Stalin's Barber

by Paul M. Levitt

  “Maja!” called Yefim. “Meena! Come here!”

  After several moments, the curtain slowly parted and two women, each dressed in a paranji, which some call a burqa, shyly entered. Covered in black from head to foot, the women looked out through eye slits. Trailing behind was a child, no more than nine or ten years old, free of the paranji but wearing a head scarf.

  “Let me introduce Razan Shtube, a fellow barber.”

  The women murmured their greetings and stood waiting to receive Yefim’s direction. He told them to sit on the couch and called Yelena, the child, to him. Embracing her and kissing her head, he looked up and said without the least suggestion of concern:

  “Which of you has been speaking to the secret police?”

  Neither woman responded.

  Yefim turned to Razan and calmly explained, “Maja’s my first wife, Meena my second.”

  Without thinking, Razan blurted, “Then they’re not sisters!” Immediately, Razan reproached himself for his rashness. His information could have come from only one source. He had unthinkingly admitted that he had been briefed by the secret police. How could he extricate himself now? He knew from Dimitri how the system infected people with two kinds of phobias: one, that everybody they met was an informer, and two, that they might be taken for one. Razan could just imagine Yefim’s state of mind.

  The Uzbek, in fact, was already ruing his frankness. Not to have treated Razan as a possible informer was a serious mistake. He had worked in the Kremlin long enough to know that questions were to be answered obliquely. When Razan was asking about Stalin, he had induced Yefim to drop his guard. Yefim knew that the first rule of self-preservation was to treat everyone, without exception, as an informer, even your wife. Sadly, if a spouse (for example, the husband) turned informer, the other person (the wife), unless an utter fool, was virtually condemned to silence; and since silence can be construed as conspiracy, the innocent party (the wife) became complicit in the same crime. Both were then trapped, because nothing binds people tighter than crime. The more people implicated and compromised, the greater the number of informants, traitors, and spies. As well, the ranks were swelled by the self-interested, who supported the regime to get ahead or to protect their own hides.

  Even if Razan was a naif, the government would expect Yefim to denounce him; otherwise he would be putting himself and his family in jeopardy. The formula was lethally simple. If “A” failed to denounce “B,” “C” could denounce both of them, a chain theoretically extendable until it tainted all the country’s 170 million citizens. Another sinister possibility was that if Razan were a government agent, he could threaten to denounce Yefim as a traitor unless Yefim agreed to work for the secret police. If Yefim refused, Razan could threaten to blacken his name by spreading rumors that the Uzbek was, in fact, a secret agent. And then Yefim’s friends would never trust him again.

  Not having worked in the Kremlin, Razan was not as sensitive as Yefim to all the implications of treachery, and felt powerless to clear his name. How does one prove a negative? If Razan said he was not a spy, Yefim could reply that he never entertained such a thought. Why even bring it up?

  It all seemed perfectly Soviet to Yefim. Razan had led him to make incriminating statements in the barbershop because it was bugged. He therefore asked Razan to join him downstairs to look for the device. A microphone would confirm his suspicions and allow him, for the taped record, to disavow all that he’d said and contend it was a trick to trap the new barber. Inch by inch the two men removed the wallpaper. When the electrical sockets proved safe, Yefim visibly relaxed, put his hands on his hips, and studied the room. Aha, the mirror behind the barber’s chair! It had always been cracked. But the fissure seemed wider now than before. With a pair of scissors, he carefully pried loose a section of glass along the crack. Termites!

  Yefim’s relief was life restoring. While so many others were traitors, apparently Razan was not. Had a microphone been discovered, Razan could have insisted that Yefim, in light of what he had said, fully confess to being a traitor, even if his confession was false. Thousands before Yefim had been similarly trapped and had then fabricated information in the hope of staying alive.

  In the apartment, except for the child, who was playing with an abacus on the rug, the women, like black idols, remained just as before, robed and silent. What a splendid disguise, Razan thought; a woman could gnash her teeth or grimace or grin and nobody could see. The burqa also made it impossible to know whether the person inside was a man or a woman. How many men, Razan salaciously wondered, had made their way into harems clothed in a burqa? Surely some Arab storyteller must have used that device for a titillating tale. Suddenly, from behind one of the burqas—Razan had no idea which—came a voice.

