and down. He was absorbed in his grievance and was oblivious of the
boy's presence, as he always had been. He, a grownup, serious person,
had no thought to spare for boys. And Alyosha sat down in the corner and
told Sonia with horror how he had been deceived. He was trembling,
stammering, and crying. It was the first time in his life that he had
been brought into such coarse contact with lying; till then he had not
known that there are in the world, besides sweet pears, pies, and
expensive watches, a great many things for which the language of
children has no expression.
The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories
THE COOK'S WEDDING
GRISHA, a fat, solemn little person of seven, was standing by the
kitchen door listening and peeping through the keyhole. In the kitchen
something extraordinary, and in his opinion never seen before, was
taking place. A big, thick-set, red-haired peasant, with a beard, and a
drop of perspiration on his nose, wearing a cabman's full coat, was
sitting at the kitchen table on which they chopped the meat and sliced
the onions. He was balancing a saucer on the five fingers of his right
hand and drinking tea out of it, and crunching sugar so loudly that it
sent a shiver down Grisha's back. Aksinya Stepanovna, the old nurse, was
sitting on the dirty stool facing him, and she, too, was drinking tea.
Her face was grave, though at the same time it beamed with a kind of
triumph. Pelageya, the cook, was busy at the stove, and was apparently
trying to hide her face. And on her face Grisha saw a regular
illumination: it was burning and shifting through every shade of colour,
beginning with a crimson purple and ending with a deathly white. She was
continually catching hold of knives, forks, bits of wood, and rags with
trembling hands, moving, grumbling to herself, making a clatter, but in
reality doing nothing. She did not once glance at the table at which
they were drinking tea, and to the questions put to her by the nurse she
gave jerky, sullen answers without turning her face.
"Help yourself, Danilo Semyonitch," the nurse urged him hospitably. "Why
do you keep on with tea and nothing but tea? You should have a drop of
vodka!"
And nurse put before the visitor a bottle of vodka and a wine-glass,
while her face wore a very wily expression.
"I never touch it. . . . No . . ." said the cabman, declining. "Don't
press me, Aksinya Stepanovna."
"What a man! . . . A cabman and not drink! . . . A bachelor can't get on
without drinking. Help yourself!"
The cabman looked askance at the bottle, then at nurse's wily face, and
his own face assumed an expression no less cunning, as much as to say,
"You won't catch me, you old witch!"
"I don't drink; please excuse me. Such a weakness does not do in our
calling. A man who works at a trade may drink, for he sits at home, but
we cabmen are always in view of the public. Aren't we? If one goes into
a pothouse one finds one's horse gone; if one takes a drop too much it
is worse still; before you know where you are you will fall asleep or
slip off the box. That's where it is."
"And how much do you make a day, Danilo Semyonitch?"
"That's according. One day you will have a fare for three roubles, and
another day you will come back to the yard without a farthing. The days
are very different. Nowadays our business is no good. There are lots and
lots of cabmen as you know, hay is dear, and folks are paltry nowadays
and always contriving to go by tram. And yet, thank God, I have nothing
to complain of. I have plenty to eat and good clothes to wear, and . . .
we could even provide well for another. . ." (the cabman stole a glance
at Pelageya) "if it were to their liking. . . ."
Grisha did not hear what was said further. His mamma came to the door
and sent him to the nursery to learn his lessons.
"Go and learn your lesson. It's not your business to listen here!"
When Grisha reached the nursery, he put "My Own Book" in front of him,
but he did not get on with his reading. All that he had just seen and
heard aroused a multitude of questions in his mind.
"The cook's going to be married," he thought. "Strange--I don't
understand what people get married for. Mamma was married to papa,
Cousin Verotchka to Pavel Andreyitch. But one might be married to papa
and Pavel Andreyitch after all: they have gold watch-chains and nice
suits, their boots are always polished; but to marry that dreadful
cabman with a red nose and felt boots. . . . Fi! And why is it nurse
wants poor Pelageya to be married?"
When the visitor had gone out of the kitchen, Pelageya appeared and
began clearing away. Her agitation still persisted. Her face was red and
looked scared. She scarcely touched the floor with the broom, and swept
every corner five times over. She lingered for a long time in the room
where mamma was sitting. She was evidently oppressed by her isolation,
and she was longing to express herself, to share her impressions with
some one, to open her heart.
"He's gone," she muttered, seeing that mamma would not begin the
conversation.
"One can see he is a good man," said mamma, not taking her eyes off her
sewing. "Sober and steady."
