Peasants and Other Stories

  Two handsome girls in hats, probably the student’s sisters, came from the other side of the river. They stood a little way off, looking at the fire. The beams that had been dragged apart were no longer burning, but were smoking vigorously; the student, who was working the hose, turned the water, first on the beams, then on the peasants, then on the women who were bringing the water.

  “George!” the girls called to him reproachfully in anxiety, “George!”

  The fire was over. And only when they began to disperse they noticed that the day was breaking, that everyone was pale and rather dark in the face, as it always seems in the early morning when the last stars are going out. As they separated, the peasants laughed and made jokes about General Zhukov’s cook and his cap which had been burnt; they already wanted to turn the fire into a joke and even seemed sorry that it had so soon been put out.

  “How well you extinguished the fire, sir!” said Olga to the student. “You ought to come to us in Moscow: there we have a fire every day.”

  “Why, do you come from Moscow?” asked one of the young ladies.

  “Yes, mademoiselle. My husband was a waiter at the Slavyansky Bazaar. And this is my daughter,” she said, indicating Sasha, who was cold and huddling up to her. “She is a Moscow girl, too.”

  The two young ladies said something in French to the student, and he gave Sasha a twenty-kopeck piece.

  Old Father Osip saw this, and there was a gleam of hope in his face.

  “We must thank God, your honor, there was no wind,” he said, addressing the student, “or else we should have been all burnt up together. Your honor, kind gentlefolks,” he added in embarrassment in a lower tone, “the morning’s chilly . . . something to warm one . . . half a bottle to your honor’s health.”

  Nothing was given him, and, clearing his throat, he slouched home. Olga stood afterwards at the end of the street and watched the two carts crossing the river by the ford and the gentlefolks walking across the meadow; a carriage was waiting for them the other side of the river. Going into the hut, she described to her husband with enthusiasm:

  “Such good people! And so beautiful! The young ladies were like cherubim.”

  “Plague take them!” Fyokla, sleepy, said spitefully.

  6.

  Marya thought herself unhappy and said that she would be very glad to die; Fyokla, on the other hand, found all this life to her taste: the poverty, the uncleanliness, and the incessant quarreling. She ate what was given her without discrimination; slept anywhere, on whatever came to hand. She would empty the slops just at the porch, would splash them out from the doorway, and then walk barefoot through the puddle. And from the very first day she took a dislike to Olga and Nikolai just because they did not like this life.

  “We shall see what you’ll find to eat here, you Moscow gentry!” she said malignantly. “We shall see!”

  One morning, it was at the beginning of September, Fyokla, vigorous, good-looking, and rosy from the cold, brought up two pails of water; Marya and Olga were sitting meanwhile at the table drinking tea.

  “Tea and sugar,” said Fyokla sarcastically. “The fine ladies!” she added, setting down the pails. “You have taken to the fashion of tea every day. You better look out that you don’t burst with your tea drinking,” she went on, looking with hatred at Olga. “That’s how you have come by your fat mug, having a good time in Moscow, you lump of flesh!” She swung the yoke and hit Olga such a blow on the shoulder that the two sisters-in-law could only clasp their hands and say:

  “Oh, holy saints!”

  Then Fyokla went down to the river to wash the clothes, swearing all the time so loudly that she could be heard in the hut.

  The day passed and was followed by the long autumn evening. They wound silk in the hut; everyone did it except Fyokla; she had gone over the river. They got the silk from a factory close by, and the whole family working together earned next to nothing, twenty kopecks a week.

  “Things were better in the old days under the gentry,” said the old father as he wound silk. “You worked and ate and slept, everything in its turn. At dinner you had cabbage soup and boiled grain, and at supper the same again. Cucumbers and cabbage in plenty: you could eat to your heart’s content, as much as you wanted. And there was more strictness. Everyone minded what he was about.”

