money. Then she described how Anyutka had come, what she had said, and
so on. The murderers were delighted and began to divide the money
between them, they almost quarrelled, then they sat down to the table,
you know, to drink. And Anyutka lay there, poor child, hearing every
word and shaking like a Jew in a frying-pan. What was she to do? And
from their words she learned that father was dead and lying across the
road, and she fancied, in her foolishness, that the wolves and the dogs
would eat father, and that our horse had gone far away into the forest,
and would be eaten by wolves too, and that she, Anyutka herself, would
be put in prison and beaten, because she had not taken care of the
money. The robbers got drunk and sent the woman for vodka. They gave her
five roubles for vodka and sweet wine. They set to singing and drinking
on other people's money. They drank and drank, the dogs, and sent the
woman off again that they might drink beyond all bounds.
"We will keep it up till morning," they cried. "We have plenty of money
now, there is no need to spare! Drink, and don't drink away your wits."
And so at midnight, when they were all fairly fuddled, the woman ran off
for vodka the third time, and the forester strode twice up and down the
cottage, and he was staggering.
"Look here, lads," he said, "we must make away with the girl, too! If we
leave her, she will be the first to bear witness against us."
They talked it over and discussed it, and decided that Anyutka must not
be left alive, that she must be killed. Of course, to murder an innocent
child's a fearful thing, even a man drunken or crazy would not take such
a job on himself. They were quarrelling for maybe an hour which was to
kill her, one tried to put it on the other, they almost fought again,
and no one would agree to do it; then they cast lots. It fell to the
forester. He drank another full glass, cleared his throat, and went to
the outer room for an axe.
But Anyutka was a sharp wench. For all she was so simple, she thought of
something that, I must say, not many an educated man would have thought
of. Maybe the Lord had compassion on her, and gave her sense for the
moment, or perhaps it was the fright sharpened her wits, anyway when it
came to the test it turned out that she was cleverer than anyone. She
got up stealthily, prayed to God, took the little sheepskin, the one the
forester's wife had put over her, and, you understand, the forester's
little daughter, a girl of the same age as herself, was lying on the
stove beside her. She covered this girl with the sheepskin, and took the
woman's jacket off her and threw it over herself. Disguised herself, in
fact. She put it over her head, and so walked across the hut by the
drunken men, and they thought it was the forester's daughter, and did
not even look at her. Luckily for her the woman was not in the hut, she
had gone for vodka, or maybe she would not have escaped the axe, for a
woman's eyes are as far-seeing as a buzzard's. A woman's eyes are sharp.
Anyutka came out of the hut, and ran as fast as her legs could carry
her. All night she was lost in the forest, but towards morning she came
out to the edge and ran along the road. By the mercy of God she met the
clerk Yegor Danilitch, the kingdom of Heaven be his. He was going along
with his hooks to catch fish. Anyutka told him all about it. He went
back quicker than he came--thought no more of the fish--gathered the
peasants together in the village, and off they went to the forester's.
They got there, and all the murderers were lying side by side, dead
drunk, each where he had fallen; the woman, too, was drunk. First thing
they searched them; they took the money and then looked on the stove--the
Holy Cross be with us! The forester's child was lying on the brooms,
under the sheepskin, and her head was in a pool of blood, chopped off by
the axe. They roused the peasants and the woman, tied their hands behind
them, and took them to the district court; the woman howled, but the
forester only shook his head and asked:
"You might give me a drop, lads! My head aches!"
Afterwards they were tried in the town in due course, and punished with
the utmost rigour of the law.
So that's what happened, sir, beyond the forest there, that lies behind
the creek. Now you can scarcely see it, the sun is setting red behind
it. I have been talking to you, and the horses have stopped, as though
they were listening too. Hey there, my beauties! Move more briskly, the
good gentleman will give us something extra. Hey, you darlings!
THE FISH
A SUMMER morning. The air is still; there is no sound but the churring
of a grasshopper on the river bank, and somewhere the timid cooing of a
turtle-dove. Feathery clouds stand motionless in the sky, looking like
snow scattered about. . . . Gerassim, the carpenter, a tall gaunt
peasant, with a curly red head and a face overgrown with hair, is
floundering about in the water under the green willow branches near an
unfinished bathing shed. . . . He puffs and pants and, blinking
furiously, is trying to get hold of something under the roots of the
willows. His face is covered with perspiration. A couple of yards from
him, Lubim, the carpenter, a young hunchback with a triangular face and
narrow Chinese-looking eyes, is standing up to his neck in water. Both
Gerassim and Lubim are in shirts and linen breeches. Both are blue with
cold, for they have been more than an hour already in the water.
