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The Naked Year

Page 9

by Boris Pilnyak


  “Don’t be distracted, Andryusha, get to work!”

  “Where are you from, Aganka? When do you sleep, rest?”

  “Where everyone’s from:–from mother!”

  “Don’t talk crazy!”

  “Hold your tongue, hold your tongue!… Get turning, stop getting distracted!”

  And Aganka died in July–over the earth moved black smallpox and typhus… –Death! Sedition, hunger, a taper:–See in order to live. The first days of July, before the intense heat, for five days there were rains and storms, the anarchists were in the house–and Andrei had never known such joy, joy of being alive!

  –This is through the eyes of Andrei,

  the poetry of Andrei Volkovich.

  THROUGH NATALYA’S EYES

  Above St. Nicholas’s, above Chornye Rechki, above the water-meadows towered a lonely hill, deserted, bald, except for the guelder roses growing on its sides, it stood alone, deserted, high. To the northern skyline the woods bristled like dark saw-edges, and southwards extended the steppes. And the centuries had reserved their own name for it–Uvek.

  On the summit of Uvek people had noticed ruins and burial mounds–the archeologist Baudek and the artist Ordinin with a detail of peasants had come to excavate them. The excavations were in their third week and centuries were being brought out of the earth. On Uvek they found the remains of an ancient town, stone ruins of aqua-ducts lay in layers, the foundations of buildings, a sewerage system–hidden by the loamy soil and black earth this had survived not from the Finns, nor the Scythians, nor from the Bulgars–someone unknown came here from the Asiatic steppes in order to found a city and disappear into history–forever. But after them, after those unknown people the Scythians were here, and they left their burial mounds. In the burial mounds, in the stone vaults, in their stone tombs, lay human bones, clothed, disintegrating at the touch, like ash, with jugs and dishes, embellished with horsemen and huntsmen, where once there had been food and drink–with the bones of a horse at their feet, with a saddle, embossed with gold, bonework and stones, and the skin had become mummy-like. In the stone vaults it was deathly, there was no longer a smell of anything, and every time it was necessary to enter them, thoughts became precise and peaceful, and sorrow entered the soul. The summit of Uvek, stony, had grown bald, wormwood had grown on it like a silver, dusty stubble, it gave off a bitter smell. –The centuries.–The centuries teach just as the stars do, and Baudek knew the joy of grief. The archeologist Baudek’s concepts were entangled with the centuries. A thing always says more not about life, but about art, and a way of life is already art. Baudek measured life by art, like any artist. And from the centuries and revolution Baudek and Gleb Ordinin wanted to follow these members of the sects who lived in farmsteads in the steppes. And bitter on Uvek was the smell of wormwood.

  Here on Uvek the diggers used to wake up at the crack of dawn, boil water in a billy can. They would dig. At midday dinner was brought from the commune. They would rest. Again they would dig, till dusk. Then they lit campfires and sat near them, talking, singing songs… Beyond the river in the village–they ploughed, reaped, ate, drank and slept, to live–just as below the ravine in the commune and in the steppe among the sectarians, where they also labored, ate and slept. And also, besides this, they all sipped and wished to imbibe peace and joy. July was scorching, incinerating the days; as always, the days were transparent and enervating–the nights brought peace and their own nocturnal discord. –Some dug out the earth, the dry loamy soil, mixed with flint and thunderstone, others carted it away in wheelbarrows, sifted it through riddles. They dug down as far as a stone entrance. The vault was dark, there wasn’t a smell of anything. The coffin stood on a dais. They lit the lamps. They made sketches. They flashed the magnesium–they took photographs. It was quiet and silent. They removed the lid, which had turned green and weighed ten poods. The others by the ravine on the high point were digging up the remains of some circular edifice, whose stones time had not yet clogged up.

  Uvek fell steeply. From Uvek the water-meadows stretched in a deserted expanse, beyond the water-meadows rose like a toothed saw-edge the woods of Chernorechye, Chernorechye: and they told Baudek the rumor of how the deserters had settled in Medin, the Green bandit army, having dug some dugouts, planted little huts, positioned their vigilantes among the bushes, with machine-guns, rifles, ready, if pressed, to go away into the steppes, to rebel, attack the towns.

