Iurii Olesha, Envy. 1929

Translated by T. S. Berczynski

This excerpt from Olesha's classic novel expresses the rage and frustration of an intellectual who cannot adjust to the new way of life that seems to be sweeping away all around him. The enthusiasm and fresh air of the outdoor stadium, with its spectators and healthy sportsmen, enrages him as he feels himself being left behind.

Chapter VIII. At the Stadium

Nikolai Kavalerov took a place in the stands. Up above, to the right from him, in a wooden box, among the banners, the gigantic type of the posters, the ladders and cross boards sat Valya. Young people filled the box.

The wind blew; the day was very bright, transparent, whistled through by the wind from all sides. The enormous field showed green with flattened grass, shining like lacquer.

Without lowering his eyes, Kavalerov looked at the box, strained his vision and getting tired worked with his imagination, trying to obtain that which he could not see or hear from a distance. Not only he, many of those sitting next to the box, despite the fact that they were excited by anticipation of the exceptional spectacle, paid attention to the charming girl in the pink dress, almost a little girl, careless in a childish way of her poses and movements and at the same time having such a look that everyone wanted to be noticed by her, just as if she were a celebrity or the daughter of a celebrated person.

Twenty thousand spectators overcrowded the stadium. An unprecedented holiday was in progress--the long-awaited match between the Moscow and German teams.

In the stands people argued, shouted, brawled over nothing. An enormous number of people packed the stadium. Somewhere a railing broke with a duck cry. Kavalerov, getting tangled in the knees of others, in search of his place, saw how on the path at the foot of the stands, breathing heavily and arms out flung, lay a respectable old man in a cream--colored vest. They moved past him thinking little about him. The anxiety was strengthened by the wind. On the tower the flags beat like lightning.

Kavalerov's whole being strained toward the box. Valya was located above him. at an oblique, at about twenty meters. His vision taunted him. To him it seemed: their eyes met. Then he raised himself. To him it seemed: a medallion is flashing on her. The wind did with her what it wanted. She continually grabbed her hat. This was a hood of shining red straw. The wind blew her sleeve up to the very shoulder uncovering her arm, slender like a flute. A handbill flew away from her and, having flopped its wing, fell into a thicket.

Yet a month before the match it was conjectured that with the German team would come the famous Getzke playing center forward, that is, the main player of the five offense men. Indeed, Getzke arrived. As soon as the German team had come out onto the field to the sound of a march, and the players had not yet managed to place themselves along the field, the public (as it always happens) recognized the celebrity, although the celebrity was walking in the crowd of other guests.

"Getzke! Getzke!" the spectators began to shout, experiencing a peculiar gratification from the sight of the celebrated player and from the fact that they were clapping for him.

Getzke, who turned out to be a short, swarthy and round-shouldered man, stepped a little to the side, stopped, raised his hands over his head and brandished his joined palms. The unknown, foreign means of welcoming inspired the spectators still more.

The group of Germans--eleven persons--shone on the green in the purity of the air with the bright, oily coloring of their clothes. On them were orange, almost gold jerseys with greenish-lilac stripes on the right side of the chest and black shorts. The shorts fluttered in the wind.

Volodya Makarov, shivering a little from the freshness of the just-donned soccer shirt, was looking out of the soccer players' quarters through a window. The Germans reached the middle of the field.

Let's go, eh?" he asked. "Let's go?

"Let's go!" commanded the captain of the team.

The Soviet team ran out in red shirts and white shorts. The spectators fell onto the railings, thrashed with their feet against the boards.

The roar drowned out the music.

It fell to the Germans to play the first half of the game with the wind.

Ours not only played and tried to do everything which is supposed to be done in order to play as well as possible but in addition did not cease to observe the Germans' game as professionals. The game continues for ninety minutes with a short break after forty-five minutes. After the break the teams change halves of the field. So that in windy weather it's more advantageous to play against the wind with fresh strength.

