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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Bishop and Other Stories, by Anton Chekhov
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Bishop and Other Stories
+
+Author: Anton Chekhov
+
+Release Date: September 9, 2004 [EBook #13419]
+[Last updated: January 25, 2014]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BISHOP AND OTHER STORIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by James Rusk
+
+
+
+
+
+THE TALES OF CHEKHOV
+
+VOLUME 7
+
+THE BISHOP AND OTHER STORIES
+
+BY
+
+ANTON TCHEKHOV
+
+Translated by CONSTANCE GARNETT
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+THE BISHOP
+THE LETTER
+EASTER EVE
+A NIGHTMARE
+THE MURDER
+UPROOTED
+THE STEPPE
+
+
+
+
+THE BISHOP
+
+I
+
+THE evening service was being celebrated on the eve of Palm Sunday
+in the Old Petrovsky Convent. When they began distributing the palm
+it was close upon ten o'clock, the candles were burning dimly, the
+wicks wanted snuffing; it was all in a sort of mist. In the twilight
+of the church the crowd seemed heaving like the sea, and to Bishop
+Pyotr, who had been unwell for the last three days, it seemed that
+all the faces--old and young, men's and women's--were alike,
+that everyone who came up for the palm had the same expression in
+his eyes. In the mist he could not see the doors; the crowd kept
+moving and looked as though there were no end to it. The female
+choir was singing, a nun was reading the prayers for the day.
+
+How stifling, how hot it was! How long the service went on! Bishop
+Pyotr was tired. His breathing was laboured and rapid, his throat
+was parched, his shoulders ached with weariness, his legs were
+trembling. And it disturbed him unpleasantly when a religious maniac
+uttered occasional shrieks in the gallery. And then all of a sudden,
+as though in a dream or delirium, it seemed to the bishop as though
+his own mother Marya Timofyevna, whom he had not seen for nine
+years, or some old woman just like his mother, came up to him out
+of the crowd, and, after taking a palm branch from him, walked away
+looking at him all the while good-humouredly with a kind, joyful
+smile until she was lost in the crowd. And for some reason tears
+flowed down his face. There was peace in his heart, everything was
+well, yet he kept gazing fixedly towards the left choir, where the
+prayers were being read, where in the dusk of evening you could not
+recognize anyone, and--wept. Tears glistened on his face and on
+his beard. Here someone close at hand was weeping, then someone
+else farther away, then others and still others, and little by
+little the church was filled with soft weeping. And a little later,
+within five minutes, the nuns' choir was singing; no one was weeping
+and everything was as before.
+
+Soon the service was over. When the bishop got into his carriage
+to drive home, the gay, melodious chime of the heavy, costly bells
+was filling the whole garden in the moonlight. The white walls, the
+white crosses on the tombs, the white birch-trees and black shadows,
+and the far-away moon in the sky exactly over the convent, seemed
+now living their own life, apart and incomprehensible, yet very
+near to man. It was the beginning of April, and after the warm
+spring day it turned cool; there was a faint touch of frost, and
+the breath of spring could be felt in the soft, chilly air. The
+road from the convent to the town was sandy, the horses had to go
+at a walking pace, and on both sides of the carriage in the brilliant,
+peaceful moonlight there were people trudging along home from church
+through the sand. And all was silent, sunk in thought; everything
+around seemed kindly, youthful, akin, everything--trees and sky
+and even the moon, and one longed to think that so it would be
+always.
+
+At last the carriage drove into the town and rumbled along the
+principal street. The shops were already shut, but at Erakin's, the
+millionaire shopkeeper's, they were trying the new electric lights,
+which flickered brightly, and a crowd of people were gathered round.
+Then came wide, dark, deserted streets, one after another; then the
+highroad, the open country, the fragrance of pines. And suddenly
+there rose up before the bishop's eyes a white turreted wall, and
+behind it a tall belfry in the full moonlight, and beside it five
+shining, golden cupolas: this was the Pankratievsky Monastery, in
+which Bishop Pyotr lived. And here, too, high above the monastery,
+was the silent, dreamy moon. The carriage drove in at the gate,
+crunching over the sand; here and there in the moonlight there were
+glimpses of dark monastic figures, and there was the sound of
+footsteps on the flag-stones. . . .
+
+"You know, your holiness, your mamma arrived while you were away,"
+the lay brother informed the bishop as he went into his cell.
+
+"My mother? When did she come?"
+
+"Before the evening service. She asked first where you were and
+then she went to the convent."
+
+"Then it was her I saw in the church, just now! Oh, Lord!"
+
+And the bishop laughed with joy.
+
+"She bade me tell your holiness," the lay brother went on, "that
+she would come to-morrow. She had a little girl with her--her
+grandchild, I suppose. They are staying at Ovsyannikov's inn."
+
+"What time is it now?"
+
+"A little after eleven."
+
+"Oh, how vexing!"
+
+The bishop sat for a little while in the parlour, hesitating, and
+as it were refusing to believe it was so late. His arms and legs
+were stiff, his head ached. He was hot and uncomfortable. After
+resting a little he went into his bedroom, and there, too, he sat
+a little, still thinking of his mother; he could hear the lay brother
+going away, and Father Sisoy coughing the other side of the wall.
+The monastery clock struck a quarter.
+
+The bishop changed his clothes and began reading the prayers before
+sleep. He read attentively those old, long familiar prayers, and
+at the same time thought about his mother. She had nine children
+and about forty grandchildren. At one time, she had lived with her
+husband, the deacon, in a poor village; she had lived there a very
+long time from the age of seventeen to sixty. The bishop remembered
+her from early childhood, almost from the age of three, and--how
+he had loved her! Sweet, precious childhood, always fondly remembered!
+Why did it, that long-past time that could never return, why did
+it seem brighter, fuller, and more festive than it had really been?
+When in his childhood or youth he had been ill, how tender and
+sympathetic his mother had been! And now his prayers mingled with
+the memories, which gleamed more and more brightly like a flame,
+and the prayers did not hinder his thinking of his mother.
+
+When he had finished his prayers he undressed and lay down, and at
+once, as soon as it was dark, there rose before his mind his dead
+father, his mother, his native village Lesopolye . . . the creak
+of wheels, the bleat of sheep, the church bells on bright summer
+mornings, the gypsies under the window--oh, how sweet to think
+of it! He remembered the priest of Lesopolye, Father Simeon--mild,
+gentle, kindly; he was a lean little man, while his son, a divinity
+student, was a huge fellow and talked in a roaring bass voice. The
+priest's son had flown into a rage with the cook and abused her:
+"Ah, you Jehud's ass!" and Father Simeon overhearing it, said not
+a word, and was only ashamed because he could not remember where
+such an ass was mentioned in the Bible. After him the priest at
+Lesopolye had been Father Demyan, who used to drink heavily, and
+at times drank till he saw green snakes, and was even nicknamed
+Demyan Snakeseer. The schoolmaster at Lesopolye was Matvey Nikolaitch,
+who had been a divinity student, a kind and intelligent man, but
+he, too, was a drunkard; he never beat the schoolchildren, but for
+some reason he always had hanging on his wall a bunch of birch-twigs,
+and below it an utterly meaningless inscription in Latin: "Betula
+kinderbalsamica secuta." He had a shaggy black dog whom he called
+Syntax.
+
+And his holiness laughed. Six miles from Lesopolye was the village
+Obnino with a wonder-working ikon. In the summer they used to carry
+the ikon in procession about the neighbouring villages and ring the
+bells the whole day long; first in one village and then in another,
+and it used to seem to the bishop then that joy was quivering in
+the air, and he (in those days his name was Pavlusha) used to follow
+the ikon, bareheaded and barefoot, with naive faith, with a naive
+smile, infinitely happy. In Obnino, he remembered now, there were
+always a lot of people, and the priest there, Father Alexey, to
+save time during mass, used to make his deaf nephew Ilarion read
+the names of those for whose health or whose souls' peace prayers
+were asked. Ilarion used to read them, now and then getting a five
+or ten kopeck piece for the service, and only when he was grey and
+bald, when life was nearly over, he suddenly saw written on one of
+the pieces of paper: "What a fool you are, Ilarion." Up to fifteen
+at least Pavlusha was undeveloped and idle at his lessons, so much
+so that they thought of taking him away from the clerical school
+and putting him into a shop; one day, going to the post at Obnino
+for letters, he had stared a long time at the post-office clerks
+and asked: "Allow me to ask, how do you get your salary, every month
+or every day?"
+
+His holiness crossed himself and turned over on the other side,
+trying to stop thinking and go to sleep.
+
+"My mother has come," he remembered and laughed.
+
+The moon peeped in at the window, the floor was lighted up, and
+there were shadows on it. A cricket was chirping. Through the wall
+Father Sisoy was snoring in the next room, and his aged snore had
+a sound that suggested loneliness, forlornness, even vagrancy. Sisoy
+had once been housekeeper to the bishop of the diocese, and was
+called now "the former Father Housekeeper"; he was seventy years
+old, he lived in a monastery twelve miles from the town and stayed
+sometimes in the town, too. He had come to the Pankratievsky Monastery
+three days before, and the bishop had kept him that he might talk
+to him at his leisure about matters of business, about the arrangements
+here. . . .
+
+At half-past one they began ringing for matins. Father Sisoy could
+be heard coughing, muttering something in a discontented voice,
+then he got up and walked barefoot about the rooms.
+
+"Father Sisoy," the bishop called.
+
+Sisoy went back to his room and a little later made his appearance
+in his boots, with a candle; he had on his cassock over his
+underclothes and on his head was an old faded skull-cap.
+
+"I can't sleep," said the bishop, sitting up. "I must be unwell.
+And what it is I don't know. Fever!"
+
+"You must have caught cold, your holiness. You must be rubbed with
+tallow." Sisoy stood a little and yawned. "O Lord, forgive me, a
+sinner."
+
+"They had the electric lights on at Erakin's today," he said; "I
+don't like it!"
+
+Father Sisoy was old, lean, bent, always dissatisfied with something,
+and his eyes were angry-looking and prominent as a crab's.
+
+"I don't like it," he said, going away. "I don't like it. Bother
+it!"
+
+II
+
+Next day, Palm Sunday, the bishop took the service in the cathedral
+in the town, then he visited the bishop of the diocese, then visited
+a very sick old lady, the widow of a general, and at last drove
+home. Between one and two o'clock he had welcome visitors dining
+with him--his mother and his niece Katya, a child of eight years
+old. All dinner-time the spring sunshine was streaming in at the
+windows, throwing bright light on the white tablecloth and on Katya's
+red hair. Through the double windows they could hear the noise of
+the rooks and the notes of the starlings in the garden.
+
+"It is nine years since we have met," said the old lady. "And when
+I looked at you in the monastery yesterday, good Lord! you've not
+changed a bit, except maybe you are thinner and your beard is a
+little longer. Holy Mother, Queen of Heaven! Yesterday at the evening
+service no one could help crying. I, too, as I looked at you,
+suddenly began crying, though I couldn't say why. His Holy Will!"
+
+And in spite of the affectionate tone in which she said this, he
+could see she was constrained as though she were uncertain whether
+to address him formally or familiarly, to laugh or not, and that
+she felt herself more a deacon's widow than his mother. And Katya
+gazed without blinking at her uncle, his holiness, as though trying
+to discover what sort of a person he was. Her hair sprang up from
+under the comb and the velvet ribbon and stood out like a halo; she
+had a turned-up nose and sly eyes. The child had broken a glass
+before sitting down to dinner, and now her grandmother, as she
+talked, moved away from Katya first a wineglass and then a tumbler.
+The bishop listened to his mother and remembered how many, many
+years ago she used to take him and his brothers and sisters to
+relations whom she considered rich; in those days she was taken up
+with the care of her children, now with her grandchildren, and she
+had brought Katya. . . .
+
+"Your sister, Varenka, has four children," she told him; "Katya,
+here, is the eldest. And your brother-in-law Father Ivan fell sick,
+God knows of what, and died three days before the Assumption; and
+my poor Varenka is left a beggar."
+
+"And how is Nikanor getting on?" the bishop asked about his eldest
+brother.
+
+"He is all right, thank God. Though he has nothing much, yet he can
+live. Only there is one thing: his son, my grandson Nikolasha, did
+not want to go into the Church; he has gone to the university to
+be a doctor. He thinks it is better; but who knows! His Holy Will!"
+
+"Nikolasha cuts up dead people," said Katya, spilling water over
+her knees.
+
+"Sit still, child," her grandmother observed calmly, and took the
+glass out of her hand. "Say a prayer, and go on eating."
+
+"How long it is since we have seen each other!" said the bishop,
+and he tenderly stroked his mother's hand and shoulder; "and I
+missed you abroad, mother, I missed you dreadfully."
+
+"Thank you."
