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Sergey, Paris, 1930s
Photo dommuseum.ru
France
1925
– 1939
The
Lure of the Motherland
1927
– 1939
Sickly and
unemployed Sergey Efron idled around town. He was never able to hold
down a gainful job. Money simply didn't interest him. For a while he
continued acting as an editor for a Prague émigré
journal. In 1930 he earned himself a certificate as camera man in
film making. Tsvetaeva was proud of him, but nothing came of it.
Towards the end of 1930 he took a job as a physical laborer, but soon
lost that too. Marina rarely mentions Sergey's misfortunes, and
somehow he seems to have been completely indifferent to their
poverty.
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It comes as no surprise
then that Sergey became attracted to various expatriate
organizations: new friends, long political discussions, the lure of
the New Russia. The most important one was the Eurasian
Movement.
The Eurasians rejected Communism but not the Revolution itself. Their
Messianic vision was that an “Eurasian Russia” would
overcome both. When the movement split towards the end of the
twenties, Sergey joined the “left”, pro-Soviet wing. For
a year Sergey was the editor of their journal Eurasia.
Marina
was not unsympathetic to the movement and was friends with several of
its members. The summer of 1930 they spent at a camp of the Eurasians
in the Savoie. At home they had unending, often bitter arguments
about a return to the Motherland. Everyone was for it except Marina.
The Soviet Union had a large number of enthusiastic admirers
among the idealistic, left-wing European intellectuals, especially in
France. Marina describes the ecstatic report of André Malraux
from a visit to Stalin's Moscow. In this intellectual climate the
idea of returning to the Motherland had much popular support among
the Russian expatriats, and the NKVD took advantage of that. They
seem to have infiltrated the left wing of the Eurasians
as
early as 1930. In their Savoie summer camps they supported political
re-education classes. Many Russians left France during the folowing
six years. Those who knew too much were imprisoned or shot on arrival
in Odessa.
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Alya had grown up into
a accomplished graphic artitst. Marina spared no money on her
education. Salomeya Andronikova found her a job. In opposition to her
mother Alya drifted more and more towards Sergey's views. In November
1934 Alya (22) and Marina had a fierce argument. Marina finally
slapped Alya for a particularly contemptuous outburst. Sergey in a
furious rage, took Alya's side. [VS
p.320-21].
After this Alya left their apartment. She would be the first who put
her pro-Soviet convictions into practice.
Little is known for
certain of Sergey's being recruited by the NKVD. He did not confide
into Marina, who knew, as a matter of course, of his increasing
radical fanaticism. Viktoria Schweitzer describes an interview with
the daughter of the Bogengardts' [VS
p.328].
She told her of a secretive meeting between Sergey and her father in
1935, in which Sergey confessed his collaboration – Bogengardt
never saw him again. Unsubstantiated rumors in Russia [VB]
accuse Sergey of having actively participated in recruiting for the
NKVD and the Spanish civil war.
Marina bore the role of being
the sole provider of her family. During 1927-1938 she rented one
dismal, cheap apartment after the other in the Meudon area outside of
Paris. So it was a true disaster when the Czech government notified
her in 1929 that her stipend would end, unless she returned to
Prague. After protracted negotiations, friends in Prague persuaded
the authorities to continue paying her 500 kronen per month, half of
the original stipend.[VS
p.286]
Once or twice a month she would give poetry readings, her own
and those of other contemporary Russian writers. These readings were
sometimes arranged by friends. The most generous among them was
Salomeya
Andronikova, a member of an old Georgian noble family, who from
1926 to 1935 sent Tsvetaeva a monthly sum of 300 ffr from her own
pocket and occasionally another 300 ffr that she collected from
friends. To put this sum into perspective, the rent for their
apartment was around 100 ffr. Marina had no compunction to beg for
money. From a note to Salomeya we learn that she asked her to send an
extra 80 ffr for a pair of solid shoes.[VS
p.317].
Salomeya denied her nothing. She gave her clothes and furniture, and
helped to find a publisher for Marina's only book to appear in
France.
From 1923 to 1939 Marina had one close personal
friend in Anna
Tesková in Prague. She shared all her tribulations and
small successes with Anna in uncounted letters, the largest source
for her difficult 14 years in France. These letters affected me very
much. They are of no interest here, but I went through similar
experiences between 1945 and 1951 as the oldest of four siblings in
Germany, although mother was more down to earth and did not write
poetry. A horrible time, unimaginable if one has not gone through
years of hunger, cramped quarters, an emotionally paralyzed father,
and utter poverty.
To keep herself alive Marina still managed
to write, mostly at night. A list of her poems and prose writings
from these years can be found under Sources
and References. After the large Prague Poema
she
wrote predominantly prose. She published her poems of 1922-1925 in
book form, After
Russia, (1927) with
Salomeya Andronikova's financial help. Even the small edition of 500
copies that were printed of the book did not sell. During 1932 –
1939 she wrote four poem cycles: Poems
to a Son (1932), Poems
to an Orphan (1936), Desk
(1937), and Poems
to the Czechens (1938/39)
and a few single poems. She complains many times to Teskova that
taking care of her daily family chores did not leave her enough room
to jot down the lines that passed her mind. Besides nobody wanted to
print her poems – the book had shown that they were unsaleable.
The
first two cycles circle around Russia: the burning question of “to
return or not to return.” When she wrote “Poems to a
Son”, Mur was seven, even in Marina's eyes an unruly,
rebellious child. He was too young to understand Marina's agonies.
The poem must, therefore, have been directed equally at her other,
grown-up “boy”, Sergey, who had spent eight months during
1931 in a Red-Cross sanatorium in the Haut Savoie, because of his
tuberculosis.
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Стихи
к сыну |
Poems to a
Son |
“Everybody in the
family pressures me to return to Russia,” Marina wrote to Anna
Teskova, “I cannot go.” A few months later Sergey must
have made up his mind. He applied for a Soviet passport. His
application was rejected. He had to “earn” it first.
Marina never mentioned any of this to Teskova; she may not have known
of Sergey's involvement with the NKVD, besides mentioning it would
have been dangerous.
For a while Marina translated Russian
poetry into French, her own and Pushkin, in the desparate hope of
earning some money. After weeks of laboring she admited to Teskova
that her efforts were dissatisfying, especially her work on her own
poems. Then she tried to write poetry directly in French. A few of
those have suvived: “Florentine Nights”, “Letter to
an Amazon,” “Miracle with Horses,” (all 1932). In a
letter to Rilke (July 26, 1926) she had characterized the three
languages at her disposal: “...French is,
an ungrateful language
for poets...”. Her French poems are dry, cold, - in short
“soulless”.
How much she longed for the love a
kindred man who could follow her poetic flights! Pasternak was too
distracted by his disintegrating marriage and moreover was terrified
of the authorities. Their correspondence never rekindled. And then
came the “catastroph”: Boris divorced his wife (1931) and
fell in love with a woman friend of theirs who was already married.
Marina was indignant and irate. “Zhenya (his wife) was there
before me, but to love another – no way! Boris is incapable of
loving. For him love – is suffering. I am not jealous. I no
longer feel any acute pain – only emptiness.” She writes
to Anna Teskova.
In June 1935 Pasternak was obliged by Stalin
to attend the “International Congress of Writers in Defence of
Culture” - ten days in Paris! Marina seems to have avoided him,
and he ran scared of the political watchdog who headed the Soviet
delegation. Rumors have it that he “saw” her in a
corridor of his hotel. He is supposed to have whispered: “Marina,
don't return to Russia, it's cold there, there's a constant draught.”
- Marina wrote Anna, “It was a non-meeting...” - and left
for the sea-shore with a sick Mur (he had had his appendix
removed).
Her Тоска,
nostalgia, homesickness for the Motherland was different from Alya's
and Sergey's. She had few illusions. The Russia she loved and longed
for was gone, the house on Tryokhprudny
Lane had
been razed and replaced by a shoddy apartment building. The people
she loved had left, were alienated, or dead. She carried her Russia
in her soul. For her there was nothing to be found in the new
“Rodina”. In 1934 she wrote a poem that expressed her
loss:
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Тоска
по родине! Мне
все равно,
каких среди |
Homesick
for the Motherland. |
A year later she expressed her aversion even more vehemently:
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Никому
не отмстила
и не отмщу
-- |
I
never revenged and never will avenge myself- |
In the hope that prose would be more acceptable and bring in better money, she wrote a number of articles. Some of her pieces were printed in various journals. But the life span of the journals was ususally short, and often enough her honorarium vanished with their demise. Her prose pieces are peculiar: sharply voiced opinions, mostly unpopular ones, alternate with lyrical evocations of an equally personal quality. They invariably made her more enemies in émigré circles than friends. A list linked to the originals is found in my Sources and References.
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Photos dommuseum.ru
Alya, encouraged by her
fanatic father, became determined to return to the USSR. “What
can they do to me? I am innocent. Your dark tales are only
anti-Soviet propaganda.” Recalcitrant as she was, with her 25
years she needed to assert herself and break free of her unyielding
mother. She had no problem in obtaining a Soviet passport, they
needed people like her. She left in March 1937, seen off by a
cheerful group of friends and well-wishers. Only Marina was full of
dark premonitions.
The following twenty-four months of
1937-1939 are a blur, a single catastrophe. Marina's letters and
notes give no indication of what happened between her and Sergey. All
evidence is based on unsubstantiated hearsay and rumors. Viktoria
Schweitzer [VS
p.337]
tried to reconstruct that period. She doubts that Marina knew
anything, but feels certain that in the very end Sergey and she
talked.
On September 4, 1937 Ignaty Reyss, a Soviet agent who
refused return to the USSR, was murdered in Switzerland. Efron was
accused by the Swiss and French police to have been instrumental in
shadowing Reyss. It later emerged that he had also been involved in
tracking down Trotsky's son, L.
Sedov. Efron was interrogated by the French police. After the
first interrogation Efron disappeared. Apparently he was spirited by
the NKVD to the USSR. He had no choice, they held Alya as a
hostage.
A bizarre account of the details of his disappearance
appeared in the Parisian emigrant newspaper Renaissance
on October 29, 1937
[Sergey disappeared on 29 September 1937]. According to this article
Marina and Mur were in the Russian embassy car with Sergey that was
taking them to Le Havre. Near Rouen Sergey jumped from the car and
fled. The Russian agents must have caught him quickly. He did not
return. [VS
p.337] - The immediate result of this was that everyone avoided
contact with Marina.
A few weeks later Marina was interrogated
by the French police. She is supposed to have told them, “Efron's
trust may have been abused. My trust in him remains unchanged.”
She read them translations of her prose writings to show her
innocence. Apparently she convinced the police that she knew nothing.
Marina was cleared and let go.
But there was, of course, no
chance that she and Mur could remain in France. The question of her
return to the motherland had been decided for her. She was a possibly
dangerous witness. Two members of her family were practically under
house arrest in the USSR. The NKVD, barely veiled, pressured her to
return and even gave her a small allowance during the summer. After
Sergey's disappearance she and Mur lived in the small Hotel Inova in
Paris. She dedicated her last poem cycle, Poems
to the Czechs, Стихи к Чехии
(1938-39), to the sufferings of Bohemia before and during the German
invasion in March 1939. Hurriedly she distributed her manuscripts
among friends in France and Switzerland. She visited and arranged for
up-keep of the graves of the Efrons in Paris, Sergey's parents and
brother.
Their final departure was delayed for three days.
The Soviet embassy needed to make sure nobody interfered or saw her
off. She wrote a last letter to Anna
Teskova standing on the train to Le Havre. They left Le Havre on
June 12, 1939
A last stanza from her Poems
to an Orphan - Стихи о сироте
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