The Fatback
Yefim Valikov, who made high boots of thick felt for a living, took his new neighbors, the Grebenshchikovs, to court. And this is why.
Alla Kuzminichna Grebenshchikova, a plump young ninny, laid out her hothouse beds right next to the wall of Yetim's bath-house, which ran along the edge of the Grebenshchikov's kitchen garden. She dragged bushels of manure over to the beds and made a big pile. To make sure the manure was good and dry, she lit the drier cow patties on the bottom with a soldering lamp and heaped the soggier patties on top. Then she left the whole mess to smoulder overnight. And smoulder it did. It smouldered and smouldered until it finally dried out all the way, and then the whole manure pile caught fire. And so did the bath-house wall. By morning, the bath-house had burned to the ground, along with a couple of other sheds, including the woodshed. The wattle fence was gone, too...
But Yefim Valikov was especially upset about the bath-house: it was brand new-less than a year old. And in the winter, he rolled out the felt he used for making boots in that bath-house.
The explanation Alla Grebenshchikova offered was absolutely ridiculous: she pretended she didn't know anything about it and told the insurance agent the manure had caught on fire by itself.
"All by itself-spontaneous combustion!" she affirmed and shook her finger at Yefim and the insurance agent.
"Don't you see?"
That "spontaneous combustion" of hers finally made the insurance agent lose his temper, too.
"Take them to court, Yefim," he said. "We wouldn't want anyone to think we were foolish enough to believe such a tale."
So Valikov filed suit. But since such affairs invariably proved tiresome and were therefore disapproved of in the village, Yefim went around shaking his finger at everyone and explaining:
"I'd be more than happy to settle this thing peacefully, the way neighbors should. But she's too smart for her-britches, that one! She keeps sticking to her tall tale of spontaneous combustion and won't let anyone say a word otherwise! "
Grebenshchikova's husband, who was an agronomist, was away at the time. When he returned, they had a talk with Yefim.
"Can't we settle things without having to go to court? We'll pay for your bath-house."
"Maybe you can settle things with her yourself. The Lord knows I couldn't. I need to go to court about us much as I need another hole in my head."
"She didn't do it on purpose."
"Nobody's saying she did. But why does she have to play the fool? Spontaneous combustion, ideed!"
"It can happen, you know, spontaneous combustion."
"But only if manure has been sitting around rotting for years on end-and in a big heap at that. But her compost combusted spontaneously in the course of a single night. That's simply impossible, my dear Vladimir Semyonovich, simply impossible!"
Truth to tell, Vladimir Semyonovich was afraid of his wife, and he was secretly glad his neighbor had already filed suit, because that way, there was nothing further to discuss: everything would be settled without his having to get involved.
"Sort it out yourselves."
"We will."
Then came the day of the trial. The judge and the other members of the court from the regional centre had come to the village to deal with a more serious case and decided to settle the matter of the fire while they were there. Court was held in the village council building.
Yefim headed for the trial nervous as a kitten. He remembered how once, during the war, he-a disabled, demobilized veteran missing a leg-had gotten drunk and beaten Mitka Trifonov, the then chairman of the village council, with his crutch, and offered to give him all his war medals in exchange for the other's leg. He could easily have wound up in prison for a stunt like that. But Mitka himself "put the breaks on", and didn't file suit against him. But for a long time thereafter, he threatened Yefim jokingly: "Well, perhaps I should bring charges against you after all, old friend... What do you think?.."
"And now I'm the one who's about to drown someone else, it seems," thought Yefim. "But she drove me to it. If there had been any other way of resolving the issue, I would never have filed suit against my neighbors." Then he recalled how the plump Alla Grebenshchikova had stared straight past him at the insurance agent when she was spinning her tall tale about spontaneous combustion as if to say, poor Yefim, he would never understand about spontaneous combustion anyway.
Yefim didn't put on his artificial leg. He used his crutches, so everyone would see he was missing a limb. But he didn't put on his medals, though. It was bad enough that he had raised such a stink about them that time with the village council chairman.
"On the other hand, if everyone goes around lighting fires wherever they like, I'll be left with nothing but my crutches. Or they might roast me like a pig with an apple in its mouth. So I'm clearly in the right."
Grebenshchikova was already at the village council. She looked proudly at Valikov but said nothing-not even hello-and turned her back to him.
"Well, it looks as if the fine lady doesn't want to bid us good day," Yefim chuckled to himself. He wasn't exactly offended, but he wished someone would tell that lady outright: "What's there to be so proud of? First you burn down my bath-house, and then you go putting on airs."
