p. 24, Yuri Gagarin, Mayakovsky, Fidel Castro: Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin (1934 – 68), Soviet cosmonaut and the first man in space, who received the most prestigious award in the USSR, “Hero of the Soviet Union”; Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (1893 – 1930), Russian Futurist poet and Soviet propagandist, often seen as the exemplar of Soviet art; Fidel Castro (b.1926), leader of the Cuban revolution and subsequently First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba.
p. 28, Lomonosov: Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov (1711 – 65), pioneering Russian grammarian, poet, scientist and founder of Moscow State University.
p. 37, Pushkin Hills: An area in the Pskov Oblast named after Russia’s most celebrated poet, Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (1799 – 1837), who spent a period of exile and wrote some of his best-known works in the region.
p. 37, Léger: Fernand Léger (1881 – 1955), French painter and sculptor, who joined the Communist Party in 1945.
p. 39, Komsomol: The Communist Party’s youth wing.
p. 40, pelmeni: Meat dumplings, a traditional Russian dish.
p. 42, Mikhail Rodzyanko… Trotsky, Lazar Kaganovich and Andrei Andreyev: Rodzyanko (1859 – 1924) was a key politician in pre-Communist Russia. Trotsky (1879 – 1940) was second to Lenin in the early days of the Revolution; Kaganovich (1893 – 1991) and Andreyev (1895 – 1971) were fervent supporters of Stalin.
p. 43, Heroine Mother: A title and the name of a medal awarded to mothers of ten or more children.
p. 45, people’s assessors: In the Soviet legal system, a people’s assessor had a role similar to that of a magistrate. Particularly in Soviet films, people’s assessors would have towed the party line in their verdicts.
p. 50, Misha Baryshnikov: Mikhail Nikolayevich Baryshnikov (b.1948), widely regarded as one of the greatest ballet dancers of the twentieth century. He defected from the Soviet Union in 1974 whilst touring in Canada.
p. 69, Peter Brook, Fellini and De Sica: All luminaries of the film or theatre worlds: Peter Brook (b.1925), English theatre and film director; Federico Fellini (1920 – 93), Italian film director; Vittorio De Sica (1901 – 74), Italian film director and actor.
p. 69, Shostakovich, Mravinsky, Eisenstein: Again, all extremely influential Soviet cultural figures: Dmitry Dmitryevich Shostakovich (1906 – 75), Russian composer; Yevgeny Alexandrovich Mravinsky (1903 – 88), Soviet conductor; Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (1898 – 1948), ground-breaking Soviet film director.
p. 76, Nikolai Gumilyov: Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilyov (1886 – 1921), Russian Acmeist poet.
p. 76, Yesenin, Zoshchenko and Vysotsky: Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin (1895 – 1925), one of Russia’s best-known lyrical poets, committed suicide at thirty. Mikhail Mikhailovich Zoshchenko (1895 – 1958) was one of the foremost figures of Soviet satire, and was persecuted by the authorities towards the end of his life. Vladimir Semyonovich Vysotsky (1938 – 80), known as a bard in Russia, was one of the most popular and respected singer-songwriters of his country.
p. 77, Raykin: Arkady Isaakovich Raykin (1911 – 87), well-known Soviet humorist.
p. 77, Sartre, Yves Montand: Jean-Paul Sartre (1905 – 1980), French existentialist philosopher; Yves Montand (1921 – 91), Italian-born French actor and singer.
p. 78, Proust, Galsworthy, Feuchtwanger… she loved Pasternak and Tsvetayeva: The first three are all “foreign” authors: Marcel Proust (1871 – 1922), French author of In Search of Lost Time; John Galsworthy (1867 – 1933), English novelist and author of The Forsyte Saga; Lion Feuchtwanger (1884 – 1958), German-Jewish novelist and playwright. Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (1890 – 1960) and Marina Ivanovna Tsvetayeva (1892 – 1941) were both celebrated Russian writers.
p. 85, Solzhenitsyn’s portrait: Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn (1918 – 2008), Russian writer and notable dissident.
p. 85, Tolya Gladilin… Vasya Shukshin… Bellochka: Here Dovlatov uses the diminutive versions of the writers’ first names to emphasize his connection with them. All were prominent writers born in the late 1920s or 1930s.
p. 85, Tarkovsky’s movies: Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky (1932 – 86), acclaimed Russian film director whose work was highly lyrical and often spiritual. Ivan’s Childhood was Tarkovsky’s first feature film and won him widespread acclaim.
