The Front

Now I’ll tell you how I was born, how I grew up, and how they first discovered in me the signs of genius. I was born twice. It happened like this:

My father married my mother in 1902, but my parents didn’t bring me into this world until the end of 1905, because my father wanted to be sure his child would be born on New Year’s Day. He calculated that the conception would have to occur on April 1st, and only on this day did he approach my mother with the proposition of having a child.

The first time he approached her was April 1st, 1903. My mother had long awaited this moment and was very excited. But my father, you see, he was in a playful mood, and couldn’t hold back from saying, “April fools!”

My mother was terribly hurt by this, and she didn’t let my father near her that day. So it was that they had to wait till the following year.

On the 1st of April, 1904, my father started to approach her again with the same proposition. But my mother, remembering the last time, said that she didn’t want to be made a fool of again, and once more, wouldn’t let him near her. No matter how much he huffed and puffed, it didn’t help.

Only the following year was he able to impel her to conceive me.

And so it was that my conception occurred on the 1st of April, 19<0>5.

However, all my father’s calculations collapsed when it turned out that I was premature, born four months ahead of schedule.

My father became so enraged that the midwife who delivered me panicked and started shoving me back where I had just come from.

Presiding over this was one of our acquaintances, a student of the Academy of Military Medicine, who declared that any attempts to put me back would not succeed. However, disregarding the words of the student, I was stuffed back in, and, as it later turned out, stuffed hastily into the wrong place.

This started a horrifying commotion.

The child-bearer shouts, “Give me my child!”

They answer, “Your child is inside of you.”

“How!” she screams, “How can he be inside of me when I just gave birth to him!”

“Well,” they tell her, “maybe you are mistaken?”

“How!” she yells, “Mistaken? As though I could be mistaken! I saw myself that just a moment ago the child was lying right here on the sheet!”

“That’s true,” they said, “But maybe it’s possible that he crawled off somewhere.”
In a word, they didn’t know what to tell her.

The child-bearer was roaring something awful and demanding her child.

This required calling for an experienced doctor. The experienced doctor looked her over, and parting his hands he suddenly understood everything, and gave her a good portion of Epsom salts. My mother relaxed, and in this way I came into this world a second time.

My father once again steamed up, because, well, this, uh, can’t be called a birth, that this, uh, isn’t yet a person, and is only half finished, and requires being either put back in again, or put into an incubator.

And so they put me into an incubator.

The Incubation Period

I spent four months in the incubator. I remember only that it was made of glass, clear and with a thermometer. I sat in the incubator atop cotton. I don’t remember anything else.

After four months they took me out of the incubator. They did this exactly on the 1st of January, 1906. in this way, it was like I was born a third time. My birthday is regarded as being January 1st.

Daniil Kharms,
September 1935

_{Translated by Artyom Anikin,
February 2010}

_{(Coincidentally, a Happy Birthday to Duco, who selflessly journeyed all the way to Moscow just to acquire the collected works of Kharms so that they could be translated into English and enjoyed by posterity.)}