The Naked Year (6 page)

“Say something, Boris.”

“One time in spring I was standing on Eagle Mountain looking at the water meadows on the other side of the Vologa. It was spring, the Vologa had burst its banks, the sky was blue–life was seething–both around me and within me. And then, I remember, I wanted to embrace the world! I thought then that I was the center from which all radii spread out, that I was everything. Later I realized that in life there are no radii or centers, that in general the Revolution and everything are only pawns in the paws of life.”

Boris is silent for a moment, then says maliciously:

“I just cannot reconcile myself to this. I hate everything and despise everyone. I cannot! I don't want to! I despise you, too, Gleb, with your purity… Marfusha? There is love. Were Marfa and Yegor in love?–To Hell with you, Devil take you!–Russia, the Revolution, the merchants appropriated mansions in their sleep, but you were born
pure (virginal)
–to Hell with you!… They called us vultures, but dead bodies are called carcasses when they're skinned! Furthermore, the lousy merchants have survived the princes!”

Boris grows silent and breathes heavily. Gleb is silent. The silence lasts a long time.

“The boomerang. Do you know what the boomerang is?” asks Boris, wearily. “It's a kind of instrument the Papuans throw into the air, and it comes back to them again. Everything in life is just like the boomerang… Gleb, my strength is all but gone, now, both the physical and that which makes others submit… and everything I have ever done will come back on me. At twenty five I was deputy public prosecutor, secret circulars were sent to me to guard against Pugachev-like peasant uprisings. Can you blame anyone?”

“I cannot blame anyone. I cannot!…”

“But I do! They're all villains! All!”

Prince Boris remains agonizingly silent.

“Brother… If I
cannot
?!”

“I don't know where your path is. I have also lost faith. I don't know…”

“I don't know either.”

“Read the Bible.”

“I've read it! I don't like it,” says Boris sluggishly.

Boris stands up, wearily, walks over to the window, looks at the distant dawn, says, pensively:

“There were nights a million years ago, today there is night, and in another million years also there will be night. You are called Gleb, I am–Boris. Boris and Gleb. According to popular folklore, on our Saints' day, the second of May, the nightingales begin their singing. I've done some vile things, I've raped young girls, extorted money, beaten my father. Do you blame me, Gleb?”

“I cannot. I cannot judge,” answers Gleb, hurriedly. “ ‘Mine is the vengeance, I shall repay.' You spoke about my purity. Yes, it's a lie…” he says. He walks over to Boris and stands at his side. The last moonlight before morning is shining down on them.

“Boris, do you remember? ‘Mine is the vengeance, I shall repay'…”

“I remember–the boomerang. I don't like the Bible,” says Boris gloomily, his face sullen. “The boomerang… The most frightening thing I have left now–is the longing for death. The vultures are dying out. Soon my teeth will fall out and my jaws will rot, my nose will cave in. In one year I, the handsome Prince Boris, a lucky man–will be no more… But–but in May the nightingales will sing! It's sad, you know!” Boris bends his head low, sullenly, surreptitiously looks at the moon, says wearily:–

“The dogs howl when the moon is out… Gleb, I have syphilis, you know…”

“Boris? What are you saying!…”

“Only I don't know–if it's the vice of our illustrious fathers or… father won't say.”

“Boris!…”

But Boris changes suddenly. Proudly, like a beautiful horse, and as they taught him in the lycée, he throws back his head and says, with a sneer,

“Eh?”

“Borya!…”

“It's most amusing when people behave genteelly. Eh?… My dear younger brother, it's time to sleep. Adieu!”

Boris walks slowly away from Gleb. Gleb is a lot smaller than Boris. He, small, is overshadowed. Boris walks decisively away from Gleb, his head raised high, silent and serene. But in the corridor he lowers his head, his gait becomes flabby. His large feet shuffle weakly along.

In his room Boris stops by the stove, leans his shoulder against its cold tiles, mechanically, obeying a habit which had persisted since winter, he rubs his hand over the tiles and presses himself–chest, stomach, knees–to the dead stove coldness.

