Stalin's Barber

by Paul M. Levitt

  * * *

  As promised, Calvo arranged for Angelina and Gregori to attend an evening salon at Margherita Sarfatti’s apartment. Observing the Roman preference for early weekday hours, the invitations said that the conversazione would take place Wednesday, between eight and ten.

  La Sarfatti, as she was known, had spent the afternoon at an exhibition of paintings by Achille Funi and Mario Sironi, two of her favorites. She arrived in the small piazza, where she maintained an apartment, in a black Lancia limousine that was so long that to turn the corner, it had to jump the curb. The cool spring weather had given her an excuse to wear a fur piece over her black dress. A string of pearls graced her neck, now thickening from age. In her youth, she had been quite a beauty, with her tall, full body, deep gray-green eyes, reddish-blond curly hair, and stylish dresses, invariably designed in Paris by Schiaparelli and adorned with tasteful and expensive jewelry. Her Venetian family, the Grassini, issued from Jewish roots, and although some members had, for mercantile reasons, defected to the church, she was secretly proud of being born an ebrea and of moving easily in Italian high society.

  The Grassini wealth had made it possible for her to receive a first-rate education and meet courtiers, cardinals, and bishops. Her father and her lawyer husband, from whom she took the name “Sarfatti,” had always indulged her expensive tastes. Not for La Sarfatti the drab, masculine clothing of the socialist women’s brigades whom she had supported before the Great War. She likewise disapproved of Fascist fashions, except for their favoring the color black. A warm and witty lady, she was famously known as “Il Duce’s other woman,” in short, his mistress, one of many, though easily the most cultured.

  Angelina could barely contain her excitement, skipping up to every fountain they passed and, like a schoolgirl, splashing drops of water on Gregori’s untonsured head. He pretended to enjoy the sport, but, in fact, he found her behavior fatuous.

  “Why all this fuss about La Sarfatti?” he asked, clearly annoyed.

  “She tutored Il Duce himself! Everyone says so. They say Benito was a boorish boy until she made him over.”

  Gregori ironically replied, “I can just imagine how much he appreciated his tutor being a woman.”

  Angelina coughed. “You’re right. Italian men resent accomplished women.” Then she dismissed the idea with a toss of her head and again tripped down the walk toward La Sarfatti’s apartment, carrying a small painting of her own, a gift for the grande dame.

  Margherita’s apartment occupied an entire upper floor, with marvelous city views. A portiere answered the door and nodded his head approvingly when Angelina flashed her invitation to partake of drinks and cultured discussion. The chairs in Sarfatti’s drawing room had been arranged in a conversational circle. Gregori and Angelina peeked into her study and saw a confusion of manuscripts, proof sheets, and books. On the apartment walls hung hundreds of paintings, arranged from floor to ceiling. But pride of place was given to a stunning white-marble bust by Adolfo Wildt, titled Margherita Sarfatti. And indeed, she held sway in all cultural matters, from painting to pottery. Her taste, which ran to the colorful and bizarre, could be seen in the artistic movement that she now spearheaded, the Novecento, known for its insane colors and its cadaver-like heads. Some of these works hung on her walls. Her collection also included ugly pieces of sculpture, for example, the head of a boxer by Romanelli that eerily resembled the head of Il Duce. But, since she preferred painting to sculpture, the room smelled of oils and resins and not marble. And of all her paintings, those of Achille Funi predominated. The shelves of one room, in fact, bore the inscription, the “Funi Library,” with numerous small cards or brass labels identifying every painting and book. Gregori felt as though he were in a suffocating museum or an airtight bell jar, not in the apartment of a person who cooked and ate and slept and used a bathroom.

  When the guests finally took their seats and turned their attention to La Sarfatti at the head of the circle, she immediately introduced the subject of art, and the importance of order.

  “The Cubists are mad, simply insane,” she pontificated, waving her arms. “They represent analysis run amok.”

  A twitchy thin-faced, balding fellow, lipping a drooping unlit cigarette, tugged at the red scarf around his neck and remarked, “Artists must be free to represent the world as they view it, whether crooked or straight. Both views are defensible. Greatness resides not in the subject matter per se but in the execution.”

