Dedalus Book of Russian Decadence

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

  Here was the outer path, and here the gate. Charlotte fell upon the snowy rise of the grave, her arms joyously thrown open, the way people fall into an embrace. And really, she wasn’t at all cold now. The snow, exactly the same white as her dress and almost the same colour as her blonde, unpinned braids, pressed so tenderly beneath her narrow body. It was gentle and soft. It sparkled beneath the moon’s rays on the marble bas-relief. As always, Charlotte touched her cheek to the barely protruding, tender, now frosty contour. Her breath made the snow crystals melt, disappear, fly off, and the features of that elusively beautiful, indifferent face became clearer and clearer. And Charlotte lay like that for a long time, her hands, grown even whiter, clasped around the cross. Albert was with her, and she had never felt so close to him. She was at ease now, not afraid of anything: she was guilty of nothing, and he knew it, because he and she were as one. A sweet languor, unlike anything she had ever known, spread through her, and warmth enveloped her limbs. He, Albert, was with her, caressing, coddling and lulling her weary body to sleep. The hours flew by, or perhaps ceased to exist. Charlotte didn’t see how once again the bulging clouds gathered, how in a moment the troubled air grew dark, and without a rustle, without a sound, big flakes, light as foam, began to fall to the ground … At first just a few, then faster and faster, they began to dance and spin unsteadily, blending together the moment they touched the ground. Lulled by an unearthly bliss, Charlotte slept. She dreamt of a light-blue world and of a love that exists only there.

  And from above, the caressing snow kept on falling and falling, dressing Charlotte and Albert in a single shroud, white, sparkling and ceremonious, like a bridal veil.

  1one, two, three.

  2 a painter.

  3 “From Helen to her Albert.”

  O evil life, your gifts

  Are naught but illusion and fraud;

  They deceptively attract,

  But they shift and change like fog.

  No sooner has beauty had time

  To blossom and entrance,

  Already you rush to weave

  New fabrics from its threads.

  And no sooner has death arrived,

  Bringing mortals liberation,

  You zealously call forth

  Ever new generations.

  O death! O tender friend!

  I don’t understand at all:

  Why don’t all mortals and gods

  Rush at once to your splendid halls?

  Fyodor Sologub, 1904

  Everything Around Us

  Dreadful, rude, sticky, filthy,

  Rigidly dull, always ugly,

  Pettily devious, rending slowly,

  Slippery, shameful, cramped and lowly,

  Openly smug, secretly lascivious,

  Wretchedly craven and trivially ridiculous,

  Slimily stagnant, viscous and miry,

  Equally unworthy of death and of life,

  Slavish, boorish, purulent, black,

  Sometimes grey, in grey obstinate,

  Eternally lazing, devilishly sluggish,

  Stupid, withered, drowsy, spiteful,

  Cold as a corpse, pitifully worthless,

  Unbearable, a lie, a lie!

  But what’s the point of crying? There’s no need to complain,

  For we know, we know: it will all be different one day.

  Zinaida Gippius, 1904

  The Earth

  A moment of weakness…

  A hesitant moment…

  And the wings of holy madness

  Are broken.

  I stand above a grave,

  Where audacity sleeps…

  Oh, all of it was merely

  Excitement, revelry,

  And pure, sacred joy

  In our eyes,

  Springtime dawns,

  Eight-leafed lilacs…

  How deceptive!

  Did it really happen?

  With a strange hope

  Above a grave I stand…

  I seek signs of movement

  Beneath dust and ashes,

  I await resurrection

  With a fearful prayer…

  But I grow more apprehensive…

  Defenceless I stand…

  The open grave, gaping,

  A black abyss, laughs;

  My omnipotent soul

  Demands a miracle…

  But from down there comes only

  The grave’s earthy smell…

  Zinaida Gippius, 1902

  Moon Ants

  Zinaida Gippius

  November 1, 1909

  I was walking along the Izmailovsky Bridge last month, at dusk. It was cold and windy. Not a lot of people about. All of a sudden I see something dark bolting for the railing, tumbling heavily over it and plummeting down into the greasy black slush of the already freezing river.

  There’s an uproar, whistles blow, a crowd gathers, people run down from the pavement towards the empty pier, near the barracks.

  I go, too. As I push my way through the crowd, I hear, “They fished him out. Got him right away with the long hook and fished him out.”

  And this little fellow is already standing there on the pavement, water dripping off him, hair all plastered over his eyes, and he’s snorting and shaking all over. In the grey dusk it’s hard to see, but by now I’d got close. A very young chap, small and thin.

  The policeman next to him is angry, and keeps shoving him along. “C’mon, you, take that! Let’s go, then, move along!”

  “But my hat,” the fellow mumbles, “my favourite hat…”

  “So we’re to go fish your hat out as well, are we? Sit down and be quiet … Hey, driver!”

  A disgruntled but acquiescent cabby materialised.

  Indignant exclamations sounded among the crowd. All were against the little fellow.

  “But my hat,” he insisted, shaking. “For pity’s sake … Your honour…”

  “What an eyeful! Bored with life, how do you like that!” a workman snorted scornfully. “I’ll give you ‘for pity’s sake’!”

