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male habit I have of observing other people's tables. Our eyes happened to
meet and I had to say hullo. It had seemed to me that he was firmly enough
established at his own table. But he relinquished it with unexpected ease
and, smiling joyfully, headed in my direction.
"Hullo, chum! How's the old country?" he bellowed from a distance.
I put on a stern expression but it was too late. There are some people
you need only ask for a light and they'll be addressing you as "chum" and
talking about "the old country" for the rest of your life.
I decided to allow no familiarity whatever and certainly none of his
hail-fellow-well-met stuff. He fairly soon exhausted his wretched assortment
of softening-up devices and in an offhand manner popped the fateful
question.
"I'm out of cash," I said with a sigh, and made a rather feeble
pretence of slapping my pockets, actually tapping my purse in doing so. The
would-be borrower looked de pressed. I rejoiced at having shown firmness
and, in a sudden desire to palliate my refusal, found myself saying, "Of
course, if you are very badly in need, I could borrow some from a friend."
"That's fine," he perked up immediately. "Why don't you give him a
ring? I don't mind waiting."
He sat down at my table. Events were moving in direction I had not
foreseen.
"He lives a long way from here," I said, trying to damp his unexpected
enthusiasm and restore the original state of depression.
"That's all right," he replied airily, refusing to have his enthusiasm
damped or to succumb to his former dispiritedness. "I'll have a cup of
coffee while I'm waiting." And he took a cigarette from the packet I had
left lying on the table, as though surrendering himself entirely to my care.
"But I've just ordered a meal," I said, unconsciously switching to
defence.
"You'll be there and back before they serve you. And if the worst comes
to the worst, I can eat it and you'll order another one."
In short, the battle was lost. It's no use trying to fight nature. If
you haven't the gift for impromptu Eying, it's better not to try.
I had to leave that warm cafe and go out into the slushy street. There
wasn't really anyone to ring up but I went round the corner and slipped into
a telephone booth.
I spent about fifteen minutes in that booth. First I took the required
sum of money out of my purse and put it in one pocket, then I took out the
cost of the meal and put that in another pocket. When I restored the purse
to its usual place, it was nearly empty.
After this I returned slowly to the cafe, trying to read some
newspapers that were on display in the street. But nothing I read made any
sense because I was afraid of mixing up my pockets and bringing down on my
own head this whole edifice of lies, whose stability always proves to be an
illusion in the long run.
By the time I got back to the cafe he had finished off my dinner and
was about to start on my coffee. I gave him the money and he put it in his
pocket without counting it. I realised at once that its return journey to my
pocket would be hard and long. It was.
"I've ordered you some coffee," he said considerately. "They're
bringing it now."
There was nothing for me to do but drink the coffee because my appetite
had quite disappeared. The waitress brought the coffee and the bill with it.
When I had paid for my dinner, which he had eaten, he gave her a generous
tip, as if to make up for my churlishness while he himself presented an
image of bored but noble opulence.
Yes, all borrowers are like that. They usher you into a taxi, allowing
you to enter first and exit last, so as not to get in your way while you are
paying.
Shakespeare said that loan oft loses both itself and friend. My
experience was the opposite, or rather, I certainly lost my money but I
gained a dubious kind of friend.
One day I told him that everyone is in Great Debt to society. He agreed
with me. Then I added cautiously that the concept of Great Debt is in fact
made up of a multitude of small debts, which we are obliged to honour, even
if at times they may appear onerous. But with this he would not agree. He
observed that the concept of Great Debt is not a multitude of small debts
but, on the contrary, a Great Debt with capital letters, which one cannot
fritter away without running the risk of becoming a vulgariser. What was
more, he detected in my understanding of Great Debt certain traces of the
theory of small deeds, which had long since been condemned by progressive
Russian critics. I decided that the cost of reducing this fortress would
exceed any tribute I might exact when it was conquered, and left him in
peace.
But now here is a remarkable fact. It is easier to refuse a loan to the
scrupulously honest than to people with what I would call a mini-conscience.
When we refuse the former we comfort ourselves with the thought that our
refusal is not motivated by the fear of losing money.
Life is much more difficult with habitual spongers. When we lend to
them we know that we risk losing our money, and they know that we know the
risk we are taking. This gives rise to a delicate situation. Our refusal
appears to undermine the man's reputation. We insult him by treating him as
a potential extortioner.
About one man who borrowed off me I have a longer tale to tell. I will
not conceal the fact that besides the purely abstract aim of research I want
to use this story to make good some of my philanthropic losses and also to
scare some other borrowers with the possibility of exposure in print. There
are not really so many of them. Out of a population of over two hundred
million, only about seven or eight altogether. Only a tiny percentage, in
fact. And yet how pleasant to know that you have awakened someone's
conscience while at the same time recovering your long-lost money. If you
ask me, there's nothing more timely than an unexpectedly repaid debt, and
nothing more unexpected than a debt repaid on time. That's not such a bad
phrase, is it? On the whole, I find that when we start talking about our
losses, our voices acquire a note of genuine inspiration.
It all began when I received at a certain place quite a large sum of
money. I won't say what place it was because you wouldn't be able to get
anything there in any case.
Succumbing to the general craze, I decided to acquire my own means of
transport. I rejected the idea of a car at once. For one thing, you have to
have a licence. Well, of course, some people buy licences. But that, I
think, is just silly. First you buy a car, then a licence, and one day you
have an accident and lose both the car and the licence, if you have the luck
to get off so lightly. Besides, I had only about a fifth of the money needed
to buy a car.
For all of these reasons I gave up the idea of owning a car. From the
four-wheeled vehicle of my imagination I removed one wheel and the result
was a comfortable three-wheeled motor-cycle and sidecar.
After mature reflection, however, I decided that a motor-cycle and
sidecar would not suit me either, because of its incurable lack of symmetry.
I knew that this lopsidedness would irritate me and that in the end I should
have to dispose of the sidecar with the aid of a roadside post.
Eventually I plumped for a bicycle and bought one. I found it had all
kinds of advantages. A bicycle is the lightest, the quietest and the most
reliable means of transport. What was more, I would be saving on petrol
because its motive power would be supplied by my own energy. I would be
entirely self-supporting, so to speak.
For about a month I rode about on my bicycle and was pleased as Punch
with it. But one day when I was cycling along at full speed, a bus suddenly
came out of a turning ahead of me. Half-dead with fear, I swerved from under
its fire-breathing radiator, rode up on to the pavement and from there, with
no reduction of speed, crashed into a watchmaker's shop.
"What's happened?!" shouted one of the watchmakers, jumping to his feet
and dropping a Yerevan alarm clock, which rolled about the floor emitting a
noise like an oriental tambourine.
"I shall claim repairs under the guarantee," I said in a calm voice, as
I came to a sudden stop against the cash desk.
"He's a nut," the girl at the desk was the first to offer a solution,
and slammed the pay window shut in a hurry.
I came to my senses and, so as not to dispel this favourable
impression, silently wheeled my bicycle out of the shop. Out of the corner
of my eye I noticed that one of the watchmakers had let the magnifying glass
drop out of his eye. For some reason it occurred to me that the watchmaker's
magnifying glass and the aristocrat's monocle have a strange similarity of
purpose. A watchmaker uses his glass to magnify tiny mechanisms while the
man who wears a monocle probably thinks he is doing the same thing with
people.
On the way home I was struck by the thought that while walking along
beside a bicycle it is easier and safer to surrender oneself to one's dreams
than while mounted on the saddle, and so I decided not to use my bicycle any
more. After all, for a cyclist to compete with a bus is like a featherweight
going into the ring with a heavyweight champion.
When I got home, I put my bicycle into the shed and forgot all about
it.
About a month later a distant relative of mine paid us a visit and
reminded me of it. In general, if a distant relative you haven't seen for a
long time pays you a visit, you may expect no good to come of it. You have
probably spent years of hard work establishing yourself while he has been
gallivanting about God knows where. And then, when you have made your way in
life and even acquired a bicycle of your own, he turns up bold as brass,
grins at you with a whole mouthful of teeth and wants to start up a great
family fellowship.
Imagine a stocky, thick-set man, in a fireproof leather jacket, with a
rough powerful handshake. He has a job in town at a filling station and he
lives in a village ten kilometres out of town. He is still a peasant and yet
already a worker. He embodies in one person both the victorious classes.
And here in front of me stands this Vanechka Mamba, and such a store of
vital energy bursts from every fold in his leather jacket, radiates from his
lustrous eyes, from his firm, strong teeth, close-set as the bullet pouches
down the front of a Circassian coat, that it seems he could quite easily
drink a beer mug full of petrol and smoke a cigarette afterwards without
doing himself any harm at all.
"Hullo there," he says, and grips my hand. The real rugged handshake of
a man of great will power.
"Hullo," I say, "if it isn't Vanechka! Where have you been all this
time?"
"I hear you want to sell a bike. I want to buy it."
I don't know what gave him the idea I wanted to sell my bicycle. I
never suspected he knew of its existence. But Vanechka Mamba is one of those
people who know more about you than you know about yourself. Still, why not
sell it? I thought. It's a very good chance.
"Yes, it's up for sale," I said.
"How much?"
"Have a look at it first."
"I've had a look," he said, and grinned. "I noticed the shed was open."
The bike had cost about eight hundred in old money. I dropped a hundred
for wear and tear.
"Seven hundred."
"No go."
"How much then?"
"Three hundred."
Now we're going to strike a bargain, I thought. One of us will move up
and the other will move down. At some point our interests must coincide.
"All right," I said, "six hundred."
"You're talking through your hat," he said. "Three hundred roubles
don't grow on trees."
"But a bicycle does, of course?"
"Who rides a bicycle nowadays? Only the village postman."
"Why are you buying it then?"
"I have a long way to go to work. I just want it temporarily, till I
buy a car."
"Going to buy a car and you haggle over the price of a bicycle."
"That's one reason why I'll be able to buy the car."
What was the use of arguing? That was Vanechka Mamba all over, quite a
well-known character in our town, particularly among drivers.
"How much will you give me for it then?" I asked.
"What I said. You won't take it to market, will you?"
"No, I won't."
"And no second-hand shop would accept it either."
"All right, then," I said, "you can have it for four hundred, since you
seem to know all about it."
"All right," said Vanechka, "I'll take it for three fifty, to make it
fair all round. After all, we're related."
"To hell with you," I said. "Take it for three fifty. But how did you
know I was selling my bicycle?"
"I saw the way you were riding it. That one won't be riding for long, I
said to myself. Either he'll smash himself up or he'll sell it."
Vanechka cast a thrifty eye round the room and gave another smile with
those bullet teeth of his.
"Got anything else to sell?"
"No," I said. "You've done well enough as it is."
We went out on to the porch. I stood on the steps and he went down into
the yard and wheeled the bicycle out of the shed.
"Where's the pump?"
"Some kids pinched it."
"And you had the nerve to bargain!" Vanechka got on the bicycle and
rode round the yard, lecturing me. "You'd better have a lock put on that
shed. I'll bring you a good padlock."
"Never mind the lock," I said. "You give me the money."
"Next Sunday I'll sell my pears and bring it over." And he rode
straight out of the yard without even getting off the bicycle.
I didn't like the look of that. But what could you do? After all he was
my relative, though a very distant one. I've said it before and I'll say it
again: one close friend is better than a dozen distant relatives. But this
is not widely understood, particularly in our part of the world.
I met him in the street a week later.
"Well, have you sold your pears?"
"Yes, but you know how it is. The harvest was so good this year it
would have been better to keep them for feeding the pigs."
"Didn't you make anything on them?"
"About enough to dress my womenfolk. You know yourself I've got five
daughters. And my wife's pregnant again. They're ruining me, the bitches."
"Why torture your wife like this?" I said. "Give it a rest."
"I need a boy," he said. "As for the money, I won't let you down. The
grapes will be ripe soon, then the persimmon, and after that the tangerines.
I'll make ends meet somehow."
"Well, get on with it," I said.
And so we parted. You have to be considerate with people who owe you
money. You have to pamper them. Sometimes you even have to spread a rumour
about how honest and reliable they are.
The grape season came and went, then the persimmon and after that the
tangerines, but Vanechka still did not appear.
Quite by chance I heard that his wife had again given birth to a girl
and I decided to remind him of my existence by means of a congratulatory
letter. You know the sort of thing. Congratulations on your new daughter.
Come and see me some time. I'm still living in the same place. We'll sit
together over a bottle of wine and have a chat.
The reply came a week later. What terrible handwriting you have, it
said. My eldest daughter could hardly make it out. Thanks for the
congratulations. My wife has given me another daughter. I'm properly mixed
up now with the names. Now they have gone and installed electricity in our
village. That means another thing to be paid for. But I have not forgotten
my debt. Don't worry, Vanechka Mamba will get out of it somehow. And at the
end of the letter he wanted to know whether I had bought a padlock yet for
the shed. If I hadn't he would bring me one.
Well, I thought, that's goodbye to my money. I did not see him again
till the following summer. By that time I had almost forgotten the debt.
I happened to be walking round the market one day when someone called
out to me. I looked round and there was Vanechka Mamba, standing behind a
mountain of watermelons. He had one great chunk in his mouth and was
crunching it with his gleaming teeth.
"Mamba water-melons!" he was shouting. "Come and get 'em before I eat
the lot myself!"
A woman asked me what kind of water-melon this was--the Mamba.
"Don't you know Mamba water-melons?" Vanechka exclaimed with a laugh
and, spearing a succulent slice with his knife, pushed it under the woman's
nose.
"I don't want to try it. I was just asking," the woman protested,
turning away in embarrassment.
"I don't want you to buy it. All I'm asking is for you to taste a Mamba
water-melon!" Vanechka almost sobbed.
In the end the woman had a taste and, once having had a taste, felt she
had better buy one. Every water-melon had a letter "M" carved on it, like a
trade mark.
"What are these tagged atoms?" I said.
"An old chap and me, we brought these water-melons in from the village
together. So I marked mine to make sure they didn't get mixed up."
He burst out laughing and, before I could remind him of his debt,
pushed into my hands a weighty water-melon. I tried to refuse, but he
admonished me sternly:
"We're relatives, aren't we? They're straight from our allotment. Home
grown! Not from a shop!"
I had to take it. It's rather awkward to remind someone of a debt when
you are holding a water-melon he has just given you, so I let it pass. To
hell with it, I thought, at least I've got a water-melon in exchange for a
bicycle.
Later I heard that he had swindled that old man properly. While they
were riding to town perched on their water melons in the back of the lorry,
the old chap had dozed off and Vanechka with his pirate's knife had marked
about twenty of the old man's melons with his own initial. So that's what a
Mamba water-melon is!
Six months later I happened to call at a filling station with a friend
of mine. My friend wanted some petrol for his car. And there was Vanechka
busy hosing down a large Volga car, his face creased in an expression of
sullen solicitude.
"Hullo, Vanechka," I said. "What are you now--a car washer?"
"Ah, hullo there," he said. He turned off his hose and came over to me.
"Do you mean to say you haven't heard?"
"What should I have heard?"
"I've bought a Volga. This is my Volga."
"Good for you," I said. "You're a man of your word."
"And he calls himself a relative," Vanechka complained to my friend.
"When he bought a bicycle I got to know about it at once. And yet when I buy
a Volga he doesn't know a thing. It isn't fair, is it?"
"You'd better not mention that bicycle," I said.
"Why not?" he said. "I'll pay you for it, though it was a rotten old
bike, with its pump missing too. But just at the moment I've started
building a house and I'm up to my neck in debt. As soon as I've finished
building I'll pay up all round."
"I suppose you use it to carry fruit?" I said.
"I should say I do. And it's ruining me! The traffic inspectors are
crazy these days. Either they won't take a bribe at all or else they want so
much it's not worth the journey."
When we had driven away, my friend said, "That Vanechka of yours is
working a fiddle on petrol. He'll get caught."
"Let him," I said, although I was sure he would not be caught.
Some time later I met a mutual acquaintance.
"Have you heard? Vanechka Mamba's been taken to hospital in a very bad
state."
"What happened?" I said. "Did the filling station blow up?"
"No," he said. "He fell into a lime pit. You knew he was building a
house, didn't you?"
"Never mind," I said. "Vanechka will get out of it somehow."
"No, he won't. He's a goner."
Vanechka was in hospital for about a month. I was going to visit him
but felt awkward about it somehow. He might think I had come for my money.
Then I heard he was up and about again. He had wriggled out of yet another
tight corner. I had been quite sure he would. He had far too many dealings
to occupy him in this world, and some of them were the kind you couldn't
delegate to anyone else. No one else could have coped.
A year passed. One day I received an invitation to the country.
Vanechka had a double occasion to celebrate--his house-warming and the birth
of a son.
I've seen enough of these celebrations. There are usually two or three
hundred guests and they don't sit down to table till about midnight. What
with all the preparations and waiting for the bosses to arrive. But the main
thing is the presents. They have a village spokesman standing in the middle
of the yard and a girl sitting at a table beside him, licking her pencil and
writing down in an exercise book exactly who brings what. Some of the
presents are in cash, but most of them are in kind.
"A vase, lovely as the moon," bawls the spokesman, holding it high
above his head and displaying it to all the guests. "As pure and clear as
the conscience of our dear guest," he adds inventively.
"A Russian eiderdown," he shouts, displaying the eiderdown with a
flourish. "Big enough to cover a regiment," he comments brazenly, though the
eiderdown is of quite ordinary size.
The people from the River Bzyb are outstanding in this respect. They
can't open their mouths without exaggerating. While the master of ceremonies
holds forth, the guest stands in front of him, his head bowed in comical
modesty. Actually he is keeping an eye on the girl, to make sure she writes
down his first and second names correctly. He then joins the onlookers and
the master of ceremonies starts singing the praises of the next gift.
"A tablecloth fit for royalty," shouts this glib-tongued individual and
whirls the tablecloth into the air, as some rustic demon might whirl his
cloak. In a word, it has to be seen to be believed. Of course, if you come
without a present you won't be turned away, but a certain climate of opinion
is created. I didn't go. But I did send him a letter of congratulation, not
hinting at anything.
One day I was standing in the station square of one of our smaller
towns and wondering how best to get home. Should I take the train or try
hitch-hiking?
I heard someone call my name, and there was Vanechka, poking his head
out of his Volga.
