Мужики

I

Nikolai Chikildeev, a waiter at the Moscow hotel "Slavyansky Bazaar," fell ill. His legs went numb and his gait changed, so that one day, walking along the corridor, he stumbled and fell together with a tray on which there had been ham and peas. He had to give up his post. What money there was, his own and his wife’s, went on doctoring, there was nothing left to live on, it grew tiresome having nothing to do, and he decided that he must go home, to the village. At home it was easier to be ill, and cheaper to live; and it is not for nothing that they say: the walls of home are a help.

He arrived at his native Zhukovo toward evening. In the memories of childhood the family nest had seemed to him bright, snug, comfortable, but now, going into the hut, he was even frightened: it was so dark, cramped, and unclean. His wife Olga and daughter Sasha, who had come with him, looked with bewilderment at the big untidy stove, which took up almost half the hut, black with soot and flies. So many flies! The stove had settled crooked, the logs in the walls lay askew, and it seemed the hut might fall to pieces at any moment. In the front corner, by the icons, bottle labels and scraps of newspaper had been pasted up in place of pictures. Poverty, poverty! Not one of the grown-ups was at home, they were all out reaping. On top of the stove sat a girl of about eight, white-headed, unwashed, indifferent; she did not even glance at those who had come in. Below, a white cat rubbed itself against the oven fork.

"Puss, puss!" Sasha called to it. "Puss!"

"She can’t hear us," said the girl. "She’s deaf."

"Why?"

"Just is. They beat her."

Nikolai and Olga understood at first glance what sort of life this was, but said nothing to each other; silently they set down their bundles and went out into the street in silence. Their hut was the third from the end and looked the poorest, the oldest of all; the second was no better, but the last one had an iron roof and curtains in the windows. That hut, unfenced, stood apart, and in it there was a tavern. The huts stood in a single row, and the whole little village, quiet and pensive, with willows, elder, and mountain ash looking out from the yards, had a pleasant appearance.

Beyond the peasant homesteads the ground fell away toward the river, steep and precipitous, so that here and there huge stones showed bare through the clay. Along the slope, around these stones and the pits dug by the potters, footpaths wound their way, whole heaps of broken pottery lay scattered, some brown, some red, and below spread a wide, level, bright-green meadow, already mown, where the village herd was now grazing. The river was a verst from the village, winding, with lovely wooded banks, and beyond it again a wide meadow, a herd, long strings of white geese, then, just as on this side, a steep climb up the hill, and up above, on the hill, a village with a five-domed church and, a little further off, the manor house.

"How good it is here with you!" said Olga, crossing herself toward the church. "What space, Lord!"

Just at that moment the bell rang for vespers (it was the eve of Sunday). Two little girls who were down below dragging a bucket of water looked round at the church to listen to the ringing.

"About this time at the Slavyansky Bazaar they’d be serving dinner..." Nikolai said dreamily.

Sitting on the edge of the bluff, Nikolai and Olga watched the sun go down, watched the sky, gold and crimson, reflected in the river, in the windows of the church, and in the whole air, soft, still, inexpressibly pure, such as never was in Moscow. And when the sun had set, the herd went by, bleating and lowing, the geese flew over from the other side – and everything grew silent, the quiet light died out of the air and the evening darkness began quickly to close in.

Meanwhile the old people, Nikolai’s father and mother, came back, gaunt, stooped, toothless, both of the same height. And the women came too – the daughters-in-law, Marya and Fyokla, who had been working across the river for the landowner. Marya, the wife of his brother Kiryak, had six children; Fyokla, the wife of his brother Denis, who had gone for a soldier, had two; and when Nikolai, coming into the hut, saw the whole family, all these big and little bodies stirring on the sleeping-shelf, in the cradles, and in every corner, and when he saw with what greed the old man and the women ate black bread, dipping it in water, he understood that he had come here for nothing, ill, without money, and with a family besides – for nothing!

"And where’s brother Kiryak?" he asked, once they had exchanged greetings.

"Living as watchman at a merchant’s," his father answered, "in the forest. He’d be all right as a peasant, but he drinks too hard."

"No provider, he!" the old woman said tearfully. "Our menfolk are a bitter lot, they don’t carry anything into the house, they carry it out. Kiryak drinks, and the old man too, no use hiding the sin of it, he knows the way to the tavern. The Heavenly Queen has turned her face from us."

On account of the guests they set up the samovar. The tea smelled of fish, the sugar was gnawed and gray, cockroaches ran over the bread and the dishes; it was unpleasant to drink, and the talk was unpleasant too – all about want and about illness. But they had scarcely finished a cup apiece when a loud, drawn-out, drunken shout came from the yard:

"Ma-a-rya!"

"Sounds like Kiryak’s coming," said the old man. "Speak of the devil."

Everyone fell silent. And a little while later, the same cry again, coarse and drawn-out, as though from underground:

"Ma-a-rya!"

Marya, the elder daughter-in-law, turned pale and pressed herself against the stove, and it was strange to see on the face of this broad-shouldered, strong, plain woman an expression of fright. Her daughter, the very girl who had been sitting on the stove and had seemed indifferent, suddenly burst into loud tears.

"And what’s the matter with you, you little pest?" Fyokla shouted at her – a handsome woman, also strong and broad in the shoulders. "He’s not going to kill you!"

From the old man Nikolai learned that Marya was afraid to live in the forest with Kiryak, and that whenever he was drunk he would come for her and, while doing so, would make a great noise and beat her without mercy.

"Ma-a-rya!" the cry rang out right at the door.

"Stand up for me, for Christ’s sake, dear ones," Marya babbled, breathing as though she were being lowered into very cold water, "stand up for me, dear ones..."

All the children in the hut, however many there were, began to cry, and watching them, Sasha began to cry too. A drunken cough was heard, and into the hut came a tall, black-bearded peasant in a winter cap, and because in the dim light of the little lamp his face could not be seen, he looked frightening. This was Kiryak. Going up to his wife, he swung his arm and struck her in the face with his fist; she made no sound, stunned by the blow, and only sank down, and at once blood began running from her nose.

"What a disgrace, what a disgrace," the old man muttered, climbing onto the stove, "and with guests here! What a sin!"

The old woman sat silent, bent over, thinking of something; Fyokla rocked the cradle... Kiryak, evidently conscious of how frightening he looked and pleased by it, seized Marya by the arm, dragged her toward the door, and gave a beast’s growl to seem still more terrible, but just then he suddenly caught sight of the guests and stopped.

"Ah, you’ve come..." he said, letting go of his wife. "My own brother, with his family..."

He crossed himself before the icon, swaying, opening his drunken red eyes wide, and went on:

"Brother, with his family, come to his father’s house... from Moscow, that is. The first-throned city, that is, Moscow, mother of cities... Forgive me..."

He dropped onto the bench by the samovar and began to drink tea, sipping loudly from the saucer, amid a general silence... He drank some ten cups, then slumped against the bench and began to snore.

They began to lie down to sleep. Nikolai, being ill, was put up on the stove with the old man; Sasha lay down on the floor, and Olga went with the women to the barn.

"There, there, my dove," she was saying, lying down on the hay beside Marya, "tears won’t help your grief. You must bear it, that’s all. It is written in the Scripture: if any man smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also... There, there, my dove!"

Then, in a half-voice, in a kind of chant, she told about Moscow, about her own life, about how she had served as a chambermaid in furnished rooms.

"And in Moscow the houses are big, made of stone," she was saying, "and there are churches, ever so many, forty times forty, my dove, and in the houses there’s nothing but gentlefolk, so handsome, so refined!"

Marya said that she had never been, not only to Moscow, but even to her own district town; she could not read, knew no prayers at all, did not even know the Our Father. She and the other daughter-in-law, Fyokla, who now sat a little apart and was listening – both of them were utterly unlettered and could understand nothing. Neither of them loved her husband; Marya was afraid of Kiryak, and when he was left alone with her she would shake with fear and every time grow faint from him, for he smelled strongly of vodka and tobacco. And Fyokla, when asked whether she was not lonely without her husband, answered with vexation:

"Let him go hang!"

They talked a while and fell quiet...

It was cool, and near the barn a cockerel crowed at the top of its lungs, keeping them from sleep. When the bluish morning light was already breaking through every crack, Fyokla got up quietly and went out, and afterward one could hear her running off somewhere, her bare feet pattering.

II

Olga went to church and took Marya with her. As they went down the path to the meadow, both of them felt cheerful. Olga liked the open space, and Marya felt in her sister-in-law someone close, someone of her own. The sun was rising. A sleepy hawk hovered low over the meadow, the river looked overcast, mist drifted here and there, but on the far side, on the hill, a band of light already stretched, the church shone, and in the manor garden the rooks were shrieking furiously.

"The old man’s all right," Marya was saying, "but the old woman is strict, always fighting. Our own bread lasted only till Shrovetide, we buy flour at the tavern, well, and she gets angry – you eat too much, she says."

"There, there, my dove. You must bear it, that’s all. It is said: come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden."

Olga spoke gravely, in a chant, and her walk was like a pilgrim woman’s, quick and bustling. Every day she read the Gospel, read it aloud, in the manner of a deacon’s clerk, and understood little of it, but the holy words moved her to tears, and words like "if" and "until" she pronounced with a sweet catch of the heart. She believed in God, in the Mother of God, in the saints; she believed that no one on earth should be wronged – not simple folk, nor Germans, nor gypsies, nor Jews, and that woe awaited even those who did not pity animals; she believed that this was written so in the holy books, and therefore, when she spoke the words of Scripture, even words she did not understand, her face grew pitying, tender, and bright.

"Where are you from?" asked Marya.

"I’m from Vladimir province. But I was taken to Moscow long ago, when I was eight."

They came to the river. On the other side, right at the water’s edge, a woman was standing and undressing.

"That’s our Fyokla," Marya recognized her, "she went across the river to the manor yard. To the stewards. Wild and foul-mouthed, something terrible!"

Fyokla, dark-browed, her hair loose, still young and strong as a girl, plunged in from the bank and began splashing the water with her feet, and waves ran off from her in every direction.

"Wild, something terrible!" Marya repeated.

Across the river lay some shaky log planks, and just beneath them, in the clear, transparent water, shoals of broad-headed chub swam back and forth. On the green bushes that leaned over and looked at their own reflection, dew sparkled. There came a breath of warmth, and it grew pleasant. What a beautiful morning! And how beautiful life on this earth might have been, if not for want – terrible, inescapable want, from which there was nowhere to hide! One had only to glance back now at the village for all of yesterday to come vividly to mind – and the enchantment of happiness that had seemed to hang all around vanished in an instant.

They reached the church. Marya stopped at the entrance and did not dare go further. Nor did she dare sit down, although the bell for the liturgy had only rung at nine o’clock. So she stood the whole time.

When the Gospel was being read, the people suddenly stirred, making way for the landowner’s family; two girls came in wearing white dresses and wide-brimmed hats, and with them a plump, rosy boy in a sailor suit. Their appearance touched Olga; at first glance she decided that these were decent, educated, and beautiful people. Marya, however, looked at them from under her brows, sullen, dejected, as though it were not people who had come in but monsters that might crush her if she failed to step aside.

And whenever the deacon proclaimed something in his bass voice, she fancied every time she heard the cry: "Ma-a-rya!" – and gave a start.

III

Word of the guests’ arrival spread through the village, and already after the liturgy a great many people had gathered in the hut. The Leonychevs came, and the Matveichevs, and the Ilyichovs, to ask after their own relations in service in Moscow. All the boys of Zhukovo who could read and write were taken off to Moscow and placed only as waiters and hall porters (just as, from the village on the far side, boys were placed only as bakers), and this had been the custom for a long time, ever since the days of serfdom, when a certain Luka Ivanych, a Zhukovo peasant, now a figure of legend, who had served as buffet-keeper at one of the Moscow clubs, took into his service only men from his own village, and these, once they had risen in the world, sent for their own relations and placed them in taverns and restaurants; and from that time the village of Zhukovo had come to be known among the people round about by no other name than Lackeyville, or Flunkeytown. Nikolai had been taken to Moscow when he was eleven, and it was Ivan Makarych, of the Matveichev family, then serving as an usher in the "Hermitage" gardens, who had found him his place. And now, turning to the Matveichevs, Nikolai said with an air of instruction:

"Ivan Makarych is my benefactor, and it’s my duty to pray to God for him day and night, since it’s through him that I became a decent man."

"My dear man," said a tall old woman tearfully, Ivan Makarych’s sister, "and nothing at all is to be heard of him, the darling."

"In winter he was in service at Omon’s, and this season, so I heard, he was somewhere out of town, in the pleasure gardens... He’s grown old! There was a time, in the summer, when he’d bring home as much as ten rubles a day, but now business is slack everywhere, and the old fellow struggles along."

The old women and the wives looked at Nikolai’s feet, shod in felt boots, and at his pale face, and said sorrowfully:

"No provider, you, Nikolai Osipych, no provider! Where’s the good of you!"

And everyone made much of Sasha. She had already turned ten, but she was small for her age, very thin, and looked no more than seven at most. Among the other girls, sunburnt, badly cropped, dressed in long faded shifts, she, fair-haired, with big dark eyes and a red ribbon in her hair, seemed a curious little thing, as though she were some small animal caught in the fields and brought into the hut.

"She can even read!" Olga boasted, looking tenderly at her daughter. "Read for us, dearie," she said, taking the Gospel out of the bundle. "You read, and the Orthodox folk will listen."

The Gospel was old, heavy, bound in leather, its edges thumbed smooth, and it smelled as though monks had come into the hut. Sasha raised her eyebrows and began, loudly, in a chant:

""And when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord... appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying: ’Arise and take the young child and his mother...’""

"The young child and his mother," Olga repeated, and flushed all over with emotion.

""And flee into Egypt... and be thou there until I bring thee word...""

At the word "until" Olga could not hold back and burst into tears. Watching her, Marya sobbed too, then Ivan Makarych’s sister. The old man coughed and bustled about to find some treat for his granddaughter, but found nothing and only waved his hand. And when the reading was over, the neighbors went home, moved, and very pleased with Olga and Sasha.

Because of the holiday the family stayed home the whole day. The old woman, whom husband, daughters-in-law, and grandchildren all alike called Grandma, tried to do everything herself; she herself lit the stove and set up the samovar, she herself even went out at midday to work, and afterward grumbled that they had worked her to death. And she worried constantly that someone might eat one bite too many, that the old man and the daughters-in-law might sit idle. Now it seemed to her that the tavern-keeper’s geese were coming round the back into her kitchen garden, and she would run out of the hut with a long stick and then shriek for half an hour by her cabbages, withered and scrawny as she was herself; now it seemed to her that a crow was creeping up on the chicks, and she would fly at the crow with curses. She was angry and grumbled from morning till evening and often raised such a cry that passers-by in the street would stop.

