Peasants

Peasants

I

NIKOLAY TCHIKILDYEEV, a waiter in the Moscow hotel, Slavyansky
Bazaar, was taken ill. His legs went numb and his gait was
affected, so that on one occasion, as he was going along the
corridor, he tumbled and fell down with a tray full of ham and
peas. He had to leave his job. All his own savings and his wife's
were spent on doctors and medicines; they had nothing left to
live upon. He felt dull with no work to do, and he made up his
mind he must go home to the village. It is better to be ill at
home, and living there is cheaper; and it is a true saying that
the walls of home are a help.

He reached Zhukovo towards evening. In his memories of childhood
he had pictured his home as bright, snug, comfortable. Now, going
into the hut, he was positively frightened; it was so dark, so
crowded, so unclean. His wife Olga and his daughter Sasha, who
had come with him, kept looking in bewilderment at the big untidy
stove, which filled up almost half the hut and was black with
soot and flies. What lots of flies! The stove was on one side,
the beams lay slanting on the walls, and it looked as though the
hut were just going to fall to pieces. In the corner, facing the
door, under the holy images, bottle labels and newspaper cuttings
were stuck on the walls instead of pictures. The poverty, the
poverty! Of the grown-up people there were none at home; all were
at work at the harvest. On the stove was sitting a white-headed
girl of eight, unwashed and apathetic; she did not even glance at
them as they came in. On the floor a white cat was rubbing itself
against the oven fork.

"Puss, puss!" Sasha called to her. "Puss!"

"She can't hear," said the little girl; "she has gone deaf."

"How is that?"

"Oh, she was beaten."

Nikolay and Olga realized from the firs t glance what life was
like here, but said nothing to one another; in silence they put
down their bundles, and went out into the village street. Their
hut was the third from the end, and seemed the very poorest and
oldest-looking; the second was not much better; but the last one
had an iron roof, and curtains in the windows. That hut stood
apart, not enclosed; it was a tavern. The huts were in a single
row, and the whole of the little village -- quiet and dreamy,
with willows, elders, and mountain-ash trees peeping out from the
yards -- had an attractive look.

Beyond the peasants homesteads there was a slope down to the
river, so steep and precipitous that huge stones jutted out bare
here and there through the clay. Down the slope, among the stones
and holes dug by the potters, ran winding paths; bits of broken
pottery, some brown, some red, lay piled up in heaps, and below
there stretched a broad, level, bright green meadow, from which
the hay had been already carried, and in which the peasants'
cattle were wandering. The river, three-quarters of a mile from
the village, ran twisting and turning, with beautiful leafy
banks; beyond it was again a broad meadow, a herd of cattle, long
strings of white geese; then, just as on the near side, a steep
ascent uphill, and on the top of the hill a hamlet, and a church
with five domes, and at a little distance the manor-house.

"It's lovely here in your parts!" said Olga, crossing herself at
the sight of the church. "What space, oh Lord!"

Just at that moment the bell began ringing for service (it was
Saturday evening). Two little girls, down below, who were
dragging up a pail of water, looked round at the church to listen
to the bell.

"At this time they are serving the dinners at the Slavyansky
Bazaar," said Nikolay dreamily.

Sitting on the edge of the slope, Nikolay and Olga watched the
sun setting, watched the gold and crimson sky reflected in the
river, in the church windows, and in the whole air -- which was
soft and still and unutterably pure as it never was in Moscow.
And when the sun had set the flocks and herds passed, bleating
and lowing; geese flew across from the further side of the river,
and all sank into silence; the soft light died away in the air,
and the dusk of evening began quickly moving down upon them.

Meanwhile Nikolay's father and mother, two gaunt, bent, toothless
old people, just of the same height, came back. The women -- the
sisters-in-law Marya and Fyokla -- who had been working on the
landowner's estate beyond the river, arrived home, too. Marya,
the wife of Nikolay's brother Kiryak, had six children, and
Fyokla, the wife of Nikolay's brother Denis -- who had gone for a
soldier -- had two; and when Nikolay, going into the hut, saw all
the family, all those bodies big and little moving about on the
lockers, in the hanging cradles and in all the corners, and when
he saw the greed with which the old father and the women ate the
black bread, dipping it in water, he realized he had made a
mistake in coming here, sick, penniless, and with a family, too
-- a great mistake!

"And where is Kiryak?" he asked after they had exchanged
greetings.

"He is in service at the merchant's," answered his father; "a
keeper in the woods. He is not a bad peasant, but too fond of his
glass."

"He is no great help!" said the old woman tearfully. "Our men are
a grievous lot; they bring nothing into the house, but take
plenty out. Kiryak drinks, and so does the old man; it is no use
hiding a sin; he knows his way to the tavern. The Heavenly Mother
is wroth."

In honour of the visitors they brought out the samovar. The tea
smelt of fish; the sugar was grey and looked as though it had
been nibbled; cockroaches ran to and fro over the bread and among
the crockery. It was disgusting to drink, and the conversation
was disgusting, too -- about nothing but poverty and illnesses.
But before they had time to empty their first cups there came a
loud, prolonged, drunken shout from the yard:

"Ma-arya!"

"It looks as though Kiryak were coming," said the old man. "Speak
of the devil."

All were hushed. And again, soon afterwards, the same shout,
coarse and drawn-out as though it came out of the earth:

"Ma-arya!"

Marya, the elder sister-in-law, turned pale and huddled against
the stove, and it was strange to see the look of terror on the
face of the strong, broad-shouldered, ugly woman. Her daughter,
the child who had been sitting on the stove and looked so
apathetic, suddenly broke into loud weeping.

"What are you howling for, you plague?" Fyokla, a handsome woman,
also strong and broad-shouldered, shouted to her. "He won't kill
you, no fear!"

From his old father Nikolay learned that Marya was afraid to live
in the forest with Kiryak, and that when he was drunk he always
came for her, made a row, and beat her mercilessly.

"Ma-arya!" the shout sounded close to the door.

"Protect me, for Christ's sake, good people!" faltered Marya,
breathing as though she had been plunged into very cold water.
"Protect me, kind people. . . ."

All the children in the hut began crying, and looking at them,
Sasha, too, began to cry. They heard a drunken cough, and a tall,
black-bearded peasant wearing a winter cap came into the hut, and
was the more terrible because his face could not be seen in the
dim light of the little lamp. It was Kiryak. Going up to his
wife, he swung his arm and punched her in the face with his fist.
Stunned by the blow, she did not utter a sound, but sat down, and
her nose instantly began bleeding.

"What a disgrace! What a disgrace!" muttered the old man,
clambering up on to the stove. "Before visitors, too! It's a
sin!"

The old mother sat silent, bowed, lost in thought; Fyokla rocked
the cradle.

Evidently conscious of inspiring fear, and pleased at doing so,
Kiryak seized Marya by the arm, dragged her towards the door, and
bellowed like an animal in order to seem still more terrible; but
at that moment he suddenly caught sight of the visitors and
stopped.

"Oh, they have come, . . ." he said, letting his wife go; "my own
brother and his family. . . ."

Staggering and opening wide his red, drunken eyes, he said his
prayer before the image and went on:

"My brother and his family have come to the parental home . . .
from Moscow, I suppose. The great capital Moscow, to be sure, the
mother of cities. . . . Excuse me."

He sank down on the bench near the samovar and began drinking
tea, sipping it loudly from the saucer in the midst of general
silence. . . . He drank off a dozen cups, then reclined on the
bench and began snoring.

They began going to bed. Nikolay, as an invalid, was put on the
stove with his old father; Sasha lay down on the floor, while
Olga went with the other women into the barn.

