After Kogan climbs into the cage, Lewis gets behind the wheel and Levinson in the passenger’s seat.
“I hope you don’t mind the company, Professor Kogan,” says Levinson, looking back through the bars as Kogan eases into the seat above the corpses.
“I do, to be honest. But it’s good practice.”
* * *
“Comrade Lewis!” Levinson calls out as the Black Maria passes by the Kazan Railroad Station.
“Present, komandir,” says Lewis, not looking up. The familiarity in his response verges on mockery.
LEVINSON: Comrade Lewis, what have you learned about our country over these past twenty-two years?
LEWIS: You are drunkards, brutes, barbarians. You have an exaggerated sense of duty and honor, which makes you reliable, and you are prone to messianic delusions, which makes you insufferable. Most of you cannot be counted among inhabitants of the world of real things. Am I missing anything?
LEVINSON: Where do I fit into this?
LEWIS: Not a drunkard, but the other things — yes.
KOGAN: I second that, Solomon. These comrades, whom you have offed, would concur also. Half of me wishes I saw that, the other half is glad I didn’t.
LEVINSON: I was speaking with Lewis. What have you learned specifically about our peculiar traditions of law enforcement, Comrade Lewis?
LEWIS: Law enforcement? Do you have that? Do you even have a genuine police function?
LEVINSON: Continue, Comrade Lewis, you are making a valuable point. What do we have instead of the police?
LEWIS: Do you have anything but terror?
LEVINSON: Excellent! Look at what we’ve done so far. I killed three MGB operatives. That’s three armed men. It was so easy. I am surprised it’s not done more often. We threw the corpses in the back of their Black Maria and drove through the center of Moscow, running every red light. We showed the MGB the corpses of their colleagues. And you, Comrade Lewis, were in whiteface through much of the operation. A badly done whiteface, at that.
LEWIS: Your point, komandir?
LEVINSON: I am not as far as the point, Comrade Lewis. Patience, please. Only questions for now. Here is another: In our country, what will happen if someone decides to break every law in the most flagrant ways imaginable? Comrade Kogan, would you like to answer this?
KOGAN: He will get far.
LEVINSON: I am still doing questions. Here is one more: What if, instead of resting on our laurels or crawling into a hole, we take this as far as we can?
LEWIS: Am I starting to hear a plan?
LEVINSON: I have been looking at our situation this way and that, and I see no way we can survive for more than a couple of weeks if things are left as they are. Even as stupid as they are, they will find us.
KOGAN: I concur, with obvious reluctance. Of course, this situation isn’t particularly significant in my case.
LEWIS: How can that be?
KOGAN: A competing life-limiting factor. Unrelated unpleasantness at the hospital. It’s complete idiocy. The Special Department wants me to make a preposterous public confession, name names, that sort of thing.
LEVINSON: Comrade Lewis, there is some chance that they will not learn about our connection. So this would be a good time for you to get back to your Siberia, dive under your desk, and pretend that nothing happened.
LEWIS: I thought of that, and I don’t believe it. It’s well known that I stay with you when I am in Moscow. Never thought I’d need to make it secret, so I didn’t.
LEVINSON: So you truly believe that you have nothing to lose? This is important.
LEWIS: Yes.
LEVINSON: I was hoping you would see it this way, because we could use you. You have a good strategic mind.
LEWIS: Use me for what?
LEVINSON: Patience! Not there yet! First, Kogan, am I to assume that you are up to trying something ambitious, something that may be our only hope?
KOGAN: Yes, you know my limitations. I don’t kill. Not anymore.
LEVINSON: Squeamish you’ve grown in your old age. Your hands will remain clean. What I do is my business.
Lewis, Kogan is a perfectionist in all of life’s endeavors. Since he has been a doctor much longer than he was a machine gunner, he may have indeed saved more lives than he has taken.
KOGAN: I hope so, Solomon. Do you believe you have reached the point where you can conclude your strategic onanism and tell us directly what your plan is?
LEVINSON: We are at that point, old goat. The plan is to escalate the process I have begun to its absolute furthest extreme. There is no point in halfway measures. They will not help us in the least. We must go for the top. The very top. Nothing less than a beheading will do.
KOGAN: Levinson, are you suggesting what I think you are suggesting?
LEVINSON: I think you understand correctly. Beheading … the top … eto odnoznachno. There is no way to misunderstand. You have to eliminate the root cause. How can I be more clear?
LEWIS: Beheading a specific individual or beheading the system?
LEVINSON: In our country, comrade, aren’t they one and the same?
KOGAN: Whom or what do you want us to behead, Solomon?
LEVINSON: Is something wrong with my diction?
KOGAN: Is something wrong with my hearing?
LEVINSON: Does it have to be one or the other?
KOGAN: Are you saying you want us to behead our beloved Iosif Vissarionovich?
LEVINSON: What other choice do we have?
KOGAN: You want us to behead the Great Stalin? The Genius of all Times and Nations?
LEVINSON: Was I so vague that you have to pester me with questions?
KOGAN: You are insane, but did we not know that?
This can’t be serious, Lewis concludes. Yet, Levinson’s demeanor suggests that it is, in fact, completely serious. He appears to be resolute, komandir-like. Unless, of course, he is acting.
“You scare me, gentlemen,” he says.
As a Soviet engineer, Lewis is trained to identify objective difficulties. These are daunting. How do you slip past thousands of soldiers of the MGB? How do you evade tanks, cannons, guard dogs, missiles, bombs? How do you get through the layers of defenses? How can you suggest such nonsense?
“How do we scare you, Mr. Lewis?” says Kogan. “Do you fear becoming an accessory to regicide?”
Is Kogan really getting involved in this insanity? Or is this the weirdest practical joke ever staged?
“No. Not that. Why would I give a shit about regicide? You know me better than that. I am just unable to tell whether you are genuine plotters or just two idiots.”
5
The purpose of art is to ennoble. The purpose of shtick is to stuff you with the rich diet of self-parody and self-hatred for no purpose beyond making you open the wallet and burp.
The timing of these heroic events—1953—coincides with the integration of Jewish humor into the American mainstream.
The Yiddish language is still heard in America’s streets. Yiddish theaters are still drawing crowds, and off-color humor fueled by vaudeville, jazz, and burlesque is flourishing in the Jewish Riviera resorts of the Catskills.
Jewish humor is completing its life cycle: blossoming, rotting, becoming shtick, transitioning into English. You can talk about Rodney Dangerfield and Henny Youngman, even include the young Lenny Bruce before he got real.
The purveyors of shtick may have been literally the American cousins of Levinson and Mikhoels. They would have been cousins who speak the same language and who are somewhat (not uniformly) aware of each other’s existence. Yet, they are cousins who exist oceans apart. And, more important, they have few reasons to like each other.