Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 1

by Leo Tolstoy

  ‘Excuse me, y’r Ex’cency, I think we can understand y’r Ex’cency!’ Epifán replied smiling, as if he quite understood the excellence of the master’s joke.

  That smile and that reply completely disillusioned Nekhlyúdov of his hope of touching Epifán and bringing him to the right path by persuasion. Moreover he felt all the time as if it were indecorous for him, who had authority, to persuade his own serf, as if all that he had said was not at all what he ought to have said. He sadly bowed his head and went into the passage. The old woman was sitting on the threshold groaning aloud, as if to show her sympathy with the master’s words which she had overheard.

  ‘Here is something to buy yourself bread with,’ Nekhlyúdov whispered, giving her a ruble note. ‘But buy it yourself, and don’t give it to Epifán or he will drink it.’

  The old woman took hold of the door-post with her bony hand, trying to rise and thank the master, but her head began shaking, and Nekhlyúdov had already crossed the road before she had got to her feet.

  Chapter IX

  ‘WHITE DAVID wants grain and posts,’ was the next entry in Nekhlyúdov’s note-book.

  After passing several homesteads, he met his steward, Jacob Alpátych, at the corner of the lane. The latter having seen his master in the distance had removed his oilskin cap, produced a foulard kerchief, and begun wiping his fat red face.

  ‘Put on your cap, Jacob! Put it on I tell you.…’

  ‘Where has your Excellency been pleased to go?’ said Jacob, holding up his cap to shade the sun, but not putting it on.

  ‘I’ve been to see Wiseman. Now tell me, why has he become like that?’ asked the master continuing on his way.

  ‘Like what, your Excellency?’ replied the steward, who followed his master at a respectful distance and having put on his cap was smoothing his moustache.

  ‘What indeed! He is a perfect scamp – lazy, a thief, a liar, ill-treats his mother, and seems to be such a confirmed good-for-nothing that there is no reforming him.’

  ‘I don’t know, your Excellency, why he has displeased you so.…’

  ‘And his wife too,’ his master interrupted him, ‘seems to be a horrid creature. The mother is dressed worse than any beggar and has nothing to eat, but the wife is all dressed up, and so is he. I don’t at all know what to do with him.’

  Jacob grew visibly confused when Nekhlyúdov mentioned Epifán’s wife.

  ‘Well if he has let himself go like that,’ he began, ‘we ought to take measures. It’s true he’s poor, like all one-man householders, but unlike some others he does keep himself in hand a bit. He’s intelligent, can read and write, and seems pretty honest. He is always sent round to collect the poll-tax, and he has been village elder for three years while I have been here, and nothing wrong has been noticed. Three years ago it pleased your guardian to dismiss him, but he was all right also when he worked on the estate. Only he has taken rather to drink, having lived at the Post Station in town, so measures should be taken against that. When he misbehaved in the past we used to threaten him with a flogging and he’d come to his senses, and it was good for him and there was peace in the family; but as you don’t approve of such measures, I really don’t know what we are to do with him. I know he has let himself go pretty badly. He can’t be sent as a soldier because he has lost two teeth, as you will have noticed. He knocked them out purposely a long time ago.3 But he is not the only one, if I may take the liberty of reporting to your Excellence, who has got quite out of hand.’

  ‘Let that matter alone, Jacob!’ said Nekhlyúdov with a slight smile. ‘We have discussed it over and over again. You know what I think about it, and say what you will I shall still not change my mind.…’4

  ‘Of course your Excellence knows best,’ said Jacob, shrugging his shoulders and gazing at his master from behind as if what he saw boded no good. ‘As to the old woman, you are pleased to trouble about her needlessly,’ he continued. ‘It’s true she brought up her fatherless children, and raised Epifán and married him off and all that; but among the peasants it is the custom, when a mother or father hands over the homestead to a son, that the son and his wife become the masters and the old woman has to earn her bread as best she can. Of course they have no delicate feelings, but it is the usual way among the peasants. So I make bold to say that the old woman has troubled you needlessly. She is an intelligent woman and a good housekeeper, but why trouble the master about every trifle? Well, she had a dispute with her daughter-in-law, and the daughter-in-law may have pushed her – those are women’s affairs! They might have made it up again instead of troubling you. And besides, you take it all too much to heart,’ added the steward, looking with fatherly tenderness and condescension at his master who was walking silently up the street before him with long strides.