And night is already taking its nightly course. And the crimson dawn–blessed–is about to meet the June morning. Gleb is thinking about himself, about his brothers, about the Virgin, about the Archangel Varakhiil, whose dress must be bedecked with flowers–white lilies… The Revolution came like white blizzards and May storms. Art–ikonography–the old white churches with mica windows. If war broke out in fourteen–

(In our Russia the woods and grasses burned in red conflagrations, like a red disk the sun rose and sank)

–there, in Europe, engendered by the stock exchange, trusts, colonial politics, etc.,–if
such
a war
could
take place in Europe, then is it not the aspen stake to all European bowler hat
CULTURE?
–this Europe hung over Russia jerked up by Peter (the old white churches were bricked up then):–was our Revolution not a May storm?–and weren't they March flood waters which washed away the scab of two centuries?–But surely there is no God, only an image–the dress of Varakhiil in white lilies!

The artist Gleb Ordinin came here to the land of his birth, with the archeologist Baudek, in order to conduct excavations.

And first to wake up in the house was the mother, Princess Arina Davidovna, née Popkova.

In the torment of dawn dim patches of light lie down on the floor and along the ceiling. Beyond the grilles on the windows is the brilliant dawn, but in Arina Davidovna's dark room it is dark, abundantly spread about are cupboards, chests of drawers, high-boys and two draped wooden beds. On the dark walls, in circular frames–you can hardly make them out–hang faded head and shoulder portraits and photographs.–And five minutes before Arina Davidovna is due to wake up, when sweetly still the Princess snores, her sister Yelena Yermilovna, née Popkova, noiselessly sits up in bed, crosses herself while getting dressed, brushes her thinning hair–and noiselessly glides through the gray dawn rooms. The house sleeps. Yelena Yermilovna inspects her dress in the entrance hall, and, unheard, opens the door on those who sleep. –And when the cuckoo cuckoos, Arina Davidovna awakes, crossing herself with her mighty hand. From the bed, from the Princess, from her feet comes the stinking smell of an unclean obese human body.

“Let me, sister, put your stockings on your little legs,” says Yelena Yermilovna.

“Thank you, sister,” answers the Princess in a bass voice.

The Princess washes herself the old-fashioned way–in a wash-hand basin. Then the old women pray aloud together, the Princess, moaning with difficulty lowers herself onto her knees three times–“Morning Prayer” “The Heavenly Kingdom” “The Pater Noster,” to her “Guardian Angel,” “To the Mother of God,”–for near ones, absent ones, for sailors and wayfarers. Yelena Yermilovna speaks, taking deep breaths–and speaks in a whispering recitative.

Marfusha runs about through the rooms and says the same thing to all, learned by heart:

“Natalya Yevgrafovna! Time you were off to the hospital, the samovar's on the table, Mother is cursing!

“Anton Nikolayevich! Time you were off shopping, the samovar's on the table and Grandmother's cursing!

“Ksenya Lvovna! Time you were off to market, the samovar's on the table and Grandmother's cursing!”

Arina Davidovna in the dining room at an oak table is cutting slices of bread and drinking tea. Yelena Yermilovna noiselessly pours out the tenth cup.

“Yegor Yevgrafovich returned during the night, Marfon'ka brought him, then they called in on Gleb Yevgrafovich. He had sold all his clothes for drink. Gleb Yevgrafovich gave him his own… he opened the door for him.” Yelena Yermilovna speaks with a lisp. “Boris Yevgrafovich also dropped in to see Gleb Yevgrafovich, and then to see father, the Prince. Father prayed till morning. Natalya Yevgrafovna lay down to sleep after eleven, after a walk down the street. She again went with the Bolshevik Arkhip Arkhipov… Tonya also supports the Bolsheviks, he smashed his glass and called me a filthy name.”

“What name?” Arina Davidovna's lips sag heavily one onto the other–and the third; in her eyes, once brown, now yellow–power.

“Bitch, sister!”

“Oh!”

