The Accidental Anarchist (12 page)

Once mail call was over, the men who couldn’t read begged me to read their letters to them. But I had no head for anything other than the envelope addressed in my father’s hand. I sat down and read:

My dear son Jacob,

This letter is written not with ink but with tears. So many months have gone by; this is already my twelfth letter and not a word from either you or Avrohom. Some people say that your entire regiment was wiped out, but we can only think about what has become of our two sons. Every minute to us is like a year. We spend whole days only awaiting the mailman. Your mother and your aunts run every day to pray upon the graves of their holy parents to intercede for you Up There. I try to console your mother that God will help and He will bring a good message. But deep in my heart I am afraid, because I know it cannot be that both of you have forgotten your parents. I no longer know what it is to sleep nights. I still say
tehillim
  for you daily, and so do the Rebbe and all his
Hasidim
, that you may be preserved from the great danger you are in. Dear son, if, Heaven forbid, anything has happened to either one of you, I beg you to write us the truth that we may know the worst. We greet you, your father and mother who hope to hear good news, Amen.

Shloime Zalman Marateck

I sat down with paper and pencil and, without waiting for my tears to dry, at once replied that we both were, praised be His Name, in good health, only Avrohom was unable to enclose a greeting at the moment because he’d just gone to town to buy tobacco.

Having written this and handed it to the mail clerk, I was gripped by a ferocious determination to somehow turn my lie into truth. In what we all knew to have been little better than a complete rout, tens of thousands of missing Russian soldiers must surely be scattered all over Manchuria: in hospitals, villages, Japanese prison camps, or temporarily attached to other units. If Avrohom were still alive somewhere, I was resolved to find him, even if, during my search for him, I was listed as a deserter.

Along with the mail, we’d received some three-month-old Petersburg newspapers, which were kind enough to inform us that our army was almost on the verge of expelling every last Japanese soldier from the Asiatic mainland. In fact, one got the impression that only the Czar’s infinite kindness kept us from driving out all of the Chinese, as well.

The only uncensored news we had from home was a little magazine in Yiddish that printed a kind of comic strip about the activities of a scrawny little man called “Uncle Pinye” or “Pintshik” and his gigantic wife, “Raizel.” It took no great cleverness to figure out that “Pintshik” was Japan (der Yapantshik) and “Meema Raizel” was Matushka Rossiya (Mother Russia). Under the guise of their little domestic tiffs, in which Raizel mercilessly bullied Pinye but her little husband always got the best of her, it was conveyed to us that not everyone back home was taken in by the bold-faced lies and boasts of the censored press.

I also found out from a wounded officer that, contrary to what we’d been told, Mukden had already fallen with losses (to us) of some 200,000 men. And that back home, there had been another unsuccessful attempt to assassinate the Czar. 

I asked the officer what the chances were that the Czar would now agree to a negotiated peace. He was pessimistic. We had already lost the war, but the longer our Little Father kept us fighting, the longer he hoped to delay the all-but-inevitable revolution.

While we waited impatiently for the American president (
Theodore Roosevelt
) to help negotiate an end to this war,  and soldiers continued to be killed daily by Japanese snipers or Chinese bandits, we were still being exhorted to prepare ourselves, physically and spiritually, for the decisive Battle of Mukden. This, we were told, would determine the outcome of the war once and for all, and teach the upstart Japanese a lesson they would not forget for centuries to come. Which was that, as General Kuropatkin had lately inscribed on his banner, “The Lord Preserves His Own.”

To raise our morale, we were also informed in strict secrecy that, unbeknownst to our treacherous enemy, a vast Russian fleet under Admiral Makaroff had been sent all the way around Africa to come upon the Japanese from behind and blow them out of the water. (What actually happened, as I read many years later, was that in May of 1905, after months of hardship, incompetence and all sorts of bad luck, when the Russian fleet, actually under Admiral Rozhdestvensky, finally appeared in the Strait of Tsushima, the Japanese navy lost no time in sending it straight to the bottom of the sea.)

