Vladimir Dudintsev
A NEW YEAR'S FABLE*
I live in a fantastic world, a fabulous land, a
city
of
my imagination. There wondrous things befall people, and I
have had my share of these adventures. I shall tell you some–
thing about them, profiting by the fact that on New Year's Eve
people are inclined to listen to all sorts of fantasies.
I shall speak of time and the tricks it plays on us. Time,
after all,
is
boundless and ubiquitously active. In a world of
fable a watch can always be set by Moscow time. This is why
I am taking the risk of setting out on my story-perhaps some
curious person will be found who will become interested
in
certain passages of my fantasy as they touch on the reality of
his
life.
A mysterious bird-an owl--came flying into our
city.
It made a few people happier by visiting them. The first of
these was my immediate chief, the Head of the Laboratory for
Solar Research, where I work. The second turned out to
be
a doctor, a neuro-pathologist and myoId school friend. For the
*
This new work by the author of
Not By Bread Alone,
a novel that
became famous for its outspoken criticism of Soviet bureaucracy, seeIIlJ
to us a story of unusual interest. It represents a break with the official
doctrine of socialist realism, and is in other ways obviously Wlorthodox
in its political implications, although these are not simple.
A New Year's Fable
first appeared in the January 1960 issue of the
Russian literary magazine,
Novy Mir,
and was published in February
in
Nowa Kultura,
the Polish literary periodical. This is its first appearance
in an American publication, in a translation from the Russian.
THE
EDITORS
