by Leo Tolstoy
I write to you of all this, dear Tánya, only that you should prepare her parents for the news, and through papa should find out from the doctors what this occurrence means, and whether it will not be bad for our expected child. Now we are alone, and she is sitting under my necktie and I feel how her sharp little nose cuts into my neck. Yesterday she had been left in a room by herself. I went in and saw that Dora (our little dog) had dragged her into a corner, was playing with her, and nearly broke her. I whipped Dora, put Sónya in my waistcoat pocket and took her to my study. To-day however I am expecting from Túla a small wooden box I have ordered, covered outside with morocco and lined inside with raspberry-coloured velvet, with a place arranged in it for her so that she can be laid in it with her elbows, head, and back all supported evenly so that she cannot break. I shall also cover it completely with chamois leather.
I had written this letter when suddenly a terrible misfortune occurred. She was standing on the table, when N.P.2 pushed against her in passing, and she fell and broke off a leg above the knee with the stump. Alexéy3 says that it can be mended with a cement made of the white of eggs. If such a recipe is known in Moscow please send it me.
1 ‘Auntie Tatiána’ – Tatiána Alexándrovna Érgolski (1795–1874), who brought Tolstoy up.
2 Natálya Petróvna Okhótnitskaya, an old woman who was living at Yásnaya Polyána.
3 Alexéy Stepánovich Orékhov (who died in 1882), a servant of Tolstoy’s who had accompanied him to the Caucasus and to Sevastopol during the Crimean War. He was employed as steward at Yásnaya Polyána.
POLIKÚSHKA
I
‘IT’S for you to say, ma’am! Only it would be a pity if it’s the Dútlovs. They’re all good men and one of them must go if we don’t send at least one of the house-serfs,’ said the steward. ‘As it is, everyone is hinting at them.… But it’s just as you please, ma’am!’
And he placed his right hand over his left in front of him, inclined his head towards his right shoulder, drew in his thin lips almost with a smack, turned up his eyes, and said no more, evidently intending to keep silent for a long time and to listen without reply to all the nonsense his mistress was sure to utter.
The steward – clean-shaven and dressed in a long coat of a peculiar steward-like cut – who had come to report to his proprietress that autumn evening, was by birth a domestic serf.
The report from the lady’s point of view meant listening to a statement of the business done on her estate and giving instructions for further business. From Egór Mikháylovich’s (the steward’s) point of view, ‘reporting’ was a ceremony of standing straight on both feet with out-turned toes in a corner facing the sofa, and listening to all sorts of irrelevant chatter, and by various ways and means getting the mistress into a state of mind in which she would quickly and impatiently say, ‘All right, all right!’ to all that Egór Mikháylovich proposed.
The business under consideration was the conscription. The Pokróvsk estate had to supply three recruits at the Feast of Pokróv.1 Fate itself seemed to have selected two of them by a coincidence of domestic, moral, and economic circumstances. As far as they were concerned there could be no hesitation or dispute either on the part of the mistress, the Commune, or of public opinion. But who the third was to be was a debatable point. The steward was anxious to save the Dútlovs (in which family there were three men of military age), and to send Polikúshka, a married house-serf with a very bad reputation, who had been caught more than once stealing sacks, harness, and hay; but the mistress, who had often petted Polikúshka’s ragged children and improved his morals by exhortations from the Bible, did not wish to give him up. At the same time she did not wish to injure the Dútlovs, whom she did not know and had never even seen. But for some reason she did not seem able to grasp the fact, and the steward could not make up his mind to tell her straight out, that if Polikúshka did not go one of the Dútlovs would have to. ‘But I don’t wish the Dútlovs any ill!’ she said feelingly. ‘If you don’t – then pay three hundred rubles for a substitute,’ should have been the steward’s reply; but that would have been bad policy.
