by Teffi
The next day there was a ring at the front door.
Nanny rushed out. She came back and started bustling around.
“Your teacher’s arrived. To look at the face on her, you’d think she was some great dog. Just you wait!”
The teacher clicked her heels together and held out her hand to Katya. She really did look like an intelligent old watchdog; she even had some kind of yellow blotches around her eyes. And she had a way of turning her head very quickly and snapping her teeth, like a dog catching a fly.
She looked round the nursery and said to Nanny, “You’re the nanny, are you? I want you to take all these toys, please. Put them somewhere well out of the way, so the child can’t see them. All these donkeys and rams have to go. It’s important to be truly rational and scientifical about toys. Otherwise we end up with morbidity of imagination and all the damage that ensues from that. Katya, come here!”
She took from her pocket a ball attached to a long rubber string. Snapping her teeth and rotating the ball on the string, she began singing out, “Hop, jump, up and down, bound and bounce! Repeat after me: hop, jump… Oh, what a backward child!”
Katya said nothing and smiled forlornly, to keep from crying. Nanny was carrying away the toys, and the ram let out a “Ba-a-a!” in the doorway.
“Pay attention to the surface of this ball! What do you see? You see that it is two-coloured. One side is light blue, the other white. Point to the light-blue side. Try to concentrate.”
And off she went, holding out her hand to Katya and saying, “Tomorrow we’re going to weave baskets!”
Katya was shaking all evening long. She couldn’t eat anything. She was thinking about the ram, but she didn’t dare say a word.
“It’s hard being lifeless. What can he do? He can’t say anything and he can’t call out to me. And she said, ‘He’s got to go!’”
The words “got to go” made her whole soul turn cold.
The foxy women came, eating and drinking, whispering, “And he said… And she said…”
And again: “Go! Just got to go!”
Katya woke at dawn, feeling a fear and anguish the likes of which she had never known before. It was as if someone had called out to her. She sat up in bed, listening.
“Ba-a-a! Ba-a-a!”
The ram’s call was pitiful and insistent. The lifeless beast was shouting.
All cold now, she leapt out of bed, clenching her hands and pressing them to her chest, listening. There it was again:
“Ba-a-a! Ba-a-a!”
From somewhere out in the corridor. He must be out there.
She opened the door.
“Ba-a-a!”
He was in the storeroom.
She pushed the door open. It wasn’t locked. It was a dim, murky dawn, but there was enough light to see. The room was full of boxes and bundles.
“Ba-a-a! Ba-a-a!”
Just by the window was a flurry of dark shapes. The ram was over there too. Something dark jumped out, seized him by the head and began dragging him along.
“Ba-a-a! Ba-a-a!”
And then—two more of the dark shapes, tearing at his flanks, splitting open his skin.
“Rats!” thought Katya. “Rats!” She remembered how Nanny had bared her teeth. She trembled all over, clenching her fists still tighter. But the ram was no longer shouting. He was no more. A big fat rat was silently dragging some grey scraps of cloth, pulling at some soft bits and pieces, tossing the ram’s stuffing about.
Katya hid away in her bed, pulling the blankets up over her head. She didn’t say anything and she didn’t cry. She was afraid Nanny would wake up, bare her teeth like a cat and laugh with the foxy women over the woollen death of the lifeless beast.
She went quite silent; she curled up into a little ball. From now on she was going to be a quiet little girl, oh so quiet, so that no one would ever find out.
1916
JEALOUSY
THAT MORNING she had a sense of foreboding from the very first.
It began when instead of her usual white stockings she was given a pair of murky blue stockings, and Nanny grumbled that the laundress had put too much blue in the wash.
“I ask you, how can she give us the laundry in such a state? And all these airs and graces. If you’re going to call yourself ‘Matryona Karpovna’, you had better ought to know your business and do things proper!”
Liza sat on the bed and examined the long, skinny legs on which she had walked about the great world for seven years. She looked at the murky blue stockings and thought, “This is bad. They look like death. Something’s going to happen to me!”
