Sister Pelagia and the Red Cockerel (38 page)

“Speak, Monsieur Berdichevsky. Kesha’s a good boy,
a yiddishe chartz
^*1
even if he is a goy He knows that what is said within these walls has to stay within these walls.”

The owner of the “Jewish heart” seemed not to have heard this flattering testimonial—he was intently rustling through the pages of the book, trying to find something. But even so, the public prosecutor lowered his voice: “I have a credit and loan company in Zavolzhsk—something like your own. Well, perhaps just a little bigger.” He demonstrated with his thumb and forefinger that the difference was only a tiny one.

“And how did you manage that? The province of Zavolzhie is outside the pale of settlement. Did you get baptized?”

“No, how could I possibly do that?” Berdichevsky asked, raising both hands in a gesture of reproach. “As they say, you can’t make a yarmulke out of a pig’s tail. But I can tell you, there was still
makes
to pay. I had to register as a merchant of the first guild
—tsimes mit kompot
. The certificate alone cost 565 rubles, and then they require you to trade wholesale, and what kind of wholesale is there in our business? If you don’t want to trade, pay the chief of police,
a loch im in kop,”
^*2
said Matvei Bentsionovich, taking on his soul the sin of slandering the perfectly honest police chief of Zavolzhsk. He was surprised at how freely the Yiddish words and phrases from his childhood rose up out of his memory.

“Eh, you haven’t seen what our police are like yet,” Golosovker said with a dismal smile. “I’ve never met worse
urls
, even in Belaya Tserkov.”

The public prosecutor blinked in puzzlement, then remembered that an
url
was the same as a goy.

But it was time to get down to business. And Berdichevsky began cautiously, “A certain man has come to me. He wants to set up his own business and he’s asking for a loan of twenty-five thousand.”

Efraim Leibovich rolled his eyes up as a sign of respect for such a large sum.

“I wouldn’t have given it to him, because he is a new man in Zavolzhsk and he has no real estate there, but there is one special circumstance to the case. This man is a goy, a nobleman, but he brought a guarantee from a Jew, and not just from some
laidak
or other, but from your town’s highly respected Rabbi Shefarevich.”

Golosovker raised his eyebrows, and Berdichevsky immediately stopped speaking to see if there would be any comments. But no comments followed.

“Mr. Shefarevich is such an important man that he and his Goel-Israel are known even in Zavolzhsk. A guarantee from the rabbi cannot be so easily dismissed. And the interest rate is advantageous, too. But I am a thorough man. I decided to come and check. And what do I discover when I get here? It seems that the rabbi has moved to Erushalaim,
eliger itot.”
As he pronounced the name of the “holy city,” Matvei Bentsionovich reverently raised his hands in the air. “And it also turns out that my would-be client spent some time in the debtor’s prison here.”

“Ah, I knew it,” the moneylender remarked with satisfaction. “A scoundrel.”

“Wait, it’s not quite that simple. He spent only a short time in prison. Everything was paid off for him, right down to the last kopeck. And someone whispered to me that it might have been the Rabbi Shefarevich himself, or his deputies, who paid the debt. Does that mean I can rely on the guarantee? And I have come to you, Monsieur Golosovker, because you know my client well. He is a certain Bronislav Ratsevich, who once owed you money. It was you who clapped him in jail, was it not?”

“It was,” said the owner of the loan office, smiling like a man recalling an old victory. “What does a clever businessman do with his money? He divides it into three parts: he puts the biggest part into deals that are reliable but don’t earn a lot of profit. He puts the next part into undertakings with medium risk, and with medium earnings. And he spends a small part on projects that are highly dubious, where he can simply lose his money, but if he is lucky the earnings can be very high. In our
gesheft
the high-risk capital investment is buying up irredeemable IOUs. For ten, or sometimes even five percent.” (Berdichevsky nodded, although this moneylending wisdom was new to him.) “Most of the time you lose, but sometimes you can be lucky. I bought up Ratsevich’s debt for a thousand rubles. People had no hope of ever getting their money back because of the kind of man he was—he served in the gendarmes department. But I wasn’t afraid. And I got everything in full, all fifteen thousand. That’s high-risk investment for you.”

