The Shchapovs were having dinner at that same table on which, in the time of the distribution of bread by ration cards, in the mornings at dawn, they used to cut up the small bread coupons of all the tenants with scissors, sort them, count them, tie them in bundles or wrap them in paper by categories, and take them to the bakery, and then, on coming back, they would chop, cut, crumble, and weigh out the portions for the quarter’s inhabitants. Now all that had become a thing of the past. The rationing of provisions was replaced by other forms of accounting. Those sitting at the long table ate with appetite, smacking their lips, chewing and chomping.
Half of the porter’s lodge was taken up by the Russian stove towering in the middle, with the edge of a quilted coverlet hanging off its shelf.
On the front wall by the entrance there was a sink with a faucet for running water sticking out over it. There were benches along the sides of the lodge with chattels in sacks and trunks stuffed under them. The left side was occupied by the kitchen table. Over it, nailed to the wall, hung a cupboard for dishes.
The stove was burning. It was hot in the porter’s lodge. In front of the stove, her sleeves rolled up to the elbows, stood Markel’s wife, Agafya Tikhonovna, using long, far-reaching tongs to move the pots in the oven closer together or further apart at need. Her sweaty face was alternately lit up by the breathing fire of the stove, then veiled by steam from the cooking. Having pushed the pots aside, she took from the depths a meat pie on an iron sheet, with one deft movement flipped it bottom side up, and pushed it back to brown for a moment. Yuri Andreevich came into the lodge with two buckets.
“Enjoy your meal.”
“Welcome to you! Sit down, be our guest.”
“Thank you, I’ve had my dinner.”
“We know your dinners. Sit down and eat something hot. Don’t scorn it. There are potatoes baked in a clay pot. A savory pie. Wheat kasha.”
“No, really, thank you. Forgive me, Markel, for coming so often and making your place cold. I want to store up a lot of water at once. I scrubbed the zinc bathtub at the Sventitskys’ till it shines; I’ll fill it up, and the big pots as well. I’ll come some five times now, maybe ten, and after that I won’t bother you for a long time. Forgive me for coming so often, I have nobody else but you.”
“Help yourself, we won’t miss it. There’s no syrup, but as much water as you like. It’s free. We don’t deal in it.”
The people at the table guffawed.
When Yuri Andreevich came for the third time, for his fifth and sixth bucketful, the tone had changed slightly and the talk went differently.
“My sons-in-law are asking who you are. I tell them—they don’t believe me. Go ahead, take the water, don’t hesitate. Only don’t spill it on the floor, you gawk. See, the doorstep’s wet. It’ll freeze, and it won’t be you who breaks it up with a crowbar. And shut the door tighter, you lummox—there’s a draft from outside. Yes, I tell my sons-in-law who you are, and they don’t believe me. So much money gone to waste on you! You studied and studied, and what was the use?”
When Yuri Andreevich came for the fifth or sixth time, Markel frowned:
“Well, once more, if you please, and then basta. You’ve got to know the limits, brother. Marina here, our youngest one, defends you, otherwise I’d pay no attention to what a noble Freemason you are and lock the door. Do you remember Marina? There she is, at the end of the table, the dark-haired one. See, she’s getting red in the face. Don’t offend him, papa, she says. As if anybody’s bothering you. Marina’s a telegraph girl at the central telegraph, she understands when it’s foreign words. He’s miserable, she says. She’ll go through fire for you, she pities you so much. But is it my fault if you didn’t turn out? You shouldn’t have gone off to Siberia and abandoned your home in a time of danger. It’s your own fault. Here we sat out all this famine, all this White blockade, we didn’t waver, and we survived. The blame’s on you. You didn’t keep Tonka, so she’s wandering abroad. What is it to me? It’s your business. Only don’t get offended if I ask what you need all this water for. Were you hired to make a skating rink in the courtyard? Eh, I can’t even get angry at a sad sack like you.”
Again there was guffawing at the table. Marina glanced around at her family with a displeased look, blushed, and started reprimanding them. Yuri Andreevich heard her voice, was struck by it, but did not understand its secret yet.
“There’s a lot of cleaning to be done in the house, Markel. I have to tidy up. Wash the floors. Do some laundry.”
There was surprise at the table.
“Aren’t you ashamed even to say such things, let alone do them, as if you’re a Chinese laundry or something!”
“Yuri Andreevich, if you’ll allow me, I’ll send my daughter to you. She’ll come to your place, do the laundry, the scrubbing. If you need, she can mend things. Don’t be afraid of the gentleman, dear daughter. You see how well- breeded he is, not like some others. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“No, what are you saying, Agafya Tikhonovna, there’s no need. I’ll never agree that Marina should dirty and soil herself for me. Why should she work for me? I’ll see to it all myself.”
“You can dirty yourself, and I can’t? You’re so intractable, Yuri Andreevich. Why do you wave me away? And if I invite myself as a guest, will you really drive me out?”
Marina might have become a singer. She had a pure, melodious voice of great pitch and strength. Marina spoke softly, but in a voice that was stronger than conversation required and that did not merge with Marina, but could be conceived as separate from her. It seemed to come from another room, to be located behind her back. This voice was her defense, her guardian angel. One does not want to insult or sadden a woman with such a voice.
With this Sunday water carrying the doctor’s friendship with Marina began. She often came to help him around the house. One day she stayed with him and never went back to the porter’s lodge. Thus she became the third, not officially registered, wife of Yuri Andreevich, who was not divorced from the first. Children came along. Father and mother Shchapov, not without pride, began to call their daughter a doctor’s wife. Markel grumbled that Yuri Andreevich did not marry Marina in church or sign up in the registry office. “What, are you daft?” his wife protested. “With Antonina alive, what would that be? Bigamy?” “You’re a fool yourself,” replied Markel. “Why look at Tonka? Tonka’s the same as if she doesn’t exist. No law will defend her.”
Yuri Andreevich sometimes said jokingly that their intimacy was a novel of twenty buckets, as there are novels of twenty chapters or twenty letters.
