sighing and saying reflectively to himself: "Yes. . . . To be sure. . .
. " By now it was dark, and here and there stars could be seen in the
sky. They had not yet lighted up indoors. Someone came into the parlour
as noiselessly as a shadow and stood still near the door. It was Lyubov
Osipovna, Zhmuhin's wife.
"Are you from the town?" she asked timidly, not looking at her visitor.
"Yes, I live in the town."
"Perhaps you are something in the learned way, sir; be so kind as to
advise us. We ought to send in a petition."
"To whom?" asked the visitor.
"We have two sons, kind gentleman, and they ought to have been sent to
school long ago, but we never see anyone and have no one to advise us.
And I know nothing. For if they are not taught they will have to serve
in the army as common Cossacks. It's not right, sir! They can't read and
write, they are worse than peasants, and Ivan Abramitch himself can't
stand them and won't let them indoors. But they are not to blame. The
younger one, at any rate, ought to be sent to school, it is such a
pity!" she said slowly, and there was a quiver in her voice; and it
seemed incredible that a woman so small and so youthful could have
grown-up children. "Oh, it's such a pity!"
"You don't know anything about it, mother, and it is not your affair,"
said Zhmuhin, appearing in the doorway. "Don't pester our guest with
your wild talk. Go away, mother!"
Lyubov Osipovna went out, and in the entry repeated once more in a thin
little voice: "Oh, it's such a pity!"
A bed was made up for the visitor on the sofa in the parlour, and that
it might not be dark for him they lighted the lamp before the ikon.
Zhmuhin went to bed in his own room. And as he lay there he thought of
his soul, of his age, of his recent stroke which had so frightened him
and made him think of death. He was fond of philosophizing when he was
in quietness by himself, and then he fancied that he was a very earnest,
deep thinker, and that nothing in this world interested him but serious
questions. And now he kept thinking and he longed to pitch upon some one
significant thought unlike others, which would be a guide to him in
life, and he wanted to think out principles of some sort for himself so
as to make his life as deep and earnest as he imagined that he felt
himself to be. It would be a good thing for an old man like him to
abstain altogether from meat, from superfluities of all sorts. The time
when men give up killing each other and animals would come sooner or
later, it could not but be so, and he imagined that time to himself and
clearly pictured himself living in peace with all the animals, and
suddenly he thought again of the pigs, and everything was in a tangle in
his brain.
"It's a queer business, Lord have mercy upon us," he muttered, sighing
heavily. "Are you asleep?" he asked.
"No."
Zhmuhin got out of bed and stopped in the doorway with nothing but his
shirt on, displaying to his guest his sinewy legs, that looked as dry as
sticks.
"Nowadays, you know," he began, "all sorts of telegraphs, telephones,
and marvels of all kinds, in fact, have come in, but people are no
better than they were. They say that in our day, thirty or forty years
ago, men were coarse and cruel; but isn't it just the same now? We
certainly did not stand on ceremony in our day. I remember in the
Caucasus when we were stationed by a little river with nothing to do for
four whole months--I was an under-officer at that time--something queer
happened, quite in the style of a novel. Just on the banks of that
river, you know, where our division was encamped, a wretched prince whom
we had killed not long before was buried. And at night, you know, the
princess used to come to his grave and weep. She would wail and wail,
and moan and moan, and make us so depressed we couldn't sleep, and
that's the fact. We couldn't sleep one night, we couldn't sleep a
second; well, we got sick of it. And from a common-sense point of view
you really can't go without your sleep for the devil knows what (excuse
the expression). We took that princess and gave her a good thrashing,
and she gave up coming. There's an instance for you. Nowadays, of
course, there is not the same class of people, and they are not given to
thrashing and they live in cleaner style, and there is more learning,
but, you know, the soul is just the same: there is no change. Now, look
here, there's a landowner living here among us; he has mines, you know;
all sorts of tramps without passports who don't know where to go work
for him. On Saturdays he has to settle up with the workmen, but he
doesn't care to pay them, you know, he grudges the money. So he's got
hold of a foreman who is a tramp too, though he does wear a hat. 'Don't
you pay them anything,' he says, 'not a kopeck; they'll beat you, and
let them beat you,' says he, 'but you put up with it, and I'll pay you
ten roubles every Saturday for it.' So on the Saturday evening the
workmen come to settle up in the usual way; the foreman says to them:
'Nothing!' Well, word for word, as the master said, they begin swearing
and using their fists. . . . They beat him and they kick him . . . you
know, they are a set of men brutalized by hunger--they beat him till he
is senseless, and then they go each on his way. The master gives orders
for cold water to be poured on the foreman, then flings ten roubles in
his face. And he takes it and is pleased too, for indeed he'd be ready
to be hanged for three roubles, let alone ten. Yes . . . and on Monday a
new gang of workmen arrive; they work, for they have nowhere to go . . .
