sacrament and extreme unction. They often talked of colds, of worms, of
tumours which move in the stomach and coil round to the heart. Above
all, they were afraid of catching cold, and so put on thick clothes even
in the summer and warmed themselves at the stove. Granny was fond of
being doctored, and often went to the hospital, where she used to say
she was not seventy, but fifty-eight; she supposed that if the doctor
knew her real age he would not treat her, but would say it was time she
died instead of taking medicine. She usually went to the hospital early
in the morning, taking with her two or three of the little girls, and
came back in the evening, hungry and ill-tempered--with drops for herself
and ointments for the little girls. Once she took Nikolay, who swallowed
drops for a fortnight afterwards, and said he felt better.
Granny knew all the doctors and their assistants and the wise men for
twenty miles round, and not one of them she liked. At the Intercession,
when the priest made the round of the huts with the cross, the deacon
told her that in the town near the prison lived an old man who had been
a medical orderly in the army, and who made wonderful cures, and advised
her to try him. Granny took his advice. When the first snow fell she
drove to the town and fetched an old man with a big beard, a converted
Jew, in a long gown, whose face was covered with blue veins. There were
outsiders at work in the hut at the time: an old tailor, in terrible
spectacles, was cutting a waistcoat out of some rags, and two young men
were making felt boots out of wool; Kiryak, who had been dismissed from
his place for drunkenness, and now lived at home, was sitting beside the
tailor mending a bridle. And it was crowded, stifling, and noisome in
the hut. The converted Jew examined Nikolay and said that it was
necessary to try cupping.
He put on the cups, and the old tailor, Kiryak, and the little girls
stood round and looked on, and it seemed to them that they saw the
disease being drawn out of Nikolay; and Nikolay, too, watched how the
cups suckling at his breast gradually filled with dark blood, and felt
as though there really were something coming out of him, and smiled with
pleasure.
"It's a good thing," said the tailor. "Please God, it will do you good."
The Jew put on twelve cups and then another twelve, drank some tea, and
went away. Nikolay began shivering; his face looked drawn, and, as the
women expressed it, shrank up like a fist; his fingers turned blue. He
wrapped himself up in a quilt and in a sheepskin, but got colder and
colder. Towards the evening he began to be in great distress; asked to
be laid on the ground, asked the tailor not to smoke; then he subsided
under the sheepskin and towards morning he died.
IX
Oh, what a grim, what a long winter!
Their own grain did not last beyond Christmas, and they had to buy
flour. Kiryak, who lived at home now, was noisy in the evenings,
inspiring terror in everyone, and in the mornings he suffered from
headache and was ashamed; and he was a pitiful sight. In the stall the
starved cows bellowed day and night--a heart-rending sound to Granny and
Marya. And as ill-luck would have it, there was a sharp frost all the
winter, the snow drifted in high heaps, and the winter dragged on. At
Annunciation there was a regular blizzard, and there was a fall of snow
at Easter.
But in spite of it all the winter did end. At the beginning of April
there came warm days and frosty nights. Winter would not give way, but
one warm day overpowered it at last, and the streams began to flow and
the birds began to sing. The whole meadow and the bushes near the river
were drowned in the spring floods, and all the space between Zhukovo and
the further side was filled up with a vast sheet of water, from which
wild ducks rose up in flocks here and there. The spring sunset, flaming
among gorgeous clouds, gave every evening something new, extraordinary,
incredible--just what one does not believe in afterwards, when one sees
those very colours and those very clouds in a picture.
The cranes flew swiftly, swiftly, with mournful cries, as though they
were calling themselves. Standing on the edge of the ravine, Olga looked
a long time at the flooded meadow, at the sunshine, at the bright
church, that looked as though it had grown younger; and her tears flowed
and her breath came in gasps from her passionate longing to go away, to
go far away to the end of the world. It was already settled that she
should go back to Moscow to be a servant, and that Kiryak should set off
with her to get a job as a porter or something. Oh, to get away quickly!
As soon as it dried up and grew warm they got ready to set off. Olga and
Sasha, with wallets on their backs and shoes of plaited bark on their
feet, came out before daybreak: Marya came out, too, to see them on
their way. Kiryak was not well, and was kept at home for another week.
