Peasants and Other Stories

  It was quite dark, and gradually the street grew empty. The music had ceased in the house opposite; the gate was thrown wide open, and a team with three horses trotted frolicking along our street with a soft tinkle of little bells. That was the engineer going for a drive with his daughter. It was bedtime.

  I had my own room in the house, but I lived in a shed in the yard, under the same roof as a brick barn which had been built some time or other, probably to keep harness in; great hooks were driven into the wall. Now it was not wanted, and for the last thirty years my father had stowed away in it his newspapers, which for some reason he had bound in half-yearly volumes and allowed nobody to touch. Living here, I was less liable to be seen by my father and his visitors, and I fancied that if I did not live in a real room, and did not go into the house every day to dinner, my father’s words that I was a burden upon him did not sound so offensive.

  My sister was waiting for me. Unseen by my father, she had brought me some supper: not a very large slice of cold veal and a piece of bread. In our house such sayings as: “A penny saved is a penny gained,” and “Take care of the pence and the pounds will take care of themselves,” and so on, were frequently repeated, and my sister, weighed down by these vulgar maxims, did her utmost to cut down the expenses, and so we fared badly. Putting the plate on the table, she sat down on my bed and began to cry.

  “Misail,” she said, “what a way to treat us!”

  She did not cover her face; her tears dropped on her bosom and hands, and there was a look of distress on her face. She fell back on the pillow, and abandoned herself to her tears, sobbing and quivering all over.

  “You have left the service again . . .” she articulated. “Oh, how awful it is!”

  “But do understand, Sister, do understand . . .” I said, and I was overcome with despair because she was crying.

  As ill luck would have it, the kerosene in my little lamp was exhausted; it began to smoke and was on the point of going out, and the old hooks on the walls looked down sullenly, and their shadows flickered.

  “Have mercy on us,” said my sister, sitting up. “Father is in terrible distress and I am ill; I shall go out of my mind. What will become of you?” she said, sobbing and stretching out her arms to me. “I beg you, I implore you, for our dear mother’s sake, I beg you to go back to the office!”

  “I can’t, Kleopatra!” I said, feeling that a little more and I should give way. “I cannot!”

  “Why not?” my sister went on. “Why not? Well, if you can’t get on with the head, look out for another post. Why shouldn’t you get a situation on the railway, for instance? I have just been talking to Anyuta Blagovo; she declares they would take you on the railway line and even promised to try and get a post for you. For God’s sake, Misail, think a little! Think a little, I implore you.”

  We talked a little longer and I gave way. I said that the thought of a job on the railway that was being constructed had never occurred to me, and that if she liked I was ready to try it.

  She smiled joyfully through her tears and squeezed my hand, and then went on crying because she could not stop, while I went to the kitchen for some kerosene.

  2.

  Among the devoted supporters of amateur theatricals, concerts, and tableaux vivants for charitable objects the Azhogins, who lived in their own house in Great Dvoryansky Street, took a foremost place; they always provided the room and took upon themselves all the troublesome arrangements and the expenses. They were a family of wealthy landowners who had an estate of some nine thousand acres in the district and a capital house, but they did not care for the country and lived winter and summer alike in the town. The family consisted of the mother, a tall, spare, refined lady, with short hair, a short jacket, and a flat-looking skirt in the English fashion, and three daughters who, when they were spoken of, were called not by their names but simply: the eldest, the middle, and the youngest. They all had ugly sharp chins, and were shortsighted and round-shouldered. They were dressed like their mother, they lisped disagreeably, and yet, in spite of that, infallibly took part in every performance and were continually doing something with a charitable object—acting, reciting, singing. They were very serious and never smiled, and even in a musical comedy they played without the faintest trace of gaiety, with a businesslike air, as though they were engaged in bookkeeping.

  I loved our theatricals, especially the numerous, noisy, and rather incoherent rehearsals, after which they always gave a supper. In the choice of the plays and the distribution of the parts I had no hand at all. The post assigned to me lay behind the scenes. I painted the scenes, copied out the parts, prompted, made up the actors’ faces; and I was entrusted, too, with various stage effects such as thunder, the singing of nightingales, and so on. Since I had no proper social position and no decent clothes, at the rehearsals I held aloof from the rest in the shadows of the wings and maintained a shy silence.

  I painted the scenes at the Azhogins’ either in the barn or in the yard. I was assisted by Andrei Ivanov, a house painter, or, as he called himself, a contractor for all kinds of house decorations, a tall, very thin, pale man of fifty, with a hollow chest, with sunken temples, with blue rings round his eyes, rather terrible to look at in fact. He was afflicted with some internal malady, and every autumn and spring people said that he wouldn’t recover, but after being laid up for a while he would get up and say afterwards with surprise: “I have escaped dying again.”

  In the town he was called Radish, and they declared that this was his real name. He was as fond of the theater as I was, and as soon as rumors reached him that a performance was being got up he threw aside all his work and went to the Azhogins’ to paint scenes.

  The day after my talk with my sister, I was working at the Azhogins’ from morning till night. The rehearsal was fixed for seven o’clock in the evening, and an hour before it began all the amateurs were gathered together in the hall, and the eldest, the middle, and the youngest Azhogins were pacing about the stage, reading from manuscript books. Radish, in a long rusty-red overcoat and a scarf muffled round his neck, already stood leaning with his head against the wall, gazing with a devout expression at the stage. Madam Azhogin went up first to one and then to another guest, saying something agreeable to each. She had a way of gazing into one’s face and speaking softly as though telling a secret.

  “It must be difficult to paint scenery,” she said softly, coming up to me. “I was just talking to Madam Mufke about superstitions when I saw you come in. My goodness, my whole life I have been waging war against superstitions! To convince the servants what nonsense all their terrors are, I always light three candles, and begin all my important undertakings on the thirteenth of the month.”

  Dolzhikov’s daughter came in, a plump, fair beauty, dressed, as people said, in everything from Paris. She did not act, but a chair was set for her on the stage at the rehearsals, and the performances never began till she had appeared in the front row, dazzling and astounding everyone with her fine clothes. As a product of the capital she was allowed to make remarks during the rehearsals; and she did so with a sweet indulgent smile, and one could see that she looked upon our performance as a childish amusement. It was said she had studied singing at the Petersburg Conservatory, and even sang for a whole winter in a private opera. I thought her very charming, and I usually watched her through the rehearsals and performances without taking my eyes off her.

  I had just picked up the manuscript book to begin prompting when my sister suddenly made her appearance. Without taking off her cloak or hat, she came up to me and said:

  “Come along, I beg you.”

  I went with her. Anyuta Blagovo, also in her hat and wearing a dark veil, was standing behind the scenes at the door. She was the daughter of the assistant president of the court, who had held that office in our town almost ever since the establishment of the circuit court. Since she was tall and had a good figure, her assistance was considered indispensable for tableaux vivants, and when she repre
sented a fairy or something like Glory her face burned with shame; but she took no part in dramatic performances, and came to the rehearsals only for a moment on some special errand and did not go into the hall. Now, too, it was evident that she had only looked in for a minute.

  “My father was speaking about you,” she said drily, blushing and not looking at me. “Dolzhikov has promised you a post on the railway line. Apply to him tomorrow; he will be at home.”

  I bowed and thanked her for the trouble she had taken.

  “And you can give up this,” she said, indicating the exercise book.

  My sister and she went up to Madam Azhogin and for two minutes they were whispering with her looking towards me; they were consulting about something.

  “Yes, indeed,” said Madam Azhogin, softly coming up to me and looking intently into my face. “Yes, indeed, if this distracts you from serious pursuits”—she took the manuscript book from my hands—“you can hand it over to someone else; don’t distress yourself, my friend, go home, and good luck to you.”

