When Dimitri and Yuri rendezvoused next, they entered the apartment building, as always, at different times and different doors. But on this occasion, Dimitri stopped at the superintendent’s office to beard him. Without so much as a word of greeting, Dimitri shoved his special leather wallet with its official NKVD badge and documents under the man’s nose. The super immediately realized that his snitching had backfired.
“I didn’t know,” he sputtered. “You may be sure in the future . . .” But he had no chance to complete his apology because Dimitri scooped up his wallet and, with the sternest look at his command, stared at the super, who cringingly sunk in his chair. Once Dimitri felt that the man’s humiliation was complete, he sneered and left.
As Dimitri recounted this experience, Yuri feared that it would make the super all the more determined to find some anti-Soviet behavior that could be used to denounce them.
“The humiliated are the most dangerous,” said Yuri. “Chekhov frequently warned us not to strip a man of his self-respect.”
“Chekhov was too full of pity. Ruthlessness is called for in some cases. The man won’t be back!”
Before lovemaking, they ate a modest meal and sat down to play chess. With Ezhov’s assignment oppressing his mind, Dimitri casually asked, “How did you spend your day?”
“As I always do, snip-snip.”
“Lunch?”
“At the Metropol. Why do you ask?”
“Just wondering.”
For several minutes, the men played in silence, Dimitri’s eyes fixed on the board and Yuri’s stealing an occasional look at Dimitri.
“You’re not jealous, are you?”
“No, it’s just that in these times we have to be extra careful about our meetings and companions.” He waited a few seconds before asking, “Was it a man or a woman?” Yuri looked uncomprehending. “At lunch . . . whom did you meet?”
“Madame Ranevskaia. You know the woman. She once owned a famous orchard. It was appropriated for workers’ bungalows.”
“Oh, yes, a charming woman, but as I recall an indecisive one.”
Dimitri was particularly gifted in his use of the bishop, while Yuri let his queen wreak most of the damage. What the men lacked in strategy they made up for in daring. Yuri had slipped in behind Dimitri’s pawns and threatened to put his king in check.
“Not so fast, my sweet,” said Dimitri, bringing a bishop to the rescue and compromising Yuri’s queen.
“She frequently travels to France, and occasionally Sweden and Norway. Art business.”
“Has she ever been to America?”
“If you mean the United States, no, but Mexico, yes.”
Dimitri studied the board and then casually inquired, “What business interests would take her there?”
“She represents Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. Rich buyers in Stockholm and Oslo collect their paintings.”
“Hm, I had no idea.” Dimitri pondered how to introduce his next question. He had no wish to infuriate Yuri, so he snorted skeptically and said, “Have you heard the absurd rumor that the super-Judas Trotsky moved to Mexico to be near Diego Rivera’s wife?”
Yuri looked at Dimitri with a pained expression. “No, I hadn’t heard. Did that rubbish come from the NKVD?”
Dimitri feared that he had not been subtle enough, because Yuri emotionally began to withdraw, as if he sensed danger, answering Dimitri’s questions in monosyllables. Suddenly Yuri dropped one of the chess pieces and forthrightly declared, “If you are working up to asking me whether Madame Ranevskaia has ever met Trotsky, the answer is yes. Now, does that make her—or me—an enemy of the people?”
How was Dimitri to answer? He could warn Yuri of the secret police’s interest in him, but he felt certain that such a disclosure would bring an end to their affair. He could say that he wanted to know in order to better advise his friend. But that approach sounded suspiciously like one crafted by the secret police. The last idea offered the most protection to Dimitri, because if Yuri had secret contacts with the opposition—a possibility that Dimitri no longer regarded as utterly fanciful—Dimitri would have time to save himself, and perhaps even Yuri. Dimitri chose to answer indirectly.
“I wish I had the money to buy a Rivera or Kahlo. They are truly painters of the proletariat. Have you any idea what their canvases cost?” Yuri relaxed. Yes, Dimitri had sounded the right note . . . nothing threatening. “Our own museums ought to be collecting them.”
