Stalin's Barber

by Paul M. Levitt

  “These shirts,” she said, “who’s been pressing them? They need a woman’s touch.”

  She gathered them up and disappeared downstairs.

  Alexei smiled thinking of how her robustness would appeal to Oblomov. He could imagine them engaged in sweaty lovemaking, though “wrestling matches” would be more accurate.

  By the time she returned, Alexei had put his trousers and jackets in the armoire—his overcoat didn’t fit. Having filled the two drawers in the chest, he left his sweaters in the valise and emptied his satchel of the half dozen medical books he had brought into exile. All of them treated maladies of the brain and psychiatric subjects, the very studies in which he had intended to specialize during his residency.

  When Lena neatly laid the shirts on the bed for Alexei to admire, she remarked, “You’ll never hear a mean word out of me. I’m not like that harridan Mrs. Minkskovia. But whoever’s been mending and ironing your shirts neglected a few rips and took no time with the pressing. The missing buttons I replaced.”

  “You’re a wonder.”

  “Now, some of these women who keep boarders . . . like Mrs. Minkskovia across the road . . . the things I could tell you.”

  Alexei added ironically, “But you won’t.”

  “Not unless, of course, you really want to know,” she said, hoping to be asked.

  “Perhaps some other time.”

  Lena opened the chest of drawers. “Just checking to see if you put away your clothing in an orderly fashion.” She held up a pair of suspenders. “Are these yours?”

  “I wore them in medical school.”

  “In Voronezh, unless you want to stand out, which is always a mistake, I’d suggest you wear belts. My late husband had some nice ones I gave away. But I still have a few you can choose from. The last person I ever saw with suspenders was a doctor from Leningrad who stayed in this very room for two months while treating patients and holding . . . what’s the word?”

  “Seminars?”

  “Yes, running seminars in the local hospitals. His name will come to me in a minute.”

  “If you don’t mind, Mrs. Goracheva, I need a place to hang my overcoat. The armoire is too small.”

  “I’ll put it in the hall closet. Hasn’t this weather been bitter? The doctor who stayed here briefly, he too came in the middle of winter. Never dressed warmly enough. Rarely wore a muffler. Chulkaturin! That was his name. I knew it’d come to me.”

  “Not Dr. Semyon Chulkaturin?”

  “That was him. Like I said, he slept in this very room.”

  “I studied with him! He worked with Freud.”

  “Never met Mr. Freud. But as for Dr. Chulkaturin . . . where else would a gentleman stay? Certainly not with Mrs. Bizmionkova—that shrew! Oh, you can be sure she tried to steal him away, with her jam tarts and honeyed words. But he knew which boardinghouse was the better one. I always mind my own business. Why, I’ve never even peeked at the notebook he left behind.”

  “A notebook here in your house?”

  “On top of the armoire, like he was trying to hide it. But since I keep a house as neat as a pin, when I dusted I found it. A lined notebook, filled from front to back.”

  “May I see it?”

  “Well, I don’t know. It’s not my property. I don’t want any trouble. I should have turned it over to the police long ago.”

  “The fact that you haven’t leads me to believe . . .”

  “I’m not a poor woman, Dr. von Fresser, nor a rich one.”

  The construction of her sentence led Alexei to ask, “How much would you accept for the notebook?”

  “You won’t think me mercenary?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Thirty rubles.”

  Alexei had been receiving regular money transfers from his mother during his medical studies in Leningrad. He and Natasha could barely live on the government stipend. When she learned of his exile, Anna had sent him a large sum, but how long could he live off the largesse of his mother-in-law and Razan? He needed to practice economy.

  “Commissar Oblomov said, ‘Anything you need, you just ask Lena. She’ll tend to your needs.’”

  “I’ll settle for twenty.”

  “Perhaps you really should turn it over to the police.”

  Mrs. Goracheva was now torn. She could give it to the authorities, hold out for her price—but who would buy it?—or sell it for less. Alexei was unlikely to inform and to risk his own safety.

  Trying another approach, Alexei soothingly said, “For helping medical science, I should think they’d give you a medal.”

