(From) Goat’s Song (1927)

By Konstantin Vaginov

A PROLOGUE,  proclaimed by the materializing author

To me, Petersburg had for some time been painted over with a greenish hue, flashing and flickering, a horrid hue, phosphorescent. And over the houses, over the faces, over the souls now shivers a greenish flare, weasely and cackling. The flare would flicker just once - and standing before you is no longer Peter Petrovich, but a sticky louse; the flare would flame up - and now you yourself are worse than a louse; and it’s no longer human beings that walk the streets; you glance under a hat - the head of a snake; you peer more closely at an old woman - and there sits a toad, gyrating its belly. While among the young people, each one has a unique dream: the engineer unremittingly desires to hear Hawaiian music, the university student seeks more effective ways to have a good time, the schoolboy wants to procure a child of his own, to serve as living proof of the boy’s masculine power. You stop by a store - a former general stands behind the counter and performatively grins; you enter a museum - the tour guide knows that what they’re saying is false, while continuing to lie. No, I don’t love Petersburg. Which means that my own dream is dead.

(Proclaimed by the materializing author:) Another PROLOGUE

And now there is no longer a Petersburg. There is only Leningrad; but Leningrad has nothing to do with us. This author, by their very trade, is a professional casket-maker, not some master of lullaby crafts. If you were to show him a casket - he would tap on it and know right away what materials it’s made from, how long ago, by which master, and would even reminisce about the corpse’s parents. Just as now, for instance, the author is readying a nice little casket for the twenty seven years of his own life. So, he’s been terribly busy. But don’t start thinking that he’s crafting this casket for some extraordinary purpose. He simply has a passion for it. And let’s say, he were to stretch out his nose a bit: Smells like a corpse! Must mean someone needs a casket. And he really does love all these corpses. He follows them around even while they’re still alive; shakes their hands, talks their ears off. But all-the-while covertly prepares wooden boards, buys up nails, and never misses an occasion to stock up on laced fabrics.

 (From) Chapter I:

 Teptelkin

In the city, year after year starry nights would alternate with white nights. In the city lived a strange creature - Teptelkin. He could often be observed with a teapot, walking to the communal dining room for some hot water. He would walk surrounded by nymphs and satyrs. Marvelous groves would waft sublime fragrances to him out in the most decrepit of places. And finical statues, a heritage of the eighteenth century, appeared to him like glowing suns forged from pentelic marble. And only very occasionally would Teptelkin, opening those enormous lucid eyes of his, find himself in a desert.

…

He would rise, shutting the yellow kimono found at a junk market, add more cold black tea into his cup, stir it with a thick wooden spoon, pull from the bookshelf a tome of de Parny, and begin cross-comparing him with Pushkin.

The window would fly open, the silvery evening casting goosebumps, and it may seem to Teptelkin that the tall tall tower and the whole city are asleep; while he, Teptelkin, alone is wakeful. “The tower - that’s culture”, he mused “ - and up at the very peak of culture - stand I”. …

****

…

“Where are you always rushing off to, young ladies?”, asked Teptelkin, smiling. “Why don’t you ever visit our gatherings? See, later today I’ll be giving a talk about a remarkable poet, and on Wednesday, next week, I’ll read a lecture about the American civilization. Don’t you know, there are real marvels going on in America; noises are being abducted by ceilings, everyone chews aromatic rubber, and at factories and manufactories before morning shifts a pipe-organ prays for everyone. So, drop by, definitely drop by.

Teptelkin performed a solid bow and kissed the slender hands being extended towards him. Then the young ladies, drumming with their heels, vanished into a byway.

Whether Teptelkin was strolling through the garden above the river, or was playing vint at a green table, or reading a book - always next to him stood Philostratus. Philostratus’s whole being brimmed with ineffable music, resplendent teenage eyes laughed beneath the wings of his lashes, long fingers, adorned with rings, clasped a tablet and a stylus. Philostratus would often be walking and having a sort of discussion with Teptelkin.

“Look”, he would say, it seemed to Teptelkin, “pay attention to how the Phoenix dies and resurges.”

And Teptelkin would perceive that strangest of birds with its feminine Asiatic eyes and full of frenzy, standing in the middle of a bonfire and smiling.

