The village. [Translation from the original Russian text by Isabel Hapgood] (16 page)

THE VILLAGE

"Son! Dear one!" shrieked an old crone in a plaided wool skirt of South Russian fashion, stretching out her hands. "Stop, for Christ's sake! Dear boy, stop it—you'll kill yourself!"

And her dear son suddenly threw back his head, clenched his fists and his teeth, and, with fury in his countenance and his trampling, screeched through his teeth:

"Tztzytz, good woman, shut your mouth with that cuckoo song."

"And she has just sold the last bit of her home-made linen for him," remarked Menshoff, as they crawled slowly across the pasture land. "She loves him passionately. She's a widow. He raps her over the mouth when he is drunk. Of course, she deserves it."

What do you mean by that—'she deserves it.'?" inquired Kuzma.

"Because she does. You shouldn't be too indulgent—"

Yes, in the town, in the railway carriages, in the hamlets, in the villages, everywhere, one could feel the presence of something unusual, the echoes of some great festival, some great victory, great expectations. But back there in the suburb Kuzma had already realized that the farther one went into those limitless fields, beneath that cold, gloomy sky, the duller, the more irrational, the more melancholy would those echoes become. Now they had driven away, and the shouts in the crowd about the dram-shop had again become pitiful. There they were keeping festival and

THE VILLAGE

trying to "celebrate," but ahead lay boredom, remote wilds, an empty street, smoky chimneyless hovels, water-casks with putrid pond water, and then more fields, the blue mist of the chilly distance, the dark forest on the horizon, low-hanging storm-clouds.

At one cottage—it had a broken window and a wheel on the rotten roof—a long-legged, ailing peasant sat on a bench. People look handsomer in their coffins than he looked in life. He resembled the poet Nek-rasoff. Over his shoulders, above a long and soiled shirt of hemp crash, was thrown an old short sheepskin coat; his stick-like legs stood in felt boots; his huge dead-looking hands lay evenly spaced on his sharp knees, upon his ragged trousers. His cap was pulled far down on his forehead, after the fashion of old men; his eyes were suffering, entreating; his super-humanly meagre and emaciated face was drawn down, his ashen lips half open.

"That's Tchutchen," x said Menshoff, nodding in the direction of the sick man. "He's been dying these two years from trouble with his stomach."

"Tchutchen? What's that—a nickname?"

"Yes, a nickname."

"Stupid!" said Kuzma. And he turned his head away, in order to avoid seeing the horrid little girl by the neighbouring cottage. She was leaning back and holding in her arms an infant in a cap, and, as she stared intently at the passers-by and stuck out her tongue at them, she chewed on a bit of black bread, which she was preparing as a sucking-piece for the

1 Scarecrow.— trans.

THE VILLAGE

child. And in the last yard and threshing-floor the bushes hummed in the breezes, and a scarecrow, all awry, fluttered its empty sleeves. The threshing-floor, which adjoins the steppe, is always uncomfortable, dreary; and there were the scarecrow, the autumnal storm-clouds, the wind humming across the fields, ruffling up the tails of the fowls which roved about the threshing-floor, overgrown with pigweed and mug-wort, alongside the grain-rick with its uncovered crest, alongside the threshing machine of Ryazan make, painted blue. . . .

VIII

THE small forest which lay blue against the horizon consisted of two long ravines thickly overgrown with oak-trees. It was known by the name of Portotchka. Near this Portotchka Kuzma was overtaken by a driving downpour of rain mingled with hail, which accompanied him the whole way to Kazakovo. Menshoff whipped up his sorry nag into a gallop as they neared the village, while Kuzma sat with eyes tightly screwed up beneath the wet grain-cloth. His hands were stiff with cold; icy rivulets trickled down the collar of his great-coat; the coarse cloth, heavy with the rain, stank of the sour grain-kiln. The hailstones rattled on his head, cakes of mud flew up into his face, the water in the ruts beneath the wheels splashed noisily; lambs were bleating somewhere or other. At last Kuzma became so

THE VILLAGE

stifled that he flung the cloth from his head and greedily gulped in the fresh air. The rain lessened in intensity. Evening drew on; the flocks dashed past the cart, across the green pasture land, on their way to the cottages. A thin-legged black sheep had got astray from the flock, and a bare-legged peasant woman, garbed in a rain-drenched short petticoat, darted after it, her white calves gleaming. In the west, beyond the village, the sky was growing brighter; to the east, on a background of dusty-bluish storm-clouds, two greenish-violet rainbows hung over the grain fields. A dense, damp odour of verdure arose from the fields, and of warmth from the dwellings.

