SPRING 2020 A PETITE LITERARY JOURNAL VOLUME 5 ISSUE 1

in Comparative Literature was based on the Overcoat”, “Nevsky Prospect”) have often been In The Footsetps Of Russian novel, A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail the inspiration for my own fantastic fictions. Lermontov and a chapter from my novel, The Pushkin & Gogol Posthumous Memoirs of Blase Kubash, was totally It is also not surprising that I would invite influenced by Nabokov’s Pale Fire. Russian and Ukrainian writers to participate in By Mark Axelrod the 23rd Annual Fowles Literary series. Along That said, it is not surprising I would with some excerpts of “classic” Russian fiction, ver since I was an undergraduate at Indiana incorporate Pushkin and Gogol into a new the works of these contemporary writers are EUniversity, I have been enamored of Russian novel/memoir I’m writing titled, Ukrainian examples of some of the finest writing being writers, especially the work of Chekhov, Odyssey, based partly on the life of my mother written in Russia and Ukraine, which the Pushkin, Nabokov, Turgenev and Gogol, the who was born in Kiev, but also as a kind of excerpts from their work would attest. I hope latter with whom I share a birthday as well as a homage to Pushkin and Gogol, whose rather you enjoy them as much as I and hope you can Ukrainian heritage. My Master’s Degree thesis fantastic fictions (e.g. “The Nose”, “Viy”, “The attend their readings.

1 John Fowles Center for Creative Writing, Chapman University Contents

Introduction FICTION BIOGRAPHIES Mark Axelrod...... 1 Oksana Zabuzhko...... 03 About the Writers...... 18 In The Footsetps Of Pushkin & Gogol Your Ad Could Go Here Mikhail Shishkin...... 04 More than Joyce Andrey Kurkov...... 10 Grey Bees Yuri Andrukhovych...... 12 LVIV, Always ZSÓFIA BÁN...... 14 Gustave and Maxime in Egypt Nikolai Gogol...... 16 Memoirs of a Madman

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge those who have helped make the publication of MANTISSA possible: President Daniele Struppa, Dean Jennifer Keene, Dr. Joanna Levin, and Dr. Eric Chimenti.

This Issue was created by Chapman University’s Ideation Lab. Special thanks to Alice Premeau.

Look for Volume 6, Issue 1 in the Spring of 2021

2 Mantissa Journal Volume V Issue I FICTION

Your Ad Could Everything in that glove shop was out to Siberia in cattle cars, and some, but rejected other garments singular, not one pair resembled their absence from the universe in without any apparent logic, but Go Here another, each more fantastic which I grew up was still evident— irrevocably and at once. In the than the next, but these—these as visible as silhouettes cut out of fall of 2004 they suddenly fell in By Oksana Zabuzhko caught my eye the second I walked group pictures, with the names love with a flamboyant fiery scarf through the door, like the glance written underneath. It warms my which I then wore throughout the Translated By Halyna Hryn of a dear fellow creature in a heart every time I see what became entire Orange Revolution—never crowd. And they were exactly my of them in other, less chaotic lands. mind that the scarf did not come They were the most splendid size: I told the gentle old man in To spend fifty years sculpting such from a fashion designer and cost leather gloves I had seen in my life: a knitted vest who sat behind the gloves, from tanning and cutting a third of what the gloves had. finished to the gossamer weight counter I wore a size six, but he to the finishing stitches around They were perfect together, and of a rose petal, with a dazzling, just shook his head. No, he said the eyelet holes that would adorn press photographers all to the man luminous bay hue that instantly in his slightly raspy Viennese imaginary hands—does this wanted my picture in that orange brought to mind the Imperial English, you’re not a six but a not mean becoming the Lord of scarf and my sunshine gloves—no, horses and their silky croups five-and-a-half, here, try these. Gloves, the one and only, not just no, don’t take them off, just leave at the Hofreitschule, delicately But I always buy sixes! You’ll be in Vienna, but in the whole wide everything as is! laced with a finely cut design at telling me, Miss, he laughed, I’ve world? the wrist (all of it handmade, my been making these gloves for fifty Here one rather expects a goodness!), they immediately years. Oh, you make these? And certain development of the plot: wrapped my hand in the firm sell them? So you are the owner? Julio Cortázar, for instance, or loving grasp of a second skin, and Yes, he confirmed, with the quiet even Peter Haigh would have one was compelled henceforth to pride of a master craftsman who definitely written a story (and stroke the hand thusly gloved with knows his worth. The tiny store Taras Prokhasko would have the same reverence as an Imperial on Mariahilferstrasse which I told one in a pub, being too lazy steed. One wanted to stroke and entered on a whim (with a purely I named them my sunshine to write it!) in which the gloves admire the hand, spreading one’s touristy “I wonder what’s here?”), gloves—they glowed. I could see quietly move on from approving fingers against the light, making transformed into a fairy-tale forest their aura in the paper bag into garments to approving—or a fist and letting it go—Ah!—and hut—the one to which the fleeing which the Lord of Gloves packed disapproving—people and begin never take such beauty off. In a heroine stumbles at nightfall and them for me—with his name to rule the heroine’s life, guiding word, walking away from those where she meets the Master of imprinted, and the address— her to the authentic and away gloves was beyond my power. the underground kingdom who Mariahilferstrasse, 35—and the from the fake, sweeping out from chops his own wood, carries his telephone numbers (land lines— her life’s wardrobe false friends, They existed—as befits any work own water, and makes his own everything about him was so unnecessary obligations, and of art—as a singular artifact. supper. I dearly wished I spoke old-worldly, solid, with a distant ultimately her own masques, better German—and the old man, nineteenth-century breeze of stripping her down like a cabbage, better English—we could hardly faith in an ordered world, a world to her bare core, and then we might talk about anything important in which things are made to last discover that there is no core, that with our tourist-minimum forever because the makers know the heroine herself does not pass vocabularies. I adore such dapper that things outlast people and will the test of the magical gloves, so gentlemen in vests—in my own one day serve for our descendants in the end she has to perish in a country they were exterminated as the only tangible proof of our dramatic fashion, to disappear, be as a species fifty years ago, shipped existence). Even through the paper disposed of, and the gloves, fine as bag, I could feel the silky softness a rose petal, will remain gloving in of the rose-petal leather. I kept their silky-chestnut splendor on a touching it and smiling. I had been desk, waiting for their new owner. entrusted with a treasure, in the Something along those lines. fairy-tale forest hut—a talisman from a different age. Who today What actually happened was would labor over such gloves— different. What happens is always every pair unique, every pair a different from what we read about single copy—to sell them for those later. In May of 2005 I did what same fifty euros they charge for I had never, in my recollection, the thick chunks of mitts in the which begins more-or-less at the mall across the street? age of three, done: I lost a glove.

Later I got myself a special designer Maybe I lost it getting out of a cab. sweater to go with the gloves. A At least, it was not anywhere on special jacket. A special pair of fine the sidewalk—I retraced my steps suede pants. I had the persistent along the entire length of my route, feeling that my sunshine gloves where I could have, theoretically, stood out no matter what I wore, dropped it, looking hungrily into no matter how carefully I selected every single trash can. All in vain: it, and they most certainly did: the glove was gone. Evaporated. they demanded different lines— Vanished. Rose up to the sky and designed by someone in love with flew away. Took off and flew into their model. With the gloves, I the wide blue sky. Burned to a could tell the mood with which crisp like the Frog Princess’s skin. another item of clothing was My sunshine glove from my left conceived and made: they accepted hand. The hand was left naked.

3 John Fowles Center for Creative Writing, Chapman University FICTION

One step into a side street off Lucia fell in love with the young the busy shopping thoroughfare, More than Joyce Irish writer to whom he had push the right door—and I will dictated Finnegans Wake, but be again in that cozy, draping By Mikhail Shishkin Samuel Beckett had explained to silence, green-colored, as if tinged her that his only interest in her with the virgin forest outside the Translated from the Russian was that she was the daughter windows but in fact because of by Marian Schwartz. of a genius. Then there was her the green lining the display case, engagement to Alex Ponizovski, an filled with the gorgeous, one-of- Saint-Gérand-le-Puy is buried in émigré who had given her father a-kind pairs of gloves in liver-bay, snow. No one can recall a winter Russian lessons. He proposed and black, buckskin and roan. Perhaps like this in Auvergne. The radio she agreed, but on condition that the Lord of Gloves will offer me reports that the Seine has frozen Beckett be their witness. When it tea and we will have a chance to over in Paris. In the ports, ships came time to go to the celebratory converse a bit, about important are ice-bound. There have been dinner, Lucia took to her bed, things—such as pursuing his craft heavy snowfalls throughout the where she lay in a stupor for for fifty years, despite the rising country. several days. She never did marry. flood of Mariahilferstrasse outside his windows. I memorized several Every morning he goes to the Her deep depressions were And I don’t think I wept like that particularly difficult phrases village barber for a shave— punctuated by angry hysterics and since the age of three. I mean, of in German, in case he couldn’t with his own razor, out of bursts of feverish activity. Nora course, I’d cried countless times, understand my English. fastidiousness. Then he wanders caught it more than anyone. The and had abundant occasions and the snowy village and outskirts. day he turned fifty, she threw a much weightier reasons to do The prospect truly made me He stops in at a church to get chair at her mother in a fit of rage. so in my more-or-less coherently nervous. warm, but even there steam comes His celebration ended with Lucia remembered forty years since I from his mouth. The clock in the being taken away to a psychiatric was three—but weeping like this, tower strikes every quarter-hour, hospital. The cake with fifty truly, never. I wept like the child stealing the time left to him. For candles was left untouched. who discovers for the first time the first time in his life he is not the injustice of the world which writing anything. He’s written it He arranged for his daughter to she had begun to believe to be all. stay in the best clinics in France, orderly and safe. Adults call it a England, and Switzerland. Doctors life crisis—and instead of weeping, He returns to the Hôtel de la Paix. subjected her to every possible they usually climb into a noose or The village restaurant on the method of treatment. They sat call a therapist. Or look for other ground floor. He drinks glass after her in cold baths, subjected her ways to glue together the shattered glass of Pernod to forget himself to electroshock, and injected self, because the older you get, the as quickly as he can. He doesn’t her with sedatives and sea water. more you see that really life can see the people at the neighboring Various hospitals made the same be put back together somehow, tables, but he hears their voices. diagnosis: schizophrenia. He made bearable, although it will All conversations about the didn’t believe it. He thought that never be the way it was before, but strange war. Drôle de guerre. All his daughter, like he himself, was that’s ok, it’s going to be alright, around are living with a sense of a creative individual, and a creator really, things have a way of fixing impending disaster. His disaster cannot be like other people. themselves, as long as you’re ok. has already begun. Every day is a That, specifically, is what everyone day of fear. Fear for his children, During periods of calm they took at home told me: Stop being a his book, his future. Fear that he her home. He tried to save her child, you have the other glove, has cancer; he suffers constant and leave a loophole, explaining you have the address, you have a stomach pains. that she was a misunderstood book coming out in Austria, you’re artist—wholly like him. He going to Vienna anyway—stop Lucia is in a psychiatric clinic in got her assignments to do book by the store and just ask them to Brittany’s La Baule. Giorgio should designs, for which he himself paid. make you a new one! You could be somewhere in Paris, but there’s But the periods of calm did not last even send them the right one by been no news from him. long. One time, Lucia begged him mail, my husband said, call them, to take her to London. At the Gare make the order, and have the left Might the reason for what has du Nord she refused to board the one ready for pick up when you’re happened to his daughter lie in train and became hysterical, so there. There was no way I was their vagabond life? Lucia was they had to unload the suitcases. doing that, though, no mailing— constantly having to change When Ulysses finally came out for me, that was somehow out of schools, friends, and languages: in America and people called to the question. To pass the surviving Trieste, Zurich, Trieste again, congratulate him, she cut the glove into unknown hands, to Paris. Or did it all begin when telephone cord. In front of visitors entrust its fate to a faceless the teenager became aware of her Lucia would fling herself at her tracking system felt like a betrayal unattractive strabismus? She’d mother and hit her in the face. She to me, as if I would be confirming wanted to dance and studied for would run away from home and go I deserved to have been abandoned years with famous choreographers, missing for days, until the police by the lost glove, as the folk-song working many hours a day, but brought her home, dirty, thinner, goes, “you knew not how to honor she left the stage almost as soon as insane. She was taken off in a us…” No, I had to do it in person, she stepped foot on it. She studied straitjacket for the last time in I had to face the Lord of Gloves in drawing but never became an March 1935. She spent the rest of his forest hut at Mariahilferstrasse. artist. Or did it all begin when her life in a clinic.