"Aye, aye, dearie," she said, lying down on the hay beside Marya;
"you won't mend your trouble with tears. Bear it in patience,
that is all. It is written in the Scriptures: 'If anyone smite
thee on the right cheek, offer him the left one also.' . . . Aye,
aye, dearie."

Then in a low singsong murmur she told them about Moscow, about
her own life, how she had been a servant in furnished lodgings.

"And in Moscow the houses are big, built of brick," she said;
"and there are ever so many churches, forty times forty, dearie;
and they are all gentry in the houses, so handsome and so
proper!"

Marya told her that she had not only never been in Moscow, but
had not even been in their own district town; she could not read
or write, and knew no prayers, not even "Our Father." Both she
and Fyokla, the other sister-in-law, who was sitting a little way
off listening, were extremely ignorant and could understand
nothing. They both disliked their husbands; Marya was afraid of
Kiryak, and whenever he stayed with her she was shaking with
fear, and always got a headache from the fumes of vodka and
tobacco with which he reeked. And in answer to the question
whether she did not miss her husband, Fyokla answered with
vexation:

"Miss him!"

They talked a little and sank into silence.

It was cool, and a cock crowed at the top of his voice near the
barn, preventing them from sleeping. When the bluish morning
light was already peeping through all the crevices, Fyokla got up
stealthily and went out, and then they heard the sound of her
bare feet running off somewhere.

II

Olga went to church, and took Marya with her. As they went down
the path towards the meadow both were in good spirits. Olga liked
the wide view, and Marya felt that in her sister-in-law she had
someone near and akin to her. The sun was rising. Low down over
the meadow floated a drowsy hawk. The river looked gloomy; there
was a haze hovering over it here and there, but on the further
bank a streak of light already stretched across the hill. The
church was gleaming, and in the manor garden the rooks were
cawing furiously.

"The old man is all right," Marya told her, "but Granny is
strict; she is continually nagging. Our own grain lasted till
Carnival. We buy flour now at the tavern. She is angry about it;
she says we eat too much."

"Aye, aye, dearie! Bear it in patience, that is all. It is
written: 'Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden.'
"

Olga spoke sedately, rhythmically, and she walked like a pilgrim
woman, with a rapid, anxious step. Every day she read the gospel,
read it aloud like a deacon; a great deal of it she did not
understand, but the words of the gospel moved her to tears, and
words like "forasmuch as" and "verily" she pronounced with a
sweet flutter at her heart. She believed in God, in the Holy
Mother, in the Saints; she believed one must not offend anyone in
the world -- not simple folks, nor Germans, nor gypsies, nor Jews
-- and woe even to those who have no compassion on the beasts.
She believed this was written in the Holy Scriptures; and so,
when she pronounced phrases from Holy Writ, even though she did
not understand them, her face grew softened, compassionate, and
radiant.

"What part do you come from?" Marya asked her.

"I am from Vladimir. Only I was taken to Moscow long ago, when I
was eight years old."

They reached the river. On the further side a woman was standing
at the water's edge, undressing.

"It's our Fyokla," said Marya, recognizing her. "She has been
over the river to the manor yard. To the stewards. She is a
shameless hussy and foul-mouthed -- fearfully!"

Fyokla, young and vigorous as a girl, with her black eyebrows and
her loose hair, jumped off the bank and began splashing the water
with her feet, and waves ran in all directions from her.

"Shameless -- dreadfully! " repeated Marya.

The river was crossed by a rickety little bridge of logs, and
exactly below it in the clear, limpid water was a shoal of
broad-headed mullets. The dew was glistening on the green bushes
that looked into the water. There was a feeling of warmth; it was
comforting! What a lovely morning! And how lovely life would have
been in this world, in all likelihood, if it were not for
poverty, horrible, hopeless poverty, from which one can find no
refuge! One had only to look round at the village to remember
vividly all that had happened the day before, and the illusion of
happiness which seemed to surround them vanished instantly.

They reached the church. Marya stood at the entrance, and did not
dare to go farther. She did not dare to sit down either. Though
they only began ringing for mass between eight and nine, she
remained standing the whole time.

While the gospel was being read the crowd suddenly parted to make
way for the family from the great house. Two young girls in white
frocks and wide-brimmed hats walked in; with them a chubby, rosy
boy in a sailor suit. Their appearance touched Olga; she made up
her mind from the first glance that they were refined,
well-educated, handsome people. Marya looked at them from under
her brows, sullenly, dejectedly, as though they were not human
beings coming in, but monsters who might crush her if she did not
make way for them.

And every time the deacon boomed out something in his bass voice
she fancied she heard "Ma-arya!" and she shuddered.

III

The arrival of the visitors was already known in the village, and
directly after mass a number of people gathered together in the
hut. The Leonytchevs and Matvyeitchevs and the Ilyitchovs came to
inquire about their relations who were in service in Moscow. All
the lads of Zhukovo who could read and write were packed off to
Moscow and hired out as butlers or waiters (while from the
village on the other side of the river the boys all became
bakers), and that had been the custom from the days of serfdom
long ago when a certain Luka Ivanitch, a peasant from Zhukovo,
now a legendary figure, who had been a waiter in one of the
Moscow clubs, would take none but his fellow-villagers into his
service, and found jobs for them in taverns and restaurants; and
from that time the village of Zhukovo was always called among the
inhabitants of the surrounding districts Slaveytown. Nikolay had
been taken to Moscow when he was eleven, and Ivan Makaritch, one
of the Matvyeitchevs, at that time a headwaiter in the
"Hermitage" garden, had put him into a situation. And now,
addressing the Matvyeitchevs, Nikolay said emphatically:

"Ivan Makaritch was my benefactor, and I am bound to pray for him
day and night, as it is owing to him I have become a good man."

"My good soul!" a tall old woman, the sister of Ivan Makaritch,
said tearfully, "and not a word have we heard about him, poor
dear."

"In the winter he was in service at Omon's, and this season there
was a rumour he was somewhere out of town, in gardens. . . . He
has aged! In old days he would bring home as much as ten roubles
a day in the summer-time, but now things are very quiet
everywhere. The old man frets."

The women looked at Nikolay's feet, shod in felt boots, and at
his pale face, and said mournfully:

"You are not one to get on, Nikolay Osipitch; you are not one to
get on! No, indeed!"

And they all made much of Sasha. She was ten years old, but she
was little and very thin, and might have been taken for no more
than seven. Among the other little girls, with their sunburnt
faces and roughly cropped hair, dressed in long faded smocks, she
with her white little face, with her big dark eyes, with a red
ribbon in her hair, looked funny, as though she were some little
wild creature that had been caught and brought into the hut.

"She can read, too," Olga said in her praise, looking tenderly at
her daughter. "Read a little, child!" she said, taking the gospel
from the corner. "You read, and the good Christian people will
listen."

The testament was an old and heavy one in leather binding, with
dog's-eared edges, and it exhaled a smell as though monks had
come into the hut. Sasha raised her eyebrows and began in a loud
rhythmic chant:

" 'And the angel of the Lord . . . appeared unto Joseph, saying
unto him: Rise up, and take the Babe and His mother.' "

"The Babe and His mother," Olga repeated, and flushed all over
with emotion.

" 'And flee into Egypt, . . . and tarry there until such time as
. . .' "

At the word "tarry" Olga could not refrain from tears. Looking at
her, Marya began to whimper, and after her Ivan Makaritch's
sister. The old father cleared his throat, and bustled about to
find something to give his grand-daughter, but, finding nothing,
gave it up with a wave of his hand. And when the reading was over
the neighbours dispersed to their homes, feeling touched and very
much pleased with Olga and Sasha.

