All I could think of replying was, “If you’re a convict, I’m Count Pototzky.” He nodded modestly, and I could almost hear him blush.
“I suppose I am a little different than the others.” With a touch of kindly authority in his voice, he asked, “Is there anything I can help you obtain? A loaf of bread, a warmer coat, a pair of boots?”
I considered his offer as solemnly as I did any other bad joke. “You own a department store below deck?”
He only smiled. “You mistrust me. In your place, so would I. But you may take my word for it; I am a criminal like you.” That avowal was invested with all the humility that only a truly great man could have summoned. “In fact, I have far more cause than you to be here.”
Making no effort to defend my well-earned right to be on a Siberia-bound transport, I waited for him to explain.
“A man gets lonely all by himself,” he confided, as though pressed to justify taking up with a non-entity like me. I had already noticed that he was not on speaking terms with anyone on board.
“Even with money?”
“I don’t buy friendship,” he said scornfully. “As you should know, money is not an unmixed blessing among men who would slit your throat for the nails in your boots.”
I controlled my urge to ask why, then, he allowed himself to look so conspicuous, or how he expected to buy me such a costly item as a warm overcoat without exposing at least some fraction of his wealth.
“I took you to be a man of some learning,” he said, “as am I.”
This struck me as curious coming from the mouth of a criminal, however distinguished he was. Only the tilt of his homburg and the elaborate knot in his cravat detracted from his aspect of professorial wisdom.
But ‘learning,’ where I came from, had only one meaning: the study of serious subjects like the Talmud and its commentaries, not the cluttering of one’s mind with the kind of paltry, secular information acquired at a university.
Before I could ask what he meant, or confess that my formal education of both kinds stopped before I turned thirteen, he demanded with a flare of contempt, “What have I in common with them? Murderers, drunkards, wife-beaters, wild-eyed revolutionaries?”
I was both amused and incensed at the way he lumped my social activism with the brutish crimes of violent gangsters and assassins.
Not without a little jab of sarcasm, I inquired, “Then what kind of misunderstanding brought you here, brother?”
I felt ashamed the moment the words left my mouth. It was not sort of question one asked of a new acquaintance, especially in a place like this. Not only on social grounds, but with our poor country liberally infested with Czarist spies, how could I be certain that he was not one of them?
My new friend, however, was not offended. “A bit of bad luck,” he said, as offhandedly as an English lord witnessing his yacht go down in a storm. “Some swine turned me in.”
At this, he smiled and granted me the knowledge of his name. (Out of respect for any descendants he may have, let us call him ‘Pyavka.’) I recognized it, at once, from all the months I spent submerged in Warsaw’s underworld, as that of the man respectfully known in certain sections of that great city as “The King of Thieves.”
Just one example of his renown: Some years back, the saintly Amshinover Rebbe had come on one of his rare visits to Warsaw. During the few steps he took between the railroad station and a waiting drozhky, some insolent thief stole his fur-lined coat right off his back. The crime had shocked even a city as hardened to villainy as Warsaw. What’s more, it had been perpetrated in bitterest mid-winter so that the Rebbe’s hosts were justly concerned not only for his health but his very life.
At the synagogue the following morning, the Rebbe preached so powerfully that the very walls were said to have glistened with tears. But as it was Shabbos, the rabbi had forbidden the board to discuss, or even think about, worldly matters until after sundown. The instant Shabbos ended, the board went, as a body, to call upon “The King of Thieves” to plead with him to intercede in a crime that had, after all, taken place in his jurisdiction.
Since criminals were assumed to love money at least as much as did bureaucrats and policemen, the delegation had been authorized to offer a 100-ruble reward for the return of the coat, no questions asked.
Unfortunately, the board happened to intrude upon the King’s palatial home at the very hour he was giving a dinner party for some of his distinguished friends. Worse yet, these included several high Polish officials and even – the Devil take them – a couple of Russian officers in glittering dress uniform, none of whom a Warsaw Jew would lightly disturb at his pleasures.
But the moment the board’s spokesman stuttered out the reason for the intrusion, Pyavka excused himself from his astonished guests, without whose tolerance he could not have reigned for even an hour. He led the intruders into his paneled study, carefully closed the door, passed around a box of cigars and sat down to listen to every known detail of the outrage. He then instructed the delegation to go back and tell the Rebbe not to worry. Not only would he, Pyavka, exert his best efforts to recover the stolen coat, but he also all but guaranteed its return before the rabbi needed to leave the following dawn.
The King was as good as his word. As for the 100-ruble reward, he ordered that it be given to a charity of the Rebbe’s choice.
No doubt, you will have suspected that the Rebbe’s warm overcoat had been hanging in Pyavka’s cupboard, all along. The thought had occurred to me, as well. Nevertheless, in my present circumstances, the very idea of meeting this living legend left me as awed as a modern American boy who’d been granted an audience with Al Capone.
