The Birobidzhan Affair: A Novel

by Marek Halter

That was it. Cohn had baited his line.

  Marina frowned and opened her mouth to speak but didn’t answer. Cohn pressed home his advantage, his voice as suave as if he were flirting with a sixty-year-old.

  “Do you know Dorothy Parker?”

  “Yes, I … ”

  “We found a book on your bookshelf with the title The Portable Dorothy Parker. On the flyleaf, there’s an autograph reading ‘To my dearest, most tender Maria, you can count on my steadfast loyalty and on all the other little things which will make us invincible women.’ The autograph is dated September twentieth, 1947. I assume it’s addressed to you and that the ‘Maria’ it refers to is you, since you’ve been going by the name of Maria Apron. Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know Dorothy Parker well, Miss Gousseiev?”

  “I met her five years ago when I first arrived in Hollywood. She helped me. As a matter of fact, she was the one who advised me to leave Hollywood and come to New York.”

  “Are you aware that she’s a communist?”

  “No, and I don’t think she is. She never said anything to me to lead me to believe she was, at any rate.”

  “You aren’t aware that the FBI questioned Mrs. Parker about her political activities two weeks ago and that she admitted to being a communist?”

  “That is correct, yes.”

  “Yet it was in the papers.”

  “I don’t read newspapers. I don’t trust them.”

  “You didn’t discuss politics with Mrs. Parker in Hollywood?”

  “No, I knew what she had done before the war, that she had founded the Anti-Nazi League to help people fleeing from Nazi Germany.”

  “And what about her recent activities? You must know, since you were close, mustn’t you?”

  “We weren’t close. She helped me. … She’s fond of me. … ”

  “Do you know that she’s one of the leaders of the civil rights movement?”

  “She explained what the movement was about, equal rights for blacks and whites.”

  “What do you think of that?”

  “It seems fair enough to me. I told Dottie that people already have equal rights in the Soviet Union. Everyone has the same rights over there, even if they stop with the right to disappear into a Gulag camp.”

  “What did Mrs. Parker say to that?”

  “She laughed.”

  “Does she know your real name?”

  “My Russian name? No.”

  “You introduced yourself to her as Maria Magdalena Apron?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “You know why.”

  “Because otherwise you would have had to tell her about the death of Agent Apron?”

  “That and everything else.”

  “That you weren’t Jewish?”

  “I went to see her to ask her to help me find work. It wasn’t easy. There were hundreds of actors looking for parts in Hollywood. Dottie Parker is very well connected there. She writes for the big studios.”

  “Did she believe you were Jewish?”

  “Yes, we talked about Birobidzhan. She’d been impressed by a talk she’d heard given by Solomon Mikhoels while he was here on tour in 1943. She wanted to help the Jews of Birobidzhan. It was important to her.”

  “She helped the Jews more than anyone else, didn’t she?”

  “No, that’s not true.”

  “You know that Parker isn’t her real name, that she’s actually called Dorothy Rothschild. … ”

  “Parker is her real name. It’s her married name. She never cared for her father. She doesn’t want to use his name, she told me. It’s common knowledge. There’s no mystery there.”

  “Despite what you said just before, you’re a close friend of Mrs. Parker, a very good friend even.”

  “Dottie is the kindest person I’ve come across in this country. She helped me find work in Hollywood. She explained how cinema works, and also why I’m not cut out for it. I have her to thank for introducing me to some theatre people.”

  “You’ve forgotten to mention that she’s also a generous soul. When you arrived in New York, Miss Gousseiev, you stayed at the Volney Residential Hotel, twenty-three East Seventy-Fourth Street, Upper East Side for three and a half months. That’s a chic residence between Fifth Avenue and Madison. The rate is two hundred and seventy-five dollars a month. Your friend Dorothy Parker paid the bill.”

  Cohn had now cast his line and sunk it deep. Nixon let out a high-pitched chuckle. McCarthy was smiling all over his face. For the first time since her first cross-examination, Marina’s cheeks flushed crimson.

  “How come Mrs. Parker was so generous to you?”

  “You’d have to ask her.”

