Why would she do that? Sveta had asked, golden-feathered eyebrows twitching in horror.
For the same reason it enraged her when I sat too long at my desk or got mired in a project — Nadia’s a poet herself. Or she was. When we met, she was being hailed as the next Akhmatova.
What was she like then?
She was just nineteen at the time, but her poems were already emerging in the best journals, alongside the top names. Rumor had it that Yevtushenko was terribly smitten with her. He’d tried to woo her and been ruthlessly rejected. I was just getting involved in the samizdat scene. The top journals didn’t impress me. But of course I was intrigued.
For you, I would’ve rejected Pasternak, said Sveta.
Poor Pasternak, said Pasha.
How’d you meet?
We were introduced on New Year’s Eve in somebody’s freezing basement — icicles hung from the doorway, and the heating tube was encased in a block of ice. The Akhmatova comparison was hardly a stretch. It wasn’t just the similar neoclassical tendencies or preference for rigid forms in their verse. Like Akhmatova’s, Nadia’s face was as highly structured as her poems, as if sculpted from stone. Her nose even bore that lordly Asiatic bump. She was tall and thin, but with bones like Roman columns — an imposing presence. She had a deep voice and used it sparingly. Whenever she did, it was cause for celebration. I was ready to marry her right then and there.
She sounds just incredible, said Sveta, almost in a whimper.
It was only downhill from there.
The marriage turned sour how soon?
It took no time at all.
But Pasha, why?
Were women who sounded like children attracted to Pasha, or did Pasha encourage women to sound like children? Whichever it was, he indulged. Initially she liked me because I was her secret, he said. She regarded herself as a public figure and tried desperately to abide by a comprehensive list of what a public figure should and shouldn’t do. I was the Jewish kid who couldn’t grow facial hair and trailed her every step. She read my unpublished heaps and saw there was something there, but dissuaded me from showing the poems to others. I probably would’ve come out with a collection a lot sooner if it weren’t for her.
If I hate her for anything, said Sveta, it’s that!
On the contrary, I should thank her. Regardless, I was very determined, fanatical — there could’ve been a nuclear disaster and violent revolution simultaneously and I wouldn’t have looked up from my notebook. The dynamic was bound to change. It was inevitable. I wasn’t going to be her secret for long. In the meantime Nadia began doing chores around the house. She blamed me for the fact that she had no time to write. But I never asked her to be a proper housewife. There was this other girl, Dora. Mama was in love with her, and God knows why this Dora wanted me. She would’ve made an excellent Jewish housewife. But I didn’t want an excellent Jewish housewife.
You never mentioned this Dora. Go on.
I wanted Nadia, with all her moods. I didn’t expect the next Akhmatova to iron pants or make borscht. All I required was a clean pair of underwear. Her pregnancy filled me with dread. It was the end for her. She knew it, too, and my theory is that’s why she hastened it. Before Sanya she was still managing to compose a poem or two, however painstakingly. Sanya was an excuse to give up. A good excuse, too — he was one of those shrieking, no-sleep, head-to-toe-rash babies.
I’ve seen the pictures — he’s adorable!
A few years later, Nadia’s resentment built to such a pitch that she abruptly quit everything that was maintaining the cohesion of our existence as a family. But by that point there was no more writing for her. The worst was when I tried to encourage her. That’s the distant past! she’d yell. I sacrificed my potential so that you could recognize yours. Banal, prepackaged sentiments neatly wrapped with a bow on top, like she got them at the resentful-wife store. And when she used them, you could tell how much she was tapping into their universal power. She was destroyed and destructive and had to say something.
What about when Ancestral Belt came out? Was she supportive?
The book just confirmed her suspicions about the course our lives were taking. She was inwardly gloating. It gave her reason to be more merciless. It should’ve been a great time for me, but it was horrible. That was the summer Mama got sick and I went to visit my family in New York, where I met the most beautiful, delicate, birdlike young lady. Guess who.
Sveta, said Sveta. But what you’re referring to was our second meeting. The bird lady made no impression whatsoever the first time around.
The period of Pasha’s life from meeting Nadia to meeting Sveta had been selected for constant retelling. It wasn’t allowed to fade, on the contrary often obtaining an added dose of color. Had Nadia shunned Yevtushenko’s advances in Pasha’s first narration? From Sveta’s exclamations of surprise, horror, disbelief, you’d never guess that this was neither the first nor the tenth time she was hearing the account. Because it was impossible to comprehend — how could Pasha, a poet of genius, a sensitive, intelligent, loving, extraordinary man, have ended up in such a hellish entanglement? It didn’t make sense. Pasha was made to revisit the beginning on a regular basis, and Nadia got to be ever more celebrated and beautiful. Hearing this didn’t upset Sveta. It shed light on the unambiguous tragedy of Pasha’s life. He’d been tricked into marriage!
During the years of Pasha’s complaining, Sveta had indeed been taking notes. She was mindful not to repeat Nadia’s offenses — there were no inquiries as to Pasha’s whereabouts, household duties weren’t a suitable topic of conversation, and Pasha’s workspace was sacred ground. He could sit for hours, if need be days, undisturbed. He began to detest the isolation of his desk, preferring to work at the crammed kitchen table while Sveta pranced stoveside.
Proximity had to be maintained. They always occupied the same tenth of the apartment, and the apartment was small — no wall moldings or ten-meter ceilings, no Turkish rugs, scenic view, ventilation. The old apartment was on the fourth floor, with exaggerated windows overlooking Potemkin Square. This apartment was on the first floor, or not even. You had to step down to enter. The window (the only one was in the kitchen) looked out at crotch level onto a courtyard whose slabs of concrete had proved inadequate to contain a spoiled earth. It was a ditch.
But the apartment didn’t matter! The old apartment had mattered. This apartment was perfect precisely because it wasn’t the old apartment, which had belonged to the Nasmertovs since midcentury and in which now resided Nadia and a frequently rearranging group of her distant relations. Nadia had turned out to be not just emotionally needy and mentally unstable but vengeful and greedy. Irrelevant — here was Sveta with a plate of cold, slippery herring and a dill-veined boiled potato. Around the house she wore what could only be called a nightie, terminating at upper thigh. She had schoolgirl legs, skinny with shapely knees. Her thighs were bluish and the inner parts always sweaty, as she was a touch knock-kneed. You wouldn’t notice unless you really looked. A shriveled ear poked through her hair. Pasha had grabbed it once at the foggy instant of sexual release, cementing a habit.