Tolstoy, Rasputin, Others, and Me

by Teffi

  A girl came in, carrying a packet of hygroscopic cotton wool. She sat there for five minutes and then went away again, taking the cotton wool with her.

  The next day, Finn-Yenotaevsky appeared.

  “You know,” I said, “I couldn’t find any doctor at all on Liteyny Street, either at number five or at number ten.”

  “You couldn’t?” he said, without the least surprise. “Well, you won’t help us bring about the revolution. Give me back the ten roubles.”

  “So, if I had found a doctor, you’d have brought about a revolution?”

  But he just gave a toss of his spirals and dashed off.

  “I’m sick of all your friends,” I said to K.P. “Can’t we put them off somehow?”

  “Wait a little longer,” he replied. “Lenin will be here soon. Only don’t tell a soul. He’s coming illegally. Once he’s here, things will get interesting. Do please wait a little.”

  And so I began waiting for Lenin.

  •

  Maxim Gorky came to me with a request.

  He told me he often received communications from the provinces, which were of interest only to himself and his friends, and of no interest whatsoever to anybody else. At that time, anyone receiving too much correspondence was liable to attract the attentions of the police, and then their letters would be intercepted and begin to go missing. However, if the correspondence was sent to an editorial office, it wouldn’t attract any attention at all. The head of the provincial affairs desk at the Stock Exchange Gazette was a man of very liberal views by the name of Linyov.[18] I was to ask Linyov for a favour: not to print any letters he received from the provinces in which the date was underlined twice. Apparently, the contents of these letters (which were quite innocuous and, actually, pure fabrication) were intended only for Gorky and his friends. Instead of printing the letters, Linyov was to pass them to me, as I often came in to the editorial office. And then Gorky’s friends would pick them up from me.

  It was all quite clear and simple.

  Linyov was happy to oblige.

  This Linyov was a man who didn’t do things by halves. He had an extravagant head of hair and a beard that seemed to ripple in the breeze.

  “I appeal to Gogol’s Russia, to Dostoevsky’s Russia. I ask them ‘Where are we heading?’ ” he would say. “But I get no answer.”

  It was too bad that he got no answer from either Gogol’s or Dostoevsky’s Russia, but he took no offence, and went on repeating his impossible question.

  Anyway, Linyov agreed, and even gave his word that he would always do everything he possibly could to help Gorky’s friends. Presently, Linyov passed me two or three letters with the dates underlined. A gentleman who claimed to be “from Gorky” came and took them away. The letters seemed to be utterly trivial: “Students at the Kursk Seminary are complaining that they have been given spoilt meat.” “The Taganrog school building is in need of repair, but it is impossible to get a housing repair grant.”

  Then, all of a sudden, the letters stopped. The “gentleman from Gorky” arrived, very agitated. He and his friends knew that an important letter had been dispatched the week before, and that Linyov hadn’t passed it on. In general, letters had started to go missing. What was going on? They had to get to the bottom of things immediately.

  “Have there been any letters?” I asked Linyov.

  “Of course there have,” said Linyov, “As it happens, they were extremely interesting. As an experienced observer of provincial life, I simply had to print the material.”

  “But you were warned that it was all pure fabrication,” I said. “How could you print it? Now you’ll get complaints!”

  “I’m already getting complaints. However, as an experienced observer . . . anyway, it’s over now. There haven’t been any more letters.”

  I looked into his tray. The first thing I saw was a letter with the date underlined.

  “What about this?” I asked. “And here’s another, and another.”

  “Oh, those!” His manner was blasé. “You can have them. I’ve used them already.”

  Later that day I passed on the letters to the “gentleman from Gorky”. He was overjoyed and then, to my surprise, he asked for a candle. He lit the candle, and began to heat the letter over the flame.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “What do you think I’m doing? I’m developing it.”

  So that was what was going on! Between the lines of the letter, yellow words began to appear. Familiar words: “co-optation”, “mandate”, “Mensheviks”.

