A Child of Christian Blood: Murder and Conspiracy in Tsarist Russia: The Beilis Blood Libel (30 page)

Brazul approached Makhalin, an acquaintance of his, and told him of the scheme. Like
Krasovsky, Makhalin had his doubts about Brazul, whom he considered a “frivolous” person, but he signed on to the plan. He had known Karaev in prison and he sent him a cryptic letter to his home in his native Ossetia, saying he had an important matter to discuss and it had to be in person.
Karaev agreed to come to Kiev.

When Karaev arrived in the city, and
Makhalin dropped by his hotel room to explain why he had summoned him, Karaev’s initial reaction was apoplectic. He was enraged that Makhalin had made him travel thousands of miles to hear such a proposal. “You want me to conduct an investigation?” he said, in Makhalin’s recollection. “How dare you!” He was offended at what he took to be an enticement to violate his criminal code of honor. Karaev took out his pistol and started waving it around—a gesture he resorted to when he felt a point needed emphasis. Makhalin tried to calm him, telling him that they should just sit down and have a sensible talk. Karaev put away the gun and listened as Makhalin assumed the earnest tone he employed when teaching his free classes to the poor. He explained to Karaev that, in his view, the Beilis case was “introducing poisonous anger in the masses” and it was necessary to do something about it. Makhalin understood the powerful hatred underlying this case; as a boy, he later testified, he had witnessed a
pogrom, an experience that had helped turn him into a revolutionary. Karaev felt himself being persuaded by Makhalin’s appeal to his conscience. As an anarchist-communist, he could only despise all discrimination based on race or religion. The pair then met with Krasovsky, who at first concealed his identity, presenting himself as “Mr. Karasev,” a gentleman who had taken an interest in the Beilis case and was helping with the investigation (an assertion that was more or less true). Karaev took three days to think things over and then informed Makhalin he would take part in the plan to prove the
innocence of the poor Jewish
brick-factory clerk.

Karaev, Makhalin, and Krasovsky would all later provide accounts of how the plan was executed, with all of them agreeing on all
important details. Their versions would closely correspond to the one offered by Vera Cheberyak’s half brother, Peter Singaevsky, except for those details that incriminate him. Those discrepancies would set the stage for a dramatic confrontation at
Beilis’s
trial, as Cheberyak and Singaevsky faced their accusers in open court.

Singaevsky was key to the plan because he was the only one of Andrei’s suspected killers not in jail at the moment, except for Cheberyak herself. Karaev quickly turned to his vast network of criminal connections to find a way of meeting Singaevsky and gaining his confidence. It turned out the two men had a mutual acquaintance, someone Singaevsky trusted: Lenka, nicknamed
Ferdydudel, a barber with underworld ties. On April 19, Ferdydudel tracked down Singaevsky in a bar and told him that the notorious outlaw Karaev wished to meet him. The small-time crook must have been awed by Karaev’s interest in him, and over the next several days Karaev loosened him up, taking him to restaurants to eat and, especially, drink. As a pretext for their meetings, he invented a story about needing some “good men” for a big robbery, a “wet job”—Russian criminal slang for murder—that involved killing as many as ten people for a prize of forty thousand rubles in loot. Would his new friend be able to help? Singaevsky was interested and lamented that his good comrades “Red Vanya” Latyshev and Boris Rudzinsky were in jail on robbery charges. In passing, he mentioned that some people were trying to “pin” the murder of the boy
Yushchinsky on them.

Karaev felt he was getting somewhere, but Singaevsky still acted as if he knew nothing about Andrei’s murder. He was an utterly dim-witted fellow, and disappointingly cautious. After four days Karaev met with Krasovsky and Brazul to brief them and discuss how to proceed. They devised a clever ruse to pressure Singaevsky to open up about the crime. Karaev would warn him that he and his half sister, Vera, were going to be arrested for Andrei’s murder. On the afternoon of April 24, he took Singaevsky out to a criminal haunt, the
restaurant Versailles, and broke the bad news: he had learned from “his man” in the Gendarmes that Singaevsky and Vera were about to be charged with Andrei’s murder. In fact, he said, the warrants had already been drawn up.

