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  Stalin’s Barber

  Stalin’s

  Barber

  A Novel

  Paul M. Levitt

  TAYLOR TRADE PUBLISHING

  Lanham • New York • Boulder • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

  Published by Taylor Trade Publishing

  An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

  4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

  www.rowman.com

  10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP, United Kingdom

  Distributed by National Book Network

  Copyright © 2012 by Paul M. Levitt

  The poem Stalin’s Mustache copyright 2004 by Ioanna Warwick.

  Reprinted by permission of the author. All rights reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Levitt, Paul M.

  Stalin’s barber : a novel / Paul M. Levitt.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-58979-771-0 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-58979-772-7 (electronic)

  1. Barbers—Russia—Fiction. 2. Albanians—Russia—Fiction. 3. Stalin, Joseph, 1879–1953—Fiction. 4. Soviet Union—History—1925-1953—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3612.E935S73 2012

  813’.6—dc23

  2012027405

  ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

  Printed in the United States of America

  To Luther Wilson

  Stalin’s Mustache

  in homage to Osip Mandelstam

  In Warsaw near the Tomb

  of the Unknown Soldier,

  in a treeless square,

  there used to scowl a statue

  of Feliks Dzierżyński,

  founder of the CheKa,

  the Bolshevik Secret Police.

  His nickname was “Bloody Felek.”

  Before the unveiling,

  someone managed to paint

  the statue’s hands blood-red.

  When the string was pulled,

  the dignitaries gasped:

  the blood of his victims

  seemed to drip

  from Bloody Felek’s hands.

  The speaker on the podium

  began to stammer.

  The military band

  struck up, then stopped;

  feebly began again.

  To the stuttering tuba,

  the string was pulled back.

  Fifty years later, ten thousand

  people jammed the square

  to watch the demolition

  of a monument to a mass murderer.

  *

  My cousin Ewa tells the tale

  of yet another fallen icon:

  a giant statue of Stalin,

  the largest in the world.

  Taller than the Statue of Liberty,

  the dictator stained the sky

  at the joining of two great rivers:

  the Volga and the Don—

  his “sneer of cold command”

  staring down the starving

  Ukraine. The ten-story

  pedestal still stands.

  Stalin was toppled into the water—

  shallow enough, they say,

  that from the cruise boats one can see

  his colossal face.

  Ewa was on one of those boats:

  “From where I stood,

  I only caught a glimpse

  of Stalin’s mustache.”

  She giggles. She must have told

  this story countless times.

  We sit around the table smiling,

  sipping home-made hawthorn wine.

  Stalin’s mustache.

  The empty

  pedestal still stands.

  —Ioanna Warwick

  Contents

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Part I

  Exile

  Making the Family Skeletons Dance

  Purging the Party

  The Letter

  Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili

  To Moscow, to Moscow, to Moscow!

  In Voronezh, a City Peter Built and Poets Braved

  In the Most High and Palmy State of Rome

  That Way Madness Lies

  Only the Pitiless

  Statistics

  Part II

  Pavel´s Polish Pelagia

  Escape from Paradise

  The Haughty Barber

  Anna on the Bubble

  Let the Innocent Escape

  The Worst Cut of All

  To the Finland Station

  Razan’s List

  Anna’s Notes

  Glossary

  Acknowledgments

  Like a nested doll, a novel masks the other figures in the finished form. So let the unmasking begin. I am particularly indebted to Kathryn Barth and Robert Hohlfelder, who hosted a Christmas party at which Bob described a visit to Istanbul and his first and only Turkish haircut. His own vivid storytelling planted the seed for a story about a barber and his tonsorial skills. For their suggestions, I thank Peter Kracht and the anonymous reader at Verso Books who read a first draft of the manuscript. My colleagues Elissa Guralnick and Tim Lyons split the chapters between them and, not surprisingly in light of their critical skills, advised revisions in organization. Michael Glueck, a professional writer, spent a day on the beach with the manuscript and returned with not only a sunburn but also several pointed observations that led to further revisions. But, of all the stylistic advice I received, none eclipsed that of my colleague Victoria Tuttle, a brilliant prose writer.

  With any historical fiction, the author is always trying to balance fact and fancy. Not knowing to whom I could turn for an evaluation of historical accuracy, I asked my friend Alan Wald, an eminent professor at the University of Michigan. He recommended Susan Weissman, professor of politics at Saint Mary’s College of California. Suzi, the author of several books, hosts a weekly radio program on KPFK in Los Angeles and writes on Left dissent. She read the manuscript and sent me a list of corrections, as well as a coruscating reader’s report. Her personal help cannot be exaggerated. She is a gem beyond price.

  All writers should be so fortunate as to enjoy the level of moral and technical support that I received. My daughter, Andrea Stein, and her husband, Stefan, were at my dinner table when I needed them. My son Scot, his wife, Erica, his daughter, Amy, and his son, Mathew, gave me invaluable assistance. My wife, Nancy, never once complained about my moodiness and absences from home. My sister, Sandra, years ago forgave me my reclusiveness.

  Frank Delaney, the Irish novelist, deserves a paragraph to himself. Talk about the kindness of strangers! From a simple dinner to an exchange of e-mails to a reading of the manuscript has grown a lasting friendship. His advice, his untiring efforts to see this book published, and his enduring generosity have set a standard for kindness that I have never seen the equal of.

  For their help in the production and preparation of this book, I am indebted to Jehanne Schweitzer, senior production editor for Rowman & Littlefield, for her meticulous work; and to Gene Margaritondo for his impeccable copyediting and creative insights. His command of English usage is daunting; hence, any grammatical errors or stylistic misadventures proceed from my own imperfections. For their careful proofreading, I thank Li
llia Gajewski and A. J. Kazlouski.

  Given the shrinking population of readers and the paucity of presses willing to publish literary fiction, albeit historical, writers increasingly need some form of financial support to offset printing costs. I am particularly lucky to have received such support from Philip DiStefano, chancellor, University of Colorado at Boulder; Russell Moore, provost, University of Colorado at Boulder; and the Kayden Research Grant Committee, University of Colorado at Boulder.

  The courage to publish this book comes from one person, Rick Rinehart. To him, I say, thank you.

  * * *

  Although it has become a cliché to observe that all art is collaboration and that we stand on the shoulders of giants, I cannot leave until I acknowledge to which authors and works, in particular, I am especially indebted.

  Sources

  Anna Akhmatova, Selected Poems

  Isaac Babel, Short Stories

  Andrey Biely, St. Petersburg

  T. J. Binyon, Pushkin

  Bertolt Brecht, Mother Courage

  Frederic Buechner, Godric

  Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita; The White Guard; and The Heart of a Dog

  Ivan Bunin, “The Gentleman from San Francisco”

  Philip Cannistraro and Brian R. Sullivan, Il Duce’s Other Woman: The Untold Story of Margherita Sarfatti, Mussolini’s Jewish Mistress

  Alfred Edward Chamot, trans., Selected Russian Short Stories

  Anton Chekhov, “Gooseberries” and “Ward 6”

  Robert Edwards, The Winter War: Russia’s Invasion of Finland, 1939–1940

  Nikolai Erdman, The Suicide

  Merle Fainsod, How Russia Is Ruled

  Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy, Natasha’s Dance, and The Whisperers

  Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Life in Early Soviet Russia

  Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand

  Vsevolod Garshin, A Red Rose

  Evgenia Ginzburg, Into the Whirlwind and Within the Whirlwind

  Nikolai Gogol, “The Overcoat”

  Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov

  Maxim Gorky, Avrahm Yarmolinsky, and Baroness Moura Budberg, The Collected Short Stories of Maxim Gorky

  Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

  O. Henry (William Sydney Porter), “The Ransom of Red Chief”

  Ilya Ilf and Eugene Petrov, The Twelve Chairs

  Amy Knight, Who Killed Kirov?

  Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon

  Walter Krivitsky, In Stalin’s Secret Service

  Natalia Kuziakina, Theatre in the Solovki Prison Camp

  Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time

  Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope against Hope and Hope Abandoned

  Osip Mandelstam, Selected Poems

  Thomas Mann, Mario and the Magician

  Vladimir Mayakovsky, The Bedbug

  Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar and The Young Stalin

  Alexander Orlov, The Secret History of Stalin’s Crimes

  Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

  Ronald Ribman, The Journey of the Fifth Horse

  Roy R. Robson, Solovki: The Story of Russia Told through Its Most Remarkable Islands

  Joshua Rubenstein, The Life and Times of Ilya Ehrenburg

  Anatoli Rybakov, The Children of the Arbat

  Thomas Seltzer, ed., Best Russian Short Stories

  Victor Serge, The Case of Comrade Tulayev

  Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Tales

  Mikhail Sholokhov, And Quiet Flows the Don

  Kirill (Konstantin) Simonov, The Living and the Dead

  Isaac Bashevis Singer, “Gimpel the Fool”

  C. P. Snow and Pamela Hanford Johnson, eds., Stories from Modern Russia

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich; The First Circle; and The Gulag Archipelago

  Sophocles, Antigone

  J. Swire, King Zog’s Albania

  Yuri Trifonov, The House on the Embankment

  Marina Tsvetaeva, Selected Poems

  Suzi Weissman, Victor Serge: The Course Is Set on Hope

  Part I

  Exile

  After sprinkling alcohol on the British sergeant’s left ear to singe the unsightly sprouting hairs, the barber Avraham Bahar ignited the liquid just as two men in long overcoats and black fedoras burst into the shop, pulled out machine pistols, fired, and fled, but not before one of them shouted, “Death to foreigners!”

  From the force of the shots, the barber’s chair slowly turned, though the sergeant remained motionless. As the red spot on the barbering cape rapidly blossomed into blood, Avraham removed it and grew faint. A gaping hole exposed the man’s slippery intestines, which slowly oozed, like eels, through the gore and down his legs. When the bloody snakes ran into the sergeant’s shoes, Avraham puked.

