cted news.
The dead man's relatives, as our customs demand, sent out messengers of
woe to the neighbouring villages, a large army cape was stretched across the
yard of his house to make a shelter where the funeral feast would be held,
and a grave was dug in the cemetery.
The collective farm sent its one and only lorry to bring the dead man
home because private transport was hard to come by in wartime. In short, the
whole thing was arranged in proper style, just as it should be. Yes,
everything was as it should be, except the dead man himself, Shchaaban
Larba, who, so it was said, had never given anyone any peace while he was
alive, and after death became quite unmanageable.
The day after the sorrowful news the lorry arrived back in the village
with the body of the dead man, who turned out to be alive.
Crooked Arm, they say, walked into the yard of his house gently
supported by Mustafa and swearing loudly. His indignation was due not to the
news of his death and the preparations for his funeral but to something he
noticed at once on glancing at the shelter made with the army cape, for
which two apple trees had been stripped of their branches. Still swearing,
Crooked Arm demonstrated on the spot how the cape could have been hung
without touching the trees.
After that, they say, he made the round of his guests shaking hands
with each and staring keenly into their eyes to discover what impression had
been caused by the news of his death and simultaneous, quite unexpected,
resurrection.
Having done this, they say, he raised that arm of his which had been
withering for twenty years but still had not withered away, and, shading his
eyes with his hand, peered rudely at the women who had been hired to weep
for him as though he didn't know what they were there for.
"What do you want?" he rasped.
They looked embarrassed. "Oh, nothing special. We just came to weep for
you."
"Well, get on with it then," Crooked Arm is said to have replied, and
put his hand to his ear to listen to the weeping. But at this point someone
intervened and led the weepers away.
When he saw the gifts that his relatives had brought, Crooked Arm
pondered for a moment. It is the custom among my people to hold any kind of
funeral feast on such a grand scale that, were it all done at the expense of
the dead man's family, its surviving members would have no alternative but
to lie down and die as well.
So, all the relatives and neighbours help out. Some bring wine, some
bring roast chickens, some bring khachapuri, and someone may even bring a
calf. And it so happened this time that one of the relatives from the next
village had brought along a well fattened calf, which Crooked Arm took an
immediate liking to. Incidentally, they say that it was from this relative
that the measurements had been taken for digging the grave, because he was
just about the same height as Crooked Arm. They say that when one of the
lads who had been told to dig the grave came up to him with a measuring
string, this relative expressed some displeasure and argued that there were
other people more suitable for the purpose, that he was probably a little
taller than Crooked Arm and Crooked Arm was more stocky.
So saying, he tried to get away from the measuring string, but the lad
would not let him get away. Like all grave-diggers, this lad was given to
joking. He said that Crooked Arm's stockiness made no difference now, and
that if the worst came to the worst and Crooked Arm was not the right size,
they would have his relative in mind.
The relative, they say, sniggered half-heartedly at these jokes, but
evidently took offence, because he withdrew to the company of the people
from his own village and stood with them, glancing sulkily at his calf,
which was tethered to the fence.
At the sight of all these gifts Crooked Arm announced that it was too
early yet to rejoice, that he still felt very ill, and that he had been
discharged only so that he should not die in hospital because doctors were
fined for that, just as collective farmers were fined for spoiled produce.
He then went straight to bed and gave instructions that the grave should on
no account be filled in, but kept open in readiness. The relatives, it is
said, dispersed somewhat unwillingly, the one who had brought the calf being
particularly displeased. But Crooked Arm calmed him with assurances that he
would not have long to wait, so the calf would not waste away even if it was
not let out of the yard.
Crooked Arm stayed in bed for about a week. After a couple of days he
began to be pestered by the curious, because by that time the rumour had
spread that Crooked Arm, having died in the hospital, had come to life on
the way home and arrived there for his own funeral. Another rumour had it
that he had not died at all but had fallen into a deep sleep from which the
doctors had been unable to awake him, but the journey back had been so bumpy
that he had woken up of his own accord.
At first Crooked Arm received the visitors, particularly while they
continued to bring him all kinds of delicacies designed to tempt the palate
of a man who had recently been dead and was still not quite alive again. But
eventually he grew tired of this, and in any case the chairman of the farm
said there was work to be done. So, when he heard the gate creak, he would
run out on the veranda and bellow in his loud voice, "Back! Keep back, you
parasites! I'll set the dog on you!"
However, the rumours of his resurrection grew and multiplied. It must
have been quite a year later when I heard in one of the neighbouring
villages that Crooked Arm had come to life not on the way home from
hospital, but actually in his grave, several days after burial. The noise he
had been making was heard by a boy who had been looking for his goat one
evening in the cemetery. So the villagers had to go and dig him out. If he
had not possessed such a powerful voice, they said, he would have died of
hunger, or even of thirst, because the site that had been chosen for his
grave was a good one--well drained.
So it came about that Crooked Arm survived or, at least, prevented his
own funeral, while retaining for himself a grave in complete readiness.
When they first saw Crooked Arm on his return from hospital, the people
of the village decided that it was the secretary of the village Soviet who
had played a joke on them, because he was the man who had said he had talked
with the hospital or someone who had pretended to be the hospital. But the
secretary declared that he would never dream of playing such a joke with a
war on.
Everyone believed him, because to joke like that in wartime would have
been just a bit too stupid. Eventually, it was agreed that there had been
some sort of mix-up at the hospital, that another old man had died, perhaps
even one of Crooked Arm's namesakes, for in Abkhazia we have any number of
people of the very same name.
I heard Crooked Arm's voice the first day we started living with our
grass widow, even before I had met him face to face. At exactly midday, when
he was coming home for dinner from work on the farm, he would at a distance
of some three hundred meters from his house start shouting to his wife,
scolding her and inquiring furiously if the hominy was ready.
The old woman would respond with equally frantic yells and their voices
with no loss of power or clarity would gradually come together, overreach
each other and at last fall silent. After a time the old woman's voice would
shoot up triumphantly from the silence but Crooked Arm's would not respond.
Later on, when I began visiting their house, I realised that the old man
kept quiet at this stage for the simple reason that his mouth was occupied
with eating; he ate as frantically as he cursed, so he could not possibly
eat and curse at the same time.
Coming home from work in the evening, he would inquire in the same tone
of voice about his horse or his grandson Yashka and again about the hominy
for supper.
Later on, I made friends with this Yashka, who was just as loud-voiced
as his grandfather but, unlike him, a good-natured lounger. Crooked Arm
usually took him to school on the back of his horse, and would curse all the
way there over having to waste his precious time on this dunderhead. Yashka
would sit in silence behind his grandfather, holding on to his belt and
gazing around with a sheepish grin on his face.
If his grandfather was away, he would be taken to school by his
grandmother on the same horse, and he would sit behind her in the same way,
except that he did not let her ride right up to the school in case the boys
made fun of him.
He and I attended school in different shifts. On my way home from
school I would meet them about halfway and Yashka would screw his head round
and stare wistfully after me, thereby touching off a fresh explosion of fury
from his grandfather. Yashka had to be taken to school because it was three
kilometres from his home and Yashka was so absentminded that he sometimes
forgot where he was going and took the wrong road.
