Stalin's Barber

by Paul M. Levitt

  “You are absolutely right, Comrade Shtube, about our Supreme Leader, but what you don’t know is that in Georgia, I once saved his life. An assassin fired at close range. In fact,” said the colonel, pulling up a trouser leg, “I . . .”

  He never completed his thought, because Polonia interrupted. With a hitch in her voice, she said, “Ilia nearly died defending the Vozhd. He took a bullet intended for Stalin.”

  Razan had played his best card and had lost. An awkward silence ensued. Spying the library in the adjoining room and playing for time, he asked if Ilia and Polonia had any objection to his looking at their collection, which was handsomely displayed in Moroccan bindings. They welcomed his interest.

  “Polonia, besides being a dancer and chemist,” said the colonel, “is a translator. So we have a great many volumes in English and French, her two other languages.”

  Razan saw a collection of O. Henry short stories and smiled; his mother had read them in English and repeated them in Albanian. Perhaps, just perhaps, he wondered . . .

  Returning to the sitting room, he said, “If you don’t mind, I think that I would like a cup of tea, after all.”

  Polonia glided across to the samovar and returned with a cup bearing an incised design. As Razan sipped his tea, he deliberately sighed and casually remarked:

  “Yelena, such a delightful child. I envy you . . . except for those few times . . . but then I’m sure Comrade Vadim Maximovich Dibratov has already told you about her occasional—what should I call them?—oddities or rather bouts of misbehavior. But then what can you expect? She is the child of enemies of the people.”

  The colonel put down his cigar and repeated, “Oddities? Bouts?” He leaned toward Razan. “What can you possibly mean, comrade?”

  “I spoke out of turn. Forget that I said anything. After all, am I not here because of her effect on me? Your feelings are mine. We both love her. She is a most charming little rascal, particularly around matchsticks.”

  “What did you say?” asked the colonel.

  “She nearly burned down the Boujinski apartment on several occasions, and she somehow managed to set fire to her mother’s best dress. But all children have a touch of pyromania in them. Right?”

  “When we interviewed her,” said Polonia, “she was a model of good manners. And there’s nothing in her file . . .”

  “So she didn’t howl like a calliope during the interview? Good. Perhaps she’s over it. I can’t tell you how many nights she kept her parents awake.”

  Polonia and Ilia exchanged worried glances.

  “I do like my sleep,” said the colonel.

  “As a precaution, you’d be well advised to soundproof your room or house the child in another wing.”

  “Surely that sweet little girl . . .” Polonia broke off. “Many of these children have suffered terribly. Perhaps . . .”

  “I’m sure by now she’s overcome her habit of kicking and biting.”

  Training his experienced battlefield eyes on Razan with the hope of detecting a flaw in the enemy, a now troubled colonel asked, “Then tell me, comrade, why would you want to adopt an unruly child who is, according to you, the embodiment of her parents’ sins?”

  “Friendship knows no defects and needs no reason. Yelena’s grandparents and I—same apartment building. That’s the all of it.”

  Razan said nothing further, letting his comments sink in. If the colonel and his wife insisted, he would have to withdraw.

  The colonel took his wife by the elbow and they walked into the library. For several minutes, they whispered. When they returned to the settee, Polonia’s eyes were moist. The colonel cleared his throat:

  “Comrade Shtube, she’s yours. We’ll just have to try elsewhere.”

  To Moscow, to Moscow, to Moscow!

  As two policemen led Alexei through the Leningrad train station, Natasha caught up with her husband on the platform and, ignoring his guards, tearfully embraced him. She swore to write every day, a promise she kept, and to visit him often in Voronezh, which proved impossible. Dimitri had tried to arrange for Alexei to serve his five years treating soldiers at a military camp. But the harder he tried, the testier the head of the secret service became, until Dimitri feared that the length of Alexei’s sentence would be doubled.

  The Leningrad publisher Kazimir Ouspensky, who wanted to employ Natasha, had, by a stroke of good luck, been promoted to an official position in the Moscow archives, where he oversaw the cataloguing of thousands of secret documents. Within a month of his arrival, he approached his superior, Efim Smilga, a Very Important Person, to ask if Natasha von Fresser could receive a special dispensation to allow her to work for him in the Archive of Denunciations.

