At the very end of the month, when the few surviving front gardens were already ablaze with lilacs, Katenka dragged me off to the country. We went a long, long way out, to our beloved Nikolsky woods. There no one could see us, but for some reason she tenderly refused to do it in the air, as we had used to, but insistently drew me down onto the grass. She hugged me fiercely, with a new ardor, wound her legs around me, her embrace almost squeezed the breath out of me, her fragrant sweat, mingled with mine, bathed her face ... it was all more powerful than it had ever been before.
That day we definitively decided to fly away.
“Lead boots will soon be all the rage,” joked Katenka. She wasn’t far from the truth. Here and there “socially conscious” pensioners, not waiting for instructions from above (I suddenly realize that “from above” sounded ambiguous in those days) started putting up notices: FLYING STRICTLY FORBIDDEN. They were already drafting new legislation against “anti-social breaking away from the collective,” setting prison terms, etc., etc. It was even suggested that parents were responsible for their children, no matter if they themselves were incapable of rising above the prosaic realities of our native land.
In Tsvetnoy market the Georgians were selling tomatoes for exorbitant prices, someone had brought some plump gladioli into town, and the Prime Minister of Australia was due to arrive on an official visit, and an aphorism by the mayor of the city made the rounds of Moscow, to the effect that if anyone flew during the visit, heads would fly too—in a word, a pal! of ennui and desolation had descended, and Katenka and I finally got two plane tickets to Simferopol; from there we would make our way by road to Yalta, rest a while, take a look round. and, going out to sea one night on a pleasure boat, leave the country for ever.
Kolenka’s warning—not to fly over large expanses of water—naturally made us a bit apprehensive, but we had no choice. The Western frontiers were now being patrolled in earnest.
Do you know what Yalta is at night? No, not Soviet Yalta, full of drunks and street brawls, reeking of cheap perfume and suntan oil! A different Yalta. Mute, dwindling, sprawled on its side like a distant dying campfire. A city from which so many have fled.... A last memory, spiced with cheap jokes....
It was a close, moonless night. I had a child’s compass, bought at the last minute. I was so afraid the pointer would come off the needle‑‑‑‑‑
Again I go back to the photographs from those years—black and white, of course; color film from the West I got only rarely, it cost the earth. Here is Katenka bearing a tray of coffee through the air—a heavy tray from our grandmother’s day. She is finding it heavy going, so her naked little form is pitched downward, her legs pointing skyward, I can see the twin hills of her buttocks, the tender confluence of her breasts. Her hair is uncombed, carelessly pinned to one side. Her downy mound still to this day gives me the shakes. Katenka under a river bridge, in one hand she is holding a rolled-up newspaper and tooting on it like an archangel. Katenka upside down in our little apartment; her hair completely covers her face, her dress too has fallen back, only her legs stick straight up like a fountain.
I have one particular photo that fills me with particular sadness—Katenka is pulling back the shade: a winter window, snow-covered branches, a sparrow, the feeble sun, wires. She is wearing an old dressing gown. Holding it at her throat with one hand, as if something were strangling her. Sometimes I think that even then she knew what was going to happen.
The most surprising thing about this picture is that Katenka is standing on the floor.
I’m reaching for the matches.
How we got ourselves to Paris is another story. We undertook no more long flights. Except Turkey, which we cut across in three hot nights alive with the incessant buzzing of cicadas. The U. S. consul in Athens issued us our first Western documents. Of course they wanted to know all about us, but we concocted a simple-minded tale involving an inflatable dinghy, supplies of drinking water, and Lady Luck. Once launched, this idyllic fiction circulated for years through all the prefectures of Europe. Pretty soon I managed to sell a dozen or so of my photos to a French agency, received an advance—it was this, incidentally, that decided our choice of a country; they had promised us the rest on arrival in Paris—and we timidly rushed out to spend what was for us an enormous amount of money. The pictures, which showed up a week later on the front covers of various thick magazines, were the sort of thing I’d been doing all my life: streets, people, mainly people. I had taken only the last few from high up—there was one of Moscow slanting away below, bristling with the sinister spires of its dwarf skyscrapers, crushed beneath the funereal weight of administrative buildings.
In Paris we lived modestly, with a sort of melancholy gaiety. Something had infused the atmosphere of our relations for good: a certain quantity of what I thought was non-lethal poison. I tried not to hear news from Russia, bought no newspapers, but whether I liked it or not the magazines that used my work slipped in commentaries on Soviet life, and I was often overcome with disgust, as in Nikakov’s office—overtly or covertly, they were 99 per cent pro-Soviet.
Money started to come in. Katenka rented a narrow storefront in one of the back streets off Les Halles. She fixed up almost everything herself, herself went around buying stuff, and soon she opened a tiny boutique, “Chez Katy,” where everything, literally everything was the same dark-cherry color. I mean blouses, sugar, pants, tennis racquets, bottles of liqueur, boots, candles, glasses, even cakes and pastries. For a month the shop yawned empty, then buyers began arriving in droves—my Katenka became very fashionable, and you saw girls in the street dressed all in Katenka’s one color. I was gladdened by her success but, to be honest, frightened by the color.
One evening at a noisy party given by a famous art critic—every last painter was there to pay his commercial respects—Katenka and I were standing on a balcony. She was wearing a light dress and her bare hands were cupped, I’m afraid to say prayerfully, around a glass of champagne. Suddenly she started talking about Nikolai Petrovich, about his one-room library, while I looked down at the early-evening bustle of Montparnasse far below. What she was saying filled me with something heavy, and I was on the point of stopping her when I heard: “He gave it to us as a gift, and it became our salvation, and we never even try it any longer... not even a tiny bit....” Already bending, or rather pouring, over the rail of the balcony, she was slipping down. The rest happened in an instant: I saw her turn in a spiral, then plummet down, a colored ball with her gown streaming out behind; I heard the motley crowd gasp as it instantly formed itself into a perfect circle.... Why did I rush to the stairs, to get the elevator? To this day, I don’t know....