Jacob's Ladder

by Ludmila Ulitskaya

But now it is gone, all is forgotten. Let’s begin anew. We will write to each other about ordinary, daily things, about the details of life; about joys, and our small tribulations, and the joys of our small tribulations (as Rolland would say).

  JANUARY 19, 1936

  My sweet friend, today I got up early, before eight, when it was still dark. I hurried out into the morning frost, under urgent physiological stimulus. I met up with the dog Roska, the unfortunate Roska. Every morning she is locked into a dark kennel, and in the evening they let her out. She never sees the light of day. She throws herself at me in greeting, and twists and twirls joyously. I always whisper the same words to her: “Poor dog, poor Roska.” If I come home late, she senses through the closed gate that it’s me and doesn’t bark. While I’m making my way over the fence, she again launches into her hysterical show of friendship. Once, in the darkness, she didn’t recognize me and started barking with hostility. When she got close enough to recognize me, she felt compunction and wanted me to understand that it was a mistake, that she didn’t mean it. She did her little somersaults and twirled around yelping and whining twice as much as usual. I whispered to her, “Poor little dog, poor little Roska, it’s all right, I’m not angry.”

  I stand in the yard a long time, watching the predawn sky, which I usually don’t get to see. I know the evening sky well. I can pick out the constellations easily; but I don’t often see the morning sky. The Big Dipper is situated differently, almost showing off its rear end, right above my head. The stars shine with a particular morning brightness. You can see how the entire bulwark—the vault of the sky—shifted over half the sky during those eight hours when I wasn’t watching. What a magnificent book it is for those who know how to read it! One of the first books that humanity learned to read, before hieroglyphs and alphabets were invented.

  Yesterday morning, I took part in a weekend concert broadcast on the radio. It was devoted to contemporary Soviet poetry. We have a well-educated consultant from the library here, a literary critic. They read the work of poets I don’t know well: Antokolsky, Petrovsky (a LEF writer, reminiscent of Khlebnikov), and others. Some of the poems were set to music, which I played. And since it was impossible to choose the pieces beforehand, I boldly improvised. My musical accompaniment to Bagritsky’s poem “The Lay of Opanas” was very apt, in particular the gloomy melody I hit upon for Makhno. I still can’t get them out of my head. After the concert, there was a meeting about organizing musical programs for the radio. I was offered the position of music director, which I very eagerly accepted; but I’m not sure whether anything will come of it. Whatever I do, wherever I find myself, I am above all a “Kulturträger,” a culture bearer; I am very ardent and energetic about such matters, and if nothing gets done, it is not my fault.

  In Fedin’s Brothers, there is a marvelous passage about German culture. I will cite it here from memory: “This musical culture achieved such heights because whole generations of unknown conductors, musical directors, and choirmasters, brick by brick, constructed the foundation of knowledge out of which the masterpieces of Bayreuth and Düsseldorf grew. And Nikita wanted to return to the native soil of his Chagin, where he had known his first love and his first hate, in order to put down his bricks.”

  I’m not very good with bricks. At the STP I set down a brick, but here in Biysk I haven’t managed yet. Perhaps it will happen on the radio.

  JANUARY 24, 1936

  My dear friend and wife, your last letter, in which you write about celebrating the New Year, is a fine letter, from start to finish. Every line sings, beginning with the chintz garters, and ending with the tears you shed over pages of the newspaper. At last you’ve told me the issue in which your own work was printed. I immediately dashed down to the library. In two libraries, the entire set of Our Achievements had been sent off to be bound, so I’ll have to wait. In the third library, they don’t subscribe to it. And the fourth—I’ll visit tomorrow.

  I read Rolland’s Musicians of Today and returned to an old idea: to write a textbook on the history of music. A textbook for schools, clubs, and radio listeners. I set to work with enthusiasm, although there’s precious little literature devoted to this subject. If you happen to come upon any music books from my library, send them to me. You don’t have to make a special effort, but anything you come across might help. The local library here has ordered a few dozen books from Moscow for me.