  Margherita would hear none of it. “Art should reflect the moral and cultural values of our society. It should be an expression not only of a country’s values but of those it wishes to inculcate.”

  Angelina chose this moment to hand her small painting to La Sarfatti, whom she pressed to comment.

  In that instant, Gregori became memory’s silent pawn. He remembered his mother hanging a reproduction of The Volga Boatmen, a painting by Ilya Repin, bought from a tinker. As Gregori watched, his mother hammered a nail in the wall over the couch. While she was leaning to hang the wired frame, Pyotr entered, eyed her vulnerable position, and came up behind her. Fully clothed, he gave her a great hump that sent her sprawling on the couch. Whether he had intended the action to be affectionate or hostile, Gregori couldn’t tell, but she tumbled on top of the picture causing it to rip. Anna, who had never shed a tear during all the years of Pyotr’s beatings, who had never let the children view her pain and humiliation, cried over the painting. Her response left Pyotr stunned. He could understand a whipped person wailing, but someone blubbering because of a cheap reproduction? In his incomprehension, he resorted to the only behavior he knew: abuse. Although Gregori was present, Pyotr dropped his pants and tried to remove Anna’s skirt to enter her from behind. Roaring, “Cry, will you? I’ll give you reason to cry,” he failed owing to his drunken state, which had left him limp.

  Margherita removed the brown wrapping paper and stared at the painting dolefully. Angelina’s heart sunk, and she began to cough. But then the mistress of the salon smiled and said, “Here is an example of a quadro, a painting, that returns to the purest traditions of Giotto and Masaccio, and yet she does not renounce the uniqueness of our modern times.” The guests clapped, and Angelina bowed her head as if she had just received a state medal. The painting, a scene of the Farfa countryside, was passed among the guests, as Sarfatti continued, “Italian art must once again become method, order, and discipline. It must give rise to definite bodily forms that are analogous to the ancients, and yet different from them. It must be independent of foreign fads and mercantile considerations.”

  Gregori had only an imperfect idea of what she meant. But he recognized a similarity to what Stalin called “Socialist Realism.” In fact, the Supreme Leader had said, “How can we judge the art of an age if not as the expression of its moral habits?”

  “Thus,” La Sarfatti continued, “an orderly society produces orderly art, while, at the same time, encouraging a respect for discipline and control.” Insisting that art had to be a mutual enterprise, she exhorted her guests to insist that artists abandon their individual “arbitrary” styles and work toward a “collective synthesis of concreteness and simplicity.”

  Yes, indeed, Margherita and Stalin were cut from the same cloth. This discovery led Gregori to the idea that all “isms” found validation in conformity, and that the “isms” closest to one another had to exaggerate their differences to maintain their separate identities. Here at last was an explanation for why those sects closest in belief, like the Catholics, hated each other so fiercely. The endless sectarian wars in the Caucasus suddenly made sense. His musing came to an end when Margherita stood to thank her guests for attending and bowed out of the room. The front door opened and the faithful cascaded down the steps and spilled into the street.

  * * *

  Weekdays Gregori spent at the Russicum under the watchful eye of a priest from the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; weekends he drove to Farfa to see Angelina, though he had reservatio
ns about the seriousness of her commitments, whether to art, politics, or religion. He began to regard her as a dabbler, a dilettante. Even her frivolity seemed at times artificial. When he tried to broach the subject of dedication to a cause, she dismissed him with feigned gaiety. His students behaved in the opposite manner. They were dedicated warriors in the service of the Vatican. Perched on wooden benches, they hunched over communal tables, scribbled in their notebooks, and haltingly repeated the soft and hard glottal sounds of the Russian language. Gregori taught them the principles of the Orthodox faith, with its insistence that the Holy Spirit came not from the Son but from God alone, and its rejection of any rigid hierarchy, namely, the pope, cardinals, and bishops. He explained that in many Orthodox churches, the clergy shared the responsibility of leading the congregation with the laity. In some cases, the laity even elected their clergy, a practice that the novice spies felt led to anarchy.

