The Worst Cut of All

Stalin returned unattended. He apologized with two words for his previous day’s retreat and for Razan’s confinement: “State security.” He sat at his desk and silently pored over some papers.

Although this man looked eerily like the Stalin whom Razan had been barbering for years, he had larger ears and skin craters, more of a paunch, and dyed hair. Where had the man who’d picked up the phone and said “Information!” disappeared? This person walked like Stalin, one moment shuffling and the next striding briskly. He exhibited the same gestures, particularly the way he stroked his mustache. His accent was unmistakably Georgian. And his left hand was likewise curled. Perhaps the other man, to whom Razan felt attached, was a double, and this man was the real Koba. If so, Razan would have to start anew. Fawning mattered most, as well as eye focus, because diverted eyes betokened guilt for a former crime, and staring signified plotting. Razan agonized. If he was mistaken, to compliment the “new” Boss might rile the old. How then could he signal this man that he could see the difference between him and the other without offending either? Or perhaps he should say nothing. But if he pretended not to see any difference, and if this man was truly Iosif V. Dzhugashvili, he might be sowing the whirlwind. Stalin’s paranoid eruptions cowed the bravest soldiers, even generals. To negotiate the emotions of the Stalin whom he regularly trimmed and shaved was one matter, but how to handle this one was another.

The Vozhd’s attention again migrated to the documents on his desk. A moment later, he looked up. “What were you talking about?”

“Ice fishing and Comrade Gusinski,” answered Razan, noting that Stalin had not said, “What were we talking about?” He treated the shift in the pronoun as an opportunity to ask, “What happened to Gusinski?”

The Boss pointed to Razan’s barbering tools. “Put them back. No haircut today.” He fingered his mustache. “Gusinski found it amusing to show up the stupidity of Gentiles. I resented Abram’s making jokes at the expense of the people. It’s class hatred.”

The only way this man could have known about Gusinki’s humor and ice fishing was to have lived with him. Or had he spent the previous evening being briefed by the secret police? Razan needed to know absolutely whether this man was the real Vozhd. An innocent life was at stake.

“How long did you remain with him?”

“Long enough to see all the superstitions he followed, with the prayer shawl and head cap and rags he wore under his clothing. I tried to lead him out of his darkness, but he resisted.”

“In those days, under the Tsar,” said Razan, aware that Stalin could have been familiar with Jewish religious habits, “religion was a form of resistance.”

“And yet so many of your people still believe in God.”

As if seeking approval for his atheism, Stalin stared at Lenin’s portrait, just long enough for Razan to pack up his utensils. With Rubin’s carving safely in the bag, he pocketed the real razor.

“What time of year did you stay with him?”

“You are very curious about my youth.”

“Because you are the Supreme Leader.”

“I lived with him in the fall.”

“Do you know the autumn holiday of Sukkoth?” asked Razan.

Stalin lit his pipe, exhaled a blue cloud of sweet-smelling smoke, and answered Razan fiercely. “Know it? I sat with Gusinski in a hut outside his cabin. We ate there for that damned holiday. I haven’t thought of the name for years until you just mentioned it. The winter had come early, and the rain was unceasing. But Abram insisted on building a hut for the holiday. I told him he was mad. I said we should stay inside. The weather was filthy . . . just awful, but he insisted on our eating in that ramshackle hut.”

Razan felt certain that this man, who knew every particular about Gusinski, was the genuine article.

“Do you still feel the same about Gusinski, now that he’s dead?”

“Why would I change?” Stalin replied gruffly.

Razan, taking this statement to mean that all Jews were on the executioner’s list, stalled for time by asking about the Houdini film.

“I’ve shelved it for the time being.”

“Is it true that Old and New is to be reissued?”

Stalin studied him for a moment, but sensing no ulterior motive on Razan’s part, said, “Why don’t you join me, and we’ll watch it together. Afterward, we can decide how to end our relationship.”

Picking up one of his desk phones, he ordered the projectionist, Aleksandr Ganshin, to prepare the movie, and a guard to lay the table in the alcove. “It will take a few minutes. In the meantime, I have a few questions for you. At grave’s edge, a man should be candid.”

“You can be sure of my sincerity.”

“Why didn’t you bring your daughters here as I ordered?”

Stalin’s pipe was not drawing well. He tamped down the tobacco, removed the stem, and reached for a pipe cleaner.

“You’re mistaken, Dear Supreme Leader. I came when I thought I would find you in . . . at night. At first, Yelena had gone off with a friend, and I couldn’t find her. But then she returned.”

“Did you have any trouble at the Kremlin gate?”

“No. Once they saw the passes, they waved us through. But the office was guarded and locked.”

“And yet none of the security men remember seeing you.”

