Notes on the Cuff and Other Stories Read online

  And show them I did! There was commotion in the workshop. The speaker was out for the count. In the eyes of the audience I read a silent, jubilant:

  "Finish him off!".....................................................................

  *

  ………………………………………………………………

  But afterwards! Afterwards...

  I was a "wolf in sheep's clothing". A "toff". A "bourgeois yes-man"....................................................................

  So now I'm not head of ASS Lit. Or Dram. I'm a stray dog in an attic. Hunched up. Shuddering when the bell rings at night .........................................................

  Oh, dusty days! Oh, stuffy nights!

  *

  And in the summer of 1920 A. D. there did appear a vision from Tiflis. A young man, all broken and disjointed, with an aged wrinkled face, arrived and offered his services as a brawler poet. He brought with him a slim volume like a wine price-list. The book contained his poems.

  Lily-of-the-valley is rhymed with don't shilly-shally.

  It's enough to drive you bonkers!

  The young man took an instant dislike to me. He brawled in the newspaper (page 4, column 4). About me. And about Pushkin. Not about anything else. He hates Pushkin more than me. It's alright for Pushkin! He's passed into the great beyond...

  But I'll be squashed like a worm.

  6.

  THE BRONZE COLLAR

  What a bloody awful town Tiflis is! A second one's arrived. In a bronze collar. Yes, bronze. And he spoke in a live magazine like that. I'm not joking! In a bronze collar, see!............................................................

  The novelist Slyozkin has been sent packing, regardless of his nation-wide reputation and his pregnant wife. That one's taken his place. So much for Lit. and Dram. And money behind the carpet..............................................................

  7.

  THE BOYS IN THE BOX

  The moon's in a corona. Yuri and I sit on the balcony and look at the canopy of stars. But it doesn't help. In a few hours' time the stars will fade and a ball of fire will flame up overhead. And we'll squirm again like beetles on pins...

  A high unbroken squeal can be heard through the balcony door. Somewhere at the back of beyond, by the foot of a mountain, in a strange town, a son has been born to starving Slyozkin in an absurdly, bestially cramped room. They have put him on the window-sill in a box with the words:

  "M-me Marie. Modes et Robes."

  And he whimpers in the box.

  Poor child!

  Poor us, not the child.

  The mountains have hemmed us in. TableMountain sleeps under the moon. Far, far away in the north lie the endless plains... In the south ravines, precipices, swirling rivers. Somewhere in the west is the sea. Above it shines the Golden Horn...

  ...Have you seen the flies on Tangle-foot?

  When the crying stops, we go into the cage.

  Tomatoes. A little black bread. And araki . What filthy vodka! Disgusting! Still it does the trick.

  And when all around is fast asleep, the writer reads me his new novel. There's no one else to hear it. The night swims. He finishes, wraps up the manuscript carefully and puts it under the pillow. There is no writing-desk.

  We whisper until the pale dawn.

  What names are on our dry tongues! What names! How Pushkin's verse can soften spiteful souls. Beware of spite, writers of Russia! ..................................................................

  Truth comes only through suffering. That's right, rest assured! But no one pays you or gives you food parcels for knowing the truth. Sad, but so.

  8.

  A THROUGH WIND

  Yevreinov (9) arrived. In an ordinary white collar. From the Black Sea on his way to Petersburg.

  There used to be such a city in the north.

  Does it still exist? The writer laughs and assures us that it does. But it takes a long time to get there. Three years in a goods van. My tired eyes feasted for a whole evening on his white collar. And for a whole evening I listened to tales of adventure.

  Brother writers, your vocation... (10)

  He hadn't got a penny. His luggage had been stolen...

  ...On another evening at Slyozkin's, the last, Nikolai Nikolayevich sat at the piano in the smoke-filled drawing-room provided by the landlady. He endured the torment of inspection with iron stamina. Four poets, a poetess and a painter (workshop) devoured him decorously with their eyes.

  Yevreinov is an ingenious fellow.

  "And now ' Musical Grimaces'..."

  Turning his face to the keys, he began to play. At first... At first he gave us a visiting elephant playing the piano, then a lovesick piano-tuner, a dialogue between steel and gold and, finally, a polka.

  Within ten minutes the workshop was totally incapacitated. It no longer sat decorously, but rolled about hysterically with much waving of hands and groaning...

  ...The man with the lively eyes went away. No more grimaces!

  *

  A sudden gust of wind blew through, and they were swept away like leaves. One from Kerch to Vologda, another from Vologda to Kerch. A rumpled Osip appears with a suitcase, complaining angrily:

  "We'll never get there, and that's that!" Of course you won't get there, if you don't know where you're going!

  *

  Yesterday Riurik Ivnev (11) appeared. On his way from Tiflis to Moscow.

  "It's better in Moscow."

  He travelled so much that one day he just lay down in a ditch.

  "I refuse to get up. Something must happen."

  And so it did. A friend chanced to see him there, took him home and gave him a meal.

  Another poet went from Moscow to Tiflis.

  It's better in Tiflis.

