I was born June 30, 1908, on the estate of my father, Dmitry Ivanovich Snegirev. By that time my father had made his name as the largest Russian sugar producer and owned two estates — in Vaskelovo, near Petersburg, where I was born, and in Basantsy, in the Ukraine, where I was destined to spend my childhood. In addition, our family had a small but comfortable wooden house in Moscow on Ostozhenka Street and a huge apartment on Millionnaya Street in Petersburg.
Father built the estate in Basantsy himself during the “troglodyte era of the sugar business,” when he bought about two thousand hectares of fertile Ukrainian land for sugar beets. He was the first Russian sugar producer to acquire his own plantations rather than buy up beetroot from the peasants in the old way. He and Grandfather built a sugar factory there as well. There wasn’t much need for a large house since the family was already living in the capital. But Grandfather, cautious as always, insisted it was necessary, repeating that “in hard times like these, the master should be closer to the beetroots and the factory.”
Father never liked Basantsy. “The land of Ukie flies,” he often said.
“Those flies are swarming to your sugar!” Mother would laugh.
There were flies enough for everyone, that’s for sure. Summers were hot. But the winters were wonderful — mild and snowy.
Father acquired the estate in Vaskelovo later, when he had already become truly wealthy. The house was stern and old-fashioned, with columns and two wings. It was there I was destined to appear in this world, prematurely as it turned out: Mother gave birth to me two weeks early. According to her, the reason was the extraordinary weather that day, June 30. Despite a cloudless sky and no wind, claps of distant thunder sounded. This thunder was unusual: Mama not only heard it, she felt it through her fetus, that is, through me.
“It was as though the thunder gave you a push,” she would tell me. “You were born easily and weighed as much as a full-term baby.”
The following night, July 1, the northern part of the sky was unusually and brightly illuminated, in fact there was not really any night at all; the evening dusk was followed immediately by the dawn. It was very strange — usually the white nights begin to shorten by the end of June.
My mother joked: “The sky lit up in your honor.”
She gave birth to me on the hard, always cool leather sofa in Father’s office: the labor pains caught her in the middle of “a silly conversation about an old flower bed and a new gardener.” Directly across from this sofa there was a floor-to-ceiling wall of oak shelves laden with cones of sugar. Each cone was poured from the sugar of its crop and weighed a pood. Each bore the stamp of its year. These massive white cones of hard sugar were probably the first thing I saw in this world. In any event, they entered my childhood memory on par with images of my mother and father.
I was christened Alexander in honor of the Russian saint and military commander Alexander Nevsky and in memory of my great-grandfather Alexander Savvich, the founder of the Snegirev family’s merchant trade. Everyone called me something different: my father called me Alexander; my mother, Shura; my aunt, Sashenka; my sisters, Shurenka; my older brothers Vasily and Vanya called me Sanya; Madame Panaget, the governess, called me Sashá; the horse trainer Frol, Liaxander Dmitrich; the groom Gavrila, the young master.
There were seven children in the family: four sons and three daughters, one of whom, Nastya, was hunchbacked. Another boy died from polio at the age of five.
I was a late child — the oldest of my brothers, Vasily, was seventeen years older than I.
My father was a tall, balding, gloomy man with long, powerful hands. His personality combined great energy, thoroughness, melancholy introspection, crudeness, and ambition. Sometimes he reminded me of a machine that periodically broke down, repaired itself, and once again began working properly. He worshipped progress and sent the managers of four of his plants to study in England. But he didn’t like to go abroad himself, saying that “over there you have to walk a tightrope.” He had no ear whatsoever for languages and knew only a few dozen memorized phrases in French. Mother said that he became disoriented abroad and felt ill at ease. Father came from an old merchant family of Saratov grain traders who gradually became manufacturers. The large Snegirev family owned four sugar plants, a confectioner’s factory, and steam ships. In his youth, Father studied in the Polytechnic Department of Saratov University, but he dropped out after the third year for unknown reasons. He immediately harnessed himself to the family business. Once every two months he would descend into a depressed drinking binge (fortunately, never for more than three days), often smashing furniture and cursing Mother ferociously, but never raising his hand against her. When he sobered up, he would ask her forgiveness, go to the bathhouse and then to church — to repent. But he wasn’t particularly religious.
He didn’t deal with the children at all. We were in the care of Mother, nurses, governesses, and the endless relatives with which the two estates teemed.
My mother was an example of the self-sacrificing Russian woman who ignores herself in order to take care of the children and see to the family’s welfare. Endowed with remarkable beauty (she was half Ossetian, half southern Cossack), an ardent heart, and an open soul, she gave her selfless love first to my father, who fell head over heels in love with her at the Nizhny Novgorod fair, then to us, the children. Moreover, Mother was hospitable to a fault: any guest who happened to drop in was never allowed to simply leave.
