The Story of a Life

39

A Small Dose of Poison

The village chemist sometimes visited Uncle Kolya. His name was Lazar Borisovich. He struck us as a rather strange chemist. He wore an old student’s uniform. A pince-nez, tied with a black string, balanced unsteadily over his wide nose. He was short and squat, with a thick beard that grew all the way up to his eyes and a wicked tongue.

Lazar Borisovich had been born in Vitebsk and attended Kharkov University, although he never took a degree. Now he lived over the local chemist’s shop with his hunchbacked sister. We suspected he was somehow connected to the revolutionary movement. He always carried with him pamphlets by Plekhanov, every page of which he had marked up with his fat red and blue pencils, underlining certain words and passages and filling the margins with exclamation and question marks. On Sundays he visited some quiet corner of the park with his pamphlets, spread out his jacket, lay down and read, one leg crossed over the other, a heavy black boot swinging in the air.

One day I visited Lazar Borisovich at the shop to buy some powders for Aunt Marusya. She had come down with a migraine. I liked the chemist’s shop. It was located in a clean old peasant hut with a covered floor, a geranium in one corner and shelves filled with porcelain jars. It smelled of medicinal herbs. Lazar Borisovich gathered the herbs himself and then dried them to make potions. I had never set foot in a house as creaky as this. Every floorboard made its own distinct squeak, as did the chairs, the wooden sofa, the shelves and the desk at which Lazar Borisovich wrote his prescriptions. His movements produced so many different rasps and scrapes that it seemed as if there were several fiddlers inside scraping their bows across tight, dry strings.

Lazar Borisovich knew every last one of these sounds and could tell exactly where each came from. ‘Manya!’ he would yell at his sister. ‘Didn’t you hear Vaska sneak into the kitchen? There’s fish in there!’

Vaska was the chemist’s mangy black cat. Sometimes the chemist said to us customers: ‘Please don’t sit on that sofa or the noise will drive me out of my mind.’

Grinding powders in his mortar, he liked to say that, thank God, the shop creaked less in damp weather than during dry spells. Then the mortar would let out a screech, the customer would jump, and Lazar Borisovich would say triumphantly: ‘Aha! I see you also suffer from nerves!’

Now, as he prepared powders for Aunt Marusya, Lazar Borisovich produced a series of creaks and squeaks and said: ‘The Greek philosopher Socrates was poisoned with hemlock. It’s true! And we’ve got an entire forest of that hemlock growing right here, in the marsh down by the mill. I’m warning you. It’s got white flowers that look like little umbrellas. The poison’s in the roots. That said, in small doses poison is useful. I think all of us should sprinkle a little dose of poison in our food now and then to get us going and clear out the brain.’

‘You believe in homeopathy?’

‘As a psychological remedy? Yes!’ Lazar Borisovich said with conviction. ‘You’re sceptical? All right then, let’s try it out on you, as an experiment.’

I was curious, and so I said yes.

‘I also know’, he said, ‘that being young gives you a certain licence, especially when you’re just finishing school and about to go off to university. Your head must be like a merry-go-round. But still, it’s high time you started doing some serious thinking!’

‘About what?’

‘As if you didn’t know!’ Lazar Borisovich exclaimed angrily. ‘Here you are now, just starting out in life. Right? Well, what are you going to do with that life of yours, if I may ask? What are you going to be? How will you make your way? Do you really think you can just go on having a good time, fooling around, avoiding all responsibility? Life is not a holiday, young man! No! One thing I can tell you for certain – we are on the eve of great events. Yes! I assure you of that. I know your uncle Nikolai Grigorievich laughs at me, but we shall see who’s right. And so, I’d like to know: what do you want to be?’

‘I want to be …’ I began.

‘Never mind!’ Lazar Borisovich interrupted. ‘I know what you’re going to say. That you want to be an engineer, a doctor, a scholar or some such thing. None of this is important.’

‘What is important then?’

‘Jus-tice!’ he shouted. ‘You must be on the side of the people. You must be one with them, you must be for them. Be whatever you want, a dentist for all I care, but fight for a better life for the people. Got it?’

‘But why are you telling me this?’

‘Why? Just because, no special reason. You’re a nice lad, but you don’t really like to think too much. I noticed that long ago. So, please do me this favour – start using that mind of yours!’

‘I’m going to be a writer,’ I said, blushing.

‘A writer?’ Lazar Borisovich straightened his pince-nez and fixed me with a terrifying stare. ‘Ha! And who doesn’t want that? Maybe I’d like to be a Leo Tolstoy myself.’

‘But I’ve already started to write … and have even been published.’

‘Well then,’ Lazar Borisovich said emphatically, ‘please wait a minute. I’ll just weigh these powders and then walk you back. We’ve got to clear this up.’

He was clearly excited, and twice dropped his pince-nez while weighing out the powders. We went out and walked through the field towards the river and from there to the park. The sun was setting in the woods beyond the river. Lazar Borisovich plucked the tops of the wormwood plants, crushed them and then smelled his fingers. He said: ‘This is a big thing you want to do, and it demands a thorough knowledge of life. Am I right? And you have very little, if any, to be quite honest. A writer! Oh, he must know so much, it’s terrifying just to imagine it. He must understand everything! He has to work like an ox and not chase after fame. Well, one thing I can tell you – you’ve got to go everywhere, you’ve got to see everything with your own eyes. Go to the peasants’ huts, the markets, the factories, the shelters. Everything, everywhere. The theatres, the hospitals, the mines, the prisons. You must let yourself be steeped in life, let it impregnate you, like valerian in alcohol. This is the only way to create a true infusion. Then you can offer it to people as a miracle cure. In specified doses, of course. Yes, indeed!’

He went on talking about what it meant to be a writer for a long time. We parted outside the park.

‘You’re wrong to think I’m a lazy good-for-nothing,’ I said.

‘Oh, but I don’t,’ Lazar Borisovich said, grabbing my hand. ‘I’m happy for you. You can see that. But admit that there’s some truth in what I said, and now you’ve got something to really think about, after my little dose of poison. Eh?’

He peered into my eyes while still holding my hand. Then he sighed and walked away. I watched him walk across the field, a short and scraggy little man, plucking the wormwood as he went. Then he stopped, pulled a large penknife out of his pocket, squatted on his heels, and started digging some medicinal root out of the ground.

The chemist’s experiment had worked. I realised that I knew almost nothing and had given little thought to so many important things. I took this funny little man’s advice and soon went out into the world, into that school of life which no books or idle daydreaming can replace. It was hard, demanding work. Being young made it possible. I never even stopped to wonder whether or not I had the strength to make it through this school. I was certain I did.

That evening we all went over to Melovaya Hill – a steep cliff along the river overgrown with young pine trees. From there we looked out into the vast, warm autumn night. We sat down on the edge of the cliff. The water rushed over the dam below. The birds stirred in the trees, settling down for the night. The last lightning of the summer flashed over the woods. Then, for just a moment, you could make out some thin clouds like faint puffs of smoke along the horizon.

‘What are you thinking about, Kostik?’ Gleb asked.

‘Nothing much … just thinking.’

I was thinking that I would never believe anyone who told me that this life – with its love, its longing for truth and happiness, with its summer lightning and its distant sound of water in the night – is without purpose and meaning. Each of us must struggle to affirm this life, everywhere and every day, as long as we live.