I don’t regret the poverty I lived through. If Hemingway is to be believed, poverty is an invaluable school for a writer. Poverty makes a man clear-sighted. And so on.
It’s interesting that Hemingway realized this only when he became rich…
At the age of seven I assured my mother that I hated fruit. By nine I refused to try on new shoes in the store. At eleven I learnt to like reading. At sixteen I learnt to earn money.
Andrei Cherkasov and I were close until we were sixteen. He was graduating from a special English-language school, I from an ordinary school. He loved mathematics. I preferred the less exact sciences. But we were both incredibly lazy.
We saw each other often, since the English school was a five-minute walk from our house. Sometimes Andryusha would drop by after school. And sometimes I would go to his place to watch colour TV. Andrei was infantile, distracted, full of goodwill. Even then I was mean and attentive to human weakness.
In our school years each of us made friends, each his own. Criminal types predominated among mine. Andrei was drawn to boys from good families.
That means there is something to Marxist-Leninist teaching: no doubt social instincts do live in people. All my conscious life I was drawn instinctively to damaged people — the poor, or hooligans, or budding poets. I tried making
respectable friends a thousand times, always in vain. It was only in the company of savages, schizophrenics and scoundrels that I felt confident.
My respectable friends told me, “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but you create all kinds of trouble. Your neuroses are catching…”
I wasn’t hurt. Ever since I was twelve, I knew that I was irresistibly drawn to lowlifes. It’s not surprising that seven of my school friends ended up in prison.
Red-haired Boris Ivanov was sent up for stealing sheet metal. The weightlifter Kononenko knifed his mistress. Misha Khamrayev, the son of the school janitor, robbed a train dining car. The former model plane-maker Letyago raped a deaf-mute. Alik Brykin, who taught me to smoke, committed a serious military crime – he beat up an officer. Yura Golynchik wounded a militia horse. And even the class monitor, Vilya Rivkovich, managed to get a year for selling black-market medicine.
My friends made Andryusha Cherkasov nervous. They were always in trouble. And they all recognized only one form of self-affirmation – confrontation.
His friends made me insecure and melancholy. They were all honest, reasonable and well-meaning. They all preferred compromise to lone struggle.
We both married comparatively early. I, naturally, married a poor girl. Andrei married Dasha, granddaughter of the chemist Ipatyev, thereby increasing the family fortune.
I’ve read about the mutual attraction of opposites; but I think there’s something dubious about it. Or, at the very least, debatable. For instance, Dasha and Andrei looked
alike. Both were tall, good-looking, well-meaning and practical. Both valued peace and quiet above all. Both lived with taste and without problems.
Lena and I were also similar. We were both chronic failures, both at odds with reality. Even in the West we manage to live contrary to the prevailing rules…
Once Andryusha and Dasha invited us to their home. We went to Kronverkskaya Street. A policeman sat in the lobby. He picked up the phone.
“Andrei Nikolayevich, you have guests!”
And then, making a slightly more severe face, he said, “ Go on…”
We took the elevator. Went in.
Dasha whispered in the foyer, “Please excuse us, the nurse is here.”
I didn’t understand at first. I thought one of Andrei’s parents was ill. I even thought they wanted us to leave.
They explained to us, “Gena Lavrentyev brought a nurse with him. It’s horrible. A girl in a Soviet Persian lamb coat. She’s already asked four times when the dancing starts. She just drank a whole bottle of cold beer… Please, don’t be angry…”
“It’s all right,” I said, “we’re used to it.”
I had once worked for a factory newsletter. My wife had been a hairdresser. There was very little that could still shock us.
Later I took a good look at the nurse. She had pretty hands, thin ankles, green eyes and a shiny forehead. I liked her. She ate a lot and bounced around in a dance rhythm even at the table.
Her date, Lavrentyev, looked a lot worse. He had bushy hair and small features – a vile combination. Besides
which, I was sick and tired of him. He talked too long about his trip to Romania. I think I told him that I hated Romania…
The years passed. Andrei and I saw each other pretty rarely. More rarely each year. We did not have a fight. We did not suffer mutual disappointment. We simply went our own ways. By this time I was writing. Andrei was finishing up his Ph.D. dissertation.
