The Vanishing Futurist

by Charlotte Hobson

  ‘Comrade Freely, I have long thought you a very rational, intelligent woman. I have known your positive attitude to the Revolution and to women’s rights for some time, but when you told me your reasons for staying in Moscow, it struck me that you would see my situation clearly, without sentiment. I hope I deduced this correctly . . .’

  He gulped audibly, and in the half-light I saw his Adam’s apple leaping up and down in his throat.

  ‘In order for me to work productively certain physical comforts are occasionally necessary. For some time now I have been wanting urgently to visit you with the proposal that we might . . . we might become intimate, so to speak. That in the light of the new world we are building, we might ourselves enjoy free, mutually satisfactory, er, beneficial . . .’

  He hesitated.

  For a moment my mind whirled. Then I noticed that he was trembling, the hand clutching his knees white-knuckled.

  I reached across and touched him.

  ‘Oh, comrade—’

  Suddenly we were together, and he was kissing my face, and pushing up my nightdress, and we were both shaking with urgency, and I was only astonished that I had never felt his hands on my waist before, or touching my breasts, and he was hurrying, hurrying, and pressed himself upon me, cried out, and a moment later fell still. I was aware of a wet patch on my thigh. The whole had taken perhaps five minutes.

  My heart was galloping, I could not quite understand what we had done. After a while Nikita raised himself from me, stood up and straightened his clothes.

  ‘I greatly value and respect your honesty and your generosity,’ he said, serious as ever.

  I sat up, flooded with shame. I covered myself with the sheet. ‘Oh . . . I see.’

  He was avoiding my eyes again. ‘You will assist me on my great task, I hope, comrade. We will work together, shall we?’

  ‘Yes indeed,’ I answered.

  ‘Well, good night then. I’m tired,’ he said, retreating. ‘A peaceful night . . .’

  Was that a ‘dear one’ that I heard at the end of his sentence? Perhaps it was. When he was gone I got out of bed, took off my nightdress and washed, staring at myself in the mirror. My shame evaporated and I was filled with joy. What had happened? It was very puzzling. I had only the vaguest knowledge of such matters, only my mother’s hissed and encoded warnings. For some reason, however, I was certain I would not fall pregnant or catch anything nasty. Shame? No, no, here in Soviet Russia there was no place for shame – here men and women were equal, we were honest with each other and we had no time for sentiment. And yet for some time he had been wanting urgently to visit me! I could hear my mother’s poisonous tones: ‘I’m afraid you’re not the type men like, dear.’ Every cell in my body rejoiced that night: she was wrong, wrong, wrong.

  *

  For several long days afterwards, I saw nothing of Slavkin. I began to dig the children’s vegetable plot in the courtyard, tripling its size, thinking of the winter ahead. In the afternoons I brought the old ladies outside and settled them in the shade of the lilac trees in the corner, where they watched and chatted.

  ‘I can’t think why we troubled to go all the way to Mikhailovka all those years,’ Anna Vladimirovna said. ‘Why, it’s just as pleasant here, without that terrible travelling!’

  ‘It was only an hour on the train,’ I reminded her.

  ‘No, no, much longer, and quite dreadful.’ In some way Anna Vladimirovna seemed invigorated by the strange new situation in the house, less tetchy, more energetic. ‘Where is the boy? Is he avoiding us?’

  Oh dear God, did she somehow know how desperately I was asking the same question? My every nerve was alive to his presence in the house, and listening involuntarily to his movements in his bedroom, his arrivals and exits at strange hours, exacerbated my insomnia terribly.

  As time passed it seemed to me that he had shown disrespect, if not for me then for the principle of self-transformation that he had spoken about so warmly. Taking my courage in both hands, I decided to approach him myself. In the new world men and women must be honest and direct with each other; it was no good hanging back like a blushing damsel.

  I knocked on the door of his room that evening, my hands sweating uncomfortably.

  ‘Enter!’

  ‘Comrade Slavkin,’ I began, ‘I’m afraid I am disturbing you in the midst of important work, but it is essential that we discuss the matter of living space. We are here in possession of almost two hundred square metres of living space, enough by government standards to house at least another twenty-five people. Don’t you think we should report this anomaly?’