"How did you get here?"
"Business. What about you?"
"Been on a trip to Sochi. Get in and I'll give you a lift."
I got in beside him and we started off. The air in the car was heavy
with the persistent subtropical scent of illegally transported fruit. I had
not seen Vanechka since his spell in hospital. He had scarcely changed at
all, except that his face had lost a little of its colour, as though someone
had dried it out with blotting paper. But he was still as cheerful as ever,
with those gleaming teeth of his.
"I got your letter," he said. "We had a grand binge. Pity you didn't
come."
"How did you manage to fall into that lime pit?"
"Oh, that? I'd rather not think about it. Nearly took off for the other
world then. You can consider I've been there already. Still, it was thanks
to that pit I got me a son.
"How so?"
"I reckon I didn't have enough lime in my body for a boy."
"You had plenty of lime all right."
"No, I mean it. Maybe I've made a scientific discovery. Write an
article about it in one of your magazines and we'll go halves on the money.
But they wouldn't print your stuff."
"Why not?" I asked guardedly.
"Your handwriting's no good. They wouldn't be able to read it."
"Why don't you stop ribbing me and tell me how you're getting on."
"Well, how shall I put it," he drawled, and with one hand flicked on
the dashboard radio, picked up some jazz, tuned in and left it playing
softly.
"There's no proper order anywhere," he declared suddenly. "That's
what's wrong."
"What makes you so worried about order all of a sudden?"
"I've just been taking some tangerines to Sochi. Four inspectors in two
hundred kilometres! Do you call that order? And don't interrupt," he added,
though I had no intention of interrupting. "Three of them accept and the
fourth refuses. Call that order? Can't they come to some agreement between
them! Either they accept or they don't, all of them. I can't tell him I've
settled up with the other three, can I? That's dishonest, isn't it?"
"Of course, it is," I said, and I thought to myself what a funny thing
this honesty is. Everyone cuts it down to suit his own needs, but the
amazing thing is that no one can do without it.
"Now look here, Vanechka," I said. "You've got a car, you've got a
house, you've got a son. Now give up this racket. What more do you want?"
"Hives," he said. "I want some hives."
"What kind of hives?"
"Bee-hives. My orchard's being sucked dry by other people's bees. I'd
rather have some of my own. I want to give it a try."
"Try it by all means. You seem to have tried everything."
"Do you know of a good bee-keeper?"
"No, I don't."
We were silent for a while. But Vanechka is not the man to keep quiet,
unless there's some hush money going.
"What's this campaign they've started about houses?"
"Why? Are they getting at you?"
"You know what a lot of envy there is about. People keep complaining.
How did he get this house, this car.... The chairman has had me up on the
mat already."
"Well?"
"When a commission or a delegation comes round, I told him, you bring
them to my place, don't you? Here's a well-to-do peasant, you say. And now
you want to sell me down the river?"
"What did he say to that?"
"He said he had his own responsibilities to face...."
We never finished our conversation. Something quite unexpected
happened.
We had been travelling fast but, despite the bends in our mountain
roads, I felt I had nothing to worry about. Vanechka had done five years as
a driver in the army and he had excellent road sense. We were just entering
the town but he did not reduce speed. Suddenly a woman ran out of a bus
queue opposite the station and bolted like a mad sheep across the road. Too
late, I thought and even as the thought crossed my mind I heard the scream
of brakes, the hiss of abraded rubber, the shouts of the crowd. The car hit
the woman, knocked her to one side and stopped.
Some people ran up to the woman, picked her up and helped her off the
road. Her face was pale and wooden. But all of a sudden she began to shake
her fists and angrily push her helpers away.
A lad ran up to the car, glanced inside and bawled, "What are you
waiting for, Vanechka? Step on it!"
Vanechka backed the car, drove round the station square, swung out on
to the main road and put on such a turn of speed that the oncoming
headlights flashed past us like meteors. We kept up this dizzy speed for
about ten minutes and I was expecting at any moment that we should depart
for a spot that Vanechka might perhaps wriggle out of but not I.
"Are you crazy," I shouted. "Slow down!"
I glanced round. A traffic inspector was chasing us on his motor-cycle.
Vanechka swung into a side street and we went bouncing along a cobbled road.
The motor-cycle disappeared for a moment only to reappear a few seconds
later at the end of the block. Vanechka turned into a dark little alley,
drove along it and jammed on his brakes so suddenly that I bumped my head on
the door I had been clinging to. Two steps from the car yawned a freshly dug
hole with a concrete pipe lying beside it. Vanechka tried to back out but
went into a skid. The roar of the motor-cycle swelled menacingly in our
ears, like fate itself.
A few seconds later the inspector pulled up beside us. He switched off
his engine and came over with the springy tread of a lion-tamer.
"Why were you exceeding the speed limit? Why didn't you stop at once?"
"I didn't hear your signal, old man." It transpired that the inspector
knew nothing of what had happened at the station. Nevertheless he was bent
on getting something down in his notebook and kept asking Vanechka
questions. Vanechka got out of the car. It was the first time I had seen him
in such an abject state. He begged and pleaded, he swore by all his
ancestors, he named mutual acquaintances. He argued that he and the
inspector were really both part of the same system. Then I noticed him
nodding significantly in my direction, obviously exaggerating the importance
of my person. He made it look almost as though he were driving me on special
instructions from the local government. I noticed myself assuming a rather
dignified air.
In the end Vanechka talked the inspector round. He escorted him to his
motor-cycle just as the local folk escort a man to his horse. I believe he
would have held his stirrup if there had been one on the motor-cycle.
"Why, that fellow's just a beggar!" Vanechka declared unexpectedly, as
soon as the traffic inspector had ridder away. It must have been a new
inspector, one he had not yet got to know.
He climbed into the car and lit a cigarette. I decided that I had had
enough adventures for one day and got out.
"Thanks," I said. "I haven't far to go now."
"Please yourself," he said and started the engine. "But what I told you
about order was right."
"What kind of order?" I asked, baffled.
"They dug up this street, didn't they? Did they put up a sign? Did they
show where the diversion was? Do you call that order?"
I spread my arms helplessly.
I could not leave before he had driven clear, so I waited. Vanechka put
the car into reverse and, while it backed slowly, with skidding tyres along
the street, I watched his resolute face with its harsh conquistador fold in
the cheek clearly illuminated by the state electricity of a street lamp.
Yes, that was Vanechka--grasping, insolent, always boisterously
cheerful. He was no fool, of course, but I would never advise anyone to take
their water-melons to market with him.
After being in the car it was particularly pleasant to walk. I have a
horror of road accidents, especially when pedestrians are involved. Thank
goodness no blood was shed. The woman must have been frightened rather than
hurt.
One day many years ago I was walking through Moscow feeling in rather
low spirits. I was just graduating from the institute and the faculty would
not accept my diploma thesis. There was something about it they didn't like.
It had frightened them somehow. Actually it was rather a silly piece of
work, but the heads of the faculty, and I myself for that matter, were slow
to realise this. Later on, when I had to defend it, its foolishness was
safely exposed and I got a good mark for it. But that day in the street I
was depressed. It was cold and slippery and there was wet ice on the
pavements. Suddenly I noticed a lorry backing out of a narrow passage
between two buildings. There were two little boys on the pavement, one about
eight, the other nearer four. At the sight of the approaching lorry the
elder boy abandoned the little one and ran to safety. I shouted at the top
of my voice. The little fellow heard nothing. He was watching the pigeons
and had lapsed into that state of profound meditation that is known only to
philosophers and children. He was so small that the end of the lorry had
already passed unhindered over his head. I managed to run up and drag him
away in time. Luckily the lorry had been moving very slowly, the driver
being particularly careful because of the ice.
The little boy never realised what had happened. He was warmly wrapped
up and only his fresh little face was visible under a fur hat with earflaps.
Neither mothers nor drivers are proof against all eventualities, and this is
where the pedestrians come in. And even they derive some benefit from such
incidents. At that moment I made up my mind once and for all that the
meaning of life did not lie in diploma work, nor even in the opinion of the
faculty, but in something else.
Perhaps, in being a decent kind of pedestrian? At bottom, all these
cars, aeroplanes, locomotives are really nothing but the children's
perambulators that we pedestrians either pull or push.
After sitting for so long in someone else's car it was a pleasant
relief to be walking on firm ground. The earth is always ours, no matter who
or what makes it spin. The main thing is the sense of freedom and peace it
gives us. You are not being moved by some external force, you are moving
yourself. And what's more, you cannot run anybody over. Of course, someone
may run you over, but then you could also be hit on the head by a falling
brick. The main thing is not to throw bricks about.
I walked home congratulating myself on never having bought a car, and
on having sold my bicycle.
I think our best thoughts occur to us when we are moving at a speed of
not more than five kilometres per hour.
--------
One hot summer day I was sitting near the pier eating ice-cream
sprinkled with broken nuts. That's the kind of ice-cream they sell here.
First they put firm little dollops in a metal dish, then sprinkle nuts on
top. I suppose I could have refused the nuts (peanuts, to be exact), but no
one else did, so I didn't either.
The girl at the ice-cream counter in her crisp white overall, looking
cool and therefore pleasant, was working silently, in a smooth, steady
rhythm. No one wanted to break this established rhythm. It was too hot and
we were all too lazy.
