by Teffi
“Well, he must have known he’d become a writer. Why else would he have gone to work in a bakery?”
•
Late that evening, when I was sitting alone in our bathroom-cabin, there was a quiet knock at the door.
“May I?”
“You may.”
In came a man in uniform. I had never seen him before. He looked around the cabin.
“You’re alone? Perfect.”
And, turning round, he called out, “Come in, gentlemen, we’ll be on our own.”
In came a few other men. Among them was O the engineer.
“Well?” asked O. “What is it we’ve come here to discuss?”
“A very serious matter indeed,” whispered the man in uniform. “We’re being deceived. They say we’re going to Sebastopol, but really we’re heading for Romania, where the captain will hand us over to the Bolsheviks.”
“Why on earth would there be Bolsheviks in Romania? You’re talking nonsense.”
“By the time you know for sure that I’m not, it will be too late. I can only tell you that the Shilka is at this very moment heading toward Romania. There’s only one thing we can do: Go to the captain tonight and confront him. Then we must hand over the command to Lieutenant F. He’s a man we can trust. I know him well, and what’s more, he’s related to a very well-known public figure. So, we must act straightaway. Please make your decision.”
Everyone fell silent.
“Gentlemen,” I began, “none of this is substantiated and it is all extremely unclear. Why don’t we just wait till tomorrow? We could simply go to the captain and ask him why we’re no longer heading for Sebastopol. Confronting him in his cabin at night would be outright mutiny.”
“So that’s where you stand, is it?” said the ringleader—and fell ominously silent.
There we were in the half-dark little cabin, whispering together like inveterate conspirators. Clattering above our heads was the tiller chain—our traitorous little captain steering the boat toward Romania. All straight out of an adventure novel.
“You’re right,” said O the engineer. “Best to wait till tomorrow.”
And the ringleader unexpectedly agreed: “Yes, maybe. Perhaps that will be best of all.”
In the morning O told me that he had been to see the captain. And the captain had gladly given him a very simple explanation: He had changed course in order to avoid some minefields.
How surprised the poor man would have been had we burst into his cabin in the middle of the night, clenching daggers between our teeth.
Later I saw Lieutenant F. A tall, melancholy neurotic, he seemed not to have known about the plan to proclaim him the ship’s dictator. Or maybe he had known . . . When we reached Sebastopol, he left the ship.
21
LIFE ON board was settling into a routine.
Those first days of heroics, when Colonel S had stood on the deck, rolled up his sleeves, and kneaded dough for flatbreads, a gold bracelet jingling on his handsome white wrist, while a famous statistician sat beside him and calculated in a loud voice the total weight of the bread to be baked, in proportion to the number of working souls on board, and then half-souls and quarter-souls—those first days of heroic amateurism were long gone.
Now our rations were being supervised by the cook, Chinese Misha.
Misha was a consumptive, an old man with the face of a startled old maid. When he had no work to do and felt like a rest, he would squat down and puff on a special pipe that allowed the smoke to be drawn through a bowl of water. A kind of hookah.
Another Chinese, a rather foolish young man by the name of Akyn, said that until only recently Misha had been fit and healthy, but that he had once got so very angry and carried on swearing so long and so loudly that he had “torn his throat.”
And there was a third Chinese man—a general servant and laundry hand.
I began to take an interest in the Chinese language.
“Akyn, how do you say ‘old man’ in Chinese?”
“Tasolomanika,” Akyn replied.
“And ‘glass’?”
“Tasagalasika.”
Chinese sounded surprisingly similar to Russian.
“And how do you say ‘captain’?”
“Tasakapitana.”
Hm . . . The words seemed to be almost the same.
“And ‘ship’?”
“Tasashipa.”
Astonishing!
“And ‘hat’?”
“Tasahata.”
We were joined by a midshipman I knew.
“I’m learning Chinese. It sounds remarkably like Russian.”
The midshipman began to laugh.
“Yes, I overheard. He thinks you’re getting him to learn Russian. What he’s been saying to you is his idea of Russian. You’re a fool, Akyn!”
“Tusafulaka!” Akyn readily agreed.
•
The days passed monotonously by.
We ate rice with corned beef. We drank disgusting water from the desalinator.
We didn’t talk about the past, we didn’t think about the future. We knew that, in all probability, we would indeed reach Novorossiisk, but who and what we would meet there we did not know.
The Shilka was supposed to be going all the way to Vladivostok. I very much hoped it would. I could meet up there with my friend M, then return to Moscow by way of Siberia. There was no reason for me to remain in Novorossiisk. And what would I find to do there?
In the meantime I used to wander about the deck at night. I would stand for a while on the moonlit side, then cross over to where it was dark.
I had grown accustomed to the steamer’s various sounds. Lying on my narrow bench in our bathroom-cabin, I would listen to the clatter of the tiller chain and the stamping of the cadets’ feet as they swept the deck.
The passengers had shaken down, each finding his or her place like potatoes in a sack. An old dignitary who looked like a fat Tatar had attached himself to a young woman from Kiev, a plump little teacher.
“So, do you continue to maintain,” the dignitary would say, his voice as deep and booming as that of any general, “do you really continue to maintain that curd dumplings are tastier than cold botvinya soup?”[112]
And he would shake his head reproachfully.
“Ay, ay, ay! Can you really not see that curd cheese is something truly vile?”
“No, curd dumplings are delicious,” the teacher would reply, pouting her lips. “You just want to tease me. That’s the kind of man you are.”
What she meant by this was unclear. But the dignitary liked it anyway and looked at the teacher with pleasure. She was as round as a cherry; she had tight pigtails and wore a dirty raspberry-pink ribbon around her neck.
O the engineer had taken on the role of chief mechanic and was spending most of his time in the engine room.
V, who had gotten me out of Odessa, had sunk into melancholy. He ate double portions of rice to which he would add slices of stone-hard salami bought long ago in Sebastopol. After eating all this with gusto and with tears in his eyes, he would say, “I’m afraid we’ll end up starving to death.”
There was a young woman who had been a maid to a count. She would emerge from the hold in the evening, wrapped in a precious Manila shawl, and stand sadly by the ship’s rail. Resting her chin on her fist, she would quietly sing:
Shine, oh shine, my wondrous star,
O star of love, O star of dawn . . .
Once, we happened to anchor for a few hours alongside a coal freighter. The freighter was black all over, all smoke and soot. She was called the Violetta.
One of her sailors, himself as black as a lamp wick, kept staring at this count’s maid wrapped in a shawl. He would move away from the side of the ship, then reappear. He couldn’t take his eyes off her.
“Looks like our Traviata has made a conquest!” the passengers joked.
But the proud maid did not deign even to glance at the soot-covered sailor.
Shine, O
shine, my wondrous sta-ar . . .
But when the Violetta weighed anchor, the sailor suddenly leant over the side of the freighter and shouted, “Anyuta! Is that you?”
The maid was dumbfounded. She looked up. She turned white.
“Lord have mercy! I don’t believe it . . . Your Excellency! It’s the count, our count . . . Heavens! Who’d have thought it?”
And turning to face us, she said, as if in a trance, “No one had any idea what had become of him. I did my best, I took care of his belongings for a long time, but in the end everything was looted anyway.” As she spoke, she kept twisting the ends of the precious shawl in her hands. “Everything went, everything was looted.”
•
How long had we been at sea? Eight days? Ten days? One person said eleven. Surely not!
In the afternoon, when my cabin-bathroom was unoccupied, I would lie on the narrow bench and think about how very little there was—only a thin layer of wood and metal—between me and the cold blue abyss. There were fish swimming about not far below; jellyfish were coiling and uncoiling their long arms and a crab was waving his claws. The crab had hooked itself to a deep underwater cliff and was staring after the bottom of our ship as it glided by: Maybe someone would come tumbling down for its breakfast. Wasn’t there sure to be at least one person who had reached the end of their tether? And still further down were rocks, seaweed, and some whiskered monster slowly moving its tentacles, waiting.
They say the ocean carries the bodies of the drowned to the shores of South America. Not far from these shores lies the deepest spot in the world—and there, some two miles down, can be found crowds of the dead: fishermen, friends and foes, soldiers and sailors, grandfathers and grandchildren—a whole standing army of the dead. The strong salt water preserves them well, and they sway there gently year upon year. An alien element neither accepts nor changes these children of earth.
I close my eyes and gaze into the transparent green water far beneath me . . . A merry shoal of tiny fish is swimming by. A school of tiny fish. Evidently they are being led by some wise fish, some fish sage and prophet. With what touching obedience the entire shoal responds to his slightest movement. If he moves to the right, they all move to the right too. If he turns back, so do they all. And there are a large number of these fish. Probably about sixty of them. Circling, darting this way and that way, wheeling about . . . Oh little fish, little fish, can you trust this leader of yours? Are you sure your foremost philosopher-fish is not simply a fool?
•
Soon we would be in Novorossiisk.
No one was particularly happy about this. It was, rather, a source of anxiety.
Those with family in Novorossiisk were no happier than anyone else. Would their family still be there? What might have happened to them was anyone’s guess.
The Shilka’s radio was now more or less functioning, but we had been unable to make contact with anyone. We were sailing into the unknown. It might be good; it might be evil.
The days dragged by, long and dreary.
What do I care where we hit land?
Cape joy, grief cliff, or bird island—
all the same when you feel so tired
you can’t even lift your eyelids.
My bright porthole may show me
purple birds or gardens of gold,
sun-kissed palms of the tropics,
pale blue ice of the poles . . .
What do I care for palace or park?
Cape joy, grief cliff, or bird island—
How strange it was several years later to hear these ragged lines—now smartened up and set to music—being sung from the stage of the Salle Gaveau . . .[113]
As if I’d thrown the lines out to sea in a sealed bottle—and the waves had carried this bottle away to distant, happier shores. Someone had found the bottle and opened it. There had been a public announcement. People had come together and my SOS had been read aloud to everyone . . . To everyone, I repeat everyone, everyone without exception . . .
No sight can bring joy to your heart
when you can’t even lift your eyelids.
22
EARLY one morning I was woken by the bellow of the ship’s horn.
What was going on up above me?
I went up on deck and was met by a sight the like of which I had never seen. A pearl-gray fog, thick and motionless, gripped hold of me and cut me off from the entire world. I took a few steps—and could no longer find the ladder I had just climbed. I stretched out my arms—and lost sight of my own fingers.
Meanwhile, the horn continued to bellow in alarm, and the whole ship was shivering, shuddering.
Had we come to a stop or were we still moving?
Somewhere nearby, as if they too were muffled by the fog, I could hear indistinct voices. Otherwise everything was unusually quiet, like a dream—a cloudy dream.
I didn’t know if I was alone on deck or if there were people around me. Maybe everyone on board had gathered here, near this bellowing horn, and I was only imagining that I was alone.
I took a few steps forward and stumbled against some kind of barrier. I held out my arms and touched . . . the ship’s rail. I was standing beside the rail. Beyond it lay the pearly void.
And then, right in front of my face, the fog quivered and floated away—like so many bits of muslin curtain in a theater, being whisked off in different directions. As if in some strange dream—so close I could have touched them—appeared crimson fezes, black faces, the whites of eyes, teeth bared in a fierce grin. I recoiled in shock. Whatever these Africans saw through the gap in the fog must have seemed no less like a dream. They rushed to the rail, waving their arms about and shouting something like “Guzel Kare! Kare guzel!”[114]
More and more crimson fezes. More and more waving arms. More white teeth. More whites of eyes . . .
And then suddenly this little “window into Africa” turned dim and murky. In an instant, it was lost in the fog.
“Goddamit!” said a nearby voice. “That was a near miss.”
The foghorn was still bellowing, the whole ship quietly shivering.
•
We were approaching Sebastopol. Timidly.
We waved a piece of rag at a boat coming toward us; we had a little talk, asked a lot of questions, and didn’t believe what we were told. We met a second boat and had another little talk. But in the end we had no choice. We needed to take on coal, and so we entered the harbor anyway.
Everything turned out all right. Sebastopol was still held by the Whites.
Half of our passengers left, to remain in Sebastopol.
The rest of us just went ashore for a walk. We wandered about the streets. Important items of news were passed on excitedly: “We found four pairs of suede shoes in a cobbler’s. Three enormous pairs and one that’s absolutely tiny.”
The ladies rushed to try them on. Me too, of course. There truly were three pairs that were quite gigantic and one that was tiny.
“Where in the world have you seen feet like this?” I asked.
“But what quality! And what style—style to make any foot smile!”
“But one pair’s enormous and I’ll never get into the other pair. What do you expect me to do with them?”
“Why not buy two pairs? That’ll be perfect. One big pair and one small pair—they’ll average out.”
A born salesman.
Sebastopol seemed dusty, dismal, and shabby.
After a while, we all returned to the Shilka. We knew that the coal was being loaded as quickly as possible and that we would set sail again the moment we could.
The ship seemed empty. But just before sailing, we took on new passengers—passengers very different from ourselves.
There was an entire unit of young men who had been guarding Crimean palaces and who were now on their way to join the Caucasus Volunteer Army. They were handsome and smart and they chatted away merrily, casually coming out with the odd word of French and singing French songs with perf
ect accents. They settled down on deck.
And then there was an infantry detachment that had already seen its share of action. Rattling their mess tins and bayonets, the men rolled into the hold like a gray wave of dusty felt.
The two units did not mix and appeared not to notice each other.
The young men up on deck called out in merry voices:
“Où es-tu, mon vieux?”[115]
“Coco, where’s Vova?”
“Who’s spilled my eau-de-cologne?”
Or they sang, “Rataplan-plan-plan!”[116]
The weary gray men from down in the hold would come up to the galley for freshly boiled water. Clinking their tin mugs, tightening the torn straps on their clothes, clomping their great boots or flapping loose soles, they would make their way past the gilded youths without looking at them.
But these poor gilded youths had few days of merriment left to them. Little joy awaited them in the Caucasus. Many were to meet their death with courage and grace. For many, “Rataplan” was their last song.
One of them had a remarkably beautiful voice. He sang late into the night. Someone said he was the nephew of Smirnov the baritone.
Late in the evening a swell came up.
I stood alone on deck for a long time.
Scraps of song, merry conversation and laughter drifted up from the saloon.
•
The gray dusty men in the hold had long fallen silent. They were not merry. They had been through too much to be merry. They slept soundly and simply, like peasants at harvest time who know they must sleep if they are to get through the heavy labor of the coming day.
The Shilka creaked and swayed. A black wave crashed dully against her side, then bounced back. It shattered the rhythm of the song; it was alien to the small, cheerful light shining out from the saloon into the dark night. The wave had its own deep and awful life; it had its own power and will, about which we knew nothing. Not seeing or understanding us, not knowing us at all, it could lift us, drag us, hurl us about. It was elemental; it could destroy.