by Oleg Pavlov
The conductor replied solemnly and sincerely ‘I am fully aware of it. We’re sending him off to God in Heaven, we’ll do everything properly, Albertych, don’t you worry.’
‘All right, you’ve got it,’ mumbled Mukhin’s father, growing listless again. ‘These two are with me. And no questions.’
‘Come on, then, why are you standing out in the cold! Here, let me take your briefcase. Young men, be our guests, we’ll be brothers. We’ll all be one, don’t you worry. Albertych! Where’s your hat? What happened?’
‘It’s gone, old chap. End of story. Let’s forget about it. Life is shit, old chap, everything in this life is total shit. Everything! With the exception of nuclear energy, friendship… and death.’
The carriage turned out to be a third-class one, of the kind in which thousands upon thousands were journeying at that very moment, travelling across all the territories, regions, republics and cities throughout the vast country. The ceiling seemed to be leaking electric light. It was cramped in the gangway. A fog of comestible odours hung in the air from the fried and the boiled, the home-cooked, the shop-bought and the rations, all mingling together and gently decomposing in the living warmth. There were bashful screen partitions. The berths to the left and right were all vacant, without a soul, but the sound of voices was growing ever more distinct. Mukhin’s father walked towards the din with such pomposity that he forced the others to pile up behind him. ‘Amazing man, one of a kind.’ The irrepressible conductor of the third-class carriage was already pushing them from the back. ‘Not like us! We just live and sleep, but a man like that lives for us all without sleeping a wink. Any other bloke would have got a job in trade or something, just for himself, but this man picked a profession that brings warmth and light to everybody. Always busy worrying his head and explaining things, presenting ideas and inventing stuff. And think of what he suffers! Wherever there’s a catastrophe in the country – there he is, saving the day! He’s given all he’s got, even his son. And we’re not taking proper care of the man, ’cause we’re too busy looking after ourselves.’
They came upon people in the second half of the carriage. The bay where they had gathered must have been where Mukhin’s father was lodging; he spoke of his own bunk there as his ‘room’. They welcomed him with a mournful silence that seemed as though everyone had pooled together to purchase it. About a dozen guests were sitting at a table spread with what was clearly a funeral feast. The table had been improvised. Some resourceful soul had bridged the folding tables by the windows at opposite sides of the carriage with a plank. The homemade table-top was covered in white sheets. The resulting arrangement made for a convincing funeral altar; its entire length could have accommodated the coffin of the person they were seeing off. The guests were squashed up along it on the passenger seats: they had occupied the lower berths, and people were also sitting in the aisles on boards spanning the gaps like little bridges. On the upper bunks – even on the perpendicular one in the gangway – there lay three more guests, whose heads hung silently over the feast like globe lampshades.
Upon the host’s arrival, one of the bottom bunks was immediately vacated and offered to the nuclear engineer. Behaving as though the young men in uniform were his guards, he maintained a morose and lofty silence. All this had a dramatic effect on the people gathered. The guests froze in their places, gazing at Mukhin’s father with a similarly sullen grandeur, while he surveyed the offerings with the pride and indifference of a well-fed man. His stern gaze sought alcohol and could be tempted only by bottled refreshments. His eyes settled firmly on the neck of a bottle, whose contents seemed not to be moonshine, and glazed over. ‘We have vodka?’ he marvelled involuntarily, entranced. ‘Don’t you worry, Albertych, the very stuff, purchased with ration coupons, especially for you. And also some cans and sunflower oil from the humanitarian aid. I offered up my whole supply.’ The conductor brought this up casually in front of the guests, though he also reddened bashfully.
‘Then may I ask you to pour me one-fifty mils,’ Mukhin’s father said promptly. ‘Fill everybody’s glasses! I declare all systems go. Could I ask you all to pay attention?’
