The Prank, page 2
And, most important, these stories are a pleasure. To draw on my own experience, when I first read Antosha Chekhonte as a young girl back in stagnation-era Leningrad, I was delighted by his humor and inventiveness. I was also struck—especially against the background of tame state-sanctioned humor—by how subversive his wit was. When my family emigrated from Brezhnev’s Soviet Union, we took the ten-volume edition of Chekhov’s works with us and it still stands on my bookshelf, somewhat the worse for wear, in its gray cover with a stylized gold seagull on the spine. I’ve known these stories for years, but in translating them I still find myself laughing. To readers of English I hope they have the effect of an early photograph of someone met in middle age: At first, the unlined young face may seem jarringly unfamiliar. But look more closely, see the smiling eyes and the familiar features: “Yes, that’s him! Of course, that’s him,” you will say. “Time has changed him but it is still the same man!”
—MARIA BLOSHTEYN
A NOTE ON THE TRANSLATION
IN MANY ways, Constance Garnett’s century-old translations continue to set the tone for Anton Chekhov in English. Garnett was a prodigious translator—single-handedly she established the canon of Russian writers in English—and her translations continue to matter, not only because of their historical importance but because whatever their flaws and faults they are still eminently readable. Nonetheless, the “capital fellows,” “by Joves,” and “old chaps” that Garnett scatters liberally throughout her Chekhov (and Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy) do a particular disservice to Chekhov, whose prose continues to sound remarkably fresh and contemporary in Russian.
As it happened, the stories in The Prank escaped the Garnett treatment—her source text excluded the stories of the early 1880s—and until quite recently they have continued to be largely ignored by translators. They present an opportunity to hear a new Chekhov and to hear Chekhov anew, as I’ve argued in my introduction, but to a translator they present a number of specific and peculiar challenges. Chekhov was a collector of unusual Russian surnames, and funny and unusual surnames are strewn throughout the stories. I’ve had to leave these names untranslated because they lose all their charm outside of the Russian linguistic context (what does it add to one’s appreciation of “St. Peter’s Day,” for instance, if one knows that Nekrichikhvostov actually means Do-not-shout-tail-ov?). Then there are the parodies of Jules Verne and Victor Hugo (writers who are no longer as widely read as they were in Chekhov’s day), which, to complicate matters, feature stilted dialogue and stumbling sentences that send up the dreadful Russian translations of Verne and Hugo that Chekhov knew. The only solution I found to this problem was to stay as close to the original text as I could and hope that the readers of my translation would trust me enough to assume that I was not failing dismally to construct a fluent English sentence.
In general, I’ve sought to translate the stories as faithfully as possible into a modern English, based on my own North American idiolect. That may sound simply obvious but it was not, as I found, by any means simple to do.
I’m grateful to Edwin Frank, my editor at New York Review Books, for his close attention to the translation throughout. I’m especially grateful to Robert Chandler, Irina Mashinski, and Boris Dralyuk, who gave me an opportunity to witness their work on The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry. The scholarship, craftsmanship, artistry, and passion that they brought to every word and line of every poem in that book inspired me, who had always thought of myself primarily as a scholar and critic, rather than translator, of Russian literature, to think again. The result is The Prank.
—M.B.
THE PRANK
ARTISTS’ WIVES
(Translated . . . from the Portuguese)
ALPHONSO Zinzaga, a free, utterly free citizen of the capital city of Lisbon, a young novelist, very famous (only to himself), showing signs of great promise (only to himself), was returning home exhausted and as hungry as the hungriest dog after a whole day of trudging the boulevards and making the rounds of editorial offices. Zinzaga resided in suite number 147 of a hotel that had figured in one of his novels as the Hotel of the Venomous Swan. He walked into suite 147, glanced around his tiny, narrow, low-ceilinged room, and sniffed in disdain. He lit a candle and, behold, a touching tableau—among heaps of paper, books, last year’s newspapers, rickety chairs, boots, robes, daggers, and nightcaps, on a small couch upholstered in blue-gray calico, slept his lovely wife, Amaranta. Filled with tenderness, Zinzaga approached her and, after taking thought, tugged her arm. She did not wake. He tugged her other arm. She sighed deeply, but she did not wake. He patted her on the shoulder, tapped her alabaster brow with his finger, gripped her foot by the shoe, yanked at her dress, sneezed so loudly that the entire hotel heard—and she never stirred.
