The Cynics by Anatoly Marienhof
A cynical translation into English
Anatoly Borisovich Marienhof or Mariengof (Russian: Анато́лий Бори́сович Мариенго́ф, 1897–1962) was a Russian poet, novelist, and playwright. He was one of the leading figures of Imaginism. Today, he is remembered mostly for his memoirs depicting Russian literary life in the 1920s and his friendship with Sergei Yesenin.
Wikipedia
Disclaimer
To answer why: I always felt it was unfair that audiences in the West are missing this fine book.
This translation is cynical because it is quick, non-professional, and breaks the translation canon (you’re supposed to translate only into your native language). I’m skipping the epigraph too, sorry. At the same time, it is thorough and careful. Russian is my native language, and I lived in the very center of St. Petersburg for many years (As if it mattered, just bragging).
I will publish it chapter by chapter here, at a slow pace.
Preface
First of all, about the time of the novel.
In 1918, Petrograd (formerly St. Petersburg) was in turmoil after the 1917 Revolution and at the start of the Russian Civil War, which flared up in western Russia, the North (Murmansk), and stretched as far as Siberia and the Far East. In September 1918, the government launched a campaign of “Red Terror,” which included shooting hostages and giving the Cheka (political police) expanded powers for summary arrest, trial, and execution of suspects.
The novel stretches from 1918 to 1924.
The Cynics
1918
1
“It’s very good that you come to me with flowers.
All the men, tongues out, are running around Sukharevka1 buying up flour and millet. They drag flour and millet to their sweethearts too. Under beds made of Karelian birch, like corpses, lie sacks.”
She put the asters in a vase. The vase was silvery, tall, shaped like a woman’s arm with the hand cut off.
A heavy truck rumbled past the windows. Focused soldiers were hauling some people who looked like broken old summer house furniture.
“You know, Olga...”
I touched her fingers.
“...after our ‘socialist’ coup I’ve come to the conclusion that the Russian people aren’t completely deprived of a sense of humor.”
Olga stepped up to a round mirror in a gilt lace frame.
“And what do you think, Vladimir...”
She looked in the mirror.
“...could it happen that in Moscow one won’t be able to get French lip rouge?”
She picked up a small golden Guerlain pencil from the table:
“How is one supposed to live then?”
2
After a four-day strike, the assembly of workers at the Tula Arms and Ammunition Factory passed a resolution: “…at the first call of the factory whistle, to return to work, since the strike could only have been declared because of the temporary derangement of workers suffering from the collapse of the economy.”
3
The Czechoslovaks2 have taken Samara.
4
In Petrograd, funeral of Volodarsky3 was underway. More than two hundred thousand people followed the coffin under a pouring rain.
5
The Cheka4 thoroughly searched the French citizen Lefenberg’s café at Stoleshnikov Lane, No. 8, and Tsumburg’s café, a Slovak, at No. 6 on the same street.
Pastries were found there, and about thirty pounds of honey.
6
Armed with a rag from Homer’s time, I stand on a light stepladder and in utter delight swallow book dust.
Below, Olga is picking at a glove the color of rat paws.
“No, Olga, you cannot demand this of me!”
She goes on peeling off her second skin from her left hand.
“So, you want me to share this pleasure beyond compare with the servants? You want me to allow my maid, once a week, to wipe down my books? Is that it?”
“Exactly.”
“Never in my life! She already gets paid far too much.”
“Marfusha!”
Agitated, I lose my balance. To keep from falling, I have to let go of the rag from Homer’s time and grab the bookcase. The rag floats in the air for a moment, then drifts down onto Olga’s hat of pearly seagull feathers.
Oh, horror! The ancient relic covers her face like a black veil.
Olga chokes on dust, coughs, sneezes.
From my “heaven” I mumble apologies. All is lost. From below I hear:
“Marfusha!”
Enter a girl, ample and broad as the copper pot my mother used to make jam in.
“Be so kind, Marfusha, take over the dusting of the books. Vladimir Vasilievich spends three hours at it, but for you it will take no more than twenty minutes.”
My heart sinks.
“Come down, Vladimir. We are going for a walk.”
I come down.
“Your face is tattooed with grime.”
My face really is tattooed with grime.
“You must wash up. Does your house still have running water? Or did I count sixty-four steps for nothing?”
“An hour ago we had water. But you know, Olga, the best part of a revolution is its surprises.”
7
We are walking down Strastnoy Boulevard5.
The maples look like old-fashioned ladies in wide straw hats with crimson, orange, and yellow ribbons.
