The Poets' Wives

by David Park

  ‘What happened to Surkov?’ she asks.

  The question throws him and as he looks across the river she sees immediately that he is uncertain of what he should say.

  ‘Why do you ask about Surkov?’

  ‘I’m curious, that’s all. Sometimes I come across things that obviously belonged to him.’

  ‘That should all have been cleared,’ he says and his voice is edged with an irritation she hasn’t heard before. ‘What did you find?’

  ‘Some books, a sketchpad, a few photographs. Not much.’ Already she is regretting mentioning it.

  ‘Shall we walk a little further while we still have the light?’ he asks and as if answering his own question sets off. ‘I’ll have someone clear the things in the morning if you show them where to find them.’

  She follows a step behind and knows not to ask any further questions. It is a few minutes before he speaks again but some of the tension lingers in his voice.

  ‘Surkov was guilty of anti-revolutionary activity. He wrote some foolish, dangerous articles and circulated them to a secret cabal of students he had organised, taking advantage of their impressionable minds.’

  ‘He was discovered?’

  ‘One of the group reported him. We informed the authorities immediately. It was quite a shock to discover that such a thing had happened in the college. It had to be stamped out right away.’

  When he looks at her she nods in what he must take to be her agreement but which is instead a silent affirmation of her own understanding. So she tells him it is getting a little cold and that she wants to finish her marking before tomorrow so that she can return the papers and go over common mistakes while it is still fresh in the students’ minds. She has been a fool momentarily borne off course by vanity and the unaccustomed and almost forgotten pleasure of kindness.

  ‘Although we discovered Surkov’s activities in time there is a view from above that the Director has grown lax, relaxed his vigilance, and that a younger man is now needed to fill the post.’

  He doesn’t need to say any more. So exposing Surkov as a traitor, as well as the resulting discrediting of his boss, has enhanced his career and is now being laid out in front of her like a dowry. She wants to tell him more than ever but for a different reason than before that he is out walking with the wife of a so-called traitor. He stops briefly to point out a heron nesting in the rushes and then they walk on towards her lodgings. At the door he shakes her hand formally. The moment has slipped away from him but as he bows and takes his leave she knows that he will make other moments. She watches him walk away, his broad shoulders a little stooped with failure. When she enters the house his aunt is waiting for her and looks at her in a way that suggests she has been anticipating an outcome so she too is to be disappointed.

  In her room she sits once more on the bed and glances around, one of the better places she has known. But it was a foolishness and while she is embarrassed by that sharpening consciousness she is also aware of a lingering sadness. The road stretching ahead of her is solitary and she must accept that now and live within both the freedom and confines of herself. There is no other way and she finds a new resolution in that knowledge. And all that is left is the work that she has to do so she finishes marking the remaining dictations, each mistake she finds underlining her own.

  On an almost empty night train that rattles through an invisible landscape she sits with her head angled to the glass. Out there in the blackness stretch new uncertainties of place and sustenance. Her case is safely ensconced in the luggage rack and the compartment is empty except for an elderly couple and a young sailor whose canvas bag has an accordion attached to it. She looks at the dozing couple whose white-haired heads rest against each other and she feels a little envy at what has endured for them. She will never know if love changes over time, never know if it’s strengthened or rendered weaker by the passing years. Everything sifts through her – the flow of the river, the drawings in the sketchbook, the garden she sat in during the evening sun. She moves her face closer to the glass but sees nothing except the reflection of the inside of the carriage. Her hand touches her hair – slowly greying now, coarser to the touch – but hers will be the only hand to know its feel. She tries to summon the memory of his touch again, the feel of his fingers tracing the contours of her face, but struggles to realise it, almost as if it hides from her somewhere in the unknown expanse of darkness.

  The old man snores a little and his mouth falls open but their angled and balanced heads remain undisturbed. Osip made no demands on her future life, extracted no foolish promise of faithfulness, and although they talked about it only briefly, she knows he wanted nothing more from her than that she should go on living and find what happiness she could. Nor did he ever obligate her with the preservation of the poems – this was her resolution alone and the vocation that now gives her life purpose.

  The train hurries through the night slowing but not stopping as it passes through stations. Another name on a map, another new start. She grows too old for it but has no other choice. Always moving, never stopping long enough for her to come to the attention of the authorities. Trying to find teaching posts but willing, as she has done already, to turn her hand to anything, whether it meant working in a factory or labouring at some job that if nothing else served to numb the mind. She rubs the window in the vain hope of clearing even a fleeting glimpse of the world outside but it leaves nothing other than the squeak of the glass and the momentary smear of her fingers. Perhaps the darkness will never be cleared. Perhaps outside the window there is only the night’s unrelenting emptiness. The young sailor looks at her briefly then turns his eyes away again as if he hasn’t registered her. She finds a pleasure in that. So let her be invisible, a small stone hidden at the side of the road while history passes her by on its reckless rush to wherever destiny beckons. Perhaps Osip was right and they should leave the clamour of the great cities and take refuge with the peasants who endure as they have done over the centuries.

