The Big Green Tent
Page 63
“Sanya, I’ve been wanting to ask you for a long time—‘A grand piano floats off the earth in a self-made storm, raising its polished sail…’—do you think he doesn’t understand?”
“He doesn’t understand, apparently, that the storm isn’t self-made,” Sanya said.
“Don’t worry about him. He understands a great deal that we have no clue about.”
“Of course. But you know that all the storms here are only reflections, pale shadows, of those he called ‘self-made’?”
They stood in the middle of the empty street, having walked a ways from the house, and talking.
“Of course we know that. What did you think of him? How is he?” Sanya asked.
“He seems happy,” Liza answered without much conviction.
“Women,” Sanya said, and grimaced.
“Did I say something wrong?” Liza said, alarmed.
“No. But I thought he looked tired. And he was unusually quiet tonight.” Sanya put his arm around her shoulders.
* * *
It was very slippery. Liza held Sanya by the arm, and they walked slowly and cautiously in the direction of the subway.
“Now it has become clear to everyone that he’s a genius. In the Russian sense of that word, not the European.”
“I don’t understand what you mean,” Liza said, becoming uneasy. She was used to catching his meanings from the slightest word or gesture.
“Well, he’s not simply a person with a divine gift for poetry or music, but a person who, like an icebreaker, moves ahead of time and smashes walls, breaks apart the ice, forges new roads, so that all the little ships and boats can sail behind in his wake. The most sensitive people, the most gifted and capable, follow in the path of the genius, and the crowd surges after them—and what was once a discovery becomes a commonplace. Average people—and here I mean myself, not you—are only able to grasp things through the efforts of genius and the general unfolding of time. The people of genius are harbingers; they precipitate the movement of time.”
“Yes, yes, of course. And the Thirty-second Sonata is evidence of that. It transcends all time—Beethoven’s own, and ours as well.”
“Beethoven was a genius. Unequivocally. He completed classical music, creating a canon and then destroying it himself. The classical structure ended—and only themes and variations remained. He crossed the boundary of boundaries. He composed however he wished—no more rondos, scherzos, all those dance forms—they were just gone.” Sanya waved his hand in dismissal. “There are no words for it.”
Liza stopped.
“No, I can’t agree with you there. The rondo, the scherzo, and all those dance forms were with Beethoven right up to the end. And what do you think ‘Arietta’ is, in the last sonata? It’s the shadow of a minuet! The shadow of some minuet up in heaven, to which angels dance, if no one else. If they exist! It can’t be considered a dance—but it’s a symbol, a hieroglyph. Already beyond the bounds of life, outside time, in an incorporeal world.”
Liza gripped Sanya under the arm. It was terribly slippery, and the ice-clad trees played in the light cast by the streetlamps. She pressed his upper arm through the sleeve of his jacket, as she used to do when they were young, sitting side by side at the Conservatory and exchanging secret signs of understanding.
“Yes, of course. But time has its own complexity…” Sanya couldn’t stop. “It becomes stratified, and no longer moves from point A to point B. It’s more like the layers of an onion bulb, everything happening simultaneously. Closer to the end … Hence the tendency toward citation. It seems that what is truly valuable doesn’t age. In the world, there is an enormous multitude, as well as a multitude of worlds. The world of Beethoven, the world of Dante, the world of Schnittke, Joseph’s world … The secret is in that…”
“Enough, enough. Stop! I have another quote, do you remember?” Liza interrupted him, and slowed her pace.
“The secret is ta-ta, ta-ta-ta-ta, ta-ta,
and more I have no right to say.”
“Yes, of course. He was a rather bad poet. But he did touch upon the secret in his prose. Don’t you think so?”
“I don’t know, Sanya. It seems that now we’ve grown up, I know much less than I did when we were younger.”
* * *
They walked for a while not saying anything, barely able to keep their balance, afraid to fall and bring each other tumbling down—the pavement was like a skating rink under their feet.
“We haven’t come across a single taxi! We should have ordered one beforehand.” Suddenly, Liza remembered something she had been wanting to say for a long time. “I saw Vera last year in Paris. She was giving a master class. At first I thought, ‘How sad, she’s not giving concerts anymore.’ Then I sat in on one of her classes, and I realized it wasn’t unfortunate at all. There are so many performers, and she is creating a school of piano performance. Or continuing one. The Russian School. And you are also part of the Russian School, as Kolosov’s student.”
“In the conventional sense. You know, until the day he died Yury Andreevich never forgave me for leaving.”
“He was a unique person. A patriot in his own way. And we are cosmopolitans. Music is our homeland.”