  “Answer the question, miss,” growled Wood.

  “Dottie doesn’t care about money. She doesn’t like being rich.”

  “Yet you still don’t consider her a friend?” Wood persisted.

  “As I’ve already said, I’m not used to having friends.”

  “It’s also possible that Mrs. Parker helped you because you were part of the same network, the same communist organization, isn’t it?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Mrs. Parker has admitted to being a communist.”

  “Well, I’m not! How could I be after what they did to Michael?”

  “So why didn’t you tell Mrs. Parker about it? Why didn’t you try and make her change her mind?”

  “Why would I have?”

  “Didn’t it bother you that your accommodation at the Volney was being paid for by a communist?”

  “I left the place for that reason, to save Dottie paying my rent.”

  “Not because you knew she was a communist?”

  “No! No!”

  “So why, then?”

  “I felt uncomfortable living in such a rich neighborhood and uncomfortable about her paying, that’s all.”

  “Because you were lying to her? Because you were passing yourself off as a Jew? Because you’d lied to everyone in Birobidzhan?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Or was it because you wanted to live somewhere less conspicuous where you could get on with your work as a spy unnoticed?”

  “You’re talking nonsense!”

  “Did Mrs. Parker ever mention a man named Otto Katz to you?”

  “No.”

  “Does the name mean nothing to you?”

  “I heard it in Hollywood. I believe he was married to the actress Marlene Dietrich at one time.”

  “You weren’t aware that the FBI was looking for him, or that your friend Mrs. Parker knew him well?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know a man called Harry Gold?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Why should I know him?”

  “Have you ever met two men going by the names of Morton Sobell and David Greenglass?”

  “No, I don’t know who they are.”

  “What about a man called Joel Barr?”

  “No.”

  “Alfred Sarant?”

  “No.”

  “William Perl?”

  “I’ve never heard any of those names.”

  “You’ve never heard the name Sobell, Morton Sobell?”

  “I’ve just told you.”

  “Yet, like you, Mr. Sobell lives at thirty-five Hester Street, Lower East Side, in the apartment above yours, to be precise, Miss Gousseiev.”

  Shirley and her colleague stopped typing. The silence quivered like a blade. McCarthy and Nixon showed their teeth, grinning fiendishly. Mundt’s forehead was as furrowed as a ploughed field.

  As for me, I snapped my pencil when I heard Cohn reel off most of the names that T. C. had mentioned the previous evening.

  Cohn put his file down on his table and glanced over at Wood.

  “Morton Sobell is wanted by the FBI, Mr. Chairman. He left his apartment the day before yesterday, on June 22. We’re assuming he’s fled to Mexico. My office, th
at is Attorney General Saypol’s office, has evidence that Sobell is part of a Soviet spy ring with a number of operatives in New York.”

  “I don’t know him!” Marina cried. “I don’t know my neighbors. … I’m not interested in getting to know them. I’m not used to … Just because you find one spy living in an apartment building, it doesn’t mean that all the other residents are spies!”

  She was talking fast, too fast. Her accent had come back, distorting her words. For the first time in a long while, she wasn’t in control of her voice. The old look of fear had returned to her face.

  Cohn agreed.

  “Of course, you’re right.”

  You could tell just how pleased he was from his voice. He had gotten what he wanted in ten minutes flat, proof that you couldn’t believe a word Marina Andreyeva Gousseiev said, and that she would probably go on lying if given the chance.

  HUAC’s wheels of suspicion turned on the principle that there was no smoke without fire, ever. Marina Andreyeva Gousseiev had entered the United States under a false name linking her with the death of an OSS agent. She had passed herself off as a Jew, had had her accommodation paid for by a ‘real Jewish communist,’ and happened to live in the same apartment building as a spy who was known to the FBI.

  And God only knew what Cohn and Saypol’s office still had up their sleeves. God only knew what they would ‘find’ in the books and scripts seized during the search. Might there be microfilms hidden inside letters, or coded messages?

  Sam had been dead right. Things were heating up.

