Ivanov could see that the busiest person around the house was Petya. Not only did he work hard himself, but he also told his mother and Nastya what to do and what not to do, and how to do everything properly. Nastya was obeying Petya meekly and was no longer afraid of her stranger-father; she had the alert and attentive face of a child who did everything in life seriously and truthfully, and she surely had a kind heart too, since she did not mind Petya.
‘Nastya, empty the potato peelings out of the mug, I need it.’
Nastya obediently emptied the mug and washed it. Meanwhile their mother was quickly making a spur-of-the-moment pie, without yeast, to put in the stove; Petya had already got the fire going.
‘Come on, Mother, get a move on!’ Petya commanded. ‘You can see I’ve got the stove ready. You’re not much of a Stakhanovite,1 you’re a dawdler!’
‘Just a minute, Petya, I’m nearly there,’ said his mother obediently. ‘I’ll just put some raisins in and it’ll be done. It must be a long time since your father had raisins. I’ve been saving them for ages.’
‘He’s had raisins all right,’ said Petya. ‘Our troops get raisins. Just look at their fat faces – they get enough food all right. Nastya, why are you sitting down – think you’re a guest here? Go on, peel some potatoes, we’re going to fry some for supper. You can’t feed a whole family on nothing but pie!’
While his mother was making the pie, Petya took the large oven-fork and put a cast-iron pot of cabbage soup in the oven, so the heat would not go to waste; as he did this, he even admonished the fire: ‘Why are you burning so messily, jumping about all over the place? Just burn evenly, and stay under the food – what do you think the trees in the forest grew up to make firewood for? And you, Nastya, why have you shoved the kindling into the stove just any old how? You should have laid it the way I taught you. And you’re peeling too much off the potatoes again, you should peel them thinly and not dig out the flesh – that’s how our food gets wasted! How many times do I have to tell you? This is the last time – do it again and you’ll get a clout round the head!’
‘Petya, why keep getting at Nastya?’ their mother said gently. ‘Just think for a moment! How can she peel so many potatoes, and do them all just as you want them, like a barber never nicking the flesh? Father’s come home, and all you can do is find fault!’
‘I’m not finding fault, I’m talking sense. Father needs feeding, he’s just back from the war, and you two are wasting good food. Think how much we’ve wasted in potato peelings in a whole year! If we’d had a sow, we could have fed her all year on potato peelings alone, then taken her to the show and been given a medal. Just imagine it! But you don’t understand.’
Ivanov had not known that his son had turned out like this; he sat and marvelled at his cleverness. But he preferred gentle little Nastya, who was also working away at household tasks. Her little hands were quick and deft – they must have had a lot of practice.
‘Lyuba,’ Ivanov said to his wife, ‘why aren’t you saying anything to me? Tell me how you’ve got on without me. How’s your health been? And what work do you do?’
Lyubov Vasilyevna felt shy of her husband now, like a young bride; she was not used to him any more. She even blushed when he spoke to her and, just as in her youth, her face took on the timid, scared expression which Ivanov found so attractive.
‘We’ve been all right, Alyosha. The children haven’t been ill too often. I’ve taken care of them. The bad thing is that I’ve only been here with them at night. I work at the brick factory, at the press. It’s a long way on foot.’
‘Where do you work?’ said Ivanov, not understanding.
‘At the brick factory, at the press. I had no qualifications, of course, so at first I just did odd jobs outside. Then they gave me some training and put me on the press. It’s been good to be working – only the children have been alone all the time. You can see how they’ve turned out. They know how to do everything themselves, they’re like grownups,’ Lyubov Vasilyevna said quietly. ‘Whether that’s a good thing, Alyosha, I just don’t know.’
‘We shall see, Lyuba… We’ll all be living together now. There’ll be time enough to work out what’s good and what’s bad.’
‘Everything will be better now you’re here. When I’m on my own I don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong, and I’ve been afraid. Now it’s for you to think about how to bring up the children.’
Ivanov stood up and paced about the room.
‘So, all in all, you’ve kept in good spirits, have you?’
