Worlds Apart

by Alexander Levitsky

  “Who is it? Where should we search? Where’s the arsonist?” they asked the monk. “You, our savior, preserve us! You, our savior, save us! You, our savior, pity and forgive us!”

  And on the fences in black letters stood the inscription: There Will Be No Fire Tomorrow.

  CHAPTER THREE.

  A fine mesh of scarlet smoke hung above the town. The bloody-burning kernel of the sun, spreading taint, stench, and fuming cinders, swam behind the scarlet mesh.

  The third morning was beginning, the third and last day.

  Overnight the cathedral with its powerful relics had burned down. The bell tower came crashing down. And the loud, throaty voice of the alarm bell ceased to sound and call.

  There was nothing left to burn. The town had reached the end of burning.

  Mind-befogged crowds wandered about. They bludgeoned with charred logs any old enemies who came in their way. As night approached, drunk on terror, despair, and blood, they left the town behind.

  At the dump behind the town those who were still in one piece, huddled tightly together, went to earth themselves that final night.

  And the monk in his dark habit stood in the midst of the survivors.

  But no voice called out to or beseeched the monk—only eyes, hundreds of eyes bent themselves on the heart concealed beneath his cassock, begging merciful forgiveness.

  And look! For the first time there was a flicker in the monk’s immobile face of stone.

  The monk removed a vessel from his breast, and moistening the aspergillum, sprinkled the beseeching eyes.

  And in a wink, like a single dry bonfire, the whole field burst into flame. A fiery cloud rent the heavens and split the night, and sparks flew from the heavens to earth and from earth to the heavens.

  _________________

  In the distance a profound darkness lay above the fire-consumed town. And only the stars looked upon the earth, on the monk in dark tatters. He alone stood in the midst of the ashes of his native town, that he had incinerated and damned, and his offended heart burned worse than any blaze and harsher than any fire.

  (1914) Translated by A.L. and M.K.

  The Orison on the Downfall of the Russian Land

  (A fragment from Russia in the Whilwind)

  Unbounded and wide—Thou art, Rus’!

  I see Thy fine Kremlin bells, Thy gold-roofed Annunciation Cathedral—snow-white as the unblemished breast of a maiden. But no silvery tribute is promised to me, nor do Thy radiant bells ring. Or are they drowned by the whistle of countless and merciless bullets which have stripped the world’s heart of compassion—the heart of all Earth?

  All that I hear is the clamor of warfare—Thy moaning, ablaze: all Rus’ has erupted in flames, and Thy timber—all charred—flies about. For time out of mind it was otherwise: all knew that Thou, standing erect, would go on standing wide and unbounded, and never be cast down—not even in all Thy travails and Thy passions. And were the plague to cover Thy body with scabs, the wind would remove the pestilence—blow it away, and Thou wouldst arise once again in Thy brightness and yet more bright—more joyful once more, yet again more sublime—above Thy green forests, Thy feather-grass steppe, the steppe bursting with joy.

  O leaders so blind, what have you brought to pass? That blood that you’ve spilled on our brotherly fields has stripped now a man’s heart of pity, uprooting the soul. And now it is warfare and moans that I hear—my Rus’, Thou art on fire! My Rus’, Thou hast fallen, and there is no raising Thee, Thou canst not rise! My Rus’, my Russian land, my motherland: stripped of pity by the blood on brotherly fields—

  Thou hast been set on fire and art on fire!

  (1920 and 1928) Translated by A.L. and M.K.

  Petersburg

  (A prologue to the novel In a Rosy Light)

  Petersburg—the city transparently nordic and lucent!

  Only jealous Moscow has slandered you so far this way and that—the same Moscow where folk from its own quarters revel in bad-mouthing its other dwellers: those from Taganka sneer at Zemlianka, and from Zemlianka they jeer at Zamoskvorechie, Zamoskvorechie—Arbat, and Arbat—Pokrovka. Their common despair has seen in you only heavy fogs, laden with devils and apparitions; it’s the hard-heatedness of the “Servants in Christ of Latter-day Russia” which—from Moscow’s earthen dungeons and flaming log cabins—has noised about that damning curse: “Thou shalt lie waste!”

