The Slaughterman's Daughter

by Yaniv Iczkovits

  The following week, another envelope arrived.

  “A new letter from Mrs Venediktova! We already know she is loyal, let’s move on,” Radzetsky said, beaming. Then, trying and failing to stifle his curiosity, “What is she saying? Anything interesting?”

  “Not really,” Zizek said. “Petersburg and more Petersburg, and more noblemen afraid of fighting, and more gossip, and young generals quoting Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, and what people are saying about Paskevich’s injury, and . . .”

  “Breshov!” Radzetsky cried. “We had better read this letter at once.”

  My Darling,

  The children and I send you our greetings and love, but I am very worried. Russia is in danger. You soldiers are probably unaware of what goes on behind the scenes. You take orders: go there! Come here! But you do not know what people are saying in St Petersburg. They say that Paskevich faked his injury. Can you believe it? They say that he used a scratch he sustained from a shrapnel shell as an excuse to retire as a national hero and abandon Russia at her darkest hour, leaving her in the hands of cowards even worse than he.

  I was at the theatre with my father and my aunt. We were sitting next to a few generals and some dissolute princes. They praised Paskevich’s restraint and argued that Russia should discard its outdated doctrines. They said that officers who continue to storm enemy positions head-on and shed the blood of their troops should be reassigned to the Siberian border. Then they praised Sun Tzu – can you believe it? Now we are learning from the barbarians! – and admired advanced tactics that use the units’ potential. Everyone here is obsessed with military pragmatism and sophistication, optimised firepower and leveraged opportunities. They talk about the high command in terms of cost and benefit, and I can already see the next war being led by bankers and accountants. You wouldn’t believe this latest idea: that soldiers should be happier! Let them drink rum instead of water, is what they say. Can you imagine your troops charging into battle in a state of drunkenness? As God is my witness, this is what they are saying.

  Floggings are also a constant subject for debate, and many claim they are “inhumane”. By God, I don’t even understand what this word means. They make up new terms that shine a revealing light on the truth, you see. Discipline has lost all meaning. What happened to honour? What happened to “charge ahead”? Is there a loftier aspiration than to die for our motherland?

  And who are those new officers who constantly get promoted, anyway? Our ideals are in shambles, our faith is weak, the fashions from Paris and London are roiling our women’s sound judgment, luxury mansions are offered for sale in the newspapers, gentlemen admire fine food with words such as “succulent”. What does “succulent” mean, anyway? Our beloved country has become one great, lecherous, decadent bordello.

  Wherever it is you are stationed, my darling, I’m sure no-one talks about succulence, because you soldiers are the true heart of this nation. My darling, at least in this household, this woman and these children know you are of a different stock.

  Yours ever,

  Yelena Venediktova

  The expression on the major’s face was unreadable, but Zizek noticed that he was tapping his foot on the ground and that the veins in his neck were bulging. For the first time in his life, Radzetsky was facing a dilemma. On the one hand, he had a clear image in his head of his own heroic death: being unhorsed, but still charging straight into the enemy’s jaws, his final words leaving an indelible impression on his admiring, if somewhat resentful, troops. Of this he was certain. On the other hand, he now felt a bit reluctant to die the old-fashioned way. Should he give those spoiled Petersburgians the pleasure of remembering him as a foolish hussar who galloped to his death? Is it really beyond his powers to prove to them that he can be a “modern” officer – one of far higher quality than any of them?

  Radzetsky got up from his chair, cleared a nostril with his finger and faced Breshov. The adjutant braced himself for a blow from the major. He was sure that the letter was too dense, that the inclusion of the Sun Tzu quotations was too artificial and had given away his ruse. Should he have left out the comments about floggings and rum? Now Radzetsky will surely ask for Captain Venediktov and what will he, the adjutant, say then? Has Breshov really resolved to rescue his comrades, or to have himself killed? The major tweaked Breshov’s nose as though trying to clear his adjutant’s nostrils too, and then said, in a hoarse voice, “Yelena Venediktova, eh? Quite a woman.”

