Pakin said:
– If you, Rakukin, don’t stop that blinking immediately, I’ll give you a good boot in the chest.
Rakukin, so as not to blink, twisted his jaws, extended his neck still further, and threw his head back.
– Uh, what an execrable sight you are – said Pakin. A mug like a chicken’s, a blue neck, simply revolting.
At that instant, Rakukin’s head was lolling back further and further and, finally, all tension lost, it collapsed on to his back.
– What the devil! exclaimed Pakin – What sort of a conjuring trick is that supposed to be?
Looking at Rakukin from Pakin’s position, it could quite easily be assumed that Rakukin was sitting there with no head at all. Rakukin’s Adam’s apple was sticking up in the air. Unwittingly one might well think that it was his nose.
– Eh, Rakukin! – said Pakin.
Rakukin was silent!
– Rakukin! – repeated Pakin.
Rakukin didn’t reply and continued to sit motionless.
– So – said Pakin – Rakukin’s snuffed it.
Pakin crossed himself and left the room on tip-toe.
About fourteen minutes later a small soul climbed out of Rakukin’s body and threw a malevolent look at the place where Pakin had just been sitting. But then the tall figure of the angel of death came out from behind the cupboard and, taking Rakukin’s soul by the hand, led it away somewhere, straight through houses and walls. Rakukin’s soul ran after the angel of death, constantly glancing malevolently back. But then the angel of death stepped up the pace and Rakukin’s soul, leaping and stumbling, disappeared into space beyond the turning-point.
On Phenomena and Existences No. 1
The artist Michelangelo sits down on a heap of bricks and, propping his head in his hands, begins to think. Suddenly a cockerel walks past and looks at the artist Michelangelo with his round, golden eyes. Looks, but doesn’t blink. At this point, the artist Michelangelo raises his head and sees the cockerel. The cockerel does not lower his gaze, doesn’t blink and doesn’t move his tail. The artist Michelangelo looks down and is aware of something in his eye. The artist Michelangelo rubs his eyes with his hands. And the cockerel isn’t standing there any more, isn’t standing there, but is walking away, walking away behind the shed, behind the shed to the poultry-run, to the poultry-run towards his hens.
And the artist Michelangelo gets up from the heap of bricks, shakes the red brick dust from his trousers, throws aside his belt and goes off to his wife.
The artist Michelangelo’s wife, by the way, is extremely long, all of two rooms in length.
On the way, the artist Michelangelo meets Komarov, grasps him by the hand and shouts – Look!..
Komarov looks and sees a sphere.
– What’s that? – whispers Komarov.
And from the sky comes a roar – It’s a sphere.
– What sort of a sphere is it? – whispers Komarov.
And from the sky, the roar – A smooth-surfaced sphere!
Komarov and the artist Michelangelo sit down on the grass and they are seated on the grass like mushrooms. They hold each other’s hands and look up at the sky. And in the sky appears the outline of a huge spoon. What on earth is that? No one knows. People run about and lock themselves into their houses. They lock their doors and their windows. But will that really help? Much good it does them! It will not help.
I remember in 1884 an ordinary comet the size of a steamer appearing in the sky. It was very frightening. But now – a spoon! Some phenomenon for a comet!
Lock you windows and doors!
Can that really help? You can’t barricade yourself with planks against a celestial phenomenon.
Nikolay Ivanovich Stupin lives in our house. He has a theory that everything is smoke. But in my view not everything is smoke. Maybe even there’s no smoke at all. Maybe there’s really nothing. There’s one division only. Or maybe there’s no division at all. It’s hard to say.
It is said that a certain celebrated artist scrutinized a cockerel. He scrutinized it and scrutinized it and came to the conclusion that the cockerel did not exist.
The artist told his friend this, and his friend just laughed. How, he said, doesn’t it exist, he said, when it’s standing right here and I, he said, am clearly observing it.
And the great artist thereupon hung his head and, retaining the same posture in which he stood, sat down on a pile of bricks.
That’s all.
Daniil Dandan, 18 September 1934
On Phenomena and Existences No. 2
Here’s a bottle of vodka, of the lethal spirit variety. And beside it you see Nikolay Ivanovich Serpukhov.
