Jacob's Ladder

16 A Secret Marriage

(1911)

Marusya spent just a few days in Moscow, but when she returned home, it seemed to Jacob that she was now older than he was. She was, indeed, older than he was—by eleven days. Jacob, with all his inclination to philosophize, had not yet stumbled on this notion—the incommensurability of the flow of time and age, and, especially, the disparate rhythms and cycles of age in men and women. That note of condescending tenderness that he had acquired through the years of interacting with his younger sisters, and which he at first transferred to Marusya, seemed misplaced or insufficient. Marusya’s unexpected maturation forced him to grow up, too. He wrote an entry about it in his diary soon after her return:

Everything that has happened to me up until today was simply a puppy’s ecstasy at the sight of a pretty young woman. Even our wonderful conversations are meaningless, because they are just the dreams of underdeveloped, puerile young people. Now I understand that only manly behavior, powerful masculine action, can correct this. If not, I’m lost. I remember with shame how we stood by the ravine in the Royal Garden, and the moment was perfect, but even then I didn’t dare kiss her. Even writing the word “her” makes me uncomfortable. Our relationship has formed on the basis of interests we share, and the fact that we belong to different sexes, that there is something between us that is purely “sexual,” should not be that important. It’s almost a kind of captivity, and it can only be overcome through unity, through wholeness and integration. Indeed, if I understand Plato correctly, this is the idea behind the “androgyne”—to be such an integrated being that sex doesn’t undermine the unity.

Jacob, following his tried-and-true custom of sharing his deepest thoughts with Marusya, outlined his notions for her in a less coherent form. Yes, she also thought about the subject of sex, and the biology lectures in her studies had made a strong impression on her. From them, Marusya had gleaned that women pay a high price for their childbearing capacity, and the inequality of the sexes derives directly from the divergent biological functions of the male and the female. But this view led her in the opposite direction—not toward androgyny, but in the direction of the authentic emancipation of women in the psychological, intellectual, and spiritual realms. There could never be any equality on the level of biology, since nature had assigned women the role of the continuation of the species, the birth and nurturing of children. This inhibits the full development of her capacities. Jacob completely shared Marusya’s views on emancipation, and even pointed out to her that men were obliged to share these views; otherwise, an intelligent, rational partnership would become a competition, and no good would come of it.

These conversations brought them closer and closer together, and Marusya’s thoughts in some way fed his courage. They finished their exams in June. Jacob qualified to enter the second year of the Commercial Institute, he passed his in absentia exams in the program of music theory at the conservatory, and Marusya received a certificate of completion of the Froebel Courses. Jacqueline Osipovna offered her the chance to work in the Froebel Society as an assistant until autumn. Now Marusya and Jacob met nearly every day; he came to see her at home, and got to know her parents and her brother Mikhail, who had just arrived from St. Petersburg. On July 12, having been detained in town for two weeks because Rayechka was ill, the Ossetsky family left for a dacha in Lustdorf, near Odessa, where they had rented a spacious house for many years running.

Jacob stayed in town. Both he and Marusya understood that it was written in the stars—the ineluctable, long-desired, and frightening moment of reckoning had arrived. The day after his parents’ departure, Jacob brought Marusya, trembling with horror and determination, home with him. On that day, her own parents were traveling to Poltava, to the funeral of a distant relative on her mother’s side. This only intensified the sense of criminality about what they were doing. The Ossetsky apartment was on the third floor of one of the most beautiful homes on Kuznechnaya Street. In the entrance hall, Marusya already felt oppressed and irritated by the dark-red carpet runner on the stairs and the gleaming chandelier on the landing.

“What a bourgeois house,” Marusya said with marked disapproval.

“Yes, I know,” Jacob said absentmindedly.

“I could never live in a house like this!” She felt like arguing a bit with Jacob; she was scared to go inside.

“Of course, Marusya, you and I would choose a very different kind of apartment to live in.”

“You can be sure of that,” Marusya said.

