Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida (Penguin Classics)

by Chandler, Robert

  ‘He’s a good man.’

  ‘You love him, do you?’

  ‘Alyosha, I’m the mother of your children.’

  ‘Go on, give me a straight answer.’

  ‘I love you, Alyosha. I’m a mother. It’s a long time since I was a woman, and that was only ever with you. I can’t even remember when it was.’

  The father said nothing, smoking his pipe in the darkness.

  ‘I’ve missed you, Alyosha. Of course I had the children, but that’s not the same as having you. I was waiting for you all the time, all those long terrible years. Often I was afraid to wake up in the morning.’

  ‘What’s his job, where does he work?’

  ‘He works at our factory, in the supplies section.’

  ‘I see, a swindler.’

  ‘He isn’t a swindler. I don’t know… His whole family were killed in Mogilyov.2 There were three children, the daughter was already grown up.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. He found himself another family, ready-made, and a woman who’s still quite young, and goodlooking – so he’s got things nice and cosy again.’

  The mother did not reply. There was a silence, but soon Petya could hear his mother crying.

  ‘He talked to the children about you, Alyosha,’ she began, and Petya could tell that big tears were hovering in her eyes. ‘He told the children how you were fighting for us and how you were suffering. They’d ask why, and he’d say because you’re a good man.’

  The father gave a laugh and knocked the ash out of his pipe.

  ‘So that’s the kind of man he is, your Semyon Yevseyevich! Never even seen me, yet he sings my praises. Quite a character!’

  ‘No, he’s never seen you. He made things up, so the children would go on loving you, so they wouldn’t lose touch with their father.’

  ‘But why? Why was he doing it? Because he wanted you and he was in a hurry? Go on, tell me, what was he after?’

  ‘Maybe he just has a kind heart, Alyosha, maybe that’s why. Why shouldn’t it be?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Lyuba, but you’re a fool. No one does things for nothing!’

  ‘But Semyon Yevseyevich often brought things for the children. He always brings something – sweets, white flour, sugar. Not long ago he brought Nastya some felt boots, only they were no good, they were too small. And he’s never asked for anything from us. We didn’t need anything either, Alyosha, we could have managed without his presents, we’d got used to the way we were living, but Semyon Yevseyevich says he feels better when he’s doing something for other people, it stops him missing his dead family so badly. It really isn’t what you think – you’ll see when you meet him.’

  ‘You’re talking nonsense!’ said the father. ‘Stop trying to trick me… I’m fed up with you, Lyuba. And I still want to enjoy life.’

  ‘Enjoy life with us, Alyosha.’

  ‘While you’re carrying on with Semyon Yevseyevich?’

  ‘I won’t, Alyosha. He’ll never come here again. I’ll tell him to stop coming.’

  ‘So something has been happening, if it’s going to stop? Oh Lyuba, how could you? You women are all the same.’

  ‘And what about you men?’ the mother said in a hurt voice. ‘What do you mean – we’re all the same? I’m not the same. I’ve been working day and night, we’ve been making linings for locomotive fireboxes. I’ve grown thin in the face and horrible-looking, no one recognizes me, beggars don’t even ask me for money. I’ve had a hard time too, and the children were alone at home. I’d get back from work – and there was the stove to light, the supper to cook, it was dark, and the children were miserable. They couldn’t help round the house like they do now, even Petya was still little. And it was then that Semyon Yevseyevich started calling on us. He’d come round – and just sit with the children. He lives all on his own, you see. “Can I come and visit you sometimes,” he asked, “so I can warm up a bit?” I told him our house was cold too, and the firewood was damp, but he said, “It’s my soul that’s chilled to the marrow. Just let me sit near your children, you don’t need to heat up the stove for me.” “All right,” I said, “come round then. With you here the children won’t be so frightened.” Then I got used to his visits too. We all began to feel better when he came. I’d look at him and think of you, I’d remember we had you… It was so sad without you, it was awful. Why not let someone come round? I thought. Time will pass quicker, we won’t be so miserable. What use is time to us when you’re not here?’

  ‘Well go on, what happened after that?’ said the father impatiently.

  ‘Nothing happened after that. Now you’re back, Alyosha.’

  ‘Well, all right then, if that’s the truth,’ said the father. ‘It’s time to get some sleep.’

  ‘Stay up a bit longer,’ the mother begged. ‘Let’s talk, I’m so happy to be with you.’

