Suddenly the blood rushed to his head. He pictured in his mind the young lady’s bewildered face as she had waited for him for an hour or more.
Then Sergey Petrovich grinned again and lay down on the bed. He slept restlessly, frequently muttering in his sleep and shifting his pillow.
6
Sergey Petrovich awoke early. It was seven o’clock in the morning.
He was sitting on his bed in his underwear, wistfully lacing his shoes.
At that moment there was a knock at the door and the younger Belousov crone entered his room.
Sergey Petrovich turned terribly pale and rose to his feet. He was shaking and his teeth were chattering in a tattoo. The old woman waved her hands, announcing that he had nothing to be ashamed of, that he was young enough be her great-grandson, and that she’d seen more than her fair share of men over the years, in a wide variety of underpants.
The old woman sat down on a stool, mournfully blew her nose into her headscarf, and solemnly declared that Sergey’s aunt, Natalya Ivanovna Tupitsyna, had died earlier that morning.
At first Sergey Petrovich didn’t quite understand what the old woman was talking about. He had expected to hear various hints and suspicions about the previous night’s incident, but this was something else entirely.
Then, after waiting a few minutes for the sake of basic decency and shedding a few inconsolable tears over the untimely demise of his aunt, the guest launched into a long and detailed account of the horrors of yesterday’s raid.
Sergey Petrovych listened indulgently, but soon began to think about his own affairs.
Of course, thought Sergey, he could go right to Katyusha and explain that his aunt had croaked. It was family circumstances, so to speak, that had kept him from having a nice time last night. He’d had to sit at the bedside of a perishing relative.
He could do that, of course. But yesterday’s excitement—all those terrible shocks—had somewhat dulled Sergey Petrovich’s desires. He turned his attention back to the old woman’s words.
She was still spinning brazen yarns about yesterday’s banditry, never suspecting that the man sitting before her had some knowledge of the case. The crone insisted that it was a gang of three men, led by a woman. And apart from these four, there was a fifth—a finger man—a totally beardless little fellow.
Sergey Petrovich, unable to bite his tongue, suggested that the old woman must have been spooked something awful, mistaking the little Belousov offshoot for a finger man and her dear sister for a gang leader.
The old woman responded bitterly that he ought to keep his useless little pronouncements to himself, and that only her resourcefulness and courage had prevented the bandits from making off with the Belousovs’ belongings, to say nothing of Sergey Petrovich’s.
Here the old woman broached the most pressing and absorbing of subjects. With great delicacy, she began to address Sergey Petrovich’s inheritance.
Yes, of course! In all the excitement, Sergey Petrovich had forgotten about his inheritance. How wonderful!
Sergey Petrovich was once again seized by joy and cheer. Once more, bright prospects and happy horizons opened before him. In his mind, he tried on his aunt’s suits and vests. In his mind, he strolled down the street in a dandy new jacket, with Katyusha Chervyakova on his arm. In his mind, he haggled with a Tatar, trying to foist off his aunt’s useless junk.
Down with gloom! Down with melancholy! Long live cheerful words, cheerful thoughts, and wonderful desires! How good and great it is to be alive in the world. How good it is—what a joy it is—to perceive life as it actually is, and not as it sometimes appears.
Sergey Petrovich felt like a boy of seventeen. He could have whirled off that very minute, sweeping the younger Belousov into a foxtrot, if only it were decent to dance so soon after a relation croaked.
Sergey Petrovich bade the old woman a polite farewell, grandly declaring that he would, without fail, attend the funeral service later that day. He certainly wasn’t going to work. No, first he’d make a beeline to Katyusha Chervyakova’s place and leave her the saddest of letters with the finest apologies. Then he’d pay his last respects to his relation.
Sergey Petrovich was even a little worried. He was afraid that the old crones might, at the last minute, pocket his inheritance.
He quickly sat down at the table. Drumming his fingers, he began to ponder the text of his letter.
Joy and happiness weighed on his chest and ruined his concentration.
