“Are they under arrest?”
“Comrade Stalin’s orders,” says Levinson, handing Khrustalev the mandate.
“Arrest Paul Robeson…,” the major reads, concluding with “blya,” a word that connotes a woman of loose morals, but is used in common speech for emphasis, melody, and balance.
“Paul Robeson?” he asks with disbelief.
“And wife,” adds Levinson.
“I’ll take a look,” says Khrustalev.
As Khrustalev creeps up to the back of the Black Maria to sneak a discreet glance, the lieutenant clenches his teeth, the soldiers sit stone-faced, and the Negroes smile politely.
“He looks young, but she is ugly,” Khrustalev reports to Levinson. “That nose … a coquette, too. Where did you find them?”
“Got them off a plane. They say our chekisty delivered them across the American border to Canada. They say he had a concert near Buffalo, state of New York.”
“Are they arrested?”
“That’s what it says.”
“Wasn’t he a laureate of the Stalin Prize?”
“So was Mikhoels. They think they were rescued, so — quiet…”
“Why are we standing here, talking? Let’s get them in, comrades. Let Comrade Robeson cheer up Iosif Vissarionovich.”
“He would love that. He’s been singing for us all the way from the airfield.”
* * *
Khrustalev walks through the Big Dining Room, singing what appears to be an English translation of a Soviet song:
Fdom bodda undoo bodda,
From oushan un-doo-dunn-blya,
Rayz aap, rayz aap, blya, ze layborink folk,
Ze go-od R-rash-shan folk!
He believes that he sounds a lot like Robeson, and perhaps he does.
Around the corner, outside the Dining Room, Khrustalev’s rendition concludes with a non-melodic “U-u-gh…” Excruciating pain emanating from the shoulder makes him bend over, albeit not low enough to experience relief.
Levinson has a talent for choking his victims while dislocating their shoulders in a wrestling version of a checkmate. This grip can be executed in a manner that causes death.
Inside the dacha, Kogan’s disgust vanishes. He sees a tasteful Frank Lloyd Wright interior, beautiful walnut paneling, comfortable chairs, a well-proportioned table.
* * *
That night, the children fail to show up, but specters bother the old man.
Five burst into his room, in robes of harsh red.
“What are you, doctors?” asks Stalin in his skull, but they don’t seem to be the same as that preposterous Yefim. They fail to answer.
Perhaps addressing them requires speech. He glances at the clock: 4:34 a.m.
“What are you, doctors?”
“Judges,” a tall specter says.
His is armed, it seems. He is holding a curved sword. The old man saw that sword before. Was it not brandished by Yefim?
“Defendant, state your name.”
He feels a hand — a corporeal hand — grab hold of his shirt collar and lift him up. A specter with a hand that grips is something new: a threat.
“Iosif Stalin. Who are you?”
The judges suddenly line up ominously like a firing squad. “Am I awake? Can this be real?” he thinks.
“Mikhoels, Solomon,” says the tall judge, the one who propped him up, and held him by the collar.
“Kaplan, Arkashka,” another specter says.
“Zeitlin, Yefim,” says specter number three.
“Akhmatova, Anna,” says the fourth.
“Robeson, Paul,” the fifth one says.
What is this? Some alive. Some dead. All known to him but one: Kaplan, or some such. Has the world changed? And this Yefim, again. The old man needs to adjust to the changing boundaries of his new life.
“Paul Robeson?” asks Stalin out loud.
“You lied, and I believed,” the specter answers.
“You wanted to believe, and so you did.”
“We sinned together.”
When did they lose their ability to hear thoughts? When did they learn to speak? Are the children different now, too? Will they still dance and play the way they did last night?
Mikhoels, who is clearly dead, and thus a harmless specter, has to differ from that Robeson fool.
“Mikhoels, do you think I missed the insult in your Kinig Lir? You called me a fool for liquidating your old friends. I banished Trotsky. Is he Kent? Cordelia Bukharin? Let’s cast Zinoviev, Kamenev, Yagoda. Which one’s your Edgar? Which one’s Edmund? I am not Lir! I kept my kingdom! I’ll make it bigger still, uniting Earth and hell to build a heaven.”
“I know why you had me killed. I grew too big for you to handle,” the tall one says. “But why kill Zuskin?”
“I read your article about Lir. You said so yourself: Lir and his jester are a single role. You taught me that the king’s the fool, and the fool’s the king. Agreeing, I decreed that the fool must follow his king to his new kingdom. Not me — the real Sovereign — but you, Mikhoels, the pretender. You left me no choice. You wrote the play. My job was to enact it.”
Levinson’s stage directions read:
Chief Judge begins a nign.
The melody is as simple as melodies can be. No words, just winding, wailing sounds, which souls carry into the heavens and back.
Ay-yay-yay-yay-yay-yay-yay-yay-yay
om bibibom-bom bibibibibom
ay biri-biri-bim-bom, biri-bim-bom
ay digidamdam-digidamdam, om-bibibibom-bibibibom …
* * *
“Yefim, I saw you minutes ago. You raised a sword. Was that a warning or a threat?”
“A mortal threat.”
“The day I fear the likes of you will be the day I die. I do not fear, so I live.”
“You lost your grip tonight,” the tall judge says.
“You lost your grip, not I. Here’s all one needs to know about Jews. You kill each other for a cause, and I control the cause and give you weapons. Then I sit down and watch. One couldn’t wish for a better sport. You mocked your God, you mocked each other’s deaths and threw the corpses to the wolves. This wasn’t symbolism. The wolves are fat. It’s real.
“Where is my fault, Yefim? Your people wanted me, and I was there.”
The nign continues, and its sound makes Kima touch Yefim, her father, like on those happy nights, when she slept in her crib, and he secured the foundation of their bright future. The contact of their souls produces hot tears that come from sadness and from joy.
Ay-ay biri-biri-biri-bim-bom
ay-ay biri-biri-biri-bom
biri-biri-biri-biri-bom …
* * *
Tears don’t cripple her. Her strength increases tenfold. Her hand is steady and her weapon poised.
The sun has yet to rise, and purring has begun.
The children slide off the illustrations and stand along the walls.
“I lived for you,” says Stalin to them. This time, he uses his voice.
They look indifferent, detached.
“Our kinig is addressing specters on the walls,” notes Kogan. “He is as mad as he is lucid.”
Levinson’s stage directions: The Chief Judge prepares physical evidence.