1
I can just hear them laughing at us three hundred years from now! What strange lives, they’ll say, these trifling folks lived. Running around with something called money, passports—registering so-called acts of social status, measuring out living space in square meters…
Well, let them laugh!
But one thing really gets my goat: the devils won’t understand the half of it. And how could they? They’ll be living the kind of life we’ve probably never even dreamed of!
The author doesn’t know or wish to guess what kind of life they’ll be living. Why rattle one’s nerves and ruin one’s health in vain? Chances are, the author won’t even live to see this wondrous future life come to full flower.
And will it really be that wondrous, this future life? That’s another question. For the sake of his own peace of mind, the author chooses to believe that this future life will be just as full of nonsense and rubbish as the one we’re living.
On the other hand, the nonsense of the future could be real trifling stuff. For example—and excuse the author’s poverty of thought—someone might spit on someone else’s head from a zeppelin. Or maybe there’s a mix-up at the crematorium, and instead of a dead relative, someone gets a perfect stranger’s worthless dust…Nothing to be done about that, of course—you’re bound to get petty troubles of that kind in the minor, day-to-day scheme of things. But the rest of life will probably be excellent, just terrific.
For all we know, there won’t be any money at all. Everything’ll be free, up for grabs. They’ll be foisting all sorts of coats and scarves on all comers at the Arcade…
“Take it, citizen,” they’ll say. “It’s a fine coat.”
And you’ll walk right past them. Your heart won’t even flutter.
“Not a chance,” you’ll say. “To hell with your coat, dear comrades—I’ve got six already.”
By gum, what a gay and appealing future life emerges before the author’s eyes!
But this deserves deeper thought. If you toss out monetary considerations and selfish motives, what amazing forms this life might take! What excellent qualities human relationships might acquire! Love, for example. Why, this most exquisite of feelings might blossom forth in absolutely remarkable ways!
Oh, what a life—what a life it will be! The author contemplates it with such sweet joy, even though he remains an outsider, who hasn’t the slightest guarantee of ever reaching it. But back to love.
Here the author must make a special comment. After all, many scientists and Party members generally dismiss the emotion of love. Excuse me, they say—what love? There’s no such thing as love. And there never has been. What you’ve got in mind, they say, is just another act of civil status—you know, like a funeral.
Here the author must disagree.
The author doesn’t wish to confess to the casual reader, nor does he wish to disclose his intimate life to certain critics he finds particularly repulsive. Nevertheless, looking back on that intimate life, the author recalls a young maiden from the days of his youth. She had this sort of silly white face—tiny little hands, pitiful little shoulders. And yet the author would go into such sappy raptures at the very sight of her! What emotional moments the author would experience, when, out of an excess of all manner of noble feelings, he would fall to his knees and kiss the ground like an idiot.
Now that fifteen years have passed and the author has grown a little gray due to various illnesses, upheavals, and worries about his daily bread—now that the author simply doesn’t wish to lie, and wishes, at long last, to see life as it is, without any falsehood or embellishment—he still insists, at the risk of appearing like a ridiculous person from the last century, that scientists and public figures are greatly mistaken.
Penning these lines about love, the author already anticipates a number of cruel retorts from public figures.
“Your own case,” they’ll say, “is no example, friend.”
“What are you trying to prove,” they’ll say, “shoving your amorous intrigues in our faces?”
“Your personality,” they’ll say, “is out of step with our age, and, in general, has survived to the present day purely by chance.”
You hear that? By chance! Forgive me, but what the hell do you mean, “by chance”? What would you have me do, throw myself under a tram?
“That’s up to you,” they’ll say. “Under a tram, off a bridge…The point is, your existence is completely unjustified.”
“Just look,” they’ll say, “at the simple, unsophisticated people all around you, and you’ll see how differently they think.”
Ha! You’ll forgive the miserable little laugh, dear reader. Just the other day the author read in Pravda about a minor tradesman, a hairdresser’s apprentice, who, out of jealousy, bit off a female citizen’s nose.1
Well, if that isn’t love, I don’t know what is! I tell you, it’s nothing to sneeze at. You think he bit off that nose to stimulate his palate? Well, to hell with you! The author doesn’t wish to get upset and roil his blood. He still has to finish his tale, go to Moscow, and, on top of that, make a number of unpleasant visits to certain literary critics, asking them not to rush into print with all sorts of critical articles and reviews in connection to said tale.
And so, love.
