The Yid Read online

  THE ARREST OF A GROUP OF KILLER DOCTORS

  Some time ago, organs of state security uncovered a terrorist group of doctors who planned to shorten the lives of leading figures in the Soviet Union by harmful treatment.

  Among members in this group were: Professor M. S. Vovsi, a therapist; Professor V. N. Vinogradov, a therapist; Professor M. B. Kogan, a therapist; Professor B. B. Kogan, a therapist; Professor P. I. Yegorov, a therapist; Professor A. I. Feldman, an otolaryngologist; Professor Y. G. Etinger, a therapist; Professor A. M. Grinstein, a neuropathologist; and I. Mairorov, a therapist.

  Documents and investigations conducted by medical experts have established that the criminals—hidden enemies of the people—carried out harmful treatment on their patients, thereby undermining their health.

  The investigation established that members of the terrorist gang, by using their position as physicians and betraying the trust of their patients, deliberately and maliciously undermined the health of the latter, intentionally ignored objective studies of the patients, made wrong diagnoses that were not suitable for the actual nature of their illnesses, and then, by incorrect treatment, killed them.

  The criminals confessed that in the case of Comrade A. A. Zhdanov they wrongly diagnosed his illness, concealed his myocardial infarction, prescribed a regimen that was totally inappropriate to his grave illness, and in this way killed Comrade Zhdanov. The investigation established that the criminals also shortened the life of Comrade A. S. Shcherbakov, by incorrectly treating him with very potent medicines, putting him on a fatal regimen, and in this way brought on his death.

  These criminal doctors sought primarily to ruin the health of leading Soviet military cadres, incapacitate them, and thereby weaken the defense of the country. They tried to incapacitate Marshal A. M. Vasilevskiy, Marshal L. A. Govorov, Marshal I. S. Konev, General of the Army S. M. Shtemenko, Admiral G. I. Levchenko, and others. However, their arrest upset their evil plans and the criminals were not able to achieve their aims.

  It has been established that all these killer doctors, these monsters who trod underfoot the holy banner of science and defiled the honor of men of science, were in the pay of foreign intelligence services.

  Most of the members of this terrorist gang were associated with the international Jewish bourgeois nationalistic organization “Joint,” created by American intelligence ostensibly to provide material aid to Jews in other countries. Actually, this organization, operating under the direction of American intelligence, carried out widespread espionage, terrorist, and other subversive activities in several countries, including the Soviet Union. Vovsi told the investigation that he had received a directive “to exterminate the foremost cadres in the USSR from the ‘Joint’ organization in the United States through Dr. Shimeliovich in Moscow and the Jewish bourgeois nationalist, Mikhoels.”

  Another news report:

  SPIES AND MURDERERS UNDER THE MASK OF DOCTORS

  The unmasking of the band of doctor-poisoners dealt a shattering blow to the American-English instigators of war.

  The whole world can now see once again the true face of the slave master–cannibals from the USA and England.

  The bosses of the USA and their English “junior partners” know that success in ruling another country cannot be achieved by peaceful means. Feverishly preparing for a new world war, they urgently sent their spies into the rear of the USSR and into the countries of the People’s Democracy; they attempted to implement what the Hitlerites had failed to do—to create in the USSR their own subversive “fifth column.” […] It is also true that, besides these enemies, we still have another, namely, the lack of vigilance among our people.

  Have no doubt but that when there is a lack of vigilance, there will be subversion. Consequently, to eliminate sabotage, vigilance must be restored in our ranks.

  Spartak, the ambulance driver, didn’t give a rip about Jesus, or Lazarus, or Yid doctors. He had read something about that in the newspapers, but thought it had nothing to do with him or any Jews he knew.

  “I didn’t know Jesus Christ was a doctor,” he replied to Arkashka’s quip.

  An Azeri, Spartak would have been a Muslim had he not been an atheist like Arkashka.

  “Remember Lazarus? The dead guy he brought back? Now, that’s a doctor!”

  “Was Lazarus a Jew also?”

  “Good question, Spartakushka. Yes, I think so. Probably.”

  “Would he have raised a dead Russian?”

