IV. SILVER WOOD SANITORIUM

A birch forest a few kilometres outside Moscow. A man in a white coat and a grave expression is walking across the paths of the institution. The patients are standing in front of a row of hedges, shiny in their bright gowns. They have just come outside to have a walk in the fresh air. In two hours a gong will call them back for lunch, then the wide-bottomed nurses will take them back into custody, seesawing their way down the corridors.

It is the summer of 1922 and, inside, head doctor Reverend is checking his patients’ hearts and kidneys and, above all, their souls. The armada of physicians, nurses and onlookers nods in synch and scampers behind him as he makes his rounds. The hallway is long, endlessly long, much longer than one would think at first, and every few metres a new sensation awaits. Silver Wood houses catatonics and hospitalists, neurotics and rheumatics, the depressed and those who only want to escape—from the Revolution and what came in its wake. There is a man of overwhelming Russian Orthodox stamp who from the moment he rises to the moment he goes to sleep just nods his head, and in bed too, tock tock tock against the wall. There is a woman who talks about her childhood in Novosibirsk although, according to the files, in her whole life she has never travelled further than the outskirts of Moscow. There are rooms which have remained as bare as when they were first acquired, a field bed pushed up against the wall, a scratchy blanket and a patient cowering in the corner as if hoping to be overlooked by Reverend and the rest of the world. There are rooms which have been so over-decorated with floral arrangements—a bucket of Narcissus here, a bundle of box-tree branches and rowan there, bouquet after bouquet around the bed, a wreath at the window—one would be forgiven for thinking they were at a funeral. And then there is that tiny savage from Sardinia who has been living in the ward on the left side for a few days now and frightening the other patients with his fits. At times he begins to tremble spasmodically, at others he is gripped by bouts of colic and hisses like an angry cat.

The name of Comrade Patient is Antonio Gramsci and there are rumours that the Comintern itself sent this odd Sardinian here. At the table and during afternoon free-time, people speculate on where he might have led the Revolution. Odessa? Tiflis? As far as people here know, the Revolution has not taken place in Italy. In Moscow, in any event, they haven’t heard of him.

But Moscow! Let’s not talk about it. Isn’t that city to blame for bringing everyone here? The traces of the Revolution are still to be found in the streets, can be seen in the people’s eyes, at first seemingly haughty but then quickly sinking to the ground. A few Muscovites have begun to stutter while others boom unceasingly as if having to compete with the thunder of cannons. Great numbers of people just stare confusedly and defiantly into the emptiness, and there are countless streets where passers-by just scurry past, their shoulders hunched as if being chased. This time, however, society won’t tip back into its old habits, it will remain turned on its head and the revolutionaries will string up any doubters by their feet. The war and its subsequent upheaval have worn on people’s nerves for far too long. The city is plagued by tics.

A young woman, tender in appearance, sullen in her weariness, is one of the most splendid carriers of this pain here in Silver Wood. Eugenia Schucht by name, she is the daughter of an anti-tsarist and as a child already had learnt to understand words like ‘deportation’ and ‘exile’ while growing up in four countries and three languages and fighting in the Civil War for the Revolution. Eugenia is lying in bed and can no longer walk. Supposedly Lenin himself had vouched for her integrity at her entrance into the CPSU, but now no one feels responsible for her legs, and she doesn’t either.

‘It’s no wonder she can no longer walk,’ Reverend says, ‘she’s walked enough, now she’s on strike.’

 

The first time she tries to walk, Eugenia stays close to the fence. She doesn’t trust the long-rotten wood hidden beneath the white lacquer, but by now who or what does she trust? She knows she’s stubborn but, outside of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, nothing really holds up. Well, maybe her father, but that remains to be confirmed. In her family, she is the one the others rely upon to make decisions and to direct and to rule, she is the leader of the little foursome of sisters, one of whom, Tania, has now gone missing in Rome. But Eugenia isn’t sorry. It’s one less mouth to keep quiet.

Apropos Rome. Hadn’t she just overheard a few words in Italian? She nestles into her simple little cotton jacket and has a look around.

The strange Sardinian is standing there speaking with a man whose face is shadowed by a flat cap. Enough with the cap, enough with the man, she wants to get a closer look at this Sardinian and at best alone, she’s already heard a bit about him, people had, in fact, related some rather handsome anecdotes about him.

Eugenia moves a few steps closer and greets him from across the fence. ‘Come è bello il tempo oggi,’ she says and the Italian smiles, how much and how well his language is spoken here in the outskirts of Moscow, he says, and from all sides too. Oh Italy, it’s really not that far away.

They fall into a relaxed exchange about the prescribed diet and the comfort of the beds, Eugenia intentionally ignoring the man in the cap. The Sardinian seems as a mild as a guenon, the diet seems to be having an effect. How were things going in Silver Wood? he asks. Strictly serenely, she replies. What did one usually do here? Wait. And for what? For waiting to continue.

The cap disappears with a curt farewell. At last Eugenia can dig a little deeper. Her hands slide along the fence, with her unsure steps she leads Gramsci away from the sanatorium building a little, there where every corner and exit has ears. Ahh, he’s from Turin. He’d run the communist newspaper Ordine Nuovo there. Now, that’s something. And he’d played a role in the Soviet movement. Respect. He’d been at the founding of the Italian Communist Party last year, and had enjoyed so much success in Italy that his name had made its way to Moscow. The important figures in the Party are happy with the opinions he published in Ordine Nuovo. A great deal.

Gramsci is thirty-one years old that summer of 1922, he’s arrived here in Moscow as the Italian representative of the executive committee of the Comintern, at the beginning of June he took part in the second conference, once again he’d worked until he was completely exhausted. Eugenia compassionately rocks her head. It’s clear that, as weak as he is, he cannot sit with the Comintern. No, no, you shouldn’t do that, Eugenia agrees and she thinks of Lenin who back in May had suffered his first stroke, he will only take over official functions again at the end of autumn. And Lenin was a full-grown man. She looks at Gramsci, that little, twisted heap with the mild, quite handsome, quite calm face which oh! is shattered by a twitch. For a moment a completely different person was standing in front of her.

He had never been master of his own body, Gramsci admits, but now he was losing complete control over it, had been driven to a point where his political work was being affected.

How is it he has already begun to open up to the thin little person in front of him he has just met? This is not his way, it is not normal for him at all. Eugenia listens, she carefully takes down everything inside herself while he goes on talking about living in a cold student’s room for years, about a shabby suit thanks to which he no longer dared to go out onto the street. Since the founding of the Italian Communist Party and separation from the socialists, he has been working more than ever, slaving away for the Party like a man possessed, she learns, and inside her it rattles and tickers and an endless tape of information gets wound up within that moon-pale head, she can see that he is exhausted and worn down and Really! You’ve never been in love in your life?