"The Cherry Seed" by Yuri Olesha

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THE CHERRY SEED

by Yuri Olesha
(1929)
(Complete Translated Text)

I travel through the invisible country. . . . I create a world which submits to no laws save the shadowy laws of my own feelings.

On Sunday, I was visiting Natasha at her dacha. There were three other guests: two girls and Boris Mikhailovich. The girls, along with Natasha's brother, Erast, set off to the river for a boat ride. We--that is to say, Natasha, Boris Mikailovich, and I--went into the forest. In the forest, we laid down in a glade, which was brightly lit by the sun. Natasha raised up her face, and suddenly her face seemed like a shining porcelain dish.

Natasha treats me like an equal. But Boris Mikhailovich she treats like an elder; she fawns on him. She understands that I don't like it, that I envy Boris Mikhailovich, and so she often takes me by the hand and, no matter what she says, turns to me to ask:

"Right, Fedya?"

As if to ask my forgiveness, not directly, but by some sideways route.

We started to talk about birds because, from the thicket, we heard the funny voice of a bird. I said that I've never seen, for example, a thrush and asked, "What is it like--a thrush?"

A bird flew out of the thicket. It flew across the glade and sat on an upright branch not far from our heads. It didn't sit, however, but stood on the wavering branch. It blinked. And I thought how ugly bird eyes are--no brow, but with strongly pronounced eyelids.

"What is that," I asked in a whisper. "A thrush? Is that a thrush?"

No on answers. I turned my back to them. My greedy gaze doesn't follow them. They delight in their solitude. I look at the bird. Glancing back, I see Boris Mikhailovich is stroking Natasha's cheek. His hand is thinking, "Let him look at the bird, the offended young man." I don't see the bird anymore. I am listening. I hear the sound of a kiss breaking. I don't turn around, but they are caught. They see that I flinched.

"Is that a thrush?" I ask.

The bird's not there anymore. It flew up through the crown of the tree. The flight is difficult. The bird flies, hitting the leaves.

Natasha treated us to cherries. By a childish habit, I kept one seed in my mouth. It rolled around in my mouth and was sucked clean. I took it out. It looked wooden.

I left the dacha with a cherry seed in my mouth.

I travel through the invisible country.

I return from the dacha to the city. The sun is setting. I'm heading east. I am traveling a double path. One path is accessible to the observation of everyone. A passerby sees a man walking along an empty, overgrown area. But what's going on with this peacefully walking man? He sees his shadow in front of himself. The shawdow moves along the ground, extending into the distance. It has long, colorless legs. I traverse the vacant lot. The shadow rises along a brick wall and suddenly loses its head. The passerby doesn't see this. Only I see it. I step into a corridor between two buildings. The corridor is endlessly high, filled with shade. Here the soil is claylike, pliable, like in a garden. Toward me, along the wall, moving to the side, runs a stray dog. We pass. I look behind. The threshhold behind is shining. There on the threshold, a solar flare momentarily covers over the dog. Then it runs off into the emptiness, and only now can I see its color--reddish.

All this happens in the invisible country, because in the country accessible to normal vision, something else is going on: a traveler meets a dog, the sun sets, the vacant lot turns green.

The invisible land is a land of attention and imagination. The traveler is not alone! Two sisters walk at his sides and lead the traveler by the hand. One sister is called Attention, the other, Imagination.

So what does this mean? Does it mean that, in defiance of everyone, in defiance of order and society, I create a world which submits to no laws save the shadowy laws of my own feelings? What does this mean? There are two worlds, the old and the new. And what world is this? A third world? There are two paths; but what is this third path?

Natasha sets a date with me and doesn't come.

I come a half hour early.

The tram clock hangs above the intersection. It looks like a small barrel, doesn't it? Two faces. Two bottoms. O, empty barrel of time!

Natasha is supposed to come at three-thirty.

I wait. Of, of course she won't come. It's ten past three.

I stand at the tram stop. Everything is moving around me. I alone stick out. People who have lost their way see me from a distance. And it all begins. A strange woman comes up to me.

"Excuse me," says the strange woman. "Can I get to Kurdrinsky on the number 27?"

No one must know that I'm waiting for a date. Let them better think: "That smiling young man came out onto the corner to facililtate the well-being of strangers. He will tell all; he will give directions; he will give us reassurance. To him! To him!"

"Yes," I answer, wearing myself out with courtesy. "You can get to Kudrinsky on the number 27."

