Dedalus Book of Russian Decadence

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

  “A railing and a cross,” thought Charlotte. “It’s hard to put up monuments in the winter, and in the spring—most likely not, the earth would have been dug up, but there’s grass there now. It must have been sometime in the autumn.”

  In September she had still often sat by the outer pathway. Could it have been at the very end? But there was nothing under September. She started into October. The books were enormous and heavy, and Charlotte’s slender hand could hardly turn the thick pages with the rows of names and numbers. It was so hard! No, she’d never find it. She was beginning to feel dazed. Aside from that, Charlotte was constantly glancing around, fearing that someone would come in and disturb her. She didn’t know what, precisely, she was afraid of; her father, even if he was a little hot-tempered, was a kind man, and anyway, what was so wrong with looking at the books? Still, her heart was in her throat, as if she were furtively doing something forbidden.

  Suddenly, at the end of a page, a familiar name caught her eye. In her father’s calligraphic hand was written: October 20 Albert Renault No. 17311.

  Now her work was easier. Charlotte immediately looked at the receipt-books. Opposite number 17311 was: “30 roubles sent. Violets.”

  Sent! That meant that the relatives themselves hadn’t come. They’d just sent money. Her father knew something after all. Almost certainly they were very wealthy people. But nonetheless they didn’t come to visit.

  Charlotte, deep in thought, went out onto the terrace and began to make the six-o’clock coffee as usual. The evening was altogether summery, warm and mild. The climbing vines had not yet managed to wrap around the pillars of the terrace, but a cluster of stunted, thick trees behind the flower garden, the gazebo, and the green fence hid even the nearest crosses from view. A little lane between pruned, blossoming acacias ran alongside a low brick wall leading to the main gates, which were of the same red brick, tall, with a bell on top. It was intersected there at right angles by the cemetery’s main avenue. But from here on the terrace, you could see neither the gates nor the crosses. The garden seemed to be simply a garden.

  Ivan Karlovich emerged sleepily, with screwed-up eyes and crimson stripes on his rumpled face. Unexpectedly, her sister Caroline appeared with her husband and one-and-a-halfyear-old son. Her three years of marriage had taken the roses from Caroline’s cheeks. She didn’t laugh anymore; instead, she moaned and complained. The watchmaker she had married for love turned out to be extremely sickly, gloomy and subject to fits. He sat with his coffee, looking green and defeated. The child he’d fathered looked even greener and sicklier, as though he might die at any moment.

  “Believe me, papa,” Caroline sometimes said with despair, “I’m not living, it’s like I’m stewing in a cauldron. Every day I expect the worst. If he coughs or heaves a sigh, I think: here we go, get ready for the worst. And the child, too, is barely alive: the doctors have found seven things wrong with him. Sometimes it pains your heart so much, you think: ah, then let it happen already! Right now! Perhaps it would be easier.”

  Their father didn’t understand Caroline’s complaints and despairing wishes. He put on a severe face and lectured her, but silent Charlotte understood. She looked at the watchmaker and his green son, and felt glad that she wasn’t bound to these frail vessels by the chains of love. Her friends were eternal, reliable, unchanging. Today the watchmaker felt better and said a few words, and Caroline seemed to cheer up. She even gave her baby two biscuits.

  “What’s the matter, Lottchen, why are you so silent?” she said, turning to her sister. “Thank God, you’re healthy. Young ladies need to have a little fun, they need company.”

  “Company, hah!” Ivan Karlovich spoke out. When he was home and with his children he always spoke Russian, and he was extremely fond of speaking Russian. “We know what Lottchen needs. Her mature years are approaching, it’s only natural! A nice husband, a couple of children … She’s less pale already. Heh-heh-heh! We know a certain someone who’s got his eye on us!”

  He gave a wink, trying to look sly.

  Charlotte was mortified. She understood her father’s hints. Johann Rotte, the eldest son of a very wealthy butcher at the far end of German Street, was asking for her hand. Johann was a sensible, energetic fellow. Her father could not conceive of the possibility of her refusal. But it had been so long since they had talked about it that Charlotte had begun hoping that Johann had his eye on another bride—and now it had come up again!

