I am not going to give away the holy Easter cake to every drunken man in
the road."
"The Cossack wasn't drunk!"
"He was drunk!"
"Well, you are a fool then!"
Maxim got up from the table and began reproaching his young wife for
hard-heartedness and stupidity. She, getting angry too, answered his
reproaches with reproaches, burst into tears, and went away into their
bedroom, declaring she would go home to her father's. This was the first
matrimonial squabble that had happened in the Tortchakov's married life.
He walked about the yard till the evening, picturing his wife's face,
and it seemed to him now spiteful and ugly. And as though to torment him
the Cossack haunted his brain, and Maxim seemed to see now his sick
eyes, now his unsteady walk.
"Ah, we were unkind to the man," he muttered.
When it got dark, he was overcome by an insufferable depression such as
he had never felt before. Feeling so dreary, and being angry with his
wife, he got drunk, as he had sometimes done before he was married. In
his drunkenness he used bad language and shouted to his wife that she
had a spiteful, ugly face, and that next day he would send her packing
to her father's. On the morning of Easter Monday, he drank some more to
sober himself, and got drunk again.
And with that his downfall began.
His horses, cows, sheep, and hives disappeared one by one from the yard;
Maxim was more and more often drunk, debts mounted up, he felt an
aversion for his wife. Maxim put down all his misfortunes to the fact
that he had an unkind wife, and above all, that God was angry with him
on account of the sick Cossack.
Lizaveta saw their ruin, but who was to blame for it she did not
understand.
ABORIGINES
BETWEEN nine and ten in the morning. Ivan Lyashkevsky, a lieutenant of
Polish origin, who has at some time or other been wounded in the head,
and now lives on his pension in a town in one of the southern provinces,
is sitting in his lodgings at the open window talking to Franz
Stepanitch Finks, the town architect, who has come in to see him for a
minute. Both have thrust their heads out of the window, and are looking
in the direction of the gate near which Lyashkevsky's landlord, a plump
little native with pendulous perspiring cheeks, in full, blue trousers,
is sitting on a bench with his waistcoat unbuttoned. The native is
plunged in deep thought, and is absent-mindedly prodding the toe of his
boot with a stick.
"Extraordinary people, I tell you," grumbled Lyashkevsky, looking
angrily at the native, "here he has sat down on the bench, and so he
will sit, damn the fellow, with his hands folded till evening. They do
absolutely nothing. The wastrels and loafers! It would be all right, you
scoundrel, if you had money lying in the bank, or had a farm of your own
where others would be working for you, but here you have not a penny to
your name, you eat the bread of others, you are in debt all round, and
you starve your family--devil take you! You wouldn't believe me, Franz
Stepanitch, sometimes it makes me so cross that I could jump out of the
window and give the low fellow a good horse-whipping. Come, why don't
you work? What are you sitting there for?"
The native looks indifferently at Lyashkevsky, tries to say something
but cannot; sloth and the sultry heat have paralysed his conversational
faculties. . . . Yawning lazily, he makes the sign of the cross over his
mouth, and turns his eyes up towards the sky where pigeons fly, bathing
in the hot air.
"You must not be too severe in your judgments, honoured friend," sighs
Finks, mopping his big bald head with his handkerchief. "Put yourself in
their place: business is slack now, there's unemployment all round, a
bad harvest, stagnation in trade."
"Good gracious, how you talk!" cries Lyashkevsky in indignation, angrily
wrapping his dressing gown round him. "Supposing he has no job and no
trade, why doesn't he work in his own home, the devil flay him! I say!
Is there no work for you at home? Just look, you brute! Your steps have
come to pieces, the plankway is falling into the ditch, the fence is
rotten; you had better set to and mend it all, or if you don't know how,
go into the kitchen and help your wife. Your wife is running out every
minute to fetch water or carry out the slops. Why shouldn't you run
instead, you rascal? And then you must remember, Franz Stepanitch, that
he has six acres of garden, that he has pigsties and poultry houses, but
it is all wasted and no use. The flower garden is overgrown with weeds
and almost baked dry, while the boys play ball in the kitchen garden.
Isn't he a lazy brute? I assure you, though I have only the use of an
acre and a half with my lodgings, you will always find radishes, and
salad, and fennel, and onions, while that blackguard buys everything at
the market."
"He is a Russian, there is no doing anything with him," said Finks with
a condescending smile; "it's in the Russian blood. . . . They are a very
lazy people! If all property were given to Germans or Poles, in a year's
time you would not recognise the town."
