Stalin's Barber

by Paul M. Levitt

  “Isn’t that amazing, though: the granddaughter?”

  Try as he might, Dimitri couldn’t see how this information strengthened their hand.

  “Don’t you see,” she replied, “with your training, you could forge a letter from the British government requesting access . . .”

  “You’re mad! One trip to the clinic and you return infected with brain fever. Where in the world would I find letterhead stationery and an envelope with the royal seal? I have no such equipment here.”

  During this conversation, Natasha had been lazing on his bed. She noticed a floor vent that allowed warm air to rise from the first floor to the second. Vera and Arkady’s room was just below his. Touching a finger to her lips, she pointed to the vent, which Dimitri inspected. She had good reason to worry. Dimitri quietly crept downstairs and waited in an alcove off the parlor, from which he could overhear anyone using the wall phone. Just when he thought his vigil in vain, Vera passed through the parlor, looked around, and dialed. Dimitri listened.

  “Yes, a matter of national security. I told you: two of our boarders.” Pause. “Z. Zumanski. This is not the first time we have turned in a report.” Pause. “Arkady’s my husband. He works in the Department of Sewers.” Dimitri came up behind Vera and put a hand over her mouth. With his other hand, he snatched the phone.

  “This is Arkady Zumanski. My wife is rather excitable. What she calls national security is nothing more than some unruliness. You know, too much kvas.” Pause. “My apologies.” Pause. “Of course we know how important your time is. But women . . . you understand. Excitable.” Pause. “Thank you, comrade. It won’t happen again.”

  With a sudden jerk, Dimitri pulled the wire out of the wall. He removed his hand from Vera’s mouth. Leading her back to her room, he made her sit. She said nothing, too scared to talk. Natasha arrived. Dimitri paced and revised his plans. For a long while, no one spoke. He had originally thought to enter the clinic in the guise of an inspector general with orders to evaluate the premises for cleanliness. But having overheard that Arkady was with the sewer works, he now had a new idea: if possible, approach the clinic from below, and escape the same way. He was waiting for Arkady to return to determine whether Voronezh’s network of sewers would work in his favor. One hour passed, and then a second. Dimitri’s patience exhausted, he asked Vera where he could find Arkady? Her answer supported his own surmise, the local tavern, “Ivan’s Oasis.” He removed his service pistol, showed Natasha how to remove the safety, and told her to shoot Vera if she so much as got up from the chair.

  “I have to pee!” protested Vera.

  Dimitri spied a chamber pot under the bed. “Use this,” he said.

  “In front of you?”

  “I’m leaving. Remember, Natasha, shoot her if necessary.”

  Ivan’s Oasis reminded Dimitri of the Brovensk Inn, which saw more of his father than did his own family. Arkady was slumped over a table at the back of the smoky, dark bar, but still conscious. At an adjoining table, a soldier slowly slipped out of his chair and rolled under the table, asleep. Dimitri brought a bottle of vodka from the bar and stood it on the table in front of Arkady, whose head slowly rose and whose eyes went from dark to light.

  “Why aren’t you at work?” asked Dimitri.

  “Goretski’s taking my shift.”

  As Arkady reached for the bottle, Dimitri stayed his hand. “Not until you explain how the sewer system works. It’s a police matter.”

  “What’s to explain? A sewer is a sewer.”

  “Yes, by any other name it smells the same.”

  Arkady opened his mouth of decayed teeth and smiled. “I like that. Say it again so I can remember it. The boys will laugh themselves silly over that one.”

  “First tell me about the system. Where does it run, which ones have walkways, and where are the manhole plates? I want the layout for the whole western part of the city.”

  “Only a few places have walkways.”

  He again reached for the bottle, but Dimitri moved it away.

  “Draw me a rough map,” said Dimitri, removing a small pad and pencil from his breast pocket.

  Arkady could see the NKVD seal on the leather cover of the pad and forced himself into a semi-sitting position. He took the pencil and sketched a spiderweb.

  “Which of those tunnels services the commissariat clinic?”

