become convinced of that,” said the directress, and drawing a thread
and making the ball of wool roll over the polished floor, upon which
Meshcherskaya had cast a glance of curiosity, she raised her eyes: “I
shall not repeat myself; I shall not speak at length,” she said.
Meshcherskaya liked very much this unusually tidy and large study;
on frosty days its atmosphere was so cozy from the warmth of the
glistening Dutch stove, and the freshness of the lilies-of-the-valley
upon the writing table. She glanced at the young Tsar, drawn at full
length in the midst of some resplendently glittering hall; at the
straight parting of the milky, neatly waved hair of the directress, and
kept an expectant silence.
“You are no longer a little girl,” said the directress with much
significance, secretly beginning to grow irritated.
“Yes, Madame,” answered Meshcherskaya simply, almost gaily.
“But not yet a woman,” said the directress with still greater
significance, and her dull-coloured face began to glow slightly. “First
of all,--what sort of a coiffure is that? That is a woman’s coiffure!”
“Madame, I am not to blame if I have nice hair,” answered
Meshcherskaya, giving the slightest of pats with both hands to her
attractively dressed head.
“Ah, so that is it,--you are not to blame!” said the directress. “You
are not to blame for your coiffure, nor to blame for these expensive
combs, nor to blame for ruining your parents with buying little
slippers at twenty roubles![1] But, I repeat to you, you lose sight of
the fact that as yet you are only a high-school girl....”
[1] A rouble, before the revolution, was equal to about half an
American dollar. _Trans._
And at this point, Meshcherskaya, without losing her simplicity and
calmness, suddenly interrupted her with politeness:
“Pardon me, Madame, you are making a mistake: I am a woman. And--do you
know who is responsible for this? Papa’s friend and neighbour, and also
your brother, Alexei Mikhailovich Maliutin. This happened last summer
in the country....”
* * * * *
And a month after this conversation an officer of the Cossacks, homely
and of plebeian appearance, having absolutely nothing in common with
that circle to which Meshcherskaya belonged, shot her on the platform
of a railroad station, among a large crowd which had just arrived with
the train. And the incredible confession of Olliya Meshcherskaya, which
had dumbfounded the directress, was fully confirmed; the officer had
declared to the examining magistrate that Meshcherskaya had enticed
him, had had a _liaison_ with him, had sworn to be his wife; but at
the depot, on the day of the murder, when she was seeing him off to
Novocherkassk, she had suddenly told him that she had never even as
much as thought of loving him, that their talks about marriage were all
merely a mockery of him, and she let him read that page in her diary
which dealt with Maliutin.
“I ran over these lines, went out on the platform where she was
promenading, waiting till I should finish reading, and shot her,” said
the officer. “The diary remained in the pocket of my uniform coat; just
glance at what was written on it on the tenth of July of last year.”
And the examining magistrate read something approximately as follows:
“It is now two o’clock at night. I had fallen fast asleep, but had
immediately awakened.... This day I have become a woman! Papa, mamma,
and Tolliya had all gone to the city, and I was left alone. I cannot
express how happy I was over being alone! In the morning I strolled by
myself in the garden, in the fields; I was in the forest,--it seemed
to me that I was all alone in the entire universe, and my thoughts
were more pleasant than they have ever before been in my life. I even
dined alone, then I played for a whole hour; to the sounds of the music
I felt as if I would live without end and would be as happy as never
before! Then I fell asleep in papa’s study. And at four Katiya woke me
up, saying that Alexei Mikhailovich had arrived. I was very glad he
had come; it was so pleasant for me to receive and entertain him. He
had driven up on his pair of very handsome horses, of a special small
breed, and they stood all the time near the steps; but he remained,
because it had been raining, and he wanted the ground to be dry toward
evening. He was very sorry that he had not caught father in, was
very animated, and bore himself like a gallant toward me; he joked a
lot about having been in love with me for a long time. When we were
strolling before tea in the garden, the weather was splendid again, the
sun glistened through the entire wet garden, although it had become
really downright chilly, and he walked about with my arm through his,
and said that he was Faust with Marguerite. He is fifty-six, but he is
still very handsome, and always very well dressed,--the only thing I
did not like was that he had come in a kind of cape; he is all scented
with English eau-de-cologne, and his eyes are altogether young,--and
black; and his beard is attractively divided in two long parts and is
perfectly silvery. At tea we sat in the glass enclosed veranda; I felt
somehow unwell and laid down upon a low couch, while he smoked; then he
changed his seat to where I was, and again began telling me some nice
things; then to examine and kiss my hand. I covered my face with a
silk handkerchief, and he kissed me several times on the lips through
the handkerchief.... I cannot understand how it could have, happened; I
lost my mind, I never thought that I was that kind! Now there is only
one way out for me.... I feel such loathing for him, that I cannot live
through this!...”