“Diego has promised to make a gift of some of his paintings to the Soviet people. A brilliant painter and a magnanimous man. All our artists should be so generous.”
At the end of the evening, Dimitri did not return directly to his room. He walked through the crepuscular square to secret-police headquarters, where he looked through the files for any reports on Madame Ranevskaia. He found several, all to the effect that her activities necessitated watching.
Taking it upon himself to follow Lubov Andreyevna Ranevskaia, Dimitri discovered that she had two daughters, both unmarried. Anya, the younger one, was an art history student at a Moscow institute, keeping company with a feckless young man, Peter Trofimov. Although a devoted revolutionary who often gave speeches about the need for unselfish labor, he could never complete his university courses. The report in his official files read that his passion for the people led the party to ignore his fecklessness, but that he should never be trusted with any serious work. The older daughter, Varya, seemed easily the most mature of the three women. Adopted as a baby, she was skittish, pale, and inordinately serious. Had Madame R. adopted the girl to prove her patriotism? Perhaps her deceased husband, or her billiard-loving brother, had sired a child out of wedlock. In any case, Dimitri decided to interview Varya.
They met in Neskuchniy Garden, next to a pond. Dimitri had represented himself as a historian interested in the story surrounding the sale of the orchard. And, in fact, aren’t most investigators like historians, re-creating the past? He had often used this ruse to deceive the people he questioned.
After introducing themselves, they slowly strolled through the gardens, Dimitri casting a wary eye in case someone was watching him. As they spoke, Varya frequently stopped to admire or balance a bloom in her hand. She stood in front of the lilacs and enthused about their incomparable fragrance. At last, they settled on a bench and Dimitri, having asked numerous questions about the family’s former estate, leaned back and, ostensibly to show himself a gentleman, said, “I trust that you have comfortable quarters in Moscow, at least large enough for your mother to hang her paintings.”
“You know about the Diego Riveras?” Varya asked. “A great many dealers come to our flat.”
“For my small collection, I use only one, Yuri Suzdal.”
“Then he’s actually a dealer?”
“Yes, why do you ask?”
“He and his friends never seem to talk about art. Then again, I can’t be sure because they always retreat to the kitchen.”
Dimitri tried to make a joke of this information. “Perhaps they are merely hungry,” he teased, scooping a handful of pebbles.
“I get the impression that they have more on their minds than canvases and prices.”
“Really?” he asked, grinding the pebbles underfoot.
“They often have with them printed material they exchange.”
“Probably just auction figures. I know Yuri. He’s always on the lookout for a good buy.”
Varya picked up a small stick and drew lines in the gravel. “What do you collect?” Had she not added, “Still lifes, portraits, country or city scenes?” he might have stumbled.
“I particularly like river scenes.”
“So do I!” said Varya enthusiastically. “You must see the two we have in our flat. Their bucolic settings calm me when I’m tense.”
“Are they for sale?”
“In the art world, everything is for sale—at the right price.”
By the time he walked Varya to the trolley stop, he had decided to watch M
adame Ranevskaia’s apartment. Dimitri befriended the doorman of the building directly across the street. Here he planted himself and spied through the front glass doors. His patience was rewarded when he saw Yuri enter Madame’s apartment complex. At short intervals afterward, three other men followed, each carrying a briefcase filled, Dimitri assumed, with printed matter.
Trained to take surveillance photographs, Dimitri positioned his camera and captured the men as they exited, separately. Although he had a picture of Yuri, he also snapped him. Turning the film over to the secret police, he asked them to check each of the men. When the report came back, Dimitri was stunned. None of them, as far as the police knew, had been engaged in political activities. But they did have records for homosexuality and for having attended readings of Anna Akhmatova’s poetry, she whom the writers’ union had rejected and who had never received Stalin’s official imprimatur.