‘It’s been all right, Alyosha, and it’s over now, we’ve stuck it out. Only we missed you dreadfully and we were afraid you’d never come back to us. We were afraid you’d die there, like others have…’
She began to cry over the pie, which she had already placed in its iron mould, and her tears dropped onto the dough. She had smeared the top of the pie with beaten egg and was still smoothing it with her palm, now smearing the festive pie with her tears.
Nastya gripped her mother’s leg in her arms, pressed her face into her skirt and stared up at her father sternly from beneath her brows.
Her father bent down to her. ‘What’s the matter, Nastya, what’s wrong? Are you cross with me?’
He gathered her up in his arms and stroked her head. ‘What’s the matter, little daughter? You’ve completely forgotten me, haven’t you? You were tiny when I went away to the war.’
Nastya laid her head on her father’s shoulder and she too began to cry.
‘What is it, little Nastyenka?’
‘Mummy’s crying, so I’m crying too.’
Petya, who was standing in front of the stove, was bewildered and annoyed.
‘What’s the matter with you all? While you’re all being moody, the heat’s going to waste. Do you want the stove heated up all over again? Who’ll give us coupons for more wood? We’ve used up the last lot, there’s just a tiny bit left in the shed – about ten logs, and it’s only aspen. Give me the dough, mother, before the heat all gets lost.’
Petya took out the big iron pot of cabbage soup and raked the embers on the floor of the stove, and Lyubov Vasilyevna, as if trying to please Petya, hurriedly put the two pies in, forgetting to brush the second one with egg.
Ivanov was finding his own home strange and rather hard to understand. His wife was the same, with her sweet, shy, though now deeply exhausted face, and the children were the same ones that had been born to him, except that they had grown older during the war, as was to be expected. But something was stopping Ivanov from feeling wholehearted joy at being back home – no doubt he was simply not used to family life any more and so was unable to understand even those nearest and dearest to him. Looking at Petya, his firstborn, now so grown up, listening as Petya gave commands and instructions to his mother and little sister, watching his worried, serious face, Ivanov confessed to himself with a sense of shame that he did not feel fatherly enough towards this boy, that he did not feel drawn to his own son. Ivanov was all the more ashamed of this lack of fatherly feeling because he was aware that Petya needed love and care more than the others did, for it was painful to look at him. Ivanov did not know in any detail how his family had lived while he was away, and he could not yet grasp at all clearly why Petya had come to be like this.
Sitting at the table, among his family, Ivanov realized what he had to do. He must get to work as soon as he could – he had to find a job and earn money, and help his wife bring up the children properly; then everything would gradually get better, and Petya would start running about with other children or sitting with a book, not standing at the stove with an oven-fork in his hands and giving orders.
During the meal Petya ate less than anyone else, but he scooped up all the crumbs and tipped them into his mouth.
‘What are you doing, Petya?’ his father asked him. ‘Why are you eating crumbs when you haven’t finished your pie? Eat it up and your mother will cut you another piece.’
‘I could e
at it all up,’ Petya said with a frown. ‘But I’ve had enough.’
‘He’s afraid that if he starts eating a lot, then Nastya will copy him and eat a lot too,’ Lyubov Vasilyevna explained straightforwardly. ‘And that worries him.’
‘You two don’t worry about anything,’ said Petya unemotionally. ‘I just want there to be more for you.’
Father and mother glanced at each other and shivered at their son’s words.
‘Well, and why aren’t you eating?’ the father asked little Nastya. ‘Are you copying Petya? Eat up, or you won’t grow up to be a big girl.’
‘I am a big girl,’ said Nastya.
She ate a small piece of pie, but pushed away another, bigger piece and covered it with a napkin.
‘What are you doing?’ her mother asked. ‘Shall I put some butter on it for you?’
‘No, I’m full up.’
‘Well eat it like that then. Why’ve you pushed it away?’
‘Because Uncle Semyon might come. I’m leaving it for him. It’s not your pie, it’s my pie I’m not eating. I’m putting it under my pillow so it doesn’t get cold.’
