Stalin's Barber

by Paul M. Levitt

  “The Tsar may have been deposed, but Russia’s no paradise. If you think so, you’re dreaming. You know the adage: ‘Ivan will always be Ivan.’”

  Avraham had replied by mentioning some of the Jews in the new Soviet government: Kaganovich, Kamenev, Litvinov, Mekhlis, Pauker, Radek, Sverdlov, Trotsky, Uritsky, Yakolev, Zinoviev. Was their presence not a portent of a new order, one without religious hatred? At least in Russia, a Jew could live safely.

  “If the country’s so wonderful, why do all the different nationalities, including the Jews, want to speak their own language? They should all be glad to speak the same tongue. It’s just lucky for you that you know how to speak it—and Yiddish.”

  “We are dying here, Rubin. Albania is dying.”

  For many days after the grisly murder, Avraham ruefully looked out the front window of his barbershop, the same one his father had opened in the shadow of a mosque. At that moment, the muezzin’s voice sounded, calling the faithful to prayer, and Avraham recalled the old Muslim aristocracy demanding perfect pruning and perfume for their finely fashioned beards. But that was before the worldwide depression had put an end to silk robes and imported cigarettes and a costumed palace guard, a time before the Albanian government of King Ahmet Bey Zog was forced to import grain from Fascist Italy and dance to Mussolini’s tunes. The fancy carriages and plumed horses that used to sound a merry tune as they passed down the streets had disappeared into the vortex of European bankruptcy. Handsome homes had fallen into disrepair, gardens gone to seed. Even the professors and poets who would sit in the barbershop quoting from journals and exchanging literary ideas had disappeared. So too the gazettes featuring serialized literary novels, now replaced with patriotic stories extolling the impoverished homeland. The barbershop no longer rang with the political arguments among Greeks, Russians, Armenians, Serbs, Mingrelians, Azerians, and Kurds who would huddle around the charcoal burner, sipping Turkish tea, and weigh the virtues of independence or confederation. All gone. Now the barber chairs and benches stood empty, gaunt auguries of the future.

  Avraham had but one naches (joy) as he stared at the wind-tossed trash and watched two men fighting over the carcass of a dead cat. Thank god that his parents had not lived to witness these troubled times: Fascism in Italy, Nazis in Germany, the Balkans in turmoil, crushing debt in Albania, and the attempt the year before in Vienna on King Zog’s life. Little wonder that people of all faiths were fleeing, the roads clogged with wagons and carts. The newspapers were saying that planes would no longer take bookings and that Greece and Macedonia, unable to handle the mass exodus, had sent troops to seal their borders. It could be only a matter of time until Albania stopped issuing emigration visas.

  Should he leave or should he stay? Tirana was home to his parents’ graves, to his friends, like dear Rubin Bélawitz, to his barbershop, his house and trees, his memories. King Zog was a liberal monarch, well aware of the danger Italy posed. Political disruptions were fugacious; they came and went. Perhaps this one would also blow over, in which case why quit the country? The familiar streets of Tirana were as much a part of him as his own limbs. Here he could see dancing dervishes, sheep slaughtered in the squares for the Bajram feast, turbaned Muslim priests, and bearded Christian bishops. Tirana had airmail and passenger service, electric lights, military and civil hospitals, and traditional bakeries that still prepared his favorite bread dough, Valya, in the old-fashioned way: thin, coated with paprika and olive oil, and then shaped into a circle and baked. He had often brought his neighbors Valya bread to repay their many kindnesses. To leave such people and this city was tantamount to amputating a limb.

  On the other hand, Tirana had no sewer lines or water pipes, no buses or trams, no railways. Roads were generally deep-worn tracks that became muddy ditches in the rain. Half-naked beggars constantly pulled at one’s sleeves; fanatical Sunni Turks conspired in cafés and swore allegiance to the sultan; corruption was rampant; eligible Jewish women were in short supply. And, perhaps worst of all, he feared that the freedoms he enjoyed as a Jew would be lost under Fascism.

