Maechka and the Book Lover

  When he returned home, Sergey Alexandrovich had barely begun to consider where best to place his new book when his wife, after issuing a flurry of instructions, sent him off to the store. Casting affectionate glances at the green dust jacket gleaming on the table, Sergey Alexandrovich exchanged the usual phrases with his wife about how it was better to “wear out one’s trousers at the office” or “spend time with the child.” But lacking, at that moment, both the strength and the mood to give his voice the required shrillness, he quickly surrendered the argument and tumbled out the door.
  Returning burdened and unsettled by encounters with grim service workers, Sergey Alexandrovich noted with satisfaction that his wife’s mood had clearly improved.
  “And Maechka’s had another misfortune,” she announced cheerfully while setting the table. “Bertik fell off the balcony.”
  Maechka  —Maya Antonovna — had been his wife’s close friend for many years. Armed with a capital-city education in art history, she worked at the best museum in town, to the loud admiration and quiet hatred of her colleagues. Once a beauty, she was still attractive, dressed with taste, but most importantly — she kept a “salon.”
  By our hopelessly provincial standards, Maechka led an openly bohemian lifestyle — that is, she visited the studios of those rare artists who, in pauses between hack jobs and drinking binges, still managed to do some real creative work.
  Not a single exhibition or worthwhile concert took place without her attendance, and several capital celebrities were honored by her personal acquaintance. In addition, Maechka herself often traveled, as she put it, “to breathe the metropolitan air.”
  In short, everything in her life was just fine — but her unerring feminine instinct compelled her to complain. To complain endlessly and inventively. With an unbroken stream of lamentations, she placed herself on equal footing with other women crushed by family and routine work. Sergey Alexandrovich saw through this game perfectly and, no matter how hard he tried, could not muster any sympathy for “poor Maechka.”
  “So… what terrible thing has happened this time?”
  “You shouldn’t say that — she really is an unhappy woman.”
  “Sure… and her whole tragedy is that she, poor thing — pass the pickle — has to associate with us…”
  “Exactly,” his wife confirmed, fishing a plump pickle out of a three-liter jar. “It’s not easy for her to exist among people like you — mastodons. She’s a metropolitan type.”
  “I think her ‘type’ is… well… perfectly normal… like everyone else’s…”
“You don’t understand anything!”
  “Then she should’ve stayed in the capital!” Sergey Alexandrovich exploded, spraying hot potatoes.
  “Careful - you’ll splatter the walls! What are you getting worked up about? Not everyone has to be like you.”
  “And that’s a pity — there’d be more order.”
  “And unbearable boredom. Eat up, eat up — you’ll miss the TV . By the way, she borrowed a book from us.”
  “What book?” Sergey Alexandrovich tensed.
   “There was one lying on the table… greenish,” his wife said, dropping plates.      “Maechka said you have excellent taste. If you want to know, she thinks very highly of you.”
  “Thank you,” Sergey Alexandrovich muttered, getting up from the table.
  The evening was ruined.
  A week later, at the next “salon,” after unsuccessfully scanning all accessible surfaces, Sergey Alexandrovich couldn’t help quietly asking the hostess about the fate of his book.
  “Oh!” Maechka exclaimed delightedly. “Where do you find such treasures! What language! Yesterday a poetess came by and gave me her new collection. Lovely, isn’t it? The illustrations are weak, of course… Oh, yes — I lent her your book for a couple of days. Can you imagine…”
  “I don’t understand,” Sergey Alexandrovich bristled. “Why mine? What is this?”
  “What do you mean, what is this?” Maechka laughed girlishly, responding to the admiring gaze of a bearded man in a chunky sweater. “Don’t be ridiculous!”
  And she fluttered off to the piano, where a group of guests were breathing the same air as a visiting celebrity — a percussionist from a capital jazz ensemble.
  For nearly two months, Sergey Alexandrovich’s wife attended Maechka’s salons alone, without her supposedly ill husband. Meanwhile, he quietly seethed, receiving reports of his book making wide circles among Maechka’s acquaintances. Then one day Maechka herself called, gently scolding him for his poor health and inviting him over, hinting that the book was finally back in her possession…
  Sergey Alexandrovich flinched when Maechka, passing by with cups for newly arriving guests, casually shoved the long-awaited book into his hand.
  The dust jacket was painful to look at — worn and greasy. The page edges had turned black.
  “What is this?” Sergey Alexandrovich whimpered.
  “What do you mean, what? Your book.”
  “But you took it brand new!”
  “Well, not exactly brand new.”
  “Brand new!” Sergey Alexandrovich insisted under the astonished gazes of the guests. “Brand new! Straight from the bookstore. I hadn’t even opened it yet…”
  “And that was your mistake,” Maechka gently interrupted. “Books are meant to be opened.”
  Sergey Alexandrovich tensed, even opened his mouth — but nothing sensible came out.
  “They’re meant to be read,” Maya Antonovna continued instructively, over the nasty cackle of an unwashed young genius in sandals on bare feet. “And during reading, they naturally wear out.”
  “But I don’t run a public library,” Sergey Alexandrovich tried to find sympathy among the guests.
  “What is it then — a museum?”
  “A cemetery?”
  “A sarcophagus!” the “salon stars” chimed in.
  Sergey Alexandrovich swallowed his tears in silence and sat down, managing only to cast an unkind glance at his wife.
  After several scandals, his wife was firmly forbidden to lend books to anyone —especially Maechka.
  A month passed.
  Gradually, Sergey Alexandrovich calmed down. He resumed his regular visits to bookstores and flea markets. But one evening, returning home with another new acquisition in hand, he heard from the kitchen:
  “And Maechka’s in trouble again!”
  “Not interested!”
  “Just don’t get angry — but she borrowed something from us to read…”
  His cottony legs somehow carried Sergey Alexandrovich to an armchair.   Collapsing into it, he swept the bookshelves with a deadened gaze.