by Teffi
Sitting in the room with her were her children, twelve-year-old Vanya, ten-year-old Liza and eight-year-old Varenka, as well as a visitor—Verochka, the young lady from next door.
“Well, then,” said Alexandra Petrovna, continuing their conversation, “to order fish or not to order?”
And she added, “‘Toe bee ore note toe bee?’ as Hamlet once said.”
She pronounced this sentence—one that the whole world is by now heartily sick of—in her own peculiar way, using only long vowel sounds.
Verochka from next door smirked and corrected her. “It’s ‘too bee’, not ‘toe bee’.”
“Oh, really?” said Dublikatova nonchalantly. Turning to her son, she said, “You’re studying Latin, Vanya. Is it ‘toe bee’ or ‘too bee’?”
Vanya looked away and answered glumly, “I don’t know. We haven’t yet got that far.”
But Verochka from next door was not discouraged.
“Oh, Alexandra Pavlovna, how funny you are! That’s not Latin, it’s English! It’s Hamlet!”
But the widow wasn’t going to surrender either.
“Well, what if it is Hamlet? I have an excellent knowledge of Hamlet. He was a Danish prince. But I can’t see why you think that a highly educated man like Hamlet, from the upper crust of society, couldn’t dash off a sentence in Latin. And why would he speak English when he’s from Denmark? Most likely, he spoke Danish.”
Just then Verochka remembered that her daddy had borrowed a thresher from Dublikatova and fell silent. But Dublikatova took the conversation to heart, and, as a dutiful mother, began mulling it over.
“We do need to hire a tutor. Liza needs to resit German, Vanya needs to resit German, French and Latin, and Varenka needs to prepare for gymnasium. We need to take on a tutor with languages anyway, so he may as well teach them English, too. Otherwise they’ll think the same as that idiot Verochka—that Hamlet cock-a-doodle-dooed in some barnyard language. I’ll write to Madame Chervinaya in Moscow—she’ll be able to find us something suitable.”
No sooner said than done.
Madame Chervinaya wrote back, and, two weeks later, sitting before the widow Dublikatova was a neatly combed and shaved gentleman with a chin that he kept thrusting forward and bulging eyes.
“Indeed,” the gentleman was saying, looking sternly at Dublikatova, who kept tucking her fingers into her palms to hide her nails, which were stained by the juice of the black-currants she had been sorting through all morning to make jam. “Indeed,” he was saying, “languages are indispensable. I’ll endeavour to teach the children French and German.”
“And English,” added the widow. “I must insist on English.”
The gentleman pressed his lips together, thought for a moment, then said sternly, “Three languages at once. That is not pedagogical, methodological or—most importantly—didactical. On this last point I particularly insist, while nevertheless emphasizing the first two.”
After saying this, he pursed his lips and thrust his head forward, furrowing his brow and rolling his pale eyes.
But this did not trouble the widow.
“Yes, indeed, I understand all that perfectly well,” she replied, although she had not understood any of it. “All the same, I absolutely must insist. To be quite frank, when I invited you here, it was, first and foremost, English that I had in mind. Or do you not have a command of English?”
To this the gentleman replied, “What a peculiar question.”
And he even turned red. Evidently he was offended.
Thus the question of English was resolved, and established as a priority.
On the whole Dublikatova liked the new tutor. He wore clean clothes. He spoke little and very sternly. He was serious about the children’s lessons. And he was perfectly well mannered, even if he was in the habit of wiping his mouth with a quick, circular movement of his index finger. But even the way he did that seemed perfectly well mannered.
Her mind now at ease as regards the tutor, the widow Dublikatova busied herself with another matter—the preparations necessary for the imminent visit of her sister Lizaveta. Lizaveta was the most important person in the whole family—or so she had managed to establish herself. As a young woman she had married a rich merchant. In order to pre-empt any slight to her noble heritage, she had immediately begun putting on airs and graces. She instructed her nephews and nieces to call her “Tante Lili” and sprinkled her conversation with French mots. She took umbrage at everything and was affronted by everyone. And on becoming a rich, childless widow, she was once and for all elevated to the position of head of the entire family. For she had three sisters and two brothers, who between them had produced a further eleven potential heirs. And if she should form a particularly strong attachment to one of them, then she might neglect the other ten.