For the last time Olga prayed at the church and thought of her husband,
and though she did not shed tears, her face puckered up and looked ugly
like an old woman's. During the winter she had grown thinner and
plainer, and her hair had gone a little grey, and instead of the old
look of sweetness and the pleasant smile on her face, she had the
resigned, mournful expression left by the sorrows she had been through,
and there was something blank and irresponsive in her eyes, as though
she did not hear what was said. She was sorry to part from the village
and the peasants. She remembered how they had carried out Nikolay, and
how a requiem had been ordered for him at almost every hut, and all had
shed tears in sympathy with her grief. In the course of the summer and
the winter there had been hours and days when it seemed as though these
people lived worse than the beasts, and to live with them was terrible;
they were coarse, dishonest, filthy, and drunken; they did not live in
harmony, but quarrelled continually, because they distrusted and feared
and did not respect one another. Who keeps the tavern and makes the
people drunken? A peasant. Who wastes and spends on drink the funds of
the commune, of the schools, of the church? A peasant. Who stole from
his neighbours, set fire to their property, gave false witness at the
court for a bottle of vodka? At the meetings of the Zemstvo and other
local bodies, who was the first to fall foul of the peasants? A peasant.
Yes, to live with them was terrible; but yet, they were human beings,
they suffered and wept like human beings, and there was nothing in their
lives for which one could not find excuse. Hard labour that made the
whole body ache at night, the cruel winters, the scanty harvests, the
overcrowding; and they had no help and none to whom they could look for
help. Those of them who were a little stronger and better off could be
no help, as they were themselves coarse, dishonest, drunken, and abused
one another just as revoltingly; the paltriest little clerk or official
treated the peasants as though they were tramps, and addressed even the
village elders and church wardens as inferiors, and considered they had
a right to do so. And, indeed, can any sort of help or good example be
given by mercenary, greedy, depraved, and idle persons who only visit
the village in order to insult, to despoil, and to terrorize? Olga
remembered the pitiful, humiliated look of the old people when in the
winter Kiryak had been taken to be flogged.... And now she felt sorry
for all these people, painfully so, and as she walked on she kept
looking back at the huts.
After walking two miles with them Marya said good-bye, then kneeling,
and falling forward with her face on the earth, she began wailing:
"Again I am left alone. Alas, for poor me! poor, unhappy!..."
And she wailed like this for a long time, and for a long way Olga and
Sasha could still see her on her knees, bowing down to someone at the
side and clutching her head in her hands, while the rooks flew over her
head.
The sun rose high; it began to get hot. Zhukovo was left far behind.
Walking was pleasant. Olga and Sasha soon forgot both the village and
Marya; they were gay and everything entertained them. Now they came upon
an ancient barrow, now upon a row of telegraph posts running one after
another into the distance and disappearing into the horizon, and the
wires hummed mysteriously. Then they saw a homestead, all wreathed in
green foliage; there came a scent from it of dampness, of hemp, and it
seemed for some reason that happy people lived there. Then they came
upon a horse's skeleton whitening in solitude in the open fields. And
the larks trilled unceasingly, the corncrakes called to one another, and
the landrail cried as though someone were really scraping at an old iron
rail.
At midday Olga and Sasha reached a big village. There in the broad
street they met the little old man who was General Zhukov's cook. He was
hot, and his red, perspiring bald head shone in the sunshine. Olga and
he did not recognize each other, then looked round at the same moment,
recognized each other, and went their separate ways without saying a
word. Stopping near the hut which looked newest and most prosperous,
Olga bowed down before the open windows, and said in a loud, thin,
chanting voice:
"Good Christian folk, give alms, for Christ's sake, that God's blessing
may be upon you, and that your parents may be in the Kingdom of Heaven
in peace eternal."
"Good Christian folk," Sasha began chanting, "give, for Christ's sake,
that God's blessing, the Heavenly Kingdom..."
The Chorus Girl and Other Stories
THE CHORUS GIRL
ONE day when she was younger and better-looking, and when her voice was
stronger, Nikolay Petrovitch Kolpakov, her adorer, was sitting in the
outer room in her summer villa. It was intolerably hot and stifling.
Kolpakov, who had just dined and drunk a whole bottle of inferior port,
felt ill-humoured and out of sorts. Both were bored and waiting for the
heat of the day to be over in order to go for a walk.
All at once there was a sudden ring at the door. Kolpakov, who was
sitting with his coat off, in his slippers, jumped up and looked
inquiringly at Pasha.
"It must be the postman or one of the girls," said the singer.
