by Teffi
“Well, fancy you saying that!” her mother protested. But she didn’t dare disobey.
We began to make our way out.
“Oh!” cried Madame Zaitseva, “Just look at these collars! They’re just what I’ve been dreaming of! Natasha, take me away from them quickly, don’t let me get carried away!”
Concerned, the fair-haired girl took her mother by the hand.
“Come this way, my angel, don’t look over there. Come over here and look at the needles and thread.”
“You know what?” whispered Madame Zaitseva, with a sideways glance at her daughter. “She heard what we were saying about Lenin yesterday. And in the evening she said, ‘I pray for him every day. People say he has much blood on his conscience. It’s a burden on his soul . . . I can’t help it,’ she said to me, ‘I pray for him.’ ”[5]
1924
Translated by Rose France
Part III
HEADY DAYS: REVOLUTIONS AND CIVIL WAR
NEW LIFE
It was not long after the war with Japan.[1] Forty-five years ago. An extraordinary time, and it comes back to me in bits and pieces, as if somebody had shuffled the pages of a diary, mixing up the tragic entries with stories so ridiculous that one can only shrug in disbelief. Did all that really happen? Was life really like that? Were other people, were we ourselves, really like that?
But yes, that is exactly how it was.
Russia had swung to the left overnight. There was unrest among the students, there were strikes among the workers, and even old generals could be heard snorting about the disgraceful way the country was being run, and making sharp criticisms of the Tsar himself.
Sometimes all this became the stuff of farce. In Saratov, the Chief of Police joined up with Topuridze—a revolutionary who had just married a millionairess—to publish a legally authorized Marxist newspaper.[2] Things could hardly have got more absurd.
The Petersburg intelligentsia took keen delight in the new political climate. One of our theatres put on The Green Cockatoo[3]– a previously censored play about the French Revolution. Journalists wrote satirical pieces undermining the establishment, poets wrote revolutionary verses and actors declaimed them on stage to enthusiastic applause.
The university and the technological institute were temporarily closed, and political meetings took place in their buildings. Ordinary, respectable city folk would wander quite freely into these meetings, draw inspiration from the shouts of “Hear, hear!” and “Down with this! Down with that!”—still a novelty at the time—and take any number of half-baked, badly formulated ideas back home to their friends and families.
New illustrated journals appeared: one, edited by Shebuev, was called the Machine Gun.[4] The cover of one issue, if I remember correctly, was adorned by a bloody handprint. These publications took the place of the respectable Wheatfield[5] and sold out quickly, bought eagerly by a rather surprising readership.
I remember once, at my mother’s house, meeting one of her old friends, the widow of an important dignitary. This dignitary had been a friend of Katkov and a diehard conservative of the type we later came to call “bison”.[6]
“I should like to read the Machine Gun,” said this dignitary’s widow, for some reason pronouncing the dreadful word not with a “u” but with a clipped “e”: “Machine Gen”. “But I don’t dare buy it myself, and I don’t like to send Yegor out to get it. I feel Yegor doesn’t approve of the latest tendencies.”
Yegor was her old manservant.
There was also an occasion when my uncle and I were at my mother’s. This uncle had been close to the royal court and, when we were children, he had often brought us sweets from the Tsar’s table (which was quite the done thing back then). The sweets were made by the Tsar’s own confectioner, and were in white wrappers with trimmed edges. We had chewed on them with awe. Now, pointing at me, my mother said to my uncle, “This young lady mixes with socialists.”
It was as if she were talking about some savage she had seen devouring a raw partridge, feathers and all. Something rather revolting—yet still impressive.
“Now there’ll be trouble,” I thought.
But to my surprise, there was nothing of the kind.
My uncle smiled archly: “Well, my dear,” he said, “young people must move with the times.”
This was the last thing I had expected.
So how was it I began to move with the times?
