Peasants and Other Stories

by Anton Chekhov

  Matvei began declaring that he hadn’t any money at all, but Sergei Nikanorich was not listening. Memories of the past and of the insults which he endured every day came showering upon him. His bald head began to perspire; he flushed and blinked.

  “A cursed life!” he said with vexation, and he banged a sausage on the floor.

  3.

  The story ran that the tavern had been built in the time of Alexander I by a widow who had settled here with her son; her name was Avdotya Terekhov. The dark roofed-in courtyard and the gates always kept locked excited, especially on moonlight nights, a feeling of depression and unaccountable uneasiness in people who drove by with posting horses, as though sorcerers or robbers were living in it; and the driver always looked back after he had passed, and whipped up his horses. Travelers did not care to put up here, as the people of the house were always unfriendly and charged heavily. The yard was muddy even in summer; huge fat pigs used to lie there in the mud, and the horses in which the Terekhovs dealt wandered about untethered, and often it happened that they ran out of the yard and dashed along the road like mad creatures, terrifying the pilgrim women. At that time there was a great deal of traffic on the road: long trains of loaded wagons trailed by, and all sorts of adventures happened; such as, for instance, that thirty years ago when some wagoners got up a quarrel with a passing merchant and killed him, and a slanting cross is standing to this day half a mile from the tavern; posting chaises with bells and the heavy dormeuses of country gentlemen drove by; and herds of horned cattle passed, bellowing and stirring up clouds of dust.

  When the railway came there was at first at this place only a platform, which was called simply a halt; ten years afterwards the present station, Progonnaya, was built. The traffic on the old posting road almost ceased, and only local landowners and peasants drove along it now, but the working people walked there in crowds in spring and autumn. The posting inn was transformed into a restaurant; the upper story was destroyed by fire, the roof had grown yellow with rust, the roof over the yard had fallen by degrees, but huge fat pigs, pink and revolting, still wallowed in the mud in the yard. As before, the horses sometimes ran away and, lashing their tails, dashed madly along the road. In the tavern they sold tea, hay, oats, and flour, as well as vodka and beer, to be drunk on the premises and also to be taken away; they sold spirituous liquors warily, for they had never taken out a license.

  The Terekhovs had always been distinguished by their piety, so much so that they had even been given the nickname of the “Godlies.” But perhaps because they lived apart like bears, avoided people, and thought out all their ideas for themselves, they were given to dreams and to doubts and to changes of faith, and almost each generation had a peculiar faith of its own. The grandmother Avdotya, who had built the inn, was an Old Believer; her son and both her grandsons (the fathers of Matvei and Yakov) went to the Orthodox church, entertained the clergy, and worshiped before the new icons as devoutly as they had done before the old. The son in old age refused to eat meat and imposed upon himself the rule of silence, considering all conversation as sin; it was the peculiarity of the grandsons that they interpreted the Scripture not simply, but sought in it a hidden meaning, declaring that every sacred word must contain a mystery.

  Avdotya’s great-grandson Matvei had struggled from early childhood with all sorts of dreams and fancies and had been almost ruined by it; the other great-grandson, Yakov Ivanich, was orthodox, but after his wife’s death he gave up going to church and prayed at home. Following his example, his sister Aglaia had turned, too; she did not go to church herself and did not let Dashutka go. Of Aglaia it was told that in her youth she used to attend the Flagellant meetings in Vedenyapino, and that she was still a Flagellant in secret, and that was why she wore a white kerchief.

  Yakov Ivanich was ten years older than Matvei; he was a very handsome tall old man with a big gray beard almost to his waist, and bushy eyebrows which gave his face a stern, even ill-natured expression. He wore a long jerkin of good cloth or a black sheepskin coat, and altogether tried to be clean and neat in dress; he wore galoshes even in dry weather. He did not go to church, because, to his thinking, the services were not properly celebrated and because the priests drank wine at unlawful times and smoked tobacco. Every day he read and sang the service at home with Aglaia. At Vedenyapino they left out the “Praises” at early matins, and had no evening service even on great holidays, but he used to read through at home everything that was laid down for every day, without hurrying or leaving out a single line, and in his spare time read aloud the Lives of the Saints. And in everyday life he adhered strictly to the rules of the church; thus, if wine were allowed on some day in Lent, “for the sake of the vigil,” then he never failed to drink wine, even if he were not inclined.

