Rally the ranks into a march!

Now’s no time to quibble or browse there.

Silence, you orators!

You

have the floor,

Comrade Mauser.

VLADIMIR MAYAKOVSKY

By the time Simon Jashi met his son, Kostya could already say ‘Deda’. Simon had had a leave request signed off for the first time. Stationed somewhere on the Don, where the peasants kept calling for uprisings, his brigade was responsible for re-education. Stasia and Simon went for walks and ate her father’s chocolate cake, which didn’t taste the way it used to. They played with their son, visited the town’s first cinema, and even rode out into the steppe together, but Stasia couldn’t help feeling as if she was living a stranger’s life: this husband simply didn’t feel like hers, and, when he departed, she experienced a real sense of relief. Alone, she was at least able to carry on dreaming of the life she had once wanted to lead, which had nothing in common with the one she was leading now.

Kostya had just started attending the town’s first state kindergarten when Simon Jashi suddenly turned up unannounced one March morning: a gaunt lieutenant with a full beard, standing outside the entrance to the house, calling for his wife. Three broken ribs that had never healed properly had given him a pulmonary embolism, which he had survived; he now limped, and his hands trembled. He had been assaulted by a peasant with a shovel, and given leave from the army for a few months as a result of his physical impairment.

Stasia, who was just tasting her son’s porridge, hurried to the door with the spoon in her hand. She looked her changed and dramatically aged husband up and down and tapped the spoon against her thigh, not knowing what else to do. This man, the father of her son, who she had always wished would love her more than he loved his duties, stood before her in his pitiful state, but neither she nor he uttered a word. They stood facing each other, with no idea where to begin.

My great-great-grandfather suggested to the newlyweds — for how else should one refer to a couple who had shared a bed for only a few nights in more than five years — that they go to the countryside, to one of the villages close by, and take some time there for each other and the child. He had a friend whose summer residence had not been expropriated: a simple, traditional Georgian lodge, just a few kilometres from the town, but far enough from the hustle and bustle of the world. They were to get to know each other again there, and Simon was to get well. The owner of the house wouldn’t bother them; they would just have to look after a few hens, two cows, and a bit of greenery.

*

The simplicity of the house, the peace of the countryside, the remoteness from politics, their everyday occupations, the friendly local peasants — all of this suited the couple very well. At first, Stasia even enjoyed working on the land and with the animals: it was a change, after all, and she was determined to give her family a fresh start. They could begin a new life. Somewhere, the remnants of that first, foolish, crazy, provocative feeling of being in love must still exist. There were horses in the village, too, which could be rented and ridden. A good start, Stasia thought, since riding had been their shared passion. But Simon was so fragile, so tired, that he couldn’t even manage to mount one of the horses. Most of the time he stayed silent, gazing listlessly into the distance, giving his son an occasional smile, only eating when Stasia reminded him to. Stasia still couldn’t see — she refused to see — that something within him had been irrevocably extinguished.

Meanwhile, in Russia, coroner’s reports were piling up:

Corpse no. 1: skull completely shattered, lower jaw broken.

Corpse no. 2: skull smashed by two bullets.

Corpse no. 3: skull and surrounding area shattered by a metal object.

Corpse no. 4: a soldier, judging by clothing, three bullet holes in the skull.

Corpse no. 5, certainly the bishop: cause of death difficult to determine, as he was apparently buried alive.

Simon Jashi had seen enough of that. More than enough. The handsome horses, his wife’s energy, and the love of his son could not make him forget it all.

Stasia’s effort to put on a cheerful, beaming face every day, whether she was doing the laundry or mucking out the cow shed (a task she took as seriously as saving her marriage), whether she was peeling potatoes or telling little Kostya a story, had no effect. Everything seemed to pass Simon by without leaving any impression on him. He rose late, spent an eternity sitting over the strong coffee that his father-in-law sent from town every three weeks, and read the paper, which always reached the village two days late. He ate what was put in front of him, as if he had no further desires or needs, and afterwards he went for a walk, returning home only late in the afternoon. After supper, he went out to play cards with the neighbouring farmers, and, when he came back at night, Stasia was usually lying in bed awake, but with her eyes closed, hoping he would want to wake her, tell her about his thoughts and worries, ask her about her own, plan the next day, something — but nothing of the sort happened. Deadened as he was, empty and resigned, he lay down silently beside his wife, turned his back to her, and fell asleep straight away.

