Stargorod: A Novel in Many Voices

The Pencil Stub

The pencil stub served me faithfully and reliably for an entire year, just like the man who had given it to me – Parfyon Dmitriyevich Malygin.

I met Parfyon Dmitriyevich in the tap-room at the old market, where I went in the hopes of overhearing a good story. Writing a story a week, I’m here to tell you, is pure madness, but a happy madness nonetheless. I lived it for a year – I forgot everything else, I listened to the human choir around me and stole from it everything that was worth stealing.

Some of it, when written down, inevitably lost its sheen, but I survived, owing much to Parfyon Dmitriyevich, who was always there to critique, edit, and supply a new twist borrowed from one of the ancient newspapers he read in his retirement. Parfyon Dmitriyevich, the son of a geography teacher and the grandson of a village priest persecuted by the Soviets, spent his life as a purveyor of stationery. First on foot, with a suitcase, then in a broken-down GAZ four-wheeler, and by the end of his long career – driving a Gazelle mini-van, he had crisscrossed the entire Stargorod region a million times. He sold simple sets of colored pencils, purple and blue ink, cheap fountain pens, presser feet for sewing machines, graph paper, slide rules, and, closer to the end of his service, markers in colors wildly divergent from the natural hues of the rainbow.

Countless Grandfather Frosts, Snowmaidens, bunny-rabbits and sad crocodiles, posters and certificates of birth came into this world thanks to his labors. Love letters and denunciations, sympathy notes and recipes for blinchiki with mushrooms would not have been preserved and would not have reached their addressees if it hadn’t been for Parfyon Dmitriyevich. And the great volumes of milk and potatoes, pickles and barley that were accounted for in parallel columns on the pages torn from school notebooks, the baseline of a life now long gone? The world does not exist thanks to the atomic bomb, Parfyon Dmitriyevich used to teach me over a shot of vodka, but by the singular grace of stationery that enables people to describe the world around them, to convey its breath to a loved one, a neighbor, or the humblest log hut in Soggy Tundra, where a woman everyone knows only as Ivanovna, once the mistress of a Detective Krotov whom she alone remembers, is living out her days.

In the tap-room at the old market, Parfyon Malygin shared a cheburek and a fifth with me and gave me the gift of soulful conversation and a simple magical pencil stub.

“You’re going to tell me they don’t make them like this anymore, aren’t you?” I prodded.

“Of course they don’t!” he said and stamped the table conclusively with his glass. “You’ll see what I mean, when it’s time.”

He went on to talk about the Truth of Life, which has much in common with the truth of fairy tales, and about the newspaper fairy tales that have nothing whatsoever to do with life. He spoke simply; we were instantly fast friends. I went to visit him many times over my year of writing a story a week, and read him the stories that seemed to spool from under the hard, sharp tip of his magical pencil almost against my will. Parfyon listened, sometimes grunting in protest, sometimes nodding in agreement, but most often he would interrupt and start on a story of his own, which led to another, and then the third, and that’s how we spent our evenings. He was ill for the entire year and sat there behind his enormous writing desk, huddled in an ancient wool blanket, his bare feet stuck inside soft valenki.

“Take speech, words,” he would begin meaningfully and fix me with his soft eyes bleached to the color of blotting paper. “Words are magic,” he would declare, hold a solemn pause, and then burst out in giggles like a proper girl who’s just heard a dirty joke.

He was fading, slowly and quietly – he knew this, but did not complain. Every day, he would shrivel another quarter of an inch – a fact recorded by pencil lines on the bathroom doorframe.

Two days ago, when I first had the idea for a Christmas story, the last in the series, I went to get his advice. The pencil he’d given me had turned into a meager stump by then, and secretly I was praying that perhaps he’d find me another one somewhere in his stocks – the prospect of life without the assistance of magic frightened me.

Parfyon Dmitriyevich looked at me with his characteristic smile:

“Will the story have miracles in it?”

“Of course.”

“Well, good then – and Merry Christmas!”

His eyes gleamed, the blanket emitted a strange rustle, and his head suddenly disappeared from behind the desk. I called his name; he didn’t answer. I went around the desk: the valenki were there on the floor, and the blanket pooled around them, empty. When I lifted the blanket, I found a brand new pencil – the new shape into which my dear friend changed himself. I left the apartment on tiptoe, slinking along the walls like a thief. At home, I read the letters impressed on the pencil: “Travels.”

“Enough of your stories, try another genre, don’t bore your reader, you can’t just spin tales out of thin air all your life,” Malygin used to tell me.

Having crisscrossed the Stargorod terrain a million times, Parfyon was trying to push me out the door and into the wide world beyond.

I, too, felt like trying something new, and so I listened to my friend’s wish. I packed quickly, threw a bunch of socks and shirts into my backpack, and topped it with a spare pair of pants. I put my new pencil carefully into a sturdy pencil case. I opened the door. It was snowing; the weather was beautiful. I started my car, let the engine warm up, and drove out of the yard.

Ahead of me spread a vast land, no better or worse than the Stargorod country, a land where life glowed quietly, awaiting the great magical holiday. Someone would be selling stationery out there too. I’ll buy myself a school notebook and write in it, and if my fingers get cold, I’ll hold them in the breath of the world and warm them.