Everything Flows by Vasily Grossman

Author:Vasily Grossman
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781590173893
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2012-01-29T18:56:20+00:00

15

Vasily Timofeyevich had a quiet voice and a hesitant way of moving. And when someone talked to Ganna, she would look down at the ground with her brown eyes and reply almost inaudibly.

After their marriage, they both became still more timid. He was fifty years old, and the neighbors’ children called him “Grandad”; he was gray-haired, balding, and wrinkled—and he felt embarrassed to have married someone so young. He felt ashamed to be so happy in his love, to find himself whispering “My darling, my sweetheart” as he looked at his wife. As for her, when she was a little girl, she had tried to imagine her future husband. He was going to be a Civil War hero like Shchors; he was going to be the best accordion player in the village; and he was going to be a writer of heartfelt poems like Taras Shevchenko. Nevertheless, even though Vasily Timofeyevich was no longer young; even though he was poor, timid, and generally unlucky; even though he had always lived through others rather than living a life of his own, her meek heart understood the strength of the love he felt for her. And he understood how she, so young, had hoped for more, how she had dreamed of a village knight who would ride up and bear her away from her stepfather’s cramped hut—instead of which he had come along in his old boots, with his big brown peasant hands, coughing apologetically and clearing his throat. And now here he was, looking at her happily, adoringly, guiltily and with grief. And she, for her part, felt guilty before him and was meek and silent.

They had a son, Grisha, a quiet little baby who never cried. His mother, now once again looking like a skinny little girl, sometimes went up to his cradle at night. Seeing the boy lying there with open eyes, she would say to him, “Try crying a bit, little Grishenka. Why are you always so silent?”

Even when they were in their own hut, both husband and wife always talked in soft voices. “Why do you always speak so quietly?” neighbors would ask in astonishment.

It was strange that the young woman and her plain, elderly husband should be so alike, equally timid, equally meek in their hearts.

They both worked without a word of complaint. They did not even dare let out a sigh when the brigade leader was unjust, when he sent them out into the fields even if it was not their turn.

Once, Vasily Timofeyevich was sent to the district center on an errand for the collective-farm stables; he went with the farm chairman. While the chairman was going about his business in the land and finance offices, he tied the horses to a post, went into the shop, and bought his wife a treat: some poppy-seed cakes, some candies, some bread rings, some nuts. Not a lot, just 150 grams of each. When he got back home and untied his white kerchief, his wife flung

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