Notes on the Cuff and Other Stories Read Online Free

only one solution — we
must write a play. A revolutionary play. About the life of the natives. And sell it..."
    I stared at him vacantly and replied: "I can't
write anything about the life of the natives, revolutionary or
counter-revolutionary. I know nothing about their life. In fact I can't write
anything at all. I'm tired, and I don't think I'm any good at writing
anyway."
    "You're talking nonsense," he answered.
"It's because you're hungry. Be a man. The life of the natives is a cinch.
I know it inside out. We'll write the play together. And split the money
fifty-fifty."
    So we started to write. There was a round hot stove at
his place. His wife would hang up the washing on a line in the room, then give
us some beetroot salad with vegetable oil and tea with saccharine. He told me
some common names and customs, and I made up the plot. So did he . And his wife sat down and advised us too. I realised at
once they were much better at it than me. But I didn't feel envious, because I
had already decided this was the last play I would ever write...
    And so we wrote it. He basked by the stove saying:
"I love creating!" I scratched away with my pen...
    A week later the three-act play was ready. When I read
it through to myself in my unheated room at night, I'm not ashamed to admit
that it brought tears to my eyes! In terms of crassness it was unique,
remarkable! Something obtuse and insolent stared out of every line of this
collective creation. I couldn't believe my eyes. What could I hope for,
imbecile, if I wrote like that? Shame stared at me from the damp green walls
and the terrible black windows. I began to tear up the manuscript. But then I
stopped. Because suddenly with remarkable, unusual clarity I realised the truth
of the saying: once written, never destroyed. A work can be torn up, burnt,
concealed from others. But never from oneself! It was the end of me! It could
never be erased. This astounding thing had been written by me. It was the end !..
     
    *
     
    The play caused a sensation in the native Sub-Section.
They bought it at once for two hundred thousand. And a fortnight later it was
performed on the stage.
    Eyes, daggers and cartridge pockets flashed in the
mist of a thousand bated breaths. After heroic horsemen rushed in and grabbed
the chief of police and guards in the third act the Chechens, Kabardians and Ingushes yelled: " Zere ! Serves him right, ze cur!"
    And following the Sub-Section ladies they shouted:
"Author!"
    There was a lot of handshaking backstage.
    " Vairy gut
play!"
    And invitations to visit their mountain
villages.
     
    *
     
    Must run! Must run!
    Quickly. A hundred thousand is enough to get out of here. Forward. To the sea. Over one sea and another to
France
and dry land — to
Paris
!
    A driving rain lashed my face as, hunched up in my
greatcoat, I ran along the alleys for the last time — home...
    You — prosewriters and
playwrights in
Paris
and
Berlin
— just you try. Try, for the fun of
it, to write something worse. If you are as talented as Kuprin , Bunin or Gorky you will not succeed. It is I who hold
the record! For collective creativity. The three of us
wrote it: me, the barrister's clerk and hunger. At the
beginning of nineteen twenty one...

 
     
     
13.
     
    The town at the foot of the mountains has vanished.
Curse it... Tsikhidziri . Makhindzhauri .
Green
Cape
! Magnolias
in bloom. White flowers the size of plates. Bananas. Palm trees! I saw them myself, I swear it, palm trees
growing out of the ground. And the sea singing endlessly by
granite cliffs. The books were right. The sun sinks into the water. The beauty of the sea. The high vault of
the heavens. The steep cliff, with creeping plants on
it. Chakva . Tsikhidziri .
Green
Cape
.
    Where am I going? Where? I'm wearing my last shirt. With crooked letters on my cuffs. And
heavy hieroglyphs in my heart. I have deciphered only one of these
mysterious signs. It says: woe is me! Who will interpret the others for