V
Gambrinous’ became empty as though orphaned without Sasha and his fiddle. The manager invited as a substitute a quartette of strolling mandolinists, one of whom, dressed like a comic-opera Englishman, with red whiskers and a false nose, check trousers, and a stiff collar higher than his ears, sang comic couplets and danced shamelessly on the platform. But the quartette was an utter failure; it was hissed and pelted with bits of sausage, and the leading comic was once beaten by the Tendrove fishermen for a disrespectful allusion to Sasha.
All the same, Gambrinous’, from old memory, was visited by the lads of sea and port whom the war had not drawn to death and suffering. Every evening the first subject of conversation would be Sasha.
“Eh, it would be fine to have Sasha back now. One’s soul feels heavy without him.”
“Ye‑e‑es, where are you hovering, Sashenka, dear, kind friend?”
“In the fields of Manchuria far away …” someone would pipe up in the words of the latest song. Then he would break off in confusion, and another would put in unexpectedly: “Wounds may be split open and hacked. And there are also torn ones.”
“I congratulate you on victory,
You with the torn-out arm.”
“Stop, don’t whine. Madame Ivanova, isn’t there any news from Sasha? A letter or a little postcard?”
Madame Ivanova used to read the paper now the whole evening, holding it at arm’s length, her head thrown back, her lips constantly moving. Bielotchka lay on her knees, giving from time to time little peaceful snores. The presider at the buffet was already far from being like a vigilant captain on his bridge and her crew wandered about the shop half asleep.
At questions about Sasha’s fate she would shake her head slowly. “I know nothing. There are no letters, and one gets nothing from the newspapers.”
Then she would take off her spectacles slowly, place them, with the newspaper, close to the warm body of Bielotchka, and turn round to have a quiet cry to herself.
Sometimes she would bend over the dog and ask in a plaintive, touching little voice: “Bielinka, doggie, where is our Sasha, eh? Where is our master?”
Bielotchka raised her delicate little muzzle, blinked with her moist black eyes, and, in the tone of the buffet woman, began quietly to whine out: “Ah, ou-ou-ou. Aou—A-ou-ou-ou.”
But time smooths and washes up everything. The mandolinists were replaced by balalaika players, and they, in their turn, by a choir of Ukrainians with girls. Then the well-known Leshka, the harmonicist, a professional thief who had decided, in view of his marriage, to seek regular employment, established himself at Gambrinous’ more solidly than the others. He was a familiar figure in different cabarets, which explains why he was tolerated here, or, rather, had to be tolerated, for things were going badly at the beershop.
Months passed, a year passed; no one remembered anything more about Sasha, except Madame Ivanova, who no longer cried when she mentioned his name. Another year went by. Probably even the little white dog had forgotten Sasha.
But in spite of Sasha’s misgivings, he had not died from the Russian cross; he had not even been once wounded, though he had taken part in three great battles, and, on one occasion, went to the attack in front of his battalion as a member of the band, in which he played the fife. At Vafangoa he was taken prisoner, and at the end of the war he was brought back on board a German ship to the very port where his friends continued to work and create uproars.
The news of his arrival ran like an electric current round the bays, moles, wharves, and workshops. In the evening there was scarcely standing-room at Gambrinous’. Mugs of beer were passed from hand to hand over people’s heads, and although many escaped without paying on that day, Gambrinous’ never did such business before. The tinker brought Sasha’s fiddle, carefully wrapped up in his wife’s fichu, which he then and there sold for drink. Sasha’s old accompanist was fished out from somewhere or other. Leshka, the harmonicist, a jealous, conceited fellow, tried to compete with Sasha, repeating obstinately: “I am paid by the day and I have a contract.” But he was merely thrown out and would certainly have been thrashed but for Sasha’s intercession.
Probably not one of the hero-patriots of the Japanese War had ever seen such a hearty and stormy welcome as was given to Sasha. Strong rough hands seized him, lifted him into the air, and threw him with such force that he was almost broken to bits against the ceiling. And they shouted so deafeningly that the gas-jets went out and several times a policeman came down into the beershop, imploring: “A little lower, it really sounds very loud in the street.”
That evening Sasha played all the favourite songs and dances of the place. He also played some little Japanese songs that he had learned as a prisoner, but his audience did not take to them. Madame Ivanova, like one revived, was once more courageously on her bridge while Bielinka, sitting on Sasha’s knees, yelped with joy. When he stopped playing, simple-minded fishermen, realising for the first time the miracle of Sasha’s return, would suddenly exclaim in naive and delighted stupefaction:
“Brothers, but this is Sasha!”
The rooms of Gambrinous’ then resounded once more with joyous bad words, and Sasha would be again seized and thrown up to the ceiling while they shouted, drank healths, and spilt beer over one another.
Sasha, it seemed, had scarcely altered and had not grown older during his absence. His sufferings had produced no more external change on him than on the modelled Gambrinous, the guardian and protector of the beershop. Only Madame Ivanova, with the sensitiveness of a kindhearted woman, noticed that the expression of awe and distress, which she had seen in Sasha’s eyes when he said goodbye, had not disappeared, but had become yet deeper and more significant. As in old days, he played the buffoon, winked, and puckered up his forehead, but Madame Ivanova felt that he was pretending all the time.