Fifty-Two Stories

This voice of human grief amid the howling of the storm touched the girl’s hearing with such sweet, human music that she could not bear the sweetness and also started crying. She heard later how the big, dark shadow quietly came over to her, picked up a fallen shawl from the floor, and wrapped it around her feet.

Miss Ilovaiskaya was awakened by a strange roar. She jumped up and looked around in surprise. A bluish dawn was looking through the windows half covered with snow. There was a gray twilight in the room, through which the stove, the sleeping girl, and Nasr-Eddin were clearly outlined. The stove and the lamp had already gone out. Through the wide-open door, the main room of the inn could be seen, with its counter and tables. Some man with a dull, Gypsy face and astonished eyes stood in the middle of the room, in a puddle of melted snow, holding a big red star on a stick. He was surrounded by a group of boys immobile as statues and all plastered with snow. The light of the star, passing through the red paper, reddened their wet faces. The crowd roared confusedly, and in their roar Miss Ilovaiskaya made out one quatrain:

Hey, you, ragged little kid,

Take your knife and go,

We’ll kill, we’ll kill ourselves a Yid,

He is the son of woe…

Likharev was standing by the counter, gazing tenderly at the singers and beating time with his foot. Seeing Miss Ilovaiskaya, he smiled broadly and went up to her. She also smiled.

“Merry Christmas!” he said. “I noticed you slept well.”

Miss Ilovaiskaya looked at him, said nothing, and went on smiling. After the night’s conversation, he now seemed to her not tall, not broad-shouldered, but small, just as the biggest steamship seems small to us once we are told that it has crossed the ocean.

“Well, it’s time for me to go,” she said. “I must get dressed. Tell me, where are you headed for now?”

“Me? To the Klipushki station, from there to Sergievo, and from Sergievo thirty miles by horse to the coal mines of one jackass, a certain General Shashkovsky. My brothers found me the post of superintendent there…I’ll be digging coal.”

“Wait, I know those mines. Shashkovsky is my uncle. But…why are you going there?” Miss Ilovaiskaya asked, looking at Likharev with surprise.

“To be superintendent. To superintend the mines.”

“I don’t understand!” Miss Ilovaiskaya shrugged her shoulders. “You’re going to the mines. But it’s bare steppe, deserted, so boring you won’t last a day there! The coal is wretched, nobody buys it, and my uncle’s a maniac, a despot, a bankrupt…You won’t even get any salary!”

“It’s all the same,” Likharev said indifferently. “I’m thankful for the mines at least.”

Miss Ilovaiskaya shrugged her shoulders and paced the room in agitation.

“I don’t understand, I don’t understand!” she kept saying, waving her fingers in front of her face. “It’s impossible and…and unreasonable! You understand, it’s…it’s worse than exile, it’s a grave for a living man! Oh, Lord,” she said ardently, going up to Likharev and waving her fingers in front of his smiling face; her upper lip trembled and her prickly face grew pale. “Well, imagine the bare steppe, the solitude. There’s no one to talk to, and you…are passionate about women! Coal mines and women!”

Miss Ilovaiskaya suddenly became embarrassed at her ardor and, turning away from Likharev, went over to the window.

“No, no, you mustn’t go there!” she said, quickly moving her fingers over the glass. Not only with her soul, but even with her back she sensed that behind her stood an infinitely unhappy, lost, neglected man, while he, as if unaware of his unhappiness, as if he had not cried at night, looked at her and smiled good-naturedly. It would have been better if he had gone on crying! She paced the room several times in agitation, then stopped in the corner, pondering. Likharev was saying something, but she did not hear him. Her back turned to him, she took a twenty-five-rouble note from her wallet, crumpled it in her hands for a while, then, turning to Likharev, blushed and slipped the note into her pocket.

The coachman’s voice was heard through the door. Silently, with a stern, concentrated face, Miss Ilovaiskaya began to dress. Likharev wrapped her up and chattered cheerfully, but his every word weighed heavily on her soul. It is not cheerful to listen to the banter of an unhappy or a dying man.

When the transformation of the living person into a shapeless bundle was completed, Ilovaiskaya took a last look around the “traveling room,” stood silently, and slowly left. Likharev went to see her off…

Outside, God knows why, winter was still raging. Whole clouds of big, soft snowflakes circled restlessly over the earth and found no place for themselves. Horses, sledges, trees, an ox tied to a post—everything was white and looked soft, fluffy.