The village. [Translation from the original Russian text by Isabel Hapgood]
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"What terrible quit-rents Doth Death collect from men!"
But there was nothing awful about the spot. He strolled on, even noticing with considerable satisfaction that the cemetery was growing; that many new and excellent mausoleums had made their appearance among those ancient stones in the shapes of coffins on legs, heavy cast-iron plates, and huge rough crosses, already in process of decay, which now filled it. "Died in the year 1819, on November 7, at five o'clock in the morning"—it was painful to read such inscriptions: death was repulsive at dawn of a stormy autumnal day, in that old county town! But alongside it a marble angel gleamed white through the trees, as he stood there with eyes fixed upon the blue sky; and beneath it, on the mirror-smooth black granite, were cut in gold letters the words: "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord." On the iron monument of some Collegiate Assessor, tinted in rainbow hues by foul weather and the hand of time, one could decipher the verses:
"His Tsar he honourably served, His neighbour cordially loved, And was revered of men."
And these verses struck Tikhon Hitch as hypocritical. But in this place even a lie was touching. For— where is truth? Yonder in the bushes lies a human jawbone, neglected, looking as if it were made of dirty wax—all that remains of a man. But is it all?
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Flowers, ribbons, crosses, coffins, and bones in the earth decay—all is death and corruption. But Tikhon Hitch walked on further and read: "Thus it is in the resurrection of the dead; it is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption."—"Our darling son, thy memory will never die in our hearts to all eternity!"
His brow furrowed even more severely; he removed his cap and made the sign of the cross. He was pale, and still weak from his illness. He recalled his childhood—his youth—Kuzma. He walked to the far corner of the cemetery where all his relatives were buried —father, mother, the sister who had died when a little girl. The inscriptions spoke touchingly and peacefully of rest, repose; of tenderness towards fathers, mothers, husbands and wives; of a love which, apparently, does not exist and never will exist on this earth; of that devotion to one another and submission to God, that fervent faith in a future life, that meeting once more in another and blessed land, in which one believes only here; and of that equality which death alone confers—of those moments when folk bestow the last kiss upon the lips of the dead beggar as on a brother's, compare him with kings and prelates, say over him the loftiest and most solemn words.
And there in a distant corner of the enclosure, among bushes of elder which dozed in the parching heat—there where formerly had been graves, but now were only mounds and hollows, overgrown with grass and white flowers 1 —Tikhon Hitch saw a fresh little grave, the grave of a child, and on the cross a couplet:
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"Softly, leaves: do not rustle, Do not wake my Kostya dear."
And as he recalled his own child, crushed in its sleep by the dumb cook, he began to blink back the welling tears.
VI
NO one ever drove on the highway which ran past the cemetery and lost itself among "he rolling fields. Now and then some light-footed tramp straggled along it—some young fellow in a faded pink shirt and drawers of parti-coloured patches. But people drove on the country road alongside. Along that country road drove Tikhon Hitch also. His first encounter was with a dilapidated public carriage which approached at racing speed—provincial cabmen drive wildly!—and in which sat a huntsman, an official of the bank. At his feet lay a spotted setter dog; on his knees rested a gun in its cover; his legs were encased in tall wading-boots, though there had never been any marshes in the county. Next, diving across the dusty hummocks, came a young postman mounted on a bicycle of an ancient model, with an enormous front wheel and a tiny rear one. He frightened the horse, and Tikhon Hitch gritted his teeth with rage; the rascal ought to be degraded to the ranks of the
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workingmen! The mid-day sun scorched; a hot breeze was blowing; the cloudless sky became slate-coloured. And, as he meditated upon the brevity and senselessness of life, Tikhon Hitch turned away with ever-increasing irritation from the dust which whirled along the road, and with ever-increasing anxiety cast sidelong glances at the spindling, prematurely drying stalks of the grain.
Throngs of pilgrims armed with long staffs, tortured by fatigue and the heat, tramped on at a peaceful gait. They made low, meek reverences to Tikhon Hitch; but their obeisances struck him as shams. "Those fellows meek! I'll bet they fight among themselves like cats and dogs at their halting-places!" he muttered. Drunken peasants returning from the Fair—redheaded, black-haired, flaxen-haired, but all alike hideous and tattered, and with about ten crowded into each cart—raised clouds of dust as they whipped up their wretched little horses. As he overtook their rattling carts Tikhon Hitch shook his head. "Ugh, you roving beggars, may the devil fly away with you."
One of them, in a print shirt torn to ribbons, lay fast asleep and was bumped about like a corpse, stretched supine with his head thrown back, his beard blood-stained, his nose swollen and clotted with dried blood. Another stumbled as he ran after his cap, which had been blown off by the wind; and Tikhon Hitch, with malicious delight, lashed him with his whip. Then came a cart filled with sieves, shovels, and peasant women. They sat with their backs to the horses, rattling and bumping about. One had a new child's
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cap on her head, worn wrong side before; another was singing with her mouth full of bread; a third flourished her arms and, laughing, shouted after Tikhon Hitch: "Hey there, uncle, you've lost your linch-pin!" And Tikhon Hitch reined in his horse, let them catch up with him, and lashed this woman, too, with his whip.
Beyond the toll-gate, where the highway turned off to one side, and where the rattling peasant carts fell to the rear, and silence, the wide space and sultriness of the steppe reigned, he felt once more that, in spite of everything, the chief item in the world was Business. He thought with supreme scorn of the landed proprietors, putting on swagger at the Fair—they, with their wretched troika teams! Ekh, and the poverty on every side! The peasants were utterly ruined, with not a scrap left on their impoverished little farms scattered about the country. A master .was needed here—a master!
"But you're not the right master, my good fellow!" he announced to himself with a spiteful grin. "You're a poor, crazy, landless stick yourself!"
Midway of his journey lay Rovnoe, a large village in which the inhabitants were freeholders. A scorching breeze coursed through the deserted streets and across the heat-singed bushes. Fowls were ruffling up their feathers and burying themselves in the ashes at the thresholds. A church of crude hue reared itself starkly, harshly on the bare common. Beyond the church a tiny clayey pond gleamed in the sunlight below a dam of manure, a sheet of thick yellow water in
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which stood a herd of cows, incessantly discharging according to the demands of nature; and there a naked peasant was soaping his head. He, too, had waded into the water up to his waist; on his breast glistened his brass baptismal cross; his neck and face were black with sunburn, his body strikingly white, pallid. - "Unbridle my horse for me," said Tikhon Hitch, driving into the pond, which reeked of the cattle.
The peasant tossed his fragment of blue-marbled soap on the shore, black with cow-dung, and, his head all grey, with a modest gesture as though to cover himself, he made haste to comply with the command. The mare bent greedily to the water, but it was so warm and repulsive that she raised her muzzle and turned away. Whistling to her, Tikhon Hitch waved his cap:
"Well, nice water you have! Do you drink it?"
"Well, then, and is yours sugar-water, I wonder?" retorted the peasant, amiably and gaily. "We've been drinking it these thousand years! But what's water? —'tis bread we're lacking."
And Tikhon Hitch was forced to hold his tongue; for in Durnovka the water was no better, and there was no bread there either. What was more, there would be none.
Beyond Rovnoe the road ran again through fields of rye—but what fields! The grain was spindling, weak, almost wholly lacking in ears, and smothered in corn-flowers. And near Vyselki, not far from Durnovka, clouds of rooks perched on the gnarled, hollow willow-trees with their silvery beaks wide open.
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Nothing was left of Vyselki that day save its name— the rest was only black skeletons of cottages in the midst of rubbish! The rubbish was smoking, with a milky-bluish emanation; there was a rank odour of burning. And the thought of a conflagration from lightning transfixed Tikhon Hitch. "Calamity!" he said to himself, turning paler Nothing he owned was insured: everything might be reduced to ashes in an hour.
VII
FROM that Fast of St. Peter, that memorable trip to the Fair, Tikhon Hitch began to drink frequently—not to the point of downright drunkenness, but to the stage at which his face became passably red. This did not, however, interfere in the slightest degree with his business, and, according to his own account, it did not interfere with his health. "Vodka polishes the blood," he was wont to remark; and, truth to tell, to all appearances he became more robust than ever. Not infrequently now he called his life that of a galley-slave—the hangman's noose—a gilded cage. But he strode along his pathway with ever-increasing confidence, paying no attention to the condition of the weather or the road. Commonplace, uneventful days ruled supreme in his house, and several years passed in such monotonous fashion that everything merged together into one long working-day. But certain new, vast events which no one had
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looked for came to pass—the war with Japan and the revolution.
The rumours concerning the war began, of course, with bragging. "The kazaks will soon flay his yellow skin off him, brother!" But it smouldered so very short a time, this pale image of former boasts! A different sort of talk speedily made itself heard.
"We have more land than we can manage!" said Tikhon Hitch, in the stern tone of an expert—probably for the first time in the whole course of his life not referring to his own land in Durnovka, but to the whole expanse of Russia. " 'Tis not war, sir, but downright madness!"
Another thing made itself felt, the sort of thing which has prevailed from time immemorial—the inclination to take the winning side. And the news about the frightful defeats of the Russian army excited his enthusiasm: "Ukh, that's fine. Curse them, the brutes!" He waxed enthusiastic also over the conquests of the revolution, over the assassinations: "That Minister got a smashing blow!" said Tikhon Hitch occasionally, in the fire of his ecstasy. "He got such a good one that not even his ashes were left!"
But his uneasiness increased, too. As soon as any discussion connected with the land came up, his wrath awoke. Tis all the work of the Jews! Of the Jews, and of those frowzy long-haired fellows, the students!" What irritated Tikhon Hitch worst of all was, that the son of the deacon in Ulianovka, a student in the Theological Seminary who was hanging around without work and living on his father, called himself a Social-
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Democrat. And the whole situation was incomprehensible. Everybody was talking about the revolution, the Revolution, while round about everything was going on the same as ever, in the ordinary everyday fashion: the sun shone, the rye blossomed in the fields, the carts wended their way to the station. The populace were incomprehensible in their taciturnity, in the evasiveness of their talk.
"They're an underhand lot, the populace! They fairly scare one with their slyness!" said Tikhon Hitch. And, forgetting the Jews, he added: "Let us assume that not all that music is craft. Changing the government and evening up the shares of land—why, an infant could understand that, sir. And, naturally, 'tis perfectly clear to whom they will pay court—that populace, sir. But, of course, they hold their tongues. And, of course, we must watch, and try to meet their humour, so that they may go on holding their tongues. We must put a spoke in their wheel! If you don't, look out for yourself: they'll scent success, they'll get wind of the fact that they've got the breeching under their tail—and they'll smash things to smithereens, sir!" -
When he read or heard that land was to be taken from only such as possessed more than five hundred desyatini 1 he himself became an "agitator." He even entered into disputes with the Durnovka people. This is the sort of thing that would happen:—
A peasant stood alongside Tikhon Hitch's shop; the
1 A desyatina is a unit of land measurement equalling 2.07 acres.— trans.
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man had bought vodka at the railway station, dried salt fish and cracknels at the shop, and had doffed his cap; but he prolonged his enjoyment, and said:
"No, Tikhon Hitch, 'tis no use your explaining. It can be taken, at a just price. But not the way you say —that's no good."
