No, Im not asleep, Im not anything, said the old man, and he coughed timidly.
The little girl couldn’t bear it any longer, and she burst out sobbing. The old man stroked her face: it was wet.
‘Why are you crying?’ whispered the old man.
‘Poor Granny,’ said the granddaughter. ‘Everyone’s alive, and she’s dead on her own.’
The old man said nothing. From time to time he just sniffed a bit, and coughed. The little girl felt frightened and she raised herself up a little so she could see her grandfather better and be sure he wasn’t asleep. She looked at his face and asked, ‘Why are you crying too? I’ve stopped.’
The grandfather stroked her head and whispered, ‘I’m… I’m not crying. It’s sweat.’
The little girl was now sitting next to the old man’s pillow.
‘Are you missing Granny?’ she asked. ‘Please don’t cry. You’re old too, you’ll die soon and then you’ll stop crying anyway.’
‘I’ll stop,’ the old man answered quietly.
The other, noisy room went suddenly quiet. One of the sons had said something. Everyone had then fallen silent. One son again softly said something. The old man recognized the voice of the third son, the physicist, the father of the little girl. It was the first time there had been any sound from him; he had neither spoken nor laughed. Somehow he calmed down all his brothers, and they even stopped talking.
Soon after this, the door opened and in came the third son, dressed as if it were daytime. He went up to his mother in the coffin and bent down over her sad face in which there was no longer any feeling for anyone.
Late night made everything silent. No one was walking or driving down the street. In the other room the five brothers were quite still. The old man and his granddaughter, so intent they were hardly breathing, watched their son and father.
The third son all of a sudden straightened up, reached out his hand in the dark and clutched at the edge of the coffin, but, failing to get a proper grip, he just pulled the coffin a little across the table and fell to the floor. As if it no longer belonged to him, his head struck the floorboards, but the son uttered no sound – it was his daughter who screamed.
Wearing only their underclothes, the five brothers rushed to their brother and carried him into the other room to bring him round and calm him. A little later, when the third son came back to himself, all the other sons were already dressed or in uniform, even though it was not yet two in the morning. One by one, they went off in secret, about the apartment, through the yard and the entire night around the building where they had lived as children, and there they wept, whispering words and laments, as if the mother were standing over each one of them, listening to him and grieving that she had died and made her children yearn for her; had she been able to, she would have stayed alive for ever, so that no one would pine for her or expend on her a heart and body to which she had given birth. But the mother had not endured living long.
In the morning the six sons lifted the coffin onto their shoulders and carried it out to be buried, while the old man took his granddaughter in his arms and followed them; by now he was used to missing the old woman, and he was pleased and proud that he too would be buried by these six powerful men – and buried no less properly.
First published in 1936
Translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler
THE RETURN
Aleksey Alekseyevich Ivanov, a Guards captain, had been demobilized and was leaving the army. His unit, in which he had served all through the war, gave him a send-off, as was fitting, with regret, love and respect, with music and with wine. His close friends and comrades accompanied him to the railway station and, after saying their final goodbyes, left him there on his own. But the train had been delayed for hours; and, after those long hours had passed, it went on being even more delayed. A cold autumn night was already beginning; the station building had been destroyed in the war and there was nowhere to spend the night, so Ivanov got a lift from a car going his way and returned to his unit. The following day Ivanov’s fellow-servicemen gave him another send-off; once again they sang songs and embraced the departing man to show their eternal friendship, but this time they expended their feelings more briefly and the party was just a group of close friends.
Then Ivanov set out for the station a second time; at the station he learned that yesterday’s train had still not arrived, so he could indeed have gone back to his unit for one more night. But it would have been awkward to be seen off a third time and cause his comrades more trouble, and Ivanov stayed, ready for a long wait on the deserted asphalt of the platform.
Near the points just beyond the station stood a pointsman’s hut which had survived the war. A woman in a padded jacket and a warm headscarf was sitting on a bench beside the hut; she had been there with her luggage the day before, and she was still sitting there, waiting for the train. The day before, as he left to spend the night with his unit, Ivanov had wondered whether to invite this lone woman back with him: she could sleep in the warm with the nurses; why leave her to freeze all night? – there was no knowing if she would ever get warm in the pointsman’s hut. But while he was wondering, the car had begun to move and Ivanov had forgotten about the woman.
Now the woman was still there, still motionless and in the same place as before. Such constancy and patience showed the loyalty and immutability of a woman’s heart – at least in relation to her possessions and her home, to which the woman was most likely returning. Ivanov went up to her: maybe she too would find it less dull to have company than to be on her own.
The woman turned her face towards Ivanov and he recognized her. It was a young woman they had called ‘Masha the bathhouse-attendant’s daughter’ because this was what she had once called herself – she really was the daughter of someone who had worked in a bathhouse. Ivanov had come across her now and then during the war, on his visits to an Airfield Service Battalion where this bathhouse Masha worked as a civilian assistant to the canteen cook.
The autumn countryside around them felt gloomy and forlorn at this hour. The train which was to take both Masha and Ivanov to their homes was somewhere far off in grey space. There was nothing to divert or comfort a human heart except another human heart.
Ivanov got into conversation with Masha and began to feel better. Masha was a straightforward and goodlooking girl, and there was a kindness in her large worker’s hands and her healthy young body. She too was returning home and wondering what it would be like to start living a new civilian life; she had got used to the airforce women, and to the pilots who loved her like an elder sister, gave her chocolate and called her ‘Big Masha’ because of her height and the way she had room in her heart for all her brothers at once, like a real sister, and not just for one of them in particular. It was unaccustomed and strange, and even frightening, to be going home to relatives she was no longer used to.
Ivanov and Masha felt orphaned now without the army, but Ivanov could never stay sad or despondent for long; if he did, he would feel as if someone were laughing at him from a distance and being happy instead of him, while all he did was scowl like a half-wit. So he would always turn back quickly to the business of living; he would find something to be interested in or consoled by, some simple makeshift pleasure, as he put it himself, and would thus escape his depression.
He moved up closer to Masha and asked her to let him give her a comradely kiss on the cheek. ‘Just a tiny one,’ he said, ‘because the train’s late and it’s so boring waiting for it.’
‘Only because the train’s late?’ asked Masha, looking intently at Ivanov’s face.
The ex-captain looked about thirty-five; the skin of his face was brown, wind-beaten and sunburnt; his grey eyes looked at Masha modestly, even shyly, and his speech, though direct, was tactful and courteous. Masha liked the hoarse, husky voice of this older man, his rough dark face and the expression it had of strength and defencelessness. Ivanov put out his pipe with a thumb that was inured to the
smouldering heat, and sighed as he waited for permission. Masha drew away from Ivanov. He smelt strongly of tobacco and dry toast, with a hint of wine – pure substances that come from fire or else can give birth to fire. It was as if Ivanov fed solely on tobacco, rusks, beer and wine.
He repeated his request. ‘I’ll be careful, Masha, just a surface kiss… Imagine I’m your uncle.’
‘I already have. Only not my uncle – my father.’
‘Splendid. So you’ll let me?’
‘Fathers don’t ask for permission,’ Masha laughed.
Ivanov was to say to himself later that Masha’s hair smelt of autumn leaves fallen in the forest, and he was never able to forget it… He walked away from the railway line and lit a small fire to fry some eggs for his and Masha’s supper.
In the night the train arrived and carried Ivanov and Masha away, towards their homes. They travelled together for two days, and on the third day they reached the town where Masha had been born twenty years before. She collected her things together in the carriage and asked Ivanov to settle the bag more comfortably on her back, but Ivanov took her bag on his own shoulders and followed Masha out of the carriage, even though he had more than a day’s journey still ahead of him.
Masha was surprised and touched by Ivanov’s considerateness. She was afraid of finding herself suddenly alone in the town she had been born in, and had lived in, but which was now almost a foreign country to her. Her mother and father had been deported by the Germans and had died in some unknown place; now Masha had only a cousin and two aunts in her home town, people to whom she felt no real attachment.
Ivanov arranged with the station commandant to break his journey, and stayed with Masha. Really he should have hurried on to his own home, where his wife and two children, whom he had not seen for four years, were waiting for him. But Ivanov was putting off the joyful and anxious moment of reunion with his family. He was not sure why he was doing this – perhaps he wanted to enjoy his freedom a little longer.
Masha did not know Ivanov’s family circumstances, and girlish shyness prevented her from asking. She trusted herself to him in the goodness of her heart, with no thought beyond the moment.
Two days later Ivanov resumed his journey home. Masha saw him off at the station. He kissed her in a habitual way and promised courteously to remember her image for ever.
Masha smiled in reply and said, ‘Why remember me for ever? There’s no need – and anyway you won’t… I’m not asking you for anything. Forget me.’
‘My dear Masha! Where were you before? Why didn’t I meet you long, long ago?’
‘Before the war I was at school, and long long ago I didn’t exist at all.’
The train arrived and they said goodbye. Ivanov departed and did not see how Masha, left on her own, began to cry because she could not forget any friend or comrade, or anyone at all whose path had even once crossed hers.
Ivanov looked out of the carriage window at the small houses of the little town they were passing and which he was unlikely ever to see again in his life, and reflected that in a house just like one of these, though in another town, his wife Lyuba lived with their children, Petya and Nastya, and that they were expecting him; he had sent his wife a telegram when he was still with his unit, saying he was coming home without delay and that he longed to embrace her and the children as soon as he possibly could.
For the last three days Lyubov Vasilyevna, Ivanov’s wife, had been to meet all the trains coming from the west. She took time off work, failed to fulfil her norm, and was unable to sleep at night for joy, listening instead to the slow indifferent movement of the pendulum of the wall-clock. On the fourth day Lyubov Vasilyevna sent Petya and Nastya to the station – to meet their father if he came during the day – but once again went to meet the night train herself.
Ivanov arrived on the sixth day. He was met by his son Petya. Petya was now getting on for twelve, and the father did not immediately recognize his son in this serious lad who seemed older than his years. The father saw that Petya was a thin, undersized little boy, but with a large head, a broad forehead and a calm face that seemed already accustomed to life’s cares, while his small brown eyes looked at the world around him morosely and disapprovingly, as if all they saw everywhere was disorder. Petya was neatly dressed and shod: his boots were worn but still had some use in them, his trousers and jacket were old, cut down from his father’s civilian clothing, but there were no holes in them, they had been darned and patched where necessary; all in all Petya was like a little peasant who had no money to spare but who took care of his clothes. His father was surprised, and he sighed.
‘So you’re my father, are you?’ asked Petya, when Ivanov lifted him up and hugged and kissed him. ‘You must be!’
‘Yes, I am. Hello, Pyotr Alekseyevich!’
‘Hello. Why have you been so long? We’ve been waiting and waiting.’
‘It was the train, Petya. It was very slow. How are your mother and Nastya? Alive and well?’
‘They’re fine,’ said Petya. ‘How many decorations have you got?’
‘Two, Petya, and three medals.’
‘And mother and I thought your chest would be covered with them. Mother has two medals as well. She got them for good service… Why haven’t you got any more luggage – just a bag?’
‘I don’t need any more.’
‘I suppose a travelling trunk gets in the way when you’re fighting?’ asked the son.
‘Yes,’ the father agreed. ‘It’s easier with just a bag. No one there uses a trunk.’
‘And I thought you all did. I’d keep my things in a trunk – in a bag things get crumpled and broken.’
Petya took the bag and carried it home while his father walked along behind him.
The mother met them on the porch; she had asked for time off work again, as if she had sensed in her heart that her husband would arrive that day. She had gone straight home from the factory, meaning to go on from there to the station. She was afraid: had Semyon Yevseyevich turned up at the house? He liked to drop in sometimes during the day; turning up in the afternoon and sitting with Petya and five-year-old Nastya had become a habit of his. True, Semyon Yevseyevich never came empty-handed, he always brought something for the children – sweets or sugar, a small loaf of white bread or a coupon for shoes and clothing. Lyubov Vasilyevna had never had anything to reproach Semyon Yevseyevich for; all these two years they had known each other he had been good to her, and he had been like a father to the children, kinder, in fact, than many a father. But Lyubov Vasilyevna did not want her husband to see Semyon Yevseyevich today; she tidied up the kitchen and the living room, wanting the house to be clean, with nothing that did not belong there. Later, tomorrow, or the next day, she herself would tell her husband everything, all that had happened. Fortunately, Semyon Yevseyevich had not come that day.
Ivanov went up to his wife, put his arms round her and stood there with her, not moving away, feeling the forgotten and familiar warmth of someone he loved.
Little Nastya came out of the house and, after looking at the father she did not remember, started pushing at his leg, trying to separate him from her mother; then she burst out crying. Petya stood silently beside his father and mother, with his father’s bag on his back; after waiting a while, he said: ‘That’s enough, you two – Nastya’s crying, she doesn’t understand.’
The father moved away from the mother and picked Nastya up. She was crying from fear.
‘Nastya!’ Petya called to her. ‘Calm down, I tell you! This is our father, he’s one of the family.’
Once inside the house, the father had a wash and sat down at the table. He stretched out his legs, closed his eyes and felt a quiet joy in his heart, a peaceful satisfaction. The war was over. During it his feet had walked thousands of miles. Lines of tiredness lay on his face, and his eyes felt a stabbing pain beneath their closed lids – they wanted to rest now in twilight or darkness.
While he sat there, the whole family bu
stled about in the living room and in the kitchen, preparing a celebration meal. Ivanov examined, one after another, all the objects around the house – the clock, the crockery cupboard, the wall thermometer, the chairs, the flowers on the windowsills, the Russian kitchen-stove. They had lived here a long time without him, and they had missed him. Now he had come back and he was looking at them, getting to know each one of them again, as if they were relatives whose lives had been poor and lonely without him. He breathed in the familiar, unchanging smell of the house – smouldering wood, warmth from his children’s bodies, a burning smell from the grate. This smell had been just the same four years ago, it had not dispersed or changed in his absence. Nowhere else had Ivanov ever smelt this smell, although in the course of the war he had been in several countries and hundreds of homes; the smells there had been different, always lacking the special quality of his own home. Ivanov also recalled the smell of Masha, the scent of her hair; but that had been a smell of leaves in a forest, of some overgrown path he did not know, a smell not of home but once again of unsettled life. What was she doing now and how was she coping with civilian life, Masha the bathhouse-attendant’s daughter? God be with her…
Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida (Penguin Classics) Page 37