The Lady With the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896-1904

  ‘Is that you, my beauty?’ Grannie growled angrily when she realized who it was. ‘You little nightbird, want a nice flogging, do you?’

  ‘It’s all right, it’s all right, dear,’ Olga whispered as she wrapped Fyokla up.

  Everything became quiet again. They always slept badly in the hut, every one of them would be kept awake by obsessive, nagging thoughts – the old man by his backache, Grannie by her worrying and evil mind, Marya by her fear and the children by itching and hunger.

  And now their sleep was as disturbed as ever and they kept tossing and turning, and saying wild things; time after time they got up for a drink of water.

  Suddenly Fyokla started bawling in her loud, coarse voice, but immediately tried to pull herself together and broke into an intermittent sobbing which gradually became fainter and fainter until it died away completely. Now and again the church on the other side of the river could be heard striking the hour, but in the most peculiar way: first it struck five and then three.

  ‘Oh, my God!’ sighed the cook.

  It was hard to tell, just by looking at the windows, whether the moon was still shining or if dawn had already come. Marya got up and went outside. They could hear her milking the cow in the yard and telling it, ‘Ooh, keep still!’ Grannie went out as well. Although it was still dark in the hut, by now every object was visible.

  Nikolay, who had not slept the whole night, climbed down from the stove. He took his tailcoat out of a green trunk, put it on, smoothed the sleeves as he went over to the window, held the tails for a moment and smiled. Then he carefully took it off, put it back in the trunk and lay down again.

  Marya returned and started lighting the stove. Quite clearly she was not really awake yet and she was still coming to as she moved around. Most probably she had had a dream or suddenly remembered the stories of the evening before, since she said, ‘No, freedom15 is best,’ as she sensuously stretched herself in front of the stove.

  VII

  The ‘gentleman’ arrived – this was how the local police inspector was called in the village. Everyone knew a week beforehand exactly when and why he was coming. In Zhukovo there were only forty households, but they were so much in arrears with their taxes and rates that over two thousand roubles were overdue.

  The inspector stopped at the inn. There he ‘imbibed’ two glasses of tea and then set off on foot for the village elder’s hut, where a crowd of defaulters was waiting for him. Antip Sedelnikov, the village elder, despite his lack of years (he had only just turned thirty) was a very strict man and always sided with the authorities, although he was poor himself and was always behind with his payments. Being the village elder obviously amused him and he enjoyed the feeling of power and the only way he knew to exercise this was by enforcing strict discipline. At village meetings everyone was scared of him and did what he said. If he came across a drunk in the street or near the inn he would swoop down on him, tie his arms behind his back and put him in the village lock-up. Once he had even put Grannie there for swearing when she was deputizing for Osip at a meeting and he kept her locked up for twenty-four hours. Although he had never lived in a town or read any books, somehow he had managed to accumulate a store of various clever-sounding words and he loved using them in conversation, which made him respected, if not always understood.

  When Osip entered the elder’s hut with his rent book, the inspector – a lean old man with long grey whiskers, in a grey double-breasted jacket – was sitting at a table in the corner near the stove, writing something down. The hut was clean and all the walls were gay and colourful with pictures cut out of magazines. In the most conspicuous place, near the icons, hung a portrait of Battenberg,16 once Prince of Bulgaria. Antip Sedelnikov stood by the table with his arms crossed.

  ‘This one ’ere owes a hundred and nineteen roubles, your honour,’ he said when it was Osip’s turn. ‘’E paid a rouble before Easter, but not one copeck since.’

  The inspector looked up at Osip and asked, ‘How come, my dear friend?’

  ‘Don’t be too hard on me, your honour,’ Osip said, getting very worked up, ‘just please let me explain, sir. Last summer the squire from Lyutoretsk says to me, “Sell me your hay, Osip, sell it to me…” Why not? I had about a ton and a half of it, what the women mowed in the meadows… well, we agreed the price… It was all very nice and proper.’

  He complained about the elder and kept turning towards the other peasants as though summoning them as witnesses. His face became red and sweaty and his eyes sharp and evil-looking.

  ‘I don’t see why you’re telling me all this,’ the inspector said. ‘I’m asking you why you’re so behind with your rates. It’s you I’m asking. None of you pays up, so do you think I’m going to be responsible!’

  ‘But I just can’t!’

  ‘These words have no consequences, your honour,’ the elder said. ‘In actual fact those Chikildeyevs belong to the impecunious class. But if it please your honour to ask the others, the whole reason for it is vodka. And they’re real troublemakers. They’ve no comprehension.’

  The inspector jotted something down and told Osip in a calm, even voice, as though asking for some water, ‘Clear off!’

  Shortly afterwards he drove away and he was coughing as he climbed into his carriage. From the way he stretched his long, thin back one could tell that Osip, the elder and the arrears at Zhukovo were no more than dim memories, and that he was now thinking about something that concerned him alone. Even before he was half a mile away, Antip Sedelnikov was carrying the samovar out of the Chikildeyevs’ hut, pursued by Grannie, who was shrieking for all she was worth, ‘I won’t let you have it, I won’t, blast you!’

  Antip strode along quickly, while Grannie puffed and panted after him, nearly falling over and looking quite ferocious with her hunched back. Her shawl had slipped down over her shoulders and her grey hair, tinged with green, streamed in the wind. Suddenly she stopped and began beating her breast like a real rebel and shouted in an even louder singsong voice, just as though she were sobbing, ‘Good Christians, you who believe in God! Heavens, we’ve been trampled on! Dear ones, we’ve been persecuted. Oh, please help us!’

  ‘Come on, Grannie,’ the elder said sternly, ‘time you got some sense into that head of yours!’

  Life became completely and utterly depressing without a samovar in the Chikildeyevs’ hut. There was something humiliating, degrading in this deprivation, as though the hut itself were in disgrace. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the elder had only taken the table, all the benches and pots instead – then the place wouldn’t have looked so bare as it did now. Grannie yelled, Marya wept and the little girls looked at her and wept too. The old man felt guilty and sat in one corner, his head downcast and not saying a word. Nikolay did not say a word either: Grannie was very fond of him and felt sorry for him, but now all compassion was forgotten as she suddenly attacked him with a stream of reproaches and insults, shaking her fists right under his nose. He was to blame for everything, she screamed. And in actual fact, why had he sent them so little, when in his letters he had boasted that he was earning fifty roubles a month at the Slav Fair? And why did he have to come with his family? How would they pay for the funeral if he died here… ? Nikolay, Olga and Sasha made a pathetic sight.

  The old man wheezed, picked his cap up and went off to see the elder. Already it was getting dark. Antip Sedelnikov was soldering something near the stove, puffing his cheeks out. The air was heavy with fumes. His skinny, unwashed children – they were no better than the Chikildeyev children – were playing noisily on the floor, while his ugly, freckled, pot-bellied wife was winding silk. It was a wretched, miserable family – with the exception of Antip, who was handsome and dashing. Five samovars stood in a row on a bench. The old man offered a prayer to Battenberg and said, ‘Antip, have pity on us, give us the samovar back, for Christ’s sake!’

  ‘Bring me three roubles – then you can have it back.’

  ‘I haven’t got them!’ br />
  Antip puffed his cheeks out, the fire hummed and hissed and its light gleamed on the samovars. The old man rumpled his cap, pondered for a moment and said, ‘Give it back!’

  The dark-faced elder looked jet-black, just like a sorcerer. He turned to Osip and said in a rapid, stern voice, ‘It all depends on the magistrate. At the administrative meeting on the 26th inst. you can announce your grounds for dissatisfaction, orally or in writing.’

  Osip did not understand one word of this, but he seemed satisfied and went home.