Then, instead of Nanny, the chambermaid Kornelka came into the room—Kornelka with the oily head, oily hands and cunning oily eyes—and began brushing her hair.
Kornelka yanked so hard with the comb that it stung, but Lisa considered it beneath her dignity to whine in the maid’s presence and so she just grunted instead.
“What makes your hands so oily?” she asked the maid.
Kornelka turned her short red hand this way and that, as though admiring it.
“It’s work makes me hands shine. I work hard, that’s why me hands shine so.”
Out on the terrace, under the old lime tree, Nanny was cooking jam on a small clay stove.
The cook’s little girl, Styoshka, was helping out, feeding wood chips into the little stove, fetching a spoon, fetching a plate, fanning flies away from the pan.
Nanny was encouraging the little girl. She was saying, “Very good, Styoshka! Oh, what a smart girl Styoshka is. Now she’s going to go bring me some cold water. Run along, Styoshka, go fetch me some water. Little Styoshka is more precious than gold buttons!”
Liza went round the lime tree, scrambling over its stout roots. In among these roots was plenty to catch the eye. In one little corner lived a dead beetle. Its wings were like the dried husks inside a cedar nut. Liza flipped the beetle onto its back with a twig, and then onto its front, but it wasn’t afraid and didn’t run away. It was completely dead and living a peaceful life.
In another corner stretched a little web, and in the web reclined a tiny fly. The web was obviously a hammock for flies.
In a third corner sat a ladybird, minding her own business.
Liza lifted her up on the twig. She wanted to take her over and introduce her to the fly. But along the way the ladybird suddenly split down the middle, spread her wings and took flight.
Nanny was rapping a spoon against a plate and skimming the foam off the jam.
“Nanna! Let me have the foam!” begged Liza.
Nanny was all red and cross. She was trying to blow a fly off her upper lip, but the fly seemed to be stuck to the damp skin of her face and it kept trying to creep across either her nose or her cheek.
“Go away! Go away now! There’s nothing for you here! How can you have the foam when it hasn’t even boiled yet? Another child would have stayed in the nursery and looked at picture books. Can’t you see Nanny’s busy? What a fidget! Styoshka, my little love, feed it some more wood chips. Oh, what a good girl you are!”
Liza watched Styoshka mincing along on her bare feet, fetching the wood chips and diligently feeding them into the stove.
Styoshka had a scrawny pigtail tied with a dirty pale-blue ribbon, and under the pigtail her neck was dark and as thin as a stick.
“She’s trying very hard indeed,” thought Liza. “And she does it on purpose. The girl really does think she’s clever. But Nanny’s just trying to be kind.”
Styoshka got up and Nanny stroked her head, saying, “Thank you, little Styoshka. Soon there’ll be some foam for you.”
Liza’s temples began to pound, very loudly. She lay face down on the bench, kicking her legs about—in their “deathly” stockings. With a furious smile and trembling lips, she said, “I won’t! I won’t go! I don’t want to and I won’t!”
Nanny turned and flung her arms up in the air. “Lord have mercy! What have I done to deserve this? I put a fr
esh dress on her this morning, and look at her now, rolling around on that dirty bench—she’s absolutely filthy! Well, are you going or not?”
“I don’t want to and I won’t!” Nanny was about to say something else, but just then a thick white foam appeared on top of the jam.
“Good heavens! The jam’s boiling over.”
Nanny rushed over to the pan, and Liza got up and began singing defiantly. And off she hopped.
Hopping out from under the lime tree, she came upon Styoshka carrying a dish of berries.
Styoshka was stepping along very carefully. And she was doing it on purpose. To show Liza what a clever girl she was.
Liza went up to her and whispered in a strangled voice, “Go! Go away from here, stupid!”
Styoshka put on a frightened face, on purpose, so Nanny would see. Now walking a bit faster, she went over to the lime tree.
Liza ran off into a thicket of gooseberry bushes, collapsed onto the grass and burst out into loud sobs.
Now her entire life was in ruins.