According to Karaev, Singaevsky panicked and began to talk. His first reaction was that the two
shmary,
“floozies,” who had seen
something had to be rubbed out. “Measures” had to be taken. The “floozies” Singaevsky had in mind were two sisters, Ekaterina and Ksenia Diakonova, who would go on to play a dramatic and at times bizarre role at the Beilis trial. They were good friends of Vera Cheberyak’s who, Krasovsky had long suspected, knew more than they were telling. For weeks, he had been conducting his own parallel covert operation, patiently working to win the women’s confidence. He had managed to secure an introduction to them through an acquaintance and, posing as a
Moscow gentleman, took them out almost daily to restaurants and the theater, talking at first of everything but the Beilis case. Finally, when they felt comfortable enough to open up to him, Ekaterina revealed that she had knocked on Cheberyak’s door on the day Andrei had disappeared, sometime in the morning or perhaps early afternoon. When the door opened she said she saw Singaevsky and Rudzinsky running from one room to another while Red Vanya covered something with a coat in the corner. Ekaterina asked what that pile in the corner was. Cheberyak said it was just some “junk,” slang for stolen goods. Ekaterina had a sense something was not right. The sisters also revealed an important material fact. They told Krasovsky that at Cheberyak’s they would often play a game called Post Office that involved writing little notes to one another. The game was played with pieces of perforated paper—very much like ones found near Andrei’s body.

If Singaevsky was about to confess, Karaev wanted there to be another witness. Karaev took him back to his hotel room, where they met with Makhalin, whom he introduced as a trustworthy criminal comrade. Karaev pretended to be desperately upset about his new friend’s situation, at one point pulling out his gun and beating himself on the head with it in feigned frustration. Singaevsky again cursed the “floozies” who had figured out that he had something to do with the crime. His mind veered from one desperate measure to another. They should kill the Diakonova sisters, Lieutenant Colonel Ivanov, and Officer Kirichenko, Singaevsky said, or break into the Gendarmes’ office and steal the case files. Karaev picked his moment and, gesturing to Singaevsky, said, “There’s the real killer of
Yushchinsky.”

Singaevsky replied, “Yes, that was our job.” The gang’s business had been ruined, he said, “because of the bastard.”

Makhalin had to quickly decide the best way to get as detailed a confession as possible. He told Singaevsky that he wanted to help him, and
it would be good if he told as much as possible about the circumstances of the crime.

“There’s nothing to tell,”
Singaevsky said. “We grabbed him and dragged him to my sister’s apartment.”

“Who do you mean by ‘we’?” Makhalin asked.

“Me, Borka, and Red Vanya,” Singaevsky replied, He added that Vanya was a good guy but wasn’t good for a wet job; he’d
thrown up after the murder.

Why had the job had been so messy? Karaev asked. Why hadn’t they gotten rid of the body?

Singaevsky answered derisively, “That was dictated by Rudzinsky’s
ministerial brain.” He told them now it had been a bad idea to leave the body so close to his sister’s house. They should have dumped it in the Dnieper, Singaevsky said, or put it in a basket and disposed of it somewhere on their way to Moscow, where they had fled the day after the crime.

Singaevsky, quieting down, stopped talking about desperate “measures” and said he needed to send a message to Boris Rudzinsky. He did not specify what the message was, but presumably it concerned Andrei’s murder. There would be an opportunity to get word to him, Singaevsky said, when Borka was escorted from prison to the investigator’s office at the courthouse on April 27. The only way to communicate with him would be through the secret sign language Russian convicts had developed to talk among themselves. Karaev was fluent in it, and now Singaevsky asked him to sign a message to his friend. He would tell Rudzinsky that Singaevsky would leave a note for Borka in the
outdoor latrine at the courthouse. This scheme pleased Krasovsky and his partners; they now had the chance of obtaining an incriminating piece of written evidence in the perpetrator’s own hand. On the appointed day they stationed themselves near the building’s entrance. Krasovsky and Brazul lurked near the outhouse ready to grab the note. Karaev managed to catch Rudzinsky’s eye, and they began conversing in signs, but the guards, sensing something was up, hustled the prisoner away before Karaev could get his message across, and Singaevsky departed without leaving the note.

