Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea

31

SUMMER in Yekaterinodar…

Heat. Dust. Through a murky veil of dust, turmoil, and all the years that have passed I glimpse faces and images.

Professor Novgorodtsev. The pale blue, very Slavic eyes of Venedikt Myakotin. The ever-sentimental Fyodor Volkenstein’s thick mane of hair. The faraway, intent gaze of Pyotr Ouspensky, the mystic…[135] And others, “slain servants of the Lord” whom we were already remembering in our prayers.

And there was Prince Y—one of my many Petersburg acquaintances. Always cheerful, feverishly animated—still more so after being shot through the arm.

“The soldiers adore me,” he would say. “I know how to treat them. I bash them in the face—just like you bash a tambourine.”

What they really loved him for, I think, was his reckless daring and his extraordinary cheerful bravado. They liked to tell the story of how he had once galloped through a village held by the Bolsheviks, whistling loudly, his epaulettes clearly visible on his shoulders.

“But why didn’t they shoot at you?”

“They were flabbergasted. They couldn’t believe their eyes: a White officer—suddenly riding through their village! They all rushed out to look, eyes popping out of their heads. It was ever so funny!”

I’ve heard the most astonishing accounts of Prince Y’s subsequent adventures. In due course, in some other town in the south, he fell into enemy hands. He was tried—and sentenced to hard labor. Since the Bolsheviks didn’t have any proper labor camps at that time, they simply put him in prison. But then they turned out to need a public prosecutor; it was only a small town and everyone with any education had either fled or gone into hiding. And they knew that the prince had completed a degree in law. So they thought for a bit, then appointed him public prosecutor. Prince Y would be escorted to the court to prosecute and to pass sentence, and he would then return for the night to his “hard labor.” Many people felt envious: They too would have been glad of free bed and board.

Yekaterinodar, Rostov, Kislovodsk, Novorossiisk…

Yekaterinodar, city of the elite. And in every government establishment—the picturesque beret, cloak, and curls of Maximilian Voloshin, declaiming his poems about Russia and petitioning on behalf of the innocent and endangered.

Rostov, city of traders and profiteers, its restaurant gardens the scene for hysterical drinking bouts that culminated in suicides.

Novorossiisk, city of many colors, ready to spring into Europe. Young men and chic ladies, motoring about in English cars and bathing in the sea. Novorossiisk-les-Bains…

Kislovodsk, which greeted approaching trains with an idyllic picture of green hills, peacefully grazing flocks and—against the backdrop of a scarlet evening sky—a finely etched black swing with a stub of rope.

A gallows.

I remember how haunted I was by that singular picture. I remember leaving the hotel first thing in the morning and setting off toward those green hills, seeking the evil mountain.

Toward it I went, climbing a steep, well-trodden path. Seen from close by, the swing was no longer black. It was gray, like any other piece of ordinary unpainted wood.

I stood right in the center, beneath its strong crossbeam.

What, in their last moments, had these people seen? Hangings were, as a rule, carried out early in the morning. From this spot, they would have seen their last sun. And this line of hills and mountains.

Down below to the left, the market was already getting underway. Brightly dressed peasant women were taking earthenware from their carts and laying it out on straw, the morning sun glistening wetly on the glazed jugs and bowls. Then, too, there would probably have been this same market. And to the right, farther off among the hills, were flocks of sheep. In tight waves (like the curls of the Shulamite),[136] these flocks were now rolling slowly down the green slope, and shepherds in furs were leaning on long crooks straight out of the Bible. A blessed silence. They, too, would have heard this silence.

It would all have been utterly simple and routine. People would have led someone up here, then stood them exactly where I was now standing myself. One of the shepherds might have looked this way, shielding his eyes with the palm of his hand, and wondered what was going on up above him.

