by Marek Halter
When they fell silent, it was as if a bunch of lunatics had suddenly stopped beating their drums.
Marina was livid. Her eyes, which had been lifeless only a moment earlier, gleamed with hatred. Nobody could have foreseen her reaction. She leaped up before the guards had time to react. There wasn’t much on the table in front of her, just a few sheets of paper, some pencils, a glass, and the not quite empty water jug. She chose the jug. Grabbing it, she hurled it at Nixon’s head. Quick on his reflexes, Nixon managed to duck out of the way just in time. The jug bounced off his shoulder and smashed against the wall.
The guards were on Marina in a flash. She struggled and yelled insults, first in English, then in Russian. It was the first time she had spoken Russian in the auditorium. The guards pinned her to the table, nearly choking her. I heard the strap of her dress snap. She whimpered with pain when they handcuffed her, and she stopped shouting. Her chignon freed itself as they hauled her to her feet. We could no longer see her face.
Nixon and McCarthy jumped up and Cohn leaped onto the platform to join them. Nixon rubbed his shoulder, wincing. He was as white as a sheet. With the stubble that had accumulated over the course of the day, he looked like a gangster out of a John Huston film.
Wood ordered the guards to take Marina away. I realized that I too had shot out of my seat, and Shirley and her colleague had stood up behind their table. Only Mundt remained rooted to his chair. McCarthy and Nixon started laughing. Nixon couldn’t have looked more proud if he’d just dodged the bullets of Bugsy Siegel’s mob.
Wood picked up his gavel and rapped on the table to announce that the hearing was to be adjourned until further notice. He offered to call a doctor for Nixon, but Nixon said that there was no need. He was tough, he’d beaten a woman in single combat. There was more laughter, then they started to deliberate in hushed tones.
I could guess the gist of their whispered conversation. Marina Andreyeva Gousseiev had just let herself in for a lynching. She had no idea how they would turn the incident to their advantage by leaking the story to the papers. Suddenly, I felt sick.
I went over to Shirley, but she stepped away from me as if I had the plague. That really rattled me.
“Hey! Shirley! What’s going on?”
She didn’t even turn her head. I had half a mind to insist, but her colleague shot me a Capone-style look.
Shit! What had I done? As if watching the idiotic Russian woman sign her own death warrant before the Committee hadn’t been bad enough!
The room had descended into madness, so I decided to get out of there and go smoke a cigarette outside in the large foyer to clear my head.
It wasn’t the best idea I’d ever had. The guards on duty had barely closed the door to the auditorium behind me before I found myself surrounded by half a dozen colleagues.
“Al! What happened in there? We heard shouting. … ”
“What’s the Russian doing?”
“Have they nailed her? Has she confessed?”
I let them prattle on while I lit my cigarette. What were they doing there all of a sudden, taking such an interest in Marina Andreyeva Gousseiev’s fate when I hadn’t seen them in two days? I put the question to them.
“Hey, Al! Haven’t you been reading the papers since you got to be the Committee’s blue-eyed boy?”
“Make no mistake, Tom! Al only gets high on his own paper’s lies. … ”
It was almost true. For the past two or three days, I hadn’t so much as glanced over my colleagues’ gossip, but I should have. They thrust the latest front pages of the New York Morning Journal, the Washington Herald, and the Daily Mirror under my nose. The rags owned by the Hearst press had been peddling McCarthy’s lies for months. Every one of them featured a photo of Marina Andreyeva Gousseiev behind the bars of her cell in her prison uniform. The headlines were eloquent:
FBI Accuses Russian Spy of Killing CIA Agent
Is Russian Spy Head of Communist Network?
Russian Spy Lived in Hollywood for Five Years
Did Russian Spy Steal Secrets to Atomic Bomb?
I skimmed the articles. They gave her real name, Marina Andreyeva Gousseiev, more or less correctly spelt, made vague allusions to Birobidzhan, reeled off a cartload of hypotheses and half-lies about a Jewish spy network, and were full of promises of future revelations. Marina was portrayed as Stalin’s mistress and the likely murderer of his wife, a high-ranking NKVD agent, a diabolic genius, and so on. The FBI was already hot on the heels of all the people she’d been in contact with in Hollywood.
