The Death of Vazir-Mukhtar

by Yury Tynyanov

  Little by little, everything in the suitcase settled down.

  And the chaise moved on, also little by little.

  The open road! Ah, the hills and dales, here and there, and the jingling little bells!

  And the rivers, meandering, so to speak, in their bright beds!

  And the skies with their clouds, all so natural!

  Nothing of the sort: he’d seen and done it all dozens of times before.

  There was nothing special about the road. Just heat, dust, and flies. Gadflies bit the horses incessantly, and the horses put up with it.

  Passengers traveling in an ordinary four-seater cab with one suitcase and a trunk were allowed four horses. State councillors and the other ranks of the fourth class were eligible for eight.

  He now held the rank of state councillor; he traveled with Sashka; but his actual post ranked him higher—minister plenipotentiary.

  The travel regulations charter took no account of such posts. It was a peacock post. It equaled the rank of senator at least, and senators, who mostly belonged to the second class, were entitled to precisely fifteen horses, no fewer, no more.

  The station master solved the problem in his own way, and after some bargaining issued Griboedov with ten horses, the entitlement of rear admirals, bishops, and archimandrites attending the Synod.

  It was quite unnecessary and inconvenient—ten horses where five were required at most, so he took them initially simply out of impishness, and then left them, one by one, at various stations along the way.

  He soon grew tired of the station masters bowing before him, so he left his luggage to enjoy the honor and went on in a chaise, just Sashka and himself, incognito.

  A chaise was like an apartment: wines and provisions in the north-facing room, clothes and books in the south-facing one. Everything a man needed, except less empty space and no need to move about. Only the horses moved; the man stayed still.

  He was pleasantly surprised by the simple routine of his journey on the humdrum dusty road.

  How many conversations, and smiles, so many different varieties of his own mirthless face.

  He spoke foreign words to foreign people to his heart’s content.

  And to his heart’s content he savored the mad game with the authors he read en route, like playing a piano whose keyboard has been covered with a cloth.

  He lived not in himself, but through his ever-changing travel companions, and all of them either were wits, or aspired to be; all of them people of action in the military, diplomatic, or literary sphere.

  What kind of people were they?

  They lived according to the clothes they wore. And acted accordingly; wherever their uniforms took them, there they went.

  “Alexander! Are you asleep again? Can’t you see it’s time for break? Didn’t you even notice that the horses stopped? Bring the wine and veal. Let’s sit under that oak tree. Coachman, will you join us, dear chap? Where are you from?”

  At the last moment of their farewell, Lenochka had begged him:

  “Alexandre, come see us in Karlovo.”

  Karlovo was Faddei’s Livonian estate, which he had kept by for his old age.

  That was when she had given him the lock of her hair and sniffled.

  Apparently in earnest.

  The girl from the Caucasus disappeared from his field of vision.

  The oak tree by the road looked like one of the knotty rostral columns of the Petersburg Exchange.

  On the eve of his departure, he had been at the top of that column, had climbed it with no clear purpose. The view was magnificent—multicolored roofs, the gold of the church domes, the full Neva, the ships, the masts.

  Someday travelers will climb that column—when the pillar will have outlived the capital—and they’ll ask: can anyone tell us where the palace used to be, where the cathedrals were? They’ll argue about it.

  Rodofinikin, Pickled Date, had not paid him his month’s salary in advance, had obviously decided instead to shortchange him for now.

  What a cheapskate bastard!

  His Asian boss, His Excellency, officialo-nincompoopolo, son of a bitch!

  And if he reminded him about it, they’d speed him all the faster on his way to Asia.

  Another station.

  “What are you reading, fellows?”

  “The latest declaration of war.”

  “How is it the latest? What are you talking about? The declaration was made in April. We have been fighting for almost three months.”

  “Have we? These Persians are at war with us again. Recruitment is in full swing in our village.”

  “What Persians? We are at war with the Turks.”

  “Turks? Here it says with the Persians.”

  “You’re reading in the wrong place. This is about the causes of the war.”

  “The causes or the war itself—same thing. What’s the difference? They’ve recruited men from Krivtsovka, from our village.”

  Katya Teleshova was a genuinely sweet woman.

  When he went to see her to say farewell, he found her in riding dress.

  “I’m coming with you, Alexander.”

  “What are you talking about, Katenka, what has come over you, my dear?”

  Her chest heaved.

  It turned out that she had become rather confused and was now a patriot, like all actresses, so she had bought herself a riding habit, ready to exchange the Bolshoi Theater for the theater of war.

  “God almighty, who are you going to fight, Katenka? And in any case, I am not going to war.”

  An old soldier was in the sentry box by the road, fast asleep.

  “What are you doing here, old man?”

  “I’m on guard.”

  “What are you guarding?”

  “The road.”

  “And who put you here to guard the road?”

  “Emperor Paul’s orders.”

  “Paul?”

  “I’ve been guarding it these thirty years. I went in town to ask. They said arrangements had been made, but the paper concerning the rations for me had been lost. So I go on guarding.”

