Баня

Today is time for another entry in the ‘fashion section’ of my otherwise very nerdy & literary blogg. Here is a picture for all of you who a) have always craved to find out what the restrooms at Ural State look like, b) want to see just how cute my new white top from Esprit that I bought on Saturday is. [The little pink thing that can be seen underneath the top is my iPod – yes, I always carry it in my bra since most of my miniskirts lack pockets…] Today was a warm and sunny day here in Yekat and I’m very proud of this outfit – even my academic guidance counselor Aleksey complimented me on it! [I would’ve never bought a top with this much cleavage had not Ksyusha insisted that I must.]

Yesterday was also a sunny and warm day here in Yekat. Only Ksyusha, Nadia and Andrey showed up for our Swedish movie club in the evening, so we decided to not watch “Ondskan” but go and drink cherry beer instead. [Andrey was, however, not invited because he would’ve probably declined such an invitation anyway.] I drank cherry beer together with the girls at the Old Dublin pub, on their ‘uteservering’ downtown, and it turned out to be a most cozy and comfortable Monday evening, even though Nadia was most upset to have missed “The Cruelty” as she believes it could teach her a thing or two necessary to know in life. Then I stayed up until 3 am finishing my latest academic article – a splendid little analysis of intertextual connections with Dusty’s chapter «Баня» [“Sauna”] in Shalamov’s short story «В бане» [“In the Sauna”]. I got so caught up in the process that I found it hard to stop myself and tell myself that enough is enough, after all 11 pages is more than the 10 minutes I get to read the article in class on Thursday. I love analyzing literature. I love literature. I love Dusty. I love Shalamov so much that I downloaded every single picture of him from the official Russian site about him and then sat for hours just envying the women next to him in the pictures. Neither of his wives were very pretty, I must admit. But his last love was [and still is, probably] not just pretty, but actually beautiful. Good for you, Varlam! But what about me? Clearly, I am losing my mind. The other day I swear I saw Shalamov on the street. Obviously, my mind was gone long before this and what is leaving me are the last scraps of my sense.

Since I went to bed so late I also woke up with less than one hour to eat breakfast, put on my make-up and arrive in time for classes at 2 pm. Gosh, it was tight. But I managed. Tonight I will continue my quest into the art of Shalamov and start ‘a philological analysis’ of one of his shorter short stories. It will become an essay for this class in linguistics that I have to pass [why?] and the great thing about it is that it should be about ‘everything’ in the text. And translating from ‘philology language’ into normal language this means that an analysis of a one page short story should be at least ten pages long. I can’t wait! I’m such a nerd. But it wasn’t until about a month ago that I started to finally get the hang of things, to understand literary theory and literary analysis. Now I’m addicted. Who knew there could be so much in such few words? Whoever says literature can’t be studied scientifically is just a party pooper, comrades, in my strictly personal opinion.

Here’s part 6 of my novella. The war is over, and we’re more than half-way to the end, and yet – the hardest things to overcome are still ahead of us. Enjoy:

6.

The telephone number of the prison was listed in the catalogue and I called it to find out when it would be possible for me to come visit Erik. I was told that the only day when visitors were allowed was Sunday, which was good for me because that was the only day of the week when I didn’t have classes at the Academy. The last Sunday in October I took the train from the capital to the small town to visit him. I didn’t tell my professor, Dr. Emmanuel’s close friend Dr. Solomon, that I was going out of town that weekend. I had managed to save up some money during August when I was working and could pay for the train tickets there and back on my own. The same Sunday I bought a dark pink lipstick and put on the only dress I owned at the time – light brown in color and made out of a far too thin fabric to be worn so late into the fall. I made sure that my hair was newly washed and didn’t put it up in a pony tail. It was still before noon when I arrived at the train station and walked by foot from there to the prison. I asked for directions and it only took me about twenty minutes to walk there. Upon entering the prison I showed my new passport – when I applied for it, something that was made possible only after I was officially rehabilitated, I had wanted to ask them to put Erik’s last name on it, but such a request proved unnecessary. My last name was automatically changed to his. I was led by a guard to a room on the second floor in the prison’s main building, in which I was told to wait. The room was rather large; the walls were white, there was a couch standing along one of the walls in front of which was a low coffee table. The room had one window that was taller than it was wide and lacked curtains. I walked up to it. Outside the sun was shining: the morning had been cloudy but now the sky had cleared. The view from the window was the least inspiring – all that could be seen where other brick buildings and a part of the concrete wall.

