Radical Shadows

by Bradford Morrow

  LUKINISHNA. On the shelf? Lordy-lord, I’m sure we can do better than that! What with your noble nature, and … well, all your good qualities, and everything, we’ll find you a woman—even one with money!

  CAPTAIN. I don’t need a woman with money. I wouldn’t dream of doing such a despicable thing as marrying for money! I have my own money—I don’t want to be eating from her plate, I want her to eat from mine! When you marry a poor woman, she’s bound to feel and understand. I’m not that much of an egoist that I want to profit …

  LUKINISHNA. Well, yes … and one thing’s sure—a poor bride might well be prettier than a rich one …

  CAPTAIN. But I’m not interested in looks either! What for? You can’t use a pretty face as a cup and saucer! Beauty should not be in the flesh, it should be in the soul. What I need is goodness, meekness, you know, innocence … I want a wife who’ll honor me, respect me …

  LUKINISHNA. Yes! How can she not respect you if you’re her lawfully wedded husband? It’s not like she’d be uneducated or something!

  CAPTAIN. Don’t interrupt me! And I don’t need an educated wife either! Nowadays, obviously, everyone’s got an education, but there are different kinds of education. It’s all well and good if your wife can prattle in French and German and God knows what else—it’s very charming! But what use is all that if she can’t, for instance, sew a simple button onto a shirt? I come from an educated background myself. I can show my face in any circle—I can sit down and chat with Prince Kanitelin as easily as I’m chatting with you right now, but I’m a simple man, and I need a simple girl. I’m not looking for intellect. In a man, intellect is important, but a female can get by quite nicely without much intellect.

  LUKINISHNA. That’s so very true! Even the newspapers are now saying that clever people are worthless!

  CAPTAIN. A fool will both love you and respect you, and realize what my rank in life is. She will be fearful. A clever woman will eat your bread, but not feel whose bread she’s eating. I want you to find me a fool! It’s as simple as that! A fool! Do you have your eye on anyone?

  LUKINISHNA. Oh, quite a few! (She thinks.) Let me see … there are fools and there are fools … after all, even a foolish hen has her brainstorms! But you want a real idiot, right? (She thinks.) I know one, but I’m not sure if she’s what you’re looking for … she’s from a merchant family and comes with a dowry of about five thousand … I wouldn’t say she’s downright ugly, she’s, well, you know … neither here nor there. She’s skinny, very thin … gentle, delicate … and she’s kind, beyond the call of duty! She’d hand over her last piece of bread if you told her to! And she’s meek—her mother could drag her through the house by the hair, and she wouldn’t even squeak! And she fears her parents, she goes to church and at home she’s always ready to help! But when it comes to this … (She points to her forehead.) … Do not judge me too harshly, sinful old woman that I am, for my plainspokenness, for the forthright truth that I speak to you with the Lord as my witness: she’s not all there up here! A complete fool! You can’t get a word out of her, not a word, as if she were dead as a doornail. She’ll sit there tightlipped for hours, and suddenly, out of the blue—she’ll jump up! As if you’d poured boiling water over her! She jumps up as if she were scalded and starts babbling … babbling, babbling … babbling endlessly … that her parents are fools, the food’s awful, and all they do is lie, and that she has nowhere to go, that they ruined her life … “There’s no way,” the girl shouts, “that you can understand me!” The fool! A merchant called Kashalotov was wooing her—she turned him down! She laughed in his face! And he’s rich, handsome, elegant, just like a young officer! And what does she do? She snatches up a stupid book, marches off to the pantry and starts reading!

  CAPTAIN. No, she’s not a fool of the right category … find me another! (He gets up and looks at his watch.) Well, bonjour for now. I’ll be getting back to my bachelor business.

  LUKINISHNA. Well, go right along! Go with God! (She gets up.) I’ll drop by again Saturday evening with more about our bride … (She walks over to the door.) And by the way, while you’re getting back to your bachelor business, should I send you someone else for now?

