“Are you off for Australia?” asked the porter.
“Moscow,” Razan answered proudly.
“I can tell you that no apartment in Moscow is large enough to hold all your things. My uncle lives there. I visited him once. Except for Stalin and his cronies, everyone lives in a coffin.”
To exhibit economy, the Shtubes booked seats in the hard coach, where travelers sat on wooden benches. Razan garrulously struck up a conversation with other passengers, to the chagrin of Anna, who kept whispering that the “walls have ears.” They told him that people often had to wait months for train tickets. So how had they received theirs without any fuss? Anna looked away when Razan asked her, a gesture that provided the answer. Would Dimitri always be in the background playing the role of puppet master, and Razan serving as the toy of a Soviet secret policeman? Influential people could open locked doors, but they could also spring a trapdoor. With Dimitri in control, Razan felt that the play about to unfold had as its author not himself, but his stepson, a conviction reinforced by a black Packard waiting to collect him and Anna at the train station.
“You do understand,” said Dimitri, as the chauffeur pointed the car toward the house on the embankment, “that if Stalin selects another barber, you will both have to return to Brovensk.”
“Immediately?” asked Anna, annoyed at the prospect.
“The Vozhd has kindly agreed to your staying for a fortnight if things don’t work out, a kind of two-week vacation.”
The enormous size of the gray government apartment building, built just two years earlier on the site of an old distillery, in Bersenevka neighborhood, the island across from the Kremlin, moved Razan to ask: How many families live here? “Five hundred and five apartments,” replied Dimitri, “though some of them are used for offices. Twenty-five entrances, all guarded.” They exited the car and thanked the driver. Razan quickly saw from the directory that one could live within its precincts and never want for anything. He counted a post office, a telegraph office, a bank, a legitimate stage, a movie theatre, a laundry, a beauty salon, a school, a medical center, restaurants, and retail stores stocked to overflowing. This building, which occupied an entire city block, belied the contention that the country was suffering from shortages. The presence of a swimming pool and gymnasium and masseurs reminded him of his father’s comment that the rich live differently from the poor. He even discovered among the wealth of wares a barbershop, but it resembled no haircutting establishment that he’d ever seen. All the equipment was silver plated, including the molding on the toadstool pedestal chairs. As he soon learned, when a resident of especially high rank wished a haircut, a red light flashed. Within minutes a bodyguard appeared, followed by the dignitary, who thought nothing of displacing some lesser personage already seated.
Dimitri fished a key from his pocket and gave it to Razan. The Shtubes had been temporarily issued apartment number 349, normally occupied by A. R. Rothstein, currently on assignment in Berlin for the year.
“It’s now yours,” said Dimitri proudly. “Don’t gamble it away.”
As the three family members exited the lift, Razan hung back and slid a few rubles into the hand of the gray-uniformed operator, who appreciatively tipped his peaked cap and whispered through tobacco breath, “The famous Comrade Rykov lives just down the hall from your apartment. He has a problem with the vodka and has to watch what he says. His daughter looks after him. Her name is Natalya.”
The Shtubes’ apartment looked out on a chocolate factory that demonically swam in smoke, and on the statue of Peter the Great, who had fared less well in the acrid air than in his Swedish wars. The top floor of the building, reserved for Stalin’s favorites, faced the river. All four wings of the apartment building had elevators that stopped at every floor. Some were quieter than others, but all of them in time became heralds of death.
A vase with cut flowers, from Dimitri, brightened the apartment, with its parquet floors, hand-painted ceilings of classical scenes, and framed picture of Stalin. He used the telephone, already connected, to order a magnum of champagne and three glasses. As the Shtubes’ belongings were unloaded, Dimitri removed his jacket and helped his parents unpack. By evening, arrayed around a coffee table, relaxing in parlor chairs and drinking champagne, they decided which furniture and clothing would have to be stored in the basement bins.
“This man Boujinski . . .” hazarded Razan.
“I have brought along a map of the city and circled the street that he lives on.” Dimitri placed the map on the table and pointed. “This other circle shows the location of your building.”
Eventually, as the group drained the bottle and their feet grew “slippy,” their tongues incautiously loosened.
