The Slaughterman's Daughter

by Yaniv Iczkovits

  Fanny peeks over at Adamsky. His eyes are a deep amber – how can such wise, owl-like eyes serve the forces of evil? He seems ill at ease, his bushy eyebrows give him a shabby appearance, and his upper lip is unnaturally thin. Perhaps once, before he started burning synagogues, Zizek thought of him as his true friend. But after last night, it is clear that his hatred of Jews is far stronger than any lingering sense of loyalty he may have had for his people.

  Adamsky chances a glance in Fanny’s direction. He hasn’t seen such attractive ugliness in a long time. Her nose is sharp, her gaze cold and detached, her fair hair is hidden beneath a headscarf that makes her impassive expression seem only icier. A deep scar on her left arm leaves no doubt: she is a lioness, a fighter. But if she is devoid of emotion like any other Jew, why did she risk her life to save Yoshke Berkovits? It is a mystery.

  He cannot stop himself from exclaiming, “Fucking hell! Now what?”

  Fanny hisses to Zizek in Polish, “Don’t tell him our plans, Zizek Breshov, he will only betray us to the police again.”

  Adamsky is furious. “If I still have my throat intact, of course. Unless you intend to slaughter me too.”

  “It’s actually easier to burn down synagogues.”

  “What?!”

  “You heard me.”

  “How dare you . . .”

  “No, how dare you?”

  Zizek tightens the reins and draws the wagon to a halt. Neither Fanny nor Adamsky seem to have given him much thought. He abandoned his seat in the rowing boat on the Yaselda to help Fanny Keismann find Zvi-Meir, after seeing her sister throw herself out of his boat. He brought with him his two horses, an elderly steed from his army days, and a headstrong colt, and since then Zizek has suffered in the sweltering heat, starved and collapsed with exhaustion. Then, in the middle of the night, he fell victim to an attempted highway robbery, was pummelled senseless by bandits and made a fugitive. In Patrick Adamsky’s tavern, he was handcuffed by secret agents who smashed his forehead against the wall, and if it hadn’t been for Fanny and Adamsky he would have found himself at the gallows soon thereafter.

  “Oy!” Zizek suddenly exclaims, and then stops speaking just as abruptly. His own voice still sounds new to him, like a stranger’s.

  Adamsky is irritated.

  “Oy what, you fool?”

  Zizek is silent.

  “Fucking hell,” Adamsky growls, but Zizek notices that Fanny is watching him with anticipation.

  “Oy,” he says again, “stop your bickering. I’m sorry, but if anyone wants to get off the wagon, they should do it right now, and quickly. These horses will keep going until they reach Minsk, if you don’t mind. Sorry, but if you two want to keep arguing, you will have to do it by the roadside, because neither of you comes out of this story a saint. We all have something to regret, and maybe, if we all get out of this alive, you will have your chance to argue over who is more at fault then. Understood?”

  Fanny and Adamsky listen intently to his outburst, and his earnestness is heartening. At the end of the speech, however, they look at each other: they still have their doubts. Why would an observant Jew stay in the same wagon as a cantonist traitor? And what does a captain in the Czar’s army have in common with a crazy Jewess? And what do any of them have in common with a useless pseudo-cantor, who might have been a music professor if melodious snoring could earn you a degree? To top it off, it is not at all clear who is sitting in the driver’s seat: is it Zizek Breshov or Yoshke Berkovits? A hermit or a demagogue; a mute or an orator? To be sure, he did not include himself in his little remonstrance, he spoke as if they were the only ones sitting here and he was still back there, back in his boat on the Yaselda. And while it is true that they were all born Jews, a closer look reveals that the only thing they have in common right now is that they are all on the run.

  All the same, none of them leave the wagon and their fears begin to subside after Zizek’s speech, despite its hesitations and foolish apologies. So, what are they not afraid of right now? First of all, themselves. Fanny knows that the knife has returned to its true purpose again, after many dormant years on her thigh. Adamsky remembers how his tavern had drained him of his pride – instead of leading troops to battle, he brought prostitutes to his guests on the top floor. Zizek has regained his voice for the first time in a very long while. And the cantor – well, there is not much to say about him, but he is better off on the wagon with a barrel of rum than being left to his own devices in the road.