His demeanour fell somewhere between odious and pathetic during this moment of liveliness, yet his audience were listening carefully and were all set for mourning. But, when he began speaking about himself, grief swept over his face too; it was as if he had turned up at his own funeral. ‘The universe is made up of atoms, and I, Albert Mukhin, was involved with an association in this country known as Spetsatom. A universe without atoms would be a shitty place. One hour ago, I was standing by my son’s coffin, and I did not feel ashamed of him. Albert Mukhin’s son has become an atom in the universe. He departed like a real nuclear scientist, walking into his own blazing reactor… May I ask each and every one of you to appreciate that? And now I’ll say, in the words of my favourite poet, Yevgeny Yevtushenko: Death is no harbour – Death breaks the journey of the ship! Gennady, your father is with you. I forgive you for what you did, old chap. We’ll meet in the universe!’
After the speech, Mukhin’s father refuelled with another 150ml of vodka and lost all interest in the goings-on. Of necessity, people were still hovering with their food. He did not chase his drink with a bite of anything; instead he fixed his gaze on the empty tumbler, which made the commotion at the table suddenly seem disconnected, indecorous, even. The guests quietened down prematurely – yet he continued to dwell in complete silence in front of the glass, as though it contained all his grief. Unable to bear the silence a moment longer and, no doubt, meaning well, somebody piped up with a heartfelt question: ‘But tell us, what was it that caused Gennady’s death?’
‘My son died defending democracy,’ said Mukhin’s father, hammering out the words. The third-class carriage soared upward in a kind of weary descent. There were no more questions. Nobody ventured to query this or even enquire further, let alone hint at an alternative. They all waited nobly for the minute of silence to end, but again someone was barely able to endure it and rose to their full height, bursting with lofty emotions like a convict during sentencing, but Mukhin’s father stubbornly refused to unseal his lips, and so for almost every person the silence turned into torture by shame.
‘Albertych, what’s wrong?’ The conductor felt frightened.
‘My son wasn’t poured any vodka,’ he said, his face unaltered.
‘What’s this? You think somebody is being stingy with the vodka? Honestly!’
A commotion broke out: they rustled up a glass, poured some vodka and placed a slice of black bread on top. Mukhin’s father said, ‘Put my glass next to Gennady’s.’ When the conductor had silently carried out his wishes, Mukhin’s father suddenly shocked people with the command, ‘Everybody drink!’ The guests downed their glasses in one, but then they noticed that he had not touched his.
‘Albertovich! What’s all this about?’
‘I won’t be drinking any more today. That’s just the way it is, old chap. People – may I ask you all to remain where you are.’
The reassured guests stayed in their seats and began hurriedly eating the snacks. The herring and meat in aspic were soon gone, and they filled up by munching on bread and packing in potatoes. The bulk of the food was quickly consumed. Then began the conversations about life and death. The guests on the top berths piped up first, as they needed assistance to receive their nibbles. And it was they who began philosophising with those sitting below, who were glumly handing them plates.
One muttonish dame dressed as lamb, who was quickly becoming inebriated, grew bolder and began serving the two soldiers in the manner of a hostess. She heaped up two plates with inedible watery pudding, then cried out with petulant languor and sweetness: ‘Why aren’t you drinking, men?’
Pavel Pavlovich, upon whom the lady was lavishing a gaze bubbling with puzzlement, grinned at her and replied impetuously, ‘A real man is the last to drink and the first to sober up.’
‘So, mister, you’re a rea
l man are you? Ooh, I don’t think I introduced myself! I’m Yelena. And you are… ?’
‘To friends and whores I’m simply Rafael.’ The lady shrank back into loneliness. Patches of mauve showed through the rough coating of face powder tinted with girlish blusher.
Deciding not to take offence too quickly, she spoke in the haughty, nonchalant tone of a teacher: ‘I’m sorry, but which category of acquaintance do you put me in?’
Pavel Pavlovich paused, forcing the lady to wait, then suddenly he smiled: ‘Ah but we aren’t acquainted; I haven’t drunk vodka with you yet.’
‘Well then let us perform that rite,’ the tipsy lady replied giddily.
‘Helen of Troy,’ he whispered so that only she could hear it.
‘Rafael, let’s be friends. Let’s drink, Rafael.’ Her babbling fluttered over the feast.
‘You bet, and with such a luscious woman!’ said the real man, and his eyes shone with a cruel, macabre spark.
