through a little window.... How they cut him up, that is. The people
flocked in from all the villages, to have a look at this murdered
man,--and me too, for that matter. They used to shove their way right
up to the very barn. Two benches was carried out on the common, placed
right near the barn, and the murdered man put upon them. A log of wood
was put under his head; chairs and a table were brought out for the
coroner and the sawbones. The sawbones walks up to him; he tears off
his shirt, tears off his drawers,--and I see a corpse lying all naked,
already stiff; yellow here and green there, while his face was all like
wax; the red beard had become thin, and simply stood out. The sawbones
put a burdock over you know what place. Right at hand, as usual, there
was a box with all sorts of contraptions. The sawbones walks up, parts
his hair from ear to ear, makes a cut, and begins to take off the scalp
together with the hair, in halves. Where it was thin, he scraped with
a little knife. He tore away a half to either side,--soon as he gets
one piece off, he pulls it down over the eye. The whole skull became
visible,--like some kind of a little pot, it was.... And there’s a
black spot on it, near the right ear,--black clotted blood; where the
blow had come, that is. The sawbones says something to the coroner,
and the coroner writes: ‘Three cracks on such and such parts.’ Then
the sawbones starts in sawing through the skull all around. The saw
don’t work, so he takes a little hammer and a small chisel, see, and
goes over the marks that he’d made with the saw, breaking through with
the little chisel. And the top of the skull just fell away, like a
cup,--the brain was all plain to be seen....”
“What don’t they do, the murdering cut-throats!” hoarsely remarked the
old man, who had just dozed off.
But Theodot was firmly finishing his say:
“Then he took out a heavy knife, and starts cutting the chest, right
through the gristle. He hacks out a three cornered piece, and starts
pulling it away,--it even started cracking.... All the stomach came to
view, and the blue lungs, and all the innards....”
Deafened by the beating of his own heart, the student got up on his
feet, standing up to the full of his great height,--in his cap, shoved
back on the nape of his neck, in his light uniform overcoat, which
was already too short for him. Gray, huge, dreadful in his Mongolian
calmness, Theodot was speaking in measured tones, his pipe gripped
between his teeth; but the student was no longer listening to him. With
all his eyes he was looking at all these men--so familiar and yet so
unknown, so incomprehensible,--who had made his whole soul so sick on
this night. Pitiful in his vice and his meekness, in all his pastoral
primitiveness, Kiriushka was sleeping, covered with his great coat,
one thick leg, swathed in white foot-cloths, and twisted at the knee,
sticking out from underneath it. Ivan, too, was sleeping; Ivan of the
morose, disdainful face, whose mother, a horrible, black old woman, had
been dying for three years now, in his black mud hut, standing near the
ditches at the edge of the bare village, in the darkness and the dirt,
underneath the low ceiling, underneath the low roof of sods, and yet
cannot in anyway die, to her grief; while his buck-toothed thin wife
feeds at her dark-yellow, hanging dry breast a bare-bellied, clear-eyed
child, with its nose running, and its lips bitten into blood by the
countless flies in the hut. The happy Pashka was sleeping his heavy,
healthy sleep in the fresh wind, in his soldier’s cap, heavy boots,
and his new short coat. As for Khomut, the old man, who has not got
even a short coat (he has only a long coat, frayed and with a large
hole through the shoulder), whose drawers always hung so low upon his
flabby thighs,--he was sitting with his back to the wind, bare-headed,
stripped to the waist. He, senilely emaciated, yellow of body, with
his shoulders elevated at a slant, with his twisted prominent backbone
glistening in the light of the stars, was sitting with his big tousled
head, ruffled by the fresh wind, bowed down, bending his neck which was
already scrawny and all in coarse wrinkles. He was intently examining
the shirt he had taken off, and, as he listened to Theodot, he would at
times squeeze its collar band between his thumb-nails.
The student jumped down upon the hard and smooth autumnal earth, and,
stooping, quickly walked toward the dark, murmurous garden, toward home.
All three dogs also arose, and, showing dimly white, started running
sideways after him, with their tails curled tightly.
_1911._
A GOODLY LIFE
My life has been a well-spent one; I got everything I went after. I
even own real property,--my little old man right after the wedding
signed the house over in my name; and I keep horses, and two cows, and
we have a business all our own. Of course, not a regular shop, now, but
just a little store, as they say,--but then, in our village, it will
pass. I always was successful, but then I have a persistent character,
at that.
