by Teffi
“What was there for me to do back there?” asks one of the meek. “I’m a professor of international law. I could only have died of hunger.”
Indeed, what is there for a professor of international law to do—a man whose professional concern is the inviolability of principles that no longer exist? What use is he now? All he can do is give off an air of international law. And now he’s on the run. During the brief stops he hurries about, trying to find someone in need of his international law. Sometimes he even finds a bit of work and manages to give a few lectures. But then the crazed swine break loose and sweep him along behind them.
“We have to run. Everyone is running.”
Out-of-work lawyers, journalists, artists, actors and public figures—they’re all on the run.
“Maybe we should have stayed behind and fought?”
Fought? But how? Make wonderful speeches when there’s no one to hear them? Write powerful articles that there’s nowhere to publish?
“And who should we have fought against?”
Should an impassioned knight enter into combat with a windmill, then—and please remember this—the windmill will always win. Even though this certainly does not mean—and please remember this too—that the windmill is right.
They’re running. They’re in torment, full of doubt, and they’re on the run.
Alongside them, grunting and snorting and not doubting anything, are the speculators, former gendarmes, former Black Hundreds[1] and a variety of other former scoundrels. Former though they may be, these groups retain their particularities.
There are heroic natures who stride joyfully and passionately through blood and fire towards—ta-rum-pum-pum!—a new life!
And there are tender natures who are willing, with no less joy and no less passion, to sacrifice their lives for what is most wonderful and unique, but without the ta-rum-pum-pum. With a prayer rather than a drum roll.
Wild screams and bloodshed extinguish all light and colour from their souls. Their energy fades and their resources vanish. The rivulet of blood glimpsed in the morning at the gates of the commissariat, a rivulet creeping slowly across the pavement, cuts across the road of life for ever. It’s impossible to step over it.
It’s impossible to go any farther. Impossible to do anything but turn and run.
And so these tender natures run.
The rivulet of blood has cut them off for ever, and they shall never return.
Then there are the more everyday people, those who are neither good nor bad but entirely average, the all too real people who make up the bulk of what we call humanity. The ones for whom science and art, comfort and culture, religion and laws were created. Neither heroes nor scoundrels—in a word, just plain ordinary people.
To exist without the everyday, to hang in the air without any familiar footing—with no sure, firm earthly footing—is something only heroes and madmen can do.
A “normal person” needs the trappings of life, life’s earthly flesh—that is, the everyday.
Where there’s no religion, no law, no conventions, no settled routine (even if only the routine of a prison or a penal camp), an ordinary, everyday person cannot exist.
At first he’ll try to adapt. Deprived of his breakfast roll, he’ll eat bread; deprived of bread, he’ll settle for husks full of grit; deprived of husks, he’ll eat rotten herring—but he’ll eat all of this with the same look on his face and the same attitude as if he were eating his usual breakfast roll.
But what if there’s nothing to eat at all? He loses his way, his light fades, the colours of life turn pale for him.
Now and then there’s a brief flicker from some tremulous beam of light.
“Apparently they take bribes too! Did you know? Have you heard?”
The happy news takes wing, travelling by word of mouth—a promise of life, like “Christ is Risen!”
Bribery! The everyday, the routine, a way of life we know as our own! Something earthly and solid!
But bribery alone does not allow you to settle down and thrive.
You must run. In pursuit of your daily bread in the biblical sense of the word: food, clothing, shelter, and labour that provides these things and law that protects them.
Children must acquire the knowledge needed for work, and people of mature years must apply this knowledge to the business of everyday life.
So it has always been, and it cannot of course be otherwise.
There are heady days in the history of nations—days that have to be lived through, but that one can’t go on living in for ever.
“Enough carousing—time to get down to work.”
Does this mean, then, that we have to do things in some new way? What time should we go to work? What time should we have lunch? Which school should we prepare the children for? We’re ordinary people, the levers, belts, screws, wheels and drives of a vast machine; we’re the core, the very thick of humanity—what do you want us to do?
“We want you to do all manner of foolish things. Instead of screws we’ll have belts, we’ll use belts to screw in nuts. And levers instead of wheels. And a wheel will do the job of a belt. Impossible? Outdated prejudice! At the sharp end of a bayonet, nothing is impossible. A theology professor can bake gingerbread and a porter give lectures on aesthetics. A surgeon can sweep the street and a laundress preside over the courtroom.”
“We’re afraid! We can’t do it, we don’t know how. A porter lecturing on aesthetics may believe in the value of what he is doing, but a professor baking gingerbread knows only too well that his gingerbread may be anything under the sun—but it certainly isn’t gingerbread.”
Take to your heels! Run!
Somewhere over there . . . in Kiev . . . in Yekaterinburg . . . in Odessa . . . some place where children are studying and people are working, it’ll still be possible to live a little . . . For the time being.
And so on they run.
But they are few and they are becoming fewer still. They’re growing weak, falling by the wayside. They’re running after a way of life that is itself on the run.