  Avraham, having never before witnessed death, staggered to the front door and cried into the rain for help. Minutes later, he heard the wailing siren of an ambulance. The gendarmerie and medical attendants pushed through a crowd of the curious. As the police interrogated him, an agitated Avraham walked backward and forward repeating, “Vey iz mir” (Woe is me). Could he identify the men? Why was the sergeant alone in the shop? Where were the other barbers?

  “I can tell you,” said the investigating officer, “it looks suspicious to me. You and Sergeant Jenkins by yourselves. Two unidentified men riddle the sergeant and leave you untouched. It smells like a setup.”

  By the time the police left, with the admonition that Avraham be available for further questioning, the barber had already begun his characteristic parsing of words. His mother, a literature teacher, had taught him that both letters and life require close reading. Had his aunt not read the meaning of a priest’s muttering at a café, his family would not have escaped the Kishinev pogrom of 1903—a time when the clergy incited mobs to kill Jews. On her advice, Mr. Bahar had bribed a Greek tailor to hide them in the event of a riot. Avraham and his family had escaped harm and emigrated to Tirana, where they resettled and changed their name in the hope of living free of anti-Semitism. But that was twenty-eight years ago, when Avraham was eighteen.

  But now Avraham had to face a new reality: “Death to foreigners.” The absence of the word “the,” as in “the foreigners,” meant the assassins wanted all non-Albanians out of the country, not just the British. His parents had openly spoken Russian and readily admitted that they had emigrated from Kishinev. And what of the police officer’s words, which all but accused him of engaging in a setup? “It looks more than a bit suspicious to me.” And the initial phrase, “I can tell you,” emphasized the point that the officer had no doubts about the killers’ accomplice. And don’t forget the accusatory diction, Avraham told himself. The word “riddled” he wouldn’t even begin to fractionate.

  The next day, as he followed his usual path to work through the bazaar, with its maze of cobbled, crooked streets, he was stopped at a roadblock by two Albanian soldiers in poorly fitting uniforms and unpolished leather boots. Groups of women dressed from head to toe in black burqas, with narrow eye slits, squatted by a wall, their embroideries spread out before them on inexpensive Turkish rugs, while across the way sat a chaos of other vendors, selling charcoal, vegetables, chickens, eggs, fruit, firewood, pots, trinkets, baskets, and rope. The only unveiled women were dark-skinned Gypsies, who were reading fortunes and using short-handled brooms to sweep up the market refuse. Off to one side, under a porch roof, moneylenders haggled over percentages. All across this city of thirty-two thousand people, the government, determined to catch the assassins, had posted descriptions of the killers and put up roadblocks.

  “Your papers!” demanded one of the soldiers, folding his arms and slyly holding out a hand to indicate that baksheesh would do as well.

  Avraham shook his head in despair. Reaching for his papers, he remarked, “I can remember when people doffed their caps at one another. Now they ask them for identification—or bribes.”

  “Idiot!” said the second
soldier. “We are merely collecting for the poor.”

  “Preventing poverty with charity,” Avraham remarked, “is as effective as making a bullet out of shit.”

  The blow to the nose happened so quickly that Avraham never saw the soldier swing the butt of his rifle. Kneeling on the ground, he wiped the blood from his face. In the distance, he could hear one of the soldiers laughing and repeating, “A bullet out of shit.”

  Two days later, he paid the groundskeeper of the Jewish cemetery a large sum to have his parents’ plots cared for in perpetuity. In front of their marble stones, he silently spoke to them, occasionally reaching down to remove an offending weed. As he read the dates of their deaths, Esther Bahar, 1929, Isaac Bahar, 1927, he remembered attending one of his mother’s classes in Tirana, where she taught both Russian and English, and his father giving Turkish haircuts to men of every nationality: Muslims, Christians, and Jews. He consoled himself knowing that in exile he would be taking with him sacred memories and, of course, his handsomely painted matryoshka doll, the one that his mother had given him on his sixth birthday, the one that told Pushkin’s fairy tale of Ruslan and Liudmila. Avraham’s mother had used the nested doll to teach him that most great writers, even the incomparable Shakespeare, root their tales in a family. By exploring how parents and children relate to one another and how their travails affect other family members, even outsiders, writers create a nested fiction.

  On his way home from the cemetery, he felt the weight of his impending departure: whether to remain in Albania or leave for Russia. The comforts of his house would be hard to forsake—a bath and a kitchen range, a sitting room and a fireplace—even though a poor draft allowed smoke to befog the house and drive the scorpions from their hiding places. But at least he could afford the price of wood; these days, not many could. Best of all, the house had a large garden, enclosed by a high brick wall, and dozens of trees: walnut, cherry, plum, fig, and thorn. He likened gardening, his passion, to barbering. Both required pruning and trimming, clipping and cutting, and a sense of shape and design. Some trees leafed low, some high, just as he shaved some sideburns above the ears, some below.

  In the Jewish quarter, Avraham had heard whispers that a single silver candlestick could buy passage to Skopje, where fellow congregants would hide a person until it was safe to cross into Rumania, then Moldavia, and finally Ukraine, where a new society, a democratic one, had begun to take shape. When he had first shared his thoughts of emigrating with Rubin Bélawitz, his rotund childhood confidant and a woodcarver, Rubin had cut him short.