* Даниил Хармс. Избранные рассказы. Старуха. (пер. на англ.) *

Russian literature seems always able to bring forth a crop of new and interesting writers who are experimenting somewhere at the frontiers of literary style, language or story. Among our contemporaries, we think of Andrey Sinyavsky (alias 'Abram Tertz'), Vasiliy Aksyonov, Sasha Sokolov and Yevgeniy Popov, along with the women writers who emerged under glasnost', during the last Soviet years: Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, Tatyana Tolstaya and others. But alongside the new writers, we continue to rediscover the old. Mikhail Bulgakov and Andrey Platonov, unexpected jewels from the Stalinist period, only came to prominence decades after their own span. Discoveries from the 'Silver Age' period (roughly the 1890s to 1917) are still coming or returning to light. Neglected figures from even further back are now achieving or recovering a belated but deserved readership (Vladimir Odoevsky from the Romantic period, Vsevolod Garshin from later in the nineteenth century). Another fascinating figure, the contemporary of Bulgakov and Platonov, but with a peculiar resonance for the modern, or indeed the post-modern, world is Daniil Kharms.

'Daniil Kharms' was the main, and subsequently the sole, pen-name of Daniil Ivanovich Yuvachov. The son of a St. Petersburg political, religious and literary figure, Daniil was to achieve limited local renown as a Leningrad avant-garde eccentric and a writer of children's stories in the 1920s and 30s. Among other pseudonyms, he had employed 'Daniil Dandan' and 'Kharms-Shardam'. The predilection for 'Kharms' is thought to derive from appreciation of the tension between the English words 'charms' and 'harms' (plus the German Charme; indeed, there is an actual German surname 'Harms'), but may also owe something to a similarity in sound to Sherlock Holmes (pronounced 'Kholms' in Russian), a figure of fascination to Kharms.

From 1925 Kharms began to appear at poetry readings and other avant-garde activities, gained membership of the Leningrad section of the All-Russian Union of Poets (from 1926), one of the many predecessors to the eventual Union of Soviet Writers, and published two poems in anthologies in 1926 and 1927. Almost unbelievably, these were the only 'adult' works Kharms was able to publish in his lifetime. In 1927 Kharms joined together with a number of like-minded experimental writers, including his talented friend and close associate Aleksandr Vvedensky (1900-1941) and the major poet Nikolay Zabolotsky (1903-1958), to form the literary and artistic grouping Oberiu (the acronym of the 'Association of Real Art').

Representing something of a union between Futurist aesthetics and Formalist approaches, the Oberiut considered themselves a 'left flank' of the literary avant-garde. Their publicity antics, including a roof-top appearance by Kharms, caused minor sensations and they succeeded in presenting a highly unconventional theatrical evening entitled 'Three Left Hours' in 1928, which included the performance of Kharms's Kafkaesque absurdist drama 'Yelizaveta Bam'. Among the Oberiu catch-phrases were 'Art is a cupboard' (Kharms normally made his theatrical entrances inside or on a wardrobe) and 'Poems aren't pies; we aren't herring'. However, in the Stalinising years of the late 1920s, the time for propagating experimental modernist art had passed. The rising Soviet neo-bourgeoisie were not to be shocked: tolerance of any such frivolities was plummeting and hostile journalistic attention ensured the hurried disbandment of the Oberiu group after a number of further appearances.

Kharms and Vvedensky evidently felt it wiser to allow themselves to be drawn into the realm of children's literature, writing for publications of the children's publishing house Detgiz, known fondly as the 'Marshak Academy', run by the redoubtable children's writer (and bowdleriser of Robbie Burns), Samuil Marshak, and involving the playwright Yevgeniy Shvarts. By 1940 Kharms had published eleven children's books and contributed regularly to the magazines 'The Hedgehog' and 'The Siskin'. However, even in this field of literary activity, anything out of the ordinary was not safe. Kharms, in his 'playful' approach to children's writing, utilised a number of Oberiu-type devices. The Oberiu approach had been denounced in a Leningrad paper in 1930 as 'reactionary sleight-of-hand' and, at the end of 1931, Kharms and Vvedensky were arrested, accused of 'distracting the people from the building of socialism by means of trans-sense verses' and exiled to Kursk. However the exile was fairly brief, the times being what Akhmatova described as 'relatively vegetarian'. Nevertheless, little work was to be had thereafter; Kharms was in and out of favour at Detgiz and periods of near starvation followed. Kharms and Vvedensky (the latter had moved to the Ukraine in the mid-30s: see Kharms's letter to him) survived the main purges of the 1930s. However, the outbreak of war brought new dangers: Kharms was arrested in Leningrad in August 1941, while Vvedensky's arrest took place the following month in Kharkov. Vvedensky died in December of that year and Kharms (it seems of starvation in prison hospital) in February 1942. Both were subsequently 'rehabilitated' during the Khrushchev 'Thaw'. Most of their adult writings had to await the Gorbachev period for publication in Russia. Both starvation and arrest were anticipated in a number of Kharms's writings. Hunger and poverty were constant companions; indeed, Kharms can lay claim to being the poet of hunger (not for nothing did he take strongly to Knut Hamsun's novel of that name), as the following translation of an unrhyming but rhythmic verse fragment shows:

This is how hunger begins:

The morning you wake, feeling lively,

Then begins the weakness,

Then begins the boredom;

Then comes the loss

Of the power of quick reason,

Then comes the calmness

And then begins the horror.

On his general situation in life, Kharms wrote the following quatram in 1937:

We've had it now in life's realm,

Of all hope we are now bereft.

Gone are dreams of happiness,

Destitution is all that's left.

The arrest of Kharms came, reportedly, when the caretaker of the block of flats in which he lived called him down, in his bedroom slippers, 'for a few minutes'. He was apparently charged with spreading defeatist propaganda; there is evidence that, even in those times, he managed to clear himself of this charge, possibly by feigning insanity.

Kharms had been a marked man since his first arrest in 1931 and he was probably lucky to escape disaster when he landed in trouble over a children's poem in 1937 (about a man who went out to buy tobacco and disappeared). In addition, his first wife, Ester Rusakova, was a member of a well-known old emigre revolutionary family, subsequently purged; it is intriguing to recall that Kharms had been, for several years, Viktor Serge's brother-in-law.

___

By the 1930s, Kharms was concentrating more on prose. In addition to his only then publishable works, his children's stories and verse, he evolved ('for his drawer') his own idiosyncratic brands of short prose and dramatic fragment.

Theoretical, philosophical and even mathematical pieces were also penned, as well as diaries, notebooks and a sizeable body of poetry. The boundaries between genre are fluid with Kharms, as are distinctions between fragment and whole, finished and unfinished states. Most of Kharms's manuscripts were preserved after his arrest by his friend, the philosopher Yakov Semyonovich Druskin, until they could be safely handed on or deposited in libraries. It will come as no surprise to readers with the most cursory inkling of Soviet literary conditions in the 1930s that these writings were then totally unpublishable — and indeed that their author is unlikely to have even contemplated trying to publish them. What is much more surprising is that they were written at all. From 1962 the children's works of Kharms began to be reprinted in the Soviet Union. Isolated first publications of a few of his short humourous pieces for adults followed slowly thereafter, as did mentions of Kharms in memoirs. Only when Gorbachev's policy of glasnost' took real effect though, from 1987, did the flood begin, including a major book-length collection in 1988. Abroad, an awareness of Kharms and the Oberiuts began to surface in the late 1960s, both in Eastern Europe, where publication was often easier, and in the West, where a first collection in Russian appeared in 1974. In 1978 an annotated, but discontinuous, collected works of Kharms began to appear, published in Bremen by the Verlag K-Presse (appropriately enough, the 'Kafka Press'), edited from Leningrad. Four volumes (the poetic opus) have appeared to date. It is probably safe to assume that virtually all of Kharms's surviving works have now appeared. The most recent 'find' is a selection of rather mild erotica, largely clinically voyeuristic and olfactory in nature, which suitably counterpoints certain tendencies already noticeable in some of Kharms's more mainstream writing. The English or American reader may have come across some of Kharms's work in the anthologies published from 1971 by George Gibian (see p. 226). In addition, scholarly literature on the Oberiuts is growing fast. Kharms translations have appeared in German and Italian, while the Yugoslav director Slobodan Pesic has made a surrealistic film, called 'The Kharms Case'. In Russia Oberiu evenings and Kharms 'mono-spectaculars' have become commonplace and Moscow News (back in 1988, in its Russian and English issues alike) was proclaiming Kharms 'an international figure'. In the present age of post-modernist fragmentation, Kharms's time has surely come.

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On the assumption that Kharms's published oeuvre may now be more or less complete (and this may still be a big assumption to make: only in 1992 his puppet play, The Shardam Circus, was published for the first time), overall assessments of his achievement begin to assume some validity. Definitive texts from archival sources have, in some instances, replaced dubious sources. We now know the intended order and content of the 'Incidents' cycle, here presented as a complete entity for the first time in English. Many of the later examples of Kharms's prose have only come to light recently, as have notebooks and letters. The prose miniature has long been a genre more commonly found in Russian literature than elsewhere. Among the disparate examples that come to mind (many of them by authors very different from Kharms) we may mention, from the nineteenth century: the feuilletons of writers such as Dostoevsky, the prose poems of Turgenev and the shortest works by Garshin and Chekhov; and, from the twentieth, short pieces by Zamyatin, Olesha and Zoshchenko and, more recently, the aphoristic writings of Abram Tertz and the prose poems of Solzhenitsyn. In spirit, Kharms clearly belongs to a tradition of double-edged humour extending from the word-play and irrelevancy of Gogol and the jaundiced mentality of Dostoevsky's 'underground' anti-heroes to the intertextual parody of Tertz and the satirical absurd of Voinovich. Kharms has clear affinities with certain of the experimental Soviet writings that sprang from a Futurist Formalist base in the 1920s. In a verse and prose sequence entitled 'The Sabre' (Sablya of 1929), Kharms singles out for special admiration Goethe, Blake, Lomonosov, Gogol, Kozma Prutkov and Khlebnikov. In a diary entry of 1937, he lists as his 'favourite writers': Gogol, Prutkov, Meyrink, Hamsun, Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll. Such listings are revealing in determining Kharms's pedigree. On a general European level, Kharms had obvious affinities with the various modernist, Dadaist, surrealist, absurdist and other avant-garde movements. Borges wrote brief masterpieces in a rather different vein. Arguably, Kafka and Beckett provide closer parallels, while Hamsun and Meyrink furnished Kharms with certain motifs. Some of the post-modernist and minimalist writings of very recent decades are perhaps closer than anything else.

'The Old Woman', a story reaching almost epic proportions by Kharms's standards, has strong claims to be regarded as his masterpiece. A deceptively multilayered story, this work looks simultaneously back to the Petersburg tradition of Russian story-telling and forward to the meta-fictional devices of our post-war era. 'Incidents' signals a neo-romantic concern with the relationship between the fragment and the whole (observable too in the theoretical pieces) and, now in its 'complete' form, it has begun to attract critical interpretation as an entity in itself. The 'assorted stories', arranged chronologically, indicate the development of Kharms's idiosyncratic preoccupations over the decade from the early 1930s. 'Yelizaveta Bam' represents Kharms's contribution to the theatre of the absurd. The remaining 'non-fictional and assorted writings' give an idea of Kharms's excursions into other forms of writing.

If Kharms still seems somehow different from all previous models or comparisons, or more startling, this is perhaps most readily explained by his constant adoption, at various levels, of what might be termed a poetics of extremism. Take, for example, his brevity: not for nothing did he note in his diary that 'garrulity is the mother of mediocrity'. If certain stories included here (especially some from 'Incidents') seem texts of concise inconsequentiality, there remain others which incommode the printer even less: consider, for instance, the following:

"An old man was scratching his head with both hands. In places where he couldn't reach with both hands, he scratched himself with one, but very, very fast. And while he was doing it he blinked rapidly."

Another feature of Kharmsian extremism resides in his uncompromising quest for the means to undermine his own stories, or to facilitate their self-destruction: there are numerous examples of this in the texts which follow.

Kharms, then, turns his surgical glance on both the extraordinary world of Stalin's Russia and on representation, past and present, in story-telling and other artistic forms. He thus operates, typically, against a precise Leningrad background. He reflects aspects of Soviet life and its literary forms, passing sardonic and despairing comment on the period in which he lived. He also ventures, ludicrously, into historical areas, parodying the ways in which respected worthies, such as Pushkin, Gogol and Ivan Susanin (a patriotic hero of 1612) were currently being glorified in print. Certain of Kharms's miniatures seem strangely anticipatory of modern trends: 'The Lecture' could almost have been set in politically correct America, 'Myshin's Triumph' smacks of London's cardboard city, and 'On an Approach to Immortality' would fascinate Kundera.

