Andrei hadn’t lapsed into despair like Louise. He didn’t think the rise of fascism and Nazism in Europe proved the futility of their lifelong efforts. He believed that the evolution of humanity needed to be viewed in a broader context, rather than on the scale of a single human life. They were working for the benefit of the future, and none of it was in vain. Each and every human being mattered. Any person who consciously refused to rule and be ruled represented a distinct change for the better.
It was true that at a certain point in history—just before the outbreak of war—it had looked like anarchism might become a mass movement. But it didn’t happen. There was no choice but to accept it, to withdraw modestly to the sidelines and continue the work, without letting up, maintaining a clear vision. After the night that had now fallen over Europe, daylight would come again. Humanity would survive, as it had survived all the horrors up to now, and once again people would search for an ideal.
AFTER SHE CAME BACK FROM CANADA, Louise’s brain was like a broken record, repeating over and over: Why bother? Whom and what was it for?
Maybe having children would have helped. Nature had made the choice easy for her. She would have had to undergo an operation to get pregnant when she was younger. Faced with the same situation today, she still would have made the same decision, but knowing that didn’t take away the bitter taste of growing old and being on her own. She felt cheated. She had expected a reward for her sacrifice, but none was forthcoming. The world had suddenly changed course, leaving her by the wayside. Or had she already received her reward, and was now paying it back?
Andrei accused her of vanity. The vanity of old age, no less! He argued that she was wasting her time trying to reach a wider audience, and succumbing to the influence of flatterers. They hadn’t spoken to each other for several weeks in Berlin because Andrei had wanted her to publish her account of Russia with an anarchist press instead of a commercial house that would sell it at an unaffordable price to make a profit. His fears, unfortunately, were confirmed when the publisher removed the whole last part of the book and changed the title without Louise’s knowledge.
She wanted Andrei to come see her more often, and tried to lure him to Saint-Tropez by setting up a room just for him, with a beautifully colored bedspread and a desk with a view of the vineyard. She could cook for him, and he would have peace and quiet.
He did come, occasionally, but he would just sleep over and then rush right home. Mimi threw tantrums over the phone. Where does Andrei get the patience to deal with her jealous outbursts? wondered Louise. How could he love a woman who is so openly hostile to me?
Louise tried to make friends with Mimi, but it always turned out the same. After a few polite letters, something would go awry and Mimi would find an excuse to be jealous. Also, her stomach problems were getting worse. She would have seizures, rolling around on the ground, moaning in pain. The doctors weren’t sure what it was. Louise thought she was just doing it to blackmail Andrei. Even worse, Andrei himself wasn’t healthy. It hurt when he urinated, and he was probably going to need an operation.
12
LATE JUNE. A LIGHT WEST WIND RIPPLES the water’s surface in the morning, but by afternoon not a leaf stirs, and the sea, green at the edges, turning a dark blue toward the horizon, lies still as a heat-stricken beast.
Saturday morning, Saint-Tropez
Dear boy,
On this day I am doubly sorry that you aren’t here.
I sit in your room, writing at your desk, looking out at the vineyard in the morning sun, and I want to tell you: However hard my life has been, whatever disappointment it has brought me, especially in recent years, one thing is certain. The friendship I feel for you is the only thing I have left. Men have come and gone. Some I loved; you know that. But none of them has been so completely intertwined with every fiber of my being as you.
I have become accustomed to the losses. I am slowly coming to terms with the fact that my life, like everyone else’s, has turned out to be nothing like what I had imagined. The only loss with which I cannot come to terms, the only true disaster that could befall me, would be to lose you. Or your friendship.
I am sad and my head feels swept clean of thoughts. There is nothing there except this: Andrei, my dear boy, is feeling better, the pain has subsided, the operation was a success, and even though he cannot be with me on the day of my birth, he is getting better and we will see each other soon.
Greetings to Mimi. I changed my opinion of her somewhat when I saw how brave and selfless she was in taking care of you. Seeing as I cannot. Seeing as you, my boy, will not allow me to.
I hope we shall soon see each other. That would be the best belated birthday present I could have.
Yours, L.
Saturday morning, Saint-Laurent
Dear girl,
Pardon my chicken scratch, but I am writing lying down, with Mimi helping me. I am unable to come and celebrate your birthday with you this year, but I think of you constantly and send you my warmest greetings. Although I am doing noticeably better, travel is, unfortunately, still out of the question. Have a good celebration without us, say hello to all our friends, and don’t be sad. Surely better times will come again, perhaps not in our lifetime, but what difference does it make?
Mimi and I are with you in spirit. I will call you later this evening to offer more personal greetings.
Yours, A.
The letters, which crossed paths somewhere near Antibes, failed to reach their addressees in time. Louise didn’t receive Andrei’s belated message until Wednesday evening, after her return home. She found it tucked under the door, and when she saw Andrei’s writing on the envelope, she forgot for a moment where she was coming from and why.
13
ANDREI KEPT HIS PROMISE and on Saturday evening called Louise. She told him that if Muhammad couldn’t come to the mountain, the mountain would come to Muhammad. In other words, she would travel to Saint-Laurent the next morning.
Andrei tried to talk her out of it. He still wasn’t feeling that well; it would be better for them to wait until he was back in shape a little. Mimi was taking exemplary care of him, not to worry.
“Do you need any money?” Louise asked bluntly. They were both hardened warriors. There was no need for them to pretend in front of each other.
It wasn’t urgent at the moment, said Andrei. He had recently received some funds from England. Though it was true, after paying the hospital bills, they wouldn’t have too much left.
She promised to send some money on Monday.
Andrei had undergone a second operation on his prostate. The first one had only made it worse, but the doctors promised relief this time, just as soon as the scar tissue and bruises had healed.
Getting him home was the worst. He was in too much pain to move. He felt utterly miserable. Mimi saw him at his moment of greatest weakness. She cleaned up his feces, urine, and blood. She held his head in the ambulance as he bit his hand in pain, calling on all the saints for help in his native Russian.
They gave him a bottle of laudanum to take home with him, which dampened the pain a little, but how long would it last him for? Where would they get the money for medicine? Why should Mimi have to beg from her family and friends and sacrifice herself for an invalid who wouldn’t produce anything of any worth again and probably couldn’t even make love to her anymore?
He took the last dose of laudanum on Saturday afternoon. That evening, shortly after his phone call with Louise, the effect wore off and the pain set in with redoubled strength. He was too tired. It didn’t make any sense.
“Go fetch the doctor,” he told Mimi. “Run.”
“I can’t leave you here,” she said.
“You have to. I need . . . something. This is unbearable.”
“I can’t,” she said.
“Go, by all the saints, run! Go and find him.”
She ran sobbing from the room.
Doubled over in pain, he shuffled over to his desk and slid ope
n the middle drawer.
He had carried a pistol with him ever since he got out of prison in Pittsburgh. In his view, the option to end one’s own life was a fundamental freedom, the only one he had left. What with all the financial hardship, being pushed around from place to place, and now his sickness on top of it, the loaded gun was his one assurance. Mimi and Louise both knew; he didn’t keep it a secret. The moment his suffering became too much to bear and the difficulties of surviving came to outweigh the positives of life, he wouldn’t hesitate. In Russia, the Bolsheviks had accused him of sentimentality, but that was only when it came to others. He felt no special attachment toward himself. He had already given up everything once before in his youth. In that respect, he had been free ever since.
He wrote down a few words of explanation on a sheet of paper and went back to bed with the gun. He didn’t want Mimi to see right away what had happened.
He pressed the mouth of the gun to the soft spot under his breastbone to avoid hitting his rib cage. He aimed upward and a little to the left. Only a few inches of soft tissue separated his heart from the bullet. There was no way he could miss. He gasped for breath as blood rushed into his throat. The pistol fell from his hand. He couldn’t reach down to pick it up and fire another shot. He lay curled in a ball on his left side, still alive.
Back then, too, he had aimed at the heart and missed. Kolman, who was smaller than he had imagined, had fallen under the desk and started crawling toward the window, where particles of dust swirled in a splotch of sunlight. Someone had come running in and pounced on Andrei’s back. As he tumbled to the floor, he had pulled a knife from his pocket and stabbed Kolman in the leg. Killing is terrible business.
Mimi didn’t notice anything when she got back. Andrei had stopped moaning. Maybe the pain had let up.
The doctor, who walked in the door right behind her, noticed the discarded revolver under the bed and sent Mimi into the kitchen. He pulled away the blanket, put it back again, and walked into the kitchen. “Do you have a phone?” he asked Mimi.
“We go to the neighbors’ to call,” she said.
“Don’t bother him for now. I gave him a shot so he could sleep. Why don’t you lie down for a while, too,” the doctor said, and walked out the door.
First he called the ambulance, then the police.
Mimi was shaken awake from her short, exhausted sleep to see Andrei being loaded into the ambulance.
“You’re coming with us,” said the younger of the two local gendarmes, clicking the handcuffs around her wrists.
“You’re under arrest,” the other declared. “Anything you say can be used against you.”
“I don’t understand,” Mimi said, shaking her head. “Who called the ambulance? Where are they taking him?”
“You have some explaining to do.”
“But what is this about?”
“Murder,” said the younger gendarme.
They took her to the police station.
The only thing Mimi could recall amid the shock was Louise’s telephone number. Andrei had drummed it into her head for so long, she couldn’t forget.
“If anything should happen to me,” he had told her, “call Louise immediately. Do you hear?”
“But why Louise?”
“Believe it or not, Louise is our most loyal friend, both of us, you and me. She’s capable, and we can rely on her. If anything happens to me, she’ll help you out.”
“May I make a phone call?” Mimi asked the older gendarme.
“Be my guest.” He unlocked the handcuffs and pushed the telephone across the desk to her. He studied her closely as she dialed the number with a trembling finger and stammered into the ear of a still-sleepy Louise that she needed to come immediately.
LOUISE ARRIVED LATE SUNDAY MORNING. She began the journey at 3:00 A.M., after Mimi called, but she had to wait for the first bus and change twice along the way. She ran straight to the hospital. Andrei recognized her, but he was in too much pain to speak. The bullet had passed through his stomach and left lung and lodged itself in his spine. The damage was too extensive for them to operate. There was nothing to do but wait for the end and pray that it would come soon.
Mimi sat on the opposite side of the bed from Louise, gripping Andrei’s cool, sweaty hands in hers. The police had kept her at the station as long as they could, but in the morning they’d had to let her go. Two independent doctors, including a police expert, had declared Andrei’s wounds to be a clear case of attempted suicide, and a search of the room had produced Andrei’s farewell letter: “Mimi, honey, forgive me. You too, Louise. I don’t want to live dependent on others. Louise, help Mimi. Love, A.”
14
“LOUISE’S BRAIN IS A CONSTANT SOURCE of amazement to me.” Louise clapped shut Andrei’s diary. No, she didn’t want to read it right now.
She and Mimi had spent the night with friends. The doctors gave Mimi a shot of sedatives, so she slept peacefully, face turned to the wall. Louise sat for a long time out on the balcony, smoking, but then she too took a pill. She had a busy day ahead of her. She and Mimi had to clean up the house and arrange the funeral. And after the funeral she would have to take Mimi to Saint-Tropez. She couldn’t be left alone right now.
She blamed herself for not coming sooner. She shouldn’t have listened to Andrei. It might not have happened if Mimi hadn’t been alone with him.
How could he do that to her? What could he have been thinking?
The next morning she went into the house first, leaving Mimi to sit in the yard. The kitchen looked like it always did, nothing out of the ordinary. At first glance nothing was out of place in the bedroom either, just a rumpled bed covered with a blanket. She decided to leave the blanket on and pack up the mattress, together with the sheet and covers, tie the whole thing up, and carry it outside.
Mimi sat quietly beneath the lemon tree. When Louise called out to ask if she could find or borrow a ball of twine, she got up and went to the landlords’.
Mimi came back with the twine and the landlady, who insisted on helping them. She said she had wanted to clean the apartment herself, before they came back, but she hadn’t been sure if Mimi would mind. Also, the police had been there. When they left, she had wiped up the blood on the floor and covered the bed with a blanket.
“Oh, my dear sweet girl,” the landlady cried, giving Mimi a hug. The same Mimi she had gossiped about all over town, asking why on earth a girl would want to live with a man old enough to be her father.
“What are you going to do, now that you’re on your own?”
Mimi broke free of her arms with a look of alarm on her face. She sensed she was in danger but didn’t quite understand how.
The landlady helped Louise tie up the mattress and covers and then called her husband, who dragged in a cart and, with a lot of grunting and panting, loaded up the package and hauled it uphill to the village dump.
Before she left, the landlady asked Louise for the last two months’ rent and reimbursement for the ruined mattress and bedding. She said she realized it wasn’t the right time, but she hoped Louise would understand. Mimi might disappear, leaving her debts unpaid.
Once the owner had left, Mimi stretched out on the sofa in the kitchen and closed her eyes. Louise, with her permission, opened the drawer of Andrei’s desk and found a journal lying on top. She knew that notebook well. It was the only one Andrei had used for the last ten years. Mechanically, she opened it up and flipped through to the last page: “Louise’s brain is a constant source of amazement to me.” She put down the journal and began going through his papers. She knew his will was in there somewhere. He himself had shown her the yellow envelope.
The envelope contained two letters, one for Mimi, one for Louise. In his letter to Mimi, Andrei apologized for not leaving any money behind and gave her a list of friends she could turn to for help. He also begged her to reconcile with her family. In his letter to Louise, he called her “my girl” and wrote that she needed to carry on her work for b
oth of them, that she mustn’t succumb to feelings of futility, but think of the future. He thanked her for her friendship, the years of life they had shared together, and all the help she had given him. “You’re a good sailor, Louise. You could sail a ship out of any storm. Please help Mimi. You’re the only she’s got. Your A.” The letter also contained instructions for the funeral. Andrei asked to be cremated and for them to spread his ashes wherever they saw fit.
In the afternoon they returned to the hospital. Louise had to choose Andrei’s clothes for the coffin, since Mimi was still too upset. She took the best she could find: a cambric shirt, a silk tie, a light summer suit, a pair of new shoes. Andrei always had enjoyed dressing nicely.
They still had to decide what to do with the body. The nearest crematorium was in Marseille. The transport and cremation would come to eight thousand francs. Eight thousand!
Louise gasped. She could put the money together, but it seemed like a sin to throw so much money away on something that was ultimately so unimportant. Surely Andrei would have agreed. A burial would come out cheaper, and whether he was burned or rotted away, he wouldn’t return from the darkness he had gone into of his own will.
She called a few friends who lived nearby—people she and Andrei had come to know over the years while living in the south of France. An English couple, two Americans. On Tuesday, at ten o’clock in the morning, they buried Andrei at the English cemetery in Nice. The sky shone blue over the tips of the cypress trees, as blue as the sea in the bay below. Louise spoke over the open grave about faith in a free and rational future for humanity, as well as about her personal loss.
The Attempt Page 16