“You can do everything,” the girl looked at Kostya with admiring eyes.
“I can,” he confirmed. “Had I dropped your bike I’d have given you mine.” He felt like being extremely generous; as a matter of fact he was sorry he couldn’t give her his bike.
“I’d not have taken it for anything,” she said. “You are leaving?”
“Yes, tonight.”
“For long?”
“Forever.”
“And when will you come back?” she asked.
“Probably never.”
The impression his words made on her affected him too.
“Never,” the girl repeated slowly. “How far are you going?”
“Very far,” he replied. “I’m taking the Moscow train tonight.”
She asked if he was going to the district capital. She had apparently thought the district capital was very far.
“Uh uh,” Kostya said. “The day after tomorrow I’ll be in Moscow.”
“In Moscow?” she asked respectfully.
“But only for a day,” he explained. “Got to do some sightseeing.”
“You’re going even farther?” she asked incredulously.
He nodded. “To Siberia.”
She became quiet. He sensed how impressive that name sounded to her.
“Who’s going with you?” she asked again.
“I’m going by myself.”
While he answered her questions, Kostya began to see his trip in a new light. He had suddenly made a discovery—he found out something about himself he had never known: he could accomplish tasks. The future, which up to now had appeared fearful, suddenly became a grandiose adventure within reach.
“I’ll guide big ships,” Kostya said, getting up from excitement. “Diesel motor ships.”
“Where to?”
“To the Arctic Ocean. Beyond the Arctic Circle and back. Through the taiga, tundra, all kinds of animals,” Kostya recalled what he knew about Siberia. He was waiting for her to ask if he really knew how to guide Diesel motor ships, but she didn’t. Perhaps she had some doubts if he really could do everything. He, too, had some doubts.
“I’ll learn,” he said, thinking of Uncle Vasya. “What one man can do another man can too.”
There was silence for a while. Narrow-shouldered, long-legged, upright, Kostya stared into the water glistening through the trees. Absorbed in his new ideas, he seemed to have forgotten about the girl who sat with her arms around her round knees, glancing at him timidly from time to time.
“Is somebody coming to see you off?” she asked softly.
“They are,” he nodded.
“Who?”
Kostya knew that Gramma and Aunt Nadya would come with him to the station, but somehow he didn’t feel like telling it to the girl. He made no reply.
“I’ll come too, may I?” she asked in a pattering whisper, brushing off her wet hair from her forehead. “We live next to the station, I’ll just jump out of the window and run up. May I?” The girl talked fast, as if she were afraid he might stop her. “I won’t be in anybody’s way, they won’t even see me. I’ll just watch. May I, may I?”
Kostya didn’t answer. He looked at her with a joyous wonderment in his heart—it was a hitherto unknown tenderness which he realized was also a new discovery.
1963
My First Feature Story
by Marina Romanina
Marina Romanina, born around 1940, studied music at the Tashkent Music Institute. She has published sketches, feature stories about youth and art. She is a graduate of the Gorki Institute in Moscow.
“My God, am I seeing green?”
This was how we were met by the literary associate editor of the district newspaper, Sashka Godh. As it turned out later he wasn’t a bad fellow, this Sashka, but in our hurt pride as aspiring journalists, Oleg and I had begun to bear him a deep grudge. And who would welcome a greeting like that? Here we come with honest-to-goodness papers certifying in boldface letters that we are no greenhorns by any means but sophomores at Moscow University down for our first journalistic practice, and what does he do? Gives it to us in no uncertain words. No, we didn’t care for that kind of reception!
We had decided to give that Sashka the cold shoulder, but he, in his passion for allegories, was too blind to see the daggers of hatred in our eyes. Tactless Sashka never stopped giving us advice.
Our boss, the editor, turned out to be a grave-looking man with a profile taken straight out of a coin-collection museum, and whose facial characteristics, as we were able to establish a few weeks later, were the typical features of an Eastern Slav. His name: Nikita Rogachev.