  A lady shrilled, “Officer, what are you doing? Take him to hospital! He’s swallowed a bellyful of river water, he’ll get cholera!”

  The policeman, now completely enraged, swore and shoved the little fellow into the cab, got in himself, trying to keep as far away as possible, and thumped the driver on the back.

  The suicide was shaking his wet hair and babbling helplessly about something, most likely the same thing as before, and they drove off, jolting into the grey murk.

  The crowd dispersed, grumbling.

  “Hanging’s too good for the likes of them!” said a merchant, and spat. “A worm like that, and he thinks he’s a suicide! So much trouble! What sort of new fashion is this?”

  A girl in a kerchief protested mildly, “But if living’s too much for him…”

  The merchant just snarled at her and spat again.

  “Likely doesn’t have a job, or else he lost his master’s money,” someone said hollowly.

  No one paid any attention to this. Indifferently, they went their separate ways. An everyday occurrence.

  But the little fellow’s face still loomed before me. Wet, snorting, babbling about his hat. And what got into him, anyway, why did he throw himself over the railings like that? He was just walking along, and then suddenly over he goes.

  Since that time I’ve been drawn to suicides. I’ve begun keeping a record of them from the newspapers, looked into every case. Don’t understand it at all. There are whole regiments of them stretching out before me, swarms of them. The reasons are all different—and they’re all the same, and all somehow incomprehensible.

  What are they going through before they make up their minds? What are they like? Is there any way to know beforehand who they are?

  Last spring a student I knew shot himself. I saw him not long before it happened and noticed absolutely nothing. Afterwards his friends said he’d seemed “lost in thought” before he did it. But that’s n
onsense; he wasn’t at all “lost in thought.”

  November 8

  Since I began to keep count, I’ve simply lost my peace of mind. I can’t work. And the strangest thing of all is that there are such a lot of them. More than there has ever been. I know this for a fact, I’ve checked. And then there are the “reasons.” Actually, the absence of any “reason,” because what they give as “reasons” are simply the conditions of life. And life has always been the same. Sometimes better, sometimes worse. The same.

  It’s especially common with simple girls. They’re drinking vinegar essence by the bucketful. But it’s not just them—they’re everywhere, these self-murderers, absolutely everywhere, only you hear about the girls more.

  For some reason Rocky Katy made an especially deep impression on me. Why she in particular, I myself don’t know. I even went to the hospital to find out what happened to her. They saved her. She recovered. She stated that there had been no reason.

  November 15

  Yesterday evening I finally went to Ligovka Street.1 It was so cold you could hardly breathe.

  Two women of that sort, in thin, shabby coats, started making up to me. Their noses were red.

  “Listen, my dears,” I say to them. “Don’t imagine things, you won’t find me of any particular use, but if you want to go somewhere and warm up for a half hour or so, I’ll treat you to a cup of tea if you like.”

  They shift uneasily, they don’t understand. I suddenly catch sight of a pair of eyes gleaming under a streetlamp: it’s a kartuznik.2 He stops, takes a look, listens in. An ordinary mug, young and untrustworthy.

  “How about it? You know, just for conversation.”

  They snorted. “Us? Well, we…”

  “If you like, we can take this young gentleman along with us, seeing as how he looks to be a friend of yours.”

  The kartuznik approached. “What’s all this?” he asked in a guttural voice. I repeated my simple proposition, which seemed so extraordinary to all of them. I made ready to move on; I’d had my fill of this.

  “There’s a little place nearby, the Record, we could go there,” one of the girls suddenly said. “I’m freezing. It’s got me by the throat. But what kind of conversation were you thinking of?”

  “Any kind,” I said, waving my hand dismissively.

  And I rudely added, “I’m curious to find out, why do you idiots keep poisoning yourselves for nothing?”

  The girls laughed. “There’s no shortage of silly girls! And we’re no better!”

  We set off for the Record. The kartuznik followed after us. Actually, he oughtn’t really to be called a “kartuznik,” since on his head he wore a battered, faded student’s uniform cap. But I knew what it meant, that peaked cap: “A man in this kind of hat must not be denied entrance into the tavern.” One of those types explained this to me a long time ago.

  The Record turned out to be the most ordinary sort of tavern—rather dingy, as one would expect, but not wretchedly filthy.

  We sat down in the public room. We asked for tea. I purposely did not order beer for them.

  The girls turned out to be very similar—both skinny, ignorant and young.

  “We’re two friends: Barb and Darla. But we won’t tell you our nicknames, because they’re of no use to you.”

  “Do you by any chance know Rocky Katy?” I asked.

  “What do you want her for, sir?” the man in the peaked cap answered with his own question.

  “Not much, just conversation. I told you already, there’s a certain thing I’m interested in. But never mind. What is your name?”

  “Mine? I have plenty of titles. But among others, they call me John Khan. Among others. Because I have a lot of wives. And this is Johnny Convert.”

  I turned around. I hadn’t noticed before that another man had come in after us, wearing the same type of cap; fat jowls, his figure tall, thin and limp; he walked softly, like a cat, slouching along, placing one foot in front of the other along the same floorboard.