"But why do you keep poking with your hand?" cries the hunchback Lubim,
shivering as though in a fever. "You blockhead! Hold him, hold him, or
else he'll get away, the anathema! Hold him, I tell you!"
"He won't get away. . . . Where can he get to? He's under a root," says
Gerassim in a hoarse, hollow bass, which seems to come not from his
throat, but from the depths of his stomach. "He's slippery, the beggar,
and there's nothing to catch hold of."
"Get him by the gills, by the gills!"
"There's no seeing his gills. . . . Stay, I've got hold of something . .
. . I've got him by the lip. . . He's biting, the brute!"
"Don't pull him out by the lip, don't--or you'll let him go! Take him by
the gills, take him by the gills. . . . You've begun poking with your
hand again! You are a senseless man, the Queen of Heaven forgive me!
Catch hold!"
"Catch hold!" Gerassim mimics him. "You're a fine one to give orders . .
. . You'd better come and catch hold of him yourself, you hunchback
devil. . . . What are you standing there for?"
"I would catch hold of him if it were possible. But can I stand by the
bank, and me as short as I am? It's deep there."
"It doesn't matter if it is deep. . . . You must swim."
The hunchback waves his arms, swims up to Gerassim, and catches hold of
the twigs. At the first attempt to stand up, he goes into the water over
his head and begins blowing up bubbles.
"I told you it was deep," he says, rolling his eyes angrily. "Am I to
sit on your neck or what?"
"Stand on a root . . . there are a lot of roots like a ladder." The
hunchback gropes for a root with his heel, and tightly gripping several
twigs, stands on it. . . . Having got his balance, and established
himself in his new position, he bends down, and trying not to get the
water into his mouth, begins fumbling with his right hand among the
roots. Getting entangled among the weeds and slipping on the mossy roots
he finds his hand in contact with the sharp pincers of a crayfish.
"As though we wanted to see you, you demon!" says Lubim, and he angrily
flings the crayfish on the bank.
At last his hand feels Gerassim' s arm, and groping its way along it
comes to something cold and slimy.
"Here he is!" says Lubim with a grin. "A fine fellow! Move your fingers,
I'll get him directly . . . by the gills. Stop, don't prod me with your
elbow. . . . I'll have him in a minute, in a minute, only let me get
hold of him. . . . The beggar has got a long way under the roots, there
is nothing to get hold of. . . . One can't get to the head . . . one can
only feel its belly . . . . kill that gnat on my neck--it's stinging!
I'll get him by the gills, directly . . . . Come to one side and give
him a push! Poke him with your finger!"
The hunchback puffs out his cheeks, holds his breath, opens his eyes
wide, and apparently has already got his fingers in the gills, but at
that moment the twigs to which he is holding on with his left hand
break, and losing his balance he plops into the water! Eddies race away
from the bank as though frightened, and little bubbles come up from the
spot where he has fallen in. The hunchback swims out and, snorting,
clutches at the twigs.
"You'll be drowned next, you stupid, and I shall have to answer for
you," wheezes Gerassim. "Clamber out, the devil take you! I'll get him
out myself."
High words follow. . . . The sun is baking hot. The shadows begin to
grow shorter and to draw in on themselves, like the horns of a snail. .
. . The high grass warmed by the sun begins to give out a strong, heavy
smell of honey. It will soon be midday, and Gerassim and Lubim are still
floundering under the willow tree. The husky bass and the shrill, frozen
tenor persistently disturb the stillness of the summer day.
"Pull him out by the gills, pull him out! Stay, I'll push him out! Where
are you shoving your great ugly fist? Poke him with your finger--you
pig's face! Get round by the side! get to the left, to the left, there's
a big hole on the right! You'll be a supper for the water-devil! Pull it
by the lip!"
There is the sound of the flick of a whip. . . . A herd of cattle,
driven by Yefim, the shepherd, saunter lazily down the sloping bank to
drink. The shepherd, a decrepit old man, with one eye and a crooked
mouth, walks with his head bowed, looking at his feet. The first to
reach the water are the sheep, then come the horses, and last of all the
cows.
"Push him from below!" he hears Lubim's voice. "Stick your finger in!
Are you deaf, fellow, or what? Tfoo!"
"What are you after, lads?" shouts Yefim.
"An eel-pout! We can't get him out! He's hidden under the roots. Get
round to the side! To the side!"