"I declare I won't marry him, mistress!" Pelageya cried suddenly,
flushing crimson. "I declare I won't!"
"Don't be silly; you are not a child. It's a serious step; you must
think it over thoroughly, it's no use talking nonsense. Do you like
him?"
"What an idea, mistress!" cried Pelageya, abashed. "They say such things
that . . . my goodness. . . ."
"She should say she doesn't like him!" thought Grisha.
"What an affected creature you are. . . . Do you like him?"
"But he is old, mistress!"
"Think of something else," nurse flew out at her from the next room. "He
has not reached his fortieth year; and what do you want a young man for?
Handsome is as handsome does. . . . Marry him and that's all about it!"
"I swear I won't," squealed Pelageya.
"You are talking nonsense. What sort of rascal do you want? Anyone else
would have bowed down to his feet, and you declare you won't marry him.
You want to be always winking at the postmen and tutors. That tutor that
used to come to Grishenka, mistress . . . she was never tired of making
eyes at him. O-o, the shameless hussy!"
"Have you seen this Danilo before?" mamma asked Pelageya.
"How could I have seen him? I set eyes on him to-day for the first time.
Aksinya picked him up and brought him along . . . the accursed devil. .
. . And where has he come from for my undoing!"
At dinner, when Pelageya was handing the dishes, everyone looked into
her face and teased her about the cabman. She turned fearfully red, and
went off into a forced giggle.
"It must be shameful to get married," thought Grisha. "Terribly
shameful."
All the dishes were too salt, and blood oozed from the half-raw
chickens, and, to cap it all, plates and knives kept dropping out of
Pelageya's hands during dinner, as though from a shelf that had given
way; but no one said a word of blame to her, as they all understood the
state of her feelings. Only once papa flicked his table-napkin angrily
and said to mamma:
"What do you want to be getting them all married for? What business is
it of yours? Let them get married of themselves if they want to."
After dinner, neighbouring cooks and maidservants kept flitting into the
kitchen, and there was the sound of whispering till late evening. How
they had scented out the matchmaking, God knows. When Grisha woke in the
night he heard his nurse and the cook whispering together in the
nursery. Nurse was talking persuasively, while the cook alternately
sobbed and giggled. When he fell asleep after this, Grisha dreamed of
Pelageya being carried off by Tchernomor and a witch.
Next day there was a calm. The life of the kitchen went on its
accustomed way as though the cabman did not exist. Only from time to
time nurse put on her new shawl, assumed a solemn and austere air, and
went off somewhere for an hour or two, obviously to conduct
negotiations. . . . Pelageya did not see the cabman, and when his name
was mentioned she flushed up and cried:
"May he be thrice damned! As though I should be thinking of him! Tfoo!"
In the evening mamma went into the kitchen, while nurse and Pelageya
were zealously mincing something, and said:
"You can marry him, of course--that's your business--but I must tell you,
Pelageya, that he cannot live here. . . . You know I don't like to have
anyone sitting in the kitchen. Mind now, remember . . . . And I can't
let you sleep out."
"Goodness knows! What an idea, mistress!" shrieked the cook. "Why do you
keep throwing him up at me? Plague take him! He's a regular curse,
confound him! . . ."
Glancing one Sunday morning into the kitchen, Grisha was struck dumb
with amazement. The kitchen was crammed full of people. Here were cooks
from the whole courtyard, the porter, two policemen, a non-commissioned
officer with good-conduct stripes, and the boy Filka. . . . This Filka
was generally hanging about the laundry playing with the dogs; now he
was combed and washed, and was holding an ikon in a tinfoil setting.
Pelageya was standing in the middle of the kitchen in a new cotton
dress, with a flower on her head. Beside her stood the cabman. The happy
pair were red in the face and perspiring and blinking with
embarrassment.
"Well . . . I fancy it is time," said the non-commissioned officer,
after a prolonged silence.
Pelageya's face worked all over and she began blubbering. . . .
The soldier took a big loaf from the table, stood beside nurse, and
began blessing the couple. The cabman went up to the soldier, flopped
down on his knees, and gave a smacking kiss on his hand. He did the same
before nurse. Pelageya followed him mechanically, and she too bowed down
to the ground. At last the outer door was opened, there was a whiff of
white mist, and the whole party flocked noisily out of the kitchen into
the yard.
"Poor thing, poor thing," thought Grisha, hearing the sobs of the cook.
"Where have they taken her? Why don't papa and mamma protect her?"