  My shoulders were so tense they felt as if they were on fire. Several cigarettes were lit. Cohn leaned back in his armchair.

  “I’ve finished for the moment, sir.”

  Wood hesitated, not quite sure where to pick up the cross-examination. He looked for a signal from Nixon, who nodded his head. They must have rehearsed Cohn’s little show before the hearing. McCarthy stepped in.

  “I’d like to come back to Agent Apron, Miss Goussov. What did he tell you about his mission?”

  Marina stared at him as if she hadn’t understood the question. Her face was still pinched with fear. The blue of her eyes clouded over. It was strange, as if the color of her irises was suddenly diluted, then the cloud lifted and left them a deeper blue and harder still. Her right hand went to her chest, her trembling fingers feeling inside the neckline of her dress as if for a missing necklace, or perhaps someone else’s fingers, the trace of a caress.

  A kind of smile returned to her lips as she moistened them. She gently shook her head. Her voice returned to normal, except that it sounded lower and farther away when she spoke into the microphone.

  “Nothing,” she whispered. “At first he told me nothing. He just wanted to love me.”

  Birobidzhan

  February–May 1943

  WINTER HELD BIROBIDZHAN in its icy thrall until the last days of April. For as long as she could remember, Marina had been used to cold snaps, but the long Siberian winter was a whole new phenomenon for her. The cold was no harsher or more biting than in Moscow. It wasn’t as if they were in Arkhangelsk or the hellish Kolyma. Yet it hung over everything, as if it had singled out that part of the world from the rest of the planet.

  The immense taiga had lost all its landmarks. The infinite mass of snow blotted out all shapes, making the vast forests that cloaked the hills disappear. Valleys and crests were reduced to the monotonous rhythm of a motionless swell. Wave upon wave reached as far as the eye could see, like a picture with no beginning and no end. The interminable plains and marshes became white voids that no living creature could enter. The meandering rivers were locked under such a thick layer of ice that military convoys would rather drive along them to the Manchurian border than risk losing their way in search of roads and tracks that had vanished.

  There was no life outside Birobidzhan and the hamlets dotted around the region. Around the izbas and scattered barns, the blackened tips of half-submerged fences stuck up out of the snow, marking the boundaries of invisible gardens. Here and there, the trail left by a sledge or a pair of skis would appear, or the furtive tracks of hares and lynxes forever on the prowl for the miracle of food. But the air and sky were just another gulf swallowing up all sounds of life. The barking of dogs, the swish of skis, the crunch of sledges, the clip-clop of mules and horses, and even the purr of the trucks and the few vans that could still get through, were all muffled like a distant dream. Anyone might have thought that the sound waves had fallen into the grip of the frost too.

  The light would vary between the purest and most dazzling crystalline rays, and shadows so dense that they would block out the beam of even the most powerful lamp. For days, there wouldn’t be a cloud in the sky, or only the faintest streaks way up high. The nights would be utterly glacial, lit by steely stars. Smoke from the stoves would rise from the spindly chimneystacks, as straight as threads hung from the unadulterated blue. Then the wind would pick up. The air would be barbed with a biting icy powder that would grate away at everything, faces and log walls alike.

  At other times, a Foehn wind would unexpectedly blow in from China. An overwhelming lethargy would deaden sound and movement. A short-lived thaw would send huge clouds ballooning up over the Amur River. Thick soot-colored clouds heavy with snow would snuff out the daylight. It would snow and snow for three, five, or ten days running. A little more of the world would disappear. The claws of the fences would be blanked out. People would have to get their shovels out again to mark the paths and break out of the prison of snow.

  Day by day, Marina came to know the way of life there, developing a whole new repertoire of movements and habits. Nadia and the women at the communal dacha taught her how to dress for indoors and out, as well as when to go out and when it was best not to brave the cold. She learned not to put too much wool around her mouth; it would only get damp when she breathed out and tear the skin off her lips when it froze. They showed her how to line her felt boots with liners warmed by the stove, how to find the right snow to boil for water and always to keep her headscarf on, even inside, because the cold, they assured her, always attacked your head first.

