The Vanishing Futurist (5 page)

‘With my institute – my scientific institute for the purposes of creating the true communard! You, Miss Gerty, you are the perfect woman to lead our Russian
dyevushki
, you have already the spirit of English egalitarianism in your veins . . .’

We talked long that night, Nikita was inspired and eloquent. In the early hours of the morning, without any awkwardness, we suddenly found ourselves making love on his rusty-springed bed. The feel of his skin against mine was intoxicating.

Immediately afterwards, as we lay in each other’s arms, we agreed that the physical side of our friendship was no more than that, part of a friendship. Romance, we both said, was a product of an outdated social order, a trap for women that turned them into second-class citizens. ‘I have the greatest respect for you, Gerty,’ Nikita said to me earnestly. ‘In fact I’m very fond of you – but I am not and I never will be “in love” with you. I reject that state of exaggerated ego in which each partner wilfully creates an ideal beloved of the other.’

I agreed with him and added, quite casually, that sexual desire is natural in both men and women – even if the words caused a foolish hot flush to creep up my cheeks. We both concluded that the important thing was to be rational about such things, and not to let emotion mislead one.

June passed in this way, and July. In what spare time I could grasp from the round of English classes, looking after the old ladies, tending the vegetable patch and trailing from shop to shop to find food, I packed away the Kobelevs’ things, determined to keep them safe if I could. ‘Loot the looters!’ Lenin had announced, and all over Moscow people were taking his words to heart. The Civil War brought news of more horrors every day. In July, they reported that the Romanovs were killed – the poor girls, the little boy. I didn’t tell the old ladies. By force of will, I shut my mind to all of it and concentrated on the house. Nikita worked with me, room by room. He was good at cleaning; as a child, he told me, he had helped his mother who always had a new baby to nurse.

Together we scrubbed and polished the floors and stored all but a few essential pieces of furniture and household equipment in the stables. We took down the heavy, swagged, fringed curtains and packed them in cloth dotted with camphor. Day by day, more sunlight poured into the house – even into poor Mrs Kobelev’s room. We flung open the doors and windows and the lush summer seemed to rush indoors. Like an old beast led out after the winter, the house pulled itself upright and pricked up its ears. The years dropped away from it. The lack of the Kobelevs themselves was like a stitch in my side, a constant, anxious ache – but at the same time exhilaration bubbled in me, just below the surface. I hardly slept, I worked like a dog, I didn’t recognise the wild-eyed, exultant girl I saw in the mirror, biting her lip to stop herself from laughing out loud.

I spent my evenings playing canasta with the old ladies, my ears pricked for the sound of the front door closing behind Slavkin. Then I excused myself and went to bed, waiting, shivering with excitement, under the covers for the door to open quietly and Nikita’s long silhouette to approach. Every evening I was sure he wouldn’t come, sure that I didn’t deserve so much happiness. Every evening he appeared, and silently, passionately, we embraced. Sometimes he was too hasty – I remember crying out – although later he was always tender, stroking my cheek. Afterwards we would lie in my bed and drink Armenian brandy. Nikita would talk, his long face animated and glowing like an El Greco, imagining a new way of living. Together we planned a commune – a place where a group of us could live together, and be moulded and changed by communal living, its problems and its rewards, into real Revolutionaries, people capable of building Communism.

‘But the Kobelevs, what would they think?’

‘Well, the alternative is Prig and his louts – they will be back any day now to give these rooms away to whomever they choose.’

‘You’re right.’

‘We’ll invite Marina and Vera, and others – this way we can choose suitable participants rather than have to take Prig’s people.’

Nikita was not the only one to have this idea – ideological communes were springing up all over Moscow. They were a rational response to the life we found ourselves living, with such scarce resources and such high hopes.

So we invited Fyodor Kuzmin, a student friend of Pasha’s, to join us, and Volodya, the yardman’s son, when he returned from the army. Marina and Vera Getler, neighbours and old family friends, agreed as well. Together we wrote a Manifesto. We renamed various rooms: Mr Kobelev’s study became our communal meeting room; the hall became a ‘Red Corner’ with political reading material. For the first time in my life, I felt that I was engaged in a mighty, vitally important task. I had never been so happy. Fyodor took some photos of us on the steps of the house – Nikita and I, standing close together, beaming straight at the camera.

