Just Send Me Word: A True Story of Love and Survival in the Gulag (32 page)

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Authors: Orlando Figes

BOOK: Just Send Me Word: A True Story of Love and Survival in the Gulag
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But even I don’t believe that. On the contrary, I think I’m guilty – just not to the extent recorded [in the sentence]. If everything had been written down and taken into consideration correctly, then maybe I would have been given 5 or 3 [years], or even less. But there would still have been something, ‘with all its consequences’. And since that’s the case, it’s impossible to demand that something should be done as if nothing had happened. What should be done? And on what grounds? You see, it’s been difficult for many people, but that’s not grounds for making it easier for everyone. And if it’s made easier
for one person, why should that be me? There’s nothing special about me to warrant it. Because I can do more interesting and beneficial work? Actually, I think I can be more useful in my latest profession (electrician) than through scientific work, much less research-based scientific work. I’m never going to turn into any kind of scientific researcher now, but a passable technician – possibly.
By this time, Sveta had resigned herself to the probability that she and Lev would live apart on his release. It was hard for her to accept after all these years of separation, but her parents needed her to look after them. The best they could hope for, she believed, was for Lev to be allowed to settle somewhere not so far from Moscow so that she could visit him. She wrote to him on 2 May:
For a long time now I’ve really needed to write you a serious letter and I keep putting it off because it immediately makes me feel depressed, since deep down I just don’t believe that in 6 months everything will somehow get settled and our life together will work out. Either Mama will start to feel even worse, or Papa too will come down with something, or the housekeeper will leave, or there’ll be something else on a global or local scale and I won’t be able to move anywhere, just visit you from time to time. Yes, I need to be prepared for that. So it may not even be necessary to think about my work, just about proximity. What’s closest? Kalinin, I guess. But the closer it is, the more difficult it’ll be for you to find work. In Aleksandrov, for example (even suburban commuter trains travel there), it’s apparently almost impossible to get work because of the abundance of all kinds of specialists. And yet, I suppose if we really are going to live together one day, we should keep my work in mind … There’s no need to think about it straight away as there are other things of more immediate interest – your arrival and our being together, as close as possible, absolutely free and not so tied to work that you can’t come here at any time. You’ll need to arrange some meetings here to clear out all the rubbish of the old umbrellas hanging over you [to remove restrictions from the Gulag]. If that means
not working for a while, then so be it. You wouldn’t be the first person in the world to live without a job for a few months …
Lev was intrigued by the idea of Kalinin, or Tver, as it had formerly been called, a provincial town not far north of Moscow on the railway line to Leningrad. He, too, had been thinking about it as a possible place to settle after Pechora, if the authorities would allow it. ‘I should have also written about Kalinin,’ he replied on 10 May.
I don’t know what I could find there and whether conditions are the same as in Aleksandrov. But given how tentative our plans are, do we really have to focus on a particular town? So long as there’s a railway station, by which I mean a convenient transport system, then the rest doesn’t really matter that much. What made you think of Kalinin in particular? At any rate, I’ll try to find some natives of Tver here and make inquiries. It’s probably a good place, and there’s always the Volga. But that might also mean it’s overcrowded.
Sveta had mentioned Kalinin ‘almost accidentally, but not completely’. She had heard that a new tyre factory was going to be built there and thought that she and Lev might both find work in it. ‘The town is growing overall and the suburban electric train will go there soon (although it’s on a good line with at least 6 long-distance trains a day). It’s 167 kilometres [from Moscow] and only a 4-hour journey. Shurka [Aleksandra Chernomordik] went there last summer and says she liked the town.’
Meanwhile, Sveta found out more about the factories in Voronezh and Yaroslavl. She did not like the Yaroslavl tyre factory: it was ‘so vast and individuals get lost there’. But that might turn out to be an advantage, if Lev got work there, as he would not be noticed as a former prisoner, whereas in Voronezh he would ‘stand out more’. On the other hand, the factory in Voronezh had fewer specialists, which would make it easier for Lev to get a job. ‘At home, I casually asked my parents whether they would like to move to V[oronezh],’ she wrote to Lev on 1 June.