  ‘Are you going home, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘No, to see White David, or the Goat … how is he called?’

  ‘Now that’s another sluggard, let me tell you. The whole Goat family are like that. Whatever you may do with him nothing helps. I drove over the peasant fields yesterday, and he has not even sown his buckwheat. What is one to do with such people? If only the old man at least taught his son, but he is just such a sluggard himself – whether it’s for himself or for the owner he always bungles it.… Both your guardian and I – what have we not done to them? He’s been sent to the police-station, and been flogged at home – which is what you are pleased to disapprove of.…’

  ‘Who? Surely not the old man?’

  ‘The old man, sir. Your guardian has many a time had him flogged before the whole Commune. But would your Excellence believe it, it had no effect! He would give himself a shake, go home, and behave just the same. And I must admit that David is a quiet peasant and not stupid; he doesn’t smoke or drink, that is,’ Jacob explained, ‘but yet you see he’s worse than some drunkards. The only thing would be to conscript him, or exile him – nothing else can be done. The whole Goat family are like that. Matryúshka, who lives in that hovel, is of the same family and is a damned sluggard too. But your Excellence does not require me?’ added the steward, noticing that his master was not listening to him.

  ‘No, you may go,’ replied Nekhlyúdov absent-mindedly, and went on towards White David’s hut.

  David’s hut stood crooked and solitary at the end of the village. It had no yard, no kiln, and no barn; only some dirty cattle sheds clung to one side of it while on the other brushwood and beams, prepared for outbuildings, lay all in a heap. Tall green grass was growing where there had once been a yard. There was not a living being near the hut, except a pig that lay grunting in a puddle by the threshold.

  Nekhlyúdov knocked at a broken window, but as no one answered he went into the entry and shouted, ‘Hullo there!’ but got no reply to this either. He entered the passage, looked into the empty cattle stalls, and entered the open door of the hut. An old red cock and two hens, jerking their crops and clattering with their claws, were strutting about the floor and benches. Seeing a man they spread their wings and, cackling desperately, flew against the walls, one of them jumping up on the oven. The hut, which was not quite fourteen-foot square, was almost filled by the brick oven with its broken chimney, a weaving loom that had not been put away though it was summer, and a blackened table with a warped and cracked top.

  Though it was dry outside there was still a dirty puddle inside near the threshold, which had been formed by a leak in the roof and ceiling during previous rain. There were no beds. It was difficult to believe that the place was inhabited – there was such an appearance of absolute neglect and disorder both within the hut and outside. Yet White David and his whole family lived there, and at that very moment, though it was a hot June day, David, wrapped head and all in his sheepskin, lay huddled in a corner on the top of the oven fast asleep. The frightened hen that had alighted there and had not yet quieted down was walking over his back without waking him.

  Not seeing anyone in the hut Nekhlyúdov was about to leave, when a l
ong-drawn slobbering sigh betrayed the sleeper’s presence.

  ‘Hullo, who’s there?’ shouted the master.

  Another long-drawn sigh came from the oven.

  ‘Who is there? Come here!’

  Another sigh, a moan, and a loud yawn replied to the master’s call.

  ‘Well, what are you about?’

  Something moved slowly on the oven. The skirt of a worn-out sheepskin coat appeared, one big foot in a tattered bast shoe came down, and then another, and finally the whole of White David appeared, sitting on the oven and lazily and discontentedly rubbing his eyes with his big fist. Slowly bending his head he looked round the hut with a yawn, and, seeing his master, began to move a little quicker than before, but still so slowly that Nekhlyúdov had time to walk some three times from the puddle to the loom and back while David was getting down from the oven.

