A Village to Call Home
A certain Nikolai Grigorievich Kuzovnikov had lived a fine, perfectly normal life. At one point in time-the beginning of the thirties it was-when lighty winds of change were blowing people hither and thither, he was caught up in the flurry of movement, and it took him from his native village to the city. At first, the city filled him with melancholy, then he took a good look around and realized that with a bit of pluck and wit, especially if he didn't take a job that required back-breaking labor, he could have a fairly easy life. So he went to work in a warehouse and stayed there even during the war. Now he lived in a big city and had a fine apartment of his own. (His children had done well by themselves and had apartments of their own.) He had grown old now and was about to retire. Had he ever stolen anything from the warehouse he was in charge of? Well, that was a ticklish question. From the point of view of some young whipper-snapper with a law degree, yes he had done his share of pilfering. But a more discriminating and sober-minded individual would realize it wasn't theft at all, because he never took more than he needed to escape want and deprivation. And especially if you considered how much he could have made off with if he'd been genuinely dishonest, the matter of theft seemed perfectly ridiculous. Was that any way to steal?! He took what he needed, but he never forgot himself or gave any indication that he lived better than anyone else.
So not one of those fellows with sheepskins from the university ever laid a finger on him. Nikolai Grigorievich experienced not a twinge of conscience-and it wasn't because he had no conscience. Not at all. It was just that things had worked out that way right from the start. Conscience had nothing to do with it. All it took was a bit of caution, nerves of steel, a lack of innate greed, and a little common sense. But as for conscience, well, you know... When a man's secret larder was full, it was all right to talk about matters of conscience. But still, a fellow would sleep more calmly if he had thought everything out in advance, weighed all the possibilities, and tied up all the loose ends. Pangs of conscience were not for him. Let the others worry about such things if they wanted. There was no reason for a fellow with empty pockets to talk of conscience-that was hardly a smart thing to do. In a word, everything was fine. Nikolai Grigorievich had travelled most of the way down the long road of life, and once, when he was in a good mood, he paused to commend himself: "Good work, old boy. You never got sent to prison, and you didn't get knocked off during the war." But there was one strange thing about the old man which he probably couldn't have explained even if he'd wanted to. But he had no desire to explain it, and he didn't give it much thought. He simply gave in to this whim (if it was in point of fact a whim at all) as he had given in to so much else in life.This is the peculiar thing he had been doing for the past five or six years.On Saturdays when he got off work, when his wife was waiting for him at home in their warm apartment, when everything was in order, and he was at peace with himself, he downed a glass of vodka, hopped on the tram, and headed for the railway station. The station was huge, and it was always crowded. There was a place next to the rest-room where the men went to smoke and talk, where the air was so thick you could cut it with a knife. Nikolai Grigorievich always made a bee-line straight for it and struck up a conversation.
"Hey, fellows," he would ask. "Are any of you from the village?"Inevitably, a good number of them were, because that was where the village men hung out after they had finished their business in town.
"Well," one of the men would say. "What is it that you need?"
"I'm looking for a village to make my home. You wouldn't happen to know of any place that's looking for a good warehouse man, would you? I've got thirty-four years of experience..." And Nikolai Grigorievich would tell them in great detail with simple trust and obvious pleasure that he was from the village himself but had left many years before to work in the city. He had devoted his life to his warehouse, and now, in his old age, he was pining to go back to the village... And then it would begin. Everyone understood his longing perfectly well and agreed that no matter how long a villager lived in the city, sooner or later, he would want to move back to the country. Then the men would begin to name various villages he could choose from. Nikolai Grigorievich could hardly jot down the addresses fast enough. Next the arguments about which village was better would begin.
"What's so great about that Vyazovka of yours?!"
"Don't be so quick to judge! You've never even been there, and you don't know a single thing about Vyazovka!.."
"I know that village like the back of my hand, and it's not the kind of place a body would want to go to retire. An old man needs the beauty of nature to soothe his aches and pains..."