It was precisely in the hope of such neglect on her part that her brothers and sisters alike enticed her to their homes with the most ardent of familial hospitality.
So it was that having persuaded “Tante Lili” to come and stay for the summer, Dublikatova was bustling about, trying to ensure that everything met her sister’s refined standards. She put up fresh wallpaper in two rooms so that her sister could choose the room she preferred. She arranged for the planting of roses of the most delicate shades, and for milk to be given to the suckling pigs. She had the piano tuned and she got rid of the mice. What more could a loving sister do?
Finally Lili arrived.
She was thin, sallow, draped in diaphanous scarves of muted hues and smelt sickeningly of cloves.
Everything left her simply aghast. Of the little boy she said in a loud whisper, like an actor in an old-fashioned theatre, “Mercy! What a monster!”
Of the girls she exclaimed, “Mercy! Why have you dressed them like that?”
And to Dublikatova herself, she said, “Really! Aren’t you letting yourself go, rather?”
And even though she kissed everyone, she did so with visible repulsion.
Breakfast left her supremely dissatisfied.
“What is this ghastly thing?” she asked.
“Jacket potato,” replied Dublikatova, turning red.
“How can you serve such stuff?” said Tante Lili indignantly, helping herself to a second portion.
All in all, despite her indignation, she ate like a trencherman.
To the tutor she paid absolutely no attention at all.
So the days went by. Dublikatova was bending over backwards in her attempts to please her rich sister, who for her part did nothing but grumble and act bored.
“What about your spiritual needs?” she would lament towards the end of the day. “You vegetate—like beasts. You have no sense of self sacrifice, no hunger for great deeds.”
“But what do you want from us, Lili dear,” asked an anguished Dublikatova. “The children are still little. Just wait and see, they’ll grow up and begin to, erm… sacrifice.”
“Oh, you don’t understand a thing!” Lily lamented. “You live like a vegetable—you live the life of an animal.”
Then one morning Lili set off on a dreamy stroll. Passing the tutor’s wing, she heard a loud male voice, saying in a pleasant tone and with great firmness, “Happiness is life’s pudding, not its bread.”
The voice said this, then dreamily said it again.
Lili was rooted to the spot.
“How intriguing! He’s sitting there and philosophizing.”
After a brief pause the voice rang out again.
“Tears are the pearls of the soul,” it pronounced firmly. “Don’t cast them before swine.”
Then it added, “That’s enough!”
At breakfast Lili kept a close eye on the tutor and realized that he was no ordinary man.
“He was born to be a leader,” she said that evening to her surprised sister. Surprised as she was, Dublikatova felt no need to ask any questions. Thank heavens there was at least one thing her sister was happy with!
The next morning Lili went back to t
he wing of the house where the tutor lived. This time she came from the opposite direction and was able to see the tutor. He was sitting in an armchair beside the window. Looking up at the clouds, he said, “Measure twice, cut once.”
Lili was a little surprised by the mismatch between his words and his posture, but she continued to observe him.
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. As you would have them do unto you. As you would have them do unto you,” repeated this remarkable person, who then got to his feet and moved away from the window.
At breakfast the children were astonished. Tante Lili’s cheeks were as pink as blotting paper and she had a rose pinned to her waist. She asked the tutor, “Ernest Ivanovich, do you like veal?”
To which he replied with some reserve, “Yes, I like eating meat.”
And he wiped his mouth with his index finger.
The next morning she went once again to the wing and heard that “the glory of beauty withers and dies, but the glory of wisdom lives forever”.
She couldn’t see the tutor, but she could hear his voice coming closer to the window, then moving away again. Evidently he was pacing around the room in thought.
