The Slaughterman's Daughter

by Yaniv Iczkovits

  On the second day, they manage to cover only a third of the distance they travelled the previous day. Novak needs rest, and the original plan to reach Slonim in two days seems wildly unrealistic. They will have to ride for four, maybe five days. The decision to visit the cradle of the butcher’s life was critical: if it proves fruitless, Novak will have lost a vital week in the investigation, and it could be impossible to make up lost time.

  Novak finds Akaky Akakyevich intolerable. Heeding authority and honour, detainees tend to curry favour with their jailers so they might have their ear when the need arises, but not Akaky. Sometimes he treats Novak as though he were his patient. “Need any help? Are you hungry? Thirsty?”

  “Enough with those questions,” Novak says. “I don’t need anything from you.”

  Unperturbed, Akaky starts asking the colonel personal questions, assuming the role of a prying, intrusive interrogator.

  Akaky: “So where is your family?”

  Novak: “St Petersburg.”

  Akaky: “And when did you see them last?”

  Novak: “A year ago.”

  Akaky: “Do you miss them?”

  Novak: “That is a strange question. I suppose so. But I would let it go if I were you.”

  Akaky: “Why don’t you visit them more often?”

  Novak: “Work.”

  Akaky: “How many children do you have?”

  Novak: “Two boys, Ivan and Alexey.”

  Novak is forced to assert his authority by launching a counter-interrogation.

  Novak: “So, where does your family come from?”

  Akaky: “Vitebsk, Minsk, Kovne.”

  Novak: “I don’t understand.”

  Akaky: “Nor do I.”

  Novak: “And how did you find your way to Marx?”

  Akaky: “He found his way to me.”

  Novak: “What?”

  Akaky: “Precisely.”

  Akaky’s laconic answers are too diffuse for Novak to be able to connect the dots. Nonetheless, Akaky is at his disposal, and even if the detainee tries to feign control over the situation, his trembling body gives away his fear.

  Yet, regarding this latter point, Novak has made a crude and uncharacteristic mistake. A man who truly fears authority does not poke fun at the secret police by presenting himself as Akaky Akakyevich. There’s no guarantee that Novak will indeed force him into submission.

  In fact, he does not know that Akaky suffers from chronic arthritis, which torments him with cold shivers and constant tremors. For this reason, he left his home to study medicine in Minsk. His real name is certainly not Avremaleh, and he’s never known any Pinchasaleh; his name is Haim-Lazer, and he was not born in Vitebsk, Minsk or Kovne (he’s never even set foot in the latter). He is actually a native of the town of Mir. How did he end up circulating Marxist pamphlets? Many years ago, in his anatomy class, he met Minka Abramovich, a Jewish girl who set his head spinning. She seemed so progressive and enlightened, spoke fluent Russian and wore St Petersburg fashions. If she had asked him to join an underground group that hailed the works of some pharaoh, he would have handed out pamphlets lauding the Egyptian monarch. What does he care? And although it was clear from the start that he never stood a chance with her, this did not curb his enthusiasm in the least. He was too old-fashioned for her taste; in other words, he could not completely renounce his Judaism. Indeed, he had quit yeshiva and gone to study medicine, but he had not shed the old world altogether, and had been known occasionally to sneak into a synagogue.

  Unlike him, Minka was wild. She kept talking about world revolution, the proletariat and an international uprising. The veins in her high forehead bulged ominously when she gave public speeches. Whenever volunteers were needed to circulate leaflets, she was the first to raise her hand, and he was the second.

