Treasury of Russian Short Stories 1900-1966

by Wassner, Selig O. ;

  Mariana traipsed around the chamber and suddenly began improvising to the music floating in from the radio:

  “Hey, you dearie, friend of mine,

  Let me give you please a cue:

  Stop your mopin’, stop your cryin’,

  ’cause my love is still with you.”

  The other girl chimed in:

  “Not in dancin’ but in ploughin’

  It is always you’n me,

  Never higher, never lower,

  Nothing but equality.”

  “Bravo, Lyonka,” Dusya shouted. “Now you, Mariana, it’s your turn.”

  Mariana knocked her heels against the floor and whooped:

  “Hey, you lassies, time to flirt,

  A new agronomist has come.

  Strike a friendship, be alert,

  An’ perhaps there will be fun.”

  A loud spontaneous giggle followed, and then—silence. “Be quiet, all of you,” Aunt Daria chided.

  “Don’t worry, he’s still asleep,” Mariana laughed. “If he wasn’t wouldn’t he’ve come out?”

  They waited. But Anton smiled and decided to keep up the pretense.

  “Well, he won’t, who cares,” Mariana snorted. “Just let him not try to take a peek while I try my jacket.”

  They all began to talk. Somebody said that the same fellows who brought the movie last time were here again. Somebody suggested that Mariana flirt a little and they’d all get free tickets. “What’s the matter with you girls,” Mariana pretended annoyance. “I’ve enough money earned to buy myself a ticket.”

  “Mariasha,” Lyonka quipped. “You know who I saw at the fair yesterday—that crush of yours?”

  “Him, Fingers?” Mariana laughed. “Oh, why didn’t I go with you? By the way, girls, I want to sell last year’s wheat. I have a yen for a woolen custom-made suit in blue’n white stripes. Anybody know how wheat’s selling now?”

  “The price’s quite low, Mariana.”

  “There it goes. Mother keeps saying, wait, it’ll go up. Yeah, to heck it will. Soon enough nobody’ll want it.”

  They all laughed. “Let’s try your jacket,” Dusya suggested.

  “All right, but make sure, girls, that nobody ogles my beauty,” Mariana warned. For a while, as the other two were whispering to each other, she was silent. “Listen to this,” she broke in, “we had a plane come to fertilize our wheat and I decided to take a ride. That no-good pilot ties me with a belt and over the ravine he turns wheels-up and gives me the scare of my life.”

  They all laughed. “Mariana,” Aunt Daria asked. “Are you going to take a kitten from my litter? They can see already.”

  “Wait till the moon’s nice’n young, Aunt Daria,” Mariana sighed. “No, I’ve got no luck in life—not even with kittens. No husband; took already three kittens, they all either died or got lost.”

  Everybody laughed again. “If I had a husband,” Mariana said in a loud voice, “I’d bear him five kids.”

  “How about those who have husbands and still no kids,” Lyonka challenged.

  “That’s not fair, girls,” Mariana insisted. “Just look how beautiful I am.”

  “Look at that jacket,” Lyonka marveled. “That Dusya has hands of gold. What a pity they made her steward.”

  “We are all happy about it,” Mariana declared. “She’s the first steward in years who gets things done.”

  “Oh, stop it,” Dusya objected.

  “All right, let’s go, girls,” Mariana chanted.

  “Where to?” Aunt Daria shouted. “Dusya ’asn’t ’ad time to eat yet. As soon as she came she scrubbed the floor and sat down to your jacket. Wait till she eats. Don’t worry, she’ll catch up with you.”

  Mariana and her friend left. It became quiet. “Eat, daughtie,” Aunt Daria said affectionately, bringing in the fried chicken. Over the radio a muffled voice was declaring his love to Snow White. Dusya ate in silence. “Mom,” she asked, almost in a whisper, “do you know if the Kuznetsovs have sold that curtain lace?”

  The old woman gasped. “Made up your mind, Dusya?” she asked in a trembling voice.

  “I have. I just can’t see that little girl …”

  “You can see best for yourself, daughter,” Aunt Daria said. “As far as the curtain lace goes … I’ll find out for you today.”

  Dusya finished her meal in silence and left, softly shutting the door behind her. Anton turned around to the wall and closed his eyes.

