Stateless (5 page)

And with that, Ari was driven away in a cloud of dust. It was the last time that Devorah saw her husband and the last image that young Shalman had of his father – driven off as a prisoner between two British soldiers.

Moscow, USSR

1943

F
ourteen-year-old Judita tried to stifle her yawn, but failed miserably as the elderly rabbi looked up from his Talmud just as she was putting her hand to her mouth. The rabbi looked closely at her to see whether there were any marks remaining on her face. Two weeks ago she'd appeared in his class looking like a whore with cheap make-up plastered all over her eyes and cheeks, an unsophisticated way of covering up the black eye and slaps which her father had given her the night before. The rabbi sighed. Such a brilliant girl; such a beast of a father.

And somehow, it was worse when it happened in the dreadful winters of Moscow. Children couldn't leave the house and so the tensions caused drunken fathers to flare up and so many wives and children were beaten. The rabbi thought of this as he pondered another problem with the winter months in Moscow. The windows of the basement where he taught the children were closed and became opaque from condensation; yet the paraffin heater made the room horribly stuffy. Judita wasn't the only one yawning, but somehow she was always the one Rabbi Ariel saw, the one he always looked at first when he glanced up from reading.

His half-moon glasses were perched on the end of his nose, his huge grey beard permanently curled from his constant stroking when he was talking or listening, his battered hat askew on the back of his head. Reb Ariel treated Judita more strictly than any of the other students in the tiny classroom. But she knew, because he often told her parents, that his discipline against her was harsh because of her potential, because she was by far the brightest student in the small school, and he was determined that she would become a great figure in the Russian Jewish community, even though she was a girl.

Classes were held in the basement of a public theatre on Bolshaya Bronnaya near Tverskoy Boulevard. The building was once the Lyubavicheskaya Synagogue until it was appropriated by the Soviet authorities for non-religious public entertainment. Though the students were all the same age, some were barely able to read a word of Hebrew. But Judita was able to read the Hebrew words as though they were as familiar as Russian. She was a natural linguist, and could speak a few words of almost any language just by listening to two people speaking it. Similarly, she could speak and read fluent Yiddish and enjoyed smatterings of Polish and German.

A young boy was reading aloud, wrestling with the words, and had already spent long minutes trying to get his tongue around the phrases. The rabbi shook his head sadly, and said, ‘Moishe, listening to you, I'm sure that the Messiah will decide not to come to earth for another generation. Your Hebrew is terrible. Learn, child. Learn! Practise. Now, Judita Ludmilla, read the next section.'

Without looking up, flawlessly and in a voice that was both strong and commanding of attention, the tall, thin handsome girl began to read the Hebrew, as though she was reading a novel by Pushkin. ‘
By your messengers you have defied the Lord, and have said, “With the multitude of my
chariots, I have come up to the height of the mountains, to the innermost parts of Lebanon; and I will cut down its tall cedars, and its choice fir trees; and I will enter into his –
'

Judita abruptly stopped reading and glanced up. In the silence, the entire class looked at her, very few of them really understanding more than the odd word of Hebrew she'd just read but comprehending that she had stopped short of finishing. The rabbi also raised his head, and felt doom descending. He knew that expression on her face. Judita both understood the Hebrew, and was about to ask one of her philosophical questions.

‘Rabbi, why does it matter where the wood came from?'

The rabbi looked at her curiously, as if he was failing to understand the question. Judita continued. ‘I mean, I understand the story but we live here in Russia. Why should this story matter?'

The rabbi was used to Judita's questioning but this was more blunt than he had anticipated. He pushed out a reply: ‘These stories tell us who we are, where we come from, our faith that God has chosen us – '

Judita cut off the rabbi by changing tack. ‘But Comrade Lenin said that all modern religions and churches, every kind of religious organisation, are always considered by Marxism as the organs of bourgeois reaction, used for the exploitation and stupefaction of the working class.'

The rabbi was speechless as the class drew a collective breath. He smiled, trying to brave her communist leanings. ‘Yes, child. All
modern
religions. Ours isn't a modern religion. Ours is the oldest and best and – '

Judita pushed on bravely. ‘If what Comrade Lenin said is true, and of course it has to be, then should we not reject these stories? What does it matter if we are Jewish?'

The rabbi was unused to being subjected to an inquisition by a fourteen-year-old girl, dealing with the difference between
the doctrine of the state and the doctrine of his faith. He was suddenly furious, and banged his fist on the table, yelling, ‘Judita!'

But as soon as her name left his lips he regretted it. The harsh booming of his voice shocked the class and even plucky Judita cowered for an instant. He realised in the shock of her face that he reminded the poor brilliant child of her father. But at the same time, he was furious that here, in the confines of his school, a Jewish girl could reject all that he represented, all that he was.

Suddenly, a distant noise of a door creaking made all of the students shift their attention from Judita to the front of their classroom. With the secret police everywhere, any unexpected noise could herald danger. They all looked at their rabbi, who smiled and nodded to give them confidence, but they knew from the forced smile on his face that he was feeling as ill at ease as they were.

The students listened intently to steps on the upper floors walking in the direction of the basement room. Then the steps – two or three or even more men – could be heard descending the stairs. The rabbi put his finger to his mouth, and whispered, ‘Quiet, children. Silence.'

All the boys and girls, as well as Rabbi Ariel, looked in fear at the door. Any interruption these days almost always spelled trouble. The door suddenly burst open, and three men stood there, dressed in the uniform of the NKVD, the Soviet secret police: brown army jackets, brown trousers, heavy black boots and a cap of purple and red stripes above the shiny black peak.

A tall man with a bushy moustache like Comrade Stalin's stepped forward into the room. He was followed by the other two men. All the soldiers were wearing moustaches. Without even glancing at the rabbi, he surveyed the boys and girls slowly, letting them know that he was suddenly in command
of the room. Only then did he turn and acknowledge the rabbi, who was staring wide-eyed at the three newcomers.

NKVD officers usually came at night to a person's home. They never knocked, but pushed the door in with their feet, dragged the occupants out to their truck, and then drove off. The householders were never, ever, seen again. Then, suddenly a new family would be in residence the following day, as though they'd lived there all their lives. Rumours said that hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people disappeared, never to be seen alive again.

No explanation, no comments from the neighbours, and certainly never, ever, a mention of the family who'd lived there the day before.

The rabbi started to speak, but the leader of the three men glared at him in such a way that all he could say was, ‘What can I . . .?'

‘You have a pupil. Judita Ludmilla Magidovich, daughter of Abel Abramovich Magidovich and his wife, Ekaterina Davidovna Magidovich. Where is she?'

The rabbi gulped and shook his head.

Without realising the implications of what they were doing, everybody in the room suddenly looked round and stared at Judita the moment the Russian policeman mentioned her name. She tried to diminish the size of her body. Ignoring the rabbi, the captain of the NKVD said, ‘Judita Ludmilla?'

She stood, and the rabbi tried to catch her eye, shaking his head fiercely, silently begging her to sit down. But she didn't.

‘Excellency?' she asked. ‘Why do you want me?'

He examined her. Most people whom he confronted, either at night in their homes, or in the prison cells of the Lubyanka, looked at him in utter horror. But this girl looked him directly in the eyes, and didn't flinch at all.

‘Come with me.'

She didn't move. After a long moment, she asked calmly, ‘What have I done?'

‘I said come with me.'

‘And I asked what I've done.'

The students, the rabbi and the other soldiers looked at Judita in astonishment. Nobody ever questioned the orders of a commanding officer, especially not a schoolgirl. And a Jewess. But instead of drawing out his gun, or screaming a command at her, he said, ‘Your country needs you. Now don't dawdle, girl. Follow me.'

Judita looked at the rabbi, who stood, and said, ‘Excellency, surely you've made a mistake. Look at her. She's only a child. Let me go with you instead. I'll answer all your questions. Let me send these children home, and – '

‘Silence!' said the officer, and he nodded to the other men in his troop, who walked aggressively through the rows, pushing desks out of the way, and grabbed the young girl's arm to hurry her to the door.

Before she left the room, she said to the rabbi, ‘Please, Reb Ariel, tell Mama and Papa that I'm fine and that all will be well. This is Russia . . .'

Once outside the school, Judita found herself in a truck on the way to the centre of Moscow. She sat quietly on the seat between the captain, whose name she didn't know, and the other men, who were never identified.

‘Where are you taking me?' she asked softly.

‘You're going to the Lubyanka,' the captain said, looking out of the window at the empty streets of the nation's capital.

She gulped. Every Muscovite, every Russian, was terrified of the Lubyanka, even if they'd never been to the centre of Moscow. It had a fearsome reputation. It was a place people went and never emerged, never returned. Some people said at night you could hear screams from inside.

‘What have I done?' asked Judita, desperate not to cry.

The captain finally turned and looked at her. ‘To ask a question like that, Judita Ludmilla, indicates a guilty conscience.'

Judita held her breath and fell silent. She knew she'd find out soon enough.

Comrade Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria walked the cold Moscow streets with his coat pulled tight around him. It wasn't a long journey to the Kremlin, perhaps a couple of hundred yards at most, but it could be the most dangerous journey in the world. Not because of criminals or car traffic. Nor was it because of the numerous checkpoints that were a constant threat to Moscow citizens. Beria was the State Security Administrator and Chief of the NKVD and so instantly recognisable to any solider and therefore safe in that respect.

No, the reason that the fifteen-minute walk was so dangerous was because he never knew whether he would return to his office or be murdered at the whim of his leader. Beria was powerful and influential but he was always walking the tightrope plucked by Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin, always in danger of being tossed into the abyss.

The walk was from the hill on Teatralnyy, down the street from Beria's office in the Lubyanka, past the Bolshoi Theatre and the Metropol Hotel and into the massive gates that punctuated the Kremlin's red walls.

Earlier that day his telephone had rung with the summons to meet with the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Beria assumed a particularly stern voice to the leader's assistant, saying that although he
was very busy dealing with great matters of state, he would make time to see the General Secretary, and would be there as soon as possible. The truth was that the moment the telephone's bell sounded, apprehension had gripped him. He could have ordered his car and chauffeur, but he needed the walk. He needed to be focused. He needed to think over the past couple of meetings with Stalin, and try to work out if he'd done something that might have angered the man. But what? Nothing! Or possibly . . .

He walked through the private entrance in the massive red walls of the Kremlin, and found his way over the vast courtyards to where the nation's most powerful man lived. While he was climbing the stairs to Stalin's office he pondered the deeply divergent paths the meeting might take. If Stalin was in one of his jovial moods, the two Georgians would sit for hours eating piroshky, drinking vodka and Alazani wine until the General Secretary fell asleep in his chair, and Beria could stagger home or to the apartment of one of his mistresses.