As it was a holiday, the family spent the whole day at home. The
old woman, whom her husband, her daughters-in-law, her
grandchildren all alike called Granny, tried to do everything
herself; she heated the stove and set the samovar with her own
hands, even waited at the midday meal, and then complained that
she was worn out with work. And all the time she was uneasy for
fear someone should eat a piece too much, or that her husband and
daughters-in-law would sit idle. At one time she would hear the
tavern-keeper's geese going at the back of the huts to her
kitchen-garden, and she would run out of the hut with a long
stick and spend half an hour screaming shrilly by her cabbages,
which were as gaunt and scraggy as herself; at another time she
fancied that a crow had designs on her chickens, and she rushed
to attack it wi th loud words of abuse. She was cross and
grumbling from morning till night. And often she raised such an
outcry that passers-by stopped in the street.

She was not affectionate towards the old man, reviling him as a
lazy-bones and a plague. He was not a responsible, reliable
peasant, and perhaps if she had not been continually nagging at
him he would not have worked at all, but would have simply sat on
the stove and talked. He talked to his son at great length about
certain enemies of his, complained of the insults he said he had
to put up with every day from the neighbours, and it was tedious
to listen to him.

"Yes," he would say, standing with his arms akimbo, "yes. . . . A
week after the Exaltation of the Cross I sold my hay willingly at
thirty kopecks a pood. . . . Well and good. . . . So you see I
was taking the hay in the morning with a good will; I was
interfering with no one. In an unlucky hour I see the village
elder, Antip Syedelnikov, coming out of the tavern. 'Where are
you taking it, you ruffian?' says he, and takes me by the ear."

Kiryak had a fearful headache after his drinking bout, and was
ashamed to face his brother.

"What vodka does! Ah, my God!" he muttered, shaking his aching
head. "For Christ's sake, forgive me, brother and sister; I'm not
happy myself."

As it was a holiday, they bought a herring at the tavern and made
a soup of the herring's head. At midday they all sat down to
drink tea, and went on drinking it for a long time, till they
were all perspiring; they looked positively swollen from the
tea-drinking, and after it began sipping the broth from the
herring's head, all helping themselves out of one bowl. But the
herring itself Granny had hidden.

In the evening a potter began firing pots on the ravine. In the
meadow below the girls got up a choral dance and sang songs. They
played the concertina. And on the other side of the river a kiln
for baking pots was lighted, too, and the girls sang songs, and
in the distance the singing sounded soft and musical. The
peasants were noisy in and about the tavern. They were singing
with drunken voices, each on his own account, and swearing at one
another, so that Olga could only shudder and say:

"Oh, holy Saints!"

She was amazed that the abuse was incessant, and those who were
loudest and most persistent in this foul language were the old
men who were so near their end. And the girls and children heard
the swearing, and were not in the least disturbed by it, and it
was evident that they were used to it from their cradles.

It was past midnight, the kilns on both sides of the river were
put out, but in the meadow below and in the tavern the
merrymaking still went on. The old father and Kiryak, both drunk,
walking arm-in-arm and jostling against each other's shoulders,
went to the barn where Olga and Marya were lying.

"Let her alone," the old man persuaded him; "let her alone. . . .
She is a harmless woman. . . . It's a sin. . . ."

"Ma-arya! " shouted Kiryak.

"Let her be. . . . It's a sin. . . . She is not a bad woman."

Both stopped by the barn and went on.

"I lo-ove the flowers of the fi-ield," the old man began singing
suddenly in a high, piercing tenor. "I lo-ove to gather them in
the meadows!"

Then he spat, and with a filthy oath went into the hut.

IV

Granny put Sasha by her kitchen-garden and told her to keep watch
that the geese did not go in. It was a hot August day. The
tavernkeeper's geese could make their way into the kitchen-garden
by the backs of the huts, but now they were busily engaged
picking up oats by the tavern, peacefully conversing together,
and only the gander craned his head high as though trying to see
whether the old woman were coming with her stick. The other geese
might come up from below, but they were now grazing far away the
other side of the river, stretched out in a long white garland
about the meadow. Sasha stood about a little, grew weary, and,
seeing that the geese were not coming, went away to the ravine.

There she saw Marya's eldest daughter Motka, who was standing
motionless on a big stone, staring at the church. Marya had given
birth to thirteen children, but she only had six living, all
girls, not one boy, and the eldest was eight. Motka in a long
smock was standing barefooted in the full sunshine; the sun was
blazing down right on her head, but she did not notice that, and
seemed as though turned to stone. Sasha stood beside her and
said, looking at the church:

"God lives in the church. Men have lamps and candles, but God has
little green and red and blue lamps like little eyes. At night
God walks about the church, and with Him the Holy Mother of God
and Saint Nikolay, thud, thud, thud! . . . And the watchman is
terrified, terrified! Aye, aye, dearie," she added, imitating her
mother. "And when the end of the world comes all the churches
will be carried up to heaven."

"With the-ir be-ells?" Motka asked in her deep voice, drawling
every syllable.

"With their bells. And when the end of the world comes the good
will go to Paradise, but the angry will burn in fire eternal and
unquenchable, dearie. To my mother as well as to Marya God will
say: 'You never offended anyone, and for that go to the right to
Paradise'; but to Kiryak and Granny He will say: 'You go to the
left into the fire.' And anyone who has eaten meat in Lent will
go into the fire, too."

She looked upwards at the sky, opening wide her eyes, and said:

"Look at the sky without winking, you will see angels."

Motka began looking at the sky, too, and a minute passed in
silence.

"Do you see them?" asked Sasha.

"I don't," said Motka in her deep voice.

"But I do. Little angels are flying about the sky and flap, flap
with their little wings as though they were gnats."

Motka thought for a little, with her eyes on the ground, and
asked:

"Will Granny burn?"

"She will, dearie."

From the stone an even gentle slope ran down to the bottom,
covered with soft green grass, which one longed to lie down on or
to touch with one's hands. . . Sasha lay down and rolled to the
bottom. Motka with a grave, severe face, taking a deep breath,
lay down, too, and rolled to the bottom, and in doing so tore her
smock from the hem to the shoulder.

"What fun it is!" said Sasha, delighted.

They walked up to the top to roll down again, but at that moment
they heard a shrill, familiar voice. Oh, how awful it was!
Granny, a toothless, bony, hunchbacked figure, with short grey
hair which was fluttering in the wind, was driving the geese out
of the kitchen-garden with a long stick, shouting.

"They have trampled all the cabbages, the damned brutes! I'd cut
your throats, thrice accursed plagues! Bad luck to you!"

She saw the little girls, flung down the stick and picked up a
switch, and, seizing Sasha by the neck with her fingers, thin and
hard as the gnarled branches of a tree, began whipping her. Sasha
cried with pain and terror, while the gander, waddling and
stretching his neck, went up to the old woman and hissed at her,
and when he went back to his flock all the geese greeted him
approvingly with "Ga-ga-ga!" Then Granny proceeded to whip Motka,
and in this Motka's smock was torn again. Feeling in despair, and
crying loudly, Sasha went to the hut to complain. Motka followed
her; she, too, was crying on a deeper note, without wiping her
tears, and her face was as wet as though it had been dipped in
water.

"Holy Saints!" cried Olga, aghast, as the two came into the hut.
"Queen of Heaven!"

Sasha began telling her story, while at the same time Granny
walked in with a storm of shrill cries and abuse; then Fyokla
flew into a rage, and there was an uproar in the hut.

"Never mind, never mind!" Olga, pale and upset, tried to comfort
them, stroking Sasha's head. "She is your grandmother; it's a sin
to be angry with her. Never mind, my child."

Nikolay, who was worn out already by the everlasting hubbub,
hunger, stifling fumes, filth, who hated and despised the
poverty, who was ashamed for his wife and daughter to see his
father and mother, swung his legs off the stove and said in an
irritable, tearful voice, addressing his mother:

"You must not beat her! You have no right to beat he r!"

