‘“Oh, Greek is so melodious, so beautiful,” he would say, savouring his words. And as if to prove his point he would screw his eyes up, raise one finger and pronounce the word: Anthropos.
‘Belikov tried to bury his thoughts inside a rigid case. Only official regulations and newspaper articles, in which something or other was prohibited, had any meaning for him. For him, only rules forbidding students to be out in the streets after nine in the evening or an article outlawing sexual intercourse were unambiguous and authoritative: the thing was prohibited – and that was that! But whenever anything was allowed and authorized, there was something dubious, vague and equivocal lurking in it. When a dramatic society or a reading-room, or a tea-shop in town, was granted a licence, he would shake his head and softly say, “That’s all very well, of course, but there could be trouble!”
‘The least infringement, deviation, violation of the rules reduced him to despair, although you may well ask what business was it of his anyway? If a fellow-teacher was late for prayers, or if news of some schoolboy mischief reached his ears, or if he spotted a schoolmistress out late at night with an officer, he would get very heated and say over and over again, “There could be trouble.” At staff meetings he really got us down with his extreme caution, his suspiciousness and his positively encapsulated notions about current wretched standards of behaviour in boys’ and girls’ schools, about the terrible racket students made in class and once again he would say, “Oh dear, what if the authorities got to hear? Oh, there could be trouble! Now, what if we expelled that Petrov in the second form and Yegorov in the fourth?” Well then, what with all his moaning and whining, what with those dark glasses and that pale little face (you know, it was just like a ferret’s), he terrorized us so much that we had to give in. Petrov and Yegorov were given bad conduct marks, put in detention and finally were both expelled. He had the strange habit of visiting us in our digs. He would call in on some teacher and sit down without saying a word, as though he were trying to spy something out. After an hour or two he would get up and go. He called it “maintaining good relations with my colleagues”. These silent sessions were clearly very painful for him and he made them only because he felt it was his duty to his fellow-teachers. All of us were scared of him, even the Head. It was quite incredible really, since we teachers were an intelligent, highly respectable lot, brought up on Turgenev and Shchedrin.1 And yet that miserable specimen, with that eternal umbrella and galoshes, kept the whole school under his thumb for fifteen whole years! And not only the school, but the whole town! Our ladies gave up their Saturday amateur theatricals in case he found out about them. And the clergy were too frightened to eat meat or play cards when he was around. Thanks to people like Belikov, the people in this town have lived in fear of everything for the last ten or fifteen years. They are frightened of talking out loud, sending letters, making friends, reading books, helping the poor or teaching anyone to read and write…’
Ivan Ivanych wanted to say something and coughed, but first he lit his pipe, peered up at the moon and said in a slow deliberate voice, ‘Yes, those intelligent, decent people had read their Shchedrin and Turgenev, their Henry Buckles2 and so on…, but still they gave in and put up with it. That’s exactly my point.’
Burkin continued, ‘Belikov and I lived in the same house and on the same floor. His room was right opposite mine and we saw a lot of each other. I knew his private life intimately. At home it was the same story: dressing-gown, night-cap, shutters, bolts, and a whole series of various prohibitions and restrictions – and all those “There could be trouble”s. Fasting was bad for you and as he couldn’t touch meat on days forbidden by the church – or people might say Belikov didn’t observe fasts – he would eat perch cooked in animal fat, food that couldn’t be faulted, being neither one thing nor the other. He didn’t have any female servants for fear people might “think the wrong thing”, but he had a male cook, Afanasy, an old, drunken sixty-year-old half-wit, who had once been a batman in the army and who could knock up a meal of sorts. This Afanasy was in the habit of standing at the door with arms folded, always muttering the same old thing with a profound sigh, “There’s been an awful lot of that about lately!”
‘Belikov’s bedroom was small, like a box in fact, and the bed was a four-poster. He would pull the blankets right up over his head when he got into it. The room was hot and stuffy, the wind would rattle the bolted doors and make the stove hum. Menacing sighs would drift in from the kitchen. He was terrified under those blankets, afraid of the trouble there could be, afraid that Afanasy might cut his throat, afraid of burglars. Then all night long he would have nightmares and, when we left for school together in the morning, he would look pale and depressed. Obviously the thought of that crowded school for which he was heading terrified him, deeply repelled his whole being – even walking next to me was an ordeal for this lone wolf. “The students are terribly noisy in class,” he would tell me, as if seeking an excuse for his low spirits. “It’s simply shocking.”
‘And this teacher of Greek, this man in his case, nearly got married once, believe it or not.’
Ivan Ivanych took a quick look into the barn and said, ‘You must be joking!’
‘Oh, yes, he nearly got married, strange as it may seem. A new history and geography master was appointed, a Ukrainian called Mikhail Savvich Kovalenko. He came here with his sister Barbara. He was young, tall, dark-skinned and had enormous hands. From his face you could tell he had a deep bass voice, the kind that really seems to come booming straight out of a barrel. The sister wasn’t what you might call young, though – about thirty, I’d say – and like her brother she was tall, with the same figure, dark eyebrows and red cheeks – in short, not the spinsterish type but a real beauty, always bright and jolly, singing Ukrainian songs and roaring with laughter. The least thing sent her into fits of loud laughter. I remember now, the first time we really got to know the Kovalenkos was at the Head’s name-day party. Among all those stiff, intensely boring pedagogues (they only went to parties because they had to) we suddenly saw this new Aphrodite rising from the foam. She walked hands on hips, laughing, singing, dancing. She sang “Breezes of the South Are Softly Blowing”3 with great feeling and followed one song with another, enchanting all of us – even Belikov. “Ukrainian is like classical Greek in its softness and agreeable sonority,” he said with a sugary smile as he sat down next to her.
‘She was flattered and she gave him a stirring lecture about life on her farm down in Gadyach4 where Mama lived, where they grew such marvellous pears and melons and pubkins: Ukrainians like calling pumpkins “pubkins”, that’s the way they talk there. And they made borsch with sweet little red beets, “Oh, so delicious – frightfully tasty!”
‘We listened, and listened, and suddenly the same thought dawned on all present. “They’d make a very nice couple,” the Head’s wife told me quietly.
‘For some reason this reminded us that our Belikov wasn’t married and we wondered why we hadn’t thought of it before, why we had completely overlooked this most important part of his life. What did he think of women, how would he answer this vital question? We hadn’t been at all interested before – perhaps we couldn’t bring ourselves to believe that this man who could wear galoshes in all kinds of weather, who slept in a four-poster, could be capable of loving.