B. Alquit is the pen-name of Eliezer Blum, a member of the editorial staff of the Jewish, Morning Journal and the author of a weekly column in that paper. He was born in Helm, Poland, in 1896 and came to the United States in 1914. He has written voluminously for Yiddish magazines and newspapers, and is noted for his stories of American life as well as those portraying the old world of his youth. This story was translated from the Yiddish by Etta Blum, the author’s wife and a well-known poet.
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It was at the time when the Moscow subway was being built. I was then living on Tverskaya with another American, who from the first day of our acquaintance had stipulated that we should address each other as “citizen.” He was to call me Citizen Zlotin and I to call him Citizen Stern.
He made a point of avoiding tourists, this Citizen Stern. He had not come to Russia to poke an inquisitive nose into the Soviet “market-wagon,” in order to see what wares the proletarian revolution had to sell to a badly adjusted world. Why, then? Firmly planted in a pair of thick, warm bedroom slippers, he stood in the center of the room, stared at the smoke from his cigarette, peeled off its thin, protective paper, and with explorative seriousness scrutinized the bit of cotton in the long mouthpiece.
“Just so,” he said. “To give a look at Moscow. See the Russians.”
At the beginning, however, he had happened to land in one of the hotels around the Bolshoi Theatre.
“And there,” he said, “wherever you turn, there stands a tourist. So I pleaded with one: ‘Move on, Citizen Alexander, do not obstruct my view. I have come to see Moscow.’ So he moved away, and in his place sprang up another.”
There was no lack of Alexanders in the neighborhood of the Bolshoi Theatre. The place teemed with foreigners—experts, pilgrims, just tourists—and, among them all, those who had not come but returned, like forgotten landlords who, before departing for the distant world, had left behind them a definite plan for a new order, a plan complete with all details. Circumstances had demanded that they should leave. But when they returned and saw how things had actually been done, they realized that strange hands, at best, are only good for brushing hot coals away.
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He was, this Citizen Stern, a man of about my age, but his face was a good deal younger, and his hair—almost entirely gray. An aged man in the middle of his forties. A youth with a wealth of patience. He had a taste for the antique too refined for a junk-peddler, yet insufficiently developed for a connoisseur. Although he could scarcely speak Yiddish, he was fond of Yiddish proverbs, without clearly understanding their meaning. These proverbs spoke out of him like so many dybbukim. They were a portion of the antiques he had inherited from the “old people” in his American family.
And his favorite dybbuk was: “In whichever synagogue you go, that’s the k’dushe to intone.” This was his philosophy of life. He noticed, for example, that the average Soviet citizen, often even the professional, shaved but once a week. So he immediately adapted his beard to the Soviet way of life. And he would argue with me each morning:
“It is scarcely tolerant, Citizen Zlotin. It is downright snobbery to put on your Sunday face in the midst of an ordinary Wednesday. ‘In whichever synagogue you go, that’s the k’dushe to intone.’”
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One fine morning. The corridor squeaked with the movement of a dozen doors. Refreshed baritones responded to feminine voices. Da-da and oop-la. Says Citizen Stern:
Surely you’ve heard the news?
What news?
That the new subway has pitched into an old cemetery.
And he said this as though a subway already existed in Moscow and a most peculiar accident had actually occurred. As a matter of fact, the tunnels were then still under construction, and not even for the entire length. I tried to console him:
Such a habit have they acquired already, our world capitals, they flourish around cemeteries. In the heart of each great city you will find a cemetery. And when the necessity arises, the corpses are politely requested to bestir themselves. They are served an eviction notice. Another suitable resting-place is found for them.
“But man,” he cried, “do you know who lies in that cemetery?”
“Your great-grandfather?”
Citizen Stern measured me with a face full of mockery.
“You want a compliment?”
“Out with it!”
“How much more logically could he have been your great-grandfather—I mean, you would wish it.”
“Who is it?”
“Gogol.”
“You mean—Gogol?”
“Yes, the famous Russian writer, Nikolai Gogol.”
He showed me the newspaper item announcing that a group of Russian writers were to be present at the cemetery for the uncovering of Gogol’s grave.
It was understood, of course, that the other corpses would not be neglected: they, too, were receiving a due unburial.
“And mind you,” Citizen Stem added, “they have well merited the respect of the Soviet capital.”
“You mean the corpses?”
“Yes, they too lived in a time of revolution. They saw the first looms, sewing machines, and locomotives. In their time factories sprang up, tearing the craftsmen away from their domestic workshops, and there followed the first primitive outbursts of class struggle. Workers hurled stones at the machines. That was the period of the Industrial Revolution.”
He took pleasure in this short historical jaunt and wished to travel further:
“Marx,” he said, “Marx had just arrived in Paris, where he became acquainted with Proudhon.”
“And wrote to Engels, the good-heart of the First International, that he did not trust the Russians.”
“Is it not astounding!” Citizen Stern jumped up with such force that I fully expected him to tear open door and windows, awaken all Moscow, leap onto the Red Square, and shout: “Listen, people, citizens, comrades—Marx did not trust the Russians!”
But no, not he. For him, this fact was another antique, a relic deserving of close scrutiny. Let’s see: When Marx said “the Russians” he meant Bakunin. They quarreled, the master-builders of the coming times. They marveled at each other and they quarreled with all the human passions of the gods. The one suspected that the other, the heavy-bodied Russian, was a Czarist spy; while the latter, in turn, admitted that had Marx not been a German and a Jew, he might well have elevated himself to a more rational system of freedom. Dynamite had not yet been discovered. But machine production had already reached its highest peak in England, and the old man undertook the writing of Das Kapital.
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And so, consequently, there was concern about the corpses from that period, concern that the Soviet subway should not—God forbid!—run them over. Another suitable resting-place was found for them, and at the grave of Gogol gathered the representatives of present-day Russian literature. Among them were two unknown visitors—my compatriot and I. As a matter of fact, Citizen Stern was a little late, but come he did.
For me this was a tremendous event. I could scarcely await the appointed hour. It was the first time I had given a thought to Gogol, the man, he who had once been flesh and blood—and now I was actually to see him. Of course I was well acquainted with him, this unforgettable artist. Of all the old Russian masters, he was my favorite. But I had read almost nothing of his life, and whenever I thought or spoke of him, I thought or spoke of Gogol the rabid anti-Semite.
Had this been true of almost anyone else, I should have viewed the remains, and let it go at that. But in Gogol’s case, his hatred for Jews somehow confused and shamed me. Here was a fierce sadist who could, nevertheless, write Dead Souls. Dostoevsky’s anti-Semitism had never been a puzzle to me. To me, Dostoevsky was more brainstormer than artist, his prose full of sandy stretches leading to a dark cloister. Even in his humor—if it can be detected in his work, if passionate joy is also humor—one feels the dread of epilepsy. And as for his morality, he himself is a cloudburst over the spiritual cripples who come to kneel about the cloister. Perhaps those others are right who say that precisely because of this Dostoevsky is a greater artist than Gogol. But it seems that when Gogol arrived at such a point, he became insane and ceased writing. Perhaps that is why he was closer to me. He wrote only so long as he could laugh.
But how he laughed at the Jews! After talking about this once with a friend, I buried Dead Souls among the stored-away books in a dark closet, that none might see it in my home.
Only here, at his grave, did I first see him—the man.
Cautiously the grave was opened. The day was sunny but cold. With upturned collars we watched the grave-diggers and tried to read the worn-out inscriptions on the adjacent tombstones. Suddenly we all moved nearer in a circle about the open grave.
Nikolai Vassilievitch!
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My eyes were dazzled by the whiteness of Gogol’s bones.
I felt as though my body were being over-run by cold ants. My head was splitting. It was as if the skeleton possessed a hypnotic power, demanding, “Look!”
The sun flooded the grave, but it was like a cold flash from the sky. The turned-up soil of the grave breathed more warmth. The skeleton was whole, inviolate and white, as though the earth and the life within the earth, for these past ninety years, had been smoothing and polishing Gogol’s bones.
