Envy

by Yuri Olesha

  A solid wailing “o-o-o” rolled from the stands.

  Volodya, squatting and spreading his arms out as if he were holding an invisible barrel, readied himself to grab the ball. But Goetske didn’t kick, he ran up to the goal. Volodya fell at his feet. The ball got stuck between the two men, like in a barrel; then the spectators’ whistles and stamping covered the scene’s finale. From the kick of one of the men the ball flew up lightly and shakily over Goetske’s head, and he drove it into the net with a strike of his head that looked like a bow.

  The Soviet team was a goal down.

  The stadium roared. Binoculars turned in the direction of the Soviet goal. Goetske, looking at his flashing shoes, ran pretentiously toward the middle.

  Volodya’s comrades picked him up.

  9

  VALYA turned along with everyone else. Kavalerov saw her facing him. He had no doubt she saw him. He started to fidget, and a bizarre idea enraged him. He thought the people around him were laughing at him; they’d noticed his anxiety.

  He looked at the people sitting next to him. Much to his surprise, sitting in the same row with him, quite nearby, was Andrei Babichev. Once again Kavalerov was indignant at the two white hands adjusting the focus on the binoculars, the large torso in the gray jacket, the trim mustache …

  The binoculars loomed over Kavalerov like a black missile. The binocular strap hung from Babichev’s cheeks like reins.

  The Germans were on the offensive again.

  Suddenly the ball, thrown by someone’s powerful and miscalculated kick, flew high up and to the side, out of the playing field and in Kavalerov’s direction, whistled over the craning heads of the lower rows, hung there for a moment, rotated all its planes, and fell to the boards at Kavalerov’s feet. The game came to a standstill. The players stopped, caught by surprise. All at once the picture on the field, green and colorful, in constant motion, froze. The way a movie stops abruptly when the film breaks, when the light has already been turned on in the hall but the technician still hasn’t turned the projector light off and the audience sees the strangely whitened frame and the outlines of the hero frozen in a pose that speaks of the most rapid movement. Kavalerov’s hatred intensified. Everyone around him was laughing. A ball landing in the rows always makes people laugh: at that moment the spectators seem to realize the true silliness of men running after a ball for an hour and a half, compelling them—the spectators, the bystanders—to view their utterly frivolous time wasting with such gravity and passion.

  At that moment, all the thousands did their utmost to give Kavalerov their unwanted attention, and this attention was easily entertained.

  Even Valya may have been laughing at him, the man the ball had landed in front of! She may have been laughing twice as hard, making fun of her enemy’s ridiculous position. He smirked, edging his foot away from the ball, which, losing its support, bumped up against his heel with feline attachment.

  “Well!” exclaimed Babichev, unhappy and surprised. Kavalerov was passive. Two large white hands reached for the ball. Someone picked up the ball and handed it to Babichev. He rose to his full height, and thrusting his belly out, drew his arms holding the ball behind his head, swinging the ball so he could throw it farther. He couldn’t be serious doing something like this, but realizing that he needed to be serious, he exaggerated his outward expression of gravity, knitting his brows and puffing out his fresh red lips.

  Swinging forward hard, Babichev threw the ball, which magically unchained the field.

  “He refused to recognize me,” Kavalerov fed his hatred.

  The first half of the game ended with the German team ahead by one to nothing … The players, with dark bruises on their faces and green blades of grass stuck to them, were walking toward the passageway, moving their bare knees powerfully and broadly, like in water. The Germans, who were red in a not very Russian way, with a flush that began at their temples, mixed in colorfully with the Muscovites. The players were walking, seeing everyone en masse—the whole crowd under the wooden walls of the passageway—and no one individually. They smeared the crowd with smiles and lifeless eyes that were too transparent on their darkened faces. Those who had just seen them as tiny multicolored little figures, running and falling, now saw them face-to-face. The noise of the game, which had yet to subside, traveled with them. Goetske, who looked like a gypsy, was walking, sucking at the cut he’d just received above his elbow.

  The news for the gawkers was the players’ height and build, the severity of the scratches, their heavy breathing and complete disarray. From far away it all made a much flimsier, more transparent impression.

