Other worlds, p.26
Other Worlds, page 26
Everything was too bright, too strong, too blaring. Yesterday, at dinner, she had said, “I can’t drink water. It’s too wet.”
And everyone had laughed.
Stanya had laughed too. He shouldn’t have. He was her husband and he should have stood up for his sick wife. She was very sick and very unhappy.
And this would go on for another three months.
If she’d known that everything would turn out so horribly, nothing would have induced her to marry. She would have studied. Not that that would have been easy. She’d had enough of studying.
But how could she have imagined the horror of village life? Always someone being slaughtered. If it wasn’t a hen, it was a goose. If it wasn’t calves, it was chickens. Fattened up. Squeezed and groped. Then killed and eaten. And if not killed and eaten, then sold, so that someone else could kill and eat them.
All so vile and frightening. Life was cruel.
And so very joyless.
At first Ilka had liked the cat. It was soft and warm. And then she’d seen it in the kitchen garden. It walked along very silently, as if across a cinema screen, ate some kind of grass, and vomited. After that, the cat disgusted her.
And her country Stanya was not the Stanya she’d known in the city. There he had been smart and fashionable.
“Your fiancé’s so chic!” other young ladies had said to her.
Here he was boring and lethargic. He didn’t answer her questions. All he ever did was smoke—and slap down his cards while playing patience.
Talking to him was impossible. She’d realized this long ago. Yet she went on trying, simply because there was no one else to talk to. Just two old aunts and some distant relative, a hanger-on who was stone deaf. They could hardly be called human beings.
The evenings were long, boring, and frightening. They all sat together in the dining room. And if you went through the study and into the living room, right up to the garden windows, there was no longer any light from the door. You were all on your own, with nothing between you and the black night.
If you put your forehead to the glass, you could make out a few trees—faint, uncertain shadows. She knew that behind them was a fence, a track, and some woodland. On the track people had seen the paw prints of wolves. At night the wolves came right up to the fence, looked through the slits, and howled at the house and its lit windows.
•
“Stanya!” Ilka says to her husband. “I’m frightened. Wolves have eaten a beggar woman.”
Stanya shrugs. “What’s there to be frightened of?” he says crossly. “You’re sitting safely at home.”
He doesn’t understand! She isn’t frightened for herself—she’s just frightened. Frightened because such things happen, because this is what it’s like in the world.
“The weather’s gotten better at last,” he says with a yawn. “We could have a Christmas Eve picnic. We could invite a dozen people from town and have lunch together over in your Kalitovka. I’d go over the day before and have the stoves lit in the dining room and the living room. I could get the chef from the club. Then you could come in the morning. And we could go back with everyone else. Or perhaps stay the night. What do you think?”
Kalitovka was a small estate belonging to Ilka’s grandmother. A large house right in the middle of the forest. Nobody lived there.
“It won’t be very nice there at night,” she says. “And the furniture’s under wraps, and the windows are all naked.”
“So what? It’s easy enough to remove the dust sheets.”
Stanya was stubborn. Always had to have his own way.
“Stanya! I don’t want to go. And I don’t want guests!” she says. “I’m not well.” And she begins to cry.
And there’s no knowing whether or not he’ll give way.
•
In the night it is quiet and black. Not dark, but black, pitch-black. Through the half-open shutters she can see the white of the window frames.
Cocks are crowing out in the yard. Like the whistle of a distant locomotive.
She’s already dozing. The bell keeps ringing and ringing. The very last guests are drawing up outside.
God, how tired she feels! And this empty house is so cold!
A long, long table in the huge dining room. Where’s it from? There are plates and glasses on it, but nothing else.
Stanya greets the guests, apologizes for something or other, and makes small talk. There are a great many guests and she doesn’t know any of them. And no one says even a word to her. It’s as if they don’t see her. Perhaps because they’re all so smart, while she’s in her old school pinafore.
Then everyone sits down at the table. She sits down too.
