Yiddishlands: A Memoir

6. Scribal Errors

34 Aunt Ánnushka was a graduate of the Berlin Conservatory of Music. She settled in Kovno with her second husband, Lyova Warshawsky, ran a kindergarten there, and performed Yiddish songs both as a soloist and member of Engel’s Choir. Deported with her family from the Kovno ghetto on October 26, 1943, she perished in one of those Estonian labor camps reserved for the last remnants of Lithuanian Jewry. Yet such horrors were never part of Mother’s story, not because she censored the past, as if knowing how they were hunted down and butchered , thrown from moving trains, buried in anonymous graves, asphyxiated and ground into ashes, or neatly arrayed in a pyre, a row of logs, a row of bodies, the way it was done in Estonia, would corrupt me for life. Learning from her in the course of the usual banter that Madame Kagan became my uncle Grisha’s lover in Yekaterinoslav, the real reason she needed him, and not some other sixteen-year-old, to help her evacuate the Sophia Kagan Gymnasium, was far more difficult to swallow, especially since the G. in my name stands for Gregory = Grisha. If Mother expunged their manner of death, it was in order to hold them accountable for their lives, to keep the ledger open. A human life, she might have said, is like a Torah scroll. If a Torah scroll is letter perfect, it’s perfect. No single scroll is more sacred than another, but 6 Scribal Errors the tiniest error in a Torah scroll renders it posl, ritually unfit. A Torah scroll, moreover, if you believe in it, can protect you and your family from harm. That is just one episode in the story of my aunt Annushka, which I’ll pretend was told to me in logical, rather than analogical, order. What I ask in return is that you not get up from the table before the meal is done and Mother has finished speaking. Mushroom-barley soup, nicknamed Soupy-Soupy for the sake of her English-speaking grandchildren, is the first course, which opens with Glasha Kochanóvsky’s engagement party held in the kindergarten, where her beloved sister Annushka taught music. Located in their courtyard, you could hear the waltzes and foxtrots playing all night. There Annushka dances the night away with Glasha’s fiancé, the incredibly virile Warshawsky , herdreamyeyesfixedonhis,andthemomentGlashaisevacuated totheinteriorofRussia,convenientlyoutoftheway,veryfaraway,he’sitching to marry Annushka, only Annushka still has a husband named Samuíl Isakovitsh, who is sitting out the rest of the war with his parents in Homel, across enemy lines. Warshawsky gets hold of a military Schein, or pass, and bravely appears before Isakovitsh, incognito, to sound him out about granting Annushka a Jewish divorce. (For all that they were so emancipated, says Mother, still they went by the Book.) “I know why she wants a divorce!” shouts Isakovitsh to the messenger from Vilna. “She has a lover. If I ever lay my hands on the guy, I’ll shoot him like a dog!” Mother interrupts to ask if I would like another piece of bread, which tells me that the punch line is coming. First in Yiddish, then, as if to vouch for its accuracy, she delivers the line in the Russian original. “When her little red cheeks turn pale, and her beautiful locks turn gray, that’s when I’ll give her a divorce!” Mother and I burst out laughing. Another year passes, and it’s Annushka’s turn to make the perilous trip into the Russian interior. Her stated purpose is to bring brother Nyonya back from Russia, and Sophia Gurevitsh is also tagging along, attached to Annushka’s pass as a fictitious aunt. (Now just because Nyonya died in one story doesn’t mean he can’t be alive in another, but without a single date to guide you, try to figure out that there’s a war still being fought, and that Nyonya has an important role to play.) Scribal Errors 35 Why did Annushka feel the sudden urge to retrieve her long-lost brother? Because only Nyonya can rescue her from her husband. The reason two elegantly dressed ladies are escorting a demobilized Russian soldier home is that along the way they have to stop in Homel. Here Annushka will try again, this time sending Nyonya as her emissary. And the maneuver works! Isakovitsh rejoices to see his...