  White David was really white: his hair, body, and face were all quite white. He was tall and very stout, but stout as peasants are – that is, his whole body was stout and not only his stomach – but it was a flabby and unhealthy stoutness. His rather comely face, with pale blue quiet eyes and broad, full beard, bore the impress of ill-health: there was no vestige of sunburn or colour in it; it was all of a pale yellowish tint with a purple shadow under the eyes, and seemed swollen and bloated. His hands were puffy and yellow, like those of people suffering from dropsy, and were covered with fine white hair. He was so drowsy that he could hardly open his eyes or stand without staggering and yawning.

  ‘How is it you are not ashamed,’ Nekhlyúdov began, ‘to sleep in broad daylight when you ought to be building your out-houses and when you are short of grain.…’

  As soon as David came to his senses and began to realize that his master was standing before him, he folded his hands below his stomach, hung his head, inclining it a little on one side, and did not stir a limb. He was silent; but the expression of his face and the pose of his whole body said: ‘I know, I know, it’s not the first time I have heard this. Well, beat me if you must. I’ll endure it.’ He seemed to wish that his master would stop speaking and be quick and beat him, even beat him painfully on his plump cheeks, if having done so he would but leave him in peace. Noticing that David did not understand him, Nekhlyúdov tried by various questions to rouse the peasant from his submissively patient taciturnity.

  ‘Why did you ask me for timber, and then leave it lying about here a whole month, and that too at the time when you have most leisure, eh?’

  David remained persistently silent and did not stir.

  ‘Come now, answer me!’

  David muttered something and blinked his white eyelashes.

  ‘You know one has to work, friend. What would there be without work? You see you have no grain now, and why? Because your land was badly ploughed, not harrowed, and sown too late – and all from laziness. You ask me for grain: well suppose I give you some, since you must not starve – but that sort of thing won’t do. Whose grain am I to give you? Whose do you think? Come, answer me! Whose grain am I to give you?’ Nekhlyúdov insisted.

  ‘The proprietor’s,’ muttered David, raising his eyes timidly and questioningly.

  ‘But where does the proprietor’s grain come from? Think of it. Who ploughed and harrowed the land? Who sowed and reaped it? The peasants. Is that not so? Then you see if I am to give away the grain, I ought to give more to those who worked most to produce it, and you have worked least. They complain about your work on the estate too. You work least, but ask for your master’s grain more than anyone. Why should I give it to you and not to others? You know if everybody lay on their backs as you do, we should all have starved long ago. One must work, friend. This sort of thing is wrong. Do you hear me, David?’

  ‘I hear, sir,’ muttered David slowly through his teeth.

  Chapter X

  JUST then the head of a peasant woman carrying linen hung on a wooden yoke was seen through the window, and a moment later David’s mother, a tall, very fresh-looking and active woman of about fifty, entered the hut. Her pock-marked and wrinkled face was not handsome, but her straight firm nose, her thin compressed lips and keen grey eyes, expressed intelligence and energy. The squareness of her shoulders and flatness of her bosom, the leanness of her arms and the solid muscles of her dark bare legs, bore witness to the fact that she had long since ceased to be a woman and had become simply a labourer. She hurried into the hut, closed the door, pulled down her skirt, and looked angrily at her son. Nekhlyúdov was about to speak to her, but she turned her back on him and began crossing herself before a grimy icon that was visible behind the loom. Having finished doing this, she adjusted the dirty checked kerchief she wore on her head and bowed low to her master.

  ‘A pleasant Lord’s day to your Excellency,’ she said. ‘God bless you, our father.…’

  When David saw his mother he evidently became confused, and stooped and hung his head still more.

  ‘Thanks, Arína,’ replied Nekhlyúdov. ‘I’ve just been speaking to your son about your household.’

  ‘Arína the barge-hauler’, as the peasants had called her since she was a girl, rested her chin on her right fist, supporting that elbow on the palm of her left hand, and without waiting for the master to finish began to speak in such a shrill and ringing tone that her voice filled the whole hut, and from outside it might have seemed as if several women were talking together.

