The Poets' Wives

by David Park

  Her feet are worryingly cold now and she needs to find a temporary refuge from the snowfall that shows no sign of relenting and which has slowly drained the day of all vestiges of light. There is a teahouse on the corner of the next street and although she begrudges the cost she sets her sights on its yellow windows that offer an invitation which is difficult to refuse. So shaking off some of the snow that coats her she pushes open the heavy door and searches for a corner table. The wooden floor is black with damp and printed with the customers’ footsteps but there is heat and, despite the smell that reminds her of the sodden queue she has just left, there is the welcome respite of a seat and a chance to stiffen herself for what remains of her journey. She is glad when no one comes to serve her as it increases the time she can justify spending there but when her tea arrives she drinks it greedily as if its heat might rush to her fingers and toes. She looks with alarm at her shoes that now appear on the edge of collapse. A decent pair of shoes in Moscow is as rare as so many other things. She will have to try and make some repairs or find that other scarcity, a cobbler who won’t charge her a king’s ransom for his services.

  Already she is making herself think of practical things in the futile hope that it will fill the emptiness that is opening inside her. So she tries to concentrate on trains and locations, contacts and possible employments, but all of this is replaced by anger, anger that she is not even to be allowed the natural expression of grief. She looks around her and sees a group of students laughing and flirting with each other, the excited chimes of their voices ringing in her consciousness. A mother instructs her child to sit up properly and a group of men, whose overcoats remind her of those worn by the agents who carried out Osip’s first arrest, huddle their heads together across the table under a stale coil of cigarette smoke.

  She finds it hard to accept the reality that life goes on seemingly unaltered since the clerk returned her parcel and spoke those few words. Surely somehow notice must be taken and for a second she feels the crazed impulse to stand and shout at them until she holds their attention and tell them that they have killed a great poet who wanted nothing more than to be able to find words that were true to the world. But she slumps back on the chair already defeated by the fact that she knows they now live in a time that has no need for truth unless it is the one publicly given to them, and where the death of some unknown individual has less significance than a grain of sand washed away by the tide. So she sits in silence and stares at them as if they exist in some different universe and for a second she isn’t sure if it’s she or they who are the outsiders to what she conceives of as reality. So that now even if she were to stand and shout it feels as if there would be some invisible barrier between them and whatever words she chose to use would simply fall back rebuffed by this thing that separates them. So her anger blunted once more by the supremacy of loneliness grows slowly cold as the tea she holds.

  When she ventures outside again the snow has temporarily stopped with only a few wind-drifted eddies falling from roofs and the ledges of buildings. She is suddenly frightened of going back to the apartment. What if they are waiting there for her, and the apartment is a sprung trap? She hesitates, uncertain of what she must do or where she must go, and then she thinks of the Shklovskis and although part of her doesn’t want to ask more of them than they have already given so generously, she has nowhere else and they would want to know of her loss so she heads towards their apartment, what’s left of her shoes squeaking as they press fresh imprints on the newly fallen snow.

  The elderly woman janitor at the Shklovskis’ greets her with her usual suspicious scowl and looks at her white-blistered coat with ill-concealed disdain as if she has no right to bring snow into the building. She herself is wearing galoshes and a stained green apron that reaches to her ankles. From a leather belt hang keys that rattle when she walks. Her hair is pinned high on her head like a turban. Their eyes meet silently for a second and she thinks that in the afterlife these women will find employment as the gatekeepers of the Underworld.

  ‘So where’s that husband of yours?’ she suddenly hears the old woman say – she’s not sure she’s ever had anything from her except an inspectorial stare.

  ‘He’s dead,’ she says and although she doesn’t want this to be the first person to hear of her loss, there is a release as she speaks the words, almost as if it frees a little of what is whelming up inside her.

  They stand facing each other silently for a second. The old woman replaces a straying strand of grey hair.

  ‘He was arrested?’

  ‘Yes. He got five years but he died.’

  The woman nods but at first says nothing, then turns her eyes to the doorway.

  ‘Heavy snows,’ she says after a moment’s hesitation. Then she turns away.

  The lift seems slower than ever as it takes her towards the place that has never barred its door and which now more than anything else is where she will be able to share her grief because it suddenly feels too big for her to bear on her own. So when Vasilisa opens the door, her friend’s smile of greeting is almost immediately replaced by an instinctive awareness of what has happened without words being spoken. She takes her by the hand and says, ‘Nadia, Nadia,’ over and over, leading her to the kitchen table and helping her into a seat, then as if awakening from a trance says, ‘Get your wet clothes off, Nadia, you’ll catch your death.’

  Victor, Nikita and Varia are standing in the doorway and Victor is holding his hand up to silence his daughter’s questions. Suddenly she is aware of the sodden weight of her coat which Vasilisa slowly and awkwardly prises from her, skimming off snow patches as she does it. ‘Your shoes,’ she says, ‘look at your shoes.’ And as she glances down she sees that they have almost disintegrated into what seems like a papery pulp. Under her friend’s motherly ministration she feels like a child and she doesn’t resist it – she has given so much of herself to looking after Osip that it feels an unfamiliar but welcome lightness to receive another’s care. Varia is summoned from the other room to help and given a rush of instructions – the wet clothing to the stove, shoes from the cupboard, soup heated.

