“Oh, if only,” her little heart began to pound, and she licked her crimson lips.
Mark Licinius Sept lay still, clenching the obol between hardening lips, and also listened. Drifting with his death-honed hearing through the mourners’ voices, the hawker’s cries; and on—through the clatter and clamor in the street; and on—through the earth’s babel, he clearly discerned the distant plash of Charon’s oar and the sad whispers of shades calling him to the black waters of Acheron. The dead Sept could hear both the steps of the stars, treading their distant orbits, and the rustle of letters, fidgeting in the scrolls still scattered about the floor; also distinct were the broodings of Hades* and the thoughts of little Fabia, his slave’s daughter, sitting here beside him. In his glassy pupils—through the murk—the child’s bright eyes, fringed with fluttering lashes, shone blue: life. Now his pupils began to be sucked in by the gloom.
Charon’s oar plashed closer.
“Sweet dates, dried dates—for one obol, only one obol.”
“O, Juno,* Queen of the Gods, if I had …” Fabia whispered.
With a terrible last exertion of his hardening muscles Licinius Sept unclenched his teeth (the exertion caused the mist around his eyes to thicken—veiling the child, the walls, and the whole earth); the new copper obol slipped out, rolled across the floor, and came to rest with a soft tinkle by the feet of the wide-eyed Fabia. She tucked her legs high up under her seat, breathing hard. All was quiet. The motionless master was smiling affectionately at her with his limpid white face. Fabia reached down for the obol.
The dates were delicious. Mark Licinius Sept was buried as is, without the obol: an oversight.
Sept’s time had come. Risen up over the earth, he glided among softly moaning shades toward the dwelling place of the dead. Behind him were the shrill shrieks and rhythmic cries of the still haggling mourners, ahead the waves of the Acheron lapping black.
Here was the riverbank. The sound of oars—hark! Coming closer. Closer still. A bark bumped against the bank. Tottering shades hastened to the noise: and with them Sept. Old Charon planted one foot on the shore. In flashes of blood-red lightening his face flared and faded: the jutting jaw, the matted gray beard, the rapacious glint in the eyes. With a trembling hand, Charon fumbled the dead men’s mouths in quick succession as a jingling stream of obols tumbled into the leathern pouch at his hip. His bony fingers grazed Sept’s lips.
“The obol,” said the ferryman. “Where’s your obol for the crossing?”
Sept was silent. Charon pushed off with his oar; the skiff full of shades floated away. Sept was left on the deserted shore of Death.
On earth: day followed night followed day followed night followed day. But by the black waters of Acheron: night followed night followed night. No daybreak, no midday, no twilight. Thousands of times the ferryman’s skiff made fast, thousands of times it cast off, and Mark Sept was still alone—between life and death. Every time he heard the skiff’s plash, he went to the water’s edge, and every time the miserly Charon pushed him aside. Thus Sept, who had brought no obol, went on wandering by the black waters: gone from life and refused by death.
He asked the hastening shades about his obol, but they only clenched their fare for the Land of Hades more firmly between their frozen lips and flew past. The darkness closed in behind them. Sept knew that his pleas were in vain. Turning to face the earth, he began to wait, years and years, for the little girl to whom he had given his Obol of the Dead.
The dates were sweet—but life is bitter and joyless. After her master’s sudden death, Fabia the slave’s daughter was resold four times. When she became a beautiful blue-eyed woman, men kissed her lips and caressed her body. Thus she passed from hand to paw, from paw to tentacle. Sorrow crept into her blue eyes and never left her unsold soul. Time rolled on from year to year, like a worn obol dropped on the ground. Her body’s last master, the old proconsul Gaius Rigidius Priscus, was generous to his concubine; Fabia slept on a marble couch amid incense and waving fans, but three times she was visited by a strange, persistent dream: the lapping of a black river; a familiar and very dear face, its rigid mouth forced painfully open; a sad whisper calling from far away: the obol—give me back my obol—my Obol of the Dead.
Fabia gave away whole fistfuls of obols to the poor and to the church: but the vision would not fade.
