statements. “Doubtless you will explain it in terms of natural economy.”
“On the Yenisey,” said Ryzhik, “it was even more beautiful than here. The earth seemed to light up from within. Even before the snows had melted the grasses came to life and light filtered into the tiniest twig, the tiniest streamlet. You walked on light. The flowers burst out of the ground overnight. Those flowers have cool, light colours. Only the stars resemble them. You leave the house one morning, you go out onto the plains, straight ahead, for there’s nothing anywhere, nothing but the horizon and the same horizon beyond the horizon. You’re alone, alone like . . . Ah! I can’t really say like whom, like what. Well, like a stone at the bottom of a well, and you don’t know what’s happening to you. You want to sing, you feel the earth is on a spree. It’s something marvellous, unique: anything might happen. That’s it, you’re going to turn around, just like that, and there right in front of you, in the emptiness, will be a great happiness. What kind? You have no idea, but its possible, that’s sure. And you do turn around and you see birds arriving. They’re coming through the sky in clouds. They’re coming with great flapping wings, and the light is climbing, the stones have a luminous polish, there are flowers, the steppe is singing in silence. Nothing happens to you, of course, but everything is possible.”
Elkin said: ‘Ryzhik, you missed your calling. You should be turning out octosyllables at three roubles a line. Why did you have to get mixed up in the Revolution? Today, you would be an official of the Pastoral Poets’ Division of the Union of Soviet Writers. You would be inundating the gazettes with organized, ideologically correct, and profitable lyricism. Pushkin would turn green with envy on his pedestal.”
“Go to Hell. I would never have seen the amazing flowers of the North. And you see, nothing in the world would make me want to cross them out of my life. Around the time when the ice began to break up, the children would go up the hill to keep watch. There was always a whole gang of observant children up there, and they never took their eyes off the river. In the evening they would report on the events of the day: ‘the first crevasse has enlarged, a pool has formed on the surface, a new crevasse is starting, you can hear cracking . . .’ They reckoned the dates of preceding years, observed the flight of birds. When the cracked ice finally began to move, when the first clear waters opened up, those children would come bounding down to the houses with shouts of joy. They were carriers of joy. The doors would fling open, people dropped everything: ‘It’s here!’ They brought accordions, and all the young people, boys and girls, set off for the hill to greet the real Spring. We would go there, too, little Nikolkin and I. (Did you know him, little Nikolkin from the Donetz? He had done four years in the isolators; he died in Perm). Nikolkin, who used to say: ‘Let me live long enough to see a single socialist prison dynamited, just one. That’s all I ask of the permanent revolution.” ’
A feminine form, swollen by old felt boots, furs, an old cloak, appeared at the turning in the rocks. “Greetings, greetings.” Varvara was the last to arrive, for she worked at the fishermen’s cooperative distributing four hundred grams of black bread per work-card, salt, rough-cut tobacco, matches, and nothing more. (The promised sugar is two months late, the coupons for it are apparently going to be voided. As for soap, the Regional Centre has been announcing a case of it for seven weeks, let’s keep hoping.) The grey fur of her old wolf-skin cap blended with her hair. Yet her face retained a touch of beauty which was almost invisible, superfluous.
Elkin said:
“Comrade Ryzhik’s report on the joys of boreal springtime is adopted without debate, unanimously with one abstention: mine. I have
“On the Yenisey,” said Ryzhik, “it was even more beautiful than here. The earth seemed to light up from within. Even before the snows had melted the grasses came to life and light filtered into the tiniest twig, the tiniest streamlet. You walked on light. The flowers burst out of the ground overnight. Those flowers have cool, light colours. Only the stars resemble them. You leave the house one morning, you go out onto the plains, straight ahead, for there’s nothing anywhere, nothing but the horizon and the same horizon beyond the horizon. You’re alone, alone like . . . Ah! I can’t really say like whom, like what. Well, like a stone at the bottom of a well, and you don’t know what’s happening to you. You want to sing, you feel the earth is on a spree. It’s something marvellous, unique: anything might happen. That’s it, you’re going to turn around, just like that, and there right in front of you, in the emptiness, will be a great happiness. What kind? You have no idea, but its possible, that’s sure. And you do turn around and you see birds arriving. They’re coming through the sky in clouds. They’re coming with great flapping wings, and the light is climbing, the stones have a luminous polish, there are flowers, the steppe is singing in silence. Nothing happens to you, of course, but everything is possible.”
Elkin said: ‘Ryzhik, you missed your calling. You should be turning out octosyllables at three roubles a line. Why did you have to get mixed up in the Revolution? Today, you would be an official of the Pastoral Poets’ Division of the Union of Soviet Writers. You would be inundating the gazettes with organized, ideologically correct, and profitable lyricism. Pushkin would turn green with envy on his pedestal.”
“Go to Hell. I would never have seen the amazing flowers of the North. And you see, nothing in the world would make me want to cross them out of my life. Around the time when the ice began to break up, the children would go up the hill to keep watch. There was always a whole gang of observant children up there, and they never took their eyes off the river. In the evening they would report on the events of the day: ‘the first crevasse has enlarged, a pool has formed on the surface, a new crevasse is starting, you can hear cracking . . .’ They reckoned the dates of preceding years, observed the flight of birds. When the cracked ice finally began to move, when the first clear waters opened up, those children would come bounding down to the houses with shouts of joy. They were carriers of joy. The doors would fling open, people dropped everything: ‘It’s here!’ They brought accordions, and all the young people, boys and girls, set off for the hill to greet the real Spring. We would go there, too, little Nikolkin and I. (Did you know him, little Nikolkin from the Donetz? He had done four years in the isolators; he died in Perm). Nikolkin, who used to say: ‘Let me live long enough to see a single socialist prison dynamited, just one. That’s all I ask of the permanent revolution.” ’
A feminine form, swollen by old felt boots, furs, an old cloak, appeared at the turning in the rocks. “Greetings, greetings.” Varvara was the last to arrive, for she worked at the fishermen’s cooperative distributing four hundred grams of black bread per work-card, salt, rough-cut tobacco, matches, and nothing more. (The promised sugar is two months late, the coupons for it are apparently going to be voided. As for soap, the Regional Centre has been announcing a case of it for seven weeks, let’s keep hoping.) The grey fur of her old wolf-skin cap blended with her hair. Yet her face retained a touch of beauty which was almost invisible, superfluous.
Elkin said:
“Comrade Ryzhik’s report on the joys of boreal springtime is adopted without debate, unanimously with one abstention: mine. I have
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