“When you meet this Boujinski fellow,” said Dimitri, “remember he’s Uzbeki, one of those damn nationalities that continue to resist Soviet law. They’re Muslims and live according to their own medieval rules. We have sent numerous cultural commissions to Tashkent to reason with them, but they insist on beards and veils and head-to-foot black clothes. I spent a week in Tashkent myself, with the peacocks screeching from rooftops. It’s a place untouched by time.”
“How long did Comrade Boujinski serve Stalin?”
“Too long. The Boss was skeptical from the first, but since V. K. Iasevich recommended him—V. K.’s in charge of Uzbekistan and headquartered in Tashkent—Koba let him stay as long as he did.”
“What was the problem?” asked Razan.
“Koba hated his Muslim dress and the fact that his wife was veiled. If you can believe it, for Stalin’s birthday party, she and Boujinski stayed home. December 21 is like a national holiday. The shame!”
As Dimitri shook the last drops of champagne into his glass, Razan asked, “But was he a good barber?”
“How would I know? I’ve heard that Stalin allows only three people to be present: the barber and two bodyguards.”
The telephone rang, and Dimitri answered it. Pause. “Yes, yes, I quite understand. My apologies. I’ll see to it at once.” Pause. “Yes, comrade, you’ll hear.”
From Dimitri’s expression, Razan surmised that his “son” was trying to formulate an idea or some words that would carefully convey his concerns. Anna, reading the pain in his face, sat on the arm of his chair and stroked his full head of black hair.
“I have some slivovitz in my bag,” said Razan. “Will that help?”
“Idiot!” Dimitri exclaimed.
No one spoke. Razan wondered whether the epithet was intended for him or was a self-criticism.
“Now, now, Dima, you are no longer a little boy throwing tantrums,” Anna purred as she wiped his sweating forehead.
Dimitri rudely removed her hand and whispered, “Not another word!”
Anna patted his hand, a signal that she understood, and went to Razan to mumble in his ear.
Dimitri, visibly embarrassed, stood unsteadily and straightened the crease in his pants. Slipping into his coat, he declared loudly, “I spoke in error. Boujinski requested a transfer. And ignore what I said about the Supreme Leader’s escort. No one but Stalin knows how many people are in attendance when he has a haircut.”
With a gruff goodbye, Dimitri slammed the door, indicating clearly to all that he had concluded his visit to the Shtubes on their first day in Moscow. He never made another.
* * *
Razan and Anna avoided, for good reason, expressions of outrage. They now knew the apartment was bugged.
“Perhaps it’s in the wall,” Anna whispered.
Razan replied sotto voce. “Without removing the plaster, how can we know . . . unless it’s in a light switch.”
Although the only tools that Razan had at hand were related to barbering, he opened a scissor and used one blade as a screwdriver, quietly removing all the light-switch plates on the walls. Nothing. Anna pointed to the ceiling light fixtures. As Razan gently unscrewed the polished light globe for each one and delicately removed the ceiling plate, Anna banged pans together. In e
very case, an unfamiliar object was affixed to the wires. Anna grabbed Razan’s arm and scribbled on a piece of paper, “Let them think we don’t know.”
Later, when he asked what led her to suspect the overhead lights, she replied that the globes had no dead insects.
Ever after, they conducted all sensitive discussions on the street, like thousands of other Muscovites.
“What if they planted one in our bedroom?” asked Razan, as they leaned on the embankment wall and peered at the river.
“I have a naughty idea,” said a Anna.
Razan pretended not to hear. “We’ll have to get used to writing notes,” he observed, “and flushing them down the toilet.”
“Did you see the warning in the hall: ‘Do not put books or paper or sanitary napkins in the toilet, only government-ply tissues.’”
Across the river stood the Kremlin. Razan silently hoped that Stalin would disapprove of his tonsorial skills, and send him and Anna back to Brovensk. Yet he dared not risk injuring the Vozhd, lest he and Anna find themselves living in the cold country. He could not share his feelings with Anna, who viewed the city as an unrivaled opportunity to advance the fortunes of her family. But he knew, with a growing revulsion, that any government that eavesdrops on its citizens has forfeited the right to hold office.
