Marina Tsvetaeva, Her Life in Poems - Rolf Gross

they needed people like her. She left in March 1937, seen off by a cheerful group of
friends and well-wishers. Only Marina was full of dark premonitions.
Sergey Efron, 1937 Sergey and Alya, 1935
Photos dommuseum.ru
The following twenty-four months of 1937-1939 are a blur, a single catastrophe.
Marina's letters and notes give no indication of what happened between her and Sergey.
All evidence is based on unsubstantiated hearsay and rumors. Viktoria Schweitzer [VS
p.337] tried to reconstruct that period. She doubts that Marina knew anything, but feels
certain that in the very end Sergey and she talked.
On September 4, 1937 Ignaty Reyss, a Soviet agent who refused return to the
USSR, was murdered in Switzerland. Efron was accused by the Swiss and French police to
have been instrumental in shadowing Reyss. It later emerged that he had also been
involved in tracking down Trotsky's son, L. Sedov. Efron was interrogated by the French
police. After the first interrogation Efron disappeared. Apparently he was spirited by the
NKVD to the USSR. He had no choice, they held Alya as a hostage.
A bizarre account of the details of his disappearance appeared in the Parisian
emigrant newspaper Renaissance on October 29, 1937 [Sergey disappeared on 29
September 1937]. According to this article Marina and Mur were in the Russian embassy
car with Sergey that was taking them to Le Havre. Near Rouen Sergey jumped from the
car and fled. The Russian agents must have caught him quickly. He did not return. [VS
p.337] - The immediate result of this was that everyone avoided contact with Marina.
A few weeks later Marina was interrogated by the French police. She is supposed to
have told them, “Efron's trust may have been abused. My trust in him remains
unchanged.” She read them translations of her prose writings to show her innocence.
Apparently she convinced the police that she knew nothing. Marina was cleared and let
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