At the Central Police Station, they treated Abke like a regular. The agents barely paid him any attention. But when Susilo explained why he’d arrested Abke, there was a ruckus in every room. The agent on duty pinched Abke to make sure it was really him.
Susilo sat at the table, amusing himself by playing with the keys to Abke’s handcuffs. If it had been anyone besides Abke, they would have slugged him on the spot. But they just emptied Abke’s pockets, pulled out his shoelaces, and shoved him into an out-of-the-way cell until morning, when Pendzik the Cripple, the magistrate for political affairs, would arrive.
Abke didn’t shut his eyes all night. Usually he slept during his arrests. He knew just about all the legal clauses and what was coming to him. They never investigated him but simply wrote out a report and sent him to the prison on Stephan Street. Abke felt at home there. He never acted like a big shot, so they always took into account the time he’d served before trial. The sentence never seemed that long: a month, more or less. But it wasn’t such a simple matter this time. Abke turned himself inside out trying to figure out what he would say the next day. At dawn he still hadn’t thought of anything, so he decided to remain silent to buy time.
Abke was just dozing off on the bare planks when an excuse hit him in his thick skull. He would claim that the kid had offered him money to hang the flag. He’d needed the money for a big game of poker, so he’d allowed himself to be convinced. Susilo had scared the kid off and he’d escaped. Abke hoped Pendzik would swallow the story and book him on a criminal charge. If so, once he got himself out from behind bars, he would never mess with politics again.
But Pendzik didn’t swallow Abke’s story. Susilo reported the details to Pendzik but the magistrate drew his own conclusion about Abke. Pendzik was never in a good mood first thing in the morning. By the time he sat down at his desk, he was in a rage with the entire world. Because of his lame leg, his nights with his wife weren’t the best. She was from the village: young and good-looking, with plenty of flesh on her bones. Pendzik wasn’t man enough for one of her teeth.
Luckily, Susilo was a regular visitor in their home. Every so often he spent a few hours of his working day in Pendzik’s bed while the magistrate for political affairs was absorbed with defending Poland from the red scourge. As a result, Pendzik and his wife had a peaceful marriage. Every Sunday, Pendzik proudly limped to the Church of the Holy Anna next to the Vilenke River with his beautiful wife on his arm, hoping the other men would drop dead from envy.
Sitting opposite Pendzik, Abke buried his head between his narrow shoulders. He tried reading Pendzik’s thin, determined lips to gauge the magistrate’s response to the story Abke had hatched that morning. Pendzik’s office was bathed in summer sunlight. The windows were open, and a green branch jutted into the room. Chestnut trees were growing in the closed courtyard of the Central Police Station. A sparrow jumped defiantly onto the window ledge as if to remind Pendzik that the entire world wasn’t sitting in the palm of his hand. But aside from the bars on the windows, everything seemed so peaceful.
As well as communists, Pendzik also hated Jews. Why, even he didn’t know. Now that a Jew, who was no doubt also a communist, sat opposite him, Penzik’s hatred transformed the room into a closed jar containing a spider and a fly. Abke explained what had happened the day before. But Polish was not Abke’s language. Pendzik summoned Susilo so Abke could speak Yiddish and the investigation could proceed more quickly and efficiently. It didn’t help. Abke stuck to his story. Susilo translated everything and Pendzik didn’t believe a single word. Finally, the magistrate gave Susilo a wink and the pair left the room. When they returned, Abke had nothing new to offer.
Susilo took charge of the situation. Before trying to break Abke, Susilo stroked his sparse, carefully groomed whiskers, adjusted his thick forelock, and buttoned his jacket. Susilo was very elegant, with a sharp crease in his well-pressed trousers. He wanted Abke to trust him. To win the confidence of the arrested man, Susilo pulled down the lower lid of his left eye with his index finger, an international sign that a person is in the criminal underworld and understands things with no more than a wink.
“Abke, stop wasting our time and stringing us along. You’re trying to create a smokescreen with this story of the money, but you’re just making a fool of yourself. You didn’t ask for the money in advance, eh? Are you so trusting in poker?”
Abke groaned. “You’re right. That was really stupid! I should have made him lay out the money in advance.”
“The same lie again. I’ll knock out your last pair of molars.”
Trying to avoid a smack in the face, Abke buried his head deeper between his shoulders and sighed, “He cheated me.”
Susilo straightened the knot of his tie and continued, “Abke, come on. Be reasonable. Tell us the guy’s name. Give us addresses. Who recruited you into the party? Tell us everything and we’ll return the favor. If not, things will go very badly for you. You’re a young man now, but you’ll leave prison with a white beard.”
“I know nothing. I swear on my freedom.”
“Stop telling stories. A criminal would never be this stubborn. You’ve obviously been well trained in the party. For many years. Your card playing and the petty theft—I see now that it was all a front to hide your political work: helping the Bolsheviks seize Poland.”
Abke couldn’t stand it any longer. He leapt from his chair and proclaimed, with a dignity that neither Pendzik nor Susilo expected, “Aside from what I do for a living, I’m an honest citizen. I have nothing against Poland.”
Susilo almost split his sides laughing. He was barely able to translate the few words for Pendzik. Pendzik was furious. “You have nothing against Poland, eh? Well Poland has something against you, Bolshevik!”
Abke had something else to say, but he couldn’t get it out. Grabbing his cane, Pendzik rained down blows on Abke’s shoulders. Abke was already lying on the floor, but Pendzik continued to hit him. Susilo grabbed his boss and tore the cane from his hand. Susilo was certainly a secret agent, but he wasn’t vicious like Pendzik the Cripple. By beating communists, Pendzik was searching for an antidote to his own weakness. Susilo was as strong as a horse and enjoyed Yiddish, cholent, and Pendzik’s wife. So he saved Abke.
Abke’s head was split open, his shoulders cut to ribbons, and his face swollen. They didn’t take him to Stephan Street but instead, to Lukishke prison where they held political prisoners.
In Lukishke prison, an arrested man lived in luxury with a straw mattress and a bed sheet. Abke stretched out like a count. The prison doctor had bandaged his head and smeared iodine on his wounds. The court record documented the fact that he’d resisted arrest. The doctor had suggested Abke be placed in a hospital ward, but the prison director wouldn’t allow it. “A communist is better off in a cell. He talks to the walls there.”
Abke ended up in a cell with two political prisoners: Rulek Raffes and Mendel Kvartatz. They’d been caught with illegal literature and were awaiting trial. By the time the swelling on Abke’s face had gone down and the wound on his head had healed, both Rulek and Mendel knew, by way of a note smuggled into the prison, that class consciousness had been awakened in Abke the Nail Biter. He’d contributed to the general struggle by putting his particular talents to work one dark night and hanging the flag of a bright tomorrow. The note included instructions to officially acknowledge Abke as an important member of the revolutionary avant-garde.
Abke wasn’t used to this kind of prison. At Stephan Street, there were usually about thirty men to a cell. Peasants who’d been arrested for stealing wood from a landowner’s forest told stories about she-devils, mossy creatures with three breasts. City pickpockets taught each other new tricks for taking a wallet from someone’s breast pocket using only two fingers, so the victim didn’t feel even a tickle. On these subjects, Abke had plenty to offer.
But here in Lukishke, he had nothing to say. Politics just wasn’t Abke’s area. All day long, Rulek and Mendel tore each
other to pieces over politics, but Abke couldn’t slip in a single word. The only time the two revolutionaries stopped was during the half-hour break, when they walked in single file in the prison courtyard. Otherwise, from early morning onward, strange names, slogans, and nasty expressions flew around the cell. Rulek and Mendel’s tongues were on fire with the word “revolution.” They never cracked a smile. Abke felt very gloomy.
Abke was certainly gloomy, but he still lent an ear to their talk. He marveled at their knowledge: young scamps and they knew so much. How easily they threw those big words at each other.
Abke could see that the arrested men wanted to improve things, but the capitalist world just wouldn’t take their advice. As far as they were concerned, the only country in the world worth mentioning was the Soviet Union, truly a Garden of Eden for the downtrodden
Not long before, Gorgeous Grishke, who “worked” on the trains, had told Abke that he’d followed an aristocrat with two suitcases all the way to Switzerland but never got the suitcases. The guy had refused to doze off. Grishke got to see Switzerland. “Shleymke Peyske’s restaurant in Vilna is a barn compared to the Swiss restaurants. And if they want poor people, they have to send for them from Vilna.”
“Switzerland sounds like a real paradise. Could the Soviet Union be even half as good?” Abke wondered. But if Mendel and Rulek thought the Soviet Union was so marvelous, maybe there was something to it. Abke tried asking them about conditions there for thieves, but they just shot him a dirty look.
At night Abke lay on his straw mattress, but he didn’t sleep, he thought. His cellmates had him totally confused. Both Rulek and Mendel were boys from fine, upstanding homes. Homes with real status. So what drove them to stick up for the entire world and rot away in prison? Maybe too much luxury. You could see from the packages they got that they lacked for nothing at home. Salami, challah, apples, plums. Life was obviously good, but not to them. They wanted a revolution.
The more he thought about it, the more Abke liked the situation. The well-fed sons of the wealthy, who never had to eat bread earned from billiards or a game of cards played with a rigged deck, wanted everyone to have a good life. For that, they sat behind bars and it didn’t bother them as long as it brought what they called “the bright tomorrow.”
One day Abke was taken to the prison office. Tshernikhov the lawyer had come to see him. Abke had been thinking that everyone had completely forgotten about him, and then, out of nowhere, who should show up to see him, but the lawyer who defended the most important political trials in Vilna. Abke had never had a defense lawyer. He usually just stood in front of the justice of the peace with a hangdog look, listened to the litany of charges, and sat out the few weeks of his sentence. The judge always grumbled and threatened him with years in prison for coming before the court so often. No one ever threw in a good word about him. And here was Tshernikhov himself. Abke was impressed.
Tshernikhov was always busy. Aside from the local court with its scandals and appeals, he was busy with other matters from which he derived only headaches, heartache, and grief. Tshernikhov was president of the Freeland League. The organization was looking for a corner of the world where Jews could be their own bosses and put an end to all their troubles. The Zionists wanted to eat him alive. “How is it possible,” they hollered, “that a Jew like Tshernikhov, with his talents, doesn’t understand that we don’t have to go looking? The place already exists. It’s called Palestine.” But Tshernikhov was sure that before the British finally let Jews into Palestine, everyone would breathe their last. He dreamt about a territory where everyone would speak Yiddish, even the Supreme Court judges.
The prison director took Tshernikhov to a room with iron bars where he could spend a few minutes with his client while the authorities kept on eye on them. Abke didn’t dare sit down. Such an honor.
Tshernikhov asked Abke to take a seat. He took a piece of paper from his briefcase and got straight to the point: “You should be aware that Pendzik has submitted an entire novel about you to the public prosecutor. They’re going to try you with your cellmates, Mendel and Rulek, to draw attention to the case. You’re going to be charged with undermining the regime and trying to tear western White Russia away from the Polish Republic.”
Abke grabbed the top of his head with both hands. “What are you talking about, Mr. Tshernikhov? I know nothing about things like that.”
“You don’t have to convince me that you know nothing. I take you at your word. But court is a different matter. I thought I’d claim that you’re insane, but that won’t work.” Tshernikhov rifled through his documents, pulled out a piece of paper, and read, “The accused, legally registered as Abbe Srogin and nicknamed Abke the Nail Biter, is a danger to society because of his quick reflexes and his intelligence. He demonstrated this when he used his weak Polish to convince the peasants at the Casimir fair to participate in an allegedly innocent betting game with three ladles and a pea. He skillfully moved the pea back and forth from one ladle to the next. The peasants had to guess where the pea ended up. The honest tillers of the soil didn’t stand a chance. The accused cheated them out of tens of zlotys.”
Tshernikhov looked at Abke with smiling eyes. “After feats like that, I can’t argue that you’re insane. I’ll have to find another way to set you free. I know—I’ll talk about your past deeds. That will convince the judge that you’re not the right person to accuse of liberating White Russia from Poland.”
Abke began to wriggle on his chair. “Mr. Tshernikhov, I beg you, don’t talk about that in court. Because of Mendel and Rulek. They’re going to try us together.”
“I won’t have any choice.”
“But they treat me like an equal. Thanks to Rulek, I’ve even stopped biting my fingernails. You know, that’s how I got my nickname, Abke the Nail Biter.”
“Why thanks to Rulek?”
“He said it’s a decadent habit.”
Tshernikhov forgot that he was in a rush. It had been a long time since he’d enjoyed himself so much. Stroking his goatee, he choked back his laughter. “So did Rulek explain to you just what decadence is?”
“He explained, but I didn’t understand much. I know it’s not a good thing because of the faces he made.”
“Okay, Abke, I’ll do what I can to save you from embarrassment. We’ll talk again.”
“Mr. Tshernikhov, I’m totally broke right now. They squeezed me dry in a poker game that looked like a sure bet. I have no rich relatives. No poor ones either, for that matter. But I’ll pay you back.”
“We don’t talk about money in cases like this.”
“But this is obviously your bread. Why else would you do it?”
The lawyer was imagining telling his wife and son about this conversation while the three of them ate their midday meal. As though Abke read his lawyer’s thoughts, instead of money, he offered merchandise guaranteed to produce peals of laughter in Tshernikhov’s dining room. Abke stammered, “No matter which way the cards fall, you owe me a little favor.”
Tshernikhov put on a serious face. “Really. Let’s hear.”
“Do you remember, two years ago, when someone took a garret full of wash from you?”
“Yes.”
“And they said they’d return everything for three hundred zlotys.”
“Right, I remember.”
“And your wife insisted on only two hundred.”
“True.”
“I told the fence to make a deal. Because I was the . . . It was my merchandise.”
Tshernikhov decided to play along with the arrested man to make him feel better. There were harsh times awaiting him. The lawyer got up from his chair, gathered his documents, closed his briefcase, and solemnly declared, “Abke, that good turn will serve you well. I’ll do everything I can to save you from serious charges. But you won’t get off scot free.”
“Who’s talking about scot free? All I want is a fair sentence.”
The lawyer was about to wink at the guard to open
the door with its iron bars, but Abke stopped him. “Mr. Tshernikhov, do you have another minute? I want to ask you something.”
“Go ahead, ask.”
“Tell me, who is this Trotsky, who Mendel and Rulek are so mad at, as if he’d spit in their food? If they could, they’d tear him to pieces like a herring.”
“Trotsky? Forget it, Abke. It would take forever to explain.” Tshernikhov thought for a moment before he spoke again. “Since we’re asking, I have a question for you. Tell me, why did you do it? Why did you throw the flag over the wires?”
Abke took a deep breath, as though he was letting a heavy load fall from his shoulders. “The guy was so determined, I felt for him. He looked like he’d been through the ringer, like he’d gone an entire year without a solid meal. But instead of breaking someone’s lock to set himself up or going off to have a good time, he risked his freedom for some crazy idea. That’s why I helped him.”
At the trial, Tshernikhov had to say something about Abke’s background and how he earned his living. If he hadn’t, Abke would have been sentenced unfairly. The judgment was longer than Abke’s previous sentences, but it could definitely have been worse. He got two years. Mendel and Rulek each got five.
The public prosecutor was a different breed than Pendzik the Cripple. Although he was no less loyal to the state than the magistrate from the Central Police Station, he had a sense of humor. He was also an ardent poker player. The public prosecutor was duly impressed when, during one of the breaks, Tshernikhov told him about Abke’s talent at shuffling cards.
A few days after the trial, the prison director informed the men that they would be transported deep into Poland, to Ravitsh prison, to serve their sentences. Following prison regulations, all three men stood at attention opposite the director and listened silently to the edict. Like all political prisoners, they were asked whether they had any special requests. Rulek, who knew Polish well, proclaimed, “I want to be taken to Ravitsh shackled to Abbe Srogin.” Mendel smiled and nodded, pleased with his friend’s gesture.
Vilna My Vilna Page 7