by Teffi
Valya stroked me indulgently on the cheek with her soft hand, which was warm and sticky, and tried to comfort me:
“Don’t cry, you silly. I’ll buy you some money.”
1926
Translated by Rose France
STAGING POSTS
1
On that morning it was always sunny.
The weather was always bright and cheerful. So, at least, both Liza and Katya remembered it for the rest of their lives.[1]
On that morning, Nanny would always dress them in new, light-coloured dresses. Then she would go to the “big” dining room, where the adults were drinking tea, and come back up again with half a hard-boiled egg, a piece of kulich and a piece of paskha[2] for each of them.
Nanny herself always broke her Lenten fast early in the morning when she came back from the Liturgy. She would have cream with her coffee, and the children knew that she would grumble all day and start to feel out of sorts by evening.
The hard-boiled egg would always get stuck somewhere in Liza’s chest and they would have to pummel her hard on the back to dislodge it.
The housekeeper, who on that day always smelt of vanilla, would come to wish them a happy Easter.
And she would tell them the story of how, twenty years ago, the mistress of a certain house had made a baba[3] using beaten egg white, and how the baba had “fallen in the oven”. And the mistress had strung herself up from the shame of it.
Liza knew this story, but she could never work out which of the two women had strung herself up and which had fallen into the oven: the baba or the mistress? She imagined a huge blazing oven, like the “fiery furnace” in the holy pictures into which the three youths were thrown.[4] And she imagined a great fat baba—the mistress—falling into the oven. In short, she couldn’t make head nor tail of it, but it was clearly something horrid, even though the housekeeper told the story cheerfully, with relish.
The housekeeper would also always reminisce about a certain August Ivanovich, a gentleman she had once worked for.
“Would you believe it—a German and all, but such a religious man he was! All through Holy Week he wouldn’t take a bite of meat. ‘It will taste all the better when I break my fast on Easter morning,’ he used to say. A German and all, but he would never sit down to Easter breakfast without ham on the table—not for all the world. That’s how religious he was!”
In the evening Liza remembered something very important, went along to her elder sister and said, “Last year, you told me you were already a growing girl, and I was still a child. But this year I fasted for Lent, so that means I’m a growing girl now too.”
Her sister turned away, annoyed, and muttered, “You may be a growing girl, but I’m a young lady. Anyway, you should be in the nursery. Go away, or I’ll tell Mademoiselle.”
Liza pondered these words bitterly. She would never catch up with Masha. In four years’ time she herself might be a young lady, but by then, Masha would already be an old maid. She would never catch up with her.[5]
2
The church is crowded and stuffy. Candles splutter quietly in the hands of the worshippers. A pale blue blanket of incense smoke is spread out high in the dome. Down below—the gold of the icons, black figures and the flames of the candles. All around—black, candlelight and gold.
Liza is tired. She breaks off pieces of melted wax, rolls them into pellets and sticks them back onto the candle, noting how much of the Gospel the priest has read. The priest is reading well, clearly enough for Liza to hear him even though she is standing a long way back.
Liza listens to the familiar phrases but cannot concentrate. She is distracted by the old woman in front of her, who keeps turning round malevolently and piercing Liza with a cold stare, with a yellow-ringed eye like the eye of a fish. The old woman is afraid that Liza will singe her fox-fur collar.
Liza is also distracted by all kinds of other thoughts. She is thinking of her friend: fair, curly-headed Zina. Zina is like a bee—all honey and gold. Her bronze hair grows in tight curls. One summer, at the dacha, Zina had been sitting holding a little lapdog, and a woman coming past had said, “Humph, just look at that . . . poodle!” And in all seriousness Zina had asked, “Was she talking about me, or Kadochka?” Zina is silly, and so like a bee that Liza calls her Zuzu.
What is the priest reading about now? “And the second time the cock crew.”[6] How had it all happened? Night. A fire in the courtyard of the high priest. It must have been cold. People were keeping warm next to the fire. And Peter was sitting with them. Liza loved Peter; for her he always had a special place among the apostles. She loved him because he was the most passionate of them. She didn’t like to think that Peter had denied Christ. When they had asked him if he had been with Jesus of Nazareth, and he had not admitted it, it was only because he didn’t want to be driven away. After all, he had followed Christ into the high priest’s courtyard—he had not been afraid then.
Liza thinks of how Peter wept and of how he walked away “the second time the cock crew”, and her heart aches, and, in her soul, she walks side by side with Peter, past the guards, past the terrible, cruel soldiers, past the high priest’s servants, who look on with malevolent suspicion, and out through the gate and into the black, grief-stricken night.
And so the night goes on. From the square outside Pontius Pilate’s house comes the hubbub of the crowd. And just then a voice, loud and forceful as fate itself, cries out, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” And it seems as if the flames of the candles shiver, and an evil black breath spreads through the church: “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” And from age to age it has been passed down, that evil cry. What can we do, how can we make amends, how can we silence that cry, so that we no longer need hear it?
Liza feels her hands grow cold; she feels her whole body transfixed in a sort of ecstasy of sadness, with tears running down her cheeks. “What is it? Why am I crying? What’s the matter with me?”
“Perhaps I should tell Zuzu,” she thinks. “But how can I make Zuzu understand? Will Zuzu be able to understand how the whole church fell silent, how the flames of the candles shivered, and how that loud, terrible voice called out, ‘Crucify Him! Crucify Him!’? I won’t be able to tell her all that. If I don’t tell it well, Zuzu won’t understand anything. But if she does understand, if she feels what I feel, how wonderful, how glorious that would be. It would be something quite new. I think somehow we would start to live our whole lives differently. Dear Lord, help me be able to tell it!”
•
Easter Sunday was always jolly. A great many visitors would come to wish them a happy Easter. Liza had put on a spring dress made to a pattern of her own choosing. And she had chosen it because the caption beneath it in the fashion magazine read: “A dress for the young lady of thirteen”. Not for a little girl, or for a growing girl, but for a young lady.
Zuzu came round for breakfast. She was looking pleased, as if she were full of secrets. “Let’s go to your room. Quick. I have so much to tell you,” she whispered.
The news really was extraordinary: a cadet! A divine cadet! And not a young boy, he was sixteen already. He could sing “Tell her that my fiery soul . . .”[7] Zuzu hadn’t heard him, but Vera Yaroslavtseva had told her he sang very well. And he was in love with Zuzu. He had seen her at the skating rink and on Palm Sunday at Vera Yaroslavtseva’s. He had seen Liza, too.
“Yes, he’s seen you. I don’t know where. But he said you were a magnificent woman.”
“Did he really?” Liza gasped. “Did he really say that? And what does he look like?”
“I don’t know for sure. When we went for a walk on Palm Sunday there were two cadets walking behind us, and I don’t know which of the two he was. But I think he was the darker one, because the other one was ever so fair and round, not the sort to have strong feelings.”
“And you think he’s in love with me, too?”
“Probably. Anyway, what of it? It’s even more fun if he’s in love with both of us!”
<
br /> “Don’t you think that’s immoral? It feels a little strange to me.”
The bee-like Zuzu, all curls and honey, pursed her rosy lips mockingly.
“Well, I’m amazed at you, truly I am. The Queen of Sheba had all the peoples of the world in love with her—and here you are, afraid of just one cadet. That’s plain silly.”
“And it’s really true, what he said about me? That I’m . . .”
Liza was embarrassed to repeat those extraordinary words (“a mag-ni-fi-cent wo-man”).
“Of course it’s true,” said Zuzu, in a matter-of-fact way. “It’s what Vera Yaroslavtseva told me. Do you think she’d make up something like that just for fun? She’s probably bursting with envy.”
“But all the same, don’t you think it might be a sin?” Liza fretted. And then: “Wait, there’s something I wanted to tell you. And now I’ve forgotten. Something important.”
“Well, it’ll come back to you. We’re being called to breakfast.”
In the evening, when she was going to bed, Liza went up to the mirror, looked at her fair hair, at her sharp little face with its freckled nose, smiled and whispered, “A magnificent woman.”
3
The night was black.
Over to starboard, the sea flowed into the sky and it seemed that there, quite close, only a few metres from the ship, lay the end of the world. A black void, space, eternity.
Over to port, one or two little lights glimmered in the distance. They were alive, flickering, moving. Or were we just imagining this, since we all knew there was a town there? Living people, movement. Life.
After two terrible, boring weeks on board, with nobody sure where they were going and when they would arrive, or whether they would ever feel the earth beneath their feet again, or whether that earth would be kind to them or whether it would lead them to sorrow, torment and death; after that, how frustrating it was to see those living lights and not dare to sail towards them.
In the morning the captain promised to contact the shore, find out the situation there and then decide what to do.
Who was in the town? Who had control of it? Friend or foe? Whites or Reds? And if it was in enemy hands, where could we go? Farther east? But we wouldn’t get far on this little coaster. We’d be drowned.[8]
Tired people wandered about on deck, looking towards the lights.
“I don’t want to look at those lights,” said Liza. “It makes me feel even more hopeless. I’d rather look at the black, terrible night. It feels closer to me. But isn’t the sea making a strange booming sound? What is it?”
A sailor passed by.
“Can you hear?” asked Liza. “Can you hear the sea booming?”
“Yes,” said the sailor, “it’s church bells from the shore. That’s a good sign. It means the Whites are there. Today is Holy Thursday. The Feast of the Twelve Gospels.”
The Twelve Gospels. A memory comes back, from long ago. Black, gold, candlelight. The pale blue smoke of incense. A little girl with blond braids clasps her hands around a wax candle that drips and flickers. She clasps her hands and weeps, “What can we do, how can we make amends, how can we silence that cry, so that we need no longer hear it: ‘Crucify Him! Crucify Him!’ ”
How strangely and clearly it all came back to her! So much time had passed, such a vast life, and then suddenly that moment—which, at the time, she had forgotten almost immediately—had suddenly come right up to her, in the form of church bells booming over the water, in the form of lights glowing on the shore like wax candles. It had caught up with her and now it was standing there beside her. It would never go away again. Never again? And Zuzu? Would Zuzu come running up again too, to buzz, to dance, to fly around her? The Zuzus of this world run fast, after all. They always catch up . . .
“And the second time the cock crew . . .”
1940
Translated by Rose France
THE WHITE FLOWER
Our friends the Zaitsevs live out of town.[1]
“The air is so much better out in the suburbs,” they say.
That is, they can’t afford to live where the air is bad.
A small group of us went to visit them.
We set off without any mishap. That is, apart from minor details: we didn’t take enough cigarettes, one of us lost her gloves, another forgot her door key. And then, at the station, we bought one ticket less than we needed. Well, anyone can make a mistake. We counted wrong. Even though there were only four of us.
It was a little awkward, actually, that we counted wrong. Apparently, in Hamburg, there was once a horse that could count beautifully, right up to six . . .
And we got out without any mishap at the right station. Though we did get out once or twice before—at every station, as a matter of fact. But every time, realizing our mistake, we had, very sensibly, got back in the carriage.
When we arrived at our destination we had a few more awkward moments. It turned out that none of us knew the Zaitsevs’ address. Each of us was relying on the others.
A quiet, gentle voice came to our aid: “You’re here!”
It was the Zaitsevs’ daughter: a girl of eleven, clear-eyed, with blond Russian plaits just like I had had at that age (plaits pulled so many, many times by other children, plaits that brought me no end of grief!).
She had come to meet us.
“I really didn’t think you’d get here!” she said.
“Why?”
“Well, Mama kept saying that you’d either miss the train or get the wrong one.”
I was a little offended. I’m actually very punctual. Recently, when I was invited to a ball, not only did I not arrive late—I was a whole week early.
“Ah, Natasha, Natasha!” I said. “You don’t know me very well yet!”
Her clear eyes looked at me thoughtfully, then down at the ground.
Delighted that we now knew where we were going, we decided to go and sit in a café for a while, then to hunt down some cigarettes, then try to telephone Paris and then . . .
But the fair-haired girl said very seriously, “No, you absolutely mustn’t. We must go back home right away. They’re expecting us.”
So, shamefaced and obedient, we set off in single file behind the young girl.
We found our hostess at the stove.
She was looking bemusedly into a saucepan.
“Natasha, quick! Tell me what you think? What is this I’ve ended up with—roast beef or salt beef ?”
The girl had a look.
“No, my angel,” she said. “This time it looks like beef stew.”
“Wonderful! Who’d have thought it?” cried Madame Zaitseva, delighted.
Dinner was a noisy affair.
We were all very fond of one another, all enjoying ourselves, and all in the mood to talk. We all talked at once. Somebody talked about the journal Contemporary Notes.[2] Somebody talked about how you shouldn’t pray for Lenin. That would be a sin. After all, the Church didn’t pray for Judas. Somebody talked about Parisian women and dresses, about Dostoevsky, about the recent spelling reform,[3] about the situation of writers abroad and about the Dukhobors,[4] and somebody wanted to tell us how the Czechs cook eggs, but she never succeeded. She kept talking away, but she was constantly interrupted.
And in all the hubbub the young girl, now wearing an apron, walked round the table, picking up a fork that had fallen onto the floor, moving a glass away from the edge of the table, seeing to all our needs, taking our worries to heart, her blond plaits glinting as bright as ever.
At one point she came up to one of us and held out a ticket.
“Look,” she said. “I want to show you something. In your own home, is it you who looks after the housekeeping? Well, when you next buy some wine, ask for one of these tickets. When you’ve collected a hundred tickets, they’ll give you six towels.”
She kept pointing things out to us and explaining things. She very much wanted to help—to help us live in the world.
“How wonderful it
is here,” enthused our hostess. “After the lives we led under the Bolsheviks! It’s barely believable. You turn on a tap—and water comes out. You go to light the stove—and there’s firewood already there.”
“Eat up, my angel,” the girl whispered. “Your food will go cold.”
We talked until it grew dark. The fair-haired girl had for some time been repeating something to each of us in turn. At last somebody paid attention.
“You need to catch the seven o’clock train,” she had been saying. “You must go to the station straight away.”
We grabbed our things and ran to the station.
There we had one last, hurried conversation.
“We need to buy Madame Zaitseva a dress tomorrow. Very modest, but showy. Black, but not too black. Narrow, but it must look full. And most important of all, one she won’t grow tired of.”
“Let’s take Natasha with us. She can advise us.”
And off we went again: Contemporary Notes, Gorky, French literature, Rome . . .
And the fair-haired girl was walking about, saying something, trying to convince us of something. At last, somebody listened.
“You need to go over the bridge to the other platform. Don’t wait till the train comes in or you’ll have to rush and you might miss it.”
The next day, in the shop, the graceful figure of Madame Zaitseva was reflected in two triple mirrors. A little salesgirl with pomaded hair and short legs was draping one dress after another over her. And on a chair, her hands politely folded, sat the fair-haired girl, dispensing advice.
“Oh!” said Madame Zaitseva, flitting about between the mirrors. “This one is lovely. Natasha, why aren’t you giving me any advice? Look, isn’t that beautiful—with the grey embroidery on the front. Quick, tell me what you think!”
“No, my angel, you mustn’t buy a dress like that. How could you go about every day with a grey stomach? It would be different if you had a lot of dresses. But as it is, it’s not very practical.”
