Hammering his fist on the letter, Grisha sat up, muttering, “No one died? No one died?” Then, staring across the table at the ornate, heavy wardrobe a few feet beyond, he called, “That crazy old man is trying to kill me.”
He stared at the letter in horror as if it were a dagger dripping with his own blood. “Your father has murdered me!” he whispered in stupefied, almost unbelieving outrage.
“Do you hear, Rachel Leah, that madman has killed me. All the way from America, he has put a bullet in my head!” This last he uttered with no small amazement.
“The lunatic has managed to do Stalin’s work for him.”
Grisha felt the final swirl of the carousel gather him in its dizzying spiral. He had the frightening thought that he might not be thrown off but instead sucked toward the center, where he would disappear like a small bug spinning down the drain. Life had more than one surprise! His previous image of destruction—so well understood—suddenly seemed normal, even reasonable. Who was the Krimsker Rebbe to be inflicting such a strange and dreadful fate upon him? An image of the froglike Krimsker Rebbe surfaced. The enigmatic madman was standing with his hands on a long gear controlling the carousel. He threatened to speed it up, spinning it into water. It would drain itself into a central drop and then evaporate altogether. So it wasn’t Stalin: it was the rebbe! At first Grisha laughed at the incredible comparison, but there did seem to be something comparable. The rebbe did exactly what he wanted and didn’t explain himself to anyone. The world, or at least the world of his hasidim, ran after him, almost deifying him and idealizing his every action. Grisha wondered whether anyone abused his father-in-law the way Dmitri Cherbyshev straddled Stalin, and as soon as he thought it, he was flooded with anger and shame.
“I should have shot the bastard! I should have blown the beast’s brains out!” he wailed in despair. “I should have killed him,” he bellowed.
From the depths of the wardrobe, a thin, reedy voice pronounced, “How Father loves God.”
“What?” Grisha asked, for the voice was muffled by the door, and heaven knew what else she had dragged in there with her. There had been a time when she sat buried in books—but since the summer she sat covered with every towel in the apartment. He had tried hiding a few for his personal use, but as if she had a sixth sense, she had unerringly found them.
“What?” he repeated, but he had heard her, and it was just as well, because she wasn’t repeating the remark. She just sat muffled in towels. At night he was often reduced to wiping his hands on his tunic!
“Rachel Leah, I wasn’t talking about your father,” he called to the closed cabinet door. “I was talking about a prisoner in the Lubyanka!”
The words “loves God” faintly reached him. Grisha wondered whether she had heard his explanation, and if so, whether she had understood. It wasn’t very clear to him how much she understood about what he was doing or about Pangolin and his wife when they brought her food.
“Not your father!” he repeated, although not loud enough for her to hear.
Not your father, although he is a lunatic. I’m not too old to learn to fly! I should bring a leather jacket and a scarf and learn to fly! The man must be stark raving mad. And writing to tell me to say “kaddish for the tsar” . . . and calling Stalin “a common joke” was like pulling the trigger.
“How could he?” Grisha whispered aloud, but he knew how he could. The rebbe was mad. Where did he think Grisha was, that he could write such things? Certainly the rebbe knew something of Stalin’s Russia. The rebbe couldn’t be deceived by Bolshevik propaganda. Others, maybe, but not him. Did the rebbe really want to kill him? Was the rebbe really mad?
Grisha picked up the letter. As for the Messiah not having come, the rebbe could not be more correct. Grisha knew all about “the impure fakes and wicked impostors.” Wasn’t Stalin one? Wasn’t Grisha himself one? The rebbe would never know how fortunate he was that his Messiah had not come. Waiting was the best part. Lenin had not been the Messiah; Stalin had not been the Messiah; but what was worse, all of Russia had to pretend they were.
At least the rebbe didn’t pretend to be the Messiah. His father-in-law’s promise of “a new man” frightened Grisha. He had had more than enough of new men for one lifetime. The rebbe was promising a new, private spiritual man, not a social creature dependent on an entire society. Probably the rebbe’s new man was better than Stalin’s—how could he be worse?—but Grisha didn’t feel as though he had the energy to make the acquaintance of any new men, even one he could believe in.