She lay there with her eyes closed, picturing Styoshka’s scrawny pigtail, her soiled pale-blue rag of a ribbon and thin neck, dark as a stick. But Nanny would be petting her and saying, “What a clever girl you are, Styoshka! Soon there’ll be some foam for you!”
“Fo-oam! Fo-oam! Fo-oam!” Liza moaned, and each time the very sound of the word “foam” was so painful, so bitter, that tears trickled from her eyes straight down into her ears.
“Fooooaam!”
“But maybe something will happen, maybe Styoshka will suddenly drop dead as she’s fetching the wood chips! Then everything will be all right again!”
But it wouldn’t be all right again. Nanny would be sad. She’d say, “Once there was this clever little girl, but she went and died. If only Liza had died instead.” And once again the tears trickled down into Liza’s ears.
“So she’s got herself a bright little girl. But this little girl doesn’t go to school. While I’m learning French. I know how to say zhai, tu ah, eel ah, voozahvay, noozah… I’ll grow up and marry a general. Then I’ll come back here and say, ‘Who’s this girl? Send her packing! She stole my blue rag for her pigtail.’”
Liza began to feel a little better, but then she remembered the foam.
“No!” she said to herself. “Nothing like that will ever happen.”
Her life was over now. She wouldn’t go back inside ever again. Why should she?
Just like Marya the old laundress had done, she would lie on her back to die. She would close her eyes and lie perfectly still.
God would see her and send His angels to fetch her sweet young soul.
The angels would come, their wings rustling—flutter, flutter, flutter—and carry her soul way up on high.
And at home everyone would sit down to dinner and wonder: “What’s wrong with Liza?” “Why isn’t Liza eating?” “Why has our Liza grown so pale?” But she would go all quiet and wouldn’t say a word.
And suddenly Mama would guess!
“Can’t you see?” she would say. “Look at her! She’s dead!”
Liza was now sitting quite still, sighing heavily with emotion, and looking at her thin legs in their “deathly blue” stockings. So, now she was dead. Dead.
But something was buzzing, buzzing, closer and closer… and then—bop!—it flew right into Liza’s forehead. A fat May-bug, drunk on sunshine, had crashed into Lisa’s forehead and fallen to the ground.
Liza jumped up and broke into a run.
“Nanny! Naaanny! A bug hit me! A bug attacked me!” Nanny took fright, then gave her an affectionate look.
“What’s the matter, you silly little goose? There isn’t even the least little mark on you. You just thought it was attacking you. Now sit down, my clever little thing, and I’ll give you some foam, some lovely foam. Wouldn’t you like that? Ahh?”
“Fo-oam! Fo-oam!” Liza began to laugh from a place deep down inside her soul that God’s angels hadn’t yet had time to whisk away.
“Nanny, I’ll never die, will I? I’ll eat lots of soup, and drink lots of milk, and I’ll never die. That’s right, isn’t it?”
1916
THE QUIET BACKWATER
EVERY SEA, every large river and every stormy lake has its own quiet backwater.
The water there is clear and calm. No reeds rustle, no ripples disturb the smooth surface. Should anything touch this surface—a dragonfly’s wing or the long leg of a dancing evening mosquito—now there’s an event for you.
If you climb the steep bank and look down, you’ll see right away where this quiet backwater begins. It’s as if it’s been marked off by a ruler.
Out there, beyond this line, waves toss and turn in anguish. They rock from side to side, as if from madness and pain, and suddenly, in a last despairing leap, they throw themselves towards the heavens, only to crash back down into the dark water, leaving the wind to snatch at clumps of wild, helpless foam.
But in the backwater, this side of the sacred line, it is quiet. Instead of waves rising in mutiny and flinging themselves at the heavens, the heavens themselves come down to the backwater, in clear azure and little puffs of cloud in the daytime, and garbed in all the mystery of the stars at night.
The estate is called Kamyshovka.
