burn with shame! You shall grovel at my feet. Hey! Stepan," she called
to the deaf man, "let us go home this minute! Let us go to my father and
mother; I don't want to live with convicts. Get ready!"
Clothes were hanging on lines stretched across the yard; she snatched
off her petticoats and blouses still wet and flung them into the deaf
man's arms. Then in her fury she dashed about the yard by the linen,
tore down all of it, and what was not hers she threw on the ground and
trampled upon.
"Holy Saints, take her away," moaned Varvara. "What a woman! Give her
Butyokino! Give it her, for the Lord's sake!
"Well! Wha-at a woman!" people were saying at the gate. "She's a wo-
oman! She's going it--something like!"
Aksinya ran into the kitchen where washing was going on. Lipa was
washing alone, the cook had gone to the river to rinse the clothes.
Steam was rising from the trough and from the caldron on the side of the
stove, and the kitchen was thick and stifling from the steam. On the
floor was a heap of unwashed clothes, and Nikifor, kicking up his little
red legs, had been put down on a bench near them, so that if he fell he
should not hurt himself. Just as Aksinya went in Lipa took the former's
chemise out of the heap and put it in the trough, and was just
stretching out her hand to a big ladle of boiling water which was
standing on the table.
"Give it here," said Aksinya, looking at her with hatred, and snatching
the chemise out of the trough; "it is not your business to touch my
linen! You are a convict's wife, and ought to know your place and who
you are."
Lipa gazed at her, taken aback, and did not understand, but suddenly she
caught the look Aksinya turned upon the child, and at once she
understood and went numb all over.
"You've taken my land, so here you are!" Saying this Aksinya snatched up
the ladle with the boiling water and flung it over Nikifor.
After this there was heard a scream such as had never been heard before
in Ukleevo, and no one would have believed that a little weak creature
like Lipa could scream like that. And it was suddenly silent in the
yard.
Aksinya walked into the house with her old naive smile.... The deaf man
kept moving about the yard with his arms full of linen, then he began
hanging it up again, in silence, without haste. And until the cook came
back from the river no one ventured to go into the kitchen and see what
was there.
VIII
Nikifor was taken to the district hospital, and towards evening he died
there. Lipa did not wait for them to come for her, but wrapped the dead
baby in its little quilt and carried it home.
The hospital, a new one recently built, with big windows, stood high up
on a hill; it was glittering from the setting sun and looked as though
it were on fire from inside. There was a little village below. Lipa went
down along the road, and before reaching the village sat down by a pond.
A woman brought a horse down to drink and the horse did not drink.
"What more do you want?" said the woman to it softly. "What do you
want?"
A boy in a red shirt, sitting at the water's edge, was washing his
father's boots. And not another soul was in sight either in the village
or on the hill.
"It's not drinking," said Lipa, looking at the horse.
Then the woman with the horse and the boy with the boots walked away,
and there was no one left at all. The sun went to bed wrapped in cloth
of gold and purple, and long clouds, red and lilac, stretched across the
sky, guarded its slumbers. Somewhere far away a bittern cried, a hollow,
melancholy sound like a cow shut up in a barn. The cry of that
mysterious bird was heard every spring, but no one knew what it was like
or where it lived. At the top of the hill by the hospital, in the bushes
close to the pond, and in the fields the nightingales were trilling. The
cuckoo kept reckoning someone's years and losing count and beginning
again. In the pond the frogs called angrily to one another, straining
themselves to bursting, and one could even make out the words: "That's
what you are! That's what you are!" What a noise there was! It seemed as
though all these creatures were singing and shouting so that no one
might sleep on that spring night, so that all, even the angry frogs,
might appreciate and enjoy every minute: life is given only once.
A silver half-moon was shining in the sky; there were many stars. Lipa
had no idea how long she sat by the pond, but when she got up and walked
on everybody was asleep in the little village, and there was not a
single light. It was probably about nine miles' walk home, but she had
not the strength, she had not the power to think how to go: the moon
gleamed now in front, now on the right, and the same cuckoo kept calling
in a voice grown husky, with a chuckle as though gibing at her: "Oy,
look out, you'll lose your way!" Lipa walked rapidly; she lost the
kerchief from her head... she looked at the sky and wondered where her
baby's soul was now: was it following her, or floating aloft yonder
among the stars and thinking nothing now of his mother? Oh, how lonely
it was in the open country at night, in the midst of that singing when
one cannot sing oneself; in the midst of the incessant cries of joy when
one cannot oneself be joyful, when the moon, which cares not whether it
is spring or winter, whether men are alive or dead, looks down as
lonely, too.... When there is grief in the heart it is hard to be
without people. If only her mother, Praskovya, had been with her, or
Crutch, or the cook, or some peasant!
