I got no place to sit.
STIRKOBREYEV
Hey you sea,
sit under that fir tree.
MARIA NATALIEVNA
I feel the coming of a quarrel!
EVERYONE, in unison:
We fear the doing of a duel!
They drink up.
SERGEI FADEYEVICH
Wow, Nina Picturovna, what are these crests?
NINA PICTUROVNA
Those are my breasts.
SERGEI FADEYEVICH
Incredible! They seem so cottony.
You’re quite the cannon.
NINA PICTUROVNA
Beg your pardon,
but what do you have in your pants?
SERGEI FADEYEVICH
Me? A popgun.
Everyone laughs. Beyond the window ribbons luminesce.
KUNO PETROVICH FISCHER
Maria Natalievna, I am no monk.
Allow me to kiss your navel.
MARIA NATALIEVNA
Kiss your own tooth, madman.
Ninotchka, let’s go into the bathroom.
GUESTS
What for?
MARINA NATALIEVNA
To write the letter that comes after O.
GUESTS
Thank God!
And in the meantime we’ll inhale fresh air.
STIRKOBREYEV
In the absence of beautiful ladies,
a spruce will instantly sprout
here in an hour, or thereabout.
Let’s throw together a duel, yes?
FOMINE
Yes, I shall feel swell
to send you straight to hell.
Hey heavenly body,
you that paid us a visit,
it’s not hard for you to take this dead guy
back on your back, is it?
STIRKOBREYEV
O paralysis, king of indispositions.
Don’t you see how it would be a hundred times more beneficial
if this half-corpse
croaked before the morning orbs.
PARALYSIS and METEORITE
We’ll be your seconds. Here are your knives.
Stab. Cut. Pray.
FOMINE
I’ll butcher you now,
fresh blood will issue,
from beneath your left nipple
depression shall drip on the snow.
You’ll shut your eyes slowly,
awkwardly lie
down and notice
the other world’s cellar cornice.
STIRKOBREYEV
Don’t brag. Don’t brag.
You yourself are about to be a has-been.
Who’ll now say hello
to the cabin’s handle?
Who’ll say merci
to pants and the chest of drawers?
You dead fish,
go back into your watery sea.
A duel transforms into the famous forest.
Ghosts of birds flutter around.
The young ladies have been prolonging their correspondence epistolary.
Mad tsar Fomine
one time walked the earth,
he pressed to his brow
the toxic powder carmine.
His magic arm
stood for an old man.
God’s voice sounds
in the tense grove of night,
a lightning-fast voice,
mightier than a strong knife.
Pines haughtily grab for it
and the laughter of the fox, the whistle of the grass-snake
provide accompaniment.
The night is all in smoke.
Fomine suddenly sees a house,
it is the edifice of goat
and yet he deems with ancient reasoning
it is the plate of good and evil.
He then picks up a jug of good
and lights the candelabras
and sleeps.
The next morning, in the hour of the morning
where nowadays stir the arbres,
upon a birch he meets a beggar
who represents he goes without food.
BEGGAR
How do you do Fomine mad tsar.
FOMINE
How do you do good soul.
For many years now
I wander.
Are you a lantern?
BEGGAR
No I am starving.
I lack turnips, I lack carrots.
My frock suit is worn.
Gods have turned fierce.
Darkness is to come.
FOMINE
In your opinion,
not mine.
BEGGAR
Fine,
so much the worse.
FOMINE
Why worse,
why not the reverse?
Consider the future life after the grave.
Surely we’ll end up as something like microbes
practically incorporeal
seductive insects,
tiny diamonds, not dumb nimrods.
This transformation is a boon, I mean.
BEGGAR
Fomine, please change the scene.
I wanna eat.
FOMINE
Eat yourself.
The beggar, devouring himself, said:
Fomine you rule—they vanished
whenas the fat bodies of clocks
climbed atop multitudes in dreams
and there was confusion of voices.
THE CONVERSATION OF THE HOURS
The first hour says to the second,
I am a hermit.
The second hour says to the third,
I am an abyss.
The third hour says to the fourth,
put on morning.
The fourth hour says to the fifth,
stars rush down.
The fifth hour says to the sixth,
we are late.
The sixth hour says to the seventh,
animals are clocks also.
The seventh hour says to the eighth,
you are friends with the grove.
The eighth hour says to the ninth,
the coursing starts.
The ninth hour says to the tenth,
we are time’s bones.