“Strange. Natasha and I even lingered, feeling your presence and accomplishments in the building.”

Blowing through the pipe stem, he screwed it into the bowl and pointed the unlit pipe at Razan. “You expect me to believe that fawning horseshit?”

To Stalin’s astonishment, the barber laughed. “Of course I didn’t think you would believe me. But I wanted you to see that I could lie as well as those other functionaries who constantly anoint you with their oil.”

Stalin cackled and lit his pipe. “I like that, Razan. You are underneath it all a good fellow. The truth is refreshing, though too much of it can ruin a good appetite. Don’t you agree?” Drawing deeply, Stalin talked as smoke issued from his mouth. “So why have you returned, knowing the danger?”

“I hoped to appeal to your well-known compassion and mercy.”

The Boss laughed so hard he excited a coughing fit. Reaching for his handkerchief, he asked, “How many years have you worked in the Kremlin? I never knew you had such a wry sense of humor.” He paused and his eyes narrowed. “Where is Natasha?”

“She wanted to visit her husband, Alexei, in Voronezh.”

“Is that where she’s gone?”

“Went. She arrived at the clinic, met her husband, and left shortly after.”

Stalin puffed and stared at Razan, who said nothing. “Why would she depart so quickly?”

“She’s on her way to Tashkent.”

“How do you know, Comrade Shtube? We have tapped your phone and read your mail—and learned nothing. So I repeat: How do you know?”

“A friend brought me the news.”

Stalin howled like a wounded animal. “I don’t believe you! But in the Lubyanka, they will extract the truth.” Then, as if he had not just told the barber that he would be tortured, he jovially pointed to the door and exclaimed, “I want you to meet your replacement.”

“As a matter of pride, may I ask: Was it because of my work?”

Stalin shook his head no. “I asked my inner circle. They said your hand is as steady as ever, no burned ears, no nicks with the razor or scissors. But what matters is not who casts the votes but who counts them. It has always been my habit to bring in new people and exile the old. Familiarity breeds betrayal. But just to show you how much I trust your judgment, I am inviting you to observe your replacement. If you find him wanting, I will interview someone else. But don’t think that you can keep saying no to stay alive.”

Stalin liked to see people grovel and beg for mercy. Razan would not join their ranks. Since Stalin wanted the barber to witness his successor, he would do so with a cheerful demeanor.

“You can watch from my couch. His name is Temuri. Georgian. No more Jews. You and Pauker were enough. Time for one of my own.”

A moment later, in response to Stalin’s pressing a buzzer, Poskrebyshev admitted two guards and a large, swarthy man with stubby fingers, unlike Razan’s long, graceful ones. Without a word, Stalin mounted the barber chair and sat silently while the man pinned a sheet over his torso and wrapped white gauze around the Supreme Leader’s neck. Deftly, the new barber shaved his face and singed the ear hairs. To Razan’s expert eye, the man had done a commendable job, and Stalin seemed pleased. As the new barber reached for the wet and dry towels, Stalin addressed Temuri for the first time.

“Your family works a small farm in Georgia. Do they ferment the grape juice and skins in a large amphora, a kvevri, or in vats?”

“Kvevri. Like our grandparents, we bury them in the soil, with just the necks sticking out. Then we cover them with an oak lid, seal them with clay, and bury them in a mound of dirt.”

“And when you dig up the fermented saperavi grape wine is it not densely red and cool?”

“Yes, and stains your lips like blood.”

Stalin raised one finger to signal Temuri to continue his barbering. The Georgian applied the hot towels to the Boss’s face and then dried the skin, filling the craters with a tan talc. Unwinding the gauze and removing the sheet, he departed with them in one hand and his barbering tools in the other.

“Is he your equal?” asked Stalin, smiling at Razan.

But Razan knew better than to praise his own skills at the expense of another, particularly since one could never be sure of what game Stalin was playing. He loved nothing better than to pit people against each other. Razan’s silence induced Stalin to speak.

“According to Molotov and Malenkov, he doesn’t have your skill, Comrade Shtube. But Temuri is not unskilled. His is by no means the worst cut of all. Besides, I can excuse a little peasant crudeness in one who makes Georgian wine and plays backgammon and who knows the Alazani valley with its orchards of walnut trees and vineyards of saperavi . . . do you understand?”

Of course he understood. The subject wasn’t philosophy. Stalin, as he often did, had invoked his memories of Georgia and a bucolic life that he’d idealized. No reasoning on the part of Razan could compete with Stalin’s Utopian memories.

“Razan, there’s nothing like a countryman, don’t you agree? I think you call them ‘landsmen.’ In fact, you have been one to all my people here in the Kremlin.”

