The Naked Year (7 page)

“The samovar's on the table, Mother has returned… Mother is swearing!”

Following Marfusha at a distance comes Yelena Yermilovna, silently and without being asked she opens doors (and with her the following conversations occur:–“Are you drawing, Gleb Yevgrafovich, sir?”–“I am, Yelena Yermilovna.”–“Well, draw till your heart's content, and the Lord keep you!…”–“I am reading, smoking, getting dressed, walking, getting angry, going to bed,”–they say to her, and she answers them all:–“Well, read, smoke, get dressed, walk, get angry, go to bed–till your heart's content, Lord keep you!…”)Yelena Yermilovna silently thrusts her head into Lidia's room.

“Are you getting dressed, ma'am?”

“Yelena Yermilovna, how many times must I tell you it's just not done to enter without knocking! Go away! I don't allow you in here. Go away!”

Yelena Yermilovna silently disappears behind the door.

“She's like a house-rat,” says Lidia Yevgrafovna is disgust.

Katerina, the youngest, helps her to get dressed. Lidia Yevgrafovna in just a white lace night gown and black stockings which cling to her shapely legs as far as the thigh, is half-lying in a low armchair. The night gown has slipped off her shoulders, her round shoulders are visible and her large, still beautiful bust with matt nipples. Katerina is combing her abundant red hair. Lidia Yevgrafovna has brown eyes, slender is her Roman nose, and she is rapaciously beautiful. Katerina, plump and indolent, is wearing a slovenly-looking dressing gown, but her hair–also red and abundant–is beautiful.

“Aa-a!” Lidia runs through her scales, to try out her voice, and says:

“You'll have to go and see Natalya, or somebody else… When did you notice?”

“About a month ago, I think,” says Katerina indolently.

“Well, if it's a month, there's no rush. Fausse-couche–it's very simple,” Lidia smiles intimately. “How many times is this?”

“Second.”

“And who is he?”

“Karrik. An army instructor. An officer, a Party member, but not a Communist.”

“And how old are you?”

“Nineteen, nearly twenty.”

“Is that so! At your age I feared marriage like the plague.”

“It happens to Olya Kuntz just about every month. She's got some midwife… very cheap. You look surprised, everyone now…”

“No, you must see a doctor! No midwives! And in general abortion's a dangerous business. You'll see a doctor today! ach!” Lidia is silent for a long time, she rubs her hands and whispers:–“And again such a long day, completely useless, like the desert… Well, yes, and I'm alone, alone! There's the story about the frog-princess–why, why did young Prince Ivan burn my frog skin?… Ah, well…”

And through the open windows, in the park, it is June over the earth. Over the earth, over the town it was June, always beautiful, always extraordinary, in its crystal dawns, in its dewy mornings, in its light days and nights. In the maids' attic the ceilings are low, the walls white, and honey bees hum in the open square windows. Every woman–an undrained delight. However, Natalya… That morning Natalya told her mother that she was going away from home, into the hospital. The same morning mother met Yegor in the corridor.

“Yegor, come here! Tell the truth.”

Yegor slowly approaches his mother, stands next to her–his hands are lowered, his head is lowered, there is anguish and shame in his bloodshot eyes.

“Yegor, were you drinking last night? Were you drunk?”

“Yes,” answers Yegor quietly.

“Where did you get the money?”

Yegor is silent.

“Where did you get the money? Tell the truth!”

“I… I sold Natalya's, Natalya's coat for the drink money.”

Mother makes a short swing with her mighty fist and strikes Yegor on his flabby cheek. Yegor does not move.

“Take that! Now get out of my sight and don't dare leave your room. Don't you dare play any music. Get out of my sight! Keep quiet!”

Yegor moves away with his tail between his legs. And then through the rooms echoes Boris's wild cry:

“But I don't want to keep silent! It's time you were quiet! I've had enough. That'll do!… Yelena Yermilovna, Yelenka! run to Yegor, you rat, and say that I, Gleb, Natalya–we protest! run, rat!… Mother, you merchant's wife!… take care!… Martha! Vodka!… Mother, you bitch, you merchant's wife–get it through your bronze skull, that your roberonde days are finished!… Finished, all finished!… Aa-ach!… Yegor, go and play, play, the Internationale!”

“Silence, Bolshevik! I'm your mother, I'll teach you!… I feed you!”

