Zilya already seemed completely convinced. Like a good Jewish girl she accepted, without rebelling against her father, the idea of marriage to a man twenty years older than her and – to judge from what people said – one with many faults.
Then one day into the shop came Svyatoslav, a young Siberian criminal who had just arrived in Transnistria. He belonged to the gang of a famous criminal called ‘Angel’, who had terrorized the communists for more than ten years, robbing trains in Siberia. Svyatoslav had been wounded in a gun battle, and his friends had sent him to Transnistria to convalesce. They had given him some money to give to the community of the Siberians, who had welcomed him without any problems. Svyatoslav had no family; his parents were dead. To cut a long story short, Svyatoslav fell in love with Zilya, and she fell in love with him.
As etiquette required, he went to Rabbi Moisha’s house and asked him for his daughter’s hand, but the rabbi dismissed him scornfully, thinking he was a pauper because his appearance was modest and, in accordance with Siberian law, he didn’t flaunt his wealth.
After suffering this humiliation, Svyatoslav appealed to the Guardian of Low River, who at that time was a criminal by the name of Sidor, nicknamed ‘Lynx’s Paw’, an old Siberian Urka. After listening to his account of the matter, Lynx’s Paw thought the Jew might have reacted like that because he had doubts about Svyatoslav’s financial position, so he advised him not to despair, but to go back to the rabbi with some jewels to offer as a gift to his daughter.
Siberian custom requires that the bridegroom himself make a proposal of marriage, but that he be accompanied by a member of his family, or in extreme cases by an old friend. So, in order to respect the law, Lynx’s Paw suggested that he himself should accompany Svyatoslav on his second attempt. They arrived at the rabbi’s house with many precious jewels, and again presented his suit, but again the rabbi dismissed them scornfully, even daring to insult them. Putting the jewels in his hand, he pretended that his palm had been burnt and dropped them on the floor, and when his guests asked him what had burnt him, he replied:
‘The human blood they are covered with.’
The two Siberians went away, already knowing what they had to do. Lynx’s Paw gave Svyatoslav permission to take the rabbi’s daughter to live in the Siberian quarter, if she agreed.
The beautiful Zilya ran away from home that very same night. Under Siberian law she could not take any possession from her father’s house except herself, so Svyatoslav had even brought her clothes for her elopement.
Next day the rabbi sent some Jewish criminals to negotiate with the Siberians. Lynx’s Paw explained to these men that according to our law any person who reaches the age of eighteen is free to do what they want, and it is a great sin to oppose this, especially when it is a question of forming a new family and of love, which are two God-willed things. The Jews showed their arrogance and threatened Lynx’s Paw with death. At that point he lost his temper and killed three of them instantly with a wooden chair; the fourth one he struck on the arm, breaking it, and sent him to Rabbi Moisha with these words:
‘He who names death doesn’t know that it is closest to him.’
At this all hell was let loose. Moisha, finding himself up against Siberians, about whom he knew nothing except that they were murderers and robbers who always stuck together, couldn’t challenge them on their own territory, so he asked the Jews of Odessa to help him.
The leaders of the Jewish community of Odessa, who were very rich and powerful, organized a meeting to discover where the truth lay, and how justice could be done. Everyone attended, including Svyatoslav, Zilya and Moisha.
After listening to both sides, the Jews tried to blame Svyatoslav, accusing him of kidnapping Moisha’s daughter, but the Siberians replied that according to Siberian law she had not been kidnapped, because she had left of her own free will, and this was proved by the fact that she had left in her father’s house everything that linked her with that place.
Moisha retorted that there was one thing she had taken away: a coloured ribbon with which she bound up her hair. It was true – Zilya had forgotten to take it off, and Moisha’s wife had noticed it.
Such a tiny detail was enough to turn the situation against the Siberians. According to our rules, now the girl would have to be returned to her father. But there was one objection.
Zilya, the Siberians said, had already married Svyatoslav, and in order to do so she had converted to the Orthodox faith and had been baptized with the Siberian Cross: therefore, according to our laws, the powers of the parents could no longer extend over her, since they were of a faith different from hers. However, if Moisha, too, converted to the Orthodox faith, his word would carry a different weight…
In a fury, Moisha tried to stab Svyatoslav with a knife, and wounded him.
And thereby he made a serious mistake: he violated the peace in a criminal meeting, a crime that must be punished by immediate hanging.
To take his own life, Moisha decided to use that ribbon of cloth that his daughter wore in her hair. He died cursing Zilya and her husband, wishing every evil on their children, on their children’s children and on all those who loved them.
Soon afterwards Zilya fell ill. Her condition deteriorated, and no medicine could cure her. So Svyatoslav took her to Siberia, to see an old shaman of the tribe of the Nency, a people of Siberian aborigines who had always had very close ties with the Siberian criminals, the Urkas.
The shaman said the girl was suffering because an evil spirit always kept her in the chill of death, removing the warmth of life from her. To stop the spirit it was necessary to burn the place that still tied him to this world. So returning to Transnistria, Svyatoslav, with the help of other Siberians, set fire to Rabbi Moisha’s house, and later to the synagogue too.
Zilya recovered, and the two of them continued to live in our district for a long time. They had six sons: two of them murdered policemen and died young in prison; one went to live in Odessa, and in time set up a flourishing trade in clothes with fake brand-names (he was the most successful of all the brothers); and the other three lived in our district and carried out robberies; the youngest of them, Zhora, belonged to the gang led by my father.
In their old age Svyatoslav and Zilya went to end their lives in the Tayga, as they had always wanted to do.
After the synagogue was burned down by the Siberians many Jews left the area. The last of them were deported by the Nazis during the Second World War, and all that remains of that community now is the old cemetery.
Abandoned for years, it became a desolate place, where rubbish was dumped and kids went to fight. The graves were looted by some members of the Moldovan community, who committed this outrage against the dead simply to get stone ornaments that they could use as decorations for the gates outside their houses: this custom was the origin of a very offensive proverb: ‘A Moldovan’s soul is as beautiful as his garden gate.’
In the 1970s the Ukrainians started building houses in the old Jewish quarter. A lot of promiscuous girls lived there, and we often had parties with them. All you had to do to pull a Balka girl was buy her a drink, because not having a strict upbringing like the girls of Low River they saw sex as just fun; but as often happens in these cases, their over-lax behaviour became a kind of malaise, and many of them remained trapped in their own sexual freedom. They usually started having sex at the age of fourteen, or even earlier. By the time they were eighteen each one of them was already known to the whole town; it was convenient for the men to have women who were always ready to sleep with them without asking for anything in exchange. It was a game, which lasted until the man got fed up with one and moved on to another.