‘Thank you most kindly.’
Marya Vasilievna enjoyed her tea and went red in the face like the peasants, and she started thinking again about the firewood and the caretaker…
‘Hang on!’ came a voice from the next table. ‘She’s the teacher from Vyazovye… we know her! She’s a good lady.’
‘Honourable!’
The weighted door kept banging as people came in and out. Marya Vasilievna sat and thought about the same old things while the accordion played on behind the partition. There were patches of sunshine on the floor; then they transferred to the counter and onto the wall, and then they completely disappeared, which meant the sun had crept past midday. The peasants at the next table started getting ready to move. Tottering slightly, the small peasant went up to Marya Vasilievna and shook her hand; seeing this, the others also shook her hand to say goodbye as they left one by one, and the door squeaked and banged ten times.
‘Come on, Vasilievna, time to get going,’ called Semyon.
They set off. And again they had to walk.
‘They built a school here not long ago, in Lower Gorodishche,’ said Semyon, turning round. ‘That was a bad business!’ ‘Why?’
‘Apparently the zemstvo chief pocketed a thousand, and the trustee took a thousand too, and the teacher got five hundred.’
‘But building a whole school only costs a thousand. It’s not good to speak ill of people. That’s all nonsense.’
‘I don’t know… That’s what people said.’
But it was clear that Semyon did not believe the teacher. The peasants never believed her; they thought she was paid far too much–twenty-one roubles a month (when five would have been enough)–and they thought that she kept most of the money she collected to pay for firewood and the caretaker. The trustee thought the same as all the peasants; he earned a bit on the side himself from the firewood, and he received a salary from the peasants for being trustee, which was something the authorities did not know about.
The forest had come to an end, thank goodness, and now it was flat all the way to Vyazovye. And there was not much further to go; they had to cross the river, then the railway line, and Vyazovye was immediately after that.
‘Where are you going?’ Marya Vasilievna asked Semyon. ‘You ought to take the road to the right, over the bridge.’
‘What? We’ll be all right this way. It’s not too deep.’
‘Watch out, we don’t want to drown the horse.’
‘What?’
‘There’s Khanov going across the bridge,’ said Marya Vasilievna, seeing a coach-and-four a long way over to the right. ‘That is him, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, that’s him. Bakvist can’t have been at home. What a fool he is, heaven help us, going that way for no good reason, when it’s two miles shorter this way.’
They arrived at the river. In summer it was not much more than a stream, which was easy enough to ford and had usually dried up by August, but now after the floods it was a river about forty feet across, fast-flowing, turbulent, and cold, and there were fresh tracks on the bank by the water’s edge–people had obviously been crossing here.
‘Giddy up!’ shouted Semyon angrily and with anxiety, pulling hard on the reins and waving his elbows up and down like a bird flapping its wings. ‘Giddy up!’
The horse walked into the water up to its belly and stopped, then started again at once, straining every muscle, and Marya Vasilievna felt a sharp coldness in her feet.
‘Giddy up!’ she also shouted out, as she stood up. ‘Come on, giddy up!’
They reached the other bank.
‘And anyway, what’s the point of all this, for heaven’s sake?’ mumbled Semyon, adjusting the harness. ‘It’s downright murder having to deal with that zemstvo.’
Her shoes and galoshes were full of water, the bottom of her dress and her coat and one of her sleeves were dripping wet, and the sugar and flour were sodden–that was more upsetting than everything else and Marya Vasilievna just threw up her hands in despair and said:
‘Ah, Semyon, Semyon!… Really!’
The barrier was lowered at the railway crossing: the express train was coming from the station. Marya Vasilievna stood by the crossing and waited for the train to pass, her whole body trembling with cold. You could already see Vyazovye–the school with its green roof, and the church with its crosses blazing as they reflected the evening sun; the windows in the station were also blazing, and there was pink smoke coming from the railway engine… And it seemed to her that everything was shivering with cold.
