The Slaughterman's Daughter

by Yaniv Iczkovits

  A man like Yankel Kriegsmann, pauper that he was, could not waste such an opportunity. He began to loiter around the abattoir, offering a blessing from the vilde chaya’s grandfather in return for a few copecks. Meir-Anschil decided it was time to forgive his father-in-law for his misdeeds and offered him paid work, cleaning the slaughterhouse.

  Yankel Kriegsmann reported for duty in the afternoon hours and cleaned the abattoir until it was spotless. He performed his work with quiet dedication, as if seeking to mend his ways, and little by little regained his son-in-law’s trust. Meir-Anschil and his daughter delegated to him the task of locking up and, after they left, he would sweep the floor, scrub down the walls and clear the waste around which the stray dogs would gather. He lingered over this last task, because he did not want to return to his lonely, empty house. He spent a long time watching the dogs feasting on leftover blood and tissue, sensing atonement for his sins and believing that he was doing good in the world.

  Nevertheless, Kriegsmann became enraged by one of these stray dogs, Tzileyger was his name, a three-legged hound with crooked hips, whose weakness and timidity among the pack of dogs left him perpetually starving and emaciated. Tzileyger would stand back until all the others had finished sniffing and licking and chewing the day’s catch, and only then would he permit himself to walk, hesitantly, on two front legs and one hind leg, to the mound of refuse.

  Kriegsmann decided to teach Tzileyger to stand his ground, and stopped him from approaching the waste once the rest of the pack had left. Whenever he saw Tzileyger dithering nervously behind the slaughterhouse, he would ambush him, beat him with a stick and throw rocks at him. Once, a stone hit one of Tzileyger’s front legs, and for weeks the dog scuttled on one front and one hind leg, which were luckily on opposite sides so he was able to keep his balance. The dog was forced to wait for Kriegsmann to leave and try his luck at a later hour, but the old man, who had nothing better to do, would always come back to surprise him in the moonlight.

  Eventually, Tzileyger gave up and began searching for other sources of nourishment, but Kriegsmann did not relent. In the evening he would sneak over with leftover bones and meat and lure Tzileyger to his home with whistles and tut-tuts. He led the dog along the muddy streets of the town until they reached his home, where he would place the bowlful of bait underneath the front porch, whistling and calling out: “Tzileyger, you cheat, come and get a treat.” Kriegsmann then peeped from his window and threw a stone at him each time Tzileyger approached. But the temptation was too great for the starving dog, who, in spite of the stones hitting his head, managed every now and then to snatch a bone that would sustain him for a few days, chewing it with great pleasure in a nook he found underneath the steps to Kriegsmann’s house.

  One morning, Yankel Kriegsmann awoke to the smell of rotting flesh, and found chicken remains and fur balls in the space between his house and the ground. He guessed that this was where the stray dog disappeared whenever he managed to pilfer a piece of bone. It was then that Kriegsmann decided to teach Tzileyger a lesson once and for all, and planned a sophisticated trap. He put out the bowl of food, as he had done every other evening, but deliberately missed the dog with the stones he threw at him. When he saw Tzileyger grab a juicy bone, he stole to the dog’s hiding place with his stick. Fanny happened to walk by her grandfather’s house exactly at that moment as she returned from her arithmetic lesson, and observed the incident to the very last detail. Tzileyger was caught by surprise and suffered Kriegsmann’s beatings with whines and howls: a front leg was broken and his body suffered grievous wounds, but his jaws continued to tightly clamp the bone.

  Fanny said nothing.

  Yankel Kriegsmann roared with laughter at the dog’s tenacity and tried to pull the bone out of his mouth, and Fanny saw Tzileyger expose his sharp teeth and snarl. The grandfather was so enraged by Tzileyger’s insurrection that he pulled at the bone with one hand and kept beating the dog with the stick in his other hand until finally, triumphantly, he seized the loot. But his triumph proved to be his defeat. The dog’s eyes sparked with wrath. Fanny watched as he mustered his courage and leaped at the old man with the last of his strength. Then, with a rage Fanny had never seen before, the dog mutilated her grandfather’s face, tore his skin, bit off his ear and clawed out his eyes.