For a minute Yefim screws up his eye at the fishermen, then he takes off
his bark shoes, throws his sack off his shoulders, and takes off his
shirt. He has not the patience to take off his breeches, but, making the
sign of the cross, he steps into the water, holding out his thin dark
arms to balance himself. . . . For fifty paces he walks along the slimy
bottom, then he takes to swimming.
"Wait a minute, lads!" he shouts. "Wait! Don't be in a hurry to pull him
out, you'll lose him. You must do it properly!"
Yefim joins the carpenters and all three, shoving each other with their
knees and their elbows, puffing and swearing at one another, bustle
about the same spot. Lubim, the hunchback, gets a mouthful of water, and
the air rings with his hard spasmodic coughing.
"Where's the shepherd?" comes a shout from the bank. "Yefim! Shepherd!
Where are you? The cattle are in the garden! Drive them out, drive them
out of the garden! Where is he, the old brigand?"
First men's voices are heard, then a woman's. The master himself, Andrey
Andreitch, wearing a dressing-gown made of a Persian shawl and carrying
a newspaper in his hand, appears from behind the garden fence. He looks
inquiringly towards the shouts which come from the river, and then trips
rapidly towards the bathing shed.
"What's this? Who's shouting?" he asks sternly, seeing through the
branches of the willow the three wet heads of the fishermen. "What are
you so busy about there?"
"Catching a fish," mutters Yefim, without raising his head.
"I'll give it to you! The beasts are in the garden and he is fishing! .
. . When will that bathing shed be done, you devils? You've been at work
two days, and what is there to show for it?"
"It . . . will soon be done," grunts Gerassim; summer is long, you'll
have plenty of time to wash, your honour. . . . Pfrrr! . . . We can't
manage this eel-pout here anyhow. . . . He's got under a root and sits
there as if he were in a hole and won't budge one way or another . . .
."
"An eel-pout?" says the master, and his eyes begin to glisten. "Get him
out quickly then."
"You'll give us half a rouble for it presently if we oblige you . . . .
A huge eel-pout, as fat as a merchant's wife. . . . It's worth half a
rouble, your honour, for the trouble. . . . Don't squeeze him, Lubim,
don't squeeze him, you'll spoil him! Push him up from below! Pull the
root upwards, my good man . . . what's your name? Upwards, not
downwards, you brute! Don't swing your legs!"
Five minutes pass, ten. . . . The master loses all patience.
"Vassily!" he shouts, turning towards the garden. "Vaska! Call Vassily
to me!"
The coachman Vassily runs up. He is chewing something and breathing
hard.
"Go into the water," the master orders him. "Help them to pull out that
eel-pout. They can't get him out."
Vassily rapidly undresses and gets into the water.
"In a minute. . . . I'll get him in a minute," he mutters. "Where's the
eel-pout? We'll have him out in a trice! You'd better go, Yefim. An old
man like you ought to be minding his own business instead of being here.
Where's that eel-pout? I'll have him in a minute . . . . Here he is! Let
go."
"What's the good of saying that? We know all about that! You get it
out!"
But there is no getting it out like this! One must get hold of it by the
head."
"And the head is under the root! We know that, you fool!"
"Now then, don't talk or you'll catch it! You dirty cur!"
"Before the master to use such language," mutters Yefim. "You won't get
him out, lads! He's fixed himself much too cleverly!"
"Wait a minute, I'll come directly," says the master, and he begins
hurriedly undressing. "Four fools, and can't get an eel-pout!"
When he is undressed, Andrey Andreitch gives himself time to cool and
gets into the water. But even his interference leads to nothing.
"We must chop the root off," Lubim decides at last. "Gerassim, go and
get an axe! Give me an axe!"
"Don't chop your fingers off," says the master, when the blows of the
axe on the root under water are heard. "Yefim, get out of this! Stay,
I'll get the eel-pout. . . . You'll never do it."
The root is hacked a little. They partly break it off, and Andrey
Andreitch, to his immense satisfaction, feels his fingers under the
gills of the fish.
"I'm pulling him out, lads! Don't crowd round . . . stand still . . . .
I am pulling him out!"
The head of a big eel-pout, and behind it its long black body, nearly a
yard long, appears on the surface of the water. The fish flaps its tail
heavily and tries to tear itself away.
"None of your nonsense, my boy! Fiddlesticks! I've got you! Aha!"
A honied smile overspreads all the faces. A minute passes in silent
contemplation.
"A famous eel-pout," mutters Yefim, scratching under his shoulder-
blades. "I'll be bound it weighs ten pounds."
