by Marek Halter
Standing indifferent at her side, the captain mumbled in Yiddish, “Kontrol! Kontrol!”
The documents changed hands in a matter of seconds. Without so much as glancing over them, the politruk went back out onto the platform, taking the bundle of papers with her. As the door slid open, Marina caught a glimpse of a small cluster of men and women. The women had baskets and huge steaming bowls. Everyone in the group was craning his or her neck to see inside before the door rolled shut, blocking the view. The passengers inside had spotted them too. A murmur ran around the car. The captain nodded his head, grinning.
“Yes, yes, there’s plenty to eat. Broyt, puter, and bortsch,” he said, using the Yiddish words for bread, butter, and beetroot soup. “All in good time, all in good time. After your papers have been checked. Just be patient. Geduld!”
He pulled a tobacco pouch out of his pocket and squashed the leaves into a bent apple pipe with his thumb. Spotting Marina behind the women, he winked at her. She looked away. He lit his pipe and said a few more phrases in broken Yiddish peppered with Russian. Only the patriarch replied.
The old man jerked his chin at various people. Marina guessed he was explaining where they came from. The captain listened, taking small puffs on his pipe, still leering at Marina. When the old man said the word Birobidzhan, the officer shook his pipe.
“No, no! Impossible, prohibited. Birobidzhan farmakht, closed!”
One woman exploded, crying, “Azoy?” Is that so? in Yiddish.
When the patriarch tried to silence her, she pushed his hand away, pointed to the children, and unleashed a torrent of words before suddenly breaking off. The carriage door opened and stayed open. One cold gust chased all the heat away. The politruk stalked in, still holding the wad of passports. She looked hard at Marina.
“Are you Comrade Gousseieva?”
Marina was so surprised that she didn’t respond.
The politruk repeated, “Are you Comrade Gousseieva or not?”
“Yes … I am.”
“Get off the train.”
“But why?”
“Just get off and you’ll find out. Hurry up, or do you want everybody to freeze?”
His pipe between his teeth, the captain muttered, “Take life as it comes, my girl, don’t argue.”
He took ahold of her arm and thrust her outside. Marina breathed in the smell of snow and hot metal. The cold gripped her throat and went straight through her clothes. She didn’t have her coat on. Her teeth chattering, she moved to open the door again.
“Wait!”
A voice rang out behind her, the voice of a young girl. “You’ll catch cold after being in that hot car.”
The girl was barely twenty years old, blonde and tubby with a big smile. She threw a blanket around Marina’s shoulders.
“Comrade Actress Marina Andreyeva Gousseiev?”
The young girl stepped aside to make way for two men. One was old and small, his peasant’s face wrinkled but his eyes sharp under his thick bushy eyebrows. The other couldn’t have been more than thirty. He was as handsome as they come with a princely face, gold-tinted eyes, a wide mouth, and vaguely feminine full lips. He stood tall, his shoulders thrown back. Marina murmured that she was indeed Comrade Gousseiev, her jaw stiff from the cold.
“Welcome to Birobidzhan, Comrade Gousseieva!”
“Welcome? Here … ”
He laughed a gorgeous deep throaty laugh, the kind that took years of practice.
“Why should that surprise you, comrade?”
Marina tried to make eye contact with the other man, but he remained inscrutable. She pulled the blanket tighter around her, shivering from head to toe.
“At Ekaterinoslavka, they told us that it wasn’t possible, that Birobidzhan was a ‘no-go military zone’ and that we wouldn’t even be allowed off the train. … ”
“Well, as you can see, you’re off!”
The young man gave her a soft charming smile. He was holding Mikhoels’s letter in his gloved hand.
“These kinds of misunderstandings are not uncommon. Our comrades over in Ekaterinoslavka pretend not to understand. It’s true that this is a military zone, because of the Japanese, as you must have gathered. It’s out of bounds to our non-Russian comrades until the end of the war, but that doesn’t apply to you. You’re not a foreigner, Comrade Gousseieva. Your domestic passport says that you’re from Moscow. You have a letter of engagement from Solomon Mikhoels for our theater. … Your case is totally different.”
He gave a slight bow from the waist up in theatrical style and held his hand out to Marina.
“I’m Metvei Levine, director of the Birobidzhan Yiddish Theatre, your director, if you like.”
His smile was as dazzling as the snow, his fingers long, and his hands muscular. Marina held out her own hand, bewildered.
Shaking a Yiddish newspaper in his gloved hand, the man with the bushy eyebrows pointed out, “Our comrade will still have to appear before the Committee, Metvei. She’ll have to apply to the commissar and be accepted, let’s not forget. … ”
His voice was rough with tobacco and used to giving orders. Levine nodded in agreement.
“This is Shmuel Klitenit, Comrade Marina Andreyeva. Shmuel is right. He’s familiar with all the procedures. He’s the vice-chairman of the Birobidzhan Executive Committee. But I’m sure we won’t have any trouble.”
Marina was hardly listening. The cold was grasping her temples. Her head was spinning. The words pricked at her like needles. She wasn’t sure whether she had understood correctly. So she really wasn’t going to be put back on the train? She was going to stay in Birobidzhan?
The glare of the sun on the snowy platform was blinding. All along the train, doors were opening. Soldiers were escorting the women fetching the wood. Their arms laden with logs, some of the women turned and peered toward the front of the train, curious.
Shouts rang out. The politruk and the captain reappeared on the step of the car. They jumped down onto the platform. The group of men and women, who until then had been taking turns holding the basins of soup to avoid setting them down in the icy snow, went up to the sliding door. Phrases in Yiddish shot back and forth. Everyone was talking at once. The questions mingled with the replies. Some of the women were in tears as they kissed one another. The men were shaking hands.
A little girl called over to Marina, “Pani Marina!” Miss Marina.
They were looking at her in surprise. She turned to Levine and Klitenit.
“What about them? Where are they going?”
“Khabarovsk, as planned!”
The politruk had heard her question and answered before anyone else had the chance. She added, “If you have any luggage, you’d better take it off the train before they’ve finished giving out the soup. The train will be on its way right after. Get it through your head that you haven’t officially been given leave to stay yet, comrade. Director Levine says that the theater has hired you. He has it in writing, but we’ll see. It’ll be up to the Committee.”
She strutted off as abruptly as she had come. The captain was giving orders, hurrying the soup distribution.
“No more tears, now, that’s enough! The train’s about to leave.”
Hailing the soldiers, he ordered them to approach. Metvei Levine touched Marina’s arm.
“The commissar is right. You should get your luggage off.”
He nudged her in the direction of the car. Holding a bowl of soup in his hand, the patriarch stared at her. She was frozen to the spot, unable to take another step. Some of the others looked up at her, then turned away. What was going through their minds just then? Did they think she was abandoning them or that she was a traitor, not one of them?
Turning back to Levine, she took the blanket off her shoulders and held it out to him.
“I can’t do it. I can’t stay here. I have to go with them.”
Levine opened his mouth to protest.
A child’s shout rang out above them, “Pani, pani Marina
!”
It was the little girl who had shouted to her a little earlier. She was holding out the rainbow blanket. Behind her, a man appeared, carrying Marina’s bag and suitcase.
She didn’t move. Once again Levine told her to take her luggage. The man held it out to her. She shook her head, not able to find the words.
Levine shouted, “Get her luggage, Nadia!”
The young blonde, who had been worried about Marina catching cold earlier, caught ahold of the suitcase, then the bundle and the blanket that the little girl wanted Marina to have. The soldiers already had their hands on the door handles.
Marina cried out.
The children’s eyes were like saucers. Some of the women were holding their weeping faces in their hands. The patriarch made a small hand gesture. He might have been waving goodbye or simply stroking the air. The door of the passenger car slid shut. A jet of steam spewed out of the locomotive. A cloud of smoke unfurled above them, blocking out the sun. The train wheels began to turn. Marina rushed forward, but Levine’s long fingers caught ahold of her arm.
