Oh, what a grim, what a long winter!
Their own grain did not last beyond Christmas, and they had to buy
flour. Kiryak, who lived at home now, was noisy in the evenings,
inspiring terror in everyone, and in the mornings he suffered from
headache and was ashamed; and he was a pitiful sight. In the stall the
starved cows bellowed day and night--a heart-rending sound to Granny and
Marya. And as ill-luck would have it, there was a sharp frost all the
winter, the snow drifted in high heaps, and the winter dragged on. At
Annunciation there was a regular blizzard, and there was a fall of snow
at Easter.
But in spite of it all the winter did end. At the beginning of April
there came warm days and frosty nights. Winter would not give way, but
one warm day overpowered it at last, and the streams began to flow and
the birds began to sing. The whole meadow and the bushes near the river
were drowned in the spring floods, and all the space between Zhukovo and
the further side was filled up with a vast sheet of water, from which
wild ducks rose up in flocks here and there. The spring sunset, flaming
among gorgeous clouds, gave every evening something new, extraordinary,
incredible--just what one does not believe in afterwards, when one sees
those very colours and those very clouds in a picture.
The cranes flew swiftly, swiftly, with mournful cries, as though they
were calling themselves. Standing on the edge of the ravine, Olga
looked a long time at the flooded meadow, at the sunshine, at the bright
church, that looked as though it had grown younger; and her tears flowed
and her breath came in gasps from her passionate longing to go away,
to go far away to the end of the world. It was already settled that she
should go back to Moscow to be a servant, and that Kiryak should set off
with her to get a job as a porter or something. Oh, to get away quickly!
As soon as it dried up and grew warm they got ready to set off. Olga and
Sasha, with wallets on their backs and shoes of plaited bark on their
feet, came out before daybreak: Marya came out, too, to see them on
their way. Kiryak was not well, and was kept at home for another week.
For the last time Olga prayed at the church and thought of her husband,
and though she did not shed tears, her face puckered up and looked
ugly like an old woman’s. During the winter she had grown thinner and
plainer, and her hair had gone a little grey, and instead of the old
look of sweetness and the pleasant smile on her face, she had the
resigned, mournful expression left by the sorrows she had been through,
and there was something blank and irresponsive in her eyes, as though
she did not hear what was said. She was sorry to part from the village
and the peasants. She remembered how they had carried out Nikolay, and
how a requiem had been ordered for him at almost every hut, and all had
shed tears in sympathy with her grief. In the course of the summer and
the winter there had been hours and days when it seemed as though these
people lived worse than the beasts, and to live with them was terrible;
they were coarse, dishonest, filthy, and drunken; they did not live in
harmony, but quarrelled continually, because they distrusted and feared
and did not respect one another. Who keeps the tavern and makes the
people drunken? A peasant. Who wastes and spends on drink the funds of
the commune, of the schools, of the church? A peasant. Who stole from
his neighbours, set fire to their property, gave false witness at the
court for a bottle of vodka? At the meetings of the Zemstvo and other
local bodies, who was the first to fall foul of the peasants? A peasant.
Yes, to live with them was terrible; but yet, they were human beings,
they suffered and wept like human beings, and there was nothing in their
lives for which one could not find excuse. Hard labour that made the
whole body ache at night, the cruel winters, the scanty harvests, the
overcrowding; and they had no help and none to whom they could look for
help. Those of them who were a little stronger and better off could be
no help, as they were themselves coarse, dishonest, drunken, and abused
one another just as revoltingly; the paltriest little clerk or official
treated the peasants as though they were tramps, and addressed even the
village elders and church wardens as inferiors, and considered they had
a right to do so. And, indeed, can any sort of help or good example be
given by mercenary, greedy, depraved, and idle persons who only visit
the village in order to insult, to despoil, and to terrorize? Olga
remembered the pitiful, humiliated look of the old people when in the
winter Kiryak had been taken to be flogged.... And now she felt sorry
for all these people, painfully so, and as she walked on she kept
looking back at the huts.
After walking two miles with them Marya said good-bye, then kneeling,
and falling forward with her face on the earth, she began wailing:
“Again I am left alone. Alas, for poor me! poor, unhappy!...”
And she wailed like this for a long time, and for a long way Olga and
Sasha could still see her on her knees, bowing down to someone at the
side and clutching her head in her hands, while the rooks flew over her
head.
The sun rose high; it began to get hot. Zhukovo was left far behind.
Walking was pleasant. Olga and Sasha soon forgot both the village and
Marya; they were gay and everything entertained them. Now they came upon
an ancient barrow, now upon a row of telegraph posts running one after
another into the distance and disappearing into the horizon, and the
wires hummed mysteriously. Then they saw a homestead, all wreathed in
green foliage; there came a scent from it of dampness, of hemp, and it
seemed for some reason that happy people lived there. Then they came
upon a horse’s skeleton whitening in solitude in the open fields. And
the larks trilled unceasingly, the corncrakes called to one another, and
the landrail cried as though someone were really scraping at an old iron
rail.
At midday Olga and Sasha reached a big village. There in the broad
street they met the little old man who was General Zhukov’s cook. He was
hot, and his red, perspiring bald head shone in the sunshine. Olga and
he did not recognize each other, then looked round at the same moment,
recognized each other, and went their separate ways without saying a
word. Stopping near the hut which looked newest and most prosperous,
Olga bowed down before the open windows, and said in a loud, thin,
chanting voice:
“Good Christian folk, give alms, for Christ’s sake, that God’s blessing
may be upon you, and that your parents may be in the Kingdom of Heaven
in peace eternal.”
“Good Christian folk,” Sasha began chanting, “give, for Christ’s sake,
that God’s blessing, the Heavenly Kingdom...”