The poor woman had sadly lost most of her wits when word came from Kiev that her husband, fighting for the Reds, had died at the hands of the marauding White Army.
“No, Yelena’s pictures. We can even put up a banner saying: ‘In devotion to Iosif Vissarionovich.’ Maybe we’ll have a Victrola playing the Internationale. No candles or incense, nothing to suggest religion. Maybe the hammer and sickle displayed on the wall.”
“You would sell pictures of our Beloved Supreme Leader for a profit? It’s unpatriotic and probably against the law.”
“I was thinking only of you, Vera Yarmilova, and the modest stipend the secret police will no longer pay.” She took an apple from the sideboard. “Food stuffs like this are expensive, maybe not so much for you, but for your daughter and her beautiful little boy and girl.” She sighed. “We should all be so lucky as to have such well-behaved and talented grandchildren. What are their names again?”
“Lev and Karolina.”
“Yes, of course. I’ve seen them in the hall when they come to visit you. Such children! It’s a shame they don’t have sweaters without holes in the elbows and sheepskin coats to protect them from the awful flu and pneumonia we’ve been seeing of late.”
Mrs. Yarmilova’s senses were not so diminished that she didn’t want to provide winter wear for her family. Lev and Karolina would be the envy of every schoolmate, not to mention her daughter’s neighbors. All the gifts she could lavish on her daughter would make up for the times that she had scolded her for marrying a drunken lout. She paused, struck by a terrible thought. What if that sot drank up the allowance she gave to her daughter? Anna put her mind to rest. “Never give cash presents.” She hugged her purse to her chest. “Buy the sweaters downstairs in the government store, and anything else that you want: wooden plates, nested toys, shawls, coats. In the foreign-goods store, if you have the money, you can purchase items from France and Sweden and Norway, even Germany and America. With the kopeks we bring in, you will be Sneshkus’s best customer. Wouldn’t you like a new handbag, from Italy, made with soft leather?”
To Anna’s delight, Vera agreed, but selling Razan on the idea proved far more difficult. They talked in the street.
“Your idea is insane. You’ll endanger the family. And for what: kopeks and rubles? We’ll all be sent to Siberia.”
“I have no fear. Growing up in Brovensk, I spent my youth watching the Tsar and Lenin. These peacocks will forgive any sin, any transgression, so long as you fawn over them. Honey-coated lies about their accomplishments make them roll over and purr. The Vozhd is no different. You of all people ought to know that.”
“Which Vozhd, the humble Bolshevik or the vengeful autocrat?”
“Yes, I know, the man is subject to moods that you say radically alter his behavior. But the Stalin who was thrown out of the seminary because he wouldn’t kiss the feet of the clergy has always wanted others to lick his boots. Should he hear of my scheme—I admit, it’s a nepman’s scheme to make money—he’ll throw a tantrum and then go back into his corner, refill his pipe with cigarette tobacco, and lie on his divan, immensely pleased that the people love him so much that they treat him like God.”
“The corner, the pipe he fills with Herzegovina Flor tobacco, the divan . . . you heard all those things from me. Don’t ever repeat them. They are treated as state secrets. If Poskrebyshev knew . . .”
“At Molotov’s dacha, when I met this Poskrebyshev, I knew at once that he wore the clothes of human loathing. Remember how he bragged that no person, no fact, could insult him? He’s proud of his slavishness. If you think that I would ever say a word that would put you in that man’s power . . . I would hang myself first.”
Razan embraced his wife and suggested that they escape the cold street and have a cup of tea and a roll in the nearby restaurant.
“Not until we settle this matter,” said Anna, unyielding.
Razan had come up against her intransigence before and always lost. But this time, he felt that she was peering into the abyss. “What you are proposing is that we open a gallery for profit and trade on Stalin’s person. How do you know that people will pay for Yelena’s pictures?”
“Stalin’s mustache is his most famous feature. Think about how men used to travel leagues to see the arm of some dead martyr in a silver sleeve. Human nature hasn’t changed in all these years. Men would sooner pay to have a picture of Stalin’s mustache than buy a starving child a crust of bread. I know these people. Come!”
