Andrei Platonov - The Fierce and Beautiful World

The father was silent, and then he struck a match, to light his pipe.

“What are you saying, Alyosha, what are you saying!” the mother said loudly. “I’ve brought the children up, they were hardly sick at all, and I’ve fed them…”

“Well, and what of it!” the father said. “Others left as many as four children behind, and they didn’t live badly, and the children grew up no worse than ours. But look at what kind of man you’ve let Petrushka grow into—he makes decisions like a grandfather but he’s probably forgotten how to read.”

Petrushka sighed on top of the stove, and he went on snoring carefully so he could go on listening. “All right,” he thought, “so I’m a grandfather, but it was all right for you with your meals all fixed for you…”

“But he’s been learning what’s hard and what’s important in life,” the mother said. “And he’s not behind in reading and writing.”

“Just who is he, anyway, this Semyon of yours? You could at least try to fool me by talking about him,” the father said angrily.

“He’s a good man.”

“You love him, don’t you?”

“Alyosha, I’m the mother of two children…”

“Well, go on, give me a straight answer!”

“I love you, Alyosha. I’m a mother, and it was a long time ago that I was a woman, and only with you, I’ve already forgotten when that was.”

The father was silent, smoking his pipe in the darkness.

“I missed you, Alyosha…. It’s true, the children were here, but they were no substitute for you, and I kept on waiting for you through those long, terrible years. I didn’t want to wake up in the mornings.”

“What does he do for a trade? Where does he work?”

“He works in the materials supply division at our factory.”

“Of course. A swindler.”

“He’s not a swindler. I don’t know… His whole family was Trilled in Mogilyev, he had three children and his daughter was already married.”

“That didn’t matter, he just took another family instead, one already prepared… and the old lady not so old, pretty good-looking too, so life was nice and cosy for him again.”

The mother made no answer. It was quiet, but soon Petrushka . heard his mother crying.

“He used to talk to the children about you, Alyosha,” the mother said, and Petrushka could tell from the voice that her eyes were full of big tears. “He used to tell them how you were fighting there for us, and suffering…. They would ask him: but why? and he would tell them: because you are a good man…”

The father laughed, and knocked the embers out of his pipe.

“So that’s the kind he is, your Semyon! Never saw me in his life, but gives me his blessing. That’s a character for you!”

“He never saw you. He made it all up on purpose, so the children wouldn’t forget you, so they’d love their father.”

“But just why, why did he need to do that? So that he could get you quicker? Just tell me, why did he do it?”

“Maybe he just had a good heart, Alyosha, that’s why. Why not?”

“You’re stupid, Lyuba. Forgive me, please. Everything has to be paid for.”

“But Semyon Yevseyevich always brought something to the children, every time he’d bring them candy, or white flour, or sugar, and just the other day he brought Nastya some felt boots but they didn’t fit—they were too small. And he didn’t ask anything from us for himself. We didn’t need anything either, Alyosha, and we’d have got along without it, we’re used to it, but he’d say he felt better inside himself when he was worrying about other people, then he didn’t grieve so much for his own family, all murdered. You’ll see him—this isn’t the way you think it is…”

“This is all some kind of nonsense,” the father said. “Don’t try to fool me… I’m tired of it, Lyuba, but I still want to» live…”

“Live with us, Alyosha.”

“I’m to live with you, and you’d live with Semyon?”

“No, I won’t, Alyosha. He won’t come here ever again, I’ll tell, him not to come any more.”

“So. That means there really was something between you, since: you now say there won’t be any longer. Ah, what a woman you. are, Lyuba! All you women are the same.”

“And just what are you?” the mother asked, offended. “What: does that mean—we’re all the same? I’m not…. I’ve worked day and night, we’ve been making fire-resistant bricks for the lining of locomotive fireboxes. I’ve got so thin in the face people don’t recognize me, even beggars don’t ask me for alms…. It’s been hard for me, too, with the children home alone. I’d come; home with the house not heated, nothing cooked, all dark, with the children unhappy, they couldn’t learn right off to take care of the. house themselves, the way they do now. Petrushka was little, too. And that’s when Semyon Yevseyevich started to come to see us.. He’d come, and sit with the children, because he lived all alone… ‘May I come and visit you,’ he asks me, ‘and get warm in your house?’ I tell him that it’s cold here, too, and our firewood is green and he answers me: ‘Never mind, it’s my spirit that’s chilled, just let me sit next to your children and you won’t have to light a fire for me.’ I said: ‘All right, come in for a while. With you here, it won’t be so frightening for the children.’ Then I got used to him, too, and we all felt better when he showed up. I’d look at him, and. remember you, that we had you…. It was so evil and sad here without you, let somebody come by, then it won’t be so lonely, and the time will go quicker. What good was time to us, when you weren’t here?”

“And then, then what happened?” the father asked hurriedly.

“Then nothing happened. And now you’ve come, Alyosha.”

“Well then, it’s all right, if that’s the way it was,” the father said. “It’s time to sleep.”

But the mother interrupted the father: “Let’s wait before we sleep. Let’s talk a little, I’m so happy with you back.”

“They can’t settle down any which way,” Petrushka thought on top of the stove. “They’ve made up, and that’s good; Mother has to get up early to go to work, but she’s still up. She hasn’t cheered up yet, but at least she’s stopped crying.”

“Did this Semyon love you?” the father asked.

“Wait. I’m going to tuck in Nastya, or she’ll throw the blanket off in her sleep, and freeze.”

The mother put a blanket on Nastya, and then walked into the kitchen and stood next to the stove to hear if Petrushka was sleeping. Petrushka understood this, and went on carefully snoring. Then his mother went back again, and he heard her voice:

“He probably loved me. He looked at me tenderly, I noticed that, but what was I—am I any good even now? Things weren’t easy for him, Alyosha, and he had to have somebody to love.”

“You might as well have kissed him, once your problem got so complicated,” the father said good-naturedly.

“Well, what do you think! He did kiss me twice, although I didn’t want to.”

“Why did he do it then, if you didn’t want to?”

“I don’t know. He said he just forgot, and then he remembered his wife, and I look a little like his wife.”

“And does he look like me?”

“No, he’s not like you. Nobody’s like you, you’re the only one, Alyosha.”

“I’m the one, you say. But that’s where counting starts—one, then comes two…”

“And he only kissed me on the cheek, not on the lips.”

“It doesn’t make any difference—where.”

“Yes, it does make a difference, Alyosha. What can you understand about how we lived?”

“What do you mean? I’ve fought all through the war, I’ve seen death a lot closer than you have…”