by Robert Carr
By ten o’clock we were all in our bedrooms. Tsvetayeva had retired to the children’s room—hers and Georgy’s for now—and was probably writing. Not poetry, though. She confirmed that much this morning, when I mentioned to her that she’d have a few hours by herself in the house, except for little Larissa, who’d be sleeping most of the time. Tsvetayeva shrugged and said she had not written one verse since she had returned. “I’m like a squeezed slice of lemon, Pavel Nikolayevich. Dipped in boiling tea too. There is nothing left in me, nothing. No molecule of the poet, no atom of the woman or of the wife I once was. And I fear that motherhood is seeping out of me as well.”
We had moved little Larissa’s cot to our bedroom, and she was already asleep, oblivious that her mother was unhappy and crying. Varya was in bed. Her sobs were subdued, the sound muffled somehow. I was grateful that she hadn’t made a scene in front of our temporary live-ins. They’re leaving the day after tomorrow, and with any luck she’ll not have a meltdown in front of them. I wonder if they hear her crying every night—our arguments, and my begging her to keep her sobs and voice down. The children’s room is only one wall away.
Varya was in her nightgown, lying on her back, and as I switched on the night lamp I looked at her red face and eyes. Her neck was red too, as if more was needed to enhance Varia’s overall expression of distress. I undressed quietly, slipped into bed and picked up a book, although I knew very well that I wouldn’t be allowed to read for long.
She began to talk, and for a while I didn’t pay attention, knowing what she was on about—Agranova, the neighbour from who we had borrowed the mattress. I had heard it all earlier, after lunch, while Tsvetayeva and Georgy were out. Agranova had been very angry that morning. She told Varya that letting Tsvetayeva stay with us was dangerous and stupid. She feared it would affect everybody in the building. Had she known what the mattress was for, she would not have lent it, and now she wanted it back. Not telling her who our guests were had been an abuse of her trust and friendship. How could we shelter the wife and child of an enemy of the people—a former White Russian, an émigré now imprisoned for treason?
I was tempted to say that Agranova was a stupid woman who had no idea—nobody knew—why Efron and Alya had been taken away, but I didn’t.
I’d heard something similar on Thursday, from Bedrosyan, at the Writer’s Union. He summoned me to his office and could barely restrain himself. “I was told you have Tsvetayeva in your apartment. Are you insane or just stupid? Do you really believe that this is the reason the Party has given you that beautiful, large apartment—to shelter enemies of the Soviet Union? My God, you’ve lost your mind. Don’t you think ahead? Don’t you ever think of the consequences? Don’t you think of your family? Don’t you love them?”
He was smoking, as usual, and walking rapidly around me as if trying to spot evidence of my madness. Then he stopped and, pointing a stained finger at me, said, “Pavel Nikolayevich, get rid of them. Get rid of your guests. That’s an order.”
I didn’t have the courage to punch him in the face, but how I wished I had. Instead, I looked through the window at the empty courtyard and, beyond it, the leafy lane, and waited for my anger and panic to lose their sting.
After a while, I turned to Bedrosyan and said, “They are moving out on Monday, Anastas Koryunovich. They’ve got a small room on Perzliakovsky Lane, more of a cupboard than a room from what I hear, but the people in there now have not moved out yet. So you see, it’s only for a few days, until the room on Perzliakovsky becomes available.”
He shouted, “Not one day! Not one hour!”
“A few days. You wouldn’t put dogs in the street like that, would you?”
“Let’s keep dogs out of this. We have to think about ourselves, about our families.”
He put out his cigarette and straightened his back, readying himself to deliver the official line. “Comrade Laukhin, what you are doing could be viewed as collusion with foreign agents. There is a special meeting on Tuesday to discuss attitudes toward returned White émigrés. I sent you a letter early this morning, by the way, expressing in writing my displeasure and views. This is not just my message, Pavel Nikolayevich. I was called too—never mind, someone close to Comrade Zhdanov—late last night. The order is loud and clear: get rid of your guests. There was also a special message for you, sort of a personal message. That you shouldn’t abuse your luck. People in high places may like your books, but even their considerable patience and benevolence has limits.”
He was afraid he would be punished too.
That morning, as I was leaving home, I told Tsvetayeva that I’d be passing by the Writers’ Union. She said, “I used to live not far from there, on Borisoglebsky Lane, for eight or nine years, until I left Moscow. I can’t imagine any more what it means to live for so long in one place. My study was in the attic. The Civil War and the famine kept me there. I starved and wrote poetry. My younger daughter … well, that’s all so long ago …”
I did the stupidest thing I could do under the circumstances. I told Varya about my meeting with Bedrosyan and this, as I should have known, has made things worse, much worse. She’s been crying and fighting with me every night since I told her. Thursday night was the worst. Sasha Cornilov showed up here in the afternoon with a warning for his favourite aunt and I heard about it from her. Oh, did I ever hear it.
I got the same warning from Cornilov, and more. I met him on the stairs—the elevator wasn’t working again—as he was leaving. He dropped all pretences and acted and talked like the thug with secret power that he is. I asked him what they had against this pitiful, weak, lonely woman. Wasn’t it enough they’d arrested her innocent husband and daughter?
He laughed at first, and then got close to me and whispered, “Innocent? Are you stupid, or just naïve? Nobody’s innocent, Uncle, nobody. Sergey Efron is far from innocent. He was one of our agents in France—oh yes, an agent, a spy (the word he used was razvedchik). It’s too bad you didn’t know him. He could have told you stories, real spy stories, not the stupid ones you waste good paper on. Oleg Vinograd might have learned a trick or two from him. But he got corrupted, our innocent Sergey Iakovlevich Efron, lost his way. Re-corrupted would be the better word—after all, didn’t he fight with the Whites? You know what we think? We think he was always corrupt—a spy for both the French and the English. This is just for your ears, because you’re getting on my nerves and I need to set you straight in a hurry.”
“Go away,” I said.
He looked with pity at me. “To think that I talked to a few people on your behalf. You’re lucky, very lucky, you’re married to Aunt Varya.”
“I don’t need your favours, and neither does Varya.”
“You don’t?” He was shouting now. “You stupid shit. How do you think you got an apartment in this palace? Do you really think it’s enough that someone spends a few hours reading your vomit?”
I got angry too and told him I didn’t want to see him in our apartment again. Then he lost it. The look on his face and what he said—he had to bend down because of his height—shook me. He leaned his whole weight on me, crushing me against the wall, and whispered, his face so close to mine that I felt his breath, “You stupid man, you stinking shit, you have no idea what we can do to you and to your family. No idea. I’m of the mind to take you on a tour, an educational tour. I can spit on my boots and make you lick them. I can make you eat my shit. Don’t make me do it. Don’t abuse your privileges. I’ll come to your apartment to talk to my aunt whenever I want. I—do you get it?—I don’t want to see your face when I come to see her. Is that understood?”
He started down the stairs, but turned back after a few steps and hit me in the solar plexus. I must have lost consciousness for a few seconds, because when I recovered he was gone and I was sitting on the stairs, breathing with difficulty. And then, as I was gathering strength to get up, I understood the true meaning of Cornilov’s words. I had an indirect hand in what happened to the Friedkins. Because
I had complained—to Varya and anybody who cared to listen—for so long and so often about the narrow squalid space we shared with the Marchuks.
I didn’t tell Varya anything about my encounter with her nephew. I had learned my lesson.
Varya turned to face me. Her left breast, heavy with milk, spilled out of her nightgown. The nipple seemed lifeless, a powerful expression of what she felt. She said, “I don’t get it. Why us, why you? You hardly know her. You met her—what?—a couple of times, maybe three times. You hear she’s out in the street and you rush to offer our apartment. Why? You’re not even a friend. She has friends, doesn’t she? Isn’t Boris Leonidovich her friend? Why doesn’t he help her?”
I didn’t answer; I had no answer.
