“Several weeks ago we held a service for two dead members of our small congregation whose names we inscribed on the plaque that hangs on that wall. On Friday we will hold services honoring four more. We will fight back. We will pray to our Lord, to help the police find the murderers. Does anyone wish to speak?”
A thin man in his thirties, clean-shaven, his dark face marked by a broken nose that had never healed properly, stood and said, “I say we arm, every one of us who does not already have a weapon. I say we should conduct our own search, that we should travel in groups when possible, that we should keep our hands on the triggers of our weapons and have them ready at the slightest sign of danger.”
There were murmurs among the congregants; small arguments began. Belinsky looked at Rostnikov. Guns in the hands of private citizens were against the law, but it was a law increasingly ignored.
A woman’s voice said, “If we kill them, we will all be condemned. More people will hate us.”
Belinsky nodded, said nothing, and pointed to a man in his sixties, heavyset and wearing a workman’s cap, who stood and spoke.
“I’m a clerk, a bookkeeper for a night club where they play loud music, the Rusty Sputnik.”
A ripple of laughter crossed the somber room.
“I’m a clerk,” the man repeated. “I have always been recognized as a Jew though I never declared or practiced the faith of my fathers and their fathers before them till now. Under the Soviet Union most of us lived as suspicious characters. I have spent my life expecting to be fired, accused, pounced on for no reason other than that I am a Jew. Rabbi Belinsky has given me and my family pride in our identity. I will fight if necessary, though I am only a nearsighted bookkeeper. That’s all I have to say.”
The man sat. There was no applause, but a general nodding of heads suggested agreement. Belinsky knew that those who were wavering were not going to speak. They had found the courage to come here tonight. They would listen and then they would talk to their families, if they had them, and decide whether to shun the synagogue or join together in determination and fear. Belinsky estimated that at least half of the people sitting in the wooden chairs before him were among the undecided.
Belinsky looked at Rostnikov, whose arms were folded before him. Rostnikov’s face showed nothing.
“For those who can attend, funeral services will be held tomorrow for our dead. Their bodies will be here from noon to three, and then we will bury them in the Jewish cemetery.”
“What should we do?” asked a woman carrying a sleeping baby.
“I have spent my life fighting,” Belinsky said. “Fighting against those who would destroy us, exploit us, enslave us. My father and uncles fought the British. My country and family have fought Arabs who wanted to destroy us. We survive. We prosper. We do this because we are willing to fight and, if necessary, die. Because we are small in number, we survive because we do not compromise in battle. Every Jew is a soldier. I think that those who wish to arm themselves should meet with me for training. I think we should go on meeting, holding services. I am prepared to die for my beliefs. Without beliefs worth dying for we simply pass through life.”
With this, Belinsky asked the congregation to rise. He lowered his head and said a prayer in Hebrew. A few in the congregation who had begun Hebrew lessons with the rabbi tried to accompany him. He repeated the prayer in Russian and more voices joined in.
The meeting had ended. Rostnikov stood and waited, putting as much of his weight on his good right leg as he could. He was learning to let his artificial leg help a bit at a time, and each day he believed the pain in what remained of his left leg eased just a bit more as he tried to make the limb of plastic and metal a part of him.
Some congregants stopped to talk to the rabbi, including the young man who had advocated armed defense. Rostnikov couldn’t hear them, but he could see that the discussion was animated, passionate. Belinsky shook the hand of the young man and the others. Soon there remained no one but the policeman and the rabbi.
“It’s cold in here,” Rostnikov said, looking at the four stoves with a pile of wood next to each. “Poor circulation.”
“Of that I am aware,” said Belinsky. “Correcting the problem is another matter.”
Rostnikov’s eyes ran up and down the walls.
“With the help of four men and the proper equipment, I believe we could build a duct system with the existing stoves that would effectively heat the building.”
“We?” asked Belinsky, moving down the aisle toward the policeman.
Rostnikov shrugged.
“You know about heating?”
“I know plumbing,” said Rostnikov. “The principles are not all that dissimilar.”
“I’ll help and I’ll find three others,” Belinsky said. “If the materials are available and not ridiculously expensive, we welcome your supervision.”
“I know where to obtain the materials reasonably,” said Rostnikov. “This will be an interesting challenge.”
“And the challenge of finding the murderers?” said Belinsky.
“You can be assured that the less-than-firmly-entrenched current government does not want an international incident over murderous attacks by anti-Semites,” said Rostnikov.
“It is impossible to understand the Lord,” said Belinsky with a sigh. “Politics, however, I do understand. Expediency triumphs and can be rationalized. It requires no goodwill, only self interest.”
“Therefore …?” asked Rostnikov.
“Therefore, I believe at the moment that you will do your best to find the murderers.”
“And find a way to heat this building.”
Belinsky smiled.
“Perhaps.”
“You have something to tell me,” said Belinsky.
The two men now stood only a few feet apart.
“One of the four dead men on the embankment was not a Jew.”
For an instant, and only an instant, Belinsky looked puzzled.
“All four were of this congregation,” said Belinsky.
“One of the murdered men was Igor Mesanovich,” said Rostnikov, pulling out a notebook and reading between the tiny drawings. “His family goes back many generations. Before the Revolution, they were practicing members of the Russian Orthodox Church. In fact, according to Mesanovich’s brother, who was interviewed a few hours ago by the Saint Petersburg police, they were members of the aristocracy. A few of them were even in the court of the czars. The brother believes that before the Revolution, when much of the family moved to Moscow and lived in this very neighborhood, his family even worshiped in this building.”
Rostnikov closed the book and returned it to his pocket.
“Perhaps Mesanovich wanted to be Jewish,” said Belinsky. “Some people have a wish to be members of a proud minority. Some Gentiles even believe in the truth of our God.”
“But he never told you he wasn’t Jewish?” Rostnikov asked.
Belinsky shook his head and said, “He told us his family was originally from Ukraine, a small shtetl.”
“We Russians are a people accustomed to lying,” said Rostnikov, “lying with such sincerity, conviction, and indignation that we often believe our own lies. I have faced murderers who committed their crime in front of numerous reliable witnesses. The murderers often swore that they had not committed the crime. Their sincerity was convincing. Polygraphs don’t work on us. It has taken us almost a thousand years to perfect this art.”
“Mesanovich was an infiltrator?” asked Belinsky.
“It is possible,” said Rostnikov. “He seems to have belonged to no nationalistic or anti-Semitic organizations. Yet one cannot avoid the possibility that those with whom he conspired distrusted him for some reason, real or imagined, and killed him. In all likelihood he was simply mistaken for a Jew, since he contended that he was one. We are looking into it. So far we have not been able to find Mesanovich’s parents here in Moscow. They have not been home when we called, and we have not found out where they might work.”