She couldn’t answer right away. —Kostya, I’m so sorry.
He answered in English. —No. Do not be sorry. You tried to save me. You did not steal me. I stole you.
Then he let go of her hands and looked to the floor.
She touched his face, on the left cheek, near the scars on his ear. —I do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief.
His back and shoulders shook.
— Sit beside me, Kostya. Come on, squeeze in closer.
He did this, his face wet, and his spine seemed to surrender as he slumped. Temerity placed her arm round his shoulders, careful not to jostle the left one, shifting in some discomfort to herself so his head might rest on her chest. She inhaled the scent of his scalp, kissed a bald spot, shut her eyes, and smiled.
Later, Kostya would remember hearing neither the racket of the tracks nor the mutters of Baba Yaga but the steady beat of Temerity’s heart.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Early in this project, tired, intimidated, and nearly broke, I rolled my chair back from my desk, rubbed my eyes, and said ‘What I need here is a detailed social history of Moscow in the year 1937.’ I couldn’t bear to look at my computer screen any longer, so I took a trip to a bookstore. I meandered over to the history section, where I spotted a thick hardcover called Moscow, 1937, by Karl Schlögel. I took a step back from the shelf, looked again: yes, it existed and yes, it offered up invaluable details of everyday life in 1937 Moscow — details of everyday life colliding with the brutal realities of the Great Purge. It was precisely what I needed. I couldn’t afford it, yet there it sat, as if waiting for me. My next paycheque several days away, I had to choose between the book and food. I chose Moscow, 1937. I owe Karl Schlögel and translator Rodney Livingstone a great debt.
I also owe a debt to Vadim J. Birstein for The Perversion of Knowledge, his study of Soviet doctors and scientists working on poisons, to Alexander Vatlin and translator Seth Bernstein for Agents of Terror: Ordinary Men and Extraordinary Violence in Stalin’s Secret Police, and to Jeffrey Keith for his MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-49. Of course, writing about characters in complex historical settings risks historical flubs. Any such errors in the novel are due not to my research sources but to my own limitations.
Somewhere around draft six, I recognized I did not have a full grasp of Temerity West. I’d assumed she would be easier to write than the Russian characters, as she is English and I grew up in a culture informed — perhaps dominated — by British habits and views. I’d forgotten something cruciaclass="underline" the British Empire. The 2002 TWI/Carlton TV miniseries The British Empire in Colour was a huge help. This documentary explores the empire’s miseries, complexities, and legacies — and the footage is fascinating.
I also studied, and continue to study, a work that felt like a quiet invitation into the realities of Soviet life in 1937: Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5. Shostakovich composed the symphony during the summer of 1937 while in official disgrace and terrified of imminent arrest. The symphony confronts the listener with fear, dark comedy, subversion, and tragedy: with truth. Listeners at the symphony’s premiere in Leningrad in November 1937 gave a half-hour standing ovation. Many wept. My favourite recording is the January 2015 concert performance by Orchestre de Paris, conducted by Paavo Järvi.
An earlier and thinner version of this story as a one-act play called Aphasia benefited from the 2007 Women’s Work Festival and dramaturgy from Robert Chafe and Sara Tilley. I also acknowledge financial support for Constant Nobody from ArtsNL.
Warm thanks to Bethany Gibson for her thoughtful edits, Jill Ainsley for her sharp-eyed copy-edits, and Antanas Sileika for reading a manuscript version and suggesting a change that I first resisted but then welcomed. Thanks also to Christine Fischer-Guy, Christine Hennebury, Ami McKay, Sean Michaels, and Trudy Morgan-Cole for manuscript reads and helpful advice. Loving thanks to my husband, David Hallett, who read every draft, and to my children, Oliver and Kendall, who endured hours of me chattering about this or that historical tidbit, sometimes grotesque, over supper.
About the Author
Michelle Butler Hallett, she/her, is a history nerd and disabled person who writes fiction about violence, evil, love, and grace. The Toronto Star describes her work as “perfectly paced and gracefully wrought,” while Quill and Quire calls it “complex, lyrical, and with a profound sense of a world long passed.” Her short stories are widely anthologized in Hard Ol’ Spot, The Vagrant Revue of New Fiction, Everything Is So Political, Running the Whale’s Back, and Best American Mystery Stories, and her essay “You’re Not ‘Disabled’ Disabled” appears in Land of Many Shores. Her novel This Marlowe was longlisted for the ReLit Award and the Dublin International Literary Award, and her first novel, Double-blind, was shortlisted for the Sunburst Award.
Butler Hallett lives in St. John’s. Constant Nobody is her fifth novel.
Photo: David Hallett
PRAISE for CONSTANT NOBODY
With vivid characters and indelible images that transmit the cruel bleakness of Stalin’s Russia and ruthless gentility of Chamberlain’s England, Butler Hallett conjures a morally complex world of high-stakes international espionage where nothing is as it seems — except that the human heart wants what it wants.
In Constant Nobody, Michelle Butler Hallett gives us a spy thriller that does more than entertain. It asks us to meditate on the fundamental questions of existence: who can we trust, and what should we believe?
Constant Nobody is a suspenseful work of historical fiction, populated with nesting dolls of intrigue, identity, and revelation. Set on the murky borders of war and political unrest, Constant Nobody is a powerful reminder of the importance of connection, one person to another, no matter the cost.
Constant Nobody is a remarkably accomplished novel. It takes readers deep into the brutal hearts of darkness of both civil war Spain and Soviet Russia during Stalin’s purges. In those hellish places, men and women struggle with duty and survival while tormenting their victims and being tormented in turn. In the nightmarish world of violence, a man and a woman must grapple with their complicated relationship while trying to save themselves from destruction.
Also by Michelle Butler Hallett:
This Marlowe
deluded your sailors
Sky Waves