“Let’s kill and flee,” says Kima.
Orphans have no patience for ritual of any sort.
OL’GA FYODOROVNA: How can we kill a man who may not understand why he is being killed?
LEVINSON: Why does it matter?
KOGAN: From the standpoint of ethics, Ol’ga Fyodorovna isn’t wrong. I am starting to wonder about this myself.
LEVINSON (reaching inside his rucksack to produce a janitor’s bucket): Ethics? What do you think we are?
LEWIS: Assassins.
OL’GA FYODOROVNA: Not I.
LEVINSON: Not you? Pray tell, what brings you here?
OL’GA FYODOROVNA: Pursuit of dignity.
LEVINSON: You’ve taken a wrong turn.
KOGAN: Indeed, my dear, assassinations are not especially dignified events. This is my first, of course, so I am only guessing.
LEVINSON: Enough! Please, Kogan, read your lines! I do not care what he understands. I care even less about her dignity and her pursuits!
OL’GA FYODOROVNA: How petty …
LEVINSON: Not those pursuits. He’s dead, besides. Please … sha! Somebody, read your lines!
KOGAN (reading): For you, Reb Iosif, we stage the first Blood Seder history has ever known. We will pretend that God did not stop Abraham’s hand, and human sacrifice flourished.
LEVINSON: We stage this play to make your madness real.
Had Solomon Mikhoels beheld him now, he would have seen his equal. Solomon Levinson is an actor who can direct, a director who can write. No wood. No splinters. Not a railroad spike in sight.
Watch Levinson seize the stage with energy, inspiration, movement. He hasn’t felt so young since 1921. On March 1, 1953, Levinson is wiser.
Directions read: The prisoner is inverted.
To hoist a man, you need two acrobats. Have them kneel down, then put one hand on each calf, another on the shoulder, and, yanking fast, stand up. The movement is machine-like.
Imagine this: the room is painted black. Chagall designed your set. There is no set, in fact. No seats, no stage. No right, no left, no up, no down. Let Marc design the costumes, too, and stick a cubist beak upon your schnoz. Make all the pieces click, biomechanically, machine-like, a modern unit fused in action.
The czar lurches forward, then to the side, but that is all — for even in his prime, his strength was meager.
Lewis and Kima grab a calf each. Each grabs a shoulder, too. Two acrobats invert the tyrant, as justice triumphs. Vault! The great biomechanical Machine of Truth is blasting off the dust and cobwebs.
Moscow time is 4:42 a.m.
The wheels of just revenge begin to grind.
* * *
When you are a little man with a crooked arm, you learn to protect your space. The arm is no problem. It petrifies, turns into granite, hard as a statue, which would be fitting, except the fingers curl. If you can part them with your right hand, a cigarette can be inserted. Or part them further and fold in a pipe. The left arm is decoration. The right arm is what you need when you make speeches.
The elbow moves forward, then back again, but not the arm. It hangs at an obtuse angle. And pain is close, lurking in the left shoulder.
As Stalin’s world inverts, he grabs the left arm with the right, to keep it in its rightful place, beside him. He needs no medical advice to know that his shoulder should stay unmoved.
He will be rescued by the guards or, better yet, the children. Inverted but intact, and held together with his own arms.
The children do not move.
“Tear them to pieces!” Stalin cries.
The children weigh allegiances. Specters often do.
LEVINSON: Kogan, your lines …
KOGAN (reading): It’s said that every generation, and every man, must find his freedom from his Egypt. Our times are cruel. We part one sea after another.
LEVINSON (holding up a flattened bullet): With this I killed a man.
KOGAN: Our freedom is won in battle …
LEVINSON: Against the czars.
KOGAN: Against the Fascists.
LEWIS: Against our brothers.
KIMA: Against the tyrants.
KOGAN: Against our God.
He must remember to hold his arm, to ward off pain. Blood rushes to his head. He needs to stand upright, ward off the pain that’s setting in the living nerves above that cursed dead arm.
Why do the children keep their frozen postures?
* * *
The specter lets the bullet drop into the bucket and, reaching into the rucksack, raises two gutted leather boxes.
KOGAN: Tefillin ripped. Twice desecrated. First by us. The second time by thugs. We gutted God for freedom. They are gutting us for gold, for sport, or for no reason at all.
LEWIS: To kill a man is homicide. To kill a czar is regicide. To kill a demigod is demideicide.
OL’GA FYODOROVNA: What do you call the killing of a madman?
LEVINSON: You have no script!
OL’GA FYODOROVNA: And yet I dare to ask.
LEVINSON: Meshugecide, let’s say!
KOGAN (reading): To kill this man is a sin times three.
OL’GA FYODOROVNA: A sin times four, you mean. Meshugecide brings it to four.
LEVINSON: Enough!
KOGAN (reading): A sin times three will equal one redemption.
OL’GA FYODOROVNA: Redemption without God? Incongruent.
LEVINSON: I wrote Without god. Lowercase.
OL’GA FYODOROVNA: Such nonsense.
LEVINSON (raises a jar of syrupy brown liquid): This blood is Kogan’s. Spilled by thugs, and mixed with snow and lard.
KOGAN: Let’s call it by its real name. A brown sauce mit shkvarkes.
LEVINSON: Consult your lines, old goat … please.
OL’GA FYODOROVNA: If your unleavened bread is called the bread of affliction, this sauce is something else.
KOGAN: Blood of affliction?
LEVINSON: Your lines! Your lines! Keep up the nign, Lewis.
KIMA: Let us rejoice at the wonder of our deliverance …
KOGAN: From bondage to freedom.
LEWIS: From agony to joy.
KIMA, LEVINSON, KOGAN, and LEWIS (reading together):
From mourning to festivity,
From darkness to light,
From servitude to redemption.
LEVINSON: Without god.
OL’GA FYODOROVNA: No, comrades, with Him. Tovarisch Stalin, I come here with an ode of sorts. I come to tell you how rich my life has been because of you. With a firmer hand than any czar, you made the Russian verse a game of life and death. Each time you raised the stakes, I felt a twinge on lips I kissed, on heads that later rolled. The more displeased you were with their songs, the more these men and women pleased me.
LEVINSON: I didn’t write this.
KOGAN: Next Year in Jerusalem? Is that the conclusion here?
LEVINSON: This is my play, you fool! I am at home! No! Forever here!
Who are these spirits? What power do they have to get me — Stalin — under their control?
His right arm slowly lets go, the left one drops, its angle widens, and pain pours in from shoulder nerves.
The world’s polarity has changed, and that which was above is now beneath.
* * *
“Judges, read the verdict,” commands Levinson.
The judges read:
“The accused, Stalin, I., is sentenced to the highest measure of punishment: the extraction of all blood, drop by drop.”
The czar feels a light pinch in his left leg and, released, warm fluid comes down upon his belly, his chest, his chin.
He hears a voice: “Why isn’t there blood?” It is a judge … Mikhoels?