Fifty-Two Stories

For all his kind-heartedness and ingenuousness, Savka scorned women. He treated them casually, haughtily, and even lowered himself so far as to laugh scornfully at their feelings for his own person. God knows, maybe this casual, scornful treatment was one of the causes of the intense, insuperable charm he had for the village dulcineas? He was handsome and well-built, and his eyes always shone with quiet tenderness even at the sight of women he scorned, but it was impossible to explain this charm by external qualities alone. Besides his fortunate appearance and original manner of treating them, it must be thought that it was also Savka’s touching role as a universally recognized failure and unfortunate exile from his own cottage to the kitchen gardens that influenced the women.

“Now tell the master why you’ve come here!” Savka went on, still holding Agafya by the waist. “Go on, tell him, you husband’s wife! Ho-ho…What do you say, good old Agasha, shall we have another nip of vodka?”

I got up and, making my way between the beds, walked along the garden. The dark beds looked like big, flattened graves. They gave off a smell of tilled soil and the delicate dampness of the plants that were beginning to be covered with dew…To the left the little red light still shone. It blinked affably and seemed to smile. I heard happy laughter. It was Agafya laughing.

“And the train?” I remembered. “The train came long ago.”

Having waited a little, I went back to the hutch. Savka was sitting motionless, Turkish fashion, and quietly, barely audibly, murmuring some song that consisted only of one-syllable words, something like “Phoo-you, to-you…me and you…” Agafya, drunk on the vodka, Savka’s scornful caress, and the stifling night, lay beside him on the ground and pressed her face hard against his knee. She was so far gone in her feeling that she did not notice my coming.

“Agasha, you know the train came long ago!” I said.

“It’s time, it’s time.” Savka picked up my thought, shaking his head. “What are you doing lying around here? You’re shameless!”

Agafya roused herself, glanced at me, and pressed her head to his knee again.

“It’s long been time!” I said.

Agafya stirred and got to one knee…She was suffering…For half a minute her whole figure, as far as I could make it out in the dark, expressed struggle and hesitation. There was a moment when, as if coming to her senses, she raised herself so as to get to her feet, but then some invincible and implacable force pushed her whole body, and she pressed herself to Savka again.

“Ah, forget him!” she said with wild, deep-throated laughter, and in that laughter you could hear reckless resolution, powerlessness, pain.

I slowly trudged off to the grove and from there went down to the river, where our fishing rods were standing. The river was asleep. Some soft, fluffy flower on a tall stem tenderly touched my cheek, like a child who wants to let you know he is not asleep. Having nothing to do, I felt for one line and pulled it. It responded limply and hung down—nothing had been caught…I could not see the other bank and the village. A little light glimmered in one cottage, but soon went out. I felt around on the bank, found a depression I had already noticed during the day, and sat down in it as in an armchair. I sat for a long time…I saw how the stars began to fade and lose their brightness, how a slight breath of coolness passed over the earth, touching the leaves of the awakening willows…

“A-ga-fya!…” Someone’s muffled voice reached me from the village. “Agafya!”

It was the returned and alarmed husband, looking for his wife in the village. And in the kitchen gardens I heard unrestrained laughter: the wife had forgotten herself, was drunk, and with the happiness of a few hours was trying to offset the suffering that awaited her the next day.

I fell asleep.

When I woke up, Savka was sitting beside me, lightly shaking me by the shoulder. The river, the grove, both banks, green and washed, the village, and the field—all was flooded with bright morning light. The rays of the just-risen sun struck my back through the thin trunks of the trees.

“So that’s how you fish?” Savka smiled. “Well, up you get!”

I stood up, stretched sweetly, and my awakened chest eagerly began to drink in the moist, fragrant air.

“Agasha left?” I asked.

“There she is,” Savka pointed in the direction of the ford.

I looked and saw Agafya. Tucking up her skirts, disheveled, her kerchief askew on her head, she was crossing the river. Her legs could barely move…

“The cat knows she ate the canary!” Savka muttered, narrowing his eyes at her. “There she goes, tail between her legs…These women are mischievous as cats, and cowardly as hares…The foolish woman, she should have gone when she was told! Now she’s going to get it, and me, too, at the local precinct…another flogging on account of a woman…”