by Teffi
THE CLOSER we get to Kiev, the more animated the train stations.
Station buffets begin to appear. Walking along the platforms are people with oily lips and shiny cheeks, still chewing. On their faces is a look of amazed satisfaction. Posters on the walls bear witness to a demand for culture: “A Stupendous Dog Show—After the Method of the Renowned Durovs”[46]; “A Troupe of Lilliputians”; “With a Full Local Repertoire—an Actress from the Alexandria Theater.”
“Well, life’s literally taking a full swing at us here!” says Gooskin. “Look at these posters! Nicely done. Ri-ight? I’d certainly go flocking to these shows myself!”
German policemen are everywhere—squeaky clean, brightly polished, and tightly packed with Ukrainian fatback and bread.
We have to change trains twice more. We have no idea why.
On a platform in one of the bigger stations, Averchenko, Gooskin, and the actress with the little dog, all conspicuously tall, are standing in the middle of a waiting crowd. A breathless figure with eyes darting about in bewilderment, with a bowler hat on the back of his head and an unbuttoned coat billowing like a lopsided sail, suddenly runs up to them and says, “Excuse me for asking—you’re not the Lilliputians, are you?”
“No,” Averchenko replies modestly.
The man with the lopsided sail is swept further on down the platform.
Gooskin doesn’t show the least surprise.
“He’s obviously waiting here for a troupe of Lilliputians, and they’re late. What are you laughing at? It happens often enough—companies arriving late. Ri-ight?”
To Gooskin the question had seemed entirely normal.
With each change of trains the class of passenger changes too. Respectably and even elegantly dressed people start to appear—“ladies and gentlemen.” By the last stretch of the journey, everyone but ladies and gentlemen has disappeared.
“Where have they all gone?”
A shifty character with a suitcase disappears into a station cloakroom—and then out comes a pillar of society: a lawyer, a landowner, a hydra of counterrevolution, with neatly combed hair, wearing a clean collar, and carrying in his gloved hand the same little suitcase. I recognize faces. The man with the pudgy fingers has now combed his beard and put a frown on his face; picking some lint off the sleeve of his wool overcoat, he voices his indignation over some recent outrage: “It’s a disgrace! The liberties they take!”
Well, if we’ve got to the point of disgraceful liberties, then we must, at last, be on solid ground.
Kiev is very close.
Gooskin puzzles us with an unexpected question, “Where are you all planning on staying?”
“In a hotel.”
“In a hotel?” he repeats—and smiles enigmatically.
“What’s the matter?”
“I’ve heard the hotels have all been requisitioned. And the private apartments are all so crowded I wish I could say the same of my purse! Ri-ight?”
I don’t know anyone in Kiev and have no idea what to do if I can’t get into a hotel.
“Gooskin, this is, in point of fact, your responsibility,” says Averchenko. “Since you are the impresario, you should have arranged rooms. You should have written to someone.”
“And who would I write to? The Ukrainian Hetman?[47] Yes, I suppose I could have written to him—if I’d wanted to get myself well and truly written off. It would be better, I think, if Madame Teffi went to speak to the Hetman. Something might come of that. Yes, something would be sure to come of it—though it might not be anything good. Still, I can see already that Madame Teffi has no intention of going anywhere herself. She’s just going to sit and wait at the station while Gooskin runs around looking for an apartment. Once again Gooskin has so much work on his hands that he can’t get a breath in edgewise.”
“What are you getting so upset about? This is clearly one of your responsibilities!”
“Responsibilities?” Gooskin repeats thoughtfully. “Yes, responsibilities. Well, find me the fool who enjoys his responsibilities! Ri-ight?”
“If worst comes to worst, I think I can help,” Olyonushka joins in timidly. “I have friends in Kiev, maybe we can all stay with them . . .”
Olyonushka looks unhappy and anxious. I realize she’s trying “to live without trampling the grass.”
On a bench across the aisle, the actress with the little dog is hissing at Averchenko’s impresario, “Why is it that others can and you can’t? Why can’t you ever get anything done?” Then, in answer to her own question: “Because you are a complete idiot.”