"Boo-oo!" cried the bittern. "Boo-oo!"
And suddenly she heard clearly the sound of human speech: "Put the
horses in, Vavila!"
By the wayside a camp fire was burning ahead of her: the flames had died
down, there were only red embers. She could hear the horses munching. In
the darkness she could see the outlines of two carts, one with a barrel,
the other, a lower one with sacks in it, and the figures of two men; one
was leading a horse to put it into the shafts, the other was standing
motionless by the fire with his hands behind his back. A dog growled by
the carts. The one who was leading the horse stopped and said:
"It seems as though someone were coming along the road."
"Sharik, be quiet!" the other called to the dog.
And from the voice one could tell that the second was an old man. Lipa
stopped and said:
"God help you."
The old man went up to her and answered not immediately:
"Good-evening!"
"Your dog does not bite, grandfather?"
"No, come along, he won't touch you."
"I have been at the hospital," said Lipa after a pause. "My little son
died there. Here I am carrying him home."
It must have been unpleasant for the old man to hear this, for he moved
away and said hurriedly:
"Never mind, my dear. It's God's will. You are very slow, lad," he
added, addressing his companion; "look alive!"
"Your yoke's nowhere," said the young man; "it is not to be seen."
"You are a regular Vavila."
The old man picked up an ember, blew on it--only his eyes and nose were
lighted up--then, when they had found the yoke, he went with the light to
Lipa and looked at her, and his look expressed compassion and
tenderness.
"You are a mother," he said; "every mother grieves for her child."
And he sighed and shook his head as he said it. Vavila threw something
on the fire, stamped on it--and at once it was very dark; the vision
vanished, and as before there were only the fields, the sky with the
stars, and the noise of the birds hindering each other from sleep. And
the landrail called, it seemed, in the very place where the fire had
been.
But a minute passed, and again she could see the two carts and the old
man and lanky Vavila. The carts creaked as they went out on the road.
"Are you holy men?" Lipa asked the old man.
"No. We are from Firsanovo."
"You looked at me just now and my heart was softened. And the young man
is so gentle. I thought you must be holy men."
"Are you going far?"
"To Ukleevo."
"Get in, we will give you a lift as far as Kuzmenki, then you go
straight on and we turn off to the left."
Vavila got into the cart with the barrel and the old man and Lipa got
into the other. They moved at a walking pace, Vavila in front.
"My baby was in torment all day," said Lipa. "He looked at me with his
little eyes and said nothing; he wanted to speak and could not. Holy
Father, Queen of Heaven! In my grief I kept falling down on the floor. I
stood up and fell down by the bedside. And tell me, grandfather, why a
little thing should be tormented before his death? When a grown-up
person, a man or woman, are in torment their sins are forgiven, but why
a little thing, when he has no sins? Why?"
"Who can tell?" answered the old man.
They drove on for half an hour in silence.
"We can't know everything, how and wherefore," said the old man. "It is
ordained for the bird to have not four wings but two because it is able
to fly with two; and so it is ordained for man not to know everything
but only a half or a quarter. As much as he needs to know so as to live,
so much he knows."
"It is better for me to go on foot, grandfather. Now my heart is all of
a tremble."
"Never mind, sit still."
The old man yawned and made the sign of the cross over his mouth.
"Never mind," he repeated. "Yours is not the worst of sorrows. Life is
long, there will be good and bad to come, there will be everything.
Great is mother Russia," he said, and looked round on each side of him.
"I have been all over Russia, and I have seen everything in her, and you
may believe my words, my dear. There will be good and there will be bad.
I went as a delegate from my village to Siberia, and I have been to the
Amur River and the Altai Mountains and I settled in Siberia; I worked
the land there, then I was homesick for mother Russia and I came back to
my native village. We came back to Russia on foot; and I remember we
went on a steamer, and I was thin as thin, all in rags, barefoot,
freezing with cold, and gnawing a crust, and a gentleman who was on the
steamer--the kingdom of heaven be his if he is dead--looked at me
pitifully, and the tears came into his eyes. 'Ah,' he said, 'your bread
is black, your days are black....' And when I got home, as the saying
is, there was neither stick nor stall; I had a wife, but I left her
behind in Siberia, she was buried there. So I am living as a day
labourer. And yet I tell you: since then I have had good as well as bad.
