Treasury of Russian Short Stories 1900-1966
Page 15
Aunt Polya was in her office when she heard the sputtering of the motor under the window. She adjusted the kerchief on her head and walked out into the hall. The buzzing of voices came up from the vestibule. The stewardess leaned over the railing and looked down—her heart stopped beating.
A woman in a loose, white robe with a slit cut out was coming up the stairs. Her head looked like a lambskin—covered with curly, short-cut hair. Her skin? Her skin was black! It wasn’t swarthy or tanned, simply black—as black as coal. The woman wore sneakers on her stockingless feet; she came closer and closer, staring at the stewardess with vivacious eyes then started to smile.
Aunt Polya muttered to herself and recoiled, shuffling her feet. Utterly bewildered, she watched the staircase which was getting crowded. Most of the women wore free-flowing robes or skirts that looked like wraps of gay fabric; exotic necklaces tinkled as they walked; flowers peeked out from behind their ears. The men’s clothes were no less weird: one wholesome, tall fellow seemed to be wrapped in nothing but a sheet; his shoulders glistened as if they had been dipped in grease. Just a handful of the men and women were dressed like Russian people. The contrast between these dark-skinned, strangely-clad, strangely-talking people and those dear milkmaids gave Aunt Polya once again a pain under her shoulder blades. She stood there dumbstruck, unable to move a foot. She watched Ivan Nifontitch, his face red as if he had just come out of a steam bath, threading his way among the rapping, dancing strangers, trying not to look frustrated in his efforts to assign the guests to their rooms. The stewardess couldn’t budge. …
She still was in a stupor when the hallway had emptied, when the chambermaids began darting frantically from room to room, until a loud, clanking crash at her feet woke her up. The youthful maid Gapkina had broken a pitcher! Aunt Polya cast her subordinate an annihilating look and left her to collect the broken glass; she went to her office.
The corner room, the stewardess noticed, was still unoccupied. A cheerful room, she thought, remembering the previous occupants—Xenya and the camel-girl. Too bad! Aunt Polya turned around and took another look at the stairway; two more dark people were coming up.
They looked like teen-agers, so young and thin they were. Between them they carried a basket, the sort of hamper the inn laundry was brought up in. The white-robed man had a gay-colored piece of baggage under one arm and a bundle hung down from his shoulder. The woman wore a necklace that looked like a string of dried corn.
They reached the middle of the hallway and began looking around, a lost expression on their youthful faces. The man smiled sheepishly and showed Aunt Polya a key, the key to the corner room. The woman tilted her cropped head and smiled too. Aunt Polya stared at them and then … took a glimpse at the basket. What she saw made her gasp. …
In it was an infant, asleep. …
He lay amid pillows, as black as a little lump of coal, his little foot stuck out, baring a sole as dark-pink as a rose petal. His breathing was loud.
“Oh, Mother, Mother!” These were the only words Aunt Polya was able to utter. “Oh, Mother,” her eyes were glued at the basket. The woman had said something, one long word, but Aunt Polya didn’t understand. She took the key from the man and went to open the corner room. The couple followed.
The stewardess was anxious to get home this evening, to tell her daughter and son-in-law all she had seen today. She’d try to relate everything, from the very beginning; she’d talk slowly and watch them gasp and shoot up their arms before she’d go on with her story. She’d watch them shake their heads as she’d tell them about this couple who had dared to travel through half the world with an infant in a basket. What a day!
But nobody was home. … Only the cat sat on the table, nipping leaves off the bouquet in the flowerpot. “Scram, you viper,” Aunt Polya screamed. She felt hurt, ready to cry. After tossing around a few pillows and pulling off bed sheets, she went to sleep without supper.
Next morning she came to work quite early; the guests had been up already. Doors were slamming, black-skinned lodgers popped in and out of rooms like jacks out of boxes. They were darting by, their robes floating, rushing downstairs for breakfast and then to the buses waiting for them outside. The door to the corner room was open.
Aunt Polya took a peek inside. Only the woman was in, standing at the window, the baby in her arms. The baby—his stark-naked body shining, white bands on his black, little arms—looked like a rubber toy. Aunt Polya watched. The mother pulled the baby to herself, stuck her face into his bare belly, then tossed him up into the air. She caught him, and mother and baby were both flooded with laughter. The woman seemed very young, just a girl, with coarse, kinky hair, swollen lips that looked funny the way they were thrust out. Aunt Polya stepped in. The woman stretched two thin, black fingers and made a “goat” for the boy, exactly the way Aunt Polya had made it for Gnatick when he was tiny.
“How come you went on such a long trip with the baby?” Aunt Polya asked, and not knowing why sat down. She, too, made a “goat” for the boy. He opened his little mouth and laughed.
“How come you did it, silly people?” Aunt Polya asked again. The mother didn’t answer. Dying from laughter, she tossed the baby into the air again.
“One has to,” the stewardess made an enigmatic statement. There was silence for a while. “And where do you live?” the stewardess asked again. The woman stared at her, apparently trying to make out the words. “Where did you come from?” Aunt Polya asked emphatically. “Where did you come from? Don’t you understand? Lord Jesus, what poor slobs, not a word of Russian! All right, what is the name of the place you live? Huh? How shall I explain it?”
She cast a pleading glance around the room, as if asking the walls to help her. The woman still stared at her, pressing the baby a little closer.
Aunt Polya had an idea. She put two fingers on the table and made them walk just as she did it for Gnatick—to make believe a man was running. Next she puffed and puffed like a steam engine; then she waved her arms to convey the picture of an airplane. Finally, breathing hard from the effort, she gave up and sat down.
The woman had been watching attentively; suddenly a smile brightened her face. “Mozambique,” she said in a soft, guttural voice. “Mo-zam-bique.”
“Mo … zambique?” Aunt Polya repeated. The woman nodded. “Where’ll that be?”
Another few minutes but the conversation didn’t click. Aunt Polya picked up the empty basin from the table and left. She decided to stop in at the manager’s office. Ivan Nifontitch was an enlightened man; he had on the wall a large map of Europe and he’d tell her where Mozambique was. But he wasn’t in.
When Ivan Nifontitch entered his office he found the stewardess, her glasses on, moving a dark, firm fingernail along the Adriatic Sea. “What are you looking for?” Ivan Nifontitch was amazed. “What are you trying to find, Aunt Polya?”
“Where’s is tsat Mozambique?” the stewardess reverted to her Ukrainian dialect. “Vy isn’t it on tse map?”
“I wish I had your worries, Aunt Polya,” Ivan Nifontitch commented with a sigh. “Mozambique is in Africa. In Africa …” he repeated.
Aunt Polya left. The corner room was wide open but its occupants were gone—even the basket with the baby.
The whole day, while occupied with her routine work, the stewardess was unable to get rid of a vague feeling of apprehension. Every now and then she walked up to the window to see if the bus was returning, and finally she went downstairs to wait for it there. The little red-haired boy whom she had seen the day before stood at the entrance. His plaid shirt was pasted with stamps like a checker board with buttons. He, too, was apparently waiting impatiently for the bus to arrive.
But the bus wouldn’t come.
“The customs they have in Mozambique,” Aunt Polya complained to the linenmaid, Terekhina. “They take a tiny baby and walk around wiss him the whole day in Moscow. What for? It’s hot like hell in the city. …”
Once again she glanced through the window then decid
ed to bring some hot water for tea. She left, knocking her heels against the floor, her face flushed with annoyance.
The corner room occupants returned toward evening, when the stewardess happened to be in her office. Aunt Polya walked through the hallway when she heard some long, queer sounds. The door was half-open, she was unable to keep from peeking in.
The woman sat at the basket; she was singing.
As a matter of fact singing was not exactly what she did; there were no words to the melody. Yet Aunt Polya knew that what she was hearing was a beautiful, sad song. The woman’s song was the cry of the wind, the rustle of the leaves, and the chirp of the birds. Sounds integrated into each other gracefully like one breath of air into another. Aunt Polya stood there at the lintel, listening.
She stood there for a long time; her feet hurt, yet she was unable to tear herself away. Melancholy pictures of her own childhood came to her mind. There she lay again on an oxcart, listening to the songs of the drivers, seeing flashes of flames in the steppe; there she lay on the oxcart, seeing unfamiliar cottages in the distance and hearing voices of alien people calling her. It all became the present: there she stood at the lintel, listening to this guttural voice and seeing distant flames, woods and trampled paths, currents of alien rivers and faces of alien children. Aunt Polya saw an unfamiliar life unfolding in front of her eyes as if it all were transpiring behind that half-open door.
