LETTER FROM MARINA G.: LENINGRAD, 1979

I am happy to tell you that I now live alone in my own one-room flat. There is a little alcove in the room and in the alcove there is a two-burner stove and a sink with a swan’s neck for the water and a long narrow window to the room more like a slot than a window that looks out over a narrow canal and a stone footbridge from the old old times and a short road that runs to one side of the canal.

The canal road is a dead-end, though the canal itself runs under an old military embankment, going out to the sea. I have never seen any boat travel the canal out to the sea. And because the road is a dead-end not so many people walk alongside the canal water or on the sidewalk, and no one skates the short stretch that freezes over in the winter. I like this very much. Crowds upset me. I feel, if there are crowds there will be plainclothes police in the crowds, secret police who are able because they are the police to touch me, to breathe against me, my neck. I have committed no crime, never, but I know that not knowing what you have done does not matter. My mother and father did not know what they had done but they disappeared.

One morning, I found a French fashion magazine on the seat of a chair where I sit always in a café on Nevsky Prospekt. I could not imagine in my mind where this magazine on the chair had come from or who was the person who left it on the chair. I slid it into my cloth bag and took it back to my room and I am turning the pages over and over, pages of skinny women in dresses and suits that I could not myself imagine wearing. But for a reason I do not understand, since automobiles are of no interest to me, it was the photograph of a long limousine, black, that I kept turning back to, a black limousine that seemed to float on sand dunes that ended nowhere, dunes that were white as white summer clouds. I felt light-headed, dizzy, staring at the black-smoked windows, especially one that seemed to be reflecting the moon in the night sky – but since it was a bright blue sky above the dunes – the moon had to be the sun, or maybe a bare light bulb, an interrogation light bulb that was shining in my eyes. I scissored the page from the magazine and suddenly I felt I was going to fall asleep on my feet so I tacked the limousine to my door and went to bed, to sleep, and did not dream.

In the morning, I came out of the apartment courtyard, I stopped and stood very still. There was a long black limousine parked on the canal road. I went cold like ice, I was sure I was in danger, it was exactly the limousine that I had taken from the French magazine and tacked to my door. I could see the limousine had the same black-smoked windows. I believed someone wearing a double-breasted suit was sitting in the back seat watching me. I believe the men who sit in the back seats of long black cars, they are the ones who wear double-breasted suits.

I leaned forward a little and stared into the smoked window. There was no moon or sun. I was staring at myself in the dark glass. I had the sick feeling that the limousine was a black period, a stop, about to be put to my life. I brought my face close to the glass, sure I was nose to nose with someone’s face inside, and to my complete surprise, I heard myself say, "Me. Yes, it’s me." As soon as I spoke the limousine moved forward, moving away from me, down to the dead-end where it stopped, the motor still running because I could see the ex-haust, sitting with its back to me, giving me a chance to run away down the road.

I am not a fool. I stepped back from the curb to the wall. The limousine, after several minutes, backed down the road, coming to a halt, again in front of me. I was not only being watched, I was sure I was going to be taken off the street to disappear. I fled into the courtyard, to the stairs, and into my room. I stood in the centre of the room, shaking, and I went close up to the window, and stood in the cover of the window curtain to see if the black limousine was still there. It was there. The motor had been turned off. I did not know why I had said, "Yes, it’s me." Furious at myself, I snatched the black limousine and the sand dunes and the blue sky from the door. I crumpled them into a ball and tossed the ball in the waste basket under the sink and then I went to that little window where I pulled the curtain away and drew the window open and leaned my shoulder and head into the open window. There was no limousine. It had disappeared. The concierge to the apartment house, who admits he is always a little drunk, was standing at the curb. I tried to keep calm. I called, "Where did the black limousine go?" and the concierge, looking at me as if I was someone who had lost her mind, said, "Limousine? There’s been no one, no limousine all morning. Only the street sweepers."