Where We Are Not

...So we were sitting in the waiting area with its dull green walls, in the unbelievably boring atmosphere of the once-meaningful Institution which keeps up only its appearances...

...It was a final act, for non-members automatically become suspect...

...As for my foreign friends, it was because of them that I could not get a job...

...We had to wait, and we conversed about unimportant matters, never mentioning our common reason for being there...

...They are not to blame...

...Her career was blossoming—she believed in what she said...

...Into the mail they went, those signs of our slavery...

...Only once, when I made some "anti-Soviet" comment (earlier I made much more cunning ones), she answered by quoting a Russian proverb: "It's always better where we are not...

...And I did not stop corresponding, which once again brings me to the stairs of the little building looking strangely welcoming and peaceful and seductive, almost like my husband's grandparents' wooden cottage...

...But then I was through the whole of it already—people at my office already knew when I quit that it was not "just so...

...I am now standing near OVIR and I'll enter...

...But here I was, heading home with a somewhat lighter heart...

...So there I was, standing in front of OVIR, visualizing their faces...

...During my writing days, I read quite a bit in Russian—something classic, nostalgic, remote, something cozy, because of its stability...

...Competition for jobs in the humanities is high...

...I felt solitary, alone...

...I had wanted to go for seven years and during those years I struggled...

...My credentials were excellent and my connections good...

...The only living literary association I had with the U. S. was Scarlett O'Hara's, or rather Vivien Leigh's, face as I remembered it from the semi-official "prosmotr" (screening) in Moscow...

...For we could go, but never return...

...Or I sleep a lot, or listen to music...

...I was not a dissident and did not demonstrate near the one and only Moscow synagogue...

...Out of the fifteenth century cathedral courtyard, out of this gray, lukewarm hell, I walked at last, waving good-bye to my guilty-looking friends...

...Still, the bitter resentment of being a child remained with me, as well as the sweet and silly memories of the early "green years...

...Now, I went to the "Raikom," the Komsomol Administration, to be officially excluded...

...The guilt then becomes so unbearable that I am shattered and ask, "Where am I really...

...I was much happier than all of those people who, like the group of blind men depicted in Brueghel's painting, had unknowingly followed their guide who had fallen into a well...

...In that moment of weakness, however, I experienced the most curious sensation of encouragement and satisfaction...

...is indeed residing . . . does not work"), in a curious look coming from a very young and very Jewish man, who thought I'd faint and fall in the snow (I was not very far from it...

...I thought: Now I'll enter the new, two story building of pink brick, characteristic of our new fancy neighborhood (all around there are embassies and cooperatives of important folk...

...yet the sensation of the uniqueness of the moment, the happy awareness of its precious, intimate secrecy began to heal me...

...But I was Jewish...

...It was an ordeal for her too, though she was one of the few sincere pro-Soviet people of my generation...

...I had felt terribly guilty when I entered the organization at fourteen, but my parents knew it would be another obstacle blocking my way to higher education if I didn't join...

...I'll be a criminal who is not in jail only because of some arbitrary political circumstances...

...With the swaying of the trees in the wind, all the best, bitter, sweet, touching memories that were my life stirred in me, causing tears...

...So, sometimes I have nightmares—I am back there and they do not let me out...

...This bitter, cold, piercingly windy Moscow spring was my last one—I tried to swallow every bit of it, to drown myself in the people, the events, the familiar atmosphere...

...Yet it is because of some of those friends that I am here enjoying life, while they still are refused their visas, or—worse—are in exile or prison...

...he was obviously putting two and two together...

...There was a choice to make, and as products of a paternalistic society, each of us knew it must be a clear and voluntary choice...

...Even now, when I am almost finished with the guilt of writing about all of it while others are still there, I have to be in a very special mood to overcome some inner reluctance and fears...

...I had lived for seven years in this never-never state before actually applying for an emigration visa, but I know people who have been agonizing for more than 10 years and still cannot decide...

...unlike so many others I had anticipated this culture shock...

...I was dizzy, sick and obsessed with an acute sense of the unreality of it: I could not be doing it...

