This does not worry Rivkah Keismann in the least. People can say what they like. If she had listened to things that other people say, she would not have married Natan-Berl’s father. Among the Jews, affection develops from cohabitation, and not the other way around. Man and wife learn to like one another out of a sense of duty and shared destiny. They will develop feelings for one another by facing the burden of everyday life and the pressures of their commitment together. Love should rest on solid foun-dations, not on a whim.
This is what Rivkah is thinking to herself, as she watches Mende clearing stones from the garden. Other people can say what they want. As far as Rivkah is concerned, this is a family in the making. Yankele has joined David and Mishka, and the three of them are studying with Schneor Mendelovits, the tutor who comes in every morning from Motal to bring them into the Tent of Torah. In the meantime, Rivkah Keismann’s granddaughters are playing nearby as Mirl draws water from the well.
The father goes out to earn their bread, the mother takes care of the housework, and the children keep busy. Just like all good families. Her maligners will tell Rivkah Keismann that their own family members are also loving, that they talk to each other, the parents sleep in the same bed, and the children know who their father and mother are. True, there is not much loving or talking or liking going on in the Keismann home. But mind you, there’s no cursing or fighting either. And can the same be said of other families? Exactly.
* * *
In the distance, Rivkah spies two horses approaching at a gallop. Before telling her darling grandchildren to come into the house, though, she takes a better look. She has never seen such a sight in her life: one of the horses is ridden by a strapping, handsome man, a skilful jockey, and perched just in front of him is none other than Reb Moishe-Lazer Halperin, riding side-saddle with both legs dangling from the same side of the horse. Rivkah Keismann cannot fathom the meaning of this, but she does know that any man who can be compelled to ride a horse like that has lost his presence of mind and could just as easily be persuaded to worship a false prophet.
Having recognised Reb Moishe-Lazer Halperin, she infers that the purpose of this visit is the conversation that the rabbi promised to have with her son, the necessity of which she is no longer certain. Her earlier idea of marrying Natan-Berl to Mende Speismann now strikes her as obsolete. Three weeks have gone by since Fanny’s disappearance, and, in all honesty, Rivkah Keismann is quite satisfied with the course things have taken. Not only that, but the time that Reb Moishe-Lazer Halperin has chosen to invite himself to their house is highly suspect, as is the presence of his strange companions. Weren’t they called Adim and Protor? (What kind of names are they, anyway? Perhaps she does not remember them correctly.) The rabbi knows full well that her son Natan-Berl leaves the house at the crack of dawn to herd his flock to the pastures, so in all likelihood the Keismann household would be one man short at such a late morning hour.
Frankly, Rivkah doesn’t like the rabbi’s continued enthusiasm for his two philanthropists for several reasons. First, if they are indeed from Vitebsk, and if indeed they went through what the rabbi claims, then she feels sorry for them; but now that they are no longer Avremaleh and Pinchasaleh but Adim and Protor, she is not so sure that she wants them to come anywhere near her grandchildren.
Second, it is not clear to her how two soldiers could have become so wealthy. People who earn their money through hard work are not usually inclined to be charitable. People who save up copeck after copeck, and put aside one rouble at a time to amass a fortune, usually leave their money to their children and family. Philanthropists are wretched, miserable people because they do not have to work for a living and they do not know anything about the hardship of daily toil that makes a nobody into somebody. Their generous donations are only meant to justify their existence and to clear their conscience as they watch most other people buckle under the pressure of earning a wage. The trouble is that the harder they try to be liked by the common man, the more he will try to distance himself from them.
Third, if they are Adim and Protor or Avremaleh and Pinchasaleh Rabinovits, people say that you cannot judge someone until you have walked in their shoes, and she makes no claim to know the secrets of their hearts as only the Almighty can. That said, she did hear of a few conscripted Jewish children who defied the Czarist army’s education, preferring death to halakhic transgression, and starvation to impure food. For these reasons, and others that she’d rather not go into right now, Rivkah slips back into the house and asks Mende to tell their visitors that she is not feeling well, that the bubbe is going to lie down and cannot receive any guests.
