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

was an elderly man, and a drunkard, and always excitable; a cutthroat, to put it plainer.⁠ ⁠… I married him and became, you understand, not an ordinary wench any more, but Nastasiya Semenovna Zhokhova, a citizen’s wife, living in a city.⁠ ⁠… Of course, it seemed flattering.

I suffered for nine years with this husband. That citizen business was just a name; we was so poor really that we was about as bad off as the muzhiks! And then there was scrapping and rows every blessed day. Well, the Lord took pity on me, and took him away. The children I had by him all used to die on me; there was only two boys left⁠—one was Vanniya, going on nine; the other was an infant in arms. He was an awful lively and healthy boy; about ten months he started in to walk, to talk; all of my children, now, used to begin walking and talking about the eleventh month. He got to drinking tea all by his own self⁠—used to sink his little face in the saucer so’s you couldn’t pull it away, nohow. But this boy died, too, when he weren’t a year yet. I come home one day from washing clothes in the river, and my sister-in-law⁠—we used to rent our rooms off her⁠—up and says:

“Your Kostiya was yelling and squirming all day today. I done all sorts of things to him already; I worked his arms and I patted him hard, and I gave him some sugar and water; but all he does is gag, and throw up the water through his nose. Either he’s gone and caught a cold, or else he’s ate something; for the children always put everything in their mouth⁠—how is a body to look after them?”

I was just scared stiff. I make a dash for the cradle and throw back the curtain, but he was already beginning to pass away then; couldn’t even as much as cry out. My sister ran to get a doctor’s assistant we knew; when he comes, he asks: “What did you feed him with?”

“He’s eaten some manna porridge, now, and that was all.”

“And wasn’t he playing with something?”

“That’s right, he was,” says my sister. “There was a copper ring from a horse-collar knocking about all the time⁠—well, he was playing with that.”

“Well,” says the doctor’s assistant, “he must have swallowed it, for sure. May your arms wither!” says he. “You’ve gone and done it now⁠—why, he’s going to die on your hands!”

Of course, it turned out just like he said. Not even two hours had gone when he passed away. We took on and we took on, but there was nothing as could be done about it; for it’s no use going against the will of God. So I buried him too; only Vanniya was left. Only he was left; but then, as they say, one is enough. A small creature, it’s true, and yet he’ll eat and drink as much as a grownup. So I started scrubbing floors at the home of Nikulin⁠—a colonel in the army, he was. Him and his wife was rather well off; they paid thirty roubles a month for the rooms they had. They lived in the upper floor; the kitchen was below. The woman they had to get up their meals was a no-account little old woman; she wasn’t responsible, and yet she was loose. Well, naturally, she got in the family way. Couldn’t bend down to scrub the floors, couldn’t pull a pot out the oven.⁠ ⁠… She went away when her time came, and I just grabbed her place: that’s how I had gotten around the masters! To tell the truth, I’ve been clever and cunning from a girl up; no matter what I took a hold of, I’d do it neat, accurate, better nor any waiter. Again, I knew how to please them: no matter what the masters would say, I’d just say “Yes, sir,” or “Yes, ma’am,” all the time, and “You are absolutely right.⁠ ⁠…” I used to get up when you could still see the moon. I’d mop up the floors, make the stove, polish up the samovar⁠—in the meanwhile the masters would wake up, but I had everything ready. And then, of course, I always kept myself clean, and was well-built⁠—I was spare, but still I was handsome. There was times when I’d even get to feeling sorry for myself: what were my beauty and my knowledge going to waste for, now, in such hard work?

Thinks I, I ought to take advantage of the opportunity. And the opportunity was, that the colonel was awful strong himself and couldn’t bear to look at me calmly. His wife, now, was a German⁠—fat, ailing, and some ten years older than he. He weren’t good-looking; heavy-bodied, short-legged, looking like a wild pig⁠—and she was still worse. Well, I see he’s started to pay court to me, to sit in my kitchen, to teach me smoking. Soon as his wife went out, he was right there on the spot. He’d chase his orderly into town, as though on some errand, and be sitting there. He bored me to death, but, of course, I pretended otherwise: I’d laugh, and I’d sit and swing my leg⁠—getting him heated up in all sorts of ways, that is.⁠ ⁠… What can you do when there’s poverty; and, as they say, this little was as good as a feast. Somehow one day, on the Tsar’s birthday, he comes down to the kitchen in his uniform frock, in epaulettes, belted with that white belt of his like with a hoop, with kid gloves in his hands. He’s buttoned his collar so tight that his neck is all swollen and he’s all blue in the face; he’s all perfumed⁠—his eyes shining, his moustache black and thick.⁠ ⁠… He comes down and says:

“I’m going to the cathedral with the missus right away; dust off my boots⁠—I’ve only gone through the yard and yet I managed to get all dusty.”

He put his