The village. [Translation from the original Russian text by Isabel Hapgood] (21 page)

"Yes, you have, brother: you're talking nonsense— you'll tell!"

"Well, and what became of the flour?" suddenly shouted Syery.

"The flour? What flour?"

"The stolen flour. From the mill."

The manager seized Syery by the collar in a deathlike grip, fit to suffocate him, and for the space of a moment the two stood stock still.

"What do you mean by it—grabbing a man like that, by his shirt?" calmly inquired Syery. "Do you want co choke me?" Then, all of a sudden, he began to squeak furiously: "Come on, thrash me, thrash while your heart is hot!" And with a jerk he wrenched himself free and seized his pitchfork.

"Come on, men!" the manager yelled, although there was no one anywhere .in the vicinity. "Help the manager! Hearken to this: he tried to stab me to death, the dog!"

"Don't come near me, or I'll break your nose," said Syery, balancing his pitchfork. "Don't forget, times are not what they used to be!"

But at this point the manager made a wide sweep with his arm, and Syery flew headlong into the straw.

The melancholy which had once more begun to take powerful effect on Kuzma along with the change in weather, went on constantly increasing in force in pro-

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portion to his closer acquaintance with Durnovka, with Syery. At first the latter was merely sad and ridiculous: what a stupid man! Then he became irritating and repulsive: a degenerate! All summer long he had sat on the doorstep of his cottage smoking, waiting for favours from the Duma. All the autumn he had roamed from farmstead to farmstead, in the hope of attaching himself to some one who was bound for the clover work. On a hot, sunny day a new grain-rick on the edge of the village took fire. Syery was the first person to present himself at the conflagration, where he shouted himself hoarse, singed his eye-lashes off, and got drenched to the skin directing the water-carriers and the men who, pitchforks in hand, flung themselves into the huge rosy-golden flame, dragging out in all directions the blazing thatches, and those who merely dashed about in the midst of the fire, the crackling flames, the gushing water, the uproar, the holy pictures, casks, and spinning-wheels heaped up near the cottages, the sobbing women, and the showers of blackened leaves scattered abroad from the burnt bushes. But what did he do that was practical? In October, when, after inundating rains and an icy storm, the pond froze over and a neighbour's boar-pig slipped from an ice-clad mound, broke through the ice, and began to drown, Syery was the first to arrive at full speed, leap into the water, and save it. But why? In order that he might be the hero of the day, that he might have the right to rush from the pond into the servants' hall, demand vodka, tobacco, and a bite to eat. At first he was all purple; his teeth were chatter-

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ing; he could barely move his white lips as he dressed himself from head to foot in some one else's clothes— Koshel's. Then he became animated, got intoxicated, began to brag—and once more narrated how he had served honestly, nobly, at a priest's, and how cleverly he had married off his daughter several years previously. He sat at the table greedily devouring chunks of raw ham and announcing in self-satisfied wise:

"Good. Matriushka, my girl, you see, had been making up to that Yegor. Well, she made eyes at him and made up to him. Nothing happened. One evening I was sitting, so, near the window, when I saw Yegor walk past the cottage once, then again—and that daughter of mine keeps diving, diving toward the window. That signifies, says I to myself, that they've settled matters. And I said to my wife: 'Do you go give the cattle their fodder: I'm off, summoned to the village assembly.' I set myself down on the straw behind the cottage, and there I sat and waited. And the first snow began to fall. And I saw Yegorka come sneaking along again. And she was on hand too. They went behind the cellar-house; then—they whisked into the cottage, the new empty one alongside. I waited a bit—"

"A nice story!" remarked Kuzma, with an embarrassed laugh.

