Vilna My Vilna

by Abraham Karpinowitz

  Karpinowitz and his narrator do not rest in their grief and longing. Karpinowitz wants future generations to understand and perhaps vicariously experience the beauty and joy of life in Vilna. The narrator of this epilogue story urges “the last Jews of Vilna, [to] throw a green bridge over everything that has disappeared, so that our children will one day be able to set foot there and understand our past lives, our past joys. About our suffering they know enough. May they taste the water from the spring in Pospieshk. May they cool their spirits in the hidden shadows of the trees in the Bernardine Garden” (p. 153).

  Without ever turning away from the painful aspects of Jewish life in Vilna and the brutal annihilation of that world, Karpinowitz offers us, his readers, his literary children, a nuanced and vivid experience of Vilna’s past life with its hope and joys.

  1

  Vilna without Vilna

  There are people who remember a man with blue spectacles who stood on the corner of Gitke-Toybe’s Lane, begging, “Take me across to the other side.” We never knew if he was really blind and needed help crossing the street or if he just longed for the touch of a warm hand. He wanted someone to take him to the opposite side, to the corner of Yiddishe Street, where the small pump supplied water to all the poor courtyards nearby. If no one came to help him, after a little while the man crossed the street on his own, tapping the cobblestones with his cane as he went.

  Why did I think about that particular man when I stood on that same corner after so many years? Absolutely nothing remained, but when I stopped there, the man’s pleas rang in my ears.

  Gitke-Toybe’s Lane bordered on Daytshe Street, the liveliest street in all of Vilna. It was called Daytshe Street even before the German murderers came to our city to slaughter the Jews. That street was my kingdom. I was friends with all the hucksters who eked out a living dragging customers into the ready-made clothing stores. I wasn’t in their line of work—I didn’t pull in customers. What I got, I took from people’s pockets. The entire street knew how I, Itsik the Hare, earned my bread. When the street was in an uproar from one end to the other, the hucksters would growl, “Itsik, scram. Quick as a hare.”

  They didn’t have to ask me twice. Quick as lightning, I ran to my regular hiding place, behind the poultry dealers on Yatkever Street. That’s how I earned my nickname, the Hare.

  I was still a boy then, just out of prison for the first time. I had yet to learn my trade—I was shoving both hands into my victim’s pocket. Zuske the Professor, who had a bar on Konske Street, taught me what I needed to know. He had a school for pickpockets. He got some of the young guys who hung around the streets together and taught us the trade. During the lessons he’d shout, “Not with your hands, idiots! With your fingers. You have to work with your fingers.”

  Hokhman the Tailor gave Zuske a gift of an old mannequin with one leg. Zuske would dress the mannequin in a jacket or coat and we’d practice on it. If the mannequin jiggled when we touched its clothing, we failed the exam. That was my school.

  No one dared cheat our professor. Every time we managed to extract something from a stranger’s pocket, Zuske got his cut, as we’d agreed. We were orphans without a home and he was like a father to us. Even if one of the professor’s students failed to bring in anything, he didn’t go hungry.

  It’s good to remember all this. I’m a big shot in Canada now. I’m in the hotel business and Mr. Jack Grossman is a name to remember. I even have a say in the Jewish community. My lineage serves me well—someone from Vilna! After my years in the wide world, I’ve become a gentleman.

  When I told people in Canada where I was from, a Jewish family with status cozied up to me. They matched me up with a girl in their family. No great beauty. She has a small defect: one of her shoulders is a little higher than the other. But she’s very well educated, always with a book in hand, even in bed. Her family set me up. They brought me into the business. Being around her, I became respectable and left Zuske the Professor behind.

  Here I stand in 1989, on the corner of Gitke-Toybe’s Lane, and I think back to life in the thirties. That was a bitter time. People escaped to Russia to save their lives. They wanted to get out of harm’s way, to work and learn a trade. We know how that turned out.

