The Poets' Wives

by David Park

  6

  1950

  Because there are spies everywhere it is no longer possible to remember what it feels like to be unwatched or to have a voice that can say what it thinks. It is only in her deepest most secret parts that she holds the print of the person life has slowly formed. It is seen by no one, except perhaps Akhmatova, and even then despite their deep trust there are moments when they feel the need to be circumspect. So even when they are sure that their conversation goes unheard by the informers in the apartments they are afflicted by the fear that in some unknown way the powers have access to what they say. And sometimes too she suffers the fleeting belief that they can see the most secret thoughts so even the mind is not totally free.

  No one trusts the phones, they have become a people speaking in whispers and it is the system’s greatest strength that it has bred suspicion and paranoia everywhere, so everyone stays protective of their own singularity and never shares with others except what they believe is ideologically correct. And most, despite everything, still believe, and look to the Leader to preserve them from those outside who would seek to invade and enslave, and those counter-revolutionaries inside the gates who conspire to sow the seeds of chaos. She knows that the greatest source of their power, a power that seems destined to endure, is that they have silenced the voices. And not just the voices of political dissent but also the voices of the artists – writers, composers, painters, playwrights. All of them bound to a lifetime of artistic servitude. She believes that Osip was right when he declared that in this their country poetry was held in such high esteem that a poem could cost you your life. They had come to know the bitter truth of that.

  As she prepares for her morning class in yet one more small-town college she wonders why they are so fearful of writers then, as she flicks the pages of the textbook she will be referencing, decides it must be to do with how they see the imagination. Individualistic, unpredictable, able to touch the heart and stir emotions – what could inspire their greater mistrust? As she packs the book carefully into her satchel she is struck once again by the irony that Osip’s first collection of poems was called Stone and in the transit camp she’s heard they made him work at breaking rocks. Such knowledge threatens to make her own heart turn to stone. Sometimes she thinks it foolish to try and resist because it must surely make her stronger and it is strength she needs if she is to survive. So let her heart be like stone that no axe can break.

  She sets off for the short walk to the college taking the river path. It is her favourite part of the day when the morning sun has not yet baked the streets into dust and rendered everything dry and brittle to the eyes. The river is already skimmed with light that makes the surface quiver into a luminous life. If her heart were stone, she tells herself, then she wouldn’t know this pleasure but nor would she feel the relentless pull of loneliness that lingers at the edge of every waking thought. There are men fishing on the far bank whipping their lines across the fret and dance of light. He wouldn’t want her to live her life under the shadow of his loss but these things aren’t inside her control no matter how often she seeks to exercise her will over such feelings. With him was the part of her life which gave her most pleasure and now there is only a sense of emptiness and a road to be followed and a responsibility that has to be borne.

  A man and a boy pass her carrying two fish wrapped in an old newspaper from whose end open mouths peep out. She hurries on – she always likes to be in the classroom early with all her notes organised and everything in place for the delivery of the lesson. There are spies amongst the class of course – their identity is well-known and while some may show a sense of creeping shame in their demeanour, others display an open pride and an enjoyment of whatever importance they think it gives themselves. The system is skilled at seeking out the vulnerable and pressuring them into service or recognising the ambitious who can be easily recruited. She has tried to give nothing to them or anyone else in the college that would merit a report or raise even the slightest concern. There is a price to be paid for this and so she carries a sense of having a permanent limit placed on who she is and sometimes this curtailment feels as if it is stifling and choking the life out of her. It doesn’t come easy to bend her will to those she hates, or suppress the fire of her anger, but the knowledge that she still carries a voice inside her head, a voice that frightened them so much that they deemed it necessary to try and silence it, sustains her through all but the lowest moments.

  She takes one last look at the river that courses to some distant sea without restraint then lowers her head and climbs the short flight of steps to the front door of the college. As always the elderly woman who seems permanently to monitor the front door responds to her polite good morning with an almost imperceptible nod and stares at her with ill-disguised suspicion. She appears to be there at all hours of the day and night, so much that Nadezhda has started to believe that she must live somewhere in the building. Her grey hair that is pinned up in a bun always seems to be on the edge of sliding into chaos. Usually a cat slinks around her ankles or sits sleeping in her lap. She has never heard her voice but this morning she speaks.

  ‘The assistant director wants to see you before classes,’ she says, her eyes narrowed and unblinking, one hand stroking the cat nestling on the broad cradle of her skirt.

  So what can he want and yet she already knows. A woman always knows when a man looks at her in that way, even though she never thought it was a look she would ever experience again. She isn’t beautiful – time’s press has engraved its mark on her. But it’s signalled in his eyes that linger just too long no matter how they try to disguise it with politeness or conversation. She finds herself smoothing her hair like some foolish young woman and straightening her blouse as she makes her way to his office on the ground floor. So it would be better now if her heart had indeed turned to stone because then she wouldn’t be thinking about how she looks or feeling the slight quickening of her pulse. But the awareness makes her experience a flare of shame. Let her heart be dead to her. Let her memories of love quicken her strength and consume the full need of her loneliness. She tells herself there is no other man’s words she wishes to hear or which can ever replace what was once hers.

