Treasury of Russian Short Stories 1900-1966

by Wassner, Selig O. ;

  Her cry wasn’t pretty. Long sobs, and frequent outbursts of anger.

  “Masha, don’t,” Yuri Pavlovitch asserted, stepping from foot to foot and nervously cracking his knuckles. “Have I insulted you, Masha?”

  She calmed down after a while. Away from the tree she got out her compact from her purse, wiped off the brown bark dust from her forehead, dried her cheeks, then powdered. For a second her glance lingered in the mirror. “There, I’m beautiful again,” she said to herself with a sigh. “But sense … I’ve hardly got any.”

  They continued leisurely along the street. At the corner near the “Gastronom” they ran into Peter’s mother. Aunt Varya cast them a quick, keen glance from under her fluffy kerchief and pursed her lips.

  “ ‘Ilo, Aunt Varya,” Masha called with a polite sneer, clasping Yuri Pavlovitch’s arm. “How are things with you?”

  “So, so,” Aunt Varya replied, stuffing some restive hair back under her kerchief. She didn’t feel comfortable in the presence of her son’s one-time “steady,” dressed up and arm-in-arm with a Technicum teacher. “So, so,” she repeated. “But what’s with you? You aren’t sick or something? Your face is so …”

  “We stood too long in the wind,” Masha said, turning toward her silent escort. “It is his fault that I’m chilly,” she added with feigned hurt in her voice, peevishly hitching her shoulder to give her almost-mother-in-law the impression that they weren’t getting chilly here without any reason.

  Aunt Varya seemed to get the hint because she pursed her lips again. “Petya’s queenie,” she suddenly announced, “is going to spill over any day now. They’re hoping for a baby boy …”

  As Aunt Varya bouncily waddled away, Masha stood watching her, her face set in bewildered anguish.

  Yuri Pavlovitch walked her home. When on parting he doffed his beret and bowed, Masha was moved; never before had anybody shown her so much gentility.

  “You better put it back on,” she told him affectionately. “You may lose your hair from the chill.”

  For the next few days Masha moved about in a pensive stupor. At work at the factory she was often scolded for letting the yarn knot, just as any novice might do.

  Yuri Pavlovitch began waiting for her at the exit. While walking her home he’d talk about the future. He had already submitted an application to the Housing Committee and hoped to be assigned a separate one-room apartment where they’d be able to start their new life. He had thought of every little detail. He had drawn with black crayon the blueprint of their future apartment and gave it to Masha on the eighth of March together with a box of “Manon” perfume. On the lower part of the blueprint next to the scale was a meticulously inscribed note: second copy.

  On Saturdays Yuri Pavlovitch guided her to the movies. He always took expensive seats in the best row.

  “You see all right, Masha?” he’d ask solicitously. “Since we have come to see a movie, we might as well see it as well as we can.”

  Masha would be cracking seeds while waiting for the red blind that covered the screen to quiver and creep up, opening the window into another world, a world full of wonders, far from this street, from this hall, and this town.

  After the movie Yuri Pavlovitch would try to discuss the picture with her. He talked in a courteous, low voice while she looked at her feet, listened to the crackling of the last unthawed shell of ice underfoot, to the drip of an occasional water drop, and to the severely hooting factory siren signaling time for the midnight shift. There he goes winding up again, she’d think, here comes another lesson in political indoctrination.

  “The most important thing is to capture the main thread of a picture,” Yuri Pavlovitch would tell her gently.

  “I like its love angle,” Masha might confess with a sigh. “And I like a picture if it has a sad ending … or a lot of action. The Amphibious Man for instance. What a picture!”

  Yuri Pavlovitch did not agree. He had read the papers and knew that The Amphibious Man was a crass movie, a Tarzan with gills.

  The wedding wasn’t far off—they had set the date for May. That is, Yuri Pavlovitch had set it. He was simply radiating as he ran about hustling and bustling. For her wedding gown he bought Masha a gorgeous white fabric, glittering, festive, fit for a stage actress.