  * * *

  In the morning the chairman of the kolkhoz and Pyotr Grigoryevitch, the party secretary, came to get acquainted with Anton. With them was a ruddy, heavy-set man who, the chairman said, was the senior livestock technician of the neighboring state kolkhoz. They all went outside. The storks were making noise on the roof.

  “Now since we have our own agronomist we’ll go places,” the chairman beamed. He told Anton that he was planning to sow new crops. He sounded like an intelligent, energetic man, easy to work with. His enthusiasm transferred itself to Anton. Pyotr Grigoryevitch talked more about people. “We’ve new blood now,” he said. Anton remembered Dusya and turned around.

  Two women stood on the threshold of the cottage. One—small, fair-haired, with hazel eyes standing out darkly against her pale face, had a small, stern mouth; the other—in a white blouse with red buttons played with her braid of black hair. Seeing they were the object of the men’s attention, the two girls came down.

  “Yevdokia Vasilyevna, steward,” the fair-haired woman introduced herself, reaching out to Anton a small, firm hand. The other girl just said hello. And then she laughed out. “My, my, you’re quite a heavy sleeper, Comrade Agronomist.”

  “You are Mariana,” Anton blurted out. Unable to tear his eyes away from her pretty, proud-featured face, he thought of yesterday.

  “Now, on second thought, you aren’t such a heavy sleeper,” Mariana chuckled.

  Dusya got into a conversation with the chairman and Pyotr Grigoryevitch, but now and then she’d glance up at Anton, at Mariana, then drop her eyes and continue talking. The livestock technician hadn’t said a word all that time. He sat on the bench, staring at the ground and drawing in the sand with a stick.

  “Let’s go and see our crew,” Dusya exclaimed.

  “All right, let’s,” the chairman agreed.

  “We all won’t fit in the car,” Pyotr Grigoryevitch warned.

  “Comrade Agronomist and me will walk ahead,” Mariana addressed Anton. “Is it all right with you, Comrade Agronomist?”

  “Sure, sure,” Anton was quick to consent. He had been looking at her, a smile on his face, unaware of his smile.

  “Nicolai Nicolayevitch,” he suddenly heard Dusya calling out. “Would you mind coming inside for a moment?” The livestock technician rose from the bench. So that’s who he is, Anton thought. Now she’s going to tell him. …

  “So are we going or not, Comrade Agronomist?” Mariana asked coquetishly. Anton opened the wicket for her but before leaving the yard he looked back again. Dusya stood in the doorway to let the livestock technician pass, her gaze wistfully fixed on them.

  Now she’s going to tell him, Anton said to himself, reluctant to leave. He heard Mariana’s gay laughter; he turned around and slammed the wicket. “Scat, scat,” Mariana shouted at the geese crowding the road. Fluttering heavily, they winged toward the river like grey and white clouds.

  * * *

  “Nicolai Nicolayevitch,” Dusya said as soon as they were inside. “Please forgive me that I took so long to make up my mind. I have now; I’m afraid I have to tell you very frankly not to wait in vain. I cannot marry you, Nicolai Nicolayevitch.”

  As the livestock technician stepped from foot to foot, not saying anything, Dusya continued: “You’re a good man, Nicolai Nicolayevitch. I have nothing against you, and I’m very, very sorry for your little girl. … But I just cannot marry you.”

  Dusya paused, waiting for him to say something, but he maintained his silence. “There’s no love bet
ween us, Nicolai Nicolayevitch,” she resumed again, “so what’s the use,” she sighed and looked down. “Maybe I’ll regret it some day. But please you have to forgive and excuse me.”

  Nicolai Nicolayevitch stood for a while, then bowed in silence, and left.

  Dusya sat down and put her head on the cool sewing-machine stand. “No,” she uttered aloud. “No, I won’t regret it.”

  She got up and walked outside. The chairman and Pyotr Grigoryevitch were still in the yard, watching the father stork teaching his offspring to fly. The old clecleck fluttered his wings, pushed away from the roof and flew up. The young clecleck also fluttered its wings but was afraid to take off. The chairman and Pyotr Grigoryevitch laughed.

