“But who told you to do that?” demanded Novak. Now the entire region would think that the commander of the Department for Public Security and Order was an idiot. “Send out two agents to Nesvizh immediately,” he ordered. “Mishenkov is probably lounging about at Bobkov’s. I want the agents to make it clear to Mishenkov that Governor Gurko is involved in this matter, and that I want to take his unit under my command.”
“Governor Gurko?” Dodek said, startled. “Yes, sir. Immediately!”
At that moment, they heard a sudden racket coming from upstairs. A man had tried to jump out of the window, and two agents had caught him by the scruff of his neck, only to be pinned down by two more young men and a middle-aged woman, all trying to free their friend. It took Novak a moment to work out exactly what was going on, because he seemed to be watching the unfolding of a cheap comedy sketch: a pile of buffoons sandwiching two of his brainless agents. Dodek calmly explained that “these are żyds whom the locals have turned in. We carried out dawn raids on their homes and now they are just making a fuss”.
“I don’t understand,” Novak said, his head in his hands. “How are they related to the investigation?”
“They are żyds.”
“So are half the residents of this goddamned town.”
“Yes, but these żyds were reported to us.”
“Reported for what?”
“Well, this one, for example,” Dodek pointed at the man who had attempted to escape, “they say he was handing out pamphlets.”
“And what did the pamphlets say?”
“‘Religion is the morphine of the masses’, sir.”
Novak glanced at a leaflet that looked like the thousands of others he had seen in every corner of the empire. A printed page that socialists circulate to incite the mob.
“But how are the pamphlets linked to our investigation?”
“I don’t know, sir, but I’m sure we’ll find out. That’s our job. This one, though? He just laughs in our faces, the insolent bastard. Do you know what he calls himself? Akaky Akakyevich, as if that’s even a name.”
“It is a name. Haven’t you heard of Gogol?”
“His name is not Gogol, sir, it’s Akaky Akakyevich, like I said.”
“Never mind, Dodek. Release them and let’s get to work.”
“Yes,” said Dodek without adding the honorific “sir”. Novak, who knew every sign of his deputy’s discontent, was unfazed. Only a fool needs the approval of another fool.
“Wait a minute,” he said, an idea suddenly flashing into his mind. “Bring Akaky over here.”
“Yes, sir.” Dodek jumped to his feet, glad that his superior had decided to behave sensibly after all.
“And leave us alone,” Novak added.
Akaky Akakyevich’s head had baby-like bald patches, and his lips were shaped into a parrotfish pucker (or was it the fist to his chin that had done that?), and his pink, unblemished skin made him look almost dainty. If Novak had not known that he was an outlaw, he would have guessed that the man standing in front of him was a footman or butler.
Their conversation may be described as a monologue for two people, or perhaps a one-way dialogue. Either way, Novak did all the talking. He was unstoppable, the words spilling out of his mouth like a verbal avalanche.
“The name Akaky Akakyevich tells me everything I need to know about the gentleman standing in front of me. You, sir, are an arrogant intellectual who has read the glorious works of Gogol and Pushkin, and is convinced that everyone else around him is a dunce. In the case of the overwhelming majority of Okhrana agents, this is not far from the truth. But it so happens that I know Gogol well, and I even know a thing or two about Pushkin, and one day I’d love to discuss Eugene Onegin with you, or perhaps the adventures of Chichikov, and maybe even lesser known authors such as Eliza Ozheshko – you must have heard of her, yes? Oh, you haven’t? She is a gifted writer living in Grodno, and therefore there is not a chance her name will ever reach the ears of the learned gatherings in St Petersburg. You should know that I myself have issued an order to line the road past her house with straw in order to muffle the clanging of carriage wheels so as not to disturb her peace. Do you know what culture is? Well, you should raise your eyes from your books and look around you. This is culture. You should respect that.