Golosovker raised one finger to emphasize the point.

After first expressing his admiration for the other man’s generosity with advice, Matvei Bentsionovich inquired cautiously, “But who paid off the IOUs? The venerable Rabbi Shefarevich?”

Efraim Leibovich grimaced disdainfully.

“Would Shefarevich buy a gendarme out of jail? Is there steam in a locomotive?”

“Is there steam in a locomotive?” Berdichevsky repeated, puzzled. “What does that expression mean?”

The moneylender laughed. “With your surname you ought to know that. It comes from Berdichev, from the time when the railway line was built. What I mean is, Shefarevich needs this gendarme like a locomotive needs extra steam.”

“But they might have some special, private dealings that we don’t know about…”

“No, no, and no again,” Golosovker snapped. “People can have dealings of any kind at all, of course, but there’s nowhere Shefarevich could lay his hands on fifteen thousand. Who should know that if not me? Shefarevich and fifteen thousand? Don’t make me laugh. You can only believe
umzin
^*3
like that if you live in Zavolzhsk. Send Ratsevich packing, he’s a swindler. He won’t give you back your money, and he forged the guarantee—he must know that Shefarevich has gone away and won’t be coming back. There’s a piece of advice worth twenty-five thousand for you!”

The moneylender spread his arms in an expansive, generous gesture.

The triumph of emancipation

“WAIT, WAIT,” EXCLAIMED Matvei Bentsionovich, alarmed at the collapse of his second and final theory. “You say the Goel-Israel had no money to buy Ratsevich out of jail. That is hard to believe. A highly respected man like Shefarevich has no need of capital. All he has to do is give the order, and the rich Jews will contribute as much as is necessary. Someone who is completely trustworthy told me that the venerable rabbi is like the prophet Ezekiel. People say there hasn’t been such a formidably belligerent Jew since the times of Judas Maccabeus, that Rabbi Shefarevich is the new incarnation of the might and wrath of Israel.”

“Spit in the face of whoever told you that. Shefarevich is an ordinary pompous blabbermouth—the thin soil of the diaspora breeds plenty of his kind. They wag their beards and their eyes flash and they bluster and thunder, but they’re just like grass snakes—their hiss is loud, but their bite is nothing to worry about.” Golosovker heaved a sigh. “The Maccabeans have been reborn all right, but they don’t wear sidelocks and they don’t observe the Sabbath, you can take my word on that.”

“You mean the Zionists?”

“Some of them.” The moneylender glanced around at the young man and began speaking in a whisper. “Do you know what I spent those fifteen thousand on, and then another five thousand on top of that?” He spread his hands plaintively. “You’ll never believe it. On draining the swamps in some valley in Palestine. How do you like that? Where is Efraim Golosovker and where are those swamps?”

“It’s a noble deed,” Berdichevsky said absentmindedly, thinking of something else.

“You’d be noble too, if you were asked so persuasively,
az och’n vei …
”

The state counselor was intrigued by the emphasis given to these words.

“You were coerced? Extortion?”

“No,” Efraim Leibovich said with a bitter laugh. “This gentleman didn’t actually extort the money. He simply came to see me in my hotel. Such a polite young man, with a tie and a calling card. He spoke to me in a pleasant voice: ‘Golosovker, you’re a rich man, and you’ve grown rich mostly by sucking the blood of poor Jews. The time has come to share with your people. I would be most grateful if you would kindly contribute twenty thousand rubles to the Megiddo-Khadash commune fund within the next three days. And if you don’t make the contribution, we’ll meet again.’ And you know, he said it in such a quiet voice, nothing like the way Rabbi Shefarevich talks. I thought: there’s a snake that doesn’t hiss, but if he bites
—neshine gedacht
, God forbid … I really didn’t want to meet that young man again.”