  “They left you on guard?”

  “What can you do? I’m telling you, the order’s been lost. I submitted a petition five years ago, but there has been no answer. I do get my rations, though.”

  At the next stop, the station master told him to wait—there were no horses. Griboedov walked about the courtyard. He saw the coachman pouring oats into the horses’ trough.

  “You are free now, aren’t you?”

  “Free at the moment, but the station master told me to be on the lookout for a general.”

  Griboedov gave him a small silver coin for a drink.

  To the station master:

  “So you are waiting for a general, dear chap? Come on now, would you like to bring me some horses?”

  The station master hurried to fulfill the order.

  To get things done, you had to start with the coachman, not the station master.

  He had been foolish in Petersburg to take Woe straight to the minister for censorship. He had been carried away. And the minister was this and that, extremely polite, but nothing had come of it. Now his Woe was with Faddei.

  After all, he was only human; he longed to have a home. He was afraid of emptiness—that was all. He tried not to think about Persia yet. Enough for one day. Everything in the world was so simple, and his best friend might well be Sashka.

  A man doesn’t need much, does he?

  The Voronezh steppes.

  Low down, in the valley, an ox-calf was mooing. Two men were transporting a cartload of hay, slowly, lazily. The oxen were just about coming up to the upper road.

  They were being bitten by horseflies and were reluctant to move. One of the men, the stout one, was dragging them by the horns; the other one yelled furiously from the cart and thrashed the beasts with a stick. The one on the right came to a stubborn halt, as if he had been standing on that spot for the last hundred years. The other
followed suit. Then the man jumped off the cart, lay down in the ditch, and lit up a cigarette.

  The sun was scorching. A young woman sang in the valley down below.

  “I am taking off the mask. A new light has shone for me.”1

  “And your orders?” asked Sashka.

  “We are turning in here, my friend. Coachman, we’re staying here for the night.”

  2

  Natalias and Marias

  All those unknown girls.

  ▶ From a folk song

  Unbridled horses were grazing lazily on the grass, steam rising from them. The coachman kept feeling their flanks. When they had cooled down, he asked the young woman for some water, and the horses drank steadily out of the pail, snorting quietly and sighing through their blue nostrils.

  The young woman’s broad hips swayed in time with the smooth rocking of the pails she carried. She had a flat, dull-colored, swarthy face and large, bare feet.

  Apart from an old man, she was the only one in the house.

  She hadn’t heard from her husband, a Cossack, for more than a year. She made and stored the hay, the old man earned some occasional money as a carter, apart from which some passing travelers lodged with her.

  She seemed to work effortlessly and serenely; she made any job look easy; she carried the pails of water in the same way.

  Griboedov ordered Sashka to bring the food and wine into the house.

  They sat down to dinner. Sashka and the coachman ate in the courtyard, talking to the old man. The young woman waited on Griboedov. Through the open window, he heard the coachman’s champing and Sashka’s slurping and that unhurried and uninteresting chatter that takes place between two commoners who don’t know one another.

  “What is your name, my dear girl?”

  The young woman, still swaying her hips, covered the table with a crude tablecloth. She was scarcely slim, quite broad-shouldered, but very light-footed. Her face was also broad, and pale, as if she’d been ill but had since recovered.

  She smiled:

  “Marya.”

  “And now you’re going back there, is that right?”

  Outside, on the other side of the window, the old man was chatting to Sashka.

  “We have an assignment,” said Sashka, sipping his tea.

  “Aha,” said the old man, satisfied.

  “Sit down, Masha, and let’s have dinner,” said Griboedov.

  “We have already eaten,” said Marya, and she sat down at the side, on the edge of the chair, looking out of the window.

  The coachman outside belched to show the old man that he had eaten enough, and kept repeating:

  “Phew, dear Lord.”

  “Do you live here alone?” asked Sashka.

  “On our own,” responded the old man impassively.

  Suddenly Marya yawned widely and sweetly with her large mouth. Griboedov immediately drank to her health and inquired:

  “Is it possible to have a swim round here? Or is the river too far?”

  “The stream isn’t far off, but it’s shallow. Fit only for children to splash about. I can heat the bathhouse for you.”

  “Could you please, Masha?” asked Griboedov.

  Masha, not particularly pleased, got back on her feet and went out into the courtyard.

  It was hot in the low bathhouse, which was set like a grassy coffin in the yard. The earth floor smelled of centuries-old smoke.

  The coachman slept in the chaise. Sashka curled up underneath his coarse cover and sighed deeply, sound asleep in the kingdom of Far-Far-Away.

  Masha sat on the porch.

  “Move over, Masha, would you?” said Griboedov.

  And he put his arms around her.

  3

  At six in the morning, the coachman rapped on the window with his whip. Griboedov woke up and waved an angry bare arm at him. The coachman left.