The native in the blue trousers beckons a girl with a sieve, buys a
kopeck's worth of sunflower seeds from her and begins cracking them.
"A race of curs!" says Lyashkevsky angrily. "That's their only
occupation, they crack sunflower seeds and they talk politics! The devil
take them!"
Staring wrathfully at the blue trousers, Lyashkevsky is gradually roused
to fury, and gets so excited that he actually foams at the mouth. He
speaks with a Polish accent, rapping out each syllable venomously, till
at last the little bags under his eyes swell, and he abandons the
Russian "scoundrels, blackguards, and rascals," and rolling his eyes,
begins pouring out a shower of Polish oaths, coughing from his efforts.
"Lazy dogs, race of curs. May the devil take them!"
The native hears this abuse distinctly, but, judging from the appearance
of his crumpled little figure, it does not affect him. Apparently he has
long ago grown as used to it as to the buzzing of the flies, and feels
it superfluous to protest. At every visit Finks has to listen to a
tirade on the subject of the lazy good-for-nothing aborigines, and every
time exactly the same one.
"But . . . I must be going," he says, remembering that he has no time to
spare. "Good-bye!"
"Where are you off to?"
"I only looked in on you for a minute. The wall of the cellar has
cracked in the girls' high school, so they asked me to go round at once
to look at it. I must go."
"H'm. . . . I have told Varvara to get the samovar," says Lyashkevsky,
surprised. "Stay a little, we will have some tea; then you shall go."
Finks obediently puts down his hat on the table and remains to drink
tea. Over their tea Lyashkevsky maintains that the natives are
hopelessly ruined, that there is only one thing to do, to take them all
indiscriminately and send them under strict escort to hard labour.
"Why, upon my word," he says, getting hot, "you may ask what does that
goose sitting there live upon! He lets me lodgings in his house for
seven roubles a month, and he goes to name-day parties, that's all that
he has to live on, the knave, may the devil take him! He has neither
earnings nor an income. They are not merely sluggards and wastrels, they
are swindlers too, they are continually borrowing money from the town
bank, and what do they do with it? They plunge into some scheme such as
sending bulls to Moscow, or building oil presses on a new system; but to
send bulls to Moscow or to press oil you want to have a head on your
shoulders, and these rascals have pumpkins on theirs! Of course all
their schemes end in smoke . . . . They waste their money, get into a
mess, and then snap their fingers at the bank. What can you get out of
them? Their houses are mortgaged over and over again, they have no other
property--it's all been drunk and eaten up long ago. Nine-tenths of them
are swindlers, the scoundrels! To borrow money and not return it is
their rule. Thanks to them the town bank is going smash!"
"I was at Yegorov's yesterday," Finks interrupts the Pole, anxious to
change the conversation, "and only fancy, I won six roubles and a half
from him at picquet."
"I believe I still owe you something at picquet," Lyashkevsky
recollects, "I ought to win it back. Wouldn't you like one game?"
"Perhaps just one," Finks assents. "I must make haste to the high
school, you know."
Lyashkevsky and Finks sit down at the open window and begin a game of
picquet. The native in the blue trousers stretches with relish, and
husks of sunflower seeds fall in showers from all over him on to the
ground. At that moment from the gate opposite appears another native
with a long beard, wearing a crumpled yellowish-grey cotton coat. He
screws up his eyes affectionately at the blue trousers and shouts:
"Good-morning, Semyon Nikolaitch, I have the honour to congratulate you
on the Thursday."
"And the same to you, Kapiton Petrovitch!"
"Come to my seat! It's cool here!"
The blue trousers, with much sighing and groaning and waddling from side
to side like a duck, cross the street.
"Tierce major . . ." mutters Lyashkevsky, "from the queen. . . . Five
and fifteen. . . . The rascals are talking of politics. . . . Do you
hear? They have begun about England. I have six hearts."
"I have the seven spades. My point."
"Yes, it's yours. Do you hear? They are abusing Beaconsfield. They don't
know, the swine, that Beaconsfield has been dead for ever so long. So I
have twenty-nine. . . . Your lead."
"Eight . . . nine . . . ten . . . . Yes, amazing people, these Russians!
Eleven . . . twelve. . . . The Russian inertia is unique on the
terrestrial globe."
"Thirty . . . Thirty-one. . . . One ought to take a good whip, you know.
Go out and give them Beaconsfield. I say, how their tongues are wagging!
It's easier to babble than to work. I suppose you threw away the queen
of clubs and I didn't realise it."
"Thirteen . . . Fourteen. . . . It's unbearably hot! One must be made of
iron to sit in such heat on a seat in the full sun! Fifteen."
The first game is followed by a second, the second by a third. . . .
Finks loses, and by degrees works himself up into a gambling fever and
forgets all about the cracking walls of the high school cellar. As
Lyashkevsky plays he keeps looking at the aborigines. He sees them,
entertaining each other with conversation, go to the open gate, cross
the filthy yard and sit down on a scanty patch of shade under an aspen
tree. Between twelve and one o'clock the fat cook with brown legs
spreads before them something like a baby's sheet with brown stains upon
it, and gives them their dinner. They eat with wooden spoons, keep
brushing away the flies, and go on talking.
"The devil, it is beyond everything," cries Lyashkevsky, revolted. "I am
very glad I have not a gun or a revolver or I should have a shot at
those cattle. I have four knaves--fourteen. . . . Your point. . . . It
really gives me a twitching in my legs. I can't see those ruffians
without being upset."
"Don't excite yourself, it is bad for you."
"But upon my word, it is enough to try the patience of a stone!"
When he has finished dinner the native in blue trousers, worn out and
exhausted, staggering with laziness and repletion, crosses the street to
his own house and sinks feebly on to his bench. He is struggling with
drowsiness and the gnats, and is looking about him as dejectedly as
though he were every minute expecting his end. His helpless air drives
Lyashkevsky out of all patience. The Pole pokes his head out of the
window and shouts at him, spluttering:
"Been gorging? Ah, the old woman! The sweet darling. He has been
stuffing himself, and now he doesn't know what to do with his tummy! Get
out of my sight, you confounded fellow! Plague take you!"
The native looks sourly at him, and merely twiddles his fingers instead
of answering. A school-boy of his acquaintance passes by him with his
satchel on his back. Stopping him the native ponders a long time what to
say to him, and asks:
"Well, what now?"
"Nothing."
"How, nothing?"
"Why, just nothing."
"H'm. . . . And which subject is the hardest?"
"That's according." The school-boy shrugs his shoulders.
"I see--er . . . What is the Latin for tree?"
"Arbor."
"Aha. . . . And so one has to know all that," sighs the blue trousers.
"You have to go into it all. . . . It's hard work, hard work. . . . Is
your dear Mamma well?"
"She is all right, thank you."
"Ah. . . . Well, run along."
After losing two roubles Finks remembers the high school and is
horrified.
"Holy Saints, why it's three o'clock already. How I have been staying
on. Good-bye, I must run. . . ."
"Have dinner with me, and then go," says Lyashkevsky. "You have plenty
of time."
Finks stays, but only on condition that dinner shall last no more than
ten minutes. After dining he sits for some five minutes on the sofa and
thinks of the cracked wall, then resolutely lays his head on the cushion
and fills the room with a shrill whistling through his nose. While he is
asleep, Lyashkevsky, who does not approve of an afternoon nap, sits at
the window, stares at the dozing native, and grumbles:
"Race of curs! I wonder you don't choke with laziness. No work, no
intellectual or moral interests, nothing but vegetating . . . .
disgusting. Tfoo!"
At six o'clock Finks wakes up.
"It's too late to go to the high school now," he says, stretching. "I
shall have to go to-morrow, and now. . . . How about my revenge? Let's
have one more game. . . ."
After seeing his visitor off, between nine and ten, Lyashkevsky looks
after him for some time, and says:
"Damn the fellow, staying here the whole day and doing absolutely
nothing. . . . Simply get their salary and do no work; the devil take
them! . . . The German pig. . . ."
He looks out of the window, but the native is no longer there. He has
gone to bed. There is no one to grumble at, and for the first time in
the day he keeps his mouth shut, but ten minutes passes and he cannot
restrain the depression that overpowers him, and begins to grumble,
shoving the old shabby armchair:
"You only take up room, rubbishly old thing! You ought to have been
burnt long ago, but I keep forgetting to tell them to chop you up. It's
a disgrace!"
And as he gets into bed he presses his hand on a spring of the mattress,
frowns and says peevishly:
"The con--found--ed spring! It will cut my side all night. I will tell
them to rip up the mattress to-morrow and get you out, you useless
thing."
He falls asleep at midnight, and dreams that he is pouring boiling water
over the natives, Finks, and the old armchair.
AN INQUIRY
IT was midday. Voldyrev, a tall, thick-set country gentleman with a
cropped head and prominent eyes, took off his overcoat, mopped his brow
with his silk handkerchief, and somewhat diffidently went into the
government office. There they were scratching away. . . .
