the wind, while horses and red bricks kept passing before him. And
perhaps because he was uncomfortable and his side ached, he felt all at
once annoyed, and the business he was going about seemed to him
unimportant, and he reflected that he might send the labourer next day
to Shuteykino. Again, as in the previous sleepless night, he thought of
the saying about the camel, and then memories of all sorts crept into
his mind; of the peasant who had sold him the stolen horse, of the
drunken man, of the peasant women who had brought their samovars to him
to pawn. Of course, every merchant tries to get as much as he can, but
Yakov felt depressed that he was in trade; he longed to get somewhere
far away from this routine, and he felt dreary at the thought that he
would have to read the evening service that day. The wind blew straight
into his face and soughed in his collar; and it seemed as though it were
whispering to him all these thoughts, bringing them from the broad white
plain . . . . Looking at that plain, familiar to him from childhood,
Yakov remembered that he had had just this same trouble and these same
thoughts in his young days when dreams and imaginings had come upon him
and his faith had wavered.
He felt miserable at being alone in the open country; he turned back and
drove slowly after the sledges, and the women laughed and said:
"Godly has turned back."
At home nothing had been cooked and the samovar was not heated on
account of the fast, and this made the day seem very long. Yakov
Ivanitch had long ago taken the horse to the stable, dispatched the
flour to the station, and twice taken up the Psalms to read, and yet the
evening was still far off. Aglaia has already washed all the floors,
and, having nothing to do, was tidying up her chest, the lid of which
was pasted over on the inside with labels off bottles. Matvey, hungry
and melancholy, sat reading, or went up to the Dutch stove and slowly
scrutinized the tiles which reminded him of the factory. Dashutka was
asleep; then, waking up, she went to take water to the cattle. When she
was getting water from the well the cord broke and the pail fell in. The
labourer began looking for a boathook to get the pail out, and Dashutka,
barefooted, with legs as red as a goose's, followed him about in the
muddy snow, repeating: "It's too far!" She meant to say that the well
was too deep for the hook to reach the bottom, but the labourer did not
understand her, and evidently she bothered him, so that he suddenly
turned around and abused her in unseemly language. Yakov Ivanitch,
coming out that moment into the yard, heard Dashutka answer the labourer
in a long rapid stream of choice abuse, which she could only have
learned from drunken peasants in the tavern.
"What are you saying, shameless girl!" he cried to her, and he was
positively aghast. "What language!"
And she looked at her father in perplexity, dully, not understanding why
she should not use those words. He would have admonished her, but she
struck him as so savage and benighted; and for the first time he
realized that she had no religion. And all this life in the forest, in
the snow, with drunken peasants, with coarse oaths, seemed to him as
savage and benighted as this girl, and instead of giving her a lecture
he only waved his hand and went back into the room.
At that moment the policeman and Sergey Nikanoritch came in again to see
Matvey. Yakov Ivanitch thought that these people, too, had no religion,
and that that did not trouble them in the least; and human life began to
seem to him as strange, senseless and unenlightened as a dog's.
Bareheaded he walked about the yard, then he went out on to the road,
clenching his fists. Snow was falling in big flakes at the time. His
beard was blown about in the wind. He kept shaking his head, as though
there were something weighing upon his head and shoulders, as though
devils were sitting on them; and it seemed to him that it was not
himself walking about, but some wild beast, a huge terrible beast, and
that if he were to cry out his voice would be a roar that would sound
all over the forest and the plain, and would frighten everyone. . . . V
When he went back into the house the policeman was no longer there, but
the waiter was sitting with Matvey, counting something on the reckoning
beads. He was in the habit of coming often, almost every day, to the
tavern; in old days he had come to see Yakov Ivanitch, now he came to
see Matvey. He was continually reckoning on the beads, while his face
perspired and looked strained, or he would ask for money or, stroking
his whiskers, would describe how he had once been in a first-class
station and used to prepare champagne-punch for officers, and at grand
dinners served the sturgeon-soup with his own hands. Nothing in this
world interested him but refreshment bars, and he could only talk about
things to eat, about wines and the paraphernalia of the dinner-table. On
one occasion, handing a cup of tea to a young woman who was nursing her
baby and wishing to say something agreeable to her, he expressed himself
in this way:
"The mother's breast is the baby's refreshment bar."
Reckoning with the beads in Matvey's room, he asked for money; said he
could not go on living at Progonnaya, and several times repeated in a
tone of voice that sounded as though he were just going to cry:
"Where am I to go? Where am I to go now? Tell me that, please."
Then Matvey went into the kitchen and began peeling some boiled potatoes
which he had probably put away from the day before. It was quiet, and it
seemed to Yakov Ivanitch that the waiter was gone. It was past the time
for evening service; he called Aglaia, and, thinking there was no one
else in the house sang out aloud without embarrassment. He sang and
read, but was inwardly pronouncing other words, "Lord, forgive me! Lord,
save me!" and, one after another, without ceasing, he made low bows to
the ground as though he wanted to exhaust himself, and he kept shaking
his head, so that Aglaia looked at him with wonder. He was afraid Matvey
would come in, and was certain that he would come in, and felt an anger
against him which he could overcome neither by prayer nor by continually
bowing down to the ground.
Matvey opened the door very softly and went into the prayer-room.
"It's a sin, such a sin!" he said reproachfully, and heaved a sigh.
"Repent! Think what you are doing, brother!"
Yakov Ivanitch, clenching his fists and not looking at him for fear of
striking him, went quickly out of the room. Feeling himself a huge
terrible wild beast, just as he had done before on the road, he crossed
the passage into the grey, dirty room, reeking with smoke and fog, in
which the peasants usually drank tea, and there he spent a long time
walking from one corner to the other, treading heavily, so that the
crockery jingled on the shelves and the tables shook. It was clear to
him now that he was himself dissatisfied with his religion, and could
not pray as he used to do. He must repent, he must think things over,
reconsider, live and pray in some other way. But how pray? And perhaps
all this was a temptation of the devil, and nothing of this was
necessary? . . . How was it to be? What was he to do? Who could guide
him? What helplessness! He stopped and, clutching at his head, began to
think, but Matvey's being near him prevented him from reflecting calmly.
And he went rapidly into the room.
Matvey was sitting in the kitchen before a bowl of potato, eating. Close
by, near the stove, Aglaia and Dashutka were sitting facing one another,
spinning yarn. Between the stove and the table at which Matvey was
sitting was stretched an ironing-board; on it stood a cold iron.
"Sister," Matvey asked, "let me have a little oil!"
"Who eats oil on a day like this?" asked Aglaia.
"I am not a monk, sister, but a layman. And in my weak health I may take
not only oil but milk."
"Yes, at the factory you may have anything."
Aglaia took a bottle of Lenten oil from the shelf and banged it angrily
down before Matvey, with a malignant smile evidently pleased that he was
such a sinner.
"But I tell you, you can't eat oil!" shouted Yakov.
Aglaia and Dashutka started, but Matvey poured the oil into the bowl and
went on eating as though he had not heard.
"I tell you, you can't eat oil!" Yakov shouted still more loudly; he
turned red all over, snatched up the bowl, lifted it higher than his
head, and dashed it with all his force to the ground, so that it flew
into fragments. "Don't dare to speak!" he cried in a furious voice,
though Matvey had not said a word. "Don't dare!" he repeated, and struck
his fist on the table.
Matvey turned pale and got up.
"Brother!" he said, still munching--"brother, think what you are about!"
"Out of my house this minute!" shouted Yakov; he loathed Matvey's
wrinkled face, and his voice, and the crumbs on his moustache, and the
fact that he was munching. "Out, I tell you!"
"Brother, calm yourself! The pride of hell has confounded you!"
"Hold your tongue!" (Yakov stamped.) "Go away, you devil!"
"If you care to know," Matvey went on in a loud voice, as he, too, began
to get angry, "you are a backslider from God and a heretic. The accursed
spirits have hidden the true light from you; your prayer is not
acceptable to God. Repent before it is too late! The deathbed of the
sinner is terrible! Repent, brother!"
