by Leo Tolstoy
The dawn was appearing, and Polikéy, who had not slept all night, began to drowse. Pulling his cap lower down and thereby pushing the envelope still farther out, Polikéy in his drowsiness let his head knock against the front of the cart. He woke up near home and was about to catch hold of his cap, but feeling that it sat firmly on his head he did not take it off, convinced that the envelope was inside. He gave Drum a touch, arranged the hay in the cart again, assumed once more the appearance of a well-to-do peasant, and proudly looking about him rattled homewards.
There was the kitchen, there the house-serfs’ quarters. There was the carpenter’s wife carrying some linen; there was the office, and there the mistress’s house where in a few moments Polikéy would show that he was a trustworthy and honest man. ‘One can say anything about anybody,’ he would say; and the lady would reply, ‘Well, thank you, Polikéy! Here are three (or perhaps five, perhaps even ten) rubles,’ and she would tell them to give him some tea, or even some vodka. It would not be amiss, after being out in the cold! ‘With ten rubles we would have a treat for the holiday, and buy boots, and return Nikíta his four and a half rubles (it can’t be helped! … He has begun bothering)….’ When he was about a hundred paces from the house, Polikéy wrapped his coat round him, pulled his girdle straight and his collar, took off his cap, smoothed his hair, and without haste thrust his hand under the lining. The hand began to fumble faster and faster inside the lining, then the other hand went in too, while his face grew paler and paler. One of the hands went right through the cap. Polikéy fell on his knees, stopped the horse, and began searching in the cart among the hay and the things he had bought, feeling inside his coat and in his trousers. The money was nowhere to be found.
‘Heavens! What does it mean?… What will happen? He began to roar, clutching at his hair.
But recollecting that he might be seen, he turned the horse round, pulled the cap on, and drove the surprised and disgusted Drum back along the road.
‘I can’t bear going out with Polikéy,’ Drum must have thought. ‘For once in his life he has fed and watered me properly, and then only to deceive me so unpleasantly! How hard I tried, running home! I am tired, and hardly have we got within smell of our hay than he starts driving me back!’
‘Now then, you devil’s jade!’ shouted Polikéy through his tears, standing up in the cart, pulling at Drum’s mouth, and beating him with the whip.
X
ALL that day no one saw Polikéy in Pokróvsk. The mistress asked for him several times after dinner, and Aksyútka flew down to Akulína; but Akulína said he had not yet returned, and that evidently the market-gardener had detained him or something had happened to the horse. ‘If only it has not gone lame!’ she said. ‘Last time, when Maxim went, he was on the road a whole day – had to walk back all the way.’
And Aksyútka turned her pendulums back to the house again, while Akulína, trying to calm her own fears, invented reasons to account for her husband’s absence, but in vain! Her heart was heavy and she could not work with a will at any of the preparations for the morrow’s holiday. She suffered all the more because the carpenter’s wife assured her that she herself had seen ‘a man just like Polikéy drive up to the avenue and then turn back again’. The children, too, were anxiously and impatiently expecting ‘Daddy’, but for another reason. Annie and Mary, being left without the sheepskin and the coat which made it possible to take turns out of doors, could only run out in their indoor dresses with increasing rapidity in a small circle round the house. This was not a little inconvenient to all the dwellers in the serfs’ quarters who wanted to go in or out. Once Mary ran against the legs of the carpenter’s wife who was carrying water, and though she began to howl in anticipation as soon as she knocked against the woman’s knees, she got her curls cuffed all the same, and cried still louder. When she did not knock against anyone, she flew in at the door, and immediately climbing up by means of a tub, got onto the top of the oven. Only the mistress and Akulína were really anxious about Polikéy; the children were concerned only about what he had on.
Egór Mikháylovich reporting to his mistress, in answer to her questions, ‘Hasn’t Polikéy come back yet?’ and ‘Where can he be?’ answered: ‘I can’t say,’ and seemed pleased that his expectations were being fulfilled. ‘He ought to have been back by noon,’ he added significantly.
