Treasury of Russian Short Stories 1900-1966

by Wassner, Selig O. ;

  “There’s none here.”

  “But when is it going to be here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe your joint will some day be trading with churek. Can you imagine, churek and cheese? What a combination!”

  “No.”

  “No what?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Do I talk in a way you don’t understand?”

  “Yes.”

  Matamey pitied the man—no sense of humor! What makes a man like that enter the services of Mercury? Fortune-hunting? Hardly—none here. So what then? A desire to do good? What good? So what then? This Abkhazian sphynx in the image of a salesman named Eugen Chizmaa defied understanding—he seemed more enigmatic than the Egyptian sphynx. There he was, staring at the counter, in total oblivion of everything around him. Matamey left without saying goodbye.

  “Have you ever seen an owl in a tree hole?” Mas asked him when he joined the others.

  No, the secretary of the village Soviet had never seen an owl in a tree-hole though he had seen once a stuffed owl in the Sukhumi museum.

  “Too bad,” the miller shook his head. “You’re a country man, yet unacquainted with owls.”

  “But I’m acquainted with papers, stacks and stacks of them,” Matamey replied with a twinkle in his eyes.

  “They’re alive too,” the janitor added.

  “And hot,” Matamey completed the sentence.

  “Watch out that your soul doesn’t change into a paper,” the miller warned.

  “I can’t vouch for that, after all I am a pen-pusher.”

  They walked on in silence, quickening their steps. The miller, his face as grim as the hour before a storm, thought about the grindstones, about those marvelous creations of the human mind that turned tiny grains into flour. If one were to observe nature through the eyes of a wise man, he’d see life as grindstones and man as a tiny grain. What a pity that Andrey turned out to be one of those tiny grains. What a pity! This search might go on into infinity—searching for one man in the mountains was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

  The atavistic spirit spoke up in the janitor. In the fashion of his ancestors he began to spin a yarn of happenings far in the past with one sole purpose in mind: to kill traveling time. Matamey paid no heed. “The prince came and stopped at the door,” Saat narrated. “Shall I call the owner and have myself invited or pass by unnoticed, the prince asked himself. The prince didn’t want people to think he was furtive.”

  “And why not?” Matamey asked without thinking.

  “Quite simple. Because a prince is a prince,” Saat replied.

  “Prince? What prince? What are you talking about?” Matamey couldn’t hide his annoyance.

  “Can’t you see,” the janitor explained. “I’m telling a story of the far past.”

  “What for?”

  “To kill time.”

  “What for?”

  “What do you mean what for?”

  “Why kill time?”

  Saat decided that the young official was so preoccupied with Andrey that he couldn’t think straight. “Matamey,” he asked, “maybe we should sing a little marching song.”

  “No. It’s best to walk in silence,” Matamey objected. “Especially on a Sunday. Hell, I was planning something for today.”

  “Shame, Matamey,” the janitor chided. “Poor Andrey is in trouble and you’re doing some planning.”

  “Why couldn’t he wait till tomorrow to disappear?”

  “He couldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Such thoughts come to a man only on holidays,” Saat said. “On workdays people don’t have the time to busy their minds with rubbish.”

  “So help me, he’s right,” Mas let himself be heard. “A man potters only from too much fat or too much leisure. If he’d toil like an ant and carry bags of flour, his head wouldn’t be cluttered with junk.”

  “What if Andrey is not pottering but is really sick?” Saat questioned.

  “Make him plow two acres of soil and that’ll cure him,” Mas advised.

  “I’d give a million to be transported on wings to my vegetable garden,” Saat expressed the wish.

  “Listen, Mas, how well do you know this road?” Matamey wanted to know.

  “Like my five fingers,” the miller replied, pointing at the sharp stones jutting out of the road dust.

  “Where does it lead, to Suipsara?”

  “Yes. And farther up no cars ever go either.”

  The road coiled under a huge rock that seemed to have suddenly grown out from the fog. A reddish boulder it was, rising about fifty meters straight up. Behind the rock the road began to climb, crawling and twisting so tortuously that the travelers had to stop several times to catch their breath. At last they reached the level of the top of the rock. The view of a valley unfolded from there, and farther away loomed chains of white-capped mountains to which this path lead. Matamey was infatuated with the scenery. He wistfully admitted to himself that he’d never seen such beauty. Mas, apparently preoccupied with his thoughts about the two grindstones and the two bags of grain, didn’t express any emotion. Saat saw nothing interesting since he had no double-barrelled rifle and these were hunting grounds, not a vegetable garden.

  “No one here as far as I can see,” the miller determined after scanning the scenery.

  “And who’s there under that tree?” Matamey asked.

  No more than a hundred paces from them lay what looked like a man or might have been a barked log of wood.

  “A man,” Matamey confirmed.

  “Looks like a log to me,” Saat quipped.

  “Some people look like logs,” Mas muttered. “Let’s walk up another hundred paces instead of quibbling.”

  They filed through amid blackberry bushes forming a narrow corridor along an overhanging cliff wall to their left.

  “Ho, ho,” the janitor exclaimed, looking up. “What a fall. I don’t wish it on anybody.” He greedily eyed the blackberries resembling miniature grapes. They looked delectable!

  “You’re not a goat, Saat,” the miller warned. “Stop ogling those berries. Wait till we’ve found Andrey then you can stuff yourself as much as you want.”

  “All right, all right,” Saat growled. Still he managed to snatch a handful of berries without slackening his pace—just like a goat.

  8

  No, it wasn’t Andrey—merely a shepherd who had lain down and dozed off. He rubbed his eyes, apologized for some reason, and got up. He was a tall babe, about twenty-five, blue-eyed, red-haired, dressed in a worn-out military uniform. The boy cast a searching glance for his herd and having found it at the clearing, felt visibly relieved. About fifteen obviously poor milk-cows of the small-sized Abkhazian variety meekly grazed in the succulent grass.

  “I was looking up at the sky and fell asleep,” the shepherd said apologetically.

  “At the sky?” Matamey queried.

  “Right there,” the shepherd stuck his finger at the sky.

  “Why at the sky?”

  “Where else? Everybody is a stargazer nowadays. Why not me?”

  “Why not indeed,” Saat agreed.

  “Maybe you’d like to fly in a rocket?” the miller sullenly investigated.

  “And why not?” the shepherd flashed a freckle-faced smile. “I’d love to. Just think, to live in the twentieth century and not to fly a rocket!”

  “You see?” the miller addressed Saat.

  “I can’t see what a chap like him would do in a rocket,” Saat said. “I’d rather he knew how much milk each of his cows gave.”

  “That’s no secret,” the shepherd took no offense. “Each one of them gives full five litres. Per day.”

  Saat groaned with laughter—quite impolitely to be sure. “Five litres, imagine! That’s what a good goat gives. A goat climbing rocks and nibbling on dry leaves! All right, maybe a little less. … But a cow!! If a cow gives no more than five litres it should be sent to slaughter.
”

  “Why slaughter?” the shepherd angrily puffed up his cheeks.

  “Very simple,” Saat lectured. “Because a cow is made to give milk and not to potter. And a good shepherd might also be of some help here. That is if he stops admiring the skies and looks instead at the grass, at the cows’ rumps and such. Young man, stars are beautiful at night, but a man always needs cows—day and night. If there’s no star he can turn on a wick lamp or make a campfire and admire it, but if there’s no milk—water won’t do. Do you understand, young man?”

  “I understand things more complicated than that,” the shepherd retorted. “I understand every word of it and that’s just why I disagree with you. I see no sense in life without the sky or the stars. The earth and the sky—together. Do I make myself clear?”

  Saat appraised his opponent from head to foot and came to the conclusion that he was facing an incorrigible dreamer. His pants in patches but his thoughts—in the skies.

  Forewarned by his secretarial sense, Matamey realized that this contest could drag on—obviously both sides were too obstinate and opinionated: the janitor in his vegetable-plot element, the shepherd in his intergalactic spaces. What was needed was a Solomon’s decision. “I think they’re both right,” he addressed Mas. “They both adhere, each in his own right, to a just viewpoint.”

