A Displaced Person: The Later Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin
248
A Displaced Person: The Later Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780810126626 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Northwestern University Press |
| Publication date: | 10/31/2012 |
| Series: | Private Ivan Chonkin Series , #3 |
| Pages: | 248 |
| Sales rank: | 690,365 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.30(d) |
About the Author
Vladimir Voinovich is a Soviet dissident writer whose defense of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn resulted in a government order for him to stop writing. After fleeing to West Germany in 1974, he wrote his best-known work, The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin (1975). His other books include Pretender to the Throne: The Further Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin (1979), The Anti-Soviet Soviet Union (1985), Moscow 2042 (1987), The Fur Hat (1988), and Monumental Propaganda (2006). He has also written film scripts and plays and has taught at Princeton and the University of Southern California.
Andrew Bromfield, a founding editor of the Russian literary journal Glas, is best known for translating Boris Akunin and Victor Pelevin. His translations of numerous other authors include Voinovich's Monumental Propaganda.
Read an Excerpt
A DISPLACED PERSON
THE LATER LIFE AND EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURES of PRIVATE IVAN CHONKINBy Vladimir Voinovich
NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2007 V. VoinovichAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8101-2662-6
Chapter One
When Ivan Kuzmich Drynov was awarded the rank of general yet again, along with the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, it naturally attracted the attention of Soviet journalists. Especially since it happened at the beginning of the war, when the Red Army was retreating on all fronts, and generals were more often shot than decorated. But here was a general regarded benevolently by the authorities, and rumors even circulated that Comrade Stalin in person had virtually drunk to bruderschaft with him. Of course, journalists made a dash for the general from all sides but, as usual, the quickest off the mark was the Pravda correspondent, Alexander Krinitsky, who had already written about Drynov's heroic exploits. Since he was personally acquainted with the general and represented the major Party newspaper, he was granted a repeat audience with Drynov ahead of all the others. The audience took place in a sanatorium not far from Moscow, where the general had been sent to take a brief rest and restore his strength.Krinitsky found the general strolling along the carpet runners on the ground floor in striped pajamas with his Gold Star pinned on. They settled down in the foyer under a ficus tree. Krinitsky took a notepad out of his dispatch case and Drynov took a pack of Palmyra of the North papyrosas out of his pocket. In response to the journalist's questions, the general declared that he had indeed succeeded in carrying through a brilliant military operation, but it should not be forgotten that generals only enjoyed such good fortune when the men they led fought courageously. He recalled Chonkin as a case in point and told Krinitsky in detail about this dauntless warrior's heroism—how he had defended a plane that made a forced landing, valiantly doing battle with an entire regiment, but at this late stage the general didn't specify exactly which regiment it was.
Since both participants in the conversation were extremely drunk, Krinitsky's recall of the general's story was somewhat inexact, and he also happened to lose his notepad on the way to his newspaper's offices. As he tried to reconstitute the general's tale, what he recalled was that Chonkin had defended a plane on which he himself had apparently arrived. So Krinitsky decided that Chonkin must be an airman. After that he drew on his own imagination, which had never let him down, to compensate for his lack of information. It was he, I believe, who created the mythical feat of the twenty-eight heroes from General Ivan Panfilov's division that has been recorded in the history textbooks as an indisputable deed of great valor, at which Krinitsky himself was virtually present in person. He it was who invented these heroes, who supposedly fought and perished in an uneven battle against German tanks at the Dubosekovo railway siding, and he it was who attributed to the mythical commissar Kliuchkov the mythical phrase which, naturally, he also invented, and on which he prided himself until the day he died: "There is nowhere to retreat, Moscow is behind us!" Not only did he pride himself on it—if anyone ever doubted the absolute or, at least, partial veracity of the legend, he subjected them to such scathing criticism in the press that the doubters suffered grave tribulations as a result.
So, on the subject of the heroic feat of Chonkin the airman, Krinitsky penned a feature article that the editors chose as the best material of the week, and then of the month, and it was hung up on a special board.