  Adjusting his metal-framed spectacles, Kazimir initiated the discussion with a series of falsehoods. “So desirous is she of working in the archives that she went to the trouble of having her eyes operated on to correct an impairment. And although married to an enemy of the people, she deplores his behavior and has indicated a willingness to divorce the traitor. She has, should you wish to note it, privately denounced him to me.”

  “Have you told the authorities?”

  “Better! The man has already been deported to Voronezh without any means of support. His medical training will be worthless. What self-respecting Soviet citizens would let an exile treat them?”

  Whether because of Natasha’s own pleadings or of Kazimir’s blatant lies, she received permission to work under Comrade Ouspensky, a condition that he greatly desired, given her rapturous looks and fetching figure.

  * * *

  Razan and Yelena quickly adapted to their new relationship, in part because both of them felt outsiders in Soviet society. Most late afternoons they spent playing chess. When not at the board, the child liked to sit at Anna’s feet while her stepmother brushed and combed her hair, or braided it Ukrainian fashion in elaborate and swirling designs. Razan accompanied Yelena, in her starched uniform, to class each morning and along the way told her stories about his youth in Albania. She sometimes related what she remembered about Tashkent. At the front door, Yelena always turned and waved before disappearing from sight. Razan felt closest to her at these moments of silent parting.

  He would then cross from the island to the Kremlin and show his pass with its official stamp and photograph, enter the Troitsky Gate, and continue to the small barbershop used by Soviet officials, a space distant from Stalin’s quarters, and one that Poskrebyshev had ordered newly equipped for Razan. Although not as comfortable as his father’s barbershop in Tirana, it had all the necessary fittings and tools: a proper chair that could be raised and lowered and the headrest adjusted, a deep sink with porcelain faucets, a small rubber hose that could be attached to the sink nozzle for the purpose of washing and rinsing hair, a steamer for towels, a wall mirror and looking glasses, and imported Swedish scissors, clippers, tweezers, combs, clips, and razors. Everything was silver coated and gleaming but not as comfortable to the hand as his own set of barbering tools, which he reserved for the man who answered to the name “Stalin.”

  Given that Koba usually didn’t sit for a shave until two or three in the morning, Razan designed his day in two shifts. He slept from 4:00 a.m. until he walked Yelena to the nearby Moscow Experimental School (MOPSh), and then returned to bed. Such a schedule meant that when not on call, his evenings were free to take his family to operas, stage plays, ballets, and, of course, the wonderful circus. Anna’s favorite entertainment was movies, and she had a special fondness for musicals, mysteries, and comedies. Natasha’s imagination took flight the moment the curtain rose on a play or a romantic ballet. Yelena would attend these diversions when her homework allowed. It was not until she saw the art exhibition at the Kremlin that Yelena discovered her vital element: drawing.

  The winter, as always, made excessive demands on one’s energy. Just to walk through the snowdrifts and keep warm exhausted those not properly dressed. With his Kremlin salary, Razan insisted that his family buy the
best and most durable clothing, which could be found in the basement government shop, the one accessible only to the party faithful. Here the goods were functional and stylish because most were imported from France and Italy and the United States. Here, and not on the Arbat, he bought Anna her fur coat. When Razan and his family walked down the street, no one could have failed to notice that they dressed like the favored Soviet class, the bureaucracy.

  On the street, cabs appeared out of nowhere while other people huddled in the cold, waiting. Tables in restaurants materialized while other customers were asked to wait or turned away. Seats for plays or ballets always turned up, although the sign in front of the theatre said SRO. Even train tickets, so difficult to acquire, became available, allowing Anna to visit her sons in Leningrad and Brovensk. Had Razan requested a car, the Kremlin staff would have provided one to travel the short distance from his apartment to work. Invited to a few weekend parties at the dachas of Molotov and Yagoda and Malenkov, though not Stalin’s, a car always took Razan and his party to the front door. Paradise, an abstraction for some, was a perk of the privileged. Alas, even in a classless society, some drink champagne and some only cheap vodka.

