The Wives: The Women Behind Russia's Literary Giants (34 page)

The Molière play was licensed for performance after Gorky commended it to Stalin. But despite Gorky’s backing, theaters in Moscow and Leningrad were afraid to make “a political mistake”; and although they rehearsed the play, it was not included in their repertoires. In Leningrad, production of
Molière
was canceled after a communist playwright complained that Bulgakov’s topic was inappropriate for the masses. Elena learned these developments from her sister, who was first to know about theatrical productions and enjoyed sharing gossip from the artistic world.

Living apart from Bulgakov, Elena only more acutely realized how her life was devoid of meaning. Her position in the Soviet elite, to which her marriage entitled her, and her freedom from material concerns did not matter so much. What she feared losing was her close family: “We had two wonderful sons; it was a blissful life. But when I met Bulgakov … I realized it was fated.”
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She phoned Bulgakov and thus ended their long separation. They met on September 1, 1932, and “the first thing he said was, ‘I cannot live without you.’
And I replied: ‘I also cannot.’” Bulgakov would depict the meeting of two lovers in
The Master and Margarita
, where his heroine’s story is drawn from Elena’s: “Obviously she was right when she said she needed him, the master, instead of the Gothic house, instead of a private garden, instead of money. She was right—she loved him.”
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During their meeting, the couple decided they must get married.

Elena took her boys for a short vacation in the country and from there wrote to Shilovsky, asking for a divorce. He gave his consent, admitting that he had treated her as a child and now realized he had been wrong. On September 11, Elena wrote her parents in Riga that she was divorcing her husband to marry Bulgakov. In his letter, Shilovsky wrote his in-laws that he did not blame Elena for her decision, which he believed was an honest one: “She is deeply and seriously in love with another man.…”
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However, it would take Elena an hour to explain to an acquaintance what bound her to Bulgakov and why she left Shilovsky. In the end, her friend admitted: “Now I understand why you have left. Shilovsky is the earth and Bulgakov—the spirit.…” There were other friends who predicted that Elena’s marriage with Bulgakov would not last.

On October 4, the day after Bulgakov and Lyubov divorced, the couple married in a Registry Office. Soon after, Bulgakov told Elena, “The whole world was against me, and I was alone. Now we are together, and nothing frightens me.”
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For the honeymoon, the couple went to Leningrad, where a theater invited Bulgakov on business, reserving for him a stay at the Astoria Hotel. There he resumed the novel about the Devil (
The Master and Margarita
) that he had burned three years earlier; he dictated new chapters to Elena.

When at the end of October they returned to Moscow, Elena moved into Bulgakov’s apartment. She arrived with her six-year-old son Sergei and without luggage; as Bulgakov would like to tell, “She got out of the car. A Primus stove in one hand and Sergei in another.”
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The older boy, Evgeny, stayed with Shilovsky for a few more years until he too joined his mother and Bulgakov. (Shilovsky was among few officers to be spared during the Great Purge. In
1936, he had married a daughter of Alexei Tolstoy, a prominent Soviet writer and Stalin’s favorite, which probably saved him.)

Later that fall, Bulgakov began Molière’s biography, which a publisher commissioned him to write. Elena accompanied him to the Lenin Library, where the two researched accounts in Russian and French. In addition, she became Bulgakov’s business manager, a role she enjoyed because it enabled her to conduct tough financial negotiations with theaters, editors, and publishers. Early in their marriage, Bulgakov authorized Elena to sign contracts with theaters and publishing houses and receive royalties at home and abroad where his plays were staged and his novel
The White Guard
was published. But of course,
The Turbins
was his only play performed at home; foreign royalties could not be collected, because Bulgakov was not permitted to travel. But Elena’s duties were important, nonetheless, since she handled the tasks Bulgakov found frustrating, giving him peace of mind to work.

Becoming fully engaged in his literary and artistic life, Elena accompanied Bulgakov to the theater and stayed for rehearsals of his adaptation of Gogol’s novel
The Dead Souls
, occasionally bringing little Sergei, who became infected with her love of the stage. Evenings were spent at home with friends, whom Bulgakov entertained with readings and stories. At night, when he would settle down to write Molière’s biography, she took his dictation. Bulgakov established a cordial relationship with Elena’s son, telling his fellow writer Evgeny Zamyatin, who had been allowed to emigrate and was living in Paris, how they spent the winter “telling fascinating tales of the North Pole and of elephant-hunting; we shot at one another with a toy pistol and were continually ill with flu. During that time I wrote a biography of your fellow Parisian Jean-Baptiste Molière for the series ‘Lives of the Great.’”
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While working on this biography, the couple was “living in the unreal, fairy-tale Paris of the seventeenth century.”
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Bulgakov, who had never traveled abroad, was trying to visualize the monument to Molière in Paris from published accounts. At his request, his brother Nikolai, who had managed to emigrate and was living in
France, described the materials and the color of the statue. Written in a light and witty prose, Bulgakov’s book stood out among the dreary, politically sound Soviet biographies—and this alone made it unacceptable. The editor became alarmed with Bulgakov’s unconventional style and lack of Soviet perspective. Moreover, he found that the book contained “fairly transparent hints about our Soviet reality.”
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(That is to say, the relationship between a writer and an autocratic ruler had not changed since the seventeenth century.) Bulgakov refused to make the major changes demanded of him, such as introducing “a serious Soviet historian” as the narrator. So the project that gave the couple much satisfaction remained unpublished, and Elena put it away with her collection of Bulgakov’s manuscripts.

On September 1, 1933, the first anniversary of their reunion, Elena started a diary, recording events that involved Bulgakov. Back in 1926, his writer’s diary and the manuscript of his novella
The Heart of a Dog
had been confiscated by the secret police during a search of his apartment. Since then, Bulgakov vowed not to keep a diary: the idea of the police reading his private thoughts was intolerable.

In Stalin’s era, few people dared keep diaries or any private records, to avoid incrimination. Elena, however, would chronicle Bulgakov’s career, his persecution by the authorities, and arrests of their friends. “I don’t know who will ever read these notes of mine. But they mustn’t be surprised if I am always writing about practical matters. They won’t know of the terrible conditions in which my husband Mikhail Bulgakov had to work.”
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In addition, she collected Bulgakov’s archive, determined to preserve every scrap of paper. He contributed manuscripts along with notes, such as “To my only inspirer, my wife Elena Sergeevna.”
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Her love of his work encouraged Bulgakov to continue his novel
The Master and Margarita
, which would become their most important undertaking together.

In October, the couple invited friends for a Bulgakov reading at home. Akhmatova was among the guests, and the couple, anticipating her judgment, were disappointed that she was silent all
evening. Refusing to share one’s thoughts was only prudent, however. A few days later, Olga told her sister that playwrights Nikolai Erdman and Vladimir Mass
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had been arrested for writing satirical fables. The news alarmed Bulgakov, and at night he burned part of the novel, deeming it too dangerous to keep.

In the atmosphere of political paranoia and arrests, Bulgakov’s psychological condition deteriorated. He developed anxiety, fear of being alone, and dread of open spaces. Now Elena had to escort him not only to the theater but everywhere he went: every trip was a torment for Bulgakov, and he was only able to save himself by telling her funny stories as they walked.

Coming home after the theater, Bulgakov would dictate to her his new chapters from
The Master and Margarita
, work that continued into the night. On January 23, 1934, Elena noted in her diary that Bulgakov was unwell, in bed, and dictated the chapter of a fire in the Berlioz apartment. By coincidence, the fictional event was followed by a real blaze in their home:

