Stalin's Barber

by Paul M. Levitt

  The taxi coming slowly down the street, with its front grille missing and its right fender dented, looked ominously familiar. He was certain that it would hold Dimitri Lipnoskii.

  The Haughty Barber

  Standing in the shadows, Razan watched the cab stop a few doors away. Yes, Dimitri would not want to come too close and risk having someone inside the basement apartment see him approach. As the cab driver pulled away, Dimitri mounted the curb and stood on the sidewalk straightening his military coat and hat before facing his sister. Turning into the building, Dimitri found his path blocked by Razan, who grabbed him by the lapels, and pushed him against the wall.

  “You filthy denouncer!” said Razan. “You scum. You maggot.”

  Although Dimitri’s mouth opened, he was so surprised by Razan’s attack that he momentarily lacked the power of speech.

  “Your mother’s been sent to Solovki, and you are here to betray your sister and Yelena. You misbegotten son of a great lady.”

  Finding his breath, he gasped, “What are you talking about?”

  “At our last interrogation, Beria told us everything,” he hissed through clenched teeth, while tightening his hold on Dimitri’s lapels.

  “Told you what?”

  “That he learned from you about the religious fervor attending your mother’s painting sales. You called her a religious zealot.”

  “Lies! All lies!”

  “Then why did you come here?”

  “To tell Natasha that I’ve made arrangements for us to flee to Voronezh,” he declared, disengaging Razan’s hands from his coat.

  “To collect her unfaithful husband? A likely story.”

  “But a true one.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “To have him back she will forgive all.”

  “Let’s just see!” Razan pushed a pliant Dimitri through the front door, down the hall, and into the basement apartment. “I want to hear it in her own words. Only then will I believe you.”

  Natasha started to throw her arms around her brother’s neck, but remembering what Razan had said, she froze and then let her arms fall to her sides. With his heart beating abnormally fast, Razan spoke clumsily, sputtering, “He says . . . Dimitri . . . you have forgiven Alexei and he has a plan to take you to Voronezh . . . and you will have no objections, even though Alexei’s been faithless. Can that be?”

  “I still love Alexei and had no idea until this moment that Dimitri wanted to get me to Voronezh. I am delighted. Overjoyed.”

  “But you are to take Yelena and leave for Petrozavodsk.”

  Although Natasha loved Yelena dearly, she had, in her excitement, forgotten Razan’s note. “I am sure that once Alexei and I have a chance to embrace and confess our wrongdoing, we’ll be reunited. I’ve dreamed it ever since I heard . . .”

  “But how can you be sure,” Razan asked, “given what he’s done?”

  Dimitri interrupted. “We could all be arrested at any moment. We must hurry.”

  But Razan, convinced that Dimitri intended only to deliver his sister to the secret police, hurried to remark, “I have serious doubts that you can be trusted. And who better than I ought to know?”

  “Insolent man,” Dimitri said, making no attempt to hide his disgust. “For Natasha’s sake you must trust me. Here is what I propose,” and he laid out his plan, which was at odds with Razan’s. “Let us not trip over pride,” said Dimitri. “I can see how to reconcile our different ideas. The important thing is to escape.”

  Natasha interrupted. “Aren’t you forgetting something, Dima?”

  Her brother’s jaw tightened. Secret policemen didn’t err.

  “Papers, Dima, papers! We need transit visas and passports—with photographs and official stamps!”

  Dimitri replied with immense satisfaction, “All taken care of. Secret police files and labs have many uses.”

  Praying that his stepson would not betray them, Razan returned to the house on the embankment, where he had agreed to wait until he received Dimitri’s signal: twelve white roses. That same evening, Razan went to see Kasarov and asked the barber if he could store his belongings with him. Of course. Together, the two of them, using the freight elevator, removed the Shtube family’s valued possessions—clothing, books, personal letters, Anna’s jewelry, and his matryoshka doll—and moved them to Kasarov’s flat. At the back of his closet, Razan had found a terrifying object: a plaster bust of Stalin. Was this an NKVD joke? A warning?

