Other worlds, p.18
Other Worlds, page 18
Well, so be it. Nyanya was really quite pleased. Anything she got wrong, she could just blame it on Ganka. She didn’t even need to bring in the devil.
So things went on, and then one day, we’d just come back from the bathhouse and were starting to put the little ones to bed when we noticed that Manechka wasn’t wearing her cross. It must have gotten left in the bathhouse.
Nyanya, naturally, blamed Ganka, and Ganka blamed the devil. Everyone blamed everyone else. Still, you can’t put a child to bed without their cross. And so Ganka was told to go to the bathhouse. Needless to say, she burst into tears. Going off on her own to a place like that—she’d never come back alive.
“You fool!” said Nyanya. “Say a prayer and go. Who’s going to touch a fool like you? I’d go myself, but the mistress won’t let me.”
Off Ganka went.
Suddenly Mama said, “Where’s Papa? He was here just now, wasn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“Wherever has he got to?”
We all began calling him. Where could he have gone, when it was time for tea? After the bathhouse, we always sat down ceremoniously to drink tea, with honey, jam, raisins, and rolls.
But Papa turned up again soon enough. “I just stepped out for a moment,” he said, “to rub some snow on my head.”
There was snow on his head all right, but he also had a lump over one eyebrow, and his nose was all scratched.
Mama was frightened. “What’s happened? You must have bashed your head in the bathhouse. But how come you didn’t notice?”
“It was the bathhouse devil!” shouted Nyanya. “I know his ways!”
We all expected Papa to start tut-tutting at Nyanya. Instead, without any argument, he said, “Yes, you must be right. Must have been the bathhouse devil. Who else could it have been?”
Next thing, we heard Ganka howling. What was the matter with her?
We ran off to the kitchen.
Ganka was sitting on the trunk where the cook kept her belongings. She was howling like a banshee.
“I . . . he . . . he . . . he . . . Pinching me like that . . . The old devil.”
At this point, naturally, Nyanya took a mouthful of water and sprayed it over Ganka. The girl squealed, opened her eyes wide as saucers—and went silent.
Ganka hadn’t managed to find the cross. The steward brought it back the following morning. And we weren’t able to get anything more out of Ganka. While she was still howling, she’d kept talking about the devil, but once she calmed down, that was it. She clammed up completely.
“Don’t keep on at the girl,” said Papa. “Leave her alone—she’ll get over it quicker.”
Mama seemed rather pleased. “Now,” she said, “I dare say you believe in him!”
“Believe in whom?”
“The bathhouse devil!”
Well of course, Papa didn’t much like to admit that Mama had been right all along. He mumbled something in embarrassment, about how, of course, all sorts of things happen that the human intellect can’t fathom.
And after that evening, he seemed somehow more subdued—and always very affectionate toward Mama.
As for Ganka, once the devil had got at her, she seemed to go quite off her head. She grew cheekier than ever, put on weight, and was constantly bawling out songs:
Oh Mamenka, I love my Yashka such a lot!
I’ll buy him some cashmere and make him a smock!
Or:
My love was ariding his white horse one day,
Shouting “Dear little sweet raisin of mine,
How I miss you!”
Shiny-faced, but with dull, listless eyes, she bawled out her songs—and kept chewing away; it seemed she always had food in her pocket. Mama even wondered if she was pinching gingerbread from the storage cupboard. But no, nothing was missing.
Nyanya scolded her. “Ganka, you slut, has Satan got into you or what?”
Arms akimbo and swinging her hips, Ganka said, “Some call me Ganka, some call me slut, but you lot can use my full name: Agafya Petrovna!”
Our jaws dropped.
Mama had a word with Papa: Should they sack her, or what? But Papa dug his heels in. “Poor lass, the bathhouse devil gave her a real fright. We can’t send her packing now—she needs looking after.”
Well, of course Mama was pleased that Papa had come to such a firm belief in the bathhouse devil. So she didn’t argue.
