Dedalus Book of Russian Decadence

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

  “Yes,” thought Volodya, “it’s not the same as in an open place, where the shadow stretches behind the person; here, when the person goes forwards, the shadow slides back, and different shadows meet him again further on.”

  Volodya turns his gaze to the dry figure of his teacher. The teacher’s cold, yellow face irritates him. Volodya looks for the teacher’s shadow and finds it on the wall, behind his chair. The shadow bends and sways monstrously—but it doesn’t have a yellow face and a sarcastic sneer, and Volodya likes looking at it. His thoughts fly off somewhere far away, and he doesn’t hear a thing.

  “Lovlev!” his teacher calls his name.

  Out of habit, Volodya gets up and stands there gazing dully at the teacher. He has such a faraway look that the other schoolboys snicker, and the teacher looks accusingly at him.

  Then Volodya hears the teacher making fun of him, in a polite and nasty way. Volodya trembles from the offence and his own weakness. Then the teacher informs him that he is giving him an “F” for not knowing the answer and being inattentive, and invites him to sit down.

  Volodya smiles stupidly and tries to work out what has just happened.

  XVIII

  An “F”—the first of Volodya’s life!

  How strange this was for Volodya!

  “Lovlev!” his school-friends tease, laughing and shoving. “Got a ‘fork’! Congratulations!”

  Volodya feels uneasy. He does not yet know how one behaves in such a situation.

  “What if I did!” he retorts with annoyance. “It’s none of your business!”

  “Lovlev!” shouts lazy Snegirov. “Our ranks have swelled!”

  His first “F”! And he would have to show it to Mama. This was embarrassing and humiliating. Volodya felt a strange, clumsy weight in the knapsack on his back—that “fork” was sticking uncomfortably in his consciousness and could not be connected with anything else in his mind.

  An “F”!

  He could not get used to the idea of an “F” and couldn’t think about anything else. When the corner policeman near the school looked at him with his usual severity, Volodya thought for some reason, “But if you only knew I got an ‘F’!”

  This was completely awkward and out of the ordinary—Volodya did not know how to hold his head and where to put his hands—his entire body felt awkward.

  And on top of this, he had to put on a nonchalant expression in front of his school-friends and talk of something else!

  School-friends! Volodya was certain that all of them were terribly glad about his “F.”

  XIX

  Mama looked at the “F,” turned her uncomprehending eyes to Volodya, again glanced at the grade and gently exclaimed, “Volodya!”

  Volodya stood before her and wished he were dead. He looked at the folds of Mama’s dress, at Mama’s pale hands, and he felt her frightened glance on his own quivering lashes.

  “What is this?” asked Mama.

  “But Mama,” Volodya suddenly spoke, “it’s the first one I ever got!”

  “The first!”

  “It could happen to anyone. And it happened by accident, really it did.”

  “Oh, Volodya, Volodya!”

  Volodya began to cry, rubbing the tears off his cheeks with his palm like a child.

  “Mama, don’t be angry,” he whispered.

  “It’s those shadows of yours!” Mama said.

  Volodya could hear tears in her voice. His heart sank. He shot a glance at Mama. She was crying. He flung himself into her arms.

  “Mama, Mama,” he said over and over, kissing her hands, “I won’t do it anymore, really and truly, I won’t make any more shadows.”

  XX

  Volodya exerted all his willpower—and made no more shadows, no matter how badly he wanted to. He tried to catch up on his unfinished lessons.

  But the shadows kept haunting him. Even though he didn’t summon them with hand-shapes, even though he didn’t heap up object upon object so they would make a shadow on the wall, the shadows themselves clustered around him, importunate and insistent.

  Volodya had lost his interest in objects—he almost didn’t see them anymore. All his attention went to their shadows.

  When he was on his way home and the sun happened to peek out from the autumn storm clouds, even if only through a hazy shroud, he felt happy at how shadows moved everywhere.

  Shadows from the lamp stood nearby him when he was at home in the evening.