"You lie rotting on the stove, you wretched creature!" Fyokla
shouted at him spitefully. "The devil brought you all on us,
eating us out of house and home."

Sasha and Motka and all the little girls in the hut huddled on
the stove in the corner behind Nikolay's back, and from that
refuge listened in silent terror, and the beating of their little
hearts could be distinctly heard. Whenever there is someone in a
family who has long been ill, and hopelessly ill, there come
painful moments when all timidly, secretly, at the bottom of
their hearts long for his death; and only the children fear the
death of someone near them, and always feel horrified at the
thought of it. And now the children, with bated breath, with a
mournful look on their faces, gazed at Nikolay and thought that
he was soon to die; and they wanted to cry and to say something
friendly and compassionate to him.

He pressed close to Olga, as though seeking protection, and said
to her softly in a quavering voice:

"Olya darling, I can't stay here longer. It's more than I can
bear. For God's sake, for Christ's sake, write to your sister
Klavdia Abramovna. Let her sell and pawn everything she has; let
her send us the money. We will go away from here. Oh, Lord," he
went on miserably, "to have one peep at Moscow! If I could see it
in my dreams, the dear place!

And when the evening came on, and it was dark in the hut, it was
so dismal that it was hard to utter a word. Granny, very
ill-tempered, soaked some crusts of rye bread in a cup, and was a
long time, a whole hour, sucking at them. Marya, after milking
the cow, brought in a pail of milk and set it on a bench; then
Granny poured it from the pail into a jug just as slowly and
deliberately, evidently pleased that it was now the Fast of the
Assumption, so that no one would drink milk and it would be left
untouched. And she only poured out a very little in a saucer for
Fyokla's baby. When Marya and she carried the jug down to the
cellar Motka suddenly stirred, clambered down from the stove, and
going to the bench where stood the wooden cup full of crusts,
sprinkled into it some milk from the saucer.

Granny, coming back into the hut, sat down to her soaked crusts
again, while Sasha and Motka, sitting on the stove, gazed at her,
and they were glad that she had broken her fast and now would go
to hell. They were comforted and lay down to sleep, and Sasha as
she dozed off to sleep imagined the Day of Judgment: a huge fire
was burning, somewhat like a potter's kiln, and the Evil One,
with horns like a cow's, and black all over, was driving Granny
into the fire with a long stick, just as Granny herself had been
driving the geese.

V

On the day of the Feast of the Assumption, between ten and eleven
in the evening, the girls and lads who were merrymaking in the
meadow suddenly raised a clamour and outcry, and ran in the
direction of the village; and those who were above on the edge of
the ravine could not for the first moment make out what was the
matter.

"Fire! Fire!" they heard desperate shouts from below. "The
village is on fire!"

Those who were sitting above looked round, and a terrible and
extraordinary spectacle met their eyes. On the thatched roof of
one of the end cottages stood a column of flame, seven feet high,
which curled round and scattered sparks in all directions as
though it were a fountain. And all at once the whole roof burst
into bright flame, and the crackling of the fire was audible.

The light of the moon was dimmed, and the whole village was by
now bathed in a red quivering glow: black shadows moved over the
ground, there was a smell of burning, and those who ran up from
below were all gasping and could not speak for trembling; they
jostled against each other, fell down, and they could hardly see
in the unaccustomed light, and did not recognize each other. It
was terrible. What seemed particularly dreadful was that doves
were flying over the fire in the smoke; and in the tavern, where
they did not yet know of the fire, they were still singing and
playing the concertina as though there were nothing the matter.

"Uncle Semyon's on fire," shouted a loud, coarse voice.

Marya was fussing about round her hut, weeping and wringing her
hands, while her teeth chattered, though the fire was a long way
off at the other end of the village. Nikolay came out in high
felt boots, the children ran out in their little smocks. Near the
village constable's hut an iron sheet was struck. Boom, boom,
boom! . . . floated through the air, and this repeated,
persistent sound sent a pang to the heart and turned one cold.
The old women stood with the holy ikons. Sheep, calves, cows were
driven out of the back-yards into the street; boxes, sheepskins,
tubs were carried out. A black stallion, who was kept apart from
the drove of horses because he kicked and injured them, on being
set free ran once or twice up and down the village, neighing and
pawing the ground; then suddenly stopped short near a cart and
began kicking it with his hind-legs.

They began ringing the bells in the church on the other side of
the river.

Near the burning hut it was hot and so light that one could
distinctly see every blade of grass. Semyon, a red-haired peasant
with a long nose, wearing a reefer-jacket and a cap pulled down
right over his ears, sat on one of the boxes which they had
succeeded in bringing out: his wife was lying on her face,
moaning and unconscious. A little old man of eighty, with a big
beard, who looked like a gnome -- not one of the villagers,
though obviously connected in some way with the fire -- walked
about bareheaded, with a white bundle in his arms. The glare was
reflected on his bald head. The village elder, Antip Syedelnikov,
as swarthy and black-haired as a gypsy, went up to the hut with
an axe, and hacked out the windows one after another -- no one
knew why -- then began chopping up the roof.

"Women, water!" he shouted. "Bring the engine! Look sharp!"

The peasants, who had been drinking in the tavern just before,
dragged the engine up. They were all drunk; they kept stumbling
and falling down, and all had a helpless expression and tears in
their eyes.

"Wenches, water! " shouted the elder, who was drunk, too. "Look
sharp, wenches!"

The women and the girls ran downhill to where there was a spring,
and kept hauling pails and buckets of water up the hill, and,
pouring it into the engine, ran down again. Olga and Marya and
Sasha and Motka all brought water. The women and the boys pumped
the water; the pipe hissed, and the elder, directing it now at
the door, now at the windows, held back the stream with his
finger, which made it hiss more sharply still.

"Bravo, Antip!" voices shouted approvingly. "Do your best."

Antip went inside the hut into the fire and shouted from within.

"Pump! Bestir yourselves, good Christian folk, in such a terrible
mischance!"

The peasants stood round in a crowd, doing nothing but staring at
the fire. No one knew what to do, no one had the sense to do
anything, though there were stacks of wheat, hay, barns, and
piles of faggots standing all round. Kiryak and old Osip, his
father, both tipsy, were standing there, too. And as though to
justify his doing nothing, old Osip said, addressing the woman
who lay on the ground:

"What is there to trouble about, old girl! The hut is insured --
why are you taking on?"

Semyon, addressing himself first to one person and then to
another, kept describing how the fire had started.

"That old man, the one with the bundle, a house-serf of General
Zhukov's. . . . He was cook at our general's, God rest his soul!
He came over this evening: 'Let me stay the night,' says he. . .
. Well, we had a glass, to be sure. . . . The wife got the
samovar -- she was going to give the old fellow a cup of tea, and
in an unlucky hour she set the samovar in the entrance. The
sparks from the chimney must have blown straight up to the
thatch; that's how it was. We were almost burnt ourselves. And
the old fellow's cap has been burnt; what a shame!"

And the sheet of iron was struck indefatigably, and the bells
kept ringing in the church the other side of the river. In the
glow of the fir e Olga, breathless, looking with horror at the
red sheep and the pink doves flying in the smoke, kept running
down the hill and up again. It seemed to her that the ringing
went to her heart with a sharp stab, that the fire would never be
over, that Sasha was lost. . . . And when the ceiling of the hut
fell in with a crash, the thought that now the whole village
would be burnt made her weak and faint, and she could not go on
fetching water, but sat down on the ravine, setting the pail down
near her; beside her and below her, the peasant women sat wailing
as though at a funeral.