  I also wanted to escape to Russia. What with the police and the prisons, I was fed up with how I was earning my living. I was an orphan, so what kept me in Vilna? The city itself. I swam through Vilna like a fish in the Viliye. I was at home from Sophianikes Street, with the whorehouses crammed with shiksas and a few Jewish girls, all the way up to Novogorod Street. Novogorod was right next to the slaughterhouses where they killed the animals for the butcher shops.

  My pals lived on Novogorod. Those guys were always ready to pick someone’s lock to help a friend in need and bring him a tasty morsel in prison. One of those guys saved my life, though not intentionally. Thanks to him, I wasn’t in Vilna when the Germans drove the Jews to Ponar to murder them.

  What a story. Gorgeous Grishke, as he was called, was quite the guy. He used to put train passengers to sleep with smoke from a special cigarette. He was very smart and knew many languages. Grishke was looking for a business partner to grab valises from the sleeping victims. He’d traveled with one of Motke the Little Kaiser’s nephews, but they fought over the division of the loot, so he was looking around for someone else.

  Grishke wanted to work with Black Leyke’s bastard, but Leyke screamed and hollered that he was going to lead her kid astray. Even though she was a former streetwalker, her Elinke was not going to get involved in shady work. People in Vilna still remembered when Spokoyni the moyel didn’t wanted to perform Elinke’s bris because no one knew the father. Leyke insisted the father was Elijah the Prophet, because he’d left and never returned. Later, when Elinke studied at the Ramayles Yeshiva, his mother didn’t dare come near the school.

  Gorgeous Grishke was keen to work with Elinke because he was so honest. But Black Leyke kept fussing over her kid, insisting he only do honest work until important people like Zelik the Benefactor and Wise Melekh advised Grishke to look for someone else.

  Grishke kept looking until eventually he got to me. “If I put a new suit on you, people’ll think you’re really somebody.” So he said. He took me to Tsalke the Nose’s ready-made clothing shop and bought me a double-breasted suit. I started to travel with him on the trains.

  I traveled with Gorgeous Grishke until one of the passengers, a little aristocrat with whiskers, refused to fall asleep. He just dozed with one eye open. When I made a grab for his valise, planning to jump off the train at the next stop, just past Kraków, he started hollering. I dropped the valise, opened the train door and climbed onto the roof. I made it all the way to the Czech border, to Koshitsa. It was an international train.

  You could write a novel about all the prisons and holes where I spent time before I got to Canada. Thanks to Gorgeous Grishke, I avoided the slaughter. Later someone told me they’d seen Grishke in Klooga, a camp in Estonia where they murdered Vilna Jews and burned their bodies.

  I stand on the corner that was once Gitke-Toybe’s Lane and I wait. Maybe someone will run up to me and shout, “Itsik! Itsik the Hare! Look at him.” But there isn’t a single person left in Vilna who’d remember me. If a passerby bothers to throw me a glance, it’s because of my camera. I promised to bring photographs back from Vilna. I’ve already been to Sophianikes Street in search of the last house, right next to the old fish market. That’s where Tall Tamara wanted to hang a sign, “Public School for Love.”

  Tamara got the idea from Siomke Kagan, the reporter from the Vilner Tog newspaper. He’d already tried organizing a professional streetwalkers union in Vilna with a separate Jewish section, but the whorehouse bosses on Sophianikes Street wouldn’t allow it. They were afraid the girls would get it into their heads to demand overtime pay. So Siomke hatched another plan: Tamara and Black Leyke would teach young Jewish men the art of love. The teachers would earn a living and future grooms would learn what w
as what. “It would also be a great honor for Jewish Vilna, the first school of its kind in the world.” That’s what Siomke wrote in the newspaper. Tall Tamara took the scheme seriously. She even ordered a sign from Karpel the sign painter, but it was never hung. The entire business came to nothing.

  I searched for that house but didn’t find even a brick. All of Sophianikes Street had been mowed down like grass in a meadow. No trace left. Only the Vilenke, the stream that splashed against the back walls of the brothels still gurgles by, but sadder than before, on its way to the Viliye.

  On the street where Shimon the Coachman once drove his horse and buggy so quickly the cobblestones trembled, mothers now sit on benches lined up on the dead earth and their little children play in the sand. Once mothers sat in the Bernardine Garden with their children and threw scraps of bread to a pair of swans.

