And Other Stories Of Communist Russia

by Zoshchenko,Mikhail.

  But along with this, the author feels an extreme urgency to write his reminiscences of this man as quickly as possible, for as time passes he will step beyond our ken, and overgrown with grass will be the path along which our modest hero passed, our acquaintance, and, we might as well say it, our relative, M. P. Siniagin.

  For this last circumstance permitted the author to see his entire life, all the trifling details of his life and all its events as they unfolded in the last years. His entire personal life passed, as on a stage, before the author's eyes.

  Here now, the one with the mustaches, the one in the short suede suit, if, God forbid, he squeaks through to that future century, will be slightly surprised and will sink brooding into his moroccan armchair.

  "Lovekins," he will say, looking down his mustaches, "interest-

  ing," he will say. "the kind,'* he will say, "of a personal life they had."

  "Andreus," she will say in a chesty voice, "don't bother me," she will say, "for God's sake, I'm reading poetry ..."

  But, as a matter of fact, reader, this kind of a man with mustaches in those peaceful times of his just won't be able to imagine our life correctly at all. He will probably think that we were squatting in mud huts, that we ate sparrows, and led some unthinkable kind of wild life, full of daily catastrophes and terrors.

  True, one must say immediately, there were many who did not have the kind of personal life just mentioned—they dedicated all their powers and all their will to their ideas and to achieving their goal.

  Well, there were also those who behaved less admirably, who adapted themselves and tried to bring themselves into step with the time in order to live comfortably and to eat a bit more fully.

  And life took its normal course. They experienced love and jealousy, and the birth of children, and various great maternal emotions, and various other excellent emotions like that. And we went with our girls to the movies. And we rowed boats. And played the guitar. And ate waffles with whipped cream. And wore fashionable striped socks. And danced the fox trot to the household piano . . .

  No, so-called personal life went on in a small way, as it always goes on in any other circumstances.

  And the enthusiasts of such a life, as far as they were able, adapted and accommodated themselves.

  Every epoch, so to speak, has its own psyche. And in every epoch thus far it has been singularly easy or, more likely, singularly difficult to live.

  Take, for example, some assuredly disturbed century, let's say, the sixteenth. What we see there—well, it seems downright unthinkable. At that time, they went out and fought duels almost every day. They hurled visitors from towers. And thought nothing of it. It was all in the order of things.

  Whereas for us, with our own psyche, it is downright frightening to imagine a life like theirs. For example, some feudal son of a bitch or other of theirs, some viscount or other, or some former Graf at that time, goes strolling, for example.

  There he goes, strolling, and that means his sword is at his

  side: and, God preserve us, if someone should shoulder him a bit or cuss him out—right away, he has to fight. And it's taken for granted.

  He goes for a stroll, and on his face there isn't even a trace of misery or panic. On the contrary, he walks along, and maybe he's even smiling or whistling. Well, he'll even kiss his wife carelessly when he says good-bye.

  "Well, ma chMe" he'll say, "I'm gonna... take a little stroll."

  And she doesn't even flinch.

  "Okay," she'll say. "Don't be late for dinner."

  In our time, now, a woman would burst into tears and clasp his feet, begging him not to go out on the street, or would at least beg him to secure for her a life less calamitous. But then it was done simply and submissively. He took his good sword, felt the edge to see if it had been blunted by a previous skirmish, and went out to wander around until dinnertime, with almost every chance of a duel or encounter.

  The author must say that if he had lived in that epoch, it would have taken quite a bit to smoke him out of the house. And he would have locked himself up all his life right down to our own time.

  Yes, from our point of view, the life was unattractive. But they didn't even notice this then, and just lived, spitting away. And they even went calling on those who had towers.

  So that, in this sense, man is quite magnificently constructed. Whatever life offers, he finds it charming. And those who can't, undoubtedly go off to the side so as not to be trampled underfoot. In this sense, life has very strict rules, and it isn't everyone who can lie across the path and have differences of opinion.

  So now we come to the main point of our story, from which, actually, this book began. The author excuses himself if he has chattered superfluously, avoiding the issue. Surely these were all necessary moments and important problems, which demanded immediate resolution.

  And as for the psyche, it is quite believable. It is fully confirmed by history.

  So that now, with calm conscience, we pass on to our reminiscences of a man who lived at the beginning of the twentieth century.

  In the course of his narration, the author will be forced to totich

  on many depressing matters, sad experiences, deprivations and needs.

  But the author begs you not to draw hasty conclusions from this.

  There are some crybabies who would be capable of ascribing all adversities merely to the Revolution, which took place at that time.

  It's very strange, you know, but the matter here concerns not only the Revolution. It is true that the Revolution removed this man from his position. Yet one might say that a life like this would be possible and probable at all times. The author suspects that such reminiscences could actually be written about any other man who lived in another epoch.

  The author begs you to note this circumstance.

  You see, the author once had a roommate. A former teacher of drawing. He was a man cut off. He dragged out a miserable and unseemly existence. And this teacher always liked to say: "It wasn't," he'd say, "the Revolution that undermined me. Even if there hadn't been a revolution, I would have been cut off all the same; either I would have been caught stealing or I would have been shot in the war, or I would have been taken prisoner and given the business. I," he would say, "have known all along what I'm in for and what life has in store for me."

