Portraits without Frames Read online

  eyes sliding over the bindings

  of the books in the rich,

  well-cared-for library

  that resembles its owner.

  Platonov gets to his feet.

  I do the same.

  We run—fly—hurtle

  down the stairs

  and wander for a long time

  about Moscow.

  There are a lot of cars.

  Which are Black Marias,

  we don’t know. We don’t

  discuss this, but we know

  we both think about it

  and think about

  how we both know this.

  “And you? Can you

  make out

  what’s relevant

  to the needs of our time

  and what isn’t?”

  Platonov asks, boldly,

  on Bolshaya Ordynka.

  I’m twenty years old. Wet

  behind the ears. “No,”

  I reply. I feel ashamed

  of my answer, but it’s the truth.

  “Precisely!” A pause. A look.

  A pause. “Stay like that.

  Don’t change.” Platonov falls

  silent, withdraws into himself,

  then says, “In fifty years’ time,

  who knows, it may perhaps

  become clear

  what era you and I live in

  and what name

  should be given it. But,

  more likely, it will

  be given many different names—

  some very strange—

  chosen by the grandchildren

  of those in power at this hour—

  the grandchildren, I should say,

  of everyone living today.”

  He was walking fast,

  not looking from side

  to side, holding his head

  up high,

  with its high cheekbones

  and flinty chin.

  Translated by Robert Chandler

  *Zelinsky was a Soviet literary critic of great influence from the early 1930s until his death. In 1940 he wrote a damning internal review of a collection of poems that Marina Tsvetaeva, recently returned to the Soviet Union, was trying to publish. He also played an important part in the public attacks on Boris Pasternak in 1958, after Doctor Zhivago had been published abroad.

  MIKHAIL ZOSHCHENKO (1895–1958) is best known for the comic short stories he wrote in the 1920s. These were hugely popular; 700,000 copies of his books were sold in 1926 and 1927 alone. Zoshchenko also won the admiration of other writers—from Maxim Gorky to Osip Mandelstam. In 1946 he was denounced as an “enemy of Soviet literature” and expelled from the Writers’ Union. Zoshchenko’s stories perfectly capture the texture of everyday life in Soviet Russia: the inescapable bureaucracy; the constant shortages of everyday necessities, especially living space; and people’s strange eagerness to denounce one another. Zoshchenko is not only one of the funniest of Russian writers but also one of the most sober; no one is more aware of the harm carried out in the name of grand visions of progress. The harsh and cramped world of his stories is a paradoxically eloquent assertion of the importance of what is so strikingly absent from it: acts of kindness.

  MIKHAIL MIKHAILOVICH ZOSHCHENKO

  This is how the story begins.

  I had had my left eye operated on

  in the clinic

  of one of the fastest

  and most furious

  of our new businessmen,

  a truly Soviet

  caricature of a capitalist,

  a man, I could see,

  with an unerring

  eye for commercial opportunity.

  There were nine of us patients,

  crowded into a small ward. I knew

  everyone’s name. We had already

  talked about everything

  there was

  to talk about,

  and there was nothing,

  I think I can say,

  we didn’t know about one another.

  We’d exhausted our supply

  of jokes. Well-wishers

  had ensured

  that all of us

  languishing in the hospital

  had a clear grasp

  of the system of bribes:

  so much for a cataract,

  so much for a glaucoma,

  so much for a scratched lens,

  so much for a detached retina—

  each item on this list, of course,

  more expensive

  than the item before it.

  And then there was a redoubtable lady,

  an administrator who could have been

  a grenadier guard, with a snowplow

  of a bust and a baritone

  that would have done her proud onstage.

  She accepted payment

  in cash

  or in French cosmetics—

  as long as the bottles

  were not too small.

  We were all feeling bored

  and one of the other patients

  said to me,

  “You, probably, have some books.

  You look like one of those . . .

  intelligentsia. What’s damaged

  your eyes is books.

  Get your friends to bring you some

  so you can read to us.”

  My friends

  brought me some books.

  I read a little Tolstoy:

  The Sebastopol Stories.

  “Not bad—but it’s

  ever so serious. And we’ve

  all had enough of war.”

  I tried Dostoyevsky:

  The Adolescent, Poor Folk.

  “Not bad, but it’s all

  ever so serious. Enough

  to make you start to cry.

  Give us something

  a bit simpler, something

  that’ll make us all laugh,

  even just a little bit.”

  And so I read them some Zoshchenko.

  Everyone was transformed.

  Everyone was reborn.

  Laughter’s more powerful than vitamins.

  The roars of laughter made it difficult

  to keep reading.

  We knew joy

  and a sense of community.

  “Just what we need!” people were saying.

