The Birobidzhan Affair: A Novel Read online

  The Birobidzhan Affair

  A Novel

  MAREK HALTER

  Contents

  Day One

  Washington, June 22, 1950

  The Kremlin, Moscow, Night of November 8–9, 1932

  Washington, June 22, 1950

  The Kremlin, Moscow, Night of November 8, 1932

  Washington, June 22, 1950

  Day Two

  Washington, June 23, 1950

  Moscow, August 1941–January 1943

  Washington, June 23, 1950

  Day Three

  Washington, June 24, 1950

  Birobidzhan, January 1943

  Washington, June 24, 1950

  Birobidzhan, February–May 1943

  Washington, June 24, 1950

  Birobidzhan, May–October 1943

  Day Four

  Washington, June 25, 1950

  Epilogue

  Notes

  Day One

  Washington, June 22, 1950

  One Hundred and Forty-Seventh Hearing before the House Un-American Activities Committee

  “PLEASE STATE YOUR FULL name and current address.”

  “Maria Magdalena Apron, Hester House, thirty-five Hester Street, Lower East Side, New York.”

  “How long have you been living there?”

  “Since last year, February 1949.”

  “Date and place of birth?”

  “October tenth, 1912, Grosse Pointe Park, Detroit, Michigan.”

  “Profession?”

  “Actress.”

  “Current occupation?”

  “I’m a drama teacher.”

  “You don’t perform? You just teach?”

  “Yes, at the Actors Studio, in New York.”

  “Are you accompanied by a lawyer, miss?”

  She just shook her head.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off her, and neither could anyone else. She was a beauty with a full face and sensual lips outlined in red. Blacker than soot, her hair was twisted into a chignon. Despite her plain black dress, fastened at the chest with a small silver brooch, she could easily have passed for five or six years younger than she actually was. She wouldn’t have looked out of place on the cover of a Hollywood gossip magazine. Except that her eyes told a less glamorous story. She could make their two deep blue irises as expressionless as Chinese lacquer at will.

  My name is Allen G. Koenigsman. In that spring of 1950, I was working as a columnist for the New York Post. The communist witch-hunt had been in full swing for three or four years. Thanks to McCarthy and his cronies, the country was beginning to swallow the idea that Hollywood and the East Coast theaters were infested with Stalin’s spies. For actors, directors, and screenwriters, a summons from HUAC, the House Un-American Activities Committee, was the source of many a sleepless night. I had already seen most of the cream of the studios paraded before the microphones, big shots like Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, Lauren Bacall, Jules Dassin, Elia Kazan, Bertolt Brecht, and Charlie Chaplin. All of them had done their best to prove they were good Americans and true anticommunists, but the list of stars who had failed to convince the Committee had just kept on growing. It was known as the “Hollywood blacklist,” black as death, so to speak. Anyone who found himself on that list might as well leave the studios, forget all about his ambitions, and find another job. Many of them had to kiss their families goodbye. Some of them preferred to leave the world for good. It was an ugly time.

  I hated attending the hearings. You didn’t exactly see humanity in its best light. But it was my job. I became an expert of sorts. And that day, I knew at first glance that the woman hauled before the Committee for a grilling was quite unlike any of the others we had seen on the stand so far. It wasn’t just because I’d never come across her name on a movie poster. There was something else. It had to do with her bearing, the way she sat with her hands folded in front of her, and her patience. She didn’t put on any of those simpering airs favored by typical Hollywood starlets, that knack they all had of giving their eyes and lips over to you like a promise in a dream. Not that she was any less beautiful—there was absolutely no doubt about that—but her beauty was not the work of MGM or Warner Brothers makeup artists. This woman had already seen life in the raw played out before her in her own personal drama. I’d have bet my life on it.

  As she persisted in saying nothing, Wood raised an impatient eyebrow. Congressman J. S. Wood, a chubby little man who always wore the same yellow tie with blue stripes, had chaired the Committee for the past year. He was said to be very pally with the actor Reagan, president of the Screen Actors Guild. Six months earlier, the pair had drawn up a list of actors suspected of being communists. I hadn’t seen Maria Apron’s name on that list.

  Wood rapped his gavel on the table in front of him and leaned in toward the microphone.

  “Answer yes or no, Miss Apron. Are you accompanied by a lawyer?”

  “I don’t see any lawyer beside me.”

  She motioned to the empty chairs beside her. I wasn’t the only one to smile. She had an accent, not a very strong one, but an accent nonetheless. And she hadn’t picked it up on Lake Michigan. It was the kind of accent that generally took German and Polish emigrants a couple of generations to shake off.

  The room wasn’t jam-packed like it usually was. Apart from the police guards posted in front of the doors and on each side of the platform; the congressmen and Committee representatives; the stenotypists; and the two official Congress cameramen, there were only four columnists, including myself. On Wood’s orders, the hearing was being held in camera, so members of the public were not admitted, journalists by invitation only.

  HUAC usually liked to make a great show of its hearings, but sometimes holding them in camera proved an effective way of drawing the media’s attention to an obscure witness. If there’s one thing a journalist can’t stand, it’s having the door shut in his face, and I was one of the lucky few to have been admitted.