In the early days, on meeting me in the street, Crooked Arm would look
at me shading his eyes with his hand, and ask:
"Who do you belong to?"
"I am the son of so-and-so," I would answer politely and give the name
of my mother, whom he had known for many years.
"Who's she?" he would thunder, and scrutinise me even more thoroughly
from under his crooked palm.
"She is Uncle Meksut's wife's sister," I would explain, though I
realised he was pretending.
"So you're one of those parasites from town?" he would say with a nod
in the direction of our house.
"Yes," I would reply, confirming that we lived there and at the same
time reluctantly acknowledging our role as parasites.
He would stand before me, peering at me in astonishment with his gimlet
eyes, a rather short, stocky man with a massive neck as red as a cock's
comb. And while he stood there, peering at me in surprise, as though to
achieve a complete mental picture of me, he would at the same time be
listening to something else, to something that was taking place on the other
side of the fence, in the maize on his allotment, as though he could tell by
whispers, by scuffling, by sounds audible to his ears alone exactly what was
happening on his allotment, in his yard and perhaps even inside the house
itself.
"So it was you who fell into my grave?" he would ask suddenly,
listening as usual to what was happening on his allotment and already
sensing something amiss that made him snort with dissatisfaction.
"Yes," I would reply, observing him with secret misgiving, because I
felt he was packed with some kind of explosive force.
"And what did you think of it down there?" he would ask still with one
ear to the fence, as it were, and becoming more and more agitated over what
was happening on the other side of it, and even beginning to mutter to
himself, "Is that old woman dead, or what? Curse her eyes... She'll ruin me
one of these days, the old fool..."
"Very nice," I would reply, trying to display my gratitude for the
hospitality. After all, it was his grave.
"It's a good, dry spot," he would agree, almost whining with
indignation at what was happening on his allotment; and all of a sudden he
would let fly and shout to his old woman, leaping straight to his top note:
"Hey! There's something grunting in the kitchen garden! Blast your
ears--it's the pigs, the pigs!"
"May I bury them with you in that grave of yours! You see pigs
everywhere!" the old woman would retort at once.
"But I can hear them--they're munching and grunting, munching and
grunting!" he would shout, forgetting all about me, and, as usual, their
voices overlapped and he seemed to snatch the end of her shout and haul
himself along by it towards the house, tossing her his own raging voice as
he went. By and by we grew accustomed to his voice and stopped paying much
attention to it, and when he was away for a few days and all was quiet and
still, it seemed strange, as though something was missing and our ears were
full of an empty roar.
His wife, a tall old woman, taller than he, and unbelievably thin,
would sometimes, when he was not at home, come round for a chat with my
mother. She would occasionally bring a cheese or a bowl of maize flour or a
fragrant lump of meat that had been smoked over an outdoor fire. With a shy
little laugh she would ask us to hide away what she had brought and, for
goodness sake, never say thank you, because that bawling husband of hers
must not know anything about it.
She and my mother would talk for hours and Crooked Arm's wife would
smoke all the time, making herself cigarette after cigarette. Suddenly
Crooked Arm's voice would be heard. He would shout something to her in the
direction of their house and she would prick up her ears at the sound of his
voice and shake with silent laughter, as though she were afraid he would
hear her laughing at him for shouting in the wrong direction.
"What do you want now--I'm over here!" she would shout in the end.
"Aha, idling again! Birds of a feather! You're nothing but a gang of
chatterboxes!" he would bawl, after a brief pause during which he must have
been struck dumb with indignation at her treachery.
One day he rode up to our gate and shouted to me to bring out a sack.
Grumbling loudly about parasites who had to have everything chewed and put
in their mouths for them to swallow, he filled my sack half full of flour
and, still fuming because he was giving away his own maize that he had had
to take to the mill on his own horse, he tied his sack to the saddle again
and rode away, bawling over his shoulder that I must be careful not to tell
that woman anything about the flour because he never had any peace from her
shrieking as it was.
Time went by and Old Crooked Arm showed no signs of dying. The longer
he delayed his death, the more the calf flourished and grew fat; the more
the calf flourished and grew fat, the sadder its former owner became. In the
end he sent a man to Crooked Arm to drop a hint about the calf. Thank the
Lord Crooked Arm was still alive, the message ran, but now it would be only
right to return the calf, because he had not made Crooked Arm a present of
it; he had only brought it to the funeral as a good kinsman should.
"Brought an egg and wants to go home with a chicken," Crooked Arm is
said to have responded. After this, they say he thought for a moment and
added: "Tell him that if I die soon he can come to the funeral without any
offering at all and if he dies I'll come to his house like a good kinsman
and bring a calf from his calf."
Crooked Arm's relative, on learning of these terms, is said to have
taken offence and told the messenger to tell Crooked Arm without any hints
this time that he did not want any calf from his calf, and certainly not
when he himself was dead; he wanted his own calf, while he was still alive,
the calf which he had brought to the funeral as an offering as a good
kinsman should. Since Crooked Arm still had not died it was time to return
the calf to its proper owner. Moreover, he gave his word that in spite of
the fact that while he was at Crooked Arm's house he had suffered the
humiliation of being measured with a bit of string, he would nevertheless,
if Crooked Arm really did die, bring the calf back again.
"This man will drive me to the grave with that calf of his," is what
Crooked Arm is supposed to have said on hearing these explanations. "Tell
him," he added, "that he has not long to wait now, so it's not worth
tormenting the wretched animal."
A few days after this conversation Crooked Arm transplanted from his
allotment to his grave two young peach trees. Possibly he did this to revive
the idea of his imminent doom. Yashka and I helped him. But apparently the
two young peach trees were not enough for him. Some days later he went to
the farm plantation at night, dug up a small tung tree and planted it
between the two peach trees. Everyone soon got to know about this. The
members of the farm chuckled among themselves and said that Crooked Arm
wanted to poison the dead with the tung fruit. No one attached much
importance to the transplanting because no one before or since had ever
stolen a tung tree for the simple reason that no peasant farmer had any use
for one, the fruit of the tung being deadly poisonous and consequently
rather dangerous.
The former owner of the calf also fell silent. Either he became
convinced that Crooked Arm was doomed after having planted a tung tree on
his grave, or else, fearing the old man's tongue, which was no less venomous
than the tung fruit, he had decided to leave him in peace.
Incidentally, legend has it that it was Crooked Arm's tongue in his
young days that gave him his crooked arm. It happened in the following
manner.
They say that after some feast or other, the local prince was sitting
surrounded by numerous guests in his host's courtyard. The prince was eating
peaches, which he peeled with a small penknife attached to a silver chain.
This penknife on its silver chain, by the way, has nothing to do with the
subsequent events, but all narrators of this tale have mentioned this
penknife, never failing to add that it was attached to a silver chain. In
retelling the incident once again I should have liked to avoid that penknife
on its silver chain, but for some reason I feel that I must mention it, that
it contains some element of truth without which something will be
lost--though I don't know what.
