Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida (Penguin Classics)

by Chandler, Robert

  Anna stopped. There was no wind and the whole dense network of damp brown and blackish branches, smaller branches, still smaller branches, twigs and next year’s little buds was strung with countless drops of water, all silvery-white in the gloom. It was the moisture left by the rain on the smooth skin of the branches; there being no wind, the moisture had collected and formed into hanging drops – round drops on the underside of the little twigs, and oval drops on the underside of the curving branches.

  Taking her folded umbrella in the same hand as her handbag, and pulling off her glove, Anna began running her fingers underneath the drops and sliding them off. When she did this carefully enough, the drop would transfer intact onto her finger, not breaking up but just slightly flattening. The wavy patterns on her finger showed up more clearly through the drop than elsewhere – the drop was like a magnifying glass.

  But one and the same drop, while showing her what lay behind it, also showed her what lay above it; the drop was a convex mirror. In this mirror, against a light background of cloudy sky, she could see – yes! – dark shoulders in a coat, and a head in a woollen hat, and even the interwoven branches above her head.

  Thus Anna forgot herself and began hunting for bigger and bigger drops, sometimes slipping them onto a fingernail and sometimes onto the fleshy part of her finger. Then, right beside her, she heard firm footsteps and she let her hand drop, ashamed to be behaving in a way more appropriate to her youngest son.

  The passer-by, however, had seen neither the game she was playing nor Anna Modestovna herself – he was the kind of person who notices nothing on a street except a free taxi or a tobacco kiosk. He was a young man with the unmistakable stamp of a higher education; he was carrying a bulging bright-yellow briefcase, and he wore a bright overcoat of soft worsted and a fur hat with a crease down the middle. Only in the capital do you encounter men with such expressions – always self-assured, always victorious. Anna Modestovna knew people like this and she was afraid of them.

  On her guard now, she walked on and came across a newspaper display board standing on pale blue posts. Beneath the glass lay both the inside and the outside pages of Labour. The glass had been chipped in one corner, water had got inside, and one sheet of newspaper was soaked. But at the bottom of this sheet Anna Modestovna saw a headline above two columns of print: THE NEW LIFE OF THE CHU RIVER.

  This was somewhere she knew: she had been born there, in the Seven Rivers region.1 Wiping the pane with her glove, Anna Modestovna began to skim through the article.

  Its writer was no miser with words. He began with the Moscow aerodrome: how he had taken his seat in the aeroplane and, as if in contrast with the dismal weather, everyone had been in a joyful mood. Then he described his fellow travellers: who was flying with him and why. He even said a word about the stewardess. After that: the aerodrome at Frunze and how, as if in harmony with the sunny weather, everyone had been in a joyful mood. Then he recounted his journey along the Chu valley. Using a rich variety of technical terms, he described the hydraulic works, the spillway, the hydroelectric power station and the irrigation canals; he enthused at the sight of desert lands now irrigated and fruitful, and he expressed astonishment at the harvest statistics of the collective farms.

  At the end he wrote: But few know that this grandiose and majestic transformation of an entire region of nature was first conceived a long time ago. Our engineers did not have to carry out detailed surveys of the valley, its geological strata and water systems. The whole of the central project was completed on the basis of laborious calculations carried out in 1912, forty years ago, by the talented Russian hydrographer and hydraulic engineer, Modest Aleksandrovich V.,2 who then, in the same year, began the initial works, risking his own capital.

  Anna Modestovna was neither shocked nor overcome with joy; it was rather that she had begun to tremble both inside and outside, as if at the start of an illness. She bent down, to see the final paragraphs right in the corner, and she tried to wipe the glass clean. With difficulty she read: But under the bigoted Tsarist regime, indifferent as it was to the interests of the people, his plans could not be realized. They ended up gathering dust in the Department of Land Amelioration, and the excavations he had already completed were abandoned.

  What a pity! – the journalist exclaimed in conclusion – what a pity that the young enthusiast did not live to see the triumph of his brilliant ideas! That he is unable to gaze upon the now transformed valley!

  Anna felt a sudden fear, surging up like boiling water, because she knew what she was going to do now: she was going to steal this newspaper! Like a thief, she looked round, first to her right, then to her left: there was nobody on the boulevard, just someone’s back in the distance. What she was doing was unseemly, quite disgraceful, but…

  The newspaper was held in place by three drawing pins across the top. Anna put her hand through the break in the glass. Where the newspaper was wet in the corner, it crumpled at once into a little damp ball and came off the pin. Standing on tiptoe, she managed to reach across to the middle pin, loosen it and pull it out. But the third, furthest pin was beyond her reach – and she just pulled on the newspaper. It tore – and the whole sheet came away in her hand.

  Straight away, behind her back, she heard the piercing staccato of a policeman’s whistle.

  As if scalded (there was little she didn’t know about fear, and a policeman’s whistle was frightening enough at any time), Anna withdrew her now empty hand and turned round.

  It was too late to run away, and it would have made things worse. Coming towards her – not down the boulevard, but through a gap in the boulevard fence, which Anna had not noticed before – was a tall policeman, looking all the bigger because of his wet raincoat, which he was wearing with the hood thrown back.

  He did not call out. He came up to her, in no hurry. He looked down at Anna Modestovna, then at the newspaper – which had dropped down, somewhat crumpled, behind the glass – then at Anna Modestovna again. He towered over her, strict and severe. It was clear from his hands and from his pink, broad-nosed face that he was someone fit and strong – the kind of man to drag people out of a blaze or carry out an arrest without using firearms.

  Not raising his voice, the policeman asked: ‘What’s all this, citizen? Do we want to be fined twenty-five roubles?’

  (Oh, please let it just be a fine! She was afraid of some harsher interpretation of her behaviour.)

  ‘Or do you not like people reading newspapers?’

  (It was coming.)

  ‘What do you mean? No, no! Forgive me!’ said Anna Modestovna, somehow almost wriggling. ‘I’ll put it back straight away… if you’ll allow me…’

  No, hardly. Even if he did allow her, a sheet of newspaper with one wet corner and one torn corner would not be so very easy to put back.

  The policeman continued to look down at her, giving no indication of his decision.

  He’d been on duty a long time and it had been raining. It would be nice to take the woman back to the station, along with her newspaper. While he filed his report, he’d dry out a little. But he wanted to understand. A respectably dressed woman, middle-aged, not drunk.

  She looked at him, waiting for her punishment.

  ‘What have you got against the newspaper?’

  ‘There’s something about my father!’ All apology, she was clasping to her chest the handle of her umbrella, her handbag and the glove she had taken off. She had not noticed that she had cut her finger against the glass.

  Now the policeman understood her. Pitying her because of her bleeding finger, he gave a nod of the head.

  ‘Being criticized, is he? But what difference is one copy going to make?’

  ‘No-o! No, no! The opposite – he’s been praised!’

  (Really, he didn’t look unkind at all!)

  At this point she saw the blood on her finger and began to suck it. And she kept on looking at the policeman’s large, simple face.

  His lips barely parted. ‘
But why? Couldn’t you have bought it in a kiosk?’

  ‘But look at the date!’ She quickly took her finger from her lips and pointed to the undamaged sheet of newspaper beneath the other half of the glass. ‘It’s been there three days. Where am I going to find a copy now?’

  The policeman looked at the date. Again at the woman. And again at the crumpled sheet of newspaper. He sighed: ‘I should file a report. And fine you… All right then, but don’t do it again. Take it quickly, before anyone sees.’

  ‘Oh thank you! Thank you! How kind you are! Thank you!’ Anna Modestovna said the words over and over again, at the same time as repeating some kind of wriggle or bow. Instead of putting her handkerchief to her finger, she quickly slipped the hand with the pink finger under the glass, seized the edge of the newspaper and pulled it out. ‘Thank you!’

  The newspaper opened out. Anna, as best she could with one edge being soaked and having only one free hand, folded it. With one more polite little wriggle, she said: ‘I’m very grateful to you. You can’t imagine what a joy this will be to my mother and father! May I go?’

  Standing sideways on to her, he nodded.

