A Second Pot of Coffee

She is both his model and his lover, and his housekeeper too – she lives with him at his studio on Znamenka: yellow-haired, short, but well-proportioned, still very young, nice-looking, affectionate. He is painting her in the mornings now as “A Bather”: on a small platform, as though beside a stream in a forest, undecided about entering the water, from which big-eyed frogs should be looking, she stands completely naked, her body developed in the way the common people’s are, covering the golden hair down below with a hand. After working for an hour or so, he leans back from the easel, looks at the canvas first one way, then another, narrows his eyes and says absent-mindedly:

“Well, this is a stop. Heat up a second pot of coffee.”

She heaves a sigh of relief and, treading bare-footed over the mats, she runs into the corner of the studio to the gas stove. He is scraping something from the canvas with a slender knife, the little stove hisses, giving off a sour smell from its green burners and the fragrant smell of coffee, and she fills the whole studio with song in a carefree, resonant voice:

 

“A little cloud slept, a little cloud of gold…

On the bre-east of a gi-i-iant cra-ag…”

 

And, turning her head, she says joyfully:

“It was the artist Yartsev that taught me that. Did you used to know him?”

“I knew him a little. A lanky sort.”

“That’s him.”

“He was a gifted chap, but pretty much of a dimwit. He died, I think, didn’t he?”

“He did, he did. Drank himself to it. No, he was kind. I lived with him for a year, like with you. He took my virginity too, at only the second sitting. Suddenly leapt up from the easel, dropped his palette and brushes, and knocked me off my feet onto a carpet. I was so frightened I couldn’t even cry out. I grabbed hold of his jacket at the chest, but it was no use! Mad, merry eyes… As if he’d stuck me with a knife.”

“Yes, yes, you’ve told me before. A good chap. And you loved him all the same?”

“Of course I did. I was really scared of him. He’d do me violence when he was drunk, the Lord save us. I’m saying nothing, and he says: ‘Katka, shut up!’”

“Nice man!”

“Drunk. His shouting fills the studio: ‘Katka, shut up!’ And I’ve been quiet for a long time as it is. Then he goes and bursts into: “A little cloud slept…” And carries on at once with different words: “A little cow slept, a little cow, not old” – that means me. You could die laughing! And again – crash with his foot on the floor: ‘Katka, shut up!’”

“Nice man. But hang on, I’ve forgotten: wasn’t it some uncle of yours that brought you to Moscow?”

“It was, it was my uncle. I was left an orphan in my sixteenth year, and he went and brought me. That was to my other uncle, to his cab man’s inn. I did the washing-up there, washed their linen for them, then my aunt took it into her head to sell me to a brothel. And she would have done, but God saved me. Once towards morning Shalyapin and Korovin came from the Strelna to take a hair of the dog, saw me lugging a boiling twelve-litre samovar to the counter with Rodka the waiter, and started shouting and roaring with laughter: ‘Good morning, Katyenka! We want you to be sure to serve us, and not that son of a bitch of a waiter!’ I mean, how did they guess my name was Katya? Uncle was already awake, he came out yawning, knits his brows – she’s not intended for that work, he says, she can’t serve you. And Shalyapin just bellows: ‘I’ll leave you to rot in Siberia, I’ll put you in irons – obey my order!’ At that point Uncle got scared at once – I was scared to death too, wanted to dig my heels in – but Uncle hisses: ‘Go and serve them, or else I’ll flay you alive later on, those are the most famous men in all Moscow.’ And so I went, and Korovin looked me over, gave me ten roubles and told me to come to him the next day – he’d taken it into his head to paint me, gave me his address. I came, but he’d already changed his mind about painting me, and sent me to Dr Goloushev, he was terribly friendly with all the artists, he examined drunks and corpses for the police and painted a bit too. Well, it was him started passing me around, he told me not to go back to the inn, and so I stayed with just the one dress.”

“That is, what do you mean by passing around?”

“This. Around studios. At first I posed fully clothed, in a yellow scarf, and always for women artists, Kuvshinnikova, Chekhov’s sister – to tell the truth, she was no good at our business at all, a dillytant – then I found myself with Malyavin himself: he sat me down naked on my feet, on my heels, with my back to him, with a shirt over my head, as though I was putting it on, and painted me. My back and backside turned out really well, powerful modelling, only he spoilt things with the heels and soles, twisted them around underneath my backside absolutely horribly…”

“Well, Katka, shut up. Second bell. Let’s have the pot of coffee.”