"Where's the manor-house of the proprietor?" Kuzma shouted to a broad-shouldered woman in a white chemise and a red petticoat.

The woman was standing on a stone beside the cottage of the village policeman, holding by the hand a little girl about two years of age. The little girl was vociferating so lustily that his question was inaudible.

"The homestead?" repeated the woman. "Whose?"

"The manor-house."

"Whose? I can't hear anything you say.—Ah, may you choke! I hope the fits will get you!" shrieked the woman, jerking the little girl so violently by the hand that she executed a complete turn and, flying off the stone, hung suspended.

They made inquiries at another cottage. Driving along the broad street, they turned to the left, then to the right, and, passing some one's old-fashioned manor-house, hermetically boarded up, they began to de-

THE VILLAGE

scend a steep declivity to a bridge across a small stream. Water trickled from Menshoff's face, his hands, his coat. His fat face with its long white eyelashes, thus washed, looked more stupid than ever. He was gazing off into space ahead with an expression of curiosity. Kuzma gazed, also. In that direction, on the sloping pasture land, lay the dark manor-park of Kaza-kovo, the spacious courtyard surrounded by decaying outbuildings and the ruins of a stone wall; in the centre of the courtyard, behind three withered fir-trees, stood the house, sheathed in grey boards, with a rusty-red roof. Below, at the bridge, was a cluster of peasants. And, coming to meet them up the steep road, which was washed into gullies, a troika-team of lean worl:-horses, harnessed to a tarantas, was struggling through the mud and straining up the hill. A tattered but handsome labourer, tall, pale, with a small reddish beard and clever eyes, was standing beside the vehicle, jerking at the reins, exerting his utmost efforts, and shouting: "Ge-et up there! G-g-et up there!" The peasants, meanwhile, with shouts and whistling, were chiming in: "Whoa! Who-oa!" A young woman dressed in mourning, large tears hanging on her long eyelashes and her face distorted with fear, who was seated in the carriage, was throwing out her hands despairingly before her. Fear, suspense, lay in the turquoise-blue eyes of the stout, sandy-mustached young man who sat beside her. His wedding ring gleamed on his right hand, which clutched a revolver; he kept waving his left hand, and, without doubt, he must have felt very warm in his camel's hair waist-

THE VILLAGE

coat and his gentleman's peaked cap, which had slipped over on the back of his head. The children, a small boy and a girl, pallid with hunger and fatigue, wrapped in shawls, looked on with gentle curiosity from the little bench opposite the main seat.

"That's Mishka Siversky," said Menshoff in a loud, hoarse voice, as he drove around the troika and stared indifferently at the children. "They turned him out yesterday. Evidently, he deserved it."

The affairs of the Kazakovo gentry were managed by a superintendent, a retired soldier of the cavalry, a tall, rough man. Kuzma was told that he must apply to him in the servants' quarters, by a workman who drove into the farmyard in a cart heaped with freshly cut coarse wet green grass. But the superintendent had had two catastrophes that day—his baby had died and a cow had perished—so Kuzma did not meet with an amiable reception. When, leaving Menshoff outside the gate, he approached the servants' quarters, the superintendent's wife, her face all tear-stained, was bringing in a speckled hen, which sat peaceably under her arm. Among the columns on the dilapidated porch stood a tall young man in full trousers, high boots, and a Russian shirt of cotton print, who, on catching sight of the superintendent's wife, shouted :"Agafya, where are you taking it?"

"To kill," replied the superintendent's wife, seriously and sadly, coming to a halt beside the ice-house.

"Give it here and I'll kill it."

Thereupon the young man directed his steps to the ice-house, paying no attention to the rain, which was

THE VILLAGE

beginning to drizzle down again from the drowning sky. Opening the door of the ice-house, he took from the threshold a hatchet. A minute later a brief tap resounded, and the headless chicken, with a red stump of a neck, went running across the grass, stumbling and whirling about, flapping its wings and scattering in all directions feathers and spatters of blood. The young man tossed aside the hatchet and went off to the orchard, while the superintendent's wife, after she had caught the chicken, stepped up to Kuzma. "What do you want?"

"I came about the garden."

"Wait for Fedor Ivanitch."

"Where is he?"

"He'll be here immediately, from the fields."

