It’s not simply that freedom might be frightening, novel, unreal; it’s that it might turn out to be not as free as advertised – or not free in exactly the way promised. And if you refuse to risk the potential “disappointment” of freedom by exercising it, you will, at least, avoid that disappointment. It’s why Boris fearfully defends, even to the point of absurdity, his non-existent status as Russian writer: when Tanya reminds him that he hasn’t been (and, seemingly, can’t be) published in the Soviet Union, he replies, “But my readers are here. While over there…Who needs my stories in Chicago?” [87] Better, perhaps, to have always-unrealized potential than lapsed actuality. Shadowing Boris, and indeed all of Dovlatov’s émigrés, is the double sense of freedom, both positive and negative, that V.S. Naipaul beautifully evokes at the end of his story “One out of Many,” from In a Free State. The story is about Santosh, a poor servant from Bombay who accompanies his master, a diplomat, to Washington, D.C. Santosh is utterly lost in America, but he eventually marries an African-American woman and thus gains the right to stay. His new employer, who owns an Indian restaurant, reassures him that in the States no one cares, as they would in India, that Santosh is married to a black woman: “Nobody looks at you when you walk down the street. Nobody cares what you do.” And Santosh comments: “He was right. I was a free man; I could do anything I wanted…It didn’t matter what I did, because I was alone.” It is an enormous privilege to live in a country where “nobody cares what you do”; but when nobody cares what you do, then perhaps it doesn’t matter what you do. Perhaps apprehending something like this, Boris falters and freezes; it is easier to make no decision at all. He lets his wife and daughter go ahead of him.
Freedom is both actual and ideal, both concrete and metaphysical. There are enacted realities, like the rule of law, free speech, economic possibility and limitation, material circumstance – it should go without saying that these actualities are of enormous consequence in immigrants’ lives. But the émigré has also a strange, pure, almost metaphysical liberty: this, as Nabokov knew, is the portable, remembered world he or she brings with him from the old country. Nabokov’s émigré professor, Timofey Pnin, knows this portable, internal, untouchable, undisappointable world to be the cosmos you carry inside you – the stories, the people, the memories, the anecdotes and jokes, even the very dates of one’s national history; in short, the émigré’s entire cultural formation: “a brilliant cosmos that seemed all the fresher for having been abolished by one blow of history,” as Pnin thinks of it. It is why Dovlatov is able to look at the single suitcase he brought with him from the Soviet Union and disdain the things inside it (the hat, the jacket, the shirt, the gloves). The things are not important. What are important are the stories these things drag with them, the very stories Dovlatov made into his book, The Suitcase, the stories that enliven every page of his writing. In this sense, things are not concrete; the impalpable stories are, made so by the great writer when set down brilliantly, vividly in print for generations of future readers. I don’t know if Boris quite understands this, at the end of Pushkin Hills; but we are very fortunate that Sergei Dovlatov did.
—James Wood
Notes
p. 7, Gordin, Shchegolev, Tsyavlovskaya… Kern’s memoirs: Arkady Gordin (1913–97) was a Pushkin expert who wrote a number of books on Pushkin in Mikhailovskoye, where the Pushkin Preserve is now located. Pavel Shchegolev (1877–1931) and Tatyana Tsyavlovskaya (1897–1978) were also noted Pushkin specialists. Anna Kern (1800–79) was briefly Pushkin’s lover. The two met in nearby Trigorskoye in 1825.
p. 8, Alexei Vulf’s Diaries: Alexei Nikolayevich Vulf (1805–81) was a bon vivant and close friend of Pushkin.
p. 8, Ryleyev’s mother: Kondraty Ryleyev (1795–1826) was a leader in the Decembrist Revolt of 1825, which sought to overthrow the Tsar, and a publisher of Pushkin’s work.
p. 13, Hannibal… Zakomelsky: Ibrahim Hannibal (1696–1781) was Pushkin’s great-grandfather, an African (probably from modern-day Eritrea) who was kidnapped as a child and given as a gift to the Russian tsar, later becoming a high-ranking favourite of Peter the Great. Pushkin wrote an unfinished novel, The Negro of Peter the Great, on the subject of Hannibal. There is a famous painting that was traditionally thought to depict Hannibal, though some scholars have argued that the medal depicted in the painting was an order not created until after Hannibal’s death. Baron Ivan Mellor–Zakomelsky (1725–90), the putative subject of the painting, was a high-ranking general who served in the Second Russo-Turkish War.
p. 15, The Bronze Horseman: Pushkin’s 1833 narrative poem which takes its title from a statue of Peter the Great in St Petersburg.
p. 17, Likhonosov: Viktor Likhonosov (1936–) was closely associated with the “Village Prose” literary movement of the Sixties that focused on rural life in the Soviet Union and often presented a nostalgic or idealized view of Russia.
p. 18, Mandelstam: Osip Mandelstam (1891–1938), Russian poet and essayist.
p. 19, the writer Volin’s work: Probably Vladimir Volin (1924–98), writer and journalist who worked for a variety of Soviet magazines and journals.
p. 20, Gleb Romanov… in Bucharest: Gleb Romanov (1920–67) was a popular actor and performer. Ruzhena Sikora (1918–2006) was a well-known Soviet singer of Czech origin. “This song for two soldi” is a line from the song ‘Una canzone da due soldi’ by the Italian singer Achille Togliani (1924–95). ‘I Daydreamt of You in Bucharest’ was a Russian song from the Fifties performed by Sidi Tal (1912–83), a Jewish singer popular in the Soviet Union.
p. 23, The sacred path will not be overgrown: A deliberate distortion of Pushkin’s famous poem ‘Exegi monumentum’: “the people’s path will not be overgrown”. Dovlatov famously attempted never to have two words in one sentence begin with the same letter – Pushkin’s text “ne zarastyot narodnaya tropa” has two Ns.
p. 27, Agdam: An Azeri fortified white wine.
p. 30, the Order of the Red Star: A decoration given for exceptional military bravery, or for long service in the armed forces.
p. 31, Gagarin: Yuri Gagarin (1934–68), Soviet cosmonaut and the first human to travel into outer space.
p. 34, The Decembrist uprising: The failed attempt to overthrow the Tsar in 1825, directly supported by many of Pushkin’s close friends.
p. 34, Benois: Alexandre Benois (1870–1960) was a Russian artist who worked extensively with the Ballets Russes and Sergei Diaghilev.
p. 36, Yesenin… Pasternak: Sergei Yesenin (1895–1925), a Russian lyrical poet who committed suicide at the age of thirty. His works were widely celebrated, but many were banned by the authorities. The poet and novelist Boris Pasternak (1890–1960) suffered enormously at the hands of the authorities, especially after being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958 for the novel Doctor Zhivago, which was banned in the Soviet Union.