‘It’ll end quicker.’
‘Dear Fathers! What will end?’
I didn’t know what would ‘end’, didn’t know what and why it was ‘so much the better’; but I knew I would no longer read and explicate Schiller’s ‘Goblet’, with its repulsive sea monster. I stood up impertinently from my chair opposite her and, with an air of importance, walked out of the schoolroom unhurriedly.
I decided to head for the pond…
Of course, after the pond I was punished: three days without playtime.
Now there were only thirteen tadpoles left, and nothing was left alive in the boggy murk except for them and the monster.
Perhaps not less than two weeks had passed since the day we read Schiller’s ballad, and the tadpoles shown mercy were in essence no longer tadpoles. Four flared paws with tiny webbed fingers had grown out of each fat head. And the head itself proved not only a head, but had a soft little belly and a round-shouldered frog’s back.
And I laughed aloud now at the frogs with tails. Why did frogs in the open, in the grass, not have tails, but in my jar they did?
My darlings, my darlings!
While the monster, who’d gobbled up everything that swarmed in my bog catch – like Pharaoh’s seven skinny cows, who gobbled up seven fat ones and didn’t get fat – stayed just as fat, rough and plated, with a strong, menacing tail and greedy claws. It just got a bit longer.
I came to love the monster.
To me it seemed clothed in armour. And in the soundless bogwater murk, where soft-bodied, witless, quite defenceless tadpoles joggled and jostled, it alone ruled absolute over lives – precise, strong, swift.
And it devoured, triumphant. And I disdained the tadpoles.
I would run, though, to the river and to the pond. I would crouch down and stare for a long time in to the water. I was thinking of splashing it in there. In order to stop seeing it, and in order to save at least those thirteen tadpoles with tails.
Once more in the pond I saw black tadpoles, sleepy little fish. Maybe he’ll start sucking them up? He’d grown to half the length of my little finger, the horrible thing.
And I returned to the jar empty-handed. There I saw the well-fed, lazy monster, nestled on the bottom among grey skins he’d sucked dry.
The monster was mysterious.
The teacher and I talked a great deal about him. We looked through three books where all sorts of things were described. We compared, we measured, but still weren’t certain about his past, or his future.
‘You know, I still think this grub of yours will turn into a water beetle!’ the teacher announced decisively.
Then we both stood by the window and looked into the jar.
‘Well, a water bug is black and round.’
‘So, what do you make of that?’
‘It’s not at all alike.’
‘Good Lord, how unreasonable you are! Do you think mosquitoes, that those silly stalks floating in your jar will turn into, look like their grubs? And butterflies?’
I’m not convinced.
‘Water beetles are good.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Down below in the barrels, you know, the ones under the gutters, lots of them swim around.’
‘Well, what of it? Have you gone swimming with them, like a little beetle maybe, or a fish?’
‘Well, so what?’
‘Why are you so sure they wouldn’t eat you up?’
‘Anyway, I don’t believe that it is a water beetle.’
‘Well, I’m not certain either. Strange, mysterious grub!’
The monster had to turn into something. But into what? What? What could things so evil, so brownish-yellow turn into, clawed and plated as they were, with tough tails that steer like a rudder toward the victim?
How terrible that the monster had to turn into something!
But maybe, after all, it would turn into a black water beetle, round, shiny and… maybe, probably even, of course, it would be good.
Where, then, would the evil go?
Could it disappear completely? Simply go nowhere, simply disappear? Like steam…
No, steam thickens from cold into clouds in the sky, and the rain comes down… Isn’t that so?
Only one small frog was left. And at some point his tail had fallen off. He’d become such a fresh young thing! So, so dear! All green! With a strong back, feet spread wide and warty, with staring eyes.
He made it out of his homemade little bog by climbing up the glass; he breathed quickly, the way pocket watches whir, and his fat, soft little stomach fell in and rose at his short neck. He was so, so green and always fresh from a bath.
He watches wide-eyed with soft, crumpled lids. He doesn’t climb down in the water.
Tame!
The monster?
So what am I to do with the monster?
Not in the river. Not in the pond. In the bog? There are baby frogs there, too.
I brought a rock for the jar, found a thick one and set it on end, so he could climb out on top. He has lungs now, he breathes with lungs now and not with gills. Both with lungs and gills: with whatever he needs. My teacher said so.
