The Investigator

The Investigator-2

Jewish nationalism is Jewish nationalism. What can you do?

I showed my ID and gave my name. The old woman mumbled something and yelled into the house, “Evka, get out here. It’s you they’ve come for!” Making her way towards me from behind a lace curtain was, apparently, the late Citizen Lilia Vorobeichik. Clearly, however, it was the same women I had spotted yesterday in the dark and, incidentally, alive.

She was wearing just a set of camiknickers. I’d seen a lot of those in Germany in ‘45.

She was perfectly at ease as she came over to me although she hadn’t done her hair and was barefoot.

“What do you want?” she asked.

I repeated my name and rank and presented my ID.

She read it carefully. You could still let other people take your papers in those days.

“Police Captain Mikhail Ivanovich Tsupkoy,” she read out, deliberately pronouncing each individual letter.

The woman looked me up and down from head to toe and wanted to add something of her own to what she saw in the document.

But I wouldn’t let her. I asked for her passport.

She fetched it. She still hadn’t got dressed or smoothed down her red hair.

As she held out the passport, I noticed that her underarm hair was light too. It was. Thick and light. I felt embarrassed for her. Being like that.

Passport details: Eva Solomonovna Vorobeichik. Registered in the town of Oster, Kozelets District, Chernigov Oblast.

I asked what she was doing in the late Lilia Vorobeichik’s house and how she was related to her.

She replied, saying, “We’re sisters. Twins. I’m going to wait here until the inheritance is sorted out. Once I’m entitled to do so, I intend to stay on. Or I might sell the house, I haven’t made my mind up yet.”

There was nothing to object to. But there was the matzo.

I said, “Citizen Vorobeichik, why are you making matzo, especially when it’s not Passover? That’s really not on. I’m giving you a serious warning. And it’s compounded by you taking on hired labour.”

Eva addressed the old woman in a loud voice. “He wants you to show him your passport. Show him. And tell him we haven’t hired you, you’re our auntie, mine and Lilka’s.”

The old woman got her passport from her room. It was well-thumbed and covered in flour. She opened it and held it out on the palm of her hand.

She had a different surname – Tsvintar. Her first name, Malka, was pure Jewish, old-fashioned, as befitted one of her years.

I asked her on which side of the family they were related.

While the old lady struggled to understand the question, Eva said with a sigh, “On the Jewish side, alright?” She didn’t lower her voice as people usually do even when she used these unflattering terms. Brazen b***h. “And we’re just going to crumble the matzo up quickly for the chickens. It’ll be a real feast. We’ve got hens, out there, behind the house. We’ll give it to them. It was just for something to do, out of boredom and sadness. Lilechka’s gone. And she loved baking. Matzo couldn’t be easier to make. Just water and flour. That’s all. Water and flour. What’s wrong with that? No yeast, no butter, nothing, not a thing, nothing at all.”

She advanced towards me as she said “nothing” and everything beneath the repellently pink camiknickers jiggled right in my face. Although height-wise she was shorter than me.

I left.

Suddenly it dawned on me that Lilia Vorobeichik hadn’t kept chickens. There had been a shed full of clutter behind the house. Moreover, I had been negligent in studying the paperwork. I had failed to check whether Eva was married. At the time many women kept their maiden names when they got married. I had no idea what her job was or where her income came from.

I scheduled a follow-up for the day after tomorrow. In order to allow Eva Vorobeichik and her so-called aunt to lower their guard.

I turned up in uniform.

The gate was locked. It was quickly opened when I knocked loudly.

The dressmaker, Polina Lvovna Laevskaya, who was in the house at the time, recognized my face and said in delight:

“You see, the Soviet system stands up for people. It really does! I was just explaining to Eva. There’s nothing on earth that the Soviet authorities can’t find out. Isn’t that so, Comrade Captain? Have you come to talk about Lilia? If it’s hard to bear, tell me first and then I’ll pass it on gently to Evocha. Hand it to her on a plate. Ever so carefully. I can do that. You know me.”

She was talking too much and taking her time about letting me into the house. I remarked that I was on duty and didn’t want to listen to anything irrelevant.

I went ahead of her and pushed the door open myself.

Order and polish reigned in the kitchen.

Laevskaya squeezed past me and through the door. As she did so, she made sure one solid leg made contact.

“I’m sorry, Comrade Captain. I’ve embarrassed you. Here you are on duty and you’re blushing. That wasn’t very nice of me. Evochka’s just popped out to the shop and Malka’s asleep. There, behind the curtain. Sleeping like a baby. It’s true what they say – old age is a second childhood.”

On the small, round table with its white, crocheted cloth stood two thimble-sized liqueur glasses and a small decanter of cherry brandy. It was immediately obvious that it was last year’s liqueur because, firstly, the new fruit had still to be picked and, secondly, it was turning to syrup. The inside of the glass was virtually coated in a layer of deep red. Like blood.

