The most difficult task for Jacob was the first report he had to write. He submitted it at the beginning of 1946. He had to find just the right language and tone of exposition. As a result, he developed a new genre of scholarly narrative, a blend of political analysis, historical research, and essay. This was his favorite threefold form: the present, the past, and a possible scenario for the future.
Life, which had heretofore contorted its aspect into a grimace, now began to smile upon Jacob. After many years of hardship and ordeals in the provincial towns, doing the practical work of an economist that did not inspire him with any enthusiasm, he was finally able to write and undertake the scholarly work that was closest to his heart and his inclinations. His efforts to get a residence permit in Moscow finally paid off—he was able to register at his sister Eva’s place. He lived with her family, had a strong friendship with his brother-in-law, and was close to his two nephews. Exile and war were behind them now, and things were so good that even his trusty foe eczema left him in peace. The only thing that cast a shadow over his life was his long-lost wife and his estranged son, who had married and now had a child of his own, whom Jacob had never met.
Jacob managed to accomplish a great deal—in part through the commissioned work he was doing. But such was his cast of mind; he didn’t know how to limit himself, how to draw boundaries. He threw himself into new interests as they arose, and they arose before he had exhausted all the possibilities of the old ones. Abandoning yesterday’s, he took up tomorrow’s—research on Palestine, its history and projects for a future that remained uncertain. He was particularly interested in the history of Palestine after its exit from the Ottoman Empire. This period, after Great Britain had received a mandate to govern Palestine, had been thoroughly explored in English publications after the First World War. These took the form of memoirs and political, archaeological, and cultural studies that were available to the public in several large libraries. It was precisely at this time that he produced an overview of the political forces in the region for the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, analyzing the various parties involved: socialists, communists, workers, Arabs, Jews, nationalists, and internationalists. At the same time, he examined the labor movement. The picture was frighteningly diverse and replete with explosive compounds and combinations.
At a certain moment, Jacob felt an urgent need to learn yet another language—Hebrew. So he set about mastering it. Now he recalled with gratitude his late father, who had hired a tutor to teach Jacob the languages of Jewish culture, Hebrew and Yiddish. This modest foundation was enough to allow him fairly quickly to begin reading publications in the ancient, but rapidly adopted and renewed, language of the future Palestine. Now a rather detailed picture of Arab-Jewish relations in the Middle East was taking shape in his mind. He believed that the best resolution of the situation would be the creation of a single Arab-Jewish state, without the division of Palestine. This was the outcome preferred by Zionists of both socialist and communist persuasion. But, in the final analysis, the future of Israel would be decided by only one person, who was sitting in the Kremlin.
Ossetsky’s reports were sent from the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee to Stern, an adviser in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and on up the ladder. The final destination was the table of the Soviet working group of the United Nations. In the spring of 1947, Arab-Jewish tensions had become so sharp that the question of creating a Palestinian state was in urgent need of resolution.
Jacob worked like one possessed. As usual, he formulated a work plan for the week, the month, the year. He adhered to this schedule, and was distraught when circumstances prevented him from carrying it out. His two years of collaboration with the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee finally bore fruit: Jacob was already laying plans for a future book on the history and geography of this region. He signed a contract with a publisher.
He did not abandon his scholarly research on demographics, either. He always had a reserve of ideas, enough for several years in advance. Jacob delivered his final report to the secretary of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, Heifetz. Mikhoels was absent from Moscow, on tour, for almost all of December 1947.
The tragedy occurred on January 12, 1948. According to the official version, Mikhoels was hit by a car in Minsk. He had been there for several days to meet with the directors and actors of the Belorussian Jewish Theater. The entire Jewish community, depleted in numbers a hundredfold after the war, flocked to him. They performed Tevye the Dairyman in his honor, regaled him at concerts, fêted him in restaurants, and invited him to actors’ residential dormitories. They adored him, showered him with adulation, and surrounded him with a protective human wall, from which he broke out only once, on the eve of his return to Moscow. Golubov, the Moscow theater critic who was accompanying Mikhoels on the tour, kept pressing him to come with him to visit his Minsk friend, but Mikhoels was so busy the entire week that he didn’t manage to make the visit until the last evening of his stay in Minsk. He never returned to his hotel. They found his body early in the morning on the 13th, with many fractures and a crushed skull.
Jacob found out about this accident on the following day, over the radio. The funeral took place several days later. So many people attended the funeral that Jacob had to wait an hour to reach the coffin to pay his last respects. The head of the deceased was mutilated, but his face was recognizable—bluish gray and stony. Next to him, on a small table, lay his broken spectacles.
Jacob left the theater where the body was lying in state. It was frosty, and the light was extinguished quickly, as in the theater. From Malaya Bronnaya, he turned automatically in the direction of his former home, on Povarskaya. Then he brought himself up short, turned around, and walked along the boulevards to Ostozhenka. The past never disappears; it only sinks into the depths. Most likely, the memory is submerged in some deep layers of the cerebral cortex, where it slumbers. Jacob had no doubt that it was a political murder, an assassination. What was Mikhoels thinking about, what did he remember, when they killed him?
Give up everything, abandon it all, and go to the provinces—to teach children music theory, or piano, or clarinet, to read Dickens, to learn Italian and read Dante … If I have time …
46 Reunion in Moscow
(2003)
After Vitya’s departure for America, Varvara Vasilievna began to love Nora. This about-face seemed to be the result of some unknown variety of tectonic shift that took place in her psyche; Vitya certainly played no role in it himself. From the moment Martha began taking charge of Vitya’s life, he sent his mother money. Although sending money to Russia was no simple procedure, Martha managed to organize an intermittent but regular method: she sent the money through Nora. Now and then, Martha even managed to force Vitya to write a letter, but often he simply signed his name to a brightly colorful postcard, and Martha had it mailed to Moscow. Varvara, a person of unexpected decisiveness and unexpected, sometimes idiotic, ideas, in the meantime transferred her longtime hatred from Nora to Martha, although the wedding photograph of her son and his second wife hung above her bed.
This unexpected love for Nora bore a weekly character—on Saturdays she visited Nikitsky Boulevard, bringing with her a blackberry pie and a parent’s blessing. Nora served tea, cut the pie into slices, nibbled at it politely, praising it, then put it aside. After her mother-in-law left, she gave the pie to the neighbors.