The Last and the First

Nina Berberova, Marian Schwartz

• Publisher: Pushkin Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781782276975
• eBook ISBN:
  9781782276982
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Classics
• Index: Literature

The first English translation of celebrated Russian writer Nina Berberova's debut novel: an intense story of family conflict and the struggle over the future of émigré life On a crisp September morning, trouble comes to the Gorbatovs' farm. Having fled revolution and civil war in Russia, the family has worked tirelessly to establish themselves as crop farmers in Provence, their hopes of returning home a distant dream. While young Ilya Stepanovich is committed to this new way of life, his step-brother Vasya looks only to the past. With the arrival of a letter from Paris, a plot to lure Vasya back to Russia begins in earnest, and Ilya must set out for the capital to try to preserve his family's fragile stability. The first novel by the celebrated Russian writer Nina Berberova, The Last and the First is an elegant and devastating portrayal of the internal struggles of a generation of émigrés. Appearing for the first time in English in a stunning translation by the prize-winning Marian Schwartz, it shows Berberova in full command of her gifts as a writer of masterful poise and psychological insight.

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CHAPTER ONE

On the morning of 20th September 1928, between nine and ten, three events occurred that set the stage for this tale. Alexei Ivanovich Shaibin, one of its many heroes, turned up at the Gorbatovs’; Vasya, the Gorbatov son, offspring of Stepan Vasilievich and Vera Kirillovna and stepbrother of Ilya Stepanovich, received a letter from Paris, from his friend Adolf Kellerman, with important news about Vasya’s father; and finally, a poor wayfarer and his guide arrived at the Gorbatovs’ farm in a broad valley of the Vaucluse.

No one knew this man’s name. Who was he? What road had led him to his present wanderings? He had passed through here the previous year, in the spring, and he was already known in the surrounding area; at that time he was still sighted and walked alone, an old Astrakhan cap pulled to his eyes, sending up white dust and bowing to those he met. He had spoken with 10Ilya and with Vera Kirillovna herself for a long time; he’d drunk, had dinner, and spent the night. But neither Vasya nor his sister Marianna saw the wayfarer the next morning. He had left at dawn, blessing the house, the orchard, and the cowshed where the oxen slept, and the attic where Ilya slept. Later, people said he’d gone west, but more likely he’d gone southwest, past Toulouse, to see the Cossacks who had settled in those parts.

Now he was blind, and that same Astrakhan cap had slipped over his shaggy eyebrows. A dark blue scar ran across his face, and he had no beard growing on his cheeks; you could tell a regimental doctor had once mended his face in haste, slapping together the torn pieces of his no longer young, swarthy skin. He was tall and ominously thin, and his military trousers sported red patches in many places—possibly scraps from someone else’s service trousers, but French, trousers that had once known the defense of Verdun. The wayfarer walked with his harsh withered hand resting on the shoulder of his guide, a black-eyed girl of about twelve whose name was Anyuta.

They stopped at the gate and the old man took off his cap. The girl looked over the low stone wall. There she saw an orchard, a vegetable plot, and a house with outbuildings partially hidden by stocky willows. In the 11silence and cool of the morning, the house stood low, burned by the sun over the long summer, with a north-facing porch and squat asparagus shoots, while farther away, past the dark blue shadow of moribund cypresses, plowed fields spread out, ready for winter crops.

This was a human habitation created not in struggle with nature but at one with it. The sun was already high in the untroubled sky, and birds flew swiftly in its gleam, like short, darting needles sewing through it.

Vasya and Marianna went over to the gate, even though they were up to their ears in work; they pushed back their round straw hats, which were as hard as tin, and their hands were covered in dirt.

“You could have sung something,” Marianna said. “Where have you come from?” She began examining Anyuta, her long colorful skirt and the narrow ribbon tied around her head.

The wayfarer made a low, unhurried bow.

“From the Dordogne, gentle lady,” he said. “We are on our way south, from the Dordogne to the Siagne River, to hot climes, to see good people, and in the spring back to our own people, for the summer. And there—God will provide. People know us.”

Vasya came closer, his face bathed in sweat.