. On Saturday it is the same story over again."
The visitor turned over on the other side with his face to the back of
the sofa and muttered something.
"And here's another instance," Zhmuhin went on. "We had the Siberian
plague here, you know--the cattle die off like flies, I can tell you--and
the veterinary surgeons came here, and strict orders were given that the
dead cattle were to be buried at a distance deep in the earth, that lime
was to be thrown over them, and so on, you know, on scientific
principles. My horse died too. I buried it with every precaution, and
threw over three hundredweight of lime over it. And what do you think?
My fine fellows--my precious sons, I mean--dug it up, skinned it, and sold
the hide for three roubles; there's an instance for you. So people have
grown no better, and however you feed a wolf he will always look towards
the forest; there it is. It gives one something to think about, eh? How
do you look at it?"
On one side a flash of lightning gleamed through a chink in the window-
blinds. There was the stifling feeling of a storm coming, the gnats were
biting, and Zhmuhin, as he lay in his bedroom meditating, sighed and
groaned and said to himself: "Yes, to be sure ----" and there was no
possibility of getting to sleep. Somewhere far, far away there was a
growl of thunder.
"Are you asleep?"
"No," answered the visitor.
Zhmuhin got up, and thudding with his heels walked through the parlour
and the entry to the kitchen to get a drink of water.
"The worst thing in the world, you know, is stupidity," he said a little
later, coming back with a dipper. "My Lyubov Osipovna is on her knees
saying her prayers. She prays every night, you know, and bows down to
the ground, first that her children may be sent to school; she is afraid
her boys will go into the army as simple Cossacks, and that they will be
whacked across their backs with sabres. But for teaching one must have
money, and where is one to get it? You may break the floor beating your
head against it, but if you haven't got it you haven't. And the other
reason she prays is because, you know, every woman imagines there is no
one in the world as unhappy as she is. I am a plain-spoken man, and I
don't want to conceal anything from you. She comes of a poor family, a
village priest's daughter. I married her when she was seventeen, and
they accepted my offer chiefly because they hadn't enough to eat; it was
nothing but poverty and misery, while I have anyway land, you see--a
farm--and after all I am an officer; it was a step up for her to marry
me, you know. On the very first day when she was married she cried, and
she has been crying ever since, all these twenty years; she has got a
watery eye. And she's always sitting and thinking, and what do you
suppose she is thinking about? What can a woman think about? Why,
nothing. I must own I don't consider a woman a human being."
The visitor got up abruptly and sat on the bed.
"Excuse me, I feel stifled," he said; "I will go outside."
Zhmuhin, still talking about women, drew the bolt in the entry and they
both went out. A full moon was floating in the sky just over the yard,
and in the moonlight the house and barn looked whiter than by day; and
on the grass brilliant streaks of moonlight, white too, stretched
between the black shadows. Far away on the right could be seen the
steppe, above it the stars were softly glowing--and it was all
mysterious, infinitely far away, as though one were gazing into a deep
abyss; while on the left heavy storm-clouds, black as soot, were piling
up one upon another above the steppe; their edges were lighted up by the
moon, and it looked as though there were mountains there with white snow
on their peaks, dark forests, the sea. There was a flash of lightning, a
faint rumble of thunder, and it seemed as though a battle were being
fought in the mountains.
Quite close to the house a little night-owl screeched monotonously:
"Asleep! asleep!"
"What time is it now?" asked the visitor.
"Just after one."
"How long it is still to dawn!"
They went back to the house and lay down again. It was time to sleep,
and one can usually sleep so splendidly before rain; but the old man had
a hankering after serious, weighty thoughts; he wanted not simply to
think but to meditate, and he meditated how good it would be, as death
was near at hand, for the sake of his soul to give up the idleness which
so imperceptibly swallowed up day after day, year after year, leaving no
trace; to think out for himself some great exploit--for instance, to walk
on foot far, far away, or to give up meat like this young man. And again
he pictured to himself the time when animals would not be killed,
pictured it clearly and distinctly as though he were living through that
time himself; but suddenly it was all in a tangle again in his head and
all was muddled.
The thunderstorm had passed over, but from the edges of the storm-clouds
came rain softly pattering on the roof. Zhmuhin got up, stretching and
groaning with old age, and looked into the parlour. Noticing that his
visitor was not asleep, he said:
"When we were in the Caucasus, you know, there was a colonel there who
was a vegetarian, too; he didn't eat meat, never went shooting, and
would not let his servants catch fish. Of course, I understand that
every animal ought to live in freedom and enjoy its life; only I don't
understand how a pig can go about where it likes without being looked
after. . . ."
The visitor got up and sat down. His pale, haggard face expressed
weariness and vexation; it was evident that he was exhausted, and only
his gentleness and the delicacy of his soul prevented him from
expressing his vexation in words.
"It's getting light," he said mildly. "Please have the horse brought
round for me."
"Why so? Wait a little and the rain will be over."
"No, I entreat you," said the visitor in horror, with a supplicating
voice; "it is essential for me to go at once."
And he began hurriedly dressing.
By the time the horse was harnessed the sun was rising. It had just left
off raining, the clouds were racing swiftly by, and the patches of blue
were growing bigger and bigger in the sky. The first rays of the sun
were timidly reflected below in the big puddles. The visitor walked
through the entry with his portfolio to get into the trap, and at that
moment Zhmuhin's wife, pale, and it seemed paler than the day before,
with tear-stained eyes, looked at him intently without blinking, with
the naïve expression of a little girl, and it was evident from her
dejected face that she was envying him his freedom--oh, with what joy she
would have gone away from there!--and she wanted to say something to him,
most likely to ask advice about her children. And what a pitiable figure
she was! This was not a wife, not the head of a house, not even a
servant, but more like a dependent, a poor relation not wanted by
anyone, a nonentity . . . . Her husband, fussing about, talking
unceasingly, was seeing his visitor off, continually running in front of
him, while she huddled up to the wall with a timid, guilty air, waiting
for a convenient minute to speak.
"Please come again another time," the old man kept repeating
incessantly; "what we have we are glad to offer, you know."
The visitor hurriedly got into the trap, evidently with relief, as
though he were afraid every minute that they would detain him. The trap
lurched about as it had the day before, squeaked, and furiously rattled
the pail that was tied on at the back. He glanced round at Zhmuhin with
a peculiar expression; it looked as though he wanted to call him a
Petchenyeg, as the surveyor had once done, or some such name, but his
gentleness got the upper hand. He controlled himself and said nothing.
But in the gateway he suddenly could not restrain himself; he got up and
shouted loudly and angrily:
"You have bored me to death."
And he disappeared through the gate.
Near the barn Zhmuhin's sons were standing; the elder held a gun, while
the younger had in his hands a grey cockerel with a bright red comb. The
younger flung up the cockerel with all his might; the bird flew upwards
higher than the house and turned over in the air like a pigeon. The
elder boy fired and the cockerel fell like a stone.
The old man, overcome with confusion, not knowing how to explain the
visitor's strange, unexpected shout, went slowly back into the house.
And sitting down at the table he spent a long while meditating on the
intellectual tendencies of the day, on the universal immorality, on the
telegraph, on the telephone, on velocipedes, on how unnecessary it all
was; little by little he regained his composure, then slowly had a meal,
drank five glasses of tea, and lay down for a nap.
A DEAD BODY
A STILL August night. A mist is rising slowly from the fields and
casting an opaque veil over everything within eyesight. Lighted up by
the moon, the mist gives the impression at one moment of a calm,
boundless sea, at the next of an immense white wall. The air is damp and
chilly. Morning is still far off. A step from the bye-road which runs
along the edge of the forest a little fire is gleaming. A dead body,
covered from head to foot with new white linen, is lying under a young
oak-tree. A wooden ikon is lying on its breast. Beside the corpse almost
on the road sits the "watch"--two peasants performing one of the most
disagreeable and uninviting of peasants' duties. One, a tall young
fellow with a scarcely perceptible moustache and thick black eyebrows,
in a tattered sheepskin and bark shoes, is sitting on the wet grass, his
feet stuck out straight in front of him, and is trying to while away the
time with work. He bends his long neck, and breathing loudly through his
nose, makes a spoon out of a big crooked bit of wood; the other--a little
scraggy, pock-marked peasant with an aged face, a scanty moustache, and
a little goat's beard--sits with his hands dangling loose on his knees,
and without moving gazes listlessly at the light. A small camp-fire is
lazily burning down between them, throwing a red glow on their faces.
