Treasury of Russian Short Stories
1900 – 1966
Treasury of Russian Short Stories
1900 – 1966
Translated
by
Selig O. Wassner
Copyright © 1968 by Selig O. Wassner
All rights reserved
For information address:
Frederick Fell, Inc.
386 Park Avenue South
New York, N.Y. 10016
Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 68-10800
Published simultaneously in Canada by
George J. McLeod, Limited, Toronto 2B, Ontario
Manufactured in the United States of America
To My Wife, Annabel, My Critic And Editor
PERSONAL ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Gosizdatelstvo Khudozhestvennoy Literatury, MOSCOW
Yunost’ Magazine, MOSCOW
Molodaya Gvardya, MOSCOW
Am-Rus Literary Agency, NEW YORK
Contents
Introduction
Nippie BY LEONID ANDREYEV—1900
The Saltmine BY MAXIM GORKY—1900
The Two Kinds of Truth BY PYOTR ZAMOYSKI—1927
Me’n My Big Mouth BY SEMYON PODYACHEV—1916
Two Deaths BY ALEXANDER SERAFIMOVITCH—1926
The Safety Inspector BY VASSILY GROSSMAN—1940
Once Upon a Morning BY VITALI VASSILEVSKI—1940
The Birthday BY CONSTANTIN TRENYEV—1943
Happiness Is Not Far Away BY YEVGENYA LEVAKOVSKAYA—1957
The “Cleclecks” BY ANNA VALTSEVA—1951
Tsat Mozambique BY TATYANA TAESS—1958
The Bridge BY NICOLAI CHUKOVSKI—1964
My First Feature Story BY MARINA ROMANINA—1963
The Backstage Cry BY YELENA USPENSKAYA—1965
What’s in a Glass? BY V. KAVERIN—1963
Yonder-Wonder BY E. CHEREPAKHOVA—1965
A Case of Geophobia BY GEORGI GULIA—1966
One Too Many BY YURI KACHAYEV—1961
The Golden Month BY NAZIR SAFAROV—1965
Little Whale, the Painter of Reality BY VASSILY AKSENOV—1964
Fifty-Fifty BY VICTOR SLAVKIN—1965
Klara: A Painter’s Tale BY YURI BONDARYEV—1965
The House Guest BY ANATOLI RUBINOV—1966
Treasury of Russian Short Stories
1900 – 1966
Introduction
If life has a purpose, and if the purpose of literature is to mirror life, then the purpose of my anthology is to project to the English-speaking reader an historical mosaic of the Soviet Union without either ideological glorifications or the anathema of evil. It is neither the paradise of Communist utopia nor the specter of an Orwellian dictatorship that Soviet literature reflects through the nonpolitical fiction of this anthology; it is the progress of the Russian individual thought. And since this fiction, untarnished by propaganda and hitherto untranslated, has not come from sources alien to the Soviet system but from Soviet anthologies, magazines, and books, the voice of protest that rings through its pages strikes with the force of a prayer. It is the universally constant quest for personal self-assertion. Thus the works included in this collection are meant to synthesize (in the words of the Russian song “Vast are you my native land”) a comprehensive, honest-to-life kaleidoscopic view of the kolkhoz and the city, from the Ukraine to the Far East, and from Georgia to the Arctic Sea.
“Cum tacent clamant” was the Roman motto for passive resistance. The most forceful way for the Russian to express his resistance to the politically repugnant features of the Soviet system was to eschew political problems in literature as if they did not exist. In THE SAFETY INSPECTOR, Vassili Grossman does nothing else but draw a factual picture of a skillful, middle-aged engineer facing an unexpected promotion. There is no overt criticism of the Stalinist regime, but the reader cannot help but wonder whether the frostbites and the bug bites, the pangs of hunger and the sweat of swelter are all an inseparable adjunct of an honest life; and the twist of the story does nothing to dispel the suspicion that Communist society has not learned how to reward conscientious work.
However, the Russian is not a melancholy brute who has resignedly accepted his role as a pawn of the collective according to the precepts of Lenin. Nor is he, for that matter, an intransigent rebel ready to raise a flaming banner against his own state or in the cause of world communism. He is, above all, a nonconformist. He is an individual whose personal problems are foremost in his mind, who wants to be free to solve them without the state’s interference. “I’m I,” he insists. “I want to be myself.”
I want to be myself! This silent cry of the Soviet man expresses itself with a rhythmic, multifarious consistence. It may be a bird YONDER-WONDER, one wing black the other red which, as a young woman hopes, will come aflying and add color to her life, or a prism, a piece of glass, in which the young scientist Petya Uglow expects to find the missing link he needs to construct a machine to study physiology. The voice of protest culminates in a school principal’s CASE OF GEOPHOBIA, a most modern manifestation of an ancient malady afflicting not only the Soviet man but any man who wants to find himself. And the Soviet man wants to find himself and be whole.
An anthology of Soviet literature would not be complete without a juxtaposition of the preceding pre-revolutionary period. I have introduced, therefore, as part of my selection, as a part of a chronological whole, four stories on life in pre-Communist Russia. The first, NIPPIE by Leonid Andreyev, symbolizes Russia before 1905, the midnight of despair. This was hopelessness as black and deep as a fall night and as wild as an abandoned dog’s howl.
Russia was a country of despair. It was the despair and the hunger, the physical hunger, of the Russian muzhik when he was working for a few kopecks (THE SALTMINE by Maxim Gorki) or when he desperately tried to borrow flour to feed his starving family (THE TWO KINDS OF TRUTH by P. Zamoyski) that served as a mind-opener and the precursor of the great upheaval—the Revolution.
The theme of the Revolution is most eloquently captured by A. Serafimovitch’s TWO DEATHS, a touching story of a Russian girl caught in the purgatory of fire and destruction. Then came peace, and the rumbles of the undying class struggle reverberate in ONCE UPON A MORNING by V. Vassilevski. They were cruel, the ex-landlords of old Russia, but look at them now! Is the Soviet man asked to have compassion?
What follows is the Second World War, a topic which has otherwise saturated Soviet literature for the last twenty-six years. In line with my original thought of presenting an historical picture of the Soviet Union as a whole, I chose only two stories relating to the war: THE BIRTHDAY (Panteleyev) and HAPPINESS IS NOT FAR AWAY (Levakovskaya), both treating hostilities from a personal rather than from a national viewpoint. The people, the men and the women, feel and participate in the war in spite of themselves. Levakovskaya, for one, draws a sympathetic portrait of the enemy who has mercilessly razed the Russian country. It is now and here that individual freedom has emerged from its loud silence into a whisper of why.
Why? As in ME’N MY BIG MOUTH (Podyachev), when the question as to “Why are we fighting this war?” was raised by a Russian peasant, so here the same question is voiced once again—but by a Soviet man through the German soldier. The “cultural thaw” has not set in yet; the voice is no louder than a whisper. But bolder ideas are to come, and personal problems of the average Russian, of the average citizen of the Soviet Union, will find an airing.
Thus, the theme dominating the final part of my selection, the theme made possible by that very whisper of protest, is devoted to casting the Soviet man against the mirror of his state. They are cardin
ally different problems, the personal problems besetting the triangle in ONE TOO MANY by Kachayev and the poignantly sarcastic husband (or suitor) in GOLDEN MONTH by Safarov; still, these are individual problems which have nothing to do with national conflicts except that they would not have found their raison d’etre were it not for the political nature of the Soviet Union. And the political nature of the Soviet Union is changing—because of those problems and because they are mirrored in literature.
The Russia of 1966, the Soviet Union of today, is sixty-six years in time and, perhaps, light years in space removed from the Russia of Leonid Andreyev. Ergo, the NIPPIE of 1900, to use a cliché, is a far cry from THE HOUSE GUEST of 1966.
—Selig O. Wassner
1900
Nippie
by Leonid Andreyev
Leonid Nicolaievitch Andreyev, 1871-1919, impressionist and symbolist. His most recognized works, Red Laugh (1904) and In The Fog (1902) deal with abnormal, and extreme situations: God, evil, fate, death, solitude, and sex. Also wrote plays: Lazarus (1906), Judas Iscariot (1901). Andreyev never reconciled himself with communism.
