The Incorrigible Optimists Club (57 page)

PARIS, JULY 1964

1

I didn't want to leave without rectifying my error. Give Leonid the photograph, the real one, which is his to keep. Tell him that I'm not angry with him. I understand. In his place, I would have acted as he did. I would not have forgiven. I was not on the right side.

I
interrupted my reading of Sacha's letter. In the envelope there was a group photograph of the Aeroflot 1948 tournament, with Leonid receiving his cup. It was impossible to know whether it was the original or a touched-up version. Running my finger over it, back and front, there was no trace of cutting or glueing.

As I made my way along the endless and deserted corridors, I didn't know whether I would succeed in getting out of the Red Banner. I had extricated myself by agreeing to testify, but it was a stopgap. I had no doubt as to what would happen. There were only two hypotheses and I would be the loser in either case. Not giving evidence proved that I was aware of the plot. The brother is guilty because he is the brother. Giving evidence meant knowing about the plot and recognizing my guilt. I knew only too well how they reasoned to have the slightest illusion about my future. They make no distinction between the innocent and the guilty. After the trial, I would be of no further use to them and they would get rid of me. Witnesses are awkward and do not have the right to a court hearing. A bullet is enough. Had I been in Yakonov's shoes, I would not have taken the risk. I would have had myself arrested and transferred to Moscow. The iron gates opened. I found myself outside in the freezing night. You only get one chance, Michel. Seize the moment, don't think, just get on with it. I went back home. I didn't go up to my flat. I had fitted out a hiding place in the cellar of a neighbour
who had been arrested. I collected what I had left there. Along with what I had just brought out of the Red Banner, I had a sufficient amount of evidence and I had rescued anything that could be used. I put everything in a bag and I left.

I didn't say goodbye to my wife. Anna Anatolievna was asleep. What was the point of waking her up to tell her that her husband was abandoning her? She was six months pregnant. She had dreadful pains in her back and her legs and she was confined to bed. I slipped a note under the door to bid her farewell. Don't judge me, Michel. Don't think: he behaved like an absolute bastard; he should have talked to her and explained. You may be correct in thinking that now, but had you lived in Leningrad in those grim years, you would know that there was no other solution. I warned her that she would have problems on my account and should get a divorce as soon as possible. In our country, it takes ten minutes to get married and five minutes to get divorced. The priority was to spare the children. I wrote to them with the usual platitudes one comes out with in such cases: that I was obliged to go abroad, that I was thinking of them, that they had to be brave to overcome this ordeal and that I would never forget them. Can a child understand when his father explains that he won't ever see him again? One day, you will have children and you will realize what it can mean for a man to go away without kissing them, without clasping them one last time in his arms. I escaped like a thief. I thought that leaving quickly would make the separation less painful. On the spur of the moment, I was strong. The grief caught up with me later, when I was safe. It was anguish. I've never had any news of them. I don't know whether she divorced, whether she's alive or was shot, whether she had a boy or a girl. The wall has descended again. Each in his graveyard, but alive.

Finland is seventy kilometres from Leningrad. Igor and I knew this region of Karelia from having wandered around it in our youth. Before the revolution, our father had a dacha on the shores of Lake Ladoga. We used to go fishing there in the summer. There is no other place on earth where the light is as beautiful as it is on this lake in June when the sun disappears over the horizon and night has not yet fallen. For years, we roamed the paths, the forests and
the thousands of lakes between Ladoga and the Gulf of Finland. At that time, this region had not been annexed. The border existed only on maps. That April, there was a metre of snow and polar temperatures. The shortest route goes through Vyborg, but they kept a close watch on it. I opted for the tracks to the north, which I knew better. By day, I slept in abandoned fortifications. On the first four nights, I followed a path that overlooked the frozen lake. Before Priozersk, I veered off through the woods. The border guards don't come out at night. I was in a good position to observe the patrol rounds and the control points. A week later, I got through into Finland. I think Igor followed the same route.

