going backwards and not forwards, the travellers saw the same scene as
they had before midday.
The low hills were still plunged in the lilac distance, and no end could
be seen to them. There were glimpses of high grass and heaps of stones;
strips of stubble land passed by them and still the same rooks, the same
hawk, moving its wings with slow dignity, moved over the steppe. The air
was more sultry than ever; from the sultry heat and the stillness
submissive nature was spellbound into silence . . . . No wind, no fresh
cheering sound, no cloud.
But at last, when the sun was beginning to sink into the west, the
steppe, the hills and the air could bear the oppression no longer, and,
driven out of all patience, exhausted, tried to fling off the yoke. A
fleecy ashen-grey cloud unexpectedly appeared behind the hills. It
exchanged glances with the steppe, as though to say, "Here I am," and
frowned. Suddenly something burst in the stagnant air; there was a
violent squall of wind which whirled round and round, roaring and
whistling over the steppe. At once a murmur rose from the grass and last
year's dry herbage, the dust curled in spiral eddies over the road,
raced over the steppe, and carrying with it straws, dragon flies and
feathers, rose up in a whirling black column towards the sky and
darkened the sun. Prickly uprooted plants ran stumbling and leaping in
all directions over the steppe, and one of them got caught in the
whirlwind, turned round and round like a bird, flew towards the sky, and
turning into a little black speck, vanished from sight. After it flew
another, and then a third, and Yegorushka saw two of them meet in the
blue height and clutch at one another as though they were wrestling.
A bustard flew up by the very road. Fluttering his wings and his tail,
he looked, bathed in the sunshine, like an angler's glittering tin fish
or a waterfly flashing so swiftly over the water that its wings cannot
be told from its antenna, which seem to be growing before, behind and on
all sides. . . . Quivering in the air like an insect with a shimmer of
bright colours, the bustard flew high up in a straight line, then,
probably frightened by a cloud of dust, swerved to one side, and for a
long time the gleam of his wings could be seen. . . .
Then a corncrake flew up from the grass, alarmed by the hurricane and
not knowing what was the matter. It flew with the wind and not against
it, like all the other birds, so that all its feathers were ruffled up
and it was puffed out to the size of a hen and looked very angry and
impressive. Only the rooks who had grown old on the steppe and were
accustomed to its vagaries hovered calmly over the grass, or taking no
notice of anything, went on unconcernedly pecking with their stout beaks
at the hard earth.
There was a dull roll of thunder beyond the hills; there came a whiff of
fresh air. Deniska gave a cheerful whistle and lashed his horses. Father
Christopher and Kuzmitchov held their hats and looked intently towards
the hills. . . . How pleasant a shower of rain would have been!
One effort, one struggle more, and it seemed the steppe would have got
the upper hand. But the unseen oppressive force gradually riveted its
fetters on the wind and the air, laid the dust, and the stillness came
back again as though nothing had happened, the cloud hid, the sun-baked
hills frowned submissively, the air grew calm, and only somewhere the
troubled lapwings wailed and lamented their destiny. . . .
Soon after that the evening came on. III
In the dusk of evening a big house of one storey, with a rusty iron roof
and with dark windows, came into sight. This house was called a posting-
inn, though it had nothing like a stableyard, and it stood in the middle
of the steppe, with no kind of enclosure round it. A little to one side
of it a wretched little cherry orchard shut in by a hurdle fence made a
dark patch, and under the windows stood sleepy sunflowers drooping their
heavy heads. From the orchard came the clatter of a little toy windmill,
set there to frighten away hares by the rattle. Nothing more could be
seen near the house, and nothing could be heard but the steppe. The
chaise had scarcely stopped at the porch with an awning over it, when
from the house there came the sound of cheerful voices, one a man's,
another a woman's; there was the creak of a swing-door, and in a flash a
tall gaunt figure, swinging its arms and fluttering its coat, was
standing by the chaise. This was the innkeeper, Moisey Moisevitch, a man
no longer young, with a very pale face and a handsome beard as black as
charcoal. He was wearing a threadbare black coat, which hung flapping on
his narrow shoulders as though on a hatstand, and fluttered its skirts
like wings every time Moisey Moisevitch flung up his hands in delight or
horror. Besides his coat the innkeeper was wearing full white trousers,
not stuck into his boots, and a velvet waistcoat with brown flowers on
it that looked like gigantic bugs.
