The master arrived--that was what they called the police inspector. When
he would come and what he was coming for had been known for the last
week. There were only forty households in Zhukovo, but more than two
thousand roubles of arrears of rates and taxes had accumulated.
The police inspector stopped at the tavern. He drank there two glasses
of tea, and then went on foot to the village elder’s hut, near which
a crowd of those who were in debt stood waiting. The elder, Antip
Syedelnikov, was, in spite of his youth--he was only a little over
thirty--strict and always on the side of the authorities, though he
himself was poor and did not pay his taxes regularly. Evidently he
enjoyed being elder, and liked the sense of authority, which he could
only display by strictness. In the village council the peasants were
afraid of him and obeyed him. It would sometimes happen that he would
pounce on a drunken man in the street or near the tavern, tie his hands
behind him, and put him in the lock-up. On one occasion he even put
Granny in the lock-up because she went to the village council instead
of Osip, and began swearing, and he kept her there for a whole day and
night. He had never lived in a town or read a book, but somewhere or
other had picked up various learned expressions, and loved to make use
of them in conversation, and he was respected for this though he was not
always understood.
When Osip came into the village elder’s hut with his tax book, the
police inspector, a lean old man with a long grey beard, in a grey
tunic, was sitting at a table in the passage, writing something. It was
clean in the hut; all the walls were dotted with pictures cut out of
the illustrated papers, and in the most conspicuous place near the ikon
there was a portrait of the Battenburg who was the Prince of Bulgaria.
By the table stood Antip Syedelnikov with his arms folded.
“There is one hundred and nineteen roubles standing against him,” he
said when it came to Osip’s turn. “Before Easter he paid a rouble, and
he has not paid a kopeck since.”
The police inspector raised his eyes to Osip and asked:
“Why is this, brother?”
“Show Divine mercy, your honour,” Osip began, growing agitated. “Allow
me to say last year the gentleman at Lutorydsky said to me, ‘Osip,’ he
said, ‘sell your hay... you sell it,’ he said. Well, I had a hundred
poods for sale; the women mowed it on the water-meadow. Well, we struck
a bargain all right, willingly....”
He complained of the elder, and kept turning round to the peasants
as though inviting them to bear witness; his face flushed red and
perspired, and his eyes grew sharp and angry.
“I don’t know why you are saying all this,” said the police inspector.
“I am asking you... I am asking you why you don’t pay your arrears. You
don’t pay, any of you, and am I to be responsible for you?”
“I can’t do it.”
“His words have no sequel, your honour,” said the elder. “The
Tchikildyeevs certainly are of a defective class, but if you will just
ask the others, the root of it all is vodka, and they are a very bad
lot. With no sort of understanding.”
The police inspector wrote something down, and said to Osip quietly, in
an even tone, as though he were asking him for water:
“Be off.”
Soon he went away; and when he got into his cheap chaise and cleared his
throat, it could be seen from the very expression of his long thin back
that he was no longer thinking of Osip or of the village elder, nor of
the Zhukovo arrears, but was thinking of his own affairs. Before he had
gone three-quarters of a mile Antip was already carrying off the samovar
from the Tchikildyeevs’ cottage, followed by Granny, screaming shrilly
and straining her throat:
“I won’t let you have it, I won’t let you have it, damn you!”
He walked rapidly with long steps, and she pursued him panting, almost
falling over, a bent, ferocious figure; her kerchief slipped on to her
shoulders, her grey hair with greenish lights on it was blown about in
the wind. She suddenly stopped short, and like a genuine rebel, fell
to beating her breast with her fists and shouting louder than ever in a
sing-song voice, as though she were sobbing:
“Good Christians and believers in God! Neighbours, they have ill-treated
me! Kind friends, they have oppressed me! Oh, oh! dear people, take my
part.”
“Granny, Granny!” said the village elder sternly, “have some sense in
your head!”
It was hopelessly dreary in the Tchikildyeevs’ hut without the samovar;
there was something humiliating in this loss, insulting, as though the
honour of the hut had been outraged. Better if the elder had carried off
the table, all the benches, all the pots--it would not have seemed so
empty. Granny screamed, Marya cried, and the little girls, looking at
her, cried, too. The old father, feeling guilty, sat in the corner with
bowed head and said nothing. And Nikolay, too, was silent. Granny loved
him and was sorry for him, but now, forgetting her pity, she fell upon
him with abuse, with reproaches, shaking her fist right in his face. She
shouted that it was all his fault; why had he sent them so little when
he boasted in his letters that he was getting fifty roubles a month at
the Slavyansky Bazaar? Why had he come, and with his family, too? If he
died, where was the money to come from for his funeral...? And it was
pitiful to look at Nikolay, Olga, and Sasha.
The old father cleared his throat, took his cap, and went off to the
village elder. Antip was soldering something by the stove, puffing out
his cheeks; there was a smell of burning. His children, emaciated and
unwashed, no better than the Tchikildyeevs, were scrambling about the
floor; his wife, an ugly, freckled woman with a prominent stomach, was
winding silk. They were a poor, unlucky family, and Antip was the
only one who looked vigorous and handsome. On a bench there were five
samovars standing in a row. The old man said his prayer to Battenburg
and said:
“Antip, show the Divine mercy. Give me back the samovar, for Christ’s
sake!”
“Bring three roubles, then you shall have it.”
“I can’t do it!”
Antip puffed out his cheeks, the fire roared and hissed, and the glow
was reflected in the samovar. The old man crumpled up his cap and said
after a moment’s thought:
“You give it me back.”
The swarthy elder looked quite black, and was like a magician; he turned
round to Osip and said sternly and rapidly:
“It all depends on the rural captain. On the twenty-sixth instant you
can state the grounds for your dissatisfaction before the administrative
session, verbally or in writing.”
Osip did not understand a word, but he was satisfied with that and went
home.
Ten days later the police inspector came again, stayed an hour and went
away. During those days the weather had changed to cold and windy; the
river had been frozen for some time past, but still there was no snow,
and people found it difficult to get about. On the eve of a holiday some
of the neighbours came in to Osip’s to sit and have a talk. They did not
light the lamp, as it would have been a sin to work, but talked in the
darkness. There were some items of news, all rather unpleasant. In two
or three households hens had been taken for the arrears, and had been
sent to the district police station, and there they had died because no
one had fed them; they had taken sheep, and while they were being driven
away tied to one another, shifted into another cart at each village, one
of them had died. And now they were discussing the question, who was to
blame?
“The Zemstvo,” said Osip. “Who else?”
“Of course it is the Zemstvo.”
The Zemstvo was blamed for everything--for the arrears, and for the
oppressions, and for the failure of the crops, though no one of them
knew what was meant by the Zemstvo. And this dated from the time when
well-to-do peasants who had factories, shops, and inns of their own
were members of the Zemstvos, were dissatisfied with them, and took to
swearing at the Zemstvos in their factories and inns.
They talked of God’s not sending the snow; they had to bring in wood for
fuel, and there was no driving nor walking in the frozen ruts. In old
days fifteen to twenty years ago conversation was much more interesting
in Zhukovo. In those days every old man looked as though he were
treasuring some secret; as though he knew something and was expecting
something. They used to talk about an edict in golden letters, about
the division of lands, about new land, about treasures; they hinted at
something. Now the people of Zhukovo had no mystery at all; their whole
life was bare and open in the sight of all, and they could talk of
nothing but poverty, food, there being no snow yet....
There was a pause. Then they thought again of the hens, of the sheep,
and began discussing whose fault it was.
“The Zemstvo,” said Osip wearily. “Who else?”