“Wha-at? You feed me?! Plundered goods feed us–stolen goods!.. Martha, vodka!…”

In the Princess's room–it is dark, abundantly spread about are cupboards, chests of drawers, tall-boys, two beds with canopies. On the dark walls, in circular frames, hang faded head and shoulder portraits and photographs. The curtains are somberly lowered over the windows. In gold-rimmed spectacles, the Princess is standing by her open writing bureau, open in front of her are her account books: “Provisions,” “Breakages,” “Servants' account,” “Linen,” “Clothing,” “The children.”

In “Breakages” the princess enters:

“Tonya broke one glass.”

Into “The children”:

“Yegor punished, Natalya gone mad–going to live in the hospital away from her parental home. God is her judge, ten rou(bles) to Ksenya as a gift.”

Into “Linen” and “Clothing” the Princess enters the things sold to the Tatars and at the bazaar, and enters the sum under Income in “Income–Expenditure.”

And the Princess cries. The Princess cries, because she understands nothing, because her iron will, her wealth, her family–have decreased and are slipping away, like water through her fingers.

“In that bustle we sold today,” –she is speaking through tears to Yelena Yermilovna–“I first saw my mother, the Princess, when I arrived as a bride. I had lilacs then in my hair, although it was January.”

However, the Princess is soon no longer crying. She stands by her writing bureau with a pen in her hands, leaning her elbows on her books, and is talking about the distant past, linking one after another, her family's, her own, distant–and recent–past.

“Near us there was a landowner, Yegorov, a retired colonel, a hunter, dead keen. He came to the estate and–didn't visit anyone… took two sister-whores away from the village and put them both to sleep with him, and would be drunk for weeks on end, or into the forest hunting for a week. And didn't visit anyone!.. We had a priest, he talked folk off the bottle, they queued up to see him, his whole church porch was strewn with corks–obviously the last time before oath-taking… Father Christopher. Father Christopher went to see Yegor, to persuade him. Yegor returned the visit–he went to church for Mass, listened to the singing, burst into tears and up to the priest at the altar, and with Father Christopher's Tatar woman–on the altar!.. And again back to his whores. Then he saw me on the road and–went mad, chased away the sister-whores, settled down and began to strike up acquaintances among the landowners, gave up drinking, and went to dances. He wrote me letters… But once he came to a dance–in a fur coat, and just his birthday suit–then went off again to pray, and the whores came back to him…”

Both the Princess and Yelena Yermilovna sigh deeply.

“Everything's worsening, sister… everything,” says Yelena Yermilovna with a sigh.

“That's true, sister. It wasn't like this before… before…”

“Yet again, sister, your husband has shut himself away from the world.”

“All the Ordinin princes are like that. And the Ordinin father's the same… It used to be that the Prince…”

“The children are giving me trouble again… There's Anton Nikolayevich swore at me with a filthy word again.”

“What word?”

“Spy, sister.”

And again Marfusha is going through all the rooms and says indifferently: “The table is laid… First course about to be served… Mummy is cursing!”

The abundant, scorching sun comes through the large, round top windows of the hall, because of the daylight the hall appears empty. Gleb has moved his sketches into a corner, has hidden them behind a screen: there, turned to the wall, stands his Virgin. Gleb is sitting behind the screen on the window, it is quiet in the hall, blue smoke rises from his cigarette. Quietly a tall double door opens and Yegor walks warily towards the piano.

“Glebushka, I can't stop myself. Forgive me.”

“Play, Yegorushka.”

Yegor presses the soft pedal, plays something of his own, excessively melancholy and virginal.

“I composed this one, Gleb, for Natalya. About her… Mother will hear…”

“Play, keep playing, Yegorushka…”

“But you know, Gleb!… You know, Gleb!… I want to play the Internationale, to the whole world, with all the stops out!.. and –and gently weave “Gretchen” into it, like Peter Verkhovensky in the Governor's wife's house in
The Devils,
–this is for mother!.. and–for Boris. A-ach!…”

Gleb is thinking about the archangel Varakhiil, whose coat is all white lilies–and he painfully remembers his mother… In the mother's dark room on the walls hang head and shoulder portraits, already faded and in round gold frames; the ceilings in the mother's room are sooty, with bas-relief Cupids, and on the walls there is damask wallpaper. In the mother's room, in front of the Princess-mother, Gleb lowers himself onto his knees, extends his hands imploringly and whispers painfully:

“Mummy, Mummy!…”

Someone rings the front door bell, a telegram is brought from Moscow to Lidia Yevgrafovna:

“Health. Love, Brilling.”

