A School for Fools

by Sasha Sokolov

  SASHA SOKOLOV was born in Canada in 1943. His father, a high-ranking Soviet diplomat, was deported from Canada as a spy in 1946, and Sokolov grew up in the Soviet Union, where he studied journalism at Moscow State University. He made repeated attempts to escape from the USSR, for which he was briefly imprisoned, but after international protests, he was finally permitted to leave the country in 1975. That same year the manuscript of A School for Fools, his first novel, was smuggled out of the Soviet Union and published in the West to great acclaim. The recipient of the prestigious Andrei Bely Prize in 1981 and of the Pushkin Prize for literature in 1996, Sokolov is the author of the novels Astrophobia and Between Dog and Wolf and of a book of essays, In the House of the Hanged.

  ALEXANDER BOGUSLAWSKI is a professor of Russian studies at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida.

  A SCHOOL FOR FOOLS

  SASHA SOKOLOV

  Translated from the Russian by

  ALEXANDER BOGUSLAWSKI

  NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS

  New York

  THIS IS A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOK

  PUBLISHED BY THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS

  435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

  www.nyrb.com

  Copyright © 1976, 2012 by Alexander (Sasha) Sokolov

  Translation, introduction, and notes copyright © 2015 by Alexander Boguslawski

  All rights reserved.

  Published in Russian as Shkola dlia durakov. Published here by arrangement with

  Elkost International Literary Agency.

  Published with the support of the Institute for Literary Translation, Russia

  Cover image: Pavel Filonov, Beasts, 1925-6; State Russian Museum, St.

  Petersburg, Russia / Bridgeman Images

  Cover design: Katy Homans

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Sokolov, Sasha, 1943- author.

  [Shkola dlia durakov. English]

  A school for fools / by Sasha Sokolov ; introduction by Alexander Boguslawski ; translation by Alexander Boguslawski.

  1 online resource. — (New York Review Books classics)

  Includes bibliographical references.

  ISBN 978-1-59017-847-8 () — ISBN 978-1-59017-846-1 (alk.paper)

  I. Boguslawski, Alexander Prus, translator, writer of introduction. II. Title.

  PG3549.S64

  891.73'44—dc23

  2014048236

  ISBN 978-1-59017-847-8

  v1.0

  For a complete list of books in the NYRB Classics series, please visit

  www.nyrb.com or write to:

  Catalog Requests, NYRB, 435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Biographical Notes

  Copyright and More Information

  Translator’s Note

  1. Nymphaea

  2. Now: The Stories Written on the Veranda

  3. Savl

  4. “Screak”

  5. Testament

  Notes

  TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

  THE IDEA for A School for Fools first came to Sasha Sokolov in the 1960s, when he was living in Moscow. The city’s hectic and distracting intellectual life made it difficult to finish a large literary project; it was not until 1973 that he completed the novel in the solitude of a small cabin without electricity on the banks of the Volga, where he was working as a game warden. The book defied all the norms and rules of socialist realism, the official aesthetic of the Soviet Union, and it stood no chance of being published there. Accordingly, Sokolov sent the manuscript abroad. It found its way into the hands of Carl Proffer, the founder of Ardis, a small press in the United States devoted to publishing Russian and English editions of works that could not be published in the USSR, along with a range of Russian modernist classics. Proffer was quick to see that A School for Fools was the work of a fully developed and enormously talented author. He sent the manuscript to Vladimir Nabokov to get his opinion, and Nabokov responded favorably. A School for Fools, he said, was “an enchanting, tragic, and touching book.”

  Helped by Nabokov’s endorsement, the book’s reception in the West was enthusiastic, and in the almost forty years since its first publication it has gone on to be translated into some twenty languages. Reviewers and scholars have studied and admired the beauty and sophistication of the novel’s language and structure and the stylistic ingenuity that Sokolov displays in dealing with its unusual hero, a juvenile inmate of a mental institution, the school for fools, who suffers from dual personality disorder and is struggling to come to terms with the death of his mentor and with his unrequited love for one of his teachers. The hero’s imperfect or selective memory and his uncertain grasp of time mean that throughout the book characters change names, acquire doubles, and even come back from the dead. The plot is fragmented, the text incorporates both passages of internal dialogue between the hero’s distinct personalities and passages of stream of consciousness, and the world of the book is bewildering, haunted, and marvelous. When, in 1989, Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost finally made it possible for the novel to come out in the Soviet Union, it was immediately proclaimed a masterpiece.

  A School for Fools can be read in a variety of ways. It can be seen as a metaphor for life in the Soviet Union, where people who did not fit in, and not just political dissidents, were often detained and interred for long periods of time in mental institutions. Quite differently, it can be seen as an exploration of the Narcissus myth, a discourse on the nature of time and memory, or an attempt at coming to terms with the illusive nature of reality. Certainly, it is an inspired and vivid example of metafiction, a literary work that exposes and explores its own fictionality and the process of its making, with a complexity and beauty of style that bears comparison to the works of Faulkner and Nabokov.

  It is in fact a great book, but in English it has been badly in need of a new translation. Proffer’s, however worthy and readable, was produced rapidly and contained some serious misinterpretations and mistakes, few of which were corrected in the several editions it went through. Even more important, Sokolov, ever the perfectionist, has continued to tweak the original Russian, altering the book in subtle and significant ways.

  In translating A School for Fools, I have set out to stay as close as possible to the original, no matter the difficulties such a goal might present. I have retained Sokolov’s very long paragraphs, a literary device that, as he says in his essay “Another Encounter,” doesn’t allow the reader to “doubt even for a second that existence is precisely what is happening here and now, on the given page.” I have also sought to capture the rhythm and flow of the text, its remarkable musicality. When the original breaks into rhyme and verse, as it does at points, I have tried not only to capture the meaning but to maintain the rhyme and the meter. I have done my best to leave nothing out. Certain turns of speech, however, certain word games and puns, are likely to escape English-speaking readers, so I have added notes that discuss Sokolov’s intertextual links and neologisms, explain the significance of some names and places, and, at points, compare the translation to the original Russian. The notes are not marked in the text—I did not wish to interrupt the flow of the novel—but they can be found in the back of the book. In general, I can only hope that I have produced a translation that is as accurate as can be, but which also preserves some of the book’s “proetry”—Sokolov’s coinage for prose elevated to the level of poetry.

  Predictably, it has taken many years and great effort to convert this rich and complex work of fiction into English. The work could not have been completed without the help of my wife, Kay Davidson-Bond, and my friend, Professor Paul Licata, both of whom read through it many times, making changes and elimi
nating mistakes. I am eternally grateful to them both. In addition, I would like to thank New York Review Books and its editors for believing in the importance of A School for Fools. Above all, however, I am grateful to have had the good fortune to be able to discuss this rendering with Sasha Sokolov. Our close collaboration, the long hours we spent discussing possible variants and word choices, saved me from many mistakes and misunderstandings. For any flaws that may remain, of course, I take full responsibility.

  —ALEXANDER BOGUSLAWSKI

  A SCHOOL FOR FOOLS

  For the feeble-minded boy

  Vitia Dancin, my pal and neighbor.

  But Saul, also known as Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked intently at him and said, “You son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, full of deceit and villainy, will you not stop making crooked the straight paths of the Lord?”

  —ACTS, 13:9–10

  To chase, to hold, and to rotate,

  To hear, to see, and to offend,

  To run, to breathe, likewise to hate,

  And to endure, and to depend.

  —Russian verbs that represent well-known

  exceptions of the rules, rhythmically

  organized for easier memorization.

  The same name! the same contour of person!

  —EDGAR ALLAN POE, “William Wilson”

  1. NYMPHAEA

  RIGHT, but how to begin, with what words? It doesn’t matter, begin with the words: There, on the pond at the station. On the pond at the station? But this is wrong, a stylistic mistake, Cafeteria would inevitably correct it; one can only say a buffet or a newsstand is at the station, but not a pond, a pond can only be near the station. So call it a pond near the station, is that so important? Great, then I’ll begin exactly like that: There, on the pond near the station. Wait a minute, what about the station, the station itself, please, if it’s not too difficult, describe the station, what kind of station it was, what kind of platform—wooden or concrete—and what kind of houses were there; you probably remember their color or, perhaps, you know the people who lived in those houses near the station. Yes, I know or rather knew some of the people who lived near the station and I can tell you something about them, but not now, later, someday, and now I’ll describe the station. It was ordinary: signalman’s hut, bushes, cashier’s cabin, and the platform—wooden, by the way, creaking, and made of boards; nails often stuck out of it and one was not supposed to walk on it barefoot. Trees grew around the station: aspens and pines; in other words, all kinds of trees, all kinds. The station was ordinary—the station itself, but everything beyond the station seemed very beautiful, extraordinary: the pond, tall grasses, the dance ring, the grove, the resort, and other things. In the pond near the station people used to swim in the evening after work; they came on electric trains and went swimming. No, first they went to their dachas. Tired, huffing, wiping their faces with handkerchiefs, dragging their briefcases and shopping bags, and making gwooking noises. Do you remember what was in the shopping bags? Tea, sugar, butter, sausage, a fresh fish flapping its tail, macaroni, buckwheat kasha, onions, prepared foods, and, rarely, salt. They went to their dachas, drank tea on their verandas, put on their pajamas, strolled— hands clasped behind their backs—in their gardens, peeked into firefighting barrels blooming with algae, were amazed by the number of frogs that kept jumping all over their lawns, played with their children and pets, played badminton, drank kvass from their refrigerators, watched television, and talked to their neighbors. Then, if it was still light, they marched in groups to the pond—for a swim. And why didn’t they go to the river? They were afraid of whirlpools and strong currents, wind and waves, bottomless pits and grasses at the bottom. And maybe there simply was no river? Maybe. But what was it called? The river was called.

  In essence, all the trails and paths in our settlement led to the pond. Thin, weak, almost unreal trails led to it from the farthest dachas, standing at the edge of the forest. They barely glowed in the evening, glimmering, while the more substantial trails, trodden long ago and forever, the paths trampled to such a degree it would be impossible for any grass to grow on them—such paths and trails shone clearly, brightly, and evenly. They shone at sunset, yes, naturally at sunset, more precisely, immediately after sunset, in the dusk. And so, flowing into one another, all the paths led to the pond. Finally, several hundred meters from the shore, they merged into one splendid road. This road ran for a while through meadows and then entered the birch grove. Look back and tell me, was it nice or not to ride a bicycle through the grove in the evening, in the dim light? Nice. Because a bicycle is always nice, in any kind of weather, at any age. Take, for example, our colleague Pavlov. He was a physiologist; he conducted various experiments with animals and rode a bicycle a lot. In one textbook—you must remember that book—there’s a whole chapter about Pavlov. It begins with pictures showing dogs with some special physiological tubes sewn into their necks, and it explains that the dogs are accustomed to getting their food when a bell rings. Whenever Pavlov did not give them food but just rang the bell for no reason at all, the animals got excited and salivated—it was simply amazing. Academician Pavlov had a bicycle and rode it often. The textbook shows one of his outings too. Pavlov is already old, but still spry. He is riding, observing nature, and the bell on his handlebars is exactly like the one in his experiments. Besides that, Pavlov had a long gray beard, like Mikheev who lived and perhaps still lives in our dacha settlement. Even though both Mikheev and Pavlov loved bicycles, the difference between them amounted to the following: Pavlov rode his bicycle for pleasure, to relax, while for Mikheev the bicycle was always the equivalent of work: It was his job to deliver correspondence on his bicycle. About him, about the mailman Mikheev (but perhaps his name was, is, and will be Medvedev?), we need to talk separately, we should devote some individual time to him, and one of us—you or I—will definitely do it. By the way, I think you know the mailman better, since you lived at the dacha much longer than I, although, if we were to ask the neighbors, they’d surely say it was a very complex question and it was almost impossible to make sense out of it. We, the neighbors would say, didn’t watch too closely what you—that is we—were doing, and in general what kind of strange question, they’d say, is that really; why did you suddenly feel the need to clarify some nonsense; isn’t it all the same how long someone lived somewhere; it’s simply foolish, they’d say, better get to work: It’s May already, but apparently the trees in your garden haven’t been spaded yet, though you like to eat apples, don’t you? Even the wind-chaser Norvegov—they’d remark—even he’s been digging in his garden patch since morning. Yes, he’s been digging, one of us will answer, or we’ll say in unison: Yes, he’s been digging. Our mentor Norvegov has the time and need for that. Besides, he has a garden and a house, while we . . . we don’t have anything like that anymore—no time, no garden, and no house. You have simply forgotten: We haven’t lived here, in the settlement, for quite a long time, possibly about nine years. After all, we sold the dacha—sold it just like that. I suspect that as a more talkative, sociable person, you’ll want to add something, engage in an argument, begin to explain why we sold it and why, from your point of view, we didn’t have to sell, and not only didn’t have to but shouldn’t have sold it. Instead, it’ll be better to leave them, to go away on the first electric train; I don’t want to hear their voices.

  Our father sold the dacha when he retired, although his pension turned out to be so extravagant that the dacha mailman, Mikheev, who has dreamt all his life about a good new bicycle but still can’t save enough money, not because he’s generous but simply because he’s not thrifty, so Mikheev, when he learned from one of our neighbors, the assistant prosecutor, what kind of retirement pay our father would receive, almost fell off his bicycle. The mailman was calmly riding along the fence, beyond which was the neighbor’s dacha—by the way, do you remember his name? No, it’s impossible to recall it right away: I have a poor memory for names, and does it
really make sense to remember all these first and last names? Of course, and yet, if we knew the last name it would be easier to tell the story. But it’s possible to think up an arbitrary last name; all names— whether you want it or not—are arbitrary, even if they’re real. On the other hand, if we give him an arbitrary last name, people may think we’re making something up, we’re trying to deceive someone, spread confusion, while we have absolutely nothing to hide, we’re talking about a man who is our neighbor, everyone in the settlement knows him and also knows he is the assistant prosecutor who owns an ordinary dacha, not very fancy, and perhaps there is no reason to twaddle that his house is made of stolen bricks—what’s your opinion? Eh? What are you talking about? Aren’t you listening to me? Yes, I’m listening, only just now I suddenly thought that beer must have been in those containers. What containers? Those large ones, in the neighbor’s shed, there was probably ordinary beer in them— what do you think? I don’t know, I don’t remember, I haven’t thought about those days for a long time. And at the moment when Mikheev rode past the neighbor’s house, the owner was standing on the doorstep of the shed holding up a container of beer against the light. Mikheev’s bicycle rattled loudly, bouncing up and down over the pine roots sticking out of the ground, and it was impossible for the neighbor not to hear and recognize the mailman’s bicycle. And when he heard and recognized it, he quickly walked up to the fence in order to ask whether there were any letters for him, but instead of this, he surprised himself by telling the mailman: Have you heard about the prosecutor?—said the assistant prosecutor, smiling—He was retired. How much did he get?—responded Mikheev, not stopping, but just braking slightly—How much money? Moving forward, he looked back and the neighbor saw that the suntanned face of the mailman expressed nothing. The mailman appeared calm, as always, only his beard, with pine needles stuck to it, fluttered in the wind, in the wind born of speed, in the speedy bicycle wind, and the neighbor—if he were in the smallest degree a poet—would inevitably imagine that Mikheev’s face, blown by all the dacha drafts, seemed to emanate wind itself and that Mikheev was indeed the one who had been known in the settlement as Sender of the Wind. Speaking more precisely, had not been known. Nobody ever saw this man; perhaps he didn’t exist at all. But in the evenings, after swimming in the pond, the dacha dwellers gathered on glass-enclosed verandas, made themselves comfortable in their wicker armchairs, and told each other various stories; one of them was the legend of the Sender. Some claimed he was young and wise, others maintained he was old and dumb, still others insisted he was middle-aged but immature and illiterate, and some that he was old and clever. There were also those who declared the Sender was young and frail, a fool but a genius. It was said he would appear on one of the sunniest and warmest days of summer, ride his bicycle, blow his hazelnut whistle, and do nothing else but send the wind across the area he rode through. That meant the Sender sent the wind only on the area that had too many dachas and dacha residents. Yes, yes, that was exactly this kind of a place. If I’m not mistaken, there were three or four dacha settlements around the station. And what was the station called? I can’t make it out from the distance at all. The station was called.