The Story of a Life

8

Svyatoslavskaya Street

The visits to Cherkassy and Gorodishche were the holidays of my childhood, while my humdrum, everyday life was centred in Kiev. Here we spent the long winters in our dreary flat on Svyatoslavskaya Street. The street, lined with monotonous blocks of flats of the same yellow Kievan bricks that were used for the pavement, ended in an enormous open area furrowed with gullies. There were several of these empty plots in the city. They were called ‘the ravines’.

All day long carts loaded with clay and rock rumbled past our house on Svyatoslavskaya Street on their way to the ravine. They dumped their loads into the ravines to level them out in preparation for building more houses. The dirt was always spilling from these carts and leaving behind a muddy mess, which is why I never did like Svyatoslavskaya Street.

We were strictly forbidden from going into the ravine. It was a terrifying place, a hideout for beggars and thieves. Nevertheless, all of us boys would on occasion form a gang and walk down together. We brought a police whistle with us just in case. To our minds it was as reliable a weapon as a revolver. At first, we just stood on the edge and looked warily down into the ravine. We could make out shards of sparkly broken glass, rusty tin cans, and dogs digging around in the rubbish. They never paid us any attention. Then we became brave enough to begin to descend. Dirty yellow smoke curled up from the hovels and dugouts at the bottom. The hovels were constructed out of any old thing lying about – broken plywood, old tin, battered crates, seats from bentwood chairs, mattresses with their springs sticking out of them. Dirty sacks served as doors. Dishevelled women in rags sat around the fires in the ravine. They called us ‘the masters’ boys’ and begged money for vodka. Only one of them, a grey, shaggy old woman with the face of a lioness, smiled at us, displaying her last remaining tooth.

She was from Italy and was well known in Kiev. She went from door to door playing the accordion for money. For a little extra she would play ‘La Marseillaise’. On those occasions, one boy stood lookout by the gate to watch for the police. This beggar woman not only played ‘La Marseillaise’ on the accordion, she screamed it in her furious, wheezing voice. In her rendition the song sounded like an angry call to arms, a curse uttered by the inhabitants of the Svyatoslavsky ravine.

There were familiar faces among the inhabitants of the hovels. There was the beggar Yasha Paduchy, for example, whose white eyes were always bleary from too much vodka. He liked to sit on the steps of St Vladimir’s Cathedral moaning the same few words over and over: ‘Good people, take pity on a cripple who needs his tipple!’ Back in the ravine Yasha Paduchy was not at all the snivelling, gentle beggar he played at the cathedral. He would drink down a quarter of a litre of vodka in one swallow, beat his chest with all his might, and howl tearfully: ‘Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest!’

Then there was the old bald man who hawked toothbrushes on Fundukleevskaya Street near Café François, and next to him the organ grinder with his parrot. Alongside the hovels clay ovens belched smoke through broken samovar funnels. I liked the organ grinder’s hovel most of all. He was gone all day long, out wandering from street to street, but a barefoot girl sat on the ground nearby peeling potatoes. She had an earthy complexion and pretty, sullen eyes. One of her legs was bound with rags.

This was the organ grinder’s daughter. A tumbler so flexible she didn’t seem to have any bones, she had earlier gone door to door with her father. A skinny little girl in blue tights, she would lay out a small carpet on the ground and perform acrobatic tricks for money. But then she injured her legs and could no longer ‘work’. She liked to read the same book over and over. The cover had been torn off but based on the illustrations I guessed it was The Three Musketeers. She used to get angry and shout at us: ‘What is it you want with us? Haven’t you ever seen how ordinary people live?’ But then she got used to us and stopped shouting. Once her short, grey father ran into us in the ravine and said to her: ‘Let them see how we suffer down here. Maybe it’ll be of use to them one day when they’re students.’

Initially, we went down into the ravine in a gang, but then I became accustomed to its inhabitants and started to go by myself. I hid this from Mama for a long time, but the organ grinder’s daughter gave me away. I had brought her Uncle Tom’s Cabin to read and then became ill for a long time and never did come back for it. She began to worry and came to our flat to return the book. Mama opened the door, and that was the end of my secret. I could tell what had happened by Mama’s tight lips and icy silence.