  Yefim responded, “You ask, Meena, why I think a wife of mine works for the secret police? So often when I was shaving the man who calls himself the Supreme Leader, he would say something like, ‘My guess is that you support Caucasian independence’ or ‘Yagoda probably terrifies you.’ How did he know my thoughts? One day, he said, ‘The Five-Year Plan is proving costly in human terms,’ which were my exact words spoken only to you and Maja.”

  Neither woman replied. Yefim reached for his Qur’an. “I want you both to swear on the holy book that you are innocent. The Prophet says that he who lies earns hell. Come now and swear.”

  They rose from the couch and crossed the room. Had Yefim not said, “Maja, you first,” Razan would have had no way of knowing one woman from the other. On the floor, the child watched the unfolding drama, transfixed. So, too, Razan. At the last second, Maja stepped aside to allow Meena to put her hand on the book and proclaim her innocence. Maja then reached for the book, but stopped. Looking at Yefim, she cried, “Must you always torment me?”

  “Why?” Yefim asked. “Tell me why, Maja.”

  Razan found the moment painful, as Maja broke down in tears.

  “I begged you not to take a second wife, but you did anyway.”

  Yefim replied without rancor, “You and Meena are friends.”

  “Yes,” she sobbed. “We agreed to say we were sisters so we could all live together.”

  “Have we not lived congenially?” Yefim asked.

  “We have.”

  “Why then . . . ?”

  She said nothing and turned away.

  “You can speak. Razan is a friend. I give you permission.”

  Slowly but deliberately, she traced the outline of her grievance. “I know the Qur’an. You are entitled to take up to four wives. But I also know how I feel. Every time you wish to be alone with Meena, I have to leave the room and the apartment. I take the child and enter the street. Such is my situation. The same is true for Meena. She and Yelena leave when you and I choose to be intimate. What she feels, I can’t say, but I feel shamed. Always I am asking myself, ‘What’s wrong with me? Why am I not enough for him? Where do I lack?’” She wiped her eyes. “That is why I agreed to inform.”

  “Even though you despise the Soviets?”

  “I hate much about them, but not their attitude toward multiple marriages. They say many wives obstruct the advancement of all people. I agree wholeheartedly. Look around at the Muslim nations. Do women enjoy a higher status in those countries or in the Soviet Union? I think you know the answer.”

  From her eloquence and candor, Razan concluded that Maja had at some time in her childhood received an education, which made her unusual among Muslim women. Probably at home, he thought, and wondered what her father did. Perhaps the government had sought her out precisely because of her education. Women who had been schooled were less likely to countenance multiple marriages.

  “Whom did you report to?” Yefim asked, still perfectly calm.

  “I can’t say.”

  “Informers meet their controls—isn’t that what they call them?—in the control’s apartment or in a private apartment belonging to an innocent person.”

  Maja refused to take the bait.

  “How
do I know,” asked Yefim, “that you are sincere and not yourself a plant, trying at this very moment to use me?”

  “You don’t, but who introduced the subject, not I?”

  “At some point I would have guessed.”

  “Perhaps.”

  That Razan was privy to this conversation obliged him by Soviet law to inform the authorities about what he had heard; otherwise he himself could be prosecuted for “lack of vigilance,” along with everyone else who had heard it, to wit, Meena and Yelena. Yes, even the child was expected to denounce the accused, in this case, Yefim. The inhumanity of Soviet law had previously been no more than a vexation, but now he felt crushed by it. Why should he, an innocent party, be liable for keeping his own counsel? As the implications slowly spread through his arteries, he understood, for the first time, that a person’s private thoughts or the verbal rambling of others were the property of the state. Not to disclose what one was thinking or hearing was like insisting on the right of private property, a Bolshevik sin. Even intellectual properties belonged to the state. A writer lived next door to him in the government house. Was he forbidden to copyright his work? And what of composers? Or, in the case of inventors, patents? The attack on imagination could not have been clearer; the state had declared war on originality.

  Razan, feeling sick, asked to be excused, but Yefim, well aware of Razan’s obligation to report the scene that had just taken place, followed him down the stairs to the street.

  “What will you say?” asked Yefim. “They’ll know that we talked.”

  “Of course we talked—about barbering! I can’t afford to say otherwise. The test, my stepson, my wife . . . all are at risk.”

  “Maja was there.”

  Both men watched a horse-drawn dray come clop, clop, clopping down the street. On the driver’s board sat an old man and a child. He was showing her how to hold the reins and drive the horse. A black Volga, the official car of mid-level Soviet officials and businessmen, was honking for the drayman to let him pass.

