The Slaughterman's Daughter

by Yaniv Iczkovits

  Driven by an instinctive impulse, she had thrown away her blankets and crept to her mother’s resting place. In the light of the lantern, Malka Schechter’s face had been pale and serene. Fanny had never seen her so calm before. The daughter had squeezed her mother’s lifeless hands, which sent back a strange warmth. The bags underneath Malka’s eyes had softened and her lips were parted as though she was about to say something. To Fanny, her mother’s death was a show of splendour compared to the crushed life that had inhabited her body. With her pretty, peace-ful face, her mother’s lips carried the promise of a tender word. Fanny knew that no game of hypothesis and consequences could overturn the fact of her mother’s death. So she did not beseech the Almighty to bring her back from the dead, nor did she pray that He would protect her from the angels of destruction. She clung to her mother and lovingly stroked her hair. It was by not praying that she felt the closest she had ever felt to the God On High, and it was through her lack of faith that He would bring her mother back that she found her consolation. In the sheer meaninglessness of death, she found God for the first time in her life.

  Fanny slept next to her mother until the break of dawn, promising herself that she would never yield to fear. With the same passion with which she dipped her fingers in her mother’s meat stew, Fanny vowed to get her hands dirty in the cauldron of this world and immerse herself completely in earthly life. Alas, her access to that life was blocked when she was forced to become a seamstress. Fanny drifted away from her calling with every day she spent with Sondel Gordon the tailor, as the eye of the needle lay her eyesight to waste. To her, everyone in Grodno was like her mother: isolated from the world in the safety of their homes. A Jew cannot call himself a Jew unless he hides behind the walls of Yiddish and dwells in the citadel of the shtetl. Men cannot fulfil the commandments unless they ward off temptation and enforce the modest conduct of women. Women cannot be whole without their husbands, even if their husband’s virtue is nothing to put on a pedestal. Every minute detail must be regulated and ordained, everything must be in its proper place. Trying to flee the rule of halakha is courting danger.

  To Fanny this way of thinking was not just a life of self-deception but actual sacrilege: these people had turned their backs on the work of Creation. So she grew closer to her father and learned his trade, and then went all the way to Motal to marry Natan-Berl and embraced country life, enchanted by the villagers’ customs. Compared to Mende and the women of Grodno, Motal, Pinsk and Minsk, Fanny was a renegade. To them, she was a little crazy, a meshugene. Behind her back the gossipy klaftes whispered that if you lie down with dogs you should not be surprised if you wake up with fleas, meaning that it was only a matter of time until tragedy would befall the Keismanns who dwelled among the gentiles. For her part, Fanny was emboldened by her need to prove to the women of Motal that Jews should not turn their backs on the world, and that their seclusion was actually a recipe for disaster. So she learned to speak Polish and befriended her neighbours and ran a successful cheese-making business, all the while continuing to observe the commandments and running a traditional home. And while we are speaking of dogs, and especially ones with fleas, Fanny had never forgotten Tzileyger, the stray who had endured a lifetime of misery, until the night he had fought for his freedom with every scrap of courage he possessed. Like the dog, she wished she could tear down the boundaries of her fate and mutilate the face of anyone who stood in her path to freedom.

  When she was paraded through the barracks, she had believed herself to be in grave danger, and that she had every reason to be on edge. The past has taught her that the gentile soldiers of the Czarist army do not tend to spare any pity for women, and definitely not for Jewish ones. But now she knows that she will not come to harm. She feels safe with these soldiers who bow their heads to her and offer her their food. And she is bursting with curiosity about how Yoshke Berkovits earned his reputation among them.

  “Zizek Breshov?” She turns to him.

  He does not answer.

  “Yoshke Berkovits?” she tries again, sensing that she is crossing a line.

  No response.

  Like a man hiding in a bunker with his ears covered during a bombardment, Zizek is lying on his bunk with his arms covering his head. Despite the honours he has been showered with, Fanny sees that entering the barracks under this old name has clearly unsettled him. He reluctantly pecked at the bread when they sat down to eat, and then lay down on the bunk and stared at the canvas above him. In the past few days, grey whiskers have sprouted on his usually smooth face, contributing to his scruffy appearance. The beatings he took from the bandits and the agents make it hard for him to find a comfortable position. He looks like a man lying in a barren field trying to clear invisible stones from under his back.

  Strange lights filter through the tent flaps, and, for a moment, Fanny fears that they are surrounded by a mob with torches. Peeking outside she sees soldiers approaching the opening of their tent, carrying offerings of candles and flowers, as though Zizek Breshov were a Christian saint.

  Delighted by the sight, Fanny raises the flap slightly, thinking it will please Zizek. But he only turns away and covers his head with a blanket. She takes the hint.

  Fanny goes out to greet the gawping soldiers. One of them approaches, carrying a canvas stretched on a frame and a brush, and asks her in Polish if it would be possible to paint the Father today.

  “The Father?” She is confused.

  “Yes, Yoshke Berkovits,” the painter says.

  “I’m sorry, he’s not well, we have travelled a long way.”

