The Return of Munchausen

by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

  “Is Professor Korobkin* at home?”

  “Pray come in.”

  I enter. The venerable scientist comes blinking toward me over the lenses of his spectacles. I explain the object of my visit: As a foreigner I would like to acquaint myself with the material conditions now facing Russian science. The professor apologizes: He cannot shake hands. Indeed, his fingers are wrapped in gauze and bandages. I inquire as to why. It turns out that scientists, deprived of such basic materials as, for instance, slates, are obliged to wander about with chalk in hand, searching for slatelike surfaces on which to jot their calculations, diagrams, and formulas. Thus Professor Korobkin, only the previous day, had come upon the appealing black back of a carriage, stopped at a nearby entrance. The professor settled to work with his chalk, and the algebraic symbols began rasping across his improvised slate when suddenly that slate, wheels turning, made off with his as yet only half-discovered discovery. Needless to say, the poor man raced off after his bolting formula, but the formula, spokes flashing, swerved down a side street, while he collided with an on-coming cart. Crash! Here the professor’s gauze-wrapped extremities told the rest without words.

  Upon leaving the professor, I began studying the backs of carriages and motorcars. Presently, as I was passing an entrance surmounted with hammer and sickle, a motorcar pulled quickly up to the curb; its black canvas back was scored with the white lines of an unfinished diagram. Glancing in the direction whence the diagram had come, I soon saw the drawer: from far down the street, a piece of chalk showing white in his outstretched hand, an asthmatic man was rushing, butting the air with his bald pate. A purely sporting interest caused me to pull out my chronometer and set the second hand in motion. But just then a door slammed: a man with eyes hidden by the visor of his cap and a briefcase under one elbow strode away from the motorcar, interrupting my observations:

  “Foreigner?”

  “Yes.”

  “Curious?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well then”—the man pointed to the bald pate now puffing up to us—“tell your countrymen: Red science is forging ahead.”

  Inviting me to follow him, he turned toward the entrance door. We walked upstairs to a private study with thirteen telephones.* Running his lips over these instruments, like a reed-pipe player over the whistles of his woodwind, he motioned me to an armchair and sat down opposite. I did not like to ask, but it was immediately obvious that I was about to converse with a man of great importance. My interlocutor spoke tersely (without incidental or dependent clauses), preferring question marks to all others. He put his questions the way people put buckets and basins under cracks in the ceiling ahead of rain, and waited. I had no choice: I began speaking of the impression of penury, of the food shortages and goods shortages that a visitor from the West positively could not fail to see. At first I spoke with restraint, choosing my words with care, but then my recent impressions overwhelmed me: I gave the facts their freedom—and down they sluiced into his waiting basin. I had forgotten nothing—not even the single-edged sword sticks.

  Having heard me out, the man removed his cap. Now I saw the famous eyes and forehead, familiar to anyone who has ever glanced through an illustrated Russian yearbook.

  “Yes, we are poor.” He caught my pupils with his. “Our life is like an exhibition: one of everything, but not more. (Perhaps that is why we are so fond of exhibitions?) I guessed your thought, did I not? It is true: our sword sticks are single-edged, our government is single-party, our socialism single-country, but one mustn’t forget the advantages of a sword stick with only one edge: at least one knows with which edge to strike. To strike without having to choose between this and that. We are poor and shall be poorer still. But all the same, sooner or later, our country of huts shall become a country of palaces.”*

  For a minute I listened to the drumming of his fingers on the edge of the desk.

  Then: “Why don’t you ask about our literature?”

  I confess I flinched: his squinting eyes had obviously stolen under the lapel of my jacket and were making free with the contents of my notebook.

  “You guessed my thought.”

  “And your name.” His laugh lengthened, then shortened the crack of his mouth, like an aperture during a short exposure. “A literary hero is naturally curious about literature. About ‘how life smells.’* It smells of printer’s ink to the people who populate books or have emigrated to them. So then, all of our penmen are given a choice: feast or fast. Some work steadily; others starve.”

  “But then,” I objected, gradually recovering my composure, “what was begun by the locomotive firebox you mean to end. . . .”

  He got up. I got up also.

