The Story of a Life

Contents

Introduction: Konstantin Paustovsky – Life and Work of a Forgotten Master

Russia and Central Europe, 1914

BOOK ONE. THE FARAWAY YEARS

1. The Death of My Father

2. My Grandfather Maxim Grigorievich

3. Carp

4. Pleurisy

5. A Trip to Chenstokhov

6. Pink Oleanders

7. Elderwood Balls

8. Svyatoslavskaya Street

9. Winter Scenes

10. The Midshipman

11. What Paradise Looks Like

12. The Forests of Bryansk

13. The Swarm

14. Water from the Limpopo

15. The First Commandment

16. Lime Blossoms

17. Just a Little Boy

18. The Red Lantern

19. Deserted Tauris

20. Ruin

21. Artillerymen

22. Kean, the Great Tragedian

23. On My Own

24. Diky Lane

25. Autumn Battles

26. ‘Living’ Languages

27. ‘Gentlemen Schoolboys’

28. The Hook-Nosed King

29. Wasting Time

30. The Inn on the Braginka

31. My Grandmother’s Garden

32. ‘Golden Latin’

33. Instructors of the Humanities

34. A Shot in the Theatre

35. Razgulyai Square

36. A Tale about Nothing

37. Leaving School

38. Summer Lightning

39. A Small Dose of Poison

BOOK TWO. RESTLESS YOUTH

40. ‘Here Lives Nobody’

41. An Unprecedented Autumn

42. The Copper Line

43. To One Side of the War

44. The Old Man with the Hundred-Rouble Ticket

45. Lefortovo Nights

46. Medical Orderly

47. Russia in Snow

48. Paper Scraps and the Bugler

49. Rain in the Carpathian Foothills

50. Beyond the Muddy San

51. Spring on the Vepsh

52. The Great Swindler

53. The Ocean Liner Portugal

54. Over Bombed-Out Roads

55. The Little Knight

56. Two Thousand Volumes

57. The Village of Kobrin

58. Treason

59. In the Marshy Woods

60. Under a Lucky Star

61. The Bulldog

62. A Dank Winter

63. A Grievous Commotion

64. The Suburb of Chechelevka

65. One Day

66. The Hotel Great Britain

67. Notebooks and Memory

68. The Art of Whitewashing

69. A Raw February

BOOK THREE. THE DAWN OF AN UNCERTAIN AGE

70. Whirlpool

71. Blue Torches

72. The Journalists’ Café

73. The Hall with a Fountain

74. The Zone of Silence

75. Revolt

76. Material for a History of Russian Houses

77. A Few Explanations

78. The Riga–Orël Goods Wagon

79. The Neutral Zone

80. Our Rag-Tag Hetman

81. The Violet Ray

82. The Bolshevik and the Haidamachka

83. Crimson Riding Breeches

84. Puff Pastry

85. A Cry in the Night

86. The Wedding Present

87. Firinka, Running Water and a Bit of Danger

88. The Last Shot

Note on the Translation

Guide to Place Names