Chevengur

by Andrey Platonov

a piercing anxiety had made little Chepurny toss and turn on the stove, weeping and raging, as if a worm were tickling him right through the middle of his body.

And this same dry, stifling anxiety was troubling Chepurny again, on a Chevengur night that might have e...

“Why is communism making me grieve, as if I were a half-bourgeois?”

Like all adults, they knew nothing of the anguish of uncertainty felt by children and party members;

whereas Chepurny was sitting there in fear of the coming day, because on this first day everything would be somehow awkward and awful, as if what had long been virginity were now ripe for marriage and everyone would have to be wedded the following day.

“You must be a poor dog, not a bourgeois dog!” Chepurny said with affection. “Never in your life have you tasted fine flour—so here’s to life in Chevengur!”

“That means the sun will be ours!” said Chepurny, and pointed greedily to the east.

“Why aren’t you asleep?” Chepurny asked them. “Today’s our first day. The sun’s already risen and birds are flying to join us—why lie here in fear?”

The lamp was burning with a yellow light from beyond the grave; Piusia extinguished it with pleasure of destruction and then remembered that nobody was guarding Chevengur—capitalists might move back in without warning, and once again it would be necessary to burn the lamp all night long, in order for the half-bourgeois to know that armed Communists were sitting there without sleep.

and this first earth, in the weakness of exhaustion, had begun to stream with the juice of grasses and the moisture of loam, rippling and quivering all its far-flung, hairy steppe, while the sun simply went on getting hotter, turning stone-like from tense, dry patience.

fires were burning, goats were grazing, and women were washing their clothes in puddles of rainwater.

Dismissed clerks, and other half-bourgeois, were hard at work—probably digging dug-outs—while three shop-assistants, working naked in the fresh air, were constructing a tent from underwear and sheets: anything to create property and a dwelling.

They washed with sand rather than soap; they dried themselves with their sleeves and with burdock leaves; they felt the hens and then searched for eggs in nooks and crannies.

As for their main soup, they began cooking it in the morning, in an iron vat whose original purpose was unknown.

when the Bolsheviks were done with revolution and ready to take in food, and when beetles, moths, and mosquitoes began to descend on the vat. The Bolsheviks would then eat—once every twenty-four hours—and sleep lightly.

“Any way but not that way! You should strangle them by hand. Each bullet you squander—a surplus bourgeois lives longer.”

The sun was already high in the sky. It was morning in Chevengur, and communism must have already set in.

On the very first day of socialism, Chepurny had woken so filled with hope by the sun, which had risen before him, and by the sight of all Chevengur lying ready and waiting, that he had asked Prokofy to go somewhere or other at once and summon the poor to Chevengur.2

If a woman’s a comrade, go ahead! But if she’s back to front, send her packing!”

Zheyev did not reaffirm his wishes, since communism had been realized anyway and women were sure to appear in it, if only as secret comrades.

For communal life in Chevengur, woman was acceptable in a drier and more human form but not in her full beauty, which did not constitute a part of communism, since the beauty of woman’s nature had existed beforehand, under capitalism, as had mountains, stars, and other inhuman phenomena.

These foresensings made Chepurny ready to welcome to Chevengur any woman whose face was darkened by the sorrow of poverty and the aging of labor.

nor would he see the comradely sun look down on this primary town as it prepared, with clean floors and freshened air, to greet the unknown, homeless proletariat now plodding along without the meaning of their own lives or the respect of others.

One thing both calmed and inspired Chepurny: somewhere near Moscow or in the Valday Hills—as Prokofy had determined from the map—there was a distant, secret place called the Kremlin and Lenin was sitting there beside a lamp, thinking, writing, and not sleeping.

But why was he writing now? Now, after all, there was Chevengur—and it was time for Lenin to stop writing, pour himself b...

A lamp was still burning in the brick house, and the eight Bolsheviks, anticipating some kind of danger, were unable to sleep.

“Comrades, we need to do some thinking ourselves. There’s no Prokofy for you now. The town stands wide open and there’s no ideas written anywhere.

Property is only of current benefit, while comrades are a necessity. Without them, you can’t conquer anything—and you end up turning into a swine yourself.”

When he was among comrades, his soul was taken up with petty concerns—and this expenditure of his inner resources made life less frightening.

But after they’d found two tall poles and prepared them, a midnight wind began to blow. This cheered Chepurny; if, in the bourgeoisie’s absence, poles still swayed in the wind the same as ever, this was proof that the bourgeoisie was definitely not a force of nature.

Six Bolsheviks stood over him with their weapons, observing the steppe, Chevengur, and their fallen comrade.

The light went out—and out of the dark of the destroyed window appeared Kirey’s bright face. He looked at the seven men, wondering who they could be. Who could be shooting in Chevengur when he himself was communism’s night watchman?

“We’ve got wells. But they may have ended Zheyev’s soul already. Why must we wait for proletariat? We don’t have any proletariat, but we did have a Zheyev.”

Here I lie, supporting all of communism. If I get up and leave, communism will leave Chevengur too—or maybe it’ll remain somewhere or other.

And what is this communism anyway? Is it a matter of buildings? Or of us Bolsheviks alone?”

Never did the song come to a conclusion, although the Bolsheviks would gladly have listened further, and they stood for a long time in greedy expectation of voice and song.

And we’ve no food for her—she’s a bourgeois. If she were a peasant woman, well and good . . . But she’s just an outmoded throw-back. We need fellow feeling, not art.”7

Leaving the machine gun unguarded, however, was out of the question—that would have been equivalent to passing the armaments of communism straight into the hands of the White enemy—and so Kirey lay there a while longer, trying to think up some way of defending Chevengur that would allow him to hunt down the chicken.

“Why doesn’t the chicken just come to me?” he wondered. “I’ll be eating it anyway. Proshka’s right—life’s still totally unorganized. Although we have communism now. The chicken ought to just come to me.”

“Who do you take me for?” Chepurny retorted crossly. “Not even Lenin’s obligated to be able to tell you for sure. Communism’s a matter for the entire proletarian mass, not for one man to think up all on his own. Outsmarting the proletariat’s not so easy.”

through the tall Chevengur grass, where wheat, goosefoot, and nettles all grew in fraternal closeness—but then he turned back, deciding to wait for the light of day.

The tall grass gave off the damp breath of the life of grains and grasses—ears of rye and small tabernacles of goosefoot lived there without harm to one another, embracing closely and keeping one another safe.

The Chevengur bourgeoisie had not sown or planted anything for three years, counting on the imminent end of the world, but the plants had gone on multiplying from their parents, observing a particular equation:

Chepurny had always said that it too was an International of cereals and flowers, guaranteeing plentiful nourishment to all the poor without the interference of labor and exploitation.

The Chevengurians thus understood that nature refused to oppress man with labor, choosing instead to grant the destitute ...

in the shape of a tree growing out of wild soil and, with two gnarled arms, embracing a man beneath the sun they shared.

But Prokofy did not agree. “Don’t touch them. They’re worn out as it is. The sun will rise soon and they’ll make their way down into Chevengur.”

And time did indeed pass quickly, since time is mind, not feeling, and Chepurny was not thinking anything in his mind.

For about two hours Chepurny stood with his banner by the boundary fence, waiting for dawn and the awakening of the proletariat.

What he saw now, lying on the slope of this mound, was a nation warming its bones in the first sun—and these people were themselves like decrepit black bones from the crumbling skeleton of someone’s vast, perished life.