Russian Winter (44 page)

“Really?”

As they approached Zoltan’s building, Grigori told Zoltan about the journal he had translated, and his thoughts about those other diaries, written by Soviet citizens, that he might be able to find in the KGB archives. “Of course it will take some doing. But it seems worthwhile, doesn’t it? A whole new set of voices, no longer silenced.”

Zoltan’s approval of this idea made Grigori all the more eager, even as he stood there on the sidewalk wishing his friend good night. Around them evening was emerging, the streetlamps—tall and slightly glaring—punctuating the fading sky. When Zoltan had gone inside, Grigori turned and made his way back toward Beller, wondering if Drew would be free yet from her duties.

When he arrived, the front windows were dark, and through the entrance he saw that the receptionist’s desk was empty. It seemed that everyone had gone. Grigori was about to press the doorbell when he saw something move in the dimly lit vestibule—Drew, standing up from a bench. She did not have her coat or bag with her, and for a moment Grigori worried that there was some sort of problem, something to prevent her from leaving. But then he saw the look on her face and, wondering, nodded hello, as she reached for the door and beckoned him in.

T
his novel is a work of fiction, and while its perimeters are firmly rooted in fact, I have taken liberties with some of the information I found in my research. In particular, the unnamed labor camp referred to in the final chapter does not correspond to any actual prison camp I know of but is inspired by Victoria Finlay’s suggestion, in her book
Jewels: A Secret History
, that the Kaliningrad amber mines may have been worked by gulag prisoners.

Much of the other information regarding amber has come from Benjamin Zucker’s
Gems and Jewels: A Connoisseur’s Guide
.

I have made every attempt to be true to the overall reality of living as an artist in Soviet Russia while creating my own version of that world. For a thorough impression of the changes in daily life in the USSR from decade to decade, I found Orlando Figes’s haunting oral history
The Whisperers
extremely helpful, while memoirs by Nadezhda Mandelstam, Ilya Erenburg, and others were rich with insights into Soviet cultural life. (Ehrenburg also provided the anecdote about Zhdanov’s musical advice, while Sergei Dovlatov’s
Ours: A Russian Family Album
included an account, echoed in Gersh’s storyline, of the writer Zoshchenko trying to “make it easier” for friends to pretend not to know him.) In particular, Emma Gerstein’s
Moscow Memoirs
painted a vivid picture of life as a Jew and an intellectual in literary society and included anecdotal inspiration for the character Zoya.

Zoya’s letter to Stalin is modeled on letters excerpted in Lewis Siegelbaum and Andrei Sokolov’s
Stalinism as a Way of Life
.

I am also thankful for the many travelogues, diaries, and unofficial cultural studies by Westerners who went behind the Iron Curtain in a particularly difficult period and took the time to record their impressions, however partial and idiosyncratic. Lydia Kirk’s
Postmarked Moscow
was an especially rich source of information (including the childbirth anecdotes in the
banya
scene), as was Harrison Salisbury’s
Moscow Journal: The End of Stalin
, which supplied the
Krokodil
jokes in chapter 5.

The joke “Thieves, prostitutes, and the NKVD work mostly at night” is from Robert C. Tucker’s
Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above
.

Among the many dancers’ memoirs I read, Maya Plisetskaya’s inspiring
I, Maya Plisetskaya
provided a particularly incisive look at an artist’s struggles in the USSR and behind the scenes at the Bolshoi. For other details of the dancing life, I greatly appreciated Marie Paquet-Nesson’s
Ballet to the Corps
, recollections of touring with an American ballet company in the 1950s.

I am indebted to Galina Vishnevskaya’s
Galina: A Russian Story
for invaluable information about Bolshoi stage life, including descriptions of Stalin’s opera visits. Solomon Volkov’s
Shostakovich and Stalin
and
The Magical Chorus
presented a compelling chronology of artistic life under Soviet rule and the cloud of anti-Semitism, and provided the “cosmopolite” rhyme in chapter 8.

My details of West Berlin as glimpsed by Soviet citizens are in part based on descriptions in Nora Kovach and Istvan Rabovsky’s
Leap Through the Curtain: The True Story of Two Hungarian Ballet Stars Who Escaped to Freedom
.

The extremely moving
Intimacy and Terror: Soviet Diaries of the 1930s
, edited by Veronique Garros and others, inspired the arrest scene and police station visit in book 2 and sparked the idea of including a journal entry in my novel.

I
had the indispensable good fortune to begin this book at the MacDowell Colony and complete it at Yaddo. Crucial support in the years in between came from the La Napoule Foundation, Ledig House, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, the Seaside Institute, and, above all, Vassar College’s W. K. Rose Fellowship in the Creative Arts.

Individuals to whom I am equally grateful include:

My constant mentors, Leslie Epstein and Margot Livesey.

The fellow readers and writers who helped me move forward from draft to draft: Eve Bridburg of Grub Street, Inc., Morgan Frank, Jill Kalotay, Leah Kalotay, Jhumpa Lahiri, Judy Layzer, Jynne Martin, Chris McCarron, Ron Nemec, Rishi Reddi, Julie Rold, Suzanne Qualls, and Ted Weesner, Jr.

For help with all things Russian: Maria Gapotchenko; Ludmilla Leibman at the Educational Bridge Project; Katherine O’Connor; and Vera Sapozhnikova, who read the manuscript with great thought and intelligence.

For details of the dancing life: Faye Arthurs and Dana Hanson; Eve Lawson; Denise Lipoli; Clyde Nantais and Jill Roberts; and Nancy Upper, who went through the manuscript with such care.

For information on auction houses, fine jewelry, and appraisals:
Elisabeth Benson-Allott and John Colosacco of Skinner, Inc.; Anne Bentley of the Massachusetts Historical Society; Linda Davis; and Julie Reber at
Antiques Road Show
.

For sharing recollections of life in East Germany and escape to West Berlin via subway: Inge Neumann.

For their help with my queries about amber and spiders: Jon Reiskind at the University of Florida–Gainesville; Naomi Pierce, Brian Farrell, and Gonzalo Giribet at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology; and David Grimaldi at the American Museum of Natural History.

For answering my questions about the West Indies: Patrice Vidal.

For other research: the excellent staff of the Boston Athenaeum and the Coolidge Corner branch of the Public Library of Brookline; Brian Haskell at the Peterborough Town Library; Howard Pincus at the Railroad Museum of New England.

For helping this book finally make its way into the world: my superlative agent, Dorian Karchmar, and outstanding editor, Claire Wachtel; and Jonathan Burnham, Michael Morrison, and the excellent team at HarperCollins, especially Julia Novitch. Thank you also to Anika Streitfeld and Jennifer Joel.

For their support and inspiration, my family—with an extra nod to my great-uncle George Bolgar, the original Happy Forced Laborer.

Jacket design by Richard Ljoenes

Jacket photograph © Ilona Wellmann/arcangel-images.com