217 Babel Street | The Penthouse
Lulu blew an impressive smoke ring. Below her, Boris gnawed the old shipping carton. Postmark: Moscow, 28/12/1974. Her mother had died just months before; the sender, months later. Lulu translated his awkward German one last time.
Dearest Sabina,
Perhaps our letters have been “purged” by the authorities here, or perhaps you have chosen silence out of necessity. I know only that I think of you, still. My essays are out (after half a century!), and in English even – The Dialogic Imagination. The rest of the unpublished work, enclosed, I must trust to you, and to England. You would laugh to see me now: an old man with only one leg to his name. I think of you as I first saw you, with your hair spilling out from that red kerchief, and you, wild as a peasant girl.
fondest love,
M.
Lulu’s father hadn’t expired at Leningrad after all. On the contrary, Mikhail Bakhtin had entered literary legend there. During the siege, he’d decided he couldn’t risk his latest manuscript falling into the wrong hands – not if his wife and his children were to remain safe. 700 pages. Black-market tobacco. One roll-up after another. So he passed the dreadful days.
Alas, habits run in families. Lulu leaned forward on the chaise longue, rolled the letter tightly around the tobacco, and struck another match.
She peered into the box at the diminishing pile of manuscripts... It had taken decades. But soon she’d be back to her Pall Mall Slimlines.