The Slaughterman's Daughter

by Yaniv Iczkovits

  There is another reason why Novak chose Adamsky’s tavern over all of the others. The first night after a murder is critical. The killers will not have gone far, and they might have to rely on local help. After all, for better or worse, we are all bound up together in a cycle of give and take. And if we recall that, of all the town’s innkeepers, Patrick Adamsky is the only one who boasts a military past, and link this fact with Radek Borokovsky’s testimony about the Russian army soldiers who allegedly attacked his innocent family, we might find a plausible connection.

  To be frank, Radek Borokovsky’s testimony has already lost much of its credibility. As he was found inebriated and unconscious, his concerned relatives and acquaintances took him to the region’s best clinics, which happen to be its taverns, where he was administered the remedy of more liquor. Nikolai Kroll, the informant, who has already expressed a wish to make his service with the Okhrana more official, was among his treating physicians and reported the different versions of the story that emerged from Borokovsky’s mouth. After each drink, Borokovsky blurted out another tale: initially he was attacked by six soldiers led by an officer and a woman; then the officer was a woman; and, later still, he recalled two giant soldiers with a rifle who were accompanying a woman, or were they horsemen riding a horse-shaped woman? In short, he is no longer very sure of anything.

  Albin Dodek pleads with his commander to arrest Radek Borokovsky and force the truth out of him through torture. “He is a born liar, a chronic drunk and a compulsive gambler.”

  But Novak gives his deputy a cunning smile. He knows that the truth is not torn out of people. It is nurtured and coaxed. What good will come of interrogating this incompetent? Just another story at most, and a dubious one at that, which he will stick to for fear of being thought a liar. If they follow Novak’s methods, they will have several versions, which will allow them to compare the details, look for patterns, and deduce that the affair involves a certain number of soldiers, between one and six; one large and fearsome woman, who by force of necessity is neither an officer nor a horse; and, as Novak has already clearly identified, the throat-slitting style characteristic of żyd ritual slaughter is also evident. Moreover, if Novak insisted on interrogating Borokovsky and others of his ilk himself, then his face, the face of the authorities, would become familiar to the people of Baranavichy, and then he would not be able to blend in with the crowds at inns. For the people around him in Adamsky’s tavern do not have the faintest idea that the good-for-nothing vagabond sitting among them with his cheek flat on the table is none other than the highest ranking secret police officer in the entire region, the man who used to be Colonel Piotr Novak.

  Baranavichy

  I

  * * *

  The Master of the World extends his arm and overwhelms the sun with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and now the heat is over and the wind is blowing on the three travel companions. Shleiml the Cantor offers another explanation: “The famished sun has wasted away. And if the sun is not immune to hunger, what will become of Shleiml the Cantor, the orphaned matchstick?”

  A single glance from Zizek is enough to make the Cantor brace himself at the back of the wagon. The journey has been long and uncomfortable; it seems that their vital organs do not have fixed locations, and a lung can suddenly replace the throat, or vice versa. Finally, they cross the bridge over the Shchara and approach Baranavichy’s main street. Now the silence is welcome. They must pretend to be strangers passing through the town and nothing more; just a father and daughter en route to Minsk, with a beggar they had picked up along the way. As they pass by the synagogue, Fanny takes Zizek’s arm, as a daughter would, but the pretence makes Zizek uneasy, and he recoils. Suddenly, they both realise how foreign they really are to one another and how far away from home they have ventured: Fanny from Natan-Berl and her children, and Zizek from his boat on the Yaselda. Melancholy strikes them. In their most desperate moments, when they were on the verge of despair, they were able to find solace in each other, but now merely linking arms is irksome, even if it is necessary for their safety. The more they avoid looking at one another, the more each of them is present in the other’s sight.

  Twilight is the best time to enter a town where Jews comprise half the population. The year expects the High Holidays, the week anticipates the Sabbath and the day awaits prayer, so the Jews are quick to pack up their stalls and close their shops before gathering in the synagogue. Fortunately for the trio of travellers, they are not scrutinised, nobody turns to look at them. If they had arrived at midday, everybody in the town would have wondered who they were and where they were going. At the very least, they would have been invited to buy something. But at this time, not a single soul asks why they are passing through.

  Even the peasants have left Baranavichy, returning to the nearby villages after selling their produce to their Jewish neighbours. Muzhiks do not have much of a nightlife. For them, nightfall does not mark the passage of time, but the occurrence of an event. Diurnal animals make way for nocturnal animals, colours fade and sounds multiply. The boughs of trees wave in unison, leaves hiss in the wind, frogs protest in chorus and packs of wolves begin to roam. The peasants prefer to sit out on their porches in the evening, their fingers wrapped around teacups and their bodies curled in comfortable chairs. Some of the muzhiks will gather to share some vodka, but come midnight bitterness will strike and they will return to their homes angry, and hopefully remember to take off their boots before falling asleep.

  The three travellers pass through the town’s main street until they reach Marinska Street, and stop outside Patrick Adamsky’s tavern. Taverns and inns are always full at this time in the evening. It is the hour when idlers forget their laziness and make peace with their destinies or, in other words, bask in self-pity. Zizek asks Fanny and the hazan to wait for him in the cart while he goes to seek the owner’s help.

  “Do you really trust him this much, Zizek Breshov?” Fanny whispers.

  “I am sorry, but I trust him even more than that,” Zizek replies.

  Zizek’s first few steps are hesitant; he opens the front door a crack, and surveys the tavern. It is more cramped and mustier than he remembers it. The walls are made of rough, rotten wood, and the rafters are in such a state that they barely support the upstairs rooms. Every step on the upper floor winds around Zizek’s nerves, and he thinks that the place seems busier than it used to be. The last time he was here, many years ago, the patrons of the inn lay idly on their beds and passed the time by counting the cockroach corpses and rat droppings that accumulated in the cracks in the wooden floor beneath them. But now, strange, unexpected sounds drift down from the top floor, the squeaks and muffled whimpers of adulterers or monks or God knows who else.

  The dining hall downstairs is divided by garish Ottoman-style arches. A mural of Christ at Golgotha is so faded that the Saviour’s body appears to have melted in the sun and Mary Magdalene seems to be rejoicing at his misery. Icons are everywhere, little booths with flowers and gold-coloured frames, beneath which the “pilgrims” are sitting, praying for a jug of kvass.

  In a corner, Zizek spots a bunch of card players, mere small fry, gambling with roubles they don’t have. One of them glances at his hand and laughs bitterly. At the other end of the room, three men are huddled in conversation, perhaps about politics, pointing their fingers at one another. Three other idlers are sitting alone at separate tables. One is leaning against the wall, owl-faced and empty-eyed. The second is so fat he cannot sit comfortably in his chair. And the third – well, five empty vodka glasses and a cheek flat against the table guarantee that he will not remain with them for much longer. In any event, there are no police officers here, and there are no women. Zizek walks in.

  * * *

  Patrick Adamsky descends the stairs from the upper floor, followed by a servant boy with a broom in his hand. “Over there,” Adamsky gestures without looking at the boy, and the servant scurries away t
o sweep one of the corners. Adamsky has an overpowering, authoritarian bearing, to which all his underlings have grown accustomed over the years, but Zizek cannot erase from his memory the image of the orphaned boy who was abducted with him by Leib Stein the khapper, the child catcher.

  II

  * * *

  Back then, Patrick Adamsky was called Pesach Abramson, and he lived with his older brother, Motl Abramson, in the house of his uncle. Pesach and Motl’s parents had both contracted tuberculosis and received a summons from On High, and the two brothers had joined the seven children of their uncle and aunt, Scholom and Mirka Abramson. Theirs was the poorest family in Motal, and the townspeople would offer them charity from time to time, but not too often, lest they should stuff themselves until their bellies burst open.

