by Teffi
He talked for a long time—with real kindness and from the heart; he even offered to champion me in a duel if I thought that would help.
More publicity, I answered, was the very last thing we needed.
He made me promise that if ever I needed help, advice, or friendship, I would send him a telegram, and he would get on a train to Petersburg without delay.
I knew very well that I would never summon him, and I wasn’t even entirely confident that he would come if I did, but his kind words were a comfort and a support. They created an opening, a chink of light in a black wall.
This startlingly chivalrous gesture—so at odds with his reputation as someone self-satisfied, hardheaded, and enamored only of himself—had truly moved me, which made it all the more painful to watch him now, pacing up and down his huge room and blustering away: “Lyolya should be here in about ten days. Anyway it will only be a few weeks, if not days, before the Bolshevik regime collapses. Maybe it’s not even worth her leaving Petersburg. It’s not the safest of times to travel. I keep hearing rumors about some kind of armed bands . . .”
This was a reference to Petlyura.
•
My premonition about Spanish influenza proved remarkably accurate.
I fell ill in the night. A 104-degree fever swept down on me like a hurricane. In my semi-delirium I remembered only one thing: that at eleven o’clock, Meskhieva, one of the actresses from the Bat, was coming to pick up some little songs of mine she was going to sing in a concert. And all through the night she kept knocking at the door, and I kept getting up to let her in and then realizing that this was delirium, that nobody was knocking, and that I was still in my bed. And then there she was, knocking at my door yet again. I forced my eyes open. It was light. A loud, clear voice was calling, “Still asleep? Then I’ll come round again tomorrow.”
Then quick footsteps, receding down the passage. Tomorrow! But what if I couldn’t get up? Would it be twenty-four hours before anyone even knew I was ill? The hotel had no staff and nobody was due to visit me.
Horrified, I leapt out of bed and drummed on the door.
“I’m sick,” I called out. “Come back!”
She heard. Half an hour later some frightened friends of mine hurried round, bringing what someone with influenza needs more than anything—a bouquet of chrysanthemums—and telling me, “Well, you’re over the worst now!”
News of my illness got into the papers.
And since no one really had anything to do, since few people wanted to start anything new until “the death throes of Bolshevism” were well and truly over, my predicament evoked the most intense sympathy.
From morning until night my room was crowded with people. They must have all found it very entertaining. They brought flowers. They brought sweets, which they then ate themselves. They talked and smoked. Young couples arranged trysts on one of the windowsills. Everyone swapped theatrical and political gossip. There were people I didn’t know at all, but they smiled and helped themselves to food and drink the same as everyone else. Sometimes I felt superfluous amongst this merry crowd. Fortunately, though, they soon ceased to pay me any attention.
“Perhaps there’s a way to send them all packing?” I said timidly to Vera Ilnarskaya, who was nursing me.
“Oh no, dear, you mustn’t do that—they’d be offended. It would be awkward. Just put up with it all for a while. You can have some rest when you get better.”
I remember one evening in particular. My guests had all gone out to have dinner. Only Vera was still left, along with someone unknown to me, who was saying, in what seemed an endless drone:
“I have an estate outside Warsaw, just a small one of course. . . .”
“I have an income from this estate, just a small one of course. . . .”
Was I, or was I not, dreaming all this?
“I have meadows on this estate, just small ones of course. . . .”
“I have an aunt in Warsaw. . . .”
“Just a small one, of course,” I interrupted, surprising even myself. “But how about, if only for the sake of variety, going and calling a doctor? Yes, I can see you’re someone most kind and obliging, go and fetch me a doctor, just a small one of course . . .”
Were those last words his or mine? I wasn’t sure. I hope they were his.
The doctor came. He marveled for a while at the state of my room.
“What’s been going on in here? Have you been holding a ball?”
“No, it’s just . . . visits from well-wishers.”
“Out! Out with the lot of them! And the flowers too—get rid of them! You have pneumonia.”
I was triumphant.
“Why so cheerful all of a sudden?” he asked, scared.
“Yes, it’s what I said! Just what I said was going to happen!”
He must have thought I was delirious, and he most certainly was not going to share in my joy.
•
After I’d recovered, when I went outside for the first time, Kiev was all ice. Black ice and wind. The few pedestrians I saw were barely able to make their way along the streets. They were falling like ninepins, knocking their companions off their feet too.
I remember an editorial office I used to visit from time to time. It was halfway up an icy hill. Trying to get to it from below was hopeless—I’d manage ten steps, then slide back down again. Approaching it from above was no better; I would gain too much momentum and slide straight past. Never in my life had I encountered such ice.
The mood in the city had changed; it was no longer celebratory. Something had been extinguished. Everyone was on the alert, ears pricked, eyes darting about. Many people had quietly disappeared, to destinations unknown. There was more and more talk of Odessa.
“Things are looking up in Odessa, I’ve heard. Whereas round here . . . Peasants, armed bands . . . They’re closing in on us . . . Petlyura or something . . .”
Kiev Thought did not fear Petlyura. Petlyura was a former employee. He would, of course, remember this.
He did indeed. His very first decree was to close down Kiev Thought. Long before he entered the city, he sent his minions ahead with instructions.