Yakov seized him by the shoulders and dragged him away from the table,
while he turned whiter than ever, and frightened and bewildered, began
muttering, "What is it? What's the matter?" and, struggling and making
efforts to free himself from Yakov's hands, he accidentally caught hold
of his shirt near the neck and tore the collar; and it seemed to Aglaia
that he was trying to beat Yakov. She uttered a shriek, snatched up the
bottle of Lenten oil and with all her force brought it down straight on
the skull of the cousin she hated. Matvey reeled, and in one instant his
face became calm and indifferent. Yakov, breathing heavily, excited, and
feeling pleasure at the gurgle the bottle had made, like a living thing,
when it had struck the head, kept him from falling and several times (he
remembered this very distinctly) motioned Aglaia towards the iron with
his finger; and only when the blood began trickling through his hands
and he heard Dashutka's loud wail, and when the ironing-board fell with
a crash, and Matvey rolled heavily on it, Yakov left off feeling anger
and understood what had happened.
"Let him rot, the factory buck!" Aglaia brought out with repulsion,
still keeping the iron in her hand. The white bloodstained kerchief
slipped on to her shoulders and her grey hair fell in disorder. "He's
got what he deserved!"
Everything was terrible. Dashutka sat on the floor near the stove with
the yarn in her hands, sobbing, and continually bowing down, uttering at
each bow a gasping sound. But nothing was so terrible to Yakov as the
potato in the blood, on which he was afraid of stepping, and there was
something else terrible which weighed upon him like a bad dream and
seemed the worst danger, though he could not take it in for the first
minute. This was the waiter, Sergey Nikanoritch, who was standing in the
doorway with the reckoning beads in his hands, very pale, looking with
horror at what was happening in the kitchen. Only when he turned and
went quickly into the passage and from there outside, Yakov grasped who
it was and followed him.
Wiping his hands on the snow as he went, he reflected. The idea flashed
through his mind that their labourer had gone away long before and had
asked leave to stay the night at home in the village; the day before
they had killed a pig, and there were huge bloodstains in the snow and
on the sledge, and even one side of the top of the well was splattered
with blood, so that it could not have seemed suspicious even if the
whole of Yakov's family had been stained with blood. To conceal the
murder would be agonizing, but for the policeman, who would whistle and
smile ironically, to come from the station, for the peasants to arrive
and bind Yakov's and Aglaia's hands, and take them solemnly to the
district courthouse and from there to the town, while everyone on the
way would point at them and say mirthfully, "They are taking the
Godlies!"--this seemed to Yakov more agonizing than anything, and he
longed to lengthen out the time somehow, so as to endure this shame not
now, but later, in the future.
"I can lend you a thousand roubles, . . ." he said, overtaking Sergey
Nikanoritch. "If you tell anyone, it will do no good. . . . There's no
bringing the man back, anyway;" and with difficulty keeping up with the
waiter, who did not look round, but tried to walk away faster than ever,
he went on: "I can give you fifteen hundred. . . ."
He stopped because he was out of breath, while Sergey Nikanoritch walked
on as quickly as ever, probably afraid that he would be killed, too.
Only after passing the railway crossing and going half the way from the
crossing to the station, he furtively looked round and walked more
slowly. Lights, red and green, were already gleaming in the station and
along the line; the wind had fallen, but flakes of snow were still
coming down and the road had turned white again. But just at the station
Sergey Nikanoritch stopped, thought a minute, and turned resolutely
back. It was growing dark.
"Oblige me with the fifteen hundred, Yakov Ivanitch," he said, trembling
all over. "I agree." VI
Yakov Ivanitch's money was in the bank of the town and was invested in
second mortgages; he only kept a little at home, Just what was wanted
for necessary expenses. Going into the kitchen he felt for the matchbox,
and while the sulphur was burning with a blue light he had time to make
out the figure of Matvey, which was still lying on the floor near the
table, but now it was covered with a white sheet, and nothing could be
seen but his boots. A cricket was chirruping. Aglaia and Dashutka were
not in the room, they were both sitting behind the counter in the tea-
room, spinning yarn in silence. Yakov Ivanitch crossed to his own room
with a little lamp in his hand, and pulled from under the bed a little
box in which he kept his money. This time there were in it four hundred
and twenty one-rouble notes and silver to the amount of thirty-five
roubles; the notes had an unpleasant heavy smell. Putting the money
together in his cap, Yakov Ivanitch went out into the yard and then out
of the gate. He walked, looking from side to side, but there was no sign
of the waiter.
