Stalin’s Barber
Stalin’s
Barber
A Novel
Paul M. Levitt
TAYLOR TRADE PUBLISHING
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Copyright © 2012 by Paul M. Levitt
The poem Stalin’s Mustache copyright 2004 by Ioanna Warwick.
Reprinted by permission of the author. All rights reserved.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Levitt, Paul M.
Stalin’s barber : a novel / Paul M. Levitt.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-58979-771-0 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-58979-772-7 (electronic)
1. Barbers—Russia—Fiction. 2. Albanians—Russia—Fiction. 3. Stalin, Joseph, 1879–1953—Fiction. 4. Soviet Union—History—1925-1953—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3612.E935S73 2012
813’.6—dc23
2012027405
™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
To Luther Wilson
Stalin’s Mustache
in homage to Osip Mandelstam
In Warsaw near the Tomb
of the Unknown Soldier,
in a treeless square,
there used to scowl a statue
of Feliks Dzierżyński,
founder of the CheKa,
the Bolshevik Secret Police.
His nickname was “Bloody Felek.”
Before the unveiling,
someone managed to paint
the statue’s hands blood-red.
When the string was pulled,
the dignitaries gasped:
the blood of his victims
seemed to drip
from Bloody Felek’s hands.
The speaker on the podium
began to stammer.
The military band
struck up, then stopped;
feebly began again.
To the stuttering tuba,
the string was pulled back.
Fifty years later, ten thousand
people jammed the square
to watch the demolition
of a monument to a mass murderer.
*
My cousin Ewa tells the tale
of yet another fallen icon:
a giant statue of Stalin,
the largest in the world.
Taller than the Statue of Liberty,
the dictator stained the sky
at the joining of two great rivers:
the Volga and the Don—
his “sneer of cold command”
staring down the starving
Ukraine. The ten-story
pedestal still stands.
Stalin was toppled into the water—
shallow enough, they say,
that from the cruise boats one can see
his colossal face.
Ewa was on one of those boats:
“From where I stood,
I only caught a glimpse
of Stalin’s mustache.”
She giggles. She must have told
this story countless times.
We sit around the table smiling,
sipping home-made hawthorn wine.
Stalin’s mustache.
The empty
pedestal still stands.
—Ioanna Warwick
Contents
Contents
Acknowledgments
Part I
Exile
Making the Family Skeletons Dance
Purging the Party
The Letter
Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili
To Moscow, to Moscow, to Moscow!
In Voronezh, a City Peter Built and Poets Braved
In the Most High and Palmy State of Rome
That Way Madness Lies
Only the Pitiless
Statistics
Part II
Pavel´s Polish Pelagia
Escape from Paradise
The Haughty Barber
Anna on the Bubble
Let the Innocent Escape
The Worst Cut of All
To the Finland Station
Razan’s List
Anna’s Notes
Glossary
Acknowledgments
Like a nested doll, a novel masks the other figures in the finished form. So let the unmasking begin. I am particularly indebted to Kathryn Barth and Robert Hohlfelder, who hosted a Christmas party at which Bob described a visit to Istanbul and his first and only Turkish haircut. His own vivid storytelling planted the seed for a story about a barber and his tonsorial skills. For their suggestions, I thank Peter Kracht and the anonymous reader at Verso Books who read a first draft of the manuscript. My colleagues Elissa Guralnick and Tim Lyons split the chapters between them and, not surprisingly in light of their critical skills, advised revisions in organization. Michael Glueck, a professional writer, spent a day on the beach with the manuscript and returned with not only a sunburn but also several pointed observations that led to further revisions. But, of all the stylistic advice I received, none eclipsed that of my colleague Victoria Tuttle, a brilliant prose writer.
With any historical fiction, the author is always trying to balance fact and fancy. Not knowing to whom I could turn for an evaluation of historical accuracy, I asked my friend Alan Wald, an eminent professor at the University of Michigan. He recommended Susan Weissman, professor of politics at Saint Mary’s College of California. Suzi, the author of several books, hosts a weekly radio program on KPFK in Los Angeles and writes on Left dissent. She read the manuscript and sent me a list of corrections, as well as a coruscating reader’s report. Her personal help cannot be exaggerated. She is a gem beyond price.
All writers should be so fortunate as to enjoy the level of moral and technical support that I received. My daughter, Andrea Stein, and her husband, Stefan, were at my dinner table when I needed them. My son Scot, his wife, Erica, his daughter, Amy, and his son, Mathew, gave me invaluable assistance. My wife, Nancy, never once complained about my moodiness and absences from home. My sister, Sandra, years ago forgave me my reclusiveness.
Frank Delaney, the Irish novelist, deserves a paragraph to himself. Talk about the kindness of strangers! From a simple dinner to an exchange of e-mails to a reading of the manuscript has grown a lasting friendship. His advice, his untiring efforts to see this book published, and his enduring generosity have set a standard for kindness that I have never seen the equal of.
