HERE was a thick roll of notes. It came from the bailiff at the
forest villa; he wrote that he was sending fifteen hundred roubles,
which he had been awarded as damages, having won an appeal. Anna
Akimovna disliked and feared such words as "awarded damages" and
"won the suit." She knew that it was impossible to do without the
law, but for some reason, whenever Nazaritch, the manager of the
factory, or the bailiff of her villa in the country, both of whom
frequently went to law, used to win lawsuits of some sort for her
benefit, she always felt uneasy and, as it were, ashamed. On this
occasion, too, she felt uneasy and awkward, and wanted to put that
fifteen hundred roubles further away that it might be out of her
sight.
She thought with vexation that other girls of her age--she was
in her twenty-sixth year--were now busy looking after their
households, were weary and would sleep sound, and would wake up
tomorrow morning in holiday mood; many of them had long been married
and had children. Only she, for some reason, was compelled to sit
like an old woman over these letters, to make notes upon them, to
write answers, then to do nothing the whole evening till midnight,
but wait till she was sleepy; and tomorrow they would all day long
be coming with Christmas greetings and asking for favours; and the
day after tomorrow there would certainly be some scandal at the
factory--some one would be beaten or would die of drinking too
much vodka, and she would be fretted by pangs of conscience; and
after the holidays Nazaritch would turn off some twenty of the
workpeople for absence from work, and all of the twenty would hang
about at the front door, without their caps on, and she would be
ashamed to go out to them, and they would be driven away like dogs.
And all her acquaintances would say behind her back, and write to
her in anonymous letters, that she was a millionaire and exploiter
--that she was devouring other men's lives and sucking the blood
of the workers.
Here there lay a heap of letters read through and laid aside already.
They were all begging letters. They were from people who were hungry,
drunken, dragged down by large families, sick, degraded, despised
. . . . Anna Akimovna had already noted on each letter, three roubles
to be paid to one, five to another; these letters would go the same
day to the office, and next the distribution of assistance would
take place, or, as the clerks used to say, the beasts would be fed.
They would distribute also in small sums four hundred and seventy
roubles--the interest on a sum bequeathed by the late Akim
Ivanovitch for the relief of the poor and needy. There would be a
hideous crush. From the gates to the doors of the office there would
stretch a long file of strange people with brutal faces, in rags,
numb with cold, hungry and already drunk, in husky voices calling
down blessings upon Anna Akimovna, their benefactress, and her
parents: those at the back would press upon those in front, and
those in front would abuse them with bad language. The clerk would
get tired of the noise, the swearing, and the sing-song whining and
blessing; would fly out and give some one a box on the ear to the
delight of all. And her own people, the factory hands, who received
nothing at Christmas but their wages, and had already spent every
farthing of it, would stand in the middle of the yard, looking on
and laughing--some enviously, others ironically.
"Merchants, and still more their wives, are fonder of beggars than
they are of their own workpeople," thought Anna Akimovna. "It's
always so."
Her eye fell upon the roll of money. It would be nice to distribute
that hateful, useless money among the workpeople tomorrow, but it
did not do to give the workpeople anything for nothing, or they
would demand it again next time. And what would be the good of
fifteen hundred roubles when there were eighteen hundred workmen
in the factory besides their wives and children? Or she might,
perhaps, pick out one of the writers of those begging letters--
some luckless man who had long ago lost all hope of anything better,
and give him the fifteen hundred. The money would come upon the
poor creature like a thunder-clap, and perhaps for the first time
in his life he would feel happy. This idea struck Anna Akimovna as
original and amusing, and it fascinated her. She took one letter
at random out of the pile and read it. Some petty official called
Tchalikov had long been out of a situation, was ill, and living in
Gushtchin's Buildings; his wife was in consumption, and he had five
little girls. Anna Akimovna knew well the four-storeyed house,
Gushtchin's Buildings, in which Tchalikov lived. Oh, it was a horrid,
foul, unhealthy house!
"Well, I will give it to that Tchalikov," she decided. "I won't
send it; I had better take it myself to prevent unnecessary talk.
Yes," she reflected, as she put the fifteen hundred roubles in her
pocket, "and I'll have a look at them, and perhaps I can do something
for the little girls."
She felt light-hearted; she rang the bell and ordered the horses
to be brought round.
When she got into the sledge it was past six o'clock in the evening.
