He Lover of Death

HOW SENKA WAS A LITTLE KIKE

In the morning he was shaken awake by Masa, who was dirty and smelled of sweat, and his eyes were red, as if he’d been loading bricks all night instead of sleeping.

‘What’s this, Sensei?’ Senka asked in surprise. ‘Just back from a date, are you? Were you with Fedora Nikitishna, or have you got someone new?’

It seemed like a perfectly normal question, quite flattering to a man’s vanity, but for some reason the Japanese was very angry.

‘I was whe’ I had to be! Get up, razybones, it’ midday orready!’

And he even waved his fist at Senka, the heathen. And him the one so fond of preaching politeness!

After that things went from bad to worse. The sleepy young man was sat on a chair and his face was lathered with soap.

‘Hey, hey!’ Senka yelled when he saw a razor in his sensei’s hand. ‘Leave me alone! I’m growing a beard!’

‘Masta’s ordas,’ Masa replied curtly. With his left hand he grabbed the poor orphan by the shoulder so that he couldn’t wriggle and then with his right hand he shaved off all fifty-four of his beard hairs, and his moustache into the bargain.

Senka was afraid of getting cut, so he didn’t budge. As the Japanese scraped away the final traces of his nascent male adornments, he muttered: ‘Ver’ just. “Some have orr fun and othas break their backs”.’ Senka didn’t understand what he was talking about, or what he meant about backs, but he didn’t bother to ask. In fact, he decided that for this outrageous attack he was never going to talk to the slanty-eyed pagan again. He was going to declare a boycott, like in the English parliament.

But the mockery of Senka’s dignity had only just begun. After the shave, he was ushered into Erast Petrovich’s study. The engineer wasn’t there. Instead, there was an old Yid in a skullcap and long coat sitting in front of the pier glass, admiring the big nose in the middle of his face and combing out his eyebrows, which were bushy enough already.

‘Have you shaved him?’ the old man asked in Mr Nameless’s voice. ‘Excellent. I’m almost f-finished. Sit here, Senya.’

Erast Petrovich was unrecognisable in this get-up. Even the skin on his hands and neck was wrinkled and yellow, with dark spots like old men had. Senka was so delighted, he even forgot about his boycott and grabbed hold of the sensei’s arm.

‘Oh, fantastic! Make me into a gypsy, will you?’

‘We don’t need any g-gypsies today,’ said the engineer, standing behind Senka’s back and rubbing some oil into his hair – it made it stick to his head so that he looked lop eared.

‘Let’s add a f-few freckles,’ Erast Petrovich said to the Japanese.

Masa handed his master a little jar. A few smooth strokes of the hand, and Senka’s mug was freckly all over.

‘The n-number fourteen wig.’

Masa handed over something that looked like a red bundle of fibres for scrubbing yourself in the bathhouse, but on Senka’s head it turned into a tangled mop of ginger hair that hung down over his temples in two matted bunches. Then the engineer tickled Senka’s eyebrows and eyelashes with a little brush, and they turned ginger too.

‘What shall we d-do with the Slavic n-nose?’ Mr Nameless asked himself thoughtfully. ‘Add a hump? Yes, I think s-so.’

He stuck a lump of sticky wax on the bridge of Senka’s nose, gave it a lick of flesh colour and sprinkled it with freckles. The resulting conk was a work of real beauty.

‘What’s all this for?’ Senka asked merrily, admiring himself in the mirror.

‘You’re going to b-be the Jewish boy Motya,’ Erast Petrovich replied, clapping a skullcap like his own on Senka’s head. ‘Masa will g-give you the appropriate costume.’

‘I’m not going to be no kike!’ Senka protested indignantly, suddenly realising that the ginger bunches were Jewish side locks. ‘I don’t wish to.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t like them! I hate their ugly hook-nosed mugs! Faces, I mean!’

‘What kind of f-faces do you like?’ the engineer asked him. ‘With snub n-noses? If someone’s Russian, do you adore him straight away j-just for that?’

‘Well, that depends what he’s like, of course.’

‘That’s right,’ Erast Petrovich said approvingly, wiping his hands. ‘One should be ch-choosy about whom one loves. And even m-more so about whom one hates. In any case, one shouldn’t l-love or hate someone for the shape of his n-nose. But that’s enough d-discussion. In an hour we have a m-meeting with Mr Ghoul, the most dangerous b-bandit in Moscow.’

That gave Senka the shakes, and he forgot all about Yids.

‘But I reckon the Prince is more frightening than the Ghoul,’ he said casually, with a slight yawn.

That was what it said to do in the book on society life: ‘If the subject of conversation has stung you to the quick, you should not betray your agitation. Pass some neutral remark on the matter in a casual voice, to show the other person that you have not lost your composure. Even a yawn is permissible but, naturally, only a very modest one, and the mouth must be covered with the hand.’

‘That depends on how you l-look at it,’ the engineer retorted. ‘The Prince, of course, spills far more b-blood, but the most dangerous criminal is always the one to whom the f-future belongs. And the future of criminal Moscow undoubtedly d-does not belong to the hold-up men, it belongs to the m-milkers. The arithmetic p-proves it. The Ghoul’s b-business undertaking is less dangerous, because it is less irritating to the authorities, it is actually p-profitable for some representatives of authority. And the milkers make m-more profit anyway.’

‘What do you mean? The Prince lifts three thousand a time, and the Ghoul only collects a rouble a day from the shops.’

Masa brought the clothes: down-at-heel shoes, patched trousers, a tattered little jacket. Senka wrinkled up his face in disgust and started putting them on.

‘A rouble a d-day,’ Mr Nameless agreed. ‘But f-from every shop, and every day. And the Ghoul has about t-two hundred of these sheep that he shears. How m-much does that make in a month? Twice as m-much as the loot the Prince takes from an average j-job.’

‘But the Prince doesn’t lift loot just once a month,’ Senka persisted.

‘How many t-times, then? Twice? Three times at the m-most? But then the Ghoul doesn’t just take a rouble off everyone. For instance, he’s d-decided to take no less than twenty th-thousand off the people we’re g-going to see now.’

Senka gasped.

‘What kind of people are they, if you can take that much money off them?’

‘Jews,’ Erast Petrovich replied, stuffing something into a sack. ‘A long time ago n-now they built a synagogue not far from Khitrovka. When the present g-governor general was appointed to Moscow nine years ago, he f-forbade them to consecrate the synagogue and d-drove most of the Hebrews out of the old c-capital. But the Jewish c-community has recovered its strength again, its n-numbers have increased, and it is trying to open its house of p-prayer. Permission has been obtained f-from the authorities, but now the Jews have run into p-problems with the bandits. The Ghoul is threatening to b-burn down the building that was erected at the c-cost of immense sacrifice. He is demanding a p-pay-off from the community.’

‘What a lousy snake!’ Senka exclaimed indignantly. ‘If you’re a good Orthodox Christian and you don’t want their Yiddish chapel anywhere near you, then just burn it down, but don’t take their pieces of silver, right?’

Erast Petrovich didn’t answer the question, he just sighed. Then Senka thought for a moment and asked: ‘So why don’t these Jews complain to the police, then?’

‘The police are d-demanding even more money for protection against the b-bandits,’ Mr Nameless explained. ‘And so the m-members of the board of t-trustees have decided to reach an agreement with the Ghoul, and for that they have appointed special representatives. You and I, Senya, I mean M-Motya, are those special representatives.’

‘What do I have to do?’ Senka asked as they were walking down Spaso-Glinishshchevsky Lane. He didn’t like this fancy-dress party nearly as much as the first one, when he was a beggar. It wasn’t too bad in the cab, but since they’d got out they’d been called ‘filthy Yids’ twice, and one tattered ragamuffin had flung a dead mouse at them. He would have boxed his ears, to teach him not to go annoying people for no good reason, but he had to put up with it for the sake of the important job they were on.

‘What d-do you have to do?’ Mr Nameless echoed as he exchanged bows with the synagogue’s caretaker. ‘Keep quiet and l-leave your mouth hanging wide open. Do you know how to d-drool?’

Senka showed him.

‘Oh, well done.’

They went into a house beside the Jewish chapel. Two nervous gents in frock coats and skullcaps, but without side locks, were waiting in a clean room with decent furniture. One was grey, the other had black hair.

Only it didn’t look like they’d been waiting for Erast Petrovich and Senka. The grey-haired one waved his hand at them and said something angrily in a language that wasn’t Russian, but the meaning was clear enough: Clear off out of it, I’ve no time for you right now.

‘It is I, Erast Petrovich N-Nameless,’ the engineer said, and the two men (they had to be those ‘trusties’) were terribly surprised.

The black-haired one raised a finger: ‘I told you he was a Jew. The name’s Jewish too, it’s a distorted form of “Nahimles”.’

