The Birobidzhan Affair: A Novel

by Marek Halter

  At nighttime, the sounds of the forest seemed more intense and mysterious than during the day. When Apron put out the lamp, it was as if an invisible world had been unleashed around them. Flesh against flesh, they lay there with their eyes open.

  After a long pause, Marina asked anxiously, “So nobody knows we’re here?”

  “Nobody.”

  “They’re expecting us in Pompeyevka.”

  “They’re expecting us, but nobody told them when we’d be arriving.”

  “Zotchenska or somebody else on the Committee might call them.”

  “Not at the kolkhoz. The only telephone is at the garrison, and that’s only used in emergencies. The garrison is seven verst away from the kolkhoz and we aren’t expected there for another four days yet.”

  Apron had lived in Stalin’s Birobidzhan for long enough by now to know that these questions had to be asked. He added, “We’re not in any danger. Not even Comrade Joseph Vissarionovich could find us. We’ll spend another night here on our way back, and every time we go on one of our tours, we’ll come here first. That way we’ll have at least a day and a night all to ourselves.”

  “You’ve thought of everything.”

  “Yes, I’m beginning to understand how to get by.”

  There was as much pride as amusement in Apron’s voice.

  Maybe it was at that moment that Marina remembered Yaroslav’s warning. “Never forget rule number one of our valiant nation. Don’t hide anything, especially not what you want to hide!”

  Perhaps, she thought, Apron was still too American to realize that in the USSR nothing was ever totally without its dangers?

  Or did she think that Michael could work miracles?

  Or was the happiness of those hours so very precious, so very intoxicating that she couldn’t bear to spoil it with even the faintest glimmer of fear?

  It was only after more fondling, more delighting in each other’s flesh, that she marveled, “So how come you can speak Russian and Yiddish perfectly well all of a sudden?”

  Apron laughed.

  “Only with you.”

  He explained that he had learned Russian and Yiddish as a child. While they were alive, his parents had spoken their two mother tongues at home.

  “They spoke to me in Russian, ‘For my education,’ as my father said, but spoke Yiddish between themselves. My mother never really learned English, but in Brooklyn and the Lower East Side that didn’t matter.”

  “So why do you pretend you don’t speak very good Russian or Yiddish?”

  “When I disembarked at Vladivostok with the medical supplies for Birobidzhan, I was with a group of emigrants. We were interrogated for two days. They dealt with me last because of the supplies. That was a stroke of luck. I noticed that anyone who spoke good Russian was being turned back. The immigration officials were afraid they might be spies. The staff that questioned me all spoke English, albeit rather badly, so I pretended. I did the same in Birobidzhan when I was interrogated again by Zotchenska and the army. They called in an interpreter from Khabarovsk. He did a pretty bad job of translating, and I kept coming out with Russian words that nobody could make heads or tails of, as if I had gotten them out of a dictionary. You should have seen Zotchenska’s face. … ”

  Marina asked what Brooklyn and the Lower East Side were like. Apron told her his life story. He talked about his childhood, his parents, how he’d won a scholarship to study medicine, and so on. He promised to teach her English. They would start the very next day. He wanted her to be able to hold a conversation by autumn.

  More promises and more lovemaking ensued. Their happiness went on into the daylight hours, and they didn’t leave the izba until early afternoon.

  The first tour was an immediate success. They stopped off in out-of-the-way hamlets where, side-by-side, a handful of Jewish immigrants and goys had been battling against the taiga for years in an attempt to eke a few cabbages and potatoes out of the practically barren earth and to graze a few cows, sometimes goats, on the land.

  Their faces and bodies were worn, but their desire to live was staunch and unswerving. They all knew Apron. No sooner had the ZIS stopped did the children jump into his arms crying, “Doctor, doctor!” Then the ritual greetings would begin. The men wouldn’t rest until he’d examined their cattle. The women would huddle around their stoves. They would keep Marina at arm’s length at first. She still had too much of the town about her, exuding an air of inaccessible refinement. Then her stories would stir up emotion, her mime would draw laughter. The children would beg for more. The old women would pat her arm, thank her with bewildered eyes, awash with a pure, long-forgotten joy that would smooth out their wrinkles and wipe away all traces of fatigue for a few hours.

