Stalin's Barber

by Paul M. Levitt

  Before leaving the house on the embankment, he took stock. He had packed his satchel with a change of clothes, brushed his overcoat, checked his galoshes for leaks, and put his work papers, the ones with the government imprimatur and official signatures indicating his position as barber to the Kremlin, in his elongated leather wallet, which he kept chained to his belt.

  At the station in M____, he hired a driver with a sleigh and horse to take him to the orphanage. The driver, a bewhiskered fellow smelling of rum, threw a heavy rug over Razan’s legs, snapped his reins, and hurtled into the night. The sleigh’s runners raced along the icy ruts as the horse galloped down the middle of the road.

  “I usually charge more,” said the Dickensian-looking man, his head and feet wrapped in rags, and his body bound in the salvaged parts of discarded jackets and coats that had been stitched together to make one garment. The remnants, all different colors, had come from pigskin, chamois, ox hide, suede, kid, and fleece. “If the local Soviet thinks I’m overcharging, I’ll lose my license.” He muttered an expletive. “Fares should depend on the weather and not some list posted in an office. Don’t you agree?”

  In fact, Razan did, but living in a country that looked upon every citizen as a possible traitor made it impossible for the barber to say he agreed. Once again, Razan found himself caught in the tentacles of Soviet logic. If the driver was trying to trap him, Razan would be a fool to respond; and if the man’s suggestion that the country was less than perfect went unreported, Razan could suffer. Leaning back to let the cold flakes fleck his face, Razan mutely agreed with Stalin’s critics. Only the Soviet faithful failed to see that life had been reduced to two choices: one could either lie to himself and others, or inform. The threat of Fascism had driven Razan from Albania; now the need to speak in euphemisms or resort to silence was robbing Russia of all individuality.

  Razan took refuge in a harmless question. “What’s the orphanage like, large or small?”

  The driver spat into the snow. “Neither, just soulless.” This fellow, Razan concluded, was either fearless or a brilliant front man for the local Soviet. “The children of those who are shot, exiled, or blacklisted are brought to places like this one, where military officers and government functionaries come to adopt them.”

  “What if the children are older?”

  “Makes no difference. They take the name of their new parents.”

  “I meant that older children are inclined to resent a new regimen. They remember their parents and the old ways of behaving.”

  “A general once said to a kid he’d just adopted, as he was climbing into this very sleigh, ‘A good whipping will change your mind.’ I suppose that’s how they do it.”

  Razan suddenly felt chilled to the bone.

  The two-story building, putrid yellow with barred windows, featured a circular drive that took the sleigh to the front door. Off to one side of the orphanage, Razan could see a few official cars. The observant driver, noting his gaze, said, “Some of ’em belong to the orphanage, but the others, I’d guess, belong to the customers.”

  Customers! thought Razan. What can that word possibly mean when applied to children being readied for adoption? Are they fattened? Schooled in manners? Indoctrinated with Marxist principles? Presumably, the children had few alternatives. They could make themselves look presentable and leave the yellow jail, or misbehave and remain, incurring, no doubt, the displeasure of their keepers.

  The more he analyzed the plight of the children, the angrier he grew, until he reminded himself of the rider in the woods whose horse suddenly took lame. Setting out on foot, the man kept telling himself that whomever he met would charge him a fortune for help. The longer he walked, the greater his ire. When he finally arrived at a farm and was greeted by the farmer, the rider said, “You can keep your goddamn help. I would rather walk than pay your fee,” and stormed out.

  At the front door, a matronly woman in a faded green uniform greeted Razan. She wore her gray hair in a tight bun in back and used no cosmetics. High-cheeked and blue-eyed and large busted, she looked Ukrainian, and spoke in an accented Russian.

  “As you can see,” said Razan, with the joke still in mind, “I come bearing no outrage or prejudices.”

  The buxom attendant rang for the director, who came on a run. She whispered, “We have a madman on our hands. While you talk to him, I’ll call the police.”

