Russian Winter (9 page)

He hunched his shoulders against the thought, shoulders to ears in the frigid air—but still that other memory came slipping back. The way she opened the glass door between them, only slightly, her knuckles protruding as on a much older woman. The door propped in front of her like a shield, the cold finality of her voice.

I’m not the person you want
.

With relief Grigori entered the fluorescent-lit Dunkin’ Donuts to meet Zoltan.

There he was, the back of his head, the grizzled thinning hair, hunched over a booth by the window, the tabletop spread with many sheets of paper. Grigori took a seat across from him on the hard scoop of bench and removed his gloves, quietly clearing his throat.

“Ah!” Zoltan looked up as if shocked. “You!”

Grigori said, “You know I’m always punctual.” To Grigori, Zoltan had said, on the telephone, “Meet me at the new café I’ve found, much better than that other one. Across from the St. Mary’s T stop. With the pink and orange sign.”

Zoltan would spend all morning here, with the business people and shopkeepers and construction workers rushing in and out and the television buzzing from its perch up on the wall and the bag ladies rustling about and the employees gossiping in Portuguese. Grigori
unbundled himself from his coat but remained in his hat and scarf; the place was not well heated.

“You know what a woman just said,” Zoltan asked, “a minute ago? She said, ‘Days like this, keeping warm’s a chore.’ Oh, it doesn’t sound the same with my accent. But you hear the poetry, don’t you? ‘Warm’s a chore…’” He wrote it into his notebook. Grigori had to smile; not only was Zoltan able to see cafés where others did not, he found poetry, too, in unexpected places.

As if aware of Grigori’s thoughts, Zoltan said, slightly defensively, “There’s good light here for reading. Not like that ghoulish campus place.” He rippled his shoulders in a theatrical shiver. “The murmuring of so many overactive egos…I hadn’t realized how it was weighing me down, Grigori, the deadening chatter of academics all around me.”

The truth was, Zoltan had been kicked out of the campus coffeehouse. Just the other day; Grigori had heard it from one of the Spanish professors. In a prolonged burst of creativity, Zoltan had spent even longer hours than usual there (which explained why Grigori hadn’t heard from him for over a week). The new café management apparently thought Zoltan some kind of squatter and requested that he no longer spend all day there, at his favorite seat in the front, showcased by the window.

Zoltan took a sip from his Styrofoam cup. “Excellent coffee here, Grigori. You really must try it.”

“I’m afraid I don’t have much time. You said you had something to discuss.”

“Yes! Very important. I would like to ask you, respectfully and with friendship, to be my literary executor.”

It was nothing he had expected.

“Thaddeus Weller had agreed to do it, you know. An excellent chap. But I’ve recently had the sad news that he’s passed away.”

“I’m so sorry.” Grigori had never heard of him.

“Tragic, really. Barely sixty years old. He never did write the brilliant novel he had inside him. You could practically see it there, in his gut, bursting to get out. Others simply called it a beer belly. I asked myself, when I heard the news, Who else do I know who truly understands me—without, of course, there being any odd tension between us? That’s the problem, you know, with my fellow poets. There’s competition, rivalry. Envy, you know. With you that’s not an issue. Even though you’re not a poet, as a translator you understand poetry thoroughly and emotionally. Not to mention that your translations are superb. And then, you and I, we have a common sensibility.”

“Well,” Grigori said, “this is quite a flattering surprise.” Normally such a job might have gone to the writer’s offspring or spouse, but Zoltan had neither. (Nor had Grigori and Christine had children; Christine’s pregnancies had never lasted past eight weeks.) “I’m very honored. Although I am curious to know just what you see as our ‘common sensibility.’”

Zoltan leaned forward on his elbows. “You have that past buried inside you that most people can’t see.” He nodded. “I was older than you when I left my country, but I think the upheaval of starting over, with that other history still a part of you, that heavy weight, is something we have in common. Don’t you?”

Grigori thought of how this country, one that offered a fresh start to all who washed up on its shores, had somehow diminished not just Zoltan but Grigori’s parents, too—in a way that the other countries along their trajectories had not. Lessened their authority, muted their brilliance; fine qualities of the mind simply were not as appreciated in this home of the brave. Looking into Zoltan’s eyes, for a frightening moment Grigori felt that rare but seizing impulse: a distinct, nearly physical, longing to tell his story. Yet all he said was, “A common sensibility. Yes.”

“Which doesn’t mean, of course,” Zoltan said quickly, “that you have to agree to be my executor. There’s no need to decide right away.
No rush. Although this is of course something I need to take care of. It’s not an enormous oeuvre, by the way. The poetry collections, various essays, and the untranslated works—I realize you’ll need help with those. My journals are in English, though I don’t know that you’ll want much to do with them.” He gestured toward a thick faded hardcover notebook on the table. “Twenty-three volumes. But they’ve been extensively pillaged these past few years, by yours truly, in service of the memoir.”

“Any good dirt?”

“Oh, a divine lot. State secrets, broken hearts…” He laughed. “I look forward to your decision, Grigori. You’re just the man, you know. I hope you know how much I admire your work. You’ve brought a long-dead poet’s words to life again. And in a whole new tongue.”

A snatch of Grigori’s own rephrasing flew through his thoughts:
Black velvet night, pinned wide and high by pinprick stars
…“I just did it for myself, really.”

“The best reason, of course. The best writing happens that way.”