The most striking feature, for many readers, will be the recurrence of Kharms's strange and disturbing obsessions: with falling, accidents, chance, sudden death, victimisation and all forms of apparently mindless violence. These again are often carried to extremes, or toyed with in a bizarre manner which could scarcely be unintentional. Frequently there appears little or no difference between Kharms's avowedly fictional works and his other writings. In his notebooks can be found such passages as:

"I don't like children, old men, old women and the reasonable middle-aged. To poison children — that would be harsh. But, hell, something needs to be done with them! . . . I respect only young, robust and splendiferous women. The remaining representatives of the human race I regard suspiciously. Old women who are repositories of reasonable ideas ought to be lassoed . . . Which is the more agreeable sight: an old woman clad in just a shift, or a young man completely naked? And which, in that state, is the less permissible in public? . . . What's so great about flowers? You get a significantly better smell from between women's legs. Both are pure nature, so no one dare be outraged at my words."

How far into the cheek the tongue may go is often far from clear: the degree of identification with narrator position in Kharms is always problematic. The Kharmsian obsessions, too, carry over into his notebooks and diaries:

"On falling into filth, there is only one thing for a man to do: just fall, without looking round. The important thing is just to do this with style and energy."

At times the implications might seem sinister, as in the following note from 1940, which could equally be a sketch for a story, or even, as we have seen, be a mini-story in itself:

"One man was pursuing another when the latter, who was running away, in his turn, pursued a third man who, not sensing the chase behind him, was simply walking at a brisk pace along the pavement."

Sometimes, a diary entry is indeed indistinguishable from a Kharms miniature:

"I used to know a certain watchman who was interested only in vices. Then his interests narrowed, and he began to be interested only in one vice. And so, when he discovered a specialisation of his own within this vice and began to interest himself only in this one specialisation, he felt himself a man again. Confidence built up, erudition was required, neighbouring fields had to be looked into and the man started to develop. This watchman became a genius."

Other entries rather more predictably affirm what might be supposed to be his philosophy:

"I am interested only in 'nonsense'; only in that which makes no practical sense. I am interested in life only in its absurd manifestation."

This last remark was written in 1937, at the height of the purges.

Some or all of this may be approachable, or even explainable, in terms of psychology, of communication theory, of theory of humour, or indeed with reference to the nature of surrounding reality: in times of extremity, it is the times themselves which seem more absurd than any absurd artistic invention. For that matter, these Kharmsian 'incidents' (on which term, more below) have their ancestry in a multitude of genres and models: the fable, the parable, the fairy tale, the children's story, the philosophical or dramatic dialogue, the comic monologue, carnival, the cartoon and the silent movie. All of these seem to be present somewhere in Kharms, in compressed form and devoid of explanation, context and other standard trappings. Kharms, indeed, seems to serve up, transform or abort the bare bones of the sub-plots, plot segments and timeless authorial devices of world literature, from the narratives of antiquity, to classic European fiction, to the wordplay, plot-play and metafictions characteristic of the postmodern era: from Satyricon to Cervantes to Calvino. In the modern idiom, theatre of the absurd and theatre of cruelty apart, Kharms's fictions anticipate in some primeval way almost everything from the animated screenplay and the strip cartoon to the video-nasty. Kharms offers a skeletal terseness, as opposed to the comprehensive vacuousness on offer from many a more conventional literary form. Once again, it is the environment in which he wrote that is the most striking thing of all. Kharms, the black miniaturist, is an exponent not so much of the modernist 'end of the Word' (in a Joycean sense) as of a post-modernist, minimalist and infantilist 'end of the Story' (in a sense perhaps most analogous to Beckett). Such a trend is usually taken to be a post war, nuclear-age cultural phenomenon, exemplified by fragmentation, breakdown and the impulse to self-destruct. However, the Holocaust and Hiroshima may well have felt imminent in the Leningrad of the bleak 1930s.

___

Finally, a word on terminology and arrangement. Many of Kharms's stories, even beyond the cycle of that name, have been dubbed 'incidents'. The slightly wider term 'incidences' could equally be used. Kharms, between 1933 and 1937, engaged on a cycle of short prose pieces which he called Sluchai. The common Russian noun sluchay (masculine, singular) may be translated, according to context, by a variety of English words: case (cf. the Italian translation of Kharms, entitled Casi), event, incident, occurrence, opportunity, occasion or chance. Commentators have at times labelled the Kharmsian generic innovation: Mini-stories, Happenings or Cases. 'Mini-stories' is of course descriptive, rather than a translation of sluchai, just as, say, 'Black Miniatures' would be interpretative; 'Happenings' and 'Cases', I feel, are open to other possible objections. Hence the term 'Incidents', as used here. Pieces which had not been given a title by Kharms have generally been called by their first words.

That, as Kharms would say, is all (vsyo!). Now read on!

Kalindov was standing on tiptoe and peering at me straight in the face. I found this unpleasant. I turned aside but Kalindov ran round me and was again peering at me straight in the face. I tried shielding myself from Kalindov with a newspaper. But Kalindov outwitted me: he set my newspaper alight and, when it flared up, I dropped it on the floor and Kalindov again began peering at me straight in she face. Slowly retreating, I repaired behind the cupboard and there, for a few moments, I enjoyed a break from the importunate stares of Kalindov. But my break was not prolonged: Kalindov crawled up to the cupboard on all fours and peered up at me from below. My patience ran out; I screwed up my eyes and booted Kalindov in the face.

When I opened my eyes, Kalindov was standing in front of me, his mug bloodied and mouth lacerated, peering at me straight in the face as before.

1930

Dear Yakov Semyonovich,

1. A certain man, having taken a run, struck his head against a smithy with such force that the blacksmith put aside the sledge-hammer which he was holding, took off his leather apron and, having smoothed his hair with his palm, went out on to the street to see what had happened. 2. Then the smith spotted the man sitting on the ground. The man was sitting on the ground and holding his head. 3. — What happened? — asked the smith. — Ooh! — said the man. 4. The smith went a bit closer to the man. 5. We discontinue the narrative about the smith and the unknown man and begin a new narrative about four friends and a harem. 6. Once upon a time there were four harem fanatics. They considered it rather pleasant to have eight women at a time each. They would gather of an evening and debate harem life. They drank wine; they drank themselves blind drunk; they collapsed under the table; they puked up. It was disgusting to look at them. They bit each other on the leg. They bandied obscenities at each other. They crawled about on their bellies. 7. We discontinue the story about them and begin a new story about beer. 8. There was a barrel of beer and next to it sat a philosopher who contended: — This barrel is full of beer; the beer is fermenting and strengthening. And I in my mind ferment along the starry summits and strengthen my spirit. Beer is a drink flowing in space; I also am a drink, flowing in time. 9. When beer is enclosed in a barrel, it has nowhere to flow. Time will stop and I will stand up. 10. But if time does not stop, then my flow is immutable. 11. No, it's better to let the beer flow freely, for it's contrary to the laws of nature for it to stand still. — And with these words the philosopher turned on the tap in the barrel and the beer poured out over the floor. 12. We have related enough about beer; now we shall relate about a drum. 13. A philosopher beat a drum and shouted: — I am making a philosophical noise! This noise is of no use to anyone, it even annoys everyone. But if it annoys everyone, that means it is not of this world. And if it's not of this world, then it's from another world. And if it is from another world, then I shall keep making it. 14. The philosopher made his noise for a long time. But we shall leave this noisy story and turn to the following quiet story about trees. 15. A philosopher went for a walk under some trees and remained silent, because inspiration had deserted him.

1931

Act I

KOKA BRIANSKY I'm getting married today.

MOTHER What?

KOKA BRIANSKY I'm getting married today!

MOTHER What?

KOKA BRIANSKY I said I'm getting married today.

MOTHER What did you say?

KOKA BRIANSKY To-day — ma-rried!

MOTHER Ma? What's ma?

KOKA BRIANSKY Ma-rri-age!

MOTHER Idge? What's this idge?

KOKA BRIANSKY Not idge, but ma-rri-age!

MOTHER What do you mean, not idge?

KOKA BRIANSKY Yes, not idge, that's all!

MOTHER What?

KOKA BRIANSKY Yes, not idge. Do you understand! Not idge!

MOTHER You're on about that idge again. I don't know what idge's got to do with.

KOKA BRIANSKY Oh blow you! Ma and idge! What's up with you? Don't you realise yourself that saying just ma is senseless.

MOTHER What did you say?

KOKA BRIANSKY Ma, I said, is senseless!

MOTHER Sle?

KOKA BRIANSKY What on earth is all this! How can you possibly manage to catch only bits of words, and only the most absurd bits at that: sle! Why sle in particular?

MOTHER There you go again — sle.

KOKA BRIANSKY throttles his MOTHER. Enter his fiancee MARUSIA.

1933

Ol'ga Forsh went up to Aleksey Tolstoy and did something. Aleksey Tolstoy also did something.

At this point Konstantin Fedin and Valentin Stenich leapt outside and got down to looking for a suitable stone. They didn't find a stone but they found a spade. Konstantin Fedin cracked Ol'ga Forsh one across the chops with this spade.

Then Aleksey Tolstoy stripped naked and, going out on to the Fontanka, began to neigh like a horse. Everyone said: — There goes a major contemporary writer, neighing. — And nobody touched Aleksey Tolstoy.

1934

* The story was written on the occasion of the first Congress of the Union of Soviet Writers and perhaps symbolically depicts the events. The mentioned persons are all known Soviet literary figures of the 1930x.

The artist Michelangelo sits down on a heap of bricks and, propping his head in his hands, begins to think. Suddenly a cockerel walks past and looks at the artist Michelangelo with his round, golden eyes. Looks, but doesn't blink. At this point, the artist Michelangelo raises his head and sees the cockerel. The cockerel does not lower his gaze, doesn't blink and doesn't move his tail. The artist Michelangelo looks down and is aware of something in his eye. The artist Michelangelo rubs his eyes with his hands. And the cockerel isn't standing there any more, isn't standing there, but is walking away, walking away behind the shed, behind the shed to the poultry-run, to the poultry-run towards his hens.

And the artist Michelangelo gets up from the heap of bricks, shakes the red brick dust from his trousers, throws aside his belt and goes off to his wife.

The artist Michelangelo's wife, by the way, is extremely long, all of two rooms in length.

On the way, the artist Michelangelo meets Komarov, grasps him by the hand and shouts: — Look!...

Komarov looks and sees a sphere

— What's that? — whispers Komarov.

And from the sky comes a roar: — It's a sphere.

— What sort of a sphere is it? — whispers Komarov.

And from the sky, the roar: — A smooth-surfaced sphere!

Komarov and the artist Michelangelo sit down on the grass and they are seated on the grass like mushrooms. They hold each other's hands and look up at the sky. And in the sky appears the outline of a huge spoon. What on earth is that? No one knows. People run about and lock themselves into their houses. They lock their doors and their windows. But will that really help? Much good it does them! It will not help.

I remember in 1884 an ordinary comet the size of a steamer appearing in the sky. It was very frightening. But now — a spoon! Some phenomenon for a comet!

Lock your windows and doors!

Can that really help? You can't barricade yourself with planks against a celestial phenomenon.

Nikolay Ivanovich Stupin lives in our house. He has a theory that everything is smoke. But in my view not everything is smoke. Maybe even there's no smoke at all. Maybe there's really nothing. There's one category only. Or maybe there's no category at all. It's hard to say.

It is said that a certain celebrated artist scrutinised a cockerel. He scrutinised it and scrutinised it and came to the conclusion that the cockerel did not exist.

The artist told his friend this, and his friend just laughed. How, he said, doesn't it exist, he said, when it's standing right here and I, he said, am clearly observing it.

And the great artist thereupon hung his head and, retaining the same posture in which he stood, sat down on a pile of bricks.

That's all.

Daniil Dandan, 18 September 1931

Here's a bottle of vodka, of the lethal spirit variety. And beside it you see Nikolay Ivanovich Serpukhov.

From the bottle rise spirituous fumes. Look at the way Nikolay Ivanovich Serpukhov is breathing them in through his nose. Mark how he licks his lips and how he screws up his eyes. Evidently he is particularly partial to it and, in the main, that's because it's that lethal spirit variety.

But take note of the fact that behind Nikolay Ivanovich's back there is nothing. It's not that there isn't a cupboard there, or a chest of drawers, or at any rate some such object: but there is absolutely nothing there, not even air. Believe it or not, as you please, but behind Nikolay Ivanovich's back there is not even an airless expanse or, as they say, universal ether. To put it bluntly, there's nothing.

This is, of course, utterly inconceivable.

But we don't give a damn about that, as we are only interested in the vodka and Nikolay Ivanovich Serpukhov.

And so Nikolay Ivanovich takes the bottle of vodka in his hand and puts it to his nose. Nikolay Ivanovich sniffs it and moves his mouth like a rabbit.

Now the time has come to say that, not only behind Nikolay Ivanovich's back, but before him too — as it were, in front of his chest — and all the way round him, there is noticing. A complete absence of any kind of existence, or, as the old witticism goes, an absence of any kind of presence.

However, let us interest ourselves only in the vodka and Nikolay Ivanovich. Just imagine, Nikolay Ivanovich peers into the bottle of vodka, then he puts it to his lips, tips back the bottle bottom end up, and knocks it back -just imagine it, the whole bottle.