From the bottle rise spirituous fumes. Look at the way Nikolay Ivanovich Serpukhov is breathing them in through his nose. Mark how he licks his lips and how he screws up his eyes. Evidently he is particularly partial to it and, in the main, that’s because it’s that lethal spirit variety.
But take note of the fact that behind Nikolay Ivanovich’s back there is nothing. It’s not that there isn’t a cupboard there, or a chest of drawers, or at any rate some such object: but there is absolutely nothing there, not even air. Believe it or not, as you please, but behind Nikolay Ivanovich’s back there is not even an airless expanse or, as they say, universal ether. To put it bluntly, there’s nothing.
This is, of course, utterly inconceivable.
But we don’t give a damn about that, as we are only interested in the vodka and Nikolay Ivanovich Serpukhov.
And so Nikolay Ivanovich takes the bottle of vodka in his hand and puts it to his nose. Nikolay Ivanovich sniffs it and moves his mouth like a rabbit.
Now the time has come to say that, not only behind Nikolay Ivanovich’s back, but before him too – as it were, in front of his chest – and all the way round him, there is nothing. A complete absence of any kind of existence, or, as the old witticism goes, an absence of any kind of presence.
However, let us interest ourselves only in the vodka and Nikolay Ivanovich.
Just imagine, Nikolay Ivanovich peers into the bottle of vodka, then he puts it to his lips, tips back the bottle bottom-end up, and knocks it back – just imagine it, the whole bottle.
Nifty! Nikolay Ivanovich knocked back his vodka and looked blank. Nifty, all right! How could he!
And now this is what we have to say: as a matter of fact, not only behind Nikolay Ivanovich’s back, nor merely in front and all around him, but also even inside Nikolay Ivanovich there was nothing, nothing existed.
Of course, it could all be as we have just said, and yet Nikolay Ivanovich himself could in these circumstances still be in a delightful state of existence. This is, of course, true. But, as a matter of fact, the whole thing is that Nikolay Ivanovich didn’t exist and doesn’t exist. That’s exactly the whole thing.
You may ask: and what about the bottle of vodka? In particular, where did the vodka go, if a non-existent Nikolay Ivanovich drank it? Let’s say that the bottle remained. Where, then, is the vodka? There it was and, suddenly, there it isn’t. We know Nikolay Ivanovich doesn’t exist, you say. So, what’s the explanation?
At this stage, we ourselves become lost in conjecture.
But, anyway, what are we talking about? Surely we said that inside, as well as outside, Nikolay Ivanovich nothing exists. So if, both inside and outside, nothing exists, then that means that the bottle as well doesn’t exist. Isn’t that it?
But, on the other hand, take note of the following: if we are saying that nothing exists either inside or outside, then the question arises: inside and outside of what? Something evidently, all the same, does exist? Or perhaps doesn’t exist. In which case, why do we keep saying ‘inside’ and ‘outside’?
No, here we have patently reached an impasse. And we ourselves don’t know what to say.
Good bye for now.
Daniil Dandan, 18 September 1934
On Equilibrium
Everyone now knows how dangerous swallowing ston
es is. A friend of mine even coined the expression ‘Dan-ex-ston’, which means: ‘It’s dangerous to extract stones.’ And a good thing too. ‘Dan-ex-ston’ can be easily remembered and, as required, instantly recalled.
He worked, this friend of mine, as a stoker on a steam-engine. He travelled either the northern line or to Moscow. He was called Nikolay Ivanovich Serpukhov and he smoked Rocket cigarettes at thirty-five kopecks a packet, and always said that they made him cough less, while those costing five roubles, he says, ‘always make me choke’.
And so Nikolay Ivanovich once chanced to get in to the restaurant in the Yevropeyskaya Hotel. Nikolay Ivanovich sat at a table and at the next table some foreigners were sitting munching apples.
At this point Nikolay Ivanovich said to himself – This is interesting – said Nikolay Ivanovich – A man’s life this!
Barely had he said this to himself when from out of the blue a Fairy appeared in front of him, saying:
– My good man, what do you need?