All of a sudden, Ganka started wearing ribbons and bows, and boots with smart buttons. How come? Where did she get them? But Papa thought it was better not to ask too many questions. “Anyushka, sweetheart, you know yourself,” he said, “there are many things in nature that cannot be explained.”
And then, not long after this conversation, Ganka packed up all her belongings.
“I’m off,” she said.
She burst out howling, fell down at Mama’s feet—and left. Without a word.
She’d gone back to her village, it seemed, and that was the end of it. Nobody was sorry—she’d been a difficult sort of girl. And with that strange mark on her nose. A devil’s titbit, indeed.
But six months later we heard through our forest warden, who had been on a distant trip, that at Vanozero (where Papa had timber floats) a new tavern had opened, run by a certain Agafya Petrovna Yerokhina.
“Goodness!” gasped Mama. “Is that our Ganka? The Yerokhins—they’re Nyanya’s people. Has she got a mark on her nose?”
“Yes. People say she was clawed by a bear.”
“A likely story. It was the bathhouse devil!”
Nyanya was summoned. Had she helped Ganka get started? Nyanya swore on the cross that never in her life had she possessed enough capital to start opening taverns.
“Well, well, well, that devil’s titbit’s no fool! It was the bathhouse devil that helped her. Who else could it have been?”
Papa came home—he’d been doing the rounds of the forest dachas—and Mama told him. His eyes almost popped out of his head.
“How can you say you don’t know?” Mama asked in astonishment. “She’s living right by your timber float, and they say she’s built herself a new house.”
But this didn’t make any sense to Papa. “That Mikhail,” he said. “He must have dreamed it all up when he was drunk. We ought to have sacked the old boozer ages ago.”
Seeing that Mama was really alarmed, he went on, “Anyushka, you’re an intelligent woman. You know very well that if the devil wants something, he’ll pull the wool over everyone’s eyes. Perhaps there really is an inn there, but evidently I was not meant to see it. I’ve been telling you for ages, there is much in the world that the human mind is not meant to fathom. So it’s best not to try. Even scientists tell us it’s dangerous. Peer too hard into nature, they say, and you’ll soon end up out of your depth.”
That calmed Mama down.
•
“So,” Alexandra Tikhonovna concluded, “that’s the sort of thing that used to go on in our part of the world. Today things are different. It’s hard to believe in things like bathhouse devils. But Papa was always such a mocker—yet even he quieted down. We children were forbidden even to speak of the ‘devil’s titbit.’ Gave in completely, he did!”
Translated by Nicolas Pasternak Slater
RUSALKA
We had many servants in our large country house. They lived with us for a long time, especially the most important of them: the coachman, who so astonished us little ones when we once saw him eat an entire black radish; Panas, who was our head gardener and the village wise man; our elderly cook; the housekeeper; Bartek the footman; and Kornelia the maid. These were all part of the household, and they stayed with us for many years.
Bartek was a rather picturesque figure. Short, with a distinctive forelock. His walk and some of his other mannerisms were very like Charlie Chaplin’s, and he too was something of a comedian. I think he must have been with us a good ten years, since he appears in every one of my childhood memories. Yes, at least ten years, even though he was fired every year, always on Whit Monday.
“It’s his journée fatale,” my elder sister liked to pronounce.
Bartek could never get through this fateful day without running into trouble.
Much was expected of servants in those stricter times. Some of the transgressions for which poor Bartek was dismissed can hardly be described as serious.
I remember one occasion when he let a dish of rissoles crash to the floor. And there was the evening when he spilled a whole gravy boat down an elegant lady’s collar. I also remember him serving chicken to a particularly stout and self-important gentleman. Evidently not someone who liked to rush at things, this gentleman studied the pieces of chicken for a long time, wondering which to choose. All of a sudden Bartek—who was wearing white cotton gloves—pointed daintily with his middle finger at a morsel he thought particularly tasty.
