I quietly got dressed and went out.
It was a still night; the sky was dark and studded with stars. This made my soul too feel strangely still.
There are moments when threads snap—all the threads that tie what is earthly in the soul to the earth itself. Your nearest and dearest become infinitely distant, barely even a memory. Even the events in your past that once mattered most to you grow dim. All of the huge and important thing we call life fades away and you become that primordial nothing out of which the universe was created.
So it was on that night—the black, empty, round earth and the boundless starry sky. And me.
How long this moment lasted I can’t say. I was brought back by the sound of voices: People were walking past, talking loudly about the theater. And I remembered everything. This, I remembered, was my evening. I was going to have to hurry. I seemed to have wandered a long way—beside me I could see a bright strip of water and some little black walkways.
“Please! For the love of God!” I called out. “Which way is the theater?”
Someone told me.
I hurried off, clacking my heels on the pavement, so I could hear that I had returned to my ordinary everyday life.
Backstage there is much excitement and bustle.
“Denikin’s here![134] It’s a full house.”
From the wings I can see the front rows. Gold and silver lace, the glint of uniforms—true splendor.
This splendid hall is laughing and applauding. The laughter even spreads backstage.
Then I hear calls of “Author! Author!”
More bustle backstage. “Author! Where’s the author?”
“Where’s the author?” I repeat like an automaton. “Where’s the author? Oh my God! It’s my own play! I’m the author!”
What would my dear impresario make of all this? What if he knew what a strange creature he has invited to his theater! A normal author would have been a bundle of nerves all through the day. A normal author would be saying things like, “Feel my hands—they’re like ice!” And what do I do? I cultivate a state of cosmic non-being—and then, when the audience calls for me, I ask with calm curiosity, “Where’s the author?”
Yet he’ll be paying me as if I were a proper, sensible author!
“Get on stage!” yells the director.
I quickly put on a carefree smile, take hold of the hands stretched toward me and join the actors on stage to take my bow.
My last bow to a Russian audience on Russian soil.
Farewell, my last bow…
31
SUMMER in Yekaterinodar…
Heat. Dust. Through a murky veil of dust, turmoil, and all the years that have passed I glimpse faces and images.
Professor Novgorodtsev. The pale blue, very Slavic eyes of Venedikt Myakotin. The ever-sentimental Fyodor Volkenstein’s thick mane of hair. The faraway, intent gaze of Pyotr Ouspensky, the mystic…[135] And others, “slain servants of the Lord” whom we were already remembering in our prayers.
And there was Prince Y—one of my many Petersburg acquaintances. Always cheerful, feverishly animated—still more so after being shot through the arm.
“The soldiers adore me,” he would say. “I know how to treat them. I bash them in the face—just like you bash a tambourine.”
What they really loved him for, I think, was his reckless daring and his extraordinary cheerful bravado. They liked to tell the story of how he had once galloped through a village held by the Bolsheviks, whistling loudly, his epaulettes clearly visible on his shoulders.
“But why didn’t they shoot at you?”
“They were flabbergasted. They couldn’t believe their eyes: a White officer—suddenly riding through their village! They all rushed out to look, eyes popping out of their heads. It was ever so funny!”
I’ve heard the most astonishing accounts of Prince Y’s subsequent adventures. In due course, in some other town in the south, he fell into enemy hands. He was tried—and sentenced to hard labor. Since the Bolsheviks didn’t have any proper labor camps at that time, they simply put him in prison. But then they turned out to need a public prosecutor; it was only a small town and everyone with any education had either fled or gone into hiding. And they knew that the prince had completed a degree in law. So they thought for a bit, then appointed him public prosecutor. Prince Y would be escorted to the court to prosecute and to pass sentence, and he would then return for the night to his “hard labor.” Many people felt envious: They too would have been glad of free bed and board.
Yekaterinodar, Rostov, Kislovodsk, Novorossiisk…
Yekaterinodar, city of the elite. And in every government establishment—the picturesque beret, cloak, and curls of Maximilian Voloshin, declaiming his poems about Russia and petitioning on behalf of the innocent and endangered.