The windows in all the blocks of buildings were brightly lighted
up, and that made the huge courtyard seem very dark: at the gates,
and at the far end of the yard near the warehouses and the workpeople's
barracks, electric lamps were gleaming.
Anna Akimovna disliked and feared those huge dark buildings,
warehouses, and barracks where the workmen lived. She had only once
been in the main building since her father's death. The high ceilings
with iron girders; the multitude of huge, rapidly turning wheels,
connecting straps and levers; the shrill hissing; the clank of
steel; the rattle of the trolleys; the harsh puffing of steam; the
faces--pale, crimson, or black with coal-dust; the shirts soaked
with sweat; the gleam of steel, of copper, and of fire; the smell
of oil and coal; and the draught, at times very hot and at times
very cold--gave her an impression of hell. It seemed to her as
though the wheels, the levers, and the hot hissing cylinders were
trying to tear themselves away from their fastenings to crush the
men, while the men, not hearing one another, ran about with anxious
faces, and busied themselves about the machines, trying to stop
their terrible movement. They showed Anna Akimovna something and
respectfully explained it to her. She remembered how in the forge
a piece of red-hot iron was pulled out of the furnace; and how an
old man with a strap round his head, and another, a young man in a
blue shirt with a chain on his breast, and an angry face, probably
one of the foremen, struck the piece of iron with hammers; and how
the golden sparks had been scattered in all directions; and how, a
little afterwards, they had dragged out a huge piece of sheet-iron
with a clang. The old man had stood erect and smiled, while the
young man had wiped his face with his sleeve and explained something
to her. And she remembered, too, how in another department an old
man with one eye had been filing a piece of iron, and how the iron
filings were scattered about; and how a red-haired man in black
spectacles, with holes in his shirt, had been working at a lathe,
making something out of a piece of steel: the lathe roared and
hissed and squeaked, and Anna Akimovna felt sick at the sound, and
it seemed as though they were boring into her ears. She looked,
listened, did not understand, smiled graciously, and felt ashamed.
To get hundreds of thousands of roubles from a business which one
does not understand and cannot like--how strange it is!
And she had not once been in the workpeople's barracks. There, she
was told, it was damp; there were bugs, debauchery, anarchy. It was
an astonishing thing: a thousand roubles were spent annually on
keeping the barracks in good order, yet, if she were to believe the
anonymous letters, the condition of the workpeople was growing worse
and worse every year.
"There was more order in my father's day," thought Anna Akimovna,
as she drove out of the yard, "because he had been a workman himself.
I know nothing about it and only do silly things."
She felt depressed again, and was no longer glad that she had come,
and the thought of the lucky man upon whom fifteen hundred roubles
would drop from heaven no longer struck her as original and amusing.
To go to some Tchalikov or other, when at home a business worth a
million was gradually going to pieces and being ruined, and the
workpeople in the barracks were living worse than convicts, meant
doing something silly and cheating her conscience. Along the highroad
and across the fields near it, workpeople from the neighbouring
cotton and paper factories were walking towards the lights of the
town. There was the sound of talk and laughter in the frosty air.
Anna Akimovna looked at the women and young people, and she suddenly
felt a longing for a plain rough life among a crowd. She recalled
vividly that far-away time when she used to be called Anyutka, when
she was a little girl and used to lie under the same quilt with her
mother, while a washerwoman who lodged with them used to wash clothes
in the next room; while through the thin walls there came from the
neighbouring flats sounds of laughter, swearing, children's crying,
the accordion, and the whirr of carpenters' lathes and sewing-machines;
while her father, Akim Ivanovitch, who was clever at almost every
craft, would be soldering something near the stove, or drawing or
planing, taking no notice whatever of the noise and stuffiness. And
she longed to wash, to iron, to run to the shop and the tavern as
she used to do every day when she lived with her mother. She ought
to have been a work-girl and not the factory owner! Her big house
with its chandeliers and pictures; her footman Mishenka, with his
glossy moustache and swallowtail coat; the devout and dignified
Varvarushka, and smooth-tongued Agafyushka; and the young people
of both sexes who came almost every day to ask her for money, and
with whom she always for some reason felt guilty; and the clerks,
the doctors, and the ladies who were charitable at her expense, who
flattered her and secretly despised her for her humble origin--
how wearisome and alien it all was to her!
Here was the railway crossing and the city gate; then came houses
alternating with kitchen gardens; and at last the broad street where
stood the renowned Gushtchin's Buildings. The street, usually quiet,
was now on Christmas Eve full of life and movement. The eating-houses
and beer-shops were noisy. If some one who did not belong to that
quarter but lived in the centre of the town had driven through the
street now, he would have noticed nothing but dirty, drunken, and
abusive people; but Anna Akimovna, who had lived in those parts all
her life, was constantly recognizing in the crowd her own father
or mother or uncle. Her father was a soft fluid character, a little
fantastical, frivolous, and irresponsible. He did not care for
money, respectability, or power; he used to say that a working man
had no time to keep the holy-days and go to church; and if it had
not been for his wife, he would probably never have gone to confession,
taken the sacrament or kept the fasts. While her uncle, Ivan
Ivanovitch, on the contrary, was like flint; in everything relating
to religion, politics, and morality, he was harsh and relentless,
and kept a strict watch, not only over himself, but also over all
his servants and acquaintances. God forbid that one should go into
his room without crossing oneself before the ikon! The luxurious
mansion in which Anna Akimovna now lived he had always kept locked
up, and only opened it on great holidays for important visitors,
while he lived himself in the office, in a little room covered with
ikons. He had leanings towards the Old Believers, and was continually
entertaining priests and bishops of the old ritual, though he had
been christened, and married, and had buried his wife in accordance
with the Orthodox rites. He disliked Akim, his only brother and his
heir, for his frivolity, which he called simpleness and folly, and
for his indifference to religion. He treated him as an inferior,
kept him in the position of a workman, paid him sixteen roubles a
month. Akim addressed his brother with formal respect, and on the
days of asking forgiveness, he and his wife and daughter bowed down
to the ground before him. But three years before his death Ivan
Ivanovitch had drawn closer to his brother, forgave his shortcomings,
and ordered him to get a governess for Anyutka.
There was a dark, deep, evil-smelling archway under Gushtchin's
Buildings; there was a sound of men coughing near the walls. Leaving
the sledge in the street, Anna Akimovna went in at the gate and
there inquired how to get to No. 46 to see a clerk called Tchalikov.
She was directed to the furthest door on the right in the third
story. And in the courtyard and near the outer door, and even on
the stairs, there was still the same loathsome smell as under the
archway. In Anna Akimovna's childhood, when her father was a simple
workman, she used to live in a building like that, and afterwards,
when their circumstances were different, she had often visited them
in the character of a Lady Bountiful. The narrow stone staircase
with its steep dirty steps, with landings at every story; the greasy
swinging lanterns; the stench; the troughs, pots, and rags on the
landings near the doors,--all this had been familiar to her long
ago. . . . One door was open, and within could be seen Jewish tailors
in caps, sewing. Anna Akimovna met people on the stairs, but it
never entered her head that people might be rude to her. She was
no more afraid of peasants or workpeople, drunk or sober, than of
her acquaintances of the educated class.
There was no entry at No. 46; the door opened straight into the
kitchen. As a rule the dwellings of workmen and mechanics smell of
varnish, tar, hides, smoke, according to the occupation of the
tenant; the dwellings of persons of noble or official class who
have come to poverty may be known by a peculiar rancid, sour smell.
This disgusting smell enveloped Anna Akimovna on all sides, and as
yet she was only on the threshold. A man in a black coat, no doubt
Tchalikov himself, was sitting in a corner at the table with his
back to the door, and with him were five little girls. The eldest,
a broad-faced thin girl with a comb in her hair, looked about
fifteen, while the youngest, a chubby child with hair that stood
up like a hedge-hog, was not more than three. All the six were
eating. Near the stove stood a very thin little woman with a yellow
face, far gone in pregnancy. She was wearing a skirt and a white
blouse, and had an oven fork in her hand.
"I did not expect you to be so disobedient, Liza," the man was
saying reproachfully. "Fie, fie, for shame! Do you want papa to
whip you--eh?"
Seeing an unknown lady in the doorway, the thin woman started, and
put down the fork.
"Vassily Nikititch!" she cried, after a pause, in a hollow voice,
as though she could not believe her eyes.
The man looked round and jumped up. He was a flat-chested, bony man
with narrow shoulders and sunken temples. His eyes were small and
hollow with dark rings round them, he had a wide mouth, and a long
nose like a bird's beak--a little bit bent to the right. His beard
was parted in the middle, his moustache was shaven, and this made
him look more like a hired footman than a government clerk.
"Does Mr. Tchalikov live here?" asked Anna Akimovna.
"Yes, madam," Tchalikov answered severely, but immediately recognizing
Anna Akimovna, he cried: "Anna Akimovna!" and all at once he gasped
and clasped his hands as though in terrible alarm. "Benefactress!"
With a moan he ran to her, grunting inarticulately as though he
were paralyzed--there was cabbage on his beard and he smelt of
vodka--pressed his forehead to her muff, and seemed as though he
were in a swoon.
"Your hand, your holy hand!" he brought out breathlessly. "It's a
dream, a glorious dream! Children, awaken me!"
He turned towards the table and said in a sobbing voice, shaking
his fists:
"Providence has heard us! Our saviour, our angel, has come! We are
saved! Children, down on your knees! on your knees!"
Madame Tchalikov and the little girls, except the youngest one,
began for some reason rapidly clearing the table.
"You wrote that your wife was very ill," said Anna Akimovna, and
she felt ashamed and annoyed. "I am not going to give them the
fifteen hundred," she thought.
"Here she is, my wife," said Tchalikov in a thin feminine voice,
as though his tears had gone to his head. "Here she is, unhappy
creature! With one foot in the grave! But we do not complain, madam.
Better death than such a life. Better die, unhappy woman!"
"Why is he playing these antics?" thought Anna Akimovna with
annoyance. "One can see at once he is used to dealing with merchants."
"Speak to me like a human being," she said. "I don't care for
farces.''
"Yes, madam; five bereaved children round their mother's coffin
with funeral candles--that's a farce? Eh?" said Tchalikov bitterly,
and turned away.
"Hold your tongue," whispered his wife, and she pulled at his sleeve.
"The place has not been tidied up, madam," she said, addressing
Anna Akimovna; "please excuse it . . . you know what it is where
there are children. A crowded hearth, but harmony."
"I am not going to give them the fifteen hundred," Anna Akimovna
thought again.
And to escape as soon as possible from these people and from the
sour smell, she brought out her purse and made up her mind to leave
them twenty-five roubles, not more; but she suddenly felt ashamed
that she had come so far and disturbed people for so little.
"If you give me paper and ink, I will write at once to a doctor who
is a friend of mine to come and see you," she said, flushing red.
"He is a very good doctor. And I will leave you some money for
medicine."
Madame Tchalikov was hastening to wipe the table.
"It's messy here! What are you doing?" hissed Tchalikov, looking
at her wrathfully. "Take her to the lodger's room! I make bold to
ask you, madam, to step into the lodger's room," he said, addressing
Anna Akimovna. "It's clean there."
"Osip Ilyitch told us not to go into his room!" said one of the
little girls, sternly.
But they had already led Anna Akimovna out of the kitchen, through
a narrow passage room between two bedsteads: it was evident from
the arrangement of the beds that in one two slept lengthwise, and
in the other three slept across the bed. In the lodger's room, that
came next, it really was clean. A neat-looking bed with a red woollen
quilt, a pillow in a white pillow-case, even a slipper for the
watch, a table covered with a hempen cloth and on it, an inkstand
of milky-looking glass, pens, paper, photographs in frames--
everything as it ought to be; and another table for rough work, on
which lay tidily arranged a watchmaker's tools and watches taken
to pieces. On the walls hung hammers, pliers, awls, chisels, nippers,
and so on, and there were three hanging clocks which were ticking;
one was a big clock with thick weights, such as one sees in
eating-houses.
As she sat down to write the letter, Anna Akimovna saw facing her
on the table the photographs of her father and of herself. That
surprised her.
"Who lives here with you?" she asked.
"Our lodger, madam, Pimenov. He works in your factory."
"Oh, I thought he must be a watchmaker."
"He repairs watches privately, in his leisure hours. He is an
amateur."
After a brief silence during which nothing could be heard but the
ticking of the clocks and the scratching of the pen on the paper,
Tchalikov heaved a sigh and said ironically, with indignation:
"It's a true saying: gentle birth and a grade in the service won't
put a coat on your back. A cockade in your cap and a noble title,
but nothing to eat. To my thinking, if any one of humble class helps
the poor he is much more of a gentleman than any Tchalikov who has
sunk into poverty and vice."
To flatter Anna Akimovna, he uttered a few more disparaging phrases
about his gentle birth, and it was evident that he was humbling
himself because he considered himself superior to her. Meanwhile
she had finished her letter and had sealed it up. The letter would
be thrown away and the money would not be spent on medicine--that
she knew, but she put twenty-five roubles on the table all the same,
and after a moment's thought, added two more red notes. She saw the
wasted, yellow hand of Madame Tchalikov, like the claw of a hen,
dart out and clutch the money tight.