+
+"I used to sit in the evenings at the open window, lonely and alone;
+often there was music playing, and all at once I used to be overcome
+with homesickness and felt as though I would give everything only
+to be at home and see you."
+
+His mother smiled, beamed, but at once she made a grave face and
+said:
+
+"Thank you."
+
+His mood suddenly changed. He looked at his mother and could not
+understand how she had come by that respectfulness, that timid
+expression of face: what was it for? And he did not recognize her.
+He felt sad and vexed. And then his head ached just as it had the
+day before; his legs felt fearfully tired, and the fish seemed to
+him stale and tasteless; he felt thirsty all the time. . . .
+
+After dinner two rich ladies, landowners, arrived and sat for an
+hour and a half in silence with rigid countenances; the archimandrite,
+a silent, rather deaf man, came to see him about business. Then
+they began ringing for vespers; the sun was setting behind the wood
+and the day was over. When he returned from church, he hurriedly
+said his prayers, got into bed, and wrapped himself up as warm as
+possible.
+
+It was disagreeable to remember the fish he had eaten at dinner.
+The moonlight worried him, and then he heard talking. In an adjoining
+room, probably in the parlour, Father Sisoy was talking politics:
+
+"There's war among the Japanese now. They are fighting. The Japanese,
+my good soul, are the same as the Montenegrins; they are the same
+race. They were under the Turkish yoke together."
+
+And then he heard the voice of Marya Timofyevna:
+
+"So, having said our prayers and drunk tea, we went, you know, to
+Father Yegor at Novokatnoye, so. . ."
+
+And she kept on saying, "having had tea" or "having drunk tea," and
+it seemed as though the only thing she had done in her life was to
+drink tea.
+
+The bishop slowly, languidly, recalled the seminary, the academy.
+For three years he had been Greek teacher in the seminary: by that
+time he could not read without spectacles. Then he had become a
+monk; he had been made a school inspector. Then he had defended his
+thesis for his degree. When he was thirty-two he had been made
+rector of the seminary, and consecrated archimandrite: and then his
+life had been so easy, so pleasant; it seemed so long, so long, no
+end was in sight. Then he had begun to be ill, had grown very thin
+and almost blind, and by the advice of the doctors had to give up
+everything and go abroad.
+
+"And what then?" asked Sisoy in the next room.
+
+"Then we drank tea . . ." answered Marya Timofyevna.
+
+"Good gracious, you've got a green beard," said Katya suddenly in
+surprise, and she laughed.
+
+The bishop remembered that the grey-headed Father Sisoy's beard
+really had a shade of green in it, and he laughed.
+
+"God have mercy upon us, what we have to put up with with this
+girl!" said Sisoy, aloud, getting angry. "Spoilt child! Sit quiet!"
+
+The bishop remembered the perfectly new white church in which he
+had conducted the services while living abroad, he remembered the
+sound of the warm sea. In his flat he had five lofty light rooms;
+in his study he had a new writing-table, lots of books. He had read
+a great deal and often written. And he remembered how he had pined
+for his native land, how a blind beggar woman had played the guitar
+under his window every day and sung of love, and how, as he listened,
+he had always for some reason thought of the past. But eight years
+had passed and he had been called back to Russia, and now he was a
+suffragan bishop, and all the past had retreated far away into the
+mist as though it were a dream. . . .
+
+Father Sisoy came into the bedroom with a candle.
+
+"I say!" he said, wondering, "are you asleep already, your holiness?"
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Why, it's still early, ten o'clock or less. I bought a candle
+to-day; I wanted to rub you with tallow."
+
+"I am in a fever . . ." said the bishop, and he sat up. "I really
+ought to have something. My head is bad. . . ."
+
+Sisoy took off the bishop's shirt and began rubbing his chest and
+back with tallow.
+
+"That's the way . . . that's the way . . ." he said. "Lord Jesus
+Christ . . . that's the way. I walked to the town to-day; I was at
+what's-his-name's--the chief priest Sidonsky's. . . . I had tea
+with him. I don't like him. Lord Jesus Christ. . . . That's the
+way. I don't like him."
+
+III
+
+The bishop of the diocese, a very fat old man, was ill with rheumatism
+or gout, and had been in bed for over a month. Bishop Pyotr went
+to see him almost every day, and saw all who came to ask his help.
+And now that he was unwell he was struck by the emptiness, the
+triviality of everything which they asked and for which they wept;
+he was vexed at their ignorance, their timidity; and all this
+useless, petty business oppressed him by the mass of it, and it
+seemed to him that now he understood the diocesan bishop, who had
+once in his young days written on "The Doctrines of the Freedom of
+the Will," and now seemed to be all lost in trivialities, to have
+forgotten everything, and to have no thoughts of religion. The
+bishop must have lost touch with Russian life while he was abroad;
+he did not find it easy; the peasants seemed to him coarse, the
+women who sought his help dull and stupid, the seminarists and their
+teachers uncultivated and at times savage. And the documents coming
+in and going out were reckoned by tens of thousands; and what
+documents they were! The higher clergy in the whole diocese gave
+the priests, young and old, and even their wives and children, marks
+for their behaviour--a five, a four, and sometimes even a three;
+and about this he had to talk and to read and write serious reports.
+And there was positively not one minute to spare; his soul was
+troubled all day long, and the bishop was only at peace when he was
+in church.
+
+He could not get used, either, to the awe which, through no wish
+of his own, he inspired in people in spite of his quiet, modest
+disposition. All the people in the province seemed to him little,
+scared, and guilty when he looked at them. Everyone was timid in
+his presence, even the old chief priests; everyone "flopped" at his
+feet, and not long previously an old lady, a village priest's wife
+who had come to consult him, was so overcome by awe that she could
+not utter a single word, and went empty away. And he, who could
+never in his sermons bring himself to speak ill of people, never
+reproached anyone because he was so sorry for them, was moved to
+fury with the people who came to consult him, lost his temper and
+flung their petitions on the floor. The whole time he had been here,
+not one person had spoken to him genuinely, simply, as to a human
+being; even his old mother seemed now not the same! And why, he
+wondered, did she chatter away to Sisoy and laugh so much; while
+with him, her son, she was grave and usually silent and constrained,
+which did not suit her at all. The only person who behaved freely
+with him and said what he meant was old Sisoy, who had spent his
+whole life in the presence of bishops and had outlived eleven of
+them. And so the bishop was at ease with him, although, of course,
+he was a tedious and nonsensical man.
+
+After the service on Tuesday, his holiness Pyotr was in the diocesan
+bishop's house receiving petitions there; he got excited and angry,
+and then drove home. He was as unwell as before; he longed to be
+in bed, but he had hardly reached home when he was informed that a
+young merchant called Erakin, who subscribed liberally to charities,
+had come to see him about a very important matter. The bishop had
+to see him. Erakin stayed about an hour, talked very loud, almost
+shouted, and it was difficult to understand what he said.
+
+"God grant it may," he said as he went away. "Most essential!
+According to circumstances, your holiness! I trust it may!"
+
+After him came the Mother Superior from a distant convent. And when
+she had gone they began ringing for vespers. He had to go to church.
+
+In the evening the monks sang harmoniously, with inspiration. A
+young priest with a black beard conducted the service; and the
+bishop, hearing of the Bridegroom who comes at midnight and of the
+Heavenly Mansion adorned for the festival, felt no repentance for
+his sins, no tribulation, but peace at heart and tranquillity. And
+he was carried back in thought to the distant past, to his childhood
+and youth, when, too, they used to sing of the Bridegroom and of
+the Heavenly Mansion; and now that past rose up before him--living,
+fair, and joyful as in all likelihood it never had been. And perhaps
+in the other world, in the life to come, we shall think of the
+distant past, of our life here, with the same feeling. Who knows?
+The bishop was sitting near the altar. It was dark; tears flowed
+down his face. He thought that here he had attained everything a
+man in his position could attain; he had faith and yet everything
+was not clear, something was lacking still. He did not want to die;
+and he still felt that he had missed what was most important,
+something of which he had dimly dreamed in the past; and he was
+troubled by the same hopes for the future as he had felt in childhood,
+at the academy and abroad.
+
+"How well they sing to-day!" he thought, listening to the singing.
+"How nice it is!"
+
+IV
+
+On Thursday he celebrated mass in the cathedral; it was the Washing
+of Feet. When the service was over and the people were going home,
+it was sunny, warm; the water gurgled in the gutters, and the
+unceasing trilling of the larks, tender, telling of peace, rose
+from the fields outside the town. The trees were already awakening
+and smiling a welcome, while above them the infinite, fathomless
+blue sky stretched into the distance, God knows whither.
+
+On reaching home his holiness drank some tea, then changed his
+clothes, lay down on his bed, and told the lay brother to close the
+shutters on the windows. The bedroom was darkened. But what weariness,
+what pain in his legs and his back, a chill heavy pain, what a noise
+in his ears! He had not slept for a long time--for a very long
+time, as it seemed to him now, and some trifling detail which haunted
+his brain as soon as his eyes were closed prevented him from sleeping.
+As on the day before, sounds reached him from the adjoining rooms
+through the walls, voices, the jingle of glasses and teaspoons. . . .
+Marya Timofyevna was gaily telling Father Sisoy some story with
+quaint turns of speech, while the latter answered in a grumpy,
+ill-humoured voice: "Bother them! Not likely! What next!" And the
+bishop again felt vexed and then hurt that with other people his
+old mother behaved in a simple, ordinary way, while with him, her
+son, she was shy, spoke little, and did not say what she meant, and
+even, as he fancied, had during all those three days kept trying
+in his presence to find an excuse for standing up, because she was
+embarrassed at sitting before him. And his father? He, too, probably,
+if he had been living, would not have been able to utter a word in
+the bishop's presence. . . .
+
+Something fell down on the floor in the adjoining room and was
+broken; Katya must have dropped a cup or a saucer, for Father Sisoy
+suddenly spat and said angrily:
+
+"What a regular nuisance the child is! Lord forgive my transgressions!
+One can't provide enough for her."
+
+Then all was quiet, the only sounds came from outside. And when the
+bishop opened his eyes he saw Katya in his room, standing motionless,
+staring at him. Her red hair, as usual, stood up from under the
+comb like a halo.
+
+"Is that you, Katya?" he asked. "Who is it downstairs who keeps
+opening and shutting a door?"
+
+"I don't hear it," answered Katya; and she listened.
+
+"There, someone has just passed by."
+
+"But that was a noise in your stomach, uncle."
+
+He laughed and stroked her on the head.
+
+"So you say Cousin Nikolasha cuts up dead people?" he asked after
+a pause.
+
+"Yes, he is studying."
+
+"And is he kind?"
+
+"Oh, yes, he's kind. But he drinks vodka awfully."
+
+"And what was it your father died of?"
+
+"Papa was weak and very, very thin, and all at once his throat was
+bad. I was ill then, too, and brother Fedya; we all had bad throats.
+Papa died, uncle, and we got well."
+
+Her chin began quivering, and tears gleamed in her eyes and trickled
+down her cheeks.
+
+"Your holiness," she said in a shrill voice, by now weeping bitterly,
+"uncle, mother and all of us are left very wretched. . . . Give us
+a little money . . . do be kind . . . uncle darling. . . ."
+
+He, too, was moved to tears, and for a long time was too much touched
+to speak. Then he stroked her on the head, patted her on the shoulder
+and said:
+
+"Very good, very good, my child. When the holy Easter comes, we
+will talk it over. . . . I will help you. . . . I will help you. . . ."
+
+His mother came in quietly, timidly, and prayed before the ikon.
+Noticing that he was not sleeping, she said:
+
+"Won't you have a drop of soup?"
+
+"No, thank you," he answered, "I am not hungry."
+
+"You seem to be unwell, now I look at you. I should think so; you
+may well be ill! The whole day on your legs, the whole day. . . .
+And, my goodness, it makes one's heart ache even to look at you!
+Well, Easter is not far off; you will rest then, please God. Then
+we will have a talk, too, but now I'm not going to disturb you with
+my chatter. Come along, Katya; let his holiness sleep a little."
+
+And he remembered how once very long ago, when he was a boy, she
+had spoken exactly like that, in the same jestingly respectful tone,
+with a Church dignitary. . . . Only from her extraordinarily kind
+eyes and the timid, anxious glance she stole at him as she went out
+of the room could one have guessed that this was his mother. He
+shut his eyes and seemed to sleep, but twice heard the clock strike
+and Father Sisoy coughing the other side of the wall. And once more
+his mother came in and looked timidly at him for a minute. Someone
+drove up to the steps, as he could hear, in a coach or in a chaise.
+Suddenly a knock, the door slammed, the lay brother came into the
+bedroom.
+
+"Your holiness," he called.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"The horses are here; it's time for the evening service."
