The khozyain resumed smoking, sucking on the cigarette in short nervous puffs. “What does Pasternak say exactly?” he asked Bukharin.
“He was stunned to learn of Mandelstam’s arrest. He asked me to tell you that in a quarrel between a poet and a political leader, the poet, whether he emerges alive or dead, always comes out on top. History, in Pasternak’s scheme of things, is on the side of the poet.”
“Fuck the cloud dweller,” the khozyain sneered, using the nickname he had bestowed on Pasternak. “You can count on these rhymesters to stick together, it doesn’t matter where the fault lies.” All the same I could tell from his tone that the boss was shaken.
Bukharin realized that Pasternak’s intervention had impressed Stalin. He drove the nail home. “He says that Mandelstam isn’t in his right mind. Years of humiliation, of not being published, of begging or borrowing money to make ends meet, have pushed him into madness. He is not rational, not responsible for his actions—”
The khozyain interrupted Bukharin. “Would you be interested in reading the particular poem, written out in his own hand, that caused him to be charged with anti-Soviet propaganda?”
Bukharin could only nod. Comrade Stalin pulled a folded paper from the inside pocket of his tunic and slid it across the desk. Bukharin reached to retrieve it and, unfolding the paper, started reading as the khozyain, smiling in grim satisfaction, spit out phrases from memory. Kremlin mountaineer . . . murderer and peasant-slayer . . . fingers fat as grubs . . . words final as lead weights . . . cockroach whiskers.
I had heard from Yagoda that Mandelstam had been arrested for an outrageous poem, but up to that moment I had no idea what was in it. The contents must have come as a bombshell to Bukharin, too. The color literally drained from his features, leaving him as pale as a peeled pear. When he looked up, he seemed to be in a state of shock. “I had no idea . . . nobody told me . . . I assumed he would be beating about the bush. They suggested it was no more outrageous than what Mandelstam usually wrote.” Bukharin collected himself. “Still, Koba, this poem only proves Pasternak’s point. No sane person could have written these lines. They stand as proof of his madness.”
“Why?”
“Why?”
“Yes, why are these lines proof of madness?”
From my place at the back of the room, I could almost see the wheels turning in Bukharin’s head. He understood it wasn’t only Mandelstam’s life that was in jeopardy, but Bukharin’s. “The lines are proof of madness because they are inaccurate, Koba. He doesn’t make a rational argument that one can take issue with. He has resorted to slander of the worst kind. This is evidence of irrationality, and the irrationality must be seen as a symptom of madness.”
“You made a big mistake interfering in this affair,” the khozyain said coldly. “I won’t forget it.”
Bukharin, it must be conceded, had balls. “There were times when you thanked me for interfering,” he snapped. “I still have the revolver you gave me with the inscription To the Leader of the Proletarian Revolution N. Bukharin from J. Stalin.”
My boss replied angrily. “If you want to talk about your past merits, no one can take them away from you. But Trotsky had them, too. Speaking between ourselves, few had as many merits before the Revolution as Trotsky.” The khozyain aimed his index finger at Bukharin. “I will take it amiss if you repeat what I said.” He waved the back of his good hand to indicate the interview was over. I reached for the knob and pulled open the door. Bukharin rose to his feet. “You’re not the revolutionist I knew when we joined Lenin in the struggle to change the world, Koba,” he said. “You used to be grateful for the support of your Bolshevik comrades.”
“Gratitude is a dog’s disease,” Stalin shot back.
Bukharin regarded Stalin for a moment as if he intended to have the last word. Then, shaking his head in disgust, he hurried past me.
When Bukharin was gone, the khozyain gestured for the door to be shut. “It’s not every day you see someone sign his own death warrant,” he noted. “About Mandelstam: The shitty thing is that Pasternak is probably right. History is a bitch, and the bitch is on the side of the fucking poets.” He looked up. “Get hold of Yagoda, Vlasik. Tell him not to put Mandelstam on the overnight list again. We’ll pin a minus twelve on him—keep him away from the twelve major cities for a few years. That’ll give him time to work through his madness. When he comes to his senses, we’ll kill him for his sanity.”