  I said good-bye to her and went away overcome with confusion. As I went down the stairs I saw my sister and Anyuta Blagovo going away; they were hastening along, talking eagerly about something, probably about my going into the railway service. My sister had never been at a rehearsal before, and now she was most likely conscience-stricken and afraid her father might find out that, without his permission, she had been to the Azhogins’!

  I went to Dolzhikov’s next day between twelve and one. The footman conducted me into a very beautiful room, which was the engineer’s drawing-room, and, at the same time, his working study. Everything here was soft and elegant, and, for a man so unaccustomed to luxury as I was, it seemed strange. There were costly rugs, huge armchairs, bronzes, pictures, gold and plush frames; among the photographs scattered about the walls there were very beautiful women, clever, lovely faces, easy attitudes; from the drawing-room there was a door leading straight into the garden on to a veranda: one could see lilac trees; one could see a table laid for lunch, a number of bottles, a bouquet of roses; there was a fragrance of spring and expensive cigars, a fragrance of happiness—and everything seemed as though it would say: “Here is a man who has lived and labored and has attained at last the happiness possible on earth.” The engineer’s daughter was sitting at the writing table, reading a newspaper.

  “You have come to see my father?” she asked. “He is having a shower bath; he will be here directly. Please sit down and wait.”

  I sat down.

  “I believe you live opposite?” she questioned me, after a brief silence.

  “Yes.”

  “I am so bored that I watch you every day out of the window; you must excuse me,” she went on, looking at the newspaper. “And I often see your sister; she always has such a look of kindness and concentration.”

  Dolzhikov came in. He was rubbing his neck with a towel.

  “Papa, Monsieur Poloznev,” said his daughter.

  “Yes, yes, Blagovo was telling me.” He turned briskly to me without giving me his hand. “But listen, what can I give you? What sort of posts have I got? You are a queer set of people!” he went on aloud in a tone as though he were giving me a lecture. “A score of you keep coming to me every day; you imagine I am the head of a department! I am constructing a railway line, my friends; I have employment for heavy labor: I need mechanics, smiths, navvies, carpenters, well sinkers, and none of you can do anything but sit and write! You are all clerks.”

  And he seemed to me to have the same air of happiness as his rugs and easy chairs. He was stout and healthy, ruddy-cheeked and broad-chested, in a print cotton shirt and full trousers like a toy china sledge driver. He had a curly, round beard—and not a single gray hair—a hooked nose, and clear, dark, guileless eyes.

  “What can you do?” he went on. “There is nothing you can do! I am an engineer. I am a man of an assured position, but before they gave me a railway line I was for years in harness; I have been a practical mechanic. For two years I worked in Belgium as an oiler. You can judge for yourself, my dear fellow; what kind of work can I offer you?”

  “Of course that is so . . .” I muttered in extreme confusion, unable to face his clear, guileless eyes.

  “Can you work the telegraph, anyway?” he asked, after a moment’s thought.

  “Yes, I have been a telegraph clerk.”

  “Hm! Well, we will see then. Meanwhile, go to Dubechnya. I have got a fellow there, but he is a wretched creature.”

  “And what will my duties consist of?” I asked.

  “We shall see. Go there; meanwhile I will make arrangements. Only please don’t get drunk, and don’t worry me with requests of any sort, or I shall send you packing.”

  He turned away from me without even a nod.

  I bowed to him and his daughter, who was reading a newspaper, and went away. My heart felt so heavy that when my sister began asking me how the engineer had received me, I could not utter a single word.

  I got up early in the morning, at sunrise, to go to Dubechnya. There was not a soul in out Great Dvoryansky Street; everyone was asleep, and my footsteps rang out with a solitary, hollow sound. The poplars, covered with dew, filled the air with soft fragrance. I was sad and did not want to go away from the town. I was fond of my native town. It seemed to be so beautiful and so snug! I loved the fresh greenery, the still, sunny morning, the chiming of our bells; but the people with whom I lived in this town were boring, alien to me, sometimes even repulsive. I did not like them nor understand them.

