Short Fiction, Ivan Bunin [reading women .TXT] 📗

She was, to tell the truth, a wicked, daft old woman; even the mistress herself was afraid of her. And she used to drink, on top of that⁠—there was always a demijohn on duty under her bed⁠—and she couldn’t bear anybody to be near her. So she began saying things about me, making trouble in all sorts of ways. Either I hadn’t pressed the linen right, or else I didn’t know how to wait at table at all.⁠ ⁠… But, if you was just to say one word to her, she’d get all in a trembling passion and run off to complain. She’d sob out loud, and, of course, not so much because she had been offended, but just dissembling. The further it went, the worse it got, so I up and says to the master and mistress:

“So-and-so,” I says, “let me go; I can’t bear to live on account of that old woman; I will lay hands on myself.”

And in the meanwhile, I already had my eye on a house on Glukhaya Ulitza.1 Well, hearing me speak like that, the mistress didn’t even try to hold me any longer. True, when she was saying goodbye to me, she wanted me to come and live with them again, awful hard; or just to come on some holidays, or on birthdays:

“You must,” she says, “always come to put things in order, to get everything ready. It’s only when you’re around,” she says, “that I feel easy. I have grown used to you, like you was one of the family.”

She saw me off with all honours⁠—which meant that she no longer held any grudge against me; she baked a great big white loaf, putting in a whole saltcellar full of sugar. I thank her in all sorts of ways, but, of course, she wasn’t anything much in my life⁠—so I thinks one thing, and I says another. I promised her all she wanted and more, scraping and bowing low before her⁠—and went my ways. And at once, with the Lord’s blessing, I got busy. I bought the house I had in mind, and opened a dram shop. The trade started off awful good⁠—in the evening, when I’d come to counting what I’d taken in during the day, there would be thirty, or forty, or sometimes all of forty-five roubles in the till⁠—and so I got the idea of opening up a store as well, so as, you understand, to get them coming and going. My husband’s sister had long since married a watchman in the Red Cross; he was calling me gossip all the time, and was friendly with me⁠—so I went to him, got a trifling loan for all sorts of fixtures, permits, and started in doing business. And right then Vanniya had finished his apprenticeship. I took counsel with folks that knew a thing or two as to where I could place him, now.

“Why,” says they, “where else would you place him, when there’s no end of work in your own house?”

And they were right, at that. So I put Vanniya into the store, and stay in the dram shop myself. And then we were off! And, of course, I had even forgot to think of all this past nonsense⁠—although, to tell the honest truth, the poor cripple had just taken to his bed, at the time I was going away. Never a word out of him to anybody, but just lies down, just like he were dead, forgetting his accordion even. Suddenly, lo, and behold ye, Polkanikha comes into my yard⁠—this same wet-nurse. (The little boys had nicknamed her Polkanikha.)2 She comes, and she says:

“A certain man has told me to give you his regards; says you should come and pay him a visit, without fail.”

I went all hot and cold from vexation and shame! “What a darling, to be sure!” thinks I to myself. “What an idea he has gotten into his head! What a mate he has found for himself!” I couldn’t hold in and I says:

“I got no use for his regards; he ought to keep in mind the state he’s in, and you, you old devil, ought to be ashamed to try and be a go-between. Do you hear me, or don’t you?”

She just stopped short. She stands, all stooping, her swollen eyes glowing at me from under her brows, and just shaking her cabbage head; she’d grown daft, either from the heat or from vodka.

“Oh, you heartless creature!” says she. “He was even crying about you,” she says. “All last evening he lay with his face to the wall, and sobbing out loud.”

“Well,” says I, “am I to start weeping bucketfuls? And wasn’t he ashamed, the redhead, to be bawling before folks? Why, what a baby! Or was he weaned from the breast, or something?”

And so I put the old woman out as empty-handed as she had come, and didn’t go myself. And right soon after that he took and really did strangle himself. Right then, of course, I felt great regret because I hadn’t gone; but at that time I had other things to think about, besides him. I had one disgrace coming on top of another, right in my own house.

I had rented out two rooms in the house; one was taken by the policeman on our post⁠—a fine, serious-minded, respectable man, Chaikin by name; a young lady prostitute came into the other. Flaxen-fair she was, kind of young, and not at all bad to look at⁠—rather good-looking. She was called Phenia. Kholin the contractor used to come to see her⁠—he was keeping her; well, I relied on that, and let her take the room. But right here some disagreement took place between them, and so he left her. What was to be done? She had nothing to pay with, but I couldn’t chase her out⁠—she had run up a debt of eight roubles.

“Miss,” says I, “you must earn off anybody; I don’t keep no open house