"So, according to you, the best way for a man to live is like an arrant fool?" inquired Tikhon Hitch with a sneer.
And Kuzma joyfully snapped up his words: "Well, that's right, that's the idea! There's nothing in the whole world so beggar-bare as we are, and on the other hand there's nobody more insolent on the ground of that same nakedness. What's the vicious way to insult a person? Accuse 'em of poverty! Say: 'You devil! You haven't a morsel to eat.' Here's an illustration: Deniska—well, I mean the son of Syery, he's a cobbler—said to me the other day—" '
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"Wait a minute," interrupted Tikhon Hitch. "How's Syery himself getting on?"
"Deniska says he's 'perishing with hunger.' "
"A good-for-nothing peasant!" said Tikhon Hitch with conviction. "Don't sing any of your songs about him to me."
"I'm not singing!" retorted Kuzma angrily. "But I ought to do it. For his name is Krasoff. However, that's another story. You'd better listen to what I have to say about Deniska. Well, he told me this: 'Sometimes, in a famine year, we foremen would go to the neighbourhood of the cemetery in the Black Suburb; and there those public women were—regular troops of them. And they were hungry, the lean hags, extremely hungry! If you gave one of them half a pound of bread for her work she'd devour it to the last crumb, there under you. It was downright ridiculous!' Take note," cried Kuzma sternly, pausing: "It was downright ridiculous'!"
"Oh, stop it, for Christ's sake!" Tikhon Hitch interrupted again. "Give me a chance to say a word about business!"
Kuzma stopped short. "Well, talk away," said he. "Only, what are you going to say? Tell him 'You ought to do thus and so'? Not a bit of it! If you give him money—that's the end of it. Just think it over: they have no fuel, they have nothing to eat, nothing to pay for a funeral. That means, 'tis your most sacred duty to give them some money—well, and something more to boot: a few potatoes, a wagon-load
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or two of straw. And hire the Bride. Send her here as my cook."
And immediately Tikhon Hitch felt as though a stone had been rolled off his breast. He hastily drew out his purse, plucked out a ten-ruble banknote, joyfully assented also to all the other suggestions. And suddenly he asked once more, in a rapid distressed voice: "But didn't she poison him?"
Kuzma merely shrugged his shoulders by way of reply.
Whether she had poisoned him or not, it was a terrible matter to think about. And Tikhon Hitch went home as soon as it was light, through the chill, misty morning, when the odour of damp threshing-floors and smoke still hung in the air, while the cocks were crowing sleepily in the haze-wrapped village, and the dogs lay sleeping on the porches, and the old faded-yellow turkey still snoozed roosting on the bough of an apple tree half stripped of its discoloured dead autumn leaves, by the side of a house. In the fields nothing could be seen at a distance of two paces, thanks to the dense white fog driven before the wind. Tikhon Hitch felt no desire to sleep, but he did feel exhausted, and as usual whipped up his horse, a large brown mare with her tail tied up; she was soaked with the moisture and appeared leaner, more dandified, and blacker because of it. He turned his head away from the wind and raised the cold wet collar of his overcoat on the right side, all glistening like silver under tiny pearls of rain which covered it with a thick veil. He ob-
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served, through the cold little drops which hung on his eyelashes, how the sticky black loam was churned up in ever-increasing density by his swiftly-revolving wheels, and how clods of mud, spurting high in a regular fountain, hung in the air and did not disperse; how they already began to adhere to his boots and knees. And he darted a glance at the heaving haunches of his horse; at her ears laid flat back against her head and darkened by the rain. And when, at last, his face streaked with mud, he dashed up to his own house, the first thing that met his eyes was YakofF's horse at the hitching-bar. Hastily knotting the reins on the fore-carriage, he sprang from the runabout, ran to the open door of the shop—and halted abruptly in terror.
"Blo-ockhead!" Nastasya Petrovna was saying from her place behind the counter, in evident imitation of himself, Tikhon Hitch, but in an ailing, caressing voice, as she bent lower and lower over the money-drawer and fumbled along the jingling coppers, unable, in the darkness, to find coins for change. "Blockhead! Where could you get it any cheaper, at the present time?" And, not finding the change, she straightened up and looked at Yakoff, who stood before her in cap and overcoat, but barefoot. She stared at his slightly elevated face and scraggy beard of indeterminate hue, and added: "But didn't she poison him?"
And Yakoff mumbled in haste: "That's no affair of ours, Petrovna. The devil only knows. It's none of our business. Our business, for example—"
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And Tikhon Hitch's hands shook all day long as that mumbling answer recurred to his mind. Everybody, everybody, thought she had poisoned him!
Fortunately, the secret remained a secret. The Sacrament was administered to Rodka before he died. And the Bride wailed so sincerely as she followed the coffin that it was positively indecent—for, of course, that wailing should not be an expression of the feelings, but the fulfilment of a rite. And little by little Tikhon Hitch's perturbation subsided. But for a long time still he continued to go about more gloomy than a thunder-cloud.
XIV
HE was immersed to the throat in business—as usual—and he had no one to help him. Nas-tasya Petrovna was of very little assistance. Tikhon Hitch never hired any labourers except "summer-workers" who were taken on merely until the cattle were driven home from pasturage, and they were already dispersed. Only the servants by the year remained—the cook, the old watchman nicknamed "Chaff," and Oska, a lad of seventeen who was both lazy and ugly of disposition, "the Tsar of Heaven's dolt"—a most egregious fool. And how much attention the cattle alone demanded! After the necessary sheep were slaughtered and salted down, twenty remained to be cared for over the winter. There were six black boar-pigs in the sty, eternally sullen and dis-
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contented over something or other. In the barns stood three cows, a young bull, and a red calf. In the yard were eleven horses, and in a box-stall stood a grey stallion, a vicious, heavy, full-maned, broad-chested brute—a half-breed, but worth four hundred rubles: his sire had a certificate, and was worth fifteen hundred. And all these required constant and careful oversight. But in his leisure moments Tikhon Hitch was devoured by melancholy and boredom.
The very sight of Nastasya Petrovna irritated him, and he was constantly urging her to go away for a visit with acquaintances in the town. And at last she made her preparations and went. But after she was gone, somehow, he found things more boresome than ever. After seeing her off, Tikhon Hitch wandered aimlessly over the fields. Along the highway, gun over shoulder, came the chief of the post-office at Ulia-novka, Sakharoff, famed because of his passion for ordering by letter free price-lists—catalogues of guns, seeds, musical instruments—and because of his manner of treating the peasants, which was so savage that they were wont to say: "When you pass in a letter, your hands and feet fairly shake!" Tikhon Hitch went to the edge of the highway to meet him. Elevating his brows, he gazed at the postmaster and said to himself: "A fool of an old man. He slumps along through the mud like an elephant." But he called out, in friendly tones:
"Been hunting, Anton Markitch?"
The postmaster halted. Tikhon Hitch approached
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and gave him a formal greeting. "Had any luck, or not, I say?" he inquired, mockingly.
"Hunting, indeed! Nothing to hunt!" gloomily replied the postmaster, a huge, round-shouldered man with thick grey hairs protruding from his ears and his nostrils, huge eye-sockets, and deeply sunken eyes— a regular gorilla. "I merely strolled out on account of my haemorrhoids," he said, pronouncing the last word with special care.
"But bear in mind," retorted Tikhon Hitch with unexpected heat, stretching forth his hand with the fingers outs
pread, "bear in mind that our countryside has been completely devastated! Not so much as the name of bird or beast is left, sir!"
"The forests have all been cut down," remarked the postmaster.
"I should think they had been cut down, forsooth! Shaved off close to the earth!" Tikhon Hitch corroborated him. And all of a sudden he added: " '.lis moulting, sir! Everything is moulting, sir!"
Why that word broke loose from his tongue, Tikhon Hitch himself did not know, but he felt that, nevertheless, it had not been uttered without reason. "Everything's moulting," he said to himself, "exactly like the cattle after a long, hard winter." And after he had parted from the postmaster he stood long on the" highway, involuntarily gazing about him. The rain had again begun to patter down; a disagreeable, damp wind was blowing. Darkness was descending over the rolling fields—the fields sown with winter-grain,
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the ploughed fields, the stubble-fields, and the light brown groves of young trees.