And then right away I stumble and rush after the woman.

"No! No! You have to take the 16."

Let's forget about the date. I'm not in love. I'm the good genii of the street. To me! To me!

Three-fifteen. The hands on the clock come together and reach to the horizontal. Seeing this, I think:

"It's a fly drying its hands. The endless fly of time."

Stupid! What's all this about a fly of time?

She's not coming and she won't come.

A Red Army soldier approaches:

"Say," he asks, "where's the Darwin Museum?"

"I don't know. I think it's over there. Wait, wait...no, I don't know, comrade. I don't know."

Let's go, who's next? Don't be shy.

A taxi, making a turn, rolls up to me. Look how the driver disdains me. Of course, not with his whole soul. He wouldn't condescent to despise me with his whole soul. He despises me only with his glove. Comrade driver, believe me, I'm an amateur. I don't know where you should take your car.

I'm not standing here to give you directions. I've got my own business. I'm standing here because---it's a pity--I have to....It's not a friendly smile on my face, but a tense one. See!

"How do I get to Varsonofevsky?" the driver asks across his shoulder.

And I, fussing, explain: there, there, and then there.

If it's come to this, why don't I stand in the middle of the street and seriously take up this business which has been forced on me?

A blind man comes up.

He shouts at me, he pokes me with his cane.

"Is the number ten coming? he asks. "Huh? The ten?"

"No," I answer, almost stroking him. "No, comrade. This is not the number ten. It's the two. But here comes the ten."

She's already ten minutes late. Why wait? Or maybe she's somewhere, hurrying, running.

"Oh, I'm late! Oh, I'm late!"

The woman is already riding on the sixteen. The Red Army soldier is already strolling through the cool corridors of the museum. The taxi driver is already souding his horn on Varsonofevsky. The blind man, indignant and egotistical, is already stepping up onto the front of the bus, carrying his cane in front of himself.

Everybody's satisfied! Everybody's happy!

And I stand with a stupid grin on my face.

And more people come up to question me: an old woman, a drunk, a group of children with a flag. And I'm already starting to chop the air with my hands. I no longer just nod with my chin like a chance passerby. No! I stretch out my hand, my palm perpendicular. In a minute a baton will grow out of my hand.

"Back!" I'll shout. "Stop! To Varsonofevsky? Turn around! Old woman, to the right! Stop!"

Oh, look. A whistle hangs between my lips. I whistle. I have to the right to whistle. Children envy me! Back! Oh, look. I am already standing between the passing streetcars. Look, I stand with one leg extended forward and hands clasped behind my back, propping up my back with a crimson baton.

Congratulate me, Natasha. I've turned into a traffic cop.

Then I see: Abel is standing off at a distance, watching me.

(Abel is my neighbor.)

Natasha's not coming, that's clear. I call to Abel.

Me: Did you see, Abel?

Abel: I saw. You're crazy.

Me: Did you see, Abel? I've turned into a traffic cop.

(Pause. Still one more glance at the clock. No chance. Ten to four.)

Me: However, it's beyond you. My transformation into a traffic cop took place in the invisible country.

Abel: Your invisible country is idealistic delerium.

Me: And you know what's most amazing, Abel? It's amazing that in this enchanted land I should figure as a traffic cop. I'd have thought I'd move about there peacefully and majestically like a soverign with the flowering staff of a wise man in my hand. But look. In my hand is a policeman's baton! What a strange conjuction of the practical and imaginary worlds.

Bergsonism
I hold to the Bergsonian view of laughter as a social sanction against inflexible behavior.

Philosophy developed by Henri Bergson (1859-1941), challenging the mechanistic view of nature. He viewed human history as a battle between the intertia of matter (reason, conservatism, laws, and social pressure) and a mystical elan vital, or "creative energy" of all living things (intuition, art, charisma). Winner of the 1927 Nobel Prize for Literature. Major works include Time and Free Will, Creative Evolution, Matter and Memory, and the ever-popular On Laughter.
Learn more at:
Bergson at Britannica.com

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sent you!

(Abel is silent.)

Me: And it's even more strange that the pretext transforming me into a policeman is unrequited love.

Abel: I don't understand anything. It's some kind of Bergsonism.

I decided to plant the seed in the ground.

I picked a spot and planted it.

"Here," I thought, "will grow a cherry tree, planted by me in honor of my love for Natasha. Maybe someday, in five years, in spring, I'll meet Natasha by the new tree. We'll stand on either side of it--cherry trees aren't tall. Maybe standing on tiptoe you can shake the blossom on top. The sun will be shining brightly. Spring will still be somewhat barren. This will be those days of spring when sewer ditches beckon to children and this paper tree has already begun it's bloom."

I'll say:

"Natasha, clear and bright is the day. The wind is blowning, making the light of day burn more brightly. The wind is rocking my tree, and it creaks with its lacquered limbs. Each of its blossoms rises and lies down again, rendering it now pink, now white. This is a kaleidoscope of spring, Natasha. Five years ago you treated me to some cherries, remember? Unrequited love makes the memory poorer and more clear. To this day I remember! Your palm was violet from the cherry juice. And you rolled it into a horn shape, sprinkling the cherries down to me. I carried off a seed in my mouth. I planted a tree in memory of the fact that you didn't love me. It is blossoming. You see, I was ridiculed then. Boris Mikhailovich was brave, conquering you. I was a dreamer, infantile. I was searching for a thrush while you were kissing. I was a romantic. But look: a strong, manly tree has grown from the seed of a romantic. You know, the Japanese believe that the cherry blossom is the soul of a man. Look: a short, strong Japanese tree is standing. Believe me, Natasha, romanticism is a manly thing, and you shouldn't laugh at it. It all depends on how you approach it. If Boris Mikhailovich caught me squatting on the vacant lot, planting the infantile seed, he would again have felt his victory over me--the victory of a man over a dreamer. And at that moment I was hiding a nucleus in the ground. It broke and let out a blinding light. I was hiding a seed in the ground. This tree is my child from you, Natasha. Bring the son which Boris Mikhailovich gave you. I'll see if he is as healthy, clean and absolute as this tree, born of an infantile subject."

I returned home from the dacha. Just then, Abel came out from behind the wall. He's a union worker. He's short and wearing a Tolstoy blouse, sandles, and light blue socks. He's shaved, but his cheeks are black. Abel always seems to need another shave. You might even think that he has not two, but one cheek--black. Abel has an aquiline nose and one black cheek.

Abel: What's going on with you? I was on the train yesterday and saw you squatting, digging in the ground with your hands. What's going on?"

I am silent.

(He paces in the room.) "A man squatting and digging in the ground. What's he doing? No one knows. Is he conducting an experiment? Or is he having a fit? No one knows. Do you really have fits?"

Me: (After a pause) You know what I've been thinking, Abel? I've been thinking that dreamers shouldn't have children. What does the new world need with the children of dreamers? Let dreamers create trees for the new world.

Abel: It's not called for in the Plan.

The land of attention begins at the head of the bed, on the chair you move toward your bed while getting undressed before going to sleep. You wake up early in the morning. The house is still sleeping. The room is filled with sunshine. Silence. Don't move so as not to disturb the stillness of the light. Socks are lying on the chair. They're brown. But in the stillness and brightness of the light, you suddenly notice in the brown fabric separate threads, waving in the air. Crimson, blue, orange.

Sunday morning. I'm again walking along the well-known path to Natasha's. I should write "Travels In The Invisible Land". If you please, here's a chapter for the "Travels" which ought to be titled "Man Hurrying to Throw A Stone":

There were bushes growing by a brick wall. I passed the bushes while walking on the path. I saw a niche on the wall and wanted to throw a stone into it. I bent down--a stone was lying at my feet. Then I saw an anthill.

The last time I saw an anthill was 20 years ago. Oh, of course I've had occasion to step on anthills in the past 20 years--many times. And of course I've seen them. But, seeing them, I didn't think, "I'm stepping on anthills"; no, the word "anthill" simply flashed in my mind--and that's all. The living image was promptly and obligingly shoved aside by the word, popping up at just the right moment.

Oh, I recalled, anthills are revealed suddenly with a glance. One...oh! And another! Then--look! Look! Another one! And that's just what happened this time. One after another, three anthills appeared.

From my height, I couldn't see the ants. My eyesight caught only a disturbance of forms which quite easily could been seen as motionless. And my sight willingly gave in to the deception. I looked and was ready to agree that it wasn't a mass of ants scurrying around the anthill, but it was merely the anthill itself crumbling like dunes.

