Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea

28

MY EVENINGS in Yekaterinodar were coming up soon.

I have no idea why the thought of any kind of public appearance fills me with such dread. I can’t explain this at all. Maybe it is beyond the understanding of anyone except the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud.

I certainly can’t say that the public has ever treated me badly. When I’ve had to read at charity events I have always been given an undeservedly warm welcome. A warm welcome and an equally generous and enthusiastic ovation. What more could I ask for? This should be enough to make anyone happy.

Far from it.

I wake up with a jolt in the middle of the night: “Heavens! What is it? Something is about to happen. Something awful, quite unbearably vile… Yes, of course. I’m giving a reading at a dentists’ benefit night.”

And the lies I tell in my attempts to escape such horrors!

Usually it starts with a telephone call: “There’s something very important I need to talk to you about. Just for a few minutes. When may I come and see you?”

Here we go.

“If you would be so kind,” I say (and even I myself feel surprised how flat my voice sounds), “perhaps you could just give me some idea now of what this is about.”

This, alas, is something the speaker rarely agrees to. For some reason, these ladies have an unshakeable faith in the invincibility of their personal charm.

“But these things are so difficult to talk about over the telephone!” the lady trills. “Please allow me just five minutes. I promise I won’t take up any more of your time.”

I make up my mind to unmask her there and then: “Does it, by any chance, have something to do with an entertainment you’re putting on?”

Now she has no way out. I need only say, “And when will this evening be?”

And, no matter what she says, the date turns out to be “utterly impossible for me, I regret to say.”

Now and again, however, I am given a date in the distant future—a whole month or even a month and a half away. And I frivolously say to myself that it really isn’t worth getting worked up about something so very distant. By then, after all, our whole solar system may have undergone some dramatic transformation. Or the lady may simply forget about me. Or the evening will be postponed. Anything can happen.

“With pleasure,” I reply. “What a wonderful cause. You can count on me.”

Then one fine morning I open the newspaper and see my own name. Yes, there it is, plain as day, in a list of writers and actors who are to perform in three days’ time in the main hall of the Assembly of the Nobility—a benefit evening, let’s say, for students who have been expelled from the Gurevich Gymnasium.[129]

What can I do? Fall sick? Slit my wrists? Catch the plague?

I remember one quite awful occasion. Now it seems like a bad dream. Yes, people have told me of exactly this kind of thing happening to them in dreams. “There I am in the Mariinsky Theatre,” an old professor of chemistry once told me, “and I’m going to have to sing. I go on stage—and all of a sudden, I remember I simply cannot sing. No, not for the life of me. And to make matters worse, I’m wearing only my nightshirt. But the audience is waiting, the orchestra is already playing the overture, and the tsar himself is sitting in the royal box. Dear God, the things one dreams!”

The story I’m about to tell you is very similar. Both nightmarish and funny.

While you’re sleeping, while you’re there inside the story, it’s a nightmare. Afterward, when you’re back outside it again, it’s funny.

A young man had called round. He wanted me to take part in a debate about the fashionable topic of the silent cinema: the “Great Mute,” as we called it then.

Leonid Andreyev was going to speak. As were Arabazhin, Volynsky, Meyerhold, and several others. I no longer remember who—but they were all important figures.[130]

I was, of course, appalled.

Going onstage with a book and reading a story you’ve written is one thing. And it’s really not so very difficult. But speaking—in public—is another matter. It’s completely beyond me. I’ve never spoken in public and I don’t ever want to.

The young man tried to win me over. If I really wasn’t up to speaking, I could just write down a few words beforehand and read them out.

“But I know nothing about the cinema. It’s not something I ever even think about.”

“Then start now!”

“I don’t know how to. I’ve got nothing to think.”

A great deal was being written about the “Great Mute,” but it had all passed me by. I had no idea where to begin, whose opinions I could rely on, and whose I should challenge.

But then the young man said something marvelously soothing: “The debate isn’t for another six weeks. You’ve got more than enough time to find out everything you need to know, and then you can just read from your notes.”

