Andrei Platonov - The Fierce and Beautiful World

Ivanov arrived on the sixth day. His son met him. Peter was now in his twelfth year, and at first the father did not recognize his own child in this serious young fellow who seemed older than his age. The father saw that Peter was an undersized and skinny little boy, but still he had a big head and a broad forehead and his face had a kind of calm, as if he were already used to the worries of the world, and his small brown eyes looked out gloomily and unhappily, as if they could see nothing but disorder anywhere around him. Peter was carefully dressed; his shoes looked worn but still serviceable, his trousers and jacket were old, made over from his father’s civilian clothes, but without any rips or tears—they had been darned where this was needed and patched where that was necessary and all of Peter added up to a little man who was not rich but in good working order. The father was surprised, and he sighed.

“You’re my father, aren’t you?” Peter asked when Ivanov had thrown his arms around him and kissed him, holding him close. “You must be my father.”

“Your father…. How do you do, Peter Alexeievich?”

“How do you do? Why were you so long getting here? We’ve waited and waited.”

“The train, Petrushka, went slowly…. How are your mother and Nastya—alive and well?”

“As usual,” Peter said. “How many decorations do you have?”

“Two, Peter, and three medals.”

“But Mother and I expected—there wouldn’t be any empty space on your uniform at all. Mother has two medals, too, they gave them to her for her services to the war effort…. Why do you have so little baggage, just one duffel bag?”

“I don’t need any more.”

“Someone with a trunk, is it hard for him to fight?” the son asked.

“It’s hard for him,” the father agreed. “With just a bag it’s easier. Nobody at war had a trunk.”

“And I thought they did have. I would have kept my good things in a trunk. They would all get broken or mussed up in a bag.”

He took the duffel bag from his father and carried it home, and the father walked along right behind him.

The mother met them on the porch of the house; she had taken time off from her job again, as if her heart had told her that this was the day her husband would arrive. She went straight home from the factory, so she could go to the station later. She was worried—maybe Semyon Yevseyevich would show up at their house: he liked to come sometimes in daytime, he had the habit of appearing in the middle of the day and sitting there with five-year-old Nastya and with Peter. It was true, Semyon Yevseyevich never showed up empty-handed, he always brought something for the children—candy, or sugar, or a white roll, or a ration coupon for goods in the store. Lyuba Vassilievna had never had any fault to find with Semyon Yevseyevich; during these two years that they had known each other Semyon Yevseyevich had been good to her, and he treated the children like their own father and even more thoughtfully than if he had been their father. But today Lyuba Vassilievna did not want her husband to see Semyon Yevseyevich. She cleaned up the kitchen and the living room, everything in the house must be tidy, with nothing strange left around. And later, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, she would tell her husband the whole truth herself, just how it had been. Luckily, Semyon Yevseyevich did not show up today.

Ivanov went up to his wife, embraced her, and stood with his arms around her, not letting go, feeling the forgotten but still familiar warmth of a person who is loved.

The little Nastya came out of the house and, seeing her father whom she did not remember, began to pull him away from her mother, tugging against his leg, and then she began to cry. Peter stood silently next to his father and his mother, with his father’s duffel bag still on his shoulder, and after waiting a little, he said:

“That’s enough for you two, or else Nastya won’t stop crying, she doesn’t understand.”

The father moved away from the mother, and picked Nastya up in his arms. She was crying in terror.

“Nastya!” Peter called to her. “Pull yourself together, I’m talking to you. He’s our father, our own father!”

Once inside the house, the father washed his hands and sat down at the table. He stretched out his legs, closed his eyes, and felt a quiet happiness in his heart, and a deep satisfaction. The war was over. His legs had covered thousands of miles during these years, lines of fatigue lay on his face, and pain stabbed his eyes behind their closed eyelids—now they wanted to rest in twilight or in darkness.

While he sat there all his family bustled around the room and in the kitchen, preparing a feast to celebrate his return. Ivanov looked at all the things in his house in order: the clock, the china cupboard, the thermometer on the wall, the chairs, flowers on the windowsill, the Russian kitchen stove… they had all lived here a long time without him, and they had missed him. Now he had come back, and he looked at them, getting acquainted with each all over again as with relatives who had been living in grief and poverty during his absence. He breathed in the house’s own solid smell—decaying wood, warmth from the bodies of his children, a wisp of something burning in the stove. The smell was the same as it had been four years before, and it had not weakened nor changed while he had been gone. Ivanov had not found this smell anywhere else, although he had been in several countries and hundreds of dwelling places during the war; the air had smelled different there, it had none of the fragrance of his own house. Ivanov could still remember Masha’s smell, and how her hair had smelled; but that was of leaves in the woods, of some unfamiliar, overgrown road, not like a home at all but like all the troubles of life. What was she doing now, and how would she manage as a civilian, Masha, the spaceman’s daughter? God be with her…

Ivanov saw that Peter ran the house. It was not just that he worked hard himself, but he gave orders to his mother and to Nastya, what to do and what not to do and how to do it right. Nastya listened obediently to Peter, and she was no longer frightened of her father as a stranger; she had the lively, concentrated face of a child who takes everything in life as true and serious, and a good heart, too, because she didn’t resent her brother, Peter.

“Nastya, empty that pot of potato peelings, I need the dish Nastya dutifully emptied the pot and washed it. Meanwhile the mother was hurriedly fixing bread, made without yeast, to put in the oven where Petrushka had already made a fire.

“Beat it, Mother, beat it quicker!” Petrushka ordered. “You can see I have the oven ready. You’ve got used to dawdling, you Stakhanovite!”

“Right away, Petrushka, right away. I…” the mother said obediently. “I’ll put in raisins because your father probably hasn’t eaten raisins for quite a while. I’ve been saving them a long time.”

“He’s eaten them,” Petrushka said. “They give raisins to our soldiers, too. Our soldiers—just look how fat they are when they walk around, they must really eat their rations…. Nastya, what are you sitting down for? Did you just stop in here to visit? Peel the potatoes, we’ll heat them for dinner in the frying pan. You can’t feed a family just on cake! ”

While the mother was fixing the bread, Peter put a cast-iron pot of cabbage soup into the oven with a big oven tongs, so as not to waste the fire, and he gave orders even to the fire in the stove:

“Why are you burning so unevenly, fidgeting every which way? Burn evenly. Get hot right under the food. Do you think trees grow in the woods for nothing? And you, Nastya, why did you put the kindling in the stove like this, you should have put it in the way I taught you. And you’ve peeled the potatoes too thick again, instead of thin peels. And why did you cut the meat up with the potatoes? That way some of the nourishment is lost. How many times do I have to tell you? Well, now is the last time, next time you’ll get it in the back of the neck!”