Stalin's Barber

by Paul M. Levitt

  Two days later, on September 17, 1939, Stalin ordered the Red Army to cross the Ukrainian and Belorussian borders into eastern Poland. Antip’s regiment was to occupy the town of Rzeszów, situated on both sides of the Wistok River in the heartland of the Sandomierska valley. His orders: take control of the factories producing aircraft engines and cannons. Pavel rode in a canvas-covered transport truck on a crisp autumn day. So many refugees crowded the road that the convoy had to stop to allow them to pass. The river of people formed a classless society, all intent on survival. They traveled on every conveyance: carts, horses, donkeys, cars, trucks, motorcycles, sidecars, ox-driven wagons, bicycles, and foot. Pavel gawked at their unfamiliar dress and possessions. Some had left behind their businesses; some had abandoned their property; some had worked as merchants, lawyers, aldermen, journalists, doctors, teachers; some made no attempt to hide their Jewish roots and readily admitted their hatred of the Germans. The virtuous and the corrupt, the grasping and the brave, marched together down the road toward the Ukrainian border. The rich rode; the poor walked. Respectable ladies from aristocratic families escorted their delicate daughters, dressed in finery fit not for the dusty road but for the drawing room, and prostitutes with carmine-painted lips shared the equality of fear. Poets, pawnbrokers, princes, and pimps were all of a sudden all comrades. When the mass of people converged on Kiev, they would no doubt each make for the sector of society to which they belonged, the junk dealers to their fellow scavengers, the actors to the theatre, the homosexuals to the demimonde, the gendarmes to the police stations, the whores and procurers to the brothels. Even anti-Bolsheviks, some of them singing songs to the memory of Symon Petlura, the Ukrainian nationalist, were seeking escape from the Germans.

  Once the regiment continued on its way, friendly crowds greeted the men with bread and salt, a traditional gesture of hospitality. The crowds were largely composed of young people from the so-called ethnic minorities: Belorussians, Jews, and Ukrainians. Before the German invasion, a third of the city had been Jewish, but when the Germans pulled out, as agreed, to allow the Russians to enter, two-thirds of the Jewish population had already been resettled in camps outside the city. Young Zionists, who had hidden from the Germans and were hoping for the best from the Russians, eagerly inquired about the prospects for emigration to Palestine. Antip and his Bolshevik propagandists had done their work well. Invariably, the Soviet reply was the same: that the new authorities would create Palestine for Jews “right here.”

  Bivouacked outside the city, the regiment grew restless a week into the encampment. A number of soldiers meandered into town and found temporary residence in private homes. Pavel intended the same, but on the outskirts of town, he spied a stunning young woman, with hair as blond as hay, wearing a bright apricot-colored cap. She passed through a wooden gate into a one-story wooden house, sporting bright green outdoor shutters, surrounded by a lush pasture. Pavel could see a single cow grazing on the grass. He followed the blond beauty and knocked on the door, unaware that he was seeking admission to the home of Madam Petukhova, a rich widow in the throes of death. Her husband had emigrated from Ukraine to Poland and had, until congestive heart failure admitted him to the cemetery, made a handsome living as a lapidary, trading on the side in diamonds and zircons. The young woman who had just entered the house answered his knock. Her name was Pelagia Petukhova, and, judging from the color of her hands and face and neck, she was clearly a beloruchki.

  Pavel explained that he was seeking only a temporary stay before the Red Army moved to occupy those cities from which German soldiers were now withdrawing. Pelagia could not help but notice Pavel’s blue eyes and sinewy arms. His muscles rippled through his clothing, and his speech was not crude. She could smell his sweat and found it not acrid but sweet. As he extended a hand of friendship to her, she noticed that he had long, delicate fingers. He knew no Polish but she spoke Ukrainian and Russian with ease, and even some German.

  “We have an extra room at the back of the house,” said Pelagia. “You will have to tiptoe. Mother is deathly ill. I fear that in the next day or two, I’ll be calling the priest.”

