The Translator John Crowley
For Tom Disch, who knows why
“Poetry is power,” M[andelstam] once said to Akhmatova in Voronezh, and she bowed her head on its slender neck.
—NADEZHDA MANDELSTAM, Hope Against Hope
Contents
Epigraph
Part I
1.
The first time that Christa Malone heard the name of…
2.
It’s always a surprise and a wonderment when our plane…
3.
It was a university huge even in 1961, a city…
4.
Because her family moved often when she was growing up,…
5.
In her room in Tower 3, she beat out the…
6.
Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays was Psychology, which Fran was taking…
7.
The Christmas when Kit was a senior in high school,…
8.
The house on East North Street where Jackie had found…
9.
In May every year the nuns of Our Lady of…
10.
They were thin white lines, not noticeable really, almost indistinguishable…
11.
It had been an accident with some ammunition, some shells…
12.
Wherever it was, in whatever city, it was a vast…
13.
“I thought about it, what he told me,” Kit said…
Part II
1.
When her first semester at the University was over in…
2.
First there was the alphabet, which even when she had…
3.
So every day that summer she rose early and studied…
4.
When his apartment on the edge of the prairie grew…
5.
The house that Falin lived in was owned by an…
6.
“Mad,” said George.
7.
In Kit’s mailbox at the dormitory when she returned to…
8.
It had fallen, it had been dropped, but the effect…
9.
The next night, as if he knew just where she’d…
10.
All that night a storm moved over the Gulf too,…
11.
It must have been near dawn. The little town where…
12.
“So the poems were lost,” she said to Gavriil Viktorovich…
13.
Four days later Christa Malone flew away, from a different…
Author’s Note
About the Author
Praise
Other Books by John Crowley
Copyright
About the Publisher
I
1.
The first time that Christa Malone heard the name of Innokenti Isayevich Falin, it was spoken by the President of the United States, John F. Kennedy.
In February of 1961, Christa stood in a reception line at the White House with twenty other high school seniors whose poems had been selected for inclusion in a national anthology of young people’s poetry called Wings of Song. All but four were girls, a flock of ungainly bright birds in their suits and dresses, all with hats and white gloves too. A gravely courteous aide had arranged them in a row, instructed them how to respond and step away, and now looked at his wristwatch and toward a distant door; and Kit Malone sensed the quick beating of their hearts. The anthology had the sponsorship of a major foundation.
He was stopping to meet them on his way to a grander affair, Kit wouldn’t remember later what it was, but when the far double doors opened he was wearing evening clothes; his wife beside him wore a gown of some unearthly material that gleamed like the robes of an El Greco cardinal. The aide guided them down the line of young poets; the President took each one’s hand, and so did the First Lady; the President asked each one a question or two, talking a bit longer with a tall girl from Quincy.