The Rabbi Who Tricked Stalin Read online

Blooma continued to take care of the child Raphael, even in the days of her pregnancy from Mogid. Some gossipers women in the central market saw her protuberant belly. Rabbi Aaron himself could not believe, at first, in what his eyes had seen. He suddenly understood, that her pregnancy and birth-giving may cause a danger to all of them… In her last months of pregnancy, and even further on, Blooma would be weighty, weak, scared - and so she will avoid from taking care of Raphael. Perhaps more than that: She may endanger Mogid. In what? Because people are curious, they would try to search who is the father, her lover. And he, Rabbi Aaron, would not be excluded from the list, in that kind of gossip. ‘How stupid I was,’ he said to himself, ‘to secretly wed this couple... On the other hand, the Mogid would have been lying with her without any wedding. About such a sin - I would not have slandered him in the citizens’ court, of course. So, now I’m trapped. . . But regarding myself, if people begin to believe that I have caused Blooma’s pregnancy, I’ll absolutely deny that. I didn’t have any sexual relations with her, God will guard me. . . Rabbi Haneles has already asked me about that, and I had partly cheated him. I told him that Blooma had sworn to me - that her man was Jewish, and I won’t disclose his name. Because he is a divorced, and has a grown up son, who might murder him if he knows about a new brother. That man was recently sentenced for many years to Siberia, so I’ve told Haneles. Is there a chance that Gepau will inquire him there? Maybe he has already died there. And even if he’s alive, obviously he would deny everything. This man is the ex-private Gallery owner, yes. He had been known in the past as skirts chaser and fornicator. His success with women derived from the fact that most women were attracted to his money. . .God will not write me as a sinner- in bluffing for Mogid and Blooma’s sake.

  “That is what Blooma had told me,” So I’ve added to Rabbi Haneles, and mentioned that I had known the man and his bad ways for long years. Yes, if the police or Gepau inquire about this pregnancy – I’ll testify. I’ll tell them that I personally know how Blooma had wanted a baby for many years. Of course I had warned her about that particular man. But he had a sweet tongue, and promised her like a monthly benefit pay for the baby, and so on. . .

  “I blame you, Reb Aaron,“ said Rabbi Haneles with a smile, “that you haven’t revealed that to me till now. But would you vow, that your son’s caretaker isn’t a whore? That she just wants to raise her own baby, which is a wish given by God? So, then- of course you can continue to employ her in taking care of your invalid child.”

  “I give you my word about that,” said Rabbi Aaron, “and thank you, Rabbi Haneles, for having patience with my failures.”

  Gepau heard also about Blooma’s story. Smart and suspicious Antonov decided to ‘decode the riddle’ of her great aspiration to bear her own baby. One day at noon Blooma was cooking a lunch pie, made of flour, eggs and vegetables.

  “Oh, God! Save me! a mouse, a mouse!” She shouted to Mogid, as she saw that a tiny triangle faced animal had been running under her table and disappeared. She had always been afraid from these impure animals. When she got to the table with two pieces of the pie, one for her and one for her husband Mogid, two mice were jumping around and she shrieked and almost dropped the food. She shouted again: “Oy Vey, disgusting rats!” – and Mogid went to the kitchen and lifted a broomstic, but could not find where the mice were.

  Suddenly the couple and the children Shmil- blooma’s baby, who was in his baby’s play pen- and Raphael - all heard somebody calling from outside: It was a double high-sharp voice of two men:

  “Kil-ling mice, kil-ling mice! who is in-te-res-ted? Kil-ling mice, kil-ling mice!”

  Blooma went back to the kitchen, and opened the small window there. She shouted toward the filthy street:

  “Come here, men. I need you. Second floor, two mice.”

  “It might be,” joked her husband, Mogid, “that these killers had sent mice all over the neighborhood, to get paid for catching them.”

  The two sharp voiced men arrived at the door. Blooma indicated Mogid- by a hand wave- to hide. She opened the door, and two Chinese - long time immigrants- entered. They were shabby dressed, and their narrow slanting positioned eyes were looking nervously at the floor. They were very meagre, their tiny hands holding wicker baskets and long sticks.

