The Stalin Epigram
The rest of the trial passed in a haze of speeches from defense lawyers (until that moment I didn’t know we had been assigned defense lawyers) demanding the ultimate penalty for my two codefendants. “These mad dogs of capitalism tried to tear limb from limb the best of our Soviet land. I insist that we do with them what we do with mad dogs, which is to say, we shoot them.” The lady lawyer assigned to defend me rose and said, “Fikrit Shotman has demonstrated genuine remorse and cooperated fully with the authorities. For him I ask the judges to impose a lenient sentence of four years hard labor in the Far East.”
There were cries from the crowd of “The mad dogs must be shot” and “Leniency for Shotman” as the three judges left the courtroom to deliberate. They filed back twenty minutes later. The lead judge read out the verdicts. The accused Ignatiev and Yegorova was condemned to be shot, sentence to be carried out immediately. Me, I pulled four years. In the courtroom, Agrippina collapsed into the arms of one of the men in dark suits. To my right, the accused Ignatiev blew a kiss to an old lady on crutches at the back of the courtroom before he turned to leave the box. The accused Yegorova sank to the floor in a dead faint. The two soldiers had trouble raising her. I shouldered them aside and lifted her as if she was a child’s doll and carried her in my arms back to the holding cell in the basement and, carefully straightening her dress, set her gently out on a bench. The last I saw of her, looking over my shoulder as I headed back to my cell block, the guards were trying to revive her with smelling salts so they could take her to execution.
FIFTEEN
Nadezhda Yakovlevna
Tuesday, the 28th of May 1934
I DID A GREAT many things in the days after Mandelstam’s arrest that recommended themselves to me as a way to make an hour or two pass without agonizing over Mandelstam’s arrest. One day I scrubbed the kitchen pots and the single grill of the paraffin stove with steel wool until my fingers turned raw. Another time I pranced around the small living room crushing moths between my palms and keeping score with chalk marks on a piece of slate. I spent an entire weekend mending garments with wrong-colored threads. Working by candlelight one night, I made copies of the poems we’d hidden in my shoes and gave the duplicates to Mandelstam’s brother Alexander for safekeeping. The night of Mandelstam’s arrest they had searched through all of our books and then flung them back onto the shelves in disorder. On the day in question, I decided to restore them to something resembling the order they had been in, dusting each book as it came off the shelf, stacking my husband’s in one pile and mine in another before returning them to the shelves. It is a law of nature that one never sorts books without pausing now and then to skim through the pages, wondering who underlined certain passages, and why, wondering who scribbled illegible notes in the margins with arrows pointing to other paragraphs. I reread sentences I’d underlined in an excellent Russian translation of Laclos’s eighteenth-century French masterpiece Les Liaisons Dangereuses. I came across another book that I’d thought I’d loaned and lost, Zinovyeva-Annibal’s Thirty-three Monstrosities, a novel from the turn of the century that, for the first time in modern Russian literature, openly described lesbian love. I don’t recall how the book came into my possession, but I do recall when: I was sixteen at the time, with a terrible crush on a Russian girl I’d met in Paris while traveling with my parents. She had slipped me notes on perfumed paper saying how much she admired my pale eyes and my delicate skin. Curiously, I can’t even remember the girl’s name now, though this puppy love was as intense as any I’d experienced before Mandelstam mooched that first cigarette from me in the Junk Shop. Perhaps this girl had given me the Thirty-three Monstrosities. On the other hand it could well have been my mother, one of the first females in all of Russia to qualify as a physician—she had a bohemian disposition and could conceivably have left the book on my night table to impart to her Kiev-bound daughter a patina of sophistication.