Then his voice rang out again, even more intensely: “The strong suffer in silence.”
Lili’s heart clenched tight.
He was strong, and he was suffering in silence. Was he being paid enough for his lessons? Sasha was so vulgar that she could easily be short-changing him. What a man! What wisdom! What strength! What a pity their paths had crossed so late in her life…
And she began standing outside the wing every morning and listening. Sometimes there wasn’t a sound; at other times she seemed to hear children’s voices. Perhaps the children were going to his room to study and were distracting him from his meditations?
Once she heard the stern admonishment: “Those who adorn their body deserve contempt. Those who adorn their soul are worthy of admiration.”
After this she stopped wearing her brooch.
One day, at lunch, the little girl Varenka was chattering away about how she would like to trip some Seryozha or other so that he would fall over and smash his nose. On hearing this, Lili grew red and agitated and said, “Varya! You must do unto others as you would have them do unto you!”
And in a trembling voice, she asked, “Isn’t that right, Ernest Ivanovich?”
The tutor stared at her. He wiped his mouth with his finger and said, with a shrug of the shoulders, “As an ideal, it’s excellent. But if, for example, you’re playing cards, you can hardly wish for your opponent to win.”
“Oh, I would never dream of playing cards!” exclaimed Lili. “Cards are dreadful.”
He shrugged his shoulders again.
On another occasion, when she saw Dublikatova straightening a bow on the little girl’s dress, Lili exclaimed, “Sasha, you shouldn’t be encouraging her to adorn her body! Isn’t that right, Ernest Ivanovich?”
Ernest Ivanovich was taken aback.
“What do you mean? I think it’s nice. Yes, I think it’s very nice indeed, as I must emphasize.”
It was Lili’s turn to be taken aback. She even seemed scared.
“You are saying that? You?”
“Well, yes, I am. Why are you so surprised? I attach a great deal of importance to one’s appearance.”
But then she realized he was being ironic, and she laughed tenderly.
An overflowing heart finds relief through words. One fine evening, her cheeks aflame, Lili said to her sister, “What a wonderful person Ernest Ivanovich is! Sometimes in the morning, when I happen to be passing the wing, I hear him talking to himself. Everything he says is so deep and meaningful.”
“When does he… I don’t know what you’re… Ah, yes, I see… It’s when he’s dictating—dictating translation to the children. I hired him with languages.”
“Don’t be so ridiculous!” said Lili angrily. “It’s nothing to do with translation! Why do you always have to cheapen everything?”
And she left the room.
She left the room, but only after exciting considerable alarm in Dublikatova’s heart. Dublikatova was now repeating to herself the well-worn phrase: “The silly woman’s gone and fallen in love.”
But what if things progressed further? What if that goose Ernest grasped that Lili was a woman with money? What if he ended up marrying her?
Dublikatova thought and thought. She thought until her heart was pounding and she had to take valerian. She didn’t sleep a wink.
In the morning she made up her mind.
“I’ll sack him—I’ll sack him along with his languages. But how?”
Here she got lucky. Lili caught a cold and took to her bed. Seeing that she was going to be in bed for at least another three days, Dublikatova summoned Ernest Ivanovich. She said she was sorry but that she was going to have to let him go—she was going away with the children the day after next and, well, there was nothing that could be done about it.
“What a pity,” said Ernest Ivanovich. “The children have been making great strides, and particularly in English, as I must emphasize.”
Dublikatova hemmed and hawed, but in the end she said a resolute farewell to the tutor.
Tante Lili was dumbfounded.
“But you must understand,” said Dublikatova, trying to placate her, “you must understand that this had nothing to do with me. He’d received news from home, he said that his wife or some other member of his family had fallen ill…”
“His wife!” exclaimed Tante Lili. “Men like that don’t have wives. He… he’s… too great a man… Too tall, I mean.”
She didn’t survive the blow. That is, she didn’t survive in the village. She went away to suffer abroad.