  The third was Osip Mandelstam. (12) He arrived one cloudy day, holding his head high like a prince. His laconic remarks devastated us.

  "From the Crimea. Ghastly. Do they buy manuscripts here?"

  "Yes, but they don't pay..." Before I could finish he had gone. I know not where...

  The novelist Pilnyak (13) went to Rostov in a flour train, wearing a woman's cardigan.

  "Is it better in Rostov?"

  "No, I just want a rest!"

  Eccentric — wears gold-rimmed spectacles.

  *

  Serafimovich arrived from up north. (14)

  Tired eyes. Hollow voice. Gave a talk in the workshop.

  "Remember Tolstoy's kerchief on a stick. It keeps catching, then fluttering again. As if it were alive... I once wrote an anti-drink label for a vodka bottle. Jotted down a phrase. Crossed one word out and put another over it. Thought a bit, then crossed that one out too. And so on several times. But the phrase came out pat. Now they write... They write in a funny way! You pick it up. Read it through. No! Can't understand it. You have another try — still no luck. So you put it to one side..."

  The local workshop sits by the wall in cor pore. Judging from their eyes they don't understand it. That's their business!

  Serafimovich's left town... Entr'acte.

  9.

  THE INCIDENT WITH THE GREAT WRITERS

  The Sub-Section's decorator painted Anton Pavlovich Chekhov with a crooked nose and such a monstrous pince-nez that from a distance he seemed to be wearing racing goggles.

  We put him on a big easel. A gingery-coloured pavilion, a small table with a carafe and a lamp.

  I read an introductory article "On Chekhovian Humour". But perhaps because I hadn't eaten for three days or for some other reason, my thoughts were rather sombre. The theatre was packed. Now and then I lost the thread. I saw hundreds of blurred faces rising up to the dome. And not a ghost of a smile on any of them. Mind you, there was some hearty applause. But I realised to my dismay that this was because I had finished, and fled backstage in relief. That was two thousand in my pocket. Now let someone else sweat it out. Going into the smoking-room, I heard
a Red Army man complain miserably: "To blazes with them and their humour! We come to the Caucasus and they won't leave us alone here either!"

  He was quite right, that soldier from Tula. I hid away in my favourite place, a dark corner behind the props room. A roar came from the hall. Hurrah! They were laughing. Good for the actors! "Surgery" saved the day and the story about the civil servant who sneezed.

  Success! Success! Sloyozkin rushed into my rat corner and hissed, rubbing his hands:

  "Write the second programme!"

  It was decided to hold a Pushkin Evening after the Evening of Chekhovian Humour.

  Yuri and I planned the programme lovingly.

  "That blockhead can't draw," Slyozkin fumed. "We'll ask Maria Ivanovna!"

  I immediately feared the worst. In my opinion Maria Ivanovna draws about as well as I play the fiddle... I concluded this when she first appeared in the Sub-Section saying she had studied under the great N. himself. (She was immediately made Head of Fine Arts.) But since I know nothing about painting, I kept quiet.

  *

  Exactly half an hour before the beginning I went into the scenery room and stopped dead: there, staring at me from a gold frame, was Nozdryov. (15) He was perfect. Crafty, goggling eyes, even one side-board thinner than the other. The illusion was so complete, that I expected him to give a loud guffaw and say:

  "Just got back from a fair, my friend. Congratulate me: gambled all my money away!"

  I don't know what my expression was like, but the painter was mortally offended. She blushed a deep red under the thick layer of powder and screwed up her eyes.

  "You obviously ... er ... don't like it, eh?"

  "Oh, but I do! Ha-ha! It's very ... nice. Very nice. Only the side-whiskers..."

  "What? The side-whiskers? You mean to say you've never seen Pushkin? Fancy that! And you call yourself a writer! Tee-hee! Perhaps you think he should be clean-shaven?"

  "Sorry, it's not so much the side-whiskers, but Pushkin never played cards, and if he had, he would never have cheated!"

  "What have cards got to do with it? I don't understand! You're making a mockery of me, I see!"

  "Pardon me, but it is you who are making a mockery. Your Pushkin has the eyes of a scoundrel!" "Ah, so that's it!"

  She threw down her brush. And called from the door: "I'll complain to the Sub-Section about you!"

  And then what happened! As soon as the curtain went up and Nozdryov appeared before the darkened hall with his sly grin, the first ripple of laughter broke out. Oh, my God! The audience had decided that after Chekhov's humour they were going to get Pushkin's humour! I began to talk in a cold sweat of "the Aurora Borealis in the snow-bound wastes of Russian belles-lettres". There were sniggers in the audience at the side-whiskers. Nozdryov skulked behind me, grunting:

  "If I were your boss, I'd string you up on the nearest tree!"

  So I couldn't stop myself and let out a snigger too. The success was overwhelming, phenomenal. Neither before nor after have I ever been the recipient of such thunderous applause. And then it began to crescendo. When Salieri poisoned Mozart in the dramatised excerpt the audience expressed its delight with approving guffaws and thunderous cries of "Encore!"

  Scampering rat-like out of the theatre I saw from the corner of my eye the poetry brawler scurry into the editorial office with his notebook...