  I did not understand what these sixty-five thousand people lived for and by. I knew that Kimry lived by boots, that Tula made samovars and guns, that Odessa was a seaport, but what our town was, and what it did, I did not know. Great Dvoryansky Street and the two other smartest streets lived on the interest of capital, or on salaries received by officials from the public treasury; but what the other eight streets, which ran parallel for over two miles and vanished beyond the hills, lived upon was always an insoluble riddle to me. And the way those people lived one is ashamed to describe! No garden, no theater, no decent band; the public library and the club library were only visited by Jewish youths, so that the magazines and new books lay for months uncut; rich and well-educated people slept in close, stuffy bedrooms, on wooden bedsteads infested with bugs; their children were kept in revoltingly dirty rooms called nurseries, and the servants, even the old and respected ones, slept on the floor in the kitchen, covered with rags. On ordinary days the houses smelled of beetroot soup, and on fast days of sturgeon cooked in sunflower oil. The food was not good, and the drinking water was unwholesome. In the town council, at the governor’s, at the head priest’s, on all sides in private houses, people had been saying for years and years that our town had not a good and cheap water supply, and that it was necessary to obtain a loan of two hundred thousand from the Treasury for laying on water; very rich people, of whom three dozen could have been counted up in our town, and who at times lost whole estates at cards, drank the polluted water, too, and talked all their lives with great excitement of a loan for the water supply—and I did not understand that; it seemed to me it would have been simpler to take the two hundred thousand out of their own pockets and lay it out on that object.

  I did not know one honest man in the town. My father took bribes and imagined that they were given him out of respect for his moral qualities; at the high school, in order to be moved up rapidly from class to class, the boys went to board with their teachers, who charged them exorbitant sums; the wife of the military commander took bribes from the recruits when they were called up before the board and even deigned to accept refreshments from them, and on one occasion could not get up from her knees in church because she was drunk; the doctors took bribes, too, when the recruits came up for examination, and the town doctor and the veterinary surgeon levied a regular tax on the butchers’ shops and the restaurants; at the district school they did a trade in certificates, qualifying for partial exem
ption from military service; the higher clergy took bribes from the humbler priests and from the church elders; at the municipal, the artisans’, and all the other boards every petitioner was pursued by a shout: “Don’t forget your thanks!” and the petitioner would turn back to give sixpence or a shilling. And those who did not take bribes, such as the higher officials of the Department of Justice, were haughty, offered two fingers instead of shaking hands, were distinguished by the frigidity and narrowness of their judgments, spent a great deal of time over cards, drank to excess, married heiresses, and undoubtedly had a pernicious corrupting influence on those around them. It was only the girls who had still the fresh fragrance of moral purity; most of them had higher impulses, pure and honest hearts; but they had no understanding of life and believed that bribes were given out of respect for moral qualities, and after they were married grew old quickly, let themselves go completely, and sank hopelessly in the mire of vulgar, petty bourgeois existence.

  3.

  A railway line was being constructed in our neighborhood. On the eve of feast days the streets were thronged with ragged fellows whom the townspeople called “navvies,” and of whom they were afraid. And more than once I had see one of these tatterdemalions, with a blood-stained countenance, being led to the police station, while a samovar or some linen, wet from the wash, was carried behind by way of material evidence. The navvies usually congregated about the taverns and the market place; they drank, ate, and used bad language, and pursued with shrill whistles every woman of light behavior who passed by. To entertain this hungry rabble our shopkeepers made cats and dogs drunk with vodka, or tied an old kerosene can to a dog’s tail; a hue and cry was raised, and the dog dashed along the street, jingling the can, squealing with terror; it fancied some monster was close upon its heels; it would run far out of the town into the open country and there sink exhausted. There were in the town several dogs who went about trembling with their tails between their legs; and people said this diversion had been too much for them and had driven them mad.