When she was back from the country Olga lodged Sasha with her for the time being, her mother supposing that while the girl was little she would not understand if she happened to see something bad. But now Sasha was thirteen and the time had really come to find alternative accommodation for her; but she and her aunt had grown attached to each other and now it was hard to separate them. In any event, there was nowhere to take Sasha to, since Olga herself was sheltering in the corridor of an establishment with furnished rooms, where she slept on some chairs. Sasha would spend the day with her mother, or out in the street, or downstairs in the laundry: she spent the nights on her aunt’s floor, between the bed and chest of drawers, and if a visitor came she would go and sleep in the entrance hall.
In the evenings she loved going to Ivan Makarych’s place of work and watching the dancing from the kitchen. There was always music and it was cheerful and noisy, with a tasty smell of food around the cook and washers-up. Grandpa Ivan Makarych would give her tea or ice-cream and pass her assorted titbits that he brought back into the kitchen on plates and dishes. One evening in late autumn, after returning from Ivan Makarych, she brought a little parcel containing a chicken leg, a piece of sturgeon and a slice of cake. Auntie was already in bed.
‘Auntie dear,’ Sasha said sadly. ‘I’ve brought you something to eat.’
They lit the lamp. Sitting up in bed, Klavdiya Abramovna started eating. Sasha looked at her curlers, which made her look dreadful, at her withered, aged shoulders. She looked long and sadly, as if she were seeing a sick woman; suddenly tears flowed down her cheeks.
‘Auntie dear,’ she said in a trembling voice. ‘Auntie dear, this morning the laundry girls were saying that when you’re old you’ll end up begging in the streets and that you’ll die in hospital. It’s not true, Auntie, it’s not true,’ Sasha continued, sobbing now. ‘I won’t leave you, I’ll feed you, I won’t let you go into hospital.’
Klavdiya Abramovna’s chin quivered and tears shone in her eyes. But she immediately took hold of herself and with a stern look she told Sasha: ‘You shouldn’t listen to laundry girls!’
XI
In the ‘Lisbon’ furnished rooms the tenants were gradually quietening down. There was the smell of burning from extinguished lamps and the lanky attendant was already stretched out on some chairs in the corridor. Olga took off her white ribboned cap and her apron, covered her head with a kerchief and went off to see Sasha and Klavdiya Abramovna at Patriarch’s Ponds. Every day from morning to late evening she was busy working at the ‘Lisbon’ rooms and was rarely able to visit her family – and then only at night. Her work took up all her time, leaving her without a single free minute, so that since her return from the country she had not once gone to church.
She hurried to show Sasha the letter she had received from Marya in the village. In it there were only greetings – and complaints of poverty, of grief, and that the old folk were still alive and getting fed without doing any work. But for some reason these crooked lines, where every letter resembled a cripple, held a special, hidden charm and besides those greetings and complaints she also read of the warm clear days in the country now, of quiet fragrant evenings when you could hear the church clock striking the hour on the other side of the river. She could visualize the village cemetery where her husband lay. The green graves breathed peace and one envied the dead – such space, such open expanses! And the strange thing was, when they had lived in the country she had dearly wished to go to Moscow, but now it was the opposite and she longed for the country.
Olga woke Sasha. Alarmed and afraid that the whispers and light might disturb someone, she read her the letter twice. Then they both went down the dark, evil-smelling stairs and left the house. Through the wide open windows they could see the laundry girls ironing. Two girls were standing outside the gates, smoking. Olga and Sasha hurried down the street, discussing what a good idea it would be to save up two roubles and send them to the village: one for Marya and one to pay for memorial prayers over Nikolay’s grave.
‘Oh, I’ve had to put up with so much lately!’ Olga was saying, clasping her hands. ‘We’d only just started dinner, my sweet, when all of a sudden in comes Kiryak, like a bolt from the blue, drunk as a lord! “Give me some money, Olga!” he says. And he shouts and stamps his feet. “Give me some – now!” But where was I to get money from? I don’t get any wages, I just live on what nice gents give me – that’s all my wealth! But he wouldn’t listen: “Give me some!” The tenants look out of their rooms, the boss comes – it was real punishment – and the shame of it! I begged thirty copecks from the students and gave them to him. He left… All day long I’ve been walking around whispering: “Soften his heart, O Lord.” That’s what I’ve been whispering.’
It was quiet in the streets. Now and then a night cab drove past, and somewhere far off, most probably in the pleasure gardens, the band was still playing and you could hear the vague crackle of fireworks.
Man in a Case
Two men who had come back very late from a hunting expedition had to spend the night in a barn belonging to Prokofy, the village elder, at the edge of Mironositskoye. They were Ivan Ivanych, the vet, and Burkin, the schoolteacher. The vet had a rather strange double-barrelled surname – Chimsha-Gimalaysky – that did not suit him at all, and everyone simply called him Ivan Ivanych. He lived on a stud farm near the town and had come on the expedition just to get some fresh air, while Burkin, the teacher, regularly stayed every summer with a local count and his family, and knew the area very well.
They were still awake. Ivan Ivanych, who was tall and thin, with a long moustache, was sitting outside the door, smoking his pipe in the full light of the moon. Burkin was lying on the hay inside, invisible in the dark.
They were telling each other different stories and happened to remark on the fact that Mavra, the village elder’s wife, a healthy, intelligent woman, had never left her native village in her life, had never seen a town or a railway, had been sitting over her stove for the past ten years and would only venture out into the street at night.
‘And what’s so strange about that!’ Burkin said. ‘There’s so many of these solitary types around, like hermit crabs or snails, they are, always seeking safety in their shells. Perhaps it’s an example of atavism, a return to the times when our ancestors weren’t social animals and lived alone in their dens. Or perhaps it’s simply one of the many oddities of human nature – who knows? I’m not a scientist and that kind of thing’s not really my province. I only want to say that people like Mavra are not unusual. And you don’t have to look far for them – take a certain Belikov, for example, who died two months ago in my home town. He taught Greek at the same high school. Of course, you must have heard of him. His great claim to fame was going around in galoshes, carrying an umbrella even when it was terribly warm, and he invariably wore a thick, padded overcoat. He kept this umbrella in a holder and his watch in a grey chamois leather pouch. And the penknife he used for sharpening pencils had its own little case. His face seemed to have its own cover as well, as he always kept it hidden inside his upturned collar. He wore dark glasses, a jersey, stuffed his ears with cottonwool and always had the top up when he rode in a cab. Briefly, this man had a compulsive, persistent longing for self-encapsulation, to create a protective cocoon to isolate himself from all external influences. The real world irritated and frightened him and kept him in a constant state of nerves. Perhaps, by forever praising the past and what never even happened, he was trying to justify this timidity and horror of reality. The ancient languages he taught were essentially those galoshes and umbrella in another guise, a refuge from everyday existence.