The flowering oleanders cast light shadows on the tables of the
open-air cafe. A salutary breeze from the sea drifted through their
straggling branches carrying a sweetish smell of decay from the tired pink
flowers. Through the oleanders I could see the pier and the sea.
Now and then anglers' boats would pass slowly, each with its home-made
trawl consisting of a basket on an iron hoop.
It was Saturday and they were catching shrimps in preparation for the
morrow's fishing. Sometimes a boat would heave to and the men in the stern
would haul in the basket with its heavy load of sand and silt and bend over
it searching for the shrimps and slopping handfuls of silt over the side.
Having emptied the basket, they would rinse it out, then throw it over the
stern again and row as far away from it as possible so as not to frighten
the shrimps with their boat. They were keeping very close to the shore
because in this kind of weather shrimps come right up to the water's edge.
On the upper deck of the pier holiday-makers were queueing for the
launch. From the water came the sound of boys' voices vying with each other
in asking, or rather, demanding that the people in the queue should throw
them coins. Responding reluctantly to these urgings, someone would
occasionally toss a coin into the water. Judging by the faces that peered
over the rail, this occupation afforded no one any great amusement. One of
the lads stayed at some distance from the pier and kept demanding throws
into the deep water. Sometimes a sparkling coin would fly in his direction.
It was harder for him to catch it out there, of course, but on the other
hand he had no rivals to contend with and could work in peace.
Some of the lads were diving straight off the pier. The sound of their
bodies splashing into the water and of their young voices was refreshing.
When a launch arrived and took on its passengers, the lads who had been
lucky enough to retrieve a few coins ran up the steps and bought ice-cream.
Wet and shivering, they would devour their portions with a noisy clattering
of spoons, then run back to the pier.
"Is this seat free?" I heard a man's voice above my head.
Beside me stood a man holding a dish of ice-cream and a folded
newspaper.
"Yes," I said.
He nodded, drew back a chair and sat down. I had been so taken up with
the sea that I had failed to notice his approach. His accent and a slight
drawl told me that he was a German. He was in his mid-fifties, sunburnt,
with a vigourous crop of short fair hair, a slightly asymmetrical face and
bright, clear eyes.
The newspaper was one of our Black Sea publications. He scanned it for
a while, laid it aside with a little smirk and set about his ice-cream. The
smirk emphasised the lopsidedness of his face and I wondered if the habit of
smirking in this fashion had perhaps pulled the lower part of his otherwise
regular features to one side.
Curious to know what it was he had laughed at, I tried to peep into his
newspaper.
"Want to read it?" he asked promptly, noticing my not very skillful
attempt, and held it out to me.
"No," I said and, sensing in his tone a desire for communication,
added, "You speak very good Russian."
"Yes, I do," he assented, and his bright eyes flashed even brighter.
"And I'm proud of it. Still, I've been studying the language since I was a
boy."
"Have you really?" I said.
"Yes," he repeated vigourously, and added with an unexpected touch of
slyness, "Can you guess why?"
"I don't know," I said, trying not to look quite so sociable if that
was what my face had expressed in the first place. "To be able to read
Dostoyevsky in the original?"
"Exactly," he nodded, and pushed aside the empty ice-cream dish. All
this time he had been hard at work on its contents without for a moment
letting me out of range of his intensely bright eyes. To perform both these
tasks at once he had been forced to lower at me most of the time.
"How do you find it here?" I asked.
"Good," he nodded again. "I came with my wife and daughter, though it's
very expensive here."
"Where are they?" I asked.
"I'm waiting for them to come back from the beach," he said, and looked
at his watch. "I decided to go for a walk in town by myself today."
"Look here," I said suddenly, trying not to appear too enthusiastic.
"Suppose we drink a bottle of champagne together?"
"I'm with you," he said good-naturedly, and spread his arms.
I rose and went to the bar. All blue plastic and glass, with dazzling
streamlined curves, the bar looked more like a flying machine than part of a
catering establishment.
Surrounded by this synthetic splendour sat the bar-tender eating hominy
and cheese in an attitude of bucolic bliss. His wife was standing over him
and at his knee, with one hand rummaging thoughtfully in a large drawerful
of sweets, was a child.
"Champagne and a kilo of apples," I said, having inspected the counter.
The one and only waitress was standing next to me, her back against the
bar, eating ice-cream. The barman wiped his hands with a rag and, clicking
his tongue, reached into the ice-barrel. The waitress did not stir.
"He's a foreigner," I said with a nod in the direction of my table.
The barman responded with a comprehending motion of his head and I
sensed his hand going deeper among the tinkling icicles in the barrel. The
waitress went on calmly eating her ice-cream.
"Tell the kids to keep quiet," I heard the barman's voice behind me.
The young coin-divers had taken over a free table next to ours. Their
elbows were beating a tattoo on the table. One of them kept shaking his head
to get the water out of his ear, and this sent the others into fits of
irrestrainable laughter. Their wet, sunburnt skin was speckled with goose
pimples. They all looked the picture of health, and it was pleasant to watch
them.
The waitress brought a dish of apples and a bottle of champagne. Having
put the dish on the table, she started taking the foil off the bottle. The
lads at the next table froze in expectation of the pop, but then I noticed
that the waitress had forgotten the glasses and stopped her. Not in the
least offended by my interference, nor in any way embarrassed by her own
mistake, she went for the glasses. She appeared to have a very keen sense of
her own independence, and also to take a secretly ironic view of her
customers. It was particularly noticeable as she walked away swinging her
broad hips, but not too much, just for her own pleasure, not for anyone
else's benefit.
A minute later she reappeared with two tall narrow glasses. She removed
the cork skillfully, letting out the air little by little, so that the boys,
who had again frozen in expectation of a big bang, were once again
disappointed. We drank to having made each other's acquaintance.
"Magnificent stuff," said the German, and replaced his empty glass
firmly on the table. Tiny beads of perspiration had broken out on his
forehead. The champagne really was good.
"Were you living in Germany during the time of the Nazis?" I asked when
the conversation turned to Mikhail Romm's film Ordinary Fascism, which he
praised highly. Apparently he had seen it at home in West Germany.
"Yes," he said. "From start to finish."
"Well, it's all over now," I said. "What do you think? Was Hitler a
clever or gifted man in his way?"
"He was never a clever man," the German shook his head, twisting his
lip a little to one side. "But he did possess some sort of hypnotic gift, I
believe."
"In what sense?"
"His speeches roused the mob, worked them up into a kind of
politico-sexual psychosis."
"What about Mein Kampf?" I said. "What would you call that?"
"In form it's a typical stream of consciousness. But in contrast to
Joyce, it's a stream of a very foolish consciousness."
"Never mind the form," I said. "The thing that interests me is how he
set about proving, let us say, the necessity for exterminating the Slavs."
"In Mein Kampf that was all wrapped up in very vague phrases. It was
only brought out into the open after they had got power. Mein Kampf was
written in 1924. On the whole, it's a wretched, semi-literate piece of
work," he added contemptuously, and I felt that the subject had begun to
bore him.
"Is that what you think now or have you always thought so?" I asked.
"Always," he replied, rather haughtily it seemed to me, and added
suddenly, "and I nearly paid the price for it."
He paused as if to recall something or, perhaps, wondering whether to
continue.
"Are you tired of my questions?" I asked, pouring champagne.
"Not a bit," he replied promptly, and having sipped at his glass again,
set it down firmly on the table. Apparently he had some doubts about the
stability of the glass.
"It was just a boys' prank," he said with a smile. "Two of my friends
and I got into our university one night and scattered pamphlets around. We
quoted a few illiterate passages from Mein Kampf and argued that a man who
didn't know the German language properly could not claim to be leader of the
German people."
"And what happened?" I asked, trying not to appear too curious.
"We were saved by the primitive mentality of the police," he said and
rose, emptying his glass, at the sound of the launch's siren.
"I'll be back in a moment," he said with a nod, and set off briskly
towards the pier, moving fast on his muscular legs. I noticed that he was
wearing shorts.
The boys' table was now occupied by a local pensioner, a smallish
chubby old man in a clean tussore tunic. On the table before him stood a
bottle of Borzhomi mineral water and a small tumbler, from which he would
occasionally take two or three sips, then munch his lips and, fingering a
string of prayer beads, go on watching the passers-by with idle curiosity.
Everything about him seemed to say: here am I, I've worked hard all my
life and now I'm enjoying a well-earned rest. I drink Borzhomi if I want to,
I count my beads if I want to, and, if I want to, I can just sit and look at
you. And there's nothing to stop you doing a good job of work in life so
that afterwards, when your time comes, you too can enjoy a well-earned rest
as I am doing now.
At first he was alone, then he was joined by a big carelessly made-up
woman wearing a necklace of wooden beads, who sat down at his table with a
dish of ice-cream. They talked animatedly and all the time the old man's
voice seemed to emanate a chilly intellectual superiority, which his
companion sought ineffectually to melt, with the result that her own voice
began to betray a certain secret resentment and even reproach. But this the
old man ignored, persisting obstinately in the tone he had adopted from the
start. I listened.
"Japan is now considered a great country," the pensioner remarked. "And
as a matter of fact they do have some very beautiful women."
"But the men are all ugly," his companion retorted joyfully. "In
meet and I had to say hullo. It had seemed to me that he was firmly enough
established at his own table. But he relinquished it with unexpected ease
and, smiling joyfully, headed in my direction.
"Hullo, chum! How's the old country?" he bellowed from a distance.
I put on a stern expression but it was too late. There are some people
you need only ask for a light and they'll be addressing you as "chum" and
talking about "the old country" for the rest of your life.
I decided to allow no familiarity whatever and certainly none of his
hail-fellow-well-met stuff. He fairly soon exhausted his wretched assortment
of softening-up devices and in an offhand manner popped the fateful
question.
"I'm out of cash," I said with a sigh, and made a rather feeble
pretence of slapping my pockets, actually tapping my purse in doing so. The
would-be borrower looked de pressed. I rejoiced at having shown firmness
and, in a sudden desire to palliate my refusal, found myself saying, "Of
course, if you are very badly in need, I could borrow some from a friend."
"That's fine," he perked up immediately. "Why don't you give him a
ring? I don't mind waiting."
He sat down at my table. Events were moving in direction I had not
foreseen.
"He lives a long way from here," I said, trying to damp his unexpected
enthusiasm and restore the original state of depression.
"That's all right," he replied airily, refusing to have his enthusiasm
damped or to succumb to his former dispiritedness. "I'll have a cup of
coffee while I'm waiting." And he took a cigarette from the packet I had
left lying on the table, as though surrendering himself entirely to my care.
"But I've just ordered a meal," I said, unconsciously switching to
defence.
"You'll be there and back before they serve you. And if the worst comes
to the worst, I can eat it and you'll order another one."
In short, the battle was lost. It's no use trying to fight nature. If
you haven't the gift for impromptu Eying, it's better not to try.
I had to leave that warm cafe and go out into the slushy street. There
wasn't really anyone to ring up but I went round the corner and slipped into
a telephone booth.
I spent about fifteen minutes in that booth. First I took the required
sum of money out of my purse and put it in one pocket, then I took out the
cost of the meal and put that in another pocket. When I restored the purse
to its usual place, it was nearly empty.
After this I returned slowly to the cafe, trying to read some
newspapers that were on display in the street. But nothing I read made any
sense because I was afraid of mixing up my pockets and bringing down on my
own head this whole edifice of lies, whose stability always proves to be an
illusion in the long run.
By the time I got back to the cafe he had finished off my dinner and
was about to start on my coffee. I gave him the money and he put it in his
pocket without counting it. I realised at once that its return journey to my
pocket would be hard and long. It was.
"I've ordered you some coffee," he said considerately. "They're
bringing it now."
There was nothing for me to do but drink the coffee because my appetite
had quite disappeared. The waitress brought the coffee and the bill with it.
When I had paid for my dinner, which he had eaten, he gave her a generous
tip, as if to make up for my churlishness while he himself presented an
image of bored but noble opulence.
Yes, all borrowers are like that. They usher you into a taxi, allowing
you to enter first and exit last, so as not to get in your way while you are
paying.
Shakespeare said that loan oft loses both itself and friend. My
experience was the opposite, or rather, I certainly lost my money but I
gained a dubious kind of friend.
One day I told him that everyone is in Great Debt to society. He agreed
with me. Then I added cautiously that the concept of Great Debt is in fact
made up of a multitude of small debts, which we are obliged to honour, even
if at times they may appear onerous. But with this he would not agree. He
observed that the concept of Great Debt is not a multitude of small debts
but, on the contrary, a Great Debt with capital letters, which one cannot
fritter away without running the risk of becoming a vulgariser. What was
more, he detected in my understanding of Great Debt certain traces of the
theory of small deeds, which had long since been condemned by progressive
Russian critics. I decided that the cost of reducing this fortress would
exceed any tribute I might exact when it was conquered, and left him in
peace.
But now here is a remarkable fact. It is easier to refuse a loan to the
scrupulously honest than to people with what I would call a mini-conscience.
When we refuse the former we comfort ourselves with the thought that our
refusal is not motivated by the fear of losing money.
Life is much more difficult with habitual spongers. When we lend to
them we know that we risk losing our money, and they know that we know the
risk we are taking. This gives rise to a delicate situation. Our refusal
appears to undermine the man's reputation. We insult him by treating him as
a potential extortioner.
About one man who borrowed off me I have a longer tale to tell. I will
not conceal the fact that besides the purely abstract aim of research I want
to use this story to make good some of my philanthropic losses and also to
scare some other borrowers with the possibility of exposure in print. There
are not really so many of them. Out of a population of over two hundred
million, only about seven or eight altogether. Only a tiny percentage, in
fact. And yet how pleasant to know that you have awakened someone's
conscience while at the same time recovering your long-lost money. If you
ask me, there's nothing more timely than an unexpectedly repaid debt, and
nothing more unexpected than a debt repaid on time. That's not such a bad
phrase, is it? On the whole, I find that when we start talking about our
losses, our voices acquire a note of genuine inspiration.
It all began when I received at a certain place quite a large sum of
money. I won't say what place it was because you wouldn't be able to get
anything there in any case.
Succumbing to the general craze, I decided to acquire my own means of
transport. I rejected the idea of a car at once. For one thing, you have to
have a licence. Well, of course, some people buy licences. But that, I
think, is just silly. First you buy a car, then a licence, and one day you
have an accident and lose both the car and the licence, if you have the luck
to get off so lightly. Besides, I had only about a fifth of the money needed
to buy a car.
For all of these reasons I gave up the idea of owning a car. From the
four-wheeled vehicle of my imagination I removed one wheel and the result
was a comfortable three-wheeled motor-cycle and sidecar.
After mature reflection, however, I decided that a motor-cycle and
sidecar would not suit me either, because of its incurable lack of symmetry.
I knew that this lopsidedness would irritate me and that in the end I should
have to dispose of the sidecar with the aid of a roadside post.
Eventually I plumped for a bicycle and bought one. I found it had all
kinds of advantages. A bicycle is the lightest, the quietest and the most
reliable means of transport. What was more, I would be saving on petrol
because its motive power would be supplied by my own energy. I would be
entirely self-supporting, so to speak.
For about a month I rode about on my bicycle and was pleased as Punch
with it. But one day when I was cycling along at full speed, a bus suddenly
came out of a turning ahead of me. Half-dead with fear, I swerved from under
its fire-breathing radiator, rode up on to the pavement and from there, with
no reduction of speed, crashed into a watchmaker's shop.
"What's happened?!" shouted one of the watchmakers, jumping to his feet
and dropping a Yerevan alarm clock, which rolled about the floor emitting a
noise like an oriental tambourine.
"I shall claim repairs under the guarantee," I said in a calm voice, as
I came to a sudden stop against the cash desk.
"He's a nut," the girl at the desk was the first to offer a solution,
and slammed the pay window shut in a hurry.
I came to my senses and, so as not to dispel this favourable
impression, silently wheeled my bicycle out of the shop. Out of the corner
of my eye I noticed that one of the watchmakers had let the magnifying glass
drop out of his eye. For some reason it occurred to me that the watchmaker's
magnifying glass and the aristocrat's monocle have a strange similarity of
purpose. A watchmaker uses his glass to magnify tiny mechanisms while the
man who wears a monocle probably thinks he is doing the same thing with
people.
On the way home I was struck by the thought that while walking along
beside a bicycle it is easier and safer to surrender oneself to one's dreams
than while mounted on the saddle, and so I decided not to use my bicycle any
more. After all, for a cyclist to compete with a bus is like a featherweight
going into the ring with a heavyweight champion.
When I got home, I put my bicycle into the shed and forgot all about
it.
About a month later a distant relative of mine paid us a visit and
reminded me of it. In general, if a distant relative you haven't seen for a
long time pays you a visit, you may expect no good to come of it. You have
probably spent years of hard work establishing yourself while he has been
gallivanting about God knows where. And then, when you have made your way in
life and even acquired a bicycle of your own, he turns up bold as brass,
grins at you with a whole mouthful of teeth and wants to start up a great
family fellowship.
Imagine a stocky, thick-set man, in a fireproof leather jacket, with a
rough powerful handshake. He has a job in town at a filling station and he
lives in a village ten kilometres out of town. He is still a peasant and yet
already a worker. He embodies in one person both the victorious classes.
And here in front of me stands this Vanechka Mamba, and such a store of
vital energy bursts from every fold in his leather jacket, radiates from his
lustrous eyes, from his firm, strong teeth, close-set as the bullet pouches
down the front of a Circassian coat, that it seems he could quite easily
drink a beer mug full of petrol and smoke a cigarette afterwards without
doing himself any harm at all.
"Hullo there," he says, and grips my hand. The real rugged handshake of
a man of great will power.
"Hullo," I say, "if it isn't Vanechka! Where have you been all this
time?"
"I hear you want to sell a bike. I want to buy it."
I don't know what gave him the idea I wanted to sell my bicycle. I
never suspected he knew of its existence. But Vanechka Mamba is one of those
people who know more about you than you know about yourself. Still, why not
sell it? I thought. It's a very good chance.
"Yes, it's up for sale," I said.
"How much?"
"Have a look at it first."
"I've had a look," he said, and grinned. "I noticed the shed was open."
The bike had cost about eight hundred in old money. I dropped a hundred
for wear and tear.
"Seven hundred."
"No go."
"How much then?"
"Three hundred."
Now we're going to strike a bargain, I thought. One of us will move up
and the other will move down. At some point our interests must coincide.
"All right," I said, "six hundred."
"You're talking through your hat," he said. "Three hundred roubles
don't grow on trees."
"But a bicycle does, of course?"
"Who rides a bicycle nowadays? Only the village postman."
"Why are you buying it then?"
"I have a long way to go to work. I just want it temporarily, till I
buy a car."
"Going to buy a car and you haggle over the price of a bicycle."
"That's one reason why I'll be able to buy the car."
What was the use of arguing? That was Vanechka Mamba all over, quite a
well-known character in our town, particularly among drivers.
"How much will you give me for it then?" I asked.
"What I said. You won't take it to market, will you?"
"No, I won't."
"And no second-hand shop would accept it either."
"All right, then," I said, "you can have it for four hundred, since you
seem to know all about it."
"All right," said Vanechka, "I'll take it for three fifty, to make it
fair all round. After all, we're related."
"To hell with you," I said. "Take it for three fifty. But how did you
know I was selling my bicycle?"
"I saw the way you were riding it. That one won't be riding for long, I
said to myself. Either he'll smash himself up or he'll sell it."
Vanechka cast a thrifty eye round the room and gave another smile with
those bullet teeth of his.
"Got anything else to sell?"
"No," I said. "You've done well enough as it is."
We went out on to the porch. I stood on the steps and he went down into
the yard and wheeled the bicycle out of the shed.
"Where's the pump?"
"Some kids pinched it."
"And you had the nerve to bargain!" Vanechka got on the bicycle and
rode round the yard, lecturing me. "You'd better have a lock put on that
shed. I'll bring you a good padlock."
"Never mind the lock," I said. "You give me the money."
"Next Sunday I'll sell my pears and bring it over." And he rode
straight out of the yard without even getting off the bicycle.
I didn't like the look of that. But what could you do? After all he was
my relative, though a very distant one. I've said it before and I'll say it
again: one close friend is better than a dozen distant relatives. But this
is not widely understood, particularly in our part of the world.
I met him in the street a week later.
"Well, have you sold your pears?"
"Yes, but you know how it is. The harvest was so good this year it
would have been better to keep them for feeding the pigs."
"Didn't you make anything on them?"
"About enough to dress my womenfolk. You know yourself I've got five
daughters. And my wife's pregnant again. They're ruining me, the bitches."
"Why torture your wife like this?" I said. "Give it a rest."
"I need a boy," he said. "As for the money, I won't let you down. The
grapes will be ripe soon, then the persimmon, and after that the tangerines.
I'll make ends meet somehow."
"Well, get on with it," I said.
And so we parted. You have to be considerate with people who owe you
money. You have to pamper them. Sometimes you even have to spread a rumour
about how honest and reliable they are.
The grape season came and went, then the persimmon and after that the
tangerines, but Vanechka still did not appear.
Quite by chance I heard that his wife had again given birth to a girl
and I decided to remind him of my existence by means of a congratulatory
letter. You know the sort of thing. Congratulations on your new daughter.
Come and see me some time. I'm still living in the same place. We'll sit
together over a bottle of wine and have a chat.
The reply came a week later. What terrible handwriting you have, it
said. My eldest daughter could hardly make it out. Thanks for the
congratulations. My wife has given me another daughter. I'm properly mixed
up now with the names. Now they have gone and installed electricity in our
village. That means another thing to be paid for. But I have not forgotten
my debt. Don't worry, Vanechka Mamba will get out of it somehow. And at the
end of the letter he wanted to know whether I had bought a padlock yet for
the shed. If I hadn't he would bring me one.
Well, I thought, that's goodbye to my money. I did not see him again
till the following summer. By that time I had almost forgotten the debt.
I happened to be walking round the market one day when someone called
out to me. I looked round and there was Vanechka Mamba, standing behind a
mountain of watermelons. He had one great chunk in his mouth and was
crunching it with his gleaming teeth.
"Mamba water-melons!" he was shouting. "Come and get 'em before I eat
the lot myself!"
A woman asked me what kind of water-melon this was--the Mamba.
"Don't you know Mamba water-melons?" Vanechka exclaimed with a laugh
and, spearing a succulent slice with his knife, pushed it under the woman's
nose.
"I don't want to try it. I was just asking," the woman protested,
turning away in embarrassment.
"I don't want you to buy it. All I'm asking is for you to taste a Mamba
water-melon!" Vanechka almost sobbed.
In the end the woman had a taste and, once having had a taste, felt she
had better buy one. Every water-melon had a letter "M" carved on it, like a
trade mark.
"What are these tagged atoms?" I said.
"An old chap and me, we brought these water-melons in from the village
together. So I marked mine to make sure they didn't get mixed up."
He burst out laughing and, before I could remind him of his debt,
pushed into my hands a weighty water-melon. I tried to refuse, but he
admonished me sternly:
"We're relatives, aren't we? They're straight from our allotment. Home
grown! Not from a shop!"
I had to take it. It's rather awkward to remind someone of a debt when
you are holding a water-melon he has just given you, so I let it pass. To
hell with it, I thought, at least I've got a water-melon in exchange for a
bicycle.
Later I heard that he had swindled that old man properly. While they
were riding to town perched on their water melons in the back of the lorry,
the old chap had dozed off and Vanechka with his pirate's knife had marked
about twenty of the old man's melons with his own initial. So that's what a
Mamba water-melon is!
Six months later I happened to call at a filling station with a friend
of mine. My friend wanted some petrol for his car. And there was Vanechka
busy hosing down a large Volga car, his face creased in an expression of
sullen solicitude.
"Hullo, Vanechka," I said. "What are you now--a car washer?"
"Ah, hullo there," he said. He turned off his hose and came over to me.
"Do you mean to say you haven't heard?"
"What should I have heard?"
"I've bought a Volga. This is my Volga."
"Good for you," I said. "You're a man of your word."
"And he calls himself a relative," Vanechka complained to my friend.
"When he bought a bicycle I got to know about it at once. And yet when I buy
a Volga he doesn't know a thing. It isn't fair, is it?"
"You'd better not mention that bicycle," I said.
"Why not?" he said. "I'll pay you for it, though it was a rotten old
bike, with its pump missing too. But just at the moment I've started
building a house and I'm up to my neck in debt. As soon as I've finished
building I'll pay up all round."
"I suppose you use it to carry fruit?" I said.
"I should say I do. And it's ruining me! The traffic inspectors are
crazy these days. Either they won't take a bribe at all or else they want so
much it's not worth the journey."
When we had driven away, my friend said, "That Vanechka of yours is
working a fiddle on petrol. He'll get caught."
"Let him," I said, although I was sure he would not be caught.
Some time later I met a mutual acquaintance.
"Have you heard? Vanechka Mamba's been taken to hospital in a very bad
state."
"What happened?" I said. "Did the filling station blow up?"
"No," he said. "He fell into a lime pit. You knew he was building a
house, didn't you?"
"Never mind," I said. "Vanechka will get out of it somehow."
"No, he won't. He's a goner."
Vanechka was in hospital for about a month. I was going to visit him
but felt awkward about it somehow. He might think I had come for my money.
Then I heard he was up and about again. He had wriggled out of yet another
tight corner. I had been quite sure he would. He had far too many dealings
to occupy him in this world, and some of them were the kind you couldn't
delegate to anyone else. No one else could have coped.
A year passed. One day I received an invitation to the country.
Vanechka had a double occasion to celebrate--his house-warming and the birth
of a son.
I've seen enough of these celebrations. There are usually two or three
hundred guests and they don't sit down to table till about midnight. What
with all the preparations and waiting for the bosses to arrive. But the main
thing is the presents. They have a village spokesman standing in the middle
of the yard and a girl sitting at a table beside him, licking her pencil and
writing down in an exercise book exactly who brings what. Some of the
presents are in cash, but most of them are in kind.
"A vase, lovely as the moon," bawls the spokesman, holding it high
above his head and displaying it to all the guests. "As pure and clear as
the conscience of our dear guest," he adds inventively.
"A Russian eiderdown," he shouts, displaying the eiderdown with a
flourish. "Big enough to cover a regiment," he comments brazenly, though the
eiderdown is of quite ordinary size.
The people from the River Bzyb are outstanding in this respect. They
can't open their mouths without exaggerating. While the master of ceremonies
holds forth, the guest stands in front of him, his head bowed in comical
modesty. Actually he is keeping an eye on the girl, to make sure she writes
down his first and second names correctly. He then joins the onlookers and
the master of ceremonies starts singing the praises of the next gift.
"A tablecloth fit for royalty," shouts this glib-tongued individual and
whirls the tablecloth into the air, as some rustic demon might whirl his
cloak. In a word, it has to be seen to be believed. Of course, if you come
without a present you won't be turned away, but a certain climate of opinion
is created. I didn't go. But I did send him a letter of congratulation, not
hinting at anything.
One day I was standing in the station square of one of our smaller
towns and wondering how best to get home. Should I take the train or try
hitch-hiking?
I heard someone call my name, and there was Vanechka, poking his head
out of his Volga.
"How did you get here?"