No vestige of clothes, no sign of flesh. Naked. The earth, which now lay in confusion about him, had freed him from everything, cleansed him completely. Here was the skull, the ribs, and here, in the emptiness underlying the ribs, the little bones—the hands, lying one near the other.
“Nikolai Vassilievitch,” someone behind me said.
I wanted to turn around, but my eyes were blinded by the golden shimmer of a ring on one of the little finger bones. I do not know how long it lasted, perhaps it was only a flicker of a moment, but I perceived the whole of sunlight in that ring, hanging so loosely on the finger bone of Gogol’s hand.
And how shall I tell it? The late autumn afternoon, at that moment, had the power of an Ezekiel, who could command him to awake, who could bid him arise, that skeleton with the ring.
The grave-diggers bent over. A clinking could be heard, and I do not know how it was for the others, but for me—I swear it—that clink of bones was like a reincarnation of that distant, ancient valley. And, suitably, it spoke to me in Russian, that biblical moment. After the first glances and the first moments of silence, the spectators broke into speech. About what, do you ask? Translate it into Yiddish, into English—it amounted to the usual talk of our own literary cafes; naturally, with a Soviet coloring. But, fundamentally, the same writers’ talk. Certainly they spoke about Nikolai Vassilievitch, but as though he were no longer here. But I had not ceased to see him. The sound of his bones must have heightened my imagination, for I called out, loudly, for all to hear:
Nikolai Vassilievitch, I forgive you!
Everyone turned to look at me. There was a sudden silence. People exchanged significant glances, seemed to inquire about me with their eyes. I was abashed but did not lose my self-possession. I felt terribly foolish but I knew that the only thing that could save me was the fool in me, if I would only let him continue talking—and he spoke:
How clean are your bones already, Nikolai Vassilievitch. Your Taras amazed and affrighted my childhood years. I fled, together with the chickens and the goats, with the young girls and the Sabbath peace, when he and Andrey and Ostop rode past our street with spears. Those spears loomed taller than the shingled roofs. Later, you told me of Cossack hermits who lived with their rifles as with women, how they waged war constantly for freedom and for their faith, and how the father Cossack shot his own son to death, in cold blood. I thought of Abraham and of Isaac and of the command to sacrifice, and said: But Taras is a murderer. Now it is all a story of long ago. Your wars are parables of times gone by. But the unbridled Cossack strength and the great love for Mother Russia—only these are true! Arise, Nikolai Vassilievitch, see the legendary heroism of Ostop and Taras, the old partisan, and now look at the Prussians, whom you hated so. Hear them laugh—how they jeer at “Yankel” and “Mordecai”—(Yankel, General Yankel, and Mordecai writing the communiques)—how you laughed, how you mocked at them! Now they are laughing, as you laughed. Your laughter. Do you remember the guffaws? And then, how could one not laugh, watching the sheenies, how the flaps of their coats flew open, their feet up-side down, wriggling, dancing so comically as they were thrown into the Dniester, so comically, the devil take them!”
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Did I really say all that, or did I only think it?
I swear I don’t know. Only this I remember well, that the people looked at me strangely. They moved away from me and came closer again. One bit his lips, pulled at his moustache. Another made a remark about the ring. It was Citizen Stern. Never before had he seen gold of such dazzling brightness—such radiance.
“Almost symbolic,” said someone standing near him.
“And how clean his bones are, already,” I added.
“Already?” The other did not understand.
Cold north winds began to blow.
“There’ll be an early winter,” said one. The setting sun reddened his face.
With upturned collars we left the cemetery. Until I was outside I could hear the heavy tread of the laborers as they carried the bones of Gogol to the automobile.
Citizen Stern walked by my side in silence. He cast a look behind him. The grave’s hollow was filled with earth, moundless, caved in. For ninety years this had been a hallowed place, and now—earth, earth with the emptiness of an old caved in mouth from which all teeth had been wrenched, and it was sad, without life and without death.
“Did you see the ring?” my friend asked in a subdued voice, suppressing a shiver between his teeth, “did you see how it beamed? As in life.”
“No, more brightly than in life.”
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