  “He’s kind,” Masha was telling herself. “Where can I find fault with him, where? He is just too kind, that’s all. He’s so solicitous … and so smart. … And he knows so much! Sure, he’s kind.…”

  One Sunday morning Yuri Pavlovitch was getting ready to go to the railroad station to pick up an important shipment. He had ordered from another town an ottoman with a yellow foam rubber mattress which was as spongy and porous as mud. He asked Masha to come with him.

  “It’s a Good-cause Sunday,” she objected. “We’ve got to contribute some work toward the memorial statue; the whole town will be there.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he agreed. “I should come with you, you are right … but, would it be possible, perhaps, to make a cash contribution instead? What do you say, I’ll go to the builders and, …”

  He left the sentence unfinished; she was glaring at him with wide motionless eyes.

  “Ooh, I can’t stand you!” she said in a deep, throaty voice. “What a gnat! I wish I’d never looked at you.” Masha was startled by her own fury with which she had hurled these words at Yuri Pavlovitch.

  Yuri Pavlovitch was stunned. “I only asked, as kind of advice,” he apologized. “Masha sweet, how can you be so touchy? What was so terrible in what I said? I only wanted to do something for us. All right, I won’t. You don’t want me to, so I won’t. All right, let’s do some good-cause work if you want us to. All right? You’re not angry with me anymore? Funny girl! Why did you get so angry? It isn’t good for your nerves to get so excited … and for nothing, for such trivialities. You shouldn’t, Masha, you shouldn’t … Masha sweet, you want some ice cream? Let’s go, let’s go …”

  See, he gave in to me, Masha told herself. He is good to me. Everything will be all right, everything … as time goes by. Still, he’s so smart and yet he didn’t understand. Make a cash contribution, huh! It’s him who is funny. But why? He didn’t understand at first and then he did. That’s all, finished.

  In the following weeks Yuri Pavlovitch got into the habit of kissing Masha on parting. She didn’t push him away anymore, though. Sometimes they’d walk up to his room which he rented in a quiet little alley quite a distance from her home. He kept his room tidy and well aired. On the landlady’s old buffet stood a new ceramic tea service—ultra modern in white and black like piano keys. They’d drink tea and eat preserves from ceramic cups and plates, to the hoarse, jazzy tunes wafting softly from a dainty little battery-powered radio. Yuri Pavlovitch would appear extremely kind, bright, and pacific. He’d set Masha at the table, right beside the nickel-plated electric samovar, make her pose serving tea into the little ceramic cups and, hunching at the window, he’d take countless pictures of her. He’d act this way almost every time she came; he’d always offer her the same kind of pastry—hard, round things with holes in the middle that looked like targets punched by bullets.

  Everything in that room seemed to lend support to the authority and the tastes of its host—the seemingly brand-new overcoat that hung on a metallic hanger, the bellied samovar, or the square rasping little radio firmly encased in a leather holster.

  Their arguments were few. Very few. Yuri Pavlovitch would crack his knuckles but maintain his composure. Masha couldn’t do that. She put her heart into everything she did and when she flared up or stayed angry, she produced loud noises that made no sense at times. In the end Yuri Pavlovitch would have the last word—after all, he was the wiser and the more experienced of the two.

  Once, Yuri Pavlovitch was waiting for her at the exit, Masha came out waving her arms in anger. “I did it,” she announced still several steps away from him. “I had an argument with the shop super.”

  “Come now,” Yuri Pavlovitch wondered, f
urrowing his brow. “It isn’t becoming for a woman to argue.”

  “All right,” Masha shouted back, “then why is he trying to play politics? That ‘youth ought to master’ bit of his, and a few other things, like he wants to transfer Dunyasha into the morning shift and have her disrupt her Technicum studies! And do you know what he says? She’ll manage both somehow. How? What a way to fix a barrel—burn the staves and hide the hoops! This’ll surely stop the leak. She’ll manage both! What a snake! So I gave him a piece of my mind and Dunya? She’s too good and too conscientious to raise her voice!” Masha expressively clenched her large, white hands.

  Yuri Pavlovitch smiled with restraint. “You don’t live within your means, Masha,” he said in a low voice, shaking his head. “This isn’t good.”

  Masha gave him a perplexed stare.

