Dear I-330,
It seems like centuries have passed since I last heard from you. Of course, I am to blame. Katenka and I have changed addresses, and the resulting chaos has prevented me, until now, from writing to you from our new habitation.
Oh, I-330, if only you knew the suffering I have endured since I last saw you! I have never been one to complain, but you are the only confidant I have ever had, so I must pour out my heart to you. Otherwise I will be driven mad by the feelings within me.
Do you remember Yuri Zhivago? Years ago, when I lived on Merchant Street, he was the man who often visited me. Yes, he was a married man, but our love was the kind of love which happens to people only once in their lifetime. Now, after spending a few months together in Varykino, he has betrayed me. When Komarovsky offered to help us escape from the country, Yura promised me that we would flee together so that we would never be apart again. Then, he sent me off with Komarovsky, promising that he would join us later in his own carriage. He broke both promises -- he never arrived. Komarovsky told me that Yura never intended to come. He said good-bye to me on the steps of the home that we had shared, all the time knowing that we would never see each other again. I, on the other hand, hoped. Since then, I have never stopped hoping that he will be able to see his child and that we will live together peacefully until our deaths. I hoped he would change his mind and come to us. I still hope, but I know that in these times, most hopes are left unanswered. I fear that I will never see Yura again.
This is the first time I have been able to tell my story to anyone, and even now, tears fall onto the page as I write to you. He did it for my child -- I remember him and Komarovsky insisting that I must go because I had no right to place the life of my child in danger. He does not realize that in the past few months, I have been a worthless mother to Katenka. I have been angry at her for being the responsibility which deprived me of the ma I love. But it is unfair to blame my misfortunes on an inoocent child. Now it is easier because I have Tonia, Yura's child, who reminds me of him. Tonia has helped me to heal, and to fulfill my responsibility as a mother to provide aa stable home full of love for my children. In these tumultuous, harsh, and bitter times, the love that mothers provide is even more important.
I hope you will forgive me if I tell you about my final months with Yura. I know that you think little of love and I know you think Yura is a scoundrel. But you do not understand him as I do. Truly he is not like Pasha, who had a will of steel. Pasha lived for an ideal -- he was determined, strong, and single-minded -- like many men of the Revolution. Yura, on the other hand, could never live for an abstract ideal. He lives for beauty. He longs for tranquility and peace, which he found in our love and his poetry.
He loves nature. In Varykino, he used to watch the sun rise over the countryside with a look of awe in his gentle brown eyes. He would sit at the window watching the sun rise, and I sat nearby, watching him. We shared everything. He planted seeds, harvested, washed clothes, cooked, and played with Katenka. Then, at night, he would write by candlelight. He would write beautiful poems about Russian and about our love. Occasionally, he would write poems about the conflicts happening throughout Russian, but he never likes to dwell on that subject.
I am sending you one of the best poems, "Hamlet," which reminds me of Yura. If he could have escaped from Russia, like Hamlet escaping from the cast of the tragic play, he would have. His mind and heart were always focused on the ideal. The bloody conflict in Russisa defied everything he believed in.
It is late now, and I must go. I have cried enough tonight remembering my Yura. Part of my soul is gone, I-330. I hope you understand love enough to understand my suffering.
Dear Lara,
You misunderstood me. You imply that I deny the importance of love. Would you be surprised if I told you that I am in love right now? Perhaps you would say, "Oh, I-330, you always say that you are in love with a new man, but you soon lose interest in him." This time, though, it's different. He has spirit and great potential.
I knew D-503 was different when I saw him in the ranks. The first thing I noticed were his hands. They were strong and hairy. This may seem a strange criterion, but it indicates that D-503 is descended from the forest people. This ancestral connection to the people who live outside the city walls means that he has the capacity to feel differently. Like your Yura, he can appreciate beauty. In fact, when I first met him, he was looking with awe at the glittering glass pavements and buildings. I approaches him and said, "Forgive me, but you looked at everything around you with such an inspired air, like some mythical god on the seventh day of creation. It seems to me you are sure that even I was created by you, and by no one else. I am very flattered..." (6)
You may say this was too forward for a proper Russian woman. But I say that the passivity of women is a tradition which I am glad did not carry over from your time into mine. I believe in pursuing what I want. And I want D-503. I want him for love, I want him for sex. Also I want him because he would be useful in fomenting rebellion in One State. He is head engineer of the Integral, a spaceship. His knowledge could be useful in escaping from One State.
