‘Of course not,’ said Nanny, ‘not night after night.’
‘So she scolded her now and again, of course, but Ganka just laughed – it was water off a duck’s back. Then, on the Eve of Epiphany, she hears noises in the kitchen – it seemed Ganka was moving things around or something. In the morning she hears little squeals. She goes into the kitchen: Ganka’s nowhere to be seen, there’s just a baby covered in rags, squealing on the bed. The manager’s wife takes fright. She starts to look for Ganka: what had become of her? Had something dreadful happened? She looks out through the window – and there’s Ganka by the hole in the ice, barefoot, rinsing out her laundry and singing. The manager’s wife wanted to dismiss her, but what would she do without her? She was such a sturdy, hardworking lass.’
I slipped quietly off.
So Ganka was friends with a simple uneducated soldier. This was horrible, horrible. And she had been tormenting some baby. There was something dark and terrible about all this. She had stolen it from somewhere and hidden it in rags; and when it had cried, she’d run off to the hole in the ice and sung songs there.
I felt miserable all evening, and in the night I had a dream from which I awoke in tears. But my dream was neither sad nor frightening, and I was crying not from grief but from rapture. When I woke, I could only half remember it and I was unable to recount it.
‘I dreamed of a boat. It was quite transparent, light blue. It floated straight through the wall into silver reeds. Everything was poetry and music.’
‘But then why are you howling?’ asked Nanny in surprise. ‘Why does a boat make you howl? Maybe a boat means something good.’
I could see she didn’t understand, but there was nothing more I could say or explain. And my soul was ringing, singing, weeping in ecstasy. A light blue boat, silver reeds, poetry and music…
I didn’t go out into the garden. I was afraid I’d see Ganka and begin thinking about terrible things I couldn’t understand – about the soldier and the little baby in rags.
The day dragged on. It was blustery outside and the wind was bending the trees. They shook their branches and the leaves churned, sounding like boiling waves.
In the corridor, outside the store room, was a surprise: on the table stood an open crate of oranges. It must have been brought from town that morning: they’d be given to us after lunch.
I adore oranges. They are round and golden, like the sun, and under their peel are thousands of tiny pockets filled with sweet fragrant juice. Oranges are beautiful, oranges are a joy.
And suddenly I thought of Ganka. She didn’t know oranges. Warm tenderness and pity filled my heart.
Poor thing! She didn’t know. I should give her just one. But how? To take one without asking was unthinkable. But if I did ask, I’d be told to wait until after lunch. And then I wouldn’t be able to take it away with me. They wouldn’t let me, and they’d ask questions – they might even guess. They might start to laugh. Better just to take one without asking. I’d be punished, I wouldn’t be given any more – and that would be that. What was I afraid of?
Round, cool and pleasant, it lay in my hand.
How could I? Thief! Thief! But all that could wait until later – I must hurry to Ganka.
The girls were weeding right by the house, by the back door.
‘Ganka! This is for you, for you! Try it – it’s for you.’
Her red mouth laughed.
‘What is it?’
‘An orange. It’s for you.’
She was turning it in her hand. I mustn’t embarrass her.
I ran back into the house and, sticking my head out of the corridor window, waited to see what would happen. I wanted to share her pleasure with her.
She bit off a piece together with the peel (why hadn’t I peeled it for her?), then opened her mouth wide, made a horrible face, spat out what she’d bitten off and hurled the orange far into the bushes. The other girls stood round her, laughing. And she was still screwing up her face, shaking her head, spitting, and wiping her mouth with the cuff of her embroidered shirt.
I climbed down from the windowsill and went quickly to the dark end of the corridor; hiding behind a large chest covered with a dusty carpet, I sat on the floor and began to weep.
Everything was over. I had become a thief in order to give her the best thing I knew in all the world. And she hadn’t understood, and she had spat it out.
How would I ever get over this grief and this hurt?
I wept till I had no more tears. Then, a new thought came into my head: ‘What if there are mice here behind the chest?’
This fear entered my soul, grew stronger there, scared away my previous feelings and returned me to life.
In the corridor I bumped into Nanny. She threw up her hands in horror.
‘Your dress, your dress – it’s all covered in muck! You’re not crying again, are you?’
I said nothing. This morning humanity had failed to understand my silver reeds, which I had so longed to explain. And ‘this’ – this couldn’t be spoken of at all. ‘This’ was something I had to be alone with.
But humanity wanted an answer and was shaking me by the shoulder. And I fended it off as best I could.
‘I’m not crying. I… my… I’ve just got toothache.’
First published in 1924
Translated by Robert Chandler
A FAMILY JOURNEY
They argued for a long time about when it was best to leave – on the morning train or the evening train.
Grandmother was in favour of the morning train: ‘At least you can look out of the window.’
Klavdiya was for the evening train: ‘You can get some sleep, and the journey doesn’t drag on for so long.’
Strokotov had no opinion of his own. Or maybe he had an opinion but didn’t come out with it, since his opinion was never asked for. So he confined himself to nodding quietly in agreement – one moment with grandmother, the next moment with Klavdiya.
Preparations for the journey had been going on for a long time. Grandmother had unravelled her knitted jacket and made a sweater for little Petya. Then she had unravelled her woollen stockings and knitted little Petya some shorts. After that she had unravelled her warm gloves and made him some socks.
‘At least the boy will be smartly dressed now. He’ll be a little doll.’
Little Petya, the freckled and snivelling scion of the Strokotov family, looked like his cowed, despairing father, but the similarity was only external. In character, he was quite different. Petya thrust himself forward as much as his modest father tried to efface himself. He was bad-tempered, capricious and always dissatisfied. All he had inherited from his father were freckles, red hair and an eternally runny nose – from hay fever in summer, and from an ordinary cold in winter.
Klavdiya, the mother, a plain, skinny woman with short thick legs, saw herself as a victim and martyr and nagged away at her husband from morning till night. To bring about peace, the old woman would intervene on behalf of her son-in-law with the conciliatory words: ‘Well, what do you expect from the fool?’
Klavdiya, who had dreamed in her youth of becoming a ballerina, believed that marriage to Strokotov had been her undoing. So as to bring a little solace to her life of sacrifice, she told people to call her ‘Kate’. This name was pronounced by the family with a soft vowel, Russian-style: ‘Kyate’.
Nature had set herself a very particular goal, one might say, in engendering the members of this family. The husband was intended for the role of a sheep, Kyate for that of an old spinster and seamstress, while the old woman was meant to be a peaceful lover of coffee and gossip. But Fate, like a third-rate director, had allotted everyone the wrong role, raised the curtain, played some little jingle and set her machine in motion.
Strokotov wore himself out, unable to live up to the role of destroyer of lives; Kyate was all too obviously no snake-charmer; while the old woman seemed to be struggling with a role a bit like that of a King Lear with no Cordelia: ‘Blow, wi
nds, and crack your cheeks!’
And now tout ce joli monde1 was on its way to a French dacha. It had taken cries of despair, an advance deposit, and payment in instalments to rent this dacha. Kyate had sobbed and cursed Strokotov, who had utterly and completely destroyed her life and was now gradually destroying it all over again. Strokotov had got into the wall cupboard and crumpled his mother-in-law’s coat while trying to hang himself. The old woman had tried to get Kyate to see reason: ‘Don’t torment the fool. If something happens, you’ll have to answer to the police.’
Then they had baked some pies and set off on their way.
It happened to be an unusually hot day. Strokotov got so exhausted dragging all the suitcases, as well as the basket for the journey, that he even (quite unprecedentedly) began to answer back. This was somehow as absurd and even horrifying as if a guinea pig under a vivisector’s scalpel were to look up indignantly and say: ‘Why are you cutting my belly open, you bastard?’
On very hot days railwaymen like to temper their rolling stock in the sun, so that a carriage feels like a red-hot iron by the time the train leaves the station.
Little Petya did not want to look out through the window; instead he got straight to work on the pies. The old woman began mournfully listing the things they had forgotten and that were therefore sure to be devoured by moths.