  The day that the white roses arrived, Razan filled an inexpensive vase with water, placed the flowers inside, and gave them to Kasarov’s wife, Ada. In his gorgeous Petrovich overcoat, Razan rode the elevator to the main lobby, where he could see at the front entrance two men and a green bread truck. Reversing direction, he entered the busy barbershop and, with a wink, asked Kasarov if he could look over his backroom supply of facial ointments. He then opened the door to the loading dock, where trucks, as always, stood waiting to deliver their wares. Some drivers were just leaving. He asked for a lift.

  “My leg,” Razan said, affecting a limp, “won’t allow me to walk very far.”

  The obliging truck driver dropped Razan around the corner from a rag shop that also sold used clothing. The owner, a Czech violinist, Cerny Michl, had immigrated to the Soviet Union shortly after the Civil War. Although his hands were no longer nimble enough for concertizing, Cerny would sit in his shop and play haunting Czech folk tunes and, occasionally, for the enjoyment of friends, a Dvorak concerto. Razan had often been attracted to the music. To show his appreciation, Razan never left without first buying some shmatte, rag, that he brought home to Anna’s dismay. A tall, thin man, with sad eyes and wisps of hair over his ears, Cerny often wore the very clothes that he eventually traded or sold. Razan regarded him as a Dickensian character, and was quite sure that one day the shop, with its clutter, would suddenly combust. Wearing Petrovich’s Gogolian masterpiece, which Comrade Michl had often admired, Razan offered to trade it for two items: a small greatcoat and an enormous brown, satin-lined gabardine greatcoat that Anna had urged him to buy, and that had hung in the shop, unsold, for several months. As Razan spread his coat on the counter, he said, “Have you ever . . .”

  Cerny interrupted. “The greatcoat you want . . . do you know who once owned it?” Before Razan could reply, the cunning shopkeeper, dusting it off, said proudly, “Marshal Ouspenski. The Marshal Ouspenski who commanded a glorious division against the White Army.”

  Razan had never heard of the man and knew that Cerny was merely touting the name and fame of the coat’s former owner to make it appear the equal of Petrovich’s incomparable creation. The barber said nothing, waiting for Cerny to show his cards.

  “I’ll trade you Marshal Ouspenski’s coat for yours. Even.”

  Razan tapped Cerny on the hand and replied, “Play me a Bohemian melody, one that captures the spirit of rascality.”

  The shopkeeper, not deaf to the allusion, took up his violin and played. “There! Are you satisfied? It is a song of a young man who has been cheated out of his inheritance.”

  Razan laughed. “It would take two greatcoats to equal the one that I have just put before you. It was cut and stitched by the great Petr Petrovich, the finest tailor in Asian Russia. Khans and imams come to him for their robes.”

  Comrade Michl answered, “You know the story of Mr. Zote, who dreamed of a cashmere coat, but went home with an angora goat?” He chuckled. “No deal! Nothing!”

  Razan replied, “You call my coat nothing?” With this feigned indignation, he swept up the coat and turned to the door.

  “Not so fast,” called Cerny. “Where is your sense of humor?”

  “Just don’t Ouspenski or Zote me. I’m here to bargain, and I know the worth of my wares.”

  “Perhaps another melody on my violin would take the sorrow from your face.”

  “I’m in a hurry, Cerny. Some other time.”

  “One should never be in such a hurry as to miss the chance to
hear Dvorak.” He whispered, “To you I can say this: Some people believe in Stalin, but I believe in music, and in meadows, and in the melodies that Fritz Kreisler plays.”

  When Razan left the shop he had in his possession two greatcoats, Marshal Ouspenski’s and one worn by Colonel Posner, a midget of a man, who had fought nobly for the Reds outside of Kiev. The coats were stuffed in a cloth shopping bag and secured with a shaggy hemp cord. By a circuitous route, Razan made his way to Resonia’s apartment. Here he opened his bundle and began, almost immediately, to instruct Yelena in how to walk in a commanding fashion, as if she were a diminutive military officer. For hours they practiced walking side by side, with Yelena matching the distance of his stride and the motion of his hips, until she could imitate his every step and movement.

