Stories (50 page)

But now old man Tsybukin himself stepped out to the middle and waved his handkerchief, giving a sign that he, too, wanted to dance a Russian dance, and a hum of approval ran through the whole house and the crowd in the courtyard:

“
Himself
stepped out!
Himself
!”

Varvara danced, while the old man just waved the handkerchief and shifted from one heel to the other, but those who were hanging over each other there in the yard, peeking through the windows, were delighted and for a moment forgave him everything—his wealth and his offenses.

“Good boy, Grigory Petrovich!” came from the crowd. “Keep it up! So you can still go to it! Ha, ha!”

It all ended late, past one o’clock in the morning. Anisim went around unsteadily to all the singers and musicians and gave each of them a new half rouble. And the old man, not swaying but somehow favoring one foot, saw the guests off and told each of them:

“The wedding cost two thousand.”

As people were leaving, somebody exchanged the Shikalovo tavernkeeper’s good vest for an old one, and Anisim suddenly flared up and started shouting:

“Stop! I’ll find him at once! I know who stole it! Stop!”

He ran outside, chasing after someone; they caught him, took him under the arms, brought him home, shoved him, drunk, flushed with anger, wet, into the room where the aunt was already undressing Lipa, and locked the door.

Five days passed. Anisim got ready to leave and went upstairs to say good-bye to Varvara. She had all the icon lamps burning, there was a smell of incense, and she herself was sitting by the window knitting a red woolen stocking.

“You didn’t spend long with us,” she said. “Boring, was it? Oh, tush, tush … We have a good life, there’s plenty of everything, and your wedding was celebrated properly, the right way. The old man says two thousand went into it. In short, we live like merchants, only it’s boring here. We do people much wrong. My heart aches, my friend—oh, God, how we wrong them! We trade a horse, or buy something, or hire a workman—there’s cheating in all of it. Cheating and cheating. The vegetable oil in the shop is bitter, rancid, the people’s tar is better. Tell me, for pity’s sake, isn’t it
impossible to sell good oil?”

“Each to his own place, mother.”

“But don’t we all have to die? Ah, no, really, you should talk with your father! …”

“Why don’t you talk with him yourself.”

“Well, well! I tell him what I think, and he says the same as you, word for word: each to his own place. In the other world they’re not going to sort out who had which place. God’s judgment is righteous.”

“Of course, nobody’s going to sort it out,” Anisim said and sighed. “And anyhow God doesn’t exist, mother. What’s there to sort out!”

Varvara looked at him with astonishment and laughed and clasped her hands. Because she was so sincerely astonished at his words and looked at him as if he were a freak, he became embarrassed.

“Or maybe God does exist, only there’s no faith,” he said. “As I was being married, I felt out of sorts. Like when you take an egg from under a hen and there’s a chick peeping in it, so my conscience suddenly peeped in me, and all the while I was being married, I kept thinking: God exists! But as soon as I stepped out of the church—there was nothing. And how should I know if God exists or not? We weren’t taught that when we were little, but here’s a baby still at his mother’s breast, and he’s taught just one thing: each
to his own place. Papa doesn’t believe in God either. You
told me that time that the Guntorevs had their sheep stolen … I found out: it was a Shikalovo peasant who stole them; he stole them, but papa got the skins … There’s faith for you!”

Anisim winked an eye and shook his head.

“And the headman doesn’t believe in God either,” he went on, “neither does the clerk or the beadle. If they go to church and keep the fasts, it’s so that people won’t speak ill of them, and in case there may really be a Judgment Day. Now they say the end of the world has come, because people have grown weak, don’t honor their parents, and so on. That’s nonsense. My understanding, mother, is that all troubles come from people having too little conscience. I can see through things, mother, and I understand. If a man’s wearing a stolen shirt, I see it. A man’s sitting in a tavern
, and it looks to you like he’s having tea and nothing else, but, tea or no tea, I can also see that he’s got no conscience. You walk around the whole day, and there’s not a single person with any conscience. And the whole reason is that they don’t know whether God exists or not … Well, good-bye, mother. Keep alive and well, and think no evil of me.”

Anisim bowed to the ground in front of Varvara.

“I thank you for everything, mother,” he said. “You’ve been a great benefit to our family. You’re a very decent woman, and I’m much pleased with you.”

Feeling moved, Anisim went out, but came back again and said:

“Samorodov got me involved in a certain business: I’ll be rich or I’ll perish. If anything happens, mother, you must comfort my father.”

“Well, now! Oh, tush, tush … God is merciful. And you, Anisim, you should be more tender with your wife—the two of you just look at each other and pout. You could at least smile, really.”

“Yes, she’s sort of a strange …” Anisim said and sighed. “She doesn’t understand anything, keeps silent. She’s too young, let her grow up.”

At the porch a tall, sleek white stallion already stood hitched to a charabanc.

Old Tsybukin made a run, leaped up dashingly on the box, and took the reins. Anisim kissed Varvara, Aksinya, and his brother. Lipa also stood on the porch, stood motionless and looked aside, as though she had not come out to say good-bye but just so, for no
reason. Anisim went up to her and brushed her cheek with his lips, barely, lightly.

“Good-bye,” he said.

And she smiled somehow strangely, without looking at him; her face quivered, and for some reason everyone felt sorry for her. Anisim also hopped up and sat arms akimbo, because he considered himself a handsome man.

As they drove up out of the ravine, Anisim kept looking back at the village. It was a warm, clear day. The cattle were being taken out to pasture for the first time, and girls and women wal
ked beside the herd in their Sunday dresses. A brown bull bellowed, rejoicing in his freedom, and dug his front hooves into the earth. Larks were singing all around, above and below. Anisim looked back at the church, shapely, white—it had recently been whitewashed—and remembered praying in it five days ago; he turned to look at the school with its green roof, at the river, where he once used to swim and fish, and joy leaped in his breast, and he wished that a wall might suddenly grow up from the ground and keep him from going further, so that he could remain only with his past.

At the station they went to the buffet and drank a glass of sherry each. The old man went to his pocket for his purse, in order to pay.

“It’s on me!” said Anisim.

The old man went soft, slapped him on the shoulder, and winked at the bartender: See what a son I’ve got.

“Why don’t you stay home, Anisim,” the old man said, “you’d be priceless in the business! I’d shower you with gold, sonny.”

“I just can’t, papa.”

The sherry was sourish and smelled of sealing wax, but they drank another glass each.

When the old man came back from the station, for the first moment he did not recognize his younger daughter-in-law. As soon as her husband drove out of the yard, Lipa was transformed and suddenly became cheerful. Barefoot, in an old, tattered skirt, her sleeves rolled up to the shoulders, she was washing the stairs in the front hall and singing in a high, silvery little voice, and when she carried the big tub of dirty water outside and looked up at the sun with her childlike smile, it seemed that she, too, was a lark.

An old workman who was passing by the porch shook his head and grunted:

“Yes, Grigory Petrovich, what daughters-in-law God sent you!” he said. “Not women, but pure treasures!”

On July 8, a Friday, Yelizarov, nicknamed Crutch, and Lipa were coming back from the village of Kazanskoe, where they had gone on a pilgrimage, the occasion being the feast of the church there— the Kazan Mother of God.
⁴
Far behind them walked Lipa’s mother Praskovya, who could never keep up, because she was ill and short of breath. It was getting towards evening.

“A-a-ah! …” Crutch was surprised as he listened to Lipa. “A-ah! … We-e-ll?”

“I’m a great lover of preserves, Ilya Makarych,” said Lipa. “I sit myself down in a little corner and drink tea with preserves. Or I drink together with Varvara Nikolaevna, and she tells me some touching story. They’ve got lots of preserves—four jars. ‘Eat, Lipa,’ they say, ‘don’t have any second thoughts.’”

“A-a-ah! … Four jars!”

“It’s a rich man’s life. Tea with white bread, and as much beef as you like. A rich man’s life, only it’s scary there, Ilya Makarych. It’s so scary!”

“What are you scared of, little one?” asked Crutch, and he turned around to see how far Praskovya was lagging behind.

“First, right after the wedding, I was afraid of Anisim Grigoryich. He was all right, he never hurt me, only as soon as he comes near me I get chills all over, in every little bone. I didn’t sleep a single night, I kept shivering and praying to God. And now I’m afraid of Aksinya, Ilya Makarych. She’s all right, she just smiles, only sometimes she looks out the window, and her eyes are so angry and they burn green, like with a sheep in the barn
. The Khrymin Juniors keep egging her on: ‘Your old man has a lot in Butyokino,’ they say, ‘about a hundred acres, and there’s sand and water there,’ they say, ‘so you build yourself a brickworks, Aksiusha, and we’ll go shares with you.’ Bricks now cost twenty roubles a thousand. It’s a going trade. So yesterday at dinner Aksinya says to the old man, ‘I want to build a brickworks in Butyokino, to be a merchant in my own right.’ She says it and smiles. But Grigory Petrovich goes dark
in the face; obviously he doesn’t like it. ‘As long as I’m alive,’ he says, ‘we can’t do things separately, it must be all together.’ And she flashed her eyes at him, ground her teeth … They served pancakes—she didn’t eat!”

“A-a-ah! …” Crutch was astonished. “She didn’t eat!”

“And tell me, please, when does she sleep?” Lipa went on. “She sleeps a wee half hour, then pops up, walks around, walks around all the time, checking whether the peasants are setting fire to something or stealing … It’s scary with her, Ilya Makarych! And the Khrymin Juniors didn’t even go to bed after the wedding, they went to court in town, and people say it’s all because of Aksinya. Two of the brothers promised to build her the brickworks, but the third took it wrong, and the factory has stood still for a month, and my uncle Prokhor is out of work and goes from door to door begging fo
r a crust. ‘Uncle,’ I say to him, ‘don’t shame yourself, go and do plowing meanwhile, or cut lumber!’ ‘I’ve lost the feel for peasant work, Lipynka,’ he says, ‘I can’t do anything …’”

They stopped near a grove of young aspens to rest and wait for Praskovya. Yelizarov had been a contractor for a long time, yet he did not keep a horse, but went about the whole district on foot, with nothing but a little sack in which he kept bread and onion, and he took long strides, swinging his arms. It was hard to keep up with him.

At the entrance to the grove stood a boundary post. Yelizarov touched it to see if it was sturdy. Praskovya came up, out of breath. Her wrinkled, perpetually frightened face was radiant wit
h happiness: she had been in church today, like other people, then had gone to the fair, and there she had drunk pear kvass! That rarely happened to her, and it even seemed to her now that she had lived for her own pleasure for the first time in her life. After resting, all three went on together. The sun was setting, and its rays penetrated the grove, shone on the tree trunks. Loud voices rang out ahead. The Ukleyevo girls had gone ahead long ago, but had tarried there in the grove, probably picking mushrooms.

“Hey, gi-i-irls!” shouted Yelizarov. “Hey, you beauties!”

He was answered with laughter.

“Crutch is coming! Crutch! The old coot!”

And the echo laughed, too. Now the grove was behind them. They could already see the tops of the factory smokestacks; the cross on the belfry flashed: this was the village, “the one where the
verger ate all the caviar at the funeral.” They were almost home; they only had to go down into the big ravine. Lipa and Praskovya, who went barefoot, sat down on the grass to put their shoes on; the contractor sat down with them. Looked at from above, Ukleyevo, with its pussywillows, white church, and river, seemed beautiful, peaceful, an impression only spoiled by the factory roofs, painted a g
loomy, savage color for the sake of economy. On the opposite slope one could see rye—stacked up, or in sheaves here and there, as if scattered by a storm, or in just-cut rows; the oats, too, were ripe and gleamed in the sun now, like mother-of-pearl. It was harvest time. Today was a feast day, tomorrow, a Saturday, they had to gather the rye and get the hay in, then Sunday was a feast day again; every day distant thunder rumbled; the weather was sultry, it felt like rain, and, looking at the fields now, each one hoped that God would grant them to finish the harvest in time, and was merry, and joy
ful, and uneasy at heart.

“Mowers cost a lot these days,” said Praskovya. “A rouble forty a day!”

And people kept on coming from the fair in Kazanskoe; peasant women, factory workers in new visored caps, beggars, children … A cart drove past, raising dust, with an unsold horse running behind it, looking as if it were glad it had not been sold; then a resisting cow was led past by the horns, then came another cart carrying drunken peasants, their legs dangling down. An old woman led a boy in a big hat and big boots; the boy was exhausted from the heat and the heavy boots, which did not let him bend his knees, but even so he kept blowing with all his might on a toy trumpet; they
had already gone down and turned off on a side street, and the trumpet could still be heard.

“And our factory-owners are a bit out of sorts …” said Yelizarov. “It’s bad! Kostiukov got angry with me. He said, ‘Too much lumber went into the cornices.’ Too much? ‘As much as was needed, Vassily Danilych,’ I say, ‘that’s how much went into them. I don’t eat it with my kasha, your lumber.’ ‘How can you speak to me like that?’ he says. ‘A blockhead, that’s what you are! Don’t forget yourself! It was I,’ he shouts, ‘who made you a contractor!’ ‘Some feat,’ I say. ‘Before I was a contractor,’ I say, ‘I still drank tea every day’ ‘You’re all crooks,’ he says … I kept quiet. We’re
crooks in this world, I thought, and you’ll be crooks in the next. Ho, ho, ho! The next day he softened. ‘Don’t be angry with me for my words, Makarych,’ he
said. ‘If I said something unnecessary, still there’s the fact that I’m a merchant of the first guild, superior to you—you ought to keep quiet.’ ‘You’re a merchant of the first guild,’ I say, ‘and I’m a carpenter, that’s correct. And Saint Joseph,’ I say, ‘was also a carpenter. Our business is righteous, pleasing to God, and if,’ I say, ‘you want to be superior, go ahead, Vassily Danilych.’ And later—that is, after the conversation—I thought: but who’
s the superior one? A merchant of the first guild or a carpenter? Turns out it’s the carpenter, little ones!”