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Authors: Orlando Figes
Just Send Me Word: A True Story of Love and Survival in the Gulag (25 page)
BOOK: Just Send Me Word: A True Story of Love and Survival in the Gulag
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Knowing a little about material conditions in the Gulag and a lot about the sacrifices people made for love, Sveta was also exasperated by some of her friends, who had everything they wanted but still could not find happiness or even recognize their good fortune. One day in mid-May she went to see her old friend Nina Semashko, who had just moved into a new house with her husband Oleg. Three years before, they had lost their baby son, but now their lives were starting to improve, at least in material terms:
I expected to see 4 walls, so to speak, several people I knew, and a few familiar objects (old bits of furniture), but I found a room full of newly bought items: a wardrobe, a bookcase, a china closet, two fold-out dining tables, a writing desk, a dressing table with a marble surface and five mirrors, a kitchen table, two settees, and I forgot the wooden double bed. It’s good, and I should be glad that people’s lives are beginning to improve, but the idea that all of this is necessary for life and for happiness made me heavy-hearted. People who used to drink tea from a pan have bought a teapot – it’s a small thing
but something to be happy about. Here, though, they’ve bought a whole house, and yet they’re anything but happy. It’s true, it’s all bought on credit, which dampens the joy somewhat, but all the same. I arrived at half past nine. Nina was finishing tidying up and suggested that I take advantage of the bathroom (done up very pleasantly with a shower). I agreed. Oleg arrived at 10, when I was drying my hair and Nina had climbed into the bath. And all evening long, he kept up a stream of caustic remarks. Nina would ask him to do something (take the rubbish out, for example) and Oleg would reply with ‘Tomorrow’ or ‘What do I have a wife for?’ That kind of thing. It made me sad.
but something to be happy about. Here, though, they’ve bought a whole house, and yet they’re anything but happy. It’s true, it’s all bought on credit, which dampens the joy somewhat, but all the same. I arrived at half past nine. Nina was finishing tidying up and suggested that I take advantage of the bathroom (done up very pleasantly with a shower). I agreed. Oleg arrived at 10, when I was drying my hair and Nina had climbed into the bath. And all evening long, he kept up a stream of caustic remarks. Nina would ask him to do something (take the rubbish out, for example) and Oleg would reply with ‘Tomorrow’ or ‘What do I have a wife for?’ That kind of thing. It made me sad.
Sveta’s own new acquisition was a camera. She bought it so she could send photographs to Lev. ‘Thanks to them,’ he wrote to her, ‘I feel I am almost by your side.’ Lev enjoyed receiving pictures of Sveta, but he was also interested in the technical aspects of her camera:
Sveta with Lev’s aunts. Olga (left) and Katya (right)
.
.
Yesterday I got a few letters and a photograph. The photograph is technically poor, so it’s possible to blame the camera, but, all the
same, you still look really lovely, Sveta, and I like it very much. So on the basis of this opinion and your mother’s (but not yours, naturally!) you can hold your head up high (according to some people here, you look much older [in the photograph] than you do in real life). It’s clear from the photograph that Aunt O. is well enough to cope with her legal worries over the dacha. She looked significantly worse in the last one you sent. The opposite needs to be said about Aunt Katya – in the photograph taken the month before last she looked livelier and younger and the expression on her face was more natural. It’s a shame if this photograph is more true to life. It’s really good that you’ve got your own camera now. What is its aperture, lens and depth of field?
same, you still look really lovely, Sveta, and I like it very much. So on the basis of this opinion and your mother’s (but not yours, naturally!) you can hold your head up high (according to some people here, you look much older [in the photograph] than you do in real life). It’s clear from the photograph that Aunt O. is well enough to cope with her legal worries over the dacha. She looked significantly worse in the last one you sent. The opposite needs to be said about Aunt Katya – in the photograph taken the month before last she looked livelier and younger and the expression on her face was more natural. It’s a shame if this photograph is more true to life. It’s really good that you’ve got your own camera now. What is its aperture, lens and depth of field?
