The House on the Embankment by Yuri Trifonov

First published:Dom na naberezhnoi, 1976 (English translation, 1983)

Type of work: Psychological realism

Time of work: The late 1930’s to the early 1970’s

Locale: Moscow and Bruskovo

Principal Characters:

• Vadim Alexandrovich Glebov, a literary critic
• A Narrator, Glebov’s childhood friend who is now a writer (and probably was Yura the Bear)
• Lev Mikhailovich Shulepnikov, a childhood friend who now holds menial jobs
• Sonya Ganchuk, a childhood friend who becomes Glebov’s fiancee
• Nikolia Vasilievich Ganchuk, Sonya’s father and a professor at the Literary Institute who becomes Glebov’s dissertation adviser

The Novel

The House on the Embankment, told by two narrators, is a series of intertwined reminiscences, flashbacks, and episodes, mainly of childhood and young adulthood in Moscow under Joseph Stalin. Most of the novella, told in the third person, relates incidents from the life of Vadim Alexandrovich Glebov. These portions alternate with short chapters told by an unidentified narrator who once knew Glebov.

When the novella begins, Glebov, an irritable middle-aged man, sees an alcoholic porter in a furniture store whom he recognizes as his old friend Lev Mikhailovich Shulepnikov or “Shulepa.” At first, Glebov cannot remember his name. Surprisingly, Lev refuses to recognize him. Later that evening, Glebov receives a telephone call from Lev, who tells him that he is being sent “you-know-where” (that is, to prison) and that he used to dislike Glebov.

Lev’s puzzling rebuff triggers Glebov’s memories of youth and childhood and the luxurious apartment house on the embankment, where many of his childhood friends lived. Glebov was drawn to the house, with its mirrored elevator, balconies, antiques, and interesting books. Next to it and in its shadow was the dilapidated Deryugin Street house, where Glebov and his family lived in one room.

Glebov’s childhood world includes Anton, Chemist, Walrus, Lev, Sonya Ganchuk, other classmates, and the belligerent Bychkov children. Nearly all the incidents that Glebov recalls involve fear, humiliation, resentment, or envy. He is intimidated by the elevator man in the apartment house and embarrassed by his anxious father, who treats Lev, the stepson of a powerful man, with respect and tries to impress him. The pain that Glebov senses even as an adult, the “agony from the unfairness of things,” begins at approximately the time when Lev moves into the house on the embankment. Glebov is able to bring friends to the cinema without paying, because his mother works in a theater. This small amount of power in his class is demolished when Lev invites a group to his apartment and shows the same film with which Glebov has been tantalizing his classmates. To Glebov’s chagrin, Lev also emerges triumphant from a boyish prank to humiliate him. Later, the elder Shulepnikov, learning that Glebov’s family wants information, extorts the names of the ringleaders of the prank from Glebov. Believing that his uncle’s fate depends on his answer, Glebov, who himself was one of the ringleaders, names Yura the Bear and Manyunya. Bear’s parents are forced to leave Moscow, Manyunya is expelled, and Glebov’s uncle is sent to prison despite Glebov’s attempts to protect him. In another incident, Anton and Lev are attacked by the Deryugin Street gang, led by Minka Bychkov, and the boys’ clothes are torn by the Bychkovs’ dog. The next day, a mysterious man appears and shoots the dog. Minka is later arrested, and the Bychkovs vanish.

After World War II, Lev and Glebov meet again as graduate students. Lev now has a second stepfather, as powerful as the first. Glebov uses his old friendship with Sonya to develop a personal relationship with her influential father, Professor Nikolia Vasilievich Ganchuk. A crude remark at a party gives Glebov the idea of pursuing Sonya, who has always loved him.

Ironically, Glebov’s hopeful alliance with the Ganchuks involves him in a moral dilemma that jeopardizes his future. He unwittingly becomes a pawn in a plot to oust Ganchuk, his dissertation adviser and future father-in-law. When questioned about Ganchuk’s ideology, Glebov partially admits what the dean wants to hear. Finally, in effect ordered to speak out publicly against Ganchuk and pressured by Ganchuk’s supporters to defend him, Glebov is in a turmoil. He is saved from having to make a decision at that time by the death of his grandmother on the day he is to appear in public. Although Sonya generously offers to release him from their commitment, he leaves her one time with the impression that he will return, but he never does. At another meeting, Glebov says something against Ganchuk, which he is later unable to recall. Lev shows up drunk and muttering at the meeting, and from that point forward, Lev’s life goes downhill. When his second stepfather loses his influence, there is nothing to stop his precipitous fall. Both Ganchuk and his wife, Yulia Mikhailovna, lose their positions at the Institute. Ganchuk is later reinstated, his wife dies, and Sonya suffers emotional problems and dies.

Almost two years after seeing Lev in the furniture store, Glebov meets his aristocratic mother on a train to Paris. Although her position in life has suffered, she still retains her arrogance, and Glebov is disturbed by her indifference to him. He learns, however, that she has a widow’s pension from her first husband.

Several short chapters are told by a narrator who was once one of the boys in the house on the embankment. His friends were the same children whom Glebov remembers, but he does not include Glebov as part of the group. The narrator was annoyed by Glebov’s caution and resented him, partly because Sonya loved him. He believes that Glebov is “a nothing person” to the point of genius, and he considers this the key to his luck and later success. The narrator recalls several incidents which Glebov does not recall or remembers differently. The narrator includes himself in his version of the Deryugin gang attack, in which he, Anton, and Lev were beaten. On their next foray down Deryugin Street, neither the gang nor the dog appeared, and the narrator suspected that Glebov had fixed it. He also recalls the humiliation when his family moved from the apartment house, and Glebov’s pleasure when he learned that they were moving to a single room in a house without an elevator.

Years later, the narrator interviews Professor Ganchuk for a book. On the anniversary of Sonya’s death, they visit her grave near closing time. At first, they are prevented from entering by a surly gatekeeper, whom the narrator recognizes as Lev. The novella ends with Lev looking up at “the long, squat, ugly house on the embankment” and wondering if some miracle might change his life.

The Characters

Glebov is an individual who uses up his vitality achieving what he wants but then is too tired to enjoy it. He attends international literary congresses and has a dacha. The reader assumes that his wife, Marina, was once the student activist Marina Krasnikova, “a loud girl in a perpetual state of excitement,” not unlike Glebov’s daughter, Margot. Glebov changes from a timid, resentful child into a short-tempered, outwardly successful man. Along the way, he loses his integrity. He misses the opportunity to confront the past and himself with honesty. Although Glebov has some sympathy for others (he feels sorry for the Bychkovs) and a conscience, he rationalizes, fails to see connections, and conveniently forgets. He tells himself that Bear and Manyunya were “bad boys” and that nothing “very terrible” happened to them. Later, he rationalizes his semi-betrayal of Ganchuk by convincing himself that Ganchuk once behaved ruthlessly and that he cannot help him anyway.

As a child, Glebov lived in an atmosphere of anxiety. His father, whose motto was “Don’t stick your head out,” hid his fear under glib humor: “He seemed to feel suffocated as though by some ancient traumatic fear.” Glebov’s once understandable fear and resentment become a justification for opportunism and a lack of moral courage. Glebov does not crave power as much as he desires security, success, and genteel comfort. (He loves the old books and carpets in Ganchuk’s study.) Glebov is dishonest with himself, about his motives and the harm to others that results. He does not consciously connect the beginning of his physical desire for Sonya with his desire for the Ganchuks’ dacha in Bruskovo. When the Ganchuk relationship becomes a hindrance, he loses his desire for her and wonders if it was really love or a only physical attraction. He decides that it was the latter. Sonya is a rare and compassionate individual, with sympathy for everyone. Glebov considers her sympathy indiscriminate and is capable of appreciating Sonya only in a limited way, mainly in terms of how he benefits from her goodness. He cannot admit any connection between her breakdown and his betrayal. Although Glebov compromises himself, he arouses the reader’s sympathy.

Lev’s slide into obscurity parallels Glebov’s rise to success. As an arrogant boy and young man, Lev impresses others with his boldness, lies, and material possessions. Whatever natural confidence he may have is enhanced by his two powerful stepfathers. Lev has a cynical awareness of the reality of power struggles that Glebov lacks. When Glebov asks his help in the Ganchuk affair, Lev becomes angry at his desire to avoid getting his hands dirty—the price of success. To his credit, Lev does not speak out against Ganchuk, but he remains a contemptuous, unpleasant individual.

Several characters represent the older generation that lived through the Bolshevik Revolution. Once a pitiless revolutionary, the old Marxist intellectual Ganchuk is an idealist, a bit self-important but kindly, unlike his mean-spirited enemies at the Institute. Interestingly, after his defeat at the Institute, Ganchuk begins to reassess the idea that troubled Fyodor Dostoevsky: If death is the end, “then all is permitted.” His wife, Yulia Mikhailovna, is almost a caricature. Enjoying comfort herself, she rages against the hypocrites who espouse Marxism and secretly harbor bourgeois ideas, and Glebov is one whom she has in mind. Lev’s mother embodies some of the worst qualities associated with the czarist nobility: indifference and haughty superiority. In contrast, Glebov’s grandmother, a peasant type, compassionately comforts Glebov on the last evening of her life.

The narrator may be identified as Yura the Bear and a persona of the author, Yuri Trifonov. The narrator recalls feats of bravery (Bear was the strongest boy) and the shame of moving (Bear’s family left Moscow). The novella is, in part, autobiographical. Yuri Trifonov’s father, like Lev’s real father, fell from power and was imprisoned under Stalin in the 1930’s. Like Bear, Trifonov would have known the humiliation of no longer belonging. The narrator is honest, for he admits at times that his memory and interpretation may be affected by his resentment of Glebov. He has strong affection for his friends, and his pain of moving is, in large part, the pain of losing his friends. As an adult, he is not afraid to look back.

Critical Context

The House on the Embankment is one of several thematically related works by Trifonov dealing with urban life, disappointments of middle age, grudges, and work and family problems. This group includes the three novellas collected in Dolgoe proshchanie (1973; The Long Goodbye: Three Novellas, 1978), comprising Obmen (1969; The Exchange, 1973), Prevaritalnye itogi (1970; Taking Stock, 1978), and the title piece, Dolgoe proshchanie (1971; The Long Goodbye, 1978); also in this group is the novella Drugaya zhizn (1975; Another Life, 1983). These works are part of the de-canonization of Socialist Realism, which is characterized by a self-sacrificing, positive hero, an omniscient narrator who views the action from the Olympian vantage point of “history,” and an inspirational theme in keeping with official ideology. The House on the Embankment may best be described as anti-Socialist Realism; it is marked by the most distinctive feature of Trifonov’s works, his concern with byt (the trivia of ordinary life), a preoccupation which in large part accounts for the popularity of his works in the Soviet Union. Trifonov’s early works include short stories and his first novel, Studenty (1950; Students, 1953), for which he won the Stalin Prize. His later novel Starik (1978; The Old Man, 1984), which some consider his masterpiece, continues the theme of confronting the past.

Bibliography

Eberstadt, Fernanda. “Out of the Drawer and into the West,” in Commentary. CXXIX (July, 1985), pp. 36-44.

Hosking, Geoffrey. “Yuri Trifonov,” in Beyond Socialist Realism, 1980.

McLaughlin, Sigrid. “Jurij Trifonov’s House on the Embankment: Narration and Meaning,” in Slavic and East European Journal. XXVI, no. 4 (1982), pp. 419-433.

Pankin, B. “A Circle or a Spiral? On Iurii Trifonov’s Novels,” in Soviet Studies in Literature. XIV (Fall, 1978), pp. 65-100.