Something stupid, bordering on culpable negligence or worse, has just come to pass.
An act was booked from Germany for a Moscow circus programme: The Intrepid Captain Masuccio and His Talking Dog, Brünhilde. (Note: circus captains always have to be intrepid.)
The dog had been booked by the commercial director, an insensitive oaf, who was impervious to modern ways of thinking. And the circus community was dozy enough not to take account of this glaring fact.
They didn’t come to their senses until Captain Masuccio set foot on the platform at the Belorussky Station.
A porter came along with a trolley carrying a caged black poodle trimmed in the Louis XIV style, and a suitcase containing the captain’s cape with its white Liberty-satin lining and his shiny top-hat.
That very day the cultural committee put the dog through its paces.
The intrepid captain raised his hat a few times, and performed a few bows. Then he put one or two questions to Brünhilde.
‘Wie viel?’ he asked her. (‘How many?’)
‘Tausend,’ the dog replied, intrepidly. (‘Thousand.’)
The captain stroked the poodle’s astrakhan coat and said with an encouraging intake of breath, ‘What a good dog!’
Then the dog pronounced a few words with long pauses between them: aber … unser … Bruder, ending with, ‘Ich sterbe.’ (‘I’m dying.’)
It has to be said that at this point there was usually a round of applause. The dog was used to it, and would go along with her master, giving a few bows of her own. But the cultural committee maintained a stolid silence.
And Captain Masuccio, with a nervous look round, proceeded to the end of the act, the climax. He picked up a violin. Brünhilde sat back on her hind legs, waited a bar or two, and then, diffidently and not very clearly, but at full volume, she launched forth.
‘Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuss auf Liebe angestelt.’
‘Ich bin what? What was that?’ asked the chairman of the cultural committee.
‘Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuss…’ muttered the director of commerce.
‘Translation!’
‘From head to foot I am made for love.’
‘Made for love?’ asked the chairman, cutting in, white-faced.
‘A dog like that needs a good hiding. This item cannot be allowed.’
Now it was the turn of the director of commerce to go white in the face.
‘Why is that? A good hiding?… what for? It’s a famous dog going through its repertoire. Big hit all over Europe. What’s wrong with that?’
‘I’ll tell you what’s wrong. The repertoire. It’s middle class, bourgeois, there’s nothing edifying in it.’
‘Yes, but we’ve already shelled out, in foreign currency. Not only that – this dog and that man Boccaccio are staying at the Metropole, guzzling caviar. The captain says she can’t go on without her caviar. The state has to pay for that too.’
‘I’ll tell you where we are,’ said the chairman, spelling it out. ‘In its present form this act cannot go on. The dog has to be given our repertoire, in keeping with the times, something progressive. Not this demobilising stuff. Think about it! “Ich sterbe.” “Ich liebe.” Listen, this is a problem about love and death! It’s Art for Art’s Sake! It’s Humanism! It’s only a step away from the uncritical assimilation of our classical heritage. No, no, this item has got to be rewritten root and branch.’
‘As director of commerce,’ said the director of commerce, looking glum, ‘I’ve nothing to do with ideology. But I will say this, as a progressive person working on the front-line of the circus art: don’t kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.’
But voting on the creation of a new repertoire for the dog had already taken place. It was unanimously decided to commission a repertoire of the right kind from the in-house minor-matters executive consisting of Usyshkin (aka Verter) and his three brothers: Usyshkin (Vagranka), Usyshkin (Ovich) and Usyshkin (Grandad Murzilka).
The perplexed captain was taken to the Metropole, and told to get some rest.
Special Executive No 6 was not fazed by the request for a dog’s repertoire. The brothers nodded in unison without even looking at each other. In fact, it was as if they had spent a lifetime writing for dogs, cats and performing cockroaches. Well, they were veterans of many a battle on the literary front, and they also had the knack of adapting their writing to the demands of working circus ideology at its dourest and most puritanical.
The hard-working house of Usyshkin got straight down to work.
‘Maybe we could use the same stuff we wrote for Spider-Woman?’ ventured Grandad Murzilka. ‘A routine from Saratov that had to fit in with the Circus-Politicisation plan. You remember. Spider-Woman stood for monetary capitalism creeping into the colonies and dominions. Nice act, that one.’
‘No, you’ve not been listening. They don’t want bare-faced stupidity. We’ve got to authorise this dog according to our “Heroic Spirit of Today” plan!’ objected Ovich. ‘First off, it’s got to be written in verse.’
‘Can she cope with verse?’
‘Not our problem! She’ll have to get used to it. She’s got a whole week.’
‘It must be in verse. Couplets. You know – Heroic couplets. About rolling-mills, or else, er – what’s it called, that spinning machine? – bankabroche! But the chorus can be a bit lighter, specially written for a dog with a sense of humour. Like this, er … hang on, er … tum-te, tum-te, tum-te … Aha! That’s it:
More shafts and mines and mining stuff.
Woof-woof
Woof-woof
Woof-woof.
‘You idiot, Buka!’ yelled Verter. ‘D’you really think the cultural committee’s going to let the dog say, “Woof-woof”? They won’t stand that sort of thing. Don’t forget the living man behind the dog!’
‘Well, it may need changing a bit… De-dee … de-dee … de-dee. That’s it. Got it now:
More shafts and mines and mining stuff.
Hurrah! Mos-Nav is good enough!
‘Deep waters for a dog?’
‘Stupid thing to say. Mos-Nav is the Moscow Life-saving Association. They don’t save lives in shallow waters.’
‘Let’s drop the poetry. Poetry’s just asking for mistakes. It’s doggerel. That’s the trouble with poetry – it narrows the scope. Just when you’ve got something good to say, a caesura gets in the way, or you can’t find a rhyme.’
‘Maybe we should give the dog something more conversational? A monologue? Something satirical?’
‘I wouldn’t. There are hidden dangers there too. What the eye doesn’t see, and all that… The whole thing’s got to be re-done.’
Brünhilde the talking dog’s repertoire met the deadline…
Under the twilit circus dome they came together, all of them – the cultural committee with its full complement and Masuccio in a slightly bloated version, due to his intemperate ingestion of caviar, and a Brünhilde degalvanised from having had nothing to do.
The read-through was conducted by Verter. He did the explaining.
‘Ringmaster announces entry of talking dog. Small table covered with cloth brought out. Carafe and hand-bell on table. Brünhilde appears. Needless to say, all your bourgeois frills and fancies – bows and bells and ringlets – they’re out. Modest, Tolstoy-style blouse. Canvas briefcase. Dressed in social activist suit. And Brünhilde reads short creative document, only twelve typewritten pages…’
And Verter had just opened his pink mouth to declaim Brünhilde’s speech when suddenly Masuccio took a step forward.
‘Wie viel?’ he asked. ‘How many pages?’
‘Twelve… in typescript,’ answered Grandad Murzilka.
‘Aber,’ said the captain. ‘Ich sterbe. I’m dying. She’s only a dog. A Hund – know what I mean? She can’t manage twelve pages, in typescript. I shall file an objection.’
‘What’s all this? Some kind of self-criticism going on?’ asked the chairman with a smirk. ‘No, I’m quite clear now. This dog needs a good hiding.’
‘Bruder,’ pleaded Masuccio,’ She’s still a young Hund. She doesn’t know it all yet. She wants to. But she can’t – not yet.’
‘No time for that,’ quoth the chairman, ‘Let’s do without the dog. We’ll be one act short. Volens, nevolens,5 you have my condolence.’
At this point even the intrepid captain went white in the face. He called Brünhilde, and left the circus, waving his arms and muttering, ‘She’s just a little Hund. She can’t do everything at once…’
The talking dog has now disappeared without trace.
Some say the dog has gone downhill, forgotten how to say her unser, Bruder and aber. She’s turned into a common-or-garden mongrel, and nowadays they call her Polkan.
But these people are whingeing loners, sceptics hiding away at home.
Others have a different story. They say they’ve got the latest on Brünhilde, who is fit and well, still performing, and a big hit. They even claim that she still knows her old words, and she’s got some new ones too. Not quite twelve typed pages, of course, but something to be going on with.
1933