Stories

“Belikov lived in the same house I did,” Burkin went on, “on the same floor, his door faced mine, we saw each other often, and I knew his home life. At home it was the same story: dressing gown, nightcap, shutters, latches, a whole array of restrictions, limitations, and—ah, something may come of it! Lenten fare isn’t good for you, and non- lenten food is forbidden, because people might say Belikov didn’t observe the fasts,³ so he ate pike- perch fried in butter—not lenten food, but you couldn’t say it was non-lenten. He didn’t keep a serving woman for fear people might think ill of him, but he kept a cook, Afanasy, an old man of about sixty, drunk and half-crazy, who had served as an orderly and was able to slap a meal together. This Afanasy usually stood by the door, his arms crossed, and always muttered one and the same thing with a deep sigh:

“‘There’s a lot of them around nowadays!’

“Belikov’s bedroom was small, like a box, and the bed had a canopy over it. Lying down to sleep, he would cover his head with a blanket; it was hot, stuffy, the wind knocked at the closed doors, the stove howled; sighs came from the kitchen, sinister sighs …

“And he was afraid under his blanket. He feared that something might happen, that Afanasy might put a knife in him, that thieves might come, and then all night he would have troubled dreams, and in the morning, when he and I walked to school together, he would be dull, pale, and you could see that the crowded school he was going to was frightening, contrary to his whole being, and that for him, a naturally solitary man, walking beside me was very painful.

“‘It’s too noisy in our classrooms,’ he would say, as if trying to find an explanation for his painful feeling. ‘I’ve never seen the like.’

“And this teacher of Greek, this man in a case, if you can imagine it, nearly got married.”

Ivan Ivanych quickly glanced into the shed and said:

“You’re joking!”

“Yes, he nearly got married, strange as it sounds. A new teacher of history and geography was appointed to us, a certain Kovalenko, Mikhail Savvich, a Ukrainian. He didn’t come alone, but with his sister Varenka. He was young, tall, swarthy, with enormous hands, and by the looks of him you could see he had a bass voice, and in fact he boomed like a barrel: boo, boo, boo … And she was no longer young, about thirty, but also tall, trim, dark-browed, red-cheeked—in short, not a girl but a sugarplum—and so saucy and loud, and she sang Ukrainian romances and laughed all the time. At the least thing she’d burst into peals of laughter: ha, ha, ha! Our first real acquaintance with the Kovalenkos came, I remember, at the director’s name-day party. Amidst the stern, tensely dull pedagogues, who even came to name-day parties out of duty, we suddenly see: a new Aphrodite rising from the foam. She walks about, arms akimbo, laughs, sings, dances … She sang ‘The Winds Waft’ with feeling, then another romance, and another, and charmed us all—all, even Belikov. He sat down beside her and said with a sweet smile:

“‘The Ukrainian language, in its softness and pleasing sonority, is reminiscent of the ancient Greek.’

“This flattered her, and she began telling him, with feeling and conviction, that she had a farmstead in the Gadyach district, that her dear mama lived on that farmstead, and they had such pears there, such melons, such squash! In the Ukraine pumpkins are called squash, and squash are called gourds, and they make borscht out of them with little red peppers and little blue eggplants, ‘so tasty, so tasty, it’s simply—awful!’

“We listened and listened, and suddenly the same thought occurred to us all.

“‘It would be nice to get them married,’ the director’s wife said to me softly.

“We all remembered for some reason that our Belikov wasn’t married, and now it seemed strange to us that we had somehow never noticed, had completely lost sight of such an important detail of his life. What generally was his attitude towards women, and how did he resolve this essential question for himself? Earlier that hadn’t interested us at all; maybe we hadn’t even admitted the thought that a man who wore galoshes in all weather and slept under a canopy was able to love.

‘He’s well over forty, and she’s thirty …’ the director’s wife clarified her thought. ‘I think she’d accept him.’

“So many things are done in our provinces out of boredom, so much that’s unnecessary, absurd! That’s because what’s necessary doesn’t get done at all. Well, so why did we suddenly have to marry off this Belikov, whom it was even impossible to imagine married? The director’s wife, the inspector’s wife, and our lady teachers all livened up, even became prettier, as if they suddenly saw some purpose in life. The director’s wife reserved a box in the theater, and we looked—there was Varenka sitting in her box with a fan, radiant, happy, and beside her Belikov, small, hunched up, as if they’d pulled him out of his house with pliers. I gave a party and the ladies demanded that I invite Belikov and Varenka without fail. In short, the machine got going. It turned out that Varenka wouldn’t have minded getting married. Her life with her brother was not so happy, all they could do was argue and quarrel the whole day long. Here’s a scene for you: Kovalenko goes walking down the street, a tall, hefty hulk in an embroidered shirt, his forelock falling over his forehead from under his cap; a pile of books in one hand, a thick, knotty stick in the other. Behind him comes his sister, also with books.

“‘But Mikhailik, you haven’t read this one!’ she protests loudly. ‘I’m telling you, I swear, you haven’t read it at all!’

“‘And I tell you I have!’ shouts Kovalenko, rapping his stick on the sidewalk.

“‘Ah, my God, Minchik! Why are you getting angry, we’re having a conversation of principle.’

“‘And I tell you I’ve read it!’ Kovalenko shouts still louder.

“And at home, whenever an outsider comes, there’s some spat. Such a life was probably boring, she wanted a corner of her own, and age was also a consideration; there was no time for choosing, she’d marry anybody, even the teacher of Greek. And to tell the truth, for the majority of our young ladies, it didn’t matter whom they married, as long as they got married. Be that as it may, Varenka began to show our Belikov a marked benevolence.

“And Belikov? He called on Kovalenko just as he did on us. He’d come to him and say nothing. He’d say nothing, and Varenka would sing ‘The Winds Waft’ for him, or look at him pensively with her dark eyes, or suddenly dissolve:

“‘Ha, ha, ha!’

“In amorous matters, especially in marriage, insinuation plays a major role. Everybody—his colleagues and the ladies—started assuring Belikov that he must marry, that there was nothing left for him in life but to marry; we all congratulated him and with important faces uttered various banalities, such as that marriage was a serious step; besides, Varenka was interesting and not bad-looking, she was the daughter of a state councillor and owned a farmstead, and, above all, she was the first woman who had treated him gently, cordially—his head got in a whirl, and he decided that he really did have to marry.”