Vilna My Vilna

by Abraham Karpinowitz

  The story of Shibele’s loss spread from Gitke-Toybe’s Lane all the way to the lumber market. Sheyndel’s teahouse was in an uproar. They couldn’t believe the injustice Shibele had suffered. In the past, no one had ever had a good word to say about him. “With your health,” they’d tell him, “you should be pushing a cart instead of playing a comb like a depressive.” When Zerdel had been Shibele’s orchestra partner, people had put up with their concerts. Now that Shibele was on his own, everyone just ignored him. But when bad luck struck and someone took Shibele’s jacket with the lottery ticket, everyone felt sorry for him. Even Sheyndel. She said she had nothing against the thief. “May he thrive and be happy, as long as his hands dry out like splinters.”

  The story of the lost ticket reached Avromke the Anarchist, the chief merchant in the passageway. Wasting no time, Avromke went straight to Sheskin to see what could be done for Shibele. Sheskin shrugged his shoulders. There was nothing to be done. Shibele’s ticket had won a large sum of money, but without the piece of paper he couldn’t claim a single groschen. Sheskin had already informed all the agents in Vilna not to pay out any money on that number. He’d also informed the central office in Warsaw about the lost lottery ticket, but none of that would help Shibele. The only thing that would help was if someone found the ticket. And the sooner the better. Sheskin finished with a proclamation that freeloaders, tramps, and barefoot bums should stay away from money. “They have no idea what it’s worth.”

  Sheskin was furious with Shibele. He’d planned to write an article for the Vilner tog newspaper about the winner and his big prize. He’d even arranged for Zalkind the photographer to immortalize the moment when he presented Shibele with his jackpot in front of all the city big shots. The entire city would have seen the advertisement for his office. But Shibele had ruined everything. He’d lain down in the middle of the courtyard like a piece of dead meat, with his jacket beside him, instead of clutching it between his legs so no one could steal it. Avromke the Anarchist defended Shibele—how could he have known that anyone would want his old rag? And it really was a rag. The material was badly torn and the lining was in shreds. Only one of the buttons remained, hanging from a thread. The elbows were worn to nothing. Everyone had warned Shibele that the jacket would soon crumble to dust.

  The jacket was never found. Avromke the Anarchist ordered all the merchants in the passageway to inspect their merchandise, hoping someone had bought the jacket without realizing it. Avromke focused his efforts on Itshe, who provided rags to the Olkeniker paper factory. Avromke got Itshe to spread all his bundles out in the passageway. No one was allowed to walk through the courtyard. The neighbors ran around in circles. Some helped by inspecting each rag separately. Shibele stood there, looking like he had a toothache. He shook his head as people shoved jackets of every size and color under his nose.

  Years passed. Shibele had long ago lost his front teeth and could no longer play music. Besides, his mind was filled with the lost lottery ticket. He never recovered from his bad luck. He’d had all the luck he needed in his breast pocket, and it had disappeared from under his very nose. Shibele sat on the steps of the little synagogue and waited for the shammes’s wife to bring him a plate of warm food. From time to time, he dragged himself to the Zaretshe cemetery to spend a little time at Zerdel’s grave with its tin plaque instead of a gravestone. Standing beside the grave, Shibele let himself have a good cry about the injustice that bitter fate had dealt him. “You said yourself, ‘Buy the ticket.’ I was planning to put up a stone for you engraved with birds, with an iron chain around it. But my jacket and the ticket went into the ground.”

  Shibele never knew how true this was. His jacket with the lottery ticket really did go into the ground, as though Zerdel had begrudged his orchestra partner wealth and dragged the winnings along paths and byways, closer to him, closer to the underground realm.

  One day, when Grush the Bawler was hanging around City Hall with his cronies, he drunkenly told them about the wrong he’d inflicted on his father years before. Grush’s father had bequeathed his son a barrel and a horse along with the right to clean the Jewish community outhouse in the synagogue courtyard.

  When the old man lay in his casket with his whiskers groomed, about to be buried, the priest realized he had no jacket. All his life, both summer and winter, Grush’s father had walked around in a pair of trousers and a fur-lined cloak. But the priest said it wasn’t proper to bury someone in a cloak. Besides, the cloak gave off an unbearable smell.

  Grush set off from upper Nove-Stroyke, where he lived, to buy a jacket in the passageway. The casket maker had given Grush a pair of filthy cardboard shoes, so he just needed the jacket. Instead of walking down Yiddishe Street, to shorten his route Grush went through the synagogue courtyard. He noticed a jacket lying on the steps of a Jewish church. He had a good look around, but the courtyard was empty because of the heat. There was only one beggar sleeping in the sun. Grush grabbed the jacket, threw it into a bag, and with the money he saved, got good and drunk at Itske the Buckwheat Pudding’s bar.

  It was already nighttime when Grush dragged himself back to their hut. He was good and drunk, but he managed to lift his father up and put the jacket on him. When all of Gush’s father’s cronies showed up in the morning, they said the man looked like a real count and that no one had ever gone into the ground looking better. But now that Grush was older, his father visited him in his dreams and criticized his son for burying him in a stolen garment instead of buying a jacket, as it should have been done.

  Shibele never learned the fate of his jacket with the lottery ticket in its breast pocket. Grush went blind from drinking spirits mixed with shellac for polishing furniture. In his later years, he could no longer afford straight whisky. He sold the barrel and the horse and was no longer seen in the synagogue courtyard.

  Shibele still showed up in the synagogue courtyard. He sat on the steps of the Gravedigger’s Synagogue humming the “March of the Regiment of the Sixth Legion” through the hole between his remaining teeth and waited for the children from Yiddishe Street to march by, laughing and shouting. One fine day Shibele also disappeared. A comb missing most of its teeth and wrapped in silk paper was found in the vestibule of the synagogue. One of the Psalm reciters placed it next to the water basin in case Shibele remembered his musical instrument and came to get it. It lay there until someone threw it in the garbage.

  No trace remained of Shibele. New musicians appeared in the synagogue courtyard. On cold nights, gathered next to the oven in the little synagogue, they sometimes spoke of Shibele. The old gravediggers said he would still be making music had it not been for the lost lottery ticket, which had completely shattered him and destroyed his musical ability. “Shibele tried to become a wealthy man in a time when paupers and the sick dared not wish for such a thing. People like that should accept their lot,” they said. Others disagreed. Shibele is gone, but from time to time his dream of wealth springs up in one of the other little courtyard synagogues.

  5

  The Folklorist

  The Vilna fish market was packed. Housewives from the entire region were running through the narrow aisles between the rows of tubs. When the women from the neighborhoods of Poploves and Zaretshe heard there were cheap smelts from the Broslav Lakes, they came running to grab what they could. The market was jumping. The fishwives moved as quick as lightning. They didn’t have to lift the gills of each fish to prove the flesh was red and therefore fresh. They just threw a bunch of little fish into each basket and told the customer to move on.

  On that day, Rubinshteyn the Folklorist set off for the fish market to collect material. He’d come from a town that was further away than Bialystok to gather folklore in the Jerusalem of Lithuania. People in the Yiddish Scientific Institute had told him if he wanted to hear the genuine language of the people, he should hang around the fish market. Even though Rubinshteyn limped, he was willing to walk to the edge of the city for the sake of a witty saying. He got up v
ery early that morning. It wasn’t easy for him to drag his crippled leg all the way from Savitsher Street, where he had his little room, to the fish market. But was there anything he wouldn’t do for folklore?

  Rubinshteyn thought the Vilna sayings had to be documented as quickly as possible. If, God forbid, they were forgotten, it would be a great loss for the culture. Because of his love of folklore, Rubinshteyn was still a bachelor. No matter how many matches were proposed to him (and good matches at that), he always declined. In the Institute, they wanted to pair him up with Zelda the researcher, an old maid who specialized in Jewish cuisine all the way back to the twelfth century. But in his imagination, Rubinshteyn saw Zelda the researcher striding to the Institute on legs that were as long and thin as a stork’s, while he limped behind her. This picture certainly didn’t appeal to him. Vilna would make a mockery of them.