In our circle of friends there was a certain K.P.,[7] the son of a senator. Much to his father’s chagrin, he was closely involved with the Social Democrats.[8] He was a restless soul, torn between Lenin’s pamphlet “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back”[9] and the poems of Balmont.
“You really must go and see Lenin in Geneva,”[10] he would say to me.
“Why Lenin? Why should I go and see Lenin?”
“Why? To study with him. That’s just what you need.”
At that point I had only just started to publish my work. My articles and sketches were being published in the Stock Exchange Gazette,[11] a paper devoted mainly to castigating the city fathers—those who had managed to grab for themselves a piece of the public “pie”. I was contributing to this castigation. One of the popular topics of the day was a plan by the city governor, Lelyanov, to fill in the Catherine Canal.[12] I had written a verse fable entitled “Lelyanov and the Canal”:
One day Lelyanov, on his morning stroll,
Clapped eyes upon the Catherine Canal,
And said, a frown upon his face,
“You really are a waste of space
Not even a canal, just a disgrace!
No one can swim in you, or sail or drink your water
In short, you just don’t do a thing you ought to.
I’ll fill you in, you pitiful canal.
I know I can, and so I shall!”
So thought the city chief, his brow now stern,
When out from the canal there swam a germ.
“What lunacy,” it said “infects your brain?
Planner Lelyanov, better think again!”
The Tsar was against Lelyanov’s plan, so he very much liked my fable. The paper’s editor, Stanislav Propper, was “rewarded by a smile from his majesty”, and added an extra two kopecks to my fee. In those days the only journalist who could command the legendary fee of ten kopecks was Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. In short, a brilliant career lay ahead of me. What did I have to learn from Lenin?
But K.P. was not easily put off. First he introduced me to a mysterious character called Valeria Ivanovna—though I soon discovered that this was an alias. She appeared to be in her thirties, she had a tired-looking face and she wore a pince-nez. She would often ask if she could bring along some interesting acquaintance. Among those she then brought along were Lev Kamenev, Alexander Bogdanov, Martyn Mandelstam, Alexander Finn-Yenotaevsky and Alexandra Kollontai.
Her friends paid me little attention. For the most part, they talked among themselves about things like congresses, resolutions and “co-optations”, of which I was entirely ignorant. They liked to repeat the phrase “iron resolve”, and they liked to abuse some people they called “Mensheviks” and to quote Engels, who had argued that armed revolt on the streets of a modern city was inconceivable.[13] They were evidently on a very friendly footing with one another—they all addressed one another as “comrade”.
Once they brought along an absolutely ordinary working-class man. They called him “comrade” too. Comrade Yefim. He said very little—and then, after a few visits, he disappeared. I heard somebody mention, in passing, that he had been arrested.
A few months later Yefim came back, completely transformed, in a new, pale suit and bright yellow gloves. He sat with his hands raised and his fingers spread.
“Why are you doing that?” I asked.
“I don’t want to get my gloves dirty. I’ve been dressed as a bourgeois, so as not to attract attention.”
It was a most unfortunate camouflage. Now his appearance was
so picturesque that it was impossible not to look at him.
“So you’ve been in prison?” I asked. “Was it hard?”
“No, not particularly.” And then, with a sudden, good-natured smile: “At Christmas they gave us roast gooses.”
But I should not have been surprised by Yefim’s fancy dress. Very soon, events were to convince me that it was not as silly as it had seemed to my inexperienced eye.
Valeria Ivanovna left the country for a couple of months. She came back dressed in a bright red blouse.
“Why are you got up like that?” I asked.
It turned out that she had entered the country on a false passport made out in the name of a sixteen-year-old girl with no education. The comrades had decided that by putting a bright red blouse on a middle-aged woman with a pince-nez and the weary face of an intellectual, they would transform her into an illiterate young teenager. And they had been right. The border guards had believed the story, and Valeria Ivanovna had arrived safely in Petersburg in her red blouse.
