Prisoners were not issued with clothing in the transit camps, and M. froze in his leather coat, which by now was in tatters. According to Kazarnovski, however, the most terrible frosts set in only after his death and he didn't have to go through them. This detail, too, is important for the date of his death.
M. scarcely ate anything, and was afraid to—as Zoshchenko was later. He always lost his bread ration and never knew which was his own mess can. According to Kazarnovski, the transit camp had a shop where they apparently sold tobacco and sugar. But where could M. have got the money? In any case, his fear of food applied to anything he could have bought there, and to sugar as well—which he would take only if it was handed to him by Kazarnovski. One can just picture it: a dirty palm offering this last gift of a piece of sugar, and M. wondering whether to take it . . . But was Kazarnovski speaking the truth? Had he perhaps invented this detail?
Apart from his fear of food and constant nervous restlessness, Kazarnovski noted that M. had a fixed idea that his life would be made easier when Romain Rolland wrote to Stalin about him. This little detail could not have been invented, and proves to me beyond doubt that Kazarnovski really did have contact with M. While we were still in Voronezh, we read about the arrival in Moscow of Romain
Rolland and his wife, and about their meeting with Stalin. M. knew Maya Kudasheva* and he kept saying wistfully: "Maya will see everybody in Moscow and they must have told her about me: what would it cost him [Rollandl to ask Stalin to let me off?" M. could not believe that professional humanists are not interested in the fate of individuals, and all his hopes were centered on the name of Ro- main Rolland. To be fair, however, I should add that while he was in Moscow, Romain Rolland did apparently obtain some improvement cf the lot of the linguists implicated in the "dictionary affair." At least, that's what people said. But this does nothing to change my view of professional "humanists." Real humanism knows no limits and is concerned with the fate of every individual.
Another point that made Kazarnovski's account sound genuine was that M. assured him that I must be in a camp, too, and he begged Kazarnovski, if he ever returned, to find out where I was and ask the Literary Fund to help me. All his life M. had been tied to the writers' organizations like a slave laborer to his wheelbarrow, and had always depended on them for his livelihood, such as it was. However much he tried, he could never free himself of this dependence— which was so much to the advantage of those who ruled over us. Even for me, therefore, his only hope was that the Literary Fund might do something. But things turned out quite differently: during the war, when the writers' organizations had forgotten about M. and me, I managed to change over to another field of activity, and if I was able to save my life and keep my memories, it was only because of this.
Sometimes, in his calmer moments, M. recited poetry to his fellow prisoners, and some of them may even have made copies. I have seen "albums" with his verse which circulated in the camps. Once he was told by somebody that in one of the death cells in Lefortovo a line from one of his poems had been scratched on the walclass="underline" "Am I real and will death really come?" When he heard this, M. cheered up and was much calmer for a few days.
He was not made to do any work—not even such things as cleaning up inside the camp. However bad the others looked, M. looked even worse. For days on end he just wandered about, which brought down on his head threats, curses and obscenities from all the people in charge of them. He was very much upset when he was almost immediately eliminated from the transports of prisoners being sent on to the regular work camps. He thought things would be easier for
* Rolland's Russian wife.
him there—though people with experience of them tried to disabuse him.
Once M. heard that there was somebody in the camp by the name of Khazin and he asked Kazarnovski to go with him to find out whether this might be a relative of mine. It turned out to be simply a namesake. Many years later this Khazin wrote to Ehrenburg after reading his memoirs, and I was able to meet him. The existence of Khazin is yet another proof that Kazarnovski really was in the camp with M. Khazin himself saw M. a couple of times—when M. came to see him with Kazarnovski, and a second time when he took M. to see another prisoner who was looking for him. Khazin says that this meeting was very touching—the name of the other man, as Khazin remembers it, was Khint, and he was a Latvian, an engineer by profession. Khint was being sent back to Moscow for a review of his case (such "reviews" generally ended tragically in those years). I don't know who this Khint was. Khazin had the impression that he had been to the same school as M. and came from Leningrad. He spent only a few days in the transit camp. Kazarnovski also remembered that M. had found an old schoolmate through Khazin.
According to Khazin, M. died during a typhus epidemic, but this was something Kazarnovski never mentioned. I have heard, however, that there actually was a typhus epidemic then—several other people have told me about it. I should take steps to try and trace this man Khint, but in our conditions this is impossible: I can scarcely put an advertisement in the newspapers to say I am looking for someone who saw my husband in a camp. . . . Khazin is a primitive type. He got in touch with Ehrenburg because he wanted to tell him his memories of the beginning of the Revolution in which he had taken part with his brothers—all of them Chekists, it seems. This was the period he remembered best, and while talking with me he kept trying to bring the conversation back to his own heroic deeds at that time.
But to return to Kazarnovski's account: One day, despite the swearing and cursing of the guards, M. would not come down from his bunk. This was during the days when the cold was getting much worse—Kazarnovski could give no more precise indication of the date. Everybody was sent out to clear away snow, and M. was left by himself. A few days later he was removed from his bunk and taken to the camp hospital. Soon afterward Kazarnovski heard that he had died and had been buried, or, rather, thrown into a pit. Needless to say, prisoners were buried without coffins, and stripped of their clothing—so that it wouldn't go to waste. There was no lack of corpses, and several were always buried in the same pit, after a tag with a number had been attached to each man's leg.
This would have been by no means the worst way to die, and I like to think that Kazarnovski's version is the true one. Narbut's death was incomparably worse. They say that he was employed in the transit camp to clean out the cesspits and that together with other invalids he was taken out to sea in a barge, which was blown up. This was done to clear the camp of people unable to work. I believe that such things did happen. When I later lived in Tarusa, there was an old ex-convict called Pavel who used to get water and firewood for me. Without any prompting from me, he once told me how he had witnessed the blowing up of a barge—first they had heard the explosion and then they had seen the barge sinking. From what he heard at the time, all the prisoners on board were "politicals" sentenced under Article 58 and no longer fit for work. There are still people—including many former camp prisoners—who even now try to find excuses for everything. Such people assure me that there was only one case like that, and that the camp commandant responsible for this atrocity was later shot. This would indeed have been a touching sequel to the story, but for some reason I am not moved by it.