Nifty! Nikolay Ivanovich knocked back his vodka and looked blank. Nifty, all right! How could he!

And now this is what we have to say: as a matter of fact, not only behind Nikolay Ivanovich's back, nor merely in front and all around him, but also even inside Nikolay Ivanovich here was nothing, nothing existed.

Of course, it could all be as we have just said, and yet Nikolay Ivanovich himself could in these circumstances still be in a delightful state of existence. This is, of course, true. But, as a matter of fact, the whole thing is that Nikolay Ivanovich didn't exist and doesn't exist. That's exactly the whole thing.

You may ask: and what about the bottle of vodka? In particular, where did the vodka go, if a non-existent Nikolay Ivanovich drank it? Let's say that the bottle remained. Where, then, is the vodka? There it was and, suddenly, there it isn't. We know Nikolay Ivanovich doesn't exist, you say. So, what's the explanations

At this stage, we ourselves become lost in conjecture.

But, anyway, what are we talking about? Surely we said that inside, as well as outside, Nikolay Ivanovich nothing exists. So if, both inside and outside, nothing exists, then that means that the bottle as well doesn't exist. Isn't that it?

But, on the other hand, take note of the following: if we are saying that nothing exists either inside or outside, then the question arises: inside and outside of what? Something evidently, all the same, does exist? Or perhaps doesn't exist. In which case, why do we keep saying 'inside' and 'outside'?

No, here we have patently reached an impasse. And we ourselves don't know what to say.

Goodbye for now.

Daniil Dandan, 18 September 1934

Everyone now knows how dangerous swallowing stones is. A friend of mine even coined the expression 'Dan-in-ston', which means: 'It's dangerous to ingest stones.' And a good thing too. 'Dan-in-ston' can be easily remembered and, as required, instantly recalled.

He worked, this friend of mine, as a stoker on a steam engine. He travelled either the northern line or to Moscow. He was called Nikolay Ivanovich Serpukhov and he smoked Rocket cigarettes at thirty-five kopecks a packet, and always said that they made him cough less, while those costing five roubles, he says, 'always make me choke'.

And so Nikolay Ivanovich once chanced to get in to the restaurant in the Yevropeyskaya Hotel. Nikolay Ivanovich sat at a table and at the next table some foreigners were sitting munching apples.

At this point Nikolay Ivanovich said to himself: — This is interesting — said Nikolay Ivanovich — A man's life this!

Barely had he said this to himself when from out of the blue a Fairy appeared in front of him, saying: — My good man, what do you need?

Well, of course, in a restaurant you do get a commotion from which, it may be said, this unknown diminutive lady may have sprung. The foreigners even ceased munching their apples.

Nikolay Ivanovich himself rather had the wind up and spoke rather offhandedly, so as to give her the brush-off. — I'm sorry — he said — but I don't really require anything in particular.

— You don't understand — said the unknown lady — I — she said — am what is called a Fairy. In the merest jiffy I'll lay on whatever you fancy.

Nikolay Ivanovich happened to notice that a citizen in a grey two-piece was listening intently to their conversation. The maitre d'hotel was rushing through the open doors and behind him some other specimen with a cigarette in his mouth.

— Bloody hell! — thought Nikolay Ivanovich — there's no telling what's going on.

And there was indeed no telling what was going on. The maitre d'hotel was leaping around the tables, the foreigners were rolling up the carpets and generally the devil only knew what! They were all doing whatever they felt like!

Nikolay Ivanovich ran out to the street and didn't even pick up his hat from the custody of the cloakroom; he ran out on to Lassalle Street and said to himself: — Dan-in-ston! It's dangerous to ingest stones — Nothing like this ever really happens, surely!

And arriving home, Nikolay Ivanovich told his wife: — Don't be alarmed, Yekaterina Petrovna, and don't get worried. Only there's no equilibrium in the world. It's just an error of some kilogram and a half over the universe as a whole, but it's really a surprising thing, Yekaterina Petrovna, totally surprising!

And that's all.

Daniil Dandan, 18 September 1934

Andrey Semyonovich spat into a cup of water. The water immediately turned black. Andrey Semyonovich screwed up his eyes and looked attentively into the cup. The water was very black. Andrey Semyonovich's heart began to throb.

At that moment Andrey Semyonovich's dog woke up. Andrey Semyonovich went over to the window and began ruminating.

Suddenly something big and dark shot past Andrey Semyonovich's face and flew out of the window. This was Andrey Semyonovich's dog flying out and it zoomed like a crow on to the roof of the building opposite. Andrey Semyonovich sat down on his haunches and began to howl.

Into the room ran Comrade Popugayev.

— What's up with you? Are you ill? — asked Comrade Popugayev.

Andrey Semyonovich quietened down and rubbed his eyes with his hands.

Comrade Popugayev look a look into the cup which was standing on the table. — What's this you've poured into here? — he asked Andrey Semyonovich.

— I don't know — said Andrey Semyonovich.

Popugayev instantly disappeared. The dog flew in through the window again, lay down in its former place and went to sleep.

Andrey Semyonovich went over to the table and took a drink from the cup of blackened water. And Andrey Semyonovich's soul turned lucent.

1934

— Drink vinegar, gentlemen — said Shuyev.

No one gave him any reply.

— Gentlemen! — shouted Shuyev — I propose to you the drinking of vinegar!

Makaronov got up from his armchair and said: — I welcome Shuyev's idea. Let's drink vinegar.

Rastopyakin said: — I shall not be drinking vinegar.

At this point a silence set in and everyone began to look at Shuyev. Shuyev sat stony-faced. It was not clear what he was thinking.

Three minutes went by. Suchkov smothered a cough. Ryvin scratched his mouth. Kaltayev adjusted his tie. Makaronov jiggled his ears and his nose. And Rastopyakin, slumped against the back of his armchair, was looking as if indifferently into the fireplace.

Seven or eight more minutes went by.

Ryvin stood up and went out of the room on tiptoe.

Kaltayev followed him with his eyes.

When the door had closed behind Ryvin, Shuyev said: — So. The rebel has departed. To the devil with the rebel!

Everyone looked at each other in surprise, and Rastopyakin raised his head and fixed his gaze on Shuyev.

Shuyev said sternly: — He who rebels is a scoundrel!

Suchkov cautiously, under the table, shrugged his shoulders.

— I am in favour of the drinking of vinegar — Makaronov said quietly and looked expectantly at Shuyev.

Rastopyakin hiccupped and, with embarrassment, blushed like a maiden.

— Death to the rebels! — shouted Suchkov, baring his blackish teeth.

1934?

Ivan Yakovlevich Bobov woke up in the best possible of moods. He looked out from under his blanket and immediately spotted the ceiling. The ceiling was decorated with a large grey stain with greenish edges. If one looked closely at the stain, with one eye, then the stain took on a resemblance to a rhinoceros harnessed to a wheelbarrow, although others held that it looked more like a tram with a giant sitting on top — however, it was possible to detect in this stain even the outlines of some city or other. Ivan Yakovlevich looked at the ceiling, though not at where the stain was, but just like that, at no particular place; while doing so, he smiled and screwed up his eyes. Then he goggled his eyes and raised his eyebrows so high that his forehead folded up like a concertina and would very nearly have disappeared altogether if Ivan Yakovlevich had not screwed up his eyes again and suddenly, as though ashamed of something, pulled the blanket back up over his head. He did this so quickly that from under the other end of the blanket Ivan Yakovlevich's bare feet were exposed and right then a fly settled on the big toe of his left foot. Ivan Yakovlevich moved this toe and the fly flew over and settled on his heel. Then Ivan Yakovlevich grabbed the blanket with both feet; with one foot he hooked the blanket downwards, while he wiggled his other foot and clasped the blanket upwards with it and by this means pulled the blanket down from over his head. 'Up yours', said Ivan Yakovlevich and blew out his cheeks. Usually, whenever Ivan Yakovlevich managed to do something or, on the contrary, utterly failed, Ivan Yakovlevich always said 'up yours' — of course, not loudly and not at all so that anyone should hear it, but just like that, quietly to himself. And so, having said 'up yours', Ivan Yakovlevich sat on the bed and extended an arm to the chair, on which his trousers, shirt and underwear lay. As for trousers, Ivan Yakovlevich loved to wear striped ones. But, at one time, there was really a situation when it was impossible to get striped trousers anywhere. Ivan Yakovlevich tried 'Leningrad Clothes', and the department store, and the Passage, and Gostiny Dvor and he had been round all the shops on the Petrograd side. He had even gone over to somewhere on Okhta but didn't find any striped trousers anywhere. And Ivan Yakovlevich's old trousers had worn so threadbare that it was gelling impossible to wear' them. Ivan Yakovlevich sewed them up several times but in the end even this didn't help any more. Ivan Yakovlevich again went round all the shops and, again not finding striped trousers anywhere, finally decided to buy checked ones. But checked trousers weren't available anywhere either. Then Ivan Yakovlevich decided to buy himself grey trousers, but he couldn't find grey ones anywhere either. Neither were black trousers in Ivan Yakovlevich's size anywhere to be found. Then Ivan Yakovlevich went off to buy blue trousers but, while he had been looking for black ones, both blue and brown ones also ran out. And so, finally, Ivan Yakovlevich just had to buy some green trousers with yellow spots. In the shop it had seemed to Ivan Yakovlevich that the trousers were not of a very bright colour and that the yellow fleck did not offend the eye at all. But, arriving home, Ivan Yakovlevich discovered that one leg was indeed of a decent shade but that the other was nothing short of turquoise and the yellow fleck positively flamed on it. Ivan Yakovlevich tried turning the trousers inside out, but that way round both legs had a propensity to assume a yellow hue embroidered with green peas and were so garish that, well, just to step out on stage in such trousers after a cinematic show would be quite sufficient: the audience would guffaw for half an hour. For two days Ivan Yakovlevich couldn't bring himself to put on his new trousers, but when his old ones got so torn that even from a distance it could be seen that Ivan Yakovlevich's underpants were in dire need of mending, there was nothing for it but to sport the new trousers. In his new trousers for the first time, Ivan Yakovlevich went out extremely cautiously. Leaving the doorway, he glanced both ways first and, having convinced himself that there was no one nearby, stepped out on to the street and swiftly strode off in the direction of his office. The first person he met was an apple seller with a big basket on his head. He said nothing on catching sight of Ivan Yakovlevich and only when Ivan Yakovlevich had walked past did he stop and, since his basket would not allow him to turn his head, the apple seller turned his whole person and followed Ivan Yakovlevich with his eyes — and perhaps would have shaken his head if, once again, it had not been for that same basket. Ivan Yakovlevich stepped it out jauntily, considering his encounter with the fruit seller to have been a good omen. He had not seen the tradesman's manoeuvre and he reassured himself that his trousers were not as startling as all that. There now walked towards Ivan Yakovlevich an office worker of just the same type as he himself, with a briefcase under his arm. The office worker was walking briskly, not bothering to look around him, but rather keeping a close watch underfoot. Drawing level with Ivan Yakovlevich, the office worker stole a glance at Ivan Yakovlevich's trousers and stopped in his tracks. Ivan Yakovlevich stopped as well. The office worker looked at Ivan Yakovlevich, as did Ivan Yakovlevich at the office worker.

— Excuse me — said the office worker — you couldn't tell me how to get to the... national... exchange?

— To get there you'll have to go along this footpath ... along this footbridge... no, I mean, you'll have to go this way and then that way — said Ivan Yakovlevich.

The office worker said thank you and quickly walked away, and Ivan Yakovlevich took a few steps forward but, seeing that now towards him came not a male office worker but a female one, he lowered his head and ran across to the other side of the street. Ivan Yakovlevich arrived at the office with some delay and very bad tempered. Ivan Yakovlevich's colleagues naturally focused their attention on the green trousers with legs of varying hue but, evidently guessing that this was the cause of his ball temper, they did not trouble him with questions. Ivan Yakovlevich underwent torture for two weeks wearing his green trousers, until one of his colleagues, one Apollon Maksimovich Shilov, suggested to Ivan Yakovlevich that he should buy a pair of striped trousers from Apollon Maksimovich himself which were ostensibly surplus to Apollon Maksimovich's requirements.

1934-37

Aleksey Alekseyevich Alekseyev was a real knight. So, for example, on one occasion, catching sight from a tram of a lady stumbling against a kerbstone and dropping from her bag a glass lampshade for a table-lamp, which promptly smashed, Aleksey Alekseyevich, desiring to help the lady, decided to sacrifice himself and, leaping from the tram at full speed, fell and split open the whole of his phizog on a stone. Another time, seeing a lady who was climbing over a fence catch her skirt on a nail and get stuck there, so that she could move neither backward nor forward, Aleksey Alekseyevich began to get so agitated that, in his agitation, he broke two front teeth with his tongue. In a word, Aleksey Alekseyevich was really the most chivalrous knight, and not only in relation to ladies. With unprecedented ease, Aleksey Alekseyevich could sacrifice his life for his Faith, Tsar and Motherland, as he proved in the year '14, at the start of the German war, by throwing himself, with the cry 'For the Motherland!', on to the street from a second-floor window. By some miracle, Aleksey Alekseyevich remained alive, getting off with only light injuries, and was quickly, as such an uncommonly zealous patriot, dispatched to the front.