  ‘Will they never quieten down?’ thought Petya, lying on the stove. ‘They’ve made it up – what more do they want? Mother’s got to get up early for work, but she’s still wide awake. A fine time to cheer up and stop crying!’

  ‘And did this Semyon love you?’ asked the father.

  ‘Wait a minute. I’ll go and tuck Nastya in, she gets uncovered in her sleep and she’ll be cold.’

  The mother covered Nastya up with the blanket, went into the kitchen and paused by the stove to check whether Petya was asleep. Petya knew what she was up to and started to snore. Then she went back and he heard her voice again.

  ‘I dare say he did love me. I saw him looking at me affectionately – and I’m not much to look at now, am I? Life’s been hard on him, Alyosha, and he had to love somebody.’

  ‘You might at least have given him a kiss then, if that’s the way things were,’ said the father in a nice voice.

  ‘Don’t be silly! He did kiss me, twice, but I didn’t want him to.’

  ‘Why did he do it then, if you didn’t want him to?’

  ‘I don’t know. He said he just lost his head, and that he was thinking of his wife, and I look a bit like her.’

  ‘And does he look like me?’

  ‘No, he doesn’t. No one’s like you, Alyosha, you’re the only one who’s like you.’

  ‘The only one? Counting starts with one: first one, then two.’

  ‘He only kissed me on the cheek, not on the lips.’

  ‘Makes no difference where.’

  ‘Alyosha, it does make a difference. And what do you know about how things have been for us?’

  ‘What do you mean? I’ve fought through the whole war, I’ve been closer to death than I am to you at this moment.’

  ‘While you were fighting, I was dying of worry. My hands were shaking from grief, but I had to keep working cheerfully. I had to feed the children and help our State against the Fascist enemy.’

  She was talking calmly, but her heart was heavy, and Petya was sorry for his mother; he knew that she had learnt to mend shoes for all three of them, not to have to pay a lot of money to the cobbler, and that she had repaired electric cooking rings for their neighbours in return for potatoes.

  ‘I couldn’t go on like that, longing for you,’ said the mother. ‘And if I had, it would have been the end of me, I know it would, and there were the children to think of. I needed to feel something else, Alyosha, some sort of happiness, just to get some rest. There was a man who said he loved me, and he was gentle to me, like you used to be long ago.’

  ‘You mean this Semyon Yevsey of yours?’

  ‘No, someone else. He works as an instructor for our trade union district committee, he’s an evacuee.’

  ‘To hell with who the man is! So what happened? Did he console you?’

  Petya knew nothing about this instructor, and this surprised him. ‘So our mother’s been naughty too,’ he whispered to himself. ‘Fancy that!’

  ‘I got nothing from him, no joy at all,’ the mother replied. ‘Afterwards I felt even worse. My soul had been drawn to him because it was dying, but when he was close to m
e, really close, I felt nothing. All I thought about was household things, and I wished I hadn’t let him be close. I realized I could only be calm and happy with you and that I’d only rest when you were close to me again. I’m lost without you, I can’t even keep myself going for the children. Stay with us, Alyosha, we’ll have a good life.’

  Petya heard his father get up from the bed without speaking, light his pipe and sit down on the stool.

  ‘How many times did you meet him and be really close?’ asked the father.

  ‘Only once,’ said the mother. ‘It never happened again. How many times should I have?’

  ‘As many times as you like, that’s your business,’ declared the father. ‘So why say you’re the mother of our children, and that you’ve only been a woman with me, a long time ago?’

  ‘It’s the truth, Alyosha.’

  ‘How can it be? What kind of truth? You were a woman with him too, weren’t you?’

  ‘No, I wasn’t a woman with him, I wanted to be, but I couldn’t. I felt I couldn’t go on without you. I just needed someone to be with me, I was so worn out, my heart had gone all dark, I couldn’t love my children any more, and you know I’d go through anything for them, I’d give the very bones from my body!’

  ‘Just a minute,’ said the father. ‘You say you made a mistake with this second Semyon of yours. You didn’t get any happiness from him – and yet here you are, you’re still in one piece.’

  ‘Yes,’ whispered the mother. ‘I’m still alive.’

  ‘So you’re lying to me again! So much for your truth!’

  ‘I don’t know,’ whispered the mother. ‘I don’t know very much at all.’

