The Story of a Life

23

On My Own

Finally, the first signs of autumn arrived.

Behind Uncle Kolya’s house there was an old apple orchard on a steep hillside. Lichen covered the hollow tree trunks and the rickety fence. I was one of the few who ever ventured into the orchard. I used to go there with my notebook, lie down in the grass and write poetry. As I now recall, the poems were bad, drenched in an indistinct melancholy. Busy ants hurried across the lines of my notebook, dragging along dead wasps; withered twigs dropped from the trees. The sky, strangely dense yet transparent, sparkled above the orchard. The wind swept the clouds from the sky and piled them up on the far side of the Desna. I tried to count them and got up to two hundred, but then everything became a blur in my eyes, and I gave up.

Autumn announced its arrival with a dry leaf falling quite unexpectedly on a bench and a small green caterpillar lowering itself on a thread onto my head.

I was sad to see summer go. Uncle Kolya had spent the summer in Bryansk, and I often visited him in the Arsenal, either at his laboratory or at the foundry workshop. I liked to watch the steam hammer at work. Standing at the hammer Staff Captain Ivanov told me of a celebrated blacksmith from the Obukhov works who could crack a walnut sitting on top of an upturned tumbler with a 1½-tonne steam hammer without cracking the glass. I liked everything about the Arsenal – the low buildings dating back to the time of Catherine the Great, the courtyards overgrown with weeds and cluttered with iron castings, the lilac bushes along the workshop walls, the shiny, oily copper cylinders of old steam engines, the smell of alcohol in the laboratories, the bearded blacksmiths, the smelters, and the fountain of bluish artesian water bubbling up from a well by the Arsenal’s outer wall.

I had to say goodbye to all this, to Bryansk, to Uncle Kolya’s cosy home, and perhaps for a long time.

That autumn I was to return to Kiev. This had been decided at a brief family meeting at the Bryansk railway station when Mama, Galya and Dima passed through on the way to Moscow. I had gone to the station with Uncle Kolya and Aunt Marusya to see Mama. Mama looked much older, and she spoke with Uncle Kolya in an apologetic tone, as if she felt she had to justify herself in his eyes. Galya was almost completely blind by now. And her hearing was beginning to go as well. She wore thick, heavy glasses. When someone spoke to her, she stared hard for a long time trying to make out who it was and would then reply with strange, irrelevant answers. Dima was sullen and silent.

Mama gave me a hug and looked me up and down from head to toe. She said that I looked much better than I had in Kiev. She sounded offended. I said that I wanted to return to Kiev and that I’d been readmitted to my old school. I’d live with Borya and earn my keep by giving lessons. Mama said that she very much wanted to take me with her to Moscow but that it simply wasn’t possible. She had no idea how she was going to get on herself, let alone care for me. The whole time Galya kept saying: ‘Kostik, where are you? Oh, there you are! I can’t see you at all.’

Aunt Marusya, talking very fast, said it was madness to allow me to go to Kiev and that while she perhaps didn’t understand a thing about the matter and didn’t have the right to stick her nose into our family business, nevertheless … She stopped talking after catching sight of Uncle Kolya’s disapproving expression. She looked out of the train’s compartment window at the platform. Her eyes were dark with anger.

‘Finally!’ Mama said. ‘Better late than never.’

Father was walking up the platform. He had just arrived on the workers’ train from Bezhitsa. The black jacket he was wearing was shiny with age. Father entered the train just as the second whistle blew. We began to say our goodbyes. Father kissed my mother’s hand and said: ‘Marusya, I’ll take care of Kostik. I’ll send him enough for his living expenses every month.’

‘Let’s hope so!’ said Mama. ‘Try to manage this one little thing – I beg of you.’

Dima parted with Father coldly. Galya, like a blind woman, groped for his face with her hand. Father turned so white it seemed even his eyes lost all their colour.

The third whistle blew. We exited the carriage onto the platform. Leaning out of the window, Mama promised to come and visit me in Kiev in the winter. The train began to move. Father stood holding his hat and watching the train’s turning wheels. He didn’t want to go back with us to Uncle Kolya’s and made some excuse about an urgent job in Bezhitsa that meant he had to catch the very first train back.

We rode home in the carriage. Neither Uncle Kolya nor Aunt Marusya said a word. Aunt Marusya sat nibbling the edge of a small handkerchief and then finally looked over at Uncle Kolya and said: ‘No, I still don’t understand. How can they do this?’

Uncle Kolya stopped her with a frown and a glance in my direction. I felt ashamed of our family troubles and how they were spoiling not only our own lives. I dreamed of escaping to Kiev as quickly as possible and of forgetting these misfortunes. Better to be alone than to live in this tiresome and confusing mess of mutual pain and suffering.

I waited for August when I’d be leaving for Kiev. It finally arrived, together with falling leaves and sullen rains. On the day of my departure the wind drove a hard rain that lashed the carriages of the Moscow–Kiev line. Father did not come to see me off, even though he had promised he would. At the station, Uncle Kolya tried to lighten the mood with banter. Aunt Marusya slipped an envelope into my coat pocket and said: ‘Read it on the way.’ When the train began to move, she turned away. Uncle Kolya took her by the arm and turned her round. She smiled at me, but then turned her back to the train again.

The raindrops running down the window made it impossible to see. I lowered the window and leaned out. Uncle Kolya and Aunt Marusya were still there on the platform watching the train depart. Steam was settling on the ground. Far off behind the train I could see a strip of clear sky. There the sun had come out. I took this as a good omen. I pulled the envelope out of my pocket. Inside was money and a note:

Look after yourself. You are heading out now into life all on your own, and so don’t forget you have an uncle and an aunt here in the provinces. They love you very much and are always ready to help.