Nastya got down from her chair; she took the pie wrapped up in a napkin over to her bed, and put it under the pillow.
Her mother remembered how she herself had once laid pillows over a pie she had baked for May Day, to keep it warm for Semyon Yevseyevich.
‘Who is this Uncle Semyon?’ Ivanov asked his wife.
Lyubov Vasilyevna did not know what to say. ‘I don’t know who he is,’ she said. ‘He comes on his own to see the children. His wife and his own children were killed by the Germans, he’s grown fond of our two and he comes to play with them.’
‘To play with them?’ said Ivanov in surprise. ‘What games do they play when he comes? How old is he?’
Petya looked quickly at his mother, then at his father; his mother did not answer his father’s question, she only looked at Nastya with sad eyes. The father smiled unpleasantly, got up from his chair, lit a cigarette and then asked Petya, ‘Where are the toys you and this Uncle Semyon play with?’
Nastya got down from her chair, climbed up onto another chair by the chest of drawers, took out some books and brought them to her father. ‘They’re book-toys,’ she said. ‘Uncle Semyon reads them out loud to me. Look what a funny teddy bear, he’s a toy and he’s a book too…’
Ivanov took the book-toys his daughter handed him: about Misha the Bear, and a toy cannon, and the little house where Granny Domna lived, spinning flax with her granddaughter…
Petya remembered it was time to close the damper in the stovepipe, so the warmth would not escape from the house. After closing the damper, he said to his father, ‘Semyon Yevseyevich is older than you… He helps us out, leave him in peace.’
Glancing out of the window just in case, Petya noticed that the clouds in the sky were not the right kind of clouds for September. ‘Look at those clouds,’ he said. ‘They’re the colour of lead – they must be full of snow. Don’t say winter’s going to set in tomorrow! What will we do? We haven’t dug up the potatoes yet, we haven’t stocked up on food. What a situation to be in!’
Ivanov looked at his son, listened to him talking and realized he felt shy of him. He would have liked to ask his wife more about this Semyon Yevseyevich who had been coming to visit for the last two years, and whether it was Nastya this man came to see or his goodlooking wife, but Petya distracted Lyubov Vasilyevna by talking about household matters: ‘Mother, give me tomorrow’s bread-coupons and the registration cards, and give me the paraffin coupons as well – tomorrow’s the last day and we must get our charcoal, oh but you’ve lost the sack, they won’t give us any charcoal without one, you must have a good look for the sack right now, or else sew a new one out of rags, how can we manage without a sack? And tell Nastya not to let anyone into our yard tomorrow for water – they take too much from the well; with winter coming the water will drop and our rope’s not long enough to let the bucket down lower, and we don’t want to have to eat snow, anyway we’d need firewood to thaw it out.’
As he said all this, Petya swept up around the stove and sorted out the kitchen utensils. Then he took the pot of soup out of the oven.
‘We’ve had some pie and now we’re having some cabbage-and-meat soup, with bread,’ Petya announced. ‘And you, father, must go first thing tomorrow to the District Soviet and the Military Commissariat. Then you’ll be put on the list straight away and we’ll get ration cards for you more quickly.’
‘All right,’ said the father obediently.
‘Yes, and mind you don’t oversleep and forget.’
‘I won’t,’ the father promised.
Their first shared meal after the war – soup with meat – was eaten by the family in silence, with even Petya sitting there calmly; it was as if father and mother and children were afraid of destroying, through some chance word, the quiet happiness of a family sitting together.
Then Ivanov asked his wife, ‘How have you managed for clothes, Lyuba? Is everything worn out?’
‘We’ve been wearing all old things, but now we can buy something new,’ Lyubov Vasilyevna smiled. ‘I had to mend the children’s clothes while they stood up in them. Then I cut down your suit, your two pairs of trousers and all your underclothes. There was no money to spare, you see, and the children had to wear something.’
‘You did right,’ said Ivanov. ‘Children shouldn’t have to go without.’
‘They haven’t had to. I even sold the coat you bought me. Now I wear my padded jacket.’
