Each night, they slept at cabins similar to the first, havens of smugglers and thieves. On the last day of their journey, they stopped shy of Sortavala. The sound of distant guns and the smell of cordite gave Razan pause. Perhaps they should stay outside the city. Through the trees, he could just barely make out what looked like a bunker, half buried in the ground. Pekka suggested that it might be a good place to spend the night. When they left the sleigh, the snowdrifts reached Yelena’s waist. The structure was a massive multilayered blockhouse, elaborately fortified with logs. Razan guessed that it was part of a line of bunkers called the Mannerheim Line and had been constructed at this point for a good reason: Sortavala was within striking distance.
The exiles hunkered down in the shelter unable to sleep, while shells screeched overhead. A few fell near them, but caused no damage. All night the guns thundered. Toward morning, as a single plane flew low overhead and strafed the area, five Finnish soldiers burst into the bunker and leveled their rifles. Pekka immediately explained the situation. The head of the Finnish patrol asked about the man slumped in the corner: Yuri. One of the plane’s bullets had tragically found its way into the bunker, splintered, and hit Yuri in the forehead. A slow trickle of blood ran from his wound, between his eyes, down the bridge of his nose, and into his open mouth. Yelena screamed. A soldier kneeled next to the hairdresser and felt his pulse. Yuri was dead. The same soldier sadly remarked that the frozen ground would not permit a proper burial. Yuri would just have to lie in the dark woods, carrion for crows.
Unable to bear the thought, Yelena begged that they make some effort to bury him. In deference to the child, the Finnish soldiers detonated an explosive in the woods that left a small ground crater, and helped lay Yuri to rest. While Yelena and Pekka whispered their own religious words, Razan mumbled Kaddish, “Yisgadal v’yiskadash sh’mayh rabo.”
Yelena found a large stone that she placed at the head of the grave and wrote a note that she placed under the stone. “Yuri Suzdal was a kind man, a good man. If you find him in summer, please dig him a proper grave. He deserves to lie in peace.”
Once the Finnish soldiers returned to the bunker, leaving Yelena and Razan alone, she asked him to help her build a Golem next to the grave. He had often told her the story of a giant molded from mud. In the unquiet forest, with shells whistling overhead and trees thrashing the air as if trying to erase the obscene graffiti of war, Razan feared that any prolonged stay in the woods would increase their danger; but she insisted, reminding him that it was he who told her about the Golem’s protective powers. Reluctantly, he agreed and helped her roll a snowball into a larger one, then a second, and a third. She stacked one on top of the other, until she was satisfied that the figure stood at least seven feet tall. Employing her artistic skills and Razan’s penknife, she cut a piece of ice from the hardened roadway and sculpted a face that unmistakably resembled Yuri’s. When she had finished, an imposing Golem stood facing south, the direction from which the forward Russian scouting party would be making its way. Declaring her work good, she trudged back to the bunker.
From Kremlin chatter, Razan knew that the Russian military was composed mostly of illiterate men who believed fiercely in the power of myths and omens and superstitions. Now that the Golem was in place, the barber hoped that when the advance party approached and saw this creature with a human face, the soldiers would bolt. The commander, of course, could always order them on pain of death to hold their ground. A few hours later, a single shot rang out, but no other. Razan imagined the course of events outside the bunker. The commander had shot the Golem to prove to his men that they had nothing to fear from a snowman. But the harm had already been done. The report of the gun had announced the arrival of the regiment’s advance guard—and the Finns stood ready. As the Russian soldiers made their way toward the fortification, the Finns opened fire with machine guns and then leaped from the bunker to mop up with pistols. No one doubted that the Finns had guts and grit—sisu—when it came to fighting. The Russians had been able to discharge only a few feeble shots before the Finns killed the stragglers and wounded.