"You have graciously given this for medicine," said Tchalikov in a
quivering voice, "but hold out a helping hand to me also . . . and
the children!" he added with a sob. "My unhappy children! I am not
afraid for myself; it is for my daughters I fear! It's the hydra
of vice that I fear!"
Trying to open her purse, the catch of which had gone wrong, Anna
Akimovna was confused and turned red. She felt ashamed that people
should be standing before her, looking at her hands and waiting,
and most likely at the bottom of their hearts laughing at her. At
that instant some one came into the kitchen and stamped his feet,
knocking the snow off.
"The lodger has come in," said Madame Tchalikov.
Anna Akimovna grew even more confused. She did not want any one
from the factory to find her in this ridiculous position. As ill-luck
would have it, the lodger came in at the very moment when, having
broken the catch at last, she was giving Tchalikov some notes, and
Tchalikov, grunting as though he were paraylzed, was feeling about
with his lips where he could kiss her. In the lodger she recognized
the workman who had once clanked the sheet-iron before her in the
forge, and had explained things to her. Evidently he had come in
straight from the factory; his face looked dark and grimy, and on
one cheek near his nose was a smudge of soot. His hands were perfectly
black, and his unbelted shirt shone with oil and grease. He was a
man of thirty, of medium height, with black hair and broad shoulders,
and a look of great physical strength. At the first glance Anna
Akimovna perceived that he must be a foreman, who must be receiving
at least thirty-five roubles a month, and a stern, loud-voiced man
who struck the workmen in the face; all this was evident from his
manner of standing, from the attitude he involuntarily assumed at
once on seeing a lady in his room, and most of all from the fact
that he did not wear top-boots, that he had breast pockets, and a
pointed, picturesquely clipped beard. Her father, Akim Ivanovitch,
had been the brother of the factory owner, and yet he had been
afraid of foremen like this lodger and had tried to win their favour.
"Excuse me for having come in here in your absence," said Anna
Akimovna.
The workman looked at her in surprise, smiled in confusion and did
not speak.
"You must speak a little louder, madam . . . ." said Tchalikov
softly. "When Mr. Pimenov comes home from the factory in the evenings
he is a little hard of hearing."
But Anna Akimovna was by now relieved that there was nothing more
for her to do here; she nodded to them and went rapidly out of the
room. Pimenov went to see her out.
"Have you been long in our employment?" she asked in a loud voice,
without turning to him.
"From nine years old. I entered the factory in your uncle's time."
"That's a long while! My uncle and my father knew all the workpeople,
and I know hardly any of them. I had seen you before, but I did not
know your name was Pimenov."
Anna Akimovna felt a desire to justify herself before him, to pretend
that she had just given the money not seriously, but as a joke.
"Oh, this poverty," she sighed. "We give charity on holidays and
working days, and still there is no sense in it. I believe it is
useless to help such people as this Tchalikov."
"Of course it is useless," he agreed. "However much you give him,
he will drink it all away. And now the husband and wife will be
snatching it from one another and fighting all night," he added
with a laugh.
"Yes, one must admit that our philanthropy is useless, boring, and
absurd. But still, you must agree, one can't sit with one's hand
in one's lap; one must do something. What's to be done with the
Tchalikovs, for instance?"
She turned to Pimenov and stopped, expecting an answer from him;
he, too, stopped and slowly, without speaking, shrugged his shoulders.
Obviously he knew what to do with the Tchalikovs, but the treatment
would have been so coarse and inhuman that he did not venture to
put it into words. And the Tchalikovs were to him so utterly
uninteresting and worthless, that a moment later he had forgotten
them; looking into Anna Akimovna's eyes, he smiled with pleasure,
and his face wore an expression as though he were dreaming about
something very pleasant. Only, now standing close to him, Anna
Akimovna saw from his face, and especially from his eyes, how
exhausted and sleepy he was.
"Here, I ought to give him the fifteen hundred roubles!" she thought,
but for some reason this idea seemed to her incongruous and insulting
to Pimenov.
"I am sure you are aching all over after your work, and you come
to the door with me," she said as they went down the stairs. "Go
home."
But he did not catch her words. When they came out into the street,
he ran on ahead, unfastened the cover of the sledge, and helping
Anna Akimovna in, said:
"I wish you a happy Christmas!"