  *

  I knew as much! On the very front page, fourth column:

  MORE PUSHKIN!

  Writers from the capital who are skulking in the local Arts Sub-Section have made a new objective attempt to corrupt the, public by stuffing their idol Pushkin down its throat.

  They even took the liberty of portraying this idol as a landlord and serfowner (which he was) with side-whiskers... And so on.

  Dear God. Please let that brawler die! Everyone's catching typhus these days. Why can't he get it too? That cretin will get me arrested!

  And that infernal old hag from Fine Arts!

  Ruined. Everything's ruined. They've banned the evenings...

  ...Ghastly autumn. Rain lashing down. Can't think what we're going to eat. What on earth are we going to eat?

  10.

  A FOOT-BINDING AND A BLACK MOUSE

  …………………………………………………………………………

  Late one hungry evening, I wade through puddles in the dark. Everything's boarded up. My feet are in tattered socks and battered shoes. There is no sky. In its place hangs a huge foot-binding. Drunk with despair, I mutter:

  "Alexander Pushkin. Lumen coelum. Sancta rosa. (16) And his threats ring out like thunder."

  Am I going mad? A shadow runs from the street lamp.

  It's my shadow, I know. But why is it wearing a top hat, when I've got a cap on? Had to take my top hat to market to buy some food. Some good folk bought it to use as a chamberpot. But I won't sell my heart and brains, even if I'm starving. Despair. A foot-binding overhead and a black mouse in my heart...

  11.

  NO WORSE THAN KNUT HAMSUN

  I'm starving ……………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

  12.

  MUST RUN. MUST RUN!

  "A hundred thousand... I've got a hundred thousand! , I earned it!

  A barrister's clerk, one of the natives, taught me how. He arrived one day when I was sitting silently, head in hands, and said:

  "I'm broke too. There's only one solution — we must write a play. A revolutionary play. About the life of the natives. And sell it..."

  I stared at him vacantly and replied: "I can't write anything about the life of the natives, revolutionary or counter-revolutionary. I know nothing about their life. In fact I can't write anything at all. I'm tired, and I don't think I'm any good at writing anyway."

  "You're talking nonsense," he answered. "It's because you're hungry. Be a man. The life of the natives is a cinch. I know it inside out. We'll write the play together. And split the money fifty-fifty."

  So we started to write. There was a round hot stove at his place. His wife would hang up the washing on a line in the room, then give us some beetroot salad with vegetable oil and tea with saccharine. He told me some common names and customs, and I made up the plot. So did he. And his wife sat down and advised us too. I realised at once they were much better at it than me. But I didn't feel envious, because I had already decided this was the last play I would ever write...

  And so we wrote it. He basked by the stove saying: "I love creating!" I scratched away with my pen...

  A week later the three-act play was ready. When I read it through to myself in my unheated room at night, I'm not ashamed to admit that it brought tears to my eyes! In terms of crassness it was unique, remarkable! Something obtuse and insolent stared out of every line of this collective creation. I couldn't believe my eyes. What could I hope for, imbecile, if I wrote like that? Shame stared at me from the damp green walls and the terrible black windows. I began to tear up the manuscript. But then I stopped. Because suddenly with remarkable, unusual clarity I realised the truth of the saying: once written, never destroyed. A work can be torn up, burnt, concealed from others. But never from oneself! It was the end of me! It could never be erased. This astounding thing had been written by me. It was the end!..

  *

  The play caused a sensation in the native Sub-Section. They bought it at once for two hundred thousand. And a fortnight later it was performed on the stage.

  Eyes, daggers and cartridge pockets flashed in the mist of a thousand bated breaths. After heroic horsemen rushed in and grabbed the chief of police and guards in the third act the Chechens, Kabardians and Ingushes yelled: "Zere! Serves him right, ze cur!"

  And following the Sub-Section ladies they shouted: "Author!"

  There was a lot of handshaking backstage.

  "Vairy gut play!"

  And invitations to visit their
mountain villages.

  *

  Must run! Must run!

  Quickly. A hundred thousand is enough to get out of here. Forward. To the sea. Over one sea and another to France and dry land — to Paris!

  A driving rain lashed my face as, hunched up in my greatcoat, I ran along the alleys for the last time — home...

  You — prosewriters and playwrights in Paris and Berlin — just you try. Try, for the fun of it, to write something worse. If you are as talented as Kuprin, Bunin or Gorky you will not succeed. It is I who hold the record! For collective creativity. The three of us wrote it: me, the barrister's clerk and hunger. At the beginning of nineteen twenty one...

  13.

  The town at the foot of the mountains has vanished. Curse it... Tsikhidziri. Makhindzhauri . GreenCape! Magnolias in bloom. White flowers the size of plates. Bananas. Palm trees! I saw them myself, I swear it, palm trees growing out of the ground. And the sea singing endlessly by granite cliffs. The books were right. The sun sinks into the water. The beauty of the sea. The high vault of the heavens. The steep cliff, with creeping plants on it. Chakva. Tsikhidziri . Green Cape.