Mr Kroll stinks, and in no uncertain terms. It could be his teeth, or perhaps the lack thereof. It took Novak a while to understand that his role would force him to associate with people of the lowest sort, but he has long since accepted that the secret police is a despicable and corrupt organisation, utterly devoid of all decency. When he served in the army, it was clear to all the soldiers who the enemy was and what a victory or a defeat would mean. But here all is lies and deceit, and he knows that to get to the bottom of this investigation, he will be forced to pull countless tricks and scams. Colonel Piotr Novak is under no illusion: anyone who serves their country with subterfuge is not a true patriot. Anyone who pulls an old man out of his bed in the dead of night in the name of national security, and tears children from their parents’ arms in the name of an ideal, by necessity must follow an illusion of security and false ideals. But does he have the strength to change the world? Not with a crushed leg. And who can say if a different method of investigation would be better than the current one? Only a fool could countenance such a thing.
And during the five hours of strenuous riding to the scene of the crime, forty versts away, he recalls the time when he proudly rode under the command of the great General Osip Gurko, when he fought fearlessly against the Turkish cavalry. Colonel Piotr Novak never roused his troops with speeches before battle and never went to console the wounded in its aftermath, and yet they charged behind him towards the Turks with their eyes closed. He excelled as a tactician and led his soldiers only into clashes in which they outnumbered their enemy. And when shrapnel from an Ottoman shell tore through his knee and shattered his leg during the Battle of the Shipka Pass, Novak still led his cavalry into the conquest of their target. He lay wounded and bleeding on the ridge of the Shipka Pass for an entire day, until he was evacuated to a nearby village, where he was informed that his left leg had to be amputated above the knee. Novak vehemently refused, knocked the doctor out cold with a single punch and, just before losing consciousness himself, demanded that his leg be amputated only at a point just above the ankle, using the Pirogov Method. The surgeon obliged, probably thinking that Novak would not survive the operation in any case, but the colonel regained his strength to spite both the doctor and himself.
If he had lost his life along with his foot, perhaps he would not be drowning in the river of doubt that is presently washing through his mind. The ruined leg has not only affected his body but also disrupted his mind, so that – instead of cherishing the memory of the pure moments of war – his thoughts keep dwelling on other details: torn limbs and wails of pain and the heartrending cries of soldiers calling for their mothers. And every time he struggles to dismount from a horse, or leans on the cane that provides the support that his missing foot can no longer offer, he does not think of his military honours, or the St George’s Cross for his courageous service on the Shipka Pass; instead, he recalls the bodies they found on the pavements of the besieged city of Plevna – as passers-by stepped over them or trod on them, indifferent – and the wounded, tens of thousands of them, who gathered in churches and mosques as several hundred carcasses were evacuated each day, and of the countless soldiers who’d had their ears cut off and their faces mutilated and their genitals severed by the Turks under the command of the infamous Othman Pasha, and the tens of thousands of Turkish prisoners of war whom the Russians had abandoned for days on end without shelter, starving and steeped in mud, a quarter of them dead by Christmastime. It was impossible to tell good from evil, liberator from oppressor; who was right and who was wrong.
Novak’s wound also destroyed his life’s dream. It became impossible for him to be promoted to general, and yet he could not bear the thought of becoming an administrator. His illustrious commander, Osip Gurko, had no wish to renounce his excellent service, however, and when he was appointed governor, he persuaded Novak to transfer to the secret police. Novak accepted the offer to become chief of the districts of Grodno and Minsk, having no wish to snub his commander. Colonel Piotr Novak remains loyal to Osip Gurko, and does not count the few letters the governor sends or worry about the infrequency of his visits. Gurko is the last shred of dignity left in his life.
* * *
And now Novak is following the informant Otto Kroll, a certified fool, who is leading them down shadeless roads beneath a burning sun and almost drowns them in one of the tributaries of the Shchara. With his help, they arrive at the crime scene exhausted and dehydrated.