  Three days later, Linyov rushed in. His hair was on end, his coat gaping open, and he had the face of a man who has just jumped off a cliff into the sea.

  He was shouting, “I have a daughter! I may not have seen her for fifteen years, but I’m a father, I’ll have you know.”

  “What’s happened to your daughter?”

  “I’ll tell you what’s happened to her,” he said. “Her only father is about to be ruined by you and your friends. Make no mistake! Those letters! Gorky will drag me to the guillotine!”

  “Don’t take on so. We don’t have the guillotine here. We’re not in France.”

  “It makes no difference. You tell Gorky from me that I have a daughter!”

  I promised I would pass on the message, and Linyov rushed off again, forgetting his briefcase and gloves.

  I told the “gentleman from Gorky”, and that was the end of the matter.

  •

  For some time now there had been talk in literary circles of the need to start a newspaper. The poet Minsky had been granted the necessary permission,[19] but he had no money. Some capitalist showed up and arranged a meeting, to which our friend K.P., who knew him, was invited. Although the plans being discussed were quite innocuous, suddenly the police burst in and arrested everybody. Nobody had done anything wrong, but the police dealt with them very harshly. Those arrested were taken to Marshal Baroch, who was well known for his bully-boy tactics. He yelled, stamped his feet and threatened to let them all rot in jail. K.P. replied, calmly, “That’s fine, but I need to make a call to my father.”

  “Call him! Feel free!” yelled Baroch. “And I’ll let him know just what sort of a son he has. He’d better watch out, too!”

  In those days, you had to give the number to a switchboard operator who would put you through. When K.P. gave the girl his father’s number, Marshal Baroch gave a start.

  “Is that Senator P.’s apartment?” K.P. asked over the phone.

  Baroch jumped to his feet.

  “Igor, is that you?” continued K.P. “Could you tell father that I’ve been arrested and that Marshall Baroch is acting the fool?”

  Marshall Baroch didn’t say a word. Shamefaced, he slunk out of the room.

  K.P. was released that day. The others were kept for three days.

  That was the last we saw of the capitalist, and the dream of starting a newspaper was dashed.

  But then fresh hope dawned. Gorky began talks with Minsky. Getting permission to start a new paper was difficult; it was easier to try to make use of the permission already granted to Minsky. Gorky found the money, and Minsky was to be the editor. The literary section would include Gorky, Zinaida Gippius (both as a poet and as a literary critic, under the pseudonym “Anton the Extreme”) and myself. The paper would take its political direction from the Social Democrats, under the leadership of Lenin. Rumyantsev was to be editorial secretary and the managing editor would be Litvinov, whom we all nicknamed Papasha (“Daddy”).

  Our future secretary found a superb building on Nevsky Prospekt for our editorial office, with a grand entrance onto the street and a uniformed doorman. Everybody was very excited.

  Minsky found the slogan “Workers of the World Unite” a great source of inspiration. Realizing that the phrase was pleasingly metrical, he composed an anthem:

  Workers of the world—unite!

  Ours the strength, the power, the will.

  Time to face ou
r final fight,

  When our enemy shall fall.

  Form a chain about the globe

  Let us, chanting with one voice,

  March as one against our foe

  Till in victory we rejoice.

  All our foe held in his hands

  We now claim as our birthright.

  We’ll take the red sun for our flag.

  Workers of the world—unite![20]

  This anthem was printed in the first edition of the paper, which was called New Life.

  New Life aroused a great deal of interest. The first issue went on sale at a price of three roubles. All the copies were snapped up almost immediately, that same evening. Our political directors were jubilant. They thought that they were the reason for the paper’s success.

  “Our comrades, the workers, have shown their support!”

  Sadly, the workers had in fact remained loyal to the Petersburg Gazette, which was printed on a special type of paper ideal for rolling cigarettes. It was the intelligentsia, needless to say, that was interested in our new paper. They were intrigued by the novelty of a collaboration between the Social Democrats and the Decadents (Minsky and Gippius), not to mention Gorky.

  •

  Strange characters began to appear in our magnificent editorial office. They whispered in corners and exchanged meaningful looks with one another.

  No one in the world of journalism knew who these people were. Even the king of Russian reporters, Lvov-Klyachko, who knew literally everyone and everything, could only look at them and shrug. It seemed that they were there at the invitation of Rumyantsev. But when we asked him who they were, he smiled slyly and said, “Wait and see.”

  These new people had not actually begun to work; they were merely conferring, making preparations.

  And then who should turn up but my old friend Yefim, the same Yefim who, while languishing in a tsarist jail, had eaten goose for Christmas. Or, as he put it, “gooses”.

  Yefim, smiling bashfully, announced that he had an idea for a political article.

  “So far I’ve only got as far as the title: ‘Plehve and his Slaves’.[21] I’d like to get it printed as soon as possible.”

  “So where is the article?”

  “Well I need a bit more time to think up the article itself.”

  A man by the name of Gukovsky appeared too. He opened his gap-toothed mouth wide and tapped on his gums with a fingernail. “Scurvy,” he declared proudly.

  From this, everyone was supposed to gather that he had spent time in exile; that he had suffered for his ideas.

  We were also joined by someone called Gusev, who had just arrived from abroad. Somebody said that he “had a top-notch singing voice”. All these men were more or less alike. They even spoke in the same way: curling their lips ironically and leaving their sentences unfinished.

  I was asked to write something satirical for the paper.

  At the time there was a lot of talk about Dmitry Trepov.[22] I no longer remember what position he held, but he was certainly someone very important; hence he was dubbed Patron—a name which, of course, also means “Bullet”. During the suppression of a recent riot[23] he had given soldiers the order to fire and “to spare no bullet”. Soon afterwards, he had been removed from his post.

  The editors decided that I should mark this occasion.

  I wrote a rhyme called “Bullet and the bullets”:

  Trepov, you are yourself the man to blame

  For your demise; as I recall it,

  Yours were the lips from which the order came:

  “Fire away lads, spare no bullet.”

  My rhyme was typeset at once and was supposed to come out the following day.

  But it didn’t appear.

  What was going on?

  Some Gusev or Gukovsky popped out from one of the side rooms and explained, “I asked them to hold back your poem. I wasn’t sure if it’s correct to rhyme ‘recall it’ with ‘bullet’. It will need to be discussed at an editorial meeting.”

  I went to see Rumyantsev.

  “Pyotr Petrovich, we can’t afford to delay. In a day or two, every newspaper in town will have come up with the same joke. We won’t be able to print it then.”

  Rumyantsev ran off to the typesetters and the poem appeared the following day. And by evening, the joke about “Bullet and the bullets” was being repeated everywhere: on the streets, in trams, in clubs, in parlours, at student meetings. I would have liked to have had a word with the expert on poetry who had kept back my poem. However, all the newcomers were so like one another that I was afraid I might get the wrong man, and upset somebody entirely innocent.

  “Don’t bother,” said Rumyantsev. “He knows anyway. He only held back your poem to show that he’s an important person around here, that his word means something.”

  “But who is he?” I asked. “Is he a writer? How does he come to be such an expert on rhyme? And in any case, it says in the contract that ‘they’ are supposed to keep to the political section. If you know who did it, tell him there are one or two things I’d like to change too in their political editorials.”

  He laughed. “That would certainly liven up the paper,” he said. “Interest has been falling off lately.”

  But actually, interest in the paper was not falling off.

  We had had some interest from Moscow. Valery Bryusov had sent us a short story. Minsky had received a letter from Andrei Bely. The literary section was getting very lively.

  There was a lot of talk at the time about new social developments, but it was difficult to detect any general trend. At salons, people discussed the government’s actions. People who were themselves of low social status were saying things like: “Those workers and tradesmen are stirring things up. There’s no satisfying that lot.”