  She knows, however, that kindness is dangerously seductive and she has been starved of that since the day her husband left her side. But the shame doesn’t stop her catching at her reflection in the glass of Anatoli Lebedev’s office door. And when she knocks she is glad to feel the calming hard coldness of the glass against the slight quiver of her hand. He calls her in and standing behind his desk beckons her to a seat.

  ‘Good morning,’ he says. ‘Thank you for coming. I wanted to speak to you before class started,’ and he is smiling slightly longer than even good manners requires.

  He’s still standing behind his desk as if he’s waiting for her to tell him to sit. She has sat before desks in the past and she’s almost grateful for the memories because they warn her now to be cautious and so she doesn’t return his smile but with both hands holds her satchel in front of her like a shield. But she looks at him all the same and as always is struck by how young he appears despite his middle age and how untainted by whatever it is deadens the faces of so many of those who have climbed their way up into positions of power. Even the war years where he lost his wife and who knew what else, while gaining a chest full of medals, have left no obvious scars. His sprightliness is also accentuated by the stooped and weary old age that holds his college boss in its tightening grip. The gossip is that soon the younger man will replace the older and it is a belief that seems universally popular with staff and students alike.

  ‘So how are you?’ he asks. ‘Fully recovered from your cold, I hope.’

  ‘It was nothing really. Just one of those coughs that come calling and then don’t want to leave.’

  ‘And you’re comfortable in your lodgings?’

  ‘Yes, thanks.’

  She knows now it was a mistake to have accepted his offer
to help her with a place to live but at the time of her arrival it seemed a welcome way to circumvent the usual trudging round in search of rooms and the inevitable trawling through a series of hovels, each more squalid than the last, before eventually finding one that passed muster. So when he told her that his widowed aunt had a room that could be made available she had availed herself of the opportunity and while it is true that now she has a clean bed in a perfectly adequately sized room and access to a small garden where she can sit when the weather is good, it has not come without its complications. Not the least of these is her landlady’s curiosity about her and the seemingly innocuous questions with which she attempts to solicit information. It appears nothing more than the product of the old woman’s boredom but means she always has to be on guard when all she wants to do is rest and try to find at least one space in her day when she can feel able to be her undisguised self.

  ‘And my aunt tells me that you’re getting on well together. I think the company is good for her. Her spirits have been low since she lost her husband.’

  She nods and thinks what a terribly conscientious nephew he must be to visit his elderly aunt so frequently and wonders how often he came before the new lodger arrived at the beginning of term. But he can’t have summoned her to his office just on the pretext of enquiring about her wellbeing, or merely to look at her, and she deliberately shuffles on the seat so that her restlessness is obvious even to him whose eyes have never left her.

  ‘Was there something else? I need to get a few things ready for my first class.’

  ‘Of course, of course. It was just to tell you that your position will be available to you next term if you wish to continue. We’ve just learned that your predecessor won’t be returning.’

  The mysterious Nikoli Surkov in whose classroom she now teaches and whose departure from the college has never been fully explained. It’s obvious he left in a hurry because everywhere she discovers little parts of who he was and in moments of boredom she tries to piece them together and form them into his identity. So there is the sketchbook of landscape drawings and portraits done in pencil and charcoal; his library of personal books – some of which she approves of and some not; a little envelope of photographs inside a book of possibly family members but all of which he is absent from. A sudden departure usually means only one thing – a summons in the middle of the night. But none of the staff or students ever make mention of him, not even to express shock at his designated crime. Despite her curiosity it would be unhelpful to make enquiries.

  ‘Yes, I would like to stay,’ she says, giving him the briefest of smiles. ‘And I can continue to lodge with your aunt?’

  ‘That would be most satisfactory to all parties,’ he says, smiling and standing again before stretching his arm out in a vague but expansive gesture. When he smiles his face takes on a boyish quality that makes her think of how everything that happened to Osip accelerated his journey into old age. She remembers him on her arm on their expedition to Moscow in search of money and help, hears again the laboured wheeze of his chest that accompanied the tired shuffle of his steps.

  She is no longer a young woman and that makes it harder to live a life that is constantly moving from place to place. As she walks to her class she is more confused than she normally allows herself to be and the self-indulgence feels dangerous and with the potential to cause her to veer off her chosen course. Is it possible she could find herself a more permanent nest in this town that sits on a river and which seems content to let much of modern life flow quietly by? She is no longer a young woman and there will be few more offers. So what is it he sees in her? She can’t believe he is enamoured by her beauty – perhaps he seeks a companion in his old age, a replacement for the wife he lost in the war. And what is it she wants? She has never even considered taking up with someone else, knowing that they would fall short of the man she loved. But if love can be set aside is the possibility of coming to an agreement with someone who is kind to her, and whose career would preserve her ability to teach and live in some unfamiliar comfort, something to be dismissed lightly?

  As always she works the students hard – she isn’t interested in being their best friend or making their life easy. And there are sharp words for the indolent or those who fail to understand that in language important meanings can be damaged by slovenliness. In the middle of the day she eats on her own in the grounds of the college and doesn’t feel the need to share the time with her colleagues. When she has finished and before afternoon classes begin she goes to the library and returns the books she has borrowed and searches for something new. There is little in English except a few copies of Dickens and she has read all of the available titles so she contents herself with borrowing a copy of Turgenev’s A Nest of the Gentry. She never reads poetry because she’s frightened of what she’s read seeping in amongst the lines that she needs to preserve like tares amongst the wheat.

  The memory of what she carries inside her keeps her focused through the afternoon and stops it dragging. At the end of classes she packs her satchel and the dictations the students have handed in for marking. If the day still retains enough heat after her evening meal she will sit in the garden and mark them. She smiles at the realisation that in her present life this represents a small pleasure. When she walks back to her lodgings she takes the path along by the river once more and so avoids the crowded town streets and their layering of dust that waits as always for some breeze to stir it into mischief. She misses Moscow and the life she once had there, misses the concerts and theatre, the endless evenings given to readings and debates about books. The river seems to flow more slowly than in the morning but there are still men fishing on the far bank. Some giant logs, escaped she imagines from the timber mills upstream, float lazily by, a temporary resting place for small birds.

  After her meal that she takes at the kitchen table with her landlady who babbles on with the indefatigable enthusiasm of someone who has had no one to talk to all day, she decides it’s warm enough to sit outside with her marking but is still able to hear the arrival of Anatoli Lebedev. She isn’t surprised but doesn’t know if what she feels is pleasure or irritation. She keeps her head in her papers even when she senses that he has come to the back door of the house to watch her. It feels already that he is approaching the time when he will say something to her and when that moment comes she must know how she will answer. It would be easier if only he tried to exert pressure on her, exploit the leverage of his position, because then she would know him unworthy but instead all he has done so far is wait patiently and when the opportunity arose show her a polite kindness that appeared not to require any form of return. It is true that in some ways, such as now, he likes quietly to observe her but it feels like it shares nothing with all those other creatures who have spied on her. So to whom does he report each night except his heart and despite everything else that rattles round her head she is conscious of being flattered.

  ‘So I see you are still working hard,’ he says as he steps into the garden.

  She stands up as if she is aware of him for the first time and because it shows appropriate respect but he tells her to sit and apologises for disturbing her.

  ‘And are they producing good work?’ he asks, peering at the papers.

  ‘Some do, some are a little slower to grasp what they need to know.’

  She is suddenly conscious of the absurdity of being with someone to whom she has shown nothing of her real self. She feels like an impostor but because she has acted as this new person for so long wonders if the old one still exists except in her memory.

  ‘It’s a lovely night,’ he says and then gets embarrassed and flounders into silence.

  She takes pity on him by simply agreeing and then as he shuffles a little she realises that he’s working up to saying something and as she stares at the papers she’s still to mark doesn’t know whether she wants him to or not.

  ‘Would you like to take a walk along the river?’ he asks, pulling himself up str
aight and finding the courage that she presumes he has in abundance.

  It will be better if she goes with him and saves him the pain of failure under the prying eyes of his aunt who is already peering through the glass.

  ‘Give me a minute to put these papers away and get my shawl,’ she says as she slips quickly past him into the house where she almost collides with his aunt who is too slow to retreat from her vantage point. In her room she places the papers in her satchel then sits at the end of the bed. She tries to calm the pulse of her breathing then puts on the shawl and before she goes back to the garden allows herself the briefest of glances in the small mirror that hangs behind her door.

  They walk against the river’s flow along a beaten path that seems to crumble to dust under their feet. Their shoulders brush from time to time but he doesn’t give her his arm or try to touch her in any way and instead channels his concentration on pointing out the different types of water fowl and birds that skim the surface. Little clouds of insects spiral up from the water and scavenging birds dive in amongst them. Then they talk about inconsequential things and she feels the urge to stop him and say, ‘I am Nadezhda Mandelstam, the wife of the poet,’ and stare at his face to see how quickly he registers the full significance of those words. If he were to shrug and say it didn’t matter then he would deserve another medal pinned to his chest. She knows she can’t risk telling him but can’t go on either being someone other than the person he thinks.

  There is a small boat with a discoloured and ragged sail that looks like a crumpled page torn from some old book and from its bow boys dive into the water, their entry marked by shouts and sudden splashes of white and the boat left rocking behind them. They pause under the light-blotched canopy of some overhanging trees and she knows that he is going to speak to her. In front of them is a thick cluster of rushes, their furred heads heavy with the fecund weight of the season. She has to stop him because she is confused and there are voices in her head that she doesn’t recognise and because she feels all the conviction that exists at her core and which makes her who she is in danger of slipping away with the steady flow of the river.