Nikita Rogachev was apparently well aware of the peculiarities of his face because otherwise it would be hard to explain the way his old high-backed leather chair was placed, letting us see only one rosy ear, a determined hunch of a nose, and then a quizzically raised mouth corner. Oleg and I, however, not intent on analyzing the mysteries of his physiognomy, would be sitting there looking over some notes on an exhibition opening or on the unveiling of a new meat-grinder model, occasionally daring to lift fluttering eyelids at the disdainfully proud hunch. We’d feel that cactuses in the desert behaved more gregariously than the people in our office, and yet we’d freeze them from the realization of our own dearth of ideas, quiet down in our corner, making hectic efforts to give the semblance of extreme activity. Nobody paid any attention to us, however, and when some novice stepped up to us with a question, Sashka would immediately raise his head and ask in his disgusting twang, “May I help you, Comrade?”
Thus two weeks went by. Gradually we got so used to feeling right at home behind our desks that Oleg went as far as allowing himself a smoke and drawing caricatures of many-handed, many-faced Sashka-monsters, while I was trying to write poetry on editorial paper. My poems, a little on the sad side, told of pride, of friendship, and Moscow.
That evening, as we were returning to our hotel, we felt very good, and for the first time we considered ourselves true journalists. Oleg nonchalantly threw his coat over his shoulder, bought us Eskimo pies at the street corner booth, and uttered in a drawling voice, “This Nikita of ours runs off quite some editorials! Have you seen his last?”
I looked at him in surprise, then the sympathetic blue-eyed gaze of the youthful salesgirl told me of the degree of Oleg’s bravado. “No,” I said, “but I think it is good to be a journalist.”
A few days later, Oleg was busy with his caricature production, and I was transcribing a poem, when Nikita unexpectedly showed up at our desks. We had been so used to seeing nothing but the chief’s profile that we didn’t recognize him at first, and when we did, in our embarrassment we forgot to put away the results of our private efforts. With unhurried portentousness the chief’s large, sure hand with an ink spot on its index finger picked up first the caricature, then my poetry. Right here and now I felt that Oleg and I were being torn asunder. No more “us” from now on. It would be he and I, each for himself.
“Hm,” Nikita’s voice rang from some dizzying height. “Have a look at this, Sashka.”
My heart rolled down with incredible speed. Sashka, though, seemed not to take any offense. On the contrary, he gleefully dashed out into the corridor, brandishing the sheet of paper in his hand, and we heard his almost childish laughter dying away in the distance. I was waiting my turn.
But Nikita reascended his throne. Bowing his head sidewise, he scribbled something on a sheet of paper. After a while he asked in a low voice, “Kids, what would you like to write?”
Oleg’s reply was instantaneous: “A feature story.”
I was quiet, because what I would have liked to write was poetry.
“A feature story about what?” Nikita asked.
“About a man,” Oleg replied laconically, in a pompous voice.
“How about a theatre?” Nikita countered in an unperturbed quasiwhisper.
As it turned out immediately, Oleg was interested in the theatre. “In that case,�
� Nikita suggested, “why don’t you try to write a story about the work of a young set of actors? I have in mind a recently established theatre … ,” and he went into the details of Oleg’s assignment. “Is it clear?” he asked in conclusion.
“Clear.”
“Then on your way.”
“Right now?”
“Sure right now, no sense dawdling. Come on, come on, let’s have some action.” Having said it, Nikita began gazing at the window which, judged by his imperial profile, signified the end of the audience.
Oleg gathered up some papers, leered at Nikita, then nodded at me and disappeared with a fluttering of lips. Thereupon the silence drew on. Just at the moment I decided the chief wasn’t going to speak to me, he asked, “How long have you been writing poetry?”