I was leafing through Thirty-three Monstrosities, lingering over the pages where the corners had been turned down at one time or another, trying (in vain) to read them with the eyes of the sixteen-year-old daydreamer I once was, when I heard footsteps beating a hasty retreat in the corridor outside the flat. Going into the hallway, I couldn’t help but spot the folded paper that had been slipped under the door. My heart started pounding in my rib cage when I picked it up. For a moment I was too frightened of what might be in it to unfold the paper and see. Pasternak had phoned several days before to say that he had learned—he absolutely refused to tell me how—that Stalin himself was taking a personal interest in Mandelstam’s case. Pasternak interpreted the information as a positive development, but I saw the dark side of this moon: if Stalin was taking a personal interest in Mandelstam, God have mercy on Mandelstam. Curiosity got the better of me and I unfolded the paper, which turned out to be a printed summons, with my name inked in, to turn up at the Furkassovsky Street door of the Lubyanka at two that same afternoon.
The Lubyanka! Was I, then, being arrested? Or did this have to do with my husband—were they going to hand me a death certificate and his personal effects? I remember that my legs gave way under me and I sank onto the floor, kneeling before the rose red radiator as if it were a religious artifact and I were praying to it. Dear God in heaven, if he still has a muse and an erection, arrange things so the sun will simply fail to rise tomorrow morning. Amen. After a time I managed to collect my strength and my thoughts enough to make it to the communal telephone in the corridor and dial Bukharin’s Izvestiya number. I reached his secretary, Korotkova. “Oh, dear,” she said with a despondent sigh, “he has absolutely forbidden me to put through a call from you, Madam Mandelstam. He won’t see you if you come by. He is furious with you—you apparently placed Nikolai Ivanovich in an awkward position vis-à-vis his friend in the Kremlin. I am afraid there is nothing I can do for you.”
To say I was shaken would be an understatement. One of the Herzen House neighbors found me sitting on the broken chair next to the telephone, staring numbly at the wall. “Nadezhda, have you had bad news?” she asked.
I handed her the summons. She read it and said, “God help you, I cannot,” and crushed it back into my fingers as if the paper were contaminated before beating a hasty retreat.
It occurred to me that I should call Akhmatova, my worldly wise friend who knew if you delivered packages to prisons you could discover where your husband was being held. I fell on Lev, Anna Andreyevna’s son by her first husband, Gumilyov, who promised me he would have his mother ring me back the instant she returned from the gastronome. I sat there for I don’t know how long before the telephone rang under my fingers. I snatched it from the cradle. It was, thank heaven, Akhmatova. I quickly read the summons to her over the phone. As usual, she considered the matter carefully before delivering her opinion. “I think we can rule out that they have summoned you to tell you he is dead,” she said finally. “From what I hear, you only learn of the death of a prisoner when a package or a letter is returned with the word Deceased stamped on it. Very occasionally some kind soul writes in the cause of death, though the death of a prisoner, even the ones shot in the basements of the Lubyanka, is almost always attributed to heart failure. On rare occasions the authorities send a formal notice listing the date on which the prisoner is said to have died.”
“If he is dead, what do they do with the body?”
“I have heard the prisoners who aren’t cremated are buried in a common grave on the Butovo Shooting Range outside of Moscow, next to the dachas they built for Chekists. But be reassured, Nadezhda, it is extremely unlikely they would summon you to announce Mandelstam’s death. I can’t rule out you will be arrested. I understand they are arresting so many people these days they don’t have enough Chekists to bring them in. The less important political prisoners are summoned to save Chekist manpower for the more important prisoners. On the other hand, it might be something entirely different—one can not abandon hope entirely that Pasternak or Bukharin somehow got word to Stalin and O
sip is being given a prison sentence. The thing to watch for, if this is the case, is the notation without the right of correspondence after the prison term. Without the right of correspondence is the equivalent of a death sentence—it means they are cutting the prisoner off from civilization because they don’t expect him to return. There is still another possibility—that Osip will be sent into exile, what they call the famous minus twelve. In which case they would need you to bring foodstuff for the journey, and clothing for the winter”—Anna corrected herself—“or winters, plural, ahead.”
“I never thought I would pray to God for Mandelstam to be sent into exile,” I said.
“It would be the least terrible resolution,” she agreed. “I will add my voice to yours on the off chance there is an Almighty and he is listening.”
“Will they permit me to accompany him into exile?”
“If it is exile, probably. More and more wives are going into exile with their husbands these days. It frees up flats, it gets nuisances like us out of eyeshot. What time are you supposed to turn up at Lubyanka?”
“Two.”
“Dearest Nadezhda, I shall camp by the telephone,” Akhmatova informed me. “If you don’t call back by five, I shall inform Pasternak and the both of us will start bombarding the Writers’ Union with telegrams demanding to know what happened to you.”
Which is how I found myself standing before a nondescript door on Furkassovsky Street, looking for a bell to ring or a knocker to strike against the wood. Mandelstam would surely have burst into laughter if he could have seen me trying to figure out how to get into the Lubyanka. In the end I wound up rapping the joints of my fingers against the door. A young Chekist in the blue uniform of a frontier guard opened it the width of a fist so that I could see only one of his eyes peering at me.
“Well?”
I slipped my summons through the crack to him. He closed the door in my face. I stood there debating whether to knock again or wait. Women passing on the sidewalk, each carrying an avoska filled with oranges, glanced at me. I wondered if they were aware that this was a back door to the dreaded Lubyanka Prison. After a moment the door opened, this time wide enough for me to pass through. I heard it being slammed shut and locked with a bolt behind me. I had all to do to keep from sinking to my knees.
“Follow,” the guard ordered.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked, but he had already hurried off and I had to run to catch up with him. We passed through another door into a courtyard, then up steps and through yet another door into an elegant entranceway filled with mirrors set into the walls and a tiled floor so polished one could see the hem of one’s skirt in it. A wide staircase with a mahogany banister curled up from the entranceway. The guard led me past the staircase to a large mirrored elevator. He handed my summons to the elevator operator, an elderly gentleman wearing white gloves and a blue tunic with gold braid and brass buttons. I got in and through force of habit glanced at myself in the mirror—my complexion alone was enough to frighten off the devil who, we all assumed, lurked in the shadows inside the Lubyanka. I tucked stray hairs back under the beret that my parents had purchased for me in Paris when I was sixteen. It occurred to me that it would have been more prudent to wear a Russian cap than one with a French label sewn inside. The elevator rose under my feet. I counted the floors as they went by. One. Two. We glided to a stop at the third floor. The operator reached for the brass grill and with an effort dragged it back, then pushed open the heavy hall door and held it for me as if I were a guest at the Ritz. “Room twenty-three,” he said, nodding in the direction of a door at the far end of the corridor. I started down the brightly lighted hallway, walking on a worn runner past an open freight elevator with padded walls, past fine wooden doors with brass numbers on them until I came to the one with twenty-three on it. And then, as if I were paying a civilized visit to a publisher who wanted to engage my services as a translator, I reached out and knocked.
What I am recounting does not originate in the lobe of the brain where memory resides. It comes directly from the mind’s eye. I relive it as I describe it, or more precisely, I live it as if for the first time. When, on occasion, I recall these awful events, they have the odor of earth at a freshly dug grave.
Here is what my heart saw when the man I came to know as Interrogator Christophorovich pulled open the door and with a nod invited me into the room. I saw Josef Stalin peering at me from a huge photograph on the wall. I saw Christophorovich grinning inanely at me like a maître d’hôtel. I saw a man who resembled—no more than resembled —the poet Mandelstam standing next to an absurd stool whose front legs were shorter than its hind legs, clinging with both hands to the waistband of his disheveled trousers to keep them from falling to his ankles.
I stumbled across the room and crushed his body, trembling from head to foot with soundless sobs, into my trembling arms.
I should add here that the stench of urine emanated from his clothing.
“As you can see, Madam Mandelstam, your husband is alive and well,” the interrogator said. Settling onto a chair behind a large table, he pushed aside a half-eaten dinner and motioned for Mandelstam to sit. My husband clung to my hand as he sank onto the stool. “Are they letting you go?” he asked in a voice that I didn’t recognize as coming from anyone I knew.