  QUESTIONS POSED BY A MAD MATHEMATICIAN

  1.) I was chased by 30 dogs, 7 of which were white, 8 gray and the rest black. Which of my legs was bitten, the right or the left?

  2.) Ptolemy was born in the year 223 A.D. and died after reaching the age of eighty-four. Half his life he spent traveling, and a third, having fun. What is the price of a pound of nails, and was Ptolemy married?

  3.) On New Year’s Eve, 200 people were thrown out of the Bolshoi Theater’s costume ball for brawling. If the brawlers numbered 200, then what was the number of guests who were drunk, slightly drunk, swearing and those trying but not managing to brawl?

  4.) What is the sum of the following numbers?

  5.) Twenty chests of tea were purchased. Each chest contained 5 poods of tea, each pood comprising 40 pounds. Two of the horses transporting the tea collapsed on the way, one of the carters fell ill and 18 pounds of tea were spilled. One pound contains 96 zolotniks of tea. What is the difference between pickle brine and bewilderment?

  6.) There are 137,856,738 words in the English language, and 0.7 more in the French language. The English and the French came together and united their two languages. What is the cost of the third parrot, and how much time was necessary to subjugate these nations?

  7.) Wednesday, June 17th, 1881, a train had to leave station A. at 3 A.M. in order to reach station B. at 11 P.M.; just as the train was about to depart, however, an order came that the train had to reach station B. by 7 P.M. Who is capable of loving longer, a man or a woman?

  8.) My mother-in-law is 75, and my wife 42. What time is it?

  A SERIOUS STEP

  Aleksei Borisitch has just arisen from a deep after-lunch slumber. He is sitting by the window with his wife, Martha Afanasevna, and is grumbling. He is not pleased that his daughter Lidochka has gone for a walk in the garden with young Fyodor Petrovitch.

  “I can’t stand it,” the old man mutters, “when young girls get so carried away that they lose all sense of bashfulness! Loafing about in the garden like this, wandering down dark paths! Depravity and dissipation, that’s what it is! You, mother, are completely blind to it all! … And anyway, as far as you’re concerned, it’s perfectly fine for the girl to act like a fool … as far as you’re concerned, the two of them can go ahead and flirt all they want down there! Why, given half a chance you too, old as you are, would gladly throw all shame to the winds and rush off for a secret rendezvous of your own!”

  “Stop bothering me!” the old woman says angrily. “Look at him, he’s rambling on, and doesn’t even know what he’s rambling about! Bald numskull!”

  “Ha! Fine! Have it your way then! Let them kiss and hug all they want! Fine! Let them! I won’t be the one called to answer before the Lord Almighty once the girl’s head has been turned! Go ahead, my children, kiss—court away all you want!”

  “Stop gloating! Maybe nothing will come of it!”

  “Let us pray that nothing will come of it!” Aleksei Borisitch sighs.

  “You have always been your own daughter’s worst enemy! Ill will, that’s all she’s ever had from you! You should pray, Aleksei, that the Lord will not punish you for your cruelty! I fear for you! And we do not have all that long to live!”

  “That’s all fine and good, but I still can’t allow this! He’s not a good enough match for her, and besides, what’s the rush? With our social status and her looks, she can find herself much better fiancés. And anyway, why am I even talking to you? Ha! That’s all I need now, a talk with you! We have to throw him out and lock Lidochka in her room, it’s as simple as that! And that’s exactly what I’m going to do!”

  The old man yawns, and his words stretch like rubber. It is clear that he is only grumbling because he feels a weight in the pit of his stomach, and that h
e’s wagging his tongue just to wag it. But the old woman takes each of his words to heart. She wrings her hands and snaps back at him, clucking like a hen. Tyrant, monster, Mohammedan, effigy and a string of other special curses fly from her mouth straight at Aleksei Borisitch’s “ugly mug.” The matter would have ended as always with a momentous spit, and tears, but suddenly their eye catches something unusual: Lidochka, their daughter, her hair disheveled, comes rushing up the garden path towards the house. At the same instant, far down in the garden where the path bends, Fyodor Petrovitch’s straw hat bobs up from behind the bushes. The young man is strikingly pale. Hesitating, he takes two steps forward, waves and quickly walks off. Then they hear Lidochka running into the house, rushing through the halls and noisily locking herself in her room.