The town during these April days has become clean, dry, its stones
have grown white, and it is easy and pleasant to walk over them. Every
Sunday, after mass, a little woman in mourning, in black kid gloves,
with an ebony umbrella, starts out walking through Cathedral Street,
which leads to the city gates. She passes by the engine house, crosses,
by means of a paved road, the dirty square where there are many sooty
smithies, and the air from the fields is blowing fresher; farther on,
between the monastery and the jail, the cloudy horizon shows white, and
the spring fields gray; and then, when one has treaded his way among
the puddles under the wall of the monastery and turns to the left,
one sees something like a large, low garden, surrounded by a white
enclosure, above the gates of which enclosure is painted the Assumption
of the Mother of God. The little woman rapidly makes a sign of the
cross several times, and like one who knows the way walks through the
main path. Having reached the bench opposite the cross of oak, she sits
in the wind and the spring chillness, for an hour, for two hours, until
her feet in their light shoes and her hands in their tight kid gloves
grow entirely benumbed. Listening to the birds of spring, sweetly
singing even in the cold, listening to the tinkling of the wind through
the porcelain wreath, she thinks at times that she would give half
her life, if only that dead wreath might not be before her eyes. The
thought that it was Olliya Meshcherskaya whom they had buried here, in
this very clay, throws her into astonishment verging on stupefaction:
how can one associate that sixteen year old school girl, who only some
two or three months ago was so full of life, enchantment, gaiety,
with this clayey hummock, and this oaken cross? Can it be possible
that underneath it is the same girl whose eyes shine so deathlessly
out of this bronze medallion, and how reconcile with this pure gaze
that dreadful thing which is connected now with the name of Olliya
Meshcherskaya? But deep in her soul the little woman is happy, as all
people in love, or devoted to some passionate idea in general, always
are.
This woman is a teacher of Olliya Meshcherskaya, a girl of over thirty,
who has long lived upon some fiction or other that supplants her actual
life. At first her brother, a poor ensign and in no way remarkable,
was such a fiction,--all her soul was bound up with him, with his
future, which for some reason appeared to her brilliant, and she lived
in a strange expectancy, that her fate would somehow change magically,
thanks to him. Later, when he was killed at Mukden, she assured
herself, that she, to her great good fortune, it would seem, was not
like others; that the lack of beauty and femininity were in her case
compensated for by brains and higher interests; that she was a toiler
in the world of ideas. The death of Olliya Meshcherskaya captivated
her with a new dream. Now Olliya Meshcherskaya is an object of her
ceaseless thoughts, of rapture, of joy. She goes to Olliya’s grave on
every holiday,--she had formed the habit of going to the graveyard and
of wearing mourning since the death of her brother. For hours she does
not take her eyes off the oaken cross; she recalls the pale little face
of Olliya Meshcherskaya in her coffin, among the flowers--and also that
which she had once happened to overhear: once, during the main recess,
strolling through the school garden, Olliya Meshcherskaya was saying,
all in one breath, to her favourite mate,--the stout, tall Subottina:
“In one of papa’s books,--he has a lot of old-fashioned funny books,--I
read what sort of beauty a woman ought to have ... you understand,
there is so much said there that one can’t remember everything: well,
of course, black eyes, like boiling pitch,--honest to God, it is
written just so!--like boiling pitch,--eye-lashes as black as night;
a softly mantling blush, a slender waist, a hand longer than the
ordinary,--you understand, longer than the ordinary!--a little foot, a
moderately large bosom, a regularly rounded calf, a knee the colour of
a sea-shell, sloping--but high--shoulders.... I learned most of this
by heart, that’s how true all this is! But do you know what the chief
thing is?--Light breathing!... But then, I have it,--you just listen
how I sigh,--really, haven’t I got it?”