A certain dream would visit Teptelkin from time to time: in it, he is descending the stairs of his tall tower; below, in the center of a pond stands the illustrious Venus; long blades of sedge grass whisper gossips to each other; the rising dawn gradually gilds over each grass-blade, and then covers Venus's head. Sparrows are chirping and chirping and hopping back and forth over narrow trails. And now he sees: there’s Maria Petrovna Dalmatova, sitting on a bench and reading Callimachus. Then she lifts from the book her eyes, peering full of love.

And she says, “We live in the midst of horror and desolation.”

****

 (From) Chapter II:

The Unknown Poet’s Childhood & Adolescence

…

1916 - On that same Western-style street the unknown poet went through his adolescence. Every single thing in this city seemed Western to him - the houses, and the churches, and the gardens, and even the poor girl Lida appeared to him like an English “Anna” or a French “Mignonne”.

Thin, with violet eyes and a small blond tuft on her head, she roamed between cafe tables to the sound of whatever music was fashionable at that time. Timidly, she would sit herself next to regulars. Some of them would treat her to coffee, brewed together with cream, others to foam-topped hot chocolate and two biscuits, others yet - to mere tea with lemon. Men in tailcoats and with napkins tucked into their armpits, passing by, would call out to her with a familiar “you” and then, bending in, would whisper into her ear the most vulgar of things.

In this cafe, young people of the masculine gender would retreat to the men’s room for reasons altogether different from why such places are normally attended. There, after they quickly glance around; something would be procured and poured over a hand. After inhaling it, they would spend some time violently shaking their heads. Following this, having grown a tiny bit more pale, they would return into the sitting hall. And at that moment the hall would become utterly transformed. To the unknown poet, it would metamorphose into a very near image of Lake Avernum, surrounded by steep shores overgrown with dense forests. And it was here that the shadow of Apollonius once revealed itself to him.

…

****

1917 - The unknown poet was sixteen and Lida was eighteen when they first met. At that time she still appeared at the cafe only once in a while. Sometimes she’d say that she is a prep school girl, then reminisce of riding in a speeding horse-cart, of a most silent night, of houses fleeting past, of flickering trees and the interior of a restaurant, of officers, of how the raised glasses would chime, and of how she cried on the sofa, wiping away her tears with the corner of a black apron. Sometimes she’d talk of how she was once in love with a university student, a silky-suit blue-blood type, and of how he graciously surrendered her to his buddies.

And sometimes she would say that the one who dishonored her was a married man, a face respected throughout the city, with a long gray beard, and which liked to cruise in the evenings around the Summer Garden.

The unknown poet tore himself away from reading, then from rearranging the books on his shelves, then from studying rare coins. It was now past two in the morning. After traversing a black staircase next to tightly lowered curtains, he descended to a deserted courtyard, blindingly illuminated by an enormous hanging lamplight. A perplexed janitor released him through the gates and watched as the young man sprinted off in the general direction of Nevsky Prospeks under tiny slanting raindrops. On the steps of an entrance hall, leaning back on the door, sat Lida. Around her, arranged into a spread, lay the satin playing cards gifted by him the night before. She had dosed off, her mouth half-gaped. The unknown poet sat beside her, peered at her girlish face, at the melting snow all around them, at the clock above his head, then produced from his pocket what was sparkling, what was white, turned towards the wall, and a unique sort of noise, resembling a drawn-out “o”, turning into an “ah”, flew through the streets, as it appeared to him. He observed the houses quickly narrow until, as towering shadows, they speared the clouds. He lowers his eyes. Enormous red digits of a lamplight are flashing over the panel. Two - like a snake; seven - like a palm tree.

The sprawled-out cards pull at his eyes. Figures come alive and engage in fleeting correspondences with him. He is a thing twining with cards, like an actor with stage-curtains; he quickly awakens Lida and, by some bizarre stroke of irony, begins to play a card game of Fool with her; five-pointed fans of cards shiver in their hands, until it grows dark in the eyes, until the wind disturbs, and then they turn towards the wall; and the rain transforms into softly fluttering melting snow. And the canopy protects them.

But the cards now appear to him as emptiness, as horror. Soon the city will start waking up.

- To the tea room, to the tea room, quickly! - says Lida, - This accursed night froze me down to the bone! And you really couldn’t have come sooner, driven me out to a hotel! I’d be sleeping, off like a corpse! Don’t you know, I’ve been outside on the street for three nights now! Is there any chance you might have some money? Maybe we could still find an open room.