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The periods of lucidity became other again. painkillers and sleeping pills and lot about Joyce, and visited him increasingly brief. She sent dozens drinking—and nothing is helping. in Paris. In one letter, Eisenstein of telegrams from the hospital, In a fit of madness, Helen rushed wrote, “My interest in him and his including to people already dead. about Paris with two blue Persian He’s afraid of dogs. Once in his Ulysses is anything but Platonic. He would send her books, which kittens, buying up the most childhood a dog attacked him, What Joyce is doing in literature she threw out the window. Lucia expensive things in boutiques on frightening him for good. He is very close to what we are doing, would attack and punch her sitters credit, leaving debts of hundreds of wanders through fields with or rather, what we intend to do and set fire to rugs and furniture. thousands of francs, and throwing pockets filled with stones. in the new cinematography! Nora stopped visiting her, and he herself on strange men until the I’m in despair that I don’t have alone went to see his daughter. At police arrested her and took her He hurls stones at the barking void. enough time. I have a boxcar the sight of her mother, she would to an insane asylum. She told the full of thoughts about Joyce and become hysterical. He still didn’t policemen that the Joyces were the cinema of the future.” For want to believe that his daughter German spies. Eisenstein, literature ended at was incurable. All he could do Joyce: “After Joyce, the next leap was assure her that she would Giorgio left his child with his is cinema.” Instead of writing a get better soon and they would parents and disappeared with his film version of Ulysses, he started be together again. Then the war new lover, Peggy Guggenheim. filmingBezhin Meadow—the story began. of the hero-Pioneer Pavlik Morozov In November, Stephen was sent to a who denounced his own kulak Giorgio had wanted to be a singer, boarding school in Saint-Gérand-le- father—to mark the anniversary and everyone had admired his bass Puy, not far from Vichy and a little of the Great October Revolution. voice, but his career hadn’t panned farther from wartime Paris. The In his book, as in life, everything out. He married a woman ten years boy didn’t understand what was happens simultaneously. The first Russian literary critic his senior who was divorced and happening, why his mama was in capable of truly appreciating had a son. Helen Kastor was a rich the hospital, or why his father had In life at this time in an adjoining Joyce was an émigré, Professor American. When they met, Giorgio gone missing. room on another planet a Dmitry Svyatopolk-Mirsky. In was twenty; she was thirty-one. prisoner’s mother is saved by his 1928, he wrote an article about She was spoiled, extravagant, and He and Nora promised their book. Anna Akhmatova spends Joyce in order to “draw the capricious. She needed a lapdog grandson they would visit him her days standing in endless Russian reader’s attention to the husband and took him along even at Christmas. They took only prison lines in hopes of learning fact that there is right now in when she got her legs waxed. They clothing—and left home for just a something about her son’s fate, Europe a writer whose equal it has had a son, Stephen, whom they few days. They would never return but in the evenings she reads. perhaps not given birth to since christened in secret from his to Paris. Stephen asked them not In October 1940 she will tell a Shakespeare’s day.” In 1932, he grandfather. Family relations with to leave him alone. They decided friend: “Last winter I read Ulysses.” returned to the Soviet Union and his bride were tense. to stay in the village so that they began writing about Joyce “as the could bring the child home on From the diary of Lydia most vivid literary representative When it came to Giorgio, Helen Sundays. Chukovskaya: of the parasitic bourgeoisie of the was jealous of all women younger era of capitalism’s decay.” than she and was constantly The winter is passing and they are “Yesterday evening, Anna making scenes. Giorgio started still living in the Auvergne village, Andreyevna came to see me. In the autumn of 1934, in Moscow, drinking. A marriage like that not knowing what to do. At one Wearing a black silk dress and the first (and last) Stalinist could not last long. time he had written in Ulysses: a white necklace, elegant. But congress of Soviet writers was “We can’t change the country. Let sad and quite distracted.” One held. It approved the doctrine Helen showed evidence of a us change the subject.” If a world of the guests admitted he didn’t of “Socialist realism,” which nervous tic, and it came to light full of wars, hatred, and fear understand Joyce. “A stunning came down to the idea that only that there was mental illness in cannot be changed, we can take a book. A great book,” said those prepared to extol their own her family and she, too, began child’s hand and go for a walk. He Anna Andreyevna. “You don’t barrack, barbed wire, and prison treatment. While she was in a tells him about the adventures of understand it because you don’t warden were permitted to write. clinic, either her child stayed at Odysseus, the siege of Troy, the have time. But I had a lot of time. I Nearly every speaker talked about boarding schools or else Giorgio Sirens, the Cyclops. read for five hours a day and read Joyce and called upon people to passed Stephen on to his parents, it through six times. At first I, too, study him in order to “know who doted on him. Nora adored Spring in Auvergne. Everything is had the feeling I didn’t understand their enemy.” In “James Joyce or looking after her grandson, and blossoming, flowering, swelling it, but later everything gradually Socialist Realism,” Karl Radek his grandfather told him stories with color. He sees nothing. came through. You know, like asserted: “The interest in Joyce composed especially for him. Toward the end of his life, he when a photograph is developed.” unconsciously expresses the himself had turned into a Cyclops. desire to get away from the great This unhappy marriage ended in One eye, and that one eye nearly Few people in the Soviet Union affairs of our country, to flee the ruin. Right before the war they blind. could read Joyce in the original. stormy sea of revolution for the parted and Helen hid their son Among those few was Sergei stagnant waters of the small lake from her husband. Giorgio took a With every passing day of the Eisenstein, who became fascinated and swamps where frogs live… A taxi to see her in September 1939, world war, Finnegans Wake, his by the writer back in the late pile of manure in which worms tore seven-year-old Stephen from life’s principal labor, becomes 1920s. “Ulysses is captivating… wiggle filmed by a film camera his wife’s arms, and spirited him more and more irrelevant. Oh well, In literature’s linguistic kitchen, through a microscope. That is away. At that time, his parents he’s not the first writer to spend Joyce is doing exactly what I rave Joyce.” Soviet writers branded were in La Baule with Lucia, so himself on writing irrelevant about regarding my laboratory Joyce their number one enemy. He they had to leave immediately books, and he won’t be the last. investigations into film-language.” became a symbol of what slaves to join their son in Paris. They With each passing day his stomach For many years, Ulysses was the hate: freedom. promised Lucia they’d be back pains grow more intense, he director’s bedside reading. He soon, but they never saw each can’t eat or sleep, and he’s taking dreamed of filming it, wrote a Karl Radek was arrested in 1936.

