In the village Shikalovo lived two dressmakers, sisters, belonging to
the Flagellant sect. The new clothes for the wedding were ordered
from them, and they often came to try them on, and stayed a long while
drinking tea. They were making Varvara a brown dress with black lace and
bugles on it, and Aksinya a light green dress with a yellow front, with
a train. When the dressmakers had finished their work Tsybukin paid them
not in money but in goods from the shop, and they went away depressed,
carrying parcels of tallow candles and tins of sardines which they did
not in the least need, and when they got out of the village into the
open country they sat down on a hillock and cried.
Anisim arrived three days before the wedding, rigged out in new clothes
from top to toe. He had dazzling india-rubber goloshes, and instead of a
cravat wore a red cord with little balls on it, and over his shoulder
he had hung an overcoat, also new, without putting his arms into the
sleeves.
After crossing himself sedately before the ikon, he greeted his father
and gave him ten silver roubles and ten half-roubles; to Varvara he gave
as much, and to Aksinya twenty quarter-roubles. The chief charm of the
present lay in the fact that all the coins, as though carefully matched,
were new and glittered in the sun. Trying to seem grave and sedate he
pursed up his face and puffed out his cheeks, and he smelt of spirits.
Probably he had visited the refreshment bar at every station. And again
there was a free-and-easiness about the man--something superfluous and
out of place. Then Anisim had lunch and drank tea with the old man,
and Varvara turned the new coins over in her hand and inquired about
villagers who had gone to live in the town.
“They are all right, thank God, they get on quite well,” said Anisim.
“Only something has happened to Ivan Yegorov: his old wife Sofya
Nikiforovna is dead. From consumption. They ordered the memorial dinner
for the peace of her soul at the confectioner’s at two and a half
roubles a head. And there was real wine. Those who were peasants from
our village--they paid two and a half roubles for them, too. They ate
nothing, as though a peasant would understand sauce!”
“Two and a half,” said his father, shaking his head.
“Well, it’s not like the country there, you go into a restaurant to have
a snack of something, you ask for one thing and another, others join
till there is a party of us, one has a drink--and before you know where
you are it is daylight and you’ve three or four roubles each to pay.
And when one is with Samorodov he likes to have coffee with brandy in it
after everything, and brandy is sixty kopecks for a little glass.”
“And he is making it all up,” said the old man enthusiastically; “he is
making it all up, lying!”
“I am always with Samorodov now. It is Samorodov who writes my letters
to you. He writes splendidly. And if I were to tell you, mamma,” Anisim
went on gaily, addressing Varvara, “the sort of fellow that Samorodov
is, you would not believe me. We call him Muhtar, because he is black
like an Armenian. I can see through him, I know all his affairs like
the five fingers of my hand, and he feels that, and he always follows
me about, we are regular inseparables. He seems not to like it in a way,
but he can’t get on without me. Where I go he goes. I have a correct,
trustworthy eye, mamma. One sees a peasant selling a shirt in the market
place. ‘Stay, that shirt’s stolen.’ And really it turns out it is so:
the shirt was a stolen one.”
“What do you tell from?” asked Varvara.
“Not from anything, I have just an eye for it. I know nothing about the
shirt, only for some reason I seem drawn to it: it’s stolen, and that’s
all I can say. Among us detectives it’s come to their saying, ‘Oh,
Anisim has gone to shoot snipe!’ That means looking for stolen goods.
Yes.... Anybody can steal, but it is another thing to keep! The earth is
wide, but there is nowhere to hide stolen goods.”
“In our village a ram and two ewes were carried off last week,” said
Varvara, and she heaved a sigh, and there is no one to try and find
them.... Oh, tut, tut..”
“Well, I might have a try. I don’t mind.”
The day of the wedding arrived. It was a cool but bright, cheerful April
day. People were driving about Ukleevo from early morning with pairs or
teams of three horses decked with many-coloured ribbons on their
yokes and manes, with a jingle of bells. The rooks, disturbed by this
activity, were cawing noisily in the willows, and the starlings sang
their loudest unceasingly as though rejoicing that there was a wedding
at the Tsybukins’.
