ONE MORE SNEAK PEEK FROM: THE DAYS OF MIRACLE AND WONDER, STORIES
Here’s one more story from my latest collection, THE DAYS OF MIRACLE AND WONDER.
Two previous sneak peeks are available at irenezabytko.com/blog.
Enjoy. The Ebook is available on all platforms mentioned here: Books2read.com/miraclewonder and www.irenezabytko.com/new
And if you do purchase the E-book, please write a review. The paperback will be out in Spring, 2021.
Photo: Monica Silvestre
“LES KURBAS’ LAST ACT”
From: THE DAYS OF MIRACLE AND WONDER, STORIES
By Irene Zabytko
Ladies and gentlemen. Some of you might know me, or you observe me standing here before you, and you‘re thinking…where have I seen him before? I’ve traveled to many cities and villages all throughout this country and have lived the equivalent of ten lifetimes. I am an actor. Perhaps you heard of me or at least had seen my most famous movie role (now replayed on the television during sentimental Soviet holidays.) Yes, I appeared in the 1958 Dovzhenko Studio production of Stalin’s life called as you know, History Misses Thee.
Ah. Well. From the looks of your faces, I am astonished to comprehend that perhaps you’ve never heard of it after all. Let me assure you—it was very popular then. Everyone was supposed to have seen it at least once in their lives if you were alive then—or wanted to stay as much.
Anyway, I played the role of one of the pallbearers at his funeral. I was the peasant looking old man—front pallbearer right side, who was so overcome with grief that he bared open his sheepskin jacket in despair before falling on the floor, and of course there’s a tattoo of Stalin’s bushy mustache image on my chest.
My over-indulgent acting for that one scene did reward me with a close-up. And I have to say, as ridiculous as the movie was, I was quite good in the role. I played similar characters until the early 1960s but by then Khrushchev had denounced Stalin, and I had to find other roles such as the lead tractor driver in the musical, Daughter of the Steppes. And certainly you must have seen me as the brutal capitalist merchant in a highly bastardized version of Pygmalion.
No? Well, no wonder. My best roles were in the theater. I love acting live and onstage above anything else. I began acting in the theater as a very young man. My parents were Shakespearian actors and sent me to Moscow to study with the great Stanislavsky because modern theater was mushrooming and blossoming after the Revolution. I was very young at the time, but it was such an honor to be away from home and in the presence of that great man—his method acting saved my life not only on stage and all those silly film roles, but so many times in my own personal life’s tragedies.
While I was studying in Moscow, my parents found work with a traveling troupe in Estonia. I was to return home to Kyiv to wait for their return. I much preferred Kyiv to Moscow at any rate—it was where I hoped to begin my acting career in earnest and surprise them with landing a role on the stage. Little did I know that I would never see them again. They disappeared, and so did I.
In Kyiv, this was oh, in 1934 or so, in Kyiv I was lucky—or so I thought—to start my apprenticeship with a new theater company where I could at last put the Stanislavsky method to good talented use. The theater troupe was called “The Octoberites” (named after the Revolution of course), and it was a fledgling one in the Podil section—the oldest most historical and whimsical part of the city which I loved. We practiced and performed in a stuffy basement, and sometimes it was distracting to look out the lone window and see people’s feet pass by, like a metronome. But after a while I hardly noticed the outside world.
I was hired as the under-underling. Which meant I was the prop boy, lights manager, curtain puller, ticket seller. I set up the stage scenery and chairs for the audience, threw out the garbage, cooked eggs and salt pork on the illegal Bunsen burner in a corner during rehearsals, not to mention procuring the odd bottle for anyone who needed extra courage before a performance. Now and then, my acting talents were called upon, and I was ready to take on anything. In truth, I was really nothing more than a stage hand who filled in the roles of the other actors when they were too ill or drunk to go on stage. I even acted the women’s roles because I was quite young and eager to memorize everyone’s parts just for a chance to act!
The longer I stayed with them, the more often I was called on to take on roles and always at the last minute. It happened that I was doing four to five costume changes a night before racing to the back of the theater to open the exit doors wearing whatever costume I had on at the moment—and never taking a bow with the others for the final curtain either I might add.
Still, it was a great little group. I learned much, but my greatest role was yet to come and it was my surviving the gulag.
Watch the trailer here: https://youtu.be/SQsb7eC2vI4
If you have the time, please do me the honor and indulge an old actor to recite his life’s story in four acts.
You just heard the Prologue and my paltry introduction. To quote Dickens, or rather misquote him, whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life has long been decided. For I am not. That station has been held by another and more worthy as you will hear. And now…
Act One—In Which I Make My Acting Debut, But Am Arrested Instead.
On one unlucky, unfortunate night—opening night 1935 at my troupe’s theater in Kyiv, I finally had my chance to act in a real role as “The Fool” (renamed “The Worker”) in a Soviet production of King Lear. The actor who was supposed to have played the part of the Fool was anything but—he purposely became sick because he knew beforehand that we would never get past the first act.