  “Don’t let me interrupt.”

  “Sit down and join us,” I said. “So what are you, originally Jewish?”

  “Heavens, no!” Khan answered for him (and really, it didn’t seem like it). “Convert, because after the revolution he became a Lutheran, fixing to marry a Jewess. But it didn’t pan out.”

  Convert turned to me with a mysterious look. “You, sir, if you’re from a newspaper about the poisonings, these girls won’t do for you. But I know Rocky Katy and others like her.”

  “You’re lying!” Barb cried out. “You don’t know Rocky Katy. Matara knows her, that’s who knows her! Only now Katy’s not much good. She’s in hospital, and there’s a kitty for her when she comes out.”

  “But do you understand what it’s all about? Do you? Matara knows! Why don’t I bring this Matara here right this minute? How about it, sir, you want Matara?”

  I waved Convert off. “First of all, I’m here not with the newspapers at all. I’m here on my own account. And secondly, please quiet down a little. Don’t bother trying to talk me into anything, I won’t end up being of any use to you, so you don’t have to go making up stories. I’m happy to treat you to a little something, if you don’t mind chatting with me, but not more than that. If you know someone who knows Rocky Katy or Matara, tell them. I’ll come again tomorrow for half an hour or so, we’ll talk, and have a little tea.

  They were all pleased with this. Pleased with my frankness.

  “I’ll bring Matara!” Convert declared.

  Barb and Darla, laughing, whinnied, “Oh, tea, just pure tea! It’s enough to make you ‘tea-spair’!”

  They drank, however, with pleasure. I promised that next time they might have a little beer as well.

  The girls wriggled happily and senselessly, like young sparrows. Neither they nor John Khan and Johnny Convert seemed anywhere near to “despairing of life.” Not in any way!

  November 17

  I’m deepening our acquaintance. Yesterday I was at the Record again, and I’m just fresh from there now.

  Yesterday Convert brought Matara (Martha, surely). Cheerful, thin and not stupid. She began to complain loudly about “life,” but clearly, she herself doesn’t pay attention to her own nonsense. It’s all so trivial.

  “You never know what tomorrow may bring, that’s for certain. A full belly, that’s all I need. I suppose even counts and princes don’t have it all sunshine and roses, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Gentlemen and men in general are more likely to take a bullet, if things aren’t going well,” said Johnny Khan with a thoughtful air. “But for us, since we’re forbidden to carry firearms, we go more for the noose. Women, though, generally take the vinegar essence route. But anyway, it doesn’t really matter, as far as the result is concerned.”

  Convert tittered. “The noose! Fat lot of good that will do, strangling yourself. If you’re in a bad way—begging your pardon, not that you would be—you’re better off rummaging through someone’s flat for whatever might turn up.”3

  “That’s another possibility,” Khan responded indifferently. “It’s simple. Better or worse, as far as the result is concerned there’s no difference.”

  “What do you mean?” I said, not understanding.

  But I got no explanation.

  Besides the two silly sparrows—Barb and Darla—there was a third, a very young girl. Darla recommended her with solemnity: “Tina. Her own sister what got poisoned.”

  “Really? When?”

  “A little more than a week ago,” Tina responded eagerly. “And she tried to tempt me, too. ‘Why not?’ she says, ‘there’s nothing to live for, anyway.’ I say, ‘All in good time,’and she ups and does it. It was me done took her to hospital.”

  “And what then?”

  “That’s all. Later she said, ‘Just fine,’ she says, ‘fine. Only it hurts.’”

  “So she recovered?”

  “No, no, she kicked it. She said that after the sacrament.”


  Matara darted a glance at me and said, “Say, is it really true that there’s such a thing as a poison that’s not painful? And cheap?”

  “There is. Potassium cyanide. You can’t buy it. But by the way, anyone who does photography can get it easily.”

  All of a sudden they livened up: Khan, Convert and the girls, all equally so. “You don’t say? What is it, exactly? And what about you, are you a photographer?”

  I was a bit taken aback. And didn’t mention to them that actually this summer I had dabbled a bit in photography.

  This time we had beer as well as tea, but not too much. I did not at all want to buy their chitchat by treating them. And besides, the conversations were turning out to be uninteresting, or at least not what I’d been looking for. Maybe I was talking to the wrong people?

  However, I trudged off to see them again today. Again the same people, except for Matara. I was already bored and ready to leave. Suddenly Matara shows up and with her an extraordinarily tall girl wearing a neck scarf.

  “Here you go, you wanted to meet her: it’s Rocky Katy,” said Matara proudly. “I barely convinced her to let me bring her to talk with you. She’s ill now. Hardly any of the locals here know her. Only I do.”

  Everybody else, though, remained indifferent. Only I was … touched somehow. I even felt a little shy.

  “Hello, Katy. Will you have some tea?”

  Rocky Katy sat down. She was heavy-set, pale, unmoving, but not at all sombre.

  “How about with a little cognac?” she asked in a husky voice.

  “Sure, a little cognac as well.”

  Matara broke in obsequiously: “The gentleman here has been wanting to know for a long time why you poisoned yourself.”