The Black Maria, the vehicle used by the Russian security police to collect prisoners (voronok, in Russian) coasts to a stop outside an address on Chkalov Street in Moscow. It’s the middle of a crisp February night in 1953. This is just a routine stop for Lt. Narsultan Sadykov and his two soldier assistants, who are there to pick up some new quarry to take to Lubyanka prison.
Thus begins “Act I” of The Yid, a tragicomic, theatrical novel by Paul Goldberg that is drenched in good measure with each of the following: Yiddish and Russian word play, a running commentary of authorial asides, ironic black humour, the awareness that all of life is a play, and the sort of intermittent bloodshed one would expect from a Shakespearian royal tragedy or the latest Quentin Tarantino film.
Sadykov’s quarry this night is Solomon Shimonovich Levinson, an old “Yid” (Jew) and former actor of the defunct State Jewish Theatre. Levinson is unlike many others in that he shows no hostility to the police and is polite and talkative as he gets ready to be escorted into the Black Maria. Sadykov is indifferent to Levinson’s jabber. He has learned that it’s best to let maniacs rave as long as they like, then nab them when they have talked themselves out.
As the state police conduct a search of Levinson’s room, he babbles on congenially about commedia dell’arte and points out a few framed photographs of himself in costume with his theatrical troupe. He points at a man in a harlequin’s leotard sitting atop a throne, and explains that it is him, dressed as the fool in Kinig Lir, the Yiddish version of King Lear.
READ: YIDDISH-SPEAKING PARROT NARRATES BOOK ON JEWISH PIRATES
A moment later, he is talking about his role in Richard II or Richard III. “Silently, Sadykov congratulates himself for allowing another old man to rave harmlessly on the way to Lubyanka.” As the search of his room continues, Levinson describes an on-stage stunt that made him famous: “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.”
Somewhere in his rambling, Levinson manages to pick up a couple of small swords and, at an opportune moment, puts the grand leap from his theatrical background to good use. His adversaries are no more and the floor is pooled with blood. Next the retired actor is quoting Henry Bolingbroke from the final scene of Richard II, who speaks of going to the Holy Land “to wash this blood off from my guilty hand.”
As “a consequence of Levinson’s brilliant pirouette with Finnish daggers,” Goldberg’s running commentary of the action informs us, “Bolingbroke’s parting line is awash in fresh blood, and comedy, tragedy and history abruptly join into one mighty stream.”
I’ve described this opening scene in detail to demonstrate not only how theatrical it is, but how much Goldberg breaks a modern authorial convention by intruding into the narrative to deliver backstory, irony or a linguistic note, usually with grace, wit and more than a touch of humour. This, of course, has been the time-honoured tradition of many a great storyteller before him, including Miquel de Cervantes, the 16th-century Spanish lampooner of knighthood and chivalry, and the 18th-century Scottish picaresque novelist Tobias Smollett.
Levinson’s spontaneous act of defiance sparks a revenge-motivated quest in which he and a ragtag group of unlikely heroes plot to assassinate the tyrannical Josef Stalin as he conducts his evil purges against the Jews. Historically minded readers will know that the action begins in what was the final week of Stalin’s life. The author cleverly sets the stage for this audacious piece of alternative historical fiction, since, given the time frame, it’s at least theoretically possible Levinson’s plot against Stalin actually succeeded.
The conspirators include Friederich Lewis, an American Negro (to use the parlance of the day) who came to Russia to build smelters and stayed to work as an engineer, and who has an uncanny resemblance to legendary singer Paul Robeson. Others are Aleksandr Kogan, one of Moscow’s top surgeons, whom Levinson, a military veteran, knew from his Red Army days, and Kima Petrova, an enigmatic young woman with a score to settle. As American author E. L. Doctorow did in the great novel Ragtime, Goldberg sprinkles his narrative with historical figures such as Robeson, Jewish artist Marc Chagall and Yiddish theatre entrepreneur Solomon Mikhoels.
Like a mad Shakespearean king, Stalin has filled his head with myths about Jews using blood for religious rituals and other malicious fantasies, and prepares a diabolical plan to cleanse the Soviet Union of Jews. Meanwhile, Levinson and his band of conspirators hatch a hilarious and violent scenario to eradicate him that seems reminiscent of Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds or Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 epic film Seven Samurai.
This daring debut novel demonstrates once again that when tragicomedy descends into farce, the anti-hero protagonists often undergo a symbolic death and rebirth with godlike powers. Paul Goldberg, the author of this notable novel, was born in Russia and immigrated to the United States in 1973. Currently a resident of Washington, D.C., he is the latest in a number of emerging American and Canadian fiction writers of Russian-Jewish background to make memorable and outstanding contributions to our literature.