  Kavalerov squeezed between strangers and under a crossbeam, stepping with relief onto the grass. Here, in the shadow, he ran with others down the path, circling around behind the stands. The refreshment area set out on the lawn under the trees filled up in an instant. The crumpled little old man in the cream-colored vest, still glancing at the public unhappily and warily, was eating ice cream. The crowd was crawling toward the field house.

  “Hurrah! Makarov! Hurrah!” the ecstatic shouts carried from there. The fans were climbing the fences, fending off the barbed wire as if it were bees—and higher, like forest gnomes: into the trees, into the dark greenery, which swayed from the wind and their agility.

  A gleaming body swinging its nakedness soared at a slant over the crowd. They were swinging Volodya Makarov.

  Kavalerov didn’t have the heart to push into the winner’s circle. He peeked through the gaps, shifting from side to side behind the crowd.

  Volodya was standing on the ground now. The sock on one foot had fallen and rolled down like a green pretzel around his pear-shaped, slightly hairy ankle. His clawed shirt was barely clinging to his torso. He had wisely crossed his arms at his chest.

  And here stood Valya. And Andrei Babichev was with her.

  All three were being applauded by the gawkers.

  Babichev was looking lovingly at Volodya.

  The wind stirred. A striped awning fell to the ground, and all the leaves swayed to the right. The ring of gawkers broke up, the whole picture went blurry, people tried to protect themselves from the dust. Valya got it worse than anyone. Her pink dress, as light as a husk, flew up over her legs, showing Kavalerov its sheerness. The wind blew the dress against her face, and Kavalerov saw the outline of her face in the glow and sheer of the fabric, which had spread out like a fan. Through the dust Kavalerov saw this and how, in trying to catch her dress, she spun around and got tangled up, nearly falling on her side. She was trying to pin down the hem at her knees, to hold it there, but she couldn’t, and then, to put a stop to the indecency, she resorted to half measures: with her arms she hugged her overly exposed legs, hiding her knees, hunching over, like a swimmer caught unawares.

  Somewhere the referee whistled. A march began. Thus the good-natured confusion came to an end. The second half of the game was about to begin. Volodya hurried off.

  “Two goals minimum against the Germans!” squealed a young boy racing past Kavalerov.

  Valya continued to battle the wind. In pursuit of her hem, she changed her position ten times and finally found herself close to Kavalerov, a whisper away.

  She was standing with her legs planted widely apart. Her hat, which had been thrown off by the wind and caught in flight, she was holding in her hand. Before she could straighten herself out from her leaps, she looked at Kavalerov without seeing him, barely tilting her head of short chestnut hair, which was cut to a sharp angle at her cheeks.

  Sunlight slipped over her shoulder, she swayed, and her clavicle flashed like a dagger. This thought lasted a tenth of a second, long enough to make Kavalerov turn cold at the realization that he would have this incurable longing inside him forever, now that he had seen this otherworldly being, so exotic and special. He was overcome by how hopelessly sweet she looked, how crushingly unattainable her purity was, and how invincible her allure—both because she was a young girl and because she was in love wit
h Volodya.

  Babichev was waiting for her, his arm extended.

  “Valya,” said Kavalerov, “I’ve waited for you all my life. Have pity on me …”

  But she didn’t hear. She was running, bent low by the wind.

  10

  THAT NIGHT Kavalerov came home drunk.

  He walked down the hall to the sink—for a good long drink. He opened the tap all the way and soaked himself. He left the tap open, the stream blaring. Walking into Anichka’s room, he stopped. The light had not been turned out. Bathed in cottony yellow light, the widow was sitting on her huge bed, her bare legs hanging over the side. She was ready for bed.

  Kavalerov took a step. She was silent, as if under a spell. Kavalerov thought she was smiling, beckoning.

  He went toward her.

  She did not resist and even opened her arms.

  “Oh you little nuthatch,” she whispered. “Look at you, you little nuthatch.”

  Later he woke up. He’d been torn by thirst, by a drunken, frenzied dream about water. He woke up—and all was quiet. A second before he awoke the piercing memory of the stream gushing in the sink came to him—but there wasn’t any water. He drifted off again. While he slept, the widow was keeping house: she turned off the tap, undressed the sleeping man, and mended his suspenders. Morning came. At first Kavalerov didn’t know what was what. Like the drunken beggar in the comedy who is taken in by a rich man and brought to his palace, he lay there, hung over, amid unaccustomed luxury. He saw his unprecedented reflection in a mirror—soles front. He lay there magnificently, his arms crossed behind his head. The sun shone on him from the side. It was as if he were hovering in the cupola of a temple, in broad, smoking bands of light. And above him hung bunches of grapes, cupids danced, apples spilled from horns of plenty—and he could almost hear an organ coming from all this. He was lying on Anichka’s bed.

  “You remind me of him,” Anichka whispered hotly, leaning over him.

  Above the bed hung a glass-covered portrait. A man, someone’s young grandfather, formally dressed—in one of the last frock coats of the era. You could tell: he had a strong, multibarreled occiput. The man was about fifty-seven.

  Kavalerov remembered his father changing his shirt …

  “You remind me a lot of my husband,” repeated Anichka, embracing Kavalerov. And Kavalerov’s head slipped under her arm, as into a tent. The widow opened the tents of her arms. Ecstasy and shame raged inside her.

  “He took me like that, too … by cunning … quietly, oh so silently, never said anything … but then! Oh you, my little nuthatch …”

  Kavalerov struck her.

  She staggered back. Kavalerov jumped from the bed, tearing apart the layers of bedding; the sheets trailing after him. She rushed for the door, her arms pleaded for help, she ran, chased by her goods and chattel, like a woman of Pompeii. A basket collapsed, a chair listed.

  He struck her several times on her back and waist, which was ringed with fat, like a tire.

  The chair was balancing on one leg.

  “He beat me, too,” she said, smiling through her tears.

  Kavalerov went back to the bed. He collapsed, feeling like he was going to be sick. He lay oblivious the whole day. In the evening, the widow lay down beside him. She snored. Kavalerov pictured her larynx in the shape of an arch leading into the gloom. He was hiding behind the arch’s vault. Everything trembled and quivered, and the ground shook. Kavalerov slipped and was knocked down by the air flying from the abyss. The sleeping woman moaned. Once she stopped moaning and fell silent, after smacking her lips noisily. The entire architecture of her larynx was warping. Her snore got powdery, fizzy.

  Kavalerov thrashed and cried. She got up and put a wet towel on his forehead. He leaned toward the wetness, lifting his whole body, searched for the towel with his hands, bunched it up, pressing it to his cheek, and kissed it, whispering, “They stole her from me … Living in this world is so hard … So hard …”

  But the widow had barely lain down before she had fallen asleep, perching close to the mirror arch. Sleep smeared her with sweetness. She slept with her mouth open, gurgling, the way old women sleep.

  There were bedbugs, and they rustled as if someone were lashing the wallpaper. There were bedbug hiding places of which the day knew nothing. The bed-tree grew and swelled.

  The windowsill turned pink.

  Gloom gathered around the bed. The night’s secrets dropped down the walls from the corners, flowed over the sleeping pair, and crawled under the bed.

  Kavalerov suddenly sat up, his eyes wide open.

  Over the bed stood Ivan.

  11

  KAVALEROV started packing right away.

  Anichka was sleeping in a sitting position under the arch, her hands clasped over her belly. Cautiously, so as not to disturb her, he pulled off the blanket, and, donning it like a cloak, stood before Ivan.

  “Well, this is excellent,” said the other. “You’re twinkling like a lizard. That’s what you should look like when you appear before the people. Let’s go, let’s go. We have to hurry.”

  “I’m very sick,” Kavalerov sighed. He smiled meekly, as if apologizing for the fact that he had no desire to look for his trousers, jacket, and shoes. “Does it matter that I’m barefoot?”

  Ivan was already in the hall. Kavalerov hurried after him.

  “I’ve been suffering for a long time for no reason,” thought Kavalerov. “This is payback day.”

  They got caught up in the stream of people. Past the next corner a gleaming road came into view.

  “There it is!” said Ivan, squeezing Kavalerov’s arm. “There’s the Two Bits!”