p. 86, friendly greetings from Goryshin, a drunken bear hug from Wolf, a quick chat with Yefimov or Konetsky… Even Daniil Granin knew my face: Gleb Alexandrovich Goryshin (1931 – 98), editor for the literary journal Aurora; Sergei Evgenyevich Wolf (1935 – 2005), a poet and prose writer from St Petersburg; Igor Markovich Yefimov (b.1937), novelist and author of a number of samizdat publications; Viktor Viktorovich Konetsky (1929 – 2002), writer and screenwriter; Daniil Alexandrovich Granin (b.1919), award-winning novelist and documentary writer.
p. 86, Kornei Chukovsky, Nikolai Oleynikov… Daniil Kharms, and so on: Chukovsky (1882 – 1969) was an influential children’s poet, critic and translator. Oleynikov (1898 – 1937) and Kharms (1905 – 42) both belonged to the absurdist OBERIU group in the 1920s, which was later seen to conflict with Soviet aesthetics. The former was shot at the height of Stalin’s purges; the latter died in a psychiatric ward in Leningrad after being arrested for treason.
p. 86, Yevgeny Yevtushenko: (b.1933) Hugely popular Russian poet and critic of Stalinism.
p. 90, Virgin Soil Upturned: A reference to a Soviet classic by Mikhail Sholokhov (1905 – 84), commonly thought of as rather dreary, and required reading in schools.
p. 93, a picture of the actor Yakovlev: Yury Vasilyevich Yakovlev (b.1928), a well-known film and theatre actor.
p. 95, Ceauşescu: Nicolae Ceauşescu (1918 – 89), General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party.
p. 107, Gostiny Dvor: The largest and most famous department store in St Petersburg.
p. 114, And soon the foe… field of blood: From Pushkin’s ‘Poltava’, English translation by John Coutts.
p. 117, Chuk and Gek: a children’s story written by Arkady Petrovich Gaidar (1904 – 41), about two young brothers who leave Moscow to visit their father, who is on a remote expedition.
p. 119, Chursina… Tenyakova: Lyudmila Alexeyevna Chursina (b.1941) and Natalya Maximovna Tenyakova (b.1944) both famous, award-winning Russian actresses.
1. James Hanley, Boy
2. D.H. Lawrence, The First Women in Love
3. Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
4. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
5. Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
6. Anton Chekhov, Sakhalin Island
7. Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli, Sonnets
8. Jack Kerouac, Beat Generation
9. Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
10. Jane Austen, Emma
11. Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone
12. D.H. Lawrence, The Second Lady Chatterley’s Lover
13. Jonathan Swift, The Benefit of Farting Explained
14. Anonymous, Dirty Limericks
15. Henry Miller, The World of Sex
16. Jeremias Gotthelf, The Black Spider
17. Oscar Wilde, The Picture Of Dorian Gray
18. Erasmus, Praise of Folly
19. Henry Miller, Quiet Days in Clichy
20. Cecco Angiolieri, Sonnets
21. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Humiliated and Insulted
22. Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
23. Theodor Storm, Immensee
24. Ugo Foscolo, Sepulchres
25. Boileau, Art of Poetry
26. Kaiser, Plays Vol. 1
27. Émile Zola, Ladies’ Delight
28. D.H. Lawrence, Selected Letters
29. Alexander Pope, The Art of Sinking in Poetry
30. E.T.A. Hoffmann, The King’s Bride
31. Ann Radcliffe, The Italian
32. Prosper Mérimée, A Slight Misunderstanding
33. Giacomo Leopardi, Canti
34. Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron
35. Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, The Jew’s Beech
36. Stendhal, Life of
Rossini
37. Eduard Mörike, Mozart’s Journey to Prague
38. Jane Austen, Love and Friendship
39. Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
40. Ivan Bunin, Dark Avenues
41. Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
42. Sadeq Hedayat, Three Drops of Blood
43. Alexander Trocchi, Young Adam
44. Oscar Wilde, The Decay of Lying
45. Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
46. Sadeq Hedayat, The Blind Owl
47. Alain Robbe-Grillet, Jealousy
48. Marguerite Duras, Moderato Cantabile
49. Raymond Roussel, Locus Solus
50. Alain Robbe-Grillet, In the Labyrinth
51. Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
52. Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island
53. Ivan Bunin, The Village
54. Alain Robbe-Grillet, The Voyeur
55. Franz Kafka, Dearest Father
56. Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales
57. A. Bierce, The Monk and the Hangman’s Daughter
58. F. Dostoevsky, Winter Notes on Summer Impressions
59. Bram Stoker, Dracula
60. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
61. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Elective Affinities
62. Marguerite Duras, The Sailor from Gibraltar
63. Robert Graves, Lars Porsena
64. Napoleon Bonaparte, Aphorisms and Thoughts
65. J. von Eichendorff, Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing
66. Adelbert von Chamisso, Peter Schlemihl
67. Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, The Three-Cornered Hat
68. Jane Austen, Persuasion
69. Dante Alighieri, Rime
70. A. Chekhov, The Woman in the Case and Other Stories
71. Mark Twain, The Diaries of Adam and Eve
72. Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
73. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
74. Gottfried Keller, A Village Romeo and Juliet
75. Raymond Queneau, Exercises in Style
76. Georg Büchner, Lenz
77. Giovanni Boccaccio, Life of Dante
78. Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
79. E.T.A. Hoffmann, The Devil’s Elixirs
80. Claude Simon, The Flanders Road
81. Raymond Queneau, The Flight of Icarus
82. Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince
83. Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of our Time
84. Henry Miller, Black Spring
85. Victor Hugo, The Last Day of a Condemned Man
86. D.H. Lawrence, Paul Morel
87. Mikhail Bulgakov, The Life of Monsieur de Molière
88. Leo Tolstoy, Three Novellas
89. Stendhal, Travels in the South of France
90. Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White
91. Alain Robbe-Grillet, Erasers
92. Iginio Ugo Tarchetti, Fosca
93. D.H. Lawrence, The Fox
94. Borys Conrad, My Father Joseph Conrad
95. J. De Mille, A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder
96. Émile Zola, Dead Men Tell No Tales
97. Alexander Pushkin, Ruslan and Lyudmila
98. Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures Under Ground
99. James Hanley, The Closed Harbour
100. T. De Quincey, On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts
101. Jonathan Swift, The Wonderful Wonder of Wonders
102. Petronius, Satyricon
103. Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Death on Credit
104. Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
105. W.B. Yeats, Selected Poems
106. Antonin Artaud, The Theatre and Its Double
107. Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Journey to the End of the Night
108. Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier
109. Leo Tolstoy, Childhood, Boyhood, Youth
110. Guido Cavalcanti, Complete Poems
111. Charles Dickens, Hard Times
112. Baudelaire and Gautier, Hashish, Wine, Opium
113. Charles Dickens, Haunted House
114. Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Children
115. Dante Alighieri, Inferno
116. Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
117. Alexander Trocchi, Man at Leisure
118. Alexander Pushkin, Boris Godunov and Little Tragedies
119. Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
120. Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn
121. Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen
122. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot
123. René de Chateaubriand, Atala and René
124. Mikhail Bulgakov, Diaboliad
125. Goerge Eliot, Middlemarch
126. Edmondo De Amicis, Constantinople
127. Petrarch, Secretum
128. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther
129. Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin
130. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground
131. Luigi Pirandello, Plays Vol. 1
132. Jules Renard, Histoires Naturelles
133. Gustave Flaubert, The Dictionary of Received Ideas
134. Charles Dickens, The Life of Our Lord
135. D.H. Lawrence, The Lost Girl
136. Benjamin Constant, The Red Notebook
137. Raymond Queneau, We Always Treat Women too Well
138. Alexander Trocchi, Cain’s Book
139. Raymond Roussel, Impressions of Africa
140. Llewelyn Powys, A Struggle for Life
141. Nikolai Gogol, How the Two Ivans Quarrelled
142. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
143. Jonathan Swift, Directions to Servants
144. Dante Alighieri, Purgatory
145. Mikhail Bulgakov, A Young Doctor’s Notebook
146. Sergei Dovlatov, The Suitcase
147. Leo Tolstoy, Hadji Murat
148. Jonathan Swift, The Battle of the Books
149. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night
150. A. Pushkin, The Queen of Spades and Other Short Fiction
151. Raymond Queneau, The Sunday of Life
152. Herman Melville, Moby Dick
153. Mikhail Bulgakov, The Fatal Eggs
154. Antonia Pozzi, Poems
155. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister
156. Anton Chekhov, The Story of a Nobody
157. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Poor People
158. Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich
159. Dante Alighieri, Vita nuova
160. Arthur Conan Doyle, The Tragedy of Korosko
161. Franz Kafka, Letters to Friends, Family and Editors
162. Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
163. Erich Fried, Love Poems
164. Antonin Artaud, Selected Works
165. Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
166. Sergei Dovlatov, The Zone
167. Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Guignol’s Band
168. Mikhail Bulgakov, Dog’s Heart
169. Rayner Heppenstall, Blaze of Noon
170. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Crocodile
171. Anton Chekhov, Death of a Civil Servant
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CHEMODAN (The Suitcase)
Copyright © 1986 by Sergei Dovlatov
Translation © Antonina W. Bouis, 1990, 2011
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the Publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction.
The Suitcase first published in Russian as Чемоdан by Эрмumahc in 1986 This translation first published in the US by Grove Weidenfeld in 1990
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
978-1-58243-733-0
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The Suitcase Page 11