  About ten days later the inspector turned up again, stayed for an hour and then left. About this time the weather was windy and cold. The river had frozen over long ago, but there still hadn’t been any snow and everyone was miserable, as the roads were impassable. On one holiday, just before evening, some neighbours dropped in at Osip’s for a chat. The conversation took place in the dark – it was considered sinful to work, so the fire had not been lit. There was a little news – most of it unpleasant: some hens had been confiscated from two or three households that were in arrears and taken to the council offices where they died, since no one bothered to feed them. Sheep were confiscated as well – they were taken away with their legs tied up and dumped into a different cart at every village; one died. And now they were trying to decide who was to blame.

  ‘The local council, who else?’ Osip said.

  ‘Yes, of course, it’s the council.’

  The council was blamed for everything – tax arrears, victimization, harassment, crop failures, although not one of them had any idea what the function of the council was. And all this went back to the times when rich peasants who owned factories, shops and inns had served as councillors, became dissatisfied, and cursed the council when they were back in their factories and inns. They discussed the fact that God hadn’t sent them any snow: firewood had to be moved, but it was impossible to drive or walk because of all the bumps in the road. Fifteen or twenty years ago – or even earlier – the local gossip in Zhukovo was much more interesting. In those times every old man looked as though he was hiding some secret, knew something, and was waiting for something. They discussed deeds with golden seals, allotments and partition of land, hidden treasure and they were always hinting at something or other. But now the people of Zhukovo had no secrets at all: their entire lives were like an open book, which anyone could read and all they could talk about was poverty, cattle feed, lack of snow…

  They fell silent for a while: then they remembered the hens and the sheep and tried to decide whose fault it was.

  ‘The council’s!’ Osip exclaimed gloomily. ‘Who else’s!’

  VIII

  The parish church was about four miles away, at Kosogorovo, and the people only went there when they really had to – for christenings, weddings or funerals. For ordinary prayers they went to the church across the river. On saints’ days (when the weather was fine) the young girls put on their Sunday best and crowded along to Mass, making a very cheerful picture as they walked across the meadows in their yellow and green dresses. But when the weather was bad everyone stayed at home. Pre-Communion services were held in the parish church. The priest fined anyone who had not prepared for Communion during Lent fifteen copecks as he went round the huts at Easter with his cross.

  The old man didn’t believe in God, for the simple reason that he rarely gave him a moment’s thought. He admitted the existence of the supernatural, but thought that it could only affect women. Whenever anyone discussed religion or the supernatural with him, or questioned him, he would reluctantly reply as he scratched himself, ‘Who the hell knows!’

  The old woman believed in God, but only in some vague way. Everything in her mind had become mixed up and no sooner did she start meditating on sin, death and salvation, than poverty and everyday worries took charge and immediately she forgot what she had originally been thinking about. She could not remember her prayers and it was usually in the evenings, before she went to bed, that she stood in front of the icons and whispered, ‘to the Virgin of Kazan, to the Virgin of Smolensk, to the Virgin of the Three Arms…’

  Marya and Fyokla would cross themselves and prepare to take the sacrament once a year, but they had no idea what it meant. They hadn’t taught their children to pray, had told them nothing about God and never taught them moral principles: all they did was tell them not to eat forbidden food during fast days. In the other families it was almost the same story: hardly anyone believed in God or understood anything about religion. All the same, they loved the Bible dearly, with deep reverence; but they had no books, nor was there anyone to read or explain anything to them. They respected Olga for occasionally reading to them from the Gospels, and spoke to her and Sasha very politely.

  Olga often went to festivals and services in the neighbouring villages and the county town, where there were two monasteries and twenty-seven churches. Since she was rather scatterbrained, she tended to forget all about her family when she went on these pilgrimages. Only on the journey home did she suddenly realize, to her great delight, that she had a husband and daughter, and then she would smile radiantly and say, ‘God’s been good to me!’

  Everything that happened in the village disgusted and tormented her. On Elijah’s Day17 they drank, on the Feast of the Assumption they drank, on the day of the Exaltation of the Cross they drank. The Feast of the Intercession was a parish holiday in Zhukovo, and the men celebrated it by going on a three-day binge. They drank their way through fifty roubles of communal funds and on top of this they had a whip-round from all the farms for some vodka. On the first day of the Feast, the Chikildeyevs slaughtered a sheep and ate it for breakfast, lunch and dinner, consuming vast quantities, and then the children got up during the night for another bite. During the entire three days Kiryak was terribly drunk – he drank everything away, even his cap and boots, and he gave Marya such a thrashing that they had to douse her with cold water. Afterwards everyone felt ashamed and sick.

  However, even in Zhukovo or ‘Lackeyville’, a truly religious ceremony was once celebrated. This was in August, when the icon of the Life-giving Virgin was carried round the whole district, from one village to another. The day on which the villagers at Zhukovo expected it was calm and overcast. Right from the morning the girls, in their Sunday best, had left their homes to welcome the icon and towards evening it was carried in procession into the village with the church choir singing and the bells in the church across the river ringing out loud. A vast crowd of villagers and visitors filled the street; there was noise, dust and a terrible crush… The old man, Grannie and Kiryak all held their hands out to the icon, looked at it hungrily and cried out tearfully, ‘Our Protector, holy Mother!’

  It was as though everyone suddenly realized that there wasn’t just a void between heaven and earth, that the rich and the strong had not grabbed everything yet, that there was still someone to protect them from slavery, crushing, unbearable poverty – and that infernal vodka.

  ‘Our Protector, holy Mother!’ Marya sobbed. ‘Holy Mother!’

  But the service was over now, the icon was taken away and everything returned to normal. Once again those coarse drunken voices could be heard in the pub.

  Only the rich peasants feared death, and the richer they became, the less they believed in God and salvation – if they happened to donate candles or celebrate Mass, it was only for fear of their departure from this world – and just to be on the safe side. The peasants who weren’t so well off had no fear of death.

  Grannie and the old man had been told to their faces that their lives were over, that it was time they were gone, and they did not care. They had no qualms in telling Fyokla, right in front of Nikolay, that when he died her husband Denis would be discharged from the army and sent home. Far from having any fear of death, Marya was only sorry that it was such a long time coming, and she was glad when any of her children died.

  Death held no terrors for them, but they had an excessive fear of all kinds of illness. It only needed some tr
ifle – a stomach upset or a slight chill – for the old woman to lie over the stove, wrap herself up and groan out loud, without stopping, ‘I’m dy-ing!’ Then the old man would dash off to fetch the priest and Grannie would receive the last sacrament and extreme unction. Colds, worms and tumours that began in the stomach and worked their way up to the heart were everyday topics. They were more afraid of catching cold than anything else, so that even in summer they wrapped themselves in thick clothes and stood by the stove warming themselves. Grannie loved medical treatment and frequently went to the hospital, telling them there that she was fifty-eight, and not seventy: she reasoned if the doctor knew her real age he would refuse to have her as a patient and would tell her it was time she died, rather than have hospital treatment. She usually left early in the morning for the hospital, taking two of the little girls with her, and she would return in the evening, cross and hungry, with drops for herself and ointment for the little girls. Once she took Nikolay with her; he took the drops for about two weeks afterwards and said they made him feel better.

  Grannie knew all the doctors, nurses and quacks for twenty miles around and she did not like any of them. During the Feast of the Intercession, when the parish priest went round the huts with his cross, the lay reader told her about an old man living near the town prison, who had once been a medical orderly in the army and who knew some very good cures. He advised her to go and consult him, which Grannie did. When the first snows came she drove off to town and brought a little old man back with her: he was a bearded, Jewish convert to Christianity who wore a long coat and whose face was completely covered with blue veins. Just at that time some jobbing tradesmen happened to be working in the hut – an old tailor with terrifying spectacles was cutting a waistcoat from some old rags and two young men were making felt boots from wool. Kiryak, who had been given the sack for drinking and lived at home now, was sitting next to the tailor mending a horse collar. It was cramped, stuffy and evil-smelling in the hut. The convert examined Nikolay and said that he should be bled, without fail.