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  As flickering, living light fills the room, the silhouette of a tall, thin man appears before the heavily draped window. The man’s nose is elongated, yet proportional to his dark, deeply wrinkled face. Slowly, with considerable arthritic stiffness and with the pomp one would expect from an actor of a provincial theater, the old man bows deeply, his left hand resting on a cane, his right making a slow, ceremonious spiral on the way to the floor.

  Sadykov reaches the only conclusion available to him: this man exhibits no fear, no trepidation, because he is mad.

  Occasionally, when he allows himself to succumb to compassion, Sadykov believes that his passengers are better off being mad, or deathly ill, because death would spare them what lies ahead: weeks or months of interrogations, then weeks in the prison train, and, finally, felling trees or mining for gold or uranium ore somewhere in the taiga or the permafrost.

  * * *

  “Dear friends, welcome!” says Levinson, shooting a grin from the nadir of the bow.

  Encountering unpredictable behavior is part of the job. Sadykov has seen men collapse, women tear their robes (literally tear their robes), children barricade the doors until they have to be kicked out of the way. But he has never seen a deep bow.

  A clinician usually makes the diagnosis within seconds of laying his eyes on a patient. Perhaps a lieutenant of state security should be required to have similar diagnostic skills. He should be able to predict that an old man like Levinson will inevitably proceed from strange performance to muttering and singing softly in his dungeon cell.

  There would be no point in subjecting him to rough interrogation, because what can a madman tell you? What art is there in beating confessions out of the demented and the frail? They will sign any protocol you place before them. They will acknowledge any political crime—plotting to vandalize the Dnepr hydroelectric power station, blowing up the smelters of Magnitogorsk, intending to change fundamental laws of physics, spying for the Grand Rabbinate of Israel and its American masters.

  Sometimes, very rarely, you encounter resistance from arrestees. Suicides, too.

  Sadykov has heard many a man sing “The Internationale” in the back of the Black Maria.

  Arise, ye prisoners of starvation

  Arise, ye wretched of the earth …

  Lacking the depth of intellect required to realize that the words of the great anthem of the World Revolution beautifully describe the dignified, defiant spirit of the men and women crated in the back of his truck, Sadykov is unable to feel the mockery.

  If there is one thing this job has taught him, it is to take nothing personally.

  * * *

  “Allow me to introduce myself: Solomon Shimonovich Levinson,” says the old man, straightening to the formidable extent of his frame. “Artist pogorelogo teatra.” Actor of a burned-down theater.

  “We have an order for a search,” says Sadykov. “Turn on the light, Levinson.”

  Sadykov will handle this in his usual restrained manner. If liquidation of enemies is your objective, why not accept disease, both mental and physical, as your allies? Is it not much easier to let the madmen rave until they wear themselves out?

  The single bulb under a fringed silk lampshade that hangs from a wire on the ceiling in Levinson’s room is decidedly unmanly. You would expect to find it in the room of an operetta singer. Its bulb is no brighter than Sadykov’s match.

  Of course, Sadykov believes in the absolute necessity of his job.

  He believes in Comrade Stalin, and he believes in purging his country of internal enemies. However, he also realizes that, inevitably, mistakes are made, and some of the arrestees are probably harmless. It is unavoidable that when you need to arrest so many people, some of them will be innocent. Even with no training in statistics, not even knowing that there is such a thing as statistics, Sadykov grasps the concept of the margin of error, something you have to recognize and accept like any other fact of life.

  With experience, Sadykov has developed a plethora of his own approaches to conducting an operation.

  Doctors often speak of patients who taught them something about life, or helped them sharpen their methodology. People whose job it is to arrest their brethren similarly learn on the job. In one prior operation, Sadykov heard an old Bolshevik—a man who knew Lenin and Stalin and had photographs on the wall to prove it—demand a private audience with Stalin.

  The old Bolshevik said something about the Party having taken a wrong turn and refused to budge when the time came. Fortunately, he lived alone, like Levinson. The old Bolshevik had been deathly pale, and Sadykov couldn’t see a way to lead him out without breaking his limbs.

