Read Online A Russian Story by Eugenia Kononenko - Free Book Online

whether she would have enough fur to make a fur coat, though unfortunately she had already come to an arrangement with the furrier. They said that the director of the collective farm had ordered all the Irivka secondary school teachers to weed twenty rows of beetroot each, justifying himself by saying that they always came to the collective farm for help when they needed it. Eugene’s women, the majority of whom were teachers themselves, were incensed at the decision of the collective farm administration. They said that when their children were old enough they would be taking them to school, not to the collective farm. The women also said there was a new foreign language teacher, the woman who was trying to sit next to you at the wake, on your right, do you remember, Zhenia?
    “Sitting next to me there was some talkative woman with a fine head of grey hair…”
    “That’s the head teacher at our school, Hanna Petrivna; what, don’t you know her yet, Zhenia?”
    “I admit that I don’t.”
    “And you know that new English woman, the rather sexy one who came to the wake in a low-cut dress, well, she went all the way to Kyiv yesterday to have an abortion! And now Hanna Petrivna doesn’t know how she can keep her on in her job at the school.”
    “Hasn’t Hanna Petrivna ever had an abortion then?”
    “God forbid, Zhenia! Hanna Petrivna is married! Her husband is an inspector with the traffic police. She has two sons, and the elder one is getting married in the autumn. And this Angela… what’s her name… is only in her first year with us. What will happen now? If she is dismissed, where will we find another English teacher?”
    If the Irivka women limited themselves to passing on the village news, one could stomach that somehow. But they wanted greater recompense for their gifts. They wanted to know his every step, at least within the bounds of the General’s house, which, according to some quaint decrees, they considered their common property.
    “How did you sleep last night? Did you hear what I said? How did you sleep?”
    He had to mutter something; otherwise the Irivka woman would keep repeating her enquiry again and again. In response to his “Well, I slept rather badly; there were thunderclaps, but it didn’t actually rain” she recounted how she had slept badly too, then she had fallen asleep in the small hours and had a dream about a wedding in the General’s house, and the table was laid in the garden, although the late General had sawn up all the tables and benches and even dug up all the wooden posts, and black birds were circling above the young couple, but they were not crows, they were enormous birds of some sort, like eagles… Her eyes were wide and bulging as she retold the dream, and the tone of her voice was like something from a horror film.
    One day he was brought a basket of early-ripened apples by a very young girl. He was struck not so much by her beauty, although she was certainly a very attractive little thing, as by a certain naïve directness, verging on idiocy. This child, unlike the other young Irivka women, rushed into the kitchen. The older women would hurriedly pass through the kitchen and the sitting room, rushing into the study and the bedroom, and if he was not to be found in his uncle’s south wing they went looking for him in the north wing. But this young girl shifted from one foot to another, waiting for him to emerge and holding the rather heavy basket with both hands.
    “What can I do for you, my dear?” he asked.
    The girl offered him the basket of apples and he thanked her for this further gift. She asked if she might have a look round. He gave her a brief tour of the General’s house and she asked how many square metres this and that room measured, noted that there were two stoves, and regretted that although there was a toilet inside the house it was out of order. Well, to repair the sewerage system he would have to call for a qualified plumber, as a