Later, at the time when the newspaper New Life was being published,[14] Lenin would hide from the police using a still more artful method. Every time he left the editorial office he would simply turn up the collar of his coat. And not once was he recognized by the agents of the secret police, even though he was, of course, under surveillance.
People began to arrive from abroad. Mainly from Switzerland. There were more of the same conversations. They all criticized the Mensheviks, and they often spoke of Plekhanov, though for some reason they always called him “Plekanov”.
“Why?” I asked.
“Oh, that’s how you say it in Switzerland.”
Many of them would tell me proudly that Plekhanov was from an old aristocratic family. For some reason they all found this very gratifying. I had the impression that Plekhanov had got under their skin in some way, that they were very anxious to convince him of something and that they were afraid he would abandon them.
The one member of the group who stood out was Alexandra Kollontai. She was a young, very beautiful society lady, always elegantly dressed, with a coquettish habit of wrinkling her nose. I recall how she once began a speech to a women’s congress with the words, “I don’t know what language to use in order to make myself understood to the bourgeois women here.”
And there she was on the platform, wearing a magnificent velvet dress with a mirror pendant on a golden chain that hung to her knees.
I noticed that all the comrades were very proud of Kollontai’s elegance. At one point she was arrested, I don’t remember exactly when or why, and the newspapers reported that she had taken fourteen pairs of shoes with her to prison. The comrades would repeat this number with reverence, lowering their voices. In exactly the same way as when they were speaking of “Plekanov’s” aristocratic lineage.
Once Kollontai invited us to her house. Valeria Ivanovna led us up the back staircase. This took us straight into the kitchen, where the astonished cook asked:
“Who are you looking for?”
“We’ve come to see Comr . . . to see Kollontai.”
“But what made you use the back stairs? Please go through to her study.”
Valeria Ivanovna appeared to have taken it entirely for granted that comrade Kollontai’s room was in the servants’ quarters.
When we entered the spacious, beautifully furnished study, we were greeted by Kollontai’s friend, Finn-Yenotaevsky, a tall dark man with a pointed face and hair like a bush of Austrian broom. Each of the curly dark hairs on his head grew in a distinct spiral, and one half-expected these spirals to chime together in the wind.
We were served tea and biscuits, just as you might expect in any well-to-do household, but then it was back to the same old conversations: the Mensheviks . . . as Engels said . . . iron resolve . . . Plekanov . . . Plekanov . . . Plekanov . . . Mensheviks . . . co-optation.
It was all extraordinarily dull. They were always picking over some trivial bone of contention: perhaps someone had been abroad and brought back some senseless Party gossip; or someone had drawn caricatures of the Mensheviks, which provoked childish amusement among the bearded Marxists with their “iron resolve”. And all the while, hardened agents provocateurs, whose role only came to light many years later, were strolling about happily in their midst.[15]
They talked about how the Mensheviks were accusing Lenin of having “pocketed ten francs intended for Menshevik use” (“pocketed”—that was the word the Mensheviks were using). Abroad, the Mensheviks were interrupting speeches by the Bolsheviks, caterwauling when Lunacharsky appeared in public, and had even tried to run off with a cash box full of admission money, which the Bolsheviks had defended with their fists.
All these conversations were of no interest to anyone not directly involved, and did nothing to inspire respect. There was no talk of Russia’s fate—of her past or future. These people seemed entirely unconcerned by everything that had aroused the indignation of earlier generations of revolutionaries; they had no interest in the principles for which earlier generations had been willing to pay with their lives. Life simply passed them by. Often some important event, a strike in a big factory or some other major disturbance, would take them completely unawares. They would quickly send their men to the scene, but of course, their men would arrive too late. In this way they failed to anticipate the importance of Father Gapon’s movement,[16] and remained blind to much else besides—failures that would later be a source of embarrassment to them.
Real life held no interest for these people. They were up to their ears in their congresses, co-optations and resolutions.
