Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets (75 page)

It was as though someone had led her there…What force was this? What was the true nature of her dream?

…We also visited Ognenny Ostrov. It took a lot of paperwork and permits with seals. Phone calls. But we made it there…At first, Volodya was very hostile with us: “Why are you turning this into a spectacle?” For years, he’d been completely alone, he wasn’t used to people anymore. He’d grown suspicious, he didn’t trust anyone. It was good that Lena had come with us, she’d take him by the hand, “My Volodya.” And he’d go all soft. Together, we convinced him to participate, or maybe he figured it out for himself, he’s a smart guy: After twenty-five years, in special situations, prisoners may be eligible for reprieves, and if we shot a movie and he became a local celebrity, it might help him later on…All of the men out there want to live…They don’t like to talk about death…

That’s what we started with…

VOLODYA

On God

I was in solitary awaiting execution. It gave me a lot of time to think…But who’s going to help you when you’re trapped behind four walls? Time didn’t exist, it was like an abstraction. I experienced such a deep sense of emptiness…One day, I burst out: “If you exist, God, please help me! Do not abandon me! I’m not asking for a miracle, just help me make sense of what has happened to me.” I fell on my knees and prayed. The Lord does not make those who turn to Him wait too long…

If you read through my case file, you’ll learn that I killed a man. I was eighteen. I had just graduated from high school, I wrote poems. I wanted to go to Moscow to study. To study to become a poet. I lived with my Mama, it was just the two of us. We had no money, I needed to make some in order to pay for tuition. So I got a job at a mechanic’s. In the evenings, there’d be dances in the village…I fell in love with this beautiful girl. I was crazy for her. One night, we were coming home from a dance…it was winter, there was snow…The trees were lit up in people’s windows, New Year’s was just around the corner. I wasn’t drunk. We were walking along, talking. Then she asked me: “So do you really love me?” “I love you more than life itself.” “What would you be willing to do for me?” “I would kill myself.” “Killing yourself—that’s easy. But would you be willing to kill the first person we come across?” She might have been joking…or maybe, I’d found myself a real shrew…I don’t remember her anymore, I’ve forgotten her face, and she’s never once written to me the whole time I’ve been in prison. “Can you kill someone for me?” She said that and burst out laughing. But I’m a real man—a hero! I needed to prove my love. So I pulled a post out of the nearest fence…It was night. Dark. I stood there and waited. And she stood next to me, waiting too. For a long time, there was no one, and then finally, we saw someone coming toward us. I hit him over the head as hard as I could. Bam! I hit him once, then again…He fell. I finished him off as he lay on the ground. With that fencepost. It turned out that it had been our teacher…

Initially, I was sentenced to death by firing squad, but then, six months later, they commuted all death sentences to life in prison. My mother disowned me. My sister used to write to me, but then she stopped. I’ve been alone for a long time…locked up in this cell for the past seventeen years. Seventeen years! If you take a tree or an animal, they don’t know a thing about time. God does the thinking for them. That’s how I am, too…I sleep, I eat, they let us out into the yard…You only see the sky through bars. In my cell, I have a bed, a stool, a mug, and a spoon…Other people live off their memories, but what do I have to remember? Nothing ever happened to me, I never got the chance to live. When I look back, all I see is darkness, and sometimes, a little lamp burning. Most often, I see Mama…Standing by the stove, or in front of our kitchen window. Beyond that, it’s all darkness…

I started reading the Bible and couldn’t tear myself away…It made me tremble with excitement. I talked to Him: “Why have You punished me?” People thank the Lord for their joy, but when there’s trouble, they wail, “What have I done to deserve this?” Instead of trying to understand the hardship they’ve been sent. Surrendering their lives to Him…

Then, suddenly, Lena appeared…She showed up and told me, “I love you.” An entire world opened up before me…I could imagine anything I wanted for myself…A family, kids. Out from the darkest night, I found myself in the brightest day…I was surrounded by light…I admit that the situation is crazy: She has a husband, three kids, and then she goes and declares her love to another man, writes him letters. If I were in her husband’s place—well, I know what I would do! “Who do you think you are? Some kind of saint?” “You can’t have love without self-sacrifice. What kind of love would that be?” I didn’t know that women like her existed. How could I have learned that in prison? I’d thought that women were either decent or bitches and that was it. Then suddenly she appears, the kind of woman you lose sleep over…She’ll come here, she’ll laugh and cry. And she’s always beautiful.

