“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 foot 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.
In the fateful summer of 1941, with Panzers roaring through the former Pale of Settlement, the urge to kill had returned.
In his late forties, Levinson was no longer prone to Byronism. Now, the urge was to kill and survive, and kill again, as directly as possible, preferably silently, in darkness. Levinson understood both who he was and who he wasn’t. He was a lone fighter, at his best in a detachment of fighters he knew, fighters he had learned to trust. No, a soldier he was not. He required autonomy. Taking orders was not his forte.
Yet, on June 27, 1941, five days after German troops poured across the Soviet borders, a commission of doctors found Levinson unfit for service. This finding came with no explanation. It was utterly absurd. He felt no less battle-worthy than he had been in his early twenties.
Within a week, Levinson was on a truck full of actors, heading toward the retreating Red Army. Yes, while the Red Army was abandoning positions, moving eastward, toward Moscow, Levinson and his players were heading westward, toward the Panzers.
He wanted to find the front even as it moved back toward Moscow, toward catastrophe. Whatever history dragged in, Levinson would be on its cutting edge. He fired few shots in that war, but he was there, always as close as he could get to the front. There were a dozen of them: musicians, singers, actors. For four years, der komandir brought the Bard to the trenches, mostly in Russian, sometimes in Ukrainian, and sometimes in Yiddish.
Since Mikhoels was nowhere near that truck, Levinson could choose any part he wanted. Mostly, he played Lir.
These performances invariably concluded with the stunt that made Levinson famous.
After the bow, Levinson came out of character and said, “I fought with swords in the Civil War, but I developed this leap onstage, to slay Romans. I think it will work just as well against the soldiers of the Third Reich.”
Levinson then picked up a pair of smallswords and, with no visible preparation, suddenly allowed his body to unfold into a dazzling leap, a pirouette with a sword in each hand.
With repetition, the leap became higher, faster. You might dismiss this as a vaudevillian display not grounded in character, but if you are inclined to be charitable, you might see that Komandir Levinson was leading Red Army soldiers on an airborne journey across the chasm that separates the stage from life.