  “For specifics, apply to this address.” An inky line torn from a notepad presented itself to me. “Our bald scientist has, I believe, finished his diagram. I must go. I could send you back the way you came, through a stovepipe, as was the custom in the Middle Ages: this telephone here plus three letters* in place of an exorcism, and you would be driven away like chaff by the wind.* But knowing your nomen, I foresee your omen. Fine. Go on feigning foreignness.”

  We exchanged smiles, but did not shake hands. I went out the door. Steps, like piano keys, slipped away from under my soles. Only the cool street air restored my calm.

  6

  The address on the notepad scrap led me to the columns of a manor house on a quiet Moscow street, away from the wagon clatter and tramcar bells. That same scrap of paper opened the door of a work-room in which, the servant told me, I would find the master of the house. Upon entering, I observed an enormous, high-ceilinged hall with no signs of furniture. The entire floor—from wall to wall—was blanketed with a gigantic, blindingly white sheet of paper held in place with tacks: running my eyes across the vast expanse of that page, I descried at its far end a man on hands and knees, moving from left to right along invisible ruled lines. On closer inspection I saw protruding from the man’s fingers and toes fountain pens, swiftly fidgeting across the paper plains. Working with the speed of a true floor polisher, he was etching four inky furrows from wall to wall with four raspy pens, gradually coming nearer and nearer to me. Now, if I squinted, I could make out: a tragedy unfolding along the top line; lower down, a treatise on basso continuo and strict counterpoint forms; his left foot was knocking out essays on Russia’s economic situation, his right foot a musical comedy in verse.

  “What are you making?” I strode toward the floor polisher, no longer able to contain the question.

  The toiler turned toward me and raised his head, peering myopically through the sweating lenses of his pince-nez: “Literature.”*

  I tiptoed out, for fear of disturbing the birth.

  My acquaintance with Moscow’s scientific and literary world did not end there: I visited the compiler of The Dictionary of Omissions, Complete & Unabridged; looked up the famous geographer who discovered the Spur of the Moment; called on a modest man who collects cracks;* and attended a ceremonial session of the Association for the Study of Last Year’s Snow.* In other words, I apprised myself of those burning questions to which Red science has devoted its efforts. Tempted as I am to expand on this subject, a lack of time prevents me.

  7

  Wandering from mind to mind, knocking on all scholarly brows, I failed to notice what was happening two or three feet lower down. The Russian saying about letting the cat out of the bag needs correcting: the cats were all eaten long ago, and when they tried not to let the hunger problem out of the bag, it fought back, furiously rumbling from all stomachs and threatening, if not given bread, to swallow the revolution. I am a philanthropist by nature, the names Howard and Haass* bring tears to my eyes. So I determined to do what I could to help this country burnt by fires and the sun: I sent off a telegram in cipher—and soon several trains had arrived from Europe loaded with toothpicks. Can you imagine, ladies and gentlemen, the feelings with which residents of hungry districts met those trains? This first success redoubled my powers. T
he soup kitchens set up by the Soviet government could not combat the scourge of hunger: they gave out one poppy seed per person so that no one could say that no food had passed their lips; this prevented grumbling, but left stomachs empty. I suggested they enlist the help of rat charmers: they mobilized every last one. Every soup kitchen received a piper who, circling the houses, lured out the rats hiding in cellars and under floorboards: led by the melody the victuals marched themselves single-file—nose to tail, tail to nose—straight into the kitchen kettles and vats.*

  Medical hypnotists were also pressed into service.* They seated the starving patient in a comfortable chair and, making passes over him, intoned, “This is not an ashtray full of cigar ends, you see, but a plate of soup with dumplings. Eat. That’s right. Now you’re full. Wipe your mouth with this napkin. Next!”

  But most popular of all were the so-called munchkitchens opened at my suggestion (I had to cite my literary source without, of course, revealing my incognito). Each kitchen was equipped quite simply with a long piece of string and, by way of food, a tiny piece of pork fat, more than enough for any number of . . . covers, shall we say, since the food was served somewhat under cover. At the lunch hour, people would line up facing the server: the server tied the slippery piece of pork fat to the string and gave it to the first mouth to swallow and then—well, you remember my ducks.* So there it is: if the line grew longer, another piece of string would be tied to the free end of the first piece and, if need be, another piece of string to that, and so on. I refer those interested to my practical munchkitchen manual, printed in an edition of several hundred thousand copies under the title Hungry as a Hunter. Incidentally, people who lunched in this manner were not immediately able to part with one another; the second person trailed after the first, the third—willy-nilly—after the second, and so on. This led to those triumphal parades that have become so widespread,* even without hunger, in Russia today. Even such common expressions as to “string along,” “pull strings,” and “string up” are, I dare say, echoes of the munchkitchen period.

