'Our children are too noisy in class,' he would say, as if seeking a reason for his low spirits. 'It's quite disgraceful.'
Yet this teacher of Greek—this hard case—nearly got married, believe it or not.
Ivan Ivanovich glanced into the bam.
'You must be joking,' he said.
Yes, he nearly married, strange as it may seem (continued Burkin). A new history and geography master had been appointed: a Michael Kovalenko, from the Ukraine. He brought his sister Barbara with him. He was a tall, swarthy young man with huge hands. He had the kind of face that goes with a deep bass voice, and that voice really did seem to come boom boom booming at you out of a barrel.
Now, his sister was no longer young—she was about thirty—but she was also tall, well-built, black-browed, rosy-cheeked. She was a real knock-out, in fact: a jolly, hearty girl, for ever singing Ukrainian songs, for ever roaring with laughter. She was alway.s ready to laWlch into a great pea:l of mirth on the slightest pretext. It was on the head- master's name-day, I remember, that we first really met the Kovalenkos. There, amid those austere, overwrought, dim pedagogues, who make even party-going a matter of duty ... behold a new Venus rises from the foam! She walks with arms akimbo, she guffaws, she sings, she dances. She renders a spirited 'Where Southern Breezes Blow', then sings one song after another, and bewitches us al—all, even Belikov.
'The Ukrainian language,' says he with his honeyed smile, utting down by her side, 'resembles the ancient Greek in its tenderness and agrecable melodiousness.'
This flattered her, and she laWlched a harangue about how they had their own farm down Gadyach way and how their old mum lived on that farm. What pears they had, what melons, what pumpkins! Pumpkins, pubs, 'pubkins' . . . they have their own special words for these things down south, and out of their dear little red little tomatoes and their blue little egg-plants they would brew soup: 'frightfully scrumptious, actually!'
We listened and we listened . .. Wltil suddenly the same idea dawned on one! and all.
'They'd make a very good match,' the headmaster's wife told me quietly.
For some reason it now struck us all that friend Belikov wasn't married. We wondered why we had never noticed such a thing before, why we had utterly lost sight of so crucial a factor in his biography. What was his attitude to woman? His solution to this basic problem? So far we had taken no interest in the matter. Perhaps we couldn't even see him as capable oflove—this four-poster-bed man, this galoshes fiend!
'He's well over forty, and she's thirty,' the headmaster's wife elucidated. 'I think she'd have him.'
Boredom in the provinces . .. the things it leads to, the wrong- headedness, the nonsense! And why? Because pcople somehow just can't get anything right. Well, for instance, why tlns sudden urge to marry off friend Belikov, who was hardly anyone's idea of a husband? The headmaster's wife, the second master's wife, all the school ladies perk up, they even look prettier, as if they've suddenly glimpsed the purpose of existence. The head's wife takes a box in the theatre—and behold Barbara sitting in that box with some sort of fan, radiant and happy. By her side is Belikov: small, crumpled, looking as ifhe's been extracted from his house with a pair of pincers. When I give a party the ladies make a point of my inviting both Belikov and Barbara. Things, in short, begin to hum. Barbara, it transpires, doesn't mind getting married. She isn't all that happy living with her brother—they argue and quarrel for days on end by all accounts.
Now, take this for a scene. Kovalenko walks down the street: a tall, lanky brute in his embroidered shirt with a quiff ofhair tumbling from cap on to forehead. He has a clutch of books in one hand and a thick knobbly stick in the other. His sister follows, also carrying books.
'But you haven't read it, Michael!' shc loudly avers. 'I tell you—1 ĵwear—you haven't read a word of it!'
'Well, I say I have,' shouts Kovalenko, thumping his stick on the pavement.
'Goodness me, Michael! Why so angry? This is only a matter of principle, after all.'
'Well, I say I have read it,' Kovalenko shouts in an even louder voicc.
Whenever they had visitors they were at it hammer and tongs. It must have been a bore, that kind of life, and she wanted a place of her own. And then there was her age. You couldn't pick and choose any more, you were ready to iurry anyonc—even a teacher of Greek. And then most of our young ladies don't care who they marry so long as they get thcnselves a husband. Anyway, be that as it may, Barbara began to show Belikov marked partiality.
And Belikov? He used to call on Kovalenko, just as he would call on us. He would arrive, sit down, say nothing. And while he was saying nothing Barbara would be singing him 'Where Southern Breezes Blow', or looking at him pensively with her dark eyes. Or she would suddenly go off in a peal ofnoisy laughter.
In • love affairs, and not least in marriage, suggestion plays a large part. Everyone—his colleagues, their ladies—began assuring Belikov that he must marry, that there was nothing left for him in life except wedlock. We all congratulated him, we made various trite remarks with solemn faces: 'marriage is a serious step,' and the like. What's more, Barbara wasn't bad looking. Besides being attractive she was the daughter of a senior civil servant and owned a farm. Above all, she was the first woman who had ever been kind and affectionate to Belikov. His head was turned, and he decided that he really must marry.
'Now would have been the time to detach him from his galoshes and umbrella,' pronounced Ivan Ivanovich.
That proved impossible, believe it or not (said Burkin). He put Barbara's portrait on his desk, and he kept calling on me and talking: about Barbara, about family life, about ^rriage being a serious step. He often visited the Kovalenkos. But he didn't change his way of life one little bit. Far from it, actually—his resolve to marry had a rather debilitating effect on him. He grew thin and pale, he seemed to retreat further and further into his shell.
'Barbara attracts me,' he tells me with a weak, wry little smile. 'And I know that everyone must get married. But, er, all this has been rather sudden, you know. One must, er. give it some thought.'
'Why?' I ask. 'Just marry, that's all.'
'No. Marriage is a serious step. One must first weigh one's impending responsibilities and duties, just in case ofrepercussions. I'm so worried, I can't sleep a wink. I'm scared, too, frankly. She and her brother have a rather peculiar outlook—they do have an unconventional way of discussing things, you know. And they are a bit on the hearty side. You get married, but before you know where you are you fmd you've become the subject for gossip.'
So he didn't make her an offer, but kept putting it off: to the great grief of the headmaster's wife and all our ladies. He kept weighing his impending responsibilities and duties while walking out with Barbara almost every day—perhaps he thought that necessary for someone in his position—and coming along to talk to me about family life. He would have proposed in the end, very likely. And the result would have been one of those stupid, ^mecessary marriages of which we see thousands: the product of boredom, of having nothing else to do. But then a gigantic scandal suddenly erupted!
The point is, Barbara's brother Kovalenko had taken against Belikov at first sight—simply ĉouldn't stand him.
'It beats me how you put up with the blighter, it really does,' he told us, shrugging his shoulders. 'Horrible little creep! Honestly, gentlemen, how can you live here? Your air stifles a man, damn it. Call yourselves teachers, do you? Educators? You're just a lot oflittle hacks. It's no temple of learning, this isn't—it's more like a suburban police station, and it smells as sour as a sentry-box. Well, that's it, lads. I shall stay here a little longer, and then I'll go to my farm downwn south to catch crayfish and teach the local kids. I shall be off. while you stay on here with this miserable humbug, blast him.'