Stalin's Barber

by Paul M. Levitt

  The next day, she deceitfully told Monty how great had been her pleasure, and she asked him to help bring Gregori back from Anzer Island to work in her section. Imagining nights of bliss, Monty persuaded the chief warden to do as Anna had asked. Gregori’s first attempted crossing failed; the winds drove the boat onto the rocks, and he had to wade ashore through the freezing water. It was not until several days later that Anna’s bearded son stood before her looking like an old man, with his lined face and bloodshot eyes and gray hair. After Monty left the room, she embraced Gregori and wept, running her fingers gently over every crease in his face.

  “At least,” she said, “you’re still alive.”

  He kissed his mother’s forehead and took her hands in his. “One of the founders of this evil camp said, ‘We have to squeeze everything out of a prisoner in the first three months—after that, we don’t need him any longer.’ You see the result.”

  “But you proved him wrong,” she said kissing his eyes.

  “Because of God’s goodness.”

  Anna failed to reply. Although steeped in the Bible since childhood, she was inclined of late to think like Razan and nearly said, “Where was God in the first instance, when they were turning this religious retreat into a ravening death camp?”

  At Anna’s suggestion, Gregori requested a transfer from the infirmary, where he briefly served under the watchful eyes of doctors and nurses, to the cemetery crew. The dead, his mother had told him, are less inclined to inform. Equally important, winter burials were virtually impossible in the frozen ground. So the crews did little except stack cadavers in pits and pilfer their belongings. It was this fact that inspired Anna to jettison her previous plan for escape and to embrace a new one. Knowing not to trust anyone, not even her son, she kept her ideas to herself. She smiled at the thought that Solovki had led her to a perfect definition of hell: a place of complete and total silence, devoid of the human voice, because words can always be used against one. The famous biblical passage from Mark came to mind: “For what shall it profit a man, if he should gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” And what precisely did informers gain? A morsel of food or a piece of blanket that kept them alive long enough for their jailers to exact a few more hours of labor? In the end, one person would turn in another for an additional bowl of balanda, prisoner’s soup, called “Dark Eyes” and made of foul-smelling salted fish. Or perhaps the soup that day was “Mary Demchenko,” concocted of rotten beets. Or maybe the extra ration was a “pie,” a small piece of black moldy bread. Any old scrap would do.

  Understandably, the importance of food to a prisoner could not be overvalued, nor the power of bribes; but what Anna quickly learned was that the jailers, especially the criminal ones, valued more than money the telling of fabulous tales. At Solovki and the other so-called special purpose camps, storytelling had saved more prisoners from death than had rubles, which the jailers could steal whenever they chose. A well-fashioned tale, replete with exotic embellishments about faraway lands, peopled by magicians and maidens, silk merchants and emirs, flew their ready imaginations from the prison to the tents of Turkey and the jewels of Jerusalem. Once a prisoner had earned a reputation as a gifted storyteller, instead of his being cursed and beaten as a counterrevolutionary, he could expect a hot biscuit.

  Since her arrival, Anna had heard that the old Solovki Theatre, disbanded in 1929, had once occupied the vestry of the Assumption Cathedral, and that the space was currently the province of criminals and non-politicals who used it for storytelling. One evening on her way back from work, as she crunched her way through the snow and sea-scented air, she detoured into the vestry. A man was just finishing a ghoulish tale. She paused, not intending to stay.

  “Having agreed on their plan of escape, the two men lined up the food, asking a third man, a young one, to join them. After traveling through the woods for a day and a half, they made a shelter from tree bows, dug a pit, and lit a small fire. The innocent, new to the camps, had no idea what was in store for him. Apparently, he’d never heard the old rhyme:

  Above the 65th anything goes,

  Especially torsos, legs, arms, and toes.

  Above that cold, bleak, frozen parallel,

  Hunger leads to cannibalism and hell.