The judge, a young man who appeared to be quite exhausted, examined his documents for a long time then looked up at Grebenshchikova and Yefim...
"Well, tell me what happened..."
Yefim thought he should probably begin.
"Well, this is what happened. This lady here..."
" 'Lady?' Are you enemies, or what? She's your neighbor, after all..."
"Yes, we're neighbors," Yefim hastened to add. "And I need this trial about as much as I do another hole in my head."
"But you filed charges nonetheless."
"Because she doesn't want to pay a kopeck! She burned down my brand new bath-house'-anyone in the village will tell you that."
"How did it happen, Alla Kuzminichna?"
"I was laying out the beds for my hothouse, and I warmed up the manure a bit..."
"Did you set it on fire?"
"Yes, and it burned for a while, then I piled wet manure on top. Obviously, the whole pile dried out, and spontaneous combustion occurred during the night."
"Look here!" exclaimed Yefim. "You might say I was born on a dung heap! I've carried manure from here to there for years, and I know practically everything there is to know about it. And then, you shouldn't forget that around these parts, we dry dung and bum it for fuel every single year! I've carried so much compost from here to there, I can't possibly..."
"Comrade Valikov denies that spontaneous combustion of manure can occur. Just because it never happened to him doesn't mean it can't happen anywhere."
The judge looked at Alla Grebenshchikova and shook his head.
"But he can't deny the fact based simply on his own experience. He has to take account of scientific evidence, too," Alla Grebenshchikova continued.
The judge kept on shaking his head.
"Now she'll try to prove that I'm a camel," Yefim thought sadly.
"I understand that Comrade Valikov has suffered a material loss, but objectively. I'm not to blame. Lightning could have struck his bath-house and burned it down just as easily. My only mistake was to lay out my hothouse
beds next to his bath-house wall, but it pokes out into our garden, so there was nothing criminal in what I did." Alla Grebenshchikova was well-prepared.
"I should have put on my medals," thought Yefim.
"I have expressed my condolences to Comrade Valikov, but this is all I could do under the circumstances."
The judge lit a cigarette and took a drag with obvious pleasure. Then, his face absolutely expressionless, he said quite simply:
"You have to pay for the bath-house, Alla Kuzminichna."
"Why?" she asked.
"What?"
"Why do I have to pay for it?"
"Are you really going to make your neighbor sue you? You should be ashamed of yourself, Alla Kuzminichna..."
Alla Grebenshchikova blushed.
"So you also deny the possibility of spontaneous combustion."
'The devil with that spontaneous combustion of yours. It was a perfectly ordinary fire, and nothing more. Not intentional, of course, but a fire nonetheless. That would take about five minutes to prove, and then you'll really feel foolish. Can't you and your neighbor work this out peaceably? How much was the bath-house worth, Valikov?"
Yefim was so overcome with gratitude that he hurriedly lowered the price sharply...
"Well, the bath-house was new, but I built it bit by bit..."
"Well, how much was it worth?"
'Two hundred or two hundred and fifty roubles more or less... If they'll just get the lumber for me, I'll rebuild it myself. The state farm has a truck, and they could ask the director... He surely wouldn't refuse..."
"It wasn't just the bath-house that burned as I understand..."
'The pressed dung I had stored up for the winter, an old shed... I'll rebuild the shed with the lumber that's left over from the bath-house..."
"Two hundred and fifty roubles, then," the judge decided. "I would advise you, Alla Kuzminichna to pay up peaceably so you won't shame yourself before the whole village."
The woman remained silent, looking neither at the judge not at Yefim.
"I can't pay you right away!"
"What a proud woman she is!" thought Yefim, feeling pity for her. Then he hastened to add:
"What do I need with your money? Just bring me the lumber for a new bath-house. And pay me as much as I would have to pay someone to cut it for me... Sixty roubles or so for the work and twenty for food-say eighty altogether. And it doesn't matter to me how much you have to pay for the lumber. Maybe you can get it for free-1 don't care in the least. And since you're both new here. I'm sure the director would give you a couple of truckloads of wood gladly. I'd have a harder time getting it myself..."
"Do you agree?" the judge asked Alla Grebenshchikova.
"I'll have to ask my husband," she replied sharply.
"He's not a bit like you," thought Yefim. "He doesn't have a stubborn streak a mile wide."
Yefim left the court in a good mood. He was dying to tell someone how things had gone, what a fine judge the young man was, how correct his decision had been, and how he, Yefim, had managed to say the right thing. He could hardly wait to get home.
Yefim's wife, Marya, could tell at once from her husband's appearance that everything had gone well.