  On the wall hung a crucifix, not an Orthodox one with three bars, but a single-barred Roman cross. Before the closure of the churches, Pavel had been baptized Orthodox, but felt that a person’s religion was hardly worth fighting over; after all, had he not accepted his stepfather without protest? In his simple way, he had arrived at a Bolshevik belief: Religious rites separate people.

  That night, he and Pelagia sat in front of the fireplace and exchanged family stories, the first step in their journey toward bonding. She found him sensitive and caring, inviting her thoughts and not bludgeoning her with his own, as former suitors had done. He paradoxically used his imposing physical presence in the service of a compassionate courtesy. She could see in the way that he touched an object, a figurine, for example, that a sensuous spring fed mind and body. Yes, here was a gentle giant, as such men were called.

  She had been courted by many men, though she was never bedded by any. All of them seemed intent on gaining, at the same time, a beautiful woman and a dowry, perhaps even Krasula. As part of the decayed nobility, her family believed in suitors first speaking to the parents and indicating their expectations. Once her father had died, her mother became the protector of Miss Petukhova’s reputation. Any young man wishing to pass into the family sitting room first had to tame the lion at the gate. Few young men had much to offer her other than rough manliness and a hard life, so older men began to pay her court. But these she found unsuitable. They had gnarled hands or wrinkled faces; they smelled of the field or garlic; they spoke ungrammatically or foully; they knew little Polish history and letters. To one suitor, she mentioned the name Copernicus. His reply: “Never met the man.” Pavel was different. His tastes in architecture and furnishings were sophisticated, and, owing to his stepfather’s influence, he had read some of the Russian masterworks: War and Peace, Fathers and Sons, and Crime and Punishment. Although he knew no other books written by Tolstoy and Turgenev and Dostoevski, these three alone enabled him to eclipse her other suitors, except for one young man, Zygmunt Frajzyngier, a Jewish schoolteacher who had come to the house once and, with the reluctant approval of Pelagia’s father, taken her to see a ballet; but Zygmunt had died shortly after from consumption.

  Pelagia’s fascination with Pavel was also heightened by the eerie resemblance he bore to her younger brother, Blazej (Blaise), who had died from bulbar polio. The only son, he was beloved by his parents and sister for his sensitivity and interest in literature. The family was convinced that he would be a second Adam Mickiewicz, the famous nineteenth-century romantic poet.

  “I like to think of myself as open minded, but I’m actually not,” said Pavel, “especially when it comes to the woman I marry. I admit I want her chaste and faithful. Is that a terrible thing to say?”

  Pelagia assured him that she expected the same of the man whom she married, and that he had no need to feel “bourgeois.” “I find,” she said, “that the most conservative people, like priests and landowners, are often the most likely to behave shamefully. They think they’re immune.”

  Pavel told her about his dog, Mir, and how he left her with a friend in Brovensk. But as he and Antip boarded the train, he heard barking and saw Mir on the platform “calling him home.” Pelagia shyly allowed that she too had a pet; it was the milk cow back of the house. She fondly called the krowa, cow, “Krasula.”

  “I raised it from a calf, and she never fails to give us a full pail of milk. Such a wonderful animal. She’s a part of the family. My father so loved her that before his death, he fashioned for her a special padded collar with three small bells. And inside the collar, he stuffed good-luck charms and religious medals and talismans for long life. Papa was very devout.”

  They talked well into the night and, before retiring, innocently hugged. That night, Pavel never closed his eyes, watching for the morning light when he could again see the fa
ir Pelagia. She, on the other hand, fell asleep immediately and dreamed of wearing her mother’s white lacy dress as she walked down the aisle of her local church to be sanctified in marriage by the local priest, Father Henryk Jankowski, known for denouncing from the pulpit “fallen” women and Jews. In her dream, Pavel was standing at the altar waiting for her, while his stepfather, whom Pavel had disclosed was a “kindly” Jew, kneeled in the church garden before a crucifix, promising to embrace the true faith if Father Jankowski would allow him to stand as best man for Pavel. She found herself tormented by the thought of Razan Shtube holding such an exalted place at her wedding and woke with a start when she heard her mother cry out for help.

