I dreamed, and I dreamed of women, and only my heart, crimson with murder, screeched and bled.
First published in 1924
Translated by Robert Chandler
THE DEATH OF DOLGUSHOV
The veils of battle swept towards the town. At noon Korochayev flew past us in a black cloak – the disgraced commander of the Fourth Division was battling alone, searching for death. As he galloped by, he shouted out: ‘They’ve cut our supply lines. Radzivillov and Brody are in flames!’
And away he went – black and billowing, eyes like black coals.
Our brigades were regrouping on the board-flat plain. The sun rolled through purple dust. Wounded men in ditches were having a bite to eat. Nurses lay on the grass, singing in soft voices. Afonka’s scouts were scouring the fields, searching for dead bodies and uniforms. Afonka rode by within two paces of me and said, without turning his head: ‘They’ve given us a bloody nose – sure as two and two makes four. Seems the commander will be fired. Our soldiers aren’t happy…’
The Poles had reached the forest a couple of miles from us, and their machine-guns were not far away. Bullets whined and squealed, an unbearable crescendo of lament. Bullets were wounding the earth, burrowing into it, trembling with impatience. Vytyagaichenko, the regimental commander, who had been snoring in the hot sun, cried out in his sleep and woke up. He mounted his horse and rode over to the lead squadron. His face was crumpled, an uncomfortable sleep had left it covered in red streaks, and his pockets were full of plums.
‘Son of a bitch!’ he said angrily, and spat out a plum stone. ‘What a mess! Get out the flag, Timoshka!’
‘Moving off, are we?’ asked Timoshka. Pulling the flagstaff out through his horse’s stirrups, he unfurled a banner bearing a star and some words about the Third International.
‘Wait and see,’ said Vytyagaichenko, and suddenly yelled wildly: ‘To horse, girls! Squadron leaders, call your men!’
The buglers sounded the alarm. The squadrons formed a column. A wounded man crawled out of a ditch and, shading his eyes with one hand, said to Vytyagaichenko: ‘Taras Grigoryevich, I’ve been delegated to speak. It looks like we’re going to have to stay put…’
‘You’ll fight them off all right,’ muttered Vytyagaichenko, and made his horse rear.
‘We sort of feel, Taras Grigoryevich, that we might not be up to it,’ the wounded man called out after him.
‘Don’t whine,’ said Vytyagaichenko, turning to face him. ‘Don’t worry – we won’t leave you behind.’ And he gave the order to move off.
At once the womanish voice of my friend Afonka Bida wailed out: ‘Don’t take us straight into a trot, Taras Grigoryevich. The enemy are all of three miles away. How are we going to slash them down if our horses are winded? There’ll be time enough – God damn it – to meet our Maker!’
‘Walk on!’ commanded Vytyagaichenko, not raising his eyes.
The regiment rode off.
‘If I’m right about the Commander,’ whispered Afonka, hanging back a little, ‘if he’s really been fired, we’re done for. Yes, soap the rope and kick away the stool…’
Tears streamed from his eyes. I gazed at Afonka in amazement. He span round like a top, clutched at his cap, snorted, whooped, and charged off.
Grishchuk with his silly old cart and I – the two of us were left on our own, knocking around until evening in between walls of fire. Divisional HQ had disappeared. Other units wanted nothing to do with us. Our regiments went into Brody and were beaten back by a counter-attack. Grishchuk and I entered the town cemetery. A detachment of Poles sprang up from behind the graves, shouldered their rifles and opened fire. Grishchuk turned his cart round. All four wheels squealed.
‘Grishchuk!’ I called out, through the squeals and the wind.
‘What a laugh,’ he answered sadly.
‘We’re done for!’ I called out, seized by the exhilaration of disaster. ‘We’re done for, my old fella!’
‘Why do women bother?’ he answered still more sadly. ‘What’s the use of matchmakin’ and marryin’’? What’s the use of godfathers and godmothers, and dancin’ at weddin’s?’
Up in the sky a trail of pink glowed and faded. The Milky Way appeared between the stars.
‘Makes me laugh,’ said Grishchuk mournfully, pointing his whip at a man sitting beside the road. ‘Makes me laugh – women goin’ to all that bother…’
The man beside the road was Dolgushov, the telephonist. He was sitting with his legs wide apart, staring hard at us.
‘Know what?’ he said, as we came up to him. ‘I’ve had it. Understand?’
‘I understand,’ said Grishchuk, stopping the horses.
‘You’ll have to waste a bullet on me,’ said Dolgushov.
He was sitting propped up against a tree. His boots were sticking out in opposite directions. Without taking his eyes off me, he carefully lifted his shirt. His stomach had been torn out, his intestines were slithering down onto his thighs, and his heartbeats were visible.
‘The Polacks are going to have some fun with me when they come. Take my papers. Write to my mother and tell her what happened…’
‘No,’ I answered, and urged my horse forward.
Dolgushov spread his blue hands out on the ground and looked at them in disbelief.
‘Sneaking away?’ he muttered, sliding down towards the ground. ‘You’re sneaking away, you bastard…’
Sweat was slithering down my body. The machine-guns were banging away, faster and faster, with hysterical obstinacy. Ringed by the halo of the sunset, Afonka Bida was galloping towards us.
‘We’re giving them quite a peppering,’ he shouted out gaily. ‘You having fun here?’
I pointed to Dolgushov and rode a little way off.
They spoke briefly – I couldn’t hear what they said. Dolgushov handed the troop commander his papers. Afonka tucked them into his boot and shot Dolgushov in the mouth.
‘Afonka,’ I said, smiling pathetically as I rode up to the Cossack. ‘I just couldn’t.’
‘Get lost,’ he said, turning pale, ‘or I’ll kill you. You four-eyed lot feel as much pity for us as a cat does for a mouse.’
He cocked his gun.
I rode off at a walk, not turning round; in my back I felt the cold of death.
‘Hey!’ Grishchuk shouted out behind me. ‘Stop fooling about!’ He grabbed Afonka by the arm.
‘The bastard!’ shouted Afonka. ‘I’ll get him in the end…’
Grishchuk caught up with me by a bend in the road. No sign of Afonka. He’d ridden off in the opposite direction.
‘Well, Grishchuk,’ I said, ‘today I’ve lost Afonka, my first friend.’
Grishchuk took out a wrinkled apple from under his seat.
‘Eat this,’ he said. ‘Eat it, please.’
First published in 1923
Translated by Robert Chandler
SALT
Dear Comrade Editor,
I want to describe to you the political unconsciousness of women who are doing us nothing but harm. The men hope that, when you travelled and noted about the Civil War Fronts, you did not miss the most inveteranate station of Fastov which lies neither here nor there, miles from anywhere, but where we drank beer and felt good cheer. With regard to the abovementioned station, there is lots of stuff to be written, but as we say in our simple way, you can’t clean up all the Lord’s shit. So I shall describe to you only what I have seen first hand with my own eyes.
It was a quiet and glorious little night one week ago when our celebrated Red Cavalry train stopped there, loaded with fighters. All of us burning to promote the common cause and we had Berdichev as our destination. Only thing was our train wouldn’t get moving, our Gavrilka’s wheels wouldn’t get turning – what was holding us up? And sure enough the stop proved of massive consequence for our common cause on account of blackmarketeers, those wickedest enemies of ours, among whom was a countless force of the female sex, and they treated towards the railw
ay authorities with great insolence. Fearlessly did these wicked enemies grasp the handrails, in a whirl of sedition they roamed over the iron roofs and in every hand were the sacks we knew so well, each holding up to fifteen stone of blackmarket salt. But the triumph of the traders and their blackmarket capitalism was not to last long. Us fighters took the initiative, clambered out of the goods wagons and gave the insulted authority of the railwaymen a chance to breathe freely again. Only the female sex still remained hanging about with their sacks. Out of compassion the fighters let some women into the goods wagons, but they kept others out. And in our wagon too, the Second Platoon’s, there was two girls at hand and when the first bell ringed we were approached by a representable woman with an infant in arms, saying, ‘Let me on, dear Cossacks, all through the War I’ve wandered in misery from station to station with a baby in my arms and now I want to meet up with my husband but on account of the railway’s condition it’s impossible to travel, but don’t I deserve better, good Cossacks?’
‘Whatever the platoon consents, woman,’ I say to her, ‘that, in fact, is how your fate will turn out.’ And I turn to the platoon and testify to them that this representable woman wishes to meet with her husband and she does indeed have a child with her so what will your consensus be – to let this woman on board or not?’
‘Let her on board,’ the lads shout, ‘but she won’t be wanting her husband when we’ve done with her!’
‘No,’ I say to the lads quite politely, ‘I feel nothing but astonishment at hearing you come out with such bollocks. If you think back, platoon, over your own lives and remember how you yourselves were once infants in arms, you’ll see that kind of talk isn’t right.’
And the Cossacks talked together, saying as my words were persuasive, and they let the woman on board and she climbed in with gratitude. On fire with the truth of my words, the fighters all tried to find her somewhere to sit and every one of them was speaking at once: ‘Sit in the corner, woman, and cuddle your baby in a motherly way. No one will touch you in that corner of yours and you’ll reach your husband untouched, the way you desire, and we count on your conscience to raise a new change of guard for us because the old they don’t stop growing older and youth, as you see, is in short supply. We have seen griefs, woman, in our first term of service and in our second. We’ve been choked by hunger and burnt by cold. But you sit here, woman, and have no fear.’
The third bell ringed and the train pulled out. And the glorious little night pitched her tent. And in that tent were stars like lamps. And the fighters remembered the Kuban night and the green Kuban star. And thoughts flew by like birds. While the wheels went clackety-clack, clackety-clack.
But when night’s time was up and the guard changed and the red drummers of dawn had beaten reveille on their red drums, the Cossacks came over to me, seeing I was sitting there wide awake and gloomy as hell.
‘Balmashev,’ they say, ‘why are you so down in the mouth? Why aren’t you sleeping?’
‘My deepest respect to you, fighters, and I ask only one request of you. Allow me to have a couple of words with that there citizeness.’
And, my whole body trembling, I rise from my couch, from which sleep has fled like a wolf from a pack of vicious dogs, and I go over to her and I take the babe from her arms and I tear off the swaddling clothes and underneath them I find a good forty-pound bag of salt.
‘Here’s a fine baby, comrades – one as doesn’t ask for the tit, never does peepee on Mummy’s skirt and never wakes anyone in the night.’
‘Forgive me, kind Cossacks,’ the woman butted in, cool as a cucumber. ‘It wasn’t me – it was this hard life of mine that deceived you.’
‘Balmashev forgives your hard life,’ I reply to the woman. ‘It doesn’t cost him anything much. Whatever Balmashev buys, he sells it on at the same price. But what about the Cossacks, woman, the Cossacks who looked up to you as a mother labouring for the Republic? What about them two girls now weeping after what they have suffered from us during the night. What about our women in the wheat fields of the Kuban, wearing out their womanly strength without husbands, while their husbands, no less forsaken themselves, can’t help but violate young girls they happen across? And nobody laid a finger on you, you obscene woman, though they damn well should have. And what about Russia, crushed by suffering?’
And she answers back:
‘I’ve no more salt, so all I have is the truth. You don’t care about Russia, you only care about saving those Yids – Lenin and Trotsky.’
‘We’re not here to talk about Yids now, you troublesome bitch. Yids have got nothing to do with this. I don’t say nothing about Lenin,1 but Trotsky is the fearless son of a Governor of Tambov and he stands up for the working classes though he comes from a different class himself. They work like convicts, do Lenin and Trotsky, to drag us out onto life’s free path, while you, you abominable bitch, are a worse counter-revolutionary than that White general threatening us with his keen-edged sabre from the back of a thousand-rouble horse. That general can be seen from everywhere, from every road, and every worker’s dream is to do him in. But you lot – you countless bitches with your strange children that don’t ask to be fed and don’t pee and don’t crap, you can’t be seen no more than a flea can and you go on biting and biting.’
And let me tell you straight that I threw that bitch of a citizeness onto the embankment from our moving train. But the coarse brute just sat there a while, shook out her skirts and went on her vile way. And seeing the woman unscathed, and Russia all around her like something beyond all words, and the peasants’ fields without an ear of wheat, and the violated girls, and the many comrades on their way to the front few of whom would ever come back, I wanted to jump out after her and kill either myself or her. But the Cossacks took pity on me and said, ‘Give her one from your rifle.’
