sleeps for half an hour, then jumps up and keeps walking and walking
about to see whether the peasants have not set fire to something, have
not stolen something.... I am frightened with her, Ilya Makaritch. And
the Hrymin Juniors did not go to bed after the wedding, but drove to the
town to go to law with each other; and folks do say it is all on account
of Aksinya. Two of the brothers have promised to build her a brickyard,
but the third is offended, and the factory has been at a standstill for
a month, and my uncle Prohor is without work and goes about from house
to house getting crusts. 'Hadn't you better go working on the land or
sawing up wood, meanwhile, uncle?' I tell him; 'why disgrace yourself?'
'I've got out of the way of it,' he says; 'I don't know how to do any
sort of peasant's work now, Lipinka.'..."
They stopped to rest and wait for Praskovya near a copse of young aspen-
trees. Elizarov had long been a contractor in a small way, but he kept
no horses, going on foot all over the district with nothing but a little
bag in which there was bread and onions, and stalking along with big
strides, swinging his arms. And it was difficult to walk with him.
At the entrance to the copse stood a milestone. Elizarov touched it;
read it. Praskovya reached them out of breath. Her wrinkled and always
scared-looking face was beaming with happiness; she had been at church
to-day like anyone else, then she had been to the fair and there had
drunk pear cider. For her this was unusual, and it even seemed to her
now that she had lived for her own pleasure that day for the first time
in her life. After resting they all three walked on side by side. The
sun had already set, and its beams filtered through the copse, casting a
light on the trunks of the trees. There was a faint sound of voices
ahead. The Ukleevo girls had long before pushed on ahead but had
lingered in the copse, probably gathering mushrooms.
"Hey, wenches!" cried Elizarov. "Hey, my beauties!"
There was a sound of laughter in response.
"Crutch is coming! Crutch! The old horseradish."
And the echo laughed, too. And then the copse was left behind. The tops
of the factory chimneys came into view. The cross on the belfry
glittered: this was the village: "the one at which the deacon ate all
the caviare at the funeral." Now they were almost home; they only had to
go down into the big ravine. Lipa and Praskovya, who had been walking
barefooted, sat down on the grass to put on their boots; Elizar sat down
with them. If they looked down from above Ukleevo looked beautiful and
peaceful with its willow-trees, its white church, and its little river,
and the only blot on the picture was the roof of the factories, painted
for the sake of cheapness a gloomy ashen grey. On the slope on the
further side they could see the rye--some in stacks and sheaves here and
there as though strewn about by the storm, and some freshly cut lying in
swathes; the oats, too, were ripe and glistened now in the sun like
mother-of-pearl. It was harvest-time. To-day was a holiday, to-morrow
they would harvest the rye and carry the hay, and then Sunday a holiday
again; every day there were mutterings of distant thunder. It was misty
and looked like rain, and, gazing now at the fields, everyone thought,
God grant we get the harvest in in time; and everyone felt gay and
joyful and anxious at heart.
"Mowers ask a high price nowadays," said Praskovya. "One rouble and
forty kopecks a day."
People kept coming and coming from the fair at Kazanskoe: peasant women,
factory workers in new caps, beggars, children.... Here a cart would
drive by stirring up the dust and behind it would run an unsold horse,
and it seemed glad it had not been sold; then a cow was led along by the
horns, resisting stubbornly; then a cart again, and in it drunken
peasants swinging their legs. An old woman led a little boy in a big cap
and big boots; the boy was tired out with the heat and the heavy boots
which prevented his bending his legs at the knees, but yet blew
unceasingly with all his might at a tin trumpet. They had gone down the
slope and turned into the street, but the trumpet could still be heard.
"Our factory owners don't seem quite themselves..." said Elizarov.
"There's trouble. Kostukov is angry with me. 'Too many boards have gone
on the cornices.' 'Too many? As many have gone on it as were needed,
Vassily Danilitch; I don't eat them with my porridge.' 'How can you
speak to me like that?' said he, 'you good-for-nothing blockhead! Don't
forget yourself! It was I made you a contractor.' 'That's nothing so
wonderful,' said I. 'Even before I was a contractor I used to have tea
every day.' 'You are a rascal...' he said. I said nothing. 'We are
rascals in this world,' thought I, 'and you will be rascals in the
next....' Ha-ha-ha! The next day he was softer. 'Don't you bear malice
against me for my words, Makaritch,' he said. 'If I said too much,' says
he, 'what of it? I am a merchant of the first guild, your superior--you
ought to hold your tongue.' 'You,' said I, 'are a merchant of the first
guild and I am a carpenter, that's correct. And Saint Joseph was a
carpenter, too. Ours is a righteous calling and pleasing to God, and if
you are pleased to be my superior you are very welcome to it, Vassily
Danilitch.' And later on, after that conversation I mean, I thought:
'Which was the superior? A merchant of the first guild or a carpenter?'
The carpenter must be, my child!"
Crutch thought a minute and added:
"Yes, that's how it is, child. He who works, he who is patient is the
superior."
By now the sun had set and a thick mist as white as milk was rising over
the river, in the church enclosure, and in the open spaces round the
factories. Now when the darkness was coming on rapidly, when lights were
twinkling below, and when it seemed as though the mists were hiding a
fathomless abyss, Lipa and her mother who were born in poverty and
prepared to live so till the end, giving up to others everything except
their frightened, gentle souls, may have fancied for a minute perhaps
that in the vast, mysterious world, among the endless series of lives,
they, too, counted for something, and they, too, were superior to
someone; they liked sitting here at the top, they smiled happily and
forgot that they must go down below again all the same.
At last they went home again. The mowers were sitting on the ground at
the gates near the shop. As a rule the Ukleevo peasants did not go to
Tsybukin's to work, and they had to hire strangers, and now in the
darkness it seemed as though there were men sitting there with long
black beards. The shop was open, and through the doorway they could see
the deaf man playing draughts with a boy. The mowers were singing
softly, scarcely audibly, or loudly demanding their wages for the
previous day, but they were not paid for fear they should go away before
to-morrow. Old Tsybukin, with his coat off, was sitting in his waistcoat
with Aksinya under the birch-tree, drinking tea; a lamp was burning on
the table.
"I say, grandfather," a mower called from outside the gates, as though
taunting him, "pay us half anyway! Hey, grandfather."
And at once there was the sound of laughter, and then again they sang
hardly audibly.... Crutch, too, sat down to have some tea.
"We have been at the fair, you know," he began telling them. "We have
had a walk, a very nice walk, my children, praise the Lord. But an
unfortunate thing happened: Sashka the blacksmith bought some tobacco
and gave the shopman half a rouble to be sure. And the half rouble was a
false one"--Crutch went on, and he meant to speak in a whisper, but he
spoke in a smothered husky voice which was audible to everyone. "The
half-rouble turned out to be a bad one. He was asked where he got it.
'Anisim Tsybukin gave it me,' he said. 'When I went to his wedding,' he
said. They called the police inspector, took the man away.... Look out,
Grigory Petrovitch, that nothing comes of it, no talk...."
"Gra-ndfather!" the same voice called tauntingly outside the gates.
"Gra-andfather!"
A silence followed.
"Ah, little children, little children, little children..." Crutch
muttered rapidly, and he got up. He was overcome with drowsiness. "Well,
thank you for the tea, for the sugar, little children. It is time to
sleep. I am like a bit of rotten timber nowadays, my beams are crumbling
under me. Ho-ho-ho! I suppose it's time I was dead."
And he gave a gulp. Old Tsybukin did not finish his tea but sat on a
little, pondering; and his face looked as though he were listening to
the footsteps of Crutch, who was far away down the street.
"Sashka the blacksmith told a lie, I expect," said Aksinya, guessing his
thoughts.
He went into the house and came back a little later with a parcel; he
opened it, and there was the gleam of roubles--perfectly new coins. He
took one, tried it with his teeth, flung it on the tray; then flung down
another.
"The roubles really are false..." he said, looking at Aksinya and
seeming perplexed. "These are those Anisim brought, his present. Take
them, daughter," he whispered, and thrust the parcel into her hands.
"Take them and throw them into the well... confound them! And mind there
is no talk about it. Harm might come of it.... Take away the samovar,
put out the light."
