Stalin's Barber

by Paul M. Levitt

  “Can you tell me why the mental ward has so few patients?”

  “They come in waves, though I’ve never seen the ward completely full. Mostly they stay for only a few months, sometimes longer. I know why you ask, but the authorities act as if it’s a state secret.” He removed some dirt from under his nails. “Maybe it is.”

  Alexei whispered, “Are there any listening devices here?”

  “No place to hide them. Put one in a pot and it’ll get soaked.”

  “Do you know the woman in Ward Three, Rissa Binderova?”

  “One look at her and you’ll never forget.” He blew a kiss to the air. “What a punim. That means face.”

  “I gather she’s striking and clever.”

  “Both! A few months ago, she showed up with an attendant to look at my hothouse orchids. She quoted Pushkin, though not quite exactly:

  ‘And eager lilacs everywhere

  Lend flush and fragrance to the air.’

  I took that as a compliment and thanked her.”

  “Can you tell me anything about Dr. Chulkaturin?”

  “He didn’t stay long and left in a hurry.”

  “And the previous doctor?”

  Lazar shook his head as if to say, I can’t discuss it.

  “I think I know his name,” said Alexei, “even though it seems to be unmentionable. A military man, right?”

  “Army. But he’s returned to his unit. I have my own theory why, but I’d rather keep it to myself. This much I can tell you,” he said peering around. “The fellow created quite a problem for Basmanaya.”

  “Through a friend,” said Alexei, “I learned he took his medical degree in Moscow, then posted to the Red Army: a special branch of the secret service.”

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, Basmanaya rushed into the clinic and asked for the return of the folders. “We keep them under lock and key,” said the director.

  “Good idea,” replied Alexei, thinking of the parenthetic sentence that had escaped Dr. Leshin’s notice. “No need for me to see them again. I’m fully satisfied.”

  Basmanaya briefly disappeared into his office. The moment he returned, Alexei started for the stairs.

  “I can see you’re anxious to meet her,” said Basmanaya. “Is it for medical reasons or personal?”

  “Why do you ask, comrade, when you know that I have neither met the woman nor seen her?”

  “True, but others have, like your former professor in Leningrad, Dr. Chulkaturin.” Basmanaya, knowing that Alexei had studied with him, had hoped to elicit a reply, but Alexei said nothing. So Basmanaya settled for directness. “Surely you know the man?”

  “Yes, he is a famous doctor and teacher.”

  “I understand the famous physician was a mesmerizing speaker.”

  Alexei assumed that Basmanaya’s information had come from Oblomov through Lena. Although she had indicated that she would be courting danger if the authorities knew about the notebook and its sale, in a country where denunciations won people promotions and medals, Lena’s word, like that of so many others, was clearly for purchase.

  “As a matter of fact, he was a spellbinder. Whenever he spoke, the auditorium was so full that latecomers had to stand at the back of the room. I always made it a point to arrive early.” They had reached the second-floor ward. “And what of your impressions? After all, he worked here at the clinic.”

  “He left under a cloud, but I’m not at liberty to discuss it.”

  Alexei disingenuously asked, “Did he ever treat Rissa Binderova?”

  They were now approaching the door to her room. Basmanaya stopped and replied, “I suggest we let sleeping dogs lie.”

  Whom was Basmanaya trying to protect: Dr. Chulkaturin or the clinic? For an instant Alexei wanted to ask whether the director could tell him more about Dr. P., but refrained lest Basmanaya think that one of the patients had revealed a confidence.

  With a shaking hand, the director unlocked Rissa’s door and swung it open. There sat a woman fingering a flute. For all her dishevelment, she was as beautiful as Pushkin’s famously stunning wife, Natalia Goncharova, who cost him his life. Could this woman, a transfixed Alexei wondered, be equally lethal?

  Although wearing a cheap apron over a peasant blouse, with her legs covered in coarse black woolen stockings, she could not disguise her harem eyes and sensuous lips. Mediterranean in coloring, she blended the best of the Sicilian women and the Greek. How her family had settled in Russia would, Alexei decided, be his first question. But before he could speak, she feigned playing the flute and, without looking up, asked, “Did you hear that? It’s Mozart’s Flute Concerto in G Major, the opening measures. Whether awake or asleep, I can hear those notes. The only way I can stop the ringing in my ears, and then only briefly, is to actually play the notes myself.” She wet her lips and then played.

