by Marek Halter
“Podarok … Podarok … Matoné!”
Everyone burst out laughing.
From then on, exchanging a few words of Russian and Yiddish with the children became a game. Kartofl meant “potato”; khaverté “friend”; the word for a “non-Jew” was goy; “fish” was just fish; “black bread” was shvarts broyt; “mother,” muter; “biscuits,” kikhl; and so on.
They could just about understand each other through mime and facial expressions, an intriguing pantomime that the children loved. Marina could laugh with them, but she still found their parents’ stern silence intimidating. When they weren’t looking, she would study their mannerisms as if she were learning a part for the stage. She noted that habit they had of drawing down their foreheads or tucking in their chins when they talked. She would try to imitate their hand play and the way they narrowed their eyes or pursed their lips when their children were naughty, and even their broad smiles, which pushed their eyebrows up toward their hairlines.
Sometimes she would catch them watching her and sizing her up, particularly the women and the patriarch. They must have wondered what a young Jewess was going to do in Birobidzhan with no husband, children, or family. Had they guessed the truth? It was quite possible. How could they fail to guess that she was a goy? The idea of it would fill her with shame, and she would be sorely tempted to admit the truth for all to hear. “I’m lying to you. I’m not one of you. I’m only going into hiding in your country to avoid becoming a zek!”
Huddled up in her corner, she would, for the hundredth time, open one of the books she’d taken with her, but it was too dark to read. Or else she would close her eyes and murmur, as if in prayer, some lines of verse that had really struck a chord with her. It was as though Pasternak had written them for her personally.
The tumult stills. I stand upon the stage
Against a door post, dimly reckoning
From traces of a distantly heard echo
What my unfinished lifetime may yet bring[7] …
It must have been nearly midnight. There had already been two changes of guard. The drumming of the soldiers’ boots on the frozen snow of the platform at Ekaterinoslavka station was becoming ingrained in their minds. The locomotive hadn’t stopped puffing the whole time, only slower and more feebly. A single paraffin lamp burned at the center of the car. The stove glowed faintly red. The women were rationing the logs, only throwing them in at the last possible moment. Their faces were stiff with cold. It was like being down a rabbit hole. Eyes glowed out of the rigid shadows. Nobody spoke or tried to sleep, not even the children. There was nothing to do but wait.
Marina nearly jumped out of her skin. A figure had appeared out of nowhere and was looming over her. She recognized the old man. The white of his beard was a blurred smudge.
He asked, “You know? You, you know?”
Marina sat up, not sure whether she had understood correctly. The patriarch repeated, “Here, why? Train?”
He motioned toward the back of the car.
Marina shook her head. “No, I don’t know. They haven’t said.”
“Soldiers for us?”
“No! For whole train. Not for us. Everyone same!” She found herself gesticulating and lapsing into poor Russian.
The old man looked at her in silence. She thought he was trying to formulate another question, but no, he was waiting for her to say something.
She remembered a word she’d learned from the children, geduld meaning “patience,” and murmured it, “Geduld, geduld … ”
The patriarch looked away, grumbling, “Geduld, geduld, always geduld! What for?”
Another whistle jolted them out of their apathy. Orders were growled. Rifle carbines clicked. In the car, the men struggled to their feet. With a scrape of metal, the door slid open. The Siberian night rushed in. The wind was picking up.
With his rifle slung over his shoulder, a soldier came in holding a paraffin lamp. The lieutenant they’d seen on the platform hours earlier appeared, and behind him a tall, thin young man who couldn’t have been over thirty. His fur coat was fastened at the waist by a broad leather belt. It was far too big for him. When the light from the lamp fell across his face, the NKVD insignia glinted on his fur cap. He was a political commissar, a politruk.