Yes, Razan too had fond memories, but for now, if he wished to succeed, he had to think of his next step, not the past. He excused himself and went to the bathroom. When he returned, Stalin said, “Come, let’s watch Old and New. Nothing puts me in a better mood than a film.”

In the outer office, Poskrebyshev took the barber’s bag, rustled through it, glanced cursorily at the carving, and closed the lid. With a nod toward Stalin, he put the bag in the closet and turned back to his desk. The Boss placed a hand on Razan’s shoulder and marched him down the red-and-blue carpeted hall to the elevator. This time, Stalin’s guards followed.

As they entered the cinema, Koba signaled to a soldier in the alcove and ordered, “Pour the barber a cup of tea and flavor it with honey. I’ll take mine with jam and the Armenian brandy. Grab the chocolates and don’t forget the spoons.”

From beside the steaming samovar, the guard dutifully took two podstakanniki, silver holders, for the hot tea glasses, handed each man his cup, and extended to Razan an open box of chocolates.

Stalin stroked his mustache and said with obvious satisfaction, “Think of it as your last supper.”

“To your health,” said Razan raising his cup. He then sipped his tea.

Stalin laughed and signaled the projectionist to roll the film.

For several seconds, the viewing theatre was thrown into darkness. If Razan had anticipated this blackout, he could have acted. But now it was too late. Perhaps at the end of the film he would have another chance. In darkness, he could sow light.

Stalin took his regular armchair and Razan sat slightly behind him, as Koba poured a half teaspoon of the Armenian brandy into the tea, stirred it, and said, “Sit next to me. You know I don’t like anyone at my back.”

“I was just trying to position myself to see the film as you do, from the same perspective.”

During the film credits, Razan wondered, as he had so many times before, about the shifts in mood and personality attributed to Stalin. One minute, he was said to be all gentleness, the next, fierce as a tiger. For the first time, Razan fully realized the degree of acting required of Stalin’s doubles. The barber closed his eyes and briefly imagined that the impersonators had been trained by no other than the brilliant Yiddish actor and director of the Moscow State Jewish Theatre, Solomon Mikhoels. Razan’s mind drifted to the night that he had seen Mikhoels in his most famous role, King Lear. Virtually every Jewish Muscovite bragged about that performance, whether or not they had seen it. If Solomon had trained Stalin’s shadows . . . the idea was absurd . . . such improbabilities rarely occurred . . . but if it were true, perhaps the death of Stalin would free the doubles to exhibit the same humanitarian values as Mikhoels. Did not the actor believe in Lenin’s idea of encouraging nationalities to pursue their own cultures under the umbrella of the Soviet state? How better to guarantee a flourishing Russian community of artists?

To settle his nerves, Razan requested more tea. When he tried to take another chair, one nearer the door, Stalin ordered him back to his previous one. The screen flashed montages of ignorant peasants blind to mechanization and progress, dark to the mud and the flies. Always the flies.

“Did you know,” said Stalin, “I didn’t meet Eisenstein until he was making this film. It was originally called ‘The General Line.’ I suggested he call it ‘The Old and the New,’ and contrast poverty and abundance. Tell how the latter had resulted from land reforms. Then I told him to sweeten the ending. After all, you have to leave the people with more than flies and shit. They want to see love.”

“A Jewish proverb says that truth matters more than love.”

Stalin placed his hand on Razan’s. The barber thought that this gesture was a preamble to the Vozhd lecturing him. But Stalin ignored the proverb and talked about the film, which mattered to him dearly.

“In the first cut, Eisenstein sentimentalized suffering. I said, ‘Sergei, given what we have done in our times—the resettlement of the bloodsucking kulaks, the class warfare, the constant unmasking of enemies of the people—show the world the face of our enemy, but through the pathos of ecstasy.’”

On the screen, Razan watched as the opening scene unfolded: springtime. The peasants are tending their fields and engaging in their usual pursuits. The heroine enters, Marfa Lapkina.

“She’s not a professional actress,” said Stalin. “Eisenstein auditioned a great many women for the part but finally settled on an amateur. In the movie, he used her real name.”

“She’s quite attractive.”

“One day, she stopped coming to the set. Some old women had told her that the film cameras were like X-ray machines: that they could see right through her clothing. She was devoutly conservative and insisted that the only person who would ever see her naked was her husband. Not until Sergei proved to her that the cameras did not show her undressed would she return.”

“Since you mention appearance, permit me to ask why all the fuss a few years ago about Yelena’s painting and the photographs made from it?” Stalin stared at him balefully. Razan pretended levity. “Come now, Boss, all condemned men deserve to have at least one of their questions answered. Besides, it’s probably my last.”