“Lidia Yevgrafovna with her daughter and Katerina Yevgrafovna returned from the “Venice” at twelve-thirty, Olenka Kuntzova was with them. They sang ballads in the garden…”

“Oh… oh, Lord!”

As if he had broken away from a chain, Anton rattled like huge knives through the house.

“Marfushka, where's my shopping bag?!”

In the dining room Anton noisily drinks boiled rye, wheezes and whistles, and his feet, like a setter-pup with fleas, twitch under the table. Yelena Yermilovna is stooping by the samovar.

“Hello, Tony, good morning,” she says.

“Good morning,” gloomily answers Anton in a deep, rooster-like bass. “I'm off to enroll in the Youth Organization today. And what tales have you been spreading about people to Grandmother?”

“Ee-ee-ee! Aren't you ashamed? Aren't you ashamed, speaking to old folks like that?”

“Now we know! Slander of the first order! If you were even on the second rung in our organization, we would smash your mug and beat you black and blue every time you said anything like that.”

“Barge hauler! Furriner!–I'll just go and tell your sister…”

“What did I say?!–You're a spy!.. You should've been in the Cheka a long time ago! That's what I'll say to the organization.”

“But surely I'm not against the power of the Soviets?”

“We know!… Marfushka… Where's my shopping bag?!” –again through the whole house various kinds of chains snapped.

In a white dress, alien, silent, Natalya Yevgrafovna drinks tea in the dining room and goes off to the hospital. The three-bucket-capacity samovar has already sung its aria, grows quiet, squeaks like a fly with a spider. The princess is putting on her “bonnet”-hat and is going with Marfusha and Ksenya to the bazaar with bundles, to sell–those old dresses, which have survived from her grandmothers. With them from the bazaar the Tatars will come in nice new galoshes, and they'll all go down into the lumber room. In the lumber room there is a smell of rats and decay, the walls are lined with stacked drawers, trunks, suitcases, a set of rusty old scales are hanging up. The Tatars will grab at any old hand made candle sticks, silver, porcelain, moth-eaten Uhlan, Hussar, Cavalry officers', simple gentry and civilian uniforms (of the Ordinin princes) and winter overcoats (of the Popkov merchants), will pitilessly find fault, suggest ridiculous terms and prod with their dried-up little hands in order to do a deal. The Princess will come across some forgotten trinket, dating from her childhood, and will cry bitterly, hiding the trinket, in order to sell it next time. Then the Tatars will gabble in their own language, increase the amount, the Princess will reduce it, they'll strike a bargain (a bargain has to be struck), the Tatars, habitually-adroitly, will wrap up their purchases in flamboyant parcels, pay thousands from bulky wallets and one-by-one (it has to be one by one!) they'll go out the back way down the hill, their nice new galoshes gleaming in the sun. And the Princess will cry in the lumber room, recalling the discovered trinket, and everything connected with it.

In the attic, in the maids' quarters, live the daughters–this has been the custom with the Popkovs and Ordinins for generations. The ceilings are low here, and it is light here–the walls are white and the square windows open. As a girl of eighteen Lidia had married the landowner Polunin right here in Ordinin–and soon left him, exchanging him for Moscow, for Paris (in Paris Ksenya was born), she met and went to live with a Cavalry officer, and parted with him, and immediately after this she met an artist from the Moscow Imperial Bolshoi Theater–and entered Bohemia forever–she began to study singing, and her singing was successful–at twenty-seven she entered the same theater as an actress; where her new husband was in the cast. This new husband she also ditched, but she never left the stage and rushed hither and thither according to the will of God and the entrepreneurs until– –Now she is back at her mother's. Her younger sister Natalya, following in her footsteps, went to Moscow as a girl, but organized her life differently: she attended medical school under Guerier and completed it:–and she had her first foolish love affair, the one which burns all boats, but if Lidia exchanged love affair for love affair–Natalya decided never to love again and stayed on to become a doctor, as is written on her diploma–and to keep silent.

And again Marfusha walks through all the rooms and says indifferently: