blacksmith Rodion, a tall, gaunt old man, bareheaded and barefooted, was
standing near his dirty and repulsive-looking cart and, flustered,
looked at the ponies, and it was evident by his face that he had never
seen such little horses before.
"The Kutcherov lady has come!" was whispered around. "Look, the
Kutcherov lady has come!"
Elena Ivanovna looked at the huts as though she were selecting one, and
then stopped at the very poorest, at the windows of which there were so
many children's heads--flaxen, red, and dark. Stepanida, Rodion's wife, a
stout woman, came running out of the hut; her kerchief slipped off her
grey head; she looked at the carriage facing the sun, and her face
smiled and wrinkled up as though she were blind.
"This is for your children," said Elena Ivanovna, and she gave her three
roubles.
Stepanida suddenly burst into tears and bowed down to the ground.
Rodion, too, flopped to the ground, displaying his brownish bald head,
and as he did so he almost caught his wife in the ribs with the fork.
Elena Ivanovna was overcome with confusion and drove back.
II
The Lytchkovs, father and son, caught in their meadows two cart-horses,
a pony, and a broad-faced Aalhaus bull-calf, and with the help of red-
headed Volodka, son of the blacksmith Rodion, drove them to the village.
They called the village elder, collected witnesses, and went to look at
the damage.
"All right, let 'em!" said Kozov, winking, "le-et em! Let them get out
of it if they can, the engineers! Do you think there is no such thing as
law? All right! Send for the police inspector, draw up a statement!..."
"Draw up a statement," repeated Volodka.
"I don't want to let this pass!" shouted the younger Lytchkov. He
shouted louder and louder, and his beardless face seemed to be more and
more swollen. "They've set up a nice fashion! Leave them free, and they
will ruin all the meadows! You've no sort of right to ill-treat people!
We are not serfs now!"
"We are not serfs now!" repeated Volodka.
"We got on all right without a bridge," said the elder Lytchkov
gloomily; "we did not ask for it. What do we want a bridge for? We don't
want it!"
"Brothers, good Christians, we cannot leave it like this!"
"All right, let 'em!" said Kozov, winking. "Let them get out of it if
they can! Landowners, indeed!"
They went back to the village, and as they walked the younger Lytchkov
beat himself on the breast with his fist and shouted all the way, and
Volodka shouted, too, repeating his words. And meanwhile quite a crowd
had gathered in the village round the thoroughbred bull-calf and the
horses. The bullcalf was embarrassed and looked up from under his brows,
but suddenly lowered his muzzle to the ground and took to his heels,
kicking up his hind legs; Kozov was frightened and waved his stick at
him, and they all burst out laughing. Then they locked up the beasts and
waited.
In the evening the engineer sent five roubles for the damage, and the
two horses, the pony and the bull-calf, without being fed or given
water, returned home, their heads hanging with a guilty air as though
they were convicted criminals.
On getting the five roubles the Lytchkovs, father and son, the village
elder and Volodka, punted over the river in a boat and went to a hamlet
on the other side where there was a tavern, and there had a long
carousal. Their singing and the shouting of the younger Lytchkov could
be heard from the village. Their women were uneasy and did not sleep all
night. Rodion did not sleep either.
"It's a bad business," he said, sighing and turning from side to side.
"The gentleman will be angry, and then there will be trouble.... They
have insulted the gentleman.... Oh, they've insulted him. It's a bad
business..."
It happened that the peasants, Rodion amongst them, went into their
forest to divide the clearings for mowing, and as they were returning
home they were met by the engineer. He was wearing a red cotton shirt
and high boots; a setter dog with its long tongue hanging out, followed
behind him.
"Good-day, brothers," he said.
The peasants stopped and took off their hats.
"I have long wanted to have a talk with you, friends," he went on. "This
is what it is. Ever since the early spring your cattle have been in my
copse and garden every day. Everything is trampled down; the pigs have
rooted up the meadow, are ruining everything in the kitchen garden, and
all the undergrowth in the copse is destroyed. There is no getting on
with your herdsmen; one asks them civilly, and they are rude. Damage is
done on my estate every day and I do nothing--I don't fine you or make a
complaint; meanwhile you impounded my horses and my bull calf and
exacted five roubles. Was that right? Is that neighbourly?" he went on,
and his face was so soft and persuasive, and his expression was not
forbidding. "Is that the way decent people behave? A week ago one of
your people cut down two oak saplings in my copse. You have dug up the
road to Eresnevo, and now I have to go two miles round. Why do you
injure me at every step? What harm have I done you? For God's sake, tell
me! My wife and I do our utmost to live with you in peace and harmony;
we help the peasants as we can. My wife is a kind, warm-hearted woman;
she never refuses you help. That is her dream--to be of use to you and
your children. You reward us with evil for our good. You are unjust, my
friends. Think of that. I ask you earnestly to think it over. We treat
you humanely; repay us in the same coin."
He turned and went away. The peasants stood a little longer, put on
their caps and walked away. Rodion, who always understood everything
that was said to him in some peculiar way of his own, heaved a sigh and
said:
"We must pay. 'Repay in coin, my friends'... he said."
They walked to the village in silence. On reaching home Rodion said his
prayer, took off his boots, and sat down on the bench beside his wife.
Stepanida and he always sat side by side when they were at home, and
always walked side by side in the street; they ate and they drank and
they slept always together, and the older they grew the more they loved
one another. It was hot and crowded in their hut, and there were
children everywhere--on the floors, in the windows, on the stove.... In
spite of her advanced years Stepanida was still bearing children, and
now, looking at the crowd of children, it was hard to distinguish which
were Rodion's and which were Volodka's. Volodka's wife, Lukerya, a plain
young woman with prominent eyes and a nose like the beak of a bird, was
kneading dough in a tub; Volodka was sitting on the stove with his legs
hanging.
"On the road near Nikita's buckwheat... the engineer with his dog..."
Rodion began, after a rest, scratching his ribs and his elbow. "'You
must pay,' says he... 'coin,' says he.... Coin or no coin, we shall have
to collect ten kopecks from every hut. We've offended the gentleman very
much. I am sorry for him...."
"We've lived without a bridge," said Volodka, not looking at anyone,
"and we don't want one."
"What next; the bridge is a government business."
"We don't want it."
"Your opinion is not asked. What is it to you?"
"'Your opinion is not asked,'" Volodka mimicked him. "We don't want to
drive anywhere; what do we want with a bridge? If we have to, we can
cross by the boat."
Someone from the yard outside knocked at the window so violently that it
seemed to shake the whole hut.
"Is Volodka at home?" he heard the voice of the younger Lytchkov.
"Volodka, come out, come along."
Volodka jumped down off the stove and began looking for his cap.
"Don't go, Volodka," said Rodion diffidently. "Don't go with them, son.
You are foolish, like a little child; they will teach you no good; don't
go!"
"Don't go, son," said Stepanida, and she blinked as though about to
shed tears. "I bet they are calling you to the tavern."
"'To the tavern,'" Volodka mimicked.
"You'll come back drunk again, you currish Herod," said Lukerya, looking
at him angrily. "Go along, go along, and may you burn up with vodka, you
tailless Satan!"
"You hold your tongue," shouted Volodka.
"They've married me to a fool, they've ruined me, a luckless orphan, you
red-headed drunkard..." wailed Lukerya, wiping her face with a hand
covered with dough. "I wish I had never set eyes on you."
Volodka gave her a blow on the ear and went off.
III
Elena Ivanovna and her little daughter visited the village on foot. They
were out for a walk. It was a Sunday, and the peasant women and girls
were walking up and down the street in their brightly-coloured dresses.
Rodion and Stepanida, sitting side by side at their door, bowed and
smiled to Elena Ivanovna and her little daughter as to acquaintances.
From the windows more than a dozen children stared at them; their faces
expressed amazement and curiosity, and they could be heard whispering:
"The Kutcherov lady has come! The Kutcherov lady!"
"Good-morning," said Elena Ivanovna, and she stopped; she paused, and
then asked: "Well, how are you getting on?"
"We get along all right, thank God," answered Rodion, speaking rapidly.
"To be sure we get along."
"The life we lead!" smiled Stepanida. "You can see our poverty yourself,
dear lady! The family is fourteen souls in all, and only two bread-
winners. We are supposed to be blacksmiths, but when they bring us a
horse to shoe we have no coal, nothing to buy it with. We are worried to
death, lady," she went on, and laughed. "Oh, oh, we are worried to
death."
