You will hear thunder : 10/09/06

It was wonderful finally to get to the Sheremetyov Palace where Akhmatova lived for so many years, and to stand in her room, and look at some of the things there that she had lived with, and think about the words she wrote while sitting at this desk. I re-read Lydia Chukoskaya's description of her first visit to Akhmatova when I came back to my hotel room: "I climbed the tricky back staircase that belonged to another century, each step as deep as three.. beyond the kitchen, a little corridor, and to the left, a door leading to her room.. its general appearance one of neglect, chaos" and of course the match was only exact in outline. But there was no mistaking the place.


There was the window out into the trees that she loved so much.


And next door was the room of Nikolai Punin, her common law husband, taken away from this apartment and executed. His overcoat still hung on the hall stand, along with his hat.

On the morning I planned my excursion I woke up early and looked out. Rain spattered the windows. I thought of the poem she wrote towards the end of her life:

You will hear thunder and remember me,
And think: she wanted storms.
The rim Of the sky will be the colour of hard crimson,
And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire.

That day in Moscow, it will all come true,
when, for the last time, I take my leave,
And hasten to the heights that I have longed for,
Leaving my shadow still to be with you.