People can think of this exquisite emotion however they wish. The author, recognizing his own insignificance and unfitness for life—and even acknowledging, devil take you, that there may be a tram in his future—holds fast to his opinion.
The author only wishes to inform the reader of a minor amorous episode that played out against the background of the present day.
“Again?” they’ll ask. “Again with the minor episodes? Again with your petty trifles in a two-ruble book?”
“Young man,” they’ll say, “are you off your nut? Who needs all this stuff, in the cosmic scheme of things?”
The author pleads, honestly and openly:
“Don’t interfere, comrades! Let a person speak his or her mind, at least in the course of debate…”
Boy, it sure is hard to write in the literary line!
By the time you fight your way through the impenetrable thickets, you’re dog-tired, bled dry.
And for what? For the sake of some love story involving citizen Bylinkin. This fellow’s neither kith nor kin to the author. The author’s never borrowed a kopeck from him. Nor are he and the author bound by a common ideology. To tell the truth, the author regards the fellow with profound indifference. He has no desire to depict this Vasily Vasilyevich Bylinkin in vivid colors. What’s more, the author doesn’t even have a clear recollection of the man’s face.
As for the others who took one or another part in this story, their faces too passed before the author’s eyes without leaving much of an impression. The only exception is Liza Rundukova, whom the author committed to memory for very particular and, so to speak, subjective reasons.
Now Mishka Rundukov, her little squirt of a brother, was less memorable. He was an extremely cocky kid, and a bully. In terms of appearance, he was kind of tow-haired, a bit jowly.
In truth, the author doesn’t really care to publicize the kid’s appearance. He was in the age of transition. I’ll waste time describing the kid—and by the time the book comes out, the little son of a bitch is all grown up. You just try and figure out who this Mishka Rundukov is. And where’d he get that mustache? At the time of this writing, there isn’t a hair on his lip.
As regards the old woman—Ma Rundukova, as it were—well, I doubt the reader will mind us skirting her description altogether. Old ladies are, in general, difficult to describe artistically. She’s an old lady, like any other. Who the hell knows or cares what kind of old lady she is? And who needs a description of, for instance, her nose? A nose like any other. Rest assured, dear reader—a detailed description of her nose won’t make your life any easier.
Of course, the author would never have undertaken to write artistic tales were his information about the heroes limited to such meager and insignificant stuff. The author doesn’t lack for information.
For example, the author has a vivid sense of the Rundukovs’ entire existence. He can describe the wretched little Rundukov home—dark, single-story. On the façade, the number 22. Above that, on a little board, a picture of a pike hook. In case of fire. Everyone has to bring something. The Rundukovs, they have to bring a pike hook. But do they have a pike hook? I don’t think so! Oh, well—it isn’t literature’s job to bring the county administration’s attention to such matters.
And the whole interior of their little home—as well as, so to speak, its material design, in terms of furniture—emerges quite distinctly in the author’s memory…Three small rooms. A warped floor. A Becker grand piano.2 Terrible looking piano, but playable. A few sticks of furniture here and there. A sofa with a tomcat or pussycat on it. On the pier-glass table, a little clock under a glass dome. The dome’s all dusty. And the pier-glass is clouded—twists your mug out of shape. A huge trunk, reeking of mothballs and dead flies.
Oh, I suppose a citizen from the capital would find their life mighty boring!
Oh, I suppose a citizen from the capital would be bored stiff at the sight of their clothes drying on a line in the kitchen. The old woman rustling up some food at the stove. Peeling potatoes, say. The peel curling away in ribbons from under the knife.
But the reader shouldn’t think that the author describes these petty little things with love and admiration. No, sir! There isn’t a hint of sweetness or romanticism in these petty recollections. The author knows these little houses, these kitchens. He’s set foot in them. He’s lived in them. Perhaps he even lives in one to this day. They have nothing to recommend them—absolutely pitiful. You walk into the kitchen and plant your face right into some wet underthing or other. And you’re lucky if it’s a relatively noble element of attire, rather than some wet stocking, Lord forgive me! Damn it, how the author hates planting his face in a stocking. Disgusting!
At any rate, for reasons wholly unrelated to literature, the author had several occasions to visit the Rundukovs. And on each of these occasions the author wondered how such an outstanding young lady—such a lily of the valley and nasturtium, so to speak—as Lizochka Rundukova could dwell amid all that pettiness and squalor.
The author always took great, great pity on this comely lass. We’ll discuss her in detail and at length in due course. At this point the author must say a thing or two about citizen Vasily Vasilyevich Bylinkin—what kind of person he is, where he came from…Is he politically trustworthy? What has he to do with the respected Rundukovs? Is he a relative of theirs?
No, he’s no relative. He just happened to get involved, temporarily, in their lives.
The author has already warned the reader that he didn’t find this Bylinkin’s countenance very memorable. All the same, closing his eyes, the author sees the man’s every feature, lifelike as can be.
This Bylinkin always walked slowly, even thoughtfully. He held his hands behind his back and blinked an awful lot. His figure was somewhat stooped, apparently bent by circumstances. As for his heels, Bylinkin would wear them down to the very counters of his shoes.
With regard to education, he had spent, to all appearances, no fewer than four years at the old gymnasium.
Social origin unknown.
The man arrived from Moscow at the very height of the revolution and did not publicize himself.
Why had he come? Also unclear. Had life in the provinces seemed a bit more sated, as it were? Or could he simply not stay put, drawn as he was, so to speak, by unknown, far-flung places and adventures? The devil knows! You can’t clamber into every psychology.
But most likely life in the provinces had seemed more sated. That’s probably why, in the first few months, the man would walk through the open-air market and stare with relish at the fresh baked bread and all sorts of produce piled up in mounds.
Actually, how the man kept himself fed remains a vague mystery to the author. Perhaps he had even held out his hand. Or maybe he collected the corks from bottles of mineral water and fruit juice, and then sold them. Yes, the town had its share of desperate speculators in those days.
At any rate, the man clearly wasn’t living too high on the hog. He was worn out, and even began to lose his hair. He walked timidly, glancing about and dragging his feet. He even stopped blinking and would simply stare at things wearily.
But then, for some unknown reason, his stock began to rise. And by the time our love story played out, Bylinkin had secured his social status, a position in the civil service, and a salary of the seventh category plus overtime.
Bylinkin’s figure had filled out. He had reabsorbed, so to speak, the vital juices of which he’d been drained. He now blinked as frequently and casually as before.
He walked with the ponderous gait of a person whom life had hard-boiled, through and through—who had earned the right to live and knew his own worth.
Indeed, at the time these events unfolded, he was a fine figure of a man of just under thirty-two.
He often, time and again, promenaded the streets, swinging his walking stick wide and swatting flowers, grass, and even leaves along the way. Sometimes he would sit down on a bench and breathe deeply and cheerfully, with a broad smile on his face.
What he was thinking and what exceptional ideas embowered his head—no one knows. Perhaps he thought of nothing. Maybe he was simply filled with delight at his justified existence. But in all likelihood he was thinking about the absolutely necessity of finding a new apartment.
And it’s true: he had been rooming at the house of Volosatov, a deacon at the Living Church, and, by virtue of his official position, was rather anxious about residing with such a politically sullied individual.3
He would ask all over town whether anyone knew, for god’s sake, of some vacant little apartment or room, so that he wouldn’t have to reside with the priest of what was obviously a cult.
At last, someone came forward and, out of the goodness of their heart, set him up with a small room—about four square meters. It happened to be a room in the house of the respected Rundukovs. Bylinkin leapt into action. He looked the place over that day, and moved in the very next morning, having hired, for said purpose, the water-carrier Nikita.
The father deacon didn’t need this Bylinkin in his life, but the whole affair had apparently wounded his unclear yet refined feelings. He bawled Bylinkin out something awful, and even threatened to pound his face, given the chance. And when Bylinkin was loading his belongings onto the cart, the deacon stood at the window, laughing loudly and artificially, as though to demonstrate complete indifference to the man’s departure.
The deacon’s wife kept running out into the yard, throwing yet another item onto the cart and shouting:
“Good riddance! Who’s stoppin’ ya? Don’t let the gate hit ya on the way out!”
A crowd of passersby and neighbors had gathered, guffawing with pleasure and clearly hinting at what appeared to be amorous relations. The author won’t confirm their speculations. He doesn’t know anything about it. And he certainly doesn’t wish to start unnecessary gossip in the realm of belles lettres.
3
The decision to rent a room out to Vasily Vasilyevich Bylinkin wasn’t motivated by self-interest, or even by any particular need. Rather, old Daria Vasilyevna Rundukova was afraid that, due to the housing crisis, their living space per person might be reduced with the forcible introduction of some crude and superfluous individual.