  She sinks into the kitchen chair while Vasilisa towels her hair and then Victor comes and holds her hand and says with a breaking voice, ‘A great loss to you and a great loss to Russia.’ He’s wiping tears from his eyes and stands shaking his head until his wife nods him away and they’re momentarily left on their own again.

  ‘It’s very hard, Nadia, very, very hard, but he will not suffer now.’

  ‘His suffering is over,’ she says, nodding in agreement while the cloth continues to dry her hair. ‘What about my suffering?’ she wants to add but instead starts to cry quietly holding back as much as she can.

  Vasilisa cradles her head and whispers consolations until she forces herself to stop crying and when Varia comes with the bowl of soup she gives the child the best semblance of a smile that she can find. Her hair is bedraggled and hangs about her face as she takes the soup glad of its warmth and then she feels Varia slipping a pair of her mother’s shoes on her feet under the table. Victor, with Nikita hovering behind the shelter of his father’s shoulder, comes back into the doorway and she lifts her head from the soup and thanks them all. Then the children are ushered away and their parents sit at the table and talk about their memories of Osip, about the poems, about better days in the past and ones which might come again in the future. She is grateful for all of it.

  ‘It’s better he died before he was transported on to Kolyma,’ she says, forcing her voice into a new resolve and speaking as much to herself as to them. ‘His heart probably just gave out. He will not have to endure the winter now.’

  They nod their silent agreement. She looks at their faces and wonders why such people can’t rule the world.

  ‘What will you do now?’ Victor asks before adding, ‘You can stay here as long as you need.’

  ‘I can’t stay,’ she tells him, touching the back of his hand. ‘I think they will
come for me when word of his death becomes public. They won’t want witnesses to their crime, particularly one who sometimes doesn’t know when to keep her mouth shut.’

  ‘Where will you go?’ Vasilisa asks, trying to get her to take more soup.

  ‘I don’t know but somewhere far from Moscow, somewhere in the country. In the shadows as much as possible.’

  ‘You must stay here tonight whatever you decide,’ Victor insists and she is pleased to accept because already she feels a greater weariness than she has ever known, as if all her life’s energy has been drained out of her.

  ‘I’m frightened to go back to the apartment to get my things,’ she says, ‘in case they are waiting for me, or come in the night.’

  ‘Victor and Nikita will go for you, bring what you need here.’

  She reluctantly agrees and hands them her key once a list has been made of what she wants and after they have gone, with her ringing admonition to be careful and to return immediately if they suspect anything is wrong, she allows herself to be shepherded to where she will sleep for the night. It is where she has slept with Osip in the past and so her final wakening moments are laced with that consciousness but which is somehow comforting and sooner than she could hope everything falls away into the respite of a dreamless sleep.

  When she wakes in the morning she struggles for a few seconds to grasp where she is and then she hears what sounds like a bird and thinks of the goldfinch described by Osip in one of his last poems in Voronezh. She wants it to sing but there is nothing except the voice of Varia piping loudly and her mother entreating her to be quiet so that she doesn’t wake their guest. She stirs slowly and everything comes rushing through her again making her turn her face to the wall and tightly close her eyes to block the morning light. She has no idea of the hour but it feels as if she has slept a long time. Then she knows that she must be gone but as always it is only concern for the safety of her friends that makes her stir. Vasilisa appears with a cup of strong tea laced with sugar and sitting beside her strokes her head.

  ‘We thought you were never going to wake,’ she says. ‘You must have been exhausted.’

  ‘My things from the apartment?’

  ‘All here waiting for you.’

  ‘And did Victor and Nikita see anyone?’

  ‘No, they said everything seemed normal and because it was late when they went they don’t believe anyone saw them leaving with your case.’

  She tries to stand and wants to begin getting herself ready but Vasilisa stops her and makes her wait until she has drained the tea and eaten some of the bread Varia has brought. Then they help her dress in a mixture of her own dried clothes and new garments belonging to Vasilisa. She feels as if she’s dressed in love and takes strength from that and tries not to think of the uncertainties that stretch out ahead of her. Once more she has gently to refuse their entreaty to stay longer but despite her protests is forced to submit to their insistence that they will accompany her to the station. Her new shoes pinch a little but the leather feels strong and promises to do its best to keep her feet dry. There is no sign of the ones she discarded the previous night and she assumes they have been thrown out with the rubbish. She wishes there was something she could give to them to show her gratitude but in its absence she simply kisses both her friends and makes a joke about Odysseus setting out on his adventures. Varia comes and hugs her and she makes another joke about not forgetting her and expresses the hope that she will not block out her memory like the faces in her schoolbook. As she kisses Nikita on both cheeks she whispers so that only he can hear, ‘Let them fly free,’ but he merely smiles and blushes a little.