  He read, sang, burned incense, and fasted, not for the sake of receiving blessings of some sort from God, but for the sake of good order. Man cannot live without religion, and religion ought to be expressed from year to year and from day to day in a certain order, so that every morning and every evening a man might turn to God with exactly those words and thoughts that were befitting that special day and hour. One must live and, therefore, also pray as is pleasing to God, and so every day one must read and sing what is pleasing to God—that is, what is laid down in the rule of the church. Thus the first chapter of St. John must be read only on Easter Day, and “It is most meet” must not be sung from Easter to Ascension, and so on. The consciousness of this order and its importance afforded Yakov Ivanich great gratification during his religious exercises. When he was forced to break this order by some necessity—to drive to town or to the bank, for instance—his conscience was uneasy and he felt miserable.

  When his cousin Matvei had returned unexpectedly from the factory and settled in the tavern as though it were his home, he had from the very first day disturbed this settled order. He refused to pray with them, had meals and drank tea at wrong times, got up late, drank milk on Wednesdays and Fridays on the pretext of weak health; almost every day he went into the prayer-room while they were at prayers and cried: “Think what you are doing, brother! Repent, brother!” These words threw Yakov into a fury, while Aglaia could not refrain from beginning to scold. Or at night Matvei would steal into the prayer-room and say softly: “Cousin, your prayer is not pleasing to God. For it is written, First be reconciled with thy brother and then offer thy gift. You lend money at usury, you deal in vodka—repent!”

  In Matvei’s words Yakov saw nothing but the usual evasions of empty-headed and careless people who talk of loving your neighbor, of being reconciled with your brother, and so on, simply to avoid praying, fasting, and reading holy books, and who talk contemptuously of profit and interest simply because they don’t like working. Of course, to be poor, save nothing, put by nothing was a great deal easier than being rich.

  But yet he was troubled and could not pray as before. As soon as he went into the prayer-room and opened the book he began to be afraid his cousin would come in and hinder him; and, in fact, Matvei did soon appear and cry in a trembling voice: “Think what you are doing, brother! Repent, brother!” Aglaia stormed and Yakov, too, flew into a passion and shouted: “Go out of my house!” while Matvei answered him: “The house belongs to both of us.”

  Yakov would begin singing and reading again, but he could not regain his calm, and unconsciously fell to dreaming over his book. Though he regarded his cousin’s words as nonsense, yet for some reason it had of late haunted his memory that it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, that the year before last he had made a very good bargain over buying a stolen horse, that one day when his wife was alive a drunkard had died of vodka in his tavern. . . .

  He slept badly at nights now and woke easily, and he could hear that Matvei, too, was awake, and continually sighing and pining for his tile factory. And while Yakov turned over from one side to another at night he thought of the stolen horse and the drunken man, and what was said in the gospels about the cam
el.

  It looked as though his dreaminess were coming over him again. And as ill luck would have it, although it was the end of March, every day it kept snowing, and the forest roared as though it were winter, and there was no believing that spring would ever come. The weather disposed one to depression, and to quarreling and to hatred, and in the night, when the wind droned over the ceiling, it seemed as though someone were living overhead in the empty story; little by little the broodings settled like a burden on his mind, his head burned, and he could not sleep.

  4.

  On the morning of the Monday before Good Friday, from his room Matvei heard Dashutka say to Aglaia:

  “Uncle Matvei said the other day that there is no need to fast.”

  Matvei remembered the whole conversation he had had the evening before with Dashutka, and he felt hurt all at once.

  “Girl, don’t do wrong!” he said in a moaning voice, like a sick man. “You can’t do without fasting; our Lord Himself fasted forty days. I only explained that fasting does a bad man no good.”