Moisey Moisevitch was at first dumb with excess of feeling on
recognizing the travellers, then he clasped his hands and uttered a
moan. His coat swung its skirts, his back bent into a bow, and his pale
face twisted into a smile that suggested that to see the chaise was not
merely a pleasure to him, but actually a joy so sweet as to be painful.
"Oh dear! oh dear!" he began in a thin sing-song voice, breathless,
fussing about and preventing the travellers from getting out of the
chaise by his antics. "What a happy day for me! Oh, what am I to do now?
Ivan Ivanitch! Father Christopher! What a pretty little gentleman
sitting on the box, God strike me dead! Oh, my goodness! why am I
standing here instead of asking the visitors indoors? Please walk in, I
humbly beg you. . . . You are kindly welcome! Give me all your things. .
. . Oh, my goodness me!"
Moisey Moisevitch, who was rummaging in the chaise and assisting the
travellers to alight, suddenly turned back and shouted in a voice as
frantic and choking as though he were drowning and calling for help:
"Solomon! Solomon!"
"Solomon! Solomon!" a woman's voice repeated indoors.
The swing-door creaked, and in the doorway appeared a rather short young
Jew with a big beak-like nose, with a bald patch surrounded by rough red
curly hair; he was dressed in a short and very shabby reefer jacket,
with rounded lappets and short sleeves, and in short serge trousers, so
that he looked skimpy and short-tailed like an unfledged bird. This was
Solomon, the brother of Moisey Moisevitch. He went up to the chaise,
smiling rather queerly, and did not speak or greet the travellers.
"Ivan Ivanitch and Father Christopher have come," said Moisey Moisevitch
in a tone as though he were afraid his brother would not believe him.
"Dear, dear! What a surprise! Such honoured guests to have come us so
suddenly! Come, take their things, Solomon. Walk in, honoured guests."
A little later Kuzmitchov, Father Christopher, and Yegorushka were
sitting in a big gloomy empty room at an old oak table. The table was
almost in solitude, for, except a wide sofa covered with torn American
leather and three chairs, there was no other furniture in the room. And,
indeed, not everybody would have given the chairs that name. They were a
pitiful semblance of furniture, covered with American leather that had
seen its best days, and with backs bent backwards at an unnaturally
acute angle, so that they looked like children's sledges. It was hard to
imagine what had been the unknown carpenter's object in bending the
chairbacks so mercilessly, and one was tempted to imagine that it was
not the carpenter's fault, but that some athletic visitor had bent the
chairs like this as a feat, then had tried to bend them back again and
had made them worse. The room looked gloomy, the walls were grey, the
ceilings and the cornices were grimy; on the floor were chinks and
yawning holes that were hard to account for (one might have fancied they
were made by the heel of the same athlete), and it seemed as though the
room would still have been dark if a dozen lamps had hung in it. There
was nothing approaching an ornament on the walls or the windows. On one
wall, however, there hung a list of regulations of some sort under a
two-headed eagle in a grey wooden frame, and on another wall in the same
sort of frame an engraving with the inscription, "The Indifference of
Man." What it was to which men were indifferent it was impossible to
make out, as the engraving was very dingy with age and was extensively
flyblown. There was a smell of something decayed and sour in the room.
As he led the visitors into the room, Moisey Moisevitch went on
wriggling, gesticulating, shrugging and uttering joyful exclamations; he
considered these antics necessary in order to seem polite and agreeable.
"When did our waggons go by?" Kuzmitchov asked.
"One party went by early this morning, and the other, Ivan Ivanitch, put
up here for dinner and went on towards evening."
"Ah! . . . Has Varlamov been by or not?"
"No, Ivan Ivanitch. His clerk, Grigory Yegoritch, went by yesterday
morning and said that he had to be to-day at the Molokans' farm."
"Good! so we will go after the waggons directly and then on to the
Molokans'."
"Mercy on us, Ivan Ivanitch!" Moisey Moisevitch cried in horror,
flinging up his hands. "Where are you going for the night? You will have
a nice little supper and stay the night, and to-morrow morning, please
God, you can go on and overtake anyone you like."
"There is no time for that. . . . Excuse me, Moisey Moisevitch, another
time; but now I must make haste. We'll stay a quarter of an hour and
then go on; we can stay the night at the Molokans'."
"A quarter of an hour!" squealed Moisey Moisevitch. "Have you no fear of
God, Ivan Ivanitch? You will compel me to hide your caps and lock the
door! You must have a cup of tea and a snack of something, anyway."
"We have no time for tea," said Kuzmitchov.
Moisey Moisevitch bent his head on one side, crooked his knees, and put
his open hands before him as though warding off a blow, while with a
smile of agonized sweetness he began imploring:
"Ivan Ivanitch! Father Christopher! Do be so good as to take a cup of
tea with me. Surely I am not such a bad man that you can't even drink
tea in my house? Ivan Ivanitch!"
"Well, we may just as well have a cup of tea," said Father Christopher,
with a sympathetic smile; "that won't keep us long."
"Very well," Kuzmitchov assented.
Moisey Moisevitch, in a fluster uttered an exclamation of joy, and
shrugging as though he had just stepped out of cold weather into warm,
ran to the door and cried in the same frantic voice in which he had
called Solomon:
"Rosa! Rosa! Bring the samovar!"
A minute later the door opened, and Solomon came into the room carrying
a large tray in his hands. Setting the tray on the table, he looked away
sarcastically with the same queer smile as before. Now, by the light of
the lamp, it was possible to see his smile distinctly; it was very
complex, and expressed a variety of emotions, but the predominant
element in it was undisguised contempt. He seemed to be thinking of
something ludicrous and silly, to be feeling contempt and dislike, to be
pleased at something and waiting for the favourable moment to turn
something into ridicule and to burst into laughter. His long nose, his
thick lips, and his sly prominent eyes seemed tense with the desire to
laugh. Looking at his face, Kuzmitchov smiled ironically and asked:
"Solomon, why did you not come to our fair at N. this summer, and act
some Jewish scenes?"
Two years before, as Yegorushka remembered very well, at one of the
booths at the fair at N., Solomon had performed some scenes of Jewish
life, and his acting had been a great success. The allusion to this made
no impression whatever upon Solomon. Making no answer, he went out and
returned a little later with the samovar.
When he had done what he had to do at the table he moved a little aside,
and, folding his arms over his chest and thrusting out one leg, fixed
his sarcastic eyes on Father Christopher. There was something defiant,
haughty, and contemptuous in his attitude, and at the same time it was
comic and pitiful in the extreme, because the more impressive his
attitude the more vividly it showed up his short trousers, his bobtail
coat, his caricature of a nose, and his bird-like plucked-looking little
figure.
Moisey Moisevitch brought a footstool from the other room and sat down a
little way from the table.
"I wish you a good appetite! Tea and sugar!" he began, trying to
entertain his visitors. "I hope you will enjoy it. Such rare guests,
such rare ones; it is years since I last saw Father Christopher. And
will no one tell me who is this nice little gentleman?" he asked,
looking tenderly at Yegorushka.
"He is the son of my sister, Olga Ivanovna," answered Kuzmitchov.
"And where is he going?"
"To school. We are taking him to a high school."
In his politeness, Moisey Moisevitch put on a look of wonder and wagged
his head expressively.
"Ah, that is a fine thing," he said, shaking his finger at the samovar.
"That's a fine thing. You will come back from the high school such a
gentleman that we shall all take off our hats to you. You will be
wealthy and wise and so grand that your mamma will be delighted. Oh,
that's a fine thing!"
He paused a little, stroked his knees, and began again in a jocose and
deferential tone.
"You must excuse me, Father Christopher, but I am thinking of writing to
the bishop to tell him you are robbing the merchants of their living. I
shall take a sheet of stamped paper and write that I suppose Father
Christopher is short of pence, as he has taken up with trade and begun
selling wool."
"H'm, yes . . . it's a queer notion in my old age," said Father
Christopher, and he laughed. "I have turned from priest to merchant,
brother. I ought to be at home now saying my prayers, instead of
galloping about the country like a Pharaoh in his chariot. . . .
Vanity!"
"But it will mean a lot of pence!"
"Oh, I dare say! More kicks than halfpence, and serve me right. The
wool's not mine, but my son-in-law Mikhail's!"
"Why doesn't he go himself?"
"Why, because . . . His mother's milk is scarcely dry upon his lips. He
can buy wool all right, but when it comes to selling, he has no sense;
he is young yet. He has wasted all his money; he wanted to grow rich and
cut a dash, but he tried here and there, and no one would give him his
price. And so the lad went on like that for a year, and then he came to
me and said, 'Daddy, you sell the wool for me; be kind and do it! I am
no good at the business!' And that is true enough. As soon as there is
anything wrong then it's 'Daddy,' but till then they could get on
without their dad. When he was buying he did not consult me, but now
when he is in difficulties it's Daddy's turn. And what does his dad know
about it? If it were not for Ivan Ivanitch, his dad could do nothing. I
have a lot of worry with them."
