Jacob's Ladder

by Ludmila Ulitskaya

  The boys give it all they’ve got; with a loud “Hooray!” they storm the room and save their “banner.” It really is a lot of fun!

  A deputation comes up to me:

  “Mr. Volunteer, we’re having a disagreement among ourselves. How much does a little whip with a rabbit’s foot cost?”

  … These are my last days with the detachment. My uniform is ready. The overcoat is being made now.

  On Sunday, most likely, I’ll be leaving for my ironworks. My Twelfth Company is stationed not in Zlatoust, but at the Katav-Ivanovsky Ironworks—eight hours away from there, it turns out. It will be much better there than in the detachment. There is very little supervision from above. Much more free time.

  KATAV-IVANOVSKY IRONWORKS–KIEV JACOB TO HIS PARENTS

  DECEMBER 9, 1912

  I’m in Katav already. As predicted, it’s much better here. I think things are going to be fine.

  Before I left, the head of the Training Detachment pestered me with questions about what I intended to do in Katav, where I would eat. I was a bit worried about that myself. Katav is in the middle of nowhere, and it’s very hard to get anything.

  “Listen, Ossetsky, send the commander of the Twelfth Company my personal regards and ask him whether it would be possible for you to take meals at his place with him.”

  “Of course. I’m grateful to you.”

  The company commander listened to my request and promised to ask his wife. But today he told me that it would be awkward for a company commander to accept money from someone in the ranks. Therefore, he recommended that I take meals with one of the officers. Ensign Biryukov has accepted the duty to “nourish” me. Today I ate with him for the first time. I’m going there to take my evening meal now. Biryukov and his wife are sweet people; they treat me with great courtesy. I’m happy overall with the higher-ups here.

  Oh, and another thing! The company commander ordered me to wear my soldier uniform. At the transfer station (where we were held up for seventeen hours, waiting on a military troop train!), I changed into my student uniform. I decided it would be better to report for duty for the first time in that attire. I was wearing civilian dress when I went to the Biryukovs’, but now I’m already wearing my soldier uniform.

  It’s quite well made. A fitted waist, cinched with a belt. Red piping, double-breasted buttons, Rifle No. 152525, Personal No. 83, Second Platoon, Volunteer Private Jacob Ossetsky. Picture-perfect!

  Perhaps you’re interested in where I’m writing this letter? I’m sitting in the company office. “Mr. Ensign” is reading the orders for the regiment. A twenty-inch lamp is burning on the table. The light is steady and bright. The papers I have just begun to write up are lying on the table. Lists of names in the lower ranks eligible for allowances from the Twelfth Company of the 196th Insarsky Infantry Regiment on December 1, 1912. I’m writing you on official government paper. By my own calculations, this theft could get me two years in a disciplinary battalion, but I’m too lazy to walk over to the other stack of paper. You see the problem? So write me, all of you! Relieve me of this boredom!

  Write me, Papa; write me, Mama! Siblings one and all, write me! Otherwise, I might forget you.

  * * *

  I just found out that in the Kazan region some reserves who had already finished their term of duty were detained. I feel terribly sorry for them. They’ve already served for two extra months. Their three years of duty probably went by faster than these last two months. In the event of war, they will most likely send us to the interior, to guard the region. Although, if war breaks out between Russia and China, they’ll send us there immediately. I don’t think there will be any war, though. It won’t come to that.

  MOSCOW–ZLATOUST MARUSYA TO JACOB

  DECEMBER 15, 1912

  I’m close to despair. It’s like beating my head against a wall. I’ve sent five letters already! Two registered letters and one ordinary mail. The registered letters were sent on December 1 and 8. So you should have gotten the first one on the 5th. Dancing devils, what’s going on? Tomorrow I’ll make inquiries about the letter from the 13th.

  How stupid and annoying it is—you write and write, and your words disappear into the ether. Am I going to disappear somewhere along the way, too? I have to leave soon. In two months and fifteen days. The time will fly by, and you won’t notice.