That same night, the guns of Karelia fell mostly silent. The Finnish soldiers, attuned to the rhythm of war, used the lull to retreat. Pekka took the occasion to drive Razan and Yelena to the main checkpoint, situated on the southeast edge of the city, where he had more than once deposited Russian exiles. He chatted with the soldiers for a minute, and, instead of merely declaring Razan and Yelena as escapees, he announced impetuously that they had transit visas, which they then felt compelled to produce. The soldiers asked why the Soviets would allow the barber and his daughter the freedom to travel and ordered them to report to Sergeant Isto at the main refugee headquarters. Pekka, regretting his words, apologized and drove to the building, where he insisted on accompanying them inside to stand witness.
Sergeant Kai Isto studied the transit visas and asked, “Why would the Soviet government allow you to leave the country when they deny transit to most everyone else?”
Razan debated whether to tell him how the documents had been obtained but decided to hold his tongue because the story seemed too improbable. Besides, whatever their source, the documents were valid in every detail. “I was the official Kremlin barber, responsible to Poskrebyshev and Stalin’s inner circle.”
“You shaved Stalin?”
“I don’t know.”
Sergeant Isto looked confused. “Don’t know? If you, the person staring into his face, don’t know, then who does?”
“The secret police. Stalin has doubles.”
The sergeant leaped from his chair and exclaimed, “Is that true?”
“Absolutely.”
“I must call headquarters to tell them. Is there any sure way to tell them apart? We have to be certain whom we are dealing with.”
The desire to blurt out that the real Stalin was dead would have obliged him to explain how he knew, a moment in time that still remained obscure owing to the effect of the poison on his capacity to recall events clearly. “It would be erroneous to say they look exactly alike.” The sergeant listened. “The man who I think is the real Stalin has larger ears and skin craters than the decoy I knew, and dyed hair. Also, worse teeth.”
“You can actually prove that you were the official Kremlin barber?” Before Razan could respond, Sergeant Isto added, “We could use you in Helsinki—right away.”
Pekka, who had known nothing about Razan’s former position, gaped in awe. Finally, he gasped, “I can only tell you this, sergeant, he is a good man, and the child . . . a wonder.”
Kai Isto, a student of languages, said that the general Finnish military staff had heard rumors that the Kremlin barber was a Jew, from Albania. Before he could continue, Razan spoke to him first in Yiddish and then in Albanian.
“To hell with the transit visas, I must get you to Helsinki.”
“And the child?” asked Razan.
The sergeant smiled and said ironically, “If she’s yours, I trust you won’t leave her behind.”
Pekka removed all the bags from his sleigh, shook Razan’s hand, and hugged Yelena. The barber shoved a handful of rubles into Pekka’s hand and muttered, “For all your good work.”
Pekka laughed. “I nearly caused your arrest.” Then he boarded the sleigh and left the same way he had come.
* * *
“Only a fool would fail to exploit a pause in the fighting,” said Anna, as she urged Karkaus to try one more time to move his car and follow the advancing Russian soldiers. But with the wind constantly shifting, as soon as the infantrymen beat a path through the snow, a drift covered it. Karkaus repeatedly backed up and tried to ram his car through the snowdrifts, eventually immobilizing the Model T. He threw up his arms and declared he could drive no farther.
“Disengage the dray,” she said in frustration. “We’ll pull it and leave the car.”
Karkaus and his dray had been long-standing partners. He felt that to break the weld and disconnect the dray woul
d be the same as lopping off a limb or relinquishing his pocketbook. “And the car?” he asked. “Do we just leave it here?”
“No, we free it and pay you your share. Then you don’t have to risk your life in the war zone.” She quoted him a number.
He scoffed. “The goods are worth twice that.”
“You’re the one who’s been selling them at half their value. Now you want to double the price. Let’s not quibble. I’ll split the difference with you.”
Karkaus pulled on his frost-encrusted mustache, stamped his frozen boots on the ground, looked back over his shoulder toward the safe geography behind him, and said, “Done!”
She wet her fingers and, like a greengrocer, counted out the cash. He took a hammer and broke the weld. With some effort, the party turned the car around, and Karkaus disappeared down the road. That he had to be pushed out of numerous snowdrifts on his way south caused him less pain than those who were pulling the dray had to endure. Fashioning harnesses out of rope, Dimitri and Gregori, like horses, pulled it, with Anna and Natasha sitting atop.
