The Slaughterman's Daughter

by Yaniv Iczkovits

  “Certainly, sir,” Pazhari says, sickened by his own obsequiousness. No matter how far the orphaned servant boy has come since he left the Komarovs and fled to St Petersburg, he still ends up grovelling before authority.

  Mishenkov retrieves his bottle of rum, pours a small drop for Pazhari and a generous measure for himself, takes a gulp and says, “The agents are saying that the suspects are more dangerous than the Narodnaya Volya revolutionaries. Three men and a woman, filthy żyds, I want us to start the search immediately!”

  “Absolutely, sir!” the colonel nods.

  Usually, at this point Pazhari will leave Mishenkov’s quarters and return an hour later with a more sensible proposition to mitigate the general’s order. But now, taken aback by Mishenkov’s uncharacteristic determination, he blurts out, “But what about training, sir? A manhunt is exhausting, but the soldiers badly need their training. The riflemen are unskilled, the horsemen cannot stay on their horses, and, worst of all, the gunners keep misfiring.”

  “We will combine the search with a joint exercise for our entire corps. Excellent idea, Pazhari!”

  If there is one thing that makes soldiers cringe, gives them a dry mouth, an itchy back and a terrible rash, it is the words “joint exercise”. Too late, Pazhari realises his mistake. Now, for the sake of finding four suspects, three of whom are being held in a cell a mere verst away from Mishenkov’s office, the general will send out the entire corps to melt in the scorching heat. What can he do? He must find a solution, and quickly.

  “Give the order, Pazhari, now!”

  “Yes, sir.” Pazhari slowly sips his rum.

  “Right this minute!”

  Even as he is making his way to his officers, which is usually the time when Pazhari comes up with an alternative to Mishenkov’s brilliant ideas, nothing springs to his mind on this occasion. One option is to speak candidly with the general, tell him that the Father is their guest and ask him to play along. But Pazhari knows all too well that there are two types of people: those who sanctify the law, and those who follow their own conscience. The former will always win any argument, and the latter will always do the right thing. Mishenkov belongs to the former group, and Pazhari can already hear in his head his superior’s reply: “As sad as it may be, old man, it is not up to us to judge right and wrong. If the authorities have decided that Zizek Breshov is a murderer, who are we to help him escape from the law? If we all did as we pleased, following ‘our conscience’ as they say, or in other words ‘our whims’, anarchy would prevail.”

  Pazhari is not a scholar, nor is he an expert on conjecture, and yet he racks his brain for a way to persuade Mishenkov. Completely out of sorts by the time he enters his tent, he glances at the topographical maps on his desk, looks for inspiration from a half-eaten apple rotting on the ground, and listens to the howls of a stray dog. Still, he cannot work out a way to dissuade Mishenkov from complying with Novak’s demands.

  Finally, he calls in the captain of the guardhouse, Captain Istomin, a strapping officer whom Pazhari has come to trust. He stares into the young man’s eyes. “I will understand if you refuse to follow this order. You should know that if it fails, you and your squad will be tried for treason. If it’s any consolation, I will stand trial alongside you. You must escort the three detainees to Minsk before the unit returns from the joint exercise. They need to find a man called Zvi-Meir Speismann. Help them find him. The only people who may come near the detainees are your five best men at the garrison. They must give them food, water and medical treatment. Do not touch Patrick Adamsky. Lay him down in the barouche and find him a nurse. Keep the three of them alive and let no-one else know about it. That is all. Will you do it?”

  “Yes, sir!” Istomin salutes and leaves.

  * * *

  The next day, with great haste, Lieutenant General Mishenkov orders the joint exercise to begin, leaving immediately thereafter for a few hours in Nesvizh, “to obtain a few authorisations, visit an old friend, take care of budgets and supplies, you understand”. He leaves the manoeuvre in Colonel Pazhari’s charge, and asks that he receive constant updates on the search, until he returns to take back the reins of command.

  Pazhari is on tenterhooks. He does not know how long it will take for Novak to learn of the four outlaws’ visit to the camp, so he decides that he must beat him to it, and shortly before leaving for the exercise he sends an urgent missive to the Okhrana’s bureaus in Grodno and Minsk. He must throw Novak a bone, Pazhari knows, but not one that is too juicy. He reports that three strange men had passed by the camp; he is unsure if they had a woman with them or not and could not verify their names. One presented himself to the guards as Patrick Breshov, and the other said he was Zizek Adamsky, or something along those lines. In any event, they did not stay for very long or raise the sentries’ suspicion.

  As Pazhari rides along at the head of the manoeuvre, he is preoccupied by the possibility of a confrontation with Novak. How long will this exercise last? If Mishenkov were asked, he would say until the mission was completed, without bothering to clarify which mission he was referring to and which was the more pressing: capturing the suspects or training his troops. Who remains in the camp? Well, the sentries, a few detainees (three of whom are held in a hidden prison cell), a handful of administrators, sick and wounded soldiers, at least two horses, and several hundred sentinels and spies in the various guard posts, some of which are quite remote and at least one that is manned by a scrawny cantor with a prodigious appetite.

