The village. [Translation from the original Russian text by Isabel Hapgood] (4 page)

"But you're not the right master, my good fellow!" he announced to himself with a spiteful grin. "You're a poor, crazy, landless stick yourself!"

Midway of his journey lay Rovnoe, a large village in which the inhabitants were freeholders. A scorching breeze coursed through the deserted streets and across the heat-singed bushes. Fowls were ruffling up their feathers and burying themselves in the ashes at the thresholds. A church of crude hue reared itself starkly, harshly on the bare common. Beyond the church a tiny clayey pond gleamed in the sunlight below a dam of manure, a sheet of thick yellow water in

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which stood a herd of cows, incessantly discharging according to the demands of nature; and there a naked peasant was soaping his head. He, too, had waded into the water up to his waist; on his breast glistened his brass baptismal cross; his neck and face were black with sunburn, his body strikingly white, pallid. - "Unbridle my horse for me," said Tikhon Hitch, driving into the pond, which reeked of the cattle.

The peasant tossed his fragment of blue-marbled soap on the shore, black with cow-dung, and, his head all grey, with a modest gesture as though to cover himself, he made haste to comply with the command. The mare bent greedily to the water, but it was so warm and repulsive that she raised her muzzle and turned away. Whistling to her, Tikhon Hitch waved his cap:

"Well, nice water you have! Do you drink it?"

"Well, then, and is yours sugar-water, I wonder?" retorted the peasant, amiably and gaily. "We've been drinking it these thousand years! But what's water? —'tis bread we're lacking."

And Tikhon Hitch was forced to hold his tongue; for in Durnovka the water was no better, and there was no bread there either. What was more, there would be none.

Beyond Rovnoe the road ran again through fields of rye—but what fields! The grain was spindling, weak, almost wholly lacking in ears, and smothered in corn-flowers. And near Vyselki, not far from Durnovka, clouds of rooks perched on the gnarled, hollow willow-trees with their silvery beaks wide open.

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Nothing was left of Vyselki that day save its name— the rest was only black skeletons of cottages in the midst of rubbish! The rubbish was smoking, with a milky-bluish emanation; there was a rank odour of burning. And the thought of a conflagration from lightning transfixed Tikhon Hitch. "Calamity!" he said to himself, turning paler Nothing he owned was insured: everything might be reduced to ashes in an hour.

VII

FROM that Fast of St. Peter, that memorable trip to the Fair, Tikhon Hitch began to drink frequently—not to the point of downright drunkenness, but to the stage at which his face became passably red. This did not, however, interfere in the slightest degree with his business, and, according to his own account, it did not interfere with his health. "Vodka polishes the blood," he was wont to remark; and, truth to tell, to all appearances he became more robust than ever. Not infrequently now he called his life that of a galley-slave—the hangman's noose—a gilded cage. But he strode along his pathway with ever-increasing confidence, paying no attention to the condition of the weather or the road. Commonplace, uneventful days ruled supreme in his house, and several years passed in such monotonous fashion that everything merged together into one long working-day. But certain new, vast events which no one had

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looked for came to pass—the war with Japan and the revolution.

The rumours concerning the war began, of course, with bragging. "The kazaks will soon flay his yellow skin off him, brother!" But it smouldered so very short a time, this pale image of former boasts! A different sort of talk speedily made itself heard.

"We have more land than we can manage!" said Tikhon Hitch, in the stern tone of an expert—probably for the first time in the whole course of his life not referring to his own land in Durnovka, but to the whole expanse of Russia. " 'Tis not war, sir, but downright madness!"

Another thing made itself felt, the sort of thing which has prevailed from time immemorial—the inclination to take the winning side. And the news about the frightful defeats of the Russian army excited his enthusiasm: "Ukh, that's fine. Curse them, the brutes!" He waxed enthusiastic also over the conquests of the revolution, over the assassinations: "That Minister got a smashing blow!" said Tikhon Hitch occasionally, in the fire of his ecstasy. "He got such a good one that not even his ashes were left!"