All that day no one heard anything of Polikéy; only later on it was known that some neighbouring peasants had seen him running about on the road bareheaded, and asking everyone whether they hadn’t found a letter. Another man had seen him asleep by the roadside beside a tied-up horse and cart. ‘I thought he was tipsy,’ the man said, ‘and the horse looked as if it had not been watered or fed for two days, its sides were so fallen in.’ Akulína did not sleep all night and kept listening, but Polikéy did not return. Had she been alone, or had she kept a cook or a maid, she would have felt still more unhappy; but as soon as the cocks crowed and the carpenter’s wife got up, Akulína was obliged to rise and light the fire. It was a holiday. The bread had to come out of the oven before daybreak, kvas had to be made, cakes baked, the cow milked, frocks and shirts ironed, the children washed, water fetched, and her neighbour prevented from taking up the whole oven. So Akulína, still listening, set to work. It had grown light and the church bells were ringing, the children were up, but still Polikéy had not returned. There had been a first frost the day before, a little snow had fallen and lay in patches on the fields, on the road, and on the roofs; and now, as if in honour of the holiday, the day was fine, sunny, and frosty, so that one could see and hear a long way. But Akulína, standing by the brick oven, her head thrust into the opening, was so busy with her cakes that she did not hear Polikéy drive up, and only knew from the children’s cries that her husband had returned.
Annie, as the eldest, had greased her hair and dressed herself without help. She wore a new but crumpled print dress – a present from the mistress. It stuck out as stiff as if it were made of bast, and was an object of envy to the neighbours; her hair glistened; she had smeared half an inch of tallow candle onto it. Her shoes, though not new, were thin ones. Mary was still wrapped in the old jacket and was covered with mud, and Annie would not let her come near her for fear of getting soiled. Mary was outside. She saw her father drive up with a sack. ‘Daddy has come!’ she shrieked, and rushed headlong through the door past Annie, dirtying her. Annie, no longer fearing to be soiled, went for her at once and hit her. Akulína could not leave her work, and only shouted at the children: ‘Now, then … I’ll whip you all!’ and looked round at the door. Polikéy came in with a sack, and at once made his way to his own corner. It seemed to Akulína that he was pale, and his face looked as if he were either smiling or crying, but she had no time to find out which it was.
‘Well, Polikéy, is it all right?’ she called to him from the oven.
Polikéy muttered something that she did not understand.
‘Eh?’ she cried. ‘Have you been to the mistress?’
Polikéy sat down on the bed in his corner looking wildly round him and smiling his guilty, intensely miserable smile. He did not answer for a long time.
‘Eh, Polikéy? Why have you been so long?’ came Akulína’s voice.
‘Yes, Akulína, I have handed the lady her money. How she thanked me!’ he said suddenly, and began looking round and smiling still more uneasily. Two things attracted his feverishly staring eyes: the baby, and the cords attached to the hanging cradle. He went up to where the cradle hung, and began hastily undoing the knot of the rope with his thin fingers. Then his eyes fixed themselves on the baby; but just then Akulína entered, carrying a board of cakes, and Polikéy quickly hid the rope in his bosom and sat down on the bed.
‘What is it, Polikéy? You are not like yourself,’ said Akulína.
‘Haven’t slept,’ he answered.
Suddenly something flitted past the window, and in a moment Aksyútka, the maid from ‘up there’, darted in like an arrow.
/> ‘The mistress orders Polikéy to come this minute,’ she said – ‘this minute, Avdótya Nikoláevna’s orders are … this minute!’
Polikéy looked at Akulína, then at the girl.
‘I’m coming. What can she want?’ he said, so simply that Akulína grew quieter. ‘Perhaps she wants to reward me. Tell her I’m coming.’
He rose and went out. Akulína took the washing-trough, put it on a bench, filled it with water from the pails which stood by the door and from the cauldron in the oven, rolled up her sleeves, and tried the water.
‘Come, Mary, I’ll wash you.’
The cross, lisping little girl began howling.
‘Come, you brat! I’ll give you a clean smock. Now then, don’t make a fuss. Come along.… I’ve still got your brother to wash.’
Meanwhile Polikéy had not followed the maid from ‘up there’, but had gone to quite a different place. In the passage by the wall was a ladder leading to the loft. Polikéy, when he came out, looked round, and seeing no one, bent down and climbed that ladder almost at a run, nimbly and hurriedly.
‘Why ever doesn’t Polikéy come?’ asked the mistress impatiently of Dunyásha, who was dressing her hair. ‘Where is Polikéy? Why hasn’t he come?’
Aksyútka again flew to the serfs’ quarters, and again rushed into the entry, calling Polikéy to her mistress.
‘Why, he went long ago,’ answered Akulína, who, having washed Mary, had just put her suckling baby-boy into the wash-trough and was moistening his thin short hair, regardless of his cries. The boy screamed, puckered his face, and tried to clutch something with his helpless little hands. Akulína supported his soft, plump, dimpled little back with one large hand, while she washed him with the other.
‘See if he has not fallen asleep somewhere,’ said she, looking round anxiously.
Just then the carpenter’s wife, unkempt and with her dress unfastened and holding up her skirts, went up into the loft to get some things she had hung there to dry. Suddenly a shriek of horror filled the loft, and the carpenter’s wife, like one demented, with her eyes closed, came down the steps on all fours, backwards, sliding rather than running.
‘Polikéy!’ she screamed.
Akulina let go the baby.
‘Has hung himself!’ roared the carpenter’s wife.
Akulína rushed out into the passage, paying no heed to the baby, who rolled over like a ball and fell backwards with his little legs in the air and his head under water.
‘On a rafter … hanging!’ the carpenter’s wife ejaculated, but stopped when she saw Akulína.
Akulína darted up the ladder, and before anyone could stop her she was at the top, but from there with a terrible scream she fell back like a corpse, and would have been killed if the people who had come running from every corner had not been in time to catch her.
XI
FOR several minutes nothing could be made out amidst the general uproar. A crowd of people had collected, everyone was shouting and talking, and the children and old women were crying. Akulína lay unconscious. At last the men, the carpenter and the steward who had run to the place, went up the ladder, and the carpenter’s wife began telling for the twentieth time how she, ‘suspecting nothing, went to fetch a dress, and just looked round like this – and saw … a man; and I looked again, and a cap is lying inside out, close by. I look … his legs are dangling. I went cold all over! Is it pleasant?… To think of a man hanging himself, and that I should be the one to see him! … How I came clattering down I myself don’t remember … it’s a miracle how God preserved me! Truly, the Lord has had mercy on me! … Is it a trifle?… so steep and from such a height. Why, I might have been killed!’
The men who had gone up had the same tale to tell. Polikéy, in his shirt and trousers, was hanging from a rafter by the cord he had taken from the cradle. His cap, turned inside out, lay beside him, his coat and sheepskin were neatly folded and lay close by. His feet touched the ground, but he no longer showed signs of life. Akulína regained consciousness, and again made for the ladder, but was held back.