"Mm! . . . Yes," the master assents. "The liver is fairly swollen! It
seems to stand out! A-ach!"
The fish makes a sudden, unexpected upward movement with its tail and
the fishermen hear a loud splash . . . they all put out their hands, but
it is too late; they have seen the last of the eel-pout.
ART A GLOOMY winter morning.
On the smooth and glittering surface of the river Bystryanka, sprinkled
here and there with snow, stand two peasants, scrubby little Seryozhka
and the church beadle, Matvey. Seryozhka, a short-legged, ragged, mangy-
looking fellow of thirty, stares angrily at the ice. Tufts of wool hang
from his shaggy sheepskin like a mangy dog. In his hands he holds a
compass made of two pointed sticks. Matvey, a fine-looking old man in a
new sheepskin and high felt boots, looks with mild blue eyes upwards
where on the high sloping bank a village nestles picturesquely. In his
hands there is a heavy crowbar.
"Well, are we going to stand like this till evening with our arms
folded?" says Seryozhka, breaking the silence and turning his angry eyes
on Matvey. "Have you come here to stand about, old fool, or to work?"
"Well, you . . . er . . . show me . . ." Matvey mutters, blinking
mildly.
"Show you. . . . It's always me: me to show you, and me to do it. They
have no sense of their own! Mark it out with the compasses, that's
what's wanted! You can't break the ice without marking it out. Mark it!
Take the compass."
Matvey takes the compasses from Seryozhka's hands, and, shuffling
heavily on the same spot and jerking with his elbows in all directions,
he begins awkwardly trying to describe a circle on the ice. Seryozhka
screws up his eyes contemptuously and obviously enjoys his awkwardness
and incompetence.
"Eh-eh-eh!" he mutters angrily. "Even that you can't do! The fact is you
are a stupid peasant, a wooden-head! You ought to be grazing geese and
not making a Jordan! Give the compasses here! Give them here, I say!"
Seryozhka snatches the compasses out of the hands of the perspiring
Matvey, and in an instant, jauntily twirling round on one heel, he
describes a circle on the ice. The outline of the new Jordan is ready
now, all that is left to do is to break the ice. . .
But before proceeding to the work Seryozhka spends a long time in airs
and graces, whims and reproaches. . .
"I am not obliged to work for you! You are employed in the church, you
do it!"
He obviously enjoys the peculiar position in which he has been placed by
the fate that has bestowed on him the rare talent of surprising the
whole parish once a year by his art. Poor mild Matvey has to listen to
many venomous and contemptuous words from him. Seryozhka sets to work
with vexation, with anger. He is lazy. He has hardly described the
circle when he is already itching to go up to the village to drink tea,
lounge about, and babble. . .
"I'll be back directly," he says, lighting his cigarette, "and meanwhile
you had better bring something to sit on and sweep up, instead of
standing there counting the crows."
Matvey is left alone. The air is grey and harsh but still. The white
church peeps out genially from behind the huts scattered on the river
bank. Jackdaws are incessantly circling round its golden crosses. On one
side of the village where the river bank breaks off and is steep a
hobbled horse is standing at the very edge, motionless as a stone,
probably asleep or deep in thought.
Matvey, too, stands motionless as a statue, waiting patiently. The
dreamily brooding look of the river, the circling of the jackdaws, and
the sight of the horse make him drowsy. One hour passes, a second, and
still Seryozhka does not come. The river has long been swept and a box
brought to sit on, but the drunken fellow does not appear. Matvey waits
and merely yawns. The feeling of boredom is one of which he knows
nothing. If he were told to stand on the river for a day, a month, or a
year he would stand there.
At last Seryozhka comes into sight from behind the huts. He walks with a
lurching gait, scarcely moving. He is too lazy to go the long way round,
and he comes not by the road, but prefers a short cut in a straight line
down the bank, and sticks in the snow, hangs on to the bushes, slides on
his back as he comes--and all this slowly, with pauses.
"What are you about?" he cries, falling on Matvey at once. "Why are you
standing there doing nothing! When are you going to break the ice?"
Matvey crosses himself, takes the crowbar in both hands, and begins
breaking the ice, carefully keeping to the circle that has been drawn.
Seryozhka sits down on the box and watches the heavy clumsy movements of
his assistant.
"Easy at the edges! Easy there!" he commands. "If you can't do it
properly, you shouldn't undertake it, once you have undertaken it you
should do it. You!"
A crowd collects on the top of the bank. At the sight of the spectators
Seryozhka becomes even more excited.
