Dear Fang, with Love

by Rufi Thorpe

  “Loafers?” I asked.

  “Shut up,” she said. “They’re the right thing.”

  And she was right. They were the right thing. She put the slacks and the loafers on with her white T-shirt and she looked suddenly Lithuanian. And older. And prettier. I knew nothing of clothes or what it takes to fit in with teenage girls, but even I could tell this was an upgrade. Vera was ecstatic.

  “Papa, thank you,” she said, as we hurried, late to our history tour.

  “You are very, very welcome,” I said, embarrassed by how grateful I was for her gratitude.

  —

  I don’t know what I had been expecting of the history tour, exactly: lectures from various speakers, trips to museums, old women in spectacles and droopy sweaters. Instead, our program consisted almost entirely of one single human specimen. There were lectures and readings of course, and there were museums, and there was Johnny Depp, who turned out to be an American Fulbright Scholar at the University of Vilnius and who was our day-to-day liaison, and there was his girlfriend Rūta, who also appeared to be employed by the program in some fashion, and who was the person to see if you didn’t like your room or wanted reservations for dinner, but the heart of the history program was Darius.

  We were to take walking tours with him every day. He spoke at length without notes, reeling off dates and titles, facts and figures in an inhuman way, almost as though he were possessed by a daimon like Socrates, a spirit that resided within his skull, giving him a priori access to all human knowledge. Judith was correct: The city of Vilnius was Darius’s life’s work and watching him talk was like watching a prodigy at the piano. The city itself would be our classroom, and most of the things we would study were not housed in museums but were simply places, ordinary ones, with pedestrians hurrying past.

  But the things Darius said were rarely straightforward and his observations veered away from the purely historical and toward the hermeneutical. He was very concerned with the etymology of the word Vilnius, for instance. Vilnius itself was named after the River Vilnia, of course, though the exact location of the town had been chosen for spiritual reasons. It was built on a sacred pagan site where people came to communicate with the dead. The word Vilnia was etymologically related in Lithuanian to the words for “the departed,” “ripple,” and “devil.”

  Darius’s English was lavishly fluent but was accented and slightly nasal, and he had an odd habit of punctuating his thoughts with the exclamation “Well!”

  “So already, we see that, again, Vilnius is at a crossroads. Well! It is the portal between Eastern and Western Europe, but it is also the portal between the land of the living and the dead, the place where reality is thinnest and contact with the outside is possible.”

  The outside? I looked over at Vera as we walked, following this strange blond historical daimon through the cobbled streets, but her attention was rapt. She was actually frowning, she was listening to Darius so intently.

  “Even though,” Darius went on, “Vilnius seems to the West to be Eastern Europe, and seems to the East to be the start of Western Europe, it is actually at the exact geographical center of Europe, which makes any exploration of Vilnius an exploration of Europe, and yet Vilnius figures in Europe’s story of herself not at all. Well! This is an interesting problem, I thought. To be so central that one is completely marginal!”

  We had to pause for a moment at a red light, and the group clustered tight around Darius as he went on. “Even stranger, Vilnius appears on early maps under a variety of names. To the Germans, Vilnius was called Die Wilde, because it was surrounded by wilderness and swamps. But the irony of a city called the Wilderness is not slight. Well! The Poles called her Wilno, the Lithuanians called her Vilnius, the French and Russians called her Vilna. It is also, of course, Vilna in Yiddish. Sometimes Vilnius appears multiple times on the same map, as though she is a pair of entangled particles that can exist in two places at once. In some ways, it is difficult to think of Vilnius as a single city at all. Czesław Miłosz famously wrote a poem about Vilnius called ‘City Without a Name.’ So how shall we think of this city then?”

  I nudged Vera on the shoulder. This idea of Vilnius as being some kind of concatenation of multiple half-imaginary cities, a city that refused to be known by a single name, reminded me of the fight we had gotten into on the plane.