Olga takes my arm.
“My old folks deigned to flee abroad. Yesterday, we received a letter from my dearest papa with instructions to ‘keep watch over the apartment.’ For this, he recommends I marry a Bolshevik6. And then, he says, we’ll see how things turn out.”
Up in the sky lie cushions in snow-white pillowcases. From some, the down has spilled out.
Olga’s face is smooth and pale, like a playing card from a fresh, top-grade deck. And her mouth — the ace of hearts.
“I want ice cream.”
I tell her that the Moscow Soviet7 has issued a decree strictly forbidding the “sale and production” of the delicacy she can’t resist.
Olga shrugs:
“What a strange sort of revolution.”
And she says, with a hint of sadness:
“I thought the first thing they’d do would be to set up a guillotine on Lobnoye Mesto8.”
From the slender, round-headed lindens fall yellow hairs.
“And our Convention, or whatever they call it, forbids selling ice cream instead.”
A rainbow stretches across the city. Like a pair of merry, multi-colored suspenders.
The wind whistles a familiar tune from a Viennese operetta. The sparrows chatter about some nonsense.
8
In Kazan, a counterrevolutionary officers’ plot was uncovered.
Searches and arrests followed. The officers involved fled to the Raevsky Hermitage9.
The Kazan Party Committee sent an investigative commission there, accompanied by four Red Guards for protection.
But the monks just up and burned the whole commission — guards and all — at the stake.
Worth noting, as reported, they burned them according to ancient Russian custom: first they tied them crosswise with rope and threw them into the river. When the water’s surface stopped bubbling, they dragged them out and set about “drying them on the pyres.”
It was Olga’s kind of story.
9
“I’ve come to say goodbye, Olga.”
“Goodbye? Goga, don’t frighten me.”
And Olga arches her eyebrow dramatically over a laughing eye.
“And where are you off to?”
“To the Don. To General Alexeyev’s10 army.”
Olga looks at her brother almost with reverence:
“Goga, you are so…”
And suddenly, out of nowhere, she throws her legs up and starts kicking them about, laughing with them like a dog wags its tail.
Goga, a sweet, handsome boy. He is nineteen. He always has those offended pink lips, a head of hair the gold of clotted cream from steppe cows, and big green sad eyes.
“Try to understand, Olga, I love my motherland.”
Olga stops kicking her legs, turns her face to him and says, seriously:
“It’s all because you never finished gymnasium, Goga.”
Goga’s offended lips pout even more.
“Only scoundrels, Olga, could solve algebra problems during a war. Farewell.”
He stretches out his hand to me, slender, tender, like a girl’s. Not even fingers, but little fingers. I clasp them tight.
“Goodbye, Goga.”
He shakes his head, spilling the gold of clotted cream.
“No, farewell.”
And pushes out those pink, girlish, offended lips. We kiss.
“Goodbye, my dear friend.”
“Why do you make me sad, Vladimir Vasilievich? I would be so happy to die for Russia.”
Poor angel. They will shoot him down for certain, like a partridge.
“Farewell, Goga.”
10
On Kuznetsky Most11 they are stripping the shop signs bare. Beneath them, grimy, pockmarked walls, scabbed over with lichens, come into view.
From the rooftops, the yellow sun streams down in clear rivulets. It seems to me I can hear it murmuring through the drainpipes.
“Back in Peter the Great’s time, Olga, this was the Kuznetsky settlement. They smoked up the sky here. They cooked iron like soup. They battered anvils with hammers. I wonder what the Bolsheviks plan to make of Kuznetsky Most?”
A workman, wearing a little cap that looked like a spit, grinned broadly:
“Well now, citizens, just for example, in Alshvang’s shop12 of bourgeois luxuries we’ll be handing out shag tobacco on ration cards.”
And, squinting slyly at Olga’s lips, he added:
“For the working people.”
The late afternoon sun spreads across the pavements. Where the sidewalk dips into potholes and hollows, great sunlit puddles tremble in the wind.
“Wait for me, Vladimir.”
“Yes, mademoiselle”
“There’s a jeweler I know in apartment thirty-seven. I need to drop him a stone. Otherwise I’ll be left without a dime.
“Same story here. Tomorrow I’m off to the secondhand dealers to sell my first-edition Pushkin.”
Olga skips lightly up the stairs.
I wait.
An old Actual State Councillor13, “wearing pince-nez,” peddles Kharkov toffees in the entryway.