Was that Mozambique?
Aunt Polya stood there until the song had stopped, until she could hear nothing but the quiet breathing of sleeping people. Then she tip-toed away.
Next morning when the stewardess came up to the second floor, the lady occupant of the corner room had been standing in the hallway. She had on the same clothes she wore the day before, except that her head was tied around with a conelike band, and her neck adorned with a string of beads as big as plums. A multicolored bag dangled down her arm.
As soon as she saw the stewardess, the woman began to wave frantically and patter. She opened the door of her room and pointed her dark-greyish palms at the baby sleeping in the basket. Then she pattered again and pointed at the clock in the hallway. Her husband had been standing at the basket, uttering a few words every now and then, raising three fingers. Aunt Polya understood: they wanted her to look after the sleeping infant for the three hours they’d be away.
“A mother’s lot ain’t easy; without a helping hand one can’t do it by herself,” Aunt Polya said sententiously. “I’ll look after him, no trouble.” She gave the woman a reassuring pat on the shoulder and watched her pick up her swirling skirts and dash downstairs to the waiting bus. The red-haired boy with the stamps was at the landing.
“Did you lose anythin’?” Aunt Polya asked sternly.
“Khow do u do?” the youngster tried to be funny. But just in case the stewardess wouldn’t appreciate it, he stepped back. “Auntie,” he said, “I wanted a stamp from Black Africa.”
“Look what fancies these kids get into their heads. Can’t leave people in peace! Get lost, I say!”
The boy took off. Aunt Polya got busy with her cleaning. There was no trace of any of the lodgers—as if a gale had swept them away. In the corner room the baby was fast asleep, and a sun ray appeared to be climbing from the floor into the window.
Aunt Polya looked into the room several times. The baby’s sleep was as sound and deep as Africa itself. By the end of the third hour, as she was about to go downstairs, a loud, demanding cry made her stop.
No sooner did she bend over the basket than the baby became quiet. He lay on his back, uncovered; his pink-heeled feet spread apart. His big, round eyes watched her curiously.
“Mommie will back very soon,” Aunt Polya tried to assure him. “Wait a bitsy bit.”
However, the moment she moved out into the hallway a loud cry rang out in the room. Aunt Polya returned and felt the sheet in the basket. “Ah, ha,” she said. “No wonder.”
Her eyes searched for dry diapers—there were none. “Heck, who cares,” she said, seizing a dry towel from the rack and spreading it under the boy’s back. He calmed down. But again, the moment she made a step backward he let out a lungful. It was obvious; three hours were over, he was hungry.
“We are quite mouthy, aren’t we?” Aunt Polya asked, picking him up. His black, little hand took a firm grip on her collar. He smelled of milk and warmth as all babies do when they wake up. “Lookie, there’s a pussy,” she pointed out after carrying him to the window. “Lookie, there’s a doggie runnin’.”
She held him as a mother would hold a baby; her large palm under his dark, little behind. Suddenly, the infant’s thick lips parted and a flood of crying poured forth. “Our mommie’s gone,” she tried to comfort him. “Tst, tst—she went and gone.”
But the baby screamed and screamed. It didn’t help to take him to the other window, swirl a tube in front of his eyes, even try to unbend those rheumatism-bound legs and dance with him. The baby wanted to eat, eat and nothing else!
Chambermaids peeked into the room several times; the floor waxer, Uncle Fyodor also stepped in with some advice. Aunt Polya found it ridiculous to listen to him; she had given birth to four of her own and knew only too well what it was when a baby’s feeding time came. It was almost the end of the fourth hour and his parents hadn’t come back—as if Moscow had swallowed them.
“You,” she ordered the maid Gapkina who stood watching the screaming infant, her neck craned like a gosling’s. “Run along and bring me some tea! An’ make it sweeter. What are’ye gaping? Never seen a cryin’ baby? Go on, on the window there’s a little bag with apples I bought for Gnatick. Rub one on the strainer. Fa-ast!”
