A novel without lies

"A novel without lies" is the story of an extraordinary friendship and an extraordinary poet seen through the prism of an extraordinary time and place, the upside-down world of Moscow just after the 1917 Revolution. By the time Sergei Esenin (1895-1925) met Mariengof in 1918, his lyrical verse had made him a national celebrity.

The cultivated Mariengof found the peasant-born Esenin provincial at first. But soon the two would be sitting up at night hammering out their Imagist manifesto. Mariengof traces Esenin's career in bohemian Moscow as well as in Europe where the poet travelled with his exotic and much older wife, the American dancer Isadora Duncan.

A self-described genius, Esenin was devastated by his non-reception in the west where no one knew him (or read poetry). His response was to ignore the west, moving through it like a blind man. When Esenin divorced Duncan and returned to Moscow, he was a changed man: crushed by the West, disillusioned by Soviet Russia; as well as increasingly unstable and alcoholic. Soon after parting company with the Imagists, he hung himself, having written a last poem in his own blood

In those days a man was stronger than a horse.

Horses would fall on the streets, die and clutter the roadways with their carcasses. A man would find the strength to drag himself as far as a stable and, if there was nothing else for it but to stretch out his legs, he'd do that behind a stone wall and under an iron roof.

Esenin and I were walking along Myasnitskaya Street.

A novel without lies was published in volume 23 of Glas. Edited by Natasha Perova and Joanne Turnbull, Glas is a Moscow-based literary journal featuring contemporary Russian writing in English translation.

Glas titles are available in the UK from Inpress Books and in north America from Northwestern University Press.

More Glas stories on openDemocracy:

Alexander Terekhov, "Pitch Black Void"

Leonid Latynin, "Sleeper at Harvest Time "

Ksenia Klimova, "A Marriage of Convenience"

Ludmila Petrushevskaya, "The Princess with the Lily-white Feet"

Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, "Yellow Coal"

Alexander Selin, "Alpatovka",

Elena Glinka, "Kolyma Streetcar"

Boris Yampolsky, "A Crowded Place"

Alexander Pokrovsky, "Saint among saints"

The number of horse carcasses, tallied up by our shocked eyes, exceeded by an order of three the number of blocks from our own Bogoslovsky Lane to the Garden Ring Road.

Opposite the Main Post Office lay two bloated carcasses, one black, missing a tail, the other white with bared teeth.

Atop the white one sat two ravens, pecking eye-jelly out of the hollow sockets. A snub-nosed candy vendor in a brown bowler hat on his tow-haired little head, tossed a rock at them. The ravens waved their black wings and cawed back some abuse of their own.

A dog was gnawing on the second cadaver. A cabman passing by on a mud-splattered sleigh flogged it with his whip. The dog pulled its snout, long and narrow like a sharpened pencil, out of the cavity where the horse's tail had once been. The dog's eyes showed annoyance, its white snout covered to the ears in blood, as if wearing a red mask. The cur licked its chops with relish.

The whole way back we walked in silence. It was snowing.

Entering our room, we threw our coats onto the chairs, not bothering to shake the flakes off them. It was below zero in the room. The snow on the coats didn't melt.

A red-haired girl brought us a small electric heater. The girl loved poetry - and one of us, to boot.

We never did manage to find out which one, due to our tireless pursuit of glory and the endless obstacles then. Reminiscing about this later on, we both regretted it - the girl had big blue eyes and hair the color of maple leaves in September.

The heater brought us no small comfort.

When we sat down to write verse, we would lock the door, turning the key twice in the lock, and with a criminal air we'd set the heater up on the table. That our ink didn't freeze in the inkwell and that we could write without gloves on was cause for celebration.

Electric heaters were strictly forbidden; we were committing a crime against the Revolution.

Around two in the morning our friend Arseny Avraamov would come for the heater. He was finishing his book, The Incarnation (about us), and in his room at the Nerenzee house the ink would also freeze and the snow on his galoshes wouldn't melt. What's more, Arseny had no gloves. He said that without the heater his fingers became like icicles -- if he tried to bend them, they'd snap off.

I note all this down so you'll read Esenin's Mare Ships more attentively: a remarkable poem about 'the ripped-open stomachs of mares, with their black sails of ravens'; about 'the sun, cooling like a puddle made by a gelding'; about 'hard frost skipping along the fields'; and about 'dogs sucking the edge of dawn with famished mouths.'

Since then a lot of water has flowed under the bridge. The Bakhrushin house now has central heating; at Nerenzee's there are gas stoves and bathrooms that warm up in a few minutes, while Esenin rose to fame at last, the day after his death...