  And these were golden words.

  The author is not making a melodrama of all this. No, the author believes in the triumphant course of life; he is sufficiently convinced to be able to live with a song on his lips. Surely there are many people who think of this, and rack their brains trying to come to terms with man in this sense.

  Of course, this is still, so to speak, the prologue to our history. The account still hasn't been settled. They say that people first began to wear stockings only two hundred years ago.

  So that everything is in its place. A good life swims into our ken.

  The Birth of Our Hero. His Youth. His Philosophical Bent. His Love for Beauty. Of Tender Souls. Of the Hermitage and a Remarkable Scythian Vase.

  Michael Polikarpovich Siniagin was born in the year 1888 on the Pankovo estate in the province of Smolensk.

  His mother was a noblewoman and his father a distinguished citizen.

  But inasmuch as the author was ten years younger than M. P. Siniagin, he can say nothing of the tangle of his early years, until the year 1916.

  But inasmuch as he was always—even at the age of forty— called Michel, it is apparent that he had a tender childhood, a good deal of attention, love, and affection. They called him Michel, and truly they could not have called him anything else. All other, coarse nicknames were little suited to his nature, to his delicate physique, and to his beautiful movements, so full of grace, dignity, and a sense of rhythm.

  It seems that he finished the Gymnasium, and it seems that he studied another two or three years somewhere or other. His education was, in any case, most outstanding.

  In the year 1916, the author, fro
m the height of his eighteen years, being in the same city as he, involuntarily observed his life and was, so to speak, an eyewitness to many important and significant changes and events.

  M. P. Siniagin was not at the front for the reason that he had suffered a hernia. And at the end of the European war, he loitered about the city in his civilian's mackintosh, with a flower in his buttonhole and a fine ivory-handled stick in his hand.

  He walked along the streets, always rather doleful and languid, completely solitary, muttering to himself verses that he composed in abundance, possessing as he did a worthy talent, a taste, and a delicate sensibility for all that is beautiful and fine.

  Pictures of the doleful and monotonous landscape around Pskov delighted him—birches, brooks, and the various little bugs that hovered over the flower beds.

  He walked out of the city and, taking off his hat, followed the play of the birds and mosquitoes with a sensitive and understanding smile.

  Or, tilting back his head, he gazed at the fat clouds as they scudded across the sky, and, then and there, composed appropriate rhythms and verses about them.

  In those years there was still quite a number of highly educated and intelligent people with sensitive spiritual make-up and tender love for beauty and the depictive arts.

  One must say directly that in our country there has always

  been an exceptional stratum of intelligentsia, to which all Europe and even the whole world has listened attentively.

  And, truly, these were very sensitive appraisers of art and the ballet, and the authors of many remarkable works, and the in-spirers of many excellent deeds and of great accumulations of knowledge.

  These were not, from the point of view of our understanding, specialists.

  These were, simply, intellectual, exalted people. Many of them had tender spirits. And there were even some who wept simply at the sight of a superfluous flower in the flower bed or that of a little sparrow hopping on the dung heap.

  The matter is of the past, but, of course, one must say, that in all this there was even a certain, a kind, as it were, of abnormality. And such a splendid blossoming undoubtedly could take place only at the expense of something else.

  The author does not in any great measure possess the art of dialectic and is not acquainted with the various scientific theories and tendencies, so that he does not take it upon himself in this sense to seek out the reasons and the consequences. But one can, of course, reasoning roughly, dig something up.

  If, let us suppose, there are three sons in a certain family. And if, let us suppose, one son is sent to school, fed with bread and butter and cocoa, bathed daily, and has his hair combed with brilliantine, but the other brothers are given nothing and all their requirements are curtailed, then the first son may quite easily make enormous strides both in his education and in his spiritual qualities. He may even begin to produce verses, and find himself moved by little sparrows, and talk on various exalted subjects.

  Not long ago, now, the author was in the Hermitage. He observed the Scythian section. And there, there is a certain remarkable, solidly built vase. And they say that this vase of which I am speaking, if they do not lie, is more than two thousand years old. It's a very stylish gold vase. Of quite exceptionally delicate Scythian workmanship. It isn't known exactly for what the Scythians fashioned it. Maybe to drink milk out of, or to put flowers of the field in it so the Scythian king could smell them. It isn't known; the scholars have not clarified this point. But they found this vase in a burial mound.

  And then suddenly on this vase I saw some pictures—Scythian peasants are sitting around. One average peasant is sitting there,

  another is picking his teeth with his fingers, a third is fixing himself a ball bat.

  The author looked a little more closely— holy fathers! Well, they were exactly our prerevolutionary peasants. Well, let us say, of the year 1913. Even their clothes were the same. The same broad shirts, belts. Long, tangled beards.

  The author was a bit beside himself even. What the devil! He looks in the catalogue. The vase is two thousand years old. But if you look at the pictures, it seems like a thousand and a half less. That means, either this is an outright swindle on the part of the scientific workers of the Hermitage, or such clothes and bats were handed down like that right up to our Revolution.

