Short Fiction

By Fyodor Sologub.

Translated by John Cournos, Stephen Graham, Rosa Savory Graham, and P. Selver.

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Foreword

This edition of Fyodor Sologub’s Short Fiction was produced from various translations. “The Old House,” “The Uniter of Souls,” “The White Dog,” “Light and Shadows,” “The Glimmer of Hunger,” “Hide and Seek,” “The Smile,” “The Hoop,” “The Search” and “The White Mother” were translated by John Cournos and originally published in 1915. “Wings,” “The Sweet-Scented Name,” “Turandina,” “Lohengrin,” “Who Art Thou?,” “The Dress of the Lily and of the Cabbage,” “She Who Wore a Crown,” “The Delicate Child,” “The Bit of Candy,” “The Lump of Sugar,” “The Bull,” “The Golden Post,” “So Arose a Misunderstanding,” “Frogs,” “The Lady in Fetters,” “The Kiss of the Unborn,” “The Little Stick,” “Equality,” “Adventures of a Cobblestone,” “The Future,” “The Road and the Light,” “The Keys,” “The Independent Leaves,” “The Crimson Ribbon,” “Slayers of Innocent Babes,” “The Herald of the Beast,” “On the Other Side of the River Mairure,” and “The Candles” were translated by Stephen Graham and Rosa Savory Graham and also published in 1915. “He Became Better,” “Three Gobs of Spit,” “Fairy Tales in the Garden, and Fairy Tales at Court,” “Captive Death,” “A Marriage,” “The Man Who Became Smaller,” “Dotard and Dotardess” and “Little Songs” were translated by John Cournos and originally published in 1916. “The Little Ray in the Little Cell,” “The Affectionate Boy” and “They” were translated by John Cournos and originally published in 1917. “The Tiny Man” was translated by P. Selver and originally published in 1919.

Robin Whittleton

Malmö, Sweden, November 2019

Short Fiction

The Old House1

I

It was an old, large, one-storied house, with a mezzanine. It stood in a village, eleven versts from a railway station, and about fifty versts from the district town. The garden which surrounded the house seemed lost in drowsiness, while beyond it stretched vistas and vistas of inexpressibly dull, infinitely depressing fields.

Once this house had been painted lavender, but now it was faded. Its roof, once red, had turned dark brown. But the pillars of the terrace were still quite strong, the little arbours in the garden were intact, and there was an Aphrodite in the shrubbery.

It seemed as if the old house were full of memories. It stood, as it were, dreaming, recalling, lapsing finally into a mood of sorrow at the overwhelming flood of doleful memories.

Everything in this house was as before, as in those days when the whole family lived there together in the summer, when Borya was yet alive.

Now, in the old manor, lived only women: Borya’s grandmother, Elena Kirillovna Vodolenskaya; Borya’s mother, Sofia Alexandrovna Ozoreva; and Borya’s sister, Natalya Vasilyevna. The old grandmother, and the mother, and the young girl appeared tranquil, and at times even cheerful. It was the second year of their awaiting in the old house the youngest of the family, Boris. Boris who was no longer among the living.

They hardly spoke of him to one another; yet their thoughts, their memories, and their musings of him filled their days. At times dark threads of grief stole in among the even woof of these thoughts and reveries; and tears fell bitterly and ceaselessly.

When the midday sun rested overhead, when the sad moon beckoned, when the rosy dawn blew its cool breezes, when the evening sun blazed its red laughter—these were the four points between which their spirits fluctuated from evening joy to high midday sorrow. Swayed involuntarily, all three of them felt the sympathy and antipathy of the hours, each mood in turn.

The happiness of dawn, the bright, midday sadness, the joy of dusk, the pale pining of night. The four emotions lifted them infinitely higher than the rope upon which Borya had swung, upon which Borya had died.

II

At pale-rose dawn, when the merrily green, harmoniously white birches bend their wet branches before the windows, just beyond the little patch of sand by the round flowerbed; at pale-rose dawn—when a fresh breeze comes blowing from the bathing pond—then wakes Natasha, the first of the three.

What a joy it is to wake at dawn! To throw aside the cool cover of muslin, to rest upon the elbow, upon one’s side, and to look out of the window with large, dark, sad eyes.

Out of the window the sky is visible, seeming quite low over the white distant birches. A pale vermilion sunrise brightly suffuses its soft fire through the thin mist which stretches over the earth. There is in its quiet, gently joyous flame a great tension of young fears and of half-conscious desires; what tension, what happiness, and what sadness! It smiles through the dew of sweet morning tears, over white lilies-of-the-valley, over the blue violets of the broad fields.

Wherefore tears! To what end the grief of night!

There, close to the window, hangs a sprig of sweet-flag, banishing all evil. It was put there by the grandmother, and the old nurse insists on its staying there. It trembles in the air, the sprig of sweet-flag, and smiles its dry green smile.

Natasha’s face lapses into a quiet, rosy serenity.

The earth awakes in its fresh morning vigour. The voices of newly-roused life reach Natasha. Here the restless twitter of birds comes from among the swaying damp branches. There in the distance can be heard the prolonged trill of a horn. Elsewhere, quite near, on the path by the window, there are sounds of something walking with a heavy, stamping tread. The cheerful neighing of a foal is heard, and from another quarter the protracted lowing of sullen cows.

III

Natasha rises, smiles at something, and goes quickly to the window. Her window looks down upon the earth from a height. It is in three sections, in the mezzanine. Natasha does not draw the curtains across it at night, so as not to hide from her drowsing eyes the comforting glimmer of the stars and the witching face of the moon.

What happiness it is to open the window, to fling it wide open with a vigorous thrust of the hand! From the direction of the river the gentlest of morning breezes comes blowing into Natasha’s face, still somewhat rapt in sleep. Beyond the garden and the hedges she can see the broad fields beloved from childhood. Spread over them are sloping hillocks, rows of ploughed soil, green groves, and clusters of shrubbery.