The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. Michael Chabon
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his father would have done with himself if the Einstein Chess Club had banned smoking while he was alive. The man could go through a whole pack of Broadways in a single game.
“Blond,” the Russian says, the very soul of helpfulness. “Freckles. What else, please?”
Landsman shuffles through his scanty hand of details, trying to decide which one to play. “A student of the game, we’re guessing. Up on his chess history. He had a book by Siegbert Tarrasch in his room. And then there’s the alias he was using.”
“So astute,” the Russian says without bothering to sound sincere. “A couple of top-dollar shammeses.”
The remark does not so much rankle Landsman as nudge him half a wisecrack closer to remembering this bony Russian with the peeling skin. “At one time, possibly,” he continues more slowly, groping for the memory, watching the Russian, “the deceased was a pious Jew. A black hat.”
The Russian tugs his hands out from under his arms. He sits forward in his chair. The ice on his Baltic eyes seems to thaw all at once. “He was smack addict?” His tone barely qualifies as a question, and when Landsman doesn’t immediately deny the charge, he says, “Frank.” He pronounces the name American-style, with a long, sharp vowel and a shadowless R. “Ah, no.”
“Frank,” Velvel agrees.
“I—” The Russian slumps, knees spread, hands dangling at his sides. “Detectives, can I tell you one thing?” he says. “Truly, sometimes I hate this lamentable excuse for a world.”
“Tell us about Frank,” Berko says. “You liked him.”
The Russian hoists his shoulders, his eyes iced over again. “I do not like anyone,” he says. “But when Frank comes in here, at least I do not run screaming out the door. He is funny. Not handsome man. But handsome voice. Serious voice. Like the man who plays serious music on the radio. At three o’clock in the morning, you know, talking about Shostakovich. He says things in serious voice, it’s funny. Everything he says, always it’s a little bit criticism. Cut of your hair, how ugly your pants, how Velvel jumps every time a person mentions his wife.”
“True enough,” Velvel says. “I do.”
“Always teasing you, but, I don’t know why, it don’t piss you off.”
“It was—You felt like he was harder on himself,” Velvel says.
“When you play him, even though he wins every time, you feel you play better against him than with the assholes in this club,” the Russian says. “Frank is never asshole.”
“Meyer,” says Berko, soft. He flies the flags of his eyebrows in the direction of the next table. They have an audience.
Landsman turns. Two men confront each other over a game in its early stages. One wears the modern jacket and pants and full beard of a Lubavitcher Jew. His beard is dense and black as if shaded in with a soft pencil. A steady hand has pinned a black velour skullcap trimmed with black silk to the black tangle of his hair. His navy overcoat and blue fedora hang from a hook set into the mirrored wall behind him. The lining of his coat and the label of his hat are reflected in the glass. Exhaustion stains the underlids of his eyes: fervent eyes, bovine and sad. His opponent is a Bobover in a long robe, britches, white hose, and slippers. His skin is as pale as a page of commentary. His hat perches on his lap, a black cake on a black dish. His skullcap lies flat as a sewn pocket against the back of his cropped head. To the eye not disillusioned by police work, they might appear to be as lost as any pair of Einstein patzers in the diffused radiance of their game. Landsman would be willing to bet a hundred dollars, however, that neither of them even knows whose move it is. They have been listening to every word at the neighboring table; they are listening now.
Berko walks over to the table on the other side of the Russian and Velvel. It’s unoccupied. He picks up a bentwood chair with a ripped cane seat and swings it around to a spot between the table of the black hats and the table where the Russian is breaking Velvel down. He sits down in that grand fat-man way he has, spreading his legs, tossing the flaps of his overcoat behind him, as if he is going to make a fine meal of them all. He takes off his own homburg, palming it by the crown. His Indian hair stands thick and lustrous, threaded lately with silver. Gray hair makes Berko look wiser and kinder, an effect that, though he is relatively wise and fairly kind, he will not hesitate to abuse. The bentwood chair grows alarmed at the scope and contour of Berko’s buttocks.
“Hi!” Berko says to the black hats. He rubs his palms together, then spreads them across his thighs. All the man needs is a napkin to tuck into his collar, a fork, and a knife. “How are you?”
With the art and determination of the very worst actors, the black hats look up, surprised.
“We don’t want any trouble,” the Lubavitcher says.
“My favorite phrase in the Yiddish language,” Berko says sincerely. “Now, how about we get you in on this discussion? Tell us about Frank.”
“We did not know him,” the Lubavitcher says. “Frank who?”
The Bobover says nothing.
“Friend Bobover,” Landsman says gently. “Your name.”
“My name is Saltiel Lapidus,” the Bobover says. His eyes are girlish and shy. He folds his fingers in his lap, on top of his hat. “And I know nothing about anything.”
“You played with this Frank? You knew him?”
Saltiel Lapidus gives his head a hasty shake. “No.”
“Yes,” the Lubavitcher says. “He was known to us.”
Lapidus glares at his friend, and the Lubavitcher looks away. Landsman reads the story. Chess is permitted to the pious Jew, even—alone among games—on the Sabbath. But the Einstein Chess Club is a resolutely secular institution. The Lubavitcher dragged the Bobover into this profane temple on a Friday morning with Sabbath coming and both of them having better things to do. He said everything would be fine, what harm could come of it? And now see.
Landsman is curious, even touched. A friendship across sectarian lines is not a common phenomenon, in his experience. In the past, it has struck him that, apart from homosexuals, only chess players have found a reliable way to bridge, intensely but without fatal violence, the gulf that separates any given pair of men.
“I have seen him here,” the Lubavitcher declares, his eyes on his friend, as if to show him they have nothing to fear. “This so-called Frank. Maybe I played him one or two times. In my opinion, he was a highly talented player.”
“Compared to you, Fishkin,” the Russian says, “a monkey is Raúl Capablanca.”
“You,” Landsman says to the Russian, his voice level, playing a hunch. “You knew he was a heroin addict. How?”
“Detective Landsman,” the Russian says, half reproachful. “You do not recognize me?”
It felt like a hunch. But it was only a mislaid memory.
“Vassily Shitnovitzer,” Landsman says. It has not been so long—a dozen years—since he arrested a young Russian of that name for conspiracy to sell heroin. A recent immigrant, a former convict swept clear of the chaos that followed the collapse of the Third Russian Republic. A man with broken Yiddish, this heroin dealer, and pale eyes set too close together. “And you knew me all this time.”
“You are handsome fellow. Hard to forget,” Shitnovitzer says. “Also snappy dresser.”
“Shitnovitzer spent a long time in Butyrka,” Landsman tells Berko, meaning the notorious Moscow prison. “Nice guy. Use to sell junk from the kitchen of the coffee shop here.”
“You sold heroin to Frank?” Berko says to Shitnovitzer.
“I am retired,” Vassily Shitnovitzer says, shaking his head. “Sixty-four federal months in Ellensburg, Washington. Worse than Butyrka. Never again I don’t touch that stuff, Detectives, and even if