To the Finland Station

After a fortnight, Razan’s strength began to return. It was time to make his way back to Petrozavodsk. He paid Mrs. Tubina for her sofa bed and her care, embraced her affectionately, thanked the good doctor, shoving into his hand a great many rubles, and taxied to the train station. He had in his wallet the visa that allowed him free passage. As he paid the cab driver, he noticed a group of policemen in front of the terminal; they were stopping travelers and checking papers. Perhaps the NKVD had finally been notified of Stalin’s murder. He entered through a side door, where he encountered only one soldier, and casually displayed his transit visa. But lacking a ticket to Petrozavodsk, he could not afford to wait a day or more, until seats became available. As the train for Petrozavodsk prepared to depart, he paced the platform, but all the doors to the passenger cars were closed and locked from the inside. Porters, though, were still loading baggage and crates. One car held horses. He remembered the Ukrainian death trains transporting soldiers and their mounts, and of course, the cattle car that he had taken to Kursk. As a soldier gripped the ring on one side of a Pelham bit and led a horse up the ramp, Razan grabbed the other side of the bit and continued into the cattle car. Before the soldier could question this civilian, Razan removed his transit visa and said, “Equine and livestock inspector. Special detail.”

The soldier, either from the shock, or the fear of official-looking papers, secured the horse and backed down the ramp, as the barber pretended to examine the animal’s lips, gums, and teeth.

“You know how susceptible to disease they are,” said Razan.

The soldier merely nodded and proceeded to bring aboard another horse, which Razan also inspected.

“This one has periodontal problems,” said Razan falsely.

“What’s that?”

“Gum disease. I’ll travel with the animal to Petrozavodsk and see to its care.”

“We have an animal tender. He’s just down the way in the canteen having a cup of tea.”

The barber grabbed several rubles from his pocket and asked the soldier if he would be so kind as to bring him a bottle of cheap vodka when he returned with the tender. If the man was a veterinarian, Razan was in some danger. The tender, a middle-aged peasant, had a high forehead, black hairs growing out of his nostrils, a round face, bloodshot eyes, and a bulbous red nose. As the man approached, Razan could smell the liquor on his breath.

“No one told me that an inspector would be examining the horses,” he muttered. “Which office are you with?”

Knowing how Russians loved authority, Razan said, “Agricultural, naturally. And you, where are your credentials, comrade?”

The young soldier was already securing the door of the cattle car. Before the peasant could answer, Razan clapped him on the shoulder and handed him the vodka.

“It will be a long trip. You’ll need some refreshments.”

“Yes, sir!” said the man, doffing his cap respectfully.

“When that one’s empty, we can always find more at other stations along the way.”

The man smiled broadly, revealing a dark cave, except for a few teeth in a state of advanced decay. He looked at Razan, blinked his besotted eyes, and gladly accepted the bottle. For the entire trip, the men barely exchanged ten words, as the barber plied his companion with cheap vodka during the journey from Moscow to Petrozavodsk. When the doors slid open and Razan faced a phalanx of soldiers, his first reaction was that he’d been discovered. But since no one immediately stepped forward to clamp him in irons, he boldly strode down the ramp, passed through the wall of soldiers, and melted into the city. What his sleeping companion said when awakened from his drunken stupor can only be guessed, though one can imagine him looking around for the man who had miraculously and unselfishly given him the elixir of life.

The apartment to which Yuri Suzdal and Yelena had moved was in a block of decaying concrete buildings that Yuri disparagingly called “Stalinist Modern.” Cracks had already begun to appear in the outside walls, and chips of cement lay on the sidewalk, as if the buildings were slowly shedding their skins. The hinges on the front door stuck. Razan had to shoulder his way into the lobby. The elevator wasn’t working, and the filthy hallway smelled of cat piss, kerosene, and fried foods. He walked up two flights of stairs and stopped to catch his breath. The hall lights had burned out, making it difficult to negotiate the maze of corridors.

Suddenly, a door opened and a heavy, gray-haired woman, bent at the waist, as though her spine, like a sapling, had been bowed in a storm and had never recovered, peered through spectacles that rested against a wart on the end of her nose. “Who are you looking for?”

Arthritis, Razan thought, as he replied, “Mr. Suzdal.”

“Down the hall,” she said, “third door on the left.”

He rang. Nothing. He rang again. The peephole in the door slid open and a raspy voice asked, “Yes?”

“It’s me, the barber, Razan Shtube.”

The person behind the door closed the peephole, and for at least half a minute, Razan waited, hearing nothing, not even a footstep. Then suddenly, the door was flung open, and Yelena threw herself into Razan’s arms. He pulled her into the apartment, asking nonstop about their health, safety, warmth, food supplies, clothing, rent, school, and everything else he could think of, including whether they had received any news from Natasha or Anna.

“Nothing,” said Yuri, “though I did hear from Dimitri. He calls the corner phone box every Friday at six a.m. I spoke to him today.”

“Did he say anything out of the ordinary had occurred?”

“Just that he and Natasha had reached Voronezh and met with Alexei. I gather the meeting was unsatisfactory. Alexei has chosen to remain behind.”

“Any other news?”

“Radios all over the country have been out of order. They say it has something to do with the frequency.”

Did this mean the Politburo had decided not to reveal the Vozhd’s death and let a double behave as if nothing had happened? In the Soviet world, everyone had to march to the same drummer; adversity could never take place, and certainly not the assassination of Stalin.

“Try the radio now.”

Yuri obligingly switched it on. A man with a Georgian accent was speaking slowly and softly. He identified himself as “your Vozhd.” Razan kneeled and listened closely to the accent and cadences. To interpret Soviet arcana took a good ear, one that could decipher double meanings and intonations.

“Comrades, just as we adore Lenin, we should equally adore the current architects of our socialist society. We should give thanks to the Politburo for steering the country into a triumphant future. I look to the Soviet press to play its part. I look to our authors to write biographies of our brave revolutionaries, extolling past and present exploits. Too many of our people view the government’s glorious efforts in a negative light. Instead of celebrating our historic victories, they belittle our constructive achievements. Instead of saluting the Soviet genius of leadership, they carp and conspire. I beg you to treat critics and disbelievers as deliberate maligners set on sabotaging the socialist revolution by blackening the leadership and doing everything possible to make the Politburo fail. Though they wear the mask of loyalty, wreckers and enemies of the people are everywhere trying to undermine our good works. They are in our very midst and at our own breasts. Those who are plotters be warned: I know your identities and will crush your conspiracies.”

Although the speech lacked any explanation for why the speaker was giving it—what was the context?—and although Razan wished he had stronger evidence to go on, he felt that he had just heard official confirmation of a major disruption in the Kremlin, either bearing on Stalin or on a new purge. The voice sounded like the man he regularly barbered, but then given the NKVD’s technical tricks, who could tell?

Yuri turned off the radio. “What’s he been blathering on about?”

Razan said cryptically, “Let us hope that some people die the death they deserved.”

* * *

Although firing squads daily shot black marketeers, whom the government called capitalists or “parasites,” they provided a supply of illegal goods throughout the country. Traveling mostly on back roads and at night, they used any vehicle they could cobble together from used parts or could steal. Of course, some goods were more in demand than others, and thus more risky to transport. Dimitri had schooled his mother on this point, and had told her that she’d be better off waiting a day or two than riding in a truck carrying petrol or heating oil or much-needed military ammunition and hardware. The impending war with Finland made the life of black marketeers all the more precarious and, when they succeeded, all the more profitable. They had no qualms about who bought their contraband; one man’s money was as good as the next’s.

Reviled in government newspapers, the outlaw capitalists supplied goods that were not on the shelves. Unlike the government, which promised with each new economic plan to meet the needs and satisfy the tastes of its citizens, and failed, the black marketeers smuggled into the country both luxury items and necessities, such as western cigarettes and pharmaceuticals. Those who could afford to buy contraband merchandise ran the risk of discovery. If some envious guest reported that Mrs. So-and-So was serving caviar, the secret police wanted to know where, and from whom, she had purchased it. Smuggled goods, therefore, had to be kept under wraps. Fancy clothes, perfumes, exotic foods, banned books—all of these could lead to the buyer’s arrest.

To be on the safe side, Anna and Gregori had left the train at Voznesenye and continued their journey in a black-market truck that stopped at a doss-house. The driver, Maikov, would be going south and said that they could cover the final distance with an old friend, Roman Karkaus, who often made the trip north. Karkaus’s vehicle stood in the parking lot. A seedy-looking fellow with half-closed eyes and a wispy mustache, Karkaus drove a Ford Model T welded to a two-wheeled, covered dray. At the moment, it held Russian tea. His destination: Petrozavodsk. Maikov introduced his passengers to Karkaus, whose tongue, owing to his unquenchable thirst for vodka, floated free as a fish.

“I can tell you’re escapees,” said Karkaus to Anna and Gregori. “I could turn you over to the secret police and earn a reward. But I despise the bastards. The least you can do is buy me a drink!”

“I’ll do more than that,” Anna replied. She paid his bill.

Before Maikov had driven south, she had shown him a piece of paper and had asked, “Do you know this address? What landmarks should we look for?”

“The road will split. Go to the right toward the lake.”

“And the other way?”

“Stay clear of that road. It leads to the political offices and police station.”

As she crunched through the snow to Karkaus’s vehicle, resembling a hermit crab, she told Gregori what Maikov had said. The motor wheezed and coughed before falling into a regular rhythm. Huddled in the back of the “Russian Ford,” loaded with boxes of tea from Georgia and Ceylon, she and Gregori shivered. Even though heavily loaded, the vehicle lacked traction. The two riders leaped out and pushed, freeing the hostage tires from the icy tracks. Once on the road, she murmured, “I don’t trust this man, Karkaus. Did you hear what he said about turning us in to the police? He’ll betray us and collect the reward—and then give the cops a few crates of tea.”

“We can always resort to the Solovki solution.”

Anna grinned. “Exactly!” How good it felt to have her son enter the orbit of her world.

This time of year did not allow for much light, but Anna made it a point to lift a corner of the tarpaulin behind the cab to watch the highway and street signs. She nearly missed the split in the road that Maikov had mentioned because it was unmarked. Expecting a major junction, she took a few seconds to realize that the divide they’d just passed was the landmark—the forked roads. Karkaus had taken the left one. She immediately lifted the tarpaulin and banged on the cab. Karkaus slowed the truck and lowered his window.

“Why all the banging?”

“Gregori is ill. Stop for a minute so he can relieve himself.”

Karkaus parked the truck next to a stand of birch trees. Fifty yards down the road stood a line of buildings, their lights winked in the dark. With electricity in short supply, offices were often lit with kerosene, or white gas, or coal oil lamps. Anna sighed with relief that they had stopped before reaching the buildings. Both mother and son armed themselves with their chisels. Then Gregori hopped out of the truck and disappeared into the trees, while Anna climbed into the cab to wait with Karkaus. Several minutes passed. Karkaus began to complain. Anna told him that it was better that Gregori vomited in the forest than in the truck. After five minutes, Karkaus insisted that she check on her son.

“I’ll wait here,” he said.

But she knew not to leave the truck, lest he drive off without them and contact the police, who would undoubtedly initiate a search. “Let’s go together. Maybe a wolf or a bear attacked him.”

Karkaus muttered that he’d been a fool to take them along, but when he saw that Anna, pleading fear, refused to move without him, he grabbed a tire iron and leaped out of the cab. Following Gregori’s footprints, they entered the woods. With Karkaus leading the way, Anna followed. She heard the snap of branches before she saw Gregori coming toward them, with chisel in hand. Karkaus spun around and saw that Anna also held a chisel.

“What is this, some kind of trap?”

A second later, Anna moved forward and pointed her chisel at Karkaus’s neck. “You missed the turnoff back there. You were going to denounce us to the secret police and collect the reward, you swine. Now just drop the tire iron.”

Karkaus did, and pulled at his mustache. To the surprise of both his captors, he replied, “Yes, I was going to betray you.”

“Didn’t we pay you enough?” asked Gregori.

“Are you so poor that you need to collect twice?” Anna added.

“I spit on money,” said Karkaus, removing the rubles Anna had paid him and throwing them in the snow. “Money can’t free a man’s soul. It can’t buy independence. I use the money to bribe border guards, customs agents, and local police so that I can travel where I want and sell what I want. Take your money. I agree that I intended to act like a scoundrel. My returning the money will make us even. But killing me will do you no good. I overheard you in the back of the truck. You want to cross into Finland. Karkaus can lead you. Do you know what my name means? It’s Finnish. My parents were Finnish. I speak Finnish. It means ‘Mr. Escape.’ My family has always had a knack for wriggling out of tight spots. I can lead you across the border. By yourself, you’re bound to get caught.”

Anna mulled over Karkaus’s words. He had a point. She had done business with scoundrels before. They were usually more imaginative than they were saintly. And to escape required not decency but deception. If this man could take her family across the border on the wings of a lie or a hoax, she had no objections to their making common cause. But she knew that obsessed with his own independence, he wouldn’t hesitate to act in his own interest. He would therefore need to be watched.

“We’ll use your truck,” she said. “My intention is to work our way to the border by selling, to soldiers at the front, tea and anything else we can get our hands on.”

“I suggest biscuits and beef, which are always in demand, as well as cigarettes and vodka.” He smiled at her crookedly. “You realize we’re talking about stealing from government stores.”

“A fool, Comrade Karkaus, I am not.”

Karkaus shook his head with obvious satisfaction. He loved nothing more than to travel in the company of rascals. On more than one occasion, he had given rides to pilgrims and priests. Those pious types drove him to drink with their talk about heaven and hell, piety and prayer. He liked a juicy adventure, one he could repeat over herring, cucumbers, and strong “Moscow water.” Travel through the Karelian peninsula would certainly have its risks, particularly since profiteers, even on a small scale, were easy game for the Bolshevik faithful. But soldiers with their mouths and their bellies pinched by hunger were unlikely to object.

“Back in the truck!” she ordered, and picked up the tire iron. “You know the city. We need a place to stay long enough to round up some goods and to allow me some time for a personal errand.”

The worst part of town was home to brothels. In one of them, the madame rented her old friend and customer Karkaus a back room, which she immediately furnished with three cots. The flaming red hair of the woman, Mrs. Pestova, had come right out of a bottle of peroxide and contrasted with her plastered ivory makeup and purple lipstick. But even all the paint could not hide her wrinkles and turkey neck. She had a smoker’s throaty voice, a persistent rumbling cough, and the yellowed eyes of a drunk whose liver was already exhibiting the effects of alcoholic poisoning.

For a few extra rubles, she allowed the locked shed in the back to house Karkaus’s vehicle and possessions, whether obtained legally or illegally, and she made available a tarpaulin to protect them from the leaking roof. Their meals they took on the next street, at a greasy kitchen. If they wanted to bathe or wash their clothes, they could do so in the brothel, for an extra charge. She reminded the party that they were lucky to find a place as comfortable as hers, now that the city was overrun with refugees fleeing the war.

“All the better,” said Karkaus. “The more people milling about, the harder for the government to find us.”