“Perhaps you are surprised, sir, to learn that a senior Okhrana officer concerns himself with things that the wider public might consider trifles. But let me tell you this: if a lady cannot write in peace, for what purpose are we defending the empire? Perhaps a cosmopolite, a superior revolutionary like yourself, believes that policemen are simply fools in uniform. Perhaps Mr Pamphleteer’s head is brimming with the ideas that brewed in the mind of that fat, decadent Prussian, Karl Marx, a man who has never worked a single day in his life and was driven by sheer boredom to plan his revolution for the new world. If so, let me ask you this: in the new world of this lazy Prussian, who will spread the roads with straw to let Ozheshko write in peace? Is this something that your revolution has taken into consideration?
“The intentions of Mr Pamphleteer were certainly good. He must have thought to himself: I am sick and tired of being a little Jew, I want to be a man of the world, I want to blend in. But you hate the rest of us so much – what do you call us? Goyim! – you were born hating us, and you cannot reconcile your desire to fit into goy society with the revulsion you feel in our presence. This is why the honourable gentleman is forced to try and change us, to criticise us, to make us more like him. What could be better than socialism, which seeks to eliminate religious and social differences? But then Mr Pamphleteer finds he is left without family on the one hand, and without everyone else on the other. Neither wants anything to do with him. His traditional family disowns him, while the goyim think him no more than a damned intellectual. All he can do is declare himself a revolutionary and hand out leaflets to the illiterate. In the absence of love and encouragement from any other quarter, he is left to embrace ‘justice’, ‘freedom’ and ‘truth’ in the hope that one day the millions who despise him now will lose their blinkers and throw off their shackles – and then they’ll skin our Mr Pamphleteer alive in the town square the day they seize power.
“In any event, at this point he has only one way of escaping the pamphleteering imbroglio in which he finds himself. I won’t have any trouble finding out your real name. Once that is done, the names of your parents, your wife, children and anyone else with Akaky Akakyevich’s blood in his or her veins will also be revealed. If there is one bad apple in the basket, all of the other apples must be inspected immediately. I imagine you do not want to find yourself in Siberia, and you do not want your children to receive a letter telling them about the illness that led to their father’s death – not intentionally, God forbid. This is just what usually happens, as I’m sure you understand. The road to Siberia is long and arduous and the terrible conditions in the prisons are a conspicuous disadvantage of the region. And one must concede that the living conditions of convicted criminals can hardly be at the top of the governor’s priorities, wouldn’t you agree?
“Do not worry, my dear sir. You have not reached the end of your road, and I can see I have your full attention. Perhaps you will be happy to learn that the man before you has no intention of foiling your plans and exposing your contacts. On the con-trary. Mr Pamphleteer and the Department for Public Security and Order are actually on the same side. Just imagine, sir, what would happen if there were no more pamphlets. Imagine what would happen if people woke up one morning and discovered that all subversive manifestos had vanished. What would they think? They would think that the regime is oppressive! That there is no freedom of speech! Do you understand me, sir? The government needs resistance. If a minority opposes the government, that must mean that the majority supports it, which is not a bad message to send out. Therefore, the Okhrana has no problem with your leaflets, and they are not the
reason why we are here.
“I would like to make a simple proposition: I will give you and your family full immunity, in exchange for which you will assist me in capturing four outlaws who have been rampaging through the district for reasons that are not yet entirely clear. You are hereby requested to accompany me and serve as my interpreter. All I want is to better acquaint myself with your people, not the Marxists of course – I know quite well how to handle them – but the Jews, the people of your birth, that is, before you chose to turn your back on them. You, sir, will help Piotr Novak become one of them.
“Your new undercover name can be Akim, which is close enough to Akaky Akakyevich but more credible, whereas my name should be something that starts with P, perhaps Prokor, the name of a brave officer I once knew in the army. You haven’t said a word since the beginning of our conversation, Akaky, that is, Akim. So, what do you think?”