I say quietly to Averchenko, “Your actor friends don’t seem to be getting on very well. That Fanichka and your impresario have been at each other’s throats throughout the journey. Putting on shows with those two will be hard work.”
“Yes, they have their differences,” Averchenko says calmly. “But what do you expect? Their affair’s been going on a long time now.”
“Their affair?”
I prick up my ears.
“I’m ashamed of you,” the actress is hissing. “You never shave, your tie’s all torn, your collar’s grubby. All in all, you look like a gigolo fallen on hard times.”
“Yes, you’re right,” I say to Averchenko. “There are clearly deep and powerful feelings at play.”
The impresario mutters back, “If I were a man who enjoyed scenes, madame, I would tell you that you’re a vulgar cow, and vicious too. Bear that in mind.”
“Yes,” I repeat. “Deep and powerful feelings, on both sides.”
It’s my duty, I feel, to cheer everyone up.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” I say, “why are you all looking so downcast? Remember how in the freight car you were dreaming of a bath and a good dinner? Just think—this time tomorrow we’ll probably be all clean and dressed up, sitting in a good restaurant and eating wonderful delicacies to the sound of music. There’ll be a gleaming white tablecloth, crystal glasses, flowers in vases . . .”
“I really don’t like restaurants,” Gooskin interrupts. “What’s so special about them? When my mama serves up plain broth at home, it goes down much better than the most expensive liver in the grandest of restaurants. Ri-ight? Of course, in a very expensive restaurant everything is in order, they do you a real parade. After you’re done gnawing your chicken bones, they bring you some warm water, and even soap, so you can wash your hands and face. But to go to a restaurant like that, you have to be stinking rich. Whereas in an ordinary restaurant you simply wipe your hands on the tablecloth. And where’s the fun in that? No, I don’t like restaurants. What’s so special about eating soup and having some idiot sitting next to you eating, pardon me, fruit compote.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Averchenko asks in bewilderment.
“What’s wrong with that? You must be joking! Do you really not understand? Where do you think he spits out the stones? He spits them out onto your plate. He’s not a juggler—they’re not all going to land on his own plate. No thank you! I’ve seen more than enough restaurants to last me this lifetime.”
•
Our train arrives at a station.
Kiev!
The station is crammed with people and the whole place smells of borsch. The new arrivals are in the buffet, partaking of the culture of a free country. They slurp away with deep concentration. With their elbows jutting out to either side as if to ward off any encroachment, they seem like eagles hovering over their prey. But how can anyone behave otherwise? Your reason may affirm that you are completely safe, that your borsch is your own property and that your rights to it are protected by the iron might of the German state. You may think you understand this, but your subconscious doesn’t. Your subconscious sticks out your elbows and sends your eyes out on stalks. “What if an unfamiliar, vile spoon reaches over my shoulder,” it says to itself, “and takes a scoop for the needs of the proletariat?”
We sit in the buffet with our luggage and wait for news about where we’ll be staying.
&nb
sp; The pudgy man with the beard and the wedding ring is eating his fill at the next table.
On a plate in front of him is a steak. Hovering above him is a waiter’s frightened face.
The man with the beard is laying into this waiter: “I said to you, you scoundrel, in plain Russian—steak with fried potatoes. Where are the potatoes? Where, I’m asking in plain Russian, are the potatoes?”
“Excuse me, sir, they are being fried now, sir. At this moment we only have boiled. Please be so good as to wait, sir. They’ll only take a minute, sir!”
The bearded man chokes with indignation: “Please be so good as to wait, sir! You expect me to wait while my steak gets cold! I don’t believe it—it’s a disgrace!”
A young porter, his lips pursed, is leaning against the wall and watching the “gentleman” and the waiter. The porter’s face says a great deal. This whole little scene is a gift to the Bolsheviks. What do they want with propaganda posters about capitalist hydras and counterrevolution when people are putting on shows like this on their behalf?[48]
The buffet is stuffy and it looks like there will be a long wait. I leave the station building.
The cheerful, sunny day will soon have faded. But the streets are full of life, with people hurrying from store to store . . . And then I see a wonderful and unprecedented scene, like a dream from a life forgotten, something improbable, exhilarating and even awe-inspiring—in the door of a bakery stands an officer with epaulettes on his shoulders, eating a cake! An officer with e-pau-lettes on his shoulders! Eating a cake! So there are still Russian officers in the world who can stand outside on a bright sunny afternoon with epaulettes on their shoulders. Instead of hiding away in basements like hunted animals, sick and hungry, wrapped in rags, knowing that their very existence threatens the lives of their loved ones . . .
Just imagine—daylight, sunshine, people everywhere, and in the officer’s hand, an unseen, unheard-of luxury, the stuff of legend—a cake!
I close my eyes and open them again. No, it isn’t a dream. So it must be real life. But how very strange this all is . . .
Might we all have grown so unaccustomed to life that we can never find our way back into it again?
My first impression is that the whole world (the whole of Kiev) is brimming with food, bursting with food. Steam and smoke billowing out of every door and window. Shops crammed with hams, sausages, turkeys, stuffed suckling pigs. And on the streets, against the backdrop of these stuffed suckling pigs—le tout Moscou et le tout Pétersbourg.
8
FOR A MOMENT all this seems like a festival.
But soon it begins to feel more like a station waiting room, just before the final whistle.
The hustle and bustle is too restless, too greedy to be a true festival. There is too much anxiety and fear in it. No one is giving any real thought either to their present or to their future. Everyone just grabs what they can, knowing they may have to drop it again at any moment.
The streets are swarming with newcomers. People have grouped together in the oddest of combinations: a Moscow city councillor with an actress from Rostov, a balalaika player with a lady who had been an eminent public figure, an important courtier with a smart, young provincial reporter, a rabbi’s son with the governor of a province, an actor from a small cabaret with two elderly ladies-in-waiting . . . And they all appear somehow bewildered—they keep glancing around, clutching at one another. Never mind who your companion may be—at least there’s a human hand, a human shoulder, close beside you.
The seven pairs of clean beasts and seven pairs of unclean beasts must have felt something similar in Noah’s ark. They had only just met, they were still introducing themselves, giving one another a friendly sniff—and then there they were, all feeling seasick together as they were rocked about by the rising waters.
Promenading along Kreshchatik[49] are many of those who had gone missing without a trace. Here is the public figure who, only a month before, flaring his nostrils impressively, had declared that we must not leave, that we must work and die at our posts.
“But how come you’ve left your post?” I call out unkindly.
“It had come to be too much of a whipping post, my dear!” he replies, doing his best to brazen it out. “First let me get my strength back a little. And then—who knows?”
And all the while his eyes dart anxiously about. Here, there, and everywhere.
Kreshchatik bustles with life. It is a place for both business and pleasure. In the middle of the pavement stands a well-known, all-knowing journalist. Like the host at some grand reception, he nods this way and that way, shakes hands to his left and to his right, walks a few steps with particularly eminent figures, grants others only a casual wave.
“Ah! At last!” he calls out to me. “We were expecting you here last week.”
“We?”
“Kiev!”
The crowd carries me forward and Kiev shouts after me, “See you tonight! You know, at—”
That’s all I manage to hear.
“We all dine there,” says a voice beside me.
It’s a lawyer I know. He too had disappeared from Petersburg without warning.
“How long have you been here?” I ask. “Why didn’t you come and say goodbye before you left? We were worried about you.”
He gives an embarrassed shrug.
“You know, the way it all happened . . . It really was most absurd . . .”
I hear cheery greetings from all sides—more than I have time to acknowledge.