There is perfect stillness. The only sounds are the scrape of the knife
on the wood and the crackling of damp sticks in the fire.
"Don't you go to sleep, Syoma . . ." says the young man.
"I . . . I am not asleep . . ." stammers the goat-beard.
"That's all right. . . . It would be dreadful to sit here alone, one
would be frightened. You might tell me something, Syoma."
"You are a queer fellow, Syomushka! Other people will laugh and tell a
story and sing a song, but you--there is no making you out. You sit like
a scarecrow in the garden and roll your eyes at the fire. You can't say
anything properly . . . when you speak you seem frightened. I dare say
you are fifty, but you have less sense than a child. Aren't you sorry
that you are a simpleton?"
"I am sorry," the goat-beard answers gloomily.
"And we are sorry to see your foolishness, you may be sure. You are a
good-natured, sober peasant, and the only trouble is that you have no
sense in your head. You should have picked up some sense for yourself if
the Lord has afflicted you and given you no understanding. You must make
an effort, Syoma. . . . You should listen hard when anything good's
being said, note it well, and keep thinking and thinking. . . . If there
is any word you don't understand, you should make an effort and think
over in your head in what meaning the word is used. Do you see? Make an
effort! If you don't gain some sense for yourself you'll be a simpleton
and of no account at all to your dying day."
All at once a long drawn-out, moaning sound is heard in the forest.
Something rustles in the leaves as though torn from the very top of the
tree and falls to the ground. All this is faintly repeated by the echo.
The young man shudders and looks enquiringly at his companion.
"It's an owl at the little birds," says Syoma, gloomily.
"Why, Syoma, it's time for the birds to fly to the warm countries!"
"To be sure, it is time."
"It is chilly at dawn now. It is co-old. The crane is a chilly creature,
it is tender. Such cold is death to it. I am not a crane, but I am
frozen. . . . Put some more wood on!"
Syoma gets up and disappears in the dark undergrowth. While he is busy
among the bushes, breaking dry twigs, his companion puts his hand over
his eyes and starts at every sound. Syoma brings an armful of wood and
lays it on the fire. The flame irresolutely licks the black twigs with
its little tongues, then suddenly, as though at the word of command,
catches them and throws a crimson light on the faces, the road, the
white linen with its prominences where the hands and feet of the corpse
raise it, the ikon. The "watch" is silent. The young man bends his neck
still lower and sets to work with still more nervous haste. The goat-
beard sits motionless as before and keeps his eyes fixed on the fire. .
. .
"Ye that love not Zion . . . shall be put to shame by the Lord." A
falsetto voice is suddenly heard singing in the stillness of the night,
then slow footsteps are audible, and the dark figure of a man in a short
monkish cassock and a broad-brimmed hat, with a wallet on his shoulders,
comes into sight on the road in the crimson firelight.
"Thy will be done, O Lord! Holy Mother!" the figure says in a husky
falsetto. "I saw the fire in the outer darkness and my soul leapt for
joy. . . . At first I thought it was men grazing a drove of horses, then
I thought it can't be that, since no horses were to be seen. 'Aren't
they thieves,' I wondered, 'aren't they robbers lying in wait for a rich
Lazarus? Aren't they the gypsy people offering sacrifices to idols? And
my soul leapt for joy. 'Go, Feodosy, servant of God,' I said to myself,
'and win a martyr's crown!' And I flew to the fire like a light-winged
moth. Now I stand before you, and from your outer aspect I judge of your
souls: you are not thieves and you are not heathens. Peace be to you!"
"Good-evening."
"Good orthodox people, do you know how to reach the Makuhinsky
Brickyards from here?"
