‘The Steel Flea’ is Leskov’s most brilliant work. In his preface to his outstanding translation, William Edgerton writes:
Underneath the deceptive gaiety of Leskov’s prose there runs a caustic commentary on Russian social and political life. Its effect is all the more powerful because it is ironically placed in the mouth of a narrator who is a staunch supporter of things as they are. This so-called skaz manner, the device of telling a story through one of its characters and in his own peculiar language, is the most prominent feature of Leskov’s storytelling technique. He almost always uses it ironically; and his malapropisms and other deformations of language reinforce his satire.
Much of the delight that generations of Russian readers have found in ‘The Steel Flea’ arises from the fact that Leskov puts only a part of his verbal effects out in plain view. He hides many others in the bushes of innocent-looking prose or camouflages them to make them look so familiar that the unsuspecting reader may pass them by completely before he realizes that crafty old Leskov has put one over on him again.
For the translator who ventures to turn ‘The Steel Flea’ into English it is not enough merely to find trite English equivalents for Leskov’s malapropisms. He must also cultivate Leskov’s subtlety. If his translation of the Russian verbal effects is so obvious that the reader becomes aware of them all on his first trip through the story, then the translator has failed to convey the full effect of Leskov’s wily genius.3
THE STEEL FLEA
(The Tale of the Cross-Eyed, Left-Handed Gunsmith from Tula and the Steel Flea)
1
When Emperor Aleksandr the First had finished the Council of Vienna1 he decided he would like to take a trip around Europe and look at the marvels in the different countries. He travelled through all the nations, and everywhere his friendliness always helped him get into the most intimidating conversations with all kinds of people, and everybody would amaze him with one thing or another and try to win him over to their side. But along with him was the Don Cossack Platov,2 who didn’t like all this persuasion; he hankered to get back to his farm, and he kept trying to talk the Emperor into going home. And if Platov noticed the Emperor getting really interested in something foreign, then just as soon as all the guides stopped talking for a minute, Platov would pop up and say this, that and the other, telling them ours at home was just as good, and one way or another he would get their minds onto something else.
The Englishmen knew this, and they thought up all kinds of shifty tricks for the Emperor’s visit, so as to get him in their power with their outlandishness and get his mind off the Russians, and in a lot of cases they managed it, especially at their big meetings, where Platov couldn’t say everything completely in French. But then he was not very much interested in that, since he was a married man and looked on all French conversations as trifles not worthy of serious imagination. And when the Englishmen started inviting the Emperor into all their store houses, gun works and soapy-rope factories, so as to show how much better they were than us in everything and then brag about it, Platov said to himself, ‘Well, this has gone far enough. I’ve put up with it so far, but I can’t take any more. Maybe I’ll succeed and maybe I’ll fail, but at least I won’t go back on my own people.’
And he had no sooner said this to himself than the Emperor told him, ‘Tomorrow you and I are going to look at their military museum. There they’ve got such natures of perfection that just as soon as you’ve seen them you’ll agree that we Russians with our significance don’t mean a thing.’
Platov said nothing in reply to the Emperor, but just stuck his humpbacked nose down into his shaggy felt overcoat and went to his room. He told his orderly to get a bottle of Caucasian grape vodka out of their travelling supplies. He gulped down a big glassful, said his prayers before the folding travelling icon, covered himself with his overcoat and started snoring such a time that none of the Englishmen in the whole house could get any sleep.
He thought, ‘Wait until the morning light; it’s always wiser than the night.’
2
The next day the Emperor and Platov went to the museums. The Emperor took none of his other Russians with him, because the carriage they gave him was only a two-sitter.
They came to a great big building, with an entrance beyond description, corridors beyond measure, and one room after another, until at last they came into the biggest hall of all, with tremendulous estuaries, and right in the middle, under a canoply, stood the Apollo Velvet Ear.3
The Emperor glanced around sideways at Platov to see what he was looking at and whether he was very much amazed; but Platov was walking along with his eyes looking down at the ground as if he didn’t see anything, and he was only winding his moustaches into rings.
The Englishmen started at once to show off all sorts of marvels and explain how everything in them was fitted together with everything else for military circumstances. There were nautical whether-meters, gamblehair coats for the infantry and waterproof rein coats for the cavalry. The Emperor was glad to see all this, and he thought everything looked very good; but Platov held his impatience and said it all didn’t mean a thing for him.
The Emperor said, ‘How is that possible? How can you be so unfeeling? Doesn’t anything at all impress you here?’
And Platov replied, ‘Just one thing impresses me here: my Don River boys fought without all this and drove out old Bony Part.’
The Emperor said, ‘That’s just prejudunce.’
Platov answered, ‘I don’t know what to call it, but I ain’t allowed to argue so I’ll keep quiet.’
The Englishmen, seeing this exchange between the Emperor, at once took him up to the statue of Apollo Velvet Ear itself and took a Mortimer rifle out of one hand and a pistol out of the other.
‘Here’s the kind of production we’ve got,’ they said, and they handed him the rifle.
The Emperor looked calmly at the Mortimer rifle, because he had some like it at home in his Summer Palace, and then they handed him the pistol and said, ‘This is a pistol of unknown and inimitable workmanship. Our admiral snatched it off the belt of a robber chieftain at Candelabria.’
The Emperor fastened his eyes on the pistol and couldn’t get enough of looking at it.
He oh-ed and ah-ed something awful.
‘Oh! Oh! Oh!’ he says. ‘What do you know about that! How is it possible to do such fine work!’ And he turned to Platov and said to him in Russian: ‘Now if only I had just one craftsman like that in Russia I would be a very happy man; I’d be so proud I would make a nobleman of him on the spot.’
At these words Platov stuck his right hand into his big wide trousers and pulled out a gunsmith’s screwdriver. The Englishmen said, ‘This won’t come open,’ but Platov, paying no attention to them, started tinkering with the gunlock. He turned it once, he turned it twice – and the gun opened up. Platov showed the Emperor the trigger, and right there in the crook was a Russian inscription: Ivan Moskvin in Tula Town.4
The Englishmen were amazed and nudged each other: ‘Uh-oh!’ they said. ‘We slipped up that time.’
But the Emperor said sadly to Platov, ‘Why did you have to embarrass them so much? Let’s go.’
They got into their two-sitter again and started off, and the Emperor went to a ball that evening, but Platov downed a still bigger glass of grape vodka and slept the sound sleep of the Cossacks.
He had been glad to put the Englishmen to rout and attract contention to the Tula gunsmith, but he had been put out as well: why did the Emperor have to feel sorry for the Englishmen in a case like this?
‘Why did the Emperor feel bad about it?’ thought Platov. ‘I can’t figure it out at all.’ And in this consideration he got up twice, crossed himself, and drank vodka until at last he forced himself into a sound sleep.
At that same time the Englishmen were not asleep either, because their heads were spinning, too. While the Emperor was having a good time at the ball, they cooked up such a new marvel for him that t
hey completely knocked the imagination out of Platov.
3
The next day, when Platov reported to the Emperor to say good morning, he told Platov, ‘Have the two-sitter carriage hitched up, and let’s go to look at some more museums.’
Platov even made bold to ask the Emperor whether they hadn’t looked at enough outlandish products, and wouldn’t it be better to get ready to go back to Russia, but the Emperor said, ‘No, I wish to see still other novelties here; they have boasted to me about how they make sugar of the very highest quality.’
They started off.
The Englishmen showed everything to the Emperor – just how many different highest qualities they had – and Platov looked and looked, and then suddenly he said, ‘But won’t you show us your factories where you make Molvo sugar?’
The Englishmen didn’t know what ‘Molvo’5 was. They whispered back and forth to each other, winked back and forth to each other, and repeated to each other, ‘Molvo, Molvo,’ but they couldn’t understand what kind of sugar that was that we made in our country, and they had to admit that they had all kinds of sugar – but no ‘Molvo’.
Platov said, ‘Well, then, you haven’t got anything to brag about. Come to our country and we’ll fill you full of tea with genuwine Molvo sugar from Bobrinsky’s factory.’6
But the Emperor tugged him by the sleeve and said quietly: ‘Now, please don’t go and spoil my politics.’
Then the Englishmen invited the Emperor to their very latest museum, where they had brought together mineral stones and nymphusorias from all over the world, beginning with the most enormous Egyptian hobble lists and coming down to the hide-bound flea, which you can’t see with your eyes but can only feel when he bites you between your hide and your body.
The Emperor set out.
They looked at the hobble lists and all kinds of stuffed animals, and then came out and Platov thought to himself, ‘There now, thank the Lord, everything is turning out all right: the Emperor hasn’t marvelled at anything.’
But as soon as they got to the very last room, there were workmen standing around in everyday jackets and aprons holding a tray that had nothing on it.
Then the Emperor really did marvel because they offered him an empty tray.
‘What does this mean?’ he asked, and the English craftsmen replied, ‘This is our humble offering to your Highness.’
‘But what is it?’
‘Well,’ they said, ‘does your Highness kindly see this little speck?’
The Emperor took a look and saw that there really was the tiniest little speck lying on the tray.
The workmen said, ‘Be so kind as to spit on your finger and pick it up and put it on your hand.’
‘What good is that speck to me?’
‘That,’ they answered, ‘is not a speck but a nymphusoria.’
‘Is it alive?’
‘No, sir,’ they answered, ‘it’s not alive. We made it in the shape of a flea out of pure English steel, and inside it is a motor and a spring. Be so kind as to wind it up with the key: then it will do a little dansez.’
The Emperor got curious and asked, ‘But where is the key?’
The Englishmen replied, ‘Here is the key, right in front of your eyes.’
‘Then why can’t I see it?’ asked the Emperor.
‘Because,’ they said, ‘you have to blow it up in a nitroscope.’
A nitroscope was brought in, and the Emperor saw that a little key really was lying on the tray beside the flea.
‘Be so kind as to take it in your hand,’ they said. ‘There’s a hole in its belly for the key, and the key will take seven turns. Then it will start its dansez.’
