had to write that we stayed behind because we didn’t have anything to wear.’
‘There you have it.’
‘OK, tell me about the subway.’
And Savelev would tell Fedya about the Moscow subway. Ivan Ivanovich and I also liked to listen to Savelev, since he knew things that I had never guessed, although I had lived in Moscow.
‘Muslims, Fedya,’ said Savelev, delighted that he could still think clearly, ‘are called to worship by a muezzin from the minaret. Muhammed chose the human voice as a signal to prayer. Muhammed tried everything – trumpets, tambourines, signal fires; nothing pleased him… Fifteen hundred years later when they were choosing a signal to start the subway trains, it turned out that neither the whistle, nor the horn, nor the siren could be heard as easily by the train engineer’s ear – with the same precision – as the live voice of the dispatcher on duty shouting, “Ready!” ’
Fedya gasped with delight. He was better adapted than any of us to the forest, more experienced than any of us in spite of his youth. Fedya could do carpentry work, build a simple cabin in the taiga, fell a tree and use its branches to make a shelter. In addition, Fedya was a hunter; in his locality people were used to guns from childhood. But cold and hunger wiped out Fedya’s qualities, and the earth ignored his knowledge and abilities. Fedya did not envy city dwellers, but simply acknowledged their superiority and could listen endlessly to their stories of the wonders of science and the miracles of the city.
Friendship is not born in conditions of need or trouble. Literary fairy tales tell of ‘difficult’ conditions which are an essential element in forming any friendship, but such conditions are simply not difficult enough. If tragedy and need brought people together and gave birth to their friendship, then the need was not extreme and the tragedy not great. Tragedy is not deep and sharp if it can be shared with friends. Only real need can determine one’s spiritual and physical strength and set the limits of one’s physical endurance and moral courage.
We all understood that we could survive only through luck. Strangely enough, in my youth whenever I experienced failure I used to repeat the saying: ‘Well, at least we won’t die from hunger.’ It never crossed my mind to doubt the truth of this sentence. And at the age of thirty I found myself in a very real sense dying from hunger and literally fighting for a piece of bread. And this was a long time before the war.
When the four of us gathered at the spring ‘Duskania’, we all knew we had not gathered through friendship. We all knew that if we survived we would not want to meet again. It would be painful to remember the insane hunger, the unchecked gastronomic lies at the fire, our quarrels with each other and our identical dreams. All of us had the same dreams of loaves of rye bread that flew past us like meteors or angels.
A human being survives by his ability to forget. Memory is always ready to blot out the bad and retain only the good. There was nothing good at the spring ‘Duskania’, and nothing good was either expected in the future or remembered in the past by any of us. We had all been permanently poisoned by the north, and we knew it. Three of us stopped resisting fate, and only Ivan Ivanovich kept working with the same tragic diligence as before.
Savelev tried to reason with Ivan Ivanovich during one of the smoking breaks. For us it was just an ordinary rest period for non-smokers since we hadn’t had any home-made tobacco for a number of years. Still we held to the breaks. In the taiga, smokers would gather and dry blackcurrant leaves, and there were heated convict discussions as to whether cowberry leaves or currant leaves were better. Experts maintained that both were worthless, since the body demands the poison of nicotine, not smoke, and brain cells could not be tricked by such a simple method. But currant leaf served for
‘There you have it.’
‘OK, tell me about the subway.’
And Savelev would tell Fedya about the Moscow subway. Ivan Ivanovich and I also liked to listen to Savelev, since he knew things that I had never guessed, although I had lived in Moscow.
‘Muslims, Fedya,’ said Savelev, delighted that he could still think clearly, ‘are called to worship by a muezzin from the minaret. Muhammed chose the human voice as a signal to prayer. Muhammed tried everything – trumpets, tambourines, signal fires; nothing pleased him… Fifteen hundred years later when they were choosing a signal to start the subway trains, it turned out that neither the whistle, nor the horn, nor the siren could be heard as easily by the train engineer’s ear – with the same precision – as the live voice of the dispatcher on duty shouting, “Ready!” ’
Fedya gasped with delight. He was better adapted than any of us to the forest, more experienced than any of us in spite of his youth. Fedya could do carpentry work, build a simple cabin in the taiga, fell a tree and use its branches to make a shelter. In addition, Fedya was a hunter; in his locality people were used to guns from childhood. But cold and hunger wiped out Fedya’s qualities, and the earth ignored his knowledge and abilities. Fedya did not envy city dwellers, but simply acknowledged their superiority and could listen endlessly to their stories of the wonders of science and the miracles of the city.
Friendship is not born in conditions of need or trouble. Literary fairy tales tell of ‘difficult’ conditions which are an essential element in forming any friendship, but such conditions are simply not difficult enough. If tragedy and need brought people together and gave birth to their friendship, then the need was not extreme and the tragedy not great. Tragedy is not deep and sharp if it can be shared with friends. Only real need can determine one’s spiritual and physical strength and set the limits of one’s physical endurance and moral courage.
We all understood that we could survive only through luck. Strangely enough, in my youth whenever I experienced failure I used to repeat the saying: ‘Well, at least we won’t die from hunger.’ It never crossed my mind to doubt the truth of this sentence. And at the age of thirty I found myself in a very real sense dying from hunger and literally fighting for a piece of bread. And this was a long time before the war.
When the four of us gathered at the spring ‘Duskania’, we all knew we had not gathered through friendship. We all knew that if we survived we would not want to meet again. It would be painful to remember the insane hunger, the unchecked gastronomic lies at the fire, our quarrels with each other and our identical dreams. All of us had the same dreams of loaves of rye bread that flew past us like meteors or angels.
A human being survives by his ability to forget. Memory is always ready to blot out the bad and retain only the good. There was nothing good at the spring ‘Duskania’, and nothing good was either expected in the future or remembered in the past by any of us. We had all been permanently poisoned by the north, and we knew it. Three of us stopped resisting fate, and only Ivan Ivanovich kept working with the same tragic diligence as before.
Savelev tried to reason with Ivan Ivanovich during one of the smoking breaks. For us it was just an ordinary rest period for non-smokers since we hadn’t had any home-made tobacco for a number of years. Still we held to the breaks. In the taiga, smokers would gather and dry blackcurrant leaves, and there were heated convict discussions as to whether cowberry leaves or currant leaves were better. Experts maintained that both were worthless, since the body demands the poison of nicotine, not smoke, and brain cells could not be tricked by such a simple method. But currant leaf served for
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