"It's close here. You go straight along the road; when you have gone a
mile and a half there will be Ananova, our village. From the village,
father, you turn to the right by the river-bank, and so you will get to
the brickyards. It's two miles from Ananova."
"God give you health. And why are you sitting here?"
"We are sitting here watching. You see, there is a dead body. . . ."
"What? what body? Holy Mother!"
The pilgrim sees the white linen with the ikon on it, and starts so
violently that his legs give a little skip. This unexpected sight has an
overpowering effect upon him. He huddles together and stands as though
rooted to the spot, with wide-open mouth and staring eyes. For three
minutes he is silent as though he could not believe his eyes, then
begins muttering:
"O Lord! Holy Mother! I was going along not meddling with anyone, and
all at once such an affliction."
"What may you be?" enquires the young man. "Of the clergy?"
"No . . . no. . . . I go from one monastery to another. . . . Do you
know Mi . . . Mihail Polikarpitch, the foreman of the brickyard? Well, I
am his nephew. . . . Thy will be done, O Lord! Why are you here?"
"We are watching . . . we are told to."
"Yes, yes . . ." mutters the man in the cassock, passing his hand over
his eyes. "And where did the deceased come from?"
"He was a stranger."
"Such is life! But I'll . . . er . . . be getting on, brothers. . . . I
feel flustered. I am more afraid of the dead than of anything, my dear
souls! And only fancy! while this man was alive he wasn't noticed, while
now when he is dead and given over to corruption we tremble before him
as before some famous general or a bishop. . . . Such is life; was he
murdered, or what?"
"The Lord knows! Maybe he was murdered, or maybe he died of himself."
"Yes, yes. . . . Who knows, brothers? Maybe his soul is now tasting the
joys of Paradise."
"His soul is still hovering here, near his body," says the young man.
"It does not depart from the body for three days."
"H'm, yes! . . . How chilly the nights are now! It sets one's teeth
chattering. . . . So then I am to go straight on and on? . . ."
"Till you get to the village, and then you turn to the right by the
river-bank."
"By the river-bank. . . . To be sure. . . . Why am I standing still? I
must go on. Farewell, brothers."
The man in the cassock takes five steps along the road and stops.
"I've forgotten to put a kopeck for the burying," he says. "Good
orthodox friends, can I give the money?"
"You ought to know best, you go the round of the monasteries. If he died
a natural death it would go for the good of his soul; if it's a suicide
it's a sin."
"That's true. . . . And maybe it really was a suicide! So I had better
keep my money. Oh, sins, sins! Give me a thousand roubles and I would
not consent to sit here. . . . Farewell, brothers."
The cassock slowly moves away and stops again.
"I can't make up my mind what I am to do," he mutters. "To stay here by
the fire and wait till daybreak. . . . I am frightened; to go on is
dreadful, too. The dead man will haunt me all the way in the darkness. .
. . The Lord has chastised me indeed! Over three hundred miles I have
come on foot and nothing happened, and now I am near home and there's
trouble. I can't go on. . . ."
"It is dreadful, that is true."
"I am not afraid of wolves, of thieves, or of darkness, but I am afraid
of the dead. I am afraid of them, and that is all about it. Good
orthodox brothers, I entreat you on my knees, see me to the village."
"We've been told not to go away from the body."
"No one will see, brothers. Upon my soul, no one will see! The Lord will
reward you a hundredfold! Old man, come with me, I beg! Old man! Why are
you silent?"
"He is a bit simple," says the young man.
"You come with me, friend; I will give you five kopecks."
"For five kopecks I might," says the young man, scratching his head,
"but I was told not to. If Syoma here, our simpleton, will stay alone, I
will take you. Syoma, will you stay here alone?"
"I'll stay," the simpleton consents.
"Well, that's all right, then. Come along!" The young man gets up, and
goes with the cassock. A minute later the sound of their steps and their
talk dies away. Syoma shuts his eyes and gently dozes. The fire begins
to grow dim, and a big black shadow falls on the dead body.
A HAPPY ENDING
LYUBOV GRIGORYEVNA, a substantial, buxom lady of forty who undertook
matchmaking and many other matters of which it is usual to speak only in
whispers, had come to see Stytchkin, the head guard, on a day when he
was off duty. Stytchkin, somewhat embarrassed, but, as always, grave,
practical, and severe, was walking up and down the room, smoking a cigar
and saying: