Faithful Masha

EMIL DRAITSER

A writer was traveling. With last minute permission from the Soviet Writers’ Union, he had left his native Moscow for America. He had been to the States before, to New York and Chicago. This time he came to see what life was like in one of the most intriguing corners of the country, Southern California.

He was old. His hands shook. It happened that he had to dictate more and more to his wife and that troubled him. Yet they had lived together for a long time, a lifetime, in fact. Masha had been the perfect companion for him, an invisible wife, a rarity in these emancipated times. Still, writing is a private affair, where one’s own hand is important. But what can one do when it hardly obeys anymore? His wife had begun to listen at night to his breathing, she was afraid he might suddenly die. During the day when he took a nap, she found excuses to peek in and see how he was doing. His son, unloved by him, was much like himself in his youth–the same plain face with eyelids that seemed glued at the corners, the same receding chin, reddish nose, and piping, abrupt speech. He had already been given charge of their household. Yes, he was a loafer too, but nothing could be done about it. Forty years old, some faded women for a week or two. He didn’t want to think about his son.

The snobs in the Writers’ Union put him up at the Bonaventura, a four-star hotel. Of course, they did it not out of respect for him, but to impress the Americans. "Get a load of us! We’re also a big and mighty country!" Mighty, my ass. A country of mice, mud, and puddles. He had recently made a short trip from Moscow to Volokolamsk, some hundred miles north of the capital. He stepped off the train and found himself knee-deep in mud. For the last three hundred years civilization had ignored this godforsaken town with its old, tumbledown monastery, dark-roofed huts, and stray goats wandering its narrow, dirty streets. The whole country is just one big Potemkin village defended with nuclear warheads.

Idiots! Why the hell did he need this fancy room? There wasn’t even a McDonald’s nearby, or any other place to get a cheap meal, the only one he could afford on their miserable daily allowance. The Bonaventura Hotel! Fountains on the ground floor. Elevators speeding through glass cylinders like pistons, making him nauseous. Why all this fuss? Was he a fur dealer or an oil tycoon? Only he knew that he was really an embroiderer, one who fashions plots on a tambour, and how happy it made him if, after enormous efforts, he managed to unburden himself of one plot, then another. But soon new ones would pop up out of nowhere and jump on his back.

The writer was not in the habit of leaving his suitcases unpacked and rushing off into the city. He spent the morning getting settled in the hotel. He realized long ago that a room, like a human being, needs to be honored, however briefly, with one’s presence. It doesn’t like being treated like a mere thing. Otherwise, in revenge, it will inflict bumps and bruises with its corners and radiators, sticking them in the way when one is least aware.

He sat awhile on the bed, touched the bedspread, and sniffed the air. My sense of smell is already failing, he thought. There wasn’t any special scent here, except perhaps that of an artificial rose. American hotels don’t smell at all like human dwellings; that butterfly chaser was right. He picked up the little bible, put out by indefatigable Gideons throughout the country. He looked at its thickness, its unmarked cover. Protestant people read little–the book had been bent open in only one place.

Masha was also there, at the edge of the bed. She, a gentle soul, knew his ways and did not hurry him. Yet he was sure she was longing to run off to some outlet to look over the dresses. She’s a woman after all. Oh, what a woman she was when they first met. "Masha, Masha, it’s good that you are not someone else’s, but ours," as the Russian song goes. And she was still a beauty. Light blue eyes, tender white face with little maddening dimples on her cheeks. She fingers the kerchief on her neck, tries to push away a little cloud of gray hair near her eyes. It’s okay, let’s sit awhile, and then go.

He was driven around town. He was bored by this empty settlement, vast like the Russian steppe and just as desolate. A truly large city, but without people on the streets, only cars and in them apparitions. He was bored with the palms, the many-floored hotels like upright matchboxes, and the freeways.

