“He’ll recognize them in a flash, he’s an expert at that. Anyway, what kind of position are you looking for?”
“I don’t know, Uncle, whatever would…”
“Well, there are ministerial posts, ministers’ assistants, directors, deputy directors, department heads, office managers, assistant office managers, special assignments – is that enough for you?”
Alexander pondered the matter, but was at a loss to come up with an answer.
“Well, perhaps, for a start, office manager would be a good idea,” he said.
“Very well then,” Pyotr Ivanych agreed.
“Then after I’ve had a chance to get my bearings, perhaps after a month or two it could be department head…”
His uncle was taken aback. “Of course, what else!” he responded. “Then after three months you’ll be a director, and in a year a minister – is that your idea?”
Alexander blushed and fell silent, and then asked, “I expect the department head told you what vacancies there were?”
“No,” his uncle replied, “he didn’t. Better leave it to him, we would have trouble deciding, and he’s the one who knows best where to place you. Don’t you say anything to him about finding it difficult to choose – and also, not a word about your projects. Furthermore, he’ll be offended to think we don’t trust him, and he can be quite intimidating. I would also advise you to avoid mentioning anything about ‘material tokens’ to the girls around here; they won’t understand – and how could they anyway? It would be over their heads. In fact I had trouble understanding myself, but they would just make faces.”
While his uncle was talking, Alexander was turning a package over in his hand.
“What is that you’re holding now?”
Alexander had been anxiously awaiting that question.
“It’s something I’ve been wanting to show you for a long time… some poems; you had asked about them…”
“I don’t seem to remember; I don’t think I asked about them…”
“The thing is, Uncle, I think office work is flat and uninspiring; it doesn’t engage the soul, and the soul thirsts to give expression to its overflowing feelings and thoughts, and to share them with those closest to oneself…”
“And what of it?” his uncle asked impatiently.
“I feel I am a creative artist by vocation…”
“That is to say you want to do something else outside your work, like translation, for example. Well, that’s most commendable; you mean something literary?”
“Yes, Uncle, I wanted to ask you whether there’s any chance you could get something of mine placed?”
“Are you sure you have some talent? Because without it you will never be anything but an artistic drudge – and what good would that be? Now, with talent, that would be a different matter. You could achieve something worthwhile and at the same time build up some capital – easily worth the hundred souls on your estate.”
“There you go again, valuing everything in terms of money.”
“Well, how would you evaluate it? The more people read your work, the more money you earn.”
“But what about fame? Now, fame, that’s the true reward of the artist…”
“Fame is tired of pampering artists. There are too many contenders. Yes, there was a time when fame, like a woman, attached itself to any of them, but now you don’t see that any more, it has pretty well disappeared, or gone into hiding – unquestionably! Yes, there is celebrity, but fame is something we virtually no longer hear of, unless it has found some other way of manifesting itself: the better a writer is, the more money he makes; anyone worse – well, I’m sorry, you don’t need me to tell you.
“Nowadays, a decent writer lives decently, doesn’t have to freeze and starve in some attic – although, of course, people no longer run after him in the street and point their fingers at him, as they would at a clown; they no longer think of a poet as some kind of divinity, but rather a human being who sees, walks, thinks, acts – sometimes foolishly – just like the rest of us: so what’s so special about that?…”
“‘Just like the rest of us’ – but how can you say that, Uncle? A poet is cast in a different mould, a higher power lies hidden within him…”
“Just as it does in others – a mathematician, a watchmaker – as well as in the likes of us factory owners. Newton, Gutenberg, Watt were also endowed with the gift of this higher power, as were Shakespeare, Dante and others. So, if I found a process by which I managed to transform our local clay into a porcelain finer even than Saxon or Sèvres, do you think there wouldn’t be some higher power at work in this?”
“You’re confusing the artist with the artisan, Uncle.”
“God forbid! Art is its own thing, and so is craft – and creativity is common to both, in the same way as its absence. Without it, the craftsman is nothing but just that, a craftsman; and not creative, and an artist without that creative spark is no poet: he’s just someone who writes things. Surely you must have learnt that at the university! Otherwise, what on earth did they teach you there?”
His uncle was already annoyed at having launched into such lengthy explanations about what he would have thought was common knowledge.
“They seem like heartfelt outpourings,” he thought. “Well show me what you have there!” he said. “Those poems.”
His uncle took the papers Alexander was holding and began to read the first page.
“Whence at times, yearning and sorrow
Envelop me in a sudden cloud
And the heart is pitted against life…
“Give me a light. Alexander!” He lit a cigar and continued:
“And a host of wishes are driven out.
Why does this troubled sleep
Suddenly descend upon my soul
Like a dark and ominous cloud
Of some strange unhappiness
And cast a sudden pall upon it?…
“You’re repeating the same thing over and over again in the first four lines – once you’ve said it, the rest is so much waffle,” Pyotr Ivanych remarked, and continued reading:
“Who can guess the reason why
This brow, so suddenly pallid
Is by cold tears bespangled…
“What sense does that make? The brow breaks out in sweat, but tears? Never heard of such a thing! And what happens to us then?
“The silence of the distant skies
Is at that instant fearsome and terrible…
“‘Fearsome’ and ‘terrible’ are one and the same thing.
“I gaze at the sky above;
The moon sails silently and shines…
“Of course, must have a moon, how can you do without it! And if you’ve put in anything about a ‘dream’ or a ‘maiden’, I give up on you.
“And one fancies that in her
An age-old fateful secret is buried.
“Not bad! Give me another light… my cigar has gone out. Now, where on earth – oh yes!
“In the heavens, the fickle stars are hiding
But tremble and shimmer
As if in tacit agreement to keep
A conspiratorial silence.
And throughout the world disaster threatens,
A grim harbinger of the evil to come,
And a deceptive peacefulness lulls us into
A sense of false security.
It’s a sorrow that has no name…”
Pyotr Ivanych opened his mouth wide and yawned, and then continued:
“She passes and vanishes without trace,
Like a wind that sweeps the steppe
And wipes away the footprints left by the beasts in the sand.
“Now this business of beasts is entirely out of place! But what’s this line you’ve drawn here? Oh, I see, first it was about sorrow, and now it’s about joy…”
And he be
gan to hurry through it in a barely audible mumble:
“But, it happens that at times another demon takes possession of us,
And a powerful wave of delight forces its way into my soul,
And my breast sweetly thrills in response… etc.”
As he finished reading, he remarked, “Neither bad nor good, although others have got off to an even worse start – so it’s worth the effort; keep writing, and apply yourself, if that’s what you want, and perhaps some talent will emerge – then that would be another matter.”
Alexander was crestfallen. This was not at all the response he had expected, although it was of some comfort to him that he found his uncle to be a cold character, almost totally lacking in soul.
“Here’s a translation from Schiller,”* he said.
“That’s enough – I see it – so you know some foreign languages?”
“I know French, German and a little English.”
“Congratulations, you should have told me long before now: now we can really make something of you. A while ago, you insisted on telling me all that stuff about political economy, philosophy, archaeology and I don’t know what else, but not a word about the most important thing – misplaced modesty! Now I can find you literary employment in a trice.”
“Will you really, Uncle? That would really be nice of you, may I hug you?”
“Wait until I find it.”
“Don’t you want to show some of my work to whomever I’m going to work for, so as to give him an idea?”
“There’s no need; if the need should arise, you can do that yourself, but maybe it won’t be necessary. Now, give me your projects and your writings!”
“You want me to give them to you? Why certainly, Uncle,” said Alexander, who was flattered by his uncle’s request. “Wouldn’t it be a good idea for me to make a table of contents with all the articles in chronological order?”
“No, there’s no need… and thanks for the gift. Yevsei! Take these papers to Vasily!”
“But why Vasily? Don’t you want them in your study?”
“He asked me for some sheets of paper to paste something on.”
“But, Uncle?…” Horrified, he snatched the pile of papers back.
“But you gave them to me; what difference does it make to you what use I make of your gift?”
“You’re absolutely ruthless, you spare no one!” Alexander groaned despairingly, and clutched the papers to his chest with both hands.
“Alexander, listen to me,” said his uncle, tearing the papers from his grasp. “Some time in the future this will spare your blushes, and you’ll thank me for it.”
Alexander let go of the papers.
“Here, take them away, Yevsei!” said Pyotr Ivanych. “See, now your room is nice and tidy, no useless knick-knacks lying round. Now it depends on you whether you want to fill it with litter or with things of practical use. Let’s go to the factory and take a walk, clear our heads, breathe some fresh air and watch people at work.”
In the morning, Pyotr Ivanych took his nephew to the department, and while he himself was talking to his friend, the department head, Alexander was acquainting himself with this new world. His head was still full of his projects, and he was racking his brains about which major national problem would be assigned to him to resolve, and meanwhile standing and looking around.
“Exactly the kind of factory my uncle would own!” he finally decided. The foreman would take a piece of something, throw it into a machine, turn a handle a couple of times, and before you knew it, out would pop a cone, an oval or a semicircle; then he would hand it to another worker who would dry it over a flame; the next one would gild it, and yet a fourth worker would decorate it, and it would become a cup, a vase or a saucer. Over there, an applicant would come in from outside and, stooping deferentially with an ingratiating smile on his face, would proffer a sheet of paper. The foreman would take it, barely graze it with his pen, hand it off to someone else – who, in turn, would toss it onto a heap of thousands of other sheets of paper. It would never get lost and, stamped as it was with a number and a date, it would pass intact through twenty pairs of hands, begetting countless progeny and reproducing itself. Yet another worker would take it and slide it into a cabinet, glance at some kind of book or some other document and mutter a few magic words to the next worker, who would start scratching away with a pen. After he was done, he would hand over the mother with her new offspring to the next in line, who would scratch away in his turn with a pen, giving birth to further progeny. Farther down the line, someone else would embellish it and hand it on. And so the paper travelled ever onwards, never to disappear. Its creators might die, but it goes on and on for ever. Finally, the dust of ages would settle on it, but even then people would still come to disturb it and consult it. And day after day, hour after hour, today and tomorrow, the bureaucratic mill grinds on without a hitch, uninterrupted, never resting, as if people don’t exist – nothing but wheels and springs…
“But where is the mind that quickens and drives this paper mill?” Alexander was wondering. “Is it in books, in the papers themselves or in the heads of these people?”
