“Intelligentshiyuz … revolutyuz …” Robber repeated strange, complicated words and twirled his finger near his neck. “I’ll marry a duchess!”
The hotter Robber got, the more complicated and unlikely his stories grew.
Petka listened to his father, open-mouthed, staring at the robber’s trilevel nose.
“All Petka and I need is for the cockerel to be whole, Petka and I don’t need anything else!” Grandmother seemed to be apologizing for something on behalf of Petka and herself.
Emptying his final cup, Robber left with the last of Grandmother’s change in his fist. Grandmother was left alone with Petka and the turkey cockerel. They cleared up, cleaned the samovar, washed the cups, brushed the crumbs into a bag, Petka did his lessons, they sat, yawned, played the silent game, and whiled away the evening. Then, after prayers, they looked under the couch: was the cockerel asleep or not? He had fallen asleep a long time ago, and they went to bed, too.
Petka tossed and couldn’t sleep. Grandmother turned from side to side: anxiety and fear gnawed at her.
“Petushok!” Grandmother called: she couldn’t bear her fear anymore.
Petka, tossing in bed with his eyes open, saw himself as a robber, and out of the complicated words his father used he was building himself a robber’s work, a robber’s life.
“Petushok, hey, Petushok!” Grandmother called even more softly, more gently.
“What, Grandmother?” Petka jumped up, he had heard Grandmother: he thought she had called loudly.
“It’s me, Petushok, don’t be afraid.” She was so scared she could barely raise her voice. “Don’t go away anywhere, Petushok …”
“I’ll join the robbers, Grandmother,” Petka responded in a lively voice. “I’ll be a robber! And so will you, Grandmother … we’ll be robbers!”
“Don’t leave, Petushok!” she squeaked in a high, barely audible voice, even Petka couldn’t hear her, and lay flat in deathly fear. Every bump, every creak sounded threatening to her now, a terrifying barking dog, as if someone was creeping up to the house, making his way to their basement entrance, a thief, an evil man, coming for Petka, her Petushok.
Petka lay there with open eyes, not Petka but a real robber, black, his hair greased with butter like the Morozov coachman, his nose three noses, one on top of the other, his hand crippled, he would take Grandmother with him and the turkey cockerel, and they would fly to Khitrovka in a balloon, and they would be robbers, there would be a bloody battle …
The flame crackled gently in the votive light before the icons and crosses, before the Four Holy Days—Intercession, All Sorrows, Akhtyrka, and Sign—before the Moscow miracle-workers—Maxim the Blessed, Vasily the Blessed, and Ioann the Holy Fool. The mountain mother deserts, fiery in the candlelight, jabbed the Moscow Kremlin with their flaming tongues.
“I’ve joined the robbers, Grandmother!” Petka muttered in his sleep.
The troubled autumn ended and winter came. Grandmother’s anxiety did not cease, and Petka became completely incorrigible: when the scallywag got hiccups, instead of reciting Our Father, which he used to recite and it always helped, he played the Kalechina-Malechina counting game! Grandmother did not calm down, the streets did not quiet down, the icy cold did not chill Moscow’s fever, life did not enter its channel of daily cares and daily work.
By unknown paths, unsensed, disaster stalked, attacking the Russian people, ruthless, inexorable, pitiless, it forced them into foreign distant lands to foreign nations where it swept them down for shame and humiliation, led them into the alien Ocean and there drowned them with an unending tempest wilder than storms, and dark, insatiable, it came from the alien yellow land, and approached the very heart, the denounced and bitterly miserable land, the Moscow River.
Whether it was for our sins, as Grandmother liked to say, or as edification for the ignorant, as the indigent talkers said at the tearoom in Zatsepa near the Church of Frol and Lavr, or for the whole world in its insane silence, the Russian land, the Russian people, numb, voiceless, frail, punished over and over, having survived so many troubles, was giving itself over to a new disaster.
After Nikola’s day, on Saturday Grandmother sat down with Petka; it was dinner time, and they started eating, what God had sent—there was no time for Grandmother at this point, people forgot about the old woman, and often Grandmother and Petka spent a week at a time on short rations.
“Grandmother!” Petka jumped up from his chair. “Hear that?”
Grandmother put down her spoon and picked at the crust of bread.
“Grandmother …” Petka stuck his head out the small window. Grandmother did not move, her head shaking as it had around Robber.
“They’re shooting, Grandmother!” Petka ran out the door.
They were shooting in the city far away, shooting on Tverskaya Street somewhere, and the heavy thud seemed to be carried underground to Zemlyanoy Val—the windows shook.
Grandmother hadn’t heard it. Petka did.
And now Grandmother could hear it and she crossed herself, as she did for thunder.
Rebellious days were upon them. Every corner, every intersection was involved: insatiable, dark, punitive, the trouble awaited day and night, in empty places and in public.
Grandmother was afraid to let Petka away from her. Sin wasn’t far away: Grandmother saw robbers everywhere, in the renters who moved workers from factories and plants into rooms, the vigilantes, the dragoons, and the Cossacks who rode along Sadovaya to the Kursk Station.
The shooting continued, Grandmother could hear it clearly, somewhere on Tverskaya, in Kudrino, on Presnya, and here, two steps away, on Meshchanskaya somewhere, they kept shooting and shooting, and with every hour the roar was louder in the basement, it was like a whip cracking, or dry branches snapping.
Grandmother didn’t sleep a single night after Nikola’s day, she guarded Petka the way she had guarded the turkey cockerel’s life in the first weeks, the way Petka himself watched the turkey hen on the egg through the crack in the back of the shed.
The boy yearned to be free, he couldn’t stay still in the room, he was restless.
Petka ran with some boys to Sukharevka and Grandmother ran after him.
What fun for Petka: in the past, kids built a hill on ice this way, but now they were barricading the street.
Petka grabbed a telegraph pole.
“Haul it!” the agitated boy yelled to his grandmother.
That was a misery for Grandmother: her hands were shaking with fear, how could she haul a pole! She could barely hold a piece of kindling. She picked up a handful of slivers, carried the kindling after the boys and put it down, her contribution, to the civilian outpost—to the mound of piled up crates, gratings, telegraph poles, and signs.
“Go, granny!” they joked about Grandmother, and a robber janitor grinned, kicking one boot against the other.
“For our sins!” whispered Grandmother, she was exhausted with her sticks, but she wouldn’t move away from Petka.
For her boy was a fine one, he climbed up high, to the very top beneath the carmine flag, angled his cap like a daring Cossack, with the patent leather visor, and the flag above him, as red as the covers on the Communion chalice.
How could you not try to keep up with him, you’d follow him to the top of the Sukhurev Tower!
That evening when the bells rang for the evening service and the shooting burst into the peals of the bells horribly, Grandmother started getting ready for church.
Petka ran ahead and played with the kids near the deacon’s cowshed: they were playing Cossacks and strikers.
Grandmother, dressed in her quilted cotton jacket, tied at an angle, in her black wool shawl, looked under the couch at the hungry cockerel: asleep or not? He was asleep. She adjusted the votive light and the righteous faces looked at her from the dusk: Miracle Workers, the Mother of God, and she felt troubled.
She was sorry that they were poor, so poor, the holidays were coming and there was nothing to
celebrate with! It was hard for her and time for the grave and she was worried for Petka … the little child, if he just could stand on his own two feet! Innocent boy.
“Holy Mother of God, Blessed, Lord, Protectress,” Grandmother put her fingers together to make the sign of the cross—
“Finish up!” said someone in another room, maybe the painters, maybe the hatters, one of the renters.
Grandmother shuddered, turned, and saw her nephew Robber in the doorway.
“Give me money, old woman!” he approached.
Grandmother shook her head: you can cut off her head, but she has nothing.
“Nothing, you say?”
“I swear to God … nothing.”
Robber pulled Grandmother by the scruff of her neck and shoved her nose at the dresser.
“Search, I say!”
Grandmother felt around under the icon shelves and silently—her tongue was tied by fear—handed Robber three balls of rope: a ball of thick rope, a ball of thin rope, and a ball of multicolored laces, collected over many years …
Robber punched the old woman, a ball rolled away, and Grandmother sat down like the turkey hen before Petka and froze in a crouch.