Baring his bad teeth, Stalin smiled coldly. “But in this case, for reasons of security, I can say only that she painted the wrong man, and that the people might have formed erroneous impressions about the face of their Vozhd. You can imagine what a problem that would have caused among the superstitious and the unschooled.”

Razan boldly hazarded, “Are you saying that she based her painting on a photograph of a decoy?”

“I hate disingenuousness, Razan, though you Jews are famous for it. The people should always have before them the face of the real Stalin, not the mustache of an impersonator.” He sipped his tea and brandy. “There, I’ve told you! By the way, Dimitri should never have talked to Serjee. The poor man took fright and poisoned himself.” Stalin reached for the brandy and, ignoring the spoon, poured a hefty draft into the tea. “If you are wondering why we let Dimitri live, it’s because he was useful to us as a domestic spy.”

“Is that how you learned about Yelena’s painting?”

“Razan, think! Every buyer was a potential denouncer. And when the state offers rewards, we always have more than enough takers.”

“In that case, your denouncers have been duped. The original painting celebrates the mustache, as you said, of an impersonator.”

“If you wish to provoke me, you are too late.” He sipped. “What concerned me equally was that your wife was behaving like a nepman and a purveyor of religious relics. She sold the paintings on the pretext that they were the equal of icons. You know I condemn religion; relics are what remain behind of the dead. I rather be adored in life than in death.”

Stalin pressed a button on the arm of his chair that told the projectionist to increase the background sound. The barber smiled; the louder the sound the less chance of Stalin being heard. The Supreme Leader reinforced his tea with brandy, and turned to Razan.

“You seem lost in thought.”

“I was told that when you changed your mind about collectives and decided to force them on farmers, Eisenstein had to alter his film. Do you ever regret your decision?”

Stalin answered brusquely. “Not about the farmers or the film!”

Given his danger, Razan chose to follow Anna’s advice and shower Koba with flattery, his requisite oxygen. “I meant no insult. Quite the reverse. I think your decision has proved prophetic.” He would have continued with the encomia, but he suddenly felt ill. His head swam, and his stomach screamed with pain. An instant later, he guessed the tea had been laced with poison, a favorite Soviet form of death. If Razan hoped to achieve what he had set out to do, he would have to act now, before he died or was paralyzed.

“It has,” Stalin continued, “made possible the advances in our country and its modernization. One day, people will look back and say, ‘The Vozhd had it right. Individual ownership promotes greed. Cooperation is the necessary first step to a perfect society.’”

Stalin relaxed and shifted his position. Now fully facing the screen, he pointed and began commenting on the forthcoming scene, in which, a state agricultural officer addresses a village meeting and urges the peasants to form a collective. So intent was Stalin on prefiguring this scene and succeeding ones, he forgot that the projectionist would have to change reels. With the theatre plunged into darkness, Stalin continued to describe the coming events and failed to see the ones nearest at hand. As Razan reached for his razor, the fire in his gut exploded and his tongue bulged like an inflated toad. All he could think of was how to assuage the burning coals in his belly. Then came a shortness of breath that he couldn’t relieve even with quick inhalations. He wished for a blast of cold air to sweep clean his intestines. If he could have reached down his throat and pulled the slimy snakes out through his mouth, he would have done so—anything to stop the burning. At that moment, he knew for sure that he had been poisoned and would shortly die.

Stalin never once glanced at him, nor did the soldier who had poured his tea and honey, the very person who had obviously poisoned him on orders from the death lover. Razan’s hands swelled and a fever quickly engulfed his face. In a few seconds, he felt so hot that he wanted to tear off his skin and wished for an ice bath to cool the oven in his forehead and cheeks. His gums bled; his eyes oozed; his nose ran; his saliva felt like lava. He couldn’t move his tongue; it felt paralyzed and inflated by pus. He squeezed it, but no infection issued forth. Convinced he would die in the next few moments, he willed himself to remove the razor from his pocket. But he couldn’t control his hand because he’d suddenly been struck with chills. His body shivered and teeth clicked. With his left hand, he tried to stop the palsy of his right hand. What use was his razor now? His bowel screamed that it needed evacuation; otherwise he would defecate in his trousers. His sphincter muscle seemed to have quit working. He could feel diarrhea seeping out of his anus and staining his pants. If he could, he had to escape the cinema; but he refused to leave until he had completed his mission.

