“An escaped man,” said one, “God go with him.”
“An escaped man,” echoed the other in reply, “The Devil take him.”
The town began with a row of poor log houses standing in little yards enclosed by dilapidated fences. A little girl bounded out, barefoot. Her feet were black. Rodion halted, enchanted. He felt naïve joy, tinged with another feeling—bitter, almost terrible—as he gazed at those familiar houses, always the same, with thatched or planked roofs so weather-beaten that you could see daylight through them. What town was this? He didn’t dare ask. He mingled with the crowd, searching for a street-sign, a notice posted by the local Soviet. But this was a town without street-signs, without posters, perhaps without a name, an ordinary little town with ruined churches: the same empty cooperatives as everywhere, a line of people in front of the closed shop of the Tabak-Trust, a miserable market-place where everything—the horses’ long drooping heads, the people’s faces, the rare sacks of grain—had the same colour of dried mud . . . On the red gauze banner strung across the main street, Rodion, who did not wish to read them, made out two faded rain-washed words: Enthusiasm, Industrialization . . .
His hungry wanderings led him to a vast building-site bristling with scaffolds and tall skeletal walls of red brick. Trucks were jouncing drunkenly through mud-puddles without even startling the little, resigned horses harnessed to ancient carts. Casks of cement were bursting through a rail fence, and men were bustling clumsily about among the trucks, the horses, the carts, the cement, the scaffoldings. On a door Rodion read: Now hiring: labourers, masons, carpenters, stucco-workers and others—bed and soup. He pushed open the door. Inside it smelled of cheap tobacco, fresh lime, manure, benzine; it was full of hoarse voices arguing about an incident involving a missing cart-load, a drunken driver, twenty-seven roubles, the Control Commission. Rodion asked for a job as a mason-tender.
“Fine. If you know the work, we’ll give you a chance to prove it in the second brigade, ‘Socialist Emulation.’ Its output is nineteen percent higher than the average for the plan. Three roubles and sixty-five kopecks a day and soup from the technicians’ canteen—you’re lucky. Only you better meet the quota. We carry out the plan here, brother: we don’t want any loafers. If you don’t work out, tomorrow I’ll send you over to the fourth, the gold-brickers brigade: black-list, two roubles forty-five, and sour-cabbage soup—Diarrhoea Brand.”
“I’ll meet the quota,” said Rodion with an imperceptible touch of self-mockery. “I’m class-conscious, citizen. What are we building here?”
“District Headquarters for State Security, comrade proletarian. So the work must be done properly, you understand. There’s competition with the prisoners’ brigades.”
The crew that Rodion joined included a woman who taught him to carry the maximum load of solidly-stacked bricks on his back and shoulders, to carry them to the top of the scaffolding fast enough so that the masons of the fifth prisoners’ brigade never paused for an instant in their methodical labours. There was no time to breathe, to exchange a few words, or to smoke, and anyway smoking was forbidden, and anyway you lost your taste for everything. To keep up your spirits, you chewed bad tobacco—twenty cigarettes for sixty-five kopecks. The woman must have been about thirty. She hid in order to drink. When she saw Rodion’s face drenched with sweat, pinched like the face of a dying man, she joined him on a shaky platform from which you could see a soft landscape of humble roofs and light-green prairies blending off into the horizons. The woman held her brandy-bottle out to Rodion.
“Drink fast! If the brigade-leader catches us we’re sure to get fined. . . .”
Rodion, racked with fatigue, avidly absorbed that liquid fire. His legs never stopped shaking under him, but he felt savagely strong and lucid: he saw reality with the intensity of a dream. The woman was flat-chested and the hard, deep-lined features of her face expressed wear and resistance. Her eyes were sunken and surrounded by dark shadows.
“Feeling better?” she asked. The corners of the grey kerchief knotted under her chin were fluttering in the breeze. Her tall form stood out over the scaffolding, and behind her there was nothing but airy space, plains, and Russian earth, the tortured earth of the Revolution, its black waters, its clouded waters, its clear waters, its frozen waters, its deadly waters, its invigorating waters, its enchanted forests, its mud, its impoverished villages, its countless living prisoners, its countless executed ones in graves, its construction sites, its masses, its solitudes and all the seeds germinating in its womb. Rodion saw it all, ineffably. All—even the germinating seeds, since they too are real. And that the woman drinking brandy from the bottle at that instant was truly, totally, a human being. He was entranced to see it so clearly.
“Listen,” he said softly, “do you know what we are? Have you ever thought about it?” She considered him with astonishment. And her direct iron-blue gaze was tinged with fear.
1936–1938
Translated from the French by Richard Greeman
I’M WAITING FOR THE FERRY
Kabir
I’m waiting for the ferry,
But where are we going,
And is there a paradise anyway?
