A Tale of Stolen Time

 

A Tale of Stolen Time … Evgeny Schwartz

Translated by Lila Pargment & Estelle Titiev

Illustrated by Nonny Hogrogian

Peter Zubov is a young boy who is given to wasting his time. He wakes up one morning and discovers, to his dismay, that his time has been stolen, and that he has transformed into an ancient bearded old man. Wandering around and wondering what to do (even his own mother doesn’t recognize him), he discovers by chance that he is the victim of four sorcerers (two male, two female) who have the power to steal time from time-wasting children and restore their own youth. He must find and gather the other victims together before midnight so they can stop the magic clock and regain their lives.  

This story goes back with me a long time, to that Wunderjahr of my Fourth Grade at McQueeney. The entire tale appeared in our reader (the book itself is not very long – 28 pages - and half of that is illustration). I remember my shudders at the illustration in the reader of the head sorcerer with his toothy sneer and glaring eyes, vividly evoking an ancient malevolence in a young body. Peter trapped in an aged state was an early example for me of body-horror, and all the more disturbing with the dawning knowledge that, in time, it could very well come true for all of us.

The book was originally in Russian (Evgeny Schwartz is a simplifying of the name Evgenni L’vovich Schvartz) and though it doesn’t seem to have traveled very far in the English-speaking parts of the world, was popular enough in Russia to have a short film made of it. The illustrations are mostly line drawings with occasional bits of red or yellow, but mostly colored with purple-grey smudges (like bruising) that makes the book look like it has somehow been soiled on every page. (Just see the picture of the cover above. That is not an accidental stain.) A curious choice by the artist, to say the least.

My copy was discarded from the Peoria Public Library (first acquired Sept. 7, 1966) and is still in very good shape, with all the protection that library covers can give. Another memory harvested and enjoyed, and a time not stolen but savored again, from a vintage year.