  “A medal!”

  “With a picture of Stalin.”

  Lena sighed, “Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, I think, is the handsomest man in Russia, don’t you? His portrait hangs in my room.”

  “No doubt about it. He cuts quite an imposing figure.”

  “Ten rubles and no less.”

  “Agreed.”

  “I’ll get the book in the morning. It’s stored in the basement.”

  That night Alexei dreamed of standing before the king of Sweden to receive the Nobel Prize for medicine, while Dr. Chulkaturin sat in the first row tapping his foot. “For original contributions to psychiatry . . .” said the king, a statement that elicited mocking laughter from Dr. Chulkaturin. Alexei was glad to see the morning. He had just finished dressing when voices sounded in the entry hall. Opening his door, he heard his name, but couldn’t follow the discussion, except for the mention of a “Dr. Leshin,” followed by the title “medical examiner.” Had some high official resented his good work and come to tell him to pack his bags and live on the street?

  After several minutes, Mrs. Goracheva called to him. He quickly put on a tie and jacket and descended the stairs. Lena said that two men, in the sitting room, wished to speak to him. Tucked under her arm was a notebook.

  “I tried to worm their business out of them,” she murmured, “but they’re as stony as the secret police,” a reference that so unnerved Alexei that he excused himself to stop at the lavatory.

  A man resembling Lenin, with wide nostrils, searching eyes, and a Van Dyke beard, stood in front of the stove. Thin and rabbitlike in his movements, he first introduced his associate, Leonid Basmanaya, a portly well-dressed fellow whose jelly jowls shook in unison with his head movements, and then himself.

  “I am Dr. Leshin, Andrei Leshin, the medical examiner for Voronezh oblast. Commissar Oblomov reported glowingly on your work in the province.” He shook Alexei’s hand. “I have already made some telephone calls this morning to Leningrad and discovered that your interest lies in psychiatry. Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see no reason to waste your talents hunting quacks. We have a clinic with a mental ward reserved for the commissariat and special cases. Interested? The previous doctor was transferred.”

  “And you,” Basmanaya chuckled, as he extended a hand to Alexei, “are now a Voronezh regular. You’re a fiver. The years go quickly.”

  A stoic Dr. Leshin observed, “That ought to give you enough time to reorganize the ward and put in place current psychiatric theories. Of all the specialties, I think psychiatry is the most misunderstood, even though one of the most important.”

  “After Leningrad,” said Basmanaya, “you’ll find that life here lacks city refinements. The clinic, though, relieves the boredom.”

  “Comrade Basmanaya,” said Dr. Leshin, “is in charge of the clinic. He can tell you about the wards, the pharmacy, the staff, and the patients, only a few of whom are in the mental ward.”

  “We have our rules,” said Basmanaya. “Ward One is for physical care, surgery and the like. Ward Two for mental patients. Ward Three is the isolation ward used for special mental cases.”

  “You have patients whom you quarantine?”

  “One. The subject insisted on writing articles critical of the state and is hostile to treatment. So we had to resort to isolation.”

  “You will find,” said Dr
. Leshin, “that we have a rather good library at the clinic.”

  “Journals, too?” asked Alexei.

  “I hope your question means,” said Dr. Leshin, “that you want to engage in research. Have you ever published a scientific paper?”

  “Yes, a theoretical one.”

  “So have I,” said Dr. Leshin, “several.”

  “May I ask about what?”

  “Human nature. I have a theory, based of course on my many years of observations.”

  Alexei nodded approvingly. “In medical school we learned that theory without observation is blind.”

  “I am preparing a paper right now for the Red Army Review, in which I argue that freedom is just another name for indecision. Accomplishments are fathered by rules.”

  “My paper treated the use of stories to help the mentally ill. Perhaps I could treat the person in quarantine.”

  Dr. Leshin’s laugh sounded like boots crushing glass. “The patient fancies herself a musician, not a lover of fairy tales.”

  “Actually,” Basmanaya added, “she plays the flute rather well, but we deny her requests for sheet music. Slander has its penalties.”