“But what are you going there for?” he asked. 12

Anyuta gave him a frightened look. Her heart started pounding for fear they would have to leave without seeing the person they’d come to see, for the sake of whom they’d made a detour from the highway, past the river and mill. How can these people ask! How dare they! she thought.

“We walk, my dear boy,” the wayfarer replied, “because we’re too old and blind to work. We go to good people’s homes to eat and have conversations with good people, and we do not complain of our Lord God.”

Marianna shrugged lightly and grinned.

“Why do you speak so oddly? We were told you were an educated man, or else a priest.”

Anyuta rushed to the old man in despair.

“Granddad, can we go? Granddad?” she whispered, tugging on his sleeve. “Let’s go, dear Granddad. We can come some other time!”

The beggar put his hand on her shoulder but did not go where she was pulling him. He took two steps toward the wall, making a deep rut in the road dust with his staff.

“They told you wrong, my good lady,” he replied, and his micaceous eyes flashed. “I am no priest. Nor was I a doctor or an engineer. Allow us to sit on your little porch. I know in your part of the world porches 13always look into the shade, and if Vera Kirillovna can find a little water for us, Anyuta and I would be very grateful.”

And he bowed abruptly at the waist.

Marianna opened the gate, and the wayfarer passed between her and Vasya, Anyuta leading him. He walked majestically, without that grim fussiness so often characteristic of the blind. They passed slowly between the vegetable beds toward the house; from time to time the beggar lifted his right hand from Anyuta’s thin shoulder and made a fluid cross over the beds, and the house, and the bent pear trees’ smeared trunks. A sack hung motionlessly from his shoulder; the sack was military, like his trousers. No one knew this man’s name.

Marianna watched him go, grinned again, and leaned over the shoots poking out of the earth.

“Come on, let’s go, let’s listen,” Vasya said, “or does nothing have anything to do with you anymore?”

He wiped his wet face with his sleeve and looked at her expectantly.

“No, it doesn’t,” Marianna replied reluctantly. “There’s nothing for me to hear. But you go on.”

Something stirred in Vasya’s sleepy face; his gaze slid down Marianna’s back, her black gathered skirt, her wooden shoes.14

“I’ve just had a letter from Adolf,” he said sullenly. “Has that nothing to do with you?”

Marianna turned her merry, high-cheekboned face toward him.

“You mean he’s summoning you?”

“Yes. He writes about Father. Old Kellerman has come and wants a meeting with me. Father’s been found, and he has an important post.”

Marianna clapped her hands and gave her brother a frightened look.

“Ah, that Gorbatov!” she exclaimed. “He lets us know through Kellerman. He wants to lure you there!”

Vasya sat down beside her and put an arm around his knees.

“It’s time for me to go,” he said firmly. “Father is calling, demanding that at least one of us return. At first old Kellerman was going to demand Adolf get Ilya, but Adolf told him flat out that was impossible. Whereas I … I’ve been wanting to go there for a whole year, and Adolf has summoned me. He writes that my papers can be in order in two days.”

“A whole year!” Marianna said slowly.

“I never tried to pretend otherwise. Mama knows it, and so does Ilya. I just can’t here. My path takes me home, to Father, and this is the goal Kellerman and I share.” He dropped his head. “I know that Kellerman 15is trying to get in Father’s good graces, but does that matter, Marianna? I might have gone even without this.”

“No, you wouldn’t!”

“I don’t know. It’s impossible for me here. Father’s working with Kellerman there and despises our settling here. I’m going. I’ll have money, I’ll have the life I want. I didn’t choose this one. And you know, it’s essential to me—I mean, roots are absolutely essential.”

“Ilya says we should have roots in the air.”

“Ilya’s always going to say something you don’t know how to answer. But there, Father’s a big shot. He sent Kellerman to Paris on business and he’s going back in a month. You have to understand. I’ve been waiting a whole year for this, waiting for Gorbatov to turn up and summon me. Adolf has worn me down!”

“He’s the one who won you over, and he’s the one sending you after your roots. He’s a scoundrel, your Adolf, and Gorbatov’s a fine one! To lure you away, to tempt you … Oh, Vasya, dear Vasya, what an automaton you are, my God! If I were Ilya I would lock you in the attic and go to Paris myself and demand that Kellerman back off. If they don’t leave you in peace—someone should lodge a complaint. There’s manure to shovel here and you’re leaving!” 16

Vasya was quiet for a moment.

“It’s true, Vasya. Let Ilya go to Paris. Wait for him. This is all about your weak will. You’re flattered that a passport will be ready in two days, that—don’t laugh—that there’s a direct train to Negoreloye, I know. Old Kellerman is clearly trying to curry favor with Gorbatov, he’s promising to return his sonny boy, promising sonny boy his roots … It would be better if Gorbatov went missing altogether, there’d be more left of him. Did Mama really not talk to you?”

“What can Mama say? Anything she’s going to say will be less than what she’s doing. If, she says, if you don’t see what our whole life’s been for, I can’t help you. If you haven’t understood why we’re living like this, so be it. Come back when you have. But Gorbatov, she says—him I curse.”

Vasya stood up and wrung his hands in anguish.

“Go,” Marianna said, bending over. “She’s right. You didn’t start this, those scoundrels did, and that includes Gorbatov. Go.”

Vasya waited, but Marianna didn’t straighten up, and he slowly walked away. Dirt stuck to his wooden shoes. He clasped his hands behind his back. He hesitated as to where to go and started uncertainly toward the house. The kitchen door was wide open, Anyuta was sitting in the doorway, and her slender little fingers 17were sorting through a bunch of dark, dusty grapes. The wayfarer’s low, placid voice reached her from the kitchen.

Through her spread fingers Marianna clearly saw which way Vasya had gone. As soon as he disappeared into the kitchen, she jumped up, let down her tucked skirt, wiped her hands on her hem, straightened the hat on her short, thick hair, and ran out of the gate.

There wasn’t a soul on the road at that already hot morning hour. The untouched track made by the postman who’d buzzed by here on his bicycle an hour before lay calmly in the dust. The black fields and the bands of meadows that had been mowed for a third time were empty and scentless, as they are in the autumn. Marianna ran tentatively at first and then faster and faster. When she finally reached the main road, she shot off like an arrow down the dismal old boundary path, her heavy strapped wooden shoes pounding. She flew past the stubble field and skirted the old farm; a dog yelped and wet linens rustled in the wind. She ran as far as the grove and stopped. Something cracked in the branches.

“Gabriel!” she called quietly.

Somewhere cows were moving, their bells tinkling, and the young oaks smelled of the Provençal valleys’ eternal freshness. 18

“Gabriel,” Marianna repeated, trying not to breathe too loudly or step too heavily. Just then she saw a cap on the ground. Gabriel was asleep, his head resting on the back wheel of his bicycle. Marianna flung herself at him and shouted right in his ear—“Gabriel!”—so that he started, swept his arm around her neck, and pulled her toward him. He smelled of pine needles and clabber, and she kissed him hard.

His apron, draped over one shoulder, was, as usual, covered in blood spots, and his cowlick was pomaded down. Marianna was crazy about his tiny teeth and early mustache, and she sat on a hummock to take it all in. Excitement and happiness had transformed her face.

“What did your father say?” she asked in French, with a faint Provençal accent, as she always spoke, as her neighbors had taught her. “Did you talk to him?”

“He said yes,” Gabriel replied, glancing slyly at her. “He said yes, but he asked who exactly I was in love with, you or Ilya.”

Marianna blushed.

“What did you say?”

“Botheration! With you! Then he started laughing and said that according to his information I was in love with Ilya, at least that’s what people in town said, and just about me.”19

“So he said yes?” Marianna repeated, gasping.

“Not right off, don’t imagine that. First he asked whether I really wanted to go from shopkeeper to peasant. Then I told him I wanted to be a landowner.”

“Is that so! You were able to put it that well?”

“Well, yes....

Table of contents

• TITLE PAGE
• CONTENTS
• TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
• CHAPTER ONE
• CHAPTER TWO
• CHAPTER THREE
• CHAPTER FOUR
• CHAPTER FIVE
• CHAPTER SIX
• CHAPTER SEVEN
• CHAPTER EIGHT
• COPYRIGHT