Although I grew up as the youngest in the family, I wasn’t the most loved: Father favored clever, obedient Ilya, designating him as his successor; Mother adored handsome, gentle Vanyusha, who loved cherry dumplings and books about kings. Father considered the athletic jester Vasily a rake with nothing but “imps in his pea brain,” and me a loafer. The personalities of my three sisters were almost indistinguishable: energetic, life-loving, moderately egocentric, and impressionable, they could shed tears and giggle with equal ease. All three of them were passionately musical, and in this area hunchbacked Nastenka excelled, preparing for a serious career as a pianist. My sisters differed only in their relations with Father. The eldest, Arisha, worshipped him; the middle sister, Vasilisa, was afraid of him; and Nastya hated him.
The family lived in four places: Vasily in Moscow, where he was endlessly struggling with his law studies; Vasilisa and Arisha in Petersburg; Vanya and Ilya in Vaskelovo; and Nastya and I in Basantsy.
I lived and was educated at the country manor until age nine. In addition to the French governess, who taught me foreign languages and music, I had a tutor, Didenko — a homely young man with provincial manners and a soft, ingratiating voice; he taught me everything he knew. He liked to talk about great warriors and the heavenly bodies most of all. Speaking of Hannibal’s campaigns and solar eclipses, he was transformed and his eyes shone. By the time I entered the gymnasium I knew a good deal about Attila the Hun and Alexander of Macedonia, and the difference between Jupiter and Saturn. Russian and arithmetic were more problematic.
My pre-gymnasium childhood was quite happy. The warm, abundant nature of the Ukraine rocked me like a cradle: I caught birds and fish with the sons of the estate managers, traveled along the Dnepr on an English launch with Father, collected a herbarium with the French governess, had fun and played music with Nastya, went to the sugar-beet fields and to watch the haymaking with the horse trainer, went to church with Mother and my aunts, learned to horseback ride with the groom, and in the evening observed the stars with Didenko.
In August the whole family would gather in Vaskelovo.
The southern Ukrainian landscape gave way to the Russian north, and instead of chestnut and poplar trees our white house with columns was surrounded by stern, gloomy fir trees, between whose centuries-old trunks the lake glinted. A long stone staircase led from the house to the lake. Sitting on its moss-covered steps and hanging my legs over the water, I loved to toss stones into the lake, watching how a circle is born and, widening swiftly, slips across the glassy surface, heading for the stony banks.
The lake was always cold and calm. But our large family was raucous and vociferous, like a flock of spring birds. Our morose, taciturn father seemed the only ominous crow in the flock. I felt comfortable in this circle of relatives, which, like the circles on the water, widened every day, filling both estates with newly acquired relations and relations of those relations. Father’s wealth, Mother’s hospitality and tenderheartedness, and our domestic comfort and prosperity all attracted people like honey. Dependents, both men and women, traveling monks and alcoholic actors, merchant widows, and gambling majors down on their luck buzzed about the parlors and outbuildings like a swarm of bees. On weekdays, when we sat down to eat, the table was usually set for about twenty people. On holidays and saints’ days, three tables were moved into the dining room at the northern estate, while in Basantsy the tables were taken out into the garden, under the apple trees.
Father didn’t object to this. Most likely he enjoyed this style of life. But I never saw any pleasure on his face during these family feasts. He only laughed or cried when he was very drunk. I never heard Father say the word “happiness.” Was he happy? I don’t know.
My mother was unquestionably happy. Her bright, creative spirit, overflowing with love for mankind, floated and soared above us all, though she often said that “happiness — is when there’s so much to do there’s no time to think.”
I grew up healthy and happy in this human hive.
Like Mother, I didn’t think about things much. I was too busy jumping off the groom’s dusty two-wheeled cart on a July afternoon and racing through a suite of cool rooms to the sound of Barcaroles with a bouquet of wild strawberries I’d just picked in distant glades and tied with grass to present to Nastya at the piano; at the same time I’d place a snail or a beetle on her hump, which made her scream and spray me with milk while beating me with the score of The Four Seasons. Then we would make up and eat berries together on the sun-warmed windowsill.
Only one thing scared and attracted me in childhood.
I had a recurring dream: I saw myself at the foot of a huge mountain, so high and boundless that my legs grew limp. The mountain was frightfully big. It was so big that I began to sweat and crumble like dried bread. Its summit disappeared into the blue sky. The summit was very high. So high that I was entirely bent and fell apart like bread in milk. I couldn’t do anything about the mountain. It stood there. And waited for me to look at its summit. That was all it wanted from me. But I couldn’t raise my head. How could I? I was all stooped and crumbling. But the mountain really wanted me to look. I understood that if I didn’t look, I’d crumble altogether and turn into bread pudding. I took my head in my hands and began to lift it. It rose, and rose, and rose. And I looked, and looked, and looked at the mountain. But I still couldn’t see the top. Because it was high, high, high. And it ran away from me something terrible. I began to sob through my teeth and choke. I kept lifting my heavy head. Suddenly my spine broke and I collapsed into wet pieces and fell backward. That’s when I saw the summit. It shone WITH LIGHT. The light was so bright that I disappeared in it. This felt so awfully good that I woke up.
In the morning I remembered the dream in detail and told it to my family at breakfast. But it didn’t make any particular impression on them.
With his habitual rough directness Father recommended that I “fantasize less and get more fresh air.” Mother simply made the sign of the cross over me that night, sprinkled me with holy water, and placed an image of Saint Panteleimon the Healer under my pillow. My sisters didn’t see anything unusual in my dream. My brothers simply hadn’t been listening to me.
During the day the mysterious mountain occasionally revealed itself to me alone, here and there — in a snowdrift near the porch, as a wedge of cake on my sister’s plate, as a juniper bush the gardener had pruned in the form of a pyramid, as Nastenka’s metronome, as a mountain of sugar in Father’s factory, as the corner of my pillow.
However, despite all this, I felt quite indifferent to regular mountains. The beautiful atlas titled Les plus grands fleuves et montagnes du Monde that Didenko showed me struck no chord of recognition: my mountain was not in there among the Jomolungmas, Jungfraus, and Ararats. They were just ordinary mountains. I had dreamed of the Mountain.
Gradually, my childhood paradise began to show cracks. Russian life seeped in through them. First, in the form of the word “war.” I was six years old when I heard it on the terrace of our Ukrainian country estate. We had been waiting some time for Father to return from the factory for dinner, and at Mother’s command had already begun the meal, when suddenly the jingle of the droshky bells could be heard, and Father entered somehow more slowly than usual. He was wearing a three-piece nankeen suit and a white hat and holding a newspaper in his hand; he was serious and sternly triumphant. He tossed the paper on the table.
“War!” he said. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his long, powerful neck. “First it’s those Austrian swine, then the Prussians. They want to gobble up Serbia.”
The men sitting around the table got up, their voices clamoring as they clustered around Father. Nastya and Arisha turned to Mother in bewilderment. She looked frightened. I had bitten off too big a piece of an egg pasty, so I kept on chewing and stared at the newspaper. It lay close to me, between a carafe of raspberry drink and a dish of cold pork. The big black word WAR was folded in half. Under it I could see a smaller word — SERBIA. It made me think of the serp, the sickle women used to reap the wheat and buckwheat growing on our estate fields. Reddish-brown cockroaches were called “Prussians.” Imagining a red cloud of them attacking the iron serp and gobbling it up, to the horror of the harvester, I shuddered and noisily spat the unchewed piece of pie out on the newspaper.
No one paid any attention to me. The men were making a restrained racket around Father, who stood too straight, as usual, and, thrusting his strong chin forward, was saying something about an ultimatum to Austro-Hungary. The women sat hushed.
I looked at the unchewed piece of pie lying on the black word WAR. I don’t know why, but for my whole life that image has been a symbol of war for me.
Later, war became part of everyday life.
News from the front was read out loud at the breakfast table. The names of generals began to seem like those of relatives. For some reason I liked General Kuropatkin best of all. I imagined that he was like Uncle Chernomor in Pushkin’s Ruslan and Liudmila. I also liked the word “counterattack.” We moved to Vaskelovo and went to see our troops off at the station. Mama and my sisters sewed clothes for the wounded, cut bandages, made cotton plugs for wounds, visited sick quarters, and once were photographed with the empress and the wounded. Vasily volunteered, despite Father’s protests and Mother’s tears.
Soon after the beginning of the war I became acquainted with two other loyal companions of humankind: violence and love.
In the spring, Father traveled to Basantsy and took Nastya and me with him. It was Palm Sunday and we set off for church in three droshkies with our aunts and various hangers-on. It was a pretty, white-and-blue church that father had restored, and it stood at the edge of Kochanovo — the village next to Basantsy. I always felt cozy and calm in the church. I liked everyone crossing themselves, bowing and singing. There was something mysterious about it. During the service I tried to do everything like the grown-ups. When the priest began sprinkling water on the palm branches and drops hit my face, I didn’t laugh but stood quietly like everyone else. However, by the end I was always bored and couldn’t understand why it had to go on so long.
