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

village handyman would not manage it. And it would not come cheap.
    On the bottom shelf of the sideboard there stood a large soup tureen belonging to an English dinner service his uncle had been given as a retirement present. This was where Eugene put the apples the girl had brought; for sure, nobody had ever used it for soup. He had never come across such fragrant, sweet early-ripening apples before.
    Volodya sometimes visited him in the evening. He was the only person in Irivka he was pleased to see. They sat at the round table; he opened the glass doors of the sideboard to take out crystal glasses and one of his uncle’s cognacs. He found Volodya’s physical presence quite congenial. He liked to observe the doctor’s youthful features and to hear him talk, although Volodya rarely expressed an original thought. On one occasion Eugene attempted to discuss the topic of nationalism with him, but he got no reaction:
    “Well, what if I am called out to Tykhonovych — God forbid — am I not supposed to help him?” Tykhonovych was some Russian who had moved to their village because he married a local woman, and he was a ‘good Russian man’.
    “Oh no, that’s not what I mean at all,” said Eugene, noting Volodya’s naivety about nationalism; however, he still found him pleasant company.
    Volodya came round the evening of the day when the girl had visited in the morning.
    “They’ve got some sort of Michurin apple tree, unique in the village,” confirmed Volodya, who somehow knew who the girl was that called on Eugene.
    “Tell me, why are they eating apples a month before the Feast of the Transfiguration?” asked Eugene, all of a sudden demonstrating a knowledge of rural rituals.
    “Well, who knows those rules these days? When they opened the Church of St. Panteleimon here, the teachers didn’t know which hand to cross themselves with! My mother showed those women how to do it; she had never been a Party member, you see. As for those apples, you have to eat them as soon as possible, because if you leave them for a while they get just as bitter as the rest of them. This is a heathen apple tree, you could say. They know this, and they keep giving them away to everybody,” laughed Volodya. He went on to explain that knowledge of the local mythology was very useful to him in his work as a rural doctor. This local mythology had been preserved in Irivka, and in neighbouring Kobivka as well, under the previous regime, because the old government, unlike their treatment of the church, did not frown on rituals concerning the giving away of apples, or the folding of a deceased person’s arms across the chest. Even the communists in the village adhered to local superstitions.
    “You’re drinking cognac from a small goblet, not moonshine from a tumbler.”
    “Well, I can drink moonshine if it’s offered… It all depends what other people are drinking.”
    “But what do you prefer?”
    “Your late uncle asked me that too. If there are just the two of you sitting together, cognac is better. If you are mingling in a crowd, moonshine is better.”
    That day — he thought of it as the day of the July apples — Eugene told Volodya sincerely how impressed he was with his discretion. He said he didn’t interfere in other people’s business, only crossing someone’s threshold when he was welcome. Eugene would never forget how he had once started intensively reading the heart-rending lines of
The Antichrist
and Volodya, sensing the strange mood the new owner of the house was in, said he would come round again some other time. That was so different from the way the women behaved every morning, giving him no respite. Volodya was embarrassed and, unlike the girl that morning, he blushed.
    “All the men are like that here,” said the young doctor, “whereas the women are very assertive.”
    Then Eugene told Volodya all about the early-morning forays by the Irivka women into his house. About the cabbage they