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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.

No one could figure out where Prentsik got the strange creatures. To people in Vilna, an ordinary sparrow sounded like a canary and every cat preened herself, delighting in her own beauty. People said that Prentsik’s wild animals weren’t local but hailed from distant lands.

One day Giligitsh, a teacher from the Re’al Gymnasium, visited Prentsik’s private menagerie. He shrugged his shoulders, marveling at the exotic herd the shoemaker had assembled. Giligitsh sat in his socks for a good few hours. While he waited, Prentsik tacked new heels and sole tips onto the teacher’s boots and the two men discussed zoological problems, Prentsik’s obsession. Prentsik didn’t spit only nails from his mouth but also random bits of theory from a certain Professor Mitchurin. In the Soviet Union, Mitchurin had paired potatoes with summer beets and apples with cherries, hoping these matches would sire legitimate offspring. That’s what Prentsik had read in the Ovnt kurier newspaper.

No matter how often Giligitsh explained that botany is not zoology, it made no difference to the shoemaker. Prentsik insisted that he would turn his animals into respectable beings. “It will take time, a lot of time. I will rear them and turn black into white.”

Meanwhile, Prentsik’s little courtyard swarmed with various creatures, dazed animals with pointy snouts and tails as hard as corncobs. A pair of brightly colored birds ran around, plucking at each other with their shiny beaks and tearing out clumps of feathers until they drew blood. All day long, there was a noisy ruckus and angry hissing in the courtyard. The animals gnashed their teeth, searching for victims.

Prentsik paid for the animals with the soles of shoes. The warden of the zoo at the corner of Zavalne Street brought Prentsik all kinds of creatures. In return, he and his family wore shoes in good repair all year long.

The Vilna zoo was a truly wretched place. There was absolutely nothing of interest to see there. The high points were a decrepit wolf with a miserable expression on its face, a pair of otters, and a limping pelican. The city was planning to build a proper zoo in Antokl, in a forest right next to the Viliye. In the meantime, the zoo was a ship without a rudder. The warden, a goy, was in complete charge and did whatever he pleased. When one of the landowners from around Vilna brought a gift to the zoo, it went straight to Prentsik. The warden always had a ready excuse: the animal had died. That’s how Prentsik raised his congregation of strange creatures. It was a sight to behold. A pregnant woman dared not even take a peek.

Why did Prentsik need the whole business? What did he hope to achieve? He wanted to show Vilna that he could beautify the world with his experiments. God himself would take notice. Prentsik argued that if the Creator wanted to, He could create animals as adorable as dolls. He even had the ability to reshape Prentsik himself so that one of his eyes would no longer be closer to his ear than to his nose. Because of that defect, among others, Fanke, Prentsik’s fiancée, had left for Africa in the middle of the night with a military tailor.

Vilna remembered how Prentsik changed after that. He stopped going to the meetings of the shoemaker’s guild. He stopped enjoying his shot of whisky at Itsik the Redhead’s bar. He also started sleeping in his clothes.

Prentsik poured his bitterness into his menagerie. He made the rounds of the butchers in the slaughterhouses and collected all sorts of bones, guts, and entrails in a sack. He didn’t avoid Probe’s bakery either. The animals had grown so scrawny, they started gnawing on old bread and even dried-out biscuits.

Every Sunday morning, Prentsik found a pile of uneaten cholent lying next to his courtyard. It was a present from the people on Kleyn Stephan Street. They felt sorry for the animals. Every so often, one of the neighbors would approach Prentsik and gently suggest he disband his treasure trove, but Prentsik wouldn’t hear of it. He would launch into a long explanation about the meaning of his zoological experiments. His creatures would become more beautiful. With patience, he would transform nature. He had read in the newspaper about a certain professor who had done just that. Prentsik talked on and on. His visitors walked away quietly, shaking their heads as if they’d just visited someone who was very sick.

Meanwhile, Prentsik did achieve one success from his many experiments. He had a dog, a mutt without a pedigree. Prentsik insisted he would teach the dog to behave like a respectable being. He tormented and bullied the poor dog until eventually it stopped sniffing at poles and started lifting its leg. When the dog had to go, it supported its front paws on the wall of Tserile’s inn and peed like a man. Everyone on Kleyn Stephan Street was amazed when they saw the dog go. After that, they left Prentsik alone.