Reb Zelig had died! Grisha’s own father had hired Reb Zelig as the sexton of the synagogue he had built in Krimsk, the Angel of Death. Lenin himself couldn’t have picked a better name for a religious institution. How many years ago? Thirty? No, it would have to be closer to fifty. His father had died in the Angel of Death, and Grisha almost had as well, in that blazing inferno when he had saved the Torah and been awarded the rebbe’s daughter as a prize. Grisha, charred by the fire—fueled by the need for a father? sparked by lust?—lapsed from his Marxism and accepted her. She had trembled beneath his touch. And now? She was mad. Thirty-three years later she sat childless and mad inside Mironov’s armoire. And ironically he, Grisha, too, had been sentenced to die by the Angel of Death after all. Reb Zelig had died, the rebbe wrote in his letter asking Grisha to replace him, and what a letter! “Say kaddish for the tsar”—“sordid Bolsheviks”—Stalin “a common joke!” Why, a neophyte investigator in the Lubyanka could sentence a man to death ten times over for every phrase. Religious conspiracy (“I shall tell you the secret of Rosh Hashanah”), serving the Okhrana (“you can’t forget the uniforms”), conspiracy with a foreign power and planning to escape (“You’re not too old to learn to fly”—what in the world did the rebbe mean by that?). Wittingly or not, the rebbe had sentenced him to death, all right. Mad or sane, it made no difference. The rebbe had killed him, his own son-in-law!
Grisha felt tired and very noble, like an innocent victim, and he felt the need to relieve himself, too. He pushed the letter away and rose from the table. Staggering through the dark, empty apartment—Mironov must have had quite a home before he was shot—Grisha mused that in prerevolutionary times a condemned man was entitled to a last meal, whereas in modern times his own last worldly pleasure was to urinate. So much for the socialism of his youth, he thought as he groped his way through the darkness. He heard the sound of an automobile engine growling in the street below and froze in panic. If the lemur was imaginary, the lion with its sharp claws and teeth was real. Grisha held his breath as the automobile continued down the quiet, curved street. He began to breathe again. What did he care if they went to collect another victim? It wasn’t him.
Still quivering with fear, he didn’t switch on a light. Standing in the dark, he could feel the dampness of the rotten walls. Last winter Rachel Leah had left the sink faucet running one winter day when he had gone to Leningrad, and two rooms had been completely destroyed before he had returned. Who could covet such an apartment? Although he could feel the wet on the wall, he stood unsuccessfully attempting his final leak. The prowling car had paralyzed him. He was thankful that the darkness hid his dry humiliation. Alone with himself and his shame, he realized that the seed of a strange thought was beginning to germinate in the dark, humid room. Before he could articulate it, its inception seemed to unlock his fears, and he began to relieve himself. Quieted, he listened to the sound of the singular stream in the darkness. It was what it was, no more, no less.
Staggering back through Mironov’s rooms, Grisha felt both weighed down and unburdened. The NKVD automobile would come for him, and “they” would take him to his death. Mad or not, it wasn’t the Krimsker Rebbe who was responsible. Grisha didn’t want to admit it, but he realized who “they” were. “They” was really “he,” and “he” was Colonel Hershel Shwartzman, and Colonel Hershel Shwartzman was Grisha himself. He hadn’t been surprised when he had shot the Whites. That was a revolutionary necessity! He ha
d not been pleased, but he was educated about the necessity of eliminating the kulaks. The death of others didn’t frighten him, but he had been stunned into disbelief at his own impending execution. Now he even understood the revolutionary necessity of that. He was no better than the others: the Bukharinists, the left oppositionists, the Mensheviks, the kulaks, the Whites. The whole thing had been murderously wrong from the start. Gasparov had been right in his defiance, and Cherbyshev had been right, too! Stalin is us. We are Stalin. Yes, Stalin was a brute, but he wasn’t the first. Stalin was the product of a necessity, an absolutely unnecessary necessity. There had been no necessity for the revolution. The mad revolution of the carousel would destroy Grisha, too. Neither the Krimsker Rebbe nor his letter would kill him. It wasn’t even Stalin alone, as he would have everyone believe. Grisha himself had been operating the carousel!