  The miller nodded his head. He was absolutely uninterested in Saat’s much less in the shepherd’s viewpoint.

  “We’ve come here to look for a man,” Matamey smiled at the shepherd. “Would you know, perhaps, our school principal?”

  “You mean Butba?” the shepherd asked.

  “Yes, him!”

  “I know him. He climbed this road an hour ago.”

  “An hour ago?” Matamey shouted out.

  “Maybe even a little less.”

  “This means he’s around here somewhere. Did he tell you anything?”

  “Yeah, we’ve had a talk.”

  “About stars?” the janitor interposed.

  “That’s right.”

  “You hear, they talked about stars.”

  “Was he absentminded?” Matamey continued the inquiry.

  “I wouldn’t say that,” the shepherd replied after some thought. “I’d say he was worried for some reason.”

  “What reason? Didn’t he tell you?”

  “He was telling me about velocities.”

  “What velocities?”

  “Of carts, cars, trains … planes, rockets …”

  “Didn’t I tell you!” Saat proudly exclaimed.

  “Didn’t you tell me what?”

  “Don’t you remember, Matamey?”

  “You see,” the shepherd went on, “when we met he asked me, ‘Would you like to travel to the stars?’ And I said, ‘Of course.’ And that made him very happy. ‘Come with me,’ he suggested.”

  “Where to?” the miller asked.

  The shepherd pointed toward the mountains.

  “What for?”

  The shepherd shrugged his shoulders. “If you ask me he wanted to see how the earth looks from above.”

  “What a strange desire,” Saat blurted.

  “Nothing strange in that, esteemed one,” the shepherd snapped back. “A man is not made to crawl like a worm, he ought to soar above the earth—like an eagle.”

  What a fellow, Matamey marveled. He couldn’t help admiring the shepherd’s deep inner conviction, his dignity without cockiness.

  “A man ought to discover the secret of the universe,” the shepherd continued. “He ought to explore the moon, Mars … He ought to discover how new stars are born. Isn’t all that worthy of interest? Isn’t that why cosmonauts and astronauts are going up into space? Recently a heavy sputnik has been orbited; it relayed a great deal of interesting information.”

  “How do you know all that?” Saat asked distrustfully.

  Instead of a reply the shepherd pulled out a little transistor radio from his traveling bag.

  “Are you listening to this?” Saat smirked.

  “Of course.”

  “To this instead of to the birds?”

  “If it’s all right with you, esteemed one,” the shepherd retorted, “yes. Instead of.” He turned on the radio and handed it to Saat. Out came the melody of a gay Abkhaz song.

  “Ho, ho,” Saat voiced elation, twisting the radio in his hands. He had not been expecting to hear a gay Abkhaz song to come out of a little box no larger than a box of matches.

  The miller spoke up. He believed the conversation between the school principal and this shepherd was to the point. “Isn’t that so?” he asked.

  “It was,” the shepherd confirmed.

  “Was he making sense?”

  “Certainly,” the shepherd expressed amazement. “As much as you and I. That man was highly interesting and intelligent. He had told me about his calculations, about his sleepless nights …”

  “Poor Andrey,” the miller wailed.

  “Just the opposite, esteemed one,” the shepherd assured him. “He was a very happy man. To be frank with you I envied him.”

  “We’re wasting time,” Saat interrupted. “Instead of discouraging him from his crazy notion you chimed in with him. Let’s go.” The janitor hastily moved away.

  Matamey took leave of the shepherd and, together with Mas, followed the janitor. The boy shrugged his shoulders and stretched out on the ground again. His stare fixed at the sky, the volume of the radio on his chest turned on, the body of the shepherd semed to be here on this sinful globe while his soul soared high in cosmic regions.

  He was trying to forget the strange travelers. He had nothing in common with them.