Now this light breathing has been scattered anew upon the universe,
upon this cloud-covered sky, upon this chill spring wind....
_1916._
AN EVENING IN SPRING
On St. Thomas’ week, on a clear evening barely tinged with rose, at
that enchanting time when the earth has just been freed from the snow,
when, in the little hollows upon the steppes, underneath the young bare
oaks, some gray, hardened snow still lingers, an old beggar was going
from house to house in a certain village in the Eletz province,--of
course, he had no hat, and there was a long linen wallet slung over his
shoulder.
This village was a large one, but quiet, lying far out among the
fields. And besides, it happened to be a quiet evening. There was
nobody near the flooded, clayey pond, that one could not see the
limits of; nor upon the level common where, in the shade of the huts
and hayricks, this old man was walking. His head was bald, yet still
black-haired; he held a long walnut staff in his hand, and looked like
a primitive bishop. The common was of a clear, vivid green; the air was
freshening; the pond, concavely-full, its tone that of a flashing flesh
colour, was slightly crimson, and there was a certain beauty about
it, despite a bottle-green block of ice, covered with rusty manure,
that still floated about in it. Somewheres on the other side, warmly
and caressingly lit up against the low-lying sun,--somewhere far-off,
it seemed,--a child, strayed behind some corn-kiln or storehouse, was
crying, and its plaintive, monotonous wailing was not unpleasant to the
ear in the evening glow.... But the folk thereabouts were none too
generous of alms.
There, at the entrance to the village, near an old, well-to-do farm,
where age-old oaks covered with the nests of rooks stood beyond the
three-roomed _izba_ of dark-red brick, a young gray-eyed married woman
had given something, but even that had been a trifle. She had been
standing near the stone threshold amid the drying spring mire upon a
hard-beaten path, holding a pretty little girl, whose little eyes did
not show any glimmer of intelligence, perched in her arms; the child
had on a little patchwork cap, and, pressing her close against her,
the woman was dancing, stamping her bare feet, and, as she turned, her
cotton skirt would swell out.
“There’s an old man; I’ll give you to him to put in his little wallet,”
she was saying through her teeth, her lips feasting on the little
girl’s cheeks:
“I’m a-goin’ to dance
So’s the floor will creak....”
And, turning, completely around, she changed her voice to a ringing,
coquettish tone, evidently imitative of some one:
“Old man, old man,--don’t you need a little girl?”
The girl was not a bit frightened; she was calmly sucking a round
cracknel, and the mother began coaxing the little girl, in all sorts of
ways, to give it to the smiling beggar who had come up:
“Give it to him, my little babe, give it to him; for you and I are all,
all alone on this whole farm; so we have nothing to give alms with....”
And the little girl stolidly stretched out her short little arm,
with the saliva-moistened cookie clenched in her little fist. And the
beggar, smilingly shaking his head at other folks’ happiness, took it
and munched it as he went on his way.
He held his stick lightly, in readiness, as he went; now it would be
a wicked, snarling watch-dog that would roll up in a ball underneath
your feet,--and having rolled right up to you, would suddenly become
quiet; or else a yellow, downy hound would ferociously tear the ground
and throw it up with his hind feet, standing near a hay rick and
growling, growling and gasping, with fiery eyes.... Upon approaching
the little window of a hut, the beggar would make a humble bow and
would tap lightly against the frame with his staff. But often no one
would respond to this tap; many were still finishing up their sowing,
finishing up their plowing, many were out in the fields. And his
soul, the soul of a peasant from of old, even rejoiced in secret: the
folks are out in the field ... this is the time that feeds the whole
year ... no time for beggars.... And at times, on the other side of
the panes upon which the beggar tapped, a fair-faced peasant woman
carrying a child at breast in her arms, would lean over as she sat on
a bench. Through the sorry little window, she appeared very big. Not
at all abashed because the beggar could see her soft breast, as white
as wheat-flour, she would wave him away with her large hand, covered
with silver rings, while the infant, without letting the sweet nipple
out of its mouth, lay back and looked up at her with its dark, clear
eyes, scratching hard its bare little outspread legs, all dotted with
pink from flea-bites. “God will give you alms,--don’t be angry with
us,” the peasant woman would say calmly. As for the old women, each
one of them would wrinkle up her face painfully, inevitably leaning out
and complaining for a long time, constantly re-iterating that she’d
be glad as glad could be to give alms, but there wasn’t anything ...
everybody was out in the fields ... and to give without asking she was
afraid,--she, being an old woman, had had her head bitten off long
ago, as it was.... The beggar would agree with her, would say, “Well,
forgive me, for the love of God,” and would go on farther.