  When the accursed wave of army quotas reached Motal, the conscription of Pesach and Motl could have been easily justified as a way of lifting some of the burden from Scholom and Mirka’s shoulders. And yet, with an unfathomable stubbornness, the uncle and aunt refused to turn in their orphaned nephews and defied the sborchik’s warrant. On the night when the foul child catcher Leib Stein knocked on their door, Scholom Abramson even dared to face him wielding a pitchfork. The pitchfork, needless to say, was quickly broken in two, with a single blow over Leib Stein’s thigh, and Scholom Abramson felt closer to his Creator than he ever had before when a second blow hit him full in the face. Nor did the abductor spare Aunt Mirka: when she rushed to her husband’s help, Stein slapped her across the face too. The blow was so surprising, and so violent, that everyone instantly stifled their sobs and screams and stared at Leib Stein, aghast, as though everything he had done up to that point had borne the hallmark of pure reason. The man’s sadistic smile was unequivocal: he delighted in beating women, and if they resisted, he would move on to their daughters. In any case, Motl and Pesach were seized by the scruff of their necks by Stein’s thugs and joined another petrified boy who was already waiting in the prison next to the synagogue.

  Scholom and Mirka Abramson swelled the cries of Selig and Leah Berkovits. The people of Motal cried along with them, the heart of the town’s rabbi broke in two, but that night many sighed in relief, thankful that at least their own children had been spared.

  But then something happened that took even Leib Stein by surprise. His task had been to take the children to the ispravnik, the regional governor, and from there to the cantonist camp. But before dawn, as they were about to stop off in one of the gentile households where they had arranged accommodation and meals, fourteen-year-old Motl Abramson leaped from the wagon and hurled himself towards the black marshes. Leib Stein and his crew chased after him, but the boy vanished as though swallowed up by the swamp. Leib Stein searched for him until sunrise, but in the morning mists, earth and sky became one, and the boy was gone without a trace.

  Where did Motl Abramson go? No-one knew. But a series of events that followed his escape led to the hypothesis that he had not gone far, that he had remained in the area to avenge the forced conscription of his brother, or perhaps to avenge the entire Jewish population. First, a month after Motl’s abduction, the houses of two low-ranking officials went up in flames. This was arson, without a doubt, and the usual suspects were members of the Polish underground. But then, two months later, there was a similar incident in Baranavichy, and this time a fire was started at the house of the assessor, the governor’s local representative. The police declared a state of emergency, a reward was offered in exchange for information about the arsonist and heavy penalties were announced for anyone who dared to aid the criminal’s escape. Threatening envoys were sent to the leaders of the Jewish community. After all, the Russian army provided a living bulwark against rioters and pogroms, and if it transpired that Jews were indeed sheltering the outlaw, the soldiers would no longer be able to protect them from an angry mob.

  The next victim in line was one of Leib Stein’s thugs. No-one knew how it happened, but while the child-catcher was on the road, an unknown perpetrator broke into his home and abducted his blameless son.

  The last person to pay the price was Motal’s very own sborchik, whose role required that he fill the conscription quotas imposed by the army. In this case, the fire was considered exceptionally violent, at least to the minds of the people of Motal, although it was not clear how one arson could be more violent than another, save for the fact that it had taken place in their town and had targeted a Jew, one of their own. At this point, though, it became clear to all that Motl Abramson was involved in this affair, and the community leaders had no doubt that these despicable acts of vengeance had to be stopped. If he continued, Motl might draw the entire Jewish community into a bloodbath. After all, the King of Kings had not consecrated the Jews above all other nations, only for them to drown in the slime of secular politics and deals. This is why they accepted any form of government that came their way and why they would sell their wares to the Russian army and also to the Russians’ enemies, without thinking that this created any conflict of interest. They were not political because they had only come to lodge in Poland, “Poh-lin”, until the coming of the Messiah, the Son of David who would lead them to Jerusalem. The Abramson affair, however, pitted them against the authorities and threatened to drag all the Jews into a vortex of escalating violence. If a sheigetz turns out to be a murderer, he is nothing more than a madman, but if a Jew is an arsonist, then all żyds are traitors. They had no choice. Motl Abramson had to be turned in.

  However it was done, and whoever gave him away, the information was accurate enough to prompt ten policemen to surprise the Abramson household in the middle of the night and arrange a roll-call of their children. Scholom Abramson asked them to count the children in their beds, but the officer in charge insisted on waking all of them, including a one-year-old infant. Indeed, the tally was seven children, an exact match with the records, three boys and four girls, the same number as the Patriarchs and the Matriarchs in the Torah. Scholom Abramson shrugged as if the matter were settled. But instead, the officer examined the papers of each child, until he reached the eldest of them, a boy of about fourteen, and yelled, “Name!”

  “Yaki Abramson,” the boy answered confidently, and the policeman carefully inspected the certificate, and muttered, “Well, then, um . . . How old are you, Yaki?”

  “He doesn’t speak Polish,” Scholom Abramson said.

  “Age!” the officer shouted, and then unexpectedly added in Yiddish, “Elter?”

  “Seben . . . acht . . .” stammered the father, adding, “seven, eight, they grow up so fast.”

  The officer glowered and, in the blink of an eye, the boy posing as Yaki Abramson shoved past him and ran for the door, and the other police officers, who had been standing guard, chased after him and subdued him with punches and kicks.

  * * *

  The information that reached the police had been horribly accurate. Motl Abramson had indeed been hiding in his aunt and uncle’s home, pretending to be one of their children, while one of his cousins, Yaki Abramson, had been sent away at the age of eight to apprentice as a blacksmith in another town. The policemen cuffed Motl and his uncle Scholom, while his aunt and cousins wailed. The court sentenced the accused to twenty years of hard labour in Siberia. A month later, the family was informed that they had both died before the sentence could be carried out. Official cause of death: typhoid.

  Broken into a thousand pieces, Mirka Abramson completely rejected any comfort that Motal’s community leaders and residents offered her. She agreed only to meet with Leah Berkovits, Yoshke’s mother, and in secret at that. And if the Berkovitses and Abramsons recovered with the years, the mothers of the two families continued to keep to themselves, their one concession being to meet once a year with Rabbi Schneerson of the Chevra Techiyas Hameisim, who came to Motal to report on what was known to him about their sons.

  The town’s residents respected the mothers’ wish to remain shut away in thei
r houses, even though a decade later this seemed rather extreme and excessive – if only for the sake of their other sons and daughters, who all deserved a proper shidduch and a better future. After all, more children remained at home than had been snatched away. Nonetheless, whenever people tried to explain this unassailable fact to their faces, however gently, they were met with an impolite rejection bordering on ingratitude. They came to offer comfort and help, and left feeling reviled and humiliated. When Rabbi Schneerson passed away, no-one else tried to break down the walls of their solitude.

  * * *

  Pesach Abramson and Yoshke Berkovits arrived in the cantonist camp where they were to be re-educated. They refused to sit in the Christian prayer classes and would not participate in the marching drills. Their teachers explained that this was their only ticket into Russian society, and the pair’s rebellion earned them serious floggings which tore open their backs but did not break their spirits. The continued obstinacy of the two friends resulted in the worst punishment of all: cleaning the latrines, which was as good as a death sentence, what with the exposure to the plague and dysentery.

  Motl’s escape gave Pesach hope that his brother would return and rescue him from that hell. He continued to secretly perform the commandments as he remembered them and to pray to the Father of Orphans, although he reflected that, in the light of his job in the latrines, it would have been better if God had not created man with so many pores and orifices, reversing the meaning of the blessing said upon relieving oneself. But once Pesach Abramson heard what had happened to his brother and uncle, Yoshke never again saw him cry or show any other kind of emotion. The nauseating work at the latrines appeared to compel Pesach Abramson to shed the customs of his people at the tender age of twelve. On completion of his education, he asked to train with the infantry corps, and in due course he was baptised into the bosom of the Son of God and christened Patrick Adamsky, a name that allowed him to become a field officer. He was honourably discharged with the rank of captain, and most people simply called him “Captain”.