  9

  The climb was slow and tedious. Matamey wheezed hard, although he was the youngest. Saat wondered why and came to the conclusion that it was because of too much paper work, too many conferences and too many heated speeches. One avoids that by gardening—after you’ve done some gardening you find it easy to climb slopes no matter how steep.

  They had been walking for about an hour. The janitor was under the impression they were creeping right into the sky. Hell, that principal knew where to hide. How strange! Only about fifteen kilometers from the village and the wilderness here was inconceivable. Wherever you looked—virgin nature! Probably a breeding place for bisons. And every step took you higher and higher. The sun, incredibly hot, scorched you unbearably in the back of your head. You seemed to be swimming in hot water. And Matamey, he looked as if he was going to keel over any moment. Who the hell needed this idiotic chase? If a man wanted to go off his mind, he’d do it whether you watched him or not, and no matter how nobly hard you’d tried to help him.

  Suddenly Matamey halted his fellow-travelers and pointed ahead. Saat and Mas strained their eyes. Was it real what they saw?

  On the crest of the next boulder, one of many ungainly boulders that nature for some reason had wanted to accumulate here, sat a man. He appeared to be either reading a book or writing on paper.

  “I swear by God that’s him,” the janitor exclaimed. “Where there’re papers or books there’s Andrey Butba.”

  There was a brief consultation: to shout to him or get in closer and let Andrey notice them? It was decided not to draw his attention. He’ll see us and decide for himself what he wants to do.

  “How did he get up there?” Saat wondered.

  “The path leads to the right of that rock.”

  “Much to the right.”

  “Isn’t there another way?”

  “Only for bisons,” Saat said. “Let’s say a prayer first before we start to climb,” he tried to quip.

  The miller suggested that they keep on straight and look for another approach farther on. Andrey couldn’t have flown up there.

  “Maybe we ought to take a little rest,” Matamey suggested.

  “To hell with rest,” the janitor shouted, covering his head with a handkerchief and wiping off his sweat. “Let’s get through with it.”

  He was seconded b
y the miller. Matamey had to succumb to the majority.

  Shortly the path turned right into a small saddle. There was nothing left to do but start crawling to the left, along a stony slope not too abrupt for climbing.

  “Follow me,” the secretary took the initiative. “And please livelier.”

  Saat was grim. The miller was silent too. Matamey tried his darnedest best not to discredit himself in front of his seniors. Often he felt like lying down on the ground to catch his breath but kept pushing on.

  Unexpectedly the travelers found themselves on the crest of a cliff, not far from Andrey Butba—literally a few steps from him. Andrey either hadn’t heard them come or pretended he hadn’t. There he was sitting like Pythagoras of old, drawing his “circles,” not on the ground though, but on an ordinary piece of paper. He did not ask them “not to cross his circles.” He simply nodded at them as if they had just come into his office. As if nothing had happened and he hadn’t run off.

  “Hello,” Matamey simply greeted him.

  “How are you,” the principal simply answered.

  The miller was less tactful. “What are you doing here, Andrey?” he asked angrily.

  “Where?”

  “Here. On this accursed rock.”

  “Accursed, why?” the principal waved toward the breathtaking panorama unfolding from this vantage point and dominating many kilometers around. Valleys and green hills, grey mountains and snow-white crests, reddish boulders and blue rivers, a whole seemingly separate and independent world, a strange, unpopulated galaxy. The rich variety of hues and colors made the janitor dizzy. He stepped aside from the edge of the cliff where Andrey was sitting.

  Andrey, a tall, handsome dark-haired man with dark hazel eyes, was dressed in light woolen breeches and a white pique shirt. “Why do you, esteemed Mas, call this rock ‘accursed’?” he asked in a respectful, unhurried tone of voice. “Has this rock offended you in any way?”

  “Very much so,” Mas snapped back. “What are you doing here, I’m asking you?”

  “I?”

  “Yes, you.”

  “What do you expect a free man to do?”

  Mas jumped up, as if scalded with hot water. “A free man works and doesn’t potter around in some mountains.”

  “Who is pottering around?”

  “You are, I believe.”