SERGEI DOVLATOV
405
She also told me a story about the poet Boris Kornilov. The
chief editor of the publishing house that my aunt worked for, Nikolai
Tikhonov, was putting together a literary anthology. He told Aunt
Mara , who was his secretary, to go to Boris Kornilov and ask him
for some poems. Kornilov refused to contribute.
"1 don't give a shit about your Tikhonov," he announced, "so I
give you nothing."
Aunt Mara returned and informed Tikhonov, "Kornilov won't
give us anything. He says he won't give you a single sheet."
"What he said was, 'He doesn't give a shit about me,'"
Tikhonov corrected her irritably. "Is it really so hard to remember?"
She knew a lot of stories about Aleksei Tolstoi, too. Once
Aleksei Tolstoi, who was tall and portly, was walking down the hall
of the publishing house. My aunt came running from the opposite
direction. She was thin and short, and she ran headfirst into Tolstoi's
belly.
"Oho!" Tolstoi said, rubbing his stomach. "And what if 1 had
an eye down there?"
My aunt knew a great many humorous literary anecdotes.
Then, on my own, I found out that Boris Kornilov had been
shot; that Zoshchenko had lauded the use of slave labor in prison
camps; that Aleksei Tolstoi was a scoundrel and a hypocrite; that
Olga Forsh had suggested revising all chronology from the moment
of birth of a certain Djugashvili (a .k .a. Stalin); that Leonov specu–
lated in rugs during the evacuation; that Vera Inber had signed a
petition demanding the execution of her first cousin, Leon Trotsky;
that "out of curiosity" Pavlenko had gone to watch Mandelstam's in–
terrogation; that Yuri Olesha betrayed his friend Shostakovich; that
the writer Miroshnichenko used to beat his wife with a bicycle
pump; and many more such facts.
But what my aunt remembered, for the most part, were the
humorous occurrences. I don't fault her for this. Our memory is
selective like a ballot box.
I think my aunt was a good editor. That is what I've been told
by the writers she edited. Of course, I don't completely understand
why an editor is really necessary.
If
a writer is good, an editor, it
would seem, is unnecessary .
If
the writer is bad, no editor can save
him. This has always seemed quite clear to me.
1 know how my aunt worked with authors. Sometimes I was
even present. For example, she would say, "Yuri, there are four
places in this passage where the word 'dank' appears."
