Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea

6

WE LEFT Klintsy in a freight car.

At first, this seemed fun. We sat in a circle on top of our luggage, as if gathered around a campfire. We munched chocolate and chatted.

Climbing up into the carriage was especially entertaining. There was no step or ladder of any kind and, since our car was toward the rear of the train, it always stopped beyond the end of the platform. You had to lift your foot almost to the height of your chest and then lever yourself up while those already inside seized hold of your arms and pulled.

But all this soon lost its appeal. The stations were empty and dirty. The signs, looking as if they had been nailed up in a hurry, were written in Ukrainian, and the unexpected spelling and unfamiliar words made everything seem like the work of some practical joker.

New to us as it was, this language seemed as inappropriate for official use as, say, the language of a Russian peasant. As surprising as if, in some official Russian institution, you were to see a sign saying, “No barging in without prior announcement,” or, inside a train carriage: “Don’t stick your mug out,” “Don’t lean your noggin against the glass,” or “All tittle-tattle strictly prohibited.”[37]

But even these entertaining signs and notices ceased to amuse us.

The train moved slowly, and the stops were many and long. The station buffets and cloakrooms were all closed. It was evident that a wave of popular fury had swept through these parts and that the newly enlightened population had not yet returned to the mundane tasks of everyday life. There was filth everywhere, and a vile stench, and the authorities’ appeals to “misters” and “missies” to observe the wise old rules of station etiquette had clearly gone unheeded. These now liberated souls were above such concerns.

I don’t know how long all this lasted. I remember that we managed somehow to get hold of a lamp. But the fumes were unbearable: “the stench of hellfire,” as Gooskin put it.

So the lamp was put out.

It began to get cold. Wrapping myself up in my sealskin coat, which until then I had been lying on, I listened to the hopes and dreams of Averchenko and Olyonushka.

It’s not for nothing that I just mentioned my sealskin coat. A woman’s sealskin coat represents an entire epoch in her life as a refugee.

Were there any of us who did not have a sealskin coat? We put these coats on as we first set out, even if this was in summer, because we couldn’t bear to leave them behind—such a coat was both warm and valuable and none of us knew how long our wanderings would last. I saw sealskin coats in Kiev and in Odessa, still looking new, their fur all smooth and glossy. Then in Novorossiisk, worn thin around the edges and with bald patches down the sides and on the elbows. In Constantinople—with grubby collars and cuffs folded back in shame. And, last of all, in Paris, from 1920 until 1922. By 1920 the fur had worn away completely, right down to the shiny black leather. The coat had been shortened to the knee and the collar and cuffs were now made from some new kind of fur, something blacker and oilier—a foreign substitute. In 1924 these coats disappeared. All that remained was odds and ends, torn scraps of memories, bits of trimming sewn onto the cuffs, collars, and hems of ordinary woolen coats. Nothing more. And then, in 1925, the timid, gentle seal was obliterated by invading hordes of dyed cats. But even now when I see a sealskin coat, I remember this epoch in our lives as refugees. In freight cars, on the decks of steamers, or deep in their holds, we spread our sealskin coats beneath us if it was warm or wrapped ourselves up in them if it was cold. I remember a lady waiting for a tram in Novorossiisk. Cheap canvas shoes on her bare feet, she was standing there in the rain, holding a little baby in her arms. To make it clear to me that she wasn’t just anyone, she was speaking to the baby in French with the rather sweet accent of a Russian schoolgirl: “Seel voo ple! Ne plur pa! Voysi le tramvey, le tramvey!”

She was wearing a sealskin coat.

Seals are remarkable beasts. They can endure more than most horses.

The actress Vera Ilnarskaya once almost drowned wearing her sealskin coat.[38] She was on the Gregore when it sank off the Turkish coast. None of her belongings could be salvaged, of course—apart from the sealskin coat. The tailor to whom she then took it declared that, since the seal is a sea animal, immersion in its native element appeared only to have made the coat better and stronger.

Dear, gentle beast, comfort and defense in difficult times, banner of our lives as refugee women: A whole epic could be written about you. I remember you and salute you.

So, there we all were, being jolted about in a freight car. Wrapped in my sealskin coat, I was listening to the hopes and dreams of Averchenko and Olyonushka.

“First of all, a warm bath,” said Olyonushka. “But just a quick one, followed immediately by a roast goose.”

“No,” said Averchenko. “First, some appetizers.”

“Appetizers are piffle. And anyway, they’re cold. We want something hot and filling straightaway.”

“Cold? No, we’ll order hot appetizers. Have you ever had the toasted rye bread with bone marrow they serve in the Vienna? No? In that case, your opinion’s hardly worth listening to. A wonderful little dish, and it’s certainly hot.”

“Is that something like calves’ brains?” Olyonushka asked in a businesslike tone of voice.

“No, it’s not like brains, it’s bone marrow—the marrow from inside a bone. You really don’t know very much about anything, do you? And then at Kontan’s, on the counter with the appetizers, there on the right, between the mushrooms and the lobster, they always have some hot vorschmack[39]—it’s amazing. And in Alberto’s, on the left, near the mortadella, they have an Italian salad… And at Medvedev’s, right in the middle, in a small pan, they have those little… those little dumplings with mushrooms, they’re hot too.”

“All right,” said Olyonushka. “But that’s enough about appetizers. So, all these little dishes from all of these restaurants will already be on the table, but I think we need roast goose too, with cabbage. No, with buckwheat, buckwheat’s more filling.”

“Not with apples?”

“I said buckwheat’s more filling. You love to argue with me, but you really don’t know very much about anything. At this rate we’re never going to find anything we can agree on.”

“And where will all this take place?” I asked.

“Where? Oh, somewhere…” Olyonushka replied vaguely, then resumed her businesslike manner. “We can also get some Kislovodsk-style kebabs, from Orekhovaya Balka.”

“Now you’re talking,” Averchenko agreed. “And in Kharkov I once had some very tasty tomatoes with garlic. They’ll be perfect with the kebabs.”

“On our estate they used to make burbot pie. Let’s have that too.”

“Excellent, Olyonushka.”

Something dark and bulky stirred in the corner. It was Gooskin.

“Excuse me, Madame Teffi,” he asked in an ingratiating tone. “I’m curious… do you like domplings?”

“What? Do you mean dumplings? What kind of dumplings?”

“My mama makes fish domplings. She’ll make you some when you come to live with us.”

“Live with you?” I asked, my heart sinking under the weight of terrible forebodings. “When am I going to live with you?”

“When?” Gooskin answered calmly. “When we get to Odessa.”

“But you said I’ll be staying in a hotel, at the London!”

“Yes, of course you will. Who’s saying anything different? Nobody’s saying anything different. You’ll be staying at the London, but in the meantime, until the luggage… the cab driver… until we’re done with all those shysters, you’ll just have a little rest at Gooskin’s and Mama will give you some of her domplings.”

In my morbid imagination I immediately saw a tiny room, divided in two by a calico curtain. A cupboard. On top of the cupboard—Gooskin’s clodhoppers and a collar that had seen better days. And behind the curtain—Mama, cooking “domplings.”

“He’s up to something,” Averchenko whispered to me. “Once we’re in Kiev, you must try and find out a bit more.”

Encouraged by my silence, Gooskin began to elaborate his plans: “We can put on a show in Gomel too. Honest to God, and we’ll be going through Gomel anyway. Gomel, Shavli. And every show will be a sell-out—I swear to it.”[40]

Gooskin was quite something. A true impresario. A man one could go a long way with.

“Gooskin,” Averchenko began, “am I right in thinking you’ve taken a great many artistes on tour?”

“Well, yes, I have. I’ve taken a choir. I’ve taken a whole theater company. I’ve taken a… But what hasn’t Gooskin taken on tour?”

“So, with so many shows—and all of them sell-outs—you must have earned millions?”

“Millions? Huh! Just give me the remainder. Give me the remainder from twenty thousand and I’ll be more than happy.”

“What remainder?” I whispered to Averchenko. “What on earth is he talking about?”

“He’s saying he’s earned so little that if everything he’d ever earned were subtracted from twenty thousand, then he’d be happy to take the remainder.”

Goodness! My Gooskin was no simpleton.

“Gooskin, how come you’ve earned so little?”

“Because I am Gooskin, not Ruslansky. I see to it that an artiste is looked after properly, that he has the best suite in the best hotel and that the staff don’t knock him about. Whereas Ruslansky, he thinks that the best suite is for the impresario. Once I said to him, ‘Listen, Goldgrubber, you’re no more of a lord than I am, so why is it I don’t mind sleeping in the corridor while you always have to have the very best suite—and as for your artiste, he just gets left out on the street, lying beneath an umbrella?’ Ruslansky, who does Ruslansky think he is? Once I gave it to him straight. I said, ‘When one of Gooskin’s tours comes to an end, the artiste says, “What a shame I wasn’t born a day earlier, so I could have spent one more day with Gooskin!” But when one of Ruslansky’s tours comes to an end, the artiste says to him, “Goldgrubber, may you rot like a rat in hell.”’ Yes, like a rat in hell. And then the artiste calls Goldgrubber a louse, but that really isn’t something I should repeat to you. Ri-ight?”

But at this point our conversation was interrupted. The train stopped and the door to our freight car slid open with a grinding screech. A loud voice commanded, “Heraus!”[41]

And a second voice bleated, in Ukrainian, “Everybody out!”

“Wonderful!” said Gooskin—and out he went into the murky darkness.

We too leaped out into the thin, slippery mud—into the unknown.

Some soldiers pushed us aside and climbed into the car. They briskly threw out our luggage, then bolted the door.

Night, drizzle, soldiers, dim lights from hand-held lanterns.

And so there we were, once more on a station platform, in the rain.

We stood huddled together, like sheep in a blizzard—heads together, tails facing out. We waited obediently. Gooskin was our shepherd and we trusted him to look after us.

I can’t say we felt particularly upset by all this. Of course, supper and a warm room for the night would have been more pleasant than standing on an open platform in the drizzle, but by this time our wants had grown modest. We were confident that nobody—nobody whatsoever—was intending to have us shot, and this confidence filled our souls with a happy, surprised contentment. The drizzle was quite cosy and not really even so very wet. Life on this earth truly wasn’t so bad.

Our luggage was piled up beside us on a little station cart. A German soldier was guarding it.

The station was poorly lit. But somewhere in the distance we could see bright light shining through a glass door. Dark figures were going in and out. Behind that door must be where fates were determined.

A tall, dark shadow strides toward us. Gooskin.

“Once more it’s the torments of Tantalus,” he says helplessly. “Here I am, dancing around in the rain with no idea whom to bribe.”

“What do they want from us, Gooskin?”

“They want to put us in quarantine. Why, I ask you, can’t they just let their quarantine stay empty for a while? I told them we’ve already done time in quarantine. And they say, ‘Show us your papers—we want to see when you left Moscow.’ They see it was only a week ago. ‘So where are your two weeks of quarantine?’ they ask. Well, what could I say to that? What do you think I said? I said I’d go and change some money. What other answer can Gooskin give to a question like that?”

“What can we do?”

“We’ll find a way. The bitten child fears the fierce flame. We have to find out whom to bribe. Why else have they dreamed up this quarantine? I just have to find another Jew, someone who can point out the way to me.”

Gooskin walks off.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” I say, “we have to try and speak to the soldier. “Olyonushka, let’s start talking to each other in German. Then the soldier will feel more sympathetic toward us. All right?”

“I’ve forgotten all my German!” says Olyonushka. “I can only remember a few grammatical rules.”

“That’ll do! Let’s hear your rules—and put some feeling into them!”

“Ausgenommen sind: binden, finden, klingen,” Olyonushka began. “Gelingen, ringen…”[42]

“A bit jollier, Olyonushka. Livelier!”

“Nach, auf, hinter, neben, in, stehen mit dem accusativ,” Olyonushka chirps on.

“Mit, nach, nächst, nebst,” I answer, nodding my head in confirmation. “Look, the soldier’s beginning to stir. Quick, give him some more!”

“Ausgenommen sind: binden, band, gebunden. Dringen, drang…”

“Zu, aus…”

The soldier is now looking at us with wan curiosity.

“Yes, you’ve got through to him, you’ve kindled his sense of patriotism. So, what next?”

“Maybe we should sing a duet? Das war in Schöneberg?”[43]

“No, I don’t think singing would be quite right.”

But what is our soldier staring at? Ah, he’s looking at my suitcase.

I walk over to him. Aha! My old suitcase has a Berlin label on it. That’s what he’s looking at. Well, now he’ll be easy prey.

“Berlin! What a wonderful city,” I say to him in German. “Have you ever been to Berlin?”

No, he hasn’t.

“Oh, when all this is over, you really must go. Oh! Oh, what a wonderful city! The Kempinski restaurant, the Wertheim department store! The beer and the sausages! Oh, oh, oh, what beauty!”

The German smiles, his patriotic feelings now blazing merrily.

“Have you been to Berlin?” he asks.

“Of course I have! And here’s the proof—my own suitcase. Berlin! Oh, Berlin!”

And now—to business.

“Yes, that was a good time—before the war. Now, though, things are so much more difficult. Here we are in the rain and we don’t know what to do. We have, of course, spent time in quarantine, though not long, because we’re all terribly healthy. That’s why we were allowed out. But we didn’t think to ask for any documents. What do you think we should do?”

The soldier adopts a severe expression, looks away from me and says, “Lieutenant Schwenn.”

He repeats the words, quietly but no less seriously, “Lieutenant Schwenn.”

Then he turns on his heels and walks away. Victory! I run off to find Gooskin.

Hurrying about between the flickering beams from the lanterns is a shadowy figure. It is, of course, Gooskin.

“Gooskin! Gooskin! The soldier said ‘Lieutenant Schwenn.’ Do you understand me?”

“Huh! I’ve already heard that from at least a dozen people. Schwenn’s in there, with the officer in command. We have to wait.”

I go back to the others.

The soldier’s patriotism is now blazing so ardently that he can no longer quiet it. “Lieutenant Schwenn!” he repeats, looking away from us. “Nun? Lieutenant Schwenn.”