That evening my parents sat down in the dining room to discuss my behaviour. I stood listening outside the door. Mama was upset and cross, but my father said that it was nothing to worry about, that it wouldn’t ruin me, and that he preferred I was friends with these unfortunate people rather than with the sons of Kiev’s merchants and officials. To this Mama replied that at my age I had to be protected from the distressing parts of life.

‘Listen,’ said Father, ‘these people repay decent, honest treatment with a devotion you won’t find in our circles. How can this be distressing?’

Mama was silent and then said: ‘Yes, maybe you’re right …’

After I had recovered, she gave me Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper and said: ‘Here … take this to the organ grinder’s daughter. I don’t know her name.’

‘Liza,’ I said shyly.

‘Well then, take the book to Liza. As a present.’

From then on no one at home made any fuss about my visits to the Svyatoslavsky ravine. I no longer had to sneak out with a bit of sugar from the sideboard for my new friends or with nuts for Mitka, the half-blind parrot. I simply asked Mama for them. And she never said no. I was grateful to Mama for this, and my spirit was as light as only that of a boy with a clear conscience can be.

Early one autumn morning the organ grinder appeared in our courtyard without his parrot. He slowly turned the crank, his heart not in it, and the organ whistled out a polka: ‘Come along, come along, my angel, come along and dance with me.’ His eyes searched the balconies and the open windows, waiting for the moment when the coppers, wrapped in paper, would begin flying out into the yard.

I ran out to the organ grinder. He went on turning the crank and said: ‘Mitka’s sick. Just sits there like a hedgehog. He won’t even crack your nuts. It’s obvious, he’s dying.’ The organ grinder took off his dusty black cap and wiped his face with it. ‘What a hopeless existence!’ he said. ‘An organ grinder without his Mitka can’t even earn enough for his vodka, let alone his bread. Now who’ll help me tell people their fortune?’

For five kopecks the parrot would pick out for the curious little green, blue or red tickets with fortunes printed on them. For some reason these tickets were called ‘good fortune’. The tickets were rolled up into little tubes and placed like cigarettes in a cartridge case. Before pulling out a ticket, Mitka stamped up and down for a long time on his perch and screeched unhappily.

The fortunes were written in rather obscure language. ‘You were born under the sign of Mercury, and your stone is the emerald, also known as the smaragd, which signifies a dislike for worldly affairs and a final mastery over them only once you have reached those years marked by the white of your hair. Beware of blonds, be they male or female, and do not venture out on the feast of St John the Baptist.’

Sometimes the tickets contained short, sinister phrases: ‘Tomorrow at dusk’ or ‘If you wish to go on living, never turn round.’

A day later Mitka was dead, and I buried him in a shoe box in the ravine. The organ grinder got drunk and disappeared. I told Mama about the parrot’s death. My lips quivered, but I managed to keep my composure.

‘Get dressed,’ Mama said in a stern voice. ‘We’re going to Burmistrov’s.’ Burmistrov was a nearly deaf old man whose beard was green with age. He looked like a gnome. In a dark, cramped shop in Bessarabka, Burmistrov traded in the most marvellous things – fishing rods, brightly coloured floats, fish tanks, goldfish, birds, ants’ eggs and transfers. Mama bought from Burmistrov an old green parrot with a lead ring on its leg. He lent us a cage. I carried it with the parrot inside out of the shop. Along the way the bird managed to bite my finger down to the bone. We stepped into a chemist’s and had it bandaged but I was so excited I hardly felt a thing. I wanted to go straight to the organ grinder and give him the parrot, but Mama said: ‘I am going with you. I must see this for myself.’

She went to her room to change. I was ashamed that Mama would change into her finer clothes before going to visit some poor and bedraggled people, but I didn’t have the courage to say anything to her. A few minutes later she came out. She was wearing an old dress, darned at the elbows. She had thrown a kerchief over her head. For once she was going out without her elegant kid gloves. As for her shoes, she had chosen the pair with the worn-down heels. I looked at her gratefully, and we set off.