The grey-haired one gulped, and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. He looked at the engineer in alarm and asked: ‘Are you sure you can manage this, Mr Nameless? Perhaps it would be better to pay this bandit? To avoid worse. We don’t want any trouble.’

‘There won’t be any t-trouble,’ Erast Petrovich assured him, sticking his sack under a table. ‘But it’s t-two o’clock already. The Ghoul will be here soon.’

At that very moment someone wailed from outside the door: ‘Oi, he’s coming, he’s coming!’

Senka looked out of the window. The Ghoul was strolling casually up the street from the direction of Khitrovka, puffing on a papyrosa and glancing around with an evil smile on his face.

‘He’s come alone, without his d-deck,’ Mr Nameless remarked calmly. ‘He’s confident. And he doesn’t want to sh-share with his own men, the haul’s too b-big.’

‘Please, after you, Mr Rosenfeld,’ said the black-haired man, pointing to a curtain that closed off a corner of the room where there were sofas (an ‘alcove’ it was called). ‘No, I insist, after you.’

The trustees hid behind the curtain. The grey-haired one just had time to whisper: ‘Ah, Mr Nameless, Mr Nameless, we put our trust in you, please don’t lead us to ruin!’

The Ghoul pushed the door open without knocking and walked in, squinting after the bright daylight of the street. He said to Erast Petrovich: ‘Right, you mangy kikes, have you got the crunch? You’re the one who’s going to cough up, are you, Grandad?’

‘In the first place, good afternoon, young man,’ Mr Nameless intoned in a trembling voice. ‘In the second place, you can stop eyeing the room like that – there isn’t any money here. In the third place, have a seat at the table and we’ll talk to you like a reasonable man.’

The Ghoul lashed out with his boot at the chair offered to him, and it flew off into the corner with a crash.

‘Spieling and dealing?’ he hissed, narrowing his watery eyes. ‘We’ve done all that. The Ghoul’s word is solid as cast iron. Tomorrow you’ll be baking your matzos on charred embers. Well, what’s left of the synagogue. And to make sure your brothers get the idea, I’ll carve you up a bit too, you old goat.’

He pulled a hunting knife out of the top of his boot and edged towards Erast Petrovich.

The engineer stayed put. ‘Ai, Mr Extortioner, don’t waste my time on all this nonsense. The life left to me is no longer than a piglet’s tail, cursed be that unclean creature.’ And he spat fastidiously off to one side.

‘You’ve hit the bull’s-eye there, Grandad,’ said the Ghoul, grabbing the engineer by his false beard and raising the tip of the knife to his face. ‘For a start I’ll gouge your eyes out. Then I’ll straighten up your nose. What do you want a great big hook like that for? And then I’ll snuff you and your stinking little brat.’

Mr Nameless looked at this terrible man quite calmly, but Senka’s jaw dropped in horror. So much for the fun of the fancy-dress ball!

‘Stop frightening Motya, he’s meshuggah anyway,’ said Erast Petrovich. ‘And put that metal stick away. It’s easy to see you don’t know Jews very well, Mr Bandit. They’re very cunning people! Haven’t you noticed who they sent out to meet you? Do you see here the chairman of the board of trustees, Rosenfeld, or Rabbi Belyakovich, or perhaps Merchant of the First Guild Shendiba? No, you see the old, sick Naum Rubinchik and the schlemazel Motya, a pair that no one in the world cares about. Even I don’t care about myself, I’ve had this life of yours right up to here.’ He ran the edge of his hand across his throat. ‘And if you “snuff” Motya here, that will be only a great relief to his poor parents. They’ll say: “Thank you very much, Mr Ghoul”. So let’s stop all this trying to frighten each other and have a talk, like reasonable people. You know what they say in the Russian village? In the Russian village they say: You have the merchandise, we have the merchant, let’s swap. Mr Ghoul, you’re a young man, you want money, and the Jews want you to leave them in peace. Am I right?’

‘I suppose.’ The Ghoul lowered the hand holding the knife. ‘Only you let slip as there was no crunch.’

‘No money ...’ Old Rubinchik’s eyes glinted and he paused for a moment. ‘But there is silver, an awful lot of silver. Does an awful lot of silver suit you?’

The Ghoul put the knife back in his boot and cracked his knuckles.

‘Cut the horse shit! Talk turkey! What silver?’

‘Have you heard word of the underground treasure? I see from the gleam in your little eyes that you have. That treasure was buried by Jews when they came to Russia from Poland during the time of Queen Catherine, may God forgive her her sins for not oppressing our people. They don’t make such fine, pure silver any more now. Just listen to the way it jingles.’ He took a handful of silver scales out of his pocket – the same kind of old kopecks that Senka had (or maybe they just looked the same – how could you tell?) and clinked them under the milker’s nose for a moment or two. ‘For more than a hundred years the silver just lay there quietly all on its own. Sometimes the Jews took a little bit, if they really needed it. But now we can’t get to it. Some potz in Khitrovka found our treasure.’

‘Yeah, I heard that yarn,’ the Ghoul said with a nod. ‘So it’s true. Was it you lot who shivved the pen-pusher and his family, then? Good going. And they say Jews wouldn’t swat a fly.’

‘Ai, I implore you!’ Rubinchik said angrily. ‘A plague on your tongue for saying such vile things! The last thing we need is for that to be blamed on the Jews. Maybe it was you who killed the poor potz, how should I know? Or the Prince? You know who the Prince is? Oh, he’s a terrible bandit. No offence meant, but he’s even more terrible than you.’

‘Watch it now!’ the Ghoul said, swinging his hand back to hit him. ‘You ain’t seen any real terror from me yet!’

‘And I don’t need to. I believe you anyway,’ said the old man, holding the palm of his hand in front of him. ‘But that’s not the point. The point is that the Prince has found out about the treasure and he’s searching for it day and night. Now we’re afraid to go near it.’

‘Oh, the Prince, the Prince,’ the Ghoul muttered, baring his yellow teeth. ‘All right, Grandad, keep talking.’

‘What else is there to discuss? This is our business proposition. We show you the place, you and your boys carry out the silver, and then we share it honestly: half for us and half for you. And believe me, young man, that will be a lot more than twenty thousand roubles, an awful lot more.’

The Ghoul didn’t think for long. ‘Good enough. I’ll take it all out myself, I don’t need any help. You just show me the place.’

‘Do you have a watch?’ Naum Rubinchik asked, staring sceptically at the gold chain dangling from the Ghoul’s pocket. ‘Is it a good watch? Does it keep good time? You have to be in Yeroshenko’s basement, right at the far end, where the brick bollards are, tonight. At exactly three o’clock. Poor little dumb Motya here will meet you and show you where to go.’ Senka winced under the keen, venomous stare that the Ghoul fixed on him and let a string of saliva dribble off his drooping lip. ‘And one last thing I wanted to say to you, just so you remember,’ the old Jew went on in a soulful voice, cautiously taking the milker by the sleeve. ‘When you see the treasure and you take it away to a good safe place, you will ask yourself: “Why should I give half to those stupid Jews? What can they do to me? I’d better keep it all for myself and just laugh at them”.’

The Ghoul swung his head this way and that to see whether there was an icon in the corner of the room. When he couldn’t find one he swore his oath dry, without it:

‘May the lightning burn me! May I be stuck in jail forever! May I wither up and waste away! If people treat me right, I treat them right. By Christ the Lord!’

The old grandad listened to all that, nodded his head then asked out of the blue: ‘Did you know Alexander the Blessed?’

‘Who?’ the Ghoul asked, gaping at him.

‘Tsar Alexander. The great-grand-uncle of His Highness the Emperor. Did you know Alexander the Blessed? I ask you. I can see from your face that you did not know this great man. But I saw him, almost as close as I see you now. Not that Alexander the Blessed and I were really acquainted, good God, no. And he didn’t see me, because he was lying dead in his coffin. They were taking him to St Petersburg from the town of Taganrog.’

‘So what are you spouting all this for, Grandad?’ the ghoul asked, wrinkling up his forehead. ‘What’s your tsar in a coffin mean to me?’

The old man raised a single cautionary yellow finger. ‘This, Monsieur Voleur: if you deceive us, they’ll carry you off in a coffin too, and Naum Rubinchik will come to look at you. That’s all, I’m tired. Off you go now. Motya will show you the way.’

He stepped back, sat down in a chair and lowered his head on to his chest. A second later there was the sound of thin, plaintive snoring.

‘A tough old grandad,’ the Ghoul said, winking at Senka. ‘You make sure you’re where you were told to be tonight, Carrot-head. Pull a fast one on me and I’ll wrap your tongue round your neck.’

He turned round softly, like a cat, and walked out of the house.

The moment the door slammed shut, the two Jews jumped out from behind the curtain.

They both started jabbering away at once. ‘What have you told him? What silver? Why did you make all that up? Where are we going to get so many old coins from now? It’s a total catastrophe!’

Erast Petrovich arose immediately from his slumbers, but instead of interrupting the clamouring trustees, he got on with his own business: he took off the skullcap and the grey wig, peeled off his beard, took a little glass bottle out of the sack, soaked a piece of cotton wool and started rubbing it over his skin. The liver spots and flabbiness disappeared as if by magic.

When there was a pause in the clamour, he said briefly: ‘No, I didn’t m-make it all up. The treasure really d-does exist.’

The trustees stared at him, wondering if he was joking or not. But from Mr Nameless’s face it was quite clear that he wasn’t.

‘But . . .’ the black-haired one said to him cautiously, as if he was talking to a madman, ‘ . . . but do you realise that this bandit will trick you? He’ll take all the treasure and not give you anything?’

‘Of course he’ll t-try to trick me,’ the engineer said with a nod as he removed his long coat, faded plush trousers and galoshes. ‘And then what Naum Rubinchik p-prophesied will come to pass. They’ll carry the Ghoul off in his c-coffin. Only not to St Petersburg. To a common g-grave in the Bozhedomka cemetery.’

‘Why have you taken your clothes off?’ the grey-haired man asked in alarm. ‘You’re not going to walk down the street like that, are you?’

‘Apologies for my state of undress, g-gentlemen, but I have very little time. This young man and I have to m-make our next visit.’ Erast Petrovich turned towards Senka. ‘Senya, don’t just st-stand there like a monument to Pushkin l-lost in thought, get undressed. Good d-day to you, gentlemen.’

The trustees exchanged glances, and the one who was older said: ‘Well then, we will trust you. Now we have no other choice.’

They both bowed and left, and the engineer turned to the sack and took out a long Caucasian kaftan with rows of little slots for bullets, a pair of soft leather shoes, a tall astrakhan hat and a belt with a knife. In a jiffy Mr Nameless was transformed into a visitor from the Caucasus. Senka watched wide eyed as he covered his neat and tidy moustache with a different one as black as tar and glued on a beard that was in the same bandit colour.

‘You look just like Imam Shamil!’ Senka exclaimed in delight. ‘I saw him in a picture in a book!’

‘Not Shamil, but K-Kazbek. And I’m not an imam, I’m a warrior c-come down from the mountains to conquer the c-city of the infidels,’ Erast Petrovich answered as he changed his grey eyebrows for black ones. ‘Are you undressed yet? No, no, c-completely.’

‘Who are we going to visit now?’ asked Senka, hugging himself –it felt pretty chilly standing around in the buff.

‘His Excellency, your f-former patron. Put this on.’

‘What Excell . . .’ Senka didn’t finish what he was saying, he gagged and froze, holding the silky, flimsy something that the engineer had taken out of his sack. ‘The Prince? Are you crazy? Erast Petrovich, he’ll do me in! He won’t listen to anything! He’ll drop me the moment he sees me! He’s a wild man!’

‘No, n-not that way.’ Mr Nameless turned the short silk and lace underpants round. ‘First the d-drawers, then the stockings and s-suspenders.’

‘Women’s underwear?’ said Senka, eyeing the clothes. ‘What do I want that for?’

The engineer took a dress and a pair of tall lace-up boots out of the sack.

‘You mean you want to dress me up like a bint? I’d rather die first!’

Mr Nameless and Masa had had it all worked out from the start, Senka realised. That was why they’d scraped his face with that razor. Well, sod that! Just how long could they go on mocking a poor orphan?

‘I won’t put it on, no way!’ he declared stubbornly.

‘It’s up t-to you,’ Erast Petrovich said with a shrug. ‘But if the Prince recognises you then he’ll d-drop you, as you p-put it, no doubt about it.’

Senka gulped. ‘But can’t you get by without me?’

‘I can,’ said the engineer. ‘Although it will m-make my job more difficult. But the real p-point is that you’ll be ashamed afterwards.’

Senka sniffed for a bit, then he pulled on the slippery girl’s pants, the fishnet stockings and the red dress. Erast Petrovich put a light-coloured wig with dangling curls on his victim’s head, wiped all the Jewish freckles off his face and blackened his eyebrows.

‘Come on, p-push those lips out for me.’

And he smeared Senka’s mouth with a thick layer of sweet-smelling lipstick. Then he held out a little mirror. ‘Take a l-look at yourself now. A real b-beauty.’

Senka didn’t look, he turned his face away.