At the front, Aleksey Alekseyevich distinguished himself with his unprecedentedly elevated feelings and every time he pronounced the words 'banner', 'fanfare', or even just 'epaulettes', down his face there would trickle a tear of emotion.

In the year '16, Aleksey Alekseyevich was wounded in the loins and withdrew from the front.

As a first-category invalid, Aleksey Alekseyevich had no longer to serve and, profiting from the time on his hands, committed his patriotic feelings to paper.

Once, chatting to Konstantin Lebedev, Aleksey Alekseyevich came out with his favourite utterance — I have suffered for the motherland and wrecked my loins, but I exist by the strength of conviction in my posterior subconscious.

— And you're a fool! — said Konstantin Lebedev. — The highest service to the motherland is rendered only by a Liberal.

For some reason, these words became deeply imprinted on the mind of Aleksey Alekseyevich and so, in the year '17, he was already calling himself a liberal whose loins had suffered for his native land.

Aleksey Alekseyevich greeted the Revolution with delight, notwithstanding even the fact that he was deprived of his pension. For a certain time Konstantin Lebedev supplied him with cane-sugar, chocolate, preserved suet and millet groats. But when Konstantin Lebedev suddenly went missing no one knew where, Aleksey Alekseyevich had to take to the streets and ask for charity. At first, Aleksey Alekseyevich would extend his hand and say: — Give charity, for Christ's sake, to him whose loins have suffered for the motherland. — But this brought no success. Then Aleksey Alekseyevich changed the word 'motherland' to the word 'revolution'. But this too brought no success. Then Aleksey Alekseyevich composed a revolutionary song, and, if he saw on the street a person capable, in Aleksey Alekseyevich's opinion, of giving alms, he would take a step forward and proudly, with dignity, threw back his head and start singing:

To the barricades

We will all zoom!

For freedom

We will ourselves all maim and doom!

And, jauntily tapping his heels in the Polish manner, Aleksey Alekseyevich would extend his hat and say — Alms, please, for Christ's sake. — This did help and Aleksey Alekseyevich rarely remained without food.

Everything was going well, but then, in the year '22, Aleksey Alekseyevich got to know a certain Ivan Ivanovich Puzyryov, who dealt in Sunflower oil in the Haymarket. Puzyryov invited Aleksey Alekseyevich to a cafe, treated him to real coffee and, himself chomping fancy cakes, expounded to him some sort of complicated enterprise of which Aleksey Alekseyevich understood only that he had to do something, in return for which he would receive from Puzyryov the most costly items of nutrition. Aleksey Alekseyevich agreed and Puzyryov, on the spot, as an incentive, passed him under the table two caddies of tea and a packet of Rajah cigarettes.

After this, Aleksey Alekseyevich came to see Puzyryov every morning at the market, and picking up from him some sort of papers with crooked signatures and numerous seals, took a sleigh, if it were winter and if it were summer a cart, and set off as instructed by Puzyryov, to do the rounds of various establishments where, producing the papers, he would receive some sort of boxes, which he would load on to his sleigh or cart, and in the evening take them to Puzyryov at his flat. But once, when Aleksey Alekseyevich had just rolled up in his sleigh at Puzyryov's flat, two men came up to him, one of whom was in a military great-coat, and asked him: — Is your name Alekseyev? — Then Aleksey Alekseyevich was put into an automobile and taken away to prison.

At the interrogation, Aleksey Alekseyevich understood not a thing and just kept saying that he had suffered for his revolutionary motherland. But, despite this, he was sentenced to ten years of exile in his motherland's northern parts. Having got back in the year '28 to Leningrad, Aleksey Alekseyevich began to ply his previous trade and, standing up on the corner of Volodarskiy, tossed back his head with dignity, tapped his heel and sang out:

To the barricades

We will all zoom!

For freedom

We will ourselves all maim and doom!

But he did not even manage to sing it through twice before he was taken away in a covered vehicle to somewhere in the direction of the Admiralty. His feet never touched the ground.

And there we have a short narrative of the life of the valiant knight and patriot, Aleksey Alekseyevich Alekseyev.

1934-36

Abram Demyanovich Pentopasov cried out loudly and pressed a handkerchief to his eyes. But it was too late. Ash and soft dust had gummed up Abram Demyanovich's eyes. From then on Abram Demyanovich's eyes began to hurt, they were gradually covered over with repulsive scabs, and Abram Demyanovich went blind.

As a blind invalid, Abram Demyanovich was given the push from his job and accorded a wretched pittance of thirty-six roubles a month.

Quite clearly this sum was insufficient for Abram Demyanovich to live on. A kilo of bread cost a rouble and ten kopecks, and a leek cost forty-eight kopecks at the market.

And so the industrial invalid began more and more to concentrate his attention on rubbish bins.

It was difficult for a blind man to find the edible scraps among all the peelings and filth.

Even finding the rubbish itself in someone else's yard is not easy. you can't see it with your eyes, and to ask — Whereabouts here is your rubbish bin? — is somehow a bit awkward.

The only way left is to sniff it out.

Some rubbish bins reek so much you can smell them a mile away, but others with lids are absolutely impossible to detect.

It's all right if you happen upon a kindly caretaker, but the other sort would so put the wind up you that you'd lose your appetite.

Once Abram Demyanovich climbed into someone's rubbish bin and when he was in there a rat bit him, and he climbed straight back out again. So that day he didn't eat anything. But then one morning something jumped out of Abram Demyanovich's right eye.

Abram Demyanovich rubbed the eye and suddenly saw daylight. And then something jumped out of his left eye, too, and Abram Demyanovich saw the light.

From that day on it was all downhill for Abram Demyanovich.

Everywhere Abram Demyanovich was in great demand.

In the People's Committee for Heavy Industry office Abram Demyanovich was a minor sensation.

And so Abram Demyanovich became a great man.

1935

Once Antonina Alekseyevna struck her husband with her office stamp and imprinted his forehead with stamp-pad ink.

The mortally offended Pyotr Leonidovich, Antonina Alekseyevna's husband, locked himself in the bathroom and wouldn't let anyone in.

However, the residents of the communal flat, having a strong need to get in to where Pyotr Leonidovich was sitting, decided to break down the locked door by force.

Seeing that the game was up, Pyotr Leonidovich came out of the bathroom and, going back into his own flat, lay down on the bed.

But Antonina Alekseyevna decided to persecute her husband to the limit. She tore up little bits of paper and showered them on to Pyotr Leonidovich who was lying on the bed.

The infuriated Pyotr Leonidovich leaped out into the corridor and set about tearing the wallpaper.

At this point all the residents ran out and, seeing what the hapless Pyotr Leonidovich was doing, they threw themselves on to him and ripped the waistcoat that he was wearing.

Pyotr Leonidovich ran off to the porter's office.

During this time, Antonina Alekseyevna had stripped naked and had hidden in the trunk.

Ten minutes later Pyotr Leonidovich returned, followed by the house manager.

Not finding his wife in the room, Pyotr Leonidovich with the house manager decided to take advantage of the empty premises in order to down some vodka. Pyotr Leonidovich undertook to run off to the corner for the said beverage.

When Pyotr Leonidovich had gone out, Antonina Alekseyevna climbed out of the trunk and appeared before the house manager in a state of nakedness.

The shaken house manager leaped from his chair and rushed up to the window, but, seeing the muscular build of the young twenty-six-year-old woman, he suddenly gave way to wild rapture.

At this point Pyotr Leonidovich returned witty a litre of vodka.

Catching sight of what was afoot in his room, Pyotr Leonidovich knitted his brows.

But his spouse Antonina Alekseyevna showed him her office stamp and Pyotr Leonidovich calmed down.

Antonina Alekseyevna expressed a desire to participate in the drinking session, but strictly on condition that she maintain her naked state and, to boot, that she sit on the table on which it was proposed to set out the snacks to accompany the vodka. The men sat down on chairs, Antonina Alekseyevna sat on the table and the drinking commenced.

It cannot be called hygienic if a naked young woman is sitting on the very table at which people are eating. Moreover Antonina Alekseyevna was a woman of a rather plump build and not all that particular about her bodily cleanliness, so it was a pretty devilish state of affairs.

Soon, however, they had all drunk themselves into a stupor and fallen asleep: the men on the floor and Antonina Alekseyevna on the table.

And silence was established in the communal flat.

1935

A certain engineer has made up his mind to build a huge brick wall across Petersburg. He considers how to accomplish this, doesn't sleep for nights cogitating it. Gradually a group of engineering planners is formed and a plan for the construction of the wall is elaborated. It was decided to build the wall at night, indeed, to build the whole thing in one night, so that it would appear as a surprise to everyone. Workers are summoned. The organisation is under way. The city authorities are sidelined and finally the night arrives when this wall is to be built. The building of the wall is known only to four men. The workers and engineers receive exact instructions as to whom to place where and what to do. Thanks to exact calculation, they succeed in putting up the wall in a single night. On the following day there is consternation in Petersburg. And the inventor of the wall is himself dejected. To what use this wall was to be put, he himself did not know.

1935

There once was a man whose name was Kuznetsov. He left his house to go to a shop to buy some carpenter's glue so as to stick a stool.

When Kuznetsov was walking past an unfinished house, a brick fell off the top and hit Kuznetsov on the head.

Kuznetsov fell, but straight away jumped to his feet and felt over his head. On Kuznetsov's head a huge lump had come up.

Kuznetsov gave the lump a rub and said: — I, citizen Kuznetsov, left the house to go to the shop to... to... to... Oh, what on earth's happened? I've forgotten why I was going to the shop!

At this point a second brick fell off the roof and again Kuznetsov was struck on the head.

— Akh! — cried Kuznetsov, clutching at his head and feeling a second lump on his head.

— A likely story! — said Kuznetsov. — I, citizen Kuznetsov, left the house to go to... to go to... to go to... where was I going!

Then a third brick fell from the top on to Kuznetsov's head. And on Kuznetsov's head a third lump came up. — Oh heck! — yelled out Kuznetsov, snatching at his head. — I, citizen Kuznetsov, left the... left the... Left the cellar? No. Left the boozer? Nol Where did I leave?

A fourth brick fell from the roof, hit Kuznetsov on the back of the head and a fourth lump came up on Kuznetsov.

— Well, now then! — said Kuznetsov, scratching the back of his head. — I... I... I... Who am I ? I seem to have forgotten what my name is ... A likely story! Whatever's my name? Vasily Petukhov? No. Nikolay Sapogov? No. Panteley Rysakov? No. Well, who the hell am I?

But then a fifth brick fell off the roof and so struck Kuznetsov on the back of the head that Kuznetsov forgot everything once and for all and, crying 'Oh, oh, oh!', ran off down the street.

If you wouldn't mind! If anyone should meet a man in the street with five lumps on his head, please remind him that his name is Kuznetsov and that he has to buy some carpenter's glue and repair a broken stool.

1935

Natasha had two sweets. Then she ate one of the sweets and one sweet remained. Natasha placed the sweet on the table in front of her and started crying.

Suddenly she has a look and on the table in front of her there lie two sweets again.

Natasha ate one sweet and again started crying.

Natasha cries and keeps one eye on the table to see whether a second sweet will appear. But a second sweet did not appear.

Natasha stopped crying and started to sing. she sang and sang away, and suddenly died.

Natasha's Dad arrived, took Natasha and carried her to the house manager.

— Here — says Natasha's Dad — will you witness the death?

The house manager blew on his stamp and applied it to Natasha's forehead.

— Thank you — said Natasha's Dad and carried Natasha off to the cemetery.

But at the cemetery was the watchman Matvei; he always sat by the gate and didn't let anyone into the cemetery, so that the dead had to be buried right on the street.

Dad buried Natasha on the street, removed his cap, placed it on the spot where he had interred Natasha and went off home.

He arrived home and Natasha was already sitting there. How come? It's very simple: she climbed out from under the earth and ran back home.

What a thing! Dad was so taken aback that he collapsed and died.

Natasha called the house manager, saying to him: — Will you witness a death?

The house manager blew on his stamp and applied it to a sheet of paper and then on the same sheet of paper he wrote: 'This certifies that so and so has actually died.'

Natasha took the piece of paper and carried it off to the cemetery for burial. But the watchman Matvei tells Natasha: — I'm not letting you in on any account.

Natasha says: — I just want to bury this piece of palmer.

And the watchman says: — Don't even ask. Natasha interred the piece of paper on the street, placed her socks on the spot where she had interred the piece of paper and went off home.

She gets home and Dad is already sitting there at home and is already playing against himself on a miniature billiard table with little metal balls.

Natasha was surprised but said nothing and went off to her room to grow up.

She grew and grew and within four years she had become a grown-up young lady. But Natasha's Dad had become aged and bent. But they will both remember how they had taken each other for dead and so they will fall on the divan and just laugh. Another time they laugh for about twenty minutes.