Lidia sends Marfusha to reply, and from the lumber room the trunks are brought down to the mezzanine.

TWO CONVERSATIONS. THE OLD MEN

The scorching sky pours down a scorching heat mist. Sweltering in the sun on the threshold of his cell, a black monk croons ancient Russian songs. In the dark cell the window is high in balsamine, the walls are dark, a jug of water and bread are on the table amidst papers–and the cell is in a far corner, near the tower, covered in moss. The priest, covered in moss, is sitting by the table on a high stool, and on a low stool Gleb sits opposite him. The black monk croons songs–

“It was on a Sabbath day

and the weather it was foul!…”

The sun scorches, the dusty sparrows chirp. Gleb is speaking quietly. The priest's face is shiny like suede, with short gray hairs, his little eyes look out of his beard slyly and keenly, out from his beard protrudes a single yellowed fang, and his bald pate is like the lid of a coffin. The sly little priest listens.

“Our greatest artists,” says Gleb quietly, “who are superior to Da Vinci, Correggio, Perugino–are Andrei Rublyov, Prokopy Chirin and those nameless ones who are scattered about the Novgorods, Pskovs, Suzdals, Kolomnas, about our monasteries and churches. And what art they had, what talent! How they solved the most complicated artistic problems… Art must be heroic. The artist, the craftsman, is a hero. And he must select for his works the majestic and the beautiful. What is more majestic than Christ and the Virgin?–especially the Virgin. Our ancient craftsmen interpreted the image of the Virgin as the sweetest of truths, the spiritual essence of motherhood–universal motherhood. Not without reason, even today, do our Russian peasant women–mothers all–pray, confess their sins–to the Virgin: she forgives, accepts sins, for the sake of motherhood…”

“About revolution, my son, about revolution,” says the priest. “About popular rebellion! What do you say?–You see that loaf there?–there are others as well being brought little by little! And what do you think,
in twenty years, when all the priests have died out, what will it be like?… in twenty years!…” –and the priest grins slyly.

“It's difficult for me to say, Father… I've spent a good deal of time abroad and always felt like an orphan there. The people in their bowler hats, jackets, dinner jackets, frock coats, the trams, buses, the subways, skyscrapers, the dazzle, the brilliance, hotels with all modern conveniences, restaurants, bars, baths, the finest linen, and female night staff who come quite openly to satisfy unnatural male demands–and what social inequality, what bourgeois customs and rules! and every worker dreams about stocks and shares, and so does the peasant. And everything is dead, a mass of machines, technology and comfort. The path of European culture led to war, ‘fourteen was able to create this war. The machine culture forgot about the culture of the spirit, the spiritual. And recent European art: in painting–either the poster or the hysteria of protest, in literature–either the stock market and detectives, or adventures among aborigines. European culture is a cul-de-sac. The rulers of Russian during the past two centuries, since Peter, have wanted to adopt this culture. Russia languished in a stifling, utterly Gogolian atmosphere. And the Revolution set Russia against Europe. And furthermore. Immediately after the first days of the Revolution, Russia, in its way of life, customs and towns–returned to the seventeenth century. On the border of the seventeenth century there was Peter…”

(“Petra, Petra!” –the priest corrects him)

“… there was a native Russian art, architecture, music, tales about Juliana Lazarevskaya. Peter came along–and Lomonosov became an unbelievable clod, with his ode about glass, and genuine folk art disappeared…”

(“It was on a Sabbath day!” –the monk again crooned in the heat)

“… in Russia there was no joy, but now there is… The Russian intelligentsia did not follow October. And it couldn't. Since Peter, Europe hovered over Russia, but below, under the rearing horse, lived our people, like a thousand years ago, but the intelligentsia are the true children of Peter. They say that the father of the Russian intelligentsia was Radishchev. Not true–Peter. After Radishchev the intelligentsia began to
repent
, repent and seek out their mother, Russia. Every member of the intelligentsia repents, and every one grieves for the people, and every one knows nothing of the people. But revolutions were unnecessary for popular rebellion–alien. –Popular rebellion is the seizing of power and creation of their own genuine Russian truth–by genuine Russians. And this is a blessing!… The whole history of peasant Russia is the history of sectarianism. Who will win this struggle–mechanized Europe or sectarian, orthodox, spiritual Russia?…”

The sun scorches. Gleb is silent, and the priest speaks hurriedly.