One might even say that Bylinkin took some advantage of this circumstance. Passing by the Becker grand, he cast an angry glance at the instrument and noted with displeasure that it was, generally speaking, superfluous; as a quiet man who had been rattled by life and shelled by artillery on two fronts, he could not tolerate superfluous bourgeois sounds.
The old woman took offense, saying that they had had their little grand for forty years now and weren’t about to tear out its strings and pedals on some whim of Bylinkin’s—especially since Lizochka Rundukova was learning to play the instrument, and this was quite possibly the girl’s primary goal in life.
Bylinkin angrily waved the old woman away, saying that he had issued his statement in the form of a delicate request, not as a strict order.
The old woman was extremely offended. She burst into tears and almost rescinded her offer of the room, before she remembered the possibility of the forcible introduction.
Bylinkin moved in the next morning and groaned in his room till that evening, setting everything up in accordance with his capital-city taste.
Two or three days passed quietly, without much change.
Bylinkin would go to work, return late, and pace his room for a long time, his felt slippers shuffling across the floor. In the evening he would chew something and, at long last, fall asleep, snoring lightly and whistling through his nose.
During the first two days, Lizochka Rundukova went about somewhat subdued, repeatedly asking her ma, and also Mishka Rundukov, what they made of this Bylinkin—whether he smoked a pipe or bore any relation to the People’s Commissariat of Naval Affairs.4
Finally, on the third day, she caught sight of Bylinkin with her own eyes.
It happened early in the morning. Bylinkin was getting ready for work, as usual.
He was walking down the corridor in his nightshirt, with his collar undone. His suspenders hung from his pants, fluttering behind him in various directions. He walked slowly, with a towel and a bar of scented soap in one hand. His other hand was smoothing down his hair, which had become disheveled in the night.
She was standing in the kitchen, busy with her domestic affairs, either fanning the samovar or chipping a bit of kindling off a dry log.
When she saw him she cried out softly and jumped aside, ashamed of her untidy morning attire.
While Bylinkin, standing in the doorway, regarded the young lady with a certain degree of surprise and delight.
It’s true: that morning she looked very pretty indeed.
The youthful freshness of her slightly sleepy face, the careless cascade of her blond hair, the slightly upturned little nose…And the bright eyes. And the rather short but plump figure. All this was remarkably appealing.
She had about her the charming carelessness, perhaps even the slovenliness of the Russian woman who jumps out of bed in the morning, digs her bare feet into a pair of felt slippers, and busies herself with the housework without so much as washing up.
The author, you might say, likes such women. He certainly has nothing against them.
Of course, when you think about it, there’s really nothing to recommend these heavy women with their lazy expressions. There’s no liveliness in them, no brightness of temperament, and, finally, no flirtatiousness. A woman like that—she doesn’t move much. Soft shoes, unkempt…Generally speaking, she’s even a bit disgusting. But just imagine!
Dear reader, it’s an odd thing!
The author has no time for those doll-like little ladies—those, so to speak, inventions of bourgeois Western culture. They’ve got these hairstyles—who knows what they are—Greek? Whatever they are, you can’t touch them. And if you do, you’ll hear no end of screaming and shouting. They’ve got these artificial dresses—and again, don’t you dare touch. You might rip it, get it dirty. So tell me: who needs it? Where’s the charm in all this, the joy of existence?
When one of ours sits down, for example, you see full well that the woman’s sitting down. She isn’t stuck on a pin, like one of theirs. That’s what their women look like. Who needs it?
The author finds a lot to admire in foreign culture, but when it comes to women, he holds fast to his national opinion.
Bylinkin, too, it appears, was fond of such women.
In any case, he now stood before Lizochka Rundukova, mouth slightly agape with delight, and, without so much as trying to raise his dangling suspenders, stared at her in joyous surprise.
But this lasted only a minute.
Lizochka Rundukova, having gasped quietly and darted about the kitchen, now rushed out, adjusting her attire and tangled hair along the way.
When Bylinkin returned from work that evening, he walked to his room especially slowly, hoping to encounter Lizochka in the corridor.
But he did not.
Then, later in the evening, Bylinkin tramped to the kitchen five or six times and finally encountered Lizochka Rundukova, to whom he bowed with an awful degree of respect and courteousness, tilting his head slightly to the side and making that indeterminate gesture with his hands which conventionally indicates admiration and extreme pleasure.
A few days of such encounters in the corridor and kitchen brought them significantly closer.
