Treasury of Russian Short Stories 1900-1966

by Wassner, Selig O. ;

  2

  The first few days they had good luck. Their track ran groves, cowslips, and perennial plant growth. The sky above them was a deep blue, oscillating from the swelter. Under their feet unseen bumble bees buzzed like bass strings of guitars. Work was easy and gay, hardly a tree to fell, hardly a stake to set. In the evenings as they took measure of the track they had covered, Vadim would smile and wink at Prokhor—another kilometer plus, and every hundred meters extra meant a few extra rubles.

  However, in another week the track ran into an overgrown silver fir thicket. Prokhor picked up his old Berdan rifle and went ahead to scout the terrain. He took a long time, and when he came back he was all scratched and grim. His hair, wiry like the autumn feather grass and tangled with needles, was matted from the sweat into a weird shade of green. Without uttering a word he took the canteen of water and drank. He finished drinking and still there was general silence.

  “Have you at least reached the end of it?” Vadim asked.

  “Green hell, no,” Prokhor wiped his lips with the palm of his hand. “The same all over, fall on your knees and cry. But crying, my friends, we shall leave for some other time. Right, Rita Margarita?”

  “But why ask me, Prokhor?” the girl looked at him with a puzzlesome expression.

  “I’m asking you because you’ll have it the toughest. But I’ve a bright idea: what if I let you handle the theodolite?”

  “Me?” Rita asked. “But I don’t know a thing about it.”

  “You’ll learn. It’s not such a complicated science.”

  Vadim wanted to say they didn’t need any favors. On second thought he decided not to say anything—that guy might think he was jealous. Jealousy! He wouldn’t admit this feeling even to himself. Whenever Prokhor got into a conversation with Rita he’d pretend indifference. But he was a poor actor—his face would draw out and tension would be written all over it. Then something else: the jealousy was intensified by envy. He envied Prokhor’s unhurried, confident airs, his agility, even his walk—the light, sprightly gait of a taiga man. True, he too had some assets: a strikingly handsome appearance, the southern swarthy kind of attraction that even men noticed. Then his sphere of knowledge—it was much wider than Prokhor’s. Prokhor, for instance, in all seriousness considered Surikoff to be one of the greatest world painters. How couldn’t he help but scoff at that homegrown Siberian patriot! Besides, how valid can be the opinions of a man who judges art by the color of postcards!

  Vadim’s reflections were interrupted by a question: “Well, don’t you intend to pack up and go home now?” It was Prokhor who had asked it.

  “Home?” Vadim’s heart ached. His home was Moscow, and if it hadn’t been for Rita he’d have never come here. She had wanted to have a romantic experience … A romantic experience! Never enough sleep, blood blisters on your hands, and an aching feeling all over your body in the mornings. Hell only knows what you eat, and that stupid tent … drag it almost every morning from one place to another.

  They got up and began walking toward the tent. Vadim walked behind Rita, absentmindedly brushing away twigs that got into his eyes. Prokhor had a strange smile on his face. “You know what, kids,” he said, as they approached the tent, “we have a reason to celebrate. Today is my birthday.”

  “You are serious?” Rita asked.

  Prokhor nodded. After poking in his knapsack for a moment he hauled out a bottle.

  “Spirits! That’s the thing,” Vadim cheered, although he never really cared for sheer spirits.

  While Rita fussed with the fire, trying to make supper, Prokhor brought an armful of bird cherries with over-ripe stalks but otherwise quite appetizing. “Are we going to water it down or what?” he wanted to know.

  “Why bother?” Vadim suggested bravely. The bottle was put on the home-made table, next to a kettle of buckwheat groat, a can of fish, fruit juice, and three enamelled cups. Prokhor dispensed the spirit but diluted Rita’s with the juice.

  “To everybody’s success,” Prokhor raised his cup.

  “To success!”

  They gulped down the drinks. Vadim gasped for breath, his chest was aflame. For a minute he sat with his mouth open, tears running down his cheeks. “Have a chaser, you kook,” Prokhor offered him a cherry stalk. Vadim grabbed the juice jar instead. And then, a short time later, he and Rita intoned some songs while Prokhor lay at the fire and listened, his head resting on his elbows. Those were strange songs, Moscow songs. They stirred up in Prokhor a vague feeling, a longing for unknown towns, for distant lands, and for the sea which he had never seen:

  On Gogol Boulevard,

  Maple leaves’re fla-a-ying high.