Although Akhmatova moved freely throughout the city and country, escaping internment for some inscrutable reason, she had written poems that could have earned other poets twenty years in a camp. Dimitri had been shown some of her verses and could recite a few lines that he thought should have made her an enemy of the people:
Without hangman and scaffold
Poets have no life on earth
She had also penned, “All poets are Yids.” So to Comrade Lipnoskii’s mind, any organized reading devoted to her work had about it a political purpose.
Dimitri painfully decided that the next meeting between him and Yuri must be their last. He would accuse his lover of infidelity, a charge that, if true, would hurt Dimitri more sharply than any political transgression Yuri could make. The personal betrayal, however, could not be shared with the secret police, lest Yuri turn around and implicate him. He therefore decided that the only way to settle the score and assuage his hurt was to drive Yuri from Moscow.
“My dear Yuri,” said Dimitri, returning from the bathroom and climbing back into bed after coitus, and after Dimitri had applied a special liquid to his eyes that elicited tears. “I can hardly bring myself to tell you,” he cried, “but the secret police know about your meetings with friends at Madame Ranevskaia’s apartment . . . and the poetry readings . . . and the printed matter.”
“We merely exchange poems!”
“Please, Yuri, do not lie to me.”
With shaking hands, Yuri angrily dressed.
“And now,” said Dimitri calmly, “you need to leave Moscow before you’re arrested. I can arrange it so that you have a few days before the police knock on your door at two in the morning.”
Reaching for the doorknob, Dimitri intended to emphasize his displeasure by departing in dramatic silence, but his feelings overwhelmed him, and he turned to look at Yuri, who flew into his arms and whispered his thanks for saving him from arrest.
Several days later, when the dreaded elevator stopped at his floor in the early morning hours, Yuri had already left the city.
* * *
Ezhov’s frustration with Dimitri sounded suspiciously like an accusation. Once again, Dimitri had been summoned to the chief’s office. But this time, Nikolai Ivanovich, wearing American-made Adler elevated shoes, was standing just a few inches from Dimitri’s face. “He must have been warned that we were watching him.”
“If you are implying . . .” Dimitri paused, hoping that Ezhov would gainsay him, but the chief merely stared coldly. “Why would I have gone to the trouble to watch the apartment and take photographs of these men if I intended to let them slip through the net?”
“Is that what I said?”
The sneaky dog, thought Dimitri. “No, Comrade Ezhov, but you seem to be implying . . .”
“The difference between seeming and being is a chasm. Don’t assume when you don’t know.” He briskly walked around his desk, opened a drawer, and removed a folder. “Here is your next assignment. I want you to report on the friendship between Yelena Boujinskia and Sasha Visotsky. The story about their crawling through heating ducts and eavesdropping doesn’t ring true. I smell a plot. Root it out!”
“Root it out?” Dimitri repeated incredulously. “How?”
“Children respond well to the Morozov story. Perhaps you can even locate the photograph Yelena used to paint Stalin’s mustache.” Ezhov must have read in Dimitri’s expression incomprehension, because Ezhov added, “Let me remind you, comrade, what the hero of all our Soviet schoolbooks, fourteen-year old Pavel Morozov, said when he denounced his father as a kulak: ‘Stalin is my father and I do not need another one.’”
What Dimitri and virtually everyone else in the country had been told was that the Soviets had killed the boy’s father, and that a group of peasants led by Pavel’s uncle had shot and killed the zealous son. Stalin frequently mentioned Pavel as a model for Soviet youth, a child who denounced his father in the interests of the state, and the Morozov story could be found in hundreds, if not thousands, of books and poems. The numerous statues dedicated to him in public places stood as a constant reminder of the virtue of denunciations.
Sasha Visotsky’s parents held managerial positions in the transportation department that entitled them to live in the house on the embankment. Their files indicated that they had been party members since their teens. No black mark had ever marred their records. Uncertain how to proceed, Dimitri asked the children’s school director, who suggested that Dimitri introduce himself as a journalist interested in writing about Sasha’s parents’ heroic work. Dimitri and Sasha met during recess in a classroom usually devoted to the teaching of English. At their first meeting, Dimitri asked Sasha about bridges and roads, trolleys and trains, airplanes and cars. After several days, Dimitri, taking notes, slowly gravitated toward the prank in which Sasha and Yelena had taken part.
