The Investigator

The Investigator-3

And so, off my own bat, wearing ordinary trousers and a white shirt, I set off to see Polina Lvovna Laevskaya.

She wasn’t surprised. Greeted me like a dear friend.

“Mikhail Ivanovich, at last! The things people are saying in town, the things people are coming up with… And about you in particular. I’m not talking about all the different gossip. You know about that from work without me. I can tell you what’s being said about you, if you like. And you can take action. Because you can’t let it carry on. Not nowadays, you can’t.”

I asked what she meant exactly.

Laevskaya made a show of being embarrassed and began her account.

This is what she said.

Rumours about the Vorobeichik case were rife in Chernigov. No-one believed that the now late actor, Moiseenko, was guilty. I was being accused of prejudice against the Jewish people and of blocking the investigation. In a word, people were saying, it was all a shady business. And when Malka Tsvintar told her neighbours I had called in and made Eva Vorobeichik’s acquaintance, Malka Tsvintar was informed in return that they expected nothing else of me since I had personally brought the investigation to an artificial conclusion and was now intent on silencing Eva Vorobeichik as Lilia’s immediate heir.

At this point, I caught Laevskaya out.

I said:

“And when did the old Tsvintar woman spread all this nonsense? What day was it? Yesterday? The day before? Or when? Have a think, Polina Lvovna. Rumours take time. Rumours are not little children. It takes more than a second to produce them.”

Laevskaya shot back:

“I don’t know. But Malka has been talking to people. And people have been talking to her. You won’t stop her mouth.”

But who could Malka have been talking to any great extent? After all, she was new in town. Laevskaya was another matter.

“I hereby declare, Polina Lvovna, that you are the person behind these rumours. And that the Tsvintar woman wasn’t popping in to see you, you were going to see her a hundred times a day. And then you spread all sorts of nonsense around town. Look me in the eye when I’m talking to you! There’s nothing on the floor. Or on the ceiling. Look me in the eye when I ask nicely, please.”

Laevskaya looked balefully in the general area of my face but not in my eye. Of course, she wasn’t brazen enough for that.

“You know something, Mikhail Ivanovich… Here you are in your nice white shirt. And no gun. So I can tell you – you don’t know everything and you can’t bring everything to light.”

“What light are you talking about, Polina Lvovna? Show me! Go on!”

I was losing patience. Not because some goggle-eyed piece of mutton dressed as lamb was pressing her fat thighs against me but because I was insulted. I was going out on a limb. But was as if she was looking down from above and could see.

“Mikhail Ivanovich, Lilechka’s case is closed, under lock and key, isn’t it?”

“And?”

“And… who has the key?”

“I have no intention of trying to guess your Jewish riddles. That’s not what I shed blood for. Even now, I’m taking a risk for your sake.”

At this point, Polina Lvovna grabbed me by the arm and hissed right in my face and the breath of that hiss was like Red Moscow perfume only musty and rank:

“How long have you been in this town? So, five years. At most. But it’s not about how long. I haven’t been here all that long either. But you, Mikhail Ivanovich, only talk to people when your works means you have to. Whereas I know everything and everyone because I choose to. And you’re not doing me a favour by taking my hand. I’m the one who can do you a favour - or not. It doesn’t matter who’s saying what. What matters is that it’s about you in person. And things don’t look good for you personally. It could be reported to the Party Committee. And taken even further.”

I didn’t understand a thing. Maybe she’d been drinking that perfume and was drunk on it. After that rancid cherry brandy of theirs, I wouldn’t put it past her. No. She was sober. If she’d been one of ours, I might still have had my doubts. I know the Jews! A man maybe but the women, they really don’t drink.

There was a knock at the door.

It was a customer with some fabric.

Polina Lvovna graciously spread the fabric on the table. She waved the crepe de chine in front of my face so that it billowed out.

She said:

“And is your wife, Lyubov Gerasimovna, planning to have a nice new frock made? If she is, she should come to me. I’ve made a note of all her measurements. She told me you really like what I’ve made for her. A woollen dress for winter – terracotta. She’s such a pale little thing. Terracotta puts a bit of colour in her cheeks. That was my advice. Thank you for coming to settle your account. Say hello to your wife. And little girl. Give the little one a kiss from me, precious little poppet that she is.”

And she began to chat to the woman who had come for a fitting.

I didn’t know my Lyuba had her clothes made by Laevskaya. I didn’t keep count of her frocks. There was nothing to count in any case. There was one, terracotta, for going out and another, brown, that she wore all the time. That was for the winter. For summer, she had a pinafore dress or something like that.

No doubt that schemer Laevskaya was now discussing me with her customer. Who knew what she would concoct? And how many women went to see her in a day? Well, two for certain. And those two would talk to another two and so on and on. No need for the Tsvintar woman at all.

And all of it baseless. Absolute twaddle.

However, if I were the type to dwell on such silliness aimed at me in person, I wouldn’t be working in law-enforcement. Nor would any of our officers. We wouldn’t even have won the war. It’s not that there shouldn’t be anything personal. A person should have everything in perfect proportion: the personal and the public. But the personal should be as little and as humble as possible.

I was particularly distressed that Laevskaya had hinted that I had been negligent in the Vorobeichik case. And yet everything was done in accordance with socialist law and order. Records kept and so on. It wasn’t anyone’s fault that Moiseenko had tragically departed his own life.

I reproduce what he said.

“Lilka was a fool. She believed in gypsies. A gypsy once told her fortune, before the war, telling her she’d have a husband whose name began with an ‘R’. Lilka used to mimic the gypsy to a T. ‘You won’t be able to resist that “R”. You’ll give in straight away. And marry him’. And she would toss the hem of her skirt and shimmy her shoulders. What didn’t she do to entrance me? I struggled to free myself. I was entirely devoted to my art. I had learnt the whole of Aleksandr Tvardovsky’s Vasily Terkin off by heart to perform when we visited the regions. But she knocked me off course with her love. When I was going away to Nosovka for the first performance, I had a real skinful. I was drunk when I set out. I thought I’d sober up. I didn’t. I got a slap on the wrist, a kick up the backside. You might think that’s why I killed her.”

I tried to corner him with an innocent question.

“Because of Vasily Terkin?” I looked him steadily in the eye.

Moiseenko looked right in my pupils, just as steadily.

“Yes,” he replied. “Because of Terkin too. And the fact that she had completely discombobulated me, telling me I couldn’t even imagine what goes on in warfare. Or what had happened to her. I’m practising a new role, reciting it off by heart and she’s couldn’t give a toss about my talent. And what did happen to her to make her know and understand what no-one else understands? She didn’t say. Just strung me along out of spite.”

“And what did happen, for example? Any suggestions?”

“You need it, you dig around for it. You can put me to bed with a shovel, I won’t say a thing about the woman I used to love. Not even if it’s true. I may have boozed away my conscience but not my art. And that’s how it is for us artists – we don’t kiss and tell!”

I quickly cut the lad down to size:

“You have nothing to do with art. You know that yourself. Let’s assume you’re the killer. Who else could have knifed Lilia? Apart from you?”

At this point, Moiseenko appeared to get a grip and drop his posturing. He said nothing for a moment.

Then declared in no uncertain terms,

“Apart from me, no-one. No-one.”

Inwardly, I was inclined to think he was the guilty party. There was the circumstantial evidence too. I’ve mentioned that already. He was drunk when he arrived in Nosovka. Lilia was murdered on the day Moiseenko came back into town. But he hadn’t come back right away. It was two days after the planned performance. He’d become entrenched at the house of a friend, chief librarian Ivan Nestorovich Shostak. Drowning his sorrows with him. Shostak testified that Moiseenko had said bad things about Vorobeichik and threatened to kill her. As it turned out, he had.

And then there were these rumours in town. “I might be poor but I’m honest,” my mother used to say. And I would repeat it too in unfavourable circumstances. Facing various losses, for example. But I had never been threatened with the loss of my good name.

I decided to come at things from the other end.

The old Jew seemed perfectly at home going to see Vorobeichik and the Tsvintar woman. I saw that he didn’t hesitate for a second at the gate, just pushed it straight open. Strangers would hesitate even if only for the tiniest moment. Whereas the old chap would leave the house slowly, looking back at the windows, casting an eye over the fence. Strangers don’t leave like that. Strangers don’t look back.

Chernigov isn’t a big town. From Red Bridge to Trinity Hill. From the Rampart to Five Corners. That’s it, all of it. It’s easy to find someone. Especially a Jew. They all know one another. It’s historical.

I went to see Veniamin Yakovlevich Shtadler. A well-known figure, originally from a rabbi’s family, who fervently welcomed the Revolution and the Civil War. He fought in the Red Army. Earned a number of medals, joined the Bolshevik Party. Then, clearly, he was purged but not sent to jail. And the reason why not was that somehow, when he was first questioned, he had bitten off part of his tongue. He banged his chin on the investigator’s desk or something like that. These things do happen.

It was concluded that he had gone crazy since he had independently embarked upon an act of self-mutilation.

He was taken to Kiev for assessment. There the final verdict was a complete absence of mental capacity.

As a result of his self-inflicted injuries, Shtadler lost the ability to speak. Most annoying was that this was when he had been called as a witness, invited for a little chat. And the investigator was a relative, a distant one. He must have asked Shtadler an indelicate question or something and the latter was so indignant that he pulled his little stunt. The relative, incidentally, soon was sent to jail.

Shtadler’s mental capacity returned in 1941 precisely. His heroic past awoke in him with terrible force and he found himself in Yankel Tsegelnik’s Partisan Detachment. He became something akin to a rabbi. He was said to pray, mumbling and murmuring, but eventually he was seriously wounded on several occasions and sent back to the rear for treatment.