  The painter immediately translates what she says into Russian for the other soldiers, who are buzzing around them like bees. “Of course,” the painter says, beaming. “I understand. Could you ask him if he could manage tomorrow? In the entire Russian army, there’s not a single portrait of the Father.”

  “Why do you call him that?” Fanny asks.

  The painter draws closer and says, mysteriously, “He is the Father who saved us.”

  “Saved you? One soldier saved an entire division?”

  “A division? How about a corps? Or an army? Don’t you know? I thought you were his wife.”

  “Oh no,” Fanny bursts out laughing, but then she sees that the painter looks offended, apparently on the Father’s behalf. “We are travelling together,” she begins, and the painter looks disappointed. “I am his niece,” she lies, and the painter’s face lights up again. “But we have not seen each other for many years.”

  “And you will ask him?”

  “Of course,” she promises. Then, unable to stop herself, she asks, “Was he an officer?”

  The painter whispers, “A corporal, maybe a sergeant.”

  “A mighty warrior?”

  “A coward.”

  “What? How, then . . .?”

  “With the power of words. How else?”

  “Tell me more.”

  “On one condition.”

  Byala

  I

  * * *

  A man and a woman are sitting on a wagon. He is holding a brush, she is all ears. Earlier, they agreed that she would learn the truth about Yoshke Berkovits, the Czarist army’s most timorous hero, on condition that the artist would have the honour of painting the Father’s niece.

  The moonlight is like a tie around the night, its beams sliding down a suit of darkness. Starry lanterns flicker in the sky. A cool wind caresses the earth’s curved back, which has grown limp beneath the weight of the day’s heat, pleading for relief. Toads are sounding their amorous calls, and the air is imbued with the scent of grass and dung. With the first brushstroke the painter begins.

  Outline of the Face

  Forgive me, madam, I am a man of many faults, but no-one has ever accused me of being a man of words. No-one! I have been granted a heavenly gift that I call a sense for beauty. Forgive me, madam, but most people have e
yes. And what do they see with those eyes? God help us. Can you believe that people invented the word “ugly”? Truly, this word is used for describing people with a certain flaw in their face. But I, the painter, have never seen a thing that is “ugly”. For years I lived with the feeling that my mind was weak and I was slow to understand, because I was fascinated by people whom others found unappealing. Everyone mocked me: if everything is so beautiful, they teased, then nothing in this world is repulsive, not even the giant mole on so-and-so’s buttocks, they said. Well, I was embarrassed. I did not mean to say that everything was perfect, symmetrical and attractive. I meant that even the things we find repugnant are beautiful in their own way, and even giant moles can stir one’s soul.

  Forgive me, madam, for the long preamble, but the story you are about to hear is told by a painter. Is this what happened down to the last detail? I do not know. Is this how I was told it? I cannot remember. But this is the way I tell it to myself: a story told by a man who senses beauty, even in latrines or a mass grave. If you would like to hear another version you can ask someone else, a blacksmith or a baker, who will surely relate the course of events from the viewpoint of metal or bread. Perhaps they would think you a strange or even terrifying woman. Your fair hair and wolf-like eyes and sharp nose and small ears seem to have been brought together from different parts of the world. But I think, and please forgive me if I am blunt, that you are beautiful. I detect a big secret behind your serene, Madonna-like eyes.

  Forgive me, madam, but the word I am forced to open Yoshke Berkovits’ story with is “shit”. To be sure, I am not using either “faeces”, “dung” or “excrement”, for good reason. I am using “shit”, that brownish, sausage-like lump that comes out of people’s behinds once a day, and twice on a good day. Well, the story of shit is in fact the story of the human race, or at least the story of the departure of the spirit from the body, which to a large degree is bound up with the ridiculous distinction between beauty and ugliness. If you are indeed a relative of Yoshke Berkovits’ (a fact I find hard to believe as I sketch your round face, which is nothing like the angular face of the Father), then you are Jewish. Either way, if you know your Old Testament, you must be familiar with the story of Adam and Eve, who ate from the tree of knowledge. Perhaps you remember, dear madam, what was the first thing they did after they began to see the world differently? They got dressed! Suddenly the body became a source of shame, and for no reason, do you understand? The moment it became possible to distinguish between good and evil, the culprit was found: the body is evil, and the mind is good. At that very moment, my dear lady, the history of shit began. For, if we are ashamed of our body, we are disgusted by its waste.

  Forgive me, madam, perhaps these words sound too harsh to your ears? What is more, a cultured artist and sublime painter is not supposed to take an interest in shit. Bollocks to that! The artist in question actually does preoccupy himself with shit, and he has no intention of letting the matter drop. Do you know why? Because Yoshke Berkovits took his first independent steps right into a pile of shit.

  Yes, indeed, my dear madam, the day he was taken by an accursed child-snatcher, Yoshke Berkovits was sent with other poor Jewish boys and delinquent Polish lads and Russian orphans to the cantonist school near Kiev, on the banks of the Dnieper. And what did they learn at that school? Well, useful professions for army life: some of them learned to bake bread, others to bandage wounds, some of them learned to beat drums, and a few of them were even sufficiently athletic to be trained for battle.