When he felt the awful need to vomit, he clenched his teeth, rose unsteadily, and slipped in behind the Vozhd. With all his remaining strength, he steadied his shaking hand, swiftly jerked the Vozhd’s chin up and back, and drew the razor across Stalin’s throat, jaggedly slicing through the bony trachea and the esophagus, and cutting both carotid arteries and the jugular vein. To force the bleeding wound closed and to make it look as if Koba had dozed off, he shoved Stalin’s head downward and pulled up his collar. Before the projectionist relit the screen with the next parts of the film, Razan staggered out the door and, fully expecting the guards to give chase, fled not outdoors, but indoors, into an office closed for the evening, Ivan Fursei’s, one of the few with a private lavatory. He dropped his soiled pants, and, while defecating into a white porcelain toilet, puked on the floor. To expel the bane of the poisoner, he forced his fingers down his throat, gagged and vomited repeatedly, until a river of green slime seemed to issue from every orifice.

Minutes passed. Where were the guards? Why hadn’t he heard the tramp of boots and alarms? Surely, the security officials, after failing to locate him on the Kremlin grounds, would be checking the offices. But no one entered. When he felt strong enough to wobble down the hall, he stood, bent at the waist like all the subservient janitors glad to have a plum job in the Kremlin, and made for the west wing—the royal apartments—where he threw up again and secreted himself in a cedar-lined armoire. His original plan had been to remain in the palace until Koba’s Myrmidons had left, and then exit the building by one of the tunnels that ran under the palace to the other side of the river, an escape route that the Tsar’s courtiers used after their assignations in the royal suites.

Before crawling into the armoire, he noticed a faded fresco: Christ raising Lazarus. Two days later, when he awoke from a comalike sleep tortured by the garish dreams that visit the ill, he barely found the strength to climb out of the wardrobe and stand. It was dark outside, night. Ravenously hungry, he knew of only one place to find nourishment—in the cinema. Even if he had to gorge on candies, sugar was better than nothing.

In his lightheaded state, he shuffled to the cinema, wondering about the absence of bells tolling for the dead Vozhd and about the palace’s empty halls. Perhaps at this moment, a government funeral was taking place in Red Square with all the Kremlin officials attending. Outside the cinema, he sunk to his knees from weakness. In this position, he saw no light under the door and pressed his ear to the space. A second later, he heard the humming sound of a projector—or was it a buzzing in his head? Persuaded that Stalin’s funeral was in process, he wondered who would dare at this moment to watch a film. If the projectionist, Aleksandr Ganshin, was in Red Square for the speeches, who was running the camera?

Hand over hand, Razan climbed the steps to the projection room and quietly entered. Ganshin, to Razan’s shock, was staring out the glass window at the screen and chuckling. The barber crept in behind the large projector and sat on the floor. Ganshin would have found it difficult to spot him because he was wedged up against the wall between the camera and a stack of reels. From this position, Razan could barely hear the soundtrack. Although curious to know who was sitting in the theatre, he’d have to wait until the film ended and Ganshin, who liked to snack, left the booth. Was it a mirage or did Razan actually see a cup resting on a chair, and an uneaten biscuit? Bewildered, he kept coming back to the question: What functionary would be watching a film during Stalin’s funeral? It would take a brave person—of any rank or relationship—to be in the cinema now. Unless . . . unless Stalin had been buried the day before and Ganshin was now showing footage of the event. But if so, why was he chuckling? Perhaps, in the safety of the booth, he felt free to laugh about the man who had made his life a misery, not just owing to Koba’s whims, but also to Svetlana’s, she who famously made demands upon her father, particularly in the matter of his arranging with the jovial Aleksandr Ganshin to show whatever movies struck her fancy.

In his cramped, airless position, he began to feel nauseous. He would have to stand, even if it meant risking his safety. Rising on wobbly legs and steadying himself with one hand against the wall, he could glimpse the screen, but not the audience. Tarzan was swinging from a vine through the jungle and bellowing for Jane. A favorite of Stalin’s, Tarzan made the Supreme Leader think that through force of personality, strength, and the right words—the knowledge of how to speak to the unruly and illiterate peasants—he could gain majesty over Russia, just as Tarzan had become king of the jungle.

Suddenly, Razan remembered his neighbor’s comment about cinematocracy: that Stalin seemed to find more political wisdom in Tarzan, dressed in a loin cloth, thumping his chest, and summoning the forest animals with his cries, than in the ideas of Marx and Lenin. But when the old theories failed, as they so often did, Stalin tinkered with them instead of reaching for new and better ideas. Originality and inventiveness meant taking chances, perhaps even temporarily loosening his grip on the reins of power. He had, in short, no blueprint to overhaul the country, one that would enable him to change in midcourse in the face of disaster. It was not that he lacked discipline; he was an efficient killing machine. Each day, he composed lists of the condemned, only occasionally granting a petitioner a reprieve for his or her abject abasement. His taste for blood was insatiable, but not owing to the logic of revenge, though he could spout Marxist doctrine on that subject for hours. The reservoir of his life was fed by the springs of personal bitterness and impotent religious hatred. He could suppress the Orthodox Church and all the other faiths in which people put their trust, but he could not extirpate them from the human heart. The thrall of other theologies, inculcated long before he came to power, had forged stronger chains than his hatred for seminaries and prying priests.

