Table for Two: Fictions by Amor Towles EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Authors: Amor Towles
- Language: English
- Genre: Literary Short Stories
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
The Line
During the last days of the last Tsar, there lived a peasant named Pushkin in
a small village one hundred miles from Moscow. Though Pushkin and his
wife, Irina, had not been blessed with children, they had been blessed with a
cozy two-room cottage and a few square acres that they farmed with the
patience and persistence appropriate to their lot. Row by row they would till
their soil, sow their seeds, and harvest their crops—moving back and forth
across the land like a shuttle through a loom. And when their workday was
done, they would journey home to dine on cabbage soup at their little
wooden table, then succumb to the holy sleep of the countryside.
Though the peasant Pushkin did not share his namesake’s facility with
words, he was something of a poet in his soul—and when he witnessed the
leaves sprouting on the birch trees, or the thunderstorms of summer, or the
golden hues of autumn, he would feel in his heart that theirs was a
satisfactory life. In fact, so satisfactory was their life, had Pushkin
uncovered an old bronze lantern while tilling the fields and unleashed from
it an ancient genie with three wishes to grant, Pushkin wouldn’t have
known what to wish for.
And we all know exactly where that sort of happiness leads.
Like many of Russia’s peasants, Pushkin and his wife belonged to a mir—a
cooperative that leased the land, allocated the acres, and shared expenses at
the mill. On occasion, the members of the mir would gather to discuss some
matter of mutual concern. At one such meeting in the spring of 1916, a
young man who had traveled all the way from Moscow took to the podium
in order to explain the injustice of a country in which 10 percent of the
people owned 90 percent of the land.
In some detail, he described the means
by which Capital had sweetened its own tea and feathered its own nest. In
conclusion, he encouraged all assembled to wake from their slumbers and
join him in the march toward the inevitable victory of the international
proletariat over the forces of repression.
Pushkin was not a political man, or even a particularly educated man. So,
he did not grasp the significance of everything this Muscovite had to say.
But the visitor spoke with such enthusiasm and made use of so many
colorful expressions that Pushkin took pleasure in watching the young
man’s words float past as one would the banners of an Easter Day
procession.
That night, as Pushkin and his wife walked home, they were both quiet.
This struck Pushkin as perfectly appropriate given the hour and the delicate
breeze and the chorus of crickets singing in the grass. But if Irina was quiet,
she was quiet the way a heated skillet is quiet—in the moments before you
drop in the fat. For while Pushkin had enjoyed watching the young man’s
words float past, Irina’s consciousness had closed upon them like the jaws
of a trap.
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