Lipa and her mother sitting in the barn saw the lights go out one after
the other; only overhead in Varvara's room there were blue and red lamps
gleaming, and a feeling of peace, content, and happy ignorance seemed to
float down from there. Praskovya could never get used to her daughter's
being married to a rich man, and when she came she huddled timidly in
the outer room with a deprecating smile on her face, and tea and sugar
were sent out to her. And Lipa, too, could not get used to it either,
and after her husband had gone away she did not sleep in her bed, but
lay down anywhere to sleep, in the kitchen or the barn, and every day
she scrubbed the floor or washed the clothes, and felt as though she
were hired by the day. And now, on coming back from the service, they
drank tea in the kitchen with the cook, then they went into the barn and
lay down on the ground between the sledge and the wall. It was dark here
and smelt of harness. The lights went out about the house, then they
could hear the deaf man shutting up the shop, the mowers settling
themselves about the yard to sleep. In the distance at the Hrymin
Juniors' they were playing on the expensive concertina.... Praskovya and
Lipa began to go to sleep.
And when they were awakened by somebody's steps it was bright moonlight;
at the entrance of the barn stood Aksinya with her bedding in her arms.
"Maybe it's a bit cooler here," she said; then she came in and lay down
almost in the doorway so that the moonlight fell full upon her.
She did not sleep, but breathed heavily, tossing from side to side with
the heat, throwing off almost all the bedclothes. And in the magic
moonlight what a beautiful, what a proud animal she was! A little time
passed, and then steps were heard again: the old father, white all over,
appeared in the doorway.
"Aksinya," he called, "are you here?"
"Well?" she responded angrily.
"I told you just now to throw the money into the well, have you done
so?"
"What next, throwing property into the water! I gave them to the
mowers...."
"Oh my God!" cried the old man, dumbfounded and alarmed. "Oh my God! you
wicked woman...."
He flung up his hands and went out, and he kept saying something as he
went away. And a little later Aksinya sat up and sighed heavily with
annoyance, then got up and, gathering up her bedclothes in her arms,
went out.
"Why did you marry me into this family, mother?" said Lipa.
"One has to be married, daughter. It was not us who ordained it."
And a feeling of inconsolable woe was ready to take possession of them.
But it seemed to them that someone was looking down from the height of
the heavens, out of the blue from where the stars were seeing everything
that was going on in Ukleevo, watching over them. And however great was
wickedness, still the night was calm and beautiful, and still in God's
world there is and will be truth and justice as calm and beautiful, and
everything on earth is only waiting to be made one with truth and
justice, even as the moonlight is blended with the night.
And both, huddling close to one another, fell asleep comforted.
VI
News had come long before that Anisim had been put in prison for coining
and passing bad money. Months passed, more than half a year passed, the
long winter was over, spring had begun, and everyone in the house and
the village had grown used to the fact that Anisim was in prison. And
when anyone passed by the house or the shop at night he would remember
that Anisim was in prison; and when they rang at the churchyard for some
reason, that, too, reminded them that he was in prison awaiting trial.
It seemed as though a shadow had fallen upon the house. The house looked
darker, the roof was rustier, the heavy, iron-bound door into the shop,
which was painted green, was covered with cracks, or, as the deaf man
expressed it, "blisters"; and old Tsybukin seemed to have grown dingy,
too. He had given up cutting his hair and beard, and looked shaggy. He
no longer sprang jauntily into his chaise, nor shouted to beggars: "God
will provide!" His strength was on the wane, and that was evident in
everything. People were less afraid of him now, and the police officer
drew up a formal charge against him in the shop though he received his
regular bribe as before; and three times the old man was called up to
the town to be tried for illicit dealing in spirits, and the case was
continually adjourned owing to the non-appearance of witnesses, and old
Tsybukin was worn out with worry.
He often went to see his son, hired somebody, handed in a petition to
somebody else, presented a holy banner to some church. He presented the
governor of the prison in which Anisim was confined with a silver glass
stand with a long spoon and the inscription: "The soul knows its right
measure."
"There is no one to look after things for us," said Varvara. "Tut,
tut.... You ought to ask someone of the gentlefolks, they would write to
the head officials.... At least they might let him out on bail! Why wear
the poor fellow out?"