She didn’t belong to anybody; she didn’t even have a name. Nobody knew where she was spending the long, chilly winters or what she ate. She couldn’t get close to the warm cottages for fear of angry watchdogs. Kids would chase her off the streets with stones or sticks, and adults would frighten her with shrill whistles. After darting from side to side, bumping against fences or people’s legs, she’d manage to tear away and take cover in a large orchard, in a hideout she knew. There she’d lick her bruises and cherish her ill-will in solitude.
Only once in her life had she been commiserated—by a drunkard who was returning home from a tavern. He was full of love for everybody, full of pity for the whole world. He was mumbling to himself about good people and about all his hopes for them. He also felt sorry for the dirty, homely dog as he happened to cast on her the aimless glance of a drunk.
“Lassie,” he called by the name common to all dogs. “Lassie, come khere, don’t be afraid.”
“Lassie” had loved to get closer. She had wagged her tail, watching the man slap himself on his knee. She hadn’t been able to make up her mind, though.
“Come khere, silly. Khonest to God, I won’t khurt you,” the man repeated convincingly.
While the dog had hesitated, wagging her tail fiercely and inching ahead with tiny little steps, the mood of the drunk had changed. He remembered all the ills brought on him by good people; his anguish grew into resentment, and by the time “Lassie” had lain on her back in front of him, he gave her a sweeping kick with the nose of his heavy boot.
That kick had shattered all of “Lassie’s” trust in people. At the mere sight of them she’d either run away with her tail between her legs or snarl. Then one winter she settled under the terrace of a datcha which had no watchman and began guarding it for free. At nights she’d run out to the road and bark until she became hoarse. After returning to her lair she’d growl, but there would be pride in her growling.
The winter nights drew on and on; the dark windows of the empty datcha stared grimly at the paled, inert orchard behind it. Sometimes a bluish fire seemed to be flaring up inside the house, but that would only be the reflection of a falling star or the sharp-horned moon sending out a timid ray.
2
Spring came; the quiet datcha began buzzing with loud voices; wheels squeaked, people clattered bulky things. Vacationers had come from the city, a whole merry crowd of them: adults, adolescents, and children. They became intoxicated with the warm, fresh air. They yelled, they sang, they laughed.
A young girl in a brown school uniform ran out into the orchard to play. She looked up at the clear sky, at the reddish boughs of the cherry trees, then quickly lay down on the grass, facing the pleasant sun. After a while, as unexpectedly, she jumped up, clasped herself, and kissing the spring air with her innocently fresh lips, she solemnly enunciated, “How happy things are!”
She said it and whirled around. At that moment, the dog which had quietly sneaked up to her sank its teeth fiercely into the hem of her inflated skirt. The dog tugged, and in a second vanished again in the thicket of gooseberries and currants.
“You, bad dog,” the girl shouted, running away. For quite some time she was babbling excitedly: “Mama, kids, don’t go into the orchard. There’s a dog, so-o-o big, and b-a-a-d!”
At night the dog stalked back to the sleeping datcha, to her lair under the terrace. From the open windows drifted soft sounds of the people’s breathing; they seemed helpless, not scary at all. She watched over them jealously, sleeping with one eye open. With every noise she stretched her head, emitting two motionless, phosphorescent lights from her eyes. There were many alarming sounds in a spring night: minute, invisible things rustled in the grass; last year’s twig crackled under a drowsing bird; on the highway nearby a cart clattered or the wheels of a loaded lorry whizzed. From far away the aromatic odor of fresh pitch spread luringly through the still air into the dawn-brightening distance.
The vacationers were kind people. The wholesome country air, the variety of nature’s hues intensified their kindness. The sun entered them as warmth and left them in the form of laughter—as a cheerful attitude toward everything alive. They got so used to the dog’s barking at night that in the morning they would ask, “Say, where’s our Nippie?”