Although the dray proceeded slowly, Anna’s business flourished. She sold her goods with remarkable ease and bought others from the soldiers, all too willing to exchange a watch, a fob, a handsome belt buckle, an extra pair of boots, or a uniform taken from a dead comrade. The army mess cook generously stole food from his larder for a turn in bed with Anna. And why would she not accede to his lust? She had witnessed the example of Monty. To survive, all is permitted, with one exception: No one was permitted to touch her daughter. The Russian Army was encamped for nearly a week, unable to make any progress against the Finnish artillery. She had parked the dray behind the cook’s bunker to speed the transfer of food. During this time, Anna and her children made more money than Razan had earned in a year. Eventually, the porcine cook, Mamish, a Circassian, began to exhaust his food supplies, which were slow to arrive. When he had nothing to trade, Anna abandoned his cot. He tried to charm her with stories about his home on the Black Sea, but she wanted material satisfaction not words. From either sexual frustration or a feeling of betrayal, he sought to avenge himself by seducing Natasha, whom he had lured to his bunker one night with the promise of piroshki.
Years later, Anna was still imagining the scene that Natasha described. Lowering her head and ducking into the half-buried bunker, Natasha had said, “They smell divine. How did you manage? Mother told me that you had no more cooking dough.”
“For you, I have.”
Mamish pulled up a chair, and she sat at his small folding table, savoring the food.
“You are not eating?”
“I had just enough left for you.”
“How kind.”
His ragged laugh put her on edge. “In this hellish world, everything has its price.”
“Meaning?”
“You owe me for the piroshki.”
She reached into a pocket of the overalls she had taken to wearing. “How much?”
“A kiss, a hug, and a roll in my rug.”
Natasha paused, threw some rubles on the table, and darted for the door. But just as she opened it and screamed, Mamish, the Circassian, fat of face but fleet of foot, overtook her. The rest of the story, Anna knew all too well. Mamish slammed the door but not before Natasha’s cry was heard by her brothers. Dimitri grabbed his pistol and entered the bunker just as Mamish was tearing her clothes. Putting the pistol to Mamish’s head, he told him to stop. But the foolish cook, now enraged, swung a heavy arm around and caught Dimitri in the face. Dimitri staggered backward. As the cook advanced on him, Dimitri raised the pistol. Mamish stopped. But a second later, as if convinced the man wouldn’t shoot, Mamish threw himself at Dimitri. It took only one shot to the face, and Mamish lay dead at Dimitri’s feet. A minute or two later, Russian soldiers appeared in the bunker. On seeing Natasha disrobed, they averted their eyes as she dressed; then they led Dimitri away. The next morning, the Russian general in charge of the small regiment applied the coup de grâce to the back of Dimitri’s head after three soldiers had served as a firing squad. Anna, needing to be restrained, screamed imprecations.
She blamed herself and took no comfort in the fact that Dimitri had killed the cook. “Mamish was a cur,” she told the general and, ever enterprising, extolled the virtues of her own cooking and volunteered herself as his replacement. The general, who had briefly served in the White Army before changing sides, was not a bad sort and felt sorry the military manual had required him to order her son’s death. In return, he made Anna the head cook for the regiment, and two days later, when the troops were resupplied, he congratulated himself, as he polished off a plate of her pirogies.
“But tell me,” he asked Anna, “what became of your son’s service pistol? One moment, he had the gun in hand, and the next, it was gone. Do you have it? His brother or sister? We can’t seem to find it.”
“I know nothing of pistols and guns and knives and such things. I mind my own business.”
The general let the subject drop because the next day, the ragtag regiment broke their encampment and slowly moved forward under the protection of Russian planes bombing Finnish emplacements. Natasha replaced Dimitri in harness and helped Gregori pull the dray. But two days later, she vanished. Anna thought she must have found a favorite among the men and run off, deserting for Finland. Without Natasha’s help to pull the dray, Anna joined Gregori and took up the harness. Now she had three jobs: pulling the dray, peddling her goods, and cooking for the regiment. One evening, as she was bending over a stew pot, the general came up behind her and gently placed a hand on her shoulder. She immediately thought, “Not again!” But the general had no such intentions. He asked her to sit down; he had something to tell her. She joined him at the very table where Natasha had enjoyed piroshki.
