On the first of our two visits to Leningrad we went out to see Zoshchenko in Sestroretsk (or it may have been Razliv). Zo- shchenko had a weak heart and beautiful eyes. Pravda had commissioned a story from him and he had written something about the wife of the poet Kornilov, who was refused work and turned away from every door as though she were the wife of an arrested man. The story wasn't printed, of course, but in those years only Zoshchenko would have dared to do anything so provocative. It is amazing he got away with it—though it must immediately have gone down on the "account" which he later had to pay.
On that first trip we went to the station from Akhmatova's apartment and were seen off by her as well as the Steniches. Since we were catching the last train, we left the house after midnight—"the light-blue midnight" of Akhmatova's poem in which she says that Leningrad seemed to her
not a European city with the first prize for beauty but a terrible exile to Eniseisk, a stopping place on the way to Chita, to Ishim, to waterless Irgiz and famous Atabasar, to the town of Svobodny and the plague-ridden stench of prison bunks,
so it seemed to me on this light-blue night—this city, glorified
by the first of our poets, and by you and me.*
Is there any wonder that this was how the city looked to us then? We all felt the same way—and that's what the city was: a transit station to exile, except that the places Akhmatova mentions were by that time comparatively well settled and they had almost stopped
• These lines have not been previously published.
sending people there.
Liuba Stenich has told me one detail of that night which I had forgotten: at the station M. hung something on a potted palm there and said: "An Arab wandering in the desert . .
The first visit gave us enough to live on for three months. When we came again in the spring just before leaving for Samatikha, we were less successful. In the morning we went to see Akhmatova, and she read to M. the poem quoted above. This was his last meeting with her. We were to have seen her later in the day at Lozinski's, but since we had to leave him almost at once, we were not there when she arrived. We were not able to stay overnight, and all we could do was say goodbye to her on the telephone.
After leaving Lozinski we stood outside on the street for a long time, wondering where to go next. We decided it would have to be Marshak.
Samuil Yakovlevich Marshak greeted us in such a crooning voice that M. couldn't bring himself to ask for money. Instead, they started talking about literature and M. read a few of his Voronezh poems. Marshak sighed—he didn't like the poems: "They give no idea of the people you meet, or what you talk about. Now, when Pushkin was in exile . . ." "What does he expect?" M. whispered to me and we took our leave. The next writer we went to see was out, and we waited on the street until he got back. But he said he had no money—he had spent everything on the dacha he was building. Apart from Selvinski, he was the only one to refuse help when asked, and I do not wish to name him because I believe his refusal was a momentary lapse—he was a decent man, a lover of poetry and one of the last of those who secretly remained true to the spirit of the old intelligentsia. It was only such people we could approach for help, but this man lost his head for a moment and behaved like a member of the Union of Writers.
In the very last days before we left for Samatikha M. said to me: "We ought to go and ask Paustovski for money." Since we didn't even know him, I was surprised, but M. assured me he was bound to help. Recently I told this to Paustovski, and he was very much upset. "Why didn't you come to see me?" he asked. "We didn't have time before M. was arrested," I explained. He was relieved. "If Osip Emilievich had come to me, I would have turned out all my pockets," he said and laughed his dry laugh. I do not doubt that he would have done just that: he was also a typical member of the "secret intelligentsia"—and no longer hides it, now there is no need to.
I recently heard that one of our literary officials has been going around asking what sort of fellow this Mandelstam was who was always borrowing money but never returned it. He obviously doesn't like M. It is possible that in his irresponsible youth M. didn't always pay back his debts, but the official wasn't even born then. As regards what happened in the Stalin period, the word "borrow" doesn't apply. It was a case of undisguised begging—which was forced on M. by the State and the life which our press constantly described as 'Ъарру." Beggary was not the worst thing about it, either.
68 Eclipse
W
ho needs this cursed regime?" Lev Bruni had said as he gave M. the money to pay his fare to Maly Yaroslavets. In the autumn it began to seem advisable to move from Savelovo, and we again started studying the map of the Moscow region. Lev recommended Maly Yaroslavets, where he had had a small wooden house built for the wife and children of his brother Nikolai. Nikolai was a former priest who had become an aircraft designer and was then sent to a camp. In 1937 he had been given a second sentence for a "crime committed in the camp"—a standard formula in those days. In other words, he had been re-sentenced without being allowed out even for a single moment. His wife, Nadia, after being expelled from Moscow, had been living for several years with her children in Maly Yaroslavets. They lived on the produce of a small vegetable garden —Lev had not been able to afford to buy a cow for them. Apart from his brother's children, he had to feed his own large family as well. He probably didn't have too much to eat himself in the days before the war, when the staple food was potatoes, and after the war he died of malnutrition. This was something that happened to "secret intellectuals." Everybody was very fond of Lev. Despite all the trials visited upon him by fate, he managed not only to remain a human being, but also to live some kind of life—most of us didn't live in any real sense, but existed from day to day, waiting anxiously for something until the time came to die.
In autumn it gets dark very early, and apart from the railroad station, there was no lighting at all in Maly Yaroslavets. We walked up the streets, which were slippery from mud, and we saw not a single street lamp or lighted window—nor were there any passers-by. Once or twice we had to knock on windows to ask the way, and each time a fear-contorted face peered out. But when we simply asked the way, the faces were at once transformed and wreathed in smiles, and we were given very detailed instructions with extraordinary friendliness. When we at last arrived at Nadia Brum's and we told her what had happened when we knocked on windows, she explained that there had been more and more arrests in recent weeks, not only of exiles, but of local people too. As a result, everybody was just sitting at home, waiting with bated breath. During the Civil War, people did not have lights in their windows for fear of attracting the attention of all the freebooters then roaming the country. In the towns occupied by the Germans, people also sat without lights. In 1937, however, it made no difference, since people were picked up not at random, but on individual warrants. All the same, everybody went to bed early, to avoid putting the lights on. Perhaps it was the most primitive animal instinct—better sit in the darkness of your burrow than in the light. I know the feeling very well myself—whenever a car stops outside the house, you want to switch off the light.
We were so horrified by the darkened town that after spending the night at Nadia Bruni's we fled back to Moscow the next morning. We didn't follow Lev's advice because we would have needed the strength of mind of the meek and gentle Nadia Bruni to stand the terror that lay like a pall over the town. It was the same throughout the whole country, of course, but in the villages and small towns it was generally less overpowering.