The lady tried to endow her clumsy inebriated tottering around the table with a kind of elaborate elegance. She was waltzing around the glasses of vodka that had been left side by side for father and son and that everybody else was ignoring, happy drinking their moonshine. She wanted to pinch them on the sly, but Mukhin’s father was hindering her, his vacant mournful gaze also roving around this tumbler monument, erected on the table at his behest. ‘Why’s nobody drinking that vodka? Someone’s got to drink it so it won’t go to waste,’ she said finally.
‘That ration is sacred. The ration for the dead man and the living one: once poured, it’s always forgotten. You see, Yelena, baby, everything here is deeply soulful, though it might look from the outside like an ordinary still life. The glass is the grave. They cover it with black bread – it’s like sprinkling earth on the grave. The vodka in the glass, that’s the soul. When it evaporates and the glass is empty – that’s it, the ordeal is over, the soul is gone. And right now we’re sitting here like fools, observing this natural phenomenon.’
‘Haha, Rafael, what a funny joke! I don’t want to know about these horrors of yours. I hate them! Sorry, but I’m still alive. I want to know all about flowers, and the sea, and love…’
This sounded like blasphemy. Being respectable people, the nearest guests turned their backs on the lady. And little by little they all began arguing over each other about love and death – noisily, rowdily, their tongues flickering like flames. Everybody was puffing out their chests, almost bobbing up and down, making sure their presence was felt and their opinions vented. Demented shouts were continually ringing out over the hubbub: ‘Love is sex;’ ‘There is no God.’ And whenever he emerged from his reverie, each time disagreeing with everything and everyone, Mukhin’s father would boom in farewell: ‘I’ll wipe e-v-e-r-y-thing out!’
The arguers were burning away like firewood. Soon the bonfire subsided into a mournful flickering, and the debaters broke up into clusters. Dismayed, some people stopped speaking entirely.
Beyond the windows of the carriages the night was ink-black. For a while nothing particularly significant occurred – except, perhaps, for the brief appearance of the pancakes the woman had promised Mukhin’s father. She remained at his side, angry at everybody for gobbling up her offering. People from the other carriages began wandering towards the noise. They hung around in the narrow gangway as though queueing, no doubt from force of habit, but they were given nothing – neither words nor drink nor food. Suddenly a girl the same height as the cast-off military padded jacket she was wearing pushed her way through the queue of grown-up freeloaders – outcasts and people who’d succumbed to alcoholism, judging by their looks, as well as a few neatly-dressed, impoverished old women – to reach the funeral spread. Her loose coal-black hair covered her down to the shoulders like a headscarf. The wild, swarthy little face, peeking out like an old woman’s, was puckered in an anguished grimace. Poking the backs of those sitting at the table, the girl said in a gruff, gravelly voice: ‘Gimme some food… Gimme money for bread…’
Without a glance, they elbowed away the beggar who was bothering them. The little girl took no offence; she merely seemed surprised that so many people had assembled to eat, their backs turned as though rejecting her alone. She stopped, happy nevertheless to be at the front of the queue, stealing glances at the food. She hungrily fancied the big strange table was heaped with the most delicious and fragrant victuals. And, although she was begging for bread, when she spotted the plates smeared with leftovers, her powers of imagination imposed upon them the sweetest of grapes, the most luscious honeycombs of melons, steaming hunks of boiled mutton – all the foods that she had ever eaten once upon a time. The contemplation of this mirage was lulling her into a pleasant slumber and, already exhausted, she was yearning to curl up and sleep. But something kept on poking her in the side. The girl opened her eyes, all gummy from dozing, and was disgruntled to see someone’s outstretched hand, apparently asking her for alms. She threw a disapproving look at the beggar sitting at the table, who turned out to be a soldier, without noticing the chocolate bar peeping out from the greatcoat sleeve that hid almost the whole of the man’s hand.
