There I sat thinking all this when I happened to look up — and what do you suppose I saw? A white horse with a rider on it right in front of my house! “Whoaa,” he tells it, jumping down and tying it to the gate, while to me he says, “Zdrastvoy, Tevel!”
“Zdrastvoytye, Officer, Zdrastvoytye,” I say, giving him a friendly greeting. It seems I only need think of the Messiah for Haman to appear right away — I mean the village policeman. “Welcome, sit down,” I say. “What’s the good word? What’s new in the big world, Officer?” Believe me, my heart was in my throat — what could he possibly have come for? He took his time telling me, too. He lit himself a cigarette slow and easy, blew out the smoke, and spat on the ground before saying, “Tell me, Tevel, how much time would you say you needed to sell your house and everything in it?”
“But why,” I said, staring at him, “should I sell my house? Is it in anyone’s way?”
“No,” he says, “it isn’t. It’s just that I’ve come to expel you from the village.”
“Is that all?” I say. “And what good deeds have I done you to deserve such an honor?”
“It’s not my doing,” he says. “It’s the provincial governor’s.”
“The governor’s?” I say. “What does the governor have against me?”
“It’s not against you,” he says. “And it’s not just here, either. It’s in every village in the area, in Zlodilevka, and in Rabilevka, and in Kostolomevka, and even in Anatevka, which has been considered a town until now. You all have to leave. Every one of you Jews.”
“Even Layzer Wolf the butcher?” I ask. “And lame Naftoli Gershon? And the rabbi? And the slaughterer?”
“Everyone,” he says, knifing the air with his hand.
Well, that made me feel a little better. Tsoras rabbim khatsi nekhomoh, as they say — misery never minds a bit of company. Still, I was burning up inside. “Tell me, Officer,” I said to him, “are you aware of the fact that I’ve been living in this village longer than you have? Do you know that my father lived hereabouts too, and my grandfather before him, and my grandmother also, rest her soul …”
I didn’t stop there, either; I went on to list every member of my family who had ever lived and died in those parts. I must say he heard me out, but all he said when I finished was, “You’re a smart Jew, Tevel, and you’ve got the gift of the gab. But what do I care about your grandmother and your grandfather and all their old wives’ tales? They flew away to heaven long ago, and you had better pack your things and fly away to Berdichev.”
That made me even angrier. It was bad enough to get such wonderful news from that big goy in the first place without his making a joke of it. He could fly away somewhere himself! “Officer!” I said. “In all the years you’ve been the law around here, have you ever heard a single soul in the village complain that I stole anything, or pilfered anything, or cheated anyone, or took the smallest item that didn’t belong to me? Go on, ask everyone if I wasn’t on better terms with them than their own next-door neighbors. In fact, how many times did I come on their behalf to ask you to stop being such a brute to them …”
Well, that didn’t sit too well with him, because he got to his feet, snuffed out his cigarette with his fingers, threw it away, and said, “Listen, I don’t have time to chew the fat with you all day. I have a written order, and that’s that. Here, this is where you sign. I’m giving you three days to clear out. That should be enough to sell all your things and pack.”
“So you’re giving me three days, are you?” I said, seeing it was a lost cause. “Well, for each of them I wish you a whole year of as much happiness as you’ve brought me. May God pay you back with interest for being the bearer of such good tidings.” And I proceeded to give him a good tongue-lashing, as only Tevye can do. What did I have to lose? Had I been twenty years younger, and still had my Golde — had I been, that is, the Tevye I once was — oho, I wouldn’t have taken it lying down: why, I would have settled his hash in a minute! But the way things stood … mah onu umeh khayeynu—just take a look at me now: I’m a shadow of myself, a walking corpse, a decrepit shell of a man! Dear Lord God, I thought, wouldn’t You like to play one of Your jokes on a Brodsky or a Rothschild for a change? Why doesn’t anyone give them a lesson in Lekh-Lekho? They could use it more than me. In the first place, it’s high time they too had a taste of what it’s like to be a Jew. And secondly, let them see for once in their lives what a great God we have watching over us …
In a word, it was one big waste of breath. There’s no arguing with God, and you can’t tell Him how to run this world of His. When He says li hashomayim veli ha’orets, I’m boss of heaven and earth, all you can do is listen. No sooner said than done with Him!.. So I went inside and told my daughter Tsaytl, “Tsaytl, we’re moving to town. Enough of this country life. It’s time to look for greener pastures … You get busy packing the linens, the samovar, and everything else, and I’ll take care of selling the house. We’ve just gotten a written order to be out of here in three days and find another roof for our heads.”
My daughter burst out crying, and as soon as they saw her, the children began howling so loudly that you might have thought it was the day of mourning for the Temple. That was already too much for me, and I let it all out on her. “What do you want from my life?” I asked her. “What in the world are you wailing for, like an old cantor on Yom Kippur? Do you think I’m God’s only child? Do you think He owes me special consideration? Do you think there aren’t lots of other Jews who are being expelled just like us? You should have heard what the policeman told me. Would you believe that even a town like Anatevka has been declared a village, glory be, so that the Jews can be kicked out of it too? Since when am I less of a Jew than they are?”
I was sure that would cheer her up, but my Tsaytl is only a woman. “How are we going to move in such a hurry?” she asked. “Where will we ever find a town to live in?”
“Don’t be a sillyhead,” I said. “When God came to our great-great-great-grandfather, I mean to Father Abraham, and told him lekh-lekho meyartsekho, get thee out of thy land, did Abraham ask Him where to? God told him exactly where to, el ha’orets asher arekko—which means in plain language, hit the road! We’ll go where all the other Jews go — that is, where our two feet take us. What’s good enough for them is good enough for us. What makes you think you’re more privileged than your sister Beilke the millionairess? If sweating for a living with her Podhotzur in America isn’t beneath her dignity, neither is this beneath yours … Thank the good Lord that we at least have something to fall back on. There’s some money that I saved over the years, there’s what we got for the horse and cows, and there’s what we’ll get for the house. Every little bit helps — why, we ought to be counting our blessings! Even if we didn’t have a penny to our name, we’d still be better off than Mendel Beilis …”
In a word, after managing to convince her that it was pointless to be obstinate and that, if a policeman comes along with an eviction order, it’s only sporting to sign without being piggish about it, I went off to the village to see Ivan Paparilo, an ox of a man who had been dying to have my house for years. Naturally, I didn’t breathe a word of what had happened — any way you look at it, a Jew is still smarter than a goy. “You must have heard, Ivan, old man,” I said to him, “that I’m about to say goodbye to you all.”