But Syery took that for praise, for enthusiasm over his cleverness and craft. And, feeling himself a hero, he went on, now raising his voice, now viciously lowering it: "So there I sat and listened, and waited to find out what would happen next. So, as I was say-

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ing, I waited a bit—then after them I went. I leaped over the threshold—and straight at her, and seized her! Weren't they frightened, though—horribly! He tumbled flat on the floor, as limp as a sack—helpless enough for any one to cut his throat—while she went off in a faint—lay there like a dead duck. 'Well/ says he, 'now thrash me.' That was what he said. 'I don't ne-ed to thrash you,' says I. I took his coat, and I took his waistcoat, too—left him in his drawers only—pretty nearly in the condition when his mother gave him birth. 'Now,' says I, 'get out, go wherever you please.' And I myself set out for my house. I looked round—and he was behind me. The snow was white, and he was white, and he was sniffling. He had no place to go—whither could he run? But my Matryona Mikolavna rushes off to the fields the minute I am out of the cottage! She went at a lively pace— a woman neighbour had difficulty in grabbing her by the sleeve when she had got almost to Basovka, and brought her to me. I let her rest a while, then I said: 'We are poor folks, ain't we?' She said never a word. 'And your mother—is she a poor wretch, or is she a decent woman?' No answer. 'You've put us to shame. Hey, haven't you? What do you mean by it—are you thinking you'll fill my house with that sort, with your bastards—and I'm to shut my eyes to what's going on? Seeing how poor we are, you ought to watch what you're about, and not make us a laughing-stock, dragging your maiden braids all over the place—you trash!' Then I began to tan her hide—I had a fine suitable little whip on hand. Well, to say it simply,

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I cut up her whole body to such a degree that she slid down at my feet and kissed my felt boots, while he sat up on the bench and yelled. Then I began on him, the dear man—"

"And did he marry her?" inquired Kuzma.

"I should say he did!" exclaimed Syery; and, conscious that intoxication was getting the better of him, he began to scrape up the fragments of ham from the platter and stuff them into the pockets of his breeches. "And what a wedding we made of it! As for the expense, I don't have to blink my eyes over that, brother!"

W

VI

64 "\ TJ JELL, that was a fine tale!" Kuzma meditated within himself, for a long time after that evening. And the weather turned bad, to boot. He did not feel like writing; his melancholy increased in strength. The poverty and lack of practical common sense on the part of Syery and Den-iska amazed him: the village was rotting! The beastly tale of the Bride's experience in the orchard, the death of Rodka, stupefied him. The life of Tikhon Hitch astonished him. And it certainly took a good deal to astonish him! Didn't he know his country, his people? With grief and anger he poured out his heart to Tikhon Hitch, exhorted him, stung him. But if Tikhon Hitch had only known with what joy Kuzma

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rushed to the window when he espied on the porch his overcoat, his peaked cap, and his grey beard! How afraid he was lest his brother would not spend the night with him, how he tried to detain him as long as possible, dragged him into discussions, reminiscences! Kuzma found the situation tiresome late in the autumn; ugh, how boresome! The sole joy he had was when some one presented himself with a petition. Gololoby from Baskova came several times—a peasant with a perfectly bald head and a huge cap—to write a complaint against his daughter's father-in-law for breaking his collar-bone. The widow Butylotchka came from the promontory to have a letter written to her son; and she was a mass of rags, wet through and icy cold with the rain. She was tearful when she began to dictate.

"Town of Serpukhoff, at the Nobility Bath-Zheltu-khin house—"

Here she burst out weeping.

"Well, what next?" asked Kuzma, sorrowfully gazing sidewise at Butylotchka, after the fashion of old people, over his eye-glasses. "Well, I've written that. What more?"

"What more?" inquired Butylotchka in a whisper, and, making an effort to control her voice, she went on: "Write further, my dear, in your very best style: To be given to Mikhail Nazarytch Khlusoff—into his own hands, you understand—" Then she began—now with pauses, now entirely without: "A letter to our dear and beloved son, Misha, why have you forgotten us, Misha, we haven't had a word from you. You

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know yourself that we are living in lodgings, and now they are turning us out, and where are we to go now. Our dear little son Misha, we beg you, for the Lord God's sake, that you will come home as fast as you can—" And once more, through her tears, in a whisper: "Then you and we will dig out an earthen hut, and so we shall be in a home of our own. . . ."

The storms and icy downpours of rain, the days that seemed all twilight, the mud at the manor-farm, all besprinkled with the fine yellow foliage of the acacias, the boundless ploughed fields and fields of winter grain round about Durnovka, and the dark clouds which endlessly hung over them—all began once more to oppress him with a fierce hatred for this accursed country where there were eight months of snow-storms and four of rain-storms; where for the commonest needs of nature one was forced to go to the barn or the cherry-shed. When the bad weather set in it became necessary to board up the drawing-room closely and move into the hall, so as to sleep all winter long there, and dine, and smoke, and pass the long evenings by the light of a dim kitchen lamp, pacing from corner to corner, muffled up in overcoat and cap, which barely protected one from the cold and the wind that blew in through the crevices. Sometimes it happened that they forgot to renew the supply of kerosene, and Kuzma passed the twilight hours wholly without a light; and at times, of an evening, he lighted a candle end merely for the purpose of supping off potato soup and warm wheat groats, which the Bride served in silence and with a stern countenance.

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"Whither can I go?" Kuzma said to himself, once in a while.

There were only three neighbours in the immediate vicinity: old Princess Shakova, who did not receive even the Marshal of Nobility, because she regarded him as ill-bred; the retired gendarme Zakrzhevsky, a hasmorrhoidally vicious and self-conceitedly stupid man who would not have permitted Kuzma to cross his threshold; and, finally, a member of the gentry, Basoff, a petty landed proprietor who lived in a peasant cottage, had married the dissipated widow of a soldier, and could talk of nothing but horse-collars and cattle. Father Petr, the priest from Kolodeza, of which Durnovka was a parish, called once upon Kuzma. But neither the one nor the other cared to continue the acquaintance. Kuzma entertained the priest with nothing stronger than tea—and the priest laughed harshly and awkwardly when he saw the samovar on the table. "A samovar-man! Capital! You, I see, are no match for your good brother—you're not lavish in your entertainment!" Kuzma announced frankly that he never went to church, out of conviction. The priest began to shout with laughter in more amazement than ever, and still more harshly and loudly: "A—ah! Those nice little new ideas! Capital! And it's cheaper, too!" Laughter was not in the least becoming to him: it was as if some one else were laughing for that tall, lean man with the big cheek-bones and coarse black hair, the furtive greedy eyes—anxiously absent-minded eyes, for ever meditating something offensive and tactlessly free of manner. "But at

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night, surely, at night you cross yourself, nevertheless—you get scared?" he said, loudly and hurriedly, as he put on his coat and overshoes in the ante-room, amazing Kuzma by his queries concerning the management of the farm, and suddenly beginning to address him as "thou."

"Yes, I make the sign of the cross," admitted Kuzma, with a melancholy smile. "But, you know, fear is not faith, and I don't cross myself to your God."

Kuzma did not go often to visit his brother. And the latter came to him only when he was perturbed over something. Altogether, the loneliness was so desperate that at times Kuzma called himself Dreyfus on Devil's Island. He compared himself to Syery. Ah, and he too, like Syery, was poor, weak of will, forced out of his proper course, and all his life had been waiting for some happy days, for work.

An unpleasant memory lingered of drunken Syery's bravery, his story, his boastfulness. But, ordinarily, Syery was not like that, even when he was intoxicated: he was merely loquacious, troubled by something, and merry in a timid way. Moreover, he did not have an opportunity to get drunk more than five times in the course of a year. He was not eager for liquor—not at all as he was for tobacco. For the sake of tobacco he was ready to endure any and all humiliations; ready to sit for hours by the side of a man who was smoking, agree with everything he said, flatter him, do anything in order that he might, after awaiting a favourable moment, say as if quite accidentally: "Pray, gossip, give me a filling for my pipe." He was passionately

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fond, also, of cards, long conversations, evening reunions in the cottages—in those cottages where there were large families, where it was warm, and where a light was burning; where itinerant wool-carders prepared the wool, and roving tailors made winter coats. But people were not, as yet, assembling thus in the cottages, and Syery sat at home. After Kuzma had been to see him a few times he felt that it was not right to bear malice toward Syery or to make fun of him. Syery lived on what was earned by day-labour during the working season—by his wife, a peaceable, silent, rather crack-brained woman—and on what he managed to beg from Deniska (who now and then made his appearance in Durnovka with his valise, white bread, and sausage, of which he was inordinately fond, cursing the Tsar and the gentry without the slightest restraint). At the first snowfall Syery went away somewhere and was gone for a week. He returned home in a gloomy mood.

"Have you been at Rusanoff's again?" the neighbours inquired.