Danilo Kis - Tomb for Boris Davidovich

Aimicke didn't tell him the name of the traitor that night. He never told him, as if he didn't want that dishonored name to pass his lips. He told him only that he was relying on his loyalty and hatred. And he said: "You'll see the face of the traitor. But don't get taken in by appearances: a traitor's face can take on a look of great righteousness".

Miksha spent a sleepless night. He tried to slip the deadly mask of the traitor onto the face of each of his comrades, but while it fitted the face of each, it suited none completely. Wearing a rubber apron, bloody to his elbows, he spent the entire next day slaughtering and skinning Iambs on Herr Baltescu's estate. At dusk he washed himself at the water trough, put on his dark suit, tucked a red carnation in the brim of his hat, and rode to the edge of the forest on his bicycle. He continued to the mill on foot, through the autumn forest, treading the thick leaves, which muffled the terrible resolution of his footsteps.

THE FACE OF THE TRAITOR

Leaning on the rusty fence by the millrace, staring at the muddy whirlpools, Hanna Krzyzewska was waiting for him. There beside Bagaryan's abandoned and rotting mill, watching the water carrying the yellow leaves, she might have been thinking about the somber passing of the seasons. She had freckles on her face (just barely visible now in the twilight of the autumn evening), but they didn't have to be a mark of Cain, those sunspots-maybe a mark of race and the curse, but not a mark of betrayal. She had arrived in Antonovka about a month ago, after fleeing Poland, where the police were after her. Before she reached the border, she had spent five hours in the icy cold of a railroad water tank, fortifying her spirit with verses of Bronyewski. The comrades had made her a set of false papers, after checking on her past: her record was impeccable (except for the tiny blemish of her bourgeois background). In Munkachev she had given German lessons, with a strong Yiddish accent, served as a link between the Munkachev and Antonovka cells, and read Klara Zetkin and Lafargue.

THE EXECUTION OF THE ASSIGNMENT

Following Aimicke's example, Miksha didn't say a word. To tell the truth, he had more right to do this than Aimicke, because he had seen the Face of the Traitor. Did he think at that moment that over the face of Hanna Krzyzewska-the face sprinkled with freckles like sand-the mask of a traitor clung like a golden death mask? The documents we use speak the terrible language of facts, and in them the word "soul” has the sound of sacrilege. But what can be established with certainty is the following: in the role of executor of justice, Miksha, without a word, put his short fingers around the girl's neck and tightened them until the body of Hanna Krzyzewska went limp. The executor of the assignment paused for a moment. By the terrible rules of the crime, the corpse should be disposed of. Bending over the girl, he looked around (only the threatening shadows of the trees everywhere), took hold of her legs, and dragged her to the river. What happened after that, from the moment he pushed the body into the water, was like an ancient tale in which justice must triumph and death uses various tricks to avoid the sacrifice of children and maidens. Miksha saw, in the middle of the concentric circles, the body of the drowned girl and heard her frantic cries, It was no illusion, no phantom that lurked in the bad conscience of murderers. It was Hanna Krzyzewska, cutting through the icy water with panicky but sure strokes, freeing herself from the heavy sheepskin jacket with two red lilies stitched at the waist. The murderer (who shouldn't be called that yet) stared aghast at the girl advancing toward the other bank, and at the sheepskin jacket borne by the fast current of the river. The uncertainty lasted only seconds. Running downstream, Miksha crossed the trestle and reached the other side as the howl of a steam engine and the humming of the rails announced a train's arrival from afar. The girl lay in the mire by the bank among the knobby stalks of water willows. Breathing heavily, she tried to straighten up, but no longer to escape. As he plunged his short Bukovina knife with the rosewood handle into her breast, Miksha, sweaty and gasping, could barely make out a word or two from the quivering, muffled, choking onrush of syllables that reached him through the slush, blood, and screams. His stabs were quick now, inflicted with a self-righteous hate which gave his arm impetus. Through the clacking of the train wheels and the muffled thunder of the iron trestle, the girl began, before the death rattle, to speak-in Romanian, in Polish, in Ukrainian, in Yiddish, as if her death were only the consequence of some great and fatal misunderstanding rooted in the Babylonian confusion of languages.

Illusions do not play games with those who have seen a dead body arise, Miksha took the entrails out of the corpse to prevent it from rising to the surface, then shoved it into the water.

THE UNIDENTIFIED BODY

The corpse was discovered a week later, some seven miles downstream from the scene of the crime. The notice given by the Czech police in the Polke Gazette, describing a drowned woman with good teeth and reddish-brown hair, between eighteen and twenty years of age, elicited no response. So the victim's identity was not established, despite the efforts of the police of the three neighboring countries to solve the mystery. Since this was an uneasy time of mutual suspicion and espionage, such interest in this case is easily understood. Unlike the daily papers, which also carried the news about the drowned woman, the Police Gazette gave a detailed description of the wounds that caused the death. It cited all the injuries in the areas of the chest, neck, and back, enumerating twenty-seven stabs inflicted with "a sharp object, most likely a knife," One of the articles described the way in which the body had been relieved of its abdominal organs, whence the likelihood that the perpetrator of the crime was an individual with "indubitable knowledge of anatomy." Despite certain doubts, the circumstances suggested a sex crime, and as such, after a futile six-month investigation, it was placed ad acta.

THE MYSTERIOUS CONNECTIONS

Toward the end of November 1934, the police of Antonovka arrested a certain Aimicke, E. V. Aimicke, who was suspected of setting fire to the warehouse of the Digtaryev firm. This incident touched off a chain of puzzling and mysterious connections. At the moment the fire started, Aimicke had gone to take refuge in the neighboring village tavern, to which the dear loops of his bicycle tracks in the thick autumn mud, like Ariadne’s thread, brought the police. They took the frightened Aimicke away. Then came a fantastic and unexpected confession: he had been informing the police about the secret political meetings held in the cellar of the house at No. 5 Yephimovska Street. Along with a great many confusing and contradictory motives for his action, he stated his sympathy with the anarchists. The police did not believe him. Having endured another few days in solitary confinement, and broken down by interrogation, Aimicke mentioned the case of the murdered girl. This was to be the key evidence in his behalf: since the members of the cell had definite reasons to suspect that someone among them was an informer, he had to sacrifice one of the members, Hanna Krzyzewska, who had joined the organization recently, was for many reasons the most suitable one to be denounced as a traitor. Then he gave a detailed description of the girl and the manner of her execution, as well as the name of the killer. [1] Aimicke took the secret of bis action to his grave: on the night following his confession, he allegedly hanged himself in his cell under unusual circumstances, which led to the justified suspicion that he had been murdered. Some investigation maintained that Aimicke was a German spy and provocateur who broke down; according to others, he was only a police informer born the police eliminated as dangerous witness. The hypothesis offered by Gut, that Aimicke lost his head over the beautiful Polish girl, who wouldn't yield to him, should not be dismissed.