The door opened and I turned around. He bent down his head slightly as he walked through the door and stopped. The door closed behind him. He was wearing a light gray shirt and pants of a darker gray shade – usual prison ware, to which I had become so used by then that I hardly took any notice of it. He seemed much bigger than I had remembered him being, but that could have been in part due to the fact that he had gained back almost all of his initial weight and in addition to this put on some muscles since our last meeting. Either he had a physically demanding work at this prison or the prisoners here were allowed to do sports and lift weights in their free time. Perhaps it was a combination of the two. His brown hair was cut short, his eyes – of the exact same color as his hair – showed hesitation as they met mine.

We stood facing each other on a distance of a couple of meters for a long time without saying anything. Neither of us moved at all and I began doubting my reasons for coming to visit him. I looked at him and saw a stranger in front of me – a stranger with whom I had shared a few brief and amusing conversations every morning and every evening during one month’s time almost five years before. I was thinking it would probably be best for the both of us if I just left him, and the memories of him, there in prison and forgot all about it – when he walked up to me and grabbed a hold of my right hand. He took it in both of his hands, as if warming it at first, then opening up the palm of my hand and stroking his thumb across it. He lifted my hand up and placed it against his cheek. When he felt the touch of my hand against his cheek he started to cry.

“I remember this,” he said.

I didn’t say anything.

“Come, let’s sit down on the couch,” he said.

We sat down next to each other on the couch. He still held my hand in his.

“You’ve been released?”

I nodded. “I had served almost all of the five years I got before I found out that my sentence was defective in the first place.”

“You were a political prisoner?” he asked and I nodded. “I didn’t know. But I think there are many, many things I don’t know about you, even though you and I are husband and wife… Do you know how I found out we’re married?”

I shook my head.

“After the trial in camp, do you remember? When I was sentenced to another ten years? I’ve been cleared of those charges now, though. And after the trial, when they gave me the documents to sign, I saw your number written there in them under ‘spouse’. I don’t know who wrote it there, and I didn’t ask.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? When we met in the other hospital? I didn’t know…”

“Back then I was in no state to speak of anything serious at all.”

“I only found out recently, at the same time I found out that I was to be rehabilitated…”

“Congratulations,” he said. “Martina, I’m not a political prisoner. And I’m older than you, not by much in years perhaps, only five years older, but much older in experience, life experience. Do you know why I’m here?” he asked and I nodded. “I was a professional criminal, a thief and a robber, before. I was sentenced to ten years for breaking into a house to steal and accidentally murdered two people there – an old couple.”

“Accidentally?”

“I didn’t plan on doing it. I had never killed anyone before in my life. I didn’t think they were home…” he hesitated, swallowed and let go of my hand. “I killed them with my bare hands. With these hands. I’ve been fighting my whole life, and when you’ve fought your whole life it is hard to stop and not fight anymore.”

“Don’t stop now,” I said.

“You don’t understand what I’m saying to you, do you?” he looked at me and I couldn’t understand the look on his face. It was unlike anything else I had seen before, yet I had seen so much before. It could have been disappointment, but it could also have been the look of a man who was trying to force himself to stop believing in something he had believed in for a long time. “I can’t ask anything of you. I can’t ask you to come visit me here every month, I can’t ask you to wait for me until I’m released next summer. I can’t ask you to remain my wife. You know the truth about me now. You must understand that we can’t be together. I can’t ask such a sacrifice of you.”

I nodded in silence, looking down at my feet on the floor. He sat next to me without touching me, without trying to take my hand again.

“You’re the only one I’ve got,” I whispered, not knowing these were the words that were going to come out of my mouth when I opened it to say something. I hardly even knew myself that I was going to say anything at all in that moment. But I had spoken.

He moved closer to me on the couch. He put his arms around me, and I placed my head against his chest. He stroked his hand over my hair, pulling me closer and tighter, tighter and closer to him. He kissed me on my forehead, and then I turned my face up toward his.

“I like your lipstick,” he said, smiling. “I haven’t seen a woman wearing lipstick for many, many years…”

I smiled.

“Can I kiss you?”

He kissed me. He held me tight and kissed me again and again and again. And it seemed to me in that moment that it wasn’t our first kiss, but that I had been kissed by him many, many times before and that I had been so tightly wrapped inside of his arms many, many years before. When he removed his shirt to reveal his naked chest, on which were tiny curls of brown, soft hair and a cross made out of silver, it seemed to me that I had already touched all of this skin before. When he pressed his body close to mine, after also I had slipped out of my dress, it was as if I had already felt the cold touch of his silver cross against my chest long before… I lost myself inside of his embrace and only woke up to reality when a guard opened the door and told us it was time for me to leave. I left and he remained.