The gloomy sky descended lower and lower over the earth. The roads, flooded by the rain, gleamed with a leaden sheen. The post-train from Moscow, which was an hour and a half late every day, was due at the station. Only from the signal-bells, the humming sounds, the rumbling, and the odour of coal and samovars in the yards, did Tikhon Hitch know that it had arrived and departed, for buildings screened the station from view. The odour of samovars now remained, and that aroused a dim longing for comfort, a warm clean room, a family—or the desire to go away somewhere or other.
But this feeling was suddenly replaced by amazement. From the bare Ulianovka forest a man emerged and directed his steps towards the highway—a man in a round-topped hat and only a short roundabout coat. On looking more closely, Tikhon Hitch recognized ZhikharefT, the son of a wealthy land-owner, who had long since become a thoroughgoing drunkard. His heart contracted with pain. "Well, it makes no difference," thought Tikhon Hitch sadly. " Twill be best to chat a bit with him and, in case of need, give him half a ruble. 'Tis not worth while to anger the vagabond: he's a spiteful fellow."
But on this occasion Zhikhareff approached in a decidedly arrogant frame of mind, bristling, but with his head, in its beggar's hat, thrown back, and chewing between his clenched jaws the mouth end of a
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cigarette, long since smoked out and extinct. His face was blue with the cold, puffy with drunkenness; his eyes were red, and his mustache disheveled. He had turned up the collar of his short coat, which was buttoned to the chin, and, with the tips of his fingers thrust into the pockets, he was splashing along in a spirited manner through the mud. His rusty, dilapidated high boots projected below his short trousers, which were tightly strained over his knees.
"A—ah!" he drawled through his teeth, as he chewed his cigarette-butt. "Whom do I see? Tikhon Fom-itch x is looking over his domains!" And he emitted a hoarse laugh.
"Good-day, Lyeff Lvovitch," replied Tikhon Hitch. "Are you waiting for the train?"
"Yes, I am—and I never seem to hit it," returne-d Zhikhareff, shrugging his shoulders. "I've been waiting and waiting, and I got so bored that I've been making the forester a little visit. We've been chattering and smoking. But I've still a whole eternity to wait! Shall we not meet at the station? I believe you are fond of putting something behind your collar yourself?"
"God has been gracious," replied Tikhon Hitch, in the same tone he had used before. "As for drinking— why shouldn't a man drink a bit? Only, he must pick the proper time."
1 Probably a deliberate bit of insolence, as he must have known that the patronymic was "Hitch," not "Fomitch."
—TRANS.
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"Fudge and nonsense!" said Zhikhareff hoarsely, skipping across a puddle with considerable agility, and he directed his course towards the railway station at a leisurely pace.
His aspect was pitiful, and Tikhon Hitch gazed long and with disgust at his inadequate trousers, which hung down like bags from beneath his short coat.
XV
DURING the night the rain poured down again, and it was so dark you could not see your hand before your face. Tikhon Hitch slept badly and gritted his teeth in torture. He had a chill—evidently he had taken cold by standing on the highway in the evening—and the overcoat which he had thrown over himself slid off upon the floor, and immediately he dreamed the same thing he had always dreamed ever since childhood, whenever his back was cold: twilight, narrow alleys, a hurrying throng, firemen galloping along in heavy carts drawn by vicious black truck-horses. Once he woke up, struck a match, looked at the ticking clock—it showed the hour of three —and picked up the overcoat; and, as he fell asleep, the thought of Zhikhareff once more recurred distressingly to his mind. And athwart his slumbers a persistent thought obsessed him: that the shop was being looted and the horses driven away.
Sometimes it seemed to him that he was at the Dan-kova posting-station, that the nocturnal rain was pat-
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tering on the pent-house over the gate, and that the little bell above it was being pulled and was ringing incessantly—thieves had come and had led thither, through the impenetrable darkness, his splendid stallion, and if they were to discover his presence there, they would murder him. And again consciousness of the reality would return to him. But even the reality was alarming. The old watchman was walking about under the windows with his mallet, but it seemed as if he were far, far away; as if the sheep-dog, with choking growls, were rending some one—had rushed off into the fields with tempestuous barking, and suddenly had presented himself again under the windows and was trying to rouse him by standing on one spot and barking violently. Then Tikhon Hitch started to go out and see what was the matter, whether everything were as it should be. But as soon as he reached the point of making up his mind to rise, the heavy slanting rain began to rattle more thickly and densely than ever against the small dark windows, driven by the wind from the dark and boundless fields, and sleep seemed to him the most precious thing in the world. At last a door banged, a stream of damp, cold air entered, and the watchman, Chaff, dragged a bundle of rustling straw into the vestibule. Tikhon Hitch opened his eyes: it was six o'clock, the daylight was dull and wet, the tiny windows were misted over with moisture.
"Make a little fire, my good man, make a little fire," said Tikhon Hitch, his voice still hoarse with sleep. "Then we'll go and feed the cattle, and you can go to your place and sleep."
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The old man, who had grown thin over night and all blue with cold, the dampness, and fatigue, gazed at him with sunken dead eyes. In his wet cap, his short rain-drenched outer coat, and his ragged bast-slippers soaked with mud and water, he growled out something in a dull tone as he got down with difficulty on his knees in front of the stove, stuffing it with the cold, fragrant bundle of straw and blowing on the lighted mass.
"Well, has the cow bitten your tongue off?" shouted Tikhon Hitch hoarsely, as he climbed out of bed and picked up his coat from the floor. "What's that you're muttering there to yourself?"
"I've been walking all night long, and now it's 'give the cattle their fodder/ " mumbled the old man without raising his head, as if talking to himself.
Tikhon Hitch looked askance at him: "I saw the way you walked about!"
He felt worn out; nevertheless he put on his coat and, conquering a petty fit of shivering in his bowels, went out on the porch, which was covered with the footprints of the dogs, into the icy chill of the pale stormy morning. Everywhere the ground was flooded with lead-coloured puddles; all the walls had turned dark with the rain.
"A nice lot; these workmen!" he said to himself angrily.
It was barely drizzling. "But surely it will be pouring again by noon," he said to himself. And he glanced with surprise at shaggy Buyan, who dashed toward him from under the granary. His paws were
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muddy, but he himself was boiling with excitement, his eyes were sparkling, his tongue was fresh and red as fire, his healthy
hot breath fairly exuding the odour of dog. And that after racing about and barking all night long!
He took Buyan by the collar and, slopping through the mud, made the rounds, inspecting all the locks. Then he chained the dog under the granary, returned to his ante-room, and glanced into the roomy kitchen, the cottage proper. The cottage had a hot, repulsive odour; the cook lay fast asleep on a bare box-bench, beneath the holy pictures, her face covered with her apron, her loins displayed, and her legs clad in huge old felt boots, the soles thickly plastered with the dirt from the earthen floors. Oska lay on the sleeping-board face downward, fully dressed, in his short sheepskin coat and his bast-slippers, his head buried in a heavy, soiled pillow.
"That devil has been at the lad!" thought Tikhon Hitch-Avith disgust. "Just look at her—at her nasty debauch all night long—and towards morning, off she goes to the bench!"
And after a survey of the black walls, the tiny windows, the tub filled with dirty dish-water, the huge broad-shouldered stove, he shouted loudly and harshly: "Hey, there! My noble lords! You ought to know when you've had enough!"
While the cook, scratching herself and yawning, heated the stove, boiled some potatoes for the pigs, and got the samovar alight, Oska, minus his cap and stumbling with sleep, dragged bran for the horses and cows.
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Tikhon Hitch himself unlocked the creaking doors of the stable and was the first to enter its warm, dirty comfort, surrounded by sheds, enclosures, and styes. The stable was ankle-deep in manure. Dung, urine, and rain had all run together and formed a thick, light-brown fluid. The horses, already darkening with their velvety winter coats, were roaming about under the pent-houses. The sheep, of a dirty-grey hue, were huddled in an agitated mass in one corner. An old brown gelding dozed in isolation alongside his empty manger, smeared with dough. The drizzling rain fell and fell interminably upon the square farmyard from the unfriendly, stormy sky, but the gelding paid no heed to anything. The pigs moaned and grunted in an ailing, persistent way in their pen.
The village. [Translation from the original Russian text by Isabel Hapgood] Page 6