With her own old man she was not gentle, calling him now a lazybones, now a plague. He was a shiftless, unreliable peasant, and perhaps, if she had not constantly driven him, he would not have worked at all but would only have sat on the stove talking. He would tell his son at length about certain enemies of his, complaining of injuries he claimed to suffer every day from the neighbors, and it was tiresome to listen to him.

"Yes," he was telling him, holding his sides. "Yes... A week after the Exaltation I sold hay at thirty kopecks the pood, of my own free will... Yes... All well and good... Only then, you see, I’m driving the hay of my own free will in the morning, bothering no one; and at a bad moment, I look up – out of the tavern comes the village elder, Antip Sedelnikov. ’Where are you taking that, you such-and-such?’ – and he boxed me on the ear."

But Kiryak’s head ached miserably from his hangover, and he felt ashamed before his brother.

"See what vodka does. Ah, my God!" he muttered, shaking his aching head. "You must forgive me, brother and sister, for Christ’s sake, I’m not glad of it myself."

Because of the holiday they bought a herring at the tavern and cooked a soup from the herring’s head. At midday they all sat down to drink tea and drank it a long while, till they broke into a sweat, and seemed to swell up from the tea, and only after that did they begin to eat the soup, all from the one pot. And the herring itself Grandma had hidden away.

In the evening the potter on the bluff was firing pots. Below in the meadow girls led a round dance and sang. An accordion was playing. And on the far side of the river, too, a kiln was burning and girls were singing, and from a distance the singing seemed harmonious and tender. In the tavern and around it the peasants made a noise; they sang in drunken voices, each on his own, and swore so that Olga only shuddered and said:

"Ah, dear Lord!.."

It astonished her that the swearing went on without a break, and that the loudest and longest of all the swearing came from the old men, whose time to die was already near. And the children and the girls listened to this swearing and were not in the least abashed by it, and it was plain they had grown used to it from the cradle.

Midnight passed, the kilns had already died down here and on the far side, but down in the meadow and in the tavern they were still making merry. The old man and Kiryak, drunk, arm in arm, jostling each other with their shoulders, came up to the barn where Olga and Marya were lying.

"Leave off," the old man was urging, "leave off... She’s a quiet woman... It’s a sin..."

"Ma-a-rya!" Kiryak shouted.

"Leave off... It’s a sin... She’s a good enough woman."

The two of them stood a minute by the barn and went on.

"I lo-ove the flowers of the fie-eld!" the old man suddenly sang out in a high, piercing tenor. "I lo-ove to gather them in the meadows!"

Then he spat, swore foully, and went into the hut.

IV

Granny stationed Sasha by her kitchen garden and told her to keep watch that the geese didn’t get in. It was a hot August day. The innkeeper’s geese might have made their way to the garden from behind, but just now they were busy at their own affairs, picking up oats near the inn and talking peaceably among themselves, and only the gander raised his head high now and then, as if to see whether the old woman was coming with her stick; the other geese might have come up from below, but they were now grazing far off across the river, stretched along the meadow in a long white garland. Sasha stood a while, grew bored, and, seeing that the geese were not coming, wandered off to the edge of the ravine.

There she caught sight of Marya’s eldest daughter, Motka, who was standing motionless on a huge rock, gazing at the church. Marya had borne thirteen children, but only six were left to her, and all girls, not a single boy, and the eldest was eight. Motka, barefoot, in a long shift, stood in the full blaze of the sun, which beat straight down on the crown of her head, but she paid it no mind and seemed turned to stone. Sasha came and stood beside her and said, looking at the church:

“God lives in the church. People have lamps and candles burning, but God has little lamps, red ones, green ones, blue ones, like tiny eyes. At night God walks about the church, and with him the Most Holy Mother of God and Nikolai the Wonder-worker – tup, tup, tup... And the watchman is frightened, so frightened! Oh, oh, little dove,” she added, imitating her mother. “And when the end of the world comes, all the churches will fly up to heaven.”

“With the be-e-e-lls?” asked Motka in a deep voice, drawing out every syllable.

“With the bells. And when the end of the world comes, the good will go to paradise, and the wicked will burn in the fire forever and ever, never going out, little dove. God will say to my mama and to Marya too: you never wronged anyone, so go to the right, into paradise; and to Kiryak and to Granny he’ll say: you go to the left, into the fire. And whoever ate meat on a fast day, him too, into the fire.”

She looked up at the sky, opening her eyes wide, and said:

“Look at the sky, don’t blink – you can see the angels.” Motka too began to gaze at the sky, and a minute passed in silence.

“Do you see them?” asked Sasha.

“Can’t see them,” said Motka in her deep voice.

“But I see them. Little angels flying about the sky, and their little wings go flick, flick, just like mosquitoes.”

Motka thought a little, looking at the ground, and asked:

“Will Granny burn?”

“She will, little dove.”

From the rock down to the very bottom ran a smooth, gentle slope, covered with soft green grass that made one want to touch it with a hand, or lie down on it. Sasha lay down and rolled to the bottom. Motka, with a serious, stern face, puffing hard, lay down too and rolled after her, and in doing so her shift rode up to her shoulders.

“How funny that made me feel!” said Sasha in delight.

They both climbed back up to roll down once more, but just then a familiar shrill voice was heard. Oh, how dreadful it was! Granny, toothless, bony, bent double, her short gray hair blowing in the wind, was driving the geese away from the garden with a long stick, shouting:

“Trampled the whole cabbage patch, the damned things, may you all drop dead, thrice-cursed, plagues on you, there’s no destruction bad enough for you!”

She caught sight of the girls, dropped the stick, snatched up a switch, and, gripping Sasha by the neck with fingers dry and hard as pincers, set about thrashing her. Sasha wept from pain and fright, and meanwhile the gander, waddling from foot to foot with his neck stretched out, came up to the old woman and hissed something at her, and when he went back to his flock all the geese greeted him approvingly: go-go-go! Then Granny took to thrashing Motka, and Motka’s shift rode up again in the process. In despair, sobbing loudly, Sasha went toward the hut to complain; behind her walked Motka, who was crying too, but in her deep voice, not wiping away her tears, and her face was already as wet as if she had dipped it in water.

“Good heavens!” Olga cried in astonishment when the two of them came into the hut. “Queen of Heaven!”

Sasha began telling what had happened, and at that moment Granny came in with a piercing shriek and a stream of curses, Fyokla got angry too, and the hut grew noisy.

“Never mind, never mind!” Olga comforted her, pale and upset, stroking Sasha’s head. “She’s your grandmother, it’s a sin to be angry at her. Never mind, my pet.”

Nikolai, who was by now worn out by this constant shouting, by hunger, by the fumes and the stench, who had already come to hate and despise poverty, and who was ashamed before his wife and daughter on account of his father and mother, let his legs hang down from the stove and said in an irritated, tearful voice, turning to his mother:

“You have no right to beat her! You have absolutely no right to beat her!”

“Well, if it isn’t the one dying up there on the stove, the good-for- nothing!” Fyokla shouted at him spitefully. “The devil brought you here, you idlers!”

And Sasha, and Motka, and all the girls, however many there were, huddled together in a corner of the stove behind Nikolai’s back, and from there listened to all of it in silence, in fear, and one could hear their little hearts pounding. When there is a sick person in a family who has been ill a long time and hopelessly, there come such heavy moments when all those near him timidly, secretly, in the depths of their souls, wish for his death; and only the children are afraid of the death of one of their own, and at the thought of it always feel a kind of horror. And now the girls, holding their breath, with mournful looks on their faces, watched Nikolai and thought that he would soon die, and they wanted to cry and to say something tender and pitying to him.

He pressed close to Olga, as if seeking protection in her, and said to her softly, in a trembling voice:

“Olya, dear, I can’t stand it here any longer. I have no strength left. For God’s sake, for the sake of Christ in heaven, write to your sister Klavdia Abramovna, let her sell and pawn everything she has, let her send money, we’ll get away from here. Oh, Lord,” he went on with longing, “if only I could see Moscow with one eye! If only I could dream of it, dear mother!”

And when evening came and it grew dark in the hut, such a longing came over everyone that it was hard to get a word out. Cross old Granny soaked crusts of rye bread in a cup and sucked at them a long while, a whole hour. Marya, having milked the cow, brought in a pail of milk and set it on the bench; then Granny poured it from the pail into jugs, also unhurriedly, taking her time, evidently pleased that now, during the fast of the Dormition, no one would be eating milk and it would all remain untouched. And only a very little, just a trifle, she poured off into a saucer for Fyokla’s baby. When she and Marya carried the jugs off to the cellar, Motka suddenly stirred, slid down from the stove, and, going up to the bench where the wooden cup of crusts stood, splashed some milk into it from the saucer.

Granny, coming back into the hut, set to work again on her crusts, while Sasha and Motka, sitting on the stove, watched her, pleased to think that she had broken her fast and would now surely go to hell. They were consoled and lay down to sleep, and Sasha, drifting off, imagined the Last Judgment: a great stove burned, like a potter’s kiln, and an unclean spirit with horns like a cow’s, all black, was driving Granny into the fire with a long stick, just as she herself had driven the geese a little while before.

V

On the feast of the Dormition, toward eleven o’clock at night, the girls and young men who had been out walking below on the meadow suddenly raised a cry and a shriek and ran off toward the village; and those who were sitting up above, at the edge of the ravine, could not at first make out what it was about.

“Fire! Fire!” came a desperate cry from below. “We’re burning!”

Those sitting up above looked round, and a terrible, extraordinary sight met their eyes. On one of the outermost huts, on the thatched roof, stood a pillar of fire a fathom high, coiling and throwing off sparks in every direction, as if it were a fountain. And at once the whole roof burst into bright flame, and the crackle of fire could be heard.

The light of the moon grew dim, and the whole village was now caught in a red, trembling glow; black shadows moved over the ground, there was a smell of burning; and those running up from below were all out of breath, could not speak for shaking, jostled one another, fell, and, unused to the bright light, saw poorly and did not recognize one another. It was terrible. What was especially terrible was that over the fire, in the smoke, pigeons were flying, and at the inn, where they still knew nothing of the fire, people went on singing and playing the accordion as though nothing had happened.

“Uncle Semyon’s on fire!” someone shouted in a loud, coarse voice.

Marya rushed about near her own hut, weeping, wringing her hands, her teeth chattering, though the fire was far off, on the other side of the village; Nikolai came out in his felt boots, the children ran out in their little shirts. Near the constable’s hut they began beating an iron plate. Bem, bem, bem... the sound carried through the air, and this rapid, unresting ringing made the heart ache and grow cold. Old women stood with icons. Sheep, calves, and cows were driven out of the yards into the street, chests, sheepskins, tubs were carried out. A black stallion, which was never let loose with the herd because he kicked and injured the other horses, now set free, went stamping and neighing through the village once and again and suddenly stopped by a cart and began kicking it with his hind legs.

The bells began ringing on the other side too, at the church.

Near the burning hut it was hot, and so bright that every blade of grass on the ground could be seen distinctly. On one of the chests that had been dragged out sat Semyon, a red-haired peasant with a large nose, wearing a cap pulled down deep to his ears, and a jacket; his wife lay face down, senseless, moaning. Some old man of about eighty, short, with a large beard, looking like a gnome, a stranger, but evidently mixed up in the fire somehow, walked about nearby, bareheaded, a white bundle in his hands; the fire glinted on his bald patch. The elder, Antip Sedelnikov, swarthy and black-haired like a gypsy, came up to the hut with an axe and knocked out the windows one after another – no one knew why – and then began chopping at the porch.

“Women, water!” he shouted. “Bring up the engine! Look lively!”

The very peasants who only just now had been carousing at the inn were hauling the fire engine on their backs. All of them were drunk, stumbling and falling, and all had a helpless look and tears in their eyes.

“Girls, water!” shouted the elder, drunk himself. “Look lively, girls!”

Women and girls ran down to where the spring was and hauled full pails and tubs up the hill, and, having poured them into the engine, ran off again. Olga hauled water, and Marya, and Sasha, and Motka. Women and boys worked the pump, the hose hissed, and the elder, aiming it now at the door, now at the windows, held the stream back with his finger, which made it hiss all the sharper.

“Well done, Antip!” approving voices called out. “Do your best!”

And Antip climbed into the entryway, into the very fire, and shouted from there:

“Pump away! Do your bit, good Orthodox folk, seeing as there’s been such a misfortune!”

The peasants stood about in a crowd, doing nothing, watching the fire. No one knew what to take hold of, no one knew how to do anything, and all around were ricks of grain, hay, sheds, piles of dry brushwood. Kiryak was standing there too, and old Osip, his father, both a little tipsy. And, as if wishing to excuse his own idleness, the old man said, turning to a woman lying on the ground:

“What’s the use of beating yourself about it, kuma! The hut’s insured – what’s it to you!”

Semyon, turning now to one man, now to another, was telling how the fire had started:

“This very old fellow here, with the bundle – he’s General Zhukov’s man, used to be a cook for our general, God rest his soul. Comes by in the evening: ‘let me stay the night,’ he says... Well, we had a glass or two, naturally... My wife was busy at the samovar, meaning to give the old man some tea, and at a bad moment she set the samovar up in the entryway, and the flame from the chimney went straight up into the roof, into the thatch, and that was that. We very nearly burned up ourselves. And the old man’s cap burned too, such a shame.”

And they went on beating the iron plate without let-up, and the bells kept ringing across the river at the church. Olga, all lit up by the glow, gasping for breath, staring in horror at the red sheep and the pink pigeons flying in the smoke, kept running now down, now up. It seemed to her that the ringing had entered her soul like a sharp thorn, that the fire would never end, that Sasha was lost... And when the ceiling came down with a crash inside the hut, the thought that now the whole village would surely burn made her go weak, and she could no longer carry water, but sat down on the edge of the ravine with her pails beside her; nearby, lower down, women sat wailing as if over the dead.

But then from the other side, from the manor estate, came two wagons carrying stewards and farmhands, bringing a fire engine with them. A student rode up on horseback, in a white tunic worn unbuttoned, very young. Axes began to knock, a ladder was set against the burning frame, and five men at once climbed up it, foremost among them the student, his face red, shouting in a sharp, hoarse voice and in a tone as though putting out fires were an ordinary business for him. They were taking the hut apart log by log; they pulled apart the cattle shed, the wattle fence, and the nearest hayrick.

“Don’t let them tear it down!” stern voices called out in the crowd. “Don’t let them!”

Kiryak strode toward the hut with a determined air, as though meaning to stop the newcomers from wrecking it, but one of the workmen turned him round and struck him on the neck. There was laughter, the workman struck him again, Kiryak fell and crawled back on all fours into the crowd.

Two pretty young women in hats came over from the other side – probably the student’s sisters. They stood at a distance and watched the fire. The logs that had been pulled apart were no longer burning but smoking heavily; the student, working the hose, directed the stream now at the logs, now at the peasants, now at the women hauling water.

“Georges!” the young women called to him, reproachful and anxious. “Georges!”

The fire was over. And only when people began to disperse did they notice that it was already dawn, that everyone looked pale, a little swarthy – that is always how it seems in the early morning, when the last stars are going out in the sky. As they went their ways, the peasants laughed and joked about General Zhukov’s cook and the cap that had burned; they were already eager to turn the fire into a joke, and seemed almost sorry it had ended so quickly.

“You put it out well, sir,” Olga said to the student. “We could do with you in Moscow: there, I daresay, there’s a fire every day.”

“And are you really from Moscow?” asked one of the young ladies.

“Just so, miss. My husband was in service at the Slavyansky Bazar. And this is my daughter,” she said, pointing to Sasha, who was chilled and huddled close to her. “A Moscow girl too, miss.”

Both young ladies said something to the student in French, and he handed Sasha twenty kopecks. Old Osip saw this, and hope suddenly lit up on his face.

“Thank God, Your Honor, there was no wind,” he said, turning to the student, “or we’d have burned to the ground in no time. Your Honor, good gentlefolk,” he added, abashed, in a lower tone, “the dawn’s a cold one, one might warm oneself... for half a bottle, out of your kindness.”

Nothing was given him, and he, grunting, shuffled off home. Olga stood afterward at the edge of the ravine watching the two wagons ford the river, and the gentlefolk walking across the meadow; a carriage was waiting for them on the far side. And coming into the hut, she told her husband with delight:

“Oh, such fine people! Oh, so handsome! And the young ladies, just like little cherubs.”

“May the devil take them!” said Fyokla sleepily, with spite.

VI

Marya considered herself unhappy and said she very much wanted to die; Fyokla, on the other hand, was quite content with the whole of this life – the poverty, the filth, the never-ending scolding. She ate whatever was given her, without picking and choosing; slept wherever and however it happened; poured out the slops right by the porch, splashing them from the doorstep and then walking barefoot through the puddle. And from the very first day she had hated Olga and Nikolai precisely because they did not care for this life.

“I’ll see what the two of you will find to eat here, you Moscow gentlefolk!” she said with malicious glee. “I’ll see-ee!”

One morning – it was already the beginning of September – Fyokla brought up two pails of water from below, pink with the cold, hale and handsome; just then Marya and Olga were sitting at the table drinking tea.

“Tea and sugar!” Fyokla said mockingly. “Fine ladies,” she added, setting down the pails, “taken to drinking tea every blessed day. Mind you don’t burst from all that tea!” she went on, looking at Olga with hatred. “Fattened up a puffy face in Moscow, you great lump of meat!”

She swung the yoke and struck Olga across the shoulder, so that the two sisters-in-law only threw up their hands and said:

“Oh, good heavens.”

Then Fyokla went off to the river to wash the laundry, scolding the whole way so loudly that it could be heard inside the hut.

A day passed. A long autumn evening came on. In the hut they were winding silk; everyone wound it except Fyokla, who had gone off across the river. The silk was taken from the nearby mill, and the whole family together earned little from it – some twenty kopecks a week.

“It was better under the masters,” the old man said, winding silk. “You worked, and you ate, and you slept, everything in its proper turn. At dinner there was cabbage soup and kasha for you, at supper cabbage soup and kasha again. There was no end of cucumbers and cabbage: eat as much as your heart desired, freely. And there was more strictness too. Everyone kept himself in line.”

Only a single little lamp gave light, burning dimly and smoking. When someone blocked the lamp and a great shadow fell across the window, the bright moonlight could be seen outside. Old Osip told, unhurried, of how they had lived before the emancipation, how in these very parts, where life now went so drearily and poorly, they had hunted with hounds, with borzois, with men from Pskov, and how during the beaters’ drives the peasants were plied with vodka, how whole trains of carts had gone to Moscow loaded with slaughtered fowl for the young masters, how the wicked were punished with birch rods or exiled to the Tver estate, and the good rewarded. And Granny too told something of her own. She remembered everything, absolutely everything. She told about her mistress, a kind, God-fearing woman, whose husband had been a rake and a debauchee, and whose daughters had all married, God knows how: one married a drunkard, another a townsman, and a third was carried off in secret – Granny herself, who was then a young girl, had helped carry her off – and all of them had soon died of grief, just as their mother had. And remembering this, Granny even shed a tear.

Suddenly someone knocked at the door, and everyone gave a start.

“Uncle Osip, let me in for the night!”

In came a small bald old man, General Zhukov’s cook, the very one whose cap had burned. He sat down, listened a while, and then he too began to remember and tell various stories. Nikolai, sitting on the stove with his legs hanging down, listened and kept asking about the dishes that used to be prepared under the masters. They talked of rissoles, cutlets, various soups and sauces, and the cook, who also remembered everything well, named dishes that no longer existed; there had been, for instance, a dish made from bulls’ eyes, called “Waking in the Morning.”

“And did they make cutlets à la maréchale in those days?” asked Nikolai.

“No.”

Nikolai shook his head reproachfully and said:

“Ah, what a sorry lot of cooks you were!”

The girls, sitting and lying on the stove, gazed down without blinking; they seemed very numerous – like cherubs among the clouds. They loved the stories; they sighed, gave little starts, and turned pale now with delight, now with fear, and Granny, who told the most interesting stories of all, they listened to without breathing, afraid to stir.

They went to bed in silence; and the old people, stirred by the stories, troubled in spirit, thought of how good youth was, after which, whatever it may have been, only what was living, joyful, and touching remains in memory, and of how dreadful, how cold that death was, which was not far off now – better not to think of it at all! The little lamp went out. And the darkness, and the two little windows sharply lit by the moon, and the silence, and the creak of the cradle, seemed for some reason to speak only of this, that life had already gone by, that there was no calling it back, no matter what... One would doze, forget oneself, and suddenly someone would touch a shoulder, breathe on a cheek – and sleep would be gone, the body would feel as though it had been lain on too long, and thoughts of death would come crowding into the mind; one would turn onto the other side – and death would already be forgotten, but in the mind there would stir old, dull, wearisome thoughts of want, of fodder, of how flour had grown dearer, and then a little later it would come back again, the memory that life had already gone by, that there was no calling it back...

“Oh, Lord!” sighed the cook.

Someone knocked very, very softly at the little window. It must be Fyokla come back. Olga got up and, yawning, whispering a prayer, unlocked the door, then drew back the bolt in the entryway. But no one came in, only a chill breath of air blew in from the street, and it grew suddenly bright with moonlight. Through the open door the street could be seen, quiet and empty, and the moon itself, sailing across the sky.

“Who’s there?” Olga called out.

“It’s me,” came the answer. “It’s only me.”

By the door, pressed against the wall, stood Fyokla, completely naked. She was shivering with cold, her teeth chattering, and in the bright moonlight she looked very pale, beautiful, and strange. The shadows on her and the gleam of the moon on her skin caught the eye somehow sharply, and her dark brows and young, firm breasts stood out with particular distinctness.

“On the other side some hooligans stripped me and let me go like this...” she said. “I walked home with no clothes on... naked as my mother bore me. Bring me something to put on.”

“Come into the hut!” Olga said quietly, herself beginning to shiver too.

“If only the old folks don’t see.”

Indeed, the grandmother was already stirring and grumbling, and the old man was asking, “Who’s there?” Olga brought out her own shift and skirt, dressed Fyokla in them, and then the two of them, trying not to let the doors bang, went quietly into the hut.

“Is that you, smooth one?” the grandmother grumbled crossly, guessing who it was. “Ah, curse you, night-walker... there’s no death for the likes of you!”

“Never mind, never mind,” Olga whispered, wrapping Fyokla up, “never mind, dear.”

Once more all grew quiet. In the hut people always slept badly; each of them was kept awake by something that gave them no peace, that nagged at them: the old man by the ache in his back, the grandmother by her worries and her spite, Marya by fear, the children by the itch and by hunger. And now, too, their sleep was troubled: they turned from side to side, muttered in their sleep, got up to drink water.

Fyokla suddenly burst into loud, rough sobbing, but at once checked herself and only whimpered now and then, more and more softly and faintly, until she fell silent. From time to time, from over there, from beyond the river, came the striking of a clock; but the clock struck strangely: first five, then three.

“Oh, Lord!” the cook sighed.

Looking at the windows, it was hard to tell whether the moon was still shining or whether dawn had already come. Marya got up and went out, and one could hear her in the yard milking the cow and saying, “Stand still!” The grandmother went out too. It was still dark in the hut, but already all the objects in it were becoming visible.

Nikolai, who had not slept all night, climbed down from the stove. He took his tailcoat out of the green trunk, put it on, and, going up to the window, stroked the sleeves, held the coattails for a moment – and smiled. Then he carefully took the coat off, put it back in the trunk, and lay down again.

Marya came back and began lighting the stove. She had evidently not quite shaken off sleep yet and was waking up as she moved about. She had probably dreamed something, or the previous evening’s stories had come back to her, for she stretched sweetly in front of the stove and said:

“No, freedom is better!”

VII

The master had arrived – so the village called the district police inspector. It had been known a week beforehand when and why he would come. There were only forty households in Zhukovo, but the arrears, government and county, had built up to more than two thousand roubles.

The inspector put up at the tavern; there he “partook” of two glasses of tea and then set off on foot for the headman’s hut, near which a crowd of defaulters was already waiting. The headman, Antip Sedelnikov, in spite of his youth – he was only a little over thirty – was strict and always took the side of the authorities, although he himself was poor and paid his own taxes irregularly. It evidently amused him to be headman, and he liked the feeling of power, which he knew no other way to display than by severity. At the village assembly they feared him and obeyed him; it happened that in the street or near the tavern he would suddenly pounce on a drunken man, tie his hands behind his back, and put him in the lockup; once he even put the grandmother in the lockup for coming to the assembly in Osip’s place and starting to swear, and kept her there a whole day and night. He had never lived in a town and had never read a book in his life, but he had picked up various learned-sounding words from somewhere and loved to use them in conversation, and for this he was respected, though not always understood.

When Osip came into the headman’s hut with his tax book, the inspector, a lean old man with long grey side-whiskers, in a grey tunic, was sitting at the table in the front corner writing something down. The hut was clean, all the walls were bright with pictures cut out of magazines, and in the most prominent place, beside the icons, hung a portrait of Battenberg, the former Prince of Bulgaria. Beside the table, his arms crossed, stood Antip Sedelnikov.

“He owes a hundred and nineteen roubles, your honor,” he said, when it came Osip’s turn. “Before Easter he paid one rouble, and not a kopek since.”

The inspector raised his eyes to Osip and asked:

“Why is that, my good man?”

“Show your godly mercy, your honor,” Osip began, growing agitated, “allow me to say, last year the Lyutoretsky squire says, ‘Osip,’ he says, ‘sell the hay... You,’ he says, ‘sell it.’ Why not? I had about a hundred poods for sale, the women had mown it on the low meadow... Well, we struck a bargain... All fair and square, all willing...”

He went on complaining about the headman and kept turning to the other peasants, as though calling them to witness; his face had turned red and sweaty, and his eyes had grown sharp and angry.

“I don’t understand why you’re telling me all this,” said the inspector. “I’m asking you... I’m asking you why you don’t pay your arrears. None of you pay, and am I to answer for you?”

“I haven’t the strength for it!”

“These words carry no weight, your honor,” said the headman. “It’s true the Chikildeevs are of the poorer sort, but if you’ll be so good as to ask the others, the whole reason is drink, and a great deal of mischief besides. No understanding of anything.”

The inspector wrote something down and said to Osip calmly, in an even tone, as if he were asking for a glass of water:

“Get out.”

He drove off soon after; and as he climbed into his cheap tarantass, coughing, one could tell even from the look of his long, thin back that he no longer remembered Osip, or the headman, or the arrears of Zhukovo, but was thinking of something of his own. Yet he had scarcely gone a verst when Antip Sedelnikov was already carrying the samovar out of the Chikildeevs’ hut, with the grandmother following after him, shrieking, her voice straining:

“I won’t give it up! I won’t give it to you, you cursed devil!”

He walked fast, taking wide strides, while she chased after him, gasping for breath, nearly falling, hunched and ferocious; her kerchief had slipped down onto her shoulders, and her grey, greenish-tinged hair streamed in the wind. She suddenly stopped and, like a true rebel, began beating her breast with her fists and crying still louder, in a wailing, singsong voice, as though sobbing:

“Good Orthodox people, you who believe in God! Fathers, we’ve been wronged! Dear people, we’ve been crushed! Oh, oh, my dears, stand up for us!”

“Granny, granny,” the headman said sternly, “keep some sense in your head!”

Without the samovar the hut of the Chikildeevs became altogether dreary. There was something humiliating in this loss, something insulting, as though the hut had suddenly been robbed of its honor. It would have been better if the headman had taken the table and carried off all the benches and all the pots – it would not have seemed so empty. The grandmother shrieked, Marya wept, and the little girls, looking at her, wept too. The old man, feeling himself to blame, sat in the corner hanging his head and said nothing. Nikolai too said nothing. The grandmother loved and pitied him, but now she forgot her pity and suddenly fell upon him with abuse and reproaches, shaking her fists right in his face. She shouted that it was all his fault; and indeed, why had he sent so little money, when he himself had boasted in his letters that he earned fifty roubles a month at the Slavyansky Bazaar? Why had he come here at all, and with a family too? If he died, what money would there be to bury him with?... And it was pitiful to look at Nikolai, Olga, and Sasha.

The old man grunted, took his cap, and went to the headman’s. It was already growing dark. Antip Sedelnikov was soldering something by the stove, puffing out his cheeks; the air was thick with fumes. His children, thin and unwashed, no better off than the Chikildeev children, were scrambling about on the floor; his plain, freckled wife, big with child, was winding silk thread. It was an unhappy, wretched family, and only Antip himself looked strong and handsome. On the bench stood five samovars in a row. The old man crossed himself before the portrait of Battenberg and said:

“Antip, show your godly mercy, give back the samovar! For Christ’s sake!”

“Bring three roubles, then you’ll get it.”

“I haven’t the strength for it!”

Antip puffed out his cheeks; the fire hummed and hissed, reflected in the samovars. The old man crumpled his cap and said, after thinking it over:

“Give it back!”

The swarthy headman looked quite black now and resembled a sorcerer; he turned to Osip and said, sharply and quickly:

“Everything depends on the district superintendent. At the administrative session on the twenty-sixth you may state the grounds for your complaint, either by word of mouth or in writing.”

Osip understood nothing of this, but it satisfied him, and he went home.

About ten days later the inspector came again, stayed about an hour, and left. In those days the weather was windy and cold; the river had long since frozen over, but there was still no snow, and people were worn out by the lack of a road. Once, before evening on a holiday, the neighbors came to sit with Osip and talk things over. They talked in the dark, since it was a sin to work and no one lit a lamp. There was some news, and rather unpleasant news at that. In two or three households the hens had been seized for arrears and sent to the district office, and there they had died, since no one fed them; sheep had been seized, and while they were being carried off, tied together, transferred at every village to new carts, one of them had died. And now they were deciding the question: whose fault was it?

“The zemstvo!” said Osip. “Who else!”

“Of course, the zemstvo.”

They blamed the zemstvo for everything – for the arrears, for the oppression, for the poor harvests – though not one of them knew what the zemstvo really was. And this had begun ever since the wealthier peasants, who owned their own factories, shops, and inns, had served as zemstvo deputies, come away dissatisfied, and afterward, in their factories and taverns, taken to abusing the zemstvo.

They talked about how God would not send snow: firewood had to be hauled, yet there was no way to drive or even walk over the frozen ruts. Long ago, fifteen or twenty years back and even earlier, the talk in Zhukovo had been far more interesting. In those days every old man had worn the look of someone guarding a secret, of knowing something and waiting for something; they spoke of a deed with a golden seal, of land divisions, of new lands, of buried treasure, and hinted at things unspoken; but now the people of Zhukovo had no secrets left at all, their whole life lay open like the palm of a hand, in plain view of everyone, and all they could talk of was want and fodder, and how there was no snow...

They fell silent. And then they remembered the hens and the sheep again and began once more deciding whose fault it was.

“The zemstvo!” Osip said dejectedly. “Who else!”

VIII

The parish church was six versts away, in Kosogorovo, and people went there only when necessary, for a christening, a wedding, or a funeral; for ordinary prayer they went across the river. On holidays, in good weather, the girls dressed up and walked in a crowd to the liturgy, and it was pleasant to watch them crossing the meadow in their red, yellow, and green dresses; in bad weather everyone stayed at home. They observed the fast in their own parish. From those who failed to complete their Lenten fast in time, priest-na-strastnoy-nedele/">the priest, going round the huts with the cross at Easter, collected fifteen kopeks apiece.

The old man did not believe in God, because he almost never thought about Him; he admitted the supernatural, but thought it could concern only womenfolk, and when religion or miracles were spoken of in his presence and he was asked some question about it, he would say reluctantly, scratching himself:

“Well, who’s to know!”

The grandmother believed, but in some dim, uncertain way; everything was jumbled together in her memory, and no sooner did she begin to think of sins, of death, of the salvation of the soul, than want and worry seized hold of her thoughts, and she at once forgot what she had been thinking of. She did not remember any prayers, and usually in the evenings, before sleep, she would stand before the icons and whisper:

“Mother of God of Kazan, Mother of God of Smolensk, Mother of God of the Three Hands...”

Marya and Fyokla crossed themselves and fasted every year, but understood nothing of it. The children were not taught to pray, were told nothing about God, were given no rules to follow, and were only forbidden to eat meat or dairy during the fast. In the other households it was much the same: few believed, few understood. Yet at the same time everyone loved Holy Scripture, loved it tenderly, reverently, but there were no books, and no one to read and explain it, and for the fact that Olga sometimes read the Gospel aloud she was respected, and everyone addressed her and Sasha with the polite “you.”

Olga often went off to patronal feasts and prayer services in the neighboring villages and in the district town, where there were two monasteries and twenty-seven churches. She was absent-minded, and while she was away on her pilgrimages she forgot entirely about her family, and only when she came home again would she make the sudden, joyful discovery that she had a husband and a daughter, and then she would say, smiling and radiant:

“God has sent his mercy!”

What went on in the village seemed repugnant to her and tormented her. On St. Elijah’s day they drank, on the Dormition they drank, on the Exaltation of the Cross they drank. On the Feast of the Intercession there was the parish festival in Zhukovo, and for the occasion the peasants drank for three days; they drank away fifty roubles of communal money and then went on collecting for vodka from every household besides. On the first day the Chikildeevs slaughtered a ram and ate it morning, noon, and evening, eating enormous amounts, and then in the night the children got up again to eat some more. Kiryak was hopelessly drunk all three days, drank away everything he had, even his cap and his boots, and beat Marya so badly that they had to douse her with water to bring her round. And afterward everyone felt ashamed and sick at heart.

Yet even in Zhukovo, in that Kholuyevka, a true religious celebration once took place. It was in August, when the Life-Giving Cross icon was carried through the whole district, from village to village. On the day it was expected in Zhukovo the weather was still and overcast. The girls had set out that morning to meet the icon in their bright, festive dresses, and brought it in toward evening, in a procession with singing, while across the river the bells rang out. A great crowd, of their own people and of strangers, filled the street; there was noise, dust, a crush of bodies... And the old man, and the grandmother, and Kiryak – all of them stretched out their hands toward the icon, gazing at it hungrily, and said, weeping:

“Our defender, little mother! Defender!”

Everyone seemed suddenly to understand that between earth and heaven there was not emptiness, that the rich and powerful had not yet seized everything, that there was still a protector against wrongs, against servile bondage, against grinding, unbearable want, against terrible drink.

“Our defender, little mother!” Marya sobbed. “Little mother!”

But the service was over, the icon was carried away, and everything went back to the way it had been, and once more coarse, drunken voices could be heard coming from the tavern.

Only the rich peasants were afraid of death, the ones who, the richer they grew, the less they believed in God and the salvation of the soul, and only out of fear before their earthly end, just in case, did they light candles and have services said. The poorer peasants were not afraid of death. The old man and the grandmother were told to their faces that they had lived long enough, that it was time for them to die, and they took no offense. People did not scruple to say, in Nikolai’s presence, to Fyokla, that when Nikolai died her husband Denis would get his release and be sent home from service. And Marya not only was not afraid of death, but even regretted that it was so long in coming, and was glad whenever one of her children died.

They were not afraid of death, but they treated every illness with exaggerated dread. The slightest thing was enough – an upset stomach, a touch of a chill – and the grandmother would already be lying on the stove, wrapping herself up, and beginning to groan loudly and without stopping: “I’m dy-y-ying!” The old man would hurry off for the priest, and the grandmother would be given communion and the last rites. Very often they talked of colds, of worms, of the lumps that travel about the belly and creep up toward the heart. What they feared most of all was catching cold, and so even in summer they dressed warmly and kept themselves warm on the stove. The grandmother loved being treated and often went to the hospital, where she said she was not seventy but fifty-eight; she supposed that if the doctor learned her true age he would refuse to treat her and would say it was time for her to die, not to be cured. She would usually set off for the hospital early in the morning, taking two or three of the girls with her, and come back in the evening, hungry and cross, with drops for herself and ointments for the girls. Once she took Nikolai too, and afterward for a couple of weeks he took the drops and said he felt better.

The grandmother knew every doctor, feldsher, and healer for thirty versts around, and not one of them pleased her. On the Feast of the Intercession, when the priest was going round the huts with the cross, the deacon’s assistant told her that near the jail in town there lived a little old man, a former army feldsher, who was a very good healer, and advised her to go to him. The grandmother listened. When the first snow fell, she drove into town and brought back the little old man, a bearded, long-coated convert from Judaism, whose whole face was covered with little blue veins. It happened that at that very time day laborers were working in the hut: an old tailor in dreadful spectacles was cutting a waistcoat out of some rags, and two young fellows were felting boots out of wool; Kiryak, who had been dismissed for drunkenness and was now living at home, sat beside the tailor mending a horse collar. And the hut was crowded, close, and foul with fumes. The convert examined Nikolai and said that cupping was necessary.

He set the cups, and the old tailor, and Kiryak, and the little girls stood and watched, and it seemed to them that they could see the illness leaving Nikolai’s body. And Nikolai too watched as the cups, clinging to his chest, gradually filled with dark blood, and felt that something really did seem to be leaving him, and smiled with pleasure.

“That’s good,” said the tailor. “God grant it does some good.”

The convert set twelve cups and then twelve more, drank some tea, and drove off. Nikolai began to shiver; his face grew drawn and, as the women said, shrank to the size of a fist; his fingers turned blue. He wrapped himself in the blanket and then in the sheepskin coat besides, but it only grew colder and colder. Toward evening he grew anguished; he asked to be laid on the floor, asked the tailor not to smoke, then grew still under the sheepskin coat, and by morning he was dead.

IX

Oh, what a harsh, what a long winter it was!

Ever since Christmas there had been no bread of their own, and they bought flour. Kiryak, who now lived at home, made a racket in the evenings, striking terror into everyone, and in the mornings suffered from headache and shame, and it was pitiful to look at him. In the cowshed, day and night, came the lowing of the hungry cow, tearing at the hearts of the grandmother and Marya. And, as if on purpose, the frosts stayed bitter the whole time, and deep drifts of snow piled up; and winter dragged on: on the Annunciation a real winter blizzard was blowing, and on Easter it snowed.

But, however it might be, winter came to an end. In early April there were warm days and frosty nights; winter would not give way, but at last one warm day overcame it – and streams began to flow, birds began to sing. The whole meadow and the bushes along the river were drowned in the spring floodwaters, and between Zhukovo and the far side the whole space was now covered by an enormous expanse of water, over which wild ducks rose up in flocks here and there. Each evening the spring sunset, fiery, with magnificent clouds, offered something extraordinary, something new, something incredible – exactly the kind of thing one afterward disbelieves when one sees those same colors and those same clouds in a painting.

The cranes flew swiftly, swiftly overhead, crying mournfully, as though calling someone to come with them. Standing at the edge of the bluff, Olga gazed for a long time at the flood, at the sun, at the church, bright and looking somehow young again, and tears ran down her face and her breath caught, so passionately did she long to go away somewhere, wherever her eyes might lead her, even to the ends of the earth. And it had already been decided that she would go back to Moscow again, into service as a housemaid, and that Kiryak would go with her to look for work as a porter or something of the sort. Ah, if only they could leave sooner!

When the ground had dried out and grown warm, they made ready to set off. Olga and Sasha, each with a bundle on her back, both in bast shoes, set out at first light; Marya came out too, to see them off. Kiryak was unwell and had to stay behind another week. Olga said her last prayer facing the church, thinking of her husband, and did not weep, only her face puckered and grew plain, like an old woman’s. Over the winter she had grown thin, plain, a little grey, and instead of her former prettiness and pleasant smile her face now wore a submissive, sorrowful expression of grief endured, and there was something dull and fixed in her gaze now, as though she could not hear. It grieved her to part with the village and with the peasants. She remembered how they had carried Nikolai out and how a memorial service had been ordered at every hut along the way, and how everyone had wept, sharing in her grief. Over the course of the summer and the winter there had been hours and days when it seemed that these people lived worse than cattle, that it was frightening to live among them; they were coarse, dishonest, filthy, given to drink, they lived at odds with one another, forever quarreling, because they did not respect, and feared, and suspected one another. Who keeps the tavern and gets the people drunk? A peasant. Who squanders and drinks away the communal, school, and church money? A peasant. Who steals from his neighbor, sets fires, bears false witness in court for the price of a bottle of vodka? Who is first to speak out against the peasants at the zemstvo and other assemblies? A peasant. Yes, it was frightening to live among them, but still they were human beings, they suffered and wept as human beings do, and there was nothing in their lives for which some excuse could not be found. Grinding labor, after which the whole body ached at night, harsh winters, meager harvests, overcrowding, and no help, and nowhere to look for it. Those who were richer and more powerful than they could not help them, since they themselves were coarse, dishonest, given to drink, and cursed just as disgustingly; the pettiest clerk or steward treated the peasants like vagabonds, and even spoke to village elders and church wardens with the familiar “you,” thinking he had every right to do so. And indeed, what help or good example could come from people who were grasping, greedy, depraved, and lazy, who came out to the village only to insult, to rob, to frighten? Olga remembered the pitiful, humbled look on the old people’s faces when, in winter, Kiryak had been led out to be flogged with birch rods... And now she was sorry for all these people, it pained her, and as she walked she kept looking back at the huts.

Having walked with them some three versts, Marya said her farewell, then sank to her knees and set up a wail, pressing her face to the ground:

“Now I’m left all alone again, my poor, poor unlucky head, my poor unhappy one...”

And for a long time she wailed like this, and for a long time still Olga and Sasha could see her kneeling there, bowing again and again to someone off to the side, her hands clasped about her head, while rooks flew over her.

The sun rose high, and it grew hot. Zhukovo was left far behind. It was a pleasure to walk, and Olga and Sasha soon forgot about the village and about Marya; they were cheerful, and everything amused them. Now a burial mound, now a row of telegraph poles marching one after another toward some unknown destination, vanishing on the horizon, their wires humming mysteriously; now, far off, a little farmstead could be seen, all green, giving off a smell of dampness and hemp, and for some reason it seemed that happy people must live there; now the skeleton of a horse, gleaming white and solitary in a field. And the larks trilled without ceasing, the quails called to one another, and the corncrake cried as though someone were really tugging at an old iron latch.

At noon Olga and Sasha came into a large village. There, in the broad street, they met General Zhukov’s old cook. He was hot, and his sweaty, red bald head shone in the sun. He and Olga did not recognize each other at first, then both glanced back at the same moment, recognized each other, and, without a word, went on, each their own way. Stopping in front of a hut that looked somewhat better off and newer, before its open windows, Olga bowed and said loudly, in a thin, singsong voice:

“Good Orthodox Christians, give alms for Christ’s sake, and may your mercy bring your parents the kingdom of heaven and eternal rest.”

“Good Orthodox Christians,” Sasha took up the song, “give for Christ’s sake, and may your mercy bring...the kingdom of heaven...”