Here I do not want to die, my dear, I would be glad to live another
twenty years; so there has been more of the good. And great is our
mother Russia!" and again he gazed to each side and looked round.
"Grandfather," Lipa asked, "when anyone dies, how many days does his
soul walk the earth?"
"Who can tell! Ask Vavila here, he has been to school. Now they teach
them everything. Vavila!" the old man called to him.
"Yes!"
"Vavila, when anyone dies how long does his soul walk the earth?"
Vavila stopped the horse and only then answered:
"Nine days. My uncle Kirilla died and his soul lived in our hut thirteen
days after."
"How do you know?"
"For thirteen days there was a knocking in the stove."
"Well, that's all right. Go on," said the old man, and it could be seen
that he did not believe a word of all that.
Near Kuzmenki the cart turned into the high road while Lipa went
straight on. It was by now getting light. As she went down into the
ravine the Ukleevo huts and the church were hidden in fog. It was cold,
and it seemed to her that the same cuckoo was calling still.
When Lipa reached home the cattle had not yet been driven out; everyone
was asleep. She sat down on the steps and waited. The old man was the
first to come out; he understood all that had happened from the first
glance at her, and for a long time he could not articulate a word, but
only moved his lips without a sound.
"Ech, Lipa," he said, "you did not take care of my grandchild...."
Varvara was awakened. She clasped her hands and broke into sobs, and
immediately began laying out the baby.
"And he was a pretty child..." she said. "Oh, dear, dear.... You only
had the one child, and you did not take care enough of him, you silly
girl...."
There was a requiem service in the morning and the evening. The funeral
took place the next day, and after it the guests and the priests ate a
great deal, and with such greed that one might have thought that they
had not tasted food for a long time. Lipa waited at table, and the
priest, lifting his fork on which there was a salted mushroom, said to
her:
"Don't grieve for the babe. For of such is the kingdom of heaven."
And only when they had all separated Lipa realized fully that there was
no Nikifor and never would be, she realized it and broke into sobs. And
she did not know what room to go into to sob, for she felt that now that
her child was dead there was no place for her in the house, that she had
no reason to be here, that she was in the way; and the others felt it,
too.
"Now what are you bellowing for?" Aksinya shouted, suddenly appearing in
the doorway; in honour of the funeral she was dressed all in new clothes
and had powdered her face. "Shut up!"
Lipa tried to stop but could not, and sobbed louder than ever.
"Do you hear?" shouted Aksinya, and she stamped her foot in violent
anger. "Who is it I am speaking to? Go out of the yard and don't set
foot here again, you convict's wife. Get away."
"There, there, there," the old man put in fussily. "Aksinya, don't make
such an outcry, my girl.... She is crying, it is only natural... her
child is dead...."
"'It's only natural,'" Aksinya mimicked him. "Let her stay the night
here, and don't let me see a trace of her here to-morrow! 'It's only
natural!'..." she mimicked him again, and, laughing, she went into the
shop.
Early the next morning Lipa went off to her mother at Torguevo.
IX
At the present time the steps and the front door of the shop have been
repainted and are as bright as though they were new, there are gay
geraniums in the windows as of old, and what happened in Tsybukin's
house and yard three years ago is almost forgotten.
Grigory Petrovitch is looked upon as the master as he was in old days,
but in reality everything has passed into Aksinya's hands; she buys and
sells, and nothing can be done without her consent. The brickyard is
working well; and as bricks are wanted for the railway the price has
gone up to twenty-four roubles a thousand; peasant women and girls cart
the bricks to the station and load them up in the trucks and earn a
quarter-rouble a day for the work.
Aksinya has gone into partnership with the Hrymin Juniors, and their
factory is now called Hrymin Juniors and Co. They have opened a tavern
near the station, and now the expensive concertina is played not at the
factory but at the tavern, and the head of the post office often goes
there, and he, too, is engaged in some sort of traffic, and the
stationmaster, too. Hrymin Juniors have presented the deaf man Stepan
with a gold watch, and he is constantly taking it out of his pocket and
putting it to his ear.