And now that the motley herd has wandered onto the Gadarene cliff for its final leap, we can see how very small it is. It could be gathered up into some little ark and sent out to sea. But there the seven unclean pairs would devour the seven clean pairs and then die of overeating.[2]
And the souls of the clean would weep over the dead ark:
“It grieves us to have suffered the same fate as the unclean, to have died together with them on the ark.”
Yes, my dears. There’s not much you can do about it. You’ll all die together. Some from eating, some from being eaten. But “impartial history” will make no distinction. You will all be numbered together.
“And the entire herd plunged from the cliff and drowned.”
March 1919
Translated by Anne Marie Jackson
Part IV
ARTISTS AND WRITERS REMEMBERED
MY FIRST TOLSTOY
I remember . . . I’m nine years old.
I’m reading Childhood by Tolstoy. Over and over again.
Everything in this book is dear to me.
Volodya, Nikolenka and Lyubochka are all living with me; they’re all just like me and my brothers and sisters. And their home in Moscow with their grandmother is our Moscow home; when I read about their drawing room, morning room or classroom, I don’t have to imagine anything—these are all our own rooms.
I know Natalya Savishna, too. She’s our old Avdotya Matveyevna, Grandmother’s former serf. She too has a trunk with pictures glued to the top. Only she’s not as good-natured as Natalya Savishna. She likes to grumble. “Nor was there anything in nature he ever wished to praise.” So my older brother used to sum her up, quoting from Pushkin’s “The Demon”.
Nevertheless, the resemblance is so pronounced that every time I read about Natalya Savishna, I picture Avdotya Matveyevna.
Every one of these people is near and dear to me.
Even the gr
andmother—peering with stern, questioning eyes from under the ruching of her cap, a bottle of eau de cologne on the little table beside her chair—even the grandmother is near and dear to me.
The only alien element is the tutor, Saint-Jérôme, whom Nikolenka and I both hate. Oh, how I hate him! I hate him even more and longer than Nikolenka himself, it seems, because Nikolenka eventually buries the hatchet, but I go on hating him for the rest of my life.
Childhood became part of my own childhood and girlhood, merging with it seamlessly, as though I wasn’t just reading but truly living it.
But what pierced my heart in its first flowering, what pierced it like a red arrow was another work by Tolstoy—War and Peace.
I remember . . .
•
I’m thirteen years old.
Every evening, at the expense of my homework, I’m reading one and the same book over and over again—War and Peace.
I’m in love with Prince Andrei Bolkonsky. I hate Natasha, first because I’m jealous, second because she betrayed him.
“You know what?” I tell my sister. “I think Tolstoy got it wrong when he was writing about her. How could anyone possibly like her? How could they? Her braid was ‘thin and short’, her lips were puffy. No, I don’t think anyone could have liked her. And if Prince Andrei was going to marry her, it was because he felt sorry for her.”
It also bothered me that Prince Andrei always shrieked when he was angry. I thought Tolstoy had got it wrong here, too. I felt certain the Prince didn’t shriek.
And so every evening I was reading War and Peace.
The pages leading up to the death of Prince Andrei were torture to me.
I think I always nursed a little hope of some miracle. I must have done, because each time he lay dying I felt overcome by the same despair.
Lying in bed at night, I would try to save him. I would make him throw himself to the ground along with everyone else when the grenade was about to explode. Why couldn’t just one soldier think to push him out of harm’s way? That’s what I’d have done. I’d have pushed him out of the way all right.
Then I would have sent him the very best doctors and surgeons of the time.
Every week I would read that he was dying, and I would hope and pray for a miracle. I would hope and pray that maybe this time he wouldn’t die.
But he did. He died. And died again.
A living person dies once, but Prince Andrei was dying forever, forever.
My heart ached. I couldn’t do my homework. And in the morning . . . Well, you know what it’s like in the morning when you haven’t done your homework!
Finally, I hit upon an idea. I decided to go and see Tolstoy and ask him to save Prince Andrei. I would even allow him to marry the Prince to Natasha. Yes, I was even prepared to agree to that—anything to save him from dying!
I asked my governess whether a writer could change something in a work he had already published. She said she thought he probably could—sometimes writers make amendments in later editions.
I conferred with my sister. She said that when you called on a writer you had to bring a small photograph of him and ask him to autograph it, or else he wouldn’t even talk to you. Then she said that writers didn’t talk to juveniles anyway.
It was very intimidating.
Gradually I worked out where Tolstoy lived. People were telling me different things—one person said he lived in Khamovniki, another said he’d left Moscow, and someone else said he would be leaving any day now.
I bought the photograph and started to think about what to say. I was afraid I might just start crying. I didn’t let anyone in the house know about my plans—they would have laughed at me.
Finally, I took the plunge. Some relatives had come for a visit and the household was a flurry of activity—it seemed a good moment. I asked my elderly nanny to walk me “to a friend’s house to do some homework” and we set off.
Tolstoy was at home. The few minutes I spent waiting in his foyer were too short to orchestrate a getaway. And with my nanny there it would have been awkward.
I remember a stout lady humming as she walked by. I certainly wasn’t expecting that. She walked by entirely naturally. She wasn’t afraid, and she was even humming. I had thought everyone in Tolstoy’s house would walk on tiptoe and speak in whispers.