  I’m feeling mournful—mainly because of the postal situation. Mikhail is coming over on Christmas. He’s become a true bon vivant, a dandy and a man of the world! Mark will probably invite us over for New Year’s. It seems he’ll be moving to Riga next year. I’ve never been as close to him as I am to Mikhail, but I’ll miss him very much. Is there a place in your life for music now? Someone probably has a piano there. Ask around. Is it possible that you haven’t been able to play for all this time?

  KATAV-IVANOVSKY IRONWORKS–MOSCOW JACOB TO MARUSYA

  DECEMBER 20, 1912

  I dream of music. Last night, before I woke up, I heard Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in its entirety. From the first note to the last. I really do know it by heart. I love the first concerto more, though. But in my dream, it was even fuller and more alive than I was aware of. Richer and more resonant. But I long for music. I went to church. The singing was unbearably flat. Remember when your ridiculous friend Vanya Belousov took us to Blagoveshchenskaya Church? What sublime singing! Breathtakingly beautiful.

  I try not to let myself think about you coming here. I won’t indulge my hopes—otherwise, I might drift off into daydreams, and that would be a luxury I can’t afford here. Before I know it, I see your lips, with a sweet, childish expression, your hands, and the lovely little bones of your wrists, the little blue veins under your pale skin … No, spare me! I transfer my gaze to the crude, rough fabric of my existence here. I feel that from the contrast alone I could explode like a cold glass touching boiling water.

  That’s all; I kiss you, a very formal kiss, on the white part on the top of your head, and on your neck, in the back, where the hair starts to grow … It’s impossible … and all of you, all of you … Lustdorf.

  DECEMBER 21, 1912

  Ah, Marusya! I can’t keep silent! The company is getting ready to perform a Christmas play. A real soldiers’ play, in which the men’s and women’s parts are all played by heavyset soldiers with mustaches. I have been asked to be the prompter. If only you could see what awkward, ridiculous figures they cut, not knowing what to do with their hands, their feet. At first they stood facing the audience for the entire act, not moving a muscle. When the sergeant major ordered a bit more dynamism, they began running around like chickens with their heads cut off, waving their arms aimlessly.

  It was hilarious! It inspired laughter—but only in me. No one else sees anything comical in it. What bumpkins!

  Marusya, I’ve made a discovery. Coming here was like going deaf—I’m completely deprived of music, and miss it terribly. A barrage of shouts, curses—these are the sounds that surround me. I went to church. The choir is wretched, but fairly large—about a dozen choristers, with a precentor hailing from true peasant stock, creaking, aged voices singing any which way. Do you remember the singing in the church in Kiev, what a joy it was to listen to? One hears the crudest sounds in the world here; even the sound of the church bells is somehow off. My God, how musically moribund it is here! And I believed that music was banished completely from these parts.

  But yesterday one of the soldiers grabbed the accordion, a barbaric instrument, and started playing. Two other soldiers took up the tune and started singing something so wonderful, the likes of which I’ve never heard before in Ukraine. It was as though my ears opened up to these heartrending sounds. The folk music here is a delight, every bit as wonderful as Ukrainian music. Now I walk around listening for it whenever and wherever I can. I seem to have missed a huge piece of musical education, which was only slightly familiar to me through Russian opera. Only now do I understand where it originated, the wondrous Russian love songs, and Varlamov, a
nd Gurilev, from whom both Glinka and Mussorgsky borrowed a great deal. Goodness, how could I have missed it …

  KATAV-IVANOVSKY IRONWORKS–KIEV JACOB TO HIS PARENTS

  DECEMBER 22, 1912

  Getting ready for the holidays. Yesterday we cleaned, scoured, decorated the whole day long. Actually, cleanliness in the barracks is always maintained. Every Saturday, all the bunks are stripped and turned out to air, the floors are scrubbed and strewn with pine shavings, and the rooms fill up with the lovely scent of pine tar. The kitchen is equally clean. There is a large marble-topped table, on which rations are sliced and divvied up—although the rations are then placed by hand on dirty scales to weigh out the allotted hundred-gram portions. After lunch, cleanliness reigns again. The samovar boils the whole day long. This beverage is the soldier’s constant helpmeet. Soldiers live for the most part on tea, porridge, and sleep.