  ‘What’s the use of talking to him, dear sir? He can’t even speak like a man. There he stands, the lout!’ she continued, contemptuously wagging her head at David’s pathetic massive figure. ‘What’s my household, sir, your Excellency? We’re paupers. You’ve got none worse than us in the whole village! We can’t do anything for ourselves or for the estate – it’s a disgrace! And it’s him that’s brought us to it. I bore, fed, and reared him, and could scarcely wait for him to grow up, and now this is what we’ve got at last! He eats the bread, but we get no more work out of him than from that rotten log. All he does is to lie on the oven, or stand like that and scratch his empty pate,’ she went on, mimicking him. ‘If only you would frighten him a bit, sir! I ask it myself – punish him for God’s sake, or send him to the army. There’s no other way out. I can do nothing with him – that’s how it is.’

  ‘Now isn’t it a sin for you to bring your mother to this, David?’ said Nekhlyúdov reproachfully, turning to the peasant.

  David did not budge.

  ‘If he were sickly now,’ Arína continued with the same animated gestures, ‘but look at him, he’s as big as the mill chimney! You would think there’d be enough of him to do some work, the lubberly lout; but no, he’s taking a rest on the oven, the sluggard. And if he does start on anything my eyes grow tired of looking at him before he’s had time to get up, turn round, and get anything done!’ she added in a drawling tone, turning her square shoulders awkwardly from side to side. ‘To-day, for instance, my old man himself went to fetch brushwood from the forest and told him to dig holes for the posts: but not he, didn’t so much as take the spade in his hands.…’ She paused for a moment. ‘He’s done for me, lone woman that I am!’ she suddenly shrieked, flourishing her arms and going up to her son with a threatening gesture. ‘You fat lazy mug! God forgive me.…’

  She turned contemptuously and yet with desperation from him, spat, and with tears in her eyes again addressed her master with the same animation, still waving her arms. ‘I’m all alone, benefactor! My old man is ill, old, and there’s not much good in him either, and I have always to do everything alone. It’s enough to crush a stone. To die would be better, that would end it. He has worn me out, the wretch! Really, father, I’m at the end of my tether! My daughter-in-law died of overwork, and so shall I.’

  Chapter XI

  ‘DIED of what?’ Nekhlyúdov asked incredulously.

  ‘From overwork, benefactor, as God is holy, she was used up. We took her from Babúrino the year before last,’ continued Arína, and her angry expression suddenly changed to a sad and tearfu
l one. ‘She was a quiet, fresh-looking young woman, dear sir. She had lived in comfort as a girl at her father’s and had not known want; but when she came to us and knew what our work was – work on the master’s estate and at home and everywhere.… She and I alone to do it. It is nothing to me! I’m used to it. But she was with child, dear sir, and began to suffer pain, and was always working beyond her strength, and she overdid it poor thing. A year ago, during St Peter’s Fast,5 to her misfortune, she bore a son. We had no bread: we had to eat anything, just anything, and there was urgent work to be done – and her milk dried up. It was her first baby, we had no cow, and how can we peasants rear a baby by hand? Well, she was a woman and foolish – that made her grieve still more. And when the baby died she wept and wept for him, lamented and lamented, and there was want and the work had to be done, and things got worse and worse: she was so worn out in the summer that at the Feast of the Intercession6 she herself died. It was he who destroyed her – the beast!’ she repeated, turning with despairing anger to her son. ‘What I wanted to ask of your Excellence …’ she went on after a pause, lowering her voice and bowing.

  ‘What is it?’ Nekhlyúdov asked absent-mindedly, still agitated by her story.

  ‘You see he is still a young man. What work can be expected from me? I’m alive to-day but shall be dead to-morrow. How is he to get on without a wife? He won’t be a worker for you.… Think of something for us. You are as a father to us.’

  ‘You mean you want to get him married? Well, all right.’

  ‘Be merciful, you who are a father and mother to us!’ and on her making a sign to her son, they both dropped on their knees at their master’s feet.