Forty Stories (16 page)

“Nekrasov is one thing, and you are another.” Here she gave a sigh. “I would marry a writer with the greatest pleasure. He would be continually writing poems in my honor.”

“I would write poems for you, if you wanted me to.”

“What would you write about?”

“About love … about my feelings for you … about your eyes.… When you read them, you would be out of your mind.… You would be moved to tears! And if I really wrote some poetical verses for you, would you allow me to kiss your little hand?”

“What a lot of fuss! Here, kiss it!”

Shupkin jumped up, his eyeballs protruding, and he took her plump little hand, which smelled of scented soap.

“Take down the icon!” Peplov whispered, turning pale with emotion. He jostled his wife with his elbow, and buttoned up his coat. “Well, here we go!”

And without any further delay he threw open the door.

“Children!” he muttered, raising his hands and screwing up his eyes tearfully. “May God bless you, my children.… Live … be fruitful … multiply …”

“I, too, bless you,” the girl’s mother repeated, weeping with joy. “Be happy, my dears. Oh, you are taking away my only treasure!” she added, turning to Shupkin. “Love my daughter, and be good to her!”

Shupkin gaped in astonishment and fright. The sudden descent of the parents was so unexpected and so awesome that he was unable to utter a single word.

“I’m caught! I’m trapped!” he thought, near fainting with terror. “The roofs falling in on you, brother! No use to run!”

And he lowered his head in humility, as though he were saying: “Take me! I have been vanquished!”

“Bless you, bless you!” the father went on, and tears filled his eyes. “Natasha, my daughter, stand beside him.… Petrovna, hand me the icon.”

Suddenly there was an end to his tears, and his face became contorted with rage.

“Idiot!” he shouted angrily at his wife. “Stupid blockhead! Is this an icon?”

“Oh, God in heaven …!”

What had happened? The writing master cautiously looked up and saw that he was saved. In her haste, instead of the icon, the mother had taken from the wall the picture of the writer Lazhechnikov. Cleopatra Petrovna stood there with the portrait in her hands, and she and old Peplov presented an appearance of utter confusion, for they had no idea what to do or say. The writing master profited from their confusion by taking to his heels.

January 1886

EVENING twilight. Thick flakes of wet snow were circling lazily round the newly lighted street lamps, settling in thin soft layers on rooftops, on the horses’ backs, and on people’s shoulders and caps. The cabdriver Iona Potapov was white as a ghost, and bent double as much as any human body can be bent double, sitting very still on his box. Even if a whole snowdrift had fallen on him, he would have found no need to shake it off. The little mare, too, was white, and quite motionless. Her immobility, and the fact that she was all sharp angles and sticklike legs, gave her a resemblance to one of those gingerbread horses which can be bought for a kopeck. No doubt the mare was plunged in deep thought. So would you be if you were torn from the plow, snatched away from familiar, gray surroundings, and thrown into a whirlpool of monstrous illuminations, ceaseless uproar, and people scrambling hither and thither.

For a long while neither Iona nor the little mare had made the slightest motion. They had driven out of the stableyard before dinner, and so far not a single fare had come to them. The evening mist fell over the city. The pale glow of the street lamps grew brighter, more intense, as the street noises grew louder.

Iona heard someone saying: “Driver—you, there!—take me to Vyborg District!”

Iona started, and through his snow-laden eyelashes he made out an officer wearing a military overcoat with a hood.

“Vyborg!” the officer repeated. “Are you asleep, eh? Get on with it—Vyborg!”

To show he had heard, Iona pulled at the reins, sending whole layers of snow flying from the horse’s back and from his own shoulders. The officer sat down in the sleigh. The driver clucked with his tongue, stretched out his neck like a swan, rose in his seat, and more from habit than necessity, he flourished his whip. The little horse also stretched her neck, crooked her sticklike legs, and started off irresolutely.…

“Where are you going, you fool!” Iona was being assailed with shouts from some massive, dark object wavering to and fro in front of him. “Where the devil are you going? Stay on the right side of the road!”

“You don’t know how to drive! Stay on the right side!” the officer shouted angrily.

A coachman driving a private carriage was swearing at him, and a pedestrian, running across the road and brushing his shoulder against the mare’s nose, glanced up at him and shook the snow from his sleeve. Iona shifted about on the box, as though sitting on needles, thrust out his elbows, rolled his eyes like a madman, as though he did not understand where he was or what he was doing there.

“They’re all scoundrels,” the officer laughed. “All trying to shove into you, or fall under your horse. Quite a conspiracy!”

The driver turned towards the officer, his lips moving. He appeared about to say something, but the only sound coming from him was a hoarse wheezing cough.

“What is it?” the officer asked.

Iona’s lips twitched into a smile, and he strained his throat and croaked: “My son, sir. He died this week.”

“Hm, what did he die of?”

Iona turned his whole body round to face his fare.

“Who knows? They say it was fever.… He was in the
hospital only three days, and then he died. It was God’s will!”

“Get over, damn you!” came a sudden shout out of the darkness. “Have you gone blind, you old idiot? Keep your eyes skinned!”

“Keep going,” the officer said. “This way we won’t get there till tomorrow morning. Put the whip to her!”

Once more the driver stretched his neck, rose in his seat, and with heavy grace flourished the whip. Several times he turned to watch his fare, but the officer’s eyes were closed and apparently he was in no mood to listen. And then, letting off the passenger in the Vyborg District, the driver stopped by a tavern, and again he remained motionless, doubled up on his box. And again the wet snow splashed him and his mare with its white paint. An hour passed, and then another.

Then three young men came loudly pounding the sidewalk in galoshes, quarreling furiously among themselves. Two were tall and slender, the third was a small hunchback.

“Driver, to the Police Bridge!” the hunchback shouted in a cracked voice. “The three of us for twenty kopecks!”

Iona tugged at the reins and smacked his lips. Twenty kopecks was not a fair price, but he did not care any more. Whether it was a ruble or five kopecks no longer mattered, so long as he had a fare. The young men, jostling and cursing one another, came up to the sleigh, and all three of them tried to jump onto the seat, and then they began to argue about which two should sit down, and who should be the one to stand up. After a long, fantastic, and ill-natured argument they decided that the hunchback would have to stand, because he was the shortest.

“Let’s go!” cried the hunchback in his cracked voice, taking his place and breathing down Iona’s neck. “Get going! Eh, brother, what a funny cap you’re wearing. You won’t find a worse one anywhere in St. Petersburg!”

“Hee-hee-hee,” Iona giggled. “Yes, it’s a funny cap.”

“Then get a move on! Are you going to crawl along all this time at the same pace? Do you want to get it in the neck?”

“My head’s splitting!” said one of the tall ones. “Yesterday at the Dukmassovs’, I drank all of four bottles of cognac with Vaska.”

“I don’t know why you have to tell lies,” the other tall one said angrily. “You lie like a swine!”

“May God strike me dead if I am not telling the truth!”

“A flea coughs the truth, too.”

“Hee-hee-hee,” Iona giggled. “What a lot of merry gentlemen.…”

“Pfui!” the hunchback exclaimed indignantly. “Damn you for an old idiot! Will you get a move on, or won’t you? Is that how to drive? Use the whip, dammit! Go on, you old devil, give it to her!”

Iona could feel at his back the hunchback’s wriggling body, and the tremble in the voice. He heard the insults which were being hurled at him, he saw the people in the street, and little by little the feeling of loneliness was lifted from his heart. The hunchback went on swearing until he choked on an elaborate six-story-high oath, and then was overcome with a fit of coughing. The tall ones began to talk about a certain Nadezhda Petrovna. Iona looked round at them. He waited until there was a short pause in the conversation, and then he turned again and murmured: “My son died—he died this week.…”

“We all die,” sighed the hunchback, wiping his lips after his fit of coughing. “Keep going, eh? Gentlemen, we simply can’t go any further like this. We’ll never get there!”

“Give him a bit of encouragement. Hit him in the neck!”

“Did you hear that, old pest? You’ll get it in the neck all right. One shouldn’t stand on ceremony with people like you—one might just as well walk. Do you hear me, you old snake? I don’t suppose you care a tinker’s damn about what we are saying.”

Then Iona heard rather than felt a thud on the nape of his neck.