  “I don’t want to get married yet,” Charlotte said in a barely audible voice. She was a humble and submissive daughter, but the thought of wedding Johann set her trembling.

  “Tut-tut, tut-tut!” her father said, raising what little eyebrows he had. “It’s for us to know whether you want to get married. Our daughter must take our wishes into consideration. A young lady of your age always wants to settle down.”

  “Absolutely right,” the watchmaker declared hollowly. “Young ladies are special wares. And they must be looked after.”

  “I can’t look after them, I can’t look after them!” All of a sudden Ivan Karlovich got agitated and his face flushed crimson. “How am I supposed to look after them? Naturally, young ladies need to get married.”

  “Don’t get excited, papachen,” Caroline said, and kissed her father on the head. “Charlotte is a clever girl, she understands. Johann’s father is such a rich man. And Johann! Healthy as a horse! What sort of girl would refuse him?”

  Charlotte, swallowing silent tears of horror, gave her father his long pipe. The conversation gradually settled into a more tranquil vein.

  Charlotte gathered up her courage. “Papa,” she asked, “Whose is that grave with the number seventeen thousand three hundred and eleven? I haven’t seen it before. There used to be a bench there. And now I go there and there’s a fence. And such wonderful violets.”

  “Hmm … Seventeen thousand three hundred …” Ivan Karlovich responded, puffing at his pipe. Violets, you say? So the violets are pretty? Let that mam’selle the countess, his fiancée—or was it cousin?—come and have a look at whether Buch the Warden conscientiously fulfils his obligations or not! Thirty roubles sent—and there are your flowers! And if she doesn’t come, it’s all the same to me. Whether you see for yourself or not, you get the best flowers for your money!”

  “But who is it, papa?” asked Caroline.

  Charlotte was mute and pale.

  “It’s … It’s a certain … A young man who had great things ahead of him, they told me. And then suddenly—ein, zwei, drei!1—and he’s gone. Ein Maler,”2 he added, not finding the Russian words. “So? The violets are pretty, are they, Lottchen?”

  And he laughed his corpulent laugh.

  Caroline and her family had long since gone, her father had retired to his room, and all was quiet in the house. Charlotte went upstairs and lit her lamp. Outside the window was the vague gloom of a moonless April night. Charlotte wanted to finish her work, a large wreath of red poppies, but she couldn’t. She was tormented by thoughts. Albert, ein Maler, a painter … He had a cousin, a fiancée … Why didn’t she come to visit him? Did he love her? What was she like?

  And Charlotte smiled at the thought that even though this cousin was a rich woman and a countess, Albert wasn’t with her now, but right here, close by, and would be here forever; and not the countess, but Charlotte would sit near him tomorrow and bring a watering can full of water for the violets and weave, if she felt like it, a soft silken wreath of very large, very pale forget-me-nots…

  Suddenly her heart gave a heavy lurch. She remembered Johann. The unfinished poppies scattered from her lap. She jumped up, undressed in a hurry, extinguished the lamp and flung herself down on the bed. Straight to sleep, so as not to think about anything!

  V

  The July day was unbearably hot. The sun heated the dry, hazy air through and through. The trees with their broad, fully-grown leaves silently, sleepily, happily took in the sun’s rays, like lizards at noon on a hot stone. The smell of d
ust and every kind of flower hung in the air. The whole cemetery park was now full of flowers. All was immaculately clean and tidy, the graves carefully tended and cheerful-looking. But mingling with the various fine fragrances and the aroma of blossoming lime trees, there was another smell, barely noticeable, but unsettling, elusive and heavy. It is a smell found only in cemeteries during extremely hot spells. Charlotte always thought that it was the breath of dying lime blossoms. They smelled exactly like that when they were falling. Charlotte didn’t feel the heat. Her fine face was as pale as always, her hands working away as usual. And here, behind the fence of Albert’s grave, where she was now in the habit of spending her days, it was especially shady. The lilac, long past blossoming, was now dense with new growth, and the old birches met in a thick green awning overhead. There were no more violets on Albert’s grave. Two big white rose bushes grew there now. Charlotte herself looked after them, and nowhere were the blossoms so fresh and luxuriant as here.

  Today Charlotte was wearing a light-coloured dress with short sleeves. She’d felt happy since morning. Her happiness, like Charlotte herself, was quiet and inconspicuous. It was as if an even, gentle flame were glowing in her heart. As she twisted long stems of lavender into a wreath that had been ordered, she suddenly began to sing in a quiet, fine voice, and this made her feel flustered. She so rarely forgot herself like that.

  The white medallion beneath the cross was now half-hidden by roses. Charlotte liked to draw her hand along the gentle, scarcely protruding profile of that half-seen face: the marble was cool to the touch, velvety and always caressing.

  It seemed to have got muggier. Hazy air crept from the surrounding bogs and from the direction of the distant forest. Charlotte, tearing her eyes away from the lavender for a moment, turned her gaze upward. She shuddered, cried out weakly and blushed: above her, on the old wooden fence, beyond which stretched other peoples’ gardens, and further still lay the bog and a coppice, sat a solid, handsome youth in a skilfully embroidered crimson shirt. It was Johann.

  “Don’t be frightened, Mam’selle Charlotte,” he said, very politely, even gallantly, as he tipped his white peaked cap. “Forgive me for … coming by the direct route. From my place it’s much closer to come like this, although the way is a bit difficult. But I knew that you had chosen this little nook … And not wishing to disturb your respected papa by coming through the main gates and the house … Will you allow me to join you?”

  “Yes,” Charlotte whispered, with lowered lashes.

  Her happiness had vanished without a trace. A dull anxiety sucked at her heart. Now it seemed more hot and humid than ever to her, and thick fragrances clouded the air.

  Johann sprang lightly down onto the path and in another moment was sitting with Charlotte on the comfortable little bench right by Albert’s grave.

  “What a charming little nook!” Johann said, removing his cap and passing his hand with its somewhat short and thick fingers through his tight black curls. Johann had every right to be called handsome: he wasn’t tall, but was broad in the shoulders, agile, with a warm, dark complexion, and on the upper lip of his slightly pouty mouth he sported a shortish, handsome, somewhat bristly moustache. Charlotte was never able to bear the gaze of his big bulging eyes, which were black as olives and ever so slightly bloodshot.

  “It’s been a long time since I’ve had the pleasure of seeing you, Mam’selle Charlotte,” Johann continued. “I’m busy all day at the shop and there’s hardly ever a free moment. Last year, as I recall, you once did us the honour of visiting our little shop … For me that day, believe me, made a big impression … That was my first year of helping my father, I’d just finished school.”

  Charlotte shuddered again, and involuntarily moved a little away from him, to the very edge of the bench. She also remembered how she and her father had once chanced to go into Johann’s shop. The place was well-lit and clean. There was an acrid smell of blood and freshly-splintered bones. The very freshest, bright red carcasses of bulls, their hides removed and muscles exposed, protruding legs lopped off at the knee, hung empty like sacks by the door and on the walls. Lower down little calves hung, their bodies much paler and plumper, almost grey, empty like the bulls, and like the bulls the bones of their legs extended as far as the knee-joint. On a gleaming table of white marble, a little to the side, lay dark, limp chunks of flesh with streaks of golden fat on the edges. Johann stood there in a white apron, jovial, strong and healthy, and skilfully cut large pieces from the chuck with a knife the size of an axe. Charlotte remembered the short, firm sound of the knife. Spatters of bone flew onto the floor. There were dark splotches on the front of Johann’s apron and on the marble table. Charlotte went out into the fresh air, saying timidly that she felt dizzy. She had probably not yet grown accustomed to that spicy, heady aroma that so invigorated Johann.

  “We’re renovating, have you heard?” asked Johann. “We’ve built a third floor. Papa’s going to move up there himself, and the second storey—the whole thing—above the shop is going to be for me. Not right away, of course … But, God willing…”

  He fell silent.

  Charlotte understood. He was talking about her. The floor above the shop—that was for her, when she married Johann. When she was home upstairs, she would hear the firm, cheerful sound of his axe as he began to chop fresh, plump pieces of meat near the marble table.