  However, this was through the eyes of the anarchist Natalya.

  Late in the evening, returning from the water-meadows, Natalya and Baudek climbed up to the bare summit to the excavations. There was a bitter smell of wormwood, the wormwood grew all over the hill like silver, dusty stubble, it smelled bitter and dry. From the deserted summit was a wide view all around, at the bottom of the hill flowed a river, beyond the river in the mist gleamed the campfires of the last haymakings and night pastures. From the field wafted a dry smell. They stopped to say goodbye–and noticed:–from the gully to the excavations, from the other side, from Nikola, naked women were running, in single file, with broad, unhurried gait, with hair disheveled, with the dark hollows of their pubic regions, with brooms of grass in their hands. The women ran in silence to the excavations, ran around the circular ruin on the high point and turned to the ravine, the gully, raising the wormwood dust.

  Baudek began to speak.

  “Somewhere there is Europe, Marx, scientific socialism, but here beliefs which are a thousand years old are preserved. The girls run about their land, they cast spells with their bodies and purity. This is the week of Peter sun-gates. Who will invent–Peter sun-gates? This is more beautiful than excavations! Now it is midnight. Perhaps it’s they who are casting spells on us. This is a girls’ secret.”

  Again from the field wafted the dry smell. In the fathomless sky a star fell–the July time of fallings stars was approaching. The grasshoppers rang out dryly and stuffily. There was a bitter smell of wormwood.

  They said goodbye. Saying “goodbye,” Baudek seized hold of Natalya’s hand, said softly:

  “Natalya, rare one, when will you be my wife?”

  Natalya answered, after a pause, softly:

  “Leave off, Flor.”

  Baudek went to the tents. Natalya returned to the ravine by a narrow path, overgrown with guelder roses, went down into the estate, into the commune. Night could not quench the thirst of the scorching day, in the night there was much thirst and scorching heat, like tarnished silver dryly gleamed–the grass, the distances, the water-meadows and the air. Pebbles showered down the flinty path.

  By the stable yard lay Svirid, he hummed, looking at the sky:

  –Kama, Kama, mother of rivers!..

  Beat the faces of the Kolchak!

  Kama, Kama, water way!

  Beat the faces of the Communists!..

  He noticed Natalya, said:

  “Now it’s night, Comrade Natalya, no chance to fall asleep, how about a cuddle! All the Communists are in the plants. Have you been to the excavators?–they say they’re excavating the town–these days everything’s being dug up! Yes!”

  And again he began to sing:

  Kama, Kama, mother of rivers!..

  “They’ve brought newspapers from the station. Strong smell of wormwood here. Country!”

  Natalya walked through to the reading room, lit a candle, the dim light was reflected greasily in the faded marble columns. As in the old days there stood bookshelves, gilded armchairs, a round table in the middle, covered with newspapers. She bowed her head, heavy plaits fell down–she read the newspapers. Both the newspapers from the province on brown paper, and the newspapers from Moscow on blue paper made out of chippings–were full of bitterness and confusion. There was no bread. There was no iron. There was hunger, death, lies, horror and terror–it was the year ’nineteen.

  In came Semyon Ivanovich, the old revolutionary, with a beard like Marx’s, lowered himself into an armchair, lit up a dog-end, nervously.

  �
�Natalya.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve been in the town. Can you imagine what’s going on? There’s nothing. In winter everyone will die of hunger and will freeze. There’s no salt, without which it’s impossible to smelt steel, without steel it’s impossible to make saws, there’s nothing to saw wood with–in winter the houses will freeze–because of no salt! It’s frightening! You can feel how frightening!–What frightening, deaf silence. Just look–death is more natural than birth, than life. All around is death, hunger, scurvy, typhus, smallpox, cholera… The woods and ravines are swarming with bandits. You can hear it–a deathly silence! Death. In the steppes there are villages, which have died out completely. Nobody buries the corpses, and in the darkness at night dogs and deserters roam about… The Russian nation.”