  The hut was lighted by a single little lamp, which burnt dimly and smoked. When someone screened the lamp and a big shadow fell across the window, the bright moonlight could be seen. Old Osip, speaking slowly, told them how they used to live before the emancipation; how in those very parts, where life was now so poor and so dreary, they used to hunt with harriers, grayhounds, retrievers, and when they went out as beaters the peasants were given vodka; how whole wagonloads of game used to be sent to Moscow for the young masters; how the bad were beaten with rods or sent away to the Tver estate, while the good were rewarded. And Granny told them something, too. She remembered everything, positively everything. She described her mistress, a kind, God-fearing woman, whose husband was a profligate and a rake, and all of whose daughters made unlucky marriages: one married a drunkard, another married a workman, the other eloped secretly (Granny herself, at that time a young girl, helped in the elopement), and they had all three as well as their mother died early from grief. And remembering all this, Granny positively began to shed tears.

  All at once someone knocked at the door, and they all started.

  “Uncle Osip, give me a night’s lodging.”

  The little bald old man, General Zhukov’s cook, the one whose cap had been burnt, walked in. He sat down and listened, then he, too, began telling stories of all sorts. Nikolai, sitting on the stove with his legs hanging down, listened and asked questions about the dishes that were prepared in the old days for the gentry. They talked of rissoles, cutlets, various soups and sauces, and the cook, who remembered everything very well, mentioned dishes that were no longer served. There was one, for instance—a dish made of bulls’ eyes, which was called “waking up in the morning.”

  “And used you to do cutlets au maréchal?” asked Nikolai.

  “No.”

  Nikolai shook his head reproachfully and said:

  “Tut, tut! You were not much of a cook!”

  The little girls, sitting and lying on the stove, stared down without blinking; it seemed as though there were a great many of them, like cherubim in the clouds. They liked the stories: they were breathless; they shuddered and turned pale with alternate rapture and terror, and they listened breathlessly, afraid to stir, to Granny, whose stories were the most interesting of all.

  They lay down to sleep in silence; and the old people, troubled and excited by their reminiscences, thought how precious was youth, of which, whatever it might have been like, nothing was left in the memory but what was living, joyful, touching, and how terribly cold was death, which was not far off, better not think of it! The lamp died down. And the dusk, and the two little windows sharply defined by the moonlight, and the stillness and the creak of the cradle, reminded them for some reason that life was over, that nothing one could do would bring it back. . . . You doze off, you forget yourself, and suddenly someone touches your shoulder or breathes on your cheek—and sleep is gone; your body feels cramped, and thoughts of death keep creeping into your mind. You turn on the other side: death is forgotten, but old, dreary, sickening thoughts of poverty, of food, of how dear flour is getting, stray through the mind, and a little later again you remember that life is over and you cannot bring it back. . . .

  “Oh Lord!” sighed the cook.

  Someone gave a soft, soft tap at the window. It must be Fyokla come back. Olga got up, and, yawning and whispering a prayer, opened the door, then drew the bolt in the outer room, but no one came in; only from the street came a cold draught and a sudden brightness from the moonlight. The street, still and deserted, and the moon itself, floating across the sky, could be seen at the open door.

  “Who is there?” called Olga.

&
nbsp; “I,” she heard the answer, “it is I.”

  Near the door, crouching against the wall, stood Fyokla, absolutely naked. She was shivering with cold, her teeth were chattering, and in the bright moonlight she looked very pale, strange, and beautiful. The shadows on her, and the bright moonlight on her skin, stood out vividly, and her dark eyebrows and firm, youthful bosom were defined with peculiar distinctness.

  “The ruffians over there undressed me and turned me out like this,” she said. “I’ve come home without my clothes . . . naked as my mother bore me. Bring me something to put on.”

  “But go inside!” Olga said softly, beginning to shiver, too.

  “I don’t want the old folks to see.” Granny was, in fact, already stirring and muttering, and the old father asked: “Who is there?” Olga brought her own smock and skirt, dressed Fyokla, and then both went softly into the inner room, trying not to make a noise with the door.

