Letter to the Lipavskys - Daniil Kharms
28 June 1932. Tsarkoye Selo, Russia
Dear Tamara Aleksandrova and Leonid Savelevich,
Thank you for your wonderful letter. I have re-read it many times and learned it by heart. I can be awakened in the night and I will immediately and word-perfectly begin: 'Hello there, Daniil Ivanovich, we are completely lost without you. Lyonya has bought himself some new...' and so on, and son on.
I have read this letter to all my acquaintances in Tsarkoye Selo. Everyone likes it very much. Yesterday my friend Balnis came to see me. He wanted to stay the night. I read him your letter six times. He smiled very broadly, so it was evident that he liked the letter, but he didn't have time to express a detailed opinion, for he left without staying for the night. Today I went round to his place myself and read the letter through to him once more, so as to enable him to refresh his memory. Then I asked Balnis for his opinion. But he broke a leg off one of his chairs and with the aid of this leg he chased me out on to the street and furthermore said that if I turn up once more with this drivel he will tie my hands up and stuff my mouth with muck from the rubbish pit. These were, of course, on his part rather rude and po-faced remarks. I, of course, went away and took the view that he quite possibly had a bad cold and that he was not himself.
From Balnis I went off to Yekaterinskiy Park and had a go on the rowing boats. On the whole lake, apart from me, there were two or three other boats. And, by the way, there was a very beautiful girl in one of the boats. And she was completely on her own. I turned my boat (incidentally, you have to row carefully when you're turning a boat, because the oars are liable to jump out of the rowlocks) and rowed after the beauty. I felt as though I resembled a Norwegian and I must have cut a fresh and healthy figure in my grey jacket and my fluttering tie and, as they say, had quite a whiff of the sea about me. But near the Orlov Column some hooligans were swimming and, as I rowed past one of them just happened to have to swim right across my path. Then another of them shouted: - Wait a minute, while this blind and sweaty specimen goes past! - and pointed at me with his foot. This was very disagreeable because the beauty heard every word. And since she was rowing in front of me and in a rowing boat, as everyone knows, you sit with the back of your head towards your direction of movement, the beauty heard every word. And since she was rowing in front of me, the beauty could not only hear, but she could see the hooligan pointing at me with his foot. I tried to make out that all this had nothing to do with me and started to look to the side with a smile on my face. But there wasn't a single other boat around. And at this point the hooligan shouted again: - Now what do you think you're looking at? We're talking to you aren't we? Hey, you, the sucker in the cap!
I set about rowing with might and main, but the oars kept jumping out of the rowlocks and the boat only moved slowly. Finally, after an enormous effort, I caught up with the beauty and we got acquainted. She was called Yekaterina Pavlovna. We took back her boat and Yekaterina Pavlovna moved over to mine. She turned out to be a very witty conversationalist. I had decided to dazzle my friend with wit, and so I got out your letter and made a start on reading it: 'Hello, there, Daniil Ivnaovich, we are completely lost without you. Lyonya has bought himself some new...' and so on. Yekaterina Pavlovna suggested that, if we pulled in to the bank, then I might see something. And I did, I saw Yekaterina Pavlovna making off, and out of the bushes there crept a filthy urchin, saying: - Mister, gie us a ride in yer boat.
This evening the letter came to grief It happened like this: I was standing on the balcony, reading your letter and eating semolina. At that moment Auntie called me into the living room to help her wind the clock. I covered the semolina with the letter and went into the room. When I came back the letter had absorbed all the semolina into itself and I ate it.
The weather in Tsarkoye Selo is well set: variable cloud, south-west wind, possible rain.
This morning an organ-grinder came into our garden and played a trashy waltz, filched a hammock and ran away.
I read a very interesting book about how one young man fell in love with a certain young person, and this young person loved another young man, and this young man loved another young person and this young person loved another young man yet again, who loved not her but another young person.
And suddenly this young person stumbles down a trapdoor and fractures her spine. But when she has completely recovered from that, she suddenly catches her death of cold and dies. Then the young man who loves her does himself in with a revolver shot. Then the young person who loves this young man throws herself under a train. Then the young man who loves this young person climbs up a tram pylon from grief and touches the live wire, dying from an electric shock. Then the young person who loves this young man stuffs herself with ground glass and dies from perforation of the intestines. Then the young man who loves this young person runs away to America and takes to the drink to such a degree that he sells his last suit and, for the lack of a suit, he is obliged to lie in hospital, where he suffers from bedsores, and from these bedsores he dies.
In a few days I shall be in town. I definitely want to see you. Give my best wishes to Valentina Yefimova and Yakob Semyonovich.
Daniil Kharms
trns. by Neil Cornwell
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