‘I had no idea you had such illustrious patients,’ he said. ‘Anna Ziatdinov, daughter of Peter Zinnurov no less –’
‘You have been going through my files – you have no right!’ I protested angrily.
‘Are you really saying, Spethmann, that when the security of the state is threatened, when the life of the tsar himself is in jeopardy, you would put private files relating to madmen beyond the reach of those sworn to preserve the civilisation in which, I feel it only fair to remind you, you also live and from which you benefit?’
‘You put your argument in such ridiculous high terms I cannot possibly answer.’
‘Who is Grischuk?’
‘I repeat: that you have read these files is shocking and contemptible.’
‘It is clearly a pseudonym. A politician, obviously.’
‘I refuse to answer,’ I said, though I wondered whether Lychev had already identified Grischuk as Gregory Petrov. Petrov was well known to the police.
‘A man of dangerous political sympathies to judge from your notes,’ Lychev went on. ‘Why do you treat such a man?’
‘Because I am a doctor,’ I said, ‘and he is my patient.’
‘What is the nature of Grischuk’s illness?’
‘I am not prepared to discuss it.’
‘All I can see from his file is that he drinks too much, eats too much and attempts to fornicate with every woman who crosses his path – often with success,’ Lychev said. ‘Tell me, please, enlighten me: how can his greed and carnality possibly be termed an illness?’
‘I will not speak about an individual patient, but’ – I was allowing myself to be drawn but it was impossible to remain silent in the face of Lychev’s goading – ‘in general terms, such behaviour may be considered a manifestation of psychological illness, in the same way that people scream when they are in physical pain.’
‘So Grischuk’s drinking, his gluttony and womanising – it is all because he is in pain? Have you discovered the source of his pain?’
‘I am not prepared to discuss individual patients.’
‘Reuven Kopelzon,’ Lychev said, changing direction abruptly.
‘I do not treat Kopelzon.’
‘Then you will not feel constrained to discuss him.’
‘I will not discuss anyone with you, Lychev.’
‘Your friend consorts with men who make no secret of their desire to see Russia expelled from her rightfully held Polish territories. How can any loyal subject maintain friendly relations with such a man?’
‘I know Kopelzon for his music, not his political views.’
‘Are both things not part of the whole man?’
He waited for an answer but I gave him none.
‘Avrom Rozental,’ he said.
‘Rozental is a chess player, as you know.’
‘And a friend of Kopelzon’s. Why?’
‘I have no idea,’ I said.
‘There are things I do not know either. Though apparently, unlike you, I would prefer to have answers. I still do not know, for example, who murdered Yastrebov or why. Above all, I do not know the identities of the other members of Yastrebov’s cell or where they are hiding. These are the things I must find out because the cell will reorganise and press on with its plans. I have to stop the terrorists before they kill the tsar and you are going to help me.’
‘Help you?’ I laughed. ‘After all you have done to us, why would I help you?’
‘I hope it would be because you are not one of these Jews who pretends to be a loyal subject but in his heart despises everything about our Russian civilisation.’
I said nothing to this.
‘Catherine still refuses to reveal Yastrebov’s identity,’ he went on. ‘If you can get her to tell me, I will have you both released.’
I searched his features but it was impossible to say if he was sincere. ‘How can I persuade her if I’m not allowed to see her?’ I said, playing for the time I needed to think his offer through.
‘I will arrange for you to see her, if you promise you will try to persuade her.’ When I did not reply, he said, ‘It’s only a name, Spethmann. The name of a man who is already dead.’
‘When can I see her?’
‘This instant,’ Lychev replied at once.
A chance to see and speak to Catherine. I nodded my head and Lychev called the jailer.
Catherine’s cell was identical to mine. She was sitting on a little wooden chair, her back perfectly straight, a book in her lap. She looked up as the door opened and, when she saw me, leaped to her feet.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked, kissing her over and over.
‘Yes, yes,’ she said. ‘I’m fine, I’m completely fine. Don’t worry about me.’
Looking past me, she saw Lychev. ‘What does he want?’ she said, her look implacable and fierce.
‘I’ll leave you to it, Spethmann. You have ten minutes,’ the detective said as he stepped outside to the corridor. The door was pushed to.
Catherine looked at me with suspicion. ‘Leave you to what?’
I took a deep breath. ‘He says he will release us if you tell him Yastrebov’s real name.’
‘No,’ she said at once.
‘Does that mean you admit to knowing Yastrebov?’ I said.
A look of annoyance came into her eyes; she was furious with herself for having let her guard down. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It means I won’t tell Lychev anything. I wouldn’t tell him my own name or yours or even his own if my life depended on it.’
‘Catherine, think about this. We are utterly in his power –’
‘I have said I will tell him nothing and when I say I’m going to do something that’s exactly what I do.’
This I already knew, only too well. Nevertheless, I had to try.
‘Why not?’ I said, repeating Lychev’s own logic. ‘Yastrebov is dead. You’re not harming him in any way. The only people suffering because of his name are you and me.’
‘And who will suffer if I give the name – even if I knew it, which I don’t? Who will Lychev arrest then? Who will he throw in prison? Tell Lychev I am content to stay where I am for as long as he wants to keep me here.’
‘I am here too,’ I reminded her.
Her features softened. I think she may even have been on the point of saying sorry. But then her defiance reasserted itself. She had said no. She would be true to her word. We passed the remaining few minutes reassuring each other as to our health and spirits. I told her I loved her. When our ten minutes were up and the door was once more barred and locked, I stood with Lychev in the corridor.
‘She may be content to stay where she is, Spethmann,’ the detective said. ‘However, she doesn’t seem to care that by her stubbornness you also have to stay. How do you feel about that?’
In weighing her alternatives, Catherine had not taken me into account, even for an instant. Though I did not admit it, I felt hurt and angry. Lychev seemed rather impressed.
‘Has Catherine had many lovers?’ he said. I was completely taken aback. Before I could say anything, he went on, ‘There’s a fashion among young people of the demi-monde to seek refuge from what they consider the depressing reality of Russia by drinking themselves to oblivion and sleeping with whoever will sleep with them. They see it as a form of rebellion, apparently. I just wondered if Catherine was one of these.’
‘She certainly is not,’ I answered, only just preventing myself from shouting at him.
‘She and Yastrebov were practically strangers when they first made love.’
‘She denies knowing anything about Yastrebov.’
‘We both know she’s lying,’ he said. ‘I was just wondering how promiscuous she is.’
‘I do not think that any of your business,’ I said sharply.
He looked carefully at me. ‘Your daughter is a highly intelligent and very attractive young woman,’ he said. ‘It would be a shame to see her spend the best years of her life in prison.’
It may be tha
t there is a heaven but even if there is, there is only one life lived on this earth. To have it withheld, to have it stunted, warped and foreshortened by jailers and policemen is a terrible thing. But is it less terrible than a life left unlived through one’s own fearfulness? That night when I lay down, I lay down beside Anna. She was in the bed, naked, unashamed and with a gleam in her eye.
Three more days passed. They were not entirely wasted. Using the old jailer’s chess set, I analysed the position I had reached against Kopelzon. Kavi had known what he was doing when he retreated the rook. There was no other way to play for the win. I asked for permission to send a postcard to Kopelzon, which Lychev granted on condition that it contained no more than the move – 35 Rg2.
Lychev also allowed me to receive books from Minna. Among these was the Babylonian Talmud, sent at my request. It amused me that when we played chess the old jailer would eye the sacred text suspiciously, uncertain whether it was safe to be in the same room as so potent a token of alien magic.
I searched the texts from top to bottom, occasionally mumbling to myself as I read, which the jailer, looking in at the observation slit, took as prayer. My father would have been horrified at the sight, even had I been able to reassure him my reading had nothing to do with veneration for the God he had rejected but with concern for the patient I was determined to save.