"Business. What about you?"
"Been on a trip to Sochi. Get in and I'll give you a lift."
I got in beside him and we started off. The air in the car was heavy
with the persistent subtropical scent of illegally transported fruit. I had
not seen Vanechka since his spell in hospital. He had scarcely changed at
all, except that his face had lost a little of its colour, as though someone
had dried it out with blotting paper. But he was still as cheerful as ever,
with those gleaming teeth of his.
"I got your letter," he said. "We had a grand binge. Pity you didn't
come."
"How did you manage to fall into that lime pit?"
"Oh, that? I'd rather not think about it. Nearly took off for the other
world then. You can consider I've been there already. Still, it was thanks
to that pit I got me a son.
"How so?"
"I reckon I didn't have enough lime in my body for a boy."
"You had plenty of lime all right."
"No, I mean it. Maybe I've made a scientific discovery. Write an
article about it in one of your magazines and we'll go halves on the money.
But they wouldn't print your stuff."
"Why not?" I asked guardedly.
"Your handwriting's no good. They wouldn't be able to read it."
"Why don't you stop ribbing me and tell me how you're getting on."
"Well, how shall I put it," he drawled, and with one hand flicked on
the dashboard radio, picked up some jazz, tuned in and left it playing
softly.
"There's no proper order anywhere," he declared suddenly. "That's
what's wrong."
"What makes you so worried about order all of a sudden?"
"I've just been taking some tangerines to Sochi. Four inspectors in two
hundred kilometres! Do you call that order? And don't interrupt," he added,
though I had no intention of interrupting. "Three of them accept and the
fourth refuses. Call that order? Can't they come to some agreement between
them! Either they accept or they don't, all of them. I can't tell him I've
settled up with the other three, can I? That's dishonest, isn't it?"
"Of course, it is," I said, and I thought to myself what a funny thing
this honesty is. Everyone cuts it down to suit his own needs, but the
amazing thing is that no one can do without it.
"Now look here, Vanechka," I said. "You've got a car, you've got a
house, you've got a son. Now give up this racket. What more do you want?"
"Hives," he said. "I want some hives."
"What kind of hives?"
"Bee-hives. My orchard's being sucked dry by other people's bees. I'd
rather have some of my own. I want to give it a try."
"Try it by all means. You seem to have tried everything."
"Do you know of a good bee-keeper?"
"No, I don't."
We were silent for a while. But Vanechka is not the man to keep quiet,
unless there's some hush money going.
"What's this campaign they've started about houses?"
"Why? Are they getting at you?"
"You know what a lot of envy there is about. People keep complaining.
How did he get this house, this car.... The chairman has had me up on the
mat already."
"Well?"
"When a commission or a delegation comes round, I told him, you bring
them to my place, don't you? Here's a well-to-do peasant, you say. And now
you want to sell me down the river?"
"What did he say to that?"
"He said he had his own responsibilities to face...."
We never finished our conversation. Something quite unexpected
happened.
We had been travelling fast but, despite the bends in our mountain
roads, I felt I had nothing to worry about. Vanechka had done five years as
a driver in the army and he had excellent road sense. We were just entering
the town but he did not reduce speed. Suddenly a woman ran out of a bus
queue opposite the station and bolted like a mad sheep across the road. Too
late, I thought and even as the thought crossed my mind I heard the scream
of brakes, the hiss of abraded rubber, the shouts of the crowd. The car hit
the woman, knocked her to one side and stopped.
Some people ran up to the woman, picked her up and helped her off the
road. Her face was pale and wooden. But all of a sudden she began to shake
her fists and angrily push her helpers away.
A lad ran up to the car, glanced inside and bawled, "What are you
waiting for, Vanechka? Step on it!"
Vanechka backed the car, drove round the station square, swung out on
to the main road and put on such a turn of speed that the oncoming
headlights flashed past us like meteors. We kept up this dizzy speed for
about ten minutes and I was expecting at any moment that we should depart
for a spot that Vanechka might perhaps wriggle out of but not I.
"Are you crazy," I shouted. "Slow down!"
I glanced round. A traffic inspector was chasing us on his motor-cycle.
Vanechka swung into a side street and we went bouncing along a cobbled road.
The motor-cycle disappeared for a moment only to reappear a few seconds
later at the end of the block. Vanechka turned into a dark little alley,
drove along it and jammed on his brakes so suddenly that I bumped my head on
the door I had been clinging to. Two steps from the car yawned a freshly dug
hole with a concrete pipe lying beside it. Vanechka tried to back out but
went into a skid. The roar of the motor-cycle swelled menacingly in our
ears, like fate itself.
A few seconds later the inspector pulled up beside us. He switched off
his engine and came over with the springy tread of a lion-tamer.
"Why were you exceeding the speed limit? Why didn't you stop at once?"
"I didn't hear your signal, old man." It transpired that the inspector
knew nothing of what had happened at the station. Nevertheless he was bent
on getting something down in his notebook and kept asking Vanechka
questions. Vanechka got out of the car. It was the first time I had seen him
in such an abject state. He begged and pleaded, he swore by all his
ancestors, he named mutual acquaintances. He argued that he and the
inspector were really both part of the same system. Then I noticed him
nodding significantly in my direction, obviously exaggerating the importance
of my person. He made it look almost as though he were driving me on special
instructions from the local government. I noticed myself assuming a rather
dignified air.
In the end Vanechka talked the inspector round. He escorted him to his
motor-cycle just as the local folk escort a man to his horse. I believe he
would have held his stirrup if there had been one on the motor-cycle.
"Why, that fellow's just a beggar!" Vanechka declared unexpectedly, as
soon as the traffic inspector had ridder away. It must have been a new
inspector, one he had not yet got to know.
He climbed into the car and lit a cigarette. I decided that I had had
enough adventures for one day and got out.
"Thanks," I said. "I haven't far to go now."
"Please yourself," he said and started the engine. "But what I told you
about order was right."
"What kind of order?" I asked, baffled.
"They dug up this street, didn't they? Did they put up a sign? Did they
show where the diversion was? Do you call that order?"
I spread my arms helplessly.
I could not leave before he had driven clear, so I waited. Vanechka put
the car into reverse and, while it backed slowly, with skidding tyres along
the street, I watched his resolute face with its harsh conquistador fold in
the cheek clearly illuminated by the state electricity of a street lamp.
Yes, that was Vanechka--grasping, insolent, always boisterously
cheerful. He was no fool, of course, but I would never advise anyone to take
their water-melons to market with him.
After being in the car it was particularly pleasant to walk. I have a
horror of road accidents, especially when pedestrians are involved. Thank
goodness no blood was shed. The woman must have been frightened rather than
hurt.
One day many years ago I was walking through Moscow feeling in rather
low spirits. I was just graduating from the institute and the faculty would
not accept my diploma thesis. There was something about it they didn't like.
It had frightened them somehow. Actually it was rather a silly piece of
work, but the heads of the faculty, and I myself for that matter, were slow
to realise this. Later on, when I had to defend it, its foolishness was
safely exposed and I got a good mark for it. But that day in the street I
was depressed. It was cold and slippery and there was wet ice on the
pavements. Suddenly I noticed a lorry backing out of a narrow passage
between two buildings. There were two little boys on the pavement, one about
eight, the other nearer four. At the sight of the approaching lorry the
elder boy abandoned the little one and ran to safety. I shouted at the top
of my voice. The little fellow heard nothing. He was watching the pigeons
and had lapsed into that state of profound meditation that is known only to
philosophers and children. He was so small that the end of the lorry had
already passed unhindered over his head. I managed to run up and drag him
away in time. Luckily the lorry had been moving very slowly, the driver
being particularly careful because of the ice.
The little boy never realised what had happened. He was warmly wrapped
up and only his fresh little face was visible under a fur hat with earflaps.
Neither mothers nor drivers are proof against all eventualities, and this is
where the pedestrians come in. And even they derive some benefit from such
incidents. At that moment I made up my mind once and for all that the
meaning of life did not lie in diploma work, nor even in the opinion of the
faculty, but in something else.
Perhaps, in being a decent kind of pedestrian? At bottom, all these
cars, aeroplanes, locomotives are really nothing but the children's
perambulators that we pedestrians either pull or push.
After sitting for so long in someone else's car it was a pleasant
relief to be walking on firm ground. The earth is always ours, no matter who
or what makes it spin. The main thing is the sense of freedom and peace it
gives us. You are not being moved by some external force, you are moving
yourself. And what's more, you cannot run anybody over. Of course, someone
may run you over, but then you could also be hit on the head by a falling
brick. The main thing is not to throw bricks about.
I walked home congratulating myself on never having bought a car, and
on having sold my bicycle.
I think our best thoughts occur to us when we are moving at a speed of
not more than five kilometres per hour.
--------
One hot summer day I was sitting near the pier eating ice-cream
sprinkled with broken nuts. That's the kind of ice-cream they sell here.
First they put firm little dollops in a metal dish, then sprinkle nuts on
top. I suppose I could have refused the nuts (peanuts, to be exact), but no
one else did, so I didn't either.
The girl at the ice-cream counter in her crisp white overall, looking
cool and therefore pleasant, was working silently, in a smooth, steady
rhythm. No one wanted to break this established rhythm. It was too hot and
we were all too lazy.
