"Schwambrania," Oska muttered.
We swore we would not. Kirikov held the lantern up to our faces, and we
solemnly pledged that we would preserve his secret to the grave.
"Listen, then, Schwambranian brothers! I am the last alchemist on
earth. I am science's Don Quixote, and this is my faithful sword-bearer. I
have discovered the elixir of universal joy. It makes the sick well and the
sorrowing happy. It turns foes into friends and strangers into bosom
companions."
"Is that your game?" Oska asked.
Kirikov snapped that his elixir was not a game, but a serious
scientific discovery. We then found out that the cave was actually a
laboratory where the elixir was made. The alchemist said that in a year's
time, when the last experiments were completed, he would publish his
findings. He would then completely renovate the house, have electricity put
in, and would give us the entire top floor for Schwambrania. In the
meantime, however, we had to keep quiet, no matter what. "I'm going to name
my elixir of universal joy in your honour, my young friends. It will be
known as the Elixir of Schwambardia.
"It's Schwamhrania. Schwambrania!" Oska shouted. "You can't even say it
right. What kind of an alphysics are you?"
"I'm an alchemist, not an alphysics!" Kirikov sounded just as cross.
We visited the alchemist several more times. By the light of day
Kirikov and his assistant Filenkin turned out to be very hospitable men.
They told us of their progress and listened to the latest Schwambranian news
with interest. The alchemist went so far as to help us govern the country.
Schwambrania flourished.
They worked at night. Their secret smoke wafted up into the yard
through a camouflaged pipe and was blown away. Sometimes we even chopped
wood for their stove. However, they never once showed us the elixir, saying
that it wasn't ready yet. One day we came to see them and found them in a
very merry mood. They were singing softly and clapping warily. A fat woman
in bright felt boots and a bright shawl was part of the party.
"See how happy she is? She just had the first drops of the elixir of
world joy," the alchemist said. "This is Agrafena, I mean Agrippina, Queen
of Schwambrania. We'll crown her, and lead her to the throne. Hooray!"
"We don't have any queen-ladies," Oska said glumly.
"He's right. We'd love to have her, but Schwambrania's a republic,
after all. If she wants to, she can be the president's wife," I explained.
"All right then. She'll be the president's wife. Agrafe ... eh- mew-eh
... Agrip-pina, would you like to be the wife of the President of
Schwambrania?"
"You bet!" said Agrippina.
A young girl who was our cousin came to stay with us. She was from
Moscow and her name was Donna Dina, or Dindonna. Her real name was just
Dina. Her black hair and flashing black eyes, which were as shiny as the
piano top, and her teeth, which were as white and even as the ivory keys,
had earned her the name of Donna.
Our aunts made sure that we understood we were to call her Cousin Dina.
However, Dina turned out to be a regular pal and when she first heard us
say, "Good morning, Cousin Dina," she burst out laughing. When she laughed
everything about her laughed: her eyes, her teeth and her hair.
"Well, then, good morning, kinsmen!" she replied. "How do you spend
your time, if I may ask?"
"In Schwambrania," Oska replied, for he felt drawn to her immediately.
"And carrying straw. And we go out for walks. Will you go out with us?"
"With pleasure. I'm sure to lose my way here alone."
Even Oska had to agree that Dina was a beauty. She wore a real sailor's
middy-blouse, given to her by a revolutionary sailor from Kronstadt. We
thought that was wonderful. We escorted her around town. We showed her the
ruins of Uger's Mansion, but did not say a word about the alchemist or his
elixir. Dina wanted to know all about Schwambrania. She was a little puzzled
by the fact that in such interesting times as these we felt a need for
make-believe. She said it was a shame and high time we got down to real
work. Our friendship blossomed during our long walks.
Young men would step aside politely to let Donna Dina pass. They nudged
each other and looked after her. We could hear them saying what a good
looker she was and beamed proudly.
Dina had only been with us for three days when, to our joy, she stepped
on our aunts' toes, that is, hems. She criticized them for bringing us up in
such an old-fashioned way, saying it was a crime to put a damper on the
social feelings that churned and boiled within us.
"She's right! You can't imagine how my feelings churn! Especially after
pumpkin mush," Oska said.
Dina hugged him and said he hadn't really understood, but no matter.
The argument continued. Our aunts said that they had long since given up, as
far as we were concerned, that we had come completely under the influence of
the street and Bolshevism which, to their minds, was one and the same thing.
They went on to say such awful things it made Dina stand up and slap her
hand loudly on the table. Her face became flushed.
"I think I forgot to mention the fact that I've joined the Party," she
said.
"Are you as good as a Communist now?" Oska inquired.
"I hope so," she replied cheerfully.
My aunts were flabbergasted. They gaped. Then their mouths shut slowly.
FEKTISTKA'S OTHER NAME
"My dear kinsmen," Dina said soon after. "Great vistas have opened up
before you. They are a challenge to your boundless energy and imagination.
But you must be social beings, dear kinsmen. It's high time you were!" She
had just been appointed Commissar Chubarkov's assistant, in charge of the
children's library and reading-room.
My aunts' definition of a children's library was: an officially
operated hotbed of infectious diseases which were to be found lurking in
profusion in the old books, as worn and torn as a ragman's clothes.
Dina's idea of a children's library was as follows: "It's not merely a
counter, kinsmen. It's not merely a place where books are handed out. A
children's library should be the main centre for educating and bringing up
children outside the school. It'll be the children's favourite clubhouse,
where each can do as he likes. We'll teach children to respect good books.
Oh, kinsmen, we'll have such a wonderful place! Your Schwambrania won't even
hold a candle to it! Everyone will want to belong to it. Just wait and see."
However, in order to become such a wonderful place, the library had to
have more space. There were some very rich people living in the adjoining
apartment. They had been asked to move some time before, and now Dina
decided to take matters into her own hands. She asked me to come along and
back her up.
This would be the beginning of my volunteer work for the library.
Dina was busy checking the catalogue and library cards when I came in.
She was surrounded by raggedy children. I recognized many of my former
neighbourhood enemies. There were also some skinny children who lived near
the railroad tracks, some stocky boys and girls from the fishermen's
settlement, and some boys who worked at the cannery and the bone-meal
factory. Some were filling in the cards, others were pasting torn pages,
while still others were on the step ladders, placing the books on the
shelves. Everyone was busy and you could see they were enjoying the job.
This was the first children's book brigade. They obviously liked Dina and
kept pestering her with questions.
"Donna Dina! Donna Dina! Who's Uncle Tom's cabin?" a little girl
wrapped in a huge shawl that was crossed on her chest and tied in back
asked.
"Donna Dinovna!" came a voice from the top of a ladder. "Is Tolstoy a
place or a someone?"
"Here's another helper, children," Dina said, pointing to me. "Put his
name down on the list, Ukhorskov."
I was very offended. I had no intention of playing second fiddle here.
I had been positive Dina had intended me to be in charge of everything.
However, I decided to say nothing for the time being.
"I know you. You're the doctor's son. Won't you get in trouble for
coming here with us?" somebody said.
"Why should I get in trouble? Everybody's equal now."
Ukhorskov, a tall boy with high cheekbones, came over to me. "Are you
going to be a doctor, too?" he said.
"No. I'm going to be a sailor of the revolution." "That's not bad. I
want to be an aviator."
Commissar Chubarkov came in just then. We hadn't seen each other for a
long time. "Oho! The younger generation's shooting up! What does your papa
write home about life in the trenches?"
Then we all trooped next door to help with the eviction. To my horror
and embarrassment the people were close relatives of Taya Opilova. She was
sitting on a trunk in the front hall when we entered. For a moment I did not
know what to say. Taya's eyes were full of contempt, indignation, reproach
and God knows what else. My one desire was to sneak off.
"I thought you were the doctor's son!" she said.
"I'd rather be a doctor's son than an exploiter's daughter!" I snapped.
"That's that!" the commissar shouted. "You've had your say and that's that."
Ukhorskov came over to me. He spoke in a whisper. "We're putting out a
newspaper. Come on over this evening. You can be the editor. You've changed
a lot. You've got a real fighting spirit now." "How come you know me?"
"You don't recognize me, do you? Remember the time I fixed your basin
and pail? I'm Fektistka. I live in the children's home now. I requisitioned
my boss' tools and I make nifty cigarette lighters. Want me to make you one
that'll look just like a pistol? And it'll be a good lighter, too?"
"I don't smoke."
"You can use it to scare thugs."
As I looked at this tall, confident boy I could hardly recognize the
tinsmith's timid apprentice. Could this be the same Fektistka whose skinny
back had first brought home to us the difference between those who made
things and those who owned them? Indeed, he had even acquired a last name!
The Commissar was waiting for me outside the library. He took my arm.
"Uh, is Comrade Dina ... uh, a relative of yours?" He was trying to sound
indifferent. "Is she your sister?"
"Yes. We're related." I was very possessive. Then I turned into the
wind so the Commissar wouldn't hear me and added, "She's my cousin."
"She's really educated." For some reason or other he sounded sad.
"She sure is! She nearly practically graduated from the University."
He sighed.
No! I was not elected editor of the children's newspaper. Horrible old
Dina told them I wasn't ready to take on such a job yet, since I liked to
daydream and wasn't sufficiently politically conscious, or some such
nonsense. I had never expected anything like that from her. And so Klavdia
was elected editor. Yes, the very same Klavdia who had always been our
prisoner when Oska and I played war in Schwambrania.
"I know what Comrade Dina means," Klavdia said slyly. "He's still
making-believe he's in a place called Schwambrania. It's a game. They used
to take me prisoner. But it's no fun to play that any more."
The kids all looked at me and smiled. Strangely, they were friendly
smiles. Never before had I been so ashamed of Schwambrania.
"I guess you've changed places now, Klavdia. You're in charge from now
on, and you've been freed for good. But Lelya 's still a prisoner of
Schwambrania. My poor kinsman." Dina smiled.
Naturally, I should have got up and walked out on those smart alecks,
but at that moment I doubted Schwambrania's right to existence more than
ever before. I felt there was nothing I could say in its defence. The game
was obviously becoming outdated. It was like an obsession, something to be
ashamed of, like a habit you want to break. Klavdia, the new editor, came
over to me and said,
"Don't be mad. Say 'fins' and come out of prison."
She was a thin and lively girl, and it was as clear as day that she had
no use for a game like Schwambrania. That was when I mentally crossed out
Item 3, the last on our list of the world's injustices, the one entitled
"Landless children". I wanted to belong to the same country she did, and so
I stayed on.
I was completely engrossed in the busy, noisy affairs of the library,
spending all my free time there. My hands and clothes were full of paint,
paste and ink. I was piled high with folders and obligations. Oska tagged
along and was soon everyone's pet. He was put in charge of the chess table.
"And chairs" he added, after he had been elected.
