Three Stories for Maslenitsa

Readers may be surprised to find the works of such a famous writer as Anton Chekhov in our modest magazine. The fact is, Chekhov (1860-1904) was prolific in his short life, and, aside from hugely successful plays like ÔThe Cherry Orchard' and ÔUncle Vanya’, and a handful of his stories, much of his work remains unknown.

Chekhov himself typified his writer’s creed as “the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love and the most absolute freedom imaginable, freedom from violence and lies, not matter what form the latter two take.” Chekhov was surely the finest writer of his time. He avoided preachiness in his writing, loved farcical and ironic themes, and often sought to use the power of understatement to expose hypocrisy and malevolence.

For this selection, we have chosen a trio of Chekhov’s lesser known earlier works (written in 1886) on a the theme of maslenitsa, or ‘butter week’. Traditionally, during Lent, consumption of butter was proscribed. This led to eight days of feasting and carnival during which huge loads of bliny (not unlike small, sourdough pancakes) were consumed, smothered in butter at each meal. Maslenitsa starts on the eighth Sunday prior to Easter (February 18 this year).

The Stupid Frenchman

Henri Pourquoi, a clown from the Ginz Brothers Circus, stopped off one day at Testov's restaurant for breakfast.

"One consomme, please!" he ordered the waiter.

"Would you like the egg with or without the white?"

"No, it'll be too much with the white... But give me a couple of toasts though..."

As he waited for his consomme, Pourquoi surveyed his surroundings. The first thing that struck him was a handsome, portly gentleman sitting at a neighboring table preparing to tuck in to some bliny.

"They do have big helpings in these Russian restaurants!" thought the Frenchman, as he watched his neighbor pouring hot butter over his bliny. "Five bliny! How can one man possibly eat so much batter?"

His neighbor, meanwhile, spread caviar on his bliny, cut each one in half and ate the lot, all in the space of less than five minutes...

"Waiter!" he called, "Bring me another helping! You call these helpings? Bring me ten or fifteen bliny at a time! Bring me balyk*,utlets for a bet... And also they say there are illnesses which make people eat too much..."

The waiter put a mountain of bliny and two plates of balyk and salmon in front of his neighbor. The handsome gentleman drank a glass of vodka, chased down with salmon, and tucked into his bliny. To Pourquoi's great surprise, he gobbled them down like a hungry man, hardly bothering to chew...

"He must be ill," thought the Frenchman. "Is he really stupid enough to think he can eat the whole of that pile? He won't even manage three bliny before he's full, and then he'll have to pay for the whole lot!"

`"More caviar!" shouted the neighbor, wiping his greasy lips with his napkin. "And don't forget the spring onion!"

“No wait... he's already eaten half of it!" thought the clown with horror. "Oh my God, has he eaten all the salmon? This is positively unnatural... Is the human stomach really so flexible? I don't believe it! However flexible his stomach is, he won't be able to expand beyond its bounds... If this gentleman was back in France, people would pay to come and watch him... Goodness me, he's finished the lot!"

“Bring a bottle of Nuit#..." said the neighbor to the waiter as he brought the caviar and onion. "But warm it up a little first.... What else? Well, how about another portion of bliny... And be snappy about it..."

"Yes... And what would you like after the bliny?"

"Something lighter... Get me a portion of selyanka+ with sturgeon Russian-style and... and... you can go for now, I'll let you know in a minute!"

"Maybe I'm dreaming this?" the clown said to himself in astonishment, leaning back in his chair. "This fellow wants to die! You can't eat so much and get away with it! Yes, yes, he wants to die. I can tell by the sad look on his face. And surely the waiter must find it strange that he is eating so much. Surely!"

Pourquoi called over the waiter, who was serving at a nearby table, and asked in a whisper:

"Look, why are you giving him so much to eat?"

“Er... well... he asked for it, sir! How can I refuse?" said the waiter in surprise.

"But he could sit here till evening and keep ordering food! If you haven't the courage to refuse him, then get the maitre d'hotel, call the police!"

The waiter grinned, shrugged his shoulders and walked away.

"Savages!" fumed the Frenchman under his breath. "They're quite happy to have a suicidal madman in their restaurant as long as he has rubles to spare! They don't care if he dies, all they care about is profits!"

"Well the service here is peculiar I must say!" muttered the neighbor to the Frenchman. "These long intervals really irritate me! You end up waiting half an hour between portions if you please! And then your appetite goes and you run out of time... It's three now, and I have to be at a gala dinner at five."

"Pardon, monsieur," said Pourquoi, turning pale, "you're already having dinner."

"What? You call this dinner? This is breakfast... bliny..."

At this point the neighbor was given his selyanka. He poured himself a full bowl, added cayenne pepper and began to eat...

"Poor man..." said the Frenchman, still horrified. "Either he's sick and doesn't realize the danger he's in, or he's doing it all on purpose... to kill himself... Goodness me, if I'd known I'd hangerous wagers...

"He's obviously a decent man, he's young and healthy..." he thought as he looked. "Perhaps he serves his country well... and quite possibly he has a young wife and children... Judging by his clothes, he must be rich and happy... but what could have made him decide to do this?.. And couldn't he have thought of a better way to die? God knows, how little people value their lives! And how base and inhuman I am that I am just sitting here and not going to his rescue! Perhaps he can still be saved!"

Pourquoi rose swiftly from his seat and went over to his neighbor.

"Listen, monsieur," he said in a quiet, stealthy voice. " I do not have the pleasure of knowing you, but believe me, I am your friend... Is there no way I can help you? Remember, you are still young... you have a wife and children.."

“I don't know what you mean!" said the neighbor, shaking his head and staring at the Frenchman.

"Oh why be coy, monsieur? My eyes are perfectly good! You are eating so much that... it's hard not to suspect..."

"I'm eating a lot?" said the neighbor in surprise. "Me?! How can I not eat when I haven't eaten anything since morning?"

"But you're eating a huge amount!"

"But you're not paying for it! What are you worried about? And anyway, I don't eat a lot! Look around you, everyone else is doing the same!"

Pourquoi looked around and was horrified. He saw waiters running around and bumping into each other with whole heaps of bliny... People sat at tables eating heaps of bliny, salmon and caviar... with as much daring and gusto as the handsome gentleman.

"Oh land of wonders!" thought Pourquoi as he left the restaurant. "Not just the climate but people's stomachs work miracles! Oh wondrous, wondrous country!"

Bliny

Did you know that bliny have been around for over a thousand years, since what is known as the old Slavonic ab ovo*...? They appeared on earth before Russian history began and have lived through it all from the beginning to the last page, without any doubt, invented, like the samovar, by Russian minds. In anthropology they should have as honored a place as twenty-foot ferns and stone knives; if we still haven't had any scientific research done on bliny, then that can only be because eating bliny is much easier than racking your brains over them...

Times change and ancient customs, dress and songs are gradually disappearing in Russia; much has gone already, and is only interesting historically, but meanwhile such triviality as bliny occupies the same firm and established place in the repertoire of today's Russia as it did 1,000 years ago. Nor is their end in sight...

Bearing in mind the respected age of bliny and their extraordinary steadfastness, certified by the centuries, in the struggle against innovation, it is sad to think that these tasty lumps of batter serve only narrow culinary and gastronomic purposes... Sad because of their antiquity, and their exemplary and purely Spartan steadfastness... Law, cuisine and stomachs do not last a thousand years.

As for me, I'm almost certain that these most eloquent elder statesmen have other ultimate purposes than the culinary and gastronomic... Besides the heavy and barely digestible batter, there is something more lofty, symbolic, even perhaps prophetic concealed in them... But what exactly?

I don't know and I will never know. It constituted and constitutes hitherto... a deep, impenetrable womanly secret, about as difficult to crack as it is to force a bear to laugh... Yes, bliny, their meaning and destiny are the secret of a woman, one which men are not likely to find out soon. That's a good subject for an operetta.

Since prehistoric times the Russian woman has religiously kept this secret, passing it down from generation to generation, exclusively from mother to daughter and granddaughter. If, God forbid, just one man were to find it out, then something would happen so terrible that even women couldn't imagine. Neither wife, nor sister, nor daughter... no woman will give away this secret to you, however dear you are to her, however far she has fallen. This is not a secret to be bought or bartered. No woman will utter it, not in the heat of passion, not in delirium. In a word, this is the only secret which has, over the course of 1,000 years, been able to avoid leaking through that fine sieve which is the fairer sex!

How are bliny baked? This is not known... Only the distant future will find out, we, meanwhile, should not analyze or ask questions, but just eat what we are given... It's a secret!

You will say that men make bliny too... Yes, but men's bliny are not bliny. A cold wind issues from their nostrils, they have the texture of rubber galoshes and their taste is far inferior to women's... Male cooks should withdraw and admit defeat...

Making bliny is an exclusively female affair... It is high time that male cooks realized that it's not just a process of pouring batter into hot frying pans, but a solemn rite, a whole complex system encompassing beliefs, traditions, language, prejudices, joys and suffering... Yes, suffering... If Nekrasov# said that the Russian woman is worn out by suffering, then it is bliny which are partly to blame...

I don't know what the process of making bliny consists of, but I have some notion of the mysteriousness and ceremony with which woman has surrounded this ritual... There is much mysticism, fantasy and even spiritualism involved... If you watch a woman making bliny, you may get the impression that she is summoning up spirits or extracting a philosophical stone from the batter.

First of all, no woman, however enlightened, would under any circumstances start making bliny on the 13th or on the eve of the 13th, or on Sunday evening or Monday. At these times bliny don't turn out well. Many shrewd women get round this by starting their baking long before maslenitsa, so that the household has the chance to eat bliny on maslenitsa Monday and on the 13th.