For their help in the production and preparation of this book, I am indebted to Jehanne Schweitzer, senior production editor for Rowman & Littlefield, for her meticulous work; and to Gene Margaritondo for his impeccable copyediting and creative insights. His command of English usage is daunting; hence, any grammatical errors or stylistic misadventures proceed from my own imperfections. For their careful proofreading, I thank Li
llia Gajewski and A. J. Kazlouski.
Given the shrinking population of readers and the paucity of presses willing to publish literary fiction, albeit historical, writers increasingly need some form of financial support to offset printing costs. I am particularly lucky to have received such support from Philip DiStefano, chancellor, University of Colorado at Boulder; Russell Moore, provost, University of Colorado at Boulder; and the Kayden Research Grant Committee, University of Colorado at Boulder.
The courage to publish this book comes from one person, Rick Rinehart. To him, I say, thank you.
* * *
Although it has become a cliché to observe that all art is collaboration and that we stand on the shoulders of giants, I cannot leave until I acknowledge to which authors and works, in particular, I am especially indebted.
Sources
Anna Akhmatova, Selected Poems
Isaac Babel, Short Stories
Andrey Biely, St. Petersburg
T. J. Binyon, Pushkin
Bertolt Brecht, Mother Courage
Frederic Buechner, Godric
Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita; The White Guard; and The Heart of a Dog
Ivan Bunin, “The Gentleman from San Francisco”
Philip Cannistraro and Brian R. Sullivan, Il Duce’s Other Woman: The Untold Story of Margherita Sarfatti, Mussolini’s Jewish Mistress
Alfred Edward Chamot, trans., Selected Russian Short Stories
Anton Chekhov, “Gooseberries” and “Ward 6”
Robert Edwards, The Winter War: Russia’s Invasion of Finland, 1939–1940
Nikolai Erdman, The Suicide
Merle Fainsod, How Russia Is Ruled
Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy, Natasha’s Dance, and The Whisperers
Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Life in Early Soviet Russia
Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand
Vsevolod Garshin, A Red Rose
Evgenia Ginzburg, Into the Whirlwind and Within the Whirlwind
Nikolai Gogol, “The Overcoat”
Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov
Maxim Gorky, Avrahm Yarmolinsky, and Baroness Moura Budberg, The Collected Short Stories of Maxim Gorky
Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate
O. Henry (William Sydney Porter), “The Ransom of Red Chief”
Amy Knight, Who Killed Kirov?
Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon
Walter Krivitsky, In Stalin’s Secret Service
Natalia Kuziakina, Theatre in the Solovki Prison Camp
Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time
Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope against Hope and Hope Abandoned
Osip Mandelstam, Selected Poems
Thomas Mann, Mario and the Magician
Vladimir Mayakovsky, The Bedbug
Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar and The Young Stalin
Alexander Orlov, The Secret History of Stalin’s Crimes
Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago
Ronald Ribman, The Journey of the Fifth Horse
Roy R. Robson, Solovki: The Story of Russia Told through Its Most Remarkable Islands
Joshua Rubenstein, The Life and Times of Ilya Ehrenburg
Anatoli Rybakov, The Children of the Arbat
Thomas Seltzer, ed., Best Russian Short Stories
Victor Serge, The Case of Comrade Tulayev
Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Tales
Mikhail Sholokhov, And Quiet Flows the Don
Kirill (Konstantin) Simonov, The Living and the Dead
Isaac Bashevis Singer, “Gimpel the Fool”
C. P. Snow and Pamela Hanford Johnson, eds., Stories from Modern Russia
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich; The First Circle; and The Gulag Archipelago
Sophocles, Antigone
J. Swire, King Zog’s Albania
Yuri Trifonov, The House on the Embankment
Marina Tsvetaeva, Selected Poems
Suzi Weissman, Victor Serge: The Course Is Set on Hope
Part I
Exile
After sprinkling alcohol on the British sergeant’s left ear to singe the unsightly sprouting hairs, the barber Avraham Bahar ignited the liquid just as two men in long overcoats and black fedoras burst into the shop, pulled out machine pistols, fired, and fled, but not before one of them shouted, “Death to foreigners!”
From the force of the shots, the barber’s chair slowly turned, though the sergeant remained motionless. As the red spot on the barbering cape rapidly blossomed into blood, Avraham removed it and grew faint. A gaping hole exposed the man’s slippery intestines, which slowly oozed, like eels, through the gore and down his legs. When the bloody snakes ran into the sergeant’s shoes, Avraham puked.
Avraham, having never before witnessed death, staggered to the front door and cried into the rain for help. Minutes later, he heard the wailing siren of an ambulance. The gendarmerie and medical attendants pushed through a crowd of the curious. As the police interrogated him, an agitated Avraham walked backward and forward repeating, “Vey iz mir” (Woe is me). Could he identify the men? Why was the sergeant alone in the shop? Where were the other barbers?