"What does nature have to do with it?" another bunch would pipe up. First of all, this fellow needs a place to work. Does that Vyazovka of yours have a warehouse? After all, he asked about where he could find work, not how many birch groves you've got there."
"Well, birch groves are important, too," Nikolai Grigorievich would add.
"That's just what I mean! Who cares about warehouses? They're all over the place these days. But if you take..."
"You lot are just running off at the mouth to have something to say," announced an important-looking fellow. "Finding a warehouse isn't much of a problem these days. First of all, he has to worry about getting a place to live. Our village has a warehouse, a river, and a lake, even. But houses are terribly expensive."
"About how much?" asked Nikolai Grigorievich, hankering after details.
"That depends on what you're looking for."
"Something pretty big and in good condition."
"Do you need a barn and a few sheds, too?"
"Well, I'd need a Russian steam bath, a woodshed, a little barn where I can do a bit of woodworking in my free time."
"Well, a good-sized house," the important-looking fellow began, doing the necessary mental calculations, "with a nice steam bath..."
"A nice one, mind you-not some ramshackle old shed!"
"A good steam bath, a split-log barn-almost all the barns in our village are built with real split logs..."
"Does your village have a power-saw bench?"
"Not right in the village, but there's one not far away."
"Well, how much?"
"If you take everything into account-a house with a good-sized vegetable garden..."
"My old lady and I don't need a very big garden..."
"Well, with a decent-sized one then. They don't have really big gardens any more. But if you take everything into account, I'd say three or three and a half."
"Thousand?!" someone would ask in amazement.
"No, roubles, you dimwit!" snapped the important-looking fellow.
"Don't you think you're a bit wide off the mark? Nothing could be that expensive," the others objected in disbelief. The important-looking fellow lost his air of importance in an instant.
"Why should I lie? There's no reason for me to exaggerate-I'm not trying to sell my house, after all. I'm just telling it like it is... The man asked a serious question, and I gave him a serious answer."
"Why should a house in your village cost so much? That's simply flabbergasting! What's so great about that village of yours?"
"Nothing. It's just an ordinary village with a state farm."
"Why should a house cost so much? Have you all lost your minds, or what?!"
"No, we're perfectly sane. It's the people who sell their houses for the lumber-those are the crazy ones. I can't imagine doing such a thing."
"I've heard about that, too. I've heard you can get your- self a good house for three hundred roubles."
"I don't know about for three hundred, but..."
"What's your village called?" asked Nikolai Grigorievich, pencil poised to jot down the name.
"Zavalikha. And it's not really a village. It's a lot bigger than most villages."
"And where is it?"
"From here, this is how you get there..." And there followed a detailed explanation of how to get to Zavalikha.
"Is it a regional centre, or what?"
"It used to be, but then they moved the centre to Krasnogorsk."
"So you probably have some kind of a warehouse or other there..." Nikolai Grigorievich prompted him.And the man replied obediently and in great detail. He was glad his village had proved more interesting than the rest to this stranger. The others stood around listening, experiencing something which resembled envy. Finally, they found a fly to put in his ointment.
"Why are the prices there so high? There probably isn't a forest for miles around!"
"Well, I bet you don't have any woods either!" replied the man from the village where the prices were so high, getting a bit nervous. "So tell me how much a big house would cost in your village-only be honest. Don't think you can fool me!"
"Why should I lie? A nice big house with a garden and a couple of sheds costs about fifteen hundred or two thousand in our parts."
"And where is that?" inquired Nikolai Grigorievich, turning to face the man.The one who had caught his interest now began to explain in just as much detail as the one before where his village was, what the river there was called, and how much meat cost there in the fall...
"One of my in-laws came... It was fall, then, too... He takes a look around and says, 'Well, it looks like your village is a fine place to live,'"
"Where's he from?"
"A city called Zlatoust to the east of the Ural Mountains."
"So why are you bringing some stupid city into the discussion? We're talking about country life."
"Well, he doesn't live right in the city. He lives in a village not faraway."
"Still, there's no reason to drag it into the conversation. This fellow is interested in the places we come from. If I wanted, I could tell you about my in-laws in Magadan. That's even farther away."
