What I want to write about is very hard to express verbally. I am so tempted to sit down at a piano, plunge my hands onto the keys, and pour it all out into a whimsical sequence of sounds -- ominous, anxious, plaintive, softly groaning and tumultuously cursing.
But, alas, mute and powerless are my stiff fingers; and the cold, distant piano will long remain silent; and the magnificent entrance into the colorful world of sounds is closed to me forever.
So I am forced to write my elegies and nocturnes in the usual way -- not on five lines but on one, quickly drawing out paragraph after paragraph, page after page. Many are the rich possibilities, the splendid achievements that language can offer -- but not when one's soul is repulsed by sober, realistic prose, when it wants sound, when it demands stormy, frantic movements of an insane hand on the keyboard.
Here is my symphony -- weak and pale, when put in words...
When the dull, greyish-pink twilight descends onto the city of St. Petersburg, as if, exhausted by hunger, it were wearily closing its once-sparkling eyes; when its formerly civilized inhabitants crawl back into their gloomy lairs to wait out yet another of the one thousand and one hungry nights; when everything grows quiet except the commissars' automobiles that cheerfully whizz about, piercing, like sharp awls, the dark, blind thoroughfares -- then several drab, silent figures assemble in an apartment on Liteinyi Avenue, and, after exchanging trembling handshakes, sit down around an empty table, illuminated only by the vile, thievish light of a tallow candle-end.
For a while, they say nothing; they are out of breath from making several gigantic efforts in a row: they had to walk up the stairs to the second floor, shake each other's hands, and move their chairs closer to the table -- this is such unbearable work!
Cold air is blowing in through a broken window... But nobody is capable of blocking off the hole with a pillow -- the preceding physical labor has exhausted their bodies for at least an hour.
They can only sit around the table and the guttering candle, and speak in a quiet, quiet murmur...
A few looks are exchanged.
"Shall we start? Whose turn is it today?"
"Mine."
"Not at all. Yours was the day before yesterday. You talked about macaroni with minced beef."
"That was Ilya Petrovich who talked about macaroni. My report was on veal cutlets with cauliflower. On Friday."
"Then it is your turn. Please begin. Attention, gentlemen!"
The gray figure bent over the table even more, making the huge black shadow on the wall quiver and shake. A tongue ran rapidly over parched lips, and a quiet, hoarse voice broke the deathly silence of the room.
"Five years ago -- I remember it as if it were yesterday -- I ordered fried navaga and a Hamburg-style steak, at Albert's. There were four pieces of navaga -- large pieces, fried in bread crumbs and butter, gentlemen! You understand, real butter, gentlemen. Butter! On one side lay a large clump of fried parsley; on the other, half a lemon. You know, a nice bright yellow lemon which is lighter on the side where it's been cut... You could just take it in your hand and squeeze it over the fish. But I did it like this: I would take the fork and a piece of bread (they served both dark and white bread, I swear) and deftly separate the thick sides of the navaga from the bone..."
"Navaga has only one bone, in the middle, shaped like a triangle," interjected a neighbor, panting.
"Shhh! Don't interrupt. Well?"
"After cutting up the navaga -- and, you know, the skin was nicely toasted, very brittle, and completely covered with the bread crumbs -- I would pour myself a shot of vodka, and only then squirt some lemon juice onto a piece of fish... I would put a little bit of parsley on top -- just for the aroma, exclusively for the aroma -- drink the vodka, and immediately swallow some fish -- yum! And there was a French bun, you know, the really plump, soft kind, -- so I ate it too, along with the fish. And the fourth piece of fish -- I didn't even finish it, heh heh!"
"You didn't finish it ?!"
"Don't look at me like that, gentlemen. The Hamburg-style steak still lay ahead, don't forget. Do you know what that means, 'Hamburg-style'?"
"Is that with an omelet on top?"
"Exactly! It's made with only one egg; just for flavor. The steak was soft and juicy, yet resilient, slightly more well-done on one side, slightly rawer on the other. You remember what roasted meat smelled like, don't you? And there was lots and lots of gravy, really thick, too, and I loved taking a slice of white bread, dipping it into the gravy and, together with a tender piece of meat -- down the hatch!"
"Were there no fried potatoes?" moaned someone at the far end of the table, grabbing his head with both hands.
"That's the whole point -- there were! But, of course, we haven't gotten to that yet. There were also some horse-radish spears, and some capers; and on the other side, almost half the dish was filled with diced fried potatoes. Damned if I know why they soak up that beef gravy so well. So the pieces were each drenched in gravy on one end, and on the other, they were quite dry and even crunchy. I would cut myself some meat, dip some bread into the gravy, grab all of this with my fork, along with a bit of omelet, potatoes, and a pickle slice..."
The neighbor emitted a muffled roar, sprang to his feet, grabbed the speaker by the collar and, shaking him with his feeble hands, cried out:
"Beer! How could you not have washed this steak down with some strong, foamy beer?"
The speaker, in ecstasy, jumped up as well.
"Of course! A large, heavy mug of beer, with white foam on top, so thick that it stayed on your moustache. I would swallow some steak and potatoes, and then dive into the mug..."
Someone in the corner started softly sobbing:
"You shouldn't have had beer... Not beer, but red wine, slightly warmed! They had such a great Burgundy for 3.50 a bottle... You'd pour some into a glass and look at it against the light -- it would sparkle like a ruby, a real ruby..."
A fist, fiercely striking the table, rudely interrupted the flow of excited whispering.
"Gentlemen! What have we become? Shame on us! How low have we fallen! You! Are you men? You are a bunch of lustful Old Man Karamazovs! All night long, you salivate over what a handful of thieves and murderers has taken away from you! You have been deprived of something that every man has the right to -- the right to eat, the right to stuff his stomach with food according to his simple tastes -- why do you tolerate this? You get a half-rotten herring tail and an ounce of bread that tastes like dirt, every day -- and there are many of you, hundreds of thousands! So go, all of you, go out into the street in hungry, desperate mobs, crawl like a million locusts that can stop a train by their sheer multitude, go and attack this gang that has created hunger and death, tear out their throats, trample them into the ground, and you will have bread, meat, and potatoes!"
"Yes! Fried in butter! Full of aroma! Hurray! Let's go! Let's trample them! Let's tear out their throats! We are many! Ha ha ha! I will catch Trotsky, push him to the ground, and poke his eye out with my finger! I will walk on his face! I will cut off his ear with my pen-knife and stuff it into his mouth -- let him eat that!"
"So let's run, gentlemen. All out into the street, all who are hungry!"
So they ran... They ran for a very long time, and covered a very long distance; the strongest and fastest reached the front door, others fell earlier -- some on the threshold of the living room, some by the table in the kitchen.
Their numb, unbending legs had covered tens of miles... They lay, exhausted, their eyes half-closed, some in the hallway, some in the dining room -- they had done all they could, they had really tried.
But the titanic effort sapped their strength, and they all collapsed, like a fire dragged apart log by log.
The speaker crawled over to his neighbor, who was lying on the floor next to him, and whispered:
"But you know, if Trotsky gave me a piece of roasted pork with gruel -- just a tiny piece -- I wouldn't cut his ear off, I wouldn't trample him! I would forgive him..."
"No," the neighbor whispered back, "Not pork. How about some chicken, so tender that the white meat easily peels away from the bone... And some cooked rice with a slightly tangy sauce..."
The rest, hearing this, lifted their eager heads, one by one, and gradually crawled together into a pile, like snakes at the sound of a reed flute...
They avidly listened.
The one thousand and first hungry night was ending. The one thousand and first hungry morning hobbled along to take its place.