“First of all, is everyone well?”
“Yes, yes, don’t worry. Everything’s all right. I wrote foolish things to you. Forgive me. But we’ll have to talk. Why didn’t you send a telegram? Markel will carry your things. Ah, I understand, you got alarmed because it wasn’t Egorovna who opened the door? Egorovna’s in the country.”
“And you’ve lost weight. But so young and slender! I’ll go and dismiss the cabby.”
“Egorovna went to get flour. The rest have been let go. Now there’s only one new girl, you don’t know her, Nyusha, to take care of Sashenka, and no one else. Everyone’s been told you’d be coming, they’re all impatient. Gordon, Dudorov, everyone.”
“How’s Sashenka?”
“He’s all right, thank God. He just woke up. If you hadn’t just come from the road, we could go to him now.”
“Is papa home?”
“Didn’t we write to you? He’s at the district duma from morning till late at night. As chairman. Yes, imagine. Did you pay the cabby? Markel! Markel!”
They were standing with the wicker hamper and suitcase in the middle of the sidewalk, blocking the way, and the passersby, going around them, looked them up and down and gaped for a long time at the departing cab and the wide-open front door, waiting to see what would happen next.
Meanwhile Markel, in a waistcoat over a calico shirt, with his porter’s cap in his hand, came running from the gateway to his young masters, shouting as he ran:
“Heavens above, can it be Yurochka? Well, of course! Here he is, our little falcon! Yuri Andreevich, light of our lives, you haven’t forgotten us who pray for you, you’ve kindly come to visit your own fireside! And what do you all want? Eh? What’s there to see?” he snarled at the curious ones. “Move on, my worthies. Bugging your eyes out!”
“Hello, Markel, let me embrace you. Do put your cap on, you funny man. What’s the good news? How are your wife and daughters?”
“They’re doing all right. Growing apace. Thanks be for that. As for news—while you’ve been about your mighty deeds there, you see, we haven’t let things slide either. We’ve got such pot-housing and bedlant going on, it makes the devils sick, brother, can’t figure out what’s what! Streets not swept, houses and roofs not repaired, bellies clean as in Lent, without annexates and contributses.”1
“I’ll complain about you to Yuri Andreevich, Markel. He’s always like this, Yurochka. I can’t bear his stupid tone. And of course he’s trying hard for your sake, thinking to please you. But meanwhile he keeps his own counsel. Enough, enough, Markel, don’t justify yourself. You’re a shady person, Markel. It’s time you got smart. Seems you don’t live with grain dealers.”
When Markel had taken the things to the entryway and slammed the front door, he went on softly and confidingly:
“Antonina Alexandrovna’s cross with me, I could hear just now. And it’s always like that. You, Markel, she says, are all black inside, same as soot in the chimney. Now, she says, not just some little child, now maybe even pugs or lapdogs are learning a bit of sense. There’s no disputing that, of course, only, Yurochka, maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not, but there’s knowing people saw a book, some Mason cometh, a hundred and forty years it lay under a stone, and now such is my opinion, we’ve been sold, Yurochka, sold for a penny, for a copper penny, for a whiff of tobacco. Look, Antonina Alexandrovna won’t let me say a word, see, she’s waving me away again.”
“What else can I do? Well, all right. Put the things down and, thank you, you can go, Markel. If need be, Yuri Andreevich will send for you again.”
2
“Alone at last, and good riddance. Trust him, go ahead. It’s sheer clowning. With others he keeps playing the little fool, but in secret he’s got his knife sharpened just in case. Though he hasn’t decided for whom yet, poor orphan.”
“No, you’re going too far! I think he’s simply drunk, and so he plays the buffoon, that’s all.”
“And tell me, when is he ever sober? Ah, to hell with him, really. My fear is that Sashenka may fall asleep again. If it weren’t for that typhus on the railways … Do you have lice?”
“I don’t think so. I traveled in comfort, like before the war. Though maybe I should wash a little? Slapdash, anyhow. And later more thoroughly. But where are you going? Why not through the drawing room? Do you go upstairs another way now?”
“Ah, yes! You don’t know anything. Papa and I thought and thought, and gave part of the downstairs to the Agricultural Academy. Otherwise in winter we won’t be able to heat it ourselves. And there’s more than enough room upstairs as well. We offered it to them. So far they haven’t accepted. They have all sorts of scientific rooms here, herbariums, seed collections. If only they don’t attract rats. It’s grain, after all. But so far they’ve kept the rooms neat. It’s now known as living space. This way, this way. How slow-witted you are! Around by the back stairs. Understand? Follow me, I’ll show you.”
“You did very well to give up the rooms. I worked in a hospital that was also stationed in a manor house. Endless suites, parquet intact in some places. Palm trees in tubs spread their fingers over the cots at night like phantoms. Seasoned soldiers, wounded in battle, would get frightened and cry out on waking up. Not quite normal ones, though—shell-shocked. The palm trees had to be taken away. I mean to say that there was, in fact, something unhealthy in the life of well-to-do people. No end of superfluity. Superfluous furniture and superfluous rooms in the houses, superfluous refinement of feelings, superfluous expressions. You did very well to make room. But it’s not enough. We must do more.”
“What have you got sticking out of that package? A bird’s beak, a duck’s head. How beautiful! A wild drake! Where did you get it? I can’t believe my eyes! These days it’s a whole fortune!”
“It was given to me on the train. A long story, I’ll tell you later. What’s your advice, shall I unwrap it and leave it in the kitchen?”
“Yes, of course. I’ll send Nyusha now to pluck it and gut it. There are predictions of all sorts of horrors towards winter—hunger, cold.”
“Yes, there’s talk about it everywhere. Just now I was looking out the window of the train and thinking. What can be higher than peace in the family and work? The rest isn’t in our power. It’s apparently true that there are misfortunes in store for many people. Some think of saving themselves in the south, in the Caucasus, of trying to get somewhere further away. That’s not in my rule book. A grown-up man must grit his teeth and share the fate of his native land. In my opinion, that’s obvious. You are a different matter. How I’d like to protect you from calamities, to send you to some safer place, to Finland or somewhere. But if we stand for half an hour on each step like this, we’ll never get upstairs.”
“Wait. Listen. There’s news. And what news! I forgot. Nikolai Nikolaevich has come.”
“What Nikolai Nikolaevich?”
“Uncle Kolya.”
“Tonya! It can’t be! How on earth?”
“Well, so it is. From Switzerland. In a roundabout way by London. Through Finland.”
“Tonya! You’re not joking? Have you seen him? Where is he? Can’t we get him here at once, this minute?”
“Such impatience! He’s outside the city in someone’s dacha. Promised to come back the day after tomorrow. He’s very changed, you’ll be disappointed. Got stuck and Bolshevized passing through Petersburg. Papa argues with him till he’s hoarse. But why, indeed, do we stop at every step? Come on. So you’ve also heard that there’s nothing good coming, only difficulties, dangers, uncertainty?”