Krinitsky walked about for an entire month feeling extremely pleased with himself, proudly thrusting out his chest and stomach. In fact, it wasn't just for that month: he always walked about proudly thrusting out anything that he could, and in addition, a month later, to the envy of his journalist colleagues, it turned out that he had again written the best article, about something else that he had not seen. The issue of the paper with the feature on Chonkin was distributed right across the country, and it could have reached the Dolgov district immediately, but it didn't, because the district was still occupied by the Germans, who mostly read the Völkischer Beobachter, and not Pravda.
Chapter Two
One of these assiduous readers of the Völkischer Beobachter was the military commandant of the town of Dolgov, SS Obersturmführer Herr Horst Schlegel. Right now he was sitting in his office, the former office of the former local secretary of the All-Russian Communist Party ( Bolsheviks), Andrei Revkin, who had died a hero's death. This change of power had brought no significant changes to the office: there was the same twin-column desk covered with green baize for the incumbent with the same long table set against the desk to form a letter T, formerly for sessions of the bureau of the District Committee, and now apparently not for anything in particular. Only the portraits had been affected by the change. Previously portraits of Lenin and Stalin had hung behind the Party secretary, while now there was a portrait of Hitler hanging behind the commandant. But Lenin and Stalin had left two dark, unfaded patches on the wall.At the precise moment under description, the commandant was engaged in assembling a parcel for his wife, Sabina, who was in the city of Ingolstat, while whistling the well-known German song "Ich weiss nicht, was soll es bedeuten," with lyrics by the Jewish poet Heine. This was the way in which he had decided, at long last, to reply to her numerous absurd requests to send her silk stockings, lace panties, and French perfume because she supposedly had nothing to wear to church or the theater. On the first occasion he had written in reply that lace underwear was not really essential for going to church, or even the theater, and he hoped very much that no one was peeping under her skirt either in the theater or at confession, and if somebody was peeping, then not only did he not wish to facilitate them, he could not, because the things she was asking for simply did not exist here. Sabina had turned a deaf ear to the remark concerning potential under-the-skirt peepers, but expressed bewilderment: surely there were women there in the place where he was stationed, and if so, then what did they wear to visit the churches and theaters? She referred Horst to the example of their former neighbor, the soap maker Johan Zeller, who regularly sent his Berbel both underwear and overwear and even cosmetics. "Mein Schatz (my treasure)," Schlegel replied to her acidly, "as far as I am aware, my friend Johan is stationed in Paris, while I am presently in a small Russian town that cannot even be found on the map. Believe me, the difference between this town and Paris is very great indeed, and the range of goods on offer here does not entirely correspond to what can be found in French boutiques."
Since she ignored his explanations and repeated the same requests in every letter, he had decided to teach her a lesson and, on the advice of his assistant, Frau Katalina von Heiss, he had put together a package in which he included what the local women wore—knitted-fabric pantaloons with elastic below the knees, woolly socks, cotton-wadded trousers, and a cotton-wadded jacket—accompanied by a written explanation that this was a typical outfit for the local ladies, and for good measure he added a bottle of Soviet triple eau-de-cologne. He was arranging his gifts in a cardboard parcel box when the aforementioned Katalina von Heiss looked in at the door. Anyone who had ever happened to meet Captain Milyaga and remain alive would have recognized this heavily made-up blonde as Kapitolina Goryacheva, the former secretary of the head of the NKVD. The former Kapitolina was now living under her real name, or perhaps another invented one—some spies change their names so often that they themselves can't always remember exactly what name they were originally given by Mom and Dad. Whether under her own name or a false one, this woman (or perhaps she wasn't even a woman) now worked for the benefit of the Great Reich (or someone else) in the same office, which was now the property of the German "Right Place," performing approximately the same duties (only for appearances' sake, of course—spies only pretend to do what everyone can see, their real goals are quite different). From time to time she also performed extra-budgetary duties of the same kind as she had in Captain Milyaga's time. This allows us to assume that she was, after all, a woman, because if she was not, Milyaga or Schlegel, or at least one of the two, would have got to the bottom of things. In short, Katalina von Heiss (that is what we shall call her) glanced into the office of the man we shall assume to be her boss and informed him that a certain local plant breeder was seeking a meeting with him.