  The question of which road to take remains. How will they travel all the way to Minsk without going through towns and villages, along exposed roads or through open fields, all while avoiding the black bogs? There is no such road in the Pale of Settlement, let alone in the big, wide Russian Empire. Adamsky, however, knows the area well and whispers a few words in Yoshke’s ear, who suddenly blanches. Without further ado, Adamsky grabs the reins. Fanny looks at him curiously, thinking that he may have finally lost his mind.

  “Ah! Che la morte!” Adamsky shouts and stands up on the platform, looking like the general of a one-man army. “To the barracks, Yoshke!” He points north-east. “Ah! Che la morte!” To the death!

  II

  * * *

  The brutal blow to Novak’s crushed leg has left him humiliated. His deputy, Albin Dodek, has now seen him screaming and writhing like a frightened boy. And when the town doctor was called in, the illustrious colonel demanded a chloroform injection, no less: a powerful anaesthetic used to knock out horses.

  How long has he lain in bed in this state? A week, judging by the sores on his back. Coming to his senses, he feels that his eyes are swollen, and from the smiles on the faces around him, his lips must have been mumbling nonsense. The leg hurts less, thank God, and Novak quickly breaks up the loud crowd in his room – mostly officers, agents and informants – and asks even the doctor to leave. He gets up from his bed, his head spinning, and leans against the wall for a moment to regain his bearings. Then he goes downstairs into the main hall of Adamsky’s tavern, summoning Albin Dodek to join him at a table, along with two other agents whose names escape him. They are replacements for Ostrovsky and Simansky, may their souls rest in peace.

  If only he could, Novak would ask to be left alone so he can think. But at times like these, he knows, the Okhrana expects a swift response. If he were to take his time, it would be seen as a sign of weakness. Instead, he asks his deputy to brief him on what has happened while he has been lying unconscious in the room upstairs, and he is surprised to learn that Dodek has been dedicating himself mostly to the victims’ funeral arrangements. To be sure, he has updated informants, briefed shopkeepers and tavern owners in the region, and alerted all the relevant agents, but he seems more interested in describing the last respects they paid the two heroes, Ostrovsky and Simansky, taking special pride in the wreaths he sent to their families.

  Novak’s cheeks are burning. “A respectful funeral is import-ant, is not that so, Dodek?” The two nameless agents, who rival Dodek in stupidity, nod in agreement. “You did call in the portrait artist to prepare facial composites of the fugitives, I presume?”

  “Certainly,” Dodek replies. “That is, I was going to call him in as a matter of urgency, but I thought I should send out a search party first.”

  Novak breathes heavily. “And did you?”

  “Yes, yes,” Dodek says. “Not yet.”

  Novak looks at the two agents, who are nodding along with Dodek.

  “So, I presume you wrote to Lieutenant General Mishenkov, at the barracks near Nesvizh, asking him to send over regiments for back-up, did you not?”

  “Yes, yes.” Dodek’s flabby fists pound the table in agreement. “We must write to him.”

  “But did you?”

  “Of course, of course. I’ll definitely write to him.” And, scrambling to his feet, Dodek urges the other agents to follow him and sets off to carry out t
he orders he has just received.

  At last, Piotr Novak is on his own. An excellent opportunity to pour himself a glass of slivovitz and reflect on recent developments. His first conclusion from the events of the other night is that, sometimes, idiots are worth listening to. Radek Borokovsky, the only surviving member of a family of thieves, a drunkard and a fool, has given countless versions of the chain of events that finished off his family: at first he described six soldiers, then two giants armed with rifles, then a cavalry squad and then who knows what else. In none of his versions, however, did he omit the presence of a large, frightful woman. Novak had not thought much of this detail, because the Jewess he had seen in the tavern had been anything but large, and certainly not frightful. Her face was round, her hips carried the experience of childbirth, and she had twitched her cheeks every now and again in discomfiture, but not in agitation. A complete fool had been sitting next to her, but he was just some clown asking for trouble: not exactly a skilled accomplice to a throat-slitting spree. In the absence of any sign of danger from their corner, Novak had focused on the burly scar-face instead. What a mistake that had been. Out of the four people involved in the crimes at the tavern, the thug had been the most innocuous. Even the flabby-armed Albin Dodek had subdued and handcuffed him without resistance.