5 John Fowles Center for Creative Writing, Chapman University FICTION

Translations of excerpts from In the novel, it is simply a shell: a wake. In the spoken title, more his vision betrayed him, the Ulysses were published in two paraphrase of a famous joke: “An all the words’ meanings start clearer the book’s essence came literary magazines, Zvezda in Irishman receiving a challenge to coming to life, fluttering, stirring. through. His dying eyes gave his Leningrad and Internatsional’naia fight a duel, declined. On being Dreaming is inseparable from sounds sight. He had absolute literatura in Moscow. asked the reason, ‘Och,’ said waking, the end is by no means the pitch—both musical and for words. Pat, ‘would you have me leave his end but merely a repetition of the He saw words’ living souls, not Dmitry Mirsky, who wrote an mother an orphan?’” end, and death lives on a par with their dead bodies. introduction to the publication, resurrection. was arrested in 1937. He perished In Russia, a poet is more than a In this book, the words do not in a camp outside Magadan. poet and Joyce is more than Joyce. To one guest who told him that his behave at all as they should. One text was a mixture of music and bleeds through another, like on Translator Valentin Stenich was prose, the writer replied, “It is the pages of a book left open in the arrested in 1937 and executed in pure music.” He recorded several rain. The words flee grammar as 1938. One autumn day in 1938, he sections on a record he always if it were a prison. The words hold placed the final period to played for visitors. Ideally, it a wild orgy, get stuck together, Also arrested in 1937 was Finnegans Wake, went outside, would have been only a sound text, copulate, latch onto one another, translator Igor Romanovich, and sat on a bench for a few hours but it was technically impossible suck out the old meanings and along with his wife Elena. She perfectly still. These were the last to record hundreds of records. inseminate new ones. The words later recalled: “He was arrested lines he wrote in his life. Audio books didn’t exist yet. The multiply via gemmation and because of Joyce, you see. We’d paper version was an inevitable division, one sprouting in another. gone cross-country skiing. That “The keys to. Given! A way a lone compromise. It is a tone painting Each word conceals the germs day Igor had received his fee, and a last a loved a long the riverrun, for which an appropriate system of of new meanings. Each word of knowing what a sweet tooth I have, past Eve and Adam’s…” annotation had not been invented. Finnegans Wake is pregnant. he’d bought lots of oranges and a Samuel Beckett: “You complain pile of delicious chocolate candies. The end that is the beginning. that this wasn’t written in English. In a thousand pages there is not Invigorated by the snow and by Everything passes, but not It wasn’t written at all. It’s not a single all-purpose sentence, our joy at the evening we had to before everything begins. An meant to be read… It is for looking such as jump from novel to novel look forward to together, we were Ouroboros—a line, as long as the and listening.” as from bed to bed. Everything preparing for a luxurious tea when novel, that bites its own tail. familiar, hackneyed, and decrepit we heard a knock at the door. It For twenty years he lived in fear is turned inside out and shredded. was the janitor, who asked Igor to No, that’s wrong. The Ouroboros of going completely blind and not From the outside, the author seems stop by the building office for a few doesn’t bite its own tail, it finishing his Work in Progress. But to be killing language, mangling minutes to sign something. I never disgorges itself, births itself if not for his blindness, this book familiar phrases, dismembering saw him again.” through its mouth, as the mouth would not have been. Eisenstein words and tossing them in the does the word, thereby changing recalled Joyce seeing him to the meat grinder, out of which come For the epigraph to “Requiem,” the course of the universe. And door: “In saying goodbye to me, rebuses and puns. Or spells, which Anna Akhmatova had all human culture gets turned this tall, slightly round-shouldered incantations. To the uninitiated, hoped to print in The Flight of Time, around: Finnegans Wake gives man nearly without a frontal his shamanist incantations seem her first collection after Stalin’s birth to the Torah. image—so sharply distinct was like gobbledygook, but intelligible death, she took a sentence from his profile of ruddy skin and fiery to God. Ulysses: “You cannot leave your The book’s very title, like an hair with its streak of gray—for mother an orphan.” How many embryo, holds the essence of the some reason is strangely waving Joyce isn’t killing language. You times had she repeated those lines, universe. All meanings live in his arms around and fumbling can’t kill what’s already dead. He talking in the night to her son, sounded words; writing forces through the air. Surprised, I ask isn’t destroying language but who was lost somewhere in the us to choose one meaning. Like him what’s wrong. ‘But you must recreating it, purging it of all Gulag? They didn’t let her include a dried insect, the written title have a coat somewhere, don’t excess, trying to find ways to say the Joyce epigraph. “Finnegans Wake” leaves merely a you?’ Joyce replies, and he fumbles the inexpressible, that which the along the walls.” On the street, usual words have not suited for a he nearly got hit by a car several long time because they have rotted. times. Darkness took away his The most important conversation eyes: atrophy of the retina, iritis, about being cannot be conducted cataract. He underwent twelve in rotten words. The pre-Babel operations. Before each, Joyce told dialect in which man spoke to God everyone he was seeing them for must be found. the last time because there was always the risk that he would In the beginning was the word. He go completely blind. To record a is returning to the source. record, he had his text written out in giant letters on an enormous His road lies through languages sheet of paper. He himself had created for misunderstanding, to great difficulty writing and keep people from building a tower dictated his lines. Books were to heaven. In Ulysses, the Irishman constantly required for his work, took the language away from the and he ordered many editions— English. In Finnegans Wake—from which were read to him out loud. all humanity, in order to fuse the He found the strength to joke: “My dialect back together. This text is a eyes have given me very little. I strong infusion of 150 living and am creating hundreds of worlds dead languages. and losing just one of them.” The

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At one time, seventy translators yourself be vanquished, rather it Wehrmacht officers. The Gestapo translated the crucial first book, means opening a door, not as to sets up shop on the rue Lauriston. where it all began, trying to an enemy but to a guest who will preserve its distinctness and come and go. At the last minute, Giorgio purity, so that not a single word manages to get out of Paris could be replaced or moved. His Here everything is as in life. and join his parents and son in work is the last book. He had to Laundresses wag tongues and then Auvergne. In May, Helen’s relatives translate it from the mixture of turn to stone and wood. A father took her off to America. Lucia dialects that scattered after the to a son, a mother a daughter, a remains in a clinic in Brittany, in pandemonium of Babel into a river an ocean. People merge, German-occupied La Baule. shamanist language of absolute decant, and spill, as words do. All understanding. Return to the word parts of the universe, animate The line of German occupation its lost clarity and distinctness, and inanimate, are connected to passes a few miles to the north purge it of everything irrelevant, one another seamlessly, all is one. of Saint-Gérand. In neighboring unimportant, and distracting One night lasts as long as world Vichy, Marshal Pétain’s Free from the main conversation. This history. The Limmat in Zurich French government. forgotten sacral language had and the Liffey in Dublin are one The place and time of action of to be rediscovered. Two books river. The story of one family is such a book is the creation of the In Ulysses, Stephen is beaten by reach toward each other, having the story of humankind. Names world, which happens everywhere soldiers for his words: “You die encompassed all world culture. play no role. You can call your wife and also wherever this book is for your country, suppose… but Ouroboros had to swallow his own Anna Livia Plurabelle. In the end, picked up, it happens always and I say: Let my country die for me.” tail. which means in the beginning, also the moment it’s read. The Just a few months before, when she’ll become a river anyway. reader becomes author and creator. the war had just begun, Joyce was Joyce went beyond literature. And before that an aging woman, Or rather, this book cannot have with his daughter in La Baule. Finnegans Wake is not prose, not and before that a child. She is a reader at all—either the person The dancehall at the restaurant a novel. A text like this can’t all women and all rivers. The reading becomes a co-creator or he was packed with soldiers, British be composed. A text like this is main hero can be called Harold or closes the book. and French. Someone started revealed whole. Not a single word Humphrey Chimpden, or simply singing the Marseillaise. Joyce can be replaced or moved. Joyce Earwicker. What difference what Once, before the beginning of joined in. His strong, beautiful listened and reproduced what he everything in the universe of beginnings, the letters went to God tenor stood out so clearly that the had heard. He dictated to dictation. the masculine gender is called, to ask Him to create everything soldiers stood the writer on the You can‘t compose a palindrome or including mythological giants that exists. Bet went to the Creator table and he sang the hymn to an island. Those already exist and and the author himself, if we’re and said, “Creator of the world, I the struggle for freedom all over can only be discovered. talking about Judgment Day? The should co-create the world because again, from beginning to end. A hero, that is, every man alive They bless You by me. After all, witness remembered: “Never had It is a book of wisdom. A book on Earth, has fought with some Bet stands for Baruch—blessing.” I had occasion to see a spectacle about accepting the world as it unknown person in Phoenix Park, The Creator replied, “Of course of such complete conquest and is—without end or beginning. Dublin’s municipal park, and now I will create a world by you, and enrapturement of an entire crowd The birth and death of a human he’s going to be tried. Earwicker you shall be the beginning of the by one single person. Joyce stood being or a river is just as much didn’t know who he fought any world!” and sang the Marseillaise, and a convention as the beginning more than Jacob knew who it they sang it with him again, and and end of a book: it was all there was he fought in the desert. One Now the letters went to him. had an entire regiment of Germans before the first capital letter, and of the heroes writes a letter of attacked them at that moment, he the final period is not the end of justification for the upcoming trial, He wrote a new Torah, certainly would never have broken off. Such the world. Death is what has to be or they all do, or the author does not a novel to entertain the reading was the feeling. Joyce and his voice leafed through between the end for them. This book is that letter. public. Only a few close to him hovered over everything.” It all and the beginning. understood what this was about. ended in disaster and disgraceful If Ulysses is a book of one day, Beckett: “His writing isn’t about capitulation. The song about the drunkard then Finnegans Wake is a book something; it is that something Finnegan who fell off a ladder and of the night. Everything of the itself.” Life goes on. Shakespeare and broke his neck and then came to day, superfluous and transient, Company is still operating in life at his own wake has become vanishes with the night, and all He wrote the last book, through Paris. The shop will close only in a palimpsest book that sucks in that remains is what is important which passed the road to the December 1941, after a German everything ever written, said, or and invisible. At night, in beginning, to the primary book, officer tries to purchase the last lived. insomnia, nothing distracts, and which was not a book about the copy of Finnegans Wake and Sylvia death’s breathing is more audible. creation but the Creation itself. Beach refuses him. She is arrested. It is a hymn to the infinity of Joyce wrote that his book was She will spend six months in a everything living. A hymn to the intended for “the ideal reader He wrote the book of eternal life. camp. Wake’s author will never earthly cycle. You can’t try to stop suffering from ideal insomnia.” learn of this. Not only in Russia is this stream, you have to step into But who cares? Joyce more than Joyce. it and surrender to the wave, a Finnegans Wake is an incantation murmuring, gurgling, muttering for a resurrection from the dead, a Paul Léon, Joyce’s secretary wave singing in a language that magical conspiracy of flesh risen of many years, flees occupied doesn’t exist. from the grave. All the heroes die On May 10, the “strange” war Paris for Saint-Gérand with his and resurrect endlessly, they bleed ends and the ordinary one begins. wife. Pavel Leopoldovich Léon, To accept life is to accept through each other and through France is defeated in a matter of a Russian émigré, a Jew from everything it gives, including the the history of humankind, having weeks. On June 14, the Germans Petersburg, a lawyer by education, disintegration of fabrics. Letting once fallen under the wheel of enter Paris without a fight. At his found himself in unpaid service to death in doesn’t mean letting being for good. favorite Fouquet, they wait on the writer’s talent. Léon conducted

