Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea

8

FOR A MOMENT all this seems like a festival.

But soon it begins to feel more like a station waiting room, just before the final whistle.

The hustle and bustle is too restless, too greedy to be a true festival. There is too much anxiety and fear in it. No one is giving any real thought either to their present or to their future. Everyone just grabs what they can, knowing they may have to drop it again at any moment.

The streets are swarming with newcomers. People have grouped together in the oddest of combinations: a Moscow city councillor with an actress from Rostov, a balalaika player with a lady who had been an eminent public figure, an important courtier with a smart, young provincial reporter, a rabbi’s son with the governor of a province, an actor from a small cabaret with two elderly ladies-in-waiting… And they all appear somehow bewildered—they keep glancing around, clutching at one another. Never mind who your companion may be—at least there’s a human hand, a human shoulder, close beside you.

The seven pairs of clean beasts and seven pairs of unclean beasts must have felt something similar in Noah’s ark. They had only just met, they were still introducing themselves, giving one another a friendly sniff—and then there they were, all feeling seasick together as they were rocked about by the rising waters.

Promenading along Kreshchatik[49] are many of those who had gone missing without a trace. Here is the public figure who, only a month before, flaring his nostrils impressively, had declared that we must not leave, that we must work and die at our posts.

“But how come you’ve left your post?” I call out unkindly.

“It had come to be too much of a whipping post, my dear!” he replies, doing his best to brazen it out. “First let me get my strength back a little. And then—who knows?”

And all the while his eyes dart anxiously about. Here, there, and everywhere.

Kreshchatik bustles with life. It is a place for both business and pleasure. In the middle of the pavement stands a well-known, all-knowing journalist. Like the host at some grand reception, he nods this way and that way, shakes hands to his left and to his right, walks a few steps with particularly eminent figures, grants others only a casual wave.

“Ah! At last!” he calls out to me. “We were expecting you here last week.”

“We?”

“Kiev!”

The crowd carries me forward and Kiev shouts after me, “See you tonight! You know, at—”

That’s all I manage to hear.

“We all dine there,” says a voice beside me.

It’s a lawyer I know. He too had disappeared from Petersburg without warning.

“How long have you been here?” I ask. “Why didn’t you come and say goodbye before you left? We were worried about you.”

He gives an embarrassed shrug.

“You know, the way it all happened… It really was most absurd…”

I hear cheery greetings from all sides—more than I have time to acknowledge.

I come across a colleague of mine from the Russian Word. “You wouldn’t believe it!” he says. “The city’s gone mad! Open any newspaper you like—you’ll find all the best writers from both Moscow and Petersburg! The theaters have been taken over by the finest of artistic talents. The Bat is here. Sobinov is here. There’s going to be a cabaret with Kurikhin in it. Ozarovsky’s staging special evenings of short plays. New plays are expected from you too. You’ll be asked to write for Kiev Thought. Vlas Doroshevich is here already, I’ve heard, and Lolo’s expected any day. We’re soon going to have a new newspaper—financed by the Hetman and edited by Gorelov. Vasilevsky’s thinking of starting a newspaper too. We won’t let you go. Life’s in full swing here.”[50]

I remember Gooskin’s words about life “taking a full swing at us.”

“People here don’t know what’s hit them,” my companion continues. “Now they’ve seen what visitors are being paid, the local journalists are talking of going on strike. ‘We’re the only ones you can rely on,’ they say. ‘Any day now our visitors will be moving on.’ And the restaurants are simply inundated by all the new customers. Cultural ‘corners’ and ‘circles’ are springing up in every square. Yevreinov will be here soon—we’ll be able to open a ‘theater of new forms.’ And we really need a Stray Dog.[51] This is a matter of the utmost urgency whose day has well and truly dawned.”

“I’m only passing through,” I say. “I’m being taken to Odessa to give some readings.”

“Odessa? Now? What do you want to go to Odessa for? It’s chaos there. You should wait until things have settled down a little. No, we’re not letting you go.”

“We?”

“Kiev.”

Heavens!

Next I see a round, familiar face—a woman I know from Moscow.

“We’ve been here for ages,” she says proudly. “We are, after all, a Kiev family. My husband’s father used to have a house here, right on Kreshchatik. Yes, we’re true Kiev natives…. You know, they have very decent crêpe de chine here…. My dressmaker—”

“Will you be going to Mashenka’s tonight?”[52] interrupts the loud bass of an actor. “She’s here for a few guest appearances…. The coffee there is divine. Made with cream and cognac….”

Everyone eats and drinks. Everyone drinks, eats, and nods in agreement: Quick! Quick! All that matters is to have one more drink and one more meal and then to snatch up more food and drink to take with you! The last whistle is about to sound.

Olyonushka arranged for me to stay with some friends of hers. The eldest of the three girls worked in an office; the younger two were still in high school.

All three were in love with a tenor at the local opera; they were very sweet, gobbling away in their excitement like little turkeys.

They lived in a wing of a large house. The yard was so densely stacked with firewood that you needed a perfect knowledge of the approach channel in order to maneuver your way to their door. Newcomers would run aground and, their strength failing, start to shout for help. This was the equivalent of a doorbell and the girls would calmly say to one another, “Lily, someone’s coming. Can’t you hear? They’re in the firewood.”

After I had been there about three days, someone quite large got caught in the trap and began letting out goat-like cries.

Lily went to the rescue and came back with Gooskin. In only three days he had grown so much stouter that it took me a moment to recognize him.

“I thought you were still at the train station. I’ve been trying to find you somewhere to stay.”

“You really thought I’d just wait in the station buffet for days on end?”

“I thought… something of the kind,” said Gooskin, evidently feeling too lazy to lie with any conviction. “If you’re going to find anywhere to stay here, you have to arrange it through a special bureau. Otherwise you don’t have a chance. But, of course, if you were to make a request in person and, at the same time, provide evidence of ill health…”

“But I’m not in the least ill.”

“So you’re not ill? So what! You’ve probably had measles at some time in your life. They’ll write ‘has suffered from measles, must have accommodation under a roof.’ Yes, something scientific like that. Well, what do you think of Kiev? Have you been to Kreshchatik? And why are there so many blondes here—can someone explain that to me?”

“It sounds as if you don’t like blondes!” giggled one of the girls.

“Why do you say that? Brunettes are good too. I don’t want to offend anyone, but blondes have something heavenly about them whereas brunettes are more down to earth. Ri-ight?” Turning to me, Gooskin added, “Well, we need to organize an evening for you.”

“But everything about Odessa’s already agreed.”

“Oh… Odessa…”

He smiled mysteriously and left—plump, sleek, and sleepy-looking.

That evening I saw Averchenko and told him my concerns about Gooskin.

“I don’t think you should go to Odessa with him,” Averchenko replied. “Pay him his cancellation fee and get rid of him as soon as you can. He’s just not the right person to put on a literary evening. Either he’ll send you out on stage with a circus dog or he’ll start singing himself.”

“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of. But what should I do?”

“Have a word with my own impresario. He’s as honest as they come, and I think he has a lot of experience.”

Averchenko, a thoroughly honorable man himself, imagined everyone else to be honorable and spent his whole life surrounded by crooks. Still, where was the harm in asking for a little advice?

“All right, ask this fine fellow of yours to come round.”

The fine fellow came round the next day and outlined a surprising plan: “First of all, don’t do any evenings in Kiev yourself because that might be detrimental to my plans for Averchenko. One literary evening is interesting enough, but when there’s literature raining down on all sides, the audience will fragment and takings will plummet.”

“Very good,” I said. “You need to look after your own interests. But I was hoping for some advice about my affairs.”

“With regard to your own affairs, I have some very subtle advice. Yes, in these matters you have to be very subtle indeed. First, travel on to Odessa and let Gooskin arrange an evening for you there. There’s a concert hall, I’ll tell you which one—there’s a concert hall in Odessa where no one can hear a word you say. So, go along there for your evening and read in a terribly weak voice. The audience will, of course, be dissatisfied and they will, of course, get angry. Then you must send a note to the papers—I’m sure you have contacts in the press—yes, you must send a note saying that the evening’s a waste of time. Tell people they could have more fun at home. Then arrange a second evening in the same hall. And again read in a barely audible voice—let the audience get really furious. Then I’ll show up in Odessa with Averchenko, hire a small hall and get wonderful reviews everywhere. And then you just say to Gooskin, ‘See what a mess you’ve made of everything. Everyone is up in arms. I think we have to terminate our agreement.’ How can he object under circumstances like that?”

I looked at him for a while without a word, and then said, “Tell me. Did you come up with this scheme all by yourself?”

He looked down at the floor with modest pride.

“So, you’re advising me to turn my own evenings into catastrophes and then publish damning reviews about them? This certainly shows originality on your part, but why does all this originality have to be at the expense of poor Gooskin? He is your colleague, your fellow impresario—why do you want to ruin him? Do you really not understand what effect this would have?”

The impresario took offence.

“Well, it seems my scheme doesn’t appeal to you. In that case, you must find some other way to get rid of Gooskin. Once you’ve found a way to do that, you and I can come to an agreement. And then everything, I guarantee you, will be perfect.”

“I don’t doubt it! Never in my life have I met anyone so ingenious as you are.”

He smiled, flattered.

“No, really, that’s too much!”