  No, Neva is unique. Neva—like the Sea, and not only by Gogol’s measure, but by that of its own Admiralty—is wide indeed. What a Sea of the Sun burns atop its deep blueness, tirelessly riding pillion!

  And the pure ducat-gold of St. Isaac’s dome has gathered such a sheaf of rays—above all your prospects, streets, and rows it burns—burns not like the roof of poured gilt on Moscow’s Kremlin, or all of Moscow, but a like a flaming globe of pure, red gold.

  And if sometimes fogs creep up in Autumn, or if in Winter one gets lost in the misty smoke and can’t get down Nevsky on foot or by car, since the etched green spheres of the electric street lamps fail to pierce the mists … if they tease you about this—well, it is the same all over the Globe: in London, and in Paris, where from the cresting Seine such a milky horror creeps that grippe starts choking folk right and left, or in Berlin, where passers-by huff like horses in the poisonous wintry mists and, hunched over, run along the streets not knowing where to find comforting warmth.

  Yes, there are fogs in Petersburg, and so there are in London, Paris and Berlin—impassable on foot or otherwise! But then that biting Muscovy frost will suddenly strike, and the evening will be swathed in a scarlet-blue northern veil, beyond which Night is forging a formidable Epiphany to the stars.

  And bonfires will flare up on snowy squares and beside your white bridges—flaming up to the stars themselves.

  (1912-17 and 1952), Translated by A.L. and M.K.

  Evgeny Ivanovich Zamiatin

  (1884–1937)

  _________________________________________________

  The Dragon

  Sunk in acrid cold, Petersburg burned in its delirium. It was obvious: out there, unseen behind the veil of mist, creaking and shuffling, red and yellow columns, spires, and gray balustrades tiptoed by. A feverish, freakish, icy Sun hovered through the fog—to the left, the right, up, down—like a dove over a burning house. From the delirious misty world dragon-men were surfacing into the earthly world—belching fog which was heard in the misty world as words, but here transmuted into round white whiffs of smoke—they were surfacing and drowning in the mist. And the screeching streetcars careened into the unknown, out of the earth-world.

  At the street-car stop a dragon with a rifle came into existence for a moment, careening into the unknown. Its cap slid down over the nose and of course it would have swallowed up the dragon’s head, if it hadn’t been for its ears: on these protruding ears the cap had settled. Its army coat dangled to the ground; the sleeves flapped; its boot-toes turned up, empty. And a hole in the mist—its mouth.

  This was now happening in the leaping-off, rushing world; and here the bitter-cold fog belched out by the dragon was visible and audible: “So I’m taking this bastard along, a smart-ass intellectual mug—made you sick to look at. And it even talks, the sonofabitch! Wouldn’t you know it? Talks!”

  “And so—you brought him in?”

  “I sure brought him—nonstop—to the Pearly Gates. With my little friend—the bayonet.”

  The hole in the mist closed. Now there was only empty cap, empty boots, and empty army coat. The screeching street-car careened out of the world.

  And suddenly—out of the empty sleeves—from their depths—emerged red dragon paws. The empty army coat hunkered down on the floor: and in the paws there was a tiny, grayish, cold lump, materialized out of the acrid cold mist.

  “Mama mia! A baby sparrow—you’re frozen stiff, huh? Whattaya say!”

  The dragon pushed the peak of its cap back—and in the mist two eyes—two narrow chinks from the feverish world into t
he human.

  The dragon with all his might blew into his red paws, and these were clearly words addressed to the tiny sparrow—but they were inaudible in the feverish world. The street-car screeched.

  “The sonofabitch: he gave a little flutter, didn’t he? Not yet? He’ll come to, by Go … Whattaya you say!”

  With all his strength he blew. The rifle dropped to the floor. And at the instant ordained by fate, at a point ordained in space, the grayish baby sparrow gave a jerk, another—and fluttered off the dragon’s red paws into the unknown.

  The dragon gaped his fog-belching maw open, to the ears. Slowly the chinks into the human world were covered over by the cap which came to rest again on the protruding ears. The Guide to the Pearly Gates picked up his rifle.

  The street-car gnashed its teeth and rushed into the unknown, out of the human world.

  (1918)

  Translated by A.L. and M.K.

  In lieu of an epigraph (ed.)

