Stories (18 page)

“What a slut!” sighed Dyudya.

“I shouted at her, stamped my feet, dragged her to the front hall, and hooked the door. ‘Go to your husband!’ I shouted. ‘Don’t shame me in front of people, fear God!’ And every day it’s the same story. One morning I was standing in my yard near the stable,
mending a bridle. Suddenly I see her running through the gate into my yard, barefoot, in nothing but her petticoat, and coming straight towards me. She took hold of the bridle, got all smeared with tar, was shaking and weeping … ‘I can’t live with the hateful man, it’s beyond me! If you don’t love me, you’d better kill me!’
I got angry and hit her twice with the bridle, and at the same time Vasya comes running through the gate and shouts in a desperate voice: ‘Don’t beat her! Don’t beat her!’ And he ran up himself like a demented man, and swung and started beating her with his fists as ha
rd as he could, then he threw her on the ground and started trampling her with his feet. I tried to protect her, but he took some reins and went at her with the reins. He’s beating her and giving little shrieks all the while like a colt: hee, hee, hee!”

“They should take the reins and give it to you the same way …” Varvara grumbled, walking off. “You prey on women, curse you all …”

“Shut up!” Dyudya shouted at her. “You mare!”

“Hee, hee, hee!” Matvei Savvich went on. “A carter came running from his yard, I called my hired man, and the three of us took Mashenka away from him and led her home under the arms. The shame of it! That same evening I went to visit her. She was lying in bed, all wrapped up in compresses, only her eyes and nose visible, and staring at the ceiling. I say: ‘Good evening, Marya Semyonovna!’ Silence. And Vasya is sitting in the other room, holding his head and weeping: ‘I’m a villain! I’ve ruined my life! Send me death, O Lord!’ I sat by Mashenka for a little half hour and admonished her. Put a fri
ght into her. ‘The righteous,’ I say, ‘will go to Paradise in the other world, and you to the fiery Hyena
⁵
along with all the harlots … Don’t oppose your husband, go and bow at his feet.’ Not a word from her, not even a blink, as if I’m talking to a post. Next day Vasya took sick with something like cholera, and by evening I heard he was dead. They buried him. Mashenka didn’t go to the cemetery, didn’t want to show people her shameless face and bruises. And talk soon spread among the townsfolk that Vasya hadn’t died a natural death, that Mashenka had done him in. It came to the authorities. T
hey dug Vasya up, cut him open, and found arsenic in his belly. The thing was clear as day; the police came and took Mashenka away, and penniless Kuzka along with her. She was put in prison. The woman had it coming, God punished her … Eight months later there was a trial. She sits on the
bench, I remember, in a white kerchief and gray smock, so thin, so pale, sharp-eyed, a pity to see. Behind her a soldier with a gun. She wouldn’t confess. At the tri
al some said she poisoned her husband, and some tried to prove that the husband poisoned himself from grief. I was one of the witnesses. When they asked me, I explained it all in good conscience. ‘The sin is on her,’ I said. ‘There’s no hiding it, she didn’t love her husband, and she was temperamental…’ The trial started in the morning, and that night they reached a verdict: to send her to hard labor in Siberia for thirteen years. After the verdict, Mashenka sat in our jail for three months. I used to visit her, and brought her tea and sugar out of human kindness. But when she saw me, she’d start shaking all o
ver, waving her arms and muttering: ‘Go away! Go away!’ And she’d press Kuzka to her as if she was afraid I’d take him. ‘This is what you’ve come to,’ I say. ‘Ah, Masha, Masha, you’re a lost soul! You didn’t listen to me when I taught you reason, so you can weep now. It’s your own fault and nobody else’s.’ I’m admonishing her, and she says: ‘Go away! Go away!’—and presses herself and Kuzka to the wall and trembles. When she was sent from here to the provincial capital, I went to see her off at the station and put a rouble into her bundle to save my soul. But she didn’t get as far as Siber
ia … In the provincial capital she came down with a fever and died in jail.”

“A dog’s death for a dog,” said Dyudya.

“Kuzka was brought back home … I thought a little and took him in. Why not? Though he’s a jailbird’s spawn, he’s still a living soul, a Christian … It’s a pity. I’ll make him my manager, and if I don’t have children of my own, I’ll make a merchant out of him. Now, whenever I go somewhere, I take him with me—let him get used to it.”

All the while Matvei Savvich was telling his story, Kuzka sat on a stone by the gate, his head propped in his hands, looking at the sky. From a distance, in the twilight, he looked like a little stump.

“Kuzka, go to bed!” Matvei Savvich shouted to him.

“Yes, it’s time,” said Dyudya, getting up. He yawned loudly and added: “They’ve just got to live by their own minds, not listening to anybody, and so they get what’s coming to them.”

The moon was already sailing in the sky above the yard; it raced quickly in one direction, while the clouds below it raced in the other; the clouds went on their way, but the moon could still be seen above the yard. Matvei Savvich prayed facing the church and,
wishing everyone good night, lay down on the ground by the cart. Kuzka also said a prayer, lay down in the cart, and covered himself with his frock coat. To be more comfortable, he made a depression in the straw and curled up so that his elbows touched his knees. From the yard Dyudya could be seen lighting a candle in his downstairs r
oom, putting his spectacles on, and standing in the corner with a book. He spent a long time reading and bowing.

The travelers fell asleep. Afanasyevna and Sofya went over to the cart and began looking at Kuzka.

“The little orphan’s asleep,” the old woman said. “So thin, so skinny, nothing but bones. He’s got no mother, there’s nobody to feed him properly.”

“My Grishutka must be a couple of years older,” said Sofya. “He lives at the factory, like a prisoner, without a mother. The master probably beats him. As I looked at this little lad today and remembered my Grishutka, my heart just bled.”

A minute passed in silence.

“He surely doesn’t remember his mother,” said the old woman.

“How could he!”

Big tears poured from Sofya’s eyes.

“All curled up …” she said, sobbing and laughing with tenderness and pity. “My poor orphan.”

Kuzka gave a start and opened his eyes. He saw before him an ugly, wrinkled, tear-stained face, beside it another face, an old woman’s, toothless, with a sharp chin and hooked nose, and above them the fathomless sky with racing clouds and the moon, and he cried out in terror. Sofya also cried out; an echo answered both of them, and anxiety passed through the stuffy air; the watchman rapped at the neighbor’s, a dog barked. Matvei Savvich murmured something in his sleep and rolled over on his other side.

Late in the evening, when Dyudya and the old woman and the neighbor’s watchman were already asleep, Sofya went out the gate and sat on a bench. She needed air, and her head ached from weeping. The street was wide and long; about two miles to the right, the same to the left, and no end to be seen. The moon had left the yard and stood behind the church. One side of the street was flooded with moonlight, and the other was black with shadow; the long shadows of poplars and birdhouses stretched across the whole street, and the shadow of the church, black and frightening, lay broadly, having swallowed
up Dyudya’s gate and half the house.
The place was deserted and quiet. From time to time, barely audible music came from the end of the street; it must have been Alyoshka playing his accordion.

Someone was walking in the shadow by the church fence, and it was impossible to make out whether it was a man, or a cow, or perhaps no one at all, but only a big bird rustling in the trees. But then a figure emerged from the shadow, stopped and said something in a man’s voice, then vanished into the lane by the church. A while later another figure appeared about five yards from the gate; it walked from the church straight towards the gate and, seeing Sofya on the bench, stopped.

“Varvara, is that you?” asked Sofya.

“And what if it is?”

It was Varvara. She stood for a moment, then came up to the bench and sat down.

“Where have you been?” asked Sofya.

Varvara did not answer.

“Watch out that you don’t come to grief, girl, with your wanderings,” said Sofya. “Did you hear how Mashenka got it with feet and reins? You may get yourself the same thing.”

“Who cares.”

Varvara laughed into her kerchief and said in a whisper:

“I’ve just been with the priest’s son.”

“You’re babbling.”

“By God.”

“It’s a sin!” Sofya whispered.

“Who cares … What’s there to be sorry about? If it’s a sin, it’s a sin, but I’d rather be struck down by lightning than live such a life. I’m young, healthy, and my husband’s hunchbacked, hateful, harsh, worse than that cursed Dyudya. Before I got married, I never had enough to eat, I went barefoot, so I left that wicked lot, got tempted by Alyoshka’s riches, and got snared like a fish in a net, and it would be easier for me to sleep with a viper than with that mangy Alyoshka. And your life? I don’t even want to look at it. Your Fyodor drove you away from the factory back to his f
ather and found himself another woman; they took your boy from you and put him into bondage. You work like a horse and never hear a kind word. It’s better to pine away unmarried all your life, better to take fifty kopecks from the priest’s son, to beg for alms, better to go head first down a well …”

“It’s a sin,” Sofya whispered again.