  “No, no,” Yuri Pavlovitch assured her with unhurried calmness, “I’m not talking about money. There’re people who live within their means and others … who don’t understand what in life ought to be touched and what mustn’t. So they pay for their mistakes. You, Masha, are dear to my heart, therefore, I must give you some advice. That incident, don’t worry about it, a little tiff and … pht, it’s forgotten. But for the future … you’ve got to know how to put fences around your world and your life, Masha, Here everything is yours, everything is important, here it’s you and I, our home, our family … But there, behind it, there’s all the rest and all of it is unimportant. Don’t knock down the fence, Masha, don’t destroy your life.”

  “But what if a person is being cut to pieces behind that fence? What if they scream for help?”

  “Come, come,” Yuri Pavlovitch said, giving Masha a light hug. “Come, come, don’t go to extremes. I’m no coward. If I hear a plea for help I’ll go and help. But—then I’ll return home and shut the gate behind me. You know what I mean, Masha?”

  Masha didn’t reply.

  That night, as she lay on her high, freshly-made bed, she couldn’t fall asleep. Thoughts kept coming and coming, and the alarm clock kept ticking and ticking the time away. Behind one thin wall a baby was crying while a low feminine voice tried to calm it by lulling and pitying. Behind another wall there was a moving of chairs, a clanking of glasses, and a singing. Masha tossed and groaned, her head began to feel warm and heavy. At last, she sat up.

  “What if I, too, got tired of being alone?” she asked into the darkness of her room. “What if I’m tired of it all? Am I not allowed to get tired? Does it have to be love the way it is in the movies? That same hopeless love? But that’s only a movie, a ticket cost two quarters whereas here … this is life, life passes by …”

  Behind the wall where glasses clanked a new sound suddenly rang out, a low strumming of a guitar. The firm, young voice of the visiting geologist whom she had seen once or twice before intoned the words of a simple, improvised song:

  It may happen sometimes, sometimes we’ll meet,

  When the snow will look again like rain.

  I’ll have a pussy willow, yellow soft as down,

  And you’ll come’n walk on this very, very street.

  Masha felt a sweet throb in her heart. She pressed her disheveled head against the cool wall. The song continued:

  It may happen sometimes, sometimes we’ll meet,

  And your face will flash in the happy crowd.

  In the shopping net,

  A can of concentrate,

  Half-a-loaf of bread.

  The same green overcoat,

  And on your neck … that dear, old scarf.

  Oh, there you go—

  Kicking on a lump of ice,

  Oh, there you go, no thought’s bothering you,

  Whereas me, I do remember everything.

  Without turning on the light, Masha pulled on her dress and went out into the kitchen. She leaned against the windowsill, in order not to have to listen to that song which stirred up restless memories.

  I’m getting jittery, she thought uneasily.

  There was a short squeak behind her back and a man stepped into the kitchen—unhurriedly, without closing the door behind himself. He was rather small, but well-built and broad-shouldered. His coarse, curly hair didn’t even stir in the draft. He gave Masha a green-eyed, gaily informal once-over and whistled. “Look what we have here, not bad. Where have you been?”

  “What do you mean where?” Masha blushed. “In my room.”

  “No, no. I mean where were you five, ten years ago, hell, where were you then?” he explained with a smile. “Those braids of yours, they look like snakes.”

  He lit his pipe, puffed, inhaling greedily, pleasurably, and filling the whole kitchenette with a choking smoke. “They didn’t let you sleep, girlie?” he asked after taking the pipe out of his mouth and squeezing it in the palm of his hand. “Or was it, perhaps, insomnia?”

  Masha made no reply.

  “Come on, tell me,” he coaxed. “You can tell me everything. I’m leaving in an hour, and then you’ll never see me again. Come on.”

  “What’s there to tell?” Masha said, averting her eyes. “Nothing to complain about. I’m about to get married soon, the harness has been bought already …”

  “You want to say you don’t love him?”

  “We’re going to have a family, a home,” Masha continued. “I’ll love my children. And what you’ve just asked, this happens only in the movies … I think.”