  While I was busy observing, wandering among meanings, decanting them into my notebooks, promoting public-mindedness, and fighting the cataclysm of hunger, time was pulling its string of days, tying days to days and months to months. Like a tear-off calendar slowly strewing its small square leaves, the trees on Moscow’s boulevards began to lose their leaves. “Satisfying bodily hunger,” I reflected, “is only half the battle. Awakening a spiritual hunger, that is the other half.” I am an incorrigible old idealist. My long conversations with Hegel left their mark both on me and, I think, on him: Freedom, immortality, God—those are the three legs of my chair* on which I calmly si—Beg pardon, I mean to say that materialists succeed only insofar as they are . . . idealists of their materialism.* Revolution’s notorious broom, which raises more dust than it sweeps out, tried to sweep the idealists out of Russia’s house,* but of course, so I reflected, many of them got stuck in the doorway—so many bushels, so many leading lights.* I would have to have a peek inside busheldom. At least once. Chance came to my help. Walking through a market one day where beggars and vendors hold out hands and wares pellmell, my eye was caught by a dignified lady offering a pair of fire tongs for sale: both lady and tongs stood leaning against a wall, evidently weary of waiting for a buyer. I walked up and tipped my hat.

  “To reach the coals in my hearth, madam, one would need tongs a thousand kilometers long. I am afraid yours will not do.”

  “But you can kill mice with them,” she said anxiously.

  Rather than argue, I paid the requisite sum and tucked the tongs under my arm: the wooden handle poking out from under my elbow was engraved with a count’s crest. I turned to go, but the countess stopped me.

  “It distresses me to think that my tongs fall somewhat short of those you require.”

  “Yes, by nine hundred ninety-nine whole kilometers and nine hundred ninety-nine thousandths.”

  “A great pity. But perhaps I might make up for this shortcoming by acquainting you with a man who sees a thousand versts and a thousand years ahead.”

  To this I assented—and soon one of those bushels had half opened. That is, the creaking door of a hovel had half opened to reveal, instead of wallpaper patterns, stains from dampness and bedbugs and, poking out of a small stove, the charred ends of a family tree. The gloomy man to whom the gracious countess now introduced me, naming the rather famous author of books about Russia’s impending fate,* sat staring at the toes of his boots. The countess, seeing my impatience, tried to shift the seer’s eyes from the ends of his boots to the end of the universe. The man bit his lip, but said not a word. Exchanging glances with me, the countess changed the subject.

  “Have you noticed that the crows on Tverskoi Boulevard, instead of cawing, have started hurrahing?* Now what could be the point?”

  “There is no point,” the prophet muttered, shifting his eyes from the ends of his boots to the ends in the stove.

  The countess gave me a nod: now he will begin. And indeed: “In the chronicles it says: ‘City of smoke.’ And also: ‘A blood-red sun rises over Muscovy beyond the smoke.’ And in the Domostroi:* ‘As bees from smoke, so God’s angels shall fly away.’ And when we became angelless, the smoke rose up from space to time and so began our beclouded (as through a haze) Time of Troubles. Time itself became troubled and the centuries confused, the thirteenth with the twentieth, and then: revolution. One of our great writers titled it long ago: Smoke.* Another, still longer ago, wrote about ‘the smoke of the Fatherland’ that is ‘sweet and dear to us.’* The numbers of gluttons who loved to gorge on smoke, to sup on cinders and decay, swelled and swelled until their native land, dwindling and dwindling, departing with the smoke, turned into the smoke that was so sweet and dear to them. Look at the street-clock disks: are their hands not trembling with disgust, flicking off the seconds’ soot and cinders? Are your eyes not crying, stung by the smoke of the times? Are. . . . Incidentally, countess, your stove is smoking. Be so good as to hand me the tongs.”

  Again the countess and I exchanged glances: what if the prophet were to guess that his inklings about the smoke had been sold along with the tongs to me? Wishing to avoid any awkwardness, I ventured to speak in my turn, unpacking a whole collection of novelties brought from the West. The prophet sat with his head sunk in his palm, locks of unruly hair hiding the expression on his face. But the countess positively beamed with pleasure and begged me to tell her more. I spoke of European capitals thundering like waterfalls, of nights transformed into electric day, of rivers of automobiles, diplomatic routs, spiritualistic séances, fashionable ladies’ dresses, sessions of the Amsterdam International* and equipages of the English king, of a fashionable Boston religion* and rising stars of the music-hall stage, of Churchill and Chaplin, of. . . . Through the blue haze (the stove was indeed playing pranks) I caught glimpses of the countess’s face melting with delight, but, oblivious of the consequences, I went on and on. When I came to the description of an audience given me by the Russian emperor, I raised my eyes . . . and saw no countess: her chair was empty. In my bewilderment I turned to the seer. He rose, sighed, and said, “Yes, no tongs, no countess: she melted.* And you are the murderer.”

  Turning up his trouser cuffs, he waded through the pool of water that only a moment ago had been the countess. I could only do the same. Bound by our secret, we slipped out, closing the door tightly behind us.

  Down a crooked street with dim lamps vainly gleaming, we walked in silence between blank walls: suddenly on one of them we saw four freshly painted symbols: USSR. My companion gestured toward the letters: “Read that.”

  I read it, decoding each letter. He shook his wrathful head.

  “Lies! Listen and I shall reveal to you this cryptogram divined by the chosen: USSR—Una Sancta Sancta Russia—One Most Holy Russia.* If you press your ear to the letters and listen to them breathe, you will notice only their exhalations, whereas I hear their inhalations as well: verily, ver
ily they say, one most holy and godlike.”

  The crooked street led us onward. Upon reaching a crossroad, my companion suddenly stopped.

  “I may go no farther.”

  “Why is that?”

  “From here the street is cobbled,” the prophet mumbled dully, “people of my profession had best stay away from stones.”*

  Leaving my companion’s motionless figure at the end of the asphalt ribbon, I strode on over the cobblestones: in the Munchausen line, thank God, there are no prophets.

  Striding along beside me was the thought: Two million backs, bushels, lives fenced off by fear of denunciations and chekaneries;* raise your eyes to theirs and you see pupils like point-blank muzzles, an endless dos à dos. Experience now confirmed my thought in all its bleakness: noticing a man walking quickly away from his dwelling, I stopped him with the question: “Where are you going?”

  In reply I heard: “To relieve myself.”

  Those words filled with bitter lyricism are forever etched in my memory. That poor, lonely man, thought I as I watched him out of sight, he has neither friend nor beloved with whom to relieve his feelings—only the dark streets remain! Two million backs; bushels-bushels-bushels.

  8

  Munchausen paused: his Adam’s apple dove down into the crack of his collar to rest. Meanwhile a bell jangled once or twice—and an image burst on the screen. A frightened “Ah!” blew through the hall like a wind, and suddenly dozens of people were knocking into one another in the darkness as they rushed for the doors.

  “Lights!” cried the speaker and, when the chandeliers blazed up: “Take your seats, I shall continue.”

  •

  The transparency that so frightened you, ladies and . . . gentlemen, would seem to merit other emotions: what flashed and faded before you just now was the second-long life of a creature embodying the ideal of social justice. Each part of his body corresponds strictly in size to its value. In other words, you have just seen the “average man”; his portrait is well known to anyone who has ever dealt with workers’ insurance. The constitution of this average man is such that every organ is directly proportionate in size to the sum paid by the insurer in case of that organ’s loss. Thus in this average man the eyes—an organ that in us is significantly smaller than, say, our buttocks, which is unfair as their value for work is far greater—his eyes, as you surely noticed, are as big as balloons; his left arm barely reaches his hip, while the fingers of his right graze the ground, and so on, and so forth. I will admit that when I first encountered those balloon-size eyes, they gave me quite a turn. But in addition to Horace’s maxim “Be surprised at nothing,”* I have a rule of my own invention: “Surprise with nothing.” So then, one day I found myself sitting next to this average man on a Moscow boulevard bench. Boys licking toffees were scampering by. Shoeblacks were chasing after dirty bootlegs. The face of my accidental neighbor was hidden behind a newspaper. Running my eyes down the paper screen, I said, “So, the reformists have gone to the right again.”