Jacob's Ladder

40 From the Willow Chest—Biysk

Jacob’s Letters

(1934–1936) BARABINSK STATION–MOSCOW JACOB TO MARUSYA (En route to Novosibirsk)

APRIL 3, 1934

Dear Marusya! I’m not sure this note will reach you. A good man I met along the way promised to send it. For the last four days and nights, I have been full of the memories of our brief Moscow reunion—after two and a half years! I cannot begin to describe to you the joy it gave me—seeing your lovely but exhausted face—and how it grieved me to feel the estrangement and tension that emanates from you now. I will never forget our meeting in Moscow—I’ll remember it till the very last. There was much I could not say to you in front of other people. They arrested and took away six of us, one of whom turned out to be a provocateur—Dr. Efim Goldberg, a convict like the rest. Half a year in a Stalingrad prison, heavy interrogation. The charge was anti-Soviet conspiracy. They accused me of being the most active member of a Trotsky-inspired anti-Soviet gang. This despite my lifelong aversion to Trotsky! I was sentenced to three years in exile by the Special Council—the most lenient sentence possible.

During this half year, I realized how misguided we have been, what kinds of illusions we have cherished. It seems to me I can put my finger on the very places out of which the illusions grew, the places where departures from the truth began. All of us will have to acknowledge what has been, and this realization will be the only thing that remains.

My dearest wife, the mistake in the Bible was that Eve was not made from Adam’s rib, but that she was cut out of his heart. I feel this place in my heart physically. I am grateful to fate for you. Please forgive me for all the difficulties I have involuntarily caused the people I most love in the world—you and Genrikh.

Jacob BIYSK–MOSCOW JACOB TO MARUSYA

JUNE 19, 1934

My dear, marvelous, TRUEST (as you signed your letter) friend! Today I celebrate, because I received the first letter from all of you (express mail). It is the first letter I am able to read alone, without intermediary readers, in all these months. I’ll try to write about everything in as much detail as possible, as you request.

After Moscow, the second half of the journey began. It was terribly sad to leave. My need to be with you had never felt so deep. Along the way to Novosibirsk, I read Gorky, partook of the delicious provisions you brought for me, and at the same time experienced conflicting feelings—sorrow for those I had left behind at the station, pleasure in my state of semi-freedom, the unknown future that beckons, and thirst, an enormous thirst for labor. We arrived in Novosibirsk in the evening. Although I was prepared for it, all the same I felt a strong sense of disappointment and deep sadness: it’s like a repeat of Stalingrad, but a worse version of it. The worst thing of all is the dearth of books and cultured people. It was just by chance I had the book by Gorky, which I reread, but I realized I just couldn’t read it a third time. During the hour of labor, I made a chessboard and pieces and played a game against myself. My only comfort is eating one piece of chocolate every evening from Eva’s box. As they say, sweetness overcomes great sorrow.

I spent eight days in Novosibirsk. Only one interesting thing happened during this time—I met a young engineer, a former Komsomol member. He turned out to be a first-class chess player. I lost five games to him in record time, but there was compensation. For the first time in my life, I played a “blind game”—that is, looking at an empty board, with no pieces, you both call out your moves and write them down. I thought I wouldn’t be able to play half the game. Imagine my surprise when it turned out I won! If Genrikh is interested, I can send him the move list with the moves explained.

In Novosibirsk, they gave me a choice of several places to settle, and I randomly picked Biysk. I arrived here at twelve midnight. After going through all the formalities, I walked along the sleeping streets to a hotel, which had received notice of my arrival by telephone from my supervising officer.

Today I’m sitting at work in the Fuel Plant, where I began work by writing a personal letter to you. I’ll get three hundred rubles; but instead of distributing bread ration cards, they give you vague promises. Though they do sell commercial bread here, the lines are terribly long; the wait is too long for a solitary individual. I don’t consider this work to be real work: it has nothing to do with my basic vision or goal.

Planning. En route from Novosibirsk to Biysk on the train, I thought for a long time about how to regulate my life so that I don’t get sidetracked, but establish continuity with my former work in economics. I was a proponent of the idea of monographic research in industry. Now I must apply this idea to the regional economy. It is mandatory that I carry out economic research on “the Biysk region and its economy.” In order to do this, I’ll have to work in the Regional Planning Office. As soon as I arrived, I went there. I was received well, but the next day it became known that the budget is already exhausted and they can’t take on a new person. I was doubly discouraged, since it seemed my primary goal was thwarted. I had to take another job; but not only did I refuse to give up on my plan, I actively started carrying it out. The library and museum are good here. In the Regional Planning Office, we agreed that I would transfer there in a few months. Now all my efforts are directed toward finding a room. There’s a little hovel, and if nothing better turns up tomorrow, I’ll have to move into it temporarily, because the tourist hostel has eaten up all my finances.

My work on the book is fascinating. I’m already contemplating with pleasure the different parts or phases of the work. I think that it will be unique in economic literature, something between economic research and a feature story or essay.

Biysk is a small town. The Siberian Biya River is cold, and the waters are ample. It is probable that there are few cultured people here. I am expecting solitude and intensive work. There are occasional tourists. I play the piano in the tourist hostel, and remember my entire repertoire. The city is built on a plain. The high Altai Mountains are nearby, which is where the tourists go. But the Biysk region itself is not mountainous—it’s flat—and it is not a very rich subject for an economic monograph. However, the scantier the subject matter, the easier it is to expand it in different directions. It must be exhaustive—that is my task. I have about six to eight months to complete it.

Well, those are the details you requested. Also exhaustive, it seems.

Tell Genrikh that I love him just the same as I always have and as I always will, no matter what he does or where he gets accepted, whether he writes to me or not—none of that has the slightest bearing on the deep affection and tenderness I feel for my son, who is also my friend. Let him study wherever he sees fit; he will always be my pride and joy.

Goodbye, my dear friend and wife; be strong and good. The motto of our life is: “The times of unhappiness will pass.”

I embrace you, my dear. J.

OCTOBER 12, 1934

My sweet, dear, wondrous wife!

Your letters are arriving regularly—the long one with your description of women’s matters, and the postcards—everything has arrived.

(1) How have you prepared for the winter? Why hasn’t the glass in the windows been repaired? Have you seen any mice? Why don’t you try to get rid of them when I’m not there? When I was there, I managed to drive them out completely—remember, I caught about forty of them, and after that they disappeared. Genrikh has to take my place, in large as well as small matters. I beg him to take over this task for me.

(2) When you happen to mention your past literary commissions, you always speak of them very warmly and positively. But now that they are offering you the possibility of devoting yourself to writing completely, you beat the retreat—“I want to have a profession; that isn’t a profession.” Incoherent and puzzling. It will give you more leisure time, and more satisfaction. Please, elaborate on your position. And send me some of your writings that are ready for publication, or something that has already appeared in print.