With the stone in my hand, I stood four paces away from the wall. The stone was to land in the niche. I swing back my arm. The stone flew and hit the bricks. A column of dust twisted up. I missed. The stone landed in some bushes at the foot of the wall. It was only then that I heard the cry of the stone, even though it had been uttered when it was still in my clenched hand.

"Wait," shouted the stone. "Look at me!"

And really, I was in too much of a hurry. I should have looked the stone over. Undoubtedly it would have turned out to be a most amazing thing. And now its gone--disappeared in the bushes and undergrowth. And I, who held the stone in my hand, don't even know what color it was. Maybe the stone was lilac. Maybe it wasn't a monolith, but made up of different substances. Maybe there was a fossil inside it--the remnants of an insect, or a cherry seed. Maybe the stone was porous; and finally, maybe it wasn't a stone that I picked up from the ground, but a petrified bone.

I met a group of tourists along the road.

Twenty people were walking along the vacant lot in which the cherry seed was resting. Abel was leading them. I stepped aside. Abel didn't see me; or to be more precise, he didn't understand me. He saw me, but didn't notice me. Like every fanatic, he gulped me down, not waiting to find out whether I agreed to it or not.

Abel stepped away from his congregation, then turnd to face them (with his back to me) and exclaimed, waving his hand mightily:

"Here! Here! Here!"

A pause. Silence.

"Comrades from Kursk!" Abel shouts. "I hope you have imaginations. Imagine! Don't be shy!"

Oh! Abel is trying to infiltrate into the land of imagination. Does he already want to show the tourists the cherry tree that is blooming in honor of unrequited love?

Abel is searching for a way into the invisible country.

He walks. He stops, kicking a leg. He kicks again. And again. He wants to free himself from some small curling plant that wound itself around his foot while he was walking. He stamped his foot. The plant crackled and little yellow balls rolled out of it. (So many plants in this story--trees, bushes.)

"Right here will rise up the giant I told you about."

Dear Natasha, I forgot about the main thing: the Plan. There's the Plan. I acted without asking permission of the Plan. In five years, on this spot--where there is now a vacant lot, ditches, usless walls--a concrete giant will rise up. My sister Imagination is an impulsive person. In the spring, they'll start laying the foundation, and what will happen to my seed then? Yet, there in the invisible country, someday, the tree dedicated to you will bloom.

Tourists will come to the concrete giant.

They will not see your tree. Is it really impossible to make the invisible country visible?

This letter is imaginary. I didn't write it. I could have written it if Abel hadn't said what he said.

"The building will be laid out in a semicircle," said Abel. "The exterior of the semicircle will be filled in with a garden. Do you have imagination?"

"I have imagination," I said. "I see it, Abel. I see it clearly. There will be a garden here. And on that spot where we are standing will grow a cherry tree."

THE END

Olesha, Yuri Karlovich. Born 3 March (19 Feb, Old Style) 1899 in Elizavetgrad, Ukraine, the son of former land owner. Family moved to Odessa in 1902. He began to write poetry in the gymnasium. After graduation from the gymnasium, he enrolled in the law faculty at Novorossik University. At the same time, he participated in literary discussion groups in Odessa, along with Ilya Ilf, Valentin Kataev, and Eduard Bagritsky.

In 1919, despite the monarchist attitudes of his parents, Olesha joined the Red Army. In 1921 he was working in Kharkov as a journalist-propagandist for the Bureau of Ukrainian Publications. In 1922, he published his first story, Angel, and moved to Moscow. There he went to work for the railway journal Gudok, producing satirical verse under the pseudonym of Zubilo (Chisel). Other staff members included Ilf and Petrov, Kataev, Isaak Babel, and Mikhail Bulgakov. Two collections of poetry were published in 1924 and 1927.

His novel Envy (Zavist) also appeared in 1927. In Envy, Andrei Babichev, a hero of the Soviet people, takes in Nikolai Kavalerov, an aimless drifter, and tries to help him. Kavalerov--irresponsible, self-centered and deluded about his own worth--dreams of personal glory and soon comes to envy and despise his host. Kavalerov hooks up with Andrei's brother, Ivan, who claims to have created an "Ophelia machine" to annihilate his enemies. Together, Kavalerov and Ivan cook up a "conspiracy of feelings" to spit in the face of the new era. Kavalerov even plots the murder of Babichev. It all comes to nothing and, in the end, Ivan and Kavalerov settle into a life of indifference. When first published, Envy was a critical success. Pravda wrote:

Olesha's style is masterful, his psychological analysis subtle, his portrayal of negative characters truly striking. . . .The novel exposes the envy of small despicable people, the petty bourgeois flushed from their lairs by the Revolution; those who are trying to initiate a "conspiracy of feelings" against the majestic reorganizatioin of our national economy and our daily life.

A stage version of the novel, entitled A Conspiracy of Feelings appeared in 1929.

"Three Fat Men", written in 1924, was published in 1928. It was the first revolutionary fairy tale in Soviet literature. The critical reaction at first was varied. V. Boichevsky in an article "How Stories For Children Should Not Be" saw it as a "sugarcoated" presentation of revolution. A.V. Lunacharsky, however, saw in it "heart-felt apologetics by the artistic intelligentsia accepting the revolution". Stanislavky and the Moscow Art Theater premiered a dramatic version of the story in May of 1930. A ballet version with music by V. Oransky was presented in 1935. It has also been turned into an opera (composer, V. Rubin, 1956), a film and several radio versions.

Olesha himself divided his short story work into two periods. The first is associated with his collection "The Cherry Seed", which included the stories The Cherry Seed (1929), The Chain, Love, Liompa (1927), The Legend (1927), The Prophet (1929), I Look Into The Past (1929), Human Material (1929), My Acquaintance, In The Circus, and Notes of a Writer.

According to Olesha, these works were "mainly about myself, thoughts about two worlds, about the position of art in a new society". Typical is the story The Cherry Seed , in which a dreamer spends most of his time in the invisible world of his imagination. He falls in love with a real woman, who does not return his love. She gives him a cheery seed, which he plants in a vacant lot, hoping that a cherry tree will grow to stand as the child of their love. However, it turns out that the spot where he planted the seed is scheduled to be the construction site for a new concrete giant called for by the Five Year Plan. Nonetheless, the dreamer imagines that the cherry tree will grow as part of a garden in front of the building.

The second or "new" period of his short stories dates from the mid-1930s to 1947. Olesha explained:

These are stories which I called "new" not because they were recently written but because they were new for me--these are stories not about myself but about Soviet people.

In the twenties, critics warned Olesha against an unconscious preaching of idealism and of a world view not centered on labor. Olesha answered his opponents:

It's possible that in 30 years I'll be read as a proletarian writer. Perhaps this is a proud declaration. Perhaps I speak too arrogantly. But I do this fully consciously. All the same, I feel I work for the proletariat. ("Soviet Theater", 1932, No.3).

In the first half of the 1930s his work (Aldebran, Conversation in the Park and others) began a transition to themes associated with the new Soviet reality. At the First All- Union Congress of Soviet Writers, Olesha said:

I have given myself the task of writing about young people. I shall write plays and stories where the main characters will decide problems of a moral character. I am certain that communism is not only an economic, but also a moral system, and the first embodiments of this side of communism will be young people.

The works of his "new" period--Stadium in Odessa, The First of May, Spectacle, We Are in the Center of the City and others--demonstrated a stylistic artlessness. The play A List of Benefits appeared in 1931.

During the 1930s, Olesha's work was subject to criticism. Envy was condemned for "reactionary" stylistics, "formalism", "naturalism", "objectivism", and "cosmopolitanism". And in 1937 Olesha was accused of antihumanism. During this period, Olesha weathered the storm by refraining from much creative literary work, limiting himself to translations and screen plays, including those for the films Soldiers of the Swamp (Bolotniye Soldaty) and Engineer Kochin's Mistake (Oshibka Inzhenera Kochina).

During the war years, Olesha was evacuated to Ashkabad, Turkmenistan, along with the Odessa Film Studio. Military themes found expression in his "Turkmen" stories. The 40s ended with the story Friends.

He began work on the quasiautobiographical "No Day Without a Line" in the early 1930s and continued work on it throughout his life. In 1956 he wrote to his mother:

My main work right now is compiling a book which will be called "Memories and Thoughts". This is a book about myself, about literature, about life, about the world. There will be many childhood memories, a lot about you, about Papa, Wanda, our acquaintances.

He often read excerpts from this work to friends. A fragment of one of these readings was recorded and released on a record "Writers Speak" (DO18421-2). [Anyone who has a copy of this record and is willing to make a cassette tape of it please contact: ComradeChairman@SovLit.com. ] The book appeared posthumously in 1965.

Olesha died of a heart attack on 10 May 1960 in Moscow.

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