  SOME say the world will end in fire,

  Some say in ice.

  From what I’ve tasted of desire

  I hold with those who favor fire.

  But if it had to perish twice,

  I think I know enough of hate

  To know that for destruction ice

  Is also great

  And would suffice.

  —ROBERT FROST, Fire and Ice (1920)

  The Cave

  Glaciers, mammoths, wastelands. Black rocks in the night that somehow resemble houses; in the rocks—caves. And no one knows who trumpets at night along the stony path among the rocks; and, sniffing out the path, blows about the white snow-dust. Perhaps it is a gray-trunked mammoth; perhaps the wind; but perhaps—the wind is the icy roar of some super-mammothish mammoth. One thing is clear: it is Winter. And you have to clench your teeth as tight as you can to keep them from chattering; and you have to split kindling with a stone axe; and each night you have to move your fire from cave to cave, deeper and deeper; and you have to bundle yourself with more and more shaggy animal hides….

  Among the rocks, where ages ago had stood Petersburg, a gray-trunked mammoth roamed at nights. And wrapped in hides, coats, blankets, rags, the cave dwellers retreated from cave to cave. On the Day of Intercession Martin Martinych and Masha boarded up the study; on the Day of the Kazan Mother of God they made their way out of the dining room and entrenched themselves in the bedroom. There was no further retreating: here they must withstand the siege—or die.

  In the cavelike Petersburg bedroom everything was just as it recently had been in Noah’s Ark: clean and unclean creatures—flood-confounded. Martin Martinych’s mahagony desk; books; stone-age flat cakes resembling some pottery; Scriabin’s Opus 74; a flat-iron; five potatoes lovingly washed white; nickel-plated bed frames; an axe; a chiffonier; firewood. And in the middle of this universe—its god: a short-legged, rusty-red, squat, greedy cave-god: a cast-iron stove.

  God droned powerfully. In the dark cave—a great fiery wonder. The people—Martin Martinych and Masha—reverently, silently, thankfully, stretched forth their hands to him. For one hour—Spring was in the cave; for one hour—animal hides, claws and fangs were thrown off, and through the ice-covered brain crust broke green shoots—thoughts.

  “Mart, you haven’t forgotten that tomorrow—never mind, I see that you have!”

  In October, when leaves have already yellowed, dulled and drooped, there come blue-eyed days; on such a day, throw back your head so you cannot see the earth, and you can believe there is still joy, it is still summer. And so it was with Masha, if you just close your eyes and only listen: you can believe that she is her former self, and that this very minute she will break into laughter, rise from the bed, embrace you; and an hour ago as a knife scraped on glass—it was not her voice, not her at all….

  “Oh Mart, Mart! How is everything … You never forgot before. The twenty-ninth: St. Mary’s—my names-day….”

  The cast-iron god still droned. As always, there was no light: it would go on only at ten. The dark, shaggy vaults of the cave swayed. Martin Martinych, squatting with his head thrown back—the knot is tighter! ever tighter!—keeps on looking into the October sky—so as to not see the yellowed, drooping lips. But Masha—

  “You understand, Mart. If the fire were started in the morning, so that all day long it would be as it is now! Eh? Well, how many have we? Well, is there still about half a cord in the study?”

  For a long, long time now Masha had not been able to get to the arctic study, and she did not know that there was already … Tighter the knot, ever tighter!

  “Half a cord? More! I think that there …”

  Suddenly—the light: it is exactly ten. And not having finished, Martin Martinych squinted and turned away: in the light it is more difficult than in the dark. And in the light one can clearly see: his face is crumpled, clayey (nowadays many have faces of clay: back—to Adam). And Masha—

  “And you know. Mart, I’d try—maybe I’ll get up … if you’ll start the fire in the morning.”

  “Why, Masha, of course … Such an occasion … Why of course, from morning.”

  The cave-god grew quieter, contracted, became still; now and then he crackles. Listen: downstairs, at the Obertyshevs’ [the Shifters’], they are splitting logs of a barque with a stone axe—with that stone axe they are splitting Martin Martinych into pieces. A piece of Martin Martinych clayishly smiled at Masha and ground dried potato peels in the coffee grinder for flat cakes; and a piece of Martin Martinych, like a free bird which had flown into a room, aimlessly and blindly beat against the ceiling, the windows, the walls: “Where would I get some wood, where to get some wood, where to get wood?”