Bylinkin would now come home, listen to Lizochka play this or that polka tremblam,5 and beg her, again and again, to perform yet another heart-piercing composition.
And she would play some flea waltz or shimmy, or pound out a few bravura chords from the Second or Third, or, devil knows, perhaps even the Fourth of Liszt’s Rhapsodies.6
And it was as if he, Bylinkin—who had been shelled by heavy artillery on all fronts twice—now heard the trembling strains of the Becker piano for the very first time. Back in his room, he would recline dreamily in his chair and ponder the charms of human existence.
Mishka Rundukov began to lead a very luxurious life. On two occasions Bylinkin slipped Mishka ten kopecks, and once gave him fifteen, asking him to whistle softly when the old woman was in the kitchen and Lizochka was alone.
The author can’t quite imagine why Bylinkin would have done this. The old woman regarded the lovers with perfect delight, hoping to see them married no later than autumn, thereby getting Lizochka off her hands.
Nor did Mishka bother delving into the intricacies of Bylinkin’s psychology. He simply whistled about six times a day, inviting Bylinkin to peer into this or that room.
Bylinkin would come into the room and sit down beside Lizochka. At first they would exchange a few meaningless phrases, then he would ask her to play one or another of her favorite ditties on the instrument. And there, at the grand piano, when Lizochka was finished, Bylinkin would place his gnarled fingers—the fingers of a philosophically minded man who had been hard-boiled by life and shelled by heavy artillery—on Lizochka’s white hands. He would ask the young lady to tell him about her life, taking a lively interest in the details of her former existence.
Occasionally he would ask whether she had ever experienced the thrill of real, true love before, or whether this was her first time.
And the young lady, smiling mysteriously and quietly fingering the piano keys, would say:
“Oh, I don’t know…”
4
They fell in passionate, dreamy love. They couldn’t look at each other without tears and trembling. And every time they met they would experience new surges of rapturous joy.
In fact, when Bylinkin gazed into himself, he even took fright. He reflected with astonishment that, having twice spent time on all fronts and having earned, with extraordinary difficulty, the right to exist, he would now gladly sacrifice his life on any one of this rather pretty little lady’s miserable whims.
Turning over in his mind the women who had passed through his life—including the deacon’s wife, with whom he had most definitely cavorted (the author is sure of it)—Bylinkin grew convinced that he had found true love and the genuine thrill of emotion only now, in his thirty-second year.
Was Bylinkin merely bloated with vital juices? Or is a person born with a predisposition and penchant for abstract romantic feelings? This remains a mystery of nature.
At any rate, Bylinkin sensed that he was a different man now—that his blood had changed in its composition and that, when faced with a love of such extraordinary power, all of life was ridiculous and insignificant.
And Bylinkin—this slightly cynical man who had been hard-boiled by life and deafened by artillery, who had, on several occasions, come face to face with death—this terrible Bylinkin even developed a bit of a poetry habit, writing about a dozen verses of every kind and one ballad.
The author isn’t familiar with his little rhymes, but one poem, entitled “To Her and This One,” which had been submitted to The Dictatorship of Labor and rejected on the grounds of inconsonance with the socialist era, has accidentally—and by courtesy of the paper’s technical secretary, Ivan Abramovich Krantz—fallen into the author’s hands.
The author holds a dissenting opinion regarding verses and amateur poetry, and, hence, chooses not to trouble readers and typesetters by reproducing the longish poem in full. He will only draw the typesetters’ attention to the final two stanzas, which are more sonorous than the rest:
I had referred to love as progress—
Such was the motto of my heart.
And I had eyes for nothing but
The image that your face imparts.
O Lizochka, yes, I have been
Reduced to ash within the fire
Of an acquaintance of this kind.
In terms of the formal method, these verses aren’t so bad, I suppose. But, in general terms, they’re pretty lousy stuff. They really are inconsonant and arrhythmic with our era.
Bylinkin didn’t pursue poetry further, abandoning the poet’s thorny path. Having always been somewhat prone to Americanism, he soon flung aside his literary achievements, buried his talent without regret, and went on with his former life, never again projecting his mad ideas onto paper.7
Bylinkin and Lizochka would now meet in the evenings, leave the house, and wander the deserted streets and boulevards late into the night. Sometimes they would go down to the river and sit on the sandy bluff, gazing at the swift waters of the river Kozyavka with deep and silent joy. At times they would hold each other’s hands and gasp quietly, admiring the extraordinary beauty of nature or a light fluffy cloud racing across the sky.