They are wearing plain clothes, but the agents’ fine steeds give them away and the gathered vagabonds and passers-by make themselves scarce as they approach. Kroll has left his wife watching over the evidence, and this new simpleton is waiting for them on the bandits’ wagon, chewing on a sausage she has found in one of the sacks. Novak dismounts, pretending not to feel the excruciating pain shooting from his left thigh all the way up his side. Recently, the leg has started to come back to life, and the shockwaves of its blasts have spread to his upper body. Novak trudges over to the wagon and knocks on a wheel with his cane, but Kroll’s wife, surprisingly, does not take the hint and carries on with her placid chewing. Kroll motions to his lady to climb down, but there are varying degrees of stupidity among the asinine, and she pulls a face, stuffs the sausage into her pocket and clambers down, widening one of the rips in her dress.
Emboldened by his wife’s acquiescence, Otto Kroll turns to Novak to demonstrate further proof of his indispensability.
“The wagon is here,” he explains. “And the bodies are over there, and the road is here.” And here is the ground, Novak thinks, and the skies are up there, and that is the sun. Kroll lights his pipe, adjusts the brim of his hat and says, “Horse thieves, definitely.” An unimpeachable deduction, thinks Novak, and he motions to Albin Dodek to rid him of this amateur detective. Time is short and there is much to be done, and the regular police investigators are expected at any moment.
Kroll wanders away, and Novak turns to examine the bodies. The two sons are lying on their bellies in pools of raspberry-coloured dried blood, their bodies bloated and their skin pale yellow. Their arms rest alongside their bodies and they each have a cheek pressed into the ground. Their mother, on the other hand, is curled up in a foetal position, her knees bent and her head tucked in. And Novak, who has seen thousands of soldiers’ corpses in his lifetime, knows that the positions of the slain gives away how they died. The two sons, without a doubt, were dispatched quickly, while the mother suffered for some time before she expired.
The colonel takes out a handkerchief from his pocket and pulls a flask of slivovitz from his jacket. He soaks the cloth with the plum brandy, covers his nose, and rolls over each of the two male corpses.
Nature has no consideration for the needs of police investigators. Clouds of bluebottles and an assortment of other evidence-obliterating vermin come to light, their frenzy undeterred even by the flapping hands of the detective in charge of the investigation. What is more, the trousers of one of the sons have been pulled down, and Novak is suddenly face to face with a lifeless pink hose that resembles a repulsive blind mole and is peeking out from the man’s underwear. Novak notices the startling slits in the victims’ throats, deep cuts in the trachea and oesophagus that would not have given them a chance. They must have twitched for a few moments in their own blood and excrement before parting from their lives. He notices contusions on the mother’s head, which, he concludes, did not lead to her death. The deep slit in her own throat will have sufficed.
The singular slaying method notwithstanding, Novak decides that the secret police do not have a particular interest in the affair. This is indeed a horrifying murder, and Novak is curious to know who the killer might be, but he believes that the case is more relevant to the regular police than the Department for Public Security and Order.
“Let’s get out of here,” he says to Dodek, but then he realises that his deputy has gone over to sit with the Krolls and join them in wolfing down radishes from
another of the sacks.
What kind of a deputy chief would whistle with admiration at the sight of Mrs Kroll demonstrating on her own neck the slaughter of the victims of his investigation?
“Dodek!” Novak calls.
“I’ll be right there, sir, the lady is just finishing her story . . .”
“Now!”
Dodek returns, looking sheepish, duly upbraided.
“I hope I did not interrupt a fascinating conversation with the distinguished Mrs Kroll?” Novak says, mounting his horse, his leg throbbing.
“The lady had almost finished her story, surely we could have waited just a moment longer—”
“Be thankful I spared you from having to spend another moment with the village idiot.”
“I don’t know if she really is a village idiot,” Dodek says. “She’s actually seen quite a bit in her time.”
“Alert the police, Dodek, we don’t have time for tall tales. Tell them that three bodies have been found at the roadside between Telekhany and Baranavichy. Probable motive, robbery. Let them open their own investigation. We are closing the file.”
“Yes, sir.” Dodek instructs the other agents, still perturbed by the reprimand for his interaction with Mrs Kroll. “The lady is rather shaken,” he says, turning back to Novak. “She won’t calm down.”
Novak looks over at Mrs Kroll, who is once again demonstrating the slaughtering motion on her own neck to the crowd of nosy onlookers who are now gathering around her.
“If she keeps raising an imaginary knife to her throat, I imagine that’ll make it all the more difficult for her to calm herself.”
“She says this is how the żyds slaughter animals.”
Novak reins in his horse. During his time in the army, he had encountered young Jewish boys who had been forced to become soldiers. Some of these recruits had insisted on observing the primitive customs of their religion and had slaughtered animals in a pagan ritual that involved a unique way of slitting the beast’s throat, even though they knew that they would be flogged for doing so. This was the first time that he had understood the popular belief that the Jews are born blind and have to drink blood in order to gain their eyesight, and why every mother warns her children that the ‘żyd weźmie do torby’: the Jew will carry you off in his sack if you misbehave.
All this notwithstanding, Novak thinks, it would be a complete surprise, perhaps even unprecedented, if the murderer turned out to be Jewish. If there is one thing that amazes him about the Jews, it is the ease with which they capitulate when threatened. Novak has taken advantage of this trait several times, and his technique has always worked: catch a Jew in a strategic setting, threaten him with disaster – family disasters are particularly expedient – and proceed to extract all the information you need. Nevertheless, Novak has learned, this is not due to their being spineless or faint-hearted, but rather by virtue of their reason and pragmatism. Their perilous situation as a numerical minority in the empire is clear to all; their segregation has indeed protected them but it has also isolated them, and before a violent mob they have little hope of help or escape. Jews therefore have to believe that, if they succumb without a struggle every now and again, they will buy themselves peace for the rest of the time. If ever they mounted any kind of militant defence, recriminations would immediately follow, and then it would not be long before vicious decrees were deemed justified, houses could be burned down, property pillaged and people exiled to Siberia. No, thinks Novak, it is hard to believe that a Jew would countenance the risk of murdering three people and jeopardising himself and his brethren.
And yet, there is some suspicious evidence to consider. If indeed the Borokovskys were well-known robbers, and if this was an act of self-defence, why would the killers not turn themselves in to the police? Might they also have something to hide? This question becomes all the more pertinent when the manner of defence is taken into account. Slashing the sons’ throats was understandable. No-one would want to leave their fate in the hands of a pair of drunken thugs, especially when one of them is flaunting a pink and repulsive worm between his legs. But why did the killers feel the need to slay the mother as well? Should he presume that they had not wanted to leave an eyewitness behind? But if that is so, why didn’t they chase down the father? And why didn’t they take possession of a wagon loaded with goods? And what did they imagine they could do with the horses? After all, the county is small, and rumours about horses gallop faster than the horses themselves. Strange indeed. Very strange.
Precisely at that moment, another informant arrives on the scene. This time it is Otto Kroll’s brother, Nikolai – genius number three – who has been sent on Otto’s behalf to reveal more evidence and give the family’s income another boost. It turns out that Radek Borokovsky has been found unconscious in one of the nearby villages. He has been drinking pálinka all night long and “singing like a canary”. From what they can make out, Mr Borokovsky maintains that a number of Russian army soldiers attacked his innocent little family on the road to Baranavichy. There were at least three or four strapping cavalrymen, along with one large and terrifying woman. He himself escaped the merciless attack by the skin of his teeth.
“Should we arrest him?” asks Albin Dodek.
“Of course not,” says Piotr Novak. “But don’t let him out of your sight.”
Dodek nods, regretting the question. He should have remembered that his commander does not believe in arrests, because they only relate to crimes that have already taken place. Novak reserves the right to apprehend anyone for crimes that will take place in the future, and if he avoids taking action now, it must mean that he expects that the charges will become more severe. I must write this down in my notepad and memorise it, Dodek thinks. “Give the suspect latitude, and prioritise surveillance over arrest.”
Novak pays Nikolai Kroll twenty roubles, which join the thirty that the Kroll family has already earned that day. The information would have reached Novak for free, but time is of the essence here, and the bribes he has paid in order to be at the forefront of the investigation are money well spent.
It is now time for the regular police to take over, as he has already instructed, and for him to leave this case – officially, at least. Naturally, he has every intention of keeping up his indefatigable investigations behind the scenes. In the meantime, he sends his deputy off to alert all available agents. They must set out immediately on a search of the surrounding area. Informants in the markets of the nearby towns, Telekhany and Baranavichy, are asked to keep their eyes and ears open, horse dealers are told to watch out for any unusual transactions, and innkeepers are ordered to report on any suspicious guests. It is not every day that one comes across three dead bodies, Jewish slaughter techniques, accusations against a belligerent military convoy and one large and terrifying woman, all of which are supposed to come together to form a consistent story. I’ll be damned, thinks Novak. This country is losing its mind.
VII
* * *
With first light, their predicament becomes clear. Both of them are beaten, battered and tattered, and Zizek urgently needs a doctor. They have nothing left apart from the rum barrel, neither food nor water.
Zizek stops the cart by a small lake where they can wash and fill their water flasks. Fanny climbs down and crouches among the reeds. Zizek assumes she is urinating, but when she does not return, he walks over to check that she is alright. He finds her sitting on a rock, her dress rolled up almost to her knees, sharpening her knife on a smooth stone.
He approaches hesitantly, careful not to make a noise, assuming that Fanny is in a state of shock. He wants to say something, but his words argue with each other inside his head and he can’t get them out.
His failed attempt at speech is not lost on Fanny. For the first time, Zizek’s enormous body is showing signs of life. They’ve been riding together for two days and he has not yet said a single word.
“Why did you come with me, Zizek Breshov?” she asks in Polish, standing up to face him.
Zizek scratches his head, the gaze of his bright-coloured eyes lowered. He retreats. She chases after him and grabs hold of his arm, and he recoils like a child receiving a scolding.
“I am sorry, Zizek Breshov, I . . .” She can feel a sob crawling up her throat.
Zizek looks at her hand gripping his arm as if it were a thorn that had penetrated his flesh. He keeps quite still, as if the slightest movement would make the thorn scratch into his arm until it bleeds. And yet he does not want to pull away. He feels ants creep beneath his skin and march in a column up his spine, all the way to the nape of his neck. A raw, addictive pain paralyses his limbs, and the sudden thought of death comes to his mind. He is ready to die at this very moment, as her fingers are biting into his skin. He feels as if he has been kicked up in the air, and a few first words are launched out of his throat to bridge the distance.
“We must return to Motal.” He is suffocated by his own words. “I’m sorry, but if we stay here, they will find us.”
Fanny lets go of his arm and walks away. If he has waited so long just to say this, it would have been better if he had remained silent. She slashes at the stalks of oats and then goes to feed the horses.
Zizek knows he has made a mistake. His first words after dec-ades of silence, and they have not met with the desired reception. Perhaps it would have been better if he had never opened his mouth, what an idiot he was even to try. He had only wanted to avoid more trouble, now that they are left without food and are wanted for murder throughout the region. If they do not hurry back to Motal, they risk imminent arrest, or even ending up in the clutches of an angry mob. Fanny could return to her village, she could resume her normal life without arousing any suspicion, and all would be well. And then he looks up and sees that Fanny has unharnessed the young horse and is leading it towards him.
The Slaughterman's Daughter Page 10