Anyway, the prince was eating peaches and complacently recalling
amorous joys. In the end, so they say, he surveyed the host's courtyard and
remarked with a sigh, "If I were to assemble all the women I have had in my
time, this yard wouldn't hold them."
But Crooked Arm, they say, even in those days, despite his youth, never
allowed anyone to be complacent for long. He popped up from somewhere and
said, "I wonder how many she-asses there would be braying in this yard?"
This somewhat elderly prince was a great connoisseur of feminine
beauty, added to which, they say, he was modestly proud of his ability to
strip a fruit of its skin without once breaking the ribbon of peel. This
skill never deserted him, not even after a night's hard drinking. No matter
how closely he was watched, or how hard people tried to distract him, he
never made a slip. Sometimes they would try to catch him out with a fruit of
extremely odd and ugly shape, but he would examine it from all angles, take
out his little penknife on its silver chain and unerringly set it to work
along the only correct path.
Having thus produced a spiral wreath of peel, he would usually hold it
up before the assembled company. And if there was a pretty girl among them
he would call her over and hang the ring of peel over her ear.
It seems to me that Crooked Arm must have been irritated by the
Prince's skill. I think he must have been observing him for a long time and
was sure that sooner or later the ribbon of peel would break. He may
actually have placed great hopes in one particular peach, but the prince
had, as usual, dealt with it quite successfully and even started boasting
about his women. You must agree there was enough to make Crooked Arm
explode, particularly as a young man.
They say that after Crooked Arm's unexpected remark the prince turned
purple and stared speechlessly at him with his eyes popping out, still
holding in his right hand the peeled and oozing peach, and in his left, the
penknife on its silver chain.
Everyone was struck dumb with horror, but the prince continued to stare
unblinkingly at Crooked Arm while the hand that was holding the peach moved
restlessly in the air as though sensing how inappropriate it was to be
holding a peach at that moment, not to mention the difficulty of drawing a
pistol while holding a peach in one's hand, particularly a peeled one. They
say his hand even lowered to the ground to get rid of the peach, but at the
last moment somehow could not bring itself to do such a thing. After all the
peach had been skinned and a well brought-up princely hand must have felt
that a skinned peach simply could not be placed on the ground. And so it
rose again, this hand, and for an agonising second groped in the air for an
invisible plate, feeling that there must be someone who would think of
providing a plate, but everyone was paralysed with fear and no one had the
presence of mind to help the prince discard this, by now indecently naked
peach. And at this point, they say, Crooked Arm himself came to the prince's
aid.
"Pop it in your mouth!" he suggested.
The guests had no time to recover from this fresh impertinence before
they found themselves witnessing the inexplicable self-abasement of the
prince, who is said to have begun in shameful haste to push the juicy,
dripping peach into his mouth, while continuing to stare at Crooked Arm with
hate-filled eyes. At last, having somehow coped with the peach, he reached
for his pistol. Still gazing at Crooked Arm with those bulging, hate-filled
eyes, he fumbled speechlessly in the region of his belt but, owing to his
extreme agitation, or, as others infer more correctly, because his hands
were sticky with peach juice, he just could not unbutton his holster.
Perhaps someone would yet have come to his senses, perhaps someone
might have managed to seize the prince's arm or, at least, hustle Crooked
Arm aside, making it impossible to shoot and perhaps dangerous for other
people, but then, they say, Shchaaban's voice rang out in the silence for
the last time. I don't mean in the sense that after this his voice never
rang out any more. Rather on the contrary, it became even louder and more
scornful. But in the sense that after this phrase he ceased to be just
Shchaaban and became Shchaaban Crooked Arm.
"I bet he doesn't take so long over the other thing," he is said to
have remarked, "judging by the way our Chegem she-asses..."
They say he did not finish his remark about the she-asses because the
old prince, at last, coped with his holster--a shot rang out, the women
shrieked and, when the smoke cleared, Crooked Arm was what fate had destined
him to be, that is, crooked-armed. Afterwards, when he was asked why after
the first insult he had gone on teasing the prince he would simply reply, "I
just couldn't stop."
Later on, however, when the prince went off with the Mensheviks and
Soviet power was finally and irrevocably established in our part of the
country, Crooked Arm began to assert that he had had an old score to settle
with the prince, perhaps even something to do with the days of partisan
warfare, and that this exchange had been merely a pretext for, or
consequence of, other more important things.
In short, despite the prince's bullet, Crooked Arm went on taking the
rise out of anyone and everyone and his jokes seemed to lose none of their
sting as the years went by.
When I was roaming round the village I would often see him on the
tobacco or tea plantation or weeding the maize. If he was in a good mood he
would simply play the fool and have everyone doubled up with laughter.
He had a knack of imitating the voices of people he knew and of animals
as well; and he was particularly good at crowing like a cock.
Sometimes he would jab his hoe into the ground, straighten his back,
look around and let out a mighty crow. The cocks in the neighbouring yards
would answer almost at once. Everyone would burst out laughing, and while
the nearest cock went on calling him he would resume his hoeing and mutter,
"A fat lot you know, you fool."
Down our way, like everywhere else probably, people believe that the
crowing of a cock has a special meaning, that it is almost an omen of the
owner's fate. Crooked Arm was debunking these rural clairvoyants. In spite
of his half-withered arm he certainly worked like the devil. Although when
sometimes there was a rumour that a new national loan was being floated, to
which contributions would be required, or when the remaining men in the
village were being mobilised for tree-felling, he would slip his left arm
into a clean red sling and go about like that for as long as he considered
necessary. I don't think this red sling was much help to him; it certainly
couldn't get him out of signing up for the loan. Nonetheless, it apparently
provided him with some additional pretext for argument.
I believe he acquired this red sling to give his arm a soldierly,
partisan appearance. Whenever he was summoned by the management board he
would put his arm in its sling before leaving. Mounted on horseback with a
black sheepskin cloak draped over his shoulders and his arm in a red sling,
he certainly did have the rather dashing air of the partisan fighter.
All was well in the village, when suddenly it became known that the
chairman of the village Soviet had received an anonymous letter against
Crooked Arm. The letter declared that the planting of a tung tree on a grave
was an insult to this new industrial crop, a hint that the plant was of no
use to living collective farmers, and that its proper place was in the
village cemetery.
The chairman of the village Soviet showed this letter to the chairman
of the collective farm, who, they say, was properly scared by it, because
someone might think that he had given Crooked Arm the idea of transplanting
the tung tree to his own grave.
In those days I just couldn't understand why things had taken such a
threatening turn--after all, everyone had known before the letter was sent
that Crooked Arm had planted the tung tree on his grave. In those days I
didn't realise that a letter was a document, and a document had to be
presented on demand, had to be answered for.
To be sure, some people say that the chairman of the village Soviet
need not have passed it on, but that he had a grudge against Crooked Arm,
and that was why he showed it to the chairman of the farm.
In short, the letter was set in motion and one day a man arrived from
the district centre to find out the truth of the matter. Crooked Arm tried
to laugh it off, but, so they say, he had clearly lost his nerve because
afterwards he had a shave, put his arm in the red sling and went about the
village staring at it as if it was just about to blow up and the only thing
he and everyone else around could do would be to dodge the splinters.
"Now you've done it," said Mustafa, an old horseman, the friend and
eternal rival of Crooked Arm. "Now you'd better guzzle your tung apples and
jump into your grave, otherwise they'll pack you off to Siberia."
"I'm not afraid of Siberia. I'm afraid you'll step into my grave while
I'm away," Crooked Arm replied.
"In Siberia, they say, they ride on dogs," Mustafa suggested meanly.
"You'd better take a bridle with you and try breaking in a dog for
yourself."
The long-standing rivalry between Crooked Arm and Mustafa was over
horses and horsemanship. They both had their feats and failures behind them.
Crooked Arm had covered himself with undying glory by stealing a famous
stallion at a certain race meeting in full view of thousands of spectators
(personally, I doubt whether there were thousands). They say that Crooked
Arm had been mounted on such a wretched, broken-winded nag and had looked so
pathetic that when he asked the owner of the stallion permission to put his
famous race-horse through its paces, the latter had granted the permission
as a joke, because he was sure the stallion would throw Crooked Arm right
away and thus add still further to its renown.
Crooked Arm, they say, slithered awkwardly off his doleful jade and, as
he passed the reins to the owner of the stallion, said, "Let's count it that
we've swopped."
"Done," the owner replied, taking the reins from him.
"Whatever you do, don't let this one throw you first time, or he'll
trample you to death," Crooked Arm warned him, and went over to the
stallion.
"I'll be careful," the owner is said to have replied and, as soon as
Crooked Arm mounted the stallion, gave a sign to a lad standing in the
background, and the lad gave the stallion a tremendous whack with his whip.
The stallion reared and galloped off towards the River Kodor, and
Crooked Arm, they say, hung on at first like a drunken mullah on a galloping
donkey.
Everyone was expecting him to fall off, but he went on and on and the
owner's jaw began to drop as Crooked Arm reached the end of the field and,
instead of following the bend of the race-course, went careering on towards
the river. For another few minutes they hesitated, thinking the horse had
taken the bit between its teeth and he could not make it turn, but then they
realised that this was a robbery of quite unprecedented daring. Fifteen
minutes later a dozen horsemen were galloping in pursuit, but it was too
late.
Crooked Arm had leapt headlong down the cliff to the river and by the
time his pursuers reached the edge he was climbing out on the far bank; for
an instant, the stallion's wet crupper gleamed in the alders at the water's
edge. The bullets flew wide and no one dared take a flying leap down the
cliff. Since then the spot has been known as Crooked Arm Cliff. Crooked Arm
himself never told this story in my presence, but he allowed others to tell
it, listening with pleasure and making a few corrections. He would always
wink at Mustafa if he was present, and Mustafa would pretend not to be
listening, until in the end he could not refrain from trying to belittle or
ridicule the exploit.
Mustafa would say that a man with one arm shot through was disabled
anyway, so he had not risked all that much for the sake of his exploit. And
if he had jumped down the cliff he had done it, first, because he was scared
and, secondly, because there was nothing else he could do, since he would
have been shot dead in any case if he had been caught by his pursuers.
In short, there was a deep and long-standing rivalry between them. In
their young days they used to thresh it out at the races; now, in old age,
though they still kept horses, they solved their disputes theoretically, in
the course of which they would become involved in a jungle of
ominous-sounding riddles.
"If a man shoots at you from over there and you, say, are riding down
that path, where would you turn your horse at the sound of the shot--and,
mind you, there's not a single tree around?"
"Suppose you're galloping down a hill with someone chasing you. Ahead
on the right there's some scrub, and on the left there's a ravine. Where do
you turn your horse then?"
Such were the disputes these two men would hold as they trudged home
with hoes or axes on their shoulders, after a long day's work.
These disputes had been going on for many years, although it was a long
time since anyone had done any shooting round our way, and certainly not at
these old men for people had learned how to avenge an insult by safer
methods. And to one of these methods, namely, the anonymous letter, it is
now time for us to return.
The representative from the district centre tried to make the old man
say what his real purpose had been in moving the tung tree, and, above all,
to reveal who had instigated him to do so. Crooked Arm replied that no one
had instigated him, that he himself had suddenly wanted to have a tung tree
growing at his head when he lay dead and buried, because he had long since
taken a fancy to this plant that till recently had been quite unknown in our
district. The man from the centre did not believe him.
Then Crooked Arm confessed he had been relying on the poisonous
properties not only of the fruit but of the roots of the tree; he had been
hoping that its roots would kill all the grave worms and he would lie in
peace and cleanliness because he had had enough trouble from the fleas in
this world.
But at this point, they say, the man from the centre asked what he
meant by fleas. Crooked Arm replied that by fleas he means dog's fleas,
which should not be confused with poultry lice, which did not worry him in
the least, any more than buffalo ticks did. But if there was one thing that
he couldn't stand it was the horse flies, and if he did throw a couple of
handfuls of superphosphate under a horse's tail during the heat of the day,
it was no great loss to the collective farm and the horse had a rest from
the flies. The man from the centre realised that he couldn't draw blood
there either, so he went back to the subject of the tung.
In short, no matter what excuses Crooked Arm produced, things began to
look black for him. The next day he was not even summoned before the comrade
from the district centre. Ready for anything, he sat in the yard of the
management office in the shade of a mulberry tree and, keeping his arm in
the red sling all the time, smoked and waited for his fate to be decided.
Then it was, they say, that Mustafa turned up and walked straight into the
management office, where the chairman of the collective farm, the chairman
of the village Soviet and the man from the district centre were conferring
together. As he walked past Crooked Arm, he looked at him and said, "I've
thought of something. If it doesn't help, you'd better lie down quietly in
your grave, just as you are, with your sling on, and I'll shake some tung
fruit down on you."
Crooked Arm made no reply to these words. He merely glanced sadly at
his arm as much as to say that he was ready to put up with any amount of
suffering but why should his arm, which had already suffered enough from the
Menshevik's bullet, suffer again?
Mustafa had a great reputation with the local authorities for being the
shrewdest man on the farm. His house was the biggest and finest in the
village, so if any top people came to visit us they were promptly dispatched
to Mustafa's hospitable house.
What Mustafa had thought of was splendidly simple. The man from the
centre was an Abkhazian, and if a man is an Abkhazian, even if he has come
from Ethiopia, he is bound to have relatives in Abkhazia.
That night, apparently, Mustafa had secretly assembled all the old men
of the village at his house, dined them and wined them, and with their help
thoroughly investigated the family origins of the comrade from the district
centre. Careful and all-round analysis had shown quite clearly that the
comrade from the district centre was through his great aunt, once a town
girl and now living in the village of Merkheul, related by blood to my Uncle
Meksut. Mustafa was quite satisfied with the results of this analysis.
With this trump card in his pocket he marched past Crooked Arm into the
management office. They say that when Mustafa informed the comrade from the
district centre of this fact, the latter turned pale and began to deny his
being related to the great aunt from Merkheul village and particularly to
Uncle Meksut. But the trap had worked. Mustafa merely laughed at his denials
and said, "If he's not a relative of yours, why are you so pale?"
He said no more and left the office.
"What shall I do?" Crooked Arm asked when he saw Mustafa.
"Wait till evening," Mustafa replied.
"Make up your mind soon," Crooked Arm said, "or my arm will wither away
altogether in this sling."
"Till evening," Mustafa repeated, and walked off.
The fact of the matter was that in denying his relationship with Uncle
Meksut the comrade from the district centre had mortally insulted my uncle.
But Uncle Meksut kept his temper. Without saying a word to anyone he merely
saddled his horse and rode away to the village of Merkheul.
By evening he returned on his sweating mount, reined up at the
management office, and handed the bridle to Old Crooked Arm, who was still
waiting there in suspense. The chairman was standing on the veranda, smoking
and surveying Crooked Arm and the surrounding scenery.
"Come in," the chairman said at the sight of Uncle Meksut.
"Just a minute," Uncle Meksut replied and, before mounting the steps,
ripped the red sling off the old man's arm and tucked it without a word into
his pocket.
They say the old man just stood there with his arm suspended in midair,
as though unable to comprehend this symbolic gesture.
Uncle Meksut placed in front of the comrade from the district centre
the yellowed, crumbling birth certificate of his great aunt of Merkheul,
issued by the notary public's office of the Sukhumi Uyezd in the days before
the revolution. At the sight of this birth certificate the comrade from the
district centre, they say, again turned pale, but could no longer offer any
denials.
"Or shall I bring you your great aunt here over my saddle bow?" Uncle
Meksut asked him.
"You needn't do that," the comrade from the district centre answered
very quietly.
"Will you take your brief-case with you or put it in the safe?" Uncle
Meksut asked.
"I'll take it with me," the comrade replied.
"Come along then," Uncle Meksut said and they left the office.
That evening there was a party at Uncle Meksut's house and the whole
case was considered. The next morning after a long discussion in Uncle
Meksut's house a statement was drawn up in Russian-Caucasian officialese and
dictated to me personally.
"At last this parasite has come in useful," Crooked Arm said, when I
moved the inkstand towards me and sat poised to take the dictation.
The leaders of the collective farm discussed the statement with the
comrade from the district centre. Crooked Arm listened attentively and asked
for every phrase to be translated into the Abkhazian language. Moreover, he
made several amendments to the wording which, as I realise now, were
designed to enhance his social and practical merits.
The passage dealing with his crooked arm gave rise to particularly
furious disputes. Crooked Arm demanded that it should be stated that he had
suffered from the bullet of a Menshevik hireling in view of the fact that
the prince who had wounded him had afterwards gone off with the Mensheviks.
The comrade from the district centre clutched his temples and begged them to
stick to the facts because he also had to answer to his superiors, even
though he did respect his relatives. In the end they arrived at a version
that satisfied everyone.
The statement took so long to draft that while I was writing it down in
my wavering hand I actually learned it off by heart. Its authors asked me to
read it out loud, which I did with great feeling. After this it was given to
the secretary of the village Soviet to be copied. This is what it said:
"The old man Shchaaban Larba, otherwise known as Crooked Arm, a
nickname he acquired some time before the revolution together with a
prince's bullet, which later turned out to he a Menshevik bullet, has ever
since the organisation of the collective farm worked actively on the farm in
spite of the handicap of his partly withered arm (left).
"The old man Shchaaban Larba, otherwise known as Crooked Arm, has a son
who at the present time is fighting at the front in the Patriotic War and
has won government decorations (field post-office number indicated in
brackets).
"The old man Shchaaban Larba, otherwise known as Crooked Arm, despite
his advanced age, is in these difficult times working without respite in the
collectivised fields, giving his above-mentioned arm no rest. Every year he
does the equivalent of not less than four hundred work-day units.
"The collective farm management together with the chairman of the
village Soviet affirms that, being a pre-revolutionary and uneducated old
man, he transplanted the said tung tree to the site of his fictitious grave
by mistake, for which he will be fined in accordance with collective farm
regulations. The management of the collective farm affirms that the
transplantation of tung trees from collective farm plantations to the
communal cemetery and particularly to home allotments has never been
practised on a mass scale and is in the nature of an individual lapse of
consciousness.
"The collective farm management affirms that old man Shchaaban Larba,
otherwise known as Crooked Arm, has never poured scorn on collective farm
affairs but in accordance with his gay and peppery character (Abkhazian
pepper) has poured scorn on certain individuals, which include quite a few
parasites of the collective farm fields, who are heroes in quotation marks
and advanced workers, without quotation marks, on their own home allotments.
But we have been eradicating such heroes and advanced workers and shall
continue to do so in accordance with the collective farm regulations up to
and including expulsion from the collective farm and confiscation of home
allotments.
"The old man Shchaaban Larba, thanks to his inborn folk talent, mimics
the local cocks, in the course of which he exposes the most harmful Moslem
customs of olden times and also entertains the collective farmers without
interrupting work in the fields."
The statement was signed and sealed by the chairman of the collective
farm and the chairman of the village Soviet.
When the work was done, the guests went out on to the veranda, where
farewell glasses of Isabella were drunk and the comrade from the district
centre passed a hint through one of the members of the management board that
he would not be averse to listening to Crooked Arm mimicking the cocks.
Crooked Arm did not have to be asked twice. He raised his immortal hand to
his mouth and gave such a cock-a-doodle-doo that all the cocks in the
vicinity broke loose like dogs from the chain. Only the host's cock, before
whose very eyes the whole deception took place, was at first struck dumb
with indignation, and then burst into such a fit of crowing that it had to
be chased out of the yard on to the vegetable patch because it offended the
ear of the comrade from the district centre and prevented him from making
himself heard.
"Does it work on all cocks or only on the local ones?" the comrade from
the district centre asked, having waited for the cock to be chased out of
hearing.
"On all of them," Crooked Arm replied readily. "Try it out anywhere you
like."
"A real folk artist," said the comrade from the district centre, and
everyone started saying goodbye to Uncle Meksut, who accompanied them to the
gate and a little further.
The chairman of the collective farm carried out to the letter what had
been promised in the statement. He fined Crooked Arm twenty work-day units.
In addition, he ordered him to move the tung tree back to the plantation and
to fill in the grave forever as a precaution against accidents to cattle.
Crooked Arm dug up the tree and moved it to the plantation, but its
sufferings had been too great and it declined into a half-withered state.
"Like my arm," said Crooked Arm. But he managed to defend his grave by
surrounding it with a rather handsome stake fence with a gate and a latch.
After the business of the anonymous letter had died down Crooked Arm's
relative once again, through an intermediary, cautiously reminded him about
the calf.