Rivkah Keismann steals to the kitchen, pulls the curtain across the window and eavesdrops attentively on the conversation taking place on the other side of the wall. She hears a weak buzz of chatter, the grunt of an irritated horse, and then silence. Then three quick knocks on the door catch her off guard. The best thing to do would be to withdraw into one of the rooms at the back of the house, but before she can move, the door opens, unbidden. Reb Moishe-Lazer Halperin stands on the threshold with the two gentlemen, Adim and Protor, just behind him and letting in the blinding sunlight.
“Mrs Keismann!” the rabbi cries, raising his arms jubilantly. “We heard that you are not well and yet we thought we should come in, because we feel confident that the news we bring will heal whatever ailment you may have.”
We? We feel confident? The news we bring? Have the three men suddenly become one?
“Why have you left your bed if you are not well?” asks the rabbi.
“Why did you leave Motal?”
“You asked me to,” says the rabbi, stung by her scorn. “We said that I would come over—”
“That was a week ago.”
“Not that long ago, I’m sure.”
“A week to the day.”
“Things came up,” the rabbi says, apologetically. “You know how hard I work. But I bring you good news.”
“Natan-Berl is not present to hear it,” Mrs Keismann says, “and even if he was here, he wouldn’t have liked to hear it in front of such a large audience.”
The rabbi takes his time before replying, and Rivkah thinks that at last he has understood the cause of her irritation. In his rush for the philanthropists’ money, he has neglected his obligations to his congregation.
“If I might be so bold, could the guests have a glass of water?” the rabbi says, drawing up a chair.
A glass of water for the guests, indeed? It always starts with a glass of water and ends with an open invitation for everything else.
“I am still weak,” she says, feebly. “Perhaps Your Honour could pour some water from the jug yourself?”
Reb Moishe-Lazer Halperin walks over to the water jug and pours out three cups. With the air of a meek servant, he offers the water to his bountiful guests, who are still standing in the doorway. Now they enter the house, and the grandmother notices that the limp of the one calling himself Protor is heavier than she remembered, and that without his cane he probably would have had to crawl. His shifting eyes spy out every corner, as if he is looking for something. Adim, for his part, looks around contemptuously, and whenever their gaze meets he immediately looks away, as if to say, I cannot believe how backwards you people are. You might as well be living in the Stone Age, whereas I have travelled all over the big, wide world. I am educated. I know Russian and French. Me me me. A man like this, who thinks that everything revolves around him alone, cannot be Jewish. The manners of the Jew bespeak self-deprecation and futility.
And yet there is something about Protor. Perhaps his disability makes her feel compassion for him, or perhaps she has gone soft over the years. Fortunately, the Blessed Holy One endowed her with particularly keen senses, and while most people favour sight, she is acutely sensitive to smell. She has no doubt that Protor is a slave to alcohol, and he has clearly tried to mask the smell of hard spirits
by drinking some sort of fruit liqueur – peach, is it? Or perhaps plum? But there’s a reason beside his limp or his intoxication for his unsteady gait. He is looking around like someone who has never set foot in a Jewish home before, with the all the wide-eyed gawping of a child. She pities a Jew who does not even recognise a Sabbath candlestick. It might have been possible to bring him back to the fold, were he not drowning in a torrent of drink and pain.
Reb Moishe-Lazer Halperin motions to his guests to sit at the table. Only once they are comfortable does he allow himself to sink into a chair and take a sip of his water. How did the faithful city become a harlot? Only greed can explain it.
“What we have to say,” the rabbi declares on behalf of the three of them, “we will say in person and in private, and we vouch that none of it will leave this room.”
Then that’s another secret gone down the drain, the grandmother thinks to herself.
“These generous gentlemen,” the rabbi goes on, “have been troubled since they met you. In fact, your visit made Akim and Prokor, excuse me, Avremaleh and Pinchasaleh, quite agitated.”
So Protor is Prokor, and Adim is Akim. The names are of no consequence; her memory is not what it used to be.
The rabbi continues. “They suddenly recalled that, when they last visited Baranavichy, they happened to meet Mrs Fanny Keismann, in a tavern!”
“A tavern?” Rivkah scoffs. “Kvatsh, kvatsh mit zozze, nonsense with gravy on top.”
“This is not nonsense,” the rabbi says, defensively. “What is more, when I told them about the disaster that has befallen your family, I could not help but mention the sister, Mende Speismann, and her wastrel of a husband, Zvi-Meir. And do you know what they told me? That they ran into a man called Zvi-Meir in Minsk, and the more I described him, the more they were convinced that he is our Zvi-Meir. They saw him at the synagogue, Mrs Keismann – the synagogue!”
“Baranavichy?” The grandmother is dumbfounded. “Minsk?”
“Akim and Prokor can send someone to Baranavichy right away. They tell me she was staying at—”
“Adamsky’s,” Akim mutters. “Patrick Adamsky.” And Protor – that is, Prokor – nods in confirmation.
“Adamsky,” the rabbi echoes. “Patrick Adamsky. That’s where they saw her, sitting in the tavern, not lying in the forest, torn apart by wild beasts. She must have simply stopped there for rest and refreshment. This is wonderful news – and there is more.”
Please, no more, thinks Mrs Keismann, no more.
“I have already told you about Avremaleh and Pinchasaleh’s generosity, and I have spoken at length about their compassion. Well, the two of them are prepared to fund the search for Fanny Keismann and help restore peace to the Keismann and Speismann families. Therefore, the purpose of our visit is actually not to prevent further disaster, but rather to advise that no disaster has taken place at all, as the Blessed Holy One, father of orphans and resurrecter of the dead, has been protecting the missing family members from harm all along. In no time at all, husbands will return to their homes and mothers to their children, and happiness will prevail. Feeling any better now, Mrs Keismann?”
Actually, the grandmother’s head has begun to ache and her limbs feel weak.
“In any event,” the rabbi presses on, “we need all the details you can give us about your daughter-in-law and Zvi-Meir. The gentlemen ask that you keep nothing back, as even the most trivial details could turn out to be the most important. After that, the gentlemen will send out messengers, and they will bring our lost sheep back to the fold. Come on, Mrs Keismann, time is short and there is much to do. You will describe, Akim will translate, and I will take a little rest because my stomach is rumbling. If you have any leftover dry bread from breakfast, that would be most welcome. And if any cheese rind remains, it would be a pity to throw it away. Where should we start, Mrs Keismann? Let us begin! Time is of the essence! Spare no detail.”
Nesvizh
I
* * *
When God created the Heaven and the Earth, darkness hovered over the void. There was no need to create darkness, only light. The Almighty illuminated even the miserable souls of men, lest they stagnate in their primordial form, that is, in terrible loneliness. This is why He created them male and female, in His shape and form, as though to say: “You humans are incapable of civility. You will only really be human beings once you have learned to live together in harmony.”
But now, as the four of them are travelling on in a ramshackle wagon in the dead of night, the total darkness outside and the desolation within are flooding the abyss in their souls. Each of them wants to be alone, as far away as possible from any other living being, and forget everything that has happened. What do they fear? Each other, more than anything. Captain Adamsky buries his face between his knees. What, in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, has he just done? Fucking hell! The authorities will confiscate his tavern now, that’s for sure. He had poured his life’s savings into his business. The result of thirty-five years of combat service in the infantry corps – gone up in smoke. His friendship with Yoshke Berkovits is a thing of the past, it belongs to a time when Adamsky was just a helpless Jewish boy, a pathetic coward called Pesach Avramson. As soon as he learned how his community had given his brother away to the authorities, how their faith had driven its leaders to fabricate a story that would justify this monstrous injustice, he knew that he wanted nothing more to do with these pigs and their religion, whose immutable laws can always be bent to suit shifting needs and interests. True, Yoshke has saved Adamsky’s life on more than one occasion, but this is not why the captain came to his aid. He did it in spite of that. He never asked Yoshke to save his goddamned life, after all. Why, then, did he risk everything and bury himself up to his neck in this affair? What is more, his formerly rational friend has clearly become a naive little lamb who has been duped by this mysterious fiend of a woman. She isn’t Yoshke’s wife, and they have obviously never been intimate. Is it some kind of business relationship? If so, what’s in it for him? Is it too late to change sides?
