Dedalus Book of Russian Decadence

by Lodge, Kirsten; Rosen, Margo Shohl; Dashevsky, Grigory

  She began to speak softly, and her words were fragrant with ambergris, musk and tuberose, and they sounded like the fine silver chains of a lit censer.

  “Dear Youth, I love you. By obeying your call, I have gone against my father’s will, and I came to you to say this: be afraid of me and my charms, run far away from this Old City, and leave me to my dark fate, leave me, who am steeped in the evil breath of Anchar.”

  “O, lovely maiden!” the Youth answered her. “You, whom I have only just discovered, and who are already dearer to me than my own life and soul—why do you say these cruel words to me? Or do you not believe in my love, which ignited so suddenly, but will never die?”

  “I love you,” repeated the Beautiful Lady, “and do not want to destroy you. My breath is saturated with poison, and my lovely Garden is poisoned. You are the first I’ve told this to, because I love you. Hurry now to leave this City, run from this Garden with its lethal beauty, run far away, and forget about me.”

  Intoxicated with rapture and sorrow sweeter than any earthly joy, the Youth exclaimed, “My beloved! What is it that I need from you? Does my soul not thirst for but a single moment? To burn up in the blissful flame of rapture and love, and at your sweetest feet—to die!”

  A slight shiver ran through the Beautiful Lady’s body, and she became as radiant as the clear joy of dawn behind a white fog. With a solemn, expansive gesture she lifted her bare arms, and striving with all her being towards the Youth, she said, “O, my beloved! Let it be as you wish, and sweet it will be to die with you. Come to me, come to my terrible Garden, and I will tell you my dark tale.”

  Again, as that morning, the bronze key on its pink ribbon flashed in her hand. Then, with a bright laugh like a boy’s, she ran back a little way, her shapely legs a dull white on the dim yellow sand of the path, and with a quick, agile swing of her arm, she tossed the key up to the window. The Youth reached out and caught the key in midair.

  VII

  There they stood, the Youth and the Beautiful Lady, intoxicated with rapture and sorrow in the poisoned Garden, in the shade of those mysterious plants, where the lifeless moon mingled the poison of its melancholy with the toxic breath of earthly, evil flowers. They looked into each other’s eyes, and the Beautiful Lady spoke in a voice that sounded like the fragile voice of a harpsichord. “My forebears were slaves—but even slaves thirst for freedom. One of my forebears, obeying his master’s will, made the long, arduous journey to the desolate plains where Anchar grows. He gathered the poisonous sap of Anchar and brought it to his master. Not a few of his master’s victories can be attributed to his poisoned arrows. But my forebear died after breathing so much of the evil fragrance. His widow began to think how to get revenge on that wicked clan of warriors. She stole the poisoned arrows, soaked them in water, and hid away the solution like a precious wine in a deep cellar. She poured a drop of that solution into a barrel of water, and with that she watered the wasteland at the edge of Old City, where our house and Garden now stand. Then she took a drop of water from the bottom of that barrel, mixed it into bread and fed it to her son. And the soil of this Garden became poisoned, and she inoculated her son with poison. And since that time all of our blood relatives, from generation to generation, were brought up on poison. And now the blood in our veins flows with fiery poison, and our breath is fragrant, but lethal, and whoever kisses us dies. And the strength of our poison doesn’t weaken as long as we live in this poisoned Garden, as long as we breathe the fragrances of these monstrous flowers. Their seeds are brought from afar—my grandfather and my father went wherever plants that are evil and harmful to people could be found—and here, in this soil poisoned for so long, those evil, lethal flowers have fully revealed their furious strength. Smelling so sweet, so joyful, those guileful blossoms turn even the dew falling from the sky into deadly poison.”