"Yes; one has a lot of worry with one's children, I can tell you that,"
sighed Moisey Moisevitch. "I have six of my own. One needs schooling,
another needs doctoring, and a third needs nursing, and when they grow
up they are more trouble still. It is not only nowadays, it was the same
in Holy Scripture. When Jacob had little children he wept, and when they
grew up he wept still more bitterly."
"H'm, yes . . ." Father Christopher assented pensively, looking at his
glass. "I have no cause myself to rail against the Lord. I have lived to
the end of my days as any man might be thankful to live. . . . I have
married my daughters to good men, my sons I have set up in life, and now
I am free; I have done my work and can go where I like. I live in peace
with my wife. I eat and drink and sleep and rejoice in my grandchildren,
and say my prayers and want nothing more. I live on the fat of the land,
and don't need to curry favour with anyone. I have never had any trouble
from childhood, and now suppose the Tsar were to ask me, 'What do you
need? What would you like?' why, I don't need anything. I have
everything I want and everything to be thankful for. In the whole town
there is no happier man than I am. My only trouble is I have so many
sins, but there --only God is without sin. That's right, isn't it?"
"No doubt it is."
"I have no teeth, of course; my poor old back aches; there is one thing
and another, . . . asthma and that sort of thing. . . . I ache. . . .
The flesh is weak, but then think of my age! I am in the eighties! One
can't go on for ever; one mustn't outstay one's welcome."
Father Christopher suddenly thought of something, spluttered into his
glass and choked with laughter. Moisey Moisevitch laughed, too, from
politeness, and he, too, cleared his throat.
"So funny!" said Father Christopher, and he waved his hand. "My eldest
son Gavrila came to pay me a visit. He is in the medical line, and is a
district doctor in the province of Tchernigov. . . . 'Very well . . .' I
said to him, 'here I have asthma and one thing and another. . . . You
are a doctor; cure your father!' He undressed me on the spot, tapped me,
listened, and all sorts of tricks, . . . kneaded my stomach, and then he
said, 'Dad, you ought to be treated with compressed air.'" Father
Christopher laughed convulsively, till the tears came into his eyes, and
got up.
"And I said to him, 'God bless your compressed air!'" he brought out
through his laughter, waving both hands. "God bless your compressed
air!"
Moisey Moisevitch got up, too, and with his hands on his stomach, went
off into shrill laughter like the yap of a lap-dog.
"God bless the compressed air!" repeated Father Christopher, laughing.
Moisey Moisevitch laughed two notes higher and so violently that he
could hardly stand on his feet.
"Oh dear!" he moaned through his laughter. "Let me get my breath . . . .
You'll be the death of me."
He laughed and talked, though at the same time he was casting timorous
and suspicious looks at Solomon. The latter was standing in the same
attitude and still smiling. To judge from his eyes and his smile, his
contempt and hatred were genuine, but that was so out of keeping with
his plucked-looking figure that it seemed to Yegorushka as though he
were putting on his defiant attitude and biting sarcastic smile to play
the fool for the entertainment of their honoured guests.
After drinking six glasses of tea in silence, Kuzmitchov cleared a space
before him on the table, took his bag, the one which he kept under his
head when he slept under the chaise, untied the string and shook it.
Rolls of paper notes were scattered out of the bag on the table.
"While we have the time, Father Christopher, let us reckon up," said
Kuzmitchov.
Moisey Moisevitch was embarrassed at the sight of the money. He got up,
and, as a man of delicate feeling unwilling to pry into other people's
secrets, he went out of the room on tiptoe, swaying his arms. Solomon
remained where he was.
"How many are there in the rolls of roubles?" Father Christopher began.
"The rouble notes are done up in fifties, . . . the three-rouble notes
in nineties, the twenty-five and hundred roubles in thousands. You count
out seven thousand eight hundred for Varlamov, and I will count out for
Gusevitch. And mind you don't make a mistake. . ."
