224

p In which it is proved that, although the heart defies
all laws, one’s being, after all, determines one’s
consciousness

p Lieutenant of the Guards Govorukha-Otrok was to have been the forty-first on Maryutka’s death list.

p He became first in her list of joys.

p She developed a tender yearning for him, for his slender hands, for his soft voice, and above all, for his extraordinary blue eyes.

p Her world was irradiated with this blueness. She became oblivious of the dismal Aral Sea and the nauseating taste of salt fish and mildewed flour. Gone was her longing to be part of the raging roaring life beyond the dark expanses of water. During the day she had her tasks: she baked cakes of the flour, boiled the odious sturgeon (which was causing little ulcers to appear on their gums), and sometimes she went down to the beach to see if the longedfor sail were not tipping towards them over the waves.

p In the evening when the greedy sun rolled out of the vernal sky, she sat in her corner of the bunk, nestling happily against the lieutenant’s shoulder and listening.

225

p The lieutenant told her many stories. He was a good story-teller.

p The days rolled by slowly, heavily, like the waves.

p One day, while basking in the sun near their shanty, the lieutenant narrowed his eyes and shrugged his shoulders as he watched Maryutka scaling a fat carp with her usual dexterity.

p “Hm. What utter rot!" he said.

p “What’s that, darling?”

p “Rot, I say. Life. Utter rot. Primary conceptions, cultivated views—a lot of claptrap. Conventional symbols, like those on a topographical map. Lieutenant of the Guards? To hell with all the Lieutenants of the Guards, I want to live. I’ve been alive for twenty-seven years, but I haven’t lived yet. I squandered heaps of money, I travelled from one country to another in search of an ideal, and all the while I felt nothing but a great emptiness sucking at my vitals. If anyone had told me then that I would spend the most meaningful days of my life here, on this idiotic pancake of an island in the midst of this idiotic sea, I would never have believed him.”

p “What’s that? What sort of days did you say?”

p “The most meaningful. Do you understand? How can I put it so that you will understand? Days when I have not felt myself pitted against the whole world, an isolated unit struggling single-handed, but one merged completely with all this.” He took in the universe with a sweep of his hand. “I feel myself inseverably a part of it all. Its breath is my breath. The breath of the tide, for instance—hear it? Swish, swish. It’s not the sea breathing, it’s me— my spirit and my flesh.”

p Maryutka put down her knife.

p “That’s putting it in the grand style. I don’t get all the words. I’d just say—I’m happy here.”

226

p “The words are different but the meaning is the same. At present I should like never to leave the warmth of these absurd sands—to remain here for ever, to melt in the heat of this ragged sun and live the life of a contented beast.”

p Maryutka stared intently at the sand as if recalling something. Then she gave a tender, guilty little smile.

p “The hell! I wouldn’t stay here,” she said. “It’s too easy. Makes a person soft. There’s not even anyone to show your happiness to. Nothing but dead fish. If only the fishermen would hurry and come! March must be almost over. I’m sick for the sight of live humans.”

p “Aren’t we live humans?”

p “We still are, but in a week’s time, when even the dregs of that stinking flour is gone and the scurvy lets loose in us, what sort of a tune will you sing then? And besides, darling, you forget this is no time to loll on the stove-shelf. Our men are fighting out there, spilling their blood. Every hand is needed. How can I sit back and enjoy myself at a time like this? That’s not what I took my army oath for.”

p The lieutenant’s eyes flashed his surprise.

p “Do you mean you intend going back to the army?”

p “What else?”

p The lieutenant played with a splinter he had broken off the door-post, and his voice flowed on in a deep rich stream.

p “You foolish girl. This is what I wanted to say to you, Maryutka: I’m sick to death of all this bloodshed. How many years of hate and war have we had! I wasn’t born a soldier. Once upon a time I lived the decent sort of life a human being ought to live. Before the war with Germany I was a student of philology, and I lived with books—beloved 227 books, that never betray you. I had lots of them. Three walls of my room were covered with them from floor to ceiling. I would sit in my room of an evening in a deep armchair, the fire burning brightly, the lamp glowing, while outside the St. Petersburg fog flicked a wet paw in the faces of the passers-by, and then, as now, I had a sense of being carefree and independent. And that gave rise to a certain blossoming of the spirit—one could almost hear the rustling of the blossoms—like the flowering of almond-trees in the spring, do you understand?”

p “Hm,” said Maryutka warily.

p “And one fine day all that was exploded, smashed to smithereens. I remember that day as if it were yesterday. I was sitting on the verandah of our country-house reading a book—I remember even that. There was a sinister sunset—deep red, giving everything a blood-like tinge. My father came up from town by train. He was holding a newspaper in his hand and seemed greatly agitated. He pronounced only one word, but there was deadly weight in it. War. A dreadful word, as bloody as the sunset. Then he said, ’Vadim, your father, your grandfather, and your great-grandfather responded to the first call of their country. I hope that you... .’ His hopes were not in vain. I left my books. I left convinced I was doing the right thing.”

p “Silly!" exclaimed Maryutka with a shrug of her shoulders. “If my old man bashes his head against the wall when he’s drunk, do you think I ought to do the same? I don’t see why.”

p The lieutenant heaved a sigh.

p “No, you could hardly be expected to see. You never had to carry the burden of a celebrated lineage, family honour. One’s duty—we were very sensitive about that.”