"I declare I am not going to do it . . ." he says, lighting a stinking
cigarette and spitting on the ground. "I should like to see how you get
on without me. Last year at Kostyukovo, Styopka Gulkov undertook to make
a Jordan as I do. And what did it amount to--it was a laughing-stock. The
Kostyukovo folks came to ours --crowds and crowds of them! The people
flocked from all the villages."
"Because except for ours there is nowhere a proper Jordan . . ."
"Work, there is no time for talking. . . . Yes, old man . . . you won't
find another Jordan like it in the whole province. The soldiers say you
would look in vain, they are not so good even in the towns. Easy, easy!"
Matvey puffs and groans. The work is not easy. The ice is firm and
thick; and he has to break it and at once take the pieces away that the
open space may not be blocked up.
But, hard as the work is and senseless as Seryozhka's commands are, by
three o'clock there is a large circle of dark water in the Bystryanka.
"It was better last year," says Seryozhka angrily. "You can't do even
that! Ah, dummy! To keep such fools in the temple of God! Go and bring a
board to make the pegs! Bring the ring, you crow! And er . . . get some
bread somewhere . . . and some cucumbers, or something."
Matvey goes off and soon afterwards comes back, carrying on his
shoulders an immense wooden ring which had been painted in previous
years in patterns of various colours. In the centre of the ring is a red
cross, at the circumference holes for the pegs. Seryozhka takes the ring
and covers the hole in the ice with it.
"Just right . . . it fits. . . . We have only to renew the paint and it
will be first-rate. . . . Come, why are you standing still? Make the
lectern. Or--er--go and get logs to make the cross . . ."
Matvey, who has not tasted food or drink all day, trudges up the hill
again. Lazy as Seryozhka is, he makes the pegs with his own hands. He
knows that those pegs have a miraculous power: whoever gets hold of a
peg after the blessing of the water will be lucky for the whole year.
Such work is really worth doing.
But the real work begins the following day. Then Seryozhka displays
himself before the ignorant Matvey in all the greatness of his talent.
There is no end to his babble, his fault-finding, his whims and fancies.
If Matvey nails two big pieces of wood to make a cross, he is
dissatisfied and tells him to do it again. If Matvey stands still,
Seryozhka asks him angrily why he does not go; if he moves, Seryozhka
shouts to him not to go away but to do his work. He is not satisfied
with his tools, with the weather, or with his own talent; nothing
pleases him.
Matvey saws out a great piece of ice for a lectern.
"Why have you broken off the corner?" cries Seryozhka, and glares at him
furiously. "Why have you broken off the corner? I ask you."
"Forgive me, for Christ's sake."
"Do it over again!"
Matvey saws again . . . and there is no end to his sufferings. A lectern
is to stand by the hole in the ice that is covered by the painted ring;
on the lectern is to be carved the cross and the open gospel. But that
is not all. Behind the lectern there is to be a high cross to be seen by
all the crowd and to glitter in the sun as though sprinkled with
diamonds and rubies. On the cross is to be a dove carved out of ice. The
path from the church to the Jordan is to be strewn with branches of fir
and juniper. All this is their task.
First of all Seryozhka sets to work on the lectern. He works with a
file, a chisel, and an awl. He is perfectly successful in the cross on
the lectern, the gospel, and the drapery that hangs down from the
lectern. Then he begins on the dove. While he is trying to carve an
expression of meekness and humility on the face of the dove, Matvey,
lumbering about like a bear, is coating with ice the cross he has made
of wood. He takes the cross and dips it in the hole. Waiting till the
water has frozen on the cross he dips it in a second time, and so on
till the cross is covered with a thick layer of ice. It is a difficult
job, calling for a great deal of strength and patience.
But now the delicate work is finished. Seryozhka races about the village
like one possessed. He swears and vows he will go at once to the river
and smash all his work. He is looking for suitable paints.
His pockets are full of ochre, dark blue, red lead, and verdigris;
without paying a farthing he rushes headlong from one shop to another.
The shop is next door to the tavern. Here he has a drink; with a wave of
his hand he darts off without paying. At one hut he gets beetroot
leaves, at another an onion skin, out of which he makes a yellow colour.
He swears, shoves, threatens, and not a soul murmurs! They all smile at
him, they sympathise with him, call him Sergey Nikititch; they all feel
that his art is not his personal affair but something that concerns them
all, the whole people. One creates, the others help him. Seryozhka in
himself is a nonentity, a sluggard, a drunkard, and a wastrel, but when
he has his red lead or compasses in his hand he is at once something
higher, a servant of God.