  After two years, Haim-Lazer left medical school and joined the underground cell under Minka’s command. Like other young revolutionaries who tend to forget the personal motivations that originally attracted them to the cause of the rebellion, the ideas and principles became the heart of the matter, even after Minka married a goy and all the more so after she was arrested and sent to Siberia. Years later, Haim-Lazer became the leader of an underground cell and became adept at internal politics, which had always seemed to him to be as corrupt as the government he wanted to overthrow. When he was caught by the secret police in Baranavichy, he did not want to be released that same day. He intended to return to his comrades after a week’s incarceration, no, no, after a month’s detention, to impress them. That was why he called himself Akaky Akakyevich, and he was surprised when none of the agents recognised the provenance of his alias. When he met Novak he realised that at least this one read something other than police reports, and after listening to the interrogator’s speech, he realised that he had become embroiled with a senior Okhranist. A high-ranking secret police officer will not mete out a month’s detention, but what the underground calls “an evaporation”. And yet, upon hearing about the four suspects that Novak is hunting down, Haim-Lazer decided he has to do whatever is in his powers to disrupt the investigation. The four suspects are not partners in his crime, but they are outlaws, which is enough to make him want to help them.

  One thing surprises Haim-Lazer: try as he might, he cannot hate Novak. This is his first substantial encounter with such a senior policeman, a man who stands for everything that is evil in the Czar’s decadent reign. After all, the colonel is authorised to comb through the personal letters of any living soul; he can invade any house in the name of national security, drag people from their beds, turn their homes upside down and tear them away from their loved ones. Under the aegis of justice, law and order, he sows chaos in citizen’s lives, who, fearful that they might prey on one another in the absence of a central government, allow the imperial chimera to prey on them instead. Unlike others of his rank, however, it seems that Novak believes that he is indeed the protector of public order. His battered body is covered with scars, his cheekbones protrude from his worn-out face, and he shambles about like a broken man. To tell the truth, Novak is as lonely as Haim-Lazer; they are both men who have left home far behind. If Haim-Lazer had to guess whether the person riding next to him was an Okhrana district commander or a troubled Jew like himself, he would have said the latter. Therefore, even though Haim-Lazer wants to see Novak lose, he does not want his defeat to be humiliating.

  IV

  * * *

  By the time Akim and Prokor reach Slonim, Novak is a wreck. During the day, the pain in his leg climbed up to his lower back, his saddle sores became a rash, and every stretch of his skin now flourishes a different hue on the red spectrum, becoming almost purple the closer it is to his groin. Novak, one should recall, is close to retirement, and his bones are not as robust as they used to be.

  He works out the schedule of the next train to Bialystok and then to Grodno. The train ride does not alleviate any of his pain: the days of riding had already made his bones ache, and the tremor of the train gives them a thorough rattle. He arrives in Grodno exhausted, but on coming out of the train station, Novak draws encouragement from the town’s familiar sights: the Neman river encircling the town, the old castle (now an army base), and the spires of St Xavier’s that watch over the market. There is a limit to the suffering he can endure. Novak wishes he could make a stop at his local office. The five-day ride on horseback and the taxing journey on the night train have surely earned him the right to rest. But what would happen if someone, even just one Jew, saw him coming out of the Okhrana offices, which are right by the town hall and the market square? How would he continue going about as Pinchasaleh Rabinovits if he had been welcomed by secret agents? And yet, the desire to slip into a pleasant office, crack open a new bottle of slivovitz and change his socks is so overpowering that Novak tries to weave together some justification. Finally, he musters enough strength to accept that, in his pitif
ul current state, he is ideally suited to infiltrating the Jews at the market. He gives Akim lengthy instructions on how to proceed. First, he should tell their story as credibly as possible, say that they are starving, inquire about the town’s slaughterhouses; then ask off-handedly about the female butcher from Grodno, Fanny Schechter, the daughter of Meir-Anschil Schechter.

  Everything goes according to plan. Akim quickly strikes up a conversation with a toothless old man oozing the sharp odour of the beetroot and radishes he sells. The vendor listens intently to Akim, and other curious souls begin to gather around them too. Touched by the story of the two lost Jews from Vitebsk, they generously offer them bread, onions and radishes. Novak is famished from the journey and devours the lot, mould and all, waiting for Akim to reach the crux of the matter.

  When their audience hears Akim’s question about Fanny, Meir-Anschil Schechter’s daughter, they quickly huddle for a consultation. “Die vilde chaya?” says one. “Eine barbaren!” another replies. “Oistrakht, fairy tales,” the tailor scoffs, and Novak is bursting with curiosity. What the hell are they saying? Goddammit, what a strange language! What kind of tongue is Yiddish, exactly? Second-rate German? Bawdy Bavarian? Refined Prussian?

