I’m feeling mournful—mainly because of the postal situation. Mikhail is coming over on Christmas. He’s become a true bon vivant, a dandy and a man of the world! Mark will probably invite us over for New Year’s. It seems he’ll be moving to Riga next year. I’ve never been as close to him as I am to Mikhail, but I’ll miss him very much. Is there a place in your life for music now? Someone probably has a piano there. Ask around. Is it possible that you haven’t been able to play for all this time? KATAV-IVANOVSKY IRONWORKS–MOSCOW JACOB TO MARUSYA
DECEMBER 20, 1912
I dream of music. Last night, before I woke up, I heard Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in its entirety. From the first note to the last. I really do know it by heart. I love the first concerto more, though. But in my dream, it was even fuller and more alive than I was aware of. Richer and more resonant. But I long for music. I went to church. The singing was unbearably flat. Remember when your ridiculous friend Vanya Belousov took us to Blagoveshchenskaya Church? What sublime singing! Breathtakingly beautiful.
I try not to let myself think about you coming here. I won’t indulge my hopes—otherwise, I might drift off into daydreams, and that would be a luxury I can’t afford here. Before I know it, I see your lips, with a sweet, childish expression, your hands, and the lovely little bones of your wrists, the little blue veins under your pale skin … No, spare me! I transfer my gaze to the crude, rough fabric of my existence here. I feel that from the contrast alone I could explode like a cold glass touching boiling water.
That’s all; I kiss you, a very formal kiss, on the white part on the top of your head, and on your neck, in the back, where the hair starts to grow … It’s impossible … and all of you, all of you … Lustdorf.
DECEMBER 21, 1912
Ah, Marusya! I can’t keep silent! The company is getting ready to perform a Christmas play. A real soldiers’ play, in which the men’s and women’s parts are all played by heavyset soldiers with mustaches. I have been asked to be the prompter. If only you could see what awkward, ridiculous figures they cut, not knowing what to do with their hands, their feet. At first they stood facing the audience for the entire act, not moving a muscle. When the sergeant major ordered a bit more dynamism, they began running around like chickens with their heads cut off, waving their arms aimlessly.
It was hilarious! It inspired laughter—but only in me. No one else sees anything comical in it. What bumpkins!
Marusya, I’ve made a discovery. Coming here was like going deaf—I’m completely deprived of music, and miss it terribly. A barrage of shouts, curses—these are the sounds that surround me. I went to church. The choir is wretched, but fairly large—about a dozen choristers, with a precentor hailing from true peasant stock, creaking, aged voices singing any which way. Do you remember the singing in the church in Kiev, what a joy it was to listen to? One hears the crudest sounds in the world here; even the sound of the church bells is somehow off. My God, how musically moribund it is here! And I believed that music was banished completely from these parts.
But yesterday one of the soldiers grabbed the accordion, a barbaric instrument, and started playing. Two other soldiers took up the tune and started singing something so wonderful, the likes of which I’ve never heard before in Ukraine. It was as though my ears opened up to these heartrending sounds. The folk music here is a delight, every bit as wonderful as Ukrainian music. Now I walk around listening for it whenever and wherever I can. I seem to have missed a huge piece of musical education, which was only slightly familiar to me through Russian opera. Only now do I understand where it originated, the wondrous Russian love songs, and Varlamov, and Gurilev, from whom both Glinka and Mussorgsky borrowed a great deal. Goodness, how could I have missed it … KATAV-IVANOVSKY IRONWORKS–KIEV JACOB TO HIS PARENTS
DECEMBER 22, 1912
Getting ready for the holidays. Yesterday we cleaned, scoured, decorated the whole day long. Actually, cleanliness in the barracks is always maintained. Every Saturday, all the bunks are stripped and turned out to air, the floors are scrubbed and strewn with pine shavings, and the rooms fill up with the lovely scent of pine tar. The kitchen is equally clean. There is a large marble-topped table, on which rations are sliced and divvied up—although the rations are then placed by hand on dirty scales to weigh out the allotted hundred-gram portions. After lunch, cleanliness reigns again. The samovar boils the whole day long. This beverage is the soldier’s constant helpmeet. Soldiers live for the most part on tea, porridge, and sleep.
Yesterday was the soldiers’ steam bath, banya day. I enjoyed it immensely, because it was the first time in my life I had ever been in a real Russian banya. I thoroughly and deliciously steamed myself. I lay down on the top bench, where it is hottest, and beat myself with birch branches in the customary fashion. A soldier kept crying out: Make more steam! Harder, thrash me harder! In the dressing room, now fully relaxed, and without an ounce of strength left in me, but extremely satisfied and content, I lay down on a bench and gave myself all the time I needed to gather my strength and wits about me. Now, that’s what you call a banya! First-class. I’ll never take a bath again at home.
I’m learning a great deal from the soldiers here. I already take steam baths and play the accordion. Well, what of it—it’s also a musical instrument, is it not? Who knows what the future holds?
Yesterday I read in the papers that the Dnieper is already ice-free and open for navigation. That’s never happened before, has it? It’s also very warm here—around twenty-six or twenty-eight degrees Fahrenheit, and never colder than about twenty-three. I was already used to fifteen or twenty below. Well, I can live with it. Addendum
Children! You haven’t written me in a long time. I’m not happy about this. Write me about the play you saw (Andersen’s fairy tale). I received a letter and a playbill. I’m delighted about both of them. I’d like to know more about it. But—I’m sorry—my eyes are closing. KATAV-IVANOVSKY IRONWORKS–MOSCOW JACOB TO MARUSYA
JANUARY 15, 1913
Today I received your first letter sent directly to Katav! And right after that came three more, which had been written earlier and were lost along the way. What a rich man I am today! I arranged them all by date, and didn’t unseal them for a long time. Impatience, and anticipation, and reassurance that there is another life, in which my wife is alive, in her blouse I love, with her hair bound up in a ribbon, with sunken cheeks, only an outline of flesh … What nonsense I’m writing you, my mind is wandering. It seems I live only in the world of my imagination!
You ask what Katav is like. It’s a small settlement that lives solely from the large cast-iron foundry and factory. From the time when there was a strike, the factory stopped working. For this reason, Katav became impoverished, and the population of the village dwindled. Only parts of the factory are functioning now. There’s a sawmill and a locksmith’s—that’s all. The huge factory halls are locked up and empty; the tall chimneys belch no smoke. A railroad was built here especially for the ironworks, and a huge pond was dug. The barracks stand on the far side of the pond, in the village of Zaprudovka. Why am I telling you all of this?
No, no, we won’t be together in Katav. I’ll meet you in Chelyabinsk. Although I still can’t imagine that I will see you in the flesh, dressed in your gray hat and wearing your white felt boots, and that you will descend the steps of the train car, right into my arms … I’m trying to get furlough for those days, and if they don’t grant it, I’ll just up and head for the hills! Of course, they’ll let me off on leave. Imagine how all the officers would surround you and stare at you here in Katav. No, no! We are meeting only in Chelyabinsk, and that’s final. I can wait two and a half months to see you—but I’m willing to wait two and a half years if I have to! Though even two and a half hours is unbearably long. March 1 is the day! KATAV-IVANOVSKY IRONWORKS–KIEV JACOB TO HIS PARENTS