  He then prepared for their departure by cosmetically aging his face and Yelena’s. With both wearing their greatcoats, Razan pocketed a loaf of bread and chunks of cheese, took the black bag with its stethoscope and other medical gear that he had bought on the black market for a staggering sum, and led his daughter out the back door of the safe house near Gorky Street. At a public phone, he called in sick for work; he then waved several rubles to hail a cab, because taxis often ignored military personnel, who could claim free passage for reasons of state. A block from the station, they exited the cab and entered the train sheds, where half-naked, sweating men in goggles and full leather aprons worked with acetylene torches, sledge hammers, files, and grinding wheels to keep the rolling stock in repair. The shed smelled of fire, and sparks flew like comets. A friend of Dimitri’s, in charge of milling, had agreed to let Razan and Yelena wait in his cramped office for the arrival of the sister and brother.

  * * *

  The day before fleeing, Dimitri had begged Lavrenti Beria for an audience, which the butcher granted when he read Dimitri’s note claiming he had found incriminating evidence about his own family. Beria liked nothing more than to see children and parents dismember each other. They met in a room with a two-way mirror, so Beria could watch the interrogation of a particularly recalcitrant pawn of the west, who was being flogged with a rubber truncheon. A signal lesson for Dimitri. “My mother, as you know, has already revealed herself as an enemy of the people and has been justly exiled to Solovki. My stepfather seems devoted to Stalin.”

  Beria unfolded a new handkerchief and blew his nose. “Really? I am delighted to hear you say that Razan is a Soviet patriot. He has cut my hair more than once, and his Turkish barbering is exquisite.”

  “But my sister, Natasha, has betrayed the state with her theft of secret documents, as you no doubt have heard.” Beria’s fulsome lecherous look spoke for him. “If you will have your office issue an arrest warrant, I will bring her here to Lubyanka Prison, as soon as I can discover her hiding place. You can personally interrogate her.”

  Beria smiled. “I hear she’s quite a beauty.”

  Dimitri, knowing Beria’s weakness for pretty women, added, “She also likes powerful men.”

  Beria sprang to his telephone and ordered that an arrest warrant be issued immediately for Natasha von Fresser.

  The plan had taken shape as Dimitri had hoped. He left the prison with the warrant and, winding his way through alleys and gardens, made his way to Resonia’s basement apartment, where his sister hugged him with a hunger born of initial distrust.

  “To reach Voronezh safely,” he told her, “we have to act quickly. I have volunteered to help the secret police apprehend defectors. Just do as I say.”

  At the train shed, among the hissing trains and bustling workers, they rendezvoused with Razan and Yelena, who were sipping tea and watching the fiery scene outside their door. Dimitri, as good as his word, passed along transit visas and passports, fresh from the police lab, listing the barber as a military doctor and Yelena as his aide.

  A grateful and excited Natasha exclaimed, “Dimitri’s plan worked. We are traveling by truck to Voronezh.” She hugged Yelena, sweetly telling her to look after Razan. Smiling at her stepfather, she said, “And you must take care of our dearest Yelena.”

  Razan clasped the brother and sister, bent their heads to his chest, and held them silently, as if cradling two infants.

  As the siblings extricated themselves and made for the door, Yelena shouted after them, “Good luck, Natasha. Good luck, Dimitri.” Then they were gone.

  * * *

  Razan’s thoughts turned to Petrozavodsk. Could this unnamed person to whom Razan was to deliver Yelena be trusted? Who was he? With no way of knowing, he had to hope that Dimitri’s friend would not denounce them. Under the most propitious conditions, bribing friends to hide one put numerous people in danger, increasing the risk that they would denounce the lawbreakers. For the moment, the success of all the parties depended on their papers. Since the days of the Tsar, the Russians had loved government documents and come to expect ukases. What was more persuasive than an order with an official stamp?

  Moments after Razan and Yelena entered the gloomy train station and passed through the doors to the platform, lights suddenly illuminated a huge overhead picture of Stalin that seemed to validate the many police crowding the platform in search of defecting soldiers and spies. Amidst the tumult and smells, a guard barked, “Your papers and tickets!” He took one look and scoffed, “Why is an old man like you heading for the Karelian front?”

  “I want to do my part,” said Razan. “I am a doctor, as you can see from my papers, and he is my assistant.”

  “What kind of doctor? My father is a thoracic surgeon.”

  “Ear, nose, and throat.”

  The guard waved them through, pointing to platform number four, where a train sat eerily silent. Walking side by side, as they had practiced, Razan and Yelena made their way to car number twenty-two, and, as Razan had choreographed, walked to their seats. The hard part lay ahead: keeping his coat buttoned for the duration of the trip to hide the money bags strapped to his body. For her part, she dared not take off her coat in the men’s lavatory lest she reveal her sex and her age. Although the press of bodies in the car made the air stifling, they sat in their greatcoats, appearing to be disciplined Soviet soldiers.

  At last, the train pulled into Petrozavodsk. As Dimitri had directed, they took a cab to the White Sea building block, a complex that resembled a dozen others. At apartment 449, the man who answered the door identified himself as Yuri Suzdal. His two rooms, once occupied by a Soviet official, now lacked the simplest amenities, like a loo. A communal one in the hall, with strips of newspaper for toilet tissue, served the entire floor. Lightbulbs dangled from electrical wires. The elegant wallpaper, seen now only in spots, had been used by previous tenants to light the stove. The plastered walls exhibited numerous scrawls, some of them literate, some not. One person had written a joke: Three men were imprisoned. The first said that he was jailed for supporting Bulganin. The second said that he was jailed for voting against Bulganin. The third said, “I am Bulganin.” The poor bricking admitted winter drafts. Suzdal led them to the rear and a small coal burner that made bearable the area around it. In the other room, the ice-caked windows prevented one from seeing outside. Razan had no intention of staying long. The plan was for him to deposit Yelena with Dimitri’s friend, whom Razan now knew as Yuri Suzdal, and to take the next train to Moscow. For safety’s sake, Yuri would shortly be moving. He handed Razan his new address. As Yelena settled into the alcove set aside for her, Razan gave Yuri enough rubles to sustain both of them for several months.

  “How have you been living until now?”

  “Before I left Moscow, Dimitri arranged through a noble friend to find me temporary quarters. Yes, this place is bad, but you should have seen the first one. Dimitri also arranged for me to have working and traveling papers.” Yuri laughed. “They come right from an NKVD lab. Such irony! Papers, though, will get you only so far, but Dima’s advice proved invaluable. He said, ‘Your initial impulse will be to distance yourself from the beast—the government and police—
but that puts you on the outside. You have a better chance of surviving if you enter the belly of the beast. From time to time, the beast looks inward and devours its own with purges, but most of those people ostensibly pose a threat to the Vozhd. Usually the beast is looking outward, to the west, to its borders, to its restive national groups.’ So I applied at the government-run housing bureau for a job as an assistant hairdresser. If the police were trying to find me, I figured the last place they would look is inside the Department of Housing. I’ve been working for a kind woman, Ekaterina Kirova. When she can, she gets me extra work on the side. Her husband found me this place and arranged for Yelena to be enrolled in a state school. As you recommended, she is registered under her own name.”

  Taking Yelena in his arms, Razan held her fast, kissing her head. He knew how scared she must feel, even though on the train, he had repeatedly explained, in whispers, why she had to stay in Petrozavodsk, and how important it was that she not draw attention to herself and keep her own counsel.

  To make her less apprehensive, he said to Yuri, “I’m sure that you could do wonders with Yelena’s thick locks.”

  Seeing Yelena’s unease, Yuri gallantly bowed. “Your Highness, whenever you want your hair done, I am at your beck and call.”

  The barber stayed but a few hours, long enough to persuade himself that Yuri would gently care for Yelena. Clearly, Dimitri and Yuri were lovers. Before leaving, Razan asked the former hairdresser whether he knew of their intent to cross the border to Finland.