A sadness comes over me. I think of that little street where the bookshops still huddle together.
Once, they called it Mokhovaya14. It stretched along the quiet, deserted bank of the marshy Neglinnaya River. With nothing to hinder it, moss grew absurdly lush in the soft silty ground.
Olga returns.
“Now we can go carousing.”
She buys some toffees from the old Actual State Councillor.
The ruddy sun, like a frisky cheerful pup, tangles itself in our feet.
11
My older brother Sergey is a Bolshevik. He lives at the Metropol, manages Waterways and Maritime Department (though he’s an archaeologist); rides around in a six-seater car on tires swollen up like they’ve got dropsy, and dines on two potatoes, roasted on the cook’s imagination.
Sergey has merry blue eyes and ears that stick out childishly. Any moment now, he might flap them like a bird, and his head, with its blue eyes, would take off in flight.
On his right cheek is a pink blotch. Since early childhood, they lay Sergey out on the operating table nearly every year, picking some fresh patch of skin no surgeon’s knife had touched yet, carving out a bloody piece. The healthy tissue, freshly cut, was stitched like a patch onto his diseased cheek. Each time, the lupus devoured the patch.
“I’ve come on business. Write me a note so they’ll give me a protection certificate for the library.”
“What do you need the library for?”
“To dust it off.”
“Go dust off the Rumyantsev Library15 instead.”
“All right... forget it.”
Sergey sits at the table and writes the note.
I strike up a talk about the the just-crushed uprising of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries16 (SRs) in Moscow; about the fate of the black-bearded seventeen-year-old boy who, to “save the honor of Russia,” threw a bomb at the German embassy; about Mirbach’s death17; about the SRs’ thirst to stir up a murderous brawl with Germany at any cost.
It’s not all settled yet. Cars still get stopped on the outskirts and held “until a triple check,” by Lenin’s order; the barriers are still lowered on the highways, and armed squads of workers keep night fires burning by them.
To needle Sergey, I talk about the SRs:
“You know, I honestly like these ‘Scythians’18 with their rusty umbrellas and torn galoshes. The bombs weigh down the pockets of their shabby padded cloaks so romantically.”
Olga put it well about the SRs: “They’re like our Goga — as if they never finished gymnasium either.”
Sergey rubs his dry nose bridge against the edge of the desk. He’s like a big shaggy dog you could imagine being friends even with black cats.
“See, it’s not romance — it’s farce. Though, in politics, that’s the same thing.”
Soft grey flakes of darkness drift down on Theatre Square.
“Their commander-in-chief, Muravyov — took off for Simbirsk three days ago and from there had the gall to ‘declare war on Germany.’ Stupid, but he’ll have to face a firing squad.”
The little park, the benches, the thin trees, the few human figures below are buried under autumn dusk. As if for hours on end warm grey snow had been falling.
I lock my eyes — sober, indifferent, cool like greenish September water filmed with rust — onto Sergey’s dreamy gaze.
I’m dying to drive him mad, to enrage him, to throw him off balance.
“The SRs, Muravyov, Germans, war, revolution — all that’s nonsense...”
Sergey opens his big eyes under his fluffy lashes:
“And what’s not nonsense, then?”
“My love.”
Below, on Theatre Square, the few street lamps light up their little cigarettes.
“Suppose your socialist proletarian revolution comes to its end — and I’m in love...”
In the clouds above, a fat German cigar sparks up.
“...a tragic end! And me? I’m basking in my happiness, floating belly-up, snorting in my rosy water and blowing bubbles every which way.”
Sergey pulls papers out of his briefcase:
“Well, brother, keeping you company is like sitting bare-assed in nettles...”
He tugs at his belt:
“Go on home. I’ve got work to do.”
12
The Bolsheviks, as best they can, are soothing the two million inhabitants of White-Stone Moscow. In the newspapers, there have even appeared new sections:
“Struggle Against Hunger.”
“Arrival of Food Shipments in Moscow.”
For today there are two pieces of glad tidings.
The first:
“Forty-eight wagons of oilcake have been dispatched to Moscow from Ryazan.”
The second:
“Today arrived fifty-two poods19 of wheat flour and one pood of rye flour.”
13
Olga is lying on the couch, her nose buried in a silk cushion.
I’m floundering in guesses:
“What’s wrong?”
Finally, to disperse the catastrophically thickening gloom, I timidly offer:
“Would you like me to read you something aloud?”
Silence.
“I have Satyricon by Petronius with me.”
After a rather formidable pause:
“I don’t want it. His heroes are pitiful, jealous brutes.”