Elena Ivanovna sat down at the entrance and, putting her arm round her
little girl, pondered something, and judging from the little girl's
expression, melancholy thoughts were straying through her mind, too; as
she brooded she played with the sumptuous lace on the parasol she had
taken out of her mother's hands.
"Poverty," said Rodion, "a great deal of anxiety--you see no end to it.
Here, God sends no rain... our life is not easy, there is no denying
it."
"You have a hard time in this life," said Elena Ivanovna, "but in the
other world you will be happy."
Rodion did not understand her, and simply coughed into his clenched hand
by way of reply. Stepanida said:
"Dear lady, the rich men will be all right in the next world, too. The
rich put up candles, pay for services; the rich give to beggars, but
what can the poor man do? He has no time to make the sign of the cross.
He is the beggar of beggars himself; how can he think of his soul? And
many sins come from poverty; from trouble we snarl at one another like
dogs, we haven't a good word to say to one another, and all sorts of
things happen, dear lady--God forbid! It seems we have no luck in this
world nor the next. All the luck has fallen to the rich."
She spoke gaily; she was evidently used to talking of her hard life. And
Rodion smiled, too; he was pleased that his old woman was so clever, so
ready of speech.
"It is only on the surface that the rich seem to be happy," said Elena
Ivanovna. "Every man has his sorrow. Here my husband and I do not live
poorly, we have means, but are we happy? I am young, but I have had four
children; my children are always being ill. I am ill, too, and
constantly being doctored."
"And what is your illness?" asked Rodion.
"A woman's complaint. I get no sleep; a continual headache gives me no
peace. Here I am sitting and talking, but my head is bad, I am weak all
over, and I should prefer the hardest labour to such a condition. My
soul, too, is troubled; I am in continual fear for my children, my
husband. Every family has its own trouble of some sort; we have ours. I
am not of noble birth. My grandfather was a simple peasant, my father
was a tradesman in Moscow; he was a plain, uneducated man, too, while my
husband's parents were wealthy and distinguished. They did not want him
to marry me, but he disobeyed them, quarrelled with them, and they have
not forgiven us to this day. That worries my husband; it troubles him
and keeps him in constant agitation; he loves his mother, loves her
dearly. So I am uneasy, too, my soul is in pain."
Peasants, men and women, were by now standing round Rodion's hut and
listening. Kozov came up, too, and stood twitching his long, narrow
beard. The Lytchkovs, father and son, drew near.
"And say what you like, one cannot be happy and satisfied if one does
not feel in one's proper place." Elena Ivanovna went on. "Each of you
has his strip of land, each of you works and knows what he is working
for; my husband builds bridges--in short, everyone has his place, while
I, I simply walk about. I have not my bit to work. I don't work, and
feel as though I were an outsider. I am saying all this that you may not
judge from outward appearances; if a man is expensively dressed and has
means it does not prove that he is satisfied with his life."
She got up to go away and took her daughter by the hand.
"I like your place here very much," she said, and smiled, and from that
faint, diffident smile one could tell how unwell she really was, how
young and how pretty; she had a pale, thinnish face with dark eyebrows
and fair hair. And the little girl was just such another as her mother:
thin, fair, and slender. There was a fragrance of scent about them.
"I like the river and the forest and the village," Elena Ivanovna went
on; "I could live here all my life, and I feel as though here I should
get strong and find my place. I want to help you--I want to dreadfully--to
be of use, to be a real friend to you. I know your need, and what I
don't know I feel, my heart guesses. I am sick, feeble, and for me
perhaps it is not possible to change my life as I would. But I have
children. I will try to bring them up that they may be of use to you,
may love you. I shall impress upon them continually that their life does
not belong to them, but to you. Only I beg you earnestly, I beseech you,
trust us, live in friendship with us. My husband is a kind, good man.
Don't worry him, don't irritate him. He is sensitive to every trifle,
and yesterday, for instance, your cattle were in our vegetable garden,
and one of your people broke down the fence to the bee-hives, and such
an attitude to us drives my husband to despair. I beg you," she went on
in an imploring voice, and she clasped her hands on her bosom--"I beg you
to treat us as good neighbours; let us live in peace! There is a saying,
you know, that even a bad peace is better than a good quarrel, and,
'Don't buy property, but buy neighbours.' I repeat my husband is a kind
man and good; if all goes well we promise to do everything in our power
for you; we will mend the roads, we will build a school for your
children. I promise you."
"Of course we thank you humbly, lady," said Lytchkov the father, looking
at the ground; "you are educated people; it is for you to know best.
Only, you see, Voronov, a rich peasant at Eresnevo, promised to build a
school; he, too, said, 'I will do this for you,' 'I will do that for
you,' and he only put up the framework and refused to go on. And then
they made the peasants put the roof on and finish it; it cost them a
thousand roubles. Voronov did not care; he only stroked his beard, but
the peasants felt it a bit hard."
"That was a crow, but now there's a rook, too," said Kozov, and he
winked.
There was the sound of laughter.
"We don't want a school," said Volodka sullenly. "Our children go to
Petrovskoe, and they can go on going there; we don't want it."
Elena Ivanovna seemed suddenly intimidated; her face looked paler and
thinner, she shrank into herself as though she had been touched with
something coarse, and walked away without uttering another word. And she
walked more and more quickly, without looking round.
"Lady," said Rodion, walking after her, "lady, wait a bit; hear what I
would say to you."
He followed her without his cap, and spoke softly as though begging.
"Lady, wait and hear what I will say to you."
They had walked out of the village, and Elena Ivanovna stopped beside a
cart in the shade of an old mountain ash.
"Don't be offended, lady," said Rodion. "What does it mean? Have
patience. Have patience for a couple of years. You will live here, you
will have patience, and it will all come round. Our folks are good and
peaceable; there's no harm in them; it's God's truth I'm telling you.
Don't mind Kozov and the Lytchkovs, and don't mind Volodka. He's a fool;
he listens to the first that speaks. The others are quiet folks; they
are silent. Some would be glad, you know, to say a word from the heart
and to stand up for themselves, but cannot. They have a heart and a
conscience, but no tongue. Don't be offended... have patience.... What
does it matter?"
Elena Ivanovna looked at the broad, tranquil river, pondering, and tears
flowed down her cheeks. And Rodion was troubled by those tears; he
almost cried himself.
"Never mind..." he muttered. "Have patience for a couple of years. You
can have the school, you can have the roads, only not all at once. If
you went, let us say, to sow corn on that mound you would first have to
weed it out, to pick out all the stones, and then to plough, and work
and work... and with the people, you see, it is the same... you must
work and work until you overcome them."
The crowd had moved away from Rodion's hut, and was coming along the
street towards the mountain ash. They began singing songs and playing
the concertina, and they kept coming closer and closer....
"Mamma, let us go away from here," said the little girl, huddling up to
her mother, pale and shaking all over; "let us go away, mamma!
"Where?"
"To Moscow.... Let us go, mamma."
The child began crying.
Rodion was utterly overcome; his face broke into profuse perspiration;
he took out of his pocket a little crooked cucumber, like a half-moon,
covered with crumbs of rye bread, and began thrusting it into the little
girl's hands.
"Come, come," he muttered, scowling severely; "take the little cucumber,
eat it up.... You mustn't cry. Mamma will whip you.... She'll tell your
father of you when you get home. Come, come...."
They walked on, and he still followed behind them, wanting to say
something friendly and persuasive to them. And seeing that they were
both absorbed in their own thoughts and their own griefs, and not
noticing him, he stopped and, shading his eyes from the sun, looked
after them for a long time till they disappeared into their copse.
IV
The engineer seemed to grow irritable and petty, and in every trivial
incident saw an act of robbery or outrage. His gate was kept bolted even
by day, and at night two watchmen walked up and down the garden beating
a board; and they gave up employing anyone from Obrutchanovo as a
labourer. As ill-luck would have it someone (either a peasant or one of
the workmen) took the new wheels off the cart and replaced them by old
ones, then soon afterwards two bridles and a pair of pincers were
carried off, and murmurs arose even in the village. People began to say
that a search should be made at the Lytchkovs' and at Volodka's, and
then the bridles and the pincers were found under the hedge in the
engineer's garden; someone had thrown them down there.
It happened that the peasants were coming in a crowd out of the forest,
and again they met the engineer on the road. He stopped, and without
wishing them good-day he began, looking angrily first at one, then at
another:
"I have begged you not to gather mushrooms in the park and near the
yard, but to leave them for my wife and children, but your girls come
before daybreak and there is not a mushroom left....Whether one asks you
or not it makes no difference. Entreaties, and friendliness, and
persuasion I see are all useless."