  Arkady scratched his head with the pencil and then circled a spot on his diagram. “Here,” he said and, taking the bottle, poured himself a full shot of vodka, which he tossed back with one gulp, followed by a sigh of satisfaction.

  “Where on the grounds of the clinic does this tunnel surface?”

  Arkady poured himself another drink. Dimitri’s dismay was apparent. He didn’t want this sot passing out. “No more ’til we’re done.”

  “The manhole plate’s in the garden. But to open it you need a special wrench key.”

  “Does the tunnel at that point have a walkway?”

  “A short one.”

  “I assume you have a wrench key.”

  “Why all these questions? Since when do you care about sewers?”

  “Only the ones with walkways. Prisoners use them to escape.”

  Arkady, for the first time, sat upright. “Really? I had no idea.” Dimitri could see that Arkady was already scheming. “A person could make some money leading them through the sewers.”

  The trap was now baited. “Yes,” replied Dimitri, “and the police are prepared to pay you to lead these people to us.”

  “You’ve got yourself a deal. Starting when? And where do I meet them and take them?”

  “I’ll handle that.” He moved the bottle and took a sip for himself. “Tell me, where do the black marketeers congregate? That would be a good place to make wholesale arrests, which would earn us both a chest full of medals.”

  “South of town, two kilometers after the brick factory. You’ll see what looks like an abandoned church. In the basement, they do business, mostly at night. And behind it, anything on wheels is used to bring in and take out the goods. But you didn’t hear it from me.”

  Dimitri patted him on the shoulder. “Be ready to leave tomorrow morning, at eight, you and I together. Here, keep the bottle and have another drink, but if you’re not sober by morning, I’ll bring charges against you as a wrecker.”

  Miraculously, Arkady’s inebriation dissipated and he said with clarity, “Only one more drink, and then I’ll set out for home.”

  “Oh, by the way, your wife told me to pass along the message that she would be staying with a friend for the night.”

  Arkady grunted, “Probably that busybody Marfa Kubin.”

  As Dimitri hastened back to the boardinghouse, he marveled at how well fear worked as a teaching tool. The two women were sitting just as he had left them. He ordered Vera to grab her coat, take a last pee in the communal lavatory in the hallway, and accompany him.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, fearfully eyeing the pistol that Dimitri retrieved from his sister and holstered.

  “Just dress warmly.”

  Taking a trolley to the south end of town, they walked to the once thriving church of Saint Gregory’s Holiness. From the outside, the shell of the church looked abandoned. It was not until one started picking his way through the ruins that the muffled sounds of life could be heard under the flooring. In the cellar, Dimitri found stands exhibiting every kind of ware, from cigarettes and perfumes to sugar and petrol. Vera surveyed the scene, her face hardly able to disguise her rapacity. Dimitri led her out the back door of the cellar and into the parking area. After several inquiries, he found a truck driver heading for Kiev. The man was delivering boxes of Cuban cigars, stolen from a military convoy, and picking up metal barrels of cooking oil. He was driving a battered GAZ-AA delivery van, modeled on Ford’s Model A truck. For a generous ration of rubles, the man agreed not to let Vera exit his truck until they reached Kiev. To try to make sure that the man would keep his word, Dimitri traded
on his NKVD credentials and told him that the woman was being secretly exiled—hence his use of a black marketeer—and that whatever she said would be lies. If Dimitri heard that the woman had not been delivered safely to Kiev, it could well cost the driver his life. To emphasize the seriousness of the matter, Dimitri copied the driver’s license number. As Vera climbed into the cab, loudly protesting her innocence and Dimitri’s villainy, he shoved money into her lap, enough to silence her until the driver had pulled onto the road and departed. Dimitri grinned as he walked back to the trolley, thinking that he’d done Arkady a great favor.