(3) Why did you need to join a Party-history study circle? All you have to do is read a book about it. All these little “rehashing” groups of the Party-history variety are unbearably boring and dreary, and a waste of time. I recommend you stay away from the group; just learn about it on your own if you must.

(4) About my health—you often ask about it. I am as strong and healthy as a longshoreman. I stopped smoking. I exercise in the morning. My hands are clear; the eczema has disappeared once and for all. I never considered it necessary to share all the details with you, but now I find I need to tell the history of my condition. When I was combing my memory, I realized that I had experienced the first symptoms in 1913. I had it treated by the doctor for the first time in 1917 in Kharkov. The disease spread, and I tried very hard to have it cured: X-ray treatment in Kiev; and, in 1924, Asya Smolkina referred me to the National Institute of Physiotherapy, for a course of d’Arsonval’s electrotherapy treatment. After that, I consulted neurologists (I was under Dovbnya’s care for a time—half a year). Then I had a relapse and was treated by Dr. Nechayev, using hypnosis again—to no avail.

In Stalingrad, I also received treatment, which didn’t work. But I found a good skin doctor there who recommended the simplest treatment of all: tar, diluted in a special way. However, the tar stained my papers when it dripped off my fingers. At that time, the cure almost succeeded. For the first three months in prison, I was completely healthy, but then I suffered a relapse, and there was no tar. It grew very bad. But since I arrived in Biysk, the symptoms of my “leprosy” have disappeared. I sleep like a baby. There is no itching. And so, after twenty years of illness and constant treatment, stubborn and unrelenting, I have achieved my goal. I have been cured, in part by the Dovbnya method, and in part by the Zoshchenko method—that is, experimenting on myself. I realized long ago that your very presence is the best medicine for me, that you free me from this illness. And not in a physiological sense, but in a more elevated one!

How long we have lived apart from one another! As it turns out, such a long period of abstention is not only possible, but not terribly difficult. Very occasionally, I lapse into physical unwellness, but usually I am fine. Because I live a rich intellectual life, there is certainly a transfer of energy, and sublimation takes place.

During the past three or four weeks I have read:

Eddington. Relativity Theory of Protons and Electrons. A book on physics. I copied out the whole book.

Shklovsky. Theory of Prose. I copied the book.

Kataev. Time, Forward!

Articles in journals on animal husbandry.

A Course in Animal Breeding. (I gave up.)

A book of poems by Bryusov.

Several issues of the magazine The Frontiers of Science and Technology.

Sasha, Rayechka’s husband, sent me the Eddington, for which I am deeply grateful. It’s an astounding book. I devoured it. I don’t understand everything in it, but I have understood enough to be enthralled and excited by it. It’s impossible to paraphrase it, to sum it up. It’s also hard to characterize the boldness of the physicists (Einstein, Dirac, et al.), their fearless thinking.

Shklovsky’s book is good in another way. He’s also a sharp thinker. And I don’t understand everything he writes about, either. I can’t achieve sufficient “defamiliarization”! When I met him in person, he didn’t strike me as such a deep thinker. I didn’t recognize him for what he is!

I work quite intensively, but even so the days and evenings are not packed absolutely full, and valuable minutes fall through the cracks.

The stack of books on my desk that I want to read keeps growing. The books enter my room by the ton, but their residue is nearly as light as air. If it takes three hours to read a book, to reread it and take copious notes on it takes another five. It’s a finicky, arduous method, but the results are worth it.

Write me about Genrikh. I don’t demand that he write me back (I’ve already reconciled myself to the fact that he won’t), but tell me how I should understand it—is it a sincere and principled decision, or just a strategy required by external circumstances? Is he interested in my life? My letters? What glider accident? What is the goal of these studies, if he does not plan to become a pilot? Where is he working? What is he reading? Does he keep a diary? Sometimes I reread the letters he wrote me in the Stalingrad prison.

I embrace you, my sweet friend, with a strong Siberian hug.

J.

NOVEMBER 15, 1934

I’m still thinking about why you took up Gogol. It’s not customary to do that sort of thorough preparation for writing a newspaper article. Have you not tried to submit this piece to the journal instead? The article must contain some central idea that I have not been able to fathom yet. You must find it. Maybe this idea would work: Writers die, but their work survives in the coming epochs; it also ages, and dies, and is then resurrected. The Revolution re-envisioned and recarved not only the present, but also the past—all of history, literature, and bygone epochs.

All the extremists from the past were revived and came to life again—the ones who perceived and felt things very intensely. This is why Turgenev and Goncharov receded, whereas Gogol and Dostoevsky seemed to return to us. People began to read and study them more. Their rich and saturated forms spoke to us. The Revolution likes what is hot, what shouts and screams, and it refuses to tolerate what mumbles and prattles, what is lukewarm. Only Tolstoy speaks for all time.

All of this concerns the form. Now, as regards the content:

Gogol’s world is the greatest foe of the Revolution: the provincial petite bourgeoisie. What Gogol described is not as cruel as Gorky’s town of Okurov; it’s just a limitless bog. He gathered up all the most painful phenomena of Russian history, experienced them himself, and held them up to view for the entire Russian people, with astonishing power and insight. He created an image of surprising precision, and at the same time conveyed the hopelessness of his world. What to do about it? Gogol doesn’t tell us. The Revolution supplied the answer: destroy it, don’t leave a single stone standing. In this way, the theme will become topical.

It’s evening. Still, I began rereading Evenings at a Farm near Dikanka and completely forgot about my analysis—of course, the main thing about Gogol is his divine use of language. JACOB TO GENRIKH

NOVEMBER 17, 1934

My dear boy, your letter crossed in the mail with mine—the one in which I took you to task for your silence. Everything in your letter makes me happy. Of course, instead of reading about the November celebrations of the Revolution, I would have preferred to read about you personally—still, it was a fine letter. I would like to note that it’s the first letter without a single grammatical error. A big milestone for us both—author and reader alike! You have scaled the grammatical heights and reached the top.

Your choice of a future path, I think, should lie in the direction of a technical school. I still haven’t completely understood why you decided to drop out of school if they didn’t expel you. The factory apprentice school is certainly out of the question. Tell me in greater detail about your technical school and the Workers’ University—send me the curriculum for both of them, if you can. Only by comparing them can you really decide. The technical school is better because it belongs to the Aerohydrodynamic Institute. The Workers’ University could suddenly decide to assign you some very narrow specialization, and you’d end up not knowing how to cope with that. The technical school is better, but find out more about it. Tell me how you intend to get accepted there. Who will give you a recommendation? And where is it easier to get admitted?

I bought you a suit and a coat of light summer cloth. I’m trying to find someone who will be able to pass the package on to you.