There was reason to hope the intimacy of the photographs might soon become more real. One of the improvements at the wood-combine in 1950 was the construction of a ‘House of Meetings’ (
Dom svidanii
), where, on the granting of official permission, prisoners could spend time privately with visitors. Located next to the guard-house at the entrance to the 2nd Colony, the house was really no more than a log cabin consisting of a room in which there was a bed, a table, some chairs and a small kitchen. But it was a private place: a prisoner could meet his wife there without the presence of a guard; he could spend a night with her.
Dom svidanii
), where, on the granting of official permission, prisoners could spend time privately with visitors. Located next to the guard-house at the entrance to the 2nd Colony, the house was really no more than a log cabin consisting of a room in which there was a bed, a table, some chairs and a small kitchen. But it was a private place: a prisoner could meet his wife there without the presence of a guard; he could spend a night with her.
At the end of June, a decree was posted in the wood-combine announcing the rules for the house: a prisoner could meet there with any visitor, it did not have to be a wife or a relative. On application to the main administration of the labour camp, every visitor would be granted a discretionary length of time, depending on the status and the conduct of the prisoner.
Sveta was determined not to miss this opportunity, even if it meant she had to travel the breadth of the Soviet Union. At the end of August, she was due to go on a holiday to the Caucasus. She had planned to travel to Erevan, Tblisi and Batumi and then spend some time in the mountains. But she now decided to make her trip there shorter so she could visit Lev before she returned to work. ‘My
holiday leave finishes on the 23rd [of September],’ she wrote to him on 13 August,
holiday leave finishes on the 23rd [of September],’ she wrote to him on 13 August,
the 24th is a free day, and then I need to find another six by any means I can (without pay for ‘family reasons’, ‘sabbatical leave’ or whatever); the 1st is a Sunday again, and on the 2nd I’ll be back at work. I decided that I’ll come to you no matter what (unless something extraordinary happens), and if there is any problem I will deal with it on the way. I’d prefer that to wasting any more time in the Caucasus, which could put my trip to you at risk. Do you understand, Levi? I’m still afraid of procrastination and delays.
Sveta left Moscow on 26 August. As agreed with Tsydzik beforehand, she sent a telegram from Batumi advising him that she needed to postpone her return to Moscow by six days. From Batumi she bought a train ticket directly to Pechora. Travelling first to Moscow, where she stopped at home to collect some warmer clothes, a woollen blanket and a bedsheet, she then took the northbound train to Pechora. From Batumi she had travelled 4,200 kilometres by train to be with Lev.
Sveta had permission to spend three days with him in the House of Meetings, a stretch of time that must have seemed a luxury. From the station Sveta walked directly to the main administration of Pechorlag, the same white building where she had been the year before, to get the necessary document. It seems she arrived on 26 September, because on that day Lev wrote to Nikita that he had ‘met S.’ The sheet and blanket she had brought from Moscow were evidently for the bed in the House of Meetings. Sveta recalled that Lev remained at her side for the whole time. He did not have to leave for his work shifts, as prisoners with visitors would normally have done, because the officials, with whom he got on well, allowed him to stay with her. These were blissful days for them. For the first time they enjoyed the ordinary happiness – which for so long had seemed impossible – of living together as man and wife.
Sveta left on the evening of 28 September. She wrote to Lev,
probably while waiting for her train at the Pechora station. As usual, she filled her letter with mundane details, as if to distract herself from the terrible emotions she must have felt on leaving him.
probably while waiting for her train at the Pechora station. As usual, she filled her letter with mundane details, as if to distract herself from the terrible emotions she must have felt on leaving him.
Farewell, Levi.
I managed to get a ticket easily, but only for a sleeper in a combination carriage.
