“So you’re Teffi, are you?”
“Yes,” I confess. (There is, after all, no getting away from this.)
“The writer?”
I give a silent nod. He’s going to say no. Why else would he have emerged so suddenly?
“Would you mind just writing your name in this notebook? That’s right. With the date and the year.”
I write with a trembling hand. First I forget the date, then the year. I am rescued by a frightened whisper from someone behind me.
“So,” the superior repeats somberly. He frowns. He reads what I have written. And then his stern mouth slides into a warm and confidential smile: “You see… I wanted your autograph.”
“You flatter me!”
I receive my permit.
Gooskin now further proves his worth. He brings the commissar along. The commissar is indeed terrible. Not a human being, but a nose in boots. There are creatures called cephalopods. Well, he is a rhinopod. A vast nose, to which are attached two legs. One leg, evidently, contains the heart, while the other contains the digestive tract. And these legs are encased in yellow lace-up boots that go right up to his thighs. These boots clearly mean a great deal to the commissar. He is very proud of them and they are, therefore, his weak spot. There indeed lies his Achilles heel. And so the serpent prepares to strike.
“I hear you are a lover of the arts,” I begin my oblique approach. And then, with sudden feminine naïveté, as if unable to control myself, I exclaim, “Ah, what wonderful boots!”
The nose blushes and puffs itself up a little.
“Hem… the Arts… I adore the theater, although I have seldom had the opportunity—”
“What astonishing boots! Truly the boots of a warrior. I can’t help thinking you must be an extraordinary man!”
“No, no, whatever makes you say that?” the commissar protests feebly. “Let’s just say that ever since childhood I have loved beauty and heroism… and service to the people.”
Heroism and service to the people—these are words best avoided. It is in the name of service to the people that the Bat has been stripped. Art and beauty are surer ground.
“No, no, don’t deny it! I sense in you a profoundly artistic nature. You love the arts. You are a true patron of art; you do everything in your power to bring art to the people—into the thick of them, into their depths, into their heart of hearts. Your boots are truly remarkable. Only Torquato Tasso[7] could have worn boots like yours, and maybe not even him. You are a genius!”
That last word settles everything. I am given permission to take a flask of perfume and two evening dresses across the frontier—as tools of my trade.
In the evening Gooskin took the commissar to see the operetta, Catherine the Great. Lolo and I had written the libretto together.[8]
The commissar softened still more, gave free rein to his feelings and ordered Gooskin to inform me that “art is indeed of material significance” and that I could take with me whatever I needed: he would say nothing. He would be as quiet “as a fish against a brick wall.”
I never saw the commissar again.
My last days in Moscow pass in a senseless whirl.
Bella Kaza-Roza, a former chanteuse from the Ancient Theatre, arrives from Petersburg.[9] These last days have brought out a peculiar talent in her: She always knows who needs what and who possesses what.
In she comes, a distant look in her dark rapt eyes, and says, “In the Krivo-Arbat Lane, in the fabric store on the corner, they’ve still got a yard and a half of batiste. You absolutely must go and buy it.”
“But I don’t need any batiste.”
“Yes, you do. When you come back in a month’s time, there won’t be a scrap to be found anywhere.”
Another time she rushes in, out of breath, and says, “You must make yourself a velvet dress this very minute!”
“?”
“You know very well that you simply can’t go on without one. The owner of the hardware store on the corner is selling a length of curtain. She’s only just taken it down. Fresh as can be—nails and all. It’ll make a wonderful evening dress. You simply can’t do without it. And you’ll never get a chance like this again!”
The look on her face is serious, almost tragic.
I hate the word “never.” Were someone to tell me that I’ll never again get a headache, even that would probably scare me.
I do as I’m told. I buy the luxurious scrap of cloth with the seven nails.
Those last days were strange indeed.
At night we hurried past the dark houses, down streets where people were strangled and robbed. We hurried to listen to Silva[10] or else to sit in down-at-heel cafés packed with people in shabby coats that stank of wet dog. There we listened to young poets reading—or rather howling—their own and one another’s work; they sounded like hungry wolves. There was quite a vogue for these poets, and even the haughty Bryusov would sometimes deign to introduce one of their “Evenings of Eros.”[11]
Everyone wanted company, to be in the presence of other people.
To be alone and at home was frightening.
We had to know what was going on; we needed to keep hearing news of one another. Sometimes someone would disappear and then it would be almost impossible to find out what had happened to them. Had they gone to Kiev? Or to the place from which there was no return?
It was as if we were living in the tale about Zmey Gorynych, the dragon that required a yearly tribute of twelve fair maidens and twelve young men.[12] One might well wonder how the people in this tale could have carried on, how they could have lived with the knowledge that a dragon would soon be devouring the finest of their children. During those last days in Moscow, however, we realized that they too had probably been rushing from one little theater to another or hurrying to buy themselves something from which to make a coat or a dress. There is nowhere a human being cannot live. With my own eyes I have seen sailors taking a man out onto the ice in order to shoot him—and I have seen the condemned man hopping over puddles to keep his feet dry and turning up his collar to shield his chest from the wind. Those few steps were the last steps he would ever take, and instinctively he wanted to make them as comfortable as possible.
We were no different. We bought ourselves some “last scraps” of fabric. We listened for the last time to the last operetta and the last exquisitely erotic verses. What did it matter whether the verses were good or terrible? All that mattered was not to know, not to be aware—we had to forget that we were being led onto the ice.
News came from Petersburg that the Cheka[13] had arrested a well-known actress for reading my short stories in public. She was ordered to read one of the stories again, before three dread judges. You can imagine what fun it was for her to stand between guards with bayonets and declaim my comic monologue. And then—miracle of miracles!—after her first few trembling sentences, the face of one of the judges dissolved into a smile.
“I heard this story one evening at comrade Lenin’s. It’s entirely apolitical.”
Reassured by this, the judges asked the suspect—who was, of course, also greatly reassured—to continue her reading, “by way of revolutionary entertainment.”
8
Lolo was the nickname of Leonid Munstein (1866–1947), a poet, satirist, critic, and editor. A friend of Teffi, he too emigrated to France via Kiev, Odessa, and Constantinople. The operetta, with music borrowed from Offenbach, was produced in Moscow in August 1918.
9
The Ancient Theatre, co-founded by Nikolay Yevreinov (1879–1953) and Baron Drizen (1868–1935), with the philosophy of “artistic historic reconstruction,” played just two seasons, 1907–1908 and 1911–1912. The singer Bella Kaza-Roza (1885–1929) was a friend of Teffi; her repertoire included settings of poems by Teffi.
10
11
Valery Bryusov was one of the founders of Russian Symbolism. Always an influential figure, he joined the Communist Party in 1920. There are several accounts of his abusing his position in the Soviet cultural apparatus to attack more gifted colleagues.
12
This three-headed dragon appears in one of the most famous Russian
13
The Soviet security services were originally called the “Extraordinary Committee” or