  And on my street? On my street there was always a commotion, like in an anthill. Every building had at least ten shops selling all kinds of goods: Tsalke the Nose and Khanovitsh with their ready-made clothing, Sarah Klok with her dressmaking notions, Taleykinski’s salami, Frumkin’s pharmacy, Bendel’s barbershop, Probe’s bakery. Is there anything you couldn’t find on that street? You could leave there dressed, well fed, shaved, and with a remedy for a cough.

  Now mothers sit with their children and old Lithuanian women knit little jackets. All on my street. Both sides of the street are now empty. You can’t even get a glass of water to quench your thirst.

  And what’s left on Yiddishe Street, just opposite my street? Nothing, as though the street had never existed. Gone is Velfke Usian’s restaurant where all the actors from the Yiddish theater used to come and eat. I knew them all. Moyshe Karpinowitz with his little beard ran the theater on Ludvizarske Street. He used to let me in to watch the performances, but he’d warn me, “Itsik, go up to the balcony. And keep your hands to yourself.”

  Gone is Yoshe with his kvass stand. Gone is Osherke the Herring’s bar. They were all on Yiddishe Street. At Osherke’s, people ate all the different kind of herring, starting early in the morning. They also played billiards there.

  Before my eyes, I see the entrance to Velfke’s restaurant. One sunny day, Avromke the Anarchist was sitting on the steps with something to say to everyone. He certainly never let a young lady, whether married or single, pass by without comment. I’d just left Osherke’s bar and I saw everything. I saw Dovidke the Cheat appear out of nowhere and stab Avromke in the heart with a knife. Avromke managed to stand up, grab Dovidke by the arm, and cry out, “You too, Dovidke?” Then he hit the ground, a dead man.

  My wife once took me to the theater. They were playing Julius Caesar by Shakespeare. A grim play with no singing or dancing. The theater on Ludvizarske was a much livelier place. With my limited English, I understood that when the senators attacked Caesar from all sides like real underworld types, he called out the very same words to his friend Senator Brutus, who shoved a knife into him just like the others.

  Did Avromke the Anarchist know what Shakespeare had written or did he have the soul of a Julius Caesar that prompted him in his final moments with those same words?

  Avromke sold secondhand things in the passageway. He certainly had enemies. He ruled over the entire miserable trade without allowing any competition. But he gave Dovidke a piece of the action from time to time, slipping him a little merchandise at bargain prices.

  In prison, Dovidke went off the rails with remorse and stopped making sense. He tormented himself over Avromke’s murder. When he went to pieces, they let him out of prison, but he was never seen on Yiddishe Street again.

  Glezer Street is gone too. No, a few things remain: a wall here, a wall there, but it’s no longer Glezer Street, where Zelik the Benefactor had his tavern. That’s where guys like Mishke Napoleon and Kalman the Squirrel got together. I wasn’t in their league, so I’d sit at a little side table and order a quarter meter of kishke. Zelik the Benefactor’s wife was the queen of kishke. Her kishke melted in your mouth. It always came out brown and shiny, like chestnuts fresh from the tree. She sold her merchandise by the meter, like Sarah Klok sold elastic for underwear.

  Zelik’s daughter Taybke was obsessed with playing the piano. How did someone like Taybke get interested in piano? You shouldn’t ask questions like that about people in Vilna. Everyone in Vilna wanted to be better and more beautiful.

  In Zelik’s home, they knew plenty about smuggling tobacco from Lithuania, but nothing about the piano. So Taybke went to Svirsky the Furrier’s to talk with his daughter, the piano teacher. She explained that she was dying to learn to play a little but had no money for lessons. She offered to pay with kishke. When Svirsky’s daughter heard the word kishke, her mouth watered and she immediately agreed. “Good, bring us kishke!”

  A winter and a summer came and went and Taybke worked on her piano playing. Toothy Khatze and Iserke, auction wholesalers, sold Zelik an old piano. When you walked through Glezer Street in the evening, you could hear Taybke playing.