Here was the train. Its windows were flooded with bright light like the crosses on the church, and it hurt to look at them. On the platform at the end of one of the first-class carriages stood a lady, and Marya Vasilievna glanced at her fleetingly: it was her mother! What a resemblance! Her mother had the same luxuriant hair, the same forehead, and her head was inclined in the same way. And with amazing clarity, for the first time in all these thirteen years, she was able vividly to remember her mother and father, her brother, the apartment in Moscow, the aquarium with the little fish, and everything else down to the smallest detail; suddenly she heard the sound of the piano being played and her father’s voice; she felt as if she was young, pretty, and well-dressed, in a bright, warm room, surrounded by her family as she had been then; a feeling of joy and happiness suddenly enveloped her and she pressed her palms to her temples in rapture and called out softly in supplication:
‘Mama!’
And for no apparent reason she burst into tears. Just at that moment Khanov drove up in his coach-and-four, and when she saw him she imagined the happiness she had never had and smiled at him, nodding her head as if she was a close acquaintance and his equal, and it felt to her as if her happiness, her exultation, was reflected in the sky, in all the windows, and in the trees. No, her father and mother had never died, and she had never been a teacher; it had just been a horrible, long, bizarre dream, and she had just woken up…
‘Vasilievna, get in!’
And suddenly it all vanished. The barrier was slowly rising. Shivering and numb with cold, Marya Vasilievna got into the cart. The coach-and-four crossed the tracks, and Semyon followed. The guard at the crossing took off his hat.
‘Here’s Vyazovye. We’re home.’
THE MAN IN A CASE
Some huntsmen had belatedly set up camp for the night in Elder Prokofy’s barn, right at the edge of the village of Mironositskoe. There were only two of them: the veterinary surgeon Ivan Ivanych and the schoolteacher Burkin. Ivan Ivanych had a rather strange two-part surname–Chimsha-Gimalaisky–which did not suit him at all, and people throughout the province just called him by his first name and patronymic; he lived on a stud farm near the town and had come on this hunting trip to breathe some fresh air. Burkin the schoolteacher, meanwhile, stayed every summer with Count P.’s family, and was very much at home in these parts.
They were still awake. Ivan Ivanych, a tall, thin old man with a long moustache, was sitting outside by the barn door and smoking a pipe; he was lit up by the moon. Burkin was inside, lying on the hay, and you could not see him in the darkness.
They were telling various stories. Amongst other things, they talked about the Elder’s wife Mavra, a healthy and not unintelligent woman who had never once in her life been out of the village she was born in; she had never seen the town or the railway, and for the last ten years had just sat by the stove, only going out at night.
‘But it’s not all that unusual!’ said Burkin. ‘There are quite a few people of a solitary disposition in the world who spend their entire lives trying to retreat into their shells like hermit crabs or snails. Maybe it’s something atavistic, and we are witnessing a return to the times when our forebears lived alone in their lairs and were not yet social animals, or maybe it’s just one of the varieties of the human character–who knows? I am not a scientist and it’s not for me to delve into such questions; all I mean is that there are quite a few people like Mavra around. In fact, you don’t h
ave to look very far: someone called Belikov, a Greek teacher who was one of my colleagues, died about two months ago in our town. You’re bound to have heard of him. He was famous for always carrying an umbrella and wearing galoshes even in fine weather, and he also never failed to wear a warm coat with a lining. He had a case for his umbrella, and a case for his watch made of grey suede, and when he took out his penknife to sharpen his pencil even that had a little case; his face also seemed to be in a case, because he kept it hidden in his raised collar. He wore dark glasses and a sweater, he stuffed his ears with cotton wool, and whenever he took a cab, he ordered the hood to be raised. Basically, he was someone who had a constant and overwhelming need to envelop himself in a protective cover, to create a kind of case for himself which would isolate and protect him from external influences. Reality irritated him; it scared him and kept him in a permanent state of alarm, and maybe he always praised the past and things which had never existed because he wanted to justify his timidity and his aversion to the present; the classical languages he taught were also just like his galoshes and umbrella really, hiding him from real life.