My father would have been embarrassed to have met Rozental. Rozental was too much like the man from Dvinsk my father wanted to forget he had ever been. Kopelzon wept rivers of sentimental tears when he talked of the poverty of the towns of the Pale. But my father’s heart was not moved by the destitution of his people. He was shamed by it, as a son would be shamed by his father falling over drunk in the street. The sight of the shnorrer humiliated him; the soup kitchen he felt a personal disgrace. He asked himself a simple question: why were his people so miserably poor and ignorant? Why was there so much vice, prostitution and robbery? Why, among his people, were there so many terrorists and revolutionaries? Kopelzon would have answered him plainly with the words pogrom, Cossack, Pale and the Black Hundreds. But all my father saw was ignorance and backwardness.
My father would never have engaged in debate, with Kopelzon or anyone else. He fell silent when faced with the strong and contrary opinion of others, not so much because his lack of education left him ill-equipped to defend his point of view, but because he took his own beliefs as self-evidently true and therefore in no need of public airing. The answer he had discovered resided in his own people, in their very being. As long as his people were themselves, it could not be otherwise. His success in the world only reinforced his belief. He had the answer, and the answer was to stop being Jewish.
‘What is on your head?’ I had asked Rozental during a session early in our analysis. He had been scratching his scalp, clawing at it with the nails of both hands.
He uttered a groan. ‘It never leaves me alone.’
His hair was very short, practically shorn. I examined it carefully. There was nothing, not even nits.
‘It’s a fly,’ he said desperately. ‘Can you not see it? It follows me everywhere. It torments me day and night.’
‘There’s nothing here.’
‘I can feel it crawling over my scalp.’
‘Would you like a mirror so you can see for yourself?’
With some difficulty I induced him to stand before the mirror over the fireplace while I held a hand mirror (borrowed from Minna) behind him, as a barber does. Eventually I settled him sufficiently to be able to continue the session.
My approach with my patients was generally the same: I began by asking for as full an account as possible of their life story. Rozental described his early years in Choroszcz, the destitute settlement in which he had lived until he went to yeshiva in Lodz. He was the youngest of twelve children and his father had died before he was born. I asked how his mother had managed.
‘My brothers and sisters and I were parcelled out to relatives. I was sent to live with my grandparents.’
‘Tell me about your grandparents.’
He hesitated, then said, ‘They were good, kind people.’
‘Were they religious?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Were you happy in their house?’
‘They loved me very much.’
Besides the obvious incompleteness of the answer, I thought I detected a trace of guilt. Here, plainly, was an avenue to explore. ‘Are your grandparents still alive?’
‘They are both dead.’
‘Were they still alive when you became famous as a chess player?’
His reluctance to answer confirmed to me my suspicion that there was something of significance in his relationship with his grandparents.
‘Avrom,’ I prodded my taciturn patient, ‘did they live long enough to hear of your successes?’
‘Yes,’ he whispered, almost inaudibly.
‘How did they react?’ He began again to scratch his scalp. ‘Were they pleased?’
‘Yes …’ he said vaguely before immediately contradicting himself: ‘No – I don’t know.’
‘Did they approve of your choice of career?’
‘How could they?’ he retorted, this time forcibly and without vacillation. ‘When they sent me to the heder they said, “Learn, Avrom, learn! Purses of silver will fall to you from heaven.” But instead of learning, what did I do? I played chess. Haran, Padan, Hebron where Abraham buried Sarah? None of this mattered – I was consumed by chess. When the boys were imagining themselves following Moses out of Egypt or fighting with Joshua at Jericho, I had visions of myself a pawn up against Lasker in a rook endgame. How could my grandparents have approved?’
Rozental had not spoken as many words in an entire hour as had just passed between us. I pressed on, ‘Were there arguments?’
He did not answer, though I put the question three times.
‘Do you feel you disappointed them?’ I ventured.
‘I just want to play chess!’ he burst out. ‘I ask nothing of anyone – nothing! I do not interfere with anyone, I do not criticise, I do not condemn. Why can’t I be left alone to play chess? Why?’
‘Who is not leaving you alone?’
‘Everyone.’
‘Your grandparents?’
‘Everyone wants me to be this, to be that. To do this, to do that.’
‘What did your grandparents want you to be?’
‘It’s not my grandparents, it’s not them!’ he insisted.
‘Who has these expectations you find so onerous?’
No matter how hard I probed, he would not be specific. It was everyone.
‘They want me to be two things,’ he sobbed, ‘but I can’t be. I just want to play chess. I want to play in the tournament. I want to play Lasker and beat him. But they won’t let me!’
‘ “They” are your grandparents, Avrom, are they not?’ Rozental answered by violently swatting the air around his head. The invisible fly had returned.
The fly was obviously the key to understanding Rozental’s illness. But it was not until I was in my cell that I discovered its true symbolic meaning. Between Lychev’s interrogations, my reading of the ancient texts led me to this: Beelzebub, the devil, got his name from ba’al-zevuv – meaning ‘master of the fly’. Searching further, I came upon a Midrash which runs: ‘The evil inclination is similar to a fly and sits at the two openings of the heart.’
For someone as thoroughly steeped in Jewish learning and tradition as Rozental, the fly was clearly a manifestation of yetzer hara – evil inclination, the impulse to follow selfish desire. It was not difficult to work out the nature of this particular evil inclination. Rozental had told me that, like Benjamin, the beloved youngest son of Jacob, he had been his grandparents’ favourite. When I pressed him on his feelings for his father’s parents, however, his replies were highly suggestive, for while he never criticised them, never once did he make a positive declaration in their favour. He would repeat, almost formulaically, t
hat they were ‘good people’, ‘kind people’, ‘simple people’. But they had also been exacting of the promising young student and had entertained ambitions of him both as the economic saviour of the distressed family and as a future religious leader of their community. It was clear that he found these expectations oppressive. ‘Everyone wants me to be this, to be that. To do this, to do that’, ‘They want me to be two things’.
Instead of fulfilling his grandparents’ dreams, Rozental became obsessed with chess and quickly aspired to become not a great religious teacher but a great professional chess player – the next World Champion. Whenever I asked him about his grandparents’ reaction, Rozental’s narrative faltered. Since professional chess would have taken him from their world and their religion, I decided the grandparents were unlikely to have approved, and that Rozental’s reluctance to acknowledge this was because of residual feelings of loyalty. In spite of coming up against very strong emotional pressure, Rozental had found the courage to pursue his dream.
But in every corner demons lie in wait for the Jewish soul. Guilt had caught up with Rozental, precipitating his terrible mental crisis. I determined that on my release – assuming that I would, sooner or later, be set at liberty – I would have to bring my patient to confront his true feelings for his grandparents. This was the analysis at which I arrived during my imprisonment. I was both proud and certain of my deductions. At some future time I would write a paper for presentation to Bekhterev and my colleagues at the St Petersburg Psychoneurologic Institute.
*
More time. And then, at last, Lychev returned. In the predawn light filtering through the high window, Lychev’s appearance was cyanotic. It was not the first time I had wondered about the state of his health: a bad heart, I concluded, and time was to tell that in this at least I was not mistaken.
‘Catherine still refuses to give me Yastrebov’s name,’ he said wearily.
‘I demand to know what charge you have against us,’ I said, rousing myself from the cot. ‘I demand to speak to a judge or a lawyer.’
Lychev held up a photograph. ‘Do you know this man?’
I was looking at a lean, darkly handsome man of about thirty, heavily moustached with unshaven cheeks and a great tangle of curly hair. Though the chains on his hands were not visible, he was, from the unnatural line of his shoulders, clearly under restraint. His large black eyes stared defiantly back at his captors.
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