The Wives: The Women Behind Russia's Literary Giants (36 page)

To escape his gloomy thoughts, Bulgakov told Elena satirical tales in the evenings: Stalin and his Politburo come for Shostakovich’s new opera at the Bolshoi. Stalin does not clap after the overture, which throws the conductor into despair. After the first act, the conductor and musicians crane their necks to see reaction from the government box: still no applause from Stalin. By the end of the opera, Shostakovich trembles with fear; the musicians and the cast only hope to stay alive. Stalin then holds a meeting with his retinue. “I don’t like to impose my opinions on others, so I won’t say that I believe the opera is a cacophony and muddle of music; now, I’m asking you comrades to offer your independent opinions.” Asked to speak first, Voroshilov calls the opera a “musical muddle.” Molotov, stammering from fear, says it’s a “cacophony,” and Kaganovich, whom Stalin addresses as a “Zionist,” proposes
it’s a “musical muddle coupled with cacophony.” Elena could not believe her eyes when next day,
Pravda
ran an unsigned editorial, titled “Muddle Instead of Music.” The article was directed against Shostakovich’s opera
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
, and the word “cacophony” was repeated several times. His ballet
The Bright Stream
was attacked next in an article headlined “False Notes at the Ballet.” Shostakovich was out of tune with Party policy, and so was Bulgakov. Immersed in the newspapers, Elena read daily reports about the closure of theaters, exiles, and executions. There was also an avalanche of attacks on people from the literary and artistic spheres; Bulgakov’s main tormentor Litovsky, the head of the Repertoire Committee, was not spared, losing his post, which partly satisfied Elena’s thirst for retribution. “Litovsky is one of the vilest monsters I have encountered through Misha’s literary career.”
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In summer 1936, Bulgakov completed the first redaction of
The Master and Margarita
. His hero, the Master, who lives in their contemporary Moscow, writes a novel about Christ and Pontius Pilate, and is harassed for his mere attempt to publish it. Margarita, an ultimate literary wife, joins with supernatural forces to rescue the Master and secure eternal life for his novel. Bulgakov, who wrote this under an atheistic dictatorship, was reasserting his belief in freedom of expression. But unlike his hero, Bulgakov and Elena kept his novel secret, only holding occasional readings for trusted friends.

In the fall, Bulgakov resigned his job at the Arts Theater, which was now a painful reminder of
Molière
. As he told Elena, the theater had become “a graveyard of his plays.” In October, he signed a contract with the Bolshoi to write opera libretti. His obsessive thoughts about his ruined literary career brought back his agoraphobia, and again he could not walk outside without Elena or little Sergei holding his hand.

Early in 1937, Bulgakov resumed his autobiographical novel about his experiences at the theater. Back in 1929, he had given Elena a first draft of this work, written as a series of letters to a “secret friend,” saying it was his “present” to her. Having unearthed
this notebook, he was now eagerly writing
A Theatrical Novel
, or
The Notes of a Dead Man
, as he renamed it. The new title reflected his mood: he told Elena that he pictured himself as a drowned man lying on shore with waves rolling over him. But despite this morbid mood and nervous exhaustion, he succeeded in writing one of his funniest works. He composed it with surprising ease, Elena recalls, and completed it without rewrites: “He would return from work at the Bolshoi, proceed to his study and while I was preparing the table, would settle at his bureau and write several pages. Then, he would emerge, rub his hands, and say, ‘After dinner I will read you what I’ve got there.’”
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In winter and spring, Bulgakov read chapters from this novel to friends and former theater colleagues, who found it hilarious, recognizing themselves and their two famous directors, Stanislavski and Nemirovich. Elena’s sister, who came with her husband Evgeny Kaluzhsky, an actor at the theater, also praised the novel despite her loyalty to Nemirovich. This merriment helped dispel the hopelessness the Bulgakovs felt about the future. Elena was “wildly enthusiastic” about this new novel and described it as the “most important” event in their lives.