  “The dupe asked when they were going to eat—and what. The other two men looked at each other. Now was the moment. Seizing the dumb ox, they slit his throat and cannibalized him. But they made one mistake. After eating their fill, they cut off the remaining pieces of flesh and stored them in their knapsacks. Caught the next day, the two men had hoped to escape the firing squad, but when human flesh was found in their packs, they were executed on the spot for cannibalism most foul.”

  The storyteller then asked a man in the audience, named Loktev, to accompany him. A ragged simpleton, who looked disconcertingly like Nicholas II, shuffled forward with an accordion and said, “Be brave, Russian people. God is merciful.” Then he pounded out a tune, while the storyteller hoarsely sang,

  “Uncle Vania played the squeezebox;

  On the squeezebox he liked to play;

  Once he played it in No-Man’s zone,

  And right away they did him slay.”

  The storyteller repeated his refrain, and the two men returned to their seats.

  Instead of applause, the performance was met with silence, as the prisoners reflected on the truth of what they had just heard. Anna interrupted. She rose and asked for permission to tell a story. If she could win over these people, she could escape all the more easily. But no one in the vestry could ever remember a woman storyteller. The pachan in charge, surprised by her daring, said that the theatre was the preserve of the non-politicals, and that she was not welcome. But the women in the audience insisted Anna be heard and ushered her to the modest stage, where she told the following folktale in a resonant voice, enriched by a colorful diction:

  In old Calcutta, a haunted princess lay dying in her bed. Each hour, her condition worsened. Her father, a rajah, wearing a crown encrusted with rubies and diamonds and pearls, offered his daughter’s hand in marriage to the man who could deliver her from death. Abhay, a young apothecary of humble origins, came to the rajah’s fabulous palace, with its Turkish rugs and crystal chandeliers, and volunteered to save the beautiful princess, Ashavari.

  “You come from a lower class,” said the rajah.

  “But I know the herbal secrets of the highest caste.”

  “Do you not fear death?”

  “As much as any man, but from the rumors that I’ve heard, I think your daughter is suffering the poisonous effects of visitations from an evil source.”

  “But how would such a person find entry in my house?” asked the rajah. “I keep all the windows and the doors securely locked.”

  “And the cellar?”

  “The crypt can be reached only from inside the palace. It holds the caskets of our noble ancestors and trunks of ancient finery.”

  The young man begged permission to enter the vault. He made his way with a lantern down the marble stairs. At the bottom lay the acquisitions of several lifetimes. Lifting the lids of eleven leather trunks, he saw garments made from silks and satin, bolts of Egyptian cotton, rolls of pure white linen, and lengths of English lace. “Nothing here,” he said, and closed the lids. Then he came upon the caskets, seven, eight, nine of them, all with silver lids. One arrested his attention because of its enormous size, thirty feet around at least. It stood apart, close to a granite stone in the floor fitted with a ring. He raised the casket lid and saw an enormous head, resting on a satin pillow, severed from its rotting body. It spoke to him mysteriously. “We were once brothers in arms. But his ambition drove him to madness. He could find pleasure only in death, so he set his mind on poisoning the world.”

  “Even Princess Ashavari?” asked the young man.

  “Yes, I am her cousin. When she refused to marry me, I joined forces with the murderer, but quickly saw the error of my ways. When I disagreed with him,
he stole up behind me with a scimitar and cut off my head. He enters the palace from beneath that granite stone.”

  From the unquiet head, Abhay learned that the murderer, a dwarf, limped and sported a black mustache that hung to his waist. His hiding place, an ancient sewer, ran from Calcutta to Georgia.

  “Each night, when he emerges, he steals to the princess’s bedroom and removes from his purse a vial with a toxic dust. Then he reaches his arm round the door and shakes the vial. Ashavari,” he said, “is slowly dying from the poisoned air.”

  Abhay promised to protect her, for he knew about toxins and poisons, both of which he used in his work.

  The disembodied head closed its eyes, and Abhay shut the lid. Returning to the rajah’s sitting room, he told the sorrowing father that he could cure his daughter by hiding behind her bedroom door, but that he would need a blade sharp enough to split a hair. The rajah objected to a single man entering Ashavari’s room but at last agreed and gave him a weapon forged by a famous sword maker in Damascus.

  That night, Abhay took up his post and closed his eyes not even once. Exactly at midnight, the door opened. An arm reached into the room, a stunted arm. Abhay raised his scimitar and, just as the arm was about to sprinkle its vile dust, cut it off near the neck. The man howled like a dog and fled, leaving his arm and his vial with its poisons behind. The man’s screams awakened the entire palace. Showing no fright, the servants were drawn to the cries, and the rajah, finding his daughter safe, was joyfully speechless.

  “If you wish,” said Abhay, “I will show you Death,” and he held aloft the severed arm with the hand still grasping the vial. “The fiend will not come again, and your daughter will soon recover. I know the antidote for this poisoned dust.”

  Just as Abhay had predicted, the fiend had forever fled from this innocent house and, when scented summer flowers bloomed and golden bells sounded from the palace belfry, all of Calcutta knew that Abhay and the Princess Ashavari were wed.

  So pleased was Comrade Monty Vessalikovski by the applause Anna received—for he had been seated in the back row, keeping an eye on the thieves and pimps and murderers—that he acceded to the criminals’ wishes that one of the authors among the remaining prisoners write a comedy to mark the end of their stay in Solovki. Monty, seeing no harm in the request, agreed. What he didn’t say was that since his superiors liked to laugh, he could ingratiate himself with Trubetskoi and Ponomarev, and earn a promotion.

  “After all,” he told Ya Mazarov, the author, “we will be leaving the islands shortly. The least we can do is have a final chuckle. You needn’t worry about me looking over your shoulder, though I do expect to be acknowledged as the impresario. One thing: Be sure to make the skit humorous at the expense of the enemies of the people.”

  Mazarov, an intellectual, a writer, and a director, had in 1917 devoted his professional life to the propaganda brigades: the freight cars reconfigured as miniature theatres that brought didactic plays to the railroad sidings of distant provinces in the service of teaching the unlettered how to behave in a socialist Utopia. He had aged considerably since his confinement at Solovki and was plagued by ugly boils. His crime? He had, by earning the affection of the actors, vexed the unpopular commissar in charge of his brigade. In addition, he had written, without formal permission, a booklet on the most effective ways to bring literacy to adult populations. The apparat regarded the pamphlet as lacking in Bolshevik orthodoxy. Ever since the first days of his exile, first at Kolyma and now at Solovki, resentment had raged in his breast. In light of the proposed evacuation, he decided not to pinch caution. But to protest the inhumanity of the camps proved daunting. How would other writers have reacted? Most, he decided, would have written drivel, though some would have died rather than compromise their dignity by praising the camps and the Politburo. He wanted to bear witness and write words that would tell the truth, not lies. For years, he had been prohibited from writing. Now was his chance, undoubtedly his last. Tovarishch Vessalikovski had selected him to write a skit. But who would perform it? The formal closing of the theatre in 1929 had been accompanied by a night of slaughter, in which the camp guards had shot hundreds of intellectuals and artists, including the few actors still at hand. Ya Mazarov would write his masterpiece, and go out in a blaze of bawdy.

  Anna Shtuba found herself involved not because she had anything artistic to contribute but because Monty had commissioned the skit while she was bending over the debit-and-credit columns trying to disguise the many false entries resulting from tufta. He had told her to assist Mazarov in any way that she could. When Monty, full of smiles, had left, Ya Mazarov pulled up a chair and said, “I was present during your recital of the sick princess. You are to be congratulated on your storytelling abilities.”

  Although pleased to be praised, Anna arched her back and leaned away from Ya, who reeked of stale tobacco.

  “I need three people,” he said, “prisoners who can fathom a satire and also keep their own counsel. Any recommendations?”

  After Ya had left, Anna weighed his needs and saw that although a number of prisoners could meet the first, hardly a soul could meet the second. A few days later, Mazarov, puffing on an evil-smelling, hand-rolled cigarette stuffed with dried seaweed, asked her to type the first draft of his skit.