She, too, was grieved, but had grown stouter and whiter; she lighted the
lamps before the ikons as before, and saw that everything in the house
was clean, and regaled the guests with jam and apple cheese. The deaf
man and Aksinya looked after the shop. A new project was in progress--a
brickyard in Butyokino--and Aksinya went there almost every day in the
chaise. She drove herself, and when she met acquaintances she stretched
out her neck like a snake out of the young rye, and smiled naively and
enigmatically. Lipa spent her time playing with the baby which had been
born to her before Lent. It was a tiny, thin, pitiful little baby, and
it was strange that it should cry and gaze about and be considered a
human being, and even be called Nikifor. He lay in his swinging cradle,
and Lipa would walk away towards the door and say, bowing to him:
"Good-day, Nikifor Anisimitch!"
And she would rush at him and kiss him. Then she would walk away to the
door, bow again, and say:
'Good-day, Nikifor Anisimitch!
And he kicked up his little red legs, and his crying was mixed with
laughter like the carpenter Elizarov's.
At last the day of the trial was fixed. Tsybukin went away five days
before. Then they heard that the peasants called as witnesses had been
fetched; their old workman who had received a notice to appear went too.
The trial was on a Thursday. But Sunday had passed, and Tsybukin was
still not back, and there was no news. Towards the evening on Tuesday
Varvara was sitting at the open window, listening for her husband to
come. In the next room Lipa was playing with her baby. She was tossing
him up in her arms and saying enthusiastically:
"You will grow up ever so big, ever so big. You will be a peasant, we
shall go out to work together! We shall go out to work together!"
"Come, come," said Varvara, offended. "Go out to work, what an idea, you
silly girl! He will be a merchant...!"
Lipa sang softly, but a minute later she forgot and again:
"You will grow ever so big, ever so big. You will be a peasant, we'll go
out to work together."
"There she is at it again!"
Lipa, with Nikifor in her arms, stood still in the doorway and asked:
"Why do I love him so much, mamma? Why do I feel so sorry for him?" she
went on in a quivering voice, and her eyes glistened with tears. "Who is
he? What is he like? As light as a little feather, as a little crumb,
but I love him; I love him like a real person. Here he can do nothing,
he can't talk, and yet I know what he wants with his little eyes."
Varvara was listening; the sound of the evening train coming in to the
station reached her. Had her husband come? She did not hear and she did
not heed what Lipa was saying, she had no idea how the time passed, but
only trembled all over--not from dread, but intense curiosity. She saw a
cart full of peasants roll quickly by with a rattle. It was the
witnesses coming back from the station. When the cart passed the shop
the old workman jumped out and walked into the yard. She could hear him
being greeted in the yard and being asked some questions....
"Deprivation of rights and all his property," he said loudly, "and six
years' penal servitude in Siberia."
She could see Aksinya come out of the shop by the back way; she had just
been selling kerosene, and in one hand held a bottle and in the other a
can, and in her mouth she had some silver coins.
"Where is father?" she asked, lisping.
"At the station," answered the labourer. "'When it gets a little
darker,' he said, 'then I shall come.'"
And when it became known all through the household that Anisim was
sentenced to penal servitude, the cook in the kitchen suddenly broke
into a wail as though at a funeral, imagining that this was demanded by
the proprieties:
"There is no one to care for us now you have gone, Anisim Grigoritch,
our bright falcon...."
The dogs began barking in alarm. Varvara ran to the window, and rushing
about in distress, shouted to the cook with all her might, straining her
voice:
"Sto-op, Stepanida, sto-op! Don't harrow us, for Christ's sake!"
They forgot to set the samovar, they could think of nothing. Only Lipa
could not make out what it was all about and went on playing with her
baby.
When the old father arrived from the station they asked him no
questions. He greeted them and walked through all the rooms in silence;
he had no supper.
"There was no one to see about things..." Varvara began when they were
alone. "I said you should have asked some of the gentry, you would not
heed me at the time.... A petition would..."
"I saw to things," said her husband with a wave of his hand. "When
Anisim was condemned I went to the gentleman who was defending him.
'It's no use now,' he said, 'it's too late'; and Anisim said the same;
it's too late. But all the same as I came out of the court I made an
agreement with a lawyer, I paid him something in advance. I'll wait a
week and then I will go again. It is as God wills."
Again the old man walked through all the rooms, and when he went back to
Varvara he said:
"I must be ill. My head's in a sort of... fog. My thoughts are in a
maze."