  Ahead of them, in the cloud of dust raised by the departed flock of geese, some sparrows were taking a merry bath. Dusya walked up to the two men. “Let’s go, Pyotr Grigoryevitch,” she said. “We don’t want our new agronomist to lose his way, do we?”

  1958

  Tsat Mozambique

  by Tatyana Taess

  Tatyana Nicolayevna Taess (Sosoyura), born in 1906, graduated from the Odessa State Conservatory in 1927. Her collection of short stories, The Long Road, appeared in 1951, followed by another collection, The Chief Editor in 1956. Her favorite theme—moral problems resulting from routine life.

  Aunt Polya was the second-floor stewardess.

  She was a corpulent, middle-aged woman with big feet clad in man’s shoes. “The Devil from Radki,” the chambermaids called her. Aunt Polya had an obsession for cleanliness, a tempestuous passion which had been striking even in Radki, the village she hailed from. It was a known fact that Radkian housewives whitewashed their ovens daily after each dinner; while she had lived in Radki, Aunt Polya used to whitewash not only the oven but also the walls of her cottage. No Radkian woman had ever been that dedicated.

  Aunt Polya had left Radki twenty-five years ago, yet her passion was as unabated as the first day she came into this little inn. Every morning she personally supervised her young chambermaids as they scrubbed the hall and each room. She made them polish the windowpanes until they sparkled; first she’d walk up and make a few imperceptible, circular swings with her rag; then she’d step back and examine the job with the most critical eye—squinting like a painter who had just put on the last touch to his masterpiece—and the glass would have to appear as transparently weightless as a sun ray.

  The inn had been built for kolkhoz farmers who’d come to Moscow for the Agricultural Exhibition. Aunt Polya’s floor was the milkmaids’ dormitory. They’d come in late spring, bringing with them their record milk-yielding cows, and leave in late fall after the exhibition closed. They were good tenants, these serious steppe denizens. In the course of a summer Aunt Polya usually managed to become good friends with most of them. In the first evenings, when they’d return tired from the exhibition, she’d bring them kettles with hot water and tea before they even asked for it. The milkmaids would enjoy their tea and invite the stewardess to partake. Aunt Polya would at first decline, just to be polite, then sit down and get herself a cup. She’d have no trouble keeping up with their drinking habits—gulping down from three to four huge bellied cups as big as milk pails—while discussing events of the day at the exhibition.

  And there would always be events galore. … Visitors would be crowding the cow station every day from morning till night, asking questions, making all kinds of notes in their little notebooks. There’d be fussing and bustling and the milkmaids would suffer watching their protégées become nervous under unfamiliar conditions, losing their appetites and their milk.

  This spring it had been Xenya Parfenovna who got upset more than anybody else. Xenya was a round, vivacious little woman from the kolkhoz “The Red Ray.” One evening, the moment she entered the room, she threw off her city slippers (to let her feet breathe freely) and began to spout off. “They put her in the middle,” Xenya began telling excitedly, wiping off her chubby cheeks, “folks sittin’ all around on chairs, like in a circus, lights turned on, even movie people’re there to take pitchers. … Then they say to me, ‘Parfenovna, will you please demonstrate electromilking for us.’ I try, but she don’t yield, my cow; stands there like a blob but no milk. I wished we both dropped dead on the spot.”

  A few gulps of tea, Xenya agitated her pink toes rapidly under the table and concluded grievously, “Whoever heard of milking a cow in a circus?”

  Aunt Polya had tried to comfort her. “Don’t get so upset, Xenya. I’ve been here many a year, and every year milkmaids have to go through a helluva time for a few days before the cows get used to it. Later, before you know it, you’ll forget all about it.”

  There was a silent, sinuous woman from the Trans-Volga country lodging in the same corner room. She had been shaking her head in between sips of tea as Xenya was unburdening herself but said nothing. That woman had brought a camel to the exhibition. Aunt Polya had made a special trip to see it. All the camel did was stand there, stretch its neck and spit. A haughty head that camel had, like a peacock, though no bigger than a snake’s. Aunt Polya had walked around it several times and yet hadn’t been able to understand why nature created such a bizarre thing. But the reticent Volga woman had adored her pet to the point of getting up every night and groping her way through the darkened exhibition grounds to make sure that her camel had everything it wanted.

