a trick of the trade, a poor thing worn to shreds by literary fiction-mongers, does not suit me, for I have become strictly truthful. So we may turn to the second variation which consists of at once letting loose a new character, starting the chapter thus:
Orlovius was displeased.
When he happened to be displeased or worried, or merely ignorant of the right answer, he used to pull at the long lobe of his left ear, fringed with grey down; then he would pull at the long lobe of his right ear too, so as to avoid jealousies, and look at you over his plain, honest spectacles and take his time and then at last answer: “It is heavy to say, but I—”
“Heavy” with him meant “hard,” as in German; and there was a Teutonic thickness in the solemn Russian he spoke.
Now this second variation of a chapter’s beginning is a popular and sound method—but there is something too polished about it; nor do I think it becoming for shy, mournful Orlovius to fling open, spryly, the gates of a new chapter. I submit to your attention my third variation.
In the meantime … (the inviting gesture of dots, dots, dots).
Of old, this dodge was the darling of the Kinematograph,
alias
Cinematograph,
alias
Moving Pictures. You saw the hero doing this or that, and in the meantime … Dots—and the action switched to the country. In the meantime … A new paragraph, please.
… Plodding along the sun-parched road and trying to keep in the shade of the apple trees, whenever their crooked whitewashed trunks came marching by its side …
No, that is a silly notion: he was not always wandering. Some filthy kulak would require an additional hand; another back would be needed by some beastly miller. Having never been a tramp myself, I failed—and still fail—to rerun his life on my private screen. What I wished to imagine most, was the impression left upon him by a certain morning in May passed on a patch of sickly grass near Prague. He woke up.At his side a well-dressed gentleman was sitting and staring. Happy thought: might give me a smoke. Turned out to be German. Very insistently (was perhaps not quite right in the head?) kept pressing upon me his pocket mirror; got quite abusive. I gathered it was about likenesses. Well, thought I, let them likenesses be. No concern of mine. Chance of his giving me some easy job. Asked about my address. One can never know, something might come of it.
Later: conversation in a barn on a warm dark night: “Now, as I was saying, that was an odd’un, that bloke I met one day. He made out we were doubles.”
A laugh in the darkness: “It was you who saw double, you old sot.”
Here another literary device has crept in: the imitation of foreign novels, themselves imitations, which depict the ways of merry vagabonds, good hearty fellows. (My devices seem to have got mixed up a little, I am afraid.)
And speaking of literature, there is not a thing about it that I do not know. It has always been quite a hobby of mine. As a child I composed verse and elaborate stories. I never stole peaches from the hothouse of the North Russian landowner whose steward my father was. I never buried cats alive. I never twisted the arms of playmates weaker than myself; but, as I say, I composed abstruse verse and elaborate stories, with dreadful finality and without any reason whatever lampooning acquaintances of my family. But I did not write down those stories, neither did I talk about them. Not a day passed without my telling some lie. I lied as a nightingale sings, ecstatically, self-obliviously; reveling in the new life-harmony which I was creating. For such sweet lying my mother would give me a cuff on the ear, and my father thrash me with a riding whip which had once been a bull’ssinew. That did not dismay me in the least; rather, on the contrary, it furthered the flight of my fancies. With a stunned ear and burning buttocks, I would lie on my belly among the tall weeds in the orchard, and whistle and
Orlovius was displeased.
When he happened to be displeased or worried, or merely ignorant of the right answer, he used to pull at the long lobe of his left ear, fringed with grey down; then he would pull at the long lobe of his right ear too, so as to avoid jealousies, and look at you over his plain, honest spectacles and take his time and then at last answer: “It is heavy to say, but I—”
“Heavy” with him meant “hard,” as in German; and there was a Teutonic thickness in the solemn Russian he spoke.
Now this second variation of a chapter’s beginning is a popular and sound method—but there is something too polished about it; nor do I think it becoming for shy, mournful Orlovius to fling open, spryly, the gates of a new chapter. I submit to your attention my third variation.
In the meantime … (the inviting gesture of dots, dots, dots).
Of old, this dodge was the darling of the Kinematograph,
alias
Cinematograph,
alias
Moving Pictures. You saw the hero doing this or that, and in the meantime … Dots—and the action switched to the country. In the meantime … A new paragraph, please.
… Plodding along the sun-parched road and trying to keep in the shade of the apple trees, whenever their crooked whitewashed trunks came marching by its side …
No, that is a silly notion: he was not always wandering. Some filthy kulak would require an additional hand; another back would be needed by some beastly miller. Having never been a tramp myself, I failed—and still fail—to rerun his life on my private screen. What I wished to imagine most, was the impression left upon him by a certain morning in May passed on a patch of sickly grass near Prague. He woke up.At his side a well-dressed gentleman was sitting and staring. Happy thought: might give me a smoke. Turned out to be German. Very insistently (was perhaps not quite right in the head?) kept pressing upon me his pocket mirror; got quite abusive. I gathered it was about likenesses. Well, thought I, let them likenesses be. No concern of mine. Chance of his giving me some easy job. Asked about my address. One can never know, something might come of it.
Later: conversation in a barn on a warm dark night: “Now, as I was saying, that was an odd’un, that bloke I met one day. He made out we were doubles.”
A laugh in the darkness: “It was you who saw double, you old sot.”
Here another literary device has crept in: the imitation of foreign novels, themselves imitations, which depict the ways of merry vagabonds, good hearty fellows. (My devices seem to have got mixed up a little, I am afraid.)
And speaking of literature, there is not a thing about it that I do not know. It has always been quite a hobby of mine. As a child I composed verse and elaborate stories. I never stole peaches from the hothouse of the North Russian landowner whose steward my father was. I never buried cats alive. I never twisted the arms of playmates weaker than myself; but, as I say, I composed abstruse verse and elaborate stories, with dreadful finality and without any reason whatever lampooning acquaintances of my family. But I did not write down those stories, neither did I talk about them. Not a day passed without my telling some lie. I lied as a nightingale sings, ecstatically, self-obliviously; reveling in the new life-harmony which I was creating. For such sweet lying my mother would give me a cuff on the ear, and my father thrash me with a riding whip which had once been a bull’ssinew. That did not dismay me in the least; rather, on the contrary, it furthered the flight of my fancies. With a stunned ear and burning buttocks, I would lie on my belly among the tall weeds in the orchard, and whistle and
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