  Madam Petukhova, a skilled seamstress, had long served the rich Rzeszów families, who admired not only her skills but also her speed. A wedding dress that would take a normal needle worker a month or more to make, she could complete in a fortnight. She had in fact made her own wedding dress that now rested in mothballs in the large cedar chest at the back of the basement. She had already altered the dress for Pelagia, her only living child, and hoped to survive long enough to see her married in it.

  Pelagia sat at her mother’s bedside for two days, as the poor woman slowly passed from lucidity to raving to a semiconscious state. Madam Petukhova had first discovered the lump in her breast fifteen months before, but she was too modest to allow the local doctor to examine a private part of her body. The tumor had grown so large that it had distorted her breast and caused the nipple to ooze a white liquid. On the evening of the third day, Madam Petukhova nearly died, not from cancer but from fright. Pavel, unfortunately, had not yet returned to the house from his daily routine. Pelagia answered a banging on the front door. In front of her stood a thief, Bronislaw Sadkowski, whose crooked face, scarred in a knife fight, mimicked his warped mind. He had been appointed by the Soviets to the role of militia commander for Rzeszów. Even though imprisoned four times for stealing and for taking speculators across the border into Hungary, he now worked for the Red Army requisitioning prized property.

  “It’s for the Soviet cause,” he declared untruthfully.

  Other thieves were also enjoying a new life under the Soviets, who employed the tortured reasoning that a prison record in a capitalist state indicated that a person had been either a class enemy of the bourgeoisie or its victim. Either one qualified a criminal to work for the Soviets. Thus, no crime prevented the Soviets from assigning custody of a city area to criminals. That many of the people appointed by the Soviets were recognizable to the locals as lawbreakers appealed to the Soviets’ sense of delayed justice.

  “I am also looking for pans,” said Bronislaw, whose left eye drooped owing to his injury.

  “Search the house. You won’t find any here. But be quiet.” She put a finger to her lips. “Mother is bedridden and quite ill.”

  Bronislaw rifled through the closets and drawers and chests.

  “You won’t find any pans in there,” said a disgusted Pelagia, who knew Bronislaw for a thief.

  A confused Bronislaw replied, “Davai kushat (Give something to eat). I am starved.”

  She found some blood sausage that he quickly devoured, ripping off a piece of bread to go with it. From his pocket, he produced a crumpled leaflet bearing the image of Stalin.

  “Hang it next to the crucifix. He’s the next thing to a God.” She took a thumbtack and placed the leaflet below the cross.

  When Pavel rapped on the door, she said, for Bronislaw’s sake, “That will be my Russian friend, a Red Army officer with the local regiment. He is staying here.”

  Bronislaw turned ashen. Gently sliding the lace curtain aside, he looked out the front window and saw a uniformed man. “I’ll leave through the back door.”

  In the few seconds it took for Pelagia to admit Pavel, Bronislaw had left the house, entered the pasture, and taken Krasula with him. Pelagia, on discovering the loss of her cow, screamed and ran to tell her mother, who nearly died in that instant. Pavel stood dumbfounded. Madam Petukhova closed her eyes and seemed to breathe her last. But minutes later, she opened her eyes and summoned enough strength to ask for the priest. Pelagia went for Father Jankowski at once. The priest brought his instruments for Extreme Unction, greeted Pavel, and asked to be alone with the good woman while he administered the last rites. Ten minutes later, he hastily exited the house.

  Pelagia entered the room and, sitting beside her mother, held her hand. Madam Petukhova’s face resembled a death mask. She looked to Pelagia as if she had passed from this world into the next. But the old woman lasted until late that night, and she managed a few last words, which came in short bursts.

  “Papa hid all his best jewels in Krasula’s collar. A small fortune in diamonds and some other stones. He said the Germans and Russians would search the house. The collar, he thought, was the safest place. I told Father Jankowski.”

  “Did he say anything?” asked Pelagia.

  “He said he guessed that the hidden cache was worth enough to start a new life and build a small church in German-occupied Kraków.” Pelagia went to the window and looked into the empty pasture; tears ran down her face. But given her “white hands” and the exalted positions that criminals now held, she waited for her mother’s funeral to tell Pavel. At the grave site, in a steady downpour, Pelagia revealed the loss and the perpetrator. Pavel promised to track down both Bronislaw and the priest, even if he had to desert the regiment. Huddled together under Pelagia’s umbrella, they returned to the house.

  * * *

  A geologist by training, Antip knew where to find different kinds of soil, knowledge he exploited when he ordered his men to truck in two kinds of earth for the horseshoe pitching court he ordered built on the west end of town. The Russian tank regiment he had challenged to a match was home to Serhiy Chumachenko, a man famous in the Red Army for his many tournament victories. He pitched his shoes on a low trajectory and landed them in an open position short of the stake, where they would slide into the post for a ringer. But to achieve this effect, he needed hard-packed soil. To put Serhiy at a disadvantage, Antip settled on potter’s clay, which had to be kept in a moist and puttylike condition for use in the stake area.

  Serhiy made it a point always to inspect the pits before agreeing to a match. When shown the hard-packed soil of Antip’s pits, he happily agreed to a contest and a hundred-ruble wager, funded in part by the men in his tank corps. Anticipation ran high as the two regiments taunted each other. Both had their champions. Although Pavel’s reputation preceded him, Serhiy knew that on hard pack he had no equal. The night before the match, Antip had his men remove the hard pack that they had originally used to construct the court, and replace it with potter’s clay, which held the shoes fast.

  Hundreds of boisterous, vodka-inspirited soldiers crowded around the playing area, running north to south. The pits at either end of the court were covered with tarpaulins because, as Antip explained, they had recently been raked, and he wanted to keep them pristine. Serhiy appeared to roars of approval, as his admirers parted in ceremonial fashion to allow him to make his grand entrance. Pavel, in the company of Pelagia, received a hug from her that elicited whistles and catcalls. His own regiment simply clapped. Both men had exchanged their uniforms for sweat clothes and sneakers, and each had his own set of regulation horseshoes. Antip asked for the prize money and placed it on a table in sight of all. As the two contestants swung their arms in circles and performed knee bends in preparation for the match, Antip directed two aides to remove the tarps. Serhiy stopped in mid-motion and turned the color of bleached bone. He saw not hard-packed dirt in the pits but wet clay. A good sport, Serhiy smiled and slightly bowed toward Antip in acknowledgment of his having been duped. Pavel, who knew nothing of the deception, shook hands with Serhiy, wished him well, and walked to the pitcher’s box. Forty feet away stood a stake fifteen inches high with a three-inch forward lean, and four feet beyond the stake, stood a backboard. Serhiy would try to adjust his game to suit the con
ditions by throwing his shoes with more height, a technique that required a different motion and degree of strength. He knew, once he had discovered that the surface was clay, that he had little chance of winning. Although Antip chuckled at his own chicanery, he offered Serhiy the opportunity to reduce the amount of the wager, but Serhiy declined, lest he admit weakness in front of his regiment.

  Pelagia watched from the sidelines, her hands clasped tightly, as if she held Pavel’s fortune in hers. Having developed a fondness for this Russian soldier, she prayed for his success.

  Serhiy pitched first. His shoe fell short of the stake, where it stuck. Pavel put his first shoe next to the pin. Serhiy’s second shoe had enough loft, but the closed end hit the stake and the shoe caromed off to the side. Pavel’s next throw was a ringer. And so it went. With Serhiy unable to bounce his shoes, he lost his rhythm and began to spray his shots. In short order, the match was over. A delighted Antip scooped up the prize money and pocketed it, having no intention of sharing the winnings with Pavel. Antip thought it reward enough to invite Pavel to dine with him that night. Besides, had it not been for Antip’s enterprise, Pavel might well have lost. Pavel made no protest and merely asked that Pelagia be included for dinner, a request to which Antip agreed, having himself noted Pelagia’s albino skin and nearly identical lustrous hair, her lovely legs and rounded chest. Pavel knew that he would have to act forcefully and soon if he was to keep the skirt-chasing Antip from transferring him to another regiment and pursuing the pretty Pelagia himself.