Memories by Teffi

Author:Teffi
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-59017-952-9
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2016-04-13T04:00:00+00:00

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New refugees kept appearing in Odessa: from Moscow, Petersburg, and Kiev.

It was easiest to obtain a travel pass if you were an actor or singer. The amount of artistic talent in Russia proved truly remarkable—opera and theater companies began to head south in droves.

“We got out with no trouble at all,” you would hear some Petersburg hairdresser say, smiling serenely. “I was the leading man, my wife was the ingénue, aunty Fima was the coquette, Mama was in charge of the box office and we had eleven prompters. We all got through. Of course, the proletariat was a little puzzled by the number of prompters, but we explained that no element of the dramatic art is more important. Without a prompter a play can’t run at all. And prompters get worn out sitting so still in their booths—and so this crucial element of the art has to be repeatedly replaced by fresh elements.”

There was an opera company made up entirely of noble fathers.

And a ballet company that was all elderly nannies and headmistresses.

Every new arrival adamantly asserted that the Bolshevik regime was falling apart and that, to be honest, it was hardly even worth unpacking one’s bags. But unpack them they did . . .

There was a general air of excitement, though you couldn’t quite call it high spirits.

“The Entente! The Triple Entente!”

We looked out to sea, hoping to glimpse British or French “pennants.”[84]

Money started slowly disappearing. Shopkeepers would give change in their own special notes, which they would later sometimes fail to recognize.

Everything was getting more expensive by the day. Once, a salesman pointed with tragic solemnity at a piece of cheese he was wrapping for me and said, “Keep an eye on it—it’s growing more expensive by the minute!”

“Well, wrap it up quickly,” I said. “Maybe the paper will slow it down.”

And then, all of a sudden, we lost Grishin-Almazov. He left Odessa incognito, without a word to anyone. There were urgent matters he needed to discuss with Kolchak. It was not long before we heard the tragic news. He was intercepted by the Bolsheviks while crossing the Caspian Sea. Seeing an approaching ship with a red flag, the gray-eyed governor of Odessa threw several cases of documents into the water, leaned over the side, and put a bullet through his forehead. He died the death of a hero.

A hero, Grishin-Almazov. I emphasize the word: hero!

His death evoked little response in Odessa. I noticed only that the hotel commandant’s greetings became more perfunctory and his fluffy dog stopped wagging its tail at me. One day the commandant knocked on my door. Sounding preoccupied, he informed me apologetically that he had found me a room in the International, since the whole of the London was being requisitioned for use as a military headquarters.

I was very sorry to leave my dear room number sixteen where at six o’clock every evening the radiator would warm up a little, where the mirror above the mantelpiece had sometimes reflected the faces of people

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