‘“How melodious and beautiful the Greek language is!” he would say, smiling sweetly; and as if to prove the truth of his words, he would half-close his eyes, raise his finger, and say “Anthropos”!
‘Belikov even tried concealing his ideas in a case. All he could understand clearly were regulations and newspaper articles in which something was forbidden. A regulation forbidding pupils from being out after nine o’clock in the evening, or some article or other prohibiting carnal love was clear and well-defined in his eyes; the thing was forbidden and there was no more to be said. But there was always a dubious element lurking in permissions and authorizations for him–something disturbing and incomplete. Whenever they permitted a drama circle in the town, or authorized the opening of a reading room or a tea shop, he would shake his head and say quietly:
‘“It’s all very well, this kind of thing, but just think where it might lead.”
‘Every kind of infringement, deviation, or departure from the rules depressed him, although you might wonder what business it was of his? If one of his colleagues was late for prayers, or if rumours of a schoolboy prank reached him, or if a lady from the school was seen out late one evening with an officer, he would become very agitated and repeatedly ask where it all might lead. And at teachers’ meetings he would drive us to despair with his circumspection and suspiciousness, and his absurd man-in-a-case sort of ideas about, for example, how badly the young people behaved in the boys’ and girls’ schools and how they made too much noise–oh and what if the school authorities found out, oh and where might it all lead?–and how it would be a good thing if Petrov could be expelled from the second year, and Egorov from the fourth. And what do you think happened? He oppressed us all so much with his sighs and his moans, and those tinted spectacles on his pale little face–his face was really small, you know, like a polecat’s–that we ended up giving in; we gave Petrov and Egorov the lowest marks for behaviour, we put them in detention, and eventually we managed to expel both Petrov and Egorov. He used to have a strange habit of visiting us at home. He would arrive at a teacher’s apartment, sit down, not say anything, but just look around. And he would sit like that without saying anything for an hour or so and then leave. He called this “maintaining good relations with his colleagues”, but he clearly found coming to see us and just sitting there a trial, and only did it because he considered it his collegial duty. We teachers were all afraid of him. Even the head of the school was scared of him. Our teachers are a pretty decent lot, you know, thoughtful people brought up on Turgenev and Shchedrin, * and can you imagine, this little homunculus with his galoshes and his umbrella had the whole school under his thumb for fifteen whole years! And not just the school. The whole town! Our ladies could not put on amateur shows on Saturdays for fear of him finding out, and the clergy were afraid to eat meat or play cards in front of him. Under the influence of people like Belikov, over the last ten to fifteen years people in our town have started to be afraid of everything. They are afraid to talk loudly, send letters, make new acquaintances, read books; they are afraid of helping the poor, teaching people to read and write…’
Ivan Ivanych cleared his throat in preparation for saying something, but first he drew on his pipe and looked up at the moon; then he said between pauses:
‘Yes. Decent, thoughtful people who read Shchedrin, Turgenev, Buckle, * and whoever else, and they just capitulate and put up with it… That just about sums it up.’
‘Belikov lived in the same building as me,’ Burkin continued. ‘On the same floor in fact; his door was opposite mine, so we saw each other often, and I knew what his life at home was like. And it was exactly the same story in his apartment: dressing-gowns, nightcaps, shutters, bolts, a whole load of prohibitions and restrictions–well, you never know where things might lead! He thought that Lenten food was harmful, but non-Lenten food was forbidden, and so in order to prevent people saying that he did not observe the fasts, Belikov ate perch cooked in butter, which is not Lenten food, but it wasn’t exactly non-Lenten either. He didn’t have any female servants because he was afraid of what people might think, but he did have a cook called Afanasy, a permanently drunk, cretinous old man of about sixty, who had once been a batman in the army and could just about drum up a meal. Old Afanasy would usually stand by the door with his arms crossed, always mumbling the same thing and sighing deeply:
‘“There’s a lot of types like them about these days!”
