MIHAIL PETROVITCH ZOTOV, a decrepit and solitary old man of seventy,
belonging to the artisan class, was awakened by the cold and the
aching in his old limbs. It was dark in his room, but the little
lamp before the ikon was no longer burning. Zotov raised the curtain
and looked out of the window. The clouds that shrouded the sky were
beginning to show white here and there, and the air was becoming
transparent, so it must have been nearly five, not more.
Zotov cleared his throat, coughed, and shrinking from the cold, got
out of bed. In accordance with years of habit, he stood for a long
time before the ikon, saying his prayers. He repeated "Our Father,"
"Hail Mary," the Creed, and mentioned a long string of names. To
whom those names belonged he had forgotten years ago, and he only
repeated them from habit. From habit, too, he swept his room and
entry, and set his fat little four-legged copper samovar. If Zotov
had not had these habits he would not have known how to occupy his
old age.
The little samovar slowly began to get hot, and all at once,
unexpectedly, broke into a tremulous bass hum.
"Oh, you've started humming!" grumbled Zotov. "Hum away then, and
bad luck to you!"
At that point the old man appropriately recalled that, in the
preceding night, he had dreamed of a stove, and to dream of a stove
is a sign of sorrow.
Dreams and omens were the only things left that could rouse him to
reflection; and on this occasion he plunged with a special zest
into the considerations of the questions: What the samovar was
humming for? and what sorrow was foretold by the stove? The dream
seemed to come true from the first. Zotov rinsed out his teapot and
was about to make his tea, when he found there was not one teaspoonful
left in the box.
"What an existence!" he grumbled, rolling crumbs of black bread
round in his mouth. "It's a dog's life. No tea! And it isn't as
though I were a simple peasant: I'm an artisan and a house-owner.
The disgrace!"
Grumbling and talking to himself, Zotov put on his overcoat, which
was like a crinoline, and, thrusting his feet into huge clumsy
golosh-boots (made in the year 1867 by a bootmaker called Prohoritch),
went out into the yard. The air was grey, cold, and sullenly still.
The big yard, full of tufts of burdock and strewn with yellow leaves,
was faintly silvered with autumn frost. Not a breath of wind nor a
sound. The old man sat down on the steps of his slanting porch, and
at once there happened what happened regularly every morning: his
dog Lyska, a big, mangy, decrepit-looking, white yard-dog, with
black patches, came up to him with its right eye shut. Lyska came
up timidly, wriggling in a frightened way, as though her paws were
not touching the earth but a hot stove, and the whole of her wretched
figure was expressive of abjectness. Zotov pretended not to notice
her, but when she faintly wagged her tail, and, wriggling as before,
licked his golosh, he stamped his foot angrily.
"Be off! The plague take you!" he cried. "Con-found-ed bea-east!"
Lyska moved aside, sat down, and fixed her solitary eye upon her
master.
"You devils!" he went on. "You are the last straw on my back, you
Herods."
And he looked with hatred at his shed with its crooked, overgrown
roof; there from the door of the shed a big horse's head was looking
out at him. Probably flattered by its master's attention, the head
moved, pushed forward, and there emerged from the shed the whole
horse, as decrepit as Lyska, as timid and as crushed, with spindly
legs, grey hair, a pinched stomach, and a bony spine. He came out
of the shed and stood still, hesitating as though overcome with
embarrassment.
"Plague take you," Zotov went on. "Shall I ever see the last of
you, you jail-bird Pharaohs! . . . I wager you want your breakfast!"
he jeered, twisting his angry face into a contemptuous smile. "By
all means, this minute! A priceless steed like you must have your
fill of the best oats! Pray begin! This minute! And I have something
to give to the magnificent, valuable dog! If a precious dog like
you does not care for bread, you can have meat."
Zotov grumbled for half an hour, growing more and more irritated.
