Two Brief Encounters with Joseph Brodsky © copyright 1996   "Some are no more, others are distant..."   Death of a Poet The unrepeatable voice won't speak again, Died yesterday and quit us, the talker with groves, He has turned into the live-giving ear of grain Or into the gentlest of rain of which he sang. And all the flowers that grow only in this world Came into bloom to meet his death. And straightway it's grown quiet on the planet That bears a name so modest Earth. Anna Akhmatova Translation: D. M. Thomas   Sitting in the New York State Supreme Court jury room what I really feel like saying is, "But your Honor how can I serve on a Grand Jury when I don't believe there is any justice in the world. How can there be any justice in the world when Joseph Brodsky is dead at age 55?" I don't think my saying this would change anything — for the judge, for me and especially for Joseph Brodsky. Brodsky is dead — dead in the Russian fashion, of a heart attack at the early age of 55. The obituary appeared in the New York Times on Monday, January 29, 1996, the day he was supposed to return to South Hadley, Massachusetts to begin the spring semester at Mount Holyoke College. Yes, he was a heavy smoker (also in the Russian fashion), but his pen had much more poetry to dispense and more years for this dispensing would have been preferable for us all. But I can't take on both Fate and Justice at once, and I will still have to serve on Grand Jury duty. Brief Encounter One I met Joseph Brodsky in 1993 at a New York University Cultural Exchange luncheon where Tatiana Tolstoya was scheduled to speak. Knowing that I was a Tolstoya fan, my sister-in-law had invited me to join her and her husband the writer Alfred Kazin at the luncheon. What started out as a casual invitation turned into a memorable occasion for me and not just because of Tolsoya. At one point I discovered that standing directly behind me was Joseph Brodsky, red wine glass in hand, cigarette dangling dangerously close to the edge of his rumpled navy jacket. He was involved in an animated discussion with someone whose own cigarette was within equally dangerously close proximity to his jacket. My sister-in-law casually remarked to me, "That's Joseph Brodsky." I gasped and replied that Jack (my husband and her brother) would be terribly disappointed to learn that he had missed the chance to meet Brodsky. I was introduced to Joseph Brodsky later in the afternoon in much the same way most people were introduced to him that day and I'm sure I left no lasting impression upon him other than the fact that I was the sister-in-law of Alfred Kazin. I began to read Brodsky's "Less Than One" after this encounter. Brief Encounter Two Two weeks after the NYU luncheon I ran into Joseph Brodsky on Cornelia Street in the Village. This pleasant and usually untraveled small street runs off Sixth Avenue and makes a diagonal run to Bleecker Street and on to points east. Although my sister-in-law told me that Brodsky lived in the Village I was still surprised to run into him on Cornelia Street. (It turned out that he was living on Morton Street, a quiet West Village street with an elbow bend right before reaching Hudson Street.) I saw him walking towards me and recognized him. In that one instant I uncharacteristically lost all inhibitions and said hello as we passed. He said hello and stopped much to my surprise. He seemed interested in a chat and so I proceeded to tell him that we had met recently at NYU, and that I had been there with Alfred Kazin and his wife. He was disarmingly charming and asked after Alfred in a genuine and friendly way. I gathered further audacity and told him that my husband, a mathematics professor at NYU, was a big fan of his prose and was sorry not to have had the chance to meet him at the luncheon. Out on a limb this far I moved closer to the edge by inviting Joseph Brodsky to our house for dinner. He said he would be delighted and told me to call him to set up a date. I was stunned but managed to reach into my coat pocket and pull out a pen along with the only piece of paper I had with me at the time — a white folded laundry slip. He took the pen and as he wrote his telephone number and initials "J. B." underneath the telephone number, asked me if I had read much of his work. I told him that I was currently working on "Less Than One", but somehow in my nervousness it came out as "Less Than Zero" (I must have gotten confused by the recent Robert Downey, Jr. movie by the same title). He laughed and corrected me then asked me how I was finding it. As he returned my pen and the soon-to-be-enshrined laundry slip I spoke the only Russian word I could pronounce: "spa`sibo" (Thank you). He smiled his generous, warm smile as I said I thought "Less Than One" was tougher going than his early childhood stores, but that it was going well enough. He smiled, said he looked forward to meeting my husband at the dinner. We parted simply — he turned and said "Goodbye." Some days later I called the telephone number he had written on the white laundry slip and Joseph Brodsky answered. (I had had difficulty convincing the owner of the Chinese laundry shop of the importance of my retaining this slip of paper when I went to retrieve my laundry. It seems I almost destroyed his bookkeeping system by not returning the slip to him when I picked up my laundry.) I reminded Brodsky of our chance encounter and of my dinner invitation. He said he would be pleased to come to dinner and we set the date for the following Friday. Alfred Kazin and his wife would also join us, though they seemed amazed that I had invited Brodsky to dinner. My husband genuinely believed from the start that the dinner would never take place and sure enough on Wednesday afternoon Brodsky called to make his apologies and said that his wife Maria was ill and asked if we could postpone the dinner until after he returned from Italy where he would be spending the next two months. I said sure and that we would also be in Italy in one month. He suggested that we meet for a drink in Rome and told me he would be staying at the American Academy in Rome. He said to call him when we got to Rome and I said I would and we said goodbye. Due to some unforeseen dental problems which I developed while we were in Tel Aviv, my husband and I had to skip the Italy portion of our trip that year and fly back to New York for emergency dental treatment. We never rescheduled the dinner. Though we never got to have dinner with Joseph Brodsky I consider myself extremely lucky to have had these brief encounters with him. Touching his life meant touching his work and through his writings I went on to discover the wonders of W. H. Auden, Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvteava and Olip Mandelstam. I owe much of my love of poetry to two brief encounters with Joseph Brodsky.