The Matiushin Case Read Online Free PDF

mournfully recalling the particular box that had got broken – she’d only set aside one like that for them, with the jars of cherry compote.
    Six months later the couple got in touch. They wrote to say that Liudmila was expecting a baby … Matiushin’s father wasn’t exactly delighted, but he trembled over that letter and made the mother read it out again, exulting that the line had been continued and joking that his little dacha had come in useful. Yakov was serving in a little town on the Polish border. He had set himself up, ignoring his father’s advice, and he hadn’t asked for any help. But as soon as the time drew close, the father seconded the mother to them with money, so that she could make sure they had all they needed for the baby and also stand guard over Liudmila and maintain order. The mother lived with the couple a long time. She stayed until the birth of a little girl, the granddaughter about whom Grigorii Ilich, strangely enough, had been dreaming. Knowing that this little Alyona was in this world, he loved her, not rationally, and not in an emotional sort of way, but with his blood. He went to see his granddaughter that very year, in person, after his wife. He considered this his duty also because Yakov hadn’t obtained any accommodation in the little town and the young family was stuck in a dreary hostel. He used his visit to do everything for them: he got friendly with some people, bent over backwards where he needed to, gave some people a fright and some people presents – and managed to arrange a separate apartment for Yakov.
    For a year, and then another, contact was maintained with postcards and letters, which Yakov wrote stingily, less and less often. But, having once made the effort to travel to such distant foreign parts, the father couldn’t manage that kind of exertion again. His concern for himself, his desire for habitual comforts and – most importantly – for peace, were stronger. Looking out at him from the china cabinet, Alyonushka’s photograph, with Grigorii Ilich in his dress uniform and medals, holding his granddaughter in his arms while Liudmila and Yakov stood at the sides like sentries, lulled him and put him off his guard. Many times he felt the impulse to go, but he didn’t, and he wouldn’t let the mother go either. They kept expecting Yakov and his family to visit them in the summer. Grigorii Ilich dreamed of how he would take leave and they would live at the dacha, how his granddaughter would eat raspberries and strawberries and he would take her fishing. The mother sometimes used to buy a toy, if she liked the look of it, or a beautiful child’s blouse, or little woolly leggings or, if the price was good, a skirt or little shoes, storing them away to be grown into. But no one came. Then the postcards and letters suspiciously dried up. They thought: if there’s no bad news, then at least they’re alive and well.
    Yashka showed up in Yelsk in April, 1982. On that day Matiushin was late, he’d had a couple of drinks, and he arrived in time to feel the air of invisible devastation in the home, the desolation, as if someone had just died. His father was in a bad way and his mother was fluttering around him, giving him something to drink to make him feel better. Grigorii Ilich was lying in an armchair with his head thrown back, looking up at the ceiling. And the first thing he said, in a pitiless, even boastful voice, was this:
    â€˜That’s it. You don’t have any brother. If he shows his face here, don’t open the door, let me know immediately and I’ll come – I’ll fling that lousy dog out so hard, he’ll forget the way back here and never show his face again!’ The mother shed a few tears, and the father flew into a fury and shouted: ‘Shut up, I’ve spoken! Who are you weeping for? Who’s thrown away everything that was ever done for him in this life? A