Somewhere downtown he got out for a stretch. There was nothing much to look at. There was as much taste here as at the market square in Serpukhov, a provincial town, only less dust perhaps. The mechanical watering hoses shot volleys of water at the close-cropped grass. (Is it possible they are synthetic, those damned modern lawns, and the water is for show after all?) But life here is also like an empty husk. Maybe the people do look a little more cheerful. And their step, too, is livelier than ours. A young black woman chiseled from dark warm bone, her skin gleaming in the sunlight, suddenly walked in front of him. He was overjoyed, because despite his failing sense of smell, he caught the light scent of her skin. She got into a blood-red car sleek as a cigarette case, and was immediately sucked into freeway traffic. He smiled at his own roguish thoughts. If he were younger and stronger, he would go after such a woman. But what about Masha? How could he live without her? And right away he called softly, Masha. She patted his hand. I’m here, I’m here.

Her maternal patting always calmed him. The way she touched him now–slowly, almost indifferently–made him realize she had guessed his thoughts again and was a little angry, jealous, and reproachful. Yes, look at you, a little old man, see how you’ve lost yourself in silly daydreams.

He relaxed in the hotel room, lying on the bedspread, right over the enormous monogrammed initials of the hotel owner. What colossal vanity. They lay side by side, he and Masha. It was always this way, together, half a century. Dear Masha, faithful Masha. She was breathing easily with her eyes shut, just dozing. Oh Masha, Masha, a writer’s wife. He had known for a long time how lucky he was.

What meant most to him was when it came to his work she never tried to just please him. As soon as he’d finish his best draft, he’d hand it to her. As he paced their apartment, staring with unseeing eyes into all the forgotten nooks, she’d go to her room, read his manuscript, then come out and say I’m sorry, Slava, but you’re capable of better than that. This needs more work, and you know it.

He’d grumble a bit, but he always knew in his gut that she was right. He’d throw his manuscript into the garbage and start anew. He’d rewrite it over and over until she’d appear at the door of her room clutching her glasses in her tiny fist (he was often struck by nature’s ability to create something so fragile) and, smiling radiantly, say You did it, Slava! This time, you did it. Let’s send it to press. Where can you get such a treasure of a woman nowadays? Nowhere. They’re extinct. It’s certainly impossible to find one among those modern women so taken up with a career of their own that they give up a family. No wonder every other marriage ends in divorce. Only people who need each other, whatever the reason, stay together. It’s that simple. He had seen many useless women around, among his son’s girlfriends, bored and dissatisfied with their lives. Oh, he himself is a lucky dog, no question about it.

How many of those so-called writers’ wives had he known in his lifetime? It’s enough to recall Tina, his first wife, and the grief her demands for constant attention gave him. She couldn’t get it through her head that an artist worthy of the name has one and only one true love. The object of his obsession is inside himself–it’s the blood and beat of his own heart. He’d completely forgotten what she looked like. Only at times in his son’s face something of his mother would show through, a fox’s grin.

The next evening he was driven to a summerhouse in the mountains for a reception in his honor given by the professor who had invited him to America. That day, after lunch, he lectured on "The Current State of Contemporary Soviet Literature." He spoke slowly, smirking inwardly at the incurable naïveté of Americans. Was he so dumb as to say what he really thinks about current Soviet literary pulp? Can’t these well-meaning, simple-minded Yankees figure out once and for all what his country is all about? Don’t they know that in his ridiculous homeland the bastards who are put in place to order him around never sleep? Every schoolboy in Russia understands that, as a writer, his every word abroad is reported back home, dutifully typed and spread out on the polished dark-wood desk in front of Comrade Potapov, the same fat-faced KGB watchdog at the Writers’ Union who authorized spending precious dollars for his American trip. It’s not easy even for a writer of his stature to get permission for a trip to the West. Was he his own worst enemy? Did they expect him to turn into a "politically unreliable," stripped of the right to go abroad? God Almighty, save America from her own stupidity.

He sensed that Masha also sighed and smiled. She read his mind. Those Americans. Those kids that have trouble growing up.