After the wedding there was singing and concertina-playing in the
laundry till late evening. Mamma was cross all the evening because nurse
smelt of vodka, and owing to the wedding there was no one to heat the
samovar. Pelageya had not come back by the time Grisha went to bed.
"The poor thing is crying somewhere in the dark!" he thought. "While the
cabman is saying to her 'shut up!'"
Next morning the cook was in the kitchen again. The cabman came in for a
minute. He thanked mamma, and glancing sternly at Pelageya, said:
"Will you look after her, madam? Be a father and a mother to her. And
you, too, Aksinya Stepanovna, do not forsake her, see that everything is
as it should be . . . without any nonsense. . . . And also, madam, if
you would kindly advance me five roubles of her wages. I have got to buy
a new horse-collar."
Again a problem for Grisha: Pelageya was living in freedom, doing as she
liked, and not having to account to anyone for her actions, and all at
once, for no sort of reason, a stranger turns up, who has somehow
acquired rights over her conduct and her property! Grisha was
distressed. He longed passionately, almost to tears, to comfort this
victim, as he supposed, of man's injustice. Picking out the very biggest
apple in the store-room he stole into the kitchen, slipped it into
Pelageya's hand, and darted headlong away.
SLEEPY
NIGHT. Varka, the little nurse, a girl of thirteen, is rocking the
cradle in which the baby is lying, and humming hardly audibly:
"Hush-a-bye, my baby wee, While I sing a song for thee."
A little green lamp is burning before the ikon; there is a string
stretched from one end of the room to the other, on which baby-clothes
and a pair of big black trousers are hanging. There is a big patch of
green on the ceiling from the ikon lamp, and the baby-clothes and the
trousers throw long shadows on the stove, on the cradle, and on Varka. .
. . When the lamp begins to flicker, the green patch and the shadows
come to life, and are set in motion, as though by the wind. It is
stuffy. There is a smell of cabbage soup, and of the inside of a boot-
shop.
The baby's crying. For a long while he has been hoarse and exhausted
with crying; but he still goes on screaming, and there is no knowing
when he will stop. And Varka is sleepy. Her eyes are glued together, her
head droops, her neck aches. She cannot move her eyelids or her lips,
and she feels as though her face is dried and wooden, as though her head
has become as small as the head of a pin.
"Hush-a-bye, my baby wee," she hums, "while I cook the groats for thee.
. . ."
A cricket is churring in the stove. Through the door in the next room
the master and the apprentice Afanasy are snoring. . . . The cradle
creaks plaintively, Varka murmurs--and it all blends into that soothing
music of the night to which it is so sweet to listen, when one is lying
in bed. Now that music is merely irritating and oppressive, because it
goads her to sleep, and she must not sleep; if Varka--God forbid!--should
fall asleep, her master and mistress would beat her.
The lamp flickers. The patch of green and the shadows are set in motion,
forcing themselves on Varka's fixed, half-open eyes, and in her half
slumbering brain are fashioned into misty visions. She sees dark clouds
chasing one another over the sky, and screaming like the baby. But then
the wind blows, the clouds are gone, and Varka sees a broad high road
covered with liquid mud; along the high road stretch files of wagons,
while people with wallets on their backs are trudging along and shadows
flit backwards and forwards; on both sides she can see forests through
the cold harsh mist. All at once the people with their wallets and their
shadows fall on the ground in the liquid mud. "What is that for?" Varka
asks. "To sleep, to sleep!" they answer her. And they fall sound asleep,
and sleep sweetly, while crows and magpies sit on the telegraph wires,
scream like the baby, and try to wake them.
"Hush-a-bye, my baby wee, and I will sing a song to thee," murmurs
Varka, and now she sees herself in a dark stuffy hut.
Her dead father, Yefim Stepanov, is tossing from side to side on the
floor. She does not see him, but she hears him moaning and rolling on
the floor from pain. "His guts have burst," as he says; the pain is so
violent that he cannot utter a single word, and can only draw in his
breath and clack his teeth like the rattling of a drum:
"Boo--boo--boo--boo. . . ."
Her mother, Pelageya, has run to the master's house to say that Yefim is
dying. She has been gone a long time, and ought to be back. Varka lies
awake on the stove, and hears her father's "boo--boo--boo." And then she
hears someone has driven up to the hut. It is a young doctor from the
town, who has been sent from the big house where he is staying on a
visit. The doctor comes into the hut; he cannot be seen in the darkness,
but he can be heard coughing and rattling the door.
"Light a candle," he says.
"Boo--boo--boo," answers Yefim.