Finally he appeared. He was shorter than I’d expected. He looked at Nanny, then at me. I held out the photograph and, too scared to be able to pronounce my “R”s, I mumbled, “Would you pwease sign your photogwaph?”
He took it out of my hand and went into the next room.
At this point I understood that I couldn’t possibly ask him for anything and that I’d never dare say why I’d come. With my “pwease” and “photogwaph” I had brought shame on myself. Never, in his eyes, would I be able to redeem myself. Only by the grace of God would I get out of here in one piece.
He came back and gave me the photograph. I curtsied.
“What can I do for you, madam?” he asked Nanny.
“Nothing, sir, I’m here with the young lady, that’s all.”
Later on, lying in bed, I remembered my “pwease” and “photogwaph” and cried into my pillow.
•
At school I had a rival named Yulenka Arsheva. She, too, was in love with Prince Andrei, but so passionately that the whole class knew about it. She, too, was angry with Natasha Rostova and she, too, could not believe that the Prince shrieked.
I was taking great care to hide my own feelings. Whenever Yulenka grew agitated, I tried to keep my distance and not listen to her so that I wouldn’t betray myself.
And then, one day, during literature class, our teacher was analysing various literary characters. When he came to Prince Bolkonsky, the class turned as one to Yulenka. There she sat, red-faced, a strained smile on her lips and her ears so suffused with blood that they even looked swollen.
Their names were now linked. Their romance evoked mockery, curiosity, censure, intense personal involvement—the whole gamut of attitudes with which society always responds to any romance.
I alone did not smile—I alone, with my secret, “illicit” feeling, did not acknowledge Yulenka or even dare look at her.
In the evening I sat down to read about his death. But now I read without hope. I was no longer praying for a miracle.
I read with feelings of grief and suffering, but without protest. I lowered my head in submission, kissed the book and closed it.
There once was a life. It was lived out, and it ended.
1920
Translated by Anne Marie Jackson
THE MEREZHKOVSKYS
A dead man can’t be flattered.
—RADISHCHEV
People who knew Dmitry Merezhkovsky and Zinaida Gippius well do not write very warmly of them in their memoirs.
Andrei Bely writes that Merezhkovsky wore shoes with pompoms, and that these pompoms epitomized the whole of Merezhkovsky’s life. Both his speech and his thought had “pompoms”.[1]
Not the most precise of descriptions, but certainly not a very kind one. Though Andrei Bely was not without “pompoms” of his own.
Alexei Remizov calls Merezhkovsky a walking coffin, and says that “Zinaida Nikolaevna Gippius was all bones and springs—a complex mechanical apparatus—but it was impossible to think of her as a living human being. With stinging malice they rejected every manifestation of life.”
The complex mechanical apparatus called Zinaida Gippius was in fact a great deal more complex than “bones and springs”.
I’ve more than once had occasion to read extremely spiteful literary reminiscences about “friends”. Something along the lines of an earthly Last Judgment. A man is stripped of all his coverings and ornaments and his naked corpse is dragged out into the open to be ridiculed.
This is cruel and wrong. We must not forget how difficult it is to be a human being.
After reading memoirs like this, one writer recently said, “You know, for the first time
in my life, I’ve felt terrified by the thought of dying.”
And I was reminded of a sweet lady from Petersburg who said of a friend, “There’s nothing this woman won’t stoop to if she thinks she’ll gain by it. You can take my word for it—I’m her best friend.”
•
Trying to describe Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky and Zinaida Nikolaevna Gippius really is very difficult.
Each was one of a kind, completely out of the ordinary—the usual yardsticks did not apply to them. Their literary gifts aside—considered simply as people—each could have been the central character in a long psychological novel.
Their extraordinary, almost tragic egocentricity was understandable once one had found the key to it. This key was their utter detachment from everyone else, a detachment that seemed innate and which they had no compunctions about. Like Gogol’s Khoma Brut, who had drawn a circle around himself.[2] Neither howling demons nor the flying coffin of a dead sorceress could touch him. He felt cold and he was alone, although there was nothing but a circle separating him—and separating the Merezhkovskys—from people and life. When the Merezhkovskys felt frightened, they briskly sought the help of holy intercessors. They decorated their statuette of Saint Theresa with flowers and, with neither faith nor divine inspiration, mumbled their way through their invocations. On Dmitry Sergeyevich’s death, Zinaida Nikolaevna felt so upset with Saint Theresa for allowing this bad thing to happen that she threw a shawl over the statuette and stood it in the corner. Just like a savage who smears his deity with fat when things go well, and flogs it in the event of misfortune. That is just the way she was. And—at the same time—Zinaida Gippius was an intelligent, subtle and talented poet. An extraordinary combination. She was indeed one of a kind.
When he was told that war had been declared, Dmitry Sergeyevich observed perfectly coolly, “Ah well—but I think the trains will keep running.”
The trains would keep running—and he would be able to take himself off somewhere far, far away, so that the circle he had drawn would not be broken, so that he, Merezhkovsky, would not feel the touch of hard, wicked life; and as for what lay out there, beyond the magic circle—cold, hunger, violence and death—that would be other people’s concern, it wouldn’t touch him.