  Marina was a dream come true for the soldiers dying of boredom in the garrisons opposite the small Japanese forts on the Manchurian border. The officers would fight for the privilege of sitting next to her at meals where alcohol kindled passions. The singing would go on until morning. She had to ward off increasingly bold advances. That earned her a reputation for being unattainable, which only made her all the more desirable. With every visit, their eagerness to see her grew. Some of the garrisons built stages just for her show. The musicians among the soldiers volunteered to accompany her singing her renditions of the old ballads. Their enthusiasm rubbed off on her. She took to learning the ones she didn’t know and surprising them with a brand-new show each time she returned.

  Apron wasn’t allowed to set foot inside the military compounds, so he would disappear along the river in the ZIS, “scouting out photo opportunities,” he said.

  When Apron came to pick her up in the truck after the officers’ endless farewells, he would take sandy tracks for quite some distance so as to be out of sight of the forts commanding views for miles around. Then he would stop the ZIS and happiness would begin again.

  This arrangement lasted for the whole summer. The tours became such a success that the Committee asked Marina to perform the same shows at the theater in Birobidzhan in the weeks she spent there. Apron and she would take care to keep away from each other when they were in town. Then, whenever they went away, they would escape to their izba tucked away in the woods as soon as they had left Birobidzhan.

  “We’ve invented the eternal honeymoon,” said Apron.

  At the end of September, Levine was still detained in Moscow. The Birobidjanskaya Zvezda reported that he had been appointed representative for the Oblast of Birobidzhan at the USSR’s Congress of the Peoples of the East. However, nobody on the Committee or at the theater was able to find out when he was due back.

  Two weeks later, at the beginning of October, as clouds bringing the first freshness of winter came scudding in from greater Siberia, Apron and Marina left Birobidzhan on their last tour together. Night was already falling. They had to light the stove in the izba. It took Marina a long time to go to sleep.

  In the pitch-black darkness, not knowing whether Apron was already asleep, she murmured, “This is the last time.”

  Apron didn’t reply. Maybe he really was asleep, but upon waking he seemed very jolly and announced that they had a very special day ahead of them.

  “What do you mean?” asked Marina, but he only kissed her on the lips and whispered, “Geduld, geduld, be patient, dear. … ”

  They drove until the beginning of the afternoon. It was one of those dismal autumn days that were not at all uncommon in the taiga at that time of year. Swollen clouds from the north were masking the sun. A bitter wind was flattening grassland and bushes alike. It had rained recently. The track was muddy. All along the bumpy trail, the truck skated in puddles, the overworked engine roared under the strain.

  Apron smoked and whistled gaily throughout the journey as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Marina sat in silence, trying to hide her sadness, doing her best not to let her thoughts of the future spoil their last tour or their happiness.

  They were supposed to be going to the Amurzet garrison on th
e border, one of the farthest away, in the southwest corner of Birobidzhan, but Apron turned off down a rough track through the marshy taiga that ran along the Bidzhan, a tributary of the Amur. In the summer, they had sped through the mosquito-infested region as fast as possible, but the freshness heralding the arrival of winter had scared off almost all the mosquitos.

  Soon Marina caught sight of a slight incline set back from the muddy road where a long low izba had been built. Its tin roof was rusty, but its log walls were painted bright blue. Unlike most other izbas, it was not surrounded by barns, vegetable gardens, and henhouses. All she could see were some carts hitched up to mules parked around the side.

  The ZIS made such a racket that it could be heard from quite a way off. A few people were waiting for them in front of the izba. The men were wearing black coats and broad-brimmed hats, their faces hidden behind their beards. Clustered to one side, their heads and chests wrapped in colorful shawls, the women were done up to look their best in full-skirted dresses kept for special occasions.

