Zugzwang (11 page)

Lychev also allowed me to receive books from Minna. Among these was the Babylonian Talmud, sent at my request.
It amused me that when we played chess the old jailer would eye the sacred text suspiciously, uncertain whether it was safe to be in the same room as so potent a token of alien magic.

I searched the texts from top to bottom, occasionally mumbling to myself as I read, which the jailer, looking in at the observation slit, took as prayer. My father would have been horrified at the sight, even had I been able to reassure him my reading had nothing to do with veneration for the God he had rejected but with concern for the patient I was determined to save.

My father would have been embarrassed to have met Rozental. Rozental was too much like the man from Dvinsk my father wanted to forget he had ever been. Kopelzon wept rivers of sentimental tears when he talked of the poverty of the towns of the Pale. But my father's heart was not moved by the destitution of his people. He was shamed by it, as a son would be shamed by his father falling over drunk in the street. The sight of the
shnorrer
humiliated him; the soup kitchen he felt a personal disgrace. He asked himself a simple question: why were his people so miserably poor and ignorant? Why was there so much vice, prostitution and robbery? Why, among his people, were there so many terrorists and revolutionaries? Kopelzon would have answered him plainly with the words pogrom, Cossack, Pale and the Black Hundreds. But all my father saw was ignorance and backwardness.

My father would never have engaged in debate, with Kopelzon or anyone else. He fell silent when faced with the strong and contrary opinion of others, not so much because his lack of education left him ill-equipped to defend his point of view, but because he took his own beliefs as self-evidently true and therefore in no need of public airing. The answer he had discovered resided in his own people, in their very being. As long as his people were themselves, it could not be otherwise. His success in the world only reinforced his
belief. He had the answer, and the answer was to stop being Jewish.

‘What is on your head?' I had asked Rozental during a session early in our analysis. He had been scratching his scalp, clawing at it with the nails of both hands.

He uttered a groan. ‘It never leaves me alone.'

His hair was very short, practically shorn. I examined it carefully. There was nothing, not even nits.

‘It's a fly,' he said desperately. ‘Can you not see it? It follows me everywhere. It torments me day and night.'

‘There's nothing here.'

‘I can feel it crawling over my scalp.'

‘Would you like a mirror so you can see for yourself?'

With some difficulty I induced him to stand before the mirror over the fireplace while I held a hand mirror (borrowed from Minna) behind him, as a barber does. Eventually I settled him sufficiently to be able to continue the session.

My approach with my patients was generally the same: I began by asking for as full an account as possible of their life story. Rozental described his early years in Choroszcz, the destitute settlement in which he had lived until he went to yeshiva in Lodz. He was the youngest of twelve children and his father had died before he was born. I asked how his mother had managed.

‘My brothers and sisters and I were parcelled out to relatives. I was sent to live with my grandparents.'

‘Tell me about your grandparents.'

He hesitated, then said, ‘They were good, kind people.'

‘Were they religious?'

‘Yes, of course.'

‘Were you happy in their house?'

‘They loved me very much.'

Besides the obvious incompleteness of the answer, I thought I detected a trace of guilt. Here, plainly, was an avenue to explore. ‘Are your grandparents still alive?'

‘They are both dead.'

‘Were they still alive when you became famous as a chess player?'

His reluctance to answer confirmed to me my suspicion that there was something of significance in his relationship with his grandparents.

‘Avrom,' I prodded my taciturn patient, ‘did they live long enough to hear of your successes?'

‘Yes,' he whispered, almost inaudibly.

‘How did they react?' He began again to scratch his scalp. ‘Were they pleased?'

‘Yes …' he said vaguely before immediately contradicting himself: ‘No – I don't know.'

‘Did they approve of your choice of career?'

‘How could they?' he retorted, this time forcibly and without vacillation. ‘When they sent me to the
heder
they said, “Learn, Avrom, learn! Purses of silver will fall to you from heaven.” But instead of learning, what did I do? I played chess. Haran, Padan, Hebron where Abraham buried Sarah? None of this mattered – I was consumed by chess. When the boys were imagining themselves following Moses out of Egypt or fighting with Joshua at Jericho, I had visions of myself a pawn up against Lasker in a rook endgame. How could my grandparents have approved?'