  Fanny stood paralysed for a few moments. It was the first time she had ever seen an animal take revenge. When she regained her senses, she tried to scare off the dog with her knife, but Tzileyger leaped at her as well, bit her left arm and disappeared. Overwhelmed by the pain, she felt as though her arm had been severed from her body. Her grandfather lay at the entrance to his house, unconscious and bleeding. When the doctor reached Kriegsmann he managed to stop the bleeding and clean the old man’s wounds, but when he returned the next day with ointments and medi-cines he told Meir-Anschil, “I’m afraid that he will live.” Only those who saw the vision of horror that was Yankel Kriegsmann that night understood what the doctor meant. The old man never appeared in public again. He could barely see or hear, his diet now amounted to no more than tepid cucumber soup, and his final doom was set for the next winter.

  Tzileyger was never seen again around Grodno, and from that day on Fanny refused to slaughter animals or eat their flesh. When her father objected to her change of heart and tried to preach along the lines of “humans having pre-eminence over beasts”, she looked at him and said, “It depends which human and which beast.”

  Yet Fanny no longer needed to slaughter in order to evoke the memory of her mother’s bosom, and a few weeks later, she asked her father to find her a proper shidduch that would be commensurate with her principles. Meir-Anschil promised the world to the matchmaker, Yehiel-Mikhl Gemeiner, who in turn suggested a few possibilities, all of which were rejected because the matchmaker failed to understand Fanny’s “principles”. Finally, Yehiel-Mikhl Gemeiner was forced to travel all the way to Motal, where he heard about Natan-Berl Keismann, a portly and rather slow golem who was older than Fanny by fifteen years. Natan-Berl had inherited from his father a cheese-making business in the village of Upiravah and made a name for himself as the most successful sheep farmer in the entire district.

  The “principle” that guided his work, so Yehiel-Mikhl Gemeiner was secretly told, was not a special salting or curdling process, but rather maintaining herds of calm and peaceful livestock – that was all.

  “Is this commensurate with her ‘principles’?” the matchmaker asked Meir-Anschil, failing to hide the mockery in his voice.

  “If you find a shidduch for Mende nearby,” Meir-Anschil replied, “I will send them both to Motal.”

  VI

  * * *

  Before she left her house, at the second hour after midnight, Fanny caressed Natan-Berl’s enormous back while he slept. She ran her fingers through the black plumes on his shoulders. How could she tear herself away from her awkward bear? How dare she torment him, how could she make her children so miserable?

  To his own mind, Natan-Berl is cumbersome and uncouth, and she knows he does not trust his own thoughts. He waits for her to approve every sentence that comes out of his mouth, and formulates his ideas with her before presenting them to other people. Before turning in, once the children are fast asleep, he likes to smoke a cigarette in the kitchen and listen to her telling him about her day. Yet, in recent weeks, she has been barely able to talk. She has been sitting before him with an expressionless face, mumbling, “Natan-Berl, we must do something about Mende,” and he knows all too well that there isn’t much that can be done.

  His wife wants to mend the entire world, but Natan-Berl tends to think that one person cannot walk down the path cut out for another. Zvi-Meir wanted to walk away from his wife, and he did. Mende wanted to be weighed down by melancholy, and she was. What can Fanny do other than console and encourage her? She should sit with her elder sister until she heals, and do her best to stop her from ever reaching Zizek’s boat ag
ain. But Fanny, for her part, is relentless in her attacks: “You would think that, Natan-Berl.” And he becomes defensive, because he has done nothing wrong. “Exactly,” Fanny says, “you’ve done absolutely nothing, Natan-Berl.” And he, who so loves to hear her say his name, fails to understand what more it is that he can do. Every morning, he wakes up to milk the sheep and goats, to tend and shepherd, his hands are filled with work from sunrise to sundown in order to provide for his family. A lamb falls ill, the meadows become boggy and he has to venture out to more remote pasture. Tomorrow he has to clean the pen and next week he must mend the fences. And if he has to care for Mende during the day, who will do the churning? “There’s nothing but milk in your head, Natan-Berl,” Fanny says as she walks away, “and this is why the world is going from bad to worse.”

  The world? Natan-Berl is befuddled. What’s he got to do with the “world”? It is a word he finds impossible to fathom, and people use it in ways that he cannot understand. He often hears others complaining, “What world are we living in?” But as far as Natan-Berl is concerned, the world is just the way it is; it is what it is and could never be otherwise.

  “Of course,” Fanny teased him once. “As long as the sheep are calm in Natan-Berl’s pens, they can be beaten and tortured everywhere else.”

  “Really, Fanny Keismann,” he said, offended. “I have a family to care for.”

  * * *

  A sudden thought occurred to Fanny. The injustice that rages in the world derives from the basic and simple fact that she and Natan-Berl have a family to care for. Because she looks after her own children, other people’s children suffer. And due to her unwillingness to jeopardise the foundations of her own home, many other homes fall to pieces. Just look at those women, for example, whose primary duty is towards their children, and whose motherhood is the source of their virtue: they would accept any injustice provided their own safe haven remained unharmed. If these women stepped out of their homes to care for others, husbands like Zvi-Meir would not dare to abandon them at the drop of a hat. But injustice always has its silent agents at work, and every affliction that occurs in one place is made possible by its silent acceptance elsewhere. She is an accomplice to the crime that took place in her sister’s home. No, not an accomplice. Worse than that. A perpetrator.

  The world cannot be mended because rupture is what makes it go round. And there isn’t a single Jewish woman who is prepared to go out of her way to fix it. Not even her.

  She does not expect anything from men. Why should they undermine their position as masters? Why should they waive the titles granted to them, in the absence of any challenge? Everybody in Motal knows that Zvi-Meir has abandoned his family, yet no envoys have been sent to Minsk. They pride themselves on being a tight-knit community with an influential rabbi, and the last thing anyone wants to do is rock the boat. They all emphatically condemn the wayward husband, but by not chasing after him, they reserve the right to do the same thing themselves. Their denouncement of Zvi-Meir consists of hollow words and no action.

  “Natan-Berl, we should go to Minsk. We must bring back this rogue, Zvi-Meir.”

  “To Minsk?” He is confused.

  “We will all go together, Natan-Berl, the children will be thrilled. People say that Minsk is a lovely city. There’s not a single hungry Jew there. We’ll take them to the theatre.”

  “The theatre?” Natan-Berl mumbles.

  “Now is the time, Natan-Berl – when the swamps dry up and the roads are easy to navigate. In a few weeks, the mud and the ice will keep us here, we’ll be stranded.”

  Natan-Berl says nothing. She can see that he has raised his protective barriers against her and she becomes filled with remorse. Why does she torment him? She takes all of her anger at Mende out on him. Instead of filling Mende’s ears with empty chatter, she should talk to her about the leap into the river, and make sure that her elder sister never again loses the will to live. But instead of shaking Mende back to her senses, she sneaks underneath the white sheet and holds her limp hand, and in the evening, she vents her anger at her husband.