  The cantor, by the way, is increasingly convinced that army life is the right life for him. This Oleg he was sent to replace must be a strange man. Why give up such a sweet job? All he is asked to do is sit in one place all day long. There is no shortage of food, although the sardines are long gone and judging by how fast he has been wolfing down the tinned meat, that will last for only a few more hours, and the crackers – how should he say this? – the crackers are clogging internal pathways that need to remain clear. But one should never complain about a full stomach.

  And most of all, he should be thankful for the company they have arranged for him. The cantor is not a sap. He knows that Olga is just a blonde scarecrow. When he speaks to her, he knows that his words rebound from a sheet of tarpaulin. And yet her indifference is refreshing; Cantor needn’t mince his words or fear a slap in the face or having his teeth broken for upsetting her.

  Olga hasn’t refused him even once since they met. Cantor lays at her feet rancid cabbage and leftover cucumber. Lucky that there are people in the world like Oleg, who, unhappy with their lot, go off and pursue other fancies. Cantor is happy to take Oleg’s place, although someone should come soon to replenish his food supplies, otherwise he will have to return to camp and demand what he is owed. He is not worried for himself, but it is the least he can do for a respectable lady like Olga, who always keeps an eye on him and protects him from the howling wolves at night.

  Grodno

  I

  * * *

  At that very moment, Colonel Piotr Novak is heading east from Baranavichy to the town of Grodno. Why Grodno? Well . . .

  In the week it took for him to recover from that accursed night in Adamsky’s tavern, the public house was converted into a makeshift H.Q. for the secret police and all the drunks who usually haunted the place were kicked out. Once he was able to, Novak left the tavern and headed for the market to stretch his battered leg. For the first time in his life, he paused by the żyds’ stalls. Leaning on his cane and gritting his teeth, he observed these creatures who have always struck him as primitive and inferior.

  He was repelled by their appearance, their strange attire. The bushy beards, the sunken eyes, the way they wet their finger with their tongue as they browse through their mysterious books. There is an entire world outside, and yet they’d rather keep their eyes glued to their boxy script? Damn them. And their foul smell, don’t they ever wash? Not for nothing are they surro
unded by swarms of pestilent flies.

  There is no need to lecture Novak about how all humans are created in God’s image. There’s no need to tell him that a child can be shaped in any mould. You can raise them to think that sitting indoors and studying all day every day is normal. You can raise them to think that men walking around with sidelocks is normal. You can raise them to think that covering their heads at all times with either a hat or yarmulke is normal. Novak knows all this and more, and yet he thinks they should at least have the decency to blend in, to make even just a minimal attempt to integrate with the rest of society. But precisely because he is aware of his instinctive dislike for Jews, Novak begins to wonder if he might have acted no better than a member of the rabble when he launched into his investigation without a shred of serious reflection. God give him strength, he only met the four foul żyds a week ago. The lady of the group murdered his agents, another member of the group crushed his leg, and their toothpick of a companion wouldn’t stop singing. The one with the most alarming appearance, the scarred-mouth thug, was silent as a rock. None of them could be described as scholarly. If they had worn plain peasant clothes, they could have easily passed as local farmers. The woman was indeed intriguing, a Jewish Joan of Arc, perhaps, but goddammit what woman behaves like a wild beast? How does she do it? How can she be insolent and arresting at the same time?

  As he wandered the busy market, Novak forced himself to stop and observe the żyds carefully. He eyed shabby carts piled with a disarray of kitchen utensils and work tools. He was puzzled by the queue at Levinsohn’s – their famous pâtissier – and he made a note of the cattle-like etiquette as the line crammed together without complaint. He studied their gestures in conversation – an old lady yelling at a vendor selling vegetables who yelled back just as loudly, only for the pair to embrace and exchange copecks and cucumbers the next moment. There was no space, just a human mass whose every member is compelled to quarrel and complain, as if every transaction must reach climactic dissonance before it can be resolved. Every word in their bizarre language sounds conspiratorial and sickening. Why can’t they find a place of their own? Why do they insist on infiltrating a country that doesn’t want them?

  To his annoyance, Novak’s thoughts led him to the same conclusions over and over again, not a very helpful outcome for his investigation. What did he want? To understand their customs. This is why he paused to observe. And yet his observations have yielded only conjectures that reinforce his starting principles, so perhaps his method is flawed? Perhaps, instead of observing, he should try first-hand experience instead.

  Novak had never approached żyds before without declaring his rank and status. Every conversation he held with them was for the sole purpose of squeezing out information, which is what he intended to do this time around. He approached the vagrant who had just completed the loud cucumber transaction.

  “Hello,” Novak greeted him in Polish. The man nodded uncertainly. Immediately, Novak registered the nearby vendors ogling him as one. “How much are they?” Novak asked, picking up a few cucumbers. “Acht und zwanzig,” the old man replied, removing a rotten tomato from his stand.

  “How much?” Novak repeated, and asked the vendor to write down the figure.

  “Acht und zwanzig,” the vendor said again, ignoring the request.