“Oh, Heavens, too much talking! Here it is, here it is…”

30th April 1944

Iron Coat

“No, I’m not a monk, my cassock and skullcap signify only the fact that I’m God’s sinful servant, a wandering pilgrim already in a sixth decade of roaming on dry land and water. By birth I’m from far away, from the north. Russia there is remote, ancient, there are forests and marshes with lakes, settlements are rare. There are many beasts, the birds are without number, you can see the big-eared eagle owl – it sits in a black fir tree, its amber eye goggling. There’s the big-nosed elk, there’s the splendid deer – its crying and calling to its mate rings out in the woods… Winters are snowy and long, the wandering wolf comes right up to the windows. And in summer the big-pawed bear sways and staggers through the forests, the wood demon whistles, halloos, plays on the pipes in the wilds; in the night, drowned women are white like mist on the lakes, they lie naked on the banks, tempting a man to fornication, insatiable lechery; and there’s no small number of unfortunates who do nothing but practise that lechery, spending the night with them and sleeping in the daytime, they burn in fevers, abandoning all other worldly cares… There isn’t a single power in the world stronger than lust – whether in a man or in a reptile, in a beast, in a bird, but most of all in a bear and in a wood demon!

“We call that bear Iron Coat, and the wood demon – simply the Forest. And they love women, both the one and the other, to fierce sweetness. A married woman, or even a maiden, may go into the woods for firewood, or for berries – and before you know it, she’s with child: she cries and repents – I was overpowered, she says, by the Forest. While another complains of the bear: Iron Coat ran into me, like, and engaged in fornication with me – how could I have escaped from him! I see him coming towards me, I prostrated myself, and he came up and sniffed at me, wondering if I was dead, folded back my gown and undergarment, crushed me… Only, to tell the truth, they’re not infrequently being devious: it sometimes happens, even with maidens, that they themselves entice him, they fall to the ground face down and, as they’re falling, bare themselves too, as though by accident. And then there’s this; it’s hard for a woman to resist, whether before a bear or a wood demon, and she doesn’t think in advance that as a result in subsequent times she’ll be possessed and have fits. The bear – he’s both a beast and not one, and it’s not for nothing our people believe he can talk, only doesn’t want to. So you can understand how enticing it is for the female soul to have such a terrible coition! And as for the wood demon, it goes without saying – he’s even more terrible and voluptuous. I can’t assert anything about him, God’s spared me from seeing him, but those who have seen him, they say in his shirt and trousers and the rest of his appearance he’s like a peasant tar-stirrer, yet his blood, though, is blue, which is why he’s dark of face; he’s shaggy-legged, and can cast no shadow either in sunlight or in moonlight; catching sight of a man passing by on a forest path, he’ll stoop down that very minute and be off at such a lick, a squirrel won’t catch him! But not when meeting a woman: not only is he not afraid of her, but, knowing that she herself is at this moment seized by terror and lust, he dances up to her like a goat and takes her in merriment, in a frenzy: she falls to the ground face down, as before the bear, and he throws off the trousers from his hairy legs, falls on her from behind, tickles her nakedness, cackles, snorts and so inflames her that, already unconscious, she’s overcome beneath him – some have told of it themselves…

“I’m leading up to myself with all this. I set off as a lonely pilgrim for the whole of my life by reason of the untold calamity that befell me at my very dawn. My parents married me to a splendid girl from a wealthy and old, honest peasant household, who was even younger than me and of wondrous charm: a transparent little face, whiter than the first snow, azure eyes like holy maidens have… But then, on the very first night of our marriage, she threw herself out of my embrace and onto the floor below the icons in the bedchamber, saying to me: ‘Will you really dare take my body beneath a holy icon case and unctuous icon lamps? I took the marriage wreath with you not of my own volition and cannot be your spouse, as I must withdraw to a hermitage and convent in order to take another wreath, to be dead to the world for my cruel sins.’ I answer her: you’ve clearly fallen into madness, what ever cruel sin can there be on your soul at your innocent age! And she says to me: ‘The Mother of God alone knows of that, and to her, when I confessed, I made my vow to be pure.’ And at that point, more than anything because of her resistance and other such terrible words – and beneath the sacred objects too – unbridled passion so brutalized me that I revelled in her right there on that spot, on the floor, no matter how she resisted with her weak powers and prayers and sobbing, and I realized only afterwards that she’d already lost her virginity when I’d had her, without thinking, though, of how and to whom she’d lost it. Being in my cups, I fell sound asleep that very minute. But she, in just her undergarment, fled from the bedchamber into the forest, and there by her wedding girdle hanged herself. And when they found her there, they saw this: sitting on the snow by her slender bare feet, with his head lowered, was a great bear. And, like the deer, for three days and three nights afterwards I filled the forests all around with my crying and calling, which could no longer reach her on earth.”

1st May 1944