+
+"What o'clock is it?"
+
+"A quarter past seven."
+
+He dressed and drove to the cathedral. During all the "Twelve
+Gospels" he had to stand in the middle of the church without moving,
+and the first gospel, the longest and the most beautiful, he read
+himself. A mood of confidence and courage came over him. That first
+gospel, "Now is the Son of Man glorified," he knew by heart; and
+as he read he raised his eyes from time to time, and saw on both
+sides a perfect sea of lights and heard the splutter of candles,
+but, as in past years, he could not see the people, and it seemed
+as though these were all the same people as had been round him in
+those days, in his childhood and his youth; that they would always
+be the same every year and till such time as God only knew.
+
+His father had been a deacon, his grandfather a priest, his
+great-grandfather a deacon, and his whole family, perhaps from the
+days when Christianity had been accepted in Russia, had belonged
+to the priesthood; and his love for the Church services, for the
+priesthood, for the peal of the bells, was deep in him, ineradicable,
+innate. In church, particularly when he took part in the service,
+he felt vigorous, of good cheer, happy. So it was now. Only when
+the eighth gospel had been read, he felt that his voice had grown
+weak, even his cough was inaudible. His head had begun to ache
+intensely, and he was troubled by a fear that he might fall down.
+And his legs were indeed quite numb, so that by degrees he ceased
+to feel them and could not understand how or on what he was standing,
+and why he did not fall. . . .
+
+It was a quarter to twelve when the service was over. When he reached
+home, the bishop undressed and went to bed at once without even
+saying his prayers. He could not speak and felt that he could not
+have stood up. When he had covered his head with the quilt he felt
+a sudden longing to be abroad, an insufferable longing! He felt
+that he would give his life not to see those pitiful cheap shutters,
+those low ceilings, not to smell that heavy monastery smell. If
+only there were one person to whom he could have talked, have opened
+his heart!
+
+For a long while he heard footsteps in the next room and could not
+tell whose they were. At last the door opened, and Sisoy came in
+with a candle and a tea-cup in his hand.
+
+"You are in bed already, your holiness?" he asked. "Here I have
+come to rub you with spirit and vinegar. A thorough rubbing does a
+great deal of good. Lord Jesus Christ! . . . That's the way . . .
+that's the way. . . . I've just been in our monastery. . . . I don't
+like it. I'm going away from here to-morrow, your holiness; I don't
+want to stay longer. Lord Jesus Christ. . . . That's the way. . . ."
+
+Sisoy could never stay long in the same place, and he felt as though
+he had been a whole year in the Pankratievsky Monastery. Above all,
+listening to him it was difficult to understand where his home was,
+whether he cared for anyone or anything, whether he believed in
+God. . . . He did not know himself why he was a monk, and, indeed,
+he did not think about it, and the time when he had become a monk
+had long passed out of his memory; it seemed as though he had been
+born a monk.
+
+"I'm going away to-morrow; God be with them all."
+
+"I should like to talk to you. . . . I can't find the time," said
+the bishop softly with an effort. "I don't know anything or anybody
+here. . . ."
+
+"I'll stay till Sunday if you like; so be it, but I don't want to
+stay longer. I am sick of them!"
+
+"I ought not to be a bishop," said the bishop softly. "I ought to
+have been a village priest, a deacon . . . or simply a monk. . . .
+All this oppresses me . . . oppresses me."
+
+"What? Lord Jesus Christ. . . . That's the way. Come, sleep well,
+your holiness! . . . What's the good of talking? It's no use.
+Good-night!"
+
+The bishop did not sleep all night. And at eight o'clock in the
+morning he began to have hemorrhage from the bowels. The lay brother
+was alarmed, and ran first to the archimandrite, then for the
+monastery doctor, Ivan Andreyitch, who lived in the town. The doctor,
+a stout old man with a long grey beard, made a prolonged examination
+of the bishop, and kept shaking his head and frowning, then said:
+
+"Do you know, your holiness, you have got typhoid?"
+
+After an hour or so of hemorrhage the bishop looked much thinner,
+paler, and wasted; his face looked wrinkled, his eyes looked bigger,
+and he seemed older, shorter, and it seemed to him that he was
+thinner, weaker, more insignificant than any one, that everything
+that had been had retreated far, far away and would never go on
+again or be repeated.
+
+"How good," he thought, "how good!"
+
+His old mother came. Seeing his wrinkled face and his big eyes, she
+was frightened, she fell on her knees by the bed and began kissing
+his face, his shoulders, his hands. And to her, too, it seemed that
+he was thinner, weaker, and more insignificant than anyone, and now
+she forgot that he was a bishop, and kissed him as though he were
+a child very near and very dear to her.
+
+"Pavlusha, darling," she said; "my own, my darling son! . . . Why
+are you like this? Pavlusha, answer me!"
+
+Katya, pale and severe, stood beside her, unable to understand what
+was the matter with her uncle, why there was such a look of suffering
+on her grandmother's face, why she was saying such sad and touching
+things. By now he could not utter a word, he could understand
+nothing, and he imagined he was a simple ordinary man, that he was
+walking quickly, cheerfully through the fields, tapping with his
+stick, while above him was the open sky bathed in sunshine, and
+that he was free now as a bird and could go where he liked!
+
+"Pavlusha, my darling son, answer me," the old woman was saying.
+"What is it? My own!"
+
+"Don't disturb his holiness," Sisoy said angrily, walking about the
+room. "Let him sleep . . . what's the use . . . it's no good. . . ."
+
+Three doctors arrived, consulted together, and went away again. The
+day was long, incredibly long, then the night came on and passed
+slowly, slowly, and towards morning on Saturday the lay brother
+went in to the old mother who was lying on the sofa in the parlour,
+and asked her to go into the bedroom: the bishop had just breathed
+his last.
+
+Next day was Easter Sunday. There were forty-two churches and six
+monasteries in the town; the sonorous, joyful clang of the bells
+hung over the town from morning till night unceasingly, setting the
+spring air aquiver; the birds were singing, the sun was shining
+brightly. The big market square was noisy, swings were going, barrel
+organs were playing, accordions were squeaking, drunken voices were
+shouting. After midday people began driving up and down the principal
+street.
+
+In short, all was merriment, everything was satisfactory, just as
+it had been the year before, and as it will be in all likelihood
+next year.
+
+A month later a new suffragan bishop was appointed, and no one
+thought anything more of Bishop Pyotr, and afterwards he was
+completely forgotten. And only the dead man's old mother, who is
+living to-day with her son-in-law the deacon in a remote little
+district town, when she goes out at night to bring her cow in and
+meets other women at the pasture, begins talking of her children
+and her grandchildren, and says that she had a son a bishop, and
+this she says timidly, afraid that she may not be believed. . . .
+
+And, indeed, there are some who do not believe her.
+
+
+THE LETTER
+
+The clerical superintendent of the district, his Reverence Father
+Fyodor Orlov, a handsome, well-nourished man of fifty, grave and
+important as he always was, with an habitual expression of dignity
+that never left his face, was walking to and fro in his little
+drawing-room, extremely exhausted, and thinking intensely about the
+same thing: "When would his visitor go?" The thought worried him
+and did not leave him for a minute. The visitor, Father Anastasy,
+the priest of one of the villages near the town, had come to him
+three hours before on some very unpleasant and dreary business of
+his own, had stayed on and on, was now sitting in the corner at a
+little round table with his elbow on a thick account book, and
+apparently had no thought of going, though it was getting on for
+nine o'clock in the evening.
+
+Not everyone knows when to be silent and when to go. It not
+infrequently happens that even diplomatic persons of good worldly
+breeding fail to observe that their presence is arousing a feeling
+akin to hatred in their exhausted or busy host, and that this feeling
+is being concealed with an effort and disguised with a lie. But
+Father Anastasy perceived it clearly, and realized that his presence
+was burdensome and inappropriate, that his Reverence, who had taken
+an early morning service in the night and a long mass at midday,
+was exhausted and longing for repose; every minute he was meaning
+to get up and go, but he did not get up, he sat on as though he
+were waiting for something. He was an old man of sixty-five,
+prematurely aged, with a bent and bony figure, with a sunken face
+and the dark skin of old age, with red eyelids and a long narrow
+back like a fish's; he was dressed in a smart cassock of a light
+lilac colour, but too big for him (presented to him by the widow
+of a young priest lately deceased), a full cloth coat with a broad
+leather belt, and clumsy high boots the size and hue of which showed
+clearly that Father Anastasy dispensed with goloshes. In spite of
+his position and his venerable age, there was something pitiful,
+crushed and humiliated in his lustreless red eyes, in the strands
+of grey hair with a shade of green in it on the nape of his neck,
+and in the big shoulder-blades on his lean back. . . . He sat without
+speaking or moving, and coughed with circumspection, as though
+afraid that the sound of his coughing might make his presence more
+noticeable.
+
+The old man had come to see his Reverence on business. Two months
+before he had been prohibited from officiating till further notice,
+and his case was being inquired into. His shortcomings were numerous.
+He was intemperate in his habits, fell out with the other clergy
+and the commune, kept the church records and accounts carelessly
+--these were the formal charges against him; but besides all that,
+there had been rumours for a long time past that he celebrated
+unlawful marriages for money and sold certificates of having fasted
+and taken the sacrament to officials and officers who came to him
+from the town. These rumours were maintained the more persistently
+that he was poor and had nine children to keep, who were as incompetent
+and unsuccessful as himself. The sons were spoilt and uneducated,
+and stayed at home doing nothing, while the daughters were ugly and
+did not get married.
+
+Not having the moral force to be open, his Reverence walked up and
+down the room and said nothing or spoke in hints.
+
+"So you are not going home to-night?" he asked, stopping near the
+dark window and poking with his little finger into the cage where
+a canary was asleep with its feathers puffed out.
+
+Father Anastasy started, coughed cautiously and said rapidly:
+
+"Home? I don't care to, Fyodor Ilyitch. I cannot officiate, as you
+know, so what am I to do there? I came away on purpose that I might
+not have to look the people in the face. One is ashamed not to
+officiate, as you know. Besides, I have business here, Fyodor
+Ilyitch. To-morrow after breaking the fast I want to talk things
+over thoroughly with the Father charged with the inquiry."
+
+"Ah! . . ." yawned his Reverence, "and where are you staying?"
+
+"At Zyavkin's."
+
+Father Anastasy suddenly remembered that within two hours his
+Reverence had to take the Easter-night service, and he felt so
+ashamed of his unwelcome burdensome presence that he made up his
+mind to go away at once and let the exhausted man rest. And the old
+man got up to go. But before he began saying good-bye he stood
+clearing his throat for a minute and looking searchingly at his
+Reverence's back, still with the same expression of vague expectation
+in his whole figure; his face was working with shame, timidity, and
+a pitiful forced laugh such as one sees in people who do not respect
+themselves. Waving his hand as it were resolutely, he said with a
+husky quavering laugh:
+
+"Father Fyodor, do me one more kindness: bid them give me at
+leave-taking . . . one little glass of vodka."
+
+"It's not the time to drink vodka now," said his Reverence sternly.
+"One must have some regard for decency."
+
+Father Anastasy was still more overwhelmed by confusion; he laughed,
+and, forgetting his resolution to go away, he dropped back on his
+chair. His Reverence looked at his helpless, embarrassed face and
+his bent figure and he felt sorry for the old man.
+
+"Please God, we will have a drink to-morrow," he said, wishing to
+soften his stem refusal. "Everything is good in due season."
+
+His Reverence believed in people's reforming, but now when a feeling
+of pity had been kindled in him it seemed to him that this disgraced,
+worn-out old man, entangled in a network of sins and weaknesses,
+was hopelessly wrecked, that there was no power on earth that could
+straighten out his spine, give brightness to his eyes and restrain
+the unpleasant timid laugh which he laughed on purpose to smoothe
+over to some slight extent the repulsive impression he made on
+people.
+
+The old man seemed now to Father Fyodor not guilty and not vicious,
+but humiliated, insulted, unfortunate; his Reverence thought of his
+wife, his nine children, the dirty beggarly shelter at Zyavkin's;
+he thought for some reason of the people who are glad to see priests
+drunk and persons in authority detected in crimes; and thought that
+the very best thing Father Anastasy could do now would be to die
+as soon as possible and to depart from this world for ever.
+
+There were a sound of footsteps.
+
+"Father Fyodor, you are not resting?" a bass voice asked from the
+passage.
+
+"No, deacon; come in."
+
+Orlov's colleague, the deacon Liubimov, an elderly man with a big
+bald patch on the top of his head, though his hair was still black
+and he was still vigorous-looking, with thick black eyebrows like
+a Georgian's, walked in. He bowed to Father Anastasy and sat down.
+
+"What good news have you?" asked his Reverence.
+
+"What good news?" answered the deacon, and after a pause he went
+on with a smile: "When your children are little, your trouble is
+small; when your children are big, your trouble is great. Such
+goings on, Father Fyodor, that I don't know what to think of it.
+It's a regular farce, that's what it is."
+
+He paused again for a little, smiled still more broadly and said:
+
+"Nikolay Matveyitch came back from Harkov to-day. He has been telling
+me about my Pyotr. He has been to see him twice, he tells me."
+
+"What has he been telling you, then?"
+
+"He has upset me, God bless him. He meant to please me but when I
+came to think it over, it seems there is not much to be pleased at.
+I ought to grieve rather than be pleased. . . 'Your Petrushka,'
+said he, 'lives in fine style. He is far above us now,' said he.
+'Well thank God for that,' said I. 'I dined with him,' said he,
+'and saw his whole manner of life. He lives like a gentleman,' he
+said; 'you couldn't wish to live better.' I was naturally interested
+and I asked, 'And what did you have for dinner?' 'First,' he said,
+'a fish course something like fish soup, then tongue and peas,' and
+then he said, 'roast turkey.' 'Turkey in Lent? that is something
+to please me,' said I. 'Turkey in Lent? Eh?'"
+
+"Nothing marvellous in that," said his Reverence, screwing up his
+eyes ironically. And sticking both thumbs in his belt, he drew
+himself up and said in the tone in which he usually delivered
+discourses or gave his Scripture lessons to the pupils in the
+district school: "People who do not keep the fasts are divided into
+two different categories: some do not keep them through laxity,
+others through infidelity. Your Pyotr does not keep them through
+infidelity. Yes."
+
+The deacon looked timidly at Father Fyodor's stern face and said:
+
+"There is worse to follow. . . . We talked and discussed one thing
+and another, and it turned out that my infidel of a son is living
+with some madame, another man's wife. She takes the place of wife
+and hostess in his flat, pours out the tea, receives visitors and
+all the rest of it, as though she were his lawful wife. For over
+two years he has been keeping up this dance with this viper. It's
+a regular farce. They have been living together for three years and
+no children."
+
+"I suppose they have been living in chastity!" chuckled Father
+Anastasy, coughing huskily. "There are children, Father Deacon--
+there are, but they don't keep them at home! They send them to the
+Foundling! He-he-he! . . ." Anastasy went on coughing till he choked.
+
+"Don't interfere, Father Anastasy," said his Reverence sternly.
+
+"Nikolay Matveyitch asked him, 'What madame is this helping the
+soup at your table?'" the deacon went on, gloomily scanning
+Anastasy's bent figure. "'That is my wife,' said he. 'When was
+your wedding?' Nikolay Matveyitch asked him, and Pyotr answered,
+'We were married at Kulikov's restaurant.'"
+
+His Reverence's eyes flashed wrathfully and the colour came into
+his temples. Apart from his sinfulness, Pyotr was not a person he
+liked. Father Fyodor had, as they say, a grudge against him. He
+remembered him a boy at school--he remembered him distinctly,
+because even then the boy had seemed to him not normal. As a
+schoolboy, Petrushka had been ashamed to serve at the altar, had
+been offended at being addressed without ceremony, had not crossed
+himself on entering the room, and what was still more noteworthy,
+was fond of talking a great deal and with heat--and, in Father
+Fyodor's opinion, much talking was unseemly in children and pernicious
+to them; moreover Petrushka had taken up a contemptuous and critical
+attitude to fishing, a pursuit to which both his Reverence and the
+deacon were greatly addicted. As a student Pyotr had not gone to
+church at all, had slept till midday, had looked down on people,
+and had been given to raising delicate and insoluble questions with
+a peculiarly provoking zest.
+
+"What would you have?" his Reverence asked, going up to the deacon
+and looking at him angrily. "What would you have? This was to be
+expected! I always knew and was convinced that nothing good would
+come of your Pyotr! I told you so, and I tell you so now. What you
+have sown, that now you must reap! Reap it!"
+
+"But what have I sown, Father Fyodor?" the deacon asked softly,
+looking up at his Reverence.
+
+"Why, who is to blame if not you? You're his father, he is your
+offspring! You ought to have admonished him, have instilled the
+fear of God into him. A child must be taught! You have brought him
+into the world, but you haven't trained him up in the right way.
+It's a sin! It's wrong! It's a shame!"
+
+His Reverence forgot his exhaustion, paced to and fro and went on
+talking. Drops of perspiration came out on the deacon's bald head
+and forehead. He raised his eyes to his Reverence with a look of
+guilt, and said:
+
+"But didn't I train him, Father Fyodor? Lord have mercy on us,
+haven't I been a father to my children? You know yourself I spared
+nothing for his good; I have prayed and done my best all my life
+to give him a thorough education. He went to the high school and I
+got him tutors, and he took his degree at the University. And as
+to my not being able to influence his mind, Father Fyodor, why, you
+can judge for yourself that I am not qualified to do so! Sometimes
+when he used to come here as a student, I would begin admonishing
+him in my way, and he wouldn't heed me. I'd say to him, 'Go to
+church,' and he would answer, 'What for?' I would begin explaining,
+and he would say, 'Why? what for?' Or he would slap me on the
+shoulder and say, 'Everything in this world is relative, approximate
+and conditional. I don't know anything, and you don't know anything
+either, dad.'"
+
+Father Anastasy laughed huskily, cleared his throat and waved his
+fingers in the air as though preparing to say something. His Reverence
+glanced at him and said sternly:
+
+"Don't interfere, Father Anastasy."
+
+The old man laughed, beamed, and evidently listened with pleasure
+to the deacon as though he were glad there were other sinful persons
+in this world besides himself. The deacon spoke sincerely, with an
+aching heart, and tears actually came into his eyes. Father Fyodor
+felt sorry for him.
+
+"You are to blame, deacon, you are to blame," he said, but not so
+sternly and heatedly as before. "If you could beget him, you ought
+to know how to instruct him. You ought to have trained him in his
+childhood; it's no good trying to correct a student."
+
+A silence followed; the deacon clasped his hands and said with a
+sigh:
+
+"But you know I shall have to answer for him!"
+
+"To be sure you will!"
+
+After a brief silence his Reverence yawned and sighed at the same
+moment and asked:
+
+"Who is reading the 'Acts'?"
+
+"Yevstrat. Yevstrat always reads them."
+
+The deacon got up and, looking imploringly at his Reverence, asked:
+
+"Father Fyodor, what am I to do now?"
+
+"Do as you please; you are his father, not I. You ought to know
+best."
+
+"I don't know anything, Father Fyodor! Tell me what to do, for
+goodness' sake! Would you believe it, I am sick at heart! I can't
+sleep now, nor keep quiet, and the holiday will be no holiday to
+me. Tell me what to do, Father Fyodor!"
+
+"Write him a letter."
+
+"What am I to write to him?"
+
+"Write that he mustn't go on like that. Write shortly, but sternly
+and circumstantially, without softening or smoothing away his guilt.
+It is your parental duty; if you write, you will have done your
+duty and will be at peace."
+
+"That's true. But what am I to write to him, to what effect? If I
+write to him, he will answer, 'Why? what for? Why is it a sin?'"
+
+Father Anastasy laughed hoarsely again, and brandished his fingers.
+
+"Why? what for? why is it a sin?" he began shrilly. "I was once
+confessing a gentleman, and I told him that excessive confidence
+in the Divine Mercy is a sin; and he asked, 'Why?' I tried to answer
+him, but----" Anastasy slapped himself on the forehead. "I had
+nothing here. He-he-he-he! . . ."
+
+Anastasy's words, his hoarse jangling laugh at what was not laughable,
+had an unpleasant effect on his Reverence and on the deacon. The
+former was on the point of saying, "Don't interfere" again, but he
+did not say it, he only frowned.
+
+"I can't write to him," sighed the deacon.
+
+"If you can't, who can?"
+
+"Father Fyodor!" said the deacon, putting his head on one side and
+pressing his hand to his heart. "I am an uneducated slow-witted
+man, while the Lord has vouchsafed you judgment and wisdom. You
+know everything and understand everything. You can master anything,
+while I don't know how to put my words together sensibly. Be generous.
+Instruct me how to write the letter. Teach me what to say and how
+to say it. . . ."
+
+"What is there to teach? There is nothing to teach. Sit down and
+write."
+
+"Oh, do me the favour, Father Fyodor! I beseech you! I know he will
+be frightened and will attend to your letter, because, you see, you
+are a cultivated man too. Do be so good! I'll sit down, and you'll
+dictate to me. It will be a sin to write to-morrow, but now would
+be the very time; my mind would be set at rest."
+
+His Reverence looked at the deacon's imploring face, thought of the
+disagreeable Pyotr, and consented to dictate. He made the deacon
+sit down to his table and began.
+
+"Well, write . . . 'Christ is risen, dear son . . .' exclamation
+mark. 'Rumours have reached me, your father,' then in parenthesis,
+'from what source is no concern of yours . . .' close the parenthesis.
+. . . Have you written it? 'That you are leading a life inconsistent
+with the laws both of God and of man. Neither the luxurious comfort,
+nor the worldly splendour, nor the culture with which you seek
+outwardly to disguise it, can hide your heathen manner of life. In
+name you are a Christian, but in your real nature a heathen as
+pitiful and wretched as all other heathens--more wretched, indeed,
+seeing that those heathens who know not Christ are lost from
+ignorance, while you are lost in that, possessing a treasure, you
+neglect it. I will not enumerate here your vices, which you know
+well enough; I will say that I see the cause of your ruin in your
+infidelity. You imagine yourself to be wise, boast of your knowledge
+of science, but refuse to see that science without faith, far from
+elevating a man, actually degrades him to the level of a lower
+animal, inasmuch as. . .'" The whole letter was in this strain.
+
+When he had finished writing it the deacon read it aloud, beamed
+all over and jumped up.
+
+"It's a gift, it's really a gift!" he said, clasping his hands and
+looking enthusiastically at his Reverence. "To think of the Lord's
+bestowing a gift like that! Eh? Holy Mother! I do believe I couldn't
+write a letter like that in a hundred years. Lord save you!"
+
+Father Anastasy was enthusiastic too.
+
+"One couldn't write like that without a gift," he said, getting up
+and wagging his fingers--"that one couldn't! His rhetoric would
+trip any philosopher and shut him up. Intellect. Brilliant intellect!
+If you weren't married, Father Fyodor, you would have been a bishop
+long ago, you would really!"
+
+Having vented his wrath in a letter, his Reverence felt relieved;
+his fatigue and exhaustion came back to him. The deacon was an old
+friend, and his Reverence did not hesitate to say to him:
+
+"Well deacon, go, and God bless you. I'll have half an hour's nap
+on the sofa; I must rest."
+
+The deacon went away and took Anastasy with him. As is always the
+case on Easter Eve, it was dark in the street, but the whole sky
+was sparkling with bright luminous stars. There was a scent of
+spring and holiday in the soft still air.
+
+"How long was he dictating?" the deacon said admiringly. "Ten
+minutes, not more! It would have taken someone else a month to
+compose such a letter. Eh! What a mind! Such a mind that I don't
+know what to call it! It's a marvel! It's really a marvel!"
+
+"Education!" sighed Anastasy as he crossed the muddy street; holding
+up his cassock to his waist. "It's not for us to compare ourselves
+with him. We come of the sacristan class, while he has had a learned
+education. Yes, he's a real man, there is no denying that."
+
+"And you listen how he'll read the Gospel in Latin at mass to-day!
+He knows Latin and he knows Greek. . . . Ah Petrushka, Petrushka!"
+the deacon said, suddenly remembering. "Now that will make him
+scratch his head! That will shut his mouth, that will bring it home
+to him! Now he won't ask 'Why.' It is a case of one wit to outwit
+another! Haha-ha!"
+
+The deacon laughed gaily and loudly. Since the letter had been
+written to Pyotr he had become serene and more cheerful. The
+consciousness of having performed his duty as a father and his faith
+in the power of the letter had brought back his mirthfulness and
+good-humour.
+
+"Pyotr means a stone," said he, as he went into his house. "My Pyotr
+is not a stone, but a rag. A viper has fastened upon him and he
+pampers her, and hasn't the pluck to kick her out. Tfoo! To think
+there should be women like that, God forgive me! Eh? Has she no
+shame? She has fastened upon the lad, sticking to him, and keeps
+him tied to her apron strings. . . . Fie upon her!"
+
+"Perhaps it's not she keeps hold of him, but he of her?"
+
+"She is a shameless one anyway! Not that I am defending Pyotr. . . .
+He'll catch it. He'll read the letter and scratch his head! He'll
+burn with shame!"
+
+"It's a splendid letter, only you know I wouldn't send it, Father
+Deacon. Let him alone."
+
+"What?" said the deacon, disconcerted.
+
+"Why. . . . Don't send it, deacon! What's the sense of it? Suppose
+you send it; he reads it, and . . . and what then? You'll only upset
+him. Forgive him. Let him alone!"
+
+The deacon looked in surprise at Anastasy's dark face, at his
+unbuttoned cassock, which looked in the dusk like wings, and shrugged
+his shoulders.
+
+"How can I forgive him like that?" he asked. "Why I shall have to
+answer for him to God!"
+
+"Even so, forgive him all the same. Really! And God will forgive
+you for your kindness to him."
+
+"But he is my son, isn't he? Ought I not to teach him?"
+
+"Teach him? Of course--why not? You can teach him, but why call
+him a heathen? It will hurt his feelings, you know, deacon. . . ."
+
+The deacon was a widower, and lived in a little house with three
+windows. His elder sister, an old maid, looked after his house for
+him, though she had three years before lost the use of her legs and
+was confined to her bed; he was afraid of her, obeyed her, and did
+nothing without her advice. Father Anastasy went in with him. Seeing
+his table already laid with Easter cakes and red eggs, he began
+weeping for some reason, probably thinking of his own home, and to
+turn these tears into a jest, he at once laughed huskily.
+
+"Yes, we shall soon be breaking the fast," he said. "Yes . . . it
+wouldn't come amiss, deacon, to have a little glass now. Can we?
+I'll drink it so that the old lady does not hear," he whispered,
+glancing sideways towards the door.
+
+Without a word the deacon moved a decanter and wineglass towards
+him. He unfolded the letter and began reading it aloud. And now the
+letter pleased him just as much as when his Reverence had dictated
+it to him. He beamed with pleasure and wagged his head, as though
+he had been tasting something very sweet.
+
+"A-ah, what a letter!" he said. "Petrushka has never dreamt of such
+a letter. It's just what he wants, something to throw him into a
+fever. . ."
+
+"Do you know, deacon, don't send it!" said Anastasy, pouring himself
+out a second glass of vodka as though unconsciously. "Forgive him,
+let him alone! I am telling you . . . what I really think. If his
+own father can't forgive him, who will forgive him? And so he'll
+live without forgiveness. Think, deacon: there will be plenty to
+chastise him without you, but you should look out for some who will
+show mercy to your son! I'll . . . I'll . . . have just one more.
+The last, old man. . . . Just sit down and write straight off to
+him, 'I forgive you Pyotr!' He will under-sta-and! He will fe-el
+it! I understand it from myself, you see old man . . . deacon, I
+mean. When I lived like other people, I hadn't much to trouble
+about, but now since I lost the image and semblance, there is only
+one thing I care about, that good people should forgive me. And
+remember, too, it's not the righteous but sinners we must forgive.
+Why should you forgive your old woman if she is not sinful? No, you
+must forgive a man when he is a sad sight to look at . . . yes!"
+
+Anastasy leaned his head on his fist and sank into thought.
+
+"It's a terrible thing, deacon," he sighed, evidently struggling
+with the desire to take another glass--"a terrible thing! In sin
+my mother bore me, in sin I have lived, in sin I shall die. . . .
+God forgive me, a sinner! I have gone astray, deacon! There is no
+salvation for me! And it's not as though I had gone astray in my
+life, but in old age--at death's door . . . I . . ."
+
+The old man, with a hopeless gesture, drank off another glass, then
+got up and moved to another seat. The deacon, still keeping the
+letter in his hand, was walking up and down the room. He was thinking
+of his son. Displeasure, distress and anxiety no longer troubled
+him; all that had gone into the letter. Now he was simply picturing
+Pyotr; he imagined his face, he thought of the past years when his
+son used to come to stay with him for the holidays. His thoughts
+were only of what was good, warm, touching, of which one might think
+for a whole lifetime without wearying. Longing for his son, he read
+the letter through once more and looked questioningly at Anastasy.
+
+"Don't send it," said the latter, with a wave of his hand.
+
+"No, I must send it anyway; I must . . . bring him to his senses a
+little, all the same. It's just as well. . . ."
+
+The deacon took an envelope from the table, but before putting the
+letter into it he sat down to the table, smiled and added on his
+own account at the bottom of the letter:
+
+"They have sent us a new inspector. He's much friskier than the old
+one. He's a great one for dancing and talking, and there's nothing
+he can't do, so that all the Govorovsky girls are crazy over him.
+Our military chief, Kostyrev, will soon get the sack too, they say.
+High time he did!" And very well pleased, without the faintest idea
+that with this postscript he had completely spoiled the stern letter,
+the deacon addressed the envelope and laid it in the most conspicuous
+place on the table.
+
+
+EASTER EVE
+
+I was standing on the bank of the River Goltva, waiting for the
+ferry-boat from the other side. At ordinary times the Goltva is a
+humble stream of moderate size, silent and pensive, gently glimmering
+from behind thick reeds; but now a regular lake lay stretched out
+before me. The waters of spring, running riot, had overflowed both
+banks and flooded both sides of the river for a long distance,
+submerging vegetable gardens, hayfields and marshes, so that it was
+no unusual thing to meet poplars and bushes sticking out above the
+surface of the water and looking in the darkness like grim solitary
+crags.
+
+The weather seemed to me magnificent. It was dark, yet I could see
+the trees, the water and the people. . . . The world was lighted
+by the stars, which were scattered thickly all over the sky. I don't
+remember ever seeing so many stars. Literally one could not have
+put a finger in between them. There were some as big as a goose's
+egg, others tiny as hempseed. . . . They had come out for the
+festival procession, every one of them, little and big, washed,
+renewed and joyful, and everyone of them was softly twinkling its
+beams. The sky was reflected in the water; the stars were bathing
+in its dark depths and trembling with the quivering eddies. The air
+was warm and still. . . . Here and there, far away on the further
+bank in the impenetrable darkness, several bright red lights were
+gleaming. . . .
+
+A couple of paces from me I saw the dark silhouette of a peasant
+in a high hat, with a thick knotted stick in his hand.
+
+"How long the ferry-boat is in coming!" I said.
+
+"It is time it was here," the silhouette answered.
+
+"You are waiting for the ferry-boat, too?"
+
+"No I am not," yawned the peasant--"I am waiting for the illumination.
+I should have gone, but to tell you the truth, I haven't the five
+kopecks for the ferry."
+
+"I'll give you the five kopecks."
+
+"No; I humbly thank you. . . . With that five kopecks put up a
+candle for me over there in the monastery. . . . That will be more
+interesting, and I will stand here. What can it mean, no ferry-boat,
+as though it had sunk in the water!"
+
+The peasant went up to the water's edge, took the rope in his hands,
+and shouted; "Ieronim! Ieron--im!"
+
+As though in answer to his shout, the slow peal of a great bell
+floated across from the further bank. The note was deep and low,
+as from the thickest string of a double bass; it seemed as though
+the darkness itself had hoarsely uttered it. At once there was the
+sound of a cannon shot. It rolled away in the darkness and ended
+somewhere in the far distance behind me. The peasant took off his
+hat and crossed himself.
+
+'"Christ is risen," he said.
+
+Before the vibrations of the first peal of the bell had time to die
+away in the air a second sounded, after it at once a third, and the
+darkness was filled with an unbroken quivering clamour. Near the
+red lights fresh lights flashed, and all began moving together and
+twinkling restlessly.
+
+"Ieron--im!" we heard a hollow prolonged shout.
+
+"They are shouting from the other bank," said the peasant, "so there
+is no ferry there either. Our Ieronim has gone to sleep."
+
+The lights and the velvety chimes of the bell drew one towards them.
+. . . I was already beginning to lose patience and grow anxious,
+but behold at last, staring into the dark distance, I saw the outline
+of something very much like a gibbet. It was the long-expected
+ferry. It moved towards us with such deliberation that if it had
+not been that its lines grew gradually more definite, one might
+have supposed that it was standing still or moving to the other
+bank.
+
+"Make haste! Ieronim!" shouted my peasant. "The gentleman's tired
+of waiting!"
+
+The ferry crawled to the bank, gave a lurch and stopped with a
+creak. A tall man in a monk's cassock and a conical cap stood on
+it, holding the rope.
+
+"Why have you been so long?" I asked jumping upon the ferry.
+
+"Forgive me, for Christ's sake," Ieronim answered gently. "Is there
+no one else?"
+
+"No one. . . ."
+
+Ieronim took hold of the rope in both hands, bent himself to the
+figure of a mark of interrogation, and gasped. The ferry-boat creaked
+and gave a lurch. The outline of the peasant in the high hat began
+slowly retreating from me--so the ferry was moving off. Ieronim
+soon drew himself up and began working with one hand only. We were
+silent, gazing towards the bank to which we were floating. There
+the illumination for which the peasant was waiting had begun. At
+the water's edge barrels of tar were flaring like huge camp fires.
+Their reflections, crimson as the rising moon, crept to meet us in
+long broad streaks. The burning barrels lighted up their own smoke
+and the long shadows of men flitting about the fire; but further
+to one side and behind them from where the velvety chime floated
+there was still the same unbroken black gloom. All at once, cleaving
+the darkness, a rocket zigzagged in a golden ribbon up the sky; it
+described an arc and, as though broken to pieces against the sky,
+was scattered crackling into sparks. There was a roar from the bank
+like a far-away hurrah.
+
+"How beautiful!" I said.
+
+"Beautiful beyond words!" sighed Ieronim. "Such a night, sir! Another
+time one would pay no attention to the fireworks, but to-day one
+rejoices in every vanity. Where do you come from?"
+
+I told him where I came from.
+
+"To be sure . . . a joyful day to-day. . . ." Ieronim went on in a
+weak sighing tenor like the voice of a convalescent. "The sky is
+rejoicing and the earth and what is under the earth. All the creatures
+are keeping holiday. Only tell me kind sir, why, even in the time
+of great rejoicing, a man cannot forget his sorrows?"
+
+I fancied that this unexpected question was to draw me into one of
+those endless religious conversations which bored and idle monks
+are so fond of. I was not disposed to talk much, and so I only
+asked:
+
+"What sorrows have you, father?"
+
+"As a rule only the same as all men, kind sir, but to-day a special
+sorrow has happened in the monastery: at mass, during the reading
+of the Bible, the monk and deacon Nikolay died."
+
+"Well, it's God's will!" I said, falling into the monastic tone.
+"We must all die. To my mind, you ought to rejoice indeed. . . .
+They say if anyone dies at Easter he goes straight to the kingdom
+of heaven."
+
+"That's true."
+
+We sank into silence. The figure of the peasant in the high hat
+melted into the lines of the bank. The tar barrels were flaring up
+more and more.
+
+"The Holy Scripture points clearly to the vanity of sorrow and so
+does reflection," said Ieronim, breaking the silence, "but why does
+the heart grieve and refuse to listen to reason? Why does one want
+to weep bitterly?"
+
+Ieronim shrugged his shoulders, turned to me and said quickly:
+
+"If I died, or anyone else, it would not be worth notice perhaps;
+but, you see, Nikolay is dead! No one else but Nikolay! Indeed,
+it's hard to believe that he is no more! I stand here on my ferry-boat
+and every minute I keep fancying that he will lift up his voice
+from the bank. He always used to come to the bank and call to me
+that I might not be afraid on the ferry. He used to get up from his
+bed at night on purpose for that. He was a kind soul. My God! how
+kindly and gracious! Many a mother is not so good to her child as
+Nikolay was to me! Lord, save his soul!"
+
+Ieronim took hold of the rope, but turned to me again at once.
+
+"And such a lofty intelligence, your honour," he said in a vibrating
+voice. "Such a sweet and harmonious tongue! Just as they will sing
+immediately at early matins: 'Oh lovely! oh sweet is Thy Voice!'
+Besides all other human qualities, he had, too, an extraordinary
+gift!"
+
+"What gift?" I asked.
+
+The monk scrutinized me, and as though he had convinced himself
+that he could trust me with a secret, he laughed good-humouredly.
+
+"He had a gift for writing hymns of praise," he said. "It was a
+marvel, sir; you couldn't call it anything else! You would be amazed
+if I tell you about it. Our Father Archimandrite comes from Moscow,
+the Father Sub-Prior studied at the Kazan academy, we have wise
+monks and elders, but, would you believe it, no one could write
+them; while Nikolay, a simple monk, a deacon, had not studied
+anywhere, and had not even any outer appearance of it, but he wrote
+them! A marvel! A real marvel!" Ieronim clasped his hands and,
+completely forgetting the rope, went on eagerly:
+
+"The Father Sub-Prior has great difficulty in composing sermons;
+when he wrote the history of the monastery he worried all the
+brotherhood and drove a dozen times to town, while Nikolay wrote
+canticles! Hymns of praise! That's a very different thing from a
+sermon or a history!"
