Andrei Platonov - The Fierce and Beautiful World

Other women sitting at the tables were also made happy by the attentions of their friends, by nature all around them, and by this foretaste of their future, which seemed long and filled with hope of immortality. Only one woman was without either flowers or confetti on her head; no one leaned over her with joking words, and she was smiling wistfully to make it appear that she was taking part in the general celebration and that she belonged. Her eyes were sad and patient, like those of a big child whose feelings have been hurt. Sometimes she glanced shyly to one side, and then, convinced that no one wanted her, quickly swept up the flowers and colored paper from the chairs of her neighbors, and hid them furtively. Occasionally Chagatayev noticed this but couldn’t understand it; he was already growing bored by the long celebration and was getting ready to leave. The woman who had been picking up the flowers dropped by other people also went off somewhere—the evening was running out, the stars had grown big, night was beginning. Chagatayev got up from his place and bowed to the comrades near him—he would not soon be seeing them again.

Chagatayev walked through the trees and he noticed the woman with the sad face hiding in the shadows; she did not see him, and she put the flowers and the ribbons on her hair and then walked back out of the trees to the lighted table. Chagatayev wanted to go back there: he wanted suddenly to topple over the tables, cut down the trees, and stop this enjoyment over which pitiful tears were being shed, but the woman was happy now, laughing, with a rose stuck in her dark hair, although her eyes were still red from crying. Chagatayev stayed in the garden; he walked up to her and introduced hirnself. She turned out to be a graduate student in the Chemistry Institute. He asked her to dance although he did not know how, but she danced excellently and led him in time to the music. Her eyes dried quickly, her face grew prettier, and her body, used to a shy tearfulness, pressed against him now with trust, filled with innocence, smelling good and warm like bread. With her Chagatayev forgot himself, ease and happiness poured out of this strange woman whom he would probably never meet again; this is how bliss often exists unnoticed right next to us.

The party and the gaiety went on until light began in the sky; then the garden emptied, only the plates and glasses were left, everyone departed. Chagatayev and his new friend Vera walked around Moscow, lighted up by dawn. The foreigner Chagatayev loved this city as his fatherland, and he was grateful that it was here that he had lived a long time, learned his science, and been fed and taken care of at no cost to him. He looked at his companion—her face had grown beautiful in the light from the sun rising far away.

The moment came when the sky was high and clean, the sun was strenuously and steadily sending its goodness—light—down to the earth. Vera walked in silence. Chagatayev glanced at her from time to time and was amazed that she could seem unattractive to everyone when even her modest quiet reminded him of the hush of grass, the loyalty of a familiar friend. He could see closely now the wrinkles of fatigue on her cheeks, her eyes deep under their eyelids, her full lips—all the mysterious arousing of this woman, all that was good and strong, hidden in this living human being. And he was timid with tenderness toward her and could not have done a thing against her, and he felt ashamed even to wonder if she was beautiful or not.

“I’m dead tired, for we haven’t slept at all,” Vera said; “let’s say good-bye.”

“Don’t worry,” Chagatayev answered. “I’m going away soon; let’s be together a little longer.”

They walked on farther, covering long streets, and at one spot they stopped.

“Here’s where I live,” Vera said and she pointed to a big building.

“Let’s go to your place. You can lie down and rest, and I’ll sit with you and then I’ll go.”

Vera stood still in embarrassment.

“Well, all right,” she said, and she invited him in.

She had a big room with the usual furniture, but the room looked somehow sad, with its blinds pulled down, boring, and almost empty.

Vera took off her summer raincoat and Chagatayev noticed that she was heavier than she had seemed. Then Vera began to rummage around for something to feed her guest, while Chagatayev inspected an ancient double picture hanging over this woman’s bed. It was the picture of a dream, when the earth was thought to be flat, and heaven close to it. A large man stood on the earth, punched a hole with his head in the dome of heaven and leaned out with his shoulders on the other side, into the strange infinity of that age, and looked into it. And he had looked for so long a time into that unknown, alien space that he had forgotten about the rest of his body, left below the ordinary sky. The same scene was painted in the other half of the picture, but with the rest of his body. The man’s body was worn out, he had grown thin and, probably, died, and his withered head was rolling down in that other world—on the outside surface of the sky, which looked like a tin basin—the head of a seeker after a new infinity where there really is no end and from where there is no returning to the poor, flat place, the earth.

But all this now seemed to Chagatayev hateful and uninteresting. With a frightened heart, he put his arm around Vera as she stooped down near him to get something, and he drew her to himself strongly and carefully, as if he wanted to nestle as closely to her as he could, to warm himself and to grow calm again. Vera understood him right away, and did not push him off. She straightened up, held his head below her own, and began to caress his black, stiff hair, while she looked off to one side, turning her face away. Her tears dropped on to Chagatayev’s head and dried there. Vera was crying quietly, trying not to change the expression on her face, so that she wouldn’t sob.

“You see, I’m pregnant,” she said.

“That’s all right!” Chagatayev answered, forgiving her everything, as brave as a man condemned to death.

“No!” Vera said sadly, covering her face with the end of her sleeve to dry her eyes and hide her crying. “No. I can’t do anything.”

Chagatayev released her. It was enough for him just to be near her, to hold her hand, and ask her why she was crying—from grief or from outrage.

“My husband has just died,” Vera said. “And it’s so hard, you know, to forget the dead. The child, when he’s born, will never see his father, and having only a mother will not be much for him…. Isn’t that true, not much at all?”

“Not much,” Chagatayev agreed. “Now I will be his father.”

He embraced her, and they went to sleep while it was light, and the noise of building Moscow, of drilling into its depths, of citizens quarreling as they rode along the streets—all of this died away in their ears; they held each other in their arms, and each of them heard through sleep the toneless, gentle breathing of the other.

Toward evening, not long before the end of the working day in government institutions, they registered their marriage in the nearest marriage bureau. They stood between two large bouquets of flowers; the clerk in charge of the bureau congratulated them in a short speech, suggested that they kiss each other as a pledge of lifelong fidelity, and advised them to have many children so that the revolutionary generation might be extended into times eternal. Chagatayev kissed Vera twice, and said good-bye to the clerk in a friendly way while he thought to himself that it would have been good if the clerk had kissed Vera, too, and not limited himself to his professional duties.

Every evening after that day Chagatayev went to visit Vera, and she waited for him and was glad when he arrived. First, they embraced each other, Chagatayev holding Vera very carefully, protecting the child of the dead father. Then they would go out for a walk, arm in arm, along the streets, looking attentively at the store windows as if they were preparing to buy a great deal, studying the sky, and not overlooking any of the little things which took place around them, as if things were so hard for the heart in a time of loving that it had to be diverted constantly with trifles so it would not feel its heavy work.