The Slaughterman's Daughter
Page 1
praise for the slaughterman’s daughter
Winner, Agnon Prize
Winner, Ramat Gan Prize for Literary Excellence
Finalist, Sapir Prize
“With boundless imagination and a vibrant style, Yaniv Iczkovits creates a colourful family drama that spins nineteenth-century Russia out of control, and he delivers a heroine of unforgettable grit. Iczkovits wields his pen with wit and panache. A remarkable and evocative read.” — DAVID GROSSMAN, Man Booker International Prize–winning author of A Horse Walks into a Bar
“A story of great beauty and surprise. A necessary antidote for our times.” — GARY SHTEYNGART, award-winning author of The Russian Debutante’s Handbook and Lake Success
“Totally compulsive reading.” — ROSEMARY SULLIVAN, award-winning author of Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva
“Combine a thriller with a road story, Fiddler on the Roof, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and a Russian novel, throw in a page-turning adventure, a few fables, some ethical speculation, a Bildungsroman, and more than one love story, and you get this epic tale. It’s witty, wise, exciting, intriguing, sorrowful, joyous, and tender. And that goes for the story as well as its characters. Full of surprise, understanding, historic sweep, and more than a few murders, The Slaughterman’s Daughter keeps you deliciously poised on a keen and beguiling fictional knife-edge.” — GARY BARWIN, Scotiabank Giller Prize–shortlisted author of Yiddish for Pirates
“With the sweeping grandeur of a Russian epic and the sly, sometimes bawdy humour of the Yiddish greats, The Slaughterman’s Daughter is a magnificent triumph.” — BRAM PRESSER, National Jewish Book Award–winning author of The Book of Dirt
“The Slaughterman’s Daughter is a miraculous patchwork quilt of individual stories within stories told by different voices through which Fanny, the Belorussian Jewish slaughterman’s daughter, cuts with her butcher knife in search of justice. That quest for justice is the master story: a feminist picaresque set in a landscape of visionary and intimate historical and physical detail.” — GEORGE SZIRTES, T.S. Eliot Prize–winning poet
“What begins as a small family drama explodes in every possible direction in its virtuosity.” — Haaretz
“An adventure story with few like it in modern Hebrew literature . . . A simply outstanding novel.” — YARON LONDON, Walla
“A major novel that zigzags between characters and plots, between history and psychology, rooted in a brilliant narrative.” — GILI IZIKOVICH, Haaretz Gallery
Yaniv Iczkovits
THE SLAUGHTERMAN’S DAUGHTER
The Avenging of Mende Speismann
By the Hand of Her Sister Fanny
Translated from the Hebrew by
Orr Scharf
Copyright © 2015 Yaniv Iczkovits
English translation copyright © 2020 Orr Scharf
Map and illustrations copyright © 2020 Halley Docherty
First published as in 2015 by Keter Books, Jerusalem
Published in English in Canada in 2020 by House of Anansi Press Inc.
www.houseofanansi.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
All of the events and characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: The slaughterman's daughter : the avenging of Mende Speismann by the hand of her sister Fanny / Yaniv Iczkovits ; translated by Orr Scharf.
Other titles: Tikkun. English
Names: Iczkovits, Yaniv, 1975– author. | Scharf, Orr, translator.
Description: Translation of: Tikkun.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 2019005655X | Canadiana (ebook) 20190056673 | ISBN 9781487006211 (softcover) | ISBN 9781487006228 (EPUB) | ISBN 9781487006235 (Kindle)
Classification: LCC PJ5055.24.C94 T5513 2020 | DDC 892.43/6—dc23
Jacket design: Andrew Smith
Text design and typesetting: Libanus Press Ltd, Marlborough
We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada.
Contents
The Yaselda River
Grodno
Telekhany
Baranavichy
Motal
Nesvizh
Byala
Tabulki
Grodno
Minsk
Motal
The Yaselda River
For my daughters, Daria and Alona
-
The author would like to extend a special thanks to Professor David Assaf from the Department of Jewish History at Tel Aviv University for his generous and illuminating comments.
The Yaselda River
From Hamagid
* * *
Issue No. 6, Thursday Adar 2, 5654
(February 8, 1894)
* * *
THE CRY OF A MISERABLE WOMAN
I implore the honourable readers to pity me, a lonely and despondent woman, because my husband has left me and our three healthy children during Passover, just five years after our marriage. As he was making his way to Pinsk to earn our bread, he sent for me and I followed him until Sukkot. Now he has vanished without a trace, and I was told that he was seen in a hotel in Minsk, and later he was spotted in a railway carriage bound for Kiev, whereas I am left with nothing, dispirited and beleaguered, stripped of my possessions, penniless, with no-one to come to my aid. Therefore, honourable readers, I ask if perhaps one of you knows of my husband’s whereabouts? Have mercy upon me and at least obtain from him a duly signed writ of divorce. I am prepared to give money, up to one hundred and fifty roubles, to whoever releases me from my husband’s yoke. These are his details: his name is Meir-Yankel Hirsch of the town of Drahichyn, he is now twenty-four years of age, of average height, with brown, curly hair, fair beard, green eyes, and has a mother and a brother in the town of Uzlyany. I, the complainant, am Esther Hirsch, daughter of Shlomo Weisel-fisch, righteous man of blessed memory.
I
* * *
Poor Esther Hirsch, Mende Speismann thinks, as she lies on her back and tucks the wrinkled clipping from Hamagid under the mattress. Three healthy fledglings she’s got? She said so herself. One hundred and fifty roubles in her pocket? At least! Not so shabby. Then why the rush to put an advert in the paper? Why give out her name and the name of her family so publicly? With that kind of money, one could hire a gentile investigator, a fearless brute who would pursue her Meir-Yankel and not give the man a moment’s peace, even in his dreams, and knock out all his teeth, save one for toothaches.
Mende pulls out the clipping again, careful not to move the shoulder on which her son Yankele is sleeping. She stretches slightly to relieve her cramped neck, which her daughter Mirl has been jabbing with her elbows. The heavy breathing of her in-laws, may they live long, drifts in from the next room. Soon, Mende knows, she must get up, light the stove, dress her children while they are still half-asleep and serve them a bit of milk in a tin bowl with grains of spelt. They will complain about the stale taste, as they always do, and she will ask Rochaleh, her mother-in-law, for a teaspoon of sugar, just one for the children to share. And Rochaleh will look back at her with disapproval that stretches her wrinkled face and scold,
“No sugar! Nit! The party is over!” But after a few moments she will sigh in resignation. Every morning, a single teaspoon of sugar is grudgingly brought out.
And what is it about this notice of the loss suffered by poor Esther Hirsch that has made Mende check and reread it constantly for the past fortnight?
Although she would never admit it, this advertisement gives her pleasure, as do the two others that ran in a previous issue of Hamagid (one entitled “A Cry for Help!” and the other “Urgent Appeal!”), and the dozens of other similar notices that keep coming, day after day, from across the Pale of Settlement. Women who have been left behind, women chained to a husbandless marriage, miserable women, schlimazel women abandoned by their husbands with deceitful assurances and charades. One husband leaves for America, die goldene medina, with promises to bring the family over to New York; another sails for Palestine to be burned by the sun; a man tells his wife he is going into town to learn a trade, only to be swept up in the intellectual circles of Odessa; a father swears to his daughters that he will come back with a hefty dowry and, all of a sudden, one hears that he is “kissing the mezuzahs” of Kiev bordellos. Mende knows that only fools find consolation in the knowledge that others suffer the same woes as they, and yet contentment steals over her as she reads, overcoming any sentiment of feminine solidarity that she might have felt with these women. She is not like them, she will never be like them. She has not rushed off to publish advertisements, she has not complained to the leaders of the community and she has not circulated descriptions of Zvi-Meir Speismann, the man who tore her life to pieces. She will never do any of this.
* * *
Mende’s limbs are aching even though she is still in bed, as if she has strained herself in her sleep. The sour odour of sweat wafts in from the room of her elderly in-laws, God bless them. Even the reek of her husband’s parents is cause for thanking the Blessed Holy One. True, their house is only a dark, dilapidated old cabin of rotting wood, with two small rooms and a kitchen. But the walls are sealed against draughts, and it has a clay floor, wooden roof shingles and thick-paned windows. And sometimes, a small living space can be an advantage, particularly if the kitchen stove has to heat the entire house. True, chicken is never served here, and the Friday-night fishcakes contain little by way of fish and plenty by way of onion. But borscht and rye bread are served every lunchtime, and cholent stew without meat on Shabbat is not so terrible.
The Speismanns could easily have turned their backs on Mende. After all, they couldn’t stand their son, Zvi-Meir, as it was. When he was young, they had hoped that he would make them proud, and they sent him to the illustrious Volozhin Yeshiva with the notion that he should become one of its top students. But after his first year, they heard that their son was openly declaring that the yeshiva’s rabbis were all hypocrites, and that the Vilna Gaon himself would have been ashamed of them. “They are a bunch of good-for-nothing wastrels,” Zvi-Meir said. “No more than dishonest schemers masquerading as hakhamim.” So Zvi-Meir left Volozhin, declaring that he would be better off as a poor pedlar than a Torah sage, if being a sage meant that he had to be officious, greedy and aloof.
This change of career notwithstanding, Zvi-Meir still found plenty of reasons to blame and complain. He would bring his pedlar’s cart to the market but never encourage passers-by to buy his wares. He would stand there like the congregation’s rabbi, convinced that people would flock to his cart as they flocked to synagogue on Shabbat. But the “congregants” walked on by, thinking: if he does not behave like a vendor, why should I behave like a customer? So the Speismann household was one of the poorest in Motal. By the time Zvi-Meir abandoned his wife and children, they had already hit rock-bottom. They lit their house with oil instead of candles, and ate rye bread with unpeeled potatoes. When Mende tried to reason with her husband and give him business advice, he told her: “When the hen starts crowing like a rooster, it is time to take her to the slaughterhouse.” That is: never you mind. Heaven forfend, there’s nothing more to add.
* * *
Pressure on her chest is disrupting Mende’s breathing. Her children cling to her on her narrow bed. She keeps her body still, lest her fledglings awake, as her soul cries out, “Why are these children my concern?”, only to be immediately beset by guilt – “God Almighty! My poor babies! Heaven protect them!” – and she prays to the good God that He leave her body intact, so that she can provide for her children and offer them a place to rest their heads, and that He unburden her from the heretical thoughts that rise in her mind like the Yaselda in springtime, as it overflows and floods the plains of Polesia, turning them into black marshes.
Another indigent morning lies in wait for her and the children, begging at the gates of dawn. Yankele will go to the cheder and Mirl will help her with the housekeeping at the Goldschmidt residence on Market Street, where the rich of Motal live. Together, they will scrub the floor tiles of the jeweller’s opulent stone house, and once again, they will ogle Mrs Goldschmidt’s pearl necklace worth three thousand roubles, the value of an entire lifetime of only just making ends meet. From there they will go on to more of the same at the Tabaksmann household, and then they will walk to the tavern: perhaps they will need a hand there too, and perhaps Yisrael Tate, the landlord, will treat Mende to another old issue of Hamagid that no-one wants to read anymore.
Cloths and rags, scourers and buckets, floor tiles and ovens, tin bowls and sinks. And so their fingernails peel away the time, one house after another, the smell of detergent clinging to skin and soul. Their toil ends at sundown, leaving them just enough time to regain their strength for the next day. And so the waters of the Yaselda surge on.
II
* * *
Once a week, Mende’s younger sister, Fanny Keismann, comes over from the village of Upiravah, a seven-verst ride from Motal, and takes Mirl’s place in the cleaning work, so that her niece can join her own daughters’ Hebrew and arithmetic lessons. Working as a charwoman is disgraceful, all the more so for a wife and mother. Mende is ridden with guilt for dragging her sister into her humiliating attempts to escape poverty. What is more, Mende does not know how to thank Fanny for her help, and is unkind to her instead. Everything that Fanny does or says is met with Mende’s rebuke: no-one cleans this way, and why did she forget to polish that window frame, and she must not use so much soap, lest they squander all their pay on suds.
Mende knows that her sister has no need for the meagre wage the cleaning earns her. Once, she saw Fanny slide into Mirl’s pocket the coins she had earned in her niece’s place. Although Mende said nothing, this infuriated her all the more. How dare she? Will she let this yishuvnikit, this rustic Jewess, come over from her village, flaunt her superiority, and give them handouts just to prove that she is better than they? And what will people say about Mende? That she borrows money from her younger sister? Heaven forfend!
Fanny had already gone too far when, not two months after Zvi-Meir went away, she suggested to her older sister that she come and live with her in the village. “You know that the children would love being together, sister, and we would enjoy it too.” Offended, Mende replied that village life was absolutely not for her, let alone for Yankele and Mirl, muttering to herself the word “weit”, which means remote, isolated, or even forsaken.
Fanny was silent, but Mende knew that her sister understood exactly what she meant. Why would any Jew live in a village these days? Whoever did so must be either mad or a recluse. Since when is what most Jews find agreeable not good enough for the Keismanns? What is wrong with a place like Motal, a proper town with a synagogue and a cemetery and a bathhouse and a mikveh? What could they possibly want among the goyim in the heartlands of fields and bogs? Who will protect their home from Jew-hating thugs?
“Weit,” Mende said again, and Fanny pretended not to hear.
Then Mende added, “Sometimes I do not understand Natan-Berl. Why does he insist on living in a village?”
Throwing Natan-Berl’s name into the conversation was a big mistake, an unnecessary tug on a rope that was overstretched as it was. Fanny sent back the cold, impregnable stare of a woman capable of beheading her sister without blinking. This alarmed Mende so much that she quickly glanced down to make sure that Fanny’s hands were where they should be, rather than on the hilt of her knife. Underneath her skirts, Mende knew, Fanny carried the knife gifted to her by their late father, who had raised them by himself after their mother had received an urgent summons from On High.
“Natan-Berl knows what he is doing,” Fanny said.
Mende had never managed to understand her younger sister’s shidduch, let alone its success. Natan-Berl Keismann was a burly hulk, more of a Goliath than a David, with a silent manner that was seen as a mark of wisdom by those who loved him and as feeble-mindedness by those who did not. He had the tan of a goy and the thick flesh of a drunk; black plumes of hair descended from his nape, growing thicker on his arms and curling around his fingers. Every day at dawn, he would rise to tend his geese and his sheep, using the sheep’s milk to make the fine cheeses that had earned him a reputation throughout the region. Whenever Mende and Zvi-Meir visited Upiravah, they could hardly wait for the moment when Natan-Berl would produce the triangular wooden tray with wedges of cheese that melted in the mouth and weakened the mind. Yellow, green and blue, bitter and spicy, greasy and fermented, too delicious to be of this world, too fine for a Jewish palate.
Mende does not dare tell Fanny the rumours she hears about the Keismanns. On Shabbat and holidays the Keismanns arrive at the Motal synagogue, come rain or hail or snow, and although they receive a cold welcome from the rest of the congregation, they always ask after their acquaintances with unwavering smiles on their faces. But still the rumours abound. It is said that the unfortunate Keismanns befriend goyim, and not just for commercial purposes either: they visit the gentiles with their children, feast on wine and cheese, and chat in a mixture of Yiddish, Polish and Russian. People say that their house is made of bricks and that it is only covered with wood to fool jealous eyes. People say that the Keismanns have money coming out of their ears. People say that they set up a lavatory in their courtyard, with five openings for ventilation and a barrel dug into the ground, which they take out once a year to fertilise their vegetable patch. People say that Fanny has already learned the native languages and speaks fluent Polish and Russian, and her husband, so they say, does not know a word of Hebrew, swaying at shul like a wheat stalk in the wind – a true golem. People say . . .