  Thus the Beautiful Lady spoke, and her voice rang with joy, and her face burned with great jubilation. She finished her tale and began to laugh, softly and mirthlessly. The Youth bent down before her and silently kissed her hand, breathing in the languorous aroma of myrrh, aloe and musk that wafted from her body and her thin dress. The Beautiful Lady again spoke. “Heirs of our oppressors come to see me, because my evil, poisoned beauty enchants them. I smile at them, at those who are doomed to death, and I pity each of them, and some I even almost loved, but I never yielded to any of them. I gave to each only a single kiss. My kisses were innocent, like the kisses of a loving sister. And whoever received my kiss died.”

  In horror and rapture, two such incompatible passions, the bewildered Youth’s soul languished. But love, which conquers all, overcoming even the anguish of a man’s final moments, triumphed now as well. Ecstatically opening his trembling arms to his tender and terrible Beautiful Lady, the Youth cried out, “If death is in your kiss, O my beloved, let me be intoxicated with an uncountable number of deaths! Cling to me, kiss me, love me, breathe upon me the ambrosial fragrance of your poisoned breath, let death after death flow into my body and into my soul, until you utterly destroy all that I once was!”

  “Is that what you want?! You’re not afraid?!” cried the Beautiful Lady.

  Pale in the rays of the lifeless moon, the Beautiful Lady’s face became like a dim, white lantern, and tremulous and deep blue were the lightning bolts of her sorrowful and joyful eyes. With a trusting, tender and passionate gesture she clung to the Youth, and her naked arms wound about his neck.

  “We’ll die together!” she whispered. “We’ll die together. All my heart’s poison is aflame, and its fiery currents are streaming through my veins, and I am like a bonfire in the all-consuming embrace of a great flame.”

  “I’m aflame!” whispered the Youth. “I’ll burn up in your embrace, and together we are two flaming bonfires, burning with the great rapture of poisoned love.”

  The sad, lifeless moon grew dim and sank, and black night came and took its turn on watch. It shaded their secret love and kisses, fragrant and poisoned, with darkness and quiet. And it listened as the rhythmic beating of their two hearts died away, and in sympathetic silence it watched over their last, shallow breaths.

  It was thus that, having breathed his fill of the fragrances breathed by the Beautiful Lady, and intoxicated by her sweet love, its sting so tender and fatal, the handsome Youth died in the poisoned Garden—and on his breast died the Beautiful Lady, having consigned her poisoned, yet fragrant soul to the sweet enchantment of love and the night.

  1 “It” refers here to the subject of Alexander Pushkin’s well-known 1828 poem, the upas tree “Anchar.” The Beautiful Lady’s account in part VII of her ancestor’s journey to gather poison from the tree for his master’s arrows, his subsequent death and his master’s military victories comes from Pushkin’s poem. Sologub’s story thus picks up where the narrative of Pushkin’s poem leaves off.

  With a secret joy I would die

  In the hour when the moon rises.

  The shadow of a mysterious dream

  Fans me with a strange sweetness.

  Devoted to boundless distances,

  Where sound fades and light dims,

  I will leave the familiar circle

  Of repeated thoughts and words.

  My heart will freely pass

  The limits of knowledge and compassion,

  And tirelessly, in the eternal abyss,

  Forward, forward it will swim.

  And the phantom of a dream

  Will fan me with an ever new, strange sweetness.

  With a secret joy I would die

  In the hour when the moon rises.

  Valery Briusov, 1898

  Follow Me

  The scent of half-wilted lilies

  Clouds my light reveries.

  The lilies speak to me of death,

  The time when I shall no longer be.

  Peace to my quieted soul.

  Nothing cheers me, nothing hurts me.

  Do not forget my last days,

  Under
stand me, when I shall no longer be.

  I know, my friend, the road is not long,

  And the poor body is quickly fatigued,

  But I know: love, like death, is strong.

  Love me, when I shall no longer be.

  A mysterious vow appears to me…

  And I know the heart shall not be deceived—

  In parting there is no forgetting for you!

  Follow me, when I shall no longer be.