  Comrade Vadim Maximovich Dibratov, the image of an albino ferret, with white hair, a lanky body, a narrow face, and kinetic energy, asked Razan into his office, where he intended to detain him long enough for the local militia to arrive and remove him. But the conversation took an unpredictable turn when the director mentioned that his father had come from Tirana.

  Razan asked the name of the street and, upon hearing it, slapped his forehead and mendaciously said, “The very area where my family lived! Your favorite pastime?” Again, he slapped his forehead. “Chess! My father loved the game; me too.”

  After an exchange of facts and memories, Razan insisted that the two fathers had probably traveled in the same circles, and shared the same views. The director grabbed his desk phone and dialed, excitedly ordering the person at the other end “to cancel the call. Yes, that one. Immediately!”

  “Would it be wrong to assume that you were talking about me?”

  “It’s nothing! Trust me, nothing,” the director sputtered in confusion. “Lyubov, the head of admissions, you know, the lady you met when you first came in, she thought, well, you know, these Ukrainians, all emotions.” He raised his hands in defeat. “She mistook you for someone else.” Dibratov offered Razan a cigarette. Razan declined. “Wise, very wise. An awful habit, but I’m addicted. So tell me, what brings you here, all the way from Moscow.”

  Razan explained that he wanted to adopt a child, but not just any child; he wanted to adopt Yelena Boujinskia. “Dimitri Lipnoskii of the secret service brought her here recently. She’s from Tashkent. Brown skinned. Curly hair and large dark eyes. Perfect teeth. A pretty child, ten years old. Her parents . . . you understand.”

  “She’s been given a bed in the east wing. I agree: a lovely little girl. But I fear there’s a problem. Let me check.” Dibratov opened a wooden filing cabinet and thumbed through the alphabetically arranged folders until he found the one that he wanted. He studied it briefly and sighed. “Just as I thought. Colonel Ilia Krichevski has already signed the papers. I knew that he and his wife liked the child, but I didn’t realize that Lyubov had already processed the transfer. Sometimes Lyubov is too accommodating, especially when one of the adoptive parents is a high-ranking officer.”

  “I gather Yelena is still on the premises,” said Razan, removing his working papers from his wallet and spreading them out on the desk.

  Breathless at the sight of the Kremlin stamp, Dibratov nattered on more confused than before. “Perhaps, if I’m lucky, something, I’m not sure what, can be done. She’s with us, that is, here at the orphanage, for at least a week more, yes, at least a week. Maybe more. We are waiting on Tashkent, our counterparts there, to send us copies of her medical records. Vaccinations, you know, are particularly important. We couldn’t possibly, not at all, let our children, I’m sure you agree, leave here without a clean bill of health. What if—I shouldn’t even think it—the child, to cite just one example, died in the Krichevski house, heaven forbid, of some exotic disease? Moscow would, I have no doubts, hear about it. The party secretary for our oblast would undoubtedly insist on an investigation, and, as you know, our Blessed Leader loves little children, even ‘strange orphans,’ whose parents have been exiled.”

  “Can you give me the colonel’s address?”

  “Kursk. I’ll write it all down.” He reached for a pen. “But I beg you, please, for the sake of our fathers’ memories, do not compromise me. The colonel’s wife, Polonia, nearly swooned over the child. I could show you other youngsters, all in perfect health.”

  Again, Razan experienced that unpleasant sense of
being treated as a customer expected to look over the goods. Dibratov made the orphanage sound like a horse market, where buyers could evaluate flesh on the hoof.

  “They are children,” mumbled Razan, “not animals.”

  “Pardon me, I couldn’t hear you.”

  “I said that children love animals. Have you no pets here?”

  “Hygiene comes first. I think you’d agree that the health of the children is more important than a dog or a cat.”

  For Razan’s tenth birthday, his parents had presented him with a shaggy Scottish terrier that had become as much a part of him as any of his appendages. The dog would accompany him as he made his way to class and return to meet him for his journey home. In Razan’s last year of school, his dog was trampled by a horse-drawn coach, which had careened down the street and jumped the curb, bearing some minor members of the royal family late for an appointment. A few days later, he received an apologetic note with a bank draft worth one pair of shoes, no small sum, but not a substitute for his faithful terrier. In fact, he bought a pair of shoes that he hardly wore. The sight of them painfully reminded him of the first meaningful death in his life.

