The Rabbi Who Tricked Stalin

by Mordechai Landsberg

Aliosha, Raf'l, Rabbi and Natalya were climbing a Train’s cabin. A label on its external wall stated: Minsk-Smolensk-Moscow. Rabbi Aaron and Aliosha had arrived to town a few hours before with such a train, and now the four of them were seated a l o n g the cabin: in that manner were most benches arrnaged for the passengers in those days. The locomotive’s chimney was smoking, and when it began to whistle and moved to the east - Rabbi Aaron looked through the window. He said to his heart: ‘Well, last time I’m looking at my cursed native town. I am indifferent to all its views, that I have seen since childhood. My hut was not really my home; the streets were mainly made for Cheka or Gepau - to raid on innocent people; the gallery had been once meaning something- a posibility for Jewish people to lead their autonomous community’s life in exile. The new so-called ‘revolutionary’ regime- had lost any respect to us. All the synagogues had been confiscated, and the few God believers would pray at home. Only a real madman would regret to depart from this cursed land, or think that one day he will be longing to it.’

  He suddenly was afraid that the tall guy was reading his thoughts.

  ‘But- no. Thank God they don’t have yet such an electric apparatus, though they had been sure that the Shocker could discover the truth about me. . .A human being thinks about himself to be the wisest creature in the world, but therefore – he is the most stupid one. I am stupid too, but I try to cover my sanity and my miniature wisdom deep inside my general madness. Many bad events may still assault over me. Now - all the three of us should try to be clever, as we understand it. But only the eyes of God would know at any given moment, before you do something - if it is wise or a folly. . . “

  Two farmers came inside the cabin with a goat. Tall Aliosha pulled out some bread from his side bag, and wanted to feed it in order to cut boredom. But the owners told him that it would not eat bread. So Aliosha offered it a rotten apple, that he had also in his bag.

  “We don’t need your food,” said the elder person,”We’ll soon get out, comrade.”

  Natalya immitated a goat’s voice: ‘Mea mea’ and Raphael joined her. They both enjoyed listening to the goat’s answer in its own voice, and only Rabbi Aaron remained solemn and his bearded sphinx face did not change. He thought that a beast is not wise enough to know its stupidity or cleverness, and to differentiate between these two. So, why does Pslam Book say: “A man in vanity; he would not understand, that he is like a rude cattle?” – a man like me had known how foolish I had been all my life. But what God wants is to tempt us, to have an experience. He would watch from above- if we will overcome it. Not so with the cattle, that everyone of its individuals is doomed to die, mostly by man’s knife. I am thinking like I am still a kosher butcher. . . Oh, I have to thank Aliosha. He is handing me now Psalms book. I enjoy reading it, though I am moving it around in the air and pretend not to know how to read. From far - my eyes catch a name of a chapter – and I know many of its sentences by heart. And now my guard is rising. He is telling Natalya he’ll be back in a minute - from the toilet. Now I can read normally:

  ‘The Lord is my life and my salvation, whom shall I fear?

  The Lord is the defence of my life, whom shall I dread? When evil doers came upon me to devour my flesh. My adversaries and my enemies, all stumbled and fell.”

  Rabbi Aaron had stopped reading and waved with the book, before Aliosha returned to the cabin. His guard was re-seated next to him as before.

  Having discerned that the Rabbi had closed the book, Aliosha took it back.

  The Rabbi’s eyes were looking at the railway’s side. He saw the fast moves of electricity wires hanging in the air, driven from one pillar to another. He thought that Lenin had at least succeeded in electrifying Russia. Not all the communists’ effort had been concentrated in detecting people’s steps. . .Yes, they had used this electrcity against me, but the shocker had stopped operating, by God’s deed. And they had not returned to torture me afterward. The Gepau had bigger leviathans than me, a poor Rabbi.

  Natalya was concentrated in her thoughts, while looking at Aliosha. She had hated him like everyone would hate the Devil; but knowing that Rabbi’s fate was in his hands, she only asked:

  “Aliosha, Do you remember the Trial that I had- years ago?”

  “Yes, of course. I wanted to apologize since then, but people were always around us. Now is the time to say something. I am sure that you are delighted now. Enjoy your emigration!”

  “You have simply tortured me - and pained me a lot. You knew that . . . I had been … .”

  “I remember well what had happened. But you can admit, that the ball of luck had turned to play for you, comrade Natalya. I know things about you and about…You can hardly imagine…”

  “Better we should not talk more about that,” she reckoned, and silence had ensued. The boy did not understand about what they were talking. He was looking at Rabbi Aaron, whose eyes told the boy that he had listened and quite understood.

  Natalya meditated for a moment about herself. When they will come to America- she must be treated by a woman doctor. There, in the United States – doctors are more professional than in Russia, and science of medicine much more advanced. She will surely bear a child there, with God’s help.

  Aliosha’s fingers fumbled in an envelope, that he had issued from his coat’s deep internal pocket. He pulled out documents, and looked at the three of them one by one. ‘Hopefully he won’t lose anything,’ the Rabbi meditated, ‘otherwise we are lost. Even my Esther’s Death Registration document I’ve seen there,’ he looked askew and discerned that paper. Then he saw also the “Psychiatric opinion of Smolensk asylum medical team, regarding the patient Aaron Hittin, a citizen of Minsk- Belarus.”

  The train stopped and the goat and its owners dropped out. Numerous people came in, and many discerned the invalid boy, peeped at him again and again. They avoided to be seated nearby or on the opposite bench. At last two women peasants dared to be the Rabbi’s neighbors. He was satisfied that they had not sat too close to him...

  The train moved again and issued a thick smoke above the locomotive’s chimney. It was seen by the boy from the cabin, as the railway became curved for a short time. Natalya told

  the boy to pay attention to a far forest, that its trees were green, and she could identify the nuances of that color. A few trees changed it- to become yellow, and some were dry and grey.

  At the railway sides there were firtrees and astyrax white trunktrees, and shrawberries and many kinds of bushes. Aliosha identified plums and apples in gardens that had been passed, and Raphael paid attention to many big birds which were flying above the train, then landing at small pools not far away. It was an afternoon hour, and not far the passengers saw a few young people running. They were dressed with old swimming shorts. Some old men were holding fishing rods, sinking them into the water and lifting them from time to time, getting a poor fishing. Then they saw two young women who sank, fully dressed, into the water. They were laughing and sprinkling water at one another, and waving hands to two guys, calling them to join.

  Several times the train passed through small towns’ stations, and people looked at the long line of cabins, that did not stop. Natalya was reading loudly to the boy from some plateboards.

  “We are very close to the capital of Russia,” she said, and Tall Aliosha nodded. He rose to look around from the cabin’s open window.

  “That’s the end of summer,” Natalya told the boy. “In the beginning of the Jewish new year - we will be out of the country. With God’s help.”

  “Aliosha,” said the boy, “Have you ever travelled to Moscow?”

  The guard nodded and smiled.

  “Ah, you had to escort other people like us, to send them abroad.”

  “Not exactly. . .” said Tall Aliosha and looked at Natalya. She interpreted his gaze and his vague answer - as unwillingness to chat. So she whispered to Raphael:

  “Dear Raf’l, the
chap is our guard. You don’t have to ask him many questions.”

  “So, I can ask you,” Raf’l whispered back, and burst in laugh, “Why do we need to get some papers in Moscow? So Aliosha has told us.”

  “We shall get papers called ‘visas’, and also some kind of passports. I myself don’t know exactly how they look like.”

  “And then we’ll go straight ahead to America?”

  Tall Aliosha bent a little, and his ears caught the boy’s last question.

  “I will escort you,” he told them, “To the black sea, to Oddessa.”

  “Oddessa?” asked Natalya in surprise, “I thought about Brest Litovsk or some other East European border.”

  “Oddessa, that is our regular point for deporting people like you.”

  Aliosha was silent, and Rabbi Aaron seated himself erect, looking outside. He saw buildings made of red bricks, white stones or tin garages, which had been a part of the capital’s industrial suburbs. A blue plateboard in Kyrill handwritten letters announced : ‘Moscow’. Natalya declared that to the boy, and he said: “But Blooma told me, that we will see there a nice rampart and many churches and castles.”

  “Wait,” said Natalya.

  “Patience, boy,” said Aliosha with a smile.

  The train sent one long whistle, once and twice and thrice. Everybody knew that the voyage had come to its end. When the movement stopped, many passengers began to get down, and people who had arrived to welcome them were densed on the train platform.