  As honest as I intended to be, this was the subject that I lit upon in the awkwardness of the moment.

  ‘Oh, yes indeed, comrade,’ he said. ‘The fact is I have been thinking about exactly this problem . . .’

  I could see, now, that he was blushing. Yes, blushing! A deep pink all down his neck and under his hair. He looked up at me almost beseechingly, like a boy gazing up at his teacher. A chill passed through me at that moment; if I had only heeded it, how much pain I would have saved myself. But I suppose it was already too late. I steadied myself, and spoke to him as gently as I could.

  ‘Please, you have no need to feel awkward with me.’

  ‘What? No, no—’ he stammered.

  ‘Really, it’s not necessary. We are adults, we are responsible for our own actions.’ I smiled, to show I meant it. ‘Now – start again. Tell me what you have been thinking.’

  He gazed at me doubtfully for a moment. Then a smile began, and spread and spread. ‘Dear Miss Gerty, comrade, what a wonderful person you are! A true Revolutionary! I am convinced that if you will help me, we will succeed. Will you help me? Will you?’

  He was almost on his knees before me, beaming, looking so young, and I couldn’t help laughing and agreeing. ‘Of course I’ll help you, Nikita, but with what?’

  ‘With my institute – my scientific institute for the purposes of creating the true communard! You, Miss Gerty, you are the perfect woman to lead our Russian dyevushki, you have already the spirit of English egalitarianism in your veins . . .’

  We talked long that night, Nikita was inspired and eloquent. In the early hours of the morning, without any awkwardness, we suddenly found ourselves making love on his rusty-springed bed. The feel of his skin against mine was intoxicating.

  Immediately afterwards, as we lay in each other’s arms, we agreed that the physical side of our friendship was no more than that, part of a friendship. Romance, we both said, was a product of an outdated social order, a trap for women that turned them into second-class citizens. ‘I have the greatest respect for you, Gerty,’ Nikita said to me earnestly. ‘In fact I’m very fond of you – but I am not and I never will be “in love” with you. I reject that state of exaggerated ego in which each partner wilfully creates an ideal beloved of the other.’

  I agreed with him and added, quite casually, that sexual desire is natural in both men and women – even if the words caused a foolish hot flush to creep up my cheeks. We both concluded that the important thing was to be rational about such things, and not to let emotion mislead one.

  June passed in this way, and July. In what spare time I could grasp from the round of English classes, looking after the old ladies, tending the vegetable patch and trailing from shop to shop to find food, I packed away the Kobelevs’ things, determined to keep them safe if I could. ‘Loot the looters!’ Lenin had announced, and all over Moscow people were taking his words to heart. The Civil War brought news of more horrors every day. In July, they reported that the Romanovs were killed – the poor girls, the little boy. I didn’t tell the old ladies. By force of will, I shut my mind to all of it and concentrated on the house. Nikita worked with me, room by room. He was good at cleaning; as a child, he told me, he had helped his mother who always had a new baby to nurse.

  Together we scrubbed and polished the floors and stored all but a few essential pieces of furniture and household equi
pment in the stables. We took down the heavy, swagged, fringed curtains and packed them in cloth dotted with camphor. Day by day, more sunlight poured into the house – even into poor Mrs Kobelev’s room. We flung open the doors and windows and the lush summer seemed to rush indoors. Like an old beast led out after the winter, the house pulled itself upright and pricked up its ears. The years dropped away from it. The lack of the Kobelevs themselves was like a stitch in my side, a constant, anxious ache – but at the same time exhilaration bubbled in me, just below the surface. I hardly slept, I worked like a dog, I didn’t recognise the wild-eyed, exultant girl I saw in the mirror, biting her lip to stop herself from laughing out loud.

