I got a fan letter--I mean email! It's from Russia With Love.

And no, it's not from Rosa Kleb. At least I don't think so....

The Novocherkassk Coat of Arms

Though I’m a man of modest talents, apparently I have fans all over the world, including Russia. Recently I received the following email. Some identifying details have been blacked out in order to protect the privacy of my Russkie admirer.

There’s so much to unpack here, so let’s begin. First, as a great-grandchild of Russian immigrants on my father’s side, I am flattered to receive such admiration from the Mother Country. Mr. Eduard Revenko says he’s from Novocherkassk, a city in southeastern Russia that borders the Ukraine. My dad’s respective grandparents lived in shtetls outside of Kiev (what we call Kyiv today), about 600 miles from Mr. Revenko.

Route from Novocherkassk to Kyiv, courtesy of Google Maps

Note the last five letters of the city name: “kassk.” That’s similar to “cossack,” which is no accident. Novocherkassk was the ancestral home of many a cossack. For those of you who don’t know, the cossacks were—among other things—a sort of paramilitary unit deployed by the Tzars to raid the Jewish shtetls, those small towns of Poland, Ukraine, and Eastern Russia. If you’re not familiar with shtetls, think of Fiddler on the Roof, which was adapted from the stories of Shalom Aleichem, pen name for writer Shalom Rabinowitz. Aleichem’s best known character, Tevye the milkman, lives in the shtetl town of Boyberik (changed to “Anatevka” in the musical). Boyberik itself is based on Boiarka, which was on the outskirts of Kiev. Yes, Kiev is the Ukraine, but then as now the area fell under Russian control. The more things change….

You probably remember that terrible scene in Fiddler where Russian soldiers raze their way through Anatevka, smashing up the wedding of Tevye’s daughter in the process. That’s a pogrom—and a genteel depiction of a pogrom at that. In reality, pogroms were nothing less than state-sponsored terrorism against Eastern European and Russian Jews. Cossacks burned and pillaged their way through shtetl after shtetl, all at the command of whatever Tzar was sitting on the Russian throne at the time.

Pogroms are why so many Jews fled to the United States. The story goes that when my grandmother was just three years old, the cossacks came roaring through her family’s shtetl. My great-grandparents fled to the roof of their home while cossacks below destroyed everything in sight. My great-grandmother held her hand over my grandmother’s mouth so the cossacks wouldn’t hear her crying, thus giving away the family hiding place. Shortly thereafter, they hightailed it out of Russia straight to Chicago.

Program from the original 1964 Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof

So I figured that Mr. Revenko—or “Comrade Eddie,” as I’m sure he would want me to call him—was writing to apologize for the past transgressions at the hands of his Novocherkassk great-grandparents. “So sorry about what happened. It was one of those parties that just got out of hand. Too much vodka, plus a few rubles from the Tzar…well, you know how those things go.” But as you can see, no apology. I guess he was unaware of our shared history. Or maybe he had moved to Novocherkassk long after the pogrom era and knew nothing about it.

Or maybe Comrade Eddie didn’t want to take a chance on offending me. After all, the man said he is “very much the great admirer of your activity,” by which I assumed he meant my writing. Granted, none of my works have been translated into Russian or even Ukranian, at least as far as I know. I did have a Polish translation of one book, which I’m sure impressed the Polska ancestors on my mother’s side.

What’s more, Comrade Eddie is president of my Novocherkassk fan club! I am to blush over that one. Fan club? In Mother Russia no less? In America my fan base is spread a little more thin. In other words, there is no fan club. Not that I would be against such a thing. I’m no Ernest Hemingway, but I’ll take what I can get. So if it’s Comrade Eddie and other Novocherkassk Arnie Bernstein fanboys, I’ll take it.

You’ve probably noted Comrade Eddie’s garbled English syntax and phrasing. When it comes to felicity of expression I’m a subpar pulp exploitation hack wannabe, only without the talent. Clearly, as demonstrated so eloquently within the quality of this email, Comrade Eddie is a diligent student of my work.

All he wanted was my photo and an autograph. I’m assuming that when Comrade Eddie asks “very much it would be desirable that the autograph nominal on my name,” he doesn’t want me to write something like “To Eduard Revenko and all my adoring fans in Novocherkassk. Good luck always! Sincerely yours, Arnie Bernstein.” Just my signature on a photo. That’s it. My Novocherkassk fans must be a humble lot.

Then there’s the invite to visit them. An enticing offer, indeed. I imagine a parade in my honor, a dinner filled with hearty Russian borscht, gallons of vodka, balalaika music, dancing (dare I dream a commissioned work by the Boloshi Ballet just for me and my acolytes?) and a speech, which Comrade Eddie would translate for my tearful fans, each one in awe to be in the presence of their literary hero. Perhaps there would be a statue of me unveiled in the town center of Novocherkassk, depicting me writing like fury, with adoring readers at my feet hanging on every word from the golden pen in my hand that inevitably would be part of this monument.

Novocherkassk party in my honor (Sergei Eisenstein rendition)

But maybe I’m taking things a bit too far. Yes, I know that my Novocherkassk devotees love me and very much they think much of my creativity. Why would they lie about something like that? And yet, for some reason, a teeny bit of me felt suspicious about Comrade Eddie’s request.

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard from an overseas correspondent. For example, in addition to my Russian ancestors, I’m also related to a Nigerian prince who was killed in a terrible auto accident and left everything to me in his will. All I had to do was front one of his banker friends a boatload of bitcoin to prove that I would act in good faith in the memory of this previously unknown royal cousin, twice removed. As it turns out, I have no blood ties to royalty. Not a prince from Nigeria. Not an earl from England. Not even a duke from a nonexistent European country in a Hallmark Christmas movie. When it comes to royalty, I can’t even draw a flush.

So, out of an abundance of caution I googled Comrade Eddie’s name. What I came up with astonished me. First, consider this acknowledgment from novelist Louise Cabral in her book The World Beyond the Pale: One Life Between Two Worlds:

Wait, what? Why that’s near word for word what Comrade Eddie wrote in his fan letter to me! I was shocked. But what was even more grating was this, a fan letter published on the website of another artist of whom the people of Novocherkassk also think very much of their creativity.

That’s on the Bram Stoker website. I don’t mean Bram Stoker, as in the iconic author of Dracula. I’m talking about an obscure heavy metal band from the late 1960s-early 1970s, a sort of goth rock group before goth rock was a thing. Comrade Eddie sent Bram Stoke fan webpage the exact same letter-slash-email as mine!

I was floored. All Comrade Eddie wanted my nominal signature, the kind of thing you would find on someone trying to create a fake credit account to suck my own bank account dry faster than Count Dracula could drain blood from Lucy Westenra (look it up).

So, in the end, despite my visions of groupies swooning at my presence whilst besotted on Beluga Noble, I decided not to send Comrade Eddie an autographed photo nominal on his name. Color me cynical.

Fame is fleeting.

The picture I always send fans who request a photo: my high school yearbook portrait, junior year. Was I not a catch? (other names masked because they were all jerks)

Thanks for reading The Typewriter's Collage. Share your thoughts in the comment section or on my various social media, all of which are linked on my website: www.arniebernstein.com. And if you happen to be Comrade Eddie, take a hike to Siberia, you cad.