Soon, we were legally married. Then we decided to have a real wedding…The prison has a prayer room. What if a guardian angel happened to glance in our direction?

Before I met Lena, I hated all women, I thought that love was nothing but hormones. Desires of the flesh…But she’s not afraid of that word, she uses it all the time, “I love you! I love you!” When she gets like that, I just sit there, unable to move. All of this—how do I put it? I’m not accustomed to happiness. Sometimes, I believe her. I want to believe that it’s true, that someone could love me, that the only difference between me and everyone else is the fact that they believe that they’re good. But people don’t actually know themselves, and if they found out what they were really like, they’d be terrified. Do you think I ever considered myself capable of…that a monster could leap out of me at any moment…Not in a million years! I thought I was a good person. Somewhere in Mama’s house, you can find the notebooks full of my poems—that is, if she hasn’t burned them. But other times, I’ll get scared…I’ve been alone for too long, I’m stuck in this state. Normal life seems very far away. I’ve grown mean and feral…What am I afraid of? I’m scared that our story is just a movie, and a movie is something that I don’t need. You could say that I’ve only now started to live…We wanted to have a child, she got pregnant. But then she had a miscarriage. The Lord reminded me of my sins…

It’s scary…So scary that sometimes, I want to kill myself, or…“I’m afraid of you,” she says. But she doesn’t leave…There’s a film for you! There you go…

FROM PRISON CONVERSATIONS

—It’s madness! Madness! The girl ought to see a shrink…

—I’ve only ever read about women like her in books, the wives of the Decembrists…Pure literature! In real life…Lena is the only one I’ve ever encountered. Of course, I didn’t believe it at first: “Maybe she’s just crazy?” But then something inside me flipped…People thought Jesus was crazy, too. Why, she’s more sane than anyone!

—One night, I couldn’t sleep a wink, thinking about her. I remembered I too had once known a woman who loved me madly…

—This is her cross. She picked it up and bears it. A true Russian woman!

—I know that Volodya—the groom! He’s the same kind of bastard as I am. I’m afraid for her. She’s not the kind of person to get married and then drop it, she will do her best to be his wife. But what can he provide for her? We don’t have the opportunity to give anyone anything. “And in my eyes the boys dripping in blood.”
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The only thing we can do is not take from people, not accept any sacrifices made in our names. Our whole life’s` purpose now is not to take anything. When you take things, it’s like you’re robbing someone all over again…

—But she’s a happy person. And she’s not afraid of being happy…

—In the Bible…God isn’t called goodness or justice…God is love…

—Even the chaplain…He comes here and reaches his hand through the bars, but then he withdraws it as quickly as possible. He doesn’t notice, but I do. I understand, there’s blood on my hands…But she decided to marry a murderer, entrust herself to him, she wants to share everything with him. Now, every one of us thinks, “That means there might still be some hope for me.” It would be so much harder for me in here if I had never heard of her.

—What does the future hold for them? I wouldn’t pay a fortune teller a single kopeck to find out…

—You boneheads! Do you really believe in miracles? Life is no white ship with snow-white sails. It’s all a pile of chocolate-covered shit.

—The thing she’s looking for, what she actually needs, is not something anyone on Earth could ever give her—only God.

—

They got married in the prison. Everything was just as Lena had imagined: sparkling candles, gold rings…The church choir sang, “Rejoice, O Isaiah…”

—

The Priest:
“Do you, Vladimir, of your free and good will and firm resolve take this Yelena, who you see before you, to be your wife?”

The Groom:
“I do, Honest Father.”

The Priest:
“Did you promise to marry any other?”

The Groom:
“I did not, Honest Father.”

The Priest:
“Do you, Yelena, of your free and good will and firm resolve take this Vladimir, who you see before you, to be your husband?”

The Bride:
“I do, Honest Father.”

The Priest:
“Did you promise to marry any other?”

The Bride:
“I did not, Honest Father.”

—

“Lord, have mercy on them…”

AS TOLD BY FILMMAKER IRINA VASILYEVA

A year later, Irina Vasilyeva and I met again.

They played our film on TV…We received letters from viewers. At first, I was excited but…something is wrong with the world we live in. It’s like that old joke: Mankind is good, but the people are mean. Some stick out: “I’m for the death penalty and recycling human waste,” “Brutes like your superman murderer ought to be publicly drawn and quartered on Red Square. With breaks for Snickers ads,” “They should be killed for their organs…used as human subjects for testing out new drugs and chemicals…” If you look in Dal’s dictionary, you will find that the word for goodness comes from the verb that means to live in plenty, with many goods…It’s when your life has dignity and stability…We don’t have any of those things here. Evil doesn’t come from God. In the words of St. Anthony, “God is not responsible for evil. He gave man the gift of reason, the ability to know the difference between good and evil…” But there were others, too…Beautiful letters like this one: “After watching your film, I started believing in love. I think God exists, after all…”

A document is an intrigue and a trap…For me, the documentary genre has one, I would call it, birth defect: The film is finished, but life goes on. My protagonists aren’t fictional, they’re real, living people; they aren’t dependent on me, my will, ideas, or my professionalism. My presence in their lives is incidental and temporary. I’m not as free as they are. If I could, I would devote my entire life to filming a single person. Or just one family, day in, day out. Here they are walking along, holding their child’s hand…going to the dacha…Drinking tea and talking about one thing one day, and something else the next…They’ve had an argument…bought some newspapers…the car broke down…summer is over…someone is crying…We live in the midst of all this, but so much happens without us. In spite of us. To capture a moment or observe some period of time is simply not enough for me. It’s not enough! I can’t tear myself away…I don’t know how to…I become friends with the people I film, I write to them, I call them. We see each other. For a long time, I’ll “shoot additional material,” watching new scenes unfold before my eyes. I have dozens of “films” of this extra footage.

One of them is about Yelena Razduyeva. There’s a whole notebook full of material. Something like a script for a movie that will never be made…

“…She suffers from what she does, but she can’t help herself.”

“…Several years went by before she decided to read the materials of his case. But it didn’t frighten her: ‘This doesn’t change anything, I love him anyway. Now, I’m his wife before God. He killed someone, but it’s because I wasn’t with him. I need to take him by the hand and lead him out of there…’ ”

“…On Ognenny Ostorov, there’s a former district prosecutor who, along with his brother, hacked two women to death with an axe, an accountant and a cashier. He’s writing his memoirs. He doesn’t even go out for walks, he can’t spare the time. They ended up making out with a pretty paltry sum of money. So what did they do it for? He himself doesn’t know…Then there’s the locksmith who killed his wife and two kids. Before, he’d never held anything but a wrench in his hands, now the whole jail is covered in his paintings. Each one of them is haunted by his own demons, all of them want to unload their feelings. Murder is just as mysterious to murderers as it is to their victims…”

“…Listen to the conversations they have…‘Do you think there’s a God?’ ‘If He exists, then death is not the end. I don’t want Him to exist.’ ”

“…So is it love? Volodya is tall and handsome, and Yuri is a dwarf…She even told me that as a man, Yuri satisfies her more…Only she has to…her husband is the way he is, a tragedy befell him. She has to hold his hand…”

“…At first, she lived in the country with her kids and visited him twice a year. But then he started demanding that she give it all up and go live near him. ‘You’re cheating on me, I can feel it, you’re betraying me.’ ‘Volodya, how can I leave my kids? Matvei is very little, he physically still needs me.’ ‘You’re a Christian…you must be submissive and obey your husband.’ She wears a black kerchief and lives by the prison. There’s no work out there, but the priest from the local church took her in. She cleans the church. ‘And Volodya is nearby…I can feel it, I can feel his presence…“Don’t worry,” I write him, “I’m right here with you…” ’ She’s been writing to him every day for seven years now.”

“…As soon as they got married, Volodya started demanding that she write to all of the authorities saying that he’s the father of multiple children and needs to get out to take care of his kids. That’s his chance. But Lena is pure…She sits down to write those letters and can’t. ‘He killed someone. There is no greater sin.’ He throws insane fits, saying he needs a different woman. One who is richer, who has more connections. He’s fed up with that holy woman of his…”