Kolpakov did not mind being found by the postman or Pasha's lady
friends, but by way of precaution gathered up his clothes and went into
the next room, while Pasha ran to open the door. To her great surprise
in the doorway stood, not the postman and not a girl friend, but an
unknown woman, young and beautiful, who was dressed like a lady, and
from all outward signs was one.
The stranger was pale and was breathing heavily as though she had been
running up a steep flight of stairs.
"What is it?" asked Pasha.
The lady did not at once answer. She took a step forward, slowly looked
about the room, and sat down in a way that suggested that from fatigue,
or perhaps illness, she could not stand; then for a long time her pale
lips quivered as she tried in vain to speak.
"Is my husband here?" she asked at last, raising to Pasha her big eyes
with their red tear-stained lids.
"Husband?" whispered Pasha, and was suddenly so frightened that her
hands and feet turned cold. "What husband?" she repeated, beginning to
tremble.
"My husband, . . . Nikolay Petrovitch Kolpakov."
"N . . . no, madam. . . . I . . . I don't know any husband."
A minute passed in silence. The stranger several times passed her
handkerchief over her pale lips and held her breath to stop her inward
trembling, while Pasha stood before her motionless, like a post, and
looked at her with astonishment and terror.
"So you say he is not here?" the lady asked, this time speaking with a
firm voice and smiling oddly.
"I . . . I don't know who it is you are asking about."
"You are horrid, mean, vile . . ." the stranger muttered, scanning Pasha
with hatred and repulsion. "Yes, yes . . . you are horrid. I am very,
very glad that at last I can tell you so!"
Pasha felt that on this lady in black with the angry eyes and white
slender fingers she produced the impression of something horrid and
unseemly, and she felt ashamed of her chubby red cheeks, the pock-mark
on her nose, and the fringe on her forehead, which never could be combed
back. And it seemed to her that if she had been thin, and had had no
powder on her face and no fringe on her forehead, then she could have
disguised the fact that she was not "respectable," and she would not
have felt so frightened and ashamed to stand facing this unknown,
mysterious lady.
"Where is my husband?" the lady went on. "Though I don't care whether he
is here or not, but I ought to tell you that the money has been missed,
and they are looking for Nikolay Petrovitch. . . . They mean to arrest
him. That's your doing!"
The lady got up and walked about the room in great excitement. Pasha
looked at her and was so frightened that she could not understand.
"He'll be found and arrested to-day," said the lady, and she gave a sob,
and in that sound could be heard her resentment and vexation. "I know
who has brought him to this awful position! Low, horrid creature!
Loathsome, mercenary hussy!" The lady's lips worked and her nose
wrinkled up with disgust. "I am helpless, do you hear, you low woman? .
. . I am helpless; you are stronger than I am, but there is One to
defend me and my children! God sees all! He is just! He will punish you
for every tear I have shed, for all my sleepless nights! The time will
come; you will think of me! . . ."
Silence followed again. The lady walked about the room and wrung her
hands, while Pasha still gazed blankly at her in amazement, not
understanding and expecting something terrible.
"I know nothing about it, madam," she said, and suddenly burst into
tears.
"You are lying!" cried the lady, and her eyes flashed angrily at her. "I
know all about it! I've known you a long time. I know that for the last
month he has been spending every day with you!"
"Yes. What then? What of it? I have a great many visitors, but I don't
force anyone to come. He is free to do as he likes."
"I tell you they have discovered that money is missing! He has embezzled
money at the office! For the sake of such a . . . creature as you, for
your sake he has actually committed a crime. Listen," said the lady in a
resolute voice, stopping short, facing Pasha. "You can have no
principles; you live simply to do harm-that's your object; but one can't
imagine you have fallen so low that you have no trace of human feeling
left! He has a wife, children. . . . If he is condemned and sent into
exile we shall starve, the children and I. . . . Understand that! And
yet there is a chance of saving him and us from destitution and
disgrace. If I take them nine hundred roubles to-day they will let him
alone. Only nine hundred roubles!"
"What nine hundred roubles?" Pasha asked softly. "I . . . I don't know.
. . . I haven't taken it."
"I am not asking you for nine hundred roubles. . . . You have no money,
and I don't want your money. I ask you for something else. . . . Men
usually give expensive things to women like you. Only give me back the
things my husband has given you!"
"Madam, he has never made me a present of anything!" Pasha wailed,
beginning to understand.
"Where is the money? He has squandered his own and mine and other
people's. . . . What has become of it all? Listen, I beg you! I was
carried away by indignation and have said a lot of nasty things to you,
but I apologize. You must hate me, I know, but if you are capable of
sympathy, put yourself in my position! I implore you to give me back the
things!"
"H'm!" said Pasha, and she shrugged her shoulders. "I would with
pleasure, but God is my witness, he never made me a present of anything.
Believe me, on my conscience. However, you are right, though," said the
singer in confusion, "he did bring me two little things. Certainly I
will give them back, if you wish it."
Pasha pulled out one of the drawers in the toilet-table and took out of
it a hollow gold bracelet and a thin ring with a ruby in it.
"Here, madam!" she said, handing the visitor these articles.
The lady flushed and her face quivered. She was offended.
"What are you giving me?" she said. "I am not asking for charity, but
for what does not belong to you . . . what you have taken advantage of
your position to squeeze out of my husband . . . that weak, unhappy man.
. . . On Thursday, when I saw you with my husband at the harbour you
were wearing expensive brooches and bracelets. So it's no use your
playing the innocent lamb to me! I ask you for the last time: will you
give me the things, or not?"
"You are a queer one, upon my word," said Pasha, beginning to feel
offended. "I assure you that, except the bracelet and this little ring,
I've never seen a thing from your Nikolay Petrovitch. He brings me
nothing but sweet cakes."
"Sweet cakes!" laughed the stranger. "At home the children have nothing
to eat, and here you have sweet cakes. You absolutely refuse to restore
the presents?"
Receiving no answer, the lady sat down and stared into space, pondering.
"What's to be done now?" she said. "If I don't get nine hundred roubles,
he is ruined, and the children and I am ruined, too. Shall I kill this
low woman or go down on my knees to her?"
The lady pressed her handkerchief to her face and broke into sobs.
"I beg you!" Pasha heard through the stranger's sobs. "You see you have
plundered and ruined my husband. Save him. . . . You have no feeling for
him, but the children . . . the children . . . What have the children
done?"
Pasha imagined little children standing in the street, crying with
hunger, and she, too, sobbed.
"What can I do, madam?" she said. "You say that I am a low woman and
that I have ruined Nikolay Petrovitch, and I assure you . . . before God
Almighty, I have had nothing from him whatever. . . . There is only one
girl in our chorus who has a rich admirer; all the rest of us live from
hand to mouth on bread and kvass. Nikolay Petrovitch is a highly
educated, refined gentleman, so I've made him welcome. We are bound to
make gentlemen welcome."
"I ask you for the things! Give me the things! I am crying. . . . I am
humiliating myself. . . . If you like I will go down on my knees! If you
wish it!"
Pasha shrieked with horror and waved her hands. She felt that this pale,
beautiful lady who expressed herself so grandly, as though she were on
the stage, really might go down on her knees to her, simply from pride,
from grandeur, to exalt herself and humiliate the chorus girl.
"Very well, I will give you things!" said Pasha, wiping her eyes and
bustling about. "By all means. Only they are not from Nikolay
Petrovitch. . . . I got these from other gentlemen. As you please. . .
."
Pasha pulled out the upper drawer of the chest, took out a diamond
brooch, a coral necklace, some rings and bracelets, and gave them all to
the lady.
"Take them if you like, only I've never had anything from your husband.
Take them and grow rich," Pasha went on, offended at the threat to go
down on her knees. "And if you are a lady . . . his lawful wife, you
should keep him to yourself. I should think so! I did not ask him to
come; he came of himself."
Through her tears the lady scrutinized the articles given her and said:
"This isn't everything. . . . There won't be five hundred roubles' worth
here."
Pasha impulsively flung out of the chest a gold watch, a cigar-case and
studs, and said, flinging up her hands:
"I've nothing else left. . . . You can search!"
The visitor gave a sigh, with trembling hands twisted the things up in
her handkerchief, and went out without uttering a word, without even
nodding her head.
The door from the next room opened and Kolpakov walked in. He was pale
and kept shaking his head nervously, as though he had swallowed
something very bitter; tears were glistening in his eyes.
"What presents did you make me?" Pasha asked, pouncing upon him. "When
did you, allow me to ask you?"
"Presents . . . that's no matter!" said Kolpakov, and he tossed his
head. "My God! She cried before you, she humbled herself. . . ."
"I am asking you, what presents did you make me?" Pasha cried.
"My God! She, a lady, so proud, so pure. . . . She was ready to go down
on her knees to . . . to this wench! And I've brought her to this! I've
allowed it!"
He clutched his head in his hands and moaned.