The gentleman looked up in some indignation. “Blockhead! How dare you?”
It was Whit Monday, and Bartek was duly dismissed.
But I don’t think he was ever dismissed for long. He may, perhaps, have gone on living in some little shed behind the wing. Then he would come and ask for forgiveness and everything would go smoothly until the next Whitsun.
He was also famous for having once shot, plucked, roasted, and eaten a whole crow. All purely out of scientific interest.
He loved telling our old Nyanya about this, probably because the story really did make her feel very queasy.
“There’s nowt quite like it, my dear Nyanya. No, there’s no flesh so full o’ goodness like that of a crow. Brimful of satiety, and how! The ribs be a little sour, mind, the loins a little like human flesh. But the thighs—so rich, so dripping wi juice they are . . . After a meal of crow, it be a whole month till you next feel hunger. Aye, it’s three weeks nah since I last put food in me mouth.”
Nyanya gasped. “So you really . . . you really ate a crow?” she would ask.
“That I did, Nyanya—and washed it dahn wi good strong water.”
The heroine of this tale, Kornelia the chambermaid, was another of these important, long-term servants. She was from a family of Polish gentry and some of her elegant mannerisms seemed affected. She was, therefore, known as “Pannochka”—Polish for “mademoi-selle.”
She had a plump, very pale face and bulging eyes. The eyes of a fish—yellow with black rims. Her fine eyebrows were like an arrow, cutting across her forehead and giving her a look of severity.
Kornelia’s hair was extraordinary. She had long plaits that hung down below her knees but which she piled up in a tight crown. All rather ugly and strange, especially since her hair was a pale, lackluster brown.
Kornelia was slow and taciturn, secretly proud. She spoke little, but she was always humming to herself through closed lips.
“Kornelia sings through her nose,” Lena and I used to say.
In the mornings she came to the nursery to comb our hair. Why she had assumed this particular responsibility was unclear. But she wielded the comb like a weapon.
“Ouch!” her victim would squeal. “Stop! Kornelia! That hurts!”
Calm and deliberate as ever, Kornelia just carried on, humming away, her nostrils flared and her lips pursed.
I remember Nyanya once saying to her, “What a slowpoke you are! For all I know, you could be asleep. You working or not?”
Kornelia looked at Nyanya with her usual severe expression and said in Polish, “Still waters break banks.”
She then turned on her heels and left the room.
Nyanya probably couldn’t make head or tail of these words, but she took offense all the same.
“Thinks she can scare me, does she? Coming out with gobbledygook like that—the woman’s just plain work-shy!”
On Sundays, after an early lunch, Kornelia would put on her best woolen dress—always decorated with all kinds of frills and bows—and a little green necktie. She would slowly and carefully comb her hair, pin it up, throw a faded lace kerchief over her shoulders, tie a black velvet ribbon with a little silver icon around her neck, take her prayer book and rosary, and go to a bench near the icehouse. She would then solemnly sit down, straighten her skirt, and begin to pray.
Lena and I were intrigued by Kornelia’s way of praying. We always followed her to the icehouse and observed her for a long time, unabashed as only children and dogs can be.
She would whisper away to herself, telling the long oval beads of her rosary with her short, podgy fingers and looking piously up at the heavens. We could see the whites of her bulging eyes.
The hens bustled about and clucked. The cock pecked away crossly, right next to Pannochka’s fine Sunday shoes. Rattling her keys and clattering her jugs, the housekeeper went in and out of the icehouse. Aloof as ever, her pale, plump face plastered with face cream, Kornelia seemed not to notice any of this. Her beads clicked quietly, her lips moved silently, and her eyes seemed to be contemplating something unearthly.
She ate her meals apart from the other servants, fetching a plateful of food from the kitchen and taking it to the maids’ room. Arching her neck like a trace horse,1 she always put her spoon into the right-hand corner of her mouth.