  Shadows all around everywhere—sharply defined ones from lights, dim ones from the dissipated light of day—they all crowded around Volodya, falling across one another, enveloping him in an indissoluble web.

  Some of them were incomprehensible and mysterious; others reminded him of something, hinted at something—but there were also the nice shadows, dear and familiar to him—those were the ones Volodya himself sought out (albeit involuntarily) and tried to catch everywhere amidst the disorderly and fleeting impressions of the other, unfamiliar shadows.

  But they were distressing, these nice, familiar shadows. Whenever Volodya noticed that he was seeking these shadows out, his conscience would torment him and he would go to Mama to confess.

  Once it happened that Volodya couldn’t overcome the temptation, and he went to the wall and began to make himself a shadow bull. Mama caught him doing this.

  “Again!” she exclaimed angrily. “That’s it, I’m going to ask the director to have you put in lock-up.”

  Volodya flushed with annoyance and answered sullenly, “There are walls there, too. Walls are everywhere.”

  “Volodya!” Mama exclaimed sorrowfully. “What are you saying!”

  But Volodya was already repenting of his rudeness and was crying. “Mama, I don’t know myself what’s happening to me!”

  XXI

  Mama still cannot overcome her superstitious fear of the shadows. The thought occurs to her more and more often that she, like Volodya, will get caught up in shadow-watching, but she tries to reassure herself.

  “What stupid thoughts!” she says to herself. “Everything will turn out all right, God willing: he’ll eventually get tired of it and stop.”

  But her heart quails with suppressed fright, and her thoughts run on, fearful of life and its approaching sorrows.

  In the dreary moments of morning she searches her soul and thinks back on her life, and she sees that it has been empty, unnecessary, aimless. Nothing more than shadows senselessly flitting by and fading into thickening twilight.

  “What have I lived for?” she asks herself. “For my son? But what for? So he, too, could fall prey to the shadows, so he could turn into a maniac with narrow horizons—riveted to illusions, to senseless reflections on a lifeless wall? And he, too, will enter into life and give life to yet more beings, who will be as ghostly and unnecessary as a dream.”

  She sits down in an armchair by the window and thinks and thinks.

  Her thoughts are bitter and dreary.

  She wrings her lovely white hands in anguish. Her thoughts are distracted. She looks at her twisted hands and begins to think about what kind of shadow figures they could produce. She catches herself thinking this and jumps up in fright.

  “My God!” she exclaims. “But this is…madness!”

  XXII

  At dinner Mama looks at Volodya.

  “He’s grown so thin and pale since he discovered that wretched booklet. And he’s changed completely, in his personality, and in everything. They say your personality changes before death. What if he dies?…Oh, no, no, God forbid!”

  The spoon trembles in her hands. She lifts her timorous eyes to the icon.

  “Volodya, why aren’t you eating your soup?” she asks fearfully.

  “I don’t feel like it, Mama.”

  “Volodya, now be a good boy, sweetheart—it’s not good for you not to have your soup.”

  Volodya smiles absently and slowly finishes his soup. Mama gave him too much. He leans back in his chair and wants to say with annoyance th
at the soup wasn’t good. But Mama has such a worried face that Volodya doesn’t dare to say anything about it and he smiles wanly.

  “I’m full now,” he says.

  “Oh, no, Volodya, but today we’re having all your favourites!”

  Volodya sighs sadly: he already knows that if Mama is talking about his favourite dishes, it means she’s going to stuff him. He suspects that at tea, too, Mama will make him eat meat, as she did yesterday.

  XXIII

  In the evening Mama says to Volodya, “Volodya, my dear, you’re going to get distracted again. You’d better not shut the door!”

  Volodya begins to work on his lessons. But he is annoyed that behind his back the door is open and that every once in a while Mama passes by the doorway.

  “I can’t stand this!” he shouts, pushing his chair back noisily. “I can’t do any work at all with the door open.”

  “Volodya, why are you yelling?” Mama reproaches him affectionately.

  Volodya is already sorry and crying. Mama caresses and cajoles him, “Volodya, darling, I’m just looking after you, so I can help you keep from getting distracted.”

  “Mama, sit here for a while,” Volodya says.

  Mama takes a book and sits down near Volodya’s desk. For a few minutes Volodya works peacefully. But her presence soon begins to irritate him. “As if I were ill!” he thinks with resentment. His thoughts are interrupted; he shifts irritably and bites his lips. Mama finally notices this and leaves the room.

  But Volodya feels no relief. Repentance for showing his impatience gnaws at him. He tries to study, but can’t. Finally he goes to get Mama.

  “Mama, why did you leave?” he asks timidly.

  XXIV

  The night before a holy day. Lamps flicker before the icons.

  It’s late and quiet. Mama isn’t sleeping. In the mysterious twilight of her bedroom she is on her knees, praying and crying, sobbing like a child.

  Her braids fall on her white dress; her shoulders are shaking. She raises her hands to her breast as if pleading and looks at the icon with eyes swollen from crying. The icon lamp on its chain wavers almost imperceptibly from her hot breath. Shadows flutter, crowd in the corners, stir behind the icon case and babble something secret. There is a hopeless longing in their babble, an indescribable sadness in their gently flickering glimmer.

  Mother gets up, pale, with wide, strange eyes, and sways on unsteady feet. Quietly, she goes to Volodya’s room. Shadows crowd around her, gently rustling behind her back; they crawl at her feet, and fall, lightly, like a cobweb, onto her shoulders; and gazing into her wide eyes, they babble incomprehensibly.

  Cautiously, she approaches her son’s bed. In the rays of the lamp his face is wan. Odd, sharply defined shadows lie on him. His breath is inaudible; he is sleeping so quietly that it frightens her.

  She stands there surrounded by dim shadows and stirred by dim fears.

  XXV

  The high church vaults are dark and mysterious. The chanting of vespers rises up to these vaults and reverberates there with solemn sadness. Dark icons look on mysteriously and severely, illuminated by the yellow flames of wax candles. The warm breath of wax and incense fills the air with majestic sorrow.

  Evgenia Stepanovna has placed a candle before the icon of the Mother of God and is now on her knees. But her prayer is absent-minded. She is looking at her candle. Its flame is wavering. Shadows from the candlelight fall on Evgenia Stepanovna’s black dress and onto the floor and they sway negatively.

  Shadows hover on the walls of the church and are swallowed up in the upper reaches, in those dark vaults, where solemn, sad songs are reverberating.

  XXVI

  Another night.

  Volodya has woken up. Darkness surrounds him and soundlessly stirs.

  Volodya has freed his hands from under the blanket and lifted them, and is now moving them gently, his gaze fastened on them. In the darkness he does not see his hands, but it seems to him that dark shadows are stirring before his eyes…

  Black, mysterious shadows, carrying grief within them and a babble of lonely longing…

  Mama, too, can’t sleep—longing oppresses her.

  Mama lights a candle and quietly goes to her son’s room to look in on him and see how he is sleeping.

  Soundlessly, she opens the door a crack and looks at Volodya’s bed.

  A ray of yellow light shudders on the wall, falling across Volodya’s red blanket. The boy is stretching out his hands to the light and watching the shadows with a pounding heart. He doesn’t even think to ask where the light is coming from.

  He is completely absorbed by the shadows. His eyes, fastened on the wall, are full of impending madness.

  The band of light grows wider, the shadows run ahead, sullen and hunchbacked, like wandering vagabond women hurrying to bring their heavy burden of ragged belongings to some unknown destination.

  Mama, trembling with horror, goes up to the bed and softly calls out to her son, “Volodya!”

  Volodya comes to. For half a minute or so he gazes at Mama wide-eyed, then he starts shaking all over, springs from the bed and falls to her feet, embracing her knees and sobbing.

  “What dreams you are having, Volodya!” Mama exclaims sorrowfully.

  XXVII

  “Volodya,” Mama said over their morning tea, “you mustn’t do this, sweetheart; you’ll wear yourself out completely if you’re going to catch shadows in the night as well.”