And their neighbours, as soon as they hear this laughter, immediately put on their coats and go off to the cinema. And one day they went off like that and never came back again. Seemingly, they were run over by a car.

1936

Once a certain professor ate something which didn't agree with him and he began to vomit.

His wife came up to him, saying: — What is it?

But the professor replied: — It's nothing. — His wife retreated again.

The professor reclined on the divan, had a little lie down, felt rested and went off to work. At work there was a surprise for him: his salary had been docked; instead of 650 roubles, he only had 500. The professor ran hither and thither — but to no avail. The professor went to the Director, and the Director threw hills out. The professor went to the accountant, and the accountant said: — Apply to the Director. — The professor got on a train and went off to Moscow.

On the way he suddenly went down with flu. He arrived in Moscow and couldn't get out on to the platform.

They put the professor on a stretcher and carried him off to hospital.

The professor lay in hospital no more than four days and then died.

The professor's body was cremated, the ashes were placed in an urn and sent off to his wife.

So the professor's wife was sitting drinking coffee. Suddenly a ring. What's that? — A parcel for you.

The professor's wife was really pleased; smiling all over her face, she thrust a tip into the postman's hand and was soon unwrapping the parcel. She looked in the parcel and saw an urn of ashes, with a message: 'Herewith all that remains of your spouse.'

The professor's wife didn't understand a thing; she shook the urn, held it up to the light, read the message six times — finally she worked out what was afoot and was terribly upset.

The professor's wife was very upset, cried for three hours and then went off to inter the urn of ashes. She wrapped the urn in a newspaper and took it to the First Five-Year Plan Garden, formerly the Tavricheskiy.

The professor's wife chose the most out-of-the-way path and was just intending to bury the urn, when suddenly a watchman came along.

— Hey! — shouted the watchman. — What are you doing here? — The professor's wife was frightened and said: — I just wanted to catch some frogs in this jar.

— Well — said the watchman — that's all right, only watch it, and keep off the grass.

When the watchman had gone, the professor's wife buried the urn, trod the earth down around it and went off for a stroll round the gardens.

In the gardens, she was accosted by some sailor — Come on, let's go for a little sleep — he said.

She replied: — Why should one sleep in the daytime? — But he stuck to his guns: sleep and more sleep.

And the professor's wife really did feel like sleeping.

She walked along the streets and she felt sleepy. People were running all around her in blue, or in green — and she just felt sleepy.

So she walked and slept. And she dreamed that Lev Tolstoy was coming towards her, holding a chamber-pot in his hands. She asked him: — What's that, then? — and he pointed to the chamber-pot, saying: — Here, I've really done something and now I'm taking it to show the whole world. Let everyone see it — he said.

The professor's wife also had a look and saw that it seemed no longer to be Tolstoy, but a shed, and in the shed was a hen.

The professor's wife tried to catch the hen, but the hen hid under a divan, from which it looked out, now in the form of a rabbit.

The professor's wife crawled under the divan after the rabbit and woke up.

She woke and looked around: she really was lying under a divan.

The professor's wife crawled out from under the divan — and saw her own room. And there stood the table with her undrunk coffee. On the table lay the message — Herewith all that remains of your spouse.

The professor's wife shed a few more tears and sat down to drink up her cold coffee.

Suddenly a ring. What's that? Some people walk in and say — Let's go.

— Where? — asked the professor's wife.

— To the lunatic asylum — they reply.

The professor's wife began to shout and to dig in her heels, but the people grabbed her and took her off to the lunatic asylum.

And there, on a bunk in a lunatic asylum, sits a completely normal professor's wife, holding a fishing rod and fishing on the floor for some invisible fish or other.

This professor's wife is merely a pitiful example of how many unfortunates there are in life who do not occupy in life the position that they ought to occupy.

1936

Masha found a mushroom, picked it and took it to the market. At the market, Masha was hit about the head, and there were further promises that she could be hit about the legs as well. Masha took fright and ran off.

Masha ran to the co-operative store and wanted to hide there behind the cash desk. But the manager caught sight of Mashes and said: — What's that you've got in your hands?

And Masha said: — A mushroom. The manager said: — Why, you're a fine one, now! How would you like me to fix you up with a job?

— Oh, you won't fix me up — said Masha. — I'll fix you up here and now! — said the manager. And he fixed Masha up with a job, turning the handle on the cash till.

Masha turned and turned away on the handle on the cash till and suddenly died. The police arrived, drew up a report, and ordered the manager to pay a fine of fifteen roubles.

— What's the fine for? — asked the manager.

— For murder — replied the police.

The manager took fright, hastily paid the fine and said: — All right, only take this dead cashier out of here straight away.

At this point the sales assistant from the fruit section said: — No, wait a minute, you've got it wrong, she wasn't the cashier. She only turned the handle on the cash till. That's the cashier sitting there.

— It's all the same to us — said the police — we've been told to take a cashier out of here, so we'll take one out.

The police started towards the cashier. The cashier thereupon lay down on the floor behind the cash desk and said: — I won't go.

— Why won't you go, you silly woman? — said the police.

— You're going to bury me alive — said the cashier.

The police started to try and lift the cashier up from the floor, but try as they might, they couldn't lift her, as she was extremely stout.

— Grab her by the legs — said the sales assistant from the fruit section.

— No — said the manager — this cashier acts as my wife. I must therefore ask you not to expose her from the rear end.

— Do you hear? — said the cashier — don't you dare expose me from the rear end.

The police look hold of the cashier under the arms and dragged and heaved her out of the co-operative store.

The manager ordered the sales assistants to tidy up the store and get business under way.

—- But what are we going to do with this dead woman? — said the sales assistant from the fruit section, pointing at Masha.

— Good gracious me — said the manager — we've made a mess of the whole thing! Well, what in fact are we going to do with the dead woman?

— And who's going to sit at the cash till? — asked the sales assistant.

The manager clutched his head with both hands. He sent apples scattering along the counter with his knee and said: — What's happened is monstrous!

— Monstrous! — echoed the sales assistants in chorus.

Suddenly the manager scratched his moustache and said: — Ha, ha, I'm not so easily nonplussed. We'll seat the dead woman behind the till, and perhaps the public won't realise who's sitting there.

They seated the dead woman at the cash desk, stuck a cigarette between her teeth to give her a greater resemblance to the living, and for additional verisimilitude gave her the mushroom to hold in her hands.

The dead woman sat there looking quite alive, except that her facial colouring was very green, and one eye was open, while the other was completely closed.

— Never mind — said the manager — she'll do.

And the public was already knocking at the doors, highly agitated that the shop had not been opened. In particular, one matriarchal figure in a silk coat was shouting her head off: she was shaking her purse and aiming a back heel kick at the door-handle. And behind the matriarchal figure some old woman with a pillowcase on her head was shouting and swearing, calling the manager of the co-operative store a stingy old swine.

The manager opened the doors and admitted the public. The public charged straight to the meat section, and then to where the sugar and pepper were sold. But the old woman made straight for the fish section, and on the way glanced at the cashier and stopped.

— Good Lord — she said — Holy goats!

And the matriarchal figure in the silk coat had already been round every section, and was rushing to the cash desk. But no sooner had she glimpsed the cashier then she stopped dead, stood in silence and just looked. And the sales assistants also stayed silent anal looked at the manager. And the manager peered out from behind the counter, waiting to see what would happen next.

The matriarchal figure in the silk coat turned to the sales assistants and said: — Who's that you've got sitting behind the cash till?

And the sales assistants stayed silent, as they didn't know what to say.

The manager also stayed silent.

At this point people came running from all sides. Already there was a crowd on the street. Caretakers from nearby houses appeared on the scene. Whistles were heard blowing. In a word, an absolute scandal.

The crowd was prepared to stand there outside the store until evening at least. But someone said that old women were plummeting out of a window on Ozerny Pereulok. Then the crowd outside the store thinned out, because a lot of people went over to Ozerny Pereulok.

1936

I used to be a very wise old man.

Now I am not quite right; you may consider me even not to exist at all. But the time was when any one of you would have come to me and, whatever burden may have oppressed a person, whatever sins may have tormented his thoughts, I would have embraced him and said: — My son, take comfort, for no burden is oppressing you and I see no bodily sins in you — and he would scamper away from me in happiness and joy.

I was great and strong. People who met me on the street would shy to one side and I would pass through a crowd like a flat iron.

My feet would often be kissed, but I didn't protest: I knew I deserved it. why deprive people of the pleasure of honouring me? I myself, being extraordinarily lithe of body, even tried to kiss myself on my own foot. I sat on a bench, got hold of my right foot and pulled it up to my face. I managed to kiss the big toe. I was happy. I understood the happiness of others.

Everyone worshipped me! And not only people, but even beasts, while even various insects crawled before me and wagged their tails. And cats! They simply adored me and, somehow or other gripping each other's paws, would run in front of me whenever I was on the staircase.

At that time I was indeed very wise and understood everything. There was not a thing that would nonplus me. Just a minute's exertion of my colossal mind and the most complicated question would be resolved in the simplest possible manner. I was even taken to the Brain Institute and shown off to the learned professors. They measured my mind by electricity and simply boggled. — We have never seen anything like it — they said.

I was married but rarely saw my wife. She was afraid of me: the enormity of my mind overwhelmed her. She did not so much live, as tremble; and if I as much as looked at her, she would begin to hiccup. We lived together for a long time, but then I think she disappeared somewhere. I don't remember exactly.

Memory — that's a strange thing altogether. How hard remembering is, and how easy forgetting That's how it often is: you memorise one thing, and then remember something entirely different. Or: you memorise something with some difficulty, but very thoroughly, and then you can't remember anything. That also happens. I would advise everyone to work a bit on their memory.

I always believed in fair play and never beat anyone for no reason, because, when you are beating someone, you always go a bit daft and you might overdo it. Children, for example, should never be beaten with a knife or with anything made of iron, but women — the opposite: they shouldn't be kicked. Animals — they, it is said, have more endurance. But I have carried out experiments in this line and I know that this is not always the case.

Thanks to my litheness, I was able to do things which no one else could do. For example, I managed to retrieve by hand from an extremely sinuous sewage pipe my brother's earring, which had accidently fallen there. I could, for example, hide in a comparatively small basket and put the lid on myself.

Yes, certainly, I was phenomenal!

My brother was my complete opposite: in the first place, he was taller and, secondly, more stupid.

He and I were never very friendly. Although, however, we were friendly, even very. I've got something wrong here: to be exact, he and I were not friendly and were always on bad terms. And this is how we got crossed. I was standing beside a shop: they were issuing sugar there, and I was standing in the queue, trying not to listen to what was being said around me. I had slight toothache and was not in the greatest of moods. It was very cold outside, because everyone was standing in quilted fur coats and they were still freezing. I was also standing in a quilted fur, but I was not freezing myself, though my hands were freezing because I had to keep taking them out of my pockets to adjust the suitcase I was holding between my knees, so that it didn't go missing. Suddenly someone struck me on the back. I flew into a state of indescribable indignation and, quick as lightning, began to consider how to punish the offender. During this time, I was struck a second time on the back. I pricked up my ears, but decided against turning my head and pretended that I hadn't noticed. I just, to be on the safe side, took the suitcase in my hand. Seven minutes passed and I was struck on the back a third time. At this I turned round and saw in front of me a tall middle-aged man in a rather shabby, but still quite good, military fur coat.

— What do you want from me? — I asked him in strict and even slightly metallic voice.

— And you, why don't you turn when you're called? — he said.

I had begun to think over the content of his words when he again opened his mouth and said: — What's wrong with you? Don't you recognise me or something? I'm your brother.

I again began to think over his words when he again opened his mouth and said: — Just listen, brother mine. I'm four roubles short for the sugar and it's a nuisance to have to leave the queue. Lend me five and I'll settle up with you later. — I started to ponder why my brother should be four roubles short, but he grabbed hold of my sleeve and said: — Well, so then, are you going to lend your own brother some money? — and with these words he undid my quilted fur for me himself, got into my inside pocket and reached my purse.

— Here we are — he said. — I'm taking a loan of a certain sum, and your purse, look, here it is, I'm putting back in your coat. — And he shoved my purse into the outer pocket of my fur.

I was of course surprised at meeting my brother so unexpectedly. For a while I was silent, and then I asked him: — But where have you been until now?

— There — replied my brother, waving in some direction or other.

I started thinking over where this 'there' might be, but my brother nudged me in the side and said: — Look, they've started letting us in to the shop.

We went together as far as the shop doors, but inside the shop I proved to be on my own, without my brother. Just for a moment, I jumped out of the queue and looked through the door on to the street. But there was no sign of my brother.

When I again wanted to take my place in the queue, they wouldn't let me in and even pushed me gradually out on to the street. Holding back my anger at such bad manners, I went off home. At home I discovered that my brother had taken all the money from my purse. At this stage I got absolutely furious with my brother, and since then he and I have never made it up.

I lived alone and granted admittance only to those who came to me for advice. But there were many of these and it turned out that I knew peace neither by day nor by night. Sometimes I would get so tired that I would lie down on the floor and rest. I would lie on the floor until I got cold; then I would jump up and start running round the room, to warm up. Then I would again sit down on the bench and give advice to all in need of it.

They would come in to me one after the other, sometimes not even opening the doors. I used to enjoy looking at their excruciating faces. I would talk to them, hardly able to stop myself laughing.

Once I couldn't contain myself and burst out laughing. They rushed in horror to escape — some through the door, some through the window, and some straight through the walls.

Left on my own, I drew myself up to my full majestic height, opened my mouth and said: — Prin tim pram.

But at this point something in me cracked and, since then, you might consider that I am no more.

1936-38

YERMOLAYEV I have been at Blinov's and he gave me a demonstration of his strength. I've never seen anything like it. The strength of a wild animal! It was awful to behold. Blinov lifted up a writing table, swung it about and tossed it all of four metres away from him.

DOCTOR It would be interesting to research this phenomenon. Such facts are known to science, but the reasons for it are not understood. Where such muscular strength comes from, scientists are not yet able to say. Introduce me to Blinov. I'll give him a research pill.

YERMOLAYEV What sort of a pill is it that you are intending to give Blinov?

DOCTOR Pill? I don't intend to give him a pill.

YERMOLAYEV But you only just said yourself that you were intending to give him a pill.

DOCTOR No, no. you are mistaken. I didn't mention a pill.

YERMOLAYEV Well, excuse me, but I heard you mention a pill.

DOCTOR No.

YERMOLAYEV What do you mean — no?

DOCTOR I didn't say that.

YERMOLAYEV Who didn't say it?

DOCTOR You didn't say it.

YERMOLAYEV What didn't I say?

DOCTOR You, it seems to me, didn't finish saying something.

YERMOLAYEV I don't understand. What didn't I finish saying?

DOCTOR Your speech pattern is very typical. You swallow your words, you don't complete the utterance of your initial thought, you hurry and then you stutter.

YERMOLAYEV When did I stutter? I speak quite fluently.

DOCTOR Ah, but that's where you're wrong. Do you see? You're even starting to come out in red blotches from the tension. Your hands haven't gone cold yet?

YERMOLAYEV No, but so what?

DOCTOR Yes, that was my supposition. I think you're already having trouble breathing. You'd better sit down, before you fall down. That's right. Now have a rest.

YERMOLAYEV But what for?

DOCTOR Shh! Don't strain your vocal chords. Now I'm going to alleviate your fate.

YERMOLAYEV Doctor! You frighten me.

DOCTOR My dear friend! I want to help you. Here, take this. Swallow it!

YERMOLAYEV Oh. Ooh! What a vile, disgustingly sweet taste! What is it you've given me?

DOCTOR Nothing, it's all right. Calm down. It's a sure remedy.

YERMOLAYEV I'm hot and everything seems to be turning green.

DOCTOR Yes, that's right, my dear friend. In a minute, you'll die.

YERMOLAYEV What are you saying? Doctor! Oh! I can't! Doctor! What have you given me? Oh, Doctor!

DOCTOR You have swallowed the research pill.

YERMOLAYEV Save me. Oh. Save me. Oh. Let me breathe. Oh. Save... oh. Breathe...

DOCTOR He's gone quiet. And he's not breathing. That means he's dead already. He has died, not finding on earth the answers to his questions. Yes, we physicians must comprehensively research the phenomenon of death.

1937

Philosopher!

1. I am writing to you in reply to your letter, which you are intending to write to me in reply to my letter which I wrote to you.

2. A certain violinist bought himself a magnet and was taking it home. On the way some hooligans attacked the violinist and knocked his cap off. The wind caught his cap and carried it along the street.

3. The violinist put his magnet down and ran off after his cap. The cap landed in a puddle of nitric acid, where it decomposed.

4. And the hooligans had, by that time, grabbed the magnet and made off.

5. The violinist returned home without his coat and without his cap, because the cap had decomposed in the nitric acid and the violinist, distressed by the loss of his cap, had forgotten his coat on the tram.

6. The conductor of the tram in question took the coat to a second-hand shop and there he exchanged it for some sour cream, groats and tomatoes.

7. The conductor's father-in-law stuffed himself on the tomatoes and died. The conductor's father-in-law's body was placed in the morgue, but then things got mixed up and, instead of the conductor's father-in-law, they buried some old woman.

8. On the old woman's grave they placed a white post with the inscription: 'Anton Sergeyevich Kondrat'ev'.

9. Eleven years later, this post fell down, eaten through by worms. And the cemetery watchman sawed the post into four pieces and burned it in his stove. And the cemetery watchman's wife cooked cauliflower soup over this fire.

10. But, when the soup was just ready, the clock fell off the wall right into the saucepan full of soup. They got the clock out of the soup, but these had been bedbugs in the clock and now they were in the soup. They gave the soup to Timofey the beggar.

11. Timofey the beggar ate the soup, bugs and all, and told Nikolay the beggar of the cemetery watchman's generosity.

12. The next day Nikolay the beggar went to the cemetery watchman and started asking him for alms. But the cemetery watchman didn't give Nikolay the beggar anything and chased him away.

13. Nikolay the beggar took this very badly and burned down the house of the cemetery watchman.

14. The fire went from the house to the church and the church burned down.

15. A lengthy investigation took place, but the cause of the fire could not be established.

16. On the spot where the church had stood they built a club and on the club's opening day a concert was arranged at which performed the violinist who, fourteen years before, had lost his coat.

17. And amid the audience there sat the son of one of those hooligans who, fourteen years before, had knocked the cap off this violinist.

18. After the concert they travelled home in the same tram. But, in the tram which was following theirs, the tram-driver was that very conductor who had once sold the violinist's coat at the second-hand shop.

19. And so there they are, travelling across the city in the late evening: in front are the violinist and the hooligan's son, and behind them the tram-driver and former conductor.

20. They travel on and are not aware of what the connection is between them and this they will never learn until their dying day.

1937

* This letter was addressed to Yakov Semyonovich Druskin.

Sen'ka bashed Fed'ka across the chops and hid under the chest of drawers.

Fed'ka got Sen'ka out from under the chest of drawers with a poker and tore off his right ear.

Sen'ka slipped through Fed'ka's hands and, holding his torn-off ear, ran off to the neighbours.

But Fed'ka caught up with Sen'ka and coshed him over the head with the sugar-basin.

Sen'ka collapsed and, seemingly, died.

Then Fed'ka packed his things in a suitcase and went away to Vladivostok.

In Vladivostok Fed'ka became a tailor; strictly speaking, he was not exactly a tailor, because he made only ladies' underwear, principally drawers and brassieres. The ladies had no inhibitions with Fed'ka; right in front of him they would hitch up their skirts and Fed'ka would take their measurements.

Fed'ka, as one might say, didn't half see some sights.

Fed'ka was a nasty character.

Fed'ka was the murderer of Sen'ka.

Fed'ka was a lecherous devil.

Fed'ka was a glutton, because every evening he ate a dozen cutlets. Fed'ka grow such a belly on him, that he made himself a corset and took to wearing it.

Fed'ka was an unscrupulous man: he took money from children he met in the street, he tripped up old men and he terrorised old women by raising his hand to them and, when a frightened old woman shied to one side, Fed'ka would pretend that he had only raised his hand to scratch his head.

It ended when Nikolay went up to Fed'ka, bashed him across the chops and hid under a cupboard.

Fed'ka got Nikolay out with a poker from under the cupboard and ripped open his mouth.

Nikolay ran off with his ripped mouth to the neighbours, but Fed'ka caught up with him and clubbed him with a beer mug. Nikolay collapsed and died.

Fed'ka gathered his things and went away from Vladivostok.

Written in two devices, by 21 November 1937

Andrey Andreyevich thought up a story like this one.

In an old castle there lived a prince, who was a terrible boozer. But the wife of this prince, on the contrary, didn't even drink tea, she only drank water and milk. While her husband drank vodka and wine, but didn't drink milk. Though, in fact, his wife, to tell the truth, also drank vodka but kept it quiet. But her husband was quite shameless and didn't keep it quiet.

— I don't drink milk, I drink vodka! — he always said. While his wife on the quiet, from under her apron, pulled out a jar and — glug! — she was drinking away.

Her husband, the prince, says: — You could have given me some.

But his wife, the princess, says: — No, there's little enough for me. Shoo!

— As for you, — says the prince — call yourself a lady! — And with these words, wallop, and his wife's on the floor! The wife, her whole kisser smashed in, lies on the floor crying. And the prince wrapped himself in his cloak and went to his quarters in the tower, where his cages stood. He bred fowls there, you see. And so the prince arrived in the tower and there the chickens were squawking, wanting food. one chicken even began to neigh.

— As for you — said the prince — you chauntecleer! Shut up, before you get your teeth bashed in! — The chicken doesn't understand a word and just carries on neighing. So, in the end then, we've got a chicken making a racket in the tower, and tile prince, then, offing and blinding and his wife, then, downstairs lying on the floor — in a word, a complete Sodom.

That's the sort of story Andrey Andreyevich would think up. Even just from this story you can tell that Andrey Andreyevich is a major talent. Andrey Andreyevich is a very clever man. Very clever and very fine!

1938

They call me the Capuchin. For that I'll tear the ears off whomsoever it may be necessary, but meanwhile I get no peace from the fame of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Why did he have to know everything? How to swaddle infants and how to give young girls in marriage I would also like to know everything. In fact I do know everything, except that I am not so sure of my theories. About infants, I certainly know that they should not be swaddled at all — they should be obliterated. For this I would establish a central pit in the city and would throw the infants into it. And so that the stench of decomposition should not come from the pit, it could be flooded every week with quicklime. Into the same pit I would also stick all Alsatian dogs. Now, about giving young girls in marriage. That, in my view, is even simpler: I would establish a public hall where, say, once a month all the youth would assemble. All of them between seventeen and thirty-five would have to strip naked and parade up and down the hall. If anyone fancied someone, then that pail would go off into a corner and there examine each other in detail. I forgot to say that they would all have to have a card hanging from the neck with their name, surname and address. Then, a letter could be sent to whomever was to someone's taste, to set up a more intimate acquaintance. Should any old man or woman intervene in these matters, I would propose killing them with an axe and dragging them off to the same place as the infants — to the central pit.

I would have written more of the knowledge within me, but unfortunately I have to go to the shop for tobacco. When walking on the street, I always take with me a thick knotty stick. I take it with me in order to batter any infants who may get under my feet. That must be why they called me the Capuchin. But just you wait, you swine, I'll skin your ears yet!

1938

Serov, an artist, went to the Obvodny Canal. Why did he go there? To buy some india rubber. What did he want india rubber for? To make himself a rubber band. And what did he want a rubber band for? In order to stretch it. That's what for. And what else? This is what else: the artist Serov had broken his clock. The clock had been going well, but he picked it up and broke it. What else? Nothing else. Nothing, this is it, in a nutshell! Keep your filthy snout out when it's not needed! And may the lord have mercy on us!

Once there lived an old woman. She lived and lived, until she got burnt up in her stove. Served her right, too! The artist Serov, at least, was of that opinion...

Huh! I would write some more, but the ink-pot has suddenly gone and disappeared.

1938

I had raised dust. Children were running after me, tearing their clothing. Old men and old women fell from roofs. I whistled, I roared, my teeth chattered and I clattered like an iron bar. Lacerated children raced after me and, falling behind, broke their thin legs in their awful haste. Old men and old women were skipping around me. I rushed on! Filthy, rachitic children, looking like toadstools, got tangled under my feet. Running was hard going. I kept remembering things and once I even almost fell into the soft mush of old men and women floundering on the ground. I jumped, snapped a few heads off toadstools and trod on the belly of a thin old woman, who at this emitted a loud crunch and softly muttered: — They've worn me out. — Not looking back, I ran on further. Now under my feet was a clean and smooth pavement. Occasional streetlamps lit my way. I ran up to the bath-house. The welcoming bath-house flickered in front of me and the cosy but stifling bathhouse steam was already in my nostrils, ears and mouth. Without undressing, I ran straight through the changing-room, then past the taps, the tubs and the planks, to the shelf. A hot white cloud surrounds me, I hear a weak but insistent sound. I seem to be lying down.

And at this point, a mighty relaxation stopped my heart.

1939

A shortish gent with a pebble in his eye went up to the door of a tobacconist's shop and stopped. His black polished shoes gleamed on the stone step leading up to the tobacconist's. The toe-caps of his shoes were directed at the inside of the shop. Two more steps and the gentleman would have disappeared through the door. But for some reason he dilly-dallied, as though purposely to position his head under the brick which was falling from the roof. The gentleman had even taken off his hat, baring his bald skull, and thus the brick struck the gentleman right on his bare head, broke the cranium and embedded itself in his brain. The gentleman didn't fall. No, he merely staggered a bit from the terrible blow, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, used it to wipe his face, which was all gooey from blood and brains, and, turning towards the crowd, which had instantly gathered around the gentleman, he said: — Don't worry, ladies and gents: I've already had the vaccination. You can see — I've got a protruding pebble in my right eye. That was also once quite an incident. I've already got used to that. Now everything's just fine and dandy!

And with these words the gentleman replaced his hat and went off somewhere into the margins, leaving the troubled crowd in complete bewilderment.

1939-40

There was a house, full of old women. The old women lounged around the house all day and swatted flies with paper bags. There were in all thirty-six old women in this house. The most vigourous old woman, by surname Yufleva, ordered the other old women about. She would nib any disobedient old woman on the back of the shoulders or trip her up, and she would fall and smash her face. One old woman called Zvyakina, punished by Yufleva, fell so disastrously that she broke both her jaws. The doctor had to be sent for. He arrived, put on his white coat and, having examined Zvyakina, said that she was too old for there being any possibility of counting on her jaws mending. Then the doctor asked to be given a hammer, a chisel, pincers and rope. The old women drifted round the house for ages and, not knowing what pincers and a chisel look like, they brought the doctor everything that seemed to them anything like tools. The doctor cursed for a long time but finally, having received all the objects he had demanded, asked everyone to withdraw. The old women, burning with curiosity, withdrew with great displeasure. When the old women, amid swearing and grumbling, had hocked out of the room, the doctor locked the door behind them and went up to Zvyakina.

— Now then — said the doctor and, having grabbed Zvyakina, tied her tightly with the rope. Then the doctor, paying no attention to the loud cries and wailing of Zvyakina, placed the chisel to her jaw-bone and struck the chisel hard with the hammer. Zvyakina began howling in a hoarse bass. Having shattered Zvyakina's jaw with the chisel, the doctor grabbed the pincers and, having engaged Zvyakina's jaws, tore them out. Zvyakina howled, shouted and wheezed, covered in blood. And the doctor dropped the pincers and Zvyakina's torn jaw-bones, took off his white coat, wiped his hands off it and, going over to the door, opened it. The old women tumbled into the room with a scream and stared goggle-eyed, some at Zvyakina, some at the blood-stained bits lying about on the floor. The doctor pushed his way between the old women and went out. The old women rushed over to Zvyakina. Zvyakina faded in volume and, obviously, was in the process of dying. Yufleva stood right there, looking at Zvyakina and nibbling at sunflower seeds. The old woman Byashechina said: — So, Yufleva, even you and I will snuff it some day.

Yufleva kicked at Byashechina, but the latter jumped aside in time.

— Come on girls! — said Byashechina. — Why hang around here? Let's leave Yufleva and Zvyakina to romp around, and we'll go and swat flies.

And the old women moved off out of the room.

Yufleva, continuing to bite into her sunflower seeds, stood in the middle of the room and looked at Zvyakina. Zvyakina had faded away and lay there motionless. Perhaps she had died.

However, with this the author is finishing his narrative, since he cannot find his ink-pot.

1940

Pushkov said: — Woman is the workbench of love.

And he immediately received a clout across the gob.

— What's that for? — asked Pushkov.

But, not getting any answer to his question, he continued: — This is what I think: a woman should be tackled from below. Women really like this and only pretend that they don't like it.

At this point Pushkov was again struck across the gob.

— But what on earth is this, comrades! If that's the way it is, I won't carry on speaking — said Pushkov.

But, after waiting about a quarter of a minute, he continued: — A woman is so built that she is all soft and damp.

At this point Pushkov was again struck across the gob. Pushkov tried to pretend that he hadn't noticed this and went on: — If you just sniff a woman...

But at this point Pushkov was so slammed across the gob that he caught hold of his cheek and said: — Comrades, under these conditions it is absolutely impossible to deliver a lecture. If this happens again, I shall discontinue.

Pushkov waited for a quarter of a minute and then continued: — Now, where were we? Ah, yes. That was it. A woman loves to look at herself. She sits down in front of the mirror completely naked...

At this word, Pushkov again received a clout across the gob.

— Naked — repeated Pushkov.

Smack! — he was weighed into right across the gob.

— Naked! — yelled Pushkov.

Smack! — he received a clout across the gob.

— Naked! A naked woman! A nude tart! — Pushkov kept yelling. Smack! Smack! Smack! — Pushkov took it across the gob.

— A nude tart with a ladle in her hands! — yelled Pushkov.

Smack! Smack! — the blows rained down on Pushkov.

— A tart's bum-hole! — yelled Pushkov, dodging the blows. — A nude nun!

But at this point Pushkov was struck with such force that he lost consciousness and crumpled to the floor as though pole-axed.

1940

They said to Myshin: — Hey, Myshin, get up!

Myshin said: — I won't get up — and continued lying on the floor.

Then Kalugin came up to Myshin and said: — If you don't get up, Myshin, I will make you get up.

— No — said Myshin, continuing to lie on the floor.

Selizneva went up to Myshin and said: — Myshin, you are for ever sprawling about the floor in the corridor and you interfere with us walking backwards and forwards.

— I have been interfering and I shall keep on interfering — said Myshin.

— Well, you know — said Korshunov, but Kalugin interrupted him and said:

— What's the point of carrying on long conversations about it! Call the militia!

They called for the militia and called out a militiaman.

The militiaman arrived after half an hour with the caretaker.

— What's going on here? — asked the militiaman.

— How do you like this! — said Korshunov, but Kalugin interrupted him and said:

— This is the situation. This citizen lies here on the floor all the time and interferes with us walking along the corridor. We've tried telling him this and that...

But at this point Kalugin was interrupted by Selizneva, who said: — We've asked him to go away, but he doesn't go away.

— Yes — said Korshunov.

The militiaman went up to Myshin.

— You, citizen, why are you lying here? — asked the militiaman.

— I'm resting — said Myshin.

— Resting here is not good enough, citizen — said the militiaman. — Where do you live, citizen?

— Here — said Myshin.

— Where's your room? — asked the militiaman.

— He's registered in our flat, but he doesn't have a room — said Kalugin.

— Wait a minute, citizen — said the militiaman — I'll have a word with him now. Citizen, where do you sleep?

— Here — said Myshin.

— Allow me to — said Korshunov, but Kalugin interrupted him and said:

— He doesn't even have a bed and he sprawls right on the bare floor.

— They've been complaining about him for a long time — said the caretaker.

— It's absolutely impossible to walk along the corridor — said Selizneva — I can't keep stepping over a man for ever. And he sticks out his legs on purpose, and he sticks out his hands, and he lies on his back and looks up. I come back tired from work, I need a rest.

— And I can add — said Korshunov, but Kalugin interrupted him and said:

— He lies here at night, as well. Everyone trips over him in the dark. I tore my blanket because of him.

Selizneva said: — He's always got tin-tacks and things falling out of his pocket. It's impossible to walk barefooted down the corridor, or before you know where you are — you put your foot on something.

— They wanted to set him alight with kerosene the other day — said the caretaker.

— We did pour kerosene over him — said Korshunov, but Kalugin interrupted him and said:

— We only poured kerosene over him to scare him, but we weren't going to set light to him.

— Oh no, I wouldn't have a man burned alive in my presence — said Selizneva.

— But why is this citizen lying in the corridor? — the militiaman suddenly asked.

— That's a fine how do you do! — said Korshunov, but Kalugin interrupted him and said:

— Well, because he hasn't got any other living space: here's where I live, in this room, and she's in that one, and that one's his, and so Myshin lives here, in the corridor.

— That's not good enough — said the militiaman. — Everyone should be lying in their own living space.

— But he hasn't got any other living space, except in the corridor — said Kalugin.

— That's just it — said Korshunov.

— And so he goes on lying here — said Selizneva.

— That's not good enough — said the militiaman and went away, together with the caretaker.

Korshunov leaped over to Myshin.

— What about it? — he yelled. — How did you like that, then?

— Wait — said Kalugin. And, going up to Myshin, he said: — Did you hear what the militiaman said? Get up from the floor!

— I won't get up — said Myshin, continuing to lie there on the floor.

— Now he will deliberately and furthermore and for ever keep on lying there — said Selizneva.

— Definitely — said Kalugin with some irritation.

And Korshunov said: — I don't doubt it. Parfaitement!

1940

Two men fell from a roof. They both fell from the roof of a five-storey newly erected building. Seemingly a school. They had moved down the roof in a sitting position to the very edge and at that point started to fall. Their fall was noticed first of all by Ida Markovna. She was standing at her window in the building opposite and was blowing her nose into a tumbler. And suddenly she caught sight of someone starting to fall from the roof of the building opposite. Peering out, Ida Markovna saw what was an entire twosome starting to fall at once. Completely losing her head, Ida Markovna tore off her shift and hurriedly began to rub the misted-over windowpane, the better to make out who was falling from the roof out there. However, twigging that, perhaps, those falling might, from their vantage point, be able to glimpse her naked — and goodness only knew what they might think of her — Ida Markovna jumped back from the window and hid behind the wicker tripod on which there had at one time stood a pot plant.

At this juncture, those falling from the roof were sighted by another personage who lived in the same building as Ida Markovna, only two floors below. This personage was also called Ida Markovna. She happened at the time to be sitting with her feet up on the window-sill and was sewing a button on her slipper. Looking out of the window, she had caught sight of those falling from the roof. Ida Markovna yelped and, leaping up from the window-sill, hastily began opening the window, so as to get a better view when those falling from the roof should strike the ground. But the window would not open. Ida Markovna remembered that she had nailed the window from beneath and rushed to the stove, in which she kept her tools: four hammers, a chisel and pincers. Grabbing the pincers, Ida Markovna again ran up to the window and pulled out the nail. Now the window was easily flung open. Ida Markovna leaned out of the window and saw those who had fallen from the roof whistling towards the ground.

On the street a smallish crowd had already gathered. Whistles were already blowing and a diminutive militiaman was unhurriedly approaching the location of the anticipated event. A big-nosed caretaker bustled about, shoving people and explaining that those falling from the roof could smite the heads of those gathered below. By this time, both Ida Markovnas — the one in a dress and the other naked — having leaned out of their windows, were squealing and kicking their legs about. And so, finally, arms spread and eyes agape, those who had fallen from the roof struck the ground.

Just as on occasion we, falling from heights we have attained, may strike the dreary cage of our future.

Written over four days. Finished 17 October 1940

Perechin sat on a drawing pin and, from this moment, his life changed abruptly. From a contemplative, quiet man Perechin turned into a downright scoundrel. He grew himself a moustache and henceforth trimmed it extremely untidily, in such a way that the one side of his moustache was always longer than the other. And so his moustache came to grow somehow askew. It became impossible to look at Perechin. What is more, he would give a repulsive wink of the eye and twitch his cheek. For a certain time Perechin confined himself to petty and reprehensible tricks: he told tales, denounced people, and cheated tram conductors by paying them his fare in the very smallest copper coin and each time two or three kopecks short.

1940

Pronin said: — You have very beautiful stockings.

Irina Mazer said: — Do you like my stockings?

Pronin said: — Oh yes. Very much. — And he made a grab at them with his hand.

Irina said: — But why do you like my stockings?

Pronin said: — They are very smooth.

Irina lifted her skirt and said: — And do you see how high they go?

Pronin said: — Oh yes, I do.

Irina said: — But here they come to an end. Up here it's bare leg.

— Oh, and what leg! — said Pronin.

— I've got very thick legs — said Irina. — And I'm very wide in the hips.

— Show me — said Pronin.

— I can't — said Irina. — I've no knickers on.

Pronin got down on his knees in front or her.

Irina said: — What are you kneeling for?

Pronin kissed her on the leg, a little above the stocking top, and said: — That's what for.

Irina said: — Why are you lifting my skirt even higher? I've already told you I've no knickers on.

But Pronin lifted her skirt all the same and said: — Never mind, never mind.

— What do you mean, never mind? — said Irina.

But at this juncture someone was knocking at the door. Irina briskly pulled down her skirt and Pronin got up from the floor and went over to the window.

— Who's there? — asked Irina through the door.

— Open the door — said a sharp voice.

Irina opened the door and into the room came a man in a black coat and high boots. Behind him came a pair of soldiers of the lowest rank, rifles at the ready, and behind them came the caretaker. The lower ranks stood by the door, while the man in the black coat went up to Irina Mazer and said: — Your name?

— Mazer — said Irina.

— Your name? — asked the man in the black coat, turning to Pronin .

Pronin said: — My name is Pronin.

— Do you have a weapon? — asked the man in the black coat.

— No — said Pronin.

— Sit down here — said the man in the black coat, indicating a chair to Pronin.

Pronin sat down.

— And you — said the man in the black coat, turning to Irina, — put your coat on. You'll have to come for a ride with us.

— What for? — asked Irina.

The man in the black coat did not reply.

— I'll need to change — said Irina.

— No — said the man in the black coat.

— But there's something else I need to put on — said Irina. — No — said the man in the black coat.

Irina put on her fur coat in silence.

— Good-bye, then — she said to Pronin.

— Conversations are not allowed — said the man in the black coat.

— Do I come with you as well? — asked Pronin.

— Yes — said the man in the black coat. — Get your coat on. Pronin stood up, took his coat and hat down from the peg, put them on and said: — Well, I'm ready. — Let's go — said the man in the black coat.

The lower ranks and the caretaker stamped their feet.

