Smoke (Alma Classics) Read online

  “Who was this self-taught genius?” asked Litvinov.

  “There’s a gentleman running around who imagines himself to be a musician of genius. ‘I,’ he says, ‘am nothing, a zero, because I didn’t study, but I’ve got a great deal more melodies and more ideas than Meyerbeer.’* ‘Firstly,’ says I, ‘why didn’t you study? And secondly, the most obscure German flautist, modestly piping his part in the most obscure German orchestra, has twenty times more ideas than all our self-taught geniuses, only the flautist keeps these ideas to himself and doesn’t push himself forward with them in the homeland of the Mozarts and Haydns.’ But our self-taught genius strums a waltz or a romance and just look: he’s got his hands in his pockets and his mouth in a contemptuous sneer. ‘I’m a genius,’ he says. It’s the same with painting and everything else. Oh, these self-taught geniuses! Who doesn’t know that they can strut their stuff only in those places where there is neither real flesh-and-blood knowledge nor real art? Surely it’s time to consign to the archives such strutting, such low-level junk, together with the well-known phrases about how, back home in Mother Russia, no one dies of hunger, how our roads are the fastest and how we can beat everyone into a cocked hat. They give me all that stuff about the giftedness of the Russian character, its instinctual genius and Kulibin.* But what does this giftedness amount to, I ask you, gentlemen? Semi-conscious mumbling or else semi-bestial cunning. Instinct! What a proud boast! Take an ant from its anthill in the forest and move it a mile away and it’ll find its way home; human beings can’t do anything like that. So, are human beings lower than ants? Instinct, even in a colossal genius, is unworthy of human beings. Reason, simple, common sense, robust reason – that’s our direct heritage and pride. Reason does not indulge in such tricks, that’s why everything depends on it. And as for Kulibin, who, with no knowledge of mechanics, devised some sort of surpassingly ugly clock, I would have ordered this same clock to be put in the pillory. ‘Look, kind people,’ I would have said, ‘how not to do it.’ Kulibin himself is not to blame, but what he did is rubbish. To praise Telushkin,* who climbed the Admiralty spire, for his daring and agility, is possible. Why not praise him? But we must not brag that he put one over German architects or ask what use they are, except at taking money. He didn’t put anything over them; they would have put scaffolding round the spire and mended it in the normal manner. For God’s sake, don’t encourage the idea in Russia that we can achieve anything without training! No, even if you’re a real brainbox, study, study from first principles! Otherwise, keep quiet and sit still, Phew! It’s got hot!”

  Potugin took off his hat and fanned himself with his handkerchief.

  “Russian art,” he began again, “Russian painting. Russian obstructiveness I do know, and Russian helplessness, but I’m sorry, I haven’t encountered Russian art. For twenty years on end we’ve revered this overblown trivia and Bryullov* and imagined that we’ve established a school and that it will be purer than all other schools. Russian art, ha-ha-ha! Ho-ho!”

  “But nevertheless, begging your pardon, Sozont Ivanovich,” Litvinov observed, “maybe you don’t acknowledge Glinka.”*

  Potugin scratched behind his ear.