  It was evening, and a few electricity lamps beamed a dim light around. The boy saw the numerous rails on the ground, and asked how had the train driver know exactly, that a certain rail would lead to Minsk or to Vladivostok (having heard once from Blooma about that far eastern town). Natalya explained, that the driver would have railmaps with him, with an exact drawing for each line, and so on.

  “I was told,” said Aliosha, who interrupted their conversation, “that the Turkish Consulate would provide visas up to four o’clock. So we will have to sleep in our hostel, and make all beaurocratic arrangements only tomorrow.”

  They saw the new ‘trum’ that was leading travellers from the railway station into the town. Rabbi Aaron remebered he had seen all that before. He would tell Natalya how he had visited Stalin – only after they all will have left out the supressors’ State… Now they will follow Tall Aliosha to one of the three floors’ buildings. Many plateboards were hanging in its front, filled with very long names. What had their writers meant? To make it clear to the viewer, where a department or agency was located? ‘The Soviet beaurocracy had invented the initializing system for shortening beaurocratic names; but although they are queer they are usefull,’ thought Aliosha proudly, ‘if you are not an expert, like me, in the regime’s secrets - you can’t find your hands and legs here. I will find out everything. I only hope, that the matresses, that we’ll get from the Kalmik storewoman- had been sprinkled by that stinking but necessary disinfection liquid. . .I can’t bear those invisible lice, characteristic to the regular communist guest-houses. Rental rooms for workers are even worse. Once I was in such a bad lodging, that I hired in Bobruisk. The Jew Shkolniky was its manager. It was at the time of the revolution. I was a teenager, travelling to see my mother, who had worked for the army there in a uniform factory. The women were sleeping in a large store, and I wasn’t permitted to join my Mom. I had not slept then for a whole night. Since that night - I’ve sworn: Be with the secret police, that gives you the best accomodation in this country…’

  Next morning Aliosha had not been confused by the multitudes of initialized names and addresse around. He and Natalya had carried again their packages and bags, and the Hittin family was led toward a building located not far. They began to climb its few steps, and saw the plateboard: ‘Passports for Citizens Depart.’ No one waited near the narrow lattice, and a woman was talking to Aliosha, who had shown her all the necessary documents.

  “The Passports had been prepared previously,” said the Tall guy to Natalya, “My boss is an expert in these matters. He arranged everything on the phone – with Gepau Moscow. It’s a much much larger and complicated institution than ours.”

  Tall Aliosha checked every detail written in the passports, that he had received. He also compared the faces of the real family members with the photo inside each Passport booklet, saw that everything was in order, and declared: “Now to the Turkish visas.”

  They walked again some hundreds steps, and came to a similar squared building, but much higher than the first. They climbed the stairs, and after counting thirteen turned to the right. It was on the fifth floor, and the visitors saw the plateboard on the door: ‘Turkish Consulate- temporary Visas’

  All entered a small waiting room, and especially Rabbi Aron was tired, breathing heavily and saying to himself:

  ‘There is no wonder that I am not a sportsman. First- for years I had been working all day long. I didn’t have the opportunity nor the wish to stroll in the streets, that may help a man to improve his health. Prophet Jeremiah has said: “And if you had run with pedestrians – and they had tired you- how would you compete with horses?” it means that we should try to be like horses, but I have also a small hole in my lung. When I was ten years old, a Russian nobleman was hunting not far from a place where my papa had taken me, to visit his friend who was owning an inn. A bullet hit me instead of a yellow fox.

  Natalya requested the Turkish clerk at the window to bring water to the Rabbi. After having done so, the maustached Turk gathered the family’s passports, closed the window, and walked to somewhere inside. After half an hour he returned with a smile on his lips: He brought the visas, with pink round circled stamps inside.

  Aliosha turned to Natalya with worried face.

  “I’ve paid them hundred and twenty rubles for that.” he said, “I hope you have brought some more rubbles in your purse, if we need.”

  Aliosha showed her the receipt for the amount he had paid.

  “Well, I have still some additional cash,” she answered, opened her black old purse and handed him the currency. “I have not received my last small salary. When I’m abroad – I’ll deal with that by the American embassy.”

  “Better forget it,” smiled Asliosha ironically, “Since you’re expelled from here, the regime owes you nothing.”

  She did not argue with him.

  “Everything in our beaurocratic procedure,” he added, looking to all of them, “has been even much faster than I’ve imagined. So, now we can walk back to the train station.”

