The Poets' Wives

by David Park

  Did he carry her face bright and sharp to the very end? Did it linger, a print on the tips of his fingers? Or did all the things he had to see blur her image into a shadowed vagueness? She tries to remember his touch in hers as she lets her fingers linger on her skin. Never the most beautiful face in the world. Not like Olga’s, not even for a second. She sees her now in all her youthful beauty, the dark wave of her hair – dark like the young woman on the stairs – and the shiny jet of her eyes. It was when she nearly lost him, the closest they ever came to separation, and there are times when she wonders about the course her life would have taken if she had. He treated her badly during that period and there is part of her that still smarts at the humiliations she had to endure. Only her packed suitcase sitting on the kitchen table brought him to his senses, shocked him into a realisation of what she was prepared to do.

  Perhaps it is anger that makes her feel a gradual warmth creep into the bed as she remembers the simpering Olga swanning around the apartment without a trace of embarrassment or shame, staking her claim in the most vulgar manner and without a single word of rebuke from him. She should have packed the case sooner, forced him to make his choice instead of standing by while they blatantly conducted an affair. But he was besotted and although he never said it, there was somehow an unspoken sense that he was entitled to this relationship. Did he think the title of poet gave him permission to sleep with another woman in such a brazen way? He wouldn’t even deign to talk about it, with Olga continuing to appear at the apartment at all hours of the day and night as if she had established formal rights to residency.

  As she remembers her own misery during this time she thinks of the young student on the stairwell and regrets that her words have sounded harsh. She thinks of going back but rejects the idea. Perhaps there comes a time when all love requires a sacrifice which no one else can help with. Whether or not to accompany Osip into exile was not a question she even had to consider – she would have gone to the ends of the earth for him because she knew the possibility of no other life except in their love. She thinks again of his expression of utter shock when he came back unexpectedly and saw her packed case. How strange is fate – if he hadn’t returned so soon after going out because he had forgotten something, she would have gone. She imagines him calling her name in the empty apartment and it returning to him unanswered. Would he have tried to find her or simply fallen forever into the willing arms of Olga? She will never know but what she does have is the memory of his words pleading with her to stay, the welter of words that expresses his need of her, the promise to throw Olga over for good. She would have liked it more if there had been some recognition of the hurt he had caused her and there is a part of her that wonders even now as she pushes the scratch of the blanket away from the bare skin of her arm whether what he needed most at that moment was the care she gave him, her understanding of the poetry and the work that needed to be done. He insisted she listen while he broke it off on the phone so that even in his rejection of his lover she was made subservient to his will.

  If the doubt still lingers there is no trace of it when she thinks of what their life became, what bond between them was established and strengthened. But her pleasure at the memory of it also edges into bitterness at the knowledge it has been taken from her, that the path which stretches ahead is a solitary one. So now there is only the coarseness of a blanket in a tiny bed in a tiny room in a remote provincial town to protect her from the loneliness of the night that she thinks of as starless and over-arching. They knew the reality of love even before he was cast out and then arrested so it was much more than just a case of the danger in which they found themselves forcing them together. And they didn’t cling together in fear even in the final years – he wasn’t capable of existing like that, never living his life like some withered leaf waiting for winter’s final blast. Despite it all he went on finding limitless pleasure in the simplest of things – sunlight on water, frost on a snowed tree, the early-morning song of a bird. And his deep enjoyment of people who lived uncomplicated lives and who could contribute a folk song or a verse of some old poem they had learned as a child never left him.

  And slowly, steadily, she becomes close to the poetry itself until it almost feels as if it’s being breathed through her. He composes in his head and generally there is a surge of restlessness as he frames into words the poem that somehow already exists. She watches him walk – sometimes outside in the winter street, sometimes around the space in which they live – sees the relentless flow of his concentrated energy, his lips moving, and readies herself. She must do nothing now that will be a distraction, so she holds herself still or lies motionless on the bed. And then he speaks the poem and she transcribes it, trying to keep up, trying not to have to query a word, or a spelling, trying not to mishear even when he’s rushing or whispering. So the poems come on to the page through her hand and her eyes are the first to see them born. And she comes to believe that she is more than just a scribe but somehow part of the moment and it feels sometimes as if the poem is water entrusted into her hand to carry and she must not spill even a drop. Only when it is finished does he come and look, standing at her side and resting a hand lightly on her shoulder, and she feels and shares his sense of intense curiosity at what has been formed there in black ink.

  Only the love poems, the ones written for Olga, are not written in her hand but they exist on paper with the other manuscripts. She wishes it were not so but their existence can’t be denied or disowned so when the time comes and they are forced to organise the original copies of all the poems and think how best to preserve them, they splay out on the table between them. They stare silently at the pages and then he reaches out his hand and gathers them to him and tells her he will destroy them. She grabs him by the wrist and tells him these too must be preserved. She ignores the flush of embarrassment flooding his face and insistently prises the pages from his hand, smooths away some of their bruises. He gets up from the table while she carefully places them in sequence and stands with his back to her as if he won’t allow himself to look at them any more, then lights a cigarette and the smoke is a blue gauze of unwanted memory garlanding his head.

