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Week of 30 January 1998 Vol. I, No. 18 Feature Article Out of the shadow of the KGB, treasuring a poet's legacy by Cliff Bernard Your turn will come. You'll also give Moscow, gently and bitterly, to your daughters. As for me, a zone of unrestricted sleep, bell sounds and early dawns in the graveyard of Vagankovo. From Verses about Moscow by Marina Tsvetayeva, trans. Mary Maddock Marina Katseva's job classification at BU is library technician III. Neatly and conservatively dressed in long skirt, sensible shoes, gray blouse, and black sweater, her gray-flecked hair kept permed and short, she certainly looks the part of an orderly keeper of books. The casual observer would never guess the tumultuous times she has lived through, or the passion that this 55-year-old Russian keeps like a banked fire in her soul for Russian music and literature, and par ticularly for one writer, the late Marina Tsvetayeva, now recognized as one of the great 20th-century Russian poets. Katseva and her husband, Boris, came to Boston eight years ago after spending five years "in refusal." When they applied for emigration to the United States in 1978, she and Boris were declared "enemies of the people." Both lost their jobs. They survived, Katseva says, by publishing articles and essays under the names of other people, and with donations from American Jews. Katseva's doctoral dissertation on Porgy and Bess was suspended and remains uncompleted. Katseva says the KGB shadowed them constantly. When their visas were finally granted, Katseva and her husband invested their savings in Marina Tsvetayeva memorabilia and other artifacts from the period in which the poet lived and worked. Professor George Kostich, who teaches Russian literature at Holy Cross College, said of Katseva's collection when it was on display several years ago: "It's a little island of Russian culture in Massachusetts. I recommend it to all my students."At the Katsevas' home, a two-bedroom apartment in a modern high-rise overlooking Revere Beach, the Tsvetayeva collection, hundreds of items from the Russia of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, is scattered throughout the rooms. Each piece has a story, and in the short time available, Katseva tries to tell them. "Here," she says, "is an exact replica of Marina's beloved bedroom that I acquired." She indicates a glass display case, maybe a foot high and deep by 18 inches across. "The original building is long ago destroyed. The details in this are authenticated by her sister." I peer into an exquisitely detailed model of a bedroom, with finely carved desk and cabinets in old dark wood, bed neatly made, covers drawn back. The walls are papered with a fine pattern, and tiny paintings hang on all sides, each ornately framed, each depicting a picture in such detail that I can almost read an artist's signature on the nearest one. Each is the size of a thumbnail. And on a shelf beside the model is a bronze lion, the size of a man's fist. Katseva hands it to me so I can feel the cool heft of it. "Lions were Tsvetayeva's favorite animal," she explains. And here is a 19th-century Russian music box, its hinges broken, and the varnish worn off in a circle around the handle, but still playing, and "identical," Katseva says, "to one owned by Marina." On the wall beside the display case is an old photo of a sad-looking but beautiful young woman, "an original," she says, "of Marina." On all this Katseva maintains a rapid-fire running commentary in her heavily accented English, outlining the history of each, its significance in the life and times of Marina Tsvetayeva, the pains she took to smuggle this piece out of Soviet Russia, how miraculous it was that that fragile porcelain survived the journey to America. In their living room, their study, their bedroom, in cabinets and in bookshelves are collections of beautifully wrought porcelain and old books signed by their authors; original sketches by prominent Russian artists hang on the walls. The porcelain pieces are particularly fine, with 19th-century gentlemen wearing capes painted a rich and unusual shade of mauve. Katseva first encountered the work of Tsvetayeva when she was working as a musicologist in Moscow. "I worked with a lot of artists, and one of them gave me some copies of her work," Katseva says. "Her books were banned in Russia for being excessively bourgeois, and were sold under the counter." She punctuates her words with rapid hand movements. "My husband and I understood from the first that we could not live without these words. We spoke them onto tape. From that moment, Marina Tsvetayeva has lived in me." Marina Katseva displays Tsvetayeva memorabilia, among some of the hundreds of items she has collected from the period when the great 20th-century Russian poet lived and worked. Photo by Vernon Doucette Katseva's love and knowledge of Tsvetayeva sustained her during the period as a refusnik in Russia. She was invited to give lectures at the State Philharmonic, in which she discussed the relationship between Russian music and poetry, particularly the work of Tsvetayeva. She spoke openly about Tsvetayeva and her life at a time when the poet was still proscribed. At one lecture she discussed Tsvetayeva's death by suicide. All the state-sanctioned literature on Tsvetayeva at the time stated blandly that she had "tragically perished in August 1941," implying, Katseva says, that her death was a war casualty. "After the lecture," she says, "I was approached by a KGB officer. 'How did you know Marina Tsvetayeva committed suicide?' he asked. I told him, 'I read, I heard.' Katseva recalls how carefully she chose her words. "If I say to him, 'I heard this at such-and-such a place,' he will ask me, 'Who told you?' So I tell him I read it in a book. 'What book?' he asks me. I tell him the name of a recent biography on Marina. He says, 'This is all very interesting. Would you phone me later and tell me what page you saw this reference on?'" "My husband was very worried. He told me the lectures were dangerous. But what could I do? . . . On the stage, I forget about everything. I say everything. My lectures about Marina became so popular that the Philharmonic offered me a permanent job. They didn't know I was a refusnik." Katseva says she loves America and Boston and would never go back. She and her husband have made a new life for themselves. However happy she is here, though, Russia stays with her, and she has deep connections with the Russian community in Boston, where she has given a series of lectures on Russian literature and music to an audience of mostly expatriate Russians. Marina Katseva's dream, she says, is to find a home for her collection. It is the one subject to which our conversation always returns. The uniqueness of the artifacts, their long and perilous journey to these shores, Marina Tsvetayeva's tragic life, and the fact that the secret police of Stalinist days destroyed so much of her past make this collection, scattered about an apartment in Revere, Mass., a unique treasure, as is the work of the poet who is its focus and the woman who has spent so much of her life bringing it here.