The Naked Year (2 page)

Ivan Emelyanovich's son, Donat, was born a beautiful and strong boy. In childhood he had everything: knuckle-bones and piglets, and swimming in the river by the ferry, and kites with rattles, and pigeons, and snares for goldfinches, and ice-boards, and the buying and selling of horseshoes, and fist-fights–this was in the days when because of his small stature no one noticed Donat. But by the time he was fifteen Ivan Emelyanovich had noticed him, had sewn him new boots, a cap and pants, forbade him to go out of the house except for school and church, made sure that he learned to write beautifully, and began to whip him intensely on Saturdays. By the age of fifteen Donat had grown up, his ginger curls twisted into ringlets. Donat's heart was made for love. In school the teacher, Blanmanzhov, made Donat travel around the map like all the other pupils: to Jerusalem, to Tokyo (by land and sea), to Buenos Aires, to New York–enumerate places, latitudes and longitudes, describe towns, people and nature–the town school was total geography, or rather not geography but travel; Blanmanzhov would set such work as: memorize a journey to Yorkshire. And during those days Donat's first love bloomed, beautiful and extraordinary like every first love. Donat fell in love with quiet, dark-eyed Nastya, the maid. At night Donat would come to the kitchen and read “The Lives of the Holy Fathers” aloud. Nastya would sit opposite, supporting her head, in a black kerchief, in her palms, and–would that only she listened!–Donat read in sacred tones, and his soul rejoiced. There was no need to leave the house–during Lent they fasted and went to church for every evening service. It was transparent April, the streams were flowing, the birds were building themselves places to live, the dusks deepened slowly, the Lenten bells chimed to each other, and at dusk, holding hands, in a spring delirium, they wandered from church to church (there were twenty-seven churches in Ordinin), they did not talk, they felt, they felt only their great joy. But the teacher Blanmanzhov also went to every evening service; he noticed Donat with Nastya, informed Father Levkoev, and he Ivan Emelyanovich. Ivn Emelyanovich, having summoned Donat and pulled up Nastya's skirts, ordered the eldest clerk (in Donat's presence) to beat Nastya's naked body with a lash, then (in Nastya's presence), having taken down Donat's pants, whipped him himself, drove Nastya away that same evening, sent her to the countryside, and sent Mashukha to Donat for the night. The next day the teacher Blanmanzhov made Donat travel across Tibet to the Dalai-Lama, then gave him a low mark because Europeans are not admitted to the Dalai-Lama. That Lent, with its dusks, its pealing bells, and Nastya's quiet eyes–remained forever the most beautiful in Donat's life.

Soon Donat learned from the clerks how to climb out of the little window at night, through the sawn-off bars and across the wall into the town, to the Yamsky Settlement, to the “Europe.” He started going behind the counter with his father. At holiday times he would get dressed up, go for walks on Great Moscow Street. He made friends with a priest of the Byelobor Monastery, Father Pimen; in summer he called on him on early, dewy mornings, and they would swim together in the monastery pond, walk through the park, then to the cells, behind a ficus plant, under a canary, among crosses and ikons, they would drink black currant juice, and Father Pimen would tell him about his women-prayers, and read verses of his own composition, such as the following:

“Oh! Virgin! Vessel of Paradise!

To Thee I pray with sighs:

Look upon me sweetly,

For I have come to love Thee deeply!”
*

Sometimes other monks would come in too, then they would go to a secret place, to a tower, send the boys for vodka, would drink and sing “Copernicus”
**
and “Sashki-Kanashki,” with a refrain to the tune of “with the saints at rest.” Sometimes in the evening Pimen would put on a student jacket, and he and Donat would set off for the circus. The monastery was ancient, with churches grown into the ground, with somber walls, with old belfries–and Pimen would tell Donat that sadness exists in the world. Pimen also introduced Donat to Uryvaikha; on sleepless June nights, climbing the wall with a bottle of vodka, Donat would go to see the persecuted, beautiful widow of the millionaire moneylender Uryvaev, and who had been placed under wardship by the merchants, and he would knock on her window, climb through the window into her bedroom, into her double bed. They made love passionately, whispered–talked–hated–cursed. The moneylender Uryvaev in his seventies took the seventeen-year-old Olenka to wife, for monastic fornication, poisoned in her everything that was natural, on his death willed her to wardship. The beautiful woman took to the bottle, grew hysterical: the town put the blame on her, “went to the extreme.”