“How she sleeps!” thought Zinzaga. “What the hell? Could she have taken poison? The disappointing reception of my last novel may have affected her deeply . . .”
Zinzaga, wide-eyed, shook the couch. Pages rustling, a book slowly slid off Amaranta’s chest and flopped onto the floor. The novelist picked up the book, opened it, and blanched. This was not some book. This was by no means just any book. This was his own latest book, published under the patronage of Count Don Barabanta-Alimonda. The novel carried the title Execution by Catherine Wheel in Saint-Muscovy of Forty-Four Polygamists with Twenty Wives Each, a novel, as you can see, taken directly from Russian life, and what could be more interesting than that! And yet, lo and behold . . .
“She fell asleep reading my novel!” Zinzaga hissed. “What a lack of respect for Count Barabanta-Alimonda! What a lack of respect for Alphonso Zinzaga, who bestowed upon her the glorious name of Zinzaga!”
“Woman!” Zinzaga barked at the top of his Portuguese lungs while banging the couch with his fist. Amaranta sighed deeply, opened her dark eyes, and smiled.
“Is that you, Alphonso?” she asked, and stretched her arms to him.
“Yes, it is I. You sleep? You sleep?” Alphonso sat down on a wobbly ramshackle chair. “And what were you doing before you fell asleep?”
“I went to ask my mother for money.”
“And then?”
“I was reading your novel.”
“And you fell asleep? Admit it! You fell asleep?”
“And I fell asleep. But why are you so angry, Alphonso?”
“I’m not angry, I’m offended by your flippant treatment of something that will surely bring me glory one day, even if it hasn’t yet! You fell asleep over my novel! That’s how this sudden sleepiness of yours appears to me!”
“There now, Alphonso! I was reading your novel with great pleasure. I was engrossed. I—I—I—I was especially struck by the scene in which the young writer Alphonso Zenzega shoots himself with a pistol—”
“That’s not in this novel. That’s from A Myriad of Lights!”
“Really? So what was the scene that transfixed me? Oh, yes! I wept when the Russian Marquis Ivan Ivanovichichichich flings himself out of his lady love’s window into the river . . . into the river . . . the Volga River.”
“Ahhh!”
“And drowns, blessing the Viscountess Ksenia Petrovna. I was transfixed!”
“If you were so transfixed, how come you fell asleep?”
“I was terribly drowsy, you know! Last night, I didn’t sleep a wink. It was so sweet of you to read your wonderful new novel to me all night long and it gave me so much pleasure I just couldn’t stop listening and I didn’t get any sleep.”
“Ahhh! That’s understandable. Get me some dinner!”
“You haven’t eaten yet?”
“No.”
“But when you left this morning you said you’d be dining with the editor of the Lisbon Provincial Gazette.”
“Yes—because I assumed the damned Gazette would be publishing my poem!”
“Don’t tell me that they’re not going to?”
“They’re not going to.”
“What a disaster! Since I became your wife, I’ve hated editors with all my heart! Are you hungry?”
“I am hungry.”
“My poor Alphonso! Do you have any money?”
“What kind of a question is that? Isn’t there something to eat?”
“No, dearest! Mother gave me food but she didn’t give me money.”
“Hah . . . ” Zinzaga muttered. The chair groaned. Zinzaga stood and began to pace. Having paced and deliberated, he felt the strongest urge to convince himself at all costs that hunger was really nothing other than lack of willpower, that man was created to battle nature, that man does not live by bread alone, that to be an artist was to go hungry, etcetera, and he would probably have succeeded, if he hadn’t recalled that right next door, in suite number 148 of the Venomous Swan, resided an Italian genre artist by the name of Butronza. This talented man, with some good connections, possessed the entirely practical and important skill—which Zinzaga had failed to master—of dining every day.
