I
“WHAT shall I write?” said Yegor, and he dipped his pen in the ink.
Vasilisa had not seen her daughter for four years. Her daughter Yefimya
had gone after her wedding to Petersburg, had sent them two letters, and
since then seemed to vanish out of their lives; there had been no sight
nor sound of her. And whether the old woman were milking her cow at
dawn, or heating her stove, or dozing at night, she was always thinking
of one and the same thing--what was happening to Yefimya, whether she
were alive out yonder. She ought to have sent a letter, but the old
father could not write, and there was no one to write.
But now Christmas had come, and Vasilisa could not bear it any longer,
and went to the tavern to Yegor, the brother of the innkeeper’s wife,
who had sat in the tavern doing nothing ever since he came back from
the army; people said that he could write letters very well if he were
properly paid. Vasilisa talked to the cook at the tavern, then to the
mistress of the house, then to Yegor himself. They agreed upon fifteen
kopecks.
And now--it happened on the second day of the holidays, in the tavern
kitchen--Yegor was sitting at the table, holding the pen in his hand.
Vasilisa was standing before him, pondering with an expression of
anxiety and woe on her face. Pyotr, her husband, a very thin old man
with a brownish bald patch, had come with her; he stood looking straight
before him like a blind man. On the stove a piece of pork was being
braised in a saucepan; it was spurting and hissing, and seemed to be
actually saying: “Flu-flu-flu.” It was stifling.
“What am I to write?” Yegor asked again.
“What?” asked Vasilisa, looking at him angrily and suspiciously. “Don’t
worry me! You are not writing for nothing; no fear, you’ll be paid for
it. Come, write: ‘To our dear son-in-law, Andrey Hrisanfitch, and to our
only beloved daughter, Yefimya Petrovna, with our love we send a low bow
and our parental blessing abiding for ever.’”
“Written; fire away.”
“‘And we wish them a happy Christmas; we are alive and well, and I wish
you the same, please the Lord... the Heavenly King.’”
Vasilisa pondered and exchanged glances with the old man.
“‘And I wish you the same, please the Lord the Heavenly King,’” she
repeated, beginning to cry.
She could say nothing more. And yet before, when she lay awake thinking
at night, it had seemed to her that she could not get all she had to
say into a dozen letters. Since the time when her daughter had gone away
with her husband much water had flowed into the sea, the old people had
lived feeling bereaved, and sighed heavily at night as though they had
buried their daughter. And how many events had occurred in the village
since then, how many marriages and deaths! How long the winters had
been! How long the nights!
“It’s hot,” said Yegor, unbuttoning his waistcoat. “It must be seventy
degrees. What more?” he asked.
The old people were silent.
“What does your son-in-law do in Petersburg?” asked Yegor.
“He was a soldier, my good friend,” the old man answered in a weak
voice. “He left the service at the same time as you did. He was a
soldier, and now, to be sure, he is at Petersburg at a hydropathic
establishment. The doctor treats the sick with water. So he, to be sure,
is house-porter at the doctor’s.”
“Here it is written down,” said the old woman, taking a letter out of
her pocket. “We got it from Yefimya, goodness knows when. Maybe they are
no longer in this world.”
Yegor thought a little and began writing rapidly:
“At the present time”--he wrote--“since your destiny through your own
doing allotted you to the Military Career, we counsel you to look
into the Code of Disciplinary Offences and Fundamental Laws of the War
Office, and you will see in that law the Civilization of the Officials
of the War Office.”
He wrote and kept reading aloud what was written, while Vasilisa
considered what she ought to write: how great had been their want the
year before, how their corn had not lasted even till Christmas, how they
had to sell their cow. She ought to ask for money, ought to write that
the old father was often ailing and would soon no doubt give up his soul
to God... but how to express this in words? What must be said first and
what afterwards?
“Take note,” Yegor went on writing, “in volume five of the Army
Regulations soldier is a common noun and a proper one, a soldier of the
first rank is called a general, and of the last a private....”
The old man stirred his lips and said softly:
“It would be all right to have a look at the grandchildren.”
“What grandchildren?” asked the old woman, and she looked angrily at
him; “perhaps there are none.”
“Well, but perhaps there are. Who knows?”
“And thereby you can judge,” Yegor hurried on, “what is the enemy
without and what is the enemy within. The foremost of our enemies within
is Bacchus.” The pen squeaked, executing upon the paper flourishes like
fish-hooks. Yegor hastened and read over every line several times.
He sat on a stool sprawling his broad feet under the table, well-fed,
bursting with health, with a coarse animal face and a red bull neck.
He was vulgarity itself: coarse, conceited, invincible, proud of having
been born and bred in a pot-house; and Vasilisa quite understood the
vulgarity, but could not express it in words, and could only look
angrily and suspiciously at Yegor. Her head was beginning to ache,
and her thoughts were in confusion from the sound of his voice and his
unintelligible words, from the heat and the stuffiness, and she said
nothing and thought nothing, but simply waited for him to finish
scribbling. But the old man looked with full confidence. He believed in
his old woman who had brought him there, and in Yegor; and when he
had mentioned the hydropathic establishment it could be seen that he
believed in the establishment and the healing efficacy of water.
Having finished the letter, Yegor got up and read the whole of it
through from the beginning. The old man did not understand, but he
nodded his head trustfully.
“That’s all right; it is smooth...” he said. “God give you health.
That’s all right....”
They laid on the table three five-kopeck pieces and went out of the
tavern; the old man looked immovably straight before him as though he
were blind, and perfect trustfulness was written on his face; but as
Vasilisa came out of the tavern she waved angrily at the dog, and said
angrily:
“Ugh, the plague.”
The old woman did not sleep all night; she was disturbed by thoughts,
and at daybreak she got up, said her prayers, and went to the station to
send off the letter.
It was between eight and nine miles to the station.