Анатолий Шигапов – Peace, war and peace (страница 8)

Andrei kept silent. He knew that when his father began to speak in this tone, it was better not to interrupt, because each word found its way without outside help. But still he could not help himself and, still looking out the window, said, trying to keep his voice calm though everything inside boiled:

"Mais c'est ridicule, mon père. How can one disgrace a man who has won so many battles? That is not just foolishness - that is..." He could not find the word.

"It is suicide," the old prince finished for him. "Russia's suicide. For without an army we are nothing. But he, you see, wants the army to be pretty. To march as in a parade. That all buttons shine. He has forgotten that a bullet is a fool but a bayonet is a fine fellow. He doesn't need soldiers - he needs puppets. And all of Russia, in his plan, is to become a puppet theater, with him as the sole puppeteer."

Karp, standing by the stove and listening, was amazed. He did not understand many words - what "disgrace" was, what a "jacket" was - but he understood the main thing: the master was cursing the tsar. And cursing him as if the tsar were not God's anointed but a common man doing foolish things. And Karp was also amazed that the master - the old prince - spoke words in Russian, but suddenly inserted something incomprehensible: "C'est un fou dangereux." And Andrei, the young master, immediately answered in the same incomprehensible tongue: "Mais c'est ridicule, mon père." And Karp thought they spoke in that incomprehensible language because they were afraid that someone would hear and report them to the tsar. But in the kitchen - no one would report them. Or were they afraid of the walls? But walls, as we know, have ears - Karp knew that for a fact.

"Be silent," the old prince suddenly said, striking the table with a ruler so that the decanter jumped - not loudly, but impressively. "Be silent and listen. La prudence est la mère de la sagesse. Remember that. With the tongue these days one must be more careful than ever. Say an extra word - and you are lost, and you will drag me down with you. And Marya? She is nineteen. Who will take care of her if we are both exiled to Siberia?"

Andrei turned from the window. His face was pale, his lips pressed together, and in his eyes - those same gray, deep eyes that his late mother had loved so much - stood such anguish that Karp, though not a sensitive man, felt sorry for the master.

"I understand, mon père," said Andrei. "I am silent. But for how long can one be silent? When will the time come when one can speak truth to one's face?"

"Never," said the old prince, with such certainty that Karp involuntarily crossed himself. "Truth is not spoken to one's face. Never. It is spoken behind the back, when the person can no longer answer, or written in diaries that are burned before death. The living keep silent. And you keep silent."

He fell silent, wearily leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes. Karp understood that the conversation was over, put the soup on the table - in a silver tureen, steaming, with dill on top - and was about to leave when he suddenly heard the old prince say, addressing not Andrei but himself:

"Will we live to see better times? Or will we die without having seen them?"

Andrei said nothing. Karp went to the kitchen, sat on a bench, and remained silent for a long time. His assistant asked: "What is it, Uncle Karp?" But Karp only waved his hand. Then he stood up, went to the window overlooking the garden, and began to look at the oak - that huge, spreading oak that had grown by the house since his grandfather's time. A month ago the oak had been green and fresh, its branches stretching toward the sun. But now, in September, the leaves had begun to turn yellow, and red veins appeared here and there, and Karp thought that this oak was like human life: first it reaches for the light, grows, spreads; then old age comes, the leaves turn yellow, the branches bend, and everything moves toward its end. And no one can postpone that end - not the tsar, not the prince, not the richest and most powerful.

"And they keep quarreling," thought Karp. "The tsar at the courtiers, the courtiers at the tsar. But what is it to us peasants? One thing remains: to work, to pray, and to wait for everything somehow to sort itself out. Or not. As God wills."

He looked at the sky - low, autumn, entirely covered with gray clouds - and thought that until spring the sky would remain this way: gloomy, cold, cheerless. And life would be the same: gloomy, cold, and it was unknown when spring would come. Maybe soon, maybe never.

He sighed, crossed himself before the icon in the corner - an old, time-blackened one - and went to finish his kitchen duties, because the prince had ordered sterlet in sauce for supper, and the soup had already cooled, and it had to be reheated, and as Karp knew, if the soup were cold, it was better not to show his face to the old prince. But his thoughts were still there, in the dining room, where the master and his son had spoken of things about which a simple man had better not think, and if he did think, then only to himself, and not repeat to anyone, not even his wife, because the tongue has no bones, and what you say today may turn against you tomorrow.

Karp put the soup on the stove, covered it, and watched it boil and bubble, thinking that life was like this soup: it cooks and cooks, and then it is poured out, and no one remembers what it tasted like. And princes boiled, and tsars boiled, and everyone would boil and be poured out. But the earth would remain, the oak would remain, the sky would remain. And someone else would look at this sky and think their own thoughts - as bitter, as insoluble, as the old prince's today.

Meanwhile, Andrei, left alone in the dining room, went to the window. The oak stood like a yellow spot against the gray background of the sky; the wind stirred its branches; the leaves rustled, and it seemed the tree was whispering something - perhaps a complaint, perhaps a curse, or perhaps just an autumn song about how everything passes. Andrei looked at the oak and thought: "When will real life begin? Must I always keep silent, looking at this oak, waiting for my father to die? And then another tsar will come, and everything will repeat, and again I must be silent and again wait for someone to die?" And he wanted to shout at the top of his lungs for all to hear: "I do not want to be silent! I want to live!" - but he did not shout, because his father was right: now words could cost you your head.

He stood a while longer, then turned and left. His steps clattered on the floor, the door slammed, and the house grew quiet. The silence was so deep that Karp could hear the leaves rustling outside, dogs barking somewhere far away, and the ticking of the clock in the old prince's study. And it occurred to him that this silence was not an ordinary silence but the kind that comes before a storm. And the storm would come. Not today, then tomorrow. Not tomorrow, then the day after. But it would come.

Karp took the soup off the stove, set it on the table, and crossed himself. "Lord," he whispered, "have mercy on us sinners." And he did not know that with these words he was praying not only for himself but for the old prince, for Andrei, and for all Russia, which, like this oak, stood in the middle of a field, buffeted by winds, not knowing when spring would come.

VIII

In the middle of the large drawing room stood a Christmas tree. The tree had been brought from a forest near Moscow the day before, had stood all night in the entryway thawing, and this morning it was brought into the hall, and Agafya with two maids had been for four hours hanging toys on it: glass balls, gold fish, porcelain angels, gingerbread men she had baked herself in the kitchen yesterday, and paper chains the children had glued. It smelled of pine needles, wax, and something sweet and festive; logs crackled in the stoves; frost painted silver patterns on the windows; and everything in the house was as it was every year, and every year everything repeated, but each time seemed new and joyful.

Agafya, adjusting the star that had slipped askew and which she had already tied to the top of the tree three times, sighed and thought: "So Christmas time has come. And it seems only yesterday it was summer, only yesterday we were mowing hay, and now here is frost, and the tree, and the children running and laughing, and no one thinks that someday it will all end. And thank God they don't think. Laughter is for children, sighing for old people." She was about to tie the star a fourth time when suddenly the drawing-room door burst open and Natasha ran in - five years old, rosy-cheeked, in her father's dressing gown belted with a sash, and a colorful kerchief on her head tied so that it stuck up like a turban in Turkish pictures Agafya had seen in the master's books. The dressing gown trailed on the floor; the kerchief slipped over her eyes; but Natasha was perfectly happy and, stopping in the middle of the room, hands on hips, shouted to the whole drawing room: