to reach an agreement with the Ghoul, and for that they have appointed special representatives. You and I, Senya, I mean M-Motya, are those special representatives.’
‘What do I have to do?’ Senka asked as they were walking down Spaso-Glinishshchevsky Lane. He didn’t like this fancy-dress party nearly as much as the first one, when he was a beggar. It wasn’t too bad in the cab, but since they’d got out they’d been called ‘filthy Yids’ twice, and one tattered ragamuffin had flung a dead mouse at them. He would have boxed his ears, to teach him not to go annoying people for no good reason, but he had to put up with it for the sake of the important job they were on.
‘What d-do you have to do?’ Mr Nameless echoed as he exchanged bows with the synagogue’s caretaker. ‘Keep quiet and l-leave your mouth hanging wide open. Do you know how to d-drool?’
Senka showed him.
‘Oh, well done.’
They went into a house beside the Jewish chapel. Two nervous gents in frock coats and skullcaps, but without side locks, were waiting in a clean room with decent furniture. One was grey, the other had black hair.
Only it didn’t look like they’d been waiting for Erast Petrovich and Senka. The grey-haired one waved his hand at them and said something angrily in a language that wasn’t Russian, but the meaning was clear enough: Clear off out of it, I’ve no time for you right now.
‘It is I, Erast Petrovich N-Nameless,’ the engineer said, and the two men (they had to be those ‘trusties’) were terribly surprised.
The black-haired one raised a finger: ‘I told you he was a Jew. The name’s Jewish too, it’s a distorted form of “Nahimles”.’
The grey-haired one gulped, and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. He looked at the engineer in alarm and asked: ‘Are you sure you can manage this, Mr Nameless? Perhaps it would be better to pay this bandit? To avoid worse. We don’t want any trouble.’
‘There won’t be any t-trouble,’ Erast Petrovich assured him, sticking his sack under a table. ‘But it’s t-two o’clock already. The Ghoul will be here soon.’
At that very moment someone wailed from outside the door: ‘Oi, he’s coming, he’s coming!’
Senka looked out of the window. The Ghoul was strolling casually up the street from the direction of Khitrovka, puffing on a papyrosa and glancing around with an evil smile on his face.
‘He’s come alone, without his d-deck,’ Mr Nameless remarked calmly. ‘He’s confident. And he doesn’t want to sh-share with his own men, the haul’s too b-big.’
‘Please, after you, Mr Rosenfeld,’ said the black-haired man, pointing to a curtain that closed off a corner of the room where there were sofas (an ‘alcove’ it was called). ‘No, I insist, after you.’
The trustees hid behind the curtain. The grey-haired one just had time to whisper: ‘Ah, Mr Nameless, Mr Nameless, we put our trust in you, please don’t lead us to ruin!’
The Ghoul pushed the door open without knocking and walked in, squinting after the bright daylight of the street. He said to Erast Petrovich: ‘Right, you mangy kikes, have you got the crunch? You’re the one who’s going to cough up, are you, Grandad?’
‘In the first place, good afternoon, young man,’ Mr Nameless intoned in a trembling voice. ‘In the second place, you can stop eyeing the room like that – there isn’t any money here. In the third place, have a seat at the table and we’ll talk to you like a reasonable man.’
The Ghoul lashed out with his boot at the chair offered to him, and it flew off into the corner with a crash.
‘Spieling and dealing?’ he hissed, narrowing his watery eyes. ‘We’ve done all that. The Ghoul’s word is solid as cast iron. Tomorrow you’ll be baking your matzos on charred embers. Well, what’s left of the synagogue. And to make sure your brothers get the idea, I’ll carve you up a bit too, you old goat.’
He pulled a hunting knife out of the top of his boot and edged towards Erast Petrovich.
The engineer stayed put. ‘Ai, Mr Extortioner, don’t waste my time on all this nonsense. The life left to me is no longer than a piglet’s tail, cursed be that unclean creature.’ And he spat fastidiously off to one side.
‘You’ve hit the bull’s-eye there, Grandad,’ said the Ghoul, grabbing the engineer by his false beard and raising the tip of the knife to his face. ‘For a start I’ll gouge your eyes out.