But there was one thoroughly bourgeois character, Pyotr Rumyantsev. Cheerful, witty, a ladies’ man and a lover of good food, he often went to the “Vienna” literary restaurant and liked to tell amusing stories about his comrades. How he fitted in among these other comrades was hard to understand; it was equally hard to believe in his iron resolve.
“One of our ships has sunk with a cargo of arms,” he would announce cheerfully. “Bad news, I’m afraid.” Then he would add with a sigh, “Let’s go and have a good breakfast at the ‘Vienna’. The workers’ movement still needs our strength.”
What could we do? If our strength was still needed, then we needed to keep it up. Far be it from us to shirk our civic responsibilities.
Finn-Yenotaevsky was someone I saw only occasionally. But once he appeared unexpectedly with some strange news.
“Tomorrow there will be a mass demonstration by the proletariat. We’re setting up a first-aid station in the editorial office of Life Questions[17] on Saperny Lane. There will be a medical orderly there, and materials for bandaging the dead and wounded.”
I was somewhat taken aback. Why were they planning to bandage the dead?
But Finn-Yenotaevsky saw nothing odd about any of this. He fumbled in his wallet and pulled out ten roubles.
“This is for your expenses. Be at the first-aid station at three o’clock sharp. In addition, I’d like you to go to Liteyny Street, to house number five, and tell Dr Prunkin that he must be in Saperny Lane, in the editorial office of Life Questions, at three o’clock sharp, without fail. Don’t forget now, and don’t mix anything up. Prunkin, Liteyny, ten—I mean, five. Prunkin Street.”
“And what did you say the ten roubles are for?”
“For expenses.”
“And will K.P. be there too?”
“He should be. So don’t forget, don’t mix anything up. And be punctual. We need discipline, my friends, or everything will be ruined! So. Five o’clock sharp—to Dr Liteyny. Don’t write anything down. You need to remember it.”
And he dashed off, his spirals chiming.
I knew the editorial staff of Life Questions and had even been invited to work on the paper. As far as I remember, the editors were Nikolai Berdyaev and Sergei Bulgakov (Father Sergius as he later became). Our friend Georgy Chulkov was the secretary and Alexei Remizov was the business manager. Remizov’s wife, Serafima Pavl
ovna, proofread the manuscripts. In short, they were people I knew. I remember Berdyaev once saying to me, “So you’re keeping company with the Bolsheviks, are you? I’d advise you to stay away from them. I know that crowd. We were in exile together. I wouldn’t have any dealings with them if I were you.”
As I was not exactly having “dealings” with them, Berdyaev’s warning had not bothered me.
Now, however, an undeniably Bolshevik first-aid station was to be set up in Berdyaev’s editorial office. If it was being organized by Finn-Yenotaevsky, there was no doubt about its Bolshevik credentials. Or was Finn-Yenotaevsky merely acting in the capacity of a member of some medical committee for the bandaging of dead people? I was reassured by the thought that K.P. would be there. He would explain everything to me. It was all a little strange, of course, but there was no going back now. I had ten roubles in my hand and an important mission to carry out. I had to act.
I went to Liteyny Street.
But it turned out that there was no doctor to be found—neither at number five, nor at number ten. I made enquiries, thinking there might be a doctor who wasn’t called Prunkin. Or a Prunkin who wasn’t a doctor. But there was no one at all. No doctor—and no Prunkin. I returned home quite dismayed.
For the first time in my life, the proletariat had entrusted me with an important mission, and I had achieved nothing. If my aristocratic elders and betters ever found out, they would look on me with scorn. Only one thing reassured me—my old friend K.P. would be at the first-aid station too. He would protect me.
The following morning I listened out carefully—was there any shooting to be heard? No, there was nothing. It was all quiet. At three o’clock sharp (“Discipline, my friends, above all!”) I entered the building. At the door of the editorial office I ran into K.P.
“Well?” I asked.
He shrugged.
“Nothing. Nothing and nobody.”
