The Little Devil and Other Stories

by Alexei Remizov

  Having served their term, the young couple made their way home through various provincial cities, Remizov at one stage providing for them by working as literary advisor to Vsevolod Meyerhold’s experimental theater, on tour through the provinces. A daughter was born to them, Natasha, the light of her father’s eyes. At last, permission was granted to live once more “in the capitals,” and they settled, not in the Golden Moscow of his childhood nor in her Holy Kiev, mother of Russian cities, but in the far more “Europeanized” St. Petersburg, where even the Russian language sounded strangely flat and colorless. Here, however, Berdyaev and Bulgakov gave Remizov a job and a living wage as caretaker cum administrator of the premises of their journal Questions of Life, which they had taken over from the Merezh­kovskys’ New Way. Seraphima Pavlovna was deeply interested and involved in the Merezhkovskys’ “New Religious Consciousness” movement, and their friendship with Filosofov provided a link with Remizov, who, in his turn, made the acquaintance of Vasily Rozanov, Alexander Blok, Andrei Bely, Fyodor Sologub, Vyacheslav Ivanov, and Lev Shestov … the flower of the first and second generations of Russian Symbolism. Remizov had already approached the Moscow-centered Bryusov, offering one of his early folktale adaptations for Bryusov’s journal The Balance, only to be told it was “too Russian, like a patch of brocade on our sober gray worsted.” Meyerhold was now working for the Symbolist theater of Vera Kommissarzhevskaya, but though Remizov still took a lively interest in Meyerhold’s work, his own mystery play was staged at N. N. Evreinov’s “Old Time Theater,” which shared the modernist enthusiasm for medieval and popular forms of street performance.7

  Still on the fringes of the literary establishment, his wonderful Round the Sun, his first book of folktales, and Limonarium, his rendering of the apocryphal acts of popular saints (unforgettably of St. Nicholas the Wonder Worker) were hardly rated as original works. Indeed, Remizov was once, like the protagonist in Sisters of the Cross, accused of “plagiarism” in the press, after which he was careful to append reference notes to the folklore collections made by various learned ethnographers who had, throughout the nineteenth century, published painstaking transcriptions of oral recitals of the old tales. Yet Remizov’s versions, though careful to preserve the lilt and flavor of the spoken word, convey an undercurrent of contemporary experience and a psychological immediacy not to be found in the transcripts of academia. It must be said also that Sisters of the Cross and other contemporary stories and novellas such as The Pond, The Clock, and The Fifth Pestilence, published during this pre–World War I St. Petersburg period, though clearly by the same hand as the folktales and apocrypha, are indisputably works of experience and imagination. Though a man obsessed with books, Alexei Mikhailovich was never a “bookish” author.

  My volume of his folktales, for instance, was quietly appropriated from our Moscow flat by our daughter’s “winter” nanny from the village, Mariya Ivanovna, to read aloud to her friends. “What do you learned people want with tales? We love them. These are good ones, you know. They don’t publish them like this anymore.”

  The tale of “The Little Devil,” which gives its title to this book, is a great example of its author’s unique blend of magic and stark, down-to-earth realism. It was published and premiered by the Moscow merchant Ryabushinsky’s newly founded journal The Golden Fleece in a promotional competition for the best literary and artistic works on the subject of the devil—and confirmed the opinion of those who considered Remizov an original author of considerable distinction. Round the Sun, with its giggles and cuddles and scary monsters “trying hard to make you laugh,” its rainbows and reconciliations wrought by busy angels, the accompanying beat of the drums at the foxes’ ball, and the mischievous choirboy Petya’s relentless, countless “Lord have mercies …” was published the following year, 1907, as a separate book. A steady stream of stories, mythical and contemporary, led to a first attempt at a Collected Works by one of the various ephemeral Symbolist publishers, then by the more substantial promise of a takeover of this project by Mikhail Tereshechenko’s financially well-established “Sirin”—in which Remizov himself, together with Alexander Blok, played an active advisory part. Though not yet (or ever until this day) an internationally “famous” author, Remizov had become at least a well-established literary figure. He had suffered a great loss when Seraphima Pavlovna, wounded and mortally offended by her little daughter’s reluctance to rejoin her almost forgotten parents after a long summer in the Ukraine with her Dovgello relatives, made the drastic decision that the child would be happier brought up by them on their country estate—and that contact with her poverty-stricken, city-dwelling parents would only unsettle her. Irrevocable decisions (the break with family, with revolution, with her child, and then with her homeland) seem to have been in her nature, and it was she who finally dynamited the comparatively peaceful flow of her husband’s life and insisted, at the very beginning of the more liberal New Economic Policy period after the revolution, that they leave Russia, first for Berlin and then, with many others, on to Paris.

  Remizov, who had reacted to the apocalyptic scale of events in his country with the poetic Lament for the Destruction of the Russian Land and the more autobiographical Russia in Whirlwind and was, at long last, not only acknowledged by the elite of his own generation but actually gaining influence with some young writers who understood his absorption in the element of “the Russian word” as written, spoken, and sung throughout the centuries, was desolate. Their train for Estonia gathered way slowly as it puffed from the St. Petersburg platform. A soldier saluted them and called “Good-bye!”—not “Till we meet again,” as separating Russians normally take their leave. Alexander Blok died the same day. Remizov reclaimed his Russian citizenship at the end of World War II, but he never went back.

  Already, deprived of make-believe play with his own child, Remizov had invented a grown-up game of his own: “The great and free House of Monkeys,” membership of which he bestowed on his friends, together with exquisitely calligraphed charters “personally signed with his own tale” by King Asyka (Alexei Mikhailovich himself). Now, perilously ensconced in temporary Berlin digs with a landlady bent on ridding her respectable premises of these chattering Russians, yesterday’s enemies with no respect for her good china and no contribution to make to the devastated German economy save the organization of transient journals, publishing houses, and debating societies, his life became a dolorous, yet gloriously free and absurd game of survival. Moving from place to place and from country to country—the Remizovs finally relocated to Paris in 1923, where they migrated from flat to flat and spent most summers in cheap lodgings on the shore of the ocean in the utmost west, the coast of Brittany, which provided the setting for many of Remizov’s later folktales—they were not in a position to collate a library, to arrange manuscripts or daily life in orderly fashion. Yet somehow, like a hedgehog accumulating autumn leaves on its prickles, Alexei Mikhailovich continued to construct a wonderfully sustained autobiography of shreds and patches, word play and high poetry, history in the making and incongruous faits du jour, a biography that has still to be published—even in Russian—as one book, albeit in several volumes, a story of our times to rank with the recollections of Proust and Joyce.

  Having risked a biography of Alexander Blok, whom Remizov (together with Seraphima Pavlovna) thought of as one of the two absolutely truthful people he had ever met, I once conceived the thought of undertaking a life of Alexei Mikhailovich Remizov myself, but found the very idea practicably unthinkable. He is there for us, waiting to be rediscovered in the epic, horrifying, funny, snapshot fragments of his own work, an epic of the “little man,” struggling through the dusk of a disintegrating Age of Enlightenment—a defenseless human being who still wants to drink tea with his friends, hug children, dream dreams, and sing of hope beyond hope.

  Meanwhile, we have here a new translation of his now proven not untranslatable stories, beginning with the tale that first made his name, and in a series that inc
ludes the diary of his acknowledged predecessor, the indomitable archpriest Avvakum—and that, in itself, is most welcome.

  NOTES

  1. At the 1985 Amherst College conference it was not my main contribution and so not printed in the proceedings (see “Aleksej Remizov, Approaches to a Protean Writer,” ed. Greta Slobin, Slavica 16 [1987]).

  2. Podstrizhennymi glazami (Paris: YMCA-Press, 1961), 31.

  3. Podstrizhennymi glazami, 70.

  4. Podstrizhennymi glazami, 35.

  5. Uchitel’ muzyki [The music teacher], ed. Antonina d’Amelia (Paris: La Presse Libre, 1983); Myshkina dudochka [The mouse’s flute—an interlude] (Paris: Opleshmik, 1953). The quotation is from page 7 of the latter.