Well, now it was over, all that public bullshit. Nothing to worry about. He had given them what they could easily read in Pravda–a few stock phrases from the Party line. It was the last night before going home. The writer entered the living room. Thank God there weren’t too many people there, mostly graduate students and a few young teachers. He easily tired of a crowd. It was obvious that the group was uncomfortable speaking Russian with him, afraid of making fools of themselves and so they kept quiet, just smiling as is expected in the West. Putting up with a man standing next to you who doesn’t talk is possible only if he radiates cordiality. Otherwise it’s deadly.

The professor’s face was tense. It’s a serious business to feed guests. He shuttled between the kitchen and the balcony, where he was grilling some exotic fish. The balcony opened out onto a mountain, overgrown with low bushes. The writer got worried. Would his stomach tolerate that sea stuff? Masha patted his hand, understanding his anxiety. It’s fine for him, he would just have to be careful, not swallow it right away, and chew on it a bit longer.

The writer sat alone on the couch, the graduate students, hesitating, evidently composing sentences and gathering courage to speak with this famous guest.

The core of his art was Russian; for him the language was sacred. He regarded with suspicion and jealousy those who could only desecrate it, no matter what the intentions. Why are so many people who study Russian so homely, the writer mused, feeling almost offended. Anyone who reconnoiters in a foreign language has to be a cutthroat. I can understand the host, a former boxer, but what about that girl with the delicate hands and sunken cheeks sprinkled with huge freckles. What’s in it for her?

They began to gather quietly around a coffee table on which the host had set out paper plates with food, soda, and a few bottles of California chardonnay. To please his guest of honor, the professor took out a bottle of Stolichnaya from the freezer. The guests stood around waiting for their turn to get to the table. There was neither that animation, nor that special, uplifting mood that accompanies Russian parties. There was no clinking of glasses–here they were plastic, and the writer couldn’t stand the feel of the material on his lips. Back home, with good food and especially good vodka on the table, the Russians say their souls rejoice. Indeed they do! When there’s a party in Russia, it’s a celebration of life. Here it’s a mere ritual of eating. What kind of party can it be without joy!

Having cooked the meal, the professor came over to keep him company. Carefully, trying not to make his esteemed guest uneasy, he asked if he wouldn’t mind meeting one of his former countrymen, a young writer, Anatoly, who had been eased out of Russia a year ago, and now was a graduate student in their department.

Oh, yes, of course, the guest didn’t mind. He had heard that Anatoly was somewhere in this part of the country. In fact, he spotted him in the audience during the lecture. Now Anatoly stood behind the host’s back, waiting for his turn to be introduced. The writer immediately took stock of him. He had hardly changed from the time of their gatherings at the Writers’ House on Herzen Street. Same leather jacket, worn at the elbows, his hands in his pockets, thumbs sticking out.

So, how are you, young man? the writer asked.

Very well, thank you, Anatoly retorted, though the writer hadn’t meant to be sarcastic.

What are you doing at a graduate school? You’re a writer, not a scholar.

I’m studying. I’ll get a position eventually. After my Ph.D. It’s not going to be easy. But then nobody will tell me what I should write about and how. No need to sell my soul to the devil, he said with a forced chuckle.

Well, the writer remarked, don’t delude yourself, young man. A writer anywhere is not quite free. They find you one way or another. What about the dollar? Did it get hold of you already? Do you still write?

As a matter of fact, I do. Mostly for the papers though. No time for real work yet.

So, do you write against us? the writer asked, laughing pointedly. The whole situation amused him.

Well, that depends on who you mean by "us," Anatoly grinned. If you mean our rotten system, then of course I do. Hasn’t it always been a Russian writer’s civic duty to equate the pen with the bayonet? he added defiantly.

Civic duty, my foot, the writer thought, cringing at Anatoly’s words. He decided not to let himself get pulled into an argument. He didn’t give a broken kopeck for all that crap they’ve been loading on a writer’s shoulders for so long. They made even Pushkin out to be a fighter for the oppressed, Pushkin who wrote to his friends that to free the serfs in a barbaric country like Russia would spell disaster for the whole nation. Didn’t he turn out to be right, after all? Wasn’t Russia still reeling from that event? Then again, did anything of the "civic duty" stuff survive the very day it was created? Does anyone read that boring Gleb Uspensky anymore or any other writer who joined up for the public good?

The day was long. The writer was tired, and he closed his eyes. He didn’t feel like arguing with Anatoly, a kid on whose lips his mother’s milk hadn’t dried yet. How could he understand what it meant to survive as a writer in his country? Big deal, they took apart the typeset of his first novel that was ready for printing. That’s nothing. What Anatoly went through can’t compare with my struggles. Let it go Slava. Don’t let it get to you, Masha whispered in his ear. Remember your heart. Did you take your pill this afternoon? He’s too young, that Anatoly, to understand.

It was nice to see you, the writer said dryly, opening his eyes. He liked Anatoly; back in Russia he had thought him very promising, but he didn’t want any complications from being too friendly with an émigré. Anatoly stepped aside so others could speak with the guest of honor.

They came by turns. They were polite and courteous, but the writer saw clearly that they were trying to conceal their true feelings. He knew that although he was known in the West, at least to Slavicists, it was not without a certain notoriety. He had never defended himself publicly. If thoughts about a poor reputation became too oppressive, he kept them to himself. Now, recalling Anatoly’s not-too-friendly look, he smiled inwardly. He knew exactly what they were saying about him behind his back: he’s aligned himself with the regime. Yes, he had written that trashy little novel that glorified Soviet power. And the authorities had swallowed every bit of it.

He had long observed that there’s no such thing as too great a compliment. It’s true not only for women, but for the Party bosses as well, who ate it up. They devoured every letter of the crap he wrote in two weeks. He was disgusted with himself and the literary soufflé he had cooked up for them. They weren’t even bothered by the lack of subtlety in the title Hail the Soviets!, the fools.

How voraciously his liberal friends sank their teeth into this work! You got it right, my confreres! Don’t have any doubts about it. A tsar or some other dictator–it’s all the same to me. My whole life is lived within ten inches–from the tip of my nose to the tip of my pen. It’s high time you understood this. We’re a terrifying breed–carnivores, cannibals. We have no mercy even towards our own wives, sacrificing them to the Moloch of the Word. What kind of woman understands and accepts this? The most rare, the incomparable. Someone like Masha. True, Masha?

She didn’t answer, just smiled gently. Only Masha had such a smile. She brushed a crumb from the lapel of his jacket.

Pandering to the authorities. It doesn’t enter my colleagues’ stubborn heads that they live by exactly the same cannibalistic principle as the system they despise: "He who is not with us is against us." What about compromise? The whole Western world would have fallen apart long ago if not for that principle. It’s only in my adolescent Russia that "compromise" is a dirty word.

"He compromised his conscience. What a shame!" I spit on all these big words. My passion is greater, stronger than I am, and I will be judged not on what I’ve said, but on the best I’ve written. It was the right thing to do–to write that novel. It brought me the State Prize in Literature and that piece of tin, the Order of Glorious Labor. Of course, it wasn’t the money and state honors I was after. I got myself something more precious–they left me in peace to do my true work. Otherwise I would never have been able to see that novel about the Civil War in print. Those years forever scarred my memory with their blood and destruction of all that was truly dear to me–my youth, my tender and gracious world that the revolution consumed. I couldn’t help but write that novel. I had to get it out of my system.

When I brought the manuscript to the publisher, they jumped at the chance to please me, a decorated writer, to find a way to get my work through their very own censors. And they did it! They prefaced it with a long article instructing the reader on how best to interpret it.

So, I’m re-pug-nant, he stretched out the word almost voluptuously. I’m rot-ten. I don’t defend my fellow writers. Ha-ha! No! N-o. They don’t exist, there’s no such thing as a fellow writer. There’s only myself, and everything around me is only as I see it. If one doesn’t believe in this, then there’s no reason to sit down at a desk. If a "fellow writer" sees differently, then he’s mis-ta-ken. The world is only the way I see it. On this point you can stretch me on the rack, break my bones–I will not recant. I will not recant. . .I have had my share of suffering. I’ve been slandered and maligned unfairly. Women have left me. Back in the twenties, I was even tortured once by mistake. All the same, my suffering has been a blessing. A difficult life is a true one. What would I be without my torments? Nothing and no one.

They served fruit. He picked an exotic, hairy piece with a thin skin, odorous, and rather sour tasting. He chose it not so much for its appearance as for its bird name–"kiwi." After dinner and wine, the graduate students gathered their courage and spoke more boldly. Clearly, some were able and worth a conversation, but despite his considerable ambition, he didn’t like to talk about his own work.

The only thing he knew for sure was that each morning in the pre-dawn light, he would sit by the window of his little study like a maiden at a spinning wheel. The spindle would hum, jump about, and burn the skin of his palms. The coarse fiber with its raw edges would twist forward from somewhere beyond, jerking along unevenly. At one moment a knot would hit unexpectedly at his fingers, at another an empty hemp shell would suddenly cut his fingertips. But when he was lucky, it would push forward with all its force.

He knows exactly where the fiber comes from–Moscow’s Sretenka street, the street of his youth. It was then that he was suffused with the voices of this lively Moscow corner. Those voices remained in his ears and through them he tuned himself, by the spirit and music of Russian street speech. It’s all in the language, in a writer’s feeling for it. If there’s no such feeling, there’s no writer, no artist. The right word vibrates throughout a story, keeps it together, makes it a whole.

Here lay another reason for not abandoning his country. The rupture with his language eventually does a writer in. He understood perfectly Pasternak’s fear of being expelled from Russia. One thing they all forgot, those people who gave the ailing writer hasty advice: in the time of Dante, exile was the second harshest punishment; the first was the death penalty. They should never forget this, those so-called liberals, all those who think that a writer should preserve himself no matter what and fight the system. Fight! For a writer, exile is an execution.

He returned from his thoughts and noticed, to his relief, that the others had forgotten him. The young people were busy flirting, and the professor had begun to finger idly the books on the shelves. Everything was back to normal. Everything was as it should be. It was time to go. He was suddenly gripped by a sense of urgency. It seemed this was his last voyage, that he would die somewhere along the way, like Bunin’s gentleman from San Francisco, a rich man in the hold of a liner with a still-undigested oyster in his stomach.

If he died suddenly, there would remain in him the disorder of a raw life, not yet filtered through his artistic brain. He knew that everything that came into his field of vision, finely tuned through many years of habit, would become a work of art.

I must get back to the hotel as soon as possible. I want to get back to Moscow. There my new novel is waiting. What if I die and the work gets lost? They won’t print it as it is. Some loutish, pigeon-toed editor will crawl into the text, dig in his claws and tear out all that is best. He won’t understand, the bastard, that this is more painful than to reach into my belly and rip out my insides. The way to do it, when the time comes, is to go to his office, and clutching frequently at my heart, wait until he signs it off to press, and then follow through to make sure that he, the monster, doesn’t cross anything out, that he doesn’t touch.

And Masha understood it again, as always. She gave a sign: It’s time. Oh, Masha, Masha, what would I do without you? I would be helpless, completely helpless and lost.

Worn out by the long evening but still smiling with that indelible American smile, the professor took him on a little joyride deep down into the garage of the cavernous hotel; bathed in columns of light, the building resembled more a baroque cathedral than a human dwelling place. The writer again felt the impatient itch of the spindle twisting in his palms. He knew that he would work all night so as not to forget to bring to Moscow his last corrections.

The devil tempted me to leave, he burst out, repressing a feeling of nausea as the elevator sped toward the heavens. Anxious, he implored in the weak voice of a sick child:

What do you think, Masha? Has it gone to press? Will I have time to correct it? Masha knew very well this terror that often overcame him– the story would leave his hands and go to the printer’s without his final approval.

You’ll make it, you’ll make it, invisible Masha patted him on the hand. Faithful Masha. Masha, who had left him long ago, more than two years now.

All she had said then was: I’m tired, Slava. I’m so tired.

Translated from the Russian by Sylvia Maizell