Ivanov was about to enter a compartment, to lie down and sleep; he no longer wanted a last look at the house where he had lived and where his children still did live: why torment oneself to no purpose? He looked out to see how far it was to the crossing – and there it was in front of him. It was here the railway crossed the track that led into the town; on this track lay wisps of straw and hay that had fallen off carts, and willow twigs and horse dung. There was rarely anyone on the track, except on the two market days of the week; just occasionally there would be a peasant on his way to the town with a full cart of hay, or on the way back to his village. That was how it was now: the track was deserted. All he could see, in the distance, running down the street that led into the track, were two children. One of them was bigger and one smaller, and the big one had taken the smaller one by the hand and was hurrying it along, but the small one, no matter how fast it tried to move its little legs, could not keep up with the bigger one. Then the bigger one began to drag the smaller one. They stopped at the last house of the town and looked towards the station, evidently wondering whether or not to go that way. Then they looked at the passenger train going over the crossing and began to run down the cart track, straight towards the train, as if suddenly wanting to reach it before it passed by.
Ivanov’s carriage had passed the crossing. Ivanov picked up his bag, meaning to go through into the carriage and lie down for a sleep on the upper bunk where other passengers would not disturb him. But what about those two children? Had they managed to reach the train before the last carriage went by? Ivanov leaned out and looked back.
The two children, hand in hand, were still running along the track towards the crossing. They both fell down together, got up and ran on. The bigger one raised his one free hand and, turning his face towards Ivanov as the train passed by, began to beckon to someone, as if calling them to come back to him. Then they both fell down again. Ivanov could see that the bigger child had a felt boot on one foot and a rubber galosh on the other, which was why he kept falling.
Ivanov closed his eyes, not wanting to see and feel the pain of the exhausted children now lying on the ground, and then felt a kind of heat in his chest, as if the heart imprisoned and pining within him had been beating long and in vain all his life and had only now beaten its way to freedom, filling his entire being with warmth and awe. He suddenly recognized everything he had ever known before, but much more precisely and more truthfully. Previously, he had sensed the life of others through a barrier of pride and self-interest, but now, all of a sudden, he had touched another life with his naked heart.
Once more, from the carriage steps, he looked down the train towards the distant children. He knew now that they were his own children, Petya and Nastya. They must have seen him when the train was going over the crossing, and Petya had beckoned him home to their mother, but he had paid no attention, he had been thinking of something else and had not recognized his own children.
Now Petya and Nastya were a long way behind, running along the sandy path beside the rails; Petya was still holding little Nastya by the hand and dragging her along behind him when she was unable to move her legs quickly enough.
Ivanov threw his kitbag out of the carriage onto the ground, and then climbed down to the bottom step and got off the train, onto the sandy path along which his children were running after him.
First published in 1946
Translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler and Angela Livingstone
DANIIL IVANOVICH KHARMS (1905–42)
Kharms was born in St Petersburg; his real name was Yuvachov. His father, a member of the terrorist organization ‘The People’s Will’, had been arrested as a young man; after four years in solitary confinement and eight years of penal servitude on Sakhalin Island, he returned to St Petersburg in 1895 and remained a devout member of the Orthodox Church for the rest of his life. His son seems to have inherited something of both his courage and his spiritual concerns.
In his early twenties Kharms enrolled at a technical college but failed to graduate; later he enrolled on a film course, which he also failed to complete. Around 1927–8 Kharms helped to found the modernist OBERIU (Association for Real Art), one of the last independent Soviet artistic groupings; the poet Nikolay Zabolotsky was also a member. The pseudonym ‘Kharms’ may be derived from the English ‘harm’, ‘charm’ or even ‘Holmes’ (Sherlock Holmes has always been popular in Russia). During the 1930s, after official criticism of the OBERIU, Kharms earned his living by writing for children, publishing twelve books of stories between 1928 and 1940.
‘The Old Woman’ is by far the longest of his stories for adults, many of which are no more than ten lines. His short pieces include thirty numbered texts that constitute the cycle known as ‘Incidents’ or ‘Happenings’. He also wrote plays, the most important of which is Yelizaveta Bam, and poetry. Most of his adult work was published only after his death, although in 1937 he published a children’s poem that included the lines:
With a knapsack and a cudgel a man set off from home;
He walked along, he walked along, so keen was he to roam…
And then one dawn, one bright clear dawn, he went into a wood;
He never has been seen again – just why’s not understood.
After this poem, which it is now difficult not to read as an evocation of one of the countless arbitrary arrests of the time, Kharms was unable to publish anything for a year. Arrested in 1941, after the outbreak of war, he died in a Leningrad prison hospital. It was not until 1988 that his work was first published in book form in the Soviet Union.