Pelageya rushes to the stove and begins looking for the broken pot with
the matches. A minute passes in silence. The doctor, feeling in his
pocket, lights a match.
"In a minute, sir, in a minute," says Pelageya. She rushes out of the
hut, and soon afterwards comes back with a bit of candle.
Yefim's cheeks are rosy and his eyes are shining, and there is a
peculiar keenness in his glance, as though he were seeing right through
the hut and the doctor.
"Come, what is it? What are you thinking about?" says the doctor,
bending down to him. "Aha! have you had this long?"
"What? Dying, your honour, my hour has come. . . . I am not to stay
among the living."
"Don't talk nonsense! We will cure you!"
"That's as you please, your honour, we humbly thank you, only we
understand. . . . Since death has come, there it is."
The doctor spends a quarter of an hour over Yefim, then he gets up and
says:
"I can do nothing. You must go into the hospital, there they will
operate on you. Go at once . . . You must go! It's rather late, they
will all be asleep in the hospital, but that doesn't matter, I will give
you a note. Do you hear?"
"Kind sir, but what can he go in?" says Pelageya. "We have no horse."
"Never mind. I'll ask your master, he'll let you have a horse."
The doctor goes away, the candle goes out, and again there is the sound
of "boo--boo--boo." Half an hour later someone drives up to the hut. A
cart has been sent to take Yefim to the hospital. He gets ready and
goes. . . .
But now it is a clear bright morning. Pelageya is not at home; she has
gone to the hospital to find what is being done to Yefim. Somewhere
there is a baby crying, and Varka hears someone singing with her own
voice:
"Hush-a-bye, my baby wee, I will sing a song to thee."
Pelageya comes back; she crosses herself and whispers:
"They put him to rights in the night, but towards morning he gave up his
soul to God. . . . The Kingdom of Heaven be his and peace everlasting. .
. . They say he was taken too late. . . . He ought to have gone sooner.
. . ."
Varka goes out into the road and cries there, but all at once someone
hits her on the back of her head so hard that her forehead knocks
against a birch tree. She raises her eyes, and sees facing her, her
master, the shoemaker.
"What are you about, you scabby slut?" he says. "The child is crying,
and you are asleep!"
He gives her a sharp slap behind the ear, and she shakes her head, rocks
the cradle, and murmurs her song. The green patch and the shadows from
the trousers and the baby-clothes move up and down, nod to her, and soon
take possession of her brain again. Again she sees the high road covered
with liquid mud. The people with wallets on their backs and the shadows
have lain down and are fast asleep. Looking at them, Varka has a
passionate longing for sleep; she would lie down with enjoyment, but her
mother Pelageya is walking beside her, hurrying her on. They are
hastening together to the town to find situations.
"Give alms, for Christ's sake!" her mother begs of the people they meet.
"Show us the Divine Mercy, kind-hearted gentlefolk!"
"Give the baby here!" a familiar voice answers. "Give the baby here!"
the same voice repeats, this time harshly and angrily. "Are you asleep,
you wretched girl?"
Varka jumps up, and looking round grasps what is the matter: there is no
high road, no Pelageya, no people meeting them, there is only her
mistress, who has come to feed the baby, and is standing in the middle
of the room. While the stout, broad-shouldered woman nurses the child
and soothes it, Varka stands looking at her and waiting till she has
done. And outside the windows the air is already turning blue, the
shadows and the green patch on the ceiling are visibly growing pale, it
will soon be morning.
"Take him," says her mistress, buttoning up her chemise over her bosom;
"he is crying. He must be bewitched."
Varka takes the baby, puts him in the cradle and begins rocking it
again. The green patch and the shadows gradually disappear, and now
there is nothing to force itself on her eyes and cloud her brain. But
she is as sleepy as before, fearfully sleepy! Varka lays her head on the
edge of the cradle, and rocks her whole body to overcome her sleepiness,
but yet her eyes are glued together, and her head is heavy.
"Varka, heat the stove!" she hears the master's voice through the door.
So it is time to get up and set to work. Varka leaves the cradle, and
runs to the shed for firewood. She is glad. When one moves and runs
about, one is not so sleepy as when one is sitting down. She brings the
wood, heats the stove, and feels that her wooden face is getting supple
again, and that her thoughts are growing clearer.
"Varka, set the samovar!" shouts her mistress.
Varka splits a piece of wood, but has scarcely time to light the
splinters and put them in the samovar, when she hears a fresh order:
"Varka, clean the master's goloshes!"