He had done thirty versts[2] that day, and was not a bit fatigued;
only his legs had grown benumbed, dulled, and had begun to wobble. His
long bag was half-filled with crusts and some odds and ends; while
under the patched long coat, narrow belted and long skirted, under the
sheepskin jacket and the much worn blouse, under the shirt next his
skin, there had long been hanging upon his crucifix an amulet wherein
were sewn ninety-two roubles in bills. And his soul was at rest. Of
course, he was old, thin, all weather-beaten,--his mouth contracted,
parched, until it was all black; his nose was like a bone; his neck
all in wrinkles resembling cracks, criss-crossing one another, as
though his neck were made of cork. But he was still spry. His eyes,
which once upon a time had been black, were now rheumy and dimmed by
thin cataracts; but still they could see not only the full-flooded
pond, but, as well, the roseate tint upon its farther side, and even
the clear, pale sky. The air was getting fresher; more loudly, but
seemingly from a still greater distance, came the receding cry of the
child; there was a scent of the chilling grass in the air.... Two
pigeons soared together over the roofs, fell to the clayey little bank
of the pond, and, raising their little heads, began to drink.... Just
a little before, in a lonely farm near the great road, some women had
grown generous and had given him a big piece of calico and a pair of
good trousers,--oh, good as new, you might say; a young fellow that
belonged to their farm had made them for himself, but he had been
crushed in a pit, in the quarry where the _moujiks_ had been digging
for clay. Now the beggar was walking along and deliberating: should he
dispose of them, or put them on himself, and throw away those he had
on--which, by now, were really none too presentable,--near the edge of
some field?
[2] A verst is about two-thirds of a mile. _Trans._
Having come to the end of the village, he entered a short little lane
that led out into the steppe. And into his eyes glanced the many-rayed,
fair-weather sun of April, sinking far beyond the plain, beyond the
gray fallow-lands and the newly tilled fields of spring-corn. At the
very end of the village, at a turn of the well-beaten, glistening
road, leading to that distant, humble hamlet where the beggar was
thinking of passing the night, stood a new hut, not large, well-roofed
with new thatch, which was lemon-coloured and resembled a well-combed
head. Keeping aloof from everybody, a man and his wife had settled
here a year ago,--there were shavings and chips still knocking about
here and there. They were a thrifty, hard-working, agreeable couple,
and sold vodka on the sly. And so the beggar went straight toward
this hut,--there was a possibility of selling the new trousers to its
owner,--and besides, he liked just to enter it; he liked it because
it seemed to be living some especial life, all its own, quiet and
steadfast, standing at the end leading out of the village and gazing
with its clear little windows upon the setting of the sun, while the
sky-larks were finishing their song in the chilling air. Near the blind
wall that gave out upon the by-lane lay a shadow, but its front wall
was gay. Last fall its owner had planted three acacia bushes beneath
the little windows. Now they had taken root and were already downy with
a yellowish verdure tender as that of a willow. Having skirted them,
the beggar walked in through the entry into the main room.
At first, after the sunlight, he could not see anything, although the
sun was looking in here as well, lighting up the blue transparent smoke
floating over the table, that stood underneath a hanging tin lamp. To
gain time while his eyes grew accustomed, he bowed and crossed himself
for a long time in the direction of the new tinselled icon hanging in a
corner. Then he laid down his bag and his staff on the floor near the
door, and made out a large-bodied _moujik_ in bast shoes and a tattered
short sheepskin coat, sitting with his back to the door, on a stool
near the table; the well-dressed mistress he saw sitting on a bench.
“The Lord’s blessing be with you,” said he, in a low voice, bowing once
more. “Greetings of the holiday just past.”
He wanted to sing the paschal _Christ Is Risen_, but felt that it would
be out of place, and reflected:
“Well, I guess the master is not at home.... What a pity.”