Sergey Petrovich glanced out the window and froze in complete awe. It was a positively lovely morning. The blue sky and tranquil treetops heralded a wonderful day.
“How nice to be alive,” Sergey muttered, opening the window. “How nice to breathe the cool morning air. How nice to be in love with some comely young lady.”
Sergey Petrovich sat down again, decisively. He offered Katyusha a few words by way of explanation and requested that she meet him without fail, at seven o’clock, at the appointed place. He sealed the envelope, dressed, and went out into the street.
He walked with his head proudly aloft. Yesterday’s terror and excitement had drifted off into eternity. Yesterday’s minor fear of life had vanished, giving way to vigorous courage.
And really, what’s the big deal? Yes, it’s true—yesterday, he’d lost a little nerve. He’d been a bit jittery. But nothing had changed. His wonderful life went on as before. And so did his merry amorous adventure. Happiness and good fortune were his constant companions.
Sergey Petrovich handed the letter to the yardman, asking him to pass it on to Katyusha Chervyakova. Then, taking deep breaths of the cool morning air, he set off with a light, prancing step to his former aunt’s place.
Sergey arrived just as the funeral service was getting started. The old priest was dragging out his rigmarole, while the Belousov crones were grunting softly, lamenting their last lodger. And yet, at the same time, all this shone with the bright cheerfulness of everyday life.
The late aunt, for her part, was laid out comfortably on a table, atop the best lace pillowcases. Her good-natured face exuded peace and happiness. The old woman looked alive. A certain blush even broke through her yellow skin. It seemed as if she had merely grown tired and lain down on the table for a little shut-eye. She might get up any minute, fully rested, and say, “Here I am, brothers.” Sergey Petrovich stared at her for a long time with his kindly eyes.
“Auntie, auntie,” he thought. “Brother, what an auntie…Finally went and croaked…”
Sergey Petrovich stood motionless, his head bowed. He was contemplating the brevity of life and the fragility of the human body, and thinking that it was necessary to cram one’s life as full as possible with all sorts of wonderful activities and merry adventures. Nor did these thoughts bring grief and melancholy to his heart—they brought peace and calm.
Without waiting for the end of the service, Sergey Petrovich bowed silently to his motionless aunt and left the room.
He went down the hall to her room. It was neat and tidy. Nothing spoke of death.
Sergey Petrovich cast a hasty glance around the room, sizing everything up. Reaching a tidy little sum—a hundred rubles—he smiled gently, left the room, locked the door, and went out into the street.
He walked down the street, laughing happily. Though it was autumn, the sun—despite all its growing spots—burned him with all its impetuous ardor. There wasn’t a hint of wind.
7
That same day, in the evening, Sergey Petrovich met with his little lady.
She showed up a bit later than he did. Worrying and searching for decent words, he took her hands in his and began to explain, right there on the corner, the reasons for his absence the previous night.
Yes, he couldn’t get away for a single minute. His aunt had opted to croak in his arms.
He described his aunt’s death in strong colors. Then he went on to describe his inheritance.
The maiden blinked her eyelashes prettily and said, with a kin
d smile, that she had indeed been mighty sore the previous night, but that today she had no complaints.
They sat in the theater, locked in a loving embrace. To the chatter of the projector, Sergey Petrovich whispered all sorts of decent words about his feelings and intentions. The maiden squeezed his hand and leg gratefully, saying that she had taken a shine to his symmetrical appearance at first sight.
After the cinema, Sergey Petrovich and his mademoiselle pounded the pavement for a good long time. And a bit later, she visited his humble abode.
Sergey Petrovich escorted her out of the house at half-past eleven that night. Civilian invalid Zhukov saw the whole thing. He was searching for his cat on the stairs at the time, and he heard Sergey Petrovich say: “If push comes to shove, we’ll make it official.”
Two weeks later, they made it official.
And six months after that, Sergey Petrovich and his young spouse won fifty rubles on a Peasant Lottery-Loan they had inherited from his former aunt.
