Berezovo: A Revolutionary Russian Epic

Leaving the Doctor’s assistant, and with Chevanin’s two fifty copeck coins secure in his pocket, Goat’s Foot hummed happily to himself as he made his way southwards. As he had been standing on the corner of Tower Street talking with Chevanin, another idea had come to him; an inspiration of such dazzling brilliance that he wondered why it had not occurred to him before. He had debated whether he should not turn back, but instead had thought better of it. He would stick to his original schedule of calls.

One hen at a time, as the poacher said, he told himself.

He walked on, past Pirogov’s workshop where a baby’s hungry cries rose above the noise of weary sawing. A few minutes later, he turned to the left and, bracing himself, entered Jew Alley.

Ever since the township of Berezovo had been established, a part of the southernmost section had been specifically reserved for the Jews. Farthest from the river and nearest to the Highway, Berezovo’s Jewish Quarter lay hidden behind the shop fronts of the poorer merchants and shopkeepers. Disqualified from eligibility for municipal services but protected historically by an Imperial decree of the Empress Catherine, its inhabitants survived as best they could. The Quarter had its own markets, its own fire service, its own temples, even its own shadow council to administer the day-to-day affairs of the neighbourhood. Despite these liberties, disease, poverty and crime – the natural results of overcrowding and segregation – had long been a way of life for its population and its reputation was notorious throughout the adjoining town.

Over the centuries, time and custom had succeeded in blurring the exact boundaries of the Quarter. In some of the streets bordering its edge Jews and gentiles were uneasy neighbours. Strengthened by generations of fear, mistrust and loathing, the citizens of Berezovo had regularly addressed the source of this spillage and it was well within the bounds of living memory that the last pogrom had taken place, the gendarmerie of the day playing a particularly active role in putting one fifth of the Quarter’s population to the sword. That had been before Colonel Izorov’s time. Since his arrival, no further outrages had occurred, a fact that led to much speculation as to where the Chief of Police’s loyalties lay. It was rumoured that he was a Freemason; even that he was secretly a Jew himself. Ignoring the unspoken criticism of the older policemen under his command, the Colonel had kept a stern and watchful eye over events in the Quarter as it had risen once again from its ashes. The old, ordered town plan had long since vanished, a victim both of the arsonists’ torch and the speculative builder. Now ramshackle buildings clustered together in semi-distinct streets. Only Jew Alley remained as it had always been, the crooked spine around which the Quarter gathered to bicker, scheme and trade.

Goat’s Foot loathed the Jews, and he feared Jew Alley. On every street corner, greasy locked men stood watching him, muttering to each other in their own language as he passed, making him feel a stranger in his own land. High above the open sewer that ran down the centre of the Alley, shop signs jutted out bearing strange cabbalistic script. Some of them he knew by heart: “L.D. Polezhayev. Quality Tailor.”; “Isaac Averbuch. Fine Furniture Made To Order”; “Menachaim Goldstein. Money Lender To The Gentry.” Their insolence made him want to spew. He believed without question the truth behind the builder Belinsky’s maxim that the coldest part of Berezovo was not to be found in the north (which would be natural as it was nearer the top of the world), nor the east (where the damp from the riverbank could penetrate even the thickest wall) but here in the south, because here there was no love, only money. The Jews had made money their religion. Money above everything, except Jewish blood, and even then they were prepared to make exceptions. Hadn’t they sold their Messiah for thirty pieces of silver (silver mind, not even gold!)? The proof (if proof were needed) that Jews owed no loyalty to either Tsar or Motherland, only to each other, was there for all to see. Was not the very man he was on his way to visit the head of the Jewish Bund exiles in Berezovo, working and living safely in the midst of them, protected by his blood? Meanwhile, the poor misguided devils who had listened to him and his like were shivering and slowly starving in their yurts out in the snowfields beyond the town’s boundaries.