The locusts (Leonow)
The locusts is a short story by the Russian writer Leonid Maximowitsch Leonow . She appeared in 1982 in the German Democratic Republic as part of the narrative band White Night and other stories in the publishing of the nation . At the center of the plot is the Russian protagonist Maronov, who is traveling to what was then Soviet Turkmenistan when a plague of locusts broke over the country. He participates in their fight.
content
The story begins with Pyotr Maronov waiting for the ferry to cross the Amu-Darya River to Turkmenistan. It comes from Novaya Zemlya , an island in the Barents Sea , via Murmansk . He was sent there to observe the ice drift, wind direction, soil temperature and air pressure, to take water measurements and to record the results. A few days before his departure there, his brother Jakob had asked him to accompany him. The reason for this was the end of Jacob's relationship with Ida, which she had ended. After the brothers were left at their observation post by their cook with no sled dogs and supplies, Jacob died of scurvy . Pyotr originally wanted to bury him, but he lacked the strength, so he left him to the sea.
When Maronov arrives in Turkmenistan in the city of Duchakli, he happens to meet Schmul Masel, called Schmel, whom he and his brother had met at the university. Masel is now married to Ida and Maronow reports to him that Jakob died a year ago. He accompanies Masel in his and Ida's apartment. When Maronow and Ida are in private, she asks about the circumstances of Jacob's death; Maronov tells her about it. In this situation, however, he consciously decides not to describe the details of the night of death to her. Then he asks Ida why she left his brother that time. Her answer is simply that she no longer loved him and that she would also live with men other than Masel, if necessary.
After the conversation with Ida, Maronov is appointed to the committee for the Turkmen committee chairman Akiamov. At the same time, the locusts appear for the first time in the story . You cross the Turkmen border coming from Afghanistan at Sussatan-Kuju. When Akiamov received the news of the locusts from the border and the fact became known to the committee, Masel suggested that Maronov, in his capacity as a farmer, should accompany him from Düschakli to Kenderli, which he did. While the two men embark on their journey on horseback, a local locust expert is called in. But when his specialist knowledge turns out to be inadequate, a professor from Moscow arrives, who brings with him extensive specialist knowledge about the locusts and provides information in Turkmenistan.
The country is gradually realizing the extent of the crisis and starting to respond to it. Reconnaissance patrols are carried out, regiments are set up, an "anti-locust army" is formed. In the course of this, Maronov becomes a chussar and leads a troop. There he brings in a young man named Pukessow, who is known as a womanizer and who appears self-confident and provocative towards Maronov. When Pukessow is observed having sexual activities with a woman and Maronow later speaks to him about it, the latter reacts carelessly with questions about the payment of overtime and expenses. Because of this insolence, Maronow sends him to Suchry-Kul as a punitive measure. Due to his consistent punishment of wrongdoing, his strict leadership of the troops and his obsession with the fight against the locusts, Maronov was finally nicknamed "the mad Tschussar".
The village of Kenderli becomes the center of the locust fight, and Maronow spends a total of six weeks there. In the meantime he changes a lot. Masel hardly recognizes him when he meets him again after these weeks. The locusts are advancing further and further into the country, Masel reports that they have now reached the Volga . In addition, the two men talk about the fact that Ida is working with one of the groups in Maronov's area and ride together towards the fields where the swarms of locusts are currently staying. There they meet Pukessow, who has also changed a lot. Masel and Maronow both notice on this occasion that Ida is now in a relationship with Pukessow.
The next day, Maronow rides on without Masel and experiences at the gates of Düschakli how a dam breaks, the irrigation canal that had kept the locusts away from the city suddenly runs dry and the swarm is moving inexorably towards Düschakli. Maronov rears up one last time and tries to save the city from ruin, then collapses. After his inner capitulation in the face of the locust apocalypse, he takes refuge in a clay ruin, where he meets Ida, who does not recognize him immediately. But when she suddenly notices who he is, she asks him several times why he came to Turkmenistan. Before Maronow replies, he tells her about the night Jakob died. He had avoided that in the first conversation with Ida. After his report he finally realizes himself that he was going to Turkmenia to fight the illusion that Jacob's story of Ida had created in his mind. Through these stories Maronow had fallen in love with a fantasy which the real Ida completely contradicts. It is now difficult for him to understand Jacob's passion for this woman. The confrontation with reality triggers a liberation in Maronow at this moment of clarity. At the same time, Ida suddenly thinks she is seeing Jakob in Pyotr's place, touches his hand and asks him to stay. Maronow then leaves the mud hut with the feeling of a newly forming skin and realizes that the stage of youth is not followed by an abyss, but a state of maturity and composure.
Finally Maronow returns to the north. When he said goodbye to Masel, he can clearly remember the fight against the locusts, but not the last conversation with Ida.
analysis
The opening scene is described in comparative detail and plays a key role in the context of the entire narrative. This becomes clear on the one hand in the fact that it takes up a comparatively long narrative time in the text, which emphasizes its importance. On the other hand, a reference to Greek mythology and the Lethe river can be seen in it . Among other things, this is a symbol for the border between the realm of the living and the realm of the dead. It was also said that those who drank from it lost all their memories before entering the realm of the dead. This aspect of forgetting is formulated in the text itself, there it says "The memory of the brother was the first thing Pyotr threw off as ballast when he went on a new tour". When Maronov left Turkmenistan at the end of the story, this motif of oblivion is also taken up, when he can remember the locust fight, but not the last conversation with Masel's wife Ida in the mud hut.
In keeping with the Lethe symbol, the locusts could be viewed as bringing death and annihilation with them, making Turkmenistan itself a place or realm of death. At the end of the story, Leonow also describes how Maronow returns to the mud hut where the last conversation with Ida took place and nothing is found there: "[...] a whole dead city lay at the entrance to the desert". The protagonist then travels back to Russia . So he did not succeed in appropriating the foreign land.
The locusts overcome all man-made boundaries in the story. It describes how they originally came from Sudan via Egypt to Palestine , Syria , Persia and Turkmenistan. Thus they can also be understood as a symbol for capitalism , which also spreads without spatial boundaries (“locust capitalism”).
The distribution of characters in the narrative is also relevant. The protagonist is Russian who travels from the advanced north to the south. The figure of the Turkmen committee chairman Akiamov, on the other hand, only plays a secondary role. The description of the Turkmens is also stereotypical and undifferentiated. They are described as passive, indolent and apathetic, the Turkmen entomologist is certified as having an "inadequate science".