The Road (38 page)

*
This is my mama
: Another passage that Grossman chose to shorten [RGALI, fond 1710, opis´ 3, ed. khr., 23]. Both the manuscript and the first version of the typescript read:

“Marfa Domityevna,” said the mistress of the house. “Let me introduce you, this is my mama.” And Marfa Domityevna immediately thought that the mother and daughter had similar noses and eyes.

Marfa Domityevna could see that the old woman felt timid both before her and before Nadya, that she was afraid of touching Nadya’s toys, that she was afraid of the cook.

The old woman was looking at her daughter with love and pity. When Marfa Domityevna was just a little village girl, when people had just called her “Marfutka,” her own mother had used to look at her in the same way.

*
a strange person
: The manuscript contains a more direct criticism: “She was not bad or unkind, and she cared about her little girl; nevertheless, she was somehow strange, lacking in character (
strannaya, nesostoyatel´naya
).” It is unclear whether this is the narrator’s criticism or Marfa Domityevna’s [RGALI, fond 1710, opis´ 3, ed. khr., 23].

*
the Red Corner
: The Russian word
krasny
means both “red” and “beautiful.” The “red corner” was originally the corner of a room where icons were hung, on the diagonal. During the Soviet period, a “red corner” was an area in a factory, hostel, or other public building that was set aside for quiet reading. Discussions could be held there and notices could be posted on the walls.

*
a cash collector
: A man whose job was to collect cash from shops or other institutions and deliver it to a bank. There was no check-clearing system in the Soviet Union; checks could be used only to withdraw money from one’s own account.

"Living Space”

Written in 1960; first published in Znamya (May 1989).

*
Furmanov and Mayakovsky
: Dmitry Furmanov (1891–1926) was a Bolshevik commissar during the Russian Civil War. His novel
Chapaev
was made into a well-known film. Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893–1930) was a futurist poet and playwright. Unhappy in love and disillusioned with the Revolution, he shot himself in 1930.

"The Road”

Written in 1961–62; first published in Novy mir (June 1962).

*
more like predatory hunters than like people
: These were probably Russian scouts and snipers. The mule is witnessing the beginning of the Soviet offensive at Stalingrad. This follows a standard pattern: an artillery barrage, a reconnaissance, the advance of the tanks, and lastly the advance of the infantry.

"The Dog”

Written in 1960–61; first published in Literaturnaya Rossiya (1966). The downbeat final sentence was omitted in this first publication; an editor, or censor, was evidently trying to make the story sound more optimistic. This sentence has also been omitted in at least one recent Russian publication of the story, but there is no doubt that Grossman intended it to remain. See Bocharov, 314.

*
a foregone conclusion
: Laika (the word means “Barker”), the first living creature to enter orbit, was launched into space on
Sputnik 2
on November 3, 1957; she died earlier than expected. During the 1950s and 1960s Soviet research scientists subjected a number of dogs to suborbital and orbital flights. Most were stray bitches from the streets of Moscow; it was thought that strays would be better able to tolerate the stresses of flight. Bitches were chosen because they were considered more patient and because they did not need to cock a leg to urinate. The dogs’ “training” included having to stand still for long periods, wearing space suits, riding in centrifuges that simulated the acceleration of a rocket launch, and being kept in progressively smaller cages to prepare them for confinement in a space capsule. Dogs that flew in orbit were fed a nutritious gel.

*
phlogiston
: According to a once widely held scientific theory, disproved by Lavoisier in the eighteenth century, all flammable materials contain phlogiston (the word is derived from the Greek
phlogistos
, meaning “flammable”), a substance without color, odor, taste, or weight that is liberated in burning.

"In Kislovodsk”

Written in 1962–63; first published in a bowdlerized version in Literaturnaya gazeta (1967) and in a complete version in Nedelya (1988).

*
The Three Musketeers
: This novel by Alexandre Dumas was first published in 1844. Athos, the eldest of the musketeers, is noble, handsome, intriguingly melancholy, and a fine swordsman—a Byronic figure. According to Korotkova, Grossman especially valued
The Three Musketeers
because there are “so few books about true male friendship.”

*
Kolchak’s forces
: Aleksandr Kolchak (1874–1920), commander of the White forces in Siberia and the Urals during the Civil War, was executed in 1920.