I come across a colleague of mine from the Russian Word. “You wouldn’t believe it!” he says. “The city’s gone mad! Open any newspaper you like—you’ll find all the best writers from both Moscow and Petersburg! The theaters have been taken over by the finest of artistic talents. The Bat is here. Sobinov is here. There’s going to be a cabaret with Kurikhin in it. Ozarovsky’s staging special evenings of short plays. New plays are expected from you too. You’ll be asked to write for Kiev Thought. Vlas Doroshevich is here already, I’ve heard, and Lolo’s expected any day. We’re soon going to have a new newspaper—financed by the Hetman and edited by Gorelov. Vasilevsky’s thinking of starting a newspaper too. We won’t let you go. Life’s in full swing here.”[50]
I remember Gooskin’s words about life “taking a full swing at us.”
“People here don’t know what’s hit them,” my companion continues. “Now they’ve seen what visitors are being paid, the local journalists are talking of going on strike. ‘We’re the only ones you can rely on,’ they say. ‘Any day now our visitors will be moving on.’ And the restaurants are simply inundated by all the new customers. Cultural ‘corners’ and ‘circles’ are springing up in every square. Yevreinov will be here soon—we’ll be able to open a ‘theater of new forms.’ And we really need a Stray Dog.[51] This is a matter of the utmost urgency whose day has well and truly dawned.”
“I’m only passing through,” I say. “I’m being taken to Odessa to give some readings.”
“Odessa? Now? What do you want to go to Odessa for? It’s chaos there. You should wait until things have settled down a little. No, we’re not letting you go.”
“We?”
“Kiev.”
Heavens!
Next I see a round, familiar face—a woman I know from Moscow.
“We’ve been here for ages,” she says proudly. “We are, after all, a Kiev family. My husband’s father used to have a house here, right on Kreshchatik. Yes, we’re true Kiev natives. . . . You know, they have very decent crêpe de chine here. . . . My dressmaker—”
“Will you be going to Mashenka’s tonight?”[52] interrupts the loud bass of an actor. “She’s here for a few guest appearances. . . . The coffee there is divine. Made with cream and cognac. . . .”
Everyone eats and drinks. Everyone drinks, eats, and nods in agreement: Quick! Quick! All that matters is to have one more drink and one more meal and then to snatch up more food and drink to take with you! The last whistle i
s about to sound.
•
Olyonushka arranged for me to stay with some friends of hers. The eldest of the three girls worked in an office; the younger two were still in high school.
All three were in love with a tenor at the local opera; they were very sweet, gobbling away in their excitement like little turkeys.
They lived in a wing of a large house. The yard was so densely stacked with firewood that you needed a perfect knowledge of the approach channel in order to maneuver your way to their door. Newcomers would run aground and, their strength failing, start to shout for help. This was the equivalent of a doorbell and the girls would calmly say to one another, “Lily, someone’s coming. Can’t you hear? They’re in the firewood.”
After I had been there about three days, someone quite large got caught in the trap and began letting out goat-like cries.
Lily went to the rescue and came back with Gooskin. In only three days he had grown so much stouter that it took me a moment to recognize him.
“I thought you were still at the train station. I’ve been trying to find you somewhere to stay.”
“You really thought I’d just wait in the station buffet for days on end?”
“I thought . . . something of the kind,” said Gooskin, evidently feeling too lazy to lie with any conviction. “If you’re going to find anywhere to stay here, you have to arrange it through a special bureau. Otherwise you don’t have a chance. But, of course, if you were to make a request in person and, at the same time, provide evidence of ill health . . .”
“But I’m not in the least ill.”
“So you’re not ill? So what! You’ve probably had measles at some time in your life. They’ll write ‘has suffered from measles, must have accommodation under a roof.’ Yes, something scientific like that. Well, what do you think of Kiev? Have you been to Kreshchatik? And why are there so many blondes here—can someone explain that to me?”
“It sounds as if you don’t like blondes!” giggled one of the girls.
“Why do you say that? Brunettes are good too. I don’t want to offend anyone, but blondes have something heavenly about them whereas brunettes are more down to earth. Ri-ight?” Turning to me, Gooskin added, “Well, we need to organize an evening for you.”
