A Question of Return Read online

  “Don’t spend too much time on Ehrenburg,” Laukhin said, taking the books from his shelves.

  “Your father seemed quite fond of him, if the journal is any indication.”

  “Ehrenburg brought medication for my aunt from abroad. Pain killers.”

  “He was unusually tongue-free with your father.”

  Paul appeared in the doorway for his session. “Should I come back later?” he asked.

  Laukhin glanced at his watch and the image of Ehrenburg and his watch suddenly came to him. Ehrenburg had surprised them with a visit three months before Laukhin’s father died. Pavel Laukhin could barely speak by then, and what he did say made little sense. No one knew how much he understood. Ehrenburg had stepped into the stuffy bedroom, looked at Pavel Laukhin’s swollen face, and, breathing heavily, complained the elevator again wasn’t working. He then sat down on the sick man’s bed and began to talk. He went on for some ten minutes, mainly about what a relief it was to him to see his memoirs in print, and how much more he knew and had wanted to say but couldn’t. He wiped his face with a white handkerchief while he talked. “A little truth is better than none at all, Pavel Nikolayevich, and for too long we’ve had none at all,” he said. Laukhin couldn’t believe his ears, and, briefly, he wondered whether his father had told Ehrenburg about his notebooks. As Ehrenburg stood up, Pavel Laukhin grabbed his arm and for an embarrassing minute wouldn’t let go, his gaze fixed on Ehrenburg’s large wristwatch. It was as if his mind was preoccupied with the only thing that made sense in the moment—the flow of time. Neither Ehrenburg nor Laukhin knew what to do or say, and then his father said “polnoch,” midnight, in a clear, powerful voice, and let go of Ehrenburg’s arm.

  Ehrenburg came to the cemetery too, leaning on his daughter, small, frail, aloof, shrewd, the ultimate survivor. He was, once again, at the centre of attention, with his memoirs being serialized in Novy Mir, and his letter in Literaturnaya Gazeta defending Yevtushenko’s poem “Babi Yar.”

  “Come in,” Laukhin said to Paul. “We’re done, or just about.”

  As he was leaving Laukhin’s office, Ben turned around. “What about this new fellow, Gorbachev. Will he be any different?”

  The incurable naïveté of westerners. “Why would he be any different? Gorbachev has been a protégé of Andropov, the KGB chief for many, many years. They’re all the same: spies, murderers, crooks.” He saw a faint smile on Paul’s face. He knew that smile, that look on his students’ faces—oh, there he goes again, Artyom Pavlovich and his hyperboles. Was there any point? Exasperated, he told them about the money Chernyenko had stashed away. When Gorbachev, his successor, had opened Chernyenko’s personal safe after his death, he found it filled with bundles of money. More bundles were found stuffed in the drawers of his desk.

  “How do you know such things?” Ben asked. “He died only a month ago, in March.”

  Laukhin switched to Russian. “How do I know, how do I know? What kind of question is that? I keep my ears open, that’s how. Gossip needs no carriage.”

  Ben was halfway out the door when Laukhin called him back. “Don’t go, not yet. I knew there was something else I wanted to ask you, and you just reminded me. I heard the Chernyenko story last night, from Galya Shukin-Baker. This brought Jean Lezzard to mind. You met him at the Bakers a week ago, not long before we left—short, shriveled, cranky. He owns an art gallery—Gallery Kerguelen-Lezzard—not far from here, on Hazelton Avenue. Remember what he said about the letters to his mother? I’d like you to go to the gallery and talk to him and, if these letters do indeed exist, get them.”

  He wrote down the address of the gallery and gave it to Ben. Then, looking at his two students, he said, “Today is an unusual day for me. It’s twenty-four years since my father died. And it’s exactly seven years ago that I got out. Seven years since I embarked on this. So many years. Who’d have thought?”

  * * *

  Monday was dedicated to his students and to his teaching duties. Helen’s hour with him was in the afternoon, just before his weekly lecture. He stayed late in his office afterward, wanting to have another go at the first Tsvetayeva excerpt in the bundle.

  He had sent it to the New Yorker as a sample. Via Bart, the editor asked him to prune it of excess names and variations of the same name, and to replace initials or abbreviations. He said that their readers would quickly lose themselves within the sea of names, and lose interest. One couldn’t expect the American reader to grasp, for example, that Yevgenya, Zhenya, Zhenka, Yevgenya Fyodorovna, Volkova, Y, and YF, were one and the same person. Laukhin would need, as well, to cull the number of characters. Tsvetayeva needed to emerge more clearly; right now she was drowning in a sea of other people.

  That morning, with Ben, they decided to drop all abbreviations, although they opted to keep some of the variations of the same name. “It’s part of being Russian,” Laukhin said, “all these Pavels, and Pashas, and Pavlushas, and Pavel Nikolayeviches.” They’d go along with the requested culling of characters too, and drop names and lesser incidents, and they’d use descriptors—Yevgenya’s husband, for example. They might even fuse two characters into one, if they were minor but the incidents in which they were involved were worth keeping. “It’s true, Ben,” Laukhin said, “the editor is right. For once. Too many names, too confusing to the readers. We don’t want to discourage them. It’s one thing when the journal comes out; the readers know what they’re dealing with, and they’ll have encountered some of the names earlier. But we don’t want unwary New Yorker subscribers turned off by an excess of names. We want to hook them, slowly reel them in.”

  “But dropping names changes the texture and feel of the journal.”

  “Just for the bundle, Ben.”

  * * *

  Tyomka was himself, of course, the three-year old Artyom Laukhin. Not that his parents had ever stopped calling him by that diminutive.

  Varya, the name his father had used most often in the journal for his mother, didn’t make Laukhin think of her. His father had called her Varenka most of the time. Varya’s parents had lived some distance away, on the road to Leningrad, and she often took her little Tyomka to spend the night there.

  The Volkovs were a highly placed couple. Through Yevgenya Volkova, they were related to the Molotovs. There was a lot about the Volkovs early in the journal. His father had been disturbed by his addiction to the Volkovs—that’s what he had called it, an addiction. Yevgenya Volkova held a salon—if the term could be applied to Moscow’s society in the thirties—where artists, writers, academics, and more mysterious and mundane comrades, gathered and tried to relax. No doubt, his father had been in love with Yevgenya Volkova. Love or lust. She had both beauty and wit, and was generous with both gifts. Stalin liked to flirt, and Yevgenya Volkova thought she had some influence on him. The Volkovs were shot after the war, in 1949, she first, he a few months later. There were rumours that she had been raped before she was killed. Either that, or she had tried to find a way to stay alive. A gory version of their end was that one of Volkova’s breasts had been cut off and presented to her husband to make him more cooperative with his interrogators. “Stone-arse” Molotov did not put up much of a fight. He had not fought for his own wife either.

  Tsvetayeva was Marina Ivanovna Tsevtayeva, the not yet famous poet who, reluctantly following in the steps of her husband and daughter, had just returned to Russia from the West with her son Georgy.

  Aleksandr (Sasha) Cornilov was his first cousin and a young poet of some promise. The son of his mother’s much older sister. The difference in age meant they had little to do with each other, but there was more to it; his father never got along with Sasha Cornilov.

  Fadeyev was the well-known novelist and for many years the first secretary of the Writers’ Union. A favourite of Stalin.

  Shnaideman was an old friend of Pavel Laukhin. An obscure poet and critic.

  Pavliuk was an enigma. Laukhin remembered him as a large man with a laughing face. He might be wrong, th
ough—to a child most adults are large. And Pavliuk’s novel Steel Tracks didn’t ring a bell at all. He had asked Colson and a few others in the department, but no one heard of it. How could a successful novel sink without a trace?

  He jotted down his thoughts on the needed changes. Ben should have another go at it, and then he’d have a final one. The excerpt had immediacy and drama. There was always drama around his countrymen, no need to strive for it. He still wasn’t sure how to connect the Tsvetayeva excerpts, and he wondered whether to leave out a few. He needed another chat with the editor the New Yorker had assigned to him. The space was limited, that he knew, but he also knew that it would be changing almost every week, and he was inclined to prepare several versions, each of a different length, in order to be ready for all eventualities.

  Wednesday, 25 October, 1939

  I saw Tsvetayeva tonight at the Volkovs.

  I’m jumping ahead. An exhausting day. Exhausting and wasted. I have not written a word, and it’s tomorrow already.

  Can’t get Tsvetayeva out of my mind; been thinking about her since I left the Volkovs, two hours ago. That image of her, wandering about, lost, bewildered, grey, drained; the hush and void that moved with her.

  I’m drunk—always am when I get back from the Volkovs—that’s why I keep jumping ahead. Here we go, from the end of yesterday.

  In the morning I went to see Shnaideman, who had taken refuge at his stepfather’s dacha in Barvikha for a couple of weeks. It was a windy day, cold but sunny. It had rained the night before and the roads were heavy. We walked and talked for much too long. Shnaideman can be a pain sometimes, and he likes to show off and to lecture, but he’s often amusing. Got back to Moscow tired, hungry, and with a nagging ache in the toes of my left foot. Could it be gout? Couldn’t be, too young. More likely bad boots.

  Varya had left a note on the bed. She had taken Tyomka to her parents and they’d stay there overnight if it got too late.

  I lay in bed for a while and I might have fallen asleep when, through the thin wall, I heard the Marchuks at it again. Drunk, shouting, the usual drama. You’d think their newborn would keep them busy and they’d forget to quarrel for a while. No such luck. I dragged myself into the kitchen for a glass of water. The sink was full of dirty dishes. Pigs!

  Washed, changed and went out.

  What is it about this urge, this addiction, this need to be and to be seen at the Volkovs? What’s the attraction? Obviously, the large, well-lit, comfortable apartment, warm even on the coldest day. The delicious food and the drinks, of course, the latter in endless supply, often in bottles with exotic shapes and labels. The people too, amusing, intelligent, informed, lethal. Learning about this and that, spicy gossip, and hearing news intended for only a select few and best not repeated. A sliver of danger, a gentle frisson of terror—always just a touch, though enough to keep you on your toes and buzzing. Like being in love without knowing what the object of your love has in store for you. The Volkovs, so free with their words, so critical and cynical, and yet so closely connected to the elite of the elite. Connected to the court, some say, delighted by their own audacity in the face of the threat that everything you say might be reported. And I keep going there, wishing to be daring and witty, in spite of Varya’s warnings and unhappiness. Like a moth to a flame, Varya told me, a form of Russian roulette. Could those words see me taken away in the middle of the night? Could this joke bring the Black Marusya to our door? The worst part is that after a few glasses you start to let down your guard, and who has only a few glasses at the Volkovs? Is being drunk a defence? Can’t be, or nobody would be convicted in our blessed country.

  Of course, in my case, Yevgenya Volkova is the added attraction. The other night I dreamed of her again. We were in bed together, with Varya watching from not far away. I was aware of Varya’s presence, although I wasn’t sure where she was or of how things would unfold. I was begging Yevgenya to change sides. She was mocking me—that’s all you’re interested in? She straddled me, and her breasts, her magnificent breasts, glimpsed and often fully imagined, were suddenly there in front of me. I stretched out my arms but my hands went through them, touching nothing but air, and I woke up.

  Yevgenya hardly looked at me tonight as we crossed paths in her large rooms, and yet she made sure that her hip brushed me slightly as she floated past. She was playing, quite aware of the effect she was having on me. On most men, actually, but she always picked just a few for her cruel teasing. I was one of them. Pavliuk said this was only the prelude, the acceptance into the antechamber from where I’d be beckoned to her bedroom. If only.

  Tsvetayeva was already at the Volkovs when I arrived. It was there that I saw her the first time, maybe a month ago, when Pasternak brought her and Sergey Efron, her husband, along. Pasternak had hoped to find Fadeyev there, and he didn’t stay long as Fadeyev had sent word that he wasn’t coming. Her husband had wanted to leave too, but Tsvetayeva insisted on staying. Efron went by a different name, “Andreyev” I believe, but everybody quickly learned who they were. Yevgenya’s husband became quite upset when, getting home late, he saw them there, in his house. Yevgenya, who had been gracious to Tsvetayeva throughout the evening, shouted at him to stop being an ass. Pavliuk witnessed the scene and reported it to me with a drunken grin. Pavliuk had pointed out the odd couple, whispering that they probably shouldn’t be there; not good for them, not good for the Volkovs. Later he introduced me to Tsvetayeva, who told me that she and her husband had come back to Moscow to see if anybody knew about the fate of their daughter. That’s why Tsvetayeva insisted on staying, hoping against hope that somebody would have heard something, and that this something, however vague and doubtful, would be whispered to her.

  This time she came without her husband, and I knew why. Her hair—grey, rat-like—was parted on one side. She moved like a rat too, a trapped rat, with hurried, jerky motions and then, suddenly, standing ramrod straight and staring. She is not an attractive woman, and she was the worst dressed. I wondered about the stories of her many affairs, how true could they be? Everything is grey about her, like the smoke from her unending cigarettes. It is impossible to figure out the colour of her eyes, even when she is close by, talking to you. Blue, green, grey? A light shade in any event, dissolved, as if their initial strength had been washed away by many sorrows. Poverty is not kind to eyes either.

  We talked. She said she didn’t know where to turn. Her husband had been taken away a few days earlier and she had not slept since. She was losing her mind. First, her daughter, and now, two months later, her husband. Would she be next? Or her fourteen- year-old son? She had returned to Russia because her daughter and husband had returned, and now they were both gone. She was beginning to think that she was the cause of their imprisonment. Why else would they both be arrested so soon after her return? She stopped and looked around her, as if hoping for an answer, and then went on. Her return to Russia had been a terrible mistake. But her daughter chose to return, as did her husband, he with very little notice. For two years she had agonized over whether she should follow them here. For two years she was unable to decide. Two years obsessed by the question of her return.

  She said she wasn’t sure why she was telling me all this, she barely knew me, but she had lost all sense of what was reasonable or appropriate, and she didn’t know where and to whom to turn. She was exhausted, with little hope of making a living from her poetry. She had gone to see an old friend from her Koktebel days whose job had something to do with movies, thinking that he could find some translation work for her. Not that she had much hope about what he could or would do. Only his wife had been at home, and she had shut the door in her face, shouting that they wanted nothing to do with her. If they’d let her teach at least—again, not a chance. She asked me if there would be any work for her at the Union—lowest clerk, anything. There was desperation in her eyes. Desperation and tears. I told her I’d see what I could do. I mentioned Fadeyev. She said she had already appealed to him, and that h
e had talked about some possible translation work. Georgian poets, some Baudelaire if she was lucky. I told her I’d talk to him myself—and to others too—about her situation. (I have no influence, and although I intend to do it, I know that I won’t be able to help her.)

  She smoked one cigarette after another, the smoke as she exhaled giving the impression that her thin body, covered by that dreadful grey dress, was slowly sublimating under my eyes into a grey gas.

  It was hard to listen to her. The last thing she said before I pulled away was that she had no place to call her own. She moved from one place to another, with her son, Georgy. She didn’t need much, but her son often yelled at her, blamed her for everything.

  Georgy was there with her. I’d heard he’s not quite right and that he’s nasty to his mother. He seemed together to me, and was polite, when I exchanged a few words with him. He ate the entire evening and kept away from his mother. Big for his age—somebody said he was fourteen.

  The odd war in the West, with its lack of battles or movement, was a main topic of conversation. Sneers too. The German-Soviet treaty, which had stunned everyone only two months ago, was now being talked about, and the vozhd’s wisdom was on everyone’s lips. Such foresight. The only one who realized you could talk to Hitler. We were not threatened anymore, and it was not our war. Let the capitalists destroy each other.