Fifty-Two Stories

GRISHA, a chubby seven-year-old, was standing by the kitchen door, eavesdropping and peeking through the keyhole. In the kitchen something was going on which, in his opinion, was extraordinary, never seen before. At the kitchen table, on which meat was usually cut and onions chopped, sat a big, burly peasant in a cabby’s kaftan, red-headed, bearded, with a big drop of sweat on his nose. He was holding a saucer on the five fingers of his right hand and drinking tea from it, biting so noisily on a lump of sugar that it sent shivers down Grisha’s spine. Across from him, on a dirty stool, sat the old nanny Aksinya Stepanovna, also drinking tea. The nanny’s face was serious and at the same time shone with some sort of triumph. The cook Pelageya was pottering around by the stove and looked as if she was trying to hide her face somewhere far away. But on her face Grisha saw a whole play of lights: it glowed and shimmered with all colors, beginning with reddish purple and ending with a deathly pallor. Her trembling hands constantly clutched at knives, forks, stove wood, rags; she moved about, murmured, knocked, but in fact did nothing. Never once did she glance at the table where they were drinking tea, and to the questions the nanny put to her she replied curtly, sternly, without turning her face.

“Help yourself, Danilo Semyonych!” the nanny offered the cabby. “What’s this tea all the time? Help yourself to some vodka!”

And the nanny moved a decanter and a glass towards the guest, her face acquiring a most sarcastic expression.

“I’m not in the habit, ma’am…No, ma’m…,” the cabby protested. “Don’t make me, Aksinya Stepanovna.”

“What sort of…A cabby, and he doesn’t drink…An unmarried man can’t possibly not drink. Help yourself!”

The cabby gave a sidelong glance at the vodka, then at the nanny’s sarcastic face, and his own face acquired a no less sarcastic expression: No, you won’t catch me, you old witch!

“Sorry, ma’am, I don’t drink…Such a weakness doesn’t suit our trade. A workman can drink, because he sits in one place, but our kind are always on view, in public. Right, ma’am? You go to a pot-house, and your horse walks away; you get drunk—it’s even worse: you fall asleep or tumble off the box. So it goes.”

“And how much do you make in a day, Danilo Semyonych?”

“Depends on the day. Some days you get as much as a greenback, and other times you go home without a kopeck. There’s days and days, ma’am. Nowadays our business isn’t worth much. There’s no end of cabbies, you know it yourself, hay is expensive, and customers are piddling, they’d rather take a horse tram. But all the same, thank God, there’s no complaints. Food enough, clothes enough, and…maybe even enough to make for somebody else’s happiness” (the cabby cast a glance at Pelageya) “…if her heart’s so inclined.”

What else they talked about, Grisha did not hear. His mama came to the door and sent him to the children’s room to study.

“Go and study. You’ve got no business listening here!”

Having come to the children’s room, Grisha placed his primer before him, but he could not read. All that he had just seen and heard raised a host of questions in his head. “The cook’s getting married…,” he thought. “Strange. I don’t understand why people get married. Mama married Papa, cousin Verochka married Pavel Andreich. But anyhow Papa and Pavel Andreich were worth marrying: they’ve got gold watch chains, good clothes, their boots are always polished; but to marry that scary cabby with the red nose, in felt boots—phooey! And why does this nanny want poor Pelageya to get married?”

When the visitor left the kitchen, Pelageya went off to the rooms and started tidying up. The agitation still had not left her. Her face was red and as if frightened. She barely touched the floor with the broom and swept each corner five times. She lingered for a good while in the room where Mama was sitting. Obviously it was hard for her to be alone, and she wanted to speak, to share her impressions with somebody, to pour out her soul.

“He left!” she murmured, seeing that Mama did not start a conversation.

“He’s obviously a good man,” Mama said, not tearing her eyes from the embroidery. “So sober, steady.”

“By God, ma’am, I won’t marry him!” Pelageya suddenly shouted, flushing all over. “By God, I won’t!”

“Don’t be silly, you’re not a little girl. It’s a serious step, you must think it over very well, and not shout for no reason. Do you like him?”

“You’re making it up, ma’am!” Pelageya became embarrassed. “To say such things…my God…”

(“She should just say: I don’t like him!” thought Grisha.)

“Aren’t you a prissy one, though…Do you like him?”

“But he’s old, ma’am! Wa-a-ah!”

“You’re making it up, too!” the nanny snapped at Pelageya from another room. “He’s not forty yet. And what do you need a young one for? A face isn’t everything, you fool…Just marry him, that’s all!”

“By God, I won’t!” shrieked Pelageya.