The Investigator

The Investigator-4

After the war, he showed up in Chernigov again. Still not quite all there but basically intact. The police would contact him when they needed to find something out from the Jewish community. He wasn’t on the staff but he never refused to help. When he was asked questions, he would write the answers on a piece of paper. His writing was ugly and slanting. I know that, by nature, Jews have to write from right to left rather than left to right like other people. That’s what the language of the Jews is like, their writing in general. His handwriting had become unbalanced, what with all this relearning.

I described the old man to Shtadler and with his help established that the person in question was one Zusel Tabachnik. He was living in temporary digs in Liskovitsa. At the foot of Trinity Hill.

For the record: a sizeable Jewish population had built up at the foot of Trinity Hill. They had been there since time immemorial, according to people in the know. After the war, their numbers didn’t fall as some people had hoped, they simply increased. Those who had been killed were replaced by people from other areas. People who had nobody left anywhere at all.

Contrary to popular belief, man clings not to a place but to property. Without property, he has no ties. Although there may still be relatives who can provide support. Over time, however, relatives as an institution have lost all importance. But in those days the Jews still had something of the kind. And so they would come and take lodgings with even the remotest of relations. Especially from the small shtetls surrounding the town and from isolated villages. Where, during the war, they had been a thorn in the flesh and were almost all wiped out unless they were evacuated or went to the front. And who was it who went to the front? The men. As for the women, children and old men – well, that’s obvious.

Comrade Stalin, when foreign journalists tried to catch him out by asking why he hadn’t evacuated all the Jews, said: “My Jews have all gone.”

Perhaps they had at that.

Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov, the Russian genius, was right: in nature, nothing disappears. A loss in one place means an increase somewhere else. And so there was an increase in Chernigov.

There was one comrade who served with me in the police, a friend, you might say. I haven’t got a bad thing to say about him. Conscience, honour – all present and correct. A veteran. A Jew. Evsey Gutin. Born and bred in Chernigov. Knew everyone in town and could read them like an open book.

I decided to ask his advice in an informal setting. And not outright but, going by the book, in a roundabout way. I bought him a bottle of vodka and turned up at his house the following Saturday.

My visit didn’t come at a good time. Evsey’s wife was bathing the children, of whom there were three. Aged from two to nearly eight. And, curiously, all boys. The oldest Grishka, then Vovka, then Iosif.

Evsey had been invalided out just as Ukraine was liberated and everyone was allowed to go home. And so he back he went to his own home. The house was of the kind that no-one set their sights on during the war. And so he settled back in and welcomed his wife and her father back from evacuation. Evsey’s own father, mother and three sisters had, naturally, been shot owing to wartime conditions.

When war broke out, Evsey had been married for about five years. To Belka. They were regarded as childless. His wife couldn’t carry her pregnancies to term. But then the children began to come along.

And there was Belka, giving them a bath.

It was a joyful, irksome affair. A family affair, of course. But I really loved children just then, mainly because of my own little daughter, my Anechka-Gannusya, and I weighed in alongside Belka and Evsey. I brought over the water, took the heated pails off the stove. It was a wood stove so I chopped the wood up a bit more, just a tad.

We all dried the children off together to make sure they didn’t catch cold. Belka towelled down the littlest, carefully, carefully, while Evsey and I played rough and tumble with the other two.

All the little lads had been circumcised. I took particular notice. But in a good way.

Jokingly, I said, “Why on earth did you mark them all out like that, Evsey? Honestly, not to mention you being a Communist but, as a responsible father to your sons, how could you circumcise them and make it so easy for a potential enemy to spot an undercover agent?”

At that point, Belka’s father, came into the house, Dovid Srulevich. Or Sergeyevich, which he himself preferred to avoid but which Belka and Evsey used when introducing him.

I had sort of hinted to Evsey, that he, a Communist, shouldn’t be embarrassed by any names at all and even less by patronymics. According to his passport, he was Abramovich but he would introduce himself as Arkadiyevich. And his father-in-law was Srulevich but he’d turned him into Sergeyevich. That’s not good. No-one who stoops to that sort of repudiation deserves to call themselves a man.

“The war’s over. There’s no need to hide”: that’s roughly what I told him.

With his usual, crooked little smile, Evsey replied:

“It’s because it sounds better.”

“Better, be damned. You’re not to blame for the fact that your names don’t really suit to the Russian language. If I’m honest, they don’t really suit any language. What are you supposed to do? Give yourselves aliases or dogs’ names?”

Evsey wasn’t even smiling now.

“Aliases and dogs’ names? What have they got to do with it? I substituted a Russian name.”

I wanted to change the subject. I could see I’d hit a real nerve.

“I meant that, for you, our names are only aliases anyway so you’d be better off keeping your own.”

Of course, I hadn’t expressed my opinion particularly well. But Evsey didn’t take offence. On the contrary, he became friendlier towards me.

Now Evsey laughed and nodded towards Dovid.

“That’s the one who did it. I kept an eye on each of them so that it didn’t happen and Dovid sneaked each one out from under my nose. Just who did Grisha and Vovka, I don’t know. Dovid won’t let on. But Iosif was done by that filthy Zusel. Yoska was named after Comrade Stalin. And Dovid was well aware of it. I specifically told him not to touch the little one with his Jewish notions. But no, the bastard went and spoiled Yoska too. Belka must have been involved. She’s completely under his thumb. Fine. Circumcised, uncircumcised, so what, if they’re healthy? I don’t think the Germans will be coming back. And I’m not afraid of anyone else. Or the Germans come to that. I gave them a real thrashing, Mishka, you know I did. And it’s in honour of that, of that thrashing, that I made my lads. And I’ll make more. Belka and I have decided we won’t stop. But we’ll have to keep a closer eye on Dovid and tear Belka off a strip to prevent her propagating religion. Still, what’s done is done.”

But I could tell that Evsey himself wasn’t really opposed to Dovid’s superstitious procedure. It’s certainly difficult to knock things out of folk, especially customs and prejudices, if they’ve flourished among the people for centuries. Whether it’s nationalism or anything else. Educating people isn’t easy or done in one fell swoop.

This tender scene took us towards dinner.

We sat at the table. The children were racing around, snatching bits of food, playing and making a din.

We ate.

I poured us all one glass, then another.

Evsey kept pace with me.

Dovid didn’t touch a drop. He took charge of the children, quietly trying to rein them in.

Then, he couldn’t take it any longer. Fork in the air, the food half-way to his mouth, and presumably spurred on by what he’d been thinking, he said:

“In Tsarist times, Jews didn’t drink. They were Jews with a capital J. The Jews were kept under far more observation than anyone else. The only way they could stand out was if they didn’t drink, were always sober. That earned them a few good marks. There were bad marks for everything else, that’s for sure. Mi-i-i-nuses! Special laws were passed for the Jews. ‘Don’t let them in here. Don’t put them there.’ But in Soviet times, everyone started all over again with a small letter – Russians and Jews alike. And in Soviet times, the Jews became just like everyone else. No more restrictions. And so the Jews drink too. What’s sauce for the goose… Even though there are no good marks left. Not even the teeniest-tiniest one. Just minuses, all the way.”

Evsey was pouring the drinks just then and his hand shook. He stole a look at the children. They stood, frozen to the spot, straining to hear.

Evsey took the glass he’d poured, drank it down deliberately and said to his father-in-law:

“You might think about the children, Dovid Sergeyevich. Saying such things in front of them.”

Belka waved her arms at them both, the old man and her husband.

“Right, you’ve gone too far! Now get on with your meal quietly. It’s time to put the children to bed and there you are yelling.” She hissed at the little boys, “Now then, geschwind schlafen, you little wretches! Mattresses out!”

It was a game for the children – rolling the mattresses out on the floor, making the beds, swapping places till they were blue in the face. She was their mother. What other explanation is required? A mother knows how to soothe her child.

Dovid Srulevich joined in as well, dragging the pillows over, moving them around. Being involved.

Belka secretly slipped us the open bottle and some of the food.

“Out,” she whispered. “Go out in the yard. Drink the rest on the logs. Out in the fresh air.”

In a nutshell, I got down to business.

It turned out Evsey knew the name Tabachnik. I didn’t even use the name, just described the old man in passing. An accurate description. That you’d recognize if you knew him. Evsey immediately came up with the name.

“He’s an odd fish, that one. Ought to be behind bars. Or better still in hospital. A dodgy character.”

“What’s dodgy about him? He’s not quite right in the head but he’s harmless.”

“But that’s the point. He’s spreading nonsense. You get propagandists canvassing before the elections to our Supreme Soviet, don’t you? Just turning up. A knock at the door and in they come. No invitation required. Everyone understands they’re there on important state business. Well, he’s some sort of propagandist too. Not for the unbreakable block but for who the hell knows what.”

“Counter-revolution? Against Stalin and Soviet power?”

“Well no, he doesn’t go that far. He only visits people of Jewish nationality. He’s got lists written down. That’s what our lot are saying. The Jews, I mean. He’s always doing the rounds. They send him packing and he’s off again. Like a clockwork toy.”

“And what, no-one’s dropped a line to you know where?”

“He hasn’t stopped, so no, they can’t have. Although they should.”

“You do it then. They’ll call him in, read him the riot act, give him a bollocking. What is it he’s campaigning for?”

“All sorts of nonsense. You, my dear Jews, you don’t exist anymore, he says. You think you do but you don’t. He says that sort of stuff then goes on his way. They give him a bit of money. Old clothes. Leftovers. Buying him off, kind of.”

“Ah, so he’s begging. Appealing for sympathy. People are such idiots. Give to a beggar once and you’re sort of in his debt. That’s what your Tabachnik’s up to too.”