The Secrets We Kept(87)

The hall echoed with jeers from the crowd. Then, one by one, each writer went to the podium to condemn Zhivago. The meeting lasted hours, every last person speaking out against him.

The vote was unanimous, the punishment effective immediately: Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was expelled from the Soviet Writers’ Union.

The next day, I gathered every book, every note, every letter, every early draft of the manuscript from my Moscow apartment. Mitya and I took them to Little House to burn. “They won’t take what’s mine again,” I told my son, as we gathered sticks from the forest. “I’d rather destroy everything.”

“How can you be sure?” Mitya asked.

“We’re going to need more wood,” I said, picking up a small log.

Borya arrived as we placed the rocks we’d hauled up from the creek in a ring. “Has it all been for nothing?” he asked, in lieu of a greeting.

“Of course not,” I said, and dumped a bucket of dry leaves atop the wood. “You’ve touched the hearts and minds of thousands.” I poured petrol onto the leaves.

He circled the fire pit. “Why did I write it in the first place?”

“Because you had to, remember?” Mitya said. “That’s what you told us. You said you were called to do it. Remember?”

“It was nonsense. Utter nonsense.”

“But you said—”

“It doesn’t matter what I said then.”

“When you handed it over to the Italians you said you wanted it to be read. Well, you’ve accomplished that.”

“I’ve accomplished nothing but putting us in danger.”

“You said the Prize would protect us. Do you no longer believe that? The whole world is watching, remember?”

“I was wrong. It’s my execution that the whole world will watch.” He raked his hands through his hair. “Am I what they say I am? A narcissist, someone who thinks—no, believes—fully believes, that he has been chosen for this task? That I’m fated to spend my life attempting to express what’s in the hearts of men?” Borya paced frantically. “The sky is falling, and I sought to write instead of building a roof to protect myself and my loved ones. Has my selfishness no bounds? I’ve sat at my desk for so long. Is it true I’m out of touch? Could I even know what is in the hearts and minds of my countrymen? How could I have gotten it all so wrong? Why go on?”

“We go on because that’s what we have to do,” I told him. Before I could get another word out to calm him, he launched into his plan.

“It’s all too much. I won’t wait for them to come for me. I won’t wait for their black car to arrive. I won’t wait for them to drag me out into the street. To do to me what they did to Osip, to Titsian—”

“And to me,” I added.

“Yes, my love. I’ll never let them. I think it’s time we left this life.”

I took a step back from him.

“I’ve saved them, you know. The pills. I’ve saved the Nembutal I was given the last time I was in the hospital. Twenty-two. Eleven for each of us.”

I didn’t know whether to believe him. Boris had threatened to kill himself before. Once, decades earlier, he even drank a bottle of iodine when his wife, before she was his wife, had refused him. He’d confessed to me later that he’d only sought her reaction, not his actual death. But this time, something in his voice, how he remained calm, made me think he might be serious.

He reached for my hand. “We’ll take them tonight. It will cost them dearly. It will be a slap in the face.”

Mitya rose to his feet. He was now taller than I, and almost as tall as Borya. Mitya, gentle Mitya, looked him in the eyes. “What are you talking about?” He looked at me. “Mama, what is he talking about?”

“Leave us, Mitya.” I said.

“I won’t!” He reared back as if he might hit Boris.

For the first time, I realized that his was no longer the hand of a little boy, but of a young man. A well of guilt filled my chest. All these years, I’d put Borya first.

“Nothing will happen.” I let go of Borya’s hand and took my son’s. “I assure you.” I pulled a fistful of kopeks from my pocket and asked him to get more petrol for the fire.

He refused to take the money. “What is wrong with you? With both of you?”

“Take it, Mitya. Go and get the petrol. I’ll be right along.”

He grabbed the money and left, looking back to warn Borya with his burning stare.

“It will be painless,” Borya said once Mitya was gone. “We’ll be together.” All this time, he’d been pretending the roaring whispers of condemnation weren’t upsetting him—that the microphones we suspected were planted in his house and mine were something to laugh about, that the negative reviews had no merit. He’d been focusing on a speck of white light at the tunnel’s end that, with the latest blow from the Writers’ Union, had faded to black.

And he believed I’d follow him—that I’d take the pills, that I didn’t have the strength to go on alone. At one time, I might not have. In fact, I might have been the one to first suggest it. But not now. Now I could go on. I would go on. They could put him in the ground, but not me.

I told him it would just give them what they wanted—that it was a weak man’s move. I said they’d gloat over their victory of the dead poet, the cloud dweller Stalin never finished off. Borya said he didn’t care about any of it as long as the pain would stop. “I can’t wait for their darkness to befall me. I’d rather step into the dark than be pushed,” he said.