“Who cares.”

Somewhere behind the church the same three voices—two tenors and a bass—started up a melancholy song again. And again it was impossible to make out the words.

“Night owls …” laughed Varvara.

And she began to tell in a whisper how she spends nights out with the priest’s son, and what he says to her, and what sorts of friends he has, and how she had spent time with traveling officials and merchants. The melancholy song called up a free life, Sofya began to laugh, she felt it was sinful, and scary, and sweet to listen, and she was envious and sorry that she had not sinned herself when she was young and beautiful …

In the old cemetery church it struck midnight.

“Time for bed,” said Sofya, getting up, “or else Dyudya will catch us out.”

The two women slowly went into the yard.

“I left and didn’t hear what he told afterwards about Mashenka,” said Varvara, making up a bed under the window.

“She died in jail, he says. Poisoned her husband.”

Varvara lay down beside Sofya, thought a little, and said softly:

“I could do in my Alyoshka and not regret it.”

“You’re babbling, God help you.”

As Sofya was falling asleep, Varvara pressed herself to her and whispered in her ear:

“Let’s do in Dyudya and Alyoshka!”

Sofya gave a start but said nothing, then opened her eyes and gazed at the sky for a long time without blinking.

“People would find out,” she said.

“No, they wouldn’t. Dyudya’s old already, it’s time he died, and they’ll say Alyoshka died of drink.”

“It’s scary … God would kill us.”

“Who cares …”

The two women lay awake and thought silently.

“It’s cold,” said Sofya, beginning to tremble all over. “Must be nearly morning … Are you asleep?”

“No … Don’t listen to me, dear heart,” Varvara whispered. “I’m bitter against the cursed lot of them, and don’t know what I’m saying myself. Sleep, dawn’s already coming … Sleep …”

They both fell silent, calmed down, and soon went to sleep.

The old woman was the first to wake up. She roused Sofya, and they went to the shed to milk the cows. Hunchbacked Alyoshka came, thoroughly drunk, without his accordion; his chest and knees were covered with dust and straw—he must have fallen down on his way. Staggering, he went to the shed and, without undressing, dropped into a sledge and at once began to snore. When the rising sun flamed brightly on the crosses of the church and then on the windows, and the shadows of the trees and the well-sweep stretched across the yard over the dewy grass, Matvei Savvich jumped up and started bustling about
.

“Kuzka, get up!” he cried. “It’s time to harness the cart! Look lively!”

The morning turmoil began. A young Jewess in a brown dress with ruffles led a horse into the yard for watering. The well-sweep creaked pitifully, the bucket banged … Kuzka, sleepy, sluggish, covered with dew, sat in the cart, lazily putting on his frock coat and listening to the splashing of water from the bucket in the well, and he shuddered from the cold.

“Auntie,” Matvei Savvich shouted to Sofya, “nudge my lad, so he’ll go and harness up!”

And just then Dyudya shouted out the window:

“Sofya, take a kopeck from the Jewess for the watering! No keeping them away, mangy Yids.”

In the street sheep were running up and down, bleating; women shouted at the shepherd, and he played his pipe, cracked his whip, or answered them in a heavy, hoarse bass. Three sheep ran into the yard and, unable to find the gate, poked about at the fence. The noise awakened Varvara, she gathered up her bedding and went to the house.

“You might at least drive the sheep out!” the old woman shouted at her. “A fine lady!”

“What else! I should start working for you Herods!” Varvara growled, going into the house.

They greased the cart and harnessed the horses. Dyudya came out of the house, an abacus in his hands, sat down on the porch, and began counting up how much the traveler owed for the night, the oats, and the watering.

“You’re putting in a lot for oats, grandpa,” said Matvei Savvich.

“If it’s too much, don’t take any, merchant. Nobody’s forcing you.”

When the travelers went to get into the cart and go, they were detained for a minute by one circumstance. Kuzka’s hat had disappeared.

“Where’d you put it, little swine?” Matvei Savvich shouted angrily. “Where is it?”

Kuzka’s face twisted in terror, he rushed around the cart and, not finding it there, ran to the gate, then to the shed. The old woman and Sofya helped him to look.