When she realised it was a soldier, the beggar girl almost brightened up, parting her sulky lips, but the smile quickly vanished from her little face when she saw Kholmogorov grinning. This soldier resembled a scarecrow – he even smiled like some pauper or freak who was badgering people and grovelling. In her eyes, all those people called ‘Russians’ were stupid and greedy. They were stupid because it was easy to trick them and greedy because they only ever pulled a few pennies out of their pockets. In her little soul, she held all Russians in contempt. And right now, in her hungry somnolence and indifference she could not understand what one of them might be wanting from her. These goings-on did not escape the beady notice, however, of the pancake widow. Shaking her breasts in the air as if waving two fists, the colonel’s wife pounced on Alyosha with a yell: ‘Don’t do it, don’t give her anything! Shoo her away! She could have lice! Ugh, there’s no rest from these refugees, the brazen little blighters. Back home they make children like there’s no tomorrow, and then they arrive here and expect us to feed them!’
‘Prostitute!’ called out the little person in the soldier’s padded jacket, glancing about amid the stupid and greedy folk looking on from every direction. The insulted colonel’s wife took fright and went limp. The girl’s breathing quickened, like a cornered animal waiting for death, although the guests stared at her indifferently and understood little in their drunken blur. She shouted something desperately and angrily, cursing in her own language this other people that had brought her nothing but fear and shame, then suddenly she threw herself under the protection of the soldier and, to everybody’s amusement, flung her arms around him with all her passion, almost like a woman in love – which was what made it funny. The colonel’s wife at first could not squeeze out even a murmur, and tears streamed from her painted, doll-like eyes. Her mascara ran, making two inky-blue spots appear beneath them. ‘Me? You calling me a prostitute? Me?’ She moaned in a trembling voice, as though she had been punched. The little beggar girl, in dread of whom this grown-up housewifely woman seemed to be shuddering with her entire being, suddenly stuck out her face, bared her teeth and, clinging to Kholmogorov, no longer afraid of anything in the world, she disgraced the colonel’s wife with the same word again.
The colonel’s wife began to sob and, before making herself scarce, she screeched at the guests, ‘You didn’t mind eating my whorish pancakes though, did you? You weren’t too prudish for that. Oh, I know who’s been spreading dirty stories about me… Well, I know what she is! You’d think she’s all educated and skinny and refined! I might not be skinny like her, I don’t know how to waggle the parts that she waggles, but for all that, my kids come from my husband, they all have a father, they’re all clean and fed and healthy. I am an honest woman… I might happen to be temporarily divorced, but I’m never up for any Tom, Dick or Harry. I’m waiting for
Mr Right, for love with a capital ‘L’, while she goes abandoning her child and running around the carriages, the bitch. She even smells like one. She might even have already caught lice from it. Look, her knickers might be crawling with them…’ She grabbed Mukhin’s father by the lapels. ‘Albert Gennadievich, you invited me to the wake, and I brought my pancakes along, and they’ve insulted me here. Albert Gennadievich, you rotter! I want nothing to do with you after this!’
The drunken man meekly allowed himself to be shaken and called a rotter, remaining torpidly silent. Once she had leapt like a shot from the funeral table, this time not as if she’d been punched but as though she were naked, timidly hiding her entirety in her own convulsive embrace, Mukhin’s father must have sensed the cold empty space beside him for he said longingly: ‘What a woman. What a woman!’ A minute later, a plaintive babble had started up again around the table. Everybody continued their arguments. The little lass clambered onto the soldier’s lap – urging him to help, as though he were a bit dense – and when she had sat down, she sneaked the chocolate bar from him, hid it quietly, slyly asked for another, and hid that one too.
‘It’s bad that you swear. Girls shouldn’t use swear words,’ Kholmogorov said. She clamped her lips moodily, slipped from his lap – and off she toddled like a goose, probably heading back where she’d come from.
When the beggar girl had vanished into the gloom of the third-class carriage, Alyosha began worrying that he’d offended her, and he pined and wilted, imagining how weak and hungry she was.
Some time elapsed. Suddenly something soft and light touched his back: it was the beggar girl pressing gently against him, making sure that it was the right man and he hadn’t forgotten her, and pretending that she hadn’t gone anywhere but had remained by his side. Craning her lithe neck, she drew closer to the swarming sounds of the arguing voices and listened earnestly, peering into the faces with her enquiring, understanding eyes, unable to tear them away even for a moment, as though she were not a witness but a judge.