I have learned how to darn socks and mend sheets and underwear. I want very much for you to learn how to do this, too. When you learn how, you will start to be very careful with things. You won’t allow a single large hole to appear, and you’ll repair your underwear as soon as it starts to show wear and tear. Let me know how you manage with it.

Do you take cold sponge baths in the morning? I do, every day. And I often do exercises to the radio. I play volleyball when I can …

You don’t say much about Mama. I know there’s been some conflict, if only a small one. You should tell me about it. Who are your friends? Tell me about them, and what their interests are.

I press your hand warmly.

Your J. JACOB TO MARUSYA

NOVEMBER 25, 1934

You ask about my household affairs. I’ll tell you. First, I buy commercial bread, not subsidized. You can buy it here easily now; there’s no standing in line. It used to be hard to come by. When there are interruptions in the supply, I have a stash of dried bread that the landlady made. There was such a shortage recently, and I ate dried bread from my sack of provisions for a whole week. When it was almost gone, they opened the bakery. Now I’m building up a supply of dried bread again. Moreover, I was given eight kilos of flour at work, and this will also become part of the emergency supply, in case of shortages. I eat in the House of Workers’ Education. The first course costs 60–80 kopecks, and the main dish, with meat, costs 1.50 to 1.80 rubles.

I’ve been working in the Butter Trust for nearly a month already, and I still haven’t received my salary. They promise to give it to me tomorrow. I eat breakfast and lunch at home—bread with the same butter they give me at work. All in all, I eat quite well. I still don’t have any electricity. I’m waiting for them to give me my pay.

My room is very warm. I’m sitting here writing you wearing only a shirt. The windows in Biysk are made without any ventilation panes, but I have an air vent in the wall. After an evening of work by the light of the kerosene lamp, the air is very bad. It will be much better with electricity.

In the last issue of New World, there is an excellent article about a modern family in Germany. You would relish reading it as much as I did. It addresses all the issues that especially interest you, and the approaches of all the various schools of German educational ideologists are cited here, too. Among them you will find many who share your own views. It will be especially interesting for you to discover these faraway kindred spirits.

The article contains a long bibliography on this issue (in German). Read Kellerman as soon as possible, for advice about further reading.

I will send you this issue. There are many things I could add to what the author has said. The article gave me an interesting idea—to write a book about women’s labor in various countries. If you would like to take up this theme, I am ready to offer you my secret co-authorship.

I read your review in Our Achievements about the partisan collection. I would like to see a more detailed explication of the book itself. Reviews seldom inspire one to read a book; they often end up as substitutes for a book, and for this reason should be more detailed and exhaustive.

I embrace you, my marvelous friend. J.

JANUARY 30, 1935

Yesterday I received your letter of January 22 about Genrikh’s illness. His heredity isn’t bad, so his body will be able to cope with it. Our financial situation will improve, and with it his diet. I’ll be sending you butter now every month—eight or ten pounds of it. I already sent you two shipments: one on January 16 with ten pounds, and another on the 26th with four. I’m afraid the first shipment might get lost in the mail: it was not registered, and I had to send it without declaring the value. The second will reach you: I sent it registered with a declared value of sixty rubles. If I get a notice that it has been received, I’ll send you the next shipment. I have sixty rubles set aside for the next one. As of the beginning of February, I’m going to be working as the choir director at the social club. I requested two hundred rubles. They apologized, but could only pay me one hundred, saying they would supplement it in some other way. I tentatively agreed. I think I’ll be earning what I am worth. In addition to the butter, I can still send you a hundred rubles a month. With this support, I think we will be able to help Genrikh recover very quickly from his illness. Write me and tell me what condition the butter is in when it reaches you. Altai butter is considered to be the best. Tell me what kind you like most—sweet, salty, or clarified.

I already wrote you that nothing came of the English lessons. I was told that whoever had given permission for the classes later withdrew it. But how wonderful it would have been to give a language course in the library!

My monthly budget breaks down like this: Dinner is expensive (three rubles a day). Bread costs one ruble a day, and the rest of the food for one day costs another ruble. Thus, about 150–160 rubles a month go for food. The room is twenty rubles; heating, twenty rubles. The wash, bathhouse, kerosene, and other incidentals come to about thirty rubles a month. It all adds up to 220–230 a month. My salary is supposed to be 350, but in fact it is 310.

Tell me about where you eat, where Genrikh takes his meals, how much lunch costs, what kind of nourishment you are getting.

I’ve started taking a keen interest in history. I’m reading a wonderful book by Mehring: The History of Germany. I regret that I didn’t discover this book years ago. I delight in every line. In his analysis of the Middle Ages, the papacy, and Christianity, there is an enormous breadth of generalization.

My incidental reading is four volumes of the tiresome Jean-Christophe, the curious French writer Giraudoux (that is who Olesha takes his cues from), Masuccio Salernitano (a contemporary of Boccaccio), and Schopenhauer on the essence of music. Interesting, but somehow fails to elaborate on some very important points.

I work on my story “Man and Things.” It’s expanding, much to my chagrin. It’s already nearly a novella, about forty or fifty pages. The work is going very slowly. I polish word by word, phrase by phrase. Every day I read it ten times over—no, countless times. The plot has already assumed its final shape; now I need to work on the details, the characters, who must be revealed in passing, through precise, incisive traits. The erotic scene came out very well, I thought.

Adieu. When will I finally get word that you have received the butter? I can’t wait. J.

FEBRUARY 8, 1935

You write that my political evolution estranges me from you, that the fissure that has been present all these years is deepening. That is because we cannot have a deep and serious conversation. I await the time when we can converse and be together again, not only in letters but in person. I would be able to allay many of your anxieties. You understood me wrong when I said that there was no sense in attending the Party-history study circle. If you have decided to take up that study, you by all means should. There is nothing wrong with that. There cannot ever be anything wrong in learning new things. The current level of teaching is not up to par, in my opinion. I could be wrong, of course. When you begin to study, write and tell me whether it is interesting.

Forty-five years old is nothing! Now it is already clear that even at sixty-five I will be the same person I am today. With the years, you mature, your capacity for work increases, and, to be honest, you become smarter. We’ll live to be at least seventy.

… books on literature. Four volumes of Kogan. The History of Modern Russian Literature. I took it only because of Bryusov, who has become a beloved poet of mine, but I ended up reading the whole book. I am learning a great deal that I should have learned long ago. Kogan’s study is not deep, but extremely packed with material and even ideas that he has evidently borrowed from others.

And Lunacharsky’s On Literature and Art is lying on the table, waiting its turn. I try to keep myself in check—otherwise, I would have another enormous stack of books about natural history, about physics. Nonetheless, The History of the Continents (about geography) is already on my desk, waiting to be read. History will occupy me at least until spring, or maybe even summer. I’m in the Middle Ages, and there is still Russian and modern history to go. I’m in a terrible hurry, as though I don’t have much time to live, or as though exams are coming up. And from every book I read, something remains in my notes.

I liked very much the part about the dispute over whether Gorky is a proletarian writer or not. Lunacharsky writes that you can’t create a standard of measure for a proletarian writer and apply it to every individual to see whether he fits. Gorky is an enormous phenomenon in literature, and in fact you have to do the opposite: with Gorky as your point of departure, construct your profile of a proletarian writer. It’s not standards of measure that create things, but things that give rise to standards of measure.

I once read Andreyev, and Sologub, and Bryusov, and Balmont, and only now, when I’m reading this book, do all the disparate impressions arrange themselves into some coherent system. The system emerged because all of them—the former—are now illuminated by the light that the searchlight of the Revolution throws on them.

Did you receive the letters with the passage by Sterne on the erotic relationship, the description of my morning ablutions, how I am wearing socks with holes in them, with an insert of rough sketches with Greek phrases, a poem by Selvinsky, a tender letter in which I wrote about the aroma of poverty, a long political letter that ended with Goethe’s line “Alles ist gesagt”? I cannot come up with a system—perhaps I should begin to number the letters again, as we used to do once upon a time?

Let me know which of these names is most fitting for a story:

The subtitle will be: “A Story of Doing.”

“Man and Things”

“Things and Man”

“Things: Masters and Slaves”

You wrote nothing about Genrikh!

I would write more, but it’s already five o’clock. I’m hurrying to the club to practice with the choir. It’s the third week they have invited me to lead it. I embrace you, my dear. J. JACOB TO HIS SISTER EVA

FEBRUARY 14, 1935

My dear Eva! Your letter made me very, very happy. From it I was able to gather that the dark clouds have dispersed somewhat. I write Mama, knowing that she will share everything with you. But, of course, there are things I don’t share with Mama. I know from her about your home affairs, and I assume that you don’t quite share everything with her. The withholding of information has been hanging over our heads, as close as we are, for many years already.

I’ll tell you about myself in a few short words. I had many difficulties with work. I changed jobs many times in the space of a year. I had no idea how adept I was at running an obstacle race! I worked as an accountant, an economist, a music teacher, a singing teacher, and I even taught accordion, which I had never laid eyes on before in my life. Now I’m the pianist in a dance class and have become a specialist in the foxtrot, all the waltzes (Boston, English, American), tango, and rumba. I can bear witness to the fact that the “foxtrotization” of Biysk is happening at a remarkably quick pace. Entire offices and organizations, from couriers to chairmen, have signed up for dance classes. People as respectable as the chairman of the Butter Trust, the local public prosecutor, and the chief of the local police all do the foxtrot! Soon, most likely, the banks will get on board. Respectable people hide their embarrassment behind the pretext of collectivity—the whole collective dances, and it’s awkward being left out.

I was recently at a party held by some acquaintances. The hostess, who was celebrating her name day, invited me. The dinner was unbelievably sumptuous, with twenty different kinds of hors d’oeuvres, including such exotic dishes as pickled cabbage, pickled pumpkin, and beets. Provincial amusements are very limited. There is a great deal of bad wine and food, and loudness is a surrogate for good cheer and merrymaking. The louder the merrier. It’s difficult to refuse an invitation to drink, but I was staunch in my refusal, and stopped after two small glasses. Do you remember the Kiev cherry brandy that Dunya used to make? I recall that it was the best of all drinks—in color, taste, aroma, strength.

They danced the foxtrot, and I played on a dilapidated old piano. They danced in furs, with the fur turned inside out. They sang and shouted out such masterpieces as “From a Far, Far Land,” “The Days of Our Lives,” and other examples of musical paleontology. I played the dancers an impossible mishmash of melodies, whatever came into my head.

At three o’clock, with enormous pleasure, I returned alone to my room. I never suffer from boredom except on those evenings when I’m expected to have a good time. Then I feel I’ve fallen into some late-nineteenth-century mediocre Russian novel. These are the Russian provinces—and it’s as though nothing has changed since the time of Ostrovsky. But I’m running off at the mouth, as my habit has been with you from days of old … And it’s been so long since we talked—oh, how long. I don’t know whether you saw it, but there was a poem in the newspaper that went: “… work gave me knowledge, and that’s not all; my brain seethes with Marx’s Das Kapital.”

Although there are fewer pressures in my life in Biysk than there were in Stalingrad, I recall the STP as a very interesting time, but I feel indignant about it. I did much valuable work there—an economic report about the reconstruction of the plant for a new model of tractor, the STP No. 3; a city planning project for a settlement; I wrote an article for an industrial journal on the popular economic significance of the STP (calculating the effects of the STP on the popular economy); an essay on the initial phase, etc. Being exposed to the American style of working turned out to be interesting and useful.

But, for the most part, I have become disenchanted with economics. I read many books in new disciplines, and each time I regret the specialization I chose. I became disappointed in it even before it became disappointed in me. I recall with distaste the economic Mount Olympus that I was so enamored of in 1928 and ’29. I remember the battles in the State Planning Committee, the leading lights of the political philistines, who, during those years before the storm, understood as much about the political outlook as blind puppies. The country was about to take a giant leap into the unknown, which demanded courage and decisiveness, and they answered everything with their splendid “abstaining from voting.” Now they are all silent, not only because they have no political language, but because they have absolutely nothing to say.

Long before the events in my own life occurred, I acknowledged my old mistakes; but I still can’t consider myself to be one of the nonpartisan Bolsheviks, following Marusya, who tries to pull me in that direction with all the passion of her nature. I regret that I’m unable. It would be easier if I could march in step with the times, with society, with my family. It’s unfortunate that I could have been able to work fruitfully, for the good of the country, but that under the circumstances I’m unable to do anything. From time to time, there is a false note that grates on my ear. It’s sad that almost none of the people with whom I could talk as easily and get along with as naturally as you are left on earth.

Be gentle with Marusya, and don’t judge her harshly. All her unhappiness, and many of Genrikh’s problems, were caused by me. I always feel guilty that I could not have provided them with a peaceful and dignified existence. I bow down before your husband, whom I always underestimated, though now I understand the depths of his nobility, and wisdom, and self-sacrifice, and all those qualities that are lacking in me. JACOB TO MARUSYA

FEBRUARY 16, 1935

After work, I went skating. It was the third time I’ve been out on the ice, and after the mishaps of the first two times, I felt so confident and strong today that I did ten circles around the rink. I had tea at home, and all evening put together a chronology of the music of the Middle Ages. I am in desperate need of books.