Indoors the tables were already covered with long fish, smoked hams,
stuffed fowls, boxes of sprats, pickled savouries of various sorts,
and a number of bottles of vodka and wine; there was a smell of smoked
sausage and of sour tinned lobster. Old Tsybukin walked about near the
tables, tapping with his heels and sharpening the knives against each
other. They kept calling Varvara and asking for things, and she was
constantly with a distracted face running breathlessly into the kitchen,
where the man cook from Kostukov’s and the woman cook from Hrymin
Juniors’ had been at work since early morning. Aksinya, with her hair
curled, in her stays without her dress on, in new creaky boots, flew
about the yard like a whirlwind showing glimpses of her bare knees and
bosom.
It was noisy, there was a sound of scolding and oaths; passers-by
stopped at the wide-open gates, and in everything there was a feeling
that something extraordinary was happening.
“They have gone for the bride!”
The bells began jingling and died away far beyond the village....
Between two and three o’clock people ran up: again there was a jingling
of bells: they were bringing the bride! The church was full, the
candelabra were lighted, the choir were singing from music books as old
Tsybukin had wished it. The glare of the lights and the bright coloured
dresses dazzled Lipa; she felt as though the singers with their loud
voices were hitting her on the head with a hammer. Her boots and the
stays, which she had put on for the first time in her life, pinched her,
and her face looked as though she had only just come to herself after
fainting; she gazed about without understanding. Anisim, in his black
coat with a red cord instead of a tie, stared at the same spot lost
in thought, and when the singers shouted loudly he hurriedly crossed
himself. He felt touched and disposed to weep. This church was familiar
to him from earliest childhood; at one time his dead mother used to
bring him here to take the sacrament; at one time he used to sing in the
choir; every ikon he remembered so well, every corner. Here he was being
married, he had to take a wife for the sake of doing the proper thing,
but he was not thinking of that now, he had forgotten his wedding
completely. Tears dimmed his eyes so that he could not see the ikons,
he felt heavy at heart; he prayed and besought God that the misfortunes
that threatened him, that were ready to burst upon him to-morrow, if
not to-day, might somehow pass him by as storm-clouds in time of drought
pass over the village without yielding one drop of rain. And so many
sins were heaped up in the past, so many sins, all getting away from
them or setting them right was so beyond hope that it seemed incongruous
even to ask forgiveness. But he did ask forgiveness, and even gave a
loud sob, but no one took any notice of that, since they all supposed he
had had a drop too much.
There was a sound of a fretful childish wail:
“Take me away, mamma darling!”
“Quiet there!” cried the priest.
When they returned from the church people ran after them; there were
crowds, too, round the shop, round the gates, and in the yard under the
windows. The peasant women came in to sing songs of congratulation
to them. The young couple had scarcely crossed the threshold when the
singers, who were already standing in the outer room with their music
books, broke into a loud chant at the top of their voices; a band
ordered expressly from the town began playing. Foaming Don wine was
brought in tall wine-glasses, and Elizarov, a carpenter who did jobs
by contract, a tall, gaunt old man with eyebrows so bushy that his eyes
could scarcely be seen, said, addressing the happy pair:
“Anisim and you, my child, love one another, live in God’s way, little
children, and the Heavenly Mother will not abandon you.”
He leaned his face on the old father’s shoulder and gave a sob.
“Grigory Petrovitch, let us weep, let us weep with joy!” he said in a
thin voice, and then at once burst out laughing in a loud bass guffaw.
“Ho-ho-ho! This is a fine daughter-in-law for you too! Everything is in
its place in her; all runs smoothly, no creaking, the mechanism works
well, lots of screws in it.”
He was a native of the Yegoryevsky district, but had worked in the
factories in Ukleevo and the neighborhood from his youth up, and had
made it his home. He had been a familiar figure for years as old and
gaunt and lanky as now, and for years he had been nicknamed “Crutch.”
Perhaps because he had been for forty years occupied in repairing the
factory machinery he judged everybody and everything by its soundness
or its need of repair. And before sitting down to the table he tried
several chairs to see whether they were solid, and he touched the smoked
fish also.
After the Don wine, they all sat down to the table. The visitors talked,
moving their chairs. The singers were singing in the outer room. The
band was playing, and at the same time the peasant women in the yard
were singing their songs all in chorus--and there was an awful, wild
medley of sounds which made one giddy.
Crutch turned round in his chair and prodded his neighbours with
his elbows, prevented people from talking, and laughed and cried
alternately.
“Little children, little children, little children,” he muttered
rapidly. “Aksinya my dear, Varvara darling, we will live all in peace
and harmony, my dear little axes....”
He drank little and was now only drunk from one glass of English
bitters. The revolting bitters, made from nobody knows what, intoxicated
everyone who drank it as though it had stunned them. Their tongues began
to falter.
The local clergy, the clerks from the factories with their wives, the
tradesmen and tavern-keepers from the other villages were present. The
clerk and the elder of the rural district who had served together for
fourteen years, and who had during all that time never signed a single
document for anybody nor let a single person out of the local court
without deceiving or insulting him, were sitting now side by side, both
fat and well-fed, and it seemed as though they were so saturated in
injustice and falsehood that even the skin of their faces was somehow
peculiar, fraudulent. The clerk’s wife, a thin woman with a squint, had
brought all her children with her, and like a bird of prey looked aslant
at the plates and snatched anything she could get hold of to put in her
own or her children’s pockets.
Lipa sat as though turned to stone, still with the same expression as in
church. Anisim had not said a single word to her since he had made her
acquaintance, so that he did not yet know the sound of her voice; and
now, sitting beside her, he remained mute and went on drinking bitters,
and when he got drunk he began talking to the aunt who was sitting
opposite:
“I have a friend called Samorodov. A peculiar man. He is by rank an
honorary citizen, and he can talk. But I know him through and through,
auntie, and he feels it. Pray join me in drinking to the health of
Samorodov, auntie!”
Varvara, worn out and distracted, walked round the table pressing the
guests to eat, and was evidently pleased that there were so many dishes
and that everything was so lavish--no one could disparage them now. The
sun set, but the dinner went on: the guests were beyond knowing what
they were eating or drinking, it was impossible to distinguish what was
said, and only from time to time when the band subsided some peasant
woman could be heard shouting:
“They have sucked the blood out of us, the Herods; a pest on them!”
In the evening they danced to the band. The Hrymin Juniors came,
bringing their wine, and one of them, when dancing a quadrille, held a
bottle in each hand and a wineglass in his mouth, and that made everyone
laugh. In the middle of the quadrille they suddenly crooked their knees
and danced in a squatting position; Aksinya in green flew by like a
flash, stirring up a wind with her train. Someone trod on her flounce
and Crutch shouted:
“Aie, they have torn off the panel! Children!”
Aksinya had naive grey eyes which rarely blinked, and a naive smile
played continually on her face. And in those unblinking eyes, and in
that little head on the long neck, and in her slenderness there was
something snake-like; all in green but for the yellow on her bosom, she
looked with a smile on her face as a viper looks out of the young rye
in the spring at the passers-by, stretching itself and lifting its
head. The Hrymins were free in their behaviour to her, and it was very
noticeable that she was on intimate terms with the elder of them. But
her deaf husband saw nothing, he did not look at her; he sat with his
legs crossed and ate nuts, cracking them so loudly that it sounded like
pistol shots.
But, behold, old Tsybukin himself walked into the middle of the room
and waved his handkerchief as a sign that he, too, wanted to dance the
Russian dance, and all over the house and from the crowd in the yard
rose a roar of approbation:
“_He’s_ going to dance! _He_ himself!”
Varvara danced, but the old man only waved his handkerchief and kicked
up his heels, but the people in the yard, propped against one another,
peeping in at the windows, were in raptures, and for the moment forgave
him everything--his wealth and the wrongs he had done them.
“Well done, Grigory Petrovitch!” was heard in the crowd. “That’s right,
do your best! You can still play your part! Ha-ha!”
It was kept up till late, till two o’clock in the morning. Anisim,
staggering, went to take leave of the singers and bandsmen, and gave
each of them a new half-rouble. His father, who was not staggering but
still seemed to be standing on one leg, saw his guests off, and said to
each of them:
“The wedding has cost two thousand.”
As the party was breaking up, someone took the Shikalovo innkeeper’s
good coat instead of his own old one, and Anisim suddenly flew into a
rage and began shouting:
“Stop, I’ll find it at once; I know who stole it, stop.”
He ran out into the street and pursued someone. He was caught, brought
back home and shoved, drunken, red with anger, and wet, into the room
where the aunt was undressing Lipa, and was locked in.