As they peered at the river, Anna leaned over and whispered to her husband. His face went from pink to red, but then Anna had always been more adventurous about sex. Back in their apartment, they stood under the bedroom fixture and loudly moaned, as if transported—and sustained—by the rapture of a cascading climax. Eventually they bought a Victrola and played Beethoven symphonies at full volume to drown out their muffled words. On those occasions when an important subject had suddenly surfaced and they lacked the time to prepare the Victrola or repair to the street, they resorted to hand signals. If, for example, they wanted to show their displeasure with a person or the system, they would merely turn their thumbs down or scribble a note. In time, they agreed on a number of gestures that became their private semaphores for expressing forbidden feelings and ideas.
One day on the street, enterprising Anna remarked with a laugh, “In Moscow one could get rich teaching sign language.”
“Now I understand,” said Razan, “why the building’s so quiet and the parks are so full, even in bad weather.”
Anna found it easier to adapt. Of the two, she was the more politically cunning. “Razan, you must admit,” said Anna, trying to pacify her troubled husband, “that publicly idolizing Stalin makes life easy. I’ll just hang his portrait on a living-room wall.”
Within a few days, the Shtubes had met their neighbors: on one side, a party official from the department of heavy industry, on the other, a member of the writers’ union. Accustomed as they were to illiterate peasants, they found it extraordinary to mingle with people who spoke and dressed well, held university and institute degrees, read books, and attended plays and concerts, though Razan did find the unfailing praise of the Great Leader disquieting.
Given the constant turnover of tenants, the Shtubes quickly realized that Stalin’s personal likes and dislikes were subject to sudden changes. At one time, the barber Yefim Boujinski had lived in the house on the embankment. Anna learned this fact by winning over the building superintendent and having Razan treat him to a Turkish Delight. It was he who told Razan, “Physician heal thyself.”
It took a second for Razan to digest the comment. During the last month, he had neither shaved nor cut his hair, having been occupied with packing and traveling and settling into new quarters. The “super” arranged with the official embankment barber for Razan to enter his shop after hours. In return, Razan barbered both men. The super especially looked forward to unlocking the door to the barbershop, settling into one of the three chairs, leaning back, and closing his eyes, while Razan performed his magic. As the ceremony progressed, the appreciative super related in a barely audible voice the history of current and former tenants.
“What do you know about Citizen Rykov?” Razan asked.
“Ah, there’s a story,” said the super. And he proceeded to tell Razan about Alexei Rykov, his wife, and wonderful daughter.
Natalya, Razan learned, adored her parents, especially her father, born to peasants and a former prisoner in a Tsarist Siberian camp. He had split with the Mensheviks, and his Bolshevik credentials were sterling—a member of the committee that planned the October Revolution, a member of the Revolutionary Military Council during the Russian Civil War, premier from 1924 to 1929 (succeeding to the post on Lenin’s death), and a supporter of Stalin and Bukharin against Leon Trotsky. But he fell afoul of Stalin for supporting the New Economic Policy (NEP), which was originally proposed by Trotsky and rejected, and then proposed by Lenin and adopted.
The policy, which eased restrictions on farmers, allowing them to own their farms, though not the land they tilled, was a partial restoration of the market economy, which Stalin vacillated over and finally condemned. Lenin had argued that NEP was temporarily necessary, given that the Soviet Union was principally an agricultural country, and that it would take years to develop an industrial-based economy and self-sufficiency. Under NEP, the economy prospered, farmers earned a decent wage, and people escaped the killing hunger of the subsequent years. It galled Stalin to be proved wrong.
The rightness of Rykov about NEP and his “rightist” moderate socialist views led Stalin to remove him in 1930, at which time Rykov moved from the Kremlin to the embankment, where he had lived ever since in bitterness, occasionally taking coffee with comrades who had originally made the great October Revolution. But eventually, as the show trials reduced the ranks of the old Bolsheviks, who were made to confess their treachery and admit to being wreckers, Rykov could foresee his own destiny and became ever more reclusive, staring through the window at the city he no longer trusted.