  “The only drawback is that there are a lot of flies in the shop. The place is swarming with them. They’ll be flying into the flat as well. But we can put up flypaper.”

  Charlotte didn’t answer.

  “It really is nice here,” Johann began again. “Shady, cool … So many flowers! Whose grave is it, anyway? You’re always coming here. Someone you know?”

  “No, not really …” Charlotte managed to say.

  Not for anything in the world would she have begun talking about Albert with Johann. She didn’t even want him to see the white medallion with the portrait. It would probably remind him of his marble table.

  “Well, it seems to me it must be frightening for you, isn’t it, Mam’selle Charlotte? When you take your evening strolls here…”

  “Why would it be frightening?” asked Charlotte in surprise.

  “Come, now! Spending all your time with them…”

  “What do you mean, ‘with them’?”

  “You know, corpses.”

  Charlotte smiled weakly. “Really, now! What corpses? There are no corpses here. They’re all underground, deep down. There’s nothing but graves and flowers here. Where you live, on the other hand,” she dared to add, “you’re the one who has corpses … I remember it—all those dead bodies, and the blood…”

  Johann burst into loud laughter. “Oh, Mam’selle Charlotte! What a joker you are! Calling our bulls and calves corpses! Ha, ha, ha!”

  Charlotte looked at him with narrowed eyes; a row of strong teeth gleamed in his pink, half-open mouth.

  “Why are we talking about such inappropriate things?” Johann began again when he had stopped laughing. “I have something to ask of you, Mam’selle Charlotte: my most heartfelt desire. Don’t refuse me!”

  He made an imploring face. “You won’t refuse me?”

  “No … If I can…”

  “Give me a flower you’ve made with your own skilful little hands. I’ll wear it always in my buttonhole, and at night I’ll put it under my pillow. Mam’selle Charlotte! You know how I treasure every one of your glances. Your eyes are like the very finest violets. Why are you so severe with me? Am I repulsive to you, Mam’selle Charlotte?”

  There was deep sincerity in his voice. Slender, ever pale and reticent, Charlotte very much appealed to Johann.

  “Am I repulsive, then?” he repeated, moving a little closer to her.

  All around was silence and sultry heat. Even the crickets had fallen silent. An oppressive, stifling, invisible haze rose from the warmed earth. The lifeless aroma was a little dizzying.

  “No … why … that’s n
ot it …” Charlotte babbled. Her heartbeats came fast and frightened.

  She didn’t finish her sentence. Just at that moment strong arms pressed her and warm, moist, soft lips greedily clung to her mouth. She remembered those lips: just a moment ago they had been before her eyes, too crimson, like the red calico of his shirt, or a little darker. And his hot, coarse touch felt like a blow to her. Red spots floated before her eyes.

  “Let me go!” she cried wildly, in a voice she didn’t recognise as her own, and she jumped up and pushed him violently away from her. “Let me go! Don’t you dare! You mustn’t, you mustn’t!”

  She shouted, her voice broke, and a horror unlike any she had ever known flooded her heart.

  Johann stood there, bewildered and disconsolate.

  “Forgive me, Mam’selle Charlotte,” he said in a ragged voice. “I didn’t know. Perhaps I’ve frightened you … But I had hoped … Your papa … and my papa…”

  Charlotte’s anger disappeared, leaving only fright and sorrow.

  She covered her face with her hands.

  “Go away,” she whispered helplessly.

  “I’ll go now,” Johann continued, a little encouraged. “If I understand correctly, you forgive me? You are so vulnerable, so delicate … You’re a highly-strung, impressionable young lady … But I adore you, you must know that, I’m worthy of forgiveness precisely because I honestly, sincerely adore you, and as soon as tomorrow my father is going to…”

  “Go away,” Charlotte said again in a pleading whisper, her face still covered. “Oh, God!” she thought. “Here! How offensive, how shameful! Here, in front of him!”

  The far-off voices of visitors could be heard around the bend. Johann looked round, sprang agilely up onto the fence and jumped down to the other side. Charlotte stood up, not daring to take her hands away, not daring to glance to the right, where silently and serenely the big roses gave off their fragrance, their heads slightly inclined, and where among their greenery gleamed the faint outline of a dear face.