Patchwork shade, pine needle carpet
,
ocher-resin drops of sun. The air hums…

“If I weren’t writing for myself,” Zoltan continued, “I wouldn’t bother at all.” Though his first and second books had been translated into various languages, none of his subsequent volumes of poetry had found life outside of the Hungarian. Grigori supposed it must pain Zoltan to think that his most mature work, the fullest blossoming of his talent, happened to have been composed in a tongue that, despite its beauty, many viewed as a linguistic joke.

“Yes, well, I suppose there’s no sane way,” Grigori said, “to account for the hours we devote to these obsessions.”

Really Viktor Elsin’s poems had been a pleasure to translate. His language was simple, his imagery rarely ambiguous. Grigori hadn’t had to spend much time grappling with linguistic puzzles or ponderous questions of meaning and intention. Except for the
final two poems: “Night Swimming” and “Riverside.” Those, too, Grigori had once viewed as clues—like the
Hello
magazine, and the black-and-white photographs, and the hospital certificate with the Soviet emblem at the center. Like the letters and the stunning piece of amber…

That tawny resin, slow-motion tears, as if the tree itself knew the future.

All of those things Grigori could have offered to Nina Revskaya—had tried to, once, had made his best effort, years ago, at her doorstep and in the slightly pleading letter he then sent her. But what could they prove, really? Just as the photographs contained other people, too, no way of verifying that they belonged to her or that they were not someone else’s duplicates (though surely, Grigori told himself, she would recall their origin), the letters were cryptic, with their nicknames and initials and at times vague phrasing, so clearly aware of the censors. The letters were the only items Grigori had ever shown to anyone other than Christine—proving what a mistake it was to show them to anyone at all.

…
cool and delicious, the checkered shade of those branches. I sometimes think,
that
is what I live for, days like that, perfect.

Back then he was twenty-one years old, and never had he been quite so proud of any paper he had written. It was with real excitement that he handed over “The Pines Weep: A Reinterpretation of Viktor Elsin’s ‘Night Swimming’ and ‘Riverside’ Sequence, Based on an Unpublished Letter.”

He was in his first year of graduate school. His professor was a short, big-eared fellow with a Mongol last name, which Grigori later erased from memory. It was with trembling hands that Grigori handed him the paper he had typed, feverishly, on his Brother typewriter.

“Thank you,” Big Ears had said, without even glancing at the cover page. “I’ll let you know when I’ve read it.”

Grigori had waited and waited, though really it was less than a week later that the phone rang in the hallway outside his rented room. Big Ears had just one question, he said, but it was a significant one: Where
is
this letter whose text you’ve included?

“I’ll show it to you,” Grigori said, eager, delighted, and just the slightest bit apprehensive.

When he handed him the handwritten pages (photocopied from the original), Big Ears read for a while before saying, “How
interesting
…” Grigori couldn’t help looking over his shoulder at the first paragraph.

As Big Ears continued to read the letter, Grigori paced the room, his heart thrumming.

“Fascinating, yes,” Big Ears said when he had finished. And then, “But what makes you think Viktor Elsin wrote this?”

“He signed it.”

“Yours and yours alone” was how the letter was signed, but Grigori had no trouble making the mental leap.

“There’s no
name
, Grigori. This could be anyone. And we don’t even know who it’s addressed to.”

“Well, that would be his wife,” Grigori said. “They often corresponded by mail. She was frequently on tour, and he traveled, too. And often stayed in his cottage at Peredelkino.” The writers’ village outside of Moscow; Grigori had done the research to prove it.

Big Ears nodded, but he was frowning. “The problem is, how do we know that Viktor Elsin wrote this letter? Really, Grigori, anyone could have written it.”

“But…the paper I just wrote. That’s the whole point. I was showing how the same things he refers to in the letter are in the poems!”

“Because you were looking for them, Grigori. Don’t you see? It’s not difficult to draw parallels when one tells oneself they’re there. You’ll need more than a few related words or similar phrases to convince me that these images are the same exact ones. Or that someone hasn’t simply cribbed from Elsin’s work.” He gave a deep, impatient sigh.

Grigori closed his eyes slowly. Perhaps when he opened them…“But—”

“How is it, again, that you have this letter? I see it’s a photocopy. Did anyone actually tell you that it was Viktor Elsin who wrote it?”

“I figured it out myself.” But Grigori’s voice, instead of sounding proud, seemed hurt.

“How did you figure it out?”

“It belonged to his wife, and then—”

“Really? Well, now, that’s good and concrete. If you can just provide some sort of testimonial from her, then—”

“No, I don’t think I can.”

Big Ears made a face. It was the face that Grigori would see again and again, for years to come, each time disappointment assailed him.
Big Ears letting his eyes droop into mock sadness, his mouth pinched into a small, demeaning pout, the way one might approach a small child who has made an adorable mistake.

“Grigori.” He shook his head. “Without any evidence, this letter could be written by…anyone. My uncle Vassily could have written it! Or some old lady neither of us knows. How do we even know which came first, the poem or the letter? The writer of this letter might simply have read Elsin’s poems and borrowed some images.” Seeing Grigori hanging his head, he added, “Listen, Grigori, your paper is very well written, an excellent example of clearly explained textual analysis. I’ve given it an A.”

Grigori’s rage bubbled up. An A? Was that all this would ever come to? An A?

“Please,” Big Ears continued. “Accept my congratulations on a job well done. But I do suggest that you leave it at that. Until you find some more concrete way to support your supposition about this most interesting document.”

Grigori had thrown the essay away, in the smelly trash bag filled with empty cans of the beef stew his housemate always ate.

Yet the letter—along with the other one in his possession—meant as much to him as before, even the parts that had nothing to do with the poems.

It had all made sense when he explained it to Christine. From the very first moment that he showed it to her, she had believed him.