A Question of Return

by Robert Carr

  “I doubt it—he’s away. Will you give us the money we need?”

  “I’ll do more than that,” Laukhin said.

  “More than that?”

  “I’ll leave you my apartment.”

  “You’ll do what?”

  He told her. It was a thought, well, a plan, that had come to him lately, and now that she was pregnant it made even more sense. She should come back to live with him and tell everybody about it. They’d be a couple again—just for appearance, of course. She should also announce that she was pregnant with his baby. Vadim would be the only one aware of the lie. Her mother too, Laukhin conceded, since she already knew who the baby’s father was. He had been invited to a conference in the West in the spring, in America, and he might be allowed to go because he’d have a wife at home, a pregnant wife, and he’d be expected to return. But he wouldn’t, and she’d be left with the apartment.

  “They’ll throw me out of it,” Tanya said. “I’m not a member of the Writers’ Union. I’m not even a writer.”

  “If you’re here in the apartment, pregnant, and you marry Vadim as soon as possible, you may have a chance. You’ll need to give a few gifts too.”

  “A few gifts?”

  “Bribes. Sway the right people. How do you think I’m still on Lavrushinsky Lane?”

  “I don’t know who they are—the right people.”

  “I do.”

  “With what money?”

  “My father’s money. I can’t take it with me, so I’ll leave it all for you.”

  She stopped. “They’ll confiscate it,” she said.

  “Maybe. But until then nothing stops me from giving you money and some very expensive gifts before I leave. There won’t be much left to confiscate.”

  “Tyoma, it won’t work. They’ll force me out of Lavrushinsky Lane once they’re certain you won’t return.”

  “You’ll be here with Vadim, and very pregnant. At the very least they’ll give you something else in exchange. Maybe something on Bezbozhny Lane, or farther away on Lenigradsky Prospect. My defection will create a stir, Tanya. You’ll condemn me, you’ll say how shocked and indignant you are. You’ll wail about how heartless I was to leave you pregnant with my child. They won’t just throw you two—or three by then—out of Lavrushinsky with nothing in exchange. They’re smarter than that. They’ll want to show off how well they treat you, because, Tanya, there’ll be western journalists swarming all around you by then, keen to hear your story.”

  She looked at him as if he had lost his mind.

  “It’s not crazy, Tanya. In the worst case, you’ll be left with the dacha in Peredelkino. That’s mine—well, father bought it years ago. I’ll put it in your name. They won’t be able to take that from you. It’s like a house, Tanya, a house in Moscow’s suburbs.”

  They walked for a while in silence. At the canal they turned left once more. He looked across the bridge at the dazzling shapes and colours of St. Basil, and then at the massive red wall along the river.

  “You’ll miss all this,” she said.

  “I know. Well, some of it.”

  “What will you do there, Tyoma?”

  “I’ll publish my father’s journal. I promised him I’d do that.”

  “That’s all?”

  “What am I doing here? I write silly screenplays and drink and laugh with people I dislike.”

  “It’s your country, your people, your language. It’s your history and your parents’ history. We just passed the Ardovs’ house. You used to go there with your father and Boris Leonidovich. You saw Akhmatova there, talked to her. All this has a meaning to you, the smells are familiar.”

  “That’s just it, Tanya, they’re so familiar we’re not aware of the stink.”

  “You’re loved here. Loved and admired.”

  “I promised my father, Tanya.”

  “You have your friends, here, a good life, privileges. You won’t have that there. Think of Fedya Malgunov.”

  “I haven’t published anything of substance since Youthful Eminences.”

  “What about Conversations with My Father? It was a huge success.”

  “All lies, Tanya. All lies.”

  Porkies, as Joan Geraldine would say, and how well the word fit. Porkies for the pigs hiding behind the red wall across the river.

  They took a few steps along the embankment.

  “Where will you live?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t have to decide now. Probably in America.”

  Thursday, 6 October, 1955

  Korotkova is being a bit of a pest. A beautiful pest, I must admit. Useful too. She met us on the deck, on the morning of the third day, wrapped in a long red dress and a fur coat, looking as if she came straight from a glamorous soirée that pushed into morning. Boris Leonidovich whispered to me, “Just like a high-roller dame on the Mississippi.” She walked with us for a while and then invited us to her cabin, the Captain’s cabin.

  A suite, not a cabin. A large, comfortable living room, with armchairs and a mahogany table. Unseen, a bedroom. This captain looks after himself. A bottle of Georgian champagne was waiting for us, and she ordered a few things to nibble on from a woman waiting there.

  Korotkova’s eyes shine when she talks to Boris Leonidovich. She hasn’t said so, but I know she’s dismissive of my books, of brave Oleg Vinograd. She has eyes only for the poet. He’s flattered, and when Korotkova disappeared for a few moments he whispered to me to leave at the first opportunity. She has an attractive face, open, with daring eyes. Her lower lip has a slight deformation, almost as if a lover had bitten it recklessly and left a permanent, oddly appealing mark. Young too, early thirties. Her beauty became more apparent when she peeled off her fur coat. Once settled comfortably in a chair, with a glass in his hand, Boris Leonidovich’s eyes measured Korotkova’s curves. What happened to our wake for Tsvetayeva? Ah, how quickly we forget our duty and promises in the presence of beautiful women.

  Not a stupid woman, it turns out. She’s quite familiar with Pasternak’s poetry and talked about it with a hurried fervour, as if eager to get to the end of a pitch, but also with feeling and passion, with the voice of a genuine lover of poetry.

  She knows Tsvetayeva’s work too, knows some of her early poems by heart, and she got all worked up when she found out that both of us had met her and that Boris Leonidovich had corresponded with her for many years. It was news to her that Tsvetayeva killed herself in Yelabuga and that she might have taken this boat there in the summer of 1941.

  7 – 8 October, 1955

  The boat is fairly big, with three passenger levels. Our suite is on the top one. Marietta Alexyevna says that Kirov holds up to two hundred people. It has been recently refurbished. It is, she claims, by far the best boat on the Volga-Kama route. Best for comfort, that is.

  I like the boat, its routine, the luster of the polished wood and the bronze handles, the crystal chandelier hanging over the captain’s table (acquired by Korotkova from a clandestine pawnbroker in Kazan, and anchored to the ceiling in several places; they had an awful time getting reimbursed, and there were dangerous insinuations of taste for a bygone era). I like the eerie quiet that descends at night when the boat is berthed, the vibrations of its giant hull each morning as the journey resumes.

  ……

  The sun tried to get through today and it’s much warmer. Now, at dusk, sky and water meet in a somber, blue-grey, darkening sameness. We spent the afternoon outside, on the small deck off our salon. The captain told us he’d keep the boat close to shore this afternoon as there was a very beautiful stretch ahead. He’d also keep the engines low—something he couldn’t do often, but for us he’d do it as a special treat.

  Around four o’clock Korotkova arrived with morsels of smoked fish, blini, caviar, fried aubergines, and, bless her thoughtful heart, a bottle of chilled vodka and another of wine. She also brought a book of Pasternak’s poetry, which she asked him to sign. Boris Leonidovich was happy to oblige, and withou
t any forethought wrote at length. Then he snapped it closed and said, “There you are. Don’t read it now. Let’s enjoy these treats. Marietta Alexeevna, you are an absolute treasure.”

  We didn’t say much as we ate the zakuski and washed them down. Boris Leonidovich smacked his lips happily, and we sat back to enjoy the unhurried, drifting panorama of villages and little towns, the skeletal woods, now and then the steeple of an old church still standing. It was like a slow motion movie, almost silent except for the soothing sounds of the waves and muffled engines. Then Boris Leonidovich read one of Tsvetayeva’s poems, an early one entitled, simply, Song, miraculously republished a few months before her death in a Moscow magazine. It had a haunting refrain, “My love, what was it I did to you?” and I ended up with tears in my eyes. Then he read a poem called Homesickness from a loose sheet with small neat handwriting. Did she give it to him? Did he copy it? We ate and drank some more, and we all had teary eyes, and then Korotkova produced the book of Boris Leonidovich’s poetry he signed earlier and asked him to read from it.

  ……

  I have brought a new notebook with me. I told myself that this trip would be worth recording in minute detail, and vowed to write everything down. I scribble often in my cabin, in bed. Tonight I’m writing in the salon, during the quiet time before dinner, sunk in one of the swivelling chairs. Earlier, Boris Leonidovich was in the other chair, looking at the grey waters and talking about Tsvetayeva. Random thoughts; he was not really concerned whether I was paying attention. Eventually, his voice began to tremble—“I apologize, Pavel Nikolayevich, this is silly, I’m not myself after the heart attack”—and he stood up and left the room.

  He returned half an hour later, and watched for a while as I wrote. All writers are relentless scribblers, so I was surprised when he said, “I hope you’re not keeping a diary, Pavel Nikolayevich. It’s a dangerous habit.”

  I lied with what I trust was a straight face. “I’m not a reckless child, Boris Leonidovich. I’m thinking that Oleg Vinograd’s next adventure could take place on a boat like this one, and I’m making notes.”

  He nodded and sat down. After a while (I was quite aware that he was watching me write) he said that he’s also thinking of a story—about a journey not unlike ours, also on the Kama River. An elderly man, on the boat to Perm. The man has heard that somebody who had been dear to him before the war spent the last months of her life not far from there. She had been arrested and spent a decade in camps, and after she was freed was forced to live in a small town in the Urals. Her health had been ruined in the camps—a miracle she survived at all—and she must have died soon after her release. The elderly man hopes to find her grave, and to talk to people who knew her during her last days. He’s sad, depressed; a tragic figure, ridden with guilt. In some way—Boris Leonidovich still needs to figure this out, although he has a couple of ideas—her arrest had saved him. He never sent her letters or parcels while she was in prison or in the camps, and didn’t get in touch with her after her release—he had a wife and children to think of. He never talked to anyone about her, what she had meant to him, what she did for him. Now, after so many years, with the thaw, with him so old that he’s been dismissed as irrelevant and senile, with his wife dead and his children estranged, he’s taking this trip. In his own eyes, he’s a coward, a man of no mettle. He’s desperate to talk about her, to unburden himself, to find somebody to tell him that he’s not such a terrible human being, that he did what he did simply to protect his family. He seeks forgiveness by making this journey to the place his former lover spent her last days, and also hopes to recall the couple of happy years he had with her. But he finds nobody, no kindred soul he can talk to about himself and about her. The people in Perm are either not interested, or do not remember her at all. He thinks of killing himself, although he realizes it’s a meaningless act, given his old age. He drinks.

  8

  On the afternoon of the dinner at the Emslies it rained violently and for a long time. It stopped just before Laukhin left his house, and by the time he emerged from the Bloor subway, the sun was back out. The Emslies lived in the Kingsway neighbourhood. He had been to their place so often that he had several routes. This time he took the longest. Large puddles glistened on the road. The rain had brought renewed shine, and the grass, the flowers and the wet soil filled the air with a sweet, raunchy aroma. Audrey came into his mind, a mixture of lust, battered ego, and longing.

  He would not think of Audrey. Not tonight—an act of will.

  On the way to the Emslies he’d think only of them. He first met Colson in the summer of 1971. Had Kate tagged along during Colson’s trip to Russia that year? Colson was thinking of a book on Akhmatova at the time, and had travelled overnight from Leningrad to Moscow to meet Lydia Chukovskaya, but the poet had cancelled on him at the last moment. A year earlier she had done the same thing, and now he realized she was avoiding him. The voice on the phone that morning sounded young and upset. He had said his name already, but Laukhin caught it only the second time—Colson Emslie, professor of Russian literature at the University of Toronto. He said he was in Moscow for two days, and somebody had told him that Artyom Laukhin had known Pasternak, had met Akhmatova a few times, and was a repository of stories and facts about them.

  “Ask a poet about a poet,” Colson added when Laukhin kept quiet at his end of the line. “That’s what my thesis supervisor always said—almost the only words of his that I remember.”

  Laukhin said his father had been the real repository. “I’ve heard many of his stories several times, and some of them are still with me.” He felt sorry for the young man, but his call came when he had plans for the day. He thought of hanging up, but he reconsidered and said, “I’m meeting somebody in Peredelkino later today. Come with me—it’s the best I can do. We’ll barge in on Chukovskaya, if she’s there, although I doubt that she’ll talk to you, and I think I know why. She’s working on a book about Akhmatova too.”

  The sky was maddeningly blue now, and that made the pain of losing Audrey more intense. He could have walked to this dinner arm-in-arm with her. But “the stars were not aligned,” and he’d lost her. After that horrible dinner with her, he’d sat down at his worktable and dashed off a few lines. Probably worthless, but he hadn’t written any verse in a long time. Maybe it would lead to something—pain and loss were seeds of poetry. What if the director-general up there were to tell him to pick between Audrey’s love or the end of his long dry spell? Which would he choose?

  There he was—thinking of Audrey.

  Yes, Kate had been with Colson on that trip, how could he forget? Fourteen years ago. Laukhin met them in front of Kievsky Station, and Kate wore a red coat that stood out. Laukhin’s first words to her were that she looked “very October”, a remark met by a blank stare. Colson was beginning to lose his hair already, but Kate seemed very young. Later, Laukhin learned that Kate was a child psychologist. She had an attractive face, somewhat Slavic in shape and colouring. She spoke little Russian, but said, now that she had married a Russian scholar, she’d learn it. She encouraged Laukhin and her husband to speak Russian in her presence, claiming she was learning by immersion, like a child. He remembered thinking that if he liked the Emslies he’d give them the full Peredelkino treatment, a guided walk that would end at his dacha with an improvised meal and a few drinks. He’d done it before with Dieter a few times, and Philip, and Bart and a couple of other foreigners. Bringing the Canadian professor and his wife along would also dispel the inevitable awkwardness of his first moments with Joan Geraldine, who he had agreed to meet with that day.

  The blue sky was turning pink, as if the director-general was running a tutorial in pastel colours. On the curving road, a fox emerged from a hedge. A fox! Was this from brazen curiosity or to escape from a flooded den? There, his mind had turned away from the Emslies without turning to Audrey.

  Colson was very tall, over one meter ninety. Lean and lithe was Joan Geraldine’s pillow description of him
later that night, when Laukhin asked her what she thought of him. She also said that he moved with unexpected grace for such a tall man. After he told Colson to meet him in front of the Kievsky Station, near the tower, Laukhin wondered aloud how he’d recognize him. “I’m tall,” Colson said. “Look for a tall thin man with a not-so-tall not-so-thin woman. There can’t be too many pairs like us around that tower. My wife is wearing a red coat.”

  The first story he’d told Colson—and he told many the day he met the Emslies—was about slipping money under Akhmatova’s pillow. In the spring of 1947, the poet visited Moscow and stayed, as always, with the Ardovs, on Bolshaya Ordinka, a block or two from the Laukhins’ apartment on Lavruhsinksy Lane. Pasternak gave a reading at the Ardovs from an early chapter of what would later become Zhivago. Pavel Laukhin went, of course, and dragged along his eleven-year old son. A year earlier Akhmatova had been ousted from the Writers’ Union, which effectively—it was hard for a westerner to appreciate this—made her unable to earn a living. The story that made the rounds was that during that evening at the Ardovs, Pasternak surreptitiously gave her some money.

  “But what that story ignores,” Laukhin said, “is that the one tasked with the delicate sliding of the envelope of money under her pillow was me, eleven years old, and bored out of my mind. It also ignores that most of the money came from my father, who always had a wad of cash with him, as Pasternak knew only too well. Before he began reading he approached my father who was in a corner with me and whispered (I could hear him), ‘Pavel Nikolayevich, I have only eighty-three rubles with me. Lend me some money for Anna Andreevna, say a couple of thousand. I’ll pay you back as soon as I can.’ He never did, by the way, but my father didn’t care. Later, as everybody settled down for the reading, Father gave me an envelope and said I should slip it under Anna Andreevna’s pillow once Pasternak started reading. He said to wait for his signal. It was something to do. I kept turning and glancing at my father for a sign, but it didn’t come for a long time. Either he fell asleep, or was waiting for others to do so. Eventually, he squeezed my shoulder. I looked around at first. Akhmatova’s eyes were closed, and she didn’t seem even to be breathing, but I didn’t think she was asleep. I had seen her once before, two years earlier, just before the war ended, when she and Pasternak gave a joint recital at the Writers Club, and my father took me along. She had enjoyed, then, a small respite in the euphoria of the imminent victory. She seemed heavier that evening at the Ardovs, and with a lot more grey hair.