Robber was on a rampage: he overturned her oak death trunk, iron clad, tossed out the funeral things—shirt, shroud, slippers, fabric—went into the wardrobe, took off the door, and there was nothing there, grabbed the dresser, rummaged through all the drawers, turned it all upside down, there was nothing! Only the middle drawer wouldn’t open, he tried and tried, it stayed shut …
The rolling ball of rope woke up the cockerel, he came out from beneath the couch, flapped his wings and sang hoarsely—sang, as if at midnight to his own detriment, so tiny, yellow, with a crest …
Robber caught the cockerel, wrung his neck, and growled at Grandmother: “Choke to death!” and left.
There, out in the yard by the cowshed, it was like Sodom, the kids went wild.
With a shout, Petka tore out of the yard onto the street—one gang was pursuing the other—and ran across the street.
A passing patrol from Sukharevka, bypassing the Khishinskaya factory, opened fire to clear the way.
Petka fell nose down into the snow, grabbed his cap—
And did not get up.
With an exploded chest, a bullet wound through his heart, stiff, Petka was returned to the basement to his Grandmother along with his cap with the patent leather visor.
This is how, this is where, this is whence disaster came, accept the disaster.
Grandmother accepted it all.
She is so very old, and yet she lives in her tiny basement room, lives on, not missing a single service, and when there is a funeral at Nikola Kobylsky, she goes to the liturgy and the service for the dead to stand with a candle.
Grandmother has no one. She gave her nephew the silver glass holder with grapes and two silver spoons that she had saved for Petka; well, now he needed nothing! Her nephew vanished with the glass holder and spoons, he no longer dropped in, and the turkey hen died.
The cockerel is coming, bringing the red sun! Grandmother remembered Petka singing the song, she thought of Petka so often. Her Petushok.
And softly she recounts, so softly as if someone is sleeping or sick in the room and she does not want to awaken or disturb him with her voice, she recounts everything about the turkey hen and the miraculous egg, about the turkey cockerel, about Robber, and how she and Petka built a barricade on Sukharevka, and how Petka had been returned to her with an exploded chest, his heart shot, stiff, and Petka’s cap with the patent leather visor …
“I went, Father,” softly, even more softly, said Grandmother, “I went to light a candle for Ivan Oslyanichek the Injured, I wanted to light it, but my hand would not go up …”
Grandmother raised her shaking hand, and the hand lowered: it was her injury and hurt, innocent, bitter, and mortal, that lowered her hand, darkened her eyes with bitterness, and her hand shook, kept trying to rise but unable; her blue empty veins tightened hard, her dry fingers tightened hard: she was holding the candle for Ivan Oslyanichek the Injured, saint of God, who accepts the hurt and injuries, innocent, bitter, mortal, all of them …
“And I did!”
Grandmother nodded and now easily raised her hand that way—the way the hands of the Moscow Miracle-Workers, Maxim the Blessed, Vasily the Blessed, and Ivan the Holy Fool are raised, and her hand did not shake: she was holding a candle, its burning, inextinguishable flame, burning the last innocent, bitter, painful hurt in her heart; and her eyes shone gently: that was faith glowing in her eyes, firm, inviolable, carrying a candle to her last days, a holy light through all the disaster, through every trouble, through all the deprivations, when everything has been taken away—the turkey cockerel—Petka—Petushok.
03
THE SACRIFICE
THE BORODINS LIVE ON THEIR ESTATE AT AN UNSETTLED TIME IN RUSSIA—THE REVOLUTION OF 1905 HAS SPREAD TO THE COUNTRYSIDE, WHERE REBELLIOUS PEASANTS ATTACK THE WEALTHY LANDOWNERS AND THREATEN EXPROPRIATION, DEMANDING THEIR SHARE OF LAND.
1
Now anyone who’s ever been to Blagodatnoe will in all good conscience, without lying, say good things about the old Borodin nest. Its name, given in the mists of time, was not a joke. You couldn’t come up with a better one, no matter how you try. And even though grapes were not growing and ripening in its gardens and birds of paradise were not singing, still, it was full of grace, as its name told.