  Tinnitus and earworm were not foreign to Alexei. A professor in medical school had said that some people hear a constant ringing in their ears, some an occasional ringing, and some hear music or a voice or a particular sound. The professor had recounted how a young student who loved American jazz had been induced by his friends to attend a classical concert to hear “good music.” A pianist was playing a Mozart piano concerto, and the andante movement utterly arrested his mind to the point that he could never escape the haunting notes. Instead of turning the young man into a lover of fine music, the sound in his ears only reinforced his dislike of the classics. He tried every remedy—medical, herbal, and mechanical—to rid himself of the omnipresent Mozart. Although the music would retreat into the background when people spoke to him or other sounds commanded his attention, the background became foreground as soon as the other competing sounds disappeared. Finally, out of desperation, he requested that a doctor cut his auditory nerve. He said he would prefer deafness to the ceaseless sound of the music. The doctor cut the nerve, and the man lost his hearing, but the sound continued. It was embedded either in the auditory cortex or the neural system. Perhaps this explained why in spite of Soviet indoctrination, the old faiths persisted.

  Alexei removed from his briefcase some sheet music and placed it on her bed. She gazed at the music and then, for the first time, at him. He smiled, but she turned back to Basmanaya and remarked, “I thought it was forbidden.”

  Confused, the director sputtered and mouthed an untruth. “Dr. von Fresser wasn’t told. Therefore, we’ll just pretend that it never happened.”

  “And Dr. Leshin?”

  Her mentioning the lurking Leshin upended Alexei’s plan to ask about her parents. Instead, he suggested a way to evade Leshin’s authority. “You can memorize the music,” he said, “and then return it. Leshin won’t be any the wiser.”

  “It might take a few days.”

  “Then you had better get started.”

  “A man after my own heart, one who doesn’t let a rule stop him from doing what’s right.” She played a few notes on her flute.

  “When I return for the music, would you like me to bring more?” Basmanaya tried to object, but Alexei ignored him and said, “Miss Binderova, if I bring other works will you let me help you?”

  She replied sincerely, “How could I resist?” She played again.

  “Who are your favorites?”

  “Vivaldi, Bach, Handel, Mozart.”

  “Done. I will talk to you again in three days.”

  Locking the door, Basmanaya insisted on knowing what Alexei hoped to achieve with the music. “She’s mad. Believe me. Dr. Chulkaturin tried every therapy, but they all failed.”

  “In which case, why keep her isolated? She’d fare better in the company of others.”

  “She’s a danger to the state,” said the director emphatically, “and don’t ask me to explain. It’s all classified.”

  “There can be only one explanation. She is privy to information that could prove embarrassing to somebody. But who?”

  “Keep asking such questions, and you’ll end up in Kamchatka. I am warn
ing you. This woman is poison. Stay away.”

  “What I can promise you, Leonid, is that in three days she will appreciatively play her flute and agree to cooperate.” He clapped the director on the back. “Trust me.”

  Basmanaya sighed, realizing that he had become part of an experiment in mental reclamation that had yet to run its course. “Three days, you say, but I have a feeling that this is just the beginning of something larger.”

  Putting his arm around Leonid’s shoulder, Alexei responded, “They picked the right man to run this clinic, perspicacious, persevering, and patient. I can already see your name in the medical annals.”

  Unfortunately, Dr. Leshin, having been told by an officious nurse about the visit, asked Alexei why his orders had been ignored.

  “Unless you mean to imprison her here,” said Alexei, “I feel that she deserves the best that we can do for her therapeutically. In fact, she was very forthcoming. Ask Director Basmanaya.”

  Shaking his head so rapidly that his jowls swung like twin pendulums, Basmanaya said, “I saw it with my own eyes.”

  “Rubbish!” exclaimed Dr. Leshin. “How would you know? If I’m not mistaken,” he growled, “you’re nothing but a functionary. I forbid any further contact with the patient!”

