The Foundation Pit Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Andrey Platonov

  Title Page

  THE FOUNDATION PIT

  Afterword

  Notes

  Acknowledgments

  Appendix

  Further Reading

  Copyright

  About the Book

  A new translation by Robert & Elizabeth Chandler and Olga Meerson.

  Platonov’s dystopian novel describes the lives of a group of Soviet workers who believe they are laying the foundations for a radiant future. As they work harder and dig deeper, their optimism turns to violence and it becomes clear that what is being dug is not a foundation pit but an immense grave.

  This new translation, by Robert & Elizabeth Chandler and Olga Meerson, is based on the definitive edition recently published by Pushkin House in Leningrad. All previous translations were done from a seriously bowdlerized text. Robert Chandler is also the translator of Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate. The American scholar Olga Meerson has written extensively on Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Platonov and many other Russian authors.

  About the Author

  Andrey Platonovich Platonov (1899–1951) was the son of a railway-worker and worked as a land reclamation expert. His most politically controversial works of the late 1920s and early 1930s, including The Foundation Pit and Chevengur, remained unpublished in Russia until the late 1980s. Other stories were published but subjected to vicious criticism. Stalin is reputed to have written “scum” in the margin of the story “For Future Use,” and to have said to Fadeyev (later to be secretary of the Writers’ Union), “Give him a good belting – for future use!” From September 1942, after being recommended to the chief editor of Red Star by his friend Vasily Grossman, Platonov worked as a war correspondent and managed to publish several volumes of stories; after the war, however, he was again almost unable to publish. He died in 1951, of tuberculosis caught from his son whom he had nursed on his return from the Gulag. Happy Moscow, one of his finest short novels, was first published in 1991 and a complete text of Soul was first published only in 1999.

  Robert Chandler’s translations from Russian include Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate, Everything Flows and The Road, Leskov’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and Aleksander Pushkin’s Dubrovsky and The Captain’s Daughter. He has also translated Sappho and Guillaume Apollinaire. His translation of Hamid Ismailov’s The Railway and his co-translations of works by Andrey Platonov have won prizes both in the UK and in the USA. He is the editor of Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida and the author of Alexander Pushkin. He teaches part-time at Queen Mary, University of London.

  Elizabeth Chandler is a co-translator, with her husband, of Pushkin’s The Captain’s Daughter and of several volumes by Andrey Platonov: The Return, The Portable Platonov, Happy Moscow and Soul.

  Olga Meerson teaches at Georgetown University. She is a co-translator of Platonov’s Soul and the author of Dostoevsky’s Taboos and Platonov’s Poetic of Re-familiarization.

  Also by Andrey Platonov

  Happy Moscow

  The Return and Other Stories

  ANDREY PLATONOV

  The Foundation Pit

  TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN BY

  Robert and Elizabeth Chandler and Olga Meerson

  ON THE day of the thirtieth anniversary of his private life, Voshchev was made redundant1 from the small machine factory where he obtained the means for his own existence. His dismissal notice stated that he was being removed from production on account of weakening strength in him and thoughtfulness amid the general tempo of labor.

  In his lodgings Voshchev took his things into a bag; he then went outside so as better to understand his future out in the air. But the air was empty, motionless trees were carefully holding the heat in their leaves, and dust lay boringly on the deserted road—the situation in nature was quiet. Voshchev did not know where he felt drawn, and at the end of the town he leaned his elbows on the low fence of a large house where children with no family were being habituated to labor and use. After that the town stopped; there was only a beer room for workers from the villages and low-paid categories2. Like some official building or other, this stood without any yard, and behind it rose a clay mound, and an old tree grew on its own there amid bright weather. Voshchev made his way to the beer room and went inside, towards sincere human voices. Here were untempered people, abandoned to the oblivion of unhappiness, and among them Voshchev felt more cut off and at ease. He remained present in the beer room until evening, until the noise of a wind of changing weather; he then went over to an open window, to take note of the beginning of night, and he caught sight of the tree on the clay mound—it was swaying from adversity, and its leaves were curling up with secret shame. Somewhere, most likely in the Soviet Trade Workers Park, a brass band was pining; getting nowhere, the monotonous music was carried off by the wind, across the empty waste by the gully and into nature. Voshchev listened to the music with the pleasure of hope, since joy was seldom his due, but he was unable to accomplish anything equivalent to the music and so he spent this evening time of his without moving. After the wind, silence set in again, to be covered by a still more silent gloom. Voshchev sat down by the window, in order to observe the tender darkness of night, listen to various sad sounds, and feel the torment of a heart surrounded by hard and stony bones.

  “Hey, food worker!” a voice rang out in the now silent establishment. “Give us a couple of jars—to pour into the hollow!”

  Voshchev had long ago discovered that people always came to a beer room in couples, like a bride and groom, or else as a whole friendly wedding party.

  This time the food worker failed to provide any beer, and the two newly arrived roofers wiped their thirsting mouths on their aprons.

  “You, bureaucrat, should jump up the moment a workingman lifts his little finger—but you stand proud.”

