And Other Stories Of Communist Russia

by Zoshchenko,Mikhail.

  any of this. It all turned to dust in my hands. Spleen pursued me at every step.

  I was unhappy without knowing why.

  But I was eighteen years old, and so I found an explanation.

  "The world is terrible' 9 I thought. "People are base. Their actions are comic. I'm not a ram from that flock."

  Over my desk I hung a quatrain from Sophocles:

  The highest gift is never to be born,

  But if you've seen the light of day—

  The second best is a quick return

  To the native dark from which you made your way.

  Naturally, I knew that there were other ways of looking at things—happy ones, sometimes even enthusiastic. But I did not respect people who were able to dance to the coarse and vulgar music of life. Such people seemed to me on a level with savages and animals.

  Everything that I saw around me strengthened my point of view.

  Poets wrote mournful verses and took pride in their melancholy.

  My favorite philosophers also spoke of melancholy with respect. "Melancholies are possessed by a feeling of exaltation," wrote Kant. And Aristotle considered that "the melancholic frame of spirit assists profundity of thought and accompanies genius."

  But poets and philosophers were not the only ones who were throwing wood on my pallid bonfire. It may seem surprising, but in my time sadness was considered the sign of a thinking person. In my milieu, broody melancholic types were respected and even those who were quite alienated from life.*

  Briefly speaking, I came to consider that a pessimistic view of life was the only possible one for a man who was thoughtful, refined, and born into the gentry class, which was my origin.

  That means, I thought, melancholy is my normal condition, and mournfulness and a certain disdain for life are the qualities of my mind. And apparently not only of my mind. Apparently—of any mind, any consciousness, that strives to be higher than that of an animal.

  * Not long ago, paging through Bryusov's Diary, I found these lines: "Dear laroshenko. A sweet man. Strange to life . . ."

  Very sad to be that way, but that's probably the way it is. In nature, coarse fibers win out. Coarse emotions, primitive ideas are victorious. Everything that has been delicately made goes to ruin.

  So thought I, when I was eighteen. And I will not conceal from you that I still thought so even considerably later.

  But I was mistaken. And now I am happy to inform you about this terrible mistake of mine.

  At that time, this mistake almost cost me my life.

  I wanted to die because I saw no other way out.

  In the fall of 1914 the World War began, and I gave up the university and went off to the army so I could go to the front for the distinction of dying for my country, for my motherland.

  In the war, however, I almost ceased to experience melancholy. It happened from time to time. But it soon passed. And in the war I felt myself almost happy, for the first time.

  I thought: Why should this be? I arrived at the notion that it was because I had found excellent comrades here, and that was why I had ceased glooming. It was logical.

  I served in the Mingrelsky Regiment of the Caucasian Grenadiers Division. We lived in a very friendly way. Both soldiers and officers. At least; that's the way it seemed to me then.

  At the age of nineteen I was already a lieutenant.

  At the age of twenty I had five medals and was recommended for promotion to captain.

  But this didn't mean that I was a hero. It meant that for two years in a row I was in the front lines.

  I took part in many battles, was wounded, poisoned by gas. My heart went bad. Nevertheless, my happy mood was almost constant.

  At the beginning of the Revolution I returned to Petrograd.

  I had no regrets for the past. On the contrary, I wanted to see a new Russia, not like the mournful country I had known. I wanted there to be around me healthy, blossoming people, not such as myself—inclined to spleen, melancholy, and sorrow.

  I didn't go through any of the so-called "social divergences." Nevertheless, I began to experience melancholy as before.

  I tried to change towns and professions. I wanted to escape from that terrible melancholy of mine. I felt it was destroying me.

  I went to Archangel. Then, on the frozen sea to Mezen. Then, I returned to Petrograd. I went to Novgorod, to Pskov. Then, to

  Smolensk province, to the town of Krasny. Once again I returned to Petrograd . ..

  Spleen followed at my heels.

