The Story of a Life

52

The Great Swindler

During one of our stops in Brest a smart-looking lieutenant with a rimless pince-nez and a limp came to call on Dr Pokrovsky.

Lieutenant Sokolovsky told a rather common story. He had been wounded and now, released from hospital, he had three months’ convalescent leave, yet since he had no relations and nowhere to go, he asked whether we might take him on as an orderly on the train for the next three months. He said that despite his limp, he felt just fine. All Sokolovsky’s papers were in order, and so Dr Pokrovsky agreed to take him on and brought him to the staff room. We students had a deep distrust of all officers and so were immediately on our guard. Had he been a mere ensign, we would have got on with him, but a lieutenant was a different matter.

From the moment of Sokolovsky’s arrival, wonders began. ‘This is no way to live, you monks!’ he said in a loud voice. ‘Call that a clean floor? Go and fetch me two buckets of water, one hot, the other cold, you bookworms, and I’ll teach you how to scrub a floor. Well, hop to it! Two pails of water, and no answering back!’

Nobody moved. We all just stared at Sokolovsky without saying a word.

‘Too proud, are you?’ he said in a derisive tone. ‘Well, I’m proud too, but I’ll show you just the same.’

He took off his tunic with its St George’s cross and in nothing but a white shirt and a pair of sky-blue braces marched off to the kitchen. He soon returned with two buckets of water. Yelling at us to pick up our feet, he began scrubbing the floors in the carriage and did such an excellent job of it that we had to admit that he truly was an expert in this business.

What followed was even more inexplicable.

Sokolovsky took Lyakhman’s guitar down off the wall, strummed a few chords and then launched into a plaintive Georgian song. Next he sang an Armenian song, followed by Ukrainian, Jewish, Polish, Finnish and Latvian numbers, before finishing this concert with a virtuoso performance of ‘A Pair of Bays’ in Gypsy style, complete with hoots and hollers.

It turned out that Sokolovsky was fluent in a number of languages and knew every last corner of Russia intimately. There was no town he had not visited and whose inhabitants of note he was not acquainted with. These strange qualities made us even more suspicious of Sokolovsky, especially after he forged Dr Pokrovsky’s signature and medical stamp on a prescription to purchase a bottle of pure alcohol from the local chemist and then proceeded to drink it down in one night.

‘Take care, my friends,’ said orderly Grekov, a taciturn student from Moscow. ‘Fate has brought a sinister character our way. We must be prepared for any disasters. It’s imperative we find out what he was doing before the war.’

Romanin put the question to Sokolovsky that very day. Sokolovsky narrowed his handsome yet insolent eyes. He stared at Romanin for a long time before answering in a quiet, threatening voice: ‘Ah, so that’s it! You want to know what I was doing back then? Well, I was a cantor in a synagogue. That’s one! A sword swallower in the circus. Two! A photographer at the Imperial Court. Three! And, by the way, I was also Prince Mikhail Shervashidze, ruler of Abkhazia. Satisfied? Or would you like to hear more? Then I shall confess to you, my dear colleagues, that I was also a gynaecologist and the leader of the Gypsy choir at the Yar.fn1 Any more questions?’

No one said a word. Sokolovsky gave a good-natured laugh and threw his arms around Romanin’s shoulders. ‘Come on now, I was nothing more than a travelling salesman, hence all my talents, although I could have been a student, just like you.’

Sokolovsky was obviously making fun of us. He tried to come across as relaxed and jovial but was now so pale with anger that the small white scar on his lip had ceased to show.

The wonders continued. No matter what the card game, be it snap or Polish faro, Sokolovsky always won. It wasn’t long before he admitted to being an expert card sharper and gave us a lecture on the art of cheating, complete with historical references and practical demonstrations. Sokolovsky picked up a batch of cards with two fingers and said: ‘Here I hold nineteen cards. Please check for yourselves, gentlemen!’