“And you,” Pyavka demanded with a lordly wink. “What sort of thievery did they get you for?”
It surprised me that he had not instantly realized that I was not a member of his odious profession. I also didn’t take well to his patronizing tone. But he awaited my answer with such genuine benevolence that I hadn’t the heart to disappoint him. Even less did I want to endanger our still-green friendship by confessing that I was there precisely for certain types of activities that would, if successful, put an end to parasites like Pyavka and his high-born Russian protectors.
So I made up a story about how I had recently met a beautiful girl from a fine family, and under her tender influence had forsworn my thievish ways. But, alas, my past had caught up with me. An informer who had seen me in a coffee house with my fiancée summoned a policeman. As I carried a revolver, I could have saved myself by putting a bullet through the arresting officer’s heart. But I simply could not commit such a cold-blooded act before the eyes of this very pure and noble creature. Thus, I ended up clapped in irons while she looked on, her face streaming with maidenly pity. And now who knew if I would ever see her again?
I was so moved by my own recital, not only did I have tears in my eyes, but if you had handed me pencil I could have drawn a perfect likeness of the girl.
Pyavka, for his part, was so affected that he encircled my shoulders with his arm and declared, “Soon you will be reunited with her. You have my word. Why do I say this? Because at the first opportunity I intend to escape.”
I didn’t have time to react to his ludicrous statement because he continued directly: “Before taking you into my confidence, I spent several days observing you. I wanted to be certain you were one of us and not some fool of a political firebrand. But I judged by your eyes that you were far too intelligent to be anything but a thief.”
I acknowledged the compliment and awaited further revelations. Not that I believed, for a moment, he had the slightest chance of escaping. Granted, Russian guards were not famous for their hatred of money. But rather than take a mere portion of Pyavka’s wealth and let him run away, why not simply kill him and take it all?
“And I have decided to take you with me.” Pyavka looked deeply into my eyes, and I exerted myself to make a proper show of gratitude for his preposterous offer. I wanted to hear more, if only to kee
p alive some spark of hope in my own heart. It also pleased me to be able, as the greater realist, to feel superior to him in something.
But as though he had already said too much, Pyavka volunteered nothing further. Instead, he solemnly began to reminisce about the tangled motives that compelled him, him, the brilliant son of a fine Jewish family, to take up his perilous and unconventional trade.
As I might have known, he viewed himself as anything but a common thief. What he saw in the glittering mirror of his self-esteem was a social reformer, a zealot who daily risked his freedom and reputation, indeed his very life, in order to redistribute other men’s ill-gotten wealth. “I am what the English call a ‘Robin Hood.’”
Moreover, he had convinced himself that it was he, and not the Bundists or Socialists or other such hollow-headed rabble, who was the true revolutionary, treading, until his cruel downfall, in the very footsteps of the great Hebrew prophets.
In the face of such impregnable delusion, there was little to do but keep silent.
I lost count of how long our vessel drifted helplessly in the embrace of a fogbank that enveloped us like a shroud. But one morning, a small, pale echo of the sun broke through. Its sparse light and shriveled dimensions might have led one to believe it was the moon or some impossibly distant star not visible from Warsaw. Then, just as suddenly, a gray sliver of land appeared before us.
My fellow prisoners broke into cheers. Escaping drowning in a sea of eternal darkness was grounds enough for celebration. But the weeks of doing nothing other than eat, sleep, fight, curse and rake their hair for hard-shelled lice had made them forget that this period of cozy idleness would soon come to an end. That we were still bound for Siberia, half a world away, not merely to die there but, on our way to the grave, to pay for our own upkeep with months or years of crushing labor.
That afternoon, our barge rubbed its flank against a creaking dock. We struggled to our feet, lumpy from disuse, no longer to enjoy the luxury of traveling by boat. Our destination, to which we would travel by foot, was a fortified camp, the first of many transit stations awaiting us in the months to come or, as the case may be, not awaiting us at all.
All at once, we were being shouted at, buffeted, counted and menaced by rows of guards who, with rifle butts and blank bayonets, did their best to pay us back for the discomfort they had been forced to endure for our sake.
Just as in Vanya’s army, there was the usual hysteria and rage arising from the traditional Russian failure to plan ahead and anticipate that a barge would soon deliver hundreds of starved and savage prisoners, and maybe somebody should have given a moment’s thought to how and where they were to be housed and fed.
Mad with exhaustion, we milled around on the drill field waiting to be noticed.
It wasn’t until near dark that a passing officer stopped and demanded to know what the devil we were doing there. We leapt to our feet and eagerly confided that we had arrived that very day and had not yet been given a meal or a place to sleep.
Consulting a folded sheet of paper, the officer satisfied himself that we were not due until the following week and, therefore, he was not responsible for us.
We pointed to a row of sturdy-looking barracks at the far end of the field and wondered if we might sleep there tonight.
