Stalin's Barber

by Paul M. Levitt

  Baring his bad teeth, Stalin smiled coldly. “But in this case, for reasons of security, I can say only that she painted the wrong man, and that the people might have formed erroneous impressions about the face of their Vozhd. You can imagine what a problem that would have caused among the superstitious and the unschooled.”

  Razan boldly hazarded, “Are you saying that she based her painting on a photograph of a decoy?”

  “I hate disingenuousness, Razan, though you Jews are famous for it. The people should always have before them the face of the real Stalin, not the mustache of an impersonator.” He sipped his tea and brandy. “There, I’ve told you! By the way, Dimitri should never have talked to Serjee. The poor man took fright and poisoned himself.” Stalin reached for the brandy and, ignoring the spoon, poured a hefty draft into the tea. “If you are wondering why we let Dimitri live, it’s because he was useful to us as a domestic spy.”

  “Is that how you learned about Yelena’s painting?”

  “Razan, think! Every buyer was a potential denouncer. And when the state offers rewards, we always have more than enough takers.”

  “In that case, your denouncers have been duped. The original painting celebrates the mustache, as you said, of an impersonator.”

  “If you wish to provoke me, you are too late.” He sipped. “What concerned me equally was that your wife was behaving like a nepman and a purveyor of religious relics. She sold the paintings on the pretext that they were the equal of icons. You know I condemn religion; relics are what remain behind of the dead. I rather be adored in life than in death.”

  Stalin pressed a button on the arm of his chair that told the projectionist to increase the background sound. The barber smiled; the louder the sound the less chance of Stalin being heard. The Supreme Leader reinforced his tea with brandy, and turned to Razan.

  “You seem lost in thought.”

  “I was told that when you changed your mind about collectives and decided to force them on farmers, Eisenstein had to alter his film. Do you ever regret your decision?”

  Stalin answered brusquely. “Not about the farmers or the film!”

  Given his danger, Razan chose to follow Anna’s advice and shower Koba with flattery, his requisite oxygen. “I meant no insult. Quite the reverse. I think your decision has proved prophetic.” He would have continued with the encomia, but he suddenly felt ill. His head swam, and his stomach screamed with pain. An instant later, he guessed the tea had been laced with poison, a favorite Soviet form of death. If Razan hoped to achieve what he had set out to do, he would have to act now, before he died or was paralyzed.

  “It has,” Stalin continued, “made possible the advances in our country and its modernization. One day, people will look back and say, ‘The Vozhd had it right. Individual ownership promotes greed. Cooperation is the necessary first step to a perfect society.’”

  Stalin relaxed and shifted his position. Now fully facing the screen, he pointed and began commenting on the forthcoming scene, in which, a state agricultural officer addresses a village meeting and urges the peasants to form a collective. So intent was Stalin on prefiguring this scene and succeeding ones, he forgot that the projectionist would have to change reels. With the theatre plunged into darkness, Stalin continued to describe the coming events and failed to see the ones nearest at hand. As Razan reached for his razor, the fire in his gut exploded and his tongue bulged like an inflated toad. All he could think of was how to assuage the burning coals in his belly. Then came a shortness of breath that he couldn’t relieve even with quick inhalations. He wished for a blast of cold air to sweep clean his intestines. If he could have reached down his throat and pulled the slimy snakes out through his mouth, he would have done so—anything to stop the burning. At that moment, he knew for sure that he had been poisoned and would shortly die.

  Stalin never once glanced at him, nor did the soldier who had poured his tea and honey, the very person who had obviously poisoned him on orders from the death lover. Razan’s hands swelled and a fever quickly engulfed his face. In a few seconds, he felt so hot that he wanted to tear off his skin and wished for an ice bath to cool the oven in his forehead and cheeks. His gums bled; his eyes oozed; his nose ran; his saliva felt like lava. He couldn’t move his tongue; it felt paralyzed and inflated by pus. He squeezed it, but no infection issued forth. Convinced he would die in the next few moments, he willed himself to remove the razor from his pocket. But he couldn’t control his hand because he’d suddenly been struck with chills. His body shivered and teeth clicked. With his left hand, he tried to stop the palsy of his right hand. What use was his razor now? His bowel screamed that it needed evacuation; otherwise he would defecate in his trousers. His sphincter muscle seemed to have quit working. He could feel diarrhea seeping out of his anus and staining his pants. If he could, he had to escape the cinema; but he refused to leave until he had completed his mission.