Then the stewards and watchmen from the estate the other side of
the river arrived in two carts, bringing with them a fire-engine.
A very young student in an unbuttoned white tunic rode up on
horseback. There was the thud of axes. They put a ladder to the
burning framework of the house, and five men ran up it at once.
Foremost of them all was the student, who was red in the face and
shouting in a harsh hoarse voice, and in a tone as though putting
out fires was a thing he was used to. They pulled the house to
pieces, a beam at a time; they dragged away the corn, the
hurdles, and the stacks that were near.

"Don't let them break it up! " cried stern voices in the crowd.
"Don't let them."

Kiryak made his way up to the hut with a resolute air, as though
he meant to prevent the newcomers from breaking up the hut, but
one of the workmen turned him back with a blow in his neck. There
was the sound of laughter, the workman dealt him another blow,
Kiryak fell down, and crawled back into the crowd on his hands
and knees.

Two handsome girls in hats, probably the student's sisters, came
from the other side of the river. They stood a little way off,
looking at the fire. The beams that had been dragged apart were
no longer burning, but were smoking vigorously; the student, who
was working the hose, turned the water, first on the beams, then
on the peasants, then on the women who were bringing the water.

"George!" the girls called to him reproachfully in anxiety,
"George!"

The fire was over. And only when they began to disperse they
noticed that the day was breaking, that everyone was pale and
rather dark in the face, as it always seems in the early morning
when the last stars are going out. As they separated, the
peasants laughed and made jokes about General Zhukov's cook and
his cap which had been burnt; they already wanted to turn the
fire into a joke, and even seemed sorry that it had so soon been
put out.

"How well you extinguished the fire, sir!" said Olga to the
student. "You ought to come to us in Moscow: there we have a fire
every day."

"Why, do you come from Moscow?" asked one of the young ladies.

"Yes, miss. My husband was a waiter at the Slavyansky Bazaar. And
this is my daughter," she said, indicating Sasha, who was cold
and huddling up to her. "She is a Moscow girl, too."

The two young ladies said something in French to the student, and
he gave Sasha a twenty-kopeck piece.

Old Father Osip saw this, and there was a gleam of hope in his
face.

"We must thank God, your honour, there was no wind," he said,
addressing the student, "or else we should have been all burnt up
together. Your honour, kind gentlefolks," he added in
embarrassment in a lower tone, "the morning's chilly . . .
something to warm one . . . half a bottle to your honour's
health."

Nothing was given him, and clearing his throat he slouched home.
Olga stood afterwards at the end of the street and watched the
two carts crossing the river by the ford and the gentlefolks
walking across the meadow; a carriage was waiting for them the
other side of the river. Going into the hut, she described to her
husband with enthusiasm:

"Such good people! And so beautiful! The young ladies were like
cherubim."

"Plague take them!" Fyokla, sleepy, said spitefully.

VI

Marya thought herself unhappy, and said that she would be very
glad to die; Fyokla, on the other hand, found all this life to
her taste: the poverty, the uncleanliness, and the incessant
quarrelling. She ate what was given her without discrimination;
slept anywhere, on whatever came to hand. She would empty the
slops just at the porch, would splash them out from the doorway,
and then walk barefoot through the puddle. And from the very
first day she took a dislike to Olga and Nikolay just because
they did not like this life.

"We shall see what you'll find to eat here, you Moscow gentry!"
she said malignantly. "We shall see!"

One morning, it was at the beginning of September, Fyokla,
vigorous, good-looking, and rosy from the cold, brought up two
pails of water; Marya and Olga were sitting meanwhile at the
table drinking tea.

"Tea and sugar," said Fyokla sarcastically. "The fine ladies!"
she added, setting down the pails. "You have taken to the fashion
of tea every day. You better look out that you don't burst with
your tea-drinking," she went on, looking with hatred at Olga.
"That's how you have come by your fat mug, having a good time in
Moscow, you lump of flesh!" She swung the yoke and hit Olga such
a blow on the shoulder that the two sisters-in-law could only
clasp their hands and say:

"Oh, holy Saints!"

Then Fyokla went down to the river to wash the clothes, swearing
all the time so loudly that she could be heard in the hut.

The day passed and was followed by the long autumn evening. They
wound silk in the hut; everyone did it except Fyokla; she had
gone over the river. They got the silk from a factory close by,
and the whole family working together earned next to nothing,
twenty kopecks a week.

"Things were better in the old days under the gentry," said the
old father as he wound silk. "You worked and ate and slept,
everything in its turn. At dinner you had cabbage-soup and boiled
grain, and at supper the same again. Cucumbers and cabbage in
plenty: you could eat to your heart's content, as much as you
wanted. And there was more strictness. Everyone minded what he
was about."

The hut was lighted by a single little lamp, which burned dimly
and smoked. When someone screened the lamp and a big shadow fell
across the window, the bright moonlight could be seen. Old Osip,
speaking slowly, told them how they used to live before the
emancipation; how in those very parts, where life was now so poor
and so dreary, they used to hunt with harriers, greyhounds,.
retrievers, and when they went out as beaters the peasants were
given vodka; how whole waggonloads of game used to be sent to
Moscow for the young masters; how the bad were beaten with rods
or sent away to the Tver estate, while the good were rewarded.
And Granny told them something, too. She remembered everything,
positively everything. She described her mistress, a kind,
God-fearing woman, whose husband was a profligate and a rake, and
all of whose daughters made unlucky marriages: one married a
drunkard, another married a workman, the other eloped secretly
(Granny herself, at that time a young girl, helped in the
elopement), and they had all three as well as their mother died
early from grief. And remembering all this, Granny positively
began to shed tears.

All at once someone knocked at the door, and they all started.

"Uncle Osip, give me a night's lodging."

The little bald old man, General Zhukov's cook, the one whose cap
had been burnt, walked in. He sat down and listened, then he,
too, began telling stories of all sorts. Nikolay, sitting on the
stove with his legs hanging down, listened and asked questions
about the dishes that were prepared in the old days for the
gentry. They talked of rissoles, cutlets, various soups and
sauces, and the cook, who remembered everything very well,
mentioned dishes that are no longer served. There was one, for
instance -- a dish made of bulls' eyes, which was called "waking
up in the morning."

"And used you to do cutlets a' la marechal?" asked Nikolay.

"No."

Nikolay shook his head reproachfully and said:

"Tut, tut! You were not much of a cook!"

The little girls sitting and lying on the stove stared down
without blinking; it seemed as though there were a great many of
them, like cherubim in the clouds. They liked the stories: they
were brea thless; they shuddered and turned pale with alternate
rapture and terror, and they listened breathlessly, afraid to
stir, to Granny, whose stories were the most interesting of all.

They lay down to sleep in silence; and the old people, troubled
and excited by their reminiscences, thought how precious was
youth, of which, whatever it might have been like, nothing was
left in the memory but what was living, joyful, touching, and how
terribly cold was death, which was not far off, better not think
of it! The lamp died down. And the dusk, and the two little
windows sharply defined by the moonlight, and the stillness and
the creak of the cradle, reminded them for some reason that life
was over, that nothing one could do would bring it back. . . .
You doze off, you forget yourself, and suddenly someone touches
your shoulder or breathes on your cheek -- and sleep is gone;
your body feels cramped, and thoughts of death keep creeping into
your mind. You turn on the other side: death is forgotten, but
old dreary, sickening thoughts of poverty, of food, of how dear
flour is getting, stray through the mind, and a little later
again you remember that life is over and you cannot bring it
back. . . .

"Oh, Lord!" sighed the cook.

Someone gave a soft, soft tap at the window. It must be Fyokla
come back. Olga got up, and yawning and whispering a prayer,
opened the door, then drew the bolt in the outer room, but no one
came in; only from the street came a cold draught and a sudden
brightness from the moonlight. The street, still and deserted,
and the moon itself floating across the sky, could be seen at the
open door.