  The author, of course, does not mean, by all these discussions, to reflect contemptuously on the former intelligentsia of which we were speaking. No, it was simply intended to explain here how and why and on whom the burden of conscience lies.

  That stratum, one must acknowledge, was quite a good one, and there is nothing to be said against it.

  As concerns M. P. Siniagin, the author naturally has no wish to compare him with those of whom we spoke. Nevertheless, this was also a man of a sufficiently intellectual and exalted level. He understood a good deal, loved beautiful trinkets, and always went into raptures over an artistic expression. He greatly loved such beautiful and excellent poets and prose writers as Fet, Blok, Nad-son, and Esenin.

  And in his own work, which was not distinguished by exceptional originality, he was under the powerful influence of these famous poets. And especially, of course, under the influence of that exceptional poet-genius of those years, A. A. Blok.

  The Mother and Aunt of M. P. Siniagin. Their Past. The Pur-chase of an Estate. Life at Pskov. The Storm Clouds Gather. The Character and Inclinations of the Aunt of M. A. Ar — va. A Meeting with L. N. Tolstoi. The Poet's Verses. His Spiritual Make-up. Enthusiasm.

  Michel Siniagin lived with his mama, Anna Arkadevna Siniagina, and with her sister, Maria Arkadevna, concerning whom there will be a special passage farther on, a special description and characterization on the grounds that this worthy

  lady, the widow of General Ar—v, plays a by no means unimportant part in our narrative.

  And so, in the year 1917 the three of them were living together in Pskov as chance visitors, who happened to be in this small but famous town for reasons quite independent of their own wills.

  At the time of the war, they arrived there in order to settle down with their sister and aunt, Maria Arkadevna, who by chance had acquired a small estate not far from Pskov.

  On this estate, both the elderly ladies, after lives fairly stormy and gaily led, wished to pass the time in complete peace and quiet, close to nature.

  This wickedly acquired property was thus appropriately called "The Lull."

  And Michel, that sufficiently mournful young man, inclined to boundless melancholy and somewhat wearied by his poetic work and by the bustle of metropolitan life with its restaurants and chorus girls and jawing noise, also desired to live peacefully in silence for a certain time in order to collect his forces and once again plunge into all that is difficult.

  Everything, however, turned* out differently from what had been planned.

  "The Lull" had been purchased only about two months before the Revolution, so that the family did not even manage to collect themselves there with their trunks and belongings. And these trunks, feather mattresses, divans, and beds were stored for the time being in the town apartment of acquaintances in Pskov. As things turned out, Michel himself and his aged mama and auntie were to live in this very apartment for several years more.

  Distinguished by their free thought and having a certain, as it were, tendency toward, and love for, revolutions, neither of the elderly ladies lost their heads very much on the occasion of the revolutionary overturn and the seizure of estates from the landowners. Maria Arkadevna, the younger sister, however, having invested nearly sixty thousands of capital in this matter, nevertheless sighed once again, dropped a curtsy, and said the devil knew what the hell was going on, inasmuch as it was impossible to drive to the estate she had purchased with her own blood fhoney.

  Anna Arkadevna, Michel's mother, was a fairly inconspicuous

  lady. She had not distinguished herself especially with anything in her life, excepting the birth of the poet.

&nbs
p; She was a fairly quiet, elderly lady, who quarreled little and loved to sit by the samovar and drink coffee with cream.

  As concerns Maria Arkadevna, however, she was a lady of quite a different stamp.

  The author had not the pleasure of seeing her in her youth; it was well known, however, that she was an extremely endearing and sympathetic girl, full of life, fire, and temperament.

  But in the years of which we speak, she was already an elderly lady who had lost her figure; she was more featureless than beautiful, but very active and energetic.

  In this sense, they would speak of her former profession. In her youth she had been a ballerina and had worked in the corps de ballet of the Marinsky Theatre.

  Hers had been even a certain degree of prominence, inasmuch as she had attracted the former Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich. True, he soon left her, after having presented her with a certain special moleskin palatine, beads, and something or other else. But her career had been launched.

  Both these elderly ladies were to play a fairly conspicuous part in the further life of Michel Siniagin, so let the reader not take it too closely to heart nor lose his temper because the author lingers on in his description of such, as it were, decrepit and faded heroines.

  The poetic atmosphere that existed in the house, thanks to Michel, evoked something from our ladies too. And Maria Arkadevna was fond of saying that she would soon apply herself to writing her memoirs.

  Her stormy life and her acquaintance with many famous people would make this worth while. She personally, as it were, had twice seen L. N. Tolstoi, Nadson, Koni, Pereverzev, and other noted people, and she wished to communicate to the world her impressions of them.

  And so, before the Revolution had begun, this family arrived in Pskov and remained stuck there for three years. M. P. Siniagin said, every day, that he had not the slightest intention in the world of hanging around there, and that at the first opportunity he would depart for Moscow or Leningrad. The following events and transformations in his life, however, significantly postponed this departure.