  “Hey,” I said, tugging Vera’s sleeve. The light had turned green and our group was slowly shuffling across the intersection. “Vilnius doesn’t have a single self either.”

  Vera squinted at me, like she had no idea what I was talking about.

  “On the plane you were talking about there being no self. That the ‘I’ is an illusion.” It wasn’t that I wanted to dredge up the fight again, but I also didn’t want that whole conversation to be erased. If it never happened, then it could never be repaired. I didn’t want her to think I thought she was crazy, even if I did think she was mentally ill. Maybe it was an impossible line to walk, but I didn’t see any other path available to me.

  “I didn’t think you were listening,” she said.

  “I was,” I said, nodding. “I always am.”

  “Hmm,” she said, and just kept walking, trying to listen to Darius, trying to catch his words over the traffic, but I could have sworn she walked several inches closer to me than she had been, and at least twice she turned to give me a look when something Darius said was interesting.

  And I felt like I had won the goddamn lottery.

  Chapter 3

  Date: 7/9/2014 9:47 PM

  From: Vera.Abramov@gmail.com

  To: FangBoy76@hotmail.com

  Subject: Suck my imperfect pearl

  Dear Fang,

  So there is a thing called baroque architecture, and the word baroque means “imperfect pearl,” which I think should be made into a sexual euphemism for clitoris. Screw “the little man in the boat.” My clitoris is not some dude doing forced labor. (I don’t know why I think all rowing is forced labor. I think I am thinking of Roman slave ships or something.) Anyway, my clitoris is an “imperfect pearl” and shall be called such henceforth. Really, the possibilities are endless. Guys that like eating pussy could be called “really into the baroque.” You could say, “I’m off to go stroke the baroque!” Do you see the potential?!

  Anyway, I really like this idea of the baroque because basically people started to think that not everything should look like an austere Greek temple and maybe buildings could get a little crazy and weird, so they started doing all this ornamentation and asymmetrical stuff, and they painted the buildings hot pink and bright yellow and purple and wild colors, and everyone was just amazed because this was beautiful too. Things didn’t have to be perfect to be beautiful. They could be weird and fucked up and insane and still be beautiful, and can you really believe that dudes were only just figuring that out? And they were figuring it out by BUILDING CHURCHES. I mean, the world is really a very weird place, Fang. Anyway, Vilnius has a ton of baroque cathedrals because I guess they didn’t get the memo when the rest of Europe got tired of baroque and they just kept on making more and more baroque buildings that got weirder and weirder and now there are no buildings like these anywhere else in the world.

  As you can tell, the history tour has started. Fang, our tour guide is amazing. Let me just give you the particulars without commentary:

  He is definitely like six foot four.

  He is definitely blond, like blond the way children are blond. I have never seen a grown man this blond.

  He is definitely extremely attractive (don’t get mad) but too clean and upright to be sexy exactly. Probably he has transcended having genitals and has been given some other, more interesting organ instead.

  He is also maybe the smartest person I have ever met and I think that it actually causes him some kind of physical pain to explain basic things to us or when someone asks a stupid question.

  I think he might have metal instead of bones. That is conjecture, but still, I’m trying
to paint a portrait here.

  He has an accent and a really nasal voice and it reminds me of Werner Herzog, so you know, there is that wonderful creepy factor. “Civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness.” Seriously, that is the kind of thing that Darius could just straight-up say, and because he is the leader or whatever, everybody nods and keeps following him. It is AWESOME.

  Update: The being nice to my dad experiment is going super well. He’s totally relaxing and it’s making him way more likable. Sometimes I really wonder: Was he always this way? Did he ever love Mama? Was love something he was once capable of, or was he always just sort of numb and bumbling and like: Whoops, I got you pregnant, so sorry! I just can’t picture it. I can’t picture what she ever saw in him. And I know that at least she did really love him because there was one time when she totally lost it with me in a Macy’s dressing room when I was seven and I was whining about wanting to get a dress that was too expensive and she just snapped and she was like, “You are the reason he left. You think everything is about you, that you deserve everything, but did you ever think about what I gave up in order to be your mom? Did you ever think about everything I lost?”