The soldier closed the door behind them, bringing with him the smell of frozen wool. Flakes of ice danced between the threads of his scarf. He left it over his face. The paraffin gave out a fierce blue light. Half-asleep, the children shielded their eyes with their hands. The politruk undid the top buttons of his coat, while the lieutenant took off his chapka hat, exposing his mottled bald scalp. His eyes were bloodshot, and the ice had etched fine black cracks into his cheeks. He asked for their papers, his breath reeking of alcohol. The patriarch didn’t need to translate. Everyone understood and held out the precious documents.
It had become a ritual. Their passports had already been checked hundreds of times, and now they had to be checked yet again. The politruk held them bundled in his hand. He went through them, calling out names. His voice was both very deep and very young, as if it had only just broken. His pronunciation was so bad that the Jews didn’t recognize their names, called out in Russian style. He had to repeat himself, which he did with a smile. They could see that it wasn’t the first time. It was a kind of game for him. He looked long and hard at them when they stepped forward.
The patriarch gave him documents written in Yiddish.
“Birobidzhan, we go to Birobidzhan, planned. Official, very official.”
Shaking his head, the lieutenant mumbled a few unintelligible words. The politruk motioned to him to be quiet. He examined the old man’s papers, making no comment. Finally, he snatched hold of Marina’s passport and the letter in Yiddish that Mikhoels had written for Birobidzhan’s Regional Executive Committee. It was an employment contract hiring her to work with the Jewish theatre in Birobidzhan for two years.
The soldier took off his scarf and leaned against the wall of the car. A black crust had developed on his chapped lips. He couldn’t have been any older than the politruk, who was just looking up from Marina’s papers. His eyes ran over her as if he were imagining what her body might be like underneath all the layers of clothing.
“So you’re an actress, Comrade Gousseieva?”
“As it says on my passport, Comrade Commissar.”
“And you’re going to work as an actress in Birobidzhan?”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t you like the theaters in Moscow?”
The politruk’s lips twitched provocatively. Marina smiled back at him.
“Most of them are closed at the moment, Comrade Commissar.”
“And you actually want to live with these yids, do you?”
Marina was thrown by the contempt in his voice. She glanced around at her fellow passengers. The adolescents had positioned themselves beside the men. Looking tense and drawn, they were focusing on their breathing. The women didn’t take their eyes off the lieutenant or the politruk for a second. A little girl wrapped herself up inside Marina’s coat and clung to her legs.
“I’m Jewish, like the others,” Marina said.
She could feel the blood rushing to her cheeks. The lieutenant didn’t give the politruk time to reply.
“Do you speak their language, comrade?”
He jerked his chin at the emigrants.
“No, not much. I don’t come from—”
The lieutenant interrupted her, turning to the politruk.
“What a bloody mess! Yet again they’ve let them come all this way without telling them! Three or four thousand verst on the train, and nobody stopped them! Isn’t anyone doing his job properly on this ruddy line? What’s the point of all these tiresome reports I kill myself writing, I ask you?”
Again the politruk shrugged.
Marina asked, “What’s happening, Comrade Lieutenant?”
“The Manchurian border is less than fifty verst from this station, comrade! If it were da
ytime, you might be able to see the Japanese trucks and tanks.”
“The Japanese?”
The lieutenant glowered at her.
“Yes, God damn it, the Japanese! They invaded Manchuria ten years ago. Didn’t you know, Comrade Actress? And we’re at war with Japan. Didn’t you know that either? Hasn’t the news reached Moscow? What do you think we’re doing here, standing around day and night in temperatures of twenty below, comrade? Comrade Stalin has asked us to guard the border and hunt down any spies. And we take our job seriously, because he’s right. It’s always worth keeping an eye out for spies on the borders. You never know what you might find when you turn over a stone. … ”
He shot a scornful glance at the Jewish families, sniggering. His lip curled with anger, a long-festering rancid anger at being stuck out in that far-flung corner of Siberia.
The politruk stepped in. “This is a no-go military zone, comrade. No foreigner gets off here. The same goes for Birobidzhan. Immigration to the area was prohibited ten months ago.”
“Prohibited. No … it can’t be. Nobody told us. … ” Marina had difficulty getting the words out from the shock of it.