  Taybke wasn’t the only one. Boys and girls sang in choirs, played mandolins, and performed in plays. Every Friday, there was a social evening at the Re’al Gymnasium. People danced and read poetry. Outsiders often showed up and caused a commotion, trying to force their way into the hall. The teachers stationed Khayme the Dandy at the entrance to keep order. In exchange, he was allowed to dance with any girl he chose. Each girl at the Re’al Gymnasium was more beautiful than the next. I knew them all, from a distance. You could enter the gymnasium courtyard through Konske Street, just opposite Zuske the Professor’s bar, my trade school. I loved watching the guys and girls strolling across the courtyard during their long break. I would have liked to join them.

  Here I stand, after so many years, on the corner of Gitke-Toybe’s Lane. I don’t recognize my own city. It has run away from me, across the Viliye, all the way to the forest, to Volokumpie. Sometimes on Shabbes we used to row to Volokumpie in a little boat we rented in Antokl from Yane the Boatman.

  And on my street, where day and night there were deals being made and a constant commotion? I am the last survivor of that street. To this day, memories of the street pierce my heart like a broken arrow that can’t be removed.

  The street has become part of the silent old city. The area from Shnipishok all the way up to the Shishkin hills that used to doze all week long is now the new city. Even the hotel where I’m staying is on the other side of the Viliye, where the rafts used to come in and the boom men took the logs out of the water for the nearby sawmills.

  The shiksa at the tourist bureau offered to show me the city. Me, of all people. I could have walked the city from one end to the other with my eyes closed. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  At dawn, I left the hotel by myself and walked over the Viliye Bridge to my Vilna: to Yiddishe Street, to Glezer Street, to Yatkever and Rudnitzker Street, to what’s now known as the old city.

  I didn’t recognize the place. There were new buildings that didn’t match their surroundings, like someone wearing a tuxedo with canvas shoes. The lanes and passageways have disappeared. There are no corners to sneak into and hide. The city has grown big, puffed up like a rich upstart. There’s no little nook to nestle into, no little corner to call your own.

  My wife warned me, “Don’t go. You’ll find nothing there but grief.” But I had to see the city that raised me one more time. Her streets were my home; her people, my family. Even Mr. Khayim Gordon, the stern shammes from the Great Synagogue, always had a good word for me: “Itsik,” he’d say, “one day you’ll become respectable.”

  Now I’ve become respectable. But who will listen to me brag? If only there had never been Germans on this earth, then Vilna would still be Vilna and I wouldn’t have become respectable, with two hotels in Canada.

  They’ve set up a kindergarten on the spot in the synagogue courtyard where the shammes, Mr. Khayim Gordon once lived. He went to Ponar with all our fellow Vilna Jews.

  People will probably be
offended. “Look whose Vilna he’s searching for: the Vilna of Zelik the Benefactor and Tovshe the Angel.” Let them be offended. This is my Vilna. Let everyone from Vilna search for their own corner, their own special spot. None of us will find anything. Nothing remains.

  Here I stand where Gitke-Toybe’s Lane once was and I cry. A little girl with a red bow in her blonde braids watches as I let the tears stream down my face. She stretches out her hand to me. She’s holding a bright red candy. I’d like to smile but I can’t. I murmur, “It’s Vilna without Vilna.”

  2

  The Amazing Theory of Prentsik the Shoemaker

  Prentsik the Shoemaker slept in his clothes. After finishing his day’s work, he went straight from his workshop to bed without taking the hat off his head. He even brought his hammer with him and shoved it under his pillow. Prentsik insisted it made no sense to undress. “You barely have time to turn around before you have to get up again.” It was easier to sleep in his clothes, especially since there was no one to watch him undress.

  Prentsik was a lonely man.

  But no one can be entirely alone. Everyone has to be involved with something, even if it’s only a fly. Prentsik was involved with animals. This wasn’t so much to drive away his loneliness as to prove a scientific theory and stun the world. He cleared out the nettles from the little courtyard behind his room on Kleyn Stephan Street, next to Tserile’s inn, and set up a zoo. He got some cages and raised all sorts of monstrosities.