  “Have they gotten dressed up like that for us?” Marina asked, surprised.

  Michael nodded. The truck slowed down as it approached the izba. A fine drizzle began to fall. As soon as the ZIS came to a halt, the men gathered around Apron, while the women took Marina in hand. They greeted her amiably enough, but gravely, with none of the gaiety that Marina had grown accustomed to.

  The men led Apron inside the izba.

  Marina asked anxiously, “What’s happening? Is someone ill?”

  The women stared at her in amazement.

  “Don’t you know where you are?”

  “No, the doctor didn’t say.”

  There was a ripple of timid laughter. A plump little woman pressed, “You really know absolutely nothing about it?”

  “What is it that I’m supposed to know?”

  The women laughed behind their hands.

  “That you’re going to be married.”

  “Married?”

  “Isn’t that why you’ve come to our synagogue?”

  There was joy all around. Gleefully, playfully, the women refused to believe that Apron had brought Marina to the synagogue to marry her without even bothering to tell her. They teased her good-naturedly.

  “Think it over. It’s not too late to run away. If you don’t go into the synagogue, if you stay out here in the marshes, tomorrow you’ll still be a free woman.”

  Finally, a man came out of the izba. It was the rabbi. He explained that the ceremony wouldn’t be entirely what it ought to be. A good many of the rituals couldn’t be performed.

  “There’ll be no mikveh bath, no observance of niddah, and of course, neither of you have a ketubah—a marriage contract—but that doesn’t matter. Here, in this country, the Eternal, blessed be his name, has seen worse. What matters is what is in your hearts.”

  He explained that a person’s wedding day was also a day for repenting past sins. Before God, Marina and her spouse were going to enter into a new life, a new soul, born of their union. All memory of the past would be wiped away if the Eternal granted them pardon. That’s what Marina Andreyeva ought to bear in mind, even if she wasn’t familiar with the prayer of atonement.

  It all went very quickly. The women escorted Marina into the izba. It was a simple room with plain benches, a kind of bookcase at one end, and an altar at the other. A seven-branched lampstand and an ark made of light wood containing the Torah scroll stood on the altar. The centerpiece of the room was a white canopy stretched over four poles.

  The rabbi stood underneath it and said a few words in Hebrew before inviting Apron, now dressed in a black coat like the others, to join him. The women shepherded Marina to the poles. Michael pulled a sheer veil out of his coat pocket and put it over Marina’s head. Taking her hand, he pulled her under the canopy.

  All around them, the chanting of prayers grew louder. Her eyes misty with tears, a lump in her throat, Marina could hardly see her sweetheart’s face. Michael pulled her around the rabbi in a sort of circle. A warm tender wall of voices rose up around them.

  Then the rabbi called out a few words in a booming voice. Apron kept ahold of Marina. In his turn, he cried in Yiddish, “If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand wither! May my tongue remain stuck to my palate if I do not keep you in mind, if I do not count Jerusalem the greatest of my joys. … ”

  Marina saw a glass appear in Michael’s hand. He threw it over his shoulder. The glass bounced on the floor and he crushed it under his heel. The little synagogue rang with cries of joy. They were man and wife.

  Michael took off her veil and kissed her. The witnesses offered their well wishes, the women squeezed Marina against their chests, murmuring, “You’re beautiful, you’re young, your husband has the zibetn kheyn, ‘the seventh charm,’ children born to you will live to see better days. Your life will be full of sunshine!”

  A man picked up the shards of glass that Apron had broken, put them carefully into an oval birch box, and presented it to the newlyweds. The rabbi gave them each a thin strip of paper, scarcely longer than his hand. Each was neatly inscribed with their names in Yiddish in fine calligraphy, certifying that, on Tishri 8 in the year 5704 after Creation, Michael Apron and Marina Andreyeva Gousseiev had taken each other as man and wife before the Eternal.

