Anna Politkovskaya

1

“Her Name is Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya”

“Her name is Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya, she’s at the university studying literature and journalism. Her husband too,” Seryosha had said. “She really insisted on meeting you… Yes, I know, she’s from the nomenklatura,* the daughter of a diplomat, but you’ll see, she’s different… Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya, you’ll remember the name?” Finally, sighing, I said yes. Seryosha is stubborn, and he’d brought me half a pound of fragrant coffee, a rarity found only in stores for foreigners.”

* In the USSR and the countries of the former Eastern Bloc, the most trustworthy members of the Communist Party, and generally those who enjoyed special privileges.

That is how I’ve come to be here, on a Sunday in February 1979, between the concert hall and the statue of Mayakovsky.* It’s the kind of Moscow winter day I love, the kind that never quite seems to begin and gently dies with the afternoon. Cars and pedestrians are rare. From time to time, a figure darts to the kiosk and then disappears behind the statue. A great silence hangs over the city, the snow falls in big flakes; everything is muted.

* A great Soviet poet.

I don’t hear her approach. Suddenly she is there, slender and running… right past me. A married woman, she? Surely not! More like a boyish young girl. I see her slip on a pair of glasses: she simply hasn’t seen me. Too short-sighted… And it’s true that our Soviet glasses are not the most flattering.

But with or without glasses, with a fine wool shawl wound around her head, hunched under one of those heavy Soviet coats, she is very pretty. A long fine-boned face under light brown bangs, the look of a girl from another era, one might say: glowing skin, shoulders speckled with snow, a slight rounding of the cheek. She reminds me more of an old-fashioned dreamer than a Soviet journalism student during the period we call “stagnation”—that says it all!

And Anna, what does she see? An old man, probably… though I’m only thirty-seven. I, Vassily Pachoutinsev, chapka tugged down over my eyebrows, not very clean-shaven, pant legs rumpled and sagging over thick and solid leather boots. A dissident,* as I was labeled by the director of a French magazine that published my stories, which took a very ironic view of our regime. In other words, an evil spirit, prone to criticism. And so a dissident I became! I was summoned to the bureau of the KGB,** our omnipresent police force, and for a few months I brushed up against serious trouble—it’s forbidden to publish abroad without permission. I lost my teaching job at the university… and got by with the help of my friends. One found me translation jobs that allowed me to scratch out a living; another managed to pull a few strings so I could keep my home.

* In the USSR, the term was used for intellectuals who contested the regime. They were severely persecuted during the Soviet era.

** Secret police and political intelligence service (now called the FSB).

But it’s not the dissident Anna Politkovskaya wants to meet.

“Let’s walk a little,” I say.

In the Soviet Union, when we want to be sure not to be heard, we walk. We get very used to talking in temperatures of five degrees.

“I brought you a gift,” she says, handing me a book that has obviously been read and reread.

And it’s a wonderful gift: an American edition of the poems of Marina Tsvetaeva, impossible to find in Moscow. That’s when I ask her to come to my home. The trust between us is immediate, total, and inexplicable.

“Is it wise to be writing a thesis on Tsvetaeva? Not the surest way to get a good grade…”

I’m intrigued. Marina Tsvetaeva was never one of our “official poets.” She wouldn’t be one of “our poets” at all if, after her death in 1941, her daughter Allia hadn’t fought and talked her way around the censors for years to publish a handful of writings. People clamored for those books, but there were so few of them…

And now this young woman is preparing a presentation on Marina Tsvetaeva at the risk of failing her exams or becoming very unpopular. She asked to meet me because I helped Allia, before she died, to sort out some of Marina’s papers, and so I was able to read poems that few people know of.

When we come out of the metro at Tretyakovskaya station, the snow crunches under our feet. In a low, soft voice, she talks about Marina, her independence of mind. Anna has the polite manners of a well-bred child and follows me down the crowded hallway of the communal apartment.*

* After the revolution of 1917, large apartments were requisitioned to house many families at once, each given one room to live in, with a communal kitchen.

At my place there are little piles of books everywhere, but I can’t complain. The apartment is right in Moscow, not in some distant low-rise building. It has a very high window looking out on the trees in the courtyard and, when it doesn’t snow, the green roofs on the opposite side. Anna asks me questions. She listens so carefully that I get over my shyness. She sits on the floor, jotting down notes. We pour more tea… and time moves on.

This is my first meeting with Anna Politkovskaya. When she leaves—“I’m late! I have to pick up my son from my mother’s!”—I watch her go. Sliding more than walking between the snowdrifts in the courtyard. I remember that she told me she was a good skater and had even been invited to join the national team of young hopefuls.

Her eyes shining, she also told me about Sasha, her husband.

I see some similarities between this young person and the poet. Like Marina, she wants to hold on to only the most intense moments of life. And like Marina, she takes off her glasses, even if it means seeing the world as a great blur.

A few months later, she calls me. The dean of the university didn’t say a word during her exam, but in the end, it went well. She has the self-assurance of an excellent student.

“And what are you going to do now?” “I’m not sure… journalism…” Much less sure of herself!