  Then as both parents refuse Varia’s plea to be allowed to come with them and with Victor carrying her case they take the lift. Close to the ground floor she has a sudden fear that when the doors open they will be faced by the secret police but when they walk out it is the keeper of the door they meet. She nods neutrally at Victor and Vasilisa, stares at the case and then inspects her from head to toe, and she is suddenly struck by their vulnerability and how a single phone call about ‘suspicious activity’ might send them tumbling into disaster.

  But, ‘So you have new shoes,’ is all the old woman says and after watching them struggling with the door she turns away again.

  As soon as they step into the street the cold crimps their faces tight and they struggle for a few minutes before establishing a purposeful rhythm. They pass the Epiphany Monastery that now houses a factory and living quarters for those working on the underground construction, past more teams of men clearing snow. Already the fresh fall of the previous night is trampled and soiled and as they make their way towards the station she is fearful that she is dragging her friends into a morass from which they will not escape, so when eventually they come in sight of it with its fluttering flags and guarded entrance she compels Victor to give her the suitcase and forbids them to journey any further with her. They reluctantly agree and then despite her attempts to strike a light note they part with solemnity that they all know is edged with finality.

  She only turns round once to wave as she walks away and sees them standing as if frozen by the cold, their hands slow to rise in response. There is nothing now to be gained from looking back. She understands that she is about to turn Osip’s description of her as ‘the beggar-friend’ into a reality and the thought almost makes her smile.

  In the station she refuses the offers from porters. She will need all the little money she has. Need all her wits and good fortune. Soldiers are checking the papers of someone they have stopped. Averting her face, she hurries past. She has a train to catch. Already she can hear its impatient whistle and the hiss of steam.

  8

  1956

  She is falling head over heels into old age, her body shrinking into itself, and with it comes a new danger, except it’s not the brittleness of her bones or the weariness of the flesh that torment her now but the slow weakening of memory. So between the lines she silently recites stray all the scattered images of her life, each half glimpsed before it slips back again into the deeply grooved rhythm of the words. Endless journeys on trains, an uncertain future unfolding in countless framed windows of ravenous forests seemingly gorging on the body of the land; windswept steppes and nameless villages looking back at her with faces scarred from the years of forced collectivisation and starvation. The journeys by boat and huddled in the back of carts. And the litany of all the backwater towns in which she has sought refuge and sustenance keeps insisting that she also speaks their names and when she tries to stifle them they assert their right to be included because they too are part of everything.

  Mostly small towns with nothing to offer beyond a temporary refuge and the brief hope of living below the surface, of never casting a shadow, and then at the first sign of attention, or suspicious questions, abandoning the little that has been built and moving on. During the war, when she found herself fleeing the new terror of Hitler, Akhmatova managed to get her evacuated to Tashkent. Other times she has hidden in places she couldn’t with any certainty locate on a map. Terrible to have lived such a nomadic life, never sure whether at any moment they would come for her. All through the different terrors, the temporary respites as its leaders were themselves eventually consumed, only to be replaced by worse, all the times that quotas had to be met, the sweeps driven by some new paranoia. Sleeping in dormitories, back rooms, corridors, spaces that were not much more than cupboards, and never having the capacity or the need to own anything other than the basic necessities for existence.

  Sometimes too she thinks of her childhood with the semblance of a smile, about all its comforts, the elegant, cultured home, the prim little English governesses straight out of Jane Eyre to whom she is grateful for her knowledge of English. It’s often been as a teacher of languages that she has found temporary employment. Perhaps there was a greater safety in a language not her own. And she tries not to think of Anatoli Lebedev because it is an embarrassment now to remember wha
t she almost felt and what she would have had to give up. There’s no longer a consciousness of what might have been gained so much as what would have been lost and it frightens her to think that she nearly put it at risk.

  She tries to insist on the purity of her memory, tries to tongue-lash it into faithful servitude with insults and curses and to banish all those names and images that aren’t part of what has to be remembered. But almost imperceptibly her memory is weakening – perhaps losing a single word here or there, or the sequence of a line. To try and help she attempts to recall the very moment she wrote the poems for the first time when the words still hung on his lips, tries to hear his voice ringing true. Sometimes it comes but at others it crumbles away like a cliff being slowly eroded by the sea. And that frightens her, even more than the sound of a stopping car or the lift halting on her floor in the middle of the night.

  She does not live her life, as he did not, held in the tight fist of fear, but it’s always a penumbral presence whose shadowy reality can never be fully escaped. What would it be like to live a life unencumbered by that deadening weight? She can’t even begin to imagine it. She lights a cigarette and sits in the room’s one chair. She knows it a foolish thought but wonders if the smoke might clear her mind, the way it would some nest of bees under the eaves. So far, she tells herself, time has been on her side. The great father is finally gone, his patricide committed behind the closed doors of the Twentieth Congress and all his crimes supposedly denounced. But how much of what is whispered on the streets is truth and how much rumour? Time has aided her to this moment but now it twists and slithers things into new shapes and so she trusts nothing any longer except her anger and the strength that gives her.