“I hope your parents weren’t too severe with you.” The boy shook his head no. “Good. Glad to hear it.” Dimitri paused and handed Sasha a chocolate wrapped in silver foil. “I suppose they knew about your little game before it got you into trouble?”
He unwrapped the sweet. “No, it was Yelena’s secret and mine.”
“I admire children who can keep secrets. But didn’t you ever tell them what you saw—without revealing how you knew?”
The boy screwed up his mouth and, after a few seconds, remarked, “Maybe once.”
“Oh? That must have been fun. What did you see?”
“A man undressing. On his arm near his shoulder, here, I saw a tattoo that looked like a cruciform with two bars across it.”
“What did your parents say when you told them?”
“To forget about it.”
“They were absolutely right,” he said making some notes.
The boy’s expression changed. He cocked his head and asked, “Why do you want to write about my parents?” Then he unfolded his reading glasses and asked to read what Dimitri had written.
“I’ve only taken notes, but as soon as I have a first draft . . .” Sasha looked confused. “I understand you’re studying French?” Sasha agreed. “It’s what your teacher calls le brouillon.” The boy’s face brightened with recognition. “Then you know what I mean. When I have the first draft, I’ll let you read it.”
Sasha put away his reading glasses and skipped out of the room. Dimitri remained, sitting alone among the empty chairs and staring at some English writing on the blackboard that he could not translate, having studied French and not English. It came from John Dos Passos’s novel The Big Money.
“America our nation has been beaten by strangers who have bought the laws and fenced off the meadows and cut down the woods for pulp and turned our pleasant cities into slums and sweated the wealth out of our people and when they want to they hire the executioner to throw the switch.”
Tormented by guilt, Dimitri hunched over the desk and buried his head in his hands, which smelled of a cheap, perfumed soap. If he reported the boy’s words, he would be imperiling Sasha’s parents for not reporting what their son had told them. If his request for a transfer had only been
granted. He left the school and, instead of taking the tram, walked to the Kremlin, troubled by Ezhov’s words. By the time he reached his room, he was telling himself how good it felt to be safe.
A week later, two families disappeared from the house on the embankment, one of them was the Visotskys.
In talking to Sasha, Dimitri had used the pseudonym “Ivan Nizhinsky” and had warned the boy to keep their meetings a secret. Sasha, however, always shared privileged information with Yelena. Although the boy never passed on the name of his interrogator, he had described the man, and Yelena shared these disclosures with Natasha, who immediately recognized her brother. On the day that Dimitri spoke to Yelena, he found himself confronting not only her but also his sister. A shocked Dimitri swore that the charade was in the service of quietly advancing Yelena for admission to the Academy of Arts. Who, after all, knew her person and passion for art better than Sasha?
Natasha had been around dishonest bureaucrats long enough to know their foul smelling words. “Rubbish!” she cried, to Yelena’s amazement. “I am not Sasha Visotsky. What are you up to, Dimitri?”
The school director had arranged for them to meet in a lower-form classroom with undersized desks for the young children. How ironic, Dimitri thought, to be in a place dedicated to learning when the point of the current exercise was to enable betrayal to pass for patriotism. Dimitri had known bad moments before but nothing equal to being unmasked by his sister. As she sat facing him, he realized to his chagrin, that she was playing Antigone to his Creon, and that they were dueling over who takes precedence, the individual or the state. Like a great many apparatchiks, Dimitri partially justified his nefarious assignments by telling himself that his family was safe. But once his actions exposed his loved ones to danger, he was prepared to abandon the mission. Had Yelena been his natural sister and not his adopted one, he would have refused from the start. But Natasha’s claim on his fidelity—the hell with the story of the Morozov boy!—mattered most. After the initial lie about the Arts Academy, he settled on an explanation that was partially true.
Stalin's Barber Page 28
