Returning to his chair, the Count sat in silence. After a few minutes, he took up Mishka’s legacy, untied the twine, and folded back the paper. Inside there was a small volume bound in leather. Tooled into the cover was a simple geometric design, at the center of which was the work’s title: Bread and Salt. From the roughly cut pages and loose threads, one could tell that the binding was the work of a dedicated amateur.
After running his hand over the surface of the cover, the Count opened the book to the title page. There, tucked in the seam, was the photograph that had been taken in 1912 at the Count’s insistence, and much to Mishka’s chagrin. On the left, the young Count stood with a top hat on his head, a glint in his eye, and moustaches that extended beyond the limits of his cheeks; while on the right stood Mishka, looking as if he were about to sprint from the frame.
And yet, he had kept the picture all these years.
With a sorrowful smile, the Count set the photograph down and then turned the title leaf to the first page of his old friend’s book. All it contained was a single quotation in a slightly uneven typeset:
And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you . . . In the sweat of your face you shall eat BREAD till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
Genesis
3:17–19
The Count turned to the second page, on which there was also one quotation:
And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of BREAD.” But he answered, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by BREAD alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’”
Matthew
4:3–4
And then to the third . . .
And he took BREAD, and when he had given thanks he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
Luke
22:19
As the Count continued turning slowly through the pages, he found himself laughing. For here was Mishka’s project in a nutshell: a compendium of quotations from seminal texts arranged in chronological order, but in each of which the word bread had been capitalized and printed in bold. Beginning with the Bible, the citations proceeded right through the works of the Greeks and Romans onto the likes of Shakespeare, Milton, and Goethe. But particular tribute was paid to the golden age of Russian literature:
For the sake of propriety, Ivan Yakovlevich put his tailcoat on over his undershirt and, settling at the table, poured out some salt, prepared two onions, took a knife in his hands, and, assuming a significant air, began cutting the BREAD. Having cut the loaf in two, he looked into the middle and, to his surprise, saw something white. Ivan Yakovlevich poked cautiously with his knife and felt with his finger. “Firm!” he said to himself. “What could it be?”
He stuck in his fingers and pulled out—a nose!
“The Nose”
Nikolai Gogol
(1836)
When a man isn’t meant to live upon the earth, the sunshine doesn’t warm him as it does others, and BREAD doesn’t nourish him and make him strong.
A Sportsman’s Sketches
Ivan Turgenev
(1852)
The past and the present merged together. He was dreaming he had reached the promised land flowing with milk and honey, where people ate BREAD they had not earned and went clothed in gold and silver. . . .
Oblomov
Ivan Goncharov
(1859)
“It’s all nonsense,” he said hopefully, “and there was nothing to be troubled about! Just some physical disorder. One glass of beer, a piece of dry BREAD, and see—in an instant the mind gets stronger, the thoughts clearer, the intentions firmer!”
Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoevsky
(1866)
I, the vile Lebedev, do not believe in the carts that deliver BREAD to mankind! For carts that deliver BREAD to all mankind, without any moral foundations for their action, may quite cold-bloodedly exclude a considerable part of mankind from enjoying what they deliver.
The Idiot
Fyodor Dostoevsky
(1869)
And do you know, do you know that mankind can live without the Englishman, it can live without Germany, it can live only too well without the Russian man, it can live without science, without BREAD, and it only cannot live without beauty. . . .
Demons
Fyodor Dostoevsky
(1872)
All this happened at the same time: a boy ran up to a pigeon and, smiling, looked at Levin; the pigeon flapped its wings and fluttered off, sparkling in the sun amidst the air trembling with snowdust, while the smell of baked BREAD wafted from the window as the rolls appeared in it. All this together was so extraordinarily good that Levin laughed and wept from joy.
Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy
(1877)
Do you see these stones in this bare, scorching desert? Turn them into BREAD and mankind will run after you like sheep, grateful and obedient. . . . But you did not want to deprive man of freedom and rejected the offer, for what sort of freedom is it, you reasoned, if obedience is bought with loaves of BREAD?
From “The Grand Inquisitor”
The Brothers Karamazov
Fyodor Dostoevsky
(1880)
As the Count turned the pages, he smiled in recognition of the characteristic feistiness that Mishka’s project expressed. But following the quote from “The Grand Inquisitor,” there was a second citation from The Brothers Karamazov from a scene the Count had all but forgotten. It related to the little boy, Ilyushechka—the one who was hounded by his schoolmates until falling dangerously ill. When the boy finally dies, his heartstricken father tells the saintly Alyosha Karamazov that his son had made one final request:
Papa, when they put the dirt on my grave, crumble a crust of BREAD on it so the sparrows will come, and I’ll hear that they’ve come and be glad that I’m not lying alone.
Upon reading this, Alexander Rostov finally broke down and wept. Certainly, he wept for his friend, that generous yet temperamental soul who only briefly found his moment in time—and who, like this forlorn child, was disinclined to condemn the world for all its injustices.
But, of course, the Count also wept for himself. For despite his friendships with Marina and Andrey and Emile, despite his love for Anna, despite Sofia—that extraordinary blessing that had struck him from the blue—when Mikhail Fyodorovich Mindich died, there went the last of those who had known him as a younger man. Though, as Katerina had so rightfully observed, at least he remained to remember.
Taking a deep breath, the Count attempted to restore his composure, determined to read through the final pages of his old friend’s final discourse. The progression of citations, which had spanned over two thousand years, did not continue much further. For rather than extending into the present, the survey ended in June 1904, with the sentences that Mishka had cut from Chekhov’s letter all those years ago:
Here in Berlin, we’ve taken a comfortable room in the best hotel. I am very much enjoying the life here and haven’t eaten so well and with such an appetite in a long time. The BREAD here is amazing, I’ve been stuffing myself with it, the coffee is excellent, and the dinners are beyond words. People who have never been abroad don’t know how good BREAD can be. . . .
Given the hardships of the 1930s, the Count supposed he could understand why Shalamov (or his superiors) had insisted upon this little bit of censorship—having presumed that Chekhov’s observation could only lead to feelings of discontent or ill will. But the irony, of course, was that Chekhov’s observation was no longer even accurate. For surely, by now, the Russian people knew better than anyone in Europe how good a piece of bread could be.