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all of Joyce’s correspondence, up to thanks of that most / distressful know what’s happened with the A few months before this, he and twenty letters a day, helped in legal writer / James Joyce / Paris / 4 May apartment he left in Paris, where his family had calmly traveled matters, and handled his financial 1939.” he has all his things, books, and to Switzerland. Now the borders and legal affairs. The Léons’ archive. Desperate, he and Nora are closed. Will he get permission apartment on the rue Casimir- When the book came out, it was argue and don’t speak for days on to enter? Giorgio is draft age and Périer was a fifteen-minute walk ignored because war had begun. end. They have no money. The might be stopped at the border. from the Joyces’ apartment on the Joyce joked sadly, “They should transfers from England have It’s unclear whether the Swiss Square de Robiac, and the writer have left Poland in peace and taken stopped; all foreign contact has authorities will let Lucia through. often went there to work, dictate, up Finnegans Wake.” Is man on ceased due to the occupation. or be read to out loud. earth to read or kill? A war of documents begins with For their twenty Paris years they various offices. He writes a request Léon and Joyce were drawn to In Saint-Gérand, Joyce and Léon lived on money from Harriet to the Swiss representative in each other not only by an interest spend the summer days of 1940 Weaver, a wealthy London Vichy for permission for his whole in Medieval jurisprudence and looking for typos in Finnegans patroness and an ecstatic admirer family to move and sends letters to Irish home rule but also by Wake, but in a world where a war of the author of Ulysses. Her everyone he knows in Switzerland their sense of humor. In 1932, is under way, the book itself seems generous support allowed them asking for help. Acquaintances the International Union of like a typo. to stay in luxurious hotels, dine recommend a lawyer in Geneva Revolutionary Writers in Moscow at expensive restaurants, and who might be able to help with sent Joyce a questionnaire that In Ulysses, Stephen says what the travel first class. As excerpts entrance visas. Lucia receives asked, “What influence has the author himself felt: “History is from his Work in Progress were permission to leave from the October Revolution had on you as a a nightmare from which I am published, her ecstasy dissipated, German occupation authorities, writer, and what is its significance trying to awake.” In Finnegans to be replaced by bewilderment. but there is no money to pay the for your literary work?” Paul Wake, he made short work of She did not approve of Finnegans bill for her clinic stay. Léon wrote in reply: “Kind sirs, history, abolished it. Now history Wake, and that was the end of his Mr. Joyce asks me to thank you for had made short work of his book, luxurious life. By the late 1930s, Joyce writes to the consulate the honor you have paid him, as a reducing it to naught. Around him she had begun financing the in Lyons for entrance visas result of which he was interested was a world war, a nightmare from Communist Party of Great Britain asking permission to remain in to learn that in October 1917 which he cannot awake. and herself became a member. She Switzerland as a refugee until the there was a revolution in Russia.” continued to support the Joyce war’s end. His case is sent on for Joyce is silent for days on end. One family merely out of a sense of consideration to the Federal Police It was Alex Ponizovski, the day he will suddenly say, “Land obligation or out of pity. for Foreigners in Bern. From there, brother of Léon’s wife, who [Tolstoy’s ‘How Much Land Does papers go to the Zurich cantonal taught Joyce Russian and was a Man Need’] is the greatest story In September, Léon leaves for police. Finally, the refusal comes. briefly Lucia’s fiancé. Alex was that the literature of the world occupied Paris. He is going to a friend of Vladimir Nabokov; knows.” rescue his friend’s archive. He Only recently he was a famous they had studied together in will hide some of the documents, writer. He worked with translators, Cambridge. Léon introduced His son is nearby, but the danger books, letters, and manuscripts in read galleys, followed reviews. He Joyce and Nabokov and brought that the French will take him into suitcases and books with friends had fame and success. His Ulysses Joyce to Nabokov’s lecture the army or the Germans and hand the rest over to the was illustrated by Henri Matisse on Pushkin. The Russian arrest him has not gone Irish consul. Ireland is a neutral himself. His first biography was writer often went to the rue away. He has a hard time country. With the outbreak of war, already being readied. During his Casimir-Périer, and Léon’s explaining to his grandson the Irish government surveyed secret, belated wedding in London, wife, a translator, helped why they’re staying in the population: 78.2% were in photographers from all the world him in the creation of his this village while his favor of neutrality; 11.6% for war publications chased after him first English novel, The Real mama has left him to go to on the side of Britain; and 10.2% and Nora. When he encountered Life of Sebastian Knight. They America. Nora’s arthritis for war against Britain. The Irish Marlene Dietrich in a restaurant worked at the same table makes walking difficult. Republican Army wages a terrorist on the Champs-Elysées, he could where Léon sat with Joyce. He himself has incessant war on English soil with the simply go over to her and chat stomach pains. He is felled support of Nazi Germany. the entire evening away. His On a copy of Finnegans Wake, by agonizing bouts and photograph was on the cover of the author wrote: “To / that collapses into bed. As In August 1941, the Gestapo arrest Time magazine. Eurasian Knight / Paul Léon before, he treats himself Léon in his Paris apartment. He / with the thousand and / one with alcohol. He doesn’t will die in Auschwitz. Now he is nobody, an ill man, a blind, irrelevant old man, a The Joyces are still in Auvergne. refugee who has been refused. Das It is the autumn of 1940, his last Boot ist voll. The boat is full. autumn. He understands this is not about In the boarding school where Switzerland. He built an ark that Stephen is living, Maria Jolas will survive all floods, but there’s closes her school and is able to no room in it for him. Das Boot leave for America. There is nothing ist voll. The boat is full. And the more keeping them in Saint- greatest book can’t take its author Gérand. Joyce writes to people along. he knows in Zurich and they invite him to come. Moving to An acquaintance who goes to the Switzerland seems like a reliable police in Zurich to ascertain the salvation from war. reason for the refusal is told that

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Joyce is a Jew. American representative in Vichy. child hasn’t seen for months. Now they are sitting in a cheap He is perplexed: “How can I extend furnished room and barely go At one time he made a Jew the a British passport?” It is a matter Three days later, right before out. Her legs ache. He can’t see hero of Ulysses. His hero was of saving lives. The American Christmas, they arrive in Zurich. anything. They are together. an outsider, an alien, Odysseus extends the documents at his own without a homeland. It was a risk. They settle in a modest boarding Just before the New Year, Zurich is metaphor for Joyce himself, the house. In the old days, he and Nora blanketed in snow. Joyce is taking outcast, the pariah. The metaphor They are living out of packed stayed in the best hotels—the a walk with his grandson through had been made real. Word become suitcases. Their entrance visas Carlton Elite, the Saint Gotthard. the city, which has become reality. are about to run out. Now the invisible. He tells the boy about Germans aren’t giving permission They’ve returned to a city they the ancient Greeks. His Swiss friends begin a campaign for Lucia to leave. They’re first arrived in thirty-seven years in support of Joyce. They write frightened for their daughter. before, after fleeing Dublin, young He once finished his story “The letters to various offices, request a What will happen to her if she and in love, his whole life and all Dead” with a snowfall like this: review of the refusal, assure them gets put out on the street because his books ahead of them. They “His soul swooned slowly as he that Joyce is not a Jew but an Aryan of unpaid bills? What will the spent all these thirty-seven years heard the snow falling faintly from Ireland. Swiss writers submit Germans do to her? After all, she together practically without through the universe and faintly their expert conclusion that Joyce has a passport from a country at parting. Living with him was falling, like the descent of their is the best English-language writer. war with Germany. impossible. Nora left several times. last end, upon all the living and The mayor of Zurich and rector of She would pack her suitcases the dead.” the university weigh in. Finally, On December 15, the last day for and move to a hotel. Even in the the cantonal authorities yield, but their visas, they decide to leave presence of others she would Behind the rippled white wall is they demand a financial guarantee without her. shout, “I hope you drown!” And the sound of water—the Limmat of 50,000 Swiss francs. Then she would curse the day she met and Liffey merging and becoming they agree to 20,000, which is On the train, Stephen chatters the man named James Joyce. Then one river. an entire fortune in any case. The loudly in English and they can’t she would come back because Swiss are trading in a precious make the excited child quiet down. living without him was utterly He doesn’t know he has just a few good: freedom and safety. Joyce impossible. Nor could he without days left. This ignorance is the sole doesn’t have that kind of money; Giorgio had taken along his most her. Nora was the muse of all his form of immortality. his Swiss friends pay the sum for precious possession, his bicycle. books, the prototype for all his him. Immediately after his death At the border, they have no way to women. Earthly, ordinary, banal, they will demand the money back pay the fee, so the Swiss customs uneducated, she gave him what a from Nora and will take his death officers confiscate the bicycle. bookish man lacks—a lust for life, mask as a pledge, until the debt is a lack of restraint, everything that repaid. In Lausanne, when Nora unpacks education kills and suppresses. She their suitcases in the hotel, all devoted her life to her beloved, and When permission to enter is their things are covered in green the fact that he turned out to be a received, it turns out that his ink because Joyce hadn’t closed brilliant writer was a coincidence. passport and Nora’s have expired. the vials properly. The first thing This woman loved him and The country is at war with Great he does is take his grandson out therefore his novels—which she Britain. The Joyces turn to the to buy him chocolate, which the did not read.

9 John Fowles Center for Creative Writing, Chapman University FICTION ticking of the alarm clock on the who were clinging to their Street. It seemed the statute of Grey Bees narrow wooden windowsill. homesteads more tenaciously limitations on these resentments than a dog clings to its favorite would never run out. Sergeyich’s By Andrey Kurkov There was still a bit of heat inside bone. Everyone else in Little thoughts reminded him of the the stove’s belly, but not enough to Starhorodivka wanted to leave mean tricks Pashka used to play, get the frosty coal going without Translated By Boris Dralyuk when the fighting had just begun. of how he used to fight dirty and the help of woodchips and paper. And so they left—because they tattle to their teachers, of how Eventually, after the long bluish feared for their lives more than he never let Sergeyich crib from 1. Sergey Sergeyich was roused by tongues of flame began to lick they feared for their property, and him during exams. You’d think the chill air at about three in the at the smoke-stained glass, the the stronger fear had won out. But that after forty years Sergeyich morning. The potbelly stove he’d master of the house stepped out the war hadn’t made Sergeyich might forgive and forget. Forgive? cobbled together in imitation of a into the yard again. The sound of fear for his life. It had only made Maybe. But how could he forget? far-off bombardment, which was picture in Cozy Cottage magazine, him confused and suddenly There were seven girls in their almost inaudible inside the house, indifferent to everything around class and only two boys—himself with its little glass door and two now reached Sergeyich’s ears burners, had ceased to give off him. It was as if he had lost all and Pashka—and that meant from the east. But soon another, Sergeyich had never had a friend any warmth. The two tin buckets feeling, all his senses, except for more proximate sound drew his one: the sense of responsibility. in school, only an enemy. “Enemy” that stood by its side were empty. attention. He listened close and And this sense, which could make was too harsh a word, of course. He lowered his hand into the one heard a car driving along a nearby him worry terribly at any hour of In Ukrainian one could say nearest him and his fingers hit street. It drove some distance, the day, was focused entirely on “vrazhenyatko”—what you might coal dust. then stopped. There were only one object: his bees. But now the call a “frenemy.” That was more two streets in the village—one bees were wintering. The roofs like it. Pashka was a harmless “All right,” he groaned sleepily, named after Lenin, the other after and frames of the hives were lined little enemy, the kind no one fears. pulled on his pants, slid his feet Taras Shevchenko—and also with felt on the inside, and their into the slippers he’d fashioned Ivan Michurin Lane. Sergeyich thick walls were covered with “How goes it, Greybeard?” Pashka out of an old pair of felt boots, himself lived on Lenin, in less sheets of metal. Although the greeted Sergeyich, a little tensely, threw on his sheepskin coat, than proud isolation. This meant hives were in the shed, a dumb as he crossed the threshold. grabbed the buckets, and went out that the car had been driving stray shell could fly in from either “You know they turned on the into the yard. down Shevchenko. There, too, side. Its shrapnel would first cut electricity last night,” he said, only one person was left—Pashka into the metal—but then maybe casting a glance at the broom to He stopped behind the shed in Khmelenko, who’d retired early, it wouldn’t have the strength to see whether he might use it to front of a pile of coal and his eyes like Sergeyich. The two men punch through the wooden walls brush the snow off his shoes. landed on the shovel—it was were almost exactly the same and be the death of the bees? much brighter out here than it was age and had been enemies from He picked up the broom, saw the inside the house. Lumps of coal their very first days at school. ax, and his lips twisted into that poured down, thumping against Pashka’s garden looked out onto grin of his. the bottoms of the buckets. Soon Horlivka, so he was one street “Liar,” Sergeyich responded calmly. the bottoms were covered with closer to Donetsk than Sergeyich. “If they had, I would’ve woken up. coal, the echoing thumps died Sergeyich’s garden faced the other I keep all my lights switched on, away, and the rest of the lumps fell direction, towards Sloviansk. so I can’t miss it.” in silence. The garden rolled down to a field, which first dipped then rose up “You probably slept right through Somewhere far off a cannon towards Zhdanivka. You couldn’t it—hell, you could sleep through a sounded. Half a minute later actually see Zhdanivka from the bomb blast. And they only turned there was another blast, which garden—it lay hidden behind a it on for half an hour. Look,” he seemed to come from the opposite hump. But you could sometimes held out his mobile phone. “It’s direction. hear the Ukrainian army, which fully charged! You wanna call “Fools can’t get to sleep… Probably had burrowed dugouts and 2. Pashka showed up at someone?” just warming their hands,” trenches into that hump. And Sergeyich’s at noon. The master “Got no one to call,” Sergeyich said, Sergeyich grunted. even when you couldn’t hear the of the house had just emptied the not looking at the phone. “Want army, Sergeyich was always aware second bucket of coal into the some tea?” Then he returned to the darkness of its presence. It sat in its dugouts stove and put the kettle on. The of the house and lit a candle. Its and trenches, to the left of the plan was to have some tea alone, “Where’d you get tea from?” warm, pleasant, honeyed scent forest plantation and the dirt road but it didn’t pan out. hit his nose, and his ears were along which tractors and lorries “Where? From the Protestants.” soothed by the familiar, quiet used to drive. The army had been Before letting his uninvited guest into the house, Sergeyich placed a “I’ll be damned,” Pashka said. there for three years now, while “Mine’s long gone.” the local lads, together with the broom in front of the “safety” ax Russian military international, by the door. You never know— They sat down at Sergeyich’s had been drinking tea and vodka Pashka might have a pistol or a little table. Pashka’s back was to in their dugouts beyond Pashka’s Kalashnikov for self-defense. He’d the stove and its tall metal pipe, street and its gardens, beyond the see the ax and break out that grin which radiated warmth. remnants of the old apricot grove of his, as if to say that Sergeyich that had been planted back in was a fool. But the ax was all “Why’s the tea so weak?” the Soviet times, and beyond another Sergeyich had to protect himself. guest grumbled, looking into field that the war had robbed of Nothing else. He put it under his his cup. And then, in a different, its workers, like the field that lay bed every night, which is why more affable voice, added: “Got between Sergeyich’s garden and he sometimes managed to sleep anything to eat?” Zhdanivka. so calm and deep. Not always, of course. Anger showed in Sergeyich’s eyes. The village had been awful quiet Sergeyich opened the door for “They don’t bring me lately. It had been quiet for two humanitarian aid at night…” whole weeks. Not a shot fired. Pashka and let out a not very Had they tired themselves out? friendly grunt. This grunt was “Me neither.” spurred by Sergeyich’s thoughts— Were they saving their shells and “So what do they bring you, then?” bullets for later? Or maybe they thoughts that had heaped a didn’t want to disturb the last two mountain of resentments on “Nothing!” residents of Little Starhorodivka, his neighbor from Shevchenko

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they’re fine,” Sergeyich said, softening his tone. “I keep an eye on them, check in every day.” “Tell me, how do they sleep in those hives?” asked Pashka. “Like people?” “Just like people. Each bee in its little bed.” “But you’re not heating the shed, are you?” “They don’t need it. Inside the hives, it’s thirty-seven degrees. They keep themselves warm.” Once the conversation shifted in an apian direction, it grew more amiable. Pashka felt he should leave while the going was good. This way, they might even manage to bid each other farewell, unlike the last time, when Sergeyich sent him packing with a few choice Sergeyich grunted and sipped his Sergeyich. Was it his earthy words. But then Pashka thought of tea. complexion? His ragged cheeks? one more question. It’s as if he’d been shaving with a “So no one came to see you last dull razor all his life. Sergeyich “Say, have you thought about your night?” stared at him and thought: if they pension?” “You saw…?” hadn’t wound up alone in the village, he would have never have “What’s there to think about?” “Yep. Went out to get coal.” talked to him again. They would Sergeyich shrugged. “When the have gone on living their parallel war ends, the postwoman will “Ah. Well, what you saw were lives on their parallel streets, bring me three years’ worth of our boys,” Pashka nodded. “On Sergeyich on Lenin, Pashka on checks. That’ll be the life!” reconnaissance.” Shevchenko. And they wouldn’t Pashka grinned. He wanted to “So what were they reconnoitering have exchanged a single word—if needle his host, but managed to for?” it hadn’t been for the war. restrain himself. “For dirty Ukes…” “Been a long time since I heard Before Pashka went out the door, shooting,” the guest sighed. “But “That so?” Sergeyich stared his eyes met Sergeyich’s one more around Hatne, you know, they time. directly into Pashka’s shifty eyes. used to fire the big guns only at Pashka gave up right away, as if night—but now they’re firing “Listen, while it’s charged…” He his back were to the wall. in the daytime, too. Listen,” held out his mobile phone again. Pashka tilted his head forward “Maybe you ought to give your “I lied,” he confessed. “Just some a bit, “if our boys ask you to do Vitalina a call?” guys—said they were from something—will you do it?” Horlivka. Offered me an Audi for “‘My’ Vitalina? She hasn’t been three hundred bucks. No papers.” “Who are ‘our boys’?” Sergeyich ‘mine’ for six years. No.” asked, irritably. “D’you buy it?” Sergeyich grinned. “What about your daughter?” “Stop playing the fool. Our boys— “What, you take me for a moron?” in Donetsk.” “Just go. I told you, I’ve got no one Pashka shook his head. “Think to call.” “‘My’ boys are in my shed. I don’t I don’t know how this stuff goes A strange occurrence has taken down? I turn around to get the have any others. You’re not exactly ‘mine,’ either.” place to-day. I got up fairly late, money and they stick a knife in and when Mawra brought me my my back.” “Oh, cut it out. What’s the matter, clean boots, I asked her how late “So why didn’t they come round to didn’t get enough sleep?” Pashka it was. When I heard it had long my place?” twisted his lips to express his struck ten, I dressed as quickly as displeasure. “Or did your bees possible. “I told them I was the only one freeze their stingers off, so now left. Besides, you can’t drive from you’re taking it out on me?” Lenin to Shevchenko anymore. There’s that big crater by the “I’ll give you freeze…” Sergeyich’s Mitkov place, where the shell voice showed that his threat landed. Only a tank could make it wasn’t empty. “You shut your over.” mouth about my bees…” Sergeyich didn’t respond. He “Hey, don’t get me wrong, I’ve just stared at Pashka’s devious got nothing but respect for your countenance, which would have bees—I’m just worried!” Pashka suited an aged pickpocket— backpedalled, hurrying to one who’d grown fearful and cut Sergeyich off. “I just can’t jumpy after countless arrests understand how they survive the and beatings. He stared at winter. Don’t they get cold in the Pashka, who at forty-nine looked shed? I’d croak after one night.” a full ten years older than “As long as the shed’s in one piece, 11 John Fowles Center for Creative Writing, Chapman University FICTION the will of its founders who, for several centuries, sought a place for it exactly between the Baltic and Black Seas. That’s why so many dolphins are found on its buildings. They are the second most common attribute (after lions) one finds among the oldest building ornaments in the city. Maybe it is they that gave the city its particular chilly dampness. You could assemble an entire photo album filled just with them. A whole novel could be written about the eels existing in the city sewer’s underground river: the path taken by an eel from the Sargasso Sea to the Shatsk Lakes and then to the Bug River basin, to the Poltva River, and then back to the Ocean—could be another “Odyssey” or another “Ulysses”. Or, at least, a poem such as this one: It seems completely possible to me— the Lviv Opera was built