But this the final love of Donat's was short-lived too, –this time the poet-informer A. V. Varygin informed, he wrote the information in his verse.

Who knows?

Who knows what would have happened to Donat?

In 1914, in June, in July the woods and grasses burned in red conflagration, the sun rose and set like a red disk, people suffered in endless suffocation.

In 1914 the war flared up and after it in 1917–the Revolution.

In the ancient town the people were gathered, and they were taught the art of killing and sent away–to the Byelovezhsky swamps, to Galicia, to the Carpathians–to kill and die. Donat was sent to the Carpathians. In Ordinin the soldiers were seen off as far as the Yamsky Settlement.

Ogonyok the Classicist was the first to die in the town, an honorable drunk, an alcoholic student–he died–he hanged himself, leaving this note:

“I am dying because I cannot live without vodka. Citizens and comrades of the new dawn!–when a a class has outlived itself–death to it! better it should go away by itself.

I am dying at the new dawn!”

Ogonyok the Classicist died before the new dawn.

In nineteen-hundred-and-sixteen a railway line was laid past Ordinin to the factory–and the merchants, “the city fathers,” pulled their last trick: the engineers proposed that the town give a bribe, and the city fathers expressed their complete willingness, but they set such a ridiculously low sum that the engineers considered it their duty to place the station ten versts away, at the factory. The trains ran past the town as if on fire, yet the first train was met by the ordinary citizens as if it were a holiday–they poured out to the Vologa, and the little boys climbed on the roofs and
willows to be comfortable.

And the first train which stopped right by Ordinin–was a revolutionary train. On this train Donat returned to Ordinin, full (an evil memory!) of the remembrances of his youth, full of hatred and willfulness. Donat did not recognize what was new, Donat knew what was old, and he wished to destroy what was old. Donat came to create–he hated what was old. Donat did not go home to see his father.

Through the ancient town, through the lifeless Kremlin they walked with banners, they sang red songs–they sang songs and walked in crowds, where formerly an ancient, cannoned merchant town, with its monasteries, cathedrals, towers, cobbled streets, slept soundly, where previously life had seethed only behind the stone walls with wolf-hounds at the gates. Around Ordinin lay forests–in the forests flared up the red fires of the manor houses, peasants with sacks and bread filed out of the forests.

The merchant Ratchin's house was taken for the Red Guard. In Blanmanzhov's house Donat made his quarters. Donat went everywhere with a rifle, Donat's curls twined as before, but a dry fire flared up in his eyes–of passion and hatred. The salt stalls were destroyed. From under the floors rats ran out by the thousands in every direction, rancid pork had been kept in the cellars, human skulls and bones were found in the foundations. The salt stalls were destroyed on Donat's orders, in its place a House of the People was built.
And that's all.

Just one more thing (if you're not too lazy, go, have a look!): each day at five to seven to the new building of the House of the People, to that very spot where “Ratchin and Sons” shop used to be, there comes every day an ancient old man, wearing round glasses, in a quilted cap, with a shrivelled back, a cane–every day he sits down on a curbstone and sits here all day, till evening, till half past seven. This is Ivan Emelyanovich Ratchin, the great-grandson of Dementy.

In the town there is hunger, in the town there is grief and joy, in the town there are tears and laughter. Over the town pass the springs, autumns, and winters. Along the new road creep the bag-men, smallpox and typhus.

On the Ordinin kremlin gates is no longer written:

Save, Oh Lord,

This town and Your people

And bless all those

Who enter these gates

In the town, in addition to the merchants, there were the gentry, the bourgeoisie and the intellectuals not of noble birth, and the town lies a thousand versts from anywhere, in Zakame, in the forests, and to the town came the
Whites
.

In the chronicle the chronicler says of the Ordinin lands—

“The town of Ordinin is made of rock. And those lands are rich in hot stone and in the lodestone to which iron clings,”–

And beyond Ordinin a metal works was set up. And the Ordinin lands are dry valleys, dales, lakes, forests, copses, marshes, fields, a peaceful sky–country lanes. Sometimes the sky is sullen in bluish-gray clouds. Sometimes the forest murmurs and moans, other times, in the summer, it burns. The country lanes–the country lanes creep and wind like twisted thread, without an end, without a beginning. A man is weary of walking, he wants to pass through more directly–he turns off, blunders along, and returns to the place he started from!.. Two ruts, plantains, a path, and around, in addition to the sky or rye, there is either snow or forest–without an end, without a beginning, without an edge. And people walk along this country lane with quiet songs: to some these songs mean grief, like the lane. Ordinin was born in them, with them, of them.

