by Teffi
“Nevertheless, the stars speak of eternity,” said the huntsman.
“Eternity! Eternity! How terrifying! ‘Forever’ is a terrifying word. And the word ‘never’ is no different—it is eternal in the same way. But for some reason ‘never’ frightens us still more. Maybe this is because ‘never’ includes a negative element, almost a prohibition, which we find abhorrent. But enough of that or I’ll start feeling wretched. A while ago, a group of us were talking for some reason about how impossible it is to grasp the concept of infinity. But there was a little boy with us who made perfect sense of it just like that. He said, ‘It’s easy. Imagine there’s one room here, and then another, and then another five, ten or twenty rooms, another hundred or million rooms, and so on and so on… Well, after a while it gets boring, you just can’t be bothered any more and you say, To hell with it all!’ That’s what it is—that’s infinity for you.”
“What a muddle you’re in,” said the huntsman, shaking his head. “Eternity and starry despair, a singing fox and a little boy’s prattle.”
“But to me everything seems quite clear. I just want to talk without any logic or order, just the way things come to me. Like after morphine.”
“Precisely,” said the huntsman. “After morphine. Because this little house of yours never really existed either. It’s just something you used to like drawing.”
“Look, I’m tired and ill. Does it really matter? When all is said and done, we invent our entire lives. After all, don’t we invent other people? Are they really, truly the way they appear to us, the way we always see them? I can remember a dream I once had. I went to the home of a man I loved. And I was greeted there by his mother and sister. They greeted me very coldly and kept saying he was busy. They wouldn’t let me see him. So I decided to leave. And as I was leaving, I caught sight of myself in the mirror and let out a groan. My face was fat and puffy and I had tiny squinting eyes. On my head was a hat with bugle beads, the kind that used to be worn by elderly shopkeepers’ wives. On my shoulders was a brown cape, and on my short neck a filthy, coarsely knitted scarf.
“‘Good God! What’s wrong with me?’
“And then I understood. This was how those women saw me. And I know now that you will never find even two people on earth who see a third in the same way.”
“You seem to have set great store by dreams,” said the huntsman.
“Oh yes. Dreams, too, are life. I’ve seen and experienced much that is remarkable, beautiful, even wonderful—and yet I don’t remember it all and not all of it has become an essential component of my soul in the way that two or three dreams have done. Without those dreams I wouldn’t be the person I am. I had an astounding dream when I was eighteen—how could I ever forget it? It seems to have foretold my whole life. I dreamt a series of dark, empty rooms. I kept opening doors, making my way through one room after another, trying to find a way out. Somewhere in the distance a child began to cry and then fell silent. He had been taken away somewhere. But I walked on, full of anguish—until, finally, I reached the last door. It was massive. With a great effort, pushing against it with all my weight, I opened this door. At last I was free. Before me was an endless expanse, despondently lit by a lacklustre moon. It was the kind of pale moon we see only by day. But something was gleaming in the murky distance; I could see it was moving. I was glad. I wasn’t alone. Someone was coming towards me. I heard a heavy thudding of horses’ hooves. At last. The sound was getting closer. And an enormous, bony white nag was approaching, its bones clattering. It was pulling a white coffin sparkling with brocade. It pulled it up to me and stopped… And this dream is my entire life. It’s possible to forget the most vivid incident, the most remarkable twist of fate, but a dream like this you’ll never forget. And I never have done. If my soul were reduced into its chemical components, analysis would reveal the crystals of my dreams to be a part of its very essence. Dreams reveal so very, very much.”
“Yours is a very nice little house,” he says, interrupting me. “And it’s a good thing you’ve finally reached it.”
“You know,” I say, “today my hair is just like it was when I was four. And so is the snow. I used to love resting my head on the window sill and looking up to watch the snow falling. Nothing on earth creates a sense of peace and calm like falling snow. Maybe because when something falls it’s usually accompanied by some noise, by a knock or a crash. But snow—this pure and almost unbroken white mass—is the only thing that falls without any sound. And this brings a sense of peace. Often now when my soul feels restless, I think of falling snow, of silently falling snow. And always there’s one snowflake that seems to come to its senses and does its best, zigzagging its way through the crowd of obediently falling snowflakes, to fly back up into the sky.”
The huntsman didn’t speak for a long time. Then he said, “Once you made out that there are five doors through which one can escape the terror that is life: religion, science, art, love and death.”
“Yes, I think I did. But do you realize that there is a dreadful force that only saints and crazed fanatics can defeat? This force closes all these doors; it makes man revolt against God, scorn science for its impotence, turn a cold shoulder to art and forget how to love… It makes death, that eternal bogeyman, come to seem welcome and blessed. This force is pain. Torturers the world over have always known this. The fear of death can be overcome by reason and by faith. But only saints and fanatics have been able to conquer the fear of pain.”
“And how have you overcome your fear of death?” he asked with a strangely mocking smile. “By reason or faith?”
“Me? Through my theory of a world soul—a single soul, common to all people and animals, to every living creature. It is only the ability to be aware of this soul, and above all to give it expression, that varies according to the physical make-up of the creature in question. A dog can distinguish between good and evil every bit as well as a human being can, but a dog of course can’t put any of this into words. Anyone who has carefully observed the life of animals knows that the moral law is inherent in them, just as it is in human beings. Which reminds me of a certain little hare, a silly little woodland creature. Someone caught this hare and it soon grew tame. It liked to stay close to its owners, and if they quarrelled it always got terribly upset. It would run back and forth between the two of them and it wouldn’t calm down until they made up. The hare loved its friends and wished them to have a peaceful life. This was for their sake, not for the hare’s, because their quarrels did not affect it directly. What upset the little wild beast was the suffering of others. It was a bearer of the world soul. This is how I feel about the world soul, and this, therefore, is how I feel about death. Death is a return to the whole, a return to the oneness. This is how I see things myself; this has been my important illumination. There’s nothing mathematical about it, certainly nothing that can be proved. For some people the concept of the transmigration of souls has been an important illumination. For others, the illumination that matters has been that of life after death, and redemption through the eternal torment of remorse. For others still, like my old nanny, what mattered most was devils with pitchforks. But I’m telling you what has been important for me. And there’s one more thing I can say. Yes, let me tell you a story. Listen. There once was a woman who had a vision in her sleep. She seemed to be kneeling and reaching out with both her hand and her soul to someone whom she had loved and who was no longer among the living. She was staying in Florence at the time and the air in her dream—probably influenced by Simone Martini’s Annunciation—was translucent gold, shimmering as though shot through with rays of gold. And within this extraordinary golden light and blessed intensity of love was that ecstasy no one can endure for more than a moment. But time did not exist, and this moment felt like eternity. And it was eternity, because time was no more. As it says in the Book of Revelation, ‘And the Angel lifted up his hand to Heaven and swore by Him that liveth forever and ever that there should be time no more.’ And then th
e woman realized that this was death, that this is all there is to death: it is something tiny, indivisible, a mere point, the moment when the heart stops beating and breathing ceases, and someone’s voice says, ‘He is dead now.’ That’s eternity for you. And all the elaborations of a life beyond the grave, with its agonies of conscience, repentance and other torments—all this is simply what we experience while we’re alive. There is no place for such trivial nonsense in eternity. Listen, huntsman, when I’m dying, I’ll say to God, ‘Oh Lord! Send your finest angels for my soul that was born of Your Spirit, for my dark, sinful soul, which has rebelled against You, in its sorrow always seeking but never finding…’”
“Never till now,” corrected the huntsman.
“Never till now,” I repeated. “And bless my body, created by Your Will, bless my eyes that have looked without seeing, my lips that have grown pale from song and laughter, and bless my womb that has accepted the fruit of love, all according to Your Will, and my legs…”
“… that have been kissed so many, many times,” interrupted the huntsman.
“No, I won’t say that. I’ll simply say, ‘Oh Lord, bless this body and release me into the immortality of your world. Amen.’ That’s what I’ll say.”
“But you’ve said it!” exclaimed the huntsman. “You’ve said it now!”
“I may have said it, but I’m not dying yet.”
My skis came to a stop. I looked down at my feet. The white-felt valenki were gone. In their place were tall, yellow-leather boots laced right up to the knee. I knew them well. I had worn them when I went to the front during the war. I began to feel strangely apprehensive.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
The huntsman was silent. Suddenly, with a slight bend of his knees and a single co-ordinated movement of his entire body, he pushed off and quickly glided ahead and down a slope. Then he flew up over a hillock and disappeared from view. Far ahead he appeared fleetingly at the top of another rise.
“Hello-o-o!” I cried out. “Come back! I don’t want to be alone!”
What is his name? How can I call out to him? I don’t know. But I can’t bear to be left all alone.
“Hello-o-o-o! I’m frightened…”
But no, this isn’t quite true: I’m not frightened. I’m just used to thinking that I’m frightened of being alone. I’ll go back to my little house. Yes, I still have something on which I can build life. I’ve still got the little house I once drew… But I’m cold. So cold.
“Come back! Hello-o-o-o-o!”
“It’s all right, I’m right here,” says a voice beside me. “There’s no need to shout. I’m here.”
I turn this way and that way. No one is there. Just the whitest white all around. The snow lies heavy on the ground. It’s no longer that light, happy snow. There is a soft tinkle, the tinkle of fine glass. Then the sharp pain of an injection into my hip. Right before my eyes are the folds of a thick apron with two pockets. My nurse.
“There,” says the voice, “your last ampoule. That’s it until morning.”
Warm fingers take hold of my wrist and squeeze it. Far, far away someone’s voice says, “Heavens. There’s no pulse. She…”
She. Who is this “she”? I don’t know. Maybe it’s that little girl, the girl with the silky hair who didn’t understand that she was Lyulya.
How very quiet it all is…
1949
Notes
1 From the poem ‘The Bell’ by Yakov Polonsky (1819–98).
2 Vite, vite, vite: Hurry, hurry, hurry (French).
3 Il n’est pas pressé: It’s in no rush (French).
4 The huntsman Thomas Glahn is a central character in Norwegian novelist Knut Hamsun’s work Pan, first published in 1894. Hamsun was a hugely influential figure from the 1890s until the Second World War. In 1920 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
5 The narrator is referring to one of Tyutchev’s best-known poems, ‘Day and Night’.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
In addition to Clare Kitson and Natalia Wase, who have both made many helpful suggestions, as well as contributing one translation each, we wish to thank all the following for their help: Michele Berdy, Kate Beswick, Maria Bloshteyn, Inna Chuyeva, Olive Classe, Mahaut de Cordon-Prache, Richard Davies, Lydia Dhoul, Boris Dralyuk, Morgan Giles, Roland Glasser, Edythe Haber, Katia Hyrahuruk, Alina Israeli, Sara Jolly, Simon Jones, Iulia Kristanciuk, Erik McDonald, Olessia Makarenia, Mark Miller, Elena Ostrovskaya, Natasha Perova, Diana Postica, Stella Postica, Irina Rodimtseva, William Ryan, Elena Trubilova, Tamara Turcan, Wendy Vaizey and Elizabeth Yellen. Anne Marie Jackson also thanks Robert and Elizabeth Chandler and Irina Steinberg. Robert Chandler also thanks many former students from translation classes and workshops who have inadvertently contributed to this collection.
An earlier version of ‘Subtly Worded’ was published in the journal Index on Censorship and ‘The Dog’ was first published in Russian Magic Tales from Pushkin to Platonov (Penguin Classics, 2012).
‘The Lifeless Beast’ was first published in The New England Review, Vol. 34, #3–4 (2014).
‘Time No More’ was first published in The Stinging Fly, Vol. 2, #27 (2014).
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Copyright
Pushkin Press
71–75 Shelton Street, London WC2H 9JQ
The stories in this volume are selected from Teffi’s entire body of work, 1910–1952
Original Russian texts © Agnès Szydlowski
English translations © Anne Marie Jackson, 2014, except: ‘The Corsican’, ‘The Dog (A Story From a Stranger)’, ‘The Lifeless Beast’, ‘Marquita’, ‘A Radiant Easter’ and ‘Subtly Worded’ © Robert Chandler, 2014; ‘Que Faire?’ © Clare Kitson, 2014; ‘Will-Power’ © Natalia Wase, 2014
Introduction © Anne Marie Jackson, 2014
This translation first published by Pushkin Press in 2014
ISBN 978 1 782270 83 6
Published with the support of the Institute for Literary Translation, Russia.
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