Based on this discussion, Razan decided not to wait any longer to seek out his predecessor. After all, at any moment he might be exiled to Tashkent or some less attractive place in Uzbekistan. The next day, Razan took a trolley to the Arbat, the once fashionable Moscow street and neighborhood now grown seedy. Some of the homes and shops still retained a sense of the wealth that had formerly made them the envy of Paris. He walked past the old mansions with their columns, plaster moldings, bright green roofs, and white-stuccoed facades. An image came to mind of Tirana’s elegant confectioners, furriers, shoemakers, clothiers, jewelers, and horse-drawn carriages. Through the windows of run-down restaurants, Razan could see ugly crockery and frayed linen tablecloths. Natasha had said that a friend of hers lived on an adjoining street. So, too, did the Boujinksi family.
In the semi-basement of a decaying apartment building stood a small barbershop. Dimitri had circled the spot. It was no more than a low brightly lit room with faded wallpaper and a yellow-stained ceiling bulging in places, potted plants in the front window, and on one wall a cracked mirror. Razan immediately recognized the familiar smell of eau de cologne and powder. An elderly man was just vacating the lone barber’s chair. Razan waited in the doorway. From upstairs came the sound of women’s voices and a child laughing. The barber wore a white coat, and his expression resembled that of all Moscow barbers, grimly obliging. He exhibited a neatly trimmed mustache and delicate hands. His sad, clean-shaven face expressed care, both kinds, sorrow and sensitivity. Dressed in western clothes, he wore them tight to his thin body and, like the Persians, was tieless. Perhaps Stalin had resented Yefim’s height, well above six feet, while the Supreme Leader stood only five feet six inches. Dimitri had mentioned Yefim and his wife absenting themselves from Stalin’s birthday party. Surely, that didn’t cause his dismissal. Perhaps the man regularly excused himself to pray. No, prayer would have been disallowed. The reason had to lie elsewhere.
Once Razan sat down in the barber’s chair and in the dim, cracked mirror studied his own face with its broken nose, he worried how to begin the discussion.
“A clean shave and
a close haircut. Please.”
“How high do you want the sideburns?”
As the barber stropped the razor on a thick leather band, Razan smiled to himself remembering the thousands of times that with the same motion he had put a fine edge on his blade.
“Permit me, comrade,” Razan said softly, “are you not Yefim Boujinski, the eminent barber who once served the Supreme Leader?”
Yefim stepped back, razor in hand, and eyed the man in the chair. “And you are?” he asked suspiciously.
“Razan Shtube, the barber from Brovensk, one of those competing to replace you.” He turned to face the barber. “I need to learn what I can about Stalin. I also need a haircut and shave.”
Yefim immediately concluded that Razan was a secret agent sent to draw him into a compromising conversation to learn if Boujinski was disclosing Kremlin secrets.
“How,” Yefim asked, “do I know that what you say is true?”
“How many Russian barbers know how to cut and singe in the Turkish manner? Certainly not secret agents.” Bounding out of the chair, Razan changed places with Yefim, reached for the alcohol, and flambéed Comrade Boujinski’s ears. “Are you satisfied now?”
“You make a good case,” said Yefim, pumping Razan’s hand. “You are an artist. The Vozhd will appreciate your skills, and even your accent, since he has one himself.” Yefim lowered his voice. “But you must be careful. Wait while I pull down the shade and lock the door. I’ll hang up the ‘Closed’ sign.”
A moment later, hot lather warmed Razan’s cheeks, as Comrade Boujinski proudly exhibited his Turkish skills. “Who better than a barber knows the local gossip?” he proudly whispered. “We are at once friends, experts, counselors, and confidants. For us the town holds no secrets. We know about aging bodies, the cooling of the blood, scalps that are losing their former glories, the slackening of the muscles, the delicate creaking of frail bones, toothless gums, bad breath, the crow’s-feet gathering on smooth temples. And we listen with attention to everything the bloodless lips of our customers have to confess. Am I not right?” asked Yefim, addressing the man in the mirror. “Some would say that the barber is the official city traitor, who snips his scissors and whispers the secrets of the living and the dead.”
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