"No, I shall never forgive myself for this! I shall never forgive
myself! Get away from me . . . you low creature!" he cried with
repulsion, backing away from Pasha, and thrusting her off with trembling
hands. "She would have gone down on her knees, and . . . and to you! Oh,
my God!"
He rapidly dressed, and pushing Pasha aside contemptuously, made for the
door and went out.
Pasha lay down and began wailing aloud. She was already regretting her
things which she had given away so impulsively, and her feelings were
hurt. She remembered how three years ago a merchant had beaten her for
no sort of reason, and she wailed more loudly than ever. VEROTCHKA
IVAN ALEXEYITCH OGNEV remembers how on that August evening he opened the
glass door with a rattle and went out on to the verandah. He was wearing
a light Inverness cape and a wide-brimmed straw hat, the very one that
was lying with his top-boots in the dust under his bed. In one hand he
had a big bundle of books and notebooks, in the other a thick knotted
stick.
Behind the door, holding the lamp to show the way, stood the master of
the house, Kuznetsov, a bald old man with a long grey beard, in a snow-
white piqué jacket. The old man was smiling cordially and nodding his
head.
"Good-bye, old fellow!" said Ognev.
Kuznetsov put the lamp on a little table and went out to the verandah.
Two long narrow shadows moved down the steps towards the flower-beds,
swayed to and fro, and leaned their heads on the trunks of the lime-
trees.
"Good-bye and once more thank you, my dear fellow!" said Ivan
Alexeyitch. "Thank you for your welcome, for your kindness, for your
affection. . . . I shall never forget your hospitality as long as I
live. You are so good, and your daughter is so good, and everyone here
is so kind, so good-humoured and friendly . . . Such a splendid set of
people that I don't know how to say what I feel!"
From excess of feeling and under the influence of the home-made wine he
had just drunk, Ognev talked in a singing voice like a divinity student,
and was so touched that he expressed his feelings not so much by words
as by the blinking of his eyes and the twitching of his shoulders.
Kuznetsov, who had also drunk a good deal and was touched, craned
forward to the young man and kissed him.
"I've grown as fond of you as if I were your dog," Ognev went on. "I've
been turning up here almost every day; I've stayed the night a dozen
times. It's dreadful to think of all the home-made wine I've drunk. And
thank you most of all for your co-operation and help. Without you I
should have been busy here over my statistics till October. I shall put
in my preface: 'I think it my duty to express my gratitude to the
President of the District Zemstvo of N--, Kuznetsov, for his kind co-
operation.' There is a brilliant future before statistics! My humble
respects to Vera Gavrilovna, and tell the doctors, both the lawyers and
your secretary, that I shall never forget their help! And now, old
fellow, let us embrace one another and kiss for the last time!"
Ognev, limp with emotion, kissed the old man once more and began going
down the steps. On the last step he looked round and asked: "Shall we
meet again some day?"
"God knows!" said the old man. "Most likely not!"
"Yes, that's true! Nothing will tempt you to Petersburg and I am never
likely to turn up in this district again. Well, good-bye!"
"You had better leave the books behind!" Kuznetsov called after him.
"You don't want to drag such a weight with you. I would send them by a
servant to-morrow!"
But Ognev was rapidly walking away from the house and was not listening.
His heart, warmed by the wine, was brimming over with good-humour,
friendliness, and sadness. He walked along thinking how frequently one
met with good people, and what a pity it was that nothing was left of
those meetings but memories. At times one catches a glimpse of cranes on
the horizon, and a faint gust of wind brings their plaintive, ecstatic
cry, and a minute later, however greedily one scans the blue distance,
one cannot see a speck nor catch a sound; and like that, people with
their faces and their words flit through our lives and are drowned in
the past, leaving nothing except faint traces in the memory. Having been
in the N-- District from the early spring, and having been almost every
day at the friendly Kuznetsovs', Ivan Alexeyitch had become as much at
home with the old man, his daughter, and the servants as though they
were his own people; he had grown familiar with the whole house to the
smallest detail, with the cosy verandah, the windings of the avenues,
the silhouettes of the trees over the kitchen and the bath-house; but as
soon as he was out of the gate all this would be changed to memory and
would lose its meaning as reality for ever, and in a year or two all
these dear images would grow as dim in his consciousness as stories he
had read or things he had imagined.
"Nothing in life is so precious as people!" Ognev thought in his
emotion, as he strode along the avenue to the gate. "Nothing!"