"Hi!" cried Yakov.
A dark figure stepped out from the barrier at the railway crossing and
came irresolutely towards him.
"Why do you keep walking about?" said Yakov with vexation, as he
recognized the waiter. "Here you are; there is a little less than five
hundred. . . . I've no more in the house."
"Very well; . . . very grateful to you," muttered Sergey Nikanoritch,
taking the money greedily and stuffing it into his pockets. He was
trembling all over, and that was perceptible in spite of the darkness.
"Don't worry yourself, Yakov Ivanitch. . . . What should I chatter for:
I came and went away, that's all I've had to do with it. As the saying
is, I know nothing and I can tell nothing . . ." And at once he added
with a sigh "Cursed life!"
For a minute they stood in silence, without looking at each other.
"So it all came from a trifle, goodness knows how, . . ." said the
waiter, trembling. "I was sitting counting to myself when all at once a
noise. . . . I looked through the door, and just on account of Lenten
oil you. . . . Where is he now?"
"Lying there in the kitchen."
"You ought to take him somewhere. . . . Why put it off?"
Yakov accompanied him to the station without a word, then went home
again and harnessed the horse to take Matvey to Limarovo. He had decided
to take him to the forest of Limarovo, and to leave him there on the
road, and then he would tell everyone that Matvey had gone off to
Vedenyapino and had not come back, and then everyone would think that he
had been killed by someone on the road. He knew there was no deceiving
anyone by this, but to move, to do something, to be active, was not as
agonizing as to sit still and wait. He called Dashutka, and with her
carried Matvey out. Aglaia stayed behind to clean up the kitchen.
When Yakov and Dashutka turned back they were detained at the railway
crossing by the barrier being let down. A long goods train was passing,
dragged by two engines, breathing heavily, and flinging puffs of crimson
fire out of their funnels.
The foremost engine uttered a piercing whistle at the crossing in sight
of the station.
"It's whistling, . . ." said Dashutka.
The train had passed at last, and the signalman lifted the barrier
without haste.
"Is that you, Yakov Ivanitch? I didn't know you, so you'll be rich."
And then when they had reached home they had to go to bed.
Aglaia and Dashutka made themselves a bed in the tea-room and lay down
side by side, while Yakov stretched himself on the counter. They neither
said their prayers nor lighted the ikon lamp before lying down to sleep.
All three lay awake till morning, but did not utter a single word, and
it seemed to them that all night someone was walking about in the empty
storey overhead.
Two days later a police inspector and the examining magistrate came from
the town and made a search, first in Matvey's room and then in the whole
tavern. They questioned Yakov first of all, and he testified that on the
Monday Matvey had gone to Vedenyapino to confess, and that he must have
been killed by the sawyers who were working on the line.
And when the examining magistrate had asked him how it had happened that
Matvey was found on the road, while his cap had turned up at home--surely
he had not gone to Vedenyapino without his cap?-- and why they had not
found a single drop of blood beside him in the snow on the road, though
his head was smashed in and his face and chest were black with blood,
Yakov was confused, lost his head and answered:
"I cannot tell."
And just what Yakov had so feared happened: the policeman came, the
district police officer smoked in the prayer-room and Aglaia fell upon
him with abuse and was rude to the police inspector; and afterwards when
Yakov and Aglaia were led out to the yard, the peasants crowded at the
gates and said, "They are taking the Godlies!" and it seemed that they
were all glad.
At the inquiry the policeman stated positively that Yakov and Aglaia had
killed Matvey in order not to share with him, and that Matvey had money
of his own, and that if it was not found at the search evidently Yakov
and Aglaia had got hold of it. And Dashutka was questioned. She said
that Uncle Matvey and Aunt Aglaia quarrelled and almost fought every day
over money, and that Uncle Matvey was rich, so much so that he had given
someone--"his Darling"--nine hundred roubles.