Jacob opened the door with his key, slammed it behind them, then pressed Marusya against the door in a rough and awkward embrace.

She knew why they had come to this empty apartment. Now his strength and passion, his urgency, his insistent embraces, the smell of his man’s cologne, the smoothness of his shaven cheeks, and the brushlike mustache he had recently grown left her no escape. It could not have been called capitulation, and it was uncertain whose victory it was over whom.

The details of this night were unforgettable. For many years, they smiled when they recalled their first fumbling attempt and their mutual disappointment, and how they wept, burying their heads in each other’s necks in shame for what didn’t happen. How they fell asleep hugging each other, having cried out all their tears over their unfulfilled lovemaking, and how, toward morning, waking up together at the same time, they discovered that everything had happened for the best, just as they had imagined it, and even better.

“My wife,” Jacob said, placing her small foot on his head.

“My husband,” Marusya answered, trying to kiss his hand. When he tried to pull the hand away, she quickly turned it over and kissed his palm. “Jacob, dear heart, my Jacob!”

Then they kissed for a long time.

“Let’s go take a bath,” Jacob said, and she followed him down the long hallway to the bathroom. It was only the second bathroom—after the one in Moscow—that Marusya had ever seen. Luxury upon luxury—a white bathtub on cast-iron legs. A bourgeois bathtub, a bourgeois life, but—devil take it—how lovely it was! The water was cold, because the boiler had been turned off while the family was away. They splashed around in the frigid water until they couldn’t take the cold anymore, feeling like young animals, puppies or beavers, completely unashamed of their nakedness. Then Marusya washed the sheet, on which there was a small oval patch of blood. It didn’t hurt—she just stung a bit inside.

Morning came. They were terribly hungry.

“What do you eat for breakfast?” he said.

“Bread and butter. With milk.”

“There’s no milk. Shall I prepare tea?”

He went to the kitchen. A loaf of white bread wrapped up in a kitchen towel, slightly stale, lay in the bread basket. He took some butter out of salted water and put it in the butter dish. Wanting everything to be nice, he fetched two of the best china teacups from the cupboard, boiled water on the kerosene burner, and prepared the tea in a teapot, which he placed on a tray with the two cups. Then he took it to his room.

Marusya, wearing a light-blue blouse, her hair gathered up in a velvet ribbon, was standing by the window. Jacob nearly dropped the tray in surprise—a stranger, a completely unfamiliar young lady, turned around to look when the door to the room opened. But she smiled, and became herself again.

They breakfasted at Jacob’s desk—the only table in the room—moving the books and papers aside to make room for the tray in the middle.

“What beautiful cups,” Marusya said, raising hers.

“Papa gave them to Mama when their first son was born. He died of diphtheria when he was only two. Grandmother says that Mama nearly lost her mind from grief, and even tried to drown herself.”

Marusya was quiet, holding her tongue though there were words clamoring to be said.

“She was already pregnant with me at the time, and her depression went away when I was born. Papa sent her to a sanatorium in Germany, and I was with her when she came back. And she was all better.”

Here Marusya couldn’t restrain herself, and she said what was on her mind. “Rich people can afford to take cures abroad. You should see how simple women laborers live. If a child dies, they go to the factory the next day after the funeral and work ten hours—no depression or sanatorium for them. Rich people don’t even want to know this.”

Jacob spread some butter on a piece of bread with a blunt knife, then put it on a small plate with fluted edges and placed it in front of Marusya. “Well, we didn’t invent social inequality. That’s just how the world is made,” he said in a conciliatory manner.

Marusya pushed away the plate in fury. “I hate this entire capitalist world! It’s unjust. This beautiful cup costs as much as a woman factory worker earns in a month!”

Jacob was bewildered. Such a wonderful morning, such a special day in their lives … The general unfairness of the world turned on its head, so that he was the child of fortune, of a happiness so great he could hardly contain himself. He didn’t want to think that his own happiness meant someone else was deprived of it.