  “You should just listen to the factory hands; they can teach you goodness,” Aglaia said sarcastically as she washed the floor (she usually washed the floors on working days and was always angry with everyone when she did it). “We know how they keep the fasts in the factory. You had better ask that uncle of yours—ask him about his ‘Darling,’ how he used to guzzle milk on fast days with her, the viper. He teaches others; he forgets about his viper. But ask him who was it he left his money with—who was it?”

  Matvei had carefully concealed from everyone, as though it were a foul sore, that during that period of his life when old women and unmarried girls had danced and run about with him at their prayers he had formed a connection with a workingwoman and had had a child by her. When he went home he had given this woman all he had saved at the factory and had borrowed from his landlord for his journey, and now he had only a few rubles which he spent on tea and candles. The “Darling” had informed him later on that the child was dead and asked him in a letter what she should do with the money. This letter was brought from the station by the laborer. Aglaia intercepted it and read it and had reproached Matvei with his “Darling” every day since.

  “Just fancy, nine hundred rubles,” Alglaia went on. “You gave nine hundred rubles to a viper, no relation, a factory jade, blast you!” She had flown into a passion by now and was shouting shrilly: “Can’t you speak? I could tear you to pieces, wretched creature! Nine hundred rubles as though it were a farthing. You might have left it to Dashutka—she is a relation, not a stranger—or else have sent it to Byelev for Marya’s poor orphans. And your viper did not choke, may she be thrice accursed, the she-devil! May she never look upon the light of day!”

  Yakov Ivanich called to her; it was time to begin the Hours. She washed, put on a white kerchief, and, by now quiet and meek, went into the prayer-room to the brother she loved. When she spoke to Matvei or served peasants in the tavern with tea she was a gaunt, keen-eyed, ill-humored old woman; in the prayer-room her face was serene and softened, she looked younger altogether, she curtseyed affectedly, and even pursed up her lips.

  Yakov Ivanich began reading the service softly and dolefully, as he always did in Lent. After he had read a little he stopped to listen to the stillness that reigned through the house, and then went on reading again, with a feeling of gratification; he folded his hands in supplication, rolled his eyes, shook his head, sighed. But all at once there was the sound of voices. The policeman and Sergei Nikanorich had come to see Matvei. Yakov Ivanich was embarrassed at reading aloud and singing when there were strangers in the house, and now, hearing voices, he began reading in a whisper and slowly. In the prayer-room he could hear the waiter say:

  “The Tatar at Shchepovo is selling his business for fifteen hundred. He’ll take five hundred down and an I.O.U. for the rest. And so, Matvei Vassilich, be so kind as to lend me that five hundred rubles. I will pay you two percent a month.”

  “What money have I got?” cried Matvei, amazed. “I have no money!”

  “Two percent a month will be a godsend to you,” the policeman explained. “While lying by, your money is simply eaten by the moth, and that’s all that you get from it.”

  Afterwards the visitors went out and a silence followed. But Yakov Ivanich had hardly begun reading and singing again when a voice was heard outside the door:

  “Brother, let me have a horse to drive to Vedenyapino.”

  It was Matvei. And Yakov was troubled again.

  “Which can you go with?” he asked after a moment’s thought. “The man has gone with the sorrel to take the pig, and I am going with the little stallion to Shuteykino as soon as I have finished.”

  “Brother, why is it you can dispose of the horses and not I?” Matvei asked with irritation.

  “Because I am not taking them for pleasure, but for work.”

  “Our property is in common, so the horses are in common, too, and you ought to understand that, brother.”

  A silence followed. Yakov did not go on praying, but waited for Matvei to go away from the door.

  “Brother,” said Matvei, “I am a sick man. I don’t want possessions—let them go; you have them, but give me a small share to keep me in my illness. Give it to me and I’ll go away.”

  Yakov did not speak. He longed to be rid of Matvei, but he could not give him money, since all the money was in the business; besides, there had never been a case of the family dividing in the whole history of the Terekhovs. Division means ruin.

