Konstantin Paustovsky
THE STORY OF A LIFE
Books One-Three
Translated, annotated and with an introduction by Douglas Smith
Contents
Introduction: Konstantin Paustovsky – Life and Work of a Forgotten Master
Russia and Central Europe, 1914
BOOK ONE. THE FARAWAY YEARS
1. The Death of My Father
2. My Grandfather Maxim Grigorievich
3. Carp
4. Pleurisy
5. A Trip to Chenstokhov
6. Pink Oleanders
7. Elderwood Balls
8. Svyatoslavskaya Street
9. Winter Scenes
10. The Midshipman
11. What Paradise Looks Like
12. The Forests of Bryansk
13. The Swarm
14. Water from the Limpopo
15. The First Commandment
16. Lime Blossoms
17. Just a Little Boy
18. The Red Lantern
19. Deserted Tauris
20. Ruin
21. Artillerymen
22. Kean, the Great Tragedian
23. On My Own
24. Diky Lane
25. Autumn Battles
26. ‘Living’ Languages
27. ‘Gentlemen Schoolboys’
28. The Hook-Nosed King
29. Wasting Time
30. The Inn on the Braginka
31. My Grandmother’s Garden
32. ‘Golden Latin’
33. Instructors of the Humanities
34. A Shot in the Theatre
35. Razgulyai Square
36. A Tale about Nothing
37. Leaving School
38. Summer Lightning
39. A Small Dose of Poison
BOOK TWO. RESTLESS YOUTH
40. ‘Here Lives Nobody’
41. An Unprecedented Autumn
42. The Copper Line
43. To One Side of the War
44. The Old Man with the Hundred-Rouble Ticket
45. Lefortovo Nights
46. Medical Orderly
47. Russia in Snow
48. Paper Scraps and the Bugler
49. Rain in the Carpathian Foothills
50. Beyond the Muddy San
51. Spring on the Vepsh
52. The Great Swindler
53. The Ocean Liner Portugal
54. Over Bombed-Out Roads
55. The Little Knight
56. Two Thousand Volumes
57. The Village of Kobrin
58. Treason
59. In the Marshy Woods
60. Under a Lucky Star
61. The Bulldog
62. A Dank Winter
63. A Grievous Commotion
64. The Suburb of Chechelevka
65. One Day
66. The Hotel Great Britain
67. Notebooks and Memory
68. The Art of Whitewashing
69. A Raw February
BOOK THREE. THE DAWN OF AN UNCERTAIN AGE
70. Whirlpool
71. Blue Torches
72. The Journalists’ Café
73. The Hall with a Fountain
74. The Zone of Silence
75. Revolt
76. Material for a History of Russian Houses
77. A Few Explanations
78. The Riga–Orël Goods Wagon
79. The Neutral Zone
80. Our Rag-Tag Hetman
81. The Violet Ray
82. The Bolshevik and the Haidamachka
83. Crimson Riding Breeches
84. Puff Pastry
85. A Cry in the Night
86. The Wedding Present
87. Firinka, Running Water and a Bit of Danger
88. The Last Shot
Note on the Translation
Guide to Place Names
About the Author
Konstantin Paustovsky was born in Moscow in 1892, but spent his childhood in Ukraine, being schooled at Kiev’s First Gymnasium. After serving as a paramedic in World War I Paustovsky worked as a journalist until he began to write the novels, short story collections and critical essays that would earn him his place as the most admired and respected figure among Russia’s contemporary writers. Paustovsky began work on his autobiography, The Story of a Life, in 1943, parts of which first appeared in English translation in 1964-four years before he died.
INTRODUCTION
Konstantin Paustovsky: Life and Work of a Forgotten Master
In June 1964, having just alighted from her plane in Moscow, Marlene Dietrich was mobbed by reporters. The actress had arrived in the Soviet Union for a concert tour, and the press was in a fever over the chance to interview the Hollywood legend. Bombarded by questions, Dietrich replied that there was only one thing she had to say: tell me all you know about Konstantin Paustovsky.
Dietrich had recently read a French translation of Paustovsky’s novella The Telegram and could not stop thinking about it and its author. For the next hour the reporters told her everything they knew about Paustovsky before Dietrich finally had to end the conversation and leave for her hotel.
On the night of the 13th, Dietrich performed for a gathering of writers, artists and actors at Moscow’s Central House of Writers. Before going out on stage, her interpreter came to the dressing room to tell Dietrich that Paustovsky was in the audience. She couldn’t believe it. ‘That’s impossible,’ she gasped, seized by an attack of nerves. She was unhappy with her performance that night, for she overexerted herself trying to make the best possible impression on the one man in Russia she had most wanted to meet.
After taking her final bow, Dietrich was instructed to wait a moment. Before she realised what was happening, there was Paustovsky slowly mounting the stairs onto the stage. Dietrich recalled later that she was so overcome with emotion she was unable to speak. All she could do to express her admiration for Paustovsky was to fall at his feet and bow her head. Paustovsky gently took her hands in his. The hall erupted in applause. A photographer captured the scene.
Paustovsky started to help Dietrich back up when his doctor ran to the stage. ‘Don’t even think of lifting her!’ he ordered. Paustovsky, now in his early seventies, had come to the concert straight from his hospital bed where he had been recovering from his second heart attack. The gentleman in Paustovsky wrestled with the voice of his doctor telling him to leave Dietrich on her knees and not strain his weak heart. He stood there for a few awkward moments until help arrived and Dietrich was returned to her feet.
The two spent the next several hours together talking about literature and art. ‘He is the best Russian writer I know,’ she wrote in her memoirs. ‘I regret that I did not meet him earlier.’ The following year Dietrich told the BBC that if she were cast away on a desert island and could bring only one book with her it would be Paustovsky’s The Story of a Life.fn1
At the time of her visit, Paustovsky was nearing the height of his fame. Four years later, upon his death at the age of seventy-six, he was not only Russia’s most treasured writer of the twentieth century but, according to his obituary in The Times, perhaps the most popular and admired living Soviet writer in both Britain and the United States.fn2
It is hard to exaggerate Paustovsky’s stature in the 1960s. Over his long career, he wrote dozens of short stories, novels, screenplays, dramas, fairytales and children’s books. Many of these works were made into films, and his stories served as the inspiration for three operas and a ballet. In 1941, he wrote the script for the film Lermontov, with a score by Sergei Prokofiev. The work that brought him the greatest fame, however, was his epic six-part memoir, The Story of a Life, published in the Soviet Union between 1945 and 1963. His memoir was devoured by generations of Russians, and Paustovsky himself became the object of intense fascination among his devoted fans. In his later years he settled in the town of Tarusa, south of Moscow, where he would write the final volumes of his memoir in a small hut perched on a high bluff. When word of Paustovsky’s writing shed got out, crowds began gathering in a nearby field in the hope of observing the master at work. Paustovsky soon found it impossible to concentrate and had to plant a long row of trees to afford him the necessary privacy to write.fn3