  The next morning, Natasha remained at the boardinghouse while Comrade Zumanski, in rubber overalls, and Dimitri, in dungarees, took a bus to a point near the clinic, where they descended into a sewer. The tunnel exhibited skilled brickwork, including a walkway that ran a short distance along the center channel, which carried sewage to a pumping station and then to a purifying plant. Both men snaked their way to the manhole plate in the garden. While Dimitri stood at the foot of a steel ladder, Arkady climbed it, removed a wrench, opened the latch, and pushed aside the manhole plate. Dimitri flew up the ladder and raced to the cottage. Before he could knock, the door opened and Alexei yanked him inside, handing him a note that read: “I’ve been expecting you. Don’t speak. The cottage is bugged. I told Natasha I would go with you. Rissa refuses to leave.”

  Dimitri looked around for this person whom he knew only by name. A second later, she materialized. The image that came to Dimitri’s mind was of some miraculous goddess rising from the sea or of a Helen launching a thousand ships of Ilium. He found himself breathing deeply to dispel his lightheadedness. Perhaps, after all, he was not doing Alexei a favor. But that wasn’t the point. He was here to assist Natasha. And yet, he could not, as before, regard Alexei with hate. In fact, he envied him, except for his imprisonment. Perhaps imprisonment was the wrong word. What could one say about a person who chooses to die for beauty or for love? Such a person was outside the pale, transcended the mundane, defied conventional morality, and justifiably so. For a moment, he wished that he preferred women to men, and that he and Alexei could change places. Rissa extended a hand to Dimitri and whispered, “Tell her to love him as I have.” She then hugged Alexei and disappeared.

  Alexei took his knapsack and followed Dimitri through the grim garden to the sewer. They both scampered down the manhole. Arkady locked the plate and quickly guided the two men to an abandoned steam tunnel that intersected the sewer and terminated near the river, where the men emerged a few yards away from a neglected shipbuilding dock that dated from Peter the Great.

  A skeptical Arkady took Dimitri’s money but felt compelled to say, “If anyone questions me, I’ll have to say you forced me to do it.”

  “Agreed.”

  The three men returned to the boardinghouse. Dimitri intended to reach Natasha first, to warn her not to say a word about Vera. But Alexei immediately embraced her, more from relief than from love.

  Arkady toured the house, returned, and said, “You told me Vera went to stay with Marfa Kubin. But she still ain’t returned.”

  “All she said was she’d be spending the night with a friend.”

  “Strange. I think I’ll walk over to Marfa’s house. She has no phone,” he said, proudly adding, “It takes blat to have one,” not realizing that his own had been rendered unusable.

  Natasha, Dimitri, and Alexei never saw Arkady again. By trams and buses they made their way to the city limits, where by prior arrangement they waited for a driver to collect them at the sports center. Inside the round and spacious foyer, with its large window facing the street, a caretaker sat on a folding chair, warming his hands in front of a small electric heater.

  “Unless you’ve come for the cross-country ski training, the center is closed. The heat won’t get turned on until spring.”

  “Do you mind if we wait here for our ride?” asked Dimitri, removing his gloves and rubbing his hands. “The man should be along shortly.”

  “Which way are you going?”

  “Moscow,” Dimitri said, winking at Alexei and Natasha. They had agreed beforehand to let Dimitri do most, if not all, of the talking.

  As the minutes ticked away, the caretaker folded his newspaper and began to study the three strangers whispering in the corner. Even though he couldn’t see how well they were dressed, he could tell from Dimitri’s greatcoat and Natasha and Dimitri’s fur jackets that they were a cut above the average worker. Why, then, didn’t they avail themselves of the Moscow train? He hadn’t heard of any exiles on the run, though anyone living in Voronezh would not be surprised by such news. In fact, in this city of political prisoners, the citizens were constantly being urged to report any suspicions they harbored owing to dress, an unpatriotic word, a Stalin joke, an unduly large group, and in general anything out of the ordinary. It was this last category that prompted the caretaker to ask a few questions before he decided whether to phone the special police responsible for the registration and surveillance of exiles.

  “No buses from here,” he said. “How will you get to Moscow?”

  “A friend is picking us up,” Dimitri replied.

  “An official car?”

  “A truck.”

  “The roads are spotted with ice. You military people?”

  To end the questioning, Dimitri said, “Contraband. We are tracking black marketeers.” He put a finger to his lips, a gesture familiar to all Soviets. “We have a tip. Shh, not a word.”