He was surrounded by merry, smart and good-natured physicists. I was surrounded by crazy, dirty and pretentious poets. His friends occasionally drank cognac and champagne. Mine systematically put away cheap rotgut. In company, his friends recited the poetry of Nikolai Gumilyov* and Joseph Brodsky. Mine read only their own works.
Soon Nikolai Konstantinovich Cherkasov died. A memorial meeting was held near the Pushkin Theatre. So many people came they had to divert traffic.
Cherkasov had been a People’s Artist. And not in name only. He was beloved by professors and peasants, generals and criminals. Yesenin, Zoshchenko and Vysotsky* had the same kind of fame.
A year later Nina Cherkasova was fired from the theatre. Then they took away her husband’s prizes. They made her return the international awards Cherkasov had received in Europe, among them some valuable gold items. The authorities made the widow turn them over to the theatre museum.
The widow, of course, was not in financial trouble. She had a dacha, a car and an apartment. Besides which, she had savings. Dasha and Andrei had jobs.
My mother sometimes visited the widow. She spent hours on the phone with her. The widow complained
about her son. She said that he was inconsiderate and egotistical.
My mother would sigh, “At least yours doesn’t drink…”
In short, our mothers turned into similarly sad and touching old women, and we into similarly hard-hearted and inconsiderate sons. Even though Andryusha was a successful physicist and I a pseudo-dissident poet.
Our mothers came to resemble each other. But not completely. Mine almost never left the house. Nina Cherkasova attended all the premieres. Besides which, she was planning a trip to Paris.
She had travelled abroad before. And now she wanted to see her old friends.
Something strange was happening. While Cherkasov was alive, they had guests every day. Famous, talented people – Mravinsky, Raykin,* Shostakovich. They had seemed to be family friends. After Nikolai Konstantinovich’s death, it turned out that they had been his
personal
friends.
For the most part, the Soviet celebrities disappeared. That left the foreign ones – Sartre, Yves Montand,* the widow of the artist Léger. And Nina Cherkasova decided to visit France again.
A week before her departure I ran into her. I was in the library of the House of Journalists, editing the memoirs of some conqueror of the tundra. Nine out of fourteen chapters began the same way: “False modesty aside…” Besides which, I was supposed to verify the Lenin quotes.
And suddenly Nina Cherkasova came in. I hadn’t known we used the same library.
She had aged. She was dressed, as usual, with understated elegance and luxury.
We greeted each other. She asked, “They say you’ve become a writer?”
I was bewildered. I wasn’t prepared for the question to be put that way. Had she asked, “Are you a genius?” I would have answered calmly and affirmatively. All my friends bore the burden of genius. They called themselves geniuses. But calling yourself a writer was much harder.
I said, “I write a bit to amuse myself…”
There were two people in the reading room. Both were looking our way. Not because they recognized Cherkasov’s widow — they could probably smell French perfume.
She said, “You know, I’ve been wanting to write about Kolya. Something like a memoir.”
“You should.”
“I’m afraid I don’t have the talent. Though all my friends like my letters.”
“So write a long letter.”
“The hardest part is starting. Where did it begin? Was it on the day we met? Or much earlier?”
“That’s how you should start.”
“How?”
“‘The hardest part is starting. Where did it begin…’”
“You have to understand, Kolya was my whole life. He was my friend. He was my teacher. Do you think it’s a sin to love your husband more than your son?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think love has sizes. It either is or isn’t.”
“You’ve grown smarter with age,” she said.
Then we talked about literature. I thought I could guess her idols without asking – Proust, Galsworthy, Feuchtwanger… But it turned out that she loved Pasternak and Tsvetayeva.*
Then I said that Pasternak lacked sufficient good taste. And that Tsvetayeva for all her genius was a clinical idiot…
So we moved on to art. I was convinced that she adored the Impressionists. And I was right.
Then I said that the Impressionists had preferred the moment to the eternal. That only in Monet did generic tendencies predominate over the specific…
Cherkasova sighed softly, “I thought you had got smarter.”
We spoke for over an hour. Then she said goodbye and left. I no longer wanted to edit the memoirs of the conqueror of the tundra. I thought about poverty and wealth. About the pathetic and vulnerable human soul…
When I was a guard, some of the prisoners in the camp were important members of the nomenklatura. They kept up their leadership manner for the first few days. Then they dissolved organically into the general mass.
Once I watched a documentary about Paris during the Occupation. Crowds of refugees streamed down the streets. I saw that enslaved countries looked the same. All ruined peoples are twins…
The shell of peace and wealth can fall from a person in an instant, immediately revealing his wounded, orphaned soul…
About three weeks passed. The phone rang. Cherkasova was back from Paris. She said she would drop by.
We bought some halva and biscuits.
She looked younger and slightly mysterious. French celebrities turned out to be much more decent than ours. They received her well.
Mother asked, “How are they dressed in Paris?”
Nina Cherkasova replied, “As they see fit.”
Then she told us about Sartre and his incredible outbursts. About rehearsals at the Théâtre du Soleil. About Yves Montand’s family problems.
She gave us presents. Mother got a delicate evening bag. Lena a make-up kit. I got an old corduroy jacket.
To tell you the truth, I was taken aback. The jacket clearly needed cleaning and repair. The elbows were shiny. It was missing buttons. I saw traces of oil paint on the lapel and sleeve.
I even thought, I wish she had brought me a fountain pen. But I said, “Thank you. You shouldn’t have bothered.”
I couldn’t very well shout: “Where did you manage to pick up this rag?”
The jacket really was old. If Soviet posters are to be believed, the unemployed in America wear jackets like that.
Cherkasova looked at me strangely and said, “That jacket belonged to Fernand Léger. He was about your size.”
I repeated in amazement, “Léger?
The
Léger?”
“Once we were very close. Then I was friends with his widow. I told her about you. Nadya went into the closet, took out that jacket and handed it to me. She said that Fernand asked her to befriend all kinds of riff-raff.”
I put on the jacket. It fitted. I could wear it over a warm sweater. It was like a short fall coat.
Nina Cherkasova stayed till eleven. Then she called a taxi.
I spent a long time staring at the splotches of paint. Now I was sorry that there were so few. Only two — on the sleeve and by the lapel.
I started remembering what I knew about Fernand Léger.
He was a tall, powerful man, from Normandy, a peasant. In 1915 he went off to the front. There he had occasion to cut bread with a bloody bayonet. Léger’s frontline pictures are filled with horror.
Later, like Mayakovsky, he struggled with art. But Mayakovsky shot himself, while Léger survived and won.
He dreamt of painting on the walls of buildings and train cars. A half-century later New York hooligans fulfilled his dreams.
He thought that line was more important than colour. That art, from Shakespeare to Edith Piaf, lived in contrasts.
His favourite words were, “Renoir depicted what he saw. I depict what I have understood.”
Léger died a Communist, having fallen once and for all for the greatest charlatanism of all time. It may be that, like many artists, he was stupid.
I wore the jacket for about eight years. I put it on only on special occasions. Even though the corduroy wore out so much that the oil paint disappeared.
Not many people knew that the jacket had been Fernand Léger’s. I hardly told anyone. I liked keeping that pathetic secret.
Time passed. We ended up in America. Nina Cherkasova died, leaving my mother fifteen hundred roubles. That’s a lot of money in the Soviet Union.
It was hard getting it to New York. It would have involved incredible effort and created hassles.
We decided to do it differently. We gave power of attorney to my older brother. But that was complicated, too. I spent two months on the paperwork. One of the documents was signed personally by Mr Schultz.
In August my brother informed me that he had received the money. No expressions of gratitude followed. Maybe money isn’t worth it.
My brother sometimes calls me early in the morning. That is, late at night, Leningrad time. His voice over the phone is suspiciously husky. Besides which, I hear female exclamations: “Ask about make-up!” Or: “Tell the jerk that fake mink coats sell best…”