Marya went with them for about two miles and then she made her farewell, prostrating herself and wailing out loud, ‘Oh, I’m all alone again, a poor miserable wretch…’
For a long time she kept wailing, and for a long time afterwards Olga and Sasha could see her still kneeling there, bowing as though someone were next to her and clutching her head, while the rooks circled above.
The sun was high now and it was warm. Zhukovo lay far behind. It was very pleasant walking on a day like this. Olga and Sasha soon forgot both the village and Marya. They were in a gay mood and everything around was a source of interest. Perhaps it was an old burial mound, or a row of telegraph poles trailing away heaven knows where and disappearing over the horizon, with their wires humming mysteriously. Or they would catch a glimpse of a distant farmhouse, deep in foliage, with the smell of dampness and hemp wafting towards them and it seemed that happy people must live there. Or they would see a horse’s skeleton lying solitary and bleached in a field. Larks poured their song out untiringly, quails called to each other and the corncrake’s cry was just as though someone was tugging at an old iron latch.
By noon Olga and Sasha reached a large village. In its broad street they met that little old man who had been General Zhukov’s cook. He was feeling the heat and his sweaty red skull glinted in the sun. Olga and the cook did not recognize one another at first, but then they both turned round at once, realized who the other was and went their respective ways without a word. Olga stopped by the open windows of a hut which seemed newer and richer than the others, bowed and said in a loud, shrill singsong voice, ‘You good Christians, give us charity, for the sake of Christ, so that your kindness will bring the kingdom of heaven and lasting peace to your parents…’
‘Good Christians,’ Sasha chanted, ‘give us charity for Christ’s sake, so that your kindness, the kingdom of heaven…’
[The following two chapters have been taken from incomplete MSS fragments that have survived in draft form; see also note on pp. 332–3.]
X
Olga’s sister, Klavdiya Abramovna, lived in a narrow side-street near Patriarch’s Ponds,18 in a wooden, two-storey house. On the ground floor was a laundry and the entire upper floor was rented by an elderly spinster, a quiet and unassuming gentlewoman, who lived off the income from rooms she in turn rented out. When you went into the dark hall you would find two doors, one on the right, one on the left. One of them opened into the tiny room where Klavdiya Abramovna lived with Sasha; the other room was rented by a typesetter. Then there was a sitting-room, with couch, armchairs, a lamp with shade, pictures on the walls – all thoroughly proper, except that a smell of linen and steam came from the laundry and all day long one could hear singing from down below. The sitting-room, from which there was access to three flats, was used by all the tenants. In one of these flats lived the landlady, in another the old footman Ivan Makarych Matveyevich, a native of Zhukovo, who had found Nikolay a job. A large barn lock was suspended by rings on his white, well-thumbed door. Behind the third door lived a young, skinny, eagle-eyed, thick-lipped woman with three children who were constantly crying. On church holidays a monastery priest visited her; all day she normally went around in only a skirt, uncombed and unwashed, but when she was expecting her priest she would put on a nice silk dress and curl her hair.
In Klavdiya Abramovna’s little place there wasn’t room to swing a cat, as they say. There were a bed, chest of drawers, a chair – and nothing else – but still it was cramped. However, the room was kept neat and tidy, and Klavdiya Abramovna called it her ‘boudoir’. She was extremely pleased with her surroundings, particularly with the objects on her chest of drawers: mirror, powder, scent bottles, lipstick, tiny boxes, ceruse and every single luxury that she considered an essential accessory of her profession and on which she spent almost everything she earned. And there were also framed photographs in which she appeared in various poses. There was one of herself with her postman husband, with whom she lived just one year before leaving him, since she felt no vocation for family life. She was photographed, like most women of her sort, with a fringe curled like a lamb’s forelock, in military uniform with drawn sabre, and as a page astride a chair, which made her thighs, sheathed in woollen tights, lie flat over the chair like two fat boiled sausages. And there were male portraits – these she called her visitors and she couldn’t name all of them. Here our friend Kiryak made an appearance: he was photographed full height, in a black suit he had borrowed for the occasion.
Klavdiya Abramovna had been in the habit of going to masked balls and to Filippov’s19 and she spent entire evenings on Tversky Boulevard.20 As the years passed she gradually became a stay-at-home and now that she was forty-two she very rarely had visitors – there were just a few friends from earlier days who visited her for old time’s sake. They, alas, had aged too and visits became increasingly rare, because every year their number dwindled. The only new visitor was a very young man without a moustache. He would enter the hall quietly, sullenly – like a conspirator – with the collar of his school coat turned up, endeavouring to avoid being seen from the sitting-room. Later, when he left, he would place a rouble on the chest of drawers.
For days on end Klavdiya Abramovna would stay at home doing nothing. But in good weather she would sometimes stroll down the Little Bronny21 and Tversky, her head proudly held high, feeling that she was a solid and imposing lady. Only when she looked in at the chemist’s to ask in a whisper if they had any ointment for wrinkles or red hands did she show any sign of shame. In the evenings she would sit in her little room with the lamp unlit, waiting for someone to come. And between ten and eleven o’clock – this happened rarely, only once or twice a week – you could hear someone quietly going up or down stairs, rustling at the door as he looked for the bell. The door would open, a muttering would be heard and a stout, old, ugly and usually bald visitor would gingerly enter the hall and Klavdiya Abramovna would hurriedly take him to her room. She adored good visitors. For her there was no nobler or worthier being. To receive a good visitor, to treat him tactfully, to respect and please him, was a spiritual necessity, a duty, her happiness and pride. She was incapable of refusing a visitor or failing to make him welcome, even when fasting in preparation for Communion.