The flowering oleanders cast light shadows on the tables of the
open-air cafe. A salutary breeze from the sea drifted through their
straggling branches carrying a sweetish smell of decay from the tired pink
flowers. Through the oleanders I could see the pier and the sea.
Now and then anglers' boats would pass slowly, each with its home-made
trawl consisting of a basket on an iron hoop.
It was Saturday and they were catching shrimps in preparation for the
morrow's fishing. Sometimes a boat would heave to and the men in the stern
would haul in the basket with its heavy load of sand and silt and bend over
it searching for the shrimps and slopping handfuls of silt over the side.
Having emptied the basket, they would rinse it out, then throw it over the
stern again and row as far away from it as possible so as not to frighten
the shrimps with their boat. They were keeping very close to the shore
because in this kind of weather shrimps come right up to the water's edge.
On the upper deck of the pier holiday-makers were queueing for the
launch. From the water came the sound of boys' voices vying with each other
in asking, or rather, demanding that the people in the queue should throw
them coins. Responding reluctantly to these urgings, someone would
occasionally toss a coin into the water. Judging by the faces that peered
over the rail, this occupation afforded no one any great amusement. One of
the lads stayed at some distance from the pier and kept demanding throws
into the deep water. Sometimes a sparkling coin would fly in his direction.
It was harder for him to catch it out there, of course, but on the other
hand he had no rivals to contend with and could work in peace.
Some of the lads were diving straight off the pier. The sound of their
bodies splashing into the water and of their young voices was refreshing.
When a launch arrived and took on its passengers, the lads who had been
lucky enough to retrieve a few coins ran up the steps and bought ice-cream.
Wet and shivering, they would devour their portions with a noisy clattering
of spoons, then run back to the pier.
"Is this seat free?" I heard a man's voice above my head.
Beside me stood a man holding a dish of ice-cream and a folded
newspaper.
"Yes," I said.
He nodded, drew back a chair and sat down. I had been so taken up with
the sea that I had failed to notice his approach. His accent and a slight
drawl told me that he was a German. He was in his mid-fifties, sunburnt,
with a vigourous crop of short fair hair, a slightly asymmetrical face and
bright, clear eyes.
The newspaper was one of our Black Sea publications. He scanned it for
a while, laid it aside with a little smirk and set about his ice-cream. The
smirk emphasised the lopsidedness of his face and I wondered if the habit of
smirking in this fashion had perhaps pulled the lower part of his otherwise
regular features to one side.
Curious to know what it was he had laughed at, I tried to peep into his
newspaper.
"Want to read it?" he asked promptly, noticing my not very skillful
attempt, and held it out to me.
"No," I said and, sensing in his tone a desire for communication,
added, "You speak very good Russian."
"Yes, I do," he assented, and his bright eyes flashed even brighter.
"And I'm proud of it. Still, I've been studying the language since I was a
boy."
"Have you really?" I said.
"Yes," he repeated vigourously, and added with an unexpected touch of
slyness, "Can you guess why?"
"I don't know," I said, trying not to look quite so sociable if that
was what my face had expressed in the first place. "To be able to read
Dostoyevsky in the original?"
"Exactly," he nodded, and pushed aside the empty ice-cream dish. All
this time he had been hard at work on its contents without for a moment
letting me out of range of his intensely bright eyes. To perform both these
tasks at once he had been forced to lower at me most of the time.
"How do you find it here?" I asked.
"Good," he nodded again. "I came with my wife and daughter, though it's
very expensive here."
"Where are they?" I asked.
"I'm waiting for them to come back from the beach," he said, and looked
at his watch. "I decided to go for a walk in town by myself today."
"Look here," I said suddenly, trying not to appear too enthusiastic.
"Suppose we drink a bottle of champagne together?"
"I'm with you," he said good-naturedly, and spread his arms.
I rose and went to the bar. All blue plastic and glass, with dazzling
streamlined curves, the bar looked more like a flying machine than part of a
catering establishment.
Surrounded by this synthetic splendour sat the bar-tender eating hominy
and cheese in an attitude of bucolic bliss. His wife was standing over him
and at his knee, with one hand rummaging thoughtfully in a large drawerful
of sweets, was a child.
"Champagne and a kilo of apples," I said, having inspected the counter.
The one and only waitress was standing next to me, her back against the
bar, eating ice-cream. The barman wiped his hands with a rag and, clicking
his tongue, reached into the ice-barrel. The waitress did not stir.
"He's a foreigner," I said with a nod in the direction of my table.
The barman responded with a comprehending motion of his head and I
sensed his hand going deeper among the tinkling icicles in the barrel. The
waitress went on calmly eating her ice-cream.
"Tell the kids to keep quiet," I heard the barman's voice behind me.
The young coin-divers had taken over a free table next to ours. Their
elbows were beating a tattoo on the table. One of them kept shaking his head
to get the water out of his ear, and this sent the others into fits of
irrestrainable laughter. Their wet, sunburnt skin was speckled with goose
pimples. They all looked the picture of health, and it was pleasant to watch
them.
The waitress brought a dish of apples and a bottle of champagne. Having
put the dish on the table, she started taking the foil off the bottle. The
lads at the next table froze in expectation of the pop, but then I noticed
that the waitress had forgotten the glasses and stopped her. Not in the
least offended by my interference, nor in any way embarrassed by her own
mistake, she went for the glasses. She appeared to have a very keen sense of
her own independence, and also to take a secretly ironic view of her
customers. It was particularly noticeable as she walked away swinging her
broad hips, but not too much, just for her own pleasure, not for anyone
else's benefit.
A minute later she reappeared with two tall narrow glasses. She removed
the cork skillfully, letting out the air little by little, so that the boys,
who had again frozen in expectation of a big bang, were once again
disappointed. We drank to having made each other's acquaintance.
"Magnificent stuff," said the German, and replaced his empty glass
firmly on the table. Tiny beads of perspiration had broken out on his
forehead. The champagne really was good.
"Were you living in Germany during the time of the Nazis?" I asked when
the conversation turned to Mikhail Romm's film Ordinary Fascism, which he
praised highly. Apparently he had seen it at home in West Germany.
"Yes," he said. "From start to finish."
"Well, it's all over now," I said. "What do you think? Was Hitler a
clever or gifted man in his way?"
"He was never a clever man," the German shook his head, twisting his
lip a little to one side. "But he did possess some sort of hypnotic gift, I
believe."
"In what sense?"
"His speeches roused the mob, worked them up into a kind of
politico-sexual psychosis."
"What about Mein Kampf?" I said. "What would you call that?"
"In form it's a typical stream of consciousness. But in contrast to
Joyce, it's a stream of a very foolish consciousness."
"Never mind the form," I said. "The thing that interests me is how he
set about proving, let us say, the necessity for exterminating the Slavs."
"In Mein Kampf that was all wrapped up in very vague phrases. It was
only brought out into the open after they had got power. Mein Kampf was
written in 1924. On the whole, it's a wretched, semi-literate piece of
work," he added contemptuously, and I felt that the subject had begun to
bore him.
"Is that what you think now or have you always thought so?" I asked.
"Always," he replied, rather haughtily it seemed to me, and added
suddenly, "and I nearly paid the price for it."
He paused as if to recall something or, perhaps, wondering whether to
continue.
"Are you tired of my questions?" I asked, pouring champagne.
"Not a bit," he replied promptly, and having sipped at his glass again,
set it down firmly on the table. Apparently he had some doubts about the
stability of the glass.
"It was just a boys' prank," he said with a smile. "Two of my friends
and I got into our university one night and scattered pamphlets around. We
quoted a few illiterate passages from Mein Kampf and argued that a man who
didn't know the German language properly could not claim to be leader of the
German people."
"And what happened?" I asked, trying not to appear too curious.
"We were saved by the primitive mentality of the police," he said and
rose, emptying his glass, at the sound of the launch's siren.
"I'll be back in a moment," he said with a nod, and set off briskly
towards the pier, moving fast on his muscular legs. I noticed that he was
wearing shorts.
The boys' table was now occupied by a local pensioner, a smallish
chubby old man in a clean tussore tunic. On the table before him stood a
bottle of Borzhomi mineral water and a small tumbler, from which he would
occasionally take two or three sips, then munch his lips and, fingering a
string of prayer beads, go on watching the passers-by with idle curiosity.
Everything about him seemed to say: here am I, I've worked hard all my
life and now I'm enjoying a well-earned rest. I drink Borzhomi if I want to,
I count my beads if I want to, and, if I want to, I can just sit and look at
you. And there's nothing to stop you doing a good job of work in life so
that afterwards, when your time comes, you too can enjoy a well-earned rest
as I am doing now.
At first he was alone, then he was joined by a big carelessly made-up
woman wearing a necklace of wooden beads, who sat down at his table with a
dish of ice-cream. They talked animatedly and all the time the old man's
voice seemed to emanate a chilly intellectual superiority, which his
companion sought ineffectually to melt, with the result that her own voice
began to betray a certain secret resentment and even reproach. But this the
old man ignored, persisting obstinately in the tone he had adopted from the
start. I listened.
"Japan is now considered a great country," the pensioner remarked. "And
as a matter of fact they do have some very beautiful women."
"But the men are all ugly," his companion retorted joyfully. "In