Stories

  But on his way back from the cemetery, he was overcome by intense anguish. Something was wrong with him: his breath was hot and heavy, his legs were weak, he felt thirsty. And then all sorts of thoughts began coming into his head. He recalled again that in his whole life he had never once pitied Marfa or been gentle with her. The fifty-two years that they had lived in the same cottage had dragged on and on, yet it turned out somehow that in all that time he had never thought of her, never paid attention to her, as if she were a cat or a dog. And yet every day she had stoked the stove, cooked and baked, fetched water, chopped wood, slept in the same bed with him, and when he came home drunk from weddings, she reverently hung his fiddle on the wall each time and put him to bed, and all that in silence, with a timid, solicitous look.

  Rothschild came towards Yakov, smiling and bowing.

  “And I’ve been looking for you, uncle!” he said. “Moisei Ilyich greets you and tells you to come to him right away.”

  Yakov could not be bothered with that. He wanted to weep.

  “Let me be!” he said and walked on.

  “But how is this possible?” Rothschild became all alarmed and ran ahead of him. “Moisei Ilyich will be upset! He said right away.”

  Yakov found it disgusting that the Jew was out of breath, kept blinking, and had so many red freckles. And it was repulsive to look at his green frock coat with its dark patches and at his whole fragile, delicate figure.

  “What are you bothering me for, you piece of garlic?” Yakov shouted. “Leave me alone!”

  The Jew got angry and also shouted:

  “But you please calm down, or I’m sending you flying over the fence!”

  “Out of my sight!” Yakov bellowed and rushed at him with his fists. “These mangy Yids won’t let a man live!”

  Rothschild went dead with fear, cowered, and waved his arms over his head as if protecting himself from blows, then jumped up and ran away as fast as he could. He hopped as he ran, clasped his hands, and you could see his long, skinny back twitch. The street urchins, glad of the chance, ran after him, shouting: “Yid! Yid!” The dogs also chased him, barking. Somebody guffawed, then whistled, the dogs barked louder and more in unison … Then one of the dogs must have bitten Rothschild, because there was a desperate cry of pain.

  Yakov walked about the common, then, skirting the town, went wherever his feet took him, and the urchins shouted: “There goes Bronzy! There goes Bronzy!” And here was the river. Snipe flitted about and peeped, ducks quacked. The sun was very hot, and the water was so dazzling it was painful to look at. Yakov strolled down the path along the bank, saw a fat, red-cheeked lady come out of a bathing house, and thought: “Some otter you are!” Not far from the bathing house boys were catching crayfish with meat for bait; seeing him, they started shouting maliciously: “Bronzy! Bronzy!” And here was an old spreading pussywillow with an enormous hole and crows’ nests in its branches … And suddenly in Yakov’s memory there appeared, as if alive, the blond-headed little baby and the pussywillow Marfa had spoken of. Yes, it was the same pussywillow, green, quiet, sad … How aged it was, poor thing!

  He sat down under it and began to recall. On the far bank, where there was now a water meadow, a big birch grove had once stood, and back then that bare hill visible on the horizon had been covered by the blue mass of an age-old pine forest. Wooden barges had navigated the river. And now everything was level and smooth, and only one birch tree stood on the far shore, young and shapely as a squire’s daughter, and there were only ducks and geese on the river, and it did not look as if there had ever been barges here. It even seemed as if the geese had grown fewer compared with former times. Yakov closed his eyes, and huge flocks of white geese rushed towards each other in his imagination.