In the end, unable to control the anger that boiled up in him, he
jumped up, stamped with his goloshes, and growled out to be heard
all over the yard:
"I am not obliged to feed you, you loafers! I am not some millionaire
for you to eat me out of house and home! I have nothing to eat
myself, you cursed carcases, the cholera take you! I get no pleasure
or profit out of you; nothing but trouble and ruin, Why don't you
give up the ghost? Are you such personages that even death won't
take you? You can live, damn you! but I don't want to feed you! I
have had enough of you! I don't want to!"
Zotov grew wrathful and indignant, and the horse and the dog listened.
Whether these two dependents understood that they were being
reproached for living at his expense, I don't know, but their
stomachs looked more pinched than ever, and their whole figures
shrivelled up, grew gloomier and more abject than before. . . .
Their submissive air exasperated Zotov more than ever.
"Get away!" he shouted, overcome by a sort of inspiration. "Out of
my house! Don't let me set eyes on you again! I am not obliged to
keep all sorts of rubbish in my yard! Get away!"
The old man moved with little hurried steps to the gate, opened it,
and picking up a stick from the ground, began driving out his
dependents. The horse shook its head, moved its shoulder-blades,
and limped to the gate; the dog followed him. Both of them went out
into the street, and, after walking some twenty paces, stopped at
the fence.
"I'll give it you!" Zotov threatened them.
When he had driven out his dependents he felt calmer, and began
sweeping the yard. From time to time he peeped out into the street:
the horse and the dog were standing like posts by the fence, looking
dejectedly towards the gate.
"Try how you can do without me," muttered the old man, feeling as
though a weight of anger were being lifted from his heart. "Let
somebody else look after you now! I am stingy and ill-tempered. . . .
It's nasty living with me, so you try living with other people
. . . . Yes. . . ."
After enjoying the crushed expression of his dependents, and grumbling
to his heart's content, Zotov went out of the yard, and, assuming
a ferocious air, shouted:
"Well, why are you standing there? Whom are you waiting for? Standing
right across the middle of the road and preventing the public from
passing! Go into the yard!"
The horse and the dog with drooping heads and a guilty air turned
towards the gate. Lyska, probably feeling she did not deserve
forgiveness, whined piteously.
"Stay you can, but as for food, you'll get nothing from me! You may
die, for all I care!"
Meanwhile the sun began to break through the morning mist; its
slanting rays gilded over the autumn frost. There was a sound of
steps and voices. Zotov put back the broom in its place, and went
out of the yard to see his crony and neighbour, Mark Ivanitch, who
kept a little general shop. On reaching his friend's shop, he sat
down on a folding-stool, sighed sedately, stroked his beard, and
began about the weather. From the weather the friends passed to the
new deacon, from the deacon to the choristers; and the conversation
lengthened out. They did not notice as they talked how time was
passing, and when the shop-boy brought in a big teapot of boiling
water, and the friends proceeded to drink tea, the time flew as
quickly as a bird. Zotov got warm and felt more cheerful.
"I have a favour to ask of you, Mark Ivanitch," he began, after the
sixth glass, drumming on the counter with his fingers. "If you would
just be so kind as to give me a gallon of oats again to-day. . . ."
From behind the big tea-chest behind which Mark Ivanitch was sitting
came the sound of a deep sigh.
"Do be so good," Zotov went on; "never mind tea--don't give it
me to-day, but let me have some oats. . . . I am ashamed to ask
you, I have wearied you with my poverty, but the horse is hungry."
"I can give it you," sighed the friend--"why not? But why the
devil do you keep those carcases?--tfoo!--Tell me that, please.
It would be all right if it were a useful horse, but--tfoo!--
one is ashamed to look at it. . . . And the dog's nothing but a
skeleton! Why the devil do you keep them?"
"What am I to do with them?"
"You know. Take them to Ignat the slaughterer--that is all there
is to do. They ought to have been there long ago. It's the proper
place for them."