  The pale boy sadly hung his head. His lips trembled nervously.

  “Know what we’ll do?” Mama continued. “Let’s try playing shadows together a little each evening, and then later we’ll sit down and do lessons. All right?”

  Volodya brightened up a bit. “Mummy, you’re—so nice!” he said bashfully.

  XXVIII

  Outside Volodya felt sleepy and a little fearful. A thick fog had set in, and it was cold and dreary. The outlines of houses were odd in the fog. Sombre figures of people moved beneath the foggy haze like sinister, unfriendly shadows. Everything was extraordinarily huge. As it loomed out of the fog, the horse of a cabby dozing at the crossroads seemed like an enormous, fantastic beast.

  A policeman looked antagonistically at Volodya. A crow on a low roof prophesied grief for him. But the grief was already in his heart; he was sad to see how hostile everything was towards him.

  A little mangy dog yapped at him from under a gate, and Volodya felt strangely insulted.

  And the street urchins, too, it seemed, wanted to insult and mock Volodya. In times past he would have dealt with them easily, but now timidity constricted his chest and pulled his weakened arms down.

  When Volodya got home, Praskovya opened the door for him and gave him a malicious, sullen look. It made Volodya feel uncomfortable. He went inside as quickly as possible, not daring to raise his eyes to Praskovya’s cheerless face.

  XXIX

  Mama was sitting by herself in her room. It was dusk—and it was boring.

  Somewhere a light flashed.

  Volodya ran in, enlivened, cheerful, with wide, slightly wild eyes. “Mama, the lamp is burning, let’s play a little.”

  Mama smiles and follows Volodya.

  “Mama, I invented a new figure,” Volodya says excitedly, setting the lamp in place. “Look here…see? It’s the steppe, covered with snow—and it’s snowing, a snowstorm.”

  Volodya lifts his hands and puts them together. “Now, you see, there’s an old man going by. The snow is knee-deep. It’s hard going. By himself. An empty field. The village is far away. He’s tired, and cold, and afraid. He’s all bent over because he’s so old.”

  Mama adjusts Volodya’s fingers.

  “Oh!” Volodya exclaims delightedly. “The wind’s blown off his cap, it’s blowing his hair about, it’s burying him in the snow. The drifts are getting higher and higher. Mama, Mama, do you hear?”

  “The blizzard.”

  “And him?”

  “The old man?”

  �
��Do you hear him moaning?”

  “Help!”

  Both of them pale, they look at the wall. Volodya’s hands sway—the old man falls.

  Mama is the first to come to.

  “It’s time to get to work,” she says.

  XXX

  Morning. Mama was at home alone. Deep in disconnected, gloomy thoughts, she was going from room to room.

  Her shadow, vague in the dissipated rays of a sun shrouded by fog, was outlined on the white door. Mama stopped at the door and raised her arm in a wide, strange gesture. The shadow on the door swayed and whispered about something familiar and sad. A strange delight spread through Evgenia Stepanovna’s soul, and she moved both hands as she stood before the door, smiled a wild smile, and watched how the shadow flitted from place to place.

  Praskovya’s steps approached, and Evgenia Stepanovna remembered that she was doing something absurd.

  Once again she feels frightened and despondent. “We need a change,” she thinks, “to go somewhere far away, somewhere new. To get away from here!”

  And all of a sudden she recalls Volodya’s words: “There are walls there, too. Walls are everywhere.”

  “There’s nowhere to go!”

  In despair she wrings her lovely white hands.

  XXXI

  Evening.

  In Volodya’s room, on the floor, a lamp is burning. Behind it, on the floor by the wall, Mama and Volodya are sitting. They look at the wall and make strange movements with their hands.

  Shadows flit and sway along the wall.

  Volodya and Mama understand them. They smile sadly and talk about something oppressive and impossible. Their faces are peaceful, and their reveries are clear; their joy is hopelessly sorrowful, their sorrow wildly joyful.