  To avoid unpleasantness in that situation, Sadykov had assured the old Bolshevik that an audience with Stalin was exactly what was being planned. He was being taken to the Kremlin, not to Lubyanka.

  The old Bolshevik brightened up, and all the way to Lubyanka he sang in a language that he said was Georgian. By the time the Black Maria passed through the heavy iron gates, the man was in a subdued state. He muttered passively, locked in an intense conversation with an imaginary interlocutor. Sadykov heard something about London and the Fifth Congress of the Russian Socialist Democratic Party.

  “Soso, didn’t I warn you about Trotsky?” he said to Sadykov when the lieutenant opened the door.

  * * *

  Levinson is wearing baggy, sky blue long underpants, a dark brown undershirt, a deep purple robe, and a matching ascot. (Actors of burned-down theaters have an affinity for ascots.)

  He has to be in his late fifties, old enough to start to soften, yet clearly he has not. He looks muscular, angular; his movements are powerful but choppy. His imposing physique notwithstanding, Levinson looks like a clown.

  “What is your name, young man?” asks Levinson, turning to Sadykov.

  Usually, MGB officers do not reveal their real names, but in this case, bowing to the sound of authority in Levinson’s voice, Sadykov can’t avoid making an exception.

  “Lieutenant Narsultan Sadykov.”

  “Sadykov … there was a Sadykov in my detachment in the Ural. A brave man,” says Levinson, pointing at one of the framed photographs on the wall.

  It’s a small photo of a dozen men dressed in leather and sheepskin coats and a mad assortment of uniforms: the White Guard, British, American.

  A tall man in a pointed Red Cavalry hat stands in the front row, his riding boot positioned on the barrel of a Maxim machine gun, his hand brandishing a curved cavalry sword. The boys behind him have the unmistakable devil-may-care look of brigands, their commander exhibiting the Byronesque spirit of a soldier-poet.

  No formal education would be required to recognize that the photo was taken in 1918, when Bolsheviks had lost control of Siberia and the surviving Red Army detachments disappeared into the forest. The fact that young Levinson was fighting for the World Revolution so far from his native Odessa, in the Siberian woods, was part of the spirit of the times and didn’t need to be explained any more than one needed to explain the landing of American Marines and British troops in Vladivostok. The world’s most powerful nations joined to strangle Bolshevism in its cradle, and Levinson et al. came to defend it.

  It’s not difficult to see how a man as imposing as Levinson would be elected the detachment commander. It’s more of a challenge to grasp how he could have survived the clashes alongside the Trans-Siberian Railroad. If images are to be believed, he displayed no signs of a capacity to avoid unnecessary risks. Such is the nature of Byronism.

  In 1953, would it matter to anyone—least of all Sadykov—that thirty-five years earlier, in 1918, at a time when Bolsheviks lost control of Siberia, Levinson and his band fought in total isolation, moving through the taiga between Lake Baikal and the Ural Mountains?

  “Can you see the round face next to the Maxim?” asks Levinson. Then, without receiving an acknowledgment, he adds, “That’s my Sadykov. Stayed in the Red Army, fought in Manchuria, Spain, rose to colonel. A carriage like your
s took him to oblivion in 1938. A cousin, perhaps? Perhaps you’ve seen him caged someplace?”

  It seems that someone forgot to instruct Lieutenant Narsultan Sadykov that a man whose job falls on the continuum between arrest and execution must not acknowledge the humanity of individuals upon whom he discharges his duties. If a person of any intelligence had written the manual for operations, it would read: Do not—under any circumstances—engage in polemics with the arrestees and the executees.

  Of course, Narsultan Sadykov is not in any way connected with Levinson’s Sadykov. Many Tatars are named Sadykov, just as many Russians are named Ivanov, Ukrainians Shevchenko, and Jews Rabinovich. How would anyone, least of all Lieutenant Narsultan Sadykov (an orphan whose father’s name was unknown to anyone, likely including his mother), know whether he is related to Levinson’s Sadykov?

  * * *

  “Young man, are you, perchance, familiar with commedia dell’arte?” asks Levinson, turning abruptly to one of the nineteen-year-olds.