somewhere near Vynnyky2 and the But how do you capture all of the directly on top of a freshly encased LVIV, Always West, thus, would have begun just possible meanings of this city with river, beyond it. And we would not have its fluctuating features? to a certain extent been allowed to go there. By Yurii Andrukhovych I select them at random, it can be regarded as Because history does not choose, understanding that more will “Only to Lviv!” I would repeat what came to be were not only five always remain. a gigantic river gravestone of my densest and sharpest years when I was fifteen years old, and but also everything that I have or maybe even a mausoleum. when I was sixteen too, as if written to this day. And if I have The City-Port But in that case slightly altering the chorus of that my Dublin, then it is Lviv.3 sweet Polish tune1 about whose Once I referred to it as a city-ship, the most sensitive musicians, existence I could not possibly have When I write about it I can’t help now let it be a harbor. when entering the orchestra pit, known back then. “Only to Lviv!” repeating myself. That said, if it That is, let it be a shore, perhaps, an is indeed so inevitable then I will cannot not hear was my answer when I was asked attempt, with each return, to estuary of a large river, an aquatic where I would like to move to unearth at least one revelation. territory, piers, docks, transporters (hearing is what they do), study. Without revelations, first and of cargo and passengers, freight foremost for an author, writing cranes, barges, and 24/7 brothels. how, in the stifling darkness within Why there? I had only a rather ceases to be writing and becomes the pipes, Stanisław Lem, in “Highcastle” vague notion of it back then. And rewriting. And if, when I do repeat, mentions the bureau of a “Cunard filling them with quivering and mostly stemming from its train I use completely new words, then it Line” ship association with models droning, station, from which we traveled won’t count as repeating. to Prague many years ago. And, of ocean liners (“The Lusitania”, almost moaning, honestly, that was it. It turns out From Lviv, paraphrasing Taras “The Mauretania”) in each of its that I had always wanted to go to Prokhasko, one can still make windows. It was located in the all those eels a few novels.4 Moreover—I am inter-war Lviv of Lem—I believe, Lviv because I imagined it to be again try to break through a train station somewhere in the convinced that many novels could on Słowacki Street. I wonder when suburbs of Prague. I’m afraid that I continue to be made from it. Lviv it disappeared—in 1939? in the only possible direction— is novel-like in the sense that its may not have been mistaken about Regardless, it was then that Lviv novels have yet to be written. Yes, towards the Atlantic. that. ceased being a discernible port I agree—a few novels have already and became a secret one. It simply It is known that eels can survive Nevertheless, I still get excited been written about it and some cannot not be a port—that was about the fact that the English pretty good ones among them. even in sewer pipes, didn’t get it from Stalin, for the sake of the Poles, in 1944. If they 2 Vynnyky is a town located six had pulled that off, Lviv would kilometers east of Lviv. (Transla- then have ended up on the other tor’s note) side of the border and all my hopes would have vanished. The border 3 Including Dubliany. (Authors’ between the USSR and Poland note) Dubliany is a suburb of Lviv. would then have been located (Translator’s note) 4 Taras Prokhasko (b. 1968) is a prominent Ukrainian writer. One 1 The tune referred to here is Tylko of his publications has the title We Lwowie’, a very popular song Z tsioho mozhna zrobyty kil’ka written in 1939 by Henryk Wars opovidan’ which translated as “One and Emanuel Shlechter. Its title Could Make Several Stories from means “Only In Lviv”. (Translator’s This”. (Translator’s note) note)

12 Mantissa Journal Volume V Issue I FICTION thus providing city-dwellers up with us and was left far behind. The City-Crossroad storyteller, employing one of the former’s motifs. What’s key is that not only with hope, This designation refers not just to this chain of storytelling is never the intersection of space but also but also with an example to follow. A longing for it echoes to this day. interrupted. If that were to happen, of time. Thus, a crossroad is also everything would disappear, For example, along Black Sea Street, a layering. A list of the ancient Sometimes it seems that Lviv is, smack in the center of the Older blow away and scatter. Thus, the first and foremost, an underground trade routes that brushed Lviv in novel has neither an end nor a City. Not the Old City but the even one way or another would not fit city. In other words, what is Older one—the one where Old beginning—one can start reading most essential in it continues on the pages of this book. Lviv was it from any page. It is imperative Rynok is to be found and towards conceived not only in the middle of to strainingly exist somewhere which Fish Street runs. to complete the cycle and to once deep below us. And the orchestra ages but also in the middle of lands. again return to that page in order pit, in this case, is somewhat of a Lviv’s non-marium condition Trade from Europe came through it to realize that there is now a transition space, a waiting room gave it a non-water condition. It on its way to Asia and trade from different story at that spot because, or a reception room, below which became its drama and its karma. Asia to Europe, although, in those while the reader was moving along only the waters of the Styx are to Existence became mundane, a times, Europe, and moreover Asia, the circle, some of the storytellers be found. dreary campaign involving toilets were yet unknown concepts and all left, taking their stories with them, and dishwater, waiting and that was known was the Old World. and new ones had taken their If you chase after two seas you listening for when they’ll turn it Besides, the very existence of Lviv place. Such a novel would be able will not get to either one of them. triggered the later division of the contain everything in it—just like continent into Europe and Asia. Lviv can. The name of the novel— The city was so ideally positioned “Rotations”. that neither caravans going from Britain to Persia, nor caravans going from Korea to Portugal, were able to avoid it. You had to go through Lviv to get from Moscow to Rome or from Amsterdam to Bombay. And not all travelers simply paused temporarily at this point of intersection. Some unexpectedly decided to remain there forever. Among them were not only merchants but also travelling musicians, sermonizers, deserters from various armies, spies, soothsayers, scholars, teachers, healers, escaped slaves and free escapees. I once tried to put together a list of them all but had to stop when I realized that it would have no end. When the upper Austrian engineering apparatus was selecting a spot on which to build a central train station in the mid-19th century they were able to swiftly reach a consensus. The central train station was erected along the line of Europe’s Central watershed, which was located at a height of Lviv’s intermarium condition on and when they’ll turn it off and, 316 meters above the two closest transformed into a non-marium finally—a drawn-out dripping of seas. Although in Ukrainian the condition. In the middle of every hours and years among mountains word for “watershed”—vododil— July in the 1980s we, in a drunken of dirty dishes and overfilled the second root—dil—implies ritual, meandered through ashtrays, with a stubborn rock in breaking apart or dividing, I would nighttime courtyards down the 5 your throat and sharp sand on your once again prefer to approach from former “Along the Pipes” Street , teeth. Life became dying in never- the opposite side. A watershed striving to unearth—in the laundered, sticky bedsheets. A foul is a geological part of the earth’s darkness, at least—the remains stench became an indispensable surface which cannot only be seen of water mills and an old pier. It element of everyday life—it would as a stitch but also as a seam. That smelled of water and slime and it crawl into dwellings as if into which seams together, connects, seemed that we were on the verge prison cells and would never leave. unites. of stumbling upon the Wallachian Bridge with its statue of St. John, It is in Lviv that I first understood That is why Lviv (I have already that we would cross over to the the meaning of the saying “to written about this) is a common right bank and lay down in its capture the water”. It really was endeavor of both the West and the reeds. Small, merchant sailboats a hunt, that endless filling up of East. Let me also add at this time from Gdansk and Lübeck silently the bathtub with rust stains on that it is one of the North and the sailed past us along the established its walls, all those buckets and South as well. Poltva—Bug—Narew—Vistula— basins set up all over the place Baltic Sea water way. Salt was and all filled to the rim. This was This could best be passed along in traded for amber and Carpathian hunting for water and keeping it in a novel about strange metaphysical juniper for Caribbean spices. Lviv’s captivity. And then—letting go— merchants who, having gathered great nautical past couldn’t keep downward, into the sewage pipes, in a local Lviv pub, take turns down to the eels and rats, to the telling stories about the most 5 Today’s vulytsia Kostia Levytsko- underground port in the estuary of distant worlds. They form a circle ho (Kost Levytskyi street). (Trans- the great river, homeward. and each one of them picks up lator’s Note) the story line from the previous 13 John Fowles Center for Creative Writing, Chapman University FICTION

Gustave and is what Maxime looked like before Gustave 7 Rue des Beauxjours, Croisset) their departure: muses collapses under the weight of the Maxime in Egypt incessantly reasoning of Maxime de Camp, (Or: The Metaphysics of Happening) about the Achille Flaubert, and Dr. Cloquet. Grand Crack. Well if there’s nothing else By ZSÓFIA BÁN Voyage. Alas, for Gustave’s there is health, then Gustave and Maxime are traveling. no chance fine, let him “Et le petit chat,” dit Hélène, “partira- his mother voyage to the t-il aussi?” Maxime is taking would East. If it must pictures and Gustave is reading. allow him on such a perilous be, then let Maxime is running around and undertaking to the ends of the what must Gustave is sitting around. Maxime earth. One example why: In happen, happen. is enthusiastic and Gustave is September of 1846, Gustave’s But did what bored. Maxime’s name is Maxime mother stands white as a sheet on had to happen really happen? And du Camp, and Gustave’s name is As for Gustave, we don’t know the platform of the train station perchance is what happens more Gustave Flaubert. Gustave and what he looked like before their where the 25-year-old Gustave important than all that does not Maxime. Fast friends. [Répétéz! departure. returns, one day later than happen? [Qu’en pensez-vous?] Articulez, et parlez à haute voix!] promised. Gustave then renounces Upon their return (1851), Maxime all further nights that were to Before the voyage, Maxime has 1 photo album and 1 trip diary have been spent with his beloved, resolves that he will (futur dans le published. Not 1 of the published Louise Colet. My mother needs me, passé!), in revolutionary fashion Gustave is now twenty-eight years images portrays Gustave. Not 1 explains Gustave to Louise. “As (technologie moderne) and “with of age, as is Maxime. Maxime is of the entries in the trip diary we know,” explains crackerjack utmost fidelity” document it two months younger than Gustave. mentions Gustave. [Qu’en pensez- Flaubert scholar Jean-Pierre, through photographs. But the Gustave will be fifty-nine when vous?] “this unusual situation gave unexpected revelatory force of the he dies, Maxime seventy-two. At rise to one of the most sublime images proves on occasion to shake this point (à ce temps-là) neither Upon their return (1851), Gustave epistolary correspondences in him to his very core. At such times, suspects this. Gustave and Maxime publishes nothing. Upon their French literature.” Merci, Madame he rips them up. (Exposure time: are traveling to Egypt, suspecting return, Gustave begins writing Flaubert, merci à vous! Alternately: min. 2 mins.; destruction time: not a thing. Gustave is 183 cm a novel. The title of the novel is Thank you, dear Louise, for you max. 1 min.) tall, gray-green eyes, attractive, Madame Bovary. Later, Gustave have the patience of an angel. and cuts a fine figure indeed. He would make a fascinating After the voyage, Gustave has a beard and mustache. He declaration that he himself was resolves he will (f. dans le p.), claims to be of Iroquois extraction, Madame Bovary. [Expliquez!] in revolutionary fashion (style which makes him immediately Maxime is not mentioned in the Jean-Pierre moderne) write in suitable language sympatico in the eyes of many. novel even once. delivers his and “with utmost fidelity.” Still, Here is what Maxime relates about lectures in there are certain words (le mot Gustave forty years later. a stunning juste) that, on occasion, shake him, sky-blue too, to his very core. When this Traduisez! Maxime wears a Renaissance ring jacket over occurs, he erases. (Exposure time: with a cameo of a satyr. He had a wispy, max. 2 nanoseconds.) After all, let “He was an exceptionally beautiful given this to Gustave five years pale-pink the juste have its limits (subjonctif) boy… the white skin of his cheeks before their voyage. In return, shirt. Le too! danced with rose-pink, and with Gustave gives Maxime a signet ring jour de his shock of hair, his striking on which he had Maxime’s initials gloire mien, broad shoulders, thick engraved and a slogan whose text est arrivé! I would softly add, in golden beard, large sea-green eyes is unknown to us. It was a sort of admiration, just for the sake of The deletions shadowed by deep black lashes, intellectual proposal of marriage, objectivity. Objectivity is the main are clearly his resonant trumpet of a voice, Maxime would later write. thing in scholarship. Objectively discernable exuberant gestures, and swelling speaking, there are two sorts in the laughter Gustave writes diligently, keeping of people: the ones who know manuscripts, made of to a schedule. Eight months they are prudes, and the ones to which him the before their voyage, on the night who don’t know they are prudes. Jean-Pierre, image of of February 13-14, he writes the Jean-Pierre, for example, doesn’t chic scholar a young following in his notebook: know. But still, he is. This is what of deletion, Gallic makes scholarship so wonderful. has devoted general “One can do so very much in a Jean-Pierre loves three things: his career. Ah, to fiddle with the in arms single evening. After dinner, I 1) Himself, 2) Flaubert, and 3) deletions of others, and poke about against conversed with my mother, then Women. In that order. Jean-Pierre in the discovery of unhappened the dreamt of travels and possible lives. also likes men, but that is not on happenings! Que c’est bizarre, que Roman I wrote almost one whole chorus this list. c’est étrange! This is said to be the legions.” of St. Anthony (the dog-headed- very pinnacle of repressive effect monkeys part), read the entire first [Question: Is it on any list?] inasmuch as, chemin faisant, there volume of Memoirs from Beyond is no time for the examination of the Grave, then smoked three pipes, self-deletions. Between deletions, Maxime is an industrious and and now, take a pill. After that, a Jean-Pierre likes to screw; he says nimble boy. He takes more than shit. And sleep is still far off!” On the last day of April 1849, the this relaxes him. Je, as a student of 25,000 calotypes on this trip. This widow Mrs. Flaubert (residing at French, offer assistance in pursuit