  Dear madam, that week the floggings stopped in Radzetsky’s regiment. As God is my witness. Of course, there was no official notice to this effect, but no contravening orders were issued either and in the absence of clear instructions either way, the commanders chose to abandon the practice. Two weeks later, under the influence of the next letter from Mrs Venediktova, Radzetsky requested his superiors’ permission to ambush retreating enemy forces.

  “Meeting them head-on,” he explained to the division commander, “would not make the most of my unit’s potential.”

  “Potential?” repeated the division commander in astonishment. “If you want to organise an ambush in the east, be my guest, Radzetsky, but stop spouting nonsense.”

  As the Russian forces besieged Silistra, Radzetsky mobilised his unit to the north-east, deploying his cavalry and infantry in an area overlooking one of the Danube’s narrow valleys. Since he had begun to read the works of Sun Tzu with the help of his adjutant – and with great interest – he knew that “a wise general makes a point of relying on the enemy for supplies”, and he would send his troops to recuperate in nearby villages, drink mead, whore to their hearts’ content and return with their morale high. “In order that there may be advantage from defeating the enemy, our men must have their reward.” Thus spoke Sun Tzu!

  * * *

  Dear madam, we are about to complete the line of your lip. Even though the lines themselves are not uninteresting, the mouth’s true enigma is its colour. Your lips are not red but a light pink that verges on white. Their pallor seems to reflect your natural composure. I find great interest in this incandescent, impenetrable face of yours, which radiates both longing and resolve. I cannot decide whether your heart is full of freedom or restraint, passion or pain, deceit or truthfulness, beginning or ending. In any event, we have reached the ears, the organ most amenable to sniffing, tasting and seeing.

  Ears

  The ear, dear madam, is the only part of the face that painters can hide, fully or partially, by using either hair or angle. Sometimes we will only outline the earlobe, sometimes we draw the inner canals. For painters, the ear is a real challenge. It tests not only our precision, but also our ability to depict the sort of listener we have before us.

  Dear madam, we may confidently say that Zizek Breshov was a good listener. By this I do not mean he had the patience to sit and listen to other people’s problems. Of course not. I mean that Zizek Breshov listened to the pulse of space and time; he listened to the heartbeat of his era.

  What kind of an era was it? Well, it was an era when, as Sun Tzu says, to kill the enemy one’s men must be roused to anger. Imagine this: two people in two different parts of the world: one in Russia, the other in either England, France or Turkey. They know nothing about one another. They do not know their counterpart’s wife, children, not even his mother-in-law, God help them. Nonetheless, because they were raised in a certain time and place, they learn to harbour bottomless hatred, and are eager to destroy each other, one aspiring to slash the ears of his enemy and the other planning to sever the head of his – and why? Because the former grew up in Kazan and the latter in Constantinople. Bloody rot!

  You might ask, what was the great discovery yielded by the Father’s listening skills? Well, he noticed that, contrary to popular assumption, men do not join the army because of ideals: men enlist, and ideals justify their enlistment after the fact. In other words: the loftier the values professed the likelier it is that the
y were concocted by some goddamned prince (this is how Radzetsky put it) to legitimise his decrees and injunctions. The more one invokes the name of God, the more one is likely to do it in the name of licentious ends.

  Zizek noticed a gradual shift in Major Radzetsky’s thinking, in light of the fabricated gossip from St Petersburg. Overturning all his earlier plans, he ordered his regiment to remain stationed where they were, and while the imperial forces suffered a miserable defeat in the battle of Silistra, Radzetsky’s cavalry waited patiently for reinforcements that never turned up. The division to which Radzetsky’s regiment belonged was ground into the earth – thousands died in battle and tens of thousands more succumbed to cholera – but Radzetsky’s troops were left unscathed, except for the odd liver broken by excessive rum-drinking, and a few victims of syphilis. When Radzetsky was summoned to report on his soldiers’ performance, everyone was astonished to learn that his unit had emerged without a scratch, and that they had even escaped the cholera. In response to his colleagues’ inquiries, he feigned surprise at their old-fashioned approach: did they not know that Sun Tzu had said that “there is no strategy worse than the siege of a walled city”? Was it not common knowledge that “he who knows when to fight and when not to fight will win”? The other regiments’ commanders stared at Radzetsky, unsure whether they were looking at a genius or a fool. Still, it was a miracle that his troops were so unaffected by disease. In other regiments, for every Russian martyr killed in battle, ten men had been lost to plagues: shivering, vomiting and incontinent, their souls separated from their dehydrated bodies only after unbearable torments, unable to relieve their parched bodies with water, which they had no access to anyway. “Water?” said Radzetsky, dumbfounded. “My soldiers drink rum and a little coffee, on the recommendation of the Czar’s representatives in St Petersburg. Didn’t you know?” But indeed, how could they have known about the letters of Mrs Yelena Venediktova from St Petersburg?

  In any case, even though they could not decide if Radzetsky was an exceptional tactician or a complete fool, two things seemed certain: one, Radzetsky was surely connected to St Petersburg’s aristocracy, and two, God had to be on his side. And therefore, he merited immediate promotion.

  Becoming a polkovnik, a colonel, and entering the senior army ranks, shocked Radzetsky. He suddenly realised that he had been too quick to judge those spoiled St Petersburg grandees, and that his attitude towards the high command had been too harsh, perhaps. After all, they had recognised his abilities in the end. According to Mrs Venediktova, it was rumoured that secret units were preying on the Bashi-Bazouk by laying sophisticated ambushes, and the names of their commanders were known only to the highest echelons of the Russian army.

  Naturally, Radzetsky continued to be guided by his sense of duty, and suppressed his excitement at the admiration he now received from his troops. As he walked through the camp, officers stepped aside to let him pass, hussars stood to attention, tailors bowed before him and cooks invited him to try some freshly baked bread. Yet he would still scrutinise them from head to heel, checking that their arms were well oiled and that their belts were straight and tight. Admiration is all well and good, but he had a regiment to run.

  Radzetsky kept his adjutant by his side at all times, but he never imagined that the admiration he enjoyed was actually addressed to the Father, the man who had extended the soldiers’ lives far beyond all expectations, the man without whom they would have been wiped out in their thousands and tens of thousands. Zizek continued to send soldiers’ letters to their wives and children, and in his spare time he even taught many infantrymen how to read and write. They were like his children. Sitting around him in two circles, as they would around a bonfire, they absorbed his teachings, working out the words they might use in their next letter. For his part, he listened to their stories and learned about the life that could have been his: he imagined all their wives to be Mina Gorfinkel, all their hometowns Motal, and all their houses resembled the home he had been snatched from as a young boy. They needed his words to kindle their hearts, and he needed their lives to kindle the soul of Yoshke Berkovits: husband, father, family man.

  All this time, Imre Schechtman continued to paint Radzetsky’s portrait. As a colonel, Radzetsky viewed his portrait, which was in fact still that of the Iron Czar, in a completely different way. He was a member of the aristocracy now. Strange as it may sound, his features had become more noble, perfectly adapting to his rank. A common man looking at Radzetsky’s portrait would never have guessed that the dignitary pictured there was descended from peasants. He would not have imagined that the son of potato farmers could acquire the unassailable, aloof appearance of a Spartan leader, an aspiring army commander. And why not commander in chief? Yelena Venediktova kept saying that Russia had lost its sanity, and that there was talk of ousting the old guard, which had spent so much of the empire’s military force in vain. And who would step in once they were gone? Who else would be made commander-in-chief, if not a modern officer of the sort Mrs Venediktova finds so loathsome? Yelena Venediktova, eh? Quite a woman, despite her old-fashioned ideas.

  Therefore, when Radzetsky was made major general and assigned the task of reinforcing the besieged corps in Sevastopol that was facing defeat, he requested permission to deploy his troops north of the Crimean Peninsula, to block any surprise attack from the combined British and French forces on that flank. The generals of the high command listened to him carefully, reluctant to deny his request even though the likelihood of such an attack seemed minimal. And so, as the battles of Balaclava and Inkerman raged in Crimea, in a bloody attempt to break the allied forces’ siege, Major General Radzetsky’s division settled in the Ukrainian lowlands without firing a single round.

  “Another letter from the lady?” the major general asked, languidly, as his peers sustained heavy shelling in Sevastopol. “What’s the matter, Breshov, have you swallowed your tongue? Read the goddamned letter!”