  Before leaving the orphanage, Razan asked to see Yelena. She came down the stairs mechanically, dressed in a dirty yellow jumper, her shining eyes now dull. When she saw Razan, a familiar face, she walked and then ran across the uneven linoleum floor. She wanted to see her parents. Could he take her? They spoke in whispers.

  “Not now. I have to make arrangements for you first.”

  “You mean that family who wants to adopt me, don’t you?”

  “My wife and I would like you to live with us.”

  “What about my mother and father?”

  “We will care for you until they return.”

  Yelena, who had buried her face in his chest and had been speaking from this protected position, now looked him in the eye. “They may never come back. Isn’t that true? All the kids say so.”

  Unable to answer “yes,” he nodded in agreement.

  She reached up and touched his cheek, which he lowered to her lips, expecting her to kiss him goodbye. Instead, she murmured in his ear, “I’m scared to remain here . . . waiting . . . not knowing where my parents are. Promise me you’ll come back.”

  He sank to one knee, hugged her, and promised.

  The train to Kursk had no vacant seats, none in fact for several weeks, but the stationmaster, a true humanitarian, ordered that the cattle car be opened so that anyone willing to transit amidst the animals, smells, and straw could ride for free. Several people peered into the car, sniffed, and declined the offer. Razan, who had known worse conditions on his trip from Albania to Birobidzhan, took his satchel and boarded. Once the train had left the city precincts, he opened the doors. Using the wooden pitchfork lying in the cattle car, he shoveled out the offal, made a bed of straw, and fell asleep.

  “Kursky Station!”

  The announcement awakened him. Among excited voices, the doors of the cattle car slid back, and he exited, smelling of black pied cows. The first thing he did was ask a station worker the location of the city baths. With his satchel in hand, he paid the attendant for a towel and a sliver of soap. Lying in the steaming bath reminded him of the writer who had said that heaven was a hot roll every morning. Almost right, he mused, but first a hot bath.

  Having dressed in his clean change of clothes, he now wondered about his exquisite overcoat. He couldn’t step outside into the cold without it; and he certainly couldn’t show up at the Krichevski house reeking of cattle. But where could he find a cleaner? And while it was being cleaned, he would have to remain at the baths. Could he trust someone not to make off with Petrovich’s incomparable creation? He felt like a character out of Gogol, and had no intention of ending up the same way, trying to locate his coat.

  The sallow attendant, who looked as if the steam baths had drained all the blood from his body, his face and hands exhibiting only a tracery of thin blue veins, offered to help. His cousin, a baker, worked next door to a tailor who also cleaned clothes. For a second time, Razan unfolded his official work papers.

  “I can’t read,” said the attendant.

  “Do you see this seal?”

  “Yes.”

  “I work for Stalin in the Kremlin. That’s what the seal means.”

  The attendant ran one hand through his thinning hair. His mouth opened, as if he intended to speak, but said nothing. When the man reached for a towel, Razan anticipated a flood of tears. Instead, the man bit the towel, like a person in the throes of a seizure. At last, after slowly lowering himself on his haunches, the man said:

  “I have no cousin.”

  “Call the local police.”

  “You wouldn’t . . .”

  “Tell them that Stalin’s barber needs a ride to the home of Colonel Krichevski.” This would not be the only time Razan used his exalted position to advance his cause. In fact, he went a step further. “And have the police call the home of Colonel Krichevski to tell him and his wife that Stalin’s barber would like to see them.”

  A car came almost immediately. Razan flashed his papers and followed a uniformed soldier outside, holding his coat at arm’s length. He would have stored it in his satchel had it not been so bulky. Perhaps the intense cold would lessen the smell.

  “Your coat, comrade, put on your coat,” said the soldier. “The temperature is forty degrees below freezing.”

  “I’m sure the car is heated.”

  “As you wish.”

  The soldier opened the backdoor for Razan, and then sat in front with the driver. Even though he put the coat at the other end of the seat, Razan could smell the pungent odor that suffused the material.