  “Kil-ling mice,” they said again repeatedly, still standing at the door.

  “Twenty Kopeks per one,” said Blooma..

  “Fiftyl! Half Rubel,” said one of the killers. His whistling voice nerved Blooma, but she said: ‘O’key’ - and showed them the kitchen.

  She saw that the tiny room, where Mogid was hiding, was closed, and that the two children were in the larger room. Meanwhile the two mice searchers were in the kitchen, bending and and dropping down on the floor, and waving with their sticks. They discovered nothing. So, she indicated them to the wider room and they began to search there, frightening the kids. Before leaving the kitchen they saw the two pies on the table, with forks and knives beside them. One of them looked at these curiously, but Blooma had not understood what they would cause. . .

  She took the children out of their room, and she saw one of the small men was equipped with flies striker, composed of a leather piece and a short stick. He said something to the other, who was grabbing now Blooma’s long broomstick. Blooma heard a strike, and saw the man kneeling there. He had pulled already out one of ‘her mice’, holding its tail by his fingers. It was still panting, its mouth spilting blood. The other Chinese was still grabbing the broomstick, and soon was prostrate on the floor... He was looking around, still holding the stick, and then few additional strikes were heard from his direction. He soon rose to his knees and became standing, and Blooma discerned that he was holding a second mouse by its tail. This time no blood was spilt from its mouth, but the mice was seen dying.

  The standing ‘mice hunters’ waved in the air their two quite fat animals and returned with broad smiles to the kitchen. They put the carcasses into a little paper bag, that they had pulled out from their pockets. They said something to each other, while standing erect, then began to declaim in their queer Russian-Chinese dialect:

  “On-ly two mice, Fif-ty and Fif-ty Ko-pek! One ru-ble.”

  Blooma pulled out her purse and paid them a ruble, as they had demanded. When she saw them getting out of the front door, she re-entered the room where Mogid had been hided.

  “They’ve finished.” she said, with a smile on her lips “It’s a miracle they found these mice in the other room. They would have suspected, if I had refused to let them in here.”

  In a minute – the two chinese burned a fire nearby, on the street’s muddy sideway.

  Blooma opened her kitchen’s window, looking toward the narrow street.

  “I see these Chinesel cooking, they’ll soon eat their hunt. Each will swallow one disgusting animal. . . God will save us.”

  “Multitudes of mice - means heavy starvation all over Russia,” reckoned her husband, ‘the know all’ Red Mogid., “with it will come epidemics. This is what Stalin’s regime has brought upon us.”

  In the afternoon Antonov heard from his ‘devoted disguised disgusting’ Chinese men about a mature man, who may not had eaten his pie in Blooma’s hut. At night Antonov sent his buddies to burst there. They found Mogid, just so easily, that Dwarf Avrum clapped his forehead by his palm. He scorned himself for his stupidity, having believed that Blooma’s lover had been in Siberia.

  The Gepau well understood, that Blooma had to be jailed. But she said that the man Red Mogid had shown her fake papers. His name –According to these, was Aalter Balaban. She did not inquire nor known that he had been searched by them, but who was not? …Rabbi Aaron was lucky, that she had not spoken about his involvement in that case. In her heart Blooma blamed The Red Mogid to have been a sacrifice of his own bad calculation. Perhaps he himself wanted to be handed to Gepau, so desparate he was about his situation. It seemed that he had
not found any argument to continue living as a fugitive, and hide day and night. Nobody knows what he was really reflecting about his morbid situation…

  Mogid did not contradict to his arrest, while the Gepauniks chained him by his hands and legs. He wanted to take some books with him – but was deprived. More than that: Soon the Gepau men used their ‘metal fists’ to blow his head with dry and also bloody strikes. He could not utter a word. In their Investigation room – Antonov howled at him again and again, and his outrage derived from being insulted by Mogid’s successful, long and audacious escape. Antonov could not find him earlier, and by that he had risked his own head. . .