All this was new to them, charming—and, most importantly, they felt they were seeing it all for the very first time.
Sometimes the lovers would walk past the town limits and go into the woods. There, holding each other’s fingers, they would stroll all gentlelike. Stopping before some pine or fir tree, they would gaze upon it in astonishment, sincerely amazed by the bold and whimsical game of nature, which had flung up from beneath the ground a tree that was so necessary to mankind.
And then Vasily Bylinkin, shaken by the uniqueness of existence on earth and by its astonishing laws, would, out of an excess of emotions, fall to his knees before the young lady and kiss the soil around her feet.
And all about them—the moon, the mystery of the night, grass, fireflies chirping, the silence of the woods, the frogs and the bugs. All about them there was this sort of sweetness and serenity in the air. It’s the joy of simple existence—a joy the author still refuses to reject wholeheartedly, which is why he cannot, under any circumstances, admit to being a superfluous figure against the background of the ascendant way of life.
And so, Bylinkin and Lizochka loved these walks past the town limits most of all.
But on one of these lovely walks, probably on a particularly damp night, the careless Bylinkin caught cold and fell ill. He came down with something on the order of mumps—or, as the doctors call it, epidemic parotitis.
By evening Bylinkin felt a slight chill and a stabbing pain in the throat. By night his mug was swollen something awful.
Lizochka would enter his room in soft slippers, weeping quietly, her hair down, and rush back and forth from bed to table, not knowing what to undertake, what to do, or how to ease the sick man’s lot.
Ma Rundukova would also waddle into the room several times a day, asking the sick man whether he wanted cranberry jelly, which was, according to her, indispensable in fighting off any and all infectious diseases.
Two days later, when Bylinkin’s mug swelled beyond recognition, Lizochka ran out to fetch a doctor.
After examining the sick man and prescribing some medicinal substances, the doctor left, likely cursing in his heart at having been summoned for such a trifle.
Lizochka Rundukova ran out after him. She stopped him in the street and, wringing her hands, began to babble, pleading: Well, how does it look? What’s the verdict? Is there any hope? The doctor had got to know, she said, that she simply wouldn’t survive this man’s death.
At that point the doctor, who had grown accustomed to such scenes in his line of work, declared indifferently that mumps is mumps and, unfortunately, one needn’t die of it.
Somewhat vexed by this insignificant danger, Lizochka glumly wended her way home and began to care for the sick man selflessly, sparing neither her meager strength nor her health—not even fearing to catch the mumps by way of infection.
In those first few days, Bylinkin was afraid to raise his head from the pillow. Probing his swollen throat with his fingers, he would ask in horror whether Lizochka Rundukova could still love him after this illness, which had enabled her to see him in such an ugly and disgusting state.
But the young lady begged him not to worry, saying that, in her opinion, he looked more dignified than ever before.
And Bylinkin would laugh, quietly and gratefully, saying that this illness sure had tested the fortitude of their love.
5
It was indeed an extraordinary love. And after Bylinkin’s head and neck regained their former shape and he rose from his sick bed, he came to believe that Lizochka Rundukova had saved him from certain death.
This lent their amorous relations a degree of solemnity and even generosity.
One day, very soon after his illness, Bylinkin took Lizochka’s hand and, adopting the tone of someone who had made a decision, begged her to hear him out without asking superfluous questions or interjecting with her silly remarks.
Bylinkin gave a long and solemn speech, declaring that he knew all about life and how hard it was to exist on earth, and that, in former days, when he was still a fledgling youngster, he had treated life with criminal nonchalance, for which he had paid dearly in his time, but that now experience had taught him how to live, had taught him the harsh and rigid laws of life. And finally he declared that now, after much deliberation, he had decided to introduce a change into the projected course of his life.
In short, Bylinkin made a formal proposal to Lizochka Rundukova, requesting that she not fret about her future well-being, even if she were henceforth unemployed and, therefore, unable to make a strong contribution to their modest communal pot.
Putting on a few airs and speaking briefly of free love—to accentuate the delicacy of the situation—Lizochka nevertheless enthusiastically accepted the proposal, saying that she had been waiting a long time, and that if Bylinkin hadn’t popped the question, he’d be a complete louse and swindler. As for open relationships, well, they’re well and good in their time, but this was a whole other kettle of fish.
Eager to share her joyous news, Lizochka Rundukova immediately ran to her mother, as well as to her neighbors, inviting them all to the wedding—a modest and intimate affair that would take place in the very near future.
The neighbors congratulated her warmly, saying that she had languished long enough as an old maid, tortured by the hopelessness of her existence.
Ma Rundukova shed a few tears, of course, and went to Bylinkin to ascertain the authenticity of the fact herself.
Bylinkin confirmed the old woman, solemnly asking for permission to refer to her, from that day forward, as “Ma.” The old woman, crying and blowing her nose in her apron, said that she had lived on this planet for fifty-three years, but that this day was the happiest day of her life. She, in her turn, asked for permission to call Bylinkin “Vasya.” Bylinkin graciously consented.
As regards Mishka Rundukov, well, Mishka took a rather indifferent attitude to the change in his sister’s life, and was, at the present time, running around in the streets like a lunatic and sticking out his tongue.
Now the lovers no longer strolled past the town limits. For the most part, they sat at home and talked late into the night, planning out their future life.
And during one of these conversations Bylinkin, with pencil in hand, began to draft on paper a plan of their future rooms, which were to constitute a separate, small, but cozy apartment.
They argued with each other breathlessly as to where to put the bed, and where to put the table, and where to place the dressing table.
Bylinkin urged Lizochka not to be foolish enough to place the dressing table in the corner.
“How utterly provincial!” Bylinkin declared. “Placing a dressing table in the corner…Every young lady goes and does it that way. It’s much better and more monumental to place a chest of drawers in the corner, and to cover it with a light lace tablecloth, which Ma, I hope, will not refuse us.”
“A chest of drawers in the corner is just as provincial,” Lizochka replied, almost in tears. “Besides, it’s Ma’s chest of drawers—who knows whether she’ll give it to us.”
“Nonsense,” Bylinkin said. “How could she not give it to us? We can’t keep our underthings on the windowsills, can we? Sheer nonsense.”
“You should talk to Ma yourself, Vasya,” Lizochka said sternly. “Talk to her as if she were your own ma. Tell her, ‘Ma, dearest, give us that chest of drawers.’”
“Nonsense,” Bylinkin said. “You know, if you’d like, I could go see the old woman this very minute.”
And Bylinkin marched off to the old woman’s room. It was already quite late. The old woman was asleep. Bylinkin shook her for a long time, but she kept wriggling and kicking, refusing to wake up and understand what was happening.
“Wake up, Ma,” Bylinkin said sternly. “Listen, can’t Lizochka and I count on the least bit of comfort? Do you expect our underthings to just flutter on the windowsills?”
Once the old woman understood, with great difficulty, what was being asked of her, she began to explain that the chest of drawers had stood in its place for fifty-one years, and that she had no intention of dragging it in all directions, tossing it to the left and to the right, in the fifty-second year of its existence. And it’s not like she could make a chest of drawers with her own hands. It was too late, at her age, to learn the craft of carpentry. High time, she said, that Bylinkin understood this and stopped offending an old woman.
Bylinkin commenced shaming Ma, saying that he, who had twice been shelled by heavy artillery on all fronts, had the right to expect a peaceful life.
“Shame on you, Ma!” Bylinkin said. “Begrudging us a chest of drawers! Well, you can’t take it with you to the grave. I hope you know that.”
“You can’t have the chest of drawers!” the old woman said screechily. “You’ll get my furniture when I up and die.”
“Right, when you up and die!” Bylinkin said indignantly. “That’ll be the day…”
Seeing that things had taken a serious turn, the old woman began to weep and wail, saying that the last word belonged to her innocent babe, Mishka Rundukov, since Mishka was the only male representative of the Rundukov clan, and so the chest of drawers, by all rights, belonged to him, not to Lizochka.
Roused from his slumber, Mishka Rundukov was decidedly against giving up the chest of drawers.
“Nothin’ doing,” said Mishka. “They want our chest of drawers but won’t shell out more’n ten kopecks. Chests of drawers cost money.”
At that point Bylinkin slammed the door shut and stormed off to his room. Bitterly reproaching Lizochka, he told her that he couldn’t do without the chest of drawers—that, as a man seasoned in battle, he knew all about life and refused to abandon his ideals.
Lizochka literally darted back and forth between her mother and Bylinkin, begging them to come to some sort of terms, and offering to drag the chest of drawers from one room to another at regular intervals.
Then Bylinkin asked Lizochka to stop darting about, proposing that she go to bed immediately and gather her strength so as to tackle this fateful question in the morning.
