Epistolophilia: Writing the Life of Ona Simaite

29. Death in Vilnius

186 chapter 29 Death in Vilnius stories within stories. Šimaitė’s life story contains the traces of other lives, perhaps as every life story does. She herself understood this. Šimaitė believed that some of these stories were in danger of dying with her, and so she ensured that her Paris correspondence would be archived to save them. In turn, her correspondents in Israel and Lithuania kept the letters they received. Among them we have Aldutė the schizophrenic, Kazys the slain poet, Kauneckas the dictionary maniac. And we must now add Tayda Devėnaitė, the suicidal editor. A reader and book lover, Devėnaitė rose quickly to a position of influence in the world of Lithuanian publishing while still in her early twenties. She began corresponding with Šimaitė in 1957, when preparing an edition of the collected works by the poet Salomėja Nėris, a late, prewar friend of Šimaitė. She tracked down Šimaitė in Paris to ask for help with the edition. “Perhaps you have some of Salomėja Nėris’s manuscripts, letters, or other material?” she wrote on April 1, 1957 (Šimaitė’s Papers, Vilnius University). The letter sparked a long affectionate correspondence. Šimaitė shared memories about Nėris and others, and even visited the places the poet had lived in Paris. Devėnaitė for her part sent Šimaitė streams of books. Unlike most of her correspondents in Vilnius who eked out lives on tiny pensions and miniscule wages, sharing cramped 187 Death in Vilnius quarters with family members, Devėnaitė was part of the Soviet establishment. She had a large apartment all to herself, a princely salary of 1,200 rubles per month, and was free to travel in Eastern Bloc countries like Bulgaria, Hungary, and neighboring Soviet republics .1 But despite her privilege and relative wealth, even Devėnaitė occasionally needed material help. Šimaitė used to send her heart medication to pass on to the poet Janina Degutytė, whose poem “Undeliverable Letters” reads: “I build homes with poems / I have nothing else to give.” Ever conscious of not taking advantage of her friend’s kindness, Devėnaitė wrote on April 10, 1959: These medications are very expensive, and you’ve deprived yourself of many things to buy them. I don’t know how to thank you. . . . The poet is feeling much better. Her collection “Fire Drops” has come out. Bookstores sold out of it immediately. (Šimaitė’s Papers, Vilnius University) Šimaitė saw an opportunity to try and help her suffering Aldutė by hooking her up with Devėnaitė, both privately and professionally. Devėnaitė was only too happy to help, and used her influence and money to provide Aldutė with travel documents for Leningrad and the Caucasus, where she met her husband Sasha. Šimaitė repaid these favors in French books, sending for example, works by Albert Camus after the writer’s death in Algeria in 1960. That same year Devėnaitė wrote: “The travel document to Druskininkai, if you insist on paying for it, costs two tomes of the impressionists. I would very much like to have them!” (October 12, 1960, Šimaitė’s Papers, Vilnius University). She arranged for a trial translation, a kind of literary audition, for Šimaitė’s niece at the press in hope of securing her a decent job, but Aldutė first didn’t show up, then failed the test on a second occasion. There was a falling out between Aldutė and Devėnaitė, and recriminations from Aldutė for Šimaitė’s continued friendship and correspondence with her now-archenemy. Of all Šimaitė’s correspondents, Devėnaitė was the most deeply implicated in the Communist Party system; she was its biggest 188 Death in Vilnius champion and believer. With regard to gender equality and feminism in the USSR, according to the editor, all was well. Women were now equals. She wrote to Šimaitė that her own path would have been impossible in interwar Lithuania and credited her professional success to the Soviet system that, in her view, blind to both gender and class, allowed a working-class girl to overcome her origins. As for official atheism, this freed her from the timewasting rituals of Catholicism. october 20, 1960 Dear Ms. Ona! . . . I would now like . . . to disagree with your views on religion, censorship, and so on. I hope you won’t be angry if I actively lay out my thoughts on these questions, which will not always agree with yours. . . . First...