The Gypsy Girl, a Fortune Teller

This story is the very first one I published on this blog.

Thank you very much for the great respond to my new hobby. Please keep on writing your comments and reviews. I highly appreciate every one of them.

The Gypsy Girl, a Fortune Teller

And so it was 1969. Riga, the springtime, the end of my 9th grade of a high school. Back in Riga, we didn’t have names for the schools, just the numbers. My school was number 17. It was the very end of the school year. There were no more classes and homework, but we still had to go to school to complete some social activities. My parents and I had been living on Terbatas street in my paternal grandfather's large communal apartment. We’ve moved there soon after my grandmother's death. But my other grandparents, on my mother's side, lived in a small apartment in the old historic part of town where we all used to live as well before. After school, I liked to drop by my grandma's apartment. There was always something good to eat and sometimes my grandma would even throw a few rubles into my hand to bust the modest budget of my pocket expenses.

That day after school I walked around the Bastion Park, smoking the usual cigarette on the way, passed the “rock”, as we jokingly used to call Latvia's freedom monument then. Soon I reached the University building and turned toward the bridge into the old city.

There were three big “D” in my life’s dialectic philosophy then, the friends, the money and the girls. ( in the Russian language all of those words, friends, money, and girls, start from the letter D). These "D" not always used to follow the same sequence of importance. Sometimes something would be missing in the chain of things and the sequence of importance would be changed, but never to oust out any of my three big D.

- Hey dear-beautiful, do you want me to tell you the fortunes?-

A gentle, ingratiating voice suddenly have stopped all my deep reasoning. At the railing of the bridge stood a young Gypsy-girl with a swaddled baby in her arms. "The fortune-telling, what nonsense," - I thought to myself. But the Gypsy girl had such beautiful blue eyes, deep and piercing, and at the same time running away and calling you to somewhere, and charming you from all the sides, and her such shiny black hair, and her such a sweet mouth framed around by an attractive lipstick so gently delineating even more attractive lips. She was kinda tawny, dark-skinned, and a fainting fuzz ran from her hair down to her slightly rosy cheeks. Her bright green silk shirt was undone by three buttons at once... or even all fours, and her soft breasts, unfettered by anything, were almost completely visible in the pull of her shirt slit... I was 17. When a 17-year-old boy would be shown a woman's breasts, anything can happen to him!

At that time in my head, all my "D" were mixing together, becoming one big "D" that ended in,- “...рак.”(The Russian word “Durak” meaning a fool, started from the letter D) . Spellbound, I followed her down the alley that led along the canal to the quiet bench behind the Opera Theater. We sat down. She put the baby on the bench and I realized it wasn't real. -Well,- I thought, - it's even better, easier...

I sat on the side of her and from my side in her blouse, - I could see everything!!! She took my hand, stroked it gently, and curled it into a fist. "You will have two sons and 7 years between them,"- she said quietly. "I see two long roads and a sea of water between them. Give me a coin and another one for the mirror," - she said. I had two bills in my wallet. One of a ruble, and the other one of a three. I took out one ruble, which I felt somewhat sorry for, and without taking my eyes off it, handed it to the gypsy girl. She folded the ruble into a square around the coin, put it under the hand mirror and breathed on it. " You will meet your love once and immediately understand that it is her, and her name will begin with the letter "L", and you will fall in love and you will have a wedding, but before the wedding, there will be a terrible sickness that suddenly will pass by before the wedding itself... And you will have a long happy life!" She got up, walked around the bench and put her arm around my head. I was plunged into a kind of magic spell of her sweet charms.

The spell passed quickly, however. When I opened my eyes, the Gypsy girl was no longer there. In the same way, my last three rubles were not in my wallet as well.

My enchanted infatuation was instantly replaced by disappointment and even anger. - How so, me, in the middle of the day, to cheat and steal my money!-

I ran to find her. I searched everything along the alley, on the bridge, and even under the bridge. But no, my Gypsy girl was gone.

I went to my grandparent's place in a very gloomy mood. My grandma was always at home, but my grandpa was still at work. I quickly made myself a bologna open-face sandwich and sat down in my grandfather's favorite chair to wait for him. I wanted to ask him. I really should have asked him about the Gypsy girl. No, not the one who just cheated me of my money, but the one he told me about once some time ago.

My grandfather was a very special person, not like everyone else. Back in tsarist times, he graduated from the higher commercial school and therefore was well-mannered and always wore arm-cover sleeves with armbands. He always dined with a lot of the knives and forks around his plate.

Grandpa had a special jacket for every occasion. Grandma always knew which jacket to serve for him to wear and when. There were only three of them, actually. There used to be the fourth one, but it was converted and re-tailored and made into a smaller jacket for me. It was about three years ago and at that time, I was already very happy that I had grown out of it. I was 17 already after all. The most important jacket, a black one, was made of very good English wool and was intended for the synagogue and for receiving guests. It was usually hanging in the closet under a cover made out of a used bed sheet and smelled like mothballs. The next, gray jacket was for work and business trips. That gray one Grandpa also wore with armbands but was taking them off for business trips. And the third jacket was most remarkable because it was purchased at the Hare's island (Zat'usala) on the Daugava river when there was a flea market. The jacket had long served its purpose, and at the time was intended for taking out the garbage and going to the basement for the firewood.

So how did my grandfather get into the tsarist commercial school?- you may ask. There was no fortune, and the misfortune helped, as they said.

My grandfather's family once before was from a Jewish small town, a shtetl. Sometimes they lived relatively well, and sometimes not very well. Not so well, it was when there was a pogrom, and then it was bad. Very bad indeed. So it happened with my grandfather's family. During the pogrom, their house was burned down. They lost everything. There was no fortune, and the misfortune helped. The authorities allowed the pogrom's fire victims to move from the pale of settlement to the big city, and so they did. They started from scratch. Rented a place to live. My grandpa's father got the job and his mother stayed home with kids. My grandfather's father died early, leaving a widow with three children. The widow should manage and so she did.

My great-grandmother sent her teen daughter to America with the family of relatives and found a sponsor for her two sons to go to college. My grandfather's older brother became a military doctor, and my grandfather became an accountant. After graduation, at the very end of the first World War, my grandfather was taken to the tsarist army to go to the front. New soldiers put on their uniforms, got their rifles and shovels, and on the train they went. The train arrived in Riga. For some reason, the soldiers were kept in the barracks for several weeks and then sent to the front finally. At the front, they dug trenches, shot somewhere, and thereafter the agitators came and said that the war was over and everyone could go home.

My grandfather returned to Riga again, and there was a huge celebration on the occasion of the end of the World War and the big fireworks. While walking around my grandpa met a Gypsy woman who offered him to predict his future. That Gypsy woman predicted my grandfather's the rest of his life. All of it! How he will meet my grandmother, and then after 7 years of their courting, he would propose to her and that they would get married. And that they would have two daughters. And that there will be another war, even more, terrible than that one. And the war will separate them, but they will meet again in Riga's rail station. And that will happen when his eldest daughter would notice him accidentally in the window of the other moving train. My grandpa told me that the gypsy's predictions came true exactly how it happened in his life. It was my mother who recognized him in the window of the train leaving Riga station when WWII ended. I wanted to ask my grandpa just one question, but it was the most important one for me that day. Once upon a time, when they were celebrating the peace after the World War, where did he meet that Gypsy women who predicted his future.

My grandfather came home from work soon thereafter. Grandma helped him with the jacket, and he changed into a pair of yellow-and-green striped pajamas that also looked like a jacket actually. After my question, he thought for a moment and remembered: "…Oh yes, at the bridge over the canal, behind the Opera Theater," - he said. I was astounded. Of course, after everything that had happened, I went home a little worried ... Two sons, 7 years between them, big water, a long road through it, some trouble before the wedding, and finally a beloved woman with the letter "L" in her name... Well, it's just nonsense... At that time, I knew a lot of girls with the names started from the letter "L". I went over them in my mind, but no, none of them, absolutely none, aroused any particular interest in me! I decided to forget the whole thing and not think about it. But still, when I got home, I wrote down all these predictions on a piece of paper and put it in the book I was reading then, the second volume of Sholem Aleichem, The Wandering Stars. That note made a useful bookmark. I put the bookmark in and sat down to read some more. And could you imagine, I got to the very place where Rose (Razzle) came to, whom would you think? You will not believe it..., Rose came to the fortune teller, the gypsy woman.

"...Day and night, this man thinks of nothing but her. The day and night. He longs for her, for Rose, that is, with body and soul, with all his soul, with all his thoughts… He wants to see you, she says. He is wasting away from longing, he longs to meet and do not know where and how… Because both of you, she says, is on the road, always on the road. Always, always on the road ... He's there, you're here. He-here, you-there… You love each other, he says, very much. He is for you, you are for him. And you rush around the world to meet one another, you strive, you rush to each other, but you wander, you wander…"

That day, everything that happened made my head spin, but soon, as is often the case for the 17-year-old boy, I completely forgot about it. Seven years had passed. Almost by an accident, I met a girl and for some inexplicable reason immediately saw her as my life partner. And you guessed correctly, her name started with a letter "L". I proposed to her on the 5th day of our acquaintance and she said - " Yes!"