When Stalin asked himself the question that he knew others around the world were asking—to what end are you sacrificing family, friends, relatives, neighbors, the goodwill of nations, your health, your sanity?—he always had the same answer: the welfare of the proletariat. And yet, when his beloved people acted as individuals, aspiring to a better life, he suppressed them with accusations about conspirators, wreckers, spies, saboteurs, and anarchists. In the most corrupted moral terms—equating goodness and stability, justice and denouncements—he promulgated draconian decrees, spouted bromides about the happy country, and promised that paradise lay just around the corner. But millions, though not all, could see through the slogans and the Communist jargon to the poverty of thought below.

At the conclusion of the film, Ganshin took his cup and went downstairs. Razan ate the biscuit and watched, as the minister of culture poured himself tea with a splash of brandy and reached for a chocolate. Letting his gaze roam over the audience, Razan could see who was present: Zhdanov, Kaganovich, Molotov, Mikoyan, Khrushchev, Beria, Malenkov, and . . . he rubbed his bloody eyes certain they were wrong. What he thought he saw was a robust, chuckling Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. Although he could make out only the back of the man, he knew the contours of the head, the gestures, the voice, the laugh, the uniform, and the authority he exuded. Admittedly, the man he had barbered for years had mastered the same characteristics, but Razan felt certain he’d killed the real Vozhd. Why, then, did he not hear the Kremlin bells, sirens, alarms, and a call for a day, a week, a month of national mourning? If Razan had identified the man below correctly, the man who had ruled Russia since 1929, then the Court of the Red Tsar had closed ranks and decided that in light of the numerous threats the country faced, Koba’s death would have to be kept from the people and treated as a state secret, in which case a decoy would serve as a figurehead, and the country would be ruled by a Troika: Khrushchev, Malenkov, and either Molotov or Beria. No, Razan must be hallucinating. Such a decision would be more brazen than the shooting of Tsar Nicholas Alexandrovich Romanov, the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, and the children. Besides, if the real Stalin were dead, why were the men below so serene? Did their smiles reflect their delight that the barber had slit Koba’s throat? Beria was standing in front of his colleagues, his palm outstretched, as if imploring them. Razan turned on the speaker in the projection booth and listened.

“If I may be so bold, Supreme Leader, I advise that we say nothing of this security breach and immediately elevate another decoy, one who will be as current as the former, right down to watching your favorite films and reading history.” Beria nodded toward Stalin, a clear invitation to respond.

“Comrades,” said Stalin, turning to the others and partially revealing his profile, “I want all the traitors connected with this heinous plot exterminated. Now you see that what I have been saying about our being everywhere besieged by enemies is true. Our beloved Russia is assailed on all sides by vipers who would have us believe that one party member is as good—or as bad—as any other. But the government is not a stock market or the law of the jungle. Just as Tarzan rules his domain, the Politburo is the holy of holies of the working class. It must not therefore be confused with a stock market, in which you bet on one group or another. As Leninists, our mutual relations must be built on trust, and must be as clean and pure as crystal. These words I have read a thousand times in Lenin’s writing. There should be no room in our ranks for conspiracy and intrigue; no room for factionalism. Lest the people hear of this outrage and lose confidence in our leadership, let us, as Comrade Beria advises, conduct ourselves as before. Until one of the remaining doubles can be fully trained, I shall remain out of sight.”

Stalin’s apparatchiks congratulated him heartily.

For all that this man had said, for all that he had spoken like Stalin, Razan still believed that he had killed the real Vozhd, and that the apparatchiks around him were now playacting. But to what end? For his own mental health, he reasoned that the man who had just spoken to his henchmen was a decoy. If only Razan could explain the charade, he might be able to stop shaking. Had he put too much trust in Koba’s remembering the Gusinski episode? Decoys, as he had feared, could always be taught the smallest details. Razan had even heard that some people could read a book once and remember every word in it. What if Stalin’s doubles had such photographic memories? No, Stalin was dead!

* * *

A hunched man, prematurely aged and wrinkled by illness, left the Kremlin through the courtiers’ tunnel and emerged on the other side of the river. Unable to walk any distance, he hailed a taxi and fell into the backseat, but not before stuffing a handful of rubles into the cabby’s hand. Through the rearview mirror, the driver could see that Razan was near death.

“I know an unlicensed doctor,” said the cabby, “a Jew struck from the official list for some religious reason. If you have no objections, I can take you to him.”

