"Open, please!" someone on the other side of the gate was saying in a deep voice. "There's a telegram for you.
Olenka had received telegrams from her husband be- fore, but this time for some reason she was numb with fright. With trembling hands she opened the telegram and read the following:
"Ivan Petrovich died suddenly today awaiting prot instructions tuneral Tuesday."
That is exactly how the telegram had it: "tuneral," and there was also the incomprehensible word "prot"; the signature was that of the director of the comic opera company.
"My precious!" Olenka sobbed. "Vanichka, my pre- cious, my sweet! Why did we ever meet! Why did I get to know you and to love you! To whom can your poor unhappy Olenka turn?"
Kukin was buried on Tuesday in the Vagankovo Cemetery in Moscow. Olenka returned home on Wed- nesday, and no sooner did she enter her room than she sank onto the bed and sobbed so loudly that she could be heard. in the street and in the neighboring courtyards.
"The darling!" said the neighbors, crossing them- selves. "Darling Olga Semyonovna! How the poor soul takes on!"
Three months later Olenka was returning from Mass one day in deep mourning and very sad. It happened that one of her neighbors, Vasily Andreich Pustovalov, the manager of Babakayev's lumberyard, who was also returning from church, was walking beside her. He was wearing a straw hat and a white waistcoat, with a gold watch-chain, and he looked more like a landowner than a businessman.
"There is order in all things, Olga Semyonovna," he was saying sedately, with a note of sympathy in his voice; "and if one of our dear ones passes on, then it means that this was the will of God, and in that case we must keep ourselves in hand and bear it submissively."
Having seen Olenka to her gate, he took leave of her and went further. All the rest of the day she heard his sedate voice, and as soon as she closed her eyes she had a vision of his dark beard. She liked him very much. And apparently she too had made an impression on him, because a little later a certain elderly lady, whom she scarcely knew, called to have coffee with her, and no sooner was she seated at table than the visitor began to talk about Pustovalov, saying that he was a fine, sub- stantial man, and that any marriageable woman would be glad to go to the altar with him. Three days later Pustovalov himself paid her a visit. He did not stay more than ten minutes and he said little, but Olenka fell in love with him, so deeply that she stayed awake all night burning as with fever, and in the morning she sent for the elderly lady. The match was soon arranged and then came the wedding.
As a married couple Pustovalov and Olenka got on very well together. As a rule he was in the lumberyard till dinnertime, then he went out on business and was replaced by Olenka, who stayed in the office till evening, making out bills and seeing that orders were shipped.
"We pay twenty per cent more for l^rnber every year," she would say to customers and acquaintances. "Why, we used to deal in local timber, and now Vasi- chka has to travel to the province of Mogilev for timber regularly. And the freight rates!" she would exclaim, putting her hands to her cheeks in horror. "The freight rates! "
It seemed to her that she had been in the lumber business for ages, that lumber was the most important, the most essential thing in the world, and she found something intimate and touching in the very sound of such words as beam, log, batten, plank, box board, lath, scantling, slab . . .
At night she would dream of whole mountains of boards and planks, of endless caravans of carts hauling lumber out of town to distant points. She would dream that a regiment of beams, 28 feet by 8 inches, standing on end, was marching in the lumberyard, that beams, logs, and slabs were crashing against each other with the hollow sound of dry wood, that they kept tumbling down and rising again, piling themselves on each other. Olenka would scream in her sleep and Pustovalov would say to her tenderly: "Olenka, what's the matter, darling? Cross yourself!"
Whatever ideas her husband had, she adopted as her own. If he thought that the room was hot or that busi- ness was slow, she thought so too. Her husband did not care for entertainments and on holidays stayed home— so did she.
"You are always at home or in the office," her friends would say. "You ought to go to the theater, darling, or to the circus."
"Vasichka and I have no time for the theater," she would answer sedately. "We are working people, we're not interested in such foolishness. What good are these theaters?"
On Saturdays the two of them would go to evening service, on holidays they attended early Mass, and re- turning from the church they walked side by side, their faces wearing a softened expression. There was an agree- able aroma about them, and her silk dress rustled pleas- antly. At home they had tea with shortbread, and vari- ous kinds of jam, and afterwards they ate pie. Every day at noon, in the yard and on the street just outside the gate, there was a delicious smell of borshch and roast lamb or duck, and on fast days there was the odor of fish, and one could not pass the Pustovalov gate with- out one's mouth watering.
In the office the samovar was always boiling and the customers were treated to tea with doughnuts. Once a week the pair went to the baths and returned side by side, both with red faces.
"Yes, everything goes well with us, thank God," Olenka would say to her friends. "I wish everyone were as happy as Vasichka and I."
When Pustovalov went off to the provinces of Mogilev for timber, she missed him badly and lay awake nights, crying. Sometimes, in the evening, a young army vet- erinary, by the name of Smirnin, who rented the wing of their house, would call on her. He chatted or played cards with her and that diverted her. What interested her most was what he told her about his domestic life. He had been married and had a son, but was separated from his wife because she had been unfaithful to him, and now he hated her; he sent her forty rubles a month for the maintenance of the child. And listening to him, Olenka would sigh and shake her head: she was sorry for him.
"Well, God keep you," she would say to him as she took leave of him, going to the stairs with him, candle in hand. "Thank you for relieving my boredom, and may the Queen of Heaven give you healthl"
She always expressed herself in this sedate and rea- sonable manner, in imitation of her husband. Just as the veterinary would be closing the door behind ^m, she would recall him and say:
"You know, Vladimir Platonych, you had better make up with your wife. You ought to forgive her, at least for your son's sake! I am sure the little boy understands everything."
And when Pustovalov came back, she would tell him in low tones about the veterinary and his unhappy do- mestic life, and both of them would sigh and shake their heads and speak of the boy, who was probably missing his father. Then by a strange association of ideas they would both turn to the icons, bow down to the ground before them and pray that the Lord would grant them children.
Thus the Pustovalovs lived in peace and quiet, in love and harmony for six years. But one winter day, right after having hot tea at the office, Vasily Andreich went out without his cap to see about shipping some lumber, caught a chill and was taken sick. He was treated by the best doctors, but the illness had its o^ way with ^m, and he died after four months. Olenka was a widow again.