People's Court

Kolya, Valya, Arkhipych, and Lena

The notice pinned to the cooperative store door was written in ballpoint pen. “Club, October 12, 5 p.m.: Community Court. Agenda Item 1, The Conduct of Nikolayev, N. N.” it said, and it was signed “The Rural Council.” And then, written sideways in the same hand: “Everybody who ordered gas, bring money.”

The club was packed, leaving no room to breathe. Some people were smoking in the vestibule; the kiddies were scampering between the rows of seats; the womenfolk, dressed warmly, smelled of soap and damp sheepskin. The rural council chairman, who was also the head engineer at the timber company, came flying in, throwing off his jacket on the way and losing papers out of his file. He banged his fist on the table, yelled at Tosya, the accountant, to take the minutes, and started things off.

“So, comrades, we have gathered today to judge Nikolayev, Nikolay, for striking his mother-in-law Grandma Valya – Petrova, Valentina – in the face. Go ahead, Nikolayev, speak your piece!”

Up onto the stage came the scrawny Nikolayev, an eternally crestfallen, vinegary little man, a tightwad and a drunk.

“Whaddya mean? I never hit her. What kind of a jerk am I? It was her… I’d been out in the forest, bone-tired I was, and she’d poured out my vodka, a whole quarter liter… What the..? Me and gramps, we wanted a bit of guy-time… And then, to top it off, gramps was mightily ticked off at me, that he was…”

“Well, if she poured it out, that wasn’t good,” the chairman agreed. “It’s because she’s not evolved. That’s not how it’s done either. But smacking her in the face there, Kolya?”

“Yeah, well…,” Nikolayev was squirming. “What did I want? I wanted to pop her on the butt with the rolling pin, that’s what.”

A noisy stir ran through the audience. Nikolayev’s mother-in-law had a butt that would give the rear end on Boy the Horse a run for its money.

Loud shouts from the front rows: “A rolling pin’s only good for flattening dough on that butt of hers!”

“She dodges me,” Kolya droned on. “And clacks her teeth at me like nobody’s business, so I drops the rolling pin. She goes to get it, my hand came up and cracked her in the eye.”

“That’s bad, Kolya,” the chairman scolded him in fatherly tones. “I mean, she’s still a broad, for all that she’s your ma-in-law. Admit that you were wrong, and we’ll let it go. But we’ll dock what she’s owed for picking cranberries. You got that down, Tosya? That’s it, then – let’s collect the gas money. Off home now, people. Tomorrow we’ve got two work teams going to Okhonya. Somebody’s downed some timber there and left it lying.” And with that, the chairman wound up the meeting.

Nikolayev went out for a smoke, crushed out his cig in a huff, and took off with the lads from the timber company’s vehicle pool to the canteen, where he could spin the “incident” to make himself look good.

Back at home, his mother-in-law, sensing disaster in the air, hurriedly collected the oven forks and the pots, hid the poker, and shamefacedly set the table. With a half-liter of vodka. After that, she scoured the yard with her eyes and, seeing no sign of Nikolayev, went back inside and carried on doing what she did.

S-s-swoosh! The snow slid off the right side of the roof, which had been warmed by the stove. Nikolayev’s mother-in-law tore her eyes from the television. It was a stylish TV, flat and inconvenient. The other one, a box model, had quite conveniently held a plaster Lenin and a cat-shaped coin bank decorated with flowers. This one Seryozha (her big city son-in-law) had screwed right into the wallpaper, so Lenin had to be put in the sideboard for safekeeping. The old gal listened hard, to hear if her son-in-law was coming, yawned, peeked at the icon corner, where the holy countenance of “The Joy of All Who Sorrow, with Alms Coins” glowed bright, and made the sign of the cross over her mouth. She was wearing a pair of the fleecy leggings that soft-hearted Chinese people had been sending in random sizes to the Russian countryside. “Shame on them,” the mother-in-law thought. “What sort of size is that? Three rude-looking letters – XXL… What are they getting at?”

She wrapped herself in her fluffy flannel robe and went back to rolling a three-liter jar of cream with her bare foot. Valentina had calculated that after seven episodes of her show, she would have a jar full of churned butter, which would justify the electricity she’d used up in the meantime. On the table, waiting for her son-in-law, the half-liter bottle stood in a sweat, the salted cucumbers were wilting and the pickled cabbage was going sour. Grandpa Arkhipych, Nikolayev’s father-in-law, was on the outs with his wife and had taken to bed in the great room, still wearing his greasy padded pants and body warmer as a mark of protest. Grandma Valya kept glancing vengefully at the snowy-white dust ruffles all smudged with grime and said not a word.

“He needs more than a good locking-up,” gramps yelled peevishly. “It’d be a relief to everybody. Silly old fool that you are, you could have gotten rid of him for a spell. But you went and took him my money, so’s they wouldn’t lock him up, the scumbag. And he should’ve been tried and locked up. Let him pay you for putting your face out of whack.”

“I gave it up ’cos I had to,” the old gal said, not taking her eyes from the TV. “If they lock him up, who’s going to feed Lena and the little ones? You?”

“What’s it to do with me? Maybe I was saving that money for a motorsickle, to cheer me up in my old age? A kopeck here makes a ruble there… Me, I didn’t drink… I’m done now, so shut up. I’m dying here.”

“Die, then, you old divvil. So much of my blood you’ve drunk, worse than that son-in-law.”

The old gal got up and looked through the window again. Nikolayev was still carousing out there somewhere. She clinked around in the cupboard, splashed some of the good stuff into a glass, gulped it down, grunted, gave gramps a sideways look, and said, “Don’t bother getting up, there’s still plenty here for your wake.”

Arkhipych bawled a little at that, hopped up from the couch, pushed the old gal out of way, and drained the quarter-liter bottle in one go. Then he mellowed out, slapped Valentina on the posterior, and went off to split wood.

“It’s way past time,” the old gal said, sitting down on the sofa, switching to her right foot, and going back to rolling the butter.

Instead of waiting for that lowdown Nikolayev, Grandma Valya yelled at her daughter Lena to go pick up the eggs and, while she was at it, feed the cow its swill. After a bit of grumbling for appearance’s sake, Lena stopped in the entryway to throw on a threadbare sheepskin coat donated by some summer people and went outside. Toward nightfall a thaw had come on, a softening... The path to the barn was melting, so she had to put boots on too.

Opening the door, Lena breathed in the thick, warm aroma brewed from hay, manure, and milk and pushed away the chickens grubbing in the trough, telling them to be off and lay eggs because all they ever did was crap and crap some more, and that’s all they knew how to do. The chickens darted aside with a disgruntled clucking and settled on their perch to sleep, rocking to and fro in the warmth rising from the cow’s back. Zorka languidly chewed last year’s hay and looked dejectedly up at the dingy little window set just below the roof. Lena poured the swill into the trough, put out some fresh hay, collected the rough, cool eggs from the nests, and left, latching the barn door behind her.

Nikolayev didn’t make it home much before daybreak and was so scared of payback from his mother-in-law that he bedded down in the barn, right there on the hay.