November 1916

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  At the end of the spacious hallway, beyond a large chest, was the front entrance, a double door with a dark glass handle. Pavel Ivanovich sprang the stiff catch and, huddling into his robe as the damp cold hit him, stuck out his head and slid his hand into the oak mailbox. All three newspapers—two from Moscow, one from Petersburg—had arrived, one day late.

  Leaving the door off the latch so that the servant could get in, he went back upstairs.

  Now that the morning was his own at last, he felt drawn to the occupations in which he was happiest—solitary reflection and paperwork would restore his equilibrium. But although it was now more than five years since Varsonofiev had finally realized that no newspaper could ever clarify his or anyone else’s thoughts, but could only make them more simplistic and superficial, or else aggravate a partisan bias, like a habitual smoker or a drunkard he could not fight his craving. By now he was incapable of excluding newspapers completely from his life, he was addicted. As a rule he tried not to pick them up in the morning. That left some of the best hours of the day for thinking, and after lunch, the newspapers, like smoking, were less noxious. But sometimes, although he had forbidden himself to do it, he went to get them automatically on rising, ruining his day and perhaps sullying his soul. Today he had gone to get them deliberately, impatient to read about the Duma sessions, or perhaps just to see how few or how many blanks the censorship had notched up.

  He could not wait to get to his study, but spread them out on a little table next to the disused samovar and began perusing them. Yes, there were plenty of blank spaces, and they spoke louder and more eloquently than the rest. They were much richer in meaning than anything the speaker could actually have said.

  He began, of course, by reading Milyukov’s speech.

  And was staggered by its emptiness. Measured not against the high peaks of human wisdom, but the minor eminence of Milyukov’s own. It was not the speech of a statesman, it was a farrago of slanderous gossip. He had never been a powerful speaker, never known how to dominate an assembly, his skill had been in divining the average view of his audience and expressing it in middle-of-the-road terms. Milyukov lacked intellectual depth, his thoughts were those of an earthbound positivist, but it was these very limitations which gave him the energy to be a political leader. He was incapable of giving his party, his parliament, or his country anything more than ephemeral political slogans.

  Varsonofiev not only knew him, but had twice been involved in public argument with him, about the symposium Vekhi. Nothing was more characteristic of Milyukov than his fury with Vekhi, and the way in which he had ranged over Russia seeking to refute a book which had annoyed and provoked him with its profundity.

  His sterility as a scholar was equally surprising: inaccuracy in the use of sources, intrusive “conclusions” instead of factual history, jealous concern for his own reputation. And yet he regarded Russia as a country not yet mature enough to appreciate him: just recently, in Oslo, he had complained that “eight generations of civilization in Russia” were insufficient (he was counting of course, from Peter I). He was always full of admiration for himself, and sometimes let slip that he measured himself against Herzen—even though a felicitous style was not among his gifts, indeed he was utterly devoid of talent.

  Varsonofiev had set out with the rest of them—Petrunkevich, Shakhovskoy, Vernadsky … In 1902 they had even thought of sending him abroad to publish Osvobozhdenie. This was thought of at the time as condemnation to exile in perpetuity—shades of Herzen again. But the young Pyotr Struve had volunteered for the job.

  No more than ten years ago Varsonofiev had been one of that loudmouthed, petty-minded crowd, with Rodichev, Vinaver, Milyukov. His fervor as a deputy in the Duma had been perfectly sincere. In the heat of battle he had never once doubted. To him, as to the others, the dissolution of the Duma on 16 June had seemed an act of arbitrary violence unparalleled in history.

  This although he was no longer a boy but a man of fifty.

  If he had remained as he was then, his name would be in today’s newspapers. A startling thought.

  Nothing about us is more surprising than our capacity to remain sincere as our lives, and our minds, change completely. Looking back, we are astonished to realize that we were once no less certain of our old views than we are of their replacements.

  Varsonofiev had undergone a complete transformation, and by no means a slow one. Why had he fought so passionately before? It had all been a mistake. The smug busybodies of the League of Liberation were like a flock of big stupid birds, all flapping their wings in unison.

  Impatiently laboring in vain, trying to change the course of such a vessel, without fully understanding its nature. But its course is beyond our comprehension, and we have no right to anything more than the slightest adjustment of the wheel. With no sudden jerks.

  Five decades? Six? Seven? How long should it take to understand that the life of a community cannot be reduced to politics or wholly encompassed by government?

  The time in which we live has unfathomable depths beneath it. Our age is a mere film on the surface of time.

  [74]

  Now that he had seen Gurko there was nothing to keep him there. But his train did not leave till the next morning, and after reserving his ticket at the Rail Transport Department he was left with one more free evening in Mogilev. Wondering how best to spend it, and whether there was anyone else he should see, he decided to call at the post office again. There might just be a second letter from Olda, and he would not have liked to miss it! What better way to spend the evening than to sit down and write her a long letter, which would have been impossible yesterday when he was so worked up. Now that his future was decided, now that he was on his way back to Romania, and there was no knowing when they would next meet, he could at least pretend that he was spending the evening with Olda.

