The Russian Jerusalem Read Online Free Page B

me, as if puzzled. There is no reason she should know me.
    â€˜Are you taking the boat to the River Kama?’ she asks,as if we were both ageing peasant women, between whom a moment of friendship was possible.
    But she is staring at me as she fingers her amber necklace, as if I were some gypsy woman met on the muddy roads near Prague, as if I knew more than she did and could foretell her future. I remember how deeply superstitious she had always been, how any hint of foreknowledge would be bound to disturb her.
    Now she asks my name, and nods when I give it to her, as if it confirms her opinion.
    â€˜Jewish, I suppose.’
    â€˜Yes,’ I reply, stung by the ease with which she has identified me, and remembering her description of down-at -heel Jewish women like herrings, who shared her clerical job in the Moscow famine.
    For the first time she looks friendly, even amused.
    A plump sixteen-year-old boy comes towards her then to complain of thirst. I can see there is some animosity between them but she reaches into the sack she is carrying and brings out a bottle of water. He takes it ungraciously, and when he has drunk his fill gives it back to her, puts his hands deep into his pockets and leaves without another word. If he sees me, he makes no sign. It is her son Georgy, I realise, studying his handsome, selfish face. She watches him leave with an expression of pained tenderness.
    â€˜Georgy did not want to leave Moscow,’ she says.
    But she speaks less to me than to herself.
    â€˜He has fallen in love. He goes fire-watching with the girl on the top of our flats. He calls me an old crow. It doesn’t matter. I want him to live. He is just sixteen. A brilliant boy. He deserves to live.’
    â€˜Where are you travelling?’ I ask her, as if I knew nothing of her story.
    â€˜Towards Yelabuga. On the Kama.’
    â€˜Don’t go,’ I cry involuntarily, knowing she would take her own life there, that her body would hang from a nail in a peasant’s hut.
    At this, she draws back from me and once again there is an expression of distrust.
    â€˜An agent of the NKVD, then?’ she murmurs, but after a few moments she shrugs as if nothing that could happen to her had much significance.
    â€˜No other way now. My life is over. Has been over for years. Listen. Marriage and love destroy. An early marriage like mine was a catastrophe. I suppose you know: my husband is in gaol. My daughter is in the Gulag. I have written nothing for two years. What else can you need to find out, whoever you are?’
    â€˜There are people you love.’
    â€˜ Do you still love people?’ she asks. ‘I long ago stopped loving anything but animals and trees.’
    Again, she looks intensely at me, her green myopic eyes puzzled. I long to explain my presence in her terrible life. To explain how her poems have given me courage from the moment I began to write. But I cannot find the words. And the river station is melting. Already people have begun to shimmer like figures in a mirage and I am losing their outlines. Yet I can hear her voice as if from beyond her own death. And her voice remains with me.
    Â 
    â€˜If you come to Moscow in a different age, I will look after you.’
    Â 
    There is a sudden bustle, the doors open and an irritable crowd pushes its way toward the boat at the dockside.
    Â 

6  Rivers
    Rivers, we dream of black rivers, and
    a shadowy world lying across their waters.
    The other shore is always a little uncertain.
    Darkness. Acacia blossom. No boatman.
    I am not brave enough for this exploration.
    This is a savage path. I fear this country.
    where so many of my kin already lie
    in unmarked graves, or have been thrown
    without pity into ravines as hair and bone.
    My guide is a gaunt, sure-footed spectre
    who walks fearlessly into the night
    murmuring, ‘ The Neva is not my river
    I cannot love St Petersburg. Once,
    with a blizzard outside and a war raging,
    I made