  The train speeds its way on a journey that seems endless and without prospect of a concluding destination. She looks at her reflection in the glass and for a moment seems so strange to herself that she has to turn away. The old man’s snores are louder now. Surely he will disturb his wife but she continues sleeping, seemingly oblivious. Perhaps before the journey ends the sailor will play his accordion and sing some sad song of home. She tries to think of where home is but there is only the furled darkness of the world outside the window and then she thinks of the room she slept in a night ago where hangs a mirror that shows no reflection and, on the end of the bed waiting to be returned, a neat pile of students’ work and a library book she never had time to read.

  7

  1939

  She says his name and hands her small parcel through the tiny window on the Sophia Embankment. His ink-stained fingers brush it to one side as an inconvenience when he starts to flick the pages of the ledger. She is afforded a glimpse of the lists of names – they seem never-ending. All disappeared into the night. How many, if any, will ever come back? Some of those who are released find themselves re-arrested while others return only to find their wife has been taken. Soon surely they will come for her. She watches the clerk’s fingers quickly turning the pages. He has come too far and has to work backwards again. He glances up at her while he does so as if he has forgotten why he’s doing the search. Their eyes meet for a second, long enough for her to look for something she recognises as human and to wonder if he has a wife and children, some life beyond this little square of window and this seemingly endless queue. There must be times when he too feels fear, the fear that comes to all with too much knowledge because in a world devoid of trust knowledge is a dangerous burden that must eventually be removed. So she wonders as he flicks the final pages and runs his finger down the column if he imagines a different finger searching for his name, written in the same black ink that makes his fingers look as if they are wearing dark gloves.

  His finger s
tops. He double-checks, his eyes squinting behind his glasses. His thin lips momentarily pull back in concentration to reveal uneven and yellowing lower teeth. Then without looking at her he pushes the parcel back through the window before raising his head to say, ‘The addressee is dead.’ That is all he says and as she stares at him she knows that nothing will prise further words out of him. Almost immediately he is looking over her shoulder to beckon silently the next woman forward and angling his head to catch the new name. But she can’t step aside from the window that now feels like the only possible portal through which she might catch one last glimpse of the man she loves. As her fingers press against the paper and her nails start to tear into it the parcel feels like the most terrible thing she’s ever had to hold. No words come out of her mouth. Already the woman behind her – the one who smells of cheap scent and onions – is brushing impatiently against her shoulder. She’s desperately trying to force herself into thought but there will be no how or when, there never is, and she knows it’s futile to try for answers, not even likely that such things are known to this man who is already turning his good ear to hear the next name for which he must search. The guard at the side of the window is looking at her and there is impatience in his movements as he starts to unfold himself from the stiffness of his slumber.

  She finds the strength to move, stepping slowly to one side. This is not where she wants her grief to be known. She will not give them her tears. She will not share it with anyone but herself. So clutching the parcel under her arm that immediately marks her with the badge of widowhood, then almost tucking it out of sight, she walks back down the length of the queue with her head high, her eyes almost clear. But the news follows her in a whisper passed from head to head until it begins to sound like a wave rolling in behind her. It is the most difficult walk she has ever had to make but she tries to channel everything into the resolution of her steps even though all of her wants to fall apart. And then as the whisper’s wave seems to splash over her she feels as if she’s being swept to some place far beyond herself.

  On the walk from the last of the queuing women the first tear comes but she shrugs it away angrily. It is a mercy, she tells herself, a blessed release from the horrors and suffering that awaited him in Kolyma so her tears are a selfishness. His weakening heart has proved his truest friend. He will not have to suffer another winter. She should not begrudge his escape or indulge in self-pity but something more powerful runs counter to these unfolding thoughts until it sweeps them aside and she is left only with the overwhelming shudder of grief. And what or who is there now to comfort her except the knowledge of the life they had. She tries to staunch the grief, protect herself with these thoughts, but as she’s pummelled and pushed by the crowd getting on the same tram it feels as if every touch serves to breach what seem now like thin-walled defences. They’re packed in tightly and suddenly she feels like she might faint but she presses her face to the coldness of the glass and makes herself breathe steadily. There are slivers of ice in the corners of the window and outside the snow has started again, if only drifting in half-heartedly on the breeze. She wants to get out of the tram where people push themselves into every available space and are indifferent to any need except their own. They’re choking the life out of her and unable to stand it any longer she elbows her way aggressively towards the door at the first stop despite the distance it means she will have to walk, ignoring the complaints of her fellow passengers.

  When she steps down her feet almost slip from below her. She hasn’t been able to harvest enough suitable winter clothing and the shoes she’s wearing will never last the coming months. Then finding the entrance to a derelict building she is sick, retching long after her stomach has given up its contents. When she’s finished she kicks fresh snow over the traces. She’s been on her own since they took him from the rest home but now as she straightens and tries to spit away the lingering taste of sickness she understands the full meaning of loneliness. Before it was as if their lives existed in parallel but were still connected through love; now there is only an overwhelming sense of isolation, of a road that must be followed alone until death.