  I’m already working on the first three chapters: (1) folk music, (2) European music which Vitya could not have known before Bach, and (3) Bach. The draft of the book will be ready by the end of this year. When I am able to use the big library, I’ll spend a few months making additions to it. The first chapter, on folk music, is virtually finished. I haven’t hit upon the proper style yet. My literary style surpasses my scholarly style; it sounds very dry at present. But I will revise it many more times. I like this task. No other such book exists yet. For me it is more than just another literary pastime. The Biysk library has initiated an inter-library-loan subscription with the Novosibirsk library, which receives a copy of every single book published in the Soviet Union. They arranged this especially for me. When it begins to function, I will be provided with all the books that come out, and I’ll be able to work more quickly and efficiently. The radio should also help—I need to listen again to dozens of composers. On my desk I have the radio program of all the concerts for the month. I’ve underlined the ones I need to hear.

  Along with the history of music, I am writing (in short bursts) a novella. This is the fifth one I’ve written, following “The Gifts of Need,” “A History of Beauty” (this one is about a woman who suffers from her beauty, from the unwanted attentions of men, and marries a blind man), “Life Is Too Long” (about two sisters who begin an independent life when they are already nearly old women, after the death of their despotic parents), and one about a girl who is in love with an old man who is a photographer. I seem to be suffering from “graphomania.” It’s rather absurd to write for the desk drawer, without any readership, appreciation, or even criticism. But, patience, patience …

  You write that Genrikh is studying English. I have a wonderful book for him. Have you heard of the Basic English system of Professor Ogden? He has reduced all the rich diversity of language to 850 words, and only sixteen verbs. If you master this bare minimum of words and know how to use them, you can read the literature that this same Ogden publishes: Swift, Dickens, etc.

  A Russian publisher has already released the book Step by Step by Ivy Litvinov (wife of the people’s commissar); it costs two rubles and forty kopecks. I acquired it even before Stalingrad—look on the lower shelf of the bookcase, where the dictionaries are. The Basic system is a wonderful idea. Such a system for other languages will no doubt follow. Learning a language according to this system (simplified language, of course) requires only eighty-eight hours.

  I wish you a very happy January 23 birthday (again)—if you wish to live according to the calendar of Pope Gregory (of Rome), and survive on pounds rather than kilograms. I kiss you. J.

  FEBRUARY 19, 1936

  I spent the whole of yesterday in a haze, as though I had been smoking opium. All morning, I read a book by a German biologist, Secrets of Nature, and then prepared the midday meal for myself. (It takes all of fifteen minutes to put on the soup, and another hour of stirring it now and then.) After my meal, I went to the library to read newspapers, and the whole evening I read The Good Earth, a novel by the American writer Pearl Buck, with a foreword by Tretyakov. A marvelous book about life in China. You must borrow it from the library—it appears in the journal International Literature. Buck is a missionary in China, no longer young, who all of a sudden decided to write this wonderful novel. And immediately acquired an international reputation. When I read the book, I perceive her as a reader, as a literary technician, as a writer, as a rival. I read her lines, and observe how the lines are made. How the plot drifts around huge obstacles and backs up on itself, and how the subject is resolve
d at the end. That’s probably the most challenging part—the resolution of the subject. I read somewhere that French playwrights write a play beginning with the fifth act, with the dénouement, and if it is powerful enough, it is adopted as the groundwork upon which the first four acts are built. You must read Pearl Buck. It is an exemplary novel, in my view: real training for the beginning writer. No doubt, the general structure of narrative, as well as of music, in the highest sense, can be captured in some general formula … But even Shklovsky doesn’t write about this!

  MARCH 8, 1936

  Nothing came of my involvement in radio; they changed their minds. Today, though, I was offered the possibility of teaching music to an eight-year-old boy, and we met for the first time. This happened after my first pupil played a sonatina on the radio, to great acclaim; and I hope pupils will be beating a path to my door now. That is, I hope all eight children from the good families of the city of Biysk will be standing in line for lessons from the maestro!