  He was puzzled how it had turned out that in the last forty or fifty years of his life he had never gone to the river, or, if he had, that he had paid no attention to it. It was a big river, not some trifling thing; fishing could be organized on it, and the fish could be sold to merchants, officials, and the barman at the train station, and the money could be put in the bank; you could go by boat from farmstead to farmstead and play the fiddle, and people of all ranks would pay you for it; you could try towing barges again—it was better than making coffins; finally, you could raise geese, kill them, and send them to Moscow in the winter; most likely you would get as much as ten roubles a year for the down alone. But he had missed it, he had done none of it. What losses! Ah, what losses! And if he had done all of it together—caught the fish, and played the fiddle, and towed the barges, and slaughtered the geese—what capital it would have produced! But none of it had happened even in dreams, his life had gone by without benefit, without any enjoyment, had gone for nought, for a pinch of snuff; there was nothing left ahead, and looking back there was nothing but losses, and such terrible losses it made you shudder. And why could man not live so that there would not be all this waste and loss? Why, you might ask, had the birch grove and the pine forest been cut down? Why was the common left unused? Why did people always do exactly what they should not do? Why had Yakov spent his whole life abusing people, growling at them, threatening them with his fists, and offending his wife, and, you might ask, what need had there been to frighten and insult the Jew earlier that day? Generally, why did people interfere with each other’s lives? It made for such losses! Such terrible losses! If there were no hatred and malice, people would be of enormous benefit to each other.

  That evening and night he imagined the baby, the pussywillow, the fish, the slaughtered geese, and Marfa, looking in profile like a thirsty bird, and Rothschild’s pale, pitiful face, and some sort of mugs getting at him from all sides and muttering about losses. He tossed and turned and got out of bed five times to play his fiddle.

  In the morning he forced himself to get up and go to the clinic. The same Maxim Nikolaich told him to put cold compresses on his head, gave him some powders, and, by his tone and the look on his face, Yakov understood that things were bad and no powder would help. Going home afterwards, he reflected that death would only be a benefit: no need to eat or drink, or pay taxes, or offend people, and since a man lies in the grave not one year but hundreds and thousands of years, if you added it up, the benefit was enormous. Life was to a man’s loss, but death was to his benefit. This reflection was, of course, correct, but all the same it was bitter and offensive: why was the world ordered so strangely that life, which is given man only once, goes by without any benefit?

  He was not sorry to die, but when he saw his fiddle at home, his heart was wrung and he did feel sorry. He could not take the fiddle with him to the grave, and it would now be orphaned, and the same thing would happen to it as to the birch grove and the pine forest. Everything in this world perished and would go on perishing! Yakov went out of the cottage and sat on the step, clutching the fiddle to his breast. Thinking about this perishing life of loss, he began to play, himself not knowing what, but it came out plaintive and moving, and tears flowed down his cheeks. And the harder he thought, the sadder the fiddle sang.

  The latch creaked once or twice, and Rothschild appeared in the gateway. He bravely crossed half the yard, but seeing Yakov he suddenly stopped, became all shrunken, and, probably out of fear, began to make signs with his hands as if he wanted to show what time it was with his fingers.

  “Come on, it’s all right,” Yakov said gently and beckoned to him. “Come on!”

  Looking mistrustful and afraid, Rothschild began to approach and stopped six feet away from him.

  “But you kindly don’t beat me!” he said, cowering. “Moisei Ilyich is sending me again. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he says, ‘go to Yakov again and tell him I say it’s impossible to do without him. There’s a wedding Wednesday …’ Ye-e-es! Mister Shapovalov is marrying his daughter to a good mensch. And, oi, what a rich wedding it’s going to be!” the Jew added and squinted one eye.

  “Can’t do it …” said Yakov, breathing heavily. “I’ve taken sick, brother.” r />
  And he started playing again, and tears poured from his eyes on to the fiddle. Rothschild listened attentively, standing sideways to him, his arms crossed on his chest. The frightened, puzzled look on his face gradually changed to a mournful and suffering one, he rolled up his eyes as if experiencing some painful ecstasy and said: “Weh-h-h! …” And tears flowed slowly down his cheeks and dripped onto the green frock coat.

  And afterwards Yakov lay all day and grieved. When the priest, confessing him that evening, asked if he had any particular sins on his mind, he strained his fading memory, again recalled Marfa’s unhappy face and the desperate cry of the Jew bitten by a dog, and said barely audibly:

  “Give the fiddle to Rothschild.”

  “Very well,” said the priest.

  And now everybody in town asks: where did Rothschild get such a good fiddle? Did he buy it, or steal it, or maybe take it in pawn? He has long abandoned his flute and now only plays the fiddle. The same plaintive sounds pour from under his bow as in former times from his flute, but when he tries to repeat what Yakov had played as he sat on the step, what comes out is so dreary and mournful that his listeners weep, and he himself finally rolls up his eyes and says: “Weh-h-h! …” And this new song is liked so much in town that merchants and officials constantly send for Rothschild and make him play it dozens of times.

  FEBRUARY 1894

  THE STUDENT

  At first the weather was fine, still. Blackbirds called, and in the nearby swamp something alive hooted plaintively, as if blowing into an empty bottle. A woodcock chirred by, and a shot rang out boomingly and merrily in the spring air. But when the forest grew dark, an unwelcome east wind blew up, cold and piercing, and everything fell silent. Needles of ice reached over the puddles, and the forest became inhospitable, forsaken, desolate. It felt like winter.

  Ivan Velikopolsky, a seminary student, son of a verger, was coming home from fowling along a path that went all the way across a water meadow. His fingers were numb, and his face was burned by the wind. It seemed to him that this sudden onset of cold violated the order and harmony of everything, that nature herself felt dismayed, and therefore the evening darkness fell more quickly than it should. It was deserted around him and somehow especially gloomy. Only by the widows’ gardens near the river was there a light burning; but far around and where the village lay, some two miles off, everything was completely drowned in the cold evening darkness. The student remembered that, when he left the house, his mother was sitting on the floor in the front hall, barefoot, polishing the samovar, and his father was lying on the stove and coughing; because it was Good Friday there was no cooking in the house,1 and he was painfully hungry. And now, hunching up from the cold, the student thought how exactly the same wind had blown in the time of Rurik, and of Ioann the Terrible, and of Peter,2 and in their time there had been the same savage poverty and hunger; the same leaky thatched roofs, ignorance and anguish, the same surrounding emptiness and darkness, the sense of oppression—all these horrors had been, and were, and would be, and when another thousand years had passed, life would be no better. And he did not want to go home.

  The gardens were called the widows’ because they were kept by two widows, a mother and daughter. The fire burned hotly, with a crackle, throwing light far around over the ploughed soil. The widow Vasilisa, a tall, plump old woman in a man’s coat, stood by and gazed pensively at the fire; her daughter Lukerya, small, pockmarked, with a slightly stupid face, was sitting on the ground washing the pot and spoons. Evidently they had only just finished supper. Male voices were heard; it was local laborers watering their horses at the river.

  “Well, here’s winter back again,” said the student, approaching the fire. “Good evening!”

  Vasilisa gave a start, but recognized him at once and smiled affably.

  “I didn’t recognize you. God bless you,” she said, “you’ll be a rich man.”3

  They talked. Vasilisa had been around, had once served gentlefolk as a wet nurse, then as a nanny, and her speech was delicate, and the gentle, dignified smile never left her face; her daughter Lukerya, a village woman, beaten down by her husband, only squinted at the student and kept silent, and her expression was strange, like that of a deaf-mute.

  “In the same way the apostle Peter warmed himself by a fire on a cold night,” said the student, holding his hands out to the flames. “So it was cold then, too. Ah, what a dreadful night that was, granny! An exceedingly long, dreary night!”

  He looked around at the darkness, shook his head convulsively, and asked:

  “I expect you’ve been to the Twelve Gospels?”4

  “I have,” replied Vasilisa.

  “At the time of the Last Supper, you remember, Peter said to Jesus: ‘I am ready to go with you, both into prison and to death.’ And the Lord said to him: ‘I tell you, Peter, the cock will not crow this day, before you deny three times that you know me.’ After the supper, Jesus was praying in the garden, sorrowful unto death, and poor Peter was worn out in his soul, he grew weak, his eyes were heavy, and he could not fight off his sleepiness. He slept. Then that same night, as you heard, Judas kissed Jesus and betrayed him to the executioners. He was bound and led to the high priest, and was beaten, and Peter, exhausted, suffering in sorrow and anguish, you see, not having had enough sleep, sensing that something terrible was about to happen on earth, followed after him … He loved Jesus passionately, to distraction, and now from afar he saw how they beat him …”

  Lukerya abandoned the spoons and turned her fixed gaze on the student.