God’s own grace poured on his good earth!
The old house with columns, the allée of maples, the fruit garden, fields, forest, cattle, people—everything belonging to Blagodatnoe delighted not only the neighbors but everyone who visited from other parts either on business or just because, both the sniffing barbered St. Petersburger and the shaggy pampered Muscovite.
The house was a full cup, harmony and order.
I swear, a bee would be jealous!
As for Borodin himself, Pyotr Nikolaevich, he was a famous eccentric and jokester, hard to find many like him: wherever he shows up, in any society and at whatever time, laughter ensues the moment he opens his mouth.
Both acquaintances and strangers laughed. It didn’t matter.
This gray, unchanging jokester had a strange face. Years passed, he turned forty, but the same expression, as if printed once and for all, lay on his immobile, frozen features.
It was strange that as people were rolling on the floor laughing, their bellies aching, the face of the deathly pale eccentric remained calm—no smile, no laughter, only spooky glints in his sunken, frozen eyes.
And no less strange was that his speech, which made all and sundry laugh, had a mechanical ring to it, like a talking doll. And when someone tried to write down his speech, the paper held only the simplest ordinary words—not the least bit funny.
And despite the apparently incommensurate appearance of Pyotr Nikolaevich Borodin with the inappropriateness of some of his jokes, no one ever thought to ask:
What is the secret here, what makes it so funny and hilarious?
The rare lover of guessing games—you inevitably find one—tried to give an explanation, aiming as they say not at the eyebrow but the eye: it’s the play of physiognomy, exquisite mimicry, extraordinarily sharp gaze—it’s clear, obvious, understandable.
Fortunately, all these explanations that set your teeth on edge then disappeared: no one wanted to ask anything, and there was no need. It’s funny, amusing—what more do you need?
Pyotr Nikolaevich had never served anywhere and was not involved in public affairs. At one time he had been elected district marshal of the nobility.
That memorable Borodin leadership quickly annoyed everyone! Not because things were bad or they saw any unpleasantness from him, quite the contrary. People couldn’t remember a merrier year: all affairs were turned into an amusement, total laughter and delight, but the result was such a mess, all sorts of contradictions and God knows what else appeared, you couldn’t clear it u
p. And if you didn’t know Pyotr Nikolaevich, you might at least wonder if he were in his right mind, and I think someone in St. Petersburg actually said that either in a salon or in a report. Only, fortunately, everything ended well.
No living person lacks odd habits, everyone has his own quirks.
Well, Pyotr Nikolaevich was no exception.
Pyotr Nikolaevich had a passion for tidying and putting things away, and he did it so cleverly that afterward finding the tidied object was extremely difficult or impossible:
Many things vanished, even very necessary ones.
Then he liked to establish order, moving around tables, chairs, and shelves, rehanging paintings, reshelving books in the library, which in fact was his constant occupation from morning until lunch every day.
At lunch, preferring rich foods like giblets, brains, and thighs, and knowing no measure, he often overate and therefore always complained about his stomach.
He liked making fires in the stoves—he was always chilly—and he wandered with a long poker from stove to stove, stirring up the heat.
He liked talking to the servants and the workers and even though the conversation always began with work it somehow ended up in complete nonsense, which brought about very unwanted and sad consequences for general order:
Not only did no one fear Pyotr Nikolaevich but—no point in hiding this!—they had no faith in him.
Besides which, fooling around and making things up, he promised completely unrealizable things: he mockingly gave his land to all and sundry, as the wave of discontent among the landless rose; of course, not a very large measure—three paces long and one pace wide—a joke plot.
What else? Yes … he had a passion for killing chickens, and he killed them as well as a real chef: the bird with its throat cut did not flap its wings or run around headless, as it often happens with an inexperienced hand.
And he also liked looking at corpses, and the more repulsive the dead face, the stronger the sense of corruption, the more attractive he found the corpse. Whenever someone died in the village Father Ivan let Borodin know, and he would immediately have his carriage prepared, drop everything, and Pyotr Nikolaevich would fly to the place or the house where the deceased lay.
The Little Devil and Other Stories Page 5