  “Are you sure that’s the best way to proceed?”

  “I love music,” said Basmanaya. “My wife and I both play the violin.”

  “If you’d let me see her . . .”

  “Ward Three? Impossible!” interrupted Dr. Leshin. “Denial of desire is the best way to discipline a recalcitrant patient. When she agrees to behave, she can have music.”

  Alexei, well aware that a long prison sentence or exile frees a person to act and say what he will, decided to personally exploit that fact. What more can they do to me now? he thought. Extend my sentence? Freedom cannot be counted in years. Death? Isn’t that also a kind of freedom, albeit a different kind?

  “We know,” said Alexei, “that stutterers lose their speech impediments when they sing. I believe that stories can equally clear the malaise in the minds of some mentally ill patients.”

  “Perhaps,” replied Dr. Leshin, unmoved. “I’ll keep your theory in mind. In my experience, however, some people are never able to dispel the stone in their brain. They get an idea and then marry it.”

  “How many patients are currently in the mental ward?”

  “Four in Ward Two.”

  “And the previous doctor?”

  “A headstrong type,” said Basmanaya, “recalled at our request.”

  “I assume his medical charts and notes are available. I’d like to see them before meeting the patients.”

  Basmanaya looked torn. “You can have all but Ward Three.”

  “Where are those records?”

  “Comrade von Fresser,” said Leshin, “you will discover that life here runs smoothly when one, shall we say, keeps his own counsel.”

  “I see. No records.”

  “Not that we have anything to hide,” added Basmanaya. “Quite the contrary. It’s just that we try to keep the clinic safe from the stain of scandal.”

  “Are you suggesting . . .” said Alexei, unsure of how to continue.

  Dr. Leshin stroked his pointed beard with his index finger, and with the toe of his boot traced a pattern in the Asian rug. “Comrade von Fresser, I started my medical career at the front during the Great War. From my army comrades, I learned a useful lesson: Rules free a man from the vagaries of choice. Follow the orders of your superiors, and you’ll fit right in.”

  As soon as the door closed behind the two men, Alexei paid Lena Goracheva for the notebook and repaired to his attic room, with its sloping roof and front window that looked out on an oak tree and the street. He sat in the rocking chair and turned on the floor lamp. In the orange glow, he held Chulkaturin’s notebook gently, as one might a rare manuscript. Chulkaturin, an eminent scientist whom Alexei had eagerly studied with, had an international reputation for his work in the field of schizophrenia and what Freud called “the talking cure,” psychoanalysis. His colleagues often said that if any patient had unhealthy, buried sexual memories, Chulkaturin could unearth them and neutralize their harmful effects.

  The notebook began with the following entry.

  Thursday, December 5th, 1931. Once again Rissa was terrified at the mention of Dr. P___. Her hatred of authority runs deep, or is it merely a fear of military personnel? Although Dr. P___ seemed competent when I interviewed him in his new quarters, if I mention his name to Rissa she becomes uncommunicative.

  A knock at the door interrupted his reading. Mrs. Goracheva had brought him a cup of tea.

  “It’s spiced with a special mushroom,” she said, “which settles the mind and brings on sweet dreams. A Persian apothecary stops in Voronezh once a month. I buy it from him.”

  Alexei had read about mushrooms in one of his pharmacology books. Some were quite poisonous; some induced hallucinations. Indians in various countries were known to use mushrooms for their religious ceremonies and regarded them as beneficial. He thanked Lena for her thoughtfulness, sipped the drink, and resumed reading the notebook. A short time later, he heard his name being called and recognized Dr. Chulkaturin seated on the floor, in front of the armoire.

  “I confess: After just a few weeks, I was in love with her.”

  “It’s apparent,” Alexei replied, “from your notes.”

  “She’s exotically beautiful. Thick dark hair. Her movements,” he moved his hips, “remind me of dancing girls in Marrakech.”

  “Doctors shouldn’t fall in love with their patients.”

  “But they often do. She has an American blues singer’s throaty voice, but it’s her rapturous flute playing . . .”

  “This information will prove useful.”