  “That’s an even better question, but it’s uncharted territory. To know conclusively, you would have needed to show him a dead Russian and a dead Jew and see which one he selected for raising.”

  Arkashka let the train of thought develop silently in his mind, then burst out laughing.

  “Or better, a group of dead Russians and a group of dead Jews…”

  Arkashka paused again, letting the thought roll on in seclusion, then reported back, “There were no Russians two thousand years ago, we should note to be completely accurate. There were hunter-gatherers or some such, sitting in the trees, maybe, but in those dark, distant times, Yid doctors were already raising the dead!”

  “You people are the best,” muttered Spartak.

  Spartak didn’t see why this might be amusing, nor did he care, but he was glad to see Arkashka entertain himself. They were grunts from the front, frontoviki, members of a brotherhood, driving through nighttime Moscow with a siren on. It was a say-what-you-want situation. No politics in that ambulance.

  Arkashka would have graduated at the top of his class, except for being nearly flunked by the idiot professor of Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism. He was unable to spew out a satisfactory analysis of Comrade Stalin’s latest work, Marksizm i Voprosy Yazykoznaniya. Marxism and Problems of Linguistics.

  Arkashka had flubbed that course godlessly. He had no problem grasping Marx, Engels, and dialectical materialism. Even Lenin was mostly understandable when taken in small doses. But the words of Comrade Stalin made no sense at all, no matter how many sleepless nights he devoted to chewing them.

  Besides, being a Jew in 1953, Arkashka was lucky to have any gig, and riding with the ambulance was more than good enough.

  * * *

  A maid wearing a dark blue dress and a light blue apron opened the door. She was a young woman, roughly Arkashka and Spartak’s age—late twenties, if that.

  They walked through a big, cavernous hallway, Arkashka carrying his doctor’s bag, Spartak carrying a stretcher.

  With the medic missing, they would both need to carry out the old woman to get her to the ambulance. Some doctors weren’t strong enough for this task, but Arkashka was fine. With no one shooting at you, with no land mines to trip, carrying out the sick seemed so easy that it felt like cheating.

  Arkashka instantly grasped the incongruence of the situation.

  “Why are we even here?” he asked himself, looking around. “These folks should be using the Kremlin hospital.” Theirs was a simple, regional ambulance, the kind that took care of stroked-out old ladies who had no admiral sons or Kremlin connections. Besides, at the Kremlin hospital they had a ventilator—American.

  The maid opened the door to a large room, where a middle-aged man sat in a massive armchair in front of a bed, watching an old woman.

  The man was wearing a white undershirt and uniform pants with a thick red stripe along the side, indicating that, even in his undershirt, he was an admiral. He was also wearing a black patent leather belt, the sort one would wear to review parades or have an audience in the Kremlin.

  Arkashka knew the admiral’s name from front-line gossip. He had been in command during the defense of Leningrad. There, he deployed something called “the floating machine gun nests.” These were, essentially, rafts, each holding a machine gun and a hapless lone soldier or sailor. The rafts were anchored at various points in the Gulf of Finland, around the city. If a gunner saw the Germans, he was expected to open fire, thereby giving away his position, and since there was
no way to escape, this led to certain death. These were literally floating coffins.

  Arkashka reminded himself that he was no longer a grunt, no longer the guy who dragged maimed soldiers through the minefields. He was a Soviet physician and, virulent nonsense in the newspapers notwithstanding, he was proud of his rank.

  The old woman lay on the bed, beneath a large painting of two deer by a stream. It would have been a peaceful scene, had it not been life-sized and framed in gold. The artist was German. Obviously, this was a “trophy” from the war. The admiral had to have commandeered a railroad car to get this monstrosity from Berlin to Moscow.

  The armchair looked like another trophy, a throne grand enough for der Führer.

  Arkashka nodded to the admiral but introduced himself to the patient, whose name he had seen on the complaint: “Ol’ga Petrovna, I am Dr. Arkady Kaplan. I am here to make you better.”

  The patient was taking rapid, shallow breaths. She was disheveled, obviously dehydrated, unresponsive. Her mouth drooped on the left side, a sign of a past stroke. According to the call, the stroke occurred a year ago.

