The Little Devil and Other Stories

by Alexei Remizov

  People’s dreams are commensurate with their concept of life after death, until the content of faith is exhausted and a man’s life flies like a spark into the ocean. Those who have no connection to “heaven” continue “darning stockings” or stringing together words, continuing the work of their lives.

  The continuing existence of the dead is revealed in the dreams of the living. Dreams are the only place for communication between “this” life and “that” one. This is the only way the dead can enter the life of the living and perhaps the living can change something in the fate of the dead.

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  Dreams have form and color, sound, and smell—“I sensed the sea.” The colors are green, red, light blue, silvery snow, but I don’t know, I’ve never seen the sun in my dreams.

  In my dreams it is always a moonlit night—Astarte, the color of the dead. The sounds—hailing, conversation, songs, music. Form—from the usual daytime ones to the monstrous—everything that you can imagine violating linear perceptions. And sometimes it happens that everything is upside down and flying—can’t imagine what it is. Or I have to do something like this: tear through paper and move the drawing not to another page but up on sticks—tricky.

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  If I only feel a connection with the world of the dead through sleep, then what can I say about the connection with the world of the living?

  Through dreams you learn things about yourself and others that you had never suspected. No conversation, no close observation can reveal what a dream can so simply.

  In dreams there is no daytime conformity and nothing is embarrassing, and no need to be embarrassed by yourself—the soul is wide open, and the other person is in the palm of your hand, full-size.

  You can learn about your previous life only in dreams, and also about others, but not with the same clarity and detail; and about your future and also about the future of others.

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  Dreams are the most reliable conductors of thoughts if the doors are open and not cluttered with the objects of life.

  Dreams can be wan and indifferent, and they can be hot: thoughts are conveyed along hot paths. Of course, it is necessary for the other—to whom the thought is addressed—to catch it.

  A sleepless person is like a wall at which you throw dried peas.

  Someone thought hard and sent me a letter, and I dreamed about him, a stranger. In the morning I get a letter—it is the letter from him: that means his thought penetrated me.

  There is no empty space, but the pathways are stuffed with daily necessities. The connection is torn; rather, it is obstructed.

  Of course, why do we need dreams when we can transmit the deepest thoughts by radio, but for the other world, there is only one path and no other: dreaming.

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  Dreams reveal the next day.

  Here is an example for everyday life: in my dream I see unknown children; I remember two girls, twins. “I wonder why I dreamed that?” was my first question when I woke up. And I forgot it, it wasn’t important. And what do you know, I’m in the metro and I see a mother and two girls enter the train—just like in my dream.

  But nothing happened that day; therefore my dream was not important, it was just that my dream showed me my waking tomorrow.

  I’ve seen entire scenes from the future with details and not about trifles.

  What does it mean? Either everything is already prepared down to my last day on earth with living people; and my “want” and “don’t want” are self-delusion. I will not want to do something only because I cannot want to do it and all my caution and calculations are a mere game: playing at having a will. It is there, but fate (predestination) will take its own. The most accurate predictions come not from rationalization but from dreams, if only … if only the dream would come!

  That was the case with ancient oracles, which attracted only dreamers.2

  But are there many people on earth who see dreams! I think there are more than people think. And so what? In our days predicting the weather is no prediction and no one pays attention. But no one publishes anything about events in people’s lives. Martin Zadeka has divinations about general things: war, catastrophe. But mine—I can only make predictions about myself or people with whom I have ties—whom I can penetrate. Not by eye, only in dreams: dreams about themselves and dreams about me.

  There’s no point in discussing reliability: I don’t believe myself first of all, and others even less so.

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  There are many puns in dreams. Here’s an example: I see Baranovskaya; she stands before me made of bones and tiny bones. In my dream I start thinking the way I would in life: what is holding her together, why doesn’t she fall apart? And suddenly I understand and want to express my thought, but at the instant of my reply another appears, an answer prepared by someone else: I am brought a bundle of baranki (bagels) and out the window I see a herd of sheep (barany) and there’s a ram (baran) under my window and through the tail I can clearly see: a zinc counter, shot glasses—“why it’s a bar,” I say. Baranovskaya, there’s music: a bar with music.