The last two postcards were so unpleasant, and upset me so much, that I immediately decided not to answer right away, so as not to give expression to rash feelings or ill-considered thoughts. Now enough time has passed so that I am able to answer calmly, and, possibly, in a humorous vein …

Judge for yourself. Here’s what you wrote: “You’re smarter than everyone else, aren’t you … stubborn as a mule!” (I can’t even believe you would use such a phrase.)

“… Your obstinacy … If you don’t want to, you don’t want to!

“Your insurmountable obstinacy …

“And I’ve become stubborn as well…”

There was another one, a letter, long before these postcards. The letter with the “necessary cruelties.” I read it, and my pride and self-esteem were sharply injured. But I struggled against this bitterness and pretended I hadn’t received it. After that, I wrote everything in the same even tone, with equanimity.

Dear friend, please understand me. Every remark you make to me is valuable and instructive, but you have more effective words at your disposal than those you have used. That is not the style, or the tone, that will reach me and evoke the desired response. A straightforward, friendly tone is all that’s needed. Not this “stubborn as a mule,” “pigheaded,” etc. That language is not in keeping with your style, and it is not worthy of our (I say with bold certainty) exemplary spousal and amicable relations.

I wanted to write in a gentle tone, in order to protect your sense of self-worth and dignity, and in order not to offend you with some sharp nuance or careless turn of phrase. If you truly find my words to be affectations, unwanted impositions, understand that it is only due to stylistic awkwardness on my part. Don’t take the letter as it came out, but as I wanted it to be. This one time, judge me not by the results, but by my intentions. I am certain that my closing salutations will not give rise to dissonance when I write that I embrace you heartily, and kiss you deeply, and still long for a true and authentic relationship with you. J.

FEBRUARY 28, 1935

My dear one, I received the postcard in which you write that your bad working conditions are causing you great anxiety. What can you do if your high qualifications, your extensive knowledge, are not valued or required? The fault does not lie with you; it’s because the government has little interest in culture. More specifically, it demands culture that is truncated, “pragmatically oriented,” “useful” to its own needs. This is understandable: the government is seeking new cultural forms, and this is a difficult process.

In March, I may send you at least as much as I sent in February, so keep this in mind when you’re looking for a new job. I already wrote you about my new earnings. If nothing changes, my affairs are going superbly, and I will be grateful my entire life for the fact that the Butter Trust first hired me, then fired me six months later. All the more since I’ve continued to do some paperwork for them in exchange for butter rather than money, and I sent it immediately through the mail to you. My life here is ideal—there are no other words for it.

In the morning, I get up and read. I work at least five hours. My job starts in the evening. I’ve arranged things thus: the club pays two hundred, and the two technical schools pay 250. If everything stays the same … But my circumstances are subject to change. If I hadn’t taken up music, I would never have found work here at all.

About my studies. I am delving into Darwinism, into biology. I have learned remarkable things, very significant. I move along at a rapid clip—I read a single thick scientific work in one morning, and during the next two I reread it and take my copious notes. And on to the next one.

About letters. Fewer and fewer people I was once close to, even the nearest and dearest, answer my letters now. I tried once more to write to Miron—I sent him Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto. A month has passed, and still no letter. Is he avoiding me? Write me if you have any news of him. Perhaps I should stop trying to contact him?

When you receive a parcel, please confirm it to me not in vague terms (“I received both the butter and the money”), but very specifically—how many pounds and on what date; there are several packages and transfers on the way at the same time, and I need to know which of them you’ve received.

I beg you, do not forget to do this for me. And although I am reprimanding you severely for your lapse, nevertheless I conclude with some lines from Selvinsky’s Fur Trade:

My little source of love and mirth,

How marvelous that you agreed

To spend your precious time on earth.

J.

MAY 2, 1935

My dearest, my little one, what has happened? There has never before been such a long disruption in our correspondence. You wrote me your last letter on March 25; then there was a telegram that your letter would be delayed—and that was the last I heard. I have a presentiment of some sort of mishap or misfortune that you want to conceal from me. I left the most vulnerable part of my existence behind in Moscow—I never forget that.

I went to send a telegram several times, but every time I decided against it—I didn’t want to distress you any more than you already are. I write you regularly; instead of a letter, on April 7 I sent you greetings (with money) through Konstantinovsky. I don’t know whether the money reached you.

A month without news of you is so hard! And, as if by coincidence, I haven’t heard from the rest of the family, either. I’m very concerned—has something happened? I miss all of you terribly. The thought of Genrikh is painful to me, and in the last letter, when I gave way to this feeling, I wrote several words I shouldn’t have.

My dear, wonderful friend, what should I write you? I feel that dark clouds have covered my existence again. What is happening with you, with Genrikh? I feel so lost and alienated in the Siberian expanses, and I am conscious of being absolutely helpless. Moreover, my longtime friend eczema has returned. I have the feeling that it returned because I so long for your touch.

I embrace you, my girl. Please, write me more often.

Your J.

NOVEMBER 23, 1935

Working in a bank … It’s not terribly hard, in fact. I’ve never worked in finance, and if I was able to master all the skills necessary for the job within a month, it means it isn’t a real profession. Any half-intelligent person could do the same. And this is a pity. I would like to sequester myself from dilettantes and nonspecialists through my profession. In recent years, I’ve become professionally disappointed.

A departmental economist is a clerk, an educated pencil-pusher. When I entered this profession, I thought about economic research, and writing about it, in an academic environment. This did not work out, for both general and personal reasons.

I beg you, find a free minute and go to October 25 Street (I don’t know the real name), Bldg. 10/2, Literary Consultancy of the State Publishing House, and find out whether the contest has already ended. If not, please pass along my three stories to them in an envelope.

NOVEMBER 28, 1935

… Now, about the parallels you see between Ehrenburg and Ostrovsky. In his book about Dostoevsky, André Gide expresses indignation at people who reduce writers to one thesis or idea, when the best thing about them is their complexity. He is delighted with the contradictions and intricacies in Dostoevsky’s writing. The best thing in life is complexity. In N. Ostrovsky’s case (How the Steel Was Tempered), it’s impossible not to see that, as literature, the book is weak and insubstantial, and that the style is a mixture of tastelessness and lack of culture. Ostrovsky is a miracle of will, of self-aggrandizement, let’s say—a genius at overcoming misfortune. That’s the best thing about the book. This is the only way the book captures the attention and sympathy of the reader. The rest of the book is very, very poor. The strongest thing in the book is its autobiographical dimension. His second book, with an invented plot, will be weaker. And how could someone who never had time to learn write a good book in the first place? When another such novice—the baker Gorky—began to write, he had already managed to digest an entire library. He was already inundated with literature. Writers are shaped either by life + books, or only books; but never life without books.

You don’t have enough objectivity to evaluate Ehrenburg. I know that you evaluate him in light of one White Guard phrase about the national flag on an automobile, which he wrote in the Kiev Whites’ newspaper in a passing fit. After that, you refuse to countenance anything he writes.