"To be sure, that is so! . . . I dare say! . . ."
"You live like a beggar and keep animals," the friend went on. "I
don't grudge the oats. . . . God bless you. But as to the future,
brother . . . I can't afford to give regularly every day! There is
no end to your poverty! One gives and gives, and one doesn't know
when there will be an end to it all."
The friend sighed and stroked his red face.
"If you were dead that would settle it," he said. "You go on living,
and you don't know what for. . . . Yes, indeed! But if it is not
the Lord's will for you to die, you had better go somewhere into
an almshouse or a refuge."
"What for? I have relations. I have a great-niece. . . ."
And Zotov began telling at great length of his great-niece Glasha,
daughter of his niece Katerina, who lived somewhere on a farm.
"She is bound to keep me!" he said. "My house will be left to her,
so let her keep me; I'll go to her. It's Glasha, you know . . .
Katya's daughter; and Katya, you know, was my brother Panteley's
stepdaughter. . . . You understand? The house will come to her
. . . . Let her keep me!"
"To be sure; rather than live, as you do, a beggar, I should have
gone to her long ago."
"I will go! As God's above, I will go. It's her duty."
When an hour later the old friends were drinking a glass of vodka,
Zotov stood in the middle of the shop and said with enthusiasm:
"I have been meaning to go to her for a long time; I will go this
very day."
"To be sure; rather than hanging about and dying of hunger, you
ought to have gone to the farm long ago."
"I'll go at once! When I get there, I shall say: Take my house, but
keep me and treat me with respect. It's your duty! If you don't
care to, then there is neither my house, nor my blessing for you!
Good-bye, Ivanitch!"
Zotov drank another glass, and, inspired by the new idea, hurried
home. The vodka had upset him and his head was reeling, but instead
of lying down, he put all his clothes together in a bundle, said a
prayer, took his stick, and went out. Muttering and tapping on the
stones with his stick, he walked the whole length of the street
without looking back, and found himself in the open country. It was
eight or nine miles to the farm. He walked along the dry road,
looked at the town herd lazily munching the yellow grass, and
pondered on the abrupt change in his life which he had only just
brought about so resolutely. He thought, too, about his dependents.
When he went out of the house, he had not locked the gate, and so
had left them free to go whither they would.
He had not gone a mile into the country when he heard steps behind
him. He looked round and angrily clasped his hands. The horse and
Lyska, with their heads drooping and their tails between their legs,
were quietly walking after him.
"Go back!" he waved to them.
They stopped, looked at one another, looked at him. He went on,
they followed him. Then he stopped and began ruminating. It was
impossible to go to his great-niece Glasha, whom he hardly knew,
with these creatures; he did not want to go back and shut them up,
and, indeed, he could not shut them up, because the gate was no
use.
"To die of hunger in the shed," thought Zotov. "Hadn't I really
better take them to Ignat?"
Ignat's hut stood on the town pasture-ground, a hundred paces from
the flagstaff. Though he had not quite made up his mind, and did
not know what to do, he turned towards it. His head was giddy and
there was a darkness before his eyes. . . .
He remembers little of what happened in the slaughterer's yard. He
has a memory of a sickening, heavy smell of hides and the savoury
steam of the cabbage-soup Ignat was sipping when he went in to him.
As in a dream he saw Ignat, who made him wait two hours, slowly
preparing something, changing his clothes, talking to some women
about corrosive sublimate; he remembered the horse was put into a
stand, after which there was the sound of two dull thuds, one of a
blow on the skull, the other of the fall of a heavy body. When
Lyska, seeing the death of her friend, flew at Ignat, barking
shrilly, there was the sound of a third blow that cut short the
bark abruptly. Further, Zotov remembers that in his drunken
foolishness, seeing the two corpses, he went up to the stand, and
put his own forehead ready for a blow.
And all that day his eyes were dimmed by a haze, and he could not
even see his own fingers.