  The women served glasses of wine and unleavened sesame biscuits, while some of the men wasted no time in untying the nuptial canopy and pulling the poles out of the permanent holes in the floor. Others took the lampstand and the Torah scroll off the altar, sealed them and the few books from the bookcase in cloth bags, and carried them out to the carts. In a twinkling, the izba was empty, and there was nothing to suggest that it had ever been a synagogue, except for the four holes in the floor.

  The next moment, the men in their long coats were seizing the reins of their mules, and the women in their colorful headscarves were settling back on the cart benches. They waved goodbye as their teams trotted off. Dumbfounded, feeling as if she were drunk on an overwhelming surge of emotion, Marina waved back until Apron pressed her to get into the truck.

  “We should get going too. We mustn’t let anyone catch us around here, or those good people will be in trouble. Don’t forget, there are no synagogues or rabbis in the Oblast of Birobidzhan.”

  He caught her by the waist and kissed her tenderly.

  “But don’t worry. It wasn’t a dream. You’re now my darling wife!”

  As the ZIS pulled away, Marina tucked the strip of paper, with her name forever joined to the name of the man she loved, carefully into her palm. For a moment, she hesitated. Should she tell Apron the truth? That he had married a phony Jew and that the ritual that had just taken place was just a farce, perhaps even a lie?

  But was that the truth, the real truth?

  Hadn’t she been journeying toward becoming Jewish for months? Wasn’t she just as Jewish as Bielke, Grandma Lipa, her fellow tenants at the communal dacha, or the MAT troupe?

  “If you want to, you’ll become Jewish … it’ll be no effort at all. You’ll learn. … ” Mikhoels had said. “You’ll become a Jewish actress capable of laughing at herself, an actress we can be proud of. That’s the price you’ll have to pay if you want to be part of the family. That’s all that matters.”

  Wasn’t that what she was in the process of becoming? Wasn’t that the only truth?

  Marina Andreyeva Gousseiev was Michael Apron’s wife in the eyes of the God of the Jews. There was no other truth.

  She squeezed the rabbi’s paper in her hand more tightly. If she could have, she would have had it embedded in her palm. And that evening, when, for the first time as newlyweds, they made love silently in the little room at the izba where they were staying, she kept her fist, still holding the sacred strip, firmly closed.

  In the week that followed, as on all their previous tours, Marina and Michael visited hamlets and garrisons. Everywhere Apron went he was very much in demand. He brought people reassurance, medication, loti
ons, and relief. Everywhere Marina went people were excited and delighted to see her. Some of her fans noticed minute changes, found her acting and mime a little graver. Something of the light-heartedness of the summer had fled. This hint of dolefulness didn’t detract from the emotion of the shows and, when she left each place, they made her promise to come back the following summer.

  On the last leg of their journey back to Birobidzhan, they stopped off in Babstovo, a hamlet made up of around fifty households. They ended up having to stay there for two days longer than expected because brothers had contracted malaria and Apron didn’t want to leave until their fevers had come down.

  Afterward, they took the byways through the taiga back to their izba in the woods to have their real honeymoon at last. The weather had turned fine again and the wind was drying out the mud on the roads, purifying the air, now once again as clear as the glass that Michael had broken under his heel at the synagogue.

  There was still a good hour of daylight left when they plunged down the track leading to the izba. Apron switched off the ZIS’s engine, pulled Marina’s face toward him and kissed her, murmuring, “Wait, the groom is supposed to carry his bride over the threshold.”

  He jumped out of the truck and went around to the other side. Marina opened the door laughing and caught ahold of Michael’s neck for another kiss. They didn’t hear the izba door open, just the shout.

  “Apron!”

  They let go of each other in fright.

  “Hold it right there, Apron!”

  Levine was standing in the doorway, a sneer on his lips, hatred in his eyes.

  Zotchenska appeared beside him, pointing a gun at Apron. She ordered, “Hands on your head!”

  While Apron put his hands up, Marina got out of the ZIS, clutching his jacket.

  “Metvei … ”

  Zotchenska yelled, “Move away from the American, Comrade Gousseieva!” The gun was shaking in her hand.

  Apron stepped to the side.