  But the food worker was not someone who entered into disagreements; rather than exhaust his strength at work, he preserved it for private life.

  “The establishment, citizens, is now closed. Find something to occupy yourselves with in your own lodgings!”

  The roofers each took a salty bread ring3 from a small saucer and went out and away. Voshchev remained alone in the beer room.

  “Citizen! You’ve ordered only one beer, but you sit here permanently. You paid for a beverage, not for premises.”

  Voshchev seized his bag and set off into the night. The questioning sky shone above him with the tormenting power of stars, but the lights in the city were already extinguished—whoever possessed the opportunity was now sleeping, full up with supper. Voshchev lowered himself over crumbs of earth into the gully and lay down on his stomach there in order to fall asleep and so part from himself. But sleep required forgiveness of past grief and the peace of a mind that trusts in life, whereas Voshchev was lying there in a dry tension of awareness, and he did not know whether he was of use to the world4 or whether everything would get along fine without him. A gust of wind blew from an unknown place, so that people would not suffocate, and a dog on the outskirts of town let it be known, in a weak voice of doubt, that it was on duty.

  “The dog’s bored. It’s like me—living only thanks to its birth.”

  Voshchev’s body grew pale with exhaustion. He felt the cold on his eyelids and used them to close his warm eyes.

  The beer worker was already freshening up his establishment, and winds and blades of grass round about were already being stirred by the sun, when Voshchev regretfully opened his eyes, which had filled with moist strength. He again faced the task of living and nourishing himself, and so he set off to the trade union committee, to defe
nd his unneeded labor.

  “Administration says that you stood and thought in the midst of production. What were you thinking about, comrade Voshchev?”

  “About a plan of life5.”

  “The factory works according to the prepared plan of the trust. If you mean a plan of your private life, you could have worked that out in the club or else in the Red Corner6.”

  “I was thinking about a plan of shared, general life. I’m not afraid of my own life—my own life’s no riddle to me.”

  “And what could you have achieved?”

  “I could have thought up something like happiness, and inner meaning would have improved productivity.”

  “Happiness will originate from materialism, comrade Voshchev, not from meaning. There’s nothing we can do on your behalf. You’re a man without consciousness and we don’t want to find ourselves at the tail end of the masses7.”

  Voshchev wanted to ask for some very weak work or other, so he would have enough for nourishment—as for his thinking, he could do that outside working hours—but for a request it is necessary to have respect for people, and Voshchev could see no feeling from them towards him.

  “You’re afraid of being at the tail end of the masses, so what do you do? You sit yourself on their necks!”

  “The State, Voshchev, has given you an extra hour for this thoughtfulness of yours—you used to work eight hours, but now it’s seven8. You should have kept quiet. What if we all get lost in thought—who’ll be left to act?”

  “Without thought, people act senselessly,” pronounced Voshchev in reflection.

  He left the committee without help. His path on foot lay amid summer; on either side work was now under way on technical improvements and housing blocks where the hitherto unsheltered masses would soon lead their speechless existence. Voshchev’s body was indifferent to comfort; he could live, without exhaustion, in an open place and he had pined with an unhappiness of his own during the time of plenty, during the days of peace in his past lodgings. Once again he had to go past the beer room on the outskirts of town; once again he looked at where he had spent the night—something in common with his own life still remained there—and then Voshchev found himself in space, with only the horizon before him and the feel of the wind against his down-bent face.

  But soon he felt doubt in his own life and the weakness of a body without truth. He was unable to keep treading the road for long and he sat down on the edge of a ditch, not knowing the precise construction of the whole world and where it was he should aim for. Exhausted by scant reflection, Voshchev bent down and laid himself in the dusty roadside grass. It was hot, a day wind was blowing and cocks were crowing in some village—everything had abandoned itself to meek existence, only Voshchev had made himself separate and silent. A dead, fallen leaf lay beside Voshchev’s head; the wind had brought it there from a distant tree, and now this leaf faced humility in the earth. Voshchev picked up the leaf that had withered and hid it away in a secret compartment of his bag, where he took care of all kinds of objects of unhappiness and obscurity. “You did not possess the meaning of life,” supposed Voshchev with the miserliness of compassion. “Stay here—and I’ll find out what you lived and perished for. Since no one needs you and you lie about amidst the whole world, then I shall store and remember you.

  “Everything lives and endures in the world, without becoming conscious of anything,” said Voshchev beside the road. And he stood up, in order to go, surrounded by universal enduring existence. “It’s as if some one man, or some handful of men, had extracted from us our convinced feeling and taken it for themselves!”

  He walked on down the road until exhaustion; Voshchev got exhausted quickly, as soon as his soul remembered that it had stopped knowing truth.

  But a town was now visible in the distance. Its cooperative bakeries were smoking, and the evening sun shone on the dust up above the buildings due to movement of the population. The town began with a forge; as Voshchev passed by, an automobile was being repaired there from going without roads. A corpulent cripple was standing beside the tethering post and addressing an appeal to the blacksmith: “Give us some baccy, Misha. Or I’ll rip the lock off again tonight!”

  The blacksmith did not reply from beneath the car. Then the mutilated man prodded him on the behind with his crutch.

  “Come on, Misha! Better stop working and give me some baccy. I’ll cause shortfalls!”

  Voshchev stopped beside the cripple; from the depths of the town a column of Pioneer children9 was advancing along the street, a tired band leading them on.

  “I gave you a whole ruble only yesterday,” said the blacksmith. “Give me a week’s peace. Or one fine day I’ll set fire to your crutches.”

  “Go ahead!” agreed the veteran. “My mates will hoist me up in my cart and I’ll tear the roof off your forge!”

  Distracted by the sight of the children, the blacksmith softened and poured some tobacco into the mutilated man’s pouch.

  “There—locust!”

  Voshchev took note that the cripple had no legs; one was missing completely, while in place of the other was to be found a wooden appendage. The mutilated man stayed upright with the support of his crutches and the supplementary tension of the wooden spur to his truncated right leg. The veteran was also without teeth; he had worn them to nothing on food, but in return for this he had eaten his way to a huge face and an obese remnant of torso; his brown, miserly, gaping eyes observed the world that lay beyond them with the greed of dispossession, with the anguish of accumulated passion, while in his mouth his gums rubbed together, pronouncing the legless man’s inaudible thoughts.

  The Pioneer orchestra, having distanced itself, began to play the music of a young march. Precisely in step, with awareness of the importance of their future, the barefoot little girls marched past the forge; their frail, hardening bodies were clothed in sailor suits, red berets lay freely and easily on their thoughtful, attentive heads, and their legs were covered with the down of youth. Each little girl moving at one with the column’s shared measure was smiling from a sense of her own significance, an awareness of the seriousness of the life being held clenched within her—a life essential both to the continuity of the column and to the power of the march. Any one of these Pioneer girls had been born at the time when dead horses of social warfare were lying on the fields and not all Pioneers had possessed skin at the hour of their origin, since their mothers were being nourished only by the reserves of their own bodies—and so on the face of each Pioneer girl still remained the difficulty of the powerlessness of early life, a scantness of body and beauty of expression. But the happiness of childhood friendship, the dignity of their stern freedom, and the realization of the future world in the play of youth designated on their childish faces a solemn joy that substituted for beauty and homely plumpness.

  Voshchev stood with timidity before the eyes of the procession of these unknown and excited children; he felt ashamed that the Pioneers probably knew and sensed more than he did, since children are time coming to maturity in a fresh body, whereas he, Voshchev—a vain attempt by life to attain its goal—was now being dismissed by hurrying, active youth into the silence of obscurity. And Voshchev began to feel shame and energy—he wanted quickly to discover the universal, long meaning of life, so that he could live ahead of the children, more quickly than their swarthy legs filled with resolute tenderness.

  One Pioneer girl ran out of the ranks into a field of rye beside the forge and picked a plant she could use. In the course of her action the small woman bent down, baring a birthmark on her swelling body, and with the lightness of power that could not be felt, she disappeared past, leaving regret in two onlookers—the cripple and Voshchev. Voshchev, seeking equality for the sake of relief, looked at the veteran; the man’s face was swollen with blood that had no way out, and he groaned a sound and moved one hand deep in a trouser pocket. Voshchev observed the mood of the mighty mutilated man, but he was glad that socialist children would alwa
ys be beyond the reach of this freak of imperialism. The cripple, however, did not take his eyes off the end of the Pioneer procession, and Voshchev began to fear for the purity and intactness of these small people.

  “Look your eyes somewhere else,” he said to the veteran. “You’d do better to have a smoke.”

  “March aside, foreman!” pronounced the legless man.

  Voshchev resignedly did not move.

  “Who are you—and do you want to receive from me?” prompted the cripple. “Fancy a fist in the face?!”

  “No,” replied Voshchev. “I got scared you were going to say your say at that little girl, or that you’d act on her in some way.”

  The veteran, in habitual torment, bowed his large head towards the ground.

  “What would I say to a child, you bastard? I look at children for memory, because soon I’ll snuff it.”

  “You must have been injured in a capitalist battle,” Voshchev said quietly. “Though cripples become old men too, I’ve seen some.”

  The mutilated man turned against Voshchev eyes in which there was now the brutality of dominant mind. Rage against the passerby even, at first, made the mutilated man unable to speak. Then, with the slowness of embitterment, he said, “Yes, such old men do happen, but there are no cripples as crippled as you are.”

  “I’ve never been in a real war,” said Voshchev. “If I had, I wouldn’t have returned from there fully complete either.”

  “I can see you haven’t—why else would you be such a fool? A man who’s never seen war is like a woman who’s never given birth—soft in the head! I can notice every bit of you through that shell of yours!”

  “Ohhh . . .” plaintively pronounced the blacksmith. “Looking at the children, I just want to shout out, ‘Long Live the First of May!’”

  The Pioneers’ band rested and then, in the distance, struck up a march of movement. Voshchev continued pining and went into this town to live.