handled an egg to know he had never slept with a woman.
Her mother took the arm of the strapping young man, who was as usual impeccably dressed, and sat him down at her side. Emma Feodorovna lit another cigarette, aimed the smoke at his handsome face and made fun of his new hairdo: short at the back with a wild black curl at the front. ‘Osip Borisovich, is that a gesture to your boyhood in the Ukraine, that thing on your head?’
Konstantin Varlamov hid his face in his cup of tea and slurped. He was primed to explain, as usual, why any appeal to his highly placed friends on behalf of Nadyezhda Petrovna would be futile. If they arrested people like Radek and Pyatakov, Rykov and Yezhov, Garniko and Petrovsky, not to mention Bukharin and Zinoviev, how could his friends do anything for an unknown woman poet? Varlamov recited this litany each time he thought he might be asked to help someone who had been arrested. Everyone was impressed: ‘The old man’s a genius! After the last litany—it went for twenty-seven minutes, including memory lapses—no one will dare to ask for his help ever again.’
Emma rested her elbow on the cover of the black piano. Out of all the men and women who were poets in Leningrad, Emma Feodorovna had chosen Nadyezhda Petrovna to be her satanic double—her close friend and even closer enemy. Nadya always beat Emma to it, making conquests that Emma had merely dreamed about, leaving her only scraps of glory. One of Sasha’s clearest childhood memories was a poetry evening at the end of which Emma had emptied a bottle of kerosene on Nadya’s red rubber cape after she had declared that Emma’s poems put her to sleep standing up, just like the stories of Maximich. The insult of the comparison with Gorky pushed Emma over the edge as, visibly trembling, she stood in front of Nadya, who was leaning on the windowsill.
‘Go ahead,’ Nadya said, ‘light a match if you dare, but only if you dare, my dear.’
Osip Levayev looked at their faces as though wondering at their faintness of heart. He turned to Sasha’s father and said, ‘Andrei Pavlovich, it’s true I missed the previous meeting, but this evening you’ve invited us to your home again. Perhaps you can explain to us what, in your opinion, we should do? It goes without saying that all of us are asking questions about the arrest. I don’t know a thing about it. In the past few months I’ve hardly seen Nadya at all.’
From her hiding place Sasha surveyed the young man, whose cold expression emphasised the distance that had come between him and Nadya and her close friends. If so, why had he turned up here this evening anyway? Was he the informer? Or maybe he had been going out of his mind with fear at home and wanted to find a way to avoid arrest? This gathering endangered them all, but Nadya’s arrest had taken her friends to the brink. Maybe a demonstration of innocence at a meeting that would doubtless be revealed to the NKVD was preferable to staying at home. Osip Borisovich’s lips were now dancing in front of Sasha like a pink half-moon. Four years earlier, on her eighteenth birthday, they had kissed at the beach. He had begged her for a whole year not to tell her mother, and took pains to praise all her poems. They weren’t especially good, she knew that, and anyway her dream of becoming a poet had recently lost its charm. She might have been enchanted by Nadya’s and Emma’s poems when she was growing up—but was poetry really how she wanted to spend her life?
Andrei Pavlovich Weissberg, the man now called upon to lead the group, rocked in his chair and gazed out at the sky, over which the early autumn darkness had spread. Cold gusts struck the windowpanes, and they all wrapped themselves in their coats. Her father, too, removed his coat from the back of the chair and put it on like a scolded child. His tormented face told of the horrors he had conjured up in his imagination: his beloved Nadka in jail, dragged out of a
Her mother took the arm of the strapping young man, who was as usual impeccably dressed, and sat him down at her side. Emma Feodorovna lit another cigarette, aimed the smoke at his handsome face and made fun of his new hairdo: short at the back with a wild black curl at the front. ‘Osip Borisovich, is that a gesture to your boyhood in the Ukraine, that thing on your head?’
Konstantin Varlamov hid his face in his cup of tea and slurped. He was primed to explain, as usual, why any appeal to his highly placed friends on behalf of Nadyezhda Petrovna would be futile. If they arrested people like Radek and Pyatakov, Rykov and Yezhov, Garniko and Petrovsky, not to mention Bukharin and Zinoviev, how could his friends do anything for an unknown woman poet? Varlamov recited this litany each time he thought he might be asked to help someone who had been arrested. Everyone was impressed: ‘The old man’s a genius! After the last litany—it went for twenty-seven minutes, including memory lapses—no one will dare to ask for his help ever again.’
Emma rested her elbow on the cover of the black piano. Out of all the men and women who were poets in Leningrad, Emma Feodorovna had chosen Nadyezhda Petrovna to be her satanic double—her close friend and even closer enemy. Nadya always beat Emma to it, making conquests that Emma had merely dreamed about, leaving her only scraps of glory. One of Sasha’s clearest childhood memories was a poetry evening at the end of which Emma had emptied a bottle of kerosene on Nadya’s red rubber cape after she had declared that Emma’s poems put her to sleep standing up, just like the stories of Maximich. The insult of the comparison with Gorky pushed Emma over the edge as, visibly trembling, she stood in front of Nadya, who was leaning on the windowsill.
‘Go ahead,’ Nadya said, ‘light a match if you dare, but only if you dare, my dear.’
Osip Levayev looked at their faces as though wondering at their faintness of heart. He turned to Sasha’s father and said, ‘Andrei Pavlovich, it’s true I missed the previous meeting, but this evening you’ve invited us to your home again. Perhaps you can explain to us what, in your opinion, we should do? It goes without saying that all of us are asking questions about the arrest. I don’t know a thing about it. In the past few months I’ve hardly seen Nadya at all.’
From her hiding place Sasha surveyed the young man, whose cold expression emphasised the distance that had come between him and Nadya and her close friends. If so, why had he turned up here this evening anyway? Was he the informer? Or maybe he had been going out of his mind with fear at home and wanted to find a way to avoid arrest? This gathering endangered them all, but Nadya’s arrest had taken her friends to the brink. Maybe a demonstration of innocence at a meeting that would doubtless be revealed to the NKVD was preferable to staying at home. Osip Borisovich’s lips were now dancing in front of Sasha like a pink half-moon. Four years earlier, on her eighteenth birthday, they had kissed at the beach. He had begged her for a whole year not to tell her mother, and took pains to praise all her poems. They weren’t especially good, she knew that, and anyway her dream of becoming a poet had recently lost its charm. She might have been enchanted by Nadya’s and Emma’s poems when she was growing up—but was poetry really how she wanted to spend her life?
Andrei Pavlovich Weissberg, the man now called upon to lead the group, rocked in his chair and gazed out at the sky, over which the early autumn darkness had spread. Cold gusts struck the windowpanes, and they all wrapped themselves in their coats. Her father, too, removed his coat from the back of the chair and put it on like a scolded child. His tormented face told of the horrors he had conjured up in his imagination: his beloved Nadka in jail, dragged out of a
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