Bulgakov’s time and creative energy were now consumed with his day job as a librettist. Describing how his talents did not fit his work, he compared himself to a large factory contracted to produce cigarette lighters. His employment at the Bolshoi became a source of additional frustration when he could not escape political pressure even by writing historical libretti. In April, Bulgakov was summons to the Central Committee and abused for his interpretation of the seventeenth-century Polish invasion of Russia. Bulgakov had failed to show the Russian people’s role as sufficiently victorious, so the Party boss was guiding him onto the correct paths. Later in the year, Bulgakov received written instructions on how to rewrite his libretto about Peter the Great: “You should base yourself on comrade Stalin’s formulation.” The libretto’s finale was found to be too idyllic, while it “must have some sort of song by the oppressed people.”
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Describing developments in her diary, Elena quoted Bulgakov as saying that they had crushed him and now “they want to make him write in a way he refuses to write.” His libretti were rejected like his plays. In fact, his native land did not need his writing: over the past seven years, he had created sixteen works in different genres, and all had been banned for political reasons, except his adaptation of Gogol’s play
The Inspector
. He and Elena discussed his situation, regurgitating the same accursed question: what should he do? Should he quit the Bolshoi? Should he try to pursue publication of his novel about the Devil? She replied in her diary, “What can I say? To me, when he is not … writing his own work, life loses all meaning.” Several friends, trying to console Bulgakov, told him that his works would be published posthumously, a “strange way” of cheering him up.

Expecting to live only a few more years, he felt his time was being wasted on unnecessary projects. The centenary of Pushkin’s death that year revived their dashed hopes for this play. Bulgakov admitted that he could not hear the word “Pushkin” without a shudder and cursed himself for ever writing a play about him. Elena remembered her anticipation of seeing this play staged, but now
“Pushkin
is knifed and we are back to where we started.” In March, the Kharkov Drama Theater initiated a lawsuit demanding the return of the advance for
Pushkin
on the grounds that the work had been banned. The theater was exploiting the situation and Bulgakov had to mount a defense. Elena managed to obtain the crucial piece of evidence, a written confirmation that the Repertoire Committee had licensed the play before issuing the ban. On April 2, Bulgakov presented the evidence in court, and a woman judge dismissed the case. The couple walked away with “moral satisfaction,” but the affair had stolen time and energy.

Later that month, while Elena was not home, Nadezhda Mandelstam came to see Bulgakov. The Mandelstams’ exile to Voronezh was ending, both were destitute, and neither Nadezhda nor Osip could obtain work. The Bulgakovs’ situation seemed not as desperate by comparison. But Elena had her own sorrow: she was troubled by
Bulgakov’s dejection when they learned that the Arts Theater was going to Paris and taking his play
The Turbins:
“I’m a prisoner … they’ll never let me out … I’ll never see the light.”

June 1937 brought reports of more show trials: eight outstanding military commanders, many of whom Elena knew personally from her marriage with Shilovsky, were arrested and charged with treason. All were shot on June 11, when she read the dreadful announcement in
Pravda
. That same day, Bulgakov had to attend a meeting at the Bolshoi, one of many such meetings across the country where people were demanding death to traitors. Elena was particularly close with the family of General Uborevich, who was “tried” and shot on the same day as Marshal Tukhachevsky. Only two years before the start of the Second World War, Stalin destroyed all of the country’s military elite. (Elena’s first husband, officer Neelov, had been destroyed earlier, in 1936.
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)

In July, Elena persuaded Bulgakov to get away from Moscow, with its horrific atmosphere of trials and sweltering heat, and spend a month in the Ukrainian countryside, without newspapers and telephone calls. Since they did not have a kopeck in the house, Elena borrowed money from friends and they headed to Zhitomir, a small picturesque city in the western Ukraine. During the restful month in a village outside Zhitomir, Bulgakov wrote
A Theatrical Novel
and the Peter the Great libretto for the Bolshoi.

When they returned to Moscow, Elena made a clean copy of Bulgakov’s libretto, only to be faced with a new crisis. This work was also rejected, and Bulgakov considered quitting the Bolshoi, but could not because they were desperately short of money. On top of his regular duties, he assisted staging productions and edited others’ libretti, returning home exhausted and suffering migraines. Later at night, he would light candles in his study and start revising
The Master and Margarita
.

