Vilna My Vilna

by Abraham Karpinowitz

  No one was supposed to know that Napoleon was in Vilna because the Cossack divisions, who were pursuing the retreating French army, had reached the city. Leybe sent the emperor’s cavalrymen to various houses nearby, but Napoleon stayed with him. Aside from a few of Leybe’s friends, no one knew that the French emperor was lying in a bedroom at Leybe’s inn with a nightcap on his head and a hot water bottle next to his belly. Leybe tried to persuade the judge, Rabbi Abraham Danzig, to remind Napoleon about his manifesto calling for a Jewish state. Danzig explained to Leybe, “That’s all yesterday’s noodles. The emperor has lost his throne and no longer has a say in the world.”

  Leybe’s wife saved the emperor. She cooked him chicken soup and gave him an herbal drink for his bladder. She also brought him a salve for his hemorrhoids. Napoleon stayed at Leybe the Fence’s inn for a few days and regained his strength. When he left Vilna, he bade Leybe a friendly farewell and gave him a gold watch. He also promised Leybe that as soon as he got his throne back, he’d make him a marquis and give him an estate in southern France. Later, Leybe’s heirs argued over the gold watch until it disappeared into the deep pocket of a distant relative, some scoundrel who wasn’t from Vilna.

  That’s how Leybe got the nickname Napoleon. A pale reflection from the name landed on Leybe’s great-great-grandson Mishke, who Zelik the Benefactor’s son Khaymke had finished off. Because of Mishke’s reputation, Zelik the Benefactor, the chairman of the underworld organization the Golden Flag, was furious about the murder. The other members of the Golden Flag were also angry. At Itsik the Redhead’s bar, their regular hangout, Tovshe the Angel shouted, “Vilna is not Chicago!”

  The younger guys were also enraged. Mishke Napoleon had his own reputation and didn’t need to rely on his great-great-grandfather, Leybe of Shnipishok. Mishke knew how to read and write. He wrote court appeals in beautiful Polish for anyone who asked. Every Friday he could be seen at the Mefitsei Haskalah Library on Zavalne Street borrowing a book for Shabbes. Mishke played billiards like a gentleman, giving weaker opponents a few balls. He kept up appearances and was never seen with girls who were unkempt. He always conducted himself with dignity.

  Everyone in the organization knew that Zelik would never approve of the murder. They remembered when Leybovitsh’s son was kidnapped by a group of gangsters for a ransom. (Leybovitsh was a wealthy Jew who owned a tannery.) Zelik the Benefactor had gotten involved and issued an order that the boy be returned without them getting a groschen. The entire business was too crass for Vilna.

  In the meantime, Zelik ran to Commissar Rovinsky and asked if he could book Khaymke on a lesser charge. “Not, God forbid, without getting something in return. Could you write in the police report that the murder happened during a drunken brawl over the shiksa?” But Rovinsky was nervous. Word of the incident had already spread far and wide.

  “If Pilsudski were still alive,” thought Zelik, “he would take care of everything.” But Pilsudski, the founder of the Polish Republic, had already been in the ground for two years. Zelik had been very friendly with Marshal Jozef Pilsudski. Over the years, with Pilsudski’s help, Zelik the Benefactor got off of dozens of charges that could have landed him in prison. Pilsudski simply wrote a few words to the district attorney’s office and the matter was dropped.

  Everyone at Belvedere Castle, Pilsudski’s Warsaw residence, knew Zelik. He was a frequent visitor. They had plenty of problems at the castle: problems with smuggled tobacco or with the locks that had been pried open at Zalkind’s jewelry store. The police bled Pilsudski dry, so he came to Zelik for help.

  Jozef Pilsudski owed Zelik the Benefactor a debt from the years before Poland became Poland. Pilsudski had wanted to organize military units to take up arms against the tsar and win back Poland’s independence. To do that, he needed money for guns, ammunition, and uniforms. Pilsudski was in contact with weapons merchants all over Europe. They were all ready to deliver the illegal merchandise immediately, as long as they were paid. But Pilsudski had no money.

  Pilsudski found out that twice a week, a train traveling from Warsaw to Petersburg passed through Bezdan, a small train station near Vilna. As well as passengers, the train also carried sacks of money. Pilsudski decided to enlist his friends to help him rob the train. It had to be done during the summer, when the roads were dry and they could escape into the woods that ran beside the railway tracks. Pilsudski had been born in the area and knew it well.

  The trouble was that all of Pilsudski’s helpers were students from fine intellectual families, ill-suited to robbing rail cars guarded by Russian gendarmes. Pilsudski needed someone from the underworld. In Vilna, someone pointed out Zelik the Benefactor to Pilsudski. At that time Zelik was young and strong, the leader of the Vilna gangsters. Pilsudski confided his plan about Bezdan to Zelik and suggested that he apply his capable hands to the task.

  Zelik agreed to lend a hand. This wasn’t because he was mixed up with politics but because he was furious with the tsarist regime for hanging Hirshke Lekert after Lekert had tried to assassinate Von Wahl, the governor general of Vilna. Six years had passed since the assassination attempt, but the young people of Vilna were still determined to take revenge.

  Whenever a charge was laid against Zelik the Benefactor, Pilsudski wrote to the judge and explained that the accused had done a great service to the Polish Republic and the Polish army. He was right. Simply put, Zelik had saved Pilsudski’s life during the raid on the Bezdan train station. Pilsudski left the railcar carrying a sack of money, but two armed gendarmes blocked his way. There was chaos in the train station. Bullets were flying in every direction. Ignoring the danger, Zelik threw an iron bar at the two gendarmes and laid them flat. Then he grabbed the heavy sack of money from Pilsudski and hollered, “Antloyf, blockhead. Get moving.” Pilsudski, who understood a little Yiddish, didn’t wait around. He immediately fled to the appointed spot, where a horse and wagon were waiting.

  “If Pilsudski were still alive,” thought Zelik, “he would have taken care of everything.” But because Pilsudski’s body had already been lying in the ground for two years, Zelik couldn’t find anyone to help his son Khaymke, who’d murdered Mishke Napoleon. Khaymke was sentenced to sit in prison until the end of time. He served his sentence in the Lukishke prison in Vilna, but he wasn’t there long.

  When the Germans attacked Poland in 1939, Khaymke escaped from prison and got to Bialystok in the Soviet Union. There, he worked as a skinner in a slaughterhouse and sold a few hides on the black market every once in a while. In 1941, when the Germans attacked Russia, Khaymke was mobilized into the Red Army. He was awarded the highest distinction for his service and attained the rank of captain. After the war, Khaymke left for America where he worked his way up doing respectable work, selling scrap metal for smelting and not, God forbid, by illegal means. His children became doctors and lawyers and Khaymke himself, the son of Zelik the Benefactor, raises money for the state of Israel.

  Where on this wide earth is there an underworld with a lineage like the Vilna underworld? Gone are the likes of Leybe Napoleon, Zelik the Benefactor, and Orke Big Bucks. Mishke Napoleon is also gone, but to this very day he stands before my eyes.

  The Vilna underworld was truly an exceptional world.

  10

  Jewish Money

  There was a Jew who lived at number 12 Daytshe Street, where the gate opened into the synagogue courtyard. No one knew how the man survived. And even though the entire building lay open like a deck of cards for Vintsenti the janitor, he couldn’t give Tsokh the landlord a clear accounting of who the man was or what he did. At some point, the landlord must have known how the tenant would pay the rent. Based on the janitor’s reports, the landlord always knew who could pay regularly and who might be stuck for cash.

  Vintsenti estimated each renter’s situation based on the number of times the person arrived home late at night and had to pay ten groschen to have the gate opened. If the janitor got no money from someone for a period of time, he took
it as a sign that the renter was down on his luck and had to cut back wherever possible. The landlord would show up in his carriage, pulled by a midget of a horse that had been rejected by Tsinizeli’s circus, to talk with his tenant about the rent. He’d suggest the tenant look for a cheaper apartment.

  But the man always paid his rent in advance; he was never a day late. And no matter how often Tsokh asked the janitor where the man got his money, the goy never had an answer.

  The man lived alone in his garret apartment, without family. He spent more time sitting at home than walking around the synagogue courtyard. Once Vintsenti went up to his apartment with the excuse that he had to see whether the gutters had come loose from the wall. He found the man sitting at his kitchen table that was strewn with colored crayons and pieces of white paper cut in the shape of wine-bottle labels.