As to all sorts of work, it was still my daddy that learned me. Though
he was a widower, and took to drink, he wasn’t far behind me in being
awful smart, business-like, and heartless. When the serfs was freed,
now, he up and says to me:
“Well, wench, I’m my own master now; let’s save up some money. As soon
as we save it up, we’ll go to the city, buy a house all to our own
selves; I’ll marry you off to a fine gentleman, and live like a king.
As for our masters, it’s no use sticking here with them,--they ain’t
worth it.”
Our masters, now,--although, to tell the truth, they were good and
kind,--was the poorest of the poor; actual beggars, you might say. And
so we went away from them to another settlement; as for the house, the
cattle, and whatever household goods we had, we sold them. We moved
right near to the city, and hired a cabbage patch from a lady by the
name of Meshcherina. She had been a _fräulein_ in the Tsar’s court; she
was plain, freckled, and had grown gray as a maid,--nobody would take
her to wife, so she lived in retirement. So, then, we hired the meadows
from her, and settled down in our little hut, all peaceful and quiet.
The weather’s chill; fall is coming on,--but little we care! We sit
and wait for good profits and never feel trouble coming along. But the
trouble was right there,--and what trouble, at that! Our venture was
drawing near the winding up, when suddenly something terrible happens.
We had had our tea in the morning,--it was a holiday,--so I stood,
just so, near the hut, watching the folks coming from church over the
meadow. As for my daddy, he had gone to see about the cabbages. It was
a sort of a bright day, even though it was windy, and so I was gaping
and didn’t notice that there was two men approaching me. One was the
priest,--so tall, you know, in a gray cassock and carrying a stick; his
face was dark, earthy; he’s got a mane like any fine horse, just simply
spreading out in the wind. The other was just a common peasant,--his
farm hand. They walked right up to the hut; I got confused, made him a
bow, and says:
“How do you do, Father? Thanks for thinking of us and calling.”
But he, I see, is angry, sullen, doesn’t even look at me; he just
stands and breaks up clods with his stock.
“And where,” says he, “is your father?”
“They’ve gone to the cabbage field,” says I. “If you like, now, I can
call them. But there he’s coming, himself.”
“Well, you just tell him to take away whatever goods he’s got,
together with this dinky little samovar, and get away from here. My
watchman is coming here to-day.”
“What do you mean, a watchman? Why, we have already given the lady the
money, ninety roubles it was. What do you mean, Father?” (Though I was
young, I knew just what was what in such things.) “Are you joking, or
something?” I says. “You ought to produce some proper paper,” I says.
“No talk out of you!” he yells. “The owner is going to live in the
city; I’ve bought the meadows from her, and now the land is my own
property!”
But he, himself, waves his arms about, knocks his stick against the
ground,--like as not to hit you in the snout any minute.
Father sees these goings-on, and starts running toward us,--he was
awful hot-headed. He runs up and asks:
“What’s all this noise about? What are you yelling at her for, Father,
without knowing yourself what’s what? You oughtn’t to be shaking your
stick, but ought to come right out and explain by what sort of right
the cabbages have come to be yours? We are poor folks, now, we can go
to court about it. You,” he says, “are a person in holy orders; you
can’t hold no enmity against nobody; your kind can’t touch the holy
sacrament if you do.”
Father, you understand, hadn’t said as much as one saucy word to him;
but the other, though he was a pastor, was as wicked as the most
ordinary drab _moujik_; and so, when he heard that kind of talk, he
just grew pale,--not a word could he say, but you could just see his
legs quivering under his cassock. And then, don’t he let out a squeal,
and don’t he go for father,--to hit him over the head, you understand!
But father got from under it, grabbed the stick, tore it out of the
priest’s hands, and then went smash! over his knee with it. The other
tried to grapple with him, but father breaks it in halves, flings the
pieces away as far as he can and calls out:
“Don’t come near me, for God’s sake, your reverence! You,” he calls
out, “are black and like a beetle, but I am still more of a beetle than
you be.”
And then he grabs him by the arms!
What with courts and law, father was sent to a convict colony for this
here thing. I was left all alone in this world, and thinks I, what am
I to do now? Plainly, you can’t get through the world on righteousness
alone; plainly, you must needs keep your eyes open. I figured it out a
whole year, living with my aunt; then I saw there was nowhere for me to
go,--I had to marry fast as I could. My dad had a good friend in town,
a harness maker,--well, him it was that courted me. You couldn’t say
as how he made a striking bridegroom,--but still he was a good catch,
at that. There was, to tell the truth, one man that I liked,--and
liked right well; but then he was poor too, about as bad off as I was,
also living with strangers, like me; but the other was his own master,
after all. I didn’t have a copper of dowry, and here, I see, he is
taking me without anything,--how could I let a chance like that pass
by? I thought, and I thought, and went and married him,--although, of
course, I knew that he was an elderly man, and a drunkard, and always
excitable; a cut-throat, to put it plainer.... I married him and
became, you understand, not an ordinary wench any more, but Nastasiya
Semenovna Zhokhova, a citizen’s wife, living in a city.... Of course,
it seemed flattering.
I suffered for nine years with this husband. That citizen business
was just a name; we was so poor really that we was about as bad off
as the _moujiks_! And then there was scrapping and rows every blessed
day. Well, the Lord took pity on me, and took him away. The children I
had by him all used to die on me; there was only two boys left,--one
was Vanniya, going on nine; the other was an infant in arms. He was
an awful lively and healthy boy; about ten months he started in to
walk, to talk; all of my children, now, used to begin walking and
talking about the eleventh month. He got to drinking tea all by his own
self,--used to sink his little face in the saucer so’s you couldn’t
pull it away, nohow. But this boy died, too, when he weren’t a year
yet. I come home one day from washing clothes in the river, and my
sister-in-law,--we used to rent our rooms off her,--up and says:
“Your Kostiya was yelling and squirming all day to-day. I done all
sorts of things to him already; I worked his arms and I patted him
hard, and I gave him some sugar and water; but all he does is gag,
and throw up the water through his nose. Either he’s gone and caught
a cold, or else he’s ate something; for the children always put
everything in their mouth,--how is a body to look after them?”
I was just scared stiff. I make a dash for the cradle and throw back
the curtain, but he was already beginning to pass away then; couldn’t
even as much as cry out. My sister ran to get a doctor’s assistant we
knew; when he comes, he asks: “What did you feed him with?”
“He’s eaten some manna porridge, now, and that was all.”
“And wasn’t he playing with something?”
“That’s right, he was,” says my sister. “There was a copper ring from
a horse-collar knocking about all the time,--well, he was playing with
that.”
“Well,” says the doctor’s assistant, “he must have swallowed it,
for sure. May your arms wither!” says he. “You’ve gone and done it
now,--why, he’s going to die on your hands!”
Of course, it turned out just like he said. Not even two hours had gone
when he passed away. We took on and we took on, but there was nothing
as could be done about it; for it’s no use going against the will of
God. So I buried him too; only Vanniya was left. Only he was left; but
then, as they say, one is enough. A small creature, it’s true, and
yet he’ll eat and drink as much as a grown-up. So I started scrubbing
floors at the home of Nikulin,--a colonel in the army, he was. Him and
his wife was rather well off; they paid thirty roubles a month for the
rooms they had. They lived in the upper floor; the kitchen was below.
The woman they had to get up their meals was a no-account little old
woman; she wasn’t responsible, and yet she was loose. Well, naturally,
she got in the family way. Couldn’t bend down to scrub the floors,
couldn’t pull a pot out the oven.... She went away when her time came,
and I just grabbed her place: that’s how I had gotten around the
masters! To tell the truth, I’ve been clever and cunning from a girl
up; no matter what I took a hold of, I’d do it neat, accurate, better
nor any waiter. Again, I knew how to please them: no matter what the
masters would say, I’d just say “Yes, sir,” or “Yes, ma’am,” all the
time, and “You are absolutely right....” I used to get up when you
could still see the moon. I’d mop up the floors, make the stove, polish
up the samovar,--in the meanwhile the masters would wake up, but I had
everything ready. And then, of course, I always kept myself clean, and
was well-built,--I was spare, but still I was handsome. There was times
when I’d even get to feeling sorry for myself: what were my beauty and
my knowledge going to waste for, now, in such hard work?
