by Yuri Olesha
“Who’s whistling?” cried Kavalerov in a voice ringing with fear.
A piercing whistle soared over the immediate area. Kavalerov turned away for a second, hiding his face in his hands, the way people turn away from a draft. Ivan ran from the fence to Kavalerov, his little feet shuffling quickly; the whistle flew after him. Ivan seemed to be sliding, not running, strung on a blinding whistle ray.
“She scares me! She scares me!” Kavalerov heard Ivan’s gasping whisper.
Grabbing hands, they ran downhill to the curses of an alarmed tramp whom at first, from high above, they’d taken for an old harness someone had thrown away.
The tramp, torn from sleep in one fell swoop, was sitting on a hummock, rifling through the grass—looking for a rock. They turned down a lane and were gone.
“She scares me,” said Ivan quickly. “She hates me … She betrayed me … She’s going to kill me …”
Once Kavalerov came to his senses, he was ashamed of his cowardice. He remembered that when he saw Ivan turn tail and run something else rose up in his field of vision, something he was too scared to let leave an impression.
“Listen,” he said, “what rubbish! It was just a boy whistling on two fingers. I saw him. A boy popped up on the fence and whistled … Yeah, a boy …”
“I told you,” Ivan smiled, “I told you you’d start looking for all kinds of explanations. And I begged you to pinch yourself harder.”
They argued. Ivan went into the beer stand he finally found. He didn’t invite Kavalerov to go with him. Kavalerov wandered, not knowing the way, searching for the sound of a tram. But at the next corner Kavalerov stamped his foot and went into the beer stand. Ivan greeted him with a smile and a hand pointing to a chair.
“So tell me,” Kavalerov implored. “Answer me, why are you torturing me? Why are you trying to trick me? There isn’t any machine, you see! There can’t be any such machine! It’s a lie, a delusion! Why are you lying to us?”
Exhausted, Kavalerov lowered himself into a chair.
“Listen, Kavalerov. Order yourself a beer, and I’ll tell you a tale. Listen.”
THE TALE OF TWO BROTHERS MEETING
The Two Bits’ delicate, growing frame was surrounded by a forest.
A forest of, well, beams, tiers, staircases, entrances, passageways, and awnings, but in the crowd gathered at its base the personalities and eyes were all different. People smiled in variously similar ways. Some inclined to simplicity said that the structure was crosshatched.
Someone else commented, “A wooden structure isn’t supposed to rise too high. The eye doesn’t respect boards that rise too high. Forests diminish a structure’s grandeur. The very tallest mast seems so easy to snap. That hulk of wood is vulnerable, no matter what. You immediately wonder about a fire.”
Someone else exclaimed, “On the other hand, look! Beams stretched out like strings! Just like a guitar—a guitar!”
To which the previous one commented: “Well, you see, I was talking about the wood’s vulnerability. Its fate is to serve music.”
Then someone’s mocking voice interjected, “What about the brass? I for one recognize only wind instruments.”
A schoolboy saw in the distribution of the boards an arithmetic no one had noticed. But he never managed to determine what the crosses of multiplication referred to or where the equal signs led; the resemblance vanished in an instant. It was too shaky.
“The siege of Troy,” thought the poet. “Siege towers.”
And the comparison was reinforced by the appearance of the musicians. Hiding behind their horns, they crawled down a kind of wooden trench to the base of the structure.
The night was black, the lamps white and spherical, the panels unusually red, the gaps under the wooden gangways deathly black. The lamps swung, their chains clanking. The shadow seemed to wag its eyebrows. Around the street lamps a swarm of midges flew up and perished. From far away, making the windows along the way wink, the outlines of outlying houses torn off by street lamps flew past and rushed at the structure—and then (until the windblown lamp calmed down) the forest came to stormy life. Everything was set in motion, and like a triple-decker sailing ship, the structure sailed toward the crowd.
Andrei Babichev walked across wood and onto wood to the base of the structure. A podium had been built there. The orator had been given a staircase, and a platform, and a handrail, and a light that blinded the black backdrop—behind and directly above him. There was so much light that even distant observers could see the water level in the pitcher on the presidium’s table.
Babichev moved above the crowd, very much in color, and shining as if he were made of tin, like a little electric figure. He was supposed to give a speech. Below, in their naturally formed shelter, the actors were preparing for their performance. A hobo, invisible and incomprehensible to the crowd, began to wail sweetly. Incomprehensible, too, was the disk of the drum, which was turned to face the crowd and which the harshness of the lighting made silver. In their wooden canyon, the actors put on their makeup. Each step of the man striding overhead shook the boards above, sprinkling them with a haze of sawdust.
Babichev’s appearance on the podium cheered the audience up. He was taken for the master of ceremonies. He was too fresh, deliberate, and theatrical in his appearance.
“Fat! Look how fat he is!” one man in the crowd admired.
“Bravo!” the shout went up in various places.
But “The floor goes to Comrade Babichev” was announced from the presidium—and the joking vanished without a trace. Many stood on tiptoe. Their attention strained. And everyone felt good. It felt very good to see Babichev for two reasons: first, he was a famous man; and second, he was fat. Fatness made the famous man one of them. They gave Babichev an ovation. Half of the applause was for being fat. He gave his speech.
He talked about what the Two Bits was going to do—how many meals, what capacities it would have, what percentage of nutrition—and the benefits of communal dining.
He talked about the feeding of children—that at the Two Bits, he said, there would be a children’s section—about the scientific preparation of the milk porridge, about children’s growth, the spine, anemia. Like any orator, he looked into the distance, over the heads of the audience down front, and so to the very end of his speech remained indifferent to what was going on below him, under the podium. But meanwhile a little man in a bowler had already long been distracting the spectators in front; they had stopped listening to the orator, riveted by the conduct of the little man who, actually, was being perfectly peaceable. True, he had taken a risk by leaving the crowd, clambering over the rope between him and the podium; true, he was standing apart, which obviously demonstrated he had certain rights, which either belonged to him or else he had simply usurped … He was standing with his back to the audience and leaning on the rope, or, rather, half sitting on the rope, hanging his backside across it, and oblivious to the total chaos that would ensue if the rope broke, as calm as calm could be, and evidently deriving great pleasure from swinging there.
He may have been listening to the orator, or, possibly, observing the actors. The ballerina’s dress flew up behind the crossbars, and all kinds of funny faces peered through the little wooden window.
And—yes! The main thing, after all, was what? He, this eccentric little man, had brought along a pillow. He was carrying a big old pillow in a yellowed pillow-case that had been slept on by many heads. And after he had settled on the rope, he lowered the pillow to the ground, and the pillow sat there next to him, like a pig.
When the orator finished his speech, he wiped his lips with his handkerchief with one hand and poured himself water from the pitcher with the other, and while the applause was dying down and the audience turned their attention, prepared to listen and watch the actors, the man with the pillow, lifting his backside off the rope, stood at his full short height, stretched out his arm with the pillow, and declaimed loudly, “Comrades! I would like to speak!”
/>
Then the orator saw his brother Ivan. His fists clenched. His brother Ivan started going up the stairs to the podium. He ascended slowly. The man from the presidium ran toward the barrier. He was supposed to stop the stranger by his gestures and voice. But his hand hung in the air, and his arm dropped in jerks, exactly as if he were counting the stranger’s steps up the stairs.
“One … two … five … ive …”
“It’s hypnosis!” people in the crowd screamed.
The stranger was walking and carrying his pillow by the nape. And there he was on the podium. A remarkable, electric little figure appeared on the black backdrop. The backdrop was black as slate. The backdrop was so black, people imagined chalk lines there—they flickered in people’s eyes. The little figure halted.
“The pillow!” the whisper ran through the crowd.
And the stranger began:
“Comrades! They want to take away your principal wealth: your home and hearth. The steeds of revolution, thundering up the black staircases, crushing your children and your cats, smashing your beloved hot plates and bricks, want to burst into your kitchens. Women! Your pride and glory—your hearth—is under attack. Mothers and wives, they want to smash your kitchens with the elephants of revolution!