Mama descended steadfastly into the ravine, passing dishevelled women struck dumb with amazement and never once bothering to lift her skirt to avoid the mounds of rubbish and cinders. Upon seeing us with the parrot, Liza blushed, her grey face turning a bright red, and made a hurried curtsy to Mama. The organ grinder was not at home – he was still out drowning his sorrow with his friends in Demievka. Liza took the parrot and, her face reddening ever more and more, kept repeating the same words: ‘Oh, but you shouldn’t have! You shouldn’t have!’

‘Do you think he can be taught to tell people’s fortunes?’ Mama asked.

‘Yes, of course, in two days’ time!’ Liza said, full of joy. ‘Oh, but you shouldn’t have! Good Lord! Why? He must have been expensive!’

After hearing about this back at home, Father grinned and said: ‘Ladies’ philanthropy! It’s their sentimental education!’

‘Oh, Lord!’ exclaimed Mama, annoyed with my father. ‘I truly don’t know why you insist on contradicting yourself. You really are too much. You would have done exactly the same in my place.’

‘No,’ my father replied, ‘I would have done more.’

‘More?’ Mama asked. I could hear a threat in her voice. ‘Oh, really? Well, we shall see!’

‘Yes, we shall see!’

I didn’t realise that my father was doing this deliberately just to upset Mama.

The day after this row Mama sent Liza my sister’s black dress and a pair of her own brown boots. But my father was not to be outdone. He waited for the organ grinder to return to the yard with his new parrot. The organ grinder sported a red scarf around his neck. The vodka had lent his nose the red sheen of victory. In Mama’s honour he played every last tune that his organ knew: a march, ‘Longing for the Motherland’; a waltz, ‘Waves of the Danube’; a polka, ‘The Parting’; and a song, ‘Oh, How the Box Is Full to Bursting’.

Once again, the parrot selected people’s fortunes. Generous hands tossed paper-wrapped coppers from the windows. Some of these the organ grinder caught gracefully in his cap. Then he slung the organ on his back and set off, bent low, as always, by the weight, but this time not out into the street but up the front staircase to our door where he rang the bell.

Having doffed his cap and extending it so low it brushed the floor, he thanked Mama and kissed her hand. Father came out and invited the organ grinder into his study. He leaned his organ gently against the wall in the front hall and then, moving carefully, followed my father. He served the organ grinder a cognac, saying that he understood what a difficult and uncertain life he led, and then offered him a position as watchman on the South-West Railway. He would have his own little house and garden.

‘Don’t judge me too harshly, Georgy Maximovich,’ he replied, blushing, ‘but I’d be bored to death. It seems I’m fated to spend my life a poor organ grinder.’

He left. Mama could not hide her look of victory, although she did manage to keep quiet.

A few days later the police unexpectedly evicted the inhabitants of the Svyatoslavsky ravine. Liza and the organ grinder disappeared. Most likely they moved on to another town. But before all this happened, I did manage to visit the ravine one last time. The organ grinder invited me to ‘spend the evening’ at his place. On an overturned crate he had laid out a plate with baked tomatoes and black bread, a bottle of cherry brandy and some old-looking sweets – fat, sugary sticks of striped rock. Liza wore a new dress, her hair in tight plaits. A worried look on her face, she kept offering me food and insisting I eat as if my mother had prepared it. The parrot, its eyes covered by a leather band, slept. From time to time the organ let out a sing-song wheeze all on its own. The organ grinder explained that this was caused by some air trapped in its pipes.

It was already September. Twilight was approaching. No one who has never been in Kiev in autumn could ever imagine the delicate beauty of those hours. The first star catches fire up in the sky. Autumn’s lush gardens wait in silence, knowing the stars must fall to earth and the gardens will catch them in their dense foliage, as if in a hammock, and then set them down on the ground so gently that no one in town will wake up or even know.

Liza saw me home. She thrust a sticky pink sweet in my hand as a parting gift and then ran off down the stairs. And I, knowing I would be in trouble for returning so late, stood for a long time trying to find the courage to ring the bell.