One summer, we arrived from Moscow to find all our servants present as usual, except that Kornelia was now living not in the maids’ room but in the little white annex beside the laundry, right by the pond. We were told that she had married and was living with her husband, Pan Perkawski, who did not yet have a position on the estate.
Kornelia still came to do battle with our hair in the mornings and she still prayed on Sundays, now sitting outside her new home, where there was a sprawling old willow. One of its two trunks leaned over the pond; the other grew almost horizontally along its banks. It was on this second trunk that Kornelia now sat, her prayer book in her hands, her velvet ribbon around her neck, and her skirt spread out decorously beneath her.
Her husband was nothing to write home about. Dull, pockmarked and—like Bartek—rather short. Most of the day he just hung about smoking. He’d acquired a chicken that he used to bathe in the pond. The chicken would struggle to get free, letting out heartrending squawks and spattering him with water—but he was unflinching. Grunting and grimacing, with the air of a man who has sworn to fulfill his duty no matter what, he would plunge the chicken into the water.
In other respects Pan Perkawski had little to distinguish him.
•
It was a rowdy and merry summer.
There was a regiment of hussars stationed in the nearest town. The officers were frequent visitors to our house, which was always full of young ladies—my elder sisters, our girl cousins, and a great many friends who had come to stay. There were picnics, expeditions on horseback, games, and dances.
Lena and I did not take part in all this and we were always being sent away just as things were getting interesting. Nevertheless, we entirely agreed with the housekeeper that the squadron commander was a splendid fellow. He was short and bowlegged, and he had a mustache, a topknot, and whiskers just like Alexander II. He would arrive in a carriage drawn by three frisky gray horses, caparisoned with long colorful ribbons. On each side of the painted shaft bow was an inscription. On the front: “Rejoice, ladies—here comes your suitor!” On the back: “Weep—he is already married.”
The squadron commander was, in reality, a long way from being married. He was in a state of permanent infatuation, but with no one in particular. He offered his hand and his heart to each young lady in turn, took their refusals in his stride, entirely without resentment, and sped on to his next choice.
And he was not the only one to be in love. Love was the prevailing mood. Young officers sighed, brought bouquets and sheets of music, sang songs, recited poems, and, narrowing their eyes, reproached the young ladies for their “be-eastly cruelty.” For some reason, they always pronounced the word beastly with a particularly long e. As for the young ladies, they grew more mysterious by the day. They laughed for no reason, spoke only in hints, went for walks in the moonlight, and refused to eat anything for supper.
It was a shame that we kept being packed off to the nursery at the most interesting moment. Some of those moments have stayed with me to this day.
I remember a tall, pockmarked adjutant translating some English poem for one of my cousins:
Clouds bow down to kiss mountains . . .
Why should I not bow to kiss you?2
“What do you make of the poem’s last line?” he then asked, bowing every bit as impressively as the clouds.
The cousin turned around, caught sight of me, and said, “Nadya, go to the nursery!”
Even though I too might have been interested in her opinion.
Other enigmatic dialogues were no less intriguing.
She (pulling the petals off a daisy): “Loves me, loves me not. Loves me, loves me not, loves me. Loves me not! Loves me not!”
He: “Don’t trust flowers! Flowers lie.”
She (glumly): “I fear that non-flowers lie still more artfully.”
At this point she noticed me. Her look of poetic melancholy changed to one of more commonplace irritation.
“Nadezhda Alexandrovna, it’s high time you were in your nursery. Please go on your way.”
But this didn’t matter. What I’d already heard was enough. And in the evening, when little Lena bragged that she could stand on one leg for three days on end, I deftly cut her down to size: “That’s a lie. You just lie and lie, like a non-flower.”
That summer’s chief entertainment was riding. There were a lot of horses, and the young ladies were constantly running out to the stables, bearing gifts of sugar for their favorites.
It was around this time that everyone became aware of the exceptional good looks of Fedko the groom.