  Yesterday was the soldiers’ steam bath, banya day. I enjoyed it immensely, because it was the first time in my life I had ever been in a real Russian banya. I thoroughly and deliciously steamed myself. I lay down on the top bench, where it is hottest, and beat myself with birch branches in the customary fashion. A soldier kept crying out: Make more steam! Harder, thrash me harder! In the dressing room, now fully relaxed, and without an ounce of strength left in me, but extremely satisfied and content, I lay down on a bench and gave myself all the time I needed to gather my strength and wits about me. Now, that’s what you call a banya! First-class. I’ll never take a bath again at home.

  I’m learning a great deal from the soldiers here. I already take steam baths and play the accordion. Well, what of it—it’s also a musical instrument, is it not? Who knows what the future holds?

  Yesterday I read in the papers that the Dnieper is already ice-free and open for navigation. That’s never happened before, has it? It’s also very warm here—around twenty-six or twenty-eight degrees Fahrenheit, and never colder than about twenty-three. I was already used to fifteen or twenty below. Well, I can live with it.

  Addendum

  Children! You haven’t written me in a long time. I’m not happy about this. Write me about the play you saw (Andersen’s fairy tale). I received a letter and a playbill. I’m delighted about both of them. I’d like to know more about it. But—I’m sorry—my eyes are closing.

  KATAV-IVANOVSKY IRONWORKS–MOSCOW JACOB TO MARUSYA

  JANUARY 15, 1913

  Today I received your first letter sent directly to Katav! And right after that came three more, which had been written earlier and were lost along the way. What a rich man I am today! I arranged them all by date, and didn’t unseal them for a long time. Impatience, and anticipation, and reassurance that there is another life, in which my wife is alive, in her blouse I love, with her hair bound up in a ribbon, with sunken cheeks, only an outline of flesh … What nonsense I’m writing you, my mind is wandering. It seems I live only in the world of my imagination!

  You ask what Katav is like. It’s a small settlement that lives solely from the large cast-iron foundry and factory. From the time when there was a strike, the factory stopped working. For this reason, Katav became impoverished, and the population of the village dwindled. Only parts of the factory are functioning now. There’s a sawmill and a locksmith’s—that’s all. The huge factory halls are locked up and empty; the tall chimneys belch no smoke. A railroad was built here especially for the ironworks, and a huge pond was dug. The barracks stand on the far side of the pond, in the village of Zaprudovka. Why am I telling you all of this?

  No, no, we won’t be together in Katav. I’ll meet you in Chelyabinsk. Although I still can’t imagine that I will see you in the flesh, dressed in your gray hat and wearing your white felt boots, and that you will descend the steps of the train car, right into my arms … I’m trying to get furlough for those days, and if they don’t grant it, I’ll just up and head for the hills! Of course, they’ll let me off on leave. Imagine how all the officers would surround you and stare at you here in Katav. No, no! We are meeting only in Chelyabinsk, and that’s final. I can wait two and a half months to see you—but I’m willing to wait two and a half years if I have to! Though even two and a half hours is unbearably long. March 1 is the day!

  KATAV-IVANOVSKY IRONWORKS–KIEV JACOB TO HIS PARENTS

  JANUARY 16, 1913

  Life in the army is going well. There’s only one cause for complaint. And it’s something very, very unpleasant. The company commander reads all the soldiers’ letters. He hasn’t opened my letters yet, and it seems he doesn’t intend to. But, in any case, be aware that it might happen at some point. At the first sign a letter has been tampered with, I’ll let you know. I sent a letter to my fellow student Korzhenko, asking him about the exams. I’ve already begun studying for them.

  I’ll send you more details about my furlough when I know more myself.

  KATAV-IVANOVSKY IRONWORKS–MOSCOW JACOB TO MARUSYA

  JANUARY 17, 1913

  Yesterday evening, the sergeant major and I were lying in bed in the barracks. The conversation turned to the subject of conjugal life. He spoke very seriously, earnestly—my God, the things he told me! His manner was such that I started asking probing questions. Soon it turned into a question-and-answer session. I listened and I learned, and eagerly. Truly, Marusya, life itself, not just books, must be a source of learning.

  I was only anxious about one thing—whether he would start asking questions, too. But it all turned out well. After I discovered what was most important for me to know, the discussion became less serious and lost its sense of urgency, and I said good night.