"Who is there?" called Olga.

"I," she heard the answer -- "it is I."

Near the door, crouching against the wall, stood Fyokla,
absolutely naked. She was shivering with cold, her teeth were
chattering, and in the bright moonlight she looked very pale,
strange, and beautiful. The shadows on her, and the bright
moonlight on her skin, stood out vividly, and her dark eyebrows
and firm, youthful bosom were defined with peculiar distinctness.

"The ruffians over there undressed me and turned me out like
this," she said. "I've come home without my clothes . . . naked
as my mother bore me. Bring me something to put on."

"But go inside!" Olga said softly, beginning to shiver, too.

"I don't want the old folks to see." Granny was, in fact, already
stirring and muttering, and the old father asked: "Who is there?"
Olga brought her own smock and skirt, dressed Fyokla, and then
both went softly into the inner room, trying not to make a noise
with the door.

"Is that you, you sleek one?" Granny grumbled angrily, guessing
who it was. "Fie upon you, nightwalker! . . . Bad luck to you!"

"It's all right, it's all right," whispered Olga, wrapping Fyokla
up; "it's all right, dearie."

All was stillness again. They always slept badly; everyone was
kept awake by something worrying and persistent: the old man by
the pain in his back, Granny by anxiety and anger, Marya by
terror, the children by itch and hunger. Now, too, their sleep
was troubled; they kept turning over from one side to the other,
talking in their sleep, getting up for a drink.

Fyokla suddenly broke into a loud, coarse howl, but immediately
checked herself, and only uttered sobs from time to time, growing
softer and on a lower note, until she relapsed into silence. From
time to time from the other side of the river there floated the
sound of the beating of the hours; but the time seemed somehow
strange -- five was struck and then three.

"Oh Lord!" sighed the cook.

Looking at the windows, it was difficult to tell whether it was
still moonlight or whether the dawn had begun. Marya got up and
went out, and she could be heard milking the cows and saying,
"Stea-dy!" Granny went out, too. It was still dark in the hut,
but all the objects in it could be discerned.

Nikolay, who had not slept all night, got down from the stove. He
took his dress-coat out of a green box, put it on, and going to
the window, stroked the sleeves and took hold of the coat-tails
-- and smiled. Then he carefully took off the coat, put it away
in his box, and lay down again.

Marya came in again and began lighting the stove. She was
evidently hardly awake, and seemed dropping asleep as she walked.
Probably she had had some dream, or the stories of the night
before came into her mind as, stretching luxuriously before the
stove, she said:

"No, freedom is better."

VII

The master arrived -- that was what they called the police
inspector. When he would come and what he was coming for had been
known for the last week. There were only forty households in
Zhukovo, but more than two thousand roubles of arrears of rates
and taxes had accumulated.

The police inspector stopped at the tavern. He drank there two
glasses of tea, and then went on foot to the village elder's hut,
near which a crowd of those who were in debt stood waiting. The
elder, Antip Syedelnikov, was, in spite of his youth -- he was
only a little over thirty -- strict and always on the side of the
authorities, though he himself was poor and did not pay his taxes
regularly. Evidently he enjoyed being elder, and liked the sense
of authority, which he could only display by strictness. In the
village council the peasants were afraid of him and obeyed him.
It would sometimes happen that he would pounce on a drunken man
in the street or near the tavern, tie his hands behind him, and
put him in the lock-up. On one occasion he even put Granny in the
lock-up because she went to the village council instead of Osip,
and began swearing, and he kept her there for a whole day and
night. He had never lived in a town or read a book, but somewhere
or other had picked up various learned expressions, and loved to
make use of them in conversation, and he was respected for this
though he was not always understood.

When Osip came into the village elder's hut with his tax book,
the police inspector, a lean old man with a long grey beard, in a
grey tunic, was sitting at a table in the passage, writing
something. It was clean in the hut; all the walls were dotted
with pictures cut out of the illustrated papers, and in the most
conspicuous place near the ikon there was a portrait of the
Battenburg who was the Prince of Bulgaria. By the table stood
Antip Syedelnikov with his arms folded.

"There is one hundred and nineteen roubles standing against him,"
he said when it came to Osip's turn. "Before Easter he paid a
rouble, and he has not paid a kopeck since."

The police inspector raised his eyes to Osip and asked:

"Why is this, brother?"

"Show Divine mercy, your honour," Osip began, growing agitated.
"Allow me to say last year the gentleman at Lutorydsky said to
me, 'Osip,' he said, 'sell your hay . . . you sell it,' he said.
Well, I had a hundred poods for sale; the women mowed it on the
water-meadow. Well, we struck a bargain all right, willingly. . .
."

He complained of the elder, and kept turning round to the
peasants as though inviting them to bear witness; his face
flushed red and perspired, and his eyes grew sharp and angry.

"I don't know why you are saying all this," said the police
inspector. "I am asking you . . . I am asking you why you don't
pay your arrears. You don't pay, any of you, and am I to be
responsible for you?"

"I can't do it."

"His words have no sequel, your honour," said the elder. "The
Tchikildyeevs certainly are of a defective class, but if you will
just ask the others, the root of it all is vodka, and they are a
very bad lot. With no sort of understanding."

The police inspector wrote something down, and said to Osip
quietly, in an even tone, as though he were asking him for water:

"Be off."

Soon he went away; and when he got into his cheap chaise and
cleared his throat, it could be seen from the very expression of
his long thin back that he was no longer thinking of Osip or of
the village elder, nor of the Zhukovo arrears, but was thinking
of his own affairs. Before he had gone three-quarters of a mile
Antip was already carrying off the samovar from the
Tchikildyeevs' cottage, followed by Granny, screaming shrilly and
straining her throat:

"I won't let
you have it, I won't let you have it, damn you!"

He walked rapidly with long steps, and she pursued him panting,
almost falling over, a bent, ferocious figure; her kerchief
slipped on to her shoulders, her grey hair with greenish lights
on it was blown about in the wind. She suddenly stopped short,
and like a genuine rebel, fell to beating her breast with her
fists and shouting louder than ever in a sing-song voice, as
though she were sobbing:

"Good Christians and believers in God! Neighbours, they have
ill-treated me! Kind friends, they have oppressed me! Oh, oh!
dear people, take my part."

"Granny, Granny!" said the village elder sternly, "have some
sense in your head!"

It was hopelessly dreary in the Tchikildyeevs' hut without the
samovar; there was something humiliating in this loss, insulting,
as though the honour of the hut had been outraged. Better if the
elder had carried off the table, all the benches, all the pots --
it would not have seemed so empty. Granny screamed, Marya cried,
and the little girls, looking at her, cried, too. The old father,
feeling guilty, sat in the corner with bowed head and said
nothing. And Nikolay, too, was silent. Granny loved him and was
sorry for him, but now, forgetting her pity, she fell upon him
with abuse, with reproaches, shaking her fist right in his face.
She shouted that it was all his fault; why had he sent them so
little when he boasted in his letters that he was getting fifty
roubles a month at the Slavyansky Bazaar? Why had he come, and
with his family, too? If he died, where was the money to come
from for his funeral . . . ? And it was pitiful to look at
Nikolay, Olga, and Sasha.

The old father cleared his throat, took his cap, and went off to
the village elder. Antip was soldering something by the stove,
puffing out his cheeks; there was a smell of burning. His
children, emaciated and unwashed, no better than the
Tchikildyeevs, were scrambling about the floor; his wife, an
ugly, freckled woman with a prominent stomach, was winding silk.
They were a poor, unlucky family, and Antip was the only one who
looked vigorous and handsome. On a bench there were five samovars
standing in a row. The old man said his prayer to Battenburg and
said:

"Antip, show the Divine mercy. Give me back the samovar, for
Christ's sake!"