At which point the khozyain—I’ll say what happened and leave you to figure out what it means—the khozyain dragged the cigarette from his lips and ground it out on the back of his hand. It’s something the boss must have picked up during his years in Siberia. Real criminals doing time for murder did this to show the political prisoners how tough they were. Looking at the burn mark, my boss nodded, as if the gesture brought back memories. Then he uttered something that confused me when he said it and makes even less sense to me now. What he said was: “Nobody’s innocent, Vlasik. Not Mandelstam, not Pasternak, not that harlot Akhmatova, not Bukharin, not even you. Nobody.”
THIRTEEN
Boris Pasternak
Thursday, the 23rd of May 1934
FEW THINGS DISHEARTENED ME more than a row with Akhmatova, probably because she turned out to be right more often than not, which is something I would grasp only after she’d hung down the phone. To add to my general sense of aggravation, I shared my father’s old apartment with six other families whose children produced such a racket in the communal hallway you could barely make out what your interlocutor was saying. So picture it: There I was, standing in the telephone niche in the corridor, barefooted after having rushed from the communal toilet to answer a call, my suspenders plunging to my shins, the telephone pressed to my ear, children scampering back and forth kicking a ball made of old rags tied with string, and me shouting into the mouthpiece begging Anna to repeat what she had just said. But of course she had raced on to make another point that may or may not have had anything to do with her previous point. Mandelstam’s arrest had put us all on edge and Anna was reproaching herself, and me, and every last member of the Union of Writers, for not fulfilling our duty as poets, in sharp contrast to Osip Emilievich, who was rotting in prison for withstanding pressure that the rest of us bowed to. Define what you mean by the duty of a poet? I hollered. Truth telling, she shouted back. You can’t do an awful lot of truth telling from the grave, I retorted, but she probably never heard me.
Akhmatova was engaged in truth telling, of course. What I had valued above all in the Revolution, back when I’d valued the Revolution, was its moral side—I’d actually entertained the idea that life would take a turn for the better, that art would be free to cut to the bone, that artists could agree to disagree and still honor one another. (I remember Mayakovsky once flinging a long arm over my shoulder after a bitter argument and saying, We really are different, Boris—you love lightning in the sky, I love it in an electric iron.) Nowadays it was no longer possible to harbor the delusion that tomorrow would be better than today, or that today was an improvement over yesterday. And this insight changed my life as an artist. For as far back as I can remember I had devoted myself to poetry, which is to say to the art closest to sign language, code writing and other signaling systems. Now I was drifting toward the view that life had grown too complicated for lyric poetry to express the immensity of our experience; that what we had lived through was best captured in prose. I dreamt of writing a novel that would seal my oeuvre, like a lid on a box. I dreamt of writing a novel that would conquer my incoherence as a poet and show how the Russian Revolution had swept away everything established, everything settled, everything to do with home and order. But I’m wandering from the subject: Akhmatova beside herself with anxiety over the fate of our dear friend Mandelstam, Pasternak trying to defend himself against attacks that were never launched, both of us overwhelmed with guilt because Osip was inside the Lubyanka and we were outside.
Some hours passed. I lay stretched o
ut on the daybed in the half of my father’s old painting studio that had been partitioned off and allotted to me, lighting up my fifth cigarette of the day, still hoping to limit myself to six before midnight, when one of my neighbors called out that I had another phone call. I assumed it was Akhmatova ringing back to apologize for things that neither of us could remember her saying. The children, thanks to God, were playing up at the other end of the corridor when I picked up the telephone.
“Pasternak?”
“Speaking.”
“Alexander Poskrebyshev on the line. Do you have paper and pencil?”
“One second.” I tugged open the drawer and found the message pad and a pencil. For some reason I pulled up my suspenders, snapping them on to my shoulders. “Ready,” I said into the telephone.
“I am going to give you a private Kremlin telephone number. Dial it in three minutes.” He read out the number and had me read it back to be sure I’d noted it correctly. Without another word, he hung up.
My heart was racing. Why would Stalin’s chef de cabinet be calling me? And who would I find at the other end of the line when I dialed the Kremlin number? I hauled my pocket watch from my trousers and stared at the second hand, convinced that it had slowed to a snail’s crawl; that at its present speed a day would last forty-eight hours, which would make limiting one’s self to six cigarettes more difficult. When I thought three minutes had gone by, I dialed the number. I was so tense I got it wrong the first time and had to dial again. Someone answered immediately.
“Do you recognize my voice, Pasternak?”
“No.”
The man on the other end of the line laughed quietly. “Stalin here. I want to talk to you about Mandelstam. I want you to know that I didn’t authorize his arrest.”
The children were kicking the ball back down the corridor and yelling as they ran after it. “I can’t hear very well—there are kids playing in the corridor. Can you say that again?”
Stalin raised his voice. “I didn’t authorize Mandelstam’s arrest. When I learned about it, I found it disgraceful. I am calling to let you know that Mandelstam’s case is being reviewed at the highest level. I have a feeling everything will turn out all right for him.”
“The fact of your taking a personal interest in the matter will reassure a great many artists and writers,” I shouted.
The children had passed. I clearly heard Stalin say, “But he is a genius, isn’t he?”
“That’s not the point,” I said.
“What is the point?” he demanded.
My brain flooded with possibilities. Perhaps Osip was wrong after all, perhaps I was right. Perhaps Stalin was living in a bubble, unaware of what the Chekists were doing in the real world outside the Kremlin. If only someone could let him know about the famine, the arrests, the executions, the deportations.
“Josef Vissarionovich, I absolutely must talk to you.”
“You are talking to me.”
“I mean face-to-ace. I mean man-to-man.”
He hesitated. “About what do you want to talk?”
I stupidly said the first thing that came into my head. “About life, about death.”
I pressed the receiver to my ear as hard as I could so as not to miss his reply. I thought I could hear Stalin breathing. And then the line went dead. I kept listening to be sure there was no mistake, all the time bitterly berating myself for not having found the right words; for having passed up the opportunity of a lifetime with my clumsiness. I cut the connection with a finger, then lifted the phone to my ear and waited for a dial tone. When I heard one I dialed the Kremlin number again. It rang sixteen times before someone answered. “Josef Vissarionovich,” I shouted, “I beg you to give me a moment to explain—”
“This is Poskrebyshev.”
“Can you put me through to Stalin, please?”
“Impossible. He is no longer in Moscow. Don’t dial this number again. It was activated for one call and will no longer exist after I hang up. Do you understand, Pasternak?”
“I do not understand—” I heard the line go dead again.
FOURTEEN
Fikrit Shotman
Saturday, the 25th of May 1934
EVER SINCE VIENNA, AUSTRIA where, as I may have mentioned, I won the silver weight-lifting medal, I’ve been accustomed to flashbulbs exploding in my face. To tell the truth, I don’t really mind them. It makes me feel important. So while my codefendants at the trial covered their eyes with their arms as we entered the October Hall, upstairs in the House of Unions, I smiled and waved to let everyone know that although I was pleading guilty, I was innocent in the sense I didn’t know what I was guilty of until Christophorovich educated me. With its high windows and gold-colored curtains and crystal chandeliers, this was as fancy a room as I ever set foot in, but I decided not to let on that I felt out of my depth. When I spotted the three judges, decked out in black robes and sitting in high-backed thrones on the raised platform, I raised high my right hand and saluted them in the style of Azerbaidzhan peasants. Judging from their grins, they weren’t indifferent to my mountain ways. The courtroom was overflowing with spectators—there were more than turned up on any given day to watch the strongman perform at the circus. I tried to count them but I gave up when I reached a hundred (there were easily three times that), which is as high as I count without help from Agrippina who, I was thrilled to see, was sitting in the very first row, protected by men in black suits on either side of her. I waved to her and she smiled back one of the forced smiles she produced when she was really sad. (She had this crazy idea that smiling could suck the sadness out of your heart, the way the juice of an onion could suck a wart out of the flat of your foot.) I recognized eight or ten faces in the courtroom. The woman who had copied down my confession was there, along with several lady clerks I’d run into when they took me to the Lubyanka clothing store to fit me out with a suit for the trial. Christophorovich was there, smiling and nodding encouragement. I even spotted the wrestler Islam Issa against a wall near the recessed gallery with tinted windows in the back where the orchestra used to play for the aristocrats before our Revolution fired the aristocrats. Christophorovich’d confided to me that Comrade Stalin himself sometimes watched trials from behind the tinted windows. Comrade interrogator knew this because the cleaning lady reported emptying ashtrays filled with his favorite cigarette, Kazbek Papirosi. Sitting at the end of Agrippina’s row were the foreign journalists. You could tell they were foreign by the lapels on their suits and by the fact that they sat with their legs crossed, which is something no self-respecting Soviet journalist would do in the formal situation of a trial. Procurator General A. Vishinsky, who (as every schoolchild knew) once shared the hampers of food supplied by his rich parents with Comrade Stalin when the two were in jail together, stood leaning on the half-circle bar across from me, studying sheets of paper in a file folder.
As for my codefendants, we were never actually introduced. We were thrown together in the basement holding cell an hour or so before the trial got under way. I never knew their names until Procurator General Vishinsky called them out at the trial.
“Knud Trifimovich Ignatiev.” The little man on my right, wearing a baggy suit with a soiled shirt buttoned up to his neck, with a mustache trimmed exactly like Comrade Vishinsky’s, stood up. “That’s me, Your Honor,” he said.
Comrade Vishinsky read out the charges against the accused Ignatiev—wrecking, treason, counterrevolutionary activities in violation of Penal Code Article 58. “How is it you plead?”
“Guilty.”
“Kindly tell the court,” Comrade Vishinsky said, peering at the accused through his horned-rimmed spectacles, his voice oozing contempt, “how a Russian national like yourself winds up with a name like Knud.”
“My mother was Danish, my father Russian. I was called Knud after my maternal grandfather.”
Comrade Vishinsky turned to address Their Honors the judges. “As you will see, the accused Ignatiev’s connection with Denmark
is pertinent to the accusations against him.” He turned back to the accused, who was clutching the bar to steady himself. “In your capacity as librarian in chief for the greater Moscow district, how many libraries did you direct?”
“In addition to the great Lenin Library and the four university libraries, I was in overall charge of forty-seven neighborhood libraries.”
“In your role as director of all these libraries, am I correct in stating that you were responsible for the destruction of books that were considered to be subversive?”
“That is correct, comrade procurator general.”
“And how were you alerted to the fact that the responsible authorities considered certain books to be subversive and thus must be destroyed?”
“At weekly intervals, I received a typewritten list from the office of the commissar for cultural affairs. On two occasions I received a note from Comrade Stalin himself inquiring why such and such a book was still available to the general public.”
“Then what happened?”
“Along with a female assistant, I made the rounds of the libraries in the small van allocated to my department and collected the offending volumes. I drove to one of the waste disposal plants on the outskirts of Moscow and personally supervised the destruction of the offending volumes.”
“They were burned in the incinerators, is that correct?”
“That is correct, comrade procurator general.”
“On the twelfth of March of this year, you were apprehended while supervising the destruction of volumes at the”—the procurator general bent his head to read from the charge sheet in the folder—“at the Yaroslav District waste station on the Yaroslav Highway. Will you tell the court why?”
“Included in the cartons of books earmarked for destruction were seventeen copies of Lenin’s collected works and eight copies of Stalin’s collected works.”
Comrade Vishinsky came around the procurator general’s bar and approached the box of the accused. “Would you be so kind as to tell the court, Knud Trifimovich Ignatiev, how you came to be destroying the widely admired texts of Comrade Lenin and Comrade Stalin.”