“What is it—the trouble of this woman?” asked Seryozha, who could not take his eyes off the distressed Korean woman. For she was attacking the train in a frenzy—challenging it to single combat; she leapt with desperate agility at one door, was pushed out by the train conductor, and flew to another door. Her baby was shaken like the rider of a bucking bronco. Trainmen stood ready to push her off at every door. But her distraught screams prevented even the iron-hearted train from starting.
Pavel, checked in a spasm of terse eloquence by the obvious inattention of Isaev, looked round. At once seeing whither the center of the stage had shifted, he strode to the woman’s side, spoke nobly to her, held her arm as she gathered herself for a new futile leap at a closed train door, spoke nobly to the trainmen, nodded his head and said “Ah Ah” superbly, pressed money into the guard’s hand. At once the train swallowed and digested the woman, and instant silence swallowed her clamor and that of her baby. Much gratified by the poor creature’s opportune predicament and its picturesque result, Pavel returned to his friends, saying gruffly (as unlike a windbag as possible): “Poor wretch! No money to pay her fare to Gensan—dying husband there—very easily fixed, fortunately. …”
“You gave her the money with which to travel!” exclaimed Wilfred, delighted, as he always was, by any improvement in anything. “Your reward will be in heaven.” And in his literal mind he imagined Saint Peter making a little note—Cr. P. N. Ostapenko—Dr. Heaven. To Third class fare to Gensan. ¥1.69.
Isaev, stretching his long thin lips to something that really looked almost like a smile, banged Pavel’s shoulder three or four times with a wooden congratulatory hand. He was of a race and class that is easily touched by cheap charity. Isaev, somewhere inside his impassive body, was rather enjoying this jaunt. His wife’s home in Seoul was something of a prison.
Pavel, delighted (for now everybody loved him safely), sang tunefully as he tightened up the girth of one of the spare horses. It was rather difficult hoisting the massive Isaev on to the back of a horse, and once there, his large hard seat seemed unable to take the curve of the saddle. But the horse was quiet, and Isaev, though not steady, looked calm. Pavel fidgeted with the stirrups, and then, ceasing his humming, looked up sunnily and affectionately into Isaev’s face, saying, “Such old friends as we are, Gavril Ilitch, aren’t going to let a hysterical son and daughter come between us, are we?” Isaev, a simple soul, smiled. He was conquered. Pavel added in a more matter-of-fact voice, “Anyway, the chit’s married now and going to leave us soon. Here’s her husband.”
They rode off. Pavel rode beside Isaev, cautiously piling charm on charm. They were halfway home before he thought it safe to detach himself from Isaev and come back to where Seryozha trailed behind the party.
“You couldn’t have been serious, my boy,” said Pavel to Seryozha, “in what you said just now about the journey back to Chi-tao-kou.”
So the argument began. It ended as they rode up to the gate of the house in Mi-san, with Seryozha saying, “My dog can’t travel in a box.”
Somehow the question had become almost a religious one with Seryozha now. The askingness of women—the commandingness of men, had obscurely fermented in his simple mind, and resulted in this explosion of philocanism. His dog was the only unbroken reed in sight—the only treasure saved from the wreck of yesterday. It was absolutely out of the question to shut the dog up in a box and leave it to the mercy of Japanese freight porters.
During the next few days the dispute became chronic, and sadly marred the wedding festivities which the Ostapenkos tried to revive in honor of Isaev’s visit. At every meal the question came up.
“Seryozha wants to walk back to China because he won’t shut his moth-eaten old wonk in a box.”
“Well, I won’t shut it up in a box,” Seryozha said. He seldom ventured further into the intricacies of debate than this.
“Why should the poor dog be shut up in a box?” Tatiana always asked. Though the matter had been explained to her at length, she could not manage to bear in mind the implications of her husband’s determination.
“Seryozha would rather that his wife should walk her feet off, than that his dog should be shut up in a box.”
“Well, I won’t shut my dog up in a box.”
“Surely there must be some way both to keep my feet on and to keep the poor dog out of the box,” said Tatiana. She was fond of the dog by now, and usually at this point called it to her knee and began interrogating it, while trying to tie its ears in a knot on the top of its head or to fit her wedding-ring on to the tip of its tail. The dog, heartily enjoying these mild diversions, slobbered appreciatively down her shin.
Whenever Tatiana spoke, Isaev looked at her, blankly and intensely, thinking of his son. Wilfred, watching him at these moments, nervously felt that just inside the big clenched trap of Isaev’s mouth the word “bitch” was only precariously detained. Apart from this unspoken contribution, Isaev said almost nothing. He ate a great deal and drank cautiously. He hardly replied, even when Varvara, determined to keep conversation as equable and normal as possible, said in her harsh, uninviting voice, “I suppose Seoul is a good deal hotter than Mi-san at this time of year,” or, “Does Olga Ivanovna bake her own
