When a woman’s dress is shabby, she becomes self-conscious. But when she is dressed well, we don’t even notice it! (There’s a proverb there.)
OCTOBER 17, 1913
Good evening, good dusk to you, Marusya! I’m so glad you’re fine. I’m also exceptionally fine—fine “squared.” Perhaps you’d like to know whence this exceptional state? Why “squared”? Because Private Volunteer Ossetsky has been thrown in the guardhouse for ten days, for insulting an officer. And in recognition of his record of good behavior, with no prior infractions, another five days were tacked on. I hope that it will be possible to reduce the sentence, because the volunteer in question has fewer than fifteen days remaining to serve in the army. In addition, unfortunately, there is no suitable place for arrestees in the barracks. The best-beloved superiors (Commander-Fathers) would never have expected to find such unruly specimens in their midst, of course.
Recently, all my superiors have literally taken a dislike to me. Eternally nitpicking.
Today is the 17th—there are fourteen or fifteen days to go. There are already fifty weeks behind me, only two short weeks left. When you get this letter, there will be only ten days or so.
The entire year, the most difficult year of my life, has brought me everything I have. There will never be a worse year. If I had lived this year in Kiev, it would have been otherwise. Worse, and otherwise. How will it end? Is it really true that everything is for the best in this best of all worlds? Is it possible that the boorishness of this officer was a necessary step along the way of my path in life?
OCTOBER 23, 1913
Good day, my good girl! The door has just banged shut behind me, and I am alone with my loneliness and my thoughts. The task before me: that my arrest become an interesting way of passing the time. I will write down everything, every single thing—and you will read it when it is all in the past, and perhaps my recollections will appear sweet and vaguely poetic by then.
And so—I am in prison. Excellent. Let Tolstoy be my mentor in the circumstances of my present life. I am referring, of course, to the story “The Divine and the Human.” My life should now turn into a burst of will, a single absolute, unremitting aspiration. I don’t want to pace desperately from corner to corner, tear at my hair, and weep.
I wrote my schedule on a piece of paper. At the bottom is a large inscription: “Our Lady, Holy Virgin Mary, give me strength!” In the severe and comfortless Hebrew monotheism there is no such warm corner. We’ll see. Now it’s time to make myself comfortable.
OCTOBER 25, 1913
The military guardhouse resembles, most likely, an ordinary prison. The difference is that your own soldiers are the ones guarding you. At the end of a watch, this sentry might himself become a prisoner. If your own company is on duty, all the better. We are very dependent here on the sentry superiors—noncommissioned officers. Prisoners consider twelve noon, when the new watch appears, to be the beginning of a twenty-four-hour day.
At 6:00 a.m.—prisoners’ reveille—the door opens, and you go to wash. You fold back the plank bed and go out. It’s still completely dark. Up by the ceiling, a tiny window covered by a grate lets in a meager light. Not until eight o’clock is the twilight bright enough for reading. Right now it’s eight o’clock.
After washing, you sit in the dark, waiting for the guard. Finally, you hear him call out, “Tea.” He comes up to the door and thrusts the spout of the teapot through the “spy hole,” filling the cup you hold under it. All day long, you hear nothing but “Guard! Take me out to relieve myself!” The keys jangle, and they lead someone out.
By five o’clock, it’s already dark. They don’t give you any light. At this time, I practice music—I do ear training, recall various pieces, whistle, and sing.
My neighbor on the right, a Jew (he’s in for theft), sings Yiddish songs and prayers the whole day. My neighbor on the left sings, too—military marches, waltzes, and yesterday he suddenly broke into “O Sole Mio”!
I hear a woman’s voice in the sentry room. What does it mean? It turns out that in one cell there is a twelve-year-old boy, a pupil from a martial-music school. They “gave him up for music” when he was seven years old. For his schooling, he is required to serve for five years. He’s awaiting trial now. He’s being tried for escaping service for the sixth time. This lively, intelligent boy is learning to be a first-class criminal, of course. One soldier was discharged on leave to Sevastopol. This boy tampered with the ticket, to make it valid for two, and went with him. He worked as a musician on a naval vesseclass="underline" “I dreamed of sailing on a boat like that my whole life.” A few months later, inquiries were made about him, and he was sent back to his company under military guard. He was held in many guardhouses along the way. He happened to pass through Voronezh, where he was from. He saw his mother there. “She came and brought me some sausage, and started to cry. I don’t like that, so I went back to my cell. She stopped crying, and then I went out to see her again.”
This cruel military atmosphere puts the mind to sleep once and for all, and hardens the hearts of the majority of grown-up people who come into contact with it. So you can imagine, Marusya, how devastated the soul of this young boy is after all these years.
He is facing pretrial imprisonment, a trial, and sentencing—to a (child’s) disciplinary detachment of music pupils, for the duration of his punishment—and serving three more years in his company.
The nights are tormenting. The bed hardly deserves the name. I roll up my uniform and put it under my head, put on my overcoat, and go to sleep. The hard planks chafe your sides, your shoulders, your legs. You fall asleep for an hour, then wake up and turn over. It’s very uncomfortable. Although I’m not terribly particular about creature comforts, I’ve never had to adjust to conditions like this. It’s not easy to sleep on wooden planks.
I remember that during my training I had to spend one night sleeping on the ground. I slept beautifully the whole night long. But this isn’t unbearable, either. Now it’s day, and night doesn’t terrify.
Today I am almost happy and satisfied with myself. In the morning I worked on French, and during the day I studied my economics textbook. Tomorrow my studies will be wonderful. Today, before-lunch passed seamlessly into after-lunch, because my entire lunch consisted of a few hunks of contraband cheese. I asked the sentry, and he ran to the store to get it.
Dusk, dusk at four o’clock. My day is ending. There are still five hours left to pace around. My neighbor sings mournfully. I hear music in my head—Rachmaninoff. If only I could look at you for just a moment and kiss your hands quietly. I can’t see a thing! Goodbye, little one.
Baratynsky’s verse is going round and round in my head. I remember it well. I remember Lermontov well. And Pushkin very well.
NOVEMBER 5, 1913
My imprisonment experience is over. I’m in a rented apartment, awaiting the discharge orders.
Masses of reserves—about one and a half thousand bearded, strapping peasants—joined the company. Now they are in formation outside the window to go to lunch. There weren’t enough copper and aluminum cooking vessels. They fetched black tin washtubs from the baths and poured the cabbage soup into them.
In the evening, I walked through the barracks for the reserves. People sleeping on straw, not getting undressed, snoring; someone cries out in his sleep, cursing. Simple folk. I’ve been living among them for a whole year. So close together that our differences get erased. They feel that I’m one of them—so there is no question of mutual misunderstanding. A sluggish, uninteresting mass of people. In most cases, crude and slovenly; they love winning and forgive everyone who wins. They’re nasty, not very smart, sometimes gratuitously violent and cruel (hooliganism), and all of them respect science for its profitability.