People say of Aksinya that she has become a person of power; and it is
true that when she drives in the morning to her brickyard, handsome and
happy, with the naive smile on her face, and afterwards when she is
giving orders there, one is aware of great power in her. Everyone is
afraid of her in the house and in the village and in the brickyard. When
she goes to the post the head of the postal department jumps up and says
to her:
"I humbly beg you to be seated, Aksinya Abramovna!"
A certain landowner, middle-aged but foppish, in a tunic of fine cloth
and patent leather high boots, sold her a horse, and was so carried away
by talking to her that he knocked down the price to meet her wishes. He
held her hand a long time and, looking into her merry, sly, naive eyes,
said:
"For a woman like you, Aksinya Abramovna, I should be ready to do
anything you please. Only say when we can meet where no one will
interfere with us?"
"Why, when you please."
And since then the elderly fop drives up to the shop almost every day to
drink beer. And the beer is horrid, bitter as wormwood. The landowner
shakes his head, but he drinks it.
Old Tsybukin does not have anything to do with the business now at all.
He does not keep any money because he cannot distinguish between the
good and the false, but he is silent, he says nothing of this weakness.
He has become forgetful, and if they don't give him food he does not ask
for it. They have grown used to having dinner without him, and Varvara
often says:
"He went to bed again yesterday without any supper."
And she says it unconcernedly because she is used to it. For some
reason, summer and winter alike, he wears a fur coat, and only in very
hot weather he does not go out but sits at home. As a rule putting on
his fur coat, wrapping it round him and turning up his collar, he walks
about the village, along the road to the station, or sits from morning
till night on the seat near the church gates. He sits there without
stirring. Passers-by bow to him, but he does not respond, for as of old
he dislikes the peasants. If he is asked a question he answers quite
rationally and politely, but briefly.
There is a rumour going about in the village that his daughter-in-law
turns him out of the house and gives him nothing to eat, and that he is
fed by charity; some are glad, others are sorry for him.
Varvara has grown even fatter and whiter, and as before she is active in
good works, and Aksinya does not interfere with her.
There is so much jam now that they have not time to eat it before the
fresh fruit comes in; it goes sugary, and Varvara almost sheds tears,
not knowing what to do with it.
They have begun to forget about Anisim. A letter has come from him
written in verse on a big sheet of paper as though it were a petition,
all in the same splendid handwriting. Evidently his friend Samorodov was
sharing his punishment. Under the verses in an ugly, scarcely legible
handwriting there was a single line: "I am ill here all the time; I am
wretched, for Christ's sake help me!"
Towards evening--it was a fine autumn day--old Tsybukin was sitting near
the church gates, with the collar of his fur coat turned up and nothing
of him could be seen but his nose and the peak of his cap. At the other
end of the long seat was sitting Elizarov the contractor, and beside him
Yakov the school watchman, a toothless old man of seventy. Crutch and
the watchman were talking.
"Children ought to give food and drink to the old.... Honour thy father
and mother..." Yakov was saying with irritation, "while she, this
daughter-in-law, has turned her father-in-law out of his own house; the
old man has neither food nor drink, where is he to go? He has not had a
morsel for these three days."
"Three days!" said Crutch, amazed.
"Here he sits and does not say a word. He has grown feeble. And why be
silent? He ought to prosecute her, they wouldn't flatter her in the
police court."
"Wouldn't flatter whom?" asked Crutch, not hearing.
"What?"
"The woman's all right, she does her best. In their line of business
they can't get on without that... without sin, I mean...."
"From his own house," Yakov went on with irritation. "Save up and buy
your own house, then turn people out of it! She is a nice one, to be
sure! A pla-ague!"
Tsybukin listened and did not stir.
"Whether it is your own house or others' it makes no difference so long
as it is warm and the women don't scold..." said Crutch, and he laughed.
"When I was young I was very fond of my Nastasya. She was a quiet woman.
And she used to be always at it: 'Buy a house, Makaritch! Buy a house,
Makaritch! Buy a house, Makaritch!' She was dying and yet she kept on
saying, 'Buy yourself a racing droshky, Makaritch, that you may not have
to walk.' And I bought her nothing but gingerbread."
"Her husband's deaf and stupid," Yakov went on, not hearing Crutch; "a
regular fool, just like a goose. He can't understand anything. Hit a
goose on the head with a stick and even then it does not understand."
