The Telegram

{1} Katherine Petrovna

October was unusually cold, rainy. The crowns of old bungalows have turned black. 

Matted grass in gardens has died, and just one small sunflower by a fence was trying to flourish, but couldn’t thrive and grow its seeds.

Trudging over the meadows by the river and clinging to the leafless willows were gray clouds. Rain was tirelessly pouring out of them.

It was hard to cross or drive on the roads now, and cowherds have stopped chasing their herds of sheep to those yellowing meadows.

Now it was more difficult for Katherine Petrovna to wake up in the morning and see all the same: the rooms where was that bitter scent of burning branches in woodstove, the dusty “News of Europe” magazine, cups - that have become yellow over years - on the old big table, the rusted silver samovar, which has stayed dirty for a long time, and the pictures on the walls. Maybe it was too murky in the rooms, or maybe those pictures have darkened over a long time, but Katherine couldn’t get anything in them. She only knew, that this one – is the portrait of her father, and this one – the small picture in golden frame – is Rimsky’s gift (Rimsky was a portrayer in Russia.)

Katherine Petrovna lived in an old house, which was built by her father – a prominent portrayer.

Once, a long time ago, he came from Pittsburg to his neighborhood, lived here peacefully and worked in the garden. Though, he couldn’t write anymore: his hand was shaking, and his vision became weak, eyes ached often.

As Katherine said, the house was “memorial”; it was being kept under the guard of state museum. But what would happen to this house when she, its last liver, dies, Katherine Petrovna didn’t know.

And in the county itself - it was called Zaborye – there was nobody to talk to about the pictures, about the life in Pittsburg, about the summer when Katherine Petrovna had been living in Paris with her father.

How could she tell about all of it to Manyushka, who was the neighbor’s daughter – to the girl, that came to Katherine’s house everyday to bring water from the draw-well, to sweep the floors, and to heat the samovar–?

Katherine Petrovna usually gave her gloves, emu’s fur, and old-fashioned black hats in reward for her duties.

“Why do you give me all this?” Manyushka would ask with a muffling voice. “You think I need it?”

“You can sell it, honey,” Katherine Petrovna would whisper. A year passed after she had weakened, and now she couldn’t speak loudly. “Sell it, okay?”

“All right,” Manyushka would reluctantly agree, take everything and go away.

Seldom came here the warden from the firefighters’ building – thick and big Tifon. He still remembered how Katherine Petrovna’s father rarely came from Pittsburg and built the house.

Tifon was a little boy at that time, and he liked him very much. Glancing at the pictures and portrays, he used to pronounce, “Good work!”

Tifon always talked uselessly, that was because of the sorrow in his life, but he helped old Katherine: he usually cut dry trees in the forest and then chopped them. And every time when he leaved, he would stop in front of the doors and ask: “I don’t know…Did Nastia write anything to you?”

Katherine Petrovna would keep silent, sitting in the couch – curved, small - and staring at some papers that she held in her hands.

“Ok,” Tifon would say impatiently. “See you, Katherine Petrovna.”

“Go, Tifon,” would whisper Katherine. “God bless you, go.”

He’d leave and, as always, close the door quietly behind him, and Katherine Petrovna would begin to cry.

Behind the windows wind blew in the naked trees, carrying the last leaves away. A kerosene lamp was blinking on the table. It seemed that the lamp was the only brisk thing in the almost abandoned house - without that feeble fire in it Katherine Petrovna wouldn’t know how to survive the night.

The nights became longer, harder, and it felt like insomnia. Nastia, Katherine Petrovna’s daughter and the only close person, was living faraway, in Leningrad. The last time she had come here was three years ago.

Katherine Petrovna knew that now Nastia didn’t care about her, about her old woman. They, the youngsters, have their own duties, their own incomprehensible interests, and their own happiness. Better not disturb them. So Katherine very seldom wrote a letter to Nastia, but she thought about her all days, sitting on the edge of the squeezed old sofa so mutely that a mouse fibbed by serenity ran out from behind the stove and, rising up on its small rear legs, sniffed the musty air.

Neither there were letters from Nastia, but once in a month or two the happy young postman Vasiliy brought her a translation for two cents. He gently held her hand as she signed the paper so that she wouldn’t sign where unneeded.

Vasiliy would leave, and she’d sit there, confused, with the money in her hands. Then she’d put on her glasses and reread a few words in the translation. The words were all the same: there’s so much work that I don’t have the time to not only come see you, but to write a letter as well.

Katherine Petrovna carefully kept the chubby papers. Due to her old bones she’d forget that Nastya’s hands had never touched the money, and it seemed to her the money smelled of Nastia’s perfume.

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The second chapter has been posted.