Crooked Arm replied that he couldn't be bothered with the calf just now
because he had been disgraced and slandered, and was busy day and night
looking for the slanderer and even took his gun with him to work. He would
know no peace until he had driven the slanderer into his grave and would not
even grudge him his own grave if he was not too big for it. Finally, he
wanted his relative to keep his ear to the ground and his eyes peeled so
that at the slightest suspicion he could give Crooked Arm the signal and
Crooked Arm would know what to do. Only when he had fulfilled his Manly Duty
would he be able to settle the business of the calf and other minor
misunderstandings that were quite natural between relatives.
After that, they say, the relative fell silent altogether and never
mentioned the calf again and tried to keep out of Crooked Arm's way. None
the less they did run into one another at a celebration of some kind. It was
late at night and Crooked Arm had plenty of drink inside him, and during the
performance of a drinking song that allowed of some improvisation, he
started repeating the same couplet over and over again:
O, raida, siua raida, ei,
Who sold his kinsman for a calf...
He went on singing without looking in the direction of his relative,
with the result that the latter gradually became sober and in the end,
unable to bear it any longer, asked Crooked Arm across the table:
"What are you trying to say?"
"Nothing," Crooked Arm replied, and looked at him as though taking his
measurements, "just singing."
"Yes, but it's a funny kind of song," said the relative.
"In our village," Crooked Arm explained to him, "everyone sings it
except one man."
"What man?" the relative asked.
"Guess," Crooked Arm suggested.
"I wouldn't even try," the relative said hastily.
"Then I'll tell you," Crooked Arm threatened.
"Go on, then!" the relative challenged recklessly.
"The chairman of the village Soviet," declared Crooked Arm.
"Why doesn't he sing it?" the relative asked pointblank.
"He's not allowed to drop hints," Crooked Arm explained.
"Can you prove anything?" the relative asked.
"No, I can't, so for the time being I'm just singing," said Crooked Arm
and once again surveyed the relative, as though taking his measurements.
By this time they had attracted the anxious attention of their host,
who did not want them to spoil the feast he was giving to celebrate the
decoration of his son with the Order of the Red Banner.
Again someone struck up the song and everyone sang, and Crooked Arm
sang with the others without any particular variations because he felt the
host's eye upon him. But when the host relaxed, Crooked Arm seized his
chance, and invented another line:
O, raida, siua raida, ei,
With a fence the dear one is protected...
But the host did hear him nevertheless and came over to the two men
with a horn full of wine.
"Crooked Arm!" he cried. "Swear by our sons who are shedding their
blood in the country's defence that you will be forever reconciled at this
table."
"I've forgotten about the calf," the relative said.
"And high time you did," Crooked Arm corrected him, then turned to the
host: "For the sake of our children I'd eat dirt--be it as you wish, Amen!"
And he threw back his head and drank a litre horn of wine in a single
draught, leaning further and further back to the accompaniment of a general
chorus helping him to drink: "Uro, uro, uro, u-r-o-o..."
Then the whole table again burst into song and the relative, so they
say, waited anxiously to see how he would sing the passage that could be
improvised. And when Crooked Arm sang:
O, raida, siua raida, ei,
O heroes, advancing under fire...
the relative listened intently for a few seconds, considering the words
from all points of view, and finally, having decided that he bore no
resemblance whatever to a hero advancing under fire, felt entirely relieved
and joined in the singing.
In the autumn we gathered a rich harvest from our allotment and
returned to town with maize, pumpkins, nuts and an enormous quantity of
dried fruit. In addition, we had laid in a store of about twenty bottles of
bekmez, fruit honey, in this case, made of apples.
We had struck a bargain with one of the workteam leaders on the farm
that we would pick the apples in an old orchard, giving half the harvest to
the farm and keeping the other half for ourselves.
Because of the shortage of labour at the farm there was simply no one
to pick the apples; everyone was busy with the main crops--tea, tobacco and
tung.
Having obtained permission to pick the apples, mother in her turn
struck a bargain with three soldiers in a pioneer battalion stationed close
by that they would help us to pick, crush and boil the bekmez out of the
apples and in exchange receive half of our half of the harvest.
In a week the operation was brilliantly completed. We acquired twenty
bottles of thick golden bekmez (clear profit), which provided us with a
substitute for sugar for the whole of the next winter.
Thus, having given everyone a splendid lesson in commercial enterprise,
we left the collective farm and Crooked Arm's voice faded away into the
distance.
___
Many years later, during a hunting trip I again found myself in that
village.
While waiting for a passing lorry to give me a lift, I stood outside
the management office in the shade of the same old mulberry tree. It was a
hot August day. I looked at the deserted school building, at the school yard
covered with succulent grass, grass of oblivion for me, at the eucalyptus
trees that we had once planted, at the old gymnastics bar which we used to
make a dash for every break between lessons, and with a traditional sense of
sorrow I breathed the fragrance of years gone by.
Occasional passers-by greeted me as everyone does in the country, but
none of them recognised me, nor I them. A girl came out of the office
carrying two water bottles, lazily let the bucket down the well and filled
it. Slowly she wound the bucket up again and started filling both bottles at
once, splashing water over them as though taking a delight in the sudden
abundance of cool. Then she tipped out the rest of the water on the grass
and walked lazily back to the office, carrying the wet bottles.
When she mounted the steps and went in through the door I heard the
wave of voices rise to meet her, and suddenly subside as the door closed. A
feeling came over me that this had all happened before.
A lad wearing a jacket and with one leg of his trousers rolled up, rode
past me on a rustily squeaking bicycle, then turned round, his thoughts
still riveted on something else, and rode up to me to ask for a light.
He had two large loaves of bread tied to his carrier. I gave him a
light and asked him if he knew Yashka, the grandson of Crooked Arm.
"Of course, I do," he replied. "Yashka the postman. Just wait here.
He'll soon be coming along on his motorbike."
I started watching the road and quite soon I did hear the chugging of a
motor-cycle. I recognised Yashka only because I was expecting him. On his
lightweight mount he looked like Gulliver on a children's bicycle.
"Yashka!" I shouted. He looked in my direction and the motor-cycle came
to a startled halt, then he seemed to press it down into the earth and the
engine gave up altogether.
Yashka wheeled the bike out from under him. We walked away from the
road and in about fifteen minutes were lying in dense fern thickets.
A big, burly fellow, with a lazy smile on his face, he lay beside me,
still very much like the Yashka who used to sit behind his grandfather on
horseback and gaze absent-mindedly around him. Until a short while ago,
apparently, he had been one of the farm's team-leaders but he had slipped up
somewhere and had now been given the job of postman. He told me this with
the same lazy smile. Even at school it had been obvious that ambition was
not one of his weaknesses.
His grandfather, it seems, had expended the whole supply of family
frenzy himself, so that there just was nothing left for Yashka to work
himself into a frenzy with. What difference did it make whether he was a
team-leader or a postman, a postman or a team-leader? His voice, however,
seemed as deep and powerful as his grandfather's, but without those choking
high notes. I asked him, of course, about his grandfather.
"You mean to say you never heard?" Yashka asked in surprise, and stared
at me with his big round eyes.
"Heard what?" I asked.
"But everyone knows about that affair. Where have you been?"
