Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (204 page)

‘ So we went and daubed Akoulka’s door all over with pitch. When we’d done that her folks almost beat her to death.

‘Her mother, Marie Stépanovna, cried “I shall die of it,” while the old man said, “ If we were living in the days of the patriarchs, I’d have hacked her to pieces on a block. But now everything in this world is rottenness and corruption.” Sometimes the neighbours from one end of the street to the other heard Akoulka’s screams. She was whipped from morning to evening, and Philka would cry out in the marketplace before everybody: “Akoulka’s a jolly girl to get drunk with. I’ve given it those people between the eyes; they won’t forget me in a hurry.”

1 Daubing the door of a house where a young girl lives is done to show that she has been dishonoured.

‘Well, one day I met Akoulka. She was going for water with her bucket, so I cried out to her: “A fine morning, Akoulka Koudimovna, my pet! You’re the girl who knows how to please the chaps. Who’s living with you now, and where do you get the money for your finery?” That’s just what I said to her; she opened her eyes as wide as you please. No more flesh on her than on a log of wood. She had only just given me a look, but her mother thought she was larking with me, and cried from her doorstep: “Impudent hussy, what do you mean by talking with that fellow?” And from that moment they began to beat her again. Sometimes they thrashed her for an hour on end. Her mother said: “I give her the whip because she isn’t my daughter any more.”’

‘So she was as bad as they said?’

‘Now you just listen to my story, nunky, will you? Well, Philka and I were always drunk. One day when I was abed, mother comes and says:

‘“What d’ ye mean by lying in bed, you hound, you thief! “ She abused me for some time, and then said: “Marry Akoulka. They’ll be glad to give her to you, and they’ll give three hundred roubles with her.”

‘“But,” says I, “all the world knows that she’s a bad girl”

‘“Tush! The marriage ceremony cures all that; besides, she’ll always be in fear of her life from you, so you’ll be in clover together. Their money would make us comfortable. I’ve spoken about the marriage already to Marie Stépanovna; we’re of one mind about it.”

‘So I say: “Let’s have twenty roubles down, and I’ll take her.”

‘Well, believe it or not, but I was drunk right up to the wedding-day. Philka Marosof was threatening me all the time.

‘“I’ll break every bone in your body. A nice fellow you are to be engaged-and to Akoulka. If I like I’ll sleep every blessed night with her when she’s your wife.”

‘“You’re a hound, and a liar,” I replied. But he insulted me so in the street, before everybody, that I ran to Aukoudim’s and said: “I won’t marry her unless I have fifty roubles down this moment.”

‘And did they really let you have her?’

‘Me? Why not, indeed? We were quite respectable people. Father was ruined by a fire shortly before he died; he’s been a richer man than Aukoudim Trophimtych.’

‘“A fellow like you, without a shirt to his back, ought to be only too happy to marry my daughter,” retorted Aukoudim.

‘“Just remember your door and its coat of pitch,” I answered back.

‘“ Stuff and nonsense,” said he. “There’s no proof whatever that the girl’s done wrong.”

‘“Please yourself. There’s the door, and you can go about your business; but give back the money you’ve had!”

‘Then Philka Marosof and I agreed to send Mitri Bykoff to old Aukoudim to tell him that we’d insult him to his face in front of everyone. Well, as I say, I was full of drink right up to the wedding-day; I wasn’t sober till I got into church. As they were escorting us home from church the girl’s uncle, Mitrophone Stépanytch, said:

‘“This isn’t a nice business, but it’s over and done with now.”

‘Old Aukoudim was sitting there crying, the tears rolling down his grey beard. Comrade, shall I tell you what I’d done? I’d put a whip in my pocket before we went to church, and I ‘d made up my mind to have it out of her with that, so that all the world might know how I ‘d been swindled into the marriage, and not think me a bigger fool than I am.’

‘I see, and you wanted her to know what was in store for her. Er, was?’

‘Quiet, nunky, quiet! I’ll tell you how it is with us. Directly after the marriage ceremony they take the couple to a room apart, and the others remain drinking till they return. So I ‘m left alone with Akoulka. She was pale, not a bit of colour on her cheeks; frightened out of her wits. She had fine hair, supple and bright as flax, and great big eyes. She was scarcely ever heard to speak; ycu might have thought she was dumb; an odd creature, Akoulka, if ever there was one. Well, you can just imagine the scene. My whip was ready on the bed. Well, she was as pure a girl as ever was; not a word of it was true.’

‘Impossible!’

‘True, I swear; as honest a girl as any good family could wish for.’

‘Then, brother, why-why-why had she had to undergo all that torture? Why had Philka Marosof slandered her so?’

‘Yes, why, indeed? Well, I got down from the bed, and went on my knees before her, and put my hands together as if I were praying, and just said to her: “Little mother, my pet, Akoulka Koudimovna, forgive me for having been such an idiot as to believe all that slander; forgive me. I’m a hound!”

‘She was seated on the bed, and gazed at me fixedly. Putting both her hands on my shoulders, she began to laugh, but the tears were running down her cheeks. She cried and laughed together.

‘Then I went out and said to the people in the other room: “Let Philka look to himself: if I come across him he won’t be long for this world.”

‘The old people were beside themselves with delight. Akoulka’s mother was ready to throw herself at her daughter’s feet, and sobbed.

‘Then the old man said: “If we had known the truth, my dearest child, we wouldn’t have given you a husband of that sort.”

‘You ought to have seen how we were dressed the first Sunday after our marriage-when we left church! I’d got a long coat of fine cloth, a fur cap, and plush breeches. She wore a pelisse of hareskin, quite new, and a silk kerchief on her head. One was as fine as the other. Everybody admired us. I must say I looked well, and little Akoulka did too. One oughtn’t to boast, but one mustn’t sing small. I tell you, people like us are not turned out by the dozen.’

‘I don’t doubt it.’

‘Just you listen, now. The day after the wedding I left my guests, drunk as I was, and ran about the streets crying: “Where’s that scoundrel Philka Marosof? Just let him come near me, the hound, that’s all!” I went all through the market-place yelling like that. I was only just able to stand.

‘They came after me and caught me close to Vlassof’s place. It took three men to get me back to the house.

‘Well, the whole thing was the talk of the village. The girls said, when they met in the market-place: “Well, you’ve heard the news-Akoulka was all right!”

‘Not long afterwards I ran across Philka Marosof, who said to me before everybody, strangers included: “Sell your wife, and spend the money on drink. Jackka the soldier only married for that; he didn’t sleep one night with his wife, but he got enough drink to keep his skin full for three years.”

‘I answered: “You hound!”

‘“But,” says he, “you’re an idiot! You didn’t know what you were doing when you married-you were drunk. How could you know anything about it?”

‘So off I went to the house, and shouted at them: “You married me when I was drunk.”

‘Akoulka’s mother tried to fasten herself on me, but I cried: “Mother, you know nothing about anything except money. You bring me Akoulka!”

‘And didn’t I beat her! I tell you, I beat her for two hours running, till I dropped on the floor with fatigue. She couldn’t leave her bed for three weeks.’

‘It’s a dead sure thing,’ said Tchérévine phlegmatically,

‘if you don’t beat them they Did you find her with her lover?’

‘No. To tell the truth, I never actually caught her,’ said Chichkoff after a pause, speaking with an effort; ‘but I was hurt, a good deal hurt, because everyone made fun of me. The cause of it all was Philka. “Your wife’s just made to be looked at,” said he.

‘One day he invited us round to his place and started in: “Do just look what a good little wife he has! Isn’t she tender, isn’t she fine, nicely brought up, affectionate, and full of kindness for all the world? I say, my lad, have you forgotten how we daubed their door with pitch?” At the moment I was hopelessly drunk; he seized me by the hair and had me on the floor before I knew where I was. “ Come along-dance. Aren’t you Akoulka’s husband? I’ll hold your hair for you, and you shall dance. It’ll be good fun.”

“Dog! ‘ I said. “ I’ll bring some jolly fellows to your house,” he went on, “and I’ll whip your Akoulka before your very eyes just as long as I please.” Would you believe it? For a whole month I daren’t go out of the house, I was so afraid he’d come and drag my wife through the dirt. And how I beat her for it!’

‘What was the use of beating her? You can tie a woman’s hands, but not her tongue. You oughtn’t to thrash them too often. Beat ’em a bit, then scold ’em well, then fondle ‘em; that’s what a woman’s made for.’

Chichkoff remained quite silent for a few moments.

‘I was very much hurt,’ he continued. ‘I began it again just as before-beating her from morning till night for nothing; because she didn’t get up from her seat the way I liked; because she didn’t walk to suit me. When I wasn’t hiding her time hung heavy on my hands. Sometimes she sat by the window crying silently-it hurt my feelings sometimes to see her cry, but I beat her all die same. Sometimes her mother abused me for it: “You’re a scoundrel, a gallows-bird!”

“Don’t say a word or I’ll kill you. You made me marry her when I was drunk; you swindled me.” Old Aukoudim wanted at first to have his finger in the pie. Said he to me one day: “Look here, you’re not such a tremendous fellow that one can’t put you down”; but he didn’t get far on that track. Marie Stépanovna had become as sweet as milk. One day she came to me, crying her eyes out, and said: “My heart is almost broken, Ivan Semionytch. What I’m going to ask of you is only a little thing for you, but it means a good deal to me. Let her go, let her leave you, Ivan.” Then she threw herself at my feet. “Do give up being so angry! Wicked people slander her. You know quite well she was good when you married her.” Once again she knelt before me and cried. But I was as hard as nails. “ I won’t hear a word you have to say. What I choose to do, I do, to you or anybody, for I’m crazed with it all. As for Philka Marosof, he’s my best and dearest friend.”’

‘You’d begun to play your pranks together again, had you?’

‘No, by Jove! He was out of the way by this time; he was killing himself with drink, nothing less. He’d spent all he had on drink, and had joined the army as substitute for another citizen. In my part of the world, when a lad makes up his mind to enlist as substitute for another, he is master of the latter’s house and everybody in it until he’s called to the colours. He receives an agreed sum on the day he leaves, but until then he lives in the house of the man who pays him, sometimes for six whole months, and there isn’t a horror in the whole world those fellows are not guilty of. It’s enough to make folks remove the ikons from the house. From the moment he consents to be substitute for a son of the family he considers himself their patron and benefactor, and makes them dance as he pipes, otherwise he calls off the bargain.

‘ So Philka Marosof played merry hell in the home of this citizen. He slept with the daughter, pulled the master of the house by the beard after dinner, and, in fact, did anything that came into his head. They had to heat the bath for him every day, and, what’s more, give him brandy fumes with the steam of the bath; and he’d have the women lead him by the arms to the bath-room.
1

‘When he came back to the man’s house after a revel elsewhere, he would stop right in the middle of the road and shout:

‘“I won’t go in by the gate-pull down the fence!”

‘And they actually
had
to pull down the fence, though there was the gate right in front of him. But all that came to an end the day he joined the regiment. That day he was perfectly sober. The crowd gathered all along the street.

‘“They’re taking away Philka Marosof!”

‘He saluted right and left. Just at that moment Akoulka was returning from the kitchen garden, and immediately Philka saw her he cried out:

‘“Stop!” and down he jumped from the cart and threw himself at her feet.

‘“My soul, my sweet little strawberry. I’ve loved you two long years. Now they’re taking me off to the regiment with the band playing. Forgive me, good honest daughter of a good honest father, for I ‘m nothing but a hound, and all you’ve gone through is my fault.”

‘Then he flings himself down before her a second time. At first Akoulka was exceedingly frightened, but she made him a low bow, bending almost double.

‘“Forgive me, too, dear boy; but I am really not at all angry with you.”

‘As she re-entered the house I was at her heels.

1 Once a mark of respect in Russia, but no longer used.

‘“What did you say to him, you she-devil, you?”

‘Now would you believe it, she looked at me as bold as you please, and answered:

‘“I love him better than anything or anybody in this world.”

‘“I say!’”

‘For the rest of that day I never uttered one single word. Only towards evening I said to her: “Akoulka, I’m going to kill you now.” I didn’t close an eye the whole night. I went into the little room leading off ours and drank kvass. At daybreak I returned. “Akoulka, get ready and come into the fields.” I had already arranged to go there, and my wife knew it.

‘“You are right,” said she. “It’s quite time to begin reaping. I’ve heard that our labourer is ill and not working.”

‘I harnessed the cart without another word. As you go out of the town there’s a forest fifteen versts long; at the end of it is our field. When we had gone about three versts through the wood I stopped the horse.

‘“Come, get up, Akoulka; your end is come.”

‘ She looked at me in terror, but got up without a word.