Her voice sounds as if it’s coming from purgatory:
“…they won’t admit that anyone else might ‘wipe their hands inside their beloved’s coat.’”
Olga pulls her nose from the cushion. The powder has come off. The wings of her nostrils have turned pink and slightly swollen.
“Really, how dare you suggest I listen to Petronius! His boys ‘gamble their behinds at dice.’”
“Olga!…”
“What, Olga?”
“I only mean to say that the Romans called Petronius ‘the arbiter of elegant taste.’”
“Is that so!”
“Elegantiae…”
“Well, well, well!”
“…arbiter.”
“Basta! I see: you’re shocked that my belly hurts!”
“Your belly?…”
“The overtures playing out in my belly are driving you mad. It disgusts you to sit next to me. You probably wanted to read me that bit in the Satyricon where Petronius recommends ‘not to be embarrassed if someone has the need… since none of us was born sealed… and that there’s no greater torment than holding it in… and not even Jupiter himself can forbid it…’ Isn’t that what you had in mind?”
I clutch my head.
“Mind you, you’re mistaken — I’m constipated!”
I lower my eyes.
“Tell me, are you in love with me?”
A flush floods my cheeks. (A dreadful injustice: men keep blushing till sixty, women only till sixteen.)
“Tenderly in love? Sublimely in love? In that case, open the cupboard and take out the enema. Do you hear what I’m asking you?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Then move!”
I haul myself along like a Becker grand piano.
“Look in the corner on the top shelf!”
I scorch my fingers on the cold glass of the jar.
“That one… with the yellow rubber hose and the black tip… pour in some water from the carafe… take the Vaseline from the dressing table… grease the tip… hang it on the hook… thank you… and now you may go home… goodbye.”
14
For the third hour I’ve been running around the city. Drenched in sweat and rage, I keep recalling how, back in the sixteenth century, Moscow was said to be “a little bigger than London.”
“My dear Penza. She has never been — and, I hope, never will be — ‘a little bigger than London.’ I dream of living out the sad remainder of my days in Penza.”
At last, when I can no longer feel my legs beneath me, somewhere near the Dorogomilovo Gate I manage to get hold of a few white and yellow roses.
Beautiful flowers! Some look like white doves with their heads torn off, like the soapy crest of a wave on the Euxine Sea, like a Svanetian lamb20 glistening white as snow. Others — like that curly-headed Jewish infant whom — later on — his quarrelsome and restless nature would lead to Golgotha.
The gardener wraps the roses in an old, crumpled newspaper. I cry out in horror:
“Madman, what are you doing? Can’t you see what paper you’re wrapping my flowers in!”
Frightened, the gardener lays the roses down on a bench. I keep shouting:
“But this is Rech21! The organ of the Constitutional Democratic Party — whose members have been declared outlaws! Any gutter tramp can drive a penknife into the throat of a constitutional democrat with impunity!”
My knees are shaking. I am my ancestors’ son. In my veins flows the pure blood of those same Slavs whose cowardice the ancient historians wrote of so fully and eagerly.
“One might think, you lunatic, that you only fell tonight beyond the Dorogomilovo Gate straight from some very distant planet. Do you really not know that your roses — white as the pearly belly of a pearl shell, golden as chicks hatched from an egg, your pure, your innocent, your virginal roses — these... these are...”
I whisper:
“...these...”
With my lips alone:
“...already...”
Soundlessly:
“...counterrevolution!”
My legs give way; I sink onto the bench; I’m gasping; I throw up my hands and shake my head like an actress of the Chamber Theatre in a tragic scene.
“But roses wrapped in Rech!!!”
Truly, fear has made me a Cicero and turned the gardener’s shack into the Forum.
“No, a thousand times I swear by the chastity of these fragrant virgins, I have but one head upon my shoulders.”
I lay my hand on his chest:
“Dear friend, if you took any interest in politics you’d know that the Communist faction of the Fifth All-Russian Congress of Workers’, Red Army, and Cossack Deputies unanimously declared the necessity of mass terror against the bourgeoisie and its lackeys.”
He nods his head in sympathy.
“But surely you wish me no harm, and so, I beg you, wrap these roses in plain wrapping paper. What? You have no plain wrapping paper? What misfortune!”
My icy fingers clutch at my temples.
What a terrible thing, love! Small wonder that in the Stone Age one male armed with a whale’s jaw would go up against another armed with a ram’s horns.
“Oh woman!”