“To him I will go!” Zinzaga determined and went to call on his neighbor.
On entering suite 148, Zinzaga witnessed a scene that delighted him as a novelist and made his heart sink as a hungry man. All hopes of dining in the company of Francesco Butronza were dashed when, among frames, stretchers, armless mannequins, easels, and chairs covered with faded costumes of all types and eras, our novelist finally spotted his friend.
Butronza, wearing a hat à la Van Dyck* and dressed in the habit of Peter the Hermit,† was standing on a stool, waving his maulstick, and bellowing furiously. His appearance was beyond terrifying. One foot was on a stool, the other on a table. His face blazed, his eyes gleamed, his goatee trembled, his hair stood on end, as if ready to fling his hat in the air.
Carolina, hot-blooded Francesco Butronza’s German wife, was huddled in the corner beside a statue of an armless, noseless Apollo with a huge angular gash in his torso. Pale and trembling she gazed at the table lamp in terror.
“Barbarians!” thundered Butronza. “You do not love art, you stifle it, the devil take you! How could I have married you, you frigid-blooded German! To think, fool that I am, that I bound myself, a man as free as the wind, an eagle, an antelope—in short, an artist—to this lump of ice full of prejudices and trifles . . . Diablo! You are ice! You are a gristly roast . . . You—you are a fool! Weep, you miserable overcooked German sausage! Your husband is an artist, not a lousy shopkeeper! Weep, beer bottle! Is that you, Zinzaga? Don’t leave! Wait! I’m glad that you dropped by . . . Behold this woman!” Butronza waved his left foot toward Carolina, who began to cry.
“There now!” began Zinzaga. “Why are you quarreling, Don Butronza? What did Donna Butronza ever do to you? Why are you making her weep? Think of your great motherland, Don Butronza, your motherland, a country where the worship of beauty is so closely intertwined with the worship of woman! Think of that!”
“I am outraged!” roared Francesco. “Put yourself in my place! As you well know, I have begun a magnificent painting at the personal request of Count Barabanta-Alimonda. He has asked me to depict a story from the Old Testament, Susanna and the Elders. Ever since this morning, I’ve been begging this fat German to undress and model for me. I’ve been crawling on my knees before her, I’m beside myself, and she still won’t do it! Put yourself in my shoes! How can I paint without a model?”
“I can’t!” wailed Carolina. “It’s indecent!”
“You see? You see? You call that an excuse, damn it?”
“I just can’t. Honestly, I can’t! He orders me to undress. He tells me to stand by the window—”
“Exactly! I will depict Susanna by moonlight! Moonbeams falling upon her breast, the Pharisees’ torches shining upon her back . . . The interplay of color! I can’t do it any other way!”
“For the sake of art, donna,” said Zinzaga, “you must forsake not only modesty; you must forsake all your feelings!”
“But I can’t, Don Zinzaga! Not this. I can’t stand by the window and expose myself!”
“Expose yourself. Really, Donna Butronza, one might suppose that you’re afraid of the eyes of the crowd, which, if you think about it, you could say . . . From the perspective of both art and reason, donna, it is clear that . . .” And here Zinzaga said something that even a very clever person would be unable to catch or paraphrase. Something perfectly proper but utterly unintelligible.
Flailing her arms, Carolina began to run around the room, as if she were afraid that they would undress her by force.
“I clean his brushes, his palettes, his rags. I dirty my dresses on his paintings. I give lessons in order to feed him. I sew costumes for him, I put up with the smell of hemp oil, I model for him for days on end, I do everything, but . . . naked? Naked? No!”
“I’ll divorce you, you red-haired Harpyess!” shouted Butronza.
“But where am I to go?” gasped Carolina. “After you’ve given me money to go back to Berlin, you can divorce me.”
“Fine! I’ll finish Susanna and I’ll pack you off to that Prussia of yours, the land of cockroaches, rotten sausage, and roundworm!” shouted Butronza, accidentally jabbing his elbow into Zinzaga’s chest. “You cannot be my wife if you can’t sacrifice yourself for art! Diablo!”
Weeping and clutching her head, Carolina sank into a chair.
“What have you done?” roared Butronza. “You’re sitting on my palette!”
Carolina jumped up. There where she had been sitting was the palette, covered with freshly mixed paints. (Oh, ye gods! What a subject for a great Portuguese painting!) Zinzaga darted out of suite 148, overjoyed that he was not an artist and grieving with all his heart that he was a novelist who still hadn’t eaten dinner.
Zinzaga was about to walk back into suite 147 when he was intercepted by the resident of suite 113, the pale, anxious, trembling wife of Peter Petruchenzo-Petrurio, actor-to-be of the royal theaters.
“What’s the matter?” Zinzaga asked.
“Oh, Don Zinzaga! Such a misfortune! What am I to do? My Peter is hurt!”
“Hurt how?”
“He was practicing taking a fall when he hit his temple against a chest.”
“The poor wretch!”
“He’s dying! What am I to do?”
“Get him to a doctor, donna!”
“He won’t go! He doesn’t believe in medicine and, well, he owes money to all the doctors.”
“Go to a pharmacy, then, and buy a lead compress. That helps with bruises.”
“How much is that going to cost?”
“It’s cheap, very cheap, donna.”
“Thank you. You’ve always been a good friend to dear Peter! We still have a bit of the money left that he received after he performed for Count Barabanta-Alimonda. I don’t know whether it’s enough, though. Could you . . . could you lend us a bit of money for that tin compress?”
“Lead compress, donna.”
“We’ll pay you back soon.”
“I can’t, donna. I spent the last of my money on three reams of paper.”
“Goodbye, then!”
“ !” said Zinzaga and bowed.
The wife of the actor-to-be of the royal theaters had turned away from Zinzaga to be immediately replaced by the resident of suite 101, the wife of the singer, cellist, and flutist Ferdinand Lay, the Portuguese Offenbach-to-be.
“What can I do for you?” Zinzaga inquired.
The wife of the singer and musician was wringing her hands. “Don Zinzaga,” she said, “would you be so kind, would you be
so good, can you get my miserable husband to pipe down? You’re his friend. Maybe you can make him stop. He’s been shamelessly roaring at the top of his lungs from first thing this morning. I can’t get a moment of peace because of his singing. Our child can’t sleep. That big baritone of his has got my nerves completely on edge! For heaven’s sake, Don Zinzaga! I’m embarrassed to look my neighbors in the eyes . . . Their children can’t get any sleep either. Can you believe it? Please, come with me! Maybe you can get him to stop.”
“At your service, donna!” Zinzaga replied, and offering his arm to the wife of the singer-musician, they set off together for suite number 101. There, between the bed, which took up half the room, and the cradle, which took up another quarter of the room, stood a music stand. On the music stand lay some yellowed sheet music. The Portuguese Offenbach-to-be was reading from the sheet music and singing. It was difficult to understand at first what he was singing. It was hard to say how he felt about it. But the sweat on his red face and the earsplitting uproar he made suggested that it was in a rage, a fury, an agony that he sang. He sang and he suffered. He beat time with his right foot and he beat time with his fists, raising them high in the air and knocking the sheet music off the stand. He stretched out his neck, squinted, screwed his mouth up, thumped his gut . . . A little person lay in the cradle, accompanying his frenzied father with yelps, squeals, and squeaks of his own.
“Don Lay, isn’t it time to take a rest?” Zinzaga inquired, walking in.
Lay did not hear him.
“Don Lay, isn’t it time to take a rest?” Zinzaga repeated.
“Get him out of here!” sang Lay and pointed to the cradle with his chin.
“What are you rehearsing?” asked Zinzaga, trying to outshout Lay. “What are you re-hears-ing?”
Lay choked and fell silent. He stared at Zinzaga.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“I? I—well, isn’t it time for you to take a rest?”