“Sectarianism? Sectarianism, you say? But sectarianism didn't come from Peter, but from the Schism!… A popular rebellion, you say?– –pugachovshchina, razinovshchina?–but Stepan Timofeevich was before Peter!… Russia, you say?–but Russia–is fiction, a mirage, because Russia is the Caucasus, the Ukraine and Moldavia!… Great Russia–Great Russia, it must be said–is Poochye, Povolzhe, Pokamye!–are you my grandson or nephew?–I've mixed up everything, everything!.. You know what words have arrived: gviu, guvuz, gau, nachevak, kolkhoz–it's an illusion. I've mixed up everything!”

Soon only the priest is speaking, the Archbishop Sylvester, the former prince and cavalry officer. The bald pate, like the lid of a coffin, bends towards Gleb, and the eyes look out sternly from the beard.

“How was our Great Russian state founded?–the beginnings of our history lie in the destruction of Kiev Rus–hiding from the Pechenegs, the Tatars, from the princes' out- and in-fighting in the woods, face-to-face with the Vyess and the Finns–our government was formed out of a fear of institutionalized government–they ran away from institutionalized government as from the plague! So there! And then when authority arrived, they rebelled, split up into sects, ran away to the Don, to the Ukraine to the Yaik. Did Great Russia not put up with Tatar barbarianism then German barbarianism because she was unnecessary to them, to herself in her native inability to govern herself?–and in her ethnography?–unnecessary… They ran away to the Don, to the Yolk–and from there went in rebellion to Moscow. And now–they've reached Moscow, seized their own power and have begun to build their own state–and they will build it. They'll build it in such a way so as not to interfere with or encroach on each other, like mushrooms in a wood. Just look at the history of the peasants: like a forest path–for a thousand years, waste lands, repair stations, graveyards, fallow fields–for a thousand years. A state without a state, but it will grow, like a mushroom. Then, there will always be a peasant faith. Through woods, fields, glades, along paths, lanes, when they fled from Kiev, they dragged themselves, and–what do you think they dragged with them?–songs, they took their own songs with them, their customs, they carried them over a thousand years, vigorous, powerful, spring songs, customs, according to which the cow was a member of the household, and a chestnut gelding–a brother in adversity; instead of Easter they abducted young girls from border areas, in the oakwoods on the hillsides they prayed to Yegory, the God of cattle. But Orthodox Christianity arrived with the Tsars, with an alien power, and from then on the people went to the sects, to the sorcerers, anywhere you care to mention, like the Don, the Yaik–away from authority. Now, then, see if you can find anything about Orthodoxy in the folk tales–it's all wood goblins, witches, water sprites, no mention of the Lord of Hosts.”

And the gray little priest chuckles slyly, slyly laughs and says still laughing, with his eyes screwed up in his beard:

“You see that crust?–they bring that! There! Hee-hee! Are you my grandson? Tell nobody. Nobody. Everything is told in my history. Open up the sacred relics–straw?… Listen here. The members of the sects went into the fire for the beliefs, but the Orthodox believers were dragged to the state Church by the scruff of their necks:–You could do as you pleased, so long as you believed in the Orthodox faith! But now peasant power has arrived, Orthodoxy is treated just like any other sect, equality of rights! Hee-hee-hee!… The Orthodox sect!… ha, ha, ha, ha… You're not dragged into this sect by the scruff of your neck!… Orthodoxy has lived for a thousand years, but it will perish, but it will perish–ha, ha, ha!–in about twenty years, no more, just as the priests will die out. The Orthodox Church, Greco-Russian, was already dead as an idea at the time of the Schism. And through the Russia of the Yegorys will roam the water sprites and witches, or Leo Tolstoy, or, if you don't watch out, Darwin… Along the paths, through the woods, down the lanes. But they say it's a–religious revival!… You see that crust?… those who lived on the three whales, the Orthodox Russian Christians of the forty-pound candles bring them–but then they're bringing less and less. Here am I, an Orthodox priest, I go everywhere on foot, on foot… ha! ha!”

The gray little priest laughs joyfully and slyly, shakes his coffin-pate, screws up his small watery eyes in his beard. The stone walls of the cell are strong and dark. On the low stool sits Gleb, bowed and silent, ikon-figure-like. But in the corner in a dark ikon-case the dark faces of the ikons in front of the lamps are sullenly silent. And Gleb is silent for a long time. The scorching sun scorches, and in the scorching heat the monk sings. But in the cell it is damp, cool–

“… And oh-oh-oh… you shouldn't work in the field!..”

“What is religion, Father?”

“An idea, a culture,” answers the priest, no longer chuckling.

“And God?”

“An idea. A myth!” –and the priest again chuckles slyly. “Father, venerable, you say?–am I losing my faculties?… my faculties… and me in my eighties!… I don't believe it! They must have broken me! They've stuffed the relics with straw!… You–my grandson?”

“Father!” and Gleb's voice stammers painfully, and Gleb's hands are outstretched.

“You know, if you replace some of the words in your speech with the words–class, bourgeoisie, social inequality–you get Bolshevism!… But I want purity, truth–God, faith, universal justice… why blood?…”

“But, but, without blood?–everyone is born out of blood, red! And the flag is red! Everything's all mixed up, confused, you'll never understand it!… Do you hear the revolution howling–like a witch in a blizzard!
listen: –Gviuu, gviiuu! Shoya, shooya… Gaau. And the wood demon drums–glav-bum! Glav-buuum!.. And the witches wiggling their rears and boobs. Kvart-khozh! Kvart-khozh! The wood demon shouts–Nach-evak! Navh-evak! Khmu!.. And the wind, and pines, and the snow:–Shoya, shoya… Khmuu… And the wind:–Gviuu… Do you hear?”

Gleb grows silent, painfully he cracks his knuckles. The father chuckles slyly, fidgets on his high stool–Archbishop Sylvester, in the world Prince Kirill Ordinin, is a demented old man. The scorching sky pours down a scorching heat mist, the scorching sky is flooded with blue and fathomless, the day blooms with the sun and scorching heat–but in the evening there will be a yellow dusk, and the bells in the cathedral ring out:–Dong, Dong, Dong!..

Prince Boris Ordinin stands by the stove, huddled against it with his broad chest, seeking out the dead stove coldness. In the Prince's study the bookshelves stand toothless, without books, which have long since been carted away to the council, and tearfully, with eyes eaten away by moths, the white bear by the settee snarls at the shelves. The small round table is covered with a tablecloth, and the home brewed vodka grows murkily murky. Prince Boris does not drink from glasses when he's on a bender. Boris rings, pressing the bell-push with the bronze poker from the hearth. Marfusha comes in, the Prince is silent for a long time then says sullenly:

“Pour out a glass and take it to Yegor Yevgrafovich…”

“Sir!…”

“Did you hear?! Let him drink to the second of May. You needn't say it's from me… B-but let him drink to the second of May! You can pour it all out for him, but don't let me know… To the second of May!… Go on!”

Prince Boris slowly pours himself a glass, stares for a long time at the murkiness in the home brewed vodka, then drinks.

“To the second of May!” he says.

Then again he stands by the stove and again drinks silently, slowly, taking his time. And the yellow dusk approaches, shuffling through the house. And when the home brew is all finished, Prince Boris goes out of the room, walks slowly, with decisively-sure steps. The house has grown quiet in the dusk, in the corridor burns a no longer bright lamp, dimly glistening in the cloudy mirrors. Mother, Princess Arina Davidovna, is sitting with Yelena Yermilovna, resting from her considerable daily chores.

“On the second of May… on the second of May, Mother, the nightingales begin to sing, after the May-day labor holiday, and it's our name-day… The nights then are blue, blue, cool-dewy, rich luxuriant… On the second of May–on a drunken May night and the most virginal!… And then–then darkness! Night!…” says Prince Boris.

“What nonsense is this?” asks his mother suspiciously.

“Yelenka, clear off!… I want a word with Mother. About brotherhood, about equality!…”

“What is it now?! –sister, don't go!”

“As you wish, Mother!.. as you wish!… It's strange, I ought to hate you, Madame Popkova, but I hate my father. Addio.”