It all sounded so nice and easy—and, more important still, the debate was a whole six weeks away.

I agreed, of course—and the young man, elated, went on his way.

The days passed. No one bothered me; no one so much as mentioned the debate to me. I forgot all about it.

Then one dull evening when I had nothing to do and didn’t feel like seeing anyone, I went to the Liteiny Theatre. I went partly out of boredom and partly for professional reasons. Several of my plays were in repertoire, and I needed to go along now and again to keep an eye on things. The actors often got so carried away (they were all young, bright and talented) and would do so much “embellishment” (their term for adding words of their own) that by the tenth or twelfth performance some passages had moved so far from the original that even a play’s author might fail to recognize it as their own creation. And an author who left the actors to their own devices for a while and then went along to the twentieth or thirtieth performance might feel genuine puzzlement: What was this jolly nonsense? None of it made any sense, yet it all seemed vaguely familiar.

I still vividly remember a very talented actor in my play Diamond Dust.[131] He was playing the enamored artist. Instead of saying to his beloved, “I’ll follow you like a black slave,” I heard him clearly and distinctly pronounce, “I’ll follow you like a black sleigh.”

I thought I’d misheard, or that the actor had simply come out with the wrong word. I went backstage and asked: Had I simply imagined this black sleigh?

“No, it’s something I thought up myself.”

“But why?” I asked in bewilderment.

“Because it’s funnier like that.”

I was at a loss what to say.

But there are worse things than black sleighs.

Once, after not seeing one of my plays for a long time, I went to the theater and heard the actors spout such a load of nonsense that I took fright. I rushed backstage. The actors greeted me with cheery pride.

“So! Do you like what we’ve done with your play? Works well, doesn’t it? The audience just loves it!”

“It’s absolutely enchanting, of course,” I replied. “But I must, I regret to say, ask you to return to my humble text. I don’t feel comfortable putting my name to someone else’s work.”

They seemed surprised.

And so, there I was, on my way to the Liteiny Theatre. It was an evening I shall not forget.

It was nearly ten o’clock and the performance had evidently begun some time ago. I had free entry, so I went to the back of the hall and found a seat.

There were a lot of people, but… what was this play? And why were the house lights on?

Up onstage is a table covered with green cloth. Behind the table, sitting in the middle, is Meyerhold—I recognize him instantly. Arabazhin is standing up; he’s saying something. Volynsky’s there too. And sitting at the end of the table is some young man. Meyerhold screws up his eyes and stares at me; evidently he recognizes me. He beckons to the young man (whose face seems strangely familiar) and says something, pointing toward me… The young man nods and makes his way offstage.

What’s happening? I suppose he just wants to be courteous and offer me a seat further forward… But what’s going on? What are they all doing here?

In the meantime the young man has entered the auditorium through a side door and is purposefully making his way toward me.

He stops beside me.

“Would you rather speak now,” he asks, “or after the interval?”

“I… erm, no, not right now… I don’t understand…” I stammer in total bewilderment.

“All right then, after the interval,” says the young man in a matter-of-fact tone. “In any event, I’ve been asked to invite you to join us onstage and take your place at the table. Let me show you the way.”

“Oh no… no… I can manage. Goodness! What’s going on?”

He raises an eyebrow in surprise and returns to the side door.

At this point I start to take in some of what’s being said on stage:

“The Great Mute…”

“The role of the Cinema…”

“Whether or not it can be called Art…”

And something begins to dawns on me. Some thought begins to take shape—a shape that, though still vague, is distinctly unpleasant.

I get up quietly and make my way to the exit. Beside it I see an enormous poster: The Cinema—a Debate.

And there in the list of speakers is my own name, plain as day.

I rush back home. There I frighten my poor maid out of her wits, telling her to put the door on the chain and not to open it on any account to anyone. I take the telephone off the hook, get into bed, and hide my head under the pillow. Dinner is ready, but I’m too scared to go and eat it.

I am afraid that if I go to the dining room, it will be easier for “them” to find me.

How fortunate that everything in the world comes to an end.