Nadya seemed to assume something else had happened. “She said it didn’t really matter. I said I would ask, but she said not to bother. She said they weren’t particularly important to her.” This last bit seemed more of a pronouncement. As though nothing from his wife’s time with him could have held any lasting importance.
He’d never thought of the two women as friends. Both had married writers. Both had been hurt by them, though in different ways. Yet it seemed one was willing to wound for the other, on the other’s behalf.
“I told her,” she went on. “I said, ‘How does one lose dishes? He must still have them somewhere.’ ‘Oh, you know Bulgakov,’ she said. ‘He’d have used them for an ashtray if I’d let him. Or to wedge under a table leg. You know Bulgakov.’” Nadya laughed at this. It wasn’t clear if the laughter was recreated for him, like the conversation, or simply her own.
“I know the ones,” he said. “She’d want them.” He felt self-conscious in correcting her, in defending his relevance in his ex-wife’s memory.
One of the swans lifted up from the water briefly; its tremendous wingspan extended over its mate; the sound of its wings against the air was like distant thunder; others walking nearby turned. Nadya studied the fowl as though it carried a message that was particular to her.
“She said it wasn’t important.” This time the bite was gone. She sounded only tired. They were dishes after all; not lives broken and swept aside. The swan settled again.
“We leave tonight,” she went on. “We can bring our clothes. No books.” A list of suggested items had been provided. Like a children’s camp, she mused.
“I’ve heard Cherdyn can be pleasant in the summer,” he said.
They were over halfway around the pond. She removed her arm from his and crossed them over her chest.
“I’m not entirely sorry to be leaving this place,” she said. He could see she was watching Osip and Margarita on the other side. “I won’t miss this.”
“Will he be able to write?” he asked.
She didn’t know. He hadn’t slept since his release.
That wasn’t what he’d meant but he let it alone.
“Has he talked about what they did to him?”
She said nothing for a moment, only hugged her arms around her torso. “No—perhaps we can hope that he will forget. We should hope for something.” As though it was the act of hoping—not the thing itself, not the granting of it—which made it possible to continue.
He sensed her manner change with this. Impart a new sympathy. But perhaps in larger dimension there was a growing acknowledgment of endings. Their walk would soon be through. The time of bitterness and reproach was over. It was a time for amends. She took his arm again.
“I remember when he first brought you to our apartment. You couldn’t have been in Moscow very long. Do you remember? You were so reserved. And shy. Every time I stood, you leapt to your feet as well and Osip laughed at you. I thought—here is this physician. What must he think of our bohemian life? Emptying our pockets to their very lint just to gather enough to buy a couple of eggs or a bottle to share. Who would want this, I thought? Why would he want this? Osip said—I think he can write—and I thought, ‘So what. Why would he want to?’”
“You were kind to befriend me,” he said.
Nadya smiled a little. “That was Osip,” she said.
“No, that was you as well, Nadyusha.” She didn’t argue with him.
“His poems aren’t lost, you know,” she said. She touched a finger against her temple. “I memorized them all. You needn’t have worried.”
With this, they both looked toward Mandelstam and Margarita.
Margarita sat erect, her hands in her lap. Mandelstam drew his hands along the sides of his scalp; it seemed he’d forgotten how little remained there. Bulgakov recognized this gesture. He wondered what she’d asked that he could not fulfill.
“Osip is lucky to have you,” he told her. He said this absently, still thinking about Margarita. Nadya seemed grateful and he smiled to reinforce his words. He thought them both supremely unlucky. He thought it was possible that she was the least lucky of all.
Both Margarita and Mandelstam looked up at their approach as though their time allotted had been overestimated. Margarita had been crying. She got up and moved away from the table. She stared at the water. She seemed not to notice the swans.
Mandelstam nodded to his wife; again this appeared to be expected and Nadya went to sit on a bench a short distance away. She took a cigarette from her purse and lit it. Bulgakov took off his suit jacket and sat in the seat Margarita had vacated. It was warm; he pushed up his sleeves. Mandelstam watched his wife for a moment.