During this time, the only one who seemed to be alive was Kostya. He grew, and was delighted by each new discovery; he learned to walk and talk, he laughed and cried. The little village constituted his whole world, and he wanted nothing more. And if his parents, who were so wrapped up in themselves, happened to laugh, it was mostly due to Kostya having done something funny or said something inappropriate for a toddler.

Although the couple’s country life was only supposed to last a couple of months, and at the start they said that Simon would soon be redeployed, nothing happened. For some reason, Simon seemed to be in no rush to take up his promised post, and his superiors didn’t seem to be missing him too much, either. And so his leave stretched out into an eternity, or so it seemed to Stasia. He received a small, regular pay packet, and, with her father’s support and hardly any demands on their money, they managed quite well. The time the Jashis spent in the countryside passed slowly and languidly, and, above all, quietly.

On rare occasions, Stasia took Kostya into the town to visit her family, and, every time, she found herself on the verge of never going back to the village and the sleepy little wooden house. But the chocolate-maker’s household was a far cry from what it once had been. They had nowhere near enough money. Inflation had reached Georgia. The Party was setting about the project of collectivisation and industrialisation, and living space was tight. The wood factory employees and their families did not get along with the chocolate-maker’s family. They were living on top of each other, and Lara, who seemed to be gradually expanding out of sheer vexation, was always bickering with the workers’ wives.

With the political situation and his social degradation, Stasia’s father’s health had suffered badly, and his character had changed. He had developed a fiery temper, and become more cantankerous and impatient. Lida was still trying to hold the family together, but was no longer having much success. Meri’s husband had lost his job, and Meri kept fleeing home from Kutaisi to sleep in Lida and Stasia’s former room.

Only the youngest, Christine, seemed really to blossom during these hopeless times. She had reached her sixteenth year, and her beauty seemed to grow more supernatural from one day to the next, such that she was hardly allowed out of the house without a chaperone. Whether grammar school boys or married men, old men or young working-class Komsomol members, she stopped them all in their tracks. Some whistled at her or wrote her anonymous letters, which came fluttering through the window of her classroom, and which Christine laughed over with the girls in her class.

*

After almost a year of country life, Stasia’s gloom reached its zenith. Every plate she washed, each egg she had to fetch from the hen house seemed to her like an unjust punishment. She felt her resentment of Simon growing; his silence seemed to mock her, and his withdrawn manner was pure provocation. She often lay down in the hay in the cowshed and cried until she could cry no more. Some days, her aggression also spread to little Kostya, who refused to acknowledge the iciness between his parents and continued to demand unlimited love and attention from them both.

‘I can’t stand it any longer. I don’t know who you are any more. I want to leave, I’m suffocating here, you do nothing to help me, and if we don’t do something about it soon, I’m going to start hating you.’

Stasia had, yet again, been lying awake in bed, and when Simon came home tipsy from playing cards with the neighbouring farmers, lay down beside her, smelling of schnapps, and was just about to turn his back, she said this in a calm, quiet, measured voice.

‘What exactly would you like to change?’ was his response. His voice, too, was calm, quiet and measured.

‘I’m not a peasant, I’m not built for this life. I never wanted to live like this. Never!’ she replied, speaking louder and more quickly this time.

‘I’ve killed a man,’ he said suddenly.

‘But you were at war.’

‘No, not in the war, it wasn’t defence.’

‘What exactly does that mean?’ Stasia asked, slowly taking in what this stranger, her husband, had just told her.

‘We were in Crimea. They’d sent us there, to a pretty little town not far from Taganrog. There was no end to the uprisings around there. So many, again and again. I mean, I understand it. They want to wipe out the kulaks, as a class. They want to completely nationalise agriculture. To them, the economic reform means that the farmers sell their wheat below the going rate, the Party buys it and sells it above that rate, and the profit flows into the arms industry and goes to build factories. But what they don’t consider is that a farmer has no interest in selling his produce at a loss. He’d rather harvest nothing: either way, he’s headed for poverty, and he’d prefer to be poor without having to toil for it. They’d sent plenty of army troops there before us, but the farmers wanted to keep their land for themselves and sell their wares at a decent price again. Why should they sell their produce to the state more cheaply just because it’s the state? So it was always a case of oppressing them, expropriating their land, resettling them. We’d been there two days when we were sent into this village, in the interior. A village collective was occupying the administrative building and stopping the commissars from doing their work. Their leader was a farmer who used to own the largest maize and wheat fields. Two of us went, in civilian clothes — we were supposed to assess the situation, and then the army would follow. A brigadier and me. The whole thing was supposed to go off without a lot of fuss; there was enough unrest in the area already. We tried speaking amicably with the man — a bear of a man, a colossus, a life of working the land ingrained in every pore. But he proved inflexible. I tried to persuade him, telling him it was pointless to be so intransigent: all his land had already been confiscated, and he wouldn’t be able to sell his produce elsewhere. He was just endangering the whole village with his resistance. But he just kept saying that he didn’t give a damn about the accursed communists and had no intention of handing all his years of work over to these swine.

‘The brigadier who’d accompanied me — he was one of the volunteers — quickly started to lose patience. We didn’t have rifles with us, otherwise we wouldn’t have got into the village; I’d introduced myself as a commissar, and there was no talk of the army, but the scoundrel whipped out a little pistol and suddenly we found ourselves in the middle of a battlefield. In no time at all people were picking up shovels and sickles, and blood would start to flow any second, I knew it; so I snatched the pistol from the brigadier’s hand — God knows where he’d got it from — and aimed it at him, demanding that he calm down. I thought we were out of danger, and I started negotiating again. But the brigadier was cursing and screaming and calling me a traitor, and when he came at me, I pulled the trigger. I don’t know why, I don’t know what for, he wasn’t armed; he came towards me and I pulled the trigger.

‘That same night, I went to Taganrog and reported everything to my commander. I was prepared for anything, but not for what he decided. The news seemed almost to delight him; he shook my hand and congratulated me. Imagine that, Stasia. He congratulated me. I only understood the following day. They marched into the village and slaughtered the lot of them because it was said the farmers had shot a Red Army soldier. So now they had the right to do that. Anyone who defended themselves and their families they shot dead, and those who remained were resettled. That’s why I was able to come back to you. That’s why I’ve been able to stay here so long: because I killed a man, Stasia.’

She laid her arm around his waist and pressed her head against his shoulder, pressed herself tightly to him, and finally rolled onto his body. She felt pity for him, even if her store of pity had been substantially depleted over the last year. All this time she had been waiting for him to start speaking, as she had waited for her son’s first words, for his first Deda, but now that he was speaking, the main thing she felt was anger.

No, no, I don’t want to hear all that, why are you telling me all that? What am I supposed to do with this story, where should I put it? It’s this goddamned war — you could have stayed here, with me, you could have avoided this war, you would have been able to find another position, you wouldn’t have had to condemn me to go after you and end up in that hell and witness the suicide of a person I had started to love. You were the one who wanted it. You didn’t have to put me in this position, coming here, and then not being able to speak to me all this time. I’m sorry for what happened to you, you and the farmers, and I’m sorry that the whole world has lost its mind, but what about me? I never thought it would be like this. I married a charming, quiet, self-assured young man, and now I have a silent, sad, empty, wounded old man, and I’m supposed to nurse him back to health, but I don’t know what to do, I simply can’t go on. You didn’t summon me to Moscow, nor did you come to me in Petrograd. And when you came back, you didn’t even ask me if it wasn’t too late!

All this she wanted to say, but instead she kissed his temples, stroked his chest, and began to undress him. And he allowed her to comfort him. They hadn’t touched each other for months, and he was relieved that his words had broken down the physical barrier, at least.