  “Oh, I love the train,” said the boy. Aliosha and Natalya smiled –but not the Rabbi.

  On the Oddessa train station’s platform - there were waiting about twenty people. At eleven thirty the long vehicle should arrive, and take them to the southern sea port. From there ships and boats would sail many ships and boats to all over the world.

  “The Rabbi’s sister is said to wait you in Istanbul,” said the Tall guy to Natalya, “It is in Turkey, not in our Soviet Union,” he added, smiling to the boy, “And there all the Hittin family will embark another ship. You’ll sail to America - the promised land, the country of unending opportunities. But we know that there is a capitalistic chaos.”

  “Oh, you exaggerate,” smiled Natalya.

  “They bluff it to be the super-realization of the impossible,” said Aliosha. “You want it - and you’ll get it.”

  Soon Aliosha’s face became severe, and his palm wiped his perspired forehead. He became afraid that he had talked too much, though no spy had been identified around..

  The Rabbi was thinking: ‘why was the guy trying, so indignantly, to discuss the issue of good or bad America? - It’s because he is looking forward to his own Shlimazl (bad luck) hardship in Gepau. What a future will he, a tall guy, have there?- tracing people and hitting them from time to time, even killing. In its core, the heart of this half Jewish Goliath – would have wished goodness to ev
ery individual, created in God’s shape. The ruthless regime has brought simple people, even having been raised properly and gently by their parents - into the abyss of cruelty and violence. In the last hours I observe a change in Aliosha’s behavior. He’s jealous, that we leave the evil State.’

  No one of Hittin’s family members had ever visited Ukraine, the southern part of Soviet Union. Now the train was passing there, and the Rabbi knew that it would be his first and last chance to see the scenery of a plain land, covered with sparse grass, and from time to time a village would be seen, or houses of a small town scattered along the railway; and everything quickly disappears, like snatched by the train’s velocity.

  ‘I‘m now less afraid, that Aliosha will get me back to Gepau and reveal my disguise’, Rabbi Aaron reflected, ’but the rule of caution still restrains me from embracing my wife and child; I should have sobbed from joy, that at last God has turnd around the wheel of my fate.’ He returned to look through the window, and moaned from relief, breathing fresh air, that had penetrated from outside.

  The early automn was flickering by some trees which became yellow brown- before their ‘forest mates’. The sun was covered by clouds and from time to time shone again, and drops of rain were flashing like noonstars in a forest passing by. The weak wind was not heard at all, because of the permanent rumbling of the train wheels on the railway. The boy began to count the number of stations in which they stopped. When he arrived to twelve he got tired and asked for a plum. Natalya pulled the red fruit from her bag and put it in his mouth, warning him to throw the kernel out into her palm.

  Most of the stations along their route were very poorly built. They were having a sole platform with tin made sheds, or withouit any roof above the waiting passengers heads. The cabins had been already filled, and in stations where no people got out – the overfull train had not stopped at all. In larger stations were seen some relatives waiting for their loved ones, waving their hands and smiling. Old women, wrapped with broad red or blue kerchiefs, were climbing the cabins and trying to sell eggs of hens or turkeys from their straw baskets. Younger women were grabbing their white or yellow or red dresses, embroidered by nice threads around the throat or in front of the bossom. They were trying to sell some hand-made skirts and blouses to women passengers. A policeman had been staying nearby, in order to prevent them from a private sale, so had been the regime’s decrees. But that uniformed guy looked around, to watch if anybody was tracing him, and continued to chat with those girls. His eyes were inspecting their nice, fat legs, which they had intentionally exposed to him- instead of dealing with their goods.

  In other stations our passengers discerned similar girls, who were hiding fruits in their ‘underwear skirts’ pockets. Wearing their external long embroidered dresses, they would face an army officer or a recruit, who had been waiting patiently to the noon train. They would offer him some apples or plums, and while taking those out of their transparent under-skirts, the young man would be attracted and begin to chat. Mainly he would try to offer the maid a joint watch of a new movie. ‘Haven’t you heard about the film ‘Joy in the grannary?’- he would ask.

  ‘I heard’- she would say, ‘but I’ve already forgotten it. About what was it?’