I had myself invited by my mother to the Seder not out of conviction, nor to give her pleasure (I despise these superstitions), but to warn Igor that he was definitely on the list of Jewish doctors and was going to be arrested. They threw me out before I was able to warn him. I was forced to phone him. I've never told Igor that it was I who saved him. I'm convinced it has never occurred to him. Anyway, it wouldn't have removed the resentment he feels towards me. I should have liked him to forgive me, not because I had saved his life, but because I was his brother and he loved me. But I didn't want to get involved in this haggling. I've waited twelve years for his forgiveness, and I've realized it won't ever come. I'm not angry with him. I, and I alone, am to blame. I've committed so many crimes and I've been party to so many others that I deserve no mercy. It's right to pay for one's mistakes. In any case, I didn't have long to live. I didn't want to look after myself and, for what I have, there's no cure.

For years, I was a loyal servant, convinced that we were right, that we had to fight and destroy our enemies. It was them or us. When there's a war, you don't ask questions, you obey. You fight. Each soldier has his job to do. We were creating a revolution. We were changing the world and its rotten organization. We were going to have done with exploitation and the exploiters. It was normal that there should be resistance, that our enemies should use every means to prevent History being fulfilled and that we should use our weapons to destroy them. You are forced to kill when you can no longer discuss, or negotiate, or compromise, or accept. There's
no alternative. The victor is the one who survives. The hatred that was directed against us was commensurate with the hope aroused by the international working class. An endless furore. All we did was to defend ourselves and retaliate. The capitalists of the entire world had risen up to eliminate us. They feared for themselves and their money. The First World War did not stop in 1918. It began that very year when our country was attacked by those who wished to crush the revolution. They stirred up a civil war. They lost. But they continued by manipulating our enemies from within. They had to be slaughtered. We killed the aristocrats, the cadets, the social-democrats, the Mensheviks, the bankers, the industrialists, the landowners, the bourgeoisie, the priests, those who clung to their privileges, as well as the countless others who opposed us. We still believed. And then we were told that there were enemies of the people among us. We did away with them. Trotsky and his gang. The Cossacks. The kulaks. The engineers. And others as well. The more of them we shot, the more sprang up. They had to be removed from our ranks. Their crimes filled us with loathing. But there was no end to it.

As for me, I erased. To begin with, it didn't bother me making Lenin's paunch disappear, his muddy shoes, his creased and torn trousers, his stained shirts, Stalin's American cigarettes and his spare tyre, the bags under his eyes, his pallid, disdainful manner, the emblems of the bourgeoisie: tie, waistcoat, watch, paintings, gramophone. After that, we had to erase the comrades of the early days: Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin, Radek, Tukhachevsky, Lenin's sister and thousands of others who were less famous, and even Gorky, the icon of the entire people. Little by little, we realized what was going on. We couldn't say anything. We were frightened. Those who showed surprise disappeared immediately. We continued. When they arrested someone, they made a clean sweep. They filled sacks and boxes: books, letters, papers, and these fed the boilers. They burnt everything. When they arrested artists, they burnt their paintings and their drawings. Writers' manuscripts disappeared, their drafts, their notes and notebooks. When they arrested Mandelstam and sent him to Siberia where he died soon afterwards,

I asked myself: what can they blame a poet for? In what way can he be harmful? Why were his poems destroyed? None of them remain. They were marvellous. What would our world be without the painters and the poets? They shot hundreds of artists, writers, playwrights and poets. They were not counter-revolutionaries. Their only crime was to be Jewish, or Catholic, or Polish, or Ukrainian, or Baltic, or peasants. I didn't know how to resist. How do you fight against the fire that destroys poems? I came up with just one solution: learn them by heart. I learned them by heart. There, they could not be found, removed, erased. When the sacks of confiscated goods arrived, I stole a few notebooks from the flames. I implanted them in my memory. I repeated them to myself every night. I learnt later that others did the same. Wives rescued the work of their husbands who had disappeared by memorizing their poems. As long as you were alive, you had a hope of saving them.

The passages I gave you and which you recited to Camille: I didn't write them. They are the work of poets who were murdered. I have passed them on to you. Here, I had the time. I transcribed them one by one in these notebooks. I haven't altered a word of them. The only limitation was my memory. I would never have believed I was able to learn so many. There are hundreds of them. Not a line is by me. I've never known how to write poems. When I could, I jotted down the name of the poet. In many cases, I didn't know who the author was. I rescued the poem, but not the poet. They will remain anonymous. Perhaps researchers or academics will manage to piece together this appalling puzzle and attribute them to their rightful author. I know I can trust you. I have chosen you because you belong to a generation that has been spared the horrors we have lived through. We didn't know how to avoid any of them. We have all committed them. Nothing can redeem us. You will know what needs to be done to preserve the memory of those who deserve to be rescued from oblivion. It is only memory that is beautiful. The rest is dust and wind.

And let no one come and tell you: ‘I didn't know'. At fairgrounds, there is a large wheel which the man in charge spins. You bet on a number and you win a prize. ‘The more you bet, the more you
win' he calls out at passers-by so as to entice them. For years and years, just one thing terrified us: that the wheel would stop on us. It stopped on your next door neighbour. Phew, we said. Once again, it's not me. There's no reason I should be picked out. I'm innocent. He's guilty. No one knew of what. If he had been arrested, then he must be guilty. While they were still breathing, no one paid these victims, these martyrs, the least attention and they mattered less than the leaves on a tree. Those who could do something raised not a little finger to help them. Now that they're dead, we don't stop talking about them, asking ourselves why we bother more about the dead than the living. Perhaps because they rouse us from our slumber and demand justice. A long time ago, Gorky wrote to Romain Rolland: ‘No single “betrayed people” exists in the twentieth century.' To declare: ‘We didn't know' is a comforting collective lie. The Russians, like the Germans, the French, the Japanese, the Turks and the others knew what was happening in their countries. No one was fooled. The arrests, the expulsions, the acts of violence, the tortures, the deportations, the executions, the propaganda, the faked photographs. Anyone who protested disappeared. So, we kept quiet. Igor, Leonid, Vladimir, Imré, Pavel, I, myself and the other: none of us knew anything. One day, the wheel stopped on us. We were lucky enough to be able to get out. We're no more innocent than the torturers from whom we escaped. I acknowledge my errors and I am more racked with guilt than Lady Macbeth. At least when you are shot, you are considered a hero and you end up being honoured with your name on a marble plaque. Once a year, they come and lay a wreath or a small bunch of roses or carnations in your memory. It gives pleasure to those who bring the flowers. In my case, I acted out of conviction. You'd really have to be a complete imbecile, wouldn't you? I erased my brother! I erased my friends! I erased innocent people! It's as if I had erased myself.

I don't want any prayer at my burial. I don't mind what they do with me. Don't concern yourself. It's of no importance if I end up in the common grave. Apart from you, perhaps, no one's going to come and put flowers on my tomb. Take care of yourself, Michel, there have been six burglaries in my attic room. Don't forget the first
lesson they inculcate KGB apprentices with. There is no such thing as chance. I find it hard to end this letter. I've still got so much to say. On the point of departure, I wonder whether it would not be better to stay so that I can give evidence. I think I'll stop here.

I bequeath to you the little I possess. There are three books in my bedroom that need to be returned to the library. I leave you my belongings, my Leica and the lenses, my books, my records, my archives, my photographs, my books of poems. You will find three large black ledgers written in Cyrillic characters: the endless list of those I have erased, and a folder containing black and white photographs. Before and after. They are all I was able to rescue. Do with them what you will. My savings amount to 1,583 francs. They are in a brown envelope. Pay the landlady for this month, and the electricity account, and the bills I've run up at the grocer's in rue Monge, the baker's shop around the corner and the chemist on the square. Lay a bunch of daisies on my grave and keep the rest. Do me one last favour: buy Prokofiev's
Romeo and Juliet
and think of me as you listen to it. And take some fine photos. Real ones.