Razan shook his head yes.

The doctor’s office was a wretched train car in a fetid alley, behind a block of apartments. Razan waited while the cabby knocked on the door. A slightly stooped man, with a white mane of hair and binocular glasses, led them inside. The car was divided by curtains into three parts: for living, eating, and working. The privy stood outside, in a shed. “I’ve been poisoned,” said Razan. With one glance, Dr. Shapira agreed. Asking no questions, he helped Razan to a cot and went right to work, administering a combination of medicinal and herbal purges. A bucket stood at the ready. Within minutes, Razan started to vomit. After the last two days, he thought that he had nothing more to disgorge. But he discharged the same hateful green bilious liquid. The doctor forced him to drink some bitter red fluid, followed by several glasses of near-boiling water. A sedative put Razan to sleep for several hours.

When he awoke, he could hear Dr. Shapira behind the curtain talking to another patient about an infected sore. Razan deduced from the advice the doctor dispensed that he was a capable physician. When Razan had a chance to observe the man’s appearance and dress, he saw that Dr. Shapira had full lips, a prominent gold tooth, and cheeks marked by deep ravines. His watery blue eyes radiated sadness, as if they had resided for too long in the house of suffering. Although the physician looked older, his taut, smooth neck muscles, suggested he was no more than fifty. His hands moved with the practiced skill of a pianist’s, as he raised Razan’s eyelids, felt his stomach, tapped on his chest, and tested the nerves in his extremities.

“You’ll live,” said Dr. Shapira, “but not as before. You’ll never sit down to a full meal again. I have no doubt your stomach is scarred, which will mean eating small portions several times a day.”

Rocking back and forth, Razan resembled the flickering candle that Jewish supplicants imitate. His persistent hope, of course, was that the candle remained lit. Before he died, he felt compelled to tell his family what he had witnessed. Thanking the doctor for his help, Razan asked him about his own situation.

“It’s really quite simple. I used to have a thriving practice in Moscow among Jews and Gentiles alike. But when the Soviets found out that I was an observant Jew, they put me on the forbidden list and told all my patients to find a different physician or suffer official displeasure. What does ‘official displeasure’ mean? Loss of job, apartment, passport, ration card? You tell me.”

Razan had been around Poskrebyshev and the apparatchiks long enough to know that the phrase meant lackeys flourished and that the independent-minded suffered. Talent and skills had no value in a society that used conformity to grease the wheels of comity.

“You are not strong enough to travel,” said the doctor. “In the apartment house across the alley, a Mrs. Tubina will look after you for a few rubles. She’ll even wash those stained pants of yours.”

“How long before I can travel?”

“At least a week, maybe two.”

Handing the doctor more rubles than Dr. Shapira requested, Razan asked him to make the arrangements. The doctor returned shortly.

“Everything’s set. You can decide the rent between you. She has a generous soul. Very religious. Orthodox. Also very nationalistic. Watch what you say, and you’ll be perfectly safe.”

Razan leaned on Dr. Shapira as they made their way across the alley, into the building, and up the stairs to the third floor. The elevator had stopped working years before, and no one knew whom to call to have it repaired. The small apartment held all her possessions and those of her children, now living in far-flung oblasts. The sitting room, with its sofa bed, had barely an inch of space on the walls, which were covered with numerous icons, candle braces, framed family photographs, plates, a clock, a calendar, two pictures of Nicholas II and his family, and one picture of Patriarch Tikhon. A shelf underneath supported a small oil lamp flickering in its gold chimney. Ragged rugs and runners barely covered the splintered floors. The mohair red-and-green furniture, replete with doilies, pillows, and dolls, had become unsprung years before. The side tables and windowsills held statues, plants, a Victrola, chipped cups and saucers, dirty ashtrays, a punch bowl filled to overflowing with old letters, wax flowers, a music box, lamps, several pairs of old spectacles, an antique slide viewer, magazines, a small radio, and ceramic figurines of everything from dwarves to dervishes.

Razan took up residence on the sofa bed, and Mrs. Tubina handed him a linen sleeping suit, pleated in front, to wear while she washed his clothes. A chain smoker, she offered him a cigarette. He declined and asked if she had any stationery. To his surprise, she produced good quality paper, currently hard to find, a small writing board, and a turquoise Sheaffer pen with a fine golden nib. He thanked her, leaned against several pillows, positioned the board on his crossed legs, wrote three words—“My Dearest Yelena”—and then paused. Not having written a proper letter in at least six or seven years, not since he and Rubin, for no apparent reason, had quit corresponding, he now realized that writing, like barbering, was a skill, and that without practice, one loses the knack. He closed the pen. Hours later, he finished it, well aware that letters leaving Moscow were often opened and read.

After leaving you and our good friend, I returned to Moscow and my job. Although, as you know, relations between my boss and me were somewhat strained, on my return he greeted me warmly and even invited me to join him to watch a Tarzan film from his private collection. You and my boss have at least one thing in common: You both love Tarzan. Before the film started, he kindly gave me tea and honey and chocolate. Such a generous man! At the end of the film, we mutually agreed it was probably time for him to find someone else to fill my position because I want to spend more time with my family.

I would have joined you already but unfortunately I took sick and am now staying with a friend, an old person who lives in a cluttered house. Among the clutter is a music box you would love. When you open the pink lid, which is inlaid with mother-of-pearl, it plays familiar passages from Glinka’s Ruslan and Liudmila. Whenever I hear the music, I think of evildoers meeting their just ends. Just such a man, notorious for his cruelty, had been living in the city and was recently murdered. I happened to witness the terrible scene. Someone came up behind him with a knife and then suddenly, the man was lying on the ground bleeding. I expected to find this violent crime reported in the newspapers, but the next day and the following, I looked and found nothing. I now begin to wonder if maybe my illness prevented me from seeing clearly, or maybe I just had a nightmare. You know how the Russian people put great store in dreams. If it was a dream, I hope I have since awakened and am not sleeping now. Because if I am still asleep, then I am not actually writing you a letter. I am only imagining it. Isn’t that idea amusing? Tomorrow, what shall I think of today? That I did not write the letter or that I did? It matters to me because I so want you to know about me and to know I will be coming home soon, even if I have to walk the whole way. How awful it must be for people who don’t know whether they have done or said one thing or another. Even worse is when you know, and others deny it or misrepresent your deeds and words or completely ascribe to you things you never did. But in this great country of ours, that kind of deception could never happen. Our Vozhd loves us and provides protection against the wiles of this world.

I must rest now. My head is hurting. As I said: I can’t even be sure I am writing to you. To persuade myself I’m awake, I press the pen to my forehead and run my hand along the edge of the stationery, which has cut my finger and caused it to bleed. To prove what I say, I will sign this letter with a bloody thumbprint.

Love,

Your father.

Razan waited two days before asking Mrs. Tubina to check the letter for spelling and mail it. She faithfully went to the tobacconist’s stand, bought a stamped envelope, enclosed and sealed the letter, and put it in the postbox.

When she returned to the apartment, she insisted on telling him a story that corresponded to his own uncertainty about dreams and reality. The owner of a large estate behaved cruelly to all his help. Two young stable boys, recently whipped for some infraction, swore revenge. They dug a large pit in the woods that could easily hold the body of a large man. One of the boys then went to the master and said he had found a large hole, and asked the master to follow him to determine its function. The other boy hid and lay in wait for his chance.

Suspecting nothing, the owner accompanied the first boy to the edge of the woods, saw the hole, scratched his head, and said he had no idea how it got there or its purpose. The boy brazenly said, “It belongs to you. Like everything else around here, it’s part of your estate.” The owner scoffed, “I don’t need it,” and the boy replied, “But, sir, of course you do.” By now impatient, the owner said the lad was talking nonsense, and it was time to return home. “What I am saying, sir, is that this hole has been dug for your grave.” The owner unfastened his belt to thrash him, but the other boy leaped from the woods with a knife and stabbed the owner. Before shoving his body into the hole, they decapitated him, as a sign of their hatred.

They buried his head in a separate hole, a small one, which they dug that same night in the courtyard. But every morning when the two boys arose, they found the head aboveground, not below, and no matter how deep they buried it in the courtyard, the next day it appeared on the surface, undecayed and bearing a smiling countenance, as though it had enjoyed every second of its hateful life and end. The boys decided to bury the head in the woods, but in the morning, as before, it appeared in the courtyard. They buried it miles away, and the same thing happened. They threw it in a river, they packaged it and mailed it to Sweden, they paid a man on his way to the Baltics to drop it in the sea, but always the head returned to the courtyard, whether a day later, a week, or a month. The boys could not destroy it. Eventually, the young boys went mad and had to be hospitalized.

So ended Mrs. Tubina’s tale.

“What is the moral of this grisly story?” asked Razan.

“Only the Lord has the power to give and take life, and those who usurp the Lord’s power are destroyed by madness.”

That night, lying on his sofa bed, Razan smelled the unpleasant odor of stale tobacco. Dead cigarettes. One of Mrs. Tubina’s overflowing ashtrays lay a few feet away, under a copy of Pravda. What the world needed, he thought, was a means to bury dead ideas. He rolled over and patted the pillow, hoping to sleep, but he lay awake thinking of the old woman’s tale, and detesting the dreadful odor.