An odour arose from the pine boards piled up near the granary, opposite the yard. The dried fish and the linden bast on which the cracknels were strung had an irritating smell. The hot locomotive of the freight-train could be heard hissing and getting up steam beyond the trees, behind the buildings of the railway station. Tikhon Hitch stood bare-headed beside his shop, screwing up his eyes and smiling slily. Smilingly he made reply:
"Bosh! But what if he is not a master, but a tramp?"
"Who? The noble owner, you mean?"
"No—a low-born man."
"Well, that's a different matter. 'Tis no sin to take it from such a man, with all his innards to boot!"
"Well now, that's exactly the point!"
But another rumour reached them: the land would be taken from those who owned less than five hundred desyatini! And immediately his soul was assailed by preoccupation, suspicion, irritability. Everything that was done in the house began to seem abhorrent.
Egorka, the assistant, brought flour-sacks out of the shop and began to shake them. And the man's head reminded him of the head of the town fool, "Duck-Headed Matty." The crown of his head ran up to a
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point, his hair was harsh and thick—"Now, why is it that fools have such thick hair?"—his forehead was sunken, his face resembled an oblique egg, he had protruding eyes, and his eyelids, with their calf-like lashes, seemed drawn tightly over them; it looked as if there were not enough skin—if he were to close his eyes, his mouth would fly open of necessity, and if he closed his mouth, he would be compelled to open his eyes very wide. And Tikhon Hitch shouted spitefully: "Babbler! Blockhead! What are you shaking your head at me for?"
The cook brought out a smallish box, opened it, placed it upside down on the ground, and began to thump the bottom with her fist. And, understanding what that meant, Tikhon Hitch slowly shook his head: "Akh, you housewife, curse you! You're knocking out the cockroaches?"
'There's a regular cloud of them in there!" replied the cook gaily. "When I peeped in—Lord, what a sight!"
And, gritting his teeth, Tikhon Hitch walked out to the highway and gazed long at the rolling plain, in the direction of Durnovka.
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VIII
HIS living-rooms, the kitchen, the shop, and the granary, where formerly his liquor-trade had been carried on, constituted a single mass under one iron roof. On three sides the straw-thatched sheds of the cattle-yard were closely connected with it, and a pleasing quadrangle was thus obtained. The porch and all the windows faced the south. But the view was cut off by the grain-sheds, which stood opposite the windows and across the road. To the right was the railway station, to the left the highway. Beyond the highway was a small grove of birches. And when Tikhon Hitch felt out of sorts, he went out on the highway. It ran southward in a white winding ribbon from hillock to hillock, ever following the fields in their declivities and rising again toward the horizon from the far-away watch-tower, where the railway, coming from the south-east, intersected it. And if any one of the Durnovka peasants chanced to be driving to Ulianovka—one of the more energetic and clever, that is, such as Yakoff, whom every one called Yakoff Mikititch 1 because he was greedy, and held
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br /> 1 When a man or woman begins to get on in the world his admiring neighbours signalize their appreciation by adding to the Christian name the patronymic, as if the clever one were of gentle (noble) birth. In this story, Tikhon soon receives the public acknowledgment of success, having begun as plain "Tikhon." Peasant-fashion, "Nikititch" was transmuted into "Mikititch."—TRANS.
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fast to his little store of grain a second year, and owned three excellent horses—Tikhon Hitch stopped him.
"You might buy yourself a cheap little cap with a visor, at least!" he shouted to YakofF, with a grin.
YakofT, in a peakless cap, hemp-crash shirt, and trousers of heavy striped linen, was sitting barefoot on the side-rail of his springless cart.
" 'Morning, Tikhon Hitch," he said, staidly.
" 'Morning! I tell you, 'tis time you sacrificed your round cap for a jackdaw's nest!"
Yakoff, grinning shrewdly earthwards, shook his head.
"That—how should it be expressed?—would not be a bad idea. But, you see, my capital, so to speak, will not permit."
"Oh, stop your babbling. We know all about you Kazan orphans! 1 You've married off your girl, and got a wife for your lad, and you have plenty of money. What more is there left for you to want from the Lord God?"