  Assiduously studying the newspapers and questioning his every customer, he worried that if he remained too long, he might lose the chance to leave. Like a spiritual accountant, he totted up and weighed all his outstanding moral debts and loans and collateral and promissory notes and good intentions, met and unmet. As so often happens, his decision came not from a careful reading of his human balance sheet, but from events beyond his control. When he saw Albanian brown shirts marching in the street and read Mussolini’s demands that Albania pay for its debts to Italy by granting Il Duce control of the sugar, telegraph, and electrical monopolies, and that King Zog make the teaching of the Italian language compulsory in all schools, he lost all his parsing reservations and decided to flee before all the borders closed and checkpoints appeared on the roads leading in and out of major towns.

  To purchase his escape, Avraham sold his barbering equipment at a loss to a competitor on the other side of Tirana. His shop was purchased by a Tajik barber who attended the neighboring mosque. Well known for his haggling, the man pursued a simple strategy: he stated his price and then fell silent. In the end, Avraham received half of what he had asked for. His last painful task was to say goodbye to Rubin. They agreed to have dinner at the Juvenilja restaurant on Avraham’s last night in Tirana. Fortunately neither man, unlike their parents, observed the dietary laws, because Rubin suggested a main course of kukurec, stuffed sheep’s intestines, dipped in yogurt and red wine, followed by a salad of roasted red peppers, onions, and toasted walnuts. At first, Avraham’s broken nose sustained the conversation. But then Rubin, wishing to make light of that unfortunate subject, tried another tack. “Do you remember our camping trips in the Dajti Mountains? Such wonderful days!”

  “When it didn’t rain.”

  “Who noticed? We made a fire and played cards and talked about which girls we had and we hadn’t. And no matter how many times you tried, you could never persuade Dominika.”

  “True,” said Avraham, fondling the corner of his napkin.

  “Such a dark-haired temptress. Now she’s married to a farmer.”

  “Marta, remember her?” He paused. “I thought I loved her.”

  “Did she ever answer your letters?”

  “Never,” he sighed.

  “Just as well. She was too religious for your tastes.”

  “My tastes?” He held up the palms of his hands. “What are they? How does anyone know himself? Our heads always get in the way.”

  Through the restaurant window, they observed in the distance fractured lightning marbling the darkness.

  “Albania is black,” Avraham remarked, “but in Russia a new day is dawning.”

  Scoffing, Rubin said, “I don’t believe in omens.”

  “I’m no political philosopher, Rubin, but from the reading I’ve done, I really think the measure of a government is not how well it treats the powerful but rather the weak.”

  “Avraham, tell me. Who are these weak you cry over: thieving Gypsies and Muslims with four wives and fifteen children?”

  “No,” Avraham sadly replied, “most of the people.”

  Rubin shook his head skeptically. Avraham looked at Rubin’s fat cheeks and thought that he had never wanted for a meal.

  “You can’t name a dozen.”

  “The crippled, the paralyzed, the limbless, the blind, the beggars, the hungry, the out of work, the stateless refugees, the dispossessed, the Christians, the Jews . . .”

  “Genug (Enough)! That’s twelve. In other words, you’re mostly talking about the sick and the poor.”

  “Which is most of the world.”

  “No government can solve the problem of hunger.”

  “Socialism?”

  “Even if you could persuade people to share—and I don’t believe you can—there are only so many steaks, so many houses, so many jobs.” He laughed censoriously. “Even just so much caviar.”

  Avraham
studied the fading light. The lightning had ceased, and the moon sat on a ridge, as if resting before rising. To lighten the weight of parting, Rubin manufactured a chuckle and said:

  “You mentioned our camping trips. Do you remember our lying on the ground and imagining that above us, somewhere in that starry plenitude, planets existed where people lived the Law?”

  Rubin wiped his mouth with the napkin and slapped the table. “When Hillel said, ‘What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole Torah; all the rest is commentary,’ he was stating the Golden Rule. A dream it is. You notice, don’t you, he left out all the difficult parts, the commentary.”

  With more hope than assurance, Avraham responded, “Where I’m going is a better world.”

  “Such a place exists only in words.”

  Eventually theirs faltered, a sign that it was time to part. Rubin insisted on paying for the meal, but before leaving the table, he touched his friend on the hand and said:

  “I have a gift for you.”

  He handed Avraham a small package.

  Rubin watched intently as Avraham untied the string and opened a teakwood box, revealing a hand-carved razor that Rubin had fashioned.

  “It’s a copy of my favorite . . .”

  Rubin interjected, “Same color, same length, same turquoise facing.” He added proudly, “A perfect replica, even to the raised edge that looks like a closed blade.”