"In Moscow," I said.
"Ah, so it hasn't got to Moscow," Yashka drawled, expressing his
respect for the distance between Abkhazia and Moscow; if a story like that
had not reached Moscow yet, it really must be a very long way.
Yashka raked in some more fern and packed it under him, settled his
head more comfortably on his postman's bag and told me about his
indefatigable grandfather's last adventure. I heard the story later from
several other people, but the first person to tell me was Yashka.
I was still marvelling at this, the final mighty splash of Old Crooked
Arm's imagination, when all of a sudden...
"Zhuzhuna! Zhuzhuna!" Yashka called out without so much as a pause
after his story, and not even raising his head from the ground.
"What's the matter?" a girl's voice responded from somewhere. I raised
myself on my elbow and looked round. Beyond the fern thickets there was a
small beech grove. Through the trees I made out a fence and, beyond that, a
field of maize. The voice had come from there.
"There's a letter for you, Zhuzhuna! A letter!" Yashka called again,
and winked at me.
"Are you making it up?" I whispered.
Yashka nodded joyfully and listened. The hushed grasshoppers cautiously
began buzzing to each other again.
"Humbug!" the girl's voice rang out at last, and I sensed that the
postman's ruse had flushed the hind.
"Hurry up, Zhuzhuna, hurry, or I'll be gone!" Yashka called
delightedly, intoxicated either with the sound of his own voice or by the
sound of the girl's name.
I realised it was time for me to go and began to say goodbye. Still
listening for a reply, Yashka urged me to stay the night but I refused; both
because I was in a hurry and because, if I did so, I would offend my own
folk, whom I had not been to see. I knew that if I stayed the night there
would be no hunting trip for me, because it would take me another two days
to recover.
As I made my way up the path to the road I again heard the girl's
voice; now it sounded more distinct.
"Tell me who it's from--then I'll come!" she was calling invitingly.
"Come, and then I'll tell you, Zhuzhuna, Zhuzhuna!" floated back on the
hot August air for the last time, and with a vague sense of melancholy or,
to put it more plainly, envy, I stepped out into the deserted village
street.
Well, anyway, I thought, Old Crooked Arm's traditions are not dying
out. Half an hour later I left the village and have not been there since;
but I still hope to go and pay our folk a visit, if only to find out where
Yashka's shouts got him with his Zhuzhuna.
___
I will tell Crooked Arm's last adventure as I now have it in my head.
Crooked Arm had lived to see the end of the war and the return of his
son and had gone on living splendidly until quite recently. But a year or so
ago, the time had come for him to die, and this time it was the real thing.
That day he was, as usual, lying on the veranda of his house and
watching his horse grazing in the yard when Mustafa rode up. Mustafa
dismounted and walked up the steps on to the veranda. A chair was brought
out for him and he sat down beside Crooked Arm. As usual, they recalled
times gone by. Crooked Arm would lapse for an instant into forgetfulness or
doze, but as soon as he awoke he would always resume from exactly where he
had left off.
"So you're really leaving us?" Mustafa asked, with a sharp glance at
his friend and rival.
"Yes, I am," Crooked Arm replied. "I'll soon be bathing the other
world's horses in the other world's rivers."
"We'll all be there one day," Mustafa sighed politely. "But I didn't
think you'd be the first."
"There were other times when you didn't think I'd be first, at the
races," Crooked Arm said so clearly that the relatives waiting at his
bedside all heard him and even had a little laugh, although they concealed
it with their hands, because it was not quite appropriate to laugh in the
presence of a dying man, even if that man happened to be Crooked Arm.
Mustafa felt slighted, but it would have been impolite to argue,
because the man was dying. And yet, it was somehow particularly humiliating
for a man who was alive and well to be laughed at by a dying man, because if
a dying man laughed at you, it meant you must be in an even more disastrous
or pitiful state than he--and how much worse could that be!
It would, of course, have been impolite to argue, but at least one
could tell a story. So he told one.
"As you're going away on this journey, I had better tell you
something," Mustafa said, bending over Crooked Arm.
"Tell me then, if you must," Crooked Arm replied, not looking round
because he was watching the yard, where his horse was grazing. In the time
left to him his greatest interest was in watching his horse.
"Don't be angry, Crooked Arm, but it was I who rang up the farm and
told them you had died," Mustafa said, as though sorrowing that
circumstances did not permit him now, as then, to launch that false rumour
again, and wishing it to be understood that he regretted this as a true
friend should.
"How could you, when they spoke Russian?" Crooked Arm asked in surprise
and looked at him.
Mustafa knew no Russian and, in spite of his great managerial talents,
was so illiterate that he had been obliged to invent his own alphabet or, at
least, introduce for his own use certain quaint hieroglyphs with the help of
which he kept a note of all the people who were in debt to him, and also a
set of accounts based on complex, multi-stage barter operations. So,
naturally, Crooked Arm was surprised to hear of his speaking on the
telephone, particularly in Russian.
"Through my nephew in town. I was standing beside him," Mustafa
explained. "As they had cured you I decided to have a joke, and besides who
would have sent a lorry for you but for that," he added, recalling the
difficulties of those far-off days.
They say Crooked Arm closed his eyes and for a long time was silent.
Then he slowly opened them again and said without looking at Mustafa:
"Now I see you are a better horseman than I am."
"It looks like it," Mustafa admitted modestly and glanced round at
those who were attending the dying man.
But at this point the close relatives gave way to tears because it was
the first time in his life that Crooked Arm had ever acknowledged himself
beaten, and this was more like death than death itself that was so near.
Crooked Arm silenced them and nodded in the direction of the horses.
"Give them some water. They're thirsty."
One of the girls took two pails and went for water. She came back with
the pails full of clear spring water and placed them in the middle of the
yard. Crooked Arm's horse went up to one of the pails and began to drink,
and Mustafa's horse turned its head and pulled at the halter. The girl
untethered the horse and, holding the bridle, stood by while it drank. The
horses reached down with their long necks, drinking quietly, and Crooked Arm
watched them with pleasure, and his Adam's apple, they say, moved up and
down as though he himself were drinking.
"Mustafa," he said at length, turning to his friend, "now I admit that
you knew more about horses than I did, but you know that I loved horses and
had some understanding of them."
"But, of course! Who doesn't know that!" Mustafa exclaimed generously,
and again turned round to look at everyone who was on the veranda.
"In a few days I shall die," Crooked Arm continued. "My coffin will
stand where those empty pails are standing now. When the weeping is over, I
want you to do something for me."
"What is it?" Mustafa asked, and with a hiss at the members of the
family, because they had again tried to sob, bent over his friend. It looked
as if Crooked Arm was expressing his last will.
"I want you to take your horse and jump three times over my coffin.
Before they put the lid down I want to feel the smell of a horse over me.
Will you do that?"
"I will, if our customs see in this no sin, " Mustafa promised.
"I don't think they do," Crooked Arm said a little more slowly and
closed his eyes--either he had fallen asleep or was just musing. Mustafa
rose and walked quietly down from the veranda. He rode away, considering the
last will of the dying man.
