Rusya (Bunin)
Short summary
Russia, 1940s. A Moscow-Sebastopol train made an unscheduled stop at a small station. A gentleman and his wife looked out the window, and he began reminiscing about a summer twenty years earlier when he worked as a tutor at a nearby estate.
He told his wife about a girl named Rusya who lived on the estate. At first, they disliked each other, but after an incident with a grass snake in a boat, they began a passionate romance. They met secretly at night, rowing across a marsh to make love on the opposite shore.
One day, as they sat together looking at pictures, Rusya's mentally unstable mother discovered them. She burst into the room and confronted them dramatically.
"'I understand everything! I sensed it, I watched! Scoundrel, she shall not be yours!' And throwing up her arm in its long sleeve, she fired a deafening shot from the ancient pistol... 'Only over my dead body will she take the step to you!'"
When forced to choose between her mother and the tutor, Rusya chose her mother. The tutor was expelled from the house, and they never saw each other again. As the train continued its journey, the gentleman drank heavily, still haunted by memories of his lost love while his wife watched him with mild contempt.
Detailed summary
Division into chapters is editorial.
A conversation on a stopped train
A Moscow-Sebastopol fast train made an unscheduled stop at a small station beyond Podolsk. A gentleman and a lady approached the window of their first-class carriage to inquire about the delay. The conductor informed them that they were waiting for a late express train. The station appeared dark and melancholy in the twilight, with the summer sunset still glowing in the distance.
As they waited, the gentleman began reminiscing about a summer he once spent in this area as a tutor. He described the landscape as boring scrubland with magpies, mosquitoes, and dragonflies. The estate where he had worked featured a neglected house in the Russian dacha style, with a small garden and a marshy lake overgrown with water lilies.
"I stayed in this area during the holidays once... It's a boring area. Scrubland, magpies, mosquitoes and dragonflies. No view anywhere... behind the house was some semblance of a garden, beyond the garden not exactly a lake..."
The lady teased him about taking a bored dacha maiden boating around the marsh. He admitted that he had indeed taken a girl boating, mostly at night, and that it had been unexpectedly poetic. Soon the express train arrived, and their carriage continued its journey. The attendant prepared their beds for the night.
Memories of a summer romance
The lady continued questioning her husband about the girl, whom he called Rusya, a diminutive of Marusya. When asked to describe her, he portrayed a thin, tall girl who wore a yellow cotton sarafan and multicolored woolen shoes on her bare feet. He explained that her simple attire was due to poverty, though she was an art student at the Stroganov School of Painting.
"Most of all in the style of poverty, I think. Nothing to put on, hence the sarafan. Apart from that, she was an artist... And she was like a painting herself, like an icon even. A long, black plait on her back, a swarthy face..."
He described Rusya's striking appearance: her swarthy face with dark moles, black eyes and brows, and a narrow, regular nose. Her mother, a princess by birth with oriental blood, suffered from manic depression and rarely emerged from her room. Her father was a taciturn retired military man. The gentleman had been tutoring their son, whom he described as straightforward and nice.
The boat trip and first kiss
When the gentleman's wife asked if he had been in love with Rusya, he admitted he had been. Initially, Rusya had been sarcastic toward him, often annoying him at the dinner table by loudly telling her father that the tutor disliked various foods. After dinner, she would paint in the garden or come to the balcony where he read, teasing him about his reading material.
One day, Rusya proposed they go boating on the lake. It was a hot, sultry day, and the air was filled with butterflies. When they reached the boat, Rusya screamed upon seeing a grass snake inside. The gentleman quickly removed it with the oar. Rusya was impressed by his action, and for the first time, they looked directly into each other's eyes.
"The day was hot, it was sultry, the grasses on the bank, speckled with little yellow buttercup flowers had been stiflingly heated up by the moist warmth, and low above them circled countless pale-green butterflies."
As they rowed among the water lilies, Rusya tried to pull a water lily toward her, causing the boat to tip. The gentleman caught her to prevent her from falling. She laughed and splashed water in his face. He then grabbed her and kissed her laughing lips. She clasped her arms around his neck and kissed him back. From that moment, their romance began.
Secret night meetings on the lake
The next day, Rusya asked the gentleman if he loved her. He confessed that he had loved her since they first met, and she admitted the same. She invited him to meet her that evening by the lake after everyone had gone to bed, warning him to be cautious as her mother watched her every step. That night, she came to the shore with a plaid blanket, and they rowed to the other bank.
On the opposite shore, they became intimate. Rusya wore only a petticoat under her sarafan, and she embraced him passionately. Afterward, she declared that they were now husband and wife. She then decided to bathe in the lake, removing her clothes without shame and swimming while he watched in awe.
"She had only a petticoat on under the sarafan. Tenderly, scarcely touching, she kissed the edges of his lips. He, with his head in a spin, threw her onto the stern. She embraced him frenziedly..."
After her swim, he helped her dress and wrapped her in the plaid. He dared not touch her anymore, only kissing her hands out of overwhelming happiness. Throughout their time together, they felt as though someone was watching them from the darkness of the woods. The mysterious atmosphere was enhanced by the greenish half-light beyond the black wood, the whining mosquitoes, and the dragonflies that flew with quiet crackling above the boat.
"And the greenish half-light hung beyond the blackness of the low wood and did not go out... while mysteriously, pleadingly, the invisible mosquitoes whined and terrible, sleepless dragonflies flew, flew with a quiet crackling..."
Their secret meetings continued for a week, until their romance was abruptly ended.
The dramatic expulsion
One day after dinner, the gentleman and Rusya were sitting in the drawing room with their heads close together, looking at pictures in old editions of The Cornfield. He quietly asked if she still loved him, and she whispered that he was silly to ask. Suddenly, they heard soft running footsteps, and Rusya's mother appeared on the threshold in a tattered black silk dressing gown.
Her eyes gleaming tragically, she ran in as though onto a stage and cried out that she understood everything. She had sensed what was happening and had been watching them. She declared that Rusya would never be his and fired an ancient pistol loaded only with powder. In the ensuing chaos, she struck the gentleman on the forehead with the pistol, cutting his brow and drawing blood.
As people ran through the house in response to the shouting and the shot, Rusya's mother continued her theatrical outburst. She threatened to hang herself or throw herself from the roof if Rusya ran away with the tutor. She demanded that Rusya choose between her mother and the gentleman. In a whisper, Rusya chose her mother, ending their romance.
"She whispered: 'You, you, Mama...' He came to, opened his eyes — still just as unwavering, enigmatic, funereal, the bluish-lilac peephole above the door looked at him from the black darkness..."
A painful memory twenty years later
Lying awake in the train compartment, the gentleman reflected on how twenty years had passed since that summer. He remembered details he had forgotten to mention to his wife, such as the pair of cranes that occasionally visited the shore of the marsh and allowed only Rusya to approach them. He recalled watching through binoculars as she squatted down in her yellow sarafan to observe the birds up close.
"And all that there had been already fully twenty years ago — coppices, magpies, marshes, water lilies, grass snakes, cranes... Yes, there had been cranes as well, hadn't there — how on earth had he forgotten about them!"
The next day, beyond Kursk, the gentleman and his wife were having lunch in the restaurant car. His wife noticed he was drinking heavily and asked if he was still pining for his "dacha maiden with the bony feet." He replied with a Latin phrase: "Amata nobis quantum amabitur nulla!" When she asked what it meant, he refused to tell her, ending their conversation with an offhand sigh as she turned to look out the window.
"'Why is it you're drinking so much? I believe that's your fifth glass already. Are you still pining, remembering your dacha maiden with the bony feet?' 'Pining, pining,' he replied... 'Amata nobis quantum amabitur nulla!'"