So Egór Mikháylovich took up a comfortable position, and even leaned imperceptibly against the door-post, while keeping a servile expression on his face and watching the movements of the lady’s lips and the flutter of the frills of her cap and their shadow on the wall beneath a picture. But he did not consider it at all necessary to attend to the meaning of her words. The lady spoke long and said much. A desire to yawn gave him cramp behind his ears, but he adroitly turned the spasm into a cough, and holding his hand to his mouth gave a croak. Not long ago I saw Lord Palmerston sitting with his hat over his face while a member of the Opposition was storming at the Ministry, and then suddenly rise and in a three hours’ speech answer his opponent point by point. I saw it without surprise, because I had seen the same kind of thing going on between Egór Mikháylovich and his mistress a thousand times. At last – perhaps he was afraid of falling asleep or thought she was letting herself go too far – he changed the weight of his body from his left to his right foot and began, as he always did, with an unctuous preface:
‘Just as you please to order, ma’am.… Only there is a gathering of the Commune now being held in front of my office window and we must come to some decision. The order says that the recruits are to be in town before the Feast of Pokróv. Among the peasants the Dútlovs are being suggested, and no one else. The mir2 does not trouble about your interests. What does it care if we ruin the Dútlovs? I know what a hard time they’ve been having! Ever since I first had the stewardship they have been living in want. The old man’s youngest nephew has scarcely had time to grow up to be a help, and now they’re to be ruined again! And I, as you well know, am as careful of your property as of my own.… It’s a pity, ma’am, whatever you’re pleased to think! … After all they’re neither kith nor kin to me, and I’ve had nothing from them.…’
‘Why, Egór, as if I ever thought of such a thing!’ interrupted the lady, and at once suspected him of having been bribed by the Dútlovs.
‘… Only theirs is the best-kept homestead in the whole of Pokróvsk. They’re God-fearing, hard-working peasants. The old man has been church Elder for thirty years; he doesn’t drink or swear, and he goes to church’ (the steward well knew with what to bait the hook). ‘… But the chief thing that I would like to report to you is that he has only two sons – the others are nephews adopted out of charity – and so they ought to cast lots only with the two-men families. Many families have split up because of their own improvidence and their sons have separated from them, and so they are safe now – while these will have to suffer just because they have been charitable.’
Here the lady could not follow at all. She did not understand what he meant by ‘two-men families’ or ‘charitableness’. She only heard sounds and observed the nankeen buttons on the steward’s coat. The top one, which he probably did not button up so often, was firmly fixed on, the middle one was hanging loose and ought long ago to have been sewn on again. But it is a well-known fact that in a conversation, especially a business conversation, it is not at all necessary to understand what is being said, but only to remember what you yourself want to say. The lady acted accordingly.
‘How is it you won’t understand, Egór Mikháylovich?’ she said. ‘I have not the least desire that a Dútlov should go as a soldier. One would think that knowing me as you do you might credit me with the wish to do everything in my power to help my serfs, and that I don’t want any harm to come to them, and would sacrifice all I possess to escape from this sad necessity and to send neither Dútlov nor Polikúshka.’ (I don’t know whether it occurred to the steward that to escape the sad necessity there was no need to sacrifice everything – that, in fact, three hundred rubles would suffice; but this thought might well have crossed his mind.)
‘I will only tell you this: that I will not give up Polikúshka on any account. When he confessed to me of his own accord after
that affair with the clock, and wept, and gave his word to amend, I talked to him for a long time and saw that he was touched and sincerely penitent.’ (‘There! She’s off now!’ thought Egór Mikháylovich, and began to scrutinize the syrup she had in a glass of water: ‘Is it orange or lemon? Slightly bitter, I expect,’ thought he.) ‘That is seven months ago now, and he has not once been tipsy, and has behaved splendidly. His wife tells me he is a different man. How can you wish me to punish him now that he has reformed? Besides it would be inhuman to make a soldier of a man who has five children, and only he to keep them.… No, you’d better not say any more about it, Egór!’
And the lady took a sip from her glass.
Egór Mikháylovich watched the motion of her throat as the liquid passed down it and then replied shortly and dryly:
‘Then Dútlov’s decided on?’
The lady clasped her hands together.
‘How is it you don’t understand? Do I wish Dútlov ill? Have I anything against him? God is my witness I am prepared to do anything for them.…’ (She glanced at a picture in the corner, but remembered it was not an icon. ‘Well, never mind … that’s not to the point,’ she thought. And again, strange to say, the idea of the three hundred rubles did not occur to her.…) ‘Well, what can I do? What do I know about it? It’s impossible for me to know. Well then, I rely on you – you know my wishes.… Act so as to satisfy everybody and according to the law.… What’s to be done? They are not the only ones: everyone has times of trouble. Only Polikúshka can’t be sent. You must understand that it would be dreadful of me to do such a thing.…’
She was roused and would have continued to speak for a long time had not one of her maidservants entered the room at that moment.
