The village. [Translation from the original Russian text by Isabel Hapgood] (26 page)

"But I haven't got it," the Bride was saying, "and I think Kuzma Hitch is taking a nap. Just you wait until to-morrow."

"I can't possibly wait," replied Deniska in a singsong, meditative voice, as he picked at the metal tip with his finger nail.

"Well, what are we going to do about it?"

Deniska reflected, sighed, and, shaking back his thick hair, suddenly raised his head. "Well, and what's the good of wagging one's tongue for nothing?" he said loudly and decisively, without glancing at the Bride, and mastering his shyness. "Has Tikhon Hitch said anything to you?"

"Yes, he has," replied the Bride. "He has downright bored me with his talk."

"In that case I will come at once with my father. It won't hurt Kuzma Hitch to get up immediately and drink tea—"

The Bride thought it over. "That's as you like—"

[277>]

THE VILLAGE

Deniska set the shoes on the window-sill and went away, without making any further mention of money. And half an hour later the knocking of bark-shoes coated with snow became audible on the porch. Deniska had returned with Syery—and Syery, for some unknown reason, was girt about the hips, over his kazak coat, with a red belt. Kuzma came out to receive them. Deniska and Syery crossed themselves for a long time toward the dark corner, then tossed back their hair and raised their faces.

"Matchmaker or not, yet a fine man!" began Syery without haste, in an unusually easy and pleasant tone. "You have an adopted daughter to marry off. I have a son who wants a wife. In good agreement, for their happiness, let us discuss the matter between us."

"But she has a mother, you know," said Kuzma.

"Her mother is no housewife; she's a homeless widow, her cottage is dilapidated, and no one knows where she is," replied Syery, still maintaining his tone. "Consider her as an orphan!" And he made a low, stately reverence.

Repressing a sickly smile, Kuzma ordered the Bride to be summoned.

"Run, hunt her up," Syery commanded Deniska, speaking in a whisper as if they were in church.

"Here I am," said the Bride, emerging from behind the door in back of the stove and bowing to Syery.

Silence ensued. The samovar, which stood on the floor, its grating glowing red through the darkness, boiled and bubbled. Their faces were not visible, but it could be felt that all of them were perturbed.

THE VILLAGE

"Well, daughter, how is it to be? decide," said Kuzma.

The Bride reflected.

"I have nothing against the young man—"

"And how about you, Deniska?"

Deniska also remained silent. "Well, anyhow, I've got to marry some time or other. Possibly, with God's aid, this will go all right—"

Thereupon the two matchmakers exchanged congratulations on the affair's having been begun. The samovar was carried away to the servants' hall. Odnodvorka, who had learned the news earlier than all the rest and had run over from the promontory, lighted the small lamp in the servants' hall, sent Koshel off for vodka and sunflower seeds, seated the bride and the bridegroom beneath the holy pictures, poured them out tea, sat down herself alongside Syery, and, in order to banish the awkwardness, started to sing in a high, sharp voice, glancing the while at Deniska and his long eyelashes:

"When in our little garden, Amid our grape vines green, There walked and roamed a gallant youth, Comely of face, and white, so white . . ."

But Kuzma wandered to and fro from corner to corner in the dark hall, shaking his head, wrinkling up his face and muttering: "A'i, great heavens! AY, what a shame, what folly, what a wretched affair!"

On the following day, every one who had heard from Syery about this festival grinned and offered him

THE VILLAGE

advice: "You might help the young couple a bit!" Koshel said the same: "They are a young couple starting life, and young people ought to be helped!" Syery went off home in silence. Presently he brought to the Bride, who was ironing in the ante-room, two iron kettles and a hank of black bread. "Here, dear little daughter-in-law," he said in confusion, "take these; your mother-in-law sends them. Perhaps they may be of use. I haven't anything else—if I had had, I would have jumped out of my shirt with joy!"

The Bride bowed and thanked him. She was ironing a curtain, sent by Tikhon Hitch "in lieu of a veil," and her eyes were wet and red. Syery tried to comfort her, saying that things weren't honey-sweet with him, either; but he hesitated, sighed, and, placing the kettles on the window-sill, went away. "I have put the thread in the littlest kettle," he mumbled.

"Thanks, batiushka," the Bride thanked him once more, in that same kindly and special tone which she had used only toward Ivanushka; and the moment Syery was gone she suddenly indulged in a faint ironic smile and began to sing:

"When in our little garden . . ."

Kuzma thrust his head out of the hall and looked sternly at her over the top of his eyeglasses. She subsided into silence.

"Listen to me," said Kuzma. "Perhaps you would like to drop this whole business?"

"It's too late, now," replied the Bride in a low voice. "As it is, one can't get rid of the disgrace. Doesn't

THE VILLAGE

everybody know whose money will pay for the feast? And we have already begun to spend it."

Kuzma shrugged his shoulders. It was true: Tik-hon Hitch, along with the window-curtain, had sent twenty-five rubles, a sack of fine wheaten flour, millet, a skinny pig. But there was no reason why she should ruin her life simply because they had already killed the pig!

"Okh!" said Kuzma. "How you have tortured me! 'Disgraced'! 'we've spent it'— Are you cheaper than the pig?"

"Whether I'm cheaper or not, what is done is done —the dead are not brought back from the cemetery," firmly and simply replied the Bride; and, sighing, she folded the warm, freshly-ironed curtain neatly. "Will you have your dinner immediately?" Her face was calm.

"Well, that settles it! You can do nothing with her!" thought Kuzma, and he said: "Well, manage your affairs as you see fit—"

XIV

AFTER he had dined he smoked and looked out of the window. It had grown dark. Ha knew that in the servants' wing they were already baking the twisted buns of rye flour—the "ceremonial patties." They were making ready to boil two kettles of fish in jelly, a kettle of vermicelli-paste, a kettle of

THE VILLAGE

sour cabbage soup, a kettle of buckwheat groats—all fresh from the slaughter-house. And Syery was making himself very busy on a hillock of snow between the storehouses and the shed. On the snow-mound, in the bluislj shades of twilight, there blazed with an orange-coloured flame the straw with which they had surrounded the slaughtered pig. Around the fire, awaiting their prey, sat the sheep dogs. Their muzzles shone white; their breasts were of a silky rose hue. Syery, stamping through the snow, ran hither and thither, mending the fire, swinging his arms at the dogs. He had tucked up high the tails of his coat, thrusting them into his belt, and kept pushing his cap to the back of his head with the wrists of his right hand, in which glittered a knife. Fleetingly and brilliantly illuminated, now from this side, now from that, Syery cast a huge, dancing shadow on the snow—the shadow of a pagan. Then, past the storehouse along the footpath leading to the village, ran Odnodvorka, and disappeared beneath the snow-mound—to summon the women for the ceremonial rites and to ask Domashka for the fir-tree, carefully preserved in her cellar and passed on from one bride's party to another on the eve of the wedding. And when Kuzma, after brushing his hair and changing his round jacket with the ragged elbows for the conventional long-tailed frock coat, had donned his overcoat and emerged upon the porch, all white with the falling snow in the soft grey gloom, a large crowd of children, little girls and boys, were still outlined blackly against the lighted windows; they were screaming and talking, and three

THE VILLAGE

accordions were being played simultaneously, and all playing different tunes. Kuzma, his shoulders hunched, picking at his fingers and cracking them, stepped up to the crowd, pushed his way through it, and, bending low, disappeared into the darkness of the ante-room. It was full of people, crowded even, in that entry-way. Small urchins darted about between people's legs, were seized by the scruff of the neck and thrust outside—whereupon they promptly crawled back again.

"Come now, let me in, for God's sake!" said Kuzma, who was squeezed tightly in the doorway.

They squeezed him all the harder—and some one jerked open the door. Surrounded by jets of vapour, he crossed the threshold and came to a halt at the jamb. At that point the better-class people were congregated—maidens in flowered shawls, children in complete new outfits. There was an odour of woven goods, fur coats, kerosene, cheap tobacco, and evergreens. A small green tree, decorated with scraps of red cotton cloth, stood on the table, its branches outstretched above the dim tin lamp. Around the table beneath the moist little windows, which had thawed out, along the damp blackened walls, sat the ceremonial w®men, festively adorned, their faces coarsely painted red and white. Their eyes flashed. All wore silk and woolen kerchiefs on their heads, with drooping rainbow-tinted feathers from the tail of a drake stuck into their hair at the temples. Just as Kuzma entered, Domashka, a lame girl with a dark, malicious, and intelligent face, sharp black eyes, and black eye-

THE VILLAGE

brows which met over her nose, had struck up in a rough, hoarse voice the ancient "exaltation" song:

"At our house in the evening, fully evening, At the very last end of the evening, At Avdotya's betrothal feast . . .

In a dense, discordant chorus the maidens repeated her last words. And all turned toward the Bride. She was sitting, in accordance with custom, by the stove, her hair flowing loose, her head covered with a large dark shawl; and she was bound to answer the song with loud weeping and wailing: "My own dear father, my own mother dear, how am I to live forevermore thus grieving with woe in marriage?" But the Bride uttered never a word. And the maidens, having finished their song, involuntarily regarded her askance. They began to whisper among themselves, and, frowning, they slowly, in a drawling tone, struck up the "orphan's song":

"Heat yourself hot, you little bath, Ring out, you sonorous bell!"

And Kuzma's tightly clenched jaws began to quiver; a chill darted through his head and his legs; his cheekbones ached agreeably, and his eyes were filled and dimmed with tears. >

"Stop that, you girls!" some one shouted.

"Stop it, my dear, stop it!" cried Odnodvorka, slipping down from the bench. " Tis unseemly."

But the girls did not obey:

THE VILLAGE

"Ring out, you sonorous bell, Awaken my father dear. . . ."

And the Bride began, with a groan, to fall face down on her knees, on her arms, and choked with tears. She was led away at last, trembling, staggering, and shrieking, to the cold summer half of the cottage, to be dressed.

After that was done, Kuzma bestowed the blessing on her. The bridegroom arrived with Vaska, Yakoff's son. The bridegroom had donned the latter's boots; his hair had been freshly clipped short; his neck, encircled by the collar of a blue shirt with lace, had been shaved to redness. He had washed himself with soap, and appeared much younger; he was even not at all ill looking, and, conscious of that fact, he had drooped his dark eyelashes in dignified and modest fashion.

Vaska, his best man, in red shirt and knee-length fur coat worn unbuttoned, with his hair close-cut, pockmarked, robust, resembled a convict, as usual. He entered, frowned, and darted a sidelong look at the ceremonial girls.

"Stop that yowling!" he said roughly and peremptorily. "Get out of here. Begone!"

The girls answered him in chorus: "Without the Trinity a house cannot be built, without four corners the cottage cannot be roofed. Place a ruble at each ;orner, a fifth ruble in the middle, and a bottle of vodka." Vaska pulled a bottle out of his pocket and set it on the table. The girls took it and rose to their feet. The crowd had become more dense than ever.

THE VILLAGE

Once more the door flew open, once more there were steam and cold. Odnodvorka entered, carrying a tinsel-adorned holy picture and thrusting the people out of her way, followed by the Bride in a blue dress with a basque. Every one uttered an exclamation of admiration, she was so pale, gentle, quiet, and lovely. Vaska, with the back of his fist, administered a resounding blow on the forehead of a broad-shouldered, big-headed urchin whose legs were as crooked as those of a dachshund; then he flung upon the straw in the centre of the cottage some one's old short fur coat. Upon it the bride and groom were placed. Kuzma, without lifting his head, took the holy picture from the hands of Odnodvorka. It became so quiet that the whistling breath of the inquisitive big-headed lad was audible. Bride and bridegroom fell on their knees simultaneously and bowed down to Kuzma's feet. They rose, and once more knelt down. Kuzma glanced at the Bride; and in their eyes, which met for an instant, there was a flash of horror. Kuzma turned pale, said to himself in terror: "In another minute I shall throw this holy picture on the floor." But his hands mechanically made the sign of the cross with the ikona in the air; and the Bride, barely touching her lips to it, fastened them on his hand and timidly reached up to his lips. He thrust the holy picture into the hands of some one beside him, grasped the Bride's head with paternal pain and tenderness, and, as he kissed her new, fragrant headkerchief, burst into sweet tears. Then, seeing nothing because of his tears, he turned away and, thrusting the people out of his

THE VILLAGE

path, strode into the vestibule. It was already deserted. The snow-laden wind beat in his face. The snow-covered threshold shone white through the darkness. The roof was humming. Beyond the threshold an impenetrable blizzard was raging; and the snow, falling out of the tiny window recesses from the sheer weight of the drifts, hung like columns of smoke in the air.