Gapkina dashed out. A few minutes later she came back flying, out of breath. Aunt Polya poured carefully a spoonful of sweet tea into the baby’s open mouth. The child spit it out in disgust. She tried to give him some strained apple; he got quiet for a second, staring at her, before kicking angrily and beginning to scream even louder.
“Look at him, tsat Mozambique,” Aunt Polya despaired. “Fwat are children eatin’ tsere? No tea, no apple. …”
Maria Petrovna, the administrator on duty came into the room, attracted by the baby’s crying. She watched in silence for a while as the stewardess walked back and forth, trying to calm the inconsolable infant. “Listen, Aunt Polya,” Maria Petrovna suggested reflectively. “What if we asked Terekhina? What do you think?”
“Oh, my God,” the stewardess exclaimed, hugging the gasping baby to her obese chest. “Why didn’t I think of it?”
In the little room behind the vestibule the linen maid Terekhina sat on a chair, her fat calves set wide apart, feeding her infant daughter who was just brought to her from home. The well-knit little girl lay in her mother’s arms like a doll, cozily sucking on the huge breast.
“Listen, Terekhina,” the stewardess stammered. “You see, his mommie’s gone, and it’s his feeding time. The babe’s simply cryin’ his heart out. He’s such a cute, little devil. So smart. …”
Terekhina seemed flabbergasted. She stared at the glistening, black infant in Aunt Polya’s arms, her bright eyes open wide, wide droplets of perspiration showing up on her stubbed nose.
“You’ve got enough for four,” Aunt Polya suggested, looking askance at Terekhina’s heavy breast. “That’s nothing for you, huh, Terekhina?”
“So what, so what,” Terekhina kept saying, not taking her fascinated eyes off the baby boy. Her daughter stirred but hadn’t stopped sucking. Without looking down, Terekhina barely squeezed her breast with her fingers.
“Gimme him,” she suddenly demanded, opening the last two buttons of her blouse. “So what, he’s here, isn’t he? I can’t let the boy go hungry, can I? His mommie got tied up somewhere, it isn’t every day she’s in Moscow. …” Terekhina smoothed the other breast and took the baby from Aunt Polya.
The boy calmed down immediately. He clutched the breast with both of his little hands and began to suck rapidly … blissfully. …
“He knows what he’s doin’,” Aunt Polya agreed.
“Where did he come from?” Terekhina asked, making the boy more comfortable.
“From Mozambique, of course, you silly,” the stewardess explained. She dropped down onto the next chair and heaved a sigh of relief. “From Mozambique,” she repeated. “You know where Mozambique is, Terekhina? It’s in Africa. … Far away in Africa.”
1961
The Bridge
by Nicolai Chukovski
Nicolai Korneyevitch Chukovski, 1905-1965 the son of the famous Russian writer Korney Chukovski, is known in the Soviet Union for his translation of Conan Doyle. His best novel, The Baltic Skies, published in 1955, was translated into English.
“I just can’t see him going,” Gramma said, turning over the potato cake in the pan with a knife. “He’s scared of everything.”
“He’ll go,” Aunt Nadya replied from the depth of the kitchen. “He has to go. He’ll be better off there.”
Gramma sighed loudly. She wasn’t at all convinced Kostya would be better off there.
Kostya had heard every word. He stood not far from the open window amid the currant shrubs, quickly picking the berries and shoving them into his mouth. Since it had been decided he would have to go away, Kostya was spending hours at a time in these shrubs, their luxurious, end-of-July growth serving as an excellent hiding place. He liked to be alone, and not have to talk to anyone. Through the branches creeping over the window sill into the shade-filled kitchen, he could see Gramma’s hands moving over the kerosene burner, and hear the sizzling of the frying pancakes.
“He’s scared of everything … everything,” Gramma repeated. “He’s afraid to buy a stamp in the post office. How’ll he go?”
Kostya’s mouth was getting sour from the berries. He worked his way out of the shrubbery, found his bicycle on the dark porch, and he opened the kitchen door. Aunt Nadya was peeling potatoes—since it was Sunday she hadn’t gone to work in the factory but was helping Gramma. The peels coiled like spirals over Aunt Nadya’s thick, manlike fingers. Gramma, a squat, little woman, had just turned over another sizzling pancake. She looked up at the boy. Kostya knew that the mountain of potato cakes piled up in a plate at the burner was being baked for him—one more sign that his going-away was final.