Dedalus Book of Russian Decadence

by Lodge, Kirsten; Rosen, Margo Shohl; Dashevsky, Grigory

  “But still,” he thought stubbornly, “you can make shadows from more than just your fingers. You can make them from anything, you just have to get the knack of it.”

  And Volodya started examining the shadows of the samovar, the chairs, Mama’s head, the shadows the dishes cast on the table—and in all these shadows he tried to discern some likeness. Mama was saying something. Volodya listened with half an ear.

  “How is Lyosha Sitnikov doing at school?” Mama asked.

  Just then Volodya was scrutinising the shadow of the milk jug. He gave a start and said, “Like a cat.”

  “Volodya, you’re fast asleep!” his mother said in surprise. “What cat?”

  Volodya flushed. “I don’t know what made me say that,” he said. “Excuse me, Mama, I didn’t hear.”

  IV

  The next evening before teatime, Volodya again remembered the shadows and again began to work on them. One shadow kept coming out badly, no matter how he stretched and bent his hands.

  Volodya was so caught up in this that he didn’t notice Mama’s approach. Hearing the creak of the door opening, he shoved the booklet into his pocket and turned from the wall in confusion. But Mama was already looking at his hands, and a look of timorous anxiety flashed in her wide eyes.

  “What are you doing, Volodya? What did you hide?”

  “It’s nothing, really,” Volodya mumbled, blushing and awkwardly shifting from one foot to the other.

  It somehow seemed to Mama that Volodya had wanted to smoke and had hidden a cigarette.

  “Volodya, show me right now what you hid,” she said in a frightened voice.

  “Mama, really…”

  Mama grabbed Volodya by the elbow. “Come now, shall I check your pocket myself?”

  Volodya blushed even redder than before and fished the booklet out of his pocket.

  “Here,” he said, holding it out to Mama.

  “What’s this?”

  “Well, look,” explained Volodya, “there are drawings here—there, you see, shadows. Well, I was showing them on the wall, and they weren’t coming out very well.”

  “Well, what’s all this hiding business, then?” Mama said, more calmly now. “What sort of shadows are they? Show me.”

  Volodya was acutely embarrassed, but obediently began to show Mama the shadows.

  “Here’s one—the head of a bald man. And here’s a rabbit’s head.”

  “You silly!” said Mama. “So this is how you do your lessons!”

  “It was only for a little, Mama.”

  “Only a little, eh? What made you blush so much, you dear boy? Never mind, then—after all, I know you’ll do everything you ought.”

  Mama ruffled Volodya’s short hair, Volodya laughed and hid his burning face under Mama’s elbows.

  Mama went out—but Volodya still felt awkward and ashamed. Mama had caught him doing something he himself would laugh at if he found a schoolmate doing it.

  Volodya knew that he was a smart boy, and considered himself serious, but this was a silly game, the kind no one but a group of little girls would play.

  He shoved the booklet with the shadows as far back as possible in a drawer of his desk and didn’t take it out again for more than a week, and even hardly remembered the shadows that whole week. Only occasionally in the evening, as he went from one subject to another, would he smile as he remembered the horned headdress of the lady—sometimes he would even go into the drawer after the booklet, but at that moment he would remember how Mama had caught him, and then he would feel ashamed and get back to work.

  V

  Volodya and his Mama, Evgenia Stepanovna, lived in the outskirts of a regional capital, in a house Mama owned. Evgenia Stepanovna had been widowed nine years ago. Now she was thirty-five. She was still young and beautiful and Volodya loved her dearly. She lived entirely for her son. She studied ancient languages in order to help him and suffered over all his troubles at school. Quiet and affectionate, she looked upon the world a bit fearfully with wide eyes that gently shimmered in her pale face.

  They lived with one servant. Praskovya, a morose tradesman’s widow, was a strong, tough woman; she was about forty-five, but her stony silence was that of a hundred-year-old hag.

  When Volodya looked at her glum, stony face, he often wished he knew what she thought about during the long winter evenings in her kitchen, when her cold knitting needles, clicking against one another, stirred tranquilly in her bony hands and her dry lips kept a silent running account. Was she remembering her drunkard husband? Or her children who had died young? Or did she see the spectre of a lonely and comfortless old age?

  Her petrified face was hopelessly despondent and severe.

  VI

  A long autumn evening. Rain and wind beyond the walls.

  How tiresomely, how indifferently the lamp was burning!

  Volodya was propped on his elbow, leaning all the way over the table on his left side, and looking at the white wall of his room, and at the white curtain on the window.

  He couldn’t make out the pale flowers on the wallpaper … Boring white…

  The white lampshade partially screened the lamp’s rays. The entire upper half of the room was in half-light.

  Volodya stretched up his right hand. On the wall dimmed by the lampshade stretched a long shadow, vague and diffuse at the edges…

  The shadow of an angel flying away into the heavens from a depraved and sorrowful world, a transparent shadow with broad wings, its head bent in sorrow on its magnificent breast.

  Wasn’t the angel carrying something significant and neglected away from the world in its tender embrace?…

  Volodya sighed heavily. His hand sank down listlessly. He bent his yearning eyes over his books.