This is not right. Ehrenburg is a great writer. Both The Second Day and Without Pausing for Breath are superb, masterfully written books. And such was the unanimous opinion of the Soviet critics. Ehrenburg is a writer of real complexity. He has internalized the technical skills of French literature, and he has introduced traditions of literary treatment of the written word into the Soviet literary tradition—which were always weak in our literary tradition, and wholly lacking in Ostrovsky. Ostrovsky doesn’t really write at all … It’s interesting to note that Ostrovsky finished writing his book in the evening, and in the morning sent it off by post. What naïveté!

And read Ehrenburg’s poetry. Poetry doesn’t deceive. He’s a poet of great sensitivity, a true one.

DECEMBER 28, 1935

My dear friend, I am forcing myself to sit down to write you a detailed letter. It pains me to have to write it. This postcard information exchange is so ice-bound, so slippery (in addition to being irresponsible).

But in the last postcard you informed me that you had already written a long letter, with an “analysis of our relations,” which was, moreover, cruel, in the tradition of “necessary cruelties.”

If you have not yet sent it, please do not. I do not need it; nor do you.

We have had a quarrel, a married couple’s quarrel. I want to resolve it, to end it, to put it behind us, to expunge it completely from the record. But you, on the other hand, want to explain things, to “teach me understanding.” I take everything back; I repent.

My unfounded apprehensions about you, my vain interrogations, my inappropriate advice—let’s assume I didn’t write any of it. They were empty words and phrases. But, please, I beg you, let’s leave behind the unpleasantness.

What was it that happened? In fact, it was trivial—something that in our former existence would have been resolved and forgotten momentarily. But here, at a distance, with miles and years interposed between us, a paltry thing becomes a large grievance.

But now it is gone, all is forgotten. Let’s begin anew. We will write to each other about ordinary, daily things, about the details of life; about joys, and our small tribulations, and the joys of our small tribulations (as Rolland would say).

JANUARY 19, 1936

My sweet friend, today I got up early, before eight, when it was still dark. I hurried out into the morning frost, under urgent physiological stimulus. I met up with the dog Roska, the unfortunate Roska. Every morning she is locked into a dark kennel, and in the evening they let her out. She never sees the light of day. She throws herself at me in greeting, and twists and twirls joyously. I always whisper the same words to her: “Poor dog, poor Roska.” If I come home late, she senses through the closed gate that it’s me and doesn’t bark. While I’m making my way over the fence, she again launches into her hysterical show of friendship. Once, in the darkness, she didn’t recognize me and started barking with hostility. When she got close enough to recognize me, she felt compunction and wanted me to understand that it was a mistake, that she didn’t mean it. She did her little somersaults and twirled around yelping and whining twice as much as usual. I whispered to her, “Poor little dog, poor little Roska, it’s all right, I’m not angry.”

I stand in the yard a long time, watching the predawn sky, which I usually don’t get to see. I know the evening sky well. I can pick out the constellations easily; but I don’t often see the morning sky. The Big Dipper is situated differently, almost showing off its rear end, right above my head. The stars shine with a particular morning brightness. You can see how the entire bulwark—the vault of the sky—shifted over half the sky during those eight hours when I wasn’t watching. What a magnificent book it is for those who know how to read it! One of the first books that humanity learned to read, before hieroglyphs and alphabets were invented.

Yesterday morning, I took part in a weekend concert broadcast on the radio. It was devoted to contemporary Soviet poetry. We have a well-educated consultant from the library here, a literary critic. They read the work of poets I don’t know well: Antokolsky, Petrovsky (a LEF writer, reminiscent of Khlebnikov), and others. Some of the poems were set to music, which I played. And since it was impossible to choose the pieces beforehand, I boldly improvised. My musical accompaniment to Bagritsky’s poem “The Lay of Opanas” was very apt, in particular the gloomy melody I hit upon for Makhno. I still can’t get them out of my head. After the concert, there was a meeting about organizing musical programs for the radio. I was offered the position of music director, which I very eagerly accepted; but I’m not sure whether anything will come of it. Whatever I do, wherever I find myself, I am above all a “Kulturträger,” a culture bearer; I am very ardent and energetic about such matters, and if nothing gets done, it is not my fault.

In Fedin’s Brothers, there is a marvelous passage about German culture. I will cite it here from memory: “This musical culture achieved such heights because whole generations of unknown conductors, musical directors, and choirmasters, brick by brick, constructed the foundation of knowledge out of which the masterpieces of Bayreuth and Düsseldorf grew. And Nikita wanted to return to the native soil of his Chagin, where he had known his first love and his first hate, in order to put down his bricks.”

I’m not very good with bricks. At the STP I set down a brick, but here in Biysk I haven’t managed yet. Perhaps it will happen on the radio.

JANUARY 24, 1936

My dear friend and wife, your last letter, in which you write about celebrating the New Year, is a fine letter, from start to finish. Every line sings, beginning with the chintz garters, and ending with the tears you shed over pages of the newspaper. At last you’ve told me the issue in which your own work was printed. I immediately dashed down to the library. In two libraries, the entire set of Our Achievements had been sent off to be bound, so I’ll have to wait. In the third library, they don’t subscribe to it. And the fourth—I’ll visit tomorrow.

I read Rolland’s Musicians of Today and returned to an old idea: to write a textbook on the history of music. A textbook for schools, clubs, and radio listeners. I set to work with enthusiasm, although there’s precious little literature devoted to this subject. If you happen to come upon any music books from my library, send them to me. You don’t have to make a special effort, but anything you come across might help. The local library here has ordered a few dozen books from Moscow for me.

I’m already working on the first three chapters: (1) folk music, (2) European music which Vitya could not have known before Bach, and (3) Bach. The draft of the book will be ready by the end of this year. When I am able to use the big library, I’ll spend a few months making additions to it. The first chapter, on folk music, is virtually finished. I haven’t hit upon the proper style yet. My literary style surpasses my scholarly style; it sounds very dry at present. But I will revise it many more times. I like this task. No other such book exists yet. For me it is more than just another literary pastime. The Biysk library has initiated an inter-library-loan subscription with the Novosibirsk library, which receives a copy of every single book published in the Soviet Union. They arranged this especially for me. When it begins to function, I will be provided with all the books that come out, and I’ll be able to work more quickly and efficiently. The radio should also help—I need to listen again to dozens of composers. On my desk I have the radio program of all the concerts for the month. I’ve underlined the ones I need to hear.

