To this day, no one knows exactly what happened. Did Krigude the blonde mermaid, who lives at the bottom of the lake and needs a different man each season, seduce him into her darkened chamber? Or did Orke’s partner, Clumsy Iserke, argue with him and push him overboard while they were casting their nets? No one knows. The water failed to spit him out. Iser swore on his mother that Orke hadn’t shown up that night to fish, but can you believe a clumsy oaf like Iser?
A number of the fishermen who’d been good friends with Orke spoke with the Broslav rabbi on Chana-Merka’s behalf. The rabbi wanted to declare her an agune, rendering her ineligible for remarriage. Everyone in the trade had their eye on her, especially Iserke. But could anyone make her happy after Orke? Perhaps a man like Rubinshteyn. Everyone in the fish market knew that he was a real gentleman who wrote books.
Chana-Merka was in a tizzy. She walked around in a daze. “Even though he drags one of his legs, the folklorist is definitely not a repulsive man,” she thought. “To say nothing of the honor.” Her friends, the other fishwives, spoke to her differently than before.
“You should realize, Mr. Rubinshteyn, that everything that wriggles needs a place to hide. Just take a silly little fish like a minnow. Before she starts to have her fun and spawn, she clears out a spot in the river bottom, swishing her tail back and forth, back and forth. Then it’s done. She has a humble home. All the more so with a person. Being alone doesn’t even work in the bath. Who will rub your shoulders? I know an intellectual like you can obviously get—how can I say it—a woman with a tinch of the aristocratic in her blood. And just look at Clumsy Iserke. He’s such a . . . I won’t even say the word out loud.”
The little park on Troker Street was deserted. Chana-Merka sat beside Rubinshteyn on a bench covered with yellow leaves that had fallen from the chestnut trees. She was all dressed up. He hung on her every word. The weather was cool, so Chana-Merka snuggled into her cat-hair coat. The folklorist didn’t even have the sense to move a little closer. Chana-Merka was beaming. She’d powdered her face and styled her hair with a little curl on her pale forehead. She smiled at Rubinshteyn and waited. Anyone else would have put an arm around her shoulder or tried something even naughtier. But Rubinshteyn was only worried about one thing: how to keep track of what she was saying so he didn’t forget even the tiniest word that might contribute to his great collection. It was generally inappropriate to write things down on the spot. He stretched out his stiff leg like an impassable highway between himself and Chana-Merka.
Chana-Merka said, “Three things never hurt: a snooze, a bath, and a good piece of fish. I’m being blunt. What’s the point of sitting in the park and freezing your ribs? I have goodies at home fit for a kaiser. I’ll boil some tea and give you a piece of marinated pike.”
Rubinshteyn tried to discourage her, “No, thank you. You really shouldn’t put yourself out.”
“I’m not putting myself out. Everything’s ready. Our enemies should have bumps on their foreheads as large as the babka I baked yesterday. Come, Mr. Rubinshteyn, let’s have a little something to eat. If you want to know what matters most, look at what’s sitting on the dinner plate.”
The folklorist hesitated another moment, but he was convinced by her juicy expression that it made perfect sense to go to her place for a piece of fish. For the sake of folklore, Rubinshteyn gave in and went home with Chana-Merka. She walked on his healthy side, taking his arm every so often. Rubinshteyn felt his heart open. He didn’t look at her, nor did he hear what she said. An autumnal sadness accompanied him to Chana-Merka’s.
Chana-Merka took on an air of gentility. She began to watch her language. The market women barely recognized her. She even started giving more accurate weights. All because of Rubinshteyn.
Ruzshke the Fishwife explained to Chana-Merka that if she wanted to please the folklorist, she should control her language in public. “Rubinshteyn is a refined man and you sometimes say things that are better left unsaid.” All the fishwives knew that Rubinshteyn had become a regular guest at Chana-Merka’s. Things like that happened in Vilna. Bizdun the actor got involved with one of Leybe the Chicken Seller’s daughters.
Chana-Merka starting coming to the market with her hair combed, wearing a pair of pumps rather than Orke’s boots. Everyone knew an engagement was in the offing. But Pale Tsirl wasn’t impressed. She said that Rubinshteyn would, in time, turn into a frog. He was no fisherman. He never hung out at Itske’s bar. He had to be in the business of sending women to Argentina. There was no other explanation.
Ruzshke went to the Institute to ask about Rubinshteyn. She returned looking radiant. “People didn’t know what to do with me. Except for one woman,” she added, “a dried up old maid. A long thin noodle of a woman who scowled all the time.”
But Rubinshteyn stopped coming to the market. He hardly ever went to Chana-Merka’s. He’d gathered enough material for the time being and spent his evenings working on his collection. Chana-Merka didn’t understand. When she’d been covered in dirt from head to toe, the folklorist had shown up at her tub every day. Now that she’d started to wish every customer a healthy appetite and to add an extra fish to each purchase, Rubinshteyn was waxing cold.
She did what she could to appeal to the folklorist. She kept her house done up for Shabbes all week, with a tablecloth on the table and a flowered bedspread covering the bed. She bought a picture in the passageway of Adam and Eve being forced out of paradise, barefoot. But the more intelligent she tried to appear, the less interested Rubinshteyn was. She spent an entire evening at home. Each scrape of the door tore at her heart. She waited for him, but he didn’t come.
The next day Rubinshteyn came upon Chana-Merka at the entrance to the Institute. She’d been embarrassed to go upstairs, so she’d stood outside for half a day waiting for him. Rubinshteyn was bewildered. Had he given Chana-Merka false hope?
“Mr. Rubinshteyn,” Chana-Merka began, puffed up with anger, “Do you think that Chana-Merka is a sack of curses and sayings that you open, shove your hand in, and grab what you want for your books? Chana-Merka also has a heart.” With that she indicated her full left breast. “This is not the way to treat a woman when you see she has a soft spot for you. If only you’d said at the beginning that all you wanted from this silly fishwife was her curses.” Chana-Merka paused for a moment and then continued, “Forget it. Use them in good health.”
Rubinshteyn had never felt the emptiness of his bachelor life so acutely. He wanted to tell Chana-Merka that she’d misunderstood, but before he could open his mouth, she disappeared behind the corner of Vivulske Street.
Rubinshteyn accepted his bitter fate, bought a green backpack, and limped away from Vilna to gather folklore in another city.
6
Chana-Merka the Fishwife
When Rubinshteyn the Folklorist left Vilna to gather folklore somewhere else, the fish market was in turmoil. He’d been coming to the market regularly to collect curses, sayings, and aphorisms. Chana-Merka, whose tub of fish stood at the entrance to the market, was the main source for his merchandise. Rubinshteyn had spent so much time collecting material from Chana-Merka that a little romance had developed. She was smitten with the folklorist, even though one of his legs was a little shorter than the other. The other fishwives, especially Pale Tsirl, were expecting a wedding. But Rubinshteyn, the old bachelor, got scared. He went to the passageway where they sold secondhand things, bought himself a green backpack, and limped away from Vilna, planning never to return.
Chana-Merka took his disappearance very hard. Apart from the honor of someone like Rubinshteyn coming to visit her to polish off a bit of carp or to savor a glass of tea with a babka, he’d crawled into her very heart. A good few years had passed since her husband, Orke the Net Caster, had drowned in the Narotshe Lake, and she longed for the warmth of another body. Apart from his leg, Rubinshteyn the Folklorist was quite a presentable man. Chana-Merka was impressed by his refined manners, the way he sat at the table without trying to la
y a hand on her.
But why had she bothered? It all came to nothing in the end anyway. Rubinshteyn left Vilna and nothing more was heard from him. Chana-Merka felt like a widow once again and tried drowning her sorrow in her tub of fish. Although she no longer let loose with humorous quips and curses, every so often she still blurted out a saying strong enough to pierce a person’s seventh rib. Sadly, not even a good day’s earnings could lift her spirits.
One winter Friday just before Shabbes, Chana-Merka was cleaning a heap of minnows from her tub. Instead of hollering and sending the water gushing through the market, she just let it quietly trickle under people’s feet. This didn’t compare with her exploits when she’d been in her full glory and the commander of the fish market.
The other fishwives understood her mood full well. Chana-Merka had dreamt a sweet dream, but it washed up on shore. Pale Tsirl, whose tub of fish stood next to Chana-Merka’s, ranted and raved. She hissed that they should have shortened Rubinshteyn’s other leg before he started coming to the market to collect curses.
Tsirl didn’t know how to comfort Chana-Merka. Should she tell her that Osher the Clucker, from the trade after all, was pining after her? He was ready to take her exactly as she was, with only the shirt on her back. But Chana-Merka had experienced something better, a man who could hold a pen in his hand, so this would be no comfort to her. It’s true that Osher the Clucker was a big shot in the fishing business, but he didn’t compare to Rubinshteyn.
Pale Tsirl decided to have a talk with Chana-Merka. “It makes no sense to eat yourself up alive because of the folklorist, that cripple. He didn’t appreciate the curses and little jokes you gave him. Or even a woman like yourself—you offered him his own plate and spoon and a good piece of fish. May he be well, but may he shit in his pants and have brown shoes at Passover.”
The two women were walking home from the market one sunny Friday. Chana-Merka, who’d once been such a chatterbox, jabbering constantly, didn’t utter a single word. Pale Tsirl tried to cheer her up. “Chana-Merka, a curse on men. There are a lot more fish in the sea. You aren’t ugly. You can certainly still say, ‘Good morning, mirror. Pretty one, don’t despair.’”
Chana-Merka sighed. “I gave that saying to Rubinshteyn to record.”
“You’re still talking about Rubinshteyn? Can’t you get that cripple out of your head? He used up all your expressions and went somewhere else in search of another pack of used odds and ends. A plague is what he’ll find to record outside Vilna. He’ll have to limp around the entire region for a year to land what you gave him in a single week. And it won’t have that special Vilna flavor.”
Chana-Merka sighed louder. “He once said that in Bialystok . . .”
Tsirl was furious. “What about Bialystok? How can Bialystok compare with Vilna? Here, you have the proof—that Institute, now what’s it called?”
“The Yiddish Institute.”
“See how easily you remember the name,” Tsirl marveled at her friend’s memory. “Exactly. They didn’t build that Institute in Bialystok, or in Grodno, or Groys Vileyke, but in Vilna, obviously. Because Vilna is a city with curses, little jokes, and crazy people. It’s unique. Vilna has what an institute like that needs.”
“What of it? He took what he found here and left for another city to gather stuff for the Institute.”
“So he left. You think the entire business will go under?” Here Tsirl came up with a plan for her friend. Thanks to this plan, YIVO, the Yiddish Scientific Institute in Vilna, was enriched with a collection of curses, little jokes, and sayings truly to be envied.
Tsirl urged Chana-Merka to do nothing less than to set off for the Institute and tell them where their folklore came from. “Everything Rubinshteyn brought them, he got from you. Why don’t you offer to bring in the merchandise yourself and let Rubinshteyn bust a gut? There’s no better way to take revenge on him.”
Chana-Merka wasn’t thinking about revenge. Her heart was broken. She’d grown accustomed to Rubinshteyn and then he’d taken off and left the city. Chana-Merka figured he didn’t like her. Perhaps he thought she was beneath him. Why talk about revenge?
But Chana-Merka took up Tsirl’s plan for an entirely different reason. During the few months she’d spent with the folklorist, she’d become infected with the folklore bug. At first she’d shrugged her shoulders, thinking, “What’s the point of all this?” But gradually she’d come to understand that all the Vilna curses, insults, biting expressions, and aphorisms could easily be forgotten. In years to come, people might think that life in Vilna had been dry and humorless; without cutting words, without the hucksters who dragged customers into the shops from the street, without the bobesnitzes who sold boiled beans with a little saying and a tune, and without even the fish sellers in the Zaretshe market.
Chana-Merka was no simple peasant from the village. She’d managed to complete a few classes in the Devorah Kupershteyn Folk Shul for Girls. Thanks to her teacher, Gershon Pludermakher, she’d learned to hold a pen in her hand. Rubinshteyn the Folklorist had scratched off a bit of her crudeness, something a fishwife needs to earn her bit of bread. Some of the refinement that Chana-Merka had developed in school, particularly from Pludermakher’s teaching, showed itself.
One beautiful morning, Chana-Merka set off for the Institute to discuss the delivery of goods. “I want to speak with the top boss,” she said. The top boss of the Institute was Dr. Max Weinreich.
An ugly specimen known as Zelda the Researcher quivered and fretted, “Why do people come here and pester Dr. Weinreich?”
But Chana-Merka didn’t give up. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I also have rights here in the Institute.” One word followed another and soon people in the Institute realized that the woman with the gold front tooth was Rubinshteyn’s folklore source. Her name did appear on his lists. When Rubinshteyn had been around, she’d been seen a few times standing outside the Institute. The first person to recognize her was Zelda the Researcher, who’d had her eye on Rubinshteyn even before Chana-Merka.
Dr. Weinreich was delighted with Chana-Merka. He saw in her a confirmation of his theory that research without the common people isn’t worth a groschen. He’d recently written an article on that topic for the Institute journal. Dr. Weinreich sat Chana-Merka down opposite his desk, wiped his glasses, and got down to business. “Absolutely, you should bring in more material, on all topics. Here in the Institute, we’ll file it where it belongs.” He assured her that what she had given Rubinshteyn was more precious than gold. “Every curse and local expression is as sweet as sugar.”
Chana-Merka left the Institute feeling elated. Dr. Weinreich had said to her, “Mrs. Solodukhin, you possess the ultimate charm. After a single conversation with you, a person can string together a strand of precious Yiddish pearls.” It was true. Chana-Merka had presented Dr. Weinreich with language that warmed his soul.
The first list Chana-Merka supplied were Vilna curses. She didn’t submit all of them because some were too crude to say out loud. But she collected a pack of curses that were far from Rosh Hashanah greetings. They are:
May you get a piece of straw in your eye and a splinter in your ear and not know which one to pull out first.
How long do they think she’ll be sick?? If she’s going to lie in bed with a fever for another month, let the month last five weeks.
May a fish ball get stuck in your throat.
They should call a doctor for you in an emergency and when he arrives, they should tell him he’s no longer needed.
May your teeth be pulled out on a winter night and may you give birth on a summer day.
You should grow like an onion with your head in the ground.
May all your teeth be pulled out except one, and in that one you should have a toothache.
Doctors should know you and you should know doctors.
May you speak so beautifully that only cats understand you.
He should feel good. Good and dead.
May you be
lucky and go crazy in a more important city than Vilna.
Chana-Merka wanted to add, “You should swallow an umbrella and it should open in your stomach,” but she remembered that everyone knew that curse. They’d even used it in the Yiddish theater. So she erased it.
During the evenings, Chana-Merka sat in her tiny room on Yatkever Street, preparing the lists for YIVO. Dr. Weinreich had told her to write everything down. It was all useful merchandise. He suggested she compile a list of words related to fishing. “What are the various tools called in Yiddish?” he asked. Filling his order, Chana-Merka wrote:
Words used in fishing, heard from my husband, Orke the Net Caster, who drowned in the Narotshe Lake:
a zavadnik: Someone who casts the nets.
tonyeven: To pull the net out of the water.
durkhshvenken di ozyere: To traverse the lake from shore to shore with a net. Literally, to rinse the lake.
When fish lay eggs, people say they’re playing.
As an added treat, Chana-Merka wrote out the names of the different varieties of apples and pears:
Types of apples: tulske, papinkes, olivne, siere, aportn, tshernohuzen.
Types of pears: margaratkes, sapeshankes, bures.
Chana-Merka collected the fruit names at the lumber market. When she started asking questions and writing the answers on a little piece of paper, the market women looked at each other over the tops of their baskets. They all felt badly that some cripple, who’d also come around asking questions and jotting things down, had hurt Chana-Merka. Everyone in the Vilna markets knew the story of Chana-Merka and Rubinshteyn.
The Institute was abuzz. The researchers and visiting students were enjoying the latest list of aphorisms that Chana-Merka had provided. After each one was read aloud, the entire group exploded in laughter. Only Zelda the Researcher, the specialist in Jewish cuisine, made wry faces. She argued that Chana-Merka’s collections were not scientifically sound and had not been collected with the appropriate methodology that proper ethnology demanded. But prattling on with fancy terminology didn’t help her. Dr. Weinreich said that Chana-Merka’s collections would be valued for their authenticity, specifically because they were taken directly from the mouths of the people. To acknowledge the importance of Chana-Merka’s material, he took the list of aphorisms in hand and read them aloud to everyone present:
Vilna My Vilna Page 10