Our relationship is egalitarian, we each give what we can, but we withhold certain things from each other too. He writes in a journal which he has never shown me, and I don't tell him my plans. I suppose we don't completely trust each other, but then again, complete trust is dangerous. One sets oneself up to either be hurt or betrayed.
At times in your letter, you remind me of O-90, the woman who is carrying D-503's child. She has no secrets from him. In fact she worships him. Because of this, he treats her like a baby. When he comments about women and their silly sentimentality, I know he is not talking about me -- he is talking about O-90. She is so pleased to be carrying his child, as if motherhood is the most important thing in life.
To be brutally honest, Lara, I think you are better off without your Yura. It sounds to me as if he lived you as he loved a landscape. You were merely a muse for his creations. When did he ever do anything for you? If I remember correctly, you supported him when he was ill, you worked selflessly to create a peaceful home for him, and then he betrayed you. Not only that, but he left you a child which you now have to raise and support. I think Pasha would have been a better husband for you, if he had felt the same duty towards you as he now feels towards the cause. At least he has a strong will, not like this poet/doctor of yours.
I hope you won't take offense at my honesty, but I think that you, Lara, must think about your needs, not just his. Allow yourself to be angry. I'm angry all of the time when men fail to live up to my expectations. But hopefully withj D-503, things will be different.
Dear I-330,
I am shocked by your letter, I must write.
I pity you and your misguided perception of love. I fear that your ideas will prevent you from ever experiencing true love. You are too preoccupied with maintaining your autonomy but you must realize that love is not about autonomy -- it is about giving yourself entirely and completely to another person until your world becomes his, and his world becomes yours. I do not predict happiness for you, I-330, unless you and D-503 learn to trust one another. True, it hurts more when he betrays your trust, but without complte trust, it is not love.
I am often lonely now. During breaks from my duties, I find myself staring into space and thinking about the past. I think about our friendship too, and how you have always disliked Yura. You think that Yura projected qualities onto me, that I was merely a symbol to him. Yes, Yura was always telling me that I represented the forces of life, love and motherhood which Russia was neglecting in this senseless civil war. But he truly believed that I possessed these qualities. Yura worshipped me, but he also knew my faults. He knew that I could often be wrongfully angry and bitter, but he loved me anyway.
I remember one occasion when I yelled at him. "I'm not allowed to be worried, to be afraid for Katenka, to think about the future," I said, "everything has to give way before my love for you." I realize now that I was unfairly blaming my problems on Yura, when he was not to blame. We live in troubled times, and therefore must withstand tremendous hardship. I must accept the fact that men "were given wings to fly above the clouds, but... mine are given me to stay close to the ground and to shelter my young" (435).
I would disagree with your criticism of O-90. I think she is lucky to be carrying D-503's child. She realizes that children are the only hope for the future. Yura realized this too when he sent myself and Katenka to safety. I have come to regard our parting as a sacrifice by both of us for the future.
I think about the future that Katenka and Tonia will see. I wonder what all of the fighting will come to, and whether it will be worth the tremendous cost our generation paid. Sons, brothers, and fathers have died -- and what for? For what have we women endured such unspeakable suffering? For what end have the men we love been taken from us?
I must tell you that I strongly disagree with your categorization of the women of our generation as passive. We have been forced to work very hard and show tremendous strength. I know women who have single-handedly supported huge families after their husbands left to fight. I-330, I must tell you that courage does not always take the form of defiant rebellion. The women of my generation bear their burdens silently and without complaint. This is true courage ---
Dear Lara,
My recent experiences have proven to me my former belief that it is best not to trust, best not to love, and best not to give when the chances of disappointment are so high. In One State, because people are encouraged to inform on each other, close relationships can become dangerous. My relationship with D-503 has soured, and sometimes I fear he will inform on me. I wish I had not placed such high hopes on him...