Their joy knew no bounds.
1926
LILACS IN BLOOM
1
You can bet they’ll take the author to task again for this new work of art.
You can bet they’ll accuse him of gross libel against humanity again, of breaking from the masses and so on.
Those little ideas of his, they’ll say, aren’t so grand.
And his heroes—they’re no great shakes either. You’d have a hell of a time finding much social significance in any of them. Their actions ain’t likely to arouse, as it were, the burning sympathy of the working masses. No, siree—the working masses won’t pledge their unconditional allegiance to such characters.
They’ve got a point, of course—my characters ain’t exactly heavy hitters. They’re no leaders, that’s for sure. What you’ve got here is, so to speak, all sorts of insignificant men and women, with their everyday comings, goings, and anxieties. But as for libel against humanity—why, you’ll find absolutely nothing of the kind.
Sure, earlier you could take the author to task for—well, if not libel, exactly, then a certain, as it were, surplus of melancholy and a desire to see various dark and coarse sides in nature and humanity. In his earlier work, the author was indeed fervently mistaken in regard to certain fundamental questions, engaging in downright obscurantism.
Just some two years ago, the author—he didn’t like this, he didn’t like that. He subjected every little thing to the most desperate criticism and destructive fantasy. Back then—it’s embarrassing to admit this before the reader—the author’s views had come to such a pass that he began to take offense at the frailty and fragility of the human body, and at the fact that man, for example, consists mainly of water, of moisture.
“Hell’s bells, what are we, mushrooms, berries?” the author would exclaim. “Who needs so much water? I mean, really, it’s just plain offensive to know what man consists of. Water, chaff, clay, some other extremely mediocre stuff. Coal, I think. And if anything should happen, this whole dusty business starts crawling with germs. I mean, really!” the author would exclaim back in those days, not without chagrin.
Even in such a holy affair as man’s external appearance—even in that, the author began to see nothing but coarseness and deficiency.
“Say you come to know a person,” the author would muse before his close relatives, “but then you turn away for a minute, or maybe don’t see the person for five or six years—well, you’re just gobsmacked by the disgusting nature of our external appearance. Take the mouth—some slapdash hole in your mug. Teeth sticking out like a fan. Ears dangling off the sides. The nose is some squiggly bump stuck in the middle, as if on purpose. I tell you, it ain’t pretty! No, sir—not much to look at.”
That gives you a taste of the sort of foolish and harmful ideas the author had come to back in those days, steeped as he was in the blackest melancholy. The author even subjected so unquestionable and fundamental a thing as the mind to the most desperate criticism.
“Take the mind,” the author would muse. “No two ways about it—man has invented lots of curious and entertaining stuff with the mind’s help: the microscope, the Gillette razor, the photograph, and so on, and so on. But as for inventing something that would put each and every person on easy street—nothing doing, nothing at all. Meantime, whole centuries fly by, whole eras. The sun’s breaking out in spots. Cooling down, you know. I mean, we’re in what—year one thousand nine hundred and twenty-nine? Poof! Frittered it all away.”
That gives you a taste of the unworthy thoughts that flashed through the author’s brain.
But surely they flashed, these thoughts, as a result of the author’s illness.
His acute melancholy and irritation with people nearly pushed him over the edge, obscured his horizons, and shut his eyes to a lot of beautiful stuff and to the things currently happening all around us.
And now the author is endlessly glad and pleased that, during those two or three lamentable years, he didn’t have occasion to write stories. If he had, great shame would have fallen on his shoulders. Those stories would truly have been malicious slander, crude and boorish libel against the world order and the human way of life.
But now all that melancholy has vanished, and the author again sees everything as it truly is, with his own eyes.
By the way, it’s worth noting that, despite his illness, the author never broke from the masses. On the contrary, he lives and ails, so to speak, in the thick of humanity. And he describes events not from the vantage point of Mars, but from our own esteemed Earth, from our own eastern hemisphere, where there happens to be a building that houses a communal apartment in which the author abides and, as it were, observes people personally, just as they are, without any embellishments, guises, or drapery.
