A Shamus Levine Mystery
The Wolf’s Head
Chapter One
It was 12:35. Shamus Chai
Levene’s large stomach felt for its empty places and growled there. Lunchtime,
he acknowledged, and burped. Levene's Monday through Friday lunch at the deli
came from Smith's Jewish and Gentile Deli, the only one in town. There
certainly were enough Jews in the several miles around Levene’s building that
Smith, the Ashkenaz-Sephard owner didn't need to include the
gentiles, but he was wise enough to know that occasionally the smell of
sizzling corned beef and cabbage, cottage cheese blintzes frying gently in palm
oil - or the acrid yet flat taste of (ugh!) gefilte fish would
indelicately inebriate a gentile nose and lead it through the mysterious,
rarified kosher air of the Hebrew experience to his deli, he'd
make a new customer.
Smith was the resident president
– the maven, the magician, who with his wand of expertise, transformed mundane
American ingredients into exotic concoctions of incredible edibles.
On the window beneath the name of the
store were the words: No chozzerai served here!
Ironically, Smith’s name was a
concoction of other names: His very existence was a gift from the survivors of
various holocausts and pogroms. His entrance into America came at the cost of
careless clerks at Ellis Island who, in one irresponsible moment, forever
scrambled one hundred years of his genealogy by changing forever his surname,
Levtoshenko to “Levin”. So, in response to forces beyond their control,
Smith’s dutiful parents restored his heritage by legally adding patronymic
given names and surnames, in honor of almost 200 years worth of paternal
fathers.
Schmuley Moishe Izrael Tomashenko-Horowitz. SMITH. But
everyone called him Moe.
Smith’s J&GD occupied the same
storefront restaurant many years. Moe made a good living from it for his large mishpocha.
He was known for his kindness to animals, a growing crowd of dogs, cats,
squirrels, birds and various wandering homeless men who frequented the back of
his store, impatiently waiting for Moe’s generous odds and ends of the day -
chicken, beef cuts including tongue of that beast, the sweet hamantashen pastry
day-olds and, of course, the gefilte fish. His store and
environs were kept scrupulously clean, for Moe kept kosher as
much as possible.
Together with the inhabitants within
and around his store, Smith’s J&GD was a village of specialized Russian and
Near-Eastern flavors, a flavorium of nosh, a temple of
delicacies dedicated to the taste-hungry palate – the culinary resurrection of
inert (gentile) ingredients to a level of tantalizing experience for the
pleasure of the many carnal tongues that wagged and chewed in their caverns
from 10 a.m. through the evening – each plate a visible, scrumptious,
tummy-pleasing mitzvah. He had received over the years more than a
few standing ovations from the grateful mavens. Smith’s J&GD
was an oasis of tastes in a city of humdrum. Levene could imagine schmoozing nowhere
else.
He and Moe were old friends who kibbitzed when
time permitted and Levene wasn’t involved in one of his complicated cases.
There were others, too; Anshel, Chinese Wong, Hirsch the Yid, and sometimes
Menasche the Sephard, though he was now very old and could only come for lunch
when his shiksa caregiver, Mildred, accompanied him. She loved
the potato latkes.
The feeling of haimish during
the lunch hour was palpable. Levene and his friends sat at the east wall. It
was embellished with pictures of old, dead but revered rabbis, once-famous
Jewish vaudeville entertainers, and the few former presidents of Israel. It was
called Moe’s Wall of Rebbes and added an air of Jewish
identity and reverence to the simple business of eating. An old, brown and very
stern image of the 12th century codifier of Hebrew law, Moses
ben Maimon (Maimonides), reigned as The Wall’s
centerpiece, looking dead-on with hunger for the corned beef and dill pickle
plate Levene savored as he took his accustomed place beneath the image.
On this day, Levene walked into the
deli. Moe was busy at the counter but shouted a “yom tov” in his
direction. Over in the corner he saw Hirsch the Yid and Chinese Wong, already
working on their lunches.
“Yom tov”. What’s the soup
today?”
“…borscht…”
said Hirsch the Yid after awhile, slurping a bowl of the red soup loaded with
shaved onions floating on top. “… the victims of war in Russia… they
didn’t have rich cold red soup … good… some days not great… Hirsch is here to
eat as usual…”
Hirsch always spoke in the third person
and with many pauses, as though words were streaming through the vapors of his
deliberating brain, occasionally allowing themselves to be released from
captivity through his mouth into thin air. Sometimes, when he really got going
on a subject of Jewish misery, his words fell all over each other, like vocal
arpeggio. He was a thoughtful man, a student of Jewish history who had been
treated for depression and given drugs to combat his bothersome self-loathing,
but he didn’t believe anything would help him. Levene hoped that on this day he
would not hear one of Hirsch’s melodies of doom.
Levene took his accustomed place
against the Wall of Rebbitzim. As the famous (and only) Jewish
detective, Levene was saved the best seat in the house when he arrived for
lunch. Chinese Wong greeted him with great white teeth beneath a thin, black
mustache and ceremoniously bowed over his chopped liver sandwich, two inches
thick, supported by dark pumpernickel bread and smothered with Poupon mustard.
A Chinese Jew, Wong was a descendant of the first wave of Jewish migration to
Shanghai – the family of Sassoons, from Bombay. His people built business
empires and landmarks in Hong Kong and he claimed to be rich, but the only
evidence of his wealth was the diamond-encrusted Mogen David he wore around his
neck, and the emerald pinkie ring on the right small finger of his very small
hands. In China he had been in the rabbinate of the first synagogue, Beth El of
Hong Kong.
Now as a middle-aged man, he was the
owner of, what else? a cleaning and tailoring establishment, specializing in
imported and hand-made clothes and garments for Hebrew marriages, High Holy
days and other Jewish gatherings. The queued Manchu dynasty hairdo was unique.
Intricately braided long black hair gathered in a pony tail, it was wrapped
around a piece of leather. Atop his topknot was a small silver Mogen David that
gleamed whenever Wong’s back was turned.
The men kibbitzed awhile over their
food, trading stories of the day. Moe joined them after awhile. He seemed
worried.
“Shamus, finder of the lost, I
think I have a job for you.”
Deeply absorbed in his lunch, Levene
swallowed his pickle and wiped its juice off his tie.
“Never too busy, at your service.
Corned beef marvelous…”
“You may recall I spoke to you about my
maternal grandfather, Schmuely? Well, he died a few months ago. In Ukraine.
Very old, left an old wife. They have relatives here in America though my
mother’s line of Liskovitz. Some of them are receiving letters and pictures of
his family in Russia.”
“Have you received anything?”
Here Moe stopped and pulled a fistful
of envelopes from his back pocket beneath the old food-stained handkerchief he
always carried there. He handed them to Levene to examine. The postmarks were
from Kiev. Levene felt another out-of-country trip coming on.
“What makes you think I can be of use?”
Moe took one of the letters and
carefully opened it. The paper stock was old and thin and not the kind made in
America. The handwriting looked to be scribbled by a young boy – lots of
partial sentences, flourishes and exclamation marks. The smell of dust and old
paper wafted up from the old paper stock. The letter was written in pencil,
faded somewhat, not dated. The signature was faint and only slightly readable.
Chapter Two
“This letter is not like the others”,
Moe continued. “It seems to have been written as a cry for help. A collector’s
piece. I don’t know how it survived - the experiences he relates are horrible -
I’m not sure why it was sent to me. It is part of a large group of letters from
the 1880’s that I received all at once a month ago. The others are about
farming in Kiev, the prices of food, the political situation there – more
historical reports. I’ve been unable to reach Schmuely’s wife. You know, mail
between Ukraine and America is very slow. It’s expensive to send letters from
that country to anywhere!”
“You have others like this?”
“Two more.”
“I see they are dated. Can you make any
connection between the dates and anything in your family history?”
Moe shrugged. “I can’t, Levene. Those
dates have nothing to do with me, But whoever this youth was, his story is
amazing. I want to find out who he was, what happened to him. Did he survive
his ordeals, did he marry, is there family in America, what?”
“What do you know about your paternal
grandfather, great- and great-great fathers?”
Moe was apologetic. “Very little.
That’s the Levtoshenko line, goes way back.”
Levene was deep in thought. Hirsch the
Jew reached slowly over, taking the letter from Levene’s hands. He turned them
over in his hands like they were news of another purge coming on. As he read he
streamed: “… sad sad… tsk… young boy lost…
running away… evil world… the dead lay in silent wait… contemplating... letters
like tombstones…” His words trailed off.
The room took on a dark feeling
of doom at Hirsch’s words. Chinese Wong gave him a stare, his slanty eyes
disapproving, but Hirsch didn’t notice. Levene snatched the letter away.
Moe broke the gloom. “Levene, find her
for me. I have to cook a corned beef. Yes? You will bring me mazel?
You will find the dead?”
“I’ll do what I can, my friend, but
there is a price tag.”
“Price tag? Not for free?”
“Free lunch for a year, maybe.”
“How can I stay in business if I cook
for free, Levene? Even six months.”
“Six months free lunches, I can choose
what I want?”
“You always eat the same thing. That’s
expensive.”
“You want results? I work best when I’m
full of corned beef.”
“You think I’m in business pro bono?”
“If I deliver, think of what I might turn
up. What can you lose?”
Moe thought a minute. He rubbed his
hands together like a squirrel who has just found a nut.
“OK,” he said and turned to go. Over
his shoulder he said “When you have the results, your six months begins.”
Chinese Wong chuckled at this. “You
Jews, always bargaining. You go to the dictionary, look up the word “bargain”
and next to it you find the word “Jew”. Chinese Wong’s large long white teeth
seemed to sparkle in delight.
“We learned it from you Chinese,”
smiled Levene, as he inspected the letters in his hands. “And who says there’s
no such thing as a free lunch?”
Chapter Three
The day was coming to a close and
Levene walked to his apartment after a long day of working on his various
cases. Without a car, Levene was dependent upon his feet and public
transportation, his phone and computer and the local library. Moe’s request
troubled him greatly – the doomed innocents who were caught up in the midst of
holocaust horrors. Throughout their tumultuous history the People of The Book
have been subjects – under a suzerainty, to twenty different nations and
rulers. From Egypt to Canaan, Assyria to British rule, their trials have shaped
their essence, determined their mindset as a people, defined their way of life
amongst the once-hated Gentiles of the earth.
We live, thought Levene as he sipped
tea in his study, in a labyrinthine construct of religious inheritance, neither
expecting nor searching out help from any but our own. Yet, in that comradeship
of one landsman with another, some essential element,
something not tangible but real, was absent. He pondered this increasingly, but
thoughts of this depth were elusive to him, and he turned to details of more
certain discovery.
Pogrom is a Russian word designating an
attack, accompanied by destruction, looting of property, murder, and rape,
perpetrated by one section of the population against another. The assassination
of Czar Alexander II in March of 1881 by the Russian revolutionary organization
Narodnaya Volya sent the Russians into a confusion and their ire went against
the Jews that Easter. A random drunken brawl broke out, and it seemed the
entire Ukraine became immediately subject to destruction of villages and their
residents. This led to wider and more systematic attacks throughout Russia, and
a centering occurred in Kiev, where several of Moe’s letters originated.
Professional ringleaders were involved. Kiev at that time was home to 20,000
Jews in a population of 140,000.
All of its synagogues were burned,
along with those inside in the midst of worshipping their God. Along with the
dead, many women and girls were violated, and children thrown from windows to
their death below. Through a series of reports and papers the world was made
aware of the horrors happening daily in Russia, but the carnage did not stop
until many thousands had paid the price of Russian vengeance upon its secular
populace.
Levene got out his magnifying glass,
extracted the paper contents of the two letters Moe had given him and began to
examine them. In the upper left of the flimsy envelope was the stamp
Ekaterinoslav, a province of Kiev filled with agricultural colonies. The rest
of the envelope was blank, as though there had not been time to address or mail
it off. The letters were written in a mix of Yiddish and English, handwriting
small, letters jammed together, in places looking more like scribble or code
than a correspondence. They were not dated, but it became evident that one
followed the other in a series of events. As he pieced together the letters,
Levene rewrote them in his own hand for clarity.
Chapter Four
The first: Zayde, Abba
says the Russians are coming to attack us. Many have moved through this night
to Chernivtsi, trying to cross in a few days into Poland. But many are still in
Kiev Oblast. We are all afraid because they will murder our cattle, burn our
homes and shoot us as we run to safety. What are we to do? He told me to take
the keys of our house to the Moglers. They’re Christian. We must tell them our
land and animals are theirs if we do not return when the purge is finished.
Abba says they will protect our things because they believe it would be better
for them to prosper through our misfortune than the rioters. Then, if we are
still alive later, our neighbors will return the keys. I am on my way to
Moglers now. I think of you as I go, safe in Odessa, Abba read that rioting
there has ceased for awhile, but not before my cousin Aaron’s death. Pray for
our people, Zayde. These purges must stop!
These words took up the entire page,
but more was scrawled hurriedly on the back, likely on a succeeding day:
Today is Yom Kippur, our Day of
Atonement. I hear from Zayde (you know who) that the synagogue in Zhitomir was
burned and the rabbi taken out and shot in full view of the townspeople. Zayde
says the rabbi was not afraid for himself but begged the attackers to spare
everyone else. This they did not do. Many of our synagogues have been burned.
Mobs are attacking the Jewish shops and houses. I hope my parents have left
already. Unable to get home. Running away toward the group meeting in
Chernivtsi. It is night, I am hiding in a bombed-out store, writing this. I’m
cold. Russian soldiers are patrolling the streets. I have seen women screaming
and running around in terror because their homes are set ablaze. My God, why
have we been chosen to suffer? When morning comes I’ll try to get home
through the woods. Zayde, if you get my words, do you agree that to be a Jew is
a curse from God? I am coming to believe it. In Chernivtsi I can give this to
be sent you through the Underground. You are the great freedom fighter. Help my
family!”
The letter was signed, or rather a
symbol was given: a quick sketch of a wolf’s head and the Hebrew letters: בֵײלָא
following it. The writer was using a code his family would recognize, but if he
were caught, he could not be linked to them. (Hebrew name -baila –white-
velvel-Yiddish- add sky)
Levene put the letter aside to refresh
his tea. He was familiar with the purges of the 1880s upon Ukrainian villages
and farms. He could almost feel the terror of this boy who, though in
great danger, thought to write his dear grandfather in Odessa Oblast,
hundreds of miles to the southeast, this day calmly overlooking its small
harbor on the Black Sea. The boy might as well have been in a hotznplotz.
As was his custom in solving cases of
all kinds, Levene began his list of questions that needed solving. After
reading the second letter, he knew his list would expand.
- Who is the writer?
- Was he a victim of the purge?
- What is the meaning of the wolf head and
choice of the Hebrew word?
- Where was the letter written and when?
- Why wasn’t it mailed?
- Who is Zayde, who is Abba?
- Who was the “great freedom fighter” the boy
alluded to?
- Names of others who have received letters from
Schmuely and wife (Samuel)
- Genealogy work?
- Talk with Moe about the other letters sent him – find connections.
Chapter Five
A knock at his door rose Levene from
his work. It was late and he rarely had a visitor without an invitation. He was
greeted by the smiling face of a boy he guessed to be about ten years old.
“Who are you, young man, to come to my
door so late in the evening?”
“I’m Jason. My mother said you’re Mr.
Levene.”
“Your mother is right. Who is your
mother?”
“Sister Ferguson. We live on the 7th floor.”
At this, Levene knew the boy was one of
the strange Mormons. He had met Mr. and Mrs. Ferguson in passing, but he didn’t
understand why the boy called her “sister”. Must be a Mormon thing. Their
multiple families took up the entire floor – a tribe of Jesus people. He sighed
and pushed the banana fronds aside to let the child in.
“What do you want, Jason? I’m a busy
man.”
“My church class is doing a project on
Christmas for Jewish people. My mother told me to ask if you celebrate
Christmas.”
Levene stared at the boy in shock. Jews
celebrating Christmas? Did Mormons know NOTHING about non-Mormons?
“No, Jason, Jewish people do not
celebrate Christmas. We do not believe the man you call Jesus was our god,
therefore we do not see any reason to celebrate his birth, or his life, or his
death.”
Jason stared back at Levene, his mouth
agape. The silence of this discovery seemed too much for both of them.
“Oh,” Jason said. “Okay… Why not?”
“Why not what?”
"Why don’t you believe in Jesus? Did you
pray about it?”
Did he pray about it? Did he pray about
his chopped liver before he ate it? Chopped liver is chopped liver! Why
should a Jew pray about Jesus? Levene was getting agitated. He still had other
cases to work before his bedtime which was fast approaching.
"Listen, Jason.
Jews take an oath not to allow anyone except God Himself into their religion.
We have all the gods we need, only one god. We ask Him to bless our bread and
our wine and we thank Him for it. We celebrate Chanukah, the cleansing of our
ancient Temple. Not Jesus, not Christmas. Tell your class that, and your
mother, okay?”
Little Jason continued to stare at
Levene a withering look as if he were viewing an entirely new kind of human
being. After a moment he shrugged and blushed a little. He turned to leave, his
lips forming a withering “bye” as he stepped over the palm fronds on his way to
the elevator. Levene watched Jason get on the elevator, hoping to wave him
goodbye, but Jason didn’t turn around. How odd that this youth should appear at
his door at this late hour, past his bedtime.
Chapter Six
The room was quiet again. Turning back
to his work, Levene couldn’t shake the feeling of sadness that for a moment
enveloped him. Suddenly he didn’t feel like working further that night.
Time for one of Moe’s piroshkies, he thought, hoping that
would relieve the encroaching gloom.
************************
Moe was singing Hebrew melodies as
Levene entered Smith's, already envisioning a whopping chopped liver and egg
sandwich on Jewish rye with extra cole slaw and pickles. When Moe set the
calorie-laden feast before his most prized customer, Levene handed him a note
with questions to be answered. Moe scanned it quickly and replied that the
"Abba" in question was his own paternal great-great grandfather,
Israel the Levite, most likely the father of the writer in question. Israel was
one of the farmers in Kiev's agricultural communities predating the scourges of
the 1880s there.
He was eventually shot when the Russian
soldiers came to take his grain and he demanded that his family was entitled to
what they produced. His widow left the farm with her three sons and four
daughters and ventured westward to a town just inside the Russian border. There
she lived with her cousins as the widow Hahn, taking her father’s name. He had
long since died a victim in an earlier purge.
Her children, however, were of strong
Jewish spirit in a Russia on the edge of social change and they took the name
Levtoshenko (of the Levite tribe), passing it on to their children, all of whom
remained in Ukraine. What was the name they changed?
"That would make Israel the Levite
likely the boy's father; your great grandfather 3 times removed. Paternal or
maternal?"
"Not sure, Levene. To my knowledge
there was no intermarriage among our lines on either side, but I have
relatives all over Ukraine who I have no connection with. My mother's maiden
name of Liskovitz was not common among the Jews of Kiev. I have a news clipping
from a Ukrainian paper dated 1995 naming one of her descendants as an important
administrator in the farming region of Cherkassy. Sadly, my friend, I can offer
little help with family names."
Levene nodded philosophically.
"Many questions to answer. I'll need the names and phone
numbers of all the family members you've been in communication with
recently."
Moe obliged with a bow. Just then
Menashe the Sephard wheeled in, anticipating his mid-day borscht. Caregiver
Mildred masterfully set the chair just opposite Levene's table, effectively
closing them off to walk-through traffic.
"Yom tov, most famous Shamus.
You look deep in thought!"
"Thinking of ordering
dessert."
"Ditto", said Lillian. She
ordered her usual latkes platter and cheesecake. Lillian was a strong three
hundred fifty or so. When she and Menashe weren't at the deli, they were
at his place playing Chinese mah jong and Hebrew Scrabble,
which she won more times than Menashe. He was too old to care about keeping
score any more. An irreverent jokester and, in his youth an irascible scholar
of Talmud, he could quote a dozen rabbis on as many subjects. Menashe was a
literal moving record of Jewish commentary.
"Here I am, in mitn drinen
again: in the middle of things. A joke for you, esteemed Shamus.
Old Jew crosses street, he is hit by a car, and he’s dying. Catholic priest
comes over, makes a cross over the old Jew's head. ‘Do you believe in God the
Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost?’ he asks. The Jew cries out
'I'm dying and he asks me riddles!’ "
Levene clapped and Menashe clapped with
him in delight. LIllian heaved a three hundred fifty pound sigh.
"I tell it better,” she said.
Levene became serious. "Menashe,
what does Talmud teach about keeping the sanctity of a name in war and
captivity?"
"You serious, Shamus?"
"Entirely." Looking for a
clue. Maybe you'll help me solve a mystery."
"You can deputize me here and
now," Menashe said with pride and sat up in his chair. "You got
questions, I got answers."
By the time their conversation ended,
Levene had made good progress and went home to read the second letter.
******************************************
This letter was somewhat longer,
written in script as difficult to make out. But there were more clues in this
one.
“Zayde, I may not be writing you again.
Sorry you couldn’t find me in the streets when Russian soldiers rode through
just today. I’m going to try and cross the border into Poland. I’m near there
now. My parents house burned. They must be taken by police. Many neighbors have
disappeared. I am in hiding in a barn where I am writing now. Several other
children are with me. We don’t give each other real names so we can’t be forced
to tell the Russian soldiers who our family members are. These boys tell of a
church nearby that takes in Jewish children. They give the children food and blankets
and hide them from the soldiers.
I’m going there to be safe. I hope they
don’t force me to wear crosses. I’ll contact you then. Will you come get me? I
must mail these letters somehow. Zayde, I think of my father and mother. If you
know where they are, please tell them I love them. I want to be home with them.
I am so scared, Zayde. Pray for me, I beg you. Love,
your grandson”
(wolf’s head and Hebrew name)
What was the name of the boy?
His only clue was the wolf’s head and the Hebrew word on the boy’s letters. Who
was this man “Zayde” that he had soldiers? Was the boy part of a military
family? Levene began to work on the useful surnames he did have: Levtoshenko,
Hahn. Add Moe’s list of characters: Schmuley Moishe Izrael Tomashenko-Horowitz.
Then there was the Christian Mogler family. Add the regions of Cherkassy,
Ekaterinoslav, Kiev. A lot of work for six months of free lunches, but Levene’s
curiousity was stirred, and when he concentrated on a case, all thoughts of
rewards were forgotten.
In his office he assembled the contacts
who worked with the Archives of Ukraine as well as other historians and
genealogists from his caseload files, including his favorite Russian
translator. He dialed the first phone number. It went to an accented voice mail
which began:
Yom tov. In 1766 there were 63,000 Jews
in Belarus. In 1941-43 more than 800,000 Belarusian Jews were massacred in
European countries. But by 1994 the first synagogue with its own rabbi reopened
in the Jewish community of Belarus and today there are maybe 50,000 Jewish
souls there. Mazel tov. Please leave a message.
He happily obliged, then worked into
the small hours of morning piecing together the puzzles of life and death that
Moe and his family were counting on him to solve. It would take more than one
continent to reconstruct the story. Levene consulted his Shᾱmusfind directory.
“Shamusfind” was an invented
word Levene preferred when accessing his large reservoir of genealogical
research tools. One that he found particularly helpful in difficult cases was the
particular gathering of available and arcane information supplied by the Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a name Levene’s tired and theologically
blind eyes endeavored to pass over very quickly, en route to
the prize: vast lists of the world’s deceased. More valuable than the Vatican’s
gold or its ancient books of inestimable worth, more useful than the waters
that cover the earth or the earth itself, were the names of those souls whom God
His Very Self sent to this His earth, blessed be He, to labor until
retrieved into the air of mystery we mortals call Heaven, THE haven of rest.
Where are these souls? mused Levene as
he urged his computer to scroll through endless appellations until dawn
approached his patio doors. Shall we believe, as the Yom Kippur prayer reminds
us, of the insignificance of human beings who are, “like a broken shard, like
dry grass, a withered flower, like a passing shadow and a vanishing cloud, like
a breeze that blows away and dust that scatters, like a dream that flits away.”
Or are we of great value to God,
blessed be He? Are our lives sacred? Does He measure the worth of a
name? Can we find written upon the scroll of Ha Shem’s Book of Life
the intimate record of our existence: the individual territory of our name?
Perhaps the angels have secretly wrapped it around the spiritual coils of our
DNA… unsearchable, yet irreplaceable.
The named on earth do not comprehend
much, Levene thought as he sipped another cup of non- decaffeinated tea,
denying himself needed sleep. He did not contemplate the mystery of life, but
he believed that when a life ends, that energy force unique to each personality
rushes to free itself of its fleshy print and at that moment also plants in the
dust of its death a resurrection, a place marker, an undeniable claim to
earthly occupancy: a NAME. And more. Affiliations, an endless identity system -
so long as babies are born (and die). With the mere reception of a body we
inherit by default the multiplicitous fulfillment of the eternal covenant which
Elohim made with his prophet Avraham, in the desert beneath a billion stars
linked forever to a single God.
Those often serendipitous combinations
of letters and marks of origin will be restored, reinvented and revisited,
reorganized, renamed and bestowed anew upon the unborn. Increasingly they add
to the growing list Levene diligently spent long and solitary years collecting.
Descendants of bloodlines, parentage, pedigrees, family trees, lineage,
kin, kinsfolk, kindred, blood relations, order, class, genus and species of a
common ancestor, each and every soul brought here from the populous skies to
propagate, configure, replicate, dominate and further complicate the earthly
and trans-earthly Registry of the Named, must be accounted
for. Names are markers for a cosmos of characters. Whether we celebrate life or
decry it, we have to our carnal form a marker added.
And what of the air we breathe? Levene
asked himself as he pored over maps of Ukraine’s heartland, tracing cities and
towns, farms and valleys. Has not the peasant inhaled the same morning air of
the aristocrat as he rises from his simple bed of naked pine?
Levine laid aside his
pen and notes, preferring now to contemplate while he dozed comfortably in his
beard while morning air wafted across his open patio doors. We live and die in
the moment, he mused, but our cognomen, our denomination, designation, ethnicity,
“handle”, namesake, nickname, nom de plume, place name, signature,
style, surname, footprint, photo, eye, hand and voice print, our tag, term and
title qualify us as belonging to a genealogical entwining of souls stretching
across the very universe, endless as waves upon a shore: Etz
Chaim! Tree of Life!
And one more thing Levene was sure of:
the dead are waiting to be claimed!
By morning Levene had assembled a few
clues. The name Levtoshenko was listed in the Consistory Church of the
Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Kiev which listed numerous entries prior to 1900.
Israel the Levite’s true last name was unknown, so Levene came to a dead end on
that line, but oddly, the Mogler family was represented – generations of them
throughout the 1800s and 1900s. They must have been forced to convert, as well
as many Jews.
Chapter Seven
Levene studied images of hastily
written pages. He shuddered, wondering how these captured Jews, likely
frightened and threatened with murder if they would not convert – conversos,
survived their likely forced baptisms into a church. Records for Odessa
were harder to locate for the years desired and would take more surname
searches for Moe’s paternal line. Several questions needed answering: 1)
meaning of the wolf’s head used as signature by the boy writer, and 2)
deciphering the use of the Hebrew name. Levene spent the morning on the phone
with his associates in Kiev before he dressed or enjoyed his morning pastries.
He felt progress but it was slow in coming.
*********************************************
It was Saturday morning. Levene opened
his door to the acrid stench of ammonia. He gagged, belched, gagged again.
Even the jungle plant growing outside his door was wilting in the stench
of it. The Deutsches were here, the Deutsches were there, cutting off his exit!
Quickly, he stepped across rags and buckets, narrowly avoiding the two
backsides kneeling on the rug scrubbing. He headed with heavy feet for the
elevator exactly 19 steps away. Trying to shield with a kerchief his large,
long Semitic nose from the hazy film circling the hallway, he tripped onto a
bucket of the devil’s cleanser and fell with a crash to the floor.
Levene groaned in pain. He grabbed at
the carpet while struggling mightily to get to his feet. There was the
venerable Mrs. Deutsch rushing to him. She held out her aged, whitewashed
wrinkled hands, wiping off his jacket and kicking behind her at the buckets
around him, all the while screaming in his face.
“Oh, Mister! Schrecklich! Schrecklich!
Oh, oh! Meine fault. Sorry, sorry, schrecklich!”
Mr. Deutsch was also standing, looking
stern but worried. “You vatch your step, young man,” he said, waggling a finger
at Levene’s nose. But his voice wavered with uncertainty, for at that moment he
became aware of the obstacle their rags and buckets had created.
Levene stood up with pain.
Instinctively he found his hat and plopped it back on his head, but not before
he had tipped it to the Deutsches in confusion and fear that they would try to
detain him further with their apologies. The sound of their language made him
shudder.
“Okay, I’m okay. Buckets all over
the place. Excuse me, excuse…”
He ran the remaining steps to the
elevator, limping and blowing his aching nose all the way down. Levene’s shoes
and socks smelled of ammonia and he had to wash them in the park fountain
nearby to drown the horrid odor, and then he walked barefoot three blocks to
the library - feeling the stares and laughs of well-trod passersby - where he
was sternly told to put them on again. He did not return to his apartment until
dark. The once virile jungle plant, exposed all day to the sickening smell of
cleaning fluids, had taken on a filmy white pallor. It’s once tightly curled
tendrils drooped wearily to the floor, its broad leaves hung from their stalks
in distress.
“You, too?” he mumbled as he entered
the safety of his apartment. Later he poured the tea leaf remains of his teapot
onto the tree’s soil.
“These leaves will help revive you,”
Levene whispered to the dying monster outside his door, and made a mental note
to move it in front of the Deutsch’s apartment during the night.
***************************************
Chapter Eight
There was a crowd at Moe’s this day at
lunchtime, reaching all the way across the room from counter to front door.