With its emphasis on guilt, the absurd and the spectural, ‘The Old Woman’, like ‘The Queen of Spades’, ‘The Greatcoat’ and much of Dostoyevsky, is very much a St Petersburg story. Kharms invokes Pushkin’s Countess in the opening lines: the time given by the old woman, ‘a quarter to three’, is the time the dead Countess appeared to Hermann. The story is in fact so dense with literary reminiscence that it begins to seem as if the narrator either does not have a story of his own or else is being prevented by some external force from telling it. This is part of what makes ‘The Old Woman’ so powerful an evocation of alienation
THE OLD WOMAN
And between them takes place the following conversation.
Hamsun1
Out in the yard stands an old woman, holding a wall clock in her hands. I walk past the old woman, stop and ask her, ‘What time is it?’
‘Look for yourself,’ the old woman says to me.
I look, and I see the clock has no hands.
‘There are no hands,’ I say.
The old woman looks at the clock face and says to me, ‘It’s a quarter to three.’
‘Ah, I see. Thank you very much,’ I say, and walk away.
The old woman shouts something after me, but I carry on without looking round. I go out onto the street and walk on the sunny side. The spring sun is very pleasant. I walk, screw up my eyes and smoke my pipe. At the corner of Sadovaya Street, I run into Sakerdon Mikhailovich. We say hello, stop and talk to one another for a long time. I get fed up with standing on the street and I invite Sakerdon Mikhailovich to a cellar bar. We drink vodka, eat hard-boiled eggs and sprats; then we say goodbye, and I walk on alone.
Suddenly I remember I’ve forgotten to turn off the electric stove at home. I feel very annoyed. I turn round and start to walk home. The day had got off to such a good start, and now something’s already gone wrong. I shouldn’t have gone outside.
I get back home and take off my jacket; I take my watch out of my waistcoat pocket and hang it on a nail; then I lock the door and lie down on the sofa. I’ll lie there and try to get some sleep.
Out on the street, boys are shouting, making a horrible din. I lie there and think up ways of putting them to death. The one I like best would be to infect them with tetanus so they suddenly stop moving. Then their parents drag them back home. They lie in their little beds and can’t even eat, because their mouths won’t open. T
hey’re fed artificially. After a week the tetanus wears off, but the children are so weak they have to lie another whole month in bed. Then they slowly begin to get better, but I give them tetanus a second time and they all croak.
I lie on the sofa with my eyes open and can’t get to sleep. I remember the old woman with the clock, the one I saw in the yard today, and I feel pleased there were no hands on her clock. Only the other day I saw a revolting kitchen clock in a used-goods store; its hands had been made to look like a knife and fork.
My God! I still haven’t turned off the electric stove. I jump up and switch it off, then I lie down again on the sofa and try to fall asleep. I close my eyes. I don’t feel sleepy. Spring sun shines in through the window, straight onto me. I start to get hot. I get up and sit in the armchair by the window.
Now I do feel like sleeping, but I’m not going to let myself. I’ll take pen and paper and I’ll write. Inside me I feel a terrible strength. Yesterday I thought through everything. It’ll be the story of a miracle worker who lives in our time and doesn’t work miracles. He knows that he is a miracle worker and can work any miracle he likes, but he does nothing. He’s thrown out of his apartment. He knows he need only lift a finger and he could keep his apartment, but he does nothing; he moves out submissively and lives outside the town in a shed. He could turn this shed into a fine brick house, but he doesn’t; he goes on living in the shed and in the end he dies, not having worked a single miracle in his entire life.
I sit and rub my hands with glee. Sakerdon Mikhailovich will burst with envy. He doesn’t think I can write a work of genius any more. Quick, quick, to work! Down with dreams and indolence! I shall write for eighteen hours on end!
I tremble all over with impatience. I can’t work out what to do: I needed to take pen and paper, but I grabbed all kinds of other things, not the ones I needed at all. I ran about the room: from window to table, from table to stove, then to the sofa and back again to the window. I choked from the flame that burned in my breast. It’s only five o’clock now. A whole day lies ahead, and the evening, and a whole night.
I stand in the middle of the room. What am I thinking about? After all, it’s already twenty past five. I must write. I move the table towards the window and sit down at it. In front of me there’s a sheet of squared paper, in my hand – a pen.
My heart is still beating too fast, and my hand trembles. I wait, so as to calm down a little. I put the pen down and fill my pipe. The sun shines straight at me; I screw up my eyes and light my pipe.
Now a crow flies past the window. I look out and see a man with an artificial leg walking along the pavement. He makes a loud knocking noise with his leg and his stick.
‘So,’ I say to myself, and keep on looking out of the window.
The sun hides behind the chimney of the building opposite. The chimney’s shadow runs along the roof, flies across the street and falls on my face. I must make use of the shadow and write a few words about the miracle worker. I seize the pen and write:
‘The miracle worker was tall.’
That’s all I can write. I sit till I begin to feel hungry. Then I get up and go over to the cupboard where I keep food. I rummage about but find nothing. A lump of sugar and that’s all.
Someone knocks at the door.
‘Who’s there?’
No one answers. I open the door and see before me the old woman who in the morning had been standing out in the yard with the clock. I’m very surprised and I can’t say anything.
‘Here I am,’ says the old woman, and comes into my room.
I stand by the door and don’t know what to do: should I throw the old woman out or, on the contrary, should I ask her to sit down? But the old woman goes to my armchair by the window and sits down in it anyway.
‘Close the door and lock it,’ the old woman says to me.
I close and lock the door.
‘Kneel down,’ says the old woman.
And I get down on my knees.
But then I begin to see the full absurdity of my position. Why am I kneeling in front of some old woman? What indeed is this woman doing in my room, sitting in my favourite armchair? Why haven’t I thrown this old woman out?
‘Now listen,’ I say. ‘What right have you got to make yourself at home in my room and boss me about? I really don’t want to be kneeling.’
‘Quite right!’ says the old woman. ‘You must lie on your stomach now and bury your face in the floor.’
I at once obey her command.
Before me I see precisely traced squares. Pain in my shoulder and right hip makes me change position. I have been lying face down; now, with great difficulty, I get up onto my knees. All my limbs have gone numb and will hardly bend. I look round and see myself in my own room, on my knees in the middle of the floor. Consciousness and memory slowly return to me. I look round the room once more and see that someone appears to be sitting in the armchair by the window. It’s not all that light in the room: it must be night now, white night. I look hard. Good Lord! Is that old woman really still sitting in my armchair? I crane my neck and look. Yes, of course it’s the old woman. Her head has drooped onto her chest; she must have fallen asleep.
I get up and hobble over to her. The old woman’s head has drooped onto her chest; her arms hang down over the sides of the chair. I feel like grabbing this woman and shoving her out of the door.
‘Listen,’ I say. ‘You’re in my room. I need to work. Please leave.’
The old woman doesn’t move. I bend down and look into the old woman’s face. Her mouth is half open; her false teeth have come loose and they’re sticking out of her mouth. And suddenly I understand: the old woman has died.
I’m seized by a terrible feeling of irritation. Why did she die in my room? I can’t bear dead people. And now what? I’ll have to sort out this carrion, I’ll have to go and talk with the caretaker and the house manager, I’ll have to explain what the old woman was doing in my room. I looked with hatred at the old woman. But maybe she isn’t dead? I feel her forehead. Her forehead’s cold. So is her hand. What should I do?
I light my pipe and sit on the sofa. A mindless rage wells up in me.
‘What a bitch!’ I say out loud.
Like a sack, the dead old woman sits there in my chair. Her teeth are sticking out of her mouth. She’s like a dead horse.
‘What a horrible sight,’ I say, but I can’t cover the old woman with a newspaper, because anything can happen under cover of a newspaper.
I can hear movement the other side of the wall: my neighbour’s getting up, he’s an engine driver. All I need now is for him to sniff out that I’ve got a dead old woman sitting in my room. I listen to my neighbour’s footsteps. Why is he being so slow? It’s half past five now! He should have left long ago. My God! He’s making himself a cup of tea. Through the wall I can hear the noise of the primus. Oh, if only this damned engine driver would hurry up and go.
I get on the sofa and put my legs up. Eight minutes pass, but my neighbour’s tea still isn’t ready and I can still hear the primus. I close my eyes and doze off.
I dream that my neighbour goes out and that I go out onto the staircase with him and slam the door behind me. It’s a spring lock, I don’t have the key on me, and I can’t get back into the apartment. I’ll have to ring and wake the other tenants, and that’s not good at all. I’m standing on the landing, wondering what to do, and suddenly I see I don’t have any hands. I tilt my head so I can see more clearly if I have any hands: to one side I can see a knife sticking out where there should be a hand, to the other – a fork.
‘Look,’ I say to Sakerdon Mikhailovich, who for some reason is sitting there on a folding chair. ‘Look,’ I say to him, ‘at what’s happened to my hands.’
Sakerdon Mikhailovich sits there in silence, and I see it’s not the real Sakerdon Mikhailovich but one made out of clay.
Then I wake up and I understand at once that I’m lying in my room on a sofa and that a dead old woman is sitting in
an armchair by the window.
I quickly turn my head towards her. There isn’t any old woman in the chair. I look at the empty armchair and I’m filled with a wild joy. It must have all been a dream. Only where did the dream start? Did the old woman come into my room yesterday? Maybe that was a dream too. I came back home yesterday because I’d forgotten to switch off the electric stove. But maybe even that was a dream. Anyway, it’s a good thing I don’t have a dead old woman in my room and that I don’t have to go to the house manager and sort out the corpse.
Still, how long have I been asleep for? I looked at my watch: half past nine, in the morning, no doubt.
Lord! The things one dreams in a dream!
I put my feet on the ground, I was about to get up and suddenly I saw the dead old woman, lying on the floor behind the table, next to the armchair. She was lying face up. The old woman’s false teeth had jumped right out of her mouth and one tooth had sunk into one of her nostrils. Her arms were bent back under her torso and couldn’t be seen; bony legs in dirty white woollen stockings poked out from beneath her skirt, which had ridden up.
‘Bitch!’ I shouted. I ran over to the old woman and kicked her in the chin.
Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida (Penguin Classics) Page 40