Andrei Platonov - The Fierce and Beautiful World

“Go over and clean up the rubbish along the grocers’ row,” the watchman instructed Nikita when he had eaten up the soup.

Nikita went back to his usual place. By now he was only dimly aware of himself at all, and he thought very little, about anything that happened to come into his mind. By autumn, probably, he would have forgotten entirely what he was. Looking around at the activity of the world he would have ceased to have any understanding of it. Other people might think this man was living but actually he would be there and exist only in forgetfulness, in the poverty of his mind, in his loss of consciousness, as if in some warmth of his own, taking shelter from mortal grief….

Soon after his stay in jail, at the end of summer when the nights were growing longer, Nikita started once to lock the door to the latrines, as required by the rules, when he heard a voice from inside:

“Wait a little, before you lock up! Are you afraid someone’s going to steal something out of here?”

Nikita waited for the man. His father walked out of the building, holding an empty sack under his arm.

“Hello, Nikita!” the father said, and he suddenly began to cry, sadly, ashamed of his tears and not wiping them away so as not to admit that he was crying. “We thought you were a dead man long ago. This means you’re all right?”

Nikita embraced his thin, drooping father; his heart, which had grown unused to feeling, had now been touched.

Then they walked through the empty bazaar and settled down in the passageway between two big merchants’ bins.

“I just came for some barley, it’s cheaper here,” his father explained. “But I was late, you see, the bazaar is closed. Well, I’ll spend the night now, and tomorrow I’ll buy it and go back home. And what are you doing here?”

Nikita wanted to answer his father, but his throat dried up and he had forgotten how to talk. He coughed, and whispered:

“I’m all right. Is Lyuba alive?”

“She threw herself in the river,” his father said. “But some fishermen saw her right away and pulled her out—she was in the hospital for a while, she got better.”

“And she’s alive now?” Nikita asked in a low voice.

“So far she hasn’t died,” his father declared. “Blood runs often from her throat; she probably caught cold when she tried to drown herself. She picked a bad time—the weather had just turned bad and the water was cold…”

The father pulled some bread out of his pocket, gave half of it to his son, and they sat there for a little, chewing their supper. Nikita was silent, and the father spread his sack out on the ground, and got ready to lie down on it.

“Have you got any place to sleep?” the father asked. “If not, you lie on the sack, and I’ll lie on the ground. I won’t catch cold, I’m too old…”

“But why did Lyuba drown herself?” Nikita whispered.

“What’s the matter? Does your throat hurt you?” the father asked. “You’ll get over it…. She missed you badly, and just wasted away from grief, that’s why… For a whole month she just walked up and down the Potudan River, back and forth, along the bank for sixty miles. She thought you’d drowned and would come to the surface, and she wanted to see you. While, it turns out, you were right here all the time. That’s bad…”

Nikita thought about Lyuba, and once more his heart filled with grief and with strength.

“You spend the night here alone, father,” Nikita said. “I’m going to have a look at Lyuba.”

“Go on then,” the father agreed. “It’s good going now, cooler. And I’ll come back tomorrow, then we’ll talk things over…”

Going out of the settlement Nikita started to run along the deserted high road. When he got tired, he walked again for a while, then he ran again in the free, light air spread over the dark fields.

It was late at night when Nikita knocked at Lyuba’s window and touched the shutters he had painted once with green paint. Now the dark night made them look blue. He pressed his face against the window glass. A pale light was filtered through the room, from the white sheets dropping off the bed, and Nikita could see the child’s furniture he had made with his father—it was all there. Then Nikita knocked loudly on the window frame. But Lyuba still did not answer, and she didn’t come to the window to see who he was.

Nikita climbed over the gate, went through the shed and then into the room—the doors were not locked; whoever lived here was not worried about protecting his property from thieves.

Lyuba was lying under the blanket on the bed, her head covered.

“Lyuba!” Nikita called to her in a low voice.

“What?” Lyuba asked from under the blanket.

She wasn’t asleep. Maybe she was lying there all alone in terror, or sick, or thought the knock on the window and Nikita’s voice were a dream.

Nikita sat on the edge of the bed.

“Lyuba, I’ve come, it’s me,” Nikita said.

Lyuba lifted the blanket away from her face.

“Come here to me, quickly,” she begged in her old, tender voice, and she held out her arms to Nikita.

Lyuba was afraid this would all go away; she grabbed Nikita by the arms and pulled him to her.

Nikita hugged Lyuba with the force that tries to pull another, beloved person right inside a hungering soul; but he quickly recovered his senses, and he felt ashamed.

“I didn’t hurt you?” Nikita asked.

“No, I don’t feel anything,” Lyuba answered.

He wanted her badly, so she might be comforted, and a savage, miserable strength came to him. But Nikita did not find from loving Lyuba intimately any higher happiness than he had usually known—he felt only that his heart was now in charge of his whole body and could divide his blood with his poor but necessary pleasure.

Lyuba asked Nikita—maybe he could light the little stove for it would still be dark outside for a long time. Let there be a fire inside the room, she wouldn’t be sleeping anyway, she wanted to wait for the dawn and look at Nikita.

But there was no more firewood in the shed. So Nikita ripped two boards off the side of the shed, split them into pieces and some kindling, and stoked up the little stove. When the fire was burning well, Nikita opened the little door so the light could shine outside the stove. Lyuba climbed out of bed and sat on the floor, facing Nikita, where there was some light.

“Is it all right with you now, you won’t be sorry to live with me?” she asked.

“No, I’m all right,” Nikita answered. “I’m already used to being happy with you.”

“Build up the fire, I’m chilled to the bone,” Lyuba asked him.

She was wearing only her worn-out nightgown, and her thin body was freezing in the cool half-light of early morning at the end of summer.

ALEXEI ALEXEIEVICH IVANOV, a Guards sergeant, left the army on demobilization. In the unit where he had served all through the war they saw him off with regret, with affection and respect, and with music and with wine. His close friends and comrades drove to the railroad station with Ivanov, and after the last farewells left him by himself. But the train was reported to be hours late and then, when those hours had run out, it was still delayed. Finally the cold autumn night began; the station had been destroyed in the war, there was no place to spend the night, and Ivanov hitched a ride back to his unit in a passing car. The next day his colleagues saw him off again. They sang their songs again and hugged him with words of eternal friendship, but this time they poured out their feelings more briefly and the affair involved only a small circle of his friends.

The second time Ivanov went to the station he learned that yesterday’s train had not yet arrived and that he might just as well go back to his unit again to spend the night. But it would have been awkward to be seen off a third time and to trouble his comrades, so Ivanov settled down for the tedious wait on the empty asphalt of the station platform.