SOMEONE once attempted to define Russian humour by suggesting that while in Russia the sight of a person falling on a banana skin is amusing enough, true hilarity is best guaranteed when the victim not only falls, hut also manages to break a leg. The Russian satirist Evgeny Popov certainly belongs to the "break a leg" school of humour.
Popov, born in 1946, was a silenced writer under the old regime, and is only now being published in the West. His politically daring, marvellously original comic satire, The Soul of a Patriot, cent ring on the death of Leonid Brezhnev referred to throughout as "He Who Once Was" - surprisingly published in Moscow as early as 1989 appeared in an English translation in 1994. Now Popov strikes again in an entertaining, raucous yet often subtle, collection of short stories, Merry Making, in Old Russia (Harvill, £8.99 in UK).
Vodka drinking, lying, explosive domestic situations and a surreal approach to the dictates of reality provide the main themes and by far outweigh the politics. It is a style of comedy shaped both by Gogol's influence and by the absurdist approach to the grotesque so favoured by Bulgakov. Jaunty, irreverent and earthy Popov nonetheless manages to hit several political bulls eyes en route.
The second of a group of five cautionary tales about the hazards of drinking, features Petrov, a hard working citizen. He is one of the best workers about; the problem is his drinking. Not that he indulges in vodka - who doesn't in these stories? - he just drinks perfume. He and another star worker are competing for the same prize and the issue must he decided. The only solution is to expose Petrov's weakness. So humiliated is he that he hangs himself.
"When they came close to him the doctors and policemen were astonished to detect a whiff of eau de Cologne about the hanged man. But then everything was explained to them, and then the doctors put the troubled minds of the of the workers' collective a rest by saying that Petrov, being an inveterate alcoholic, had committed suicide while in a state of alcoholic depression. And therefore the collective bore no responsibility for all his pathologically induced actions."
In another story, two lovers happily drink themselves into such a state that the man carries his girlfriend out and hurls her over their fifth floor balcony and then follows her. Aside from the central role played by the demon drink, these black opening stories are not typical of what is to follow.
In the knockabout title story, a battling elderly couple - Punch and Judy with shades of Synge - have yet another argument over the man's drinking. He reasons that the only way of ending her constant nagging is by killing - or at least, pretending - to kill himself. "He cut the rope into two pieces. He wound one piece round his waist, and he made a noose out of the other piece to go round his neck and he hung himself up on the wall, like a crumpled, tatty rag doll that had been lost and found several times over." Popov demonstrates a real flair for abusive dialogue throughout the collection and it is particularly sharp in the fiery exchanges between the aged pair.
In Teddy Boy Zhukov, the narrator recalls a school dance from his youth. "All day long you could feel the heightened atmosphere at school: there was something really special about the way the bell rang, something really right when we answered the teachers questions and even the caretaker woman, Fenya, was amazingly sober that morning." The narrator of "The Material of the Future" despairs of the national custom of stealing from one's place of work. Invariably he finds himself overhearing people brag about their latest theft from the factory. "I got awfully depressed. I got so depressed that I promptly left the queue, especially as they'd run out of sausages by then anyway." Another story begins in a suburban line railway station waiting room when the narrator wakes abruptly: "Really? So what then? Well, I'm drunk." The man's neighbour, "an intellectual type, maintained a fastidious silence in response to the erstwhile drunk's outpourings. Women, guys, girls and their long haired blokes with their transistor radios, cracking sunflower seeds and occasionally yelling out in metaphysical rapture: "Well, I've had enough of you!"
There are 28 stories here. Even the weakest of them are redeemed by the sharpness of the writing. Popov, a master of the wicked aside, has again, as with The Soul of a Patriot, been brilliantly served by his translator, Robert Porter. This is a funny book, informed by Popov's humanity as much as by his humour. In The Singing of the Brass, a young man walked along the street where he lived, the black snow piled up along the pavements ... in the open car - all black and red, in red calico and velvet - travelled his father in an absurd horizontal position, seeing nothing with his closed eyes, seeing nothing, travelling along, but not even travelling, but rather being transported to the cemetery to be buried in the cold, black earth."
Evgeny Popoy, in common with Andrei Bitov, is one of the lost generation of Russian writers who somehow survived to reassert themselves. In 1979 Popov was expelled from the Writers' Union, only months after being permitted to join, three years after his first two short stories were published in November. He was banned for six years. And no doubt shared the feelings of the narrator of The Soul of a Patriot: "I was flattered everywhere, and published almost nowhere."
Although not quite as impressive as his novel, many of these stories are very good; colourful, atmospheric. earthy and crafted. They also manage to reflect the best of contemporary Russian writing while echoing the great 19th century tradition which, defying time, repression and politics, continues to shape the finest Russian comic fiction.