  “They came to the high priest,” he went on, “Jesus was questioned, and the servants meanwhile made a fire in the courtyard, because it was cold, and they warmed themselves. Peter stood by the fire with them and also warmed himself, as I’m doing now. A woman saw him and said: ‘This man was also with Jesus,’ meaning that he, too, should be taken and questioned. And all the servants who were by the fire must have looked at him suspiciously and sternly, because he became confused and said: ‘I do not know the man.’ A little later someone again recognized him as one of Jesus’ disciples and said: ‘You are one of them.’ But he denied it again. And a third time someone turned to him: ‘Did I not see you today in the garden with him?’ A third time he denied it. And right after that the cock crowed, and Peter, looking at Jesus from afar, remembered the word he had said to him at the supper … Remembered, recovered, went out of the courtyard, and wept bitterly. The Gospel says: And he went out, and wept bitterly’ I picture it: a very, very silent and dark garden, and, barely heard in the silence, a muffled sobbing …”

  The student sighed and fell to thinking. Still smiling, Vasilisa suddenly choked, and big, abundant tears rolled down her cheeks. She shielded her face from the fire with her sleeve, as if ashamed of her tears, and Lukerya, gazing fixedly at the student, flushed, and her expression became heavy, strained, as in someone who is trying to suppress intense pain.

  The laborers were coming back from the river, and one of them, on horseback, was already close, and the light of the fire wavered on him. The student wished the widows good night and went on. And again it was dark, and his hands were cold. A cruel wind was blowing, and winter was indeed coming back, and it did not seem that in two days it would be Easter.

  Now the student was thinking about Vasilisa: if she wept, it meant that everything that had happened with Peter on that dreadful night had some relation to her …

  He looked back. The solitary fire flickered peacefully in the darkness, and the people around it could no longer be seen. The student thought again that if Vasilisa wept and her daughter was troubled, then obviously what he had just told them, something that had taken place nineteen centuries ago, had a relation to the present—to both women, and probably to this desolate village, to himself, to all people. If the old woman wept, it was not because he was able to tell it movingly, but because Peter was close to her and she was interested with her whole being in what had happened in Peter’s soul.

/>   And joy suddenly stirred in his soul, and he even stopped for a moment to catch his breath. The past, he thought, is connected with the present in an unbroken chain of events flowing one out of the other. And it seemed to him that he had just seen both ends of that chain: he touched one end, and the other moved.

  And when he crossed the river on the ferry, and then, going up the hill, looked at his native village and to the west, where a narrow strip of cold, crimson sunset shone, he kept thinking how the truth and beauty that had guided human life there in the garden and in the high priest’s courtyard, went on unbroken to this day and evidently had always been the main thing in human life and generally on earth; and a feeling of youth, health, strength—he was only twenty-two—and an inexpressibly sweet anticipation of happiness, an unknown, mysterious happiness, gradually came over him, and life seemed to him delightful, wondrous, and filled with lofty meaning.

  APRIL 1894

  ANNA ON THE NECK

  I

  After the wedding there was not even a light snack; the newly-weds drank a glass, changed their clothes, and went to the station. Instead of a gay wedding ball and dinner, instead of music and dancing—a two-hundred-mile pilgrimage.1 Many approved of it, saying that Modest Alexeich was of high rank and no longer young, and a noisy wedding might perhaps not seem quite proper; and then, too, it was boring to listen to music, when a fifty-two-year-old official married a girl barely over eighteen. It was also said that Modest Alexeich, as a man of principle, undertook this trip to the monastery, essentially, to let his young wife know that in marriage, too, he gave first place to religion and morality.