  “We must be approaching some cows,” said the driver.

  “Strange,” said the other, “I don’t see any.”

  Both soldiers began sniffing. Razan tried to pretend that nothing was wrong and hoped that his official position would dissuade the soldiers from identifying the source of the smell. Although his two escorts occasionally glanced at each other with a knowing look, neither man spoke. When they dropped him off at the colonel’s house, instead of accompanying him to the front door, the driver said:

  “If I were you, I’d leave the coat in his garden.”

  Standing in the bitter cold without any means to keep warm, other than taking refuge in the foul-smelling coat, Razan rang the bell and pressed into the narrow doorway, holding his coat apart from his body. When the door suddenly opened, he nearly fell into the vestibule.

  “Are you the barber?” said a young man in a starched tunic and trousers tucked into high leather boots, in the manner of the Vozhd.

  “Yes.” Handing the man his coat, he said, “I’ve had an unfortunate accident. Please deposit this coat in the garden.”

  Holding it with his thumb and forefinger, the young man carried it out the backdoor, as if it were an offending pet that had soiled the rug. When he returned, the fragrances issuing from the greenhouse, an effect that the colonel prized, had been eclipsed by the hint of a stockyard. To make matters worse, Polonia Krichevskia managed a perfume factory and had the nose of an aromatic chemist. When the colonel, with his walrus mustache and florid face, invited Razan into the sitting room to meet his wife, Polonia looked past him, trying to detect the source of some bovine ordure. She and her husband exchanged baffled looks, sat on the French settee, and invited “Comrade Shtube” to explain why he had come to their house.

  The sitting room, decorated in rococo, belied all the Soviet talk about humility and the common man. Every piece of furniture, every table lamp, every figurine and hand-painted plate exhibited delicately executed ornamentation imitating foliage, shell work, and scrolls. In addition to the French frills, two objects captured the eye: a large white ceramic stove, equipped in the Austrian manner to sleep a person on top, and a samovar resting on an elegant sideboard. Razan could see the whole room reflected in the silver gloaming of the stately samovar, with
its old Slavonic inscriptions, a runic reminder of glories past, a fading memory of the old order.

  “Tea?” asked Polonia.

  “I really can’t stay long.”

  The colonel and his wife waited stiffly for Razan to explain the reason for his presence. When he had finished, Ilia and Polonia spoke with one voice in opposition.

  The colonel, barely keeping his temper under control, asked, “Why should your claim to the child eclipse ours?”

  “I knew her grandparents,” said the barber disingenuously. “I met the child when she was staying with them.”

  “You have a great heart, worthy of a Soviet,” said Colonel Krichevski, with just the slightest hint of sarcasm, “but we’ve made up our minds. Besides, children are taken from their parents and friends every day—for the good of the motherland.”

  “Patriotism, like any feeling, is hard to argue with.”

  “Comrade Shtube, you have no idea the impression the child made on us. Her delicate gestures . . . her balletic movements,” said Polonia, who herself strode across the carpet with feet pointed outward like a trained ballerina and moved her hands and wrists as if they floated in air.

  The colonel, as everyone in the military knew, had fought for the Tsar against the Germans. He had been a White Army officer, a fact that Razan now elicited. Most, if not all, of these officers were repugnant to Stalin, who had famously said:

  “Prick the skin of every Red officer who once fought for the Tsar, and he’ll bleed White!”

  As much as Razan disliked blackmail, he felt compelled to keep his word to Yelena. “As Stalin’s barber . . .”

  “You must tell us about it,” the colonel said sincerely. “You must be privy to a great many . . .” He laughed. “State secrets.”

  For effect, Razan looked around as if checking his surroundings for eavesdroppers. “He has his assistant, Poskrebyshev, look at all the adoption lists, even though they run into the thousands. Anyone who once fought for the Whites, or is suspected of harboring sympathies for their cause, is struck from the list. But I’m sure, Colonel, that you and your lovely wife can make a special case for your adopting Yelena Boujinskia. If I could, I would help, but given my own feelings, I’m hardly the one to advance your case.”