  Hoping to distract the caretaker, Alexei asked, “May I have a word with you?” The caretaker shook his head yes. “That black wart you have above your ear needs looking into. If I were you, I’d have it removed and biopsied.”

  “You a doctor?”

  “Yes.”

  The sister and brother looked at each other incredulously. The police would now know which road the escaped doctor and his companions were taking. Dimitri quickly added, “A doctor of forensics. He studies evidence in criminal cases.”

  The caretaker looked disappointed. “My mother mentioned the mole. Here I was thinking you were a real doctor.”

  “Have it checked,” repeated Alexei, as Dimitri gently guided him back to the corner.

  “Not another word!” Dimitri exhaled through clenched teeth.

  The caretaker excused himself, but whether for a telephone or a mirror tormented the escapees. Before the man returned, a truck stopped in front of the center. The group scampered out the door and into the front seat.

  “There isn’t enough room for everyone in the cab,” said the driver, introducing himself as Mikhail Artemev.

  “As soon as the center’s out of sight,” Dimitri replied, “one of us will move to the back. The caretaker was suspicious.”

  “Isn’t everybody in this country?”

  Mikhail fitted the role of a truck driver engaged in the business of transporting stolen goods. His short, muscular body, his large, scarred hands, his grim expression would have given any policeman pause before ordering him out of his van. He spoke with a Caucasian accent, having grown up in Ossetia. His devil-be-damned attitude was typical of mountain men, and he seemed to take pride in defying the authorities. “Unless they shoot me,” he said, “no law is going to keep me from doing what I please. A prison camp!” he said scornfully, “they sent me to one in Kazakhstan. I was back driving these roads in under six months.”

  At a stand of beech trees, he idled the truck and reached behind the driver’s seat to remove a pillow and a ragged blanket. Although the weather was frigid, one of the men would have to ride in the back. Dimitri volunteered. He untied the tarpaulin and squeezed in between boxes of caviar and vodka. Mikhail apologized for the rough quarters but said he had no objections if Dimitri dipped into the roe. They would spend the night at a boardinghouse deep in a stand of fir trees.

  “It caters to truckers. In other words, the people who run it can be trusted. You and your cousin here,” said Mikhail, referring to Alexei, “can trade
off every hour. I don’t want you freezing to death and me having to bury you.”

  “What if the police stop us?” asked Dimitri.

  “They won’t!”

  From his comment, the escapees deduced that the police were “on the take,” and that the boardinghouse was a local safe house for thieves and black marketeers.

  By the time the truck passed through K______, Dimitri and Alexei had frequently exchanged places and were exhausted by the effort to keep warm. Mikhail pulled into a wooded area with a sandy road that led back to an old-style Russian log house with shiplap siding, painted red to imitate a brick surface, and three-paned T-windows. The scrollwork over the windows had obviously been carved by a master, though the colors, yellow and orange, had badly faded. Several trucks were parked in the trees. Mikhail knew one of them and remarked, “Stepan Borschak is a good fellow. He’ll have plenty of stories to tell us.”

  The overseers of the lodge, the Medvedevs, disclaimed any political interests but passionately followed Russian chess. In the sitting room, a cherrywood table held an inlaid chessboard with ivory pieces. The board dated from the eighteenth century and had been passed down through the family, which counted among its members a number of distinguished players, though no grand masters. Behind the table and chessboard stood a ceramic Scandinavian stove that emitted enough heat to make the fireplace superfluous. Four truckers arrived just to take dinner: whitefish, potatoes, and cabbage. Dimitri later observed that the meal, though not gourmet, was filling and the company jolly.

  The tradition at the boardinghouse was that after dinner the guests told stories, followed by chess. Stepan Borschak limped from a bullet in his hip. In his late forties, he had fought in the Civil War on the side of the Reds, not for ideological reasons but because the girl he loved was a devoted Bolshevik. When she left him, he turned to womanizing, stealing, drinking, and embellishing stories that he heard on the road. Whatever the original plot, he managed to turn it to his principal interest: betrayal.