The King
The wedding ceremony was over. The rabbi sank into an armchair, then he left the room and saw tables set out along the entire length of the courtyard. There were so many of them that they stuck their tail out past the gate onto Gospitalnaya Street. Covered in velvet, the tables wound through the yard like snakes whose bellies had been patched with every color, and they sang in thick voices — patches of orange and red velvet.
Apartments had been turned into kitchens. A fat flame beat through the soot-stained doors, a drunken and plump flame. In its smoky rays, old women’s faces baked, along with women’s shaking chins and slobbered breasts. Sweat, pink as blood, pink as the foam of a mad dog, flowed around these heaps of overgrown, sweetly stinking human flesh. Three cooks, not counting the dishwashers, prepared the wedding supper, and over them reigned eighty-year-old Reizl, traditional as a Torah scroll, tiny and hunchbacked.
Before supper, a young man, unknown to the guests, slipped into the yard. He asked for Benya Krik. He took Benya Krik aside.
“Listen, King,” the young man said, “I have a couple of words to tell you. Aunt Hana from Kostetskaya Street sent me…”
“Well, alright,” replied Benya Krik, nicknamed the King, “what are these couple of words?”
“A new police captain arrived at the precinct yesterday; Aunt Hana told me to tell you…”
“I knew about that the day before yesterday,” Benya Krik replied. “Go on.”
“The captain gathered the precinct and delivered a speech to the precinct…”
“A new broom sweeps clean,” Benya Krik replied. “He wants a raid. Go on…”
“And do you know when the raid will be, King?”
“It will be tomorrow.”
“King, it will be today.”
“Who told you this, boy?”
“Aunt Hana told me. Do you know Aunt Hana?”
“I know Aunt Hana. Go on.”
“The captain gathered the precinct and gave them a speech. ‘We must strangle Benya Krik,’ he said, ‘because where there is a sovereign emperor, there is no king. Today, when Krik is giving his sister away in marriage and they will all be there, today we must carry out a raid…'”
“Go on.”
“Then the stools began to be afraid. They said: if we do a raid today, while he is having a celebration, Benya will get angry and a lot of blood will be shed. So the captain said: my pride is dearer to me…”
“Well, go now,” the King replied.
“What should I tell Aunt Hana about the raid?”
“Tell her: Benya knows about the raid.”
And he left, this young man. He was followed by about three of Benya’s friends. They said they would be back in half an hour. And they returned in half an hour. That was all.
People did not sit at the table according to seniority. Stupid old age is no less pitiful than cowardly youth. And not according to wealth. The lining of a heavy purse is sewn from tears.
At the table, in the first place, sat the bride and groom. This was their day. In the second place sat Sender Eichbaum, the King’s father-in-law. This was his right. One should know the story of Sender Eichbaum, because it is no ordinary story.
How did Benya Krik, a gangster and the king of gangsters, become Eichbaum’s son-in-law? How did he become the son-in-law of a man who owned sixty milch cows minus one? Here, the whole matter lay in a raid. Just a year ago, Benya wrote Eichbaum a letter.
“Monsieur Eichbaum,” he wrote, “please place tomorrow morning under the gate at 17 Sofievskaya Street — twenty thousand rubles. If you do not do this, then something unheard of awaits you, and all of Odessa will be talking about you. Respectfully, Benya the King.”
Three letters, each clearer than the last, remained unanswered. Then Benya took measures. They came at night — nine men with long sticks in their hands. The sticks were wrapped in tarred oakum. Nine blazing stars lit up in Eichbaum’s cattle yard. Benya forced the locks of the shed and began leading the cows out one by one. A lad with a knife was waiting for them. He would topple a cow with a single blow and plunge the knife into the cow’s heart. On the ground, soaked in blood, torches bloomed like fiery roses, and shots rang out. With shots, Benya drove away the workwomen who had run to the cowshed. And following him, the other gangsters began to fire into the air, because if you don’t fire into the air, you might kill someone. And so, when the sixth cow fell at the King’s feet with a deathly lowing — then Eichbaum ran out into the yard in nothing but his underpants and asked:
“What will come of this, Benya?”
“If I don’t have money, you won’t have cows, Monsieur Eichbaum. It’s two times two.”
“Come into the house, Benya.”
And in the house, they came to an agreement. They split the slaughtered cows in half. Eichbaum was guaranteed immunity and issued a certificate with a seal. But the miracle came later.
During the raid, on that terrible night when the stabbed cows were lowing and the heifers slipped in their mothers’ blood, when the torches danced like black maidens and the milkmaids shrank back and shrieked under the barrels of friendly Brownings — on that terrible night, the old man Eichbaum’s daughter, Tsilya, ran out into the yard in a low-cut chemise. And the King’s victory became his defeat.
Two days later, without warning, Benya returned all the taken money to Eichbaum and after that appeared in the evening for a visit. He was dressed in an orange suit, a diamond bracelet sparkled under his cuff; he entered the room, said hello, and asked Eichbaum for his daughter Tsilya’s hand.
The old man suffered a slight stroke, but he got up. There were still twenty years of life left in the old man.
“Listen, Eichbaum,” the King said to him, “when you die, I will bury you in the first Jewish cemetery, right at the gates. I will set up for you, Eichbaum, a monument of pink marble. I will make you the elder of the Brodsky Synagogue. I will quit my specialty, Eichbaum, and join your business as a partner. We will have two hundred cows, Eichbaum. I will kill all the milkmen except you. A thief will not walk on the street where you live. I will build you a dacha at the sixteenth station… And remember, Eichbaum, you weren’t a rabbi in your youth either. Who forged the will? Let’s not speak of it loudly… And your son-in-law will be the King, not some snot-nose, but the King, Eichbaum…”
And he got his way, Benya Krik, because he was passionate, and passion rules over worlds. The newlyweds lived for three months in fat Bessarabia, amid grapes, abundant food, and the sweat of love. Then Benya returned to Odessa in order to give his forty-year-old sister Dvoira, who suffered from Graves’ disease, away in marriage. And now, having told the story of Sender Eichbaum, we can return to the wedding of Dvoira Krik, the King’s sister.
At this wedding, turkeys, roasted chickens, geese, stuffed fish, and fish soup in which lemon lakes shimmered like mother-of-pearl were served for supper. Flowers swayed above the dead goose heads like magnificent plumes. But is it really fried chicken that is washed ashore by the foamy surf of the Odessa Sea?
All the noblest of our contraband, everything for which the land is famous from end to end, was doing its destructive, its seductive work on that starry, on that blue night. Foreign wine warmed stomachs, sweetly broke legs, befuddled brains, and brought forth a belch, resonant as the call of a battle trumpet. A black cook from the Plutarch, which had arrived three days ago from Port Said, brought past the customs line pot-bellied bottles of Jamaica rum, oily Madeira, cigars from the plantations of Pierpont Morgan, and oranges from the environs of Jerusalem. This is what the foamy surf of the Odessa sea washes ashore, this is what sometimes falls to the lot of Odessa beggars at Jewish weddings. They got the Jamaica rum at Dvoira Krik’s wedding, and therefore, having sucked their fill like unkosher pigs, the Jewish beggars began to pound their crutches deafeningly. Eichbaum, with his vest unbuttoned, surveyed the raging assembly with a squinted eye and belched affectionately. The orchestra played a flourish. It was like a divisional review. A flourish — nothing but a flourish. The gangsters, sitting in close ranks, were at first embarrassed by the presence of strangers, but then they let themselves go. Lyovka the Cossack broke a bottle of vodka over his sweetheart’s head. Monya the Artilleryman fired into the air. But the delight reached its limits when, according to ancient custom, the guests began to present gifts to the newlyweds. Synagogue shamashes, leaping onto the tables, sang out the number of gifted rubles and silver spoons to the sound of the bubbling flourish. And here the King’s friends showed what blue blood and the yet-unextinguished knighthood of Moldavanka were worth. With a careless flick of the hand, they tossed gold coins, rings, and coral strings onto silver trays.
Aristocrats of Moldavanka, they were squeezed into crimson vests, their shoulders were wrapped in russet jackets, and on their fleshy legs, leather the color of celestial azure was bursting. Standing at their full height and sticking out their bellies, the bandits clapped to the beat of the music, shouted “Bitter!” and threw flowers at the bride; and she, forty-year-old Dvoira, Benya Krik’s sister, the King’s sister, disfigured by disease, with an overgrown goiter and eyes popping from their orbits, sat on a mountain of pillows beside a scrawny boy bought with Eichbaum’s money and struck dumb with misery.
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