for the family from the great house. Two young girls in white frocks and
wide-brimmed hats walked in; with them a chubby, rosy boy in a sailor
suit. Their appearance touched Olga; she made up her mind from the first
glance that they were refined, well-educated, handsome people. Marya
looked at them from under her brows, sullenly, dejectedly, as though
they were not human beings coming in, but monsters who might crush her
if she did not make way for them.
And every time the deacon boomed out something in his bass voice she
fancied she heard "Ma-arya!" and she shuddered.
III
The arrival of the visitors was already known in the village, and
directly after mass a number of people gathered together in the hut. The
Leonytchevs and Matvyeitchevs and the Ilyitchovs came to inquire about
their relations who were in service in Moscow. All the lads of Zhukovo
who could read and write were packed off to Moscow and hired out as
butlers or waiters (while from the village on the other side of the
river the boys all became bakers), and that had been the custom from the
days of serfdom long ago when a certain Luka Ivanitch, a peasant from
Zhukovo, now a legendary figure, who had been a waiter in one of the
Moscow clubs, would take none but his fellow-villagers into his service,
and found jobs for them in taverns and restaurants; and from that time
the village of Zhukovo was always called among the inhabitants of the
surrounding districts Slaveytown. Nikolay had been taken to Moscow when
he was eleven, and Ivan Makaritch, one of the Matvyeitchevs, at that
time a headwaiter in the "Hermitage" garden, had put him into a
situation. And now, addressing the Matvyeitchevs, Nikolay said
emphatically:
"Ivan Makaritch was my benefactor, and I am bound to pray for him day
and night, as it is owing to him I have become a good man."
"My good soul!" a tall old woman, the sister of Ivan Makaritch, said
tearfully, "and not a word have we heard about him, poor dear."
"In the winter he was in service at Omon's, and this season there was a
rumour he was somewhere out of town, in gardens.... He has aged! In old
days he would bring home as much as ten roubles a day in the summer-
time, but now things are very quiet everywhere. The old man frets."
The women looked at Nikolay's feet, shod in felt boots, and at his pale
face, and said mournfully:
"You are not one to get on, Nikolay Osipitch; you are not one to get on!
No, indeed!"
And they all made much of Sasha. She was ten years old, but she was
little and very thin, and might have been taken for no more than seven.
Among the other little girls, with their sunburnt faces and roughly
cropped hair, dressed in long faded smocks, she with her white little
face, with her big dark eyes, with a red ribbon in her hair, looked
funny, as though she were some little wild creature that had been caught
and brought into the hut.
"She can read, too," Olga said in her praise, looking tenderly at her
daughter. "Read a little, child!" she said, taking the gospel from the
corner. "You read, and the good Christian people will listen."
The testament was an old and heavy one in leather binding, with dog's-
eared edges, and it exhaled a smell as though monks had come into the
hut. Sasha raised her eyebrows and began in a loud rhythmic chant:
"'And the angel of the Lord... appeared unto Joseph, saying unto him:
Rise up, and take the Babe and His mother.'"
"The Babe and His mother," Olga repeated, and flushed all over with
emotion.
"'And flee into Egypt,... and tarry there until such time as...'"
At the word "tarry" Olga could not refrain from tears. Looking at her,
Marya began to whimper, and after her Ivan Makaritch's sister. The old
father cleared his throat, and bustled about to find something to give
his grand-daughter, but, finding nothing, gave it up with a wave of his
hand. And when the reading was over the neighbours dispersed to their
homes, feeling touched and very much pleased with Olga and Sasha.
As it was a holiday, the family spent the whole day at home. The old
woman, whom her husband, her daughters-in-law, her grandchildren all
alike called Granny, tried to do everything herself; she heated the
stove and set the samovar with her own hands, even waited at the midday
meal, and then complained that she was worn out with work. And all the
time she was uneasy for fear someone should eat a piece too much, or
that her husband and daughters-in-law would sit idle. At one time she
would hear the tavern-keeper's geese going at the back of the huts to
her kitchen-garden, and she would run out of the hut with a long stick
and spend half an hour screaming shrilly by her cabbages, which were as
gaunt and scraggy as herself; at another time she fancied that a crow
had designs on her chickens, and she rushed to attack it with loud words
of abuse. She was cross and grumbling from morning till night. And often
she raised such an outcry that passers-by stopped in the street.
She was not affectionate towards the old man, reviling him as a lazy-
bones and a plague. He was not a responsible, reliable peasant, and
perhaps if she had not been continually nagging at him he would not have
worked at all, but would have simply sat on the stove and talked. He
talked to his son at great length about certain enemies of his,
complained of the insults he said he had to put up with every day from
the neighbours, and it was tedious to listen to him.
"Yes," he would say, standing with his arms akimbo, "yes.... A week
after the Exaltation of the Cross I sold my hay willingly at thirty
kopecks a pood.... Well and good.... So you see I was taking the hay in
the morning with a good will; I was interfering with no one. In an
unlucky hour I see the village elder, Antip Syedelnikov, coming out of
the tavern. 'Where are you taking it, you ruffian?' says he, and takes
me by the ear."
Kiryak had a fearful headache after his drinking bout, and was ashamed
to face his brother.
"What vodka does! Ah, my God!" he muttered, shaking his aching head.
"For Christ's sake, forgive me, brother and sister; I'm not happy
myself."
As it was a holiday, they bought a herring at the tavern and made a soup
of the herring's head. At midday they all sat down to drink tea, and
went on drinking it for a long time, till they were all perspiring; they
looked positively swollen from the tea-drinking, and after it began
sipping the broth from the herring's head, all helping themselves out of
one bowl. But the herring itself Granny had hidden.
In the evening a potter began firing pots on the ravine. In the meadow
below the girls got up a choral dance and sang songs. They played the
concertina. And on the other side of the river a kiln for baking pots
was lighted, too, and the girls sang songs, and in the distance the
singing sounded soft and musical. The peasants were noisy in and about
the tavern. They were singing with drunken voices, each on his own
account, and swearing at one another, so that Olga could only shudder
and say:
"Oh, holy Saints!"
She was amazed that the abuse was incessant, and those who were loudest
and most persistent in this foul language were the old men who were so
near their end. And the girls and children heard the swearing, and were
not in the least disturbed by it, and it was evident that they were used
to it from their cradles.
It was past midnight, the kilns on both sides of the river were put out,
but in the meadow below and in the tavern the merrymaking still went on.
The old father and Kiryak, both drunk, walking arm-in-arm and jostling
against each other's shoulders, went to the barn where Olga and Marya
were lying.
"Let her alone," the old man persuaded him; "let her alone.... She is a
harmless woman.... It's a sin...."
"Ma-arya!" shouted Kiryak.
"Let her be.... It's a sin.... She is not a bad woman."
Both stopped by the barn and went on.
"I lo-ove the flowers of the fi-ield," the old man began singing
suddenly in a high, piercing tenor. "I lo-ove to gather them in the
meadows!"
Then he spat, and with a filthy oath went into the hut.
IV
Granny put Sasha by her kitchen-garden and told her to keep watch that
the geese did not go in. It was a hot August day. The tavernkeeper's
geese could make their way into the kitchen-garden by the backs of the
huts, but now they were busily engaged picking up oats by the tavern,
peacefully conversing together, and only the gander craned his head high
as though trying to see whether the old woman were coming with her
stick. The other geese might come up from below, but they were now
grazing far away the other side of the river, stretched out in a long
white garland about the meadow. Sasha stood about a little, grew weary,
and, seeing that the geese were not coming, went away to the ravine.
There she saw Marya's eldest daughter Motka, who was standing motionless
on a big stone, staring at the church. Marya had given birth to thirteen
children, but she only had six living, all girls, not one boy, and the
eldest was eight. Motka in a long smock was standing barefooted in the
full sunshine; the sun was blazing down right on her head, but she did
not notice that, and seemed as though turned to stone. Sasha stood
beside her and said, looking at the church:
"God lives in the church. Men have lamps and candles, but God has little
green and red and blue lamps like little eyes. At night God walks about
the church, and with Him the Holy Mother of God and Saint Nikolay, thud,
thud, thud!... And the watchman is terrified, terrified! Aye, aye,
dearie," she added, imitating her mother. "And when the end of the world
comes all the churches will be carried up to heaven."
"With the-ir be-ells?" Motka asked in her deep voice, drawling every
syllable.
"With their bells. And when the end of the world comes the good will go
to Paradise, but the angry will burn in fire eternal and unquenchable,
dearie. To my mother as well as to Marya God will say: 'You never
offended anyone, and for that go to the right to Paradise'; but to
Kiryak and Granny He will say: 'You go to the left into the fire.' And
anyone who has eaten meat in Lent will go into the fire, too."
She looked upwards at the sky, opening wide her eyes, and said:
"Look at the sky without winking, you will see angels."
Motka began looking at the sky, too, and a minute passed in silence.
"Do you see them?" asked Sasha.
"I don't," said Motka in her deep voice.
"But I do. Little angels are flying about the sky and flap, flap with
their little wings as though they were gnats."
Motka thought for a little, with her eyes on the ground, and asked:
"Will Granny burn?"
"She will, dearie."
From the stone an even gentle slope ran down to the bottom, covered with
soft green grass, which one longed to lie down on or to touch with one's
hands... Sasha lay down and rolled to the bottom. Motka with a grave,
severe face, taking a deep breath, lay down, too, and rolled to the
bottom, and in doing so tore her smock from the hem to the shoulder.
"What fun it is!" said Sasha, delighted.
They walked up to the top to roll down again, but at that moment they
heard a shrill, familiar voice. Oh, how awful it was! Granny, a
toothless, bony, hunchbacked figure, with short grey hair which was
fluttering in the wind, was driving the geese out of the kitchen-garden
with a long stick, shouting.
"They have trampled all the cabbages, the damned brutes! I'd cut your
throats, thrice accursed plagues! Bad luck to you!"
She saw the little girls, flung down the stick and picked up a switch,
and, seizing Sasha by the neck with her fingers, thin and hard as the
gnarled branches of a tree, began whipping her. Sasha cried with pain
and terror, while the gander, waddling and stretching his neck, went up
to the old woman and hissed at her, and when he went back to his flock
all the geese greeted him approvingly with "Ga-ga-ga!" Then Granny
proceeded to whip Motka, and in this Motka's smock was torn again.
Feeling in despair, and crying loudly, Sasha went to the hut to
complain. Motka followed her; she, too, was crying on a deeper note,
without wiping her tears, and her face was as wet as though it had been
dipped in water.
"Holy Saints!" cried Olga, aghast, as the two came into the hut. "Queen
of Heaven!"
Sasha began telling her story, while at the same time Granny walked in
with a storm of shrill cries and abuse; then Fyokla flew into a rage,
and there was an uproar in the hut.
"Never mind, never mind!" Olga, pale and upset, tried to comfort them,
stroking Sasha's head. "She is your grandmother; it's a sin to be angry
with her. Never mind, my child."
Nikolay, who was worn out already by the everlasting hubbub, hunger,
stifling fumes, filth, who hated and despised the poverty, who was
ashamed for his wife and daughter to see his father and mother, swung
his legs off the stove and said in an irritable, tearful voice,
addressing his mother:
"You must not beat her! You have no right to beat her!"
"You lie rotting on the stove, you wretched creature!" Fyokla shouted at
him spitefully. "The devil brought you all on us, eating us out of house
and home."
Sasha and Motka and all the little girls in the hut huddled on the stove
in the corner behind Nikolay's back, and from that refuge listened in
silent terror, and the beating of their little hearts could be
distinctly heard. Whenever there is someone in a family who has long
been ill, and hopelessly ill, there come painful moments when all
timidly, secretly, at the bottom of their hearts long for his death; and
only the children fear the death of someone near them, and always feel
horrified at the thought of it. And now the children, with bated breath,
with a mournful look on their faces, gazed at Nikolay and thought that
he was soon to die; and they wanted to cry and to say something friendly
and compassionate to him.
He pressed close to Olga, as though seeking protection, and said to her
softly in a quavering voice:
"Olya darling, I can't stay here longer. It's more than I can bear. For
God's sake, for Christ's sake, write to your sister Klavdia Abramovna.
Let her sell and pawn everything she has; let her send us the money. We
will go away from here. Oh, Lord," he went on miserably, "to have one
peep at Moscow! If I could see it in my dreams, the dear place!"
And when the evening came on, and it was dark in the hut, it was so
dismal that it was hard to utter a word. Granny, very ill-tempered,
soaked some crusts of rye bread in a cup, and was a long time, a whole
hour, sucking at them. Marya, after milking the cow, brought in a pail
of milk and set it on a bench; then Granny poured it from the pail into
a jug just as slowly and deliberately, evidently pleased that it was now
the Fast of the Assumption, so that no one would drink milk and it would
be left untouched. And she only poured out a very little in a saucer for
Fyokla's baby. When Marya and she carried the jug down to the cellar
Motka suddenly stirred, clambered down from the stove, and going to the
bench where stood the wooden cup full of crusts, sprinkled into it some
milk from the saucer.
Granny, coming back into the hut, sat down to her soaked crusts again,
while Sasha and Motka, sitting on the stove, gazed at her, and they were
glad that she had broken her fast and now would go to hell. They were
comforted and lay down to sleep, and Sasha as she dozed off to sleep
imagined the Day of Judgment: a huge fire was burning, somewhat like a
potter's kiln, and the Evil One, with horns like a cow's, and black all
over, was driving Granny into the fire with a long stick, just as Granny
herself had been driving the geese.
V
On the day of the Feast of the Assumption, between ten and eleven in the
evening, the girls and lads who were merrymaking in the meadow suddenly
raised a clamour and outcry, and ran in the direction of the village;
and those who were above on the edge of the ravine could not for the
first moment make out what was the matter.
"Fire! Fire!" they heard desperate shouts from below. "The village is on
fire!"
Those who were sitting above looked round, and a terrible and
extraordinary spectacle met their eyes. On the thatched roof of one of
the end cottages stood a column of flame, seven feet high, which curled
round and scattered sparks in all directions as though it were a
fountain. And all at once the whole roof burst into bright flame, and
the crackling of the fire was audible.
The light of the moon was dimmed, and the whole village was by now
bathed in a red quivering glow: black shadows moved over the ground,
there was a smell of burning, and those who ran up from below were all
gasping and could not speak for trembling; they jostled against each
other, fell down, and they could hardly see in the unaccustomed light,
and did not recognize each other. It was terrible. What seemed
particularly dreadful was that doves were flying over the fire in the
smoke; and in the tavern, where they did not yet know of the fire, they
were still singing and playing the concertina as though there were
nothing the matter.
"Uncle Semyon's on fire," shouted a loud, coarse voice.
Marya was fussing about round her hut, weeping and wringing her hands,
while her teeth chattered, though the fire was a long way off at the
other end of the village. Nikolay came out in high felt boots, the
children ran out in their little smocks. Near the village constable's
hut an iron sheet was struck. Boom, boom, boom!... floated through the
air, and this repeated, persistent sound sent a pang to the heart and
turned one cold. The old women stood with the holy ikons. Sheep, calves,
cows were driven out of the back-yards into the street; boxes,
sheepskins, tubs were carried out. A black stallion, who was kept apart
from the drove of horses because he kicked and injured them, on being
set free ran once or twice up and down the village, neighing and pawing
the ground; then suddenly stopped short near a cart and began kicking it
with his hind-legs.
They began ringing the bells in the church on the other side of the
river.
Near the burning hut it was hot and so light that one could distinctly
see every blade of grass. Semyon, a red-haired peasant with a long nose,
wearing a reefer-jacket and a cap pulled down right over his ears, sat
on one of the boxes which they had succeeded in bringing out: his wife
was lying on her face, moaning and unconscious. A little old man of
eighty, with a big beard, who looked like a gnome--not one of the
villagers, though obviously connected in some way with the fire--walked
about bareheaded, with a white bundle in his arms. The glare was
reflected on his bald head. The village elder, Antip Syedelnikov, as
swarthy and black-haired as a gypsy, went up to the hut with an axe, and
hacked out the windows one after another--no one knew why--then began
chopping up the roof.
"Women, water!" he shouted. "Bring the engine! Look sharp!"
The peasants, who had been drinking in the tavern just before, dragged
the engine up. They were all drunk; they kept stumbling and falling
down, and all had a helpless expression and tears in their eyes.
"Wenches, water!" shouted the elder, who was drunk, too. "Look sharp,
wenches!"
The women and the girls ran downhill to where there was a spring, and
kept hauling pails and buckets of water up the hill, and, pouring it
into the engine, ran down again. Olga and Marya and Sasha and Motka all
brought water. The women and the boys pumped the water; the pipe hissed,
and the elder, directing it now at the door, now at the windows, held
back the stream with his finger, which made it hiss more sharply still.