But he climbs down from the rock. He loves the water. And then…
To kill.
To kill the monster and save the soft, tame little frog, the last one. But how to kill something so tough and plated? You can’t crush it. It will crunch. It’s impossible. Disgusting.
Simply catch it and shake it out in the sun. It’s sunny on the balcony. There’s a door right here from the room on to the balcony; strictly speaking onto the roof, which is railed off with a balustrade and covered with iron sheeting. The iron heats up almost as much as my toy irons, which I use to press my doll’s clothes. (I even tried to heat them that way in the sunshine.) That’s the south. But even so, of course, for this one it’s not enough…
Still, if you splash it out, it will bake to death there. It’ll croak, the filthy thing.
Yes, Vasya was right. Better if I’d poured everything out together. Oh God! Why is it so hard?
Little green one sat on the stone till evening. Mouth like a rainbow, little warts everywhere. Looking. And then he lowers the soft folds over his eyes, and they become two stretched-out grey balloons.
I went about impatient, ill-tempered. My heart was in torment. I loved and hated the monster.
No, I hated the green one.
I went to bed that way, without deciding. Anyway, towards evening the sun had left my balcony…
I’m lying down and trying to sleep, not sleeping. It’s very unpleasant.
I should light a candle. To see what’s in the jar. What if it doesn’t sleep at night? Does it have eyes? I didn’t notice behind the claws. And anyway, it doesn’t matter. Since at night your eyes can’t see.
It will suck the frog to death. Oh, it will suck it to death before morning!
But the other one’s on the rock… He’ll climb down; oh, he’ll climb down from the rock into his favourite murky water, boggy and homelike.
On purpose, I’ve been bringing water from a deep ditch, where slippery grass grows. Only I’ve tried hard not to scoop in a new creature together with the water…
My mind races and I’ve already lifted my foot towards the floor. Suddenly I remember angrily, ‘Nature! Nature! Man wants to live in ways he can’t. That means not even obeying God.’
And then I’m lazy! And it’s dark! And it’s awfully unpleasant to see him at night.
But what if suddenly it changed? Suddenly, right today? Right now has decided to change? And if it decided to change, maybe it’s a sin to kill it. Maybe before it sucks the other one to death it will change, and then it will never suck anyone. But if I kill it? Kill it right at the moment when I shouldn’t?
And then how to kill it? There’s no sun at night. You have to crush it. It will crunch. It’s hard.
I buried my head beneath the pillow, so everything would be muffled and soft.
So let i
t!… That’s how it has to be. I fell asleep.
In the morning, the goggle-eyed, web-footed little frog was no more.
It, it. It alone.
I don’t feel sorry. I don’t cry. Some sort of calm had descended.
I go down to the pantry for a spoon, in silence, biting my lip in businesslike fashion. I fish out the sleepy, well-fed monster with the spoon. And out on to the iron balcony.
The sun hasn’t heated the iron sheets yet. It’s still around the corner.
Shall I wait? Impossible!
I splash out the water, shake him out on to the floor. I watch.
He coils about, beating disgustingly with his hard tail against the iron, lifting his clawed head with its vile yellow eyes. I see, now I see everything. I lean over close. He’d be half the length of my little finger, but I imagine that I’m looking into his eyes, right into them, vile, yellow, greedy, merciless.
I brought the stone that had been in the jar, where the green one would sit. I pressed the stone on the vile head with its claws and eyes. I crush it. It crunches. But the plated body still shakes, curving all over, and the tail lifts upright.
It’s unbearably disgusting.
I throw the stone. The head is all crushed.
Nothing. Nothing. Now everything will be finished. Still businesslike, I go to my room. I grasp the jar tight with two hands – and through the window.
The jar flies, splattering fetid, dead water, the dirty jar flies far beyond the window, towards the clean sand on the flower-bedded lawn. It’s a heart that’s grown spiteful, with a sharp feline claw.
Nothing. So everything in my jar ‘finished quickly’. Let it.
But there, in the bog, it continues – as God ordained?
First published in 1907
Translated by Jane Costlow
IVAN ALEKSEYEVICH BUNIN (1870–1953)
Bunin was born in Voronezh into a family of impoverished gentry. After briefly attending Moscow University, he worked as a journalist, then in rural administration. His first published works were in verse, but he soon became better known for his prose; his models were Pushkin, Tolstoy and Chekhov. He saw Tolstoy as the greatest exemplar of a tradition of noblemen-writers of which he was himself the last representative. Bunin left Russia in 1920 and settled in France, remaining fiercely hostile to the Soviet regime. In 1933 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
In his autobiographical novel Life of Arseniev (written 1930–39), Bunin wrote of himself as a young man: ‘my sight was so good that I could see all seven stars of the Pleiades; I could hear the whistle of a marmot over half a mile away in the evening fields, and the smell of a lily of the valley or an old book could make me drunk.’ His mature prose is sensual, musical and perfectly controlled. He claimed that prose, like verse, ‘must be in a definite key’; he also spoke about the need to establish ‘the general resonance’ of a work.
Bunin was first translated into English as early as 1916 and was admired by such writers as Katherine Mansfield, Virginia and Leonard Woolf and D. H. Lawrence. During the second half of the twentieth century, however, he was somewhat forgotten in the West – probably because of a general lack of interest in émigré literature at a time when it seemed more important to try to understand the Soviet Union. Bunin’s last volume of stories, Dark Avenues (1943), has been especially neglected – even though he rightly considered it his best book. Two other important works by Bunin are his novel The Village (1910), a dark and perceptive portrayal praised by Maksim Gorky of the deepening crisis of peasant Russia, and his memoir Cursed Days, an account of the anarchy and brutality Bunin witnessed between 1918 and his final departure from Russia in 1920.
The Koteliansky/Lawrence/Woolf translation of ‘The Gentleman from San Francisco’ is outstanding. Koteliansky provided a literal version; this was edited first by Lawrence, then by Leonard Woolf. Lawrence and Woolf both had a light touch as editors, clearly understanding that an intelligent literal translation can sometimes need only the most delicate of adjustments to become poetry. ‘In Paris’ (from Dark Avenues) is one of Bunin’s few works set in his émigré present, rather than his Russian past.
THE GENTLEMAN FROM SAN FRANCISCO
Woe to thee, Babylon, that mighty city!
Apocalypse
The gentleman from San Francisco – nobody either in Capri or Naples ever remembered his name – was setting out with his wife and daughter for the Old World, to spend there two years of pleasure.
He was fully convinced of his right to rest, to enjoy long and comfortable travels, and so forth. Because, in the first place he was rich, and in the second place, notwithstanding his fifty-eight years, he was just starting to live. Up to the present he had not lived, but only existed; quite well, it is true, yet with all his hopes on the future. He had worked incessantly – and the Chinamen whom he employed by the thousand in his factories knew what that meant. Now at last he realized that a great deal had been accomplished, and that he had almost reached the level of those whom he had taken as his ideals, so he made up his mind to pause for a breathing space. Men of his class usually began their enjoyments with a trip to Europe, India, Egypt. He decided to do the same. He wished naturally to reward himself in the first place for all his years of toil, but he was quite glad that his wife and daughter should also share in his pleasures. True, his wife was not distinguished by any marked susceptibilities, but then elderly American women are all passionate travellers. As for his daughter, a girl no longer young and somewhat delicate, travel was really necessary for her: apart from the question of health, do not happy meetings often take place in the course of travel? One may find oneself sitting next to a multimillionaire at table, or examining frescoes side by side with him.
The itinerary planned by the Gentleman from San Francisco was extensive. In December and January he hoped to enjoy the sun of southern Italy, the monuments of antiquity, the tarantella, the serenades of vagrant minstrels and, finally, that which men of his age are most susceptible to, the love of quite young Neapolitan girls, even when the love is not altogether disinterestedly given. Carnival he thought of spending in Nice, in Monte Carlo, where at that season gathers the most select society, the precise society on which depend all the blessings of civilization – the fashion in evening dress, the stability of thrones, the declaration of wars, the prosperity of hotels; where some devote themselves passionately to automobile and boat races, others to roulette, others to what is called flirtation, and others to the shooting of pigeons which beautifully soar from their traps over emerald lawns, against a background of forget-me-not sea, instantly to fall, hitting the ground in little white heaps. The beginning of March he wished to devote to Florence, Passion Week in Rome, to hear the music of the Miserere; his plans also included Venice, Paris, bullfights in Seville, bathing in the British Isles; then Athens, Constantinople, Egypt, even Japan… certainly on his way home… And everything at the outset went splendidly.