In the chronicle and “The History of Great Russia, of Religion and Revolution,” the chronicler, Ordinin Archbishop Sylvester, said of the Ordinin people

“They lived in the forests, like wild animals, they ate all unclean things, and used foul language before their fathers and fiancees; there were no marriages among them but orgies between the villages, they would come together for these orgies, for dancing and all means of devilish diversions and they abducted young girls for themselves, with whom they came to an agreement, the men had two or three wives each; if someone died, a funeral feast was prepared in his honor, then a huge fire was made up, and having placed the corpse on it, they set fire to it, and after this they gathered the bones, put them in a small vessel which was placed on a pillar by the roadway, as they do to this day.”

And today's song in the snowstorm:

–Snowstorm. Pines. Clearings. Terrors.–

–Shooyaya, sho-yaya, shoooyayaya…

–Gviuu, gaaauu, gviiiuuuu, gviiiiuuuu.

And:–

–Gla-vboomm!

–Gla-vboomm!!

–Goo-vooz! Goo-oo-voo-ooz!..

–Shooya, gviiiuu, gaauuu…

–Gla-vboommm!!

And–

CHINA-TOWN

This is from its, China's vagabondage–

They began in Moscow, in China-town, behind the Chinese wall, in the stone side streets and town houses, among the gas-lamps–a stone desert. In the daytime China-town stirred with a million people and a million human lives–in bowler hats, in felt hats and homespun coats–itself in a bowler hat and with a briefcase of bonds, shares, invoices, bills of exchange–of ikons, skins, manufactured goods, raisins, gold, platinum, Martyanich vodka–a virtual Europe, all bowlered. –But at night the bowlers disappeared from the stone side-streets and town houses, emptiness and silence arrived, the dogs roamed about, and the streetlamps shone funereally among the stones, and people, as rare as dogs, and wearing peaked caps, walked only into and out of Zaryadye. And then in this desert out of the town houses and from under the gates crawled: China without a bowler hat on, The Heavenly Empire, which lies somewhere beyond the steppes to the East, beyond the Great Stone Wall, and looks at the world with slanting eyes, like the buttons of Russian soldiers' greatcoats. This is one China-town.

And the second China-town.

In Nizhni-Novgorod, in Kanavino, beyond Makarye, where along the Makarye the same Moscow daytime Ilinka squatted on its huge behind, in November after the September millions of poods, barrels, pieces, arshins, and quarters of goods, exchanged for rubles, francs, marks, pounds, dollars, lira, etc., after the October debauchery, under the curtain of the Volga flood of wines, caviar, “Venice,” “Tartar,” “Persian,” “Chinese,” and liters of spermatozoa–in November in Kanavino, in the snow, from the boarded-up stalls, from the dismantled booths, from the emptiness–looking through the soldiers' buttons instead of eyes–it: the China of nocturnal Moscow, and the one concealed behind the Great Stone Wall. Silence. Inscrutability. Without a bowler hat on. Soldiers' buttons instead of eyes.

That Moscow one–at nights, from evening till morning. This one–in winters, from November till March. In March the Volga waters will flood Kanavino and carry China away to the Caspian.

–This is from its vagabondage.

And the third China-town.

There it is. The hollow, the pines, the snow, further on–rocky mountains, a leaden sky, a leaden wind. The snow is crunchy, on three sides there are wet pines, and the wind is blowing for the third day: the omen knows that the wind eats the snow. March. In the pines–a hamlet, beyond the hills–a town, in the hollow–a factory. The chimneys do not smoke, the furnace is silent, the workshops are silent–and in the workshops there is snow and rust. A steel silence. And from the soot-covered workshops, from the cutting machines and from the hammers and cranes, from the furnace, from the rolling mills with rusted blocks of iron–it looks: China, and they grin (how they grin!) the soldiers' buttons.

There, a thousand versts away, in Moscow, the huge mill-stone of revolution has crushed Ilinka, and China has crawled out of the Ilinka, has crawled.........

“Where to?!”

“Crawled to Taezhov?!”

“You lie! You lie! You lie! The furnace will flare up again, the blocks will roll, once again the lathes and cutting machines will wave their arms!”

“You li-ie! You li-ie!” –and this is not hysterics, but perhaps, with cold malice, with clenched cheekbones. –This is Arkhip Arkhipov.