Wicked Cold

Skating rinks are closed. Children are not allowed outside to play and they’re bored to tears at home. Horse races have been cancelled. It’s turned beastly cold, as they say.

^{In Moscow some thermometers read 34 degrees below zero Centigrade; others, for some reason, say only 31 below; and there are also a few eccentric instruments that indicate even 37 below. And this occurs not because some of them measure the temperature in Centigrade, while others are graduated according to the Réaumur1 scale; nor is it because it’s colder on Ostozhenka Street than on the Arbat, or because the frost’s more severe on Razgulyaya than on Gorky Street.2 No, the reasons are different. You yourself know that in our country the production of these slender and delicate instruments isn’t always on an extraordinarily high level. In general, until the economic organization in question, struck by the fact that, as a result of the frost, our population has unexpectedly taken note of its shortcomings, begins to improve, we’ll take the average figure of 33 degrees below zero. That’s undoubtedly accurate and serves as the precise arithmetical expression of the concept of “beastly cold.”}

^{Muffled right up to their eyeballs, Muscovites shout to one another through their collars and scarves:}

^{“It’s simply amazing how cold it is!”}

^{“What’s so amazing about it? The weather bureau says that this cold spell can be explained by the invasion of a cold air mass from the Barents Sea.3}

^{“Thanks very much. How subtly they manage to account for it all. And I, fool that I am, thought the cold spell was caused by the invasion of an extensive mass of warm air from Arabia.”}

^{“Well, you’re laughing now, but tomorrow it’ll be even colder.”}

^{“That’s impossible.”}

^{“I assure you it will.  I have it from the most reliable sources. But don’t tell anybody. Understand? A cyclone is moving towards us, and there’s an anti-cyclone in its wake. And there’s another cyclone in the wake of this anti-cyclone, the tail of which will hit us. Understand? This is still nothing; now we’re in the center of an anti-cyclone, but when we enter the tail of the cyclone, then you’ll really start to cry. It’ll become incredibly cold. But don’t say a word to anyone.”}

^{“Wait a minute: which is colder – a cyclone or an anti-cyclone?”}

^{“An anti-cyclone, of course.”}

^{“But you just said it’s unbelievably cold in the tail of a cyclone.”}

^{“It really is very cold in the tail.”}

^{“And the anti-cyclone?”}

^{“What about the anti-cyclone?”}

^{“You yourself just said that an anti-cyclone is colder.”}

^{“And I still say it’s colder. What don’t you understand? It’s colder in the tail of an anti-cyclone than in the tail of a cyclone. That seems clear.”}

^{“And where are we now?”}

^{“In the tail of an anti-cyclone. Can’t you see for yourself?”}

^{“Why is it so cold?”}

^{“Did you think that Yalta4 was attached to the tail of the anti-cyclone? Is that what you think?”}

^{In general it’s been observed that in times of severe frost people begin to tell lies for no reason at all. Even people of unimpeachable honesty and veracity tell lies, people to whom it would never occur to lie under normal atmospheric conditions. And the colder it is, the bigger the lies they tell. The result is that, in the current cold conditions, it’s not at all difficult to meet someone who’s become a bald-faced liar.}

^{Such a person arrives for a visit and takes a long time to unwrap himself: besides his own muffler, he takes off a woman’s white scarf, pulls off a pair of large felt boots (the kind that porters wear), puts on his shoes that he’s brought along wrapped in newspaper, and, upon entering the room, announces with delight:}

^{“52 degrees below. Réaumur.”}

^{The host, of course, feels like saying: “Why are you traipsing around paying visits in such weather? You ought to stay home.” But instead of this, he says to his own surprise:}

^{“Oh, no, Pavel Fyodorovich, it’s much more. It was 54 below during the day; now it’s certainly colder.”}

^{At this point the doorbell rings and a new figure bursts in from the street. Still in the corridor this person cries out joyfully:}

^{“Sixty below. Sixty! It’s impossible to breathe, absolutely impossible.”}

^{And all three of them know perfectly well that it’s not 60 below at all, or even 54, or 52, not even 35, but 33, and not Réaumur, but Centigrade, but it’s impossible for them to refrain from exaggeration. Let’s forgive them this little weakness. Let them lie to their heart’s content. Perhaps they’ll be the warmer for it.}

^{While they’re talking, putty is dropping from window-frames with a crackling sound because it’s not so much putty as ordinary clay, even though in the selection of products being sold it was described as high-quality putty. “Inspector Frost” notices everything. Even the fact that in our stores there’s no nice cotton wool that’s so pleasant to look at as it lies there between the window frames guarding the warmth of the apartment.}

^{But the speakers pay no attention to that. They relate various stories about the cold and about blizzards, about the pleasant drowsiness that overcomes people as they’re freezing to death, about Saint Bernards with small casks of rum tied around their necks who search out lost climbers in snowy mountains; they recall the Ice Age, acquaintances who have fallen through the ice (one, it seems, fell into a hole, floundered for some twelve minutes beneath the surface, and then climbed out unharmed, alive and kicking); and many more accounts of a similar nature.}

^{But the crowning glory of all are the stories about grandfather.}

^{Grandfathers in general are celebrated for their robust health. People are always telling interesting and heroic stories about them. (For example: “My grandfather was a peasant,” although in fact he owned a grocery shop, though it was a small one.) So, in times of severe frost, the figure of grandfather acquires absolutely cyclopean dimensions.}

^{A story about grandfather is preserved in every family.}

^{“You and I wrap ourselves up – we belong to a weak, pampered generation. But my grandfather, I still remember him (here the narrator blushes, obviously from the cold); he was a simple serf peasant, and during the greatest cold spell, you know, about 64 degrees below, he’d go off to the woods to collect firewood wearing only a silk jacket and a necktie. How do you like that? Quite a hardy soul, right?”}

^{“That’s interesting. What a coincidence, so to speak: it was the same in my family. My grandfather was a real character. There’d be almost 70 degrees of frost, every living thing was hiding in its burrow, and my old man heads for the river to have a swim wearing only his striped shorts. He’d cut himself a hole in the ice, dive in – and then go home. And what’s more, he’d say he felt hot, stuffy.”}

^{Here the second narrator blushes, apparently from the hot tea he’s been drinking.}

^{For a while the speakers regard each other cautiously and, convinced that no objections to their mythological grandfathers are forthcoming, they begin telling lies to compete with one another about how their ancestors used to break ruble coins with their fingers, eat glass, and take young wives when they were already – well, what do you think, how old? – 132. It’s amazing what hidden traits the extreme cold reveals in people!}

^{Whatever tricks our improbable grandfathers were up to, 33 degrees below is still an unpleasant thing. Amundsen5 said that it’s impossible to get accustomed to cold. One can believe him without requiring proof. He knew what he was talking about.}

^{And so, it’s cold. Very cold. One can’t even believe that somewhere in the far north of Russia there are fortunate warm regions where, according to reports from our respected weather bureau, it’s no more than 10 or 15 degrees below zero.}

^{Skating rinks are closed; children stay at home, but life goes on – the metro completes its run, theaters are full (it’s better to freeze to death than to miss the show), policemen wear their white traffic gloves, and in the most severe cold, airplanes depart right on schedule for their routine flights.}

* The translation of this story’s title (Собачьи холод, written in 1935) was suggested by Chris Yarsawich, a student at the Middlebury Russian School in the summer of 2004.

Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov are pseudonyms of Ilya Fainzilberg (1897-1937) and Evgeny Kataev (1903-42), who were a team of satirical writers and journalists. They came originally from Odessa, but met in Moscow where they collaborated on the satirical adventure novel, Twelve Chairs (1928), which quickly became a huge success. This was followed by a second hit, The Golden Calf (1931). In 1935-36 they made a six-month car journey across the U.S. which they described in a perceptive and entertaining travelogue, One-Storied America (1936).

⁽¹⁾ The Réaumur temperature scale was established in 1730 by the French naturalist René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur (1683–1757), with its zero set at the freezing point of water and its 80° mark at the boiling point of water at normal atmospheric pressure.

⁽²⁾ Names of streets in Moscow. 

⁽³⁾ The Barents Sea in the Arctic Circle extends along the northern coast of Russia.

⁽⁴⁾  Yalta is a resort city on the southern coast of the Crimean peninsula in the Black Sea.