I settle my account with my simple-minded executioner in crisp banknotes, and pressing the fatal flowers to my heart, I step out into the street.
15
Kazan taken by the Czechoslovaks; the British shell Arkhangelsk; cholera in Petersburg.
16
I no longer need to ask myself: Do I love Olga?
If a man today can, for his beloved, grease a black enema nozzle with Vaseline, and tomorrow stand breathless at her doorbell with an armful of roses — then he has no need to torment himself with foolish questions.
Love that is not strangled by the rubber hose of an enema — is immortal.
17
Next week, coupon No. 2 of the worker’s ration card will begin to be redeemed for vobla22 — half a pound per person.
18
Last night I wept from love.
19
In Vologda, an assembly of communists passed a resolution declaring that “it is necessary to annihilate the bourgeois class.” The proletariat must cleanse the world of parasites — and the sooner, the better.
20
“Olga, will you marry me?”
“How timely of you, Vladimir. Just this morning I found out there won’t be any central heating in our building all winter. If it weren’t for your proposal, I’d surely turn into an icicle in December. Can you imagine — sleeping alone in that huge bed of mine, big enough to play hockey on?”
“So then…”
“I accept.”
21
Her head is cut off by a double silk blanket.
On the crisp snow of the linen pillowcase, her spilled hair looks like blood.
The head of Iokanaan23 on a silver platter was less majestic.
Olga barely breathes. Fatigue has sprinkled her eyelids with the ground graphite of a Faber pencil.
I am proud and happy, like Herodias. This head has been served to me. I thank fate, which danced for me the dance of the seven veils24. I am ready to kiss the dirty heels of this greatest of barefoot women for such a splendid and one-of-a-kind gift.
Through the cream curtain, morning rays push through.
Cursed sun! Loathsome sun! It will chase away her sleep. It stomps through the room in its copper boots like a drayman.
So it goes.
Olga heavily lifts her eyelids, dusted with fatigue; she stretches; with a sigh she turns her head toward me.
“Horrible, horrible, horrible! All this time I was sure I was marrying for convenience, and it turns out I married for love. You, my dear, are thin as a stick, and in December you won’t warm the bed at all.”
22
I and my books, armed with the protective certificate from the People’s Commissariat of Education, moved in with Olga.
As for the furniture — it did not move with me. The house committee, eager to ease my psychological struggle with ‘bourgeois prejudices,’ forbade me to take my bed, my writing desk, or my chairs.
I had a serious conversation with the chairman of the house committee.
I said:
“Fine, I won’t argue: a writing desk is a luxury item. In the end, The Critique of Pure Reason can be written on a windowsill. But the bed! I must have something to sleep on!”
“Where are you moving?”
“To my wife.”
“Does she have a bed?”
“She does.”
“Then sleep with her in the same bed.”
“Forgive me, comrade, but I have long legs, I snore, after tea I sweat. And generally I’d prefer us to sleep separately.”
“When you married — was it for love or did you register at the commissariat?”
“We registered at the commissariat.”
“In that case, citizen, by the laws of the Revolution — you’re obliged to sleep together.”
23
Every night, quietly, so as not to wake Olga, I slip out of the house and wander the city for hours. Happiness has robbed me of sleep.
Moscow is black and deserted, like five centuries ago, when the city streets were locked at night with iron grilles, the bolts guarded by grille watchmen.
This darkness and emptiness suit me, for I can rejoice in my happiness without fear of being taken for an idiot.
If we are to trust a certain respectable English diplomat, Ivan the Terrible once tried to teach my ancestors to smile. For that, he ordered that during his walks or rides they beheaded anyone who came toward him if their face displeased him.
Yet even such decisive measures led nowhere. We remained a people of gloomy temper.
If a man walks about with a cheerful face, people point fingers at him.
And love has split my mug into a grin from ear to ear.
By day, street urchins would be trailing behind me.
Through the crenellations of the Kremlin wall, the stars seep in tiny, pale droplets.
I gaze at the Ivan Pillar, raised by Godunov, and cannot help but compare it to my feeling.
I am ready to ring the alarm bells so that every dog in this mad city, sprawling like Rome and Byzantium over seven hills, might know of this greatest of events—my love.
And then I ask myself for the hundredth time that most loathsome little question:
“But what’s the point, really? Why is your petty passion an Ivan’s Bell Tower? Isn’t the Lombard-Byzantine style a bit too solemn for it?”
And the vile little answer has its own precise sense:
“Such is man. Even the stench you yourself give off does not seem foul to you. More likely—it tickles the nose pleasantly.”