Proconsul Rigidius died. Fabia would go to his heir, as part of the inventory. When the heir’s servants came to her door, there was no answer from behind the purple curtain. They went inside: Fabia lay on her marble couch, her motionless arms outstretched as if for an embrace. The thing listed in the inventory as No. 5 had, upon completion of the necessary formalities, to be crossed out: the cemetery for suicides accepted the new corpse.
Mark Sept recognized the approaching shade: it glided along in the file of the dead, head thrown back, limpid white arms open, as if for an embrace; between pale lips the semicircle of an obol gleamed. The skiff appeared. Sept barred Fabia’s way.
“Do you recognize me?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve been waiting here—for years and years—between death and life. Give me back my obol, my Obol of the Dead.”
Then …
The story suddenly stopped, as if its way too had been barred.
“And then,” Mov repeated, languidly surveying his circle of listeners, “what should one do with that ‘then,’ for instance, Hig?”
Hig looked surprised for no more than a second; confronting the question with his elbows and chin thrust out, he began pressing one word to the next. “For your ‘then’ one needn’t look for a ‘when.’ It’s useless. You have led your theme into a mystical fog in which it’s easier to lose the beginning than to find the end. Find your own way out. I won’t go near your Acheron.”
“What about you, Das?” Mov went on, and you couldn’t tell if he was joking or in earnest.
Das wagged his round lenses. “My good Moov—beg pardon, Mov—I would dispose of your shades as follows: one obol for two. That’s better than nothing. Thus paid, Charon lets Fabia and Sept on the skiff. But halfway across the Acheron, between the two shores, death and life, the divine miser says to them: ‘You paid me half the fare.’ Your heroes, over whom the infernal ferryman’s dreadful oar is already looming, are forced to get off—and go straight to the famous, divinely croaking Acheron frogs hymned by Euripides and Aristophanes.* That’s where they belong.”
Nodding his thanks, Mov turned to the next person. “Fev?”
“To a man in whose lungs one of those Acheron toads has settled, the bottom of a river flowing around death does not always inspire mirth. I’ll say this: your story has left a coppery taste in my mouth. Ask the next person.”
But the next person, Tyd, didn’t wait to hear his name. Moving his chair so close to Mov’s that their knees touched, he began, “I think I can guess your—or, rather, our—ending, Mov: ‘and then …’ Wait a minute—and then Fabia leaned toward Sept, the obol gleaming between her lips. Sept reached for it with his parched mouth. First their lips fused, then their souls. The dropped obol slipped down and vanished in the black waters between worlds. The skiff pushed off without them. The two remained between death and life because that is what love is … Understand? I’d like to know what Zez says.”
“I say,” Zez replied dully, “that instead of inventing endings one had better rethink the beginning: I would construct it very differently.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps because I’m a man … a man with his obol clenched firmly between his teeth. My story next Saturday will make my words plain: to all and to the end.”
7
ON RETURNING home, I sat up for a long time reviewing the evening’s reversals. The series of images was interrupted now and then by Rar’s empty, silent armchair. How would he have dealt with the Obol of the Dead? I began thinking about his reasons for fleeing the earlier meeting. And strangely: the uneasiness that had tormented me the whole last w
eek quieted and subsided. It no longer looked like a casual act. Rar had clearly broken with the group. So much the better. My plan was this: to attend one more meeting of the conceivers, make completely sure of Rar’s decision, and discreetly try to elicit his real name and, if possible, his address.
All that week I felt slightly unwell. I didn’t leave my room. Out the window winter was in its death agony: the snow was turning black and sinking down; clods of mud stared up out of rank pools; carrion crows hunched on bare trees, as though waiting for decay; dripping drops muttered like psalm readers on the tin-plated sill.
My tear-off calendar changed numbers six times before I saw the word: Saturday.
Toward evening, at the usual hour, I set off for the meeting. I walked slowly, step by step, considering how and to whom to put my questions about Rar. Nearing the house where our meetings took place, I saw a man dash down the entrance steps. Under the flapping cape and hat pulled low, I divined the figure of Tyd—I wanted to call out, but didn’t know how. He ducked around the corner of the house. Puzzled, I climbed the steps and rang the bell. The door opened directly: Zez’s face peeped out and peered cautiously around. I wanted to go in, but he blocked the way.
“The meeting’s canceled. Have you heard about Rar?”
“No.”
“That’s odd. Barrel between his teeth and … Burial’s tomorrow.”
I stood there stunned, unable either to ask or answer. Zez’s face came closer.
“It’s all right. We’ll have to suspend our meetings—for a week or two, no more. The police may pay a visit. Let them: no one searching emptiness has ever managed to find anything. You seem worried. Don’t be. Whatever happens, all you need to know is how to clench your obol firmly between your teeth.”
The door slammed shut.
I wanted to ring the bell again—then changed my mind. Back in my room, I was a long time overcoming the torpor that had seized me. I drew my armchair up to the table and sat staring out the window into the black night—stupidly and vacantly. The pendulum clock on the wall continued to clacket.
I hadn’t expected them: they came of their own accord—one after another—the five Saturdays. I tried to drive them out of my mind, but they would not go. Then I reached for my inkwell and clicked open the lid. The Saturdays nodded—now and then, their lips moved; and the dictation began. I barely had to time to fetch a pen; words were suddenly gushing out of all five mouths, jostling at the split in the nib. Thirsting and impatient, they guzzled the ink and whirled me along from line to line. The blankness of the black shelves had suddenly bestirred itself: it was all I could do to take down the flooding images.
Now the fourth night is nearly gone. My words too are nearly gone. My writing life—having begun so unexpectedly—shall die newborn. Never to be reborn. As a writer I’m all thumbs, it’s true—I don’t have a way with words; it is they that have had their way with me, conscripting me as a weapon of revenge. Now that their will has been done, I may be discarded.
Yes, these half-dried sheets have taught me a great deal: words are spiteful and tenacious—anyone who tries to kill them will sooner be killed by them.
Well, that’s all, my pen has scraped bottom. Again I’m without words—forever. The ecstasies of these four nights have taken everything from me: I’m spent. And yet I did, if only briefly, for a few scant instants, break out of my orbit and step out of my “I”!
Here—I’m giving the words back; all except one: life.*
1926
Notes
Calderón: Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600–1681), Spanish dramatist who excelled at autos sacramentales, allegorical religious plays; author of La vida es sueño (Life Is a Dream).
Saint Francis: Saint Francis of Assisi (1182–1226), Italian monk known for his love of nature; founder of the Order of Franciscans.
Eckermann: Johann Peter Eckermann (1792–1854), German writer and amanuensis to Goethe; author of Conversations with Goethe (1836–1848).
Börne: Ludwig Börne (1786–1837), German political writer and satirist known for his attacks on Goethe; lived in Paris after 1830.
Ebbinghaus: Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909), German psychologist who pioneered experimental methods of measuring human retention and memory.
Shakespeare’s famous character who asks if his soul is easier to be played on than a pipe: Hamlet to Guildenstern (III.2): “You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass … do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe?”
the provincial tragedian who—for effect—breaks Hamlet’s pipe in half: Edwin Booth (1833–1893), an American actor famed for his Hamlet, would “snap the pipe across his knee and throw the pieces from him.” Elizabeth Robins, “On Seeing Madame Bernhardt’s Hamlet,” North American Review (December 1900): 171.
two empty bottles and a Primus: Typical artifacts of Soviet life: the bottles for reuse or return; the one-burner oil stove for cooking on in a communal kitchen.
Ernesto Rossi: Italian tragedian (1827–1896) most admired for the Shakespearean roles with which he toured Europe and, on several occasions, Russia. He played Hamlet over four decades, from 1856 to the end of his life. A Russian biography of Rossi based on his memoirs appeared in 1896.
Salvini: Tommaso Salvini (1829–1915), Italian tragedian with a high forehead and aquiline nose. Like Rossi, he brought his Shakespearean roles to Russia in Italian. The passion of his Othello (Moscow, 1882) made a powerful impression on the future stage director Konstantin Stanislavsky, who devoted a chapter to it in My Life in Art (1924).
Sarah Bernhardt: French actress (1844–1923), who first played Hamlet in Paris in 1899. On opening night the audience was cold and unreceptive until Polonius asked, “What do you read, my lord?” Hamlet, “dressed and got up like the pictures of young Raphael, was lying on a chair. The first ‘Des mots’ he spoke with an absentminded indifference, just as anyone speaks when interrupted by a bore; in the second ‘Des mots’ his answer seemed to catch his own attention; and the third ‘Des mots’ was accompanied by a look, and charged with intense but fugitive intention, with a break in the intonation that clearly said: ‘Yes, it is words, words, words, and everything else in the whole world is only words, words, words.’ The whole house applauded.” Maurice Baring, Sarah Bernhardt (London: Peter Davies, 1933).
Kemble: John Philip Kemble (1757–1823), stunningly handsome English actor. (His sister Sarah Siddons also played Hamlet.)
Kean: Edmund Kean (1789–1833), English actor whose fire after the formality of Kemble was a revelation. Reviewing Kean’s Hamlet in the Morning Chronicle (March 14, 1814), William Hazlitt called his kissing of Ophelia’s hand “the finest commentary ever made on Shakespeare. It explained the character at once (as he meant it) as one of disappointed hope, of bitter regret, of affection suspended, not obliterated, by the distractions of the scene around him.”
Richard Burbage: English actor (1568–1619) who first played Hamlet. He and His brother Cuthbert built the Globe Theatre in which Shakespeare was a partner. Three centuries later Burbage’s hold on the Globe was summed up by Austin Dobson:
When Burbage played, the stage was bare
Offount and temple, tower and stair,
Two broadswords eked a battle out;
Two supers made a rabble rout;
The Throne of Denmark was a chair!
And yet no less, the audience there
Thrilled through all changes of Despair,
Hope, Anger, Fear, Delight and Doubt,
When Burbage played.
Zamtutyrsky: A parody of a typical provincial Russian actor at the turn of the twentieth century. Zamtutyrsky’s name, an imperfectly constructed pseudonym, is intended to sound grand (the Russian prefix za means “beyond”) but comes off as silly and absurd. The Russian prefix zam means “deputy” or “vice,” tut means “here”—so that a fair translation might be “Subheresk
y.”
I’m looking for the book in the third act: A sign that Stern is coming undone. He should have said “second act,” but Zamtutyrsky’s Hamlet, always drunk, doesn’t notice.
Polevoi: N. A. Polevoi (1796–1846), whose poetic, if rather free, translation of Hamlet (1837) firmly established Shakespeare on the Russian stage; it was reissued more than ten times in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, despite the appearance of other recognized versions. See Gamlet: Antologiya russkikh perevodov 1828–1880 / 1883–1917, 2 vols. (Moscow: Sovpadenie, 2006).
Pavlenkov: F. F. Pavlenkov (1839–1900), politically liberal St. Petersburg publisher whose mission it was to help the masses educate themselves with his cheap but neat editions of good books on most subjects, including astronomy, zoology, mathematics, medicine, psychology, and ethics. Though Pavlenkov brought out a brief life of Shakespeare (1896) as part of his biography series, Zhizn’ Zamechatel’nykh Lyudei, he did not reprint Polevoi’s translation of Hamlet. For a catalog of his publications, see Yu.A. Gorbunov, Florenty Pavlenkov (Chelyabinsk: Ural Ltd, 1999).
I’m taking the role and breaking it in two: “Shakespeare is wholly dialogical … Even left alone, a character fences with himself, splits into two … If it is Hamlet, into two Hamlets debating inside the soliloquy, one of whom says ‘to be,’ while the other naysays: ‘not to be.’” Krzhizhanovsky, “Fragmenty o Shekspire,” in Sobranie sochinenii (Collected Works), edited by Vadim Perelmuter (St. Petersburg: Symposium, 2001–2010), Vol. IV, 366–67.
Will was playing the Ghost: According to Shakespeare’s first biographer, Nicholas Rowe (1709), the playwright was “not an extraordinary actor: the top of his performance was the Ghost in his own Hamlet.”
You know you need marjoram and rue for the mad scene: Mad Stern has mixed up his mad scenes. Instead of the requisite “rosemary,” he calls for the “marjoram” suggested by Edgar in Lear (IV.6) when the King is at his maddest. (Sweet marjoram was used as a remedy for diseases of the brain.)
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