'You really are an angell' they would gush.
The house-where she had lived since birth, and which she was due to inherit, stood on the outskirts of to^: in Gipsy Lane, near Tivoli Gardens. In the evenings and at night she could hear the band in the Gardens and the crash of bursting rockcts, and it all sounded to her like Kukin battling with his doom and taking his main enemy—the indifferent public—by storm. She would feel deliciously faint—not at all sleepy—and when Kukin came back in the small hours she would tap her bedroom window, showing him only her face and onc shoulder through the curtains . .. and smile tenderly.
He proposed, they were married, and when he had feasted his eyes on that neck and those plump, healthy shoulders, he clapped his hands.
'You angel! he said.
He was happy, but it rained on his wedding day—fl«d his wedding night—so that look of desperation remained.
They lived happily after the marriage. She would sit in the box- office, look after the Gardens, record expenses, hand out wages. Her rosy cheeks, her charming, innocent, radiant smile could be glimpsed, now through the box-office window, now in the wings, now in the bar. Already she was telling all her friends that there was nothing in this world so remarkable, so important, so vital as the stage. True pleasure, culture, civilization . .. only in the theatre were these things to be had.
'But does the public understand?' she would ask. 'They want slap- stick. We put on Faust Inside Out yesterday, and almost all the boxes were empty. But if we'd staged some vulgar rubbish, me and Vanya, we'd have had a full house, you take my word. We're presenting Orpheus in the Underworld tomorrow, me and Vanya. You must come.'
Whatever Kukin said about the theatre and actors, she echoed. Like him she scorned the public for its ignorance and indifference to art. She interfered in rehearsals, she corrected the actors, she kept an eye on the bandsmen. Whenever there was an unfavourable theatrical notice in the local newspaper she would weep—and then go and demand an explanation from the editor's office.
The actors liked her, they called her 'Me and Vanya' and 'Angel'. She was kind to them, she lent them small sums, and ifany of them let her down she would go and cry secretly without complaining to her husband.
They did quite well in winter too. They had taken the townwn theatre for the whole season, and rented it out for short engagements to a Ukrainian troupe, a conjurer, some local amateurs. Olga grew buxom and radiated happiness, while Kukin became thinner and yellower, and complained of his appalling losses though business was pretty good all winter. He coughed at night, and she would give him raspberry or lime-flower tisane, rub him with eau-de-Cologne and wrap him up in her soft shawls.
'Oh, you are such a splendid little chap,' she would say, stroking his hair and meaning every word. 'You're such a handsome little fellow.'
When he was a\vay in Moscow in Lent recruiting a new company she couldn't sleep, but just sat by the window looking at the stars. She compared herself to a hen—they too are restless and sleepless at night without a cock in the fowl-house. Kukin was held up in Moscow. But he'd be back by Easter, he wrote, and he was already making certain plans for the Tivoli in his letters. Then, late on Palm Sunday evening, there was a sudden ominous knocking at the gate as someone pum- melled it till it boomed like a barrel. Shuffling barefoot through the puddles, the sleepy cook ran to answer.
'Open up, please,' said a deep, hollow voice outside. 'A telegram for you.'
Olga had had telegrams from her husband before, but this time she nearly fainted for some reason. She opened it with trembling fingers, and read as follows:
MR KUKIN PASSED AWAY SUDDENLY TODAY NUBSCUTCH AWAIT INSTRUCTIONS FUFERAL TnJE.SDAY
That's what was printed in the telegram: fuferal. And there was this mcaningless nubscutch too. It was^ signcd by the operetta producer.
'My darling!' Olga sobbed. 'My lovely, darling Iittle Vanya, oh why did I ever meet you? Why did I have to know you, love you? For whom have you forsaken your poor, miserable little Olga?'
Kukin was buried in the Vagankov Cemetery in Moscow on the Tuesday. Olga returned home on Wednesday, flopped down on her bed as soon as she reached her room, and sobbed so Ioudly that she could be heard out in the street and in the next-door yards.
'Poor angel!' said the ladies of the neighbourhood, crossing them- selves. 'Darling Olga—she is taking it hard, poor dear.'
One day three months later Olga was coming dolefully back from church, in full mourning. A neighbour, Vasya Pustovalov, manager of the Babakayev timber-yard—also on his way back from church— chanced to be walking by her side. He wore a boater and a white waist- coat with a gold chain across it. He looked more like a country squire than a tradesman.
'There's always a pattern in things, Mrs. Kukin,' said he in a grave, sympathetic voice. 'The death of a dear one must be God's will, in which case we must be sensible and endure it patiently.'
He saw Olga to her gate, he said good-bye, he went his way. After- wards she seemed to hear that grave voice all day, and she need onIy close her eyes to see his dark beard in her imagination. She thought him very attractive. And she must havĉ made an impression on him, too, because not long afterwards a certain elderly Iady, whom she barely knew, came to take coffee with her . . . and had hardly sat down at table before she was on about Pustovalov. What a good steady man he was, said she—any young Iady would be glad to marry him. Three days later Pustovalov called in person. He onIy stayed about ten minutes, he hadn't much to say for himself, but Olga feII so much in Iove with him that she lay awake alI night in a hot, feverish state. In the morning she sent for the elderly Iady, the match was soon made, a wedding foIIowed.
After their marriage the Pustovalovs Iived happiIy. He was usuaIIy at the timber-yard tiII Iunch. Then he wouId do his business errands whiIe OIga took his pIace—sitting in the office tilI evening, keeping accounts, dispatching orders.
'Timber prices rise twenty per cent a year these days,' she wouId teII customers and friends. 'We used to deal in Iocal stuff, but now—just fancy !—Vasya has to go and fetch it from out Mogilyov way every year. And what a price!' she would say, putting both hands over her chceks in horror. 'What a pricc!'
She felt as if she had been a timber dealer from time immemorial. The most vital and essential thing in lifc was wood, she fclt: And she found something deeply moving in thc words joist, logging, laths, slats, scantlings, purlins, frames, slabs. When she was aslecp at nights, she would dream of mountains of boards and laths, and oflong, never- ending wagon trains taking timber somewhere far out of town. She dreamt of a whole battalion of posts, thirty foot by one foot, marching upright as they moved to take thc timber-yard by storm. Beams, baulks, slabs clashed with the resounding thud of seasoned wood, falling do\\Ti and getting up again, jamming against each other, and Olga would cry out in her sleep.
'What's the matter, Olga dcar?' Pustovalov would ask tenderly, and tell her to cross herself.
Shc shared all her husband's thoughts. If he thought the room too hot, if hc thought business slack—then she thought so as well. Her husband disliked all forms of entertainment, and stayed at home on his days off. So she did too.
'You spend all your time at home or in the officc,' her friends would say. 'You should go to the theatre or the circus, angeL'
'We haven't time for theatre-going, me and Vasya,' she would answer gravely. 'We're working people, we can't be bothered with trifles. What's so wonderful about your theatres, anyway?'