MAMA, RIMMA AND ALLA
From the early morning that day had been going badly.
The day before,
the maid had begun putting on airs and walked out. Barbara Stepanovna ended up
having to do everything herself. Then the electric bill came first thing in the
morning. And then the student boarders, the Rastokhin brothers, came up with
completely unexpected demand. They had allegedly received a telegram from
To this Barbara Stepanovna answered that that it was quite irregular to vacate the room in April, when there is no one to rent it to, and that it was difficult for her to return the money, as it was given to her not on a loan but as a payment for the room, regardless of the fact that the payment had been made in advance.
The Rastoknih brothers disagreed with Barbara Stepanova. The discussion became drawn-out and unfriendly. The students were stubborn, infuriating louts at long, clean frock coats. When they realized that getting their money back was a lost cause, the older brother suggested that Barbara Stepanova give them her sideboard and pier glass as collateral.
Barbara Stepanovna turned purple, and retorted that she would not tolerate being spoken to in such a tone, that the Rastokhins’ suggestion was utter rubbish, that she knew the law, her husband being a member of the district court in Kamchatka, and so on. The younger Rastokhin flared up and told her he didn’t give a hoot that her husband was a member of the district court in Kamchatka, that it was quite obvious that once she got her hands on a kopeck there was no prying it loose, that they would remember their stay at Barbara Stepanovna’s – with all that clutter, dirt and mess – to their dying day, and that although the district court in Kamchatka was quite far away, the Moscow Justice of the Peace was just around the corner.
And that was how discussion ended. The Rastokhin marched out haughtily and in silent fury, and Barbara Stepanovna went to the kitchen to make some more coffee for her other boarder, a student by the name of Stanislaw Marchotsky. There had been loud and insistent ringing from his room for quite a few minutes.
Barbara Stepanovna stood in front of the spirit stove in the kitchen. A nickel pince-nez, rickety with age, sat on her fat nose; her graying hair was disheveled, her pink, morning coat full of stains. She made the coffee, and thought how these louts would never had spoken to her in such a tone if there hadn’t been that eternal shortage of money, that unfortunate need to constantly snatch, hide, cheat.
When Marchotsky’s coffee and fried eggs were ready, she brought his breakfast to his room.
Marchotsky was a Pole – tall, bony, light blond, with long legs, and well-groomed fingernails. That morning he was wearing a foppish grey dressing gown with ornamental military clasps.
He faced Barbara Stpanovna with resentment.
“I’ve had enough of there never being a maid around!” he said. “I have to ring for a whole our, and then I’m late for my classes”.
It was true that all too often the maid wasn’t there, and that Marchotsky had to ring and ring, but this time he had a different reason to for his resentment.
The evening before, he had been sitting with on the living room sofa with Rimma, Barbara Stepanovna’s oldest daughter. Barbara Stepanovna had seen them kissing two or three times and hugging in the darkness. They sat there till eleven, then till midnight, then Stanislaw laid his head on Rimma’s breast and fell asleep. After all, who in his youth has not dozed off on the edge of a sofa with his head propped on the breast of a high school girl, met by chance on life’s winding path? It is not necessary such a bad thing, and more often than not there are not consequences, but one does have to show a little consideration for others, not to mention that the girl might well have to go to school the next day.
It wasn’t until one-thirty in the morning that Barbara Stepanovna declared quite sourly that it was time to show some consideration. Marchotsky, brimming with Polish pride, pursed his lips and took umbrage. Rimma cast an indignant look at her mother.
The matter had ended there. But the following morning it was quite clear that Stanislaw hadn’t forgotten the incident. Barbara Stepanovna gave him his breakfast, salted the fried eggs, and left.
It was eleven in the morning. Barbara Stepanovna opened the drapers in her daughter’s room. The gentle rays of the weak sun gleamed on the dirty floor, on the clothes scattered throughout the room, on the dusty bookshelf.
The girls were already awake. The eldest, Rimma, was thin, small, quick-eyed, black-haired. Alla was a year younger – she was seventeen – larger than her sister, pale, sluggish in her movement, with delicate, pudgy skin, and sweetly pensive expression in her blue eyes.
When her mother left the room, she started speaking. Her heavy bare arm lay on the blanket, her little white fingers hardly moving.
