I, too, had my DACHA-IST period, and to be perfectly honest, I’ve never written more or better. I would get up every morning. .
E
ESTEPA (СТЕПЬ, or STEPPE). Observed from the sky for a period that stretches across centuries, the color of the STEPPE vertiginously changes as it is traversed by myriad beings and overrun by shimmering waves of AGRICULTURE beneath the microscope that is the passage of the epochs. (You might also want to imagine raising a languid arm and placing the finger of Providence, the mark that designates the chosen one, on an obscure Mongol horseman, tautening his bow at full gallop, who, just as he’s about to release the arrow, discovers in horror the Absolute Presence of God and topples over dead, flat on his back in the grass.)
The STEPPE is the low-pressure zone where the Golden Horde, the violent cyclone that uprooted the Kievan Rus, took on more water vapor and increased its wind speed. But when the Horde disintegrated into the shreds of impotent nomadic tribes, the Muscovite lava flowed toward its rarefied savannahs and little by little — a period of time measured out in centuries — reached the coasts of the ocean called Тихий (Tiji), an adjective that can be translated from the Russian as “pacific,” or peaceful, calm, and smooth, but that also allows for translation as “peaceable,” in the sense of nonwarlike.
I deduce, therefore, that it was a sensation of calm, of journey’s end, that overtook the first explorer who sighted the edge of that other steppe, its vast blue immensity. An identical apathy is provoked by the real STEPPE, seen from the window of our train: it is interminable, empty, desolate, devoid of food.
EURASIA. In 1949, two scholars in Hamburg discovered the slow march of a glacier toward the Elbe. Some still cling to the erroneous notion that Europe extends to the Urals, but in fact it is Asia that extends to the borders of Western Europe. Russia, the IMPERIUM, is an Asiatic country, one that happens to be inhabited by pale-skinned peoples.
I. It seems fitting to amplify this entry with the following notice on the Hyperboreans offered by Gaius Plinius Secundus in his Naturalis Historia. In Book IV, paragraph 89, we read: Pone eos montes ultraque Aquilonem gens felix, si credimus, quos Hyperboreos appellavere, annoso degit aevo, fabulosis celebrata miraculis. ibi creduntur esse cardines mundi extremique siderum ambitus semenstri luce solis adversi, non, ut imperiti dixere, ab aequinoctio verno in autumnum: semel in anno solstitio oriuntur iis soles brumaque semel occidunt. regio aprica, felici temperie, omni adflatu noxio carens. domus iis nemora lucique, et deorum cultus viritim gregatimque, discordia ignota et aegritudo omnis. mors non nisi satietate vitae epulatis delibutoque senio luxu e quadam rupe in mare salientibus; hoc genus sepulturae beatissimum.Behind these mountains and beyond the north wind there dwells (if we can believe it) a happy race of people called the Hyperboreans, who live to extreme old age and are famous for legendary marvels. Here are believed to be the hinges on which the firmament turns and the extreme limits of the revolutions of the stars, with six months’ daylight and a single day of the sun in retirement, not as the ignorant have said, from the spring equinox till autumn: for these people the sun rises once in the year, at midsummer, and sets once, at midwinter. It is a genial region, with a delightful climate and exempt from every harmful blast. The homes of the natives are the woods and groves; they worship the gods severally and in congregations; all discord and all sorrow is unknown. Death comes to them only when, owing to satiety of life, after holding a banquet and anointing their old age with luxury, they leap from a certain rock into the sea: this mode of burial is the most blissful. (Trans. H. Rackham)
EXPECTORATION (or SPITTING). The Muscovites are exceedingly adept expectorators. They constantly announce плевать мне на все (I spit on this and on that), and at the appropriate point in the diatribe emit a ptui of profound disdain that is the impeccable acoustic counterpart of SPITTING. Despite what might generally be supposed, this pantomime is not frowned upon; everyone does it and it is quite theatrical. But a real expectoration — so innocent a thing, a simple gob of saliva on the lawn — sends them into near-hysterics; first because of the lawn (they are great lovers of verdure), and then because it’s so very “ugly.” And the false but sonorous ptui is not? What do you make of this, K**? And of the way they crack sunflower seeds in public and toss the shells to the ground?
F
FLUTE (MAGIC). The decor of the fall of the IMPERIUM included street musicians, felt hats at their feet anticipating the occasional crumpled ruble or some small change. MONK was taken by surprise as he shot beams from his eyes to probe a Byzantine church’s multicolored cupolas at the far end of the canal for, at that very moment, the high notes of a flute made him turn his head.
I. I panned rapidly over the bear cub exhibited in chains so that cruel children could be photographed with him, the Great Man on his pedestal, the stone fountain. Another warble from the flute. I finally located the musician who was clearly playing for his own delight, far from the public. I would leave him some money: for Bach, for the instrument’s sweet tones in the lower registers, for the excellent acoustics in the chosen spot. You see, at first I took this musician for a boy (there was another boy nearby, a Cossack’s overcoat on his shoulders), wearing a pair of jeans with holes at the knees and a long sweater. I understood my mistake when she raised her head to attack the next phrase.
I followed the melody with eyes closed, the original version of a tune I also knew in an adulterated rendition by the Swinger Singers.
II. A few months after finding myself surrounded by snow, when the imminence of nuclear war still troubled me more, much more, than the idea of giving K** a kiss, a friend gave me a recording of a group of Budapest virtuosi (FLUTE, clarinet, violin, and clavichord) playing Mozart. I had noted the name of that Austrian musician among the plans for “breaking through” I had sketched out during my last year of school, long before going to study in Muscovy, when I was still a model student, extremely conscientious in my fulfillment of what was expected and not yet gone to hell in a handbasket. . politically, that is, to finally say it outright.
With all the gravity of one embarking upon a rite of initiation, I drew the curtains in my room to create a penumbra that would be conducive to my listening. The first chords sounded. I followed the violin’s arabesques and the phrasing of the clarinet and before the end of the first movement was already fed up, unpleasantly surprised and disgusted by such irresponsible lightheartedness. The idea of frivolity, this ENCYCLOPEDIA’S central concept, had not yet been installed with all its nuances and implications in my mind, but the ensemble of sensations Mozart’s music aroused in me that day could only have been summed up by an allusion to frivolity in its most pejorative sense.
Preoccupied, I compared his music to Bach’s — which I knew better — and the latter came out far ahead for the weightiness of his themes, the monumentalism, the seriousness of his proximity to God. Years would go by before I, happy to be young, without a speck of dust on my conscience, would enjoy myself while listening to the “jewel tones” of Mozart’s music, a music that could justify my shameful inclination toward (SWISS) CHOCOLATES and Dutch cheese.