That day, when the service was over we began to leave the church with the crowd. Right behind us there was a sudden crush of people and several voices began arguing.
“These Ukies are always barging ahead!” one voice said in Russian.
“Those Moscow mosquitoes fly in just to push us around!” said another voice in Ukrainian.
The weather was springlike, the sun was shining, and the remaining patches of snow crunched underfoot. Father and the aunts gave alms to the poor, while Nastya and I sat in the britzka and looked at the square in front of the church. It was jammed with people. Some were already drunk. The village people, the Ukies, loitered about here — as did the factory people who worked in Father’s plant. The plant was located about a verst from the village, but the factory settlement, built awhile back by my grandfather, lay just beyond the wide ravine. The Ukies shelled pumpkin seeds and made a hubbub; the factory workers smoked and laughed. Suddenly someone in the crowed screamed, we heard the sound of a slap, someone’s cap went flying, the crowd surged with excitement, and the men ran to the ravine. The women squealed and ran after them. The square emptied in a second; the only people remaining were the beggars, the cripples, two constables with big sabers, and my relatives.
“Where are they going?” I asked Nastya, who was four years older.
Still chewing on the host, Nastya smacked her palm on the back of the driver’s padded coat.
“Mikola, where are they running to?”
The swarthy Ukie with droopy mustaches turned around, smiling. “Well, miss, they’s run off like the divil’s kin to slug ’em in their mugs.”
“Slug whose face?”
“Them own selves, Miss.”
“What for?”
“Wouldn’t be knowing...”
We stood up in the carriage. In the ravine the men had lined up in two ranks — the plant workers, mostly Russian newcomers, in one; the local Ukrainian villagers in the other. The women, old people, and children stood at the edge of the ravine and watched them from above. A hat flew up again and the fight began. It was accompanied by women’s shrieks and encouraging shouts. For the first time in my life I saw people deliberately beating each other. In our family, other than Father’s occasional cuffs and Mama’s smacks, or a disobedient child ordered to sit in the corner, there were no punishments. Father often yelled at Mother until he was blue in the face, stamped his feet at the servants, and threatened the manager with his fist, but he never touched anyone.
Mesmerized, I watched the fight, not understanding the meaning of what was happening. The people in the ravine were doing something very important. It was hard for them to do it. But they were really trying. They tried so hard they almost cried. They groaned, swore, and shouted. It was as though they were giving one another something with their fists. It was interesting and frightening. I began to tremble. Nastya noticed and hugged me.
“Don’t be scared, Shurochka. They’re peasants. Papa says all they do is drink and fight.”
I held Nastya’s hand. Nastya was watching the fight in a strange way. It was as though she stopped being my sister and became distant and grown-up. And I was left alone. The fight continued. Someone fell on the snow, someone else was pulled by the hair, another guy would move back, spitting red. Nastya’s hand was hot and alien to me.
Finally the constables whistled, and the old men and women shouted.
The fight stopped. The brawlers went home cursing — the Ukies to Kochanovo; the factory folk to the settlement. My tenderhearted mother couldn’t help herself and cried after them, “Shame on you! Orthodox boys are on the front fighting the Germans, and you fight each other on a holiday!”
The ends of my father’s thin-lipped mouth curled in a smile. “It’s all right, let them entertain themselves and get it out of their system. It will be quieter that way.”
He was afraid of the strikes and walkouts that had shaken Russian factories in 1905. All in all, though, he was content: the mobilization didn’t affect his workers since sugar was considered a strategic product during wartime. The war promised great profits for Father.
Mama got in the carriage with us, the coachman tugged on the reins, clucked, and we set off. I let go of Nastya’s hand. Two factory fellows passed by in homespun coats. One of them had a black eye, yet he was positively glowing with joy. The other guy touched his broken nose. Mother turned away indignantly.
“There you go, master, sir, we taught those Ukies a lesson!” said the fellow with the black eye, who pulled something from his closed fist and showed it to me, winked, and laughed. “A Ukie tooth got stuck in the mallet.”
His friend quickly bent over and blew his nose. Red drops colored the snow. These fellows were happy. Both of them had a kind of invisible gift. They had received it in the fight. And they took it home with them.
I couldn’t understand what kind of gift it was. Nastya and the other grown-ups understood, but they wouldn’t say. There were many things no one would tell me.
I discovered the world’s secrets for myself.
At the end of July we moved to Vaskelovo. At noon, after a two-hour lesson with Madame Panaget, I had some baked-milk pudding with bilberries and headed for the garden to play until dinner. The garden had been built a century and a half earlier, but it retained only remnants of its original magnificence — the former owner hadn’t taken care of it at all. I loved to launch paper boats in the pond, climb on the willow tree that bent over to the ground, or, hiding behind the juniper bushes, throw pinecones at an old marble faun. But that day I didn’t feel like doing any of this. Nastya was practicing her music in the house; Mama and the nanny were making jam; Father had left for Vyborg to buy some kind of machine, taking Ilya and Ivan with him; Arisha and Vasilisa were dozing with their books on chaise longues. I wandered around until I reached the most overgrown corner of the garden, and suddenly saw our maid, Marfusha. Squeezing her body between two iron fence bars pulled slightly apart, she disappeared into the forest that began just beyond the garden. There was something entirely uncharacteristic in her furtive movement; plump and calm, she was usually unhurried and smiling, with silly, wide-open brown eyes. Sensing some mystery in Marfusha’s action, I wriggled through the fence and carefully ran after her. Her stern blue dress with its white apron stood out starkly against the background of the wild forest. The girl walked swiftly along the path, without turning around. I followed, walking on the soft, pine-needle-covered ground. A thick grove of old fir trees stood all around. It was dusky in the grove and only the rare birdcall could be heard. After about half a verst the grove ended: a small swamp began here. At the edge of the trees there were three shelters fashioned from fir branches. Every spring Father and his friends came here to hunt black grouse, which mated in the swamp. A whistle sounded from one of the huts. Marfusha stopped. I hid behind a thick fir. Marfusha looked around, and entered the hut.
“I was thinking you’d not come,” a man’s voice said, and I recognized Klim, a young servant.
“They’ll be sitting to dinner soon, the missus is making jam. Lordy, I hope they don’t miss me,” Marfusha said quickly.
“Don’t worry, they won’t take notice,” Klim muttered, and they fell silent.
I approached the hut stealthily, thinking to give a shout and scare them. On reaching the edge of the hut, I was just about to open my mouth, but I froze on the spot when I caught a glimpse of Klim and Marfusha through the fir branches. A sack was spread out on the ground inside the hut. They were kneeling, embracing, and sucking on each other’s mouths. I had never seen people do that. Klim was squeezing Marfusha’s breasts with one hand, and she was moaning. This went on and on. Marfusha’s arms hung helplessly. Her cheeks were burning. Finally their mouths separated, and curly-headed, skinny Klim started to unbutton Marfusha’s dress. This was totally incomprehensible. I knew that only a doctor was allowed to take a woman’s dress off.
“Wait, I’ll take off my apron,” said Marfusha, removing the apron, folding it carefully, and hanging it on a branch.
Klim unhooked her dress, bared her young, strong breasts with little nipples, and began to kiss them greedily, murmuring, “Sweetheart, my sweetheart.”
“What is he — some kind of a baby?” I thought.
Marfusha shuddered and her breathing was irregular.
“Klimushka...my precious...Do you really love me?”
He muttered something and unhooked her rustling blue dress even further.
“Not that way,” she said, pushing away his hands and lifting the hem of her dress.
There was a white slip under her dress. Marfusha lifted it. And I saw female thighs and the dark triangle of her groin. Marfusha quickly lay down on her back.
“Lordy me, it’s a sin...Klimushka...”
Klim lowered his pants, fell on top of Marfusha, and began to move back and forth.
“Oh, we shouldn’t...Klimushka...”
“Quiet,” Klim muttered, moving back and forth.
He began moving faster and growling like an animal. Marfusha moaned and cried out, muttering, “Lord...oy, it’s a sin...oh my God...”
Their bodies trembled, their cheeks filled with blood. I understood clearly that they were doing something very shameful and secret, for which they would be punished. I could see that it was very hard for them, and probably hurt. But they really really wanted to do it.
Soon Klim grunted, the way men grunt when they’re splitting logs, and then he was still. It was as though he fell asleep, lying on Marfusha like a mattress. She kept on moaning softly and stroked his curly head. Finally he rolled over, sat up, and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.
“Lordy...what if there’s a baby?” said Marfusha, lifting her head.
Klim looked at her as though seeing her for the first time.
“Yull come tonight?” he asked hoarsely.
“Heavens, who’ll let me out?” she said, starting to button her dress.
“Come when it gets dark,” Klim sniffed.
“Klimushka, sweetheart, what’ll happen now?” she replied, suddenly hugging him close.
“Nothing will happen,” he muttered.
“Oh no, I gotta run,” she murmured.
“You go, I’ll come along after,” said Klim gloomily, chewing on a twig.
“It’s not wet on the hem is it?”
“Nuh-uh.”