Foolish question. How could we not know those buildings were already occupied by a work brigade sent the previous year to enlarge the camp’s capacity? Only, having not yet been supplied with lumber, nails, bricks or cement, not to mention tools, they were believed to be somewhat behind schedule.
As usual in such places, it was the hardened criminals who ran the show. To get your share of food it was necessary to be on good terms with them, a talent not all of us possessed in equal measure.
This, I thought, was an ideal place for someone like Pyavka to demonstrate his mastery over his fellow thieves. But mysteriously, from the moment of our debarkation, I had seen no trace of him. And at roll call the next morning, twelve prisoners were listed as missing. Despite Pyavka’s not exactly shrinking appearance, I had no idea whether he was somewhere in the vast camp or had already found an officer he could bribe to send him back home. And without a word to me! So much for a thief’s loyalty.
Given that there was no earthly place for him or anyone else to go, no one doubted that the fugitives would be back before dark. But with good Russian logic, we who had made no effort to escape were punished with a four-week loss of “privileges.”
By afternoon, three of the missing were properly accounted for, having died during the night. I volunteered to help bury the corpses, one of whom had a fairly decent pair of felt-lined boots, and seemed not to mind my making a trade.
We remained in this camp for several weeks, watching as ancient vessels with decks as long as the Jewish Exile continued groaning up to the dock, ready to take yet another load of men to some dark and distant region of eternal ice. It seemed as if the ships grew older and more decrepit with each visit.
When it was our turn to depart, we were marched in single file onto another sea-going barge whose decks made you hesitant to put your foot down too heavily. The way some of those vessels managed to stay afloat, I wondered if it might have been safer to swim to Siberia. But, to be truthful, I was in no hurry to find out.
Before the boat could leave, the guards lined us up once more and tried, four or five times with rapidly decreasing patience, to count us and make sure that each name had a likeness or a body attached to it.
Once again, I heard no mention of Pyavka’s name, and he was nowhere to be found. Suddenly I wondered whether some fellow prisoner, fed up with his aristocratic airs, might not have stuck a knife into him – whether for the money he carried or as a simple outlet for irritation.
Although I might have lost confidence in Pyavka as a friend, I had not been ready to give up looking for him. I missed the encouragement I had gotten from his fantastic notions for escape.
Later that day, just as mysteriously as he had disappeared, Pyavka reappeared. I asked him where he had been, and what he had been doing.
“Negotiating,” he said.
“For what?”
With an air of deep mystery, he let on that it was best I didn’t know.
Under a steady, sullen downpour, the guards finally allowed us to make our way down a ladder into the cargo hold. Most of us were shivering, but still in reasonably good spirits. That is, no knives had yet been drawn in a threatening manner.
A few slivers of daylight leaked into the hold. Enough for me to see a skin of greenish slime that corroded the bulkheads, which I fervently hoped were above the water line.
The deck under our feet was slippery as ice, and no one had thought to provide facilities for us to sit or lie down, not to mention relieve ourselves. Some of the men began, in blind panic, to gasp for air and try to struggle back up the ladder. But they discovered that someone had thoughtfully locked the hatch. We were not allowed back on deck until summoned for our evening soup. Afterwards, most of us decided, despite the cold and damp, to spend the night under the black sky rather than return to the hold, even if it meant sleeping standing up.
Increasingly, on those moonless nights, a prisoner might sling one leg over the railing and, deaf to the amused shouts of the guards from their warm cabins on the quarterdeck, mutter a farewell prayer before flinging himself, headlong, into the water. None of his comrades showed any inclination to intervene. In fact, should someone bent on suicide prove too weak or too frozen to make this small climb, there was no shortage of brotherly hands ready to give him a hearty boost.
All around me, people were so numbed with boredom and hunger that their only entertainment seemed to be dredging up old scores, ranging from the division of loot from a long-ago robbery to the disputed income of some shameless female walking the streets. Once ignited, these little squabbles burst into flame so quickly that they often left one or both parties expiring of stab wounds or screaming in pain. Some convicts averted their eyes, while
others looked on as raptly as a child in the circus.
There were, I regret to admit, also familiar rumblings of how the Jews were responsible for the way things were going, both aboard the ship and back in the miraculous world of civilian life. Fortunately, I was able to get my hands on a knife from one of the bodies waiting to be thrown overboard. Since I couldn’t sleep with my eyes open, this was no guarantee of absolute safety. But it made me feel that, should I need to defend myself during daylight hours, I would not die without a fight.
One day, a minor encounter left me with a set of teeth marks in my fist. I knew our vessel had a small room set aside as a dispensary. I knocked and entered, surprised to see an actual doctor in a white coat standing hunched over a guard who complained of a sore throat. Having squirted something from a rubber bulb into the man’s mouth, the doctor sent him on his way, “cured” and grateful.
The Accidental Anarchist Page 19