  “Exceptions, you know, merely confirm the rule, but even in this case we could not refrain from boasting. If you were to say, for example, that Glinka was a really remarkable musician whom circumstances, both external and internal, prevented from becoming the founder of Russian opera, there would be no argument. But no, that’s not good enough. He must immediately be promoted to full general and made Master of the Royal Music. Other nations will be cut down to size; they’ve got nothing like this, it will be said, while some colossal self-taught genius, whose work is nothing but a pitiful imitation of second-rate foreign practitioners, is immediately pointed out. Genuinely second-rate. They are easier to imitate. Nothing like it? Oh, you dismal dolts, for whom there is no artistic tradition and for whom artists are something like Rapp.* A foreigner can lift two hundred pounds with one hand, but a Russian can lift twice as much. Nothing like it?! I make so bold as to tell you, I can’t get the following memory out of my head. This spring I visited the Crystal Palace near London;* in this building, as you know, there is something of an exhibition of everything which human inventiveness has achieved – an encyclopedia of humanity, so to speak. Well, sir, I wandered about, wandered past all these machines and installations, past statues of the great and the good. At the time I thought: if an edict were to be issued that, together with the disappearance of one nation from the face of the earth, everything that nation had invented should immediately disappear from the Crystal Palace, then our Russia, our native, Orthodox Mother Russia could go to blazes and not disturb a single nail or a single pin. Everything would remain in place perfectly peacefully, because even the samovar, bast shoes, the shaft-bow troika harness* and the knout – all celebrated products of ours – were not actually invented by us. You can’t even do a similar experiment with the Sandwich Islands; the local inhabitants have invented boats and spears of some sort. Visitors would notice their absence. ‘That’s slander! That’s too harsh,’ you will probably say. To which I will say: firstly, I cannot reprimand with soft words, and secondly, clearly it’s not only the Devil that people can’t look in the eye, but themselves; it’s not only children who like to be lulled. Our old inventions came creeping in from the East; as for new ones, we’ve gone halves with the West to import them and we still go on talking about independent Russian skills. Some bright sparks have even discovered Russian science; with us, so they say, twice two is also four, but it comes out bolder somehow.”

  “But wait a minute, Sozont Ivanovich,” Litvinov exclaimed. “Wait a minute. Surely we send some things to international exhibitions and Europe supplies itself with some things from us.”

  “Yes, with raw materials, raw products. And mark you, my dear sir, for the most part our raw materials are good only because they are subject to other ghastly conditions. Our bristles, for example, are large and tough only because our pigs are bad, our hides strong and thick because our cows are thin. Our lard is rich because it’s boiled down together with the meat. However, why am I holding forth to you about this? After all, you concern yourself with technology and must know all this much better than I. People say to me: inventiveness! Russian inventiveness! Take our dear landowners. They complain bitterly and suffer losses because there is no satisfactory grain-drying machine which would spare them the need of putting the sheaves in drying barns, as in the time of Ryurik.* These barns are terribly unprofitable, like bast shoes and bast matting, and they constantly burn down. The landowners complain, but there is still a complete absence of grain-drying machines. And why are there none? Because the Germans don’t need them. Maybe they thresh the corn damp and don’t worry about inventing grain-drying machines, but we are in no state to invent anything at all. In no state – enough said! From this day forth I promise that, as soon as I come across a self-taught genius or autodidact, I’ll say to them: ‘Where is the grain-drying machine? Hand it over!’ But what hope is there for them? We are in a fit state to pick up an old patched-up shoe which long ago fell off the foot of Saint-Simon or Fourier* and, reverentially putting it on our head, to bear it like a holy relic; or to dash off a little article on the historical and contemporary significance of the proletariat in the main towns of France – we’re able to do that too. I tried to suggest to one such writer and political economist, like your Mr Voroshilov, that he should name me twenty towns in France. Do you know what happened as a result? What happened was that, in desperation, the political economist, out of all the towns in France, finally named Montfermeil, probably remembering the novel by Paul de Kock.* Then I remembered the following anecdote: once, when I was making my way through the forest with a gun and a dog—”

  “Are you a hunter?” asked Litvinov.

  “I do a bit of shooting. I was making my way into a marsh in search of snipe. Other hunters had told me about t
his marsh. I look and see, sitting in a clearing in front of a little hut, a merchant’s steward, as fresh and sturdy as a peeled nut. He was sitting and smiling to himself – what at, I don’t know. I asked him: ‘Where is the marsh and are there any snipe there?’ ‘Indeed, indeed,’ he intoned rapidly, with an expression which suggested I had given him a rouble. ‘I’m pleased to say the marsh is top class, and as for game birds, all sorts of them, good Heavens – they’re there in abundance.’ I set off, but not only did I not find any game birds, but the marsh itself had long since dried up. Tell me please, for pity’s sake, why do Russians tell fibs? Why did the political economist tell untruths? Why the untruth about the game birds?”

  Litvinov did not answer and merely sighed sympathetically.

  “But if you start a conversation with the same political economist,” Potugin continued, “about the most difficult social-science problems, but only in general terms, without facts, just watch him go! He’ll soar like a bird, like an eagle. However, once I did succeed in catching such a bird. As you will see, I used a good, visible decoy. I was talking with one of our present-day ‘young things’ about, as they put it, various questions. Well, sir, he got very angry, as is the custom; among other things he rejected marriage with genuinely childish ferocity. I put all sorts of arguments to him, but I might as well have been talking to the wall! I saw it was impossible to tackle him from any side. Then a happy thought struck me. ‘Allow me to inform you,’ I began. You must always speak politely to ‘young things’. ‘You study the natural sciences yet you’ve never paid attention to the fact that all carnivorous and predatory animals, both birds and beasts, all those which have to hunt for prey, which have to work hard to obtain live food for themselves and their children… but do you number humans among suchlike animals?’ ‘Of course I do,’ returned the ‘young thing’. ‘Human beings are nothing more than carnivorous animals.’ ‘And predatory ones,’ I added. ‘And predatory,’ he agreed. ‘Then I’m surprised you haven’t noticed that such animals practise monogamy.’ The ‘young thing’ shuddered. ‘How so?’ ‘Like this: remember the lion, the wolf, the vixen, the hawk, the cow. Just consider: how could they act otherwise? Even a pair can only just feed their children.’ My ‘young thing’ pondered this. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘in that case the animal is no model for the human.’ Then I called him an idealist, and how despondent he became! He almost wept. I ought to have calmed him down and promised that I wouldn’t give him away to his friends. It’s no easy matter, earning the title of ‘idealist’! That’s the point. Today’s young people have miscalculated. They imagined that the time of dark, subterranean work had passed, that it was all right, they say, for our fathers and forefathers to dig like moles, while for us this role is humiliating. We will operate in the open air; we will operate… My dear fellows! Not even your children will operate; would it not be as well to go back into the burrow, in the footsteps of your forefathers?”

  A brief silence fell.

  “I, sir, am of the opinion,” Potugin began again, “that we are indebted to civilization not only for knowledge, art and justice, that even the very sense of beauty and poetry develops and strengthens under the influence of that same civilization, and that so-called popular, naive, unconscious creativity is crude junk. In Homer himself can be observed traces of a rich and refined civilization; love itself is ennobled by it. The Slavophiles would willingly have hanged me for such heresy, if they hadn’t been such soft-hearted creatures; all the same, I insist on my rights, and however much they regale me with Madame Kokhanovskaya and The Swarm at Rest,* I will not sniff this triple extrait du moujik russe,* for I do not belong to high society, which meets from time to time to convince itself that it hasn’t become completely Frenchified and for which this literature en cuir de Russie* is really created. Try to read to an ordinary peasant – a real ordinary peasant – the most lacerating, the most ‘popular’ extracts from the Swarm and he will think you are telling him a new spell to cure fever or drunkenness. I repeat – without civilization there is no poetry either. Do you want to form a notion of the poetic ideal of the uncivilized Russian? Look up our medieval epics and legends. I make no mention of the fact that in them love constantly appears as a consequence of sorcery, of a love philtre, is caused by drinking a sleeping draught and is also called witchcraft and enchantment. Nor do I mention the fact that our so-called epic literature, alone among all other European and ancient literatures, alone mark you, has no representation – if you exclude ‘Vanka-Tanka’* – of a typical pair of lovers; that the knight of Holy Russia always begins his acquaintance with his betrothed by mercilessly belabouring her white body, because ‘the female sex is plump’. I will make no mention of any of that, but will allow myself to turn your attention to the exquisite image of a youth, the jeune premier,* as depicted in the imagination of the original, uncivilized Slav. Just look: here comes the jeune premier. He has made himself a sable coat, stitched along every seam, a sash of sevenfold silk runs under his armpits, mittens cover his fingers, the collar of his fur coat is higher than his head. From the front you can’t see his rubicund face, from behind you can’t see his white neck. His hat sits over one ear and on his feet are boots of morocco leather, with painted toes and high heels; around the toes you could roll an egg and under the heels a sparrow could flutter to and fro. The youth walks along with the quick, light gait of our own Alcibiades, Churilo Plenkovich,* which produced an astounding, almost medicinal effect on old women and young maidens. The same gait is used inimitably by our loose-limbed waiters, that cream, that flower of Russian dandyism, that nec plus ultra of Russian taste. I tell you seriously, baggy bravado is our artistic ideal. Well, is the image a good one? Is there much material there for painters and sculptors? What about the beauty ‘with the face as red as hare’s blood, who captivates the youth’? But it seems you are not listening to me.”

  Litvinov started. He genuinely had not heard; he was persistently thinking of Irina and his last meeting with her.

  “Forgive me, Sozont Ivanovich,” he began, “but I’m again addressing my former question to you… concerning Madame Ratmirova.”

  Potugin folded his newspaper and stuffed it into his pocket.

  “You’d like to know again how I got to know her?”

  “No, not that. I’d like to hear your opinion about the role she played in Petersburg. What was that role in essence?”

  “I don’t honestly know what to say to you, Grigory Mikhailovich. I became very close to Madame Ratmirova, but quite by chance and not for long. I did not get an insight into her world and what was happening there remained unknown to me. People gossiped in my presence, but, as you know, with us slander reigns not only in democratic circles. Besides, I wasn’t even inquisitive. However, I can see,” he added after a short pause, “that she is of interest to you.”

  “Yes, we’ve chatted quite frankly a couple of times. All the same, I ask myself: is she sincere?”

  Potugin lowered his gaze.

  “When she gets carried away, she is sincere, like all passionate women. Pride also sometimes stops her lying.”

  “But is she proud? I rather supposed she was capricious.”

  “Fiendishly proud. But that doesn’t matter.”

  “It seems to me she sometimes exaggerates.”

  “That doesn’t matter either. But from whom did you expect the truth? The best of these young ladies are corrupt through and through.”

  “But remember, Sozont Ivanovich, you yourself called her your friend. Didn’t you almost drag me to her by force?”

  “What? She asked me to fetch you to her and I thought: ‘Why not?’ And I really am her friend. She’s not without her good qualities. She’s very kind, that is to say, generous; that is, she gives to others what she has absolutely no need of herself. However, surely you know her better than I do.”

  “I knew Irina Pavlovna ten years ago, but since then…”

  “
Oh, Grigory Mikhailovich, what are you saying? Does human nature change? ‘In cot and burial plot the same.’ Or perhaps…” Here Potugin bent over even lower. “Perhaps you are afraid of falling into her hands. It’s a fact – there’s no avoiding falling into someone’s hands.”

  Litvinov gave a forced laugh.

  “You think so?”

  “There’s no avoiding it. Men are weak, women are strong, Fate is omnipotent. It’s difficult to reconcile oneself to a colourless life; it’s impossible to forget oneself completely. There lies beauty and affection; there lies warmth and light. How can one resist? And you’ll run there like a child to its nanny. Then, of course, inevitably come cold, darkness and emptiness. And it ends with your losing the taste for everything and ceasing to understand anything. First, you won’t understand how it’s possible to love, then you won’t understand how it’s possible to live.”

  Litvinov looked at Potugin, and it seemed to him that he had never met a more lonely, desolate, hapless individual. Potugin did not shrink or submit on this occasion; pale and utterly downtrodden, with his head in his chest and his hands on his knees, he sat motionless and merely smiled a despondent, wry smile. Litvinov felt sorry for this wretched, melancholic eccentric.

  “Incidentally, Irina Pavlovna mentioned to me,” he began in an undertone, “a good friend of hers called, as I recall, Belskaya or Dolskaya…”

  Potugin cast a sad-eyed glance at Litvinov.