  I spent my evenings playing canasta with the old ladies, my ears pricked for the sound of the front door closing behind Slavkin. Then I excused myself and went to bed, waiting, shivering with excitement, under the covers for the door to open quietly and Nikita’s long silhouette to approach. Every evening I was sure he wouldn’t come, sure that I didn’t deserve so much happiness. Every evening he appeared, and silently, passionately, we embraced. Sometimes he was too hasty – I remember crying out – although later he was always tender, stroking my cheek. Afterwards we would lie in my bed and drink Armenian brandy. Nikita would talk, his long face animated and glowing like an El Greco, imagining a new way of living. Together we planned a commune – a place where a group of us could live together, and be moulded and changed by communal living, its problems and its rewards, into real Revolutionaries, people capable of building Communism.

  ‘But the Kobelevs, what would they think?’

  ‘Well, the alternative is Prig and his louts – they will be back any day now to give these rooms away to whomever they choose.’

  ‘You’re right.’

  ‘We’ll invite Marina and Vera, and others – this way we can choose suitable participants rather than have to take Prig’s people.’

  Nikita was not the only one to have this idea – ideological communes were springing up all over Moscow. They were a rational response to the life we found ourselves living, with such scarce resources and such high hopes.

  So we invited Fyodor Kuzmin, a student friend of Pasha’s, to join us, and Volodya, the yardman’s son, when he returned from the army. Marina and Vera Getler, neighbours and old family friends, agreed as well. Together we wrote a Manifesto. We renamed various rooms: Mr Kobelev’s study became our communal meeting room; the hall became a ‘Red Corner’ with political reading material. For the first time in my life, I felt that I was engaged in a mighty, vitally important task. I had never been so happy. Fyodor took some photos of us on the steps of the house – Nikita and I, standing close together, beaming straight at the camera.

  I often find myself staring at those photos now. It’s hard to make sense of what became of those two smooth-skinned children – the girl now a bent, wrinkly old woman, while across the Soviet world, from hoardings and murals, book covers and film posters, the boy smiles on unchanged.

  *

  One evening towards the end of August Nikita and I heard a muted knocking and voices at the front door. We leant out of the window into the warm summer night. Two figures were waiting in the street; we could hardly make them out in the twilight.

  ‘Who’s there?’ Nikita called quietly.

  ‘Good Lord, can that really be you, Nikita?’ came a familiar voice. ‘Get down here at once, you dog, open the door to us.’

  Pasha and Sonya Kobelev had returned to Moscow.

  ‘Friends! My dear friends!’ shouted Nikita, galloping downstairs and flinging open the door. I hurried behind.

  ‘My goodness, Miss Gerty! You look beautiful! Have you been waiting for me?’ Pasha stepped indoors. ‘Don’t touch me, Nikita, for goodness’ sake; we must fumigate these clothes, there are infections everywhere. Just get us some water to wash with, there’s a good girl, Gerty—’

  ‘Oh – yes, of course.’ I brought a basin and as they washed they told how they had travelled south – their week-long journey, unable to leave their seats for fear of not being able to force their way back into the train, poor Mrs Kobelev delirious with fever, begging for laudanum. Outside Yalta they had found a small villa to rent and had installed themselves safely. The area was now under White control, from whom the Kobelevs had little to fear, even if they disagreed with their politics. ‘My father plans to stay the winter there, at any rate, and then decide what’s best.’ Pasha said quietly. He looked tanned, if thin and tired. ‘They’re quite happy – the children swim and sunbathe all day long. Even my mother seems rather better. But Sonya and I couldn’t allow ourselves to swan around like that for ever. Once they were settled in we decided to come back. To do our bit for the Revolution and all that. You can’t imagine what all those Whites are like – they really are clankingly awful. Their politics are one thing, but do you know they talk about nothing but duck shooting? And their moustaches . . .’

  I smiled. ‘Well, if they have substandard moustaches, of course. What did your parents say when you told them?’

  ‘My mother wasn’t happy,’ Pasha shrugged. ‘My father understood. He was anxious about us, of course, but I think he was proud.’ He blinked. ‘And of course he plans to come back.’

  ‘Once things have settled down,’ I said – Mr Kobelev’s mantra. ‘By spring, once things are a bit calmer—’

  Slavkin, who had been pacing about the room during this conversation, suddenly interrupted.