  She never said anything like that ever again, but I never forgot it, obviously. I can even still remember that dress. It was so stupid that I wanted it—it was green taffeta and black velvet, the kind of thing you would only ever wear at a holiday party. I don’t even know why I wanted it except that it reminded me of the Samantha American Girl doll who was like the only brunette role model I ever had.

  The other thing I totally forgot to tell you about is the old woman who is also staying in our building, Judith Winter. This woman is my idol, Fang. I want to grow up to be her more than I want almost anything. For one thing, she wears red lipstick and no other makeup, which is a sure sign of someone who knows what’s going on. Also, she just turned seventy and her husband died only a year ago and this trip is her brave foray into the world and her attempt to live a life without him even though they were married for most of her life and he was her one true love. Also, she is a novelist and she has written eight novels and they have won awards. And of course, she is a Real Jew who has lived in Israel and whose husband was studying to become a rabbi but was also some kind of Buddhist priest or something? I don’t know, but shit, it all sounds amazing. She also had a freak-out after the concert and asked me if I had pot because she is a pothead but she couldn’t bring any weed on the plane. I felt really bad that I couldn’t help her out.

  All of the Jews on this trip are much Jew-ier than me, Fang. I honestly feel a little out of place. I mean, Dedushka Pavel and Babushka Inna aren’t religious at all, like, at all, and when I was really little we never went to synagogue. In the Soviet Union, being observant would have meant no jobs, KGB investigations, it was illegal even to study Hebrew. They knew nothing about Judaism when they came to America. My mother said she asked them once, when she was a little girl, why they had to be Jews, and they said, “Well, someone has to be, I guess. The way some people are ugly or beautiful, or tall or short. It’s just a misfortune.” And that bothered my mom, I think. She thought they had no pride in themselves, and it was all also caught up with Dedushka Pavel’s coin dealership and him wanting to make money and be American and have a nice car, and my mom hated all that. So then right around when I turned twelve she developed this manic thing of suddenly we had to be Jews! She was going to give me the Jewish upbringing she never had! I mean, seriously, before that I’m not even sure we owned a menorah, though I do have childhood memories of playing dreidel and conning one of my cousins out of all his chocolate coins. And certainly we celebrated Rosh Hashanah.

  Anyway, we started going to temple every week and I had to have a bat mitzvah and go to Hebrew school, which I wasn’t that into, to be honest, and it mainly felt like I was playing catch-up because I was so behind everybody else. I was shit at Hebrew, I was really terrible at it, and then I found out we had to do this service project? I was supposed to tutor this girl for a year for free, only I really hated doing it and she hated doing it, I mean—we kept meeting, but I wasn’t trying very hard, and the long and the short of it was that she failed math and it was all my fault and her parents were very, very angry at me. But it was too late to do something else so we just let it slide, but I always felt like I wasn’t really a bat mitzvah. I always felt like a fraud. Which is part of why I stopped going to temple, but also because that was right around when we moved to Rancho and we never did choose a new temple to start going to and whatever phase my mom was going through seemed to have died down.

  Sometimes I feel so moved, like at the concert, at that Yiddish lullaby about being chased into the abyss of the world, or learning about the Holocaust, and I think: This is my heritage, these are my people. And it feels authentic. And I feel like it’s important.

  And then other times I feel like an imposter and I think: Bullshit. You don’t know anything. You are a suburban little white girl who hasn’t done one single hard thing in her life. You are more of a Californian than a Jew! I don’t know. Is it enough that Hitler would have killed me? Is that enough to make me Jewish? I’m getting weird, I’m sorry. I’ll stop.

  Stopping, stopping, stopping!!!

  Anyway, it’s awesome that your brother’s band got that gig—I’m jealous I don’t get to go! I am totally fine with you going, by the way, but you are not allowed to dance with anyone and you are not allowed to even talk to any girls who are hotter than me. It’s not that I don’t trust you, it’s just that I’m a reasonable human being, and do NOT let any of your cousins drive, they are always saying they are fine to drive when they are totally hammered.

  Okay, I’ve gotta go, I’m exhausted, but FYI, it is almost ten at night here, and guess what? THE SUN IS STILL OUT. Do you see how deranged this town is?

  With Love,

  From Vilnius,

  Your Imperfect Pearl,

  V

  PS: I left you a note in your underwear drawer. I have been waiting for you to find it, but you have said nothing about it and I am an impatient creature. Please tell me you are changing your underwear regularly while I am gone.

  SOME KIND OF HAPPY SURREALITY began to take hold of both Vera and me the longer we were in Vilnius. It took a few days to get into the swing of the program so that we weren’t checking the schedule constantly, worrying we’d missed something, but by day four we were old pros at following Darius around. The routine of it reminded me pleasantly of school, and yet following Darius around was nothing like school. The stories he told us were bizarre and beautiful, and Lithuanian history, which was already complicated and difficult to understand, became a sloppy stew of stories and characters and details in my mind. Vilnius was a city of many peoples: Jews, Lithuanians, Poles, Russians, Belorussians. It was a city of many languages, of many graveyards, of many histories. Part of what made Darius’s stories so confusing was that Vilnius kept being taken over by different powers, becoming part of first one country, then the next, sometimes changing hands two or three times in a single year.

  I had never imagined Grandma Sylvia arising (and I did in some way picture her as not born, but arising, thrust upward out of the sea foam) from a place so complicated or so multicultural. My feeble imaginative powers had been spent on the details of her escape from the camp, the brutal years as a rebel in the forests, her voyage to America. About her life before these things I had pictured—what? Sheep? A butter churn? It was a joke. I had not even really considered what it meant that Grandma Sylvia was Polish, nor had I understood that when she was a girl Vilnius was home to so few native Lithuanians. “There used to be a saying,” Darius told us, “that in Vilnius the façades were Russian, the interiors were Polish, the streets were Jewish, and the ghosts were Lithuanian.”

  I was slowly coming to understand the implications of a history I had always technically known: that Poland and Lithuania had once been one grand combined state, which was part of why both Po
les and Lithuanians called Vilnius home. In fact, many Poles considered Lithuania just a special, rather mysterious and pagan part of Poland, while many Lithuanians saw themselves as culturally assimilated and repressed. Darius, quoting somebody, had said, “Poland is like a pretzel—everything that’s good about it is in the outer crusts, and inside there’s nothing.”

  I had always imagined Grandma Sylvia as a victim. It was startling now to frame her as an oppressor.

  Walking around the real Vilnius made me suddenly consider questions I had not ever bothered to ask: Did Grandma Sylvia get along with her parents? What had her parents even been like? To whom did she feel closer, her mother or her father? How had the German occupation changed her daily life? Had she continued to go to school? How long was it after the occupation before her family was picked up, just a matter of days, or did it take a while for the Reich to get organized and assess their enemies? The whole thing seemed realer to me now in a way I could not have anticipated.

  But I avoided the subject of Grandma Sylvia with Vera. I had not told her the true story of Grandma Sylvia’s rape birthday, and I suppose I was afraid that I would accidentally reveal something if we talked about her too much. The truth was that I wanted to tell the story to Vera. To me, it was the piece that made all the rest of the portrait make sense. It was the heart of the mystery. But Katya had asked me expressly not to mention it.

  “She has issues about rape,” Kat had said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. This put me immediately on edge, worrying that it indicated some kind of psychological stress I had been completely unaware of. Since when did Vera have issues with rape?