“No, please don’t, comrade. It’s no use.”
In the weeks that followed, Marina was haunted by the thought of the convoy disappearing behind a bank of snow.
The smoke from the engine funnel hung over the empty tracks for a good while, like a thick gloomy cloud in a bright sunny sky. The spotless snow was reflected in the huge half-moon window in the station pediment, blinding them. The platform cleared. The little group that had come to wait for the train disappeared into the station, their empty basins clanging like bells in the icy air. Without bothering to get back into line, the soldiers sauntered off, the silver mist of their breath curling between the barrels of their rifles. The politruk was already out of sight, and the captain was not far behind her.
Klitenit, the Committee’s vice-chairman, stepped away from Levine and moved to go back inside the station.
Marina barred his way.
“What’s going to become of them? What’s going to become of them in Khabarovsk?”
Metvei Levine answered for Klitenit, “They’ll be taken care of. It won’t be the first time.”
Marina ignored him and waited while Klitenit reached inside his coat for his cigarettes. It was a brand-new packet, as red as the Soviet flag. He took off one glove to pull away the strip, tearing the golden letters CCCR.
“Maybe they’ll send them back where they came from,” he mumbled, sticking a cigarette under his yellowing mustache. “Or perhaps they’ll park them somewhere until the end of the war.”
“In a camp? A zek camp?”
Once again Levine jumped in, saying that Comrade Gousseieva must be exhausted. You had to beware the winter sun in Birobidzhan; it masked the intensity of the cold. Why didn’t she go and have a cup of tea in the warm refreshment room inside the station?
Neither Marina nor Klitenit took any notice of him. Nadia stared at Marina, fascinated. She threw the rainbow blanket back over Marina’s shoulders. Marina gathered it close to her bosom. Klitenit was studying her face. He took a long draw on his cigarette. When he exhaled, the smoke clung to the hairs of his mustache.
“Do you really want to know the truth, comrade? The truth is that we have no idea what becomes of them. All we know for sure is that it would have been better for them if they had never set foot on that train.”
“Maybe they didn’t have a choice?”
“It’s possible, quite possible, but then we don’t always have a choice either.”
He walked away without another word. Nadia tugged at Marina’s arm.
“You can’t stay here. Your tears are freezing to your cheeks. They’ll tear your skin.”
Marina prodded at the cracked film of frozen tears with her fingertips. She hadn’t even realized she was crying. Nadia caught ahold of her wrist.
“Whatever you do, don’t touch! You’ll break the skin, and then you’ll end up with scabs all over your face.”
For a long moment, Marina felt woozy, as if she were drunk. She didn’t resist when Levine and young Nadia pushed her inside the station as if she were a ragdoll. After so many days spent battling the cold, Marina found the heat inside the station suffocating. She felt a longing for the shudder of the train and the stench of the car, the smell of hot metal, rust, and soot. As they made their way across the arrival hall, she hardly noticed that people were staring at her. A gigantic portrait of Stalin took up an entire wall. She was as bedazzled by the refreshment room with its round tables draped in white tablecloths as she had been by the snowy taiga.
At Nadia’s request, a waiter with Asian features brought a bowl of barely tepid water. The young woman dipped a handkerchief into the water and pressed it to Marina’s cheeks. The frozen tears melted. Marina groaned. She felt as though she had thousands of needles pricking her skin. There was another portrait of Stalin hanging above the bar, a photograph that had been touched up with soft colors. He looked young and tender, with a smile on his face, younger and more tender than he had been when Marina had found herself naked in his arms. And wherever you were in the refreshment room, his eyes seemed to be able to see right into the depths of your soul.
For a few seconds, Marina had the crazy feeling that he was really looking at her. She was nearly choked by a sob of panic that she had been stifling for hours, days, or perhaps even years. Nadia redoubled her efforts to soothe her, while Levine knelt at her feet. Everyone in the arrival hall was now watching them. Marina mumbled some words that, fortunately for her, were incomprehensible, or perhaps she didn’t say them out loud but only whispered them in her head to Joseph Vissarionovich. “You see, you see. I’m here, just as you wanted, I’m here!”