We counted. Sokolovsky played this little trick more than once, and every time he was right. It was incomprehensible, beyond anything we had ever encountered before, it made no sense and left us confused and exhausted. Everything to do with Sokolovsky gave us a headache. His tricks became ever stranger. Sokolovsky would place a box of matches or cigars on the bed and instruct us not to take our eyes off it, but somehow it would vanish into thin air right in front of us. Sokolovsky sat there the whole time with his hands in the pockets of his breeches, before miraculously removing the box from the pocket of one of us orderlies.

‘Nothing to get excited about!’ he would say. ‘Basic stuff, really. The fact is the human eye is a crude instrument capable of capturing only slow movements. Certain speeds are simply beyond its power of perception. I trained my hands for ten years to acquire such speed. Ten years, mind you! That’s a lot more work than poring over some old books on Roman law or histology. Yes, sir! Vaudeville is truly something, all the rest is nonsense!’fn2

The front was quiet at the time. There were few wounded to look after, but a great many sick, especially epileptics. In those days one rarely heard the word ‘epilepsy’. The disease was largely known by its popular name – ‘falling sickness’. Epileptics were forbidden from being transported with the wounded. They were collected into groups at the field hospitals and then sent together by a separate train to the rear. This was an unpleasant and difficult business, and so the field hospitals came up with various tricks to get rid of the epileptics as quickly as possible. They bandaged the men’s arms and legs, even put them in splints or plaster casts, and sent them off on the hospital trains together with the wounded. Yet on the journey these men began suffering from fits, which drove nearly every man in the carriage out of his mind with terror.

Our doctors tried their best to separate the epileptics from the wounded before they were loaded onto the trains and could be sent back to the hospitals. They were rarely successful since the epileptics presented no outward signs of their illness. Sokolovsky offered to help the doctors. He asked Pokrovsky for permission to accompany the doctors as they made their inspections before the trains left the station. Pokrovsky laughed, but agreed – he too was intrigued by this unusual orderly. And so began the ‘historic’ inspection. Sokolovsky entered one of the carriages with the doctors. He quickly cast his eyes over the wounded men and then said to one greybeard with a bandaged arm: ‘You, fellow, over here!’

The soldier got up from his bed and walked over.

‘All right, let me have a look at you!’ Sokolovsky ordered. His burning eyes penetrated the nervous soldier. ‘Don’t avert your eyes. It won’t do any good.’

Sokolovsky drew up close to the soldier and asked in a soft, compassionate voice too low for any of the other wounded to hear: ‘Got the falling sickness?’

The soldier shuddered and his face dropped. ‘Yes, sir,’ he pleaded in a whisper. ‘But it’s not my fault.’

‘Then get out of this carriage!’

In this manner Sokolovsky uncovered seven epileptics on this single run and they were returned to the hospital. After that, the hospital authorities didn’t dare try to sneak any more epileptics onto our trains.

‘Who is this?’ they asked us. ‘Is he really a clairvoyant or just some swindler? Just how’s he able to do this?’

Sokolovsky replied to the doctors’ questions with a polite smile. ‘I can’t tell you a thing. Believe me when I say I have no idea how I do it.’

Most of the orderlies and doctors treated Sokolovsky with friendly curiosity. They were amused by this undeniably talented but odd and empty man. Others, however, such as Romanin and myself, found having to deal with him upsetting. We were repelled by his ceaseless clowning, his bragging, his cold cynicism and his incessant noise making. What I came to find most surprising was that in the depths of the eyes of this man, who had evidently been brought up on barracks humour, one could at times catch a glimpse of a timid, doglike appeal for pity. Where had he come from? What sort of social milieu or set of circumstances creates such people?

I never once saw Sokolovsky sad or depressed. Ever since I have been convinced that the capacity to feel sadness is one of the things that define being fully human. Someone who is incapable of feeling grief is just as pitiful as someone who has no understanding of what joy is or has lost all sense of humour. The lack of any one of these qualities attests to an irreparable spiritual deficit. Sokolovsky told me once that his entire life he had wanted nothing more than to do good for others, but he simply wasn’t foolish enough for such a thing. I didn’t believe him.