  Today I spoke with the bank manager about a raise. He promised to do what he could, so things are developing in a satisfactory way. For this reason, I even had a radio installed in my room. And that is where my big-spender ways will end. I have furnished myself with electricity, a radio subscription, laid in a supply of firewood, had my shoes repaired, as well as all my clothing.

  JUNE 19, 1936

  I’m sitting at the table, reading about forestry. The radio broadcast Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, and the sounds of bitter grief are still ringing in my ears. Everything is getting mixed up together: your letter of yesterday, and Gorky’s death, which was announced over the radio, the rain beating against the windowpane, and the passionate refrain of the symphony …

  JULY 1, 1936

  About your essay. I read your literary portrait of Tretyakov five times over. The article made me very happy. It’s beautifully rendered, and the quality far outstrips the average for the journal. The language is good—in a word, brava! This is your first article of the kind, and the next ones are sure to be even more powerful.

  I can take delight in an article that expresses ideas I don’t agree with—neither with their conclusions, nor their assessments, not even with the structure of the piece. Nevertheless, I praise it without reservation. If I am permitted to express myself on this subject and offer criticism, tactfully, without any dogmatic sermonizing, I would say the following.

  A literary essay should not give an appraisal at all. The critic is not an evaluator. He is a commentator, an opponent, a proponent, or a sociologist of the ideas that move the writer. Above all, one should not overpraise. And you give way to this in your essay when you write: “His mind is perfectly poised … a rich and resonant voice … an unusual writer”—twice—“full of significance … exceptional mastery (!) … wonderful essays … a writer of all genres…”

  Is this all true? In a cup of tea there are five pieces of sugar. If he is indeed a writer of all genres, I would respond that, though he is great in his genre, his genre is too insignificant. Tretyakov is a useful writer, but, if one must sum him up, I would say: he is a typical second-rate writer, a mediocre talent.

  His main shortcoming (and that of many other writers) is that he has no ideas of his own. You cannot name a single idea or thought that would immediately bring Tretyakov to mind. He is diluted in the epoch, produced by it; he studies it but doesn’t enrich it. He takes and doesn’t give back. He doesn’t have enough extremism and self-limitation for this.

  “Mastery lies in limitation” (Goethe).

  Tretyakov is an essayist skimming the surface of many ideas, but none of them is memorable, none stands out above any others.

  Enough about him—now about you. You write that there were roads and crossroads, victories and defeats, but he found what was most important—“and the road was found”—essays on German writers. What is unique about them? It’s a literary device of significant details and trivia. Is that all? That’s very little. And “the victory and the road” are not convincing. The engine of enormous (is it really enormous?) power turns the coffee grinder—this is the epigraph it deserves, the only epigraph that would ring true.

  Trivia:

  (1) The piano imagery doesn’t work. If the “upper lid of the piano is the height of Tretyakov,” he is very small of stature—a regular dwarf.

  (2) “His gesture is fluid, his thought lightning-quick” (!)—and immediately Pushkin comes to mind: “His eyes / Shine. His face is terrible. / His movements are quick. He is magnificent. / He is like divine thunder.”

  If I were to write a critical essay on the writer, I would do it differently. The path of the writer is a social phenomenon, and not individual. In this case, the author himself is a matter of secondary importance. I would take a single idea of the author’s (if he has any ideas at all), and I would adopt it as the title and central thesis of the essay. I would talk about the author (if possible without evaluation) only as an example of this idea.

  The essay would then be devoted not to the writer but to his ideas, and it would be independent of the writer himself. What is the governing idea of this writer? That in our time “life is more important than literature, writing is a side effect of the deed.” “In the beginning was the Deed,” then the word appeared—this is how he sums up the time we live in. What are the deeds of Tretyakov himself? His own deeds are small, insignificant, and he does not write on a grand scale, by any means. And his own point of view (“literature as the refuse of life”) is not checked against life itself, and doesn’t ring true; it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Literature is a self-justifying value.