  Zinaida Gippius, 1895

  What makes you beautiful? Not your dress,

  Nor your boots, nor your elegant corset;

  What’s a corset? It’s mere deceit;

  Without it your figure is naturally sleek.

  Can your beautiful legs be seen in boots?

  You are lovelier when you go barefoot,

  And you shine when you are naked—

  Enchanting, young, and animated.

  You can save your fancy dress

  For the crowd, for strangers, and for friends,

  But I, my love, am always glad

  To see your body all unclad

  When we’re alone in bed at night,

  Your nakedness gleaming in candlelight.

  And, as I lie with you in bed,

  I feel trembling and warmth beneath my hand,

  And I perceive with arrogance

  That I may fondle, and caress,

  And, with my love, exhaust you,

  And torment you, and beat you.

  Fyodor Sologub, 1893

  Light and Shadows

  Fyodor Sologub

  I

  Volodya Lovlev, a thin, pale boy of about twelve, had just got home from school and was waiting for dinner. He stood in the living room by the piano, looking at the latest issue of Field, which had been delivered that morning from the post office. A newspaper was lying there as well, partially covering a page of Field, and from it fell a small booklet printed on thin, grey paper—an advertisement for an illustrated journal. Inside the booklet, the publisher listed the future contributors (a good fifty well-known literary names), lavishly praised the journal as a whole and its numerous individual sections, and gave sample illustrations.

  Volodya began to leaf distractedly through the grey booklet, examining the tiny pictures. His big eyes gazed wearily from his pale face.

  One page suddenly caught the boy’s interest and made his wide eyes open even wider. From the top down, along the whole length of the page, six drawings were printed, portraying hands folded together in various ways. Their shadows, cast against a white wall, formed dark silhouettes: a lady’s head in a funny-looking horned headdress, the head of a donkey, a bull, a sitting squirrel, and so on.

  Volodya, smiling, became absorbed in his examination of the drawings. He was familiar with this game: he already knew how to place the fingers of one hand to make a rabbit’s head appear on the wall. But here were some Volodya had not seen before, and—most importantly—these figures were all fairly complex, for two hands.

  Volodya wanted to make these shadows. But now, in the uncertain light of a dying autumn day, of course it wouldn’t work well.

  “I should take the booklet to my room,” he thought. “Nobody else needs it.”

  Just then he heard approaching steps and his mother’s voice from the next room. Suddenly and unaccountably reddening, he quickly shoved the booklet into his pocket and stepped away from the piano, towards his mother. Smiling affectionately, she came up to him. She was remarkably like him, with the same wide eyes in a pale, beautiful face.

  Mama asked, as she usually did, “What did you do in school today?”

  “Nothing,” Volodya said frowningly.

  But immediately he felt he was speaking rudely to his mother, and he was ashamed. He gave her an affectionate smile and began to recount how his day at school had gone—but this only made him feel more vexed.

  “Pruzhinin distinguished himself again today in our class.” He began to tell about a teacher who was disliked by the pupils because of his rudeness. “Our Leontiev gave the wrong answer in a lesson, and he says to him, ‘That’ll do,’ he says, ‘sit down—wood may as well sit on wood!’”

  “Well, you notice everything now,” said Mama, smiling.

  “He’s always awfully rude.”

  Volodya was silent for a while, then sighed and said in a complaining tone, “And they’re always rushing us.”

  “Who?” asked Mama.

  “The teachers. They all want to get through the course as fast as possible and then review it all thoroughly for the exams. If you ask about something, they probably think you’re trying to drag out the time to the bell, so you won’t be called on.”

  “Well then, talk with them after class.”

  “Yes, but after the lesson they’re also in a hurry, to get home or to the girls’ school for classes. And it’s all so fast—first geometry and then Greek right away.”

  “Try to keep up!”

  “Yes, keep up! Like a squirrel in a wheel. Really, it annoys me.”

  Mama smiled gently.