Laevskaya made herself at home and got another glass.

She turned it about in front of her face and offered it to me questioningly. “You, of course, won’t be having a nice little snifter of brandy but I’ll put it on the table for form’s sake. Just to be friendly.”

I didn’t want to cause a conflict over nothing and nodded my assent.

Laevskaya sat down.

So did I.

She was first to break the silence.

“So, what do you have to say about Lilechka?”

“I’m here about something else. And it would be better if you left now, Polina Lvovna. With the utmost respect, of course.”

“Oh, of course, I’ll go. If that’s what it takes. Just tell me one little thing. What’s happened to bring you here about something else?”

I behaved entirely properly and immediately gave myself due credit without bragging or vanity. Laevskaya had taken a shine to me and a little later I would be able to milk her for a good deal of useful and important information. With a view to receiving information in return, she would tell me all she knew.Whether she might make up anything extra was the real question.

I said meaningfully, “That’s police business. I’d like you to leave.”

She looked behind the curtain and, blinking her eyes towards it, whispered, “If it’s a secret, don’t mention it in front of Malka even if she is asleep or something. She pretends to be deaf as a post but there are no flies on her.”

Aloud and in the direction of the curtain, she said, “I’ll be guided by you. I’m going. Please, wait for Evocha. She’ll be here any minute. In the meantime, try dear Lilechka’s tasty little liqueur. What the eye doesn’t see... It’s lovely and sweet. Poor Lilechka had a sweet tooth.”

When I entered the house on Clara Zetkin Street, the clock read exactly two o’clock. I left at half past three. I read the papers on the bookshelf and listened quietly to the wireless.

Malka never emerged from behind the curtain. At the same time, I noticed that she answered little calls of nature in a pot or something of the sort.

Eva never turned up.

I drank one glass. To spite myself. It was the first time I had shown such weakness. Rules are rules. But show it I did. Right before I left. And a good job too. The liqueur was bitter and I concluded that the women hadn’t been drinking it at all. Just pretending in case someone looked in.

Next I walked all around the outside of the house. There really were chickens in the backyard. The shed had been cleared of its clutter and fitted out as a henhouse. I found light coloured crumbs and broken bread on the ground. Broken into big pieces as if to prove that it really was matzo.

The plot was enclosed by a fairly low but sturdy fence. It would be impossible for an adult to pass through the thin gaps between the slats. Which meant there was only one way into the house – through the all-too-familiar gate. I checked again although I had already ascertained this during the Lilia Vorobeichik case. Next, I made a grade A study of the house.

And the backyard and outside the front. But a lot had changed in the past two months. Just look at the chickens.

I observed the gate from various vantage points. No one went into the house or came out either.

At 1700 hours, I gave up and called it a day.

There was real work waiting for me and I had no right to be distracted by a personal matter. Even then my conscience told me that it was personal.

That night I dreamed about the small, round table at the Vorobeichiks’ house.

They wanted to lift the body of the murdered woman onto the table in its coffin to begin the farewells. The coffin wouldn’t fit. It was losing balance, threatening to fall.

They lifted the coffin down.

On the table lay another woman, the same as the one in the coffin but naked, who said, moreover, “That’s not how you do it. This is.”

She curled up in a foetal position. And that worked well.

They said, “Since you fit so well there, we’ll say our last goodbyes to you and Lilia can continue to thrive and prosper.”

It’s possible I made those last words up but that was the essence of it.

I make no secret of it. I immediately took an awful lot on myself. I didn’t share my impressions with my work colleagues. And, as a result, stewed it all over by myself.

To all intents and purposes, there was nothing going on. But I began to keep a very serious eye on the house in Clara Zetkin Street. When I wasn’t engaged in urgent police work, of course.

In this way, I established that the dressmaker Laevskaya was constantly visiting the house (several times in forty-eight hours).

Several times, a Jewish man of very advanced years darted in and out with a bag.

There was a dog barking. Previously, in the late Lilia Vorobeichik’s time, there had been no guard dog in the yard.

The Tsvintar woman didn’t put her nose outside.

And, most importantly, there was no sign whatsoever of Eva Vorobeichik.

Light showed in the windows on the side of the street where the fence was lowest until late at night. Until about eleven o’clock.

Facts are stubborn things. And these facts were saying they needed to be understood. I couldn’t figure them out.

Just one fact was abundantly clear and that was Eva Vorobeichik. The one and only.

Incidentally, my family life at that time consisted of a family of three: me, my wife Lyubov Gerasimovna and our four-year-old daughter Anechka.

We were renting a room from an elderly couple named Shchupak and aspired to nothing better since we had been promised our own space in a nice new barracks on Voykov Street before too long. And, if we had another baby in short order we might even hope for a flat in an official block on Kotsyubinsky Street. But we hadn’t managed to produce that other baby. And particularly not to order.