Since the Germans were playing with the wind, and the wind was very strong, the whole game was blown toward our goal. The ball almost never left the Soviet half of the field. Our backs gave strong "sparks," that is, high, parabolic kicks, but the ball, sliding along the wall of the wind, turned, sparkling with yellow, and rambled backwards. The Germans attacked fiercely. The celebrated Getzke turned out to be really and truly a formidable player. AD attention focused on him. When the ball fell to him, Valya, sitting on high, screeched as if at once, immediately, she was bound to see something horrible and criminal. Getzke was bursting toward the goal. Then Valya, swinging toward her neighbor, grabbed her neighbor's arm with both hands, pressed her cheek to it and, thinking only of one thing, to hide her face and not see the horrible, continued to watch with squinted eyes the frightful movements of Getzke, black from running in the heat.

But Volodya Makarov, goalkeeper of the Soviet team, caught the ball. Getzke, not yet having completed the movement made for the kick, gracefully changed this movement for another needed in order to turn and run, turned and ran, bending his back tightly covered with the jersey sweat-soaked to blackness. Instantly Valya assumed a natural pose and began to laugh: first, with delight that they didn't drive the ball in on our side, and second--because she remembered how recently she was squealing and grabbing her neighbor's arm.

"Makarov! Makarov! Bravo, Makarov!" she shouted with everyone.

Every minute the ball flew at the goal. It struck against its bars, they moaned, lime fell off them. Volodya grabbed the ban in a sort of flight, when this seemed mathematically impossible. The whole audience, the whole living slope of the stands became as if sheerer--each spectator rose, shoved by the frightful, impatient desire to see at last the most interesting--the score of the goal. The referee threw the whistle into his lips on the run, prepared to whistle the score. Volodya did not catch the ball--he plucked it from the line of flight and, as if violating physics, subjected himself to the stunning effect of indignant forces. He flew up together with the ball, whirling, literally getting screwed on to it: he clasped the ball with his whole body--knees, stomach and chin, throwing his weight onto the velocity of the ball, as they throw rags to put out a flare-up. The intercepted velocity of the ball threw Volodya sideward two meters; he fell in the form of a colored paper bomb. The enemy forwards ran toward him, but in the end the ball turned up high above the battle.

Volodya remained in the goal. He couldn't stand still. He walked along the line of the goal from one pole to the other, suppressing the gust of energy called forth by the struggle with the ball. Everything buzzed in him. He moved his arms, shook himself, tossed up lumps of earth with his toe. Trim before the beginning of the game, now he consisted of rags, a black body and the leather of the enormous fingerless gloves. The respites didn't continue for long. Once again the attack of the Germans rolled to the Moscow goal. Volodya desired victory for his side with a passion and worried about each of his players. He thought that he only knew how one has to play against Getzke, what his weak sides are, how to defend against his attack. It interested him too, what sort of opinion had formed in the famous German of the Soviet game. When he himself applauded and shouted "hurrah" to each of his backs, he felt right then like shouting to Getzke:

That's how we play! Do we play well in your opinion?

As a soccer player Volodya represented a complete opposite to Getzke. Volodya was a professional sportsman--the other was a professional player. Important to Volodya was the general course of the game, the overall victory, the outcome--Getzke strove only to show his own skill. He was an old, experienced player, not intending to maintain the honor of the team: he valued only his own success; he was not a permanent member of any sort of sports organization because he had compromised himself by moves from club to club for money. They forbade him to participate in matches for the play-off of a championship. They invited him only for friendly games, demonstration matches and trips to other countries. Skill united in him with luck. His participation made the team dangerous. He was suspicious of the players--both those with whom he played and the opponents. He knew that he would drive in the balls on any team. The rest was not important to him. He was a hack.

As early as the middle of the game it became clear to the spectators that the Soviet team was not yielding to the Germans. They were conducting the correct attack--Getzke was hindering this. He spoiled, destroyed their combinations. He was playing only for himself at his own risk without help and without helping. Receiving the ball, he drew all the movement of the game to himself, squeezed it into a lump, loosened and sloped it, transferred it from one edge to another--according to his own plans, obscure to his partners, relying only on himself, on his running and abilities to dodge the opponent.

Hence the spectators concluded that the second half of the game, when Getzke would rest and when our boys would receive the windy side, would end with the rout of the Germans. If only right now our boys could hold out, not letting even one ball through into their goal.

But this time, too, the virtuoso Getzke achieved his own. Ten minutes before the break he burst toward the right edge, carried the ball with his body, then stopped sharply, cutting off the pursuers, who, not expecting the stop, ran out ahead and to the right, turned with the ball toward the center, and through an open space, dodging only one Soviet back, drove the ball straight toward the goal, frequently glancing now at his feet, now at the goal, as if proportioning and calculating the velocity, directions, and timing of the kick.

A continuous "o-o-o" in a howl rolled from the stands.

Volodya, bowing his legs and placing his arms as if he were holding an invisible barrel, prepared to catch the ball. Getzke, not kicking, ran up to the goal. Volodya fell under his legs. The ball became hidden between the two of them as in a barrel; then the whistles and tramping of the spectators covered the finale of the scene. From a kick of one of the two the ball lightly and unevenly flew up over the head of Getzke, and he pounded it into the net with a jerk of his head similar to a bow.

Thus a goal was scored against the Soviet team.

The stadium roared. Binoculars turned in the direction of the Soviet goal. Getzke, looking at his gleaming shoes, coquettishly ran to the center.

Comrades picked up Volodya.

IX

Valya turned together with everyone else. Kavalerov saw her face turned toward him. He didn't doubt that she saw him. He started to fuss: a strange supposition made him angry. It appeared to him that those around were laughing--they had noticed his anxiety.

He looked around at those sitting alongside. And it was very unexpected that in one corner with him, in the near vicinity, sat Andrei Babichev. Once again Kavalerov was revolted by the two white hands regulating the hinge of the binoculars, the massive trunk in the gray jacket, the trimmed moustache...

Like a black projective the binoculars hung over Kavalerov. The straps of the binoculars hung down like reins from Babichev's cheeks.

The Germans were already advancing again.

Suddenly the ball, thrown out by someone's powerful and uncalculated kick, flew up high and sideways beyond the field, out of the game, in the direction of Kavalerov, whistled over the ducked heads of the lower rows, stopped for an instant and, all its laminae twirling, crashed down into the boards, towards Kavalerov's feet. The game stopped. The players froze, overcome by surprise. The picture of the field, green and variegated, moving all the time, now all of a sudden turned to stone. Thus a motion picture stops all of a sudden at the moment of a break in the film, when they are already turning the light on in the theater but the projectionist has not yet managed to turn out the light, and the audience sees the strangely whitening still and the contours of the hero, absolutely motionless in that pose, which speaks of vast rapid movement. Kavalerov's anger intensified. Everyone around laughed. A ball falling in the seats always evokes laughter: as if at that minute the spectators realize the true comicalness of the fact that for half an hour people have been running after a ball, inducing them--the spectators, the bystanders--to accept their completely frivolous pastime with such seriousness and passion.

All of the thousands at this minute, as much as they were able, presented Kavalerov their unsolicited attention, and this attention was laughable.

It's possible that Valya, too, was laughing at him, the person caught under the ball! It's possible that she's enjoying herself doubly, jeering at an enemy in a funny situation. He smirked, moving his foot aside from the ball which, losing support, with catlike affection again bumped against his heel.

"Well!" involuntarily and amazedly shouted Babichev.

Kavalerov was passive. Two big white palms reached out for the ball. Someone picked up the ball and passed it to Babichev. He stood up to his full height and, sticking out his stomach, tilted his arms in order to throw farther. He couldn't be serious in such a thing and understanding that it's necessary to be serious, exaggerated the outward expression of seriousness, frowning and pouting his fresh, red lips.

Babichev, heavily swaying forward, hurled the ball, magically unfettering the field.

"He doesn't recognize me," Kavalerov harbored his anger.

The first half of the game ended with the score "one to nothing" in favor of the German team... The players, with dark streaks on their faces, covered with threads of grass, went toward the passage moving their naked knees heavily and widely as in water. The Germans, outlandishly red, with a blush beginning at the temples, mixed gaily with the Muscovites. The players walked seeing everyone at once, the whole crowd under the boarded wall of the passage, and seeing no one individually. They smeared over the crowd with smiles and lifeless eyes, too transparent on their darkening faces. The people to whom they had just seemed like little, running and falling, multicolored figurines, now met them close up. The not yet cooling noise of the game moved together with them. Getzke, resembling a gypsy, watched, sucking a little wound just received above the elbow.

To the idlers the novelty was the details of the height or build of this or that player, the severity of the scratches, the heavy breathing, the complete disarray of the clothing. From afar everything produced a lighter, more festive impression.

Kavalerov was squeezed between the sides of others under some sort of crossbeam and was relieved to get down onto the grass. Here, in the shade, he ran along the path with the others, skirting the stands from the back side. The refreshment stand, placed on the lawn under the trees, filled up in an instant. The rumpled little old man in the cream-colored vest, still discontentedly and cautiously looking at the public, was eating ice cream. A crowd clung to the soccer players' quarters.

"Hurrah! Makarov! Hurrah!" excited shouts carried from there. The fans clambered up onto the fences, defending themselves against the barbed wire as against bees--and higher: onto the trees, into the dark green, swaying from the wind and adroitness, like wood dwarfs.

Obliquely over the crowd a shiny body gushing with nakedness flew up. They were swinging Volodya Makarov.

Kavalerov lacked the spirit to pass beyond the triumphal ring. Hanging around behind the crowd he peeped through the cracks.

Volodya was already standing on the ground. The stocking on his one leg lowered, rolling up into a green bagel around his pear-shaped, slightly hairy calf. The mutilated shirt barely held on to his trunk. He chastely crossed his arms on his chest.

And here stands Valya. And Andrei Babichev is with her.

The idlers are applauding all three.

Babichev looks lovingly at Volodya.

The wind intervened. A striped peg fell; all the leaves swung to the right. The ring of idlers disintegrated, the whole picture fell apart, people were escaping the dust. Valya caught it more than anyone. The pink dress, light like husks, flew up over her legs, showing Kavalerov its transparence. The wind blew the dress against her face, and Kavalerov saw the contour of her face in the radiance and translucency of the fabric spreading like a fan. Kavalerov saw this through the dust, and how, catching her dress, she whirled, got tangled, nearly falling sideways. She tried to slain the hem down on her knees, to squeeze it, but she didn't manage it, and then, to terminate the indecency, she resorted to half measures: she clasped her overly exposed legs with her arms, hiding the knees, folding up double, like a bather taken unawares.

Somewhere the referee whistled. A march rolled off. Thus the gay confusion was interrupted. They were beginning the second half of the game. Volodya dashed.

"A minimum of two goals on the Germans!" screeched a boy rushing past Kavalerov.

Valya continued to struggle with the wind. In the chase after the hem she changed position ten times and in the end found herself close to Kavalerov, at the distance of a whisper.

She stood, legs planted widely apart. Her hat, thrown off by the wind and caught in flight, she held in her hand. Not yet recovering from the jump she looked at Kavalerov without seeing him, tilting her head to the side a little with its short, chestnut hair cut sharply at the cheeks. The sunlight slid over her shoulder, she swayed and her collar bones flashed like daggers. The viewing lasted a tenth of a minute and growing cold, Kavalerov immediately understood what an incurable yearning would remain in him forever because he had seen her, a being of another world, alien and extraordinary, and sensed how depressingly inaccessible her purity was--both because she was a little girl and because she loved Volodya--and how irresolvable her seductiveness was.

Babichev was waiting for her, stretching out his arm.

"Valya," said Kavalerov. "I've been waiting for you my whole life. Take pity on me ...

But she didn't hear. She ran, undercut by the wind.

Source: Yuri Olesha, Envy (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1975), Chapter VIII, pp. 100-108.