Grisha almost hoped to hear the sound of the black Fiat so he would be forced to stop thinking such thoughts, but no purring motor muffled the sound of his weary feet dragging across Mironov’s parquet floors. He knew that he was responsible. The secret was out. The rebbe had told him a secret, too—a secret of creation. Maybe this Jewish secret might have been Grisha’s. No, probably not, but it might have been poor Rachel Leah’s. Who knew what secrets she was guarding in that wardrobe on the night of Rosh Hashanah? All along, he had been sure that he had done her a great favor by not abandoning her when her primitive religious fervor was an insult to progress and a threat to his career. Now he wondered if there was room in the wardrobe for two.
He listened carefully for the telltale sounds of Stalin’s new men in their old car, but he couldn’t detect the rumble of a motor, the hum of a rubber tire, the pop of a car door. Nothing. What was left? Grisha knew.
He circled through the empty rooms until he arrived in the hallway. The barricade at the top of the steps seemed flimsier than ever before and uglier, too. There was no seeking shelter behind its raw, unfinished boards. He collected the brown cloth bag and returned to their room. Like all the others, it, too, was Mironov’s, but at least they lived in this one. He opened the sack and placed the bottle of wine on the table; its brownish red bubbles gurgled up to the top in quick, darting certainty. Methodically he turned to the sideboard for Rachel Leah’s candlesticks. The two knobby silver objects filled his hands with an imposing weight—purposeful, menacing, and dusty. He looked around for a towel or cloth. Finding none, he slowly wiped them with the bottom of his tunic, but their protuberances were covered with leaves in relief, and the dust sought refuge in the crevices and nooks. There was no time for the official NKVD garment to do the job properly. He placed the pair toward the center of the long, large table. On the same grand scale, they graced it handsomely.
In the candle box he searched for tall, new tapers, but because of the numerous power failures, there were only used ones. He chose two almost new candles, although one had dark black smears from a poor wick. It would have to do.
From the drawer he removed the coarse loaves Pangolin had acquired and put them on the simple wooden cutting board near the head of the table. He remembered that they should be covered with a cloth, but he didn’t bother searching for one. They would lie bare. He put the simple bread knife near the loaves. He checked his preparations. Ah yes, he needed something for the wine. Glancing futilely at the sideboard where he had found Rachel Leah’s candlesticks, he remembered that he no longer had his silver kiddush cup. That, too, had been a wedding gift from the rebbe and rebbetzin. What had happened to it? He couldn’t quite remember, but at the time it had seemed insignificant. Hadn’t Rachel Leah stuffed it into his pack when he rode with the Cossacks? Had he given it to a wounded comrade dying of thirst? Had it fallen clanking to the ground as he dashed from a nameless town under enemy fire? Had he traded it for boots? It must have been long ago. He could no longer remember, and he didn’t really want to know. Sometimes forgetting was merciful, but he wished it weren’t so long, long ago.
He took a plain glass tumbler and set it and the bottle next to the bread. Moving a wooden chair from the side where he usually sat, he placed it at the head for himself. At the opposite end of the table, he placed a chair for his wife. It was impossibly distant, but that was the only setting that seemed appropriate for the festal inauguration of the New Year, Rosh Hashanah.
All was ready. No, not quite. After she lit the candles, he would recite the kiddush over the cup of wine, sanctifying the Day of Judgment. On the shelf he found Rachel Leah’s prayer book. This, too, had been a gift to the new bride. Grisha handled it gently; the worn cover and frayed pages seemed to represent their marriage. Unlike the silver candlesticks, the simple book had no dust on it at all. So she used it regularly, even though she surely knew its contents by heart. He placed it near the wine and went to call his wife to their New Year’s table.
Smoothing his tunic, he remembered that his head should be covered. He had no skullcap. Feeling foolish, he put on his NKVD visored cap. He considered turning it around so that the visor pointed backward, but that seemed even more ridiculous. Well, she would understand. He had no choice.