And on account of living such a life, the author notices what’s what and why. So there’s no sense in accusing the author of libeling and insulting people with his words. Especially since the author has, in recent years, developed a particular fondness for people, with all their vices, flaws, and other abovementioned particularities.
Of course, that’s the author, but other intellectuals really do utter all sorts of words from time to time. They might say that people are still rubbish. They might say we’ve got to straighten them out, put them in order. We’ve got to thrash out the rough elements of their nature. We’ve got to whip ’em into shape. Only then can life shine in all its marvelous splendor. There’s just that one, so to speak, little hurdle. But the author doesn’t hold those opinions. He resolutely disavows those views. Oh, sure, we’ve still got to overcome such unfortunate technical deficiencies as bureaucratism, philistinism, red tape, gang rape, and so on.1 But everything else, for the time being, is more or less in place and doesn’t interfere with the gradual improvement of life.
And if the author were asked: “What do you want? What urgent change, for example, would you make in the people around you, leaving aside the abovementioned deficiencies?”
Well, he’d have plenty trouble coming up with an answer.
No, he doesn’t want to change a thing. Except for one little trifle, maybe. I mean greed. I mean the coarse daily grind of material calculation.
I mean, I’d like to see people pay each other visits, you know, for the sake of pleasant heart-to-heart chats, without any hidden motives or calculations. Of course, it’s all just a whim, empty fantasy. The author probably has too much time on his hands. But such is his sentimental nature—he’d like to see violets sprouting right on the sidewalk.
2
Of course, it may well be that everything the author has just said bears no direct relation to the work at hand—but people, I’m telling you, he has raised very urgent, pressing questions. And that, you know, is the author’s pigheaded nature—he just can’t get started with no storytelling before he’s had his say.
And yet, in this case, the author’s words do indeed, to some extent, bear direct relation to our tale. Especially since he raised the top
ic of various self-serving calculations. It just so happens that the hero of this tale came face to face with precisely such circumstances. So exhausted was he by the whole whirlwind of ensuing events that, I’m telling you, his jaw dropped.
In the wonderful years of his youth, when all of life seemed but a morning stroll—down a boulevard, say—the author was blind to life’s shadowy side. He simply didn’t notice it. His eyes were on something else. He saw all sorts of merry little things, various beautiful objects and experiences. He saw flowers growing, buds blossoming, clouds floating, and people loving each other warmly and mutually.
But due to his youth, the foolishness of his character, and the naivety of his vision, the author failed to notice how all these things happened—that is, what poked and prodded what.
Later, of course, the author began to pay attention. And suddenly he saw all sorts of things.
Here, say, he sees a gray-haired fellow squeezing another fellow’s hand, looking him in the eye, uttering words. Had the author seen the same thing earlier, why, he would’ve taken heart. “Looky here,” he would’ve thought. “Look how pleasant everyone is, how special, how they love each other, and, in general, how wonderfully life’s shaping up.”
Well, these days the author sets no store by the hallucinations of his visions. The author is gnawed by doubt. He worries, our author: maybe the gray-bearded fellow’s squeezing that there hand and looking into them there eyes so’s to shore up his shaky position at work, or to grab a chair at a university and read lectures from said chair on beauty and art?
The author will never forget a certain minor incident that transpired not very long ago. This incident literally cuts the author to the quick without a knife. Imagine a lovely little house. Guests coming and going. Hanging around all day, all night. Playing cards. Gulping down coffee with cream. Treating the young hostess real respectful-like, smooching her hands and everything. Well, of course, one day they come and arrest the master of the house, an engineer.2 The wife, she takes ill and, of course, damn near starves to death. And not a single bastard comes by to check in on her. No one smooches her hands, that’s for sure. Hell, they’re all afraid this former acquaintance might cast a shadow over them.
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