  II

  After dinner Volodya went to his room to do his lessons. Mama was careful to make sure Volodya was comfortable, and everything he might need was there in the room. No one disturbed Volodya here—even Mama did not come in while he was studying. She would come in later to help Volodya, if necessary.

  Volodya was a diligent lad, and what they call talented. But today he was having trouble studying. No matter which lesson he took up, some unpleasant thing occurred to him—he would recall the teacher of that subject, a biting or rude phrase of his, tossed off in passing and lodging deep in the impressionable boy’s heart. Many of the most recent lessons had somehow gone poorly: the teachers seemed dissatisfied, and it was tough going. Their bad mood communicated itself to Volodya, and now a vague uneasiness drifted towards him from the pages of his books and notebooks.

  He went hurriedly from one lesson to the next, then to a third—and he was annoyed by these useless and unnecessary trivialities, the frantic pace of all these petty things that had to be done as quickly as possible, so as not to become “wood on the wood” of his bench tomorrow. He even began to yawn from boredom and vexation, and impatiently jiggled his legs as he nervously shifted in his seat.

  But he knew without a doubt that it was imperative to learn all these lessons, that it was very important, and that his entire fate depended on it—and he conscientiously did the work that bored him.

  Volodya made a small inkblot on his notebook and put down his pen. Taking a close look, he decided it would be possible to remove it with a penknife. He was glad of the diversion. There was no knife on the table. Volodya put his hand in his pocket and dug around. Amidst all kinds of rubbish and junk of the sort boys stuff their pockets with, he felt a little knife—and as he fished it out, along with it came a little booklet.

  He didn’t yet know what the paper in his hand was, but as he pulled it out he suddenly remembered that it was the booklet with the shadows, and immediately he livened up and felt happier.

  And that’s what it was—the little booklet he had completely forgotten about as he was doing his lessons.

  He nimbly leapt up from his chair, moved the lamp closer to the wall, gave a cautious, sidelong glance at the door (which was slightly ajar) to make sure no one was coming—and with the booklet opened at the familiar page, he began to carefully examine the first drawing and put his hands together the way it showed. At first the shadow came out badly, not the way it was supposed to. Volodya moved the lamp around and bent and stretched his hands this way and that—and finally he got a woman’s head in a horned headdress on the white wallpaper of his room.

  Volodya was having fun now. He angled his hands and gently wiggled his fingers—the head bowed, smiled, made funny faces. Volodya tried another figure, and then another. All of them were difficult at first, but Volodya eventually managed to get them.

  He spent half an hour or so doing this and forgot all about his l
essons, school and everything in the world.

  Suddenly familiar steps sounded outside his room. Volodya flushed, shoved the booklet into his pocket, quickly put the lamp back, almost knocking it over in the process, and sat at his place, bending over his notebook. Mama came in.

  “Let’s have tea, Volodya dear,” she said.

  Volodya pretended he was looking at the blot and getting ready to open his knife. Mama gently laid her hands on his head … Volodya flung the knife aside and clung to Mama, his face flushed. Evidently, Mama had not noticed anything, and Volodya was glad about that. But he still felt oddly ashamed, as if he had been caught playing stupid, childish games.

  III

  On the round table in the middle of the dining room the samovar quietly crooned its gentle, cooing song. The hanging lamp drenched the white tablecloth and dark wallpaper in a drowsy atmosphere.

  Mama was lost in thought, bending her beautiful, pale face over the table. Volodya laid his hand on the table and stirred the tea in his glass with a spoon. Sweet streaks ran through the tea, and fine bubbles rose to its surface. The silver spoon jingled softly.

  Boiling water fell splashing from the tap of the samovar into Mama’s cup.

  A thin shadow from the spoon fell on the saucer and the tablecloth and dissolved in the tea. Volodya looked closely at it: among the shadows thrown by the sweet streaks and light bubbles of air, this one reminded him of something—what exactly, Volodya couldn’t decide. He bent and turned the spoon and ran his fingers along it, but nothing came of it.