‘Mamma, Sëmka is dwownded!’ the lisping little girl suddenly cried from their corner. Akulína tore herself away and ran to the corner. The baby lay on his back in the trough and did not stir, and his little legs were not moving. Akulína snatched him out, but he did not breathe or move. She threw him on the bed, and with arms akimbo burst into such loud, piercing, terrible laughter that Mary, who at first laughed too, covered her ears with her hands, and ran out into the passage crying. The neighbours thronged into the corner, wailing and weeping. They carried out the little body and began rubbing it, but in vain. Akulína tossed about on the bed and laughed – laughed so that all who heard her were horror-stricken. Only now, seeing this motley crowd of men and women, old people and children, did one realize what a number of people and what sort of people lived in the serfs’ quarters. All were bustling and talking, many wept, but nobody did anything. The carpenter’s wife still found people who had not heard her tale of how her sensitive feelings were shocked by the unexpected sight, and how God had preserved her from falling down the ladder. An old man who had been a footman, with a woman’s jacket thrown over his shoulders, was telling how in the days of the old master a woman had drowned herself in the pond. The steward sent messengers to the priest and to the constable, and appointed men to keep guard. Aksyútka, the maid from ‘up there’, kept gazing with staring eyes at the opening that led to the loft, and though she could not see anything was unable to tear herself away and go back to her mistress. Agatha Mikháylovna, who had been lady’s-maid to the former proprietress, was weeping and asking for some tea to soothe her nerves. Anna the midwife was laying out the little body on the table, with her plump practised hands moistened with olive oil. Other women stood round Akulína, silently looking at her. The children, huddled together in the corner, peeped at their mother and burst into howls; and then subsiding for a moment, peeped again, and huddled still closer. Boys and men thronged round the porch, looking in at the door and the windows with frightened faces unable to see or understand anything, and asking one another what was the matter. One said the carpenter had chopped off his wife’s foot with an axe. Another said that the laundress had been brought to bed of triplets; a third that the cook’s cat had gone mad and bitten several people. But the truth gradually spread, and at last it reached the mistress; and it seems no one understood how to break it to her. That rough Egór blurted the facts straight out to her, and so upset the lady’s nerves that it was a long time before she could recover. The crowd had already begun to quiet down, the carpenter’s wife set the samovar to boil and made tea, and the outsiders, not being invited, thought it improper to stay longer. Boys had begun fighting outside the porch. Everybody now knew what had happened, and crossing themselves they began to disperse, when suddenly the cry was raised: ‘The mistress! The mistress!’ and everybody crowded and pressed together to make way for her, but at the same time everybody wanted to see what she was going to do. The lady, with pale and tear-stained face, entered the passage, crossed the threshold, and went into Akulína’s corner. Dozens of heads squeezed together and gazed in at the door. One pregnant woman was squeezed so that she gave a squeal, but took advantage of that very circumstance to secure a front place for herself. And how could one help wishing to see the lady in Akulína’s corner? For the house-serfs it was just what the coloured lights are at the end of a show. It’s sure to be great when they burn the coloured fires; and it must be an important occasion when the lady in her silks and lace enters Akulína’s corner. The lady went up and took Akulína’s hand, but Akulína snatched it away. The old house-serfs shook their heads reprovingly.
‘Akulina!’ said the lady. ‘You have your children – so take care of yourself!’
Akulína burst out laughing and got up.
‘My children are all silver, all silver! I don’t keep paper money,’ she muttered very rapidly. ‘I told Polikéy, “Take no notes,” and there now, they’ve
smeared him, smeared him with tar – tar and soap, madam! Any scabbiness you may have it will get rid of at once …’ and she laughed still louder.
The mistress turned away, and gave orders that the doctor’s assistant should come with mustard poultices. ‘Bring some cold water!’ she said, and began looking for it herself; but seeing the dead baby with Granny Anna the midwife beside it, the lady turned away, and everybody saw how she hid her face in her handkerchief and burst into tears; while Granny Anna (it was a pity the lady did not see it – she would have appreciated it, and it was all done for her benefit) covered the baby with a piece of linen, straightened his arms with her plump, deft hands, shook her head, pouted, drooped her eyelids, and sighed with so much feeling that everybody could see how excellent a heart she had. But the lady did not see it, she could not see anything. She burst out sobbing and went into hysterics. Holding her up under the arms they led her out into the porch and took her home. ‘That’s all there was to be seen of her!’ thought many, and again began to disperse. Akulína went on laughing and talking nonsense. She was taken into another room and bled, and plastered over with mustard poultices, and ice was put on her head. Yet she did not come to her senses, and did not weep, but laughed, and kept doing and saying such things that the kind people who were looking after her could not help laughing themselves.
