The village. [Translation from the original Russian text by Isabel Hapgood] (3 page)

And Tikhon Hitch was obliged to answer them all. Out of sheer boredom he bought a little book entitled "Oi, Schmul and Rivke: Collection of fashionable farces, puns, and stories, from the wanderings of our worthy Hebrews"—and, as he sat in his cart, he dipped

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into it frequently. But no sooner did he begin to read: "Iveryboady knows, zhentelmen, zat vee, ze Zhews, iss ferightfully foand of beezness/' than some one hailed him. And Tikhon Hitch raised his eyes and answered, although with an effort and with clenched jaws.

He grew extremely thin, sunburned, yet pallid, flew into bad tempers, and was conscious of being bored to death and of feeling weak all over. He got his stomach so badly out of order that he had cramps. He was compelled to resort to the hospital; and there he waited two hours for his turn, seated in a resounding corridor, inhaling the repulsive odour of carbolic acid and feeling as if he were not Tikhon Hitch and a person of consequence, but rather as if he were waiting humbly in the ante-room of his master or of some official. And when the doctor—who resembled a deacon, a red-faced, bright-eyed man in a bob-tailed coat, redolent of soap, with a sniff—applied his cold ear to his chest, he made haste to say that his belly-ache was almost gone, and did not refuse a dose of castor oil simply because he was too timid to do so. When he returned to the Fair ground he gulped down a glass of vodka flavoured with pepper and salt, and began once more to eat sausage, sour black rye bread made of second-rate flour, and to drink tea, raw vodka, and sour cabbage soup—and he was still unable to quench his thirst. His acquaintances advised him to refresh himself with beer, and he went for some. The lame kvas-dealer shouted: "Here's your fine kvas, the sort that makes your nose sting! A kopek a glass—prime lemonade!" And Tikhon Hitch bade the kvas-peddler halt. "He-ere's

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your ices!" chanted in a tenor voice a bald, perspiring vendor, a paunch-bellied old man in a red shirt. And Tikhon Hitch ate, with the little bone spoon, ices which were hardly more than snow, and which made his head ache cruelly.

Dusty, ground to powder by feet, wheels, and hoofs, littered and covered with dung, the pasture was already being deserted—the Fair was dispersing. But Tikhon Hitch, as if with deliberate intent to spite some one or other, persisted in keeping his unsold horses there in the heat, and sat on and on in his cart. It seemed as if he were overwhelmed not so much by illness as by the spectacle of the great poverty, the vast wretchedness which, from time immemorial, had reigned over this town and its whole county. Lord God, what a country! Black-loam soil over three feet deep! But— what of that? Never did five years pass without a famine. The town was famous throughout all Russia as a grain mart—but not more than a hundred persons in the whole town ate their fill of the grain. And the Fair? Beggars, idiots, blind men, cripples—a whole regiment of them—and such monstrosities as it made one frightened and sick at the stomach to behold!

ON a hot, sunny morning Tikhon Hitch started homeward through the big Old Town. First he drove through the town and the bazaar, past the cathedral, across the shallow little river,

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which reeked with the sourly fetid odour of the tan-yards, and beyond the river, up the hill, through the Black Suburb. In the bazaar he and his brother had once worked in Matorin's shop. Now every one in the bazaar bowed low before him. In the Black Suburb his childhood had been passed. There, halfway up the hill, among the mud huts embedded in the ground, with their black and decaying roofs, in the midst of dung which lay drying in the sun for use as fuel, amid litter, ashes, and rags, it had been his great delight to race, with shrill shouting and whistling, after the poverty-stricken teacher of the county school —a malicious, depraved old man, long since expelled from his post, who wore felt boots summer and winter, under-drawers, and a short overcoat with a beaver collar which was peeling off. He had been known to the town by the peculiar nickname of "the Dog's Pistol."

Not a trace was now left of that mud hut in which Tikhon Hitch had been born and had grown up. On its site stood a small new house of planking, with a rusty sign over the entrance: "Ecclesiastical Tailor SobolefT." Everything else in the Suburb was precisely as it had always been—pigs and hens in the narrow alleys; tall poles at the gateways, and on each pole a ram's horn; the big pallid faces of the lace-makers peering forth from behind the pots of flowers in the tiny windows; bare-legged little urchins with one suspender over a shoulder, launching a paper snake with a tail of bast fibre; quiet flaxen-haired little

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girls engaged in their favourite play, burying a doll, beside the mound of earth encircling the house.