And where else did you see faces like these? You never seem to meet them in the street, nor do they ever emerge into the light of day. It’s here, it seems, that they are born, raised and grafted onto their surroundings, and it’s here that they die.
Aduyev took a long look at the head of department: a veritable Jupiter the Thunderer; he had only to open his mouth, and out would spring Mercury with a copper plaque on his chest; he had only to hold out a piece of paper, and a dozen hands would be stretching out to grasp it.
“Ivan Ivanych!” he said.
Ivan Ivanych hopped up from his seat and was standing before Jupiter in a flash.
Alexander felt intimidated, but without knowing why.
“Give me the snuffbox!” With fawning eagerness, Ivan Ivanych held open the box for him with both hands.
“Now, try him out!” said the department head, pointing at Aduyev.
“So that’s who is going to test me!” thought Aduyev, looking at Ivan Ivanych’s yellow face and worn and shiny elbows. “Can this really be someone who deals with matters of national importance?”
“Do you have a good hand?” Ivan Ivanych asked him.
“Hand?”
“Yes, handwriting. Here, be good enough to copy this document!”
Alexander was surprised at being asked to perform this task, but did as he was told. Frowning, Ivan Ivanych examined his work.
“Not very good, sir,” he said to the department head, who took a look at the copy.
“Yes, you’re right; he’s not capable of producing a fair copy. So let’s put him to writing out leave slips, then when he’s got used to that, we could assign him to completing forms, and maybe he will work out; he’s a university graduate.”
Before long Aduyev himself became one of those cogs in the machine. He did nothing but write, write and write, to the point that eventually he found himself wondering what else people did with their mornings, and whenever he thought of his projects, he couldn’t help blushing.
“Uncle,” he thought, “you were right about one thing, inexorably right. Can it be that you were right about everything else? Could I have been wrong about those cherished, lofty ideas of mine, my eager faith in love, in friendship, in people and even in myself? Then what is life about?” He bent over the paper on which he was writing, and scratched away harder with his pen, his eyelashes glittering with tears.
“Well, fortune is really smiling on you,” said Pyotr Ivanych to his nephew. “When I started out, I worked for a whole year without pay, but here you are already starting out at above minimum salary – 750 roubles, altogether a thousand with the bonus. A splendid start! The department head is full of praise for you, although he does say that your mind tends to wander, an
d you forget commas, and leave out the table of contents. So please, apply yourself, and above all concentrate on what’s in front of you, and don’t let your thoughts carry you up and away.”
His uncle pointed upwards. From that time on, he became more affectionate towards his nephew.
“What a great fellow my head clerk is, Uncle,” said Alexander one day.
“What makes you say that?”
“We’ve got to know each other. He’s such a lofty soul, such a great sense of honour, and a noble cast of mind! And his deputy too, a mind of his own and an iron will…”
“Have you really got to know them so well?”
“Yes, indeed!”
“Hasn’t the head clerk been inviting you home on Thursdays?”
“Oh yes, every Thursday. It seems that he’s taken a particular liking to me.”
“And has his deputy been borrowing money from you?”
“Yes, Uncle, a mere nothing. I just gave him what I had on me, twenty-five roubles, although he had asked for fifty more.”
“Well, so you’ve started lending money!” His uncle was annoyed. “I’m partly to blame, because I failed to warn you. I just didn’t imagine that you were as gullible as that, and that after knowing someone for only two weeks, you would start lending money. Well, it can’t be helped, I’ll go halves with you, and give you twelve roubles fifty.”
“But why, Uncle? He’ll pay it back.”
“Some hopes! I know him. Because of him I was out 100 roubles when I worked there. He scrounges from everyone. Next time he asks you, just tell him that I want my money back, and he’ll desist. And stop going to see the head clerk!”
“But why, Uncle?”
“He’s a hustler. He’ll get you to sit down at the card table with a couple of other card sharks, they’ll gang up on you, and you’ll lose your shirt!”
“A hustler!” Alexander exclaimed in astonishment. “Surely not? He always seems to be speaking straight from the heart.”
“Just tell him casually in the course of conversation that I’ve taken all your money to keep it safe, and then you’ll see how keen he is on pouring out his heart and whether he’ll ever invite you again on Thursdays.”
The Same Old Story Page 8