He closed the door that Lipa might not hear, and went on softly:
"I am unhappy about my money. Do you remember on Low Sunday before his
wedding Anisim's bringing me some new roubles and half-roubles? One
parcel I put away at the time, but the others I mixed with my own money.
When my uncle Dmitri Filatitch--the kingdom of heaven be his--was alive,
he used constantly to go journeys to Moscow and to the Crimea to buy
goods. He had a wife, and this same wife, when he was away buying goods,
used to take up with other men. She had half a dozen children. And when
uncle was in his cups he would laugh and say: 'I never can make out,' he
used to say, 'which are my children and which are other people's.' An
easy-going disposition, to be sure; and so I now can't distinguish which
are genuine roubles and which are false ones. And it seems to me that
they are all false."
"Nonsense, God bless you."
"I take a ticket at the station, I give the man three roubles, and I
keep fancying they are false. And I am frightened. I must be ill."
"There's no denying it, we are all in God's hands.... Oh dear, dear..."
said Varvara, and she shook her head. "You ought to think about this,
Grigory Petrovitch: you never know, anything may happen, you are not a
young man. See they don't wrong your grandchild when you are dead and
gone. Oy, I am afraid they will be unfair to Nikifor! He has as good as
no father, his mother's young and foolish... you ought to secure
something for him, poor little boy, at least the land, Butyokino,
Grigory Petrovitch, really! Think it over!" Varvara went on persuading
him. "The pretty boy, one is sorry for him! You go to-morrow and make
out a deed; why put it off?"
"I'd forgotten about my grandson," said Tsybukin. "I must go and have a
look at him. So you say the boy is all right? Well, let him grow up,
please God."
He opened the door and, crooking his finger, beckoned to Lipa. She went
up to him with the baby in her arms.
"If there is anything you want, Lipinka, you ask for it," he said. "And
eat anything you like, we don't grudge it, so long as it does you
good...." He made the sign of the cross over the baby. "And take care of
my grandchild. My son is gone, but my grandson is left."
Tears rolled down his cheeks; he gave a sob and went away. Soon
afterwards he went to bed and slept soundly after seven sleepless
nights.
VII
Old Tsybukin went to the town for a short time. Someone told Aksinya
that he had gone to the notary to make his will and that he was leaving
Butyokino, the very place where she had set up a brickyard, to Nikifor,
his grandson. She was informed of this in the morning when old Tsybukin
and Varvara were sitting near the steps under the birch-tree, drinking
their tea. She closed the shop in the front and at the back, gathered
together all the keys she had, and flung them at her father-in-law's
feet.
"I am not going on working for you," she began in a loud voice, and
suddenly broke into sobs. "It seems I am not your daughter-in-law, but a
servant! Everybody's jeering and saying, 'See what a servant the
Tsybukins have got hold of!' I did not come to you for wages! I am not a
beggar, I am not a slave, I have a father and mother."
She did not wipe away her tears, she fixed upon her father-in-law eyes
full of tears, vindictive, squinting with wrath; her face and neck were
red and tense, and she was shouting at the top of her voice.
"I don't mean to go on being a slave!" she went on. "I am worn out. When
it is work, when it is sitting in the shop day in and day out, scurrying
out at night for vodka--then it is my share, but when it is giving away
the land then it is for that convict's wife and her imp. She is mistress
here, and I am her servant. Give her everything, the convict's wife, and
may it choke her! I am going home! Find yourselves some other fool, you
damned Herods!"
Tsybukin had never in his life scolded or punished his children, and had
never dreamed that one of his family could speak to him rudely or behave
disrespectfully; and now he was very much frightened; he ran into the
house and there hid behind the cupboard. And Varvara was so much
flustered that she could not get up from her seat, and only waved her
hands before her as though she were warding off a bee.
"Oh, Holy Saints! what's the meaning of it?" she muttered in horror.
"What is she shouting? Oh, dear, dear!... People will hear! Hush. Oh,
hush!"
"He has given Butyokino to the convict's wife," Aksinya went on bawling.
"Give her everything now, I don't want anything from you! Let me alone!
You are all a gang of thieves here! I have seen my fill of it, I have
had enough! You have robbed folks coming in and going out; you have
robbed old and young alike, you brigands! And who has been selling vodka
without a licence? And false money? You've filled boxes full of false
coins, and now I am no more use!"
A crowd had by now collected at the open gate and was staring into the
yard.