  “Looks like she has been experiencing Cheyne-Stokes respiration for at least twenty-four hours, more likely forty-eight,” Arkashka estimated silently. “Almost certainly, she needs to be hospitalized—or, perhaps, it’s time to say good-bye.”

  Spartak gently set down the stretcher and left the room. He would be called in later, to help carry the woman to the ambulance.

  “Repeat your last name, young man,” ordered the admiral, and the combination of the tone of his voice and the smell of alcohol on his breath told Arkashka that this wasn’t going to go well.

  After years as a medical student, Arkashka grew accustomed to being addressed formally, as vy. This man used the familiar, ty. This was a sign of contempt, which could only get worse after this man got to contemplate Arkashka’s last name. (It’s unlikely that non-Jewish Kaplans exist anywhere in the world.)

  “Kaplan, Arkady Leonidovich,” Arkashka repeated. He gave his full name.

  “Ot vashego brata ne ubezhish,” said the admiral. There is no escape from you.

  Arkashka left this unanswered. “May I examine your mother, Comrade Admiral?”

  Arkashka’s preferred way of dealing with ethnic slurs and other forms of insult was to ignore them. This is an accepted approach in the medical profession, because a doctor who is regularly insulted may eventually start to believe in his own inferiority.

  Kogan called it a mind-fuck, mozgoyebaniye.

  Self-confidence is a component of clinical judgment, and a doctor whose clinical judgment is compromised is harm waiting to happen. Kogan had been getting this nonsense throughout his career, and to protect his patients, he had completely desensitized himself to it.

  Or so he claimed over vodka one night. Imagine a surgeon infected by belief in his own inferiority.

  “Now, Abram, this is my mother, understand?” said the admiral.

  “Yes, Comrade Admiral. I understand this. Now I will measure her heart rate and listen to her heart.”

  Arkady let the slur pass. He picked up the old woman’s right hand, the one not affected by the stroke. It felt limp.

  “Ol’ga Petrovna, can you squeeze my hand?” he asked, knowing that she couldn’t.

  While her hand was in his, Arkashka took her pulse. It was around 120 beats per minute, about twice the normal. Respiratory rate was about thirty-six breaths per minute, about six times the normal. Blood pressure was eighty over forty, reptilian low.

  “There are many of your brothers in Kremlyovka,” said the admiral as Arkashka grabbed the stethoscope out of his doctor’s bag. “You’d feel at home there.”

  Through the stethoscope, Arkashka heard scattered, rattling noises. That was the sound of rhonchi, a fancy way of saying junk in the airways.

  “May we discuss the status of the patient, Comrade Admiral?”

  “Kaplan, Kaplan. Abrasha.”

  The admiral pronounced the r in an exaggerated way intended to mimic Yiddish. It came out on a spectrum between r and h. “And during the war, where were you, Kaplan?”

  “I was in Stalingrad, Comrade Admiral.”

  Arkashka’s pronunciation was clear, as Moscow as it gets.

  “Stalinghad…,” repeated the admiral in mocking accent. “I’ll tell you where you were! In Kazan’, behind the Ural, drinking Russian blood.”

  He was drunk, of course, but Arkashka was no stranger to drunks. The only thing to do was to go through the case, make the decisions that needed to be made, and get the fuck out.

  “Comrade Admiral, I know this is very difficult…,” Arkashka carried on. “Your mother is breathing the way she is because her body isn’t absorbing oxygen the way healthy bodies do. As carbon dioxide builds up, she compensates by breathing more rapidly. This is called Cheyne-Stokes respiration. I know it’s difficult to accept, but this is how death begins.”

  “Molchat’!” shouted the admiral. Silence!

  “The situation may not be hopeless, however,” Arkashka soldiered on. “Your best course of action would be to take Ol’ga Petrovna to the Kremlin hospital, where they will be able to do a chest X-ray, do blood work. If appropriate, they may use a respirator, a machine that will help her breathe, at least for a while. Municipal Hospital Number One, where I work, doesn’t have a respirator. My ambulance can transport her to Kremlyovka. You can come with us in the ambulance while your staff makes appropriate arrangements.”