  Yakov said nothing, but still waited for Matvei to go away, and kept looking at his sister, afraid that she would interfere and that there would be a storm of abuse again as there had been in the morning. When at last Matvei did go Yakov went on reading, but now he had no pleasure in it. There was a heaviness in his head and a darkness before his eyes from continually bowing down to the ground, and he was weary of the sound of his soft dejected voice. When such a depression of spirit came over him at night, he put it down to not being able to sleep; by day it frightened him, and he began to feel as though devils were sitting on his head and shoulders.

  Finishing the service after a fashion, dissatisfied and ill-humored, he set off for Shuteykino. In the previous autumn a gang of navvies had dug a boundary ditch near Progonnaya and had run up a bill at the tavern for eighteen rubles, and now he had to find their foreman in Shuteykino and get the money from him. The road had been spoiled by the thaw and the snowstorm; it was of a dark color and full of holes, and in parts it had given way altogether. The snow had sunk away at the sides below the road, so that he had to drive, as it were, upon a narrow causeway, and it was very difficult to turn off it when he met anything. The sky had been overcast ever since the morning and a damp wind was blowing. . . .

  A long train of sledges met him; peasant women were carting bricks. Yakov had to turn off the road. His horse sank into the snow up to its belly; the sledge lurched over to the right, and to avoid falling out he bent over to the left, and sat so all the time the sledges moved slowly by him. Through the wind he heard the creaking of the sledge poles and the breathing of the gaunt horses, and the women saying about him, “There’s ‘Godly’ coming,” while one, gazing with compassion at his horse, said quickly:

  “It looks as though the snow will be lying till Yegory’s Day! They are worn out with it!”

  Yakov sat uncomfortably huddled up, screwing up his eyes on account of the wind, while horses and red bricks kept passing before him. And perhaps because he was uncomfortable and his side ached, he felt all at once annoyed, and the business he was going about seemed to him unimportant, and he reflected that he might send the laborer next day to Shuteykino. Again, as in the previous sleepless night, he thought of the saying about the camel, and then memories of all sorts crept into his mind: of the peasant who had sold him the stolen horse, of the drunken man, of the peasant women who had brought their samovars to him to pawn. Of course, every merchant tries to get as much as he
can, but Yakov felt depressed that he was in trade; he longed to get somewhere far away from this routine, and he felt dreary at the thought that he would have to read the evening service that day. The wind blew straight into his face and soughed in his collar, and it seemed as though it were whispering to him all these thoughts, bringing them from the broad white plain. . . . Looking at that plain, familiar to him from childhood, Yakov remembered that he had had just this same trouble and these same thoughts in his young days when dreams and imaginings had come upon him and his faith had wavered.

  He felt miserable at being alone in the open country; he turned back and drove slowly after the sledges, and the women laughed and said: “ ‘Godly’ has turned back.”

  At home nothing had been cooked and the samovar was not heated, owing to the fast, and this made the day seem very long. Yakov Ivanich had long ago taken the horse to the stable, dispatched the flour to the station, and twice taken up the Psalms to read, and yet the evening was still far off. Aglaia had already washed all the floors, and, having nothing to do, was tidying up her chest, the lid of which was pasted over on the inside with labels off bottles. Matvei, hungry and melancholy, sat reading, or went up to the Dutch stove and slowly scrutinized the tiles which reminded him of the factory. Dashutka was asleep; then, waking up, she went to take water to the cattle. When she was getting water from the well the cord broke and the pail fell in. The laborer began looking for a boat hook to get the pail out, and Dashutka, barefooted, with legs as red as a goose’s, followed him about in the muddy snow, repeating: “It’s too far!” She meant to say that the well was too deep for the hook to reach the bottom, but the laborer did not understand her, and evidently she bothered him, so that he suddenly turned round and abused her in unseemly language. Yakov Ivanich, coming out that moment into the yard, heard Dashutka answer the laborer in a long rapid stream of choice abuse, which she could only have learned from drunken peasants in the tavern.