Morning was no better. Many bitter and hurtful truths were uttered on all sides.
The angry old woman said with desperate determination that she now saw him, Vasily Vasilyevich Bylinkin, for what he really was—that today he’d take her chest of drawers, and tomorrow he’d make jelly out of her and eat it up with bread. That’s the sort of man he was!
Bylinkin shouted that he would file a petition with the police to have the old woman arrested for spreading false and defamatory rumors.
Lizochka, shrieking quietly, dashed from one to the other, begging them to stop hollering, for heaven’s sake, and try and sort the matter out calmly.
The old woman said that she was far past the age of hollering, and that she would tell all and sundry, without any sort of hollering, that Bylinkin had dined with them three times and had never bothered, for the sake of courtesy, to offer a bit of compensation for even one of those meals.
Bylinkin grew terribly agitated and declared acidly that, on his many walks with Lizochka, he had bought her no end of lollipops and marshmallows, as well as two bouquets of flowers, but you didn’t see him presenting any bills to Ma.
To which Lizochka replied, biting her lip, that he should cut out the brazen lies—there hadn’t been any marshmallows, just a few fruit drops and a small bunch of violets, which wasn’t worth a kopeck and, moreover, had faded the very next day.
Lizochka walked out of the room in tears, leaving everything to fate.
Bylinkin wanted to hurry after her and apologize for his inaccurate testimony, but then he locked horns with the old woman again, called her the devil’s own ma, spit at her, and ran out of the house.
Bylinkin disappeared for two days—no one knows where. When he returned, he stated in an official tone that he no longer considered it possible to stay with the Rundukovs.
Two days later Bylinkin moved to another apartment, at the Ovchinnikovs’. Lizochka defiantly sat those two days out in her room.
The author doesn’t know the details of the move, nor does he know what bitter moments Lizochka endured. He doesn’t even know whether she endured them. Had Bylinkin felt any hint of regret, or had he done all this with full awareness and determination?
The author knows only that long after the move—indeed, long after his marriage to Marusya Ovchinnikova—Bylinkin kept calling on Lizochka Rundukova. The two of them would sit side by side, shaken by their misfortune, and exchange insignificant words. From time to time, recalling this or that happy episode or event from the past, they would discuss it with sad and pitiful smiles, holding back their tears.
Sometimes Lizochka’s mother would come into the room, and then the three of them would bewail their fate together.
Eventually Bylinkin stopped calling on the Rundukovs. From that point on, whenever he’d encounter Lizochka in the street, he’d give her a proper, reserved bow, and then walk on…
6
This is how their love came to an end.
Of course, at another time—say, three hundred years from now—their love wouldn’t have come to an end. Dear reader, it would have come into lush and extraordinary flower.
But life dictates its own laws.
Concluding his tale, the author wishes to say that, in the process of unfurling this unsophisticated love story and getting somewhat carried away with the experiences of its protagonists, he had completely lost sight of the nightingale, which was mentioned so mysteriously in the title.
The author fears that the honest reader or typesetter, or even the desperate critic, might be unintentionally disappointed at the tale’s conclusion.
“What gives?” they’ll say. “Where’s the nightingale?”
“Why pull the wool over our eyes?” they’ll say. “Why entice the reader with such a light-hearted title?”
It would, of course, be ridiculous to start the love story over again. The author won’t even try it. He only wishes to fill in some details.
This happened at the very height, at the very pinnacle of their sentimentalism, when Bylinkin and Lizochka would walk past the town limits and wander around in the woods late into the night. On occasion they would stand there for a long time, in perfectly immobile poses, listening to the chirr of the bugs and the singing of the nightingale. And often enough, at these moments, Lizochka would wring her hands and ask:
“Vasya, what do you think that nightingale’s singing about?”
To which Vasya Bylinkin would typically reply, in a reserved tone:
“Little bastard wants grub.”
And only later, after getting somewhat used to the young lady’s psychology, did Bylinkin begin to offer more detailed and nebulous responses. He would speculate that the bird was singing about some spectacularly beautiful future life.
The author is of the same opinion: it was singing about a fabulous future life—which will come, say, three hundred years from now, maybe even sooner. Yes, dear reader, let those three hundred years pass like a dream, and then we’ll really live it up.
Of course, if we get there and things are just as rotten, then the author consents, with a cold, empty heart, to consider himself a superfluous figure against the background of the ascendant way of life.
And in that case, he might as well jump under a tram.
1926
