I see Russia, as does Ibrahim, the Tsar's negro, as 'one huge work-room where only machines were moving and every worker was occupied with his job in accordance with a fixed plan'; and wonder if under Putin it is the same?
I see a ball-room, ladies and gentlemen in two rows, curtseying or bowing low repeatedly to each other to the strains of melancholy music, and Korsakov, fresh from Paris, wide-eyed and biting his lip at this 'peculiar way of passing the time'; and then flouting the rules of Russian etiquette humiliated and forced to drain the Goblet – filled with malmsey wine – of the Great Eagle; and wonder if that scene was as entertaining to write as it was to read?
I see Kiril Petrovich Troyekurov's kennels with over five hundred hounds – though that number seems inconceivable somehow – and hear them 'singing their praises in their canine tongue'; and wonder, though it's wrong, if the Russian military do the same – whine and lick Putin's hand?
A pause...and then my imagination is struck again.
I see a cat saved from a blaze; officials trapped inside, the roof falling in, their screams stopped. Nothing but charred remains.
I see a daughter with the run of her father's extensive library, choosing which French writer of the eighteenth century to read; and wonder about her father's favourite the Perfect Cook – what sort of book was it?
I see dispossessed officer Dubrovsky's pact in the post-master's house with the French tutor; see his transformation from officer to brigand to teacher to brigand again; and wonder if it's true that we always miss what's right before our eyes?
I see the Volga with loaded barges floating on it, and 'little fishing-boats, so aptly called smacks', flashing here and there, and the hills and fields and small villages stretching beyond it; and wonder if those with such a landscape as a view know how fortunate they are?
I see many-coloured lights flare up, whirl about, and fall in 'showers of rain and stars'; and am, like Maria Kirilovna, 'carried away like a child.'
I see, from a distance, an airy shadow approach a trysting-place and meet a bolder shadow, and then, some time later, one disappear among the trees.
Time flies...lost in a dream.
I see a red-haired boy stealing a ring from a hollow oak, and caught see him dragged to and locked in a pigeon-loft with an old poultry woman as his watch, and then brought before the police-captain; and wonder how it feels to be a prisoner, for your fate to be decided?
I see a pistol drawn, one that wounds, one that threatens; and consider how a moment can change everything.
I see two winning cards, three, seven; and wonder nervously, unlike Hermann, if the third will be...? Three, seven....
These idle thoughts, sensations, escape me while reading Pushkin.
Picture credit: Pushkin at the Mikhailovsky, Pyotr Konchalovsky (source: WikiArt).
See The
Queen of Spades and Other Stories by Alexander Pushkin
(Penguin Classics, translation and footnotes by Rosemary Edmonds).
Written 9-10th May 2022.