He fixed his indignant eyes on Rodion and went on:
"My wife and I behaved to you as human beings, as to our equals, and
you? But what's the use of talking! It will end by our looking down upon
you. There is nothing left!"
And making an effort to restrain his anger, not to say too much, he
turned and went on.
On getting home Rodion said his prayer, took off his boots, and sat down
beside his wife.
"Yes..." he began with a sigh. "We were walking along just now, and Mr.
Kutcherov met us.... Yes.... He saw the girls at daybreak... 'Why don't
they bring mushrooms,'... he said 'to my wife and children?' he said....
And then he looked at me and he said: 'I and my wife will look after
you,' he said. I wanted to fall down at his feet, but I hadn't the
courage.... God give him health... God bless him!..."
Stephania crossed herself and sighed.
"They are kind, simple-hearted people," Rodion went on. "'We shall look
after you.'... He promised me that before everyone. In our old age... it
wouldn't be a bad thing.... I should always pray for them.... Holy
Mother, bless them...."
The Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, the fourteenth of September,
was the festival of the village church. The Lytchkovs, father and son,
went across the river early in the morning and returned to dinner drunk;
they spent a long time going about the village, alternately singing and
swearing; then they had a fight and went to the New Villa to complain.
First Lytchkov the father went into the yard with a long ashen stick in
his hands. He stopped irresolutely and took off his hat. Just at that
moment the engineer and his family were sitting on the verandah,
drinking tea.
"What do you want?" shouted the engineer.
"Your honour..." Lytchkov began, and burst into tears. "Show the Divine
mercy, protect me... my son makes my life a misery... your honour..."
Lytchkov the son walked up, too; he, too, was bareheaded and had a stick
in his hand; he stopped and fixed his drunken senseless eyes on the
verandah.
"It is not my business to settle your affairs," said the engineer. "Go
to the rural captain or the police officer."
"I have been everywhere.... I have lodged a petition..." said Lytchkov
the father, and he sobbed. "Where can I go now? He can kill me now, it
seems. He can do anything. Is that the way to treat a father? A father?"
He raised his stick and hit his son on the head; the son raised his
stick and struck his father just on his bald patch such a blow that the
stick bounced back. The father did not even flinch, but hit his son
again and again on the head. And so they stood and kept hitting one
another on the head, and it looked not so much like a fight as some sort
of a game. And peasants, men and women, stood in a crowd at the gate and
looked into the garden, and the faces of all were grave. They were the
peasants who had come to greet them for the holiday, but seeing the
Lytchkovs, they were ashamed and did not go in.
The next morning Elena Ivanovna went with the children to Moscow. And
there was a rumour that the engineer was selling his house....
V
The peasants had long ago grown used to the sight of the bridge, and it
was difficult to imagine the river at that place without a bridge. The
heap of rubble left from the building of it had long been overgrown with
grass, the navvies were forgotten, and instead of the strains of the
"Dubinushka" that they used to sing, the peasants heard almost every
hour the sounds of a passing train.
The New Villa has long ago been sold; now it belongs to a government
clerk who comes here from the town for the holidays with his family,
drinks tea on the terrace, and then goes back to the town again. He
wears a cockade on his cap; he talks and clears his throat as though he
were a very important official, though he is only of the rank of a
collegiate secretary, and when the peasants bow he makes no response.
In Obrutchanovo everyone has grown older; Kozov is dead. In Rodion's hut
there are even more children. Volodka has grown a long red beard. They
are still as poor as ever.
In the early spring the Obrutchanovo peasants were sawing wood near the
station. And after work they were going home; they walked without haste
one after the other. Broad saws curved over their shoulders; the sun was
reflected in them. The nightingales were singing in the bushes on the
bank, larks were trilling in the heavens. It was quiet at the New Villa;
there was not a soul there, and only golden pigeons--golden because the
sunlight was streaming upon them--were flying over the house. All of
them--Rodion, the two Lytchkovs, and Volodka--thought of the white horses,
the little ponies, the fireworks, the boat with the lanterns; they
remembered how the engineer's wife, so beautiful and so grandly dressed,
had come into the village and talked to them in such a friendly way. And
it seemed as though all that had never been; it was like a dream or a
fairy-tale.