  And over city roofs,

  Clouds are hanging day and na-a-ight,

  Rains and janitors,

  Keep chasing boys and girls,

  To whom nothing matters but their la-a-ove.

  Vadim and Rita’s faces were sad as they sang. They’re homesick, Prokhor thought. He, too, could visualize the boulevard covered with heaps of fallen leaves and in between them the wet glitter of the asphalt. There was an autumn nip in the air and crowds of people were milling around.

  “I feel like dancing now,” Rita sighed. “I miss dancing … Boys, can you think up a grand ballroom, all in multicolored lights, a parquet floor and music? Doesn’t it all seem as unreasonable as a rainbow now?”

  Prokhor gave a shiver. He stared at her.

  “What hit you?” she asked.

  “Oh, nothing,” he blushed and looked down at his feet. “There’s a place we could dance … in the village.”

  “Sure,” Vadim scoffed. “They have a parquet floor and colored lights, and …”

  “You’re still a grouch,” Rita said, rising from the ground. “I’m going to change,” she addressed Prokhor as she entered the tent. A short time later she came out, dressed in a bright cotton print dress with short sleeves. He noticed for the first time how attractively supple she was.

  3

  The village with the affectionately odd name Petenka was about five kilometers from the track. People were in demand in Petenka, especially fellows. Because fellows are like free birds—they want to study, or work in a factory, or in construction—away they go and that’s the last you’ve seen of them in Petenka.

  Petenka used to have a booming sable industry. But when for some strange reason the animal world had migrated farther north and the hunting had lost its lure, that industry had petered out. Crop-growing was never good in Petenka. So now only old folks and unmarried women stayed, living on mushrooms, berries, nuts, or raising figs. But young women were only too anxious to migrate to town. The village had been slowly emptying; more than half of its cottages were barred by boards, and the three rows of inhabited cottages presented a glum picture.

  No wonder then that all of Petenka was more than happy when three strangers showed up in front of its club. There was many an ouch and gasp as each of the unmarried young women who had been clinging to the windowpanes made a headlong dash for her best holiday dress put away in the chest. Half an hour later a marveling, naphthaline-smelling Petenka congregated in front of the club, having delegated Vas’ka Khromoff, its accordion player and chatterbox, to introduce himself to the visitors and then the visitors to Petenka.

  The dances began, Vas’ka did his best to make his accordion weep sorrowfully or giggle hysterically. Little kids, wide-eyed and full of wonder, had come to watch but their presence was not desired. “Too stuffy anyway without you,” they were unceremoniously ushered out, and a smack on the behind added for remembrance.

  Rita danced with abandon—the quadrille, the “Little Pine,” the “Sabbath Jig,” dances she had never heard of in Moscow. But this evening had turned out to be such an extraordinary, happy affair, everything went so smoothly … that she could sense her partner’s every move. And her partner, Prokhor, was such a good teacher! Vadim watched them from his seat in the corner, the usual ironic smile playing on his handsome face.

&n
bsp; During intermissions the girls would surround them in a tight circle.

  “Where do you work?” one asked.

  “You live in a tent? Day and night?”

  “Could you use us in your work?”

  Prokhor took pains in answering minutely every question. Any girl who wanted to study geodesics had his approval. “That’s right, girls,” he told them. “No sense turning into sour pickles here. Beauties like you are hard to come by no matter where.”

  Not until midnight did the dance begin to break up. To the accompaniment of Vas’ka’s accordion, Rita walked away with her arm in Vadim’s. Her face stood out in the dark in a fine, hazy outline. Only rarely did she turn her head to have a glance at Prokhor and when she did her eyes had a gleam of apprehension. It seemed she had wanted to ask him something but dared not.

  A bunch of girls came running by. Vadim followed them with his eyes, then suddenly asked, “You’re a monk or something? Look how many cuties and you do nothing but flap your ears.”