"Bring three roubles, then you shall have it.

"I can't do it!"

Antip puffed out his cheeks, the fire roared and hissed, and the
glow was reflected in the samovar. The old man crumpled up his
cap and said after a moment's thought:

"You give it me back."

The swarthy elder looked quite black, and was like a magician; he
turned round to Osip and said sternly and rapidly:

"It all depends on the rural captain. On the twenty-sixth instant
you can state the grounds for your dissatisfaction before the
administrative session, verbally or in writing."

Osip did not understand a word, but he was satisfied with that
and went home.

Ten days later the police inspector came again, stayed an hour
and went away. During those days the weather had changed to cold
and windy; the river had been frozen for some time past, but
still there was no snow, and people found it difficult to get
about. On the eve of a holiday some of the neighbours came in to
Osip's to sit and have a talk. They did not light the lamp, as it
would have been a sin to work, but talked in the darkness. There
were some items of news, all rather unpleasant. In two or three
households hens had been taken for the arrears, and had been sent
to the district police station, and there they had died because
no one had fed them; they had taken sheep, and while they were
being driven away tied to one another, shifted into another cart
at each village, one of them had died. And now they were
discussing the question, who was to blame?

"The Zemstvo," said Osip. "Who else?"

"Of course it is the Zemstvo."

The Zemstvo was blamed for everything -- for the arrears, and for
the oppressions, and for the failure of the crops, though no one
of them knew what was meant by the Zemstvo. And this dated from
the time when well-to-do peasants who had factories, shops, and
inns of their own were members of the Zemstvos, were dissatisfied
with them, and took to swearing at the Zemstvos in their
factories and inns.

They talked of God's not sending the snow; they had to bring in
wood for fuel, and there was no driving nor walking in the frozen
ruts. In old days fifteen to twenty years ago conversation was
much more interesting in Zhukovo. In those days every old man
looked as though he were treasuring some secret; as though he
knew something and was expecting something. They used to talk
about an edict in golden letters, about the division of lands,
about new land, about treasures; they hinted at something. Now
the people of Zhukovo had no mystery at all; their whole life was
bare and open in the sight of all, and they could talk of nothing
but poverty, food, there being no snow yet. . . .

There was a pause. Then they thought again of the hens, of the
sheep, and began discussing whose fault it was.

"The Zemstvo," said Osip wearily. "Who else?"

VIII

The parish church was nearly five miles away at Kosogorovo, and
the peasants only attended it when they had to do so for
baptisms, weddings, or funerals; they went to the services at the
church across the river. On holidays in fine weather the girls
dressed up in their best and went in a crowd together to church,
and it was a cheering sight to see them in their red, yellow, and
green dresses cross the meadow; in bad weather they all stayed at
home. They went for the sacrament to the parish church. From each
of those who did not manage in Lent to go to confession in
readiness for the sacrament the parish priest, going the round of
the huts with the cross at Easter, took fifteen kopecks.

The old father did not believe in God, for he hardly ever thought
about Him; he recognized the supernatural, but considered it was
entirely the women's concern, and when religion or miracles were
discussed before him, or a question were put to him, he would say
reluctantly, scratching himself:

"Who can tell!"

Granny believed, but her faith was somewhat hazy; everything was
mixed up in her memory, and she could scarcely begin to think of
sins, of death, of the salvation of the soul, before poverty and
her daily cares took possession of her mind, and she instantly
forgot what she was thinking about. She did not remember the
prayers, and usually in the evenings, before lying down to sleep,
she would stand before the ikons and whisper:

"Holy Mother of Kazan, Holy Mother of Smolensk, Holy Mother of
Troerutchitsy. . ."

Marya and Fyokla crossed themselves, fasted, and took the
sacrament every year, but understood nothing. The children were
not taught their prayers, nothing was told them about God, and no
moral principles were instilled into them; they were only
forbidden to eat meat or milk in Lent. In the other families it
was much the same: there were few who believed, few who
understood. At the same time everyone loved the Holy Scripture,
loved it with a tender, reverent love; but they had no Bible,
there was no one to read it and explain it, and because Olga
sometimes read them the gospel, they respected her, and they all
addressed her and Sasha as though they were superior to
themselves.

For church holidays and services Olga often went to neighbouring
villages, and to the district town, in which there were two
monasteries and twenty-seven churches. She was dreamy, and when
she was on these pilgrimages she quite forgot her family, and
only when she got home again suddenly made the joyful discovery
that she had a husband and daughter, and then would say, smiling
and radiant:

"God has sent me blessings!"

What went on in the village worried her and seemed to her
revolting. On Elijah's Day they drank, at the Assumption they
drank, at the Ascension they drank. The Feast of the Intercession
was the parish holiday for Zhukovo, and the peasants used to
drink then for three days; they squandered on drink fifty roubles
of money belonging to the Mir, and then collected more for vodka
from all the households. On the first
day of the feast the Tchikildyeevs killed a sheep and ate of it
in the morning, at dinner-time, and in the evening; they ate it
ravenously, and the children got up at night to eat more. Kiryak
was fearfully drunk for three whole days; he drank up everything,
even his boots and cap, and beat Marya so terribly that they had
to pour water over her. And then they were all ashamed and sick.

However, even in Zhukovo, in this "Slaveytown," there was once an
outburst of genuine religious enthusiasm. It was in August, when
throughout the district they carried from village to village the
Holy Mother, the giver of life. It was still and overcast on the
day when they expected _Her_ at Zhukovo. The girls set off in the
morning to meet the ikon, in their bright holiday dresses, and
brought Her towards the evening, in procession with the cross and
with singing, while the bells pealed in the church across the
river. An immense crowd of villagers and strangers flooded the
street; there was noise, dust, a great crush. . . . And the old
father and Granny and Kiryak -- all stretched out their hands to
the ikon, looked eagerly at it and said, weeping:

"Defender! Mother! Defender!"

All seemed suddenly to realize that there was not an empty void
between earth and heaven, that the rich and the powerful had not
taken possession of everything, that there was still a refuge
from injury, from slavish bondage, from crushing, unendurable
poverty, from the terrible vodka.

"Defender! Mother!" sobbed Marya. "Mother!"

But the thanksgiving service ended and the ikon was carried away,
and everything went on as before; and again there was a sound of
coarse drunken oaths from the tavern.

Only the well-to-do peasants were afraid of death; the richer
they were the less they believed in God, and in the salvation of
souls, and only through fear of the end of the world put up
candles and had services said for them, to be on the safe side.
The peasants who were rather poorer were not afraid of death. The
old father and Granny were told to their faces that they had
lived too long, that it was time they were dead, and they did not
mind. They did not hinder Fyokla from saying in Nikolay's
presence that when Nikolay died her husband Denis would get
exemption -- to return home from the army. And Marya, far from
fearing death, regretted that it was so slow in coming, and was
glad when her children died.

Death they did not fear, but of every disease they had an
exaggerated terror. The merest trifle was enough -- a stomach
upset, a slight chill, and Granny would be wrapped up on the
stove, and would begin moaning loudly and incessantly:

"I am dy-ing!"

The old father hurried off for the priest, and Granny received
the sacrament and extreme unction. They often talked of colds, of
worms, of tumours which move in the stomach and coil round to the
heart. Above all, they were afraid of catching cold, and so put
on thick clothes even in the summer and warmed themselves at the
stove. Granny was fond of being doctored, and often went to the
hospital, where she used to say she was not seventy, but
fifty-eight; she supposed that if the doctor knew her real age he
would not treat her, but would say it was time she died instead
of taking medicine. She usually went to the hospital early in the
morning, taking with her two or three of the little girls, and
came back in the evening, hungry and ill-tempered -- with drops
for herself and ointments for the little girls. Once she took
Nikolay, who swallowed drops for a fortnight afterwards, and said
he felt better.