“What was he saying? He was mocking your pans, your kettles, your stewpots, your right to stick your nipple between your baby’s lips … He’s teaching you to forget—what? What does he want to push out of your heart? The family home—your home, your dear home! He wants to turn you into tramps across the savage fields of history. Wives, he spits in your soup. Mothers, he dreams of wiping your babies’ resemblance to you—the sacred, beautiful family resemblance—off their little faces. He’s breaking into your nooks and crannies, scurrying like a rat over the shelves, he’s crawling under the beds, under the nightshirts, in the hair of your armpits. Drive him into Hell! … Here is a pillow. I am the king of pillows. Tell him: Each of us wants to sleep on his own pillow. Don’t touch our pillows! Our still unfledged heads, as rusty as chicken feathers, lay on these pillows, our kisses fell on them in a night of love, we died on these—and the people we killed died on them, too. Don’t touch our pillows! Don’t summon us! Don’t lure us, don’t tempt us! What can you offer to replace our ability to love, hate, hope, cry, regret, and forgive? … Here is a pillow. Our coat of arms. Our banner. Here is a pillow. Bullets get stuck in pillows. We’ll use our pillow to smother you …”
His speech broke off. He had said too much as it was. It was as if he’d been seized by his last phrase, the way you can be seized by the arm: his phrase was bent behind his back. He stopped short, suddenly frightened, and the real reason for his fright was that the man he was fulminating against was standing there in silence, listening. The whole scene could actually have been taken for a performance. That’s how many did take it. Actors often do appear from the audience, after all. Especially since the real actors were drifting out of the wooden shed. Yes, like nothing so much as a butterfly the ballerina flitted out from under the boards. An eccentric in a gorilla suit climbed onto the podium, grabbing onto the crossbar with one hand and with the other holding an odd-looking instrument—a very long horn with three bells. And since you could expect anything from a man in a gorilla suit and a red wig, the impression was easily formed of him climbing by some magical means up that very same pipe. Someone in a tailcoat was dashing about under the podium, trying to corral the scattering actors, who were struggling to see this extraordinary orator. You see, the actors, too, assumed that one of the showmen invited to participate in the concert had come up with a stunt, had brought along a pillow, had got into an argument with the speaker, and now his usual number would begin. But no. In terror, the eccentric slid down that idiotic pipe! Alarm began to spread. But it wasn’t the words the stranger had scattered so luxuriantly on the crowd that sowed the disturbance. On the contrary, the little man’s speech was perceived as intentional, a stunt. Now the ensuing silence raised the hairs under many caps.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” asked the little man, dropping the pillow.
The giant’s voice (no one knew that this was brother talking to brother), the giant’s brief cry was heard by the entire square, the windows, the entryways. Old men sat up in bed.
“Who are you fighting, scoundrel?” asked the giant.
His face crumpled. His face was leaking like a wineskin, from everywhere—his nostrils, lips, ears—some kind of dark liquid was oozing from his eyes, and everyone shut their own eyes in horror … But he hadn’t said this. The boards around him had, the concrete, the braces, the lines, the formulas, which had taken on flesh. It was their fury that was bursting him open.
But his brother Ivan did not retreat (everyone was actually expecting him to retreat and retreat and plop down on his own pillow). On the contrary. Suddenly he found his strength, straightened up, walked toward the barrier, put his hand over his eyes like a visor, and called out, “Where are you? I’m waiting for you! Ophelia!”
A wind blew up. There had been gusts, actually, the whole time, and the lamps had been swaying … Those present were by now used to the shadow figures (rectangles, Pythagorean trousers, Hippocratic crescents) combining and disintegrating—a triple-decker sailing ship of a structure was steadily breaking free of its mooring and advancing on the crowd—so that the new gust from which many shoulders turned and many heads bowed would have been met by ordinary displeasure and immediately forgotten had it not been for …
Afterward people said it flew up from behind and over their heads.
