Katherine Brabon - The Memory Artist

This place is incredible—look at the artwork. Sukhanov gestured at the walls. His cheeks shone in the dim light. Anyone can write their own work there, or messages, quotes from Bulgakov’s work, he said. But I say no more cat drawings. He laughed. There’s enough bloody cats.

He took Lena’s shoulders in his hands and announced, We’re going to find that artist guy—I want to draw something on the walls. The two of them made their way over to a young guy talking in a small group. Ilya saw a poet friend and went over to speak to him. I went to look at the artwork.

The walls of the stairwell beside the stairs were covered in scattered scrawls, mostly in black ink, tilted left and right in long paragraphs. Over and around the words were strange drawings. There were many cats, as Sukhanov said—that weirdly human animal who accompanies the satanic whirlwind through Bulgakov’s Moscow. Just as they were in the novel, the cats seemed unnerving, not entirely animal. Some sat on chairs, one leg crossed over the other; another stared almost derisively out at the gathering on the stairs, a careful paw at its spectacles; and one, sitting poised with feline grace and wearing a bow-tie, put one thick paw regally before it, while a gun dangled casually from the other.

I tried to imagine Bulgakov walking up those same stairs, turning the doorknob to enter his apartment, sitting down at his desk to begin another evening of writing, which I imagined he did after his wife had gone to bed, lamplight dim, the air close, slightly suffocating him in his study. I imagined him agonising over each word, every line, wondering what would get past the censors and what would be slashed like his heart. For me, Bulgakov had the same sort of presence as writers like Shalamov, as the voices from Radio Liberty who spoke to me from the mint-green radio on our kitchen table. Heard but not seen, felt but not touched.

I stood close to the wall outside Bulgakov’s apartment, reached out and trailed a finger along one line of small, neat writing as if coursing a path on a map: I am a historian. There will be a most interesting occurrence at Patriarch’s Ponds this evening!

I looked around. People sat in small, quiet circles stood alone reading the walls, or moved between groups. Ilya had joined a loud group with Sukhanov. Lena was talking to another girl with long black hair tied back. Nobody had to mention the author. We just wanted to be where he had been. Our presence acknowledged an unspoken respect, a kind of innate love for the dead writer.

I stood at the walls for a while, rereading passages I knew well. A young man, tall with light brown hair, black-framed glasses, olive skin and a gentle sort of face, stood quietly reading as well, and we were soon talking. Neither of us had been to the building before.

I’m Yura, he said.

He told me he had heard of the apartment from an acquaintance, a musician. Unlike others gathered in the stairwell, the many hand-waving students and poets, Yura was not full of idealism. He seemed thoughtful, a bit distant, as though he’d just paused partway through a long search for something. I asked whether he lived in Moscow, whether and where he was a student.

I’m trying to be an academic, he said, rubbing the back of his head. Science and the academy is all a joke here, though. Unless of course you have certain contacts.

A few young guys and two girls passed us on the stairs, one of the girls carrying a guitar.

I’m also trying to make my way out of here, said Yura, gazing for a moment at the group passing us. I want to move to the West.

I’m guessing that’s pretty tough, I said.

Sure is, said Yura, raising his eyebrows once. Especially for a Jewish scientist.

You could write an article, I suggested. Getting some attention is a start. Me and Ilya—I waved an arm over at the group Ilya had joined—we’ve published a few things, we could help.

Maybe. Yura nodded. He gave a half-smile, as though grateful but unsure. I’ve never really done anything political before, he said. To be honest, I just feel the country is beyond change and I’d rather get out.

Think about it, though. A lot has changed since Brezhnev.

Yura shrugged and gave that uncertain smile again. You seem to know a lot about all of this, all the politics, he said.

I shrugged too, and said something about it running in the family.

My parents tried to emigrate in the seventies, said Yura. But no luck. He shook his head, as if something had bothered him for a long time. If only they had, I could be in New York right now, he continued. Your parents do one thing different, even your grandparents, and that’s it for you.

A friend of mine has always wanted to live abroad, I told him, thinking of Anya. I don’t think I ever really thought about it seriously until I spoke to her. But I’m sure things are going to change now, with Gorbachev.

Yura looked up at a large portrait of a cat with red eyes above us. I’m going to hope you’re right, Pasha, he said.

I invited him over to where Ilya, Sukhanov and Lena stood. We sat against the old walls, drank beer and stayed for a few hours in the echoes of Bulgakov’s presence, under the gaze of the malevolent cats and scrawls of Manuscripts don’t burn!

Ileft the dacha , not bothering to lock the door, walked under a burning sun into the next yard and knocked at the front door of the neighbour’s house. No one answered, so I opened the door and entered a short, dim hallway. I entered the first room on my left, which was the kitchen. I heard oil spitting in a pan, and a radio, a woman’s voice drifting at a low volume.

The neighbour’s wife stood at the stove with her head covered in a white cloth, an apron over her dress while she stirred, one after the other, two or three pans and pots of different sizes. She turned to say hello, wiped her hands on her apron and with a warm smile pressed her palms to the sides of my arms. Her name was Vera Sergeyevna. The grandchildren were already at the table, playing with cutlery, the youngest kicking his legs beneath the table.

Pasha, boy, you’re here, the neighbour said as he walked in. He moved about eagerly. Over a dinner of cutlets, potatoes and mushrooms in butter, and cucumber salad, he spoke constantly across scattered topics— samogon recipes, the prices of vodka and wood, Yeltsin’s latest prime minister, the work needed on the dacha I was staying in. It was as though he had long been awaiting an audience other than the tired one of his wife and the naive one of his grandchildren.

Vera Sergeyevna listened patiently and gave me a knowing, weary smile every now and then as her husband’s sentences grew longer and longer. She had something perceptive about her, in her eyes, so that I felt watched closely when she looked at me with her kind smile.

I was distracted, though. Too close to other, older thoughts. I came to some unfocused realisation that I couldn’t really lose the desire to write, but what was once an excited longing had hardened into a kind of hopelessness. I’d stopped writing, had effectively stopped thinking, when I came to St Petersburg. I wondered whether my inner silence, the hours spent staring at the ceiling, the unhappiness that overwhelmed me at times, were the dying echoes of my old creative longings, the certainty that I would one day create something.

I repeated the thought to myself: the impulse to create art, when frustrated, doesn’t disappear, but manifests itself in other ways. It was the first thought in a long time that I wanted to write down. That rare desire felt like Moscow to me. I was half listening to the neighbour. He was talking about his father.

And when we went into the forest, he said, Papa would dig his boot into the ground, mark a line so we could find our way out.