  “It’s a work of art.”

  “Feel the finish . . . like your own razor. See for yourself.”

  Avraham turned the carving over and over, admiring its exactitude. His smile indicated pleasure but also mystification.

  “Yes, I know, you’re thinking what can I do with this wood carving. I could say treat it as a knickknack or display it in your barbershop.” He shyly looked at his hands. “I just wanted to give you something that would remind you of Tirana . . . and me.”

  “But I have nothing for you.”

  “You’ve given me years of friendship.”

  “If you keep talking this way, Rubin . . .” He choked on the words.

  * * *

  At the Lana River, where the bullfrogs filled the still darkness of summer nights, they embraced and parted. Rubin, sick with sorrow, slunk across the bridge, remembering how Avraham used to make loneliness strange with his presence. But Avraham was now persuaded that survival eclipsed friendship. He unlocked his front door, packed two cane baskets, one with food, the other with his barbering equipment and personal items, like the nested doll he had removed from his shop. In his bathroom mirror, he studied his collapsed nose bridge. His was no longer the handsome face and Roman visage that an Italian client had once compared to Vatican canvases, perhaps because of his Mediterranean coloring and the sensuous full lips he had inherited from his mother. From his father he owed his soft-spokenness, strong hands, and long narrow fingers. His sharp facial features were accentuated by high cheekbones and a narrow chin. Having always wished to stand six feet tall, he had missed the mark by three inches. Besides his broken nose, he bore other signs of wear: a thinning hairline and legs with prominent varicose veins, a barber’s bane.

  He made it a point to leave his small house unlocked, for beggars to bed there. Wending his way along the cobblestone alleys in the wretched precincts of the Gypsy village, from which the government drew its hamals (blacksmiths) and Gypsy men to execute stray dogs and cart away rubbish, he was stopped by a woman who begged a penny to read his palm. A small charcoal brazier glowed in the dark, casting a copper light across her uneven features and dark eyes. With his future in mind, the barber dug out a coin and seated himself on her rug. In the cold night, the Gypsy’s words left him bewildered.

  “Beware the man who wants his face

  Visible in every place.

  The devil has just one intent,

  To change the world to excrement.

  Goodness has a thousand cares,

  And can’t escape the Hydra’s stares.”

  * * *

  When he entered the Dajti Mountains, east of Tirana, he wore on his back his whole store of clothes: three shirts, two pairs of pants, a heavy sheepskin jacket and mittens, a woolen cap with earflaps, and a muffler that his mother had knit. From his innumerable walks in these woods, many of the paths were as familiar as Tirana’s streets and buildings, as were the mountain eagles and hawks, roosting in the trees, and the black woodpeckers, beating their recognizable rat-a-tat-tat. Here resided the real soul of Albania: the beech trees and Eve’s Edenic song issuing from the rictuses of birds.

  He had taken the precaution of wearing galoshes, knowing that underfoot the ground would be wet from the frequent rains. Soon the forest floor would be blanketed with snow, and each morning would reveal the footprints of hares and otters and wolves, to say nothing of the numerous bird tracks. As he walked, he looked behind him to see if he was leaving tracks. But the falling leaves and light rain erased the marks of his presence as soon as he passed. A life, he thought, was no different. As the religious texts say, we are only passing from one world to the next. Why, he mused, are some people remembered and others not? Through countless years of evolution, the different species had learned to survive by refining memory, remembering their enemies and avoiding pitfalls, like quicksand and sticky amber. And yet, he often heard people say that to survive, one must learn to forget; that the remembrance of pain past can kill. So who was right? He voted with those who celebrated memory, a form of bearing witness, without which he deemed progress impossible.

  He had been told to move only at night and sleep during the day. More than once he was awakened by curious animals led to his scent. Eventually, he made his way southeast from Tirana to the rutted road leading to Bitola. From a hilly vantage point in the woods, he could see the border and guards turning back emigrants. The barber would have to bribe not only the Albanian sentries but also the Macedonian ones, whom he could see at a checkpoint down the road. His first impulse was to follow the barbed-wire border fence into the forest and crawl under the divide undetected; but he remembered that land mines had been planted to deter political adventurers. Several hours expired before he saw a means to escape. An itinerant cook, harnessed like a donkey, dragged behind him a two-wheeled cart. The cook had not yet reached a point at which he could be seen by the guards. Avraham scooted down the hill and asked the man if he might join him. The presence of a barber might prove especially profitable, one person preparing a meal for the soldiers, the other cutting their hair. When the cook paused, Avraham gave him a lek, worth a hundred qintars.

  “Have you a government pass to be in the area?” asked the peddler. “It’s off-limits to those without a license.”

  From one of his cane baskets, Avraham removed a framed photograph of himself and an aide of King Zog’s, whom he’d barbered. “Will this do?”

  The peddler stared at the picture, wiped his nose on his arm, and said. “Come on.”

  At the border, the two guards, awed by Avraham’s picture bearing a flourishing signature, vied to be the first to have his ear hairs singed. Delighted with the results, they urged him to travel down the road to the Macedonian checkpoint, where their counterparts, friends from the old days of open borders, would have the pleasure of the barber’s pyrotechnics. And so it was that Avraham passed from one group to the next on the wings of his wondrous barbering, waving goodbye to cook and country.

  From Macedonia, he traveled to Moldavia or, to be exact, the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, where the local Jewish population advised him to continue east until he arrived in the pale. Moldavia, they said, harbored only criminals and corrupt government officials who would steal your toenails if they could market them. During his trek, he supported himself with stops in dozens of villages, exchanging barbering for a bed. In November 1931, still on the road, he arrived at a train station occupied by hundreds of Soviet military personnel. Here was an ideal place to pick up a few extra coins. Most of the men needed a shave, and w
ith the train temporarily stalled on its way to northern Caucasia and Ukraine, a modest bribe to the stationmaster enabled Avraham to use the primus stove to boil water, and use the waiting room for his shop. When the train was ready to depart, the Soviet troops pressed him to join them, at least as far as Ukraine. His indecision moved them to describe the beautiful landscape, drawing on quotations from Lermontov and Tolstoy.

  Through his train window he watched the great steppes, as the famed prairies of grain turned russet in the autumn light and gray in the morning fogs. Although his command of Russian diction and nuance fell short of his parents’, he knew that the oft-repeated word “kulak” was being used pejoratively. What did it mean? By the end of the first day, he had made the acquaintance of a young Jewish soldier, with whom he conversed in Russian and Yiddish.

  “Kulak,” breathed the boy, “I doubt even Stalin could define it. Generally, the word refers to rich farmers who lend money, employ peasants for pennies, buy and sell, and refuse to let the government confiscate their grain and animals in exchange for foreign currency.” The boy paused. Someone passed. “They hide or destroy their possessions, or even fight. But we know how to break their will.” The soldier looked around and barely whispered. “We starve them. But you never heard me use that word. It is forbidden.”

  As the train lumbered along, it passed countless stations, all of them looking the same. Women and children, with distended bellies and bony limbs, stood with outstretched hands, begging for food. That first night, the train pulled off to a siding to replenish the steam engine’s water supply. Most of the troops were asleep. Avraham slipped off the train to stretch and saw in the dark the outlines of a village that seemed utterly deserted. In the moonless night he stumbled down blue pestilential streets, past dozens of dark windows, past burned houses and barns, past dead animals, past strange wall posters, stamped “GPU.” From days of rain, the ground had turned to mud. Taking a different path back to the train, he heard a rustling noise and stopped to listen. Nothing. At length, he detected a human whimper that came from a dilapidated pig shed. A woman and two children, a boy and a girl no older than five and seven, were huddled together under a threadbare blanket, eating leaves and tree bark. Next to them lay a dead dog that the woman, with a pile of twigs at her feet, was preparing to cook. The skeletons of cats, frogs, mice, and birds lay scattered about, all of them devoured to the bone. Catching sight of Avraham, the woman scooped the starving boy into her arms. She handed the barber the living corpse, hairless and wrinkled, with greenish stumps for arms. Her mumbled dialect was unintelligible to Avraham, who held up the palms of his hands and shrugged to signify that he could not understand. Pointing a bony finger, she indicated that she wanted Avraham to take the boy and feed him. The emaciated child felt like a skin stuffed with feathers. Avraham would have given the boy back to his mother had he not suddenly spied in the corner of the shed, peeking out from a thin layer of straw, the skeletal remains of a man. His genitals lay rotting to one side. He had been cannibalized.