  Martin Martinych put on his coat, girded himself with a leather belt (the cave dwellers have a myth that it is warmer this way), and banged a pail by the bureau in the corner.

  “Where to, Mart?”

  “I’ll be right back. Downstairs for water.”

  On the dark stairway, icy with water splashes, Martin Martinych stood for a moment, rocked to and fro, took a deep breath, and then, with a fetter-like rattle of the pail, he went downstairs to the Obertyshevs’: they still had running water. The door was opened by Obertyshev himself, dressed in a coat tied with rope, long unshaven, his face—a waste overgrown with some sort of reddish, dust-laden weed. Showing through the weeds—yellow stone teeth; and between the stones—the flick of a lizard’s tail—a smile.

  “Ah, Martin Martinych! What? You’ve come for some water? Come in, come in, come in.”

  In the narrow cage between the outer and inner doors you could not turn around with a pail in hand—in that cage was Obertyshev’s firewood. Martin Martinych, made of clay, bumped his side painfully against the firewood: there was a deep indentation in the clay. And still deeper—against the corner of a chest of drawers in the dark corridor. Through the dining room—in the dining room was the she-Obertyshev and three Obertyshlings; the she-Obertyshev was hastily hiding a bowl under a napkin: a man has come from another cave and God knows, he might suddenly pounce and grab.

  In the kitchen, having turned on the faucet, Obertyshev gave a stony-toothed smile:

  “Well, how’s your wife? How’s your wife? How’s your wife?”

  “Oh well, still the same, Alexei Ivanych. Bad! Tomorrow is her names-day, but I have no …”

  “It’s the same, Martin Martinych, the same with everyone, the same, the same.”

  Listen: a bird has flown into the kitchen; it flutters, and rustles its wings; to the right, to the left—and suddenly in desperation it strikes the wall full with its breast:

  “Alexey Ivanych, I wanted … Alexey Ivanych, couldn’t you … just five or six logs …”

  Yellow stone teeth showing through the weeds, yellow teeth—from his eyes, all of Obertyshev was being over-grown with teeth, teeth that grew longer and longer.

  “Oh, come now, Martin Martinych, come now, come now. We ourselves have but … You know yourself how things are nowadays
, you know, you know….”

  Tighter the knot! Tighter—ever tighter! Martin Martinych wound himself up, lifted the pail, and—through the kitchen, through the dark corridor, through the dining room. At the dining room threshold Obertyshev stuck out his hand—a momentary lizardy whisk.

  “Well, so long…. Only the door, Martin Martinych, don’t forget to slam it shut, don’t forget. Both doors, both, both—you just can’t get enough heat!”

  On the dark ice-encrusted landing Martin Martinych set down the pail, turned around, firmly pulled shut the first door. He listened: he heard only the dry shivering of his bones and his tremulous breathing, punctuated like a dotted line. In the narrow cage between the two doors he stretched forth a hand, felt around—a log, and another, and another…. No! Quickly he shoved himself out onto the landing, closed the door. Now only to slam it more tightly, so the lock would click….

  But—he had no strength. He had no strength to slam the door on Masha’s tomorrow. And on a line delineated by his scarcely perceptible punctuated breathing, two Martin Martinyches grappled in a struggle to the death: the one, of old, of Scriabin, who knew: he must not—and the new one, of the cave, who knew: he must. He of the cave, with teeth grinding, trampled, strangled the other—and Martin Martinych, breaking his nails, opened the door, stuck his hand into the firewood—a log, a fourth, a fifth,—under his coat, in his belt, into the pail—slammed the door and up the stairs—with huge animal’s bounds. In the middle of the stairs, on some icy step, he suddenly froze, and pressed into the wall: below, the door clicked again—and Obertyshev’s dust-laden voice:

  “Who’s—there? Who’s there? Who’s there?”

  “It’s me, Alexey Ivanych. I … I forgot the door … I wanted to … I returned to close the door more tightly …”

  “You? Hm … How could you do that? You must be more careful, more careful. Nowadays everybody steals, you know yourself, you know yourself. How could you do that?”