  Had Dr. Leshin politely told the director that he wanted an end to their contact with Rissa Binderova, Leonid would have complied. But Leshin’s having said that he was nothing more than an apparatchik offended him. Had he not worked his way up from emptying bedpans to the directorship of the clinic? In the Soviet Union, equality and accomplishment mattered. For good reason, then, he felt insulted. He remembered what Miss Binderova had said about breaking rules for the greater good, and as long as Alexei was there to take the blame, he would sneak him into the patient’s room. In the meantime, he would transfer the officious nurse and stand watch for Dr. Leshin.

  The next day, Basmanaya let Alexei borrow the key to her door—for an hour. Anxious to begin, Alexei took the stairs two at a time. Rissa was playing the music. He sat down beside her and listened. Although no expert, he was familiar enough with the classical composers and top-flight performers to know that Rissa was gifted. He waited to speak until she had finished.

  Returning the sheet music, she said, “I’ve already committed it to memory,” and then, like a child eyeing a possible present, asked, “What’s in your briefcase?”

  “Your favorites, as well as the Brahms Flute Concerto.”

  “It always moves me to tears.”

  “Besides music, does anything else affect you so deeply?”

  “Memories.”

  “They bring us home.”

  “And yet we’re told to forget.”

  “Why is that?” he asked.

  “Because some people regard memory as a form of conspiracy. They tell us that the past is over and we should look to the future. I think such people can live from day to day only by forgetting.”

  “But only by remembering do we have a possibility of learning who we are,” said Alexei, who fully intended to engage in Freud’s talking cure to release whatever memories were tormenting her. “Tell me how your family came to settle in Russia.”

  Though not surprised that her parents had migrated from southern Europe, he was shocked when she told him when.

  “My family came from Sicily at the end of the twelfth century, after the great scientific and poetic age turned to war instead of words. So my ancestors have lived in this country longer than most of the monolingual midgets who now govern it.”

  “Besides Russian, what do you speak?”

  “Yiddish, German, Polish, Ukrainian, French, and English. I can also read Latin, Greek, Spanish, and Italian.”

  “Let me guess: Yours was a wealthy family with private tutors?”

  “There were only two of us, my brother and I. He died in the Civil War, killed by the Red Army who found him in the company of the White Guard. In fact, he had been captured, but that didn’t prevent the swine from killing him for being on the wrong side of the line.”

  “You’re wasting your talents confined to this room.”

  She laughed and flapped her hands over her head. “Then open the door and let me fly away.”

  As before, her costume was unusual: Turkish puff pants, a rainbow Ukrainian tunic, and a red beret. A yellow scarf hung from her neck to her knees. Was she trying to look Bohemian?

  “I understand you like riddles,” said Alexei.

  “Because I am one, and, if I’m not mistaken, you have come to unriddle me.” She played a scale on the flute. “Right?”

  “Frankly, you don’t seem a riddle to me.”

  “Tell me, then, who am I?”

  “Rissa Binderova. Your family came from Sicily.”

  She interrupted by putting a finger to his lips. “I appreciate your wit, which those boring Bolsheviks lack. You realize, though, if the floor nurse finds you here, she’ll have you removed. Dr. Leshin’s orders. She makes her rounds in the mornings and late afternoons. Those times that one actually needs her, she can’t be found. She regularly takes her pleasure with one of the orderlies.”

  “She’s been transferred.”

  Rissa gazed at him with dark, bewitching eyes. “Riddle one.

  In a meadow teeming with bugs,

  There Liudmila lies on a rug.

  A Chernomor shorn of his beard

  Is dressed in white and terribly feared.

  Who is he?”

  “Are you saying that you were taken from the clinic?”

  “I just told you.”

  “Chernomor?”

  Rissa picked up the flute and without resort to the sheet music played several notes from Vivaldi’s A Minor Flute Concerto, breaking off suddenly.

  “How’s that for a hint?”

  “I confess, I’m not fluent in music.” He watched in utter fascination as her luscious lips fluted another musical phrase. “I need your help,” he said, “give me more of a hint.”

  “Riddle the second.

  A medical man in a spanking white coat

  A stone in his trousers, a gun at my throat,

  Come tell me this riddle, and I’ll give you a groat.”

  Alexei mused for a minute and shook his head. Rissa again played, this time from the sheet music he had brought her, Handel’s Flute Concerto in G Major.

  “I give up. What’s the answer?”