"Who?" queried Schlegel.
"A local madman," said Katalina. "A very amusing individual."
"Well, all right. Send him in."
Schlegel took the box off the desk, sat down in his chair, and pretended to be writing something exceptionally important.
The door opened and a strange man bowed in the doorway before walking into the office, accompanied by Katalina. He was wearing a groundsheet cloak over a padded jacket and striped canvas trousers tucked into the tops of cowhide boots with handmade galoshes glued together out of pieces of automobile tire rubber. He had a battered map case hanging over his shoulder and was holding a wide-brimmed straw hat in his left hand.
The visitor approached the commandant's table, smiled, and said: "Good health to you, guten Tag, Mr. Commandant, allow me to introduce myself: Kuzma Matveevich Gladishev, self-made genius of plant-breeding."
Katalina's Russian was excellent (no worse than Captain Milyaga's), and German was her native language, but she couldn't find an appropriate German term for the Russian word meaning "self-made," and she translated it as selbstgeborene—"self-born."
"What do you mean, self-born?" the Obersturmführer asked in amazement. "Even Jesus Christ was born of woman. Did he hatch from an egg or something of the sort?"
Katalina laughed and translated the question for the visitor, who replied with dignity that he hadn't hatched himself out of anything but, despite lacking adequate education, he had succeeded, thanks to his own personal efforts and talent, in acquiring extensive knowledge and in some respects had surpassed even the most highly educated academicians and bred a vegetable hybrid with which he wished to feed the German army.
Naturally, the commandant inquired as to what kind of hybrid this was. Gladishev put his hat down on the chair beside him, hastily opened his map case, took out several newspaper cuttings with articles, both long and short, devoted to himself, with photographs, and laid them out on the desk in front of the commandant.
Katalina offered to translate the texts, but the commandant said "Don't bother" and fixed his eyes on one of the photographs, in which Gladishev was shown with a bundle of the hybrid. Then he looked up at the live Gladishev and exchanged glances with his assistant.
"The Soviet newspapers have written so much about you. Are you a Bolshevik?"
"Absolutely not!" said Gladishev, throwing his hands up to his chest in fright. "On the contrary. I am categorically opposed to the Soviet order, for which I have been subjected to repeated persecution ..."
Schlegel folded his arms and leaned back in his chair. "Interesting!
Tell him that all the Russians I meet here claim to have been persecuted by the Communists. And how did they persecute him? Did they arrest him? Put him in prison? Torture him? Stick needles under his fingernails?"
Frau von Heiss translated.
Gladishev admitted that he had, thank God, managed to avoid unpleasantness of that sort. But the Soviet authorities had refused to recognize his scientific achievements and denied him the opportunity to cultivate the hybrid he had created, which he had called ROTNAS, i.e., the Road to National Socialism.
"If the German authorities would give me enough land for my hybrid, I could supply the entire German army," said Gladishev, clutching his hat between his knees and flinging his arms out wide, as if trying to embrace all those whom he was prepared to feed. "Can you imagine it, Mr. Officer, a huge area of land from which we could gather a double harvest of potatoes and tomatoes at the same time!"
"Very well," the Obersturmführer said through his interpreter, "we may perhaps consider your proposal at a later time, when we finish this war. Do you have anything else to say?"
"Anything else?" Gladishev hesitated, uncertain of how to set forth a hypothesis that some people might find incredible. Of course, he hadn't been able to share ideas of this kind with any Soviet bureaucrat. But now he was facing the representative of a new and more advanced civilization, who ought to take a broader view of things.
"You see ... how can I put it ... you'll say it sounds crazy ... and I would agree with you ... but I have personally witnessed the transformation of a horse into a man."
"A horse into a man?" Katalina asked.
"I can understand why you might not believe me," Gladishev admitted, "but I even have written evidence. Here ..." He rummaged in the map case, took out a scrap of paper and smoothed it out as he laid it on the desk. There was a single phrase traced out on it in round, almost childish writing.
"What's this?" the commandant asked, grimacing at the paper in disgust.
"It says: 'If I die, please consider me a Communist,'" Frau von Heiss translated.
"What does that mean?" the commandant asked, bewildered. "Consider whom? You?"
"Oh no!" Gladishev said with a smile when he heard the translation. "Not me, of course not. I never made any applications to join the Party.
It's Osya ..."
"Osya?" Schlegel asked, demonstrating that he too spoke Russian quite well. "I believe Osya is a Jewish name. Isn't that so, Frau von Heiss?"
"Jewish?" Gladishev exclaimed, startled. And he smiled: "No, he wasn't a Jew. Osya, Osoaviakhim, he wasn't Jewish, he was a gelding, that is, a horse, but he'd been, you know, castrated."
"A Jew, Mr. Scientist," Schlegel said with a frown, "is a racial concept. And a Jew, whether he's castrated, circumcised, or baptized, is still a Jew as far as we're concerned and must be handed over to the German authorities."
"And especially," added the former Kapitolina, "if he wants to be a Communist."
"He doesn't wasn't to," Gladishev babbled rapidly, getting flustered.
"He wanted to. But they shot him. He was a gelding, but they shot him just at the point when, as a result of unremitting toil, he turned into ..."
"Into a Jew?" the Obersturmführer prompted.
"Absolutely not," Gladishev protested vehemently. "He turned into ... simply a man."
"What does 'simply a man' mean?" the SS officer countered. "And what's so simple about it, if even before he changed, he was already asking to be considered a Communist?"
"Well, he did that out of sheer stupidity," Kuzma Matveevich tried to explain. "Out of stupidity and ignorance, especially since he grew up on a Soviet collective farm and, you understand, he had outmoded views of the world. But if the German High Command is interested in principle ..."
"No," the Obersturmführer said decisively. "The German High Command has no interest in this. In fact," he said, raising one finger, "we would be more interested in the reverse process of transforming a man into a horse. But in the meantime, My Dear Sir Who Gave Birth to Himself, I would advise you to go back home and, if you genuinely wish to forward the ideals of National Socialism, start by exposing the Jews and Communists hiding among you."
"Yes, sir!" Gladishev replied obediently and set off toward the exit, but then he stopped in the doorway. "Pardon me, Mr. Officer, but what about my hybrid?"
"We'll talk about it some other time," the Obersturmführer promised. "And now I have a question for you. Excuse me, but what is that you have on your feet? Not the boots, I mean, but those things on top of them."
"Those?" Gladishev looked down at his feet and shrugged, unable to understand how his footwear could be of interest to such an important representative of Great Germany. "Why, those are rubber goods."
"Something like galoshes?" the SS officer asked, seeking a more specific answer.
"You could say that."
"They're Soviet galoshes," the former Kapitolina laughed. "If I recall correctly, the Russians call them slush-stompers, condoms, shit crushers, and CTPs. CTP," she explained to Schlegel, "is the Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant."
"Very interesting," said Schlegel. "And do they really not let through moisture?"
"Never," Gladishev assured him. "They're very high-quality goods."
"Really?" Schlegel got up from behind his desk, walked around Gladishev, and prodded the slush-stompers with his foot. "Listen, Mr. Scientist, would you be willing to sell me these things of yours ..."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A DISPLACED PERSON by Vladimir Voinovich Copyright © 2007 by V. Voinovich . Excerpted by permission of NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY PRESS. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Preface....................viiPart One The Colonel's Widow....................3
Part Two The Transformation....................51
Part Three Chonkin International....................181