One night in November, as Bulgakov was working on the novel, they had a visitor from the Arts Theater, actor Grisha Konsky. Bulgakov had befriended this young and talented actor when playing the judge in
The Pickwick Papers:
they shared a dressing room.
Konsky had also come to their apartment for Bulgakov’s readings of
A Theatrical Novel
but, more recently, behaved strangely. He interrogated Elena with questions about Bulgakov’s work and was obviously spying on him. Elena caught him going through papers on Bulgakov’s desk and scrutinizing his library. Their talented friend had become an informer.

That fall, the literary community was shaken by the arrest of the writer Boris Pilnyak. Bulgakov had known him for years, although they had never been friends. In the 1920s, Pilnyak had written a novella,
The Tale of the Unextinguished Moon
, wherein he implied that Stalin was responsible for the death of the military commander Mikhail Frunze. Despite that, Stalin permitted Pilnyak and his wife to travel abroad. The reckoning came a decade later. In late October 1937, Pilnyak was accused of spying, terrorism, and conspiring with writer André Gide, whom he allegedly supplied with negative facts about the Soviet Union. Elena recorded the news of his arrest with obvious trepidation. The following spring, Pilnyak was condemned to death during proceedings that lasted fifteen minutes.

In early 1938, their artistic community discussed two major events. One was the closure of Meyerhold’s Theater and its director’s imminent fate; the other—Shostakovich’s comeback with the success of his Symphony No. 5 in D minor. The premiere in Leningrad the previous fall was an absolute triumph, with ovations lasting half an hour. The Bulgakovs attended the performance at the Moscow Conservatory on January 29. Elena remembers excited crowds in front of the Conservatory, throngs of people going up the marble staircase, ignoring Shostakovich while trying to get through. “After the symphony, the public made a standing ovation, calling for the composer. He came out—excited and pale as death.” Shostakovich’s return to public life, after extensive harassment in 1936, was a sensation in itself. The Bulgakovs, feeling hopeful and energized, stayed up all night, celebrating with friends in the bar of the Hotel Metropol. The occasion gave some hope to the Bulgakovs that a comeback was possible.

That year, the couple became particularly close with the Erdman brothers. Nikolai Erdman, a dramatist who had worked with director Meyerhold, had been deported to Siberia for his satirical fables in 1933. After serving a three-year sentence, he settled in the town of Kalinin, beyond the hundred-kilometer Moscow zone, where the Mandelstams also had to reside. In February 1938, Bulgakov wrote Stalin on Erdman’s behalf, asking him to ease his punishment and to allow him to return to Moscow; Elena delivered the letter to the Central Committee. (While Bulgakov’s petition was ignored, Erdman made a comeback in 1941 after writing a script for the major Soviet propaganda comedy
Volga-Volga.)
In 1938, however, Erdman secretly traveled to Moscow and visited the Bulgakovs with his brother Boris, a stage designer, and Elena relished their nightly conversations.

That winter and spring, Bulgakov was editing
The Master and Margarita
and reading chapters to friends. Nikolai Erdman was present during an April 7 reading, one which made “a tremendous impression” on the audience, Elena wrote. “Everyone was particularly impressed with the ancient chapters, which I also adore.” Erdman spent the night at their apartment and had literary discussions with Bulgakov. “I’d kill myself for not knowing stenography; I wish I could record all their conversations.”
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The ancient chapters, depicting Jerusalem two thousand years ago, were unlike anything in their contemporary literature. Elena wrote, after one of the readings: “The audience was wonderful, M.A. read very well. The interest in the novel is tremendous. Misha said at supper: soon I will send it in, it will be published. Everyone was tittering shyly.” The novel’s ancient chapters majestically portray the events leading to the crucifixion of Jesus under the rule of Pontius Pilate, the fifth Prefect of the Roman province of Judea from 26 to 36 CE. A philosopher preaching the Kingdom of Truth without state violence over individuals and with “no rule by Caesar” was revelatory in Soviet Russia. The story of Christ and Pilate and their conversation about good and evil took on greater meaning during the Terror, when all morality was abandoned.

The desire to see his novel published prevailed over the couple’s bitter experience, and in May 1938 Bulgakov approached his old editor, Nikolai Angarsky, with whom he had worked in the 1920s. Elena recalls how the editor came to a reading at their house and, even before he heard Bulgakov’s chapters from
The Master and Margarita
, proposed a different project: