Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida (Penguin Classics)

by Chandler, Robert

  Platonov was thinking about all this as he stood by the gate with a log on his shoulder, waiting for the next roll-call. The firewood was brought in and stacked, and the people, jostling and swearing, hurried back into the dark log barrack.

  When his eyes had got used to the dark, Platonov saw that by no means every worker had gone out to work. In the far corner, on the upper bed-boards, where they had taken the only light – an oil-lamp with no glass – seven or eight men were sitting in a circle round two other men who had their legs crossed like Tatars and were playing cards across a dirty pillow they had placed between them. The smoky lamp trembled, its flame lengthening and rocking the shadows.

  Platonov sat down on the edge of the bed-boards. His shoulders and knees ached; his muscles were trembling. Platonov had been brought to Jankhar only that morning, and this had been his first day’s work. There were no free places on the boards.

  ‘Any moment now the game will break up,’ thought Platonov, ‘and I’ll be able to lie down.’

  The game up above finished. A black-haired man with a moustache and a long nail on the little finger of his left hand rolled over towards the edge of the boards.

  ‘Well then, let’s have a look at that Ivan Ivanovich over there!’

  Platonov was woken by a prod in the back.

  ‘Hey you – you’re being called.’

  ‘Well, where is this Ivan Ivanovich?’ came the voice from up above.

  ‘I’m not Ivan Ivanovich,’ said Platonov, screwing up his eyes.

  ‘He won’t come, Fedechka.’

  ‘Won’t he now?’

  Platonov was pushed out into the light.

  ‘Hope to live?’ Fedya asked him quietly, rotating his little finger with its long dirty nail in front of Platonov’s eyes.

  ‘Who doesn’t?’ answered Platonov.

  A powerful punch in the face knocked him off his feet. Platonov picked himself up and wiped off the blood with his sleeve.

  ‘That’s no way to answer,’ Fedya explained affectionately. ‘I’m sure that’s not the way you were taught to answer at college, Ivan Ivanovich!’

  Platonov remained silent.

  ‘Bugger off now,’ said Fedya. ‘Go and lie down by the shit bucket. That’s your place now. One squeak from you – and we wring your neck.’

  This was no empty threat. Platonov had already seen two men being strangled with towels – in settlement of some ‘thieves” score. Platonov lay down on the damp, stinking planks.

  ‘Brothers, I’m bored,’ said Fedya, yawning. ‘Someone might at least give my heels a scratch.’

  ‘Mashka, hey, Mashka, come and scratch Fedya’s heels.’

  Into the strip of light emerged Mashka, a pale, pretty ‘thief’ about eighteen years old.

  He pulled off Fedya’s worn yellow shoes, carefully slipped off his torn dirty socks and, smiling, began to scratch Fedya’s heels. Fedya was ticklish; he was giggling and shaking.

  ‘Get lost,’ he said suddenly. ‘You can’t scratch. You don’t know how to.’

  ‘But Fedya, I…’

  ‘Get lost, I said. Scraping and clawing at me like that. No finesse.’

  The onlookers nodded their heads sympathetically.

  ‘In Kosoy, now, I had a Yid. He knew how to scratch. Brothers, did he know how to scratch! An engineer.’

  And Fedya plunged into his memories of a Yid who had once scratched his heels.

  ‘But Fedya, Fedya, what about the new boy? Don’t you want to try him?’

  ‘Huh,’ said Fedya. ‘His sort don’t know how to scratch. Still, you can bring him along.’

  Platonov was brought out into the light.

  ‘Ey, Ivan Ivanovich, you look after the lamp!’ Fedya ordered. ‘And at night you can put wood on the fire. Yes, and in the morning you can empty the slop pail. The orderly will show you where.’

  Platonov remained obediently silent.

  ‘In exchange,’ Fedya explained, ‘you will receive a bowl of soup. I don’t eat that swill anyway. Right, now go and sleep.’

  Platonov lay down in his former spot. The workers were nearly all asleep, huddled up in twos or threes for warmth.

  ‘I’m bored,’ said Fedya, ‘the nights are too long. If only someone here could pull novels. In Kosoy, now…’

  ‘But Fedya, Fedya, what about the new boy? Don’t you want to try him?’

  ‘That’s an idea,’ said Fedya, coming back to life. ‘Bring him along.’

  Platonov was brought along.

  ‘Listen,’ said Fedya, almost ingratiatingly. ‘I got a little carried away just now.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ Platonov said through clenched teeth.

  ‘Listen now. Can you pull novels?’

  A light gleamed in Platonov’s dull eyes. He could – and how! In the investigation prison, his whole cell had been spellbound while he told the story of Count Dracula. But they had been people. Whereas this lot? Should he become court jester to the Duke of Milan – a jester who was fed for a good jest and beaten for a bad one? But there was another way of looking at it all. He would teach them about real literature. He would enlighten them. He would awaken in them an interest in art, in the word; even here, in the lower depths, he would do his duty, fulfil his calling. As had long been his way, Platonov did not want to admit to himself that it was simply a matter of being fed, of receiving an extra bowl of soup not for carrying out a slop bucket, but for other, more dignified work. More dignified? No, he wouldn’t really be an enlightener – he would be more like someone scratching a criminal’s dirty heels. But the cold, the beatings, the hunger…

  Smiling tensely, Fedya waited for an answer.

  ‘Y-yes, I can,’ said Platonov, and smiled for the first time on that difficult day. ‘I can pull novels.’

  ‘You darling!’ said Fedya more cheerfully. ‘Come on then, climb up here. And here’s some bread for you. Tomorrow you’ll get something better. Come on, sit on this blanket. And have a smoke!’

  Platonov, who had not smoked for a week, drew with painful pleasure on a stub of makhorka.

  ‘What’s the name then?’

  ‘Andrey,’ said Platonov.

  ‘Well then, Andrey, how about something nice and long that’s got a bit of spice in it? Something like The Count of Monte Cristo. None of that stuff about tractors.’

  ‘Les Misérables, perhaps?’ Platonov suggested.

  ‘Is that the one about Jean Valjean? I heard that in Kosoy.’

  ‘The Club of the Knaves of Hearts then. Or The Vampire?’1

  ‘Fine. Let’s have those Knaves… Silence, you swine!’

  Platonov cleared his throat.

  ‘In the city of St Petersburg, in the year 1893, a mysterious crime was committed…’

  It was getting light when Platonov found he had no more strength left: ‘And with that the first part comes to a close.’

  ‘Great stuff!’ said Fedya. ‘That’s the spirit! Come and lie down with us now. There isn’t much time left for sleep – it’s dawn. You’ll have to snatch a bit of shut-eye while you’re out at work – you must get your strength up for this evening!’

  Platonov was already asleep.

  They were being taken out to work. A tall country lad, who had slept through yesterday’s Knaves of Hearts, gave Platonov a vicious shove as they went through the door: ‘Watch where you’re going, you reptile!’

  Someone immediately whispered something in the lad’s ear.

  As they were forming into ranks, the tall lad went up to Platonov.

  ‘Don’t tell Fedya I hit you. I didn’t realize, brother, that you’re a novelist.’

  ‘I won’t,’ answered Platonov.

  Written in 1954; first published in 1967

  Translated by Robert Chandler and Nathan Wilkinson

  DUCK

  The mountain stream was already gripped by ice, and in the shallows there was no stream at all. The shallows had been the first part to freeze and after a month nothing was left there of su
mmer’s thundering, threatening water; even the ice had been crushed, ground down and shattered by horses’ hooves, tyres and felt boots. But the stream was still alive, its water still breathing – white steam was rising up from the bits of open water, the patches still free of ice.

  An exhausted duck, a diver, flopped onto the water. The flock had flown south long ago, the duck had been left behind. Everything was still bright, snowy – especially bright because of the snow that covered the whole naked forest, that covered everything up to the horizon. The duck wanted to rest, just a little, and then rise up and fly – fly away after its flock.

  The duck had no strength to fly. The huge weight of its wings dragged it to the ground, but the water was a support, a refuge – the open patches of water seemed to the duck to be a living river.

  But before the duck had looked round, before it had caught its breath, its keen ear registered danger – the rumble of danger.

  A man was running down the snowy hillside, stumbling on frozen tussocks of grass that now, towards evening, had begun to freeze still harder. He had seen the duck long ago and had been watching it with a secret hope. Now this hope had been realized – the duck had settled on the ice.

  The man had been creeping up on the duck but had lost his footing. The duck noticed him and the man began to run, no longer trying to hide. The duck was too tired to fly. It only needed to take off and, apart from threats and curses, nothing would have threatened it. But to lift itself up into the sky it needed strength in its wings – and the duck was too tired. All it could do was dive. It vanished in the water and the man, armed with some kind of heavy stick, stayed by the patch of water where the duck had gone under, waiting for its return. Soon, after all, the duck would need to breathe.

  Twenty yards away, however, lay more open water. The man swore as he saw that the duck had swum under the ice and surfaced in this other patch of water. But it was no more able to fly than before. And it was wasting whole seconds in resting.

  The man tried to break up the ice, to smash it, but with only rags for footwear this was impossible.

  He thumped the ice with his stick. The ice began to crumble a little, but it didn’t break. The man ran out of strength and, breathing heavily, sat down on the ice.

  The duck swam round its patch of water. The man began to run, cursing and throwing stones at the duck, and the duck dived down and reappeared on the first patch of water.

  And so they went on, man and duck, until darkness fell.

  It was time to return to the barrack, to give up on this chance hunt. The man regretted wasting his strength on this mad pursuit. Hunger had prevented him from thinking properly, from working out a sure way of tricking the duck; the impatience of hunger had led him astray, stopping him from constructing a reliable plan. The duck was still out there in the middle of the ice, on its patch of water. It was time to return to the barrack. The man had not been trying to catch the duck in order to cook and eat the meat of a bird. A duck is a bird, and that means meat, doesn’t it? To cook the duck in an iron pot or, better still, bury it in the embers of a fire. To coat the duck with clay and bury it in glowing purple embers, or simply throw it into the fire. The fire would burn down and the duck’s clay jacket would crack. The fat inside would be hot and slippery. This fat would flow onto his fingers, it would congeal on his lips. No, this was not why the man had been trying to catch the duck. Hazily, confusedly, other plans had been forming, taking vague shape in his brain. He’d take this duck to the foreman, he’d give it to him as a present – and then the foreman would strike the man off the ominous list being drawn up that night. The whole barrack knew about this list, and a man tried not to think about what was impossible, what was beyond his reach – how to escape the transport and stay here on this site, with these workbrigades. Here the hunger was bearable, and enough is as good as a feast.

  But the duck was still on the water. It had been very difficult for the man to take a decision himself, to act independently, to do something his daily life had not prepared him for. He had not been taught to hunt ducks. That was why his movements had been helpless, clumsy. He hadn’t been taught to think about the possibility of such a hunt – his brain couldn’t come up with correct answers to the unexpected questions life posed. He had been taught to live differently, without needing to take decisions of his own, with another will – someone else’s will – in charge of events. It is uncommonly difficult to meddle in one’s own fate, to ‘refract’ fate. And maybe that’s all for the best – a duck dies on a patch of water, a man in a barrack.

  His frozen, ice-scratched fingers tried to warm themselves against his breast – trembling from the aching pain of incurable frostbite, the man had tucked his hands, both of them, under his shirt. There was little warmth in his hungry body, and the man returned to the barrack, pushed his way through to the stove and still couldn’t get warm. His body was shaking, shuddering unstoppably.

  The foreman looked in through the barrack door. He’d seen the duck too, he’d seen the dead man chasing the dying duck. The foreman didn’t want to leave this settlement either – who knew what lay in store for him at the next site? The foreman had been counting on a generous present – a live duck and a pair of trousers from a free worker – with which to soften the heart of the work superintendent, who was still asleep. When he woke up, the superintendent would then cross the foreman off the list – not the old slogger who’d caught the duck, but himself, the foreman.

  In his bed, the work superintendent was rolling a ‘Rocket’ cigarette between practised fingers. He too had seen the beginning of the hunt, through the window. If the duck were caught, the carpenter could knock up a cage and the superintendent could take the duck along to the commandant, or rather to his wife, Agnya Petrovna. And the superintendent’s future would be assured.

  But the duck was left to die on its patch of water. And everything went on just as if the duck had never come to those parts at all.

  Written in 1963; first published in 1970

  Translated by Robert Chandler and Nathan Wilkinson

  ALEKSANDR ISAYEVICH SOLZHENITSYN (b. 1918)

  Solzhenitsyn was born in Kislovodsk. He studied mathematics, and he worked as a schoolteacher for several months before the outbreak of the Second World War. Like his father under the Tsarist regime, he then served as an artillery officer. In 1945 he was sentenced to eight years in the Gulag for criticizing Stalin in a letter to a friend. Shortly before his release, he was operated on for stomach cancer. A year later, in 1954, he was admitted to an oncological clinic in Tashkent; he responded unusually well to treatment. At the height of Khrushchev’s ‘Thaw’ in 1962, Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, a realistic evocation of life in a labour camp, was published to huge acclaim. Other short works were published in the Soviet Union, but the novels Cancer Ward and The First Circle could be published only in the West. Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Writers’ Union in 1969 and deported to the West in 1974, after the publication of The Gulag Archipelago. After two years in Zurich, he settled in Vermont. He returned to Russia in 1994.

  Few books have had the political impact of The Gulag Archipelago, a long history of the Soviet system of labour camps. It is possible that Solzhenitsyn played an important role in the Soviet Union’s eventual collapse. Solzhenitsyn’s heroism, however, no longer commands automatic respect. Liberals have long been repelled by his reactionary Slavophilism, and he is now seen in Russia as an anachronism. Few people have read more than a small part of his most recent work, The Red Wheel, a cycle of huge novels set between 1914 and 1917. The subtlety and tenderness of some of his earlier work has been forgotten.

  The most striking chapter in Solzhenitsyn’s memoir Invisible Allies is about an experience of his while he was living in a small town in Kazakhstan, released from the Gulag but not yet officially ‘rehabilitated’. One of the other exiles is the childlike Zubov, a born conspirator. When Solzhenitsyn first recites to him the poetry and plays he has comp
osed and memorized in the camps, Zubov’s only response is to express amazement that Solzhenitsyn should so burden his memory. He makes Solzhenitsyn a box with a hidden drawer. Until then Solzhenitsyn has never dared write anything down, and he has had to devote one week in every month to ‘reviewing’ the material he has memorized. Freed from this burden, and from the fear of confusing his memory, he can afford for the first time to rework his texts. Solzhenitsyn describes Zubov’s gift as ‘no less of a liberation than stepping out of the camp gates’. ((London: Harvill, 1997), p.]sb[9).

  Solzhenitsyn’s devotion to his cause is beyond question. What Invisible Allies makes sadly, if inadvertently, clear is the emotional price he paid for his heroism. He writes warmly and vividly about his friends from his first years after being released. The ‘allies’ described in the later chapters, however, are cyphers; people have ceased to matter to him except as assistants in his heroic endeavour.

  ‘What a Pity’, one of Solzhenitsyn’s earliest stories, is surprisingly little known. Based on a true incident later recounted in Part Six of The Gulag Archipelago, it is set in 1952, the year before Stalin’s death.

  WHAT A PITY

  The institution Anna Modestovna had to go to for the document was closed for lunch. This was annoying but it made sense to wait: it would only be another fifteen minutes, and she could get everything finished before her own lunch break was over.

  Anna Modestovna didn’t want to wait on the staircase, so she went back outside.

  It was a late October day, damp but not cold. There had been some fine drizzle during the night and in the morning, but it had stopped. Lorries rushed by along the tarmac, sometimes sparing the passers-by but more often spraying them with thin mud. There was something appealing about the grey, raised boulevard between the carriageways, and Anna Modestovna crossed on to it.

  There was hardly anyone at all on the boulevard, even in the distance. Here, if you avoided the puddles, you could walk over the coarse sand without getting your shoes in the least wet. Under the trees lay a dark layer of damp leaves and, if you went close, a faint smell seemed to waft up from them – perhaps left over from when the leaves were alive, or perhaps the beginning of decay; in any case, between the two carriageways of exhaust fumes, this boulevard was a rest for your lungs.