"Where can I make an inquiry here?" he said, addressing a porter who was
bringing a trayful of glasses from the furthest recesses of the office.
"I have to make an inquiry here and to take a copy of a resolution of
the Council."
"That way please! To that one sitting near the window!" said the porter,
indicating with the tray the furthest window. Voldyrev coughed and went
towards the window; there, at a green table spotted like typhus, was
sitting a young man with his hair standing up in four tufts on his head,
with a long pimply nose, and a long faded uniform. He was writing,
thrusting his long nose into the papers. A fly was walking about near
his right nostril, and he was continually stretching out his lower lip
and blowing under his nose, which gave his face an extremely care-worn
expression.
"May I make an inquiry about my case here . . . of you? My name is
Voldyrev. And, by the way, I have to take a copy of the resolution of
the Council of the second of March."
The clerk dipped his pen in the ink and looked to see if he had got too
much on it. Having satisfied himself that the pen would not make a blot,
he began scribbling away. His lip was thrust out, but it was no longer
necessary to blow: the fly had settled on his ear.
"Can I make an inquiry here?" Voldyrev repeated a minute later, "my name
is Voldyrev, I am a landowner. . . ."
"Ivan Alexeitch!" the clerk shouted into the air as though he had not
observed Voldyrev, "will you tell the merchant Yalikov when he comes to
sign the copy of the complaint lodged with the police! I've told him a
thousand times!"
"I have come in reference to my lawsuit with the heirs of Princess
Gugulin," muttered Voldyrev. "The case is well known. I earnestly beg
you to attend to me."
Still failing to observe Voldyrev, the clerk caught the fly on his lip,
looked at it attentively and flung it away. The country gentleman
coughed and blew his nose loudly on his checked pocket handkerchief. But
this was no use either. He was still unheard. The silence lasted for two
minutes. Voldyrev took a rouble note from his pocket and laid it on an
open book before the clerk. The clerk wrinkled up his forehead, drew the
book towards him with an anxious air and closed it.
"A little inquiry. . . . I want only to find out on what grounds the
heirs of Princess Gugulin. . . . May I trouble you?"
The clerk, absorbed in his own thoughts, got up and, scratching his
elbow, went to a cupboard for something. Returning a minute later to his
table he became absorbed in the book again: another rouble note was
lying upon it.
"I will trouble you for one minute only. . . . I have only to make an
inquiry."
The clerk did not hear, he had begun copying something.
Voldyrev frowned and looked hopelessly at the whole scribbling
brotherhood.
"They write!" he thought, sighing. "They write, the devil take them
entirely!"
He walked away from the table and stopped in the middle of the room, his
hands hanging hopelessly at his sides. The porter, passing again with
glasses, probably noticed the helpless expression of his face, for he
went close up to him and asked him in a low voice:
"Well? Have you inquired?"
"I've inquired, but he wouldn't speak to me."
"You give him three roubles," whispered the porter.
"I've given him two already."
"Give him another."
Voldyrev went back to the table and laid a green note on the open book.
The clerk drew the book towards him again and began turning over the
leaves, and all at once, as though by chance, lifted his eyes to
Voldyrev. His nose began to shine, turned red, and wrinkled up in a
grin.
"Ah . . . what do you want?" he asked.
"I want to make an inquiry in reference to my case. . . . My name is
Voldyrev."
"With pleasure! The Gugulin case, isn't it? Very good. What is it then
exactly?"
Voldyrev explained his business.
The clerk became as lively as though he were whirled round by a
hurricane. He gave the necessary information, arranged for a copy to be
made, gave the petitioner a chair, and all in one instant. He even spoke
about the weather and asked after the harvest. And when Voldyrev went
away he accompanied him down the stairs, smiling affably and
respectfully, and looking as though he were ready any minute to fall on
his face before the gentleman. Voldyrev for some reason felt
uncomfortable, and in obedience to some inward impulse he took a rouble
out of his pocket and gave it to the clerk. And the latter kept bowing
and smiling, and took the rouble like a conjuror, so that it seemed to
flash through the air.
"Well, what people!" thought the country gentleman as he went out into
the street, and he stopped and mopped his brow with his handkerchief.
