Free The Greatest Russian Stories of Crime and Suspense by Otto Penzler Page A

his legs and pushing them into his well-worn sandals.
    Silence rolled about the rooms of the house, a usual but always unpleasant fact for Aniskin. Somehow it so happened that he was always busy and the life of his own family went on irrespective of him, not around him, but along some distant parallel. Nobody ever stopped to ask himself whether it was good or bad, for the divisional militia inspector lived a mysterious and unusual kind of life not only in the eyes of his family but of all the villagers. He was as enigmatic and removed from everyday human pursuits as a high-ranking general who spent all days behind the doors of his office.
    As usual Aniskin had his tea by himself. His red face expressed bliss, delight and contentment. Everything was as usual, but he had his tea in the kitchen instead of in the yard. And Glafira, knowing that the only time he felt at home was during his meals, came into the kitchen and sat down in front of him. She sat quietly, resting, and her face was blissful too. Strangely enough, the thin bony Glafira and her stout husband were somehow alike, either in their manner of looking at people, or in the frown of the eyebrows, or in the vertical furrow over the bridge of the nose.
    “Finished weeding the tomatoes?” Aniskin asked looking sideways at her.
    “Yes.”
    Long comfortable minutes floated by. Aniskin drank one glass of tea after another, bit the sugar noisily, champed at a piece of bacon and puffed right and left. Glafira sat silent, gazing down, but one could see from the restful look of her ear, the strand of dark hair and the curved toe on her foot that she enjoyed these minutes alone with her husband.
    “Bought boots for Fedka?” Aniskin asked her lazily.
    “No.”
    “Why not?”
    “What does he want pigskin boots for?”
    Again there was a spell of silence, the special kind characteristic of this house. Aniskin listened to it, opened his mouth to say something, but changed his mind and only waved his arm.
    “I’ll buy him boots next week,” Glafira explained. “Duska sent an order to the district when she heard Fedka needed some. Have you been after her again?”
    “She has been cheating children out of their change. The day before yesterday she robbed Petka Surov of three kopecks.”
    “And Darya’s Luska of five kopecks,” Glafira volunteered after some consideration.
    “Five kopecks?” Aniskin asked, placing his glass on the table and turning to his wife heavily. “Five kopecks!”
    “Yes. She thinks that because I’ve quarrelled with Darya I won’t find out about the five kopecks. But Darya is not a fool, she came and told me. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘you and I had a quarrel, but it’s real shameless to cheat a child out of five kopecks.’ I’m sure Duska knows that she complained, so she’s in a hurry to get Fedka real nice boots.”
    “I’ll keep it in mind,” Aniskin said smiling and shaking his head. “Duska, Duska, funny woman! What does she want all that money for?”
    “She is making herself a new coat. Remember they delivered three fur collars to the shop and she bought one of them.”
    “I know about that.”
    “Then why do you ask what she wants the money for? D’you think she’d let that collar lie another winter?”
    “Oh, you always know everything,” Aniskin said with sudden severity and turned away from his wife, who did not react to his change of tone in any way, however, but sat there as happy and relaxed as before. She simply stared more intently down at the floor and bent her scrawny neck lower. Suddenly her sunken cheeks moved in a smile.
    “You know, Fedka is already wearing size nine. Can you imagine it?”
    “Take ten then,” Aniskin responded after a pause. “I suppose you were going to anyway?”
    “Yes.”
    And again the room was immersed in silence. Aniskin drank two more glasses of tea, then upturned his empty glass resolutely and rose with a springy motion. The table and the stool creaked, the floorboards