  In the hairdresser’s one day, a big, strapping woman with red cheeks, the owner of a horse cab yard, was sitting beside me having her hair set. She was saying to the hairdresser, “You know what, Monsewer, I’m that scared these days, I can’t even leave the house.”

  “Why ever not?” asked the hairdresser.

  “Well, everyone’s saying the antilligentsia is about to cop it. It’s scaring the living daylights out of me . . .”

  In the house of a certain governor’s wife I met a Baroness O. She had been brought to Russia by Zinaida Gippius.

  “Why don’t you have a Carmagnole?”[24] she was saying. “It’s a lovely, cheerful revolutionary song for the triumphant people to dance to. I can write the music and one of your poets can write the words. I love writing music. I’ve already written two romances: one about a Turkish pasha in love, and the other about a queen in love. Now I can write a Carmagnole. So don’t forget, now. Have a word with your poet friends.”

  •

  In the dark corners of the editorial office there was much whispering, and the rustling of strange documents—little groups of cockroaches waving their whiskers.

  Rumyantsev strode boldly about the office, like an animal-tamer in a circus. He was very pleased with all his staff, and was now waiting impatiently for Lenin’s arrival, so that he could boast to him about how well he had set everything up. He was the object of disapproving whispers from the cockroaches in their corners, but he took no notice of this and only chuckled roguishly. Watching him, you would think he was merely playing at being a Bolshevik, and enjoying himself immensely. Yet he had, in his day, spent time in exile (albeit not in Siberia, but in Oryol).[25] He had translated Marx and was seen by the Bolsheviks as a powerful force in the world of literature. He barely said a word to the whisperers in the corners and sometimes even nodded in their direction and gave us a knowing wink.

  But there was an odd mood in the editorial office. It was tense, unfriendly and awkward. Minsky was particularly anxious. He was the chief editor, the paper was authorized in his name, and yet he was not even being shown the political articles. Gorky was no longer coming in to the office. It seemed he had left the city.

  “Wait a
nd see,” Rumyantsev tried to reassure everybody. “Soon Lenin will be here and everything will be sorted out.”

  I walked about the office, quietly singing, “The master is coming, the master will sort it all out.”[26]

  Rumyantsev was right.

  The master did come.

  And he did sort it all out.

  •

  Sitting in reception were Rumyantsev and two other men. One of them I recognized as one of our whisperers, but the other was new to me. The new man was plain and rather plump with a large lower jaw, a prominent forehead with thinning hair, small, crafty eyes and jutting cheekbones. He was sitting with one leg crossed over the other, explaining something to Rumyantsev very emphatically. Rumyantsev kept spreading his hands in dismay and shrugging his shoulders. He was clearly put out.

  The whisperer was devouring this newcomer with his eyes, nodding at his every word and even bobbing up and down impatiently on his chair.

  When I came in, the conversation immediately broke off. Rumyantsev introduced me and the newcomer said amiably, “Yes, yes, I know” (not that there was really much to know).

  Rumyantsev did not tell me the man’s name. Clearly I was expected to know already.

  “Vladimir Ilyich is unhappy with our premises,” said Rumyantsev.

  Ah! Vladimir Ilyich! The man himself!

  “The premises are excellent,” Lenin interrupted. “But not for our editorial office. What on earth gave you the idea of having our office on Nevsky Prospekt? And to have such a grand doorman on duty! No ordinary working man would have the courage to walk past a figure like him. And your diarists are no use at all. You must have diaries written by workers . . .”

  “It’s anyone’s guess what they’d come up with,” Rumyantsev said crossly.

  “It doesn’t matter. Of course it will be badly written and incoherent, but that isn’t important. We can take a piece, work on it, correct it and publish it. And then the workers will know it’s their paper.”

  I thought of Yefim and his “Plehve and his Slaves”.

  “And will the workers be writing the literary reviews and the theatre and opera reviews, too?” I asked.