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  There are calendar dreams: predicting the weather. I can’t say anything about good weather, but rain and snow are open to me. It’s funny: I dream about our learned Spanish specialist and philosopher critic K. V. Mochulsky every time. I don’t need to develop corns or broken bones; without them I can speak as if I had a barometer: according to Mochulsky, rain’s coming.

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  Can we establish the symbolism of dreams? Or compile a “dream book for everyone?”

  Symbolism is handed down by tradition—inculcated from childhood; does that mean then that something can be established and followed?

  It can, but not for certain: the symbolism of dreams is not constant. Just as the speed of light vacillates depending on time, changing every hour of the day, so the symbols change by person and his spiritual state.

  According to all dream books the classic “guano” means “money.” In Russian that makes sense: “guano” is a Sanskrit word that means “goods,” as in property. But it happens like this, too: you dream that you step into a pile or get smeared, but in the morning not only do you not get any money, you’re handed a bill for gas or electricity and you have to pay. So much for “guano”!

  The same with money: money is silver, which is tears, and apparently nothing but trouble ahead, and instead—bam! A check for 1,000 francs. How’s that?

  You can’t get far with dream books, even the “eastern” ones.

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  There are dry dreams and sticky ones. The dry vanish at the first call, even before your first thought of waking up. The “sticky ones,” they hold on tight, at least until evening, no bustle will dislodge them. And beneath them walks the man, bumbling or burning all day in yearning.

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  The most difficult thing in dreams: the return from the past: events and faces seemingly forgotten forever.

  Or nothing vanishes and the past lives in the present in layers, not dying off? What a weight my soul bears!

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  Writers’ dreams take on literary form, the habit of craft: I wonder how it is for musicians? What is amazing is that people who have nothing in common with words suddenly dream—and often it is the only memorable dream, and for life—in poetry. It is equivalent to stones that are revealed only to the eyes, mute stones, suddenly singing!

  Or perhaps “poetry” is in fact the very heart of our mysterious life—the soul of the endless world.

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  There is a method to learn how to remember dreams, but it has nothing to do with how you recall the past in life.

  Here is what our legendary Martin Zadeka tells us:

  “Upon awakening from dreaming the tension is closer to the top of the head, from where you must grab it and drag it out, paying no attention.”

  I will try.

  __________________________

  1. Sergei Aksakov (1791–1859) described a “fateful dream” that p
redicted the day of his mother’s death in his family chronicle Childhood Years of Bagrov the Grandson.

  2. The Oracles were eighteenth-century books predicting the future, like horoscopes, but based on dreams.

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  SAVVA GRUDTSYN

  “SAVVA GRUDTSYN” IS A FAIRY TALE VERSION OF HISTORICAL EVENTS, ACTUAL PARTICIPANTS MIXED IN WITH FICTIONAL ONES. AFTER THE TIME OF TROUBLES AND THE ELECTION OF ALEXEI, THE FIRST ROMANOV TSAR, IN 1613, WAR BETWEEN ORTHODOX RUSSIA AND CATHOLIC POLAND AND LITHUANIA CONTINUED. MERCHANTS TRIED TO PURSUE THEIR PROFITABLE COMMERCE, WHILE WAR RAGED ON THE BORDERS. THE SIEGE OF SMOLENSK WAS LONG AND PAINFUL, AND THE RUSSIAN VICTORY IN 1633 WAS A MAJOR STEP IN KEEPING THE COUNTRY TOGETHER. IN REMIZOV’S FICTIONALIZED ACCOUNT, SEMYON THE HOLY FOOL AND VIKTOR THE DEVIL FIGHT OVER SAVVA’S SOUL.

  Veliky Ustyug, Glenden in the olden days. Its neighbor is Solvychegodsk. The Stroganovs live in Solvychegodsk; the Stroganovs have Siberia with an eye on China. The Grudtsyns live in Ustyug; the Grudtsyns have the Kama and Volga with an eye on Persia. Russian eyes beyond the Moscow borders, important names.

  Veliky Ustyug is the city of Prokopy, a holy fool in Christ, the golden-domed Cathedral of the Birth of the Mother of God in the square, and Usovye is the white house of Foma Grudtsyn. Foma has a son, Savva, and the story is about him.

  I

  1

  Savva is the only and desired son, the love and hope of his father and mother. Savva had no friends, for where could you find a peer for him? Only in books. His father had a wall of books up to the eaves: spiritual and worldly books.

  The Great Reader-Menaion is where Savva started his study. After the exploits and miracles of the holy martyrs came the exploits of the kings: Alexandria, the acts of the Two-Horned King; The Book of Sinagrip, king of the Adors—the tales of Akir the Wise; Gesta Romanorum (Roman Acts), “the great mirror of human life,” Roman-Byzantine and Eastern stories with morals, the sourcebook for Shakespeare; The History of Seven Wise Men from Sindbad Name, material for Boccaccio; Tales of the Wise King Solomon; The Tale of Varlaam the Hermit and Joasaph, Prince of India (The Book of Bilaukhar and Budasfa) and his beloved Stefanit and Ikhnelat, about animals; and Chronograph and Physiologies, the history and marvels of nature.

  “And everything that he obtained with his eyes, perceived by hearing, was kept in his heart, fixed by memory, taken in mind and will.”

  That is how the Arabic Kalila and Dimna would describe Savva, but in Russian you would say, “suckled by book-learning.”

  Savva started copying from the books he was reading: it made the difficult easier to understand and lightened the dark. He achieved great mastery of the art of letters. For the saint day of his father and mother, Savva gave them a letter ornamented with the thin firs and ferns of the Ustyug winter, for the feast of St. Foma and St. Elena.

  When he was copying from a book, Savva did not stick to the letters and did it in his own way, both in meaning and tone: his outer and inner eyes opened early. “Philosophizing,” said the dogmatists from Vologda and Kostroma and Yaroslavl. Neither his father nor his mother stopped him, did not call him “apostate and heretic,” but felt joy and pride: the only one!

  It was a dangerous time, troubles caused a whirlwind in Rus: people turned on their own kin, Cossacks and scouting Poles, boyars and peasants, all and sundry muddied the land, destroyed cities, the order imposed by the Stoglav was falling apart. False “tsareviches” arose everywhere and every thief dreamed of being tsar in Moscow. Hard times ensued.

  It wasn’t to seek fortune but to protect and save his son that Foma left Ustyug and moved with his whole family to Kazan: things would be quieter there. And while things settled down, he lived five years in Kazan. Once the Poles were thrown out of the Kremlin and a tsar, Mikhail Fyodorovich Romanov, was elected, and the inextinguishable Rus rose from extinction over the “straight” and the “crooked,” leaving the sins of the Time of Troubles in oblivion, Olena, Savva’s mother, returned to Ustyug, while Foma went back to the interrupted business of the Grudtsyns.

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  On his river strugs loaded with freight, Foma sails along the Volga: his path is to Astrakhan and then from Astrakhan to Persia. He is busy but happy: he’ll be able to spread out—sitting for so long in Kazan without business, you wither and get covered with moss. Foma sent Savva to Solikamsk: Savva is nineteen, time to learn trade. Next summer, God willing, they’ll go together to the “Redtops kizilbash,” the Turkmen: to see people and to be seen; Foma can’t get enough of his son; now let everyone else see him: “tsarevich!!”

  “God blessed me, can’t complain, such a son can gather up Persia for Moscow!”

  Savva did not reach Solikamsk in his father’s vessels; he docked at the Usolsky city in Oryol. He unloaded the cargo, rented a warehouse, and opened his business.

  He settled at Kolpakov’s inn. The innkeeper was a friend of Foma and received his son with honor and helped him in business: it was not easy for Savva to move from books to trade accounts.

  A wealthy merchant lived in Oryol, the richest man in town, an old friend of Foma, Bozhen the Second—a name renowned for his wealth and his exemplary life: just and firm in his faith, “straight,” and his brains were not scrambled. Bozhen heard that Foma’s son was a guest in their city.

  Friendship and many years tied him to Savva’s father: they started their path together and helped each other.

  “I’ll take Savva home,” Bozhen decided, “he’ll be a son to me.”

  And as Savva left the warehouse and walked to the inn, Bozhen came toward him. Bozhen recognized him by his father: “Grudtsyn!”

  He was so happy. And the questions began: father, mother, Kazan and Ustyug, and how did he come to Oryol and for long?

  “And you’re not ashamed,” Bozhen rebuked him, “your father and I, we exchanged crosses, he is my blood brother, you’ve heard my name, Bozhen the Second? And you haven’t called on me all this time! Forget it, I’m not letting you go back to Kolpakov, you’ll live at my house as my own son.”

  Savva was happy, too: family life is not an inn.

  That same day, bidding farewell to Kolpakov, Savva moved to Bozhen’s house.

  Bozhen was on his third marriage, the wedding was held after Christmas, a feast worthy of a voyevoda, the town leader.

  Bozhen was a godly man, probably only Kolpakov prayed more zealously; he observed fasts strictly, and he was very careful with money; he would never trust another’s eye, only his own. He took a wife for the housekeeping: to keep the house in cleanliness and so that everything would be on time and no one stole anything.

  Stepanida is related to Savva. After her father died, she was left with her mother as the eldest sister over sisters and brothers, a large family. And if they managed to get something and make life work and there was still hope, it was Stepanida who always took care of everything. People adored Stepanida and everyone wanted to please her. This is the truth: a person comes into the world to bring peace and happiness.

  Bozhen didn’t have a sparrow nose or a stupid lip, he knew whom to choose. What did he care whether Stepanida was sixteen or twenty, it wasn’t about age, you wouldn’t find another Stepanida on the Oka, or the Kama, or even if you sailed the entire Volga.

  A lively parable, “About an Old Husband and Young Maiden,” was composed then, not a book story but from life. The literate wrote it down and read it, not whispering but saying out loud: “Good!” The illiterate listened and laughed: “Right!”

  And just as the parable told it, that’s how it happened.

  Stepanida’s mother sighed: it was clear weather in the house, the sun shone brightly: her old son-in-law was not cheap, he paid well for Stepanida.

  At the Easter service, when it was time to kiss, her mother all in tears with happiness—she had lived to see such a joyous Easter!—came up to her gold-encased daughter. No, there was no one on earth but her Stepanida, from the meadows, as beautiful as spring herself. With radiant faith her mother decla
red Christ is risen and kissed her. And then, in an ingratiating way, “Donya, my little daughter, how are you living?”

  Stepanida looked at her mother, such a flash of love in that brown, bottomless gaze! Her throat filled hotly, like a murmuring dove! And with a sigh the words escaped: “I want freedom!”

  Her mother understood, she did not say as it had been said forever: “Fear God, you’ve been married in church!” Her mother understood with her simple heart that love is not strong and unbreakable from the church but that love makes the world strong and blesses the earth. In farewell, she repeated her all-forgiving mother’s love, “Donya, my little daughter!”

  And then Bozhen himself brought Savva into the house, so it was fate.

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  Like a meeting of separated lovers, love exploded at first glance: he was drawn to her and a touch pierced him, and she accepted the love.

  The first night in Bozhen’s house, Savva could not sleep, “I can’t get used to a new place,” was the explanation, he thought of her; and Stepanida did not sleep the whole night, “the votive light is bothering me,” all her thoughts were of him.

  From the start Bozhen loved Savva. Bozhen felt the weight of years falling from his chest, it was Foma and not Savva under his roof, and a new youth was beckoning. And Bozhen felt how good and full it was in his house and that his young wife was even more beautiful, as if he were noticing her for the first time.

  Savva had brought happiness to their house!

  At night, while Bozhen slept: satisfaction brought him peaceful sleep, and Stepanida pretended to be asleep: love is sleepless, and no matter how chilly it was in the quiet, tense hour, she rose easily and went into Savva’s room.

  Savva was at the window—spring at night. What did he have to think about but her, repeating her words, not intended but pronounced for him, and her voice.

  And there she was. How greedily she kissed him deep with her whole mouth. And in that kiss all the words were said.