I began to back away from the hut, then turned and ran home.
What I had seen in the hut shook me as deeply as the brawl in the ravine. I understood with all my small being that both things were very important for people. Otherwise they wouldn’t do them with such passion and effort.
I soon learned about childbirth from my brother Vanya. After that, the scene in the hut acquired another dimension for me: I understood that children are born out of a secret groaning, which is carefully hidden from everyone. Vanya informed me that children were only made at night. I began to listen carefully at night. And once, walking by my parents’ bedroom, I heard the same moans and growling. Returning to my own bed, I lay there and thought: What a very strange activity this is, making children. Only one thing remained unclear — why is it all hidden?
In the morning at breakfast, when Marfusha, Klim, and Father’s old servant Timofei were serving us, and everyone sitting at the table was, as usual, discussing news from the front, I suddenly asked, “But is Marfusha going to have a baby?”
The conversation stopped. Everyone looked at Marfusha. At that moment she was holding a porcelain dish from which the gray-haired, bulbous-nosed Timofei was ladling farina porridge onto our plates with his customary, long-suffering, anxious expression. Klim, standing in the corner of the dining room at the samovars, was filling glasses with tea. Marfusha turned redder than she had in the hut. The dish shook in her hands. Klim looked askance at me and grew pale.
Mother saved everyone. Most likely, she had guessed about the ties between the maid and the servant.
“Shurochka, Marfusha will have five children,” she said. Then she added: “Three boys and two girls.”
“That’s right,” Father agreed, frowning as he spooned jam abundantly over his porridge. “And then — another five. So that there’s someone to go to war.”
Everyone laughed approvingly. Marfusha tried to smile.
She had a hard time of it.
With each month the war intruded into our lives more and more. Vasily arrived home from the front. Not on his own two legs — he was driven from the train station in Father’s automobile. The automobile blew its horn three times, and we ran out to meet our war hero, who had written short but memorable letters. Vasily stepped out of the automobile and, leaning on the chauffeur and Timofei, began climbing the steps to meet us. He was wearing an overcoat and a peaked cap, and his face was very yellow. Timofei carefully held his wooden stick. Vasily smiled guiltily. We rushed to kiss him. Mama sobbed. Father walked over and stood nearby, gazing tensely at Vasily and blinking. His strong chin trembled.
In Poland, near Lovich, Vasily had been in a German gas attack. Although my brother had been poisoned with chlorine, the serpentine words “mustard gas” slithered into me.
Sitting in the parlor by the blazing fireplace, Vasily had tea and pastries and told us how he ran from the chlorine cloud; how he killed eight Germans with a machine gun; how two of his frontline friends were blown to bits by one shell, the warrant officer Nikolaev and the volunteer Gvishiani; how they silently took out the sentries with a horsehair string, “the Gypsy bride”; how to fight lice and tanks; what capital flamethrowers the Germans have; and what a multitude of Russian corpses lay in a huge wheat field after the Brusilov Offensive.
“They lay in even rows as though they’d been deliberately arranged. When they moved to attack the machine-gun nests, they were mowed down like grain.”
We listened, holding our breath. The glass of tea shook in Vasily’s yellow hand. He kept having to cough; his eyes teared up and were always red now, as though he’d just been crying. Vasily would grow short of breath when walking; to catch his breath he’d stop and lean on his walking stick.
Father sent him to Piatigorsk to take the waters.
Then a year later in Moscow my oldest brother took his own life, firing a revolver at his temple and a ladies’ Browning at his heart simultaneously. Vanya said that Vasily shot himself because of a married woman with whom he had been hopelessly in love even before the war.
Father kept growing wealthier and ever more dependent on the war. His business moved up in the world. He acquired many new acquaintances, mostly among the military. He began to drink more, and more often, and was rarely at home, saying that now he “lived on the road.” Various thin-eared, energetic young men darted about him; he called them his commissioners. Now he was involved not only in sugar but in many other things as well. When he shouted into the telephone, bizarre phrases would reach my ears: “American rubber will grab us by the throat one of these days,” “There’s a shipment of crackers gone criminally missing in the warehouse,” “Those scoundrels from the land committee of the southwestern front are cutting me without a knife,” “Six cars of soap shavings have been delayed at the junction,” and so on.
My grandmother, who was quietly living out the remainder of her life in the house on Ostozhenka, said one time at Easter, “Our Dimulenka has completely lost his head with this war: he’s chasing seven rabbits at one time.”
And at the time Father really did remind me of a man in torment, racing hopelessly after something nimble and elusive. He himself grew no livelier for the race; on the contrary, he seemed to ossify, and his immobile face frowned even more. It seemed that he had completely stopped sleeping. His eyes shone feverishly and settled on nothing, roaming constantly when he had tea with us.