The politruk shrugged. “Somebody must have forgotten to mention it. That’s war for you. You can’t expect everything to be perfect all the time.”
“But we have our papers. … ”
The politruk held the bundle of papers out to her. “You have your papers, comrade, and I have my orders. Nobody’s getting off the train until we reach Khabarovsk.”
“But what are we going to do? These people have come all the way from—”
“That’ll do. I know where they come from. There’s been a change of plans, that’s all.”
He buttoned up his coat. Marina was aware of murmurs around her. The soldier heaved himself away from the wall and lifted his lamp high, his rifle in his hand. The politruk yanked the door open. Marina grabbed the lieutenant’s sleeve as he put his chapka hat back on.
“Where are we going?”
The lieutenant didn’t bother to reply, elbowing her out of the way.
Before jumping down onto the platform, the politruk shouted, “You’ll go wherever you’re told. People in Birobidzhan are used to that. They’ll know what to do with you.”
The train left the station in the middle of the night. It moved without so much as a whistle to signal its departure. Marina’s fellow travelers hadn’t needed much explanation from her.
The patriarch asked, “Birobidzhan? Finished, not possible?”
She wanted to tell him about the Japanese, the war, and the spies, but the old man interrupted her with a snort.
“War or no war, same for Jews. Birobidzhan same. Same everywhere. No room for Jews.”
Marina wanted to protest, but no words had come out, only tears, floods of tears. She had been holding back that bitter, shame-ridden deluge for too long.
The patriarch shook his head. Afterward, there had been shouting, angry outbursts, and endless arguments. Marina didn’t understand a word they were saying. The fluid guttural tones of the Yiddish language washed over her, reinforcing her loneliness. She withdrew to her seat, unable to sleep. What was she going to do if she couldn’t get to Birobidzhan? Where could she go? What was going to happen at Khabarovsk?
Most Muscovites had heard of Khabarovsk in Siberia, but the place was only ever mentioned in connection with the missing persons who had disappeared into the abyss of the Gulag labor camps there.
So that’s what lay in store for them, the zek camps.
That was Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin’s gift to her. He hadn’t had her arrested by the leather coat brigade. She had never known the corridors of Lubyanka. The train carrying her to Birobidzhan was an ordinary train. There had been no obstacle, nothing to stop her seeking Mikhoels’s help. Why would Stalin have gone to the trouble since she was throwing herself headlong into the hell of a zek’s life of her own free will?
Because she didn’t doubt for a minute that Joseph Vissarionovich knew where she would go to escape him, just as he knew that she would never get there. Who knew better than he and the NKVD that Birobidzhan was a no-go military zone that had closed its borders?
Stalin always knew everything. How could she have forgotten? Why had she believed in … ?
In what? In his measly affection? In his nostalgia for a night of drunkenness and feigned tenderness with an insignificant actress?
How could she be so naive? She really was becoming Jewish, or at least as credulous as the poor souls who were fleeing the Nazi massacres in the hope that they would be welcome at the other end of Siberia.
Stalin would never stop being Stalin. Hadn’t there been enough lies and torments to prove that?
Shaken about by the jolting of the train, she couldn’t sleep, breathless with fear and questions. She got up once or twice to throw another log onto the stove. Despite the cold, the women had forgotten all about it. Curled up close, they were whispering themselves into a frenzy.
Exhaustion finally claimed her. Marina fell asleep shortly before daybreak. Her troubled sleep was plagued with bad dreams and constantly broken by the mumble of voices and the roar of the train.
She was woken up by a screech of metal that was more shrill than any that had gone before. Rays of sunlight set the shadows dancing around the car. The children were jostling one another for a space in front of the windows. They had melted the ice with a plate from the stove and were peering out at the vast snowy plain, rubbing away the frost constantly generated by their breath with their sleeves. The luggage, bundles, and coats had been tidied up as if in full expectation of disembarkation at the next stop.
