Sentimental Tales

by Mikhail Zoshchenko

  He ordered that the patient be placed in a chair, while he, crudely mocking doctors and medicine, went off to the kitchen, there to begin his scientific preparations.

  Aided by the brother of mercy, he drew a bucketful of cold water, then scurried through the door on tiptoes, and, with a sudden shout, dumped the water on the head of the patient, who had been blithely sitting on his chair, understanding little of what was happening.

  Suddenly forgetting about his ailment, Volodin looked to be spoiling for a fight. In general, the procedure put him in a violent state—he started driving the public out of the apartment and making moves to pummel his homegrown doctor.

  But soon enough Volodin calmed down and, having changed his attire, dozed off with his head on his moppet’s knees.

  The next morning, he rose in perfect health and, after shaving and putting himself in order, returned to his usual way of life.

  The author, of course, is not about to argue that this home remedy had a healing effect. In all likelihood, the disease went away by itself, especially since three to four days is a pretty long duration—although, to be sure, the medical profession has witnessed this particular disease last even longer. So who knows? Perhaps the cool water did indeed have a benign effect on our patient’s befuddled brains, thus accelerating the healing process.

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  A few days later Volodin and his moppet made it official, and he moved in to her modest apartment.

  Their honeymoon was a quiet affair, very serene.

  The brother of mercy’s remaining anger gave way to pure graciousness, and he even paid the young people a couple of visits. On one of these occasions he graciously borrowed three rubles, though it must be said he never actually promised to return the money. He did, however, give a solemn promise not to kill or lay a further finger on Volodin under any circumstances.

  With regard to his earnings and, in general, his salary, Volodin had to admit that he had detracted from it. Sure, he had fibbed a bit, wishing to test her love. There’s nothing offensive about that.

  While making his confession, he again begged her to tell him whether she’d known he was lying, or whether she hadn’t known and had decided to marry him out of disinterested affection.

  The little lady, giggling thoughtfully, assured him of the latter, saying that, at first, she didn’t know he was lying and was really afraid he was flat broke. But then she saw clear through his transparent actions. Oh, she didn’t object, really—he had a legitimate right to get to the bottom of his future spouse.

  Listening to this womanly talk, Volodin cursed himself in his thoughts, calling himself an ass and a muttonhead, because he hadn’t managed to check the young lady thoroughly and catch her out.

  But then, of course, what choice did he have? Especially since his malignant ailment had done him such an ill turn, robbing him of his will and energy and totally muddling his head. He couldn’t have found a fitting solution to his problem in that state. What’s more, the young lady had simply outplayed him, trumping him with the ace of her condition. But somehow, some way, everything would come to light on its own in the future.

  As for poor Margarita Gopkis, she continued to hold a grudge. One day, upon meeting Volodin out on the street, she refused to respond to his reserved bow, turning her profile sideways.

  This minor event nevertheless weighed heavily on Volodin, who had lately begun to wish that life were smooth and sweet in every regard, and that the air were full of fluttering doves.

  That day he again grew somewhat anxious, recalling the recent events of his life.

  He couldn’t sleep all night. He tossed and turned in bed, gazing gloomily, searchingly at his spouse.

  The young lady was fast asleep, sniffling and smacking her parted lips.

  “It was all calculation,” thought Volodin. “Of course, she’d known all along. There’s no way she would have married him if he was really broke.” In his anguish and anxiety, Volodin got out of bed, paced about the room for a while, then walked over to the window. Pressing his blazing forehead against the glass, he stared out at the dark garden, with its trees swaying in the wind.

  Then, worried that the cool night air might trigger his disease again, Volodin hurried back to bed. He lay there for a long time, his eyes open, tracing the pattern on the wallpaper with his finger.

  “Oh, there’s no doubt—she’d known I was lying,” Volodin thought again as he drifted off.

  But he rose the next morning, cheerful and calm, and tried not to think of such crude matters any longer. And if these matters did occur to him, he would sigh and dismiss them with a wave of his little hand, resigning himself to the fact that no one ever did anything without self-interest.

  1929

  NOTES

  INTRODUCTION

  1. E. B. White, “Some Remarks on Humor” (1941), in The Second Tree from the Corner (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1954), 173.

