Robert Chandler (translator), Elizabeth Chandler (translator), Anne Marie Jackson (translator), Irina Steinberg (translator) 2017

Paris, 1920, three years after the October revolution, le dernier déjeuner, elle mange le chagrin.

In tragi-farcical vignettes, Teffi’s memoir pieces together her journey from Moscow to Constantinople, together with Arkady Averchenko, her impresario Gooskin, the actresses, and hundreds of thousands other unheroic individuals who found themselves on the wrong side of history. The clueless and haggard émigrés came in droves, trickled through icy outposts and poured into makeshift cityscapes, chased to the edge of the land by a dismal and violent whirlwind. They looted, cheated, strayed, betrayed, partied like Bacchus, and cut in line for permits, tickets, a room or a berth.

Acting differently would be insensible and unnatural, given the circumstances.

“With my own eyes I have seen sailors taking a man out onto the ice in order to shoot him – and I have seen the condemned man hopping over puddles to keep his feet dry and turning up his collar to shield his chest from the wind. Those few steps were the last steps he would ever take, and instinctively he wanted to make them as comfortable as possible.

We were no different. We bought ourselves some “last scraps” of fabric. We listened for the last time to the last operetta and the last exquisitely erotic verses. What did it matter whether the verses were good or terrible? All that mattered was not to know, not to be aware – we had to forget that we were being led onto the ice.” – Teffi wrote.

An acclaimed author who at one point or another supported one faction or another, Teffi was widely read by the populace, her prose witty and entertaining in all degrees of its seriousness. She portrayed nameless strangers and historical figures in fair play. The daily terrors post-1917, aristocrats, officials, and intelligentsias denounced, executed, tortured, robbed, and left to die alone and impoverished. Yet there are mad vignettes like this one, which took place after Teffi boarded the Shilka, bound for Novorossiysk from Odessa:

“The tug towed us to a coal freighter. Then came an announcement addressed to everyone on board – “to everyone, I repeat everyone, without exception: You must load the coal onto the Shilka yourselves. There are no workers on the freighter and we have no crew. If you want this ship to move, you must all get to work.”

“Every one? Surely not everyone!”

“Yes,” came the reply. “Everyone.”

This was followed by a most curious scene.   

Wanting to show that they knew all this was a joke, elegant young men in smart suits smiled nervously. Any moment now, of course, it would become obvious that elegantly dressed young men cannot be forced to hump coal. That would be simply too absurd! Ridiculous!

“All right – everyone line up on deck!” called out a commanding voice. “Every man present, except the old and infirm.”

The elegant young men were dumbstruck. They looked around in confusion. This joke was going on too long.

“Well? What are you waiting for?” someone shouted at one of them. “Didn’t you hear the order? Get up on deck.”

Up on deck, perhaps their elegance would be more apparent. It would be obvious that they were the wrong men for the job.

The deck quickly began to fill with rows of passengers.

“You are about to be given a basket. Place this basket on your back.”

…

Out onto the deck came a thickset gentleman of about forty, his eyes flickering with rage.

“Will you please stop this at once?”

“Only when you tell me on what grounds you are refusing to carry out your share of the work now required from each man on board!”

“On what grounds?” bellowed the thickset gentleman. “I’m refusing on the grounds that I’m a landowner and a nobleman. I have never worked, I never shall work and you won’t see me working today. Get that into your heads once and for all!”

A ripple of indignation passed through the crowd.

“Excuse me, but if we refuse to work, this boat will never get out to sea!”

“My husband’s a landowner too,” came a squeaky voice.

“We’ll fall into the hands of the Bolsheviks!”

“What’s that got to do with me?” the gentleman cried out indignantly. “Hire someone! Do whatever is necessary! We’ve been living in a capitalist society and I fully intend to adhere to capitalist principles. If you prefer all this socialist nonsense and labour for everyone, then what are you doing on this ship? Go ashore and join your Bolshevik comrades. Understand?”

This caused confusion and division.

“Well, up to a point…”

“But on the other hand, we can hardly just wait here for the Bolsheviks…”

“And if we’ve all got to work, why shouldn’t he?”

“Lynch him!” snorted an old lady who had just appeared on the deck.“

…

Teffi’s world is now gone, a thing of time past and time destroyed. But either history repeats itself or there is no history. Memories from Moscow to the Black Sea reads refreshingly contemporary, as if the flow of time is non-linear.

“Now [he] has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” – said Einstein, in a eulogy for his friend.

To think about the past, present, and future, about the beloved, that be is in perspective. Once they were and then they were not. Only here I am, agreeing with everyone else on grief.

Where’d all the time go? – asked Dr. Dog.

*Thumbs up for the translators’ very helpful footnotes about historical figures, places, and events mentioned.