  ‘Yes, yes, but Gerty, perhaps you’d empty the water for us, would you?’ He pushed the basin into my hands, slopping it over my dress. ‘My word, I have been missing you both!’ he burst out before I’d left the room. ‘I’ve an idea, a plan. I had no one to discuss it with . . .’

  I couldn’t help stopping and looking at him in astonishment.

  ‘Of course Gerty and I have talked it all over,’ he stammered, embarrassed. ‘She’s been a wonder, but—’

  ‘Gerty is a wonder,’ said Pasha. ‘We all know that.’

  ‘But I need other progressive minds to discuss my plans with, you understand.’

  My face was burning. I emptied the basin in the laundry and sat there for a long while, until I calmed down.

  The following day, Nikita drew me aside and said, without looking me in the eye, ‘We’ve always been friends, comrade. I hope you will do me the honour of remaining my friend even if certain aspects – which were always quite separate from our friendship – are no longer appropriate to our relationship.’

  Part of me had guessed immediately what he was about to say, but nonetheless I was silenced for a moment. I stared at him and stammered, ‘What aspects?’ And when he took a deep breath and was about to tell me, I interrupted, ‘No, no – but why are they no longer app—’ the word he had used failed me, ‘no longer app— app—’

  Slavkin looked at me. He seemed puzzled. ‘Are you all right, Gerty? Perhaps you should sit down?’

  I sat on the stairs.

  ‘The fact is, that now Pasha and Sonya are here, and all our members are about to move in, the time has come to devote ourselves to the commune, do you see? We must all make sacrifices and our – our physical intimacy is one of them. We cannot have couples, with secrets and so on, forming divisions within the group. We must be a collective.’

  I said nothing, determined not to cry. To my horror, he crouched down in front of me and put his hands on my shoulders. ‘I must tell you, Gerty, how grateful I am for your friendship. I’ve never known anyone like you. You have taught me so much about the human spirit, what generosity it is capable of . . . With you in the commune, I think we have a chance of making it work.’ He gave me a little squeeze and left. Was it my imagination, or was he almost jaunty as he stepped out of the front door?

  I lay hunched over on the stairs for a long time, feeling the sharp edges of the mahogany panelling pressing into the skin of my forehead. Tears dripped onto the stair carpet, soaked in, and disappeared. Then I heard someone coming and struggled upright, straigh
tening my clothes. Neither Slavkin nor I mentioned our liaison to the others – why would we? And I was grateful, on the whole, that none of the members of the commune noticed anything amiss – my low spirits, or the way Slavkin seemed to avoid me, or a thousand other pinpricks that pierced me each day.

  So at the end of August 1918, the Kobelevs’ house on Gagarinsky Lane became the Institute of Revolutionary Transformation, and we – its raw materials, aching to be transformed.

  6

  The Institute of Revolutionary Transformation

  Manifesto

  WE, the Comrades of the Institute of Revolutionary Transformation – declare war on:

  The Private – from now on there shall be no I, only We.

  The Old – in this new world we shall build everything anew – Society, Family, Art, Science, Language, Nature, ourselves.

  The Ego – the enemy within ourselves that sabotages all attempts at true Communism. It shall be dragged out and crushed.

  We hereby renounce, joyfully and wholeheartedly, certain frills that society prizes: sexual activity, romance, wealth, power, marriage, family, success, luxury, leisure.

  Comrades shall be expected to comport themselves with the iron discipline of Revolutionaries – chaste, frugal and dedicated to the cause.

  All property shall be held in common, and all decisions shall be made by the commune as a whole. There shall be complete equality between comrades.

  The non-objective aesthetic of the avant-garde will transform our commune and our city. The New World will look, feel and think in the language of Modernity.

  We celebrate comradeship, cooperative effort, and every form of creativity.

  And so, we aim to transform our own selves into true communards, capable of inhabiting the Communist State.

  All Hail the Revolution!

  Signed: Nikita Slavkin, Pavel Kobelev, Sofia Kobelev, Dr Marina Getler, Vera Getler, Gertrude Freely, Fyodor Kuzmin, Vladimir Yakov.