  And she walked quickly away, quite forgetting why she had come to this street, clutching the newspaper, which she had folded skewwhiff, and sucking now and again at her finger.

  She must hurry back to her mother. So the two of them could read this together! Once her father’s place of exile had been determined, mother would go and visit him. She could take the newspaper with her.

  The journalist hadn’t known! He hadn’t known – or he would never ever have written that! And the editorial board didn’t know – or they’d never have let it through. The young enthusiast had lived to see the day. He had lived to see the triumph of his brilliant ideas, because his death sentence had been commuted and he had instead spent twenty years in prisons and camps. And then, while on his way, under guard, to some remote place of perpetual exile, he had petitioned Beria himself, asking to be sent to the Chu valley. But he had been sent elsewhere, and the local internal affairs office had no idea what to do with the useless old man: there was no suitable job for him – and as for a pension,3 he had not put in enough years of work.

  Written in 1956; first published in 1978

  Translated by Robert Chandler

  VASILY MAKAROVICH SHUKSHIN (1929–74)

  Shukshin was born in the village of Srostki in the Altai region of Siberia. In 1933 his father was executed, accused either of sabotage or of inciting a riot. For the sake of her family, Shukshin’s mother resumed her maiden name; this name – Popov – was also used by Vasily until he was sixteen. After finishing his seven years at the village school, Shukshin enrolled in a technical college. He also began writing stories, which appear to have been rejected by a Moscow journal. Since Shukshin was living in another town, the village postmaster – according to Shukshin’s sister – delivered the returned manuscripts to another Vasily Shukshin, the writer’s illiterate uncle, who used the paper to roll cigarettes. This could be a story written by Shukshin, rather than a story about him – yet it may well be true.

  Shukshin left Srostki during the famine of 1946. He wandered around Central Russia for two or three years, sleeping in workers’ barracks or on park benches and working at a variety of labouring jobs. In 1949 he joined the Soviet navy, but he was discharged after four years because of stomach ulcers. He moved to Moscow in 1954, where he was a contemporary – and rival – of Andrey Tarkovsky at the most prestigious Soviet film college. As well as acting and making films, he wrote short stories, short novels and two longer historical novels, nearly all set in rural Siberia. His most famous work is the short novel Snowball Berry Red, about an ex-convict trying to escape his old lifestyle; Shukshin played the lead role in his film of the book. Another important story is ‘Before the Cock Calls Thrice’, a parody of a Russian folk tale in which Ivan the Fool is sent on a search not for wisdom, but for a certificate attesting to his wisdom. Shukshin’s bleak tone and his unsparing portrayal of village life did not escape criticism. In the 1970s, however, Russian nationalism was beginning to replace Marxism-Leninism as the State’s binding ideology; none of Shukshin’s work could be seen as in any way pro-Western or anti-Russian, and he was able to publish most of it.

  Shukshin has sometimes been criticized for spreading his talents too thinly. It seems likely, however, that all three of his careers – acting, directing and writing – were essential to him. He can perhaps best be seen as a folk storyteller – a figure he himself described as ‘both a playwright and an actor, or, more likely, a whole theatre in one person’.1 In the words of the critic Donald Rayfield, ‘Shukshin has a cameraman’s eye and a dramatist’s ear’.2

  Most of Shukshin’s heroes are dreamers, searching for some escape from the monotony of the everyday. The émigré critic Mikhail Geller wrote, ‘people who have lost an arm or a leg continue to feel pain in the amputated limb; Shukshin’s characters feel pain where man’s soul used to be.’3 Some of Shukshin’s stories are, nevertheless, extravagantly funny; others, like ‘In the Autumn’, would be depressing were it not for Shukshin’s evident compassion towards his characters.

  IN THE AUTUMN

  Ferry operator Filipp Tyurin finished listening to the latest news on the radio, hung around at the table some more, and was sternly silent…

  ‘There’s just no stoppin’ ‘em!’ he said angrily.

  ‘Who you railin’ at this time?’ asked Filipp’s wife, a tall old woman with manly hands and a man’s deep booming voice.