As for the tutor, Ernest Ivanovich, he may have disappeared from Dublikatova’s life, but not without a trace. A trace remained, and quite an amusing one at that. When the children were taken to school in Moscow, it turned out that they knew no English whatsoever. They translated and spoke quite briskly in some other strange language, but just what language that was—no one had a clue. Dublikatova was appalled.
“He must have been the Devil himself !”
Much later it was established that the language the tutor had foisted upon his young charges instead of English was Estonian. And he had drummed it into their heads so well that, despite their mother’s pleading and their own suffering, they were never able to forget it.
As for the widow Dublikatova, she conceived an intense loathing of Shakespeare. Because, strictly speaking, it had all started with him.
But, as Shakespeare never found out, there’s no need to dwell on this any further.
1936
PART IV
1930s: Magic Tales
“THE KIND THAT WALK”
FIRST TO RAISE THE ALARM would be the two young pointers that were always playing by the gate.
They would begin baying a peculiar warning bay—a dog’s way of saying “Bewa-a-a-re! Bewa-a-a-re!”
At this, the entire pack of village dogs slumbering by our front door would jump to their feet—big dogs, little dogs, pedigree, half-breed and stray mutts with no breeding whatsoever.
From the kennel would emerge a great shaggy dog named Watcher, who looked like an old man wearing a sheepskin coat inside out. He would fly into a rage, barking himself hoarse, jumping up on his hind legs and tugging at his chain.
This entire canine concert marked an event that was rather straightforward and by no means unusual: Moshka the carpenter coming in through the gate.
Why the dogs grew so agitated at the sight of him I can’t understand even now.
Moshka was old, very thin, long and stooped. On his head he wore a yarmulke and he had side-locks, a long black rekel coat and galoshes. For those parts, in short, he looked entirely ordinary.
What was remarkable about him was not his appearance but other things—which the dogs could hardly have known about.
First, he had a reputa
tion as an unswervingly honest man. He carried out every job well, on time and at a fair price, and without asking for a deposit.
Second, and this, too, the dogs couldn’t have known, he was a man of few words. I don’t know whether he ever spoke at all. Maybe he only winked and shook his side-locks.
But what was truly remarkable about him was a legend that shed some light on his strange ways. Apparently, one Yom Kippur, some thirty years ago, while he and his fellow believers were praying and repenting of their sins in the synagogue, there was an incident that Jewish folk belief saw as unusual, but not beyond the bounds of possibility: poor Moshka was dragged off by a devil.
There were, naturally, people who had seen with their very own eyes how Moshka flew up into the air and was carried off by some foul being who looked like nothing so much as a ram. They’d wanted to help Moshka out by making the sign of the cross over the devil, but then they had thought better of it: the cross might get Moshka even deeper into trouble.
One old woman didn’t see a ram but “somefink like a ball with flames comin’ out its nose”.
What kind of nose a ball has this old woman did not try to explain; she just spat over her shoulder.
Whatever the truth, Moshka disappeared for the better part of thirty years. Then he reappeared—from heaven knows where—settled down beyond the cemetery in an abandoned bathhouse and began going from one landowner to another doing carpentry jobs. His work was good. How he’d learnt his trade during his years with the devil was hard to imagine.
There were, as always, clever people to be found who said with a little smirk that Moshka had simply been dodging military service and must have spent all those years in America.
This reasonable explanation was to no one’s liking; some people even found it offensive.
“What far-fetched stories people come up with! When with our very own eyes we saw the devil drag him away. Besides, if Moshka was in America, don’t you think he’d be telling us about it? People are real loudmouths when they come back from America. If you don’t tell tales when you come back from America, when are you going to tell tales? But he just holds his tongue. Why? Why do you think? It’s because he’s bound by a vow of silence! Maybe he has to atone for some kind of sin. And why’s he so honest? Don’t tell me that’s from being in America! Ha ha! And as for him not wanting to be paid in advance, well, that’s because he’s afraid the devil might drag him off again and money that belonged to others would simply be wasted.”