Treasury of Russian Short Stories 1900-1966

by Wassner, Selig O. ;

  Once again Petya explained that he needed this glass to complete an apparatus for use in physiology. But this time he spoke with emotion, and while he spoke a thought which had been knocking at his mind since he saw Skatchkov cautiously edged in—as if to tease: why did he need this glass? “I’m not a technician,” Petya said unsurely, “but it seems to me that if the surface, that is … if I could … then why, even the thinnest film might …”

  Ivan Pavlovitch had been listening, blinking his eyes, “Uhm, well,” he said at last, realizing perhaps that his original judgement about this young man had been wrong, “now let’s go.”

  “Where to?”

  “To my house.”

  “What for?”

  “What for? To have dinner with me,” Ivan Pavlovitch said. “You’ll meet my family … By the way, you may keep the glass, too.”

  8

  Petya returned to his hotel in the tender frame of mind he usually got into after spending a pleasant evening with a friendly family. He had liked the whole Yevlakhov clan: the hostess—a little, nimble woman; the son—an oceanologist recently returned from the Antarctic; and the daughter with her husband—both doctors. They seemed to be a closely-knit family in spite of their presently divergent interests and separate homes. They had enjoyed Ivan Pavlovitch’s story about the “theft” of Tshassov’s glass; but whenever Croizé’s name was mentioned, somebody would promptly change the subject. Those two didn’t get along well, Petya knew now for sure. Whatever the reason the Frenchie was probably to blame, he thought.

  Only a few hours left to catch his train to Perm at 10:40. He would see at least the Senate Square; Petya was already in the hallway when they called him to the telephone. It was Croizé’s secretary. “Igor Lavrentyevitch was very sorry,” she cooed. “A foreign delegation, you know …” Petya wondered whether the director had found out already about his visit to Yevlakhov. “Igor Lavrentyevitch would like you to stop in tomorrow about twelve,” the secretary cajoled, “he’d like to have all the details …”

  “I’m sorry,” Petya said, “but I’m leaving tonight. Please give Igor Lavrentyevitch my best regards and also the best wishes of my chief, Professor Nikitin. So long.”

  “Ants in your pants, Croizé,” he said to himself, sticking out his tongue, which was as long as an anteater’s. He pranced from one end of the room to the other, then stopped in front of the mirror and began to jig. He hadn’t even heard the knock at the door until somebody said, “You dancing?”

  It was Valka. They never were in the habit of embracing—just a firm handshake. “You came after all,” Petya said, looking over his friend. Valya Koloskov was still the same huge, baby-faced lug who always had trouble finding a hat for his head and never learned how to sit down without breaking a chair. They had been seeing each other rarely since Valya had left Perm to work in his own specialty, physics. However, when they’d meet they’d spend a whole night talking, just talking. Tamara had learned how to stay out of sight at such times.

  But now they had just a few hours! “Hell, what luck,” Petya fretted. “I had wanted so much to see Leningrad!”

  “Why haven’t you?” Valya asked. “You had plenty of time.”

  “I had but I have none now,” Petya replied, and went on telling his friend about his travels between Croizé and Yevlakhov. “It’s partly my own fault,” he concluded.

  “What next,” Valya scolded. “You’re always ready to blame yourself. These old gents don’t realize it that the second half of the twentieth century is almost half over … Let’s go.”

  “Where to?”

  “Sightseeing!” Valya said. “Sure it’s also your fault,” he added, as they went down the flight of steps. “You ought to know better than not to know how to take every hour as it comes.”

  They walked out into a light rain. But they hadn’t noticed it until the sound of the Neva’s waters merging with the Great Nevka hit their ears. They stood on the Petrograd Bank. Valya had wanted to show his friend the scenic view of the revolutionary ship Aurora anchored for eternity at the opposite shore, but the contours of the vessel were outlined now dimly in the fog and rain that enveloped the river. Yet, as far as Petya was concerned, Leningrad was still dear, flowing through the depths of his subconscious while his conscious mind was wholly absorbed by Valya’s talk. Koloskov couldn’t tell him much of his classified work under the famous Professor Winkler, but what he did say was so breathtaking that Petya realized how much happier his friend must be in his field.

  They passed a newspaper stand. The photos of the dark side of the moon were on the first page. Petya was amazed how matter-of-factly Valya took the news. “Of course, it’s quite a feat,” he said, “but when you stop to think of it … nothing but a new way of travel. Take a train ride; do you stop to think what makes the engine go? So when we’ll travel to Mars or Venus we won’t question what makes the rockets move. Cosmic flights—just an application of old laws, nothing else. And new discoveries are still to come … Hey, you recognize this?” Valya pointed at a large building in the fog.

  “What is it?” Petya asked.

  “The Winter Palace.”

  “Oh.” Petya was disappointed. He had expected it to be more elegant.

  “You ought to see it from the other bank, from the columnal façade,” Valya suggested, as they were crossing the palace bridge. “But to come back to your story, these two old gents—nothing but two points. Draw a line between them and … everything will become clear. Like a chart of a starry sky.”

  “I don’t understand,” Petya shook his head.

  “That’s because you’re still a ninny,” Koloskov said condescendingly. “Look you oaf,” he suddenly pointed to his left, “there’s the Academy of Sciences … and the University. Twelve departments!”

  Everything looked smudged, as if seen through a thick, steamed-up glass. “Hell, what luck,” Petya sighed. “What were you saying about those old gents?”

  “I said that your story’s only a reflection of that incessant fight in science,” Valya declared. “Only the form changes. Take your experience: just a case of application and ingenuity.”

  “More complicated than that,” Petya objected.

  “Perhaps,” Valya agreed. “But in the end what difference does it make why Croizé has lost touch with science! As far as you and I are concerned we are only interested in him because he reveals a degree of scheming of which we had no idea. The old generation, they’re masters in it! I knew a brilliant scientist; he gave up his work, that is he delegated it to his assistants, and he himself devotes his talents to studying the personal relations between two academicians, call them ‘A’ and ‘B.’ And he has no selfish motive, mind you, just that he can’t live without meddling into other people’s business … as some people can’t live without smoking. The same with your Croizé … Hey look, there are the sphynxes!”

  Through the countless granules of fog glimmering in the rain, the naked sphynxes stared meekly. “Nothing but scheming,” Petya repeated, “back-stabbing! A game of intrigue!”

  “No worse than any other game,” Valya said. “Take horse races, for instance …”

  “I don’t agree with you,” Petya interrupted. “I’m glad we don’t know about it any more than we do.”

  “You think so? As I see it, it all depends how you react to it. I think in that respect we both might do well to learn a few things from the old gents.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “What?” Valya repeated. “That neither you nor I know too well how to enter somebody’s house gracefully, how to say hello, keep up a conversation, and say a polite goodbye. That’s what!”

  “Fiddlesticks.”

  “Not at all, pal,” Valya said earnestly. “We’ve time for everything but for civil manners.”

  They had reached the Bridge of Lieutenant Schmidt. They could see it, but the rest of Leningrad would emerge momentarily out of the fog to vanish without giving too many clues about itself. Somewhere in that
soup, it might have been near or far, was the Copper Horesman, the Admiralty, the senate …

  “I’d like to tell you about that engineer,” Valya resumed, “who had a letter published in the Komsomol. What’s the use of poetry if you compare it with the rockets or computers he designed?”

  “My boss,” Petya suggested, “he’s the same kind, and he has two doctorates.”

  “Of course,” Valya sneered. “He’s the learned Doctor Goose. He and his kind of argument are a century old. Even Chekhov wrote that art can become as boring as eating every day. Still, you’ve got to eat!”

  They had turned by now to the River Boulevard and found the Copper Horseman. In the narrow beam of a projected light that seemed to tear out a strip of the fog, the horseman had a worried look—as if the inclement weather was delaying his urgent errand.

  “I came here with a group of architects,” Petya said. “All young fellows—like you and me. They all were of the same opinion: the older generation are bonzes—just sitting in our way. You know what bonzes are, Valya?”

  “What are you taking me for?”

  “Well, then, these bonzes have a gruesome influence in the architectural field. And how’s yours?”

  “There’s plenty of them in ours, too,” Valya said, “but they don’t have it too easy there. They have to keep producing and if they don’t …”

  Petya looked at his watch. “Is it time?” Valya asked.

  They took a taxi back to the hotel. “It seems to me,” Valya reflected on his way back, “the question here is not of bonzes or the traditional conflict of fathers and sons, but in a different dimension—in a horizontal one.”

  “Meaning?”

  “One group’s only interested in what science is going to do tomorrow, and the other has a hard time in parting with yesterday. Don’t you think … Here, there’s the Public Library. Pal, why don’t you move to Leningrad?” Valya sighed.

  “Can’t swing it.”

  “Then why don’t you take off a week in the winter. You’ll come with me to Viborg and do some skating.”

  “I doubt I’ll be able to get away,” Petya said. As always the topic of conversation came back to the question of how to arrange for more frequent meetings. Sharing impressions helped them to think, and yet, strangely enough, their personal relations seemed rather restrained.

  Valya helped Petya with his luggage and saw him off to the Moscow Railroad Station. Shortly after the train pulled out Petya clambered onto the upper berth and went to sleep. He dreamed again, but when he awoke late at night it wasn’t the dream that made him think. It was a strange impression, the kind that follows a long, involved nightmare. He had a feeling of emptiness, that something should have happened in that dream and hadn’t. The memory of his friend waving goodbye from the platform had a cheering effect though. He lit the nightlamp and out of his suitcase he gingerly took the Tshassov glass. It looked cool, its nacreous center seemed to vibrate. Three days ago it had been nothing but a piece of glass that happened to have the physical properties he needed to finish his apparatus, and now it was an object tied up with a multitude of impressions. Something entirely new! So what if he hadn’t really seen Leningrad. Hadn’t he carried off with him the town of Yevlakhov and his family; the town of the little, frank Oganezov—the man who bore on his puny shoulders a huge enterprise? Hadn’t he carried off with him the town of Valya Koloskov, the man who looked at the future with that same calm, cocky assurance he had since the third grade of elementary school?

  Most important, however, Petya discovered something about himself: he knew now how much he had to learn about himself. Thoughts came and came. The thought that had occurred to him during the discussion with Yevlakhov: might it not bring a few changes into his set? Petya doubled up on his berth, pulled under his knobby knees and began to jot down on the back of a cigarette pack.

  New ideas!

  1965

  Yonder-Wonder

  by E. Cherepakhova

  Ella Matveyevna Cherepakhova, born in 1936, graduated from the University of Moscow with a degree in journalism in 1958. Wrote for magazines Yunost’, Literaturnaya Gazeta, and Smyena. Her documentary novel appearing in serial form in Smyena.

  “Would you mind stopping here,” Yuri Pavlovitch had said, having decided to kiss her.

  They stood at the edge of the little town park. The wind was driving gay candy wrappers along bubbly snow drifts that had become glass-slippery from much thawing and refreezing. It wasn’t the memory, nor the thought, but the aroma and the sounds of last summer, suppressed during the long winter days, that suddenly burst into the open of Masha’s mind. It was the harsh odor of dry dust, the scent of flowers in front-yard gardens sprinkled by a scant rain, the harmonious shuffle of soles on the dance floor, and the abruptly quick laughter rolling along benches … Those little lamps in the park, few, dull-yellow, as small as tiny pumpkins, and the rhythmic brief refrain of a song from the raucous radio loudspeaker …

  Yuri Pavlovitch’s hand felt tight and heavy on her shoulder. He drew her to himself.

  “Please don’t,” Masha pleaded weakly. Her body withered, unwillingly tensed, resisted …

  But Yuri Pavlovitch either didn’t understand or didn’t listen. He kept pulling her, with some effort now, though maintaining a serious expression on his reddened face. He had light, almost invisible eyelashes, as thin as a spider’s web. Once again the wind drove a handful of wrappers—they drifted with a soft, crackling sound along the lumpy snow. Masha’s lips felt cold and sore from his hard kiss.