‘What is it, Dunyásha?’
‘A peasant has come to ask Egór Mikháylovich if the meeting is to wait for him,’ said Dunyásha, and glanced angrily at Egór Mikháylovich. (‘Oh, that steward!’ she thought; ‘he’s upset the mistress. Now she won’t let me get a wink of sleep till two in the morning!’)
‘Well then, Egór, go and do the best you can.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ He did not say anything more about Dútlov. ‘And who is to go to the market-gardener to fetch the money?’
‘Has not Peter returned from town?’
‘No, ma’am.’
‘Could not Nicholas go?’
‘Father is down with backache,’ remarked Dunyásha.
‘Shall I go myself to-morrow, ma’am?’ asked the steward.
‘No, Egór, you are wanted here.’ The lady pondered. ‘How much is it?’
‘Four hundred and sixty-two rubles.’
‘Send Polikúshka,’ said the lady, with a determined glance at Egór Mikháylovich’s face.
Egór Mikháylovich stretched his lips into the semblance of a smile but without parting his teeth, and the expression on his face did not change.
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Send him to me.’
‘Yes, ma’am’; and Egór Mikháylovich went to the counting-house.
II
POLIKÉY (or Polikúshka, as he was usually contemptuously called), as a man of little importance, of tarnished reputation, and not a native of the village, had no influence either with the housekeeper, the butler, the steward, or the lady’s-maid. His corner was the very worst, though there were seven in his family. The late proprietor had had these corners built in the following manner: in the middle of a brick building, about twenty-three feet square, there was a large brick baking-oven surrounded by a passage, and the four corners of the building were separated from this ‘colidor’ (as the domestic serfs called it) by wooden partitions. So there was not much room in these corners, especially in Polikéy’s, which was nearest to the door. The conjugal couch, with a print quilt and pillowcases, a cradle with a baby in it, and a small three-legged table (on which the cooking and washing were done and all sorts of domestic articles placed, and at which Polikéy – who was a horse-doctor – worked), tubs, clothing, some chickens, a calf, and the seven members of the family, filled the whole corner— and could not have stirred in it had it not been for their quarter of the brick stove (on which both people and things could lie) and for the possibility of going out onto the steps. That, however, was hardly possible, for it is cold in October and the seven of them only possessed one sheepskin cloak between them; but on the other hand the children could keep warm by running about and the grown-ups by working, and both the one and the other could climb on the top of the stove where the temperature rose as high as 120 degrees Fahrenheit. It may seem dreadful to live in such conditions, but they did not mind – it was quite possible to live. Akulína washed and sewed her husband’s and her children’s clothes, spun, wove, and bleached her linen, cooked and baked in the common oven, and quarrelled and gossiped with her neighbours. The monthly rations sufficed not only for the children, but for an addition to the cow’s food. Firewood was free, and so was fodder for the cattle, and a little hay from the stables sometimes came their way. They had a strip of kitchen garden. Their cow had calved, and they had their own fowls. Polikéy was employed in the stables to look after two stallions; he bled horses and cattle, cleaned their hoofs, lanced their sores, administered ointments of his own invention, and for this was paid in money and in kind. Also some of the proprietress’s oats used to find their way into his possession, and for two measures of it a peasant in the village gave twenty pounds of mutton regularly every month. Life would have been quite bearable had there been no trouble at heart. But the family had a great trouble. Polikéy in his youth had lived at a stud-farm in another village. The groom into whose hands he happened to fall was the greatest thief in the whole district, and got exiled to Siberia. Under this man Polikéy served his apprenticeship, and in his youth became so used to ‘these trifles’ that in later life, though he would willingly have left off, he could not rid himself of the habit. He was a young man and weak; he had neither father nor mother nor anyone else to teach him. Polikéy liked drink, and did not like to see anything lying about loose. Whether it was a strap, a piece of harness, a padlock, a bolt, or a thing of greater value, Polikéy found some use for everything. There were people everywhere who would take these things and pay for them in drink or in money, by agreement. Such earnings, so people say, are the easiest to get: no apprenticeship is required, no labour or anything, and he who has once tried that kind of work does not care for any other. It has only one drawback: although you get things cheap and easily and live pleasantly, yet all of a sudden – through somebody’s malice – things go all wrong, the trade fails, everything has to be accounted for at once, and you rue the day you were born.