This new name, “Nippie,” remained with the dog. At first her dark body would appear like a shadow in the bushes and vanish the moment a hand reached out to throw her some food. Gradually, Nippie began to decrease the distance separating her from the people by one step a day. Peering into their faces, she learned their habits; half an hour before lunch she was already standing at the bushes, affectionately wagging her tail, waiting for a morsel. Yet, because of her habit toward moderation grown out of years of tramping, she ate very little. Still she improved: her long hair, which used to hang down in reddish, dry strands, covering her belly with ever-dried mud, became clean, glossy—dark as satin.
Lola, the young girl who had been the first to become acquainted with Nippie, introduced the dog into the happy circle of the vacationing people. “Nippie dear,” Lola called, her hurt forgotten, “come here, please. Nice, dear doggie—come. You want sugar? I’ll give you sugar. Come, please.”
The dog was distrustful; the girl was scared. Yet, patting herself cautiously and talking as softly as any young girl with a melodious voice and a pretty face would, Lola inched up to the dog.
“I like you, Nippie,” she cooed. “I like you very much. You have such a nice little nose, and such expressive little eyes. Don’t you believe me, Nippie dear?”
There was a wrinkle over Lola’s little nose, a cloud in her expressive eyes, and a frown on her naively charming, sun-blushed face.
For the second time in her life the dog turned over on her back and closed her eyes. She wasn’t sure whether she would be hit or petted. She was petted. A small, warm hand at first hesitantly skimmed her rough head, and having taken Nippie’s acquiescence as a token of unquestionable surrender, it freely and boldly moved over the dog’s shaggy body—jostling, petting, tickling.
“Mama, kids, look. I’m petting Nippie,” Lola spilled over with pride.
When the other fair kids came running—noisy, tinkle-voiced, fast, like droplets of escaping mercury—Nippie was dying from fear and helpless expectation. She knew that if she were hit now, she would not have the strength to sink her sharp teeth into the hand of the offender—her anger was gone. When the children began to pet her in turn, her spine was tingling with a pleasurable sensation almost as painful as the one that hitting brought.
3
Nippie blossomed in all her canine soul. She responded to her name in a precipitate dash, whether from under the terrace or from the green depth of the orchard. She belonged to people and was allowed to serve them. Wasn’t that enough for a dog’s happiness?
The newly found warmth had not fully freed her from fea
r, however. She’d still be confused at the sight of strange people, visitors. She still accepted every token of fondness as something marvelous to which she couldn’t adequately respond. She had never learned to fawn; other dogs knew how to express their feelings by standing on their hind legs, rubbing against people, or even trying to grin—Nippie didn’t.
The only trick she ever learned was to fall on her back, close her eyes, and whimper softly. But that, she realized, did not convey her grateful enthusiasm and love. Intuitively Nippie began to try to do things she had possibly seen other dogs do. She absurdly turned somersaults, clumsily jumped or twisted around herself, making her lithe body look awkward, pitifully funny.
“Mama, kids, look! Nippie’s playing,” Lola shouted. Losing her breath from laughter, the girl begged: “More, little Nippie, more. That’s the way …”
Everybody gathered around, laughing while Nippie whirled, turned, fell. Nobody saw the strange plea in the dog’s eyes—the plea for warmth. In the past people would shout and whoop to see the dog utterly scared; now they pretended affection to see her make herself ridiculous in her attempts to show love.
“Little Nippie, nice Nippie, show us your tricks,” they kept asking.
Little Nippie would oblige—whirl, turn, fall to the accompaniment of gay laughter. They would praise her in her presence, but express disappointment at her unreasonable fear of people as she would disappear the moment visitors came.
4
Autumn flared up with yellow colors; the sky wept profusely; the datchas began to vacate, closing fast like candles doused one after another by torrential gusts.
“What are we going to do with Nippie?” Lola worried. She sat with her arms around her knees, watching sadly as the sparkling drops of rain started to come down the windowpane.
“What pose is that, Lola? Whom are you trying to imitate?” her mother chided. “What can we do? We’ll have to leave her here, what else?”
Treasury of Russian Short Stories 1900-1966 Page 1