I was at the girls’ house – I saw Lida and Nelly [Kovalenko]. It turns out they’ve already got dark-blue ribbons, but they were very pleased with the red ones. To be on the safe side, I made a note that neither Nelly nor Tolya [Tolik] has any exercise books. And Lida isn’t studying at the moment, she’s looking after somebody else’s child. She’s planning to travel to Dnepropetrovsk with her sister, Tamara, to study at a technical school. I approved of the plan and gave them my address.
I’ll send you a description of my journey. But for now I’ve run out of energy and so I’m going to stop writing.
Somehow, Levi, look after yourself. And greetings to everyone.
She was back in Moscow early in the morning of Sunday, 1 October, and returned to work the following day. No one asked her where she’d been.
Lev wrote to her on 29 September. He wanted her to know that she had made a big impression on his friends, who had come to see her in the House of Meetings, some to thank her for the parcels and medicines that she had sent:
My darling Sveta, all the warmth has left with you – the air yesterday evening was already quite autumnal, and it snowed in the night, though it turned into slush by the morning.
I received many compliments intended for you. One of them went like this: ‘How that girl can talk! She could talk with the dead!’ (in the sense of being able to bring the dead back to life – not to be confused with ‘talking to the dead’). I. Z. [Bashun, a senior mechanic at the power station] doesn’t really get into conversations with strangers but he says he found it easy to talk to you.
And N. L[itvinenko] showed up slightly stunned a couple of evenings ago. He said that he expected to meet an imposing woman, ‘at any rate, much more imposing than you’ (me, that is), but it turns out (and both God and you forgive me for my bravery in telling this), ‘she’s just a slip of a girl’. There you go – take it as you wish. I was, of course, very pleased! Thank you, all you intelligent people!
Over the next weeks, as Lev and Sveta settled back into their routines, they began a conversation about how they would spend the four years until his release. Sveta started it, outlining her ‘ideal life’ for the coming winter, which entailed a lot of skating, skiing, swimming and music. ‘I can’t decide,’ she wrote on 14 October, ‘if it’s bad to think of things that are purely for pleasure, to dream of spending time with no purpose.’
Because right now what I really want more than anything is to be healthy for our life in the future. Conditions are hardly going to be easy and I’ll need to be strong and resilient. Maybe that’s just an excuse for laziness. I usually prefer outings that have a purpose (picking mushrooms and berries or reaching a specific destination) to aimless wanderings. But now I have only one goal: to wait for you. The word ‘wait’ is too passive: heartache drains my energy and stops me from getting on with life. Something you once said just popped into my head: ‘I wouldn’t go anywhere without you.’ That’s true, Levi. But I want the world to be good and interesting for you, even without me in it. That will be a real victory for me because then I will stop worrying about you. It’s not good to count on only one person (the same as having just one child).
Lev replied with one of his most passionate letters. It was written in the first three days of November.
I agree with you that the world is a good and interesting place no matter who is in it, but only in the most general sense. For none of it is true insofar as it relates to you, Sveta. Svet, the world is unquestionably
good, but it’s so much more beautiful when it is lit up by you that I wouldn’t want – and would never want – to look at it without the illumination you bring to it.
43
Do you really want me to enjoy the world in the dark, or at best in the half-light after you have gone away? ‘Not to count on only one person’? Sveta, Sveta, if it hadn’t been you writing that, if it weren’t just your endless selflessness (there’s no other word for it), if I’d received your letter from anybody else, I would have stopped writing. While I agree with the general theory, it’s an example of faulty reasoning.
good, but it’s so much more beautiful when it is lit up by you that I wouldn’t want – and would never want – to look at it without the illumination you bring to it.
43
Do you really want me to enjoy the world in the dark, or at best in the half-light after you have gone away? ‘Not to count on only one person’? Sveta, Sveta, if it hadn’t been you writing that, if it weren’t just your endless selflessness (there’s no other word for it), if I’d received your letter from anybody else, I would have stopped writing. While I agree with the general theory, it’s an example of faulty reasoning.
‘That will be a real victory for me because then I will stop worrying about you.’ If only you’d written it in the conditional, Sveta.