  Akim’s face flushes at their comments. Novak tries to catch his eye, but Akim evades him and carries on listening to the crowd. Novak tries to motion him aside to hear the translation, but Akim ignores him. Novak tugs at his jacket. “What are they saying?” he demands and Akim mutters out of the corner of his mouth, “She’s not here.”

  “What do you mean ‘she’s not here’?” Novak says, horrified. “Where is her family?”

  Akim smiles, supposedly in reassurance, but Novak detects a glint of satisfaction in his eyes as he says, “They are all in the afterworld.”

  “What?” Novak yelps. It is all he can do not to shout. “Are you sure?”

  Before Akim can answer him, some of the surrounding Jews start to usher them through the market, past the city’s two castles – the old and the new – that overlook the river, and then towards the main synagogue and into a dark, dank hovel, which turns out to be a restaurant. There they are served an odd-looking salad of cucumber with dill, a repulsive, gelatinous dish (probably some kind of fish), meatballs that taste like fried fingernails, and shredded carrot, spicy enough to burn your mouth. Novak forces himself to keep smiling as he tastes these foul foods and thanks everyone, “Dank! Dank!” – a word he picked up from Akim – noticing as he does so that dozens of curious Jews have gathered around him. They stand there, their eyes shining happily as they follow every bite he takes, making it impossible for him to spit anything into a napkin. The odd sip of slivovitz would have made the experience tolerable, or at least it would have refreshed his palate and tempered the flavours, but instead they serve him yash, a drink that is somewhere between brandy and rum mixed with cow piss. He empties one glass after another, without stopping, until his heart is aflame.

  As soon as dinner is over, they are dragged along an alleyway to a large house with a spacious courtyard. Akaky manages to whisper to Novak, “We have ended up among the Hasidim, they’re taking us to the gute Yid, the good Jew, the rebbe, great-grandson of Rabbi Alexander Ziskind the Just, author of The Foundation and Root of Worship, hailed as a genius by the Vilna Gaon himself. It’s a great honour!”

  “Lovely,” hisses Novak. “But what about Fanny Schechter?”

  “I have no idea,” Akaky says with a shrug.

  The rebbe welcomes them with a warm embrace and tearful eyes, as if they were his own, long-lost sons. Moments later, the synagogue gabbai has measured Novak for a kaftan, other hands have placed a fur hat on his head, tzitzit sprout underneath his shirt, and everyone dances around him in ecstatic circles. When it is time for prayer at the shtiebel – a shabby, bare and rather damp house of prayer crowded with a motley crew that reminds Novak of the market square – the men crammed around him bend back and forth, right and then left, wrapped in sacred shawls that smell of pickled cabbage. Instead of delighting the high Heavens with melodious sounds in perfect harmony, and purifying the air with incense and perfume, they moan and groan with the ecstasy of bleating sheep.

  They shove a prayer book into his hands. One of the rebbe’s men stands beside him and helps him follow the angular script, word by word. After prayer they all come up to shake his hand and invite Avremaleh and Pinchasaleh for tisch. Novak is desperate for the evening to be over so that he can slide a cup of slivovitz down his throat to wash away the bad taste that lingers in his mouth, before grabbing Akaky Akakyevich by the throat to settle accounts. Yet before they sit down to eat once more, the rabbi gives a speech, wine glass in hand. And Novak finds himself following the others’ example, shouting “lechayim” when they shout, drinking when they drink, muttering when they mutter, sitting down when they sit down, singing when they sing, making merry when they make merry and dancing when they dance. He is served different dishes that nonetheless taste exactly like his previous meal, especially the yash. This time, however, Novak’s stomach is less quarrelsome, so he devours everything, regardless of taste, embracing the mauling of his senses by the hard drink and the heavy dancing.