Rostov, city of traders and profiteers, its restaurant gardens the scene for hysterical drinking bouts that culminated in suicides.
Novorossiisk, city of many colors, ready to spring into Europe. Young men and chic ladies, motoring about in English cars and bathing in the sea. Novorossiisk-les-Bains…
Kislovodsk, which greeted approaching trains with an idyllic picture of green hills, peacefully grazing flocks and—against the backdrop of a scarlet evening sky—a finely etched black swing with a stub of rope.
A gallows.
I remember how haunted I was by that singular picture. I remember leaving the hotel first thing in the morning and setting off toward those green hills, seeking the evil mountain.
Toward it I went, climbing a steep, well-trodden path. Seen from close by, the swing was no longer black. It was gray, like any other piece of ordinary unpainted wood.
I stood right in the center, beneath its strong crossbeam.
What, in their last moments, had these people seen? Hangings were, as a rule, carried out early in the morning. From this spot, they would have seen their last sun. And this line of hills and mountains.
Down below to the left, the market was already getting underway. Brightly dressed peasant women were taking earthenware from their carts and laying it out on straw, the morning sun glistening wetly on the glazed jugs and bowls. Then, too, there would probably have been this same market. And to the right, farther off among the hills, were flocks of sheep. In tight waves (like the curls of the Shulamite),[136] these flocks were now rolling slowly down the green slope, and shepherds in furs were leaning on long crooks straight out of the Bible. A blessed silence. They, too, would have heard this silence.
It would all have been utterly simple and routine. People would have led someone up here, then stood them exactly where I was now standing myself. One of the shepherds might have looked this way, shielding his eyes with the palm of his hand, and wondered what was going on up above him.
One of those hanged here had been Ksenya G, the famous anarchist.[137] Bold, gay, young, beautiful—always chic, and the companion of Mamont Dalsky.[138] Back in the days of revolutionary fever, many of my friends had gone out carousing in the company of these two and their lively, entertaining fellow-anarchists. And they all, without exception, had struck us as fakes and braggarts. Not one of us had taken them seriously. We had known Mamont’s colorful persona too well and too long to believe in the sincerity of his political convictions. It was posturing, hot air, a hired costume, the grease-paint of a tragic villain. Intriguing and irresponsible. On stage Mamont had, throughout his career, played Edmund Kean in the play by Alexandre Dumas; off stage he had played not only Kean but also the “genius” and the “libertine” of the play’s title. But Mamont had died (oh, the little ironies of fate!) because of an act of old-fashioned courtesy. Standing on the running board of a tram, he had stepped back to make room for a lady. He had lost his footing and fallen beneath the wheels. And several months later his companion, gay, chic Ksenya G, had stood here, in this very spot, smoking her last cigarette and screwing her eyes up as she looked at her last sun. Then she had flicked away the cigarette butt—and calmly thrown the stiff noose around her neck.
134
Anton Denikin (1872–1947) was the commander-in-chief of the White forces in southern Russia from December 1918 until April 1920.
135
Pavel Novgorodtsev (1866–1924) was a liberal political philosopher and lawyer; he emigrated in 1921 and died in Prague. For Myakotin see note 100, for Volkenstein note 100 and 107. Pyotr Ouspensky (1878–1947) was a follower of the spiritual philosopher George Gurdjieff (1866–1949).
136
In the Song of Solomon 4:1, Solomon says to a woman referred to as the Shulamite, “Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves’ eyes within thy locks: thy hair is as a flock of goats, that appear from mount Gilead.”
137
Ksenya Mikhailovna G (1892–1919) was an anarchist who, after the October Revolution, joined the Bolshevik Party. Her independence of mind led to her being sent out of the way, to Kislovodsk, where she worked as an investigator for the Cheka. After the Whites captured Kislovodsk, she was arrested, sentenced and hanged. “G” was the pseudonym adopted by her husband, whose surname was Golberg.
138
Mamont Dalsky (1865–1918) was a tragic actor, famous for his interpretation of the lead role in