Fanny is also preoccupied by her own thoughts. With one hand she feels her neck, which just a short while earlier was in the steely grip of an officer’s fist, and with her other hand she touches the knife, which she intends to throw away at the first opportunity. This disaster could not be further from her original plan to help her sister. All she wanted to do was cross the Yaselda and ride to Minsk, confront Zvi-Meir and make him sign a writ of divorce, there and then. She never imagined that she would find herself slaying a family of bandits, and then fleeing the scene of a second crime with a synagogue arsonist in tow and the slit throats of two police officers in her wake. Natan-Berl must be sick with worry. When it came down to it, he might have been able to understand what his wife had intended to do. He knows her. And after all, what a man wants and what the world is can rarely be reconciled. Can anyone force the world into submission? Everybody knows that only the Blessed Holy One can. But in any case, even if Natan-Berl had approved of her initial plan, he would never accept its consequences: there are five dead bodies to her name, and her own life is in grave danger.
Natan-Berl couldn’t possibly understand anything from the ridiculous note she left him. “Take care of yourselves until I return.” Is this what a wife and mother writes to her loved ones knowing she will be gone for a long time? What were you thinking, Fanny Keismann? Her children must be tiptoeing around their father, stricken with guilt and sorrow. Gavriellah will be the only one in the house who can somehow soothe them, Fanny knows this much. And her mother-in-law, Rivkah Keismann, will be relishing every moment. Rivkah, who always warned her son against the shochet’s daughter, the vilde chaya. Is it too late for Fanny to change her mind and go home? Would she ever be able to salvage her former life? Or could it be that, really – and the thought makes her shiver – she knew all along that she would be leaving it forever?
These two runaways fear one another. Adamsky has seen with his own eyes just how dangerous the fragile woman can be with her knife, and she has seen the captain betray her without blinking. True, he subsequently risked his life to save hers, and he cannot ignore how she courageously rescued Yoshke Berkovits, contradicting everything he had ever thought about those cowardly Jews, but neither of these events was planned, and there’s no knowing what will come next or how it will turn out. Fanny wonders: would the captain betray her again? Adamsky wonders: would she slit his throat, too? Only time will tell. Perhaps in days, maybe hours, maybe moments, they will have their answers. For now, they can only sit side by side, tense and vigilant.
And what about the forces of law and order? They have much to fear on that score. This affair is likely to end at the scaffold. Whether undercover or uniformed, every officer in the region will take this manhunt personally. It is no longer a matter of killing roadside bandits; now they are wanted for slaughtering secret agents.
The agents’ commander, it turned out, was the limping drunkard from the tavern. It shocked them to discover that such a man could be a seasoned Okhrana agent, and that he could just as easily show up tomorrow disguised as a tzaddik. They should not underestimate his shrewdness, nor his thirst for vengeance, and they should not forget that the captain has smashed the officer’s already wounded leg, adding agonising insult to injury.
The first scratches of sunrise do nothing to ease the tension between the passengers. They need to decide where they are going. What is keeping this band together, aside from the fact that they are all fleeing both Poles and Russians? And that they have managed to raise the ire of both criminals and law enforcement? During the night, the dark made it easy to avoid looking at each other. But now, as the sky is clearing and the horizon opens up before them, this intimacy seems to evaporate as the tangible presence of all four travellers becomes impossible to ignore.
The Slaughterman's Daughter Page 19