Kostik, called the Artist or the Eagle, dragged around and howled like a leprous bitch the very next day, when, returning from the mine (where he had become the foreman and the scourge of the prisoners), he learned that Taube had been transported. "The one you took upon yourself has married another," Segidulin, the new chief, said to him in his hissing voice. "You're lying, Monkey," answered Kostik, pale as a ghost, but one could see by the expression on his face that he believed Segidulin's words.
THE JIMMY
Kostik, the molted Eagle, the once notorious safecracker and ex-chief, dragged around like this for eight years, bowed down like a leprous bitch, hiding the eagle pecking at his liver, changing prison camps and prison camp hospitals, where various keys, little bundles of wire, spoons, and rusted nails were extracted from his stomach. For eight years Segidulin's shadow hovered over him like an evil omen, sending him messages which awaited him at various transit stations, and which called him by his real name: "'Bitch". And then one day, now a free man (if one could call a man who lived under the terrible burden of humiliation "free"), he received a letter from someone who knew his secret. The letter was mailed from Moscow and took ten days to reach Maklakov, In the envelope, postmarked November 23, 1956, there was a jumbled news item (without the date), from which, however, Kostik could figure out the information be needed: Dr. Taube, an old Party member and former member of the Comintern known as Kiril Beitz, had been rehabilitated, and upon leaving the prison camp he had become director of a hospital in Tumen. (Tarashchenko's hypothesis that the news item was sent by Segidulin seems to me again entirely plausible; the safecracker must become a murderer or he would remain a “bitch" — satisfaction enough for one who had enjoyed his revenge for years) Kostik left the very same day. How he managed to get from Arkhangelsk to Tumen without the necessary documents, within three days, is of no consequence here. From the Tumen railroad station he proceeded to the hospital on foot. During the subsequent investigation, the porter remembered that on the night of the murder a strange man had asked for Dr. Taube. The porter couldn't remember his face, because the stranger's cap obscured his eyes. Taube, who had arrived in Tumen several days before, after working for two years as a free man in the Norilsk prison camp, slept on the hospital premises, and was on duty that night. When Kostik entered the room, Taube was standing at the table and opening a can of tuna fish. The radio was on softly, and Taube didn't hear the padded door open. Kostik took a jimmy out of his sleeve and delivered three powerful blows to his skull, not even looking at his face. Then, without haste, and probably with relief, he passed by the porter, a former Cossack who was so full of vodka that he rocked slightly while sleeping in an upright position, as though in a saddle.
THE LAST HONORS
Only two persons escorted Dr. Taube’s coffin: his housekeeper, Frau Else, a Volga German (one of the rare surviving specimens of this human flora), and a devout and somewhat unbalanced woman of Tumen who attended every funeral. Frau Else was the doctor’s housekeeper from the far-off Moscow days, when Taube first came to Russia. At the time of his death she must have been seventy. Although her native language was German, as was Taube’s, they always spoke to each other in Russian. There were two reasons for this: in the first place the desire of the Taube family to make the adjustment to the new environment easier, and also as a form of extreme politeness, which essentially amounted to a more elegant form of fear.
But now there was no one left alive in the doctor’s family (his wife had died in the prison camp, and his son had been killed in action), so Frau Else reverted to her native language: her dry, purple lips were fervently whispering a prayer in German. Meanwhile, the devout woman of Tumen was praying in Russian for the soul of the servant of God, Karl Georgievich, whose name was written in gold letters on the funeral wreath ordered by the hospital collective.
This took place in the Tumen cemetery on the bitterly cold afternoon of December 7, 1956.
Distant and mysterious are the ways that brought together the Georgian murderer and Dr. Taube. As distant and mysterious as the ways of God.
A Tomb For Boris Davidovich
{IN MEMORY OF LEONID ŠEJKA}
History recorded him as Novsky, which is only a pseudonym (or, more precisely, one of his pseudonyms). But what immediately spawns doubt is the question: did history really record him? In the index of the Granat Encyclopedia, among the 246 authorized biographies and autobiographies of great men and participants in the Revolution, his name is missing. In his commentary on this encyclopedia, Haupt notes that all the important figures of the Revolution are represented, and laments only the "surprising and inexplicable absence of Podvoysky. Even he fails to make any allusion to Novsky, whose role in the Revolution was more significant than that of Podvoysky. So in a "surprising and inexplicable” way this man whose political principles gave validity to a rigorous ethic, this vehement internationalist, appears in the revolutionary chronicles as a character without a face or a voice.
In this text, however fragmentary and incomplete, I shall try to bring to life the memory of the extraordinary and enigmatic person that was Novsky. Certain omissions — particularly those concerning the most important period of his life: the Revolution and the years immediately following it-could be explained in much the same way the above commentator explains other biographies: after 1917, his life merges with public life and becomes "a part of history," On the other hand, as Haupt points out, we should not forget that these biographies were written in the late 1920’s: hence the significant omissions, discretion, and haste. Haste before death, we might add.
The ancient Greeks had an admirable custom: for anyone who perished by fire, was swallowed by a volcano, buried by lava, torn to pieces by beasts, devoured by sharks, or whose corpse was scattered by vultures in the desert, they built so-called cenotaphs, or empty tombs, in their homelands; for the body is only fire, water, or earth, whereas the soul is the Alpha and the Omega, to which a shrine should be erected.
Right after Christmas of 1885, the Czars Second Cavalry Regiment halted on the west bank of the Dnieper to catch their breath and celebrate the feast of the Epiphany, Prince Vyazemsky, a cavalry colonel, emerged from the icy water with the symbol of Christ in the form of a silver cross. Prior to that, the soldiers had shattered the thick crust of ice for some twenty meters around with dynamite; the water was the color of steel. The young Prince Vyazemsky had refused to let them tie a rope around his waist, He crossed himself, his blue eyes gazing at the clear winter sky, and jumped into the water. His emergence from the icy whirlpools was first celebrated with salvos, and then with the popping of the corks of champagne bottles in the improvised officers' canteen set up in an elementary school building. The soldiers received their holiday ration of seven hundred grams of Russian cognac each: the personal gift of Prince Vyazemsky to the Second Cavalry. Drinking began right after the religious service In the village church and continued until late in the afternoon. David Abramovich was the only soldier not present at the service. They say that during that time he was lying in the warm manger of the stables, reading the Talmud, which, given the profusion of associations, seems dubious to me. One of the soldiers noticed his absence and a search began. They found him in the shed (in the stables, according to some) with the untouched bottle of cognac beside him. They forced him to drink the liquor given him by the grace of the Czar, stripped him to the waist so as not to desecrate the uniform, and set about flogging him with a knout. Finally, when he was unconscious, they tied him to a horse and dragged him to the Dnieper, A thin с ruse had already formed where they had previously broken the ice. Having tied him around the waist with horse whips so he wouldn’t drown, they pushed him into the icy water. When they finally pulled him out, blue and half dead, they poured the remainder of the cognac down his throat and then, holding the silver cross over his forehead, sang in chorus "The Fruit of Thy Womb." In the evening, while he was burning with fever, they transferred him from the stables to the house of Solomon Malamud, the village teacher. Malamud’s sixteen-year old daughter coated the wounds on the back of the unfortunate private with cod-liver oil. Before leaving with his regiment, which was being dispatched that morning to crush an uprising, David Abramovich, still feverish, swore to her that he would come back. He kept his promise. From this romantic encounter, whose authenticity we have no reason to doubt, Boris Davidovich was born, he who would go down in history under the name of Novsky, B. D. Novsky.