‘Belikov’s bedroom was small, just like a box, and his bed had a curtain. When he went to bed, he wrapped himself up completely; it would be hot and stuffy, the wind would knock on the closed doors, and the stove would hum; meanwhile, sighs would come from the kitchen, ominous sighs…
‘And he was afraid underneath his blankets. He was scared of what might happen, scared that Afanasy might stab him, or that thieves might break in, and all night he would have troubled dreams. Then in the morning, when we walked to school together, he was pale and withdrawn; it was clear that he found the crowded school he was walking to terrifying and inimical to his whole being, and walking next to me was also difficult for him because he was such a solitary person by nature.
‘“They make such a lot of noise in the classrooms,” he would say, as if trying to find an explanation for his negative feelings. “It’s a disgrace.”
‘And can you imagine, this teacher of Greek, this man in a case, almost got married.’
Ivan Ivanych looked round quickly into the barn and said: ‘You’re joking!’
‘Yes, he almost got married, as strange as it may seem. A new history and geography teacher was appointed at our school, a certain Mikhail Savvich Kovalenko, a Ukrainian. He did not come alone, but with his sister Varenka. He was a tall, dark young man with huge hands; you could see from his face that he had a bass voice, and his voice really did sound as if it came from a barrel: boom, boom, boom… She was not all that young, about thirty, but she was also tall and slim, with black eyebrows and red cheeks–a very handsome woman, basically–and so lively and noisy; she was always singing Ukrainian songs and laughing away. The slightest encouragement and she would let forth a throaty laugh: ha-ha-ha! We first got to know the Kovalenkos properly, I remember, at our principal’s birthday party. Amongst the dreary, terminally dull teachers who go to birthday parties out of a sense of obligation, we suddenly saw a new Aphrodite arising from the foam: hands on hips, laughing, singing, dancing… She sang “The Winds are Blowing” with real gusto, then another song, and another, and she charmed us all–all of us, even Belikov. He sat down next to her and said with a sweet smile: “Ukrainian is like Ancient Greek in its softness and pleasant sonority.”
‘This flattered her and so she started enthusiastically telling him about the farmstead she had back home in the Gadyach * district, where her dear mama lived; what pears they grew there, what melons, what pumpkins! She explained
that Ukrainians used the Russian word for tavern to mean pumpkin, and that they had another name altogether for taverns. And the bortsch they cooked with tomatoes and aubergines was “just so incredibly, amazingly delicious!”
‘We listened and we listened and then suddenly an identical thought occurred to all of us.
‘“It would be good to marry those two off to each other,” said the principal’s wife quietly to me.
‘For some reason we had remembered that Belikov was not married, and now it seemed strange to us that we had completely neglected to consider such an important detail in his life. What was his attitude to women in general; how had he decided this central question? It had not interested us before; perhaps it had not even entered our heads that a person who went about in galoshes whatever the weather and slept behind curtains was capable of love.
‘“He’s well past forty and she’s thirty…” the principal’s wife went on. “I think she would accept him.”
‘The things we get up to in the provinces from sheer boredom– so many unnecessary and stupid things! And it is because we do not do what actually needs to be done. Why did we suddenly feel we had to marry off this man Belikov, whom it was impossible even to imagine ever being married? But the principal’s wife and the other ladies in the school all perked up and even started looking more attractive, as if they had suddenly discovered a purpose in life. The principal’s wife took a box in the theatre and we saw Varenka sitting there with a fan, beaming away happily, and Belikov next to her, all hunched up and small, as if he had been extracted from his apartment with pincers. If I had a party the ladies would insist that I make sure to invite Belikov and Varenka. To cut a long story short, the machine was put into motion. It turned out that Varenka was not against getting married. She did not much enjoy living with her brother, as they were always arguing and being rude to each other. Here’s a typical scene: Kovalenko would be walking down the street, a tall, lanky fellow in an embroidered shirt, with a lock of hair on his forehead escaping from his cap; in one hand he would be carrying a bundle of books and in the other a thick, knotted stick. His sister would be following him, also carrying books.
About Love and Other Stories Page 20