The Night Watchman

Back in the 1920s, when advising to set his fantastic stories in Russia, A.M. Gorky suggested to Kaverin that he write something on the themes of common winged phrases—“for example: about the devil who broke his leg—remember: ‘Even the devil will break his leg here.’” Thanks to this Gorky “hint,” the fairy-tale novella “A Lot of Good People and One Envious Person” was born. “One of its heroes wore an iron belt so he wouldn’t ‘burst from envy,’ and another so easily got into his neighbor’s ‘eye’ rather than his ‘eyebrow’ that it was necessary to immediately call for ‘ambulance help.’” From fairy tales written at different times, a cycle gradually formed: “The Night Watchman, or Seven Entertaining Stories Told in the Town of Nemukhino in the Thousand Nine Hundred Unknown Year.” In this fairy-tale cycle, Kaverin considered the best story “Nemukhino Musicians”: “I came up with it in Yugoslavia, on the shore of the Adriatic Sea, in Dubrovnik. The impression of this beautiful ancient fortress-town is reflected in the tale ‘The Flying Boy.’”

“I always wanted to write fairy tales,” Benjamin Alexandrovich admitted, “and there was time for that… But I can’t tell about how fairy tales are written. Despite the apparent simplicity, this art is mastered by very few, and I have no confidence that I belong to their number.”