  “Your daughter,” said Razan nervously, “who is her mother?”

  “Maja.”

  “She’s a lovely child. Most women would wish to have her large dark eyes and perfect complexion. How old is she?”

  “Yelena is ten, and the sweetness of our lives.”

  As the car drew even with the two barbers, Yefim turned his back to the street. Razan instinctively understood, and did likewise. Stay out of sight. The nail that sticks up gets hammered.

  After the Volga disappeared, Yefim remarked, “I can’t even imagine what it’s like to own a car. They say that in America, working people own Fords, but I don’t believe it. In America there’s a depression. In fact, they’re sending experts to see how the Soviet system works, perhaps to adopt it. Fools!” Turning to Razan, Yefim added, “You do know that if you reported me you would put yourself in good standing with the secret police.”

  “Yefim, I owe you a favor. You shared your experience and knowledge. For your own safety—and mine—I beg you: take your family and leave for Tashkent. I might even be able to help you with train tickets.”

  Yefim smiled warmly. “So you are a secret agent after all!”

  Razan took the Uzbek’s hand and mumbled, “No.”

  For a moment, Yefim studied the street and shops, as if silently saying goodbye. “I’ll arrange to leave at once. A thousand thanks.” He put his hands on Razan’s shoulders. “Let me hug you.” As he did so, he whispered, “I have slipped into your pocket a picture. It is the man I barber. Don’t ask how I got it.” Releasing Razan, he opened the door to his building and stopped. “Tell me one thing: Why did you think they were sisters?”

  “It’s my biblical upbringing,” replied Razan, feeling his ears. Yefim had given him a true Turkish Delight.

  “But in the Old Testament,” said Yefim, “the patriarchs often have more than one.”

  To protect Dimitri, Razan had lied about the source of his information. But it wasn’t his deceit that disturbed him; it was that lying had come so easily and seemed so natural. A quotation came to him: “Beware the temptation to ignore what is true.” Would the future, he wondered, mimic the past or would new generations live in a world where falsehood was less useful than truth?

  Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili

  The day that Razan Shtube met the man who called himself Stalin, a fierce frost coated the city. Icicles hung from the Kremlin. Razan wore his new overcoat, the one Petrovich had made to order with a fur collar of marten, a hood lined with velvet, and a thick padding of calico wool sewn with fine double seams of heavy silk thread. Razan had never owned such a fine garment; not even his childhood bear suit could compare. Petrovich’s creation was like a protective womb that helped him endure the cold of subzero Russian winters.

  Dimitri had intended to collect Razan and drive him to his interview, but an emergency arose, and a courier brought Razan an official pass. Instead of taking a cab, Razan decided to walk across the bridge to the Kremlin. The bitter wind would concentrate his mind. Passing under the vaulted archway of the white Kustafya Tower, the barbican of the Troitsky Gate, he came to a guardhouse, flanked on either side by soldiers. Through a grille, Razan poked his pass at a stony official.

  “This warrant was issued by one Dimitri Lipnoskii of the secret police. I have to check on his authority to issue passes.”

  Razan stamped his feet on the icy pavement to keep them warm. As the soldier held the phone, waiting for clearance, he misconstrued Razan’s behavior.

  “Impatience, Citizen Shtube, will get you nowhere.” He then thanked the person on the phone and said to Razan, “I was instructed to ask, what is the purpose of your appointment?”

  “I’m here to interview for the position of Stalin’s barber.”

  “Are you in possession of any weapons?”

  “Just my scissors, shaving equipment, and combs.”

  Handing Razan a basket, the soldier directed him to empty his briefcase, which included the teakwood box and razor that the barber’s father had given him in Albania. It took a minute before the guard returned the contents, with a permit noting that the barber was carrying a razor.

  The two soldiers, who had been flanking the guardhouse and standing rigidly in the cold, led Razan to the armory and the desk of a man in a black suit, who introduced himself as a security agent. With the guards looking on, he closely studied Razan’s pass, opened his briefcase, examined the contents of the teakwood box, and conducted a body search of the barber. Then he reached for the phone on his desk, said something about “clearance,” and told Razan to wait, adding:

  “Comrade Poskrebyshev, Stalin’s secretary, will be down shortly to collect you.”

