He was immersed to the throat in business--as usual--and he had no one
to help him. Nastasya Petrovna was of very little assistance. Tikhon
Ilitch never hired any labourers except “summer-workers” who were taken
on merely until the cattle were driven home from pasturage, and they
were already dispersed. Only the servants by the year remained--the
cook, the old watchman nicknamed “Chaff,” and Oska, a lad of seventeen
who was both lazy and ugly of disposition, “the Tsar of Heaven’s
dolt”--a most egregious fool. And how much attention the cattle alone
demanded! After the necessary sheep were slaughtered and salted down,
twenty remained to be cared for over the winter. There were six
black boar-pigs in the sty, eternally sullen and discontented over
something or other. In the barns stood three cows, a young bull, and
a red calf. In the yard were eleven horses, and in a box-stall stood
a grey stallion, a vicious, heavy, full-maned, broad-chested brute--a
half-breed, but worth four hundred rubles: his sire had a certificate,
and was worth fifteen hundred. And all these required constant and
careful oversight. But in his leisure moments Tikhon Ilitch was
devoured by melancholy and boredom.
The very sight of Nastasya Petrovna irritated him, and he was
constantly urging her to go away for a visit with acquaintances in
the town. And at last she made her preparations and went. But after
she was gone, somehow, he found things more boresome than ever. After
seeing her off, Tikhon Ilitch wandered aimlessly over the fields. Along
the highway, gun over shoulder, came the chief of the post-office
at Ulianovka, Sakharoff, famed because of his passion for ordering
by letter free price-lists--catalogues of guns, seeds, musical
instruments--and because of his manner of treating the peasants,
which was so savage that they were wont to say: “When you pass in a
letter, your hands and feet fairly shake!” Tikhon Ilitch went to the
edge of the highway to meet him. Elevating his brows, he gazed at the
postmaster and said to himself: “A fool of an old man. He slumps along
through the mud like an elephant.” But he called out, in friendly tones:
“Been hunting, Anton Markitch?”
The postmaster halted. Tikhon Ilitch approached and gave him a formal
greeting. “Had any luck, or not, I say?” he inquired, mockingly.
“Hunting, indeed! Nothing to hunt!” gloomily replied the postmaster, a
huge, round-shouldered man with thick grey hairs protruding from his
ears and his nostrils, huge eye-sockets, and deeply sunken eyes--a
regular gorilla. “I merely strolled out on account of my hæmorrhoids,”
he said, pronouncing the last word with special care.
“But bear in mind,” retorted Tikhon Ilitch with unexpected heat,
stretching forth his hand with the fingers outspread, “bear in mind
that our countryside has been completely devastated! Not so much as the
name of bird or beast is left, sir!”
“The forests have all been cut down,” remarked the postmaster.
“I should think they had been cut down, forsooth! Shaved off close to
the earth!” Tikhon Ilitch corroborated him. And all of a sudden he
added: “’Tis moulting, sir! Everything is moulting, sir!”
Why that word broke loose from his tongue, Tikhon Ilitch himself did
not know, but he felt that, nevertheless, it had not been uttered
without reason. “Everything’s moulting,” he said to himself, “exactly
like the cattle after a long, hard winter.” And after he had parted
from the postmaster he stood long on the highway, involuntarily gazing
about him. The rain had again begun to patter down; a disagreeable,
damp wind was blowing. Darkness was descending over the rolling
fields--the fields sown with winter-grain, the ploughed fields, the
stubble-fields, and the light brown groves of young trees.
The gloomy sky descended lower and lower over the earth. The roads,
flooded by the rain, gleamed with a leaden sheen. The post-train from
Moscow, which was an hour and a half late every day, was due at the
station. Only from the signal-bells, the humming sounds, the rumbling,
and the odour of coal and samovars in the yards, did Tikhon Ilitch know
that it had arrived and departed, for buildings screened the station
from view. The odour of samovars now remained, and that aroused a dim
longing for comfort, a warm clean room, a family--or the desire to go
away somewhere or other.
But this feeling was suddenly replaced by amazement. From the bare
Ulianovka forest a man emerged and directed his steps towards the
highway--a man in a round-topped hat and only a short roundabout coat.
On looking more closely, Tikhon Ilitch recognized Zhikhareff, the son
of a wealthy land-owner, who had long since become a thoroughgoing
drunkard. His heart contracted with pain. “Well, it makes no
difference,” thought Tikhon Ilitch sadly. “’Twill be best to chat a bit
with him and, in case of need, give him half a ruble. ’Tis not worth
while to anger the vagabond: he’s a spiteful fellow.”
But on this occasion Zhikhareff approached in a decidedly arrogant
frame of mind, bristling, but with his head, in its beggar’s hat,
thrown back, and chewing between his clenched jaws the mouth end of a
cigarette, long since smoked out and extinct. His face was blue with
the cold, puffy with drunkenness; his eyes were red, and his mustache
disheveled. He had turned up the collar of his short coat, which was
buttoned to the chin, and, with the tips of his fingers thrust into the
pockets, he was splashing along in a spirited manner through the mud.
His rusty, dilapidated high boots projected below his short trousers,
which were tightly strained over his knees.
“A--ah!” he drawled through his teeth, as he chewed his cigarette-butt.
“Whom do I see? Tikhon Fomitch[10] is looking over his domains!” And he
emitted a hoarse laugh.
“Good-day, Lyeff Lvovitch,” replied Tikhon Ilitch. “Are you waiting for
the train?”
“Yes, I am--and I never seem to hit it,” returned Zhikhareff, shrugging
his shoulders. “I’ve been waiting and waiting, and I got so bored that
I’ve been making the forester a little visit. We’ve been chattering and
smoking. But I’ve still a whole eternity to wait! Shall we not meet at
the station? I believe you are fond of putting something behind your
collar yourself?”
“God has been gracious,” replied Tikhon Ilitch, in the same tone he had
used before. “As for drinking--why shouldn’t a man drink a bit? Only,
he must pick the proper time.”
“Fudge and nonsense!” said Zhikhareff hoarsely, skipping across a
puddle with considerable agility, and he directed his course towards
the railway station at a leisurely pace.
His aspect was pitiful, and Tikhon Ilitch gazed long and with disgust
at his inadequate trousers, which hung down like bags from beneath his
short coat.