  Several weeks went by; the summer was almost half over when a sudden order came: all rooms were to be vacated and the milkmaids transferred to another dormitory, in another inn. Subsequently, Ivan Nifontitch, the manager, gathered all the employees and declared that the inn was assigned to house delegates to the International Youth Festival.

  The second-floor stewardess was not an illiterate woman. She listened to the radio every morning and had heard so much about that festival that she thought she knew all there was to know about it. However, when it was announced that festival delegates were going to live in this inn, on her floor, she became so excited that her knees buckled under her. At the meeting, she sat poker-faced and stern as usual, her starched kerchief bound tightly over her dark hair without a trace of grey, trying not to give away her nervousness. Only when the manager droned in his boring voice, “We shall fight for cleanliness, Comrades,” did Aunt Polya stir and shout out for the whole hall to hear, “You ain’t talkin’ to children, Ivan Nifontitch.”

  She came home full of elation, bursting to share her thoughts with her daughter. But Marina was getting ready to go out to the movies with her husband. She listened for a while, sitting in front of the mirror, dressed in nothing but a blue slip and bra while little Gnatick played with her curlers. “It’s interesting,” Marina said, “they’ll even come from Venezuela.”

  Venezuela? Aunt Polya had never heard of it. Assuming that her daughter made a remark only for the sake of saying something and wasn’t interested in what her mother had to say, Aunt Polya felt hurt. She thumped out in her man’s shoes and went to the kitchen to prepare supper.

  Time passed; every day Aunt Polya expected the new guests to arrive but the inn remained empty. The rooms sparkled with the flawless cleanliness of scoured boats, and a large dining room improvised on the lawn under a canvas tent was vacant too. On a nearby street crossing a gay, wooden effigy of a little man in a cap had been put up, and under its pointing hand there was a sign in a foreign language: KHOTEL. That’s how the place is called now, Aunt Polya thought. She liked the sound—so unfamiliarly important! Yet, she couldn’t shake off that fear that they’d run out of delegates before it came to her “khotel.”

  At last rumors began to spread that the other inns (or khotels) next to the exhibition grounds were filling up. Nobody had seen the newcomers as yet, but the news had rolled up to the second floor. The stewardess’ duties ended at six o’clock. She could hardly wait. The moment the night shift came to relieve her, she rushed to cast a military eye at the file of chambermaids lined up for inspection, and hurried out into the drab street. Here she stop
ped—the din was as heavy as in a railway station.

  Several identical yellow buses were lined up in a goose-file. Curiosity seekers crowded the sidewalk, youngsters kept diving in and out, and old women from faraway alleys had come to have a look at the strangers. Aunt Polya haughtily pursed her lips and walked up to the first bus. What she saw made her shudder.

  Dark-skinned, frail-looking lads in light jackets that looked like ladies’ blouses, and scrawny girls in tight pants, with curly, short-cut hair were noisily unloading their baggage. There were shouts and laughter until the last suitcase and knapsack was unloaded, until everybody threw his luggage over his shoulder, and went off toward his “khotel,” curiously glancing around.

  The stewardess walked up to the next bus. Bare-kneed fellows in plaid skirts, fuzzy-cheeked and wholesome, were coming out unhurriedly. One of them put a pipe into his mouth and began to wail like a blindman at a fair; somebody else blew a trumpet. One blue-eyed, ruddy-cheeked girl kept shouting “hello” to the on-lookers—one could have thought she was talking into a telephone.

  Another bus came. All of its passengers wore identical tall, red hats with tassels that looked exactly like the dwarfs’ in Gnatick’s fable books. Then came another; a fat guy in short leather pants and a feather in his hat climbed out backwards. A little, red-haired boy tore away from the group of youngsters and ran up to him. “Here,” he offered the foreigner a badge bearing an emblem.

  “O,” the fatso exclaimed eagerly, grabbing the badge. “O,” he repeated, taking off a trinket from his lapel and giving it to the boy. The boy rushed back to his gang, triumphantly clutching the trinket in his hand.

  The noise and the unfamiliar chatter gave Aunt Polya a sharp pain under her shoulder blades. It suddenly occurred to her that while she had been standing here guests might have arrived at her inn. This thought made her clatter back so fast that she was amazed at her speed.

  The guests for her “khotel,” however, didn’t arrive until next morning.