Besides,
What will I,
Who see you everywhere,
Do there?
I’m okay where I am, says Kabir.
Spare me the trip.
Translated from the Hindi by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF NYRB CLASSICS
Asterisk (*) indicates an NYRB Classics Original. Dagger (†) indicates no longer in print.
1999
Peasants and Other Stories
anton chekhov
Translated from the Russian by Constance Garnett
Selected and with an introduction by Edmund Wilson
A High Wind in Jamaica
richard hughes
Introduction by Francine Prose
My Dog Tulip
j. r. ackerley
Introduction by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
My Father and Myself
j. r. ackerley
Introduction by W. H. Auden
Lolly Willowes, or, The Loving Huntsman
sylvia townsend warner
Introduction by Alison Lurie
The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard
sØren kierkegaard
Edited and with an introduction by W. H. Auden
Contempt
alberto moravia
Translated from the Italian by Angus Davidson
Introduction by Tim Parks
Boredom
alberto moravia
Translated from the Italian by Angus Davidson
Introduction by William Weaver
Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist
alexander berkman
Introduction by John William Ward
Jakob von Gunten
robert walser
Translated from the German and with an introduction by Christopher Middleton
The Winners†
julio cortázar
Translated from the Spanish by Elaine Kerrigan
Introduction by Alastair Reid
The Other House
henry james
Introduction by Louis Begley
Herself Surprised†
joyce cary
Introduction by Brad Leithauser
To Be a Pilgrim†
joyce cary
Introduction by Brad Leithauser
The Horse’s Mouth†
joyce cary
Introduction by Brad Leithauser
A Handbook on Hanging
charles duff
Introduction by Christopher Hitchens
2000
Memoirs of My Nervous Illness
daniel paul schreber
Translated from the German and edited by Ida Macalpine and Richard A. Hunter
Introduction by Rosemary Dinnage
Hindoo Holiday: An Indian Journey
j.
r. ackerley
Introduction by Eliot Weinberger
We Think the World of You
j. r. ackerley
Introduction by P. N. Furbank
The Wooden Shepherdess
richard hughes
Introduction by Hilary Mantel
The Stories of J. F. Powers
j. f. powers
Introduction by Denis Donoghue
Morte D’Urban
j. f. powers
Introduction by Elizabeth Hardwick
Wheat That Springeth Green
j. f. powers
Introduction by Katherine A. Powers
The Fierce and Beautiful World†
andrey platonov
Translated from the Russian by Joseph Barnes
Introduction by Tatyana Tolstaya
Memoirs
lorenzo da ponte
Translated from the Italian by Elisabeth Abbott
Preface by Charles Rosen
Edited, annotated, and with an introduction by Arthur Livingston
Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author
edward john trelawny
Introduction by Anne Barton
Virgin Soil
ivan turgenev
Translated from the Russian by Constance Garnett
Introduction by Charlotte Hobson
Classic Crimes
william roughead
Introduction by Luc Sante
The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren
IONA and PETER OPIE
Introduction by Marina Warner
The Unknown Masterpiece and Gambara*
honoré de balzac
Translated from the French by Richard Howard
Introduction by Arthur C. Danto
The Pure and the Impure
colette
Translated from the French by Herma Briffault
Introduction by Judith Thurman
The Waste Books
georg christoph lichtenberg
Translated from the German and with an introduction and notes by R. J. Hollingdale
The Glass Bees
ernst jünger
Translated from the German by Louise Bogan and Elizabeth Mayer
Introduction by Bruce Sterling
A Month in the Country
j. l. carr
Introduction by Michael Holroyd
To Each His Own
leonardo sciascia
Translated from the Italian by Adrienne Foulke
Introduction by W. S. Di Piero
The Wine-Dark Sea
leonardo sciascia
Translated from the Italian by Avril Bardoni
Introduction by Albert Mobilio
Seven Men
max beerbohm
Introduction by John Updike
Alfred and Guinevere
james schuyler
Introduction by John Ashbery
2001
The Pilgrim Hawk: A Love Story
glenway wescott
Introduction by Michael Cunningham
The Fox in the Attic
richard hughes
Introduction by Hilary Mantel
Manservant and Maidservant
ivy compton-burnett
Introduction by Diane Johnson
A House and Its Head
ivy compton-burnett
Afterword by Francine Prose
The Haunted Looking Glass
Ghost Stories chosen and illustrated by Edward Gorey
The Root and the Flower
l. h. myers
Introduction by Penelope Fitzgerald
The Quest for Corvo: An Experiment in Biography
a. j. a. symons
Introduction by A. S. Byatt
Hadrian the Seventh
fr. rolfe (baron corvo)
Introduction by Alexander Theroux
Madame de Pompadour
nancy mitford
Introduction by Amanda Foreman
The Anatomy of Melancholy
robert burton
Edited and with an introduction by Holbrook Jackson
With a new introduction by William H. Gass
Letty Fox: Her Luck†
christina stead
Introduction by Tim Parks
Exploits and Adventures of Brigadier Gerard
arthur conan doyle
Introduction by George MacDonald Fraser
The Golovlyov Family
shchedrin
Translated from the Russian by Natalie Duddington
Introduction by James Wood
The Radiance of the King
camara laye
Translated from the French by James Kirkup
Introduction by Toni Morrison
Eustace and Hilda: A Trilogy
l. p. hartley
Introduction by Anita Brookner
Sleepless Nights
elizabeth hardwick
Introduction by Geoffrey O’Brien
Seduction and Betrayal: Women and Literature
elizabeth hardwick
Introduction by Joan Didion
A Way of Life, Like Any Other
darcy o’brien
Introduction by Seamus Heaney
Renoir, My Father
jean renoir
Translated from the French by Randolph and Dorothy Weaver
Introduction by Robert L. Herbert
The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian
nirad c. chaudhuri
Introduction by Ian Jack
As a Man Grows Older
italo svevo
Translated from the Italian by Beryl de Zoete
Introduction by James Lasdun
Letters: Summer 1926
BORIS PASTERNAK, MARINA TSVETAEVA, and RAINER MARIA RILKE
Edited by Yevgeny Pasternak, Yelena Pasternak, and Konstantin M. Azadovsky
Translated by Margaret Wettlin, Walter Arndt, and Jamey Gambrell
Preface by Susan Sontag
Mr. Fortune
sylvia townsend warner
Introduction by Adam Mars-Jones
The Selected Works of Cesare Pavese
cesare pavese
Translated from the Italian and with an introduction by R. W. Flint
An African in Greenland
tété-michel kpomassie
Translated from the French by James Kirkup
Introduction by A. Alvarez
The Life of Henry Brulard
stendhal
Translated from the French and with an introduction by John Sturrock
Preface by Lydia Davis
2002
On the Yard
malcolm braly
Introduction by Jonathan Lethem
Selected Stories†
robert walser
Translated from the German by Christopher Middleton and others
Foreword by Susan Sontag
The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll
álvaro mutis
Translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman
Mawrdew Czgowchwz
james mccourt
Introduction by Wayne Koestenbaum
The Go-Between
l. p. hartley
Introduction by Colm Tóibín
The Outcry
henry james
Introduction by Jean Strouse
Letters from Russia*
astolphe de custine
The 1843 translation from the French, edited, revised, and with an introduction by Anka Muhlstein
Miserable Miracle: Mescaline
henri michaux
Translated from the French by Louise Varèse and Anna Moschovakis
Introduction by Octavio Paz
Riders in the Chariot
patrick white
Introduction by David Malouf
A Book of Mediterranean Food
elizabeth david
Foreword by Clarissa Dickson Wright
&
nbsp; Summer Cooking
elizabeth david
Foreword by Molly O’Neill
Mary Olivier: A Life
may sinclair
Introduction by Katha Pollitt
Randall Jarrell’s Book of Stories
randall jarrell
Selected and with an introduction by Randall Jarrell
Corrigan
caroline blackwood
Afterword by Andrew Solomon
Great Granny Webster
caroline blackwood
Introduction by Honor Moore
The New Life†
dante alighieri
Translated from the Italian and with an introduction by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Preface by Michael Palmer
The Ten Thousand Things
maria dermoût
Translated from the Dutch and with an introduction by Hans Koning
The Unpossessed: A Novel of the Thirties
tess slesinger
Introduction by Elizabeth Hardwick
The Middle of the Journey
lionel trilling
Preface by Monroe Engel
The World of Odysseus
m. i. finley
Introduction by Bernard Knox
Shadows of Carcosa: Tales of Cosmic Horror*
h. p. lovecraft and others
Edited by D. Thin
The Book of My Life
girolamo cardano
Translated from the Latin by Jean Stoner
Introduction by Anthony Grafton
Troubles
j. g. farrell
Introduction by John Banville
The Moon and the Bonfires*
cesare pavese
Translated from the Italian by R. W. Flint
Introduction by Mark Rudman
Paris Stories*
mavis gallant
Selected and with an introduction by Michael Ondaatje
A Sorrow Beyond Dreams: A Life Story†
peter handke
Translated from the German by Ralph Manheim
Introduction by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
james hogg
Introduction by Margot Livesey
In the Freud Archives
janet malcolm
With an afterword by the author
The Fountain Overflows
rebecca west