  The old man and the old woman stare at each other with stunned surprise, cast down their eyes and turn slightly pale. Both remain silent, not knowing what to say. To them, the meaning behind the fray is as clear as rain. Without a word, both of them understand and feel that while they were busy hissing and growling at each other, their daughter’s fate had been decided. The plainest human sensibility, not to mention a parent’s heart, can comprehend what minutes of agony Lidochka, locked in her room, was living through, and what an important, fateful role the retreating straw hat played in her life.

  Aleksei Borisitch gets up with a grunt and starts marching up and down the room. The old woman follows his every move, waiting with bated breath for him to say something.

  “What strange weather we’ve been having these past few days,” the old man suddenly says. “At night it’s cold, then during the day the heat’s unbearable.”

  The cook brings in the samovar. Martha Afanasevna warms the cups with hot water and then pours the tea. But no one touches it.

  “We should … we should call her … Lidochka … so she can drink her tea …” Aleksei Borisitch mumbles. “Otherwise we’ll have to put a fresh samovar on for her … I can’t stand disorder!”

  Martha Afanasevna wants to say something but cannot. Her lips twitch, her tongue does not obey and her eyes cloud over. A few moments pass and she bursts into tears. Aleksei Borisitch, himself teetering on the verge of tears, badly wants to pat the sobbing old woman on the back, but he is too proud. He must stand firm.

  “This is all nice and fine,” he grumbles. “It’s just that he should have spoken to us first … yes … first of all he should have, properly, asked for Lidochka’s hand! … After all, we might not want to give it to him!”

  The old woman waves her hands in the air, moans loudly and rushes off to her room.

  “This is a serious step …,” Aleksei Borisitch thinks to himself. “One can’t just decide willy-nilly … one has to seriously … from all sides … I’ll go question her … find out all the whys and wherefores! I’ll talk to her, and then I’ll decide … This won’t do.”

  The old man wraps his dressing gown tightly around himself and slinks to Lidochka’s door.

  “Lidochka!” he calls, timidly tugging at the doorknob. “Uhm, are you … uhm? Are you feeling ill or something?”

  No answer. Aleksei Borisitch sighs, shrugs his shoulders for some reason and walks away from the door.

  “This won’t do!” he thinks to himself, shuffling in his slippers through the halls. “One has to look at it … from all sides, to chat, discuss … the holy sacrament of marriage, one can’t just approach it with frivolity … I’ll go and talk to the old woman …”

  He shuffles into his wife’s room. Martha Afanasevna is standing before an open trunk, rummaging through heaps of linen with trembling hands.

  “There’s not a single nightshirt here …,” she mumbles. “Good, serious parents will even throw in some baby clothes for the dowry! And us, we’re not even doing handkerchiefs and towels … you’d think she wasn’t our flesh and blood, but some orphan …”

  “We have to talk about serious matters and you’re nattering on about bits of cloth … I can’t even bear to look at this … our daughter’s future is at stake, and she’s standing here like some market woman, counting bits of cloth! … This won’t do!”

  “And what are we supposed to do?”

  “We have to think, we have to look at it from all sides … have a serious talk …”

  They hear Lidochka unlock her door, tell the maid to take a letter to Fyodor Petrovitch and then lock the door again.

  “She is sending him a definite answer,” Aleksei Borositch whispers. “Ha, the simpleminded fools! They don’t have the wherewithal to turn to their elders for advice! So this is what the world has come to!”

  “Oh! I suddenly realized, Aleksei!” the old woman gasps, wringing her hands. “We’re going to have to look for a new apartment in town! If Lidochka will not be living with us, then what do we need eight rooms for?”

  “This is all foolish … balderdash … what we have to do now is to seriously …”

  Until dinnertime they scurry about the house like shadows, unable to find a place for themselves. Martha Afanasevna rummages aimlessly through the linen, whispers things to the cook and suddenly breaks into sobs, while Aleksei Borisitch grumbles, wants to discuss serious matters and talks nonsense. Lidochka appears at dinnertime. Her face is pink and her eyes slightly swollen.