“When was this? Where? And who is this man?”

“You ask me when? Four months ago. You ask me where? In the city of Odessa,
zol dos farhapt vern
^*4
I went there on business.”

Matvei Bentsionovich reminded him of the third question. “I also asked you
who
this thug was.”

“You used the word, not me,” the moneylender said, glancing at the door, although Odessa was a good three hundred miles away. “Many Jews regard him as a hero. If you ask me, I’ll tell you that heroes and thugs are baked from the same flour, but that’s not important. The polite young man who came to visit me was called Magellan. I made inquiries, spoke to respectable people. And what they told me about this Magellan made me think it was best to let those swamps be, or rather, let them
not
be any longer. Twenty thousand is very big money, but what good is it to a dead man?”

“Oh, really?” laughed Berdichevsky, amused by the story. Who would have thought that a Zhitomir pawnbroker could be so impressionable?

“I won’t tell you everything those respectable people told me about the Jew called Magellan, because it would take a long time, and it would be sure to give you nightmares, and who needs nightmares on the Sabbath? What I will tell you is what I saw with my own eyes, and then you can say ‘oh, really?’ and laugh—all right?” Golosovker shuddered at the hideous memory. “You think I’m
mishuginer
, to go throwing away twenty thousand on some lousy swamps, even if I was seriously frightened? Two days is two days, I thought. In two days the Lord God divided the light from the darkness and the water from the dry land—since we happen to be talking about swamps. I read in an Odessa newspaper that the next day the ‘Megiddo-Khadash was holding a meeting, and I decided to see what kind of people they were. If they were really frightening, I was going to dash back to Zhitomir the same day, let Monsieur Magellan try to catch the wind in the meadow. And if they weren’t very frightening, I was going to finish my business in Odessa first, and then take off.

“So I went to see. Well, it was a typical meeting. One Jew shouting a lot of loud words and others listening. Then another Jew came out and started shouting too. Then a third one. They shouted for a long time at the tops of their voices, but they didn’t listen too well, because Jews like to do the talking themselves, they don’t like to listen to anyone else. And then Magellan came out. He spoke quietly and not for long, but they listened to him the way they listen to the cantor Zeevson in our synagogue when he comes from Kiev with his choir of eighteen singers. And when he finished speaking and said ‘If you’re with us, sign the Charter’ (they had a Charter, something like an oath of loyalty or allegiance), a long line of young men and women formed. They all wanted to drain swamps and fight Arab bandits. And I thought to myself, never mind my business in Odessa, I’m leaving for Zhitomir today. Then suddenly Fira Dorman pushed her way through the crowd and started giving a speech herself. You know who Fira Dorman is, of course?”

“Isn’t she the American socialist and suffragette? I read about her in the newspapers.”

“I don’t know what a ‘suffragette’ is, but if it’s someone who claims a woman is just as good as a man, then Fira’s the one they mean. She was taken to America as a little girl, picked up all sorts of stupid ideas there, and came back to stir up confusion in poor Jewish heads that are already topsy-turvy …

“So anyway, Fira comes out with her cropped hair and papirosa, wearing some kind of riding breeches, and she starts yelling in this hard voice—just like a sergeant major on the parade ground: ‘Don’t you believe this
shmuk
, girls! He’s lying to you about equal rights and the new brotherhood. And I ask you, what kind of word is that—“brotherhood”? If we’re talking equality, then why not “sisterhood”? And why is the leader of the commune a man? Because this glib speechifier wants to lead you into a new slavery! People like him came to us in America too, to set up communes! I can tell how it all ended! The poor girls did the same work as the men, but they also did their laundry, and fed them, and bore their children, and then, when they grew old prematurely and lost their looks, their “brothers” of yesterday brought in new wives, young ones, and they didn’t tell them anything about equal rights!’