In Voronezh the most favored tenants were exiles. Since they were always under threat of being forced to move to some remoter place, the owner of the room they rented could always, in case of conflict, help this to come about. For this reason we got plenty of offers and M. was run off his feet looking at rooms in all kinds of hovels. But in fact it was a long time before we actually moved, because everybody wanted a year's rent in advance. The water was already freezing in our veranda when I went to Moscow to get some translating work to do. I obtained it with astonishing ease. Luppol had heard about our "miracle" and, certain he could give M. work without running any great risk, he was very glad to do so. We gave the advance on the translation to the owner of a small house on the outskirts of the city who had agreed to be paid for only six months ahead. Every journey into the city center was a nightmare—and we had to go in frequently to obtain references for the renewal of M.'s papers, to find jobs for him, and so forth. There were endless waits at the tram stops, and people hung from the cars like clusters of grapes. Before the war, city transport was in a terrible state, even in Moscow. That winter we also got to know the winds blowing from the steppes in all their fury. People in our sort of plight are particularly sensitive to cold, as we realized during all the recurrent periods of famine, war or exile.
It soon appeared that the owner of the house, an agronomist who wore high leather boots, had only taken us in because he thought he might make interesting contacts through us. "I thought you'd have writers like Kretova and Zadonski * coming to see you, and we'd all be dancing the rumba together," he complained in a hurt tone. To give expression to his disappointment in us, he burst into our room when we were visited by friends, such as Kaletski and Rudakov, and demanded to see their papers: "You're holding meetings here, and as the owner of the house I'm responsible." We threw him out and he went away sighing sadly. Once he cornered me and bemoaned his fate: "If only more decent people would come to see you." He could not return the money we had paid him in advance, and we just had to stay on for the whole six months. M. took it all with good humor: exiles had traditionally suffered at the hands of their landlords. In the old days they denounced you to the police, and now it was to the GPU. But it seemed that our agronomist only threatened, and never actually went to report us. We had to be thankful for small mercies.
Our next room, which we occupied from April 1935 to February 1936, was in the city center, in a former lodging house where all kinds of shady types had settled. The police raided the place several times, looking for illegal vodka stills. Our young neighbor, a prostitute, adored M. because he always bowed to her on the street, and she often came with a pail of water to wash our floor. But she wouldn't take any money: "I'm doing it because I like you." An old Jewish woman who was bringing up three young grandchildren
# Voronezh writers.
used to come in and complain about life in general. The owner of the place was trying to get rid of her and kept writing denunciations in which he accused her of prostitution. The old woman denied it, pointing to her age ("Who would need me?") and the small size of her room, where the three grandchildren slept all huddled together.
It was lucky that people who wrote denunciations were so unconcerned about plausibility and reported whatever came into their heads—until 1937 there had to be some element of truth. Denunciations were in fact a reflection of their writers' level, illustrating what flights of fantasy they were capable of. Our second Voronezh landlord was on the very lowest level. Once we were summoned to the GPU office, confronted with one of his denunciations, and asked to write an explanation. He had reported that we had been visited during the night by a suspicious type, and that the sound of shots had come from our room. The first part might just have got by, but the second part was hopeless. The visitor in question was Yakhontov, whose name was plastered up all over town on the billboards, and when he simply confirmed that he had sat up with us all night, that was the end of the matter.
The mere fact of being summoned in connection with a denunciation meant that it was not going to be used against you. This was shown by something that happened to me later—admittedly, after the fall of Yezhov when the terror had subsided. I was called out to the GPU section of the police station in Moscow, where after M.'s death I had managed to get a temporary permit to live in our old apartment. I was asked to explain a denunciation to the effect that I held meetings in my apartment during which there was counterrevolutionary talk. The only person who had visited me was Pasternak—he came to see me immediately on hearing of M.'s death. Apart from him, nobody had dared to come and see me, as I explained to the secret-police official. In the upshot nothing much happened, except that I was asked to leave Moscow before my temporary permit had run out. This time I was being eased out by my temporary lodger, who had been moved in with us by the Union of Writers on the recommendation of Stavski. The man, whose name was Kos- tyrev, called himself a writer and sometimes hinted that he had rank equivalent to that of a general.
When after the Twentieth Congress they were going to give me a place to live in Moscow again, I was called to the Union of Writers and asked how I had come to lose my original apartment. I told them about Kostyrev. Ilyin, the official of the Union dealing with me, spent a long time going through lists of writers, but he could find no one of this name. Whether Kostyrev was a writer or a general, the fact is that he had used the standard technique of getting an apartment for himself. I believe that Kostyrev was trying to get out of the secret police into literature, but he probably didn't make it. The time when he moved into our apartment was a transition period for people with double careers and double missions.
Our landlord in Voronezh who thought he heard shooting in our room at night saw nothing shameful in his activities as an informer. He probably regarded himself as a useful member of society, a keeper of the peace. What his work was we could never make out. He never talked about it and we preferred not to inquire. He described himself as an "agent" and was always going out into the countryside on matters "concerning collectivization." At any event, he was very small fry—though even people like him were carefully chosen.
His wife, who was very young, almost a girl, and whom he had married to save her from the hard life of her dispossessed kulak family, had let the room to us during one of his prolonged absences in the countryside. She herself moved to the kitchen and sent the money received from us to her parents. Her huband thus had two tenants around his neck, but got no benefit from it. Though she had been "saved" by him, she kept him pretty firmly in hand. Judging by some of the talk that passed between them, she knew something about him that even in those brutal times would not have been taken lightly. Both to his face and behind his back she referred to him in the traditional way as a "Herod," and when she cursed him in choice language, he cringed in front of her. But, all the same, he could not put up with us, his tenants, and he played all the nasty tricks he could think of. For instance, he once came into our room holding a live mouse by the tail—the house swarmed with all kinds of vermin —and, greeting us from the doorway in brisk military fashion, he said: "Allow me to roast this." Then he started to walk over to our electric toaster, which had an open grill. He thought this kind of toaster was despicable—a bourgeois plaything which should be done away with, like the kulaks, and opposed by any honest Soviet citizen. Rudakov and Kaletski, who were always sitting around in our room, sprang to the mouse's defense, and the landlord, who was a fearful coward, retreated. From the neighboring room we could then hear his jibes about the intellectuals and their weak nerves—"I'll give them a real scare—I'll grill a cat on that toaster of theirs." The extraordinary thing was that he wasn't a drunkard and did all these things in a completely sober state. The mouse was his star turn.