  “There’re cuties everywhere,” Prokhor replied in a bored tone of voice.

  “Oh, I see. You only go for the beauties. But if you listen to me you’ll be better off with just a cutie,” Vadim advised. “When you are with a beautiful girl you only tend to make a fool of yourself. You waste your good time trying to make love heavenly. But if she is just cute, she has no swollen head and makes life easier for you.”

  “You’ve had your say, that’s enough,” Prokhor said, slowing down a little. “And don’t you talk about beauty. You’ve never seen it and you never will.”

  “And why not?”

  “Because you can’t see it by looking at it with the eyes of a gadfly,” Rita interjected.

  Vadim stopped and abruptly removed his hand from her arm. “Already in cahoots, you two. All right, to hell with you,” he snapped, walking away, almost running ahead, and soon disappearing in the darkness.

  “Look out, don’t get lost,” Prokhor shouted after him. Then after a moment of silence he asked Rita, “Is he always such a psycho?”

  “I wouldn’t call him a psycho,” she said. “Just selfish. Especially since he wasn’t accepted at the university. It’s hard to accept failure when they keep telling you for years that you’re better and smarter than the rest. Some time ago he began to drink so his mother decided a trip would do him some good.”

  “And you were made his wet nurse?”

  “Poppycock,” Rita replied angrily. “I flunked out too. For almost a year I did nothing but loaf. It got me down. Without qualifications it’s even hard to get a cleaning woman’s job in a factory. I’m not the lucky type.”

  Prokhor had a mind to ask her why she was making up a story about herself. He didn’t, though. She had apparently forgotten, he thought, about the written-in acknowledgment in Lugovski’s book of poems she had lent him. “To Margarita Smolentseva,” it said, “for her ardent participation in the amateur circle.” And beneath the inscription there was the clearly legible stamp of the Bauman Institute.

  They had been walking along a soft forest lane before turning into a path. It was so dark that they kept stumbling against naked tree roots, until the moon rolled out and the birches began to reflect its cool gleam. When they reached the clearings, and waded knee-deep in foggy vapors, Prokhor thought of a fairy tale river whose shores were made of yogurt.

  4

  Each morning brought with it a new round of tortures. After a short night’s sleep that barely relieved the previous day’s fatigue, it was time to crawl out of the sleeping bags and start a new cooking fire. For the second week the wind had been blowing from the east, bringing with it swarms of gnats, spiders, mosquitoes and wood lice. The lice were the worst—they were so tiny that no horsehair net or chemicals could keep them away. The wood lice found their way up the sleeves, behind the collars, into the boots, then dug into the skin. They fearlessly crept into the fire or smoke, and barely was a spoon lifted to the mouth without a flat insect body floating in it.

  “Vitamins,” Prokhor quipped glumly. “Something like black caviar.”

  That would be at breakfast times. At work it was even worse. Breathing behind mosquito face masks was hard. Toward evening the clothes were soaked with perspiration, and after drying they squeaked like frost-stiffened laundry.

  No more than two hundred meters of track could be cleared in a day. When the earnings for the week were totaled, there was barely enough for food. In addition, Vadim badly chafed his foot. One morning Prokhor took a look at his painfully twisted face and said, “You know what, fella, you better take a rest for a few days. We’ll somehow manage without you.”

  For the first time Prokhor went to work alone with Rita. A warm drizzle had been coming down since early morning, the sky was overcast, and an intoxicating aroma of marsh tea stood in the air. Prokhor worked with a mechanical aloofness, taking a deep breath, heaving a blow with the axe (the only tool he used as the thicket was thinning out), then making a step forward … Another step, and the same all over again.

  The morning progressed. The drizzle became mixed in with pricky needles, and the marsh tea aroma turned into a nauseating, dizzying odor. A sticky sweat filmed his eyes and blood hummed in his ears. A dull stupor took hold of his body, filling his heart with hate toward all those grey, wet stems that stood like a blinding screen between this murk and the bright world ahead.

  Around noon they decided to work through dinner with only a little time out for a breather, then call it quits earlier in the evening. Sitting at the smoking fire, Prokhor reflected aloud how they’d get out to the village on Saturday and heat up the bath house.