‘Her jacket’s too short. She could catch cold in it,’ commented Petya. ‘I’ll go and work as a stoker at the bathhouse. I’ll earn some money and get her a coat. People bring clothes to sell at the market, I’ve had a look and checked the prices. Some of the coats are all right.’
‘We can get by without you and your wages,’ said the father.
After dinner Nastya put a large pair of glasses on her nose and sat by the window to darn the little knitted mittens her mother now wore at the factory inside her work-mittens. It was already autumn; the weather had turned cold.
Petya glanced across at his sister and began to scold her: ‘What are you up to now? Why have you got Uncle Semyon’s glasses on?’
‘I’m not looking through them, I’m looking over them.’
‘Oh really!… I can see what you’re doing! You’ll ruin your eyesight and go blind, then you’ll be on a pension and be a burden for the rest of your life. Take the glasses off this minute, I tell you, and stop darning those mittens, mother will darn them, or I’ll do them myself as soon as I have a moment. Get out your exercise book and practise your writing – goodness knows when you last did any!’
‘Does Nastya go to school then?’ asked the father.
Their mother replied that Nastya was not yet big enough for school, but that Petya made her do lessons every day; he had bought her an exercise book, and she practised drawing the strokes for letters. Petya was also teaching his sister to do sums, adding and subtracting pumpkin seeds in front of her, while Lyubov Vasilyevna was herself teaching Nastya to read.
Nastya put down the mitten and took an exercise book and a pen and nib out of the chest of drawers, while Petya, satisfied that everything was being done properly, put on his mother’s padded jacket and went outside to chop wood for the next day; he usually brought the firewood into the house at night and laid it behind the stove to dry out, so it would give out more heat and be more efficient.
In the evening Lyubov Vasilyevna got supper ready early. She wanted the children to go to sleep in good time so that she and her husband could sit together and talk. But the children did not fall asleep until long after supper; Nastya, lying on the wooden couch, kept watching her father from under the blanket, while Petya, who had lain down on the Russian stove he always slept on, winter and summer alike, tossed and turned, grunting and whispering something, and it was quite some time before he quietened down. But the night wore on, and Na
stya closed her eyes that were tired from looking, while Petya started to snore on the stove.
Petya always slept lightly and on his guard: he was afraid something might happen in the night and he would not hear – a fire, or robbers breaking in, or his mother might forget to latch the door and it would come open during the night and all the warmth would escape. This time it was the troubled voices of his parents that woke him; they were talking in the room next to the kitchen. What time it was – midnight or nearly morning – he did not know, but his father and mother were not asleep.
‘Alyosha, don’t make so much noise, the children will wake up,’ his mother was saying quietly. ‘You mustn’t say bad things about him, he’s a good man, and he’s loved your children…’
‘We don’t need his love,’ said the father. ‘I love my children myself. Loving other people’s children – I like that! I sent you certificates regularly and you had your job – what did you need this Semyon Yevseyevich for? Still hot-blooded, are you? Oh Lyuba, Lyuba! You’re not the woman I thought you were… You’ve made a fool of me.’
The father fell silent, then struck a match to light his pipe.
‘What are you saying, Alyosha? How can you?’ the mother burst out. ‘When I’ve brought up the children and they’ve hardly ever been ill and they’ve got plenty of flesh on them.’
‘So what?’ said the father. ‘Some women were left with four children, but they managed all right, and their kids are no worse than ours. And as for Petya and the way you’ve brought him up – he carries on like an old man, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s forgotten how to read.’
From his place on the stove Petya sighed and then pretended to snore, so he could go on listening. ‘All right,’ he thought, ‘maybe I am an old man, but it was all very well for you – you didn’t have to worry where your next meal was coming from!’
‘Yes, but he’s learnt some of life’s hardest lessons!’ said the mother. ‘And he doesn’t fall behind in his schoolwork.’
‘Who is this Semyon of yours?’ said the father angrily. ‘Stop leading me up the garden path.’
Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida (Penguin Classics) Page 38