“We have found the pistol,” he said somberly.
“The pistol?” said Anna, who had already forgotten.
“Your son’s.”
“Dimitri’s?”
He slid it across the table. “Yes. I thought you might want to keep it . . . in these perilous times.” He paused. “It was found in the woods by the men who resupplied us. On their way back, they discovered it . . . next to a body.”
“A body?”
“Your daughter’s.”
When Anna awoke, she found herself on a cot in a temporary medical tent, with the gun holstered at her feet. Heavily sedated, she was told she had passed out in the company of the general, who had been tight lipped about the cause and would say only, “It’s a personal matter.” A temporary cook had taken her place, and Gregori was left to haul the dray by himself. Eventually, the regiment had approached Sortavala, where the fighting was fierce. The Russians tried to dig trenches in the frozen ground but finally gave the task up as impossible. Instead, the soldiers felled trees and made rough shelters, one of which housed Anna and Gregori.
And here they stayed, listening to the screaming shells overhead until one day, a soldier in a Finnish uniform burst into their shelter and cried, “We have an opening!” Gregori, thinking the regiment was being overrun by the enemy and their lives were in danger, grabbed his brother’s pistol and killed the man, only to discover a short while later he had shot a Russian spy in a Finnish uniform. Thinking of his brother and certain the same fate awaited him, Gregori panicked and fled into the woods. Anna never saw him again.
* * *
Although the Russian regiment, following orders, retreated, she insisted on staying with her goods. Harnessing the dray to her waist, she slowly pulled it north until she spotted a Finnish patrol that took her and the dray to Sortavala. When questioned about her role in the regiment, she told a heartrending story about the death of her children and insisted that she had only one goal in mind: to escape. Fortunately, one of the officers remarked she was not the first to cross into Finnish territory that day. Anxiously, she asked for details. It was only after the officer made a call to Helsinki that she learned Razan and Yelena had reached safety and were
being housed north of the city, in an area mostly free of Soviet bombs. The officer then ordered her to leave on the next truck for the capital. But she refused. The whole of her inventory, her life goods, she cried, were in the dray.
“It could be a matter of life or death,” said the officer.
“So is my wagon. With it, I can support myself; without it, I have nothing.”
“Your husband is proving useful to the government. He and your daughter are being generously cared for. I urge you to join them.”
“And who will make use of the goods in my dray?”
“The soldiers,” said the officer. “Isn’t that what you’d want?”
Anna felt morally trapped. How could she ask the very people who had saved her husband and daughter to purchase her wares? But on the other hand, she knew their value, and if she could sell them, she would earn, in addition to the many rubles she had stored in her footlocker, Finnish currency, markka and penni. She had nothing to lose by trying her luck; or might she lose the goodwill of the officer and have to haul her wagon by foot to Helsinki? Every cell in her body contained the memory of her childhood poverty, but Razan and Yelena were her wealth.
“Is there no way,” she asked, “to put the dray in the truck?”
“No room.”
“These goods might help relieve the rationing in Helsinki.”
“More so here on the front,” said the officer. “Our men have little in the way of food and money. Just look around.”
Anna could not deny the condition of the ragged Finnish soldiers, so she settled on what she considered a fair compromise: The officer would give her a signed statement, confirming her material losses. All her adult life she had equated money and self-preservation, a not unreasonable nexus, and though she sometimes regretted choosing money over morals, she knew that she was not alone. The Soviets talked a good game about sharing the wealth, but in the countryside, she had noticed that the rich ate and dressed differently from the poor; and in Moscow, some traveled in chauffeured cars, and some walked. Only a fool would voluntarily relinquish his holdings and expect nothing in return. And she was no fool.
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