Still, all in all, it probably wasn’t such a bad idea to be going away, even if only for a month. For a change of climate.
By now Gooskin was proving his worth more than ever. Perhaps more from nerves than from any real need. One morning, for some reason, he had been over to see Averchenko.
“It was awful,” he told me, waving his hands in the air. “At ten o’clock this morning I hurried over to see Averchenko—and what did I find? He was snoring—snoring cats and dogs! He’s going to miss the train!”
“But I thought we weren’t leaving for another five days.”
“The train leaves at ten o’clock. If he sleeps like that today, then what’s to stop him from sleeping like that a week from now? He’ll be sleeping like that his whole life. He’ll be sleeping—and we’ll be waiting. Wonderful!”
Gooskin dashed about. He got more and more agitated. He moved faster and faster. He flapped his hands in the air, like a broken belt drive. But had it not been for his frenzied energy, who knows how my life would have turned out? Wherever you are, O my pseudonymous Gooskin, I send you my greetings!
2
THE DAY for our departure was constantly being postponed.
First, there would be delays with someone’s travel permit. Then it would turn out that our hope of hopes, our Nose-in-Boots, had yet to return to his frontier post.
My own preparations were more or less complete. My trunk was now full. Another trunk, in which I had packed a number of old Russian shawls (the latest of my crazes), had been stowed away in Lolo’s apartment.
But what if the authorities suddenly declared some “Week of Poverty”—or, for that matter, a “Week of Elegance”—and all these shawls were confiscated?
In the event of trouble, I asked Lolo to state that the trunk was of proletarian origin, that it belonged to Fedosya, his former cook. And to make all this more convincing and to ensure that the trunk was treated with proper respect, I put a portrait of Lenin inside it, with the inscription, “Darling Fedosya, whose memory I shall treasure with the deepest affection. Your loving Vova.”[14]
Not even these measures proved of any help.
Those last Moscow days passed by in a turbid whirl. People appeared out of the mist, spun around and faded from sight; then new people appeared. It was like standing on a riverbank in the spring twilight and watching great blocks of ice float past: On one block is something that could be either a cart packed with straw or a Ukrainian peasant hut; on another block are scorched logs and something that looks like a wolf. Everything spins around a few times and then the current sweeps it away forever. And never will you learn what it really was.
Various engineers, doctors, and journalists made brief appearances. Now and then some actress or other would show up.
A landowner I knew passed through on his way from Petersburg to his estate in Kazan. From Kazan he wrote that the peasants had looted his home and that he had been doing the rounds of their huts buying back his paintings and books. In one hut he had seen a miracle: a portrait of me painted by Schleifer,[15] hanging in the icon corner next to Saint Nicholas the Miracle Worker. The woman who had been allotted this portrait had taken it into her head that I was a holy martyr.
Lydia Yavorskaya was cast up on our shores.[16] She arrived unexpectedly, as elegant as ever, and talked about how we must all join forces and organize something. Just what, I never understood. She was accompanied by some kind of boy scout in shorts, whom she referred to rather solemnly as “M’sieur Sobolev.” The block of ice spun around, and they floated away into the mist.
Mironova made a no less sudden appearance. She performed a few pieces at a little theater on the outskirts of town and disappeared too.
Then a woman I liked very much, an actress from some provincial town, floated into our circle. Someone stole her diamonds, and she turned for help to a criminal investigations commissar. This commissar turned out to be someone kind and good-natured. He did what he could to help and then, learning that she would be spending the evening with a group of writers, asked her to take him along with her. He adored literature but had never set eyes on a living writer; nothing could make him happier than to glimpse us in the flesh. The actress asked our permission, then brought him along. Never in my life have I seen someone so tall. His voice was like a great bell high above us, but the words this bell sounded were surprisingly sentimentaclass="underline" well-known children’s verses, and declarations that until this moment his life had been only a matter of mind—or “moind,” as he put it—but that now his heart had awoken.
He spent day after day pursuing criminals and bandits. He’d set up what he called a museum of crime, and he showed us his collection of complex instruments for sawing through locks, snapping off door chains, and slicing silently through iron bolts. He showed us the small tool kits with which a professional burglar goes out to work. Each little case contained a small flashlight, along with a bite to eat and a small bottle of eau de cologne. I was surprised by the eau de cologne.
“Who’d have thought it? Such refinement. What makes them want to douse themselves with eau de cologne when they’re in such danger, when every moment is precious?”
His explanation was simple enough. The eau-de-cologne was a substitute for vodka, which was no longer obtainable.
After catching a few of his bandits, the commissar would join our little circle in the evening. He would show deep feelings; he would express astonishment that we really were the people we said we were. And at the end of the evening he would walk me home. There was something rather frightening about walking at night, down the bleak streets, beside this extraordinarily tall figure. All around us were alarming rustles, stealthy footsteps, screams, sometimes shots. Yet none of these was as frightening as the giant who was my guard.
Sometimes the telephone would ring late in the evening. It was our guardian angel whose heart had awoken. He was phoning to check that everything was all right with us.
After we’d recovered from the shock of the sudden ringing, we would recite:
Our guardian angel kept an eye on us until the very moment of our departure. He took us to the railway station and guarded our luggage, which was clearly an object of interest to the Cheka officers there.
All of us who were leaving felt a great deal of sorrow. There was a sorrow we all shared, and then we each had our own individual sorrow. Sorrow lay somewhere behind our eyes, deep behind our pupils. There it glimmered—like the skull and crossbones on the forage caps of the Prussian Death’s Head Hussars. But this was not something we spoke about.
I remember the delicate profile of a young harpist. About three months after we left, she was betrayed and executed. I remember my distress over my young friend Leonid Kannegisser. A few days before the assassination of Uritsky,[18] he’d heard that I was in Petersburg. He telephoned me and said that he very much wanted to see me—but only on neutral territory.
“Why not in my apartment?”
“I’ll explain when we meet.”
We agreed to meet for a meal at the home of some mutual friends.
When we met, Kannegisser said, “People are following me. I don’t want to lead them to your apartment.”
I put this down to adolescent posturing. It was a time when many young people were assuming mysterious airs and pronouncing enigmatic phrases. I thanked him and inquired no further.
14
“Vova” is an affectionate form of the name “Vladimir.” The intentionally ludicrous implication is that Fedosya received this shawl and portrait as a gift from Lenin himself.
15
Savely Schleifer (1881–1943). Born in Odessa, Schleifer studied there and in Petersburg. After living in Paris from 1905 to 1907, he returned to Petersburg. He taught there after the revolution but emigrated to Paris in 1927. Arrested by the Nazis soon after the outbreak of World War II, he died in Auschwitz.
18
After the October Revolution, Moisey Uritsky (1873–1918) was appointed head of the Petrograd Cheka (i.e. security police). On 17 August 1918 he was assassinated by Leonid Kannegisser, a poet and former military cadet. Soon after this, and after an attempt on Lenin’s life, the Bolsheviks initiated the wave of arrests and executions known as the Red Terror. Kannegisser was executed in October 1918. Ironically, Uritsky had been one of the few important Bolsheviks to disagree with Lenin about the need to resort to terror. See Ivan Bunin,