So I took my faithful rifle down from the wall and wiped that shame off the face of the workers’ land and republic.
And we fighters of the Second Platoon swear before you, dear comrade editor, and before you, dear comrades in the editorial office, that we shall deal mercilessly with all the traitors who are dragging us into the dirt and trying to turn the stream back to its source and cover Russia with nothing but corpses and dead grass.
In the name of all the fighters of the Second Platoon,
Nikita Balmashev, soldier of the Revolution.
First published in 1923
Translated by Robert Chandler
MIKHAIL MIKHAILOVICH ZOSHCHENKO (1895–1958)
Born in St Petersburg, Zoshchenko attended school and university there. He served as an officer in the First World War but volunteered for the Red Army in 1918. He joined the literary grouping ‘The Serapion Brothers’ in 1921 (see p. 200). His humorous sketches quickly became popular; 700,000 copies of Zoshchenko’s books were sold in 1926–7 alone. He also won the admiration of other writers – from Maksim Gorky to Osip Mandelstam. Zoshchenko wrote his finest, and sharpest, work in the 1920s, but he went on writing through the 1930s and early 1940s. In 1943, he published part of Before Sunrise, which can best be described as his attempt to psychoanalyse himself and discover the reason for his lifelong depression. In 1946 he was denounced as an ‘enemy of Soviet literature’ and expelled from the Writers’ Union. After this he wrote little of value.
Behind his mask of semi-literacy, Zoshchenko is a sophisticated and self-conscious artist. A previous translator, Sidney Monas, has written, ‘Zoshchenko uses careless language carefully. [His narrators speak in] a weird mixture of peasant idiom, misunderstood highfalutin phrases, rhetorical flourishes, explanatory asides that are anything but explanatory, repetitions, omissions, propaganda jargon absurdly adapted to homey usage, instructional pseudoscientific words, foreign phrases, and proverbial clichés joined to the latest party slogans.’1
The central criticism directed at Zoshchenko by the authorities was that at a time of epic achievements he wrote only of trivia. Voronsky, the editor of the influential jou
rnal Krasnaya Nov’ (Red Virgin Soil), wrote in a 1922 review of Zoshchenko’s first book: ‘This is supposed to be Revolution? Here we get backyards, little crumbs and tiny anecdotes. But that which shook all of Russia from end to end, the loud rumble that was heard around the world […] where is the echo of all this?’2 In reality, however – and this may be the true reason for Voronsky’s indignation – Zoshchenko registered this echo precisely; his stories perfectly capture the texture of everyday life in Soviet Russia, what Sinyavsky has called its ‘outrageous small-mindedness’:3 the inescapable bureaucracy; the constant shortages of everyday necessities, especially living space; and people’s strange eagerness to denounce one another.
Many of Zoshchenko’s stories allude to the classics of Russian literature, above all to Gogol. The theft, or loss, of items of clothing is a motif that recurs especially often; a dozen or more stories can be read as a commentary on ‘The Greatcoat’. ‘The Galosh’ also alludes to Pisarev, a utilitarian philosopher who claimed to value a good pair of galoshes more than any work of art. And ‘The Bathhouse’ is a parodic re-creation of Dostoyevsky’s infernal bathhouse in his House of the Dead.
‘Electrification’, perhaps Zoshchenko’s masterpiece, works on many levels. It can be read as a study of what psychoanalysts call ‘resistance’, the tendency to resist healing. What proves unbearable is not darkness and filth but light and cleanliness; the narrator’s wife cuts the wires after rather than before the apartment is redecorated. Politically, the story is still more bold. ‘Communism is Soviet Power plus the Electrification of the Whole Country’ was one of Lenin’s most famous slogans; Zoshchenko is casting doubt on the whole Communist project.
Zoshchenko is not only one of the funniest of Russian writers but also one of the most sober; no one is more aware – as he shows in ‘The Hat’ – of the harm carried out in the name of grand visions of progress. The cramped harsh world he portrays is a paradoxically eloquent assertion of the importance of what is so strikingly absent from it: small acts of kindness.
Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida (Penguin Classics) Page 33