That evening Mustafa gathered the elders of the village, gave them all
plenty to eat and drink and told them of Crooked Arm's request. The elders
discussed the matter and reached a decision.
"You'd better jump, if that's his dying wish, because you're the best
horseman now."
"He admitted that himself," Mustafa interpolated.
"There's no sin in it because a horse doesn't eat meat and its breath
is clean," they concluded.
Crooked Arm heard of the elders' decision the same night and so they
say, was well pleased. Two days later he died.
Once again, as during the war, the messengers of woe were sent out to
the neighbouring villages. Some received the news of his death with
suspicion, and the relative who had brought the calf in those days said that
it would do no harm to jab him with the sharp end of a crook to make sure he
really was dead and not just shamming.
"There's no need to jab him," the messenger of woe replied patiently,
"because horseman Mustafa is going to jump over him. That was his dying
wish."
"Then I'll go," the relative said with relief. "Crooked Arm wouldn't
let anyone jump over him while he was still alive."
They say there were even more people at the funeral this time than
before, when no one had any doubt that Crooked Arm was dead. Many of them,
of course, were attracted by the promised spectacle of a funeral
steeplechase. They all knew of the great rivalry between the two friends,
and it was said that even though Crooked Arm was dead he wouldn't let the
matter rest there.
Afterwards some people claimed to have seen Mustafa practising in his
yard with a trough propped on chairs. But Mustafa denied with a frenzy
worthy of Crooked Arm himself that he had been jumping over any such trough.
He said his horse could easily leap a gate if necessary and Crooked Arm
wouldn't be able to reach him even if he tried to do so with his famous arm.
And so, on the fourth day after the old man's death, when everyone had
finished taking final leave of their relative and fellow villager, Mustafa
stationed himself by the coffin awaiting his finest hour, sorrowful and at
the same time impatient.
When the time came he delivered a short speech, full of a solemn
dignity. He recounted the heroic life of Shchaaban Larba, otherwise known as
Crooked Arm, from one horse to the next, right up to his dying wish. As a
brief reminder to the young, Mustafa mentioned the feat of the stolen
stallion and how Crooked Arm had not been afraid to leap down the cliff,
giving it to be understood in passing that if he had yielded to fear it
would have been a great deal worse for him. He said that he recalled the
incident not in order to detract from Crooked Arm's exploit but to offer the
young folk yet another proof of the advantage of bold decisions.
And then, in accordance with the dead man's wish, and his own wish, he
addressed the assembled elders in a thunderous voice and again asked them if
it were not wicked to jump over a coffin.
"There is no sin in that," the elders replied. "A horse eats no meat,
so its breath is clean."
After that Mustafa walked to the tethering post, untied his horse,
leapt into the saddle, flourished his whip and charged along the corridor
formed by the crowd towards the coffin.
While he had been walking to the tethering post the space beyond the
coffin had been cleared and the people moved back so that the horse should
not ride anyone down. Someone had suggested covering the dead man with the
tent cape to protect him from any earth that might be scattered from the
horse's hooves. But one of the elders had said there would be no sin in that
either because he was going to lie in the earth anyway.
Well, Mustafa's horse charged up to the coffin and suddenly stopped
dead. Mustafa shouted and lashed it on both flanks with his whip. The horse
twisted its head round and bared its teeth, but stubbornly refused to jump.
Mustafa swung it round, galloped back, dismounted, for some reason
tested the saddle girths, and once again swooped on the coffin like a hawk.
But again the horse balked and, no matter how Mustafa whipped it, refused to
jump, although it did rear.
There was about a minute of tense silence in which only the crack of
the whip and Mustafa's laboured breathing could be heard.
And then one of the elders said:
"It strikes me the horse won't jump over a dead man."
"That's right," recalled one of the others. "A good dog won't bite his
master's hand and a good horse won't jump over a dead man."
"Down you get, Mustafa," somebody shouted. "Crooked Arm has proved to
you that he knew more about horses than you."
Mustafa turned his horse and, parting the crowd as he went, rode out of
the yard. And then a tremendous burst of laughter went up among the
mourners, such as one would be unlikely to hear even at a wedding, let alone
a funeral.
The laughter was so loud and long that when the chairman of the village
Soviet heard it in his office he dropped his rubber stamp and exclaimed:
"Upon my word, I believe Crooked Arm has jumped out of his grave at the
last moment!"
It was a merry funeral. The next day Crooked Arm's posthumous joke was
being told and retold in nearly every corner of Abkhazia. In the evening
Mustafa was somehow persuaded to attend the funeral supper, for though it
was no sin to jump over a dead man it was considered a sin to bear a grudge
against the dead.
When an old man dies in our country the funeral feast is a lively
affair. Men drink wine and tell each other funny stories. Custom forbids
only drinking to excess and the singing of songs. Someone may inadvertently
strike up a drinking song, but he is soon stopped and falls into an
embarrassed silence.
It seems to me that when an old man dies there is place for
merry-making and ritual splendour at his funeral feast. A man has completed
life's journey and, if he dies in old age, having lived his span, it means
there is cause for the living to celebrate his victory over fate.
And ritual splendour, if it is not taken to the absurd, did not spring
from nowhere. It says to us: something tremendous has happened--a man has
died. And if he was a good man, there will be many who wish to mark and
remember the event. And who deserves to be remembered of men, if not Crooked
Arm, who all his life enriched the earth with labour and merriment, and in
his last ten years, it might be said, actually tended his own grave and made
it bear fruit and gathered from it quite a good crop of peaches.
You must agree that not everyone manages to pick a crop of peaches from
his own grave; many may try but they lack the imagination and daring that
Old Crooked Arm possessed.
And may the earth be soft as swan's down for him, as indeed it should
be, considering that it was a good dry spot they chose for him, a fact he
was very fond of mentioning while he lived.
--------
Borrowers
The man who wants to touch you for a loan sends no telegram in advance.
Everything happens suddenly.
He begins by discussing certain cultural matters of wide general
interest, possibly even outer space, listens to all you have to say on the
subject with the greatest attention and, when a warm human relationship has
developed between you in this abstract sphere, he takes advantage of the
first pause in the conversation to splash down gently from the cosmic
heights, and say:
"Incidentally, you couldn't lend me a tenner for a fortnight, could
you?"
Such a swift change of subject cripples the imagination and always
leaves me at a loss. What I really cannot understand is why this should be
incidental. But that is the way of borrowers. They can turn any incident to
their advantage.
For the first few precious seconds I am confused. And confusion spells
disaster. The mere fact of not answering promptly indicates that I have
money, and once that is established, it is the hardest thing in the world to
prove that you need that money yourself. The only thing to do is to fork
out.
Of course, there are some odd characters who pay back what they borrow.
Actually they do a lot of harm. If they didn't exist, the whole tribe of
chronic defaulters would have died out long ago. But, as things are, it
continues to prosper, profiting by the moral credit of these eccentrics.
I did once refuse an obvious cadger. But I soon repented.
We met in a cafe. I might never have noticed him but for a revolting
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