I often find myself staring at those photos now. It’s hard to make sense of what became of those two smooth-skinned children – the girl now a bent, wrinkly old woman, while across the Soviet world, from hoardings and murals, book covers and film posters, the boy smiles on unchanged.

One evening towards the end of August Nikita and I heard a muted knocking and voices at the front door. We leant out of the window into the warm summer night. Two figures were waiting in the street; we could hardly make them out in the twilight.

‘Who’s there?’ Nikita called quietly.

‘Good Lord, can that really be you, Nikita?’ came a familiar voice. ‘Get down here at once, you dog, open the door to us.’

Pasha and Sonya Kobelev had returned to Moscow.

‘Friends! My dear friends!’ shouted Nikita, galloping downstairs and flinging open the door. I hurried behind.

‘My goodness, Miss Gerty! You look beautiful! Have you been waiting for me?’ Pasha stepped indoors. ‘Don’t touch me, Nikita, for goodness’ sake; we must fumigate these clothes, there are infections everywhere. Just get us some water to wash with, there’s a good girl, Gerty—’

‘Oh – yes, of course.’ I brought a basin and as they washed they told how they had travelled south – their week-long journey, unable to leave their seats for fear of not being able to force their way back into the train, poor Mrs Kobelev delirious with fever, begging for laudanum. Outside Yalta they had found a small villa to rent and had installed themselves safely. The area was now under White control, from whom the Kobelevs had little to fear, even if they disagreed with their politics. ‘My father plans to stay the winter there, at any rate, and then decide what’s best.’ Pasha said quietly. He looked tanned, if thin and tired. ‘They’re quite happy – the children swim and sunbathe all day long. Even my mother seems rather better. But Sonya and I couldn’t allow ourselves to swan around like that for ever. Once they were settled in we decided to come back. To do our bit for the Revolution and all that. You can’t imagine what all those Whites are like – they really are clankingly awful. Their politics are one thing, but do you know they talk about nothing but duck shooting? And their moustaches . . .’

I smiled. ‘Well, if they have substandard moustaches, of course. What did your parents say when you told them?’

‘My mother wasn’t happy,’ Pasha shrugged. ‘My father understood. He was anxious about us, of course, but I think he was proud.’ He blinked. ‘And of course he plans to come back.’

‘Once things have settled down,’ I said – Mr Kobelev’s mantra. ‘By spring, once things are a bit calmer—’

Slavkin, who had been pacing about the room during this conversation, suddenly interrupted.

‘Yes, yes, but Gerty, perhaps you’d empty the water for us, would you?’ He pushed the basin into my hands, slopping it over my dress. ‘My word, I have been missing you both!’ he burst out before I’d left the room. ‘I’ve an idea, a plan. I had no one to discuss it with . . .’

I couldn’t help stopping and looking at him in astonishment.

‘Of course Gerty and I have talked it all over,’ he stammered, embarrassed. ‘She’s been a wonder, but—’

‘Gerty is a wonder,’ said Pasha. ‘We all know that.’

‘But I need other progressive minds to discuss my plans with, you understand.’

My face was burning. I emptied the basin in the laundry and sat there for a long while, until I calmed down.

 The following day, Nikita drew me aside and said, without looking me in the eye, ‘We’ve always been friends, comrade. I hope you will do me the honour of remaining my friend even if certain aspects – which were always quite separate from our friendship – are no longer appropriate to our relationship.’

Part of me had guessed immediately what he was about to say, but nonetheless I was silenced for a moment. I stared at him and stammered, ‘What aspects?’ And when he took a deep breath and was about to tell me, I interrupted, ‘No, no – but why are they no longer app—’ the word he had used failed me, ‘no longer app— app—’

Slavkin looked at me. He seemed puzzled. ‘Are you all right, Gerty? Perhaps you should sit down?’

I sat on the stairs.

