An excerpt from Remembering Nikolai Ostrovsky

Anna Karavaeva*

The balcony door stood open, and the curtain stirred in the wind, 
filling out, rising reluctantly, and shrinking like a dipped 
sail. A crumpled towel left by someone on the radio made a white 
blur in the dusk. It looked like a white rabbit who had laid down 
its long ears preparing to jump.

I remembered that bright September morning in Sochi two years 
ago, the small house in Orekhovaya Street, the ripe, orange 
persimmons in the sunlit garden, the pleasant whitewashed room, 
and the dear face on the piled-up pillows.

The white rabbit nestled happily in the folds of the blanket as 
Nikolai's nervous fingers caressed its long, silky ears. Nikolai 
was laughing softly, and his gleaming teeth were as white as 
sugar. On the bedside table lay several big red apples, and their 
lovely smell filled the whole house. The white rabbit, comically 
twitching its soft ears, licked the gentle human hand with its 
small pink tongue.

I wanted to shut my eyes tight and see that hot September morning 
again, and the house filled with sunlight and apple fragrance. My 
thoughts refused to take a melancholy course, and my mind was 
still unable to grasp what had happened and tell itself that this 
was the irrevocable....

But reality asserted itself, and my eyes saw with ruthless 
clarity the face that had forever grown still. The last struggle 
for survival had sapped all his life juices, and dried him as a 
leaf is dried in a hot wind. It only spared his tall, handsome 
forehead, and his soft dark chestnut hair. This clear, domelike 
brow rose above a small, wizened face. And one fancied that his 
creative imagination, infused with revolutionary ardor and an 
irrepressible interest in and love of life, was still working 
busily....

I placed my hand on his forehead. It was still warm and even 
moist, as though Nikolai was simply resting after his exciting 
exertion. The Order of Lenin twinkled uncannily on his sunken 
chest as if life were stirring in it, and one would see it rise 
in a soft sigh.

For three days, from morning till night, an endless stream of 
people of all ages filed past the bier, which was literally 
submerged in flowers and wreaths.

Nikolai Ostrovsky continues to live not only in his books: he 
himself is a heroic image, and one of the strongest and most 
striking personalities of his epoch.

Fate treated him cruelly, depriving him of the power of sight and 
the use of his legs and arms. But he overpowered his physical 
infirmities, his incurable disease, weakness, grief and torpor, 
and victoriously asserted life, creative endeavour, and struggle.

As an ardent singer of the Bolshevik youth, he sang his militant, 
joyous song of struggle and victory of socialism, and his voice, 
ringing with a beautiful, lyrical strength, resounded throughout 
the Soviet land and the whole world.

Away with melancholy recollections! Let us part with them, for 
death is the tax we must pay for the frailty of our physical 
being, and let us turn to the inexhaustible, powerful fount of 
life....

I went to see him on a cold, windy day in 1932 — a typical day 
for early Moscow spring. He lived in Mertyy Pereulok [since 
renamed Nikolai Ostrovsky Pereulok — Ed.]

The large flat was packed with tenants. It was noisy and crowded. 
People jostled you in the corridor, babies were howling and 
someone was typing inexpertly in a far room, pecking at the keys 
with a woodpecker's persistence.

What a setup for a writer! Imagine working in that din! I 
knocked, and opened the door into Nikolai Ostrovsky's room.

A man, muffled up to his chin in blankets and shawls, was lying 
on the bed. The pillows were piled high, and I saw a mop of dark 
chestnut hair, a large, prominent forehead, and a thin, wan face 
that did not have a drop of colour in it.

The thin eyelids trembled slightly. The thick eyelashes cast 
bluish shadows on the hollow cheeks. Hands of a waxen 
transparency lay on top of the blankets.

I knew that Nikolai Ostrovsky was an invalid, but still I did not 
picture him quite like this.

He looked so terribly weak and helpless that I decided not to 
bother him and come back another time.

Just then a slight old lady walked briskly into the room. She had 
lively dark brown eyes, and her face was wreathed in smiles.

"Mother, who's there?" Nikolai suddenly asked in a voice that was 
somewhat hollow, but very young and not weak at all.

His mother told him my name.

"Oh! How nice", he said. "Come nearer, come here".

A beautiful white-toothed smile lighted up his face. Its every 
line seemed to glow with youthful eagerness and the joy of 
living. At first I fancied that his big, brown eyes also sparkled 
with animation. But in the next moment I realized that the 
sparkle came from the deep and rich coloring of the irises. 
Still, during our conversation I kept forgetting that he was 
blind, for there was so much concentration, attention and 
joviality in his radiant face.

We were talking about the first part of his novel How the 
Steel Was Tempered which had just been signed for publication 
in the magazine Molodaya Gvardia, where I worked as editor 
at the time. Nikolai was curious to hear how his characters had 
impressed us.

"Pavel, I think, is not a bad kid at all", he said with sly 
humour, and flashed me a smile. "I'm not making a secret of it, 
of course, that Nikolai Ostrovsky and Pavel Korchagin are the 
closest of friends. He's made from my brain and my blood too, 
this Pavel person.... What I want to know is this: does my novel 
read simply as an autobiography, the story of just one life?"

His smile suddenly waned, and with his lips compressed, his face 
looked cold and stern.

"I've purposely put the question so bluntly because I want to 
know whether the thing I'm doing is good, right, and useful for 
people or not? There are lots of single cases that are 
interesting in themselves, but a reader will pause before one for 
a moment, as before a shop window, even in admiration perhaps, 
and then walk on his way, never again remembering what he had 
seen there. That is what every writer should fear most, and 
myself, a beginner, the more so."

I told him that he had nothing to fear on this score.

He interrupted me gently and said: "Only please, let's agree on 
one thing: don't comfort me from the kindness of your heart. You 
don't have to sugar the pill for me. I'm a soldier, after all, I 
could sit a horse when I was a mere kid, and I won't be thrown 
off now."

Although his lips twitched and his smile was shy and gentle, the 
strength of his unbreakable will was suddenly revealed to me with 
the utmost clarity. At the same time I felt terribly happy that 
what I had to say to him would, in fact, comfort him.

I told him that as I read his book I involuntarily recalled the 
heroes from the Russian and western classics. Many of these 
heroes, created by writers of genius, shaped the will and the 
mentality of whole generations. For background they had the 
history of social relations, social and personal tragedies, and 
the glory of the peaks attained by human culture.

Pavel Korchagin could take a proud and confident stand among the 
great and the gloried. This young newcomer, emerging from the 
fires of the Civil War, should not feel self-conscious finding 
himself in such illustrious company. Nor did he have to go cap in 
hand begging for a place, even if only the smallest, in the 
literati gardens. He had something which the others had not: his 
young heart was possessed of an inexhaustible strength and 
throbbed with an unquenchable passion of struggle, and his mind 
was fired by the most progressive and noble thoughts of people's 
freedom and happiness.

Needless to say, Pavel Korchagin was irreconcilably hostile to 
someone like Balzac's Rastignac, but all the freedom-loving 
characters in literature, whether in the works of Pushkin, Byron 
or Stendhal, were close to him in spirit. But, of course, he 
would find the greatest number of kindred souls among Gorky's 
heroes.

We were already talking like old friends, we touched upon 
different themes but invariably came back to the novel. Nikolai 
wanted to hear how the editing went and what changes were made by 
Mark Kolosov, the assistant editor of Molodaya Gvardia, 
and myself. When I told him how we threw out all sorts of 
ornamental cliches, he gave a roar of laughter and then chuckled 
with good humour as I cited his unfortunate turns of speech and 
some words he had used.

"D'you know the reason for all these slips?" he asked, abruptly 
changing to a serious, thoughtful tone. "I suppose you'll say 
it's my lack of culture? That too, but there's another thing you 
must take into account — my creative isolation, if you know what 
I mean. I began writing as a lone beginner, on my own 
responsibility. It's wonderful that I'll have literary friends 
now!"

He asked me what I thought of the composition of the novel as a 
whole, his handling of separate scenes, dialogues, descriptions 
of scenery, how well he had succeeded in bringing out the typical 
traits of his characters, and where he had made blunders in 
language, comparisons, metaphors, descriptive names, and so on.

Each one of his questions showed that he had done a lot of 
reading and thinking on the subject, and his approach to many of 
the problems involved in literary work testified to his maturity.

Time simply flew. I was afraid I was tiring Nikolai, but every 
time I rose to leave a word or a remark would start us off again, 
and I'd stay "for another minute". Our conversation skipped from 
one topic to another, the way it does with two people who have 
only just met and want to know each other better. Still, we went 
back to the novel all the time, and spoke of the second part on 
which Nikolai was working. I had completely forgotten that I was 
in a sickroom, visiting a hopelessly handicapped person.

He told me about his writing plans and worries, set himself the 
deadline for the coming chapters, and his words were charged with 
such truly exuberant energy that it never occurred to me to offer 
any uncalled-for sympathy or encouragement.

I was terribly glad that Molodaya Gvardia had acquired 
this new author — a fresh and powerful talent, a Bolshevik, 
veteran of the Civil War, a man with such remarkably clear-cut 
ideological and moral values.

This was a strong character, tempered in battle, and so, rather 
than restrain him, I wanted to help him to develop his plans.

I can still hear his deep voice, mellow with happiness and pride, 
as he said:

"And so I'm back in the ranks. That's the main thing, you know. 
I'm back in the ranks! Isn't life wonderful! What a life is 
starting for me!"

All the way home I kept hearing these words: "What a life is 
starting for me!" and they sounded like a song.

* * *

Translated by R. Prokofieva

*Anna Karavaeva [1893-1979]. Novelist, editor, and journalist, 
whose early work touched on the struggle for a new life in the 
pre-kolkhoz village. A graduate of the Bestuzhev Courses for 
women (1916), her first works appeared in 1922. The 1928 novel 
Sawmill tells of the positive effects Soviet 
industrialisation has on the peasantry. In the 1930s, her works 
addressed the issue of the education of young people in settings 
as diverse as the pre-Revolutionary intelligentisa, the Civil War 
era, and contemporary society. The Great Patriotic War (World War 
II) inspired her to write on the work and struggles of those in 
the rear in her trilogy Motherland, for which she was 
awarded the State Prize. Between 1931 and 1938 she was chief 
editor of the journal Molodaya Gvardia and as such oversaw 
the preparation and publication of Nikolai Ostrovsky's How the 
Steel Was Tempered. Also, was a correspondent for Pravda 
between 1941 and 1943. Karavaeva was awarded the Order of 
Lenin five times.

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