14 Mantissa Journal Volume V Issue I FICTION

of excellence. more fiercely than this boredom to M: (silence) Hassan el-Bilbezi: a dancer dressed Jean-Pierre my life! The only difference is, it as a woman. “His belly and hips prefers it kills more slowly! It’s Monday. The G: Lemon ice! Lemon ice! gyrate hypnotically—the belly from behind Khamsin is blustering, the clouds veritably undulates—and during (see also are red…” [Traduisez!] M: (I’m going to kill him.) the grand finale, his pantaloons Huysmans’s inflate and open.” [Deleted] À rebours), The Khamsin is blustering. Maxime kills Gustave. World which helps Gustave is blustering. Gustave literature mourns. At this point, Gustave and Maxime look at each the Flaubert finds a white chameleon. Maxime Gustave hasn’t even written other with some surprise. As if go more smoothly the following strikes it dead. Gustave spots Madame Bovary. All right then, Gustave were seeing Maxime for day. I let him. After all, I love a flying heron. Maxime shoots sighs Maxime. I’ll spare him. I can the very first time. “. . . What is literature. it. Gustave and Maxime’s eyes use this one later (which he did). his name, where could he be living, meet. Their chests heave. Those He rewrites the end of the scene, what about his life, or his past? He sea-green eyes, those black lashes. like this: would have liked to explore the [Deleted] Gustave and Maxime furnishings in Maxime’s room, Gustave and Maxime set out walk through the desert. Gustave G: My dear Max, thank you ever so every last article of his clothing, in October of 1849. Maxime is and Maxime have been walking much for not shooting me in the the people jubilant. Gustave is swept on a through the desert for three days head. I’d have done it if I were you. he sees. The tide of ecstasy (see also the widow without a drop of water. desire for Flaubert’s last words: “Are you M: Gustave, this could be physical trying to kill me, Gus?!”). For me, Dialogue: the beginning of a beautiful possession writes Gustave, friendship is like a friendship. disappeared camel. Once it gets going, nothing G: Remember the lemon ice we had behind can stop it. Gustave is mistaken. at Tortini’s? (FIN) a deeper There are some things that can curiosity, an (pronounced Cannes). M: (nods) excruciating curiosity that knew no bounds.” G: Lemon Gustave and Maxime go whoring. [Gustave deletes this remark, ice is just Gustave still has some of that fine and uses it elsewhere. Jean- Travel is the greatest enemy of a heavenly. sausage from home, as well as a Pierre mentions nothing of this.] friendship. Or perhaps not. But if it Admit it, case of morbus gallicus. Non, je ne Gustave has a thought: travel is is, then it goes whole hog. Gustave you’d love to regrette rien! Secretly, Maxime is a sentimental education. This is bored. Gustave is not the least toss back a fascinated by him, and jealous. pleases him and he writes it down. interested in fulfillment. Maxime lemon ice right now. is astonished by this, yet remains Gustave and Maxime draw their displeased. Gustave, chuffs M: Indeed I would. voyage to a close. They smoke Maxime, is “I go off with that dissolute Safia- a water pipe in a Greek café. just like (Five minutes later) Zugera, a rakish little tigress. I Later, Gustave writes about it all, Honoré: sully the settee.” Gustave has an surprisingly, elsewhere [Jean- he looks at G: Oh, those lemon ices! The steam obsessional neurosis. He cannot Pierre is silent on this.]: nothing but that envelops the cup like a white stand disorder. remembers jelly. “He took a trip. He came to know, everything. “During my second round with one after the other, the melancholy But who M: Could we change the subject? Kücsük, when I kissed her on the of great ships, the shiver of wants to shoulder and felt her round choker awakening in a desert tent, the climb up to G: That would be nice, but lemon under my teeth, her pussy like a sweet lulling intoxication of those the guano- ice is stained velvet pillow, I was a wild landscapes and ruins, and the caked attic of fulfillment, thinks clearly animal.” strange bitterness of shattered Gustave. Gustave is no devoté of worthy of temptation.” unnecessary exertion. Gustave is having its Here the student of French will phenomenally corpulent. Gustave praises respond: And then: “A miserable attack of is cantilevered to the top of the sung. “Jean-Pierre, nerves about 3 in the afternoon.” Great Pyramid by twelve Arab Take a mon cher, Jean-Pierre at last reports, in a servants. At the peak of the spoonful that phrase, footnote: “It is quite difficult to Great Pyramid, gasping for air, and there ‘stained make out these words, overwritten they have a look around. The it towers velvet in a light blue ink; the deletions Pharaoh can just suck all my like a pillow’— only serve to render the text dicks, thinks Gustave. Le sport aide little cathedral; gently spread it would unreadable. This is not the non seulement le développement between tongue and palate. As you call it result of the author’s corrections physique, mais aussi la formation it slowly melts, it exudes a fresh, adjectival but rather the bowdlerizations morale (Baron Pierre de Coubertin, magnificent savor, bathing the or verbal?” of Caroline Franklin-Grout.” Les jeux Olympiques). [Mémorisez!] uvula, gently stroking the tonsils, [Qu’en pensez-vous?] Caroline is Gustave’s niece. sliding down the esophagus (to She manages Gustave’s papers. “. . . dear God, what is this constant the latter’s boundless delight), Louise Colet’s reaction: “Gustave, Caroline is an impossible prude. exhaustion that weighs me down and then it reaches the stomach, you bastard, go get fucked!” “The text, then, is unreadable,” wherever I go! It even accompanies which veritably cackles in glee. (Which he did.) continues a triumphant Jean- me on my trip! It has become one Just between us, a lemon ice is just Pierre, “but the word ‘nerves’ with me! Deianeira’s shirt did not what the Kusheir Desert needs! glows faintly through the ink. It cling to Hercules’ shoulders any appears that the word ‘seizure’

15 John Fowles Center for Creative Writing, Chapman University FICTION Memoirs Of A follows it.” And yet he seems so mild and quiet, his umbrella up. Of the higher Madman and asks so amiably, “Please lend classes one only saw an official Jean-Pierre has exposed Caroline. me your penknife; I wish to mend here and there. One I saw at the Jean-Pierre is not fond of Caroline. my pen.” Nevertheless, he knows street-crossing, and thought to By Nikolai Gogol how to scarify a petitioner till he myself, “Ah! my friend, you are not [Répétez!] has hardly a whole stitch left on going to the office, but after that October 3rd.—A strange his body. young lady who walks in front of O Caroline, O Jean-Pierre! occurrence has taken place to-day. you. You are just like the officers I got up fairly late, and when In our office it must be admitted who run after every petticoat they The word “nerves” glows faintly Mawra brought me my clean boots, everything is done in a proper see.” through the ink. I asked her how late it was. When and gentlemanly way; there is I heard it had long struck ten, I more cleanness and elegance than As I was thus following the train of dressed as quickly as possible. one will ever find in Government my thoughts, I saw a carriage stop offices. The tables are mahogany, before a shop just as I was passing To tell the truth, I would rather and everyone is addressed as “sir.” it. I recognized it at once; it was not have gone to the office at all And truly, were it not for this our director’s carriage. “He has to-day, for I know beforehand that official propriety, I should long ago nothing to do in the shop,” I said to our department-chief will look as have sent in my resignation. myself; “it must be his daughter.” sour as vinegar. For some time past he has been in the habit of saying I put on my old cloak, and took I pressed myself close against the to me, “Look here, my friend; there my umbrella, as a light rain was wall. A lackey opened the carriage is something wrong with your falling. No one was to be seen on door, and, as I had expected, she head. You often rush about as the streets except some women, fluttered like a bird out of it. How though you were possessed. Then who had flung their skirts over proudly she looked right and you make such confused abstracts their heads. Here and there one left; how she drew her eyebrows of the documents that the devil saw a cabman or a shopman with together, and shot lightnings from himself cannot make them out; you write the title without any capital letters, and add neither the date nor the docket-number.” The long-legged scoundrel! He is certainly envious of me, because I sit in the director’s work-room, and mend His Excellency’s pens. In a word, I should not have gone to the office if I had not hoped to meet the accountant, and perhaps squeeze a little advance out of this skinflint.

A terrible man, this accountant! As for his advancing one’s salary once in a way—you might sooner expect the skies to fall. You may beg and beseech him, and be on the very verge of ruin—this gray devil won’t budge an inch. At the same time, his own cook at home, as all the world knows, boxes his ears.