‘The fact is, that now Pasha and Sonya are here, and all our members are about to move in, the time has come to devote ourselves to the commune, do you see? We must all make sacrifices and our – our physical intimacy is one of them. We cannot have couples, with secrets and so on, forming divisions within the group. We must be a collective.’

I said nothing, determined not to cry. To my horror, he crouched down in front of me and put his hands on my shoulders. ‘I must tell you, Gerty, how grateful I am for your friendship. I’ve never known anyone like you. You have taught me so much about the human spirit, what generosity it is capable of . . . With you in the commune, I think we have a chance of making it work.’ He gave me a little squeeze and left. Was it my imagination, or was he almost jaunty as he stepped out of the front door?

I lay hunched over on the stairs for a long time, feeling the sharp edges of the mahogany panelling pressing into the skin of my forehead. Tears dripped onto the stair carpet, soaked in, and disappeared. Then I heard someone coming and struggled upright, straightening my clothes. Neither Slavkin nor I mentioned our liaison to the others – why would we? And I was grateful, on the whole, that none of the members of the commune noticed anything amiss – my low spirits, or the way Slavkin seemed to avoid me, or a thousand other pinpricks that pierced me each day.

So at the end of August 1918, the Kobelevs’ house on Gagarinsky Lane became the Institute of Revolutionary Transformation, and we – its raw materials, aching to be transformed.

The day began in the IRT with the clanging of Mr Kobelev’s huge copper gong – one of the few possessions of his that still remained in the house – at six each morning. How delicious those summer dawns were, the morning sun through the poplar trees dancing on the ceiling of my bedroom. I dressed rapidly; everything was quicker now – no dreary lacing of stays, no elaborate hair arrangements. All the female members of the commune – Sonya Kobelev, the sisters Marina and Vera Getler and I – wore our hair short and had exchanged our corsets and underpinnings for loose cotton dresses, and all of us were amazed at the difference it made. Whereas before we were hardly aware of our bodies and gave them no thought, except to feel uncomfortable, now suddenly I noticed the muscles sliding under the skin of my arms, I felt the air on my legs and the sweat trickling down my torso on hot days. And if I was careful, and worked hard, and concentrated on such matters as the muscles in my legs, the fresh morning air, and so on, then I found I could keep my mind off dark thoughts for whole hours at a time.

At six-thirty we sat down to eat breakfast in the airy, high-ceilinged dining room with its large windows giving onto the garden and listened while one of the members read something suitable – Gorky, perhaps – a relief, as the food was best not dwelt on. It was usually
kasha
,
buckwheat porridge, or perhaps
blondinka
, as we called millet porridge, with salt fish. Even in the summer, when supplies were relatively plentiful, there was already the sensation of dread before you had started your bowl . . . the last spoonful was drawing near. You took smaller and smaller bites and you savoured the feeling of food on your tongue, in your mouth; you never swallowed too quickly. You found different ways to eat your portion; a slice of bread could make a whole plateful of tiny balls of dough. I remembered little Liza’s words, years before – ‘I don’t like to eat, I prefer to be hungry’ – and I understood her better now. The only way to overcome hunger was to welcome it in.

At the time we were brisk with ourselves. Communists are too tough to whine about hunger, we said. We joked about the Moscow Slimming Diet and then we changed the subject. But all these years later, I still have what my little grandsons call ‘the tins’ – the hoard of tinned and dry foods that I keep piled up to the ceiling under the stairs. My daughter Sophy tells me I am absurd, but I can’t help it. If you’ve once been hungry like that, you never quite feel safe again.

After we had scraped our bowls clean, if it was not a working day, we sat in the garden and debated how to run the commune. We set it up as if we were establishing a small independent state. We had a Customs House, run by two Customs Officials to whom all members handed over any food they came by. A Finance Ministry controlled most of the money the members might earn, apart from a small amount to be kept by individuals. A Triumvirate of Food Commissars was in charge of buying and bartering the supplies for the month. Small articles such as soap, paper, pencils, hairpins, and so on were in theory available from the Shop Without a Clerk, which was in a cupboard in the meeting room; a small red book was provided for members to note down what they had taken, and we relied – in this as in all our arrangements – on the communards’ good faith. All these positions were rotated weekly, and those who were not assigned any that week were expected to show solidarity with their labouring comrades. For example, while the Ironing Brigade was at work, volunteers might entertain them with songs or funny anecdotes.