"Stop talking nonsense! Pretty soon you'll be telling us about your relatives in America."
"What does America have to do with it?"
"About as much as Magadan."
"Here we are talking about a village and you go sticking in your Zlatoust! Why in the devil did you do that?"
"Calm down, calm down now," Nikolai Grigorievich said in a reconciliatory tone. Oddly enough, he became somewhat of a boss here in the manner of a foreman handing out assignments to a crowd of waiting day-laborers. "Calm down, fellows. This isn't some Oriental bazaar, after all. But there's one more thing I have to know: how far is your village above sea level?" This was a question for the fellow whose village has the cheapest houses.
The man didn't know. None of them knew how far above sea level their villages were.
"Why in the world do you need to know that?"
"Oh, it's very important," Nikolai Grigorievich explained, "because of my heart and circulatory system. If a village is elevated even a little bit, I couldn't possibly live there, because the decreased oxygen would be bad for my heart."
"We've never noticed it ourselves," admitted the men gathered around him.
Of course, Nikolai Grigorievich had said this to make himself look important. They continued to chat about the price of houses, barns, and food, about whether a village had a river or perhaps a lake close by. About how far away the forest was.... Then the subject gradually shifted to the topic of how wonderful village people were-calm and friendly, not a thief or a loudmouth among them. And gradually, without noticing it, the men began to exaggerate slightly the sterling qualities of their neighbours. It began quite naturally, with no ulterior motives on anyone's part. One fellow would start talking about his neighbours, then another would feel compelled to throw in his bit, but in such a way as to make it clear that his fellow villagers were better than the rest.
Listen here-if one of our women goes to the well for water, she never locks her door-there's no reason to, because no one will come in, not even a Gypsy. She just props it shut with a stick and goes about her business. We've got plenty of Gypsies, mind you, but we've taught them good manners."
"Who are you trying to kid?! Take our village now. We've got a thief..."
"A thief! You don't mean it!"
"Yes, a thief. And we all know it: he's been in and out of jail half a dozen times for his thieving ways. But anyway, we have this old school marm-she even has a medal for years of loyal service. So anyway, this thief came right up to her in broad daylight and said: 'Let me stay with you for a week or two.' She had been his first grade teacher years before, you see. He had been an orphan, and she had apparently worked at his orphanage. Or something like that. 'Let me stay with you for a couple of weeks,' he told her, 'until I find myself a job somewhere.' "
"So did she let him stay there?"
"She sure as heck did, and we all thought, 'Well, he'll clean her out sure as we're livin.' We even felt sorry for her."
"But don't you know a thief will never steal from the place he's living. That's part of their code of honor."
"Sure, I know. Everyone knows that."
"Well, did he clean her out?"
"No, he didn't touch a thing. He managed to resist somehow."
"That's just part of their code of honor, I tell you. If he'd lifted anything, he'd get it hot from his fellow thieves!"
"But I tell you, he didn't steal a thing!"
"Anyway, it's still pretty strange. Even the thieves don't give a damn about that honor any more! Honor my foot! Last year some snake-in-the-qrass stole a haystack from me!"
"That wasn't a thief, that was one of your neighbors for sure. Why the devil would a real criminal need a hay- stack?!"
They all started laughing and remembered other things that had happened over the years, all of them chain-smoking with such fury that the air stung their eyes. The time passed without their noticing, and before long, it was time to leave. Waiting at the railway station was hardly one of life's pleasant endeavors.
"Once I was headed home from the regional centre," began a fellow with an air of efficiency about him, "and I saw an old woman by the side of the road. Must have been eighty or eighty-five if she was a day. I pulled over, and she said, 'Take me to Krasnoye, sonny.' Well, it must have been a good sixty-five kilometres to Krasnoye, so I asked her if she had anything to pay me for the trip, because it was really out of my way. 'Sure I do, sonny,' she told me, so I took her all the way to Krasnoye." At this point, the man's eyes began to flash in expectation of the denouement. "When we got there, I said, 'This is it, granny, so pay up.' So she rummaged in her bag for a while and pulled out five eggs!"