I really don’t see what good one gets by serving in our department. There are no plums there. In the fiscal and judicial offices it is quite different. There some ungainly fellow sits in a corner and writes and writes; he has such a shabby coat and such an ugly mug that one would like to spit on both of them. But you should see what a splendid country-house he has rented. He would not condescend to accept a gilt porcelain cup as a present. “You can give that to your family doctor,” he would say. Nothing less than a pair of chestnut horses, a fine carriage, or a beaver-fur coat worth three hundred roubles would be good enough for him.

16 Mantissa Journal Volume V Issue I FICTION her eyes—good heavens! I am lost, Now I am willing to forfeit a whole ah! what folly—let me say no more rascals offered me his snuff-box hopelessly lost! month’s salary if I ever heard about it! without even getting up from his of dogs writing before. This has chair. “Don’t you know then, you But why must she come out in such certainly astonished me. For some I have read the Northern Bee. country-bumpkin, that I am an abominable weather? And yet they little time past I hear and see What foolish people the French official and of aristocratic birth?” say women are so mad on their things which no other man has are! By heavens! I should like to finery! heard and seen. tackle them all, and give them This time, however, I took my hat a thrashing. I have also read a and overcoat quietly; these people She did not recognize me. I had “I will,” I thought, “follow that fine description of a ball given naturally never think of helping wrapped myself as closely as dog in order to get to the bottom of by a landowner of Kursk. The one on with it. I went home, lay a possible in my cloak. It was dirty the matter. Accordingly, I opened landowners of Kursk write a fine good while on the bed, and wrote and old-fashioned, and I would not my umbrella and went after the style. some verses in my note: have liked to have been seen by her two ladies. They went down Bean wearing it. Now they wear cloaks Street, turned through Citizen Then I noticed that it was already “‘Tis an hour since I saw thee, with long collars, but mine has Street and Carpenter Street, and half-past twelve, and the director only a short double collar, and the finally halted on the Cuckoo had not yet left his bedroom. But And it seems a whole long year; cloth is of inferior quality. Bridge before a large house. I know about half-past one something this house; it is Sverkoff’s. What a happened which no pen can If I loathe my own existence, Her little dog could not get into monster he is! What sort of people describe. the shop, and remained outside. I live there! How many cooks, how How can I live on, my dear?” know this dog; its name is “Meggy.” many bagmen! There are brother The door opened. I thought it officials of mine also there packed was the director; I jumped up I think they are by Pushkin. Before I had been standing there a on each other like herrings. And I with my documents from the minute, I heard a voice call, “Good have a friend there, a fine player on seat, and—then—she—herself— In the evening I wrapped myself day, Meggy!” the cornet.” came into the room. Ye saints! in my cloak, hastened to the how beautifully she was dressed. director’s house, and waited there Who the deuce was that? I looked Her garments were whiter than a long time to see if she would round and saw two ladies hurrying a swan’s plumage—oh how come out and get into the carriage. by under an umbrella—one old, splendid! A sun, indeed, a real sun! I only wanted to see her once, but the other fairly young. They had she did not come. already passed me when I heard She greeted me and asked, “Has not the same voice say again, “For my father come yet?” shame, Meggy!” Ah! what a voice. A canary bird! A What was that? I saw Meggy real canary bird! sniffing at a dog which ran behind the ladies. The deuce! I thought “Your Excellency,” I wanted to to myself, “I am not drunk? That exclaim, “don’t have me executed, happens pretty seldom.” but if it must be done, then kill The ladies mounted to the fifth me rather with your own angelic “No, Fidel, you are wrong,” I heard story. “Very good,” thought I; “I hand.” But, God knows why, I Meggy say quite distinctly. “I will make a note of the number, in could not bring it out, so I only was—bow—wow!—I was—bow! order to follow up the matter at the said, “No, he has not come yet.” wow! wow!—very ill.” first opportunity.” She glanced at me, looked at the What an extraordinary dog! I was, October 4th.—To-day is Wednesday, books, and let her handkerchief to tell the truth, quite amazed and I was as usual in the office. I fall. Instantly I started up, but to hear it talk human language. came early on purpose, sat down, slipped on the infernal polished But when I considered the matter and mended all the pens. floor, and nearly broke my nose. well, I ceased to be astonished. Still I succeeded in picking up the In fact, such things have already Our director must be a very handkerchief. Ye heavenly choirs, happened in the world. It is said clever man. The whole room what a handkerchief! So tender that in England a fish put its head is full of bookcases. I read the and soft, of the finest cambric. It out of water and said a word or titles of some of the books; they had the scent of a general’s rank! two in such an extraordinary were very learned, beyond the language that learned men have comprehension of people of She thanked me, and smiled so been puzzling over them for three my class, and all in French and amiably that her sugar lips nearly years, and have not succeeded in German. I look at his face; see! how melted. Then she left the room. interpreting them yet. I also read much dignity there is in his eyes. in the paper of two cows who I never hear a single superfluous After I had sat there about an hour, entered a shop and asked for a word from his mouth, except a flunkey came in and said, “You pound of tea. that when he hands over the can go home, Mr. Ivanovitch; the documents, he asks, “What sort of director has already gone out!” Meanwhile what Meggy went on weather is it?” to say seemed to me still more I cannot stand these lackeys! remarkable. She added, “I wrote to No, he is not a man of our class; he They hang about the vestibules, you lately, Fidel; perhaps Polkan is a real statesman. I have already and scarcely vouchsafe to greet did not bring you the letter.” noticed that I am a special favorite one with a nod. Yes, sometimes of his. If now his daughter also— it is even worse; once one of these

17 John Fowles Center for Creative Writing, Chapman University AUTHORS

About the Writers

Mark Axelrod Mark Axelrod is a graduate of both Indiana University and the University of Minnesota. He has been the Director of the John Andrey Yuryevich Kurkov Fowles Center for Creative Writing for which he has received Andrey Yuryevich Kurkov is a Ukrainian novelist and an five National Endowment for the Arts Grants. He has received independent thinker who writes in Russian. He is the author of 19 numerous writing awards including two United Kingdom novels, including the bestselling Death and the Penguin, 9 books for Leverhulme Fellowships for Creative Writing as well as children, and about 20 documentary, fiction and TV movie scripts. screenwriting awards from the Sundance Institute, the WGA East, His work is currently translated into 37 languages, including and the Nicholl Fellowship. He recently received awards from English, Spanish, Japanese, French, German, Italian, Chinese, the Irvine International Film Festival, the Chicago International Swedish, Persian and Hebrew, and published in 65 countries. Film Festival and the Illinois International Film Festival for his Kurkov, who has long been a respected commentator on Ukraine for screenplays. the international media, notably in Europe and the United States, has written assorted articles for various publications worldwide. His books are full of black humor, post-Soviet reality and elements of surrealism. Oksana Zabuzhko Oksana Zabuzhko (b.1960), Ukraine’s major writer and public intellectual, authors over twenty books (poetry, fiction, non- fiction), and is internationally known with her novels Field Work Yurii Andrukovych in Ukrainian Sex (1996), and The Museum of Abandoned Secrets Yurii Andrukovych was born in 1960 in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine. (2010). Her books have been translated into seventeen languages, He studied at Ukrainian Printing Academy (1977—1982) and in and won her many awards (MacArthur Grant, Angelus Central Moscow Literary Institute (1989—1991). In 1985, he founded European Literary Prize, Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine, et the literary performance group Bu-Ba-Bu (Burlesk—Balahan— al.). Recent publications: Der lange Abschied von der Angst. Essay Bufonada i. e. Burlesque-Bluster-Buffoonery). He has published five (Droschl, 2018), Your Ad Could Go Here. Stories (AmazonCrossing, poetry books, six novels and four books of essays. His books are 2019, forthcoming). translated into 20 languages and published in Poland, Germany, Canada, USA, Hungary, Spain, Switzerland and other countries. He is a laureate of six prestigious international literary awards: Herder Preis (Hamburg, 2001), Erich-Maria Remarque Friedenspreis (Osnabrück, 2005), Leipziger Buchpreis zur Europäischen Mikhail Shishkin Verständigung (2006), Central European Literary Award Angelus Mikhail Shishkin is one of the most prominent names in (Wrocław,2006), Hannah-Arendt-Preis für politisches Denken contemporary Russian literature. Shishkin was born 1961 in (Bremen, 2014) and Vilenica Award (2017). Moscow. Shishkin is the only writer who has received all the most important and prestigious of Russian literary awards: the Russian Booker Prize (2000), The National Bestseller Prize (2006) and The Big Book Prize (2006, 2011). His books have been translated into 30 languages.

18 Mantissa Journal Volume V Issue I AUTHORS

ZSÓFIA BÁN Zsófia Bán is a writer, critic and scholar. Her fiction has appeared in Hungarian and foreign language translations, including German, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Slovenian and others. She has been the recipient of a number of prizes for fiction, essay writing and criticism. Nikolai Her most recent book of essays on the visual representation of historical memory is Der Gogol Sommer unsres Missvergnügens, [The Nikolai Vasilievich Summer of Our Discontent], Gogol was born on the Matthes und Seitz and DAAD, same day as Axelrod, 2019. Her book of stories Night also of Ukrainian School: A Reader for Grownups origin. They went to school together was published by Open Letter before Gogol decided he had enough of Books, 2019, translated by Jim Ukraine and moved to St. Petersburg. Tucker. Zsófia Bán was a writer- Although Gogol was considered by in-residence with the DAAD his contemporaries to be one of the Artists-in-Berlin Program in preeminent figures of the natural school 2015/16. She lives and works in Budapest where she is Associate of Russian literary realism, later critics have Professor of American Studies at Eötvös Loránd University. found in his work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of surrealism and the grotesque (“The Nose”, “Viy”, “The Overcoat”, “Nevsky Prospekt”). His early works, such as Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, were influenced by his Ukrainian upbringing, Ukrainian culture and folklore. His later writing satirized political corruption in the Russian Empire (The Government Inspector, Dead Souls). The novel Taras Bulba (1835) and the play Marriage (1842), along with the short stories “Diary of a Madman”, “The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich”, “The Portrait” and “The Carriage”, are also among his best-known works. He and Axelrod have continued to communicate over the decades.

19 John Fowles Center for Creative Writing, Chapman University The next Issue is devoted to

Scandinavia

2022 will be our 25th Anniversary!

20 Mantissa Journal Volume V Issue I