“What do you mean, letting me go?”
“Have you forgotten? I visited you in your cell, Nadenka. You and Zinaida.” He beckoned for me crouch next to him so that his mouth was near my ear. “When they arrested her, they arrested the epigram that I wrote out for her.”
“My name,” the maître d’hôtel announced from behind the table, “is Christophorovich. I have the honor of being your husband’s interrogator. He is slightly disoriented, as you can see, due most certainly to the shock of seeing you.” He turned to Mandelstam. “Your wife, along with your wife’s friend the actress Zinaida Zaitseva-Antonova, were never taken into protective custody.”
“You are lying, of course,” Mandelstam said in a voice that sounded more like the one I remembered. “I saw them both in prison.”
“He is telling the truth, Osya. You must have dreamed it. I have been in our flat in Herzen House these past two weeks.”
Christophorovich cleared his throat. “You have been summoned,” he informed me, “to hear Mandelstam’s sentence for having violated Article 58, which covers the offenses of anti-Soviet propaganda and counterrevolutionary activities. Your husband’s poem is a counterrevolutionary document without precedent.” The interrogator extracted a sheet of paper from the bulging folder on the table. “Comrade Stalin has reviewed the case personally and instructed the Organs to isolate and preserve the prisoner. He is sentenced to three years of minus-twelve exile.”
“What does that mean, minus-twelve?” Mandelstam asked.
“It means you are not permitted to reside in any of the Soviet Union’s twelve major urban centers,” Christophorovich said.
My husband’s grip on my hand tightened and he began to shake uncontrollably. “I am not to be shot?”
“You won’t be shot,” I told him. “You will live to compose beautiful poems by the dozen.”
“I am not to be shot?” he repeated, as if he hadn’t heard my response.
“Rest assured, you will not be subjected to the highest measure of punishment,” Christophorovich said. He looked directly at me. “Is it your desire to go into exile with your husband?”
“No,” Mandelstam answered for me.
“Absolutely,” I said, overruling him.
“Which will it be?” Christophorovich demanded.
“I most certainly will accompany my husband into exile.”
“In that case, I will draw up the necessary papers and bring them to you for signature.”
He came around the desk and stood over Mandelstam. “Considering the counterrevolutionary nature of your crime, the sentence represents an incredible act of clemency from the very highest level. Count your blessings.” With
that he left the room, closing the door behind him.
His lips quivering, Mandelstam started to speak. “Be careful what you say,” I whispered. “They are surely listening.” And I glanced at the walls in the classic gesture indicating microphones could have been functioning in them.
“Did you deny being arrested because he was in the room?”
“No. It’s the truth. I have been home all this while.”
“And Zinaida?”
“After days and days of phoning, I succeeded in getting her on the line. Her voice was strained. I suppose it was because she and her husband are divorcing. She assured me she had destroyed the copy of the epigram you wrote out for her.”
He shook his head in confusion. “If her voice was strained, it’s because they arrested her copy of the epigram and she was afraid to admit it. Christophorovich showed it to me. There was no mistaking it—it was the first version before Pasternak got me to change the second stanza. I recognized the handwriting as my own.”
“I don’t understand—”
“Nor do I understand. Believe me, I am not hallucinating. I visited you and Zinaida in prison, for God’s sake.”
“And I tell you, you imagined it. Dear God, what else did you imagine?”
Mandelstam mumbled something in Greek: Ei kai egnokamen kata sarka Christon. I recognized the phrase instantly, as we had often tried to decipher these mysterious words of Saint Paul’s in 2 Corinthians. Paul is said never to have crossed paths with the Christ, yet he claims, We have known Christ after the flesh. I didn’t understand what Mandelstam was getting at by quoting Paul. “Are you trying to tell me you saw Christ in the flesh in prison?” I asked.
He shook his head in annoyance, then looked over at the photograph of Josef Stalin on the wall behind the interrogator’s table. “I saw him.”
I still didn’t understand. “Stalin came to see you in prison?”