“Christ be with you. What partizhans? It’s Stepanych scarifying wolves in Shutma.”
9
The first meeting of the new arrivals with the hosts took place in the yard of the director’s little house. A painful scene, at first silent, then confusedly noisy and incoherent, was played out.
Elena Proklovna was returning to the yard from her evening walk in the forest. The sun’s evening rays stretched behind her from tree to tree across the whole forest, almost the same color as her golden hair. Elena Proklovna was dressed in light summer clothes. She was red-cheeked and was wiping her face, flushed from walking, with a handkerchief. Her open neck was crossed in front by an elastic band, which held the hanging straw hat thrown behind her back.
Her husband was coming home from the opposite direction with a gun, climbing up from the ravine and intending to see at once to the cleaning of the sooty barrels, in view of the defects he had noticed in the discharge.
Suddenly, out of the blue, over the stones of the paved driveway, Vakkh drove up dashingly and loudly with his surprise.
Very soon, having climbed out of the cart with all the rest, Alexander Alexandrovich, falteringly, taking off his hat, then putting it on again, gave the first explanations.
The genuine, unaffected stupefaction of the nonplussed hosts and the unfeigned, sincere embarrassment of the wretched guests, burning with shame, lasted for several moments. The situation was clear without explanations, not only to the participants, Vakkh, Nyusha, and Shurochka. The oppressive feeling communicated itself to the mare and the colt, to the golden rays of the sun, and to the mosquitoes circling around Elena Proklovna and settling on her face and neck.
“I don’t understand,” Averky Stepanovich finally broke the silence. “I don’t understand, don’t understand a thing and never will. What have we got here, the south, the Whites, the land of plenty? Why did your choice fall precisely on us? Why have you come here, here, why on earth to us?”
“I wonder if you’ve thought of what a responsibility it is for Averky Stepanovich?”
“Lenochka, don’t interrupt. Yes, precisely. She’s perfectly right. Have you thought of what a burden it is for me?”
“For God’s sake. You haven’t understood us. What are we talking about? About a very small thing, a nothing. There’s no encroachment on you, on your peace. A corner in some empty, dilapidated building. A spot of land nobody needs, gone to waste, for a vegetable garden. And a load of firewood from the forest when nobody’s looking. Is that so much to ask, is it some sort of infringement?”
“Yes, but the world is wide. What have we to do with it? Why is this honor bestowed precisely on us and not on somebody else?”
“We knew about you and hoped you had heard about us. That we’re no strangers to you and will not be coming to strangers ourselves.”
“Ah, so it’s a matter of Kruger, of you being his relatives? How can you open your mouth and acknowledge such things in our time?”
Averky Stepanovich was a man with regular features, wore his hair thrown back, stepped broadly on his whole foot, and in summer belted his Russian shirt with a tasseled strip of braid. In older times such men went and became river pirates; in modern times they constituted the type of the eternal student, the lesson-giving dreamer.
Averky Stepanovich gave his youth to the liberation movement, the revolution, and only feared that he would not live to see it or that, once it broke out, its moderation would not satisfy his radical and bloody lust. And then it came, overturning all his boldest suppositions, and he, a born and steadfast lover of the workers, who had been among the first to found a factory workers’ committee at the “Mighty Sviatogor” and set up workers’ control in it, was left with nothing for his trouble, excluded, in an empty village, deserted by the workers, who here mostly followed the Mensheviks. And now this absurdity, these uninvited last remnants of the Krugers, seemed to him a mockery of fate, a purposely mean trick, and they made the cup of his patience run over.
“No, that’s beyond me. Inconceivable. Do you realize what a danger you are to me, what position you put me in? I really must be going out of my mind. I don’t understand anything and never will.”
“I wonder if you can conceive of what a volcano we’re sitting on here even without you?”
“Wait, Lenochka. My wife is perfectly right. It’s no sweet time even without you. A dog’s life, a madhouse. Between two fires all the time, and no way out. Some hang it on us that we’ve got such a red son, a Bolshevik, a people’s darling. Others don’t like it that I myself was elected to the Constituent Assembly. Nobody’s pleased, so just flounder about. And now you. How very merry to go and get shot over you!”
“What are you saying! Come to your senses! For God’s sake!”
After a while, exchanging wrath for mercy, Mikulitsyn said:
“Well, we’ve been yelping in the yard, and enough. We can continue in the house. Of course, I don’t see anything good ahead, but these be the dark waters in the clouds, the shadow-scripted murk of secrecy.9 However, we’re not Janissaries, not heathens. We won’t drive you into the forest as a meal for Bruin the bear. I think, Lenok, they’ll be best off in the palm room, next to the study. And then we’ll discuss where they can settle. I think we’ll install them in the park. Please come in. Welcome. Bring the things in, Vakkh. Give the newcomers a hand.”
In carrying out the order, Vakkh merely sighed:
“Unwedded Mother! Wanderers have as much stuff. Just little bundles. Not a single sweetcase!”
10
A cold night set in. The newcomers washed. The women got busy turning the room allotted to them into night lodgings. Shurochka, who was unconsciously accustomed to having adults receive his infantile utterances in baby talk with delight, and who therefore, adapting himself to their taste, was pouring out his twaddle animatedly and zealously, felt disconcerted. Today his babble had no success, no one paid any attention to him. He was displeased that the black colt had not been brought into the house, and, when they told him to be quiet, he burst into tears, afraid that, being a bad and unsuitable boy, he would be sent back to the baby shop, from which, as he thought, he had been delivered to his parents when he was born. He loudly voiced his genuine fears to all around him, but his sweet absurdities did not make the usual impression. Constrained by staying in a strange house, the adults moved about more hurriedly than usual and were silently immersed in their cares. Shurochka felt hurt and blubbered, as
