When God created the Heaven and the Earth, darkness hovered over the void. There was no need to create darkness, only light. The Almighty illuminated even the miserable souls of men, lest they stagnate in their primordial form, that is, in terrible loneliness. This is why He created them male and female, in His shape and form, as though to say: “You humans are incapable of civility. You will only really be human beings once you have learned to live together in harmony.”
But now, as the four of them are travelling on in a ramshackle wagon in the dead of night, the total darkness outside and the desolation within are flooding the abyss in their souls. Each of them wants to be alone, as far away as possible from any other living being, and forget everything that has happened. What do they fear? Each other, more than anything. Captain Adamsky buries his face between his knees. What, in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, has he just done? Fucking hell! The authorities will confiscate his tavern now, that’s for sure. He had poured his life’s savings into his business. The result of thirty-five years of combat service in the infantry corps – gone up in smoke. His friendship with Yoshke Berkovits is a thing of the past, it belongs to a time when Adamsky was just a helpless Jewish boy, a pathetic coward called Pesach Avramson. As soon as he learned how his community had given his brother away to the authorities, how their faith had driven its leaders to fabricate a story that would justify this monstrous injustice, he knew that he wanted nothing more to do with these pigs and their religion, whose immutable laws can always be bent to suit shifting needs and interests. True, Yoshke has saved Adamsky’s life on more than one occasion, but this is not why the captain came to his aid. He did it in spite of that. He never asked Yoshke to save his goddamned life, after all. Why, then, did he risk everything and bury himself up to his neck in this affair? What is more, his formerly rational friend has clearly become a naive little lamb who has been duped by this mysterious fiend of a woman. She isn’t Yoshke’s wife, and they have obviously never been intimate. Is it some kind of business relationship? If so, what’s in it for him? Is it too late to change sides?
Fanny is also preoccupied by her own thoughts. With one hand she feels her neck, which just a short while earlier was in the steely grip of an officer’s fist, and with her other hand she touches the knife, which she intends to throw away at the first opportunity. This disaster could not be further from her original plan to help her sister. All she wanted to do was cross the Yaselda and ride to Minsk, confront Zvi-Meir and make him sign a writ of divorce, there and then. She never imagined that she would find herself slaying a family of bandits, and then fleeing the scene of a second crime with a synagogue arsonist in tow and the slit throats of two police officers in her wake. Natan-Berl must be sick with worry. When it came down to it, he might have been able to understand what his wife had intended to do. He knows her. And after all, what a man wants and what the world is can rarely be reconciled. Can anyone force the world into submission? Everybody knows that only the Blessed Holy One can. But in any case, even if Natan-Berl had approved of her initial plan, he would never accept its consequences: there are five dead bodies to her name, and her own life is in grave danger.
Natan-Berl couldn’t possibly understand anything from the ridiculous note she left him. “Take care of yourselves until I return.” Is this what a wife and mother writes to her loved ones knowing she will be gone for a long time? What were you thinking, Fanny Keismann? Her children must be tiptoeing around their father, stricken with guilt and sorrow. Gavriellah will be the only one in the house who can somehow soothe them, Fanny knows this much. And her mother-in-law, Rivkah Keismann, will be relishing every moment. Rivkah, who always warned her son against the shochet’s daughter, the vilde chaya. Is it too late for Fanny to change her mind and go home? Would she ever be able to salvage her former life? Or could it be that, really – and the thought makes her shiver – she knew all along that she would be leaving it forever?
These two runaways fear one another. Adamsky has seen with his own eyes just how dangerous the fragile woman can be with her knife, and she has seen the captain betray her without blinking. True, he subsequently risked his life to save hers, and he cannot ignore how she courageously rescued Yoshke Berkovits, contradicting everything he had ever thought about those cowardly Jews, but neither of these events was planned, and there’s no knowing what will come next or how it will turn out. Fanny wonders: would the captain betray her again? Adamsky wonders: would she slit his throat, too? Only time will tell. Perhaps in days, maybe hours, maybe moments, they will have their answers. For now, they can only sit side by side, tense and vigilant.
And what about the forces of law and order? They have much to fear on that score. This affair is likely to end at the scaffold. Whether undercover or uniformed, every officer in the region will take this manhunt personally. It is no longer a matter of killing roadside bandits; now they are wanted for slaughtering secret agents.
The agents’ commander, it turned out, was the limping drunkard from the tavern. It shocked them to discover that such a man could be a seasoned Okhrana agent, and that he could just as easily show up tomorrow disguised as a tzaddik. They should not underestimate his shrewdness, nor his thirst for vengeance, and they should not forget that the captain has smashed the officer’s already wounded leg, adding agonising insult to injury.
The first scratches of sunrise do nothing to ease the tension between the passengers. They need to decide where they are going. What is keeping this band together, aside from the fact that they are all fleeing both Poles and Russians? And that they have managed to raise the ire of both criminals and law enforcement? During the night, the dark made it easy to avoid looking at each other. But now, as the sky is clearing and the horizon opens up before them, this intimacy seems to evaporate as the tangible presence of all four travellers becomes impossible to ignore.
Fanny peeks over at Adamsky. His eyes are a deep amber – how can such wise, owl-like eyes serve the forces of evil? He seems ill at ease, his bushy eyebrows give him a shabby appearance, and his upper lip is unnaturally thin. Perhaps once, before he started burning synagogues, Zizek thought of him as his true friend. But after last night, it is clear that his hatred of Jews is far stronger than any lingering sense of loyalty he may have had for his people.
Adamsky chances a glance in Fanny’s direction. He hasn’t seen such attractive ugliness in a long time. Her nose is sharp, her gaze cold and detached, her fair hair is hidden beneath a headscarf that makes her impassive expression seem only icier. A deep scar on her left arm leaves no doubt: she is a lioness, a fighter. But if she is devoid of emotion like any other Jew, why did she risk her life to save Yoshke Berkovits? It is a mystery.
He cannot stop himself from exclaiming, “Fucking hell! Now what?”
Fanny hisses to Zizek in Polish, “Don’t tell him our plans, Zizek Breshov, he will only betray us to the police again.”
Adamsky is furious. “If I still have my throat intact, of course. Unless you intend to slaughter me too.”
“It’s actually easier to burn down synagogues.”
“What?!”
“You heard me.”
“How dare you . . .”
“No, how dare you?”
Zizek tightens the reins and draws the wagon to a halt. Neither Fanny nor Adamsky seem to have given him much thought. He abandoned his seat in the rowing boat on the Yaselda to help Fanny Keismann find Zvi-Meir, after seeing her sister throw herself out of his boat. He brought with him his two horses, an elderly steed from his army days, and a headstrong colt, and since then Zizek has suffered in the sweltering heat, starved and collapsed with exhaustion. Then, in the middle of the night, he fell victim to an attempted highway robbery, was pummelled senseless by bandits and made a fugitive. In Patrick Adamsky’s tavern, he was handcuffed by secret agents who smashed his forehead against the wall, and if it hadn’t been for Fanny and Adamsky he would have found himself at the gallows soon thereafter.
“Oy!” Zizek suddenly exclaims, and then stops speaking just as abruptly. His own voice still sounds new to him, like a stranger’s.
Adamsky is irritated.
“Oy what, you fool?”
Zizek is silent.
“Fucking hell,” Adamsky growls, but Zizek notices that Fanny is watching him with anticipation.
“Oy,” he says again, “stop your bickering. I’m sorry, but if anyone wants to get off the wagon, they should do it right now, and quickly. These horses will keep going until they reach Minsk, if you don’t mind. Sorry, but if you two want to keep arguing, you will have to do it by the roadside, because neither of you comes out of this story a saint. We all have something to regret, and maybe, if we all get out of this alive, you will have your chance to argue over who is more at fault then. Understood?”
Fanny and Adamsky listen intently to his outburst, and his earnestness is heartening. At the end of the speech, however, they look at each other: they still have their doubts. Why would an observant Jew stay in the same wagon as a cantonist traitor? And what does a captain in the Czar’s army have in common with a crazy Jewess? And what do any of them have in common with a useless pseudo-cantor, who might have been a music professor if melodious snoring could earn you a degree? To top it off, it is not at all clear who is sitting in the driver’s seat: is it Zizek Breshov or Yoshke Berkovits? A hermit or a demagogue; a mute or an orator? To be sure, he did not include himself in his little remonstrance, he spoke as if they were the only ones sitting here and he was still back there, back in his boat on the Yaselda. And while it is true that they were all born Jews, a closer look reveals that the only thing they have in common right now is that they are all on the run.
All the same, none of them leave the wagon and their fears begin to subside after Zizek’s speech, despite its hesitations and foolish apologies. So, what are they not afraid of right now? First of all, themselves. Fanny knows that the knife has returned to its true purpose again, after many dormant years on her thigh. Adamsky remembers how his tavern had drained him of his pride – instead of leading troops to battle, he brought prostitutes to his guests on the top floor. Zizek has regained his voice for the first time in a very long while. And the cantor – well, there is not much to say about him, but he is better off on the wagon with a barrel of rum than being left to his own devices in the road.
The question of which road to take remains. How will they travel all the way to Minsk without going through towns and villages, along exposed roads or through open fields, all while avoiding the black bogs? There is no such road in the Pale of Settlement, let alone in the big, wide Russian Empire. Adamsky, however, knows the area well and whispers a few words in Yoshke’s ear, who suddenly blanches. Without further ado, Adamsky grabs the reins. Fanny looks at him curiously, thinking that he may have finally lost his mind.
“Ah! Che la morte!” Adamsky shouts and stands up on the platform, looking like the general of a one-man army. “To the barracks, Yoshke!” He points north-east. “Ah! Che la morte!” To the death!