The Poets' Wives

by David Park

  The queue shuffles a little closer to the window. Even before his first arrest his fellow writers, his so-called comrades in the Writers’ Union, had cast him into the wilderness. She recalls with fresh bitterness how no one would publish his work, no one would accept his contributions to their magazines, how people snubbed him in the street. The only work he could find was a few poorly paid bits of translation. There are those too who insist on describing him as a former poet and refer to him as a translator. But the poems exist and in those years of exile in Voronezh the knowledge that his time was short spurred him on to write, the words tumbling out of him so that she could hardly keep up with their transcription. From under the shadow of death, out of his mouth and out of his heart and soul, a whole other world spinning through the excited but careful accuracy of her hand and on to the scraps of rough paper that were their only manuscript. Written on scraps and then written on the heart.

  She stands in the queue that appears to move ever slower the closer they get to the window. The old woman’s wails have disappeared but seem to echo and linger in the renewed silence. It is what they all fear and fear it more with each step that brings them towards the moment when the clerk will look at his lists of names – something that always takes a long time until the wait becomes almost unbearable. Sometimes the wait and the fear reduce the woman’s voice to a hesitant whisper, or even drain it completely, and then he will snarl at them to speak up. Perhaps the clerk enjoys this power over them. But does he feel nothing when he bluntly tells them their loved one is dead and then is unable, or refuses, to give any further information? Perhaps he experiences only satisfaction that another enemy of the people has perished for their heinous crimes. The inevitable stream of questions about where and when and how are dismissed by the shout of ‘Next’ and she has seen more than once the suddenly bereaved shouldered out of the way by the person behind her in the queue. In these times the living always take precedence over the dead.

  Everyone believes she is watched, perhaps even here in the midst of this long line. In every apartment block there is at least one police spy who seeks to ingratiate him- or herself with their masters by supplying information, or by denouncing someone on whatever pretext is available. Sometimes in Moscow they were visited by strangers who made little attempt to disguise their official employment while others purported to be admirers, lovers of literature, and sought to entice Osip into saying something that would incriminate him, or ask for a copy of a particular poem that they supposedly loved so much. On occasions the flat was searched in their absence and such was their sense of power that they were happy to leave their calling cards – cigarette butts in the ashtray, a drawer pulled out but deliberately not closed. As she stands in the queue she tells herself that they cannot search the hidden folds of her heart.

  The sky is opening itself as if it might snow again and as she turns her face to it she wonders what these women have had to sell as they desperately seek to find some money to make the parcel. She herself has become a beggar, going in desperate hope from friend to friend, from family member to anyone who might be able or willing to give something. Sometimes doors were closed on her – in one place she was told to wait but no one returned as they had suggested they would. Despite Pasternak’s kindness and his intervention on Osip’s behalf, soon his wife will tell her not to come to their house. Others scrape together whatever they can spare. Once someone silently slips an envelope into her pocket. Perhaps there are even women standing in the queue who have had no recourse but to sell themselves and she knows already that there are some who having lost their husbands have sought protective shelter in marriage or relationship with some Party official. She does not judge them. There are enough others whom she does.

  She thinks of those fellow writers who refused her husband clothes after his return to Petrograd from the Crimea and when he had nothing to protect him from the winter. The only means of getting clothing was from the exchange of vouchers and it was one of those at the top of the Writers’ Union who authorised their issue. When Osip had asked for a jumper and a pair of trousers someone had scored out the word trousers on the voucher. ‘He’ll manage without,’ was what he had said. So Osip who was reduced to such a level that he had to ask for a pair of trousers was refused while the Union of Writers could find dachas and apartments and who knew what other luxuries for those so-called writers whose talents didn’t merit being mentioned in the same breath. It angers her again that he has been subjected to such indignities, angers her more than he ever showed, so she takes his and adds it to hers. Then as the queue shuffles a few feet forward again she finds comfort in telling herself that the judgement of history will pay them back. It’s what she has to believe. Their work is dead, withered on the vine, and she takes pleasure in that. So now there will be no poetry as true and beautiful as that her hand transcribed but only the doggerel that they justify by calling it proletarian art. Perhaps if he could have done it he would have survived but it wasn’t in him. Even when Lakhuti organised for him to see the construction of the White Sea Canal and write something appropriately celebratory about the revolution’s power to transform and master nature, Osip couldn’t do it. It was an abomination to him, the poem he produced feeble rubbish, and nor could he ever bring himself to disavow what he had written in the past.

  So it’s one of the poems that she recites now, recites over and over until the words seem to become part of her, flowing along her consciousness into the quick of her being with no longer any need for memory or the imposition of her will. It feels like they suffuse her breathing and her consciousness and for a second she worries that the words will print themselves on her face and force themselves into the light. If she had a mirror she would look to reassure herself that her imagination is playing tricks on her. And there is the deep pleasure of listening to his voice again because it is not hers that she hears and she knows she will never let it stop speaking. As long as there is breath in her body the words will exist. So during the long wait in the queue she uses the time to recite the poems until she has little understanding of how many hours have passed and how close she is getting to the window. But something suddenly disturbs her and makes her look up and frees herself from the silent incantation.

  She stares at the woman in front. The droplets in her hair and the little blisters of snow on her shoulders have dried but the silver strands seem to have been polished brighter. It must be the changing light. There is something wrong. She sees that in the almost imperceptible rise and fall of her shoulders, the slackening of her neck muscles and the way her hand moves repeatedly to her face. And then amidst the shuffling feet and stifled coughing she hears her breathing begin to quicken and deepen. Instinctively she reaches out her arm and rests it on the woman’s shoulder but drops it again as she feels her whole body start under the touch. In that second she had also felt the woman’s thinness, her shoulder blade pressed up tight against the skin as if trying to break free. The woman turns her face to look at her and reveals dark rings under her eyes, the hollowed cheeks that make-up has been unable to disguise. Her eyes are closing as if succumbing to an overwhelming weariness and she is about to fall asleep on her feet.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asks.

  ‘I feel faint.’

  There are no chairs, nowhere to find her a seat, and anyway after three hours in the queue she knows that neither of them will want to give up their place so close to the window. She looks around her but sees nothing that can help so she steps forward and puts her arm round the woman’s waist and feels her lean the little weight she has into her. The smell of onions and cheap scent quickly occupies the space she has just vacated. There are tiny beads of sweat on the ailing woman’s forehead and her face is drained of all colour. She gives her a little handkerchief and watches her use it to wipe her brow then dab the corners of her mouth. They move forward a couple of steps in tandem. The young woman holds her head up and breathes deeply, desperately trying to inhale fresh air. After a while her
breathing becomes more regular and she is able to straighten herself a little.

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ she whispers as she wipes her face again.

  ‘How far gone?’

  ‘About four months.’

  ‘Is there no one you can get to queue for you?’

  ‘Who can I ask? Who wants to risk themselves for someone else’s husband?’

  She understands so says nothing in response. There are only half a dozen people ahead of them now and she is momentarily distracted from the young woman who still leans against her by a rising pulse of fear. Already she has caught her first glimpse of the clerk’s face and felt the dryness in her throat.

  ‘A child who will never see his father,’ the young woman says.

  ‘He will come back,’ she says and then wonders what right she has to comfort a stranger with a lie.

  The woman slowly shakes her head in silent denial before saying, ‘A father who will never see his son.’

  She says nothing in reply but instead asks her name. She tells her that it is Marta and then confesses her shame at the paucity of her parcel’s contents.

  ‘We’re all the same,’ she tells her, ‘scraping and borrowing to find something to send.’

  ‘How will we survive?’ the young woman asks.

  But she has no answer for this and she listens as the young woman takes deep breaths. Somewhere on the other side of the wall a man’s voice laughs. She feels her slowly ease her body away as she tries to refind her own balance. The young woman glances at her and whispers, ‘They took him a month ago. My husband is a good man. He would never do what they say. He is an engineer?. . .’

  But she gently hushes her then whispers, ‘They are all good men. Be careful what you say.’

  ‘We quarrelled the day before he was taken – about something so stupid that I cannot even bear to remember it,’ she says as she holds the handkerchief to her eyes.

  ‘He will not think of it, he will think of only you. Your love will keep him strong,’ she says. ‘And you must be strong for the child.’ Then she steps back into line and the young woman without turning round lets her hand move behind her and she takes it and clasps it briefly before they release their grip again.

  She holds the sensation of another’s hand in hers long after they have let go. There feels a momentary strength in it that contains the promise of endurance, the possibility of survival, that each of them is not alone in the world. The queue shuffles forward. Almost there now. She recites his words, believing they will exert their own protective strength, and it is important the closer she comes to the window that all he has written and all that is him in each of the poems will stand resolute. She layers the words across her heart, a dancing line about pear and cherry blossom. There is a sudden synthesis of voice and scent and colour that breaks and shudders through her senses. A mother and her child walk past her having delivered their parcel. How many millions of parcels tied with string or sealed with wax? How many ledgers of names? She finds the strength to smile at the child but she stares back with expressionless eyes. She hopes that despite her eyes she too carries words in her memory – a favourite story told before sleep, a simple expression of love, or a father’s sentimental song from better days. She recites again, the power of the words involuntarily making her lips move. The young woman in front has reached the window and eventually after the drawn-out bureaucratic requirements she hands over her parcel so a slender possibility of hope still exists for her. Then she turns away tightly gripping the receipt that means her husband is still alive somewhere in the world. As she passes their eyes meet for a fleeting second, a slight bow of the head offers a final thanks and then she too is gone.

  So now it is her turn and she tries to clear her throat so that when she says his name her voice will be clear and strong. The clerk’s head is still down, writing something that is hidden from her. His white papery scalp is visible through the thin gauze of his hair. She stands perfectly still, invisible to him. She tries to tell herself that she doesn’t feel sick but everything is tightening inside her as she finds herself inescapably drawn to the void that stretches beyond the window. He looks up, his eyes blinking behind his pince-nez. There is a smear of ink staining his fingers. He is a little hard of hearing so it is his good ear he angles towards her. Then at his demand she raises her head, gives the poet’s name her voice.

  2

  1936

  After their banishment in Voronezh has ended, they risk a journey to Moscow hoping to raise money and speak to those who might help their situation. On the train they do not talk much but stare out at landscapes that have finally been surrendered by winter and are slipping into the first full flush of spring. No one makes eye contact with anyone else. They say there are some who ride the trains simply to listen for those whose tongues have been loosened by the illusion that they have been afforded the privilege of a private world momentarily separated from the rest of their lives. Everywhere white-barked birch trees quiver into loose-limbed leaf. Thick collars of pine tighten around tiny hamlets so it looks as if they are choking the life out of them. They pass ragged ribbons of villages that outwardly look as if history has left them untouched but she knows that this too is just another illusion and remembers the dispossessed kulaks and peasants who beg for food in the streets of Voronezh.

  The money she had been given by the women who turned up at the apartment after his arrest is now exhausted. There is no work despite Osip going on a regular basis to the local Writers’ Union. Even the translation has ended. In the winter they will stop his pension. They live on cabbage soup and eggs, manage when they’re lucky to acquire tea and butter, some cigarettes. She has made earlier trips to the Moscow offices of the Writers’ Union where she sees Marchenko or Shcherbakov but their faces are blank and stony, their eyes hard, and she knows they have no help for her. At first she thinks her words can be sharp flints that will chip away at them until she carves out the human beneath the surface but their impassive faces blunt her pleas and she goes away empty-handed.

  In Moscow outside the railway station they see Petrov who once loved nothing better than to come to the flat for supper and debate. Osip raises his hand in greeting and she watches it freeze in the air as Petrov turns on his heels and crosses to the other side of the road. They are plague carriers, marked as infected, contagious to all who come in contact with them. Only the strangers rushing through the crowded streets or piling on to the overcrowded trams are able to brush against them, briefly share the air they breathe. But even then the protective shield of anonymity feels paper-thin, able at any moment to be torn asunder, and so they huddle closer together as each moment torments them with the possibility of denunciation. She listens to the struggle of his breathing and is frightened that the journey will prove too much.

  ‘Let’s not judge him too harshly,’ he says suddenly.

  ‘We were always good to him,’ she replies. ‘Why must you always be like Christ, offering your cheek to the betrayer?’

  ‘Because he’s a weak man and who knows what fear has worked in him.’ And when she doesn’t answer, ‘Put your sword away, Nadia, he needs his ear if he is to survive.’

  She goes to reply but reluctantly stops – they have no energy to waste in arguments about Petrov – and tells herself that perhaps it is because he has tasted fear he is not so quick to judge.

  It was one of those who came to their home and was present at the reading of the poem about Stalin who betrayed them. Petrov had not been there that evening. She sees the circle of listeners in the faces of the strangers who stream all about her and wonders who it was and knows it is the curse of the age to suspect even those whose heart bears nothing but love. There is a sudden commotion on the pavement. A woman is shouting and waving her arms, berating a younger woman who is bending down to gather up carrots that have fallen. A page of newspaper flaps on the ground. Her crime in the absence of paper bags in the shop is to wrap the carrots in a newspaper bearing Stalin’s photograph. As s
he bends down to retrieve them her face is curtained by the loosening fall of her hair and she has to pause to push it out of her eyes. The accuser towers over her, her face a burning red as she angrily denounces this act of criminality, and then stamps on a carrot that has rolled towards her with a repeated rhythm that makes it look as if she is doing some crazy dance. The younger woman scampers away desperately trying not to spill what’s left of her purchase as shouts pursue her. Then the shouting, stamping woman is transformed, carefully cradling the newspaper as if it is a young child she has taken into her arms to suckle.

  ‘So this is what we’ve come to,’ Osip says as he stands motionless but she encourages him to move away with a sharp pull on the sleeve of his coat. They have places to visit, information to seek, money to try and borrow. After the countryside the city’s waves of noise and movement seem clamorous, making her feel as if they are flotsam on its crowded currents. She thinks it strange that during the day life flows like this and there is little that signifies what goes on under the surface. It is at night that the fear emerges as families whisper, anxious that none of their voices carry through the thin makeshift walls that divide their living spaces. So the sound of a car stopping outside or the rise of the lift is enough to make them think their time has come. To die in your own bed becomes the unspoken dream. But what chance of such a welcome end when now there are quotas that must be met? So who can tell when the knock at the door will summon them to a different fate? Once it was thought that living quietly and guarding the tongue would ensure safety but now there is no way of knowing in advance or understanding what crimes they have supposedly committed. All around them there are sudden spaces like a wood where each day the axe comes to cut down more trees. Cuts them down supposedly to allow more light and air, to give the rest the chance of future growth, but in each of those spaces stretches a shadow that grows longer until it encompasses all of them.