Yefim boldly pulled a bottle from his pocket and started to tell her what had transpired:
"Everything is fine! The judge was a clever young fellow, indeed! He put that shameless hussy in her place right off. 'You should be ashamed of yourself!' he says. 'There's no such thing as spontaneous combustion! You set it on fire, so you have to pay for it!"
"Imagine that!"
"He gave her such a hard time she didn't know where to turn for help. 'Can't you see your neighbor has only one leg?!' " Yefim always got drunk very quickly on an empty stomach. " If he were to write to the proper authorities about this, you'd really be in hot water. Do you know where his other leg is?' says the judge. 'He lost it in the battle for Moscow during the war! And here you are dragging the poor man to court! All he has to do is say the word, and you'll be nothing but skin and bones!' "
Marya realized that Yefim was exaggerating quite a bit, but the judge had said Grebenshchikova had to pay for the bath-house, and that was the main thing! For the rest, let him have his fun.
"So that means there is justice on this Earth after all!"
"Can't you tell this poor man fought at the front during the war?! You can see it in his eyes! And you with all your book-learnin'-do you realize who you've tried to tangle with? Have you no shame?' he says."
Enough of guzzling liquor and rejoicing," Marya snapped angrily. "Instead of lolling around, you should get up off your behind and take that nice judge a big hunk of fatback. Then, when he gets home, he'll have some fine fatback from the village to feed his kids."
'To listen to you, one'd think the city stores never sold fatback..."
"Well, they did, but not like ours! Go cut off a nice chunk with lots of meat and take it to him before he leaves. And say thank you. You probably hobbled off without even thanking the man. And after all he did for you!"
Yefim marvelled at the logic of the female mind.
"It came out pretty rotten, didn't it: the man did his best, and I didn't even thank him..." thought Yefim, then ruminated aloud: "He wouldn't have a drink with me, of course. After all; he's an important man around here, and people would talk."
"So take him some fatback."
"Sure I will. Nothing's too good for a man like him! Maybe I should take him some cash, too."
"He won't take money from you. He'd get in trouble if he did that. But you can give him the fatback. It's for his kids, after all."
So Yefim went down to the root cellar and cut off a generous chunk of savory fatback with lots of meat. What a wife he had!
"What will those damned women think of next?!" he mused.
He wrapped the fatback in a clean rag and hobbled off to the village council building, glad that now the judge would have something to be happy about, too. You for the nice things you do, pretty soon you won't ever want to do anything good for anyone. And then we go around whining about how terrible life is! So try to do something nice for somebody once in a while!" Yefim didn't care one whit about that stupid fatback, for instance. But it would never have occurred to him to take some to the judge. Yefim was pleased at the idea that he would appear so polite and thoughtful to the judge now. The cold sobered him; he always sobered up as quickly as he had gotten drunk. "So many smart people," he thought, "but none of them know how to live."
The judge was still at the village council, but he was about to leave.
"Could I trouble you for a minute. Comrade Judge," Yefim requested. "Let's go into the office... There's no one in there. Are you headed home from here?"
The tired judge (What made him tired, Yefim couldn't imagine. Being a judge didn't seem like hard work at all to him) looked at him.
"Do you have any kids?"
"Where?"
"At home."
"You mean any kids of my own?" asked the judge, not understanding what he meant.
"Sure."
"Yes, I do, but why are you asking?"
"Then take this to them. It's real village fatback with lots of meat. City people like fatback with lots of meat. Out here in the country where we have to work hard, we tike it with more fat than meat, but you folks are different."
Yefim started to unwrap the fatback, but he couldn't get the rag off. He fumbled hurriedly, glancing back at the door. "You like your fatback nice and tasty. Why the devil can't I get this rag off?!"
"Just what do you think you're doing?"
"I brought you some fatback to take to your kids."
The judge involuntarily cast a glance at the door. Then he stared hard at Yefim.
"What are you looking at me like that for?" protested Yefim. "I told you it's for your kids."
"I won't take it," said the judge softly.
"I didn't bring it to you because of this morning. That's all in the past. I just thought you could take it to your kids. There's nothing wrong with that. It's not money, after all."
"I won't take it! Now get out of here!" the judge snapped. With that, he turned around and left the office, slamming the door after him.
Yefim stood there, hunched over on his crutches, holding the fatback. The painful realization came to him that he should never have brought the fatback... Now he just stood there, staring at it in silence. He didn't know what to do.
The judge poked his head into the office and said:
"Get out of here right this minute. There's someone coming! And wrap up that fatback so no one sees it! Hurry up!"
As soon as Yefim was outside, he knew what he should do.
"I'm going to take this fatback home and knock that worthless Marya upside the head with it! "
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