24
The Central Executive Committee25 passed a resolution: “Transform the Soviet Republic into a military camp.”
25
Across the creaking, plank-built stage paces a thin-legged orator back and forth:
“Our terror will not be personal, but mass terror — terror of class. Every bourgeois must be registered. The registered ones shall be divided into three groups. The active and dangerous — we shall exterminate. The inactive and harmless, yet valuable to the bourgeoisie — we shall lock up, and for every head of our leaders taken, we shall take ten of theirs. The third group we shall set to hard labor.”
Olga stands four steps away from me. I can hear her heart beating with excitement.
26
The Council of People’s Commissars resolved to erect monuments to:
Spartacus
The Gracchi
Brutus
Babeuf
Marx
Engels
Babel
Lassalle
Jaurès
Lafargue
Vaillant
Marat
Robespierre
Danton
Garibaldi
Tolstoy
Dostoevsky
Lermontov
Pushkin
Gogol
Radishchev
Belinsky
Ogarev
Chernyshevsky
Mikhailovsky
Dobrolyubov
Pisarev
Gleb Uspensky
Saltykov-Shchedrin
Nekrasov…
27
Citizens of the fourth category receive: one-tenth of a pound of bread per day and one pound of potatoes per week.
28
Olga looks into the murky glass.
“Indeed, Vladimir, for some time now I’ve begun to feel, sharply and suddenly, the scent of the revolution.”
“Shall I throw open the window?”
The sky is vast, branching, grandiloquent.
“I too, Olga, feel its scent. And you know, it was from the very day the sewage in our house broke down.”
A crescent moon, horned and crooked, dangles somewhere in the loftiest heights, like a foolish little Christmas bauble.
Down the street they dragged a regimental field kitchen. Thanks to the warlike bearing of the soldiers escorting it, the peaceable pot took on the majestic air of heavy artillery.
For some reason Olga and I always address each other as ‘you’ in the formal way.
‘You’ is like a ladle of water letting a cold trickle spill over our relations.
“Read me the news from the front, would you?”
“I don’t want to. I’m in an exalted mood, and the present-day staffs don’t know how to serve up a battle.”
I recall an old communiqué:
“Pototsky, a magnificent glutton and drunkard, lost the battle.”
That was about the clash with Bohdan Khmelnytsky near Korsun.
The wind runs barefoot, slippery heels skimming over the cold autumn puddles where the sky is reflected and horse dung drifts.
Olga decides:
“Tomorrow we’ll go to your brother. I want to work with the Soviets.”
29
The Revolutionary Military Council is developing a plan to train combat personnel from among adolescents aged 15 to 17.
30
We approach Sergey’s room. The door flies open. A gray-haired, square-shouldered old man with weary eyes is buttoning up his greatcoat.
“Who’s this?”
“General Brusilov.26”
Three commanders have been assigned to tutor my brother — generals decorated, like most Russian warlords, with old age and defeats.
When defeat becomes one of a general’s field habits, it brings him the same loud fame as writing bad novels.
In such cases, people say:
“It’s his method.”
Sergey holds out his hand to Olga.
Once again, he looks like a big yard dog that’s been taught to give its paw.
We settle into armchairs.
On Sergey’s desk lie heavy volumes of The Suvorov Campaigns27.
On the nightstand by the bed — a biography of Skobelev28.
I ask:
“So tell me, what exactly do you plan on commanding — a platoon or a company?”
“The front.”
“In that case, you ought to read not Suvorov but the memoirs of Baron Herberstein29, written at the start of the sixteenth century.”
Sergey looks at Olga.
“Even in a civil war, it doesn’t hurt for a generalissimo to know the traditions of his native army.”
Sergey keeps looking at Olga.
“The strategy of Dmitry Donskoy30, of Grand Prince Vasily of Moscow, of Andrei Kurbsky31, of Peter’s upstarts and Catherine’s ‘eagles’ — it stood out for its marvelous simplicity and greatest wisdom. When planning a battle, they first and foremost ‘relied more on the number of troops than on the courage of the soldiers and the good order of the army.’”
Olga takes a cigarette from a golden case.
Sergey comically pats his pockets like wings, fumbling for matches.
I can’t stop myself.
“This ‘law of victory,’ Baron Herberstein found it worth passing on to his countrymen — and the envoy of the Queen of England — to Thomas Chard32.”
Sergey leans toward Olga:
“Would you like some tea?”
And tempts her:
“With sugar.”
