Andrei Platonov - The Fierce and Beautiful World

“Why do you have tears in your eyes?” Vera asked Chagatayev on the day of his departure for his own country.

“I was thinking of my mother, and how she used to smile at me when I was little.”

“Well, how was that?”

Chagatayev was flustered.

“I don’t remember…. She was happy for me and she was mourning me—people don’t smile like that now. With her, tears ran down her happy face.”

His mother had told Nazar that her husband, Kochmat, had not beaten her when he learned that Nazar was not his son but the son of a Russian soldier, nor had he become bitter at her, but just withdrawn and hostile to everybody. He went off by himself a great distance to catch his breath there from his sorrow; then he had come back and he had loved Gulchatai just as he had before.

Nazar Chagatayev went for a walk with Vera for the last time. That evening a train would take him to Asia. Vera had already fixed everything for his long trip: she had darned his socks, sewed on all his buttons, she had ironed his linen herself, and she tried out and tested all his things several times, caressing them and envying them because they were going away with her husband.

On the street Vera asked Chagatayev to go with her to a friend’s house. Maybe in a half hour’s time he would stop loving her forever.

They walked into a big apartment. Vera introduced her husband to an old woman and asked her:

“What’s Ksenya doing? Is she home, or somewhere else?”

“She’s home, she’s home. She just came in,” the housekeeper said.

A black-haired girl between thirteen and fifteen was sitting in a big, disordered room. She was reading a book, and twisting the end of her braided hair in her hand.

“Mama!” the girl shouted in delight to her mother as she walked in.

“Hello, Ksenya,” Vera said. “This is my daughter,” and she introduced the girl to Chagatayev.

Chagatayev shook her strange hand, childlike and feminine; the hand was sticky and dirty, because children do not learn cleanliness right away.

Ksenya smiled. She did not look like her mother—she had the regular face of a young person, a little sad and pale from the fatigue of growing. Her eyes had different colors—one was black, the other blue—which gave her whole face a meek expression, as if Chagatayev were looking at some regrettable and delicate abnormality. Only her mouth spoiled Ksenya—it had already grown thick, the lips were full, as if they were always thirsty for drink, and it was as if some strong, destructive plant were bursting through the innocent silence of her skin.

All of them were silent in the ill-defined situation, although Ksenya had already guessed what it was all about.

“Do you live here?” Chagatayev asked the girl.

“Yes, with my papa’s mother,” Ksenya said.

“And where is your papa, is he dead?”

Vera was at one side, looking out of the window at Moscow.

Ksenya laughed.

“No, what are you saying! My papa is young, he’s living in the Far East, and he builds bridges. He has already built two.”

“Big bridges?” Chagatayev asked.

“Big ones… One of them is a suspension bridge, another With two supporting piers and with sunken caissons, they’ve disappeared forever, they’re lost!” Ksenya said happily. “I’ve got photographs of it from the newspaper.”

“And does your papa love you?”

“No, he loves some strangers, he doesn’t want to love Mama and me.”

They talked some more: Chagatayev felt a confused regret inside his heart; he sat there with the light, sad feeling of being asleep, or traveling somewhere. Forgetting ordinary life, he took Ksenya’s hand in his, and held it, not letting go.

Ksenya sat there in terror and amazement, her different-colored eyes looked out poignantly, like two people who are very close but do not know each other. Her mother, Vera, stood apart, quietly smiling at her daughter and her husband.

“Isn’t it time for you to go to the station?” she asked.

“No, I’m not going today,” Chagatayev said. He felt an attachment to Ksenya, a feeling of human kinship and of anxiety about what would be best for her. He wanted to be a protecting strength for her, a father, and an eternal memory in her heart.

Excusing himself, Chagatayev went out for a half hour, bought various things at Mostorg, and brought them back as presents for Ksenya. If he hadn’t done this, he would have regretted it for a long time.

Ksenya was delighted by the presents, but not her mother.

“Ksenya has only two dresses, and her last shoes have gone to pieces,” Vera said. “For her father doesn’t send us a thing, and I have only just started to work…. Why did you buy all this nonsense? What need does a girl have for expensive perfume, or a suede bag, or some kind of gay-colored bedspread?”

“Now, Mama, never mind, let it go!” Ksenya said. “They’ll give me a dress for free at the children’s theater, I’m an activist there, and the Young Pioneers will be giving out mountain-climbing boots soon, so I won’t need shoes. Let me keep the bag and the bedspread.”

“It all makes no sense,” Vera complained. “And he needs the money himself, he has a long way to go.”

“I’ve got enough,” Chagatayev said. He took out four hundred rubles more, and left them for Ksenya’s board.

The girl walked up to him. She thanked Chagatayev, holding her hand out to him, and she said:

“I’ll soon be able to give you presents. I’ll be rich soon!”

Chagatayev kissed her, and said good-bye.

“Nazar, do you love me any more?” Vera said when they were out on the street. “Let’s go and get a divorce, before you’ve gone away…. You saw—Ksenya’s my daughter, you’re the third one for me, and I’m thirty-four years old.”

Vera fell silent. Nazar Chagatayev was amazed.

“Why don’t I love you? Didn’t you love those other men?”

“I loved them. The second one died, and I still cry for him when I’m alone. The first one deserted me and the girl, I loved him, too, and I was, faithful to him…. And I’ve had to live long times without a man, go out to happy evening parties, and put paper flowers on my own head.”

“But why don’t I love you?”

“You love Ksenya, I know…. She’ll be eighteen, and you thirty, maybe a little more. You’ll get married. Just don’t lie to me, and don’t get upset. I’m used to losing people.”

Chagatayev stood in front of this woman, not understanding anything. What was strange to him was not her grief but the fact that she believed that she was doomed to loneliness although he had married her and shared her lot. She was clinging to her grief, and was in no hurry to squander it. It meant that in the deepest part of a person’s reason or of his heart there exists an enemy force which darkens one’s life even in the embrace of loving arms, even under the kisses of one’s children.

“Is this why you wouldn’t live with me?” Chagatayev asked.

“Yes, this is why. For you didn’t know I had a daughter like that, you thought—that 1 was younger, and purer…”

“Well, and what of it? It all makes no difference to me.”

They walked quietly back to Vera’s room. She stood in the middle of her dwelling place, without taking off her raincoat, indifferent and alien to everything, to the people and the things around her. At this moment she would have given away all her belongings to her neighbors; such a good deed would have comforted her a little, and diminished her suffering.

“Well, and how can I go on living now?” Vera asked, talking to herself.

Chagatayev understood Vera. He put his arms around her, and held her for a long time, in order to soothe her if only with his own warmth, because suffering which has been invented is the most inconsolable of all and does not surrender to any words.