Our secret electric heater was discovered. For days, Esenin and I lived in fear. We speculated for hours on end as to what punishment Revolutionary law would bring down on our heads. We had nightmares about Lubyanka, an investigator with hawk-like eyes, black steel bars. When our building's super amnestied our crime, we had a feast. Friends shook our hands, girlfriends cried tears of joy, they all embraced and congratulated us on this unexpected outcome. In celebration we drank tea from a samovar brought to a boil by St. Nicholas: we had no coal or chips -- so we had to chop this old icon, hanging humbly in the corner of the room. Only How-Much-fer-Salt refused to drink the divine tea. He pushed away the seductively steaming glass, sat sullenly, and angrily explained that his grandfather was a believer, that he had great respect for his grandfather and just three years ago such tea would have gotten us all exiled to Siberia.

Meanwhile, the winter was becoming fiercer by the week.

After the mishap with the electric heater, we decided to remove to our tiny bathroom, thus giving up a writing desk of seasoned oak wood, a superlative set of bookshelves along with the complete collected works of our landlord Karp Karpovich and the enviable spaciousness of our ice-cold study.

We covered the bathtub with a mattress for a bed; the washstand with boards for a desk; and the little water heater tank we fueled with books.

The warmth from the water heater inspired us to compose lyrical verses.

A few days after our move to the bathroom Esenin read to me:

The astral belfry bangs away in silence,

Every leaf is a candle to the dawn,

I'll let no one in my chamber,

To no one will I open the door.

And indeed: we were forced to defend our discovery, the ‘Promised Bathroom', tooth and nail as well as with a heavy lock. The neighbors in our communal apartment, envious of our warm, carefree existence, held meetings and passed resolutions, demanding that turns be taken for residence by the water heater pipe and that we, who had seized a shared space without the proper warrant, be evicted.

We were implacable and hard as stone.

Shortly after New Year's Eve I began squiring a girl. Esenin made a fuss over this; he would knit his brows when I disappeared in the evening. Kusikov would add fuel to the fire, hinting that I had betrayed Esenin's friendship. He assured him that it always started that way -- with a small infatuation, and ended ...

Esenin knew Kusikov well; he knew that he was like that muzhik in Chekhov's story, who would tell a peasant carting a log, 'Hey, them there logs are deadwood, they're all rotten'; who would tell a fisherman sitting with his rod, 'They ain't a-gonna bite in this weather'; who would assure peasants during a drought, 'There won't be no rain right up 'til the frost comes'; and then when it rained, 'Well, now everything's gonna rot in the fields.'

All the same Esenin was unnerved and distressed by Kusikov's remark.

Once I spent the night out. I came back to our 'Promised Bathroom' around ten in the morning; Esenin was sleeping. On the washstand stood an empty bottle and glass. I had a sniff -- the smell of raw vodka seared my nostrils.

I shook Esenin. He raised his heavy, red lids to me.

'What's this, Seryozha? You drank vodka by yourself?'

'Yeah. That's right. An' I'm gonna drink it every day ... if you start spending every night out... look, you can fool around out there with whoever you want, but just come home to sleep.'

That was his rule: he loved to dally, but come four or five in the morning he'd be in his own bed.

We laughed:

'He's running back into his stall.'

The fundamental thing about Esenin was his fear of being alone.

His last days in the Angleterre Hotel, he would flee his room at night and sit alone in the hall until the sparse winter dawn. On his last night he knocked on the door of Ustinov's room, begging to be let in.

By the end of winter we had lost our fortress. We were forced to retreat from the bathroom -- back to the icy expanses of our room.

Esenin and I started sleeping in the same bed. We'd pile a mountain of blankets and coats on top of ourselves. On the even days of the month I'd be the one to contort myself first on the ice-cold linen, heating it with my breath and body warmth. On the odd days Esenin did it.

A poetess asked Esenin to help her find a job. She had rosy cheeks, round hips and plump shoulders.

Esenin said he could set her up as a Soviet typist if she would come round to our place every night about one o'clock, disrobe and crawl in between our frigid sheets. It wouldn't take her fifteen minutes to warm the bed! Then she could crawl out, dress and go home.

He promised that we would be sitting with our backs to her throughout, our noses buried in manuscripts.

For three days, precisely observing these conditions, we lay down to sleep in a poetess-warmed bed.

On the fourth day our poetess gave notice, her voice choked with indignation, her pupils round with rage, turning her eyes from sky-blue to black, like the buttons on our lacquered boots.

We were perplexed:

'What's wrong? We observed the conditions religiously...'

'That's just it!' she said. 'I didn't hire myself out to warm the beds of saints.'

'Oh!'

But it was too late: the door slammed so hard in my face that all six screws in the English lock popped out of their holes.

Yakulov was having a party in his studio. Some time after midnight, Isadora Duncan came by. A red tunic flowing in light folds; red hair with a shimmer of copper; a large body, stepping lightly and easily.

Her eyes, like saucers of blue faience, scanned the room and froze on Esenin.

The small, tender mouth smiled at him.

Isadora was lying on a couch with Esenin at her feet. She dipped her hand in his curls and said in broken Russian:

'Golden head.'

It was astounding that she, who knew no more than ten Russian words, knew these two.