  In three years I changed towns twelve times and professions ten times.

  I was a policeman, a bookkeeper, a shoemaker, an instructor in poultry husbandry, a telephone operator for the border guard, a detective, the secretary of a court, a clerk-expediter.

  This wasn't on account of hard times, this was on account of confusion. For half a year I went to the front again in the Red Army—at Narva and Yamburg.

  But I had a bad heart from poison gas and I was obliged to think of a new profession.

  In 19211 started to write stories.

  From the time that I became a writer, my life changed very much. But spleen remained as before. Moreover, it attacked me more frequently.

  Then I had recourse to doctors. In addition to spleen, I had something wrong with my heart, something with my stomach, something with my liver.

  The doctors went at me, energetically.

  They began to treat me for three of my illnesses with pills and water. For the most part with water—inside and out.

  It was decided to drive off the spleen with a combined blow— at once from all four sides: flanks, rear, and front—by trips, sea-bathing, Charcot sprays, and the amusements so necessary to my tender years.

  I began to go to sanatorium^ twice a year—to Yalta, Kislovodsk, Sochi, and other blessed places.

  In Sochi I got to know a certain man whose melancholy was significantly greater than mine. Twice a year at the minimum he was extracted from the noose into which he had shoved his head because an unmotivated melancholy tormented him.

  With a feeling of the greatest respect, I began to converse with this man. I assumed I would see wisdom, intellect, an overabundance of knowledge, the scornful smile of genius which is forced to drag along on our transient earth.

  I saw nothing of the kind.

  This was a narrow-minded man, uneducated, without even the shadow of enlightenment. He had read no more than two books

  in his entire life. And he wasn't interested in anything except money, food, and women.

  Before me was the most commonplace man, with vulgar thoughts and vacuous desires.

  I didn't even grasp immediately that that's the way it was. At first it seemed to me that the room was smoky, or that the barometer had fallen and a storm was brewing. Because something didn't seem quite right when I was talking to him. Then I look—it's just that he's a fool. Simply a dunderhead with whom it was impossible to talk for more than three minutes.

  My philosophical system gave a shudder. I grasped the fact that it was not exclusively a matter of a high degree of consciousness. But what, then? I did not know.

  With the greatest humility I gave myself up into the hand of the doctors.

  In two years I consumed half a ton of powders and pills.

  I drank every nauseating mess.

  I allowed myself to be cut, x-rayed, and imprisoned in baths.

  But cure did not follow. And things went even so far that my friends no longer recognized me on the street. I got terribly thin. I was like a skeleton with a little skin stretched over it. I became terribly stiff. My hands trembled, and even the doctors were astonished at the yellowness of my skin. They had begun to suspect that I had hypochondria to such a degree as to render their methods useless. What I needed was hypnosis and a clinic.

  One of the doctors succeeded in hypnotizing me. He began to suggest to me, once I was hypnotized, that I languished and mourned in vain, that everything was well in the world and there was n
o reason for such grief.

  For two days I felt a considerable lift, then I became considerably worse than I had been before.

  I almost ceased to emerge from my house. Every new day found me in the dumps.

  I ceased to go to sanatoriums. Closer to the truth, I went and languished there for two or three days, and then went home again in a more fearful melancholy than when I had arrived.

  Then I turned to books. I was a young writer. Only twenty-seven years old. It was natural that I should turn to my great comrades—writers, composers ... I wanted to know if they had gone through anything similar. If they had not experienced a melancholy similar to mine. And if they had, what reasons, what

  motivations they assigned to it. And what they did to get rid of it.

  And then I began to note down everything that related to spleen. I took these notes without any special system or plan. I did, however, try to select that which was characteristic for a given man, that which turned up often in his life, that which did not seem accidental, a moment's fancy, an outburst.

  These notes engaged my imagination for several years.