  In Natalya’s room in the attic, in the corner stood a crucifix with a bunch of grass thrust behind it–this survived from the landowners. The mirror on the pot-bellied mahogany dressing table with ancient indispensable trinkets was discolored and starting to peel. The drawer of the dressing table was open: from there still emanated, in landowners’ fashion, the smell of wax, and on the bottom there were scattered multicolored pieces of silk–this was the maids’ room under the Ordinins. Little rugs and carpet runners lay about. Through the windows there was a broad view of the water-meadows, the river–one thought that in winter all this vast empty space would be white from the snows. Natalya stood for a long time by the windows, plaiting her hair, let slip her sarafan. She was thinking–about the archeologist Baudek, about Semyon Ivanovich, about herself–about the Revolution–about its misery–about her own misery.

  The first to announce the dawn were the martins, they flew about in the yellow dry gloom, chirping. The last bat flew past. At dawn came Irina. She sat down in silence on the window. With the dawn came the bitter smell of wormwood–and Natalya understood: of wormwood, of its fabulous bitter smell, the smell of living and dead water, not only our dry-valley Julys’ smell–all our days smell of it, the year nineteen hundred and nineteen. The sadness of the wormwood–is the sadness of our days. But with wormwood the peasant women chase out devils and unclean spirits from their huts. –The Russian nation–she remembered. In April, when they were chasing the Whites, at a small, steppe station, where there were sky, steppe, five poplar trees, rails and a station hut, she noticed three people–two peasants and a child. All three were in bast sandals, the old man in a short fur coat, but the girl half-naked. All three had noses which said definitely that the blood in them was both Chuvash and Tatar. They all had hollow faces. The broad sunset faded. The old man’s face resembled a hut, his hair cascaded down like a thatch roof, his near blind eyes looked westward, like thousands of years. In these eyes there was an immeasurable indifference–or, perhaps, the wisdom of centuries, which it is impossible to comprehend. Natalya was thinking then: there is the genuine Russian nation, these here hollow, gray ones, eaten away by filth and sweat, with harrowing faces like huts, with hair like thatched roofs. The old man was looking westward; the other was sitting motionless, having drawn up one leg and put his head on it. The girl was sleeping, sprawled out on the asphalt, expectorated on and bespattered with sunflower peel. They were silent. And it was pitiful and frightening to look at them–at those, by whom and in whose name the Revolution is made. A people without a history–for where is the history of the Russian people?–a people, who have created their own songs, their own tunes, their own tales… Then these peasants came across the commune by chance, sang, like pilgrims, bowed down, asked for alms, told how they were from “Vladimir,” driven out by hunger, walked ground begging: at home they had left boarded-up huts, had eaten everything, even horses. And Natalya noticed: lice were falling off them. This very station, where she met them for the first time, was called “Mar Junction.”

  Outside there was a noise of buckets, women were going to do the milking. The horses had been brought from the night pasture. Semyon Ivanovich, who had not slept that night, was greasing the cart with Svirid, getting ready to go into the water-meadows for hay. The chickens, which had already grown a little, were making a din. Day came, scorching the earth with its heat, when it was necessary to drink its thirst, in order to go in the evening for more wormwood, Baudek’s wormwood, for the bitterness of joy, since Natalya had never had this wormwood joy, and these days brought it, when it is necessary to live–now or never.

  The sun traveled its scorching sun’s path, the day languished in scorching heat, the ring of silence, the distance shimmered in a slight scorching hot shimmer, like melted glass. In the afternoon shift, in the rest period, Natalya came to the excavations, sat with Baudek under the sun, amid the disemboweled earth, on an upturned wheelbarrow. The sun burned, and on the wheelbarrows, on the black earth, on the stones, on the huts, on the grass lay the scorching hot paints, like multicolored pieces of silk.

  Natalya spoke about the scorching heat, about the Revolution, about the days: with all her blood she felt, accepted the Revolution, wanted to create it–and today’s days brought wormwood, today’s days smell of wormwood–she spoke like Semyon Ivanovich. And moreover, because Baudek placed his head on her knees, because the collar of his embroidered shirt was undone, he bared his neck, and there was scorching heat–she smelled another wormwood, about which she was silent. And again she spoke like Semyon Ivanovich.