“You look well,” said Bulgakov. “All things considered.” He stopped, feeling clumsy.
Mandelstam turned back; he appeared not to have heard him. “Do you remember when we first met?” he said.
Bulgakov remembered. It had been after a coffeehouse reading, one of Bulgakov’s first, not long after he’d moved to Moscow. There’d been many amateur writers that night, reading from their work. He remembered the soft flesh of the poet’s handshake. Somehow it’d made him less fearful of him, his ability to crush all hope, until the other man smiled, his lips parting to speak, then all fear rushed back.
“Do you remember what I said to you?”
Mandelstam had said that someday he would come back to this same coffeehouse to listen to this same man, only the line would go around the building, perhaps even the block, for they would stand for hours, happily, to hear the voice of a great writer. Of course Bulgakov remembered. He’d gone home that night and written it down.
“You were very generous to me,” said Bulgakov.
“Was I? I couldn’t remember. Did it matter?”
“Of course.” A small twinge of that fear returned.
“If I had told you to go back to medicine, would you have?”
Mandelstam patted the front pockets of his shirt. He removed a silver case, opened it, and placed its last remaining cigarette between his lips. Bulgakov lit it for him.
“It’s too late for that,” said Bulgakov. “Your words did their damage.”
The poet sat back. He worked the cigarette between his lips, then removed it.
Between them lay a green worm, a moth larva. It had fallen from an overhanging branch to the table’s surface. Some unlucky turn of a leaf, a wisp of breeze, and a misstep had sent it from its universe of green. Neither of them spoke; it was something to brush aside. For a moment, its legs moved helplessly; then it curled inward to right itself. Immediately two black ants set upon it as if waiting for that opportunity. In their arms, the larva contracted reflexively, then ceased to struggle, paralyzed from their bites of formic acid. The ants hesitated at the table’s edge, burdened with their prize, then disappeared over the rim. Mandelstam maintained his gaze on that spot. His frown deepened.
The larva would not know a life of wings and air; it would not grieve that loss. To this larva, the meaning of its life was to provide food for ants.
“I’ve done things—will you take an old man’s confession?” Mandelstam looked away again. “God—it’s beautiful today.” Despite his words, his expression was of one who mistrusted what he saw.
“You have nothing to confess,” said Bulgakov. He tried to sound assured of this.
“I’d always considered the possibility of arrest,” said Mandelstam. “I had believed it was only a matter of time.” He inhaled from his cigarette. His hand visibly trembled and he lowered it quickly.
“I’m not sure what you want to hear. The physical details aren’t important, I suppose. At first you live for your release. That is the composition of your hours. When you will see the sky again—the trees, the sun. Your wife. You live for things you never gave thought to. You believe if you can be strong, you can withstand them. You believe
such strength is possible.”
“You are strong,” murmured Bulgakov. “The strongest man I know.” This part he felt truly.
Mandelstam lowered his voice; he seemed anxious to continue. “I don’t know if it’s the beatings. Or the isolation. Maybe something else. At some point you stop living for your release. You stop thinking of your wife, of your future. You stop thinking.” He paused. “You only live. Questions are asked and you answer them. There is food and you eat. There is pain and you cry openly. If your life were to suddenly end; you think this is how life is; this is how it ends.” He seemed to search Bulgakov’s face for comprehension. “You have no regret, no sense of loss. No care for those you leave behind. You do not consider that it could have happened another way.”
The loveliness of the afternoon grew deceptive. “Those are terrible circumstances,” said Bulgakov.
Mandelstam sat back a little. A piece of ash fell from his cigarette. He flattened it against the table with his thumb. “Questions were asked and I answered them.” He looked out over the pond. “Many questions. About a lot of people.” It seemed he was counting their number among those enjoying the afternoon as though it was this reckoning for which he was accountable.
“Who did they ask about?” said Bulgakov. His apprehension grew. What could they want to know?
“Among other things—the names of those who’d heard the poem.”
His poem—as though it was a contagion. For some diseases, the afflicted couldn’t be saved.
Mandelstam’s face remained impassive, unapologetic. Harsh experience had stripped all comfort. Truth would no longer be urged gently forward, to steal upon one as in the verse of a song. Truth would be delivered bare-boned. He had no desire for Bulgakov’s sympathy. He would dare Bulgakov to look away from his actions, to layer himself in kindness and pity and self-deception; he himself could do it no longer as though he lacked the appendages for it.
Mandelstam continued. “Then one morning a different door opens. You are pushed through it and there is sun, sky. Arms wrap around you. Slowly it comes back; names first: this is sun; this is sky. Slowly you understand whose arms are around you. Explanations are given for questions you haven’t asked. You’ve been released.” He seemed to struggle to continue. “Then the rest returns: your past, your future. You don’t know what burdens they are until you assume them again.” He looked at his arms, his hands, as if those things were visible to him. He studied his hands. “By them, you know what you’ve done.”
He leaned forward. “Do you know the moment I was most happy? Do you? Standing in the sun. Without pain. Without names. Without knowledge. That is death. A man should never know how pleasant death will be. A man should never learn this.”
Bulgakov recoiled. “Why are you telling me this?” The skin over the other man’s arm was thin, mottled; dark ecchymoses ran its length. He’d not perceived these before. From shackles? Beatings? Mandelstam’s fingernails were yellowed and overly long; Bulgakov noticed then that several were missing entirely.
Mandelstam folded his fingers into his palms.
“Perhaps,” he went on. As though this was what he’d intended all along. “You should consider that you would have done the same.”
Mandelstam’s words found him as easily as if the poet had touched his shoulder. Had he known of Bulgakov’s meeting with Stalin? Had he listened for Bulgakov’s pleas on his behalf and heard only silence? Would he point out Bulgakov’s nails, his teeth: they were whole, unbroken. Instruments of torture hadn’t been required. Bulgakov wished he would never have to see Mandelstam again, as if in this manner such memories could be rooted out; at the same time he wanted to cry out for that loss.
Mandelstam looked toward his wife. “There is my heart,” he said. He lifted the cigarette to his lips. His tremor had lessened. “She believes I’ll be better someday.”
Margarita remained a short distance away. A group of children came upon her, kicking a faded ball. They swarmed her, then maneuvered the ball along the path away from her. With them gone, she looked more vulnerable. He could blame Mandelstam for this, but in some anticipatory way, he already blamed himself.
“Nadya has us packed,” Mandelstam went on. “I think she is happy to go.” He was signaling the end of their time together. He met Bulgakov’s eyes only once more. There was no regret with this. Like Bulgakov, he had no wish to see him again.
Mandelstam stood, holding the edge of the table until he took the cane. He passed Margarita as he moved off to join his wife. The two clasped hands and set off on the path together. Neither of them looked back.
Bulgakov imagined them walking the landscape of Cherdyn. It was a new town, utilitarian and bold, rising from the dark and freshly turned tracts of bulldozers. A glowing city on the steppe, the sun shattered and amplified by glass and steel. It would be hard to see in the continuous glare.
Mandelstam would only need to see the spot of land before him, that place where he would next set his foot. He would pray for no greater vision than this. They could all pray for blessed shortsightedness.
Margarita sat down next to him. Her face had warmed in the afternoon heat; it glowed with the faint sheen of perspiration. She seemed as young as the children who’d crowded her. She touched his arm and asked if he was all right. Her hand remained there, hopeful. “He said you’d be like this,” she said.
She should know better then.
She looked out over the pond; the swans were well-behaved under her watch. She still held his arm, but it seemed different now. The sense of her fingers was weightless. He could easily escape her, but he was reluctant.
“I didn’t think you’d come today,” she said.
But he had.
The skin she touched seemed more human than before, as if she had applied this quality with her fingertips. She believed that someday he’d be better, too.
He kissed her hand. Then he laid his cheek against it. He could try to keep her there.
Though perhaps then things would not end well for her.
There came again the slow beat of the swan’s wings from across the pond; it seemed a pulse in the air, better felt than heard.
He could pull his head back into Stalin’s rabbit hole. He glanced at the sky.