Young Nadia and Levine misunderstood. They quietly reassured her, telling her that she had nothing more to fear, that everything was going to be all right, that she was safe now.
“Nobody is going to make you leave Birobidzhan, I promise,” Levine assured her, warmly taking her hands in his.
Closing her eyes, she nodded, doing her best to block out Joseph Vissarionovich’s wild stare that seemed to burn into her breast. Nadia kissed her cheek, while Levine stood up, flashing her his most handsome smile.
“Nadia will take care of you, Marina Andreyeva. She’ll show you around and make sure you have everything you need. She’s fantastic, you’ll see, and you’re in luck; there’s a room free next door to hers in the main dacha. You can move in there in your own time, and I’ll meet you at the theater first thing tomorrow morning. Nadia will show you where it is.”
With unexpected formality, Levine seized her hand again and bent down as if he were going to kiss it. Heads turned to look at him as he made his way to the door.
Nadia announced, “He’s my cousin.”
When Marina didn’t respond, the young woman explained. “Metvei is my cousin. It’s thanks to him that I was able to come here. He immigrated to Birobidzhan just before the war. Before that, he was in charge of the Jewish theater in Lipetsk. Everyone says he’s a great director, but actually he’s a writer, almost a poet. He writes plays in Yiddish. He’s even translated Chekhov’s Three Sisters. There’s a poster describing it as fartaïtcht un farbesert, ‘an improved translation’ by Metvei Levine, you’ll see. … ”
The waiter set their glasses of tea down in front of them. Shivering, Marina cupped her frozen hands around hers. Nadia stopped talking to sip the steaming drink, staring at Marina, her huge black eyes burning with curiosity.
“He liked you,” she went on. “I could tell straightaway that he liked you. He’s so happy to have a new actress, particularly one from Moscow!”
She put on a childish face.
“He’s handsome, isn’t he? All the women in Birobidzhan think so. It has to be said that around here, a man like him … ”
She stopped short, blushing.
Marina smiled. “He said you were called Nadia, but … ”
“Nadia Sarah Leventhal. I’ll be nineteen soon. I want to be a primary
school teacher. I couldn’t believe my eyes back then, on the platform, when the politruk got you off the train. If Metvei hadn’t insisted, you would now be hurtling toward Khabarovsk with the others. I think that big fat Zotchenska is a bit frightened of him. That’s the politruk’s name by the way, Masha Zotchenska. Or maybe she’s in love with him like all the others. Who knows … ?”
Nadia had a soft but cruel laugh, full of youthful energy. How long had it been since Marina had come across such joy, such an appetite for life?
Once Marina had warmed up, Nadia led her through the streets of Birobidzhan.
“Come on. We have to get you all settled in before nightfall. It gets dark very early here, and there isn’t much light in the rooms. We have to keep an eye on the time.”
In that January of 1943, Birobidzhan was a frozen little town buried in the snow. The low afternoon sun was playing tricks with the shadows in the handful of long narrow streets. There weren’t many people about. Figures hurried down the very broad avenue opposite the station, bent under the weight of their rucksacks. A group of children on an errand appeared from around a street corner. A sleigh came out of nowhere, its little bells tinkling noisily. An old man leading a mule with a frost-spangled head grunted inaudibly in response to Nadia’s greeting.
Strangely enough, there seemed to be more trees than houses behind the banks of snow, as if the town had sprung up out of the forest. All the buildings were wooden, but many of them were still unfinished. Nadia pointed at a large flat expanse of land that stopped abruptly on the edge of a silver birch forest.
“That’s our river, the Bira. But don’t be fooled, it’s not the Amur!” she chortled under her fur hood. “The Amur is farther down, much farther! I’ll take you there tomorrow. All the young people in Birobidzhan meet there to go skating. Come on. It’s this way now.”