Again he smoothed his tunic and knocked softly on the wardrobe door.
“Rachel Leah, Rachel Leah,” he called gently.
Self-consciously, he cleared his throat and knocked again.
“Rachel Leah, may I open the door?” he asked bashfully.
He received no answer.
“I’m opening the door,” he announced timidly, as if he were invading the Ark of the Law. He pulled gently on the wardrobe door that covered one-fourth of the front of the massive old cabinet. To his surprise, it was perfectly balanced. Offering no resistance, it swung open easily beneath his touch without even so much as a squeak.
The protective mountain of towels, linens, and tablecloths that mysteriously obscured the interior did not surprise him, but the smell did. He recoiled from the rancid odor of sweat tinged with the bite of dried urine and the slight stench of excrement. He fell back a half step, then held his ground. Breathing through his mouth, he respectfully stepped closer to the amorphous heap of colors and cloths, addressing the Sinai of drapery apologetically as an unworthy supplicant.
“Rachel Leah, your father has written sending his blessings. It is Rosh Hashanah, and I have some—No,” he corrected himself, “I was given some kosher wine as a gift. I would like to make kiddush for you.”
He stared into the enigmatic folds that veiled the bride of his youth, but he heard nothing, not even the rustle of cloth. One of lesser faith would have wondered whether she truly dwelled inside, but Grisha knew that beneath the layers of years she sat quiet and rejected, imprisoned by his inattention. Grisha did not, however, wonder whether she sat awaiting his call. He had turned away from her; it would be only fair were she to turn away from him.
“Would you like to come out and light the New Year’s candles?” he invited gently.
He received no response.
“It has been a very long time,” he admitted.
He waited a while and added, “I understand. It has been too long.”
Leaving the cupboard door open, Grisha turned to the box of matches. The long wooden sticks crackled into flame with a precision and energy that surprised him. All else in their home seemed so dark, sluggish and weighed down by decades and decay. But the light exploded as if from another world. Grisha remembered something about a match factory in Krimsk. Wasn’t there a match factory there? But wasn’t Krimsk dark and sluggish? How strangely inappropriate, he thought, but no more so than his lighting the High Holiday candles.
Grisha turned the flaming match to one wick, then the other. The first burned with the steady, even glow that he recalled from his youth, when his mother had waved her arms in silent exhortation, pronouncing the blessing. It was a memory that seemed incredibly distant. He could barely remember Rachel Leah lighting Rosh Hashanah candles at all. Because Grisha felt uncomfortable performing a woman’s function, he didn’t utter the simple blessin
g that he knew he could find in the tattered prayer book. He couldn’t quite admit this discomfort at taking a woman’s role; rather he thought to himself that it would be rude for him to usurp her holy deed in front of her—for he surely felt her presence as if she were seated at the holiday table watching his every motion.
The wick of the second smoke-smeared candle sputtered and seemed to swallow the flame rapaciously. Imperfectly, a thin twisting thread of smoke rose toward the ceiling. It, too, unnerved Grisha, for it seemed to reflect the falseness of his action—even the false state of his soul, although Grisha, of course, didn’t believe in any such thing, did he? How could he? He glanced at the high vaulted ceiling, so far above him that he couldn’t even detect the black smoke smudging it. That was some consolation, though he knew that if the candle burned long enough, it would surely leave a sooty stain.
Standing alone at his place at the head of the table, he carefully leafed through Rachel Leah’s prayer book in search of the blessings that he must recite inaugurating the Day of Judgment. He felt a sense of urgency, for he feared that the frayed edges might crumble in his hands if he continued to cast them about. With relief, he found what he was looking for. The Hebrew text seemed so alien and archaic, with all its little dots and zigzags of vowel sounds swarming above and below and even inside the old-fashioned square letters. Could he still read it? It seemed to call for deciphering more than reading. The first line in large print must be the blessing for wine, one he still knew by heart. The continuation of the blessing of sanctification must certainly begin the same way—“Blessed art Thou, O Lord, King of the Universe.” When Grisha saw that indeed it did, he began to develop the confidence that despite all the years, he could probably make it through if he really concentrated.
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