I’d been had. The New York Post’s exclusivity was a thing of the past, and now that the false rumors had started, writing anything to quash them would be like trying to stop a tsunami with a bucket and spade. I could already imagine what kind of mood Sam and Wechsler would be in up in New York.
I doubted that Wood was responsible. Leaks and lethal rumors were more McCarthy’s speciality, and the Hearst press would be giving him all the help he needed with his dirty tricks. Each and every one of the articles was along the same lines. They talked of nothing but the “revelations” of Harry Gold and Greenglass, “the mind-boggling communist network of Jewish spies” and, to crown it all, page two showed photos of the “Hollywood Ten” locked up the previous day in Ashland Federal Prison in Kentucky.
There was no point reading that trash or discussing it either. My colleagues, if I can call them that, waited tauntingly for my response. I did my best to wriggle out of it. No, the Russian hadn’t confessed to anything. She had sworn she wasn’t a spy. So far nothing she had said linked her with the atomic bomb and, in my opinion, they were being overhasty, but such was life. It was their choice, wasn’t it?
I was boring enough to see them off. A few more feeble jokes came my way, then Tom Krawitz, an old-timer from the Washington Herald, handed me the latest issue of Red Channels.
“Happy reading, Al. You should read the list of names in there carefully. Maybe you’ll find your own name on it, who knows?”
He sneered, treating me to a friendly slap on the back. I must have gone red with fear and, to this day, I still hate myself for that.
Red Channels was an invention of the American Business Consultant, a mouthpiece for the Chinese lobby and ex-FBI agents obsessed with the communist witch-hunt. They backed McCarthy to the hilt and had a passion for denunciation. In that particular issue, dated the previous day—June 23, 1950—they had come up with the names of no less than a hundred and fifty-one “reds.” Over the next few hours, that many American families were going to have their lives wrecked, lose their jobs, and their friends. I found Hellman, Parker, Dashiell Hammett, Garfield, Nick Ray, Losey, Dassin, and a good third of Hollywood on that list. The rest of them worked in television, radio, or theatre, or for the papers. Red Channels was a bit behind on the latest news all the same. It still referred to Marina as Maria Apron.
But my name wasn’t on the list.
That was something at least.
Nevertheless, Sam’s warning three hours earlier suddenly shot through my mind. Things were heating up. Yes, God damn it, things were heating up!
“Al? Al Koenigsman?”
I wheeled around, as if I were expecting to find myself face-to-face with a monster, but it was only Shirley’s fellow stenotypist, a small woman in her fifties with a crop of brown curls that must have taken a vast army of curlers to regiment every evening.
She acted embarrassed, casting a brief glance at the guards posted at the door before opening her hand to show me a note folded in her palm.
“It’s from Shirley.”
I snatched the slip of paper as fast as I could, trying not to look too uptight.
“Thanks for the message.”
“Don’t mention it. … Chairman Wood has just announced that the hearing is going to resume in five minutes if you’re interested.”
“Thanks again.”
She turned on her heels, setting her curls bouncing.
I moved away to re
ad Shirley’s note.
Forget dinner this evening. Go home and don’t go out. Watch what you say on the telephone. Don’t try and speak to me. We can’t have anything more to do with each other.
Don’t keep this note on you.
PS: Your Russian is totally nuts!
I wished I could have laughed at Shirley’s paranoia, but instead I felt my pulse quicken. Shirley must have heard something. Perhaps the FBI had given her a grilling, asked her questions about me and the fake visitor permit.
I glanced around the lobby from behind Red Channels magazine, pretending to read the list. There were only two colleagues left talking in a corner, not a guard in sight, except for the two manning the door, not a single trilby lurking behind a Daily Mirror. There was no need. They knew where to find me. There was nothing to stop them from watching my car and lying in wait.