  Novak said nothing more. The old man’s emaciated face was spotted like the face of a ravenous hyena, his speckled hands tended to his vegetables like the hands of a farmer turning soil, his nose was inexplicably bluish and its tip black like the tip of a pencil. Novak took out a rouble coin and slammed it on the scale with a metallic clatter, but the old man did not so much as glance at the money. Novak returned the cucumbers and swept the coin back into his pocket. The vendor’s nimble fingers quickly rearranged the cucumbers on the pile.

  Novak moved away to queue up for Levinsohn’s patisserie. A few peasants further ahead in the queue were chatting with the Jews in a hybrid language of Polish and Yiddish. Novak took this to be an encouraging sign – maybe the Jews here would talk to him. But instead, the queue around him melted away. What was happening? This was the best patisserie in Baranavichy. Everyone said that Levinsohn’s cakes were impossible to beat. People waited in this queue around the clock, come rain or come shine. And as soon as Novak arrived, they all vanished?

  A strange feeling crept over him: his presence there was unwelcome, he was a stranger in his own country. Worse still, he seemed to know absolutely nothing about the customs of the place. Having always been immersed in the affairs of the Department for Public Security and Order, he had never behaved like a normal citizen before, and the żyds were the first to notice it. He did not get up in the morning and go to the same office, he did not return home to the same woman at the end of every day. He lived in the shadows and his face proved it. What did he have to do to be recognised as a normal human being by the local Jews?

  Eventually, Levinsohn turned to him and Novak pointed at a slice of plum or cherry cake, he was not sure which. He expected change from his rouble coin, but Levinsohn served him his cake wrapped in paper, shrugged and turned to serve the next customer. Could this be the price of a single slice? It was exorbitant on any scale, the price of an entire meal. The patrons served before him, he seemed to recall, had not paid as much for their slices of the very same cake. But not knowing how to ask the question, and finding the pricing policy incomprehensible, Novak stormed out of the shop. As soon as he had gone, the queue reformed as Jews and locals squeezed in together again, apparently relieved to see the back of him.

  Novak was relieved too, to return to observing them at a safe distance. The line that separated him from them was drawn again. He had felt out of place at closer quarters. As an Okhrana commander, his job was to sow fear and suspicion in people’s hearts. He knew that an exchange of a few words with any one of the people huddled together in the queue would be all it took for them to pull out a dagger and stab the back of the person in front of them. He could turn them all against each other at the drop of a hat. But in the absence of a concrete threat, they live side by side in peace. All it takes is a nice slice of wild berry cake (he was wrong to think it was plum or cherry; it is a dense confection of blueberries and white mulberry, delectable!), to make the Pole forget that most żyds earn twice as much as he does, and that this yarmulke-wearing horde own most of the businesses in town.

  On a philosophical level, it could be said that humans are creatures with strictly material needs and wants. All the Poles need is a slice of cake, even one only half as good as the cake that is sliding down his throat at that moment, to make peace with the żyds. Luckily for Novak, however, the Poles abhor material concerns more than anything. They always try to show that they are spiritual, divinely inspired. He knows that without the Poles’ “values” there would be no violence and, preferable as this might be, without violence Novak would be out of a job. Therefore, all he has to do is ask the Poles for their thoughts on the matter: “What is more important to you – morals or mulberries?”, and in just twenty-four hours, Novak could focus the mind of the mob and have them setting fire to half the town’s homes. But perhaps there could be another way to infiltrate the ranks of the żyds. If he cannot merely observe them, or talk to them as one normal person to another, then, he thought, the only solution is to become one of them. He would need a particularly good lie to cover his identity, and an interpreter of course, preferably a local who knows the żyds’ customs and is fluent in their conspiratorial language. If Novak were to approach them as one of their own, surely they would open up to him.

  But what about his appearance? Well, it is a sorry thing to admit, but the colonel’s face has long been worn and weather-beaten. Once he happened to overhear one of his agents joking with his colleagues that no-one would ever suspect Novak of working with the Okhrana because he looked too much like a żyd. And now his decrepit appearance might prove useful. This investigation, he was convinced,
would force him to dig very deep. He must mask everything about himself if he wants to find the culprits.

  II

  * * *

  Novak retreated from the market, his limp growing more pronounced with every stride. He returned to Adamsky’s tavern to find his deputy, Albin Dodek, poring over a map. The north arrow was pointing straight at Dodek’s flabby belly, as he puzzled over the symbols on the map as though trying to break a cipher.

  “Anything interesting, Dodek?” Novak asked, and his deputy blushed as if caught red-handed.

  “Yes, sir, I’m trying to work out which of the nearby villages they might be hiding in.”

  “And what conclusions have you reached?”

  “If they are not in an army camp, which is highly unlikely, they are definitely in one of the villages around here.”

  His deputy’s confident dismissal of the likelihood of the fugitives escaping to an army camp immediately made Novak suspect that this was exactly where they were.

  “Have our messengers returned with an answer from General Mishenkov?”

  “No, sir, we dispatched them only yesterday, but I did add a note saying that it was very urgent,” Dodek said. “I wrote: ‘Anyone hiding information about their identity or whereabouts will be considered a full accomplice’, or something along those lines.”