Over tea at a small neighborhood café, Razan spooned honey into his cup and plaintively said, “Anna, our lives before . . . we never wanted for essentials. Have I ever denied you anything?”
She stirred some sugar into her tea. An attractive woman, with a small enticing mouth—her slightly protruding lower lip was especially seductive—she was also a clever one. When her peasant’s cunning came into play, her eyes would narrow and her generous bosom rise mysteriously, revealing its bounty and seeming to say, “If you hope to see more of me, you’ll do as I wish.” Had someone told her that squeezing kopeks makes them multiply, she would have purchased a pair of pliers. She loved Razan’s inherent gentleness and took pride in his skills, but she wondered about his indifference to money. In Brovensk, the peasants had a saying: “Only Jews can shit shekels.” Had she married the exception?
“God takes care of those who take care of themselves. For the future and my family’s security, I put my trust in money—and you. After my husband died, a number of men expressed their interest in me, one or two of them, in fact, quite handsome. But none of them showed me any real kindness. They treated me as a cash cow. You were different, are different, and I love you for your gentleness. I know you have no passion for money, but I do. You have told me about your comfortable house in Albania. But I have tasted the dry bones and thirst of poverty. My family was so poor that to keep the hunger at bay I chewed on my own clothing, just to have something in my mouth. Now I see a chance for us to become rich. Like the church, we will be exploiting people’s fears. If they don’t show their love of God or, in this case, Stalin, are they not then running the risk of being cast into hell or into a hellish camp? The bureaucrats will come, and they will buy; and they will want everyone to know that they have purchased a share in Bolshevik heaven.” She reached across the table and took Razan’s hand. “Trust me. When the time is right, we shall cash in our kopeks and leave . . . maybe even cross the border into Finland.”
Initially, the embankment residents came to Vera Yarmilova’s gallery out of curiosity. Her next-door neighbor, Alexei Rykov, was the first to hazard a look. His black curly hair had, since his fall from favor, turned gray, and his mustache and Van Dyke beard needed trimming. His nose, pinched at the bridge, always made Anna think of a man who had been cut in half. With his sad, piercing eyes, he studied colleagues whom he despised for their bloodlust. He had stood for social democracy and a humane application of Communism. But his so-called rightist views had cost him the chairmanship of the party and led to his abased position as minister of post and telegraph. Slowly, the erstwhile leader lost everything, including his life. Demoted to a nonvoting membership in the party’s Central Committee and expelled from the Communist Party, he retired with palsied hands and yellowed skin to await his fate at the house on the embankment.
The lower half of his face reflected his internal pain: his quivering lips, his disordered speech, his untrimmed facial hair. Sadly, his slow descent could be charted in his physiognomy and in the progressive deterioration of his wife, who was now bedridden from a stroke. Taking solace in drink, he had become a pathetic alcoholic, dependent on his daughter for his needs.
When he saw Yelena’s work, he raised a shaky arm, clenched his fist, and mumbled, “May the devil take him.” Moving his head from side to side, he added, “It could have all been so different.” He then did something startling and dangerous. With others in the room, he shouted, “You are a cutthroat Georgian, an uncouth barbarian, and nothing will change
you but death, which can’t come soon enough.”
Most of the visitors promptly left. The two who remained tepidly asked, “How do we know it’s really the Vozhd?” And “Does Comrade Stalin know, and if he doesn’t, couldn’t we be punished?” Anna assured them that the drawings of the famous mustache were based on their own Beloved Leader, and that she would never run the risk of counterfeits. “If you are worried about inviting Stalin’s ire,” she said, “I ask you: have you ever known Koba to resent the love of his people? Ridiculous! I’ve never heard anything more absurd.”