Before the conversation had begun, the pamphleteer had mocked the Okhrana agents when he told them his name was Akaky Akakyevich, but at that moment he was paralysed with fear. Under his pink skin, Novak detected, this man was no more than a timid baby, small fry, whose only prior displays of courage would have been in fierce ideological debates in some academy or other. And now he had discovered that handing out leaflets, that refuge of cowards, had led him straight into the abyss.
The bald patches on Akim’s head were flushing violet, as if Novak’s words had stung him and left a rash on his head. His groomed moustache, a sure sign of vanity, fluttered up and down as he gasped, “You can’t— Not at all—” His broken sentences sounded to Novak like bursting bubbles. “It’s impossible, you could never become one of them – they’d never believe—”
“Exactly!” Novak said, brightly. “That is why I need you.”
“But I – who am I? You don’t understand – I’m not one of them – my own family doesn’t speak to me – I can barely remember the language.”
“Excellent!” Novak patted Akim’s shoulder. “And now you regret leaving and want to come back. It’s a wonderful story. See? We are already making progress.”
“But—” Akim squirmed.
“Look, my friend,” Novak said, leaning towards him. “My dear Akim, there comes a time when explanations run dry and contradictions no longer matter and the conversation is over. And at that point we must roll up our sleeves and get to work. Who are we? Akim and Prokor. What are we? Jews. Why should they believe us? That remains unclear. But that is why you are here and why you are still alive. Is not that so?”
Novak could not have predicted the immediate and, one should add, exceptional results of his idea to recruit this so-called Akaky Akakyevich. That evening, two men left Adamsky’s tavern: Avremaleh and Pinchasaleh Rabinovits, otherwise known as Akim and Prokor. As they walked towards the emptying town square and stripped market stalls, they came across a group of pedlars whose conversation appeared to have drifted away from business and over to gossip. Akim approached them, somewhat apprehensively, and briefly outlined the sad story of Avremaleh and Pinchasaleh. The pedlars listened intently, and Prokor quietly joined the pack. He could tell when Akim had successfully obtained the information he had been sent to get: did they know of a female shochet from the area? Amid the thicket of their strange dialect, Novak identified the name of the town of Grodno and smiled to himself. The recipe he had devised had yielded a hearty casserole indeed.
By the time Akim had finished interrogating the pedlars, Novak knew, even without the help of his interpreter, that they were headed for a town well known to him, where a pleasant office and reliable agents awaited. They would find the butcher’s family and discover her motives. It would be interesting to see if she would raise her knife once a dagger was placed against her parents’ and brothers’ necks. “Good work, Akim,” he said to his new, petrified lackey. “We leave tomorrow at first light.”
III
* * *
There is nothing that Russia prides herself on more than her size, and there is nothing that Russia suffers from more than her size. The empire is a corpulent giantess who cannot see below her stomach or bend down to lace her own boots: she will never know what goes on between the creases of her flab. A Muscovite salt merchant might be called to visit Astrakhan on business and be eager to know that his pregnant wife is well back in Moscow, but any letter he receives will have been sent six months ago. If he replies, his wife will receive his letter six months later. Can he change the past or predict the future? Of course not. It is therefore best that his letters avoid advice on daily matters and instead contain words of affection, inquiries after his children’s well-being and health, and words of prayer. These things have always been free from the constraints of time and place.
It is little wonder therefore that the proposal by the Austrian engineer Franz Anton von Gerstner, to connect Russia by rail-way, was enthusiastically received by Czar Nikolai the First. His advisers did not doubt that this adventure might improve the state of the empire’s economy, but they were unconvinced whether the cumbersome Russian giantess could be transformed into a fleet-footed athlete almost overnight. They wondered if tens of thousands of versts of steel could really break through the desolate, intractable expanse, or if the railway would change the character of Russia.