Levine was startled to see a heavy, full-figured woman sitting in his accustomed
place beneath Maimonides, who didn’t look at all comfortable with the
arrangement. She was drinking coffee with what appeared to be whipped cream on
top in a swirl. Levene was unsure about telling her she’d have to move. He
removed his hat and put it on again. Why did speaking with women make him
sweat?
“Shalom aleichem, Shamus,”
said the woman, smiling sweetly at him. “I am Miriam Rosner, Moe’s sister. He
tells me you are working on the case of our ancestor, the young boy?”
Levene breathed a sigh of relief. She
was there to help with the case.
“Yes, I have the two letters. I also
have some questions,” said Levene, still standing. Miriam beckoned him to sit
in the chair opposite her.
“Gevult, we don’t know his name,
but he has become like a legend in our family because he escaped the Russian
invasions and entered a Catholic church for protection.”
“How did you find that out without
knowing his name?”
She reached out a manicured hand with
long red nails and waved it before him. “Oy, a very strange story. So my great
great grandfather was, as you know, Israel the Levite of Kiev. Very famous man
in Kiev during the purges. He helped save many Jews from death by hiding them
in his factory. He was a kind of Shamus, too!”
“Largest city in Ukraine, as well as
its capital,” verified Levene. Miriam nodded and drew closer. He caught her
musky cologne and for a moment forgot his next question. He avoided the
disapproving look of Maimonides who was holding court upon the Wall.
“One day he hears about a group of Jews
smuggled across into Poland by Catholic nuns. He can’t believe it and has to
see for himself, so secretly he sends his gabbai to find them,
which he does. They admit to it and offer to transfer their catch to the rabbi.
The gabbai makes a deal with them to transfer the children to
the Polish Resistance in Przernysl.”
“I believe that’s one of the oldest
border towns in eastern Poland. Why there?”
Miriam took a large gulp of coffee and
wiped her chin. “Headquarters of the Polish Catholic diocese. Even the Nazis,
when they burned the cities of Poland, kept clear of the Catholics… Let me tell
you, if the Jews had as much smarts as the Nazis when it came to Catholics,
maybe they’d still be alive today…”
She laughed ironically and finished her
coffee. Levine was writing her words in the pocket notebook he always carried.
“Mrs. Rosner, this is very helpful. Do
you remember hearing any names with reference to the children taken to the
Catholic rescue house?"
“No, no names. Why?”
“Is that diocese still active after all
these years?”
“I don’t know that, either, Shᾱmus.
Maybe their records were transferred to Krakow later on, or some other large
city in Poland. I thought you might follow that lead, see where it takes you.
According to the story our family remembers, the transfer was made and the
Jewish children were taken to this Catholic sanctuary in Poland, with crosses
and drawings of saints all around them. I suppose they were all made into
Catholics, so we don’t know their family names anymore. But that’s about all I
know.”
Miriam Rosner stood to leave. They
shook hands cordially and Levene took her warmed seat to mentally process her
information. The tracks of the boy who wrote After quickly eating his Blintz,
Cole Slaw and Potato Latkes Special he caught the number #256 bus and
made an unannounced visit to a certain Catholic diocese cardinal he knew
several miles distant, after first buying a large pack of Alka-Seltzer tablets.
*************************************
Sometimes even Levene lost a case. The
Case of the Potted Dwarf Banana Tree was the latest example of miscalculation.
Following the mishap with the Schultzes, our Shamus made up
his mind to rid his apartment door of the ten feet tall, banana-less self-pollinating Musa
sapientum (fruit of wise men) Dwarf Cavendish. He carried out his
fiendish plan in the small hours of night while the Schultzes were ashnoring in
their spotless beds. The container was almost too heavy for him, but he pulled
and pushed it into the elevator and down to the third floor. With every tug
and push he mumbled regrets of pouring Mrs. Greenleaf’s exotic elixirs into its
hungry soil for five years.
At approximately 3:50 a.m. the deed was
done and Levene, his flimsy drawers flapping, quickly cumbered himself back
upstairs and fell fast asleep in bed amongst a litter of genealogical
scribblings.
He awoke late with a feeling of great
satisfaction for the coup he’d committed, had morning hamentashen and
coffee. He prepared to leave. Chuckling to himself, he opened wide his
apartment door and – what? The blasted monster tree was before his eyes - smack
in front of his door! He froze, leather case in hand, hat on head. He had only
slept a few hours, heard nothing during the interim before dawn. What the ? His
mind raced to decide who the culprit was, the Schultzes on their early morning
route? Did Mrs. Greenleaf notice its new location while on her morning
constitutional up and down the stairwells of each floor? Did God bring it back
to him in mute punishment for his sneaky deed?
Levene stared at his tree. They
regarded each other. After a moment he sighed. He realized the droopy,
ammonia-stenched mass of stalks, blades and waxen leaves was a sign from God,
Blessed be He, that the world’s only Jewish detective, Shamus Levene, was
to accept this arboreal burden as part of his sachel upon
the earth. “I must humble myself,” he said to the tree. “It is I who
cannot say “no” to Mrs. Greenleaf. Vay is mere, I am a schmuck for
not cutting you up long ago”. But then he had an idea.
Half an hour later Levene exited his
apartment, the tree placed again in its accustomed spot. Fastened somewhat
precariously upon its maze of tendrils, thick stalks and huge, wide green
elephant-ear leaves hung a cardboard sign hastily scrawled with a marker pen,
thick cord tied to each end of the board.
The makeshift sign read “Shamus Levene’s
Tree of Life. Looking for your dead? I can help.”
*******************************
A month had passed. Levene spent the
morning busily cleaning, dusting and stocking up on tea and cookies to be ready
before his guests would arrive before noon. He’d made sure the Schultzes were
cleaning one of the other floors. The first to enter his apartment study was
Moe. He brought strudel and other Jewish crudités. Soon the room began to smell
like a Jewish bakery.
“Shamus, my dear friend, you
have news for me? You sounded so mysterious on the phone.” He arranged the
strudel carefully on its platter, licking the sugar off his fingers.
“I have news, yes, good news. It was a
big task, bringing your family lines together. I’m ready for my six months of
free lunches!”
Moe replied he hadn’t forgotten, then a
knock on the door and people began coming in. Soon the room was full of Moe’s
relatives. Happily they introduced themselves as though they’d been separated
just a little while. There was Moe’s sister, Miriam Rosner and her grown son,
Saul. A niece from Moe’s maternal side, Alexandra Abelev, represented
Schmuely, her deceased great grandfather in Kiev, Georgi Levtoshenko descendant
of Israel the Levite through his son Alexander Levtoshenko. Liska
Handleman, Moe’s maternal grandmother was there with her walker, following a
hip replacement.
A Tomashenko (Israel the Levite’s)
distant relative was located in a nearby town. Even a Mogler relative who was
contacted agreed to come meet the recent relatives of their old neighbors in
Kiev. Soon, they were all excitedly exchanging information about their lineage
and relationship to one another. It was a heartwarming sight and Levene was
quite pleased with himself as he watched and listened.
Eventually he called them all to order,
bidding them settle with their coffee, tea, strudel and whatnot. When the room
was quiet with anticipation he began.
Chapter Nine
“Good afternoon. I am Shamus Levene,
finder of the lost Jews of the world, and I welcome all of you here today. My
good friend Moe Levtoshenko” – Moe waved his hand in the air - “Moe has
commissioned me to solve a mystery in his family, to fill a gap, as it were. I
will reveal the results of my search at this time.”
Everyone tittered in excitement. Moe
passed a box of Kleenex around in anticipation. Levene handed out family tree
charts in the form of a menorah with eight levels. The names were neatly
handwritten by Levene. The chart traced Moe’s family, maternal and paternal,
with some entries almost 200 years old.
“First, a bit of history is
required. Belarus, where some of Moe’s family lived during
the 1700-1800s, was once a region of Poland-Lithuania. Christians there
tried to prevent the Jews from building synagogues. Jews were forced into
conversion. Many thousands were murdered. But by the turn of the 20th century,
there were over 725.000 Jews in Belorussia.”
“I thought my relatives all lived
in Kiev,” said Moe, looking confused.
“All but a few, and those few were
descendants of some very important people,” Levene replied. “They were
very poor, but when a very influential rabbi, Zalman by name, introduced
Hasidism, most Jews happily accepted it. Now look here at the name at the
bottom of the chart.” He pointed to the name, Zalman. “Rabbi Zalman was Saul
Tomashenko’s father. He led the congregation for many years. The practice of
Hasidism caught on among the poor Jewry in many countries, not only
Russia. Moe, Saul was your great-great-great grandfather.
“What is Hasidism?” asked Moe.
“It means having loving-kindness, like
a branch of Orthodox Jewry. The peasants of the old country were sincere and
simple, and their religious observance mirrored that as they worshpped God in
privacy.”
Moe was amazed at Levene’s words. Until
this moment he’d known little of his family’s past, and even less about his own
Judaism.
Levene sat in his overstuffed chair in
the middle of the room and leafed through his papers. The group of listeners
were intent to hear more, as though listening to a fascinating story.
“Now during the Holocaust years, many
Jews fled to other countries as they could, and some came to these United
States. I was able to find out, Moe, that your mother’s great-great grandmother
stole away to Russia somehow, in the mid-1850’. She came to Kiev and was
trained as a seamstress for a Romanov family member. She did quite well.
After a few years they moved her into one of their homes. Eventually she
married a relative, a Jewish judge. Their only son, Schmuely, was born
there and lived there all his life. His wife, whose descendant was your
mother, Moe, is still alive there, still employed by a Romanov family.
What you don’t know is that they had a daughter, Martina."
Levene handed Moe a letter
addressed to him. It bore a foreign postmark and lots of stamps. “She wrote you a letter, Moe, in
English. She wants to correspond.”
Moe shook his head in wonder,
speechless with amazement. Alexandra Abelov was crying with joy.
“I am so happy,” she said. “I have
another cousin!”
Levene continued. “I wondered how Saul Tomashenko’s
son, Israel, became Levtoshenko,” Levene explained, showing some
documents to the group. “I discovered that Israel found out he was descended
from Levites who worked in the Temple in Jerusalem, and he wanted that
designation on his name. Lev equals Levite, a special Hebrew tribe whom God
called His Own. The name stuck, and, as you know, Moe, Levtoshenko your real
surname.”
Moe nodded. “I have always loved my
name, but in America names mean little, so I put it away when I opened the
deli. I do miss signing myself as Levtoshenko.”
Levene’s voice became excited. “But
among these other discoveries, I was finally able to solve the case of the
Wolf’s Head boy!”
Chapter Ten
A chorus of “What? The Wolf’s Head
boy?” met his ears. Levene showed the group the two letters Moe had given
him.
“As you can see, his signature was a
rough sketch of a wolf’s head. But he added the Hebrew letters, reading from
right to left: bet-yod-lamed-aleph. This spells out the word
“white”. A wolf in Yiddish is “velvel”. The boy put his name into
code words so, if caught or if his letters were intercepted, no one would be
able to identify him. As a good Jewish boy, he also knew that he was descended
from Levites, and had to remain true to his faith and blood. To divulge his
true surname to his enemies would violate the code of honor Levites lived by
when in the midst of battle.
“What was his name?” asked Mogler, the
neighbor.
“His name was Baila Velvelsky, or
"white wolf", with –sky added to make his name seem
Russian. He was born about 1870. Here are the letters he wrote his grandfather,
Israel the Levite Levtoshenko, that he was going to enter a Catholic rescue
home just inside Poland. After some painstaking search, I discovered that among
the lists of boys and girls cared for by the nuns, was the name Baila
Velvelsky. He kept the name he probably invented in his letters, a code between
himself and his grandfather, to keep his real name safe from Russian soldiers
and the Nazis."
“How is he related to us, then?” asked
Moe. Is he a Levtoshenko?
“Yes, he was your grandfather,
Alexander Levtoshenko’s son by another marriage."
“What happened to him? Did he live?”
“Oh, yes, he lived. When he entered the
Catholic rescue home just inside the Polish border, he became quite unruly.