  Baudek was lying on his back, having half covered his gray eyes, held Natalya’s hand and, when she was silent in the scorching heat, began to speak:

  “Russia, Revolution. Yes. The smell of wormwood–of living or dead water–Yes!… Will everything be extinguished? Are there no ways? And… You remember the Russian fable about the living and the dead water. The fool Ivanushka was ruined completely, he had nothing left, it wasn’t even possible for him to die. The fool Ivanushka conquered, because truth was with him, truth fights falsehood, all falsehood will perish. All fables are interwoven with grief, fear and falsehood–and are untangled by truth. Look around–in Russia now there is a fable. The people are creating fairy tales. The people are creating the Revolution; the Revolution began like a fable. Surely hunger is fabulous and death is fabulous? Surely the towns are dying fabulously, going away into the seventeenth century, and the factories are being fabulously reborn? Look around–a fable. There is a smell of wormwood–thus the fable. And with us, with us both is–also a fable, your hands smell of wormwood!”

  Baudek put Natalya’s hand on his eyes, quietly kissed her palm. Natalya was sitting bent over, her plaits cascaded down–again she sensed keenly that the Revolution for her was bound up with joy, violent joy, the kind which misery accompanies, wormwood misery. A fable. As in the fable Uvek, as in the fable the lands beyond the river, as in the fable Semyon Ivanovich, with the beard of Marx, the water-sprite Marx, evil, like Kashchei. The wheelbarrows, the huts, the earth, Uvek, the river, the distance–gleamed, burned, shone like scorching hot shreds. Around it was fiery, deserted and silent. The sun on its course was moving towards there, little by little, out from under the wheel-barrows, out of the holes crawled the diggers, dressed any-old-how, in torn trousers, pants made of sacks, covered with bast matting, they yawned, frowned, drank water out of buckets, rolled cigars.

  One sat down opposite Baudek, lit up, scratched his open hairy chest, said unhurriedly:

  “Let’s get started, Florich!… The horse should be harnessed. Michaelo, presumably, has fallen down into the ravine.”

  Towards evening the grasshoppers began to chirr. Natalya was in the kitchen gardens, she carried buckets, watered the beds, the sweat came out on her forehead in drops, and her body, straining under the weight of the bucket, ached sweetly, with unused strength. Drops of water splashed onto her bare legs and the coolness brought relief. Towards evening in the cherry grove a redstart called. Lazily, the last bees were flying about in the golden air, heading for the apiary. She walked into the cherry grove, ate the shiny cherries with juice like blood. In the bushes grew bluebells and belladona–she
plucked by habit bunches of flowers. In her room, in the attic, in the maids’ room she sorted out in the dressing table old silk pieces, inhaled the smell of the silk, wax and pungent ancient perfume. She saw her room with new eyes: in the room was a green dusk, and over the floor walked light shimmering shadows, the white walls accepted them in senile ecstacy, easily and simply. She stood over the washbasin, splashing herself with cold water.

  The sun was going away in a broad yellow sunset.

  The scorching hot day faded in a yellow dusk. At seven the bell rang for supper, and in the pantry for half an hour it was noisy, they crowded around the pot of porridge, poured milk from small buckets into plates, then drank tea, taking glasses round to all the rooms. On the terrace, overgrown with almonds and thuya, was a guest, a sectarian–the lad Donat from the neighboring farmstead, with an apostolic beard, all in white and in forty-pound boots with metal soles, he had dropped in to talk about horses. The lad Donat refused tea, he drank milk. On the terrace with him sat Semyon Ivanovich. The sky was dying in fiery ruins of the clouds. In the undergrowth near the terrace a redstart whistled lonely and bitterly:–vee-tee, vee-teess!

  Semyon Ivanovich, in a blouse, also an old man, perched on the gate like a young man, his arms crossed and leaning his head against the column. Donat was sitting by the table, calmly, erect, one leg on the other.

  “You don’t admit of wars?” asked Semyon Ivanovich, as always dryly and imperceptibly maliciously.

 

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