In retrospect, I think I was so desperate to find someone who could understand my rebellion that I approached the first person who I thought possessed the necessary qualities. I thought D-503's Forest People ancestry would give him spirit. I found out that he has spirit enough to love me, but not spirit enough to take up the struggle. He watched those of us who openly defied the Benefactor at the elections last week with a combination of horror and awe. He alternates between love for me and my struggle, and love of One State and its "beautiful simplicity." I am constantly persuasive, but I fear that his guilty sense of betrayal towards One State may destroy us all.
It's strange, lately I have seen characteristics in him which remind me of your Yura. D-503 has often told me that I puzzle him. He compares me to an X, an unknown variable in an equation he thought he had solved. He often tells me that my eyebrows form an X, and that I have sharp, pointy teeth. I think he is trying to tell me that I scare him. I represent for him something incomprehensible -- something fascinating yet terrifying.
I think I represent for him a life which he never imagined before. He was so brainwashed by One State that he thought that life should be orderly and solvable like a math problem. I offered him an alternative to reason, love. And I introduced chaos and uncertainty into his orderly life. The problem is, I have come to embody so much for him, that it is becoming oppressive for me. It is interesting how women become projections and fantasies of men. We come to symbolize more than we want to, and we are not given a voice to demonstrate who we really are.
There will come a time when D-503 will have to choose between what One State symbolizes and what I symbolize. But will I accept the role of a symbol, or will I demand that he see me as a complex and autonomous human being?
Dear I-330,
The person knocking on the door when I wrote you last was from the telegram office. He informed me that Yura was dead from a heart attack.
I immediately left for the funeral. When I arrived, I discovered two very shocking facts. First of all, I discovered that Pasha had killed himself. I wonder what he was thinking when he did it. I can imagine him -- full of sorrow and regret because he gave up so much to fight for a cause, and then the cause turned on him. He may have died wondering where his wife and child were -- whether they were alive or dead. Poor Pasha! He changed from the sweet boy I married into a ruthless and cruel general. Why? It was as if he had a second life after me, one completely unknown and incomprehensible to me.
The second surprising fact was that Yura had been living with another woman, and had two children by her. I try to justify it by telling myself that he was a lonely middle-aged man, but it's difficult. Why did he betray me? Why didn't he try to find me? Was our love real to him?
I reread his poetry and tell myself that our love meant something to him. But, like you, I am tired of being disappointed. I came to this funeral to say good-bye to Yuri, to grieve for him. But when I left, I had the shocking feeling that I was now free to have a completely new life, just as Yura and Pasha did, but at my expense. I long to leave my house and never come back -- I hear I may rebel against the role that I was created to fulfill. You have been a terrible influence on me, I-330!!!
Dear Lara,
Because you have been my one true friend and confidant, I must write you to inform you of the latest events.
He has informed on me, but I do not blame him. He is not the same man I knew. The Great Benefactor gave him the Operation, a procedure which destroys the imagination. Now he is merely a pawn. He is incapable of choosing between me and One State because the part of the brain which conceived me is dead.
First I died as a symbol, tomorrow I will die physically. But I am not scared. I am satisfied. I and other so-called "enemies of happiness" have changed One State forever. Rebellion is spreading. The western part of the city is in uprising. People have broken through the outer walls and are constantly escaping to join the Forest People. O-90 has escaped with D-503's child.
We have our own civil war here, Lara, but unlike you -- there is nothing to lose and everything to gain. I wish that I could be alive to see the promising future --
I go to the gas chamber tomorrow. The next day, I will go to the Benefactor's machine. As my final act of rebellion, I will bear my suffering in silence. I will show them that I will not be moved.
Lara, my sister, my confidant, my friend... You taught me about true courage. Give me courage now...
Dear I-330,
I know that this letter will never reach you, but I must write you a final note. I know you bore your suffering with true courage. I take inspiration from this, and try to fulfill my duties here with strength. Katenka and Tonia are growing up. I work hard to support them. I find fulfillment in my memories, and in my children.
We lived our lives in different ways, with our own share of joys and suffering. I wuld have liked to experience your life for a while, to savor the excitemnet of rebellion, to make demands openly --
You will never read these words, so I will stop writing. I will keep this letter in my metal box of valuables, along with all of the letters you sent me throughout our lives.