  ‘Oh, that’s a wonderfull film with an overwhelming plot. Friendship develops between a male Kolkhoz member and a metalurgic industry maiden worker. She has been injured in her work by a hot steel rod, very painfully indeed. Her boyfriend would come to visit her in hospital every day - and she recovers. Their wedding takes place in the Kolkhoz grannary, with plenty of folklore dancings.” The last sentences were passing through the inventive mind of Natalya. ‘Not so long ago- I was such a silly girl, too,’ she reflected, ‘but I had, at least, an idealistic errand in my mind.’

  She looked at the Rabbi. He was sweety-sleepy; but she had the feeling that he had half opened his eyes and peeped at her and smiled. Meanwhile- Aliosha was looking at the approaching numerous railways, and guessed the train was close to the big city, Kiev. The locomotive was in a mad hurry, pulling the cabins behind and shaking and smoking. Many passengers were looking again from the windows, perhaps to watch - first time in their life- that big city with the many Pravoslav negleced domed churches, and many coaled stoned houses, that the revolution had not yet the time and money necessary for a repair.

  ‘The starvation period that the Ukraina suffers’, thought Natalya, ‘is a result of Stalin’s stubborn decision to break the Kulaks (private farmers). It has brought a big trouble to this country, which the train is crossing in wheels drums’ staccato.’

  The Rabbi, however, suddenly became aware of his own trouble. He looked at his son’s eyes, and a great mercy came to his heart, but also a great fear. He would not reveal to anyone what is shaking him now. This monster, this beloved boy, would follow him like a spectre - all his lifelong. He will drag his missing hands along their way. No solution to such a terrible helpless invalidity. . .

  Aaron’s beard had become stiff, and he was feeling he should curl it by his fingers, like he had been doing in the asylum. He, Rabbi Aaron Hittin, is no longer there – but some cursed habits of that unforgotten place had stuck to him. This ‘tick’ seemed like he could not get rid of

  A bad habit. If he is inflicted by real madness, God should know it and rescue him. Now he is looking at that beard, and first time discerns some grey hairs flickering there. The suffering has sent its sign on him. His mood is changing into a darkened awe, and he is folding again and again into his own self, and his heart pounds with the re-rumbling of the train’s wheels, which make the trian running like a long devilish snake toward the south.

  The boy looked at two pink apples, that Aliosha had bought for him through the window. It was while the train had its longest stop, gathering hundred or more new passengers. Aliosha cut one fruit to four pieces by his knife, and now was feeding the boy. Natalya took two pieces from his palm and fed Rabbi Aaron and herself. Aliosha’s appetite was also strong, and he wiped the dust from the other apple- by the edge of his short coat, and began to eat, too.

  An old woman peasant, who arrived to the cabin and discerned an empty seat near Aliosha, suddenly discerned the boy’s missing hands. She crossed herself and murmured a prayer. Her basket, containing some vegetables, fell down.

  Her husband whispered to her:

  “It’s not an epidemic sickness; so, why are you scared?”

  She gathered from the floor her fallen tomatos and onions, and was attacked by hiccups. Each of the train’s bumping - the woman followed by a loud hiccup, which made the boy to move left, bend a little, and cover his mouth. He was uterreing an unncontrollable laugh – turning to Natalya.

  But then Raphael was suddenly feeling an urgent need to piss. He whispered it to his mother-in-law. Natalya raised him, and was holding his reins tightly, and her fingers sustained - from behind - his walk to the toilet. It was located two cabins far away. In the passages leading from one cabin to another she would embrace the boy, as these were turbulent and shaky. Inside the stinking rest room she held him tight. He looked on the ground moving under the ‘toillet’s hole’ (so it was in those times, as also even in some trains nowadays). Natalya buttoned his trousers and they were on their way back to their cabin.

  A late afternoon breeze was penetrating from the cabins’ windows. The railway’s side-nameboards announced that Oddessa was not far. The passengers felt that the air was more humid. Someone pointed on the fine sparkling sea, effected by sunlight beaming from the west south horizon. They all were soon viewing a new: scenery: Six or seven warships ‘parking’ not far, anchored to the Soviet navy’s long platform. Behind the ships and to the far left - there were fishing boats and oar vessels; but at that point the locomotive penetrated into a built area, that hidded the scenery. Then it ejected its last three long whistles- slowed down its race against the clock, and at last its brakes stopped the long vehicle in a screech. r />
  CHAPTER 49