In class, Atya, Kharpik, and Romashka behaved tolerably, they didn’t pull any tricks, they were rather distracted and when called upon responded out of sync. They all got a 1, the lowest grade, in their grade books. But it didn’t matter anymore!
As soon as the last class was over and Atya recited “We thank Thee, Our Creator” in a ringing voice, Kharpik without ado tossed his books under the desk and rushed home.
No one was at home: his father was in court, his mother at the Gostiny Dvor shops, there was just the cook Vasilisa.
“Vasilisa, give me three rubles,” Kharpik asked.
But Vasilisa didn’t have that kind of money and after hanging around in the kitchen, Kharpik went into his father’s study, and he didn’t have to rummage for long: there was change under an old briefcase.
Kharpik counted it: exactly three rubles. What luck!
“Farewell, Vasilisa, we’ll never see each other again,” Kharpik said from the doorway.
“Where are you going?” Vasilisa inquired. And suddenly Kharpik felt so sorry for Vasilisa that he was about to blab the secret, but fortunately caught himself.
“Going to the Nikolayevsky Station, Vasilisa!” Atya and Romashka were waiting at the Finland Station for a long time; many trains had left before Kharpik finally showed up.
Without wasting time, they got a ticket to Terioki, in Finland, settled in the train wagon and—farewell gymnasium, farewell Russia!—set off for America right to uninhabited Mymra Island.
The trip was fun. They sang “Stand, Rise Up” and smoked.
They imagined the road was America and the passengers all detectives, Sherlocks.
Near Kuokkala, Atya pulled out their cook Feklusha’s passport and showed it proudly to his friends.
“Now we can travel to the devil, it will be fine: the passport is real,” Kharpik said approvingly.
“We’ll show those detectives,” Romashka confirmed.
And so they reached Terioki.
Disembarking from the train, the students headed for the dachas and wandered around until late evening, doing whatever they wanted: they climbed roofs, stairs, and trees.
Romashka suggested swimming in the sea but one thing stopped them: they were too lazy to undress.
It was getting cold, they were hungry: after all, it’s hard without dinner.
Back at the station they bought some bread right away and finished it off.
They had to think about where to sleep. It was too cold to spend the night on the sleepers and it had started snowing and they would lock up the station.
They thought and thought what to do and decided to ask the watchman for permission to sleep in his hut.
The watchman was agreeable, he didn’t resist, he agreed. But before letting them in the hut, he made them clean up the station and sweep the rails.
They cleaned up the station and swept the rails. And then they slept so hard, they had never slept so sweetly.
They dreamed only of sweet things: entire boxes of chocolate and marmalade and plain candy—eat as much as you can.
If not for the watchman, swear to God, they would have slept all day.
“Hey, martyrs and sinners!” the watchman joked in his own way.
They went back out to the station, bought bread with the last of their money, snacked, and started back for the dachas when a gendarme appeared in the doorway.
“Where are you going?” the gendarme asked angrily.
“We’re from Nazarov’s dacha,” Romashka replied for them; Romashka had lived in Terioki last summer.
“The Nazarov dacha?” the gendarme asked and after a quiet conversation with a gentleman who came up to him, it must have been a detective, he said very gendarme-like and angrily, “You’re under arrest!”
A train was approaching from Vyborg.
The travelers accompanied by the gendarme and the detective glumly went to the train—they had to go back to St. Petersburg.
“What would he say to his princess now, how could he approach her, where was his India, his America, where was the uninhabited island, where was Mymra Island, would she receive him or was everything lost?” Atya worried, looking out the window at the black spring road.
Kharpik and Romashka were very worried: they’d really get it, farewell, America!
4
Days moved like weeks. And they moved badly.
Of course, the meeting at the station was not terrible at all: Atya’s mother simply wept with joy, and things went well at the gymnasium, he was allowed to take exams.
But what did Atya care about the gymnasium? He did not get the island, and how can you approach empty-handed.
Klavdia Guryanovna kept mocking him. She called Atya a retired American.
“I have to come up with something,” Atya kept thinking, “maybe I should chop off a finger and give it to her or gouge out my eye, let her feel my emotion.”
“It’s all Grandfather’s fault,” Mother complained to Father. “I know how things are done in Kluchi, the boy is useless, the lessons don’t reach his brain. First he was in love with Klavdia Guryanovna, now he’s dreaming about some Mymra.”
His father the doctor held that in treatment it was necessary to employ the beer and castor oil method, since all sorts of ills come from a clogged stomach. And in upbringing, it required convincing, since words alone were not enough, and therefore he decided to give Atya a beating at the first opportunity.
But it happened that he couldn’t catch Atya: either work held him up, or Atya was at school, or not at school but hiding somewhere, as if the earth had swallowed him up.
One morning Father looked into the nursery: Atya was sitting on the bed in just his shirt and thinking about something, naturally, he was thinking about his Mymra!
Holding his breath, the doctor crept up unnoticed, and one more tweak, one more step and he would have him—he would whip Atya so that he would not forget.