  “Ah, to be young again, no wrinkles, no warts. And yet . . .”

  “What?”

  “I worry about her obsessiveness. She always plays the same music and repeats certain measures. According to Freud, it must be something she’s suppressing. I should have tried sodium pentothol.”

  “Hmm, that’s an idea. According to your own articles, it’s not unusual for patients to be confused about their identity. You suggest in your notes that her fondness for riddles indicates as much.”

  “And those damned flute passages that she plays hours on end.”

  “Perhaps she is trying to signal what she can’t say.”

  “Whenever I ask her to stop, she always obliges.”

  “Someone right now is playing the Mozart Flute Concerto no. 2 in D Major. Do you not hear it in the distance, Dr. Chulkaturin?”

  “I wrote her a poem.

  In Samarkand, where I am bound,

  I’m told that peacocks perch on every roof,

  And cry their soulful sound.”

  Alexei held up the notebook and pointed to a passage. “You said: ‘The more I learn about Rissa Binderova, the greater my feelings for her. Perhaps I should stop now before it’s too late.’”

  “I should have followed my own advice. What a fool!” He shook his head. “I was warned not to go near her. But once we . . .”

  “A man away from home, especially in a town of exiles, craves the touch of a woman. Was that it?”

  “I held her hands as we spoke, and as her fingers mingled with mine . . .” He entwined his fingers. “I was caught, like a magnet drawn to metal. Nothing else mattered.”

  “When you wrote, ‘Such a shame, such a waste of a young Jewess in the bloom of life . . . if only I could take her with me back to Leningrad,’ did you actually have a choice? Would the authorities have released her to your care?”

  “Probably not, but then I never insisted.”

  Alexei felt an inexplicable anger. “You’re asthmatic. Married. Two grown sons. You’re an old man. What are you talking about?”

  “I could have kept her as a mistress. I wouldn’t be the first. Just consider all the men around Stalin who keep girlfriends in rich apartments. And just imagine her devotion to me for arranging her release from this jail!”

  �
�Filthy bastards! I’ll bet Stalin’s aides are all married.”

  “Of course, but marriage grows stale.”

  “She’s my contemporary, not yours!” Alexei said, furiously shaking the notebook. Surprised by his anger, he pondered its source.

  “You don’t even know her. Idealization has its dangers, Alexei, as you know from your psychiatric studies. Besides, you’ve recently wed. Why the sudden change from purist to playboy?”

  “Natasha’s in Moscow, and her letters bore me silly. Besides, I’m here, and she’s there.”

  “Perhaps she’s saying the same thing. Has she requested permission to visit you in Voronezh? But of course, it’s forbidden.” He smiled. “Maybe you ought to meet Rissa and make her acquaintance. It won’t be easy. Ward Three. She’s mad, you know.”

  Chulkaturin laughed teasingly and slowly disappeared, as Alexei slumped in his chair profoundly asleep.

  The next morning, Alexei gave strict instructions to Lena never again to lace his tea with a mushroom. “Persian or no Persian apothecary. The mushrooms you buy have psychedelic properties that act like a drug and induce dreams.”

  He took his coat from the front closet, stepped into the cold, and hailed a Fiat taxi to take him first to the post office and then to the clinic.

  Basmanaya greeted him warmly in the lobby under a large picture of Stalin, and started his tour of the facilities with a stop at the pharmacy. Alexei had anticipated seeing a counter and an attendant in a white coat waiting to serve the staff. Instead, he saw an old man with a scraggly beard tending a storeroom of a few shelves that held boxes marked “Cotton Balls,” “Rubber Gloves,” “Benzodiazepines,” “Sodium Pentothol,” “Ether Masks,” “Sulfur,” “Syringes,” and similar medical names. The old man, who was introduced as Comrade Lvov, exhibited courtly manners. Alexei guessed at once that the man hailed from the old school, the landed aristocracy.

  “Comrade Lvov is indispensable in the dispensary,” laughed Basmanaya, amused at his own play on words. “He works long hours and will open the pharmacy in the middle of the night if we need him.”