  My Darling,

  The children and I send you our greetings and love, but things have become unbearable. Russia is falling apart, and I am not talking about the odd defeat in Crimea. No, my darling, for we have known greater losses. Mother Russia is facing a spiritual collapse, and this is why I am so anxious for its future. You soldiers, may the saints protect you, are bearing the brunt in the trenches, unaware that a revolution is forming at home. Noblemen and princes from St Petersburg are speaking of peace, in effect shooting you in the back, and people say that the Czar is under their sway. Rumour has it that his health has deteriorated, and some are even saying . . . my hand is shaking, forgive me, darling . . . some are saying that he has only a few weeks left to live, and we know all too well who will succeed him to the throne. Alexander Nikolayevich certainly cannot be called a military man, and they are saying that all the officers responsible for the defeats in Crimea will be stripped of their rank and sent to Siberia.

  Yesterday we went to the opera and heard a new production of Glinka’s “A Life for the Czar”. This is without a doubt his best opera. We were surrounded by the great and the good of the capital, and as they were watching the wonderful drama of Ivan Susanin, the Russian hero who sacrifices his life for the Czar, they were saying that the army should retreat to the border and bring the pointless carnage to an end. You see, darling? If tomorrow, God forbid, you should lose your life in a cruel battle, they will think your death unnecessary. For them, courage for its own sake is not reason enough to give one’s life away. To them honour is currency, loyalty an object, and love for the motherland just one idea among many. They want to foster a new breed of officer, who thinks independently, preserves the forces under his command and above all else protects his soldiers from cholera. The next commander-in-chief will have to be a nurse and his officers will serve their own soldiers bread and beef.

  They say Sevastopol is about to fall. Yet this does not stop them from dressing up for the opera and looking for the culprits. They say that
the entire high command will be exiled to Siberia. To our great shame, half the Russian army is holed up in a tiny peninsula. I know that in your eyes it is a good thing to attempt to break the siege at the cost of tens of thousands of lives. Yet we know that officers like you are called “old-fashioned”, and that thanks to your courage and loyalty you will end up being hanged like a despicable traitor. Worry not, my darling, at least in this household, this woman and these children know you are of a different stock.

  Yours ever,

  Yelena Venediktova

  If all warfare is based on deception, as our friend Sun Tzu taught, Breshov concluded that non-warfare can also be based on deception. But if there was anything that could be stated quite truthfully, it was that the Crimean War ended terribly for Russia and taught Radzetsky’s troops the following: that one had better avoid mixing rum with coffee, root vegetables can soothe indigestion, and that Odessan whores get very angry if you don’t pay them.

  At this point, the Father’s first “sons” were discharged from the army, veterans between the ages of forty and fifty who had lived to see retirement age. They told their children and grandchildren about their second Father, Zizek Breshov the adjutant, or rather Yoshke Berkovits from Motal, who before the age of eighteen had saved their father’s life with the power of words. Zizek was the first father in history who could boast at such a young age of having tens of thousands of descendants, all of whom were older than he was by at least twenty years.

  Patrick Adamsky also became one of Breshov’s children. Adamsky, a junior second lieutenant back then, was spared time and again from carrying out suicidal missions on Radzetsky’s orders. On several occasions Adamsky’s squad was deployed to vulnerable locations, surrounded by the superior forces of the Bashi-Bazouk, a perfect recipe for disaster devised by Radzetsky whenever he did not want to feel completely left out of the war. In the nick of time, however, the adjutant would read to the major general a letter that had just happened to arrive from Mrs Venediktova, and would prompt Radzetsky to wonder if it was really such a good idea to attack. It transpired, according to the letter, that St Petersburg’s counts and princes had become so impressed with Radzetsky’s cunning that they had started referring to him as “the Hussar”. The Hussar, people were saying, defeats the enemy while keeping his forces unharmed, and his name, princes were whispering, had even reached the ears of the Czar. Did he really want to ruin his reputation with a fiasco on the battlefield? Perhaps not. Instead, Radzetsky would send orders to secure the flanks and retreat, telling his reporting officers that their mission had been accomplished. And what was their mission? No more than keeping the unit intact, as it transpired.