10 Leaving for Exile
Men would not come near our plague-stricken house, but sent their wives instead—women were less exposed. Even in 1937 most women were arrested because of their husbands, not on their own account. No wonder, then, that men were more cautious than women. On the other hand, even the most prudent men were surpassed by their wives when it came to "patriotism." I quite understood why no husbands had come, but I was astonished to see so many wives: persons sentenced to exile were usually shunned by all. Akhmatova gasped: "What a lot of them!"
s soon as I came home, the apartment began to fill with people.
I packed our baskets—the same ones which had so irritated the staff at CEKUBU,[4] as M. tells in his "Fourth Prose"—or, rather, threw everything into them at random: saucepans, linen, books. M. had taken his Dante to prison with him, but didn't insist on keeping it when they told him that once a book had been taken to the cells, it could not be allowed out again and had to be left in the prison library. Not yet knowing the conditions in which a book becomes an eternal hostage, I threw in another edition of Dante. I had to think of everything—going into exile was not like setting off on an ordinary journey with a couple of suitcases. This I had every reason to know, having spent all my life moving from place to place with my wretched belongings.
My mother gave me all the money realized from the sale of her furniture in Kiev. But it was very little, a wad of worthless paper. Our women visitors went off in all directions to raise money for us. This was in the seventeenth year after the creation of our system.
Seventeen years of persistent indoctrination had been to no avail. These people who collected money for us, as well as those who gave it, were breaking the rule that governed relations with victims of the regime. In periods of violence and terror people retreat into themselves and hide their feelings, but their feelings are ineradicable and cannot be destroyed by any amount of indoctrination. Even if they are wiped out in one generation, as happened here to a considerable extent, they will burst forth again in the next one. We have seen this several times. The idea of good seems really to be inborn, and those who sin against the laws of humanity always see their error in the end—or their children do.
Akhmatova went to the Bulgakovs and returned very touched by the reaction of Elena Sergeyevna, Bulgakov's wife, who burst into tears when she heard about our exile and gave us everything she had. Sima Narbut ran around to see Babel, but did not come back. But all the others kept arriving with contributions and there was soon a sum so large that it lasted us for the journey to Cherdyn and the first two months of our life in Voronezh. Admittedly, we didn't have to pay for our tickets (except for a small supplement on the return journey)—this is the one convenience of being an exile. In the train M. noticed what a lot of money I had, and asked where I had got it. When I explained, he laughed: what a roundabout way of getting the means to travel. All his life he had been eager to travel, but never could because of lack of money. The sum we had now was enormous for those days. People like us had never at any time been rich, but before the war nobody in our circle could even say that he was comparatively well-off. Everybody lived from hand to mouth. Some of the "Fellow Travelers" * started doing quite well as early as 1937, but this was only by comparison with the rest of the population, which could barely make ends meet.
At the end of the day Dligach came with Dina, and I asked him whether he could lend me some money. He went off to get some and left Dina with us. I never saw him again—he vanished for good. I didn't expect him to lend me money, I just wanted to see whether he would disappear like this. We had always suspected that he was an "adjutant," and, as such, it would have been natural for him to clear off when he heard I had been to see M.—for fear that I might have learned about his role. This is indeed what it looked like, but it is still not final proof. He might simply have taken fright—this cannot be ruled out.
• See page 420.
I was seen off to the station by Akhmatova, M.'s brother Alexander and my own brother, Evgeni Khazin. On the way there I stopped at the Lubianka, as had been agreed with the interrogator, by the same entrance I had used that morning to come to the meeting with M. The officer on duty let me in and a moment later the interrogator came down the staircase with M.'s suitcase in his hands. "You're off?" he said. "Yes," I replied and forgetting who he was, automatically held out my hand as I said goodbye. We were not, I repeat, revolutionaries, underground plotters or politically minded people at all. But we suddenly found ourselves having to act as though we were, and I had now nearly sinned against time-honored tradition by shaking hands with a member of the secret police. But the interrogator saved me from disgrace by not responding—he did not shake hands with people like me—that is, with his potential victims. It was a good lesson for me—my first political lesson in the spirit of the old revolutionaries: never shake hands with a policeman. I was very ashamed that I had to learn it from a police interrogator. Since then I have never forgotten it.
We went into the station building, and I was about to go to the ticket office when I was intercepted by a short, fair-haired man in a baggy civilian suit—it was the agent who had searched our trunk and thrown the papers in a pile on the floor. He handed me a ticket, but didn't take my money. Some porters—not the ones we had hired, but some new ones—picked up my baggage. They told me I needn't worry and that everything would be taken right through to the train. I noticed that the first ones didn't come up to beg for tips, but just vanished.
We had to wait for a long time, and Akhmatova was forced to leave me, because her train to Leningrad was already due to depart. At last the fair-haired man reappeared, and, relieved of all the usual burdens and worries of getting on a train, we went through to the platform. The train drew in and I caught a glimpse of M.'s face through the window. I showed my ticket to a conductress, who asked me to go right to the end of the train. My brother and brother- in-law were not admitted.
M. was already in his compartment and there were three soldiers with him. With our guards we occupied all six berths, including the two on the side. The stage manager of our departure, the fair-haired agent, had arranged everything so perfectly that he seemed to be showing off the marvels of a Soviet Thousand and One Nights.
M. pressed up against the window. "It's a miracle!" he said, gluedto the pane. Our two brothers were standing on the platform. M. tried to open the window, but a guard stopped him: "It's against the rules." The fair-haired man came back once more to check that everything was all right and gave final instructions to the conductress: the door into this compartment from the rest of the coach was to be kept locked during the whole journey, and only the toilet at our end could be used. At stopping points only one of the guards was allowed to leave the coach; the other two were to stay with us all the time. Wishing us a good journey, the fair-haired man left us, but I saw him standing on the platform until the train started to leave. He was obeying his instructions to the letter, no doubt.
? the moment when I entered the coach and saw our brothers
The coach gradually filled with other passengers. The door to our compartment was guarded by a soldier who turned back passengers eager to find places—the rest of the coach was crammed. M. stayed by the window, desperate for contact with the two men on the other side, but no sound could penetrate the glass. Our ears were powerless to hear, and the meaning of their gestures hard to interpret. A barrier had been raised between us and the world outside. It was still a transparent one, made of glass, but it was already impenetrable. The train started for Sverdlovsk.