The Naked Year (16 page)

A soldier from the food collecting detail climbs into a silenced freight car.

“Well, which? what?”

An old man on a bunk takes off his cap and pushes it round from hand to hand.

“Club together, lads, two roubles fifty kopeks each!..”

In the new dawn the train moves away.

On the platform appears the duty man, and the train with a thousand voices bids farewell:

“Scuuum! Briiibetaaakeer!…”

The train is going so slowly that it is possible to get out and walk alongside. Steppe. Emptiness. Cold. Hunger. In the daytime over the steppe rises a sleepy sun. In the autumn silence over the plundered fields fly crow flocks–melancholy flocks. The cottages of the infrequent hamlets smoke with a blue strawy smoke–melancholy cottages.

At night snow falls, the earth meets the morning with winter, but along with the snow comes warmth, and again it is autumn. It's raining, the earth is crying, blown about by a cold wind, enveloped by a wet sky. The snow is lying in gray patches. The hoar frost became a gray veil.

In the village of Stary Kurdyum, sprawled over the steep slopes by a steppe stream like fly stains, nobody knows, that just there by the horizon, lies–Asia.

In the village of Stary Kurdyum, on the Russian side, on the Tartar and Mordvinian–in front of the cottages in little barns and behind the cottages in the ricks, on the threshing floors–lie wheat, rye, millet, corn–crops. They had cleared up the crops, now rest, peace.

That day at dawn in the village of Stary Kurdyum, on the Russian side they are stoking the bathhouses. The bathhouses–mud huts–stand along the river. Barefooted girls draw the water, in the cottage the owner kindles the ashes, gathers up the rags, and everyone goes to get steamed–old men, muzhiks, brothers-in-law, sons, children, mothers, wives, daughters-in-law, young girls, all together. In the bathhouse there are no chimneys–in the steam, in red reflections, in the crush white human bodies are pushed together, they all wash with the same lye, the owner rubs everyone's back, and everyone runs to the stream to bathe, in the gray dawn hoar frost. The snow lies over the gullies by the stream.

And on the Tartar side, beyond the stream, where there is a mosque, at that hour, after Friday, the Tatars, having spread out their little carpets, pray towards the East, the invisible sun, then, having wiped their hands and feet, in stockings and embroidered skullcaps walk into a circular cottage, laid out with carpets and cushions, sit in the center of the cottage, on the floor, and eat mutton, smacking their lips, with their hands, over which flows the lard. An old man eats the sheep's eyes. The women who, it seems, are not invited to eat, stand behind the men with jugs of water.

And at this hour into the village of Stary Kurdyum comes the “artel” of workmen who have come for bread.

By the outskirts, by the long winch of the well stand the Mordva in a cramped bunch, women wearing caps, with legs like timbers, and small tiny men with wispy beards, in hats like clay washbasins and wearing shirts beneath their knees, tied around the chest and with combs in their belts:–wild people even more silent then the ancient sphinxes. A grubby little man, squinting, stooped, runs up to the new arrivals, takes off his hat, smiles palely, screws up his eyes, whispers:

“Give me silver monnaie!.. monnaie… I'll give you some rye, I'll give you wheat!… Silver monnaie!”–and he runs back to his own.

A woman in a cap, and with legs like timber, takes his place.

“Give me silver monnaie! I'll give you some rye, I'll give you wheat!” says the peasant woman, she smiles and runs back, screwing up her eyes, which are like sunflower seeds, and dim like a worn soldier's button (China-town?!).

On the steep slope from the nearby bathhouse there dashes a naked girl with disheveled hair, she runs like one berserk to the stream, from there to the cottage and back to the bathhouse. From the other side from behind the stream dash the Tatars, mounted, dangling their legs, accompanied by Tatar children and dogs' barking. The Tatars surround the new arrivals, dangle their legs, restraining the horses, extend their hands for the shaking. One shouts out, clownishly sneering:

“Buy me! Me–Saviet, Cammittee, Camissar! buy me! Hundred roubles! You hungry, we change goods!” –and smiles cunningly. “Come my place! We roast sheep! Me–Saviet! Me want–me sell, no want–no sell!… You no go next door!”

The snow lies in gray patches, the hoar frost has become like a gray veil, and invisible are the boundless steppe boundaries. In the village of Stary Kurdyum nobody knows that just there, beyond the fold of the sky–Asia. The peasant woman, the one who arrived with the hungry people, thinks “Rye, if for cloth when we have the chance ten roubles each will do, but if for money–a hundred… Ticking like calico, printed calico–with darkness, for the old women… Fustian…”

Two men are walking along the road with bundles under their arms. A peasant woman is standing by the well. One of the two surreptitiously approaches the peasant woman and says, surreptitiously:

“Will you change flour for goods, missus?”

“But what goods is it?”

“Cotton textiles. Cloth, printed calico… Different goods.”

“Well, wait… Into whichever house I beckon, common in!”

She beckons. They go. They knock their foreheads against the lintel–they enter the cottage. In the cottage half the cottage is stove, on the stove are an ancient old woman and half a dozen scruffy kids, in the corner a pig, in the red corner–the master, ikons, a general and the Tsar's family.

They cross themselves. They bow down. They shake hands in turn with the host and all the household. And they ask to eat–and eat silently, avidly, hurriedly –pork fat, mutton, kasha, broth, bread, again pork fat, again mutton. The host in the red corner sits in
silence, in silence he observes–the host's eyes have grown into his beard.

The host says to his daughter-in-law:

“Dunka, get the bath ready!”

They go to wash, and, when steaming, Dunka draws the water for them.

When the guests return, the host says to Dunka:

“Dunka, put on the samovar.” And to the guests:

“Now, what goods have you got? Show me!”

The guests spread out their goods. The host looks at them with a host's look, keeps silent. The peasant women, both of the family and those who have crammed into the cottage, get stuck to the goods as if to honey. A guest holds a piece of red material up to the hostess, prods the hostess in the side and says playfully:

“Master, look! It's made you look twenty years younger–younger than a young peasant woman!–Mistress! climb on the stove as fast as you can, hide yourself from the master!”

“Stand back! Light up!” –the peasant woman spreads out into a pancake.

But the guest, squinting, winds some sort of trouser cheviot around his legs, thrusts his knee out to everyone and praises it. The peasant women select the necessary and the unnecessary. Another guest is talking to the host–about the harvest, about the war, about the famine, about how in Moscow the Moscovites all have as much cloth, cars and calico as they want and how in Moscow they are falling down dead from hunger on the streets.

They serve tea. They all drink with palms and fingers extended, blow, keep silent. If you can't deceive you won't sell. When they've drunk half a dozen glasses each, the host, arms akimbo and sullen, asks:

“Well, what about a price, then?”

The peasant women move away to the door, with naively-indifferent and secretly-afraid faces.

The boss had entered the deal.

“Your goods–our money,” –the guest replies hurriedly, “We'll exchange it for flour.”

“We know, for flour! We've now got sixty-two poods on the go.”

The guest's face becomes distorted with pain and insult, the guest laments like a woman:

“A-a– You value your own goods but not ours?… A-a… And who knocked up the price?… –all of us?… We're croaking on the streets from hunger, and you want to skin us even more! A-a! Who knocked up the price?… Who knocked up the price!? –All of us!”

“Mistress, pour out mo' tea,” says the host dryly.

Again they drink with palms and fingers outstretched, again they bargain. Again they drink tea and again they bargain. The peasant women stand by the doors, keep humbly silent. An old woman asks from the stove for the tenth time:–“Who's come?…” Lads have already stuck to the girls in the entrance hall, having run all around the village. A piglet snorts. Under the stove the young cocks cluck.

Finally the host and guests do a deal: all the goods–wholesale–three arshins–a pood. The host is satisfied, because he has swindled the guests. The guests are satisfied, because they have swindled the host. The host feeds the guests once more–with cabbage soup with pork, wheat pancakes with sour cream and butter, kasha with mutton lard–and leads them to the inn to swig moonshine. Varangian times!

By the inn on a pole a wisp of hay dangles orphan-like in the gray wind. Dogs thoughrout the village are barking. On the Tatar side, where the guests feet were washed and they were fed on the floor, from cottage to cottage crowds dragged themselves in search of buyers. The lifeless Mordva stand without children in a tight small group. Beyond the outskirts lies the steppe–endless, boundless. A cold wind is blowing from the steppe, it's raining, and the earth is weeping. In the inn the muzhiks are drinking moonshine, bawling, and, half-cut, they go to the Tatar commissar to pay him taxes and duties, to better transport the rye to the halt: they'll take the rye by night, with a detail of men armed with sticks.

The Reds and Whites had been in the village of Stary Kurdyum several times each, whole sidestreets lie burnt and plundered. In the village of Stary Kurdyum live people, stuffed with bread, with pigs and calves, which they also feed with bread; they live with the burning torch, they light the torch with flint; they live half-naked… Over the steppe in broad waves moves robbery and the counter-revolution, blazing like distant nocturnal glows, sounding like the tocsin… In the village of Stary Kurdyum there are no young men; some have gone off to the Revolution, others have gone off with the Whites.

Dusk. In the gray dusk the soldier's wife thirty years of age (it's sweet to kiss such a soldier's wife nights!) stops the man burning with the last flush of consumption, beckons to him and whispers:

“Come to my place, lad. Nobody'll be back. I'll give you some bread. The bath's heating up.”

And in the bathhouse, in the red reflections, the man sees: on the woman's stomach and groin has broken out an even marble-like cold–syphilitic–rash.

At dusk something heartrending cries out: in the mosque the muezzin, a muezzin just like the rest. At dusk the Tatars pray, having spread out their little carpets, directing their glances to the East, to the unseen Asia.

The last black necklace of the crows' wedding flies by–a melancholy wedding.

And back over the empty steppe crawls train No. 57 mixed, loaded with people and bread.

And “Mar loop-station,” where earlier they didn't change even the points, is building a fairytale career: the dreams of the young duty man are coming true. At “Mar loop-station” a barrage detail is stationed, internal customs. Now the trains stop here for days and nights. And day and night the campfires burn and around the station are crowds of people. In the well and pools there is no longer a drop of water. And for water they run two versts, to the little river. It's impossible to walk two paces without stepping in human excrement. The first aid cars are crammed with the sick. From the food train, where machine-guns sternly protrude, come happy songs, a dozen concertinas groan. Around there is moaning, wailing, crying, praying, cursing. The duty man is speaking curtly with the leader of the detail, few words–the duty man knows well, what it means to rub a cuff with a cuff–the duty man can send the train away in ten minutes and he can hold it up for days–the duty man can receive and send off a train at night, when the train guards “are not working because of lack of light”–and the duty man has–women, wine, money, new clothes, excellent tobacco, Heinemann et Cie sweets–the duty man talks like a commander using few words, and he has no time, languishing, to wander up and down the platform.

Through the plundered black steppe crawls the train No. 57 mixed, crammed with people, flour and filth… Falling, falling into the desert of night is the wet snow, the wind swirls, the heated goods vans jingle. Night. Darkness. Cold. And already long since in the dark abyss the red lights of the campfires have been blazing at the “Mar loop-station,”–frightening, like a feverish mirage. In the freight cars where people are sitting and standing on people, nobody sleeps, the freight cars remain indistinctly silent. The train is stopping slowly, the wheels screech indistinctly. The campfires burn, by the campfires in the snow people huddle together and bags roll about. The station cottage is silent. In the darkness, in a group, with their committees,
the freight car officials of train No. 57 combined are gathering. Snow. Wind. Two men go away, arrive. For a minute by the station cottage the duty man appears, speaks like a commander.