“Well, there’s just a little bit left. I’ll snip it off, and that’s it. On family business?”
“What family business! I was working for the former union of credit associations. A traveling agent. They sent me around on inspection. I got stuck devil knows where in eastern Siberia. No way to get back. There are no trains. I had to go on foot, no help for it. I walked for a month and a half. The things I’ve seen, it would take more than a lifetime to tell.”
“And you oughtn’t to tell. I’m going to teach you a bit of wisdom. Now wait. Here’s a mirror. Take your hand from under the sheet and hold it. Look at yourself. Well, how do you find it?”
“I think you’ve cut too little. It could be shorter.”
“It won’t hold its shape. As I said, you oughtn’t to tell anything. It’s better to keep mum about all that now. Credit associations, deluxe trains under the snow, agents and inspections—it’s better if you even forget the words. You’ll get into a real mess with them! Don’t put your foot in it, it’s not the season. Better lie that you’re a doctor or a teacher. Well, there, I’ve chopped your beard off roughly, now we’ll give you a real shave. We’ll soap you up, zip- zap, and you’ll get ten years younger. I’ll go put some water on to boil.”
“Who is this woman!” the doctor thought while she was away. “There’s a feeling that we may have some points of contact and I should know her. Something I’ve seen or heard. She probably reminds me of someone. But, devil take it, who precisely?”
The seamstress returned.
“Well, now we’ll have a shave. Yes, so it’s better never to say anything unnecessary. That’s the eternal truth. Silence is golden. About those special trains and credit associations. Better to invent something about being a doctor or a teacher. And as for seeing all sorts of sights, keep it to yourself. Who’ll be surprised at it now? Does the razor bother you?”
“It hurts a little.”
“It scrapes, it must scrape, I know. Bear with it, dearie. No way to avoid it. Your hair has grown and turned coarse, the skin’s not used to it. Yes. Sights won’t surprise anybody now. People have been tried and tested. We’ve drunk our cup of grief. Such things went on here under the Whites! Robberies, murders, abductions. Hunting people down. For instance, there was this petty satrap, from Sapunov’s men, and, you see, he took a dislike to a certain lieutenant. He sends soldiers to ambush him near the Zagorodny woods, across from Krapulsky’s house. He’s disarmed and taken under escort to Razvilye. And Razvilye at that time was the same for us as the provincial Cheka is now. Golgotha. Why are you shaking your head? Scrapes, does it? I know, dearie, I know. Nothing to be done. Here I’ve got to shave against the grain, and your hair’s stiff as bristles. Stiff. A tricky place. His wife is in hysterics. The lieutenant’s wife. ‘Kolya! My Kolya!’ And goes straight to the chief. Only ‘straight’ is just a manner of speaking. Who’s going to let her? Connections. A woman on the next street had access to the chief and interceded for everybody. He was an exceptionally humane man, not like the others, compassionate. General Galiullin. And all around there was lynch law, atrocities, dramas of jealousy. Just like in Spanish novels.”
“She’s talking about Lara,” the doctor guessed, but by way of precaution he said nothing and did not enter into more detailed questioning. Yet when she said “Just like in Spanish novels,” she again reminded him terribly of someone. Precisely by this inappropriate phrase, spoken out of place.
“Now, of course, it’s quite a different story. Let’s say there’s still more than enough investigations, denunciations, executions even now. But the idea is totally different. First, they’re new to power. They’ve been ruling less than no time, they still haven’t acquired a taste for it. Second, whatever you may say, they’re for the simple folk, that’s where their strength lies. There were four of us sisters, including me. And all working women. Naturally we lean towards the Bolsheviks. One sister died, she was married to a political. Her husband worked as a manager at one of the local factories. Their son, my nephew, is the leader of our village rebels—a celebrity, you might say.”
“So that’s what it is!” it dawned on Yuri Andreevich. “She’s Liberius’s aunt, Mikulitsyn’s notorious sister-in-law, hairdresser, seamstress, switchwoman, a jack-of-all-trades whom everybody knows. I’ll keep quiet like before, however, so as not to give myself away.”
“My nephew was drawn to the people from childhood. He grew up near his father, among the workers at the Mighty Sviatogor. The Varykino factories, maybe you’ve heard of them? Ah, what are we doing, the two of us! I’m a forgetful fool! Half the chin’s smooth, the other half unshaven. I’m talking away. And what are you doing, not stopping me? The soap on your face has dried up. I’ll go and heat some water. It’s grown cold.”
When Tuntseva came back, Yuri Andreevich asked:
“Varykino—it’s some sort of blessed backwoods, a wild place, where no shocks ever reach?”
“Well, ‘blessed,’ so to speak. That wild place got into maybe a worse pickle than we did. Some bands of men passed through Varykino, no one knows who. They didn’t speak our language. They went from house to house, taking people out and shooting them. And then left without a word. The bodies just stayed there unattended on the snow. It happened in the winter. Why do you keep jumping all the time? I almost cut your throat with the razor.”
“But you said your brother-in-law lived in Varykino. Did he, too, suffer from these horrors?”
“No, why? God is merciful. He and his wife got out of there in time. The new wife, the second one. Where they are, nobody knows, but it’s certain they’re safe. Recently there were new people there. A Moscow family, visitors. They left even earlier. The younger man, a doctor, the head of the family, disappeared without a trace. Well, what does it mean, ‘without a trace’? It’s just a way of speaking, that it was without a trace, so as not to get upset. But in reality we’ve got to assume he’s dead, killed. They searched and searched, but didn’t find him. Meanwhile the other man, the older one, was called home. He’s a professor. Of agronomy. I heard he got a summons from the government. They passed through Yuriatin before the Whites came for the second time. You’re up to it again, dear comrade? If you fidget and jump like that under the razor, it won’t be long before the client’s throat is cut. You ask too much from a barber.”
“So they’re in Moscow!”
7
“In Moscow! In Moscow!” echoed in his soul with every step, as he went up the cast-iron stairs for the third time. The empty apartment met him again with an uproar of leaping, tumbling, scattering rats. It was clear to Yuri Andreevich that he would not get a wink of sleep next to these vermin, however worn out he was. He began his preparations for the night by stopping up the rat holes. Fortunately, there were not so many of them in the bedroom, far less than in the rest of the apartment, where the floors and baseboards were in less good condition. But he had to hurry. Night was falling. True, there waited for him on the kitchen table, perhaps in expectation of his coming, a lamp taken down from the wall and half filled, and, next to it in an open matchbox, several matches, ten in number, as Yuri Andreevich counted. But the one and the other, the kerosene and the matches, he had better use sparingly. In the bedroom he also discovered a night lamp—a bowl with a wick and some traces of lamp oil, which the rats had probably drunk almost to the bottom.