The mistress was not at all bad-looking, with a very shapely waist,
with white hands,--just as though she were no mere peasant woman. She
was in a gala-dress, as always; in a pearl necklace, in a blouse of
coarse calico, with thin puffed-out sleeves, with an apron broidered in
red and blue, in a skirt of indigo wool with terra-cotta checks, and in
half-boots, rough but well-sown and made to fit the foot, their heels
shod with steel. With her neat head and clear face bent down, she was
embroidering a blouse for her husband. When the beggar had greeted her,
she raised her steady but unglittering eyes, threw an intent glance
upon him, and nodded amiably. Then, with a light sigh, she laid her
work aside, deftly stuck her needle in it, went toward the oven, her
half-boots clacking over the wooden floor and her flanks swaying, and
took a small bottle of vodka and a thick cup with blue stripes out of a
little cupboard.
“I have gotten tired, though ...” said the beggar, as if he were
talking to himself,--both in apology for the vodka and because he was
confused by the silence of the _moujik_, who had not turned around
toward him.
Stepping softly in his bast-shoes, humbly walking around him, the
beggar sat down upon another stool, at an opposite corner of the table.
As for the mistress, she put the cup and the small bottle before him,
and went back to her work. Then this stalwart, tattered son of the
steppes raised his head heavily,--there was a whole greenish demijohn
standing before him,--and, narrowing his eyes, he fixed his gaze upon
his humble bottle-companion. He may have been pretending just a trifle;
but still, his face was inflamed; his eyes were drunken, filled with
the dull glitter of tipsiness; the lips, grown soft and flabby, were
half-open, as in a fever,--evidently, this was not the first day of
his spree. And the beggar grew a little more wary, and carefully
began filling his cup. “After all, now, he’ll drink his and I’ll
drink mine.... This is a tavern, and we don’t bother one another,”
he was thinking. He raised his head, and his mistily-black eyes, the
colour of ripe sloe-thorn, as well as his whole visage, made rough and
weather-beaten by the steppe, were void of all expression.
“Where was you tramping?” asked the _moujik_, roughly and crazily.
“Have you come to steal, seeing as how all the folks are out in the
fields?”
“Why should I be stealing?” the beggar replied, evenly and meekly.
“I’ve had six children of my own, and my own house and goods....”
“You’re blind and you’re blind, but, never fear, many’s the feather and
the twig you’ve carried to your nest!”
“Why should you be saying that? I’ve worked hard as could be for ten
years in the quartz mines....”
“That ain’t work. That’s....”
“Don’t you be saying anything out of the way,” said the mistress,
without elevating her voice, without raising her lashes, and bit off
the thread. “I don’t listen to anything unseemly. I ain’t heard it from
my husband yet.”
“Well, that will do; I won’t do it any more ... lady!” said the
_moujik_. “’Scuse me ... I’m after asking you,” said he to the beggar,
frowningly, “what can you get out of the ground, now, when it ain’t
been ploughed nor sown?”
“Well, now, of course.... Whoever has the land, for example....”
“Wait,--I’m smarter than you be!” said the _moujik_ slapping the table
with his palm. “Answer what you’re asked; did you serve for a soldier?”
“I was a non-commissioned officer of the Tenth Grenadiers Regiment of
Little Russia, under Count Rumiyant-zev-Zadunaisky.... What else should
I be doing but serving for a soldier?”
“Keep still, don’t gabble more’n you’re asked! What year was you took?”
“In ’seventy six, in the month of November.”
“Wasn’t you ever at fault?”
“Never.”
“Did you obey the officers?”
“There was no way of my doing otherwise. I had taken an oath.”
“But what’s that scar doing on your neck? Do you understand what
I’m driving at now? I am testing him,” said the _moujik_, with his
eye-brows working surlily, but changing his commanding voice for a more
simple one, and turning toward the mistress his crazed face, aureately
illumined through the tobacco smoke by the sunset; “I may be poor, all
right, but I’ve caught more than one fellow like that! I know enough to
come in out of the rain!”
And again he put on a frown, looking at the beggar:
“Did you bow down before the Holy Cross and the Gospel?”
“That I have,” answered the beggar, who had managed to take a drink, to
wipe his mouth with his sleeve, to sit up straight again, and to impart
to his face and his misty eyes a dispassionate expression.
The _moujik_ surveyed him with glazed eyes.
“Stand up before me!”
“Don’t raise any fuss. Am I talking to you, or am I not?” the mistress
quietly intervened.