  She got used to the strong smells of rooms that were almost never aired, the sweet balmy scent of the cellars where they would go to dig up the carrots, beetroots, and turnips tucked up in beds of dry sand in the autumn, and where cabbages were strung from the beams of the low ceilings. Small barrels of sauerkraut and cucumber gave off an acrid brinish odor in the cold store at the back of the kitchens, where fillets of fish caught in the Bira, long strips of salted meat, and the odd hare found in a garden snare were left to dry out.

  The women of the izba had greeted her with amused curiosity. Marina had never come across names like theirs. They were called Bielke Pevzner, Lipa Gaister, Boussia Pinson, Inna Litvakovna, and Guita Iberman. Grandma Lipa was the oldest, though she claimed not to remember her exact date of birth. Guita was only two years older than Nadia. The girl had a masculine build and a broad face that lent itself to laughter and happiness, but she was pining for true love. The others were tough, robust women, their bodies fashioned by years of hardship and determination, their faces so marked by wrinkles and ordeals that it was impossible to guess their ages.

  They had long since grown accustomed to life in the commune, confining their privacy to little ways, knowing how to adapt to the changing moods of this or that person, sharing the habits, rituals, fits of rage, and signs of affection that bound them together into one true family. Each of them proved as exuberant in their happiness as in their sorrows. Grandma Lipa watched over Nadia and Guita as if they were her own daughters. The story of how they came to be there was a long one. They had been the sole survivors of the upheaval of the time and were without their husbands, brothers, sons, or daughters.

  Marina learned from Nadia that Inna was at her wits’ end waiting for letters from her husband, Itzik. She was thirty-five, although she looked ten years older. Itzik was five years younger than she wa
s, and to Inna’s utter despair, he had signed up for the Red Army in the early days of the war, along with all the other young men in Birobidzhan. For the first few months, he had written to Inna every week. He had been posted to one of Budionny’s regiments out fighting in the foothills of the Caucasus, defending the oil wells in the Caspian Sea. Inna hadn’t had a letter since the previous autumn and was out of her mind with worry. Every week she went and asked the Committee to transfer Itzik to Birobidzhan to join the troops patroling the Manchurian border. Needless to say, it didn’t happen. The Committee elders and Zotchenska had threatened to have her locked up, but Inna couldn’t help herself. Every week, after waiting in vain for a letter, she would go back to them with the same request.

  What Inna feared so much had already happened to Boussia. At the very beginning of the siege of Stalingrad, in the space of one month, her husband and two sons had been killed. Boussia had wanted to die. At the time, she had been working in the big bakery on October Street. They had stopped her from throwing herself into the oven. She had already burned off all her hair. After that, the women from the dacha had taken turns watching her night and day. Boussia had resisted, calling them names, and had even tried to end it all by setting the house on fire. After a while, her hair had grown back, frizzier than before and as white as snow, and then one day she had gone back to her old job at the bakery and went on with her life.

  Bielke’s story was not unlike that of millions of Soviet citizens. Bielke had left Berdychiv in the Ukraine with her husband, Moshe Pevzner, when the Jewish Oblast of Birobidzhan was in its infancy. Moshe had been a primary school teacher in Berdychiv. On arriving in Birobidzhan, he had helped to set up a Jewish school. Very soon, he had found himself taking on tasks for the Executive Committee of the Oblast and was later elected their representative. Then the great purges of 1936 and 1938 had swept the country. Birobidzhan had not escaped unscathed, quite the reverse in fact. Moshe had been arrested along with all the other members of the Committee. They had been condemned as “enemies of the people.” A number of them had been shot. Moshe had gone off to face a bleak life of starvation in the Gulag. Bielke had risked everything to find out which camp he’d been sent to, but to no avail. Nobody knew. That had been six years ago now, but Bielke had always refused to believe that he was dead, and she wouldn’t leave Birobidzhan. If her Moshe were to come back to her someday, he’d find her there. Fearing for her children, however, she’d sent them back to Berdychiv to stay with her family. It had been a terrible decision. Now that the Nazis were in the Ukraine, what had become of the Jews of Berdychiv?