  6. Podstrizhennymi glazami, 93.

  7. Starinnyi Teatr, founded by N. N. Evreinov and Baron N. V. Osten-Driezen in 1907.

  01

  BEBKA

  REMIZOV WAS ARRESTED IN 1896 IN A CLASH BETWEEN POLICE AND STUDENT DEMONSTRATORS AND SENTENCED TO SIX YEARS IMPRISONMENT AND EXILE IN THE NORTH OF RUSSIA. VOLOGDA WAS HOME TO MANY POLITICAL EXILES, INCLUDING THE PHILOSOPHER NIKOLAI BERDYAEV. HERE, REMIZOV GAVE UP HIS MARXIST BELIEFS AND BECAME COMPLETELY IMMERSED IN PHILOSOPHY, COSMOGONY, AND SLAVIC MYTHOLOGY. HE LODGED WITH AN EXILED COUPLE IN 1900–1901 IN UST-SYSOLSK. BEBKA WAS THEIR SON. TWO OTHER EXILES, BOTH SHOEMAKERS, ALSO LIVED THERE.

  The long winter left, the way so many winters had left—boring, stormy, and black, girdled in the burning, icy glow of insatiable cold.

  A blizzard howled, blanketing everything with white snow all around, burying forest, and river, and empty steppe.

  The house in which I lived was barely visible, and only the clouds of timorous smoke spoke of life.

  But inside it was dead and quiet, with the infrequent thud of a hammer or squeak of tar-coated thread.

  Now the impatient spring of the far north, abandoned, lonely….

  Every morning, when I am reading or writing, the door of my room first shudders, then pushes forward a bit, and, at last, creaks open.

  “Let me in, Bubuka, let me in, Bubuka, Bu-bu-ka!” I hear an insistent child’s voice.

  In comes a small chubby boy, dressed either in a gray robe or in a red shirt and blue pants.

  “Bubuka, make me a squeaker,” the boy says, approaching the table.

  “What squeaker?” I ask Bebka without looking up from my work.

  “Like on a steamer!”

  “I don’t know how to make squeakers.”

  “I’ll show you a squeaker!”

  “Well, all right, but not now, Bebka, later, I’m working now.”

  “You put on your coat and hat, button up and let’s go, you can work later.”

  I say nothing, try to concentrate, and put on a serious face.

  Bebka crawls around on the floor, picking up pieces of colored paper and rolling them up.

  “What are you doing, Bebka?”

  “I’m making a candy for Mama, she’ll eat it; yesterday she gave me lots of big ones and didn’t save you any!”

  “Why didn’t she?”

  “I’ll bring you some myself, when Papa comes.”

  Bebka climbs up on the chair and stares at the flowers for a long time.

  “Bubuka, do you have a lot of flowers?”

  “A lot.”

  “Yellow ones, too?”

  “Yellow ones, too.”

  “Give me one flower?”

  I take the flowers from the glass and hand them to Bebka.

  “Here, take them all and go outside, and later I’ll make you a squeaker.”

  “Like on a steamer?”

  “Better than on a steamer, but go play now.” Bebka takes the flowers and, dropping them, heads for the door. I let him out.

  Through the open window for a long time I hear a child’s voice repeating something like a song:

  Bubuka gave me all the flowers.

  Bubuka gave me all the flowers.

  I go back to work, but it’s no good—I see Bebka: he’s dropping flowers and singing …

  An hour passes, then another. I hear Bebka’s voice again, he runs up to me quickly:

  “Bubuka, for you!” He takes a candy from his mouth and offers it to me.

  I pretend to suck it.

  “Now give it back!”

  He goes to the next room where the cobblers work; grumpy Ivan Onufrich and lanky Pyotr Andreich—and the same scene is repeated there.

  “Now give it back!” I hear Bebka’s insistent voice.

  The cold is here.

  In the mornings a thin silver rime covers the soft, green winter crops, and the brown waves with crests white as gull breasts and red as drops of blood thrash about to the screams of the steely whirlwind that blew in from the tundra.

  Bebka did not show up.

  I walked along the edge of town and in the window of a house I saw him: he was playing with some children in his gray robe and tall rubber galoshes over his stockings.

  And today, when the whirlwind flew away and the sun, playful and warming, gathered up the herds of fluffy storm clouds, the door shuddered once again and Bebka came in.

  “Where’ve you been?”

  “Hunting beeses.”

  “I saw you, you know!”

  “Where did you see me?”

  “In the woods, but you didn’t recognize me; come on, what’s my name?”

  “Bubuka!”

  “And what else?”

  Bebka is silent for a long time, then grabs my neck with his little hands and climbs up on my lap, and whispers in my nose instead of my ear: “Billygoat.”

  The steamer is coming!

  From the window I see something far away, bobbing like an old gray ice floe.

  I hurry to the wharf.

  I come across Bebka on the way: he’s wearing a long coat with straps below the waist, and a fluffy blue hat on his head, like a pancake with a doughnut in the middle.

  “Bubuka, the boat is coming, take me with you!”

  I take his hand and we run.

  At the wharf Bebka sits on the railing of the stairs and waits.

  At last the boat approaches and gives a long, piercing howl.

  “Well, Bebka, should we go see the cannibals?”

  “You go, I’m not going!” Bebka peers all around, as if trying to see something very important.

  “Then let’s go home, there’s nothing more to see.”

  We climb the bank slowly, and Bebka keeps looking back to see if the steamer will leave.

  Sailboats skim along the river; gulls screech.

  “When the steamer goes by,” Bebka says in a tired voice, “you run, Bubuka, run!”

  After lunch Bebka comes over and silently stands next to me.

  “Hello, Saka-fara!”

  “Am not. You’re a Saka-fara!” Bebka says grumpily.

  “Why the pouting lips, look how long they are, like an Agag’s, did someone hit you?’

  Bebka is silent.

  “Didn’t you eat?”

  Silence.

  “Want some tea?”

  Silence.

  “Here’s what, Bebka. Let’s go take a nap, and I’ll lie down with you and tell you a very-very scary story!”

  I pick him up and carry him to the bed.

  First I do nanny goat for him and then the crow with cold water and I warm up his tummy, but he won’t smile, so I shut my eyes and start snoring.

  “Bu-bu-ka!” Bebka says softly.

  “Ah, it’s you, Bebka, I thought it was the child grabber!”

  “A story!” Bebka said, even more softly.

  “A story! Well, listen! … Once upon a time there lived Chokyr and a fox, they were friends, they went to the woods together, they went to the steamer.”

  Bebka yawned and goggled his little eyes.

  “They napped together after lunch and picked yellow flowers and made squeakers …”

  “Like on the steamer?” Bebka asks sleepily; his little face growing rosy, his lips puff u
p and protrude.

  “And then one time they had no bread but they were hungry …”

  Bebka is asleep; I quietly get off the bed.

  But soon he wakes up, frightened—all wet—and starts crying …

  He’s taken home.

  “I brought you yellow flowers!” yells Bebka. He unbuttons his shorts and pulls out crumpled dandelions.

  I take the flowers and button his shorts.

  “Well, now you’d better go visit Ivan Onufrich, I’m working, Bebka!”

  “Then I’ll never come visit you!” he grumbles and leaves.

  From the next room I hear this conversation:

  “Did you skin the goat?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it squeaking?”

  “It will now, hear it?” And the lanky one squeaks.

  “Mama says that a hare ran off with the porridge.”

  “I came across it!” the grumpy cobbler says severely.

  “And the goat?”

  “The goat, too.”

  Ivan Onufrich comes to my room, sets up two chairs, hangs threads on the backs, and starts winding.

  Bebka follows him, and if a thread gets tangled up, he waits patiently for Ivan Onufrich to unknot it.

  Bebka is working!

  Later, when they’re twisting the tarred threads, he walks around the room in a long cobbler’s apron holding a hammer. He looks at the bookshelves and taps the spines.

  “I like these, they’re good,” he says, pointing to the books that have multicolored tickets glued on, “and these are bad, and why don’t the books fall down?”

  A grim, cold morning.

  The ice must be moving on the sea.

  The river is gray and dirty.

  A fine autumn rain has come.

  I’m sitting by the window; it’s quiet, except for the wind howling and moaning in long drawn-out breaths.

  Suddenly I see Bebka; he’s at the riverbank, legs bare to the knee, looking along the river.

  “Hello, Bebka!” I call to him.