About the Saratov accordion, Yesenin and boundless sorrow…

Many years ago I spotted a wonderful Saratov accordion in a department store. It cost a mere twenty-eight roubles. And so, as I was getting ready to travel to Denmark for a student theatre festival with the play "If you skin a cat, it looks just like a rabbit", I decided to take along, as a souvenir, this pride of Russia — the accordion. Times were lean, actors were paid a pittance… And then it dawned on me — why not sell my accordion abroad and at least earn a bit of money... But since, as it turned out, I'm no good at commerce, nothing came of the scheme. So I gave the accordion to a man who was our patron in the West — a millionaire and philanthropist. In a word, a lover of the beautiful. The gifted benefactor felt ill at ease for a long time, quite unable to recover from the grand gesture of a Russian actor. He probably didn't sleep at night, forever puzzling over how to repay me... At last the chance arose. Our sound engineer happened to buy a car in Denmark for five hundred dollars. But at the very first crossroads he was arrested. The police declared that one couldn't drive around town in such a wreck, quickly summoned a tow truck, and sent the battered old car off to the scrapheap. The distraught sound engineer shared his grief with our patron, and the latter immediately handed the poor fellow five hundred dollars. Meanwhile I was modestly shuffling about nearby, barely restraining the urge to shout that I had no money either, and mystified as to why the millionaire had made happy not me, the one who had given him the accordion? The mystery was revealed at the farewell dinner: the merry, tipsy patron rose, looked at me, winked, and made a speech! From the translation I understood that in his eyes I was a well-off man, very rich, even richer than he, because I'd given such a dear, valuable gift just like that. How about that! Years passed, and fate once again brought me together with the Saratov accordion. One day my wife was offered the chance to stage the play "Lefty" at the music hall, with me, naturally, in the lead. Polina wanted to make the hero's entrance more striking, and decided that Lefty should come on stage with an accordion. My wife and I set off on a search. We went round almost every music and second-hand shop, but never came across the famous Saratov accordion. Finally, in one little shop where the staff were true treasure-hunters and fans of the film "The Cuckoo", they promised to get hold of the rare instrument for us. Soon the lads rang up, and we rushed to the shop. The Saratov accordion, adorned with little bells, lay in an almost new blue box. It was explained to us: this is a most rare specimen, the master craftsman of the famous accordions had died long ago, without passing on his secrets to any pupils. Taking the accordion in my hands, I fell to musing: why is it precisely this one I like, and not the bayan or the accordion I once played? Perhaps because in the Saratov accordion, with its frivolous little bells, one can hear a certain recklessness and an elusive lyrical sorrow. It is this, for some reason, that makes me remember Yesenin and a story connected with his poems that befell me in my distant youth. …After the army I got a job as an optician at the Lensovet Institute of Technology — helping to install a laser apparatus. Just like in the film "The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin". The work wasn't demanding, it suited me well enough, and besides, the institute had a theatre studio, which I attended. It was 1974, beer in the country was in short supply, the city's kiosks could be counted on one hand, yet on Borovaya Street, which was not far from my work, there were a whole sixteen of them! Every day at exactly noon I would head off to this beer paradise. Here many people knew one another, at least by sight. Once, as I was sipping a mug, I noticed a puny little man. Surely he'd once been a slim, curly-haired blond, but life, it seemed, had knocked him about badly. The little man circled among the regulars and asked, a touch insistently: "Old chap, spare us a sip!" One weekend I had a fine time at a wedding, and in the morning at work I couldn't settle. At last, having waited for noon, I set off for Borovaya. I stood through the long queue and, deciding not to be stingy, ordered four mugs at once. Suddenly that very puny fellow comes up and asks me to treat him to some beer. And after the first mug I'd already mellowed. "Why not," I say, "take a mug!" We got talking, drank a second round. And suddenly he began to recite Yesenin: "I gather corks — to stopper up my soul…" The pitiful little man was transformed before my eyes. Time seemed to stop: I forgot it was time to get back to work. People bustled around us, but we didn't notice them. There was only a little island by the beer kiosk, the sun shone, and Yesenin rang out. When the fellow had finished, in a rush of feeling I gave him all the money I had in my pocket. The next day at 12.00 I was already standing by the familiar kiosk. I waited a long time, but the fellow never appeared. For a whole week I searched for my new acquaintance, asked the regulars about him… At last I asked the shopgirl. The woman in a white lace cap, rolling her eyes in displeasure, muttered: "The simpleton, you mean? Why, he died a week ago!" I felt sad. I'd seen this odd fellow for a full six months, yet only spoke to him literally the day before his death. And to think I could have been listening to Yesenin... Who was he? I shall probably never know... It is he whom I sometimes recall when I take up the accordion. The little bells ring plaintively, and it seems as though — snow, a covered sleigh crawling across the boundless steppe. Perhaps such is the fate of the Russian soul — to grieve when merry, and be merry when sad.