  When his handler, Carlo Cospirato, asked him how he liked the work, he lied, “I’d rather be in the Soviet Union, helping in the struggle to create a new society.”

  “That’s what you’re doing now,” replied Carlo, a true believer. “You are helping the cause by rooting out the enemies of Bolshevism.”

  In fact, Gregori relished conspiracies, whether in Moscow or Rome, and especially papal machinations. Every restaurant and café seemed to have its whisperers and secret agents. One day, he approvingly told the Russicum priest from the Congregation of the Faith, “You and I with Him conspire.” The priest’s grin suggested that he understood “Him” to stand for God. But what did Gregori intend: Christ? The staunchly anti-Communist pope, Pius XI? The Soviet government? Or was it the abstract idea of a higher cause, which had become for him a vague feeling that he associated with the armor of righteousness? Although exalted causes produced high emotions, they also implied obedience. Awash in a sea of theology, Gregori argued with himself about the virtues and defects of submission and its attendant certitude.

  The Russicum students liked Gregori and, in turn, their respect brought out the natural teacher in him. As students and teacher grew closer, Gregori felt responsible for the fate of these young men. They had, through his tutorials, become his “children.” If he gave Carlo their names, as planned, they would likely be caught and shot. Given that he wanted to build a better world—didn’t the old medieval metaphor portray God as an architect?—he would have to play God and fashion his own future instead of following the plan of some other designer. Perhaps he would even stay in Rome and devote himself to teaching others. But teaching what? Catechistic instruction was boring. One could continue for only so long training spies to undermine the Soviet regime. To make the teaching more challenging, he introduced lessons in history. He told his students how religious ideas and institutions had evolved, and gave numerous examples to prove supernatural truths and God’s miracles. Deploring the split between Greek and Roman churches, he argued that doctrinal Orthodoxy and sectarian arguments came not from the Bible but from church councils, where political power, not scripture, was at issue.

  After a day of such exhilarating exposition, he would retire to his dormitory, sip a glass of wine, nibble on pane and some pecorino, his favorite cheese, and try to sort out his growing unease over competing theories. In the blue-black darkness of night, he would fall to his knees before a cheap icon that he had purchased from a stand outside of the Vatican—the gold paint was already chipping—and engage in a timeless ritual, a catechism.

  Question: Which is the true church? Answer: The Orthodox.

  Question: Do you believe in Stalin? Answer: Yes, but . . .

  Question: Do you believe in celibacy? Answer: No.

  Question: Do you achieve holiness through good deeds, a theocracy, or penance? Answer: Prayer. Reply: Answer the question.

  When he shared these ideas with his students, word reached the Office of the Faith, and his overseer gently suggested that he should leave political philosophy to the Catholic fathers and get on with the labor of schooling his students in Orthodox doctrines.

  “We count on you,” said the priest, “to instruct our people in the liturgy, to illuminate for them the role of icons and the symbolic importance of priestly garments. How else can they get close to the people and bring them to the true faith?”

  One evening, after he and Angelina dined in a cellar restaurant a few steps from the Piazza dei Fiori, they walked past the statue of Giordano Bruno and made their way to Capitoline Hill. Below, people were gathering in the Piazza Venezia. “Of course!” said Angelina, as they descended the Michelangelo steps. “Mussolini is speaking tonight from his balcony.”

  The couple joined the swelling crowd. Although Il Duce would not appear for another thirty minutes, Gregori could hear in the voices of the faithful a religious reverence, an ecstasy. For them, Benito was a religious experience. Gregori had read about the spellbinding leader, had seen numerous photographs of him in the newspapers, and had heard him on the radio. But what he experienced now was unlike any spiritual awakening he had ever known. Yes, it was comparable to a religious conversion. The man looked strikingly like Calvo. The magician was everywhere, supplanting God with his mesmerizing powers and magical plans for a new Roman empire that would engulf the Levant and much of East Africa.