Another year passed.
The war had made its way into all the cracks. It had slithered out onto the streets. Columns of soldiers marched in the cities; at the station, cannons and horses were loaded onto the trains. Mama and I stopped visiting Basantsy — it was “restless” there. Our entire family settled in Petersburg. Relatives were left behind on the estates. The wartime capital taught me three new words: unemployment, strike, and boycott. For me they were embodied in the dark crowds of people on the streets of Petersburg who wandered about glumly, and whom we tried to pass by as quickly as possible in the dark, in our automobile.
Petersburg began to be called Petrograd.
In the newspapers people wrote mean poems about the Germans and drew caricatures of them. Vanya and Ilya liked to read them aloud. All Germans were divided into two types for me at that time: one was fat with a meaty, laughing face in a horned helmet, a saber in hand; the other was thin as a stick, in a peaked cap, with a monocle, a riding crop, and a sour, disdainful expression on his narrow face.
My older sister Arisha brought home a patriotic song from school. In her singing lessons, the whole class was composing music to the verses of some provincial teacher:
Arise, Russia, oh great and spacious land,
The mortal fight is now at hand,
With the Germans’ dark force,
With the Teutonic knights’ horde!
Nastya and Arisha accompanied with four hands, and I sang with pleasure, standing on a chair.
When we moved to the big city, I noticed that everything happened faster than in Basantsy or Vaskelovo: people moved and talked more quickly, drivers raced along and hollered, automobiles honked and rattled, gymnasium students hurried to school, newspaper hawkers shouted about “our losses.” Father would enter the apartment, throw off his sheepskin coat, eat hurriedly, close himself in his office with his assistant, and then take off in the automobile with his commissioners and disappear for a week. Mama also moved much faster; she was always going somewhere and buying something. We went visiting often and quickly. I had a lot of new friends — boys and girls.
I was being intensively prepared for the high school: I studied Russian and arithmetic with Didenko, and French and German with Madame Panaget. Lessons progressed much faster than before as well.
Even our two pugs, Kaiser and Shuster, ran faster now, barked louder, and pooped on the rug more often.
We celebrated Christmas 1917 at the large house of Father’s new friends. By that time Father had suddenly stopped all his trips and given himself over entirely to a new, menacing word which, like a powerful broom, had swept “trains of chipped lump sugar” and “cars of soap shavings” out of our home. This word was “the Duma.” Like fat Patsiuk from Gogol’s Christmas story, it had entered our parlor and settled in for the duration. Along with it, Papa’s new friends began to come by and sit until late at night. Almost all of them were outwardly identical and entirely different from my tall, gaunt father: they were short, lively, sturdily built, with shaved wide necks, clipped beards, and curled mustaches; they smoked a lot and argued incessantly. Then, once they’d had enough arguing and smoked until they were hoarse, they would write something, dictating to one another at the same time, then father would drink wine with them and they’d go off to dine at Ernest or the new Donon’s. Now father was involved only in politics; he would go to meetings of the mighty, mysterious Duma, and in conversations with Mama often talked about some kind of abscess that was “just about to burst” and how “we must seize the moment.”
After the beginning of the war, the banker Riabov became Father’s best friend in Petrograd. He was also in the Duma.
I fell in love for the first time in my life with the Riabovs’ eleven-year-old daughter, Nika. It was Christmas morning and we children were acting out the Christmas story. The Riabovs’ older son, Riurik, played Herod; Nastya, the angel of the Lord bringing good tidings; Vanya, Ilya, and Arisha, the three kings; Vasilisa, the Mother Mary; and some overgrown high-school student was Joseph. Children we didn’t know well played angels, devils, and slaughtered infants. Nika and I each played two parts: first, Herod’s soldiers searching for male children; and then the ass and the ox who warmed the Christ child in the manger with their breath. The Christ child was played by the Riabovs’ youngest son, Vanyusha, who was five. When he was successfully born in the second act, and Nika and I fastened on the cow and donkey papier-mâché masks and readily poked our muzzles forward to warm him with our breath, Vanyusha burst into tears. We looked at each other through the cutout eyes and giggled quietly. Nika’s brightly sparkling black eyes framed by the donkey’s enormous eyelashes, her soft laughter, and the fragrance of some saccharine-sweet perfume elicited an unexpected rush of tenderness in me. I took her moist hand and didn’t let go until the end of the act.
I sat next to her at dinner, crowding out a little girl. My feelings for Nika grew with every dish that was served. I chatted with her, talking all kinds of nonsense. While we ate crepes with caviar, I pinched her on the elbow in nervous gaiety; over tea and biscuits, I stuck her finger in my dish of apricot preserves.
