Мария Степанова - In Memory of Memory

An eleven-year-old boy was taken to see such a demonstration of fighting techniques in Moscow. Later in his life Boris Pasternak would remember how

in Spring 1891 they showed a regiment of Dahomey Amazons in the Zoological Gardens. How my first impressions of woman were linked forever wsith that naked line, the closed ranks of suffering, the tropical parade to the beat of a drum. How I became a captive to form earlier than I should have been, because I saw the form of captivity on them.

I look at the words and the possessions of the dead, laid out for us in the cabinets of literary museums, or ready for printing, or lovingly conserved, and I feel more and more as if I were looking into an enclosure containing the silent and closed ranks of the “exhibited.” When you spend a long time with what the old inventories called “linen belonging to the deceased,” the bars of the cage start to come into focus more sharply, and what lies behind recedes from view.

The letters of my grandmother written in her girlhood, which I transcribe, line by line; the Soviet songs Aunt Galya wrote up; the letters of a philosopher, the diaries of a machine worker — all of this reminds me more and more of the brain, pelvis, and sexual organs of Saartjie Baartman. The Hottentot Venus, as they loved to call her, was a much-favored object of scientific interest at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The shape of her body, the diameter of her nipples, and the line of her buttocks were living proof for various different types of evolutionary theory and formed the basis for boldly sexual prepositions. The well-known naturalist Dr. Georges Cuvier paid particular attention to the length of her labia. She was exhibited to medical students, enlightened amateurs, and crowds at freak shows. On occasion you were allowed to poke her. Her service to “humanity” did not end with her death: for one hundred and fifty years her remains were exhibited in museums in France and only reluctantly withdrawn from view in 1974. We, the people of the past and the present, are endlessly vulnerable, desperately interesting, utterly defenseless. Especially after we are gone.

In Spring 1942, in the Leningrad Region, lines of soldiers walked through the twilight, one behind the other, holding on to each other as tightly as they could. They were usually led by the soldier with the best sense of direction. With a stick he felt for potholes and the bodies of people and horses, and the chain of the unseeing followed him and tried their best to wind their way around obstacles. Nyctalopia is the Greek name for a condition that begins in the following way: the sufferer stops being able to tell blue and yellow apart, the field of vision narrows, and on entering a lit space he sees colored spots in front of his eyes. Its name among the people is “moon blink.” It is caused by the long winter, a lack of vitamin A, and extreme fatigue. I once read this description of it in a memoir: “I could only see two small stretches of land and they were directly in front of me. Everything else was hidden in darkness.”

Leonid Gimmelfarb, my grandfather’s nineteen-year-old cousin, was somewhere in the marshes and forests in this district: his 994th Rifle Regiment had held its position since the autumn, during which time the regiment had completely replaced its personnel as well as its commanding officers several times. Lyodik, as he was called at home, wrote regularly to his mother who had been evacuated to the faraway Siberian town of Yalutorovsk. He’d been in these parts before: he’d sent his first letters to his mother from training camps in the region in May the previous year. In one letter, he wrote that he’d gone to Leningrad to apply to the college of aviation, “although of course I wasn’t accepted, they said I wasn’t right.”

On September 1, 1939, the first day of the Second World War, a conscription act was passed in the USSR, leading to mass conscription. The children and grandchildren of all those of doubtful lineage (aristocrats, factory owners, merchants, officers in the Tsarist army, priests, richer peasants) were also included, although they had to serve as infantrymen without hope of promotion — the military academies and colleges remained closed to them as they had been before. The new act seemed fair on the whole, since it was based on a need for equality, though it lowered the conscription age quite considerably, from twenty-one to nineteen, and even eighteen for those who had left school early. Lyodik wrote that it was warm and comfortable in his tent, which slept ten recruits. They’d built a bench and a table and even decorated it a bit, and he’d set himself the challenge of learning to play chess better. New regulations had come in and now instead of a kilo of bread they each received 800g. There was a “vegetarian day,” when they ate cheese instead of meat, and even if it wasn’t exactly fun, at least they understood what was going on, and it kept them busy.

In my mother’s papers there was a special bundle with Lyodik’s letters and childhood postcards. The little boy, standing in his felt boots with shining galoshes and his lambskin cap pulled down over his eyes, was an important part of her own childhood — his absence made him almost her contemporary, and the fact that he was fated to die at the terribly young age of twenty was overwhelming. When Lyodik’s mother, the wizened, gray-haired Auntie Verochka, died and was buried somewhere along the wall of the Donsky Crematorium, all that remained of her worldly possessions was this little bundle. The death notice, and strips of army paper with numbers on and little notes: “greetings from the front,” “all my love,” “P.S. I am alive and well.” “Alive and well” was pretty much all Lyodik’s letters amounted to, although he used every possible occasion to send word. “Nothing much to report” was the mantra, and it filled the sheets of paper — whatever was going on around him was by now beyond description. What he couldn’t quite suppress though was a strange ringing, it wasn’t in the words themselves, but still it sounded in the background. Much as if a calm person were writing calming words, just as a tank rumbled down the street and all the china in the cupboards began to hum.

In pencil, on the lined sheet of an exercise book:

May 28, 41

Dearest Mother,

The day before yesterday I received a lot of correspondence: five letters, a postcard and two letters from you, one letter from everyone, and one from Father. You can probably imagine how pleased I was to receive these precious letters. I haven’t written for a while because I wasn’t able to send letters. Now our political officer is involved and the postal service is much improved. I’m moving around but the address is always the same.

I am in good health, feeling well and certain of our victory. I hope to be together with you for my twentieth birthday. I’m so proud of Father and his brothers. In a letter sent on May 6 he said that he had signed up as a Local Defense Volunteer and would make himself useful in the rear guard and on the front line. Uncle Filya and Uncle David are also joining up, Father writes. Auntie Beti’s husband has been called up — he’s a political officer. Father has found a placement from May 2. I’m so pleased for him.

Have you been troubled by air raids? As a soldier with some experience, I want to give you a little advice. It’s best to find shelter in the metro if you are near a station, or in an air raid shelter. If you are a long way from both, then try to run to a low place, and don’t stand at full height.

Many thanks for all the warm words from Auntie Beti, Lyonya, Lyolya. Congratulations to Lyonya on becoming a father, Lyolya on becoming a mother, and Beti and Sarra Abramovna on becoming grandmothers.