Translation of Poem by Lidia Chukovskaya, Лидия Чуковская, "Куда они бросили тело твоё?" QUESTIONS FOR A LOVED ONE DEMISED

 

Лидия Чуковская
(1907-1996)

Куда они бросили тело твоё? В люк?
Где расстреливали? В подвале?
Слышал ли ты звук
Выстрела? Нет, едва ли.
Выстрел в затылок милосерд:
Вдребезги память.
Вспомнил ли ты тот рассвет? Нет.
Торопился падать.

 1956

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

                                                 Questions for a Loved One Demised

Where did they throw your body?

In some ditch?

Where did they shoot you?

In some basement niche?

 

Did you hear the sound of the shot?

No, hardly, unlikely enough.

A shot in the occiput is merciful,

Shatters your brainwaves to flinders and fluff.

 

Did you recall the dawn of that day?

No. You had pressing things to deal with:

Like Hurry up, fall,

Like passing away.

 

Translator’s Note

 

Matvei Bronshtein (1906-1938), an eminent physicist and Lidia Chukovskaya’s husband, was arrested in 1937, executed (shot) in 1938. The usual way of executing people in the years of Stalin’s Terror involved none of the niceties associated with this business in Western countries. No last meal. No last walk down the corridors of Death Row, priest at your elbow, bidding farewell to your fellow inmates. No final words to the world at large before they pulled the plug.

 

You were led out of your cell as if on the way to another session of interrogation. You had no idea that you were about to be shot. Your jailer, who walked, as usual, behind you, quietly took out a pistol and shot you in the back of the head. No one bothered to notify relatives, either that the execution was imminent, or afterward, when the deed had been done. The body was disposed of, most often in some common grave with other prisoners. Lidia Chukovskaya found out that her husband had been shot only in 1939. She was lucky. Many relatives of executed “enemies of the people” found out their fate only ten years after the fact, or even twenty.

 

Matvei Bronshtein