  So these too are preserved and stored in the memory. And to ensure they haven’t slipped away they must be silently repeated – over and over – in the lonely moments before sleep or when walking in the streets where the cleared snow decays into blackness like rotting teeth. And yes sometimes they feel like a scourge and she is tempted to let them go, to see them gently slip away, but something stronger prevents her. There is only one poem she has destroyed and expunged from her memory, and she has done that out of love for him and not herself, a poem he wrote in a moment of fear because he hoped to save his life, even though it was already too late, and which would bring hurt to him if future generations were to read it. It worries her that perhaps there are other copies of it that some day will emerge and be used by those who seek to destroy his name. Everything else must be preserved, even these love poems that are hooked on the bitterest barb of memory.

  It is the memory of the pain that love can bring that makes her push the blanket away from her and get out of the bed. She looks at her face in the small mirror with the cracked lacquer frame. She isn’t ageing into beauty in the way that is the late blessing of some women. She never had the looks of Akhmatova or even Olga so perhaps she should be glad that at least there won’t be time’s cruel fading, the journey that renders the mirror’s unwelcome truth sharper with each passing day. If he were to touch her face now would it feel different to the one he knew? He will never come back to her – she will never know where his body is buried or be able to visit it. So life decrees that he walks through a door, there is the sound of a lorry’s engine and then she is never to see him again. Perhaps, she tells herself, some good thought can be found in that there was no breach in love, that they were separated at the time when it was at its most intense.

  She thinks again of the young woman on the stairs and
wonders what will happen to her. She leaves her room and walks along the empty corridor. At the end window she stops and watches what must be a rising wind shiver and fret the trees. It will surely pluck the few remaining leaves. The sun is dropping low in the sky. The days are shortening. She feels the inescapable weariness of facing another winter. On the stairs the only sound is that of her own feet. The door of the store is slightly open. She hesitates then opens it and steps inside. There is no sign of the young woman. Sudden debris blowing against the slit of window startles her. It sounds as if a storm is coming. She stands by the same broken desk where earlier the young woman had sat and touches the wood with her fingers. What will happen to her? She would like to be wrong but she doesn’t think it likely that a young man whose family is important in the Party will be strong or brave enough to throw over everything for love. Perhaps the young woman will not make him choose but think that the forces ranged against her are too powerful and so will try to preserve her own secret by being the one who makes the break. She doesn’t want to ponder the possibilities because she knows that most of them hold only the likelihood of regret.

  Why does regret linger so long? When they were taking Osip that final time she had already played out the scene in her head and rehearsed what she would say and yet in that very moment no words could be uttered. So she had spoken them every day until the news of his death in the desperate need to believe that somehow they would reach him however far away he was being held. She looks at the spades piled in the corner. Soon they will be needed again to clear the snow. There is a hollow thumping and moan of complaint from the fretwork of pipes. Did he need those words to take with him in the back of the lorry or were they already written on his heart because there were many times in those last years of exile when he seemed to know what she was thinking without her speaking? She wants to speak to him now and so she starts to tell him what she had prepared for the final moment but the words falter and then fade into nothing. She looks in desperation at the narrow window and tries again but in their place comes only the consciousness that winter is coming when the white-barked birch trees shorn of their leaves will slowly make shivering ghosts of themselves.

  5

  1934

  There are only two beds and one chair in the room that serves as their hospital ward in Cherdyn. Even in hospital they are isolated in case their supposed infection is passed to others. Osip lies on the bed beside her and stares at the large clock that hangs on the opposite wall. Its face is moon white with thick black hands and numerals. He’s stared at it for a long time but speaks little.

  Staff check on them at regular intervals. She carries their curses in her memory at her failure to look after him. After so many nights without sleep she had drifted off and when she awoke he had already clambered out of the second-floor window, and even though she had desperately tried to hold on to him by his arms, he had slipped out of the sleeves of his jacket and fallen to the ground outside. It’s his second attempt to kill himself and no more successful than the first, resulting only in the pain of a dislocated shoulder which amidst the curses and shouts a woman doctor had set back in place. The staff are frightened and angry that their negligence in allowing this thing to happen might incur the wrath of those whose orders were that he should be preserved. They blame her and as she is not to be trusted they are inspected regularly. Sometimes the open door briefly reveals the presence of peasants come for treatment, their beards and dress making them look like remnants from a different century.

  Long journeys on trains, a river steamer and in the back of a truck have brought them here to this their first place of banishment with the three guards constantly at their side, keeping them separated from other travellers. Always vigilant but not unkind when out of the public gaze. It’s on the train journey that she first realises things aren’t right with Osip as he sits looking at the thickly wooded mountains of the Urals. He seems to stare somewhere far beyond the landscape and his talk is all of imminent death. Again and again he asks her if she can hear it, hear the voices, but for her there is only the rattle of the train, the snores of a passenger she can’t see and the squeak of the soldiers’ leather boots when they stretch their limbs or adjust their stance as they maintain the required separation from other passengers.

  ‘Can’t you hear them?’ he asks again.

  ‘What is it you hear?’ she asks, trying to calm him by taking his hand.

  ‘All the voices. Voices calling and whispering,’ he says, pressing her hand against his ear as if to stop the sounds.

  ‘There are no voices.’

  He looks at her and she sees the disbelief fixed there. She believes they have done something to his mind in the prison and despite her thinking that they have given back her husband, the person who sits opposite her is changed in some ways she can’t understand.

  ‘What do the voices say?’ she asks.

  ‘I can’t make them out. They’re calling and shouting but their words aren’t clear. Are you telling me the truth when you say you hear nothing?’

  She nods and reaching across gently prises their hands from his ear and tries to calm him once again by talking about anything that comes into her head so she remembers things from their past, places they’ve been, their old circle of friends, tells him quietly about the women who came to the apartment with money when they heard that they’d been exiled. But none of her words seem to penetrate beyond his fear. She remembers how going through the forest in the back of the truck he had seen a peasant standing with an axe and he had said that they were going to behead him. Nor does it seem to be death he now fears but the ever-present reality of its imminent and sudden violence – the bullet to the back of the head, the firing squad. He sits hunched and tense as if expectant that he will be taken to such an end at any moment, even there on the train as it cuts a path through steep-banked swathes of trees whose branches seem to reach out like hands towards the glass.

  Much later when he starts to recover and they have been allowed to reside in Voronezh he will try to tell her some of what happened in the Lubyanka – the sleepless nights under the lights; the night-time interrogations with their threats and insults and the constant repetition of questions he’s already answered; the stool pigeon who shares his cell and whose purpose is to pile more stress on him with his talk of darkest consequences; being taken from the cell by the guards and being made to wait for hours for more sessions, or something worse, that never happens. Being put in a straitjacket after the first suicide attempt. There were voices there too, the voices of a crying woman he thought was her but again whose words he couldn’t make out. They had led him to believe that they were holding her. He tries to tell her about what happened to him but for all his skill with language she can see his frustration as he struggles to convey what is so far beyond the reach of human words. However she comes to understand that whatever the details of his experience in those weeks, the truth is that his mind has been battered and bruised and he has been forced asunder from who he is. As she looks at his fear-flecked eyes that seem to see menace in every fleeting glimpse of the landscape she too is frightened and unsure whether the man she knows will ever come back to her.

  Later on she will be told by those who have also experienced the terror that it is what happens to everyone who goes through the hands of their oppressors. But she also believes how much worse it must have been for a man whose every sense is sharpened and who sees the world and everything around him with the clear-eyed vision of the poet. So now every brick and every smell, every silence and every scream are branded in his consciousness and for the moment at least their memory threatens to unbalance him and leave him frightened by each shadow that falls across his path.

  He lies on the bed and stares at the clock. Its ticking seems to grow ever louder in the silence. His arm in a sling prevents him turning on his side away from her and so he either rests on his back or lies facing her but it is as if he isn’t able to find all his old comfort in her presence. Sometimes
she’s not sure he even knows who she is and then she tries to use her voice to reach him and to pull him back to her and to himself. But he has only eyes and ears for the ticking clock. Although she tries to block it out she remembers the eyes of the prisoner in the corridor and she wonders if there is a moment that comes to all when fear tips the mind out of its normal buoyant hope and sends it sinking into darker depths. She needs to sleep but is frightened to leave him even though he seems momentarily calmer and has displayed no further signs of wanting to harm himself. But the journey’s sleepless nights and the burden of worry have left her exhausted so although at first she tries to resist, gradually she feels herself slipping into sleep and knows she is powerless to prevent it.

  Now it is her own voices she can hear – during the Civil War the screams of the trapped women thought to be Cheka who had fallen into the hands of the mob; the sound of Osip’s exultant voice pouring out his poem about Stalin; the late night, instantly recognisable knock on the apartment door. But there are silences too – the world outside the train’s window; the endless sitting in empty corridors when she tries to find people who will help. Sometimes she dreams of childhood and then everything is briefly different and the life that stretches ahead seems nothing so much as an adventure where she will play the leading role. But then everything changes again and it’s like some old story told in a different childhood where in the shadows lurks unseen evil that waits its chance to snatch the unsuspecting. And then she’s straying too close to the woods, ignoring all the warnings her parents have given, and she’s not paying any attention to anything other than the moment when it bursts from the darkness of the trees and is carrying her away. When she tries to scream no sounds come and she can see everyone in the village going about their business but she can’t find a voice to summon their help.