  A long autumn evening … Monotonous white light … Weeping and babbling beyond the walls…

  VII

  Mama caught Volodya making shadows a second time. This time he was doing a bull’s head really well, and he was admiring it and making the bull stick out its neck and bellow.

  But Mama was not pleased.

  “So this is how you study!” she said reproachfully.

  “It was only for a little, Mama,” Volodya whispered, abashed.

  “That’s something you can do in your free time,” Mama continued. “After all, you’re not a baby—you ought to be ashamed of spending your time on such nonsense!”

  “Mummy, I won’t do it again.”

  But it was hard for Volodya to keep his promise. He really liked making shadows, and the desire to do so frequently came to him in the midst of some uninteresting lesson.

  Every once in a while his little evening diversion took up a lot of time and prevented him from preparing his lessons properly. He had to make up for lost time then, and didn’t get enough sleep. But how could he give up the game?

  Volodya successfully invented several new figures, and not just by using his hands alone. And these figures came to life on the wall and, it sometimes seemed to Volodya, carried on fascinating discussions with him.

  But he had always had quite an imagination.

  VIII

  Night. It is dark in Volodya’s room. Volodya has gone to bed, but he can’t sleep. He lies on his back and looks at the ceiling.

  Someone with a lantern is going down the street. There on the ceiling his shadow is flitting by amidst red patches of light from the lantern. Evidently, the lantern is swinging in the hands of the passer-by—the shadow sways, flickering unevenly.

  Volodya is inexplicably terrified. He quickly pulls the blanket over his head, and shivering all over in his haste, turns quickly onto his right side and summons pleasant thoughts.

  He starts to feel warm and nice. Lovely, naïve fantasies are forming in his head, the kind he has before falling asleep.

  Often when he goes to bed he is seized by terror, and he seems to become smaller and weaker—he hides in his pillow, forgets how a big boy behaves, becomes tender and affectionate, and he wants to hug and kis
s Mama.

  IX

  Grey twilight was thickening. Shadows merged. Volodya was sad.

  But here was the lamp. Light poured onto the desk’s green felt, and vague, pretty shadows darted along the wall.

  Volodya felt a surge of happiness and revived spirits and hastily pulled out the grey booklet.

  The bull bellows … The young lady laughs loudly … What angry round eyes that bald gentleman makes!

  Now his own.

  The steppe. A pilgrim with a bundle. One can all but hear the sorrowful, drawn-out travelling song … Volodya is happy and sad.

  X

  “Volodya, this is the third time I’ve seen you with that booklet. So now you’re spending whole evenings at a time admiring your hands?”

  Volodya stood awkwardly by the desk, like a naughty child caught in the act, and turned the booklet around and around in his hot hands.

  “Give it here!” said Mama.

  Abashed, Volodya held out the booklet. Mama took it and left without a word—and Volodya sat down to his schoolwork.

  He was ashamed that he had upset Mama with his stubbornness, and annoyed that she had taken the booklet away, and ashamed again that he had got himself into this silly fix. He felt terribly awkward, and his annoyance towards his mother distressed him: it was wrong of him to be angry with Mama, but he couldn’t not be angry. And because it was wrong to be angry, he became even angrier.

  “Let her take it, then,” he finally concluded. “I can manage without it just as well.”

  And Volodya really did know the figures by heart and had been using the booklet just to be sure.

  XI

  Mama brought the booklet with the drawings of shadows to her room, opened it, and fell into thought.

  “What is it about them that is so enticing?” she thought. “He’s such a good, smart boy—and all of a sudden so keen on this nonsense! … But if that’s the case, then it can’t be just nonsense! … So what is it, then?” she asked herself insistently.

  A strange dread arose inside her—a sort of hostile, shy feeling towards those black drawings.

  She stood up and lit a candle. With the grey booklet in her hands she went up to the wall and hesitated in fearful anguish.

  “I’ve just got to find out what this is all about,” she decided, and she began to make the shadows, from the first to the last.

  Insistently and attentively, she placed her fingers together and bent her hands until she got the figure she needed. The confused, timid feeling stirred inside her. She tried to overcome it. But the dread grew and enchanted her. Her hands shook, but her thought, intimidated by life’s twilight, sped on towards the sorrows that threatened ahead. Suddenly she heard her son’s approaching steps. She shuddered, hid the booklet and put out the candle.

  Volodya entered and stopped on the threshold, taken aback by how severely Mama looked at him, and by her awkward, strange position by the wall.

  “What do you want?” asked Mama in a harsh, uneven voice.

  A dim suspicion flashed through Volodya’s mind, but he hurriedly banished it and began to talk with Mama.

  XII

  Volodya was gone.

  Mama paced up and down the room several times. She noticed that her shadow moved behind her along the floor and—how odd!—for the first time in her life her shadow made her feel uncomfortable. The thought that the shadow was there kept recurring to her—but Evgenia Stepanovna was somehow afraid of this thought and even tried not to look at her shadow.

  But the shadow crept after her and teased her. Evgenia Stepanovna tried to think about something else—but in vain.

  She suddenly stopped, pale and agitated.

  “So it’s a shadow, a shadow!” she exclaimed aloud, stamping her feet with a strange feeling of annoyance. “So what? What about it?”

  And suddenly she realised that it was stupid to shout like that and stamp your feet, and she calmed down.

  She went up to the mirror. Her face was paler than usual, and her lips trembled with frightened anger.

  “Nerves,” she thought. “I must take myself in hand.”

  XIII

  Twilight was falling. Volodya was lost in a daydream.

  “Let’s go for a walk, Volodya,” said Mama.

  But shadows were everywhere outside as well, evening shadows, mysterious and elusive, and they whispered something familiar and endlessly sad to Volodya.

  Two or three stars peeked out from a hazy sky, seeming very far away and alien to both Volodya and the shadows surrounding him. But Volodya, in an effort to do something nice for Mama, began to think about those stars: they alone were alien to the shadows.

  “Mama,” he said, not noticing that he had interrupted Mama, who was talking to him, “it’s too bad one can’t get all the way to those stars.”

  Mama looked up at the sky and answered, “Whatever for? Earth is the place for us—up there it’s different.”

  “How weakly they shine! But I guess that’s for the best.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if they shone brighter, they would have shadows, too.”

  “Oh, Volodya, why are you always thinking about shadows?”

  “I didn’t mean to, Mama,” said Volodya in a repentant tone.

  XIV

  Volodya kept trying to prepare his lessons better; he was afraid of upsetting Mama with his laziness. But he concentrated all the powers of his fantasy on piling up the objects on his desk each evening so that they would throw a whimsical new shadow on the wall. He would lay out everything that came to hand this way and that, and was glad when he could make sense of the outlines that appeared on the white wall. These shadowy outlines were becoming near and dear to him. They were not mute—they talked, and Volodya understood their babbling language.

  He understood what the poor wretch was grumbling about as he plodded along the high road in the autumn sludge, a walking stick in his trembling hands and a bundle on his bent back.

  He understood what the snow-covered forest was complaining of, its frosty branches crackling as it stood miserably in the winter silence, and what the slow raven was croaking about in the grizzled oak, and why the busy squirrel was mourning in its empty hollow.

  He understood why the old beggar women were weeping in the mournful autumn wind, decrepit, homeless women shivering in their ancient tatters in the cramped cemetery, among the rickety crosses and hopelessly dark graves.

  Oblivion and agonising sorrow!

  XV

  Mama noticed that Volodya was still frittering away his time. At dinner she said, “At least you might find something else to do.”

  “Like what?”

  “You could read.”

  “The thing is, you start to read, but you feel like making shadows.”

  “You might think up some other game—like making soap bubbles.”

  Volodya smiled sadly. “Yes, the bubbles float up and their shadows float behind them along the wall.”

  “Volodya, you’re going to ruin your nerves in the end! I can see—you’ve lost weight since you started doing this.”

  “Mama, you’re exaggerating!”

  “Please! I know you’re not sleeping well at night and sometimes you talk in your sleep. What if you fall ill?!”

  “Really now, Mummy!”

  “God forbid you should go out of your mind or die—how could I bear it?”

  Volodya gave a laugh and threw his arms around Mama’s neck. “Mummy, I won’t die. I won’t do it anymore.”

  Mama saw that now Volodya was crying.

  “All right, that’s enough now,” she said. “God is merciful. There now—see how nervous you’ve become? You’re laughing and crying all at once.”

  XVI

  Mama fixed her fearful gaze on Volodya. Every little thing now worried her.

  She noticed that Volodya’s head was slightly asymmetrical: one ear was higher than the other, and his chin jutted a little to one side. Mama looked in the mirror and noticed the s
ame irregularities in her own face.

  “Maybe,” she thought, “this is one of the signs of bad heredity, of degeneration? And who, then, is the source of this evil? Is it me—I’m so high-strung … or his father?”

  Evgenia Stepanovna thought about her late husband. He had been the kindest and nicest of men, weak-willed, with senseless, impetuous ideas and ecstatic and mystical tendencies, a man who dreamt of a better social order, who “went to the people,”1 and who drank heavily in the last years of his life.

  He was young when he died—only thirty-five years old.

  Mama even took Volodya to the doctor and described his illness. The doctor, a jovial young man, heard her out, chuckling, and gave various recommendations about diet and lifestyle accompanied by funny little witticisms, cheerfully wrote out a prescription and playfully added, clapping Volodya on the back, “But the best cure would be a touch of the strap.”

  Mama was mortally offended on Volodya’s behalf, but she followed all the other instructions to the letter.

  XVII

  Volodya was sitting in class. He was bored. He was only half-listening.

  He lifted his eyes. On the ceiling near the front wall of the classroom a shadow was moving. Volodya noticed that it was falling from the first window. At first it stretched from the window towards the middle of the classroom, but then it quickly flitted away from Volodya to the front—obviously, someone was walking outside beneath the window. When this shadow moved yet again, another shadow fell, from the second window, also first towards the back wall and then heading quickly towards the front. The same thing repeated in the third and fourth windows—shadows fell onto the ceiling of the classroom, and as the passer-by moved forward, they stretched back.