  Though it’s impossible to verify such things, it’s unlikely in the extreme that any previous victim of Stalinism had ever mentioned commedia dell’arte at the time of arrest.

  “Pidaras tochno,” responds one boy, addressing the other. (Definitely a pederast would be the exact translation, but the expression really means definitely a fag.) The boy utters this nonsense as though Levinson doesn’t exist. Onstage this would be called an aside.

  Had Sadykov understood the situation, he would have rewarded this soldier’s perfect execution of denial of humanity.

  “No,” replies Levinson casually. “Not a pidaras. Why would you think that? I said commedia dell’arte. Commedia dell’arte is a theatrical movement, which began in Italy in the sixteenth century. It spread, and it never fully went away. Molière’s characters are based on commedia character types. Our Gogol was influenced by commedia.”

  “Pedrilo,” mutters one of the boys, summoning another variation on the theme of buggery.

  “You are being dismissive out of ignorance. You will see in a minute that you do know something about commedia,” says Levinson, making eye contact with the boys, then casting a glance at Sadykov.

  “Madness,” Sadykov concludes, but says nothing. He rifles through the old man’s desk, as per instructions. No Walther there, just an empty holster from a Soviet pistol, a basic Makarov.

  The irrational should be handled indirectly, if at all. Though Levinson seems to be failing in his effort to engage the audience, his story is as accurate as he can make it.

  After returning to Moscow in 1920, on a lark, Levinson auditioned for a theater troupe started by a young man named Alexander Granovsky.

  This was an experimental theater company inspired in part by commedia dell’arte, badly in need of clowns and acrobats. Commedia was making a return as art for the people, and Granovsky recognized Levinson’s ability to play a sad, angry clown, akin to a recurring commedia character named Pulcinella. In Russian, Pulcinella was renamed Petrushka.

  “I played variations on Petrushka for a long, long time. Of course, you’ve heard of Petrushka.” Levinson stops, as though he has just told a joke. “That would be within your intellectual grasp.”

  Of course, there is no childish laughter of delight, no sign of recognition, no aha moment.

  An argument can be made that the joke is on Levinson. His revolutionary past and obvious ability to inflict great bodily harm were the source of comedy.

  Granovsky’s goal was to build a great European progressive theater company. What could be edgier than a menacing Petrushka? Komandir Petrushka, a sad, angry clown battling the forces of history. Levinson was an anachronism from the beginning. He was perfectly static, an actor who would not get any training, who would get neither better nor worse.

  Levinson liked being a clown. After two years of being the agent of death, is there anything wrong with wanting to make audiences laugh, just like his father had made him laugh what seemed like centuries earlier? How is that different from becoming, say, a doctor? From his first performance to, now, his last, Levinson’s default has always been to go for laughs. A critic might call this pandering.

  Levinson has learned that he loves being a part of an ensemble even more than he loves the sound of laughter. It reminds him of being in the forest, surrounded by his band. Onstage, as in the woods, the river of adrenaline runs wide and missteps are fatal.

  Onstage, Levinson realizes that the line between reality and imagination is perilously porous.

  * * *

  Giving Sadykov no chance to say a word, Levinson places his hand on the young lieutenant’s shoulder and points at a photo of an acrobat, standing on his head, wearing tefillin. The object’s leather belt wraps around his right leg, from the knee to the ankle, like a black serpent or a weird garter.

  “That’s me, in 1921,” says Levinson. “Twice wounded, demobilized, but, overall, no worse for wear. Standing on my head, with tefillin. Do you know about tefillin, what that was?”

  “Khuy sobachiy,” says one of the boys. A dog’s penis.

  “Not quite a khuy sobachiy,” says Levinson, treating the idiotic insult as an argument in a learned discussion. “Jewish prayer rituals required every man to strap on two small black boxes, containing sacred texts: one on the forehead, another on the left arm. The ways of the shtetl had to go away. We were there to kick them down the stairs of history. With tefillin, we were slaves. Without it, we were free. Naturally, with tefillin, I stand on my head. Without it, I’d be right-side up.”

  Surely, the young man has no way to put this knowledge to use in his everyday life, but awaiting the lieutenant’s orders, he is in no position to get on with the well-choreographed business of search and arrest. The boys know nothing about Sadykov’s strategy of stepping back to let the maniacs rave till they weaken.

  * * *

  “Here I am, in 1935…”

  Levinson’s cane now points at a photograph of another group: actors on a large stage. It is difficult to find Levinson in that photo, and knowing that Sadykov will make no effort to do so, he points at a man in a harlequin’s leotard sitting atop a throne.

  “Yours truly as Nar. Pardon me, Shut. The English name of this character is Fool.

  “Kinig Lir, the opening scene. I sit atop the throne. Lir’s throne, until they chase me away. The Nar is on the throne.

  “Zuskin was in one of his dark moods. He stared at the back of the couch and couldn’t say a word. I was his understudy. Nar Number Two.”

  That performance marked the only time Levinson and Mikhoels, the two Solomons, played in the same scene. They were a poor match. What sense did it make for the Nar to stand twenty-two centimeters taller than Lir? Levinson would not have objected to reversing the roles. Indeed, he would have been a splendid King Lear. He would have played Lear as a wreck of the great, fierce monarch. He would have been a larger-than-life Lear.

  Alas, at GOSET, this wasn’t in the cards.

  Sadykov should not be judged harshly for failure to understand. Records show that in 1935, when this photograph was taken, he was trying to stay alive in an orphanage. GOSET’s celebrated production of Kinig Lir was outside his life experience.

  The reason for denying the humanity of your arrestees and your executees is simple in the extreme: you block them out, because as humans we have little control over our ability to listen. And when we listen—sometimes—we hear what is said. And sometimes this leads to a dangerous bond between the arrester-executioner and arrestee-executee. Nothing good comes of such bonds.

  Not trained to deal with floods of complicated memories, Sadykov and the boys simply stare.

  More important, let it be a cautionary tale that something in the photos sparks Sadykov’s curiosity, and, perhaps unbeknownst to himself, he stands by the pictures, studying the strangely shaped ladders of the stage sets, the large crowds of actors frozen in mid-pose.

  There is real Levinson brandishing a Japanese sword in the Civil War; Levinson, his fo
ot resting atop a Maxim; Levinson wielding a dagger in the GOSET production of Bar-Kokhba, a thinly veiled Zionist extravaganza about strong Jews. With great displays of swordplay, this story of a rebellion against Rome gave Levinson something Mikhoels was hell-bent on denying him: a chance to shine.

  “Next, we were going with Richard II or Richard III; I confuse them,” says Levinson in a barely audible whisper aimed at no one. “Imagine that … But then that war … Are you familiar with Richard II or Richard III?”

  Silently, Sadykov congratulates himself for allowing another old man to rave harmlessly on the way to Lubyanka.

  * * *

  Sadykov notices the photo of a dozen actors using the back of a Red Army truck as a stage. The truck is American, a battered Ford that ended up in the USSR by way of Lend-Lease. (Americans took too long getting into the war in Europe, but, thankfully, they did finance it, shipping arms and supplies to their allies.) Sadykov drove a truck like that once, years earlier, in training. Similarly to the Black Maria, the Ford was given a diminutive name: Fordik.

  Oddly, recognition that they have a truck in common makes Sadykov almost sorry that Levinson slips into a rant before he reaches that photo.

  Sadykov fails to recognize that in any house tour—as in any museum—it is crucial to notice what is left out.

  When World War II came, Levinson experienced a fundamental physical urge to fight. Whatever it was, it emanated from his very essence, and was an expression of who he was and why he lived. You can get in touch with such feelings onstage if you are very, very good.

  Under normal circumstances, Levinson would have returned to service in the rank of major. He would have preferred to enlist as a private, or perhaps as a commando, a leader of a small detachment that crosses enemy lines, operating under cover of darkness. In the previous war, this was Levinson’s biggest strength. In that war he sometimes felt the pangs of remorse for slitting the throats of fellow Russians, mowing down clueless Czech legionnaires, and running one raid into the camp of U.S. Marines. Sensitivity, even a little compassion, started to creep into his soul, and the saber wound (a slash across the back by a White Army officer just as Levinson’s sword entered his chest) came almost as a relief. He thought he was done with killing.