  The Rabbi heard about Mogid’s arrest from sobbing Blooma. She was sure that Gepau would kill her husband. If before that - Rabbi Aaron had been angry about her pregnancy, now he saw that all his fears had become a reality. He waited a week, hesitating to meet Elya Ruhin, who certainly had already heard about his dear uncle’s capture. But at last the Rabbi decided to walk to Elya’s office and hear his opinion, if there could be some hope to save Mogid’s life.

  Of course Gepau will not release him from jail, or refrain from sending him to in Siberia. If they don’t kill him, that will be miraclous. Perhaps Mogid will be asked to publicly confess, that he had been cheated and deluded by Trotsky all the way long. . .

  As Rabbi Aaron presumed, his ex-brother-in-law refused to talk about Mogid. But he revealed that he had already heard about that, maybe from Antonov –but he didn’t mention it.

  “For the time being,” Elya told Aaron, “Mogid is detained in the asylum in Smolensk, so I was told. He had been brought there, as he’s got out of his mind. He is controlled now by the order of Stalin’s Head of Secret police, Menzhinsky.”

  Rabbi went to Antonov’s Gepau Office. He was received by the Deputy Vronsky, and requested to meet Mogid. He told the Gepau that Mogid had become a religious Jew, so his wife said. He, Rabbi Aaron, feels himself responsible for providing him some Jewish sacred articles like Talith (prayer cloth), and take care that he is supplied Kosher food.

  A week later Rabbi Aaron was allowed to travel by train to Smolensk. His boss Mendelevitch was very angry about that. Rabbi Aaron would leave the painter alone exactly on Sunday, his official day of rest, when the greatest crowd of visitors arrive. That would entail a tremendous effort, and scandalous Aaron would avoid his presence in the Gallery at such a day, that his service is so needed. . .

  Rabbi was waiting inside the Asylum Reception Office, located in an old building – from the Tsaristic era, as indicated by the wide arched entrance with two pillars in the front, seen from inside. He handed the asylum’s clerk all his documents - and a short letter from Gepau Minsk Deputy. Soon a Physician came to meet the Rabbi. He led him along the Reception Hall, and stopped at a green door Number 7 in the far right wall. The Psychiatric doctor opened the door. Inside they saw grey walls and the place was mostly darkened. In the middle there was a closed cabine, used for the mad’s dwelling. There was a small window on the cabine’s mid-wall, with prisoners’ bars.

  Rabbi’s escort pointed to him on a man seated behind the bars. His face was turned aside, and his head was wrapped with a wide bandage. It was Mogid, who was like a shadow of his figure in the past.. He was curved like a hunch-back. He was completely baldheaded and his two weeks beard had changed to grey and yellow, its hairs standing erect like nails; his clever eyes were now looking like two cinders that had completely lasted.

  The visitors’ steps had turned the tortured man’s attention. Mogid seemed like looking at both Rabbi and the Doctor, but soon dropped his eyes again and remained frozen on his seat.

  “Try to speak to him,“ said the Doctor to Rabbi Aaron ,”We think that he understands something. You see, his head was badly hurt.”

  The Doctor left Rabbi Aaron with the man. The Rabbi approached him and almost stuck his nose behind the bars, trying to look at him closely. He said: “Mogid, Mogid”- and heard him only mumble. Rabbi Aaron was feeling great mercy to the poor Mogid. He handed him the Talith parcel.

  “God, save this man!” he prayed, “Like you had saved our father Abraham from the Furnace of King Nimrod.”

  Rabbi saw that Mogid cannot utter a clear word. He was whispering in excitement:

  “Mogid! I have just a crazy idea! I might be like you. Everybody might. . .God,! help this man.. and me. Be our shelter. Amen.” Mogid nodded, as if he had understood. But suddenly he burst in a is loud laughter. Rabbi Aaron was scared and jumped aside.

  ‘God, save me!” he prayed, looking at Mogid, “Let me succeed, show me my way! But don’t let me be in his situation. Not that!”

  He heard a call, coming from behind:

  “Comrade Hittin, come down. Time out! Time out!”

  CHAPTER 21