Crutch got up to go home to the factory. Yakov also got up, and both of
them went off together, still talking. When they had gone fifty paces
old Tsybukin got up, too, and walked after them, stepping uncertainly as
though on slippery ice.
The village was already plunged in the dusk of evening and the sun only
gleamed on the upper part of the road which ran wriggling like a snake
up the slope. Old women were coming back from the woods and children
with them; they were bringing baskets of mushrooms. Peasant women and
girls came in a crowd from the station where they had been loading the
trucks with bricks, and their noses and their cheeks under their eyes
were covered with red brick-dust. They were singing. Ahead of them all
was Lipa singing in a high voice, with her eyes turned upwards to the
sky, breaking into trills as though triumphant and ecstatic that at last
the day was over and she could rest. In the crowd was her mother
Praskovya, who was walking with a bundle in her arms and breathless as
usual.
"Good-evening, Makaritch!" cried Lipa, seeing Crutch. "Good-evening,
darling!"
"Good-evening, Lipinka," cried Crutch delighted. "Dear girls and women,
love the rich carpenter! Ho-ho! My little children, my little children.
(Crutch gave a gulp.) My dear little axes!"
Crutch and Yakov went on further and could still be heard talking. Then
after them the crowd was met by old Tsybukin and there was a sudden
hush. Lipa and Praskovya had dropped a little behind, and when the old
man was on a level with them Lipa bowed down low and said:
"Good-evening, Grigory Petrovitch."
Her mother, too, bowed down. The old man stopped and, saying nothing,
looked at the two in silence; his lips were quivering and his eyes full
of tears. Lipa took out of her mother's bundle a piece of savoury
turnover and gave it him. He took it and began eating.
The sun had by now set: its glow died away on the road above. It grew
dark and cool. Lipa and Praskovya walked on and for some time they kept
crossing themselves.
THE HUNTSMAN
A SULTRY, stifling midday. Not a cloudlet in the sky.... The sun-baked
grass had a disconsolate, hopeless look: even if there were rain it
could never be green again.... The forest stood silent, motionless, as
though it were looking at something with its tree-tops or expecting
something.
At the edge of the clearing a tall, narrow-shouldered man of forty in a
red shirt, in patched trousers that had been a gentleman's, and in high
boots, was slouching along with a lazy, shambling step. He was
sauntering along the road. On the right was the green of the clearing,
on the left a golden sea of ripe rye stretched to the very horizon. He
was red and perspiring, a white cap with a straight jockey peak,
evidently a gift from some open-handed young gentleman, perched jauntily
on his handsome flaxen head. Across his shoulder hung a game-bag with a
blackcock lying in it. The man held a double-barrelled gun cocked in his
hand, and screwed up his eyes in the direction of his lean old dog who
was running on ahead sniffing the bushes. There was stillness all round,
not a sound... everything living was hiding away from the heat.
"Yegor Vlassitch!" the huntsman suddenly heard a soft voice.
He started and, looking round, scowled. Beside him, as though she had
sprung out of the earth, stood a pale-faced woman of thirty with a
sickle in her hand. She was trying to look into his face, and was
smiling diffidently.
"Oh, it is you, Pelagea!" said the huntsman, stopping and deliberately
uncocking the gun. "H'm!... How have you come here?"
"The women from our village are working here, so I have come with
them.... As a labourer, Yegor Vlassitch."
"Oh..." growled Yegor Vlassitch, and slowly walked on.
Pelagea followed him. They walked in silence for twenty paces.
"I have not seen you for a long time, Yegor Vlassitch..." said Pelagea
looking tenderly at the huntsman's moving shoulders. "I have not seen
you since you came into our hut at Easter for a drink of water... you
came in at Easter for a minute and then God knows how... drunk... you
scolded and beat me and went away... I have been waiting and waiting...
I've tired my eyes out looking for you. Ah, Yegor Vlassitch, Yegor
Vlassitch! you might look in just once!"
"What is there for me to do there?"
"Of course there is nothing for you to do... though to be sure... there
is the place to look after.... To see how things are going.... You are
the master.... I say, you have shot a blackcock, Yegor Vlassitch! You
ought to sit down and rest!"
As she said all this Pelagea laughed like a silly girl and looked up at
Yegor's face. Her face was simply radiant with happiness.
"Sit down? If you like..." said Yegor in a tone of indifference, and he
chose a spot between two fir-trees. "Why are you standing? You sit down
too."