  Then the essay would be more “finished,” and it would have a general thesis; its claims would be independent of second-rate examples. These are the thoughts that your essay suggests to me.

  Nevertheless, in spite of my remarks, it is an essay of a very high order. Yesterday I read Our Achievements, but it was no more than dull, inartistic daubing. Written not with a pen but with a spade, a stirring rod, a housepainter’s brush—a disgrace. I know the one who appears alongside you and writes such a vapid essay about Paris. During a difficult moment at the end of the twenties, I fed him a meal of my paltry crumbs. Then it turned out he didn’t deserve this.

  Your writing is the best in the issue. If there are any good minds on the editorial board, they should not let someone with your talents slip away. Reading your article was a real feast for me. Write, write—write and don’t stop. Stay strong and active.

  I kiss you and shake your hand,

  with a literary greeting,

  with a spousal greeting,

  with a friend’s greeting.

  AUGUST 1, 1936

  … I received all the postcards you sent. Thinking about our correspondence during the recent past, I realize that our separation has had palpable results. Soon we will have been apart for six years, and I have sorely missed your closeness and the friendship of my son. We are separated by miles and years, and other less notable but still real divergences of paths. Divergence of paths, and the difficulty of mutual understanding.

  For the time being, I have felt this in your letters; perhaps you have sensed the same in mine?

  There are questions you refuse to answer. If I insist, I get a short reply: Don’t be anxious or nervous, be patient. It is difficult to survive in ignorance. I understand how much effort is required of both of us in order to reconnect again, to find our former selves in those we have now become.

  Our next reunion is approaching. I’ll be honest with you: I am apprehensive about how this meeting will go. You write me that when we see each other again I will find you and our son just the same as when I left you, and there is no need to be anxious. But nothing ever returns to the same place, and I know that a great deal has changed, though I can’t really envision how. I am trying to solve this puzzle, to anticipate the future, though I admit I’m as yet unable.

  Your letters, in fact, are very cold and informative, but in your last letter you s
uddenly gave vent to reproaches that had built up over the years. The pain scorched me when I read it. Can’t we accept one another with “open hearts”?

  For me, Genrikh is a sphinx, a mystery that is unlikely to afford me a happy surprise when it is uncovered. All of this I now have to consider, to think and feel through, and I must prepare myself for it.

  Marusya, I love you deeply. I am no longer young, but I am not ashamed to repeat the words of our first meetings. At our age, such words are often avoided. The emotional expressions of our youth are now absent in our letters, and have been absent a long time—those sweet intimacies that filled our correspondence at one time in the past.

  Please send me a picture of you. It’s silly to say you’ve aged, you’re no longer attractive. I’m not interested in a picture of a fresh young beauty. I need your picture, a picture of you exactly as you are now. I’ve aged, too—by as many years as you have. Send me a picture.

  I’ll end this letter with the refrain that always fits the bill—but I hope it sounds fresh this time.

  I kiss you. Deeply and tenderly, as I did in those moments when I wanted, and was able, to reverse your bad or sad mood. I embrace you—“along every line”—if you remember what this once meant to us. J.

  SEPTEMBER 26, 1936

  It’s rather difficult for me to write just now, dearest one! You ask me whether I know anything yet. No, not yet, but what usually happens is that everyone who has served his term here gets a passport and a free train ticket to any destination he wishes. It will probably be the same in my case. It’s up to the Moscow police whether they will allow me to live there and give me a residence permit. Most likely, they will not. Actually, this depends on random local circumstances. Gerchuk, my old friend, went to live in Moscow after his term of exile, and has been living there a long time; other friends of mine are not given permission. In any event, I’ll come home for a few days and decide what to do after that.

  I’ve never been confronted with so many unknown factors in my life as I am now. Nothing in the future is clear to me—neither my legal status, nor even my family circumstances. I’ll have to do a new inventory of the household goods—what remains, and in what condition is it?