Until then, Yakuts lived with Yakuts in Siberia, and Muscovites lived with Muscovites in Moscow. If the Yakut met the Muscovite, they would have been equally puzzled by the thought that they were subjects of the same empire. Their appearances could not have been more different: one was Turco-Mongol and the other an Eastern European Slav. Their religion was different – despite the Muscovites’ attempts at conversion, the Yakuts remained shamanic in faith. And what about their occupations? In one place they were cattlemen and in the other they were clerks and bureaucrats. What could the Yakut and the Muscovite talk about with one another? Well, they might have been able to make a stab at conversation if only they knew each other’s language. Would the railway do away with all these differences? It was hard to believe that it would.
In any event, many in government had wondered at the time: why should the Yakut and the Muscovite resemble each other? This aspiration seemed too far-fetched. Must all relationships be based on a common language, an identical faith and similar occupations? What is wrong with a relationship based purely on selling products, distributing goods or building factories? A wedding between a Yakut man and a Muscovite woman might still be long in coming, but in the meantime, commerce was a realistic prospect, and the railway tracks would multiply opp-ortunities in that regard. Incidentally, before a Yakut and a Muscovite could marry, it would be necessary to build the St Petersburg–Warsaw line first.
When Novak arrives at the busy Baranavichy railway station with his rosy-cheeked comrade-in-arms, the waiting room is packed and an announcement advises that there are delays due to urgent works on the Baranavichy–Slonim line. A muzhik was probably lying on the tracks in an alcohol-induced stupor. This is not a rare occurrence in itself, but instead of running him over, the train driver must have decided to spare his life and braked abruptly, derailing the train and buckling its axles. Now an entire region is paralysed, the passengers are kicking their heels, and no-one knows how long the repairs will take.
At the ticket counter, Novak learns that all trains heading east for Slonim have been cancelled until further notice. As to the question of when the service will resume, the sleepy cashier removes his glasses, rubs his eyes and shrugs. A conductor leaning against the wall next to Novak puffs on his pipe and says, “The way things are run in this country, it will take for ever.” Novak sees that the man is expecting to start a conversation. There is nothing better for striking up a conversation than an opening complaint about how the country is run, which soon leads to talk of avarice among the aristocracy, the corruption of bureaucrats, and ends with the defencelessness of the man in the street against the state. What a royal waste of time.
Back
at Adamsky’s tavern, Novak decides to bypass the accident. They will travel to Slonim on horseback and then take the train to Grodno via Bialystok. The road to Slonim is not short, more than sixty versts of craggy hills, but Novak thinks they should not wait. At the end of their first day of riding, however, he is groaning with pain on account of his leg.
By now anaesthetics are useless. Damn Adamsky for waking up the monster of agony from its slumber. Novak could ask a doctor for morphine once they arrive in Slonim, but it will knock him out and the spectacle of Colonel Piotr Novak muttering nonsense under his blankets is out of the question. He has two choices: either learn to live with the pain or die.
“Need any help?” parrotfish-lips asks him.
The day I need help with my leg from this character, Novak thinks, I will stick a bullet in my head. But when they reach the inn, where they will break their journey, Novak is barely able to dismount from his horse. He is forced to let his butler-like interpreter carry his bag upstairs and sign the register. Novak lies down as soon as he can, but he stays awake for hours, his face buried in the pillow as shame mingles with pain and anger.
When they leave for Slonim on the second day and the interpreter falls asleep in his saddle, Novak can’t help but wonder why he keeps chasing after ghosts. His peers frequent sumptuous salons, hobnob with aristocrats and plutocrats, and free up time for their personal affairs by commissioning underlings to do their work for them. And what about him? Is he still trying to please his master, Governor Osip Gurko, or has this investigation turned into a personal vendetta against Adamsky for aggravating his leg? Is he driven by the desire to unearth the motive behind the killings, or by his attraction to their enigmatic perpetrator? Is it even possible to separate the two? What is certain, however, is that Novak would have ridden to Grodno in any event.
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