Eventually I say, “Schon! Already!”[44]

The soldier’s eyebrows and ears twitch a little. Then he calms down.

Gooskin comes back.

“Well?” I ask.

“A complete trifle! So cheap I felt well and truly ashamed! Ri-ight? But you have to go and talk to the officer yourselves. He’s the one who issues passes. He’ll give you one all right, but you must ask in person.”

Along we go, with no idea what we’re going to say to this officer.

We find him at his desk, a German with an entourage of junior Ukrainian officers.

“Why the hurry?” ask the Ukrainians. “Why not stay here for a while?”

“We’ve got no choice. We have to hurry. We’re performing the day after tomorrow in Kiev and we really must be there on time.”

Some of the officers have heard of us. They smile shyly and make little jokes.

“Instead of making us wait here, you should take some leave and come to see our show in Kiev,” says Averchenko. “We’re inviting all of you. Come along. Yes, you really must!”

The young officers look excited: “A show? And you’ll be performing? Oh, if only we could!”

“Quarantine? How can there even be any question of quarantine?” Gooskin interrupts. “These are Russian writers! They’re so brimming with health that God forbid—have you ever heard of a Russian writer getting ill? Huh! See what a Russian writer looks like!”

And he proudly exhibits Averchenko. He even pulls his coat open.

“Does he look like he’s sick? No, certainly not. And the day after tomorrow, they’re putting on a show. Such a show that I would certainly go flocking to it myself. A show that will go down forever in the canals of history. And if we really do need some quarantine, then we can find it in Kiev. Honest to God! We’ll find one of your quarantines and stay there for a while. Why not? Ri-ight?”

“Please say a word on our behalf to your German,” I ask the officers.

They click their heels, whisper among themselves for a few minutes, then put some documents in front of the German. At which point Gooskin turns to me and says with great seriousness, “And whatever you do, please be sure to say that it was I who went into quarantine first of all. Otherwise they might try and keep me here! And it’s five months now since I last saw my mama.”

Turning to the astonished officers, he pronounces in the most solemn of tones, “For five months now I have been located outside my mother.”

Once again we were on a train.

In Gomel, some kind people had suggested we go to Kiev by steamer: “You’ll go past an island that’s been taken over by some kind of armed band. They’ve got machine guns. They shoot at every steamer that goes by.”

Cosy as this sounded, we had chosen to go by train.

Our first-class carriage was entirely adequate, but there were few passengers and nearly all of them rather strange—peasants, it appeared, in peasant smocks. They sat without saying a word, moving only their eyebrows. There was also a bearded man with a gold tooth who didn’t look in the least like a peasant. His overcoat was rather grubby, but his hands were smooth and pudgy. The wedding ring on his ring finger had sunk deep into the flesh.

A strange lot. But there was no sign of any malice in their stares. It was not like when we were leaving Moscow; then people had looked at us with real fury—the intelligentsia suspecting we might be from the Cheka while the workers and peasants had seen us as capitalist landlords still drinking their blood.

“Well, not long now till Kiev,” said Gooskin, who was keeping us entertained with soothing chatter.

“In Kiev, I shall introduce you to a friend of mine,” he said to Olyonushka. “A very nice, profoundly cultured young man. Lotos.”

“What?”

“Lotos.”

“An Indian?” Olyonushka asked reverently. In her eyes I glimpsed a vision of yogis, of an apple tree she had planted and the fruit it was bearing.

“What makes you think that?” said Gooskin, offended on his friend’s behalf. “He’s a salesman, a salesman for Lotos. Optical glass. He’s from an aristocratic family. His uncle had a pharmaceutical warehouse in Berdyansk. He wants to get married.”

“And you, Gooskin? Are you married?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“My demands are excessive.”

“What are your demands?”

“First, she needs to be buxom.” Gooskin lowered his eyes, paused and added, “And of course, she must have a dowry.”

“And tell us, Gooskin! What’s your first name? The way we keep calling you by your surname feels a little strange.”

Gooskin gave an embarrassed smile.

“My name? You’re all going to laugh.”

“Heavens, what makes you think that?”

“Honest to God, you will. I’m not telling you.”

“Dear Gooskin, we won’t laugh! We give you our word. Tell us!”

“Olyonushka,” I whisper. “Don’t be too insistent. Maybe it sounds like some rude word.”

“Don’t be silly…. Please tell us, Gooskin. What’s your real name?”

Gooskin blushed. With a helpless shrug of the shoulders, he said, “My name is… I’m sorry, it’s a bit of a joke! Alexander Nikolaevich! Well, now you know.”

We had indeed been expecting anything but this.

“Gooskin! Gooskin! You’re killing us!”

Gooskin laughed louder than any of us.[45] He was wiping his eyes with a rag of indescribable color that, in more elegant times, had probably been a handkerchief.