One of those hanged here had been Ksenya G, the famous anarchist.[137] Bold, gay, young, beautiful—always chic, and the companion of Mamont Dalsky.[138] Back in the days of revolutionary fever, many of my friends had gone out carousing in the company of these two and their lively, entertaining fellow-anarchists. And they all, without exception, had struck us as fakes and braggarts. Not one of us had taken them seriously. We had known Mamont’s colorful persona too well and too long to believe in the sincerity of his political convictions. It was posturing, hot air, a hired costume, the grease-paint of a tragic villain. Intriguing and irresponsible. On stage Mamont had, throughout his career, played Edmund Kean in the play by Alexandre Dumas; off stage he had played not only Kean but also the “genius” and the “libertine” of the play’s title. But Mamont had died (oh, the little ironies of fate!) because of an act of old-fashioned courtesy. Standing on the running board of a tram, he had stepped back to make room for a lady. He had lost his footing and fallen beneath the wheels. And several months later his companion, gay, chic Ksenya G, had stood here, in this very spot, smoking her last cigarette and screwing her eyes up as she looked at her last sun. Then she had flicked away the cigarette butt—and calmly thrown the stiff noose around her neck.

Sunlight playing on the glazed earthenware in the bazaar. Brightly dressed women, milling about by the carts. Farther away—shepherds moving slowly down the steep green slopes, leaning on their staffs. And probably, a faint ringing, as there always is in the mountain silence. And the silence was blessed.

People often complain that a writer has botched the last pages of a novel, that the ending is somehow crumpled, too abrupt.

I understand now that a writer involuntarily creates in the image and likeness of fate itself. All endings are hurried, compressed, broken off.

When a man has died, we all like to think that there was a great deal he could still have done.

When a chapter of life has died, we all think that it could have somehow developed and unfolded further, that its conclusion is unnaturally compressed and broken off. The events that conclude such chapters of life seem tangled and skewed, senseless and without definition.

In its own writings, life keeps to the formulae of old-fashioned novels. We learn from the epilogue that “Irina got married and I have heard tell she is happy. Sergey Nikolaevich was able to forget his troubles through service to society.”

All too quick and hurried, all somehow beside the point.

Those last days in Novorossiisk before our contrived, unexpectedly far-fetched departure were equally hurried and uninteresting.

“It’ll be difficult to return to Petersburg right now,” I was told. “Go abroad for a while. Come spring you’ll be back in the motherland.”

“Spring,” “motherland”—what wonderful words…

Spring is the resurrection of life. Come spring I’d be back again.

Our last hours on the quayside, beside the steamer The Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich.[139]

Hustle, bustle, much whispering. The strange whispering that, along with a constant looking back over the shoulder, had accompanied all our arrivals and departures as we slid down the map, down the huge green map across which, slantwise, was written The Russian Empire.

Yes, everyone is whispering; everyone is looking back over their shoulder. Everyone is frightened, constantly frightened, and not until their dying day will they find peace, will they come to their senses. Amen.

The steamer shudders, whipping up white foam with its propeller, spreading black smoke over the shoreline.

And slowly, softly, the land slips away from us.

Don’t look at it. You must look ahead, into the wide, free expanse of blue.

But somehow the head turns back. Eyes are opening wide and they keep looking, looking…

And everyone is silent. Except for one woman. From the lower deck comes the sound of long, obstinate wails, interspersed with words of lament.

Where have I heard such wails before? Yes. I remember. During the first year of the war. A gray-haired old woman was being taken down the street in a horse-drawn cab. Her hat had slipped back onto the nape of her neck. Her yellow cheeks were thin and drawn. Her toothless black mouth was hanging open, crying out in a long tearless wail: “A-a-a-a-a!” Probably embarrassed by the disgraceful behaviour of his passenger, the driver was urging his poor horse forward, whipping her on.

Yes, my good man, you didn’t think enough about whom you were picking up in your cab. And now you’re stuck with this old woman. A terrible, black, tearless wail. A last wail. Over all of Russia, the whole of Russia… No stopping now…

The steamer shudders, spreading black smoke.

With my eyes now open so wide that the cold penetrates deep into them, I keep on looking. And I shall not move away. I’ve broken my vow, I’ve looked back. And, like Lot’s wife, I am frozen. I have turned into a pillar of salt forever, and I shall forever go on looking, seeing my own land slip softly, slowly away from me.