Still, the operation as a whole had been a tremendous success. Margolin and members of the Beilis
Defense Committee decided that Brazul should deliver a written
affidavit relating Singaevsky’s confession
and the revelations of the Diakonova sisters to Lieutenant Colonel Ivanov, the head of the Gendarmes’ investigation.
Brazul would make a further claim in the affidavit—that the mysterious letters implicating the Jews and signed by “a
Christian,” which were sent to Andrei’s mother and the pathologist days after the body was discovered, were written “at the dictation of Vera Cheberyak” and that the handwriting matched that of a member of her gang. The affidavit was delivered into Ivanov’s hands on May 6. On May 30, the results of Brazul’s investigation were revealed in the Kiev newspapers and reprinted in papers across the empire. The stories created an unbelievable sensation. “
Brazul’s Declaration,” as it was called, threw the prosecution into a state of chaos.

The defense demanded that the
indictment be thrown out and the case remanded to the magistrate for a new investigation. Chaplinsky, the chief prosecutor, passionately resisted at first. His communications that May reveal a man in a deep state of anger, even emotional crisis. The case that was to make his reputation was falling apart. The high post in the capital that he craved was slipping from his grasp. He complained that his refusal to reopen the investigation in the face of new evidence was “arousing an
outcry in the Yid press.” Yet he had to concede that it was not just the Jews who were against him. “Many influential people at the present time,” he noted with disapproval in a letter to an official, “are
unfavorably disposed to the staging of a
ritual murder case in court.”

He was dismayed to hear such an opinion expressed even by people he might otherwise respect. On May 23, Lieutenant Colonel Ivanov recommended to Chaplinsky that Vera Cheberyak be arrested and asked his approval to move ahead and bring her in. Chaplinsky reported to the justice minister that Ivanov “regarded [the evidence] as
completely sufficient material for the indictment in the murder not of Mendel
Beilis but Vera Cheberyak, Latyshev, Rudzinsky and Singaevsky.” Chaplinsky added, without any explanation or justification, that he had denied Ivanov’s request. On May 28, Chaplinsky wrote in unusually personal terms to deputy justice minister Liadov, the man whose mission to Kiev had signaled the regime’s backing of the case a year earlier. “An onslaught is being conducted [on me] from all sides,” he complained, seeking to convince him to terminate the Beilis case. “I, of course, am not going to take this bait,” he concluded defiantly, “and
chase my well-wishers away.”

In resisting the “well-wishers” pushing him to quash the case, he had the full backing of justice minister Shcheglovitov. On June 8, the minister summoned Chaplinsky to
St. Petersburg to consult over how to deal with the disastrous turn that the Beilis affair was taking. The two men reconsidered their strategy and decided that delay would work in their favor. They would take the opportunity to rid themselves of the pathetically weak indictment and begin the
investigation afresh in the hope of strengthening the case against the accused.

On his return to Kiev, Chaplinsky announced that he was dropping his opposition to withdrawing the original indictment and agreed to have the case remanded back for reinvestigation. On June 19 the Kiev Judicial Chamber acceded to the request. The case was now back to where it had been almost exactly eleven months earlier when Beilis had been dragged from his home in the middle of the night. The court rejected a defense motion for Beilis to be freed on his own recognizance. He remained in prison, in a state of legal limbo, again an unindicted prisoner with limited legal rights.

Chaplinsky had great hopes for the new investigation. He had pushed aside the troublesome Vasily Fenenko, who had fought him at every step, and appointed a new, compliant investigating magistrate who was enthusiastic about making the case against a Jewish suspect. The chief prosecutor was heartened by two important developments that he knew about and the defense did not. First, Vera Cheberyak had formulated a promising new scheme to impugn the integrity of the defense and incriminate Mendel Beilis. Second, he knew that Brazul’s vaunted “independent investigation” was booby-trapped like an anarchist’s bomb: for Karaev and Makhalin, those supposed star witnesses for the defense, were not what they appeared to be.

Makhalin and Karaev were indeed revolutionaries. They presented themselves as classic specimens of the genre: Makhalin, the leftist of the high-minded sort, and Karaev, the radical outlaw. Yet these young men were also commonplace among the denizens of the revolutionary world in one other respect. Makhalin was registered in the files of the Okhrana or secret police
under the code name “Deputy.” Karaev was known to the secret police under the rather obvious “Caucasian.” The two men had been—inevitably, one is tempted to say—informers.

The previous fall, Karaev had come under suspicion by his anarchist
comrades of working for the Okhrana. His friend Makhalin, whose treachery was still undiscovered by his fellow radicals, organized an internal investigation that assuaged the cadre’s suspicions—raising enough doubts about Karaev’s alleged perfidy that no one felt confident enough of his guilt to kill him.