  When he felt the awful need to vomit, he clenched his teeth, rose unsteadily, and slipped in behind the Vozhd. With all his remaining strength, he steadied his shaking hand, swiftly jerked the Vozhd’s chin up and back, and drew the razor across Stalin’s throat, jaggedly slicing through the bony trachea and the esophagus, and cutting both carotid arteries and the jugular vein. To force the bleeding wound closed and to make it look as if Koba had dozed off, he shoved Stalin’s head downward and pulled up his collar. Before the projectionist relit the screen with the next parts of the film, Razan staggered out the door and, fully expecting the guards to give chase, fled not outdoors, but indoors, into an office closed for the evening, Ivan Fursei’s, one of the few with a private lavatory. He dropped his soiled pants, and, while defecating into a white porcelain toilet, puked on the floor. To expel the bane of the poisoner, he forced his fingers down his throat, gagged and vomited repeatedly, until a river of green slime seemed to issue from every orifice.

  Minutes passed. Where were the guards? Why hadn’t he heard the tramp of boots and alarms? Surely, the security officials, after failing to locate him on the Kremlin grounds, would be checking the offices. But no one entered. When he felt strong enough to wobble down the hall, he stood, bent at the waist like all the subservient janitors glad to have a plum job in the Kremlin, and made for the west wing—the royal apartments—where he threw up again and secreted himself in a cedar-lined armoire. His original plan had been to remain in the palace until Koba’s Myrmidons had left, and then exit the building by one of the tunnels that ran under the palace to the other side of the river, an escape route that the Tsar’s courtiers used after their assignations in the royal suites.

  Before crawling into the armoire, he noticed a faded fresco: Christ raising Lazarus. Two days later, when he awoke from a comalike sleep tortured by the garish dreams that visit the ill, he barely found the strength to climb out of the wardrobe and stand. It was dark outside, night. Ravenously hungry, he knew of only one place to find nourishment—in the cinema. Even if he had to gorge on candies, sugar was better than nothing.

  In his lightheaded state, he shuffled to the cinema, wondering about the absence of bells tolling for the dead Vozhd and about the palace’s empty halls. Perhaps at this moment, a government funeral was taking place in Red Square with all the Kremlin officials attending. Outside the cinema, he sunk to his knees from weakness. In this position, he saw no light under the door and pressed his ear to the space. A second later, he heard the humming sound of a projector—or was it a buzzing in his head? Persuaded that Stalin’s funeral was in process, he wondered who would dare at this moment to watch a film. If the projectionist, Aleksandr Ganshin, was in Red Square for the speeches, who was running the camera?

  Hand over hand, Razan climbed the steps to the projection room and quietly entered. Ganshin, to Razan’s shock, was staring out the glass window at the screen and chuckling. The barber crept in behind the large projector and sat on the floor. Ganshin would have found it difficult to spot him because he was wedged up against the wall between the camera and
a stack of reels. From this position, Razan could barely hear the soundtrack. Although curious to know who was sitting in the theatre, he’d have to wait until the film ended and Ganshin, who liked to snack, left the booth. Was it a mirage or did Razan actually see a cup resting on a chair, and an uneaten biscuit? Bewildered, he kept coming back to the question: What functionary would be watching a film during Stalin’s funeral? It would take a brave person—of any rank or relationship—to be in the cinema now. Unless . . . unless Stalin had been buried the day before and Ganshin was now showing footage of the event. But if so, why was he chuckling? Perhaps, in the safety of the booth, he felt free to laugh about the man who had made his life a misery, not just owing to Koba’s whims, but also to Svetlana’s, she who famously made demands upon her father, particularly in the matter of his arranging with the jovial Aleksandr Ganshin to show whatever movies struck her fancy.

