The man took M. off to the militia station and Rudakov ran after them. But they did not get as far as the station—on the way M. had another attack. He was again brought home in an ambulance and carried upstairs in a chair borrowed from Kolychev's apartment on the ground floor. While a doctor attended to M., the "electrician" waited in the room. When M. was a little rested, he showed all his medical certificates to our strange visitor, who asked to be given the one with a triangular stamp which had been signed by Razumova. Taking it with him, he went to Kostyrev's room to make a telephone call. Having got his instructions, he came back and said to M.: "Stay where you are for now." Then he left us.
M. stayed in bed for several days. Every day, in the morning and evening, the "electrician" or one of his colleagues—always in civilian clothing—looked in on us. During the day M. was able to joke about it ("All the trouble they're having with me!") and consoled himself with the thought that if he hadn't exposed the "electrician" they would have come to pick him up at night. He was not so cheerful at night. Once I woke up and saw him standing at the foot of the bed with his head thrown back and his hands spread wide. "What is it?" I asked. He pointed at the wide-open window. "Isn't it time? Let's do it, while we're still together." "Not yet," I said, and he didn't argue. I am not sure I was right. We should both have been spared so much torment.
The next morning we endured the visit of the "electrician," who was now promising to send his "own doctor," but before he came again in the evening we slipped out of the house and went to Ya- khontov's apartment, where we stayed the night. In the morning I came back to our place to get our things ready to leave, but Kostyrev insisted on taking me around to the militia station. "Where is Mandelstam?" they asked me. "He's gone away." "Where?" "I don't know." They then said we must clear out of Moscow within twenty- four hours.
For his pains Kostyrev was rewarded with our apartment. His widow and daughter still live there. I would like his daughter to read this, but the children of such parents do not read books—unless they also work in the literary section of the Lubianka and have to by way of duty. In that case it is probably better that she doesn't see this manuscript.
We stayed with Yakhontov for three days and spent the whole time consulting maps of the Moscow region. At last we settled on Kimry. It was easy to get to from the Savelovo railroad station near the Moscow suburb of Maryina Roshcha, where the Yakhontovs lived. Another attractive feature was that it was on the Volga—if one must live in a small provincial town, then better it should be on a river. We did not go back to our apartment on Furmanov Street— M.'s brother Alexander and my brother Evgeni volunteered to bring our things to the station. To say goodbye to my mother, who was still in the apartment, we called her down into the street. She was quite startled when M. went up to her with outstretched hand and said: "Hello, my illegal mother-in-law."
It was the beginning of June when we left Moscow.
It must be said that the militia had shown unusual humanity and tender-heartedness by allowing a sick man to stay on illegally in Moscow until he was well enough to travel. They are not generally so considerate, and they would have been quite within their rights to insist that we leave immediately.
6 2 In the Country
R
ather early for us to come out to the country this year," said - M. after we had taken refuge from the Moscow militia in the small village of Savelovo on the high bank of the Volga opposite Kimry. It was set in sparse woodland, and in the market there the peasants sold berries, as well as milk and buckwheat for making kasha. There was a tearoom where we could go and read the local newspaper, which had the comic name The Invalid's Echo. The tearoom was lit by a smoky kerosene lamp, whereas at home we had only candles. It was very difficult for M. to read by this kind of light because of the bad state of his eyes. We have all ruined our eyesight through having to sit by kerosene lamps all our lives. In fact, however, we had brought very few books with us, since we did not expect to settle here. This was only a temporary halt which we needed to have a rest and take stock of our situation.
Savelovo is a village with two or three streets. All the houses looked well-built and were made of wood with old-fashioned fretwork window frames and gates. Not far away was the village of Kalyazin, which would shortly be submerged in the waters of the artificial lake then being made. It would have been possible to get one of the excellent frame houses from Kalyazin and set up house in Savelovo if only we had had the money to buy one.
The inhabitants of Savelovo worked mainly at the nearby factory, but they got a livelihood from the river by catching fish and selling it on the black market. It also provided them with fuel for the winter—on summer nights they used boathooks to pull in logs as they were floated down from the lumber camps on the upper reaches of the river. In those days the Volga still fed those who lived on its banks, but now a stop has been put to this as well, and the rivers are no longer a source of livelihood.
We preferred to remain in Savelovo—which was the last station on the railroad—rather than cross over to Kimry, a shabby little town on the other side of the river. This would have made it more difficult for us to make day trips into Moscow. The railroad was a kind of lifeline for us. As our friend G.M. told us—she had been through the prisons and camps and knew what it was to be a "convicted person"—it didn't matter what god-forsaken place you settled in as long as you could hear the whistles of passing trains.
The forbidden city of Moscow was like a magnet. People of our status were allowed to reside only at points just over a hundred kilometers away, and all the places within reach of the railroads in this belt around the city were crammed with former prisoners and exiles.
Particularly popular was the small town of Alexandrov, because it was possible to get to Moscow and back in one day by changing to the electric train at Zagorsk. This meant a journey of three hours instead of four or four and a half on other lines into Moscow. After a day in Moscow, where one would go to get some money to live on, or to make the rounds of officials in connection with one's case, it was advisable to return by the last train to the place where you were registered.
In 1937, when people who had been in trouble were re-arrested on a mass scale, the secret police found it very convenient to have their victims all gathered together at these focal points just beyond the hundred-kilometer perimeter around Moscow. It was much easier than tracking them down individually. Whole towns could be cleared out at one fell swoop. Since these operations were carried out according to plans for which "production quotas" were set, the police agents involved were no doubt well rewarded for their self- sacrificing efforts in reaching their targets. Every time these small towns were emptied in this way, they would at once begin to fill up again with new ex-prisoners who in due course were all picked up in their turn.