They all went out into the corridor.

The man in the black coat locked the door of Irina's room and sealed it with two brown seals.

— Outside — he said.

And they all went out of the flat, loudly slamming the outside door.

1940

An old man set out to go into the woods, although he didn't know what for. Then he came back and said:

— Hey, old woman, you!

The old woman fell straight down. Since then, the hares are white in winter.

Anton Mikhailovich spat, said 'ugh', spat again, again said 'ugh', again spat, again said 'ugh' and walked away. And to hell with him. I'd do better to talk about Il'ya Pavlovich.

Il'ya Pavlovich was born in 1893 in Constantinople.

When he was still a small boy, he was taken to Petersburg and hero he went to the German school on Kirochnaya Street. Then he worked in some shop or other, then he did something else and at the beginning of the revolution he emigrated abroad. Well and to hell with him. I'd do better to talk about Anna Ignat'evna.

But to talk about Anna Ignat'evna is not so very simple. In the first place I don't know anything about her and in the second place I have now fallen off my chair and forgotten what I had intended to say. I'd do better to talk about myself.

I am on the tall side, quite intelligent, I'm a flashy dresser with a bit of taste, I don't drink, I don't go to the races, but I do chase the ladies. And the ladies don't avoid me. They even like it when I muck around with them. Serafima Izmailovna has often invited me round and Zinaida Yakovlevna also used to say that she was always pleased to see me. But there did occur between me and Marina Pavlovna an amusing incident which I want to tell you about. It was a completely ordinary incident, but all the same an amusing one for, thanks to me, Marina Pavlovna went absolutely bald, like the palm of your hand. It happened like this: once I arrived at Marina Pavlovna's and bang! — she went bald. And that's all there is to it.

1941

Without boasting, I can tell you that, when Volodya struck me across the ear and spat in my face, I really got him, so that he won't forget it. It was only after that that I hit him with his primus and it was evening when I hit him with the iron. So he didn't die straight away by any means. This doesn't prove that I cut his leg off as early as the afternoon. He was still alive then. Whereas Andryusha I killed simply from inertia, and I can't hold myself responsible for that. Why did Andryusha and Yelizaveta Antonovna fall into my hands anyway? They had no business springing out from behind the door. I am being accused of bloodthirstiness; they say I drank blood, but that is not true: I licked up the pools of blood and stains — it is a man's natural urge to wipe out the traces of even the most trivial of crimes. And also I did not rape Yelizaveta Antonovna. In the first place, she was no longer a virgin; and secondly I was having dealings with a corpse, so she has no cause for complaint. What about the fact that she just happened to have to give birth? Well, I did pull out the infant. The fact that he was not long for this world anyway, well that's really not my fault. I didn't tear his head off; it was his thin neck that did that. He was simply not created for this life. It's true that I stomped their dog to a pulp around the floor, but it's really cynical to accuse me of murdering the dog when in the immediate vicinity, it might be said, three human lives had been obliterated. The infant I don't count. Well, all right then, in all this (I can agree with you) it is possible to discern a degree of severity on my part. But to consider it a crime that I squatted down and defecated on my victims — that is really, if you'll excuse me, absurd. Defecation is an urge of nature and consequently can in no sense be criminal. All things considered, I do understand the misgivings of my defence counsel, but all the same I am hoping for a complete acquittal.

1940

Now I will describe how I was born, how I grew up and how the first signs of genius were discovered in me. I was born twice. This is how it happened.

My Dad got married to my Mum in 1902, but my parents brought me into the world only at the end of 1905, because Dad was adamant that his child should be born at New Year. Dad calculated that conception had to take place on the first of April and only on that day did he get round my Mum with the proposition of conceiving a child.

My Dad got round my Mum on the first of April 1903. Mum had long been awaiting this moment and was terribly thrilled. But Dad, as it seems, was in a very playful mood and could not restrain himself, saying to Mum: 'April Fool!'.

Mum was absolutely furious and didn't allow Dad anywhere near her that day. There was nothing for it but to wait until the following year.

On the first of April 1904, Dad again started getting round Mum with the same proposition. But Mum, remembering what had happened the year before, said that she had no further desire to be left in that stupid position and again would not allow Dad near her. It didn't matter how much noise Dad created, it got him nowhere.

And only a year later did my Dad manage to have his way with my Mum and beget me.

And so my conception took place on the first of April 1905.

However, all Dad's calculations broke down because I turned out to be premature and was born four months before my time.

Dad created such a fuss that the midwife who had delivered me lost her head and started to shove me back in, from where I had only just emerged.

An acquaintance of ours who was in attendance, a student from the military medical academy, declared that shoving me back in would not work. However, the student's words notwithstanding, they still shoved me and shoved me back, for all they were worth.

At this point a fearful commotion broke out.

The progenetrix yells: — Give me my baby!

And the response comes: — Your baby — they tell her — is inside you.

— What! — yells the progenetrix. — How can my baby be inside me when I have just given birth to him!

— But — they say to the progenetrix — mightn't you be mistaken?

— What! — yells the progenetrix — mistaken? How can I be mistaken! I saw the baby myself, he was lying here on a sheet only just now!

— That is true — they tell the progenetrix — but perhaps he's crawled off somewhere. — In a word, they themselves don't know what to tell the progenetrix.

And the progenetrix is still making a noise and demanding her baby.

There was nothing for it, but to call an experienced doctor. The experienced doctor examined the progenetrix and threw up his hands; however, he thought it all out and gave the progenetrix a good dose of English salts, and by this means I saw the light of day for the second time.

At this juncture, Dad again started creating a fuss, saying that, surely, this couldn't be called a birth, that this, surely, couldn't yet be called a human being, but rather a semifoetus, and that it ought to either be shoved back again or put into a incubator.

And so they put me into an incubator.

1935

I sat in the incubator for four months. I remember only that the incubator was made of glass, was transparent and had a thermometer. I sat inside the incubator on cotton wool. I don't remember anything else about it.

After four months they took me out of the incubator. They did this, as it happens, on the first of January 1906.

By this means, I was to all intents and purposes born for a third time.

But it was the first of January that was counted as my birthday.

1935

* Note: Daniil Kharms was in fact born on 17 December (Old Style) / 25 December (New Style), 1905.

1.

Once I arrived at Gosizdat <publishing house> and there in Gosizdat met Yevgeny L'vovich Shvarts who, as always, was badly dressed but with pretention to something.

Catching sight of me, Shvarts began to crack jokes but also, as always, unsuccessfully.

I cracked jokes significantly more successfully and soon, with regard to intellectual relations, put Shvarts squarely on his back.

Everyone around envied my wit, but they could do nothing about it as they literally killed themselves laughing. In particular Nina Vladimirovna Gernet and David Yefimych Rakhmilovich, who called himself Eugene because of the sound of it, used to kill themselves laughing.

Seeing that his jokes didn't work with me, Shvarts started to change his tone and in the end, cursing me up and down, declared that everyone in Tiflis knows Zabolotsky and hardly anyone knows me.

At this point I lost my temper and said that I was more historically important than Shvarts and Zabolotsky, that I shall leave a radiant mark upon history, while they will quickly be forgotten.

Having got the feel of my magnitude and my major world significance, Shvarts gradually began to palpitate and invited me round for dinner.

2.

I decided to mess up the party, and that's what I'm going to do.

I'll start with Valentina Yefimovna. This inhospitable personage invites us round and instead of a meal she puts on the table some awful sour stuff. I enjoy eating and I know what's what when it comes to food. You can't fool me with sour muck! I even go into restaurants on occasions and see what sort of food they have there. And I cannot stand it when this particularity of my character is not recognized.

Now I'll move on to Leonid Savel'evich Lipavsky. He didn't shrink from telling me in my face that every month he composes ten thoughts.

In the first place, he's lying. He doesn't compose ten, it's less.

And secondly, I think up more. I haven't counted up how many I think up in a month, but it must be more than he does...

And I, for example, don't throw it in everyone's face that I, say, possess a colossal mind. I have quite sufficient evidence to consider myself a great man. Yes and, at any rate, I do consider myself such.

That is why it is insulting and painful for me to find myself among people who are inferior to me in terms of mind, insight and talent, and not to feel that I am accorded the respect that is fully my due.

Why, oh why am I better than everyone else?

3.

Now I have understood everything: Leonid Savel'evich is a German. He even has German habits. Look at the way he eats. Well, he's a pure German, that's all there is to it! Even by his legs you can tell that he's a German.

Without boasting at all, I am able to say that I am very observant and witty.

So, for example, if you take Leonid Savel'evich, Yuri Berzin and Vol'f Erlikh and line them all up together on the pavement, then you could well call them: major, minor and minimus.

In my view that's witty, because it's moderately funny.

And all the same, Leonid Savel'evich is a German! I really must tell him this when I see him.

I don't consider myself an especially intelligent person, but all the same I have to say that I'm more intelligent than all the rest. Perhaps there's someone more intelligent than me on Mars, but I don't know about on Earth.

For instance, they say that Oleinikov is very intelligent. And in my view he is intelligent, but not very. He discovered, for example, that if you write a '6' and turn it upside down, then you get a '9'. And in my view that's just stupid.

Leonid Savel'evich is absolutely right when he says that someone's mind is their worth. And if there is no mind, that means there is no worth. Yakov Semyonovich argues with Leonid Savel'evich and says that someone's mind is their weakness. And in my view that's already a paradox. Why ever should the mind be a weakness? Not at all. Rather, it's a stronghold. I think so, anyway.

We often get together at Leonid Savel'evich's and talk about this. If an argument breaks out, then I always turn out the winner of the argument. I myself don't know why.

Everyone regards me with a certain astonishment for some reason. Whatever I do, everyone finds it astonishing.

I don't even make any effort. Everything seems to work out of its own accord.

Zabolotsky said some time that I was born to govern the spheres. He must have been joking. No such idea has ever entered my head.

In the Writers' Union I am considered an angel, for some reason.

Listen, my friends! In fact you shouldn't bend the knee before me like that. I am just the same as all of you, only better.

4.

I have heard the phrase: 'Seize the moment'. It's easily said, but hard to do. In my view, it's a meaningless expression. And really, you can't call for the impossible.

I say this with complete certainty, because I have tested everything on myself. I have grabbed at the moment but not managed to seize it and have merely broken my watch. Now I know that it's impossible.

it's also impossible to 'seize the epoch', because it's the same as the moment, only a bit more so.

It's another matter if you say: 'Document what is happening at this moment'... That is quite another matter.

So, for example: one, two, three! Nothing happened! And so I have documented a moment in which nothing happened.

I told Zabolotsky about this. He was very taken by this and sat the whole day counting: one, two, three! And made notes that nothing had happened.

Shvarts caught Zabolotsky at this activity. And Shvarts also took an interest in this original means of documenting what was happening in our epoch, since an epoch is formed out of moments.

But I beg to draw your attention to the fact that once again I was the prime mover of this method. Me again! Me everywhere! It's simply astonishing!

What comes with difficulty to others comes easily to me!

I can even fly. But I'm not going to tell you about that because, come what may, nobody will believe it.

5.

Whenever two people are playing chess, it always seems to me that one is fooling the other. Especially if they are playing for money.

In general, I find any kind of playing for money disgusting. I forbid gambling in my presence.

And as for card players, I would have them executed. That would be the best method of getting to grips with games of chance.

Instead of playing card games, it would be better if people would get together and read each other a bit of ethics.

Though ethics is rather boring. Womanizing is more fun.

Women have always interested me. Women's legs have always excited me, especially above the knee.

Many people consider women to be depraved creatures. But not me! On the contrary, I even consider them to be somehow quite pleasant.

A plumpish young woman! What's depraved about her? She's not depraved at all!

Children are another matter. They are usually said to be innocent. And I consider that they might well be innocent, but anyway they are highly loathsome, especially when they are dancing. I always make an exit from anywhere where there are children.

Leonid Savel'evich also doesn't like children. And it was me who inspired him with such ideas.

... Generally speaking, everything that Leonid Savel'evich says has already been said some time earlier by me.

And that doesn't only go for Leonid Savel'evich.

Everyone is only too pleased to pick up even scraps of my ideas. I even find this funny.

For example, Oleinikov ran up to me yesterday, saying that he had got into a complete muddle over questions of existence. I gave him some sort of advice and discharged him. He went off delighted with me and in his very best mood.

People see me as a means of support, they repeat my words, they are astonished by my actions, but they don't pay me money.

Foolish people! Bring me money, the more the better, and you will see how pleased that will make me.

6.

Now I'll say a few words about Aleksandr Ivanovich.

<"But the Artist...">

Foma Bobrov and his Spouse

Disarmed, or Unfortunate in Love

How a Man Crumbled

<"I didn't go in for blocking up my ears...">

On the Circle

On Laughter

On Time, Space and Existence

From 'A Tract More or Less According to a Synopsis of Emerson'

Letter to the Lipavskys

A Letter

Letter to K. V. Pugachova: an Extract

Letter to his sister Ye. I. Yuvachova

Letter to Aleksandr Vvedensky

The Old Woman