I looked around to see if anyone was coming out of the museum.
“If you wish to engage me I will drive you, but at first I wish to show you something—how do you say?—of interest.”
He reached through the open front window of the taxi and brought forth a flat package wrapped in brown paper tied with red string.
“Stories which I wrote.”
“I don’t read Russian,” I said.
“My wife has translated some of them. She is not by her profession a translator, although her English is advanced and sensitive. She had been for two years in England for Soviet Purchasing Commission. We became acquainted in university. I prefer not to translate my stories because I do not translate so well Russian into English, although I do it beautifully the opposite. Also I will not force myself—it is like selfimitation. Perhaps the stories appear a little awkward in English—also my wife admits this—but you can read and form opinion.”
Though he offered the package hesitantly, he offered it as if it was a bouquet of spring flowers. Can it be some sort of trick? I asked myself. Are they testing me because I signed that damned document in the Kiev airport, five copies no less?
Levitansky seemed to know my thought. “It is purely stories.”
He bit the string in two and, laying the package on the fender of the Volga, unpeeled the wrapping. There were the stories, clipped separately, typed on long sheets of thin blue paper. I took one Levitansky handed me and scanned the top page—it seemed a story—then I flipped through the other pages and handed the manuscript back. “I’m not much a critic of stories.”
“I don’t seek critic. I seek for reader with literary experience and taste. If you have redacted books of poems and also essays, you will be able to judge literary quality of my stories. Please, I request you will read them.”
After a long minute I heard myself say, “Well, I might at that.” I didn’t recognize the voice and wasn’t sure why I had said what I had. You might say I spoke apart from myself, with reluctance that either he wasn’t aware of or chose to ignore.
“If you respect—if you approve my stories, perhaps you will be able to arrange for publication in Paris or either London?” His larynx wobbled.
I stared at the man. “I don’t happen to be going to Paris, and I’ll be in London only between planes to the U.S.A.”
“In this event, perhaps you will show to your publisher, and he will publish my work in America?” Levitansky was now visibly uneasy.
“In America?” I said, raising my voice in disbelief.
For the first time he gazed around before replying.
“If you will be so kind to show them to publisher of your books—he is reliable publisher?—perhaps he will wish to bring out volume of my stories? I will make contract whatever he will like. Money, if I could get, is not an idea.”
“Whatever volume are you talking about?”
He said that from thirty stories he had written he had chosen eighteen, of which these were a sample. “Unfortunately more are not now translated. My wife is biochemist assistant and works long hours in laboratory. I am sure your publisher will enjoy to read these. It will depend on your opinion.”
Either this man has a fantastic imagination, or he’s out of his right mind. “I wouldn’t want to get myself involved in smuggling a Russian manuscript out of Russia.”
“I have informed you that my manuscript is of made-up stories.”
“That may be but it’s still a chancy enterprise. I’d be taking chances I have no desire to take, to be frank.”
“At least if you will read,” he sighed.
I took the stories again and thumbed slowly through each. What I was looking for I couldn’t say: maybe a booby trap? Should I or shouldn’t I? Why should I?
He handed me the wrapping paper and I rolled up the stories in it. The quicker I read them, the quicker I’ve read them. I stepped into the cab.
“As I said, I’m at the Metropole. Come by tonight about nine o’clock and I’ll give you my opinion, for what it’s worth. But I’m afraid I’ll have to limit it to that, Mr. Levitansky, without further obligation or expectations, or it’s no deal. My room number is 538.”
“Tonight?—so soon?” he said, scratching both palms. “You must read with care so you will realize the art.”
“Tomorrow night, then, same time. I’d rather not have them in my room longer than that.”
Levitansky agreed. Whistling through eroded teeth, he drove me carefully to the Metropole.
That night, sipping vodka from a drinking glass, I read Levitansky’s stories. They were simply and strongly written—I had almost expected it—and not badly translated; in fact the translation read much better than I had been led to think, although there were of course some gaffes—odd constructions, ill-fitting stiff words, some indicated by question marks and taken, I suppose, from a thesaurus. And the stories, short tales dealing—somewhat to my surprise—mostly with Moscow Jews, were good, artistically done, really moving. The situations they revealed weren’t exactly news to me: I’m a careful reader of the Times. But the stories weren’t written to complain. What they had to say was achieved as form, no telling the dancer from the dance. I poured myself another glass of the potato potion—I was beginning to feel high, occasionally wondering why I was putting so much away—relaxing, I guess. I then reread the stories with admiration for Levitansky. I had the feeling he was no ordinary man. I felt excited, then depressed, as if I had been let in on a secret I didn’t want to know.
It’s a hard life here for a fiction writer, I thought.
Afterwards, having the stories around made me uneasy. In one of them a Russian writer burns his stories in the kitchen sink. Obviously nobody had burned these. I thought to myself, if I’m caught with them in my possession, considering what they indicate about conditions here, there’s no question I’ll be up to my hips in trouble. I wish I had insisted that Levitansky come back for them tonight.
There was a solid rap on the door. I felt I had risen a few inches out of my chair. It was, after a while, only Levitansky.
“Out of the question,” I said, thrusting the stories at him. “Absolutely out of the question!”
The next night we sat facing each other over glasses of cognac in the writer’s small, book-crowded study. He was dignified, at first haughty, wounded, hardly masking his impatience. I wasn’t myself exactly comfortable.
I had come out of courtesy and other considerations, I guess; principally a dissatisfaction I couldn’t define.
Levitansky, the taxi driver rattling around in his Volga-Pegasus, amateur trying to palm off a half-ass ms., had faded in my mind, and I saw him now as a serious Soviet writer with publishing problems. There are many others. What can I do for him? I thought. Why should I?
“I didn’t express what I really felt last night,” I apologized. “You caught me by surprise, I’m sorry to say.”
Levitansky was scratching each hand with the blunt fingers of the other. “How did you acquire my address?”
I reached into my pocket for a wad of folded brown wrapping paper. “It’s on this—Novo Ostapovskaya Street, 488, Flat 59. I took a cab.”
“I had forgotten this.”
Maybe, I thought.
Still, I had practically had to put my foot in the door to get in. Levitansky’s wife had answered my uncertain knock, her eyes immediately worried, an expression I took to be the one she lived with. The eyes, astonished to behold a stranger, became outright uneasy once I inquired in English for her husband. I felt, as in Kiev, that my native tongue had become my enemy.
“Have you not the wrong apartment?”
“I hope not. Not if Gospodin Levitansky lives here. I came to see him about his—ah—manuscript.”
Her eyes darkened as her face paled. Ten seconds later I was in the flat, the door locked behind me.
“Levitansky!” she summoned him. It had a reluctant quality: Come but don’t come.
He appeared in apparently the
same shirt, pants, tricolor socks. There was at first pretend-boredom in a tense, tired face. He could not, however, conceal excitement, his lit eyes roving over my face.
“Oh ho,” Levitansky said.
My God, I thought, has he been expecting me?
“I came to talk to you for a few minutes, if you don’t mind,” I said. “I want to say what I think of the stories you kindly let me read.”
He curtly spoke in Russian to his wife and she snapped an answer back. “I wish to introduce my wife, Irina Filipovna Levitansky, biochemist. She is patient although not a saint.”
She smiled tentatively, an attractive woman about twenty-eight, a little on the hefty side, in house slippers and plain dress. The edge of her slip hung below her skirt.
There was a touch of British in her accent. “I am pleased to be acquainted.” If so one hardly noticed. She stepped into black pumps and slipped a bracelet on her wrist, a lit cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth. Her legs and arms were shapely, her brown hair cut short. I had the impression of tight lips in a pale face.
“I will go to Kovalevsky, next door,” she said.
“Not on my account, I hope? All I have to say—”
“Our neighbors in the next flat.” Levitansky grimaced. “Also thin walls.” He knocked a knuckle on a hollow wall.
I indicated my dismay.
“Please, not long,” Irina said, “because I am afraid.”
Surely not of me? Agent Howard Harvitz, CIA—a comical thought.
Their small square living room wasn’t unattractive but Levitansky signaled the study inside. He offered sweet cognac in whiskey tumblers, then sat facing me at the edge of his chair, repressed energy all but visible. I had the momentary sense his chair was about to move, fly off.
If it does he flies alone.
“What I came to say,” I told him, “is that I like your stories and am sorry I didn’t say so last night. I like the primary, close-to-the-bone quality of the writing. The stories impress me as strong if simply wrought; I appreciate your feeling for people and at the same time the objectivity with which you render them. It’s sort of Chekhovian in quality, but more compressed, sinewy, direct, if you know what I mean. For instance, that story about the old father coming to see his son who ducks out on him. I can’t comment on your style, having only read the stories in translation.”
“Chekhovian,” Levitansky admitted, smiling through his worn teeth, “is fine compliment. Mayakovsky, our early Soviet poet, described him ‘the strong and gay artist of the world.’ I wish it was possible for Levitansky to be so gay in life and art.” He seemed to be staring at the drawn shade in the room, though maybe no place in particular, then said, perhaps heartening himself, “In Russian is magnificent my style—precise, economy, including wit. The style may be difficult to translate in English because is less rich language.”
“I’ve heard that said. In fairness I should add I have some reservations about the stories, yet who hasn’t on any given piece of imaginative work?”
“I have myself reservations.”
The admission made, I skipped the criticism. I had been wondering about a picture on his bookcase and then asked who it was. “It’s a face I’ve seen before. The eyes are poetic, you might say.”
“So is the voice. This is picture of Boris Pasternak as young man. On the wall yonder is Mayakovsky. He was also remarkable poet, wild, joyful, neurasthenic, a lover of the Revolution. He spoke: ‘This is my Revolution.’ To him was it ‘a holy washerwoman who cleaned off all the filth from the earth.’ Unfortunately he was later disillusioned and also shot himself.”
“I have read that.”
“He wrote: ‘I wish to be understood by my country—but if no, I will fly through Russia like a slanting rainstorm.’”
“Have you by chance read Dr. Zhivago?”
“I have read,” the writer sighed, and then began to declaim in Russian—I guessed some lines from a poem.
“It is to Marina Tsvetayeva, Soviet poetess, good friend of Pasternak.” Levitansky fiddled with the pack of cigarettes on the table. “The end of her life was unfortunate.”
“Is there no picture of Osip Mandelstam?” I hesitated as I spoke the name.
He reacted as though he had just met me. “You know Mandelstam?”
“Just a few poems in an anthology.”
“Our best poet—he is holy—gone with so many others. My wife does not hang his photograph.”
“I guess why I really came,” I said after a minute, “is I wanted to express my sympathy and respect.”
Levitansky popped a match with his thumbnail. His hand trembled as he shook the flame out without lighting the cigarette.
Embarrassed for him, I pretended to be looking elsewhere. “It’s a small room. Does your son sleep here?”
“Don’t confuse my story of writer, which you have read, with life of author. My wife and I are married eight years, but without children.”
“Might I ask whether the experience you describe in that same story—the interview with the editor—was true?”
“Not true although truth,” the writer said impatiently. “I write from imagination. I am not interested to repeat contents of diaries or total memory.”
“On that I go along.”
“Also, which is not in story, I have submitted to Soviet journals sketches and tales many many times but only few have been published, although not my best. Some people, but only few, know my work through samizdat, which is passing from one to another the manuscript.”
“Did you submit any of the Jewish stories?”
“Please, stories are stories, they have not nationality.”
“I mean by that those about Jews.”
“Some I have submitted but they were not accepted.”
I said, “After reading the stories you gave me, I wondered how it is you write so well about Jews? You call yourself marginal—that was your word—yet you write with authority. Not that one can’t, I suppose, but it’s surprising when one does.”
“Imagination makes authority. When I write about Jews comes out stories, so I write about Jews. Is not important that I am half-Jew. What is important is observation, feeling, also art. In the past I have observed my Jewish father. Also I study, sometimes, Jews in the synagogue. I sit on the bench for strangers. The gabbai watches me with dark eyes and I watch him. But whatever I write, whether is about Jews, Galicians, or Georgians, must be work of invention, or for me it does not live.”
“I’m not much of a synagogue-goer myself,” I told him, “but I like to drop in once in a while to be refreshed by the language and images of a time and place where God was. That may be strange because I had no religious education to speak of.”
“I am atheist.”
“I understand what you mean by imagination—as for instance that prayer-shawl story. But am I right”—I lowered my voice—“that you are saying something about the condition of Jews in this country?”
“I do not make propaganda,” Levitansky said sternly. “I am not Israeli spokesman. I am Soviet artist.”
“I didn’t mean you weren’t but there’s a strong sympathy for Jews, and ideas are born in life. One senses an awareness of injustice.”
“Whatever is the injustice, the product must be art.”
“Well, I respect your philosophy.”
“Please do not respect so much,” the writer said irritably. “We have in this country a quotation: ‘It is impossible to make out of apology a fur coat.’ The idea is similar. I appreciate your respect but need now practical assistance.
“Listen at first to me,” Levitansky went on, slapping the table with his palm. “I am in desperate situation. I have written for years but little is published. In the past, one, two editors who were friends told me, private, that my stories are excellent but I violate social realism. This what you call objectivity they called it excessive naturalism and sentiment. It is hard to listen to such nonsense. They advise me swim but not to use my leg
s. They have warned me; also they have made excuses for me which I do not like them. Even they say I am crazy, although I explained them I submit my stories because Soviet Union is great country. A great country does not fear what artist writes. A great country breathes into its lungs work of writers, painters, musicians, and becomes more strong. That I told to them but they replied I am not sufficient realist. This is the reason I am not invited to be member of Writers Union. Without this is impossible to publish.” He smiled sourly. “They have demanded me to stop submitting to journals my work, so I have stopped.”
“I’m sorry about that,” I said. “I don’t myself believe any good comes from exiling poets.”
“I cannot continue anymore in this fashion,” Levitansky said, laying his hand on his heart. “I feel I am locked in drawer with my stories. Now I must get out or I suffocate. It becomes for me each day more difficult to write. It is not easy to request a stranger for such important personal favor. My wife advised me not. She is angry, also frightened, but it is impossible to go on in this way. I know in my bones I am important Soviet writer. I must have audience. I wish to see my books to be read by Soviet people. I wish to have in minds different than my own and my wife acknowledgment of my art. I wish them to know my work is related to Russian writers of the past as well as modern. I am in tradition of Chekhov, Gorky, Isaac Babel. I know if book of my stories will be published, it will make for me favorable reputation. This is reason why you must help me—it is necessary for my interior liberty.”
His confession came in an agitated burst. I use the word advisedly because that’s partly what upset me. I have never cared for confessions such as are meant to involve unwilling people in others’ personal problems. Russians are past masters of the art—you can see it in their novels.
“I appreciate the honor of your request,” I said, “but all I am is a passing tourist. That’s a pretty tenuous relationship between us.”
“I do not ask tourist—I ask human being—man,” Levitansky said passionately. “Also you are freelance writer. You know now what I am and what is on my heart. You sit in my house. Who else can I ask? I would prefer to publish in Europe my stories, maybe with Mondadori or Einaudi in Italy, but if this is impossible to you I will publish in America. Someday my work will be read in my own country, maybe after I am dead. This is terrible irony but my generation lives on such ironies. Since I am not now ambitious to die it will be great relief to me to know that at least in one language is alive my art. Mandelstam wrote: ’I will be enclosed in some alien speech.’ Better so than nothing.”
The Complete Stories Page 52