Well, of course, in a restaurant you do get confusion from which, it may be said, this unknown diminutive lady may have sprung. The foreigners even ceased munching their apples.
Nikolay Ivanovich himself rather had the wind up and spoke rather off-handedly, so as to give her the brush-off – I’m sorry – he said – but I don’t really require anything in particular.
– You don’t understand – said the unknown lady – I – she said – am what is called a Fairy. In the merest jiffy I’ll lay on whatever you fancy.
Nikolay Ivanovich happened to notice that a citizen in a grey two-piece was listening intently to their conversation. The maître d’hotel was rushing through the open doors and behind him some other specimen with a cigarette in his mouth.
– Bloody hell! – thought Nikolay Ivanovich – there’s no telling what’s going on.
And there was indeed no telling what was going on. The maître d’hotel was leaping around the tables, the foreigners were rolling up the carpets and generally the devil only knew what! They were all doing whatever they felt like!
Nikolay Ivanovich ran out to the street and didn’t even pick up his hat from the custody of the cloak-room; he ran out on to Lassalle Street and said to himself: – Dan-ex-ston! It’s dangerous to extract stones – Nothing like this ever really happens, surely!
And arriving home, Nikolay Ivanovich told his wife – Don’t be alarmed, Yekaterina Petrovna, and don’t get worried. Only there’s no equilibrium in the world. It’s just an error of some kilogram and a half over the universe as a whole, but it’s really a surprising thing, Yekaterina Petrovna, totally surprising!
And that’s all.
Daniil Dandan, 18 September 1934
A Knight
Aleksey Alekseyevich Alekseyev was a real knight. So, for example, on one occasion, catching sight from a tram of a lady stumbling against a kerbstone and dropping a glass lampshade for a table-lamp from her bag, which promptly smashed, Aleksey Alekseyevich, desiring to help the lady, decided to sacrifice himself and, leaping from the tram at full speed, fell and split open the whole of his phizog on a stone. Another time, seeing a lady who was climbing over a fence catch her skirt on a nail and get stuck there, so that she could move neither backward nor forward, Aleksey Alekseyevich began to get so agitated that, in his agitation, he broke two front teeth with his tongue. In a word, Aleksey Alekseyevich was really the most chivalrous knight, and not only in relation to ladies. With unprecedented ease, Aleksey Alekseyevich could sacrifice his life for his Faith, Tsar and Fatherland, as he proved in the year ’14, at the start of the German war, by throwing himself, with the cry ‘For the Motherland!’, on to the street from a second-floor window. By some miracle, Aleksey Alekseyevich remained alive, getting off with only light injuries, and was quickly, as such an uncommonly zealous patriot, dispatched to the front.
At the front, Aleksey Alekseyevich distinguished himself with his unprecedentedly elevated feelings and every time he pronounced the words ‘banner’, ‘fanfare’, or even just ‘epaulettes’, down his face there would trickle a tear of emotion.
In the year ’16, Aleksey Alekseyevich was wounded in the loins and withdrew from the front.
As a first-category invalid, Aleksey Alekseyevich had no longer to serve and, profiting from the time on his hands, committed to paper his patriotic feelings.
Once, chatting to Konstantin Lebedev, Aleksey Alekseyevich came out with his favourite utterance – I have suffered for the Motherland and wrecked my loins, but I exist by the strength of conviction in my posterior subconscious.
– And you’re a fool! – said Konstantin Lebedev. – The highest service to the Motherland is rendered only by a LIBERAL.
For some reason, these words become deeply imprinted on the mind of Aleksey Alekseyevich and so, in the year ’17, he was already calling himself a liberal whose loins had suffered for his native land.
Aleksey Alekseyevich greeted the Revolution with delight, notwithstanding even the fact that he was deprived of his pension. For a certain time Konstantin Lebedev supplied him with cane-sugar, chocolate, preserved suet and millet groats. But when Konstantin Lebedev suddenly went missing no one knew where, Aleksey Alekseyevich had to take to the streets and ask for charity. At first, Aleksey Alekseyevich would extend his hand and say: – Give charity, for Christ’s sake, to he whose loins have suffered for the motherland. – But this brought no success. Then Aleksey Alekseyevich changed the word ‘motherland’ to the word ‘revolution’. But this too brought no success. Then Aleksey Alekseyevich composed a revolutionary song, and, if he saw on the street a person capable, in Aleksey Alekseyevich’s opinion, of giving alms, he would take a step forward and proudly, with dignity, throw back his head and start singing:
To the barricades
We will all zoom!
