The faces gazed out in complete immobility from their shell-work
frames. Here was a scene which had never taken place and could
not take place: In the field, amid the thick-growing rye, lay two
persons--Tikhon Ilitch himself and a young merchant named Rostovtzeff,
holding in their hands glasses exactly half filled with dark beer.
What a close friendship had sprung up between Rostovtzeff and Tikhon
Ilitch! How well he remembered that grey day in Carnival Week when
the picture was taken! But in what year had that happened? What had
become of Rostovtzeff? Perhaps he had died in Voronezh--and now no
one knew for a certainty whether he were still alive in this world or
not. And yonder stood three petty burghers, drawn up in military style
and perfectly wooden, with their hair parted in the middle and very
smooth, dressed in embroidered Russian shirts opening at the side and
long coats, with their boots well polished--Butchneff, Vystavkin, and
Bogomoloff. Vystavkin, the one in the middle, was holding in front
of his breast the bread and salt of hospitality on a wooden platter,
covered with a towel embroidered with cocks, while Butchneff and
Bogomoloff each held a holy picture. They had been photographed on a
dusty, windy day, when the grain-elevator had been blessed--when the
Bishop and the Governor had come for the ceremony, when Tikhon Ilitch
had felt so proud that he had been one of the crowd appointed to greet
the officials. But what had his memory retained about that day? Merely
this--that they had waited beside the elevator for five hours, on the
new brown rails of the track, that the white dust had been blown in
clouds by the wind, that the railway carriages and the trees were all
covered with dust, that the Governor, a long, lean man, exactly like
a corpse in white trousers with gold stripes, a uniform embroidered
in gold, and a three-cornered hat, walked towards the deputation in a
remarkably deliberate manner--that it was very alarming when he began
to speak as he accepted the bread and salt, that every one had been
surprised at the thinness and whiteness of his hands, and the skin on
them, as delicate and gleaming as the hide stripped from a snake, the
brilliant, polished gold rings and rings with gems on his dry, slender
fingers with their long transparent nails. Now that Governor was no
longer among the living, and Vystavkin was dead, also. And in another
five or ten years people would be saying, in speaking of Tikhon Ilitch,
too: “The late Tikhon Ilitch.”
The room had grown warmer and more cosy, now that the stove had got
to going well; the little mirror had cleared off; but nothing was
to be seen through the windows, which were white with a dull steam,
indicating that the weather had grown colder outside. The insistent
grunting of the hungry pigs made itself more and more audible. And
suddenly the grunt was transmuted into a mighty unanimous roar:
obviously the pigs had heard the voices of the cook and Oska, who were
lugging to them the heavy tub with their mess. And, without finishing
his reflections on death, Tikhon Ilitch flung his cigarette into the
slop-basin, drew on his overcoat, and hurried out to the barn. With
long strides, sinking deep in the sloppy manure, he opened the door
of the sty with his own hands, and for a long time kept his greedy,
melancholy eyes riveted on the pigs, which hurled themselves on the
trough into which the steaming mess had been poured.
The thought of death had been interrupted by another: “the late,” as
applied to himself, was all right, but possibly this particular dead
man might serve as an example. Who had he been? An orphan, a beggar,
who had often had no bread to eat for a couple of days at a stretch.
But now? “Your biography ought to be written,” Kuzma had said one day,
in jest. But there was no occasion for jesting, if you please. He must
have had a noddle on his shoulders, if the wretched little urchin who
barely knew how to read had turned out not Tishka, but Tikhon Ilitch:
that was what it meant.
But all of a sudden the cook, who had also been staring intently
at the pigs as they jostled one another and got their forefeet into
the trough, hiccoughed and remarked: “Okh, O Lord! I only hope some
calamity won’t happen to us today! Last night I had a dream--I thought
cattle were being driven into our farmyard: sheep, cows, all sorts of
pigs were being driven to us. And they were all black, every last one
of them was black!”
And once more his heart sank within him. Yes, there were those cattle!
The cattle alone were enough to drive a man to hang himself. Not three
hours had elapsed--and again you had to seize your keys, again drag
fodder for the whole farmyard. In the common stall were three milch
cows; in special stalls were the red calf and the bull Bismarck: now
they must be supplied with hay. The horse and sheep got bran for their
dinner, but the stallion--the devil himself couldn’t tell what that
beast wanted! He was completely spoiled. He thrust his muzzle against
the grated top of his door, sniffed at something, and made grimaces:
he curled back his upper lip, bared his rose-coloured gums and white
teeth, distorted his nostrils. And Tikhon Ilitch, in a rage which
surprised even himself, suddenly yelled at him: “You spoiled pet, curse
you, may the lightning strike you!”
Again he had got his feet wet; he had a chill; it began to sleet--and
again he had recourse to the mountain-ash-berry brandy. He ate some
potatoes with sunflower-seed oil, and salted cucumbers, sour cabbage
soup with mushrooms added to it, and wheat groats. His face got red,
his head grew heavy.