So Kuzma began to wait at the window of the servants' quarters. He glanced inside and descried in the semi-darkness an oven, sleeping boards, a table, a small trough on the bench near the window, and a little coffin made from such another trough, in which lay the dead baby with a large, nearly naked head and a little bluish face. At the table sat a fat blind young girl, fishing with a wooden spoon for the bits of bread in a bowl of milk. The flies were buzzing around her like bees in a hive, but the blind girl, sitting as erect as a stuffed figure, with her white eyeballs staring into the darkness, went on eating and eating. She made a terrible impression on Kuzma, and he turned away. A cold wind was blowing in gusts, and the clouds made it darker and darker.

In the centre of the farmyard rose two pillars with

THE VILLAGE

a cross-bar, and from the cross-bar hung, as if it were a holy picture, a large sheet of iron; upon this they rapped when they were alarmed at night. About the farmyard lay thin wolf hounds. A small boy about eight years of age was running around among them, dragging in a small cart his flaxen-haired, chubby-faced younger brother, who wore a large black peaked cap. The little cart was squeaking wildly. The manor-house was grey, heavy-looking, and, assuredly, devilishly dreary in this twilight. "If they would only light up!" Kuzma said to himself. He was deadly weary, and it seemed to him as if he had left the town almost a year ago. Suddenly a sound of roaring and barking became audible, and through the gate of the orchard madly leaped a pair of dogs, a greyhound and a watchdog, dragging each other sidewise, any way as chance decreed, colliding, staring wildly about, and trying to tear each other to pieces, their heads in different directions. After them, shouting something or other, raced the young gentleman.

IX

KUZMA spent the evening and the night in the garden, in the old bath-house. The superintendent, on arriving from the fields on horseback, had remarked angrily that the garden had been "leased long ago," and in reply to a request for lodging over-night had expressed insolent amazement.

TKE VILLAGE

"Well, but you are a sensible fellow!" he had shouted, without either rhyme or reason. "A nice posting-station you've picked out! Are there many of your stamp roving about at present?" But he took pity on Kuzma in the end, and gave him permission to go into the bath-house. Kuzma paid off Menshoff and walked past the manor-house to the gate into the linden avenue. Through the unlighted open windows, from beyond the wire fly-screens, thundered a grand piano, drowned by a magnificent baritone-tenor voice, lifted in intricate vocalizations which were completely out of harmony with both the evening and the manor. Along the muddy sand of the sloping avenue, at the end of which, as if at the end of the world, the cloud-flecked sky gleamed dully white, there advanced toward Kuzma a poor-looking peasant, short of stature, with dark reddish hair, his shirt minus a belt; he was cap-less, wore heavy boots, and was carrying a bucket in his hand.

"Oho, ho!" he said, jeeringly, as he listened to the singing while he walked on. "Oho, he's going it strong, may his belly burst!"

"Who is going it strong?" inquired Kuzma.

The peasant raised his head and halted. "Why, that young gentleman of ours," he said, merrily, making havoc with his consonants. "They say he has been doing that these seven years."

"Which one—the one who was chasing the dogs?"

"N-no, another one. But that's not all! Sometimes he takes to screeching, 'To-day 'tis your turn, to-morrow 'twill be mine'—regular calamity!'

[177]

!"

THE VILLAGE

"He's taking lessons, of course?"

"Nice lessons they must be!"

"And that other one—what does he do?"

"That fellow?" The peasant drew a long breath, smiling in a discreetly jeering manner the while. "Why, nothing. Why should he? he has good victuals and amusement: Fedka tosses bottles, and he shoots at them; sometimes he buys a peasant's beard, cuts it off, and stuffs it into his gun, for fun. Then again, there are the dogs: we have an immense number of them. On Sundays, when the church bells begin to peal, the whole pack of them sets to howling; 'tis an awful row they make! Day before yesterday they chewed up a peasant's dog, and the peasants went to the courtyard of the manor. 'Give us enough to buy a vedro x of liquor, and we'll call it quits. Otherwise, we'll go on strike at once.' "

"Well, did he give the money?"

"Of course he didn't! Gi-ive, indeed, brother!— There is a miller here. He came straight out on the porch and said: 'The wind is blowing from the fields, gentlemen-nobles!' Catch him napping, forsooth! The young gentleman started to bully them: 'What sort of a wind is that you're talking about?' 'Just a certain sort,' says he. 'I've propounded a riddle to you; now you just think it over!' That brought him to a dead standstill, brother!"