  “My dear girl,” the man said softly. “I’ve had a few drinks, you’ll have to excuse me. I’m also probably a little sentimental, but listen to me. A person needs happiness, lots of happiness. He should eat happiness, drink happiness, bathe in happiness, and wallow in it as in golden sand. Hell, he ought to be happy. This is a … must! This is the vitamin of life. Do I make sense? I’ve had a few drinks, but never mind. You know, when I was a child, before I’d fall asleep at night I’d close my eyes and whisper those very cherished desires, and then hold my breath, waiting and waiting, counting: one, two, three. Then I’d hear distinctly the flapping of huge wings and know that it was coming. What? A huge bird of wonderment, one wing blue, the other red. Yonder-wonder, I’d call it. My bird of happiness! It made everything come true, everything, everything. I grew up, and grew old, and my bird is still winging down to me whenever I call it. Whenever I’m not too greedy, too cowardly, too timid, and whenever I’m honest with others and myself. Most of all myself, you hear? One wing blue, the other red …”

  “You’ve asked me if I loved or didn’t love,” Masha challenged fervently. “With him, you don’t know how to act. You try to clutch at his sides, they’re too smooth, you break your fingernails. And yet, he seems like any other man.”

  “Only seems like?” the man prodded. “Now look here, Girlie. I’m going to tell you something, something which is a secret. In some town there was once a wondermaster who had a shop in which he made dummies. You should’ve seen the superb dummies that man made! And you should’ve seen the clothes he designed for them! He made them look alive, like people! Almost like people! Well, one evening he somehow forgot to lock the door of his shop and the dummies broke out into the world. Nobody stopped them because they looked like people … almost like people. So these dummies scattered throughout towns and villages. Some of them even married. After all, they were almost like people. Just that they had no human warmth … and also, no life ever came from them. That was all. Oh, Girlie, listen to me, remember well my little tale and take heed. You may find such a dummy anywhere. Please watch out for them, I implore you. Well, I’ve got to go. So long, Girlie.”

  The man bowed his curly head interspersed with grey and for a split second clung to Masha’s large, coarse hand.

  She saw him plod away, energetically swinging his suitcase. He was bareheaded, his coarse hair didn’t stir in the wind. Masha thought for a while and then threw her overcoat over her shoulder and walked out into the night. It was daybreak. The trunks of pine trees rising along the street gleamed bronze-reddish in the glow of dawn whereas
the twigs loomed like dark funnels. The trees stood motionless, like trumpets waiting for the skilled hand of some unknown giant musician. Suddenly, over the houses, over the road, and over the pine trees, the crystal-clear, blue air high above was pinged by a strange winter bird. A joyously alarming premonition suddenly tweaked Masha’s heart. For a second she remembered Yuri Pavlovitch, his tall, erect, straight figure, his smooth, gentle voice.

  “No, no, no!” she exclaimed. It was the whisper of anguished passion, the sweet ache of liberation. The sharp morning breeze caressed her face. She slowly squinted her eyes and began to count, “One, two, three … So where are you my Yonder-wonder? Where are you, my bird of happiness? Come aflying.”

  1966

  A Case of Geophobia

  by Georgi Gulia

  Georgi Dmitryevitch Gulia, born 1913. His first novel, On The Incline, appeared in 1930. In his novel As Long As The Earth Turns, published in 1962, Gulia depicts the life and work of Soviet scientists.

  It was Sunday and Matamey Larsanba could allow himself the luxury of staying in bed an extra half-hour. There were at least two reasons for that, first—youth, and second—his position as secretary of the village Soviet, either reason not being devoid of a certain sanctioned dose of country leisure.

  His parents, with whom he lived, went out of their way to spoil him. The young man’s father never chided him for those extra moments in bed which he enjoyed lying idle and thinking of nothing, while his mother always brought him a glass of hot milk and a bowl of cold hominy right to his bedside, as if he were a decrepit old prince.

  This morning, however, there was to be none of the traditional half-hour of leisure nor the usual meal by Mother’s job-weary hands. Somebody was calling—he had to dress in a hurry and go out onto the porch.

  “Are you asleep?” asked Saat Chkok, the school janitor. He was quite excited.

  “Not any more,” Matamey said. “Anything happen?”