  [There follows a number of melancholy quotations from Chopin, Gogol, Nekrasov, Poe, Flaubert, Saltykov-Shchedrin, De Maupassant, Bryusov, and Tolstoi.]

  I filled a whole notebook with similar notes. They struck me, even shook me. But I had deliberately not selected people whose lives had been particularly touched by a particular sorrow, misfortune or death. I chose a condition that repeated itself. I chose those people of whom many said themselves that they didn't understand where this mood came from.

  I was struck, bemused. What kind of suffering was this to which people were subject? And how to come to grips with it, by what means?

  Maybe this suffering is the result of a disharmony in the life around us, of social griefs, world problems? Maybe this is the basis for such melancholy?

  Yes, it is so. But at this point I recalled the words of Cherny-shevski: "It isn't because of world problems that people drown themselves, shoot themselves, and go out of their minds."

  These words disturbed me even more.

  I could find no solution. I did not understand.

  Could it be, after all (I thought once again), this is a scorn for the world to which great men are subjected by virtue of their higher degree of consciousness?

  No! Along with these great men whom I listed, I saw no fewer great men who experienced no such melancholy, although their consciousness was on as high a level. And sometimes it was even significantly higher.

  During an evening dedicated to Chopin, they played his second concerto for piano and orchestra.

  I sat in the last rows, exhausted, tormented.

  But the second concerto drove off my melancholy. The powerful, masculine sounds filled the hall.

  Joy, struggle, extraordinary force, and even triumph resounded in the concerto's third part.

  Where did this weak man get this immense force—this composer of genius whose sad life I knew so well by now? Where did he get such joy, such enthusiasm? Does it mean that all this was in him? Only constrained? By what?

  At this point I thought of my own stories, which made people laugh. I thought of laughter, which was in my books but not in my heart.

  I will not conceal it from you: I was frightened. Then suddenly the idea came to me that I had to find the reason—why my forces were constrained, and why I found life so unhappy; and why there are people like myself in the world, inclined to brooding and unmotivated melancholy.

  In the fall of 1926 I braced myself to go to Yalta. And I braced myself to stay there for four weeks.

  For ten days I lay in my hotel room. Then I went out for a stroll. I walked into the mountains. And sometimes I sat for hours at the seashore, rejoicing that I was better, that I was almost well.

  For a month I improved a lot. My spirit grew calm, even gay.

  In order to strengthen my health still further, I decided to continue my rest. I bought a boat ticket for Batum. From Batum I wanted to go to Moscow byxlirect train.

  I took a separate cabin. And in a marvelous mood, I left Yalta.

  The sea was calm, without a murmur. And I sat on the deck all day admiring the Crimean shore and the sea, which I loved so much and for the sake of which I usually went to Yalta.

  In the morning, still scarcely light, I was on deck again.

  A wonderful dawn broke.

  I sat in the chaise longue, relishing my excellent mood. My thoughts were the happiest, they were gay. I thought of my trip, of Moscow, of friends I would meet there. Of the fact that my melancholy was now behind me. And let it remain a riddle, as long as it bothered me no more.

  It was early morning. Thoughtfully, I gazed out at the light ripple of the water, at the patches of sunlight, at the sea gulls who sat on the water with a loathsome squawking.

  And suddenly, in a single moment, I felt bad. This wasn't simply melancholy. It was agitation, quivering, almost terror. I could scarcely get up from the chaise longue. I barely reached my cabin. And for two hours I lay on my bunk without moving. And, once again, melancholy arose, of an intensity that I had not yet experienced.

  I tried to struggle with it. I went out on deck. I started listening to people's conversations. I wanted to cast it off. But I did not succeed.

  It seemed as though I should not and could not continue the journey any farther.

  I could hardly wait for the stop at Tuapse. I went ashore with the intention of continuing on my way after a few days.

  A nervous fever shook me.

  I took a trolley to a hotel. And there I lay down.

  It was only after a week that I recovered my will and began to prepare myself for the road.