  The admiral’s hand grabbed Arkashka by the lapels of his white coat. The hand was strong, beefy. The palm was so large, it seemed to cover half of Arkashka’s chest.

  “Now you listen to me, Rabinovich. This is my mother. Mother! Understand?! She will not be going to Kremlyovka. Who do you think got her paralyzed to begin with?”

  “There are excellent doctors…”

  “Yids! Bloodsuckers! Murderers!”

  Clearly, a calm, professional approach was failing Arkashka. He was alone in a room with a man whose grief was fueled with alcohol.

  Yet, the bit about the Kremlin hospital couldn’t be ignored. The idea that this man would deprive his mother of access to a ventilator was starting to make sense. He believed the Yids at Kremlyovka would kill her.

  That was consistent with what was being published in the newspapers. The stories were mostly about Kremlyovka. The list of arrested doctors includes Stalin’s personal physician, Vinogradov, one of the few non-Jews on the list.

  Arkashka realized that the admiral was confused, alone, unclear about what his next strategic move would be. Unable to trust anyone as his mother lay dying, he had commandeered an ambulance much like he had commandeered the railroad cars to bring his loot from Germany.

  This was madness, of course. What was Arkashka to do? Was there a way out of this trap?

  He threw the question to the admiral.

  “What do you suggest we do, Comrade Admiral?”

  “We cure her right here.”

  Abrikosov slowly got out of his chair and brandished a short dagger that was hanging on his belt. It was a shiny ceremonial weapon, called kortik in Russian and a dirk in English. This weapon had an ivory handle. It was gold plated. Unsheathing it, the admiral placed its point against Arkashka’s nose.

  Arkashka didn’t blink.

  “Now, Abramovich, this is the kortik of a Soviet admiral. By this kortik I swear that nothing will stand between my mother and full recovery. You will stay here for as long as it takes to improve her breathing, and I will sit here with you for as long as it takes to make sure that this fine Russian woman walks again.”

  With these words, the admiral placed the unsheathed kortik across his knees.

  Often you need time to make an irrational family member come to his senses, Arkashka decided.

  He must do something, anything, to create an appearance of a therapeutic intervention.

  He reached into the bag and produced a glass bottle containing saline solution, connected it to a c
atheter, and carefully inserted the needle into the woman’s vein. Then he placed the bottle on the table next to the bed, well above the patient.

  “Ol’ga Petrovna is severely dehydrated. This should help her for the time being.”

  The admiral’s gaze remained focused on the kortik.

  “Comrade Admiral, please understand that you called an ambulance. We would be happy to stabilize Ol’ga Petrovna and transport her. This is our job. But we are unable to stay here, because this woman needs to be in a hospital. We cannot give her the hospital care she needs. We need to make a decision.”

  He sat down and looked at the admiral, whose face remained placid. Arkashka looked at his watch. Family members frequently threaten doctors. Making good on the threat is something completely different. If this man had any sanity left in him, he would not act on impulse. He would recognize the consequences. He would recognize that killing doctors was still punishable by law, almost certainly, even if they were Jews, even now. Arkashka decided to give the man enough time to decompress. If this didn’t work, nothing would.

  Exactly fifteen minutes later, Arkashka looked at his watch again, got up, and, saying nothing, headed toward the door.

  “By the honor of a Soviet officer,” said Admiral Abrikosov, rising from the armchair and, before Arkashka reached the door, inserted the kortik in the doctor’s back, then calmly returned to his mother’s bedside.

  Arkashka walked into the kitchen, where Spartak was drinking tea served to him by the maid.

  “There is a knife in my back,” he said.

  * * *

  Kogan was on service that night. His notes from that surgery are unusually detailed, even by his standards:

  Preoperative Diagnosis: Right hemothorax due to penetrating trauma with exsanguination.

  Postoperative Diagnosis: Same with intraoperative death.

  Findings: Massive hemothorax with stab wound to the pulmonary hilum primarily affecting the right superior pulmonary vein adjacent and into the pericardium. The wound was inflicted with a ceremonial dagger, 19.5 cm. long. The dagger has an ivory handle bearing the inscription: “To Admiral Abrikosov for bravery and inventiveness in the defense of Leningrad, I. Stalin.”