Kiev Thought was perplexed, even a little embarrassed.
But close it did.
11
THEN TRUE winter set in, with snow and severe frosts.
My doctor said that living in an unheated room with broken windows after a bout of pneumonia, however amusing it might seem, was not conducive to good health.
And so my friends found me a room in a pension for high-school girls run by a very respectable lady. They promptly gathered up my belongings and moved both them and me to this new room. They worked selflessly. I remember how Vera Ilnarskaya, who had made herself responsible for the small accoutrements of my everyday life, threw into a single cardboard box a lace dress, my silk underwear, and an uncorked bottle of ink. Verochka Charova (from the Korsh Theatre in Moscow) took charge of twelve withered bouquets that she considered of sentimental value. Tamara Oksinskaya (from the Saburov Theatre) collected together all the visiting cards heaped on the windowsills. Meskhieva carefully packed the remaining sweets and empty bottles. All in all, my move was arranged briskly and efficiently. The only things they forgot were my trunk and all my dresses in the wardrobe. But the little things were all there and that’s what really matters, because it’s little things that are most often forgotten.
My new room was astonishing. The kind lady who rented it out to me had evidently furnished it with all the objects that had embellished her journey through life. There were antlers and horns of all kinds, canes, woolen pom-poms, and nine or ten small tables, their stout, heavy marble tops supported by frail, splayed, stick-like little legs. It was impossible to put anything down on these tables. You could only marvel from a distance at human ingenuity: Who would have thought it possible to rest such a weight on something so insubstantial? Sometimes one of the tables would collapse of its own accord. You’d be sitting there quit
e peacefully and then you’d hear a sigh from the other end of the room—a table swaying for a moment before crashing down to the floor.
There was also a grand piano which—amid all this clutter—we did not immediately notice. It was awkwardly located. First you had to squeeze past some horns and an étagère—only then, hemmed in by three small tables, could you sit down at it.
We decided to make everything a bit nicer and more comfortable: to drape a shawl over the unused door, to move the piano to the opposite wall, and to hang the portraits of various aunties behind the wardrobe.
No sooner said than done. There was a rumble of tables, a glassy tinkle—and one of the aunties broke free from the wall all by herself.
“Good God! What was that? If the landlady hears, I’ll be straight out on the street.”
Blonde curly-haired Lilya, who had come to welcome me on behalf of the high-school girls, also offered her help. She immediately broke a vase full of pom-poms and collapsed in horror onto the divan, right on top of the second aunty, who had been taken down and carefully placed there out of harm’s way.
A crunch and a snap. Howls. Squeals.
“Somebody sing something to drown all this racket!”
At this point everyone got down to the really important task—moving the piano.
“Wait!” I cried. “There’s a little bronze dog on top of the piano, on a malachite stand. I’m sure the landlady really treasures it. Let me take it out of the way. Yes, leave this to me—you good people just smash things.”
I took hold of the little dog and carefully began to lift. What a weight! And then—what was that terrible crash? And why did this dog suddenly feel so light? There it was, still in my hands. The malachite stand, however, now lay at my feet, smashed to bits. Who would have thought that the dog hadn’t been glued to the stand!
“That’ll fetch the landlady all right,” Lilya whispered in horror.
“Whose fault is that? Why didn’t you sing like I asked you to? You saw me picking up that little dog—that was your cue to start something choral. Well, you’d better get on and move the piano or we’ll be here all night.”
We pushed the piano out into the room, rolled it along on its casters, tucked in its long tail, and finally got it into position.
“Wonderful. Over here will be just right. Meskhieva, I’ll compose a new song for you.”
I fetched the stool, sat down, and tried to play a chord. . . . What on earth? The piano refused to play. We rolled it along a little bit further and banged a few times on the lid. It remained silent as silent can be.
A knock on the door.
“Sh!”
“Somebody sing something!”
But we couldn’t not answer the door.
It wasn’t her. It was an engineer I knew. He’d come to wish me well in my new lodgings.
“Why are you all looking so tragic?”
We told him everything, including the tragedy of the grand piano.
“The piano? I can sort that out for you in no time. First, we just need to take out the keys.”
“Darling, you’re the answer to our prayers.”
He sat himself down, twiddled something around—and out came the keys.
“There! And now back they go!”
But the keys didn’t want to go back.
The engineer went very quiet. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his brow.
A terrible suspicion began to dawn on me.
“Wait! Look me in the eye and tell me the truth. Have you ever before in your life removed the keys from a grand piano?”
“Yes!”
“And have you ever got them back in again?”
Silence.
“Tell me the truth! Have you ever got them back in again?”
“N-n-no. Never.”
•
Dreary, uneventful days.
The life that had bubbled up so noisily and excitedly had now subsided.
Returning to Moscow was impossible. Kiev was cut off from everywhere to the north. Those who were quicker and more alert had already left. Everyone, however, now had their plans. Remaining in Kiev was out of the question—and we all knew this.
Once, I was talking to the famous clairvoyant, Armand Duclos, in the foyer of a theater, after a show. A soldier on duty by the door came up to us and said, “Tell me, Mr. Duclos, will Petlyura be here soon?”
