He was very agitated now, moved the plate of chakhokhbili back, impaled a large piece of meat, and chewed at it, smacking his lips like a gourmet. His appetite had evidently returned.
“You see, I simply have a nervous i-illness.” He moved the plate away again. “I am thirty-nine years old: no longer young, but not yet old. I have no contact with my family. I am as good as orphaned,” he joked.
He leaned forward, and some of his thick hair, which he combed back, tumbled onto his forehead. His hair really was very attractive.
“He’s going to propose,” Medea surmised.
“I have never been married and, just between ourselves, had no intention of changing that. Only, you see, I had a slight attack yesterday, when we were sitting in that meeting, and purely because you were there it passed off quite without any consequences. Then you came home with me and we sat together all evening and I didn’t feel a thing.”
“He’s so daft it’s comical,” Medea thought, smiling to herself.
“You see,” the dentist battled on, “you really aren’t my type at all . . .”
Such frankness seemed, even to someone as devoid of flirtatiousness as Medea, to be going too far, but by now she was completely at sea and had no idea where this conversation was leading. Then the dentist made an abrupt turn, as if twisting his molar forceps: “In general I like smaller women, solid, firmly planted, you know, on the ground in the Russian style. No, don’t think I’m a simpleton, I realize that you are something of a princess, but since I was a young man I haven’t been accustomed to looking in the direction of princesses. Laundresses, cafeteria assistants, forgive me, nurses . . .”
“He is a scream, but I have a pile of laundry at home waiting to be ironed,” she thought. Samuel Yakovlevich speared a piece of the by now cold meat with his fork, hastily chewed and swallowed it, and now Medea could see how nervous he was.
“When you took my hand, Medea Georgievna . . . No, forgive me, it was I who took your hand, I felt that by your side I feared nothing. The whole evening I felt nothing for you, only that by your side I feared nothing. I escorted you back, then I came back home, lay down, and decided immediately that I must marry you.”
The information left Medea completely unmoved. She was an old maid of twenty-nine and for many years had contemptuously rejected propositions of various kinds made to her by a rather small number of men.
“And then I dreamed of my mother!” he exclaimed dramatically. “If you only knew what a dreadful personality she had, but that’s beside the point. I have never in my life dreamt of her before, but last night I did. She came very close to me, and I could even smell her hair, you know, her old grey hair, and she said to me sternly, ‘Yes, Sam, yes.’ And that was it. I can only think myself that it’s ‘yes.’ ”
Medea was sitting bolt upright. She always did carry herself very upright. Her collar was slightly crumpled on the left, but she did not notice it. She was wondering how to turn this eccentric down gently, so as not to offend him. It didn’t seem to have occurred to him that she might say no.
“Yes, Medea Georgievna, and there is one more thing I should tell you about myself as your future husband. The point is, I am a certified psychiatric patient. That is, I am perfectly all right. It is an old story, but I should nevertheless tell it to you. In 1920, I was drafted into a subdivision of the ChON Special Detachments and sent out to requisition grain. It was a matter of the highest priority, I always understood that. And grain, of course, we duly found in the village of Vasilishchevo in Tambov province. I am quite sure there was grain hidden in every homestead, but we found it in two, which didn’t at all look to be among the richest. We had our orders: anyone found concealing grain was to be shot as an example to others. The Red Army soldiers arrested three peasants and took them outside the village boundary. As they were taking them away, all the people of the village followed. Two of the men were brothers with a shared farm, and the other was an older peasant. Their wives were running after us, and their children. An old paralyzed woman, the mother of the older man, was crawling after us. We took away a hundredweight and a half of grain from them in total, and from the brothers a measly half a hundredweight. There was I, Medea Georgievna, the commanding officer of the grain squad. We lined the three of them up, the Red Army soldiers facing them with their rifles. Well, then the women and the little children raised such a shriek that something struck me in the head and I fell down. I’d had something like an epileptic seizure. After that, of course, I remember nothing. They put me in the cart, right there on top of the grain, and took me back to the city. I was told I turned black, and my arms and legs were like sticks, completely rigid. Three months I was in the hospital, and then they sent me to a sanatorium and then set up a commission and decided that I had weak nerves. After the commission they wanted to transfer me to work for the Party administering the economy, but I had second thoughts and asked them to let me be a dentist. They took my weak nerves into account and released me. You may perhaps have noticed that I am a good dentist. I know the prophylactic side, and all about dentures. I have not changed my Party views, only physically I really am weak. Whenever I need to support a Party decision, my spirit is all for it, but my flesh relapses into weakness and fear that I might be about to have another fit, a nervous fever . . . like at yesterday’s meeting. I am telling you all this as a very big personal secret, although actually it’s all written down in my medical record. I had an opportunity to have it removed, but I thought, ‘No, I’m not going to. What if the Party were to call me again to do my duty in operational work. I just can’t do it. Shoot me like a dog, but I still can’t do it.’ But I have no other failings, Medea Georgievna.”
Medea then reflected, “God help us, my brother Philip was shot by the Reds; my brother Nikifor was hanged by the Whites, but before that both of them had become murderers themselves. This one couldn’t do it, and he’s lamenting his weakness. Truly, the wind of the Spirit blows where it wills.”
Samuel saw her back to her house. The road glistened dimly beneath their feet. That part of the suburbs was a desolate place then, not built up, and strewn with rubbish. It was about four kilometers to Medea’s house. Samuel, who talked ceaselessly, suddenly fell silent when they were halfway there. He had actually said everything there was to say about himself. In the years of their marriage he only added minor details to what he had told her that evening.
Medea too was silent. He was holding her arm with his thin, strong hand, but she nevertheless had the feeling that it was she who was leading him.
When they reached Harlampy’s old estate, the moon came out, silvering the trees in the orchard; the gates had long ago been barricaded and the house’s residents used two gates at the side and back. They stopped by the side gate. He coughed and asked brusquely, “So, when shall we go to the Registry Office?”
“We shan’t,” she said, shaking her head. “I need to think about it.”
“What is there to think about?” he asked in surprise. “Today we have collectivization of agriculture, tomorrow there will be something else. Of course, life is just getting better all the time, but I think we shall find it easier to get through this wonderful life together, if you see what I mean.”
It was quiet in the house. She took off the grey dress and put on another very similar one for wearing at home. Then she sat down to write a letter to Elena. It was a long, sad letter. She wrote not a word about the comical dentist and his ridiculous courtship but told Elena only about how the boys had grown up and were leaving her; and about how it was night now and she was alone at home, and that her youth had passed, and she was feeling tired.