  * * *

  Please, madam, I would ask you not to move. I am about to complete the contour of your face and every movement changes the angle, and consequently the whole sketch, so if you wouldn’t mind . . . exactly. That’s it.

  * * *

  In any event, Yoshke arrived at that school at the age of twelve with his friend Pesach Avramson, and the two of them became the most stubborn cadets in the camp. When students were summoned for Sunday mass – they did not attend. When they were offered twenty-five roubles to be baptised in the river – they disappeared. The kitchen was not kosher – they refused to eat meat. It was strictly forbidden to wear a yarmulke – they both covered their heads with a hand. Pay attention, madam, because you must understand: their backs took close to one hundred lashes every week. In the end, they were sentenced to the worst punishment a cantonist could be given: latrine-cleaning duty, a job that cut short, not to say obliterated, the life expectancy of those sentenced to do it. In the first month the body would contract a disease, in the second month it would run a high fever and in the third month it would be interred in the furthest plot in the cemetery. Mind you, the two managed to persevere thanks to their sense of humour. They called one another Colonel Shit and General Piss. They pretended that each day at school they studied the doctrine of the body’s structure and orifices, and they argued at length like two scholars whether so-and-so had had corn or wheat for lunch. They consumed their food indifferently, since it consisted mostly of turgid mashed potato. Before long, they could no longer distinguish between their insipid meals and the pigeon droppings they were ordered to clean from the windows. “What’s to eat today?” one would ask. “Pigeon muck,” the other would reply. The usual joke.

  Forgive me, dear madam, but I do not know if you can understand what I’m trying to tell you. Two boys aged twelve who grew up in a remote Jewish town were snatched one night from their beds and hauled along in a wagon for hundreds of versts, to be offered far-reaching privileges in exchange for obedience. And yet something in the depth of their souls told them to resist. And we, in the Russian army, appreciate stubborn resistance, and nothing makes us happier than trying to break a stubborn mule. This is why their instructors exiled them to that mound of shit, in effect giving them two choices: repentance or death. The two of them would wake up early each morning and march to the outhouses. Initially, they tried to keep their clothes clean, vomiting profusely when the stains of dung spread well beyond their uniforms. They started to breath only through their mouths and ignored the swarms of maggots and worms they encountered. In time they realised that this was to be their world, stinking as it might be, and that their protection must consist of shut eyes and blocked nostrils.

  They continued to pray every morning, afternoon and evening, not even knowing why, reciting the bits and pieces they could remember. As the days went by, they changed. People say that God started laughing when he heard them praising His name while they were smeared with shit. This doesn’t happen very often, you know, your God laughing His head off. He makes constant demands and metes out punishment, and sometimes He even shows some mercy. But laughter? Our own God is also as dry as stale bread. I wouldn’t want to attend family dinners with the Holy Father and Son.

  Well, God’s laughter emboldened the pair the more they prayed, and at their young age they discovered something that most people do not understand until they draw their final breath: there is nothing wrong with the body, not even with its excretions. Every day they waited in the long cabin for the thousands of well-fed soldiers who visited the latrines. Like attentive bartenders at a tavern who always remember what their regulars order, the two learned to recognise soldiers by the smell, shape and colour of their turds.

  They would joke: here comes the captain’s pink sausage, followed by the blacksmith’s puffy nugget, and then the splatter of the artillery sergeant (who can never seem to find the hole), and the baker’s sheep dung. Oh look, today the cooks have changed the menu from mashed potato to rice and beans, as may be inferred from this stringy crap. We are dust and to dust we shall return, isn’t that a phrase from your Scriptures too?

  Eyes

  Could you relax your face a little? Let us start with the eyes. They are dominant as it is, so please don’t frown. Thank you.

  * * *

  Forgive me, dear madam, but Yoshke and Pesach worked at the latrines for two months without once falling ill. If I had to guess, two
full years would not have broken their spirits. Other things crushed them, of course. Some would call it “emotions” or “mental torment”, but these are flowery ways to describe the wounds and contusions the soul sustains when it is ripped apart.

  Forgive me, madam, but as you may have already realised, I am not much of a patriot. I like Russia, but I will not die for its sake. In the army I am given food in exchange for my art, even if it only amounts to painting flattering portraits of generals. I pray to God, like everyone else, so as not to attract the wrong sort of attention, and to avoid being seen as a snide intellectual, Heaven forfend. Even if you tried, you would not find an idea for which I’d be willing to sacrifice my body. This is why I’ve always admired you Jews (that is, if you really are Jewish), for your resolute avoidance of patriotism and your strict loyalty to your family and community.

  One ordinary day, as Pesach Avramson was leaning against an outhouse after emptying a latrine tank, one of the cantonists approached him to report the rumour that his brother had been arrested. I don’t know all the details, but apparently Pesach’s brother was also conscripted, managed to escape and decided to have his vengeance. His considerable acts of retribution ultimately led the Jewish community to turn him in to the authorities.