*

Simon’s confession brought about a change in the couple’s relationship, and another pregnancy for Stasia. It softened the fronts slightly, and made the silence a little more permeable. But unfortunately it wasn’t able to turn the silent, sad, wounded soldier back into a witty, charming, quiet, and self-assured young man. And when their daughter, Kitty, came into the world in the year of Lenin’s death, the couple still didn’t know how to help each other with their respective wounds, their disappointments, and their loneliness.

In 1924, the year Kitty was born, there were twelve work camps and fifty-six other prisons in Moscow alone. Bukharin had proclaimed: ‘Yes, we will remodel the intelligentsia, like in a factory.’ And Leon Trotsky, the man seen as Lenin’s successor, was still too preoccupied with the ‘idea of permanent revolution’ to notice that the former bank-robber from our homeland had started to gather power around himself. In May 1924, our countryman, Joseph, Soso, or Koba, who two years previously had been named General Secretary of the Party — in spite of the warnings issued by an already seriously ill Lenin — prevailed against the Party’s internal opposition, led by Trotsky, and secured his supremacy at the 13th Party Conference.

But Kitty, who bore the name of her mother’s dead twin sister, was granted life. She was greedy and loud, as if living for two people at once.

Simon’s walks became shorter, and he started to throw his wife a few grateful glances in passing. And, just as Stasia started to believe recovery was in sight, first of all a couple of official letters arrived, and then, one winter’s evening, a commissar, who wanted to talk about Simon Jashi’s future. The gentleman in the brown wool suit, which was a little too tight for him, sat in the small living room drinking the wine that Stasia had offered him.

‘It’s almost a year since Comrade Lenin died. The father of us all and the brightest star in the Soviet sky. To Lenin!’ He raised his glass. The lieutenant had to clink glasses with him.

‘You have always done your duty. We have been informed about it. You can bank on a promotion, Comrade Jashi. You want to continue serving the Motherland, don’t you? Of course you do. I see it in your eyes.’

The gentleman lit a cigarette.

‘Though I have to tell you, you will only learn the exact location of your posting once you’re in Moscow, where you are expected on the first of next month.’

Stasia shut her eyes. She felt dizzy. In the few seconds that passed before her husband replied, she hoped. And then she heard Simon saying:

‘Yes, of course, yes.’

‘And what about us?’ Stasia couldn’t stop herself.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, he’s going to be sent God knows where again, and I’ll have to spend years waiting for him again, here, with two small children? In the hope that at some point my children will get to set eyes on their father again for a day or two?’

Simon looked angrily at her, but she didn’t care.

‘Comrade, as the wife of a man who is serving his Motherland and the development of our socialist country so honourably, you should support him, instead of making things more difficult for him.’

‘It’s not his Motherland,’ Stasia let slip. She turned her face to the wall so she wouldn’t have to bear Simon’s gaze any longer.

‘You still seem rather flustered, Comrade. Understandable, in view of the difficult birth on the rainy night of the …’

Stasia was winded. He knew everything; all this time they had supposed themselves alone, but they never had been. Simon would never escape, no matter where they went. Her husband had killed, and must continue to do so — Stasia suddenly realised this with ghastly clarity. Once — even if by unhappy chance — he had demonstrated his talent, and now this talent was what they were after. She glanced at Simon, who was sitting at the table, looking rather paler than usual. He didn’t defend himself, didn’t refuse, displayed no emotion.

She blinked. Her head hurt. She tried to think of a solution. For her. For the children. She tried to picture her future — a future that from now on would be an extension of this present, this dreary everyday life, with love and affection reduced to a minimum; of this silence, this marital taking-for-granted and banality.

She looked around and saw the shabby room with its old furniture. She saw the washing hanging outside in the yard, the white flags fluttering in the dark of the night, the darned tablecloth, her worn-out gloves, her son’s sad, scattered toys, and saw herself in ten years’ time, probably exactly where she was standing now, her slippers even more trodden down, a little more weight on her hips, and even more grey hairs in her chestnut-brown plait.