The unhealthy condition in the train, particularly in the staff room, that had begun with the appearance of Sokolovsky could not last long. The end came suddenly.

One day we stopped in Keltse. The chief doctor let a few of us orderlies go into town for the evening. The town was dark and deserted. We stopped at a simple café. It was brightly lit inside and smelled of chocolate; the two waitresses – sisters – were standing about chattering. The wet night didn’t appear so depressing now that we were looking out at it through the window’s dark glass. We sat and quietly drank our coffee. At a far table a sapper dozed, lulled to sleep by the warmth of the café, the smell of coffee and vanilla, and the muted voices of the blonde sisters.

The glass door of the café flew open with a bang and in walked Sokolovsky. He was without a greatcoat and wore a brand-new uniform of a cornet in the Hussars. Silver epaulettes flashed on his shoulders. His cavalry sword clattered on the red brick floor as he walked. We stared at Sokolovsky in shocked silence. He slowly came over to us. His face was distorted in a terrible grimace, his eyes were bloodshot. He stopped and glared at Romanin.

‘I didn’t know you were in the Hussars, Sokolovsky,’ said Romanin. ‘Have a seat.’

‘Stand up!’ Sokolovsky shouted in a wild voice. ‘Don’t you know to salute an officer? Forgotten your place, have you, you dogs?’

‘Knock it off,’ Romanin said, not too sure of himself. ‘You’re drunk.’

‘Shut up!’ roared Sokolovsky, drawing his sword. ‘I’ll cut you into pieces, you little puppies. I’ll show you who the real Sokolovsky is!’

He slammed the sword down onto our table. The table split in two and the cups went flying. The sisters shrieked. The sapper opened his eyes and jumped. A frenzied Sokolovsky swung the sword at Romanin, but Grekov hit him in the back with all his might. Sokolovsky fell onto the broken table and dropped his sword.

We ran out of the café and took off through some back alleys until we came to the railway tracks and followed them to our train. We went straight to Pokrovsky and told him everything that had happened in the café. He ordered us to lock the staff room for the night and should Sokolovsky return, not to let him in. We were to report the incident the next morning to the commandant.

I went to the operating carriage to sterilise some bandages in preparation for taking on more wounded the next day. In the middle of the night I heard someone trying to open the door with a key but I had bolted both locks and he couldn’t get in. The person fiddled with the key for a long time and then started tapping at the window. I went over and looked out. There was Sokolovsky, without his forage cap and with a soldier’s greatcoat thrown over his shoulders.

‘Let me in for the night,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to hide me, friend.’

‘No!’ I said. ‘I’m not letting you in.’

‘If I had my Nagant right now,’ he said with a twisted grin, ‘I’d blast a hole in you, you little pup, and send you off to your dead grandmother. Still not gonna let me in, eh?’

‘No.’

Sokolovsky stepped closer to the window.

‘Someday, God willing, we’ll meet again. Take a good look, boy, remember this face. That might just give you enough time to say a quick prayer before I drain every last drop of blood from your body.’

‘Romanin, come here!’ I called out, even though I knew he wasn’t in his dispensary.

Sokolovsky spat hard at the window, stepped back and then disappeared into the darkness. I put out the light, retrieved the revolver we kept in the drawer under the bandages and sat up waiting for an attack. But Sokolovsky never returned. He had vanished. Five or six days later, however, while we were stopped at Radom, a friendly-looking young peasant appeared, handed the duty orderly a wooden box wrapped in canvas, and then turned and walked away. On the box were the words ‘To the Nurses of Field Hospital Train No. 217’.

The orderly delivered the box to the head nurse. Removing the canvas she found written: ‘A pair for each of the nurses. With fond memories, Lieutenant Sokolovsky.’

The nurses opened the box. Inside was a collection of small black jewel boxes lined with lilac-coloured velvet containing a pair of diamond earrings for every nurse. Pokrovsky immediately ordered they be handed over to the station commandant.

Three days later we read in a small Brest newspaper about an unusually violent robbery of a jewellery store in Vilnius. That same day the commandant came to see Pokrovsky and asked: ‘Did you employ an orderly who went by the name of Sokolovsky?’

‘Yes, he worked for me.’

‘Where’s he now?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You should try to find out.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he’s rather big game.’

‘But I’m no hunter,’ Pokrovsky answered with a laugh.

‘Too bad!’ the commandant said mysteriously and then walked off without bothering to explain what he had meant or say what he knew about Sokolovsky.

We came up with all sorts of theories in light of his comment, but then, with time, forgot all about Sokolovsky. It was not until two years later that I heard his name again. I was working at the time at the Novorossiisk Factory in the smoky town of Yuzovka in the Don Basin. We had a draughtsman in our workshop named Grinko, a former Socialist Revolutionary. He was a pale, tubercular fellow who went around in a floppy hat and with a dismissive air of irony towards everything around him. I was living in a cheap room at the Hotel Great Britain. It was in that musty room that Grinko told me how a court in Yekaterinoslav had sentenced him to five years’ exile in Siberia for his membership of the Socialist Revolutionary Party.

On the way to Siberia, in Kharkov, their convict train stopped to pick up a young man in irons and a rimless pince-nez. The carriage was full of petty thieves and other riff-raff. The young man gave them one look and said ‘Well?’ The riff-raff stopped talking at once and cleared out an entire compartment for him, even though the carriage was crammed with convicts, and afterwards did everything possible to win his approval. The draughtsman noticed that even the guards treated the young man with a certain respect and did him favours.

The man in irons invited Grinko into his compartment, where he said that he too was an educated man, fluent in several languages, and a lover of music. Grinko told the man of his misfortunes. He listened carefully, then leaned in and said in a whisper: ‘I’ll get you out.’

‘How?’

‘No lie! It’s ridiculous to spend two years in Siberia on such an idiotic charge. Two years of exile would do you in.’

He asked Grinko to tell him all about his case, which he did, even though he didn’t believe that this convict in irons could do anything to help. He assumed the man was just bragging for the sake of it.

But then at some small junction in the province of Penza the train stopped. An officer of the gendarmes boarded carrying with him a telegram sent from Yekaterinoslav ordering that, after further examination into the case of Grinko, he was to be removed from the train and sent to the town of Narovchat and there held in prison until further instruction. As they removed Grinko from the train, the man in irons gave him a wink and told him in the future ‘to be more cautious on the turns’.

Grinko did not stay long in the remote prison at Narovchat. Soon another telegram arrived from the court in Yekaterinoslav stating that the draughtsman had been retried in absentia and acquitted for lack of evidence. The prison warden shook Grinko’s hand and wished him well. Yet as soon as Grinko arrived back at Yekaterinoslav station, he was arrested and charged with attempted escape. It was only then that Grinko realised that this entire complicated business of his ‘release’ had been organised by the young man in irons.

‘He’s a well-known criminal,’ the draughtsman told me. ‘The head of a powerful organisation of thieves and forgers. Apparently, he had bribed one of the guards to send a message about me to one of his people in Kursk. It was all done with great care and precision, and I, like a fool, fell right into their little trap and so was arrested a second time.’

‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘did this young man in irons have any distinguishing marks on him?’

‘He had a scar on his lip. His name was Sokolovsky. And he had a limp.’

And so I told him about the mysterious orderly by the name of Sokolovsky.

‘That’s him!’ said Grinko. ‘He must have been hiding from the police, and your train was the perfect place.’

‘But why did he use his real name?’

‘Because there are thousands and thousands of Sokolovskys. And besides, men like him sometimes like to play with fire and tempt fate.’

Over the course of many years I became convinced that every encounter leaves its trace, even an encounter with such a man as Sokolovsky. From some of the hints he dropped I guessed that even as a child he had suffered more than his share of injustices. Embittered, he invested all his talents in avenging his humiliations no matter what the cost.