*
the Left and Right Oppositions
: The Left Opposition was a Communist Party faction opposed to Stalin and led, from 1923 to 1927, by Leon Trotsky. The Right Opposition was a Communist Party faction opposed to Stalin in the late 1920s; its most important figures were Nikolay Bukharin and Aleksey Rykov.

*
Budyonny staying with us
: Marshal Semyon Budyonny was a Russian Civil War hero.

*
Warsaw citadel
: A fortress built by Tsar Nicholas I. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries many important revolutionaries were imprisoned there.

*
Oryol prison
: An infamous prison, with a high death rate. Political prisoners were kept together with criminal convicts. Feliks Dzerzhinsky, the first head of the Cheka, served two terms there.

*
Blumenthal-Tamarin
: A Russian actor, notorious for collaborating with the Nazis during the war.

*
Hauptmann
: Gerhart Hauptmann (1862–1946) was once well known for his plays of social protest. In 1912 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

*
they worshipped Vertinsky
: Born in 1889, Aleksandr Vertinsky emigrated after the Revolution but returned to the Soviet Union in 1943. He remained the object of official disapproval until his death in 1957. His first legal vinyl record was released in the Soviet Union only in 1976.

PART FOUR: Three Letters

*
I ask for freedom for my book
: Fyodor Guber,
Pamyat'i pis'ma
(Moscow: Probel, 2007), 102.

*
standing in an empty room
: Vasily Grossman,
Sobranie sochinenii
, (Moscow: Vagrius, 1998) vol. 1, p. 133.

*
so miraculously found him
: Ibid., 413.

*
listening, learning and imagining
: Claude Lanzmann,
Shoah
(Eureka, 1985), page 76 of the booklet accompanying the 2007 DVD of the film.

Letter of September 15, 1950

*
Auntie Anyuta, Uncle David, and Natasha
: David and Anyuta Sherentsis, Grossman’s maternal uncle and his wife, supported him throughout his childhood. David Sherentsis was a wealthy doctor, entrepreneur, and philanthropist, and Grossman and his mother lived in his and Anyuta’s house for many years. Anyuta died of natural causes in the mid-1930s. David Sherentsis was arrested in 1938, as a “speculator”; it is likely that he died or was executed during the following year. Natasha (a mentally retarded young relative who lived with David and Anyuta) was, along with Grossman’s mother, among the 12,000 Berdichev Jews shot by the Nazis on September 15, 1941; in
Life and Fate
she is portrayed as Natasha Karasik.

Letter of September 15, 1961

*
nor in Auntie Liza’s
: Grossman’s father, Semyon Osipovich, died in 1956. Auntie Liza was another of Grossman’s maternal aunts. For the importance in Grossman’s life of her daughter Nadya Almaz, see Part One
.

*
Syoma
: An affectionate form of Semyon—Grossman’s father’s first name.

*
my love is eternally with you
: For the Russian text of both letters, see Guber, 78–79.

PART FIVE: Eternal Rest

*
describes in “Eternal Rest”
: Here we follow the account given by Fyodor Guber. Semyon Lipkin, however, remembers Novodevichye as being Olga Mikhailovna’s first choice: “Grossman’s relatives, Zabolotskaya, and I wanted to bury the urn with Grossman’s ashes in the Vagankovo Cemetery, beside the grave of Grossman’s father...But Olga Mikhailovna insisted—obstinately—on the Novodevichye—the country’s most prestigious cemetery.” [Fyodor Guber,
Pamyat´ i pis´ma
(Moscow: Probel, 2007), 624.] It is unclear which of Grossman’s relatives Lipkin has in mind here. Guber insists that the Vagankovo was Olga Mikhailovna’s first choice; he suggests that Lipkin may have heard of her wish to have the ashes buried in the Novodevichye only after she had already failed with regard to the Vagankovo.

