The Return of Munchausen

by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

  During my stay in Moscow I tried not to miss a single scientific or scholarly lecture. The general economic revival* has had a most beneficent effect on the pace of scientific research and experimentation. With your permission, ladies and gentlemen, I shall now summarize the last two lectures it was my good fortune to attend.

  The first was devoted to proto-rhyme: the lecturer, an esteemed academician who had devoted his life to the study of Slavic etymologies, had gone in search of the first rhyme ever heard in Old Russian. Years and years of work had taken him back to the ninth century: it appeared that the inventor of rhyme was Saint Vladimir,* who rhymed the words “think” and “drink.” From this proto-rhyme, which grew gradually more complex, sprang all of Russian versification.* But take away its “drink,” said the silver-tongued lecturer, and it would have nothing with which to rhyme its “think,” its now-trembling base would leave all its superstructures wobbling, and its house of books no more stable than one of cards. In conclusion, he suggested revising the terminology and classifying poetry not as “lyric” and “epic,” as in the past, but as “home-distilled” and “purified.”

  The second lecture was part of a series organized by the Institution of Leveling Psyches (ILP). The title alone—“Either Side of the Part”—intrigued me. A respected physiologist would present ILP studies in the electrification of thought.* A group of ILP scientists had proven that nervous currents, which arise in the brain like electrical currents, travel only over the surface of the brain’s hemispheres, the two poles of electro-thought. From there it was technical child’s play to raise a person’s consciousness by two or three more centimeters so as to localize it on the surface of the cranium, at which point a part made from forehead to nape could comb thought processes to the left or to the right, depending. I need hardly explain to you that, in this bold experiment, strands of hair replaced the wires that radio thought into space.

  After a brief theoretical summary, the physiologist proceeded to the demonstrations. A man in a brass helmet pulled down around his ears was led up onto the stage. The helmet was removed to reveal a neat straight part and hair so smooth it seemed to have been ironed into the man’s skull—from right to left and from left to right. The physiologist picked up a glass wand and brought it to the man’s left hemisphere.

  “The idea of ‘the State’ is localized in this subject just here, at the end of this strand of hair to the left of the part. A red dot marks the spot. I invite those of you who are nearsighted to come forward and see for yourselves. Now watch: I shall press ‘the State.’ ”

  The tip of the glass wand poked the red dot: a spark flashed from the right side of the part to the left, the subject’s jaws unclenched and out came “The State is organized violence. . . .”* The hand with the wand jerked back; the jaws, teeth grinding, snapped shut. The physiologist signaled to his assistant.

  “Part his hair on the left. Good. Now, as you can see, the red dot is on the right side of the part. Contact!”

  Again the glass wand poked the dot, a spark flashed from left to right, the jaws flew open and “The state is a necessary stage on the way to. . . .”*

  “Better hold your tongue,” the physiologist waved his wand.

  The jaws clamped shut, and the subject was replaced with another. This one had a disheveled rebellious look. Four ILP guards barely managed to maneuver him up onto the stage. His hair stood on end, spitting sparks with a dry crackle, while his convulsively twisting mouth was gagged with a gag.

  “Switch on the words,” the physiologist gave the command.

  The gag was removed, and out gushed words eliciting a soft murmur among the many-headed audience—“counterrevolution,” “White ideology,” “one hundred percent bourgeois,” “the revolution is in danger”—until someone jumped up and shouted, “For that you should be shot!”

  The physiologist held out both hands, calming the audience.

  “Citizens, come to order! I ask that you not interrupt the experiment. Switch on the shaver!”

  The assistant dashed to the instrument panel—and suddenly an ordinary electric hair shaver (but with long handles sheathed in glass) was gliding over the subject’s skull, rapidly shearing off his thoughts. With every pass of the metal teeth over the top of the counterrevolutionary’s head, his vocabulary became smaller, duller, more confused. When the shaver had completed its task, a guard began sweeping up the shorn-off worldview. The subject’s arms hung limp as whips, but his doleful tongue, like the wooden rattle around a cow’s neck, kept knocking out just two words: “freedom speech—speech freedom—freedom speech—freedo—”

  With a look of concern, the physiologist set about inspecting the subject’s shaved head. Suddenly his face brightened. He pointed a stubby finger at the patient’s crown.

  “Here are two last hairs.” He grinned at the audience and, squeezing two square fingernails to an invisible something, yanked. “There! Clean as a whistle. And not a peep!”

  The physiologist blew on his fingers and went back to the lectern. The guard, who had finished sweeping up, was about to dispose of the mental rubbish. But just then, from the back rows, came a soft sound: either a yawn, or a muffled sob. After a long pause, the bespectacled physiologist cast a stern look around the now hushed rows and said, “Remain calm. Let’s remember the Russian saying: Having cut off the hair, one does not cry over the head.”*

  12

  If you have never been to a May Day parade in Moscow, you have never seen a public celebration. Come May, all windows are flung wide; red flags ripple in the spring puddles, mingling with the reflections of white clouds; from street to street drums beat, one hears the steady tread of columns as million-legged streams eddy across Red Square so as to cascade down to the vernally rushing Moscow River, free of ice and overflowing its banks. Trumpets hurl into the air “The Internationale,” red standards fidget in the wind like gigantic cockscombs as the skyward beaks of bayonets sway past the reviewing stands. Squeezed in among the crowd, I observed at length this Celebration crying its battle cries, fluttering its red plumage of banners and ribbons, its gigantic trihedral beak ready to peck out all the stars in the sky like grains of millet so as to throw back fistfuls of ruby-red pentagonals, its wings spread from pole to pole ready to fly, a celebration full of fury that suddenly brought to mind a legend I had found not long before in a Moscow library, but instantly forgotten in the press of days and doings. Now I began to recall this legend about a Frenchman who traveled to Moscow in 1761* so as to. . . . But just then, for the thousandth time, brass trumpets screamed “The Internationale,” the crowd reeled, someone trod on my toes, and I lost the thread.

  Only toward evening did the celebration begin to fall off, like a cherry blossom in the wind. The walls still glowed with zigzags of lights, but the crowds had thinned away; then the windows closed their glass eyelids, the lights went out, and I alone strode down a deserted street trying to recollect the details of a half-forgotten legend. Little by little it all came back to me, down to the title page with its bold: THE DEVIL IN A DROSHKY.

  In 1761, so the legend went, a Frenchman traveled all the way to Moscow for the purpose of finding a certain person of the greatest importance to him, but along the way he lost the address and only dimly remembered that this person lived by the Church of Little Nikola on Rooster Legs. On arriving in Moscow, the Frenchman hired a carriage and bid the driver take him to Nikola on Rooster Legs. The driver shook his head and said he knew no such church: there was Wet Nikola,* Nikola Red Bells,* Nikola on Three Hills,* but as for Nikola on Rooster Legs. . . . Then the visitor bid him proceed from crossroad to crossroad that he might ask passersby. The driver flourished his whip and started off. The people they met in passing recalled different churches, some Nikola in the Pillars* or Nikola in Pyzhi,* others Nikola on Chicken Legs* or Nikola in the Carpenters.* But no one knew Nikola on Rooster Legs. The carriage wheels spun on, searching for the lost church. Night fell; horse, driver, and whip began to flag—but the in
sistent Frenchman said he would not get down until they had found Rooster Legs. The driver flicked the reins, and again the wheel rims rattled through the benighted streets of Moscow. In those days the city went early to bed, and only two or three passers, stopped by a voice bowling out of the darkness, hastened to say “Don’t know” before ducking inside their doors. The sun blazed up, went out, again flared, and again sank into the gloom, and still the search went on. The weary nag, now stumbling, could barely pull the carriage, the driver swayed sleepily on his box, but the stubborn visitor, mangling the unfamiliar words, demanded they continue—on and on. Now they stopped at every church, and if it were night, the driver would go and knock on the windows next door. Sleepy people peered out at the question of Nikola on Rooster Legs, but then the windows slammed shut with a curt “No.” And again the spokes spun around their axles in search of the lost church. One night the keeper of Little Nikola on Chicken Legs, whose crosses tower over a tangle of side streets intersected by two Molchanovkas, heard a bony knock at the window of his lodge. Getting up from the stove bench, he saw (the night was moonlit) a shaggy face pressed to the pane. “Who’s there?” the keeper called out. “What is it?” Through the door he heard a mangled, yet intelligible, “P’tit Nikola on Rooster Leg.” The keeper crossed himself in fright, murmuring prayers, while the persevering Frenchman returned to his carriage and went on with his search. Soon a legend grew up around this strange visitor: people who had come across the mysterious carriage spoke of a devil in a droshky who rode about the nighttime streets of Moscow searching for the underground church of Satan, whose left heel, as we all know, is a rooster’s.

  Now passersby, on hearing the rattle of the mysterious carriage, would dart away into side streets, dodging any encounter or question. And the devil in a droshky would whirl on in vain from crossroad to crossroad without ever meeting a single living soul.

  Giving myself up to images from this old legend, I walked along the now noiseless streets, treading on shadows and moon blots, until chance led me into a long and narrow cul-de-sac. I turned around so as to make my way out of the stone sack, but just then, from around the bend, came the soft but distinct rattle of approaching wheels. I quickened my step in an effort to outpace them. But too late: the dilapidated carriage had barred my way. Yes, it was they: the flogged nag, through whose panting ribs the moon cast a skeletal weave of shadows; the driver holding the reins in his bony hands; and the dim silhouette of his passenger peering into the perspective of streets. I pressed my back to the wall, trying to hide behind the corner of a house. But they had already seen me. A low top hat of a kind long in disuse rose up over the passenger’s head and his dead lips moved. But I, forestalling the question, shouted at his guttural mutterings:

  “Listen, you, vision, where is your vision? Stop playing the legend. You are searching for the church on Rooster Legs. But there are thousands here: knock on any door, and see if it is not so. Don’t you see the red cockscombs fluttering over the roofs of their houses, the gleaming steel beaks raised up to the sky? Every house (if you credit their tales), every idea (if you credit their books) is on rooster legs.* Only touch it—and all this, feathers bristling, will come rushing after and peck us up, with all our millionaires, like so much millet. As for your driver, I would urgently advise him to join a union: let it exact from you what the man is owed for a hundred and sixty-two years. You are an exploiter, and a devil to boot!”

  Incensed, I walked right through the apparition without further ado. The day’s events had thoroughly exhausted me. Sleep had long awaited my return. Come morning I scarcely managed to untangle that clew of reality, dream, and legend.

  13

  What I have reported here to this distinguished gathering is but a few meager pennies, shaken out of my mouth as out of the slot of a tightly packed coin box. All of Russia is right here, under the crown of my head. I would need at least a dozen tomes to contain the entire experience of my journey to the Land of the Soviets.

  At any rate, sensing that my coin box was full, I decided it was time to give some thought to my return. Few in the USSR manage to obtain a passport to travel abroad. The first official to whom I applied replied in the tone of the inscription over the gates of Dante’s hell:* “Not a living soul.”

  But I did not bat an eye.

  “I beg your pardon! How can I be a living soul when I have been conditionally shot?”

  I set about procuring the necessary documents and moved my case off dead center. After several weeks of bureaucratic hoops, I had in my pocket both ticket and pass.

  My last day was at hand. My train would leave a few minutes after six. High in the midday sky a July sun was shining: I still had a few hours at my disposal—I decided to devote these to bidding Moscow farewell. Setting off at a leisurely pace, I soon reached one of the bridges spanning the river and, hanging over the railing, gazed for the last time at the waves and foam being swept away by a current quick as time. From the silt-covered banks came the long drawly croaks (“Kva! Kva!”) of frogs, recalling for the last time the legend of how that astonishing city was built (the beginning of this legend you may read in the famous history by Zabelin*) in a bygone age when in place of houses there were hummocks, in place of squares slimy bogs, in place of people frogs, and Tsarevich Mos came from heaven knows where and wooed heaven knows why Tsarevna Kva. They built a marital house amidst the bogs and marshes and celebrated their wedding. But as soon as Mos and Kva were left alone, Kva heard someone calling her. “Go,” said she to her husband, who would sooner be with his wife than away from her. “See who is calling me.” Vexed as he was, Mos went out and saw sitting on a hummock a toad: “Kva! Kva!” Mos shooed the toad away, but as soon as he returned to his wife, someone from another hummock began calling her by name. Again his wife said, “Go and find out.” Mos grew angry and commanded a marital house to be built in another place. But there too, as soon as he was alone with his young wife, the calls came on all hands and all hummocks, distracting Tsarina Kva from her husband. Tsarina Kva began to cry and asked that a house be built in a third place. And then a fourth, and a fifth, and a thirty-third. The axes pounded and pounded, and house after house grew up; where there had been hummocks, now there were roofs; where there had been lakes, now there were squares; where there had been marshes and bogs full of croaking frogs, now there was a big city full of people who spoke a pure local dialect of the purest Russian. And now no one could prevent Mos and Kva from being joined, even in name: “Moskva.”[4]

  Tearing myself away from the railing, I set off again at the same leisurely pace down the familiar streets. A gust of wind overturned the tray of a little boy selling fruit jellies; he scrabbled about in the dirt after the scattered sweets, rinsed them in the nearest puddle, and replaced them neatly on the tray. I walked on. A familiar wooden fence swam into view. Scrawled across the top board, warming their rust-colored letters in the sun, were the words HANGING BY A THREAD. For a second I slowed my step and tried to picture the meaning of that phrase. Then, with a feeling of resignation, I again walked past and on.

  Slumped against a playbill pillar, an accordion slung between his jumping elbows, a drunk was singing: “Eh, little apple with leaves either side, I’d surely love you, but fear the great divide.” Suddenly the pillar turned, dropping singer and song on the ground. Onward.

  Floating toward me was an enormous square: in the center of the square, with five crosses raised up to the sky, stood a cathedral;* next to the huge cathedral stood the high marble pedestal of a statue evidently knocked down by the revolution. I must confess I have never been able to let an empty pedestal pass. The incompleteness, the unfinishedness always irritates me. So it was now: I quickly scrambled up onto the marble base and assumed an attitude of serenity, full of dignity and grandeur. Passing by below was a street photographer. I had only to throw him a silver coin for his head to dive under his dark cloth. Standing with hand outstretched* to the sinking sun, I could see a crowd gathering to watch with oohs
and aahs this impressive tableau. But the screen will convey this more quickly and convincingly. There. (Thunderous applause greeted the tableau that leapt from the magic lantern up onto the flatness of the screen. Munchausen bowed, then motioned for silence.)

  I would not like, ladies and gentlemen, for this to be taken as a hint. But in returning to my story, I must tell you that the Muscovites thronging the square around my statue responded to me exactly as you have, here in this hall: their clapping, their shouts of “Come back soon,” “Don’t go!” and “Why are you leaving us?” prevented me climbing down from my pedestal. What’s more, the photographer made a very long exposure. So it should not strike you as strange that I was late for my train: it pulled out right in front of my nose, leaving me alone with ticket in hand, on the empty platform.

  My situation turned out to be extremely serious. The problem was that trains left Moscow for the border (left, that is, during the time of which I speak) not more than once a month. This would ruin all my plans. Worse still, it would prevent me honoring promises I had given my contractors in the West, thus making me, Baron Munchausen (strange even to think, much more to say aloud), a liar and a cheat who goes back on his word.

  But I had no choice. I returned to the city and spent the whole night sitting on a bench on Strastnoi Boulevard considering what to do. In the meantime, time was stretching seconds into minutes, and minutes into hours. The date stamped on my ticket was now yesterday’s, and suddenly I had a thought: Why not try to find yesterday?

  I set off directly for a newspaper office and poked through the little window where they accept such notices this text: “LOST: Yesterday. If found, please return for a substantial reward to . . .” and so on.