  ‘They’re bombin’ again!’ Filipp nodded at the radio.

  ‘Who’re they bombin’’?

  ‘The Vietnamese, who else?’

  The old woman didn’t approve of her husband’s passion for politics, and what’s more this foolish passion irritated her. From time to time they’d had some serious quarrels because of politics, but the old woman didn’t feel like quarrelling now – she didn’t have time for it. She was getting ready to go to the bazaar.

  Filipp, in a stern, intense frame of mind, put on some warmer clothes and set off for the ferry.

  He’d been a ferry operator for a long time, ever since the war. He’d been wounded in the head and had to give up carpentry because it hurt to bend over his work. So he became a ferry operator.

  It was the end of September; the wind had picked up after the rains, bringing with it cold, nasty weather. The ground squelched underfoot. From the loudspeaker in the village store you could hear an exercise programme being broadcast. The wind mixed with snatches of music and the buoyant voice of the Moscow trainer. Even so, the village pigs and roosters managed to hold their own, their squealing and crowing piercing through the other sounds.

  The villagers Filipp met on his way nodded their greetings to him and hurried on, either to the village store for bread or to the bus – they were also in a hurry to get to the bazaar.

  Filipp was used to making the trip from his house to the ferry each morning; he’d complete it without thinking. That is, he’d think about something, but not at all about the ferry or who, for example, he might be ferrying across the river that day. Everything was clear as far as that was concerned. Right now he was thinking about how to keep those Americans in check. He was surprised, but he never asked anyone why it was we didn’t force them back with our missiles. Everything could be resolved in a couple of days.

  In his youth Filipp had been very active politically. He’d taken an active part in the new life after the Revolution; he’d been an activist in the organization of the kolkhozes.1 He hadn’t dispossessed any rich peasants, it’s true, but he’d done a lot of arguing and shouting, trying to convert the unbelievers and getting himself all worked up in the process. But he hadn’t been a Party member either. Somehow that had never come up in conversation with the comrades in charge of everything, but still those in charge could never manage without Filipp. He helped them with all of his heart. And he was secretly proud that there was no way they could
manage without him. He liked, for instance, to sit around in the village council on the eve of elections and talk to the district comrades about how best to hold the elections: who should take the ballot-box home, who would come on their own to vote, and of all things not to forget to run and remind them in the morning. Of course, there’d also be those who’d start getting all pigheaded about things as soon as you tried to get them to vote: ‘And did they lend me a horse when I asked for one so’s I could go get firewood?’ This would absolutely amaze Filipp. ‘What’re you talkin’ about, Yegor?’ he’d say to the muzhik.2 ‘There ain’t no comparison! Any fool can see that! What we got here is a political matter, and you’re goin’ on about some horse! They’re as alike as a pie and a pussy.’ And he’d rush all over the village, arguing his point. And folks would also argue back, they liked sparring with him. They wouldn’t take offence. Rather, they’d say, ‘Now, you tell them over there…’ Filipp would feel the importance of the moment, he’d get all worked up, and take everything personally. ‘Well, that’s the common folk for you!’ he thought, completely wrapped up in his great cause. ‘They’re all a bunch of backwoods blockheads.’ As the years passed, Filipp’s political activism subsided, his head wound began to bother him again, so he no longer had the strength to be an activist and get all worked up. However, he continued to take all political and social issues to heart, as he’d done formerly, and he worried a lot.

  By the river the wind blew in strong gusts. It whipped and blustered. The cables creaked. But at least the sun peeped out, and that was nice.

  Filipp went back and forth across the river. He ferried over the people who were in the biggest hurry and then, later on, things went more easily, without a lot of jumpy nerves. And Filipp was just about to turn his thoughts back to the Americans when a wedding party drove up, the kind they have nowadays, with everybody in cars all decked out with ribbons and balloons. This city-style wedding party had also become the fashion in the village. Three cars drove up. The wedding party piled out on the bank. They were loud, slightly tipsy and very showy and swaggering. Although it was the fashion – to go in cars with ribbons – it was still a rare sight. Not everybody could get hold of such cars.