Read Online A Russian Story by Eugenia Kononenko - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Eugenia Kononenko
Ads: Link
insisted on chopping up for him, and about the milk, and about how the women always wanted to know how he had slept last night.
“Well, let me tell you something! Has any man ever brought you carrots or a lump of lard? It’s always the women. They’re all the same in Irivka. They dominate the men and tell them what to do. And they treat you like a child, Zhenia!”
They probably treated the late General as a child as well. His marriage to the district librarian, a
Muscovite
at that, was something of a rebellion by a scolded child against a bevy of ferocious nannies. Nothing good came of it either, and the nannies howled in chorus: “See what you get when you don’t do what sensible women tell you!”
So Eugene, as best he could, began to contest the child status which he had unexpectedly acquired in this village, and it wasn’t an easy struggle. One day he locked the door, and in the morning his delivery women yanked at the door, yelling outside, while he slowly made Turkish coffee in a copper coffee-pot brought from home, patiently watching the foam oozing up to the brim of the pot. The water in the Irivka wells was actually so bitter-tasting that even strong tea could not disguise it and coffee was the only answer. This spring water, mother’s holy well, tasted bitter too. However, in Kobivka, as they told him, the water was quite different. But you can’t keep fetching your water from Kobivka to Irivka. At the village shop he bought cartons of juice which the sales assistant Lida handed to him over the heads of the people queuing for bread, and he brewed coffee from the well water. And then a key grated in the lock and the door opened!
“Oh my goodness, you’re here!”
“Alive and kicking!”
“Didn’t you hear us trying to break into the house?”
“We rushed round to Vasylivna’s, because the General, God rest his soul, gave her a key when he got poorly.”
“You must have heard us!”
“I had some music playing,” said Eugene, making an excuse instead of firmly, not to say sharply, telling them he was not keen to see early visitors who would then roam about his house all morning.
“Well, we’ll let you off this once, but from now on please don’t lock up.”
“We all nearly had heart failure!”
“Oh what a lovely smell! You’re making coffee. In return for making us run round to Vasylivna’s!”
And the women started rummaging in the General’s sideboard for coffee cups.
He decided to go for morning walks in the forest, because he couldn’t follow his intellectual pursuits until the evening anyway. The women drew him off course, insisting that he accepted their vegetables and spent a short while at least telling them how he had slept. And listening to the village news. The Irivka women could not contemplate the thought that they were unwelcome. Once he was finally alone, he cursed his weakness, his pitiful inability to tell them to go to hell. This annoyance troubled him all day, preventing him reading the books he had brought from home, as he needed peace and quiet to read Nietzsche or even Francis Bacon. The big isolated house at the edge of the village was perfectly suited to intensive reading. But, for some reason, his everyday village life was reminiscent of the absurd, even more so than the situation in his parents’ house. When he went into the forest, if he actually managed to reach the forest, he heard voices behind him:
“If only he was going there to pick berries or gather mushrooms, but he goes there just for the sake of it. And we bring him his milk, don’t we?”
“As we used to bring the General’s.”
“Now then, the General, what a man he was! But this one! Well, never thanks you properly!”
I don’t want this sort of Ukraine,” he thought. I can understand people escaping from here and doing whatever it takes to be able to afford the rent for a studio flat on the outskirts of Kyiv, as many of my acquaintances did. It is not the lack of hot
“Well, let me tell you something! Has any man ever brought you carrots or a lump of lard? It’s always the women. They’re all the same in Irivka. They dominate the men and tell them what to do. And they treat you like a child, Zhenia!”
They probably treated the late General as a child as well. His marriage to the district librarian, a
Muscovite
at that, was something of a rebellion by a scolded child against a bevy of ferocious nannies. Nothing good came of it either, and the nannies howled in chorus: “See what you get when you don’t do what sensible women tell you!”
So Eugene, as best he could, began to contest the child status which he had unexpectedly acquired in this village, and it wasn’t an easy struggle. One day he locked the door, and in the morning his delivery women yanked at the door, yelling outside, while he slowly made Turkish coffee in a copper coffee-pot brought from home, patiently watching the foam oozing up to the brim of the pot. The water in the Irivka wells was actually so bitter-tasting that even strong tea could not disguise it and coffee was the only answer. This spring water, mother’s holy well, tasted bitter too. However, in Kobivka, as they told him, the water was quite different. But you can’t keep fetching your water from Kobivka to Irivka. At the village shop he bought cartons of juice which the sales assistant Lida handed to him over the heads of the people queuing for bread, and he brewed coffee from the well water. And then a key grated in the lock and the door opened!
“Oh my goodness, you’re here!”
“Alive and kicking!”
“Didn’t you hear us trying to break into the house?”
“We rushed round to Vasylivna’s, because the General, God rest his soul, gave her a key when he got poorly.”
“You must have heard us!”
“I had some music playing,” said Eugene, making an excuse instead of firmly, not to say sharply, telling them he was not keen to see early visitors who would then roam about his house all morning.
“Well, we’ll let you off this once, but from now on please don’t lock up.”
“We all nearly had heart failure!”
“Oh what a lovely smell! You’re making coffee. In return for making us run round to Vasylivna’s!”
And the women started rummaging in the General’s sideboard for coffee cups.
He decided to go for morning walks in the forest, because he couldn’t follow his intellectual pursuits until the evening anyway. The women drew him off course, insisting that he accepted their vegetables and spent a short while at least telling them how he had slept. And listening to the village news. The Irivka women could not contemplate the thought that they were unwelcome. Once he was finally alone, he cursed his weakness, his pitiful inability to tell them to go to hell. This annoyance troubled him all day, preventing him reading the books he had brought from home, as he needed peace and quiet to read Nietzsche or even Francis Bacon. The big isolated house at the edge of the village was perfectly suited to intensive reading. But, for some reason, his everyday village life was reminiscent of the absurd, even more so than the situation in his parents’ house. When he went into the forest, if he actually managed to reach the forest, he heard voices behind him:
“If only he was going there to pick berries or gather mushrooms, but he goes there just for the sake of it. And we bring him his milk, don’t we?”
“As we used to bring the General’s.”
“Now then, the General, what a man he was! But this one! Well, never thanks you properly!”
I don’t want this sort of Ukraine,” he thought. I can understand people escaping from here and doing whatever it takes to be able to afford the rent for a studio flat on the outskirts of Kyiv, as many of my acquaintances did. It is not the lack of hot
Similar Books