Once Lake Onega froze and boats could no longer dock with their supplies, trains became the principal supply route for materiel. Anna asked Karkaus whether it was safer to pilfer from a dock or a railroad siding. He moved his cheeks from side to side as if gargling and replied that each had their strengths and weaknesses. The docks were unfenced, not so the railroad stockyard. But the docks were in plain sight, and the railroad mostly hidden from view. What they needed was a good pair of wire cutters and a moonless night. For both, they had to wait a few days. In the meantime, Anna, needing to find Yelena and Razan in Petrozavodsk, inquired about the address of the local educational ministry, and paid them a visit to ask which school Yelena Boujinskia was attending. She knew to act discreetly lest her questions invite suspicion. When she talked her way past the first desk, she arrived at the office of the registrar, a Comrade Brik. A large picture of Stalin looked down from one wall.

“When my sister died last year of septicemia,” said Anna, “working in a military hospital, her husband volunteered for the war against the Fascist Finns and sent the child to live here in this city with an uncle. Now my brother-in-law is missing in action.” She paused to let the implications sink in. “That’s why I’m here.”

“Boujinskia?” you said.

She spelled it for him, sniffled, and dabbed her eyes with a small handkerchief.

“Ah, yes, State School Number Four.”

“And the head of the school?”

She listened intently. Comrade Kuznetsova. Minora Kuznetsova. The last words died on Brik’s tongue: “Students are encouraged to follow in the footsteps of our Soviet heroes.”

“Thank goodness for that,” said Anna saluting. “We’ve had enough of the old-school values. It’s time for the new.”

The registrar smiled and accompanied her to the door.

Standing outside State School Number Four, she waited until the bell sounded and the children poured into the street. Even from a distance, she had no trouble identifying Yelena as she skipped down the steps. Anna followed her undetected for three blocks, until Yelena parted from her friends and proceeded alone.

“Ye-lay-na,” Anna cooed, as she had a thousand times in the past.

The child pivoted, stared, and hurtled down the sidewalk. They clung together and only, after a long spell, reluctantly disengaged. “Papa said you might never return!”

“I was lucky,” Anna said, “and I have a surprise for you.” The child looked at her expectantly. “No, it’s not a toy. It’s something better. I have come to Petrozavodsk with my son Gregori, the one I told you about, who lived in Leningrad and was then transferred to the east. Now you have only one more to meet, Pavel, since you already know Dimitri.”

“And Natasha?” the child expectantly asked.

“She’ll be joining us soon.”

“Promise?”

“Well, my dearest one, I will almost promise. Remember: There’s a war. Travel is difficult. She is coming with Dima.”

The child pressed her cheek against Anna’s stomach and gripped her mother’s sides tightly. “Don’t go away again. I want us all to be together.”

“Where is your father? Surely,” she said in mock horror, “he has not abandoned you!”

She took Anna’s hand. “Follow me.”

The two of them walked several blocks, with Anna carefully noting the neighborhood and how to find it again. When they arrived at the apartment blocks, Anna told herself that the brothel had more charm than these Stalinist slabs. The inside of the apartment building was even worse than the outside. Offensive smells assaulted her nose, among them the odor of offal. Apparently, the plumbing had frozen, and the sewers had backed up. Yelena said that they were waiting for a workman to repair the system. Anna knew what that meant: The system would be down for quite a while. All the more reason to act quickly and pilfer the wares that would sell. Then they could make good their escape across the Karelian peninsula.

Razan was not at the apartment. He had gone to a nearby shop to buy a newspaper. He avidly followed the reports about the war and the evacuation of Solovki. Admittedly, the news about the prison camp was scant, but by reading between the lines and speaking to refugees from the northeastern front, he was able to learn that the camp had been virtually abandoned and the prisoners moved. He was determined to wait at least a month for Anna, even though the weather was worsening and Petrozavodsk was being evacuated. Before taking Yelena out of school and putting his transit visa to the test, he swore to keep vigil for his absent wife. Unlike Anna, who had set her heart on crossing into Finland, he had come to the conclusion that the attempt would be perilous and, even if successful, costly.

As he unlocked the door to the apartment, he heard Yelena and Yuri talking. He smelled pea soup. The child was asking whether Yuri would join them. Join them in what? Escape?

“Not without your uncle Dimitri,” said Yuri, stirring the soup.

Had Yuri just heard from Dimitri? Razan quickened his step. On seeing Anna, he slumped to his knees, covered his head with his hands, and cried like a puling infant into the tattered rug. She gently raised him to his feet. They hugged fervidly, as if to keep each other from disappearing. This scene was so affecting that Yelena began to cry, and then Yuri. Only Anna remained dry eyed.

“You Russians are all the same,” she said teasingly. “You cry on any occasion.”

“Any occasion!” said a tear-faced Razan. “I am witnessing a miracle: someone who has survived Solovki.”

She smiled appreciatively and added, “Gregori, too.” Razan’s incredulous look invited explanation. “We are staying a distance from here, at an unsavory place, but a safe one. So don’t ask me to move in with you. I am with Gregori and another man . . .”

A disconsolate Razan murmured, “Another man?”

“Let us just say a Finnish business associate who knows Karelia. I will explain later. For now, it is important I get back to Gregori and Karkaus—that’s his name—they are expecting me. I’ll be gone for a few days. If I don’t return, inquire at Mrs. Pestova’s house on Ulitsa Dzerzhinsky number twelve. But if you go, you’ll be shocked.”

Yuri knew the address because the street housed not only heterosexual brothels but also a homosexual one. He looked away and smiled at the thought that the founder of the secret police had his name on a street of whorehouses.

“You won’t even stay for dinner?” asked a disappointed Razan.

“There will be many dinners in our future, but not tonight. I have work to do.”

Yuri’s interest was now piqued. What did “work to do” mean? Not as a prostitute! “Mrs. Shtuba,” he began, intending to ask her if she was employed by Mrs. Pestova, but then thought better of it. Instead, he simply said, “I hope Mrs. Pestova treats you well.”

Anna, quick to detect the nuance, replied, “My son and I, as well as our Finnish guide, live in a back room with three cots. It makes for a good place to hide. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Yuri had to admire the way Anna had deduced his meaning. “Yes, I think it’s a splendid place. Better than here.”

“My point exactly,” she said, and kissed Yelena and Razan goodbye, hugging Yuri, to whom she whispered, “Thank you for all that you’ve done. I shall never forget.”

“But,” exclaimed Razan, “I have so much to tell you! All of it important . . . strange but true . . . I think.”

Anna took his face in her hands. “We will have the rest of our lives to talk. And the first thing you must tell me is why you look as worn as a Solovki zek. You’re not yourself.”

“That is part of the story.”

She reached for the door. “When we are alone . . .”

He retreated to the sitting room and collapsed on the couch from emotional exhaustion. Yelena put a pillow under his head. He thanked her and, once again, wondered if he had actually killed the Supreme Leader? Perhaps Anna had done him a favor by saying they had the rest of their lives to talk. He was still not convinced—absolutely convinced—that recent events had occurred as he thought. That is, he believed that he had killed a man he considered the real Stalin. But had he, in his poisoned state, truly killed Koba, someone else, or a chimera? Did the scene that he’d witnessed from the cinema booth actually take place, and if so, had he overheard a live conversation or one that he dreamed? What constituted proof in a world where lies and stratagems formed the basis of government and survival?

The man on the radio had said, “We should give thanks to the Politburo for steering the country into a triumphant future.” Did “steering the country” mean that the Politburo would now be the governing power, and that Stalin was dead?

Anna had said he was not himself. She was more right than she knew. His stomach had atrophied; his hands shook (when he had tried to give Yuri a haircut, he lost control of the scissors, and wouldn’t dare try to singe ear hairs); his sleep was tortured by dreams of death and dying; his powers of concentration were slipping, making it difficult to sustain his attention long enough to read a novel, resorting now only to poetry; his feet shuffled; his sight, which had always been acute, was now dimmed, though he had not yet ventured out to buy new spectacles; and he worried, frankly, that his sexual health had been diminished or even lost, since he no longer had nighttime erections. Given his state, Anna would find it hard to believe that he had slit the neck of the Vozhd, and yet he felt the need to relate what he thought to be true.

At the core of all human beings are certain stories. Whether they issue from fact or fancy, they make us, in large part, what we are. Even in old age, people still talk about their youth. Soldiers retell war stories. Fire and phosphorus burn in their brains. Our memories, which constitute a life, mark us indelibly. Razan was convinced that he had slit a man’s throat. But convincing Anna might take some doing. Although no man or woman ought to live burdened with a story that cries to be told, he feared that his would be dismissed as the phantasm of a sick mind. He therefore decided to wait until Finland to speak, since preventing the death of his family in the forest came first.

That same night, Anna and her two companions surveyed the supply depot at the railroad, where military goods were stored before being trucked to a base outside the city. Karkaus then drove them to what looked like an abandoned house. Entering through a cellar door, they were stopped by a burly fellow. Karkaus whispered some code or password, and the sentinel admitted them to a lighted room that was a beehive of black-market activity. At long wooden tables, made from sawhorses and planks, thieves displayed merchandise of every kind and haggled over each sale. Karkaus bought three black woolen masks, a filtered flashlight, a sharp knife, and a chain cutter strong enough to make short work of the railroad fence.

For several days, the three stayed out of sight at the brothel. On the appointed night, they drove to the railroad yard, waited for the watchman to pass, and then crawled through the hole Karkaus cut at the base of the fence. Instinctively, Karkaus knew which piles to plunder. Anna removed the tarps and put the stacked boxes within easy reach of the two men, who raced back and forth with the contraband. They knew they had one hour to remove all their booty, at which time, the watchman would return. While the men spirited the goods through the fence, Anna positioned herself where she could easily see anyone coming. At last, she too left the yard.

With Karkaus’s vehicle piled high with boxes, he had little room to drive and no space at all, with the front seat piled high, to carry passengers. He told Anna and Gregori that he would meet them back at Mrs. Pestova’s shed.

“We go together or we don’t go at all,” said Anna.

“You don’t trust me?” said Karkaus, looking injured.

“Would you trust me?” she replied.

“Absolutely.”

Anna snorted skeptically. “Gregori can take the tram. I’ll sit on your lap while you drive.”

“How will I see?”

“Over my shoulder.”

The prospect of sitting on this thief’s lap didn’t please her. As he tugged at his mustache, she could imagine his thoughts. If he got fresh, she still had the chisel, which she conspicuously displayed and then stored in her purse. The vehicle tipped and swayed on its return journey. Twice, Roman Karkaus thrust his hips in a suggestive manner. The second time, Anna reached down and pinched him.

On the following day, they sorted the goods and reorganized the truck so that it would seat two, Karkaus and Anna. Whoever joined them needed to walk. Only when the truck was packed and ready to depart did Anna reconnect with her family and introduce Gregori and Karkaus to the others. Razan had developed a nervous rash, convinced that Anna had either been killed or been abducted by some Finn whom she called Karkaus. But not wishing to look like a jealous husband, he had refrained from finding the address she had given him. If her absence continued two days longer, he would go. When everyone met, Anna surveyed the group to see whether points of friction arose. None did. Karkaus behaved well, and Gregori made quite a hit with Yelena, regaling her not with stories of saints, as Razan feared, but with the details of his and Anna’s escape. Yelena particularly thrilled to hearing about trading human flesh for the real thing, though Anna had wanted Gregori to omit that part of the tale. Even Razan and Gregori seemed glad to embrace, perhaps because Solovki had caused the priest to doubt and to dampen his enthusiasm for proselytizing.

Karkaus was impatient to set out the next day or two for the border, but Anna insisted that they wait for Dimitri, who had told Yuri during their last coded telephone conversation that he and his sister would be visiting their ailing mother in no more than a fortnight. So began the wait. In the meantime, Yelena continued to attend school, Razan and Anna took walks along the frozen lake, and Yuri, when not occupied with hairdressing, joined Gregori and Karkaus in innumerable games of poker, a card game that Gregori had learned in Solovki, Karkaus from a westerner, and Yuri from the other two. The stakes were counted out in signed scraps of paper, to be reclaimed with real money once they reached Helsinki.

Days passed as the group waited for Dimitri and Natasha. Would they ever arrive? Had they been arrested? The clock ticked and nerves frayed. Finally, Anna said that they would wait no more than another three days. The decision, of course was hers, since they were her children. But always practical, Anna knew the longer the wait, the greater the danger. To reduce the chances of a neighbor reporting this group that regularly met in Yuri’s apartment, she and Gregori and Yuri returned to the brothel—to wait. Karkaus was resigned, though anxious, and Gregori chafed.

“If you and I could escape from Solovki,” he said to his mother, “what does it take for Dima and Natasha to get here from Voronezh?”

Anna knew that Gregori had never felt close to either Dimitri or Natasha, and that he much preferred his older brother, Pavel. She also knew that he was a man of deep resentments, one well suited to be a priest, owing to his uncompromising need to purge sin from the world, albeit sin as he defined it. Razan had once told her that Gregori and the Vozhd shared some of the same traits. When she had objected, he had pointed out that for all Stalin’s professed atheism, it was an open Kremlin secret that just as religion had made him, he was determined to remake religion.

A day before Anna’s deadline, Dimitri and Natasha arrived. Their journey had left them haggard and weary and underfed. Not wishing to revisit unhappy memories, they left most of their travails unspoken; but one Dimitri recounted.

“By every vehicle and conveyance we traveled eastward. I calculated that if the police were looking for us, they would look north or west. At the city of Kotlas, where we arrived after an all-night drive in the back of a truck, we boarded a bus for Velsk. But all the main roads west and north had roadblocks. Our bus was stopped. Fortunately I was not wearing my uniform.”

Natasha anxiously interrupted. “Dimitri, remember a child is present.” She swept up Yelena and held her tightly.

Yelena responded, “A lot of my classmates have seen their parents taken away. I’m not afraid.”

What kind of world is it, thought Razan, where children take for granted the arrest and deportation of parents? Yelena had witnessed the disappearance of her own. He did not want her to become inured to pain and insensitive to loss. But how else could a child survive?

Dimitri began to pace, clearly weighing his words. “Well, two very nice Red Army men had blocked the road with their car. They boarded the bus and ordered everyone off. They were searching for deserters and checking papers.” Dimitri leaned down and said to Yelena, “Do you know what a deserter is?”

“Our teacher said they’re people who do not love their country.”

“Perhaps,” replied Dimitri, “but some of them aren’t able to fight. They have to look after families or maybe they’re ill. I still had my service pistol; it was stored in my bag. When the Red Army men asked to see my papers, I removed the pistol and pointed it at them. ‘What does this mean?’ one demanded. I told the two men to walk ahead of me into the woods.”

“You didn’t shoot them?” asked a transfixed Yelena.

“Kill them, no. I would never do such a thing,” said Dimitri. “I took their guns and ordered them to walk deep into the woods before they turned around. One Red Army man objected and started toward me in a threatening manner, so I put a bullet in his foot.”

“You shot him?” exclaimed Yelena.

“Just nicked him enough to make him behave. He was all right. Then I took their car keys, and Natasha and I drove off in the police car. But we knew that we wouldn’t get far, because the Red Army and police would be hunting us down. We drove north and hid the car in an abandoned barn. From there we hitched rides until we reached the east side of Lake Onega. We walked the rest of the way. It was bitterly cold and the southern approach to the city is being patrolled. We found shelter with farmers—we paid them—and walked by night.”

Not until some time later did Razan learn that Dimitri had killed the two men. But by then, much had changed.

Once dinner was over and the dishes put away, Karkaus laid out his plan. In small groups, they would travel southwest to the now Soviet-occupied town of Pitkyaranta, situated south of the Finnish city of Sortavala, their hoped-for destination. Though under constant bombardment, Sortavala was on the Finnish side of the peninsula. If movement north proved impossible, with any luck they could cross into Finland via the “Road of Life,” frozen Lake Ladoga. They would meet in Pitkyaranta. Karkaus would transport Yuri in the Model T. Lacking travel documents, Karkaus could say that he lost them, and Yuri could show his; but Karkaus assured the others that given his knowledge of the countryside, they would be safe. A few days later, the Lipnoskii and Shtube families, toting packed bags and dried food, started on foot toward Pitkyaranta. Along the way, they came upon numerous ghost villages, in which they found refuge. From nearby streams, they collected water, heated it, and took makeshift baths. In the fields, they dug up buried tubers and rationed their food.

Karkaus and Yuri, having managed to avoid the numerous patrols, arrived first and located an abandoned farmhouse with beds but no mattresses. When Anna and her family finally reached Pitkyaranta and rendezvoused with the two men, they all sheltered there temporarily, until Dimitri could bribe an officer to give him a paper certifying that Razan Shtube and his party of seven had permission to procure firewood north of Lake Ladoga and peddle food goods to the Red Army. After resting for several days to husband their strength, they slowly followed the military road toward the front lines, as Anna and her children, in collusion with Karkaus, sold food, drink, and tobacco to weary Soviet soldiers, who gladly paid the reduced prices on offer. But even at the lowered rates, the family was swimming in rubles.

A few miles north of Pitkyaranta, a foot patrol stopped the slow-moving vehicle and the others, like tinkers, tramping closely behind. Razan showed them the official paper, stamped and signed by the local commandant, and Anna, armed with a box of cigarettes that she had removed for herself, offered the soldiers a smoke. When asked the price of the cigarettes, she told him, using the standard jargon about the fatherland and the harvest and the patriotic war, that she could not charge more than half, even if she suffered a loss.

The party could see that escape across the frozen lake was impossible with the presence of Russian patrols and tanks and field artillery. So they followed the forest until the Model T could barely move through the snow. When the vehicle finally stuck fast, Karkaus declared that the party was too large to negotiate the war zone and make it to safety. “We will have to split up,” he said. Anna refused to leave the vehicle, with all its stolen goods; and her children refused to leave her. It was therefore decided that Razan, Yuri, and Yelena would make their own way through the woods, and the others would keep to the road and follow behind the Soviet troops. As Natasha hugged Yelena and cried, Razan tried to persuade Anna to join him, but her indomitable mercantile spirit prevailed. She argued that they would need the money in Finland, that she could guarantee her safety by having something valuable to trade or sell, and that Karkaus and her children would protect her.

“But the paper with permission to cut trees is in my name.”

“Keep it,” she said. “We’ll meet not in Leningrad but Helsinki, at the Finland Station.” The irony was not lost on him: The latter station was the place of Lenin’s return to Russia. She then walked into his arms. As they held each other, Yelena hugged Anna.

“I no sooner find you than I lose you,” Razan murmured. “Will it always be this way?” She held him all the closer. Had he not been persuaded that Yelena was safer with him, and that the fewer the people, the faster they could move, he would have found parting with Anna unbearable.

The party of three left the main road and followed a minor one, where the snow was untrammeled. Still weak from having been poisoned, Razan depended on Yuri and Yelena to carve a trail. They walked for several hours, until it began to storm, and Razan admitted that he couldn’t continue. The woods were dotted with the cabins of hunters and fishers, most of whom had taken lodging elsewhere to avoid the war. Coming upon an occupied two-story log cabin, they knocked. A hunter, Teodoro Tomski, answered the door. His shoulder-length hair, heavy beard, and thick eyebrows brought to mind some mythic Yeti. Tomski took one look at Razan and knew he would have to house these strangers, a kindness for which Razan rewarded him generously, though Tomski asked for little. The hunter supplied them with bundles of straw for their sleeping needs and a large chamber pot. “Better an indoor pot,” said Razan, “than an outdoor privy.” Tomski had only a few extra blankets. With the wind whistling between the uncaulked attic logs, they slept in their clothes and sweaters and coats to ward off the cold, all the while waiting for an end to the storm. In truth, Razan was glad for the rest. To wash, they melted snow and heated it in large pots, which they poured into a miniature bathtub. At night, by a kerosene lamp, Yuri read Russian fairy tales to Yelena from her favorite book. The hairdresser and child, in their dependent needs, had become emotionally joined.

On the third night, with visibility near zero from blowing snow, a soldier thumped at the door and said his lieutenant wanted to speak to all the men in the house. Tomski, Razan, and Yuri left the cabin and showed the lieutenant their papers. Teodoro produced a resident hunting permit, Razan the document that permitted logging, and Yuri, to the barber’s surprise, a medical deferment that declared him unfit for medical service because of partial blindness in his left eye. No doubt, Dimitri had authored his lover’s release.

“Can you tell me,” said the lieutenant, standing in a greatcoat under a fir tree, his squad of soldiers in the background, “why I see no piles of wood next to the house—or a cart to carry them back to town? The people in the city need wood. What is your explanation?”

Razan indignantly answered, “I’ve been waiting for my drunken helper, Jacov Gerstein. He was to meet us here with horse and dray.”

“A German?”

“A Jew.”

“The lazy dog.”

The lieutenant followed the men into the house. On seeing Yelena, he inquired about her presence and demanded to speak to her alone.

“She’s my daughter,” said Razan. “She has done nothing.”

“I just want to ask her a few questions.”

Razan watched from a window. What he could see only in pantomime happened as follows:

“We’re looking for deserters,” the lieutenant said, “and I’d like to know more about the ‘girly man.’ Is he really blind in one eye?”

Yelena, sensing the need to protect Yuri, boldly replied, “He can hardly fry eggs. Yesterday, he fell down the stairs.”

The officer hitched up his belt. “You haven’t answered me.”

In the peremptory manner of Anna, she responded, “You have no right to question the loyalty of a man whose eye was injured while serving his country.” With Gregori’s Solovki stories fresh in mind, she added, “He was a prison guard on a train, and some zeks attacked him when the train stopped to take on water.”

“Is that what he told you?”

“Yes.”

The lieutenant spat. “If they had shot those zeks in the first place, we wouldn’t have to feed the bastards.” He warned that he could check Yelena’s story by seriously grilling this Yuri Suzdal. “But I trust you.”

Praising Yelena for her cleverness, he told her to go inside and get warm, turned on his heels, and kicked a pile of snow as he left with his squad.

She waited and watched the man fade into the fog. Shivering, but not from the cold, she thought of her parents and her many prayers for their return. At that moment, peering into the wooded darkness, she knew that she would never see them again. Razan and Anna had treated her well, and she them. Even so, she hoped that one day she and her parents could board a train for Tashkent. Perhaps because her current direction was north and not south, she had murmured, “Goodbye.”

* * *

For a small bribe, Teodoro Tomski arranged to have Razan, Yelena, and Yuri driven north. The price the hunter quoted might have been higher had Tomski not seen Yelena stand her ground with the lieutenant. He admired her courage. But Tomski warned the barber that he would be entering a no-man’s zone and at any moment could be killed by a shell launched from either the Finnish or Soviet side. Razan said they had no choice and waited for the guide. Shortly, a small sleigh arrived, pulled by a chestnut Finn horse, which Pekka, the smuggler, explained was capable of pulling heavier loads than many larger draught-horse breeds. An erstwhile farmer who had spent time in Leningrad and spoke an accented Russian, Pekka knew horses. He called himself by just the one name and refused to offer his last. When he talked, his false teeth clicked. A cigarette drooped from his dentals, and his fingers were badly stained with nicotine. He was missing part of one ear and wheezed when he breathed. His face was badly scarred from pox and his nose resembled a large boil that begged to be lanced. He spoke little as he drove horse and sleigh through the forest, neither scraping a tree nor finding himself in a drift. To pass the hours, Yuri sang folk songs and whimsical ditties of his own composition.

A Russian bear broke from the woods,

Stealing all of Yelena’s goods,

Including her family and home,

Her canvas and oils and comb.

Cheerfully she settled the score

By drawing his face as a boar;

She called him not Teddy but toad,

And drew his hat as a commode.

Although Pekka stopped for his passengers to relieve themselves, no one ate. They had to cover a certain distance by nightfall if they were going to reach a safe house in the woods, a place that Finnish smugglers used. The same would be true for the second and third day, if they were to reach Sortavala unscathed. Trails used by trappers and smugglers were the only safe way into the city; but once in Sortavala, hardly anyone was safe from the artillery shells.

In the dark, they reached a long, low hut used by outcasts. The main room had a dozen bunks, but no mattresses; a second room housed the kitchen. An outside privy was a two seater. The smugglers cooked their own food, so Pekka had brought smoked reindeer, bread, and carrots that turned limp when defrosted. Candles and kerosene lamps provided their light. Razan heard more Finnish being spoken than Russian. As Yelena undressed for bed, a drunken Finn accosted her. Before Razan could react, Pekka held a knife to the man’s throat and told him that he’d slit his windpipe if anything happened to the child. The man staggered off, swearing incomprehensible words.

Each night, they slept at cabins similar to the first, havens of smugglers and thieves. On the last day of their journey, they stopped shy of Sortavala. The sound of distant guns and the smell of cordite gave Razan pause. Perhaps they should stay outside the city. Through the trees, he could just barely make out what looked like a bunker, half buried in the ground. Pekka suggested that it might be a good place to spend the night. When they left the sleigh, the snowdrifts reached Yelena’s waist. The structure was a massive multilayered blockhouse, elaborately fortified with logs. Razan guessed that it was part of a line of bunkers called the Mannerheim Line and had been constructed at this point for a good reason: Sortavala was within striking distance.

The exiles hunkered down in the shelter unable to sleep, while shells screeched overhead. A few fell near them, but caused no damage. All night the guns thundered. Toward morning, as a single plane flew low overhead and strafed the area, five Finnish soldiers burst into the bunker and leveled their rifles. Pekka immediately explained the situation. The head of the Finnish patrol asked about the man slumped in the corner: Yuri. One of the plane’s bullets had tragically found its way into the bunker, splintered, and hit Yuri in the forehead. A slow trickle of blood ran from his wound, between his eyes, down the bridge of his nose, and into his open mouth. Yelena screamed. A soldier kneeled next to the hairdresser and felt his pulse. Yuri was dead. The same soldier sadly remarked that the frozen ground would not permit a proper burial. Yuri would just have to lie in the dark woods, carrion for crows.

Unable to bear the thought, Yelena begged that they make some effort to bury him. In deference to the child, the Finnish soldiers detonated an explosive in the woods that left a small ground crater, and helped lay Yuri to rest. While Yelena and Pekka whispered their own religious words, Razan mumbled Kaddish, “Yisgadal v’yiskadash sh’mayh rabo.”

Yelena found a large stone that she placed at the head of the grave and wrote a note that she placed under the stone. “Yuri Suzdal was a kind man, a good man. If you find him in summer, please dig him a proper grave. He deserves to lie in peace.”

Once the Finnish soldiers returned to the bunker, leaving Yelena and Razan alone, she asked him to help her build a Golem next to the grave. He had often told her the story of a giant molded from mud. In the unquiet forest, with shells whistling overhead and trees thrashing the air as if trying to erase the obscene graffiti of war, Razan feared that any prolonged stay in the woods would increase their danger; but she insisted, reminding him that it was he who told her about the Golem’s protective powers. Reluctantly, he agreed and helped her roll a snowball into a larger one, then a second, and a third. She stacked one on top of the other, until she was satisfied that the figure stood at least seven feet tall. Employing her artistic skills and Razan’s penknife, she cut a piece of ice from the hardened roadway and sculpted a face that unmistakably resembled Yuri’s. When she had finished, an imposing Golem stood facing south, the direction from which the forward Russian scouting party would be making its way. Declaring her work good, she trudged back to the bunker.

From Kremlin chatter, Razan knew that the Russian military was composed mostly of illiterate men who believed fiercely in the power of myths and omens and superstitions. Now that the Golem was in place, the barber hoped that when the advance party approached and saw this creature with a human face, the soldiers would bolt. The commander, of course, could always order them on pain of death to hold their ground. A few hours later, a single shot rang out, but no other. Razan imagined the course of events outside the bunker. The commander had shot the Golem to prove to his men that they had nothing to fear from a snowman. But the harm had already been done. The report of the gun had announced the arrival of the regiment’s advance guard—and the Finns stood ready. As the Russian soldiers made their way toward the fortification, the Finns opened fire with machine guns and then leaped from the bunker to mop up with pistols. No one doubted that the Finns had guts and grit—sisu—when it came to fighting. The Russians had been able to discharge only a few feeble shots before the Finns killed the stragglers and wounded.

That same night, the guns of Karelia fell mostly silent. The Finnish soldiers, attuned to the rhythm of war, used the lull to retreat. Pekka took the occasion to drive Razan and Yelena to the main checkpoint, situated on the southeast edge of the city, where he had more than once deposited Russian exiles. He chatted with the soldiers for a minute, and, instead of merely declaring Razan and Yelena as escapees, he announced impetuously that they had transit visas, which they then felt compelled to produce. The soldiers asked why the Soviets would allow the barber and his daughter the freedom to travel and ordered them to report to Sergeant Isto at the main refugee headquarters. Pekka, regretting his words, apologized and drove to the building, where he insisted on accompanying them inside to stand witness.

Sergeant Kai Isto studied the transit visas and asked, “Why would the Soviet government allow you to leave the country when they deny transit to most everyone else?”

Razan debated whether to tell him how the documents had been obtained but decided to hold his tongue because the story seemed too improbable. Besides, whatever their source, the documents were valid in every detail. “I was the official Kremlin barber, responsible to Poskrebyshev and Stalin’s inner circle.”

“You shaved Stalin?”

“I don’t know.”

Sergeant Isto looked confused. “Don’t know? If you, the person staring into his face, don’t know, then who does?”

“The secret police. Stalin has doubles.”

The sergeant leaped from his chair and exclaimed, “Is that true?”

“Absolutely.”

“I must call headquarters to tell them. Is there any sure way to tell them apart? We have to be certain whom we are dealing with.”

The desire to blurt out that the real Stalin was dead would have obliged him to explain how he knew, a moment in time that still remained obscure owing to the effect of the poison on his capacity to recall events clearly. “It would be erroneous to say they look exactly alike.” The sergeant listened. “The man who I think is the real Stalin has larger ears and skin craters than the decoy I knew, and dyed hair. Also, worse teeth.”

“You can actually prove that you were the official Kremlin barber?” Before Razan could respond, Sergeant Isto added, “We could use you in Helsinki—right away.”

Pekka, who had known nothing about Razan’s former position, gaped in awe. Finally, he gasped, “I can only tell you this, sergeant, he is a good man, and the child . . . a wonder.”

Kai Isto, a student of languages, said that the general Finnish military staff had heard rumors that the Kremlin barber was a Jew, from Albania. Before he could continue, Razan spoke to him first in Yiddish and then in Albanian.

“To hell with the transit visas, I must get you to Helsinki.”

“And the child?” asked Razan.

The sergeant smiled and said ironically, “If she’s yours, I trust you won’t leave her behind.”

Pekka removed all the bags from his sleigh, shook Razan’s hand, and hugged Yelena. The barber shoved a handful of rubles into Pekka’s hand and muttered, “For all your good work.”

Pekka laughed. “I nearly caused your arrest.” Then he boarded the sleigh and left the same way he had come.

* * *

“Only a fool would fail to exploit a pause in the fighting,” said Anna, as she urged Karkaus to try one more time to move his car and follow the advancing Russian soldiers. But with the wind constantly shifting, as soon as the infantrymen beat a path through the snow, a drift covered it. Karkaus repeatedly backed up and tried to ram his car through the snowdrifts, eventually immobilizing the Model T. He threw up his arms and declared he could drive no farther.

“Disengage the dray,” she said in frustration. “We’ll pull it and leave the car.”

Karkaus and his dray had been long-standing partners. He felt that to break the weld and disconnect the dray would be the same as lopping off a limb or relinquishing his pocketbook. “And the car?” he asked. “Do we just leave it here?”

“No, we free it and pay you your share. Then you don’t have to risk your life in the war zone.” She quoted him a number.

He scoffed. “The goods are worth twice that.”

“You’re the one who’s been selling them at half their value. Now you want to double the price. Let’s not quibble. I’ll split the difference with you.”

Karkaus pulled on his frost-encrusted mustache, stamped his frozen boots on the ground, looked back over his shoulder toward the safe geography behind him, and said, “Done!”

She wet her fingers and, like a greengrocer, counted out the cash. He took a hammer and broke the weld. With some effort, the party turned the car around, and Karkaus disappeared down the road. That he had to be pushed out of numerous snowdrifts on his way south caused him less pain than those who were pulling the dray had to endure. Fashioning harnesses out of rope, Dimitri and Gregori, like horses, pulled it, with Anna and Natasha sitting atop.

Although the dray proceeded slowly, Anna’s business flourished. She sold her goods with remarkable ease and bought others from the soldiers, all too willing to exchange a watch, a fob, a handsome belt buckle, an extra pair of boots, or a uniform taken from a dead comrade. The army mess cook generously stole food from his larder for a turn in bed with Anna. And why would she not accede to his lust? She had witnessed the example of Monty. To survive, all is permitted, with one exception: No one was permitted to touch her daughter. The Russian Army was encamped for nearly a week, unable to make any progress against the Finnish artillery. She had parked the dray behind the cook’s bunker to speed the transfer of food. During this time, Anna and her children made more money than Razan had earned in a year. Eventually, the porcine cook, Mamish, a Circassian, began to exhaust his food supplies, which were slow to arrive. When he had nothing to trade, Anna abandoned his cot. He tried to charm her with stories about his home on the Black Sea, but she wanted material satisfaction not words. From either sexual frustration or a feeling of betrayal, he sought to avenge himself by seducing Natasha, whom he had lured to his bunker one night with the promise of piroshki.

Years later, Anna was still imagining the scene that Natasha described. Lowering her head and ducking into the half-buried bunker, Natasha had said, “They smell divine. How did you manage? Mother told me that you had no more cooking dough.”

“For you, I have.”

Mamish pulled up a chair, and she sat at his small folding table, savoring the food.

“You are not eating?”

“I had just enough left for you.”

“How kind.”

His ragged laugh put her on edge. “In this hellish world, everything has its price.”

“Meaning?”

“You owe me for the piroshki.”

She reached into a pocket of the overalls she had taken to wearing. “How much?”

“A kiss, a hug, and a roll in my rug.”

Natasha paused, threw some rubles on the table, and darted for the door. But just as she opened it and screamed, Mamish, the Circassian, fat of face but fleet of foot, overtook her. The rest of the story, Anna knew all too well. Mamish slammed the door but not before Natasha’s cry was heard by her brothers. Dimitri grabbed his pistol and entered the bunker just as Mamish was tearing her clothes. Putting the pistol to Mamish’s head, he told him to stop. But the foolish cook, now enraged, swung a heavy arm around and caught Dimitri in the face. Dimitri staggered backward. As the cook advanced on him, Dimitri raised the pistol. Mamish stopped. But a second later, as if convinced the man wouldn’t shoot, Mamish threw himself at Dimitri. It took only one shot to the face, and Mamish lay dead at Dimitri’s feet. A minute or two later, Russian soldiers appeared in the bunker. On seeing Natasha disrobed, they averted their eyes as she dressed; then they led Dimitri away. The next morning, the Russian general in charge of the small regiment applied the coup de grâce to the back of Dimitri’s head after three soldiers had served as a firing squad. Anna, needing to be restrained, screamed imprecations.

She blamed herself and took no comfort in the fact that Dimitri had killed the cook. “Mamish was a cur,” she told the general and, ever enterprising, extolled the virtues of her own cooking and volunteered herself as his replacement. The general, who had briefly served in the White Army before changing sides, was not a bad sort and felt sorry the military manual had required him to order her son’s death. In return, he made Anna the head cook for the regiment, and two days later, when the troops were resupplied, he congratulated himself, as he polished off a plate of her pirogies.

“But tell me,” he asked Anna, “what became of your son’s service pistol? One moment, he had the gun in hand, and the next, it was gone. Do you have it? His brother or sister? We can’t seem to find it.”

“I know nothing of pistols and guns and knives and such things. I mind my own business.”

The general let the subject drop because the next day, the ragtag regiment broke their encampment and slowly moved forward under the protection of Russian planes bombing Finnish emplacements. Natasha replaced Dimitri in harness and helped Gregori pull the dray. But two days later, she vanished. Anna thought she must have found a favorite among the men and run off, deserting for Finland. Without Natasha’s help to pull the dray, Anna joined Gregori and took up the harness. Now she had three jobs: pulling the dray, peddling her goods, and cooking for the regiment. One evening, as she was bending over a stew pot, the general came up behind her and gently placed a hand on her shoulder. She immediately thought, “Not again!” But the general had no such intentions. He asked her to sit down; he had something to tell her. She joined him at the very table where Natasha had enjoyed piroshki.

“We have found the pistol,” he said somberly.

“The pistol?” said Anna, who had already forgotten.

“Your son’s.”

“Dimitri’s?”

He slid it across the table. “Yes. I thought you might want to keep it . . . in these perilous times.” He paused. “It was found in the woods by the men who resupplied us. On their way back, they discovered it . . . next to a body.”

“A body?”

“Your daughter’s.”

When Anna awoke, she found herself on a cot in a temporary medical tent, with the gun holstered at her feet. Heavily sedated, she was told she had passed out in the company of the general, who had been tight lipped about the cause and would say only, “It’s a personal matter.” A temporary cook had taken her place, and Gregori was left to haul the dray by himself. Eventually, the regiment had approached Sortavala, where the fighting was fierce. The Russians tried to dig trenches in the frozen ground but finally gave the task up as impossible. Instead, the soldiers felled trees and made rough shelters, one of which housed Anna and Gregori.

And here they stayed, listening to the screaming shells overhead until one day, a soldier in a Finnish uniform burst into their shelter and cried, “We have an opening!” Gregori, thinking the regiment was being overrun by the enemy and their lives were in danger, grabbed his brother’s pistol and killed the man, only to discover a short while later he had shot a Russian spy in a Finnish uniform. Thinking of his brother and certain the same fate awaited him, Gregori panicked and fled into the woods. Anna never saw him again.

* * *

Although the Russian regiment, following orders, retreated, she insisted on staying with her goods. Harnessing the dray to her waist, she slowly pulled it north until she spotted a Finnish patrol that took her and the dray to Sortavala. When questioned about her role in the regiment, she told a heartrending story about the death of her children and insisted that she had only one goal in mind: to escape. Fortunately, one of the officers remarked she was not the first to cross into Finnish territory that day. Anxiously, she asked for details. It was only after the officer made a call to Helsinki that she learned Razan and Yelena had reached safety and were being housed north of the city, in an area mostly free of Soviet bombs. The officer then ordered her to leave on the next truck for the capital. But she refused. The whole of her inventory, her life goods, she cried, were in the dray.

“It could be a matter of life or death,” said the officer.

“So is my wagon. With it, I can support myself; without it, I have nothing.”

“Your husband is proving useful to the government. He and your daughter are being generously cared for. I urge you to join them.”

“And who will make use of the goods in my dray?”

“The soldiers,” said the officer. “Isn’t that what you’d want?”

Anna felt morally trapped. How could she ask the very people who had saved her husband and daughter to purchase her wares? But on the other hand, she knew their value, and if she could sell them, she would earn, in addition to the many rubles she had stored in her footlocker, Finnish currency, markka and penni. She had nothing to lose by trying her luck; or might she lose the goodwill of the officer and have to haul her wagon by foot to Helsinki? Every cell in her body contained the memory of her childhood poverty, but Razan and Yelena were her wealth.

“Is there no way,” she asked, “to put the dray in the truck?”

“No room.”

“These goods might help relieve the rationing in Helsinki.”

“More so here on the front,” said the officer. “Our men have little in the way of food and money. Just look around.”

Anna could not deny the condition of the ragged Finnish soldiers, so she settled on what she considered a fair compromise: The officer would give her a signed statement, confirming her material losses. All her adult life she had equated money and self-preservation, a not unreasonable nexus, and though she sometimes regretted choosing money over morals, she knew that she was not alone. The Soviets talked a good game about sharing the wealth, but in the countryside, she had noticed that the rich ate and dressed differently from the poor; and in Moscow, some traveled in chauffeured cars, and some walked. Only a fool would voluntarily relinquish his holdings and expect nothing in return. And she was no fool.

Even her own family was not exempt from her divided feelings. She well remembered leaving Brovensk and having to decide which belongings to sell and which to take. Once the decision was made and she had sold most of her furniture, Razan had suggested that she give the money to Pavel, since they would be well cared for in Moscow. At first, she thought he was teasing; then, she thought he was mad. “My possessions!” Razan had replied, “Charity begins at home.”

She had scoffed at the very idea of Razan quoting the Bible and had said, “Yes, with me!” But in the end, she had given Pavel the money.

On reaching Helsinki, the truck driver called his dispatch officer for instructions. The reply came back: “Take them to the front steps of the Parliament Building, Eduskuntatalo. Her husband and daughter will be inside waiting for her.” Northwest of the main post office, the driver stopped. Anna thanked him and leaped out to greet Razan and Yelena, racing down the steps of the building. The driver put her bags at the curb and left. In the winter cold, the family’s entangled arms formed a cocoon, and they sank to the pavement, as love leaked out of their eyes. Razan handed her a gift: a broadtail coat with a mandarin collar in fox. But happiness often companions with pain. When Yelena asked about her dearest Natasha and kind Dimitri—the child had never felt close to Gregori—Anna attributed all of their deaths to bombs and artillery shells. Had someone pointed out the connection between her dray and the fate of her children, she would have called them contemptible Bolsheviks. In her mind, she had been a courageous mother, caring and protective. No, they had died from the hateful war and the greediness of nations claiming as much land as their armies could conquer. She had tried only to do what was best for her family: to keep them wealthy enough to live free of the hunger and sweat of the poor.

* * *

That evening, at Anna’s request, the family attended the Uspenski Orthodox Church. Inside the redbrick building, the family stood at the back, admiring the largest Orthodox cathedral in Western Europe. Anna requested a few minutes for herself and made her way to the altar, where she genuflected before an icon sprinkled with gold dust, “Mother and Child.” After crossing herself, she stood and kissed the icon. Then she dropped a few coins in the donation box, lit four candles, and prayed that her children and Yuri be received into heaven. Razan whispered to Yelena to say a prayer in Uzbek for the souls of the dead, and he silently did the same in Hebrew. When Anna returned, she buried her face in Razan’s chest and quietly sobbed. He gently stroked her hair, still lustrous, though much grayer than it was before Solovki. No one spoke in the tram on the way back to the government-owned apartment assigned to Razan. During his family’s absence, when he was not meeting with the intelligence service, he had consoled himself by decorating the walls of the apartment with reproductions of bucolic country scenes; and of course, he included Yelena’s paintings, except for Stalin’s iconic mustache.

Weeks later, Razan tried yet again to explain the events in the cinema. But he found Anna’s questions as difficult to answer as those of the Finnish secret service.

“I know it sounds crazy,” he said in the muted voice that he had acquired from living for so many years in the Soviet Union, “but I swear: I slit his throat.” Anna sympathized with his recent misery without actually expressing agreement. “You must believe me, because if I killed an innocent man, he was no doubt forced, on pain of death, to play the role of Stalin.”

She looked at him lovingly but not as she had when they lived in Brovensk. “Better,” she said, “that we listen to the radio,” and turned it on. The Finnish Orchestra was playing the Brahms cello concerto.

They listened in silence, holding hands, until Razan rose to answer a knock at the door. His neighbor, a Russian exile whose family estate had been looted, and the library burned, excitedly asked, “Did you hear?”

“We are listening to the Brahms.”

“Me, too. But a special announcement. From the Politburo. Stalin has declared that ‘a son does not answer for his father.’”

“Taras, what are you talking about?”

“Stalin just said, on the radio, the purges must end and the country needs to be united. They quoted him in Russian: ‘A son does not answer for his father.’ It no longer matters if your parents were kulaks or priests or merchants or Jews or Tsarist officers. All is forgiven. He’s put forth a new policy. Who knows his motives? First he signs a peace pact with Germany, and now with his own people.”

“Four years ago, in 1935, December, I think it was, he made the same declaration, and look what followed.”

Taras nodded and crossed the hall to his apartment. While latching the door, Razan noticed that his hand shook. He had become an observer of his own failing health, standing outside of himself and chronicling his progressive decay. Is this my reward, he thought, for knowing about great crimes and, though hating them, continuing to work in the Kremlin? He ran his hand through his hair and paused to view its perfect whiteness in the entry hall mirror. His pale blue eyes brightened, elated by what they saw: Stalin slumped in his favorite cinema chair, his head bowed, and a trickle of blood tracing the cut made by Razan’s Damascene razor. “I waited three years too long,” he said to the mirror. Stalin’s head slowly rose and turned to face the barber. His neck was unscathed and on his lap rested Razan’s matryoshka doll. “Konspiratsia . . . the virus of the age,” muttered Stalin. “I knew it was only a matter of time before you too caught the virus.”

Anna called to him. “Are you talking to me?”

Razan returned to the sitting room. Without any preamble or qualifying expressions, he calmly said, “I was talking to Stalin.”

She consoled him and said that with rest he’d recover. But her expression belied her words. The first time he’d told her about the murder—their reunion night—she had pressed her hands in prayer, kissed Razan, and said, “If only it were true.” When he insisted then, like now, that it was, she had quoted an old proverb, “Believe nothing and be on your guard against everything.”

The radio concert continued, but Razan’s attention was elsewhere. Anna leaned over and kissed his head.

“Who was that at the door?” she asked.

He nearly said Stalin.

“You look,” remarked Anna, “as if you’ve just seen a ghost.” At that moment, the barber devoutly wished he could escape from the konspiratsia tunnel, where life and lies were one, and ride his train of memories to a place of cure and absolution for having served as Stalin’s barber.

FINIS