Country Dwellers
...So why not. Mother? Remember your young days. Do come and see us. You'll be able to have a look at Moscow and all that. I'll send the money for the fare.
Only you'd better come by air - it will be cheaper. Drop me a wire right away so that I know when to meet you. Above all, don't get scared.
Grandma Malanya read this,pursed her withered lips- and lapsed into deep thought.
"It's an invitation from Pavel,"she said to Shurka, and looked at the lad over her spectacles. Shurka was her grandson. Her daughter had not been able to stick to one husband, and the old lady had persuaded her to place Shurka temporarily in her charge. She was fond of her grandson but kept him under her thumb.
Shurka was doing his homework at the table. In response to his grandmother's statement he merely shrugged - go if you've been invited.
"When do your holidays come round?" Grandma asked sternly.
Shurka pricked up his ears.
"Which holidays? Winter?"
"Did you think I meant summer?"
"First of January. Why?"
Grandma again pursed her lips and became thoughtful.Shurka's heart contracted with joyful anxiety.
"Why?" he repeated.
"Never mind. Get on with your homework." Grandma slipped the letter away into her apron pocket, put on her coat and shawl and left the cottage.Shurka ran to the window to see where she was going. At the gate Grandma met a neighbour and started relating her news in a loud voice.
"Pavel's invited me to stay with him in Moscow. I just don't know what to do. Really, I don't. Come and see us, he says. We're missing you badly, that we are."
The neighbour made some inaudible reply but his grandmother's voice came back loudly.
"That'd be a good thing, of course. I've never seen my own grandchildren yet, except in a snap-shot. It's the journey that worries me, that it does."
Two other women halted as they were going by, then another, and yet another... Soon quite a crowd had gathered round Grandma Malanya and with every new arrival she would begin her story all over again.
"It's Pavel. He's inviting me to Moscow. I just don't know what to do..."
Evidently they were all advising her to go. Shurka dug his hands into his pockets and started pacing the room. His expression was dreamy, and thoughtful, too, like his grandmother's. On the whole he was very much like her, just as lean, with high cheekbones and the same small clever eyes. But their characters were quite different. The grandmother was energetic, wiry, loud-voiced and eager to know everything. Shurka, though also of a curious turn of mind, was shy to the point of stupidity, modest, and easily hurt.
That evening they composed a telegram to send to Moscow. Shurka wrote. Grandma dictated.
"My dear son Pasha, if you really want me to come, I can come, of course, although in my old age..."
"Hold on!" said Shurka. "Who writes telegrams like that?"
"How do you think they should be written, then?"
"Will come. Stop. Or perhaps: Will come after New Year. Stop. Mother. That's all."
Grandma was quite offended.
"You've been going to school for six years now, Shurka, and you still haven't any sense. It's about time you learned some!"
This offended Shurka.
"Go ahead then," he said. "Do you know how much it'll come to if you write it like that? About twenty rubles in old money."
Grandma pursed her lips, and thought.
"Very well, then. Write it like this: Dear son, I've been taking some advice from the people round here..."
Shurka put his pen down.
"I can't write such things. Who wants to know you've been asking people's advice? They'll laugh at us at the post-office."
"Write as I tell you!" Grandma commanded. "Do you think I grudge twenty rubles for my own son?"
Shurka took up his pen and with a condescending frown bent over the paper.
"My dear son Pavel, I've had a word with the neighbours here and they all advise me to go. Of course, I feel a bit frightened at my time of life..."
"They'll only rewrite it all at the post-office," Shurka interposed.
"Let them try!"
"You won't know anything about it."
"Go on writing: ...Of course, I feel a bit frightened,but never mind. We'll come after the New Year. Stop.I bring Shurka with me. He's a big boy now. And quite obedient too."
Shurka skipped that last bit, about his being a big boy and obedient.
"I shan't feel so frightened if I'm with him. So good-bye for now, son. I miss you right bad myself..."
For "right bad" Shurka wrote "terribly".