Giligitsh brought his daughter’s only pair of dress shoes to Prentsik and spoke to him again. “Prentsik, a living creature is not a piece of fruit. You can’t apply Mitchurin’s methods to zoology. Aside from that, Mitchurin is bluffing. I’m telling you, his experiments are going nowhere.”

Prentsik banged wooden tacks into Giligitsh’s daughter’s high-heeled shoes and held forth: “You’ll see what I’m going to do with these animals. I’ve already gotten them used to eating human food. The next generation’s fur will be a different color. It’ll also be softer.”

Giligitsh couldn’t stand it any longer and shouted, “There are laws!”

Prentsik wasn’t at all perturbed by the teacher’s shouts. “What laws?”

“The laws of nature.”

The shoemaker looked at Giligitsh out of the corner of the eye that was closer to his ear and stunned the teacher with his question. “And who says that nature can’t be altered?”

An amputee sold birds and goldfish in a shop on Hekdesh Street. Every Friday, on his way back from Tishkevitsh’s steam bath, Prentsik stopped at the shop. The amputee tried to get Prentsik to see that humans can’t alter nature.

The amputee moved around his shop in a little wagon with two nickel wheels. His legs had been amputated all the way up to his stomach, and he was ashamed to be seen in public. That is, until Prentsik sat him down on a piece of heavy leather, traced a line around his body with a piece of chalk, and cut the leather to size. Then he took a linen sack, sewed it to the leather, and placed it on the wagon. The amputee had a garment both to wear and to transport himself. After Prentsik packed him into a linen bag with a piece of leather sewn underneath it, people were no longer so put off by his appearance. And the two men became friends.

The amputee’s shop was filled with birds in cages and fish in jars. There was a large aquarium in the window. There, life was better for the fish. They could stretch out a fin. All day long, children stood in the street with their noses glued to the windowpane, watching the colorful fish performing their tricks, chasing each other up and down the aquarium and lounging in the water.

It was Friday afternoon. There were no customers in the amputee’s shop. Even the birds in the cages were preparing for Shabbes: dusting themselves off and cleaning their feathers. The two friends sat together, one in his wheelchair, the other on a kitchen stool. The amputee tried to get through to Prentsik. “The teacher, Mr. Giligitsh, is right. I wish him good health. Not too long ago, he explained to me that there are two kinds of canaries. He opened my eyes. And you’re arguing with him. What he says is God’s truth. There are no tricks in zoology. Every bird has its hop.

“If you need convincing, I’ll tell you a story that will explain zoology to you. One evening a cow and a goat go to a meadow. They chew the same grass. On the way home, the cow leaves a large pile of goods. Believe me, you wouldn’t want to step in it. And the goat, here a pellet, there a pellet, little pieces of nothing. Mr. Giligitsh is absolutely right. ‘Every creature has its ways.’”

Prentsik wasn’t willing to be convinced, “And my dog?”

“If they tortured you with old cholent, you’d also climb the walls.”

It was already Shabbes when Prentsik left the amputee’s shop. All the shops on Hekdesh Street were closed. The gate to the Jewish hospital was also closed. A light rain accompanied Prentsik home. It was already dark. Here and there, Shabbes candles shimmered through the cracks in the shutters. Hunched over, with his collar raised, Prentsik walked through Hekdesh Street, carrying his little bundle of dirty laundry under his arm. Every drop of rain that fell on his face diluted his certainty about the zoological theory he’d been so determined to prove. He’d tried for a number of years, but no great scientific discoveries had emerged from his little courtyard. When he placed two different creatures in one cage, instead of falling in love, in no time at all one tore the other’s head off.