“I had a dream, Rimma,” she said. “Imagine – a strange little town, small, Russian, mysterious… The light grey sky is hanging very low, and the horizon is very close. The dust in the streets is also grey, smooth, calm. Everything is dead. Not a single sound can be heard, not a single person can be seen. And suddenly I feel like I’m walking down some side streets I don’t know, past quiet little wooden houses. I wander into blind alleys, then I find my way out in the streets again, but I can only see ten paces ahead, and I keep walking on and on. Somewhere in front of me is alight cloud of whirling dust. I approach and see wedding carriages. Mikhail and his bride are in one of them. His bride is wearing a veil, and her face is happy. I walk up to the carriages, I seem to be taller than anyone else, and my heart aches a little. Then they all notice me. The carriages stop. Mikhail comes up to me, takes me by the arm, and slowly leads me into a side street. ‘Alla my friend’ he says in a flat voice, ‘all this is very said, I know. But there’s nothing I can do, because I don’t love you.’ I walk next to him, my heart shudders, and more grey streets keep opening up before us”.
All went silent.
“A bad dream” she added. “But who knows? Maybe because it’s bad, everything will turn out well and he’ll send me a letter.”
“Like hell he will” Rimma answered. “You should have been a little more clever and not run off to see him. By the way, I intend to have a word or two with Mama today!” she said suddenly.
Rimma got up, dressed, and went over to the window.
Spring lay over
Outside the church, in its front yard, the grass was damp, green. The sun softly glided the lackluster chasubles, and twinkled over the dark face of the icon standing on the slanting column by the entrance to the churchyard.
The girls went into the dinning room. Barbara Stepanovna was sitting there, carefully eating large portions of food, intently studying the rolls, the coffee, the ham, through her spectacles. She drunk the coffee with loud short gulps, and ate the rolls quickly, greedly, almost furtively.
“Mama!” Rimma said to her severely, proudly raising her pretty little face. “I’d like to have a little chat with you. You needn’t blow up. We can settle this quietly, once and for all. I can no longer live with you. Set me free.”
“Fine,” Barbara Stepanovna answered quietly, rising her colorless eyes to look at Rimma. “Is this because of yesterday?”
“Not because of yesterday, but it has to do with yesterday. I’m suffocating here.”
“And what do you intend to do?”
“I’ll take some classes, learn stenography, right now the demand – “
“Right now stenographers are crawling out of the woodwork! You think the jobs will come running – “
“I won’t come to you for help, Mama!” Rimma said shrilly. “I won’t come to you for help. Set me free!”
“Fine,” Barbara Stepanovna said again. “I’m not holding you back.”
“I want you to give me my passport.”
“I’m not giving you your passport.”
The conversation had been unexpectedly restrained. Now Rimma felt that the passport matter gave her a reason to start yelling.
“Well, that’s marvelous!” she shouted, with sarcastic laugh. “I can’t go anywhere without my passport!”
“I’m not giving you your passport!”
“I’ll go turn myself into a kept woman!” Rimma yelled hysterically. “I shall give myself to a policeman!”
“Who do you think will want you?” Barbara Stepanovna answered, critically eyeing her daughter’s shivering little body and flushed face. “You thing a policeman can’t fint better – “
“I’ll go to
“Ah, so this is how you speak to your mother,” Barbara Stepanovna said standing up with dignity. “We can’t make ends meet, everything is falling apart around us, we’re short of everything, all I’ll ask is for a few minutes of peace and quiet, but you… Wait till your father hears about this!”
“I’m going to
write him myself, to
Barbara Stepanovna walked out of the room. Rimma, small and disheveled, paced excitedly up and down the room. Angry, isolated phrases from her future letter to her father tore through her brain.
“Dear Papa!” she would write. “You are busy, I know, but I have to tell you everything. May the allegation that Stanny dozed on my breast lie heavy on Mama’s conscience! It was an embroidered cushion that he was dozing on, but the center of the gravity lies elsewhere. As Mama is your wife, you will doubtless side with her, but I can’t stay here any longer, she is a difficult person! If you want, Papa, I can come to you In Kamchatka, but I will need my passport!”
Rimma paced up and down, while Alla sat on the sofa and watched her. Quiet and mournful thoughts lay heavily on her soul.
“Rimma is fussing about,” she thought. “while I am completely desolate!. Everything is painful, nothing makes sense!”
She went to her room and lay down. Barbara Stepanovna came in wearing a corset. She was thickly and naively powdered, flushed, perplexed, and pitiful.
“I just remembered that the Rastokhins are leaving today. I have to give them back their sixty rubles. They threatened to take me to court. There are some eggs in the cupboard. Make some for yourself – I’m going down to the pawnbroker.
* * *
When Marchotsky came home from his classes at around six in the evening, he found the entrance hall filled with packed suitcases.
…
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