Yegorushka had never in his life seen so much money as was lying on the
table before him. There must have been a great deal of money, for the
roll of seven thousand eight hundred, which Father Christopher put aside
for Varlamov, seemed very small compared with the whole heap. At any
other time such a mass of money would have impressed Yegorushka, and
would have moved him to reflect how many cracknels, buns and poppy-cakes
could be bought for that money. Now he looked at it listlessly, only
conscious of the disgusting smell of kerosene and rotten apples that
came from the heap of notes. He was exhausted by the jolting ride in the
chaise, tired out and sleepy. His head was heavy, his eyes would hardly
keep open and his thoughts were tangled like threads. If it had been
possible he would have been relieved to lay his head on the table, so as
not to see the lamp and the fingers moving over the heaps of notes, and
to have let his tired sleepy thoughts go still more at random. When he
tried to keep awake, the light of the lamp, the cups and the fingers
grew double, the samovar heaved and the smell of rotten apples seemed
even more acrid and disgusting.
"Ah, money, money!" sighed Father Christopher, smiling. "You bring
trouble! Now I expect my Mihailo is asleep and dreaming that I am going
to bring him a heap of money like this."
"Your Mihailo Timofevitch is a man who doesn't understand business,"
said Kuzmitchov in an undertone; "he undertakes what isn't his work, but
you understand and can judge. You had better hand over your wool to me,
as I have said already, and I would give you half a rouble above my own
price--yes, I would, simply out of regard for you. . . ."
"No, Ivan Ivanitch." Father Christopher sighed. "I thank you for your
kindness. . . . Of course, if it were for me to decide, I shouldn't
think twice about it; but as it is, the wool is not mine, as you know. .
. ."
Moisey Moisevitch came in on tiptoe. Trying from delicacy not to look at
the heaps of money, he stole up to Yegorushka and pulled at his shirt
from behind.
"Come along, little gentleman," he said in an undertone, "come and see
the little bear I can show you! Such a queer, cross little bear. Oo-oo!"
The sleepy boy got up and listlessly dragged himself after Moisey
Moisevitch to see the bear. He went into a little room, where, before he
saw anything, he felt he could not breathe from the smell of something
sour and decaying, which was much stronger here than in the big room and
probably spread from this room all over the house. One part of the room
was occupied by a big bed, covered with a greasy quilt and another by a
chest of drawers and heaps of rags of all kinds from a woman's stiff
petticoat to children's little breeches and braces. A tallow candle
stood on the chest of drawers.
Instead of the promised bear, Yegorushka saw a big fat Jewess with her
hair hanging loose, in a red flannel skirt with black sprigs on it; she
turned with difficulty in the narrow space between the bed and the chest
of drawers and uttered drawn-out moaning as though she had toothache. On
seeing Yegorushka, she made a doleful, woe-begone face, heaved a long
drawn-out sigh, and before he had time to look round, put to his lips a
slice of bread smeared with honey.
"Eat it, dearie, eat it!" she said. "You are here without your mamma,
and no one to look after you. Eat it up."
Yegorushka did eat it, though after the goodies and poppy-cakes he had
every day at home, he did not think very much of the honey, which was
mixed with wax and bees' wings. He ate while Moisey Moisevitch and the
Jewess looked at him and sighed.
"Where are you going, dearie?" asked the Jewess.
"To school," answered Yegorushka.
"And how many brothers and sisters have you got?"
"I am the only one; there are no others."
"O-oh!" sighed the Jewess, and turned her eyes upward. "Poor mamma, poor
mamma! How she will weep and miss you! We are going to send our Nahum to
school in a year. O-oh!"
"Ah, Nahum, Nahum!" sighed Moisey Moisevitch, and the skin of his pale
face twitched nervously. "And he is so delicate."
The greasy quilt quivered, and from beneath it appeared a child's curly
head on a very thin neck; two black eyes gleamed and stared with
curiosity at Yegorushka. Still sighing, Moisey Moisevitch and the Jewess
went to the chest of drawers and began talking in Yiddish. Moisey
Moisevitch spoke in a low bass undertone, and altogether his talk in
Yiddish was like a continual "ghaal-ghaal-ghaal-ghaal, . . ." while his
wife answered him in a shrill voice like a turkeycock's, and the whole
effect of her talk was something like "Too-too-too-too!" While they were
consulting, another little curly head on a thin neck peeped out of the
greasy quilt, then a third, then a fourth. . . . If Yegorushka had had a
fertile imagination he might have imagined that the hundred-headed hydra
was hiding under the quilt.
"Ghaal-ghaal-ghaal-ghaal!" said Moisey Moisevitch.
"Too-too-too-too!" answered the Jewess.
The consultation ended in the Jewess's diving with a deep sigh into the
chest of drawers, and, unwrapping some sort of green rag there, she took
out a big rye cake made in the shape of a heart.