7 Secrets of Moscow — Petushki (Moscow to the End of the Line)

How events from the life of Venedikt Erofeev and quotes from the books he read seeped into the text of the famous poem.

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1. The Secret of the “Bitch’s Guts” Recipe

Here is the recipe for one of the cocktails created by the poem’s main character, Venichka—a drink that “eclipses everything”:

• “Zhigulevskoye” beer — 100 g
• “Sadko — The Rich Guest” shampoo — 30 g
• Resol for hair cleaning from dandruff — 70 g
• BF glue — 15 g
• Brake fluid — 30 g
• Disinsectal for eliminating small insects — 30 g

This is how readers of the first separate edition of Moscow — Petushki in the Soviet Union (Prometey Publishing House, 1989) saw the recipe for “Bitch’s Guts.” But already in the next edition (“Interbook,” 1990), the recipe was slightly different: 20 grams of disinsectal were needed, not 30. In the almanac Vest, where the full text was first published in the Soviet Union, there were even more differences: 12 grams of BF glue were needed, and 35 grams of brake fluid. Which of the recipes is correct? After all, Venichka says that “life is given to a man only once, and it must be lived so as not to err in the recipes.”

However, in the very first edition of Moscow — Petushki from 1973, printed in Israel, the recipe for “Bitch’s Guts” contained neither BF glue nor brake fluid; instead, it had foot antiperspirant—an ingredient in another cocktail mentioned in the poem, “Spirit of Geneva.” The author did not notice this repetition right away, but only after a typewritten copy was made from the manuscript. Therefore, the repetition remained in all foreign editions, which Erofeev himself pointed out in a letter to the Hungarian translator Elzbieta Vari (blaming the French publishing house YMCA-Press, where Erofeev’s book was released in 1977, and once again changing the exact number of grams in the recipe):

“And one more thing about the recipes: YMCA-Press arbitrarily distorted the recipe for ‘Bitch’s Guts.’ There is no ‘foot antiperspirant’ in it. But there is (between resol and disinsectal): brake fluid — 25 g, BF glue — 8 grams. One really cannot err in the recipes.”

In modern editions, there is no foot antiperspirant in “Bitch’s Guts,” but the discrepancy in the number of grams remains: everything depends on which edition the text is printed from. Well, it seems the reader is left to choose the exact dosage at their own discretion.

2. The Secret of the “Classical Mugs”

Venichka describes the appearance of his murderers:

“How can I explain to you what kind of mugs they had? No, not bandit mugs at all, rather the opposite, with a hint of something classical…”

How should this description be understood? It is believed that “a hint of something classical” is a reference to the Roman legionaries who crucified Christ. Like the legionaries, Venichka’s murderers are four in number, in the scene of the murder they “nail” the hero to the floor, and Venichka himself repeats Christ’s dying question shortly before his death: “Why, Lord, have you forsaken me?”

That the scene of the hero’s murder in Moscow — Petushki is somehow connected with the Gospel story is beyond doubt, but the indication of a “classical hint” in the faces of Venichka’s executioners apparently means something else. In the notebook that Erofeev kept in 1969–1970 (the time the novel was written), there is the following phrase:

“And their mugs are smooth, classically clear. If there are any pimples, they are somewhere at the nape of the neck.”

The definition “with a hint of something classical” serves as an indication of the flawless, “unblemished” appearance of the murderers, which the author hated. The poet Olga Sedakova said this about Erofeev:

“In everything perfect and striving for perfection, he suspected inhumanity. The human meant the imperfect to him, and he demanded that the imperfect be treated ‘with first love and last tenderness,’ the more imperfect—the stronger the treatment. The greatest tenderness was deserved, in his opinion (I quote), ‘by the one who pissed himself in front of everyone’.”

“The one who pissed himself in front of everyone” is, of course, the chairman from old Mitrich’s story in Moscow — Petushki, who “stands and cries, and pisses on the floor, like a little child.” The chairman “is all in boils,” and old Mitrich’s “entire face is pockmarked, as if shot at close range.” Venichka, of course, feels compassion for both.

3. The Secret of One Quote

On the commuter train, Venichka’s fellow traveler tells a phantasmagoric story about her relationship with the Komsomol organizer Evtyushkin:

“And somehow wildly, operatically, he laughed, grabbed me, fractured my skull, and left for Vladimir-on-Klyazma. Why did he leave? To whom did he leave? All of Europe shared my bewilderment.”