  “Haven’t you read my files?”

  “The clinic has either hidden or destroyed them.”

  She resumed playing the Handel—rapturously.

  * * *

  From his window, Alexei could see a full moon, and, as he often did in winter, he chose to walk in the cold, silver night. He intended to look at the river, but he never arrived. Instead, he found himself drawn to the theatre, where mostly young people were streaming into the auditorium. He followed them and took a hard wooden seat. Billed as a poetry reading, the event featured three local actors who had volunteered to read the poems of Pushkin, Blok, Akhmatova, Pasternak, Mandelstam, and Tsvetaeva. In no time, every seat was taken and the aisles filled. Alexei looked around hoping to recognize the young man who had accompanied him on the train from Leningrad, but couldn’t identify him among the grim-faced secret agents in the audience who tactlessly peered out of the corners of their eyes. These men—and some women—made no effort to hide. When others clapped and cheered, they remained immobile; when others laughed, they never smiled. The young listeners obviously knew the police had come to watch them, and yet they eagerly gave voice to their enthusiasm, yelling the names of their favorite poems and requesting that some be repeated. Here, in Alexei’s estimation, was to be found the best of Russia, the lovers of language and thought who valued their country’s literary traditions.

  A man resembling Mandelstam sat in the second row, and the woman next to him recited every poem in unison with the actor. Alexei asked the young man next to him:

  “The two people in the second row: Are they the Mandels
tams?”

  “Yes,” wheezed the boy, reeking of nicotine. “Osip and Nadezhda. Sitting next to them is Anna Akhmatova.”

  “The Akhmatova?”

  “The very one. When word got out that Anna and Osip would be here tonight, the exiles rushed from every cellar and garret. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the people here can’t even read, but they love to listen to poetry. My own favorite is Marina Tsvetaeva.”

  When Alexei mentioned Pasternak, the lad said, “Too dreamy for me. I prefer poetry of feeling to descriptions of woodlands and meadows.”

  One of the actors, as slight as a whisper but with the resonance of a prophet, read some of Akhmatova’s poems, which elicited excited applause. He asked her to stand. She bowed to the audience. In response, the people rose to their feet and cried their delight.

  He introduced Mandelstam, now exiled to Voronezh, and then quoted from Osip and a deceased Russian poet, Nikolai Gumile. “‘Words devoid of precise significance,’ our beloved Mandelstam says, ‘are a perversion of language and have a bad smell. Many people have talked of such dead words.’ No doubt he was thinking of Gumile, who writes, ‘Dead words smell badly. These words are terrifying because they show the extent to which people have renounced the chief quality that makes us human: the gift of speech and thought.’” Deafening applause.

  A pale actress with too much lipstick read next. She chose lines from Tsvetaeva that Alexei felt frighteningly apt.

  “How is life with simulacrum,

  For you who’ve trodden Sinai . . . ?

  After Carrara marble,

  How’s life with crumbling plaster?”

  She continued:

  “Be honest: are you happy?

  No? In trough’s shallowness

  How fare you, darling? Worse?

  As I do, with another?”

  Returning to his attic, Alexei thought about the woman he’d married and the one he now wished for instead. Natasha and Rissa were both strikingly handsome. The first had courage and craft, like her mother, and a compassionate heart. He had known from the start the list of her virtues; he had also known her principal defect. She lacked the coruscating intelligence that would make him want to talk to her as well as love her. After coitus, he would roll over and feign sleep. What did they have in common? Their conversations focused on family and friends, people and things, never ideas. She was uneducated, and no matter how he tried to convince himself that her warmth and wiliness made up for her absence of wit, he could not escape the fact that he found her dull. How well he remembered the night before his marriage, an evening spent with several of his medical-school chums. They had praised Natasha’s pulchritude and comeliness, but not a word had been said about a beautiful brain. Like Pushkin, who had a premonition of disaster the night before he wed, Alexei had shook with apprehension. Natasha could satisfy his aesthetic and sensuous longings, but not his need to live a life of the mind. As a man of integrity, he had felt honor bound to marry the young girl to whom he was betrothed. Yes, “girl” was the right word. It took but a few weeks of marriage to realize that passion could not substitute for companionable minds. She was a provincial; he was not.