Second, the evening before making the bliny, the mistress of the house always whispers something secretly to the cook. They whisper and look at each other with eyes like they were composing a love letter... After the whispering, they usually send Yegorka the kitchen boy to the shop to buy yeast... The housekeeper then stares for a long time at the yeast, sniffs it, and however ideal it is, will undoubtedly say:

"This yeast is no good. Go and tell them to give you some better stuff, you wretched boy..."

The boy runs off and brings some new yeast... Then a large clay jar will be fetched and filled with water, and the yeast dissolved in it with a little flour... When the yeast is in, the mistress of the house and the cook go pale, cover the jar with an old cloth and put it in a warm place.

"Make sure you don't oversleep, Matryona..." whispers the mistress. "And keep the jar in a warm place at all times!"

There follows an anxious and wearisome night. Both the housekeeper and the cook suffer from insomnia, and if they sleep, then they are delirious and have terrible dreams... How lucky you men are that you don't make bliny!

Before the gloomy morning starts to lighten, the mistress of the house, barefoot, straggly haired and dressed in just a nightshirt runs down to the kitchen.

"Well? How is everything?" she says, hurling her questions at Matryona. "Answer me then!"

Matryona, meanwhile, is standing by the jar and pouring buckwheat flour into it...

Third, the women watch closely to make sure that no male, whether from the household or an outsider, enters the kitchen while bliny are being made... Cooks will not even let firemen in at this time. No one is allowed to enter, have a look or ask any questions... If anyone should look into the clay jar and say: "What excellent batter!" then you may as well pour it away because the bliny won't be a success! What women say or what spells they read during the making of bliny, no one knows.

Exactly half an hour before the batter is poured into the frying pan, the red-faced and by now exhausted cook pours a little hot water or warm milk into the jar. The mistress stands beside her. She wants to say something, but under the influence of holy terror is unable to speak. The other members of the household, meanwhile, pace around the rooms in expectation and, looking into the face of the housekeeper as she keeps rushing into the kitchen, get the feelings that there is someone giving birth there, or, at the least, getting married.

Then at last the first frying pan hisses, then a second, a third... The first three bliny are defective Ñ Yegorka can eat those... but the fourth, fifth, sixth etc. go onto the plate, are covered with a napkin and carried into the dining room to the craving diners. The woman of the house, red-faced, beaming and proud, brings the bliny herself... Anyone would think she had in her arms not bliny, but her firstborn.

So how is this triumphant sight to be explained? By evening, the lady and the cook are too tired to either stand or sit. They really look as if they are suffering... A little more, it seems, and they'll give up the ghost.

That's the superficies of the sacred rite. If the bliny were meant exclusively for the ignoble satisfaction of the stomach, then let's face it, neither the mysteriousness, nor the nighttime activities, nor the suffering would be comprehensible... Obviously there is something there, and this Ôsomething' is carefully hidden.

When you look at the ladies, you can certainly draw the conclusion that, in the future, bliny are going to carry out some great mission of world importance.

On Frailty

A maslenitsa theme for a sermon

Court Counselor Semyon Petrovich Podtykin sat down at table, spread a napkin over his chest and, burning with impatience, awaited the moment when the bliny would be brought... Before him, as before a general surveying the field of battle, was an impressive picture... In the middle of the table stood a single line of slender bottles, to attention on parade. There were three varieties of vodka, some Kiev liqueur, Chateau La Rose, Rheinwein and even a pot-bellied vessel containing an elixir brewed by Benedictine monks. Around the drinks, in aesthetically pleasing chaos were squeezed herrings in mustard sauce, sprats, sour cream, unpressed caviar (3 rubles 40 kopecks a pound), fresh salmon etc.. Podtykin looked over the scene and greedily swallowed his saliva... His eyes filled with greasy tears, and he smirked lustfully...

"Look, do you have to take so long?" he winced, addressing his wife. "Hurry up, Katya!"

And then, at last the cook came in with the bliny... Semyon Petrovich, at the risk of burning his fingers, seized the top two bliny, the hottest, and slapped them down on his plate with gusto. The bliny were crisp, porous and fluffy, like the shoulder of a merchant's daughter... Podtykin smiled pleasantly, hiccuped with delight and doused them in hot butter. Then, as if to kindle his appetite and savor the anticipation, he slowly and measuredly spread caviar on them. Those places which the caviar missed he poured sour cream on... It would seem that the only thing left to do was to eat them, wasn't it? But no!.. Podtykin looked at his own handiwork and was not satisfied... He thought a bit, then put the fattiest piece of salmon, a sprat and a sardine on the bliny, then, panting with expectation, rolled both bliny into tubes, downed a glass of vodka with relish, grunted, opened his mouth...

  But at that moment he was sized by an apoplectic fit.

If you feel intrigued about bliny and want to know more, read our recipe, coming up in the next issue! It will be well worth the wait!