It cannot happen, and it cannot happen because it would mean the end of everything that’s still human inside me. It would be moral suicide, not victory. Whose victory, and over whom? Yours, over yourself? In this sense, to claim a victory over yourself is nonsensical, and for somebody or something to vanquish you inside me is impossible – because of age, temperament and our shared and ill-fated past. And why would you try to argue me into such a hollow ‘victory’? It’s cruel, not kind. Has there really been so little spoken, written and sung over the last thousand years by human beings who have a heart and soul? Svetlye, I don’t need these false consolations; you would be better off, seriously, simply spending the winter skiing, at the swimming pool, and in the country, taking care of yourself.
Sveta replied:
My darling Lev, I received your letter of 1–3 November yesterday. Levi, I didn’t manage to express myself correctly and I don’t even now know the best way to say what I mean – only God forbid that I should want somebody (or something) to vanquish me inside you. When I wrote about victory, I meant our victory. Not victory over us but victory over everything cruel that we’ve had to face, over the burdens that have made us stumble and caused us pain. I don’t want
the pain to make you forget even for a moment all the good in the world – the earth and the sun and the water and, most importantly, people and relationships. I don’t want this joy to subside, and I want us to be young for a long time. Reasoning – any reasoning – doesn’t come into it. Levi, if the world is lit up already, then I hope it stays as bright, despite the laws of physics and regardless of the distance from the source of light. And in reality there is no distance, since the source is your attitude towards others, which means it’s always within you … Nevertheless, I’m right about not counting on just one person, Levi. Life should be taken on so firmly that not even the greatest sorrow can change this attitude, as long as it’s not a small-minded attitude from below but a wise, almost Tolstoyan, attitude from above. In that case it’s far from the destruction of what’s human; on the contrary, it’s what makes us human. I’m frustrated that I can’t express myself better; you might as well tear this letter up. I feel compassion for someone who loses his zest for life on impact with it (maybe love as well as compassion), but I have the greatest respect for those who remain on their feet (if they do so not out of flippant bravado, but through willpower, intelligence and character) … I come across more bravely in company than I truly am, but I try to keep going and I think that’s how it should be. Oh, I give up; I can’t do it. I wanted to write a nice, humorous, cheerful letter and tell you that your letter was like a song to my ears, but instead of that I’ve got angry with myself almost to the point of tears for my inarticulate mumblings. Well, what’s there to say about the weather? Only that it’s horrible.
the pain to make you forget even for a moment all the good in the world – the earth and the sun and the water and, most importantly, people and relationships. I don’t want this joy to subside, and I want us to be young for a long time. Reasoning – any reasoning – doesn’t come into it. Levi, if the world is lit up already, then I hope it stays as bright, despite the laws of physics and regardless of the distance from the source of light. And in reality there is no distance, since the source is your attitude towards others, which means it’s always within you … Nevertheless, I’m right about not counting on just one person, Levi. Life should be taken on so firmly that not even the greatest sorrow can change this attitude, as long as it’s not a small-minded attitude from below but a wise, almost Tolstoyan, attitude from above. In that case it’s far from the destruction of what’s human; on the contrary, it’s what makes us human. I’m frustrated that I can’t express myself better; you might as well tear this letter up. I feel compassion for someone who loses his zest for life on impact with it (maybe love as well as compassion), but I have the greatest respect for those who remain on their feet (if they do so not out of flippant bravado, but through willpower, intelligence and character) … I come across more bravely in company than I truly am, but I try to keep going and I think that’s how it should be. Oh, I give up; I can’t do it. I wanted to write a nice, humorous, cheerful letter and tell you that your letter was like a song to my ears, but instead of that I’ve got angry with myself almost to the point of tears for my inarticulate mumblings. Well, what’s there to say about the weather? Only that it’s horrible.
BOOK: Just Send Me Word: A True Story of Love and Survival in the Gulag
13.77Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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