  Why was that?

  It was a good question, but I had yet to figure out the answer. It wasn’t as if I was on especially good terms with the Committee. I wasn’t in the habit of baying for blood along with the rest of the pack. On two or three occasions, I had written in no uncertain terms that the methods used by HUAC were not the kind that people quite rightly expected of a country like ours. Nevertheless, the previous day, I had received a little card with my name on it, making me persona grata at the one hundred and forty-seventh hearing. And now that I was there, planted firmly behind the press table, watching the awesome stranger, the Red Army itself would have had trouble dragging me away.

  Wood flicked through some papers. He wasn’t a very good actor. When he tried to look stern, it only made his double chin look bigger.

  “Miss Apron, it’s my duty to remind you of certain rules. I must tell you that if you refuse to answer the questions put to you, you’ll be sent to jail for contempt of Congress. You should also be aware that the only rights you have before this Committee are the rights granted to you by this Committee. Have I made myself clear, Miss Apron?”

  “I think so.”

  “Answer yes or no.”

  “Yes.”

  “Please rise. … Now raise your right hand and swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

  “I swear.”

  “No. You have to repeat it after me: ‘I swear to tell the truth … ’”

  “I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

  “You may be seated. … The witness is all yours, Mr. Cohn.”

  And they were off. Wood settled back in his armchair and Chief Investigator Cohn set his gold pen down on the stack of files in front o
f him before getting to his feet.

  He was a smart aleck, that Roy Cohn. At twenty-three, he had the face of a boy or a pouting angel. He was always carefully dressed, tending to go for Logan Belroes three-piece suits, and had a soft spot for gray silk ties. His dimpled chin and full lips made him more than capable of a cute smile. With his neat parting and his glossy hair slicked back Clark Gable–style, it was easier to picture him dancing cheek-to-cheek than in the role of chief investigator. Nevertheless, that’s what he was. And if he did have the face of an angel, it was a devil’s angel.

  Young as he was, he had already earned himself quite a reputation. In two and a half years, he had conducted about a hundred investigations into “un-American” activities. You could count the suspects who had cleared their names on the fingers of one hand. Goodness knows where his appetite to add the poor souls to his trophy case came from, but it didn’t seem likely to be satisfied anytime soon.

  Once he was on his feet, he attacked without further ado.

  “Maria Apron, are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?”

  “No.”

  “You’re not a member of the Communist Party in the United States?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “And you never have been?”

  “No.”

  “Not even in a country other than the United States?”

  “I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “You’re not a member of the Communist Party in the USSR?”

  “No. How could I be?”

  “You’ve sworn an oath before this Committee, Miss Apron. I’ll ask again. Are you a member of the Communist Party in the USSR?”

  “No, I am not and never have been.”

  Her voice had changed and so had Cohn’s expression. Something had happened between them, but we didn’t quite know what. The chief investigator’s questions were not leading toward the usual trap. She had understood as much in a flash.

  “Are you a Soviet agent, Miss Apron?”

  “No. I’m an actress. That’s all.”

  “How long have you been in the United States, Miss Apron?”

  “I’ve just told you. You have my passport.”

  “You were born in the United States?”

  “Yes.”

  Cohn nodded smugly. His angelic smile widened.

  “You’re lying.”

  Holding up a green passport in his right hand, he turned to the congressmen.

  “The witness submitted this passport to the FBI. She told them her name was Maria Magdalena Apron, as she has just done here under oath. We checked. There is no Maria Magdalena Apron born on October tenth, 1912, at Grosse Pointe Park, Detroit. The FBI is positive that this passport is a fake. It’s a first-rate fake, but a fake nonetheless.”

  There may not have been many of us in the room, but every one of us gasped. Cohn waved the passport at the woman and had to shout into the microphone to make himself heard over the murmurs.

  Wood brought down his gavel a couple of times to restore order. Sitting on the woman’s left, I was at the right angle to have a good view of her face. Her eyes seemed to turn a deeper shade of blue. The powder she wore no longer hid her wrinkles or her pallor. I could imagine how she felt. It must be strange to realize that your life is in the hands of a brat who looks like a gigolo. Cohn liked nothing better than to play on his witnesses’ surprise.

  Without waiting for silence, he asked, “What are you doing in our country? Who are you?”

  He was putting on a good show. The congressmen and my colleagues were already rubbing their hands at the idea of the next day’s headlines. However, the unidentified woman remained stonily indifferent, her fingers clutching a white handkerchief on the table.

  Wood struck his gavel again.

  “You must reply to the questions put to you, Miss Whatever-your-name-is. You have just this instant perjured yourself by giving a false name, and the Committee could have you arrested right now. … ”

  We suspected that it would do nothing of the sort. Everyone was too keen to find out more. Cohn had some more surprises up his sleeve. He waved the passport again.