“And the Russian School you were referring to? No, you’ll never make a good cosmopolitan. You, with your Tchaikovsky, are also a musician of the Russian School.”
“Why do you all hate Tchaikovsky so much?”
“I got over that long ago. Our friend Joseph can’t abide him, though, for his unconcealed emotion and pathos.”
“Well, there may not be a lot of pathos in the poet’s work; but he also belongs to the Russian School.”
“No, he belongs to the world.”
“I beg to differ, my friend. He writes in Russian.”
“Yes, that’s so. In Russian.”
* * *
A cab stopped next to them, almost grazing Liza. A large, drunken man clambered out. Sanya gestured to the driver to wait, stroked Liza’s hair, and kissed her. She ran her hand down his face, from his temple to his chin. Anyone seeing them might have thought they were lovers saying good-bye.
“Do you want us to drop you off somewhere?”
“No, I live nearby. I’ll be all right.”
“See you, then.”
“See you.”
* * *
It was after one in the morning, January 28, 1996. That night, the poet died.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank my dear friends, whose love has been a lifesaver.
I am grateful to Elena Kostioukovitch for her daily support of many years—for the wonderful conversations, sharp criticism, meticulous editorial work, and for her priceless friendship.
Alena Smorgunova and Yuri Freilin, for their participation in writing the book.
My friends the Alexanders—Smolyansky, Okun, and Bondarev—for their attentive and creative reading, copious comments, and unwavering interest in the book.
Sanya Daniel, Vitya Dzyadko, Igor Kogan, and Elena Murina, for being fearless and upstanding witnesses of their era—or perhaps, not completely fearless, which makes them even greater in my eyes. I am grateful to them for our long Muscovite conversations about our shared past.
I am endlessly grateful to my dear friends in Israel for their heartfelt, reliable support during the hot summer of 2010: my guardian angel Lika Nutkevich, Sergey Ruzer, Luba and Sandrik Kaminsky, Igor and Tata Guberman, and Lucy Gorkushenko for their warmth, care, and constant concern.
I am grateful to my beloved, courageous friends Lena Keshman, Tanya Safarova, Ira Yasina, and Vera Millionshikova for our correspondence and conversations, which were so crucial during the summer of 2010 when the work on the book—and my strength—were coming to an end.
A special thank-you to my musician friends who led me through the enchanted forest of music: Vera Gornostayeva, Olesya Dvoskina, Volodya Klimov, and Olga Schnittke-Meerson.
I would like to apologize to those who I ha
ve failed to mention at this moment, for which I will surely kick myself later. How could I have forgotten you?
Finally, with gratitude, I would like to remember the dear departed who have served as the inspiration for my characters, the innocents who stumbled into the meat grinder of their time, those who survived, and those who were maimed; the witnesses, the heroes, the victims—in their eternal memory.
LUDMILA ULITSKAYA
November 2010
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
Unless otherwise indicated, all excerpts of poems quoted in this edition are translated by me. In order of appearance, the poems are:
“Outside it was cold…”: Mikhail Kuzmin.
“Gogol”: Pyotr Vyazemsky.
“To an army wife, in Sardis”: Sappho, trans. Mary Barnard, Sappho: A New Translation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1958).
“The Sparrow. From Catullus”: Francis Fawkes (1761).
Pushkin’s Bronze Horseman, trans. Waclaw Lednicki (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1955).
“Thus it begins. At two or so they rush…”: Boris Pasternak.
“Some are of stone, some are of clay…”: Marina Tsvetaeva.
“The Stormy Petrel”: Maxim Gorky.
“Hamlet”: Pasternak.
“When in the country, musing, I wander…”: Alexander Pushkin.
“Flux”: Vladimir Narbut.
“Let me not go mad—”: Alexander Pushkin.
“Deaf-mute Demons”: Maximilian Voloshin.
Deaf-mute Demons
by Maximilian Voloshin
Who is blind, but my servant? or deaf, as my messenger whom I sent? who is blind as he who is perfect, and blind as the Lord’s servant?
—Isaiah 42.19
They walk the earth
Blind and deaf and dumb
And draw fiery signs
In the spreading gloom.
Illuminating the abyss,
They see nothing.
They create, not knowing
Their own predestination.
Through the murky underworld
They beam a prophetic ray …
Their fates are the face of God
Casting light amid the storm clouds.
29 December 1917
“Childhood”: Boris Pasternak.
“Letter to General Z.”: Joseph Brodsky (1968).
“Memory is an armless equestrian statue…”: Eduard Limonov.
“It will not perish in our wake—” from “Three Poems for Joseph Brodsky”: Natalia Gorbanevskaya.
“In the madhouse…” from “To Yuri Galanskov”: Natalia Gorbanevskaya.
“Brush the bliss of half-sleep from your cheek…” from “To Dima Borisov”: Natalia Gorbaevskaya.
“Koktebel”: Maxim Voloshin.
“The Hurricane”: Eshref Shemi-Zade.
Hamlet: William Shakespeare.
“The Old House”: Innokenty Annensky.
“Winter’s Eve”: Boris Pasternak.
“When will the pall on my / Ailing heart disperse?”: Evgeny Baratynsky.
“August”: Joseph Brodsky.
“Bagatelle (To Elizaveta Lionskaya)”: Joseph Brodsky.
“The secret is…” from Glory: Vladimir Nabokov (Wellesley, 1942).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LUDMILA ULITSKAYA is one of Russia’s most popular and renowned literary figures. A former scientist and the director of Moscow’s Hebrew Repertory Theater, she is the author of fourteen works of fiction, three tales for children, and six plays that have been staged by a number of theaters in Russia and Germany. She has won Russia’s Man Booker Prize and was on the judges’ list for the Man Booker International Prize. You can sign up for email updates here.
ALSO BY LUDMILA ULITSKAYA
The Funeral Party: A Novel
Medea and Her Children
Sonechka: A Novella and Stories
Daniel Stein, Interpreter: A Novel
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Epigraph
Prologue
Those Wondrous School Years
The New Teacher
Children of the Underworld
The LORLs
The Last Ball
Friendship of the Peoples
The Big Green Tent
Love in Retirement
Orphans All
King Arthur’s Wedding
A Tad Too Tight
The Upper Register
Girlfriends
The Dragnet
The Angel with the Outsize Head
The House with the Knight
The Coffee Stain
The Fugitive
The Deluge
Hamlet’s Ghost
A Good Ticket
Poor Rabbit
The Road with One End
Deaf-mute Demons
Milyutin Park
First in Line
The Decorated Underpants
The Imago
A Russian Story
Ende Gut—
Epilogue: The End of a Beautiful Era
Acknowledgments
Translator’s Note
About the Author
Also by Ludmila Ulitskaya
Copyright
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011
Copyright © 2010 by Ludmila Ulitskaya
Translation copyright © 2015 by Bela Shayevich
All rights reserved
Originally published in Russian in 2010 by Eksmo, Russia, as Зеленый шатер
English translation published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
First American edition, 2015
An excerpt from The Big Green Tent originally appeared, in different form, in The New Yorker.
Published by arrangement with ELKOST International Literary Agency, Barcelona, Spain
Grateful acknowledgment is made to University of California Press Books for permission to reprint an excerpt from “To an army wife, in Sardis,” by Sappho, translated by Mary Barnard, from Sappho: A New Translation.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ulitskaia, Liudmila.
[Zelenyi shater. English]
The big green tent / Ludmila Ulitskaya; translated from the Russian by Bela Shayevich. — First American edition.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-374-16667-0 (hardcover) — ISBN 978-0-374-70971-6 (ebook)
1. Male friendship—Soviet Union—Fiction. 2. Soviet Union—Social conditions—1945–1991—Fiction. 3. Soviet Union—Intellectual life—Fiction. I. Shayevich, Bela, translator. II. Title.
PG3489.2 .L58Z4513 2014
891.73'5—dc23
2014016972
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Published with the support of the Institute for Literary Translation, Russia.
* When they were teenagers, the writers and activists Alexander Herzen (Sasha) (1812–1870) and Nikolay Ogarev (Nick) (1813–1877) famously took an oath on the Sparrow Hills, vowing to dedicate their lives to fighting tyranny.
* Julian calendar (so-called Old Style date). Russia adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1918, but many religious holidays were still celebrated according to their Old Style dates.
* A game in which players toss a
round, heavy piece of metal (called a bita) at a stack of coins, in order to hit or knock it over, and then take turns using the bita to try to flip the coins over. If you flip a coin, it’s yours to keep. —Trans.
* The title of an eponymous story by Ivan Bunin.
* Trans. Mary Barnard, 1962.
* “The Sparrow. From Catullus” by Francis Fawkes (1761).
* Trans. Waclaw Lednicki, 1955.
* At Russian wedding parties, it is customary for guests to cry out “It’s bitter!” when they drink. This is a cue for the bride and groom to kiss and make the wine sweet, a call-and-response ritual repeated throughout the wedding party. —Trans.
* Baikal–Amur Railroad.
* See the full translation of Voloshin’s poem in the Translator’s Note on here.