Along with the history of music, I am writing (in short bursts) a novella. This is the fifth one I’ve written, following “The Gifts of Need,” “A History of Beauty” (this one is about a woman who suffers from her beauty, from the unwanted attentions of men, and marries a blind man), “Life Is Too Long” (about two sisters who begin an independent life when they are already nearly old women, after the death of their despotic parents), and one about a girl who is in love with an old man who is a photographer. I seem to be suffering from “graphomania.” It’s rather absurd to write for the desk drawer, without any readership, appreciation, or even criticism. But, patience, patience …

You write that Genrikh is studying English. I have a wonderful book for him. Have you heard of the Basic English system of Professor Ogden? He has reduced all the rich diversity of language to 850 words, and only sixteen verbs. If you master this bare minimum of words and know how to use them, you can read the literature that this same Ogden publishes: Swift, Dickens, etc.

A Russian publisher has already released the book Step by Step by Ivy Litvinov (wife of the people’s commissar); it costs two rubles and forty kopecks. I acquired it even before Stalingrad—look on the lower shelf of the bookcase, where the dictionaries are. The Basic system is a wonderful idea. Such a system for other languages will no doubt follow. Learning a language according to this system (simplified language, of course) requires only eighty-eight hours.

I wish you a very happy January 23 birthday (again)—if you wish to live according to the calendar of Pope Gregory (of Rome), and survive on pounds rather than kilograms. I kiss you. J.

FEBRUARY 19, 1936

I spent the whole of yesterday in a haze, as though I had been smoking opium. All morning, I read a book by a German biologist, Secrets of Nature, and then prepared the midday meal for myself. (It takes all of fifteen minutes to put on the soup, and another hour of stirring it now and then.) After my meal, I went to the library to read newspapers, and the whole evening I read The Good Earth, a novel by the American writer Pearl Buck, with a foreword by Tretyakov. A marvelous book about life in China. You must borrow it from the library—it appears in the journal International Literature. Buck is a missionary in China, no longer young, who all of a sudden decided to write this wonderful novel. And immediately acquired an international reputation. When I read the book, I perceive her as a reader, as a literary technician, as a writer, as a rival. I read her lines, and observe how the lines are made. How the plot drifts around huge obstacles and backs up on itself, and how the subject is resolved at the end. That’s probably the most challenging part—the resolution of the subject. I read somewhere that French playwrights write a play beginning with the fifth act, with the dénouement, and if it is powerful enough, it is adopted as the groundwork upon which the first four acts are built. You must read Pearl Buck. It is an exemplary novel, in my view: real training for the beginning writer. No doubt, the general structure of narrative, as well as of music, in the highest sense, can be captured in some general formula … But even Shklovsky doesn’t write about this!

MARCH 8, 1936

Nothing came of my involvement in radio; they changed their minds. Today, though, I was offered the possibility of teaching music to an eight-year-old boy, and we met for the first time. This happened after my first pupil played a sonatina on the radio, to great acclaim; and I hope pupils will be beating a path to my door now. That is, I hope all eight children from the good families of the city of Biysk will be standing in line for lessons from the maestro!

Today I spoke with the bank manager about a raise. He promised to do what he could, so things are developing in a satisfactory way. For this reason, I even had a radio installed in my room. And that is where my big-spender ways will end. I have furnished myself with electricity, a radio subscription, laid in a supply of firewood, had my shoes repaired, as well as all my clothing.

JUNE 19, 1936

I’m sitting at the table, reading about forestry. The radio broadcast Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, and the sounds of bitter grief are still ringing in my ears. Everything is getting mixed up together: your letter of yesterday, and Gorky’s death, which was announced over the radio, the rain beating against the windowpane, and the passionate refrain of the symphony …

JULY 1, 1936

About your essay. I read your literary portrait of Tretyakov five times over. The article made me very happy. It’s beautifully rendered, and the quality far outstrips the average for the journal. The language is good—in a word, brava! This is your first article of the kind, and the next ones are sure to be even more powerful.

I can take delight in an article that expresses ideas I don’t agree with—neither with their conclusions, nor their assessments, not even with the structure of the piece. Nevertheless, I praise it without reservation. If I am permitted to express myself on this subject and offer criticism, tactfully, without any dogmatic sermonizing, I would say the following.

A literary essay should not give an appraisal at all. The critic is not an evaluator. He is a commentator, an opponent, a proponent, or a sociologist of the ideas that move the writer. Above all, one should not overpraise. And you give way to this in your essay when you write: “His mind is perfectly poised … a rich and resonant voice … an unusual writer”—twice—“full of significance … exceptional mastery (!) … wonderful essays … a writer of all genres…”

Is this all true? In a cup of tea there are five pieces of sugar. If he is indeed a writer of all genres, I would respond that, though he is great in his genre, his genre is too insignificant. Tretyakov is a useful writer, but, if one must sum him up, I would say: he is a typical second-rate writer, a mediocre talent.

His main shortcoming (and that of many other writers) is that he has no ideas of his own. You cannot name a single idea or thought that would immediately bring Tretyakov to mind. He is diluted in the epoch, produced by it; he studies it but doesn’t enrich it. He takes and doesn’t give back. He doesn’t have enough extremism and self-limitation for this.

“Mastery lies in limitation” (Goethe).

Tretyakov is an essayist skimming the surface of many ideas, but none of them is memorable, none stands out above any others.

Enough about him—now about you. You write that there were roads and crossroads, victories and defeats, but he found what was most important—“and the road was found”—essays on German writers. What is unique about them? It’s a literary device of significant details and trivia. Is that all? That’s very little. And “the victory and the road” are not convincing. The engine of enormous (is it really enormous?) power turns the coffee grinder—this is the epigraph it deserves, the only epigraph that would ring true.

Trivia:

(1) The piano imagery doesn’t work. If the “upper lid of the piano is the height of Tretyakov,” he is very small of stature—a regular dwarf.

(2) “His gesture is fluid, his thought lightning-quick” (!)—and immediately Pushkin comes to mind: “His eyes / Shine. His face is terrible. / His movements are quick. He is magnificent. / He is like divine thunder.”

If I were to write a critical essay on the writer, I would do it differently. The path of the writer is a social phenomenon, and not individual. In this case, the author himself is a matter of secondary importance. I would take a single idea of the author’s (if he has any ideas at all), and I would adopt it as the title and central thesis of the essay. I would talk about the author (if possible without evaluation) only as an example of this idea.

The essay would then be devoted not to the writer but to his ideas, and it would be independent of the writer himself. What is the governing idea of this writer? That in our time “life is more important than literature, writing is a side effect of the deed.” “In the beginning was the Deed,” then the word appeared—this is how he sums up the time we live in. What are the deeds of Tretyakov himself? His own deeds are small, insignificant, and he does not write on a grand scale, by any means. And his own point of view (“literature as the refuse of life”) is not checked against life itself, and doesn’t ring true; it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Literature is a self-justifying value.

Then the essay would be more “finished,” and it would have a general thesis; its claims would be independent of second-rate examples. These are the thoughts that your essay suggests to me.