For a few seconds, Marina believed that there had been a miracle. Had they had some new information while she’d been asleep? Were they going to get off at Birobidzhan after all? No, of course not, it was impossible, sheer folly, absurd. Did these men and women really have no idea what was in store for them?
Then she saw their faces, the hard look in their red eyes, their pinched lips and stony expressions.
Yes, of course they knew.
But they were ready, prepared for the worst. It wasn’t the first time this had happened to them. They’d been through it all before. Hadn’t they fled the Nazis?
One of the women noticed that Marina was awake. She poured some piping hot tea into a metal beaker and brought it over to her. While Marina drank, she pointed to her suitcase, open bags, vanity case, and trail of clothes, using her hands to signal to her to tidy up. She should make sure she was ready too.
Marina shrugged her shoulders. The woman insisted and gently rubbed her cheek, reminding Marina of Mrs. Mikhoels’s maternal gesture. This woman’s touch had the same understanding and enduring tenderness. Raising her eyebrows, a mocking twinkle in her eyes, the woman gesticulated as if passing an invisible ball from one hand to the other. She murmured, “Meshané mazal! Meshané mazal!”
It was the first time that Marina had heard the expression meaning Luck can change.
Who could say when their luck might change?
Yes, some day or other, it’s bound to happen. Even misfortune pauses from time to time. You have to be ready, you have to be patient. Wasn’t that what she herself had said to the patriarch? Geduld, geduld!
She packed her bags, all the while thinking how absurd it was. Neither her case nor her bundle would ever be set down on the platform at Birobidzhan station.
In an attempt to calm her nerves, she went over to the children. They made room for her in front of the windows. Some of the little girls slid their arms around her neck as if she were their big sister. The train crawled forward, barely any faster than a sledge. The rolling slopes of the interminable white steppe slid by. There was no road to be seen, not even an animal’s paw prints. As the track skirted an escarpment, thick smoke from the locomotive smudged the snow like the stroke of an enormous black paintbrush. A splurge of soot sank into the white background like tattoo ink into the skin.
A bo
y called out. A log wall stuck up out of the snow. Smoke zigzagged through the sparkling air. In the next hour, other traditional log cabins known as izbas came into view. The children pointed at them, calling out excitedly. Behind them, their parents sat in silence. The patriarch’s eyes were closed. He looked like he was asleep, his hands in fingerless gloves clasped over his stomach.
The izbas got bigger. They were surrounded by barns. The train was passing a village. A group of sledgers stood up to wave at them. Their lips were moving, but they were out of earshot. Children shouted out a reply, banging on the windows.
A snowy track ran alongside the railway line. They saw more sleighs, long log cabins, a broken wave of snow-covered rooftops, smoke belching out of chimney stacks, the warehouses of a sawmill, the tall chimney of a brickyard, and a sign in Yiddish. The patriarch got up, tottering as the train rocked from side to side. They were coming into Birobidzhan.
For days, they’d been waiting for this moment with hope beating in their breasts. Now everyone was clenching their fists so that nobody else would notice their shaking hands. Their faces were rigid. The children fell silent again and moved away from the windows. Marina avoided making eye contact when anyone glanced in her direction. They all froze when the train whistled, announcing their arrival at the station.
There was the usual squeal of metal as the train drew to a halt. They saw only the pediment with its pink border and ornate Hebrew characters confirming that they were in Birobidzhan. Above the awnings, a huge Cyrillic banner the height and width of the façade ran:
All for the front, all for victory
As at Ekaterinoslavka the previous day, soldiers positioned themselves all along the train, clutching rifles. Nobody tried to get off, but the door of the car slid open almost at once. An officer with the stars of a captain on his coat collar swept in. His face was broad, plump, and ageless, his short beard sewn with quivering beads of frost. You could barely see his eyes under his eyelids, puffy with late nights and drink. A woman came in behind him, a politruk. Buttoned stiffly into her quilted jacket, she was tall with broad hips, her baggy trousers stuffed into felt boots. Her head was wrapped up in two layers of scarves. She asked to see their passports, holding out her leather-gloved hand.