Although he remained there several years, he ran away several times and had to
be searched for. He was given the name of Francis by the nuns, but
rejected it. He always wrote his own preference; the small head of a wolf and
the Hebrew word for white. He stood out because he refused to pray with others
or take the holy water or call the priests, Father, or the sisters, nuns.
Finally, this very individual child secreted himself in a laundry cart and
somehow escaped through an open chute. He was not seen there again.”
The crowd was silent, contemplating the
possible fates of the boy who called himself the White Wolf. Levene watched
them with a smile, for he knew what was to come. He continued:
“In Poland this youngster seemed to
disappear for a number of years, but I, Levene, Shamus of the
lost, I found him again. He joined the Polish police force toward the end of
the Jewish purges, always known only by his nickname and signature, the White
Wolf. Evidently, he never used his true name again.
“How did you discover him?” asked Mrs.
Rosner.
“I realized that this boy, if he’d
lived, might have remained in Poland because of the purges that recurred in
Ukraine. I wondered what kind of work he would seek out. I found, in a Polish
directory for the year 1890, a business called ‘Wolf’s Head House’. It was a
boarding house that took in abandoned and lost children, Jewish or no. They
entered the doors of the establishment and, according to rumor, they weren’t
seen again. Were these children secretly sent to England and America for safety
by Resistance Underground workers ? Fortunately, no one could prove anything.”
“So I did more searching. In a housing
directory for the city of Lublin in Poland, I discovered the name “W.W. Velvel”
and had it checked out. Turns out, Velvel was actually our White Wolf.
Evidently he married a Polish girl. They had one son named Velvel who, when he
was 35, married a widow with three daughters. They also raised four more
of their own. All the while the White Wolf invested in other boarding houses
and became quite successful.”
“Fascinating story, Shamus. Six
months of free lunches are yours!”
“Oh, it gets better.” Levene smiled one
of his biggest smiles. He rose and went to his telephone and dialed a number.
While everyone in the room waited in anticipation, there came the knock at his
door. He asked Moe to open it. Levene continued:
“Several of the grandchildren of
our White Wolf eventually found passage to the States here. They can tell you a
lot more about the solitary child who ran from the Russians and lived to be the
father of a growing Jewish family.”
Moe opened the door to six adults who
looked to be in their 40s. Velvel’s grandchildren. They stood there
regarding each other. For a moment there was silence all around. Then Levene
began the introductions, but he was soon overrun with joyous laughter as
everyone rose to shake hands and welcome in the newcomers. That afternoon many
new relationships were made and more family history was exchanged than Levene
could have found in many years of solitary searching.
*********************************************
Chapter Eleven
On his way to the cleaners to retrieve
his slacks and tea-stained ties, Levene met Mrs. Greenleaf fussing in her
second garden, just outside the walls of the apartment house. She wore an apron
over her slacks that sported a whimsical drawing of very large pruning shears,
with the question fashioned in twigs: “Used Your Secateur Today?” Levene
hunched himself together and attempted to pass her without words, but she gave
him a big smile and rose from her gardening with real secateurs in hand.
“Oh, Mr. Levene, so good to see you
today. Going to the library again?”
“First the cleaners. More cases
to solve, you know, always more….” He tried to step around her but she was
dangling the very long scissors in front of him. He began to fear she would try
to trap his beard between the broad sharp blades of the weapon.
“Oh, yes. Your reputation precedes you.
You’re our only famous tenant.” She seemed delighted with his fame, as though
she was a part of his life. Levene blushed. He preferred to remain in the
shadow of his celebrity. Then, a bit coyly, Mrs. Evergreen said: “I noticed
your sign on the dwarf banana the other day… I don’t understand – that tree has
become enormous. Have you been feeding it some special potion I don’t know
about?”
Levene looked at the long-handled
scissors and then at Mrs. Evergreen. Did she suspect his covert actions
disposing of her protein potions? He took a deep breath and spoke in a nervous
tone.
“Just some tea leaves in the soil every
once in a while. Yes, it certainly has grown. Probably labelled wrong before it
was sold. Got to go see you later and have a nice day Mrs. Evergreen” he said
as fast as possible and quickly moved on.
Later that evening he took the elevator
to his apartment. He had found an article about the purges in Czechoslovakia
and read it while the transport reached his floor. Still reading, he began
walking down the long hallway. The sound of a symphonic choir met his ears. So
beautiful and soothing! What was it?
He looked up. All the apartments read
in the 700s. Levene realized too late that he was on the 7th floor,
the Jesus People floor. He turned around, hurrying back to the elevator. The
music and singing were enchanting. It seemed to float across the hallway,
coming as it did through several open doorways. It soothed his lonely soul, and
for a moment he forgot to press the UP button.
Suddenly, there was a woman next to
him, smiling kindly and peering at him.
“Are you the famous genealogy detective
who lives on the 9th floor?” she asked.
Levene turned to see her. She was
probably his age. Sweetness radiated from her face. He suddenly felt rather
safe.
“I am Chai Levene, yes, a sort of
detective. Why do you ask?” The music of the choir was heightening. It
was a soothing hymn he had heard long ago, but had forgotten. He felt
himself not wanting to leave.
“I was wondering if your work takes you
to other countries?”
“Oh, yes, on occasion…” She had bright
eyes that seemed to sparkle softly.
“Then, Mr. Levene, might I have your
card? My family has been trying to find lost relatives for several years, but
we just can’t locate any records.”
Levene handed her a card and gave a
slight bow, as was his way. “I am at your service,” he muttered in his best
tone, looking into her blue eyes. He might even work for free, he
thought. His great shyness had always prevented him from closeness with
women, but this one came with choir music!
She smiled again and tossed her long blonde
hair. “Thanks so much. I’ll be in touch soon, okay?”
“Anytime,” Levene said, meaning
it. She turned and disappeared inside her apartment, leaving the door
open. The choir music was still in his ears as he made his evening tea and
prepared to settle down to a night of lonely study. He resolved to find
out the name of the music and purchase the album. He found himself very much
wanting to see her again. I really could lose some weight, he thought,
wondering if Moe would make him salads in place of corned beef sandwiches…