  Figure 1. “On that day, Rubinshteyn the Folklorist set off for the fish market to collect material.” By Yosl Bergner from Avrom Karpinovitsh, Baym Vilner durkhhoyf (Tel Aviv: I. L. Peretz, 1967). Courtesy of the artist.

  Rubinshteyn stood in the fish market, waiting for folklore. He didn’t have the courage to walk closer to the tubs. He was afraid the fishwives might humiliate him, especially because it was slippery near the tubs and he could easily fall. So he stood at the edge of the row of tables. But he could barely contain himself. Ruzshke the Fishwife let fly with a real string of curses. From the distance, Rubinshteyn could only hear one out of every ten words, but even that made him salivate. Ruzshke was giving a housewife what for and was about to hit her with the tail of a carp.

  The crowd around the tubs thinned out, and the fishwives started taking off their aprons that were caked with fish scales. The market would soon be empty.

  Chana-Merka was the first to notice Rubinshteyn. Her tub stood at the very edge of the market. “Why is that man standing around without a basket? What’s he doing here?” she wondered. It was as clear as day that he hadn’t come to buy fish. He’d obviously been sent by City Hall to spy. Why would he have a pencil in his hand if not to check the weights? Of all the fishwives, Chana-Merka was the most likely to weigh high. Every Yom Kippur at the Yizkor service, she would wail loudly, pouring out her bitter heart. Yoel the shammes always reprimanded her. “Chana-Merka, wail less and give the correct weight.”

  Chana-Merka didn’t just stand there. She smiled flirtatiously at Rubinshteyn, revealing the gold crown on her front tooth. “My dear man, I’ll give you a kilo of tench that are so frisky, you’ll have trouble carrying them home.”

  Rubinshteyn was befuddled and didn’t know what to say. He looked foolishly at Chana-Merka. Her face was partly covered by the fringes of her woolen kerchief. Her cheeks were burning from her recent sales and her merry eyes left Rubinshteyn feeling uneasy. He stayed silent.

  Chana-Merka didn’t stop. “My dear man, what if I add a few barbels? Your wife won’t know what to do with you.”

  Finally the folklorist showed some life and stammered, “I . . . I’m not looking for fish.”

  “That’s all I have to offer. What are you looking for?”

  Rubinshteyn blurted out, “Some good curses.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll explain. I collect curses. Sayings also. I was just listening to all of you talk.”

  A stone fell from Chana-Merka’s heart. “So that means you’re not from City Hall? Because I thought . . . if that’s where you’re from, I hope you find yourself lying face down in hell.”

  Chana-Merka was happy she’d escaped unscathed. Pointing to Rubinshteyn, she shouted across the entire market, “Hey, this man is collecting curses. Who wants to give him some merchandise?” A crowd immediately formed around the folklorist. The fishwives wanted to have a closer look at the amazing sight. Rubinshteyn tried to explain folklore to them, but they didn’t let him get a word in edgewise. The fishwives, especially Ruzshke and Pale Tsirl, made fun of him and drowned out his words.

  After that rebuff, Rubinshteyn quickly left the market. Chana-Merka felt her heart tighten. She hadn’t noticed that he dragged one leg. Was she responsible for what had happened in the market? She reproached herself, “Maybe this is how he earns his living.”

  Rubinshteyn swallowed his pride and returned to try his luck with the fishwives. Not so much with all the fishwives as with one in particular, Chana-Merka. He really should have been angrier with her than any of the others, but he couldn’t stay angry, no matter how hard he tried. His temperature rose when he thought of her rosy cheeks and her eyes that glittered like gold. During the previous few nights, while lying on his narrow bed, Rubinstein had remembered that he wasn’t only a folklorist, but also a man.

  For years, Rubinshteyn had been absorbed in collecting folk wisdom. He was literally soaked in aphorisms, curses, invectives, and fables. From early in the morning until late at night, he was up to his eyeballs in his collections. He’d felt secure in his defense against all temptation. But then along came Chana-Merka. A single smile from her had pushed him off his path.

  The folklorist tried as hard as he could to bury his feelings and to arrive at the market with dry, scientific objectives, but it didn’t work. Thoughts of Chana-Merka whirled around in his head and stopped him from thinking about anything else. Chana-Merka greeted him. “Oh, the gentleman with the curses is here. I’ll chop up the little door for firewood and fry you some flea giblets. What a guest.”

  Rubinshteyn felt warm all over. He’d caught a whiff of folklore. He unbuttoned his raincoat, unobtrusively took out his notebook, and immediately started writing. “Say something else,” Rubinshteyn asked Chana-Merka. “Talk and I’ll write.”

  “Write what you want. Aren’t there enough crazy people in Vilna already? I just want to know if this is how you earn your living or if you do it for fun.”

  Wasting no time, Rubinshteyn began to explain the lofty aims of folklore to Chana-Merka. She nodded her head while he talked. She didn’t grasp everything he said, but some things made sense to her. The other fishwives edged up to Chana-Merka’s tub to listen. Pale Tsirl was about to start her routine again, but this time Chana-Merka wouldn’t stand for it and shouted, “If you want to give the man merchandise, that’s good. If not, you can go and. . . .” She was tempted to really lay into them, but she held her tongue. She was embarrassed in front of Rubinshteyn.

  The folklorist didn’t collect many treasures that day, but he was as happy as could be. Chana-Merka had asked him to meet her on Shabbes morning at the little park on Troker Street for a chat.

  Zelda the researcher was sitting in one of the small rooms in the Institute. She was writing about a Jewish dish called shleyskes and chewing on the end of a loaf of bread thinly spread with cottage cheese. Both the chewing and the writing were difficult. One of her molars was raging, and she couldn’t figure out exactly what shleyskes were. One book she’d found implied that they were dough pellets kneaded with honey and poppy seeds. A pamphlet said they were a kind of cookie sprinkled with almonds. She had no idea which version was correct. She was depressed. She would have loved a tasty dish at that point, even modern fare.

  Zelda the researcher had had a streak of bad luck. She’d bought a new coat at Tsalke the Nose’s ready-made clothing store. Not for herself, but for Rubinshteyn. She’d hoped it would occur to him to take her to one of Mr. Gershteyn’s choir concerts. But what had happened? Rubinshteyn hadn’t even glanced in her direction. They sat in the same room with their desks touching, but all he ever said was “Good morning.” He walked from one room to the next with his lists of folklore, boasting about his treasures.

  Everyone clucked over his findings and patted him on the back. Dr. Weinreich, the director of the Institute, congratulated him. Apparently Rubinshteyn had gotten to know some sort of fishwife, a backward element who’d supplied him with information. “If only he’d investigated scientifically, without mixing up his work with his personal feelings,” Zelda thought. People in the Institute said that the pair had
been seen sitting together near Castle Hill on Shabbes.

  Zelda got up from her desk and walked across the room, nudging her molar with her tongue as she went. She sighed loudly. The final result of all her studying and rummaging around in books was that some simple woman got more pleasure from life than she did, even with all her knowledge. Rubinshteyn’s notes lay on his desk. Zelda peeked furtively at them, like a hen at its oats. Rubinshteyn had written in florid handwriting on a large piece of white paper:

  Material from folklore investigation, taken from Mrs. Chana-Merka Solodukhin, a fish seller in the Vilna fish market.

  Sayings:

  You’re already a dog, don’t be a pig.

  When a shlimazl tries to kill a chicken, it’s the chicken who walks away.

  Eating matzoh balls is better for your health than reading the Haggadah.

  From love she gets . . .

  Reading the material had enflamed Zelda’s sore tooth, but she still took a look at the list of curses.

  May they carry you and sing.

  May a weak balcony fall on your head.

  May they use your guts to hang laundry.

  Zelda couldn’t bear to read any further. She spat at the floor and returned to her desk to search for a source to explain shleyskes.

  Chana-Merka started coming to the market in a clean apron. She didn’t want to be embarrassed if Rubinshteyn showed up. She really wanted to please the folklorist. Her Shabbes meetings with him had unsettled her.

  Chana-Merka had been a widow for close to two years. Orke the Net Caster had certainly been a good man, not a drinker. But what difference did that make now that he was no longer around? No one from Broslav could forget him. He’d been one of the best fishermen. His net casting was legendary. He’d brought in several nets full of fish every night, without fail.