  One day Fanny takes courage. She waits for Rochaleh to go out to draw water and shuts the door of Mende’s room after her. She climbs onto Mende’s bed, caresses her elder sister’s head and tries to find a foothold in her hollow eyes. She searches for all the authoritative words that have come to her mind countless times before, but her voice is caged because she can see that her sister does not want tikkun, she does not want to have her soul mended. Mende has always wanted only one thing – a husband and children, or, in a word: a family. Without even one of its components Mende does not feel whole, certainly not strong, and she refuses to rise above her grief for the sake of praise, such as “see how brave she is”. To be frank, the status of agunah, a husbandless wife, does not suit her character, and her precarious family situation contradicts her faith. The dybbuk that possessed Mende is nothing more than sadness and outrage at being forced, against her will, into the world of sin. It is not Zvi-Meir that she is pining for; she yearns for the authority of a husband and for the life of a wife. She does not live for the sake of Yankele and Mirl but for the sake of being a mother. This is why Fanny said nothing and retreated from the bed and sat on a chair next to her sister for a few moments. Later, she left the house and walked north along the town’s narrow paths, all the way to the Yaselda, where she found Zizek’s boat. At her request, he let her board his craft and rowed back and forth, from one shore to the other. Why did she do that? She does not know. Perhaps she expected Zizek to say something or to stop at the spot where her sister jumped ship. But Zizek rowed steadily and calmly and did not stop, his expression detached and his rowing motion constant; it was then that Fanny realised that it was no coincidence that it had been on Zizek’s boat, of all places, where Mende came to realise that her fate was sealed. She must have felt that this was how she would float through the years, how ten months of anticipation for Zvi-Meir would become one hundred, and she would end her life, just like Zizek, with a steadfast forwards motion towards meaninglessness.

  Then a bold idea rose up in Fanny’s mind, and she dared to say it out loud. Zizek kept his countenance and continued rowing with a blank face, but somehow Fanny knew that he had heard her and understood. All she said were two words, but at the second hour after midnight, as she left her home with a heavy heart, she hoped that Zizek would find a way to help her.

  * * *

  That evening she was very emotional around her children, jumping and dancing and hugging them too much.

  “What is wrong with you?” asked Gavriellah, her eldest. “You are being funny.”

  “I trust you, Gavriellah Keismann,” Fanny said, in tears, and her eldest daughter’s eyes searched her with suspicion. After Fanny had put the children to sleep, she came to Natan-Berl’s bed and stroked the small of his back for a long time. When the house resonated with the tender breathing of sleeping children, she went out to the kitchen and sat meditatively at the table.

  Before going out into the dark, it suddenly occurred to her that she should leave a note, but her excitement drove the words out of her brain. What could she write? What explanation could justify abandoning five beloved children and one Natan-Berl? Finally, she tore off a piece of paper and scribbled down “I’ll be back very soon”, but immediately regretted this cryptic message and instead wrote “Take care of yourselves until I return”. She wanted to change that too, but time was pressing, so she left the note on the table and stepped outside.

  In the dead of night, she met the coachman Mikhail Andreyevich, as agreed, with his cart (and a rifle, to use against foul beasts), and paid him a hefty sum in order to ensure that this rendezvous would remain secret. Together they rode north to Motal, surprising barn owls in the topmost branches of pine trees and startling deer. They advanced along Motal’s main road. Mad dogs chased after the cartwheels until they had left the town, but no lanterns lit up in any of it
s homes, thank God. When they reached the river, they found Zizek’s empty boat. It was very dark.

  Zizek emerged from the bushes, holding a lamp. He quickly pushed his boat into the river and helped Fanny to climb aboard, then jumped in after her and calmly rowed towards the northern bank. When they reached the other side, she did not know how to thank him: words and money meant nothing to Zizek. So she briefly touched his arm, but he nervously shook her off, which alarmed her. She stepped out of the boat onto the boggy ground, and as she walked away, she realised that he was just behind her. She walked towards the nearby village, where she knew a few locals who could arrange for her to hire a cart and horses at dawn. Zizek continued to follow her. She began to fear that she might have trusted him too much. He never leaves the Yaselda, and now he is following her footsteps away from the riverbank. Fanny began to formulate a plan to be rid of him and felt for the knife on her thigh.

  Then Zizek suddenly strode past her, took the lead and had her follow him to a grove of trees, where she discovered that he had already hidden two horses and a wagon in preparation. He helped her climb onto the wagon seat, then took the reins and turned the horses. Now his steady rowing motion was replaced by his pulling on the leather straps. Nothing moved in his face. His bright eyes were fixed on the Pole Star, by which he would navigate their route to Minsk, and the two words Fanny had said to him at noon guided his way and blended with the horses’ hoofbeats. Zvi-Meir . . . Zvi-Meir . . . Zvi-Meir . . .