Moscow. Autumn. Cold.
My life in Petersburg has been liquidated. Russkoye Slovo is closed. There are no prospects.
However, there is one prospect. It appears every day in the form of Tusskin, a cross-eyed impresario from Odessa, who is persuading me to go with him to Kyiv and Odessa to arrange my literary performances.
He persuaded me gloomily:
“Did you eat a roll today? Well, you won’t tomorrow. Everyone who can is heading to Ukraine. But no one can. And I’m taking you, I’m paying you sixty percent of the gross receipts, the best room in the ‘Londonskaya’ hotel has been ordered by telegram, right on the seashore, the sun is shining, you read a story or two, you take the money, you buy butter, ham, you are fed and you sit in a café. What are you losing? Ask about me—everyone knows me. My stage name is Guskin. I have a surname too, but it’s awfully difficult. By God, let’s go! The best room in the ‘International’ hotel.”
“You said—the ‘Londonskaya’?”
“Well, the ‘Londonskaya.’ Is the ‘International’ bad for you?”
I went around asking for advice. Many people were indeed aiming for Ukraine.
“That stage name, Guskin, is somehow strange.”
“What’s strange about it?” experienced people replied. “No stranger than others. All these minor impresarios are like that.”
Averchenko stopped my doubts. He, it turned out, was being taken to Kyiv by some other stage name. Also for a tour. We decided to leave together. Averchenko’s stage name was also taking two actresses who were supposed to perform sketches.
“Well, there you go!” Guskin rejoiced. “Now just deal with the departure paperwork, and then everything will go like buttered bread.”
I must say, I hate all public appearances. I can’t even figure out why myself. An idiosyncrasy. And on top of that, a stage name—Guskin, with percentages that he calls “porcents.” But everyone around me was saying: “Lucky you, you’re leaving!” “Lucky you—cream cakes in Kyiv.” And even just: “Lucky… with cream!”
Everything suggested that I had to go. And everyone around was bustling about the departure, and if they weren’t bustling, having no hope of success, they at least dreamed. And people with hopes unexpectedly found Ukrainian blood, threads, and connections in themselves.
“My best man had a house in Poltava.”
“And my surname is actually not Nefedin, but Nekhvedin, from Khvedko, of Malorussian [Ukrainian] root.”
“I love tsibulya [onion] with salo [fatback]!”
“Popova is already in Kyiv, the Ruchkins, the Melzons, the Kokins, the Punins, the Fikis, the Shpruks. Everyone is already there.”
Guskin intensified his activity.
“Tomorrow at three o’clock, I’ll bring you the most terrifying commissar from the most border station. A beast. He just stripped the entire ‘Bat’ (Die Fledermaus) operetta company naked. Took everything.”
“Well, if they strip mice, how are we supposed to get through!”
“That’s why I’m bringing him to meet you. You be nice to him, ask him to let you through. In the evening, I’ll take him to the theater.”
I began dealing with the departure paperwork. First, at some institution dealing with theatrical affairs. There, a very languid lady, with a Cléo de Mérode hairstyle, thickly covered in dandruff and adorned with a tarnished copper hoop, gave me permission for the tour.
Then, at some place—either barracks or shacks—in an endless queue, for long, long hours. Finally, a soldier with a bayonet took my document and took it up to the officials. And suddenly, the door burst open, and “the man himself” walked out. I don’t know who he was. But he was, as they said, “covered in machine guns.”
“Are you so-and-so?”
“Yes,” I admitted. (There was no point in denying it now.)
“A writer?”
I nod silently. I feel that it’s all over—otherwise why would he have rushed out.
“Well, then, be kind enough to write your name in this notebook. Like that. Put down the date and year.”
I write with a trembling hand. I forgot the date. Then I forgot the year. Someone’s frightened whisper from behind prompted me.
“Ri-ight!” said “the man himself” gloomily.
He furrowed his brows. Read it. And suddenly his formidable mouth slowly shifted sideways into an intimate smile:
“I… wanted this for an autograph!”
“Most flattering!”
The pass was granted.
Guskin’s activity intensified even further. He dragged the commissar along. The commissar was terrifying. Not a person, but a nose in boots. There are animals called cephalopods. He was a nasopod. A huge nose, to which two legs were attached. The heart was apparently located in one leg, and digestion took place in the other. He wore yellow, laced boots up to his knees. And it was clear that the commissar was agitated by and proud of these boots. Here was his Achilles’ heel. It was in those boots, and the snake began to prepare its sting.
“I was told that you love art…” I began from afar and… suddenly immediately, naively and femininely, as if unable to control an impulse, I interrupted myself: “Oh, what wonderful boots you have!”
The nose reddened and slightly swelled.
“M-m… art… I like the theater, although I rarely get the chance to…”
“Astonishing boots! There’s something knightly about them. For some reason, I think you are an extraordinary person in general!”
“No, why…?” the commissar weakly defended himself. “Say, I have loved beauty and heroism since childhood… serving the people…”
“Heroism” and “serving” were dangerous words in my case. They stripped the “Bat” because of “serving.” I had to base my argument on beauty quickly.
“Oh, no, no, don’t deny it! I feel a deeply artistic nature in you. You love art, you patronize its penetration into the popular masses. Yes, into the masses, and the thickets, and the dense forests. You have remarkable boots… Torquato Tasso wore boots like that… and even that’s not certain. You are a genius!”
The last word decided everything. Two evening gowns and a bottle of perfume would be passed through as instruments of production.
In the evening, Guskin took the commissar to the theater. They were showing the operetta Catherine the Great, written by two authors—Lolo and myself…
The commissar softened, became sentimental, and instructed me to be told that “art truly has merit” and that I could transport everything I needed—he would be “silent as a fish on ice.”
I never saw the commissar again.
The last Moscow days passed senselessly and chaotically.
Kaza-Roza, a former singer of the “Ancient Theater,” arrived from Petersburg. During those memorable days, a strange ability unexpectedly manifested in her: she knew what everyone had and what everyone needed.
She would arrive, look into space with black, inspired eyes, and say:
“In Krivoarbatsky Lane, on the corner, in a Surov’s shop, there are still one and a half arshins [just over a meter] of batiste left. You absolutely must buy it.”
“But I don’t need it.”
“Yes, you do. In a month, when you return, there will be nothing left anywhere.”
Another time, she rushed in, breathless:
“You must sew a velvet dress right now!”
“?”
“You know yourself that you need it. On the corner, in the general store, the owner is selling a piece of curtain. She just tore it down, it’s completely fresh, right with the nails. It would make a wonderful evening dress. You need it. And such an opportunity will never present itself again.”
Her face was serious, almost tragic.
I terribly dislike the word “never.” If I were told, for instance, that my head would never hurt again, I would probably be scared even then.
I submitted to Kaza-Roza, bought a luxurious scrap of fabric with seven nails.
These last days were strange.
Through the dark night streets, where passersby were robbed and strangled, we ran to listen to the operetta Silva or, in shabby cafés crowded with people in torn coats smelling of wet dog, we listened as young poets read themselves and each other, howling in hungry voices. These young poets were in vogue then, and even Bryusov was not ashamed to head some “erotic evening” with his haughty person!
Everyone wanted to be “among people”…
It was eerie for some to be home alone.
All the time, you had to know what was happening, to find out about each other.
Sometimes someone would disappear, and it was hard to find out where they were: in Kyiv or somewhere they would never return from?
We lived like in the fairy tale about the Dragon Gorynych, to whom twelve maidens and twelve brave youths had to be given every year. It would seem, how could the people in that fairy tale live on earth when they knew Gorynych would devour their best children? But then, in Moscow, it occurred to me that Gorynych’s vassals probably also ran to little theaters and bought fabric for dresses. A person can live anywhere, and I myself saw how a condemned man, whom sailors were dragging onto the ice to be shot, jumped over puddles so as not to soak his feet, and turned up his collar to shield his chest from the wind. He instinctively sought to traverse those few steps of his life with the greatest comfort.
So it was with us. We bought some “last scraps,” listened for the last time to the latest operetta and the latest exquisitely erotic poems—bad, good, what did it matter!—just so we wouldn’t know, wouldn’t realize, wouldn’t think about being dragged onto the ice.
A message came from Petersburg: a famous actress had been arrested for reading one of my stories. In the Cheka, they forced her to repeat the story before the formidable judges. You can imagine the cheerful readiness with which this humorous monologue was read between two guards with bayonets. And suddenly—oh, a joyful miracle!—after the first few trembling phrases, the face of one of the judges spreads into a smile.
“I heard this story at a party with Comrade Lenin. It is completely apolitical.”
The reassured judges asked the reassured defendant to continue the reading, now in a “breakneck entertainment order.”
All in all, perhaps it was a good thing to leave, even for a month. To change the climate.
And Guskin continued to intensify his activity. More, probably, out of agitation than necessity. For some reason, he kept running to Averchenko’s apartment.
“You understand the horror,” he said, shaking his hands. “I ran to Averchenko’s at ten this morning, and he’s sleeping like a log. He’s going to miss the train!”
“But we aren’t leaving for five days.”
“But the train leaves at ten. If he slept like that today, why won’t he be sleeping like that next week? Or his whole life? He’ll be sleeping, and we’ll be waiting? What a business!”
He ran. He worried. He hurried. He flapped in the air, like a belt running idle. And who knows how my fate would have turned out without his energy. Greetings to you, Guskin-stage-name, wherever you are…
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