Meanwhile, I went on training our apathetic recruits, our pitiful replacements, how to make a bayonet charge against a trench defended by machine guns. And we all waited with great enthusiasm for the “Battle of Destiny.”

There was another shipment of mail, although, once more, most of the 198 men to whom the letters were addressed would never answer to their names, again.

I had a fresh letter from my father. This time it was addressed to me, alone. My heart pounded as I tore it open. He wrote:

This is the seventeenth letter to which you have not replied. Your mother is almost blinded with weeping. My dear child Jacob, I must also tell you that I have heard Avrohom is dead. However, the
Gerer
Rebbe specifically assured me that you are alive and that you will, with the help of the Almighty, return to us.

Today I got up from sitting
shiva
for your brother, may he dwell in a bright Eden. Your mother cries that her prayers were insufficient to save him, and that he has not come to a Jewish grave. I plead with her to regain her strength, so that she may live to see you and your other brothers come back to us in a good hour.

Choked with bitterness, I told Glasnik that Avrohom was dead. Therefore, I now intended to keep my end of the bargain, which was not to return without him.

Glasnik, seeing that I was serious, argued angrily that the fact that my father had sat
shiva
was wholly insufficient proof that my brother was actually dead. Assuming Avrohom were married, would there not have to be two eyewitnesses to his death before his wife could be declared a widow and permitted to marry, again?

For once, I had no patience with this
Babylonian
kind of logic. In fact, ready to do the job before Glasnik, with his superior knowledge of
Talmudic
law (as he hadn’t run away from
yeshiva
before the age of thirteen), could weaken my resolve, I fumbled for my revolver.

Glasnik looked at the weapon and shook his head. Did I really want to be buried here, in the alien soil of Cathay, where no one would ever find my grave? Was my determination so feeble that I was afraid I’d change my mind if I waited until we got to a town large enough to have a Jewish cemetery, where at least I’d be able to receive a proper Jewish burial? Glasnik promised that if I’d wait to kill myself like a proper, God-fearing Jew, he would personally dig my grave and say
kaddish
for me. In fact, if the conditions were attractive enough, he might even keep me company and shoot himself, as well. (Perhaps I should explain that our frequent readiness to consider suicide was not a sign of madness or despair, but simply of weighing a reasonable alternative over something worse.)

It took me some moments to realize that he was joking. But suddenly, in dead earnestness, he said, “Brother, we belong to the nation of Israel, and we have survived far worse than this, and by the merits of our holy ancestors and the tears of our parents, you’ll see, we will, with His help, return alive.”

I looked at him and felt moved to tears. What a gift it was to have a true friend! He now tried to cheer me up by picturing our homecoming: Two young men, straight as arrows, whom the most beautiful girls in our district would consider it a privilege to look upon; the matchmakers would fall upon us like horseflies on a dung heap. But we would merely twirl our mustaches, and if they asked how much of a dowry we demanded, we’d tell them not to come back and talk to us about anything less than a thousand rubles.

So, thanks to Glasnik’s eloquence, I didn’t shoot myself that day.

A few mornings later, in the midst of a blinding snowstorm, five horsemen approached our camp and begged for a bite to eat. The insignias on their uniforms identified them as being with Avrohom’s unit. I asked if they knew a soldier named Marateck.

They said they’d never heard the name. I turned away, crushed. But one of the horsemen explained that they’d only been with the company for two days, and this gave me a moment of renewed hope. . . until the second one said there were hardly any survivors from the original company. On the other hand, if I wanted to see for myself, they were stationed only about ten or twenty kilometers away.

I wanted to grab the horseman closest to me by the throat. Why hadn’t he said that to begin with? Ten, twenty, 100 kilometers – nothing would stop me from finding out whether Avrohom was alive. I didn’t let myself stop long enough to consider whether I might prefer to hold on to some shred of hope rather than discover a harsher truth.

Writing down whatever directions the horsemen could give me (which wasn’t much since they were lost, themselves), I drew a rough map, which I tucked into my boot. They’d also given me the password, “Red Girl.”

I ran to tell Glasnik I was going to find out, for certain, whether my brother was dead or alive. He argued with me that, despite all the rumors of peace negotiations, there were still believed to be Japanese snipers positioned on at least one of the hills I would have to pass. Even if I managed to get past them, a lone Russian rider was almost certain to be ambushed by some roving band of Chinese highwaymen. Furthermore, the snow outside the camp was almost belly-high to a horse, and even in what little shelter we had, the icy wind cut through you like a razor.

The conditions suited me just fine. In fact, I said, in such uncivilized weather, any sensible sniper or bandit would be huddling deep inside his cave, and I would have a much better chance of slipping past him.

The Russian soldier in charge of the horses was an old friend. When I told him of my plan, he advised me not to take a horse but a mule, which might go more slowly, but would have much better staying power under these terrible conditions.

My friends gave me some of their spare ammunition, and I left loaded down with 120 rounds, a rifle, a cavalry saber, and my revolver. Before leaving, I gave Glasnik my diary  and begged him to send it to my parents as a remembrance if I didn’t come back.

I climbed into the saddle, and the mule carried me into the night. By my watch, it was barely eight-thirty in evening. Ten or twenty kilometers, even under these conditions, should not take more than three hours. Whether or not I would try to return tonight depended on how much danger I encountered en route, but above all on the kind of news I got when I arrived.

Three hours later, I found myself in the midst of an endless forest but it had finally stopped snowing. Despite my fear of bandits, I struck a match to consult my map. If the map was even roughly accurate, I had covered less than half the distance. If I came out at the right spot when I emerged from the forest, I would still have to climb a considerable hill, and then cross a body of water, which may or may not be a river, and may or may not be frozen over.

The trees bent and groaned under the weight of the snow. Each one was a perfect hiding place for a Cathayan bandit, to whom the value of my weapons alone, not to mention the mule, would guarantee a life of luxury for at least half a year.

By the time I got through the forest and reached the edge of the water, it was long past one o’clock in the morning. In the moonlight, I saw the outlines of a ruined hut on the opposite shore. Its roofless walls might, unless inhabited by Heaven-only-knows who, give me and the mule a sheltered place to rest for a while.

As we headed for the cabin, the mule’s clumsy hooves cracked the ice. Unable to halt in time, it stumbled headlong into the frozen water, spilling me into the water with it. Fortunately, the river or lake was only neck-deep. But as we emerged on the opposite shore, I was shivering like a leaf in a high wind, and the mule behaved as though it were having a fit.

The clothes began to stiffen on my body, and my head boiled with fever. I felt myself grow dizzy. For good measure, my vision also began to blur. As for my feet, they were as responsive as two blocks of granite. I said to myself, “Master of the Universe, have I come through all these hardships and dangers only to die here, where no Jew will ever find my body?”

When I finally reached the ruined hut, another blow fell. Beyond the hut were at least half a dozen possible paths. I consulted my frozen map. There was nothing on it to correspond to this tangle of roads. In the morning, even if I woke up with renewed strength, how would I know which path to choose?

A ravenous howl broke the silence behind me, and I suddenly realized I was surrounded by wolves. I quickly dragged the mule into the ruined hut and fell into a deep sleep.

In my dream, my grandfather, Reb Shmuel Schlossberg, of blessed memory, appeared to me, bearing in his hands a red clay vessel covered with white linen. Just as he had in my childhood, he seemed to have come in response to my moans of distress. He stroked my cheek, and had me drink from the clay vessel in his hands.

As I drank endlessly, feeling no need to pause for breath, he said, “If you take the second road to the left of the hill, you will find your brother.” He even advised me where I would locate my mule, which I hadn’t realized was missing.