Thinks I, I ought to take advantage of the opportunity. And the
opportunity was, that the colonel was awful strong himself and
couldn’t bear to look at me calmly. His wife, now, was a German,--fat,
ailing, and some ten years older than he. He weren’t good-looking;
heavy-bodied, short-legged, looking like a wild pig,--and she was
still worse. Well, I see he’s started to pay court to me, to sit in my
kitchen, to teach me smoking. Soon as his wife went out, he was right
there on the spot. He’d chase his orderly into town, as though on some
errand, and be sitting there. He bored me to death, but, of course, I
pretended otherwise: I’d laugh, and I’d sit and swing my leg,--getting
him heated up in all sorts of ways, that is.... What can you do when
there’s poverty; and, as they say, this little was as good as a feast.
Somehow one day, on the Tsar’s birthday, he comes down to the kitchen
in his uniform frock, in epaulettes, belted with that white belt of
his like with a hoop, with kid gloves in his hands. He’s buttoned his
collar so tight that his neck is all swollen and he’s all blue in the
face; he’s all perfumed,--his eyes shining, his moustache black and
thick.... He comes down and says:
“I’m going to the cathedral with the missus right away; dust off my
boots,--I’ve only gone through the yard and yet I managed to get all
dusty.”
He put his foot in its patent-leather boot upon a bench,--just like a
big iron pillar, his leg was; I bent down, wanting to wipe it off, but
he grabs me by the neck, even tearing my kerchief off; then he grabbed
me tight about the bosom and was already dragging me behind the stove.
I try this way and that,--can’t get away from him nohow. And he is hot
all over, just swelling up with blood,--trying to overpower me, that
is; to get at my face and kiss me.
“What are you doing!” I says. “The mistress is coming,--go away, for
the love of Christ!”
“If you will get to love me,” he says, “I won’t begrudge you anything!”
“Oh yes, now, we know all about those promises!”
“May I never leave this spot,--may I die without absolution!”
Well, of course, there was more of the same sort of thing. But, to
tell the honest truth, what did I know at that time? I could have
very easily been taken in by his words; but, glory be to God, things
didn’t turn out his way. Somehow he caught hold of me another time,
at an unlucky moment. I broke away, all mussed up, and got mortal
angry,--and there was the mistress, now; she was coming down, dressed
up, all yellow, fat, like a dead person, groaning, her dress rustling
on the stairs. I break away, and stand there without my kerchief,--and
there she is, heading straight for us. He goes past her and shows his
heels, but I stand there like a fool, not knowing what to do. She stood
opposite me, and she stood some more, holding the silk skirt of her
dress,--I remember like it was to-day: she was going out visiting, and
had on a brown silk dress, and white mittens without fingers, and she
carried a parasol, and wore a hat like a basket. She stood for a while,
let out a groan, and went out. To tell the truth, though, she never
said a word to him or to me. But when the colonel went away to Kiev,
she just took and drove me out.
So I got all my little belongings together and went back to my
sister,--Vanniya was living at her house, you understand. I went away
from this place, and again I figure: my brains are just going for
nothing; I can’t save up anything, nor make a decent match and have
a business of my own,--God has wronged me! I’ll get in harness once
again, thinks I, turn about somehow, and I _will_ get what I’m after,
and _will_ have a capital of my own, or die trying! So I thought it all
out, apprenticed Vanniya to a tailor, and then got a place for myself
as maid with Samokhvalov the merchant.... And that was the beginning of
my rise.
They gave me a wage of two and a quarter. There was two servants,--me,
and a girl by the name of Vera. One day I wait at table, and she washes
the dishes; the next day I wash the dishes, and she waits at table. You
couldn’t call it a large family: there was the master, Matvei Ivannich;
the mistress, Liubov Ivanna; two grown-up daughters; and two sons. The
master himself was a serious-minded man, not much given to talking,--he
was never even at home on week-days, and whenever there was a holiday,
he’d be sitting upstairs in his room, reading all sorts of newspapers
and smoking a cigar. As for the mistress, she was a simple soul,
kind, and, like myself, from the middle classes. They wasn’t long in
marrying off their daughters, Anna and Klasha, and held two weddings in
one year,--married them off to military men. Right there, to tell the
truth, is where I begun to save up,--for the military men did give me
a great deal in tips. If you just did anything, even a trifle,--like
handing them the matches, say, or their overcoats and rubbers,--right
off you’d have twenty kopecks, or thirty.... But then I used to go
about awful neat, and I pleased the military. Vera, to tell the truth,
was always putting on some airs, like some miss or something; she took
short, mincing steps, was tender and awful easy hurt,--the minute
anything would happen, she’d knit her downy eye-brows, her lips,
like cherries, would start to quiver, and there was the tears in her
eye-lashes. True, she did have pretty eye-lashes, great big ones, I
never saw anybody else with anything like them. But then, I was wiser.
