When Olga had returned from the country, she had put Sasha to live with her sister-in-law, thinking that it would only be temporary and that the girl, while she was still so little, if she should see anything bad, would not understand it. But now Sasha was over thirteen, and really the time was approaching when she must look for some other place for her; yet Sasha and her aunt had by now become attached to one another, and it was difficult to separate them; nor was there anywhere for Sasha to go in view of the fact that Olga herself was taking shelter in the corridors of rooming houses and sleeping at night on chairs. The day was spent by Sasha with her mother, or on the street, or down below in the laundry; the nights she would spend at her aunt’s, on the floor, between the chest of drawers and the bed, and in the case of a visitor’s arriving, she would lie down in the entrance hall.
She liked to go in the evening to the place where Ivan Makarich worked, and to watch the dancing from the kitchen. There the music was always playing, it was bright and noisy; the cook and the kitchenmaids had about them a savory smell of food, and Grandpa Ivan Makarich would give her some tea or some ice and would pass to her some morsels from the saucers and plates he had brought back into the kitchen. Once in autumn, late in the evening, coming back from Ivan Makarich’s, she had carried home, wrapped up in paper, a drumstick, a piece of sturgeon, and a piece of cake. . . . Her aunt was already in bed. . . .
“Dear Auntie,” said Sasha sadly, “I’ve brought you something to eat.”
They lit the light. Klavdia Abramovna began to eat, sitting up in bed. And Sasha regarded her curlpapers, which made her aunt seem quite dreadful, and her old withered shoulders; she regarded her sadly and long as if she were looking at a sick woman; then suddenly the tears rolled down her cheeks.
“Dear Auntie,” she brought out in a shaky voice. “Dear Auntie, the girls in the laundry were saying this morning that you’d be begging in the streets in your old age, and that you’d die in the hospital. That’s not true, Auntie—it isn’t true,” Sasha went on, now sobbing. “I shan’t leave you, I’ll see that you’re fed . . . and I shan’t let you go to the hospital.”
Klavdia Abramovna’s chin began to quiver and tears glistened in her eyes, but she kept herself under control and only said, glancing sternly at Sasha: “It’s not proper to listen to the washwomen.”
11.
In the furnished rooms of the Lisbon, little by little the lodgers grew silent; there was a smell of burning in the air from the lamps that had been put out, and the long-legged upstairs waiter had stretched himself out on chairs. Olga took off her apron and her white-ribboned cap, put a kerchief over her head, and went off to see her family by the Patriarch’s Ponds. Her work at the Lisbon kept her busy all day from morning till late at night; and she could only rarely get to see them, and then only at night; her work took up all her time, not leaving her a single free moment: she had not, since her return from the country, even once been to church.
She was hurrying now to show Sasha a letter she had had from Marya in the country. This letter contained nothing but messages of greeting and complaints about wants and woes, about the fact that the old people were still alive, contributing nothing and eating up bread; yet somehow in these crooked lines, in which each letter looked like a cripple, there was for Olga a peculiar hidden charm, and, along with the complaints and the greetings, she read also that just now in the country the clear and warm days had come, that it was quiet in the evenings and that the air was fragrant, that the hours were striking in the church beyond the river; she could see the country churchyard, where her husband lay: from the green graves tranquility breathed, you were envious of the dead—and so much space out there, such freedom! And yet, what a strange thing: when you were actually living in the country, you were eager to get to Moscow, but now, on the contrary, you longed for the country.
Olga awakened Sasha, and, nervously, in apprehension lest somebody might be disturbed by her whispering and the light, she read her the letter twice. After this, they descended together by the dark and stinking stairway and left the house. The windows were wide open, and they could see the women ironing; and two of them were standing behind the gate, smoking cigarettes. Quickly Olga and Sasha went out into the street and talked about how nice it would be to save up two rubles and send them to the country: one for Marya and the other to pay for a mass for the dead to be said over Nikolai’s grave.
“Oh, I’ve just had the most awful scare!” Olga, clasping her hands, began to tell Sasha her tale. “We’d only just sat down to eat, darling, when suddenly, from goodness knows where, there was Kiryak just as drunk as drunk! ‘Give me some money, Olga!’ he says. And he shouts and stamps his feet—give him money and that’s all there is to it. And where am I going to get money? They don’t pay me any wages—I live on the alms the good gentlemen give me—that’s all the money I’ve got. . . . He won’t listen—‘Give me money!’ he says. The lodgers look out of their rooms, the landlord arrived on the scene—I thought I’d die of shame—what a scandal! I begged thirty kopecks from the students and gave them to him, and he went away. And all day I’ve been going around whispering, ‘O Lord, soften his heart!’ That’s what I’ve been whispering all day. . . .”
It was quiet in the streets; from time to time the nocturnal cabs would pass, while from somewhere far away—it must have been in the amusement park—music was still heard playing and the muted burst of rockets.
She knew all the rooming houses in Moscow.
The old lackey from Omon’s. His son a compositor.
The sixth day after Olga had left the rooming house and had not come back to sleep, her daughter became worried; in the evening she would feel depressed and weep, and that night she went out to get money.
Sitting on the boulevard at night, Sasha would think about God, about the soul, but the thirst for life overcame these thoughts.
K[lavdia] A[bramovna] wanted to take Sasha to a procuress, but Sasha did not want to go: “It won’t do for anyone to see.”
The make-up man was always on the wing, dropping fragmentary phrases; he will say: “We are all brothers,” and go away without explaining.
“The rich have taken everything for themselves—even the churches, the sole refuge of the poor.”
When Sasha would tell about the country, even the make-up man, sitting in his room, would listen.
Sasha worked in the laundry without grumbling: “We can’t be happy, because we’re simple people.”
From Zhukovo many lackeys, thanks to the protection of Luke Ivanovich, an old man who had lived sometime a long while ago, a legendary character. From him this deterioration dated.
Sasha drank a great deal of tea: she would drink six glasses at a time.
Just as women of K[lavdia] A[bramovna]’s age want to see young girls get married, so she wanted to see young girls have a clientele of respectable visitors.
Having so many people about him at the printer’s was wearing for the make-up man, so that at home he tried to be alone.
On the boulevard, noisy students were walking arm in arm; one of them felt Sasha’s breasts.
Kiryak came at night and made a rumpus. The monastery priest was in his drawers. The make-up man gave him money. The janitor threw him downstairs so that he spun around like a top, and it was surprising he was still alive.