Papa said ‘Why?’ and Mama, ‘No.’ I didn’t continue the conversation because I have no idea how to discuss such personal matters with them. And why upset them? The decision doesn’t have to be made right away, and we all need to stay alive until that ‘later on’.
Sveta looked into the railway timetables and drew up a list of towns with their distances from Moscow to consider for the shorter term. ‘So there you go,’ she wrote at the bottom of the list. ‘And what do I know about them? Nothing. But there are factories and electric power stations everywhere. After this, all that’s left is to read the coffee grounds.’ She then laid out the alternatives:
Possible options:
1. If the radius is < 100, I can either live and work here and travel to see you or live with you and travel to work and home again. The shorter the radius, the more convenient either option would be.
2. If the radius is < 200, but >100, the only possibility is for me to live and work here and just come to visit you.
3. With a radius > 200 there’s still that possibility but visits will obviously be less frequent, and for me to carry on working and live with you, then Yar[oslavl] would still be the best. And with this there are also possible sub-options: either my parents live here or (something that Shurka thinks is completely feasible but that I don’t think Mama would agree to) I move them with me. Then the radius could be even greater, but if Papa doesn’t want to give up working, it’s once again got to be either Yar[oslavl] or Vor[onezh]. We’ve got so used to M[oscow] that I don’t know whether it’s worth moving my parents … The provincial calm and purer air would be much better for them than all the commotion and running around here. But M[oscow] is still better for supplies and medicines (although Shurka says that they have morphine everywhere) … The best option for me – for my peace of mind and so I don’t burst – would obviously be for everybody to live together, otherwise my hives are just never going to go away and I’ll never stop lashing out at people. And it
would be easier financially as well. It’s always more expensive living in two homes … In truth, I don’t know what I want.
Sveta was torn between her duty to look after her parents and her desire to be with Lev. The conflict was making her feel agitated and depressed. All the anxiety about where they would live only partially masked a bigger worry: what would life be like with Lev? She had waited for this moment for fifteen years, but now that it was almost upon them, she was consumed by doubt:
I’m already falling headlong into a hole and there I am wallowing at the bottom, thinking how I didn’t study well, how I’m a bad daughter, how I work badly – the only thing that’s left is my service to myself and to the one called God (and even then somebody else would have managed to do it better; and if I’m allowed into heaven it will only be because of you). And if it now turns out (as is very probable) that I’m even going to make a poor wife – and will be no better as a mother – then all that’s left for me is to hang myself. I’ll stop eating and sleeping. Perhaps my fear of leaving Mama is covering up the fear that I won’t be fit to be a wife. Honestly, I’m scared.
Lev, too, felt nervous, but his doubts were not about Sveta:
Sveta, my darling, there’s not going to be any need for you to hang yourself, you silly creature! And right now there’s no need to stop eating and sleeping. What does ‘bad’ mean in this or any other sense? In every way you’ll be yourself, and what else do I – do we –need? How is it possible that there is something you’re not fit for? No matter what you turn out to be, you’ll be good at it. Do you really think that any set of skills, like being a housewife, can ever be the most important thing – that their absence cancels out the unique, priceless thing that makes us want to wait for each other? … And you mustn’t leave your mother. I’m just as scared as you, if truth be told, Sveta, only I’m scared for myself and not for you; because according to friends and their recollections of me, I’m difficult to live
with. But that’s not why I say you should stay with your mother. It’s that I don’t think we’ll ever stop worrying if we leave them. And if I’m already feeling guilty towards her now (and not just this minute but all the time), how could I possibly reconcile your leaving her with my conscience? All I can think of for the time being is to wait and try to set up a situation – in terms of an apartment and location – that would be acceptable to your mother and where we could all finally settle together. What more can we hope for when there’s still absolutely no information?
Lev had no idea when he would be released. ‘My leaving is still obscured by shadow,’ he wrote on 4 June,
but I’ve already started thinking about sending my books home little by little. The only thing I don’t know is where to. I’ve got 2 suitcases full of all kinds of books. I’m going to try to cut the amount down to one and a half and send them in small parcels since I don’t know where I’m going to be going first and it will be awkward to drag them along with me everywhere. But if I send them in small parcels then where to? To you or to Uncle Nikita?
Six days later there was ‘no more certainty about the future’. There were ‘no official statements or signed documents’ about the procedures of release, Lev wrote to Sveta, ‘and those leaving go through the formal procedures one way today and a different way tomorrow’.
In this limbo state, Lev decided on a temporary plan to optimize his chances of living within 50 kilometres of Moscow by travelling first to Uncle Nikita’s at Malakhovka and trying to obtain his diploma, which he thought would help him find a better job and place to live.
I’ll go about tracking down my diploma from Uncle N.’s and look for work. And I’ll visit everybody who’s expecting me, of course. I’m promising myself that I’ll control my obstinacy [about not
wanting to depend on people] for a month, for the sensible reason that a person has the right to take a month off after such a period of labour, and if he doesn’t die over the course of the following year he’ll be able to pay off his debts … If, at the end of the month, or near the end, it finally becomes clear that it’s not working out [with the diploma and the search for a job near Moscow], then I’ll go to K[alinin] or somewhere that seems right for both of us and try to find work there and four walls and a ceiling, where I’ll be able to wait for you to visit, pending better times.
On 7 June, Sveta’s father went to a sanatorium in Shirokoe, not far from Kalinin, to spend the summer recovering his health. On 1 July, he had a stroke. Ten days later, he had another. Sveta rushed to be with him. There was no paralysis but he was very fragile and had problems with his speech. Sveta sent a telegram to Lev: ‘Papa’s condition complicated by secondary stroke. Now slowly improving. I’m staying at Shirokoe Bologovskoe.’
Lev was expecting his release in the next few days. Now that the moment was upon him, he felt none of the euphoria he might have expected. In some ways, he was sad to be leaving. There were friendships he had made that he would miss, people like Strelkov who were sick, whom he did not want to leave behind, as he explained to Sveta in his final letter from the labour camp. If he had numbered all his letters over the past eight years, it would have been the 647th.
9 July 1954 No. 29
Svetloe, after your telegram I received your letter dated the 29th. I’m hoping there’ll be something else tomorrow. How’s Aleksandr Alekseevich [Sveta’s father]? And your mother? The past week has been really full for me – I’ve had to help Strelkov ‘pay old debts’ in the form of all kinds of orders and promises. Strange as it may seem, in a week’s time I’m going to be parting from old friends. And – this is less strange – I have some regrets. Only about people, of course, or rather their company, although with some there will be the possibility of meeting up again, probably quite soon. Incidentally, Strelkov
has more freedom of movement than the rest of us at the moment, which is obviously improving his mood. Financially, the last two months have been three times better for him, first because of general changes to his pay-rate and second because he’s currently substituting for one of the workshop’s managers who has gone on holiday …
I have not managed to find anyone from K[alinin]. Well, it doesn’t matter. If I’m not able to stay at Uncle N[ikita]’s for longer than a couple of days, I’ll go to K[alinin] anyway. I still don’t know how much longer I’ll be here. In any event the delay is hardly going to be more than a week. For more than 10 days now we’ve had a heatwave here, and yesterday it was nearly 38 degrees, but I only managed to go swimming for the first time today.
The day before yesterday, when I was with A. M. [Iushkevich], I allowed a doctor to tap on my chest and have a good listen – it was the same doctor who put me in the hospital 4 years ago. He found that I still don’t have any particular grounds for complaint or worry, which I agree with completely.
I still haven’t written anything to my aunts. I’ll write to Uncle N. tomorrow.
Look after yourself, Svet.

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