Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea

APPENDIX: THE LAST BREAKFAST

THE ARTICLES and sketches Teffi wrote during the years 1917–19 are gradually being republished. The most recent edition, Teffi in the Country of Memories (Kiev: LP Media, 2011), contains over seventy pieces, though it may well be incomplete. Twenty of these were published in Kiev newspapers, mostly between October 1918 and January 1919, and three were published in Odessa, in early 1919. Teffi clearly drew on some of these articles for Memories, and excerpts from them are quoted in the endnotes. “The Last Breakfast” (first published April 2, 1919, in Our Word, Odessa), the best piece from these months, and one which Teffi refers to directly in Chapter 14 of Memories, is translated here in full.

In times gone by, when Europe was peaceful and life settled, a condemned man would be offered breakfast on the morning of his execution. His last breakfast.

Le dernier déjeuner!

Witnesses to this last breakfast always noted with surprise the heartiness of the man’s appetite.

Strange indeed.

If, in normal circumstances, someone is woken at four in the morning and offered breakfast, it is unlikely he’ll respond with much interest. But a condemned man, knowing he has no more than two or three hours left to live, will gladly devote half an hour to a plate of roast beef.

Those whose last hours have been counted out and who have been handed the bill may, perhaps, slip into some peculiar state—a state of psychological coma. The soul has died away, died off, but the body’s complex and cunning laboratory continues to function of its own accord. The smell of food makes nostrils flare; saliva fills the mouth, digestive juices start to flow, and what we call an appetite arises. The body lives. Surprising though it may seem, the body continues to live. It lives and breakfasts with relish. Nobody, of course, believes that the Bolsheviks might be coming. To believe such a thing would be improper, impolite, a sign of ill breeding and ingratitude. There is no escaping the patriotism of the moment.

Nobody believes such a thing.

Yet every epoch, even every little turning point in an epoch, has a phrase or word—a leitmotif—that captures the general mood. You will hear this word everywhere: in theaters, in cafés, in restaurants, at business meetings, at the card table, and out on the street. Wherever people are talking, whatever they are talking about, you cannot get away from this word.

The word of the moment is “visa.”

Remember the day, take note of the day, when you don’t hear this word.

In the month of March, 1919, life in Odessa is ruled by the sign of “visa.”

“I am getting a visa.”

“You will get a visa.”

“He has got his visa already.”

“We…” etc.

“The Bolsheviks aren’t coming, but I’m trying to get hold of a visa.”

“For where?”

“Anywhere—it’s all the same to me.”

This could be accurately translated as: “I, of course, have not been condemned to death, but just to be on the safe side I am petitioning for a pardon anyway.”

Or to put it more simply: One fine morning people come and assure you, in the most impassioned of tones, that you have absolutely nothing to worry about, your life is really not in any danger. And your previous sense of peace and calm is lost forever.

“I believe you. I know full well that I’m not in any danger. But why do you have to keep telling me that? Hmm…”

“The Bolsheviks aren’t coming. It won’t be allowed. Have you got a visa?”

Perhaps this is true—the Bolsheviks won’t come, and their coming is simply not possible. But in that corner of your consciousness, in that region of your brain that deals with the intricacies of obtaining foreign passports, the Bolsheviks have already taken over. They have been allowed into the city, they are making themselves at home here, and they are doing as they please with you. And fate offers you a last breakfast. Le dernier déjeuner. Clubs and restaurants are packed to bursting. People are guzzling chicken feet at eighty roubles each. People are blowing their “last odd million” in games of chemin de fer. Bellies bulging, lifeless eyes, and a one-way visa to the island of Krakatakata (wherever that may be). And you’re not allowed to stop anywhere en route.

Cold dreary days. Apocalyptic evenings.

In the evening people gather together, wearing hats and fur coats. With pale lips, their breath coming in clouds, they repeat, “The Bolsheviks, of course, aren’t coming. A visa—must get hold of some kind of visa.”

And they throw the last chair into the stove, after taking turns to sit on it for a minute by way of farewell.

This too is a kind of dernier déjeuner.

Cold days.

But if one morning the sun happens to leap up into the faded sky—a sky that is exhausted from waiting for spring—what absurd pictures we will see. These pictures are gloomy and sinister; they are not pictures fit for the sun.

The owner of a sugar refinery has walked out of a gaming house. He has been playing cards with abandon—and by morning he has lost two and a half million. By any standards that is quite a sum. But he has promised that by tomorrow he’ll come up with some more money, to win back his losses.

The sun hurts the man’s eyes, which are weary from his sleepless night. He squints, unable for a moment to take in a curious little scene being acted out right there in front of him.

On the pavement a man is poking about in a hole dug for a tree. Evidently, a former actor—you can tell from the stubble on a face that has now gone some time without a shave. The skin hangs from his cheeks in deep folds, pulling down the corners of his mouth. The actor is wearing only a light summer coat, and over it—like a beggar king—a brownish-black threadbare blanket.

The actor is engaged in a serious task. He is picking through discarded nut shells. Searching for a mistakenly spat-out kernel. Ah! He seems to have found something. He lifts this something up to his face and, slightly squinting, with a quick monkey-like movement of both hands, picks out a fragment of nut. The owner of the sugar refinery, screwing up his tired eyes, watches all this for a few seconds, calmly and without embarrassment, as one might observe a monkey unwrapping a sweet. The actor looks up, also only for an instant. Then he returns to his task. Equally calmly and without embarrassment, like a monkey being watched by some other species of wild animal.

He carries on with his dernier déjeuner.

“Hey, sun! Put those beams of yours away. Nothing worth gawping at here!”And what’s all this about “psychological comas”? It’s nothing of the kind.

People are just carrying on with their lives, living the way they have always lived, as is their human nature.