  2. M. Ol’shevets, “Obyvatel’skii nabat (O ‘Sentimental’nykh povestiakh’ M. Zoshchenko,” Izvestiia (August 14, 1927). Reprinted in Litso i maska Mikhaila Zoshchenko, ed. Iurii V. Tomashevskii (Moscow: Olimp, 1994), 148–152.

  3. See Gregory Carleton, The Politics of Reception: Critical Constructions of Mikhail Zoshchenko (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998), 61–62.

  4. For a broad introduction to Soviet culture and society under NEP, see Sheila Fitzpatrick, Alexander Rabinowitch, and Stites, eds., Russia in the Era of NEP: Explorations in Soviet Society and Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991).

  5. On the Proletarian Culture (Proltkult) movement, see Edward J. Brown, The Proletarian Episode in Russian Literature, 1928–1932 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1953), James Francis Murphy, The Proletarian Moment: The Controversy over Leftism in Literature (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991), and Mark D. Steinberg, Proletarian Imagination: Self, Modernity, and the Sacred in Russia, 1910–1925 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002).

  6. Mikhail Chumandrin, “Chei pisatel’—Mikhail Zoshchenko?,” printed in Zvezda, no. 3 (1930), 206–219. Reprinted in Litso i maska Mikhaila Zoshchenko, 161–178. Discussed, along with other critical responses, in Carleton, 67–68, and throughout.

  7. Chumandrin, in Litso i maska Mikhaila Zoshchenko, 172, 178.

  8. Zoshchenko, “O sebe,” in Begemotnik: Entsiklopediia “Begemota”: Avtobiografii, portrety, sharzhi i izbrannye rasskazy, stikhi i risunki nashikh iumoristov—pisatelei i khudozhnikov (Leningrad, 1928). Reprinted in Sobranie sochinenii, ed. I. N. Sukhikh (Moscow: Vremia, 2008), 105–107. My translation.

  9. This was established by Iurii Tomashevskii. See his “Chronological Canvas of the Life and Work of Mikhail Zoshchenko” in Litso i maska Mikhaila Zoshchenko, 340; an English translation of this “Chronological Canvas” appears in Russian Studies in Literature 33, no. 2 (Spring 1997): 60–92. Russian Studies in Literature 33, nos. 1 and 2 (1997) feature a number of valuable articles on Zoshchenko. Tomashevskii (1932–1995) was Secretary of the Commission to Preserve Zoshchenko’s Literary Heritage and compiled an indispensable volume of reminiscences, Vospominaniia o Mikhaile Zoshchenko (St. Petersburg: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1995). Linda Hart Scatton’s Mikhail Zoshchenko: Evolution of a Writer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), originally published in 1993 and revised in 2009, is an excellent English-language resource on the author’s life and work. A.B. Murphy’s Mikhail Zoshchenko: A Literary Profile (Oxford: William A. Meeuws, 1981) was the first book-length study of Zoshchenko in English.

  10. Zoshchenko, “A Wonderful Audacity,” translated by Rose France, in 1917: Stories and Poems from the Russian Revolution, edited by Boris Dralyuk (London: Pushkin Press, 2016), 206–208.

  11. Zoshchenko, “O sebe.”

  12. See Hongor Oulanoff, The Serapion Brothers: Theory and Practice (The Hague, Mouton, 1966) and The Serapion Brothers: A Critical Anthology, ed. Gary Kern and Christopher Collins (Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis, 1975).

  13. Zoshchenko, “O sebe, o
b ideologii i eshche koe o chem,” Literaturnye Zapiski, no. 3 (August 1, 1922). Reprinted in Sobranie sochinenii, 101–103.

  14. For more on Zoshchenko’s style, in the context of the Russian literary tradition of skaz (intentionally nonstandard, markedly oral prose), see Jeremy Hicks, Mikhail Zoshchenko and the Poetics of Skaz (Nottingham, England: Astra, 2000).

  15. Zoshchenko, “O sebe, o kritikakh i o svoei rabote,” in Mikhail Zoshchenko. Stat’i i materialy, ed. B. V. Kazanskii and Iu. N. Tynianov (Leningrad: Academia, 1928), 10. Reprinted in Sobranie sochinenii, 108–111.

