The Death of Vazir-Mukhtar

by Yury Tynyanov

  He preferred the austere desert of the old theater, where the stage was the scaffold, the boxes were the judges, the stalls were the mob, and the theater machinery the guillotine.

  The edgy atmosphere of theater gossip was his school of diplomacy; skirmishes with the police were his wars; actresses’ embraces and backstage fondling were lovers’ prison visits.

  Where was Katenin, where was Shakhovskoy, his enemy Yakubovich?

  Where was Pushkin, dutifully witty, Pushkin, who in the front row used to bring to the theater the rough spirit of the Parisian streets?

  That evening, Pushkin approached him without ceremony and extended his hand.

  “Glad to see you,” he shouted through Boieldieu. “I envy you. You ride all over Persia as we cavort all over the journals.”

  His sideburns could be classed as Jewish. There was some new independence of manner about him.

  “And are you as bored as I am?” asked Griboedov.

  He was undecided. His Woe from Wit had been put aside, unpublished, unstaged, buried, and he was now writing another play. There was something equivocal about being the author of a single comic play. He used to write for the theater; now he wanted to be a poet. One had to be careful with Pushkin. He intrigued Griboedov like a creature of a different breed.

  “Vyazemsky now calls Abbas Mirza ‘Abbé Mirza,’” said Pushkin. “I envy you. Let’s change places.”

  If only they could!

  Both noticed that they were surrounded.

  The mob was watching them. Sideburns no longer spread down faces toward chins, as they had done last time he’d been here. Instead, they descended in a straight line under the collar, trimmed evenly at an angle. Everyone boasted tight trousers, and those worn by the dandies were ridiculously clingy. Artificial bouquets were attached higher up on the ladies’ shoulders, right on the shoulder itself. Shoulders and arms were barer, dresses shorter. Behind the fans, their eyes slid over both men; the men’s sideburns moved when they spoke.

  The ladies had grown astonishingly brazen. They would come up, take a point-blank look, and then be off, giggling.

  It looked like the two of them were giving a free show before the ballet had even begun. Pushkin glanced at his Breguet watch. Evidently, he was well used to the ladies.

  “As always, the show will start later because of His Majesty,” he said. “I dislike this custom; it smacks of waiting in the chancellery and of Emperor Alexander Pavlovich’s rituals … This is how the theater explains the wait.”

  “His Majesty is honorable, full of vigor,” he continued glumly, his eyes moving over faces and shoulders. “He is also ever so forthright and could be just about to reprieve the exiles any day now. I seem to have made my peace with him,” he said, and gave Griboedov a searching glance, “but I don’t like being kept waiting.”

  “And has he made peace with you?” smiled Griboedov.

  Pushkin shrugged his shoulders and then said:

  “Out of envy of you, I am starting to write the history of the wars in the Caucasus, and I have written to Ermolov. Too afraid to approach you.”

  Bulgarin walked straight toward them, leading Lenochka by her elbow. Pushkin shook hands with Griboedov and said very quickly:

  “We’ll meet again. Glad to see you. There are so few of us, and some are far away.”

  Under cover of the musical bravura, he intended to escape. But having left Lenochka and Griboedov to their own devices, Bulgarin dashed toward Pushkin, fussing happily, took him by the arm in front of everybody, and led him sedately into the corner. Never pausing in his chatter, he pulled a sheet of paper out of his pocket and offered it to Pushkin.

  Griboedov kissed Lenochka’s hand ardently, and she blushed. Bulgarin, who abandoned Pushkin as quickly as he had previously abandoned Lenochka, spoke breathlessly and deftly got rid of some small fry. He considered Griboedov his property and was annoyed that their seats were not together.

  The ushers put the lights out, and the ballet began.

  Griboedov felt a particular lightness all over his body; his muscles tensed. He grew lighter than usual, hardly conscious of his own weight. He reclined in his seat, only his glasses pointing ahead, and looked around. The bald and polished pates, the pinkish white shoulders disturbed him.

  Yes, he felt young again; he wanted to giggle.

  The semidark void, stirring and resonating with little coughs, was his youth. He was rediscovering his true self: the anxiety that emanated from his body was natural here, everybody felt excited, everybody’s eyes were searching for somebody else, and everybody was restless. The ladies made one last tilt of the head before an invisible mirror, the men picked pieces of fluff off their tailcoats.

  He was the master of them all, towering above them.

  The negotiations with Abbas, the obsequiousness in front of Paskevich, today’s ceremony at the palace—it had all been a preparation, a precondition for his owning this crowd.

  Handel’s God Save the King3 was performed. The crowd hesitated and got up on its feet submissively.

  He looked proudly in the direction of the emperor’s box.

  Which of them had more power?

  Today he had realized Nicholas’s equivocal existence. The emperor was an incomplete man. His icy look was extraordinary. The soldierly fabric of his uniform smelled of ladies’ powder, the breeches were of a sickly sweet color. Pushkin had addressed the emperor in his poem “Stances.” Nicholas had such a hold over his imagination because Pushkin was a man of a different breed.

  Griboedov turned in his seat and squinted at the emperor’s box. He would outwit him.

  A storm of applause—the audience demanded an encore of the anthem, the Russian national anthem, composed by a German for an English king.

  No one knew that mischief was sitting in the second row by the aisle, dressed in a prim black tailcoat. He peered ahead. Straight in front of him was the magnificent bald head of a dignitary, as naked as a newborn babe.

  Hairless heads terrified him. There was something helpless and shameless about bald human heads. He couldn’t bear to behold baldies and snub noses.

  He recalled how one such baldie had once applauded a bad actress very loudly, and how, sitting behind him, he had felt so impatient about it all that he had reached out and clapped him calmly on his bald patch. He had been young and insolent then. The policeman was lost for words, and he had received a bizarre reprimand.

  “What kind of applause is that, gentlemen, clapping on bald pates?!”

  He had managed to get away with it back then. He glanced at tonight’s bald patch and smiled.

  All of a sudden, the curtain rose and the man with the bald patch shouted:

  “Bravo!”

  Then, with the same happy smile, Griboedov calmly stretched out his narrow hand and lightly slapped the bald head.

  And sat back.

  A pair of human eyes, elderly, indignant, and blue, bulged at him. They saw a frozen gaze, fixed on the stage, the famous pair of spectacles and the highly held, celebrated head.

  The man was choking with rage. He recoiled, nonplussed.

  He shifted a bit in his seat and once again glanced at Griboedov apprehensively and suspiciously. Then he stroked his head and glanced in the direction of the boxes.

  Griboedov realized that in the uncertain dimness, the man thought he had dreamt it.

  He had lost the habit of theatergoing and was intoxicated by it, like a man who had not had a drink for ages and now got drunk on a single glass.

  The ballet was called Acis et Galatée.

  Acis dashed about the stage, leaping from one corner to another with his hands pressed to his heart. This, incidentally, also helped him in his leaps. The music flung him wherever it wished. He walked on his points, extended, froze, and then again he was swept all over the stage. Finally, he twirled and sank down on one knee. The little feather on his little hat fluttered; he breathed heavily and smiled. Powder flaked from his nose. Hearing the applause, he got
up, made a low bow, and again fell on one knee.

  Katya Teleshova emerged from the wings with tiny steps, wearing Galatea’s tights and with little wings on her back; she swam to Acis and then flew back, drumming with her feet along the line drawn on the stage. Turning her head from one side to the other, she tripped in sharp staccato to the other end of the stage. She was used to the clapping, and as soon as she heard it, she curtsied readily, like a circus horse.

  Acis quickly stood up from his kneeling position.

  But Griboedov was not interested in Acis.

  Katya Teleshova, whom he knew like his own hands or chest, was curtsying on stage.

  She had brownish-pink, rather shortish legs and arms that were confident in their helplessness; the foam of her tutu was beating against her thighs.

  He knew that she was dancing for him, and when the applause came, he tilted his head slightly, involuntarily imitating her. He knew that she hadn’t danced like this when he was away.

  He raised the opera glasses to his spectacles, then took them off and pressed the glasses right into the sockets of his eyes—to bring her closer to him.

  And so he saw her face. It was simple, almost peasantlike, the pretty face of a milkmaid. The low, white neckline flooded his eyes, like fresh, warm milk. He remembered her scent. One mustn’t smile and dance like this in public. Katya must be mad.

  Acis irritated him. He watched furiously how he supported her, so clumsily. His dancing was pretty bad, and he looked like a flying fool, particularly when he performed battements. He had silly white thighs; the very color of his tights was silly, indolent, insolent. His average height Griboedov found something of an insult, indicative of Katya’s poor taste.

  He gave a soft whistle and kept saying:

  “All right, all right, tap away for now.”

  Her partner’s leaps provided Katya with resting time.

  “This is impossible, impossible!” Griboedov kept saying softly, plaintively.

  And when everything stirred around him, when they started to clap their hands, he turned around and, without joining in, looked curiously at the stalls.

  Acis came out from the wings, leading Katya by the hand and bowing.

  And who on earth was asking for him?

  After the ballet had ended, the lights did not go up and the theater immediately began to rock and cough. It was springtime, and the snivels would cease only for the duration of the performance.

  Next was an interlude, a tableau of Apollo and the nine Muses. He bit his nails angrily. He couldn’t go backstage right now. And at this point, the stage machinery took pity on him.

  The device that was lowering the platform holding Apollo and the nine Muses stalled in midair. It stopped halfway, revealing the white legs of Apollo and nine pairs of pink female legs. So there they were, stuck on high in all their glory, sitting meekly on their movable platform.

  A frightened female shriek, then laughter, and somebody got on their feet.

  Total turmoil followed.

  Griboedov knew that the stuck platform meant the sacking of the machinery operator; he would be kicked out: the emperor was sensitive to these incidents and could not abide the unexpected. Today the stage machine was out of order, and the Muses were stuck in midair; tomorrow something else might get stuck, and the whole world would be in a state of chaos.

  Griboedov laughed into his handkerchief, left the auditorium, and went backstage.

  Either because order had already been restored or because there was commotion in the auditorium, the wings were deserted. Except for a figure resembling a knight with a fireman’s hatchet and two military men who were waiting for somebody.

  Katya’s door was open. He entered the room, smiling.

  Candles were lit. She was standing by an open wardrobe filled with costumes and seemed to be expecting him.

  “Let’s go to your place,” he said in a flat voice, adding, “sunshine” or some such word, which did not come out right. He saw how she winced.

  Suddenly the corridor erupted: with laughter, coughing, rasping French dialogue, the bass voice of a thespian—the intermission had begun.

  Katya took his head with both hands, kissed him quickly on the forehead and pushed him toward the door.

  He found himself suddenly out in the corridor, ejected like a little boy. There, he turned back into the prim tailcoat, perambulating slowly, ogled and whispered about.

  On the stage, the corps de ballet was performing a cotillion. It was a gala show. The pairs stood still on the spot, their faces turned upward, like horses champing at the bit.

  They were arranged crisscross, and on the four points of the cross, the pairs danced in a circular movement.

  They rotated around an immobile but diminishing cross, the pairs flung off faster and faster, curtsying with the exaggerated politesse of the dance, and the cross melted away. This was the latest fashionable figure, curiously named the boa.

  The orchestra slowed down, the boa curtsied, dispersed, and went off stage.

  Griboedov was infuriated. Katya would be tied up until the end of the show in the Russian dance. He was irked and feeling increasingly ridiculous. Strictly speaking, his whole situation was ludicrous: to have his pleasure put on hold for so long.

  A couple of poles were being set up on stage, with a rope tied tight between them. A little Italian busied himself at it fussily and gave it a good feel. This was the second number—the tightrope walker, Ciarini.

  The grave Italian, who was holding up the end of his evening, was making his blood boil.

  He turned and, trying not to look around, began to make his way to the exit. Spotting Faddei, he bolted toward the stairs and ran into Lenochka.