A fire broke out. I yelled: “Misha!!”
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He came running as he was, in a shirt, barefoot, and found the kitchen already in flames.… I woke up Seryozhka,
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dressed him and took him outside, rather—opened a window, jumped out and took him in my arms. Then I returned to the house. Up to his ankles in water, his hands burned, M.A. was throwing everything into the flames, all he could lay his hands on: blankets, pillows, and washed laundry. Finally, he stopped the fire.… We went to sleep at 7
A.M.
and at 10
A.M.
it was time for M.A. to go to the Theatre.
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At other times, when Bulgakov’s dark thoughts returned, he called himself a captive and a prisoner. He could not visit his brother’s family in France and had been dreaming in vain of museums in Paris and Rome; he would tell Elena how he wanted to see the world. “Do I have that right?” he would ask her, referring to his longstanding wish to travel, and she would reply, “You do.”
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In
May 1934, overcoming fear of refusal, the couple applied for permission to go abroad with the Arts Theater troupe. After they submitted applications, Bulgakov cheered up and, as they walked home, told Elena excitedly, “So, this means I’m not a captive! This means I will see the light!” He imagined a new book he would bring from his travels, dictating it to Elena in Rome; he dreamed of the sun, which would cure him, and of their walks in the evenings. “Am I really not a prisoner?” he kept repeating. Naturally, Elena also dreamed of this trip, which would help her recuperate after her recent pneumonia, contracted in Bulgakov’s damp and cold apartment.

By then, both were anxious to move to a newly built apartment house, which belonged to the Writers’ Union, the same one where the Mandelstams had settled some six months earlier. When in mid-February they moved to their new flat, Bulgakov described their living arrangement to writer Vikenty Veresaev, “An astonishing apartment-block, I swear! There are writers living above and below and behind and in front and alongside.”
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In June, the couple went to pick up their passports at the theater. It was a government-subsidized trip and the staff was provided a generous travel allowance, in addition to passports. Olga’s allowance was $400, while the two directors received $500. Called in last, the Bulgakovs were given white slips of paper—refusals. As they left the theater, Bulgakov fell ill and Elena took him to the nearest drugstore, from where she called a cab to take them home.

All-knowing Olga foresaw that Bulgakov would be refused, having told Elena they only give travel permission to writers who can be relied on to produce work the Soviet Union needs. “And how did Maka [Bulgakov] prove that he changed his views after Stalin’s phone call?” Bulgakov’s sister, Nadezhda, also believed he must reform. She conveyed remarks of her husband’s relative, a communist, who suggested sending Bulgakov to one of their construction sites, built by prisoners, for three months. To this, Bulgakov replied there was even a better way to reform people—feed them salt herring and deny water, referring to the widely used torture. An
editor from the Literary Encyclopedia phoned Olga at the theater, saying they were publishing an article on Bulgakov, which will be “definitely unfavorable.” The editor was wondering whether he had reformed his views after
The Turbins
. Bulgakov said it was a pity that the theater’s porter did not take the call, for he would have replied, “Yes, he had reformed yesterday at 11 o’clock.”

Because of attacks on Bulgakov in the press, theaters were afraid to even mention his name. After director Nemirovich introduced Bulgakov to the audience, he worried whether he had made a political mistake. In 1934, during the 500th performance of
The Turbins
, the author’s name was not mentioned in a congratulatory telegram to the theater.

Although Bulgakov was almost taboo, his play
The Turbins
was still universally loved. Stalin and his government continued to see it, applauding after each performance.
The Turbins
was also staged in America, and in September 1934 the Bulgakovs received the American cast at their home. Unaware that Bulgakov had been denied travel, the director told the couple it would be wonderful to see them in New York.

Looking for ways to make money, Bulgakov turned to acting: the theater gave him the role of the judge in
The Pickwick Papers
. Elena remarked in her diary: “I am in despair. Bulgakov—as an actor.…” She sat nervously in the audience when Bulgakov appeared in a judge’s red mantle and blond wig, visibly enjoying his minuscule part. In fact, he liked acting more than writing adaptations of Gogol and other classics for the theater, projects he only took on to earn a living.

The premiere of
The Pickwick Papers
on December 1 was attended by members of the government, who, however, did not stay to the end. The news spread that Sergei Kirov, a prominent Bolshevik and Leningrad Party chief, had been assassinated, so all Party officials fled the theater. As the country plunged into mourning, few realized the grave consequences of the event. Stalin, who had engineered the murder, would use it as an excuse to conduct his Great Purge, which would claim the lives of millions.