On 11 December 1920 our patience ended, so we exposed Akhmatova’s suppurating apoliticism for the people to see. That experience became another pearl for her oyster-shell! Bitterness and musings on bitterness became inseparable in her poetry, like the concentric ovals of arched bridges and their reflections upon the Winter Canal. Not long afterward, I saw her praying and weeping at Blok’s funeral procession; those tears became new beads on her necklace of sorrows. In our Soviet Russia of today, when art is supposed to be positive and life-affirming, there is simply no place for this kind of person.
When we liquidated Gumilyev in ‘21, for anti-Soviet conspiracy, another crimson jewel splashed into the well. I was there; I made sure that everything went professionally. At the last moment, he stood as stiff and pale as one of those statues outside the Catherine Palace. I allow that he didn’t grovel like the others.
I was there in 1930 when she discovered his grave—two holes for sixty people, because why should these scum deserve tombs of their own? There she was, praying and sobbing again! Had it been up to me, I would have shot her right there. But who listens to me? And so naturally she went home and wrote more anti-Soviet poems.
Long before that, in her odious “When in Suicidal Anguish,” she’d already compared Leningrad to a drunken whore. Well, she ought to know. That’s why I’d just as soon give her eight grams, although she’s so birdlike that seven would suffice.
In 1933, when we arrested her son Lev for the very first time, just to tease him, another jewel of suffering glowed within her poetic well; exegesis reveals it to be a second red jewel. The red dot feared by Shostakovich—it haunted all his nightmares—was death, of course. What was it for her? Stars and water, poison drinks, salt and churches, these very specific entities made up her world, in which everything not only meant what it meant, but existed independently. For Shostakovich, the red dot equaled nothing more than death. For Akhmatova, no matter what else it was, it also became a ruby.
Presumably it is this concretion of treasures to which L. K. Chukovskaya is referring when she writes Akhmatova’s fate became something even greater than her own person.
All the same, we’d finally begun to make progress with her. The way we educate these people is first to shoot someone they love, so that they realize that this can and will happen to them; next, we take away someone they love more than themselves. When we did this to Shostakovich, the results were excellent. In Akhmatova’s case we were also quite effective: Where Stalin is, is freedom, and you know the rest.
No doubt she suffered other shocks, because our Revolution ripped out almost everything, even the brass plates on the doors of what used to be called Saint Petersburg. I almost laughed at her surprise when she saw Krylov’s half-sandbagged statue in the Summer Garden!
In that same year, we banned her so-called “work”—a measure which I’m happy to say remained in force until 1940. Her white face and black braids, like the snow and willows at Tsarskoe Selo, lived on as if they’d been forgotten; in fact no one forgot her, especially not us. She once wrote that death eases thirst—with lye. We said to ourselves: Let her get thirstier first! Kisses and prayers, unanswered knocks, more kisses, boredom, abandonment and death, what did we care about any of that? However, I’m not ashamed to tell you that I enjoyed watching her kissing.
By now that tight black silk dress of hers had holes in it, and she’d long since sold the oval cameo in her belt; who among us Russians hasn’t been desperate for bread?
Our objective for her: No more summer poems. Give us the greenish skies of Leningrad in autumn. Then we’ll know she’s where we want her.
In 1937 we fulfilled the Stalin Route, the nonstop flight across the Pole to America, in an ANT-25 with a red star on each wing! You’d think that this event would be worth commemorating. I made a point of attending the ceremony. Elena Konstantinovskaya and Roman Karmen, freshly wed and newly returned from Spain, were also at the aerodrome. Elena failed to recognize me, I’m relieved to say. I’ve watched Karmen’s newsreel half a dozen times. It’s quite good, really. But do you think Akhmatova cared to participate in our victory? Instead, she polished another jewel in that poisoned necklace called “Requiem.”
In 1938 we arrested her son again and condemned him to death by shooting, but we were still just playing; we were curious to see if that would bring her around. I was one of the ones who recommended that his sentence be commuted to five years, and that’s what he got, not that he deserved it; he tried to defy us even after we’d beaten him for eight months.
At this point her persona had assumed certain qualities most convenient to us: resignation, poverty, martyrdom, and the pretense of meekness (not that you can ever trust those bourgeoisie, even when we keep our heels on their necks). Then there were the religious trappings, which I’m personally not averse to in the case of such people; it’s to our advantage when a dying class stupefies itself with the opiate of the masses. We’d stripped her of her yellow dress; now she was no better than all the shivering men in jackets, the bowed women in shawls, waiting in the sun of searchlights beneath fatality’s moon-breath for their turn at the window: Will the clerk take my package or not? If not, the person I meant it for has gone to stay with Lev Gumilyev. L. Zhukova, whose relatives we’d already sent away, encountered her one winter’s day in the queue at Liteiny Prospekt, number 4, and described her in a letter as an aloof mannequin. That was how we liked her! Unfortunately, her presence still electrified any crowd. To me, this proves that we hadn’t been sufficiently strict with her. An aloof mannequin she might have been, as still as water under ice; but our task was to freeze her solid. In this we never succeeded: after all, Akhmatova was the poet of “Requiem,” which even our yes-man Shostakovich admired and which I’m sorry to say I’ve heard on the lips of students, prisoners, prostitutes, peasants and kerchiefed factory women. Needless to say, it gets no mention in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. All I can say is that world events have confirmed the correctness of that policy.
This was the period when L. Chukovskaya, infatuated by those Russian eyes of hers (grave but not sad, steady but not fixed; aware, capable of gentleness and ruthlessness), became Akhmatova’s confidante. In her diary (I’ve read every page), Chukovskaya insists that she herself, her words, her deeds, her head, shoulders and the movements of her hands were possessed of such perfection, which, in this world, usually only belongs to great works of art. Tell me she wasn’t in love! Later on, Akhmatova turned against her in Tashkent, for no reason. That’s how it is with people like that.
I followed them across a stone bridge over a canal, and a stone church-head trembled in the dark water below—not decapitated yet, only reflected.—Anna Andreyevna, what do you think of Shostakovich’s music?—Well, of course there are brilliant pages, replied Akhmatova.—Chukovskaya took her arm. Then they turned right. For the sake of inconspicuousness, I stayed behind, smoking my cigarette and thinking about Elena Konstantinovskaya. Pyotr Alexeev was already in position. He enjoyed those outings—although he was much more in love with the two beefy, cheery sisters who’d become the tennis champions of our Soviet land. He got ill-tempered when Akhmatova went to Liteiny Prospekt to send another package to Lev; that was a busman’s holiday for him. He informed me that on one occasion, when she came up to the window and spoke her name, a woman in the long line behind her burst into tears. This was unpleasant to us. Whatever our next move against her might be, we had to plan it out. On those afternoons when I stayed behind, I had a very pleasant time arranging Akhmatova’s future. When that palled, I thought some more about Elena Konstantinovskaya. Chukovskaya was going to come back late and alone. I waited at the bridge. Then I went home, counting Leningrad’s broken windows.