  There was just one thing that struck me as strange—he thought that he was talking to a very experienced person. He didn’t notice, by my questions, how ill-informed I really was. Actually, I tried to appear very canny about everything. And, apparently, I pulled it off.

  MOSCOW–KATAV-IVANOVSKY IRONWORKS MARUSYA TO JACOB

  JANUARY 15, 1913

  5:00 a.m. I’ve just returned. I was at the “Wednesday,” and afterward a large, fascinating group of people came over to talk. Four interesting men, very intelligent, hovered around me for a long time. They like me. Do you understand, my Jacob, they like me! And I’m happy. It pleases me to hear about my lovely arms and hands, my eyes, that I’m divinely inspired, etc., etc. They say I have remarkable eyes, and I want to shout with joy, Jacob! It’s me, your wife, who has lovely eyes, and lips, and hands! I’m desired by all these elegant, refined men—and it makes me happy, simply happy—because you desire me.

  Jacob, my dearest and best—there is no success or joy that can tear me away from my dreams for so much as a second. It makes me want you even more intensely. My God! My faith in you is so strong, so deep, it frightens me. You are my most profound, and everlasting, faith. So much so that I am scared by it.

  It’s already daylight. I’m going to bed. I embrace you. No need to kiss my hand today.

  Well, goodbye, beloved. My Jacob … Don’t think badly of me—I’m not drunk! Only I miss you terribly.

  KATAV-IVANOVSKY IRONWORKS–KIEV JACOB TO HIS PARENTS

  JANUARY 20, 1913

  What will become of my studies at the Institute? This disturbs me even more than the war. Through my friend Korzhenko, I found out that I must take furlough immediately and pass a minimum number of exams. Don’t mention this in your letters, though. The company commander mustn’t know that I’m planning to take a leave. Just to be on the safe side. The only thing that really worries me is that they won’t grant me furlough. Oh well, I’ll just drop out of the Institute in that case. Without any hopes of being readmitted. And the obstacles before me are formidable: first, they may refuse to give me leave—it’s not at all unlikely; and second, if they grant me leave, I still might not satisfy the minimum requirements for passing the exams. It’s hard for me to find even three hours a day to study. And how can I work in a tiny room packed with people? And there’s nowhere else to go.

  KATAV-IVANOVSKY IRONWORKS–MOSCOW J
ACOB TO MARUSYA

  JANUARY 23, 1913

  … There are moments when I am filled with jealousy and longing, thinking about you onstage—wearing your tunic, your arms and shoulders bare, your wondrous feet—you dance in a circle with other actresses, and still the spectators are staring only at you. And I feel anguish and suffering, that strangers’ eyes can gaze at your body. The greedy gazes of men. I feel these thoughts will suffocate me! I banish them, realizing that I shouldn’t be thinking them, much less writing them. But we made a pact about mutual honesty.

  MOSCOW–KATAV-IVANOVSKY IRONWORKS MARUSYA TO JACOB

  JANUARY 25, 1913

  … “My dream is that you will abandon the theater or at least leave it temporarily and come ‘home.’” Every other year! I am so sad. Does this mean that you in fact don’t approve of my being onstage? Why?

  Jacob, I can’t abandon the stage, I can’t and I shouldn’t. Every other year would be impossible. In one year, the public forgets an actress’s name! They would even forget Komissarzhevskaya if she left for a year! And a young actress all the more! I believe in myself, and I believe in this opportunity I have. It will allow me to become what I can and must be. This is not ordinary theater. It’s an intricate and complex life, in which dance is only one way of grasping it, its great mysteries. We have spoken so much about this. I’ve only been onstage for one year. And I have accomplished a great deal in this year. You must also take into account the fact that I have not fallen victim to anyone’s embraces or touched anyone’s lips. By ignoring male protection, I know that it will take me three times longer to achieve what I wish. How can you speak about “greedy gazes” to me? I feel these gazes constantly, even on the tram, or in the library. I won’t abandon the theater. Unless it abandons me. I can’t imagine that you would ever issue an ultimatum—“me or the theater.” It would be doubly hard for me—to lose you for this reason, or to lose the theater?