I went over to one of the big bronze ashtrays, stubbed out my cigarette, and immediately lit another. Striking a match, I set fire to Shirley’s note, trying not to look suspicious, and then buried the ashes in the sand.
For a couple of seconds, I was torn between going back into the auditorium and slipping away as fast as possible. I would have given anything to hear T. C. Lheen’s advice just then, but that was out of sheer panic.
I paced up and down to calm my nerves before showing the guards my pass and going back into the auditorium.
It was just as well I did. I made my entrance just as the door at the far end opened. The guards were jostling Marina along in front of them. She hadn’t redone her chignon. With both hands in handcuffs, she was holding on to the broken strap of her dress under the white caraco jacket over her shoulders.
I quickly slipped back into my place, making a point of ignoring the stenotypists’ table. Wood’s eyes followed me. He looked as happy as if he’d found a rat in the auditorium.
Cohn attacked while the guards held Marina upright behind the witness table.
“Miss Gousseiev, I am informing you that Congressman Nixon’s lawyer will be filing suit with the attorney general in the next few hours for battery and attempted murder before witnesses. Chairman Wood will also be filing suit for contempt of the Committee. The resulting charges will be added to the charges already upheld, together with any arising from the FBI’s investigations into your espionage activities.”
Cohn paused for a few seconds. It was common practice for chief investigators to give the accused some time to decode their jargon.
McCarthy, Nixon, Mundt, and Wood looked at Marina with the same contemptuous air of satisfaction. She took no notice of them, staring down at the table in front of her, her head bowed. It was impossible to know what she was thinking. Her hair hung loose, masking part of her face, but what could be seen of her features was perfectly calm. There was no trace of her fury. The slightly swollen rings under her eyes lent her face a kind of tenderness and refinement that belied the hardness of her mouth.
Once again, I couldn’t help but find her incredibly beautiful, and I was certainly not the only one in the room. Not that her beauty gave her any advantage over that band of male chauvinist pigs, consumed by their fear of losing face in front of a woman.
Wood struck his gavel.
“You may be seated. The Committee has some more questions for you.”
She didn’t budge, didn’t react at all.
Cohn said, “Miss Gousseiev?” but still to no effect.
Wood signaled to the guards. One of them pulled up a chair and tried to force Marina to sit down. Wrenching her shoulder free with a jerk, she lifted her face and sneered at McCarthy and Nixon. Once again she reminded me of a hunted animal facing the most savage hounds in the pack as they go in for the kill, but she didn’t show her teeth, just contempt.
“Go ahead, ask your questions. I won’t be giving you any more answers. It’s over. I’m not going to say another word.”
“Miss Goussov … ”
“I see no point in talking to you. You don’t listen. I’m Michael Apron’s wife. We got married, but you don’t want to believe me. You only want to hear what it suits you to hear.”
“You’re what? His wife?”
Wood’s jaw dropped.
McCarthy barked, “Apron married you? What the devil is this latest lie?”
I noted that he looked more enraged than surprised.
She just smiled.
Cohn persisted, “Are you refusing to answer the question?”
“You’re making up my story as you go along. You don’t need me for that.”
And those were the last words she spoke before the Committee.
For a good quarter of an hour, they did their damnedest to make her talk. Did she have any proof that the marriage had taken place? Where had the ceremony been held, when, why? Her refusal to answer the Committee’s questions was yet another outrage against its members. What did she hope to achieve by it? Did she think it would get her off the hook? Was she not ashamed of herself for sullying the memory of a dead man, a soldier of the Land of the Free, with her lies?
Their irritation was comic. She didn’t give in. Her face remained calm, her lips sealed, her mouth hard, but I saw all the pleasure of revenge gleaming in the dense blue of her irises. She had thrown them a bone and they had gone after it, only to find themselves biting at thin air.
Eventually, Nixon let out a frustrated groan. I didn’t take my eyes off McCarthy. He still seemed preoccupied, as if his anger were a sham. At a word from McCarthy, Wood rapped his gavel and declared the hearing adjourned. He would let us know when it was to resume in due course.
