Nina Berberova Told Me So
HAVANA TIMES – A friend lent me the autobiographical book Nina Berberova, published by Circe in Spanish. The Italics Are Mine in English). I had previously read two of her texts: Moura Budberg (a biography) and The Resurrection of Mozart (short stories). I was fascinated by those readings and, as almost always happens in such cases, I felt committed to reading everything by this author that came my way. So, I was overjoyed when I began to enjoy this new book.
It didn’t stop surprising me. I loved it. I lived through it with enthusiasm cover to cover. Now then, I want to share one impression I had among so many, from what this intelligent Russian woman, who had so much to tell us and did so wonderfully well, expressed. I confess that many of the facts pained me. But this particular one struck me so deeply as I read it that I can’t help but share it. It concerns an anonymous letter from Moscow, addressed To the writers of the world, which appears on pages 170–171.
The letter speaks of the abuses suffered by writers, artists, intellectuals, and the general public in what was then the Soviet Union. It begins by saying: “It pains us to think that the clinking of champagne glasses offered to foreign writers by our government might have drowned out the sound of the chains that weigh upon our literature and upon the entire Russian people.”
It goes on to recount how “freedom of expression remains imprisoned,” and the persecution and punishment endured by creators, scientists, thinkers… all at the hands of censorship. The experience shared in the letter is truly terrifying.
But what terrified me most, I must admit, was the date it was written. It appears at the end, where it says: “A group of Russian writers, Russia. May 1927.” At that moment, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. 1927! The catastrophe had only just begun. In other words, it was like this from the start! And it had to continue until the collapse of the socialist bloc in that country in 1991! That information hit me hard.
Every time I hear people in my own country, socialist Cuba, ask: “How much longer is this going to go on?”—and everyone knows full well what that question refers to, I always want to believe the answer is: Soon, not much longer, We’re nearing the end… But when I came across this document thanks to Berberova and thought about everything she and her people had to go through, with such degrees of suffering, I was honestly left stone-cold.
A customer and I almost always (how can we avoid it?) talk about the torment of getting food first, and everything else afterward. And in one of those moments when I let myself get carried away, though I try to be optimistic most of the time, I told her I still don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. She, an older woman of over 70 with immense wisdom and a biting sense of humor, replied: “No way! And if you do see it, when you get close… it’s just a firefly!”
I laughed out loud. I have to thank her reaction, because it dissolved a bit of the bitterness, at least in that moment.
Yes, history is tragic, as another customer once told me. However, out of principle, I want to believe that salvation happens somehow.
The final word cannot belong to the powerful, to our Cuban communist leaders, and sooner rather than later, justice will have its say. July 11, 2021, was part of that history, that transformation. Women and men, inside and outside the Island, who have decided to discuss more than one issue regarding the politics we want to shape our lives. A discussion that can only take place with the respect and responsibility it requires, of course.
I want to uphold this position and these ideas beyond any “Christian principles” I might have. I want to embody them fully, to make them part of my deepest convictions, despite all the adversity we face: the firefly, the tunnel’s darkness, my own feelings of fear and confusion. Because I also believe that if we doubt too much, we won’t be able to help ourselves at all. As a colleague once told me, something that might be debatable, but to me is revealing in this context: “This isn’t a feeling, it’s a matter of faith.”
Read more from the diary of Lien Estrada here on Havana Times.