  Novak’s second conclusion from that night’s events is that presuppositions obstruct one’s judgment. He had presumed that, being a woman, she would be incapable of murder, whereas the thug, being a man, had to be the source of any violence. When he had entered her room and sat at her bedside, he had caressed her arm a little as she slept, and for a moment he had felt comforted; an almost inevitable feeling really – a force majeure, if only because he was sitting beside a woman.

  But there was more to it than that. The knowledge that he was about to touch a Jewess – a follower of alien customs – did not repel him, but rather excited him all the more. Strange, isn’t it? But then, the demands of his life as an army officer has driven a wedge between him and Anna, his wife, and their two sons. He was never any good at writing letters, addressing the envelopes in which he sent them money with the words “To my wife and two sons, from Piotr”, as if this relieved him of any additional obligations to them.

  When he had returned home injured after the battle on the Shipka Pass, he’d had to lie in his room for weeks. He had felt like a foreign object lodged in the household’s throat, because with every impatient look she gave him, Anna seemed to be trying to eject him from their home. When he told her about the direct invitation he had received from Osip Gurko to join the Department for Public Security and Order, she did not even ask what his position would be. If someone had asked her today what her husband did, she would not have been able to give an accurate answer, other than that he was somewhere near Grodno or Minsk, doing something for the security services, she has no idea what.

  Novak will never forget the way she cared for him while he was bedridden. When she brought him his meals, he could never decipher her evasive eyes, which seemed not to see him, even when they looked in his direction. When she returned to collect the dishes, he would compliment her cooking, and she would pucker her lips in an artificial smile. She looked at him with the contempt she reserved for cowards. No-one had ever looked him like that before. When he tried telling her about what he had endured on the Shipka Pass, she had pressed her lips together to stop herself from laughing. It took him a while to realise that he had missed the opportunity to make her think of him as a hero a long time ago. He had not been around when his sons were born and he had almost never sat down to dinner with them; she had raised his sons as fatherless children. To her, he was not a courageous officer but a mundane coward, and a saboteur of routine, which in her eyes made him the worst criminal of all.

  But as he was touching the Jewess’s arm, his emotions got the better of him. How he would have liked to abandon the investigation and slip beneath her blanket. He wouldn’t have undressed her under any circumstances – for heaven’s sake, he is no bar-barian. All he would have done would be to cling to her warm body and sink into deep sleep. That was how he imagined her to be, soft and tender, and he had failed to register her surprising composure when he began interrogating her. Oh no, to him she was a woman, and like all other women she carried within herself the promise of consolation, or at least that was what Novak believed, until he witnessed her slaughtering of two of his agents.

  Novak’s third conclusion is that the more he discovers about the killers’ identity, the harder it becomes to discern their motive. First, the name “Zvi-Meir” has been mooted as the cause of everything. A Jewish name, of course, but one that is unfamiliar to him. Novak does not recall any “Zvi-Meir” in any group of socialist insurgents or Palestine dreamers. He must find out quickly who he is and what he is involved in. Second, Novak is convinced that Adamsky would not risk his livelihood for the sake of such a bizarre assortment of patrons, even if one of them was an old friend. But if a man with something to lose acts so irrationally, it means that he is fighting for an ideal. And yet, the ideal usually dictates the course of action, which, in turn, alludes to its underlying principle. Ideals and struggles must be reciprocal. Whereas in this case the actions are unfathomable and illogical: why get into hot water with both outlaws and the law? And why butcher people as though they were cattle?