  She read the manuscript that same night and couldn’t sleep, troubled by the thought that she was privy to an anti-Soviet parody. If she failed to notify the authorities and, in particular, Monty, she would almost certainly be punished and Vessalikovski shot. As much as she desired the latter, she wanted no part of the former. But how was she to proceed? To tell Monty about the skit would condemn Ya Mazarov, whom she admired for exhibiting the courage to write it. Perhaps the actors would refuse to read it aloud or the authorities would conveniently intervene. Mazarov, she decided, was suicidal, and she would plead that having been ordered by Comrade Vessalikovski to assist Mazarov, she had no choice but to obey.

  When Mazarov came to her office for the script and the copies, she asked him to step outside. Throwing a coat over her shoulders, she followed him into the cold. Shouting into the wind, she said, “Why did you write it? You have endangered your life.”

  “I will tell you,” said Mazarov. “We prisoners are like dogs. You can intimidate a dog, to a point. But if the dog has a need to growl, nothing will stop him, not even beatings. The same is true of the Russians. You can cow them into obedience, but eventually they will resist. This is my way of growling. Grrr!”

  * * *

  Anna decided that the night of the performance would start the countdown toward escape. From Monty, she had obtained enough smoked meats to sustain her on a long journey; from Gregori’s stripping of the dead, she had collected threadbare jackets and boots, which she unstitched and then reconstructed, fortified with adequate padding. If they ran out of supplies, they would have to use her few savings to buy from the peasants. In the days leading up to the performance, she suffered Monty’s repeated sexual assaults to gain additional rations, such as a loaf of bread and a sausage. But with each violation, her pity for Monty eroded. She would be merciless.

  When the evening of the performance arrived, Tovarishch Vessalikovski entered the vestry in the company of all the high camp officials, including Commandant Trubetskoi and Chief Warden Ponomarev. Monty wore his finest clothes and, with his boots shining and his chest festooned with tin badges extolling Communist glories, he glowed like a tinseled Christmas tree. Everyone stood as the camp masters took their seats in the first row; then Monty bustled about to see that all the stage props Mazarov had requested were in place.

  Coarse candles, made especially for the occasion, lit the room, and the guttering wax exuded an oily smell that reminded Anna of those cheap churchmen who used to sell their good tapers and replace them with cheap ones. The flickering shadows on the wall brought to mind shadow puppets, which she had once seen in a traveling show. At the front of the vestry stood an open ladder with a piece of wood projecting from th
e top. At the end of it hung a puppet, manned by a zek perched on the ladder. A short distance away stood two empty chairs, facing each other. Monty returned and approvingly looked at the full house.

  Mazarov strode down the aisle, positioned himself in front of the audience, and said, “Our skit, commissioned by Comrade Vessalikovski is called “The Truth Puppet.” I beg your imaginative indulgence to think of this space”—he gestured to the area behind him—“as the interior of Comrade Stalin’s Kremlin office. The doll hanging from the wooden arm we are calling a Truth Puppet.”

  This was the cue for two criminal zeks to enter and sit in the empty chairs. Each carried a script that Anna, having no carbon paper, had typed from first to last. At once, she realized Mazarov’s strategy. By inducing criminals to act in the skit, he had radically reduced the chances of their being shot. The criminal zeks rarely feared official punishment, since they composed the majority of guards, behaved the most ruthlessly, and ran their own government within the camp. Mazarov stood up.

  “The two men facing each other are the late, unlamented Yagoda and our Infallible Leader, the bringer of happiness and prosperity. We trust his mustache does him justice. Yagoda cannot see the Truth Puppet because it hangs behind his chair. Now for our skit.”

  Bowing, Mazarov took a seat in the front row.

  STL: You seem worried this evening, my friend. What is it, Genrikh?

  YAG: Well, to tell the truth, I am worried about my assistant, Beria.

  STL: He isn’t ill?