Why does “all of Europe share” the bewilderment, and what does this mean at all? It is easiest to assume that a newspaper cliché is being played out here: in the official Soviet press, it was customary to write about the joy, sorrow, or pride that other nations or even “all progressive humanity” shared with the Soviet Union—why shouldn’t “all of Europe” share the bewilderment of Venichka’s fellow traveler, especially since Erofeev often parodies the official Soviet language in Moscow — Petushki. However, the source of this phrase is actually completely different, namely, it is an almost exact quote from Anatole France’s novel The Amethyst Ring, published in the Soviet Union in a translation by Grigory Yakho. The hero of the novel, Mr. Bergeret, receives a letter from his Milanese friend Carlo Aspertini, in which the latter answers his correspondent’s question about an old requiem hymn and adds in a postscript:

“Why do the French stubbornly refuse to acknowledge an indisputable judicial error, which they could so easily correct without prejudice to anyone? I strive in vain to find the reason for their obstinacy. All my compatriots, all of Europe, all the world share my bewilderment.”

The reference is, of course, to the Dreyfus Affair; Mr. Bergeret was a supporter of the officer’s innocence from the very beginning, but how did this phrase end up in the speech of Venichka’s fellow traveler? In 1966, Erofeev read The Amethyst Ring and wrote down several phrases from it (which he always did when reading books). Moscow — Petushki, like Erofeev’s other works, is full of such quotes—whether from the Bible, the Mahabharata, France’s novel, a radio broadcast, an article in Pravda, or an excerpt from a tear-off calendar—as well as remarks from friends or casual acquaintances. But the context is generally not important to Erofeev. He takes quotes from the most diverse sources and, like building blocks, constructs his own text from them.

4. The Secret of the Finnish Song

In the chapter “Saltykovka — Kuchino,” Venichka sits by his sick son’s crib and tries to cheer him up:

“You will get up again, boy, and you will dance to my ‘piglet farandole’ again—remember? You danced to it when you were two years old.”

But then he corrects himself:

“…no, we won’t dance the farandole. There are words that are irrelevant… ‘At the en-d of Au-gust you stretched out your legs…’ that won’t do. Much better is this: ‘One-two-put-on-your-slippers-why-are-you-not-ashamed-to-sleep?'”

And adds:

“I have special reasons for loving this nastiness…”

What are those reasons? Perhaps it is because Venichka suggests that his son dance to “Jenka”—a Finnish song popular in the 1960s. In the Soviet Union, this melody was known in different arrangements and with different lyrics: the version Erofeev mentions was performed to the music of Gennady Podelsky and the words of Dmitry Ivanov. And the reason for the author’s love for this melody lies in his special attitude towards Scandinavia and northern countries in general.

Erofeev was born on the Kola Peninsula, finished school there, and even claimed at the end of his life that he first crossed the Arctic Circle only at the age of 17, when he went to apply to Moscow State University. The North truly occupied a special place in his life: as a student, Erofeev wrote several articles about Norwegian writers, the reasons for his love for whom, as the author himself explained, are again rooted in geography. Later, in one interview, Erofeev spoke about it this way:

“…I was then blinded by this Scandinavian literature of mine. And I only wrote about it. <…> Because they are my countrymen. <…> Henrik Ibsen, Knut Hamsun in particular. And in fact, I only like the music of Grieg and Jan Sibelius. There’s nothing you can do about that.”

5. The Secret of the “Individual Charts”

Venichka, who briefly became a foreman and failed in his mission to enlighten his subordinates, invents a system of “individual charts”:

“So, after a month, the worker approaches me with a report: on such and such a day, so much of such and such was drunk, on another day so much, et cetera. And I, with black ink and on vellum paper, depict all this with a beautiful diagram.”

This witty episode only seems fictional. In the late 1960s, Erofeev actually worked as a cable splicer at the PTUS [Training and Production Site] near Moscow, and a notebook from 1969–1970 mentions a certain Totoshkin, to whom the writer owed 20 kopecks. The same surname is borne by one of the members of Venichka’s team.

In the charts depicted in the book, the vertical axis shows the amount drunk, and the horizontal axis shows the days, with only two dates marked: the 10th and the 26th, which are the dates for salary and advance payment (the peaks naturally occur on these days). Why the 26th, when the advance payment was usually given on the 25th? This is a mistake by the typist who retyped the copy of the novel that later went abroad and was used for the first edition: the author’s manuscript has the 25th. In all subsequent editions, this error remained uncorrected. Incidentally, the depiction of the charts themselves also likely belongs to the same typist, not Erofeev himself. In the manuscript, they look slightly different, but, unable to reproduce them exactly, the typist was obviously forced to draw them herself.

6. The Secret of the Pink Glass

A dialogue takes place between Venichka and the “black-mustached man in a jacket,” who argues that “all valuable people in Russia drank like swine”:

“— Well, and Nikolai Gogol…

— What about Nikolai Gogol?..

— He always, when he was at the Panaevs’, asked for a special, pink glass to be placed on the table for him…

— And he drank from the pink glass?

— Yes. And he drank from the pink glass.

— And what did he drink?..

— Who knows!.. Well, what can you drink from a pink glass? Well, vodka, of course…”

Where could the black-mustached man have gotten this information about the writer’s life? The most obvious source is the memoirs of Ivan Panaev and his wife Avdotya. Panaeva writes that “at Gogol’s place setting stood a special faceted large glass and red wine in a carafe,” and her husband writes that “in front of his place setting at dinner was not ordinary, but pink glass.” The black-mustached man seems to have combined these two descriptions, taking the “special glass” from one and its color from the other. However, in describing the glass, the Panaevs clarify that it was served to Gogol not in their house at all, but at the Aksakovs’—as a sign of that family’s special respect for the writer. The fact is that Erofeev read Not a Day Without a Line by Yuri Olesha, who, in turn, had just read Avdotya Panaeva’s memoirs: “In the memoirs, there is the appearance of Gogol. In front of him at dinner stands a special setting, a special pink glass for wine.” The Aksakovs are not mentioned by Olesha, and a reader unfamiliar with the original source might indeed think that the dinner took place at the Panaevs’ house. That is exactly what happened. Erofeev transcribed this episode into one of his 1966 notebooks, taking from Olesha not only the story itself but also the definition “special pink glass,” added on his own that the glass was placed at Gogol’s request, and inserted the plot into the story of the black-mustached man in Moscow — Petushki.

It is curious that in the very first publication (in the almanac Vest), the Panaevs were replaced by the Aksakovs. Perhaps an editor intervened, or perhaps the writer himself, noticing the mistake, decided to correct it. In any case, in the next edition (1989), this part remained uncorrected, and since then, in different editions of Moscow — Petushki, one can find either the Panaevs or the Aksakovs—depending on the source.

7. The Secret of the “Half-Witted Poetess”

Venichka describes his thirtieth birthday:

“And when I turned thirty, last autumn? And when I turned thirty, the day was mournful, like the day of my twentieth birthday. Borya came to me with some half-witted poetess, Vadya and Lida came, Ledik and Volodya.”

Who is the “half-witted poetess” and who are all the others mentioned here? The writer celebrated his thirtieth birthday on October 24, 1968, and in the text of the poem, he lists the guests who came to celebrate his own birthday. These are Vladimir Muravyov, Erofeev’s classmate at Moscow State University, and his brother Leonid, the “beloved firstborn” Vadim Tikhonov, to whom the author dedicated Moscow — Petushki, and his wife Lidia Lyubchikova, Boris Sorokin, whom the writer met while studying at the Vladimir Pedagogical Institute, and Olga Sedakova, who met Erofeev precisely on the day of his thirtieth birthday celebration. “Why did you call me ‘half-witted’?” she later asked Erofeev. — “I was only half wrong.”

Erofeev not only made himself the main character of the book but also included his friends and acquaintances in it. Olga Sedakova later recalled how, reading Moscow — Petushki, she did not immediately realize that she was reading fictional prose and not a diary. Erofeev’s acquaintances can also be found in the writer’s other texts: the main character of Walpurgis Night, Lev Gurevich, likely borrowed his surname from the writer’s classmate at the Orekhovo-Zuevo Pedagogical Institute, and the hero of another play, the unfinished Dissidents, Mikhail Kaplan, is named after the poet of the same name. In Walpurgis Night, Gurevich, who ends up in a psychiatric hospital, tells the chief physician: “For example, Count Tolstoy calls me…”, and this is not the delusion of a madman. The reference is to Nikita Ilyich Tolstoy, the great-grandson of Leo Nikolaevich and an acquaintance of Erofeev.

Sources

• Vlasov E. The Immortal Poem of Venedikt Erofeev “Moscow — Petushki”. Writer’s Satellite. In: Erofeev V. Moscow — Petushki. With commentaries by Eduard Vlasov. St. Petersburg, 2015.
• Erofeev V. Notebooks of the 1960s. Moscow, 2005.
• Erofeev V. Moscow — Petushki etc. Moscow, 1989.
• Chronicle of the Life and Work of Venedikt Erofeev. Zhivaya Arktika (Living Arctic). No. 1, 2005