So rich a tradition is that of the Russian short story that surely it must intimidate even its contemporary native writers. That said, the subversive legacy of Pushkin, Gogol and Chekhov survived 70 years of communism, and during the darkest years of censorship great writers such as Bulgakov and Platonov, and, more latterly, Popov and Bitov, remained active. Time and again, successive generations of Russian writers have proven they find their literary heritage, at least, more inspiring than oppressive.
Aside from The Clay Machine Gun by the innovative young Russian Victor Pelevin, Ingo Schulze's 33 Moments of Happiness is possibly the year's most singular new fiction work. It draws broadly and imaginatively from that magnificent Russian tradition, playing close to its heart while never losing a subtle and valuable sense of distance. His art is rooted in the fluidity of his narrative voices. This debut is a dazzling extravaganza: blackly humorous, atmospheric, at times surreal, almost grim, and invariably possessing that apparently effortless style and array of tone-shifts to which only the most gifted writers are privy.
Above all, these stories are so Russian in mood and ethos - collectively as well as individually - that his collection is a worthy addition, as well as tribute, to one of the world's enduringly great literatures. There is a catch, though - Ingo Schulze, whose sense of detail approaches that of Nabokov, is not Russian - he is German and his Russia is based on six months spent working as a newspaper editor in St Petersburg.
But it would be extremely foolish to suggest these stories are clever pastiche, and considering that echoes of various Russian masters - particularly the Chekhov of "Ward No. 6" and Bulgakov at his blackest - prevail, as well as German writers such as Boll and Grass, Schulze (who clearly understands the Gothic fairy tale as well as he does satire) is above all an original who has absorbed much and made most of it his own. Many of these stories stand alone, yet also work brilliantly together in creating a multidimensional portrait of a chaotic, diverse and eccentric society full of madness and pain and humour.
Three Bulgakovian devils show up at a massage parlour and embark on a feast which culminates in their devouring one of the young female employees, leaving only her head and feet. According to the manager of the steam baths, the victim didn't seem to mind: "her eyes were closed, and her mouth had a relaxed smile. She was in a better world now."
In another tale, a deserted wife and mother of four sets out to find a new partner. Scant sympathy meets the efforts of Antonina Antonovna Verekovskaya, who becomes a subject of ridicule. With her only son proving as worthless as her husband, she sets out to find a man with a secure income. Salvation is found when she faints at the feet of the new factory director, an American named Nick. The family's problems are immediately solved.
Few of the pieces end as happily as this one, with Nick marrying Vera, one of the daughters. "When Vera died, Nick married her beautiful sister Annushka, and when Annushka died, Nick married the even more beautiful Tamara. Antonina Antonovna shed tears at each wedding. I cannot say how long she lived so happily. For here her story becomes lost in darkness."
SEVERAL of the stories deal in lasting desperation. Schulze shares something of Dostoyevsky's flair for exasperation and crazed violence. There are moments of operatic hysteria, but he is equally effective with quiet despair. "Florian Muller-Fritsch was wheezing. He felt the end had come. Ever since this morning, when over the obstacle of his belly he had had to roll his socks inch by inch up over his sweaty feet, he had smelled death . . ." When his end comes, the poor man simply dissolves into the sidewalk.
Far less dramatic but even more effective and moving is the remarkable portrait of a lonely spinster, Viktoria Federovna. At the subway station, she makes certain that the woman who checks the tickets actually looks at her monthly pass. There is a reason. "Last year, in this same station she had used for eighteen years, someone had grabbed her arm, and spun her around. She was cheating the state, a controller had shouted for all to hear. No one had stopped to testify on her behalf. And until she had dug her pass from her handbag again, so many people had gone by that those on the platform probably did take her for a cheat". And, with a masterful touch worthy of Chekhov, the narrator adds: "even when she wasn't thinking of it, she sometimes felt that hand on her arm."
Schulze's characters are individuals, not colourful grotesques. Even descriptions which are general rather than specific retain an awareness of suffering humanity at the mercy of everything, particularly the weather.
A palpable sense of Russia is evoked: the smells, the squalor, the confusion, beautiful girls with sex to sell, weary caretakers guarding shabby entrances to crowded buildings. The most obviously autobiographical piece must be the one in which a German journalist is sent to open a Russian office for his newspaper and gradually discovers that the obliging local staff set out to make it more than a home-away-from-home - for them it is home, complete with their food, bedding and husbands calling by. Arriving there one Sunday to send a fax, the narrator recalls: "There was a whimpering coming from the waiting room. All four ladies were standing around the sofa, on which an old woman was lying. They hissed at me to be quiet, for heaven's sake, the doctor had already been notified."
An ingenious conceit lurks behind the entire book. An unnamed woman explains in a preface that these stories have been written by a German she met on a train. Don't be lulled into thinking that these are idealised impressions of a romantic Motherland. "Russia," sighs one disgruntled narrator, "all you can do is leave it . . . why was I in this city? . . . it was as if the people here had only recently come in from the village and didn't know how to walk down a street . . . And all the while they talk about Pushkin, fate and the Volga". As the ill-fated Muller-Fritsch recalls: "What Russians find tolerable is fatal to Germans."
Far more than mere moments of happiness are on offer here. Schulze's cunningly magical, astutely observed stories are as rich as the culture which inspires them.
Eileen Battersby is an Irish Times journalist and critic