  In his cramped, airless position, he began to feel nauseous. He would have to stand, even if it meant risking his safety. Rising on wobbly legs and steadying himself with one hand against the wall, he could glimpse the screen, but not the audience. Tarzan was swinging from a vine through the jungle and bellowing for Jane. A favorite of Stalin’s, Tarzan made the Supreme Leader think that through force of personality, strength, and the right words—the knowledge of how to speak to the unruly and illiterate peasants—he could gain majesty over Russia, just as Tarzan had become king of the jungle.

  Suddenly, Razan remembered his neighbor’s comment about cinematocracy: that Stalin seemed to find more political wisdom in Tarzan, dressed in a loin cloth, thumping his chest, and summoning the forest animals with his cries, than in the ideas of Marx and Lenin. But when the old theories failed, as they so often did, Stalin tinkered with them instead of reaching for new and better ideas. Originality and inventiveness meant taking chances, perhaps even temporarily loosening his grip on the reins of power. He had, in short, no blueprint to overhaul the country, one that would enable him to change in midcourse in the face of disaster. It was not that he lacked discipline; he was an efficient killing machine. Each day, he composed lists of the condemned, only occasionally granting a petitioner a reprieve for his or her abject abasement. His taste for blood was insatiable, but not owing to the logic of revenge, though he could spout Marxist doctrine on that subject for hours. The reservoir of his life was fed by the springs of personal bitterness and impotent religious hatred. He could suppress the Orthodox Church and all the other faiths in which people put their trust, but he could not extirpate them from the human heart. The thrall of other theologies, inculcated long before he came to power, had forged stronger chains than his hatred for seminaries and prying priests.

  When Stalin asked himself the question that he knew others around the world were asking—to what end are you sacrificing family, friends, relatives, neighbors, the goodwill of nations, your health, your sanity?—he always had the same answer: the welfare of the proletariat. And yet, when his beloved people acted as individuals, aspiring to a better life, he suppressed them with accusations about conspirators, wreckers, spies, saboteurs, and anarchists. In the most corrupted moral terms—equating goodness and stability, justice and denouncements—he promulgated draconian decrees, spouted bromides about the happy country, and promised that paradise lay just around the corner. But millions, though not all, could see through the slogans and the Communist jargon to the poverty of thought below.

  At the conclusion of the film, Ganshin took his cup and went downstairs. Razan ate the biscuit and watched, as the minister of culture poured himself tea with a splash of brandy and reached for a chocolate. Letting his gaze roam over the audience, Razan could see who was present: Zhdanov, Kaganovich, Molotov, Mikoyan, Khrushchev, Beria, Malenkov, and . . . he rubbed his bloody eyes certain they were wrong. What he thought he saw was a robust, chuckling Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. Although he could make out only the back of the man, he knew the contours of the head, the gestures, the voice, the laugh, the uniform, and the authority he exuded. Admittedly, the man he had barbered for years had mastered the same characteristics, but Razan felt certain he’d killed the real Vozhd. Why, then, did he not hear the Kremlin bells, sirens, alarms, and a call for a day, a week, a month of national mourning? If Razan had identified the man below correctly, the man who had ruled Russia since 1929, then the Court of the Red Tsar had closed ranks and decided that in light of the numerous threats the country faced, Koba’s death would have to be kept from the people and treated as a state secret, in which case a decoy would serve as a figurehead, and the country would be ruled by a Troika: Khrushchev, Malenkov, and either Molotov or Beria. No, Razan must be hallucinating. Such a decision would be more brazen than the shooting of Tsar Nicholas Alexandrovich Romanov, the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, and the children. Besides, if the real Stalin were dead, why were the men below so serene? Did their smiles reflect their delight that the barber had slit Koba’s throat? Beria was standing in front of his colleagues, his palm outstretched, as if imploring them. Razan turned on the speaker in the projection booth and listened.

  “If I may be so bold, Supreme Leader, I advise that we say nothing of this security breach and immediately elevate another decoy, one who will be as current as the former, right down to watching your favorite films and reading history.” Beria nodded toward Stalin, a clear invitation to respond.

  “Comrades,” said Stalin, turning to the others and partially revealing his profile, “I want all the traitors connected with this heinous plot exterminated. Now you see that what I have been saying about our being everywhere besieged by enemies is true. Our beloved Russia is assailed on all sides by vipers who would have us believe that one party member is as good—or as bad—as any other. But the government is not a stock market or the law of the jungle. Just as Tarzan rules his domain, the Politburo is the holy of holies of the working class. It must not therefore be confused with a stock market, in which you bet on one group or another. As Leninists, our mutual relations must be built on trust, and must be as clean and pure as crystal. These words I have read a thousand times in Lenin’s writing. There should be no room in our ranks for conspiracy and intrigue; no room for factionalism. Lest the people hear of this outrage and lose confidence in our leadership, let us, as Comrade Beria advises, conduct ourselves as before. Until one of the remaining doubles can be fully trained, I shall remain out of sight.”

  Stalin’s apparatchiks congratulated him heartily.

  For all that this man had said, for all that he had spoken like Stalin, Razan still believed that he had killed the real Vozhd, and that the apparatchiks around him were now playacting. But to what end? For his own mental health, he reasoned that the man who had just spoken to his henchmen was a decoy. If only Razan could explain the charade, he might be able to stop shaking. Had he put too much trust in Koba’s remembering the Gusinski episode? Decoys, as he had feared, could always be taught the smallest details. Razan had even heard that some people could read a book once and remember every word in it. What if Stalin’s doubles had such photographic memories? No, Stalin was dead!

  * * *

  A hunched man, prematurely aged and wrinkled by illness, left the Kremlin through the courtiers’ tunnel and emerged on the other side of the river. Unable to walk any distance, he hailed a taxi and fell into the backseat, but not before stuffing a handful of rubles into the cabby’s hand. Through the rearview mirror, the driver could see that Razan was near death.

  “I know an unlicensed doctor,” said the cabby, “a Jew struck from the official list for some religious reason. If you have no objections, I can take you to him.”

  Razan shook his head yes.

  The doctor’s office was a wretched train car in a fetid alley, behind a block of apartments. Razan waited while the cabby knocked on the door. A slightly stooped man, with a white mane of hair and binocular glasses, led them inside. The car was divided by curtains into three parts: for living, eating, and working. The privy stood outside, in a shed. �
��I’ve been poisoned,” said Razan. With one glance, Dr. Shapira agreed. Asking no questions, he helped Razan to a cot and went right to work, administering a combination of medicinal and herbal purges. A bucket stood at the ready. Within minutes, Razan started to vomit. After the last two days, he thought that he had nothing more to disgorge. But he discharged the same hateful green bilious liquid. The doctor forced him to drink some bitter red fluid, followed by several glasses of near-boiling water. A sedative put Razan to sleep for several hours.

  When he awoke, he could hear Dr. Shapira behind the curtain talking to another patient about an infected sore. Razan deduced from the advice the doctor dispensed that he was a capable physician. When Razan had a chance to observe the man’s appearance and dress, he saw that Dr. Shapira had full lips, a prominent gold tooth, and cheeks marked by deep ravines. His watery blue eyes radiated sadness, as if they had resided for too long in the house of suffering. Although the physician looked older, his taut, smooth neck muscles, suggested he was no more than fifty. His hands moved with the practiced skill of a pianist’s, as he raised Razan’s eyelids, felt his stomach, tapped on his chest, and tested the nerves in his extremities.

  “You’ll live,” said Dr. Shapira, “but not as before. You’ll never sit down to a full meal again. I have no doubt your stomach is scarred, which will mean eating small portions several times a day.”

  Rocking back and forth, Razan resembled the flickering candle that Jewish supplicants imitate. His persistent hope, of course, was that the candle remained lit. Before he died, he felt compelled to tell his family what he had witnessed. Thanking the doctor for his help, Razan asked him about his own situation.

  “It’s really quite simple. I used to have a thriving practice in Moscow among Jews and Gentiles alike. But when the Soviets found out that I was an observant Jew, they put me on the forbidden list and told all my patients to find a different physician or suffer official displeasure. What does ‘official displeasure’ mean? Loss of job, apartment, passport, ration card? You tell me.”