  “That fellow knows his stuff!”

  They were falling off mattresses.

  Bandages were slipping off eyes.

  In dashed the head nurse. “What’s going on

  in here? I’ve never heard

  such a racket. Stop all

  this reading at once. You should

  be ashamed of yourselves!”

  I stopped reading. Everyone

  went back to being bored.

  Zoshchenko, once again,

  was forbidden. Of course:

  What else

  could we have expected?

  And so, instead of reading,

  I talked to them about Zoshchenko.

  My own thoughts and impressions.

  Swarthy, quiet, timid. Brown eyes.

  A man who had kept his counsel

  among wheeler-dealers and their floozies,

  among criminals and swindlers—

  he knew them not from clever books

  but from the life he’d led. He’d seen

  enough—more than enough of them.

  And he had learned

  to keep his mouth shut.

  He was a man like no one else.

  His eyes had a wonderful glitter,

  almost as if there were tears in them.

  He seemed to me to be looking

  somewhere into the depths of the soul,

  as if the world lying outside

  the soul were too much for him.

  He’d been in the war,

  he’d suffered concussion,

  he’d been gassed. All this had left him

  with heart p
roblems. He had bred rabbits

  and chickens. He had worked as a cobbler,

  a policeman, an agent

  for the Criminal Investigation Department.

  This wealth of professions

  had come in useful.

  He’d got to know people.

  Then it was time

  to say goodbye to fun

  and games, time for Zoshchenko

  to start his real work.

  How does it start—

  the mad day, the mad life

  of a writer? What whim,

  what overwhelming force

  presses a pen into some poor fellow’s hand

  and leads him down

  through all of Dante’s

  twisting circles?

  One day

  I was walking

  down Nevsky Prospekt

  with Slonimsky—not the composer

  but his father, the writer,

  one of the Serapion Brothers.*

  And there, coming toward us,

  not far from the Anichkov Bridge

  and Clodt’s famous horses,

  was Zoshchenko. Two writers,

  two Serapions, two Mikhails,

  two old friends. I was introduced.

  “I’ve been wanting to meet you for years!”

  I said breathlessly. Zoshchenko

  said nothing. He seemed to be almost

  pitying me. Had I said the wrong thing?

  What was I to do? Best, I thought,

  to hold my tongue. Which

  I did. The two Mikhails

  talked for a long time. And then,

  as we were saying goodbye,

  Zoshchenko said, “I’m reading

  this evening. A workers’ club

  in Vyborgskaya. Do come if you can!”

  And he wrote down the address.

  Slonimsky was doing something else,

  but I went along. And I didn’t regret it.

  Zoshchenko and I arrived

  together. Chance?

  Sometimes chance is a bearer of gifts.

  It was early. No one

  to greet the writer. He invited me

  backstage. We’d only just met

  and there I was—in the role

  of trusted friend. I was

  all eyes, and I soon realized

  that Zoshchenko was a lonely man

  who hid this with great skill.

  It was my lucky day:

  The author, Zoshchenko,

  reading his own work.

  And me backstage, looking out

  into the packed hall. Z. read

  clearly, as if at ease,

  as if simply chatting,

  one to one, with individual listeners.

  He read “The Forked Object”

  and “The Aristocratic Lady.”

  He sounded sad and thoughtful—

  and the audience went wild.

  They roared with laughter.

  I saw mouths twisted into strange shapes;

  I heard snorts, neighs, and bleats.

  One man was slapping his hand on his knee;

  another kept turning his head

  madly from side to side;

  a third was trying to silence

  someone mooing and weeping beside him.

  A fourth was howling, head

  thrown back. Where were you,

  Brueghel? O Goya,

  where were you? I saw these things

  with my own eyes.

  And I saw thoughtful looks,

  expressions of deep alarm;

  I saw the shining faces of true

  lovers of the word. And I saw

  Zoshchenko, calm and pale,

  retire backstage,

  a little hunched, as if battered

  by the waves—those rolling

  breakers of applause.

  “Why are they all laughing?”

  he asked. “I’ve been telling them

  terrible things.” With a shrug

  of despair he goes out again.

  One more story. The story’s creator

  is swarthy, brown-eyed.

  Quiet. Unsmiling. Sad.

  And only now and then

  do the corners of his slightly

  swollen mouth betray

  that he has something to say.

  And so he writes, his pen

  scratching away in some room

  near the Griboyedov Canal.

  No, this is no portrait. Only

  a first sketch. We leave the club.

  He says nothing. But then,

  as we’re saying goodbye: “What can I

  teach them? All they ever learn,

  and they learn it quicker and quicker,

  is how to poison one another’s lives.

  Goodbye. See you soon.” But I

  never

  saw Zoshchenko again.

  May–June 1993

  Translated by Robert Chandler

  *The Serapion Brothers was a group of writers formed in Petrograd in 1921. Among its members were Viktor Shklovsky, Mikhail Slonimsky, and Zoshchenko. Among their teachers were Yevgeny Zamyatin and Korney Chukovsky.

  ISAAC BABEL (1894–1940), one the twentieth century’s most innovative and influential prose stylists, was born in Odessa, Ukraine, into a relatively well-to-do Jewish family. A lifelong Francophile and devotee of Guy de Maupassant, he began writing short stories at an early age. During the Civil War he joined the Red Army as a political commissar and correspondent, and his experiences with the Cossacks during the Polish-Soviet War of 1919–1921 inspired one of his masterpieces, Red Cavalry (1926). In his other great cycle, The Odessa Tales, he fictionalized the exploits of the city’s legendary Jewish gangsters, as well as his own childhood and youth. He based his play Sunset (1928) on one of his gangster tales. He was arrested in 1939 and shot in 1940, a victim of Stalin’s purges.

  ISAAC EMMANUILOVICH BABEL

  More than any other storyteller,

  he married sorrow with delight.

  I read his prose like poetry,

  all breathless, getting it by heart.

  I was fifteen years old.

  I read him aloud, to myself—

  my poet,

  he drew me like first love.

  Behind thick glasses

  (yes, always—ever since childhood)

  lay laughter, slyness, a sparkle of eyes.

  An upturned nose,

  head tilted back.

  I first saw Babel at a publisher’s

  on Bolshaya Cherkasskaya,

  leaving the accounts department.

  Film clip: He stuffs his wallet

  into his jacket pocket,

  a little stooped,

  his face not quite content,

  not quite self-mocking—

  he did, after all, once say of himself:

  “This is someone

  I’ve been fighting against

  all my life.”

  He walks down the stairs,

  and I follow him with my eyes.

  Here—the man who wrote Red Cavalry,

  The Odessa Tales, Sunset.

  And then a second meeting.

  His face is always acting.

  The eyes, cheeks, lips, and nose

  find it hard to get on together.

  It’s hard to grasp the story.

  We weren’t here for the start

  of this act; by the time we arrived

  it was already

  scene three or four.

  “Don’t be shy, kids, come in!”

  To Babel we were kids—

  two students bearing an invitation

  from our institute

  to a meeting with André Malraux,

  who had just arrived from Paris.

  “All right! Let’s think it over. Sit down.

  Want a drink? Hungry?”

  We refused so vehemently

  that Babel said, “Of course


  you’re hungry.” We were indeed.

  When food was brought,

  we found it difficult

  to eat and drink in a leisurely manner.

  “What would you have me do

  at this meeting with André Malraux?”

  “Whatever you like. Talk.

  And, of course, interpret.”

  “That’s right—interpret.

  Malraux’s already called me. I agree.”

  For us two students

  this was a victory.

  Our friends had said we’d never

  get to speak to Babel.

  Feeling awkward, we rose,

  thanked him for the meal, and said goodbye—

  my classmate Rita and I.

  Weightily, Babel rested

  his palms on our shoulders.

  A pressed suit, a tight waistcoat.

  How old was he?

  Twenty-three? Thirty-three? Forty-three?

  At the institute they asked us

  to meet the car bringing Malraux and Babel.

  Students poured out into the street: “They’re here!”

  Both wearing black suits.

  I’ve told you about Babel already.

  Malraux is thin-faced and pale.

  His soft hair falls every now and then

  over his eyes. His long thin fingers

  sweep back these strands

  that still, as if out of spite,

  keep falling across his forehead.

  He speaks softly but quickly,

  as if carried away, not trying to please.

  The year, I think, is 1936.

  Malraux is not yet minister of culture.

  Babel still has his freedom.

  Later, after his arrest,

  he’ll want the news of his arrest

  passed on to Andrey,

  as he called Malraux. But at the time—

  there we were, firing our questions.

  Babel could barely interpret

  fast enough. The great man of silence

  found himself

  with a great many words to say.

  The nervously proud Malraux

  kept thinking,

  and his thoughts rolled over us

  like the wheels

  of a weather-beaten carriage.

  Babel kept glancing at his watch,

  lifting the edge of his cuff,

  and shaking his head.

  “What do they know in France of Pasternak?”

  A pause, a long pause.

  Suddenly Malraux brightens up, raises his head:

  “I’ve heard that in the Latin Quarter

  they read about a young man

  who walks around the city

  blithely, giddily repeating

  the name of the girl he loves—I think it’s . . .”

  “Marburg, Marburg!” the hall bursts out.

  And no less than twenty voices