“Marusya, why should we think about injustice today? What does it have to do with us? What makes you think something like justice exists anywhere in the world?”

“Have you read Marx?” she asked. “A peasant or a worker can’t eat a piece of bread and butter because they’re exploited by capitalists!”

“Marusya, I’m an economist. We study Marx,” he said stiffly. The echoes of their physical intimacy and happiness were still with him, and he had no wish to discuss political economy.

“We have to get some things clear between us, Jacob, so that there won’t be any misunderstanding about it later. For a whole year, I attended a study group where we read the works of Marx. It was an illegal group, as you might imagine. But I can’t conceal it from you anymore—I’m a Marxist.”

It wasn’t true that Marusya had been part of the group for a whole year; Ivan Belousov took her a few times, but it had bored her.

“Marusya, why conceal it? Nowadays there isn’t a single course in political economy that doesn’t deal with Marx. I’ve covered everything, from the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, his early work, to the last. Why do you need to go to a study group? I have his basic works, by the way, in German; the Russian translations are poor. But I can get them in French. I know they exist. I’ve read them very carefully—from Marx’s early works, it’s evident that he was a humanist, and his goal was to liberate the human being from the strictures of capitalist relations. In the human will he saw only the reflection of historical conditions, though. He subordinated the value of individual existence, freedom of the personality, to the ideals of justice in some future society. But it seems to me that subordinating the needs of the individual to social interests in this way can lead to suppression of the personality—and that troubles me. No, no, I could never be a Marxist. And why would you need a study group, in any case? Group efforts like that are always a waste of time, I’m convinced.”

At this point, the whole conversation ceased to interest Marusya. She took a bite of her bread and swallowed the still-warm tea. “You simply don’t understand. You can’t, because you yourself are from a bourgeois family. Let’s not talk about it anymore.”

But now Jacob was wounded to the quick. He was indeed from a bourgeois family. His father owned a mill, a ferry that plied the Dnieper, some sort of grain trade, a banking office … and it was his father’s wish that he would eventually manage all these eggs, distributed among so many baskets, in order to provide for the family and ensure its continued prosperity. Jacob was bored by it, and even, for some reason, ashamed of it. Music was what truly interested him, it was the life he yearned for; but his father’s condition was that he only pursue music as a caprice, a whim, a diversion. Jacob saw no way of escape from these paternal demands and prejudices.

Jacob took away the tray, and Marusya was left alone. She was overcome with despair. Why had she talked that way, why did she think she had to bring up Marx? Why this outburst at such an inappropriate moment? She had ruined everything! Everything! What must he think of her now? She stood by the window, her forehead resting against the pane.

He returned quietly, making sure the door didn’t give him away, and put his arms around her, kissed the back of her neck, then turned her around and kissed the place on her throat where the clavicles meet. All the wounding words and thoughts disappeared in both of them. They gave themselves over to the joy of touch, and they built their house of love in the darkness and depths of the body.

When it was almost evening, Jacob walked her home. They walked in silence, because what they had experienced couldn’t be put into words. Jacob embraced Marusya next to the entranceway to her house.

“Husband and wife?” he asked, to make sure.

“Husband and wife,” she replied. “But for now it’s our secret.”

“But I feel like telling everyone I meet. That you’re my wife.”

“Not now. Why should we? We know, and that’s enough.”

In the intimate shared language that nearly every couple indulges in, they called this night, the first night of their marriage, “Lustdorf” for the rest of their life together.

Their honeymoon lasted until the end of August. The Ossetskys returned from the dacha in Lustdorf on the 29th, and on the same day Marusya boarded a train for Moscow. This time, she was traveling alone, with a small suitcase given her by her cousin Lena and a basket of provisions prepared by her mother for her to eat along the way. Jacob, slender, handsome, and nattily dressed, accompanied her to the station. Marusya felt proud that she had such a wonderful husband, and that the passengers were staring at them, most likely thinking, What a lovely pair! They exchanged a protracted grown-up goodbye kiss. Write me! Write me!