Benjamin's Crossing by Jay Parini

Author:Jay Parini [Parini, Jay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2021-02-09T00:00:00+00:00

It was agony to deal with a man in this state. Like an idiot, I let him stay in my house for two weeks. Crazier yet, I let him seduce me one night, after many drinks. He said, “My dear, you look painfully stiff. Let me give you a massage.” Before I knew what was going on, his hand was between my legs. One thing led to another, then his body lowered itself upon me, from behind. I was immobile, and I could not resist, although the next day I said to him: “We must never do that again. I do not want to have sex with you. Bernhard is my lover.” I asked him to be my friend, a real friend. “Friends are more important than lovers, you know,” I said. He seemed hurt by this and left Riga in a bitter mood.

In the winter of 1926 he appeared, again without warning, in Moscow. I had been living in a sanatorium, recovering from a breakdown. The doctors all agreed that years of straining for professional success in the theater combined with political activism had taken a harsh toll on my nerves; I was not by nature a strong person, though I pretended to be tough. My relations with Bernhard, to start with, were unsatisfactory. He played games with me, showering approbation only to undercut what he said with smirks and subtle digs. He was, I think, used to having actresses jump through whatever little hoops he put before them. I found this intolerable and would scream, “You are not my director!” But it was hopeless. Bernhard’s personality was set in concrete.

I had no wish to see Walter just now, but there he was beside my bed, fidgeting and smoking one cigarette after another; he begged me with those dark, sad eyes to abandon Bernhard, to become his lover. What an absurdity! He telegraphed his arrival, asking poor Bernhard to pick him up at the Belorussian-Baltic station. (Bernhard, of course, agreed; he considered Walter “a dear old thing.”) They came straight to my room—Bernhard puzzled, Walter breathless with the kind of expectation one can only frustrate. He presented me with One-Way Street, his manic little book of fragments. It was dedicated to me: “This street is named Asja Lacis street, after the engineer who laid it through the author.” Bernhard, when he saw this dedication, looked at Walter in amazement. There was no jealousy in him, thank goodness. It was not in his nature. Privately, he said, “You mustn’t lead him on, Asja. The man is obviously mad about you.” But I was not leading him on. I wasn’t leading him anywhere!

What exactly did he expect to gain from this visit? I was not going to let him leap into my sickbed: One can only do so much for the People, and Walter was already wavering in his political commitment. He had seemed, in his letters, on the verge of joining the Party, but now, having arrived at the center of the revolution, he resisted.

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