The Rabbi Who Tricked Stalin

by Mordechai Landsberg

During the week of Rabbi Aaron hospitalization in small Minsk’s asylum, his wife Natalya tried to visit him. She arrived there with wagoner Bearl, whom she paid well for the voyage; but she had not been allowed to see the mad. The watchman at the asylum’s gate told her that her husband was ‘in quarantine’, as if he had been inflicted by a plague…

  However- after the Rabbi had been sent to Smolensk, the Ministry of Healthcare sent a message to Natalya about her husband’s transfer. A typed announcement was added to it, that visits of relatives and friends would be allowed every Sunday, from nine to twelve a.m.

  Natalya invited Mendelevitch to come with her. He agreed, having hired a woman cashier to replace Rabbi; he thought that in the afternoon he could return to his work, as many people would arrive the Gallery on Sunday.

  They took also Blooma with them, and her child was left in the hands of Blooma’s cousine, who was living not far. The three walked to the train station early in the morning. They enjoyed even the smell of the new train’s wooden and iron seats, and the nice views seen from the windows, mostly of forests and green fields and new ‘Kolhozes’ and ‘Sovkhozes’ (collective agricultural farms) that Stalin ordered to settle along the ways of all Russia.

  The visitors were seated in one of the cabins, and in the last minute joined them wagoner Bearl, who came to the train by riding his horse. As the train wheels began rumbling, Mendelevitch’s voice was heard, talking to Natalya.

  “I have brought something with me,” he said. He had on his knees a big brown envlope. It included a book and a framed colored drawing, with a glass that would defend it from flies and dust. He pulled it out and pointed on it to Natalya.

  “You see this picture? It’s my present to the Asylum’s Staff. A drawing of Krashchikov. People like such presents, everywhere.”

  “Do you think they will hang this - for the patients or for the staff?”

  “For both,” he was smiling.

  In the picture there was a procession of peasants with bloody beards, rolling eyes full of hatred- and opening their mouths, shouting at a “classical caricatured Uncle Sam” (with a folded Cylinder Hat- a common type of painting and drawing in Soviet times for mocking at the Bad Capitalist Villain, who was shown carrying a sack of $-s, as signed on it, as well as on his back’s long black robe).

  “I don’t believe it has a great artistic value,” said Natalya very solemnly, “excuse me for mentioning that - to an expert like you.”

  An old man, who was sitting at the bench edges, smoking a cigarette “tail”- that he put in his narrow “tube pipe”(common way of smoking in those days), was coughing. Mendelevitch looked at Natalya with a suspicious guess about the man.

  “You will not succeed to resent me, man,” he rebuked the smoker.

  The train stopped suddenly. The travellers were pushed forward and backwards. Natalya’s fingers touched the old man’s beard unintentionally, while driven forward by the train’s sudden stop. The cigarette in the old man’s pipe caused her to feel a slight burn. She uttered a weak scream.

  Three conductors arrived, and the passenmgers showed them their tickets.

  “One is a Gepaunik, I swear!” whispered the old man to Natalya, looking at the slow ‘work tempo’ of the tickets’ inspectors.

  “Lately I have read a book about Paranoya,” said Mendelevitch to Natalya, “I hope that the Rabbi’s case is not that...”

  “His case is only a slight shock from the last event with the boy.”

  “Hopefully,” said the painter. He had read that such a type of mental illness may come and like-disappear, and after years burst again. But he refrained telling it to God-fearing Natalya.

  ‘As I have witnessed the Rabbi’s amok attack in my gallery,’ he thought, ‘I know that he is either a Paranoid- or Schisophrenic- or both. I bet he is! But why should I make Natalya sore? I regret that I’ve begun talking to her.’

  The tickets’ inspector requested Mendelevitch to hand him his ticket, and he was confused. His fingers were busy in searching it in his pockets: He had four external and two internal - one in his light checkered coat, two in his cotton shirt and three in his new grey trousers. The painter was an unmarried bachelor of fifty, and his salary had permited him to buy quite nice clothing…At last he had found the ticket under his new German pocket watch (at those days– wrist watches were rare or not found in Russia at all.).

  Natalya was looking at the painter’s nervous moves of search, but her mind was still busy. She was thinking: ‘In our social science courses we were told, that the Capitalistic psychopathology had invented these definitions - of paranoya etcetera. Why?- in order to oppress the working class, by blaming many in madness, and preventing them to find employment anywhere.’

  The conductor asked for Natalya’s ticket, which she showed him.

  “I have read,” said Mendelevitch suddenly “that Soviet methods of curing mental problems- are more simple than in the west.”

  “More simple?”

  “Yes. Our medical stuffs believe– how not?- in hard physical work. By that they make the patiens be very busy, forget about their ailment, and of course contribute to the wealth of the nation.”

  The Hall for the visitors, ‘waiting to see patients’, was near the Reception Office of the Asylum. It was bearing the name of Kuprin, a Russian author. On the wall there was a brown colored picture: Standing in front were about ten workers, bending to the ground -each holding some tool in his hands. It was a group of prisoners or patients, dragging snow with their shovels and other tools- out of a wide road - to enable motor vehicles and horse wagons to pass.