We always had a small audience, and typical of that night were those who came only because we “papered the walls” meaning that we handed out free tickets to anyone who wanted to come in from the street and out of the rain.
One of my myriad jobs was to count how many attended each performance. That night, I counted a drunk who fell asleep in the back row, three middle-aged women who were street cleaners and came because their shifts hadn’t begun, three couples of various ages, and six men all wearing black and looking as stern and ominous as cemetery ravens.
When I looked out into the audience that night, I didn’t think those six men in identical black leather coats were anything to be concerned about. We were used to having more empty seats than the motely people filling them. But there they were, in the third row, wearing the same coats, not taking off their caps and not even applauding when the curtain came up.
I was ready for my cue. I was about to shout out my first line which was rewritten to fit the political times. Instead of the original one Shakespeare wrote which if you recall was: “Let me hire him too. Here is my coxcomb.” I was to say: “Let me hire him too. Here is my worker’s cap.” And as soon as I thrusted my woolen newsboy cap up into the air, our sullen audience in the third row arose in unison holding out their pistols with one yelling out, “In the name of the people we arrest you for bourgeoisie capitalist propaganda.” Of all things—and right before my big speech and song. Ach!
Two of the men in black pointed their Lugers while coming up on stage where we were soon taken off it, and into a Black Maria. I kept counting the people in the van. It seems they arrested all our troupe and the others in the audience too except for that drunk who fell between the rows of seats and unwittingly was hidden from it all.
Act Two—In Which I Show Up at the Show Trial and Shipped to Solovki.
Well, we—that is my acting troupe and I did appear in a show trial—aptly called since it was an absolute lunatic farce.
We were huddled en masse on a stage inside a courtroom. For once, I was in the front row nearest our two lawyers who by the way, were also arrested even before the trial, and were forced to join us on the platform.
Then another lawyer, one appointed by the People’s Council appeared. I must admit that some of the very best acting was by that so called defense lawyer who did nothing to help us.
His lines were exquisite and I will recite his damning evidence of why we didn’t deserve to be defended:
“Ahem—Comrades of the Extraordinary Court of the People. I am ashamed to stand before you as part of this travesty. This travesty of defending this so called acting troupe of vagabonds, parasites, and hooligans before you. Should I try to persuade you of their innocence of not defaming the People in their decadence? For allowing a young guttersnipe (pointing in my direction) to dare assume the role of a traitor of the Revolution? Of defending these vile corrupters possessing the lowest morals by appearing before an audience of Tovarishi and insulting our patriotism and loyalty to the Cause with their insidious play that is devoid of any revolutionary zest and zeal? Nay! In good Soviet proletarian conscious I cannot! I shall not! Therefore Comrades, do with them whatever you in good proletarian wisdom think must be done. I wash my hands—hands mind you that spent the morning digging in the collective farm alongside our brothers in the villages—I wash my wearied hands of these miscreants, these mockers of all that is good and just in our Soyuez.”
He was given a standing ovation. I must say he was quite good. I admired the way he wiped his proletarian hands and sweating brow with a red silk handkerchief. Actually, his hands looked very well-manicured and he wore a gold watch that glittered with each angry twitch of his hands when he very dramatically threw down the stack of papers that supposedly was the briefs of our case. When they took us away I noticed that the papers were pages from a dictionary…official looking even so.
He took mere seconds to denounce us and the judge took another second to sentence us. We then spent several awful days at the prison where I was separated from nearly all of my troupe. A few of us were released together, and then whisked away onto a ship headed over the monstrous waves of the White Sea and onward to the notorious gulags of the Solovki Islands. That was the worst trip of my life.
END OF SAMPLE
PRAISE FOR THE DAYS OF MIRACLE AND WONDER
“Irene Zabytko has shown that a writer can tell great stories and still have a Ukrainian point of view.” —A. J. Motyl, Author The Jew Who Was Ukrainian
“Irene Zabytko’s work is very engaging. I always look forward to her writing as it is captivating, and her characters are empowered with grace and strength.”— Laurie Kuntz, Poet, Author, The Moon Over My Mother’s House (forthcoming)
“What a breezy but compelling read. I like it a lot. The momentum builds within a social framework that is both ominous and absurd. I hear a bit of Nabokov and of course Hohol.”—Lila Dlaboha, Poet, Past Editorial Board Member The Little Magazine.
Irene Zabytko is an award-winning fiction writer. She is the author of the highly acclaimed novel about Chornobyl (Chernobyl), THE SKY UNWASHED, and the short story collection WHEN LUBA LEAVES HOME. Irene is also the author of the ultimate fiction writing guidebook: THE FICTION PRESCRIPTION: HOW TO WRITE AND IMPROVE YOUR FICTION LIKE THE GREAT LITERARY MASTERS.
