"I'm tired of these people," she said blinking. "They don't let me get on
with my work. You know who I mean. Believe me, he's a terrible man."
She sighed and sat down.
"No, she won't marry him. She's heartbroken and he's getting on in
years."
For nothing better to say, I could only repeat: "Is that so?"
"Believe me, he's a terrible man," Nina Kapitonovna repeated
thoughtfully. "Maybe! Good Lord! Maybe!"
I sat as quiet as a mouse. The dinner was forgotten. White beads of
water rolled over the stove as the water in which the potatoes were
swimming kept boiling and boiling.
The old lady went out again and this time spent some fifteen minutes
in the dining-room. She came back frowning and threw up her hands.
"She's turned him down!" she announced. "Rejected him. My God!
Such a man!"
I don't think she quite knew herself whether to be glad or
disappointed that Maria Vasilievna had refused Korablev.
"It's a pity," I said.
She looked at me in astonishment.
"She could marry," I added. "She's still young."
"Stuff and nonsense!" Nina Kapitonovna began angrily. Then
suddenly becoming sedate and dignified, she sailed out of the kitchen
and met Korablev in the hall. He was very pale. Maria Vasilievna stood
in the doorway silently watching him as he put on his coat. Her eyes
showed that she had recently been crying.
"Poor man, poor man!" Nina Kapitonovna said as though to herself.
Korablev kissed her hand and she kissed him on the forehead, for
which she had to stand on tiptoe and he had to bend down.
"Ivan Pavlovich, you are my friend and our friend," Nina Kapitonovna
said gravely. "I want you to know that this house is like your own home.
You are Maria's best friend, too, I know. She knows it
too."
67
Korablev bowed in silence. I felt very sorry for him. I simply couldn't
understand why Maria Vasilievna had refused him. I thought
them a suitable pair.
The old lady must have been expecting Maria Vasilievna to call her in
and tell her all about it-how Korablev had proposed and how she had
refused him. But Maria Vasilievna did not call her. On the contrary, she
locked herself in her room and could be heard pacing the floor inside.
Katya finished her drawing of "the Spaniards' first encounter with the
Indians" and wanted to show it to her mother, but Maria Vasilievna said
from behind the closed door: "Later on, darling."
Somehow the place became dreary after Korablev had left and
drearier still when Nikolai Antonich came home and briskly announced
that there would be six for dinner, and not three as he had expected.
Willy-nilly, Nina Kapitonovna was obliged to set about it in earnest.
Even Katya was called in to help cut out little rounds of dough for the
meat pastries with a tumbler. She fell to work with a will, getting
flushed and covering herself with flour-nose, hair and all - but she soon
tired of it and decided to cut out the rounds with an old inkwell instead
of the tumbler, because it made star-shaped rounds.
"It's so much prettier. Grandma," she pleaded.
Then she heaped the stars together and announced that she was going
to bake a pie of her own. In short, she was not much of a help.
Six people to dinner! Who could they be? I looked out of the kitchen
and counted them coming in.
The first to arrive was the Director of Studies Ruzhichek, nicknamed
the Noble Thaddeus. I don't know where he got that nickname—
everybody knew only too well how noble he was! Next came the teacher
Likho, a stout, bald man with a peculiar elongated head. Then the
German-cum-French teacher, herself a German. Our Serafima arrived
with the watch on her breast, and last of all an unexpected guest in the
person of Vozhikov from the eighth form. In fact, we had here nearly all
the members of the School Council. This was rather odd, inviting
particularly the whole School Council to dinner.
I sat in the kitchen, listening to their conversation. The doors were
open. They started talking about Korablev. Would you believe it! It
appeared that he was sucking up to the Soviets. He was trying his
damnest "to carve out a career" for himself. He had dyed his moustache.
He had organised a school theatre only to "win popularity". He had been
married and had driven his wife into an early grave. At meetings, they
said, he shed "crocodile tears".
So far this had been conversation, until I heard the voice of Nikolai
Antonich and realised that it wasn't conversation but a conspiracy. They
wanted to kick Korablev out of the school.
Nikolai Antonich worked up to his subject from afar:
"Pedagogics has always envisaged art as an external factor in
education..."
Then he got round to Korablev and first of all "gave him his due for
his gifts". It appeared that "the cause of his late wife's death" was
nothing to do with us. All that concerned us was "the measure and
extent of his influence upon the children". "What worries us is the
harmful trend which Ivan Pavlovich is giving to the school, and that is
the only reason why we should act as our pedagogic duty prompts us to
act—do our duty as loyal Soviet teachers."
68
Nina Kapitonovna raised a chatter of empty plates and I could not
catch exactly what his pedagogic duty prompted Nikolai Antonich to do.
But when Nina Kapitonovna served the second dish I gathered from the
general conversation what it was they were after.
First, at the next meeting of the School Council Korablev was to be
asked to "confine himself to the teaching of geography as prescribed by
the syllabus". Second, his activities were to be assessed as "a
vulgarisation of the idea of manual education". Third, the school theatre
was to be closed down. Fourth and fifth, something else. Korablev, of
course, would resent it and would leave. As the Noble Thaddeus said:
"Good riddance."
Yes, this was a mean plan and I was surprised that Nina Kapitonovna
said nothing. But I soon realised what it was. Round about the middle of
the second course she started lamenting the fact that Maria Vasilievna
had rejected Korablev. She thought of nothing else, heard nothing else.
She kept muttering and shrugging her shoulders, and once even said out
aloud: "Well, well! Who asks Mother these days?"
She must have felt sore about Maria Vasilievna not having sought her
advice before refusing Korablev.
The guests had gone, but I still couldn't make up my mind what to do.
What beastly luck that Korablev had come to propose on that day of
all days. He would have done better to stay at home. I would then have
been able to tell Maria Vasilievna all I had heard. But now it was
awkward, even impossible, because she had not come out for dinner;
she had locked herself in and would not admit anyone. Katya had sat
down to her homework. Nina Kapitonovna suddenly announced that
she was dog tired and sleepy. She lay down and fell asleep at once. I
sighed and took my leave.
CHAPTER NINE
THE REJECTED SUITOR
Lame Japhet, the duty man at the Children's Home, had looked in
twice to see if we were asleep or larking about.