Jacob's Ladder

by Ludmila Ulitskaya

  Marusya pushed away the plate in fury. “I hate this entire capitalist world! It’s unjust. This beautiful cup costs as much as a woman factory worker earns in a month!”

  Jacob was bewildered. Such a wonderful morning, such a special day in their lives … The general unfairness of the world turned on its head, so that he was the child of fortune, of a happiness so great he could hardly contain himself. He didn’t want to think that his own happiness meant someone else was deprived of it.

  “Marusya, why should we think about injustice today? What does it have to do with us? What makes you think something like justice exists anywhere in the world?”

  “Have you read Marx?” she asked. “A peasant or a worker can’t eat a piece of bread and butter because they’re exploited by capitalists!”

  “Marusya, I’m an economist. We study Marx,” he said stiffly. The echoes of their physical intimacy and happiness were still with him, and he had no wish to discuss political economy.

  “We have to get some things clear between us, Jacob, so that there won’t be any misunderstanding about it later. For a whole year, I attended a study group where we read the works of Marx. It was an illegal group, as you might imagine. But I can’t conceal it from you anymore—I’m a Marxist.”

  It wasn’t true that Marusya had been part of the group for a whole year; Ivan Belousov took her a few times, but it had bored her.

  “Marusya, why conceal it? Nowadays there isn’t a single course in political economy that doesn’t deal with Marx. I’ve covered everything, from the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, his early work, to the last. Why do you need to go to a study group? I have his basic works, by the way, in German; the Russian translations are poor. But I can get them in French. I know they exist. I’ve read them very carefully—from Marx’s early works, it’s evident that he was a humanist, and his goal was to liberate the human being from the strictures of capitalist relations. In the human will he saw only the reflection of historical conditions, though. He subordinated the value of individual existence, freedom of the personality, to the ideals of justice in some future society. But it seems to me that subordinating the needs of the individual to social interests in this way can lead to suppression of the personality—and that troubles me. No, no, I could never be a Marxist. And why would you need a study group, in any case? Group efforts like that are always a waste of time, I’m convinced.”

  At this point, the whole conversation ceased to interest Marusya. She took a bite of her bread and swallowed the still-warm tea. “You simply don’t understand. You can’t, because you yourself are from a bourgeois family. Let’s not talk about it anymore.”

  But now Jacob was wounded to the quick. He was indeed from a bourgeois family. His father owned a mill, a ferry that plied the Dnieper, some sort of grain trade, a banking office … and it was his father’s wish that he would eventually manage all these eggs, distributed among so many baskets, in order to provide for the family and ensure its continued prosperity. Jacob was bored by it, and even, for some reason, ashamed of it. Music was what truly interested him, it was the life he yearned for; but his father’s condition was that he only pursue music as a caprice, a whim, a diversion. Jacob saw no way of escape from these paternal demands and prejudices.

  Jacob took away the tray, and Marusya was left alone. She was overcome with despair. Why had she talked that way, why did she think she had to bring up Marx? Why this outburst at such an inappropriate moment? She had ruined everything! Everything! What must he think of her now? She stood by the window, her forehead resting against the pane.

  He returned quietly, making sure the door didn’t give him away, and put his arms around her, kissed the back of her neck, then turned her around and kissed the place on her throat where the clavicles meet. All the wounding words and thoughts disappeared in both of them. They gave themselves over to the joy of touch, and they built their house of love in the darkness and depths of the body.

  When it was almost evening, Jacob walked her home. They walked in silence, because what they had experienced couldn’t be put into words. Jacob embraced Marusya next to the entranceway to her house.

  “Husband and wife?” he asked, to make sure.

  “Husband and wife,” she replied. “But for now it’s our secret.”

  “But I feel like telling everyone I meet. That you’re my wife.”

  “Not now. Why should we? We know, and that’s enough.”

  In the intimate shared language that nearly every couple indulges in, they called this night, the first night of their marriage, “Lustdorf” for the rest of their life together.

  Their honeymoon lasted until the end of August. The Ossetskys returned from the dacha in Lustdorf on the 29th, and on the same day Marusya boarded a train for Moscow. This time, she was traveling alone, with a small suitcase given her by her cousin Lena and a basket of provisions prepared by her mother for her to eat along the way. Jacob, slender, handsome, and nattily dressed, accompanied her to the station. Marusya felt proud that she had such a wonderful husband, and that the passengers were staring at them, most likely thinking, What a lovely pair! They exchanged a protracted grown-up goodbye kiss. Write me! Write me!

  17

  From the Willow Chest

  Jacob’s Notebook

  (1911)

  AUGUST 29

  I came back home from the station. The house was filled with a hubbub and din, children racing around, sunburned and pretty, things being cleaned and put away everywhere. In the kitchen it smelled like food cooking; something sizzled in the frying pan. For a month and a half, the house had been ours—Marusya’s and mine—we were so used to being here together, just the two of us. Every moment was so weighty. Now it has ended, and today the house has returned to its noisy existence, so far removed from my own. No, it’s not really alien to me—but I have witnessed a rehearsal of my own future together with Marusya, and it is wonderful. Rayechka and Eva pushed two armchairs together to make a bed. Rayechka put her favorite toy dog and doll in it; but I see Marusya sitting in the armchair reading a book, by the green light from the lamp. Marusya looked pale, but it suited her. My wife.

  Today, at the station, she was so poised, so lovely, that I almost felt flustered. I looked at her as though through someone else’s eyes—this young woman in a light, loose-cut blouse, with an elegant neck and facial features, a supple figure, harmonious, her cheeks a bit hollow, long shadows, huge eyes, gray, stern. Such perfect slenderness, so womanly, without a drop of artificiality—my wife.

  It’s good that she’s going away. I need time to process my emotions and experiences so I can make new plans for my life. Papa is paying for my studies at the Institute, and at the conservatory. I’ve already finished my German classes, so that expense is gone. I can’t tell him I have a wife yet, while I’m in this position. I will be forced to continue to accept help from him, but I’ll have to provide Marusya with her most basic needs. I’ll advertise my services as a tutor in the newspaper. I can help pupils prepare to enter the gymnasium: mathematics, geography, history, German. Piano lessons—for beginners. I have to think up an announcement that doesn’t sound like the cry of a drowning man. If I get even three private students, I’ll be able to send at least twenty rubles to Moscow; forty if all goes well.

  I’ll speak with Yura, Verzhbitsky, and Filimonov about tutoring.

  I have to admit that my intentions to do independent reading and study this summer came to naught. I didn’t manage to read even half of what I set out to do.

  Papa brought me a letter from Genrikh from Heidelberg. He describes his summer trip through Switzerland and Italy. It is mainly addressed to Papa, just a few lines to me, but very important ones. He completely affirms the ideas I expressed in my letter to him. He says he’ll help me. He’s the noblest person I’ve ever known in my life.

  SEPTEMBER 2

  Yesterday something horrific happened. The terrorist Bogrov wounded Stolypin in the municipal theater, in the inter
mission of the opera Tsar Saltan. It was Mordka (Dmitry) Bogrov, an anarchist. Papa is acquainted with his whole family; his father is a barrister. They live on Bibikovsky Boulevard. I know where their house is, since Papa once took me with him to deliver some German documents, to help translate them. I’ve seen this Mordka-Dmitry on several occasions. A pathetic man. He graduated from the First Gymnasium. He was good friends with my cousin David. It’s hard to predict what kinds of political consequences will follow if Stolypin dies from his wounds. Most likely, the authorities will become harsher and more punitive toward all sectors of society. Reforms will be halted immediately, and the economy may also react to the event by ceasing to develop. I don’t see a single positive outcome of this in the near future.

  SEPTEMBER 12

  Stolypin died of his wounds a week ago. Today they announced that Bogrov was executed. I’m not sorry for him—such a public murder at the opera is an outrage, an abomination! How can one kill in the presence of music! But one is filled with horror that in the twentieth century, in an enlightened empire, an execution by hanging can be carried out, like in the Middle Ages. That’s what is most horrifying! Undoubtedly.

  SEPTEMBER 14

  Marusya’s letters affect me perhaps even more strongly than her presence. Each time a letter arrives, I want to rush to the station and take the next train to Moscow. I close my eyes and it’s easy to feel her near me physically, right here, where she really was not so long ago. I fall asleep, and wake up right away. And can’t get to sleep again. From longing. Tonight I reread Chekhov. Poor, poor thing! What unhappy relations he must have had, one would think, with women. How clearly that is revealed in his stories. I couldn’t fall asleep for a long time, because I kept trying to devise other plots, contrary notions—about the courage and decisiveness of women, about their sacrificial nature. Nekrasov was the only one in Russian literature who was able to describe this, when he wrote about the Decembrist wives. But not even in Tolstoy can one find a positive image of the modern woman. There are a number of charming young ladies, but no truly active women. Strangely, Pushkin sensed this better than anyone. During a time when education for women simply didn’t exist—they learned the ABC’s from the local priest, along with household management—Pushkin envisioned the character of Tatiana Larina, who had only this scanty education but had such a strong sense of her own worth! This is what Pushkin wanted to say, I think.

  The other day, I read Women and Ladies, by Mr. Amfiteatrov. Yura brought it over, it’s brand-new. And it’s a pathetic excuse for literature. Lightweight feuilletons, sketches, anecdotes. Every single woman he describes in this collection is a nonentity. What has happened to that sense of self-worth that Pushkin ascribed to women? If we elaborate this further, we see that only Pushkin wrote about personal self-worth, about the dignity of the human being—male (Pyotr Andreyevich Grinev) and female (Masha Mironova and Tatiana Larina). This is the foundation of foundations. From the artistic point of view, Amfiteatrov’s writing is lively, but the style is journalistic, unrefined. Again, I can’t help noticing that Dina, a Jewish female character-type, deals in contraband, and resembles Chekhov’s Susanna Moiseyevna. It’s astonishing, but all the Jewish girls I know, like Marusya, Beti, Asya, are students—some study pedagogy, others medicine. Verochka Grinberg works in a library. Yet in the stories of Mr. Chekhov and Mr. Amfiteatrov, they all seem to be pawnbrokers. Dostoevsky’s old woman pawnbroker inspires less intense disgust than these Jewish pawnbrokers. Maybe it’s because the old woman is Russian, and not Jewish?

  The woman question will become more and more important, I think. This is only the beginning of the process, and in a hundred years everything will change—women will be different. Doctors, senators, even government ministers, will be women. And these young ladies, girls who plunge into education and learning, are just the beginning of the process of development. Turgenev, fragile, refined Turgenev, created a single, integrated type, the “Turgenev woman.” But he chose a formidable woman, a singer, a world-renowned figure, as his lover, as his own companion. Emancipated, in other words? Or am I judging the matter incorrectly?

  I even had two ideas for stories—fairly good ones, if I do say so myself.

  One is about a young girl who falls in love with an old man and meets with him in secret, even bearing his children, two or three of them. She conceals from everyone else who the father is. Everyone looks down on her and judges her; not even her mother understands where these children have come from. The old man dies and leaves her a small fortune in his will. She leaves the children and goes away to study. Like our Beti, for example, to Switzerland. She becomes a dentist, or maybe a gynecologist, then returns home to her children. She works, and gives them a good education. And the whole time she is studying, the children stay with her mother, their grandmother, and everyone thinks she has abandoned them. I’ll have to ask Beti about her studies in Switzerland to give the story verisimilitude.

  I also thought of another story, in the vein of Sholem Aleichem—about a tailor, very famous and sought-after, someone like our Meyerson, for example, who is gradually going blind, and his daughter begins to work for him, and no one knows that she has taken his place. Her father is dying, and she becomes … I have to think a little more about how her life will take shape, independent of men. And she herself is not pretty, not married, yet she is content with her life, and feels fulfilled.

  Marusya is right: world culture suffers without education for women. Truly, these are revolutionary times.

  SEPTEMBER 16

  I have completely adapted to my new regimen. I need to observe strict discipline. I rise at 5:30. Hygiene. From 6:00 to 7:30, I study science. Then I drink tea and have breakfast and go to the Institute (three versts). I go on foot, so I can exercise my limbs and pass Marusya’s house on the way, rather than taking a trolley. I’m at the Institute by 8:30. I have classes until 2:00. Then I teach a lesson (one lesson in piano; another, starting next week, in mathematics). Three times a week, I have classes at the conservatory. I play regularly, but I can’t manage more than an hour a day. (My education in music theory doesn’t require me to be a first-rate performer, but I consider mastery of an instrument to be mandatory.) I have a late lunch at home. After lunch, I copy Solovetsky’s or Kononenko’s lecture notes (if the lectures are essential), which I missed on the previous day, so that I have no gap in my knowledge of statistics or political economy. At 7:00, we have dinner, and after that I play with the little ones until about 8:00. From 8:00 until midnight is my time for reading, when I don’t go out to a concert. I usually attend concerts at least twice a week. I try to go to bed by midnight, but I don’t always manage. What bliss—the house is asleep, it’s quiet, I roam through the world of science and art in my reading. I borrowed a book on movement and exercise. I read about Isadora Duncan’s school, which borrows from traditions of antiquity; it appeals to me greatly. But—and this I have not said to Marusya—her pedagogy classes, especially concerning education for women, seem to me to be more socially useful than all the recent enthusiasm for Bewegung (contrapuntal motion).

    1. New play by Leonid Andreyev

    2. The Way to Live: In Health and Physical Fitness, by George Hackenschmidt. On physiological degradation of the modern man despite the advances of medicine in the areas of combating infectious diseases and improvements in nourishment. Increased life expectancy??? Now, that’s a perfect application for statistics!

    3. Sigmund Freud, Die Traumdeutung. It hasn’t been translated into Russian. It’s a pity, the book is exceptionally compelling, but not convincing. A hypothesis!

    4. Sigmund Freud, Eine Kinderheitserinnerung des Leonardo da Vinci, 1910

    5. Boethius—on music—I have to look for sources. Does it exist in Russian? In German? Is it really the oldest tract on music theory?

  OCTOBER 1

  I’ve taken on so many activities and commitments, and this saves me. Letters from Marusya. I acquired a special box to store m
y letters and postcards in. I hide it among the books. It’s the most secret part of my life. I can’t even imagine what would happen if these letters fell into the wrong hands. Poor thing, she’s so busy that she can’t always find time to write a letter to me. We agreed to write every other day. I finish my exams on January 15, and on the 16th, I’ll be on the train! The letters stimulate me enormously. Sometimes I think, How is it possible that only four months ago I lived without Marusya? No, this question is disingenuous. How is it possible I lived without a woman? I’m suffering terribly now from the absence of a woman, and I fully understand those young men who go to prostitutes. It’s not a matter of love, only of physiological needs. True, said physiology is so simple you can easily get by without a prostitute, relying on your own means. The aversion one feels, I think, is the same.

  NOVEMBER 2

  The weather has taken a turn for the worse. Rain. I no longer want to go to the Institute on foot. I take a horse-drawn tram and this saves me half an hour of morning time. But these morning walks gave me energy, and I miss them. Marusya writes that it has been raining in Moscow for a whole month, and it’s cold on top of that. She’s always freezing in her little room at home. Yesterday I sent her twenty rubles that I earned teaching my two classes. I haven’t seen her in so long, sometimes it seems that she never existed—I just imagined it all, it was some kind of hallucination. But on my desk there is a receipt from the post office, as proof that, in some room I’ve never seen on Bogoslovsky Lane, a fire is burning in the stove, and it will be warm.

  NOVEMBER 21

  If it’s not one thing, it’s another. I’ve been working on statistics for two weeks. I lack the mathematical means for processing the statistics. I’ve consulted several textbooks on differential calculus. It seems to me that there must be more precise means of working with data than we were presented in Savenko’s lecture. And Marxism, which one simply can’t get around these days. It isn’t just by chance that Marusya took it up. It’s the main intellectual current. It makes many important claims that are hard to dispute, but it inspires some sort of aesthetic antipathy in me. I have to consider why this might be. Maybe it’s more ethical than aesthetic. But he is a serious scholar. He has many fundamentally important ideas—not just empty words. It’s fascinating. In the meantime, I missed a whole week of classes at the conservatory. But I can’t live without music, and I can get along very well without economics. Although I have changed my views somewhat in the past year. Before, I went to the Institute because I didn’t wish to disappoint Papa, who relied on me to take over his business and secure the family fortune. Now I see that my studies have scientific meaning and value. No history of civilization exists without a consideration of economics. You can’t examine a civilization without taking into account this factor. Economics has its own laws that are bound up with the laws of the world order. You can’t achieve anything without it. And I also spent a whole week reading Adam Smith. And I realized that, without a deep understanding of the history of the Middle Ages, nothing that came afterward makes any sense. And that’s how it always is—you think you’re pulling at one little thread, and it turns out that everything is attached! But as for what lies closest to my heart—it’s music. Only music matters!