  The four visitors of Rabbi Aaron found their seats on a long bench, together with ten people who had come there to visit other mads.

  Natalya soon left the group. She impatiently disappeared behind a side-door at he right corner of the Hall. Soon she was pushed back by a sanitary worker or a guard. A man who had just left the Reception Office was approaching her and her friends. On his nose were hanging round heavy glasses, and he had a shorted like-Lenin’s beard. He introduced himself to the waiting group, after Natalya noticed him and became to stand by his side. Her friends rose from the bench.

  “Well,” the man introduced himself, “I am Doctor Pavlov- of the team, that takes care of Rabbi Hittin. Are you all his relatives or comrades?”

  “Yes, we are,” said Natalya, Blooma, Mendelevitch and Bearl .

  “We have organised your visit,” said Pavlov, “in a way that will keep our patient in a stable state of mind.”

  “I am the Rabbi’s wife.” said Natalya, “I was promised - in writing- by the Ministry, that the Rabbi will meet us one by one. So. . . “

  “It depends on you: If that’s your wish- very well. Maybe others only would like to see him together, and just say hello. . .which is better for him.”

  “So, where is he?” Asked Natalya.

  Mendelevitch sent her a penetrating look. He was afraid that she would begin a protest about trivial matters.

  “He is waiting for you nearby,” said Pavlov very politely, “and please, try …not to bring him to a nervous condition.”

  “Can everyone of us talk to him?” asked Blooma.

  “Each of you will be given two minutes, to stay alone with him.”

  “Only two mi-nutes?” wondered Natalya ,”That’s not enough. At least – for me.”

  “I don’t want to disobey this institute’s orders. For you - three minutes, but please understand that he, in his condition…”

  “Thank you,” said Natalya.

  “We have, of course, our inspection system, to follow what you tell and hear...You can tell him whatever you like…Well, comrades, who is first?”

  “I volunreer. ” said Mendelevitch, looking at Natalya.

  “No,” said Natalya, “I’m brave enough. I’ll face whatever his condition is, and go first”

  Nobody objected, so she was escorted by Doctor Pavlov
toward the door, that she had tried to enter before. Now she saw that somebody had written, in big capital letters- on a label stuck to that rear door: “TO THE MADS’ PAVILLION”.

  The doctor elbowed Natalya in a paternal gesture of care. He pointed on the way out:

  “You walk right, and find the stairs. Climb there and you’ll reach the corridor of the second floor. There you’ll see the meeting room.”

  She was climbing quickly, her heart pounding. They could not have made of him a bunch of skin and bones- within less than two weeks.

  She saw a green door opposite to the stairs, opened it and entered.

  It was a waiting room of 4x4 meters.- also equipped with empty ugly benches, for the visitors, like she had seen in the reception hall.

  She discerned Aliosha standing at the green wall opposite to the front door. At the first moment she was scared, and the tall guy indicated her to walk toward the “meeting room” on the right. That room was fully enclosed area, its door closed- but there had been a wide opening, window-like, in its front wall. Vertical prison bars were stuck to the window’s frame.

  Natalya heard Tall Aliosha’s rude voice:

  “Rabbi Aaron, Your first visitor is here. Your wife!”

  He turned to Natalya and said: “You Keep distance from his hands.”

  She wondered that he had immediately left her alone there, stepping downstairs. She approached what she thought to be ‘the prison’s cabin’, which Pavlov had called ‘the meeting room’. She discerned Rabby Aaron’s head. It peeped behind the window’s behind bars. But his sphinx face and immovable head indicated her only – that her husband had been alive.

  “Hello, my dear Rabbi,” she said and restrained herself from breaking in a whimper.

  Rabbi Aaron did not move. She was feeling that his eyes were vivid, as he gazed askew at her.

  “You recognize me, I know,” she said with a mild smile.

  His fingers played with his beard, pulling it to the sides and rolling the hairs to become narrow stiff and savage plaits. Then he put his hands on the mid rods, and shook the “window frame”.

  His noisy move caused her eyes to become wet. She used her handkerchief to wipe her tears.

  “Oh, what they have done to you?” she almost cried, “Dear Rabbi… Please , show me a sign!”

  Rabbi Aaron put –very quickly- his right hand’s finger on his lips, in a sign of hush, and immediately dropped it.

  Natalya heared the voice of Tall Aliosha. The entry door behind her was opened, and she listened to the Guard’s steps at her back.

  “End of visit, madam Hittin!” said Aliosha loudly, like an impatient automat, emphasizing the French ‘madam’, “Nothing more to say. No use of staying any more with the Rabbi. D’you understand? Go back, visitor. Don’t waste your comrades’ time. Fin.”

  Natalya went back to the reception hall, where she met Doc Pavlov. He told her that the Rabbi’s Kosher requirements were known to the asylum’s management, but “they could not afford him Kosher meat, so he would eat bread, vegetables and eggs. You have seen him, he is not too meagre. Our physician had already weighed him”.

  CHAPTER 41