To capitalize doubly on the project, Anna had Yelena set up an easel and draw those tenants who would pay a ruble to sit for their portrait. Before long, the walls of Vera’s apartment were hung with Yelena’s drawings, which in fact lured quite a few buyers. As Anna had predicted, votary lights began to appear in the apartments of people who had purchased a picture of Stalin’s mustache. Anna hoped that one day Stalin would actually sit for a painting, and that Razan could be included in the background. The papers had run stories on Stalin’s doctors and dentist. Why not a picture of the Vozhd and his barber? Given the Boss’s international reputation, Anna knew that if Razan appeared with him, her husband could command a great deal of money for interviews with foreign correspondents, biographers, and historians. Making a bullet out of shit might be impossible, but making money from celebrity was not.
Yelena produced the greatest bonanza of all when she painted on a neutral background a huge Stalin mustache—and nothing else—that covered virtually the entire canvas. Of all her artwork, this painting proved the most popular, so much so that numerous residents bid to buy it. Anna eventually auctioned it off to the highest bidder, but not before she had a local photographer duplicate it hundreds of times. Razan even presented a copy to Stalin, who asked if he could have Yelena paint another, for which he would sit. Anna’s dream had come true!
Shortly after Stalin’s request, Anna received a note in the mail from Serjee, the Kremlin’s official photographer requesting “an audience.” From the formal wording, she couldn’t decide whether the man wanted to talk or snap her picture. To be on the safe side, she responded, “You asked for an audience. Certainly. Just tell me when,” and signed her name. A few days later, a second note arrived: “Would Tuesday next suit you?” These high government officials, she concluded, wrote and spoke a language unlike her own. When the man knocked on the door, she saw standing before her a short heavy-shouldered Tatar. A model of politeness, he asked if they could “retire to her sitting room for a tête-à-tête,” whatever that meant.
He introduced himself only as Serjee, the single name that appeared on his letters. His Russian was perfect. Did he have a last name or a patronymic? He explained that in the 1920s, the government banned all but first names for Mongolians.
“My family came from Ulan Bator. During the Civil War, we lived in China. My father was a chemist. I went to school in Peking, where I learned how to use a camera. Comrade Stalin, who is a great and generous man, made me a Kremlin photographer.”
Anna poured him tea. She explained that her husband was napping, and that her young daughter would soon be returning from school. “Your note never said what you wished to see me about. Does it touch upon Stalin? Is there a problem?”
“Problem? No, I wouldn’t call it that. You had someone paint Koba’s mustache. A photograph was then taken of the painting. If you will excuse me for saying so, the lighting in the picture is poor and, as a result, Stalin’s mustache lacks luster. Neither the picture nor the painting quite do it justice. I would like to buy the canvas and, as well, remove all the photographs from circulation. Your daughter can then paint a new one, and I can photograph it.”
“The painting was sold to a diplomat who lives in this building. I’m not sure he’ll sell it.”
“I have been . . . that is, I am prepared to pay twice the amount or more, if necessary.”
Anna noted the revision in language from “I have been” to “I am.” She wanted to ask if Stalin had directed him to buy the painting, and would he really commission a new painting?
Sensing her reluctance, he said, “Mrs. Shtube, let me assure you that no harm will come to you or the painter. I merely want to photograph a new canvas properly, with the right lighting and lens.”
To suggest harm was to admit its possibility. The absence of evidence, she knew, was not evidence of absence. You learned that fact at a young age living in a Soviet society.
“And the original painting: Will that also be safe?”
“Absolutely! You have my word.”
“Excuse my provincial habits. I am a cautious person. So tell me, is it you or the Vozhd who’s dissatisfied?”
Serjee began to perspire. His hands trembled, and he began to tug at his buttons and pull on his chin, all the time looking at her pitifully.
Although Anna had a nose for trouble, in this instance she couldn’t frame the source or nature of it. Perhaps the problem wasn’t Stalin or Serjee, but rather the object itself. Serjee wished to remove both the canvas and the photographs. Perhaps, though, the problem was the very idea of the mustache.
Since Serjee offered no further explanations, she led him through the building and introduced him to the owner of the canvas, Dr. Efraim Slonim. She would have liked to remain to hear what was said, but Serjee made it clear that he wanted her to leave.
“Thank you, Mrs. Shtube,” he said. “I will now conduct my business with Dr. Slonim.”
He slightly bowed and turned up his right palm, as if to point the way out. Anna turned to Dr. Slonim, who was so bewildered by Serjee’s invasion that whatever thoughts he might have wished to express remained stillborn. Out in the hall, Anna wondered and worried. Perhaps Razan had been right: Her financial finagling would earn them all a five-year stay in the cold country. She wished at that moment Yelena could crawl through the heating vent and listen to what this Tatar was saying. Tatars! She had never trusted them.
Anna rose early the next morning to catch Dr. Slonim on his way to the Kremlin, where he removed gall bladders and benign tumors, and the occasional appendix, leaving the more serious surgery to Dr. Ginzburg. Like Stalin’s dentist, these men were all Jews, even though the Vozhd railed against “Zionists.” Anna wondered.
“Dr. Slonim, excuse me, I know you have appointments to keep. But that man last night, Serjee, I never had a chance to explain. He was a complete stranger to me. To this minute,” she falsely said, “I don’t have the slightest idea what he wanted, do you?”
“He wanted to buy your daughter’s portrait of Koba’s mustache. He offered me three times what I paid.”
“Did you sell it?”
“His offer made me suspicious. I thought: Maybe this painting is the work of a budding genius. Although I sometimes buy paintings, I am no connoisseur. The art dealer Henrik Hilgy is. I want to ask him. Then I’ll decide.” He shook his head in wonderment. “Three times what I paid!”
“Dr. Slonim, my advice to you is if your expert says the painting is the work of an amateur, don’t let that stop you from asking for ten times the amount. The Tatar will pay it. Trust me.”
Dr. Slonim looked at his watch. Anna could see that his car was waiting at the curb. He buttoned up his English duffel coat, reached for the door, paused, and said, “Do you know something I should know?”
She looked around and whispered, “In God’s name I don’t. My husband—the Supreme Leader’s barber!—even he claims to know nothing. In fact, he advised me to avoid the subject. But every bone in my body tells me that the Tatar came because of Stalin’s mustache.”
Later that evening when Anna told Razan the story, he agreed with her view and opined that the mustache had become incendiary. Her lucrative business would have to come to an end.
“Tell all your buyers that somehow Stalin learned about their votary lights and worship of his mustache. Tell them, he said that such worship resembled a religion. He has therefore forbidden the selling of any unautho
rized paintings or photographs of him.”
Anna was pained to think of the money she’d lose. “And what about authorized pictures? Are we allowed to worship those?”
The barber’s annoyance was palpable. “If you insist on behaving like a nepman, then have Yelena paint landscapes or city scenes, but stay away from Stalin. His face already haunts every home.”
Anna reluctantly agreed.
In Voronezh, a City Peter Built and Poets Braved
Before the train departed for Voronezh, Alexei von Fresser was bound over by the two secret agents to a young soldier, no older than a teenager, whom Alexei cultivated, treating him to a cup of hot tea and a buttered roll that he bought from the porter in charge of the food cart. The soldier, Konstantin Gilyarovsky, came from a small village on the Volga and regularly brought exiled men from Moscow and Leningrad to one of the camps in the eastern zone. He preferred escorting women, not because their company was more pleasant but because they were less likely to be sent to Siberia. An exiled woman was usually a “hundred-and-fiver,” a stopiatnitsa, who had to live at least a hundred kilometers away from Moscow. Voronezh qualified.
One-day journeys enabled Konstantin to sleep at home. Although Voronezh lacked the amenities of great cities, it offered free concerts and poetry readings by exiled artists. Had his commanding officer known that he attended such gatherings, he could have suffered a loss of pay—his rank was too low to be reduced—and perhaps even a few days in the guardhouse. He sat next to Alexei on the hard wooden seats, and enviously watched his prisoner reading a book. Eventually, Alexei noticed Konstantin’s raptness.
“Would you like to share it?”
He held up the cover to exhibit the title.
“I can’t read,” said the boy.
“Then let me read to you. Have you ever heard of Pushkin?”
“Yes, yes,” he replied excitedly. “I have even heard some of his poems read out loud.”
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