  “So here she is!” the old man says, without looking at her.

  They sit down to eat silently for the first two courses. Their faces, their movements, the cook’s walk—everything is touched by a kind of shy solemnity.

  “We should, Lidochka, you know,” the old man begins, “have a serious talk … from all sides … Well yes! … uhm, shall we have some liqueur, huh? Glafira! Bring over the liqueur! Champagne wouldn’t be bad either, though, well, if we don’t have any … well, forget it … well yes … this won’t do!”

  The liqueur arrives. The old man drinks one glass after another.

  “Uhm, so let’s discuss things …,” he says. “This is a serious matter … your future … This won’t do!”

  “It’s simply awful, Daddy, how you just love to talk nonstop!” Lidochka sighs.

  “Well, yes …,” the old man says, startled. “No, you see, I was just … pour se twaddler … don’t be angry …”

  After dinner, the mother has a long whispered conversation with her daughter.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re talking pure balderdash!” the old man thinks, pacing through the house. “They don’t realize, the silly things, that this is serious … important … this won’t do! No!”

  Night falls. Lidochka is lying on her bed awake. The old couple is not sleeping either, whispering to each other till dawn.

  “Those damn flies don’t let one sleep!” Aleksei Borisitch grumbles. Yet it is not the flies that keep him awake, but happiness.

  SUPPLEMENTARY QUESTIONS FOR THE STATISTICAL CENSUS, SUBMITTED BY ANTOSHA CHEKHONTE

  16.) Are you a clever person, or are you an idiot?

  17.) Are you an honest person? A swindler? A robber? A bastard? A lawyer or …?

  18.) Who is your favorite satirist? Suvorin? Bukva? Amicus? Lukin? Yuli Schreier or …?

  19.) Are you a Joseph or a Caligula? A Shoshana or a Nana?

  20.) Is your wife a blond? A brunette? A starlet? Or a red-head?

  21.) Does your wife beat you, or not? Do you beat her, or not?

  22.) How much did you weigh in pounds when you were ten years old?

  23.) Do you partake of hot drinks—yes or no?

  24.) What were you thinking about the night you filled out these census forms?

  25.) Did you see Sarah Bernhardt on stage—yes or no?

  QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

  QUESTIONS

  1.) How can you tell what she’s thinking?

  2.) What can an illiterate man read?

  3.) Does the wife love me?

  4.) When can you sit and stand at the same time?

  ANSWERS

  1.) Search
her premises.

  2.) A heart.

  3.) Whose wife?

  4.) When you’re sitting in jail.

  O WOMEN, WOMEN!

  Sergei Kuzmitch Pochitayev, editor-in-chief of the provincial newspaper Flypaper, came home from the office tired and worn out, and slumped down on the sofa.

  “Thank God I’m finally home! Here I can rest my soul … by our warm hearth, with my wife, my darling, the only person in this world who understands me, who can truly sympathize with me!”

  “Why are you so pale today?” his wife, Marya Denisovna, asked.

  “My soul was in torment, but now—the moment I’m with you—I’m fully relaxed!”

  “What happened?”

  “So many problems, especially today! Petrov is no longer willing to extend credit to the paper. The secretary has taken to drink … I can somehow deal with all these things, but here’s the real problem, Marya. There I am, sitting in my office going over something one of my reporters wrote, when suddenly the door opens and my dear old friend Prince Prochukhantsev comes in. You know, the one who always plays the beau in amateur theatricals—he’s the one who gave his white horse to that actress, Zryakina, for a single kiss. The moment I saw him I thought: what the hell brings him here, he must want something! But I reckoned he’d probably come to promote Zryakina. So we started chatting about this and that. Finally it turns out that he hadn’t come to push Zryakina—he brought some poems for me to print! ‘I felt,’ he tells me, ‘a fiery flame and … a flaming fire! I wanted to taste the sweetness of authorship!’