She went on. “The Pasternaks’ apartment is larger than ours. He’s got the dacha in Peredelkino as well, surely big enough that they could stay there if he’d rather not have them here. He often has guests at Peredelkino, sometimes more than just two people. And he’s all by himself there nowadays.”
She looked at me, waiting, but, again, I had nothing to say.
“Why us, Pasha, why us? Look at little Larissa, Pasha, look at her. Don’t you want to see her grow up? What difference does your silly gesture make? Tsvetayeva is a marked woman, and you know it as well as I do.”
“Varenka, it’s only one more day. They’re going the day after tomorrow.”
“There’s nobody in the Pasternaks’ apartment right now. It’s empty. I ran into Boris Leonidovich in front of our building this morning. He was waiting for a taxi, all loaded with parcels. He didn’t seem happy to see me. I asked about Zinaida, and he said she had been away for almost a week, fetching the boys from Koktebel. He was on his way to Peredelkino. He came back only for the night, to check his mail and pick up a few things. I couldn’t resist—the thought of his empty apartment made my blood boil—and I told him about our guests. He looked rather embarrassed. Sheepish. He tried to appear startled, but didn’t quite manage it. I think he knew—I mean, what I told him was not news to him, although he acted as if it was. I told him that I was very upset, scared. And I asked him whether he wanted to see Tsvetayeva, his friend. Yes, I was hoping that he didn’t know about Tsvetayeva’s latest predicament and that he would drop everything at once in order to see her, and that he would then insist she move in with them, with the Pasternaks, in their larger and empty apartment. At the very least, I hoped he’d want to see her, talk to her, hold her hand, give her a hug. She was only a couple of floors below him.”
Varya laughed bitterly. “Well, he wouldn’t. How naive of me to even think of it. His face did turn red, though, which isn’t easy under that tanned skin of his. All that work in the vegetable garden, you know. Oh, he did mention the garden, his beloved garden, which gives him so much strength. He said he regretted he couldn’t see Tsvetayeva but he had to get back to Peredelkino immediately. He couldn’t spare even half an hour. He has been working on something very important, something vital, crucial for his work, something more significant than anything else he’s done before, and he just could not put it off. ‘One of those moments, Varvara Prokofievna, one of those moments an artist must seize,’ he said. ‘You understand, don’t you? I’m sure Pavel Nikolayevich has moments like this too, when everything else is put aside and the only thing that matters is the work.’ Then he made it worse. He said that he had urgent work to do in the garden at the dacha. His potatoes and his cabbage, his carrots and onions—his winter provisions were rotting and he had to harvest them. On his next trip to Moscow he’d make sure to visit Tsvetayeva, but he just couldn’t do it this morning. The taxi came, to his relief. He got halfway in, then he ran after me. Took my hand and kissed it. His gallant self, as usual. He said, ‘You are a good woman, Varvara Prokofievna, a very good woman. And your husband is a brave man. Please tell him that. God bless you both.’ And he ran away. What an exit! Your hero, Pasha, the greatest living Russian poet.”
I switched off the light and whispered, “One more day, Varenka, and it’ll all be over. We’ll soon forget this, you’ll see.”
Little Larissa sighed in her sleep and then made a brief sucking noise. I leaned toward Varya and nibbled her ear. It was wet from her tears. I touched her full soft breasts. She whispered, “No, not now, Pasha,” but I knew better and I spent some time over there, then I moved, slowly, down her belly, to her thighs, and I parted them gently, and soon she was biting my neck, and all this time I was thinking that Tsvetayeva and Georgy would leave the day after tomorrow, on Monday, and that, with a bit of luck, once again I wouldn’t have to make a choice, a real hard choice, that is.
We’ve lost the ability to make hard choices and stand up. We are spineless. We are afraid to make even meek, passive gestures, gestures that require no real backbone, like my offer to have Tsvetayeva and her son in our apartment for a few days. We are prostrated, frightened, terrorized.
Was Varya right? Should I throw out these two pitiable souls tomorrow or, even better, right now, wake them up in the middle of the night and throw them out in the street, into the hands of almighty God? It would be our mustachioed God who would catch them.
Artyom Laukhin
The Art of Poetry
(The Paris Review, Draft 1.0, June 1985)
The interview with Artyom Laukhin was conducted over two consecutive days in February 1985. The first day we met at the poet’s home in Lytton Park, a neighbourhood of what had once been North Toronto but was now well within the city. “The ugliest house on the street,” Laukhin claimed, and, despite the cold weather, insisted on coming out with me when I left to point out its worst architectural features. He was renting it for next to nothing from an acquaintance, a developer, also a former Soviet Union citizen.
Inside, the small house was functional and comfortable. A den at the back, kitchen, dining-cum-living room on the ground floor. There used to be three small bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, but the previous owner renovated it into one huge bedroom and a spacious bathroom. The bedroom, Laukhin told me, had a large table under the windows facing south, where he worked. At first he had been taken aback by the setup, but eventually he got used to having a bed in his workroom. If during the night he had a thought or two worth writing down, he was at his table in no time.
Laukhin sported a discrete moustache which, according to him, went through many transformations and sizes, from Gorkyan to no moustache at all. Light eyes, slightly bulging, a frowning vast forehead, a round face, upturned nose, and thinning hair. Medium height and broad-shouldered. A scowling bulldog, arrogant and impatient. He filled in his clothes, and gave an impression of energy and strength. During the interview, he often stood up and paced, and he used his arms to make a point.
We settled in the den, a well-lit, wood-panelled room, one wall covered with built-in bookshelves. An L-shaped, battered, blue leather sofa, stained coffee table, and a very old and dusty television set. Soviet posters from the twenties or thirties on the wall—several of them, all simply framed—either quite valuable or later reproductions. A play at Moscow’s Satirical Theater, a movie, Lieutenant Kije, with music by Prokofiev, a three quarters portrait of a stern Mayakovsky in the threatening stance of a bouncer. Laukhin wore jeans, a T-shirt, tasseled loafers, and an old smoking jacket that reminded me of Babel’s portrait on the cover of one of the first American editions of his stories. He said it belonged to his father, and it was one of those articles of clothing to which one becomes ridiculously and unexplainably attached.
I heard movement above us while we talked. Laukhin said he had a houseguest for a few days, an academic friend of his. It was a female friend, because when he left the room to bring us some tea and sandwiches I heard him talking and a young woman’s voice answering. The poet had a reputation as a ladies’ man, but he seemed unwilling to explain who his guest was.
When I left, he stepped briefly out with me. After criticizing the house, he pointed to the end of the street and said, “Yonge Street, up there, is the longes
t street in the world.” There was a childish pride to the way he said this, an indication that he was happily ensconced in Toronto.
The next day we met in his office at Alumni Hall, a three-storey stone building on the eastern edge of the sprawling University of Toronto downtown campus. He wore blue jeans again, and a Maple Leafs sweatshirt. When we went to lunch, a five-minute February cold, windy, eye-piercing walk, he wore a light winter jacket, and no hat or scarf.
Overall, I spent some eight hours with Art Laukhin. His English is very good, grammatically correct and heavily accented. We began speaking in English, with small forays into Russian. Toward the end, I’d ask questions in English and he’d respond in Russian. He spoke rather quickly, particularly in Russian. If uninterested, the flow of words slowed down dramatically, and I knew it was time to switch topics. As a condition of the interview, he insisted we discuss his father’s forthcoming journal and not his own poetry for which he is now famous. The first volume of the journal has been delayed and is now scheduled for publication in the early fall.
Erika Belov-Wang
INTERVIEWER
Is Mayakovsky one of your favourite poets?
ARTYOM LAUKHIN
It’s the poster, isn’t it? I found these posters here, in Toronto, somewhere on Queen Street West. I admire Mayakovsky’s energy, versatility, even his willingness to end it all, but I can’t say he is a favourite. He’s too political, too intense. He hits you with a hammer when a wooden stick would be more effective. My father was very fond of his poetry. He met him a few times when he was young, and he often talked about him.
INTERVIEWER
Are there entries about him in your father’s journal?