  “I never washed in a village bath house,” Rita confessed. “It must be fun.”

  “A bath house’s a bath house,” Prokhor opined, “whether in town or in a village.”

  “Have you often been to town?” she asked.

  “I do even now—from time to time, when I have to pass my exam in Krasnoyarsk.”

  “My, you’re so secretive,” Rita shook her head reproachfully. “You never told me you did some studying. At the Institute?”

  “Yeah. At the Forest Institute.” He felt a little embarrassed, as if he had offended her. “You know,” he said, trying to change the subject, “this winter I’ll make sure to go to Moscow. I’ve promised myself already. If I do I’ll come to see you, you mind?”

  Prokhor’s face became serious, through his eyes still smiled. Rita wasn’t sure if he had meant it in earnest or not. “You may come,” she almost whispered, dropping her head.

  It was still light when they started on their way back to the tent. Prokhor, who had been walking ahead of Rita, suddenly made such an abrupt stop that she bumped her nose into his back. She wondered why he had stopped, then peeking over his shoulder, she saw Vadim—apparently coming to meet them. Vadim walked across the clearing, bending quite often, straightening up, chucking back his head like a rooster, and spilling a string of berries from his open hand to his open mouth.

  Probably blackberries, Rita thought flatly, the cowberries aren’t ripe yet—as if it were of the utmost importance to establish what kind of berries Vadim was eating. It took her almost a whole minute to become aware of a really important factor: Vadim wasn’t limping at all. He ambled with the easy gait of a man who had had a good rest. He was even whistling a happy tune.

  Then Vadim saw them. His tune stopped in the middle of a bar, his face contorted into the familiar mask of pain. “You’re early today. I … I thought,” he smirked sheepishly before unclenching his fist and showing them a handful of blackberries.

  “Yes, we’re early to-day,” Prokhor stated slowly. “Well … Let’s have supper.”

  They ate in silence. The supper was endless, the silence was oppressive. Finally Rita couldn’t stand it any longer and ran off into the tent. Prokhor took his rifle from behind the table and walked toward the woods.

  “Wait,” Vadim called out.

  “What do you want?”

  “I�
��ve got to talk to you,” Vadim caught up with him and walked alongside. They crossed the clearing and plunged into a thinly grown deciduous forest. Prokhor walked ahead, dragging his feet, stumbling often on anthills and dried-up fallen trees, raising a pungent, yellow dust. Only after some time, as if he suddenly remembered that Vadim was behind him, he stopped.

  “What’s the talk going to be about?” he asked, turning around to face Vadim.

  “It’s not more than once that I … well, stepped the wrong way,” Vadim said, without raising his eyes.

  “This is no time for words, Vadim. I think you’d better go.”

  “Where to?” Vadim didn’t understand at first.

  “You just go away.”

  Vadim paled. “I see,” he said, twisting his mouth. “You want to have Ritka all for yourself. What a fox you’ve turned out to be. But let me tell you something, you roan.” Vadim made a step closer. “Haven’t you been looking for a pure beauty? Well, what do you say to this? Ritka’s no beauty, she’s cute all right, you understand? You can get from her what you want without as much as an ouch.”

  “Swine!” Prokhor called with a dreary calm. “You miserable swine!”

  Vadim knew a fist into his face would come next if he didn’t get out of the way. He jumped aside and ran to the road. He wanted to stop and call from there some nasty, obscene name but was afraid Prokhor might take off his rifle and take a shot at him. Stumbling on tussocks and jerking from helpless rage, he kept walking toward the village.

  Prokhor pressed his cheek to an asp and closed his eyes. He stood there for a long time, listening to the beats of his heart. Then he got himself a smoke, hunched his back, as if wanting to become smaller, and walked toward the tent.

  Rita was sitting on an empty box, crying.

  “Get your things,” Prokhor told her gently, touching her shoulder. “He’s gone.”

  “I hate him,” she shouted, bursting into loud sobs.

  “No, you love him,” he said, “and he’s your responsibility.” What an idiot I am, he thought, trying to talk her into going. Why? I don’t want her to go.