Fifty-Two Stories

THE COOK GETS MARRIED

GRISHA, a chubby seven-year-old, was standing by the kitchen door, eavesdropping and peeking through the keyhole. In the kitchen something was going on which, in his opinion, was extraordinary, never seen before. At the kitchen table, on which meat was usually cut and onions chopped, sat a big, burly peasant in a cabby’s kaftan, red-headed, bearded, with a big drop of sweat on his nose. He was holding a saucer on the five fingers of his right hand and drinking tea from it, biting so noisily on a lump of sugar that it sent shivers down Grisha’s spine. Across from him, on a dirty stool, sat the old nanny Aksinya Stepanovna, also drinking tea. The nanny’s face was serious and at the same time shone with some sort of triumph. The cook Pelageya was pottering around by the stove and looked as if she was trying to hide her face somewhere far away. But on her face Grisha saw a whole play of lights: it glowed and shimmered with all colors, beginning with reddish purple and ending with a deathly pallor. Her trembling hands constantly clutched at knives, forks, stove wood, rags; she moved about, murmured, knocked, but in fact did nothing. Never once did she glance at the table where they were drinking tea, and to the questions the nanny put to her she replied curtly, sternly, without turning her face.

“Help yourself, Danilo Semyonych!” the nanny offered the cabby. “What’s this tea all the time? Help yourself to some vodka!”

And the nanny moved a decanter and a glass towards the guest, her face acquiring a most sarcastic expression.

“I’m not in the habit, ma’am…No, ma’m…,” the cabby protested. “Don’t make me, Aksinya Stepanovna.”

“What sort of…A cabby, and he doesn’t drink…An unmarried man can’t possibly not drink. Help yourself!”

The cabby gave a sidelong glance at the vodka, then at the nanny’s sarcastic face, and his own face acquired a no less sarcastic expression: No, you won’t catch me, you old witch!

“Sorry, ma’am, I don’t drink…Such a weakness doesn’t suit our trade. A workman can drink, because he sits in one place, but our kind are always on view, in public. Right, ma’am? You go to a pot-house, and your horse walks away; you get drunk—it’s even worse: you fall asleep or tumble off the box. So it goes.”

“And how much do you make in a day, Danilo Semyonych?”

“Depends on the day. Some days you get as much as a greenback, and other times you go home without a kopeck. There’s days and days, ma’am. Nowadays our business isn’t worth much. There’s no end of cabbies, you know it yourself, hay is expensive, and customers are piddling, they’d rather take a horse tram. But all the same, thank God, there’s no complaints. Food enough, clothes enough, and…maybe even enough to make for somebody else’s happiness” (the cabby cast a glance at Pelageya) “…if her heart’s so inclined.”

What else they talked about, Grisha did not hear. His mama came to the door and sent him to the children’s room to study.

“Go and study. You’ve got no business listening here!”

Having come to the children’s room, Grisha placed his primer before him, but he could not read. All that he had just seen and heard raised a host of questions in his head. “The cook’s getting married…,” he thought. “Strange. I don’t understand why people get married. Mama married Papa, cousin Verochka married Pavel Andreich. But anyhow Papa and Pavel Andreich were worth marrying: they’ve got gold watch chains, good clothes, their boots are always polished; but to marry that scary cabby with the red nose, in felt boots—phooey! And why does this nanny want poor Pelageya to get married?”

When the visitor left the kitchen, Pelageya went off to the rooms and started tidying up. The agitation still had not left her. Her face was red and as if frightened. She barely touched the floor with the broom and swept each corner five times. She lingered for a good while in the room where Mama was sitting. Obviously it was hard for her to be alone, and she wanted to speak, to share her impressions with somebody, to pour out her soul.

“He left!” she murmured, seeing that Mama did not start a conversation.

“He’s obviously a good man,” Mama said, not tearing her eyes from the embroidery. “So sober, steady.”

“By God, ma’am, I won’t marry him!” Pelageya suddenly shouted, flushing all over. “By God, I won’t!”

“Don’t be silly, you’re not a little girl. It’s a serious step, you must think it over very well, and not shout for no reason. Do you like him?”

“You’re making it up, ma’am!” Pelageya became embarrassed. “To say such things…my God…”

(“She should just say: I don’t like him!” thought Grisha.)

“Aren’t you a prissy one, though…Do you like him?”

“But he’s old, ma’am! Wa-a-ah!”

“You’re making it up, too!” the nanny snapped at Pelageya from another room. “He’s not forty yet. And what do you need a young one for? A face isn’t everything, you fool…Just marry him, that’s all!”

“By God, I won’t!” shrieked Pelageya.

“You and your whimsies! What the devil do you want? Another girl would fall at his feet, but you—‘I won’t marry him!’ All you want is to trade winks with mailmen and repetutors! There’s a repetutor who comes to Grishenka, ma’am, she just stared her stupid eyes out at him. Shameless creature!”

“Have you seen this Danilo before?” the lady asked Pelageya.

“Where could I have seen him? I saw him for the first time today, Aksinya found the cursed fiend somewhere and brought him here…And so he landed on my head!”

Over dinner, as Pelageya served the food, the diners all looked her in the face and teased her about the cabby. She blushed terribly and giggled unnaturally.

(“It must be shameful to get married…,” thought Grisha. “Terribly shameful!”)

The food was all oversalted, blood seeped from the underdone chickens, and to top it off, during the mealtime plates and knives spilled from Pelageya’s hands as if from a crooked shelf, but nobody uttered a word of reproach, since they all understood her state of mind. Only once Papa flung his napkin down angrily and said to Mama:

“Why do you want to get everybody married? What business is it of yours? Let them get married as they like.”

After dinner the neighboring cooks and maids flitted through the kitchen, and the whispering went on till evening. How they had sniffed out the matchmaking—God knows. Waking up at midnight, Grisha heard the nanny and the cook whispering behind the curtain in the children’s room. The nanny was persuading, and the cook now sobbed, now giggled. Falling asleep after that, Grisha dreamed that Pelageya was being abducted by a Chernomor and a witch…¹

The next day came a lull. Kitchen life continued on its course, as if there were no cabby. Only from time to time the nanny would put on a new shawl, assume a solemnly stern expression, and go off somewhere for an hour or two, evidently for negotiations…Pelageya and the cabby did not see each other, and, when reminded of him, she would flare up and shout:

“Curse him up and down! Why should I think about him! Tphoo!”

One evening in the kitchen, when the nanny and the cook were assiduously cutting out a pattern, Mama came in and said:

“You can marry him, of course, that’s your business, but you must know, Pelageya, that he cannot live here…You know I don’t like to have someone sitting in the kitchen. See that you remember…And I won’t give you the nights off.”

“God knows what you’re thinking up, ma’am,” shrieked the cook. “Why do you reproach me over him? Let him rot! Why should I be stuck with this…”

Peeking into the kitchen one Sunday morning, Grisha froze in amazement. The kitchen was packed full of people. There were cooks from all the households, a caretaker, two policemen, a corporal with his stripes, the boy Filka…This Filka usually loitered around the laundry room and played with the dogs, but he was neatly combed, washed, and holding an icon in a foil casing. In the middle of the kitchen stood Pelageya in a new calico dress and with a flower on her head. Beside her stood the cabby. The newlyweds were both red-faced, sweaty, and kept blinking their eyes.

“Well, now…seems it’s time…,” the corporal began after a long pause.

Pelageya’s whole face twitched and she burst into tears…The corporal took a big loaf of bread from the table, stood beside the nanny, and started to recite the blessing. The cabby went over to the corporal, plopped down before him, and gave him a smacking kiss on the hand. He did the same before Aksinya. Pelageya followed him mechanically and also plopped down. Finally, the outside door opened, white fog blew into the kitchen, and the public all moved noisily from the kitchen into the yard.

“Poor thing, poor thing!” thought Grisha, listening to the cook’s sobs. “Where are they taking her? Why don’t Papa and Mama stand up for her?”

After the church there was singing and concertina playing in the wash-house till evening. Mama was angry all the while that the nanny smelled of vodka and that on account of these weddings there was nobody to prepare the samovar. When Grisha went to bed, Pelageya had still not come back.

“Poor thing, now she’s crying somewhere in the dark!” he thought. “And the cabby tells her: ‘Shut up! Shut up!’ ”

The next morning the cook was already in the kitchen. The cabby stopped by for a minute. He thanked Mama and, looking sternly at Pelageya, said:

“Keep an eye on her, ma’am. Be her father and mother. And you, too, Aksinya Stepanna, don’t let up, see that everything stays honorable…no mischief…And also, ma’am, allow me an advance of five little roubles on her salary. I’ve got to buy a new yoke.”

Another puzzler for Grisha: Pelageya had lived freely, as she liked, not answering to anybody, and suddenly, out of the blue, appeared some stranger, who somehow got the right to her doings and her property! Grisha was upset. He wanted passionately, to the point of tears, to be nice to this victim, as he thought, of people’s abuse. Choosing the biggest apple in the pantry, he snuck into the kitchen, put it in Pelageya’s hand, and rushed back out again.

1885