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One of the book's few revelations concerns the extent of her involvement with the Soviet secret police. Her husband had been an early employee of the Cheka, and she pursued the association by welcoming agents to gatherings at the apartment the Briks shared with Mayakovsky. One of the lovers Lili took when Mayakovsky was still alive was a high-level secret police official. But the most shocking anecdote is provided by Rita Rait, now one of Russia's most distinguished translators from English. In the '20s, Lili sought to recruit Rait to spy on Russian emigres in Berlin, and arranged a meeting for the purpose with a police agent in her own apartment.
There was nothing extraordinary about Lili's camaraderie with the secret police. After all, Soviet society, including the literary salons, was riddled with spies, as Nadezhda Mandelstam, the widow of the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, recalled in her magnificent memoir Hope Against Hope. Had Mayakovsky not tak en his own life, he would surely have fallen victim to such informers, as Mandelstam and hundreds of other writers did during the Great Purges of the late '30s. But who could be held accountable for his actions? asked Nadezhda Mandelstam. Her answer may apply to all the characters in the pitiful drama that is played out in this book. A person's be havior, and even character, she wrote, "is always in the merciless grip of the age, which squeezes out of him the drop of good or evil that it needs from him." —Patricia Blake
Excerpt
"The setting for their meeting was in itself almost symbolic of the point the Briks had come to in their lives. Their Petrograd apartment was a mixture of fashionable bohemianism and middle-class elegance ... The atmosphere was strained when Elsa and Mayakovsky came in. Unwilling to sit down to make polite small talk, he hulked in the doorway to the dining room as the others settled at the table for tea. Lili leaned over to Elsa and whispered, 'Please, I beg you, tell Mayakovsky not to bore us today. Tell him not to read us any poetry.'
Mayakovsky was so used to reluctant audiences ... For the Briks, crowded at the table in their small dining room trying to keep their eyes on their teacups while a towering, disheveled poet recited loudly into their faces, the effect would have been overpowering whether they liked it or not... For Brik the poem was a brilliant revolutionary statement. Osip took the notebook that 'The Cloud in Trousers' had been copied into and read the poem over to himself, while Mayakovsky smiled, stirred jam into his tea, and looked at Lili and Elsa with his large brown eyes. Suddenly he took the notebook from Osip's hands, and asked Lili, 'May I dedicate it to you?' "