We watched Marina disappear behind the door, taking her mystery with her. It had been a superb performance, one of the finest theatrical exits I have ever had the good fortune to see.
Nevertheless, I kept my eyes pinned on McCarthy. I could have sworn that he didn’t think the whole marriage story was intended to be a scoop, and my intuition was right, even if it was a few more days before T. C. was able to confirm that for me. Marina wasn’t lying. She was indeed Michael Apron’s wife.
Birobidzhan
May-October 1943
BIROBIDZHAN’S ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATIONS were fast approaching. May 7 was less than three weeks away. Toward the end of the day, Metvei Levine slipped quietly into the auditorium. He sat in one of the chairs at the back, out of the glow of the lamp above the door illuminating Stalin’s portrait.
Onstage, the Koplevna sisters, Anna Bikerman, old Yaroslav, and Marina were rehearsing the play they were planning to perform for the festival. It was an adaptation of Sholem Aleichem’s great classic Tevye the Dairyman, Tevye der Milkhiker in Yiddish. Levine had written the adaptation himself. Tailoring the original parts to the diminished troupe was painstaking work. Yaroslav was to play Tevye, Vera Koplevna his wife. The young women in the original had mutated into comic aunts played by Guita Koplevna and Anna. Marina was to be the dairyman’s only daughter, Tzeitel, while Levine was to play her two admirers as they appeared, Perchik the student and Fyedka the peasant.
Tevye the Dairyman was a tart melancholy work that drew attention to the fragility of Jewish traditions. Time was marching on and young Jews, receptive to the dreams of new worlds, were turning away from their parents’ principles and squandering their values on illusions about the future. Such was the uncertain path trodden by the Jews. All the strengths they had built up were under attack not only from external forces, but sometimes from the very heart of the community.
The subject matter may turn out to be delicate, particularly at a time when Stalin himself was showing much less enthusiasm for making Birobidzhan a bastion of Jewish culture.
Being cautious, Levine hadn’t included Sholem Aleichem’s most scathing lines in his adaptation. His changes steered the play toward slapstick comedy and a fatalistic nostalgia calculated to please Birobidzhan’s Executive Committee and meet with the party’s approval. Yaroslav had objected to the changes, but Levine had counted on him being only too happy to play the part of Tevy
e, even altered as it was, and he had been right.
From the shadows of the auditorium, Levine watched Marina perform. Hearing her recite the lines he had written for her brought a smile to his face. She had made remarkable progress in record time. Her Yiddish pronunciation was improving with every rehearsal. She had to make herself slow down but matched this ritardando with her whole body, lending her a curious grace that, in her exchanges with the other actors, marked her as different—a very modern character. Marina purified the tradition of Yiddish theatre by the very effort she put into discovering its power anew.
Every time he saw her onstage or played opposite her, Levine knew that together they could achieve great things. He had never had an actress of her caliber to help realize his creative ambitions. What a shame his adaptation of Tevye the Dairyman couldn’t be shown in Moscow, where he would have had an audience capable of appreciating the full value of his work!
He waited until the end of Yaroslav and Marina’s scene, with the Koplevna sisters and Anna Bikerman in the background. As soon as silence fell, he was on his feet, applauding loudly. They all turned toward the auditorium, blinded by the spotlights. Levine stepped into the center aisle where they could see him.
His hand shielding his eyes, Yaroslav grumbled, “Is that you, Metvei? It’s about time, Comrade Director. We haven’t seen hide nor hair of you in four days. You’ll have to have another look at the three main scenes at the end. You’ve given me some lines that don’t work … ”
“Khabarovsk,” Levine shot back in reply, “I was summoned to the party’s regional Secretariat.”
Watching Levine come up the steps at the side of the stage, Yaroslav frowned.
Vera Koplevna asked, “So what’s the bad news?”
“Don’t be so negative, Vera. Things change, and so do we.”
“Tevye wouldn’t like it,” muttered Yaroslav. “Go on, Metvei, tell it to us straight. They’re going to stop us from showing the play, is that it?”