  She hesitates before she steps back into the thoroughfare, scanning the faces that pass, suddenly frightened that she’s being followed. They’ll come for her now – she knows it. They’ve already come once when she was in Kalinin only to find her gone. They don’t like loose ends and that’s what she is and she also knows that again and again they sweep up the closest relatives of those who’ve been taken. It’s to protect themselves from the embittered offspring, the loved-one who will suffer in silence and patiently wait the moment to take revenge. His death will bring her back to their mind and they have plenty of reasons to believe that she is infected, a carrier, because she is belligerent with them, unwilling to be cowed in their presence, so now more than ever she feels at risk. But as she hesitates no heads turn to give her a second look and after crossing her mouth with the back of a gloved hand she steps out into the throng.

  The falling snow forces everyone’s heads into submission and as she trudges onwards she tries to tell herself that she must find comfort in the knowledge that he has escaped the full horrors of what awaited him. In the one short letter received from the transit camp near Vladivostok he told her he had been given five years for his ‘counter-revolutionary activity’. The high-ranking Special Tribunal that sentenced him meted out Soviet justice to ‘socially dangerous persons’. He might just have been pleased by that description. But he had also spoken of the cold, his ill-health, and the hope that she might be able to send some clothes. It hurts her to the core to think of him shivering in some frost-bitten wooden barracks through which a sharp-toothed wind relentlessly gnawed at the bones. She carries the parcel under her arm and knows its meagre offerings would have done little to preserve him. Only the letter it contains in which she affirms her love might have helped his mind, if not his body, bear whatever each day brought. His own letter expressed love and concern for her – as she recites the words to herself and keeps her head angled to avoid the snow hitting her eyes she guesses the fear that she had been arrested was an additional torment to the already heavy burden he carried.

  There is a team of supervised men clearing snow – she wonders if they are petty criminals conscripted into public service – their long-handled shovels scooping and flinging it in an unbroken rhythm. Sometimes when shovels hit the pavement there are sparks and dull clacks that sound like horse’s hooves. A tram goes past, its roof temporarily painted white. For a second she regrets alighting so soon before her stop. At intervals she glances over her shoulder to convince herself she isn’t being followed. If they believe she holds hidden manuscripts they will seek her out and if that happens then the poems that exist now only in her memory will also tumble with her into the pit. The determination to avoid this fate for both the poems and herself spurs her on. As long as the poems are preserved then they have not succeeded in killing him. She must get out of Moscow, this time exile herself in some far-off town where her file will struggle to find her. She must keep running, try to outrun the slow turning of the bureaucratic wheels that seeks to determine her destiny. So she ignores the cold seeping into her toes and the tips of her fingers and hurries on to pack whatever pathetic amount of possessions life has left her with.

  The snow is heavier now, pelting in with greater fury as if its earlier languid fall was merely a rehearsal for this, its real performance. It plasters and sticks against her coat, plashing on her cheekbones and eyebrows, but she welcomes it, trying to convince herself that its coldness might deaden some of the pain of grief that burns inside her. For a fleeting second she regrets the absence of a child – a daughter – to whom she might have given her love and received it in return, a child who might if favoured by fortune outlive her and survive long enough to reach a world where truth once more is honoured.

  It will take her half an hour to reach the apartment and once more she berates her impetuosity in getting off
the tram but she felt as she was being suffocated in the tight press and she will not risk subjecting herself to that again. Two black horses with glistening flanks and harnesses lined with white plod along beside her as they pull a cartload of barrels. Flurries of flakes vanish in the stream of their nostrils. The driver is hunched and caped, his shoulders braided with snow. She imagines the bodies of the dead in the camps thrown in the back of such a cart and then dumped naked into some pit. He will have no headstone, no place where she can visit, and she understands as she watches the cart’s wheels leave the briefest tracks that his memorial is carried deep inside herself and so even now in the midst of her grief and with the snow trying to freeze her face into a death mask her lips begin to move.

  She speaks silent lines in a requiem to him, words that speak of mystery and beauty, and as the snow continues to fall, the city, even now, even in this moment, seems slowly to assume a new image of itself, dressing itself in fresh raiment of white. The voice she hears is not her own but the cadences and rhythms of his and it’s as if he is speaking to her once more and she tells herself so long as she has these words layered inside her then she will always have him as part of her life. And despite the dark recurring impulses that have fastened to her since his being taken, she knows that she must go on living and has to go on walking now despite the cold and the distance.

  Part of her wants to go to the Writers’ Union and confront them with the news of his death, shout their shame in their faces, but to do so will sign her own death warrant and death is a luxury, a welcome fate, that must be denied to her. So she must try to outrun the wolves that search for the trail of her scent. She must cover her traces and hope such a snowfall as this will obliterate her tracks. As she crosses the bridge a squad of soldiers push their truck that has skidded to an angled halt. Competing instructions are shouted to the driver and as it rights itself there is much backslapping and laughter. Down below in the river great ice floes choke the black throat of the water.