It was the end of November. Practically all the way to Gibraltar the voyage passed in icy darkness, varied by storms of wet snow. Yet the ship travelled well, even without much rolling. The passengers on board were many, and all people of some importance. The boat, the famous Atlantis, resembled a most expensive European hotel with all modern equipments: a night refreshment bar, Turkish baths, a newspaper printed on board; so that the days aboard the liner passed in the most select manner. The passengers rose early, to the sound of bugles sounding shrilly through the corridors in that grey twilit hour, when day was breaking slowly and sullenly over the grey-green, watery desert, which rolled heavily in the fog. Clad in their flannel pyjamas, the gentlemen took coffee, chocolate or cocoa, then seated themselves in marble baths, did exercises, thereby whetting their appetite and their sense of well-being, made their toilet for the day, and proceeded to breakfast. Till eleven o’clock they were supposed to stroll cheerfully on deck, breathing the cold freshness of the ocean; or they played table-tennis or other games, that they might have an appetite for t
heir eleven o’clock refreshment of sandwiches and bouillon; after which they read their newspaper with pleasure and calmly awaited luncheon – which was a still more varied and nourishing meal than breakfast. The two hours which followed luncheon were devoted to rest. All the decks were crowded with lounge chairs on which lay passengers wrapped in plaids, looking at the mist-heavy sky or the foamy hillocks which flashed behind the bows, and dozing sweetly. Till five o’clock, when, refreshed and lively, they were treated to strong, fragrant tea and sweet cakes. At seven, bugle-calls announced a dinner of nine courses. And now the Gentleman from San Francisco, rubbing his hands in a rising flush of vital forces, hastened to his state cabin to dress.
In the evening, the tiers of the Atlantis yawned in the darkness as with innumerable fiery eyes, and a multitude of servants in the kitchens, sculleries, wine cellars, worked with a special frenzy. The ocean heaving beyond was terrible, but no one thought of it, firmly believing in the captain’s power over it. The captain was a gingerhaired man of monstrous size and weight, apparently always torpid, who looked in his uniform with broad gold stripes very like a huge idol, and who rarely emerged from his mysterious chambers to show himself to the passengers. Every minute the siren howled from the bows with hellish moroseness, and screamed with fury, but few diners heard it – it was drowned by the sounds of an excellent string band, exquisitely and untiringly playing in the huge two-tiered hall that was decorated with marble and covered with velvet carpets, flooded with feasts of light from crystal chandeliers and gilded girandoles, and crowded with ladies in bare shoulders and jewels, with men in dinner jackets, elegant waiters and respectful maîtres d’hôtel, one of whom, he who took the wine orders only, wore a chain round his neck like a lord mayor. Dinner jacket and perfect linen made the Gentleman from San Francisco look much younger. Dry, of small stature, badly built but strongly made, polished to a glow and in due measure animated, he sat in the golden-pearly radiance of this palace, with a bottle of amber Johannisberger at his hand, and glasses, large and small, of delicate crystal, and a curly bunch of fresh hyacinths. There was something Mongolian in his yellowish face, large teeth blazing with gold, and strong bald head blazing like old ivory. Richly dressed, but in keeping with her age, sat his wife, a big, broad, quiet woman. Intricately, but lightly and transparently dressed, with an innocent immodesty, sat his daughter, tall, slim, her magnificent hair splendidly done, her breath fragrant with violet cachous, and the tenderest little rosy moles showing near her lip and between her bare, slightly powdered shoulder-blades. The dinner lasted two whole hours, to be followed by dancing in the ballroom, whence the men, including, of course, the Gentleman from San Francisco, proceeded to the bar; there, with their feet cocked up on the tables, they settled the destinies of nations in the course of their political and stock-exchange conversations, smoking meanwhile Havana cigars and drinking liqueurs till they were crimson in the face, waited on all the while by negroes in red jackets with eyes like peeled hard-boiled eggs.
Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida (Penguin Classics) Page 22