Old Izergil and other stories / Старуха Изергиль и другие рассказы. Книга для чтения на английском языке

She walked to and fro between the door and the window, her heels clicking on the floor. She glanced through the window, then at the visitor with wrinkled brows, and swaying slightly, moved slowly towards the door. It seemed to him that her face looked sterner and more preoccupied than usual.

“Perhaps she feels what’s coming?” he thought.

“I’ll explain why I look radiant.” said Foma aloud and invited her: “Sit down, please!”

She shrugged her shoulders and reluctantly, irresolutely sat down facing him.

“Well?”

Foma leaned towards her, put out a yellow-nailed varnish-stained hand, and began in a low, soft, tender voice:

“Do you know. Comrade Liza. I want to tell you just one word.” He rose to his feet, pointed his finger in front of him and exclaimed in an impressive tone: “Full ahead!”

“What’s that?” asked Liza, smiling.

“Let me explain: imagine a steamboat on the river, engines throttled down because the fairway’s unfamiliar. Then the situation becomes clear. ‘Half speed!’ yells the captain down to the engine room, and then, when all’s plain sailing, the captain commands: ‘Full ahead!”’

Liza opened her eyes in a puzzled look, silently biting her lips with little white teeth.

“You don’t understand?” queried Foma, moving up closer.

“N-no! Who’s the captain?”

“The captain? You! And me – we’re both captains of our lives – you and me! We have the right to command our own destiny – isn’t that so?”

“Why, yes, but – what’s it all about?” exclaimed the girl, laughing.

Foma held his arms out to her and repeated in broken accents:

“Full ahead, comrade! You know us, me and all the rest – come to us, come with us to complete unity!”

Liza stood up. It seemed to him that a shadow passed over her face and chased the bloom from her cheeks, quenched the shining light of her eyes.

“I don’t understand,” she said, lifting her shoulders. “It goes without saving – of course I am with you… What makes you speak of it? What is the matter?”

Foma seized her hands in his own hard palms, shook them and almost shouted:

“It goes without saying! Wonderful, comrade! I knew it… of course you’ll – you’ll do it!”

“Do what?” she questioned nervously, snatching her fingers away. “Don’t shout, there are other people in the house… Do what?”

Her voice sounded angry and a little indignant. Foma caught the note and hastened to explain:

“Marry me – that’s what I propose! Right full ahead! D’you imagine what it’ll be like – our life, comrade? What a holiday it’ll be…”

Standing before her, with bis arms frantically sawing the air, he began to sketch the long pondered scenes of their life together, their work, pictures of life in exile, and as he spoke his voice dropped lower and lower, for Liza seemed to be melting before his gaze, dwindling and shrinking and receding further and further away.

“Good God, how stupid!” he heard a muffled distressed exclamation. “How vulgar!”

It seemed to Foma as if somebody had imperceptibly sprung at him and clenched a hand over his mouth so hard that his heart instantly stopped beating and he gasped for breath.

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Foma!” he heard a low indignant voice saying. “It’s simply – why, it’s awful! It’s stupid – don’t you see? Oh, how disgusting, how silly!”

It seemed to him that the girl was shrinking into the wall, burying herself among the portraits, and her face grew as grey and lifeless as the photographs above her head. She pulled her plait with one hand and fanned the air in front of her with the other, shrinking ever smaller and speaking in a low but sharp voice:

“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself to regard me only as a woman?”

Foma spread his hands and stammered:

“Why? Not a woman, but generally… as people – you and me…”

“What kind of comradeship is this?” she asked. “What am I to think of you now? Why did you have to insult me, why?”

Foma had no recollection of how he left the little room with the many photographs on the walls, how he took his leave of Liza and what she said at parting – she had utterly dwindled and merged into the grey smudge of the rigid tutorial faces, had become one with them, inspiring, as they did, a cold stern deference.

He paced the streets, seeing nothing but misty circles before his eyes, and pulled his cap down low over his head, musing concentratedly, obstinately, drearily:

“Why stupid? Of what should I be ashamed? Vulgar? A woman? What’s wrong with a woman? Does that matter so much? If there are two souls united in a single idea – what if it is a woman?”

And he pulled his cap lower. His head felt cold, as though it had been stocked with ice and the sense of chilliness was so keen that his heart ached with a dull pain, as if he had been breathing asphyxiating fumes in an ill-ventilated room.

He caught up with a funeral procession. A soldier was being buried. Four stalwarts in uniforms, taking broad even strides, carried the coffin on their shoulders, and it swung measuredly from side to side in the frosty air. In front walked a drummer, adroitly beating a tattoo with his drumsticks, scattering into the air the impressive roll of his drum. Behind marched a platoon of soldiers with shouldered rifles. The soldiers wore black ear-caps tied under their chins and they all seemed to he wounded with deep gashes.

Alongside the coffin ran a little dun dog with its tail between its legs, and when the drum ceased beating the burial roll, it ran closer to the coffin, and when the drumsticks resumed their music it darted back with a timorous plaintive whimper.

Foma took off his cap with a great effort, leaned against a fence and watched the strange soldiers go by, shuddering with the cold that filled his breast and thinking, as though enquiring of some one: “Why ashamed?”

    1910

The Breakup

On the river opposite the city, seven carpenters were hurriedly repairing an ice apron the townsfolk had taken apart for firewood during the winter.

The spring was late that year – the stripling March looked more like October; only around midday, and not every day at that, a pale, wintry sun would appear in a sky shot through with sunbeams, and diving through the blue rents in the clouds, squint down ill-naturedly at the earth.

It was already Friday of Passion Week and still at night the dripping eaves froze into blue icicles a good half-arshin long; the ice on the river, now bare of snow, had the same bluish tint as the wintry clouds.

While the carpenters worked, the church bells in the town rang out their mournful, metallic appeal. The workers raised their heads and gazed into the murky haze that enveloped the town, and often an axe poised for a blow would hang for a moment in mid air as though reluctant to cleave the gentle sound.

Here and there on the broad surface of the river fir branches, stuck into the ice to mark the paths, cracks and fissures, pointed skywards like the hands of a drowning man twisted with the ague.

The river presented a dreary spectacle; deserted and bare, its surface a scabrous mass, it spread desolately away into the gloomy space from which a dank, chill wind breathed lazily and dismally.

…Foreman Osip, a neat well-built little chap with a tidy silver heard that clung in tiny curls to his pink cheeks and mobile neck, old Osip always in the fore, was shouting:

“Get a move on there, you hen’s spawn!’

And turning to me, he said mockingly: