This happened at the end of 1919, somewhere right after Hanukkah.
Chairman of the Nth Cheka Mikhail Ryabinin (aka Moishe Rabinovich), enthusiastically transferring piles of interrogation reports from the drawers of an old table into a luxurious multi-leaf cabinet of pre-war work that had just been confiscated by the Soviet government from a local exploiter, stumbled and fell in his own office. After lying for a while in an unnatural position and rubbing the bruised area, he began to get up and suddenly saw a familiar name flash somewhere among the sheets scattered on the floor: Fruchstein. Excitedly moving the documents apart with his hands, Ryabinin soon discovered the required protocol, the existence of which he had not suspected a minute ago. Indeed: “Frukhshtein Solomon, born in 1895, native of the town of S. near Berdichev.” He, Shlomo's childhood friend! Ryabinin, with a pounding heart, looked into his file and was pleased to discover that Fruchshtein had been detained by the Cheka a month ago on a not so serious charge - of aiding a White Guard, a young cadet, whom he was simply treating in his home for some serious illness.
Ryabinin authoritatively shouted to the sentry and ordered Fruchshtein to be immediately taken to his office. Five minutes later, Shlomo was already floundering in the arms of the Chairman of the Cheka, not yet fully understanding what was happening to him. In the crowded cell, he heard many times about the terrible “Commissar Ryabinin”; he was sincerely afraid of a possible meeting with him, which he still could not avoid, but which unexpectedly resulted in a warm meeting with his old friend Moishe Rabinovich. Truly, “how glorious is our Lord in Zion”!
Calling the guard again, Moishe instantly arranged a luxurious table. Of course, it was not gefilte fish with fresh challah, as in my childhood, but still something impressive for the humble prisoner. Having poured monstrously smelling moonshine into the glasses, Moishe joyfully toasted the meeting. Shlomo returned the greeting just as joyfully, but refused to drink.
– I’d better eat, okay? - he said and, without waiting for an answer, he pushed the boiled potatoes and a hefty crust of bread towards him.
Moishe drank alone, not taking his happy eyes off Shlomo.
“You can, now you can do anything,” he said, involuntarily grunting and catching his breath, “I’ll let you out tomorrow morning!” You are, of course, innocent of anything. Sorry, friend, it’s a revolution, you understand...
“Yes, yes, of course, I understand everything,” Shlomo quickly confirmed, not understanding anything at all about what had been going on in this country for the third year now, and still not even believing that the terrible security officer sitting in front of him was his best childhood friend Moishe.
– Do you remember how you and I dreamed of finding a treasure and becoming the first rich people among the Jews? Ha ha ha! - Moishe went into pleasant memories.
– Do you remember how you fell in love with the beautiful Sonya Osik at the same time, and she replied that she would marry the one of us who was first asked to sit at the eastern wall of the synagogue? Ho-ho-ho, the girl was right...
Shlomo willingly supported this cheerful conversation, and for about an hour all that was heard from the office of the Chairman of the Cheka was friendly laughter and the repeated phrase every now and then: “Do you remember... No, do you remember?!”
And suddenly all this sweet nonsense was shattered by Ryabinin’s simple and, in principle, not obligatory for a frank answer question.
– Listen, Shlomo, how did you so carelessly get involved in this nasty story? Was it worth risking your life for some cadet? Why did you hide him and treat him?
An awkward pause hung in the air. The smiles slowly disappeared from the friends’ faces.
– Do you really want to know this? – Fruchshtein asked seriously.
“I’m trying to come up with a wording why I’m releasing you from arrest tomorrow.” Did you know this White Guard, did he do something good for you?
- No, Moishe. When I picked him up on the road outside the city, I saw him for the first time in my life.
- What stupidity! Have you heard what laws are in effect now? Laws of revolutionary times! You could have already been put against the wall if I hadn’t fallen into your hands with your case... And yet, why did you want to save it?
Fruchshtein was slow to respond. He suddenly clearly felt that if he told the real reason now, the consequences would be the most unpredictable. And yet, a minute later, he uttered the fateful word.
– I became a Christian.
- What? – Ryabinin couldn’t believe his ears. -Have you become a cross?
– Call it what you want, but I believe in Jesus Christ that He is our Messiah and the Son of God! Jesus teaches in one of His parables that a certain priest and a Levite once passed by a man wounded by robbers and abandoned on the road. And an unknown Samaritan picked him up and helped him. You may consider it stupid, but this is the whole reason why I treated that unfortunate man whom your security officers found in my house and shot.
– And you still feel sorry for him! – Ryabinin’s face became alien and stern. - You feel sorry for the enemy! Do you think he would have spared me, for example, if I had fallen into his hands? Can you even imagine how they deal with security officers?..
Ryabinin thought for a moment and then continued his monologue.
“However, that’s not even what worries me more now.” But how can you, a Jew, the son of respectable parents, the one with whom we dreamed of studying at the rabbinical school, reading and kissing the Torah, renounce the faith of your fathers?! You may say that I myself have become an atheist... Let it be! But as soon as I hear the cantor’s voice: “Let us cry to the Lord, may He help us!” or the old song “Peace be with you, angels of the Lord,” you believe, who comes to your throat... No, I never betrayed the dream of our childhood, the dream of every young Jew: to force Christians to reckon with us... Just think how many generations of Jews were humiliated, abused, trampled by your Christians! How many they forced to be baptized, killed in drunken pogroms! And now Shlomo Fruchshtein, a pure-blooded Jew with nowhere to test it, joins the tormentors of his people...
– You don’t understand, there is a completely different Christianity! - exclaimed Frukhshtein. – I joined a community of evangelical Christians. These are real believers. Even the Orthodox persecuted them no less than the Jews...
- Well, it’s necessary! Not only did he cross over, but he also joined the sectarians and turned into a kulak parsley. “All men are brothers,” is that what they say among you?
There was a little silence.
– Maybe I’d better go back to my cell? – Fruchshtein asked quietly. – Think what you want, but I will no longer renounce the Messiah Jesus.
“No, you will listen to me to the end,” Ryabinin said in an unkind voice. He took another sip of moonshine and, walking around the office, continued his speech. – Do you remember our Rabbi Chaim, how he always warned Jews against the temptation of Christianity? “Whoever is baptized,” he said, “is, as it were, already Russian, and he can study and succeed in his career; but for some reason our old-fashioned parents were in no hurry to follow this easy road...” That’s what old Chaim taught, in case you forgot. And perhaps I myself joined the revolution in order to save the Jewish people from the lordly whims of the Great Russian Christians... How could you betray us, Shlomo?.. Remember the sweet and absent-minded cantor Shimon, how he always sang and cried on the Torah holiday! Remember the ancient synagogue... You crossed out everything, everything. And now I, the Chairman of the Cheka, persuade you to return to your faith...
After these words—whether it happened by accident or intentionally, who knows—Ryabinin took the Mauser out of his holster and placed the Mauser on the table in front of him. He narrowed his eyes and looked at Fruchshtein, who was now like a stranger to him.
- Blind people leading blind people! – Shlomo answered excitedly. – Those who have the Scripture kiss it and do not understand it! Those who waited for centuries for the Messiah, and when He came, immediately rejected Him. Don't think that I don't love my people! I am ready to pray and beg God for every Jew... Even though you stained your hands with blood in the Cheka, I will pray for you too...
“That’s enough,” Ryabinin said in an icy voice, “the sentry, take the arrested person to the cell!”
Left alone, Moishe slowly put the cold muzzle of the Mauser to his temple. He wanted to die. He had already thought many times about such an honorable outcome from that bloody meat grinder in which he had been spinning hopelessly almost from the very beginning of the civil war. But this time something stopped him. “What a friend I’m losing,” he whispered, pointing the gun at the folder with the Fruchshtein case. Then, leaning back in his chair, he suddenly threw the folder up and immediately, with a practiced movement, raised his Mauser and fired. The thin “case”, pierced in the very center, rushed towards the wall and fell almost silently to the floor.
At the sound of the shot, the same sentry, a hefty fellow named Stepan, came running. Seeing his commander unharmed, he smiled and said:
- Well, thank God, Comrade Ryabinin, you are alive!
- What should I have done, Stepan? – Moishe asked sadly.
- Well, of course, you shot...
- Yes, he shot, but not where you thought... You already took him to
camera?
“Yes, I haven’t had time yet, it’s standing in the yard, right next to the red brick wall...”, guessing the owner’s train of thought, the sentry answered dully.
“For the world revolution of the proletariat, Stepan,” Moishe said quietly and slowly, “people like this Frukhshtein, thoroughly saturated with religious dope, are a great obstacle.” You must help the revolution...
The sentry nodded understandingly and said:
- We will do this now, Comrade Ryabinin! Don't take it to your heart...
- Only, Stepan, without cruelty, with one bullet, I ask you.
“That’s right, don’t worry,” answered the sentry and left.
“That’s all,” thought Moishe, “now it will work out...”
A minute later, a quiet shot was heard on the street. It almost merged with the sound of another shot, which was heard in the office of the Chairman of the Cheka, Mikhail Ryabinin.