  ‘All right, but I know a lot, I’ve been through more than you have,’ said the father. ‘You’re a whore, that’s what you are.’

  The mother was silent. The father’s breathing was fast and laboured.

  ‘So here I am, home at last,’ he said. ‘The war’s over, and now you’ve wounded me in the heart… All right, you go and live with your Semyons. You’ve made a fool of me, you’ve turned me into a laughingstock. But I’m not a plaything, I’m a human being.’

  In the dark the father began putting on his clothes and his shoes. Then he lit the paraffin lamp, sat down at the table, and wound up his watch.

  ‘Four o’clock,’ he said to himself. ‘Still dark. It’s true what they say: women aplenty, but not a wife to be found.’

  It grew quiet in the house. Nastya was breathing evenly, asleep on the wooden couch. Up on the warm stove, Petya pressed his face into the pillow and forgot he was meant to be snoring.

  ‘Alyosha,’ said the mother in a gentle voice. ‘Alyosha, forgive me.’

  Petya heard his father groan, and then heard the sound of breaking glass; through a gap in the curtain he could see it had got darker in the other room, though a light was still burning. ‘He’s crushed the glass,’ Petya guessed. ‘And there’s no lamp-glass to be got anywhere.’

  ‘You’ve cut your hand,’ said the mother. ‘You’re bleeding. Take a towel from the chest of drawers.’

  ‘Shut up!’ the father shouted at her. ‘I can’t stand the sound of your voice. Wake the children! Wake them up this very minute! Wake them, do you hear? I’ll tell them what sort of mother they’ve got! I want them to know.’

  Nastya cried out in fear and woke up.

  ‘Mummy!’ she called out. ‘Can I get into bed with you?’

  Nastya liked getting into bed with her mother in the night, to lie under the blanket with her and get warm.

  Petya sat up on the stove, swung his legs over the edge, and said to everyone: ‘Go to sleep! Why have you woken me up? It’s not day yet, it’s still dark outside! Why are you making such a noise? Why is the lamp burning?’

  ‘Go to sleep, Nastya, go back to sleep, it’s still early, I’ll come to you in a minute,’ the mother answered. ‘And you lie down, Petya, and don’t talk any more.’

  ‘Why are you talking then?’ said Petya. ‘And what does Father want?’

  ‘What’s that to do with you?’ the father replied. ‘A right sergeantmajor you are!’

  ‘And why have you smashed the lamp-glass? Why are you frightening Mother? She’s thin enough as it is. She eats her potatoes without any butter, she gives all the butter to Nastya.’

  ‘And do you know what your mother’s been up to here, do you know what she’s been playing at?’ the father cried plaintively, like a little boy.

  ‘Alyosha!’ Lyubov Vasilyevna said softly to her husband.

  ‘Yes, I do, I know everything!’ said Petya. ‘Mother’s been crying for you, she’s been waiting for you, and now you’ve come back home – and she’s still crying! You’re the one who doesn’t know!’

  ‘You don’t understand anything yet!’ said the father furiously. ‘A fine son we’ve produced!’

  ‘I understand everything perfectly,’ Petya answered from the stove. ‘It’s you who don’t understand. There’s work to do, we have to go on living, and you two are quarrelling like stupid fools.’

  Petya stopped. He lay down on his pillow; and silently, without meaning to, he began to cry.

  ‘You’ve had things too much your own way in this house,’ said the father. ‘But it’s all the same now. You can carry on being the boss.’

  Petya wiped away his tears and answered: ‘Some father you are, saying things like that, and you a grownup who’s been through the war! You should go to the war-invalids’ co-op tomorrow – you’ll find Uncle Khariton there, behind the counter, he cuts the bread and he never cheats anyone. He’s been in the war too and come back. Go and ask him – he tells everyone, he laughs about it, I’ve heard him myself. He’s got a wife, Anyuta, she learnt to drive and now she delivers the bread, and she’s a good woman, she doesn’t steal any of it. Anyuta had a friend too, and she used to visit him and they’d have a drink and something to eat. This friend of hers has a decoration, he’s lost an arm and he’s in charge of the shop where you take your coupons to get clothes.’

  ‘Stop talking nonsense and go to sleep,’ said his mother. ‘It’ll soon be light.’

