Moscow he has an assignment: to get several weeks’ food for his wife and children. When he finishes his scholarly business, he bustles through the stores and then goes to the railroad station to leave his purchases at the baggage hold. By the time he’s ready to leave he has a good selection that he loads onto the train. He often comes to our apartment with his latest find, which he keeps in the refrigerator while we have our intellectual talks. He jokes about these foraging problems as if they didn’t affect him.
Actually Vladislav Aleksandrovich is a pessimist who long ago gave up any hope of changing real life. He is a talented scholar with a famous name, but his honesty and even morbid decency kept him from making a career, since scholarship often goes hand in hand with selling out. So he sits in his godforsaken town, making scholarly discoveries, reading books, and waiting for the Roman Empire to fall, since he knows for sure how it will happen.
MAY 24. I’m sure he’s an artist of genius, but as Vladimir Vysotsky’s song goes, "Let them try it, I’ll wait.” Last night’s adventure was more than enough for me. Ivar came to see me around six, and with typically Baltic politeness he gave me lovely roses, kissed my hand, and said pretty compliments. Then he told me about his fourth wife, whom he loves very much. He falls in love from time to time and gets married. Ivar feels it is indecent to cheat on women just as it is indecent to sleep with them outside marriage. So in his thirty-five years he has had three divorces and three children. Ivar likes to get all
his children together and take them to the park. This doesn’t happen too often because he works like a fanatic. I must say that he paints wonderful things. I am convinced that he will be famous some day.
So we had dinner, drank some wine, and, as usual, talked about many things. Friends who live in the building next door called and invited us over. Ivar, who is not very sociable, agreed and told me that he was in the mood to drink. He has the strange ability to program himself: “Today I work until I pass out; tomorrow I party without limits.” At first things went well. We drank moderately and for fun, talking and enjoying ourselves, but suddenly Ivar changed. He got completely drunk in a second. We decided to take him outside and put him in a taxi to drive him home, but we couldn’t. He resisted and pushed my friend, who was trying to hold him up and keep him from falling in the snow. We realized that we couldn’t get him into a taxi, so we took him to my place. I saw how hard male friendships are; you can’t leave a drunken pal in the snow. The neighbor turned out to be a weakling. He got us to the elevator and ran off. It’s a good thing that Ivar is slight. I couldn’t have managed with a big man. He collapsed on the couch and begged me to close the doors. “They’ll come for me; lock up tight.” But the doors were closed.
I suggested he go to sleep, but he told me in slurred words that he had to brush his teeth. I could understand that. I never went to bed without brushing my teeth, even in former merry days when I could have been drunk. Before he reached the sink, Ivar fell into the tub. I was furious, but at the same time it was funny. I got him out and set him up by the sink. I handed him a toothbrush. He brushed long and methodically while I held
him up. Then we had a problem. He needed to use the toilet. He suggested that I hold him up from behind while he did what he needed. That was too much. I stood him up by the toilet, leaned him against the wall, and told him what to do. I went out and waited for the sound of a falling body. No problem. A few minutes later he was dead to the world in my bed. I took the folding bed and thought this was what it was like with an alcoholic husband, dealing with this every night. There are so many miserable women like that in our country! I felt lucky. Ivar would leave in the morning, and I would joke with my friends about this. Actually he thought it was funny, too, and in the morning he wanted all the details—what he had done, what he had said. I told him about the windows and doors and asked him what the problem was. I could see that it was serious and sad. He is terrified of ending up in jail because he won’t be able to paint. “And I’ll die if I can’t paint,’’ he confessed.
“But why would they want to put you in jail?” I asked.
He said that in our country the authorities can put you away for no reason; they could just do it. That’s why he’s so afraid of open doors, especially when he’s been drinking. He thinks that they are coming up the stairs after him and getting closer to the door. And he drinks sometimes to get rid of his tension and fears. When he told me this, I remembered one of his paintings: twilight, a solitary man standing knee-deep in the snow in a field and looking at a grim, half-deserted village in the distance. The picture is imbued with depression, loneliness, and despair. You can’t paint a picture like that without feeling it all in the depths of your soul.
MAY 26. I have these extravagant impulses sometimes. I see a painting or read a poem and I have the need to travel. Once I went to Tallinn after contemplating Breughel. I wanted to experience medieval Europe. And just the other day I was reading Mandelstam . . . :
I have returned to my city, familiar as tears,
As my sinews, as childhood’s swollen glands. Petersburg, I do not want to die yet,
I have your telephone numbers.
. . . and realized that I couldn’t resist. I had to go to Petersburg- Leningrad. Mama decided to go with me. After all, it’s her hometown. It’s a good thing we have a friend at the ticket counter. We can pick up our tickets tomorrow. I don’t know what we’d do without her. There are no tickets available nowadays.
Tatyana Leonidovna called with a new mystery episode. Leopold called and asked for the keys to the dacha (which she had wisely taken away from him). He said he had to pick up his clothes. She said she was busy and couldn’t meet him. She went off to the dacha, gathered up his things, and took a taxi to his place with a friend. She waited downstairs, and her girl friend went up to his floor, rang his doorbell, and offered Leopold a bag with his stuff. He shouted that he didn’t want to deal with her and slammed the door. Then she knocked at the neighbor’s door and asked him to give the bag to Leopold, who must have been listening at his door, because he leaped out and yelled at the neighbor not to take the things. But the friend was running
down the stairs by then. Now they don’t know what happened to the bag.
Leopold called Tatyana as if nothing had happened and tried to persuade her not to get a divorce. He said that she was too impulsive and temperamental, while he was rational and controlled, just the kind of man she needed. Now he’s going around telling all his friends how much he adores her and doesn’t want to lose her. But Tatyana Leonidovna knows his tricks, and she took the final papers to the court. The denouement approaches.
JUNE 2. So we’re back from Leningrad. I returned with a strange feeling: Something is rotten in that kingdom. I even said to Mama, “It’s like coming back from a madhouse to a normal one.” I recently heard that Leningraders think the same about us.
They say that Leningrad is turning into a ghost town. I think that’s an amazingly accurate description. The old Petersburg streets are there, the magnificent buildings, the embankments—you can touch them, they’re here, but they’re not, not really. The unique spirit of Petersburg is gone, leaving only the shell, which is beginning to fall apart, like a corpse. Walking through the city, you seem to be at a gigantic surrealistic funeral. I may be exaggerating, but I want to convey the acuteness of my sensations. Small provincial towns in Russia die with a gentle sadness, but Petersburg is losing its majesty heavily and grimly. I think that the people there are strange, too. They seem to be trying to escape from reality.