Dashutka was left alone in the tavern. No one came now to drink tea or
vodka, and she divided her time between cleaning up the rooms, drinking
mead and eating rolls; but a few days later they questioned the
signalman at the railway crossing, and he said that late on Monday
evening he had seen Yakov and Dashutka driving from Limarovo. Dashutka,
too, was arrested, taken to the town and put in prison. It soon became
known, from what Aglaia said, that Sergey Nikanoritch had been present
at the murder. A search was made in his room, and money was found in an
unusual place, in his snowboots under the stove, and the money was all
in small change, three hundred one-rouble notes. He swore he had made
this money himself, and that he hadn't been in the tavern for a year,
but witnesses testified that he was poor and had been in great want of
money of late, and that he used to go every day to the tavern to borrow
from Matvey; and the policeman described how on the day of the murder he
had himself gone twice to the tavern with the waiter to help him to
borrow. It was recalled at this juncture that on Monday evening Sergey
Nikanoritch had not been there to meet the passenger train, but had gone
off somewhere. And he, too, was arrested and taken to the town.
The trial took place eleven months later.
Yakov Ivanitch looked much older and much thinner, and spoke in a low
voice like a sick man. He felt weak, pitiful, lower in stature that
anyone else, and it seemed as though his soul, too, like his body, had
grown older and wasted, from the pangs of his conscience and from the
dreams and imaginings which never left him all the while he was in
prison. When it came out that he did not go to church the president of
the court asked him:
"Are you a dissenter?"
"I can't tell," he answered.
He had no religion at all now; he knew nothing and understood nothing;
and his old belief was hateful to him now, and seemed to him darkness
and folly. Aglaia was not in the least subdued, and she still went on
abusing the dead man, blaming him for all their misfortunes. Sergey
Nikanoritch had grown a beard instead of whiskers. At the trial he was
red and perspiring, and was evidently ashamed of his grey prison coat
and of sitting on the same bench with humble peasants. He defended
himself awkwardly, and, trying to prove that he had not been to the
tavern for a whole year, got into an altercation with every witness, and
the spectators laughed at him. Dashutka had grown fat in prison. At the
trial she did not understand the questions put to her, and only said
that when they killed Uncle Matvey she was dreadfully frightened, but
afterwards she did not mind.
All four were found guilty of murder with mercenary motives. Yakov
Ivanitch was sentenced to penal servitude for twenty years; Aglaia for
thirteen and a half; Sergey Nikanoritch to ten; Dashutka to six. VII
Late one evening a foreign steamer stopped in the roads of Dué in
Sahalin and asked for coal. The captain was asked to wait till morning,
but he did not want to wait over an hour, saying that if the weather
changed for the worse in the night there would be a risk of his having
to go off without coal. In the Gulf of Tartary the weather is liable to
violent changes in the course of half an hour, and then the shores of
Sahalin are dangerous. And already it had turned fresh, and there was a
considerable sea running.
A gang of convicts were sent to the mine from the Voevodsky prison, the
grimmest and most forbidding of all the prisons in Sahalin. The coal had
to be loaded upon barges, and then they had to be towed by a steam-
cutter alongside the steamer which was anchored more than a quarter of a
mile from the coast, and then the unloading and reloading had to
begin--an exhausting task when the barge kept rocking against the steamer
and the men could scarcely keep on their legs for sea-sickness. The
convicts, only just roused from their sleep, still drowsy, went along
the shore, stumbling in the darkness and clanking their fetters. On the
left, scarcely visible, was a tall, steep, extremely gloomy-looking
cliff, while on the right there was a thick impenetrable mist, in which
the sea moaned with a prolonged monotonous sound, "Ah! . . . ah! . . .
ah! . . . ah! . . ." And it was only when the overseer was lighting his
pipe, casting as he did so a passing ray of light on the escort with a
gun and on the coarse faces of two or three of the nearest convicts, or
when he went with his lantern close to the water that the white crests
of the foremost waves could be discerned.
One of this gang was Yakov Ivanitch, nicknamed among the convicts the
"Brush," on account of his long beard. No one had addressed him by his
name or his father's name for a long time now; they called him simply
Yashka.