Andrei Platonov - The Fierce and Beautiful World

“Hello!” a woman said shyly to Nikita from one side.

The voice both touched and warmed him at the same time, as if someone dear to him and in some trouble had called on him for help. But then it seemed to Nikita that it had been an error and that it was not he who was being greeted. Afraid of making a mistake, he looked slowly around at the people who were walking past him. There were only two of them, and both of these had gone by him. Nikita looked behind him—a big, grown-up Lyuba had stopped and was looking at him. She gave him a sad, embarrassed smile.

Nikita walked up to her and looked her over carefully, as if to see if she had kept herself in good shape, for even in his memory she was precious to him. Her Austrian boots, tied up with a string, were clearly worn-out, her pale muslin dress came only to her knees, probably because that was all the cloth there was; the dress filled Nikita with compassion for Lyuba right away, he had seen dresses like that on women in their coffins, while here the muslin was covering a living, grown-up, even if impoverished, body. She was wearing an old woman’s jacket on top of the dress—probably Lyuba’s mother had worn it when she was a girl, and there was nothing on Lyuba’s head—just her hair twisted below her neck into a light-colored, firm braid.

“You don’t remember me?” Lyuba asked him.

“No, I haven’t forgotten you,” Nikita answered.

“One should never forget,” Lyuba said with a smile.

Her clear eyes, filled with some secret emotion, were looking tenderly at Nikita as if they were feasting on him. Nikita was looking at her face, too, and his heart was both glad and sorry at the sight of her eyes, which were sunk deep from hardships she had lived through and lighted up with confidence and hope.

Nikita walked back with Lyuba to her home—she still lived in the same house. Her mother had died not long before, and her young brother had been fed during the famine by a Red Army field kitchen and had grown used to it and gone off to the south with the Red Army to fight the enemy.

“He got used to eating porridge, and there wasn’t any at home,” Lyuba said.

Lyuba was living now in just one room—she didn’t need any more. Nikita looked with a sinking feeling at this room where he had first seen Lyuba, the little piano, and the expensive furniture. Now there was no piano, and no wardrobe with fretwork on its front, there were just the two upholstered chairs, a table and a bed, and the whole room was no longer as interesting and as mysterious to him as it had been when he was younger—the paper on the walls was faded and torn, the floor was worn down, next to the big tiled stove stood a small iron one in which a handful of chips could be burned to make a little heat.

Lyuba pulled a notebook out of the top of her dress and took off her shoes, so that she was barefoot. She was studying medicine at the district academy; in those days there were universities and academies in all the districts because the people wanted to advance their knowledge as quickly as they could; like hunger and want, the senselessness of life had tormented the human heart too long, and it was high time to find out what the existence of men was all about, was it something serious, or a joke?

“They hurt my feet,” Lyuba said, pointing to her shoes. “You sit down for a while, and I’ll get into bed, because I’m terribly hungry, and I don’t want to think about it…”

Without undressing, Lyuba climbed under the blanket on the bed and placed her braid on top of her eyes.

Nikita sat there silently for two or three hours, waiting for Lyuba to go to sleep. Then night fell, and Lyuba stood up in the darkness.

“My friend, probably, won’t be coming today,” Lyuba said sadly.

“What of it? Do you need her?” Nikita asked.

“Very badly,” Lyuba said. “They have a big family, and the father is in the army, she brings me supper when there’s something left over…. I eat, and then we study together…”

“But do you have any kerosene?” Nikita asked.

“No, they gave me firewood…. We light the little stove, and then we sit on the floor and we can see by the flame.”

Lyuba smiled helplessly, and ashamed, as if some cruel, unhappy thought had occurred to her.

“Probably her older brother didn’t fall asleep,” she said. “He doesn’t like to have his sister feed me, he begrudges it… But I’m not to blame! I’m not so fond of eating: it isn’t me, but my head starts to ache, it starts to think about a piece of bread and keeps me from living and thinking about anything else…”

“Lyuba!” a young voice said outside the window.

“Zhenya!” Lyuba called out.

Lyuba’s friend walked in. She took four big baked potatoes out of the pocket of her jacket and put them on the iron stove.

“Did you get the histology book?” Lyuba asked her.

“And where would I get it?” Zhenya answered. “I signed up for it at the library…”

“Never mind, we’ll get along without it,” Lyuba declared. “I memorized the first two chapters in the department. I’ll recite it, and you take notes. Won’t that work?”

“Even better!” Zhenya answered, laughing.

Nikita stoked up the little stove so its flames would light the notebook, and then got ready to go back to his father’s for the night.

“You won’t forget me now?” Lyuba asked as she said good-bye to him.

“No,” Nikita said. “I have nobody else to remember.”

Firsov lay around the house for a couple of days and then went to work in the same furniture workshop where his father was employed. They listed him as a carpenter and assigned him to getting materials ready, and his pay was lower than his father’s, hardly more than half as much. But Nikita knew this was temporary, while he got used to the trade, and then they would give him a rating as a cabinetmaker, and his pay would be better.

Nikita had never lost his habits of work. In the Red Army people were busy not just making war—in their long halts and when they were being held in reserve Red Army soldiers dug wells, repaired the huts of poor peasants in the villages, and planted bushes on the tops of ravines to keep the earth from washing away. For the war would be over and life would go on, and it was necessary to think about this in advance.

After a week Nikita went to call on Lyuba again; he took her some boiled fish and some bread as a present—it was the second course of his dinner at the workers’ restaurant.

Lyuba was hurrying to finish a book by the window, profiting from the light still in the sky, so Nikita sat quietly for a while in her room, waiting for the darkness. But soon the twilight caught up with the quiet on the street outside, and Lyuba rubbed her eyes and closed her textbook.

“How are you?” Lyuba asked him in a low voice.

“My father and I get along, we’re all right,” Nikita said. “I brought you something to eat there, go on and eat it, please.”

“I’ll eat it, thank you,” Lyuba said.

“Then you won’t go to sleep?” Nikita asked.

“No, I won’t,” Lyuba answered. “I’ll eat my supper now, and I’ll be full!”

Nikita brought some kindling from the shed and lit the iron stove to make some light. He sat down on the floor, opened the door of the stove and fed chips and little twigs to the flames, trying to keep the heat at a minimum with as much light as possible. Lyuba sat down on the floor, too, when she had eaten the fish and the bread, facing Nikita and next to the light from the stove, and began to study her medical book.

She read silently, sometimes whispering something, smiling, and writing down some words on a pad in a small, quick handwriting, probably the more important points she read. Nikita just took care that the fire burned properly, and only from time to time—not often—looked at Lyuba’s face, and then stared at the fire again for a long time because he was afraid of bothering Lyuba with his looking at her. So the time went, and Nikita thought sadly that it would soon go by completely and it would be time for him to go home.