"...At least I'll have a chance to see your little ones. Stop. Mother."
"Now let's tot it up," Shurka proclaimed gleefully, and started ticking the words off with his pen and counting in a whisper: "One, two, three, four..."
Grandma stood behind him and waited.
"...Fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty! How's that? Sixty multiplied by thirty makes one thousand eight hundred? How's that, eh? Divide by a hundred, equals eighteen...Over twenty rubles' worth!" Shurka announced triumphantly.
Grandma took the telegram and put it away in her pocket.
"I'll take it to the post-office myself. You're bound to make it more than it is, you learned man."
"Go ahead. It'll come to just the same. It won't be more than a few kopeks out."
...At about eleven o'clock their neighbour Yegor Lizunov, the supply manager at the village school, came in to see them. Grandma had left a message with his family,asking him to call on her when he came back from work. Yegor had done a lot of travelling in his time. He had even flown.
Yegor took off his coat, then his hat, smoothed down his greying, matted hair with calloused palms and sat down at the table. A smell of hay and harness spread through the room.
"So you want to fly, do you?"
Grandma Malanya went down into the cellar and returned with a large bottle of mead.
"Yes, Yegor. Tell us all about it."
"Well, there's not much to tell, is there?" Yegor's glance was condescending rather than greedy as he watched the old lady filling his glass. "You Just go to town, get on the Biisk-Tomsk train as far as Novosibirsk, and then ask where the air terminal is. Or mebbe you can go straight from the station to the airport..."
"Just a minute! You and your 'mebbes'. You tell me what to do. Don't 'mebby' me. And not so fast.Don't throw it at me all at once." Grandma placed the glass of mead in front of Yegor and eyed him severely.
Yegor fondled the glass.
"Well, when you arrive in Novosibirsk the first thing you do is ask how to get to the airport. Remember that,Shurka."
"Make a note of it, Shurka," Grandma commanded.
Shurka tore a sheet out of his exercise book and started taking notes.
"When you get to Tolmachovo you'll have to ask again where they sell tickets for Moscow. Then you buy your tickets, get on a TU-104 and in five hours you'll be in Moscow, the capital of our Motherland."
The old lady propped her head on her small withered fist and listened to Yegor in dismay. The more he talked and the easier the journey seemed to him, the more worried the old lady's face became.
"In Sverdlovsk, though, you'll make a stop..."
"What for?"
"You'll have to, that's all. No one's going to ask your opinion. They'll just land you and that's that." Yegor decided it was time he had a drink. "Well?.. Here's to an easy journey!"
"Not so fast, man. Do we have to ask them to land us in Sverdlovsk, or do they land everybody?"
Yegor drank deep, smacked his tips with relish, and stroked down his moustache.
"Everybody. Right good mead this is of yours, Malanya Vasilyevna. How do you make it? I wish you'd tell my old woman."
Grandma poured him another glass.
"When you stop being so mean, you'll start making good mead."
"How come?" Yegor was puzzled.
"Put more sugar in it. You always want something on the cheap, you do. Put more sugar in your brew, then it'll be worth drinking. It's a crying shame to strengthen it with tobacco the way you do."
"Aye," Yegor said thoughtfully. He lifted his glass,looked at the old dame, then at Shurka, and drank. "Aye,"he repeated. 'That's all very well. But when you're in Novosibirsk, you'd better mind you don't slip up."
"Why?"
"Well, you know, anything might happen." Yegor took out his pouch, made a cigarette, lit it and blew out a huge cloud of white smoke from under his moustache. The main thing, when you get to Tolmachovo, o'course, is not to mix up the ticket desks. Or you might find yourself flying to Vladivostok."
Grandma Malanya rose uneasily and filled Yegor's glass for the third time.
Yegor drank it at once, smacked his lips and set about enlarging on his idea.
"Some people, you know, they just come up to the desk and ask for a ticket. Where that ticket is to take them, they don't say. So they find themselves flying in quite the opposite direction.. So, as I says, mind your step"
Grandma poured Yegor a fourth glass. Yegor became quite relaxed and fell into a talking mood.
"When you're flying in a plane, you need nerves of steel! Up it goes, and the first thing they do is give you a sweet..."
"A sweet?"
"O'course. That's as much as to say, forget everything. Never mind what happens... But as a matter of fact, that's the most dangerous moment of all. Or else, let's say, they'll tell you, 'Fasten your seatbelts.' 'But why?' you say.
That's the regulations.' Regulations-huh! What they mean is we might come a cropper, that's what they mean I but they call it regulations."
"Heavens above!" the old lady exclaimed. "Why fly in the thing if that's what..."
'There's a saying, isn't there, if you're afraid of the wolf don't go into the forest." Yegor glanced at the bottle.
'The jets, o'course, they're a bit more reliable. The ones with a propeller, they may break down at any moment-and there you are... And besides, they often catch fire, these engines. I was flying once from Vladivostok..." Yegor settled himself more comfortably on his chair, lighted a fresh cigarette and again looked at the bottle. Grandma never stirred. "There we were, flying along, and I happened to look out of window - all aflame!"
"God preserve us!" Grandma exclaimed. Shurka was listening open-mouthed.
"Aye. So of course, I hollered out. One of the pilots comes running up... Still, it wasn't so bad, he just bawled at me, that's all. "What are you starting a panic for?' he says. 'Yes, it's burning all right, but you needn't worry, just sit where you are...' That's the way they run things in that air force of theirs."
To Shurka this seemed quite unbelievable. He had expected to hear that at the sight of the flames the pilot had tried to shake them off by increasing speed, or else made a forced landing, but instead he had just given Yegor a telling-off.
"There's one thing I can't understand," Yegor continued, addressing Shurka. "Why don't they give the passengers parachutes?"
Shurka shrugged. He had not been aware that passengers were not given parachutes. This was strange, too, if it was really so.
Yegor stubbed out his cigarette in a flower-pot, half rose and filled his glass from the bottle.
"This is some mead, Malanya! "
"Don't overdo it - it'll make you drunk."
"Wonderful stuff..." Yegor shook his head and drank.
"Ah! But the jets, they're dangerous too. If something goes wrong with one of them, down it goes like a chopper. Instantaneous that is - nothing left to pick up afterwards. Three hundred grammes per person counting his clothes."
Yegor frowned and directed an attentive glance at the bottle. Grandma picked it up and carried it out into the passage. Yegor sat on for a little longer, then got up to go.
He was swaying slightly.
"Still, there's nothing to be afraid of really!" he said loudly. "But keep as far as you can from the pilot's cabin. Stay right back in the tail, then you'll be all right. Well, I'm off..."
He strode heavily to the door and put on his hat and coat.
"Regards to Pavel Sergeyevich from me. That's some mead of yours, Malanya"
Grandma was annoyed that Yegor had so quickly made himself tipsy - it hadn't been a proper talk.
"Your head isn't what it used to be, Yegor."
"I'm tired, that's why." Yegor picked a wisp of straw off the collar of his coat. "I told them officials of ours the hay ought to be carted in summer. No, they wouldn't! Now after that snow-storm all the roads are snowed up.
We've been hauling and tugging all day and we could hardly get through to the nearest stacks. And now that mead of yours..." Yegor shook his head and chuckled. "Well, I'm off. You go by air - nothing to be scared of really. Just keep away from that pilot's cabin. Good-bye."
"Good-bye," Shurka said.
The door closed behind him; they heard him stepping down carefully from the high porch, and then crossing the yard. The gate creaked and in the street he struck up not very loudly with a song about the wide and rolling sea, only to break off again rather suddenly.
Grandma Malanya stared at the darkened window in dismay. Shurka read over what he had taken down of Yegor's remarks.
"I'm afraid to fly, Shurka," said Grandma.
"Other people fly."
"Wouldn't it be better to go by train ?" '
'That means all my holidays will be wasted travelling."
"Well, I don't know. I'm surel" Grandma sighed.