Behind her are three huge windows. Huge, black, and naked.
The guests are wildly cheerful. All speaking at once and laughing. Shouting, clattering plates, making a hubbub.
And then—a sudden silence. Everyone freezes. Wide-open staring eyes. Horror on every face. Everyone is looking outside, through the naked black windows.
There must, Ilka realizes, be something dreadful out there. Very slowly, hunching her shoulders, she turns around.
What is it?
The window is alive with points of green light. Points of living green light. Twinkling. Shifting about a little, and always in pairs.
“Wolves!” someone whispers. “Be quiet! Don’t move! We’re surrounded by wolves.”
It’s happened! Just what she was afraid of. She’d seen it coming.
“A-a-a-ah! I’m sca-a-a-ared!”
“What’s the matter?” says an unfamiliar voice. “Wait, I’ll light a . . .”
A blinding light.
“Well? What is it?”
No, it’s a familiar voice.
“Stanya, my dear, please let’s not go to Kalitovka! I’m frightened!”
“Idiot!” Stanya grumbles. “Screaming your head off at night! Instead of saying anything sensible, you wake the whole house!”
The whole house, of course, meant Stanya.
Still, let him grumble. Really, she quite liked it. It calmed her down.
All went dark again. For a long, long time. Out in the yard, the cock crowed. No, it was the bell. Who could it be?
“Must be a telegram,” Stanya says. “Go and open the door. The servants haven’t heard, and I’ve got a cold.”
She doesn’t want to get up.
“Go on,” Stanya says. “You’re my wife and you must do as I say.”
She gets up. Without lighting a candle, she fumbles her way out of the room. She reaches the stairs. Very carefully, gripping the banister, she goes down into the hall.
Another sharp ring.
Beside the front door is a little window. Through it she can see the porch. She looks out.
The moon! A miracle—it hadn’t been there before. And now there it was—round, clear, and malevolent. Glittering on the snow.
And she can see dogs. But there’s something strange about them. All in a half-circle, sitting back on their tails. Heads pulled down into their shoulders, as if they’ve caught colds too. All staring at the porch, tongues lolling out.
There on the porch is another, bigger dog. It’s restless, stamping up and down. Then it leaps up and seizes the bell rope between its teeth. As it leaps, Ilka sees that its tail is straight and thick.
A wolf.
Yes, these were wolves.
“They’ve gotten brazen,” the old gardener had said. “Worse than people.”
Ilka huddles in the corner, afraid to move. She no longer looks out of the window.
Ever so slowly, the front door starts to open.
“It’s the moon!” Ilka thinks. “The moon’s opening the door to them! It’s in league with them! Oh my God!”
“This is getting to be quite impossible,” the moon says indignantly. “You’ve turned into a regular hysteric. You need a bucket of cold water thrown over you every morning. There’s no other way we’ll get any sense out of you.”
There’s something familiar about this voice. Something that isn’t so frightening. Of course, it’s Stanya!
“Stanya! Quick! Light a candle!”
“Please! Do me a favor! Go and stay with your oh so clever mother. A fine way she must have brought you up, to make you into such a hysteric. Crying all day, yelling all night! Enough to wear out anyone’s nerves!”
Stanya is boring. Evil-tempered. He curses and rants, but still—better him than the moon or the wolves. Yes, no doubt about that.
“Stanya,” she says gently. “Stanya, be patient. Wait till it’s light. Then you can rant at me all you like. Say something nice to me now. What do you think? What shall we call our little one?”
Translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler
PART FIVE
from Earthly Rainbow (1952)
BABA YAGA
In the words of the magic tales: “Baba Yaga Bone-Leg rides in a mortar, pushes herself on with a pestle, and sweeps away her tracks with a broom.”
And in the words of teachers of literature: “Baba Yaga is the goddess of whirlwinds and snowstorms.”