Granny knew all the doctors and their assistants and the wise men
for twenty miles round, and not one of them she liked. At the
Intercession, when the priest made the round of the huts with the
cross, the deacon told her that in the town near the prison lived
an old man who had been a medical orderly in the army, and who
made wonderful cures, and advised her to try him. Granny took his
advice. When the first snow fell she drove to the town and
fetched an old man with a big beard, a converted Jew, in a long
gown, whose face was covered with blue veins. There were
outsiders at work in the hut at the time: an old tailor, in
terrible spectacles, was cutting a waistcoat out of some rags,
and two young men were making felt boots out of wool; Kiryak, who
had been dismissed from his place for drunkenness, and now lived
at home, was sitting beside the tailor mending a bridle. And it
was crowded, stifling, and noisome in the hut. The converted Jew
examined Nikolay and said that it was necessary to try cupping.

He put on the cups, and the old tailor, Kiryak, and the little
girls stood round and looked on, and it seemed to them that they
saw the disease being drawn out of Nikolay; and Nikolay, too,
watched how the cups suckling at his breast gradually filled with
dark blood, and felt as though there really were something coming
out of him, and smiled with pleasure.

"It's a good thing," said the tailor. "Please God, it will do you
good."

The Jew put on twelve cups and then another twelve, drank some
tea, and went away. Nikolay began shivering; his face looked
drawn, and, as the women expressed it, shrank up like a fist; his
fingers turned blue. He wrapped himself up in a quilt and in a
sheepskin, but got colder and colder. Towards the evening he
began to be in great distress; asked to be laid on the ground,
asked the tailor not to smoke; then he subsided under the
sheepskin and towards morning he died.

IX

Oh, what a grim, what a long winter!

Their own grain did not last beyond Christmas, and they had to
buy flour. Kiryak, who lived at home now, was noisy in the
evenings, inspiring terror in everyone, and in the mornings he
suffered from headache and was ashamed; and he was a pitiful
sight. In the stall the starved cows bellowed day and night -- a
heart-rending sound to Granny and Marya. And as ill-luck would
have it, there was a sharp frost all the winter, the snow drifted
in high heaps, and the winter dragged on. At Annunciation there
was a regular blizzard, and there was a fall of snow at Easter.

But in spite of it all the winter did end. At the beginning of
April there came warm days and frosty nights. Winter would not
give way, but one warm day overpowered it at last, and the
streams began to flow and the birds began to sing. The whole
meadow and the bushes near the river were drowned in the spring
floods, and all the space between Zhukovo and the further side
was filled up with a vast sheet of water, from which wild ducks
rose up in flocks here and there. The spring sunset, flaming
among gorgeous clouds, gave every evening something new,
extraordinary, incredible -- just what one does not believe in
afterwards, when one sees those very colours and those very
clouds in a picture.

The cranes flew swiftly, swiftly, with mournful cries, as though
they were calling themselves. Standing on the edge of the ravine,
Olga looked a long time at the flooded meadow, at the sunshine,
at the bright church, that looked as though it had grown younger;
and her tears flowed and her breath came in gasps from her
passionate longing to go away, to go far away to the end of the
world. It was already settled that she should go back to Moscow
to be a servant, and that Kiryak should set off with her to get a
job as a porter or something. Oh, to get away quickly!

As soon as it dried up and grew warm they got ready to set off.
Olga and Sasha, with wallets on their backs and shoes of plaited
bark on their feet, came out before daybreak: Marya came out,
too, to see them on their way. Kiryak was not well, and was kept
at home for another week. For the last time Olga prayed at the
church and thought of her husband, and though she did not shed
tears, her face puckered up and looked ugly like an old woman's.
During the winter she had grown thinner and plainer, and her hair
had gone a little grey, and instead of the old look of sweetness
and the pleasant smile on her face, she had the resigned,
mournful expression left by the sorrows she had been through, and
there was something blank and irresponsive in her eyes, as though
she did not hear what was said. She was sorry
to part from the village and the peasants. She remembered how
they had carried out Nikolay, and how a requiem had been ordered
for him at almost every hut, and all had shed tears in sympathy
with her grief. In the course of the summer and the winter there
had been hours and days when it seemed as though these people
lived worse than the beasts, and to live with them was terrible;
they were coarse, dishonest, filthy, and drunken; they did not
live in harmony, but quarrelled continually, because they
distrusted and feared and did not respect one another. Who keeps
the tavern and makes the people drunken? A peasant. Who wastes
and spends on drink the funds of the commune, of the schools, of
the church? A peasant. Who stole from his neighbours, set fire to
their property, gave false witness at the court for a bottle of
vodka? At the meetings of the Zemstvo and other local bodies, who
was the first to fall foul of the peasants? A peasant. Yes, to
live with them was terrible; but yet, they were human beings,
they suffered and wept like human beings, and there was nothing
in their lives for which one could not find excuse. Hard labour
that made the whole body ache at night, the cruel winters, the
scanty harvests, the overcrowding; and they had no help and none
to whom they could look for help. Those of them who were a little
stronger and better off could be no help, as they were themselves
coarse, dishonest, drunken, and abused one another just as
revoltingly; the paltriest little clerk or official treated the
peasants as though they were tramps, and addressed even the
village elders and church wardens as inferiors, and considered
they had a right to do so. And, indeed, can any sort of help or
good example be given by mercenary, greedy, depraved, and idle
persons who only visit the village in order to insult, to
despoil, and to terrorize? Olga remembered the pitiful,
humiliated look of the old people when in the winter Kiryak had
been taken to be flogged. . . . And now she felt sorry for all
these people, painfully so, and as she walked on she kept looking
back at the huts.

After walking two miles with them Marya said good-bye, then
kneeling, and falling forward with her face on the earth, she
began wailing:

"Again I am left alone. Alas, for poor me! poor, unhappy! . . ."

And she wailed like this for a long time, and for a long way Olga
and Sasha could still see her on her knees, bowing down to
someone at the side and clutching her head in her hands, while
the rooks flew over her head.

The sun rose high; it began to get hot. Zhukovo was left far
behind. Walking was pleasant. Olga and Sasha soon forgot both the
village and Marya; they were gay and everything entertained them.
Now they came upon an ancient barrow, now upon a row of telegraph
posts running one after another into the distance and
disappearing into the horizon, and the wires hummed mysteriously.
Then they saw a homestead, all wreathed in green foliage; there
came a scent from it of dampness, of hemp, and it seemed for some
reason that happy people lived there. Then they came upon a
horse's skeleton whitening in solitude in the open fields. And
the larks trilled unceasingly, the corncrakes called to one
another, and the landrail cried as though someone were really
scraping at an old iron rail.

At midday Olga and Sasha reached a big village. There in the
broad street they met the little old man who was General Zhukov's
cook. He was hot, and his red, perspiring bald head shone in the
sunshine. Olga and he did not recognize each other, then looked
round at the same moment, recognized each other, and went their
separate ways without saying a word. Stopping near the hut which
looked newest and most prosperous, Olga bowed down before the
open windows, and said in a loud, thin, chanting voice:

"Good Christian folk, give alms, for Christ's sake, that God's
blessing may be upon you, and that your parents may be in the
Kingdom of Heaven in peace eternal."

"Good Christian folk," Sasha began chanting, "give, for Christ's
sake, that God's blessing, the Heavenly Kingdom . . ."

-THE END-
Anton Chekhov's short story: Peasants

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