I used to put on a smooth waist, cut on a bias, with open-work; I’d
put a switch on my head with a black velvet bow, and I wore a starched
white apron,--it would interest anybody just to look at me. Vera, she
always used to lace herself tight in corsets; she’d lace herself so
tight she couldn’t stand it, and at once her head would start aching
till she’d throw up,--but I never even had no use for a corset, and was
all right as I was.... And when the military men were gone, the sons
started in tipping me.
The elder had already reached twenty when I took the place, and the
younger was going on fourteen. This boy had to sit all the while, poor
fellow. He had broken all his legs and arms,--I seen that business many
a time. When he’d break something, the doctor would come to him right
away, bandage it up with cotton, lint, and all that sort of thing;
then he’d pour something over it like lime; this same lime would dry up
together with the lint, would become like a splint; and when the hurt
part was healed up, the doctor would just cut all that stuff, taking it
all off,--and the arm, when you’d look at it, was all grown together.
He couldn’t walk by himself, but crawled around on his bottom. He used
to simply dash upon sofas, and over thresholds, and up the stairs. He
even used to crawl across the whole yard into the garden. He had a
great big head, clumsy looking, like his father’s; his temples coarse,
red-haired, like a dog’s wool; he had a broad, old-looking face.
That was because he used to eat an awful lot,--he’d eat sausage, and
chocolate bon-bons, and pretzels, and pastry made out of layers of
dough,--whatsoever his heart might desire. But his little legs, his
little arms, was like a sheep’s, and all broken, all in scars. They
used to keep him just so for a long time, making long shirts for him
of different colours; sometimes blue, sometimes pink. They had a lady
teacher from a parochial school coming over to our house to teach him.
He was a great hand for learning, and had a good head on his shoulders!
And the way he’d play on an accordeon--you couldn’t find even a whole
person to play like that! He’d play, and sing in time with the music.
He had a strong, piercing voice. He used to go way, way up when he’d
sing: “I’m a monk, and handsome too!” He used to sing that song often.
The elder son was in good health, but also a sort of innocent, not fit
for any business. They gave him away for instruction into all sorts of
schools,--and he was chased out of all of them; they couldn’t learn him
anything. Come night,--he’d get full some place or other, and be gone
until dawn. Still, he really was afraid of his mother, and would not
come in through the front door for anything. I’d get through with my
work in the evening, and wait until the master and mistress would be
asleep; then I’d steal through the rooms, open the window in his little
den, and then go back to my place again. He’d take his boots off in the
street, crawl through the window in only his stocking-feet, and never a
squeak or a creak out of him. The next day he’d get up like he’d never
been any place, and in some spot where we couldn’t be seen he’d shove
what was coming to me into my hand. It wasn’t none of my worry, and I’d
take it right gladly! If he was to break his neck, that would be his
lookout.... And then I started in having an income from the younger,
from Nicanor Matveich.
I was after what I wanted day and night, you might say. Once I took
into my head that one idea, to absolutely provide for myself and to
marry a decent party, I had taken a fresh hold on life. I used to save
every little copper, now; money, you know, has little wings, once you
let it out of your hands!
I got rid of this here Vera,--but she, to tell the truth, was there
really without need; I just put it that way to the master and mistress:
“I can get along all by my own self,” I says; “you just add any trifle
you like to my wage, and you’ll do better nor now.” So, then, I was
left alone and managing everything myself. I wouldn’t even take the
wages in my hands,--soon as twenty or twenty-five roubles would gather,
I’d beg the mistress to go to the bank and put it away in my name.
Clothes, and shoes, and everything else went with the place,--what was
I to spend money for? The only expenses I had was to put up a little
stone at my husband’s grave,--I paid two roubles seventy, so’s people
wouldn’t talk. And right here, the Lord forgive us,--such was my luck
and his misfortune,--this poor wretch had to go and fall in love with
me....