The huge ship sailed at the crowd, wood creaking, wind howling, and the black flying body—like a bird against the rigging—struck a tall beam and came crashing down, smashing a lamp.
“Scared, brother?” asked Ivan. “Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll hurl her at your forest. She’s going to destroy your structure. The screws will unscrew themselves, the nuts will fall off, the concrete will crack like a leprous body. All right? She’ll teach every beam how to disobey you. All right? It’s all going to come down. She’s going to turn every number of yours into a useless flower. Here, brother Andrei, is what I can do …”
“Ivan, you’re seriously ill. You’re raving, Ivan,” the man they’d been expecting storms from spoke gently and sincerely. “Who are you talking about? Who is ‘she’? I don’t see anything! Who is going to turn my figures into flowers? The wind just knocked a lamp against a beam, the lamp just broke. Ivan, Ivan …”
And his brother took a step toward Ivan and reached out. But Ivan fended him off.
“Look!” he cried, raising his hand. “No, you’re not looking the right way … There, there … more to the left … Do you see? What’s that sitting there, on the beam? See? Drink some water. Pour Comrade Babichev some water … What’s that perched there on the pole? Do you see?!! Do you believe?!! Are you afraid?!!”
“It’s a shadow!” said Andrei. “Brother, it’s just a shadow. Let’s get out of here. I’ll give you a ride. Let the show begin. The actors are tired of waiting. The public is waiting. Let’s go, Vanya, let’s go …”
“A shadow, is it? It’s no shadow, Andryusha. It’s the machine you’ve been laughing at … That’s me sitting on the pole, Andryusha, me, the old world, my era is sitting there. The mind of my era, Andryusha, which knew how to compose both songs and formulas. A mind full of dreams, which you want to destroy.”
Ivan raised his hand and shouted, “Go on, Ophelia! I’m ordering you!”
And then, after perching on the beam, it flashed on and off as it turned, spun, rattled, and stamped like a bird, and vanished into the dark gap between the crossed boards.
There was panic, a stampede, people were fleeing, howling. But it crawled along, making its way across the boards. Suddenly it peered out again, emitting a ray of orange light, and whistled something; elusive in shape, like a weightless shadow, spiderlike, it leaped perpendicularly, higher, into the chaos of boards, and again perched on an edge, and looked aro
und …
“Do it, Ophelia! Do it!” shouted Ivan, racing around the podium. “Did you hear what he was saying about the hearth? I order you to destroy the building …”
People were fleeing, and their flight was accompanied by the flight of the clouds and a stormy fugue in the sky.
The Two Bits came crashing down …
The storyteller fell silent …
“A drum lay flat amid the ruins, and I, Ivan Babichev, scrambled onto it. Ophelia hurried toward me, dragging the trampled, dying Andrei.
“‘Lower me onto the pillow, brother,’ he whispered. ‘I want to die on a pillow. I surrender, Ivan … ’
“I put the pillow on my knee, and he leaned his head against it.
“‘We won, Ophelia,’ I said.”
7
SUNDAY morning Ivan Babichev paid a visit to Kavalerov.
“Today I want to show you Valya,” he said with great ceremony.
They headed out. Their stroll could have been called enchanting. It was made through an empty, festive town. They circled around Theater Square. There was almost no traffic. The ascent up Tverskaya was blue. Sunday morning—one of the best views of a Moscow summer. The lighting, not fragmented by traffic, remained intact, as if the sun had just risen. In this way they walked along the geometric planes of light and shadow or, rather, through a stereoscopic body, because the light and shadow intersected not only along the plane but in the air as well. Before they reached the Moscow City Council building, they found themselves in full shadow. But in a gap between two bodies a large mass of light fell. It was thick, almost corporeal: here you could no longer doubt that light was tangible. The dust hanging in it could have passed for the oscillation of the ether.
And here was the lane connecting Tverskaya and Nikitskaya. They stood there admiring a blooming garden.