  16. Zoshchenko, “O sebe, o kritikakh.”

  17. Kolenkorov’s very name is indicative of his unsuitability, as well as of his odd ontological status. As Lesley Milne points out, “Kolenkorov’s name is derived from the word kolenkor, or ‘calico,’ that plain-coloured cloth used, among other things, for bookbinding. Kolenkor features also in the idiom ‘Eto sovsem drugoi kolenkor’—‘That’s quite another kettle of fish.’ Kolenkorov’s Sentimental Tales are indeed quite a different kettle of fish from the officially propagated literature in a post-revolutionary Russia engaged in its grandiose socio-political experiment,” Zoshchenko and the Ilf-Petrov Partnership: How They Laughed, Birmingham Slavonic Monographs, no. 35 (Birmingham: Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham, 2003), 44.

  18. See Thomas P. Hodge, “Freudian Elements in Zoshchenko’s Pered voskhodom solntsa (1943),” Slavonic and East European Review 67, no. 1 (January 1989): 1–28.

  19. As Milne writes, Zoshchenko “applied to be reinstated, but in his case it was argued that ‘reinstatement’ would mean conceding that the original decision to exclude him had been a mistake. Zoshchenko was, accordingly, not ‘reinstated’ but only ‘admitted’ to membership, as if for the first time, on the basis of what he had been able to publish between 1946 and 1953,” Zoshchenko and the Ilf-Petrov Partnership, 10.

  20. White, “Some Remarks on Humor,” 174.

  21. Alexander Zholkovsky’s article on the theatrical dimension of Zoshchenko’s art is titled “Mikhail Zoshchenko’s Shadow Operas,” in Russian Literature and the Other Arts, ed. Catriona Kelly and Stephen Lovell (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000): 119–146. Zholkovsky is one of Zoshchenko’s most perceptive critics, who has been able to reconcile, convincingly, his “humorous” and “serious” works; see, for instance, “ ‘What Is the Author Trying to Say with His Artistic Work?’: Rereading Zoshchenko’s Oeuvre,” Slavic and East European Journal 40, no. 3 (1996): 458–474, and Mikhail Zoshchenko: Poetika nedoveriia, 2nd ed. (Moscow: Izd-vo LKI, 2007).

  PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

  1. This is Zoshchenko’s homage to his close friend and mentor at the World Literature workshop, the great translator, essayist, and children’s poet Korney Chukovsky (né, Nikolay Vasilyevich Korneychukov, 1882–1969). In his diary entry for August 23, 1927, Chukovsky wrote: “My one and only consolation at this time is Zoshchenko, who often comes and spends whole days with me. He is very worried about his book What the Nightingale Sang. He is outraged by a review, published by some idiot in Izvestiia [one of the two official Communist Party newspapers], that treats Nightingale as a petit bourgeois encomium to petit bourgeois life. In response to the review he has written a hilarious note to the preface for the second edition, claiming that the author of the book is in fact Kolenkorov, one of his characters. Since he is so worried about the book, he was very happy when I told him that I read it as poetry, that the amalgamation of styles he achieves with such virtuosity does not prevent me from sensing the work’s lofty—biblical—lyrical qualities,” Kornei Chukovsky, Diary, 1901–1969, edited by Victor Erlich, translated by Michael Henry Heim (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 202–203.

  PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION

  1. The tag “promoted worker” alludes to the Soviet phenomenon of “vydvizhenstvo,” a concerted effort to promote workers to administrative positions with the help of adult education courses. Kolenkorov, Zoshchenko suggests, should be regarded as someone who has been promoted—hastily and, in all likelihood, prematurely—to the rank of author.

  1. APOLLO AND TAMARA

  1. The Fourth Congress of the Communist International (Comintern) was held in Petrograd and Moscow between November 5 and December 5, 1922.

  2. Lenten sugar is a candylike dessert for Lent, made by boiling sugar (which is refined without egg whites or animal blood serum) in water and fruit juice. Later, non-Lenten versions of the dessert were made of plain sugar boiled in butter and milk. It was sold in crumbled pink or blue pieces, resembling the Scottish tablet, Dutch borstplaat, and French sucre à la crème.

  3. Persian Lilac (Lilas de Perse) was a popular perfume invented by Henri Brocard (1839–1900) and produced at the Moscow soap and perfumery factory he had founded in 1864. The factory was nationalized in 1917 and, in 1922, renamed New Dawn (Novaya Zarya).

  2. PEOPLE

  1. Established in 1921, the Hero of Labor award was given to outstanding workers in Moscow and Leningrad; in 1927, it was extended to the whole of the Soviet Union.

