Old Tsybukin went to the town for a short time. Someone told Aksinya
that he had gone to the notary to make his will and that he was leaving
Butyokino, the very place where she had set up a brickyard, to Nikifor,
his grandson. She was informed of this in the morning when old Tsybukin
and Varvara were sitting near the steps under the birch-tree, drinking
their tea. She closed the shop in the front and at the back, gathered
together all the keys she had, and flung them at her father-in-law’s
feet.
“I am not going on working for you,” she began in a loud voice, and
suddenly broke into sobs. “It seems I am not your daughter-in-law, but
a servant! Everybody’s jeering and saying, ‘See what a servant the
Tsybukins have got hold of!’ I did not come to you for wages! I am not a
beggar, I am not a slave, I have a father and mother.”
She did not wipe away her tears, she fixed upon her father-in-law eyes
full of tears, vindictive, squinting with wrath; her face and neck were
red and tense, and she was shouting at the top of her voice.
“I don’t mean to go on being a slave!” she went on. “I am worn out. When
it is work, when it is sitting in the shop day in and day out, scurrying
out at night for vodka--then it is my share, but when it is giving away
the land then it is for that convict’s wife and her imp. She is mistress
here, and I am her servant. Give her everything, the convict’s wife, and
may it choke her! I am going home! Find yourselves some other fool, you
damned Herods!”
Tsybukin had never in his life scolded or punished his children, and had
never dreamed that one of his family could speak to him rudely or behave
disrespectfully; and now he was very much frightened; he ran into
the house and there hid behind the cupboard. And Varvara was so much
flustered that she could not get up from her seat, and only waved her
hands before her as though she were warding off a bee.
“Oh, Holy Saints! what’s the meaning of it?” she muttered in horror.
“What is she shouting? Oh, dear, dear!... People will hear! Hush. Oh,
hush!”
“He has given Butyokino to the convict’s wife,” Aksinya went on bawling.
“Give her everything now, I don’t want anything from you! Let me alone!
You are all a gang of thieves here! I have seen my fill of it, I have
had enough! You have robbed folks coming in and going out; you have
robbed old and young alike, you brigands! And who has been selling vodka
without a licence? And false money? You’ve filled boxes full of false
coins, and now I am no more use!”
A crowd had by now collected at the open gate and was staring into the
yard.
“Let the people look,” bawled Aksinya. “I will shame you all! You shall
burn with shame! You shall grovel at my feet. Hey! Stepan,” she called
to the deaf man, “let us go home this minute! Let us go to my father and
mother; I don’t want to live with convicts. Get ready!”
Clothes were hanging on lines stretched across the yard; she snatched
off her petticoats and blouses still wet and flung them into the deaf
man’s arms. Then in her fury she dashed about the yard by the linen,
tore down all of it, and what was not hers she threw on the ground and
trampled upon.
“Holy Saints, take her away,” moaned Varvara. “What a woman! Give her
Butyokino! Give it her, for the Lord’s sake!
“Well! Wha-at a woman!” people were saying at the gate. “She’s a
wo-oman! She’s going it--something like!”
Aksinya ran into the kitchen where washing was going on. Lipa was
washing alone, the cook had gone to the river to rinse the clothes.
Steam was rising from the trough and from the caldron on the side of
the stove, and the kitchen was thick and stifling from the steam. On the
floor was a heap of unwashed clothes, and Nikifor, kicking up his little
red legs, had been put down on a bench near them, so that if he fell he
should not hurt himself. Just as Aksinya went in Lipa took the
former’s chemise out of the heap and put it in the trough, and was
just stretching out her hand to a big ladle of boiling water which was
standing on the table.
“Give it here,” said Aksinya, looking at her with hatred, and snatching
the chemise out of the trough; “it is not your business to touch my
linen! You are a convict’s wife, and ought to know your place and who
you are.”
Lipa gazed at her, taken aback, and did not understand, but suddenly
she caught the look Aksinya turned upon the child, and at once she
understood and went numb all over.
“You’ve taken my land, so here you are!” Saying this Aksinya snatched up
the ladle with the boiling water and flung it over Nikifor.
After this there was heard a scream such as had never been heard before
in Ukleevo, and no one would have believed that a little weak creature
like Lipa could scream like that. And it was suddenly silent in the
yard.
Aksinya walked into the house with her old naive smile.... The deaf man
kept moving about the yard with his arms full of linen, then he began
hanging it up again, in silence, without haste. And until the cook came
back from the river no one ventured to go into the kitchen and see what
was there.