Almost despite myself, I loved it all . . . so many jokes, so many passionate debates. We pinned up reproductions of non-objective pictures we admired. We painted slogans on the walls: ‘Come on, Live Communally!’ in yellow letters on the red wallpaper in the hall, and in the study a quote from Gerrard Winstanley: ‘Live together, Eate together, Show it all abroade’. In Slavkin’s workshop, which he set up in the empty drawing room, we nailed a banner along one wall: ‘We have nothing to lose but our chains.’ (‘And that hammer . . . I’m sure I left it here somewhere,’ added Pasha, of course.) The men’s dormitory was Mr Kobelev’s bedroom, while at first the female members of the commune had the small, separate bedrooms at the back of the house. Then Dr Marina (as we called her, although she was still in training) disagreed with this arrangement.

‘Why do women need privacy? Only to hoard some kind of private property, some frippery; or to indulge in private fantasies instead of working; or perhaps to facilitate sexual relations, which would be the most offensive reason of all . . . We women, more than any men, need to rid ourselves of the insidious reactionary voice in our head – look pretty, be charming, please everyone! A collective life will help us to be free of it. We assert our right to a communal women’s dormitory. They are only partition walls between the bedrooms; I propose we demolish them.’

Tall and thin with short dark hair, constantly smoking and grave as a Spanish
hidalgo
, Dr Marina was the most militant of all of us. She had already spent three years struggling against the casual chauvinism of her male colleagues, and no battle was too small to fight.

‘Well said!’ approved Slavkin. ‘Everyone, share your thoughts on this suggestion.’

‘Let’s hope the house shows a proper Revolutionary spirit and doesn’t collapse on us all,’ ventured Pasha.

‘They’re such nice little bedrooms,’ Vera said wistfully.

She could barely have chosen a more outrageous description, in our terms.

‘Nice!’

‘Perhaps you mean
cosy
!’

‘Verochka, you should be ashamed of yourself! Explain to your sister that we’re in the middle of a Revolution, Doctor—’

‘Let’s vote on it – who’s for the women’s dormitory?’

The motion was carried unanimously, even the blushing Vera putting up her hand, and the following week the three back bedrooms were knocked into one. Sonya, Dr Marina, Vera and I moved in together, and it did mean that there was little time for vanity – and even less for introspection. At night, when I couldn’t sleep, I still felt desolate – although what right did I have when Nikita had been so honest with me from the beginning? But at least, day by day, my ego was being eroded – ‘dragged out and crushed’, as our Manifesto said. I was changing, little by little, and the pain it caused me was only natural. It was a sacrifice worth making for our cause.

‘The children seem to be turning everything upside down, Miss Gerty!’ Anna Vladimirovna kept saying querulously. ‘In my day, Father would have sent them to bed with no supper.’

‘Well, that’s more or less what happens these days too.’

 ‘
Nichevo strashnovo
,’ Vera soothed them. ‘Nothing to worry about.’ Vera, who wasn’t remotely interested in politics, was probably the most generous and selfless communard of all of us. Kind and plump, with shiny dark hair and huge blue eyes, she often helped me with the old ladies, who adored her. ‘Let’s listen to the gramophone, shall we?’

‘If you say so, my dear . . .’

Dr Marina and Vera had brought the gramophone with them; in the evenings we played ‘Sensation Rag’ and Marion Harris singing ‘I ain’t got nobody’, and danced on the lawn. Pasha asked his aunt to dance, and Nikita led out a shy and delighted Mamzelle. I hung back as each song ended, hating myself for minding that he never asked me. Later, under the warm night sky, we lay on the grass, told stories and read poems. The one I remember best was the Futurist poet Khlebnikov’s ‘Incantation by Laughter’, which, read aloud, always reduced us to helpless snorting heaps:

‘Miss Freely,’ said Miss Clegg, striding into the hallway one hot August day. ‘I made a promise to your poor parents. I cannot abuse their trust. I simply will not allow you to remain in this house a moment longer.’