Nika laughed.
And there was understanding in her laugh. It seemed she liked me too. After dinner a children’s masquerade and dance was held around the Christmas tree. And when the men set off upstairs to smoke and play cards, and the ladies headed to the veranda in the winter garden to trade news, it was proposed that the children play charades. Two lovely English governesses helped us.
“Whaaat to due wiss ziss pepper?” the redheaded, incredibly freckled governess asked, painstakingly pronouncing the Russian words as she pulled little slips of paper with our names out of a box pasted with stars.
“Bark at Nika!” I shouted louder than the others.
We barked at her, sprayed her with water, and carried her around the Christmas tree...
Nika laughed for me with her black eyes. I wanted terribly to do something with her so that everyone else around would disappear. The scene I had witnessed in the hut had nothing to do with this feeling. Nika, being the older of us, understood me. She suddenly decided she wanted to switch her wolf mask for the Baba Yaga witch mask.
“Sasha, let’s go, you can help me,” she said, running up the stairs to her room.
Once in her room, she ignored me, but her face burned with excitement as she fell on her knees and began to search furiously through a starry violet bag of masks.
“Where is it...? Oh, mon Dieu! Here it is!”
I kneeled down next to her, hugged her tightly around the neck, and kissed her cheek.
“Sasha, you’re so funny,” she muttered, staring at the big-nosed witch mask.
I kissed her again. My heart fluttered. She turned toward me, closed her eyes, and pressed her face to mine. We froze. And for the very first time, I felt that time could stand still.
“Now who do you think could be hiding in here?” came a feigned query, accompanied by the loud rustle of skirts.
Hateful time started up again. And along with it the mistress of the house and a lady with a green fan entered the room. I didn’t have time to release Nika from my embrace.
“They’re being amorous!” the lady exclaimed rapturously, aiming her lorgnette at us. “Nina Pavlovna, just look at them! How sweet!”
But Nika’s homely, taciturn mother was clearly displeased. She looked at us — we were blushing and pressed to each other — attentively.
“Put on the masks. And go downstairs,” she said.
We grabbed the tiger and Baba Yaga masks and ran downstairs.
Nina Pavlovna didn’t say anything to my parents. But she did everything possible to make sure Nika and I didn’t see each other again. My requests to my mother to “definitely visit Nika” came to naught: Nika was either “under the weather,” or “visiting relatives,” or (despite the Christmas holidays!) “intensively studying arithmetic.”
A month and a half of unrequited desire to see my black-eyed love threw me into a feverish state. I lay in bed hallucinating for three days with a high temperature. I would surface from terrifying, colorful dreams into Mother’s cool hands placing a towel soaked in water and vinegar on my brow, and bringing me a cup of cranberry mors to drink. I never saw my Mountain in any of those dreams. I glimpsed a human sea, a boundless ocean of voices, faces, dresses, and tuxedos, that rolled powerful waves at me. I drowned in them, floundered, attempted to swim out past them, but again and again they covered my head. I knew that somewhere nearby, in the same place, Nika was floundering. But the harder I searched for her in whirlpools rustling with women’s dresses, the more furiously I was tossed through endless suites of rooms into smoked-filled parlors and stuffy bedrooms. My head was bursting with voices. Finally I broke through to her and saw my love in her little white dress, wearing a Baba Yaga mask. I ran over to her, grabbed the endlessly long, bumpy nose of the mask, and tore it off. But under the mask I found Nika with a live donkey head. She was chewing on something and stared straight at me with donkey eyes. I awoke with a cry.
I came to on the fourth day.
Neither Mama nor the nanny was anywhere to be seen. I raised my head: the drapes were drawn tight, but through a crack you could see daylight. I got out of bed. My head swam from weakness. Swaying, wearing a nightshirt that went to the floor, I headed for the door, opened it, and frowned: our huge apartment was bathed in sunlight. It issued from the parlor. I headed that way, my bare soles shuffling along the cool parquet floor. In the parlor, all their backs turned to me, stood our family. The windows were open and the spring sun beat blindingly through them. Everyone standing there was looking out the window. I walked over to Mama. She grabbed me, kissed me, hugged me hysterically, and picked me up. I could see our street, Millionnaya Street, out the window. It was usually quiet and almost empty, but now it was flooded with people. The crowd surged, roared, and crawled toward something. Here and there strips of red fabric could be glimpsed.
“What is it, Mama?” I asked.
“It’s the Revolution, son,” Mother answered.
Later everyone in the family joked: Sasha slept through the Russian Revolution.