In children’s books, Baba Yaga was depicted as a wild, gaunt old woman, with evil green eyes, tousled gray hair, and a fang sticking out of her mouth. She was thin and bony. She was very, very frightening—and she ate children.
The word “goddess” conjured up images of beauty—of Venus or Diana. We’d seen statues of them, images of perfection. We’d heard people say, “She looks like a goddess.” And then it turned out that our own goddess, our own Russian goddess, was this terrible witch—a hideous and vicious old woman. It seemed ridiculous and absurd.
But if we’re to be honest about it, can any of our ancient gods be called beautiful? Lel’, perhaps, the god of spring? But he wasn’t so very popular and has not survived in folk memory.
The figures who have survived are the house spirit, the forest spirit, and Baba Yaga. Nowadays the names of all three are used for insults.
The house spirit—a stern little monster—may have been a guardian of the hearth, responsible for keeping a home in good order, but he behaved like some old-style landowner. He brawled. He made a racket. He tormented the horses and got up to all kinds of mischief in the stables. He pinched the maids till they were black and blue all over. He had a sense of justice, but he was willful and autocratic: “Maybe I’ll take a liking to you, or maybe I won’t. And if I don’t, you’ll soon wish you were dead.”
As for the forest spirit, it takes courage even to mention him. He made wild hooting noises, confused people and led them into impassable thickets. He did not have a single good deed to his name. He had an evil temper. His only aim, his only role was to frighten, to lead astray—to bring someone to a bad end and then plait a tangle of grasses and weeds over the scene of the crime.
Only the rusalka was beautiful. But if she let you see her—if you were unable to take your eyes off her—it was because she wanted to lure you to your doom. She used her sweetness and delicate beauty as a lure, to make you feel sorry for her. You’d see her sitting there on a branch—a little woman, though she wasn’t really a woman at all, since her lower half was the tail of a fish. There she would sit, just above the water, hiding this tail of hers in the weeds. A little woman, shy and delicate—and always weeping bitterly. Had she merely sat there and beckoned, few people would have come any closer. But how could they help going closer when they saw her weeping? They felt sorry for her. Her lure was pity. A very dangerous goddess indeed.
But Baba Yaga is still more terrifying—and more interesting. And more Russian. Other nations did not have goddesses like Baba Yaga.
Baba Yaga lived on the edge of the forest, in a windowless, doorless hut standing on chicken legs. Though, in fact, the hut always did have a door—facing the forest. So a sneaky young hero, having somehow learned the words of the spell, had only to say, “Little hut, little hut, turn your face toward me and your back on the forest!” And the hut would turn around.
Baba Yaga lived alone. Except for a cat. Total solitude was too much even for Yaga. The cat gave off a sense of warmth and coziness. He purred and had soft fur. That was why Yaga liked to have a cat around. As for people, she hated them and never sought them out. People came to her of their own accord to learn various wise secrets, and they always managed to cheat her. She knew only too well that every human approach brought with it deception and hurt.
“I can smell the smell of a Russian,” she would sometimes say to herself. And this smell always brought trouble.
Some brave young hero would tell her a pack of lies, make false promises, elicit from her whatever he needed to know, cheat her, and then slip away. She could expect neither gratitude nor honest payment.
And every time she heard the words of the spell, every time the hut turned on its chicken legs, Yaga knew what was coming. And every time, she still stupidly believed in the honesty of the human soul: “It’s just not possible. They can’t all be like that.”
One day a poor little orphan girl turns up. Her stepmother has thrown her out of the house, sending her off to certain death. But Yaga has seen this before—she knows only too well that no human whelp, however little, however poor and pitiful, is without its share of guile. And as well as guile, this little pup of a girl will have with her a little comb, a little towel, and a piece of fatback. She will give this fatback to the cat—and the cat will betray his owner. That warm, soft, purring puss, that flatterer and caresser—he too will betray her. And the squeaking gates will betray her—the girl will just smear them with oil. Nothing but treachery and betrayal. All so sad and bo-o-oring.