MARTYRS
LIZOTCHKA KUDRINSKY, a young married lady who had many admirers, was
suddenly taken ill, and so seriously that her husband did not go to his
office, and a telegram was sent to her mamma at Tver. This is how she
told the story of her illness:
"I went to Lyesnoe to auntie's. I stayed there a week and then I went
with all the rest to cousin Varya's. Varya's husband is a surly brute
and a despot (I'd shoot a husband like that), but we had a very jolly
time there. To begin with I took part in some private theatricals. It
was A Scandal in a Respectable Family. Hrustalev acted marvellously!
Between the acts I drank some cold, awfully cold, lemon squash, with the
tiniest nip of brandy in it. Lemon squash with brandy in it is very much
like champagne. . . . I drank it and I felt nothing. Next day after the
performance I rode out on horseback with that Adolf Ivanitch. It was
rather damp and there was a strong wind. It was most likely then that I
caught cold. Three days later I came home to see how my dear, good
Vassya was getting on, and while here to get my silk dress, the one that
has little flowers on it. Vassya, of course, I did not find at home. I
went into the kitchen to tell Praskovya to set the samovar, and there I
saw on the table some pretty little carrots and turnips like playthings.
I ate one little carrot and well, a turnip too. I ate very little, but
only fancy, I began having a sharp pain at once--spasms . . . spasms . .
. spasms . . . ah, I am dying. Vassya runs from the office. Naturally he
clutches at his hair and turns white. They run for the doctor. . . . Do
you understand, I am dying, dying."
The spasms began at midday, before three o'clock the doctor came, and at
six Lizotchka fell asleep and slept soundly till two o'clock in the
morning.
It strikes two. . . . The light of the little night lamp filters
scantily through the pale blue shade. Lizotchka is lying in bed, her
white lace cap stands out sharply against the dark background of the red
cushion. Shadows from the blue lamp-shade lie in patterns on her pale
face and her round plump shoulders. Vassily Stepanovitch is sitting at
her feet. The poor fellow is happy that his wife is at home at last, and
at the same time he is terribly alarmed by her illness.
"Well, how do you feel, Lizotchka?" he asks in a whisper, noticing that
she is awake.
"I am better," moans Lizotchka. "I don't feel the spasms now, but there
is no sleeping. . . . I can't get to sleep!"
"Isn't it time to change the compress, my angel?"
Lizotchka sits up slowly with the expression of a martyr and gracefully
turns her head on one side. Vassily Stepanovitch with reverent awe,
scarcely touching her hot body with his fingers, changes the compress.
Lizotchka shrinks, laughs at the cold water which tickles her, and lies
down again.
"You are getting no sleep, poor boy!" she moans.
"As though I could sleep!"
"It's my nerves, Vassya, I am a very nervous woman. The doctor has
prescribed for stomach trouble, but I feel that he doesn't understand my
illness. It's nerves and not the stomach, I swear that it is my nerves.
There is only one thing I am afraid of, that my illness may take a bad
turn."
"No, Lizotchka, no, to-morrow you will be all right!"
"Hardly likely! I am not afraid for myself. . . . I don't care, indeed,
I shall be glad to die, but I am sorry for you! You'll be a widower and
left all alone."
Vassitchka rarely enjoys his wife's society, and has long been used to
solitude, but Lizotchka's words agitate him.
"Goodness knows what you are saying, little woman! Why these gloomy
thoughts?"
"Well, you will cry and grieve, and then you will get used to it. You'll
even get married again."
The husband clutches his head.
"There, there, I won't!" Lizotchka soothes him, "only you ought to be
prepared for anything."
"And all of a sudden I shall die," she thinks, shutting her eyes.
And Lizotchka draws a mental picture of her own death, how her mother,
her husband, her cousin Varya with her husband, her relations, the
admirers of her "talent" press round her death bed, as she whispers her
last farewell. All are weeping. Then when she is dead they dress her,
interestingly pale and dark-haired, in a pink dress (it suits her) and
lay her in a very expensive coffin on gold legs, full of flowers. There
is a smell of incense, the candles splutter. Her husband never leaves
the coffin, while the admirers of her talent cannot take their eyes off
her, and say: "As though living! She is lovely in her coffin!" The whole
town is talking of the life cut short so prematurely. But now they are
carrying her to the church. The bearers are Ivan Petrovitch, Adolf
Ivanitch, Varya's husband, Nikolay Semyonitch, and the black-eyed
student who had taught her to drink lemon squash with brandy. It's only
a pity there's no music playing. After the burial service comes the
leave-taking. The church is full of sobs, they bring the lid with
tassels, and . . . Lizotchka is shut off from the light of day for ever,
there is the sound of hammering nails. Knock, knock, knock.