  The road diverted me. I began to feel better. The terrible melancholy disappeared.

  It was a long way, and I began to think of my unfortunate illness, which could vanish so swiftly and reappear in the same way. Why? What were the reasons?

  It was as if there weren't any reasons. Must be simply "weak nerves," an excess of "feeling." Must be. It happens all the time and sends me swinging like a pendulum.

  I started to think: Was I born that weak and emotional, or did something happen in my life that undermined my nerves, corrupted them, and turned me into an unfortunate flake of dust, driven and shaken by every wind?

  And suddenly it struck me that I could not have been bora so unhappy, so defenseless. I might have been born weak, fragile, I might have been born with one arm, one eye, without an ear. But to have been born to brood and to brood without reason—just because the world seems base! But I'm no Martian. I'm a child of my own planet. I must, like any animal, feel some joy in existence. Experience happiness, if all goes well. And struggle, if it goes badly. But to brood?! When even an insect that has only four hours to live rejoices in the sun! No, I could not have been born such a monster.

  And suddenly I understood clearly that the reason for my misfortunes must be contained in my life. No doubt—something happened, something took place that acted on me in this oppressive way.

  But what? And when did it happen? And how to find this unfortunate event? How to find this reason for my melancholy?

  Then I thought: I have to recall my life. And feverishly I began to recall. But immediately I grasped that nothing would

  come of this if I did not introduce some kind of system into my reminiscences.

  There is no need to recall everything, I thought. Only to recall the most powerful, the most striking things. It should be sufficient to recall those things which I associate with my spiritual distress. That was the only way I could solve the riddle.

  And then I began to recall the most striking pictures that had remained in my memory. And I noticed that my memory had preserved them with unusual precision. Trifles had been preserved, details, colors, even smells.

  Spiritual distress, like a magnesium flare, illuminated all that had occurred. These were candid photographs which remained in my mind.

 
With unusual agitation I began to study these photographs. I noted that they agitated me even more than the desire to find the reason for my misfortunes.

  ///. FALLEN LEAVES 1912-15

  I'M BUSY

  The yard. I'm playing football. I'm bored playing, but I still play, furtively glancing up at a second-floor window. My heart contracts from melancholy.

  Tata T. lives there. She's grown up. She's twenty-three years old. She has an old husband. He's forty. We high-school kids are always teasing him when he comes home from work, a little stooped.

  And so the window opens. Tata T. adjusts her hairdo, stretching and yawning.

  Seeing me, she smiles.

  Ah, she's very fine. She's like a young tigress from the zoo— such striking, flashing, blinding colors. I almost can't bear to look at her.

  Smiling, Tata T. says to me: "Mishenka, come on up here for a minute."

  My heart gives a happy leap, but, without lifting my eyes, I answer: "You can see, I'm busy. I'm playing football."

  "Then hold out your hat. I'll throw you something."

  I hold out my school hat. And Tata T. throws a small package into it, wrapped in ribbon. It's chocolate.

  I toss the chocolate into my pocket and I go on playing.

  At home, I eat the chocolate. And the ribbon—after touching it to my cheek for a moment, I toss it on the table.

  AN AUTHENTIC COPY

  Getting out of school, I meet the realist Serezha K. He is a tall, blond, despondent youth.

  Nervously smacking his lips, he says to me: "Yesterday, I broke off with Valka P. once and for all. And just think, she asked me to return all her letters."

  "Then you should return them," I say.

  "Naturally, I'll give her letters back," says Serezha. "But I want to keep a copy . . . What's more, I'd like to ask a favor of you. I need you to confirm these copies . . ."

  "What for?" I ask.

  "Well, just in case," says Serezha, "she might say she never loved me at all ... But if there are confirmed copies . . ."

  We approach Serezha's house. Serezha is the son of the fire-chief. Therefore, his place has a certain attraction for me.

  Serezha puts three letters on the table and the three copies he has already made.