But his uneasiness increased, too. As soon as any discussion connected with the land came up, his wrath awoke. Tis all the work of the Jews! Of the Jews, and of those frowzy long-haired fellows, the students!" What irritated Tikhon Hitch worst of all was, that the son of the deacon in Ulianovka, a student in the Theological Seminary who was hanging around without work and living on his father, called himself a Social-

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Democrat. And the whole situation was incomprehensible. Everybody was talking about the revolution, the Revolution, while round about everything was going on the same as ever, in the ordinary everyday fashion: the sun shone, the rye blossomed in the fields, the carts wended their way to the station. The populace were incomprehensible in their taciturnity, in the evasiveness of their talk.

"They're an underhand lot, the populace! They fairly scare one with their slyness!" said Tikhon Hitch. And, forgetting the Jews, he added: "Let us assume that not all that music is craft. Changing the government and evening up the shares of land—why, an infant could understand that, sir. And, naturally, 'tis perfectly clear to whom they will pay court—that populace, sir. But, of course, they hold their tongues. And, of course, we must watch, and try to meet their humour, so that they may go on holding their tongues. We must put a spoke in their wheel! If you don't, look out for yourself: they'll scent success, they'll get wind of the fact that they've got the breeching under their tail—and they'll smash things to smithereens, sir!" -

When he read or heard that land was to be taken from only such as possessed more than five hundred desyatini 1 he himself became an "agitator." He even entered into disputes with the Durnovka people. This is the sort of thing that would happen:—

A peasant stood alongside Tikhon Hitch's shop; the

1 A desyatina is a unit of land measurement equalling 2.07 acres.— trans.

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man had bought vodka at the railway station, dried salt fish and cracknels at the shop, and had doffed his cap; but he prolonged his enjoyment, and said:

"No, Tikhon Hitch, 'tis no use your explaining. It can be taken, at a just price. But not the way you say —that's no good."

An odour arose from the pine boards piled up near the granary, opposite the yard. The dried fish and the linden bast on which the cracknels were strung had an irritating smell. The hot locomotive of the freight-train could be heard hissing and getting up steam beyond the trees, behind the buildings of the railway station. Tikhon Hitch stood bare-headed beside his shop, screwing up his eyes and smiling slily. Smilingly he made reply:

"Bosh! But what if he is not a master, but a tramp?"

"Who? The noble owner, you mean?"

"No—a low-born man."

"Well, that's a different matter. 'Tis no sin to take it from such a man, with all his innards to boot!"

"Well now, that's exactly the point!"

But another rumour reached them: the land would be taken from those who owned less than five hundred desyatini! And immediately his soul was assailed by preoccupation, suspicion, irritability. Everything that was done in the house began to seem abhorrent.

Egorka, the assistant, brought flour-sacks out of the shop and began to shake them. And the man's head reminded him of the head of the town fool, "Duck-Headed Matty." The crown of his head ran up to a

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point, his hair was harsh and thick—"Now, why is it that fools have such thick hair?"—his forehead was sunken, his face resembled an oblique egg, he had protruding eyes, and his eyelids, with their calf-like lashes, seemed drawn tightly over them; it looked as if there were not enough skin—if he were to close his eyes, his mouth would fly open of necessity, and if he closed his mouth, he would be compelled to open his eyes very wide. And Tikhon Hitch shouted spitefully: "Babbler! Blockhead! What are you shaking your head at me for?"

The cook brought out a smallish box, opened it, placed it upside down on the ground, and began to thump the bottom with her fist. And, understanding what that meant, Tikhon Hitch slowly shook his head: "Akh, you housewife, curse you! You're knocking out the cockroaches?"

'There's a regular cloud of them in there!" replied the cook gaily. "When I peeped in—Lord, what a sight!"

And, gritting his teeth, Tikhon Hitch walked out to the highway and gazed long at the rolling plain, in the direction of Durnovka.

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VIII

HIS living-rooms, the kitchen, the shop, and the granary, where formerly his liquor-trade had been carried on, constituted a single mass under one iron roof. On three sides the straw-thatched sheds of the cattle-yard were closely connected with it, and a pleasing quadrangle was thus obtained. The porch and all the windows faced the south. But the view was cut off by the grain-sheds, which stood opposite the windows and across the road. To the right was the railway station, to the left the highway. Beyond the highway was a small grove of birches. And when Tikhon Hitch felt out of sorts, he went out on the highway. It ran southward in a white winding ribbon from hillock to hillock, ever following the fields in their declivities and rising again toward the horizon from the far-away watch-tower, where the railway, coming from the south-east, intersected it. And if any one of the Durnovka peasants chanced to be driving to Ulianovka—one of the more energetic and clever, that is, such as Yakoff, whom every one called Yakoff Mikititch 1 because he was greedy, and held

1 When a man or woman begins to get on in the world his admiring neighbours signalize their appreciation by adding to the Christian name the patronymic, as if the clever one were of gentle (noble) birth. In this story, Tikhon soon receives the public acknowledgment of success, having begun as plain "Tikhon." Peasant-fashion, "Nikititch" was transmuted into "Mikititch."—TRANS.

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fast to his little store of grain a second year, and owned three excellent horses—Tikhon Hitch stopped him.

"You might buy yourself a cheap little cap with a visor, at least!" he shouted to YakofF, with a grin.

YakofT, in a peakless cap, hemp-crash shirt, and trousers of heavy striped linen, was sitting barefoot on the side-rail of his springless cart.

" 'Morning, Tikhon Hitch," he said, staidly.

" 'Morning! I tell you, 'tis time you sacrificed your round cap for a jackdaw's nest!"

Yakoff, grinning shrewdly earthwards, shook his head.

"That—how should it be expressed?—would not be a bad idea. But, you see, my capital, so to speak, will not permit."

"Oh, stop your babbling. We know all about you Kazan orphans! 1 You've married off your girl, and got a wife for your lad, and you have plenty of money. What more is there left for you to want from the Lord God?"

This flattered Yakoff, but he became more uncommunicative than ever. "O, Lord!" he muttered, with a sigh, in a sort of chuckling tone. "Money—I don't know the sight of it, so to speak. And my lad—well, what of him? The boy's no comfort to me. No comfort at all, to speak the plain truth! Young folks are no comfort nowadays!"

Yakoff, like many peasants, was extremely nervous,

1 Sharpers who pretend to be the poverty-stricken descendants of the Tatar Princes who ruled Kazan before it was conquered, during the rein of Ivan the Terrible.— trans.

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especially if his family or his affairs were in question. He was remarkably secretive, but on such occasions nervousness overpowered him, although only his disconnected, trembling speech betrayed the fact. So, in order to complete his disquiet, Tikhon Hitch inquired sympathetically: "So he isn't a comfort? Tell me, pray, is it all because of the woman?"

Yakoff, looking about him, scratched his breast with his finger-nails. "Yes, because of the woman, his wife, his father may go break his back with work."

"Is she jealous?"

"Yes, she is. People set me down as the lover of my daughter-in-law."

-"H'm!" ejaculated Tikhon Hitch sympathetically, although he knew full well that there is never smoke without fire.

But Yakoff's eyes were already wandering: "She complained to her husband; how she complained! And, just think, she wanted to poison me. Sometimes, for example, a fellow catches cold and smokes a bit to relieve his chest. Well, she noticed that—and stuck a cigarette under my pillow. If I hadn't happened to see it—I'd have been done for!"

"What sort of a cigarette?"

"She had pounded up the bones of dead men, and stuffed it with that in place of tobacco."

"That boy of yours is a fool! He ought to teach her a lesson, in Russian style—the damned hussy!"

"What are you thinking of! He climbed on my breast, so to speak. And he wriggled like a serpent.

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I grabbed him by the head, but his head was shaved! I grabbed hold of his stomach. I hated to tear his shirt!"

Tikhon Hitch shook his head, remained silent for a minute, and at last reached a decision: "Well, and how are things going with you over there? Are you still expecting the rebellion?"

But thereupon Yakoff's secrecy was restored instantaneously. He grinned and waved his hand. "Well!" he muttered volubly. "What would we do with a rebellion? Our folks are peaceable. Yes, a peaceable lot." And he tightened the reins, as though his horse were restive and would not stand.

"Then why did you have a village assembly last Sunday?" Tikhon Hitch maliciously and abruptly interjected.

"A village assembly, did you say? The plague only knows! They started an awful row, so to speak."

"I know what the row was about! I know!"