I had never been able to talk about my poems, something within me would shrink as if unexpectedly touched by an ice-cold hand. I wouldn’t even let anybody read them right away but only after a few days when I could look at them from the distance. It had always seemed to me as if the poems tarnished and lost their warmth by being talked about. Of course, I knew kids who felt just the opposite. We had, for example, a fellow in our group, Petka Goryev, who’d flaunt his sheet of paper before he’d managed to put down two stanzas. “Hey, kids, listen to this,” he’d shout, running around and showing it to everybody. “Quite good, isn’t it?” he’d shout after reading it to the first listener, slapping him excitedly on his shoulder, and dashing off to the next. So then, when Nikita asked me about my poetry, I only nodded in reply. I was afraid he’d start right away taking it apart. But Nikita told me in a rather pensive voice, “You know, they might be printed.”
I looked at him, not recognizing his face. As he smiled again and his eyes seemed affectionate, attentive, for some reason I immediately forgot his profile as if I had always seen him only like this. However, as I maintained my silence, Nikita added, “What about a feature story, you ever write one?”
“I never did,” I said.
“In that case you should try,” Nikita smiled. “It might come in handy some day since you’ve chosen this kind of work.”
That Sunday I’d barely had my breakfast when I sped off in a creaking bus toward a little workmen’s town to interview one Nicolai Ivanovitch Pospelov, a master workman in a machine-building plant. I was to familiarize myself with the way of life of a leading workman and write a warm feature story about him.
While we had been traveling on the town’s cobblestone road, everything went fine, but no sooner had we turned into a country road than something happened to the bus. It began to snort, cough, as if it were choking, then belched out a thick stream of black, smelly smoke and suddenly took off, staggering from side to side, scaring the wits out of dogs and occasional pedestrians.
The passengers convulsively clutched their seat supports and shook as if in seizures of ague. I clenched my teeth, lumps of fear clogging my throat, but then the bus unexpectedly stopped dead on the run, as if it had suddenly spent its last strength. We tumbled one on top of the other, and when we’d regained our senses we found we had arrived.
I reeled out into the soft roadside dust. Cottages floated by me in a slow procession, flashing their blue or green front yards, trees swirled in front of my eyes, a frightened cackle of chickens struck my ears.
I remembered that Nicolai Ivanovitch’s house was supposed to be at the other end of the road, in the direction we had come from. While on my way to it, the houses stopped floating, the chickens stopped cackling. I was composed enough to read the name of the street.
There was his house, amid orchard greenery, and through the open gate in the fence I could see a barn and a covered well with a double-pitched roof. At the barn I saw the back of a young fellow in a blue T-shirt squatting in front of a motorcycle, while a woman with a white kerchief, dressed in a long loose jacket, was wringing out a rag. I thought she must have just finished scrubbing the floor.
“Hello there,” I said, trying to give the impression of a seasoned reporter. “Is Nicolai Ivanovitch home?”
The woman stopped wringing her rag. She tilted her head and fixed on me a pair of gray eyes set in gay folds. “Kolya,” she called, slightly raising her voice, “someone here to see you.”
The fellow in the blue T-shirt stopped fiddling with his motorcycle and reluctantly turned around. Wiping his hands on a piece of cloth, he walked up to us. “Came to see me?” he asked, studying me with equally gray eyes that stood out on his sun-made hazel face.
“I’m here to see Nicolai Ivanovitch Pospelov, the master-workman,” I said, unwilling to admit the possibility that the renowned master and this suntanned boy with the tuft of straw-blond hair and house shoes on his bare feet were one and the same person. Probably his son, I thought.
But the fellow cut my conjectures short. “I’m Nicolai Ivanovitch Pospelov,” he said. “You from the Discom?” Apparently abashed by my fixed look, he suddenly turned shy. “I probably have a dirty nose,” he wiped his cheek with a greasy hand, blushing terribly. “Go on in, I’ll be with you,” he called, running off.