  Then, like a boy, like a guardsman, he took her hands in his and led her away. Lenochka affected surprise, and her black eyes looked like two plums. She was no fool and surrendered herself to chance, while not having a clue what was afoot, not a solitary clue. Still astonished, she allowed a fur coat to be thrown over her shoulders, and only in the carriage told Griboedov, looking at him with the same innocent plums:

  “Vous êtes fou. Das ist unmöglich.”4

  This was möglich all right. Faddei was an unselfish friend; he would never show that he knew. It was a kind of Oriental hospitality.

  “Lenchen,” said Griboedov and leaned toward her, “you had a headache, you felt dizzy, so I took you home.”

  Out on the road, the mud was brittle and icy. The wheels cut through it swiftly and evenly as in the days of his youth.

  They entered the house stealthily, and now it was Lenochka who was in charge. In the long corridor, she pressed her finger to her lips to prevent her old aunt, tante, from hearing them. In Faddei’s household, she acted as the mother-in-law. Lenchen opened the door to the study and peeked inside. Griboedov went in, and Lenochka sank onto the sofa. Her plums were glistening. She said:

  “Das ist unmöglich.”

  Their lovemaking was angry, repetitive, mechanistic, until levity flared his nostrils and he burst out laughing.

  There was supreme power and supreme order on earth.

  That power belonged to him.

  With a blunt iron, he was entering the rich earth, cutting through the Caucasus, ploughing Transcaucasia, driving a wedge deep into Persia.

  What the hell! Here he was, conquering her, the earth, slowly and stubbornly, entering into every detail.

  Until the moment came when he ceased to care.

  His panting breath was the highwayman Stenka Razin’s,5 heard all over the world.

  He was making the best of what was left, plundering the country, committing his final robberies, and each raid was becoming briefer, deeper.

  Anger was thrashing the world.

  And then came complete equilibrium—the infant Asia was breathing next to him. Easy laughter played on his lips.

  The green curtains at Faddei’s were beautiful.

  Then he saw the funny side of it all: he had behaved like a boy, couldn�
�t wait, had run off and made mischief. He felt sorry for Faddei.

  And he dug the infant Asia lightly in the ribs.

  5

  When Faddei came back from the theater, Lenochka was having tea with Griboedov in the dining room, her head bandaged.

  Faddei was delighted.

  He was unconcerned about Lenochka’s migraine, which was so bad that she had to be brought home from the theater. When Griboedov was around, Faddei paid little attention to anybody else. And in spite of the headache, Lenochka was making a good job of pouring the tea. Faddei seemed to respect her all the more for Griboedov’s attention to her.

  This for Faddei was true happiness.

  He had experienced everything in his life: a penurious Polish youth; the war, which had terrified him; treason; the brush with death; destitution; the detention cell; his friendship with the police; and being in the service of the Third Department.6

  But he was as slippery as an eel and had managed to save his skin because his view of life was simple, physical.

  Faddei was a moralist, and a man interested in the banalities of life.

  He was neither a man of letters nor a man of office. He was an official of literary affairs, good at spotting trends and sniffing the air.

  If this Caliban had not been endowed with an inborn craving for eating, sleeping, quarreling, and telling salacious, unsavory jokes, he might have occupied a major post. But these days, even policemen were expected to behave with decorum, and nothing that he did was anything of the kind. He had a natural taste for scandal, typical of impoverished and squalid Polish landowners—a taste for the tavern, a beer, a half-eaten fish, and shenanigans with chambermaids.

  Griboedov was his hero, the greatest thing that had ever happened to him, the teardrop in his pint of beer, his sentimental friendship.

  He ran errands for him, borrowed money for him, tried to get his comedy published, although it couldn’t get past the censors, and for hours on end boasted about him brazenly to his drinking chums from the journals, as if he were his private property.

  Griboedov hated the vanity of the literary scum. In his heart of hearts, he hated literature itself. It was in the wrong hands, everything was going haywire, nothing was being done as it should.