  The square and Bolshaya Sadovaya Street were unrecognizable under the snow. The sidewalks had been partly cleared, leaving narrow paths between deep drifts. It was too cold for strollers, and the stalls along the monastery wall were closed. Only the larger shops and the pharmacies were as brightly lit as ever. The place which yesterday had seemed so romantic was changed beyond recognition.

  But in the post office the same unsmiling clerk stood behind the same polished counter. He flicked through a bundle of envelopes with the same alert efficiency and—yes!—handed over another letter.

  Vorotyntsev seized this windfall eagerly and made off. Glancing at the writing as he went, he was at a loss.

  He did not realize at first what he was looking at.

  He pulled up short.

  Strange! It hadn’t immediately registered that the letter was from Alina.

  The last thing he had expected.

  How could he have failed to recognize that bold sprawl, those mannered flourishes, those oval loops above and below.

  But her writing was larger than usual. Untidier. Somehow more frightening.

  He hadn’t been expecting it. He had thought that nothing would happen until he was back with his regiment, that she would not write before that. He had thought that he could put all these unpleasantnessess out of his mind for a while.

  How could she have tracked him down? Of course! He had shown her Svechin’s telegram. She had seemed to ignore it at the time. But he had deliberately left it on the table.

  Now there was this letter.

  There was a sort of desperation in that wild scrawl. As on that last morning in Moscow.

  Pretend that he hadn’t received it? After all, it was only by chance that he had looked in at the post office. He need not have gone there again. Should he postpone this painful business until he reached his regiment? Or at least until he got to Army HQ?

  He was reluctant to spoil the happiness he had felt last night—that extraordinarily warm November night with snow in the offing. After parting with Nechvolodov he had walked and walked, back and forth, on the dark Rampart, as the wind gradually got colder, unable to stop wa
lking. His reply to Olda swirled through his mind, but he had collapsed on his bed and fallen asleep without writing a single line.

  Now he was abruptly reminded of Alina’s existence. It had been dishonest of him to forget her.

  He went over to the reading desk, chose a different section this time, and broke the envelope open with one finger, leaving a jagged edge.

  No “Dear Georgi.” Not even “Georgi.” He felt at once as though he had been brutally stripped naked.

  “What good to me is a husband for whom I am not the best of women? What good to me is a husband who is not the best of men?”

  Jolted by this body blow, Georgi could not force himself to read the words in order, but raced feverishly ahead, expecting to find something dreadful and irreparable.

  “I could not reconcile myself to the fact that she exists, not for a single week. I was not created for the ‘role’ of ‘one wife among others’! Do you think that I can go on living in such a hell? Knowing that you may have gone to her at this very moment? It would be many times easier to say farewell to life.”

  Oh, God!

  “But you wouldn’t let me commit suicide.”

  No, no, it couldn’t come to that!

  But, skipping half a page, as if the most terrifying lines had excited some magnetic force on him, he read: “The price I must pay for taking that path is suicide!”

  He remembered the fluttering in her throat. How she had fainted in the guesthouse. The numbness of her arms after her heart attack. All this could have happened again, dozens of times in those last few days, without any suicide attempt. And he had abandoned her, left so lightheartedly, felt such a sense of liberation.

  And she had struggled to write as her strength failed her.

  “If I am to go on living, the only way out for me is to leave you.”

  The floor seemed to slip from under him. His legs, his whole body became weightless: she had withdrawn that first dreadful threat and he was airborne with joy, joy that stung like a whiplash! Free! Was he free?

  This, he saw now, was what he had wanted. Wanted without daring to dream, or give the slightest hint, or even admit it to himself.

  He felt again as he had felt the night before, felt like a balloon, soaring … felt like shouting for joy. But it was only for a moment. Wounding words dragged him down to earth.

  “What sacrifice did you ever make for me? What did you ever go without?”

  It was true. He had lived, he had pursued his career … for himself, not for her.

  “Choose one of us, but not in Petersburg. Go to her if you must! I don’t want your charity! I have outgrown that! I have come to my senses!”

  Freedom! Freedom! He exulted in spite of himself. How he had longed for this!

  But the next lines were a heartrending cry that cut him to the quick.

  “You are free! But I too am free again! I may fall. I may become a geisha, but I am still free! You will never need to pity me again!”

  No signature either.

  Georgi screwed up his eyes. A searing pain seemed to melt them.

  He had not experienced this sensation since childhood.

  The burning sensation troubled his sleep, and became more and more painful as his sleep became shallower.

  Not a figurative burn—a real one as though someone was touching the walls of his heart with a rod dipped in iodine. Burning his heart, not figuratively—his actual heart, to the left of center in his chest, pumping blood, pumping it now irregularly, missing beats because of the burning.

  This intolerable burning bored deeper and deeper into his sleep until at last he was prodded out of it, but even after he awoke the burning continued.

  He had found no refuge in sleep. And it felt as if the night was still far from its end.

  In the prevailing darkness, with no hint of light at the window, this torment gripped him all the more cruelly.

  A week ago, it was Alina who had tossed and turned, night after night, while the wall of her heart was seared by pain like this—no, surely worse! Several iodine rods at once! And he, a detached onlooker, had found it almost beautiful. She had become prettier, gentler, and he had imagined that they could amicably, with extraordinary goodwill toward each other …

  Now it had caught up with him and pierced him to the heart. My poor, weak little girl! What have I brought upon you? I owned up, went away—and left you to eat your heart out!

  He was staggered by the agony, the violence of his pity for Alina. He could scarcely hide his tears as he hurried back from the post office to lock himself in his room. In the guesthouse with her he had felt nothing like this overpowering pity.

  Alina, her vulnerability showing in her dear gray tear-stained eyes, stood before him, projected from her wounded distance, as clearly visible in the darkness as if illuminated.

  What terrible thing had he done? What a disaster! What had he done to her?!

  Her love for him was her whole life. What suffering it must have cost her to think of sacrificing herself. To give him his freedom!

  This was something that had never occurred to him! He had said nothing to provoke it. Quite the contrary: he had said, “Nothing in the world could make me abandon you!”

  Sharing was impossible for her. Her immediate impulse was divorce! She was ready to divorce him! She did not realize what she was suggesting, couldn’t see how soon she would come to grief.

  He remembered her word “geisha,” her heartbroken cry—he could almost hear the sob in her voice. Poor innocent—you really think you could? That catch in her voice—like someone taking on a task beyond her powers, like a little girl trying to sing a grown-up aria. It was so like her! This desperation, this impulse to leap into the abyss, without stopping to think, just to “show” somebody!

  Freedom? Before he had even asked for it? Before it had even unfolded its wings in his mind? Suddenly, like a brick on his head … freedom.

  Alina’s sacrifice had robbed Georgi of his buoyancy. He could no longer believe that he had … When? Yesterday? Yes, only yesterday evening. Had hurried from the post office to the Rampart, cheerful, light on his feet, young, unaware that the happiness he had won was about to be eclipsed, wrested from him.

  But it had happened.

  That which in Petersburg he had taken to be the most dazzling success of his life. That which in Moscow still seemed like a fresh torrential stream pouring into his life … had suddenly laid him flat on his back in the darkness. A disaster from which there was no escape. A disaster he could not come to terms with, could not live with.

  Olda’s words, which had rung so clearly the night before, were muffled now by the eddying fog of unhappiness. He could no longer hear them. Her exquisite, intelligent features were obscured as if by a smoke screen, and he could not see her whole face at once, only where the smoke thinned, one sad eye, the fold of anxious disagreement on her brow, a section of her upper lip. Not all of it at once. And no sound at all reached him.

  But Alina’s agonized shriek shrilled in his ears, lodged there like a needle.

  That was her character! Prostrate one moment—soaring aloft the next! With trebled strength! Purse-lipped pride: the decision must be hers! No one must decide for her! And her decision would follow her first impulse! I am not the best of women? So let us part!

  But a few hours, or maybe a few minutes later, she would break down …

  “You will see me in such a brill …”

  Did she really have any idea what her decision meant? Would she really be able to live without him? Would she ever recover?

  No, my poor girl, you’ll go to pieces! How can I possibly let that happen? My dear little girl, what have I brought you to? It was not just his heart aching, it was his whole chest, as if shattered.

  But … Olda? Olda! Olda, of whom he would never have dared to dream! Let me see you! Come from behind your smoke screen! Let me see you and hear you! Help me! You are the clever one, you always know what to do!

  No, she would not s
how herself.

  Only in snatches.

  In fragmentary memories.

  And suddenly her words came into his mind—her very own words: wise human beings make the best of reality, instead of dreaming up substitutes for it.

  She had been talking about something quite different, but still …

  Well, it was his fate. His duty? The burden of age. Forty years old was not twenty. A man’s eyes should be opened at twenty.

  But General Levachev had misled him, given him bad advice.

  Sleep had now ebbed beyond recall.

  On his back under that huge mass of darkness he felt particularly helpless, at the mercy of thoughts burning through him like a flame, drilling into him like an auger.

  Of course they loved one another. Of course they got on well together. How could they part now?

  There was so much that was good … he could remember hardly anything that was not good, not touching, not endearing in their ten years together. How patiently she had shared his years as a penniless junior officer, deprived of so many of life’s pleasures. She knew that enlightened officers usually abandoned the army, but had put no pressure on him to do so. And he really had loved hearing Chopin and Schumann from the next room.

  He was all the more helplessly trapped because he had never expected anything remotely like it.

  Why had things taken such a terrifying turn? Surely it need never have come to this?

  Just because he had told the truth?

  Perhaps he should have kept silent, as others did?

  How had it all started? Released from his Transylvanian hole in the ground like an overcharged shell, he had sped, ineffectually, pointlessly, ingloriously over great distances to splash down unexploded into a bog.