Volume 2, Number 4 · April 2, 1964
Russian Pastorale
By Helen Muchnic
Going to Town and Other Stories
by Yuri Kazakov, compiled and translated by Gabriella Azrael
Houghton Mifflin, 325 pp., $4.95
The title story of this collection is a rather grim sketch of a carpenter who leaves the country to take his sick wife to Moscow. He is sure she will die there and hopes she will, for he has long since stopped caring for her and she has prevented his settling in the city. They drive off in their cart, she, tears streaming down her 'hollow cheeks,' gazing on the countryside she loves, where she has spent her life; he, up front, gay and spruce, a ram's carcass beside him—he has just slaughtered the animal in a brutally efficient way thinking of how after dropping her off at the hospital and selling the ram in the market, he will go to the station restaurant and, over a light beer, will watch the trains go by, while 'a waitress in a white apron and cap will wait on him, the orchestra will play, and there will be the smell of food and the smoke of good cigarettes.' This is what he loves about the city. This is what he means when, getting permission to go, he tells the chairman of his collective farm that he 'wants to live.' As for his wife, all that she 'really wanted was to die at home and be buried in her own graveyard.'
Review, 1380 words
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