Before our wedding, we had to wait several months, as there was a queue in the Riga State Registration Office for many days ahead. The first available weekend for us fell on November 7th, the Great October Revolution Day, but we flatly refused to connect our lives with the life of the Communist party, with the Red revolution, and with all of that Red October, so we had to wait almost a whole month for the next available day. Two months before the wedding I got sick. I had, one side of my face was paralyzed. My face was frozen in a terrible smile and because of this, when my friends came to visit me, they were attacked by an uncontrollable fit of laughter. It made me laugh, too, but I couldn't..., my face couldn't do the smile, just tears pore down uncontrollably. I was taken to doctors, but frankly, they didn't know how to treat me or what to do. I was prescribed deep warming therapy, the technology that was apparently borrowed from the Spanish Inquisition. They stripped me half-naked and laid me on a cold, galvanized-iron covered table. Two paper-wrapped tubes were inserted into my nose, those were the smaller ones and the larger one was inserted into the mouth for me to breathe. Then they took a galvanized bucket with no bottom in it and put it on my head around my face. Then the hot paraffin was poured into the bucket. The warming up was really deep, indeed. I felt it very strongly, with the half of my face that felt everything… And there was a nasty taste of wet paper in my mouth...

Three weeks before the planned wedding, Lily took me to a well-recommended specialist, the neurologist. The lady doctor looked at us and brutally asked Lily: "So you really decided to marry a freak, my dear? You are young, beautiful and you have your whole life ahead of you. And he, ... well, he might straighten up a little in the few years, but he'll never be normal again." We walked home to Terbatas street, where I lived with my parents, in silence. Lily followed me to the door and left. My parents weren't at home. There was a big wall mirror in the living room. I stood in front of the mirror and looked at my face with the stupid frozen smile on it. I didn't feel funny and even if I would, I couldn't laugh, I couldn't... I stood in front of the mirror for more than an hour trying to move something on my face. And the doctor's words were pounding in my head:”...he will never be normal...” And then suddenly I noticed that I could move my eyebrow just a little! Just a little it moved. It was like a miracle. There was no limit to my joy and I immediately rushed to the phone to call Lily.

Two weeks before the wedding, my illness almost completely disappeared, as suddenly as it had begun. It was only when we were photographed that I would apologize, took a small hand mirror out of my pocket, and adjusted my jaw so that it wouldn't fall off the proper position.

Two years after our wedding we had our first baby boy. Two years later in 1980, we emigrated to America. We left in a very complicated but meaningful way, with a deep understanding of everything that had happened around us, although from the outside our departure seemed somewhat spontaneous to many, like so much else in our lives, I would add.

​ At the end of the '80s, Riga was allowed to send books to America, and my mother sent me all my favorite ones, the ones we weren't permitted to take with us. I remember opening the parcel with the six-volume of Sholem Aleichem book set and picking up the second volume, The Wandering Stars. A long-forgotten note fell out of the book: - ...Two sons, 7 years between them, big water, a long road through it, some trouble before the wedding, and finally a beloved woman with the letter "L"... and we are truly happy.

Lily and I have two beautiful sons. One was born in Riga, the other one is our proud Texan boy. There are 7 years between them. If you ask me if I believe fortune tellers, I will replay, I'm sure that I don't. Because they are mostly charlatans and liars, all except the one, the Gypsy girl at the bridge over the Riga's canal, which is behind the Opera and Ballet Theater, the Gypsy girl with such blue eyes, deep and piercing, and at the same time running away and calling you somewhere, and with the hands that charm you from all the sides...

I originally wrote this story in Russian for the Riga Accent group on Facebook. But the story happened to be too long and I decided to wait till my website would be ready to be published.

Alex Mirsky November 2019

Some of my favorite comments:

From Lily:

I just wanted to add that Alex told me this story about the gypsy fortune teller when he found the note in his book, 15 years after we got married. Everything predicted by the fortune teller had already happened. If it would happened not with me I wouldn't believed to it. But it happened!

My reply:

Thank you dear! But nevertheless I would insist that everything happened because of us, you and me. We are the builders of our life, with G-ds help.

From Mark:

I enjoyed your story. Well written and engaging. 3 questions... What are arm-cover sleeves with armbands? Also, what is tsarists school? Can you translate your bookmark letter?

My reply: Thanks, I'm really happy that you like it. 1) The elbow sleeves are a really old school. Back then the clothes were expensive and made from the real wool fabric without any synthetic additives. The clothes made from real wool fabric doesn't wear very well. Jacket arm sleeves especially. Bookkeepers and clerks wore satin protective sleeves with garters over the actual jacket arm sleeves to protect from wear and tear. 2) There were some colleges under the Imperial patronage. Education there was very good, but more affordable. To be admitted to the Imperial College was difficult. One should pass the entry exams with all As and as for my grandpa, he needed to hide his Jewish ethnicity. 3) The note on the picture is real. It said exactly what I wrote in the story. " two sons, 7 years, long way, the name starting from 'L'..." when the quarantine will be over and life will go back to normal, you guys will come over and I will show you the book and the note. Thanks, again heart