CHAPTER 12
First Margarita had a deadline to complete. Then there were plans with someone else. A girlfriend, she added, as though she could sense the panic in his silence. The following evening she had a head cold. “It feels like I’m carrying a ball on my neck.” She sounded annoyed that this required explanation but perhaps it was just the cold. Bulgakov wanted to know how this could come upon her so fast, but how could that be asked? “I hope it leaves as quickly as it came,” he said, trying to sound confident. The line went dead and he reasoned she needed her rest. Shortly thereafter he went to her apartment anyway. He would say it was to check on her. He would bring something, a gift. Isn’t that what a friend would do? He looked around his apartment, then slipped the empty saltcellar from his table into his pocket.
He knocked twice before the door opened. She was in a bathrobe and looked disheveled from sleep. She didn’t question his appearance, though neither did she welcome him and instead returned to her bed. He came in and closed the door.
“This looks worse than a head cold,” he said, as if to provide good purpose for himself. She only hugged the pillow and rolled toward the wall. He sat down; first on the saltcellar, then removed it from his pocket. “I brought you something.”
She rolled back; she tried to focus on the object in his hand, then reached for it. He was at once sorry; he could have gone without this further embarrassment. She seemed to find the gift no odder than his appearance at her door. She put it on the table beside her and rolled back again. Shortly she was sleeping.
He had dozed off in the chair because he awoke to her voice. She was on her side, her head propped on her arm.
He couldn’t tell how much time had passed. She seemed in better shape than him. “I’m not sure this makes sense,” she said. His head cleared immediately; what had come before this pronouncement? What didn’t make sense?
“I’m not blaming you,” she said. She picked up the saltcellar and fidgeted with it. “Perhaps I’m skeptical of love in general.”
He wanted to tell her she was young for such an attitude, but thought it would sound judgmental. When instead he wanted to touch her.
She laid her head back on her pillow, and stared at the glass piece as she turned it over. “Love is no different than any other relationship. At its core, it seems to be more about power.”
Was it not obvious that she had all the power? “I couldn’t disagree with you more,” he said.
She turned toward him. Again with her hand under her head. She was utterly divine for all of her disarray. “At the very moment I fall in love with you, you will cease to be captivated by me.”
She could imagine loving him! He should be overjoyed by this. But she had been hurt before. Perhaps by Mandelstam. Possibly himself. There were lesser men who’d be enthralled with her until their dying breaths. Let her find one of that species, she seemed to be saying. Let her be with one for whom she was never intended.
She smiled then, and it was as if to break his heart. “Isn’t this the way it tends to work for you?” With other women, she meant. She’d added this last part carefully, not wanting to hurt him.
“Come to my reading tomorrow,” he said.
She looked surprised. He put his hand to his heart. He could feel it knocking.
Her face seemed to empty of all expression. She asked how she could say no. Later he would wonder if she’d actually expected an answer to her question.
Bulgakov arrived at the apartment of the playwright, Alexei Glukharyov, early the following evening. Glukharyov met him at the door, half-dressed and apologizing that there were no spirits to be had. He insisted he’d forgotten though Bulgakov guessed that it was his wife who was not completely approving of these get-togethers and had scotched the idea, who’d wisely predicted that hosting an evening of liquored-up writers would end at a much later hour. Bulgakov told him he’d invited someone. He then sat on the sofa and waited for others to arrive. He had one cigarette remaining. It would calm his nerves, but he feared smoking it too soon. Perhaps someone would think to bring a bottle and he stared at the door as though he could will this to happen. A roll of pages was pressed between his shirt and suit pocket. He’d been unable to decide what to read, uncertain of what she might like, and he vacillated between telling himself it mattered not at all and that his future happiness depended on this choice. Glukharyov had disappeared behind the curtain that hid the bedroom; he was arguing with his wife. At some point in their past they’d found sufficient interest in one another to register their union, to sign the required documents. Was love an elusive thing or this banality? Was it as Margarita had predicted? More writers arrived; one had brought wine and glasses were passed. Perhaps she wouldn’t come; then he could read anything.
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