  Natasha had moved in with her mother and stepfather, occupying the living room with Yelena, whom she treated as a younger sister, often and proudly reading to her now that her vision had been surgically repaired. After several months, they became confidants, which confirmed Razan and Anna’s decision to adopt Yelena. The child idolized the lovely Natasha and would often come directly from school to the archives, where she sat in the waiting room among dozens of people, all hoping to uncover some document that would exonerate them or their loved ones or prove to the contrary some damning assertion. On entering the building, she was, like the others, always searched. A guard would shake out her notebook and primers looking for contraband. But when Natasha appeared, slipping her a spool of film to pocket, they would leave undetected. It was the introduction of forbidden objects that concerned the guards, not the removal of ones that citizens studied under the watchful eye of an attendant.

  On the days that Natasha asked Yelena not to meet her, the blond beauty usually left the building in the company of Comrade Ouspensky, who took her to the Metropol Hotel for a drink and then to one of the few fashionable Moscow restaurants for dinner, always to be followed by dancing. The same barbershop that Dimitri patronized, Paul’s, styled Natasha’s loops and curls and waves. In fact, Paul himself cut her hair. The first time she sat in his chair, the one that was closest to the door and that rested on a platform six inches higher than the other two, he stepped back and studied her face as if planning to paint it.

  “A woman’s hair,” he said, “is the elegant frame for her face. It should not clash with her coloring and certainly not with her bone structure. Your face reminds me of Bernini’s marbles, the same whiteness, the same passion, the same angularity to the neck.”

  She made it a point, though she could barely afford it, to have her hair styled weekly. What made the cost possible was the fortuitous arrival one afternoon of Dimitri, who had come to collect Comrade Yuri Suzdal. Her brother, who had eyes only for Yuri, failed to notice her until he and his companion had reached the front door. Dimitri knew at once that she would discover their relationship, if Paul hadn’t already disclosed it. Insisting on paying half the cost of her hairdressing visits, Dimitri made no demands in return, but Natasha was now worldly enough to know the meaning of a quid pro quo. Didn’t she, in fact, have one with Kazimir? She let him kiss her and fondle her in return for nights on the town and costly presents. Although he had often tried in the privacy of his own apartment to seduce her, she had unfailingly slapped his hand; but she knew that one day, when the conditions were propitious . . .

  A positive response to the right person would guarantee her more than cocktails and dinners and fluffy dresses and cosmetics and fashionable shoes. She would ride in a chauffeur-driven black car, be collected from the embankment each morning, and driven on weekends to dacha parties. She would receive regular promotions and pay raises. And perhaps most enticing of all, she would have access to the holy of holies, the vault with top-secret documents.

  Diminutive and dapper, dedicated and devious, Kazimir Ouspensky had first married for money and then for position. His first wife came from a farm family that owned hundreds of acres, until the government appropriated the land. Wife number two came from a Bolshevik family with connections to Bukharin, who eventually fell out of favor. Kazimir’s brood, four children, could be found in Leningrad, but he had not spoken nor seen them for years. His second marriage had made possible the small but prominent government publishing house he ran for the principal purpose of printing the theoretical musings of party officials. To his credit, Kazimir would occasionally publish writers not on the government list. His favorite poet, Marina Tsvetaeva, best known for her lines,

  And soon we all shall sleep beneath the soil,

  Who would not let each other sleep above it,

  was always in need of money, small sums of which he arranged for her to receive secretly. Although chastised for publishing poets out of favor with the government, he found more pleasure in the works of the pariahs than the doggerel of hacks celebrating a new tractor or dam or canal.

  His not unhandsome features, pale blue eyes, clear skin, small mouth, blond hair, gentle hands, had over the years attracted a number of women, but none of them as bewitching as Natasha, who held him spellbound, even to the point of danger. When he had transferred to Moscow to become the archivist of denunciations—an entire wing of his ministry screened the thousands of denunciatory letters that arrived every week—he had distinguished himself by exhibiting an unerring sense of knowing which letters to credit and which to ignore.

  “Dear Comrade Stalin” was a typical salutation. “I live in an apartment building with Galina Sobol. Whenever your name is mentioned, she makes the sign of the figa, like an illiterate Italian peasant, to keep the evil eye away. She should be reeducated in a camp, and I should be given her apartment, much roomier than my own with a view of the garden.” A letter of this kind would seem to beg for the reject pile, but Kazimir was struck by the candor, the name Sobol, and the word “figa.” After an undercover investigation, Kazimir discovered that the writer, a man, belonged to an anti-Semitic group, which the police subsequently broke up, and was himself an Italian Fascist agent with family in Rome.

  “Dear Koba” immediately suggested to Kazimir that the writer was a lovesick woman who wanted to insinuate herself into the presence of Stalin. “I have uncovered a nest of spies in the alley across from me. If you will send me a train ticket to Moscow, I will bring you their names and show you my proof.”

  “Dear Defender of the Motherland” normally meant that the letter writer was going to engage in self-denunciation. “When asked by the authorities, I originally said that my father worked in a metal shop. But now I see how my lies have poisoned my life and cost me my health. The truth is that my father was a policeman for the Tsar. I hate myself for having lied and wish you to tell me how I can make amends.”

  Kazimir usually arranged for the self-denouncers to be brought in for questioning. In most instances, they proved frightened and no threat to the state, though some of them had to relinquish their current positions to make way for patriots. The ex-children of priests, for example, could not be allowed to obstruct a true Soviet.

  Eventually Kazimir’s good work caught the attention of Stalin’s favorite secret policeman, Genrikh Yagoda, deputy chairman of the GPU. A ferret-faced jeweler’s son from Nizhny Novgorod, he sported a brush mustache, loved orchids, watched German pornography, and cultivated literary friendships. He was principally responsible for the purges in the countryside, having persuaded Stalin to root out the kulaks as plotters against the party and Supreme Leader. Yagoda asked to see Kazimir, whom he found immensely clever, and offered him any archival job he desired. Comrade Ouspensky requested the sensitive position of cataloguing Koba’s s
ecret files.

  “Ah, the crown jewels,” said Yagoda.

  “And if I might be so bold . . .” Yagoda shook his head yes. “My assistant, Natasha von Fresser, should replace me as head of the Archives of Denunciation.”

  Stroking his pointed chin, Yagoda said, “Let me guess. She is very beautiful.”

  “And a gifted archivist. I trained her myself, if you’ll excuse my lack of modesty.”

  “Excused. I’ll see to it that she is given the job, the title, and the increase in pay.”

  When Kazimir left Yagoda’s office, he was convinced that Natasha would appreciatively give herself up to him, perhaps that same night. But Natasha was so excited by the news that she felt in no mood for romance. She wanted to dine and dance, and get blissfully drunk.

  Thanks to Ouspensky’s connections, Natasha met men in government of all types and ranks. Her desk in the archives, like honey to bees, drew swarms of admirers, both married and single. Within weeks, she found herself escorted to dacha dinners, excursions, theatricals, readings, concerts, and men’s apartments. Although Ouspensky was her original sponsor, she soon found little need for him. The poor man wondered if others were enjoying what he had failed to receive.

  Shortly after her installation as the archivist of denunciations, Natasha had begun spiriting documents from the office and passing them to Yelena. Had she been caught, exile or death would have ensued; and yet she harbored no fears. She engaged in this illegal practice for two reasons: one, she was light-fingered by nature; two, she thought that in the future she might be able to make good use of some of these odious letters.

  Yagoda saw Natasha for the first time during one of his periodic archival visits in search of damning evidence to condemn some poor soul. He stopped at her desk and, struck by her Scandinavian mien, could hardly unscramble his jumbled syntax. When he learned that she was Kazimir’s protégé, the woman Kazimir had recommended as his replacement, he insisted that Comrade Ouspensky bring her to his dacha. Given that Yagoda was Kazimir’s superior, Ouspensky feared that the chief would have his way with Natasha.