She sits down on the floor, cleans the goloshes, and thinks how nice it
would be to put her head into a big deep golosh, and have a little nap
in it. . . . And all at once the golosh grows, swells, fills up the
whole room. Varka drops the brush, but at once shakes her head, opens
her eyes wide, and tries to look at things so that they may not grow big
and move before her eyes.
"Varka, wash the steps outside; I am ashamed for the customers to see
them!"
Varka washes the steps, sweeps and dusts the rooms, then heats another
stove and runs to the shop. There is a great deal of work: she hasn't
one minute free.
But nothing is so hard as standing in the same place at the kitchen
table peeling potatoes. Her head droops over the table, the potatoes
dance before her eyes, the knife tumbles out of her hand while her fat,
angry mistress is moving about near her with her sleeves tucked up,
talking so loud that it makes a ringing in Varka's ears. It is
agonising, too, to wait at dinner, to wash, to sew, there are minutes
when she longs to flop on to the floor regardless of everything, and to
sleep.
The day passes. Seeing the windows getting dark, Varka presses her
temples that feel as though they were made of wood, and smiles, though
she does not know why. The dusk of evening caresses her eyes that will
hardly keep open, and promises her sound sleep soon. In the evening
visitors come.
"Varka, set the samovar!" shouts her mistress. The samovar is a little
one, and before the visitors have drunk all the tea they want, she has
to heat it five times. After tea Varka stands for a whole hour on the
same spot, looking at the visitors, and waiting for orders.
"Varka, run and buy three bottles of beer!"
She starts off, and tries to run as quickly as she can, to drive away
sleep.
"Varka, fetch some vodka! Varka, where's the corkscrew? Varka, clean a
herring!"
But now, at last, the visitors have gone; the lights are put out, the
master and mistress go to bed.
"Varka, rock the baby!" she hears the last order.
The cricket churrs in the stove; the green patch on the ceiling and the
shadows from the trousers and the baby-clothes force themselves on
Varka's half-opened eyes again, wink at her and cloud her mind.
"Hush-a-bye, my baby wee," she murmurs, "and I will sing a song to
thee."
And the baby screams, and is worn out with screaming. Again Varka sees
the muddy high road, the people with wallets, her mother Pelageya, her
father Yefim. She understands everything, she recognises everyone, but
through her half sleep she cannot understand the force which binds her,
hand and foot, weighs upon her, and prevents her from living. She looks
round, searches for that force that she may escape from it, but she
cannot find it. At last, tired to death, she does her very utmost,
strains her eyes, looks up at the flickering green patch, and listening
to the screaming, finds the foe who will not let her live.
That foe is the baby.
She laughs. It seems strange to her that she has failed to grasp such a
simple thing before. The green patch, the shadows, and the cricket seem
to laugh and wonder too.
The hallucination takes possession of Varka. She gets up from her stool,
and with a broad smile on her face and wide unblinking eyes, she walks
up and down the room. She feels pleased and tickled at the thought that
she will be rid directly of the baby that binds her hand and foot. . . .
Kill the baby and then sleep, sleep, sleep. . . .
Laughing and winking and shaking her fingers at the green patch, Varka
steals up to the cradle and bends over the baby. When she has strangled
him, she quickly lies down on the floor, laughs with delight that she
can sleep, and in a minute is sleeping as sound as the dead.
CHILDREN
PAPA and mamma and Aunt Nadya are not at home. They have gone to a
christening party at the house of that old officer who rides on a little
grey horse. While waiting for them to come home, Grisha, Anya, Alyosha,
Sonya, and the cook's son, Andrey, are sitting at the table in the
dining-room, playing at loto. To tell the truth, it is bedtime, but how
can one go to sleep without hearing from mamma what the baby was like at
the christening, and what they had for supper? The table, lighted by a
hanging lamp, is dotted with numbers, nutshells, scraps of paper, and
little bits of glass. Two cards lie in front of each player, and a heap
of bits of glass for covering the numbers. In the middle of the table is
a white saucer with five kopecks in it. Beside the saucer, a half-eaten
apple, a pair of scissors, and a plate on which they have been told to
put their nutshells. The children are playing for money. The stake is a
kopeck. The rule is: if anyone cheats, he is turned out at once. There
is no one in the dining-room but the players, and nurse, Agafya
Ivanovna, is in the kitchen, showing the cook how to cut a pattern,
while their elder brother, Vasya, a schoolboy in the fifth class, is
lying on the sofa in the drawing-room, feeling bored.