EMIL DRAITSER
423
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 suffer–
ing 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 appear–
ance 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 ambi–
tion, 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 for–
ward 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 for–
got, 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 oth–
ers had forgotten him. The young people were busy flirting, and the pro–
fessor had begun to finger idly the books on the shelves. Everything was
