In short, our Jews — don’t even mention them! — put the whammy on me. The next thing I know, God sends me a relative — and a real kissing cousin too, let me tell you, the horse’s own tail, as they say. Menachem Mendl was his name: a wheeler, a dealer, a schemer, a dreamer, a bag of hot air; no place on earth is bad enough to deserve him! He got hold of me and filled my head with such pipe dreams that it began to spin like a top … I can see, though, that you want to ask me a good question: why does a Tevye, of all people, get involved with a Menachem Mendl? Well, the answer to that is: because. Fate is fate. Listen to a story.
One day early last winter I started out for Yehupetz with some merchandise — twenty-five pounds of the very best butter and a couple of wheels of white and yellow cheese such as I only wish could be yours. I hardly need say that I sold it all right away, every last lick of it, before I had even finished making the rounds of my summer customers, the dacha owners in Boiberik, who wait for me as though I were the Messiah. You could beat the merchants of Yehupetz black and blue, they still couldn’t come up with produce like mine! But I don’t have to tell you such things. How does the Bible put it? Yehalelkho zor—quality toots its own horn …
In a word, having sold everything down to the last crumb and given my horse some hay, I went for a walk about town. Odom yesoydoy mi’ofor—a man is only a man: it’s no fault of his own if he likes to get a breath of fresh air, to take in a bit of the world, and to look at the fine things for sale in Yehupetz’s shopwindows. You know what they say about that: your eyes can go where they please, but please keep your hands to yourself!.. Well, there I was, standing by a moneychanger’s window full of silver rubles, gold imperials, and all sorts of bank notes, and thinking: God in heaven, if only I had ten percent of what I see here, You’d never catch me complaining again. Who could compare to me then? The first thing I’d do would be to make a match for my eldest daughter; I’d give her a dowry of five hundred rubles over and above her trousseau, her bridal gown, and the wedding costs. Then I’d sell my nag and wagon, move to town, buy a good seat in the front row of the synagogue and some pearls, God bless her, for my wife, and make a contribution to charity that would be the envy of any rich Jew. Next I’d open a free school for poor children, have a proper tin roof made for the synagogue instead of the wreck it has now, and build a shelter for all the homeless people who have to sleep on the floor there at night, the kind any decent town should have. And lastly, I’d see to it that that no-good Yankl was fired as sexton of the Burial Society, because it’s high time he stopped swilling brandy and guzzling chicken livers at the public expense …
“Why, hello there, Reb Tevye!” I heard someone say behind me. “What’s new with a Jew?”
I turned around to look — I could have sworn that the fellow was familiar. “Hello there, yourself,” I said. “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”
“From somewhere?” he answers. “From Kasrilevke! I’m an acquaintance of yours. In fact, I’m actually your second cousin once removed. Your wife Golde is my third cousin on her father’s side.”
“Say there,” I say. “You aren’t by any chance Boruch Hirsh and Leah Dvossi’s son-in-law, are you?”
“You guessed it,” he says. “I’m Boruch Hirsh and Leah Dvossi’s son-in-law. And my wife, Shayne Shayndl, is Boruch Hirsh and Leah Dvossi’s daughter. Do you know me now?”
“Do I?” I say. “Your mother-in-law’s grandmother, Soreh Yente, and my wife’s aunt, Frume Zlote, were, I believe, real first cousins — which makes you Boruch Hirsh and Leah Dvossi’s middle son-in-law indeed. The only trouble is that I’ve forgotten your name. It’s slipped right out of my mind. What exactly did you say it was?”
“My name,” he says, “is Menachem Mendl. Boruch Hirsh and Leah Dvossi’s Menachem Mendl, that’s how I’m known in Kasrilevke.”
“In that case, my dear Menachem Mendl,” I say to him, “you deserve a better hello than the one I gave you! Tell me, how are you? How are your mother-in-law and your father-in-law? How is everyone’s health? How is business?”
“Eh,” he says. “As far as health goes, we’re all still alive, God be praised. But business is nothing to speak of.”
“It’s sure to pick up,” I say, glancing at his clothes. They were patched in several places and his boots, the poor devil, were a safety hazard. “Leave it to God,” I said. “Things always look up in the end. It’s written in the Bible, hakoyl hevel—money never follows a straight line. One day you’re up, the next you’re down. The main thing is to keep breathing. And to have faith. A Jew has to hope. So what if things couldn’t be worse? That’s why there are Jews in the world! You know what they say: a soldier had better like the smell of gunpowder … Not that that has anything to do with it — why, all of life is but a dream … Tell me, though, my good fellow: what are you doing here, right smack in the middle of Yehupetz?”
“What do you mean, what am I doing here?” he says. “I’ve been here, let me see, it’s been nearly a year and a half now.”
“Is that so?” I say. “Do you mean to tell me that you live here?”
“Sshhh!” he says to me, looking all around. “Not so loud. You’re right, I do live here, but that’s strictly between the two of us.”
I stood staring at him as though at a madman. “If you’re hiding from the law,” I said to him, “are you sure that the main street of Yehupetz is the place for it?”
“Ask me no questions, Reb Tevye,” he says. “That’s how it is. I can see that you don’t know very much about our legal system here. If you’ll just let me explain it to you, you’ll understand in a jiffy how a man can live here and not live here at one and the same time …” With which he launched into such a brief explanation, that is, such a long song and dance, about what he had been through trying to get a permit to live in Yehupetz that I said:
“Listen, Menachem Mendl, I have an idea. Why don’t you come spend a day with us in the village? It will be a chance to rest your weary bones. You’ll be a most welcome guest. In fact, the old lady will be tickled pink to have you.”