  When the curtains parted and Mussolini appeared on the balcony, holding up his immense jaw to the sky as if challenging the Almighty, the street subsided into obedient silence. “Although we wish to re-create the glory that was Rome, we are not passatisti, those captive to the past.” To punctuate each point, he punched the air with his fist. “We also want a New Italy, the Italy of tomorrow, one that throbs with massive engines of production, commerce, and travel. One in which aircraft fill the skies with the thunder of their motors, and automobiles speed along ribbons of highway, and steamships, like sharpened steel, slice across the oceans. I envision great factories with tall smokestacks reaching the clouds, and electricity sparking life into every human endeavor. I see buildings that dwarf the Coliseum and rival the Pantheon, train stations that resemble artworks, marble statues in every courtyard, and all of us sharing in the beauty that was and is to come.”

  He spoke of the poverty and humiliation visited upon the country after the Great War; and he said that for the nation to enter into the ranks of the richest and most powerful nations, Italy must express its national interests through any viable means. How else could they escape the current worldwide economic depression?

  “We will do whatever it takes to maximize the interests of the people. If the evidence argues that the nation prospers most under monarchy, Fascists will become monarchists. If the evidence shows that monarchy is unworkable, then Fascists will become republicans. If Venezia can do what we can’t, then we will all become Venetians.” Urging communalism, Mussolini cried, “Only in the development of the nation-state will individuals and classes find their own fulfillment. Fascism places the nation before all else. The group counts more than the individual, the nation more than the group. Think of the fascio,” he said, holding up a flag exhibiting the familiar symbol.

  Tumultuous applause shook the piazza. From the overflow crowd in adjoining streets came cheers as loud as those in the Piazza Venezia. The Italians were embracing Ignatius Loyola’s teaching that individuals are most free when they merge their identities with the group and give their leaders the decision-making powers. Benito claimed that he was merely an agent of the people, the vehicle through which the collective will spoke. At that instant, Gregori was uncomfortably reminded that he, too, was subject to the will of a greater force, in fact, two forces, the pull of religion and the push of the Soviets. The first was freighted with sectarianism. Should one choose the Orthodox or Roman rites? The second, with its so-called dictatorship of the proletariat, was just another form of Fascism. So why prefer Stalin to Mussolini, or Mussolini to Stalin? The answer to that question would determine Gregori’s future course of action.

  * * *

  Several days later,
Gregori found himself asking: Do I want to linger in the lifeless antiquity of either the Orthodox or the Catholic Church? He felt that Mussolini’s speech had baptized him in beauty, and that to join the Fasci di Combattimento, not as a soldier, but as a spiritual fellow traveler appealed to him. His immediate problem was to find a trustworthy person with ties to the Fascists who could secretly insinuate him into the movement. He could not speak to Carlo Cospirato or to anyone at the Russicum, and he could hardly walk into a recruiting office. Given his church connections, he would be suspected immediately, even though the Fascists and the Vatican had made common cause in the Lateran Pacts of 1929.

  So he sought out Margherita Sarfatti, and she in turn arranged for him to meet Galeazzo Ciano, married to Mussolini’s daughter Edda. As minister of propaganda, Ciano was involved in the black work of disinformation. A week later, Gregori was standing in an ornate room, on a Turkish rug, before an enormous table, crafted by some Renaissance artist. A handsome young man with dark hair and lively eyes, Ciano would squint when focusing on a person whom he thought worth his attention. Rumor said that he distrusted Hitler. Gregori spoke with undisguised passion. “I agree with Mussolini that we must distinguish between the act, what a person does, and what a person thinks, the ideological commitment. Not to recognize the difference between behavior and belief is to falsify reality.” He thumped his chest. “From within me, I hear a ringing voice that is at odds with my priestly calling. It says never rest, go forward. Where? Not toward some distant heavenly goal, but toward myself, the ideal self that I ought to be. The voice, as I understand it, is a moral admonition: Sii uomo, Be Man!”

  Ciano wryly observed that the priest had only the Russicum to recommend him, a Catholic organization, and, at this moment, Gregori wished to leave that assignment for one with the Fascists. Gregori said, “Surely you have contacts in the Soviet Union who can report back to you on my loyalty.”