It was some months since I had last seen Miss Clegg. Her appearance, however – solid and weathered, still topped by her small crocheted cap – had scarcely changed. I admired her for that. There were not many who had stayed so unbowed by the hardships of the Revolution.

‘Miss Clegg, how kind of you to think of my parents, and me. But there is no reason to feel concerned, I assure you. I make a reasonable living by giving English lessons, and I’m among friends. I’ve lived here for over four years now – I feel at home.’

Her eyes flickered over our ‘Red Corner’ with its slogan and portraits of Marx and Engels.

‘Miss Freely, you know I am not one to mince my words. You are living in a house of ill repute. Your name is connected with the most depraved behaviour. There are those at St Andrew’s who would refuse you entrance to the hostel, but I have used what little influence I have to persuade the Reverend Brown that we must offer you this charity.’

‘Please thank the Reverend for me and tell him that I’m in no need of assistance.’ I smiled at her and attempted to be firm. ‘Now, if you will excuse me, I have a meeting to attend.’

‘Miss Freely! I will not be sent away like this—’

‘Well – then perhaps you’d like to stay for our evening meeting? You will see that there is nothing remotely depraved about it.’

It was perhaps unfortunate that she attended the session at which we set up the Commissariat for Clothing.

‘Comrades!’ began Slavkin, once we had all gathered. ‘Good, all here, and we have with us also an acquaintance of Comrade Freely’s. Welcome, Comrade Clegg.’ He nodded towards Miss Clegg, who was perched on a chair in the corner, her expression a wonderful mixture of excitement and disgust. ‘Now we must discuss the matter of the collectivisation of our clothing. We have already decided to pool all our possessions for the common good. We have handed over our income and our valuables. How can we, therefore, allow one member to walk about in an astrakhan coat, while another shivers in a cotton jacket?’ As he talked, he loped about on his long, knobbly, Bactrian legs.

‘Quite right,’ said Dr Marina. ‘Clothes only provide fuel for vanity. We cannot have them creating inequality between us.’

‘I don’t see anyone in an astrakhan,’ commented Pasha.

‘Pasha, you’re a . . . a Galliffet,’ Sonya said, frowning at her brother (the latest term of abuse, it was a reference to the French general who suppressed the Paris Commune). ‘A wool coat, then. You know what he means.’

‘I am not! I just don’t think this idea is radical enough. Why do we need clothes at all? It’s warm at the moment, clothes only get dirty and need washing, as well as promoting inequality. I mean, even collectivised clothes – give one man a smock, and he’ll look like a wastrel; give the same smock to another and he’ll wear it like a hero,’ he ran on. ‘Everyone knows that. Only the naked body can be truly equal.’

‘I’ll second that,’ Volodya, the ex-soldier drawled, speaking past the soggy cigarette stub that lived in the corner of his mouth. ‘Clothes off, everyone!’ He stood up and took off his jacket with a flourish.

Miss Clegg made a noise in her throat, something like ‘Oglf.’

‘Well, in that sense nudity wouldn’t be equal either, would it? Some people are better made than others, there’s no escaping that,’ snapped Fyodor. ‘We need clothes for protection and warmth. Enough of this oafishness.’

Even then, of course, fault lines existed within the commune. Volodya, just back from the trenches and highly suspicious of anything that smelt of refinement or intellectual snobbishness, did not blend happily with Fyodor’s rather prissy emphasis on ‘Revolutionary culture’ (that is, neatness, politeness and meticulous self-discipline), and Fyodor disapproved of Pasha’s jokes.

‘Don’t be so hasty!’ Pasha retorted. ‘Haven’t you heard of the nudist movement these days? They dance with only a loin cloth, or a fig leaf, or something. I’m sorry to say I haven’t seen it yet. Anyway, I think some of the other members agree with me. Didn’t I hear Comrade Clegg expressing an interest?’