Armand frowned and closed his eyes.
“Petlyura . . . Petlyura . . . three days from now.”
Three days later, Petlyura entered the city.
Armand Duclos was extraordinary.
Before I left Moscow, I had been to several of his séances. His answers to the questions put to him were extremely accurate.
Later when we got to know each other, he admitted that he usually started these sessions with little prearranged tricks—but after a while he would start to feel strange. He would slip into a trance and find himself answering a question this way or that way without knowing why.
He was very young, not more than twenty. A pale, thin boy with a beautiful, tired face. He never talked about his background, but he spoke French quite well.
“I was alive many, many years ago. Then I was called Cagliostro.”[58]
But he lied lazily and without enthusiasm.
I think he was simply a Jewish boy from Odessa. His impresario was an energetic young student. Armand himself was quiet and sleepy and had no business sense at all. His own success meant nothing to him.
While Armand was still in Moscow, Lenin had taken an interest in him and twice summoned him to the Kremlin; Lenin wanted to know what fate held in store for him. When we asked Armand about these meetings, he was evasive: “I don’t remember. I remember only that Lenin has success till the end. As for the others, some have success and some don’t.”[59]
His impresario told us how alarming all this had been. He was well aware that “when something came over him,” Armand would quite forget who he was dealing with.
“Well, thank God that’s all behind us!”
Only a few months later, Armand was executed.[60]
•
The last act of our Kiev drama.
Petlyura was entering the city. There was a wave of arrests and searches.
Nobody wanted to go to bed at night. We all wanted to stay together, usually in Milrud’s apartment. We would play cards to keep awake and we were always listening out to see if anyone was coming. If there was a knock or a ring at the door, we hid the money and cards beneath the table. Armand often used to join us.
“No, I can’t play cards,” he said. “I mean, I know every card in advance.”
He then lost three nights in a row.
“How strange. When I was a little child, no one dared play with me.”
“But who wants to play cards with children?” we would reply.
Quiet, always rather sleepy, he neither argued nor laughed. He was a strange boy.
“I’m always half asleep. And this sleep exhausts me. It drains my blood and saps my strength.”
His beautiful face was indeed very pale. He was telling the truth.
Petlyura’s men were now patrolling the streets. Unbelievably polite gentlemen in soldiers’ greatcoats would click their heels and tell us which streets to avoid so as not to get caught in one of their raids.
“But who are you?” we would ask.
“We’re the peasant bands you all kept talking about,” these gentlemen would reply with proud humility and heavy Ukrainian accents.
The shops ran out of stock, then closed. People hid or fled. There were more and more soldiers’ greatcoats to be seen.
Milrud’s apartment was searched. Apparently little Alyoshka sprang out of the playroom with a ferocious cry:
“I’m Petlyura! Don’t you dare!”
And the patrol respectfully withdrew.
•
There was a victory parade. Vinnichenko bowed to the crowds. Never had he received such ovations for any of the pl
ays he had written.[61]
Fine fellows in new overcoats made from German cloth rode by on strong, sturdy steeds.
Muscovites said mockingly, in Ukrainian, “Long live Ukraine, from Kiev to Berlin.”[62]
And then—after a last quick walk, a last quick look—we packed our cases. Time to leave.
Not far from the city, we heard the boom of cannon.
“Where?”
“Behind Bald Mountain, I think. Seems the Bolsheviks are approaching.”
“Well, there’s no knowing when all this will be over. Have you got a travel permit?”
“Odessa! To Odessa!”
12
I WENT to say goodbye to the Lavra.[63]
“God knows when I’ll be here again!”
Yes, God knows . . .
The Lavra, the very heart of devout old Russia, was empty. No pilgrims: no old men with little knapsacks; no old women with little bundles tied to their walking sticks. The monks going about their business looked troubled and anxious.
I went down into the caves. I remembered my first visit, many years ago, with my mother, my sisters, and our old nanny. A checkered and eventful life lay between me and the long-legged girl with blonde pigtails I had once been. But my feelings of awe and fear had not changed. Just as I had crossed myself and sighed long ago, so I crossed myself and sighed now—moved by the same beautiful and ineffable sorrow emanating from the age-old vaults that had heard so many ancient Russian prayers and seen so many, oh, so many Russian tears. . . .
An old monk was selling little crosses, prayer ropes, and a miniature image of the Mother of God, glued by some miracle to the inside of a small, flat bottle with a narrow neck. Beside her were two plaited candles and a lectern with a tiny icon on it. And on her halo I read an inscription: “Rejoice, O unwedded Bride!” It was a wonderful miniature. To this day, having survived all my wanderings as a refugee, this small flat bottle—the old monk’s small miracle—stands on my Parisian mantelpiece.
I also went to say goodbye to the Cathedral of Saint Vladimir. In front of the icon of Saint Irina, I saw a little old woman, all in black, on her knees. Her shoes were old and worn, the toes turned inward, toward each other, in a way that seemed timid and endearing. She was weeping. And while the little old woman wept, the magnificent Byzantine Empress, entwined in pearls and framed in gold, gazed sternly down at her.