Nevertheless, in spite of my remarks, it is an essay of a very high order. Yesterday I read Our Achievements, but it was no more than dull, inartistic daubing. Written not with a pen but with a spade, a stirring rod, a housepainter’s brush—a disgrace. I know the one who appears alongside you and writes such a vapid essay about Paris. During a difficult moment at the end of the twenties, I fed him a meal of my paltry crumbs. Then it turned out he didn’t deserve this.

Your writing is the best in the issue. If there are any good minds on the editorial board, they should not let someone with your talents slip away. Reading your article was a real feast for me. Write, write—write and don’t stop. Stay strong and active.

I kiss you and shake your hand,

with a literary greeting,

with a spousal greeting,

with a friend’s greeting.

AUGUST 1, 1936

… I received all the postcards you sent. Thinking about our correspondence during the recent past, I realize that our separation has had palpable results. Soon we will have been apart for six years, and I have sorely missed your closeness and the friendship of my son. We are separated by miles and years, and other less notable but still real divergences of paths. Divergence of paths, and the difficulty of mutual understanding.

For the time being, I have felt this in your letters; perhaps you have sensed the same in mine?

There are questions you refuse to answer. If I insist, I get a short reply: Don’t be anxious or nervous, be patient. It is difficult to survive in ignorance. I understand how much effort is required of both of us in order to reconnect again, to find our former selves in those we have now become.

Our next reunion is approaching. I’ll be honest with you: I am apprehensive about how this meeting will go. You write me that when we see each other again I will find you and our son just the same as when I left you, and there is no need to be anxious. But nothing ever returns to the same place, and I know that a great deal has changed, though I can’t really envision how. I am trying to solve this puzzle, to anticipate the future, though I admit I’m as yet unable.

Your letters, in fact, are very cold and informative, but in your last letter you suddenly gave vent to reproaches that had built up over the years. The pain scorched me when I read it. Can’t we accept one another with “open hearts”?

For me, Genrikh is a sphinx, a mystery that is unlikely to afford me a happy surprise when it is uncovered. All of this I now have to consider, to think and feel through, and I must prepare myself for it.

Marusya, I love you deeply. I am no longer young, but I am not ashamed to repeat the words of our first meetings. At our age, such words are often avoided. The emotional expressions of our youth are now absent in our letters, and have been absent a long time—those sweet intimacies that filled our correspondence at one time in the past.

Please send me a picture of you. It’s silly to say you’ve aged, you’re no longer attractive. I’m not interested in a picture of a fresh young beauty. I need your picture, a picture of you exactly as you are now. I’ve aged, too—by as many years as you have. Send me a picture.

I’ll end this letter with the refrain that always fits the bill—but I hope it sounds fresh this time.

I kiss you. Deeply and tenderly, as I did in those moments when I wanted, and was able, to reverse your bad or sad mood. I embrace you—“along every line”—if you remember what this once meant to us. J.

SEPTEMBER 26, 1936

It’s rather difficult for me to write just now, dearest one! You ask me whether I know anything yet. No, not yet, but what usually happens is that everyone who has served his term here gets a passport and a free train ticket to any destination he wishes. It will probably be the same in my case. It’s up to the Moscow police whether they will allow me to live there and give me a residence permit. Most likely, they will not. Actually, this depends on random local circumstances. Gerchuk, my old friend, went to live in Moscow after his term of exile, and has been living there a long time; other friends of mine are not given permission. In any event, I’ll come home for a few days and decide what to do after that.

I’ve never been confronted with so many unknown factors in my life as I am now. Nothing in the future is clear to me—neither my legal status, nor even my family circumstances. I’ll have to do a new inventory of the household goods—what remains, and in what condition is it?

But, for the time being, I’m busy with trivial predeparture matters. I bought a suitcase, had my shoes repaired, had trousers made, and finished my dental work. I need to reread my archive and bring it up to date. The time of accumulating knowledge is past; it is time to bring things to fruition.

OCTOBER 2, 1936

Dear friend, I’ve just been listening to a concert performed by Oborin that was broadcast on the radio from Novosibirsk. The headphones are on a long cord, so I can move around the room wearing them, walking from one corner to another. Whenever they broadcast a long concert, I listen and sew at the same time. The whole concert I spent repairing my trousers. My memory carried me back to the past, to those distant years when I first heard these pieces. There is so much sadness in the remote depths of my past. But I don’t wish to dwell on that now, but on something else—on how music has defined our relationship. Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff introduced us to each other. Schumann brought us closer together, and other composers seduced us. It’s rare that I hear a concert that doesn’t bring back such warm memories. Yesterday, I listened to Schubert’s “Der Doppelgänger,” today Oborin played Schubert/Liszt’s “Barcarolle,” Liszt’s “The Hunt” étude, and Schumann’s Carnaval. I listen to broadcasts from Moscow of guest appearances of the Ukraine Opera, that same Kiev opera theater from which I received my musical education in the twelfth row of the balcony for thirty kopecks a ticket.

I recall with gratitude the people who helped awaken my musical tastes, and try to trace that chain of events that alienated me from music. How sad it all is.

It’s so strange that in Moscow I became completely estranged from it, whereas in Biysk I grew close to it again. I don’t think I will ever again abandon it seriously, and for a long time.

It’s hard for me to imagine that we will enter the Main Hall of the Conservatory again … On the very first evening, I’ll buy tickets at the door.

NOVEMBER 16, 1936

… to clarify a few important details. Please obtain the following papers before the day of my arrival:

(1) certificate of your employment

(2) certificate of Genrikh’s employment

(3) certificate from the Housing Committee stating that I lived there from 1923 to 1931

When I arrive, I will submit a request to the NKVD for permission to live in Moscow and to be registered there. I might postpone submitting it until the end of November, when the new Constitution is adopted, but I’m not sure. I was informed that a general amnesty was being planned for that day. Although according to my documents I was released earlier, these circumstances may have bearing on my situation, too.

Send me a postcard when you receive this letter, and let me know your phone number, and the number at Ostozhenka Street. Most likely, the old number, 1-94-13, has been changed to a direct one; and I’ve forgotten Eva’s.

The NKVD told me that they will not delay me even one extra day. It will take a few days for the police to give me a passport. I anticipate that I will be home by the end of the year. It is possible, however, that administrative complications will keep me here for another few weeks. Judging by others’ experience, no one has ever finished the term on the stipulated date.

Well, that’s about all. I sense how hard our correspondence has become for you to maintain, and not only because there isn’t enough time. In general, our communications have grown weaker—six years is a long time. And it has become difficult for me to write you as well. Sometimes I sit over a letter for a long time, and nothing comes of it.

It’s a good thing that the bad recedes into the past.

I kiss you.

—J.