  Vintsenti informed Tsokh that the man survived by preparing labels for Borovsky’s vinegar or for Berger’s lemonade. It made no sense to Tsokh to make labels by hand rather than ordering them from a printer. He concluded that even though Vilna didn’t lack for lunatics, here was one more crackpot who figured he could compete with the printshops. As long as the man made no trouble and paid his rent, it was no concern of Tsokh’s.

  Vilna certainly didn’t lack for lunatics. The entire synagogue courtyard was crawling with mixed-up characters. All year long, Yudke the Maid-Chaser ran after all the young ladies, married or single, who walked through the courtyard. People whispered that he wasn’t the slightest bit crazy. The proof—he ignored the old women. Then there was Gedalke the Cantor who screamed that they wouldn’t let him sing from the lectern in the City Synagogue because he didn’t have patent leather shoes. Crazy Rokhl, who fancied herself a high-society lady, went around in a crinoline she’d gotten from the Yiddish theater. Iserson preached from the steps of the Gravedigger’s Synagogue that the doors to the lunatic asylums should be opened because that’s where the sane people were.

  The lunatics gathered at Sheyndel’s teahouse, under the window of the little Gaon’s Synagogue. Sheyndel was the only one who could handle them. But the man didn’t go to Sheyndel’s teahouse. He had nothing to do with that crazy bunch. The only place in the synagogue courtyard where he went was the Strashun Library.

  When Khaykl Lunski, the librarian, noticed a man standing in the library doorway and gazing forlornly at the bookshelves, he offered him a chair at the public reading table. The man sat at the edge of the table for almost an hour, strumming his fingers like a condemned person. Lunski walked up to him and quietly asked, “Can I help you?”

  The man looked up at the librarian with a pair of dull black eyes that suited his thin, shriveled face. “I would like to know . . .” he mumbled and then clammed up.

  Khaykl encouraged him, “Please, tell me what you’d like to know. Don’t be embarrassed. Just ask.”

  The man plucked up his courage and answered quietly, “I want to know about Jewish money.”

  “About Jewish money? Certainly. What do you want to know?”

  “Well, we once had a land of Israel. What kind of money did they use?”

  Khaykl Lunski responded to the man’s question as naturally as if he’d asked the time of day. He took the man to an out-of-the-way corner and explained that he’d have to consult many books to learn about Jewish money. But because he’d come to the library, Lunski would share a few key details with him. “It is written in the Torah, in the passage called ‘The Life of Sarah,’ that Abraham our Father paid four hundred shekels for a plot in the Cave of Machpehlah to bury his wife. When the Jews fought a war against the Romans, they cast coins with the same name, shekel.”

  “Shekel,” the man interrupted Khaykl’s lecture. “Shekel is really a beautiful word. Don’t you agree?”

  Khaykl Lunski began to understand why the man was so preoccupied with Jewish money. The furniture in his head had been moved around a little. But he explained his obsession with such seriousness and enthusiasm that Khaykl’s smile faded in a matter of minutes.

  The man explained that he lived alone. His sister in Johannesburg sent him money to cover his expenses. “I figure there’ll be a Jewish state one day. All our troubles point in that direction. I’ve decided to create money for that state. A state without money is nothing.”

  He’d thought about it for a long time, but hadn’t known how to begin, in particular what to call the money. Now he knew. “I’ll call them shekels.” He would sign each bill himself, like a real state president and write “Yiddish gelt” on it so people would know it was Jewish money. “Everything will be written in Yiddish, even though they’ll speak Hebrew in the future state. But Yiddish works better because people understand it. Soon I’ll start buying things with Jewish money. Once a month, I’ll exchange the Jewish currency for Polish zlotys. That way I’ll get Vilna Jews used to their own money as a first step towards having their own state.”

  When the man spoke about the future Jewish state, Khaykl Lunski noticed that his dull eyes lit up with a flame fanned by a distant wind carrying his childlike dream.

  And so the man introduced Jewish money into Vilna. It wasn’t easy. At first people threw his bills back at him. He was ignored by the bobesnitzes, the women who walked around the city selling large pots of beans with the ditty, “Enjoy hot beans, good enough for the kaiser.” But they wouldn’t exchange a ladleful of goods for Jewish money. It made no difference to them when the man insisted that he guaranteed every groschen. “I’ll buy out the Jewish capital with Polish money every month.”

  Sarah-Merah, the senior bobesnitze, asked, “What are you doing? You can pay with real money and be done with it.”

  “And Jewish money isn’t money?” asked the man.

  Sarah-Merah looked at the other women and then handed the man a ladleful of the moist fluffy beans that melt in your mouth. She carefully examined both sides of the shekel he gave her and then stuffed it into an inner pocket of her undergarment. The other women consoled her, “You’ve lost a ladleful of beans, but you’ve made some lunatic happy.”

  Little by little, the entire area from Yiddishe Street all the way to the lumber market on Zavalne Street started using the Jewish bills. The exchange rate was a shekel for ten groschen. Every month the man showed up to redeem his bills for state zlotys. Lots of people accepted the Jewish money: Probe from the bakery, Taleykinski with his salami, Frumkin’s pharmacy, and even the stall where they sold half a herring and cottage cheese by the spoonful.

  The man set up shop on the steps of the Tiferes Bachurim Society every Wednesday between Minkhe and Ma’ariv, the afternoon and evening prayers. He also did business in the synagogue courtyard, where working guys gathered in the evening to learn a little Torah from Shmerele Sharafan the Preacher. To increase the circulation of Jewish money, the man exchanged his money in the courtyard at a cheaper rate, for only eight groschen. The passageway where they sold secondhand merchandise as well as Yoshe’s kvass stand and Itske the Buckwheat Pudding’s bar all accepted the shekel as legitimate currency. The man was constantly surrounded by customers. To people who didn’t balk at buying only the pickling brine, the salt water from the herring keg, two groschen was real money.

  There were piles of shekels at Sheyndel’s teahouse. Just like other state presidents, the man donated alms to the beggars from the bills he’d created himself. Sheyndel used these contributions to hand out tea and buttermilk. Once she even told Iserson, the chief lunatic, that her teahouse was the place to exchange shekels, not Bunimovitsh’s bank.

  The man never failed to pay his debts. Each month, like clockwork, he walked through the city redeeming his Jewish money. Even Avromke the Anarchist, the chief used clothing dealer in the passageway, who didn’t believe in God, believed absolutely in Jewish money and sold the man a pair of trousers in exchange for shekels.

  The man walked around the synagogue courtyard like a banker, wearing new trousers, carrying a briefcase, and supplying everyone with Jewish money. Gedalke the Cantor call
ed him up to the synagogue lectern to receive a blessing for a long and healthy life, as befits a state president. Vilna Jews began grumbling that the time had come for them to live like everyone else. “Why not? Are the Poles entitled to a country and not us? Even if the guy’s a little crazy, running around like a president with his Jewish money, still, he’s got something to say.”

  A large part of Vilna happily participated in the man’s dream about Jewish money. But then calamity struck and the entire business collapsed. Someone started counterfeiting the man’s money. When the man went to Probe’s bakery to settle accounts, she gave him a wad of bills that weren’t his. He immediately fainted and would have breathed his last had someone not poured a can of water over him. When he came to, he started screaming that those weren’t his shekels. “They’ve counterfeited my currency.” That’s exactly what had happened.

  On each of his shekels, the man had drawn a pair of tamed lions sporting boyish faces and holding a blue and white flag with paws as thin as chair legs. On the counterfeit notes, someone had dashed off two shaved beasts without manes, like cats on a garbage can. The man’s signature was nothing more than chicken scratches, rather than the ornate letters befitting a president. And the counterfeit bills were printed on second-rate paper.

  The man soon discovered counterfeit shekels at Sheyndel’s teahouse and at Itsik the Buckwheat Pudding’s bar. Probe was the first to create a scene, demanding money. Then others followed. When the man berated them for not bothering to examine the shekels, they explained, “We thought you’d put out a new series of bills.” The biggest tragedy of all took place at Zlatinke’s stall at the corner of Yiddishe Street. With seven counterfeit shekels, they cleaned out her entire supply of herring and other goods.