The strap was squirming joyfully in the doctor’s hands, but Atya was no fool, you couldn’t get him alive—hop!—and only his heels flashed before him. Sauve qui peut! Without any thought, dashing as if from a fire, he ran into Klavdia Guryanovna’s room.
The door was unlocked. Klavdia Guryanovna was in bed.
Atya jumped in and hid under the blanket.
He could hear his father come to the door, stand for a bit, and go away.
“My princess, you saved my life from the death penalty,” Atya whispered, his head spinning with joy, “you will forgive me, forgive me, I came to you on my own, without an island, with nothing, forgive me, I did not manage to get you a kingdom, I will get it for you: India, America, all the islands, all the countries … everything, everything … the whole world!”
He was gasping, it seemed that his soul had embraced her soul and held it tight, his heart lurched and his body trembled:
for she was so close, his Princess Mymra,
the inaccessible and proud. Klavdia Guryanovna
covered her laughter with her hand.
“May I?” the Deputy’s voice interrupted outside the door.
“A minute!” Pushing Atya away, Klavdia Guryanovna pointed under the bed.
Atya obeyed meekly and once under the bed, froze, trying not breathe and shutting his eyes, so as not to look.
The visitor Deputy would not notice him!
He squatted just the way he had long ago in the chicken house on goose eggs, sitting to hatch geese.
He did not breathe, did not look, but he heard everything.
The Deputy was undressing. The Deputy took of his jacket, took off his shoes. The Deputy’s cufflink fell, pinging, and rolled on the floor, stopping at Atya’s feet.
And Atya felt unbearably hot, as if it wasn’t a cufflink but a coal breathing heat on him.
They talked. Their words were the most ordinary. Everyone talks like that; the words were spoken by everyone.
And as Atya listened more closely, he grew cold and then hot: not the words, but the shape of the word
s, the connection of the words, the speaking of the words to him sounded like the vilest of profanity and insult.
He did not understand what was happening, he did not understand anything yet, but he understood with his heart and through his longing, through his love he understood and with his insulted soul he saw that she was not the one and only, not Princess Mymra, but was like everyone, like his mother, like Sasha and Panya, like his godmother, like the cook Feklusha, just the same …
And the desert opened before him.
He would have punctured his ears rather than hear, but he heard everything.
His soul and body felt as if he were being beaten as once in Kluchi they beat a thief who had hidden under the bed in the kitchen, they beat his head, his face, his belly. His eyes were glassy. “Finish him off!” “No, they shouted, “He’ll wait!’ They’d let him go and beat him again …
And then, as if someone had smashed his temple with a butt, the bed shook above him, the floor shook beneath him, everything juddered—it was the end of his life.
Only when the visitor was let out the front door to the street, and Klavdia Guryanovna was dressing, Atya came to his senses and crawled out from beneath the bed, without looking back, and when she asked if he’d come with her for a walk on Nevsky after lunch, he said nothing.
Without books or lunch Atya went to the gymnasium.
He didn’t notice a thing. He didn’t remember how he got to the school.
Having sat through the beginning of class, he asked to be excused. They allowed him to leave.
He left the classroom and was alone in the bathroom.
It was empty in the bathroom, water gurgled in the pipes.
And when he remembered, remembered it all—stones were lighter: his princess did not exist!
The tears rolled down. Atya wept.
For the first time in his life, he wept.
That is how the earth will weep the final time, when the stars fall from the sky.
Oh, if this night
Were not beautiful
My breast would not ache
My soul would not suffer.
The tramp song of a tramp singer came from the neighboring yard to the gymnasium yard and from the yard with the spring air through the window to Atya.
And Atya, through the tears, seemed to be laughing—
Where should he seek his star—his princess?
07
PANNA MARIA
RUSSIAN READERS WILL UNDERSTAND THAT THE STORY IS SET IN POLAND. KOSTEL AND KSENDZ ARE THE RUSSIAN WORDS FOR A POLISH CATHOLIC CHURCH (KOŚCIÓŁ) AND A POLISH CATHOLIC PRIEST (KSIĄDZ). THE HONORIFICS FOR THE WOMEN ARE POLISH—PANNA (MISS) MARIA AND PANI (MRS.) JADWIGA.
Our region has poor villages, small towns, and swamps.
Occasionally, through the trees, you can catch a glimpse of church crosses and a bunch of gray huts huddled along the swamp edge.
On Sundays, the tinny, dreary ringing torments the soul with its peal.
Fair-haired girls and women in white scarves, like white birds, seem to float, mistily, along trodden paths to our old church, dark and low, grown into the ground.
How beautiful it is in a place where bright flowers grow and the sun breathes deeply, but nothing can replace the stifling longing of swamps and fogs and dreary Sunday bells.
When the service was over and the priest went to the confessional, Pani Jadwiga fell on her knees before him, complaining about her miserable fate: again there were problems with her cow, and she has just enough to feed the children but not enough for oil.
“Shame on you,” the priest stopped her. “You are pestering God with complaints about your trifles. Follow the example of Panna Maria: she was blind at birth, and being as beautiful as an angel, she sings in church or plays the organ and always praises Jesus and his Holy Mother. You will never hear a bitter word from her, she only thanks the Creator and praises Him.”
So on her way home Pani Jadwiga stopped by to see the pathetic woman for whom, according to the priest, misfortune was the source of the great joy of thanking and praising.
The tall pale young woman walked silently across the front garden, and her big blue eyes were incredibly tranquil and you would never say that they do not see, and only the light movements of her fingers showed that she was blind.
And Pani Jadwiga told her, as she had the priest, about her sorrow.
In response, very simply, as only very exhausted people who have accepted their suffering, with almost no words and just her touch, Panna Maria comforted the poor woman and even gave her money.
Receiving her handout, the happy Jadwiga grew talkative: she wanted to say something very amusing to entertain the maiden. She told her about some young man who had come from Warsaw to visit Russian neighbors.
“He strolls past your front garden very frequently, and he’s going back to Warsaw in a week.”
She chatted on for a long time, exaggerating the beauty and charm of the man.
Maria listened indifferently at first, as if to ordinary village news, but suddenly regret that she could not see a thing, that she was blind, rose in her soul, but she caught it immediately and began reciting a prayer, blessing the will that decided her blind fate.
Jadwiga left very pleased, and everything continued in the same old way.
In the evening Panna Maria went out into the garden, she always spent the evening alone with the flowers, and sometimes she felt bitter, but that bitterness was the usual blessed state, blossoming, like her garden, with dreams. But this time, and she didn’t even know why, a special feeling overcame her: she was listening closely, as if expecting someone.
But there wasn’t a soul about and there were no steps on the road.
When it was time to go back inside, she didn’t know why her heart was filled with such sadness.
The next day she had the same feeling, but stronger, and the sadness was more profound.
And quite unexpectedly she told herself plainly that she was waiting for him, that man Jadwiga told her about, and she was sad because he wasn’t there.
It was only on the third evening, when she waited agitatedly in her garden, that the jangling of spurs along the road struck her ears and a voice so closely familiar chilled her heart.
Of course, it was he, that man.
And there were others with him, and their voices were like owl screeches.
Panna Maria counted the hours, the minutes until evening when she would go into the garden and sit down to wait: once again the jangle of spurs and the voice—if she could only hear that voice once more!
The days passed, replaced by evenings—what heavy hours, what racing minutes!—and no one.
And so, imperceptibly, came the seventh, final day.
She firmly remembered Jadwiga’s words that he was leaving in a week.
And would she never again hear his voice?
And if she did, would she never ever see him?
“Jesus, let me see just once!”
In a bitter longing she fell before the Crucifix with arms crossed and begged.
“Jesus!”
And she wept, the way you do when you pity the whole world until it hurts and you feel guilty before everyone and you could just weep, and never had her tranquil eyes fluttered that way, they fluttered like wings.
“Jesus!”
Her head burned, her heart throbbed.
“Jesus! Once! To see!”
Without any hope, Panna Maria went into her garden and sat on the bench facing the road.
The grass rustled and something moaned squeakily behind the house—a bird perhaps, or wind, no, not wind, the wind was catching clouds, gathering rain.
Her heart stopped.
She could hear nothing, only the rustling, only the wind.
And then her sensitive ear heard steps in the distance.
Yes, she was not mistaken. And soon the spurs jangled down the road and now she would hear his voice.
Small and shabby, a puny lieutenant with a face
like a squeezed lemon walked down the road and someone was with him.
But she looked—and saw only him.
She had never ever seen anyone and she did not need to see anyone else.
Her heart was illuminated, she wanted to cry out—and she fell dead on the bench.
08
THE KIND GUARD
A TALE OF THE SUPERNATURAL, “THE KIND GUARD” IS SET IN ST. PETERSBURG, WITH MEDICAL STUDENTS AND THEIR PROFESSOR. REMIZOV RETURNS TO THE THEME OF DESTINY IN THIS STORY. THE ACCEPTANCE OF ONE’S ABILITIES PLAYS A KEY ROLE IN A MAN’S DESIRE TO BETTER HIMSELF.
1
In one of the wretched attics of the Eremeyev rental building on Vasilevsky Island in St. Petersburg there lived Lapin, a student at the Medical Academy.
Studying was hard for him, but getting a piece of bread was even harder. However, he was brave, diligent, and persistent.
Sashenka, a hat maker of a minor sort, just as poor as he, shared his labor and helped how she could. Deep in need and cares, even with the flickering lamplight he somehow did not notice whether she was beautiful or not, and after his midnight work he fell right to sleep.
On his name day, Lapin invited his comrades over and, deep into the night, when Sashenka was already fast sleep behind the cotton curtain divider, they drank beer and vodka.
Gusts of wind from the sea reached the attic, but the noise of their voices muffled them.
They began to talk about who was braver.
They decided that each would perform an extraordinary deed.
First was the student Prokopov.
“Let’s do this … A week ago, as you know, our professor, the famous surgeon Petrov, died; he had lived his whole life unsociably and was considered a wizard. He is buried, as you know, at Smolensky—we’ll invite that loner over to visit!”
The approving laughter of his friends, like the wind, carried off the words.
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