“I can tell you,” said the investigating officer, “it looks suspicious to me. You and Sergeant Jenkins by yourselves. Two unidentified men riddle the sergeant and leave you untouched. It smells like a setup.”
By the time the police left, with the admonition that Avraham be available for further questioning, the barber had already begun his characteristic parsing of words. His mother, a literature teacher, had taught him that both letters and life require close reading. Had his aunt not read the meaning of a priest’s muttering at a café, his family would not have escaped the Kishinev pogrom of 1903—a time when the clergy incited mobs to kill Jews. On her advice, Mr. Bahar had bribed a Greek tailor to hide them in the event of a riot. Avraham and his family had escaped harm and emigrated to Tirana, where they resettled and changed their name in the hope of living free of anti-Semitism. But that was twenty-eight years ago, when Avraham was eighteen.
But now Avraham had to face a new reality: “Death to foreigners.” The absence of the word “the,” as in “the foreigners,” meant the assassins wanted all non-Albanians out of the country, not just the British. His parents had openly spoken Russian and readily admitted that they had emigrated from Kishinev. And what of the police officer’s words, which all but accused him of engaging in a setup? “It looks more than a bit suspicious to me.” And the initial phrase, “I can tell you,” emphasized the point that the officer had no doubts about the killers’ accomplice. And don’t forget the accusatory diction, Avraham told himself. The word “riddled” he wouldn’t even begin to fractionate.
The next day, as he followed his usual path to work through the bazaar, with its maze of cobbled, crooked streets, he was stopped at a roadblock by two Albanian soldiers in poorly fitting uniforms and unpolished leather boots. Groups of women dressed from head to toe in black burqas, with narrow eye slits, squatted by a wall, their embroideries spread out before them on inexpensive Turkish rugs, while across the way sat a chaos of other vendors, selling charcoal, vegetables, chickens, eggs, fruit, firewood, pots, trinkets, baskets, and rope. The only unveiled women were dark-skinned Gypsies, who were reading fortunes and using short-handled brooms to sweep up the market refuse. Off to one side, under a porch roof, moneylenders haggled over percentages. All across this city of thirty-two thousand people, the government, determined to catch the assassins, had posted descriptions of the killers and put up roadblocks.
“Your papers!” demanded one of the soldiers, folding his arms and slyly holding out a hand to indicate that baksheesh would do as well.
Avraham shook his head in despair. Reaching for his papers, he remarked, “I can remember when people doffed their caps at one another. Now they ask them for identification—or bribes.”
“Idiot!” said the second
soldier. “We are merely collecting for the poor.”
“Preventing poverty with charity,” Avraham remarked, “is as effective as making a bullet out of shit.”
The blow to the nose happened so quickly that Avraham never saw the soldier swing the butt of his rifle. Kneeling on the ground, he wiped the blood from his face. In the distance, he could hear one of the soldiers laughing and repeating, “A bullet out of shit.”
Two days later, he paid the groundskeeper of the Jewish cemetery a large sum to have his parents’ plots cared for in perpetuity. In front of their marble stones, he silently spoke to them, occasionally reaching down to remove an offending weed. As he read the dates of their deaths, Esther Bahar, 1929, Isaac Bahar, 1927, he remembered attending one of his mother’s classes in Tirana, where she taught both Russian and English, and his father giving Turkish haircuts to men of every nationality: Muslims, Christians, and Jews. He consoled himself knowing that in exile he would be taking with him sacred memories and, of course, his handsomely painted matryoshka doll, the one that his mother had given him on his sixth birthday, the one that told Pushkin’s fairy tale of Ruslan and Liudmila. Avraham’s mother had used the nested doll to teach him that most great writers, even the incomparable Shakespeare, root their tales in a family. By exploring how parents and children relate to one another and how their travails affect other family members, even outsiders, writers create a nested fiction.
On his way home from the cemetery, he felt the weight of his impending departure: whether to remain in Albania or leave for Russia. The comforts of his house would be hard to forsake—a bath and a kitchen range, a sitting room and a fireplace—even though a poor draft allowed smoke to befog the house and drive the scorpions from their hiding places. But at least he could afford the price of wood; these days, not many could. Best of all, the house had a large garden, enclosed by a high brick wall, and dozens of trees: walnut, cherry, plum, fig, and thorn. He likened gardening, his passion, to barbering. Both required pruning and trimming, clipping and cutting, and a sense of shape and design. Some trees leafed low, some high, just as he shaved some sideburns above the ears, some below.
In the Jewish quarter, Avraham had heard whispers that a single silver candlestick could buy passage to Skopje, where fellow congregants would hide a person until it was safe to cross into Rumania, then Moldavia, and finally Ukraine, where a new society, a democratic one, had begun to take shape. When he had first shared his thoughts of emigrating with Rubin Bélawitz, his rotund childhood confidant and a woodcarver, Rubin had cut him short.