For freedom
We will ourselves all maim and doom!
And, jauntily tapping his heels in the Polish manner, Aleksey Alekseyevich would extend his hat and say – Alms, please, for Christ’s sake. – This did help and Aleksey Alekseyevich rarely remained without food.
Everything was going well, but then, in the year ’22, Aleksey Alekseyevich got to know a certain Ivan Ivanovich Puzyryov, who dealt in sunflower oil in the Haymarket. Puzyryov invited Aleksey Alekseyevich to a cafe, treated him to real coffee and, himself chomping fancy cakes, expounded to him some sort of complicated enterprise of which Aleksey Alekseyevich understood only that he had to do something, in return for which he would receive from Puzyryov the most costly products of nutrition. Aleksey Alekseyevich agreed and Puzyryov, on the spot, as an incentive, passed him under the table two caddies of tea and a packet of Rajah cigarettes.
After this, Aleksey Alekseyevich came to see Puzyryov every morning at the market, and picking up from him some sort of papers with crooked signatures and numerous seals, took a sleigh, if it were winter and if it were summer a cart, and set off as instructed by Puzyryov, to do the rounds of various establishments where, producing the papers, he would receive some sort of boxes, which he would load on to his sleigh or cart, and in the evening take them to Puzyryov at his flat. But once, when Aleksey Alekseyevich had rolled up in his sleigh at Puzyryov’s flat, two men came up to him, one of whom was in a military great-coat, and asked him – Is your name Alekseyev? – Then Aleksey Alekseyevich was put into an automobile and taken away to prison.
At the interrogation, Aleksey Alekseyevich understood not a thing and just kept saying that he had suffered for his revolutionary motherland. But, despite this, he was sentenced to ten years of exile in the northern parts of his fatherland. Having got back in the year ’28 to Leningrad, Aleksey Alekseyevich began to ply his previous trade and, standing up on the corner of Volodarskiy, tossed back his head with dignity, tapped his heel and sang out:
To the barricades
We will all zoom!
For freedom
We will ourselves all maim and doom!
But he did not even manage to sing
it through twice before he was taken away in a covered vehicle to somewhere in the Admiralty direction. His feet never touched the ground.
And there we have a short narrative of the life of the valiant knight and patriot, Aleksey Alekseyevich Alekseyev.
(1934–36)
A Story
Abram Demyanovich Pantopasov cried out loudly and pressed a handkerchief to his eyes. But it was too late. Ash and soft dust had gummed up Abram Demyanovich’s eyes. From then on Abram Demyanovich’s eyes began to hurt, they were gradually covered over with repulsive scabs, and Abram Demyanovich went blind.
As a blind invalid, Abram Demyanovich was given the push from his job and accorded a wretched pittance of thirty-six roubles a month.
Quite clearly this sum was insufficient for Abram Demyanovich to live on. A kilo of bread cost a rouble and ten kopecks, and a leek cost forty-eight kopecks at the market.
And so the industrial invalid began more and more to concentrate his attention on rubbish bins.
It was difficult for a blind man to find the edible scraps among all the peelings and filth.
Even finding the rubbish itself in someone else’s yard is not easy. You can’t see it with your eyes, and to ask – Whereabouts here is your rubbish bin? – is somehow a bit awkward.
The only way left is to sniff it out.
Some rubbish bins reek so much you can smell them a mile away, but others with lids are absolutely impossible to detect.
It’s alright if you happen upon a kindly caretaker, but the other sort would so put the wind up you that you’d lose your appetite.
Once Abram Demyanovich climbed into someone’s rubbish bin and when he was in there a rat bit him, and he climbed straight back out again. So that day he didn’t eat anything.
The Plummeting Old Women Page 4