The promontory and Durnovka lived in a state of perpetual enmity
and mutual disdain, as adjoining villages always do. The promontory
dwellers regarded the Durnovka folk in the light of bandits and
beggars, while the Durnovka people returned the compliment precisely
and in full measure. Durnovka was “gentry property,” while on the
promontory dwelt “boors,” one-farm petty owners--more properly
speaking, the remains of the one-farm people who had emigrated to
the Tomsk Government. Odnodvorka was the only person who was not
included in this enmity, these quarrels. Small, thin, dependable, she
was lively, even-tempered, and agreeable in intercourse; and she was
observant. She knew every family on the promontory and in Durnovka as
well as if it were her own; she was the first to inform the manor-house
of every smallest happening in the life of the village. And every one
was also thoroughly well acquainted with her life.
She never concealed anything from anybody; she talked calmly and
simply about her husband and Durnovo and stated that she had become a
procuress when he went away. “What could I do?” she said, with a faint
sigh. “I was dreadfully poor; I had not enough bread even after the new
harvest. My good husband loved me, to speak the plain truth, but one
has to submit, you know. The master gave three whole carloads of rye
for me. ‘What can I do?’ I said to my husband. ’Twas plain, I must go,
he said. He went for the rye, dragged home measure after measure, and
his tears drip-dripped, drip-dripped all the while.”
And, after a moment’s thought, she added:
“Well, and later on, when the master went away, and my husband went to
Rostoff, I began to bring people together, as chance occurred. You’re
immoral dogs, the Lord forgive you!”
By day she toiled, never pausing for a moment; by night she mended,
sewed, stole snow-screens from the railway. Once late at night, when
Kuzma was driving to Tikhon Ilitch, he ascended a hillock and halted
paralyzed with fright: across the ploughed land, half deluged in
darkness, on a faintly smouldering strip of the sunset, something
black, huge, sprang up and bore down smoothly on Kuzma.
“Who’s that?” he shouted feebly, tugging at his reins.
“Oï!” feebly and in affright shouted that which had so swiftly and
smoothly sprung up against the sky; and it disappeared with a crash.
Kuzma recovered himself--and instantly recognized, in the darkness,
Odnodvorka. She had been running toward him on her light, unshod feet,
all bent together with the weight of two screens a fathom long--the
sort that are set up, in winter, along the railway line, to protect it
from snowdrifts. And, having rearranged herself, she whispered, with a
quiet laugh:
“You frightened me to death. When one runs off somewhere of a night,
one is all a-tremble, but what can one do? The whole village uses these
for firewood, and that’s the only way we save ourselves from freezing.”
The farm-hand Koshel, on the other hand, was a man not devoid of
interest. There was nothing one could talk about with him, and he was
not loquacious by nature. Like the majority of the Durnovka people, he
merely repeated antiquated, insignificant apophthegms, reasserted that
which had been known for many a long year. If the weather turned bad
he cast an eye at the sky: “The weather’s spoiling. Rain is what the
growing green things most need at the present moment.” The fields were
ploughed a second time, and he remarked: “If you won’t give a second
ploughing you’ll be left without bread. That’s what the old people have
always said.”
He had been a soldier in his day--had been in the Caucasus--but the
military life had left no traces on him. He was unable to pronounce the
word “post-office” properly: he called it “spost-office.” He could tell
absolutely nothing whatsoever about the Caucasus, with the exception of
the facts that mountain followed mountain there, and that terribly hot
and strange waters spurted out of the ground. If you placed a piece of
mutton in them, it was boiled in one minute, and if you didn’t take it
out at the proper time, it got raw again. And he was not in the least
proud of the fact that he had seen the world; he even bore himself
with scorn toward people who knew the world. It is well understood
that people only “rove about” because they are forced to do so, or
through poverty. He never believed a single rumour--“all lies!”--but he
did believe, and swore to it as a fact, that not long ago a witch had
rolled in the form of a wheel through the twilight shades near Basovka,
and that one peasant, who was no fool, had taken and caught hold of
that wheel and thrust his belt through the hub and tied it fast.
“Well, and what happened next?” asked Kuzma.
“What?” replied Koshel. “That witch waked up early in the morning,
and, lo and behold, that belt was sticking out her mouth and behind,
and was tied fast over her stomach.”
“But why didn’t she untie it?”
“Evidently, the knot had had the sign of the cross made over it.”
“And aren’t you ashamed to believe such nonsense?”
“What is there for me to be ashamed of? People lie, and I let them
talk.”
So Kuzma only liked to hear the man’s songs. As he sat in the darkness
at the open window, without a light anywhere, with the village barely
discernible like a black spot on the other side of the ravine, it was
so quiet round about that the apples could be heard falling from the
wild apple trees beyond the corner of the house. And Koshel walked
slowly about the farmyard with his mallet, and with a serene melancholy
hummed to himself in his falsetto voice: “Cease your song, canary,
little bird.” He kept watch over the manor until morning and slept
by day. He had hardly anything to do: Tikhon Ilitch had made haste
to settle up Durnovka affairs betimes that year, and out of all the
cattle only one horse and a cow remained. So things were quiet, even
rather boresome, at the manor-house. The clear days were followed
by colder days, bluish-grey, soundless. The goldfinches and tomtits
began to whistle in the bare park, the cross-bills to pipe in the fir
trees, the cedar-birds made their appearance, bullfinches, and some
sort of leisurely tiny birds which hopped in flocks from place to
place on the threshing-floor, whose supports were already sprouting
with bright green new growths; sometimes a very silent, light little
bird of that sort perched all alone on a spear of grass in the field.
In the vegetable gardens behind Durnovka, the last potatoes were
being dug among the sheaves. And at times, as evening drew on, some
one of the peasants would stand there for a long space, absorbed in
thought and gazing at the fields, as he bore on his back a plaited
basket filled with ears of grain. Darkness began to fall early, and at
the manor-house they said: “How late the train passes by nowadays!”
although there had been no change in the schedule of the trains. Kuzma
sat near the window and read newspapers all day long; he had written
down his spring trip to Kazakovo and his conversations with Akim; he
had jotted down remarks in an old account book--all he had seen and
heard in the village. What occupied his attention most of all was
Syery, the Grey Man.