“Hee-hee-hee,” he laughed. “Such merry gentlemen! God bless them!”

“Driver, are you married?” one of the tall men asked.

“Me, am I married? Hee-hee-hee. You’re all such merry gentlemen. There’s only one wife left to me now—the damp earth. Hee-ho-ho. The grave, that’s what’s left for me. My son is dead, and I’m alive. Strange how death comes by the wrong door. It didn’t come for me, it came for my son.…”

Iona turned round to tell them how his son died, but at that moment the hunchback gave a little sigh of relief and announced that, thank God, they had come to the end of the journey. Having received his twenty kopecks, Iona gazed after the revelers for a long time, even after they had vanished through a dark gateway. Once more he was alone, once more silence fell on him. The grief he had kept at bay for a brief while now returned to wrench his heart with still greater force. With an expression of anxiety and torment, he gazed at the crowds hurrying along both sides of the street, wondering whether there was anyone among those thousands of people who would listen to him. But the crowds hurried past, paying no attention to him or to his grief. His grief was vast, boundless. If his heart could break, and the grief could pour out of it, it would flow over the whole world; but no one would see it. It had found a hiding place invisible to all: even in broad daylight, even if you held a candle to it, you wouldn’t see it.

There was a doorman carrying some kind of sack, and Iona decided to talk to him.

“What time is it, my dear fellow?” he asked.

“Ten o’clock. What the devil are you standing there for? Get a move on!”

Iona drove along the street a bit. His body was bent, and he was surrendering to his grief. He felt it was useless to turn to people for help, but in less than five minutes he had straightened himself up, shaking his head as though he felt a sharp pang of pain, and then he pulled at the reins. He could bear it no longer.

“Back to the stables,” he thought. “Back to the stables.”

The little mare, as though she read his thoughts, started off at a trot.

An hour and a half later Iona was sitting by a large dirty stove. On the stove, on the floor, on benches, men were snoring. The air was noisome, suffocating. Iona found himself gazing at the sleeping people. He scratched himself, and he was sorry he had come back so early.

“I haven’t earned enough even for the hay,” he thought. “There’s grief for you. But a man who knows his work, and has a full belly, and a well-fed horse besides, he’s at peace with the world all his days.”

From one of the corners a young driver rose, grunting sleepily as he reached for the water bucket.

“You thirsty?” Iona asked him.

“Reckon so.”

“Well, it’s a good thing to be thirsty, but as for me, brother, my son is dead. Did you hear me? This week, at the hospital.… Such a lot of trouble!”

Iona looked to see whether the words were producing any effect, but saw none—the young man had covered up his face and was asleep again. The old man sighed and scratched himself. Just as the young man wanted to drink, so he wanted to talk. Soon it would be a week since his son died, and still no one had let him talk about it properly. He would have to tell it slowly, very carefully. He would tell them how his son fell ill, how he suffered, what he said before he died, how he died. He would have to describe the funeral, and how he went to the hospital to collect his son’s clothes. His daughter Anissya was still in the country. He wanted to talk about her, too. Yes, there was so much to talk about. And the listener would have to gasp and sigh and bewail the fate of the dead man. And maybe it would be better to talk about it to women. Even though women are so foolish, you can bring the tears to their eyes with a few words.

“Now I’ll go and look at my horse,” Iona thought to himself. “There’s always time for sleep—nothing there to be afraid of.”

He threw on his coat and went down to the stable to look after her, thinking about such things as hay, oats, and the weather. Alone, he dared not let his mind dwell on his son. He could talk about him to anyone, but alone, thinking about him, conjuring up his living presence, no—no, that was too painful for words.

“Filling your belly, eh?” he said, seeing the mare’s shining eyes. “Well, eat up! We haven’t earned enough for oats, but we can eat hay. Oh, I’m too old to be driving. My son should be driving, not me. He was a real cabdriver, and he should be alive now.…”

Iona was silent for a moment, and then he went on: “That’s how it is, old girl. My son, Kuzma Ionich, is no more. He died on us. Now let’s say you had a foal, and you were the foal’s mother, and suddenly, let’s say, the same little foal departed this life. You’d be sorry, eh?”

The little mare munched and listened and breathed on his hands.