  “Is that you, you sleek one?” Granny grumbled angrily, guessing who it was. “Fie upon you, nightwalker! . . . Bad luck to you!”

  “It’s all right, it’s all right,” whispered Olga, wrapping Fyokla up; “it’s all right, dearie.”

  All was stillness again. They always slept badly; everyone was kept awake by something worrying and persistent: the old man by the pain in his back, Granny by anxiety and anger, Marya by terror, the children by itch and hunger. Now, too, their sleep was troubled; they kept turning over from one side to the other, talking in their sleep, getting up for a drink.

  Fyokla suddenly broke into a loud, coarse howl, but immediately checked herself, and only uttered sobs from time to time, growing softer and on a lower note, until she relapsed into silence. From time to time from the other side of the river there floated the sound of the beating of the hours; but the time seemed somehow strange—five was struck and then three.

  “Oh Lord!” sighed the cook.

  Looking at the windows, it was difficult to tell whether it was still moonlight or whether the dawn had begun. Marya got up and went out, and she could be heard milking the cows and saying, “Stea-dy!” Granny went out, too. It was still dark in the hut, but all the objects in it could be discerned.

  Nikolai, who had not slept all night, got down from the stove. He took his dress coat out of a green box, put it on, and, going to the window, stroked the sleeves and took hold of the coattails—and smiled. Then he carefully took off the coat, put it away in his box, and lay down again.

  Marya came in again and began lighting the stove. She was evidently hardly awake and seemed dropping asleep as she walked. Probably she had had some dream, or the stories of the night before came into her mind as, stretching luxuriously before the stove, she said:

  “No, freedom is better.”

  7.

  The master arrived—that was what they called the police inspector. When he would come and what he was coming for had been known for the last week. There were only forty households in Zhukovo, but more than two thousand rubles of arrears of rates and taxes had accumulated.

  The police inspector stopped at the tavern. He drank there two glasses of tea, and then went on foot to the village elder’s hut, near which a crowd of those who were in debt stood waiting. The elder, Antip Syedelnikov, was, in spite of his youth—he was only a little over thirty—strict and always on the side of the authorities, though he himself was poor and did not pay his taxes regularly. Evidently he enjoyed being elder and liked the sense of authority, which he could only display by strictness. In the village council the peasants were afraid of him and obeyed him. It would sometimes happen that he would pounce on a drunken man in the street or near the tavern, tie his hands behind him, and put him in the lockup. On one occasion he even put Granny in the lockup because she went to the village council instead of Osip, and began swearing, and he kept her there for a whole day and night. He had never lived in a town or read a book but somewhere or other had picked up various learned expressions and loved to make use of them in conversation, and he was respected for this though he was not always understood.

  When Osip came into the village elder’s hut with his tax book, the police inspector, a lean old man with a long gray beard, in a gray tunic, was sitting at a table in the passage, writing something. It was clean in the hut; all the walls were dotted with pictures cut out of the illustrated papers, and in the most conspicuous place near the icon there was a portrait of the Battenberg who was the Prince of Bulgaria. By the table stood Antip Syedelnikov with his arms folded.

  “There is one hundred and nineteen rubles standing against him,” he said when it came to Osip’s turn. “Before Easter he paid a ruble, and he has not paid a kopeck since.”

  The police inspector raised his eyes to Osip and asked:

  “Why is this, brother?”

  “Show Divine mercy, your honor,” Osip began, growing agitated. “Allow me to say last year the gentleman at Lutorydsky said to me, ‘Osip,’ he said, ‘sell your hay . . . you sell it,’ he said. Well, I had a hundred poods for sale; the women mowed it on the water meadow. Well, we struck a bargain all right, willingly. . . .”

  He complained of the elder and kept turning round to the peasants as though inviting them to bear witness; his face flushed red and perspired, and his eyes grew sharp and angry.

  “I don’t know why you are saying all this,” said the police inspector. “I am asking you . . . I am asking you why you don’t pay your arrears. You don’t pay, any of you, and am I to be responsible for you?”

  “I can’t do it.”

