Vitya called Nora now and then. They did see each other, but she forgot all about him between one visit and the next. A few times, she brought out her marriage license to show one of her girlfriends, more for a good laugh than anything else; and her marital status freed her from the anxiety of unmarried girls that reigned all around her.
In her third year of marriage, Nora embarked on a feverish romance that lasted for a full two weeks. This was her first affair with someone other than a fellow student her own age. He was a grown-up man, a theater director, who had dropped by Tusya’s studio to wish her a (belated) happy birthday. On the first evening, the director tried feebly to fend her off, but Nora all but turned somersaults around him. Used to women’s advances, he gave in through sheer laziness. He had always been attracted to fleshy women with large breasts, hair, and legs. Young girls with delicate, slender legs, transparent ears on an almost bald head, and eager lips frightened him. Recently, many girls of that description had appeared in actors’ circles, and up until then he had managed to steer clear of them. But on this particular evening, he was tired and not as vigilant as usual. He’d had a bit to drink, felt soft and mellow from conversation, and surrendered without resistance. A Moscow romance in no way fit into his plans, but the girl wouldn’t let him out of her clutches; for two weeks, they were inseparable. Then he left, taking with him a heightened respect for himself and gratitude toward Nora, who, with her fierce love, had awakened in him hidden powers that he intended to use, of course, for something else altogether.
Nora remained in Moscow, bereft, trying to stop up a hole that felt bigger than she was herself. It turned out that the affair with Nikita Tregubsky, which she thought had left her older and wiser, had not taught her anything. She had fallen in love again. By now, she already understood that you have to fight fire with fire—she mobilized all her admirers, and tumbled around with them in various positions and situations—but the memory of this infernal Tengiz would not fade. At that time, she still hoped that she could get along without him. Neither he nor she could have supposed that what they had begun would last a lifetime.
That year, Nora hardly saw Vitya at all. Just by accident, near the metro station, they ran into each other, and their relationship flared up again for a while. It was during this time that Andrei Ivanovich finally managed to get divorced, Amalia resigned from the design bureau where she had worked as a draftsman for twenty years, and they went to live in the country, at Prioksko-Terrasny Nature Reserve. At first, they would travel back and forth to Moscow, but then they renovated a house, adding almost all the modern conveniences, took in pets, and came back to the city less and less often.
Vitya again started coming over to see Nora now and then, and sometimes stayed the night. Varvara Vasilievna’s hatred for her invisible daughter-in-law grew more and more intense, but Nora was oblivious to it, a cause for more annoyance to Varvara Vasilievna: What kind of an attitude was this? She was just waiting for the chance to give Nora a piece of her mind, and to quarrel to her heart’s content; but the chance eluded her. It eluded her for a long, long time. In fact, Nora never did give her mother-in-law the opportunity to air her grievances on the subject once and for all for the rest of her life.
7 From the Willow Chest
The Diary of Jacob Ossetsky
(1911)
JANUARY 1
I woke up this morning fairly early, suddenly recalling with vivid clarity a memory from early childhood. Thirteen years ago. I’m not yet seven. Mama helps me with my lessons. Every day I write two pages to practice my penmanship. I sit in the dining room of our tiny little house (our “own home”) in Rtishchevo. It’s evening already. I have copied out a whole story, and there are still two pages left. I write on them: “Jacob Ossetsky, January 1, 1898.” Mama says that there are two hours to go, it’s still December. I answer, “But I’m already going to bed.”
And in the morning a manservant came over, and another man, a peasant who was a stranger to me. And they wished us a Happy New Year, and showered us with rye and barley. The newspaper Life and Art was extra fat, with pictures in it. Then Genrikh, my older brother, came—what joy! I felt such love for him! He is still the most interesting and well-read person in the family. His mother died in childbirth, and he was taken in by his aunt; she also had an infant, so she nursed both of them at once. And he stayed in that family to live. When Father remarried, to Mama, they wanted to take him back, but his aunt wouldn’t agree to it. I missed him terribly when I was little. I still do when I don’t see him for a long time. It’s been a whole year and a half since he went to Germany to study in Göttingen. His adopted family is wealthy, but Father doesn’t have the means to send me to Germany. I’m sure that in time I will earn enough myself to pay for my studies and go to Germany, like Genrikh. To Göttingen or Marburg.
It means so much to have an elder half-brother, even though I rarely see him. The little ones are another matter altogether. They are wonderful, but I love Eva most of all, and feel the most for her. And I mean the most to her. It will be this way our whole life—an eternal bond. She’s no longer a child, but a young lady. She has developed a womanly figure, real breasts, and she has started feeling embarrassed about it. She’s a charming creature. It’s strange to me to think that some man will love her, that the carnal world will claim its due, and there will be children. For some reason, it’s unpleasant for me to think about. In three weeks I’ll be twenty, and I still can’t figure it out—am I already grown up, or still an adolescent? When I study music or mathematics, or read a serious book, I always think I’m completely grown up; but as soon as I’m around my younger siblings, I seem to shed five or six years. Yesterday we were horsing around and playing, and I was galloping around like a madman, until Rayechka fell and bumped her nose. Is it possible that I’ll have kids, a lot of them? First, though, a wife. It’s hard for me to envision her. I think I’ll recognize her, though. But it’s unlikely to happen anytime soon.
JANUARY 10
Yesterday Yura told me that Rachmaninoff was coming to Kiev. Two concerts! January 21 and 27. The main thing now is to get hold of tickets. They haven’t gone on sale yet, but I’ll run over to see Radetsky today and ask him to ask his aunt, who has been secretary of the Kiev Musical Society for many years, to get a ticket for me. I’ll go down on my knees and beg—only I don’t know whom to kneel before, Radetsky or his aunt!
JANUARY 22
Yesterday I didn’t have the strength to write. I don’t know about today, either. But I always feel that if I don’t write down everything that happens to me, from the first to the last, it will all disappear. I have never experienced such a storm of emotion, and the main thing is that I feel I never really lived before yesterday—up until now, it was all practice, just études of some sort. Scales, nothing but scales!
First—Rachmaninoff. In the first half of the concert he conducted the orchestra. The Second Symphony. I had never heard it before. Modern genius. But I will have to listen to it a lot; there is much in it that is new for me. He didn’t wear a tuxedo, as is customary, but a frock coat. His hair is cropped short, and he looks more like an aviator or a scientist, a chemist, than an artist. And he looks so powerful that from the first moment you lay eyes on him you know he’s a colossus, a giant! For the entire first half of the concert, I had no idea where I was—in paradise? I could have been anywhere, except on earth. Still, it was not a divine realm, but a human one—an exalted human realm. The melodic principle is very strong in it. It takes another direction altogether from Scriabin’s, and it is more in keeping with my nature. I even had the feeling that all the organs inside me, each individually—heart, lungs, liver—were rejoicing at these sounds. My ticket, moreover, was for a seat in the orchestra, not for a cheap upper-balcony seat. Father gave me ten rubles for my birthday. Eva probably told him that I was longing to be able to attend this concert. I would have been happy even to stand on the stairs, but I was in the orchestra. And this had important consequences. At the end of the first half of the concert, the audience gave a standing ovation, for ten minutes. I have never seen such a successful performance in my life. During the intermission, I went out to the lobby. Everyone was enthralled; the atmosphere was electric, and rapturous exclamations filled the air. Then I saw her. Standing by a column was a slender girl, pale, her delicate neck rising from a large white collar, like a white stem growing from it. I saw her from the side, and recognized her immediately. It was her! The very same girl! With the blue tie under the white collar. I hardly saw her face—I simply rushed up to her and said: “What luck! I knew I was sure to meet you again! And at a concert like this, a concert like this!” She looked at me calmly and said, surprised, “I beg your pardon, there must be some mistake. We aren’t acquainted.” “No, no, of course we’re not! But I saw you at a performance of Khovanshchina. You were with two students. Very unpleasant ones!” That just burst out of me, and I was horrified that it had slipped off my tongue so easily. And she looked at me with enormous surprise, then laughed such a wonderful, girlish laugh, like Eva.