“We should talk sometime, Viktor.”
He nodded his head again, meaning: not here. Too many ghosts stalked the corridors of this building, a neoclassical mansion that had been built in the nineteenth century for a count named Sollogub. The yellow house, trimmed in white and flanked by two symmetrical wings, was said to have later served Tolstoy as a model for his depiction of the Rostov mansion in War and Peace. Many of us, unconsciously indulging the conceit that fiction trumped fact, would insist that it was indeed the Rostov mansion.
“Thank you.”
Viktor clasped my hand, and I was surprised by its strength and warmth. Then he left. The whole thing had taken less than a minute.
Now I realized that the weight pressing on my soul the entire weekend was not the fear of signing the petition, but the fear that I would not. With the door closed, I seemed about to levitate from my desk. Or, conversely, I was in the tumble of some glorious fall, the wind sweeping my precociously graying, sloppily long hair behind me. All at once I recalled the sensations—so vivid they were nearly physical—that I had experienced when my first poem had been accepted for publication. Then too there had been relief: I would be a writer after all. Then too there had been a wonderment at my trespass: in that case, across the holy fields of Russian literature. And then there had been the prolonged, deliciously drowsy wait for the journal’s actual publication and arrival. (None of the pleasures of publication approach the pleasure of anticipating publication.)
Still buoyed by relief, I turned to the mail that had accumulated on my desk in the previous few days. There was some union business—applications for membership and information about a forthcoming musical program dedicated to a visiting Malaysian playwright—as well as a personal letter from a family friend and a large gray envelope that contained, I knew at a glance, a manuscript from some provincial literary aspirant. I received envelopes of this kind not infrequently and considered the thoughtful reading of their contents an obligation incurred by my profession as well as by my office. My own literary career had begun with a similar packet addressed to Boris Sorokin. I cut open the large envelope and shook out onto the desk a spill of onion skin.
The cover letter contained a few comments about my most recent novel that were perceptive in their artfully offhanded approval. I brought the paper to my face, but the only perfume was the ink’s. Sometimes ambitious female writers sent their photographs; Marina Burchatkina hadn’t, so I assumed that she was plain. I wasn’t disappointed. Already the caress of her praise had produced the accustomed tingling along the insides of my thighs, a quickening of my appetite. If she were plain, I could at least be assured that my response to her work would be based on its merit.
Her letter stated that she was a schoolteacher in Kaluga and had contributed a number of items to a vaguely familiar provincial youth magazine. She asked if perhaps, “respected comrade,” I would advise her, on the basis of these stories and poems, whether she should continue her literary pursuits.
I returned the manuscript to the envelope, which I slid into a drawer for later reading, but curiosity prevented me from releasing my grip on it. I pulled out the manuscript. Never did I open an envelope from a novice writer without the trembling hope that it contained something wonderful, something that would change my life or the course of Russian literature. I had yet to be rewarded for this expectation, which I sustained for its evidence of my idealism and open-mindedness. Even today, I pick through the most obscure and irregularly published journals looking for a miracle.
A minute swept away that morning’s millennial hopes. Marina had sent me three short stories and a sheaf of poetry, forgettable even now after all that’s happened. I remember only my response: a headshake and a dull, leaden feeling. Her work was not as poor as other samotyok that had “self-flowed” onto my desk. She had a competent command of the language, but it was put to use for nothing original and certainly nothing urgent. Mired deep within the then loosely watched borders of conventional socialist realism, the stories were predictable and unpersuasive. Some of the poems simply failed to scan.
Fortunately for Marina, enough of my good mood remained to compose a few words of mild encouragement. I rolled a sheet of paper into the typewriter. I told her that I appreciated her comments about my novel and was touched by her decision to turn to me for advice. I commended her careful use of language and her obviously heartfelt sentiments. All true. And then I advised her as I would have advised the most inarticulate and illiterate of aspirants and what I advised myself when my own work faltered: keep writing.
Three
Of course, it was not only ghosts that stalked the halls of Vorovskovo, 52. There were corporeal informers and professional eavesdroppers or, to put it more benignly, people whom we would simply prefer not have auditing our conversations. Viktor’s nod had reminded me, as I needed to be reminded from time to time, that the union was an instrument of the state. It was closely monitored by several organs of the state, including the Committee for State Security—that is, the KGB—and the Party. Indeed, several high-ranking members of the Secretariat passing through the narrow hallways also held rank in the KGB, and others owed their official positions to inclusion on the Party’s or the KGB’s nomenklatura lists. This infiltration was ubiquitous throughout Soviet society. As if placed in a room with two bright lamps, each organization or government agency cast a pair of shadows; one belonged to the Party and the other to the security forces.
On the Rostov mansion’s polished parquet floors, there were many places where the penumbras of these shadows overlapped. Various union secretaries, section secretaries, deputies, and other officials openly served more than one master. Many of them did it with a grace that lent them authority and propriety. Boris Sorokin was a fixture at Party congresses, where he lectured the delegates on the importance of providing the resources to maintain high literary output. Kind, garrulous Viktor Ilyin, the Moscow branch’s organizational secretary, was a former lieutenant general in the KGB, with whom he kept close ties. It was presumed that even Darya Sergeyevna, the stout old lady who had been watching our coats since Gorky’s time, castigating us for being underdressed and prescribing home remedies when, as a consequence of our defiance, we became ill, kept a tally of our comings and goings, and especially who with.
The shadows overlapped across our desks. The rank and file never forgot that a full literary career outside the union was impossible: nonunion writers without registered employment risked prosecution as “social parasites.” All of us knew our responsibilities as Soviet writers. We had private and public selves. Writing was the work of the public self.
The year-long repairs of the café downstairs ended with it unpainted. The café reopened anyway and after the first weekend a number of comic and obscene graffiti marked the walls. They were brought to the attention of Konstantin Fedin, the union’s first secretary, who furiously swore he would catch and punish the perpetrators. Before that could happen, some anonymous hero painted over the evidence with a copse of graceful palm trees. Afterwards it was allowed that other writers could add to the landscape “in a tasteful way,” and soon the walls were covered with more palm trees, Gaugin-esque girls in straw skirts, dragons, flying fish, and gentle, hilarious caricatures of our most easily caricatured colleagues. More than one observer commented that we made better artists than writers, a remark that seemed less amusing when Valery Schenëv mordantly responded, “Yes, that is fair, since the members of the artists’ union are better writers.” Indeed, the artists’ union, much more political than the writers’ union, was currently consuming itself with petitions and tracts.