On the plain at the crest of the hill, he crossed himself before the cemetery, behind the fence of which, among the trees, was the grave which had once been such a source of terror to him—that of the rich miser Zykoff, which had caved in at the very moment when they were filling it. And, after a moment's reflection, he turned the horse in at the gate of the cemetery.

By the side of that large white gate had been wont to sit uninterruptedly, jingling a little bell to which were attached a handle and a small bag, a squint-eyed monk garbed in a black cassock and boots red with age—an extremely powerful, shaggy, and fierce fellow, to judge by appearances; a drunkard, with a remarkable command of abusive language. No monk was there now. In his place sat an old woman, busy knitting a stocking. She looked like the ancient crone of a fairy tale, with spectacles, a beak, and sunken lips. She was one of the widows who lived in the asylum by the cemetery.

'"Morning, my good woman!" Tikhon Hitch called out pleasantly, as he hitched his horse to a post near the gate. "Can you look after my horse?"

The old woman rose to her feet, made a deep reverence, and mumbled: "Yes, batiushka." 1

i"Matushka" and "batiushka" (literally, "Little Mother"

and "Little Father") are the characteristic Russian formula

for addressing elderly strangers, regardless of class distinctions.—TRANS.

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Tikhon Hitch removed his cap, crossed himself once more, rolling his eyes upward as he did so before the holy picture of the Assumption of the Mother of God over the gateway, and added: "Are there many of you nowadays?"

"Twelve old women in all, batiushka."

"Well, and do you squabble often?"

"Yes, often, batiushka."

Tikhon Hitch walked at a leisurely pace among the trees and the crosses along the alley leading to the ancient wooden church, once painted in ochre. During the Fair he had had his hair cut close and his beard trimmed and shortened, and he was looking much younger. His leanness and sunburn also contributed to the youthfulness of his appearance. The delicate skin shone white on the recently clipped triangles on his temples. The memories of his childhood and youth made him younger; so did his new peaked canvas cap. His face was thoughtful. He glanced from side to side. How brief, how devoid of meaning, was life! And what peace, what repose, was round about, in that sunny stillness within the enclosure of the ancient churchyard! A hot breeze drifted across the crests of the bright trees which pierced the cloudless sky, their foliage made scanty before its season by the torrid heat, their light, transparent shadows cast in waves athwart the stones and monuments. And when it died away the sun once more heated up the flowers and the grass; birds warbled sweetly in the languor; sumptuously-hued butterflies sank motionless upon the hot paths. On one cross Tikhon Hitch read:

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"What terrible quit-rents Doth Death collect from men!"

But there was nothing awful about the spot. He strolled on, even noticing with considerable satisfaction that the cemetery was growing; that many new and excellent mausoleums had made their appearance among those ancient stones in the shapes of coffins on legs, heavy cast-iron plates, and huge rough crosses, already in process of decay, which now filled it. "Died in the year 1819, on November 7, at five o'clock in the morning"—it was painful to read such inscriptions: death was repulsive at dawn of a stormy autumnal day, in that old county town! But alongside it a marble angel gleamed white through the trees, as he stood there with eyes fixed upon the blue sky; and beneath it, on the mirror-smooth black granite, were cut in gold letters the words: "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord." On the iron monument of some Collegiate Assessor, tinted in rainbow hues by foul weather and the hand of time, one could decipher the verses:

"His Tsar he honourably served, His neighbour cordially loved, And was revered of men."

And these verses struck Tikhon Hitch as hypocritical. But in this place even a lie was touching. For— where is truth? Yonder in the bushes lies a human jawbone, neglected, looking as if it were made of dirty wax—all that remains of a man. But is it all?

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Flowers, ribbons, crosses, coffins, and bones in the earth decay—all is death and corruption. But Tikhon Hitch walked on further and read: "Thus it is in the resurrection of the dead; it is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption."—"Our darling son, thy memory will never die in our hearts to all eternity!"

His brow furrowed even more severely; he removed his cap and made the sign of the cross. He was pale, and still weak from his illness. He recalled his childhood—his youth—Kuzma. He walked to the far corner of the cemetery where all his relatives were buried —father, mother, the sister who had died when a little girl. The inscriptions spoke touchingly and peacefully of rest, repose; of tenderness towards fathers, mothers, husbands and wives; of a love which, apparently, does not exist and never will exist on this earth; of that devotion to one another and submission to God, that fervent faith in a future life, that meeting once more in another and blessed land, in which one believes only here; and of that equality which death alone confers—of those moments when folk bestow the last kiss upon the lips of the dead beggar as on a brother's, compare him with kings and prelates, say over him the loftiest and most solemn words.

And there in a distant corner of the enclosure, among bushes of elder which dozed in the parching heat—there where formerly had been graves, but now were only mounds and hollows, overgrown with grass and white flowers 1 —Tikhon Hitch saw a fresh little grave, the grave of a child, and on the cross a couplet:

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"Softly, leaves: do not rustle, Do not wake my Kostya dear."

And as he recalled his own child, crushed in its sleep by the dumb cook, he began to blink back the welling tears.

VI

NO one ever drove on the highway which ran past the cemetery and lost itself among "he rolling fields. Now and then some light-footed tramp straggled along it—some young fellow in a faded pink shirt and drawers of parti-coloured patches. But people drove on the country road alongside. Along that country road drove Tikhon Hitch also. His first encounter was with a dilapidated public carriage which approached at racing speed—provincial cabmen drive wildly!—and in which sat a huntsman, an official of the bank. At his feet lay a spotted setter dog; on his knees rested a gun in its cover; his legs were encased in tall wading-boots, though there had never been any marshes in the county. Next, diving across the dusty hummocks, came a young postman mounted on a bicycle of an ancient model, with an enormous front wheel and a tiny rear one. He frightened the horse, and Tikhon Hitch gritted his teeth with rage; the rascal ought to be degraded to the ranks of the

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workingmen! The mid-day sun scorched; a hot breeze was blowing; the cloudless sky became slate-coloured. And, as he meditated upon the brevity and senselessness of life, Tikhon Hitch turned away with ever-increasing irritation from the dust which whirled along the road, and with ever-increasing anxiety cast sidelong glances at the spindling, prematurely drying stalks of the grain.

Throngs of pilgrims armed with long staffs, tortured by fatigue and the heat, tramped on at a peaceful gait. They made low, meek reverences to Tikhon Hitch; but their obeisances struck him as shams. "Those fellows meek! I'll bet they fight among themselves like cats and dogs at their halting-places!" he muttered. Drunken peasants returning from the Fair—redheaded, black-haired, flaxen-haired, but all alike hideous and tattered, and with about ten crowded into each cart—raised clouds of dust as they whipped up their wretched little horses. As he overtook their rattling carts Tikhon Hitch shook his head. "Ugh, you roving beggars, may the devil fly away with you."

One of them, in a print shirt torn to ribbons, lay fast asleep and was bumped about like a corpse, stretched supine with his head thrown back, his beard blood-stained, his nose swollen and clotted with dried blood. Another stumbled as he ran after his cap, which had been blown off by the wind; and Tikhon Hitch, with malicious delight, lashed him with his whip. Then came a cart filled with sieves, shovels, and peasant women. They sat with their backs to the horses, rattling and bumping about. One had a new child's

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cap on her head, worn wrong side before; another was singing with her mouth full of bread; a third flourished her arms and, laughing, shouted after Tikhon Hitch: "Hey there, uncle, you've lost your linch-pin!" And Tikhon Hitch reined in his horse, let them catch up with him, and lashed this woman, too, with his whip.

Beyond the toll-gate, where the highway turned off to one side, and where the rattling peasant carts fell to the rear, and silence, the wide space and sultriness of the steppe reigned, he felt once more that, in spite of everything, the chief item in the world was Business. He thought with supreme scorn of the landed proprietors, putting on swagger at the Fair—they, with their wretched troika teams! Ekh, and the poverty on every side! The peasants were utterly ruined, with not a scrap left on their impoverished little farms scattered about the country. A master .was needed here—a master!