The Emperor could barely pick up the key and barely hold it in his fingers. He took hold of the flea with his other hand and hadn’t hardly stuck the key in before he felt the whiskers move, and then the legs started working, and at last it suddenly jumped up and in one bound did a straight dansez and two fairiations to one side and then to the other, and danced like that through a whole cod drill in three fairiations.
The Emperor gave orders on the spot to give a million to the Englishmen in any kind of money they wanted – either in silver fivekopek coins, if they wished, or else in small bills.
The Englishmen asked for it in silver, because they couldn’t make heads or tails out of paper money, and then right off they pulled another one of their shifty tricks: they handed over the flea as a gift, but they hadn’t brought any case for it. Without a case you couldn’t keep either the flea or the key, because they would get lost and thrown out with the trash. But they had made a case out of a diamond in the shape of a nut, with a hole dug out of the middle for the flea. They didn’t make a gift of this, because they said the case was government property, and they are very strict over there about government property, even for the Emperor – you can’t give it away.
Platov was about to get hot under the collar, and he said, ‘What’s the idea of all this swindle! They gave us a gift and they got a million for it, and still that isn’t enough! The case,’ he says, ‘always goes with such things as these.’
But the Emperor said, ‘Leave off, please, this isn’t your affair – don’t go and spoil my politics. They have their own customs.’ And he asked, ‘How much does that nut cost that the flea fits into?’
The Englishmen reckoned that would be five thousand more.
Emperor Aleksandr said, ‘Pay them,’ and put the flea in that nut himself, and the key along with it, and so as not to lose the nut he put it into his gold snuffbox, and he ordered the snuffbox put into his little travelling casket, which was all covered with the mother of pearl and fishbones. The Emperor dismissed the English workmen with honour and said to them, ‘You are the finest workmen in the whole world, and my men can’t do anything compared to you.’
They were very pleased with this, and Platov could say nothing against the words of his Emperor. Only he took the nitroscope and slipped it in his pocket without saying anything, because ‘it goes with it,’ he says, ‘and you’ve taken a lot of money from us already.’
The Emperor knew nothing about that till he got to Russia. They left right away, because military affairs had filled the Emperor with melancholy and he wanted to go to spiritual confession before Father Fedot in Taganrog.7 On the way he and Platov had a mighty unpleasant conversation, because they had entirely different ideas in their heads: the Emperor thought nobody could come up to the Englishmen in art, and Platov begged to report that our people could make anything once they got a good look at it, only they didn’t have any useful training. And he pointed out to the Emperor that the English workmen have completely different rules of life, science and production for everything, and every man among them has all the absolute circumstances before him, and for that reason he has a completely different meaning.
The Emperor would not listen very long to that, and when Platov saw this he didn’t insist. So they rode along in silence, only Platov would get out at every station and in his aggravation he would drink up a big glass of vodka, eat a little salt mutton, light up his enormous pipe, which was big enough to hold a whole pound of Zhukov tobacco,8 and then take his seat and sit without saying a word beside the Tsar in the carriage. The Emperor would look off in one direction, and Platov would stick his chibouk9 out the other window and smoke into the wind. This was how they rode all the way to Petersburg, and when the Emperor went on to see Father Fedot he didn’t take Platov at all.
‘You,’ he said, ‘are intemperate in spiritual conversation, and you smoke so much that my head is full of soot from your pipe.’
Platov felt insulted and he lay down at home on his bed of ire, and just kept on lying there, smoking his Zhukov tobacco without intercession.
4
The marvellous flea of blue English steel remained in Aleksandr the First’s little fishbone casket until he died in Taganrog, after turning it over to Father Fedot to pass on to the Empress when she calmed down. Empress Elizabeth Alexeyevn
a looked at the flea’s fairiations and smiled, but she didn’t take an interest in it.
‘My affairs now,’ she said, ‘are widow’s affairs, and no amusements can win my attention,’ and when she got back to Petersburg she handed over this wonder with all her other valuables as an inheritance for the new emperor.
In the beginning Tsar Nicholas the First also paid no attention to the flea, because there was trouble at the time he got up on the throne, but after that one day he started looking through the little casket that had come down to him from his brother, and he took out the snuffbox, and out of the snuffbox he took the diamond nut, and in it he found the steel flea, which had not been wound up in a long time and for that reason was not moving, but lay there quietly like it was numb.
The Emperor looked at it in amazement.
‘What can this trifle be, and to what purpose did my brother preserve it in this way?’
The courtiers wanted to throw it out, but the Emperor said, ‘No, this must mean something.’
They called a druggist from the pharmacy effacing the Anichkin Bridge, who weighed poisons in the very finest scales. They showed it to him, and he took the flea and put it on his tongue and said, ‘I feel something cold, like strong metal.’ And then he mashed it a little with his teeth and announced, ‘Say what you please, but this is not a genuine flea but a nymphusoria, and it is made of metal, and the work is not ours – not Russian.’
Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida (Penguin Classics) Page 16