The Cooks Wedding and Other Stories | Page 3

cannot live here. . . . You know I don't like to
have anyone sitting in the kitchen. Mind now, remember . . . . And I
can't let you sleep out."
"Goodness knows! What an idea, mistress!" shrieked the cook. "Why
do you keep throwing him up at me? Plague take him! He's a regular
curse, confound him! . . ."
Glancing one Sunday morning into the kitchen, Grisha was struck
dumb with amazement. The kitchen was crammed full of people. Here
were cooks from the whole courtyard, the porter, two policemen, a
non-commissioned officer with good-conduct stripes, and the boy
Filka. . . . This Filka was generally hanging about the laundry playing
with the dogs; now he was combed and washed, and was holding an
ikon in a tinfoil setting. Pelageya was standing in the middle of the
kitchen in a new cotton dress, with a flower on her head. Beside her
stood the cabman. The happy pair were red in the face and perspiring

and blinking with embarrassment.
"Well . . . I fancy it is time," said the non-commissioned officer, after a
prolonged silence.
Pelageya's face worked all over and she began blubbering. . . .
The soldier took a big loaf from the table, stood beside nurse, and
began blessing the couple. The cabman went up to the soldier, flopped
down on his knees, and gave a smacking kiss on his hand. He did the
same before nurse. Pelageya followed him mechanically, and she too
bowed down to the ground. At last the outer door was opened, there
was a whiff of white mist, and the whole party flocked noisily out of
the kitchen into the yard.
"Poor thing, poor thing," thought Grisha, hearing the sobs of the cook.
"Where have they taken her? Why don't papa and mamma protect her?"
After the wedding there was singing and concertina-playing in the
laundry till late evening. Mamma was cross all the evening because
nurse smelt of vodka, and owing to the wedding there was no one to
heat the samovar. Pelageya had not come back by the time Grisha went
to bed.
"The poor thing is crying somewhere in the dark!" he thought. "While
the cabman is saying to her 'shut up!'"
Next morning the cook was in the kitchen again. The cabman came in
for a minute. He thanked mamma, and glancing sternly at Pelageya,
said:
"Will you look after her, madam? Be a father and a mother to her. And
you, too, Aksinya Stepanovna, do not forsake her, see that everything is
as it should be . . . without any nonsense. . . . And also, madam, if you
would kindly advance me five roubles of her wages. I have got to buy a
new horse-collar."
Again a problem for Grisha: Pelageya was living in freedom, doing as
she liked, and not having to account to anyone for her actions, and all at
once, for no sort of reason, a stranger turns up, who has somehow
acquired rights over her conduct and her property! Grisha was
distressed. He longed passionately, almost to tears, to comfort this
victim, as he supposed, of man's injustice. Picking out the very biggest
apple in the store-room he stole into the kitchen, slipped it into
Pelageya's hand, and darted headlong away.
SLEEPY

NIGHT. Varka, the little nurse, a girl of thirteen, is rocking the cradle
in which the baby is lying, and humming hardly audibly:
"Hush-a-bye, my baby wee, While I sing a song for thee."
A little green lamp is burning before the ikon; there is a string stretched
from one end of the room to the other, on which baby-clothes and a pair
of big black trousers are hanging. There is a big patch of green on the
ceiling from the ikon lamp, and the baby-clothes and the trousers throw
long shadows on the stove, on the cradle, and on Varka. . . . When the
lamp begins to flicker, the green patch and the shadows come to life,
and are set in motion, as though by the wind. It is stuffy. There is a
smell of cabbage soup, and of the inside of a boot-shop.
The baby's crying. For a long while he has been hoarse and exhausted
with crying; but he still goes on screaming, and there is no knowing
when he will stop. And Varka is sleepy. Her eyes are glued together,
her head droops, her neck aches. She cannot move her eyelids or her
lips, and she feels as though her face is dried and wooden, as though
her head has become as small as the head of a pin.
"Hush-a-bye, my baby wee," she hums, "while I cook the groats for
thee. . . ."
A cricket is churring in the stove.