The tenth hour says to the eleventh,
it may be we are couriers.
The eleventh hour says to the twelfth,
let us consider the roads.
The twelfth hour says to the first,
I’ll catch up with you in our endless race.
The first hour says to the second,
have some human sedative, friend.
The second hour says to the third,
at what point can we concur.
The third hour says to the fourth,
I bow to you as if you were a corpse.
The fourth hour says to the fifth,
we too are darkened treasures of the earth.
The fifth hour says to the sixth,
I worship the hollow world.
The sixth hour says, seventh hour,
it’s dinner time, come home.
The seventh hour says to the eighth,
I would have wanted to count another way.
The eighth hour says to the ninth,
you are like Enoch snatched up to the skies.
The ninth hour says to the tenth hour,
you are like unto an angel engulfed in fire.
The tenth hour says, eleventh hour,
for some reason you lost your moving power.
The eleventh hour says to the twelfth,
and still we are incomprehensible.
FOMINE
I shall be poisoning the clock.
Accept O clock this medicine in a tablespoon.
Another kingdom now is come.
SOPHIA MIKHAILOVNA
Please, please,
enter.
I snow sit crumble.
My uncle, my progenitor
left to see the pencil.
<
br /> FOMINE
Can it be. You are alone. You are heaven.
SOPHIA MIKHAILOVNA
Sir you see me here alone
perched gracefully on the table.
I love you all the way down,
get out your pistol.
FOMINE
You approve of me. That is superlative. Here is how happy I am.
SOPHIA MIKHAILOVNA
Sergey, Ivan and Mitya and Vladislav,
embrace me tighter with your love.
I’m afraid, I don’t know why, I’m elegant,
but everything around me is so terrible,
kiss my cheeks.
FOMINE
Rather your slipper. Rather your slipper. I do not deserve any better. Idol. Goddess. Goddess. Idol.
SOPHIA MIKHAILOVNA
You joshin’ me, am I so godly. I got a nose like a doorbell and my eyes are slits. I’m jus’ a regular dummy.
FOMINE
Oh please, for a man in love like myself everything seems better than it actually is.
To me your splendid panties have the looks
of wings,
whereas your speeches are like the books
of the novelist Anatole France.
I am in love with you.
SOPHIA MIKHAILOVNA
My golden Fomine. My watering can.
Fomine kisses and takes her. She yields to him of course. It is possible that one more person comes into being.
SOPHIA MIKHAILOVNA
Oops I think we just made a wee mess.
FOMINE
Only dogs and cats can make a wee mess. But we’re people.
SOPHIA MIKHAILOVNA
I would like to have a go at it again.
FOMINE
So what. How I love you. I’m kind of bored.
SOPHIA MIKHAILOVNA
My angel. My paladin. You are departing. When are we gonna see each other.
FOMINE
I’ll be back some time.
Weeping, they embraced.
Fomine went outside, and Sophia Mikhailovna came up to the window to watch him. Fomine went out into the street and began making water. SOPHIA MIKHAILOVNA blushed at the sight and said happily, Just like a birdie, just like a baby.
VENUS, sitting in her broken-down bedroom and trimming her last nails:
When one rapscallion didn’t come on to me,
I felt the years come unto me.
He was mustachioed and graceful
and like a dream he rose so tall.
There was some kind of weather happening,
monsoon, sirocco, or mistral.
A dead gentleman runs in.
I think I have become eroded,
I was as beautiful as a rodent,
but now I feel outmoded.
Yes, I was beauty itself but now
my belly has distended down,
my bellybutton droops as well.
My carcass has become disgusting.
Bristle disfigures it, and pimples.
I sniff the air with my nostrils.
I don’t like how I smell.
A dead gentleman runs in.
Even the thoughts that I think are different,
they are more diffident.
Why should a leper couple disrobe
in the process of carousing,
love each other on traveler’s trunks,
men and women in trousers.
Lordie, something will happen, something will happen.
A dead gentleman runs in.
I’ll take a beeswax candle
and run teach at the river, where
dark is the sole sail
and fire plays among the hair.
A dead gentleman runs in.
FOMINE
Save me Venus,
this is the other world.
VENUS
What are you saying dear soul?
FOMINE
Hope, Sophia, Charity, and Faith
once gave me advice.
VENUS
Why do you need advice. Here’s a breast.
Lie down. Rest.
FOMINE
Sneeze Venus.
Venus sneezes.
FOMINE
So this isn’t the other world.
VENUS
Let’s, let’s lie down on the mattress,
and be each other’s heart’s witness.
FOMINE
But I am headless.
I might look like a Cossack
but my tongue’s missing.
VENUS, disappointed:
Oh what a mess,
And that other thing you also lack,
I suppose.
FOMINE
Do you mind if we don’t talk about it. It bothers me. Impotent-shimpotent. Who cares. That’s not why I died, to have to do everything all over again.
VENUS
Okay, okay, go to sleep.
FOMINE
But what will be there when I wake up?
VENUS
Nothing will be there. Everything will stay the same.
FOMINE
But will I at least see the other world?
VENUS
Go to hell.
Fomine sleeps. VENUS washes and sings:
I love boys
that have eleven fingertoys
and I don’t want to die.
And so I’m gonna live like an animal. Watch me moo.
The goddess Venus moos
but God in heaven is mute.
He does not hear her lowing.
Silence stays everywhere unflowing.
FOMINE, waking up:
What is this, a cowshed or something. I better get out of here.
Lower the gangplank, hey you on board!
I’m going to look for the ways of the Lord.
VENUS
I wish somebody’d pull down your knickers and snip off what you ain’t got. Run along, run along.
A dead gentleman runs in.
FOMINE
I see a womanflower
sit on a nocturnal vase,
the flow under her buttocks
forms another phase
of otherworldly properties.
I am full of dreams and anxieties.
I look over there,
there there is a star,
I look here in confusion
but see
the nest of humanity
and the symbols of baptism.
Look, having packed a mirror, sack and candles,
a rider gallops from room to room.
The lambs expectorate.
O woman! O mother!
You sleep under a blanket,
tired of elevating your legs,
yet still you yearn to be projected
in dreams to certain men in love,
your belly decorated with a plume.
I warn each twig in bloom:
Under the ax I met my doom.
We ask: how does she does know that’s what she is?
WOMAN, waking with resplendent eyes:
I had a horrifying nightmare.
I dreamt my skirt had disappeared
and on my fur coat mountains rose
and something carried off my voice.
As if the men of heaven not earth
with tin wings clapping on their backs
clamored for bread or was it death.
I saw the pocks of their faces,
I saw none like in other places.
I am a woman! I declared
and soundlessly licked clean the hands
of brutal angels of despair,
plucking various hairs from my figure.
How terrifying was my nightmare.
My arms and legs rustled from fear,
inform me God what it was for.
I hadn’t thought a lot about ashes and dust before,
but now I will.
FOMINE
Think, smile like a candle,
you probably
won’t be able to guess.
Death is the hedgehog
of death.
WOMAN
My mind is weak,
I also am a dummy.
I hear the noise of death,
I hear nature speak.
All objects live
a short time only,
summer and spring only,
Tuesday and Thursday.
Passing your time
in passing away,
in amorous flailing
nailing it, you
are funny maiden,
you think it’s all milk and honey.
No sweet baby
that’s not what life is like,
and you will come to an end with a belch
like a palmgrove or the lottery.
MAIDEN
Excuse me but your remonstrance
would sound fitting somewhere by the service entrance.
You natural idiot don’t exactly sparkle with wisdom
as do the distinguished scientists Karl Marx, Bekhterev, and Professor Ohm.
Everyone knows their end will come,
everyone knows their lead will run.
This is just dumb!
I’m not yet a skeleton,
I’m not scared of some infernal brigadier.
Come back, Fomine, moan, whisper, peep right here.
FOMINE
Me, peep? You nonentity,
what you got that’s worth looking at.
WOMAN
Have you been standing like this for long?
FOMINE
I don’t remember. Five or seven days.
I lost count.
I don’t feel like myself.
And how are you feeling.
WOMAN
Me? I yearn, I yearn,
I yearn to toss and turn.
She tosses and turns this way and that.
FOMINE howls:
You twilight, you mutable,
you rotten egg!
Victory, O Lord, Victory,
I knew its look immediately.
GOD
So what is its look?
FOMINE
A look most geographical, even a landscape.
NOSOFF
Above all other arts
I value music.
Only in music do we see the bones of feelings.
Music is glassy. It is like a mirror.
In art of music the creator
comes in tenth place.
He is the merchant of the abstract,
in him the human being falls mute.
When you pick up the violin,
when you pick up the tambourine,
Alexander Vvedensky Page 5