The others burst out laughing, and the man continued, pleased as punch:
"So she told me, 'Well, in the old days, we used to pay with eggs, and people were always glad to have them.' 'O.K.,' I told her. 'Go on, granny. Don't worry about it.' "
Then the man repeated several times what he had told her: 'Go on, granny. You can't get blood from a turnip, can you?' This signified that he was in fact a kind man, too. It was obvious from these discussions that the villages were full of kind, simple, artless, selfless people and no others. And though once in a while, you might run into a trouble-maker or malicious, stingy soul, but only rarely.
Nikolai Grigorievich had quit writing down addresses and was just listening, turning from one side to another, and laughing along with the rest... He listened with such good-natured joy that the men kept on talking with just as much pleasure, telling one story after another of amazing human selflessness. True, once in a while, some jealous character or liar would poke his ugly mug into a story, but that wasn't important. Everyone agreed tacitly that it was nonsense, for the world was actually ruled by reason and goodness.
"I saw them selling beer on tap earlier today, so I stood in line, and when my turn came, the lady didn't even pour me a full mug. She just filled it up to here and shoved it at me without even looking up, then went on to the next fellow. I walked away and thought: 'Where I come from, we wouldn't even tell her thank you for service like that.'"
Everyone agreed that in the city, people were always in a hurry. There were crowds everywhere, and that shameless lady had taken advantage of the fact. But if you thought about it, she hadn't cheated him out of very much. Of course, she'd have some extra change by the end of the way. Moreover, it wouldn't kill you to do without that extra sip or two she cheated you. And she probably had kids to feed, too.
But the one thing the village people could never understand about the city was the rudeness. There didn't seem to be any explanation for why people were always yelling and being mean to each other. It was better not to ask a sales lady or an office clerk about anything, even if you didn't understand; you would get such a dressing down, it would make your ears burn. When they got to this topic, the men all gave each other friendly glances of surprise, signifying a total lack of comprehension. Nikolai Grigorievich didn't understand this urban phenomenon any better than the rest of them. He experienced the same emotions. And at this point, he would always press someone to the rest-room wall, jostle him, and explain in a loud voice:
"That's exactly why I want to leave! Exactly why! I can't stand it any more. Do you think I live badly here? Not at all! I have a two-room apartment for just me and my old lady! But I can't take it any more! City life makes me sick!" As Nikolai Grigorievich pressed that fellow to the wall and shouted into his face, his suffering was quite sincere. He beat his chest and almost burst into tears... For the moment-and this was the most amazing thing-he forgot totally that he did more than his share of yelling at the warehouse. He was always shouting at the drivers and loaders, and God forbid anyone should ask him a question. All that was momentarily forgotten, and there arose in his soul the sincerest offense at all the yelling, arguing, and insulting that went on in the city. The hell with city life and his two-room apartment-the devil take it all! He would be better off buying a house in the country and living out the rest of his days with self-respect, as befitted a human being. He didn't want to be part of the crowd-he simply couldn't do it! He was a human being, after all. How dear were these words of human dignity and calm to Nikolai Grigorievich. How good it felt and how necessary it was for him to shout them out... Sometimes, the others even fell silent, and his shouts would be the only ones ringing in the smokey, pungent air. The others felt genuinely sorry for him and wanted to help.
Having spoken his peace, Nikolai Grigorievich would head for home with the addresses in his pocket. He always walked, though it was quite a way. It took him a while to calm down after all that excitement. His soul ached just a tiny bit, and he felt tired. By the time Nikolai Grigorievich reached home, he was always hungry as a bear.
He had no intention of going anywhere. He didn't really want to move back to the country or anything of the sort. But he couldn't live without going to the railway station now. It had already become a necessity. If anyone-his elder son, for example-had tried to shame him and forbid him from writing down all those addresses and chat with the village men, he would have found a way to sneak off to the station and do it anyway. How could anyone think of forbidding him? He simply couldn't live without it now.
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