Prentsik regretted his stubbornness. He thought about his visit with the amputee. While the man had talked, Prentsik looked around at the brightly colored birds, so unlike his own ugly creatures. Here a robin redbreast, there a finch with a colorful little cap. In one corner a bluebird, with two spots on its wings like epaulets, hopped around its cage. The canaries were as yellow as poppies and the parakeets and wagtails were so lively and proud, they were a pleasure to behold. The amputee had confided to Prentsik that if it weren’t for the birds, he would do himself in. Even though he couldn’t move, at least the merchandise in his shop made him happy. He’d told Prentsik that this was his only pleasure.

Prentsik came home, ate his solitary meal, and began to read the Ovnt kurier. The Friday edition always contained an article written by the preeminent editor A. I. Grodzenski about the latest scientific achievements. The articles were always clearly explained and spiced up with Grodzenski’s personal commentary. This week the editor had written about the sex lives of leeches.

But that evening, the contents of the article wouldn’t stick in Prentsik’s brain. All he could think about was his own failure in zoology. He’d hoped to prove that you could raise creatures and make those that are ugly, beautiful. It wasn’t so much the creatures he wanted to transform as himself. He’d come into the world with one eye planted in the wrong spot on his face, a harelip, and ears as large as Chanukah latkes. He’d hoped to show that after much effort, he’d eventually sport a perfect face and a black moustache. He would stroll down Daytshe Street with a bowler hat on his head. Girls wouldn’t run from him, the way Fanke had when she’d been only a hair’s breadth away from standing with him under the wedding canopy.

Prentsik saw that nature did indeed have its laws, just like Mr. Giligitsh had said, and his own life was controlled by a cruel law.

He bemoaned his fate until deep into the night. He couldn’t sleep. He knew that to honor Shabbes, he should wake in the morning with a clear head, without any thoughts about zoology. Unfortunately, he couldn’t stop his thinking.

Prentsik threw down his newspaper and went into the courtyard. A large moon was shining in a perfectly clear sky. A cool breeze ushered in an early autumn. Prentsik’s animal treasures were bathed in dazzling light. The creatures lay hidden in their cages, sleeping the gloomy sleep of prisoners who have long ago given up on their freedom. Only the mole, the warden’s latest gift, huddled close to the grates of its cage, trying to dig under its prison.

Prentsik opened the cages, one after the other. At first, the drowsy animals didn’t understand what was happening. But once they were fully awake, they fled as though from a fire. They didn’t have far to run. After bounding through a few streets, they found themselves in the Zakrete forest. A few lost their way and ran in a different direction, but that was no great calamity. They made it to a forest in Antokl. Vilna had enough forests for an entire regiment of minks, martens, and other creatures.

A moment later, there wasn’t a single soul left in Prentsik’s zoo. Even the mole, who had no idea where in the world it was, had burrowed under a little hill close to the prison on Stephan Street. The only creature left in Prentsik’s little courtyard was a hen with a goiter hanging down to the ground.

Prentsik went back to his room, turned off the light, took off his trousers, and stretched out on his bed in nothing more than his underwear. It had been a long time since he’d slept without his clothes. Before he fell asleep, Prentsik remembered the amputee telling him that if it weren’t for the birds, he would do himself in. Prentsik hoped to find a creature that could make him just as happy.

In the morning, Prentsik put on his Shabbes suit, packed half a challah in the Ovnt kurier and walked down Daytshe Street to Cathedral Square. From there he headed to the Bernardine Garden. The path leading to the bench beside the pond was strewn with fallen leaves from the chestnut trees. As Prentsik approached the pond, his feet were buried in a soft golden carpet that lifted his mood. He felt as though he was on his way to a joyful rendezvous.

The only swan in Vilna was swimming in the pond that shone like a mirror. Its head, as white as a bridal veil, turned gracefully and ever so slightly to one side, the better to see who was throwing the little pieces of challah. The bird skimmed gracefully across the cold water towards the shore.

Prentsik sat beside the pond for a long time, feeding this creature fashioned with so much divine patience. It needed no alteration; its tiniest feather was absolutely necessary. Prentsik watched the swan’s movements as it swallowed the pieces of challah. Every so often, the swan raced across the pond like a radiant ship carrying Prentsik’s dream, a dream of beauty.

Prentsik stopped sleeping in his clothes. He returned to Itsik’s bar for his shot of whiskey. He stopped reading scientific articles.