...it turns into infatuation with verses, architecture and paintings...

...To have two cars in a land of milk and honey...

...He could not hire me...

...Thank you...

...But not me...

...We could go to an unknown country with very few possessions, no funds, and practically no knowledge of what the future would hold...

...I had walked here with this very friend, talking of work, trifles, love, art, gossip and politics—and in the spring, "babushkas...

...Or we could stay and lose, possibly forever (should emigration be closed), this single opportunity—for what...

...To travel...

...What seems to be nostalgia becomes, as the day goes on, a craving for the past—my own recent past and the remote...

...In the morning dawn I think, "Should I still be there, helping my mother to nurse my grandmother in a dirty hospital, or sitting in an armchair (deliberately killing time) in the museum where I worked, or talking to friends whose lives I shared only because we had common hatreds...

...I forced myself to this ultimate decision, this final act, this deed...

...Chessplayers, children and young men relaxing on the boulevard benches under the fragrant linden trees stared at us...

...The man watched me standing near the building of OVIR (Visa Authority...

...The wet, grayish snow was falling on the heaps already there...

...Still, there is a sense of loss...

...But soon I lose control, and I write not what I had planned to write in this session, but everything that comes to my distracted mind, as if there is someone else writing and not me at all...

...I expected that the shock of actually getting permission, fears of saying goodbye to my parents, fears of customs would be at least as great as the shock of applying...

...The guilty face of a Russian intellectual...

...but the party secretary, a very elegant, educated and Frenchified woman, said, "Over my dead body...

...I knew exactly what I was doing...

...It is unfortunate that this country is so young and that I know so little about its culture...

...Or I would have to sell, at great risk, the blue jeans my friends would send me...

...My eyes are moist, my face is hot and dry, my hands tremble with the anticipation of writing and inside me there is enough of the warmth and self-confidence to keep this inner world of mine alive...

...She was the committee leader...

...America is not like Italy, where I cried in the courtyard of the Ospedale degli Innocenti— cried as I realized that I was actually seeing this place that I had studied in my Art History courses and was never supposed to see...

...A big, fair, sturdy girl, rather pretty with the type of face usually called "open," she arrived a little later than I did...

...No, I do not mean that Emily Dickinson means less to me than Pasternak...

...I was comforting him for not being able to fight the personnel people of the Institution...

...They'll just make another note in my personal file...

...The face of a woman in the Lenin library who could not bring herself to greet me...

...We were always quite friendly, the two most punctual and reliable people at the museum...

...Why bother with a Jew when one can always find a non-Jew or, better yet, a pure Russian to fill the job...

...The roads, the weather, relationships, even the "good" in our lives—friends, loves, landscapes—were perverted, rotten...

...I was not refused yet, and so was not eligible for aid from Jewish organizations in other countries...

...The face of an old boyfriend who also wanted to help—very tall, elegant, uttering with an ironic smile, "Feel free to emigrate, even if they hire you...

...I had tried to conform, but friends are friends—I corresponded with them and brought them to my work when they felt like seeing the museum...

...yet I was, and every look from unfriendly, hurrying, frozen people, every cloud on the low, gray sky with just a hint of blue in it was whispering, "You are doing it...

...I'll talk to the Inspector, and then I'll be changed, a different person...

...maybe they were able to grasp a sign, an indication...

...In my own circle of Jewish and non-Jewish friends, who are perpetually humiliated but who nonetheless view themselves as a wordly elite of intellectuals, I will be an object of envy, gossip, admiration, concern and disapproval...

...Besides, my husband and I are out of work...

...My husband would probably be forced to go into military service or would be hiding constantly from the authorities in a friend's winter "dacha...

...I wanted to be like everybody else, to settle down...

...No, I did not leave my job voluntarily...

...There is no anxious heartbeat that accompanied my childhood and youth, when, upon waking, I was afraid of my father's unpredictable and unwarranted morning anger, or later, when I was angry at having to deal with people I disliked in a life that I loathed...

...I know only that it was not possible to stay, and it was impossible to go...