A cinder suddenly flew into one of the hapless Strokotov’s eyes. Cinders were always flying into his eyes: this was a misfortune that accompanied every one of the family’s infrequent departures from Paris. Strokotov blinked, pulled at his eyelid, rubbed at his eye, rubbed towards his nose with his fist, rubbed away from his nose with his handkerchief; nothing made any difference.
Kyate got angry and began to hiss: ‘Why doesn’t this happen to anyone else? Columbus discovered the whole of America and nothing ever flew into his eye. Vasco da Gama… Hundreds like him… And did any of them? No, never… Whereas this ass… His eyes catch every bit of rubbish that’s going!’
‘Leave off, Kyate,’ said the old woman. ‘What do you expect from him? You don’t seem to understand what kind of man he is. Give your nerves a rest.’
Strokotov felt hotter than ever as a result of his eye trouble. ‘I’m dying, I need a drink,’ he groaned. ‘Why didn’t we bring any water with us?’
‘Because you never think of anything,’ replied his wife, and went on to develop this thought sullenly and angrily: ‘Is there anything you’re capable of thinking about? No. There isn’t. There never is. Not once have you ever thought about anything.’
‘Ask him if he’s still got the money,’ the old woman instructed her daughter, preferring, because of the extraordinary contempt that she felt, not to address her son-in-law directly.
‘It’s still there, Maman,’ Strokotov reassured her. ‘The hundred francs are in my wallet. But all the same, I’m dying, and there’s no water.’
The coach was getting hotter and hotter. Seeing her husband’s sufferings, Kyate was suddenly filled with pity; her pity, however, because of the peculiar workings of her psyche, was directed not at Strokotov but at her mother. ‘Mama, darling, you’re sweating all over – you mustn’t sit in a draught. Viktor, be so good as to close the window. Mama will catch cold. It probably makes no difference to you if my mother, who has made so many sacrifices for you, catches pneumonia. But to me it’s not a matter of indifference. Close the window!’
The old woman almost protested against the closing of the window since she too was finding it unbearably hot, but she saw how desperately Strokotov wanted to disobey and instantly decided upon an act of self-sacrifice – anything to make things worse for her son-in-law: ‘Thank you, Kyate, for taking care of your mother.’
With trembling hands Strokotov slammed shut the window, collapsed back into his seat with a groan and closed his eyes. The veins on his neck were protruding visibly.
The old woman looked at him thoughtfully out of the corner of one eye: ‘Would this be too much for him?’
She decided it wouldn’t.
‘Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!’
The train slowed down.
The martyr opened his eyes. ‘I’ll slip out and buy a bottle of Vichy,’ he said, not looking at anyone.
And there was something in his tone that silenced both mother and daughter, preventing either of them from finding an appropriate rejoinder. The train came to a halt and Strokotov, trying not to look at his ladies in case they stopped him, leaped out on to the platform. But since Strokotov was unlucky with everything, the trolley with the drinks and sandwiches turned out to be at the other end of the platform. Strokotov gestured despairingly, trying to summon the trolley, but the trolley was busy with other passengers and he himself had to run the length of the train.
He found his Vichy.
‘Combien?’
‘Trois francs.’
He rummaged through each of his pockets. But he never had any change on him and was rummaging just on the off chance, just in case. He had to open his wallet and take out the sacred hundred-franc note.
The young lad in charge of the trolley took the note, spent a long time smoothing it out, inquired more than once if Strokotov didn’t happen to have three francs about him, opened some little box, fiddled about inside it with one finger, handed a sandwich to a new customer, gave this man his change – and began fumbling about again, still holding onto the accursed hundred-franc note. Trembling with impatience, Strokotov glanced with hatred at the intruder and saw him suddenly quicken his pace and begin to gallop towards the train. Strokotov looked round. The train was moving.
His heart lurched. Everything went black. Clutching the cold, potbellied bottle of water against his chest, Strokotov rushed towards the train, grabbed hold and leaped into the last coach.
‘Did you get the change?’ the ladies yelled out together, with one voice. They had been observing this whole scene through the window.
‘How could I?’ he replied sullenly. Naïvely trying to change the subject, he then asked in a businesslike voice: ‘Did you remember the corkscrew?’
The ladies choked. They were so enraged they couldn’t breathe. They couldn’t speak.
‘Where?’ said Kyate, recovering herself. ‘Where are the hundred francs? Good God! This is hell. It’s worse than being with a runaway convict.’
She let out such wild cries that even little Petya, who was used to everything and had been observing this entertaining little scene with curiosity, suddenly took fright and began to howl.
The old lady wanted to add her bit. She waited a long time, then couldn’t wait any longer. She took umbrage.
‘Don’t shout like that,’ she reprimanded her daughter. ‘French people are listening. It’s not right.’
‘To hell with your French people,’ the daughter snapped back. ‘This cretin leaves us without a centime and it’s all the same to you. You only care about looking good in the eyes of the French. You’re wasting your time. You’ll never get anything out of them except sale étranger.’2
Hearing unpleasant and entirely understandable words, a Frenchman sitting beside the other window took this sale étranger personally, flared his nostrils, took a deep breath, snorted and began – so it seemed – to compose a retort.
‘Stop it, Kyate!’ said the old woman sternly. ‘This is getting out of hand.’
But Kyate was neither listening nor hearing.
‘He felt like a little Vichy water. And why not? What do we care about money? So what if he has to pay a hundred francs? What does his wife matter? She can walk about naked as long as he gets his Vichy.’
And suddenly Strokotov leaped to his feet, terrible and black, his hair standing on end.
‘To hell with you!’ he howled. ‘To hell with a-a-all! of you-ou-ou! I just can’t…’
And, swinging the potbellied bottle above his head, as if he were an Indian and it were a tomahawk, he hurled it out through the window.
‘Hold me back!’ wheezed Kyate. ‘Hold me ba
ck! I’m probably going to kill him.’
‘Be quiet!’ the old woman shouted hysterically, and suddenly, to universal astonishment, lifted up her leg and began to pull off her shoe. She then slipped a hand down her stocking and removed a piece of folded newspaper from beneath her heel. Everyone froze, silently watching in fear and wonder, the way people watch a conjuror as he produces a live chicken from an empty hat.
The old woman unfolded the newspaper and took out a compressed hundred-franc note.
‘There! Maybe this will shut you up,’ she said calmly, holding the money out to her daughter.
The daughter took the money, closed her hand over it, and pursed her lips.
‘And now you’d better explain where you got hold of this money,’ she said.
The old woman said nothing.
‘You squirrelled it away, is that it? From the housekeeping, I suppose? My own mother! The person who should be a model of selfless… What’s up?’
The train came to a halt.
‘We’ve arrived,’ shouted Strokotov. ‘Quick – get out! The train only stops for three minutes. Hurry up! Kyate – your cardboard box! Maman – don’t forget your parcel.’
‘What a quick journey!’ said the old woman, cheering up.
‘Amazing!’ Kyate joined in. ‘I hadn’t even noticed. Petya, darling, give Mummy your hand. Viktor, you take the basket. He always forgets something or other. Well, it’s been a wonderful journey!’
First published in 1938
Translated by Robert Chandler
YEVGENY IVANOVICH ZAMYATIN (1884–1937)
Zamyatin was born in Lebedyan, a small town around 200 miles south of Moscow. His father was an Orthodox priest and a schoolmaster; his mother a musician. After going to secondary school in Voronezh, he studied naval engineering in St Petersburg. In 1905 he was briefly imprisoned after joining the Bolshevik Party. He won recognition in 1913 with his ‘A Provincial Tale’; like most of his early work, it is set in a provincial Russia that Zamyatin portrays as stifling and brutal. In March 1916 he was sent to Newcastle, to supervise the construction of icebreakers for the Russian navy. His stay in England inspired the satirical ‘The Islanders’ (1918) and ‘The Fisher of Men’ (1921). Shortly before the October Revolution, Zamyatin returned to Russia; now, however, he wrote critically of the Bolsheviks, and he was imprisoned twice more – in 1919 and 1922. Because of his moustache, neat tweed suits and formal behaviour, Zamyatin became known as ‘the Englishman’.
Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida (Penguin Classics) Page 27