Axelbant then asked, “Did your wife tell you that on the first visit to the doctor, he gave your son a shot?”
“No, he didn’t do it. Nobody had the medication, neither the pharmacies, nor the doctor.”
“But the record indicates that in your claim of May 14 you said that Stern gave an injection to your son, and your wife in gratitude gave the doctor 10 rubles,” Axelbant said.
“I don’t know... We all are thankful...”
The counsel turned to Hanna, “Did Stern’s treatment help your son?”
“So far no complaints.”
“It seems, in fact,” said the counsel, “that as a result of this treatment he grew six inches.”
“Maybe as a result, or maybe, he just grew up,” said the boy’s mother.
“Is Victor healthy now?”
“So far he is.”
“Then why did you write in your May 14 statement, even after the military medical commission recognized that the boy was now in perfect health, ‘I lately had a suspicion that the doctor was treating my son improperly, so I decided to contact the prosecutor’?”
“I only had a suspicion that maybe Victor didn’t need that treatment at all.”
Stern interrupted. “Who taught you to say at the face-to-face confrontation that I was a spy, that someone was paying me money for the wrong treatment of youth?”
In response, Hanna murmured something unintelligible. Stern, instead of trying to get a clear answer from the witness, asked another question, “Why did you go to the prosecutor’s office so late, a year later, on May 14?”
Stern continued his testimony to refute all counts of the charges. “I helped tens of thousands of people,” he said, “and cannot remember how many shots of hormones I gave this boy. When the youth Victor Overchuk came to our clinic more than two years ago, on October 18, 1972, another doctor, not me, diagnosed hypogenitalism with growth retardation. The fifteen-year-old boy’s sexual development was at the level of a six-year-old child. His height was four feet, six inches, and his weight was seventy-two pounds.”
Throughout the year, continued Stern, other doctors were trying to treat Victor to no avail, and finally “they referred him to me.” During the trial the doctor never belittled his talent, even likening himself to a medieval philosopher and astrologer Giordano Bruno, who was tried for heresy.
“Who’s this Bruno?” I asked the athlete sitting next to me.
He shrugged.
I said, “He was burnt on the stake.”
He shrugged again.
“I prescribed the boy hormones in my modification,” continued Stern. “The pharmacy didn’t have these drugs. But every day mattered, and I injected him at least eight times, as confirmed by the father and the son in the preliminary investigation and here. The boy was coming to me without his parents, once or twice a week. And he paid nothing. Most certainly my combination of hormones was worth 65 rubles! Four months later—please see his chart—we got a phenomenal result, the boy grew three inches and gained more than fifteen pounds. It seems that his parents should be happy. I saved their son.” He looked at Hanna sitting in the first row. “What matters is that this honest and decent woman came to her senses. She herself was a victim of outside influence.”
Answering the prosecutor, her husband suddenly became adamant—Stern was given only 50 rubles, not 65, and it was he who did it, not Hanna.
“When?” The prosecutor and the judge were trying to find out.
“I don’t remember. Two years have passed,” said Ivan.
Stern asked Ivan’s son, “Did the treatment help?”
The high school senior Victor Overchuk swelled with pride. “I grew six inches!”
This is a story that happened to a family from a village with an ironic name Chary (Enchantment). The story was typical, except for the “espionage” and for the amount of rubles that was larger than those “given” by the rest of ninety-two witnesses and victims. All boys had one thing in common. They had been healed by Doctor Stern.
Now before the court stood Mikhail Sushko, another witness for the prosecution. The tall peasant stood at attention, petrified, like a soldier being reviewed. However, this numbness and the clumsy words that he spoke did not prevent him from standing his ground: Yes, the draft board. Yes, I brought the lad. Yes, the medicine wasn’t in the pharmacies, and the doctor gave us the medicine. What kind? Like tiny buttons. No—no, he never asked for money. “I’d ask him ‘how much?’ and he’d say, ‘See for yourself, it’s written on the bottle.’”
Public prosecutor Krivoruchko spoke: “Something isn’t quite clear here. During the preliminary investigation, you said to prosecutor Krachenko, ‘I asked, how much is this medicine?’ Stern said “Ten rubles.” ‘I gave him ten rubles.’”
A smile flitted across the prosecutor’s face. “So, you did give the defendant ten rubles.”
“What defendant?”
“Stern.”
The farmer switched into his native Ukrainian tongue. “He was so good to me and to my lad,” he said, “so I gave him ten rubles.”
“For medication?”
“No—no! No. On the bottle it was written—30 kopecks.”
“So why did you give him the money?”
“For this medicine.”
The prosecutor was smiling again, “Ten rubles?”
“No, thirty kopecks.”
“So why did you give him ten rubles?”
“We got along nicely, and we liked the doctor very much.”
Time and again the prosecutor asked in essence the same questions. The face of Sushko became wet. The judge asked, “Do you understand why the prosecutor has been asking you so many questions?”
“No,” said the farmer.
“What did you say to the interrogator?”
“Thirty kopecks.”
The prosecutor jumped up, took from the judge the preliminary interrogation protocol he just quoted, and angrily approached Sushko, “Your son would be better at answering my questions! Read your testimony!”
Silent Sushko stared at the spot where the prosecutor’s finger stuck.
“Why aren’t you reading?” the prosecutor asked.
“I’m reading,” Sushko said.
I was beginning to suspect the peasant of bullying the Soviet court.
The prosecutor switched to shouting, “Read aloud!”
Sushko hesitated, stumbled on the letters like on rocks, but slowly, syllable by syllable, confused in word stress like a fish in a seine, gradually, he got to the fateful ten rubles. The prosecutor and the judge were delighted. The slow pace made it easier for me to record new details of the indictment. It said that Stern had sold Sushko a vial of “foreign” thyroiodine for 10 rubles, which actually cost 30 kopecks and had been produced in Soviet Belarus. Thus Stern fraudulently amassed 9 rubles 70 kopecks.
I whispered to my neighbor, “And thus he earned three half-liter bottles of cheap vodka.” The neighbor, to my surprise, nodded. How could I know that he was from the KGB?
Eventually the peasant read, with a shaky voice, the last sentence written by the prosecution investigator: “When inspecting the bottle presented by citizen Sushko, it was found that the cost was erased from the bottle.”
Now Judge Orlovsky considerably calmed down and almost lovingly, addressed Sushko like a terrified child, “Well, now you do remember what Stern told you, don’t you?”
The victim’s voice drooped, “Yes.”
“What precisely did he say?” the judge asked.
Then came an eerie silence. Before us was a broken man. The hall was frozen in anticipation.
“And then. What did he say?” the judge repeated kindly.
The farmer’s voice was barely audible; “Thirty kopecks.”
It started all over again. Prosecutor Krivoruchko licked his lips, his handsome face twisted, he almost screamed, “Who spoke to you before the trial?”
“They came…,” the victim said reluctantly. He did not loo
k at the prosecutor, but was staring straight ahead, over the judge’s head.
“Who?!”
“The prosecutor.”
There was a new dramatic pause. Time seemed to stop. Nodules twitched on Sushko’s skinny cheekbones, “Kra… Kra… Maybe Kravchuk?” The judge looked at our enemy regiment with disgust and found a path out of the impasse, “So then why did you give ten rubles to Stern, if he didn’t demand it?”
The farmer was again agonizing in silence. I continued scribbling in my notebook, when Orlovsky asked me, “You continue writing? Earning a livelihood?”
I raised my head. Our eyes met.
The hard evidence of the bottle, of course, was produced in court. The judge examined the hapless little thing. Two silent lay judges thoughtfully twisted it between their fingers.
“The price is erased,” Orlovsky confirmed on behalf of all three of them.
“Maybe it’s still in sight…,” mumbled the dumbfounded Sushko, while gently taking the dark bottle from the hands of the prosecutor. He held it between his thick thumb and index finger and looked through it against the light barely glimmering in the gray December window.
Later, counsel Axelbant would say in the oral argument, “The most surprising and revelatory finding for the investigating officer Krachenko is that Sushko said—there was the price. 30 kopecks. Who erased it? We must ask the investigator about this.”
Stern expressed his outrage at the pressure applied to Sushko and demanded to find out who came to the peasant’s home before the trial. The judge calmly interjected, “The court is going to cause Sushko to testify again and to establish who visited him.”
However, this wasn’t done.
After two weeks of the trial, we finally learned why the KGB, the judge, and the police had demonstrated such a high level of tolerance toward us, traitors present in the courtroom. Reports about this ordinary trial of the most common fraud and money-grubbing were published in some papers in the West. They were written by my invisible antithesis, a correspondent of the Novosty News Agency, Boris Antonov, a colleague of my former buddy Vladimir Zhukov.
All the time Orlovsky kept in mind the external enemies.
“Don’t appeal to the public! Speak to the court!” These words of the judge we heard on the very first day of the trial. The following day, December 12, this phrase had become sacramental. All day, the judge constantly interrupted Stern, literally muzzled him. At the close of that day, he let Stern read his statement. But as soon as the defendant uttered the first words of protest against the interrogation techniques of prosecutor Krivoruchko, the judge’s resentment boiled over, “Hush! You talk so loud!” He winced and turned to the audience, “For what purpose is this done?” The situation was novel to the experienced judge who became tongue-tied and stammered, “The man knows who they are, and we know who wrote… Nobody has the right to record the process!”
Under the accompaniment of his tirade, I frantically continued writing down almost every word in my notebook, and the judge, looking at me in disgust, continued, “The defendant is apparently aware that his words are being recorded. That sort of thing… It’s known…,” the judge turned to the defendant, “Do you want me to raise this man from his chair?”
I gripped my notebook in hand and braced to get up. My neighbor pricked up his ears.
Stern was confused. “I don’t understand…”
“I think it’s…” the judge said. At this point, while giving me another withering look, he unintentionally reassured me. “The court proceedings were recorded yesterday on tape.”
In fact the “man” was not me, but Victor Stern, who was sitting beside his mother. The battered tape recorder was actually in his pocket. The judge, known for his rigidity, displayed indecision, did not make “this man” rise from his chair and did not take away our secret weapon. Those who revealed to him our secret even allowed the tape recording to continue for the time being. Even though, at one time, there was suddenly music emanating throughout the room that had been equipped according to strict canons of judicial interior—in the depths of his own pocket Victor accidentally pressed the wrong button.
“What is this? Who’s playing music?” asked the startled Orlovsky.
“It’s from the street,” said one of the relatives.
I turned to a new personality, this time, a grim middle-aged woman sitting beside me and whispered, “Shall we dance?”
How delightful is impunity!
Dozens of women from collective farms wearing short, slinky plush coats had already appeared before us. From them Josepha Bayda was distinguished only by a slim figure and a melodious voice. Now this pretty woman of about forty, stood in the center of the stuffy room, behind the bend of a flimsy wooden barrier.
She had never been to Vinnitsa. Always a lot to do in the village. Stephan traveled with his father to the doctor with a black beard. She glanced at the whitened beard of Stern, blushed, and continued. At home the son, as the doctor ordered, took a lot of powders. The doctor did the injections himself. Stephan traveled to him for a long time. The doctor, a good man, took her husband to the pharmacy; we—country folk, are lost in such a large city.
“How much money did your husband pay at the pharmacy?” Orlovsky asked.
“Fifty rubles.”
“To whom did he give the money there?”
“The pharmacist.”
“Not the doctor?”
“No. Why to the doctor?”
“And what did you say to the investigator?”
“The pharmacist.”
“There are discrepancies in your testimony,” said the prosecutor. “In the record of the interview, you said that your husband paid fifty rubles not to the pharmacy but to the doctor.”
“No. My husband would tell me about it.”
“Did your husband bring foodstuffs to the doctor?” the judge said.
“No.”
The defense counsel burst in at this point. “I don’t see any discrepancies in the testimony. The record doesn’t say that Bayda gave money and foods.”
Josepha Bayda confirmed. “He never took anything from our house.”
“Please tell me,” said Stern, “do you know what disease your son had?”
Instead of answering, she started sobbing and wiping tears with the edge of her flowery scarf.
“What happened?” interjected the judge. “Why are you crying, victim?”
“He was a cripple! Quite a cripple!”
“And now?”
“Now he’s he-e-e-ealthy!” she said, drowning in her tears.
“Why cry if he’s healthy?” the judge asked.
“Because he was a cri-i-pple!” the mother cried, still in distress.
“Thousands of Soviet doctors treat their patients free of charge,” said the judge Orlovsky. “It’s their duty to cure.”
Josepha Bayda: “I’m grateful to the doctor!”
“How long did Doctor Stern treat your son?” said Stern, referring to himself in the third person.
“Two years. And we never gave you anything. Please forgive me, I never even came to thank you,” the victim said sheepishly to Stern. “I myself was ill.”
After the mother, her son appeared before the judge. A tall handsome Stephan, contrary to court orders, greeted the defendant and stared at the judge with dislike.
“In ‘71 I went to Mikhail Isayevich,” he said, respectfully using the very Jewish patronym of Stern. “Every week I skipped one school day. Traveled from afar. And then Mikhail Isayevich said, ‘You might fail in all subjects. Better come to my house on Sundays.’”
Prosecutor: “Who was buying drugs?”
“My father.”
“Was he paying the doctor?”
“I cannot know that.”
“And you?”
“I have no money at all.”
“Witness, are you healthy?” interjected Dr. Stern.
“Of course!” Stephan almost yelled. “Thank you!”
“How long will you remember your doctor?” said Stern again.
“All my life!”
I looked at the boy and thought, women like his mother probably had been rescuing Jews from the Germans. Sushko might have done it, too.
Later, when Stephan had already returned to his village, Mikhail Stern’s joyful voice rang defiantly: “I was eager to perform a miracle, and I did it. Eunuchoidism—is a terrible word. Recovery from this disease doesn’t happen too often. I spared neither time nor effort, nor drugs, nor my days off. If I have been such a moneymaker and a cheapskate as I’m depicted here, nothing could have stopped me from cashing in. But I treated him free of charge.”
Prosecutor Vitaly Krachenko had pushed aside the testimony of the Bayda family given to the district investigator and wrote in the indictment something quite the opposite. Why was he not afraid to flagrantly disobey the law?
After all nineteen episodes of fraud had been considered, the defense counsel stated that none of the episodes had evidence of fraud or breach of the patients’ trust. And why was defense counsel Axelbant, this rich Moscow lawyer, putting pressure on the poor prosecutor Krachenko? After all, he was not just an executor of the Party royal will. He also had his deep-seated feelings.
Once in the early stages of the trial, I walked in the Stern’s garden to take a look at the results of the search of Jewish gold. When it was not found, that did not mean for Krachenko that the Sterns had no gold. Two dozen investigators for three months had been looking in all twenty-five districts of the region for witnesses among his patients. The prosecutor knew that for a physician to survive only on his meager salary was a challenge and many asked patients for money. Forty witnesses, selected by the prosecutors out of two thousand passed in three weeks in front of my eyes in the courtroom. One thousand nine hundred sixty of the questioned patients had insisted that Stern had refused to take money when they begged him.
On the sixth day of the trial a local refusenik, Mike Mager, told me that one guy from the parking lot was lamenting, “Ah, Mike, the Stern’s car was parked right here with us for a few days, and we didn’t know that it had golden bumpers!”
This beaten-up Jewish car had been imagined, in accordance with the expectations of the crowd, to be quickly filled with gold. On the seventh day of the trial August Stern heard a policeman telling a prosecution witness that the gold was hidden in the engine of the car.
Dancing on Thin Ice Page 13