- What are you saying, Lida! At five in the morning every hotel is overfilled. No one would let us in!

- Then let’s go quickly, quickly to the tea room. I’m plagued by anguish. Oh my god, quickly now, quickly to the tea room!

He gazed over her absolutely white face, her dilated pupils; for how many internal years had he been sitting there now, and what is the meaning of that lamplight, and what exactly is the snow trying to signify through itself, and what, furthermore, is signified by his own self appearing there on the Prospekt?

Flowers of love, flowers of frenzy…

Lida suddenly began to sing, stepping away from the entrance-hall. Some rascally-looking passerby tossed them an irony-filled glance. The unknown poet and Lida ventured forth through a veil of prickly snow. The cards lay forgotten over the staired platform.

****

(From) Chapter VIII:

The Unknown Poet & Teptelkin at Night by the Window

- You are committing grandiose treachery… - the unknown poet once told me.

- You are destroying my life’s work. My whole life through, I labored to depict tragedy through my verse; to show that we carried within us a light; you, on the other hand, are seeking out every possible way to darken our memory in posterity’s eyes. -

I glanced over, looking directly at him. The unknown poet went on, regularly flashing his eyes at me.

- If you really think that we’ve perished, then you are fatally mistaken. We are are a special, periodically recurrent condition, and it is not possible for us to perish. We are inevitable. - He sat down on a bench. I placed myself next to him. He looked at me. - You are a professional literary worker. There is nothing in the world that’s worse than a professional literary worker. - He got up and reseated himself slightly away from me on the same bench.

- You’re insane, - I muttered. He turned his head.

- Sometimes the cognitions of contemporaries are liable to misalign with each other. But that doesn’t give you a right to call me insane. -

I was immediately filled with shame. Yes, maybe he truly is not insane. For a while we sat in silence.

He began intently listening in to the rustling of leafs.

Some Komsomol (*Communist Youth Group) types strolled past us with their girlfriends.

“No, no, he’s insane after all!”

- I have this way of growing absent, and very often - said the unknown poet, as if guessing my thought, - but in reality, it’s nothing stranger than mere absorption in nature. -

He got up and shook my hand.

- I’m sincerely very sorry that you are being forced to live in the same world you write about. -

He was being approached by Teptelkin.

They greeted each other with staid formality, like two exceptionally well-mannered persons, and with none of our shoulder-slapping familiarities. Then they strolled off together down one of the alleys.

I began walking towards a mosque and, while passing next to it, hopped into a trolley car.

“No, you are insane, insane after all”, - I thought.

After entering my house, I fussed around, sharpening a pencil.

- No, - I said, - it’s imperative to figure out what they’re up to. And with no delay. They must be getting themselves into some lousy and incorrigible business again.

I curled my whiskers while stepping out. Then, depositing the key in my pocket, I double-checked that the pencil and some paper were still in there. The night was white. (*Summer nights in Saint Petersburg can get dusky, but seldom (if ever) dark. - Translator’s Note)

…

By the time I approached Teptelkin's residence it was after one in the morning. The janitor allowed me through. I made my way through a half-demolished annex and situated myself right outside of Teptelkin’s window. The two of them were sitting at a table, illuminated by the burning of a kerosene lamp. They were reading from something and heatedly debating. Occasionally, the unknown poet would rise and start pacing around the room. “What is that they’re reading? What exactly are they talking about? - I thought. - Probably just giggling at modernity.”

- I think, - the unknown poet stood up - that our epoch is a heroic one. -

- Without a single doubt, a heroic epoch, - confirmed Teptelkin.

- I think that the world is living through an enormous shock, analogous to that associated with the early Christian centuries. -

- Yes. I’ve become convinced of that myself. - Teptelkin replied.

- What a grandiose spectacle is opening up before us! - remarked the unknown poet. -

- Such an interesting moment for us to be alive in! - Teptelkin exuberantly whispered.

- But now it’s time for me to get going, - the unknown poet walked away from the window. - I will be borrowing your Dante. -

- Of course. - Teptelkin replied. The unknown poet approached the book, shut it, and after placing it into his pocket, began saying his goodbyes to Teptelkin. Then, after lingering a few minutes following the poet's departure, I left my post as well.

And as I seeded myself home that night over the utterly deserted streets, I couldn't stop thinking about how I too once considered the unknown poet to be Petersburg’s very own Pythian oracle.

…

****