  Kavalerov saw it: gardens, spherical clumps of leaves, an arch made of light translucent stone, galleries, a ball flying above the greenery …

  “Over here!” Ivan commanded.

  They ran along the wall, which was covered in ivy, then had to jump. The blue blanket made the jump easier for Kavalerov, he flew through the air and over the crowd and landed at the foot of a very broad stone staircase. Immediately, frightened, he began crawling away under his blanket, like an insect folding its wings. No one noticed him. He crouched behind a pedestal.

  At the top of the stairs, surrounded by young people, stood Andrei Babichev. He stood there with his arm around Volodya.

  “They’re just about to bring her in,” said Andrei, smiling at his friends.

  And at that Kavalerov saw the following: down the asphalt road leading to the steps of the staircase came an orchestra, and soaring above the orchestra was Valya. The sound of the instruments was holding her up. She was being borne along by the sound. She would ascend and descend above the brass depending on the height and force of the sound. Her ribbons were flying higher than their heads, her dress was billowing, her hair was swept upward.

  The final passage dropped her at the top of the stairs, and she fell into Volodya’s arms. Everyone stepped back. Those two remained in the circle.

  Kavalerov didn’t see what came next. A sudden horror gripped him. A strange shadow suddenly moved in front of him. Freezing, he slowly turned around. On the grass, a pace behind him, sat Ophelia.

  “A-a-agh!” he began shouting terribly. He hurried to escape. Ophelia jingled and grabbed him by the blanket. It slid off. In his shameful state of undress, stumbling, falling, striking his jaw on the stone, he scrambled up the staircase. The others were looking up. The lovely Valya stood there, stooping.

  “Ophelia, back!” Ivan’s voice rang out. “She’s not obeying me … Ophelia, stop!”

  “Hold her!”

  “She’s going to kill him!”

  “Oh!”

  “Watch out! Watch out!”

  Kavalerov looked back from halfway up the staircase. Ivan was trying to scramble up the wall. The ivy pulled away. The crowd surged back. Ivan was hanging on the wall from arms set wide apart. The frightening iron thing was moving slowly across the grass in his direction. Out of what might be called the thing�
��s head a gleaming needle was slowly poking through. Ivan howled. He was losing his grip. He fell, his bowler rolled away among the dandelions. He sat, his back pressed to the wall, his hands covering his face. The machine kept advancing, tearing dandelions as it went.

  Kavalerov got up and in a voice full of despair began to shout, “Save him! Would you really let a machine kill a man?”

  No answer followed.

  “My place is with him!” said Kavalerov. “Teacher! I shall die with you!”

  But it was too late. Ivan’s cowardly wail made him collapse. As he fell, he saw Ivan skewered to the wall.

  Ivan tilted quietly, turning on the terrible axis.

  Kavalerov buried his head in his arms, so as not to see or hear anything more. Still he heard the clanking. The machine was mounting the stairs.

  “I don’t want to die!” he shouted with all his might. “She’s going to kill me! Forgive me! Forgive me! Spare me! I wasn’t the one who defamed the machine! I’m not to blame. Valya! Valya! Save me!”

  12

  KAVALEROV was sick for three days. Once he recovered, he tried to escape.

  He climbed down, staring at a single point: the floor by the corner of the bed. He dressed like an automaton and suddenly felt a new leather loop on his suspenders. The widow had done away with his safety pin. Where had she gotten the loop? Had she taken it off her husband’s old suspenders? Kavalerov fully realized the vileness of his situation. He ran into the hall jacketless. He detached the red suspenders as he went and tossed them aside.

  He hesitated on the threshold of the landing. There were no voices coming from the yard. Then he stepped onto the landing, and all his thoughts became confused. The sweetest sensations arose—yearning, joy. It was a lovely morning. There was a light breeze (that seemed to be turning the pages of a book) and the sky was blue. Kavalerov was standing over a befouled spot. A cat, frightened by his sudden movement, ran out of the trash bin; some kind of filth fluttered down after her. What could be poetic in a pigsty enveloped in so many curses? He stood there craning his neck and stretching his arms.