"Bravo, Antip!" voices shouted approvingly. "Do your best."
Antip went inside the hut into the fire and shouted from within.
"Pump! Bestir yourselves, good Christian folk, in such a terrible
mischance!"
The peasants stood round in a crowd, doing nothing but staring at the
fire. No one knew what to do, no one had the sense to do anything,
though there were stacks of wheat, hay, barns, and piles of faggots
standing all round. Kiryak and old Osip, his father, both tipsy, were
standing there, too. And as though to justify his doing nothing, old
Osip said, addressing the woman who lay on the ground:
"What is there to trouble about, old girl! The hut is insured--why are
you taking on?"
Semyon, addressing himself first to one person and then to another, kept
describing how the fire had started.
"That old man, the one with the bundle, a house-serf of General
Zhukov's.... He was cook at our general's, God rest his soul! He came
over this evening: 'Let me stay the night,' says he.... Well, we had a
glass, to be sure.... The wife got the samovar--she was going to give the
old fellow a cup of tea, and in an unlucky hour she set the samovar in
the entrance. The sparks from the chimney must have blown straight up to
the thatch; that's how it was. We were almost burnt ourselves. And the
old fellow's cap has been burnt; what a shame!"
And the sheet of iron was struck indefatigably, and the bells kept
ringing in the church the other side of the river. In the glow of the
fire, Olga, breathless, looking with horror at the red sheep and the
pink doves flying in the smoke, kept running down the hill and up again.
It seemed to her that the ringing went to her heart with a sharp stab,
that the fire would never be over, that Sasha was lost.... And when the
ceiling of the hut fell in with a crash, the thought that now the whole
village would be burnt made her weak and faint, and she could not go on
fetching water, but sat down on the ravine, setting the pail down near
her; beside her and below her, the peasant women sat wailing as though
at a funeral.
Then the stewards and watchmen from the estate the other side of the
river arrived in two carts, bringing with them a fire-engine. A very
young student in an unbuttoned white tunic rode up on horseback. There
was the thud of axes. They put a ladder to the burning framework of the
house, and five men ran up it at once. Foremost of them all was the
student, who was red in the face and shouting in a harsh hoarse voice,
and in a tone as though putting out fires was a thing he was used to.
They pulled the house to pieces, a beam at a time; they dragged away the
corn, the hurdles, and the stacks that were near.
"Don't let them break it up!" cried stern voices in the crowd. "Don't
let them."
Kiryak made his way up to the hut with a resolute air, as though he
meant to prevent the newcomers from breaking up the hut, but one of the
workmen turned him back with a blow in his neck. There was the sound of
laughter, the workman dealt him another blow, Kiryak fell down, and
crawled back into the crowd on his hands and knees.
Two handsome girls in hats, probably the student's sisters, came from
the other side of the river. They stood a little way off, looking at the
fire. The beams that had been dragged apart were no longer burning, but
were smoking vigorously; the student, who was working the hose, turned
the water, first on the beams, then on the peasants, then on the women
who were bringing the water.
"George!" the girls called to him reproachfully in anxiety, "George!"
The fire was over. And only when they began to disperse they noticed
that the day was breaking, that everyone was pale and rather dark in the
face, as it always seems in the early morning when the last stars are
going out. As they separated, the peasants laughed and made jokes about
General Zhukov's cook and his cap which had been burnt; they already
wanted to turn the fire into a joke, and even seemed sorry that it had
so soon been put out.
"How well you extinguished the fire, sir!" said Olga to the student.
"You ought to come to us in Moscow: there we have a fire every day."
"Why, do you come from Moscow?" asked one of the young ladies.
"Yes, miss. My husband was a waiter at the Slavyansky Bazaar. And this
is my daughter," she said, indicating Sasha, who was cold and huddling
up to her. "She is a Moscow girl, too."
The two young ladies said something in French to the student, and he
gave Sasha a twenty-kopeck piece.
Old Father Osip saw this, and there was a gleam of hope in his face.
"We must thank God, your honour, there was no wind," he said, addressing
the student, "or else we should have been all burnt up together. Your
honour, kind gentlefolks," he added in embarrassment in a lower tone,
"the morning's chilly... something to warm one... half a bottle to your
honour's health."