  2. Russian populism (“narodnichestvo”) was a socialist movement of the 1860s and 1870s. The populists (“narodniki”) were urban intellectuals who believed that the key to reform lay with the peasantry, and so “went out to the people,” spreading political propaganda throughout the countryside. Unfortunately, most peasants were not receptive. That, in combination with tsarist repression, splintered and radicalized the movement. It was a radical cell of populists—the People’s Will (Narodnaya Volya) group—that assassinated Tsar Alexander II in 1881. Jan Baudouin de Courtenay (1845–1929) was an influential Slavic linguist. He was born in Warsaw, in Congress Poland, which was in a “personal union” with the Russian Empire and would, in 1867, be absorbed into the imperial realm. He spent most of his career at Russian universities. In addition to his linguistic work, Baudouin de Courtenay was known as an advocate of national revival and limited autonomy for minority groups under Russian rule. In 1914, he was arrested for publishing a pamphlet espousing his federalist views (“The National and Territorial Aspects of Autonomy”) and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment at the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg. He was released after three months.

  3. Jack London’s works were enormously popular in the Soviet Union, and more or less ideologically acceptable; Nadezhda Krupskaya read two of Jack London’s stories to her husband, Vladimir Lenin, in the days before his death. (Nadezhda K. Krupskaya, Memories of Lenin, vol. 1, trans. E. Verney [New York: International Publishers, 1930], 209.)

  3. A TERRIBLE NIGHT

  1. The German philosopher is likely Oswald Spengler (1880–1936), whose The Decline of the West (Der Untergang des Abendlandes, 1918–1922) was influential in the postwar years. For Spengler, primitive human culture began at the end of the last Ice Age; he deduced that Western civilization, modern culture’s final phase, had spent its vital energy and would soon begin to decline.

  4. WHAT THE NIGHTINGALE SANG

  1. The newspaper Pravda (Truth) was the official organ of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union until 1991.

  2. Jacob Becker, who immigrated to St. Petersburg from Bavaria in 1841, became one of the most prominent piano manufacturers in Russia. The Becker firm, which had been the official purveyor to Nicholas II, was nationalized in 1917; their factory was renamed Red October (Krasny Oktyabr).

  3. The Living Church, or “Renovationism,” was a schismatic offshoot of the Russian Orthodox Church, which was founded in 1922 and dissolved in 1946. The Living Church accepted Soviet rule and was infiltrated by the secret police; the moral qualities of its de facto leader, Alexander Ivanovich Vvedensky (1889–1946), were questionable.

  4. The People’s Commissariat for Naval Affairs was established in February 1918. In November 1923, it became part of the People’s Commissariat for Military and Naval Affairs, which was subsequently dissolved in March 1934 and replaced by the People’s Commissariat of Defense.
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  5. By “polka tremblam,” Kolenkorov means “Polka Tremblante” (“tramblan” in Russian). It is a partnered dance, better known as the “schottische,” which likely originated in Bohemia.

  6. The “flea waltz” (“Der Flohwalzer”) is a simple composition for piano, often taught to beginners. The “shimmy” was a popular dance of the Jazz Age, associated with the Kraków-born American actress and dancer Gilda Gray (née Marianna Michalska, 1901–1959). The last reference is, of course, to Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies.

  7. During the 1920s, “Americanism” was synonymous with businesslike efficiency and modern methods of production.

  6. LILACS IN BLOOM

  1. Zoshchenko ends his catalog of “deficiencies” with “chubarovshchina”—a term referring to a notorious incident that occurred on August 21, 1926 in Leningrad’s Chubarov Lane, when an unmarried female worker was raped by twenty-six (some accounts say forty) young male workers, a number of whom were members of the League of Young Communists (Komsomol). The incident, and the term “churbarovshchina,” came to symbolize lack of ideological discipline.

  2. This is an allusion to the arrests and show trials of technicians accused of sabotaging Soviet industry in the late 1920s and 1930s. The first and most famous of these incidents occurred when fifty-three engineers were arrested in the town of Shakhty and put on trial in 1928. Five of the accused were sentenced to death and another forty-four were imprisoned.

  3. White officer: Zoshchenko uses the term “zlotopogonnik” (person with gold epaulettes), which at the time referred to officers of the White army.

  4. Author’s note: The maiden smiled playfully and cheerfully, smelling the lilacs.