Later she kissed him on the lips.

Then her mouth, small and red as a bullet wound, pleasantly mangled the Russian sounds:

'Angel.'

She kissed him again and said:

'Damn.'

At four in the morning Isadora and Esenin left together.

How-Much-fer-Salt sat down by me and, in utmost desperation, started outlining a plan for 'Vyatka's rescue.'

'I'll take him away.'

'He won't go.'

'To Persia.'

'If only to Persia...'

We left Yakulov's at dawn. We strolled the deserted streets with heavy hearts.

The next day we went over to Isadora's place.

The address was 20 Prechistenka, Balashova's former private residence. Heavy marble staircases, rooms in various styles: Empire, like some Moscow restaurants, favored by merchants; Mauritanian, like the Sandunov public bathhouses. The winter garden consisted of sickly cactuses and cheerless palms, as depressed and sad as the scrawny beasts in iron cages at the city zoo. The furniture was heavy and gilt. Brocade, damask, velvet.

Isadora's room contained armchairs, couches, and tables covered over in light French fabrics, Venetian kerchiefs, and motley Russian chintz. Everything that could be pressed into service to mask bad taste and disagreeable luxury had been extracted from her trunks.

Isadora smiled tenderly and, wrinkling her nose, said:

'C'est Balachoff ... bad chambre ... Isadora fichu chale achetra ... many ruska chale...'

There were mattresses and pillows on the floor covered with rugs and furs.

The chandeliers were veiled in red silk. Isadora didn't like white electric light. The rumor had it she was over fifty.

On a small table by the bed stood a large portrait of Gordon Craig.

Esenin took it and scrutinized it. Then he sucked in his dry, slightly chapped lips.

'Your husband?'

'Qu'est-ce que c'est?'

'Mari... epoux...'

'Qui, mari... bi ... Craig writes travaillait, travaillait... Craig genie.'

Esenin jabbed his own chest.

'I'm the genius, too! Esenin is the genius ... the genius! Me ... Esenin, I'm the genius, and Craig is crap!'

Grimacing contemptuously he slips Craig's portrait under a pile of sheet music and old journals.

'Adieu!'

Isadora, in raptures:

'Adieu.' She makes a slight gesture of farewell.

Esenin lowers his brow: 'Now, Isadora, dance! You understand, Isadora? Dance for us!'

He imagines he's Herod demanding a dance from Salome.

'Dance? Bon!'

Duncan dons Esenin's cap and jacket. The music is sensual, unfamiliar, disturbing.

Isadora is an apache. Her scarf is the woman partner. A frightening and marvelous dance.

The scarf's narrow pink body coils and twists in her hands. She snaps its spine, her restless fingers wring its throat. The round silk head droops pitiably, tragically.

When Isadora finished the dance, her diaphanous partner's corpse lay stretched out on the carpet in convulsions.

Esenin soon became her master, her sovereign. Like a dog, she would kiss the hand he'd just raised to strike her, and kiss the eyes in which hatred burned more often than love.

Even so, he was no more than a dancing partner, like that scrap of pink fabric -- tragic and bereft of will.

She danced.

She led the dance.

Esenin had practically moved into the house in Prechistenka.

Isadora gave him a gold watch. She imagined that a watch would keep him from always rushing off, running away from her Empire armchairs to some mysterious appointment and unknown affairs.

Sergei Konenkov divided all of humanity into those who wore watches and those who didn't.

Describing someone, he would usually mutter:

'This one ... wears a watch.'

We already knew that if it was an artist he was talking about, there was no point in debating his talents any further.

Now, as capricious fate would have it, that epitome of the 'watchless man', Esenin, had a timepiece in his pocket, a gold, double-lidded Bouret watch, no less.

On top of that, whenever he met someone new, he would take the watch out of his pocket, snap open the heavy gold lid, apparently just interested in the time.

In all other respects, the watch had not played its intended role. All the same he went on running away from those soft armchairs to his unknown affairs and mysterious, non-existent appointments.

Sometimes he'd turn up at our place in Bogoslovky with a small parcel.

On such days he was serious and firm. The words rang out:

'Finally... I told her, "Isadora, adieu!" Like that.'

The small parcel generally contained two or three shirts, underpants and socks. Esenin's possessions were returning to Bogoslovsky.

We would smile.

I'd tell Kozhebatkin at the bookshop:

'Today Esenin told Isadora again, 'Adieu! Adieu! Gimme my laundry.'

Two hours after Esenin's arrival from Prechistenka, the porter would come by with a letter. Esenin would pen a terse and inflexible reply.

Another hour, and Isadora's secretary, Ilya Ilyich Shneider, would be pressing our diminutive doorbell.

Finally, towards evening, Isadora herself would appear. Her lips swollen like a child's and those blue faience saucers glistening with salty tears.

She dropped onto the floor by Esenin's chair, embraced his leg, bestrewed the red honey of her hair along his knees:

'Angel.'