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 called 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.

Just a week earlier, the man had been the hero of the synagogue courtyard, and now everyone was railing against him. “Imagine. He made half of Vilna crazy with his Jewish money, with his buying and selling, the devil only knows why.”

In a single instant, the good times were over. People fought, accusing each other of terrible things, all because this crazy guy had led everyone around by the nose. The story reached the policeman with the red beard who patrolled the Jewish area, ate cholent at Velfke’s restaurant, and was on a first-name basis with everyone. He wasn’t happy with the situation. “How can you have Jewish money in Poland? What are my Jews thinking?” Avromke the Anarchist barely managed to appease the policeman with a gift for his wife. Then Avromke informed the man in no uncertain terms that he had to stop distributing Jewish money and close his bank.

The man’s presidency came to an end. He struggled to pay his debts for the counterfeit shekels and was left without a groschen. No matter how much money his sister sent, it wasn’t enough to silence all the screaming mouths. If Sheyndel from the teahouse hadn’t given the man food, he would have collapsed in the street. He sat at the bare table in his garret apartment, waiting for Vintsenti the janitor to show up and tell him to come down to the courtyard to have a talk with Tsokh the landlord. The man trembled with fear that Tsokh would ask him to leave because he was behind with the rent.

One morning, just before Shevuos, Tsokh showed up in his carriage and told Vintsenti to ask the man to come down to the courtyard for a little conversation. The landlord stood next to the gate of number 12 Daytshe Street with his tenant, the former president of a Jewish state he had financed out of his own pocket, almost losing his shirt in the process. Tsokh asked about the rent. The man began to stammer, making excuses. Tsokh listened. The man’s words flowed from his mouth like drops of water off a goose’s back. Finally he whispered in a muffled tone, “Believe me, Mr. Tsokh, I didn’t drink away the money. Someone took me for a ride and counterfeited my Jewish money. One day there’ll be a state and this wrong won’t be forgotten.”

Tsokh looked at his renter as though seeing him for the first time. “One day there’ll be a Jewish state. Hmmm. The man says it with such conviction. Maybe he’s right.” And Tsokh, who would have demanded rent from the sparrows on the roof, smiled and said, “Bring down your shekels—all of them. I’ll accept them as rent until your sister sends money.”

The man brought down a bundle of bills. The janitor couldn’t believe his eyes when the landlord put the colored pieces of paper into his pockets, got into his carriage, and with a lively giddy up, urged his midget of a pony down the length of Daytshe Street. Tsokh glided over the Vilna streets toward a distant place where Jewish money would be vindicated. But he never arrived there. The Germans wiped his building off the face of the earth, together with the synagogue courtyard. He and the man with the Jewish money went to their deaths at Ponar with all their Jewish neighbors.

Only the shekel survived. It arrived at a distant shore far, far from Vilna, in the Jewish state that the man with the Jewish money had imagined.