You can see that it once stood on the very edge of the river. But the river retreated and left behind it, as a forget-me-not, a little blue-eyed lake—a joy to ducks—and masses of stiff reeds growing in the front garden.
The main house is abandoned; the doors and windows are boarded up.
Life lingers on only in the lodge—a cross-eyed, lopsided little building.
Here live a retired laundress and a retired coachman. They are not doing nothing; they are looking after the estate.
In her old age the laundress has sprouted a beard, while the coachman, yielding to her more powerful personality, has turned into such an old woman’s blouse that he calls himself Fedorushka.
They live righteously. They speak little, and because both are hard of hearing, both always have their say. If one actually manages to hear the other, they understand only hazily, so they keep to what is near and dear, what they lived through long ago, what they know all about and have already recalled many a time.
Besides the coachman and the laundress there are other souls living on the estate: a cunning mare who thinks only about oats and how she might work less, and a glutton of a cow. There are chickens too, of course, though it’s hard to say how many—you can’t say there are four, but neither can you say there are five. If you throw them some grain and are careful to say, “Come and get it, God bless!”, then four chickens come running. But just you forget that blessing and along comes a fifth. Where it’s come from no one knows—and it gobbles up all the seed and bullies the other hens. It’s big and grey, and evidently it likes seed that hasn’t been blessed.
What a worry it all is! The grain belongs to the master and mistress. Sooner or later the mistress will come and ask, “Who’s been pecking at my grain? Four beaks or five?”
How will they answer that?
They are afraid they’ll be called to account. It’s been a hard winter. They’ve got through firewood aplenty. Fear sets them thinking: across the river lie piles of state-owned wood ready for the spring floating. They harness the mare, cross the river and bring back a load. When they’ve used it all up they go back for more. How glorious it is having such fine wood right there on your doorstep. Even the mare, sly though she is, doesn’t pretend to be tired. She hauls the wood with pleasure.
And then comes—would you believe it?—a summons from the magistrate.
The magistrate asks, “Why did you steal the wood?”
“What do you mean, ‘why’? To heat the stove. We’ve burnt all our own wood already. When her ladyship comes, she’ll give us what for.”
The magistrate could have been worse. He doesn’t shout at them—but he does tell them to put the wood back. Why did he have to be so s
tingy? Yes, he’d brought them nothing but trouble.
And how had he found out, this magistrate? They hadn’t seen anyone when they were fetching the wood. Apparently it was the tracks from their sled—going across the river to the piles of wood and back to their door again.
Tracks? Weren’t people cunning nowadays? The things they could figure out!
It’s a warm day. Four red hens are pecking at scattered, properly blessed crusts of bread.
The table has been brought out onto the porch for tea. There’s company today. The coachman’s kinswoman has come from the village—his grand-niece, a girl called Marfa. It’s Marfa’s name day and she has come here to celebrate.
She’s a large girl, white, big-boned and slack-jawed. Her name-day dress is of such an intolerably bright pink that it even verges on blue. The day is clear and golden—the grass is young and garish green, the sky’s the bluest of blues, and the yellow flowers in the grass are like little suns—but before the girl’s dress they all seem dim and faded.
The old laundress looks at the dress. She squints and screws up her eyes. She feels that the girl’s bearing lacks dignity.
“Why do you keep fidgeting?” the old woman grumbles. “Where’s your manners? It’s your name day, your patron saint is looking down at you from on high, but you—you’re like a heifer with your tail swishing this way and that.”
“What’s that, Granny Pelageya?” the girl asks in surprise. “I haven’t wiggled a finger since I sat down.”
The old woman screws up her eyes at the bright, bright dress and can’t understand what’s the matter, what can be making her eyes so cloudy.
“Why don’t you go and fetch the samovar?”
Along comes the old coachman. His face is anxious, his brows knitted together—evidently he has been having to deal with the cunning mare.
“She’s eaten all the oats again. No matter how much you give her, she cleans up every last grain. The cunning creature! She’s got more tricks than many a man. She could outwit more than a few of us, I tell you. I’ll be in for it when the mistress comes.”