...I mailed the Komsomol ID cards to the Party Authority...

...It was this word—rot—that one disagreeable person we knew used when he predicted to my husband, "You'll never go...

...Or maybe they were just staring, but I was always afraid: It seemed to me their eyes were yelling, "Criminal, traitor, Kike...

...I started to look elsewhere and was refused ten jobs...

...Should I now decide not to climb the stairs, where would we go...

...Maybe they saw something more than two friends sharing an early spring stroll...

...It is very difficult to travel from Russia, particularly to the West, and especially if you are Jewish...

...I am fortunate...

...I lie in bed, with my eyes still closed, very warm, hearing the slamming of car doors, and I think, "I am here...

...The poetry is gone, and during the day, full of my new, purely American problems (tons of work, small achievements and the petty frustrations of everyday life), I can find no time or energy for writing...

...I had done a lot of work for her but she was afraid...

...I should be rotting there, shouldn't I?" As I prepare to leave for work, I remember, gradually, that before leaving Russia, I had similar feelings—the same tears for the same verses, the same reactions to the same sights...

...For you have to pay for everything in life, and the one thing which is forever gone from my life is poetry...

...Or, the sensation of wind in my ears, suffocation in my throat and emptiness in my stomach comes back from those last days before leaving Moscow...

...So when I lost my wretched voice the Administration first wanted to transfer me to another job (there were plenty of them in the museum—not fancy, but not requiring talking...

...To give a proper future to our children...

...I did not do this alone...

...At the same time, I felt a deceptive and careless relief—the deed was done and now it was as if nothing had happened...

...I would have to take from my parents (which I hadn't done since they were divorced) or my friends...

...I collected all the bureaucratic baggage: papers signed by our parents stating that they allowed us to go, the notarized seal of the House Authority so that all the neighbors would know and gossip about us to their hearts' content, copies of workbooks, letters stating that I do not work (another pretext to make me a subject of official persecution while I waited for—or if I were refused—a visa), and all the rest...

...And finally, the charming face of my best friend—concerned, yet amused, she says, "Before you quit, our supervisor at work once told me, 'You are friendly with her and she corresponds with people abroad.' " She didn't respond, but she did not stop seeing me...

...My problem was an internal, raging battle: My rational sense yelled "Go ahead," my emotions cried, "I can't stand this life," and the animal, childish instincts implored, "No, you cannot do it, it is not possible...

...It had all happened after a ten-month struggle, but it was I who looked happier, freer when it was done...

...I began to feel it even before—in the suspicious (though not all of them evil) glances of the "babushkas," in the House Authority ("I hereby certify that this person...

...Was it, finally, the instinct for survival that wore down all the rationalizations...

...I'll be the first one to suffer revenge should the political situation change and emigration close...

...Yet, my choice was my own, so when it came to being publicly excluded from the Komsomol, I was not feeling guilty towards my former colleagues...

...To escape from this huge political prison...

...The author wishes to thank Francesco Nichols for her editorial assistance...

...I've heard of people who got their visas and then did not emigrate...

...Pride and resentment are involved...

...When I left OVIR, every step was painful, though I felt relieved...

...I mean the unique personal poetry of my childhood and youth, the flowers I smelled, the dogs I petted, places and sites I visited at particular and precious moments in my life...

...It would have been much easier for me if my old schoolmate (museum colleague and antipode), were not there officiating...

...It was one such miserable day at the very end of winter, when, after these seven years of struggle with myself and others, I Finally committed the irreversible act...

...It is not pain—the whole emigration is gradually becoming a part of someone else's life, just as the terrors of childhood and the despairing moments of youth had...

...Elena Tsypkin, whose article entitled 'Departure from Moscow" appeared in the September issue of moment, lives in Boston...

...That I had lost my voice and could not work any more as a guide and that they would not give me another job was not, of course, sufficient reason...

...But this much we knew: we would rot...

...Maybe they realized we were marked—Jewish and different...

...I felt almost happy, calm and confident...

...Change is always difficult but it is particularly terrifying for people who have never learned how to take command over their own lives...