Rozental had not spoken as many words in an entire hour as had just passed between us. I pressed on, ‘Were there arguments?'

He did not answer, though I put the question three times.

‘Do you feel you disappointed them?' I ventured.

‘I just want to play chess!' he burst out. ‘I ask nothing of anyone – nothing! I do not interfere with anyone, I do not
criticise, I do not condemn. Why can't I be left alone to play chess? Why?'

‘Who is not leaving you alone?'

‘Everyone.'

‘Your grandparents?'

‘Everyone wants me to be this, to be that. To do this, to do that.'

‘What did your grandparents want you to be?'

‘It's not my grandparents, it's not them!' he insisted.

‘Who has these expectations you find so onerous?'

No matter how hard I probed, he would not be specific. It was
everyone
.

‘They want me to be two things,' he sobbed, ‘but I can't be. I just want to play chess. I want to play in the tournament. I want to play Lasker and beat him. But they won't let me!'

‘ “They” are your grandparents, Avrom, are they not?' Rozental answered by violently swatting the air around his head. The invisible fly had returned.

The fly was obviously the key to understanding Rozental's illness. But it was not until I was in my cell that I discovered its true symbolic meaning. Between Lychev's interrogations, my reading of the ancient texts led me to this: Beelzebub, the devil, got his name from
ba'al-zevuv
– meaning ‘master of the fly'. Searching further, I came upon a Midrash which runs: ‘The evil inclination is similar to a fly and sits at the two openings of the heart.'

For someone as thoroughly steeped in Jewish learning and tradition as Rozental, the fly was clearly a manifestation of
yetzer hara
– evil inclination, the impulse to follow selfish desire. It was not difficult to work out the nature of this particular evil inclination. Rozental had told me that, like Benjamin, the beloved youngest son of Jacob, he had been his
grandparents' favourite. When I pressed him on his feelings for his father's parents, however, his replies were highly suggestive, for while he never criticised them, never once did he make a positive declaration in their favour. He would repeat, almost formulaically, that they were ‘good people', ‘kind people', ‘simple people'. But they had also been exacting of the promising young student and had entertained ambitions of him both as the economic saviour of the distressed family and as a future religious leader of their community. It was clear that he found these expectations oppressive. ‘Everyone wants me to be this, to be that. To do this, to do that', ‘They want me to be two things'.

Instead of fulfilling his grandparents' dreams, Rozental became obsessed with chess and quickly aspired to become not a great religious teacher but a great professional chess player – the next World Champion. Whenever I asked him about his grandparents' reaction, Rozental's narrative faltered. Since professional chess would have taken him from their world and their religion, I decided the grandparents were unlikely to have approved, and that Rozental's reluctance to acknowledge this was because of residual feelings of loyalty. In spite of coming up against very strong emotional pressure, Rozental had found the courage to pursue his dream.

But in every corner demons lie in wait for the Jewish soul. Guilt had caught up with Rozental, precipitating his terrible mental crisis. I determined that on my release – assuming that I would, sooner or later, be set at liberty – I would have to bring my patient to confront his true feelings for his grandparents. This was the analysis at which I arrived during my imprisonment. I was both proud and certain of my deductions. At some future time I would write a paper for presentation to Bekhterev and my colleagues at the St Petersburg Psychoneurologic Institute.

* * *

More time. And then, at last, Lychev returned. In the predawn light filtering through the high window, Lychev's appearance was cyanotic. It was not the first time I had wondered about the state of his health: a bad heart, I concluded, and time was to tell that in this at least I was not mistaken.

‘Catherine still refuses to give me Yastrebov's name,' he said wearily.

‘I demand to know what charge you have against us,' I said, rousing myself from the cot. ‘I demand to speak to a judge or a lawyer.'

Lychev held up a photograph. ‘Do you know this man?'

I was looking at a lean, darkly handsome man of about thirty, heavily moustached with unshaven cheeks and a great tangle of curly hair. Though the chains on his hands were not visible, he was, from the unnatural line of his shoulders, clearly under restraint. His large black eyes stared defiantly back at his captors.

‘Of course,' I replied. ‘It's Berek Medem.'

Everyone in Russia knew the prison photograph of the Polish terrorist Berek Medem, murderer of innumerable Okhrana agents, policemen, tax collectors, collaborators and spies. Not a week passed without the newspapers reproducing it as they chronicled his exploits with all the ghoulish fascination and horror they typically devote to the activities of such baroque desperadoes. They reported with particular relish his escape from Pawiak prison in Warsaw, after which he went to the house of the woman who had betrayed him. He did not kill her but instead threw acid into her face, and in doing so inspired imitators all over the empire, from Finland to Kamchatka. Many of his sort – the organisers and inciters of terrorism – went to pieces on arrest and revealed themselves as cowards. But one had only to glance at the photograph to see that Berek Medem was possessed of a Robespierrist
dedication to his cause. Here was someone who took life and when the time came he would give life. The career of the revolutionary was short, those fierce dark eyes said, and he accepted this without complaint.

‘When did you last communicate with Berek Medem?' Lychev said.

It took me a moment to realise he was serious. I laughed. ‘Have you taken leave of your senses, Lychev?'

‘Answer my question.'

‘The answer is I have never communicated with Berek Medem.'

‘Why then has Berek Medem been seen in your office building?'

I laughed again in derision of him. Every day there were dozens of supposed sightings. He was seen on a railway platform in Port Arthur. An hour later he was on a boat on the lagoons of Odessa while simultaneously robbing a bank in Kiev.

‘Has your friend Kopelzon ever talked about King to you?'

‘Your conspiracy grows ever bigger and more fantastical, Lychev,' I said. ‘First Berek Medem, now King.'

‘Answer the question.'

‘No. Kopelzon has never mentioned King.'

‘Has Rozental mentioned him?'

‘Rozental?' I said, amazed. ‘Rozental is probably the only person in Russia who hasn't heard of King.'

‘Answer the question.'

‘I already have.'

‘Are you really so indifferent to the security of the state, Spethmann? You profess loyalty yet you hold the work of the police in contempt. How do you reconcile these contradictions?'

‘Your games bore me, Lychev. I will answer no more questions.'

‘Of course you are above it all – you are the man who has no time for political affairs.'

I froze. I felt sure Lychev would see my heart pounding under my shirt. He seemed to be studying my expression carefully. Was he aware of what he had just said?
The man who has no time for political affairs
. The only occasion on which I had made any such claim was when Tolya was ransacking my files and Kavi was holding his knife up in front of my face.

I was gripped by a sudden fear for Catherine.

‘I want to see my daughter,' I said. ‘I want to see her now.'

‘Your daughter was released last night,' he said. ‘Gather your things.'

I was confounded. I wanted to believe him and at the same time I was afraid to. Was it a trick to lower my guard?

The old jailer appeared at the door. ‘If his honour would follow me,' he said.

‘What is going on?' I demanded. ‘Did Catherine give you a name?'

Lychev's look told me the answer was no.

Still scarcely believing this sudden turn of events, I collected my books and few belongings and followed Lychev and the jailer down the dimly lit corridor. We passed through a barred gate into a large room with a low concave ceiling and pillars and arches of brick. From here, I was escorted up a flight of stone steps into a courtyard. The air was frigid, but it was the cold of early spring, not winter, and heartening for that. It stung my nostrils.

We came to a broad, squat gatehouse.

As the bolts were pulled back, Lychev said, ‘I need Yastrebov's real name and I'm going to get it – one way or another.'

He seemed slighter, more insubstantial than ever. I ignored him as one ignores a bore at a party, and stepped outside. The
instant the gate closed behind me I had the sensation it had all been a dream.