228

p “Well, what of it? I loved my father too, but if he was a blooming soak, there’s no reason why I should be. You should have sent him packing.”

p The lieutenant gave a crooked, bitter smile.

p “I didn’t send him packing. I packed myself off— to the war. And there, with my own hands, I buried my human heart in that festering dung-heap, that universal grave-yard. Then came the Revolution. I was glad. I put all my hope in it, but it—-Look, not once in all the years I had been an officer in the tsarist army did I lay a finger on a soldier under me. But the Reds caught me in the railway station in Gomel, snatched off my shoulder-straps, and spat in my face. Why?.. . I managed to escape to the Urals. I still had faith in my country. Once more I set out to fight for her, and for the shoulderstraps that had been so dishonoured. The longer I fought, the clearer it became to me that I no longer had a country. And the shoulder-straps weren’t worth fighting for. And I remembered the only thing that was humane and had lasting value. Thought. Ideas. I remembered my books. The only thing I want to do now is to return to them, to bury myself in them, to ask their forgiveness and settle down to live with them.”

p “So that’s it, is it? The world’s cracking in two, people are fighting for justice, spilling their blood, and you want to curl up on the sofa and read books?”

p “I don’t know . . . and don’t want to know!" cried out the lieutenant in desperation, leaping to his feet. “The only thing I know is that the world’s coming to an end. You were right when you said it was cracking in two. Oh, it’s cracking, all right! It’s rotten and falling to pieces! It’s empty, stripped of its guts! It’s dying of emptiness. It used to be young, fertile, unexplored, with the lure of new lands, undiscovered riches. That’s all over. There’s nothing 229 new to discover. Nowadays the mind’s cunning is all expended on how to save what it has, to drag out existence for another century, another year, another week. Machines. Lifeless mathematics. And thought, made sterile by this mathematics, is concentrated on problems of how to exterminate human beings. The more human beings we exterminate, the fatter our own bellies and pockets will be. To hell with it all! I don’t want to hear anybody’s views but my own. Enough! I’m out of the running. I don’t want to soil my hands any more!”

p “Your pretty white hands! Your starched collars! You’ll be big-hearted enough to let others dig in the dung for you, eh?”

p “Let them, damn it all! Let anyone who has a taste for it. As soon as we’re rescued, Maryutka, we’ll go to the Caucasus. I’ve got a little place not far from Sukhumi. That’s where we’ll go. I’ll settle down with my books and let the world go hang. What I want is peace and quiet. I don’t want justice. I want peace. And you’ll begin to study. You want to study, don’t you? You’ve complained so many times that you had no chance to study. Well, here’s your chance. I’ll do everything for you. You saved my life and I’ll never forget it.”

p Maryutka sprang to her feet.

p “So that’s what you want me to do, is it?" She hurled the words at him like nettles. “Lie beside you on a feather-bed while people are sweating out their life’s blood for the sake of justice? Fill my belly with chocolates when every chocolate is bought with somebody else’s blood? Is that what you want?”

p “Come, now, must you be so coarse?" asked the lieutenant with a shudder.

p “Coarse? You want everything nice and soft? Just you wait. You stuck your nose up at Bolshevik truth—’Don’t want to know anything about it,’ you said. Well, you don’t know and never did know 230 anything about it—what it really is and how it’s soaked through and through with sweat and tears.”

p “No, I don’t know,” said the lieutenant languidly. “But I find it very strange that a girl like you should let herself be so coarse.”

p Maryutka put her hands on her hips.

p “I’m ashamed to have took up with the likes of you!" she burst out. “You worm, you spineless creature! ’Come away, deary, we’ll loll on the bed, you and me, and have a nice quiet life!’" she mocked. “Other people are ploughing up the earth with their bare hands to make a new world, while you. ... Ugh! you are a son of a bitch!”

p The colour rushed to the lieutenant’s face and his lips formed into a thin line.

p “Don’t you dare! You’re forgetting yourself, you slut!”

p Maryutka took one step forward, lifted her hand, and struck the lieutenant full force on his thin unshaved cheek.

p He fell back, trembling and clenching his fists.

p “Lucky for you you’re a woman,” he hissed. "I hate you, you cheeky little hussy!”

p He stalked off to the shanty.

p Maryutka gazed dazedly at her stinging palm, then waved it deprecatingly.

’Ain’t he the gentleman! A fish-pox on him!”