He rummages in his briefcase. The briefcase is stuffed to the brim with papers, folders, newspapers.
“Well, seems I boasted in vain.”
Papers, folders, newspapers spill onto the floor. Sergei snatches some white lump in midair. Wrapped in lined paper lies a shard of sugar.
“Please, take it.”
He crushes the dark ration-sugar lump with the spine of Suvorov.
“I have a small request for you, Sergey Vasilich.”
Olga, with a light, unusual nervousness, explains her wish to “be useful to the world revolution.”
“Well then…”
A pink spot on Sergey’s cheek flushes awkwardly crimson.
“So, as I was saying…”
And, saying nothing more, he smiles.
“What was it you wanted to ask me, Sergey Vasilich?”
He scratches behind his ear.
“Wanted to ask?..”
The tea in the glasses is as thin as a December dawn.
“Yes…”
The spoon in the glass is dull gray, aluminum.
“So, I wanted to ask…”
And he scratches behind his other ear:
“Do you know how to do any actual work?”
“Of course not.”
“Mm-hm…”
And he brings his brows together with businesslike intent.
“In that case, we’ll have to put you in a responsible position.”
Sergey firmly picks up the telephone receiver and, connecting with the Kremlin, begins to speak with the People’s Commissar for Education.
31
Marfusha stands barefoot on the windowsill, scrubbing the glass with a soapy sponge. Her bare, smooth, pink calves — warm and heavy — tremble. It seems this woman carries two hot hearts, both sealed in here.
Olga gestures with her eyes at the bare feet:
“I’d want nothing else if I were a man.”
The warm skin on Marfusha’s calves flushes crimson.
Marfusha jumps down from the windowsill and leaves the room, as if just to empty the bucket of water.
Olga says:
“You’re worthless if you’ve never tried to lay a hand on her.”
32
Olga is organizing propaganda trains.
A young man with protruding lips and ears solemnly extends his hand to me and introduces himself:
“Comrade Mamashev.”
He’s her personal secretary.
[new chapters will be added shortly]The Sukharevka was a famous open-air market in Moscow, located around the Sukharev Tower (demolished in 1934). In the early 20th century, it was a bustling flea market and black market, known for all kinds of goods — legal and illegal — especially during shortages and famine.
The Czechoslovak Legion, initially formed from Czech and Slovak POWs and deserters from the Austro-Hungarian army, rebelled against the Bolsheviks and captured a stretch of the Trans-Siberian Railway and several cities, including Samara in in early June 1918.
Viktor Volodarsky (real name Moisei Markovich Goldstein, 1891–1918) — a Bolshevik revolutionary, journalist, and prominent Soviet agitator. Assassinated in Petrograd in June 1918. His funeral became one of the early mass political funerals of the new regime.
The Cheka (short for “All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage”) was the Bolsheviks’ first secret police organization, founded in December 1917. Known for its ruthless methods, it was the forerunner of the KGB.
Strastnoy Boulevard — A historic boulevard in central Moscow, part of the Boulevard Ring. Its name comes from the Passion Monastery (Strastnoy Monastery), which stood there until it was demolished in the 1930s.
Bolshevik — A member of the radical socialist faction that seized power during the Russian Revolution of 1917. The Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, became the ruling Communist Party of Soviet Russia.
Moscow Soviet — The Moscow Soviet of Workers’ Deputies was the city’s revolutionary governing council after the 1917 October Revolution. It exercised local authority under Bolshevik rule, enforcing new decrees and controlling everyday life in Moscow.
Lobnoye Mesto — A stone platform on Red Square in Moscow, historically used for public proclamations and, in popular imagination, associated with executions, though few actually took place there.
Raevsky Hermitage — A secluded Orthodox monastic community near Kazan; “пустынь” means “hermitage” or “desert” — a place for ascetic seclusion, which in this case hid conspirators and hosted bonfires.
General Alexeyev — Mikhail Vasilyevich Alexeyev (1857–1918), a prominent Russian general and one of the leaders of the anti-Bolshevik White movement during the Russian Civil War. He organized the Volunteer Army on the Don, which fought against the Red Army after the 1917 Revolution.
Kuznetsky Most: Literally Blacksmiths’ Bridge — a historic street in central Moscow, once home to blacksmiths in Peter the Great’s time. By the early 20th century, it had become a fashionable shopping street for the wealthy.
Alshvang’s shop: A well-known Moscow store before the Revolution, famous for selling expensive imported goods and luxury items to the bourgeoisie.
Actual State Councillor: A high civil rank in Imperial Russia’s Table of Ranks, equivalent to a general or senior official. The title granted hereditary nobility and often appears in Russian literature as a symbol of the old bureaucratic class.
Mokhovaya: Literally Moss Street — an old Moscow street named for the lush moss that once grew along the banks of the swampy Neglinnaya River. Known for its small bookshops and quiet backstreet atmosphere.
The Rumyantsev Library — Moscow’s first major public library, later renamed the Lenin Library (now the Russian State Library).
The Socialist-Revolutionaries (SRs) were Russia’s main peasant-populist party. They split after 1917 into Right SRs (moderates) and Left SRs (radicals). The Left SRs briefly cooperated with the Bolsheviks before revolting against them in 1918.
Mirbach — Wilhelm von Mirbach (1871–1918), the German ambassador to Soviet Russia. He was assassinated in Moscow by Left Socialist-Revolutionaries in July 1918. The murder was meant to provoke a new war between Soviet Russia and Germany, and to sabotage the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty, which the Left SRs opposed.
“Scythians” — a half-mocking term for Russian radicals, alluding to ancient steppe tribes seen as wild and untamed, used by poets and revolutionaries to glorify their rebellious spirit.
Pood — an old Russian unit of weight equal to about 16.38 kilograms (36 pounds).
Svanetian lamb: A lamb from Svaneti, a remote mountainous region in Georgia (the Caucasus), famous for its snow-covered peaks and hardy white sheep.
Rech: Russian for “Speech.” Rech was the main newspaper of the Constitutional Democratic Party (the Kadets) in the early 20th century. After the Bolsheviks seized power, the party was banned and its members declared enemies of the revolution.
Vobla — dried fish, Caspian roach.
Iokanaan is the archaic or stylized form of John the Baptist — it comes from the Hebrew Yochanan (יוחנן), meaning “God is gracious.”
Marienhof is referencing the biblical story of Salome and John the Baptist, popularized in decadent and symbolist literature and art — most famously by Oscar Wilde’s play Salome. In the story, Salome dances the Dance of the Seven Veils for her stepfather, King Herod, who promises her anything she desires. At her mother Herodias’s urging, Salome demands the head of John the Baptist (Iokanaan), who had condemned her mother’s sins. His severed head is brought to her on a silver platter — an image that became a symbol of fatal desire, erotic cruelty, and decadent sacrifice in fin-de-siècle art and literature.
The Central Executive Committee — the highest legislative, administrative, and supervisory body in the early Soviet state, formally known as the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK). It functioned as the main governing authority between sessions of the Congress of Soviets.
Aleksei Brusilov (1853–1926), a Russian general best known for the Brusilov Offensive during World War I — the Russian Empire’s most successful campaign of the war, though ultimately costly and futile. In the Civil War period, Brusilov cooperated with the Red Army despite his Imperial past.
The Suvorov Campaigns: A reference to the military campaigns of Alexander Suvorov (1730–1800), one of Imperial Russia’s most celebrated generals, renowned for never losing a battle and for his emphasis on speed, discipline, and simplicity in warfare. Suvorov’s campaigns were widely studied as examples of tactical brilliance.
Mikhail Skobelev (1843–1882), a Russian general famous for his leadership in the Russo-Turkish War (1877–78) and Central Asian campaigns. Nicknamed the “White General” for his white uniform and horse, Skobelev was celebrated as a romantic military hero of late Imperial Russia.
Sigismund von Herberstein (1486–1566), an Austrian diplomat and historian best known for his Notes on Muscovite Affairs (Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii, 1549), one of the earliest detailed European accounts of Muscovy, its people, and military traditions.
Dmitry Ivanovich Donskoy (1350–1389), Grand Prince of Moscow and Vladimir, famed for defeating the Mongol-Tatar forces at the Battle of Kulikovo in 1380 — a landmark moment in the rise of Muscovy’s military and political power.
Prince Andrei Kurbsky (1528–1583), a Russian nobleman, military commander, and writer who fought for Ivan the Terrible but defected to Lithuania after falling out with the Tsar — remembered for his political letters criticizing Ivan’s tyranny.
Thomas Chard: Possibly a fictional or ironic name — there is no historical record of a Thomas Chard connected to Herberstein’s Muscovite missions. The real Thomas Chard (d. 1538) was an English abbot executed under Henry VIII, with no link to Russian affairs. Marienhof likely uses the name playfully to evoke old diplomatic gossip.