Ukhorskov, Klavdia and I organized a literary club. A month later the
first issue of our magazine appeared. It was called Bold Thinking. I signed
my name as the editor-in-chief. We hardly visited the alchemist any more,
for we were too busy at the library. In the evenings everyone gathered in
the reading room, and the day's newspapers were read aloud. This was really
"news", real dispatches from the front lines. Stepan Atlantis and perhaps my
father were somewheres out there, and thus were also part of these
dispatches.
We had lectures, literary debates and evening and morning social
events, at which both actors and audience were equally thrilled. The
library's fame spread throughout Pokrovsk. Every day new boys and girls
would come in from the outskirts.
We wore out our shoes and the thresholds of the various organizations
in an effort to supply the library with kerosene and firewood. Dina and her
aide, Zorka, a shy and gentle girl, made terrible scenes at the city
council, arguing over every stick of firewood. Once, when there was not
enough wood to last out the month, we all donated whatever we could. Small
frozen children brought a board, a panel of a chest or an armful of sticks,
despite the fact that there was no firewood at home. Still, they brought the
wood to the library. Once again hot flames made the stove doors rattle. In
the evening the young readers would take their eyes from their books to
listen to their wood crackling triumphantly in the stove, to see the
victorious array of bright sparks. Each would look around possessively at
the bookcases, the tables and his neighbours, for each felt himself the
master here. The merry crackling of the stove drowned out the churning of
their empty stomachs.
Chubarkov would stop by for new books practically every day. He was an
avid reader and attended all of our plays, debates and literary evenings.
His loud applause inspired us. He, however, was mostly inspired by Dina's
presence. Dina, as he put it, had a great cultural influence on him.
Irresponsible people said he was simply in love. But that didn't concern us.
In the midst of all our work we decided to set an evening aside for a
gala performance. The children invited their parents. We had a general
housecleaning in the library, got rid of the cobwebs and hung new posters on
the walls. For some reason or other, only mothers came to the party. They
were given the best seats. They fixed their combs and hid their work-weary
hands under the fronts of their shawls. Dina and Zorka offered them tea
without sugar, but there was apple butter.
A very new feeling of being a part of things and wanting to prepare a
very special welcome, to be especially hospitable to the guests, prompted
Oska and me to make a real sacrifice.
I put on my coat and was about to dash back home.
"Going for the Schwambranian sugar?" he said, guessing my intentions.
"Yes!"
Dina was really touched. I imagined what Stepan Atlantis would have
said, had he been there.
"See, Stepan, I'm donating all our sweet private property for the good
of everybody," I would say.
"Good for you! That's exactly how a sailor of the revolution should
act," he would reply.
Our hearts nearly burst from pride as we watched the mothers drinking
their tea with Schwambrania's sugar.
The performance was Act Two of Nikolai Gogol's play The Marriage.
"Just look at my boy," one of our mothers was saying. "Why, you'd think
he was a real dandy!"
"Goodness! Is that Annie? I swear it is. You'd never recognize her in
that get-up."
"There's Nina! Look at her. I never knew she could be so high and
mighty."
"Who's the skinny boy? The doctor's son? I might have guessed. He
speaks so politely."
"My Serge learned his part so good he's saying it faster'n anybody.
What a rascal! The boy in the booth there can hardly keep up to tell him
what's next."
"Where's your boy, Stepanida?"
"You can't see him. He's holding the curtain."
The play was a smashing success. The actors were smothered in the
motherly embraces of the audience. Next on the program was Oska, reciting a
piece from The Sorochinskaya Fair.
The audience sat back expectantly.
"Do you know what the Ukrainian night is like?" Oska began with great
feeling.
"No! No, we don't! Tell us!" came several voices from the audience.
"No, you do not know what it is like," he continued, obviously startled
by the response.
"Of course we don't," the mothers replied. "How could we? We never had
time for book-learning."
Afterwards the children took their mothers on a tour of inspection,
showing them their drawings, posters, magazines and the bulletin board with
newspaper clippings.
"They've got themselves a whole kingdom of their own here!" one of the
women exclaimed.
Then there were games and dancing. At first, the women stood along the
walls shyly, but Dina and Zorka pulled them into the middle of the room. I
played a lively folk dance, four-handed, counting Oska's two, and the room
began to spin like a huge top. We had had many children's parties and
birthday parties at home, but none had ever been as much fun as this.
"Thank you, Donna Dinovna," the beaming mothers said. "And you, Zorka
dear. And you, boys and girls. Our youth's gone and past, with no good times
to remember. But at least we've lived to see our children happy. Thank you."
"You should thank yourselves. You made all this possible," Dina
replied.
Saucy Klavdia dragged me off to the "Surprise Room". One corner of the
room was hidden by some very nice drapes. The sign above them read:
"Panorama. View of a Moonlit Winter's Night".
"Want a look?" she said. "Pay a forfeit."
I paid a forfeit.
Klavdia turned down the lamp. "Look!" She pulled the drapes apart.
I saw a gold frame. Within it was a beautifully made scene of a
winter's night. The moon's milky-blue beams illuminated it. The granaries of
Pokrovsk had been copied very well. The tall water-tower was set in the
middle of the deserted square. Red lights glowed in the windows of the tiny
houses.
"Doesn't it look real?"
"Yes," I breathed. "I think it's even prettier than if it was real. Who
did it?"
"Dina. And she said to be sure I showed it to you." Klavdia was
laughing. "Now look!"
Suddenly, I saw a little horse and wagon moving across the panorama. At
that instant the toy night dissolved, the perspective became deeper, the
granaries took on their usual size, and I realized that there was no
panorama. The gilt frame had been set in a large window that faced on the
square. I had been looking out at an ordinary night in the real town of
Pokrovsk. I never would have dreamed that this beautiful night scene and our
wonderful party could have taken place on our ordinary earth. A mist of
cheap tinfoil shrouded Schwambrania. The earth of Schwambrania was slipping
away from under me. At that very moment I heard mocking laughter. I looked
around. Dina was standing there, surrounded by a crowd of boys and girls.
"Well? Do you realize now that you need a gold frame to turn Pokrovsk
into Schwambrania?"
They laughed. Oska came over to me and took my hand. We stood thus,
surrounded by the laughing children. Fektistka Ukhorskov was laughing.
Klavdia was laughing. Just as Oska and I were about to join in the general
merriment at the expense of the Big Tooth Continent, the hot blood of true
Schwambranians rushed to our heads. How dared they mock us!
"Did you guess what the trick is?" Dina asked. We said nothing. "Then
I'll tell you. It's all a matter of the old saying being true: the grass is
always greener on the other side of the fence. But a well-known Communist
writer once said: the proletariat doesn't have to build castles in the air,
because it can and is building its kingdom on earth. That's why we had a
proletarian revolution. To make the grass greener on our side."
In the applause that followed I heard the echoes of disenchanted
Schwambrania's fall.
Oska and I, still holding hands, stalked out of the rollicking room.
"Where are you going?"
"Are your Schwambranian feelings hurt?"
"Never mind, they'll come back," Dina said. "Hey, kinsmen, wait a
minute! Never mind, they'll come back. They'll come back to work and not to
play at make-believe."
Revolutionary humanity, according to rumour, had another very dangerous
enemy besides Chatelains Urodenal, my aunts and the real, live Admiral
Kolchak. This was the Yo-ho-ho Gang. They came from Atkarskaya, Petrovskaya
and Saratovskaya streets. Red-headed Vaska Kandrash (Kandrashov) was the
gang leader, but Hefty Martynenko, my overgrown former classmate, provided
the real leadership.
"Yo-ho-ho! Yo-ho-ho! Nobody can scare us, ho!" was their war-cry as
they made the rounds of their domain.
The children's library did not escape attack. They came on a Sunday, a
week before Oska and I walked out. There were about fifteen of them and they
advanced in a close and wary bunch. Vaska Kandrash was in the lead. He
walked over to Donna Dina's desk and said,
"Find me a nice snappy book. I want a real interesting one. You got one
by Louis Boussenard? No? How about Nat Pinkerton? Not him neither? Some
Soviet library you got here!"
"We don't have silly books like that. But we do have books that are a
lot more interesting. I can see you boys have a real fighting spirit. The
way things are run here, every reader is in charge of the library. Would you
like to be our fighting squad and keep order in the reading room and guard
our book exhibit? There are a lot of ruffians who tear the books and mess
the place up. I know I'll be able to rely on you."
This was most unexpected. The Yo-ho-hos were taken aback. The gang
members exchanged glances.
"I'll bet you're the commander," Dina continued, addressing Kandrash.
"Yes. I am." He was flattered. "How'd you guess?" "That's common
knowledge. Well, what do you say? Can I rely on you to keep order here?"
Once again the Yo-ho-hos looked uneasy.
"Sure you can. Who tramped all that snow in?" Kandrash bellowed at the
members of his gang. "What's the matter? You so sick you can't bend over and
brush it off your boots? Look at the mess!"
The Yo-ho-hos jostled each other as they tumbled out into the hall and
wiped their feet. Then they hung their hats on the pegs.
Hefty could not forgive the gang for this betrayal. He caught up with
me one day as I was passing the library. He was furious, for he felt I was
chiefly responsible for the Yo-ho-hos changing sides. He grabbed my coat and
lifted me off the ground. The conversation was more than brief.
"You?"
"Yes!"
"Ahhh!"
When I was finally able to open my eyes again a fight was raging.
Ukhorskov and the Yo-ho-hos were closing in on Hefty. I dashed into the
fray. They accepted me as one of them.
"All of you to one?" Hefty roared.
"No! All of us for one!" the boys replied and went on socking him.
Never before had Hefty been so badly beaten. I knew why he was being
hit. He was a real and vicious enemy, no matter that he may have been a
rip-roaring fellow. He was getting what was coming to him. The line that
divided the world into two camps had become very clear to me. Hefty was on
the other side. I was here, with the boys whom I had come back to from
Schwambrania. I was let in on the fight and hit Hefty with real pleasure. I
pummelled him on my own behalf and on behalf of Stepan Atlantis. I socked
him like a runaway Schwambranian and pounded him like a sailor of the
revolution. And we did him up fine.
I was jubilant as I returned from the battlefield. My head was
spinning, a result of our victory and the hard wallop delivered by Hefty.
Oska met me in the front hall. " 'Hoo-ray, hoo-ray!' they all shouted, the
Schwambranians," I sang.
"There's great news," Oska said in a stupid voice.
The family was gathered at the table. Misfortune lay on the table, as
long as a pike.
"Papa has typhus," Mamma said in a hospital whisper. "Uralsk has been
cut off. It took the telegram nine days to reach us. Maybe he's already...."
"'Hoo-ray, hooray!' They were clouted!"
I was given some water. I got up from the floor unaided.
We had no word of Papa in the two weeks that followed. For two weeks we
did not know whether we should speak of him as someone who was alive, or as
someone who had died. For two weeks we were afraid to mention him, for we
did not know whether to use the present or the past tense.
It was during those difficult days that we learned Stepan had been
killed. Stepan Gavrya, the boy who had wanted to find the lost Atlantis, had
died a hero's death. There were various versions of what had happened.
Volodya Labanda said a Red Army man had told him that the whiteguards had
taken Stepan prisoner. As he faced a firing squad he had been told,
"Stand against the wall!"
And Stepan supposedly had said, "I'm used to that. I used to stand
against the wall every day in school."
Maybe Labanda invented all this. I really don't know. But I do know
that Stepan Gavrya, alias Atlantis, was killed. He would never see me become
a sailor of the revolution. I would not come out to welcome him in my
patched felt boots, carrying rotten straw in my swollen hands. There is
nothing more to write about him.
What a terrible loss.
The town became muffled under the snow like an ear that is stuffed with
cotton. Snowdrifts billowed along the swollen streets. The yards brimmed
over with snow like flour bins. It was cold. The grey sky drifted overhead,
catching on the chimneys, where it stuck like water weeds on piles. It was
cold. The drifts had laid siege to the town. Hospital trains snowbound out
there in the icy, and perhaps Papa....
One train had ploughed through the drifts the previous day. I hurried
to the station. The train chugged in and stopped. No one came out. It was a
train of dead men. The wounded and sick had all frozen to death on the way.
The bodies were stacked on the platform.
But Papa was not one of them.
It was cold. And dreary. I wanted so badly to go over to the library,
to do some work with the children there, to go through the books and discuss
the latest news dispatches. But I felt awkward about showing up after
Schwambrania's fall. What was Schwambrania, after all? A stuffed lion. And
the stuffing was dust. A party favour with no surprise inside it. Even Oska
had become bored with the game.
Thus overcome by boredom, we went to see the alchemist, trudging
through the snow as we made our way to the house and then down to the
basement. We came upon a disgusting scene. They had apparently all had too
much of the elixir. Filcnkin was on the floor, out like a light. Agrippina.
the wife of Schwamhrania's president, was being sick in a corner. The
alchemist was barely able to keep his balance on a stool.
"Want ... some elixir? It'll m-make you's happy as me." He offered me a
slopping glass.
I accepted it from his unsteady hand. A nauseating smell hit me in the
face. Why.... The terrible truth dawned on me: it was homebrew!
"He-he.... Yes. Natur'ly. It's homebrew. The purest kind. Eh-mew-eh....
Distilled it m'self. My ... eh ... Elixir of Schwambrania. Your
Schwambrania. too ... eh-mew-eh.... It's somewhat like homebrew.... Your own
invenshun, this. A dream of your own brewing...."
We ran out. Why were we so unlucky? Had we been the unwitting helpers
of a moonshiner? Our own invention! Our own brewing! We were so crushed we
went to bed early that night, without boat whistles or dreams. Sleep, as
chilly and loose as a snowdrift. enveloped us.
There was a loud knocking on the door in the middle of the night. Oska
slept on. I jumped out of bed. I heard my father's weak voice. He was alive!
He was led up the stairs. His steps were halting. His skin was yellow. He
looked like a corpse. A beard as huge as a dickey covered his chest. He took
off his fur hat. Mammy rushed to him, but he shouted:
"No! Don't anyone come near me! I'm full of lice ... I have to
bathe.... And eat.... Potatoes if you have any...."
His voice shook, as did his head. We started a fire in the pot-bellied
stove, fried potatoes and heated coffee. We put the holiday lamp on the
table. It was a real feast.
The water for his bath was ready. We went into the other room and from
there could hear the cake of soap knocking against his bones. Fifteen
minutes later we were called back into the room. Papa had on a clean shirt,
his face was clean, and he did not look as frightening as before. He was
speaking about the situation at the front. As long as he spoke of himself,
his voice was calm, though his unfamiliar beard seemed to be weighing down
his words. But then suddenly he became very excited and tears rolled down
his cheeks. "There were the wounded ... the dying ... lying on the floor in
the corridors.... On frozen urine ... three inches high.... I'm a doctor ...
I couldn't...."
Mamma tried to calm him. After a while he regained his composure. He
had a cup of coffee. He was home again. Papa looked at me and said, "You've
grown a mile." Then he tweaked my nose, as he always did.
"He's become unmanageable," my aunts hurried to say. "He's carried off
all the books in the house for the proletarians."
"It's about time you stopped judging things the way you used to," Papa
said irritably. "I can't understand how you can be so petty in times like
this. If you had only seen the faces of our boys when they routed those....
If you had...."
We went off to bed an hour later. At last I had handed over my duties
as the man of the house. I felt as though the invisible belt that had been
holding me in all this time had been let out, and I could suddenly breathe
easily again.
I fell headlong onto my bed and sobbed deliciously into my pillow. I
was bewailing Papa's typhus, my own state of nervous tension, the Red Army
men of the Urals Front, poor Stepan, the injustice of the homebrew incident
and much, much more. But not one of these tears would fall upon the soil of
Schwambrania. I decided to return to the library the next morning.
The armoured train burst upon the city. From the railroad station it
had been shunted onto a spur line that ran within the city limits, past all
the old granaries, and was known as the Granary Line.
Thus, the armoured train clanged along the Granary Line, thrusting its
guns impolitely and warningly into the faces of Breshka Street and the flour
dealers' warehouses. The mottled, camouflaged sides of the armoured cars
were battle-scarred. The locomotive was the most badly battered, for its
whole front section had been mangled. Clad in its dirty-green coat of mail,
it resembled a huge and angry lobster with a missing claw. After it had
towed the armoured cars to the spur line, it backed away to the railroad
station to undergo repairs.
Meanwhile, we were again busy drawing posters in the library, an
assignment given to us by the Commissar. The slogan was:
Help combat typhus!
Once again we spared neither paint no effort and adorned our pictures
of the terrible lice with a staggering number of legs and feelers. Once
again strange centipedes crawled across our frightening posters. Underneath
we strung the lines of a poem of our own that had by now become implanted in
our minds:
When all is neat and clean
No louse is ever seen.
The project was completed a few days later. We wanted to give the
posters to the Commissar, but I was told he was at a meeting in the armoured
train. I decided to take them there. The train was like a silent ironclad,
moored in a dead end.
"Where do you think you're going?" a sentry called out.
"To see Commissar Chubarkov. I have some posters for him." I did not
feel in the least bit shy.
"Let's see them." I unrolled the posters and the sentry examined them
closely. "They look fine. True to life. All right, go on in."
I entered the car softly. No one noticed me. The air was full of
cigarette smoke. The head of the Cheka was there, and the Commissar, and a
lot of other people. It was as dim and as close as a vault. The atmosphere
was tense. The heavy armour that covered the car pressed upon everyone. A
very thin man dressed in leather pants and a short sheepskin coat was
speaking.
"As the commander of the train, I want to say that the men, the guns
and the ammunition are in readiness. We're being delayed, because the
locomotive is being repaired. The railroad men are holding us up."
"Then there's nothing more to say. We'll wait till we hear from them.
Robilko's due any minute. He'll tell us how things are. The only thing I
want is some sleep. I haven't had any sleep for four nights," the Cheka
Chairman said.
"What if it's not the locomotive?" the Commissar said and puffed hard
on his cigarette, flicking the ash on the table angrily.
"Listen, friend," the commander of the armoured train said, "let's keep
this place clean. Don't drop ashes all over. See how neat everything is? We
even got an ashtray to keep it this way. The boys traded it someplace. It's
a funny-looking thing. So put your ashes in it." And he pushed something
strange over to the commissar. Chubarkov jabbed his butt at the opening.
"Their attack is scheduled for tomorrow," the Commissar said. "If your
train doesn't shield us, they'll hit our rear. It's all a matter of
repairing the engine. And what if it's not?" he repeated.
"If it isn't, I'll go over and see what it is," the Chairman said.
"I'll talk to the fellows. I can vouch for the workers. They won't let us
down. They're on our side. As for the foremen and mechanics.... Well, if
it's sabotage, they'll be in for trouble." He rose and strode along the
passage. He was a stern, determined man, so unlike what he had been when he
had laughed so heartily over our Schwambranian papers. And the Commissar was
different, too. This was not the man I knew. He spoke more simply, and did
not keep repeating "that's that". He spoke well. Here he was among his own
people, men he could rely on completely. He was doing his job, and the great
responsibility that lay upon him gripped his heart and made him clench his
teeth. This was my very first encounter with the revolution in its everyday
life. This was the very first time I was seeing it at close range and not
from the heights of Schwambrania, not by peeking out of our doorway. This
was when I realized that the job these people, whom I now saw in a new
light, were doing was a difficult and dangerous one, but the only real and
worthwhile job there was.
Then Robiiko rushed in. I knew him. He was a railroad engineer who had
helped us get rid of the principal of the Boys School in February 1917. He
now rushed into the car. Everyone jumped up.
"Well?" they all demanded.
"The railroadmen told me to give back your appeal. They said they don't
need it. They said they know what the revolution means to them by heart.
They pledged to do their proletarian duty. Which means they'll repair the
engine by tomorrow morning, even though it means working all through the
night."
The armoured train left the next day. The railroad workers' brass band
played. The Commissar made a speech. The engine clanged and then steamed out
of the station.
At that very moment a hand was thrust out of the loophole of the middle
car. It was holding the strange ashtray I had seen the evening before and
was emptying it.
The armoured train was moving. The loophole was passing me. I
recognized our seashell grotto, the grotto of the Black Queen, the former
hiding place of Schwambrania's secret. Butts and ashes were pouring out of
it. Butts and ashes.
A special meeting of all readers had been called in the library. We had
no firewood for the coming month. The city council had said there was none
to spare, and so the library would have to be closed. The commissar paced up
and down glumly. We were desperate. A sudden brainstorm hit me with such
force it practically blinded me and made me squint. Everyone looked at me
strangely.
"Comrades! Let's use Schwambrania for firewood!"
"Schwambrania's firewood is only good for heating castles in the air.
Forget it," Dina said.
"No! That's not what I meant. D'you know Uger's Mansion? It's full of
old planks and logs, and what not. That was our secret place. Oska and I
used to play there. So I know. Let's all get together and fill the woodpile.
To hell with Schwambrania. It's for a good cause."
At first there was silence. My suggestion had been like a bombshell.
Then someone clapped. A moment later everyone was shouting, jumping,
clapping. The Commissar lifted me off the floor. The ceiling seemed to be
coming down on us three times in a row as we were thrown up into the air,
making our hearts skip a beat. Oska and I were the heroes of the day.
"But you'll have to chase the two alphysics out first," Oska said when
he had been set down again.
"Which alphysics?" Dina asked.
"Alchemists," I explained.
"That's what I meant. They're getting drunk on homebrew there."
The Commissar wrote something in his notebook and left quickly without
saying a word.
Schwambrania was collapsing. Our firewood project was nearly over. A
heavily-laden sleigh was pulling away. I stood in a chain of boys and girls,
handing planks I received from the boy on my right to the boy on my left.
The planks seemed to undergo a change in my hands, for I was given pieces of
Schwambrania, but I handed over ordinary firewood for our library. We were
working well. My scratched hands and arms ached. The frost hurt my skin
through the holes in my mittens, but it was good to feel that the boy on my
left was as closely linked to me as I was to the boy on my right, while he,
in turn, was to the one of his right, and so on down the line. I was a step
in a live ladder. The make-believe land of Schwambrania was being passed
along the chain to be burned for a good cause.
A group of boys, the Commissar, Zorka, Dina and Ukhorsky were pulling
down the rickety wall of the high gallery. Suddenly, someone screamed:
"Stop! Wait!"
We all looked up. There, on the very top of the swaying gallery, we
spotted Oska. He had just got there and seemed quite unconcerned. "It's so
beautiful up here," he called down. "I can see way far off."
"Down! Get down this minute!" the Commissar croaked. "No! Wait! Don't
move! I'll get you down myself." He swung up as nimbly as a cat, climbing
through the gaping holes of the floors. The gallery creaked threateningly.
Then he appeared in the top window.
"Be careful!" we called.
By now he had climbed out onto the ledge. He was gripping the crumbling
edge of the window frame with one hand and running his other over the wall,
seeking something to hold on to. He inched along the ledge until he had
nearly reached Oska.
"Shh! Stand still. Don't move," he kept saying.
"Look, isn't it nice to look down from here?" Oska spoke calmly as he
waited for the Commissar.
"Give me your hand, and that's that!" Chubarkov growled as he stretched
his hand towards Oska. He grabbed him and pulled him in through the window.
A moment later the gallery collapsed, coming down with a great roar like an
avalanche and raising clouds of snow.
"You sure would have spoiled everything," the Commissar said as he set
Oska down.
The ruins of Schwambrania lay all about us.
"The Schwambranians perished like goggle and mangle," Oska said
unexpectedly.
"I think you mean like Gog and Magog," Donna Dina said and smiled.
I stood among the phantom bodies, among the remains of the unborn
citizens. I stood there as a general stands on a battlefield.
"Listen, comrades. I've just made up the last Schwambranian poem," I
said and recited:
I stand upon the battlefield,
Schwambrania's fate has now been sealed.
Perished all, and many more:
Jack, Pafnuti, Brenabor,
Ardelar, Urodenal,
Satanrex, the admiral.
Death-Cap-Poison-Emir, too.
That's that! They're through!
A glorious list of rare old names.
Farewell, Schwambrania, land of fame!
Down to work now, everyone,
Till the job is really done.
Tales are dust, tales are naught,
What is real is better wrought!
Life holds joy for me and you....
That's that! Adieu!
The story's over. This is the end of the book.
But wait a minute! I'll pick up the globe. It's round and true, and I
want to take my bearing. The coloured sphere spins on its base as if it were
a bubble blown out of the black stem. But it lacks the brilliant shimmering
and the readiness to burst at a moment's notice that is a part of every soap
bubble. The globe is solid, steady and ponderable.
It can be picked up like a lamp or a cup.
Oska and I were both bookworms. Our respect for the globe was
excessive. We never grabbed it by the stand, but always picked it up
carefully. It rested in our hands, nestling in the reverence bred by our
elders who spoke about "all is vanity" and "there is greatness in small
things". It looked bold, significant and even terrible, like Yorick's skull
held by Hamlet's probing fingers.
"I know how people guessed the Earth was round," Oska said after he had
become convinced that his version of the place where the Earth curved was
unscientific. "It's because the globe is ... spherical. That's why, isn't
it, Lelya?"
We would probably have grown up to increase the number of the
well-known type of human being, the person who learns the Earth is round by
looking at a school globe, who fishes in a fishbowl, who watches life go by
through his window and learns the meaning of hunger when his doctor puts him
on a diet.
Our thanks to the epoch! The way of life of callous hardened rear ends
was blasted. It was a crushing blow. And we had to learn the hard way that
the Earth was round.
As for the globe, we have long since learned its true use and purpose:
it is not a revelation, it is simply a visual aid. The sphere turns. Oceans
and continents pass in review. There is no Schwambrania. Nor can one find
Pokrovsk now. The city has been renamed Engels.
I visited the city recently. I went there to congratulate Oska on the
occasion of the birth of his daughter. When I received the telegram in
Moscow I must confess I was overcome by an attack of former Schwambranian
pride. I went as far as to prepare a grandiloquent speech (0, daughter of
the Land that Never Was! 0, daughter of a doughty Schwambranian!) I even
thought of a number of fine-sounding names for her: Schwambraena, Brenabora,
Delyara.... But then I received a letter from Oska which read, in part:
"Enough is enough! We created more than enough imaginary idiots. My daughter
is real, and I don't want to hear a word about Schwambranians or
Caldonians.'I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I've named her Natalia. All the
best to you,
Your brother Oska."
Once again I was home in Pokrovsk. We were in the very same room from
which, twelve years before, I had exited, my stride that of a man of the
house. The stand-in for our famous Black Queen was now tucked away in the
chess table. I looked for and found the scratches on the piano lid that had
been made in the Tratrchok. Six-months-old Nata stared at me in round-eyed
wonder.
I gave her a rattle with a long handle that was made to resemble a
globe.
Our grey-haired father returned from inspecting an outlying district.
Mamma had just finished conducting a lesson for a group of illiterate women.
They were learning to read and write. A warm family reunion awaited us. Oska
arrived from Saratov late that evening. He was curly-haired, hoarse and
manly-looking.
"Lelya! I barely managed to get away. I lectured to shipbuilders in the
morning and at a technical school in the afternoon. From there I went to the
district committee. I'm just back from a meeting of rivermen. I spoke on the
revolution in Spain. How do you like Nata?"
At this I made my emotional cradle speech of welcome: "0, you," I said,
"you who," I said.
"That's enough," Oska said. "That's enough of your hamadryads."
"It's about time you knew the difference between a hamadryad and a
madrigal!" I cried.
"Ah! It's that old childish habit of mine of getting words mixed up. By
the way, can you tell me the difference between a dragoman and a
mandragora?"
I then read the family this book. It was not the usual kind of
author-reads-his-book evening, for the characters of story kept interrupting
me. They would become offended over something, or feel proud. They added
things, protested about others, argued with the author and forgave him.
Meanwhile, Nata was busy chewing on the globe-rattle. The descendant of
Schwambranians rattled her small mace.
"I'll tell you what I think of the book," Oska said in a very formal
tone of voice. "It rightly presents us as insignificant and silly fools. The
author has successfully exposed the silliness of such daydreaming.
Unfortunately, however, he has not been able to avoid a petty-bourgeois
vagueness in some of the characterizations. However, while exposing the
insignificance and silliness of those Schwambranian daydreams, you've gone a
bit too far. You want to deprive the present of the right to dream. That's
wrong! I think this should be changed. Wait...." He dumped the contents of
his briefcase onto the table, and books and notepads, squirmed out of it
like fish out of a creel. Among them I saw a small book entitled "A
Communist's Companion" and recalled the deceased Jack, the Sailor's
Companion.
"Here it is," he said, opening a pad. "Here's a quotation from Lenin I
copied out:
" 'And if they say: what is it to us? After all, we don't need any
illusions or tricks to sustain our enthusiasm.... This is our great joy. But
does this mean that we ... don't need to dream? A class that is in power, a
class that is truly changing the world in a workaday way is always given to
realism, but it is also given to romanticism.'
"Here, you see, one should understand this romanticism to mean what
Lenin meant when he spoke of a dream. And this is no longer an imaginary
star that can never be reached. It's not something to console your
imagination. It's our own very real Five-Year Plan, and all the ones that'll
follow. It's our determination to move on despite all obstacles. It is that
'practical idealism' which Engels said the materialists had so much of when
the narrow materialists accused him of 'narrowness and excessive soberness
of mind'. You should have said something about that in the book," my learned
brother concluded.
"I know there's a lot that can be improved," I said humbly. "I feel it,
but don't know how to do it yet. And don't rush me. A person has to digest
all this first. I'm not happy about being Jack, the Communists' Companion. I
don't want to be just a companion. I want to be a sailor of the revolution,
and I will be one, I promise you, my brother and communist, as I would have
said to Stepan Atlantis."
Oska and I stayed up talking late into the night. Everyone had gone to
bed. Speaking in whispers made our throats itch, as did our recollections.
We lined the characters of the book up for a last review. We held a roll
call of my old class at school.
"Vyacheslav Alipchenko!" I said.
"Died of typhus," Oska replied.
"Sergei Aleferenko?" I asked.
"Party Secretary of the wharves."
"Stepan Gavrya, alias Atlantis!"
"Killed in action on the Urals Front."
"Konstantin Rudenko, alias Beetle!"
"Lecturer in analytical mechanics."
" Vladimir Labanda!"
"Shipbuilding engineer."
"Martynenko, alias Hefty!"
"Exiled for counter-revolutionary activities."
"Ivan Novik!"
"Director of a machine and tractor station."
"Kuzma Murashkin!"
"First mate on the Gromoboi."
"Arkady Portyanko!"
"Botanist and scholar."
"Grigory Fyodorov!"
"Red Army commander."
"Nikolai Shalferov!"
"Killed by counter-revolutionaries."
The next morning Father took me to the suburbs to see the new hospital.
I couldn't recognize the city. At the place where the Earth curved there was
a wonderful recreation park. Homes for workers of the meat-packing plant
were going up on the side of our destroyed Schwambranian mansion that had
once belonged to Uger. A bus passed. Students of the city's three colleges
were hurrying to their classes. Large new houses lined Breshka Street.
Airplanes roared over the city, but I didn't see anyone look up. A new
theatre, clinic and library were under construction. A magnificent sports
stadium crowned the top of the hill. I recalled the two Schwambranians'
visits to the Cheka and the Chairman's words:
"And we'll have paved streets everywhere, and big muscles, and movies
every day."
While the story was in the telling, the deed was done. The clear
windows, spotless floors and shiny instruments of the new hospital dazzled
me.
"Well? Was there anything remotely like this in Schwambrania?" Papa
said, enjoying my admiring glances.
"No. Nothing of the kind."
Papa beamed.
The day before we were to leave for Moscow Mamma went to the closet
that housed our family treasures and pulled out a large shield with the
coat-of-arms of Schwambrania on it. It now adorns the wall of my study and
is a taunting and devilish reminder of our errors and our Schwambranian
imprisonment. Thus, according to legend, did Prince Oleg of yore hang his
shield upon the gates of Constantinople as a constant reminder to the
conquered Greeks.
But the globe has spun full circle. There is no Schwambrania. The
story, too, has come full circle. It is not a revelation, but simply a
visual aid.
We swore we would not. Kirikov held the lantern up to our faces, and we
solemnly pledged that we would preserve his secret to the grave.
"Listen, then, Schwambranian brothers! I am the last alchemist on
earth. I am science's Don Quixote, and this is my faithful sword-bearer. I
have discovered the elixir of universal joy. It makes the sick well and the
sorrowing happy. It turns foes into friends and strangers into bosom
companions."
"Is that your game?" Oska asked.
Kirikov snapped that his elixir was not a game, but a serious
scientific discovery. We then found out that the cave was actually a
laboratory where the elixir was made. The alchemist said that in a year's
time, when the last experiments were completed, he would publish his
findings. He would then completely renovate the house, have electricity put
in, and would give us the entire top floor for Schwambrania. In the
meantime, however, we had to keep quiet, no matter what. "I'm going to name
my elixir of universal joy in your honour, my young friends. It will be
known as the Elixir of Schwambardia.
"It's Schwamhrania. Schwambrania!" Oska shouted. "You can't even say it
right. What kind of an alphysics are you?"
"I'm an alchemist, not an alphysics!" Kirikov sounded just as cross.
We visited the alchemist several more times. By the light of day
Kirikov and his assistant Filenkin turned out to be very hospitable men.
They told us of their progress and listened to the latest Schwambranian news
with interest. The alchemist went so far as to help us govern the country.
Schwambrania flourished.
They worked at night. Their secret smoke wafted up into the yard
through a camouflaged pipe and was blown away. Sometimes we even chopped
wood for their stove. However, they never once showed us the elixir, saying
that it wasn't ready yet. One day we came to see them and found them in a
very merry mood. They were singing softly and clapping warily. A fat woman
in bright felt boots and a bright shawl was part of the party.
"See how happy she is? She just had the first drops of the elixir of
world joy," the alchemist said. "This is Agrafena, I mean Agrippina, Queen
of Schwambrania. We'll crown her, and lead her to the throne. Hooray!"
"We don't have any queen-ladies," Oska said glumly.
"He's right. We'd love to have her, but Schwambrania's a republic,
after all. If she wants to, she can be the president's wife," I explained.
"All right then. She'll be the president's wife. Agrafe ... eh- mew-eh
... Agrip-pina, would you like to be the wife of the President of
Schwambrania?"
"You bet!" said Agrippina.
A young girl who was our cousin came to stay with us. She was from
Moscow and her name was Donna Dina, or Dindonna. Her real name was just
Dina. Her black hair and flashing black eyes, which were as shiny as the
piano top, and her teeth, which were as white and even as the ivory keys,
had earned her the name of Donna.
Our aunts made sure that we understood we were to call her Cousin Dina.
However, Dina turned out to be a regular pal and when she first heard us
say, "Good morning, Cousin Dina," she burst out laughing. When she laughed
everything about her laughed: her eyes, her teeth and her hair.
"Well, then, good morning, kinsmen!" she replied. "How do you spend
your time, if I may ask?"
"In Schwambrania," Oska replied, for he felt drawn to her immediately.
"And carrying straw. And we go out for walks. Will you go out with us?"
"With pleasure. I'm sure to lose my way here alone."
Even Oska had to agree that Dina was a beauty. She wore a real sailor's
middy-blouse, given to her by a revolutionary sailor from Kronstadt. We
thought that was wonderful. We escorted her around town. We showed her the
ruins of Uger's Mansion, but did not say a word about the alchemist or his
elixir. Dina wanted to know all about Schwambrania. She was a little puzzled
by the fact that in such interesting times as these we felt a need for
make-believe. She said it was a shame and high time we got down to real
work. Our friendship blossomed during our long walks.
Young men would step aside politely to let Donna Dina pass. They nudged
each other and looked after her. We could hear them saying what a good
looker she was and beamed proudly.
Dina had only been with us for three days when, to our joy, she stepped
on our aunts' toes, that is, hems. She criticized them for bringing us up in
such an old-fashioned way, saying it was a crime to put a damper on the
social feelings that churned and boiled within us.
"She's right! You can't imagine how my feelings churn! Especially after
pumpkin mush," Oska said.
Dina hugged him and said he hadn't really understood, but no matter.
The argument continued. Our aunts said that they had long since given up, as
far as we were concerned, that we had come completely under the influence of
the street and Bolshevism which, to their minds, was one and the same thing.
They went on to say such awful things it made Dina stand up and slap her
hand loudly on the table. Her face became flushed.
"I think I forgot to mention the fact that I've joined the Party," she
said.
"Are you as good as a Communist now?" Oska inquired.
"I hope so," she replied cheerfully.
My aunts were flabbergasted. They gaped. Then their mouths shut slowly.
FEKTISTKA'S OTHER NAME
"My dear kinsmen," Dina said soon after. "Great vistas have opened up
before you. They are a challenge to your boundless energy and imagination.
But you must be social beings, dear kinsmen. It's high time you were!" She
had just been appointed Commissar Chubarkov's assistant, in charge of the
children's library and reading-room.
My aunts' definition of a children's library was: an officially
operated hotbed of infectious diseases which were to be found lurking in
profusion in the old books, as worn and torn as a ragman's clothes.
Dina's idea of a children's library was as follows: "It's not merely a
counter, kinsmen. It's not merely a place where books are handed out. A
children's library should be the main centre for educating and bringing up
children outside the school. It'll be the children's favourite clubhouse,
where each can do as he likes. We'll teach children to respect good books.
Oh, kinsmen, we'll have such a wonderful place! Your Schwambrania won't even
hold a candle to it! Everyone will want to belong to it. Just wait and see."
However, in order to become such a wonderful place, the library had to
have more space. There were some very rich people living in the adjoining
apartment. They had been asked to move some time before, and now Dina
decided to take matters into her own hands. She asked me to come along and
back her up.
This would be the beginning of my volunteer work for the library.
Dina was busy checking the catalogue and library cards when I came in.
She was surrounded by raggedy children. I recognized many of my former
neighbourhood enemies. There were also some skinny children who lived near
the railroad tracks, some stocky boys and girls from the fishermen's
settlement, and some boys who worked at the cannery and the bone-meal
factory. Some were filling in the cards, others were pasting torn pages,
while still others were on the step ladders, placing the books on the
shelves. Everyone was busy and you could see they were enjoying the job.
This was the first children's book brigade. They obviously liked Dina and
kept pestering her with questions.
"Donna Dina! Donna Dina! Who's Uncle Tom's cabin?" a little girl
wrapped in a huge shawl that was crossed on her chest and tied in back
asked.
"Donna Dinovna!" came a voice from the top of a ladder. "Is Tolstoy a
place or a someone?"
"Here's another helper, children," Dina said, pointing to me. "Put his
name down on the list, Ukhorskov."
I was very offended. I had no intention of playing second fiddle here.
I had been positive Dina had intended me to be in charge of everything.
However, I decided to say nothing for the time being.
"I know you. You're the doctor's son. Won't you get in trouble for
coming here with us?" somebody said.
"Why should I get in trouble? Everybody's equal now."
Ukhorskov, a tall boy with high cheekbones, came over to me. "Are you
going to be a doctor, too?" he said.
"No. I'm going to be a sailor of the revolution." "That's not bad. I
want to be an aviator."
Commissar Chubarkov came in just then. We hadn't seen each other for a
long time. "Oho! The younger generation's shooting up! What does your papa
write home about life in the trenches?"
Then we all trooped next door to help with the eviction. To my horror
and embarrassment the people were close relatives of Taya Opilova. She was
sitting on a trunk in the front hall when we entered. For a moment I did not
know what to say. Taya's eyes were full of contempt, indignation, reproach
and God knows what else. My one desire was to sneak off.
"I thought you were the doctor's son!" she said.
"I'd rather be a doctor's son than an exploiter's daughter!" I snapped.
"That's that!" the commissar shouted. "You've had your say and that's that."
Ukhorskov came over to me. He spoke in a whisper. "We're putting out a
newspaper. Come on over this evening. You can be the editor. You've changed
a lot. You've got a real fighting spirit now." "How come you know me?"
"You don't recognize me, do you? Remember the time I fixed your basin
and pail? I'm Fektistka. I live in the children's home now. I requisitioned
my boss' tools and I make nifty cigarette lighters. Want me to make you one
that'll look just like a pistol? And it'll be a good lighter, too?"
"I don't smoke."
"You can use it to scare thugs."
As I looked at this tall, confident boy I could hardly recognize the
tinsmith's timid apprentice. Could this be the same Fektistka whose skinny
back had first brought home to us the difference between those who made
things and those who owned them? Indeed, he had even acquired a last name!
The Commissar was waiting for me outside the library. He took my arm.
"Uh, is Comrade Dina ... uh, a relative of yours?" He was trying to sound
indifferent. "Is she your sister?"
"Yes. We're related." I was very possessive. Then I turned into the
wind so the Commissar wouldn't hear me and added, "She's my cousin."
"She's really educated." For some reason or other he sounded sad.
"She sure is! She nearly practically graduated from the University."
He sighed.
No! I was not elected editor of the children's newspaper. Horrible old
Dina told them I wasn't ready to take on such a job yet, since I liked to
daydream and wasn't sufficiently politically conscious, or some such
nonsense. I had never expected anything like that from her. And so Klavdia
was elected editor. Yes, the very same Klavdia who had always been our
prisoner when Oska and I played war in Schwambrania.
"I know what Comrade Dina means," Klavdia said slyly. "He's still
making-believe he's in a place called Schwambrania. It's a game. They used
to take me prisoner. But it's no fun to play that any more."
The kids all looked at me and smiled. Strangely, they were friendly
smiles. Never before had I been so ashamed of Schwambrania.
"I guess you've changed places now, Klavdia. You're in charge from now
on, and you've been freed for good. But Lelya 's still a prisoner of
Schwambrania. My poor kinsman." Dina smiled.
Naturally, I should have got up and walked out on those smart alecks,
but at that moment I doubted Schwambrania's right to existence more than
ever before. I felt there was nothing I could say in its defence. The game
was obviously becoming outdated. It was like an obsession, something to be
ashamed of, like a habit you want to break. Klavdia, the new editor, came
over to me and said,
"Don't be mad. Say 'fins' and come out of prison."
She was a thin and lively girl, and it was as clear as day that she had
no use for a game like Schwambrania. That was when I mentally crossed out
Item 3, the last on our list of the world's injustices, the one entitled
"Landless children". I wanted to belong to the same country she did, and so
I stayed on.
I was completely engrossed in the busy, noisy affairs of the library,
spending all my free time there. My hands and clothes were full of paint,
paste and ink. I was piled high with folders and obligations. Oska tagged
along and was soon everyone's pet. He was put in charge of the chess table.
"And chairs" he added, after he had been elected.
Ukhorskov, Klavdia and I organized a literary club. A month later the
first issue of our magazine appeared. It was called Bold Thinking. I signed
my name as the editor-in-chief. We hardly visited the alchemist any more,
for we were too busy at the library. In the evenings everyone gathered in
the reading room, and the day's newspapers were read aloud. This was really
"news", real dispatches from the front lines. Stepan Atlantis and perhaps my
father were somewheres out there, and thus were also part of these
dispatches.
We had lectures, literary debates and evening and morning social
events, at which both actors and audience were equally thrilled. The
library's fame spread throughout Pokrovsk. Every day new boys and girls
would come in from the outskirts.
We wore out our shoes and the thresholds of the various organizations
in an effort to supply the library with kerosene and firewood. Dina and her
aide, Zorka, a shy and gentle girl, made terrible scenes at the city
council, arguing over every stick of firewood. Once, when there was not
enough wood to last out the month, we all donated whatever we could. Small
frozen children brought a board, a panel of a chest or an armful of sticks,
despite the fact that there was no firewood at home. Still, they brought the
wood to the library. Once again hot flames made the stove doors rattle. In
the evening the young readers would take their eyes from their books to
listen to their wood crackling triumphantly in the stove, to see the
victorious array of bright sparks. Each would look around possessively at
the bookcases, the tables and his neighbours, for each felt himself the
master here. The merry crackling of the stove drowned out the churning of
their empty stomachs.
Chubarkov would stop by for new books practically every day. He was an
avid reader and attended all of our plays, debates and literary evenings.
His loud applause inspired us. He, however, was mostly inspired by Dina's
presence. Dina, as he put it, had a great cultural influence on him.
Irresponsible people said he was simply in love. But that didn't concern us.
In the midst of all our work we decided to set an evening aside for a
gala performance. The children invited their parents. We had a general
housecleaning in the library, got rid of the cobwebs and hung new posters on
the walls. For some reason or other, only mothers came to the party. They
were given the best seats. They fixed their combs and hid their work-weary
hands under the fronts of their shawls. Dina and Zorka offered them tea
without sugar, but there was apple butter.
A very new feeling of being a part of things and wanting to prepare a
very special welcome, to be especially hospitable to the guests, prompted
Oska and me to make a real sacrifice.
I put on my coat and was about to dash back home.
"Going for the Schwambranian sugar?" he said, guessing my intentions.
"Yes!"
Dina was really touched. I imagined what Stepan Atlantis would have
said, had he been there.
"See, Stepan, I'm donating all our sweet private property for the good
of everybody," I would say.
"Good for you! That's exactly how a sailor of the revolution should
act," he would reply.
Our hearts nearly burst from pride as we watched the mothers drinking
their tea with Schwambrania's sugar.
The performance was Act Two of Nikolai Gogol's play The Marriage.
"Just look at my boy," one of our mothers was saying. "Why, you'd think
he was a real dandy!"
"Goodness! Is that Annie? I swear it is. You'd never recognize her in
that get-up."
"There's Nina! Look at her. I never knew she could be so high and
mighty."
"Who's the skinny boy? The doctor's son? I might have guessed. He
speaks so politely."
"My Serge learned his part so good he's saying it faster'n anybody.
What a rascal! The boy in the booth there can hardly keep up to tell him
what's next."
"Where's your boy, Stepanida?"
"You can't see him. He's holding the curtain."
The play was a smashing success. The actors were smothered in the
motherly embraces of the audience. Next on the program was Oska, reciting a
piece from The Sorochinskaya Fair.
The audience sat back expectantly.
"Do you know what the Ukrainian night is like?" Oska began with great
feeling.
"No! No, we don't! Tell us!" came several voices from the audience.
"No, you do not know what it is like," he continued, obviously startled
by the response.
"Of course we don't," the mothers replied. "How could we? We never had
time for book-learning."
Afterwards the children took their mothers on a tour of inspection,
showing them their drawings, posters, magazines and the bulletin board with
newspaper clippings.
"They've got themselves a whole kingdom of their own here!" one of the
women exclaimed.
Then there were games and dancing. At first, the women stood along the
walls shyly, but Dina and Zorka pulled them into the middle of the room. I
played a lively folk dance, four-handed, counting Oska's two, and the room
began to spin like a huge top. We had had many children's parties and
birthday parties at home, but none had ever been as much fun as this.
"Thank you, Donna Dinovna," the beaming mothers said. "And you, Zorka
dear. And you, boys and girls. Our youth's gone and past, with no good times
to remember. But at least we've lived to see our children happy. Thank you."
"You should thank yourselves. You made all this possible," Dina
replied.
Saucy Klavdia dragged me off to the "Surprise Room". One corner of the
room was hidden by some very nice drapes. The sign above them read:
"Panorama. View of a Moonlit Winter's Night".
"Want a look?" she said. "Pay a forfeit."
I paid a forfeit.
Klavdia turned down the lamp. "Look!" She pulled the drapes apart.
I saw a gold frame. Within it was a beautifully made scene of a
winter's night. The moon's milky-blue beams illuminated it. The granaries of
Pokrovsk had been copied very well. The tall water-tower was set in the
middle of the deserted square. Red lights glowed in the windows of the tiny
houses.
"Doesn't it look real?"
"Yes," I breathed. "I think it's even prettier than if it was real. Who
did it?"
"Dina. And she said to be sure I showed it to you." Klavdia was
laughing. "Now look!"
Suddenly, I saw a little horse and wagon moving across the panorama. At
that instant the toy night dissolved, the perspective became deeper, the
granaries took on their usual size, and I realized that there was no
panorama. The gilt frame had been set in a large window that faced on the
square. I had been looking out at an ordinary night in the real town of
Pokrovsk. I never would have dreamed that this beautiful night scene and our
wonderful party could have taken place on our ordinary earth. A mist of
cheap tinfoil shrouded Schwambrania. The earth of Schwambrania was slipping
away from under me. At that very moment I heard mocking laughter. I looked
around. Dina was standing there, surrounded by a crowd of boys and girls.
"Well? Do you realize now that you need a gold frame to turn Pokrovsk
into Schwambrania?"
They laughed. Oska came over to me and took my hand. We stood thus,
surrounded by the laughing children. Fektistka Ukhorskov was laughing.
Klavdia was laughing. Just as Oska and I were about to join in the general
merriment at the expense of the Big Tooth Continent, the hot blood of true
Schwambranians rushed to our heads. How dared they mock us!
"Did you guess what the trick is?" Dina asked. We said nothing. "Then
I'll tell you. It's all a matter of the old saying being true: the grass is
always greener on the other side of the fence. But a well-known Communist
writer once said: the proletariat doesn't have to build castles in the air,
because it can and is building its kingdom on earth. That's why we had a
proletarian revolution. To make the grass greener on our side."
In the applause that followed I heard the echoes of disenchanted
Schwambrania's fall.
Oska and I, still holding hands, stalked out of the rollicking room.
"Where are you going?"
"Are your Schwambranian feelings hurt?"
"Never mind, they'll come back," Dina said. "Hey, kinsmen, wait a
minute! Never mind, they'll come back. They'll come back to work and not to
play at make-believe."
Revolutionary humanity, according to rumour, had another very dangerous
enemy besides Chatelains Urodenal, my aunts and the real, live Admiral
Kolchak. This was the Yo-ho-ho Gang. They came from Atkarskaya, Petrovskaya
and Saratovskaya streets. Red-headed Vaska Kandrash (Kandrashov) was the
gang leader, but Hefty Martynenko, my overgrown former classmate, provided
the real leadership.
"Yo-ho-ho! Yo-ho-ho! Nobody can scare us, ho!" was their war-cry as
they made the rounds of their domain.
The children's library did not escape attack. They came on a Sunday, a
week before Oska and I walked out. There were about fifteen of them and they
advanced in a close and wary bunch. Vaska Kandrash was in the lead. He
walked over to Donna Dina's desk and said,
"Find me a nice snappy book. I want a real interesting one. You got one
by Louis Boussenard? No? How about Nat Pinkerton? Not him neither? Some
Soviet library you got here!"
"We don't have silly books like that. But we do have books that are a
lot more interesting. I can see you boys have a real fighting spirit. The
way things are run here, every reader is in charge of the library. Would you
like to be our fighting squad and keep order in the reading room and guard
our book exhibit? There are a lot of ruffians who tear the books and mess
the place up. I know I'll be able to rely on you."
This was most unexpected. The Yo-ho-hos were taken aback. The gang
members exchanged glances.
"I'll bet you're the commander," Dina continued, addressing Kandrash.
"Yes. I am." He was flattered. "How'd you guess?" "That's common
knowledge. Well, what do you say? Can I rely on you to keep order here?"
Once again the Yo-ho-hos looked uneasy.
"Sure you can. Who tramped all that snow in?" Kandrash bellowed at the
members of his gang. "What's the matter? You so sick you can't bend over and
brush it off your boots? Look at the mess!"
The Yo-ho-hos jostled each other as they tumbled out into the hall and
wiped their feet. Then they hung their hats on the pegs.
Hefty could not forgive the gang for this betrayal. He caught up with
me one day as I was passing the library. He was furious, for he felt I was
chiefly responsible for the Yo-ho-hos changing sides. He grabbed my coat and
lifted me off the ground. The conversation was more than brief.
"You?"
"Yes!"
"Ahhh!"
When I was finally able to open my eyes again a fight was raging.
Ukhorskov and the Yo-ho-hos were closing in on Hefty. I dashed into the
fray. They accepted me as one of them.
"All of you to one?" Hefty roared.
"No! All of us for one!" the boys replied and went on socking him.
Never before had Hefty been so badly beaten. I knew why he was being
hit. He was a real and vicious enemy, no matter that he may have been a
rip-roaring fellow. He was getting what was coming to him. The line that
divided the world into two camps had become very clear to me. Hefty was on
the other side. I was here, with the boys whom I had come back to from
Schwambrania. I was let in on the fight and hit Hefty with real pleasure. I
pummelled him on my own behalf and on behalf of Stepan Atlantis. I socked
him like a runaway Schwambranian and pounded him like a sailor of the
revolution. And we did him up fine.
I was jubilant as I returned from the battlefield. My head was
spinning, a result of our victory and the hard wallop delivered by Hefty.
Oska met me in the front hall. " 'Hoo-ray, hoo-ray!' they all shouted, the
Schwambranians," I sang.
"There's great news," Oska said in a stupid voice.
The family was gathered at the table. Misfortune lay on the table, as
long as a pike.
"Papa has typhus," Mamma said in a hospital whisper. "Uralsk has been
cut off. It took the telegram nine days to reach us. Maybe he's already...."
"'Hoo-ray, hooray!' They were clouted!"
I was given some water. I got up from the floor unaided.
We had no word of Papa in the two weeks that followed. For two weeks we
did not know whether we should speak of him as someone who was alive, or as
someone who had died. For two weeks we were afraid to mention him, for we
did not know whether to use the present or the past tense.
It was during those difficult days that we learned Stepan had been
killed. Stepan Gavrya, the boy who had wanted to find the lost Atlantis, had
died a hero's death. There were various versions of what had happened.
Volodya Labanda said a Red Army man had told him that the whiteguards had
taken Stepan prisoner. As he faced a firing squad he had been told,
"Stand against the wall!"
And Stepan supposedly had said, "I'm used to that. I used to stand
against the wall every day in school."
Maybe Labanda invented all this. I really don't know. But I do know
that Stepan Gavrya, alias Atlantis, was killed. He would never see me become
a sailor of the revolution. I would not come out to welcome him in my
patched felt boots, carrying rotten straw in my swollen hands. There is
nothing more to write about him.
What a terrible loss.
The town became muffled under the snow like an ear that is stuffed with
cotton. Snowdrifts billowed along the swollen streets. The yards brimmed
over with snow like flour bins. It was cold. The grey sky drifted overhead,
catching on the chimneys, where it stuck like water weeds on piles. It was
cold. The drifts had laid siege to the town. Hospital trains snowbound out
there in the icy, and perhaps Papa....
One train had ploughed through the drifts the previous day. I hurried
to the station. The train chugged in and stopped. No one came out. It was a
train of dead men. The wounded and sick had all frozen to death on the way.
The bodies were stacked on the platform.
But Papa was not one of them.
It was cold. And dreary. I wanted so badly to go over to the library,
to do some work with the children there, to go through the books and discuss
the latest news dispatches. But I felt awkward about showing up after
Schwambrania's fall. What was Schwambrania, after all? A stuffed lion. And
the stuffing was dust. A party favour with no surprise inside it. Even Oska
had become bored with the game.
Thus overcome by boredom, we went to see the alchemist, trudging
through the snow as we made our way to the house and then down to the
basement. We came upon a disgusting scene. They had apparently all had too
much of the elixir. Filcnkin was on the floor, out like a light. Agrippina.
the wife of Schwamhrania's president, was being sick in a corner. The
alchemist was barely able to keep his balance on a stool.
"Want ... some elixir? It'll m-make you's happy as me." He offered me a
slopping glass.
I accepted it from his unsteady hand. A nauseating smell hit me in the
face. Why.... The terrible truth dawned on me: it was homebrew!
"He-he.... Yes. Natur'ly. It's homebrew. The purest kind. Eh-mew-eh....
Distilled it m'self. My ... eh ... Elixir of Schwambrania. Your
Schwambrania. too ... eh-mew-eh.... It's somewhat like homebrew.... Your own
invenshun, this. A dream of your own brewing...."
We ran out. Why were we so unlucky? Had we been the unwitting helpers
of a moonshiner? Our own invention! Our own brewing! We were so crushed we
went to bed early that night, without boat whistles or dreams. Sleep, as
chilly and loose as a snowdrift. enveloped us.
There was a loud knocking on the door in the middle of the night. Oska
slept on. I jumped out of bed. I heard my father's weak voice. He was alive!
He was led up the stairs. His steps were halting. His skin was yellow. He
looked like a corpse. A beard as huge as a dickey covered his chest. He took
off his fur hat. Mammy rushed to him, but he shouted:
"No! Don't anyone come near me! I'm full of lice ... I have to
bathe.... And eat.... Potatoes if you have any...."
His voice shook, as did his head. We started a fire in the pot-bellied
stove, fried potatoes and heated coffee. We put the holiday lamp on the
table. It was a real feast.
The water for his bath was ready. We went into the other room and from
there could hear the cake of soap knocking against his bones. Fifteen
minutes later we were called back into the room. Papa had on a clean shirt,
his face was clean, and he did not look as frightening as before. He was
speaking about the situation at the front. As long as he spoke of himself,
his voice was calm, though his unfamiliar beard seemed to be weighing down
his words. But then suddenly he became very excited and tears rolled down
his cheeks. "There were the wounded ... the dying ... lying on the floor in
the corridors.... On frozen urine ... three inches high.... I'm a doctor ...
I couldn't...."
Mamma tried to calm him. After a while he regained his composure. He
had a cup of coffee. He was home again. Papa looked at me and said, "You've
grown a mile." Then he tweaked my nose, as he always did.
"He's become unmanageable," my aunts hurried to say. "He's carried off
all the books in the house for the proletarians."
"It's about time you stopped judging things the way you used to," Papa
said irritably. "I can't understand how you can be so petty in times like
this. If you had only seen the faces of our boys when they routed those....
If you had...."
We went off to bed an hour later. At last I had handed over my duties
as the man of the house. I felt as though the invisible belt that had been
holding me in all this time had been let out, and I could suddenly breathe
easily again.
I fell headlong onto my bed and sobbed deliciously into my pillow. I
was bewailing Papa's typhus, my own state of nervous tension, the Red Army
men of the Urals Front, poor Stepan, the injustice of the homebrew incident
and much, much more. But not one of these tears would fall upon the soil of
Schwambrania. I decided to return to the library the next morning.
The armoured train burst upon the city. From the railroad station it
had been shunted onto a spur line that ran within the city limits, past all
the old granaries, and was known as the Granary Line.
Thus, the armoured train clanged along the Granary Line, thrusting its
guns impolitely and warningly into the faces of Breshka Street and the flour
dealers' warehouses. The mottled, camouflaged sides of the armoured cars
were battle-scarred. The locomotive was the most badly battered, for its
whole front section had been mangled. Clad in its dirty-green coat of mail,
it resembled a huge and angry lobster with a missing claw. After it had
towed the armoured cars to the spur line, it backed away to the railroad
station to undergo repairs.
Meanwhile, we were again busy drawing posters in the library, an
assignment given to us by the Commissar. The slogan was:
Help combat typhus!
Once again we spared neither paint no effort and adorned our pictures
of the terrible lice with a staggering number of legs and feelers. Once
again strange centipedes crawled across our frightening posters. Underneath
we strung the lines of a poem of our own that had by now become implanted in
our minds:
When all is neat and clean
No louse is ever seen.
The project was completed a few days later. We wanted to give the
posters to the Commissar, but I was told he was at a meeting in the armoured
train. I decided to take them there. The train was like a silent ironclad,
moored in a dead end.
"Where do you think you're going?" a sentry called out.
"To see Commissar Chubarkov. I have some posters for him." I did not
feel in the least bit shy.
"Let's see them." I unrolled the posters and the sentry examined them
closely. "They look fine. True to life. All right, go on in."
I entered the car softly. No one noticed me. The air was full of
cigarette smoke. The head of the Cheka was there, and the Commissar, and a
lot of other people. It was as dim and as close as a vault. The atmosphere
was tense. The heavy armour that covered the car pressed upon everyone. A
very thin man dressed in leather pants and a short sheepskin coat was
speaking.
"As the commander of the train, I want to say that the men, the guns
and the ammunition are in readiness. We're being delayed, because the
locomotive is being repaired. The railroad men are holding us up."
"Then there's nothing more to say. We'll wait till we hear from them.
Robilko's due any minute. He'll tell us how things are. The only thing I
want is some sleep. I haven't had any sleep for four nights," the Cheka
Chairman said.
"What if it's not the locomotive?" the Commissar said and puffed hard
on his cigarette, flicking the ash on the table angrily.
"Listen, friend," the commander of the armoured train said, "let's keep
this place clean. Don't drop ashes all over. See how neat everything is? We
even got an ashtray to keep it this way. The boys traded it someplace. It's
a funny-looking thing. So put your ashes in it." And he pushed something
strange over to the commissar. Chubarkov jabbed his butt at the opening.
"Their attack is scheduled for tomorrow," the Commissar said. "If your
train doesn't shield us, they'll hit our rear. It's all a matter of
repairing the engine. And what if it's not?" he repeated.
"If it isn't, I'll go over and see what it is," the Chairman said.
"I'll talk to the fellows. I can vouch for the workers. They won't let us
down. They're on our side. As for the foremen and mechanics.... Well, if
it's sabotage, they'll be in for trouble." He rose and strode along the
passage. He was a stern, determined man, so unlike what he had been when he
had laughed so heartily over our Schwambranian papers. And the Commissar was
different, too. This was not the man I knew. He spoke more simply, and did
not keep repeating "that's that". He spoke well. Here he was among his own
people, men he could rely on completely. He was doing his job, and the great
responsibility that lay upon him gripped his heart and made him clench his
teeth. This was my very first encounter with the revolution in its everyday
life. This was the very first time I was seeing it at close range and not
from the heights of Schwambrania, not by peeking out of our doorway. This
was when I realized that the job these people, whom I now saw in a new
light, were doing was a difficult and dangerous one, but the only real and
worthwhile job there was.
Then Robiiko rushed in. I knew him. He was a railroad engineer who had
helped us get rid of the principal of the Boys School in February 1917. He
now rushed into the car. Everyone jumped up.
"Well?" they all demanded.
"The railroadmen told me to give back your appeal. They said they don't
need it. They said they know what the revolution means to them by heart.
They pledged to do their proletarian duty. Which means they'll repair the
engine by tomorrow morning, even though it means working all through the
night."
The armoured train left the next day. The railroad workers' brass band
played. The Commissar made a speech. The engine clanged and then steamed out
of the station.
At that very moment a hand was thrust out of the loophole of the middle
car. It was holding the strange ashtray I had seen the evening before and
was emptying it.
The armoured train was moving. The loophole was passing me. I
recognized our seashell grotto, the grotto of the Black Queen, the former
hiding place of Schwambrania's secret. Butts and ashes were pouring out of
it. Butts and ashes.
A special meeting of all readers had been called in the library. We had
no firewood for the coming month. The city council had said there was none
to spare, and so the library would have to be closed. The commissar paced up
and down glumly. We were desperate. A sudden brainstorm hit me with such
force it practically blinded me and made me squint. Everyone looked at me
strangely.
"Comrades! Let's use Schwambrania for firewood!"
"Schwambrania's firewood is only good for heating castles in the air.
Forget it," Dina said.
"No! That's not what I meant. D'you know Uger's Mansion? It's full of
old planks and logs, and what not. That was our secret place. Oska and I
used to play there. So I know. Let's all get together and fill the woodpile.
To hell with Schwambrania. It's for a good cause."
At first there was silence. My suggestion had been like a bombshell.
Then someone clapped. A moment later everyone was shouting, jumping,
clapping. The Commissar lifted me off the floor. The ceiling seemed to be
coming down on us three times in a row as we were thrown up into the air,
making our hearts skip a beat. Oska and I were the heroes of the day.
"But you'll have to chase the two alphysics out first," Oska said when
he had been set down again.
"Which alphysics?" Dina asked.
"Alchemists," I explained.
"That's what I meant. They're getting drunk on homebrew there."
The Commissar wrote something in his notebook and left quickly without
saying a word.
Schwambrania was collapsing. Our firewood project was nearly over. A
heavily-laden sleigh was pulling away. I stood in a chain of boys and girls,
handing planks I received from the boy on my right to the boy on my left.
The planks seemed to undergo a change in my hands, for I was given pieces of
Schwambrania, but I handed over ordinary firewood for our library. We were
working well. My scratched hands and arms ached. The frost hurt my skin
through the holes in my mittens, but it was good to feel that the boy on my
left was as closely linked to me as I was to the boy on my right, while he,
in turn, was to the one of his right, and so on down the line. I was a step
in a live ladder. The make-believe land of Schwambrania was being passed
along the chain to be burned for a good cause.
A group of boys, the Commissar, Zorka, Dina and Ukhorsky were pulling
down the rickety wall of the high gallery. Suddenly, someone screamed:
"Stop! Wait!"
We all looked up. There, on the very top of the swaying gallery, we
spotted Oska. He had just got there and seemed quite unconcerned. "It's so
beautiful up here," he called down. "I can see way far off."
"Down! Get down this minute!" the Commissar croaked. "No! Wait! Don't
move! I'll get you down myself." He swung up as nimbly as a cat, climbing
through the gaping holes of the floors. The gallery creaked threateningly.
Then he appeared in the top window.
"Be careful!" we called.
By now he had climbed out onto the ledge. He was gripping the crumbling
edge of the window frame with one hand and running his other over the wall,
seeking something to hold on to. He inched along the ledge until he had
nearly reached Oska.
"Shh! Stand still. Don't move," he kept saying.
"Look, isn't it nice to look down from here?" Oska spoke calmly as he
waited for the Commissar.
"Give me your hand, and that's that!" Chubarkov growled as he stretched
his hand towards Oska. He grabbed him and pulled him in through the window.
A moment later the gallery collapsed, coming down with a great roar like an
avalanche and raising clouds of snow.
"You sure would have spoiled everything," the Commissar said as he set
Oska down.
The ruins of Schwambrania lay all about us.
"The Schwambranians perished like goggle and mangle," Oska said
unexpectedly.
"I think you mean like Gog and Magog," Donna Dina said and smiled.
I stood among the phantom bodies, among the remains of the unborn
citizens. I stood there as a general stands on a battlefield.
"Listen, comrades. I've just made up the last Schwambranian poem," I
said and recited:
I stand upon the battlefield,
Schwambrania's fate has now been sealed.
Perished all, and many more:
Jack, Pafnuti, Brenabor,
Ardelar, Urodenal,
Satanrex, the admiral.
Death-Cap-Poison-Emir, too.
That's that! They're through!
A glorious list of rare old names.
Farewell, Schwambrania, land of fame!
Down to work now, everyone,
Till the job is really done.
Tales are dust, tales are naught,
What is real is better wrought!
Life holds joy for me and you....
That's that! Adieu!
The story's over. This is the end of the book.
But wait a minute! I'll pick up the globe. It's round and true, and I
want to take my bearing. The coloured sphere spins on its base as if it were
a bubble blown out of the black stem. But it lacks the brilliant shimmering
and the readiness to burst at a moment's notice that is a part of every soap
bubble. The globe is solid, steady and ponderable.
It can be picked up like a lamp or a cup.
Oska and I were both bookworms. Our respect for the globe was
excessive. We never grabbed it by the stand, but always picked it up
carefully. It rested in our hands, nestling in the reverence bred by our
elders who spoke about "all is vanity" and "there is greatness in small
things". It looked bold, significant and even terrible, like Yorick's skull
held by Hamlet's probing fingers.
"I know how people guessed the Earth was round," Oska said after he had
become convinced that his version of the place where the Earth curved was
unscientific. "It's because the globe is ... spherical. That's why, isn't
it, Lelya?"
We would probably have grown up to increase the number of the
well-known type of human being, the person who learns the Earth is round by
looking at a school globe, who fishes in a fishbowl, who watches life go by
through his window and learns the meaning of hunger when his doctor puts him
on a diet.
Our thanks to the epoch! The way of life of callous hardened rear ends
was blasted. It was a crushing blow. And we had to learn the hard way that
the Earth was round.
As for the globe, we have long since learned its true use and purpose:
it is not a revelation, it is simply a visual aid. The sphere turns. Oceans
and continents pass in review. There is no Schwambrania. Nor can one find
Pokrovsk now. The city has been renamed Engels.
I visited the city recently. I went there to congratulate Oska on the
occasion of the birth of his daughter. When I received the telegram in
Moscow I must confess I was overcome by an attack of former Schwambranian
pride. I went as far as to prepare a grandiloquent speech (0, daughter of
the Land that Never Was! 0, daughter of a doughty Schwambranian!) I even
thought of a number of fine-sounding names for her: Schwambraena, Brenabora,
Delyara.... But then I received a letter from Oska which read, in part:
"Enough is enough! We created more than enough imaginary idiots. My daughter
is real, and I don't want to hear a word about Schwambranians or
Caldonians.'I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I've named her Natalia. All the
best to you,
Your brother Oska."
Once again I was home in Pokrovsk. We were in the very same room from
which, twelve years before, I had exited, my stride that of a man of the
house. The stand-in for our famous Black Queen was now tucked away in the
chess table. I looked for and found the scratches on the piano lid that had
been made in the Tratrchok. Six-months-old Nata stared at me in round-eyed
wonder.
I gave her a rattle with a long handle that was made to resemble a
globe.
Our grey-haired father returned from inspecting an outlying district.
Mamma had just finished conducting a lesson for a group of illiterate women.
They were learning to read and write. A warm family reunion awaited us. Oska
arrived from Saratov late that evening. He was curly-haired, hoarse and
manly-looking.
"Lelya! I barely managed to get away. I lectured to shipbuilders in the
morning and at a technical school in the afternoon. From there I went to the
district committee. I'm just back from a meeting of rivermen. I spoke on the
revolution in Spain. How do you like Nata?"
At this I made my emotional cradle speech of welcome: "0, you," I said,
"you who," I said.
"That's enough," Oska said. "That's enough of your hamadryads."
"It's about time you knew the difference between a hamadryad and a
madrigal!" I cried.
"Ah! It's that old childish habit of mine of getting words mixed up. By
the way, can you tell me the difference between a dragoman and a
mandragora?"
I then read the family this book. It was not the usual kind of
author-reads-his-book evening, for the characters of story kept interrupting
me. They would become offended over something, or feel proud. They added
things, protested about others, argued with the author and forgave him.
Meanwhile, Nata was busy chewing on the globe-rattle. The descendant of
Schwambranians rattled her small mace.
"I'll tell you what I think of the book," Oska said in a very formal
tone of voice. "It rightly presents us as insignificant and silly fools. The
author has successfully exposed the silliness of such daydreaming.
Unfortunately, however, he has not been able to avoid a petty-bourgeois
vagueness in some of the characterizations. However, while exposing the
insignificance and silliness of those Schwambranian daydreams, you've gone a
bit too far. You want to deprive the present of the right to dream. That's
wrong! I think this should be changed. Wait...." He dumped the contents of
his briefcase onto the table, and books and notepads, squirmed out of it
like fish out of a creel. Among them I saw a small book entitled "A
Communist's Companion" and recalled the deceased Jack, the Sailor's
Companion.
"Here it is," he said, opening a pad. "Here's a quotation from Lenin I
copied out:
" 'And if they say: what is it to us? After all, we don't need any
illusions or tricks to sustain our enthusiasm.... This is our great joy. But
does this mean that we ... don't need to dream? A class that is in power, a
class that is truly changing the world in a workaday way is always given to
realism, but it is also given to romanticism.'
"Here, you see, one should understand this romanticism to mean what
Lenin meant when he spoke of a dream. And this is no longer an imaginary
star that can never be reached. It's not something to console your
imagination. It's our own very real Five-Year Plan, and all the ones that'll
follow. It's our determination to move on despite all obstacles. It is that
'practical idealism' which Engels said the materialists had so much of when
the narrow materialists accused him of 'narrowness and excessive soberness
of mind'. You should have said something about that in the book," my learned
brother concluded.
"I know there's a lot that can be improved," I said humbly. "I feel it,
but don't know how to do it yet. And don't rush me. A person has to digest
all this first. I'm not happy about being Jack, the Communists' Companion. I
don't want to be just a companion. I want to be a sailor of the revolution,
and I will be one, I promise you, my brother and communist, as I would have
said to Stepan Atlantis."
Oska and I stayed up talking late into the night. Everyone had gone to
bed. Speaking in whispers made our throats itch, as did our recollections.
We lined the characters of the book up for a last review. We held a roll
call of my old class at school.
"Vyacheslav Alipchenko!" I said.
"Died of typhus," Oska replied.
"Sergei Aleferenko?" I asked.
"Party Secretary of the wharves."
"Stepan Gavrya, alias Atlantis!"
"Killed in action on the Urals Front."
"Konstantin Rudenko, alias Beetle!"
"Lecturer in analytical mechanics."
" Vladimir Labanda!"
"Shipbuilding engineer."
"Martynenko, alias Hefty!"
"Exiled for counter-revolutionary activities."
"Ivan Novik!"
"Director of a machine and tractor station."
"Kuzma Murashkin!"
"First mate on the Gromoboi."
"Arkady Portyanko!"
"Botanist and scholar."
"Grigory Fyodorov!"
"Red Army commander."
"Nikolai Shalferov!"
"Killed by counter-revolutionaries."
The next morning Father took me to the suburbs to see the new hospital.
I couldn't recognize the city. At the place where the Earth curved there was
a wonderful recreation park. Homes for workers of the meat-packing plant
were going up on the side of our destroyed Schwambranian mansion that had
once belonged to Uger. A bus passed. Students of the city's three colleges
were hurrying to their classes. Large new houses lined Breshka Street.
Airplanes roared over the city, but I didn't see anyone look up. A new
theatre, clinic and library were under construction. A magnificent sports
stadium crowned the top of the hill. I recalled the two Schwambranians'
visits to the Cheka and the Chairman's words:
"And we'll have paved streets everywhere, and big muscles, and movies
every day."
While the story was in the telling, the deed was done. The clear
windows, spotless floors and shiny instruments of the new hospital dazzled
me.
"Well? Was there anything remotely like this in Schwambrania?" Papa
said, enjoying my admiring glances.
"No. Nothing of the kind."
Papa beamed.
The day before we were to leave for Moscow Mamma went to the closet
that housed our family treasures and pulled out a large shield with the
coat-of-arms of Schwambrania on it. It now adorns the wall of my study and
is a taunting and devilish reminder of our errors and our Schwambranian
imprisonment. Thus, according to legend, did Prince Oleg of yore hang his
shield upon the gates of Constantinople as a constant reminder to the
conquered Greeks.
But the globe has spun full circle. There is no Schwambrania. The
story, too, has come full circle. It is not a revelation, but simply a
visual aid.