  ‘Well, you two are stopping me sleeping… And it won’t soon be light… This man with no arm made friends with Anyuta, life got better for them, but Khariton still lived at the war… Then Khariton comes back and starts cursing Anyuta. He curses her all day long and at night he has some vodka and something to eat, but Anyuta just cries and doesn’t eat at all. He curses and curses, till he’s tired out, then he stops tormenting Anyuta and says, “You fool of a woman, having only one man – and a man with only one arm at that! When I was away on my own I had Glashka and I had Aproska, and then there was Maruska and Anyushka your namesake, and then I had Magdalinka into the bargain!” And he laughs. And Anyuta laughs too. And she starts boasting about her Khariton: what a fine man he is, no better man anywhere, he killed Fascists and he had so many women after him he couldn’t ward them off… Uncle Khariton tells us all this in the shop, he’s taking in the loaves of bread one by one… And now they’re quite peaceful, they have a good life… And Uncle Khariton laughs again and says, “But I deceived my Anyuta – I hadn’t had anyone. No Glashka, no Nyushka, no Aproska, and no Magdalinka into the bargain. A soldier’s the son of the Fatherland, he’s got no time to fool around, his heart is levelled against the enemy. I just made all that up to give Anyuta a scare.” Go to bed, father, put the light out – without the glass it just smokes!’

  Ivanov listened in amazement to this story told by his son. ‘What a devil!’ he said to himself. ‘I kept thinking he’d start talking about my Masha.’

  Petya was exhausted and he began snoring; this time he really was asleep.

  When he woke up it was broad daylight, and he was frightened to find he had slept so long and not yet done anything in the house.

  No one was at home except Nastya. She was sitting on the floor turning the pages of a picture book her mother had bought her a long time ago. She looked through this book
every day, because she had no other books, and traced the words with her finger, as if she were reading.

  ‘Why are you messing up your book already?’ Petya said to his sister. ‘Put it away. Where’s mother? Has she gone to work?’

  ‘Yes,’ answered Nastya quietly, closing the book.

  ‘And where’s father got to?’ Petya looked round the house, in the kitchen and in the living room. ‘Has he taken his bag?’

  ‘Yes, he has,’ said Nastya.

  ‘What did he say to you?’

  ‘Nothing. He kissed my mouth and my eyes.’

  ‘Did he?’ said Petya, and began to think.

  ‘Get up off the floor,’ he ordered his sister. ‘I’ll give you a proper wash and get you dressed, we’re going out.’

  At that moment their father was sitting in the station. He had already drunk a large glass of vodka and had got himself a hot meal with his travel voucher. In the night he had made up his mind once and for all to take the train to the town where he had left Masha and to meet up with her there again, perhaps never to part from her. A pity he was so much older than this bathhouse-attendant’s daughter whose hair smelt of the countryside. But you can never tell – there’s no knowing the future. All the same Ivanov hoped Masha would be at least a little bit glad to see him again; that would be enough, it would mean he too had a new and close friend, one, moreover, who was beautiful and cheerful and kind. You never can tell!

  Soon the train arrived, going in the direction Ivanov had come from only yesterday. He took his kitbag and went on to the platform. ‘Masha isn’t expecting me,’ he thought. ‘She told me I’d forget her, whatever I said, and that we’d never meet again; yet here I am, on my way to her for ever.’

  He got into a carriage and stood at the end of it, so that when the train pulled out he could look for a last time at the little town where he had lived before the war and where his children had been born. He wanted to look one more time at the house he had left; it could be seen from the train – the street it stood on led to the level crossing, and the train had to go over the crossing.

  The train started, and went slowly over the points and out into the empty autumn fields. Ivanov took hold of the handrail and looked out from the carriage at what had been his hometown – at the little houses, the bigger buildings, the sheds, the lookout tower of the fire-station… In the distance he recognized two tall chimneys: one was the soap factory, the other was the brick factory – Lyuba would be working there now at the press. Let her live her own life now, and he would live his. Maybe he could forgive her, but what difference would that make? His heart had hardened against her now and there was no forgiveness in it for a woman who had kissed another man and lived with him just so that the war, and separation from her husband, would not make her so lonely and miserable. And the fact that it was the hardness of her life, and the torment of need and yearning, that had driven Lyuba to her Semyon or her Yevsey was no excuse; it was simply proof of her feelings. All love comes from need and yearning; if human beings never felt need or yearning, they would never love.