Мария Степанова - In Memory of Memory

Those who are dear to use are shaped forever in the heart’s memory, as long as we are alive, and the grief, the pain and the loss are with us, too. Come and visit us, perhaps you’ll find some respite being with others, do come.

2.

From my grandfather, in reply to his niece, Galina. Unfinished draft. June 1980. My fifty-year-old aunt Galya was dealing with grief in her own way. She and her father, my grandfather, who was unyielding in his demands and his assessments of others, didn’t get along, and months passed before they could find a way of living together harmoniously.

Galina, you wrote that your first brush with death was in 1948, when Lusya, if I’m not mistaken, died. Dora and I happily kept our distance from death until May 1980. I remember how it all happened, but I won’t go into details. Masha’s family has had a few funerals to cope with over the last thirty or so years. Maybe less. There’s been a series of them to get over. Leastways, the ones I know about. They were heavy losses indeed. We were fortunate and never had such losses. No one died until this year. Everyone present and correct. So this loss was all the heavier, all the more painful. The first twenty-three days since Dora’s death have passed in spring sunshine. I just can’t get used to it. I’m a healthy person, but morning till night I pace the empty flat, I’m beside myself. Up till then, wherever I was, whatever I was doing, I knew that someone would be waiting for me at home and the sooner I could get back there, the better. And now there’s no need to hurry because there’s no one there anyway. It’s so hard, Galina, I can’t tell you how hard it is. And I feel much the same as you, why her and not me. She was the mother, the grandmother, all the young ones needed her, not me. But as much as I might have wanted to, I couldn’t take her place.

Still, even with all these feelings and in this mood, life goes on. One other important thing to mention is that when Dora was alive I didn’t have much of a relationship with my daughter Galya. I often used to point out to her how she didn’t help her mother much, how she didn’t help with the housework or the cooking and of course that didn’t help matters. She’s a tricky girl, she’s withdrawn, very close to her brother, always has been. I didn’t share her casual attitude to housework, but her mother protected her and did everything herself, as she thought Galya got tired at work and on her long commute on the metro. But now all of that means we are not close.

Once when I went to hospital to see Dora she told me straight out all her wishes for after she was gone. She said, “Just in case. Who knows how this operation will go and I’d like you to know my wishes. Look after Galya. She’s all you’ve got. She’s an introverted girl, she won’t come begging. You take the lead. She has a difficult life as it is.” And when I replied, “What are you talking about, it’ll all be fine, and you’ll be back home with us soon,” she answered that she didn’t know what the outcome of the operation would be, but she had at least told me her dying wish.

3.

Undated, but clear from the content that this is July 1980. Father and I were traveling and staying by a lake, Galka was in a sanatorium. On two scraps of writing paper, paper-clipped together, my grandfather has written in his firm hand: “Page from diary.” He is writing here (as it later becomes clear) about my mother.

I am a person with quite a developed sense of personal responsibility so I was working hard until four o’clock in the morning to make the apartment look presentable for someone I’d describe as being very close to me. And today I continued the work, so I could receive her without embarrassment, despite being a man, and not a woman with all the experience and skills in household matters. It took up all my time and energy, but I was sure it would all be worth it and I wouldn’t be ashamed to have her in the house.

So the job was done. But all in vain.

She didn’t come.

I waited so long, I did all that running around, I made such an effort so the meeting would take place in the best possible circumstances…

But she didn’t come, despite telling me that Monday was a day when she could do as she wished…

She didn’t come.

Clearly she just doesn’t want to admit to a mutual relationship — between a woman who loves the revolutionary “Gadfly” and her just-a-good-friend, who is like the character of the doctor in the book… who loved her and cared for her, never asking for anything in return. And she knew it and was a friend to him, a comrade… and was even grateful

4.

Nikolai Stepanov to Natalia Stepanova

Grandfather is writing here to my mother in Mishor, the Crimean resort where we were holidaying in 1983. It’s possible he didn’t send the letter. This is a draft and I couldn’t find a clean copy in my mother’s papers.

Moscow, June 5, 1983

My dearest Southern Belles, Masha and Natasha,

Thank you so much for the letter which I received last night from my southern belles! Thank you. Please believe me when I say that I heaved a huge sigh of relief on receiving it. The weight on my heart, the anxiety which had burrowed deep into me, all was removed by your warmth and kindness… and I felt young again! Thank you, thank you, Natasha, for recovering my heart’s balance. If I were a believer I would say “may god give you and all your dear ones immense joy.” Thank you. All my gratitude.

That Crimean landscape, the nature, the sea… I remember well how Dora and I once spent a holiday there back in the good old days, and we stayed in a little privately owned house belonging to a Ukrainian woman, very neat and tidy, very welcoming and kind. That was a long time ago, in those precious days of youth, when two young people still had everything ahead of them — still free, nothing to tie them down. And those were simpler times. We were still in the Komsomol youth movement, no children, no cares, nothing to make our lives harder. We were just starting our family life together. And yesterday your little postcard nudged my memory and your letter made me feel livelier and I couldn’t get to sleep for ages for the memories, I was transported to the past, to our youth together. Just for this — not to mention that you are there, in the South surrounded by all that wonderful nature, and yet you didn’t forget that somewhere in the world, in one of the world’s great cities, there’s a person called Nikolai, who is also known as “Grandpa Kolya,” and for that, Natasha, dearest girl, I send you all my gratitude. But I also want to say that I appreciate your straightforwardness and your warmth, and that you exist and that you are mother to my (Dora would have joined me in this, I am sure) our very first grandchild. They used to say about Vladimir Ilich Lenin that he was “simple as truth” and I believe this to be one of the best qualities in a person.

Everything I have written here is true. I have the most ordinary personality. Russian, but with some particular qualities. These are not just to do with my simplicity and openness, but to do with the fact that anyone I have a spiritual connection with I open my heart to, and I trust that person absolutely. And so I wanted to say that your postcard delighted me, that simple little message, but I was also delighted that I hadn’t been deceived in your friendship. In these difficult times there aren’t many people one can rely on and trust. I’m happy you are who you are! Looking back I can see that I always felt close to serious women and girls, with whom I could have fun, but also talk about the serious things, the real things. Who made me feel trust, and also, no less important, respect for them. I am sorry to say that these days there are many young people of both sexes, who are indiscriminate, who aren’t able to blush or feel any kind of shame.