  From the nearby railroad station came an anguished, long wail of a locomotive, then a grating sound as the train jerked, gained speed and moved away.

  “Oh, Masha, Masha,” Yuri Pavlovitch mumbled happily, not letting her out of his embrace.

  The wind is blowing right at us, Masha thought, feeling a painful pinching of the frost through her nylons. Why didn’t I put on warmer stockings? she asked herself. She could hear and notice every little movement and every sound around her. Yet one thought kept surfacing to the wavy sea of her memories, splashing like a big fish, “Well, that’s it, the end of my voyage …”

  She heard the music and the summer whispers, and envisioned clearly the dull-yellow, tiny pumpkinlike lamps, Peter’s stripeless shirt, looming vaguely white in the dark-blue stuffy air. And then, as now, her heart had begun to hammer at a heavy, uneven clip.

  “So you’re leaving?” she had asked, peering into Peter’s dark, broad face. “You’re going to jilt me? And stop pretending, you … you, thick-lipped monk.” Peter wore his dark hair cut very short.

  She had wanted to cry but her pride hadn’t let her.

  “Oh, stop it,” Peter had confidently said, embracing her and picking lint off her dress. “You won’t get lost for a while. And soon I’ll have you come over to me … Just wait. As soon as I’ve built a marriage bureau I’ll dash you off a telegram.”

  He had gone, had never written, and after he had helped build there a factory, houses and a marriage bureau, he had married some local girl and sent his mother a wedding card. “What a scoundrel,” his mother had showed it to Masha. “Took after his father, his soul rest in peace.” But inwardly Aunt Varya had been glad; she had never liked Masha. “Those textile girls,” she’d sneer. “They’re all high-handed.”

  And what about Yuri Pavlovitch? Masha returned to the present. So, let it be Yuri Pavlovitch. What difference does it make!

  However, when he tried to kiss her again, without words and to her own surprise, she broke away from his embrace. As she stood there, her rosy head-kerchief slipped down to her nape, Yuri Pavlovitch was slowly regaining his composure, blinking his eyes in embarassment. He was tall, very straight and rigid, his blue, ironed overcoat matching his blue beret. Masha found it strange to see him so awkwardly distraught. “Why am I behaving with him this way?” she asked herself, adjusting the kerchief on her head. “Your little boy is all right,” they tell me. Little boy! How can you call a teacher
at the Technicum little boy! And then … he brings me flowers, not like that thick-lipped monk.

  “What do you see in me?” she asked Yuri Pavlovitch. “Why don’t you find yourself some nice teacher or a nurse from the hospital … They would not be in the way of your development.”

  “My heart has chosen you, Masha,” Yuri Pavlovitch said sadly, though in a triumphant voice. “You’re just in my taste … very much so.”

  “You talk of me as if I were a bun or something,” Masha smiled. “But why do we stand in the wind? Let’s go before all our love is aired out.”

  They walked out of the park, mincing their steps, skidding on the ice covered by a thin, greyish layer of drifted springlike snow. “You ought to think, Masha,” said Yuri Pavlovitch in an offended tone of voice. “Yeah, you ought to think a lot, because in the end every woman needs a home, a family … And besides, you’re no little girl anymore. I was told you’re twenty-five.”

  Masha suddenly felt like laughing. She began to giggle and couldn’t stop until her eyes filled with tears, and when she stopped and leaned her forehead against the rough-barked pine tree, she began to cry. She cried because she was twenty-five years old and had found no true love. She wondered if it would ever come. A girl’s infinitely beautiful dreams had come to an end and people like Yuri Pavlovitch had marked off, so to say, their last borderline.

  “So what? I’ll take and leave them,” Masha resolutely told herself. “Who do I have to ask?”

  She tried to suppress the unexplainable anger that had begun to well up within her, force herself to feel differently, feel gratitude or something like it for the clear vision of a serene, well-rounded, peaceful life that awaited her with this man. Yuri Pavlovitch was reliable, so true-to-life reliable. He wouldn’t leave her, jilt her, nor forget her. But the sensation of an incomprehensible loss oppressed and gnawed Masha’s heart.