  “His words have no sequel, your honor,” said the elder. “The Chikildyeyevs certainly are of a defective class, but if you will just ask the others, the root of it all is vodka, and they are a very bad lot. With no sort of understanding.”

  The police inspector wrote something down, and said to Osip quietly, in an even tone, as though he were asking him for water:

  “Be off.”

  Soon he went away; and when he got into his cheap chaise and cleared his throat, it could be seen from the very expression of his long thin back that he was no longer thinking of Osip or of the village elder, nor of the Zhukovo arrears, but was thinking of his own affairs. Before he had gone three quarters of a mile Antip was already carrying off the samovar from the Chikildyeyevs’ cottage, followed by Granny, screaming shrilly and straining her throat:

  “I won’t let you have it, I won’t let you have it, damn you!”

  He walked rapidly with long steps, and she pursued him, panting, almost falling over, a bent, ferocious figure; her kerchief slipped on to her shoulders, her gray hair with greenish lights on it was blown about in the wind. She suddenly stopped short, and like a genuine rebel, fell to beating her breast with her fists and shouting louder than ever in a singsong voice, as though she were sobbing:

  “Good Christians and believers in God! Neighbors, they have ill-treated me! Kind friends, they have oppressed me! Oh, oh! dear people, take my part.”

  “Granny, Granny!” said the village elder sternly, “have some sense in your head!”

  It was hopelessly dreary in the Chikildyeyevs’ hut without the samovar; there was something humiliating in this loss, insulting, as though the honor of the hut had been outraged. Better if the elder had carried off the table, all the benches, all the pots—it would not have seemed so empty. Granny screamed, Marya cried, and the little girls, looking at her, cried, too. The old father, feeling guilty, sat in the corner with bowed head and said nothing. And Nikolai, too, was silent. Granny loved him and was sorry for him, but now, forgetting her pity, she fell upon him with abuse, with reproaches, shaking her fist right in his face. She shouted that it was all his fault; why had he sent them so little when he boasted in his letters that he was getting fifty rubles a month at the Slavyansky Bazaar? Why had he come, and with his family, too? If he died, where was the money to come from for his funeral . . .? And it was pitiful to look at Nikolai, Olga, and Sasha.

  The old father cleared his throat, took his cap, and w
ent off to the village elder. Antip was soldering something by the stove, puffing out his cheeks; there was a smell of burning. His children, emaciated and unwashed, no better than the Chikildyeyevs, were scrambling about the floor; his wife, an ugly, freckled woman with a prominent stomach, was winding silk. They were a poor, unlucky family, and Antip was the only one who looked vigorous and handsome. On a bench there were five samovars standing in a row. The old man said his prayer to Battenberg and said:

  “Antip, show the Divine mercy. Give me back the samovar, for Christ’s sake!”

  “Bring three rubles, then you shall have it.”

  “I can’t do it!”

  Antip puffed out his cheeks, the fire roared and hissed, and the glow was reflected in the samovar. The old man crumpled up his cap and said after a moment’s thought:

  “You give it me back.”

  The swarthy elder looked quite black, and was like a magician; he turned round to Osip and said sternly and rapidly:

  “It all depends on the rural captain. On the twenty-sixth instant you can state the grounds for your dissatisfaction before the administrative session, verbally or in writing.”

  Osip did not understand a word, but he was satisfied with that and went home.

  Ten days later the police inspector came again, stayed an hour and went away. During those days the weather had changed to cold and windy; the river had been frozen for some time past, but still there was no snow, and people found it difficult to get about. On the eve of a holiday some of the neighbors came in to Osip’s to sit and have a talk. They did not light the lamp, as it would have been a sin to work, but talked in the darkness. There were some items of news, all rather unpleasant. In two or three households hens had been taken for the arrears and had been sent to the district police station, and there they had died because no one had fed them; they had taken sheep, and while they were being driven away tied to one another, shifted into another cart at each village, one of them had died. And now they were discussing the question, who was to blame?