*
the Vostryakovo Jewish Cemetery
: Semyon Lipkin,
Kvadriga
(Moscow: Knizhny Sad, 1997), 632. John and Carol Garrard [
The Bones of Berdichev
(New York: The Free Press, 1996), 305–08] expand on Lipkin’s account, suggesting that Grossman wanted to lie in Jewish ground in order to be united, at least symbolically, with his mother and other victims of the Shoah. Olga Mikhailovna’s behavior was—they believe—motivated in part by a love of prestige and in part by a desire to be buried beside her husband. Seemingly unaware that the main Moscow cemeteries were administered by secular authorities, the Garrards mistakenly assume that, had Grossman been buried in the Vostryakovo Jewish Cemetery, it would have been impossible for Olga Mikhailovna, a non-Jew, to be buried beside him. Grossman has often been compared to Tolstoy; Olga Mikhailovna’s role in his life seems oddly similar, at least in some ways, to Sofya Andreyevna’s role in Tolstoy’s life. Not only did Olga Mikhailovna run the household but she also, at least after 1945, typed and retyped
all
her husband’s manuscripts—even the chapters in
Life and Fate
about Viktor Shtrum and his love affair with Maria Sokolova. According to Guber, she retyped
For a Just Cause
;
Life and Fate
;
Good Wishes
;
Everything Flows
; all Grossman’s postwar stories; the articles “The Murder of the Jews in Berdichev,” “The Sistine Madonna,” and “Eternal Rest”; and Grossman’s letter to Khrushchev. Together with Korotkova, she also typed out his wartime notebooks, which Grossman read aloud. And, like Sofya Andreyevna, Olga Mikhailovna is often cast in the role of trivial-minded wife, unworthy of her husband.

*
I dug the holes with my fingers
: Guber, 154; and e-mail from Guber, March 30, 2010.

"Eternal Rest”

Written in 1957–60; first published in Znamya (May 1989). The article seems almost to have been lost forever, although Guber is certain that Olga Mikhailovna prepared it for publication. Yekaterina Korotkova, however, writes, “As I was going through my father’s files, I came across a large envelope that seemed, at first glance, to have nothing in it but rubbish: scraps of newspaper, and other bits of torn-up paper covered in handwriting. I noticed a few pages—squared pages from a school exercise book—that had been crumpled but not torn up. I read one page and found it interesting. I read more pages—and began to feel upset that notes like this should have been lost. But then I went through the envelope more carefully—and I found still more pages. From these I was able to piece together the sketch: ‘Eternal Rest.’ I do not know what happened to the final manuscript; my father never spoke of it. Nor do I know why he threw away this rough draft—something he did not normally do.”

*
oxygen pillows
: These bags made from rubberized cloth—small oxygen reservoirs with a tap and a connecting pipe—are still used in Russia by people with breathing difficulties. Once emptied, they can be taken to a chemist’s and refilled.

*
They have seen meekness
[...]: Here we have taken a liberty we have not allowed ourselves elsewhere—that of abridgment. We have omitted the next three pages, which are taken up by some rather dull, excessively generalized accounts of a variety of unhappy family relationships.

*
First or Second Guild
: The First Guild comprised very wealthy merchants; the Second Guild, less wealthy merchants; and the Third Guild, artisans and small tradesmen.

*
life has become merrier
: That is, it is the mid-1930s.

*
life by other means
: In “On War” Carl von Clausewitz wrote, “It is clear that war is not a mere act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political activity by other means.”

*
said the Greek
: “Everything flows” (Πάντα ῥεῖ—
panta rhei
), the aphorism used by Grossman as the title of his last novel, has conventionally been attributed to Heraclitus, a pre-Socratic philosopher who lived circa 535–475 BC.

*
And nothing of that hope remains
: From “14 December 1825,” Fyodor Tyutchev’s skeptical response to the Decembrist Rebellion.

*
and the German Cemetery
: In 1918 all three cemeteries were secularized and began to accept the dead of all nationalities and creeds. The German Cemetery (Vvedenskoye) was, from the early 1770s until 1918, the main burial ground for Catholics and Protestants. The Armenian Cemetery, established in 1804, is close to the Vagankovo Cemetery.

*
the assassination of Kirov in 1934
: Sergey Kirov (1886–1934), an Old Bolshevik who enjoyed considerable popularity, was assassinated in 1934. It is possible that Stalin was himself responsible. Stalin exploited the assassination as a justification for the Great Terror, during which he arrested or executed most of the remaining Old Bolsheviks.

Appendixes