  By nightfall, instead of punching Akaky in the face for making him participate in this farce, Novak happily lies down on a rickety bed in a hut cleared of its inhabitants for his sake. He is at peace. Right now, Fanny Schechter is far from his mind, and he even manages to forget the torturous journey to Grodno. Soon after laying his head on the pillow, he falls fast asleep, still wearing his clothes, his heart uplifted by the echoes of the rabbi’s inscrutable speech.

  V

  * * *

  Sometimes, the crowing of the rooster awakens a desire for revenge. The sun has not risen yet, but a pair of quarrelling cockerels are pecking at the shreds of Novak’s sleep. At moments like these, the colonel regrets that he does not carry a pistol. To his colleagues, he always explains that the Department for Public Security and Order fights a silent war, where any use of firearms would be the mark of failure. “Our cannons are our attentive ears and a good memory,” is his favourite quip. But now, as his head explodes and last night’s meal inches its way up his gullet, ears and memory are of no use to him.

  Just one look at the man snoring by his side reminds Novak of everything he would rather forget. On arriving in Grodno yesterday morning, he was dragged into a feast of fools. They had him drinking gruesome wine at noon, and singing ‘Shalom Aleichem’ by the night’s end. At the shtiebel, a new word for his vocabulary, he swayed in prayer and pretended to read their incomprehensible book. And for what? It turns out that the people he was looking for, Fanny Schechter’s relatives, are no longer with us. Novak is beside himself.

  He is also beginning to suspect that this Akaky Akakyevich is no innocent lamb. Did he know all along that their arduous journey would end with nothing? If this was his plan from the start, then the pale butler is a knave in parrotfish scales. Very interesting. If Akaky continues to follow his own plans even after Novak’s threats of Siberian prisons, then the colonel is facing a worthy opponent.

  Novak is well aware that the chain of inferences that has led him to this bed is not without its weaknesses. What’s more, the ease with which he was coaxed to attend that feast, the tisch, which they held in their honour last night, suggests frivolous, negligent and unprofessional behaviour. And yet, as he remembers the wild joy that clung to those Hasidic men, the attire they made him wear, the food he had to swallow, the dancing that spun his head, he cannot identify a single moment when he’d had an opportunity to escape their clutches. They had simply surrounded him and dragged him along and run next to him and sat him at the table. It is a hard thing to admit, but in their company he had felt a surge of energy – even happiness. They had trampled over his will like a herd of buffalo, and to his surprise, he appeared to welcome the stampede. Even his leg feels a little better, and an entire day is about to go by without him
thinking about it once. His slivovitz bottle remains in his pocket, untouched.

  Therefore, even though he knows that he must somehow escape and return to Baranavichy, Novak does not protest when two young men enter the hut and invite Akaky and him to the shtiebel. He gets up from his bed and dons the kaftan he was lent the day before. Just look at him now: Colonel Piotr Novak marching arm in arm with three żyds, his head adorned with a spodik – the tall fur hat – the long black kaftan sliding down his body, a cloth gartel around his waist, leaning on his cane on one side and on his “brother”, Avremaleh Rabinovits, on the other.

  On their way to the shtiebel, Novak notices a few ducks waddling through the courtyards like drunks and cherry trees laden with flaming-red fruit, and he exchanges smiles and warm handshakes with the other Hasidim. Naturally, if Novak’s colleagues from the secret police were to encounter him right now, he could explain his behaviour down to the last detail: he has given up on his initial intention of meeting Fanny Schechter’s family but he still wants to learn about the żyds way of life well enough to pass for one of them. Nothing wrong with that. Yet if he met his colleagues at this very moment, as he enters the rebbe’s court surrounded by a crowd swaying in prayer, Novak would probably choose not to mention that his heart is racing with joy.

  For lunch, he and Akim are invited to join a family: husband, wife and seven children, four of whom are playing hide-and-seek around Novak. One of the little scamps bumps into a table corner and starts to wail. His mother picks him up and scolds his siblings, the grandmother tries to calm everyone and the father offers him a slice of lekach – yet another word added to Novak’s vocabulary – and the boy immediately forgets his pain and focuses on the treat, sparking his brothers’ jealousy. They too are compensated with some cake and a brief quiet ensues.