A short time later we were sitting in a low-ceilinged room that felt cool from the freshly-scrubbed floor. Lace-trimmed curtains and the leaves of a tiny canned lemon plant fluttered in the breeze. With an air of importance I laid the recently received reporter’s notebook on the table and took a glimpse at the question guide given to me by Nikita. My host, his face washed, his wet tuft of hair neatly combed, sat modestly on a tabouret like a model pupil, with drawn knees. His answers were monosyllabic, of the yes-and-no variety—he was graduated from a technical high school, was assigned to a plant, was in the army. …
I began to feel bored. The loud buzzing of a fly made me remember Oleg and his assignment on a boat ride. Some people have all the luck, I thought. My questionnaire was exhausted. Our talk was a failure and I had no story. I was annoyed at myself for not having found a way to reach this fellow. You’re inept, I told myself, and you tackled something you can’t handle. I was ashamed to think of what Nikita was going to tell me tomorrow. I could already visualize Sashka’s skeptical look and Oleg’s glances of sympathy. What a shame!
“By the way,” I asked, “have you ever thought of er … some competitive improvements?”
“Me?” Nicolai blushed. “Yes, I have,” he said before clamming up again.
The woman with the white kerchief, his mother, peeked into the room. “Why not turn on the lights?” she suggested.
Only now I noticed that it was getting dark outside. I was ready to leave when a titilating aroma of baked potatoes hit my nostrils.
“Would you mind having supper with us?” the woman asked uncertainly. Nicolai Ivanovitch’s younger brother (also Sashka) was already sitting at the table. It was I now who was answering questions. Elizaveta Ivanovna, the boys’ mother, was amazingly skillful in drawing out of me that I was a practicing reporter (a mother is always concerned), and a sophomore at the university.
“You’re quite a girl,” she sighed. “My Nicolai is also getting ready to enter the university. I don’t know what to tell him. … Well,” she asked, “have you managed to write down a lot?”
“Not much,” I replied dejectedly. “Nicolai Ivanovitch isn’t too eager to talk about himself.”
Sashka snorted into his plate. He found it funny that somebody was referring to his brother by his first full name and his father’s name. Elizaveta Ivanovna frowned visibly at her younger son. Then she turned to Nicolai. “What’s the matter with you?” she scolded. “Somebody comes from quite some distance to talk to you, and you. … Why don’t you tell her about that kind of cutter you were the first to think of, spent whole nights on it. I’d get up,” she was talking to me again, “we used to have a cow then, I’d get up in the morning to milk the cow and I’d see a light coming through from under his door. What’s the matter with him, I thought, hadn’t gone to sleep? I look in, there he is, his head on the notebook, fast asleep. Then they gave him an
award, and he used it to buy his motorcycle. All the time he’s been trying to talk me into going for a ride with him. But it’s not for me. … I can hardly stand on my feet,” Elizaveta Ivanovna added, not without some coquetry.
“Now see here, Nicolai Ivanovitch,” I said (and Sashka snorted again), “how come you didn’t tell me all that?”
“Why this respectful ‘Nicolai Ivanovitch’?” his mother prompted. “He’s no senior citizen. Call him Kolya, that’s good enough.”
After supper they spent quite some time showing me the family album, and when I finally decided to leave, it was quite dark. Lights were on in all the neighboring houses. Sounds of an accordion wafted in through the cool blue of the evening. “Would you like me to give you a ride on my motorcycle?” Nicolai offered timidly.
“Well …” I remembered the bus ride and thought the motorcycle couldn’t be worse than that. “Let’s go.”
He led the motorcycle out onto the road. A few dark figures detached themselves from the next gateway. “Going to town, Kolya?” a brittle voice inquired.
Without replying Nicolai turned on the motor.
“Oh, he has a gal with him. …”
Nicolai intensely pressed on the gas pedal. The brittle voice intoned:
“Went a belle to the well for a hike
For a hike on a bike, on a mo. …”
“Shut up, you,” Nicolai cut him off curtly.
The jingle stopped. I sat on the back seat and we dashed off. House lights began to flash by like sparks; through my squinting eyes I could see them tiny and full of glitter.
Treasury of Russian Short Stories 1900-1966 Page 17