"Let's write Pavel a letter, and we'll cancellate the telegram."
Shurka tore yet another sheet out of his exercise book
"So we're not flying?"
"Fly! But it's such a terrible ordeal, that flying is. Goodness me! Nothing left but three hundred grammes..."
Shurka was deep in thought.
"Write this: Dear son Pavel, I've had a word with some knowledgeable folk around here..."
Shurka bent over the paper.
'They've told us about this flying business... And Shurka and I, we've decided to come in summer by train. We could have come now, but Shurka's holiday's only a short one..."
Shurka hesitated for a second or two and went on writing:
"And now. Uncle Pavel, I'm writing to you myself.
Granny's been frightened by Uncle Yegor Lizunov, our supply manager, if you remember him. For example, he told us the following. He looked out of the window and saw the engine was on fire, so he informed the pilot about it and the pilot just ticked him off. I think that if the engine really was on fire, the pilot would have tried to shake off the flames by speed, as they usually do. I can only assume that Uncle Yegor saw flames from the exhaust and started a panic. Will you, please, write and tell Granny it's nothing to be afraid of, but don't mention to her what I wrote. Or else she won't travel even in summer. There'11 be the vegetable garden to look after, the pigs, the hens and geese and all that - she'll never leave them. You see, we are still country dwellers. But I'd just love to see Moscow. We do it at school in geography and history, but that's not the same thing, you know. And another thing Uncle Yegor said was that the passengers are not given parachutes. That's sheer blackmail. But Granny believes it. Please, Uncle Pavel, make her ashamed of herself. She loves you so much. So you write to her something like this. What do you mean by it, mother? Your own son's a pilot. Hero of the Soviet Union, with many decorations, and you're afraid to fly in a passenger plane that's safe as houses! At a time when we have smashed the sound barrier. Write that to her and she'll be on that plane in no time. She's very proud of you. And quite justifiably so, of course. I'm proud of you too. And I'm just longing to see Moscow. Well, good-bye for now. Greetings, Alexander."
And meanwhile Grandma was dictating to him:
"...We'll come a bit later on, towards autumn. The mushrooms will be in by then. I could bring you some pickled mushrooms, make some buckthorn jam for you.
In Moscow it's all shop-made stuff, I know. They can't make it like I make it at home. So that's how things are, dear. Give my love to your wife and the children and love from Shurka too. All for now... Have you got that all down, Shurka?"
"Yes, I have."
Grandma took the sheet, folded it and put it in an envelope and herself wrote the address: "Moscow, 78 Leninsky Prospekt, flat 156. To Hero of the Soviet Union Lyubavin, Pavel Ignatyevich from his mother, in Siberia."
She always wrote the address herself because she knew it would be more sure of getting there if she wrote it.
"Well, that's that. Don't fret, Shurka. We'll go in summer."
"I'm not fretting. But you'd better do a bit of packing now and then. You might suddenly change your mind and decide to fly."
Grandma looked at her grandson and said nothing.
That night Shurka heard her shifting about restlessly on her bed over the big Russian stove, sighing quietly to herself and muttering.
Shurka could not sleep either. He was thinking. The very "ear future promised many wonderful surprises. Adventures he had never dreamed of before. "Shurka!" his grandmother called.
"What is it?"
"I expect they let Pavel into the Kremlin, don't they?"
"I expect so. What of it?"
"Fancy going inside there, just for once, and looking round."
"They let everyone in nowadays."
Grandma was silent for a while.
"Tell me another!" she said.
"Nikolai Vasilyevich told us so."
They were both silent for a minute or two.
"You're pretty brave. Granny, in the ordinary way, and now you're scared," Shurka said disapprovingly. "What are you so scared of?"
"You go to sleep," Grandma commanded. "You're a real dare-devil, aren't you? You'd be the first to do it in your trousers."
"Want a bet that I wouldn't be scared?"
"Go to sleep, boy. You'll never wake up in time for school tomorrow."
Shurka fell quietly asleep.
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