  Novak decides that there is only one key to the investigation: he is willing to bet that there are not that many female slaughterers among the żyds, and that all it will take to find her home is a spot of snooping around the nearby towns. Novak knows that he only needs to start knocking on a few doors for women to start fleeing, screaming, “Gevalt! Gevalt!” What is it with these people, that they are startled by the merest gust of wind? If you so much as light a cigarette in their presence, they believe you have come to burn down their house. And therefore, once they realise that all you want is a bit of information, they sigh in relief and tell you everything they know.

  III

  * * *

  What does a soldier want in peacetime? War. Adamsky knows that if the Czar’s enemies could have seen the courage of the Russian army in times of calm, they would not have dared to declare war on this disciplined bear. Just take a look around the army base near the town of Nesvizh. Spartan canvas tents propped up alongside makeshift wooden buildings, which transform the area into a city of officers and soldiers. Each unit is a family, and every regiment has its own bakers, tailors, cobblers and blacksmiths. And naturally, the most important thing for the morale of the troops: bands of musicians and portraitists for immortalising the war heroes.

  Soldiers are sitting around in large groups, stout, tall men, wide of chest and narrow of waist. They each wear a fancy kepi, which tops a loose dark-green tunic and wide trousers tucked into knee-high boots. Morale is low because they are stationed at Nesvizh, which is a long way from the few areas where their army is still fighting the Turks. There is nothing more depressing for soldiers than feeling left out.

  As a rule, Czar Alexander III, “the peacemaker”, tends to avoid conflicts with other countries. Much to his soldiers’ dismay, he spends most of his days building alliances, creating coalitions, and conquering tracts of land in Asia simply by signing agreements. At this rate, these men will end up retiring from military service without ever seeing any action. In the meantime, they dutifully clean their weapons, change guard posts and train during the day. At other times, they play cards, examine the reflection of their eyes at the bottom of empty glasses, and scorch their throats with cigarette smoke. Their favourite pastime is to spread rumours. Right now, new plans to mobilise forces towards the Danube are raising their hopes.

  They earn thirty-two roubles a month, which is twice the salary of Turkish soldiers, but only a third of that of the French and a quarter of that of the British. This will not prevent them, however, from marching at a pace of five versts an hour when ordered to do so. Their equipment is always at the ready: a
haversack containing a tent, a sleeping bag, a copper jug for brewing coffee, bandages, and a grey, thick coat rolled and tied up with rope.

  The cavalrymen are different altogether. Armed from head to toe, they each shoulder a new musket with bayonet, and the hilts of pistol and sword protrude from their belts. They are compact, their faces wise, eyes small and mouths large, resembling one another to the point of indistinguishability. Their hair is thick and no longer than their shoulders, its hue tending to be lighter than the colour of their moustaches. They can be told apart by the pedigree of their horses and the quality of their tack. They are all, however, terribly narrow-minded. For them war is not a political issue; it is the place from which a man can emerge either proud or humiliated. The battlefield is where one can give the loftiest expression to one’s humanity, they believe. And if the Czar, God’s emissary, has decided that they must attack Con-stantinople, they will never ask why, only when.

  The officers sleep in separate tents. The degree of veneration they enjoy is usually in inverse proportion to their seniority. The junior officers are the most admired, but serving in such close promimity with their troops leaves them exhausted. They do not necessarily come from aristocratic families, and so their honour depends on deeds rather than titles. They are battle-ready, brave and intelligent, resent dogmatism and admire impromptu solutions. A good platoon commander is a good listener, to both his own soldiers and the enemy.

  Going up a level, one will find the colonels and major generals, regiment and division commanders. These usually come from prominent families, and grow up thinking that life in St Petersburg is too bourgeois. Their reasons for joining the army are almost existential, and they think of the battlefield as the only place where one may find self-fulfilment and lead a meaningful life. Their leadership style is philosophical and aloof; how else would they be able to send hundreds of men to their death? They tend to observe their subordinates from a distance, and reflect on human nature: what makes them follow my lead? Why don’t they run away, or defect? How can I be confident that they will listen to me tomorrow? And so on.