  Dimitri had told his father-in-law that Alexander Nikolaevich Poskrebyshev, in his capacity as chef de cabinet, screened all of Stalin’s appointments and many of his official documents. Absolutely devoted to Stalin, he actually lived in the Kremlin, near Koba, to serve him when needed. A few minutes later, Poskrebyshev brusquely introduced himself and snarled contemptuously from a pockmarked face, a physical disfigurement that he shared with the Boss.

  “You are Razan Shtube, from Brovensk,” he said looking at a paper. “An Albanian, you lived briefly in Birobidzhan. No doubt a Jew who wants to pass for a Russian.” Before Razan could reply, the pox-scarred man said, “Married to Anna Lipnoskaya, whose son Dimitri works for national security.”

  Poskrebyshev’s familiarity with Razan’s history persuaded the barber that the more Stalin’s gatekeeper knew about him, the better. He’d then know that Razan presented no danger.

  “Are your nails clean?” Before Razan could respond, Poskrebyshev snatched his hands. “I’ve seen worse.”

  On the advice of Dimitri, the barber had carefully pruned his nails, cut his cuticles, and, of course, scrubbed his hands. Why, Razan wondered, would anyone employ this loathsome aide?

  “You types are all the same,” said Poskrebyshev. “You come here expecting the Belove
d Leader to give you easy work. Under socialism, labor is a full-time job, not a one-hour haircut and shave. Follow me. Count yourself lucky to be in the Kremlin and meeting our Beloved Koba. But I must advise you that the Great Builder of the Soviet Union has already turned away three barbers, not counting the traitor from Tashkent. So don’t whine to me that you weren’t warned.”

  The phrase “the traitor from Tashkent” nearly persuaded Razan to turn on his heels and make straight for the door.

  “Will Dimitri Lipnoskii be joining us?”

  “His special assignment will take a few days to complete. Our Courageous Stalin normally disdains doing favors for friends, but he has made an exception for Dimitri, who recommended your skills. I’m sure your son will regret it.”

  Yefim had damned Poskrebyshev with just a whisper. “That toad would kill his own family for Stalin.” Comrade Ugly, as he was called by his detractors, snapped his fingers for the barber to follow, as if summoning a dog.

  To awe the few simple citizens who made it past the Kremlin gates, and to make them think that the Great Kremlin Palace was the people’s house, Stalin had Poskrebyshev guide visitors through the magnificent rooms to gape at Russia’s rich past. Today, however, he seemed out of sorts and ill disposed to lead Razan on a Kremlin tour.

  At the front door of the palace, he said peremptorily to a uniformed attendant in a black jacket with golden epaulets, “Artur, show this cit the Catherine Room. The Congress Hall is being used. I have work to do.” Poskrebyshev then disappeared.

  The eighteenth-century Catherine Room, which was furnished with chairs and divans bearing the monograms of Catherine the Great and had walls covered with green silk wallpaper and portraits of royalty framed in gold, left Razan breathless. He slipped his guide several rubles and asked the man to permit him a peek into the other palatial rooms. Artur took him directly to the Georgievski Hall, adorned with hollow zinc columns, ornate crystal chandeliers, and an intricately patterned parquet floor built with twenty different kinds of wood. “When the room is lit,” said Artur, “the light luminously reflects off the floor.” Mirrored doors led from the Georgievski Hall to the octagonally shaped Vladimirski Hall, in which a glittering three-tiered crystal chandelier hung from a dome. After the Vladimirski Hall, they went to the Palace of Facets, where the walls blazed with every color of the palette, then to the Tsarina’s Golden Chamber, and, through the gilded doorways of the Holy Vestibule, into the Terem Palace. The last two stops on the tour were the Palace of Congresses, which looked like an enormous wooden schoolroom, and Stalin’s glittering scarlet and gold reception room, used for entertaining foreign dignitaries. From the large conference chamber, formed out of the joining of the Alexandrovski and Andreyevski halls, Razan could hear voices, clinking glasses, laughter, and a balalaika. Artur said that a meeting of Soviet delegates was in session, prompting Razan to look through the slightly open door on a scene that remained with him for the rest of his life. On an easel stood a large portrait of Stalin. Party members were celebrating the successes of their different provinces. People of all hues and races and dialects and languages were singing the praises of Soviet life and drinking the health and wisdom of the Supreme Leader. Many of the faces would surface again, both in Poskrebyshev’s office and in newspaper photographs that recorded the achievements of these “Soviet heroes” and, subsequently, their unlamented deaths.