The pike chopped a load that stood so high you couldn’t reach to the top of it. And it was tied so tight you couldn’t even slip a finger between the logs.
The pike went on ahead, clearing the fallen branches. And Omelyanushko stood there on the footboard, singing so loud it made the crowns of the trees shake. Crowds of people ran out into the road again and he crushed everyone that was left.
3. The tsar heard news of all this. From the porch of his royal palace he dispatched a whole regiment of soldiers. Up they marched to the porch of Omelyanushko’s hut. ‘Is Omelyanushko at home?’ ‘Yes, where would I go? I’m lying at home, lying on the stove.’
1
The soldiers began to rush about. Some fired cannons, others swung hatchets. But what did he care? All he did was play about with his bits of shit. And then: ‘By my father’s blessing, by my mother’s blessing, by the pike’s command!’ Omelyanushko had only to lift his hand – and he felled the whole regiment.
The tsar sent a second regiment of soldiers. They hurried up to the hut. ‘Is Omelyanushko at home?’ ‘Yes, I’m at home, lying on top of the stove. There’s no one can scare me – I don’t doff my cap to no-one.’ This second regiment didn’t even go into the hut. They turned tail.
On the third day the tsar sent two million soldiers. ‘Are you coming?’ ‘Yes, I’m ready now!’ By then the soldiers were dismantling the hut, log by log. ‘By my father’s blessing, by my mother’s blessing, by the pike’s command, get going, stove, and take me with you!’
The pike knocked down the wall, and the stove set off. It stopped by the tsar’s porch. ‘Ignorant lout, do you know how many of my soldiers you’ve killed?’ ‘But your most royal Highness, what have I done? Whom have I seen? Where have I been?’ ‘Be off with you, you foulness and filth! Away with you and your stench!’ The tsar was already feeling sick.
But Marya Chernyavka was in a room up above. Soldiers had been bringing her food and drink. And then Omelya had come. She had opened the carved windows. Omelya took just one look at her. ‘Be bound to me – be my betrothed!’ Her heart fell ill. No longer did she eat or drink when the soldiers brought her food.
‘She no longer eats or drinks,’ the soldiers said to the tsar. ‘All she does is weep. Her eyes are all red. She keeps rubbing them with her muslin sleeves.’ ‘Go and ask her,’ said the tsar, ‘if he said anything to her.’ The soldiers asked her, and she answered, ‘He said, “Be bound to me – be my betrothed!” And then my heart fell ill. Since then I haven’t eaten or drunk.’ The tsar heard this, then said to two of his soldiers, ‘Go and find him. Bring him to me. Don’t let him go.’
4. ‘Well, Omelyanushko, are you ready?’ ‘Yes!’ ‘Let’s go then!’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because Marya Chernyavka is longing for you. She won’t eat or drink. Her father has sent for you!’ ‘By my father’s blessing, by my mother’s blessing, by the pike’s command, go with me, stove! Come on lads, sit here on the stove with me – it’ll be warmer for you!’ And so some of them just sat there and smoked, while others took care of the fire and threw on more wood.
They drew near the palace gates. The pike took a besom broom and swept away all the turds; now the stove was as clean as a clean floor. They came to the porch. ‘Soldiers, bear food and drink to him! But first bear him in on your hands! I’m off to the forge – there I shall forge their wedding bands!’
The tsar went to the forge and forged six large hoops. He stuffed Omelya and Marya Chernyavka into a forty-bucket barrel, bound the barrel with these six hoops and cast the barrel into the Danube River.
5. Who knows how long they floated there? ‘What can we do, Omelyanushko? I feel lonely and full of grief. I want to set eyes again on the fair light of the world!’ ‘Pray to God! Morning is wiser than evening.’ ‘Maybe we’ve been brought to land? Maybe we’ve been brought to yellow sand?’ ‘No, my silly girl, we’re stuck on a sand bank, the barrel will never float free now.’ ‘I feel lonely and full of grief.’ ‘Pray to God! Morning is wiser than evening.’
‘By my father’s blessing, by my mother’s blessing, by the pike’s command, may this barrel be cast onto dry land, onto yellow sand!’ And the pike cast them onto dry land – them and their barrel.
‘What can we do, Omelyanushko? I feel lonely and sick and full of grief. I want to set eyes again on the fair light of the world!’ Somehow Omelya bored a hole in the bottom of the barrel. Along came a wolf and he began to crap. Omelya caught him by the tail and didn’t let go. The wolf took fright and off he ran. He knocked the barrel against a pine tree, against a second pine, against a fifth and a tenth pine. The barrel fell apart. The wolf had set them free.
6. ‘Marya Chernyavka!’ ‘What?’ ‘You stay here! I’ll go and have a look at that mountain. I’ll see what it’s like there.’ ‘Will you be long?’ Off Omelya went. For a month and a half he tried to climb the mountain. He tried and tried, but he couldn’t get up it. ‘By my father’s blessing, by my mother’s blessing, by the pike’s command!’ The pike pulled him up. He stood on top of the mountain. ‘May a city stand here – a city finer than my
father-in-law’s! And with heaps of grain that reach to the barn roofs!’ He got all this done, then went back for Marya.
They came to the mountain. She climbed up one stone, then up another, and then fell back down again – back to the foot of the mountain. She’d all but torn her dress to shreds. She struggled and struggled, but what could she do? ‘By my father’s blessing, by my mother’s blessing, by the pike’s command!’ And the pike pulled them both up to the top.
‘Omelyanushko!’ she said. ‘It’s a fine city, but we can’t live without food!’ ‘Pray to God. He’ll provide food and drink!’ They came to the first barn. She crossed herself. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I can see we won’t be dying of hunger!’ She came to a second barn – and she fell to her knees and prayed. Omelya took her into a third barn. Lord God! In that barn there was still more grain.
There they were. He took her into a hut. ‘Light the stove,’ he said, ‘and cook some breakfast!’ She did as he said. All Omelya had to do himself was put the bread in his mouth. ‘Well then,’ he said. ‘You eat and drink. I shall go and call up an army.’
7. Three mornings he called up hosts of soldiers. Soon there was nowhere in the city to billet them all. He called up hosts and hosts. ‘Well, Marya Chernyavka, these next three evenings I shall call up provisions!’ He sat down, he called up provisions. Lord God! Soon there was nowhere in the city to store them all.
‘Now I’ll go to the market and buy some fine bulls – after all, I have to feed everyone!’ He bought twenty-five of the most expensive bulls. ‘Now cook them! I’ll go and sort out tables and tablecloths.’ The beef was soon cooked, and he himself did everything else. ‘Sit down, soldiers! Sit down, my children! Eat and drink! As you served the fair tsar, so you must serve me! Do not betray me!’
He fed them well. ‘Now then, off you go! When my father-in-law’s soldiers start shooting, keep all their bullets and shells! Keep them there on your knees! Don’t shoot! Wait till I give the order – shoot then!’ The enemy soldiers fired their guns. They did all their shooting and then they ran out of bullets. They had
nothing left. ‘Well, my children, now you can pick them off. They’ll fall over like sheaves of wheat in the drying barn!’ His soldiers got to work. The whole city fired their guns and killed all the father-in-law’s soldiers.
‘Now you must come and visit! Now you must come and be my guest!’ Omelya said to his father-in-law. ‘But you must be sure to close your eyes.’ The father-in-law closed his eyes. Soon he was sitting there on a bench, eating and drinking. ‘I’ve been here thousands of times, but I’ve never seen a mountain here before. Where did this mountain come from? Where did this city come from? Where have you come from yourself?’ In came Marya Chernyavka. ‘It’s me, father,’ she said. ‘And this is Omelyanushko.’
All proper hospitality was shown him. ‘Take him away – outside the city! Sit him on the gates, shoot him and scatter his ashes!’ And so they did. They took the tsar away, shot him and scattered his ashes.
(Nadezhda Aleksandrovna Lokhvitskaya,1872–1952)
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the magic tale represented what was most glamorous and exotic in Russia’s far distant past. In the 1920s and 1930s, to Nadezhda Teffi and her fellow Russian émigrés in Paris and elsewhere, the magic tale represented not so much Russia’s historical past as the irretrievable world of their own childhood and youth.
Teffi’s real surname was Lokhvitskaya. She was born in St Petersburg into a distinguished family that treasured literature; she and her three sisters all became writers. Her elder sister was well known as a poet, and each of her younger sisters published articles in periodicals and had plays performed in theatres. In 1907, Nadezhda began to write under the name ‘Teffi’; this is sometimes thought to come from the English ‘Taffy’, but she herself, in her story ‘Pseudonym’, said it derives from ‘Steffi’, a familiar form of ‘Stepan’ – the name of one of her friends. After the Revolution, Teffi settled in Paris. There she was an important literary figure; she ran a salon and, for the rest of her life, contributed weekly columns and stories to leading émigré periodicals with impressive regularity.
Teffi wrote in a variety of styles and genres: political feuilletons published in the Bolshevik newspaper
New Life (Novaya Zhizn’)
during her brief period of radical fervour after the 1905 Revolution; Symbolist poems that she declaimed or sang in Petersburg literary salons; popular one-act plays, mainly satirical treatments of topical subjects – one was entitled ‘The Woman Question’; and a novel titled simply
Adventure Novel
(1930). Her finest works, however, are her short stories and her
Memoirs
(1928–9), a witty yet tragic account of her last journey
across Russia, before going by boat from the Crimea to Istanbul in 1919.
Writers of the stature of Bunin, Bulgakov and Zoshchenko admired Teffi; she also always had a wide readership. In pre-Revolutionary Russia, candies and perfumes were named after her; after the Revolution, her stories were published and her plays performed throughout the Russian diaspora. During the first four decades after her death, however, she was almost forgotten. This was probably in part because she was a woman; in part because she was considered ‘lightweight’ (critics noticed her wit more than her perceptiveness); and in part because both Western and Soviet scholars tended to ignore émigré literature. Since the early 1990s Teffi has been published more and more widely. Nevertheless, her earlier, lighter work is still better known than the more profound stories she wrote in the 1930s.
Throughout her career, Teffi retained an interest in all aspects of the folktale: its language, its rhythmic structure, the power of its images and its moral truthfulness. ‘When the Crayfish Whistled’ is one of Teffi’s best-known early stories; its theme – the danger of our wishes being granted – is a common theme in oral tales. ‘A Little Fairy Tale’ is a concise primer of Russian folklore, refracted through two distinct prisms: that of Soviet life in the first years after the Revolution and that of émigré life in France. ‘Baba Yaga’ was first published as a large-format picture book for children. Teffi follows Afanasyev’s well-known version; her mastery of folktale diction and rhythm is perfect. ‘The Dog’ is from
The Witch
, the collection Teffi herself considered her best.
Each of the stories in
The Witch
is devoted to a particular character or theme from Russian folklore. ‘The Dog’ is not a ‘magic tale’ in the sense that this term is used by folklorists. It is in many respects realistic and it is embedded in a particular historical moment. We have included it because it provides a fine example of a writer drawing on folklore not for ornament but as a source of psychological truth. Just as D. H. Lawrence sometimes draws on the paranormal, so Teffi draws on folklore to convey how, at moments of crisis, we can be overwhelmed by the most primitive aspects of the psyche.
And the last piece, an article written in 1947 and also titled ‘Baba Yaga’, exemplifies the extent of Teffi’s capacity for thoughtful empathy. In her 1932 version of this story she describes the cat wiping tears from his eyes – perhaps the one detail that clearly distinguishes Teffi’s version from that of a folk narrator. In this article, she goes still further, entering into the thoughts and feelings even of the archetypal Russian witch.
The Christmas tree shone its last; the guests went back to their homes.
Little Petya Jabotykin was diligently pulling the birch-bark tail off his new rocking horse and listening to what his parents said as they took down the beads and stars and put them away until the following year. Their conversation was very interesting.
‘Never again,’ Papa Jabotykin pronounced solemnly, ‘am I having a Christmas tree. It’s a waste of money and it affords us no enjoyment.’
‘I’d imagined we’d be getting something from your father,’ said Maman Jabotykin, seizing her chance.
‘A likely story! We’ll get something from my father the day crayfish start to whistle.’
‘And I thought he’d be giving me a real live pony,’ said Petya, looking up at his father.
‘A likely story! My father will give you a pony the day crayfish start to whistle.’
Father was sitting with his feet far apart and his head bent down. His moustache was drooping, as if damp, and his sheep-like eyes were fixed gloomily on one spot.
Petya glanced at his father and decided this was a safe moment to talk to him.
‘Papa, why crayfish?’
‘Hm?’
‘When crayfish start to whistle – that’s when everything’s going to happen?’
‘Hm?’
‘But when will they start to whistle?’
The father was about to give a frank answer to his son’s question when he remembered that a father’s duty is always to be strict. He gently cuffed Petya on the back of the head and said, ‘Off you go to bed, piglet.’
Petya went to his bedroom, but he did not stop thinking about crayfish. On the contrary, the thought of them was now so firmly lodged in his head that nothing else in the world any longer held any interest for him. The rocking horses did not get their tails pulled out; the clockwork soldier’s spring remained unbroken; the clown’s squeak-box remained in its correct place, in the pit of his stomach. Petya’s room, in short, was the abomination of desolation. Because the young master had no time for such trifles. He was pacing about, wondering what could be done to make crayfish hurry up and start whistling.