  Griboedov had slept naked. It was too hot, and to protect himself from the midges, he had pulled a coarse sheet over himself. The old man was bustling in the corridor, by the entrance. Then the usual ritual began under the window: the coachman tinkered with the girth and yelled at the trace horse; it jerked its muzzle, making the little bells jingle, while the old man kept grumbling:

  “Tighten the collar, will you? It’ll chafe in front.”

  “No it won’t,” said the coachman contemptuously, through clenched teeth.

  The old man probed one of the trace horses.

  “Look here, your horse has strangles behind its ears.”

  “So it does,” said the coachman angrily, but at that point, the little bells rang, the horse jerked its head, and the coachman yelled: “Enough of that, you beast!”

  Then he said, placatingly:

  “I’ll take it to the horse doctor at the next station …”

  “Why go to a doctor?” said the old man. “You need a farrier. He’ll lance them.”

  Griboedov was tired of listening to all this. He stuck his head out of the window.

  The horses were already harnessed to the chaise. The old man, in a sheepskin coat and white long underwear, stood near the horses and the coachman.

  Sashka did not stir beneath his covers.

  Griboedov flung the window wide open.

  “Now listen to me, my dear fellow,” he said to the coachman, “get the luggage down and you can go on without us.”

  “So you’re not coming?”

  The coachman was nettled.

  “No, I am not. Here’s something for yourself, go on, get yourself a drink.”

  The dumbfounded coachman began to untie the trunk and the suitcase and shoved them roughly right up to Sashka’s nose, which could just be seen sticking out from under the covers.

  4

  On a hot day, Judah, son of Jacob, was traveling on an ass, and on the way, he spotted a woman with an exposed thigh. He wanted to gratify himself, and he entered her and knew her, and the fact that the woman turned out to be his daughter-in-law, Tamar, was an incidental and ironic part of the biblical story. Such, no doubt, was the custom of all travelers, and even apostles were permitted to take a maid with them from one settlement to the next, although the Evangelist neglects to mention the purpose that the maids would serve.

  How nice it is to feel the bluish grass crushed under your bare feet instead of the pale dust of the road; to straighten up, have a good stretch; to understand suddenly that the most delicious thing in the world is brown bread and milk, that the most essential thing is the tiniest corner of the earth—though it’s not your own, it will do for now—and that the most compelling thing of all is a woman, young and taciturn.

  The common folk spoke slowly and showed no interest in other people’s affairs. The old man was incurious and saw nothing strange in the fact that Griboedov had stopped at his place. There are all sorts of people on this earth; you never know what they need. In any case, this man in spectacles would pay for his bed and board.

  He began to settle down, arranged his books, but did not read them. Nor did he write any letters. He avoided thinking about the Caucasus or Persia. The carriages that drove noisily along the upper road were an irritation. They flew by in a hurry. In the evenings, he went up there and took long walks.

  It was easy to imagine that he was in love with the girl from the Caucasus, that he had plans, that he needed to bring them to life, and that he was unhappy. All that was true, but beside the point. He couldn’t be constantly unhappy and constantly in love. Sometimes at a friend’s funeral, the sun shines, the mourner feels good, and with sudden horror, he realizes that he is happy.

  The strange thing was that he did feel happy.

  And Masha, whose eyes were always asking for gifts, was a real woman.

  Towels, the shawl that he’d bought as a present for someone in the Caucasus, had already been stashed in her little wrought-iron trunk, and there was also a bracelet hidden deep in there, right in the corner.

  Masha could not bring herself to wear it.

  5

/>   “Why do you live outside the village, old man?” asked Griboedov.

  “I had a grievance,” the old man said quietly. “I settled here around thirty years ago. Masha was not even born.”

  “What kind of grievance?”

  “What’s the point of remembering it now?” said the old man, and left.

  Thirty years ago, he had had a grievance; the old man was young then; he moved out of the village, bought a little house, sired Masha, lost his wife, and then Masha married a Cossack, went back to the village. He lived for a while as a lonely widower, the Cossack went off to war, and Masha returned to him for a summer.

  What was there to ask about? The grass asks no questions; nor does the ox. The Cossacks gave them a wide birth, though some stayed for a while.

  Griboedov got into his routine in the space of four days.

  At the crack of dawn, Sashka would go with the old man to scythe the grass; the old man’s hay patch was not far off, and Sashka spent the afternoons mostly asleep.

  A strange haymaking that was. One morning, Griboedov got up early and went to see it. The old man strode along the strip with his scythe, swinging it like a pendulum. He swung the handle, glistening as if varnished with age and human hands, and he stopped and swept again, attacking the grass ahead of him. Soon his shirt would be soaked all over in sweat.

  All the while, Sashka lay with his feet up, reading his book. It was rumpled and soiled, and also glistening, almost as if lacquered, from being pocket-worn. But he did not read; he sang. It was a songbook.

  Sashka sang:

  Quieten down, fierce wind, for a moment,

  Let me weep to my poor heart’s content.

  The old man paid him no attention whatsoever.