by Teffi
This sailor might have been a phoenix, he might have risen from the flames, but he too was soon whirled away by the northeasterly . . . Only dust and debris . . . Later, or so I heard, he offered his services to the Bolsheviks. It’s not impossible.[127]
Dust and debris.
But I shall not forget the evenings I saw him standing in front of the Saint Andrew’s flag.
•
I continued to wander about the city.
I began to come across new groups of refugees. Among them were people I had already met elsewhere.
In their faces I saw something new. What struck me, what stayed in my mind, was the way these people’s eyes were constantly darting about. Shifting about in embarrassment, in confusion, and even—momentarily—taking on a look of insolence. As if they needed just a few more seconds before they could settle into this insolence, before they could feel secure in it.
I understood later that these were people who, like poor Alexandr Kugel, were troubled by a sense of uncertainty: On whose side were might and right now?
These people were waiting to see which way the wind was blowing. They wanted to establish themselves here while keeping in with the authorities back there.
I happened to meet the senior official who, in Kiev, had declared he would not rest until he had slain seven Bolsheviks on the grave of his executed brother “so that their blood seeps through the earth, so that it seeps down to my brother’s tortured body!”
He was not looking especially militant. Shoulders hunched, he was constantly turning this way and that way, looking around furtively, glancing slyly out of the corners of his eyes.
His whole manner with me was rather strained. He did not so much as mention his seven Bolsheviks and he made no great display of feeling. He seemed more like a man trying to make his way across a swamp, struggling to keep his footing on a narrow log.
“But what about your family?” I asked. “Where are they?”
“At the moment they’re in Kiev. Still, we’ll be seeing each other soon.”
“Soon? But how are you going to get back to Kiev?”
For some reason he looked around him. The same new look of furtive resentment.
“Soon there’ll probably be all kinds of opportunities. But this isn’t really the moment to be talking about them.”
Opportunities did indeed soon arise for him. And he remains an esteemed and successful figure, working in Moscow . . .
My memories of those first days in Novorossiisk still lie behind a curtain of gray dust. They are still being whirled about by a stifling whirlwind—just as scraps of this and splinters of that, just as debris and rubbish of every kind, just as people themselves were whirled this way and that way, left and right, over the mountains or into the sea. Soulless and mindless, with the cruelty of an elemental force, this whirlwind determined our fate.
27
THIS WHIRLWIND did indeed determine all our fates—tossing us to the right, tossing us to the left.
A fourteen-year-old boy, the son of a sailor executed by the Reds, made his way back north in search of his relatives. He was unable to find even one of them. And then, within a few years, he had joined the Communist Party. As for the family he had been trying to find, they had all emigrated. When they spoke of their son, it was with shame and bitterness.
An actor who sang popular Bolshevik songs and ditties happened to get left behind in some town or other after a Bolshevik withdrawal. He refashioned his songs till they sounded appropriately anti-Bolshevik and then remained White forever more.
Eminent artistes ended up stranded in the south. Far from their theaters and loved ones, they found life unbearable. Lost and bewildered, they span around for a while in the White whirlwind. Then, breaking free, they were swept north like migrating birds, flying over rivers and burning cities, obedient to the pull of their native roosts.
•
Enterprising little gentlemen began to appear, shuttling between Moscow and the south along paths known to them alone. Bringing things to us in the south and taking things back to Moscow on our behalf . . . They would politely offer to deliver money to relatives; or they could go and fetch things we had left behind in Moscow or Petersburg.
These little men were strange. It was clearly not merely to be of service to us that they went on these long journeys. But what was the reason for their constant shuttling? Who were their masters? Whom were they serving? Whom betraying? No one seemed very bothered by any of these questions. People just said, “So and so is going to Moscow soon. He knows a way through.”
But how did he know? Why had he needed to know? These were questions people chose not to ask.
Occasionally someone would say casually, “He’s probably a spy.”
But their tone of voice was benign and matter of fact. They might just as well have been saying, “He’s probably a lawyer.”
Or “Probably a tailor.”
Spying, it seems, was a profession like any other.
And the little men kept scuttling about, shuttling back and forth, always buying and selling.
•
The population of Novorossiisk was changing. Gone were the encampments that had made the waterfront so lively and colorful.
The first wave of refugees had receded.
Denikin’s White Army was advancing and those who, only a few months before, had been fleeing the Bolsheviks were now pouring back into the towns Denikin had liberated.
News of Denikin’s successes was a source of feverish excitement.
This excitement concealed both farce and tragedy.
I often came across a man from Kharkov, always arm in arm with a pretty young actress. Gesturing perplexedly, he would say, “Why do they have to keep advancing so quickly? They ought to have a little rest. Don’t you agree that soldiers should be allowed to get their wind back? I know they are heroes, but even heroes sometimes need a break.”
Then he would add hopelessly, “The way things are going, it won’t be long before we all have to go back home.”
He had a wife in Kharkov.
But another element in this tragedy was more farcical still. His wife—and I knew this for certain—was no happier than he was; her delight in Denikin’s victories was equally bleak.
“Your poor darling wife,” I once said to him. “She must be overjoyed!”
And then silently, to myself, I went on, “Poor woman! Every time she hears news of a White victory she probably wanders about the house tearing up letters, clearing away telltale cigarette butts, her hand trembling as she writes little notes: ‘The Whites are approaching. To be on the safe side, you’d better not come tomorrow . . .’ ”
“Yes,” I went on aloud, “the poor darling must be well and truly overwhelmed.”
I shall never know just what he was thinking, but he replied, “Yes indeed. You know what she’s like—such a meek little soul. Sometimes I almost wish she’d love me a little less. Self-denying love like hers always brings suffering. I am, of course, as you know, both faithful and devoted—”
“Yes, yes, of course . . .”
“These days, marriages like ours are few and far between. We couldn’t be more faithful to each other—not if we were Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky themselves.”[128]
What happened when husband and wife were reunited, I do not know. Maybe Bobchinsky succeeded in tidying away the evidence. Maybe Dobchinsky was able to lie his way out of trouble.
•
Two actresses unexpectedly paid me a visit. They had been sent by an impresario from Yekaterinodar who wanted to put on two evenings of my plays. The actors—and they were a good company—would perform the plays, and I was to give a short reading myself. The terms were not bad. I agreed.
The actresses also gave me a letter from Olyonushka. She too was in Yekaterinodar. She was writing to tell me that her husband had died of typhus and that she was planning to come and see me.
Poor Olyonushka. It was hard to imagine Olyonushka as a widow, in mour
ning.
Then came a telegram: “Arriving tomorrow.”
The Shilka was taking on coal. The large coal barge—already nearly empty—was moored alongside.
I was sitting on deck, keeping an eye on the gangway, waiting.
All of a sudden our cadets began laughing and shouting, “Bravo! Bravo!”
I turned around. Walking along the narrow band of planking around the edge of the barge, above the gaping black abyss of the almost empty hold, was a young lady. Using a little travel case as a balancing aid, she was walking with a spring in her step, almost skipping along.
“Olyonushka!”
I had pictured her wearing a long black veil, with a handkerchief in her hand. But the woman I saw before me had a bright, rosy face and a plaid cap perched on the back of her head.
“Olyonushka! I thought you’d be in mourning. . . .”
“No,” she replied, giving me a firm kiss on the cheek. “Vova and I made a vow. We each promised that should the other die, we would do all we could not to be sad. Instead of grieving, we’d go out and enjoy ourselves. We’d go to the cinema. That’s what we promised each other.”
Then she told me the complicated story of her marriage.
When she got to Rostov, Vova had been expecting her. He had booked her a room, the one next to his, but they didn’t tell anyone else in the hotel that they knew each other. They got married, but in secret, continuing to pretend to everyone that they were complete strangers.
“But why?”
“I was worried about Dima in Kiev,” Olyonushka said awkwardly. “I was afraid he’d shoot himself if he heard I’d married. Or that he’d suffer most dreadfully. And I can’t bear people to suffer.”
Olyonushka kept a little picture of Vova on her bedside table. This was a source of constant surprise to the chambermaid.
“Your brother looks just like that young officer who’s staying here!”
“Does he really?” Olyonushka would respond with no less surprise. “I must remember to look out for him.”
She and Vova had had little money, but they had been quietly happy together. Vova’s work often took him away. Even though he was only nineteen, he was already a captain and was being sent on important missions. Before he set off, Olyonushka would bless him with a tiny pearl-embroidered icon of the Mother of God. He would then take the icon away with him, as well as a little plush dog she gave him “so he wouldn’t feel lonely.”
After one of his missions Vova came back looking tired and sad.
“When I was at the station,” he said, “a big shaggy dog came up to me. It kept looking at me, begging me to stroke it. It looked so wretched and dirty. And for some reason I kept thinking, ‘If you give in, if you stroke this dog, you’ll catch typhus.’ But it kept looking at me. It kept begging to be petted. Now I’m probably going to die.”
From that day on Vova was very subdued. And it seemed to him that whenever he entered a room, some kind of strange, transparent, gelatinous figure would be standing by the wall. Then it would bend down and vanish.
Vova was called to Yekaterinodar again. He set off, then disappeared. The days passed: He should have been back in Rostov long ago. And Olyonushka kept hearing the most terrifying rumors about Yekaterinodar. Apparently people were collapsing in the street, struck down by typhus as if by lightning. And then they died without even once regaining consciousness.
Olyonushka took two days’ leave from the Renaissance (as her little theater was called) and went off in search of her husband. She went round all the big hotels and hospitals in Yekaterinodar, but he was nowhere to be found. There was no record of Vova anywhere.
She went back home.
And then she received a message that her husband was indeed badly ill—in a hospital in Yekaterinodar.
Olyonushka asked for leave once again. She found the right hospital. There she was told that her husband had been picked up unconscious in the street and that he’d had a fever for a long time—the most severe form of typhus. He had died without ever coming back to himself and had already been buried. In his delirium he had kept repeating just two words: “Olyonushka, renaissance.” Eventually it had occurred to one of his fellow patients that he might be asking the hospital staff to contact the theater in Rostov.
“The poor boy,” the doctor said to Olyonushka. “He never stopped calling for you. He was calling for you with all his heart, and none of us understood.”
The widow was given “the possessions of the deceased”—a little plush dog and a tiny pearl-embroidered icon of the Mother of God.
And then Olyonushka had to go straight back to Rostov. She had to take part that evening in some idiotic Bat-style cabaret.
And that was the story of Olyonushka’s marriage.
Just like the Polish children’s song:
Little bear
jumped on the chair
and blinked.
A good song
and not too long . . .
Our lives were indeed at the mercy of a whirlwind. It tossed us to the left; it tossed us to the right.
28
MY EVENINGS in Yekaterinodar were coming up soon.
I have no idea why the thought of any kind of public appearance fills me with such dread. I can’t explain this at all. Maybe it is beyond the understanding of anyone except the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud.
I certainly can’t say that the public has ever treated me badly. When I’ve had to read at charity events I have always been given an undeservedly warm welcome. A warm welcome and an equally generous and enthusiastic ovation. What more could I ask for? This should be enough to make anyone happy.
Far from it.
I wake up with a jolt in the middle of the night: “Heavens! What is it? Something is about to happen. Something awful, quite unbearably vile . . . Yes, of course. I’m giving a reading at a dentists’ benefit night.”
And the lies I tell in my attempts to escape such horrors!
Usually it starts with a telephone call: “There’s something very important I need to talk to you about. Just for a few minutes. When may I come and see you?”
Here we go.
“If you would be so kind,” I say (and even I myself feel surprised how flat my voice sounds), “perhaps you could just give me some idea now of what this is about.”
This, alas, is something the speaker rarely agrees to. For some reason, these ladies have an unshakeable faith in the invincibility of their personal charm.
“But these things are so difficult to talk about over the telephone!” the lady trills. “Please allow me just five minutes. I promise I won’t take up any more of your time.”
I make up my mind to unmask her there and then: “Does it, by any chance, have something to do with an entertainment you’re putting on?”
Now she has no way out. I need only say, “And when will this evening be?”
And, no matter what she says, the date turns out to be “utterly impossible for me, I regret to say.”
Now and again, however, I am given a date in the distant future—a whole month or even a month and a half away. And I frivolously say to myself that it really isn’t worth getting worked up about something so very distant. By then, after all, our whole solar system may have undergone some dramatic transformation. Or the lady may simply forget about me. Or the evening will be postponed. Anything can happen.
“With pleasure,” I reply. “What a wonderful cause. You can count on me.”
Then one fine morning I open the newspaper and see my own name. Yes, there it is, plain as day, in a list of writers and actors who are to perform in three days’ time in the main hall of the Assembly of the Nobility—a benefit evening, let’s say, for students who have been expelled from the Gurevich Gymnasium.[129]
What can I do? Fall sick? Slit my wrists? Catch the plague?
I remember one quite awful occasion. Now it seems like a bad dream. Yes, people have told me of exactly this kind of thing happening to them in dreams. “There I am
in the Mariinsky Theatre,” an old professor of chemistry once told me, “and I’m going to have to sing. I go on stage—and all of a sudden, I remember I simply cannot sing. No, not for the life of me. And to make matters worse, I’m wearing only my nightshirt. But the audience is waiting, the orchestra is already playing the overture, and the tsar himself is sitting in the royal box. Dear God, the things one dreams!”
The story I’m about to tell you is very similar. Both nightmarish and funny.
While you’re sleeping, while you’re there inside the story, it’s a nightmare. Afterward, when you’re back outside it again, it’s funny.
A young man had called round. He wanted me to take part in a debate about the fashionable topic of the silent cinema: the “Great Mute,” as we called it then.
Leonid Andreyev was going to speak. As were Arabazhin, Volynsky, Meyerhold, and several others. I no longer remember who—but they were all important figures.[130]
I was, of course, appalled.
Going onstage with a book and reading a story you’ve written is one thing. And it’s really not so very difficult. But speaking—in public—is another matter. It’s completely beyond me. I’ve never spoken in public and I don’t ever want to.
The young man tried to win me over. If I really wasn’t up to speaking, I could just write down a few words beforehand and read them out.
“But I know nothing about the cinema. It’s not something I ever even think about.”
“Then start now!”
“I don’t know how to. I’ve got nothing to think.”
A great deal was being written about the “Great Mute,” but it had all passed me by. I had no idea where to begin, whose opinions I could rely on, and whose I should challenge.
But then the young man said something marvelously soothing: “The debate isn’t for another six weeks. You’ve got more than enough time to find out everything you need to know, and then you can just read from your notes.”