  “At the request of the Chief Investigator’s Office, the FBI has run some checks on this document. Its registration is one in a series of four ‘blanks’ created by the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, for one of its agents, which explains the quality. … I would remind the Committee that the OSS was in charge of intelligence gathering on espionage in the USSR until the creation of the CIA in 1947. Seven years ago, in 1943, an OSS agent infiltrated Stalin’s inner circle. His name was Michael David Apron.”

  Wood didn’t need to strike his gavel. For a few seconds, the clickety-clack of the stenotype machines fell silent. Cohn’s voice was so flat he may as well have been reading the weather forecast.

  “Agent Apron never returned from his mission. The OSS files show that contact was last made in summer 1944. Not a word since. … Not a word until this woman submitted this passport to the FBI claiming to be Maria Magdalena Apron.”

  When Cohn stopped talking, the Russian’s shoulders were hunched. A vein pulsed wildly at her temple. Her chest was heaving in and out, rapidly tightening and loosening the black fabric of her dress, making the silver brooch glitter. I never knew whether this was a measure of her acting prowess or panic, but her mouth didn’t open even a crack. Wood and McCarthy barked in time. For a few seconds, they did nothing but yell.

  “Did you kill Agent Apron, Miss Nobody?”

  “No!”

  “Who are you?”

  “How long have you been spying on us?”

  “I am not a spy!”

  “You’re lying!”

  “Who else is in your network?”

  “Nobody! I am not—”

  “You’re lying!”

  “No!”

  She sprang to her feet. I wouldn’t have expected her to be so tall.

  “I am not a spy, and I did not kill Michael! You don’t know anything! I did everything I could to save him.”

  Now we knew where her accent came from. Her eyes darted over to the congressmen, then to the press table. I must have worn the same look of a hungry wildcat as the others. Cohn may well have hit the jackpot. I began to have some idea what would be on the front page of the next Post. Those thoughts must have been written all over our faces in neon lights. She sat back down.

  “You’re right. My name is not Apron. Michael gave me that name. He gave me the passport too.”

  “Did he give it to you or did you kill him for it?”

  That was Nixon. It was the first time he had spoken. Every time he opened his mouth, his voice sounded like gravel.

  “No! No, it wasn’t like that!”

  Wood held up his hand to interrupt her.

  “Please resume your questioning, Mr. Cohn.”

  The Russian studied us all, one by one. Our eyes met for the first time. The blue of her irises was as dark as an abyss. Dark as fear, I thought. She closed her eyes long enough to draw a breath. I could count the lines around her mouth.

  Cohn resumed questioning in his smarmy voice. He did what he did best, displaying such cold conceit it was clear he didn’t think he was dealing with a human being.

  “Your name?”

  “Marina Andreyeva Gousseiev[1].”

  “Date and place of birth?”

  “October tenth, 1912, in the town of Koplino, south of Leningrad.”

  “When did you arrive on United States soil?”

  “In January 1946.”

  “Why did you enter the United States on a fake passport?”

  “Michael gave it to me. He—”

  “You’re a Soviet agent?”

  “No!”

  “Are you a member of the Communist Party?”

  “No!”

  “You have never been a member of the Communist Party?”

  “No! Never ever!”

  “You’re a Soviet but not a communist?”
/>   “I fled from my country because I couldn’t live there anymore, because Michael had to flee too.”

  “You fled with Michael Apron?”

  “Yes, we had no choice.”

  “Did you kill him?”

  “No! Why would I have killed him? I loved him. I’ve never loved anyone like I loved Michael.”

  “Jails are full of murderers who loved their victims, miss. How did you come by this passport?”

  “Michael gave it to me. … I didn’t kill him, I swear.”

  Wood’s voice boomed over the loudspeakers.

  “What will you swear on? The Bible or Stalin’s portrait?”

  There was laughter. Nixon’s voice could be picked out above the rest.

  “You have lied to this Committee from the word go, miss. You’re going to have to say more than ‘I swear’ to convince us that you’re telling the truth.”

  Wood gestured to Cohn to resume.

  “Where did you meet Michael Apron?”

  She didn’t reply immediately. The ghost of a smile flickered over her lips, perhaps because Cohn’s question had brought back memories, or perhaps because she had just caught on to the Committee’s strategy of bombarding the witness with yes or no questions that had to be answered in four or five words maximum, not a tactic that ever gave anyone a chance to explain.

  Cohn opened his mouth to ask the question again, but she jumped in first.

  “In Birobidzhan.”

  “Birobidzhan?”

  “He went there as a doctor. … ”

  Wood barked into the microphone, “Answer the questions. Where is Birobidzhan?”

  She paused for a second, holding Wood’s gaze, feeling in vain for a stray lock of hair in her chignon.

  “A Jewish state near Vladivostok. It’s an oblast, an autonomous region.”

  “A Jewish state in the USSR?”

  “Yes. It’s been there for a while.”

  “Are you Jewish, Miss Gousseiev?” asked Cohn.

  “Almost.”

  She had spoken in no more than a whisper, but everyone had heard.

  “You can’t be ‘almost’ Jewish, Miss Gousseiev! Either you are or you aren’t. I know what I’m talking about, believe me.”