There Yaga sits, cross as cross can be, sharpening her one fang.
“I should eat up every one of these boys and girls. But they’re cunning, they always manage to slip away. They appear out of nowhere. They pay homage to my great wisdom. They lie and cheat—and then they take to their heels, time and again.”
The treacherous cat and the dishonorable gates release the sly little runt of a girl. Yaga rushes off in pursuit. The girl throws down her comb—and a dense forest appears. Yaga gnaws her way through the trees. The girl throws down her towel—and a broad, flowing river appears. Yaga begins to drink up the river—but the girl is soon far away, out of reach. And the vile little creature has made off with all of Yaga’s secrets.
So there she is once again. Staring out from her chicken-leg hut, nose almost touching the trees. She feels b-o-r-e-d. Would winter never come?
Spring brings anxiety. Nature starts to live it up. People and animals make love. They give birth to cunning little children—which means trouble. Then comes summer. In the heat, the forest seethes with life. The trees do their work; the wind scatters their seeds. The forest feels pleased with itself. Stupid old fool of a forest. It loves life, the immortality of the earth.
Then—autumn. A first dusting of snow. Yaga cheers up.
And then, at last, winter.
The winds begin to blow. The eight grandsons of the god Stribog.1 Fierce and vicious—beings after her own heart. Soon paths will be hidden by blizzards. Whirlwinds will whirl their crystal dust, snowstorms will sing their songs. At last!
Yaga gets into her mortar and pushes off with her pestle. The mortar knocks against hillocks; it bumps, leaps, and jumps; it soars through a whirl of snow. She has strands of ice in her hair; her bony knees poke out. She is terrible and powerful. Free as free can be. She flies over the earth like the song of the storm.
Who has ever seen her? As knights dying on a battlefield glimpse the Valkyries, so people freezing to death see Yaga through their closed eyes.
Yaga leaps out of her mortar. She sings and dances. She seizes a soft young birch. She twists, twirls, bends, and snaps it. A loud moan—and powdered snow flies up into the air like silver smoke. Then Yaga throws herself at a scarecrow. He’s stuffed with straw and someone’s wrapped him around some rosebushes for the winter. She throws her arms around him and dances with him. Wild and drunken, she shakes him about, then hurls him to the ground.
“Let me go!” begs the scarecrow. “Don’t torment me. I don’t want you! I’ve got a rose for a heart.”
Baba Yaga howls and weeps. On she whirls, crazed and vicious. Roaming the fields and valleys again, looking for someone new to torment.
A traveler. He’s just gotten out of his sleigh, he’s trying to find the road. Aha! She spins him around, knocks him into a snowdrift, and flings snow into his eyes.
Where was he going? To some Masha or other. Some sweet, jolly, warm little Mashenka. What does he want with her now? He’s all white now, whiter than white. His eyelashes and eyebrows are white. Icy white curls poke out from under his cap. Wonderful—free and wonderful is the song of the blizzard. It enchants him. Mashenka? What does he care about Mashenka now? No more than he cares about a colorful piece of cloth on a fence. Can he even remember her? Eyes of green crystal are looking into his soul. They fill him with terror and joy, and his soul sings and laughs. Never, never has it known such delight.
Baba Yaga! Terrible old hag! Accursed man-eater! How wonderful you are with your song and your crystal eyes! You are a GODDESS. So take me into your death—which is better than life!
The blizzard falls silent. It’s warm and dark in the little hut on chicken legs. The broom stands in the corner, exchanging winks with the pestle. The faithless cat purrs sleepily, stretching his back, pretending . . .
Baba Yaga is lying on the stove. Water drips onto the floor from her icy hair. A bony leg sticks out from under some rags.
Boring. Boring. B—o—r—i—n—g.
Translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler
VOLYA
O to live free, freer than free;
O to live free as the wind.