+
+"Is it difficult to write them?" I asked.
+
+"There's great difficulty!" Ieronim wagged his head. "You can do
+nothing by wisdom and holiness if God has not given you the gift.
+The monks who don't understand argue that you only need to know the
+life of the saint for whom you are writing the hymn, and to make
+it harmonize with the other hymns of praise. But that's a mistake,
+sir. Of course, anyone who writes canticles must know the life of
+the saint to perfection, to the least trivial detail. To be sure,
+one must make them harmonize with the other canticles and know where
+to begin and what to write about. To give you an instance, the first
+response begins everywhere with 'the chosen' or 'the elect.' . . .
+The first line must always begin with the 'angel.' In the canticle
+of praise to Jesus the Most Sweet, if you are interested in the
+subject, it begins like this: 'Of angels Creator and Lord of all
+powers!' In the canticle to the Holy Mother of God: 'Of angels the
+foremost sent down from on high,' to Nikolay, the Wonder-worker--
+'An angel in semblance, though in substance a man,' and so on.
+Everywhere you begin with the angel. Of course, it would be impossible
+without making them harmonize, but the lives of the saints and
+conformity with the others is not what matters; what matters is the
+beauty and sweetness of it. Everything must be harmonious, brief
+and complete. There must be in every line softness, graciousness
+and tenderness; not one word should be harsh or rough or unsuitable.
+It must be written so that the worshipper may rejoice at heart and
+weep, while his mind is stirred and he is thrown into a tremor. In
+the canticle to the Holy Mother are the words: 'Rejoice, O Thou too
+high for human thought to reach! Rejoice, O Thou too deep for angels'
+eyes to fathom!' In another place in the same canticle: 'Rejoice,
+O tree that bearest the fair fruit of light that is the food of the
+faithful! Rejoice, O tree of gracious spreading shade, under which
+there is shelter for multitudes!'"
+
+Ieronim hid his face in his hands, as though frightened at something
+or overcome with shame, and shook his head.
+
+"Tree that bearest the fair fruit of light . . . tree of gracious
+spreading shade. . . ." he muttered. "To think that a man should
+find words like those! Such a power is a gift from God! For brevity
+he packs many thoughts into one phrase, and how smooth and complete
+it all is! 'Light-radiating torch to all that be . . .' comes in
+the canticle to Jesus the Most Sweet. 'Light-radiating!' There is
+no such word in conversation or in books, but you see he invented
+it, he found it in his mind! Apart from the smoothness and grandeur
+of language, sir, every line must be beautified in every way, there
+must be flowers and lightning and wind and sun and all the objects
+of the visible world. And every exclamation ought to be put so as
+to be smooth and easy for the ear. 'Rejoice, thou flower of heavenly
+growth!' comes in the hymn to Nikolay the Wonder-worker. It's not
+simply 'heavenly flower,' but 'flower of heavenly growth.' It's
+smoother so and sweet to the ear. That was just as Nikolay wrote
+it! Exactly like that! I can't tell you how he used to write!"
+
+"Well, in that case it is a pity he is dead," I said; "but let us
+get on, father, or we shall be late."
+
+Ieronim started and ran to the rope; they were beginning to peal
+all the bells. Probably the procession was already going on near
+the monastery, for all the dark space behind the tar barrels was
+now dotted with moving lights.
+
+"Did Nikolay print his hymns?" I asked Ieronim.
+
+"How could he print them?" he sighed. "And indeed, it would be
+strange to print them. What would be the object? No one in the
+monastery takes any interest in them. They don't like them. They
+knew Nikolay wrote them, but they let it pass unnoticed. No one
+esteems new writings nowadays, sir!"
+
+"Were they prejudiced against him?"
+
+"Yes, indeed. If Nikolay had been an elder perhaps the brethren
+would have been interested, but he wasn't forty, you know. There
+were some who laughed and even thought his writing a sin."
+
+"What did he write them for?"
+
+"Chiefly for his own comfort. Of all the brotherhood, I was the
+only one who read his hymns. I used to go to him in secret, that
+no one else might know of it, and he was glad that I took an interest
+in them. He would embrace me, stroke my head, speak to me in caressing
+words as to a little child. He would shut his cell, make me sit
+down beside him, and begin to read. . . ."
+
+Ieronim left the rope and came up to me.
+
+"We were dear friends in a way," he whispered, looking at me with
+shining eyes. "Where he went I would go. If I were not there he
+would miss me. And he cared more for me than for anyone, and all
+because I used to weep over his hymns. It makes me sad to remember.
+Now I feel just like an orphan or a widow. You know, in our monastery
+they are all good people, kind and pious, but . . . there is no one
+with softness and refinement, they are just like peasants. They all
+speak loudly, and tramp heavily when they walk; they are noisy,
+they clear their throats, but Nikolay always talked softly,
+caressingly, and if he noticed that anyone was asleep or praying
+he would slip by like a fly or a gnat. His face was tender,
+compassionate. . . ."
+
+Ieronim heaved a deep sigh and took hold of the rope again. We were
+by now approaching the bank. We floated straight out of the darkness
+and stillness of the river into an enchanted realm, full of stifling
+smoke, crackling lights and uproar. By now one could distinctly see
+people moving near the tar barrels. The flickering of the lights
+gave a strange, almost fantastic, expression to their figures and
+red faces. From time to time one caught among the heads and faces
+a glimpse of a horse's head motionless as though cast in copper.
+
+"They'll begin singing the Easter hymn directly, . . ." said Ieronim,
+"and Nikolay is gone; there is no one to appreciate it. . . . There
+was nothing written dearer to him than that hymn. He used to take
+in every word! You'll be there, sir, so notice what is sung; it
+takes your breath away!"
+
+"Won't you be in church, then?"
+
+"I can't; . . . I have to work the ferry. . . ."
+
+"But won't they relieve you?"
+
+"I don't know. . . . I ought to have been relieved at eight; but,
+as you see, they don't come! . . . And I must own I should have liked
+to be in the church. . . ."
+
+"Are you a monk?"
+
+"Yes . . . that is, I am a lay-brother."
+
+The ferry ran into the bank and stopped. I thrust a five-kopeck
+piece into Ieronim's hand for taking me across and jumped on land.
+Immediately a cart with a boy and a sleeping woman in it drove
+creaking onto the ferry. Ieronim, with a faint glow from the lights
+on his figure, pressed on the rope, bent down to it, and started
+the ferry back. . . .
+
+I took a few steps through mud, but a little farther walked on a
+soft freshly trodden path. This path led to the dark monastery
+gates, that looked like a cavern through a cloud of smoke, through
+a disorderly crowd of people, unharnessed horses, carts and chaises.
+All this crowd was rattling, snorting, laughing, and the crimson
+light and wavering shadows from the smoke flickered over it all
+. . . . A perfect chaos! And in this hubbub the people yet found room
+to load a little cannon and to sell cakes. There was no less commotion
+on the other side of the wall in the monastery precincts, but there
+was more regard for decorum and order. Here there was a smell of
+juniper and incense. They talked loudly, but there was no sound of
+laughter or snorting. Near the tombstones and crosses people pressed
+close to one another with Easter cakes and bundles in their arms.
+Apparently many had come from a long distance for their cakes to
+be blessed and now were exhausted. Young lay brothers, making a
+metallic sound with their boots, ran busily along the iron slabs
+that paved the way from the monastery gates to the church door.
+They were busy and shouting on the belfry, too.
+
+"What a restless night!" I thought. "How nice!"
+
+One was tempted to see the same unrest and sleeplessness in all
+nature, from the night darkness to the iron slabs, the crosses on
+the tombs and the trees under which the people were moving to and
+fro. But nowhere was the excitement and restlessness so marked as
+in the church. An unceasing struggle was going on in the entrance
+between the inflowing stream and the outflowing stream. Some were
+going in, others going out and soon coming back again to stand still
+for a little and begin moving again. People were scurrying from
+place to place, lounging about as though they were looking for
+something. The stream flowed from the entrance all round the church,
+disturbing even the front rows, where persons of weight and dignity
+were standing. There could be no thought of concentrated prayer.
+There were no prayers at all, but a sort of continuous, childishly
+irresponsible joy, seeking a pretext to break out and vent itself
+in some movement, even in senseless jostling and shoving.
+
+The same unaccustomed movement is striking in the Easter service
+itself. The altar gates are flung wide open, thick clouds of incense
+float in the air near the candelabra; wherever one looks there are
+lights, the gleam and splutter of candles. . . . There is no reading;
+restless and lighthearted singing goes on to the end without ceasing.
+After each hymn the clergy change their vestments and come out to
+burn the incense, which is repeated every ten minutes.
+
+I had no sooner taken a place, when a wave rushed from in front and
+forced me back. A tall thick-set deacon walked before me with a
+long red candle; the grey-headed archimandrite in his golden mitre
+hurried after him with the censer. When they had vanished from sight
+the crowd squeezed me back to my former position. But ten minutes
+had not passed before a new wave burst on me, and again the deacon
+appeared. This time he was followed by the Father Sub-Prior, the
+man who, as Ieronim had told me, was writing the history of the
+monastery.
+
+As I mingled with the crowd and caught the infection of the universal
+joyful excitement, I felt unbearably sore on Ieronim's account. Why
+did they not send someone to relieve him? Why could not someone of
+less feeling and less susceptibility go on the ferry? 'Lift up thine
+eyes, O Sion, and look around,' they sang in the choir, 'for thy
+children have come to thee as to a beacon of divine light from north
+and south, and from east and from the sea. . . .'
+
+I looked at the faces; they all had a lively expression of triumph,
+but not one was listening to what was being sung and taking it in,
+and not one was 'holding his breath.' Why was not Ieronim released?
+I could fancy Ieronim standing meekly somewhere by the wall, bending
+forward and hungrily drinking in the beauty of the holy phrase. All
+this that glided by the ears of the people standing by me he would
+have eagerly drunk in with his delicately sensitive soul, and would
+have been spell-bound to ecstasy, to holding his breath, and there
+would not have been a man happier than he in all the church. Now
+he was plying to and fro over the dark river and grieving for his
+dead friend and brother.
+
+The wave surged back. A stout smiling monk, playing with his rosary
+and looking round behind him, squeezed sideways by me, making way
+for a lady in a hat and velvet cloak. A monastery servant hurried
+after the lady, holding a chair over our heads.
+
+I came out of the church. I wanted to have a look at the dead
+Nikolay, the unknown canticle writer. I walked about the monastery
+wall, where there was a row of cells, peeped into several windows,
+and, seeing nothing, came back again. I do not regret now that I
+did not see Nikolay; God knows, perhaps if I had seen him I should
+have lost the picture my imagination paints for me now. I imagine
+the lovable poetical figure solitary and not understood, who went
+out at nights to call to Ieronim over the water, and filled his
+hymns with flowers, stars and sunbeams, as a pale timid man with
+soft mild melancholy features. His eyes must have shone, not only
+with intelligence, but with kindly tenderness and that hardly
+restrained childlike enthusiasm which I could hear in Ieronim's
+voice when he quoted to me passages from the hymns.
+
+When we came out of church after mass it was no longer night. The
+morning was beginning. The stars had gone out and the sky was a
+morose greyish blue. The iron slabs, the tombstones and the buds
+on the trees were covered with dew There was a sharp freshness in
+the air. Outside the precincts I did not find the same animated
+scene as I had beheld in the night. Horses and men looked exhausted,
+drowsy, scarcely moved, while nothing was left of the tar barrels
+but heaps of black ash. When anyone is exhausted and sleepy he
+fancies that nature, too, is in the same condition. It seemed to
+me that the trees and the young grass were asleep. It seemed as
+though even the bells were not pealing so loudly and gaily as at
+night. The restlessness was over, and of the excitement nothing was
+left but a pleasant weariness, a longing for sleep and warmth.
+
+Now I could see both banks of the river; a faint mist hovered over
+it in shifting masses. There was a harsh cold breath from the water.
+When I jumped on to the ferry, a chaise and some two dozen men and
+women were standing on it already. The rope, wet and as I fancied
+drowsy, stretched far away across the broad river and in places
+disappeared in the white mist.
+
+"Christ is risen! Is there no one else?" asked a soft voice.
+
+I recognized the voice of Ieronim. There was no darkness now to
+hinder me from seeing the monk. He was a tall narrow-shouldered man
+of five-and-thirty, with large rounded features, with half-closed
+listless-looking eyes and an unkempt wedge-shaped beard. He had an
+extraordinarily sad and exhausted look.
+
+"They have not relieved you yet?" I asked in surprise.
+
+"Me?" he answered, turning to me his chilled and dewy face with a
+smile. "There is no one to take my place now till morning. They'll
+all be going to the Father Archimandrite's to break the fast
+directly."
+
+With the help of a little peasant in a hat of reddish fur that
+looked like the little wooden tubs in which honey is sold, he threw
+his weight on the rope; they gasped simultaneously, and the ferry
+started.
+
+We floated across, disturbing on the way the lazily rising mist.
+Everyone was silent. Ieronim worked mechanically with one hand. He
+slowly passed his mild lustreless eyes over us; then his glance
+rested on the rosy face of a young merchant's wife with black
+eyebrows, who was standing on the ferry beside me silently shrinking
+from the mist that wrapped her about. He did not take his eyes off
+her face all the way.
+
+There was little that was masculine in that prolonged gaze. It
+seemed to me that Ieronim was looking in the woman's face for the
+soft and tender features of his dead friend.
+
+
+A NIGHTMARE
+
+Kunin, a young man of thirty, who was a permanent member of the
+Rural Board, on returning from Petersburg to his district, Borisovo,
+immediately sent a mounted messenger to Sinkino, for the priest
+there, Father Yakov Smirnov.
+
+Five hours later Father Yakov appeared.
+
+"Very glad to make your acquaintance," said Kunin, meeting him in
+the entry. "I've been living and serving here for a year; it seems
+as though we ought to have been acquainted before. You are very
+welcome! But . . . how young you are!" Kunin added in surprise.
+"What is your age?"
+
+"Twenty-eight, . . ." said Father Yakov, faintly pressing Kunin's
+outstretched hand, and for some reason turning crimson.
+
+Kunin led his visitor into his study and began looking at him more
+attentively.
+
+"What an uncouth womanish face!" he thought.
+
+There certainly was a good deal that was womanish in Father Yakov's
+face: the turned-up nose, the bright red cheeks, and the large
+grey-blue eyes with scanty, scarcely perceptible eyebrows. His long
+reddish hair, smooth and dry, hung down in straight tails on to his
+shoulders. The hair on his upper lip was only just beginning to
+form into a real masculine moustache, while his little beard belonged
+to that class of good-for-nothing beards which among divinity
+students are for some reason called "ticklers." It was scanty and
+extremely transparent; it could not have been stroked or combed,
+it could only have been pinched. . . . All these scanty decorations
+were put on unevenly in tufts, as though Father Yakov, thinking to
+dress up as a priest and beginning to gum on the beard, had been
+interrupted halfway through. He had on a cassock, the colour of
+weak coffee with chicory in it, with big patches on both elbows.
+
+"A queer type," thought Kunin, looking at his muddy skirts. "Comes
+to the house for the first time and can't dress decently.
+
+"Sit down, Father," he began more carelessly than cordially, as he
+moved an easy-chair to the table. "Sit down, I beg you."
+
+Father Yakov coughed into his fist, sank awkwardly on to the edge
+of the chair, and laid his open hands on his knees. With his short
+figure, his narrow chest, his red and perspiring face, he made from
+the first moment a most unpleasant impression on Kunin. The latter
+could never have imagined that there were such undignified and
+pitiful-looking priests in Russia; and in Father Yakov's attitude,
+in the way he held his hands on his knees and sat on the very edge
+of his chair, he saw a lack of dignity and even a shade of servility.
+
+"I have invited you on business, Father. . . ." Kunin began, sinking
+back in his low chair. "It has fallen to my lot to perform the
+agreeable duty of helping you in one of your useful undertakings.
+. . . On coming back from Petersburg, I found on my table a letter
+from the Marshal of Nobility. Yegor Dmitrevitch suggests that I
+should take under my supervision the church parish school which is
+being opened in Sinkino. I shall be very glad to, Father, with all
+my heart. . . . More than that, I accept the proposition with
+enthusiasm."
+
+Kunin got up and walked about the study.
+
+"Of course, both Yegor Dmitrevitch and probably you, too, are aware
+that I have not great funds at my disposal. My estate is mortgaged,
+and I live exclusively on my salary as the permanent member. So
+that you cannot reckon on very much assistance, but I will do all
+that is in my power. . . . And when are you thinking of opening the
+school Father?"
+
+"When we have the money, . . ." answered Father Yakov.
+
+"You have some funds at your disposal already?"
+
+"Scarcely any. . . . The peasants settled at their meeting that
+they would pay, every man of them, thirty kopecks a year; but that's
+only a promise, you know! And for the first beginning we should
+need at least two hundred roubles. . . ."
+
+"M'yes. . . . Unhappily, I have not that sum now," said Kunin with
+a sigh. "I spent all I had on my tour and got into debt, too. Let
+us try and think of some plan together."
+
+Kunin began planning aloud. He explained his views and watched
+Father Yakov's face, seeking signs of agreement or approval in it.
+But the face was apathetic and immobile, and expressed nothing but
+constrained shyness and uneasiness. Looking at it, one might have
+supposed that Kunin was talking of matters so abstruse that Father
+Yakov did not understand and only listened from good manners, and
+was at the same time afraid of being detected in his failure to
+understand.
+
+"The fellow is not one of the brightest, that's evident . . ."
+thought Kunin. "He's rather shy and much too stupid."
+
+Father Yakov revived somewhat and even smiled only when the footman
+came into the study bringing in two glasses of tea on a tray and a
+cake-basket full of biscuits. He took his glass and began drinking
+at once.
+
+"Shouldn't we write at once to the bishop?" Kunin went on, meditating
+aloud. "To be precise, you know, it is not we, not the Zemstvo, but
+the higher ecclesiastical authorities, who have raised the question
+of the church parish schools. They ought really to apportion the
+funds. I remember I read that a sum of money had been set aside for
+the purpose. Do you know nothing about it?"
+
+Father Yakov was so absorbed in drinking tea that he did not answer
+this question at once. He lifted his grey-blue eyes to Kunin, thought
+a moment, and as though recalling his question, he shook his head
+in the negative. An expression of pleasure and of the most ordinary
+prosaic appetite overspread his face from ear to ear. He drank and
+smacked his lips over every gulp. When he had drunk it to the very
+last drop, he put his glass on the table, then took his glass back
+again, looked at the bottom of it, then put it back again. The
+expression of pleasure faded from his face. . . . Then Kunin saw
+his visitor take a biscuit from the cake-basket, nibble a little
+bit off it, then turn it over in his hand and hurriedly stick it
+in his pocket.
+
+"Well, that's not at all clerical!" thought Kunin, shrugging his
+shoulders contemptuously. "What is it, priestly greed or childishness?"
+
+After giving his visitor another glass of tea and seeing him to the
+entry, Kunin lay down on the sofa and abandoned himself to the
+unpleasant feeling induced in him by the visit of Father Yakov.
+
+"What a strange wild creature!" he thought. "Dirty, untidy, coarse,
+stupid, and probably he drinks. . . . My God, and that's a priest,
+a spiritual father! That's a teacher of the people! I can fancy the
+irony there must be in the deacon's face when before every mass he
+booms out: 'Thy blessing, Reverend Father!' A fine reverend Father!
+A reverend Father without a grain of dignity or breeding, hiding
+biscuits in his pocket like a schoolboy. . . . Fie! Good Lord, where
+were the bishop's eyes when he ordained a man like that? What can
+he think of the people if he gives them a teacher like that? One
+wants people here who . . ."
+
+And Kunin thought what Russian priests ought to be like.
+
+"If I were a priest, for instance. . . . An educated priest fond
+of his work might do a great deal. . . . I should have had the
+school opened long ago. And the sermons? If the priest is sincere
+and is inspired by love for his work, what wonderful rousing sermons
+he might give!"
+
+Kunin shut his eyes and began mentally composing a sermon. A little
+later he sat down to the table and rapidly began writing.
+
+"I'll give it to that red-haired fellow, let him read it in church,
+. . ." he thought.
+
+The following Sunday Kunin drove over to Sinkino in the morning to
+settle the question of the school, and while he was there to make
+acquaintance with the church of which he was a parishioner. In spite
+of the awful state of the roads, it was a glorious morning. The sun
+was shining brightly and cleaving with its rays the layers of white
+snow still lingering here and there. The snow as it took leave of
+the earth glittered with such diamonds that it hurt the eyes to
+look, while the young winter corn was hastily thrusting up its green
+beside it. The rooks floated with dignity over the fields. A rook
+would fly, drop to earth, and give several hops before standing
+firmly on its feet. . . .
+
+The wooden church up to which Kunin drove was old and grey; the
+columns of the porch had once been painted white, but the colour
+had now completely peeled off, and they looked like two ungainly
+shafts. The ikon over the door looked like a dark smudged blur. But
+its poverty touched and softened Kunin. Modestly dropping his eyes,
+he went into the church and stood by the door. The service had only
+just begun. An old sacristan, bent into a bow, was reading the
+"Hours" in a hollow indistinct tenor. Father Yakov, who conducted
+the service without a deacon, was walking about the church, burning
+incense. Had it not been for the softened mood in which Kunin found
+himself on entering the poverty-stricken church, he certainly would
+have smiled at the sight of Father Yakov. The short priest was
+wearing a crumpled and extremely long robe of some shabby yellow
+material; the hem of the robe trailed on the ground.
+
+The church was not full. Looking at the parishioners, Kunin was
+struck at the first glance by one strange circumstance: he saw
+nothing but old people and children. . . . Where were the men of
+working age? Where was the youth and manhood? But after he had stood
+there a little and looked more attentively at the aged-looking
+faces, Kunin saw that he had mistaken young people for old. He did
+not, however, attach any significance to this little optical illusion.
+
+The church was as cold and grey inside as outside. There was not
+one spot on the ikons nor on the dark brown walls which was not
+begrimed and defaced by time. There were many windows, but the
+general effect of colour was grey, and so it was twilight in the
+church.
+
+"Anyone pure in soul can pray here very well," thought Kunin. "Just
+as in St. Peter's in Rome one is impressed by grandeur, here one
+is touched by the lowliness and simplicity."
+
+But his devout mood vanished like smoke as soon as Father Yakov
+went up to the altar and began mass. Being still young and having
+come straight from the seminary bench to the priesthood, Father
+Yakov had not yet formed a set manner of celebrating the service.
+As he read he seemed to be vacillating between a high tenor and a
+thin bass; he bowed clumsily, walked quickly, and opened and shut
+the gates abruptly. . . . The old sacristan, evidently deaf and
+ailing, did not hear the prayers very distinctly, and this very
+often led to slight misunderstandings. Before Father Yakov had time
+to finish what he had to say, the sacristan began chanting his
+response, or else long after Father Yakov had finished the old man
+would be straining his ears, listening in the direction of the altar
+and saying nothing till his skirt was pulled. The old man had a
+sickly hollow voice and an asthmatic quavering lisp. . . . The
+complete lack of dignity and decorum was emphasized by a very small
+boy who seconded the sacristan and whose head was hardly visible
+over the railing of the choir. The boy sang in a shrill falsetto
+and seemed to be trying to avoid singing in tune. Kunin stayed a
+little while, listened and went out for a smoke. He was disappointed,
+and looked at the grey church almost with dislike.
+
+"They complain of the decline of religious feeling among the people
+. . ." he sighed. "I should rather think so! They'd better foist a
+few more priests like this one on them!"
+
+Kunin went back into the church three times, and each time he felt
+a great temptation to get out into the open air again. Waiting till
+the end of the mass, he went to Father Yakov's. The priest's house
+did not differ outwardly from the peasants' huts, but the thatch
+lay more smoothly on the roof and there were little white curtains
+in the windows. Father Yakov led Kunin into a light little room
+with a clay floor and walls covered with cheap paper; in spite of
+some painful efforts towards luxury in the way of photographs in
+frames and a clock with a pair of scissors hanging on the weight
+the furnishing of the room impressed him by its scantiness. Looking
+at the furniture, one might have supposed that Father Yakov had
+gone from house to house and collected it in bits; in one place
+they had given him a round three-legged table, in another a stool,
+in a third a chair with a back bent violently backwards; in a fourth
+a chair with an upright back, but the seat smashed in; while in a
+fifth they had been liberal and given him a semblance of a sofa
+with a flat back and a lattice-work seat. This semblance had been
+painted dark red and smelt strongly of paint. Kunin meant at first
+to sit down on one of the chairs, but on second thoughts he sat
+down on the stool.
+
+"This is the first time you have been to our church?" asked Father
+Yakov, hanging his hat on a huge misshapen nail.
+
+"Yes it is. I tell you what, Father, before we begin on business,
+will you give me some tea? My soul is parched."
+
+Father Yakov blinked, gasped, and went behind the partition wall.
+There was a sound of whispering.
+
+"With his wife, I suppose," thought Kunin; "it would be interesting
+to see what the red-headed fellow's wife is like."
+
+A little later Father Yakov came back, red and perspiring and with
+an effort to smile, sat down on the edge of the sofa.
+
+"They will heat the samovar directly," he said, without looking at
+his visitor.
+
+"My goodness, they have not heated the samovar yet!" Kunin thought
+with horror. "A nice time we shall have to wait."
+
+"I have brought you," he said, "the rough draft of the letter I
+have written to the bishop. I'll read it after tea; perhaps you may
+find something to add. . . ."
+
+"Very well."
+
+A silence followed. Father Yakov threw furtive glances at the
+partition wall, smoothed his hair, and blew his nose.
+
+"It's wonderful weather, . . ." he said.
+
+"Yes. I read an interesting thing yesterday. . . . the Volsky Zemstvo
+have decided to give their schools to the clergy, that's typical."
+
+Kunin got up, and pacing up and down the clay floor, began to give
+expression to his reflections.
+
+"That would be all right," he said, "if only the clergy were equal
+to their high calling and recognized their tasks. I am so unfortunate
+as to know priests whose standard of culture and whose moral qualities
+make them hardly fit to be army secretaries, much less priests. You
+will agree that a bad teacher does far less harm than a bad priest."
+
+Kunin glanced at Father Yakov; he was sitting bent up, thinking
+intently about something and apparently not listening to his visitor.
+
+"Yasha, come here!" a woman's voice called from behind the partition.
+Father Yakov started and went out. Again a whispering began.
+
+Kunin felt a pang of longing for tea.
+
+"No; it's no use my waiting for tea here," he thought, looking at
+his watch. "Besides I fancy I am not altogether a welcome visitor.
+My host has not deigned to say one word to me; he simply sits and
+blinks."
+
+Kunin took up his hat, waited for Father Yakov to return, and said
+good-bye to him.
+
+"I have simply wasted the morning," he thought wrathfully on the
+way home. "The blockhead! The dummy! He cares no more about the
+school than I about last year's snow. . . . No, I shall never get
+anything done with him! We are bound to fail! If the Marshal knew
+what the priest here was like, he wouldn't be in such a hurry to
+talk about a school. We ought first to try and get a decent priest,
+and then think about the school."
+
+By now Kunin almost hated Father Yakov. The man, his pitiful,
+grotesque figure in the long crumpled robe, his womanish face, his
+manner of officiating, his way of life and his formal restrained
+respectfulness, wounded the tiny relic of religious feeling which
+was stored away in a warm corner of Kunin's heart together with his
+nurse's other fairy tales. The coldness and lack of attention with
+which Father Yakov had met Kunin's warm and sincere interest in
+what was the priest's own work was hard for the former's vanity to
+endure. . . .
+
+On the evening of the same day Kunin spent a long time walking about
+his rooms and thinking. Then he sat down to the table resolutely
+and wrote a letter to the bishop. After asking for money and a
+blessing for the school, he set forth genuinely, like a son, his
+opinion of the priest at Sinkino.
+
+"He is young," he wrote, "insufficiently educated, leads, I fancy,
+an intemperate life, and altogether fails to satisfy the ideals
+which the Russian people have in the course of centuries formed of
+what a pastor should be."
+
+After writing this letter Kunin heaved a deep sigh, and went to bed
+with the consciousness that he had done a good deed.
+
+On Monday morning, while he was still in bed, he was informed that
+Father Yakov had arrived. He did not want to get up, and instructed
+the servant to say he was not at home. On Tuesday he went away to
+a sitting of the Board, and when he returned on Saturday he was
+told by the servants that Father Yakov had called every day in his
+absence.
+
+"He liked my biscuits, it seems," he thought.
+
+Towards evening on Sunday Father Yakov arrived. This time not only
+his skirts, but even his hat, was bespattered with mud. Just as on
+his first visit, he was hot and perspiring, and sat down on the
+edge of his chair as he had done then. Kunin determined not to talk
+about the school--not to cast pearls.
+
+"I have brought you a list of books for the school, Pavel Mihailovitch,
+. . ." Father Yakov began.
+
+"Thank you."
+
+But everything showed that Father Yakov had come for something else
+besides the list. Has whole figure was expressive of extreme
+embarrassment, and at the same time there was a look of determination
+upon his face, as on the face of a man suddenly inspired by an idea.
+He struggled to say something important, absolutely necessary, and
+strove to overcome his timidity.
+
+"Why is he dumb?" Kunin thought wrathfully. "He's settled himself
+comfortably! I haven't time to be bothered with him."
+
+To smoothe over the awkwardness of his silence and to conceal the
+struggle going on within him, the priest began to smile constrainedly,
+and this slow smile, wrung out on his red perspiring face, and out
+of keeping with the fixed look in his grey-blue eyes, made Kunin
+turn away. He felt moved to repulsion.
+
+"Excuse me, Father, I have to go out," he said.
+
+Father Yakov started like a man asleep who has been struck a blow,
+and, still smiling, began in his confusion wrapping round him the
+skirts of his cassock. In spite of his repulsion for the man, Kunin
+felt suddenly sorry for him, and he wanted to soften his cruelty.
+
+"Please come another time, Father," he said, "and before we part I
+want to ask you a favour. I was somehow inspired to write two sermons
+the other day. . . . I will give them to you to look at. If they
+are suitable, use them."
+
+"Very good," said Father Yakov, laying his open hand on Kunin's
+sermons which were lying on the table. "I will take them."
+
+After standing a little, hesitating and still wrapping his cassock
+round him, he suddenly gave up the effort to smile and lifted his
+head resolutely.
+
+"Pavel Mihailovitch," he said, evidently trying to speak loudly and
+distinctly.
+
+"What can I do for you?"
+
+"I have heard that you . . . er . . . have dismissed your secretary,
+and . . . and are looking for a new one. . . ."
+
+"Yes, I am. . . . Why, have you someone to recommend?"
+
+"I. . . er . . . you see . . . I . . . Could you not give the post
+to me?"
+
+"Why, are you giving up the Church?" said Kunin in amazement.
+
+"No, no," Father Yakov brought out quickly, for some reason turning
+pale and trembling all over. "God forbid! If you feel doubtful,
+then never mind, never mind. You see, I could do the work between
+whiles, . . so as to increase my income. . . . Never mind, don't
+disturb yourself!"
+
+"H'm! . . . your income. . . . But you know, I only pay my secretary
+twenty roubles a month."
+
+"Good heavens! I would take ten," whispered Father Yakov, looking
+about him. "Ten would be enough! You . . . you are astonished, and
+everyone is astonished. The greedy priest, the grasping priest,
+what does he do with his money? I feel myself I am greedy, . . .
+and I blame myself, I condemn myself. . . . I am ashamed to look
+people in the face. . . . I tell you on my conscience, Pavel
+Mihailovitch. . . . I call the God of truth to witness. . . ."
+
+Father Yakov took breath and went on:
+
+"On the way here I prepared a regular confession to make you, but
+. . . I've forgotten it all; I cannot find a word now. I get a
+hundred and fifty roubles a year from my parish, and everyone wonders
+what I do with the money. . . . But I'll explain it all truly. . . .
+I pay forty roubles a year to the clerical school for my brother
+Pyotr. He has everything found there, except that I have to provide
+pens and paper."
+
+"Oh, I believe you; I believe you! But what's the object of all
+this?" said Kunin, with a wave of the hand, feeling terribly oppressed
+by this outburst of confidence on the part of his visitor, and not
+knowing how to get away from the tearful gleam in his eyes.
+
+"Then I have not yet paid up all that I owe to the consistory for
+my place here. They charged me two hundred roubles for the living,
+and I was to pay ten roubles a month. . . . You can judge what is
+left! And, besides, I must allow Father Avraamy at least three
+roubles a month."
+
+"What Father Avraamy?"
+
+"Father Avraamy who was priest at Sinkino before I came. He was
+deprived of the living on account of . . . his failing, but you
+know, he is still living at Sinkino! He has nowhere to go. There
+is no one to keep him. Though he is old, he must have a corner, and
+food and clothing--I can't let him go begging on the roads in his
+position! It would be on my conscience if anything happened! It
+would be my fault! He is. . . in debt all round; but, you see, I
+am to blame for not paying for him."
+
+Father Yakov started up from his seat and, looking frantically at
+the floor, strode up and down the room.
+
+"My God, my God!" he muttered, raising his hands and dropping them
+again. "Lord, save us and have mercy upon us! Why did you take such
+a calling on yourself if you have so little faith and no strength?
+There is no end to my despair! Save me, Queen of Heaven!"
+
+"Calm yourself, Father," said Kunin.
+
+"I am worn out with hunger, Pavel Mihailovitch," Father Yakov went
+on. "Generously forgive me, but I am at the end of my strength
+. . . . I know if I were to beg and to bow down, everyone would help,
+but . . . I cannot! I am ashamed. How can I beg of the peasants?
+You are on the Board here, so you know. . . . How can one beg of a
+beggar? And to beg of richer people, of landowners, I cannot! I
+have pride! I am ashamed!"
+
+Father Yakov waved his hand, and nervously scratched his head with
+both hands.
+
+"I am ashamed! My God, I am ashamed! I am proud and can't bear
+people to see my poverty! When you visited me, Pavel Mihailovitch,
+I had no tea in the house! There wasn't a pinch of it, and you know
+it was pride prevented me from telling you! I am ashamed of my
+clothes, of these patches here. . . . I am ashamed of my vestments,
+of being hungry. . . . And is it seemly for a priest to be proud?"
+
+Father Yakov stood still in the middle of the study, and, as though
+he did not notice Kunin's presence, began reasoning with himself.
+
+"Well, supposing I endure hunger and disgrace--but, my God, I
+have a wife! I took her from a good home! She is not used to hard
+work; she is soft; she is used to tea and white bread and sheets
+on her bed. . . . At home she used to play the piano. . . . She is
+young, not twenty yet. . . . She would like, to be sure, to be
+smart, to have fun, go out to see people. . . . And she is worse
+off with me than any cook; she is ashamed to show herself in the
+street. My God, my God! Her only treat is when I bring an apple or
+some biscuit from a visit. . . ."
+
+Father Yakov scratched his head again with both hands.
+
+"And it makes us feel not love but pity for each other. . . . I
+cannot look at her without compassion! And the things that happen
+in this life, O Lord! Such things that people would not believe
+them if they saw them in the newspaper. . . . And when will there
+be an end to it all!"
+
+"Hush, Father!" Kunin almost shouted, frightened at his tone. "Why
+take such a gloomy view of life?"
+
+"Generously forgive me, Pavel Mihailovitch . . ." muttered Father
+Yakov as though he were drunk, "Forgive me, all this . . . doesn't
+matter, and don't take any notice of it. . . . Only I do blame
+myself, and always shall blame myself . . . always."
+
+Father Yakov looked about him and began whispering:
+
+"One morning early I was going from Sinkino to Lutchkovo; I saw a
+woman standing on the river bank, doing something. . . . I went up
+close and could not believe my eyes. . . . It was horrible! The
+wife of the doctor, Ivan Sergeitch, was sitting there washing her
+linen. . . . A doctor's wife, brought up at a select boarding-school!
+She had got up you see, early and gone half a mile from the village
+that people should not see her. . . . She couldn't get over her
+pride! When she saw that I was near her and noticed her poverty,
+she turned red all over. . . . I was flustered--I was frightened,
+and ran up to help her, but she hid her linen from me; she was
+afraid I should see her ragged chemises. . . ."
+
+"All this is positively incredible," said Kunin, sitting down and
+looking almost with horror at Father Yakov's pale face.
+
+"Incredible it is! It's a thing that has never been! Pavel Mihailovitch,
+that a doctor's wife should be rinsing the linen in the river! Such
+a thing does not happen in any country! As her pastor and spiritual
+father, I ought not to allow it, but what can I do? What? Why, I
+am always trying to get treated by her husband for nothing myself!
+It is true that, as you say, it is all incredible! One can hardly
+believe one's eyes. During Mass, you know, when I look out from the
+altar and see my congregation, Avraamy starving, and my wife, and
+think of the doctor's wife--how blue her hands were from the cold
+water--would you believe it, I forget myself and stand senseless
+like a fool, until the sacristan calls to me. . . . It's awful!"
+
+Father Yakov began walking about again.
+
+"Lord Jesus!" he said, waving his hands, "holy Saints! I can't
+officiate properly. . . . Here you talk to me about the school, and
+I sit like a dummy and don't understand a word, and think of nothing
+but food. . . . Even before the altar. . . . But . . . what am I
+doing?" Father Yakov pulled himself up suddenly. "You want to go
+out. Forgive me, I meant nothing. . . . Excuse . . ."
+
+Kunin shook hands with Father Yakov without speaking, saw him into
+the hall, and going back into his study, stood at the window. He
+saw Father Yakov go out of the house, pull his wide-brimmed
+rusty-looking hat over his eyes, and slowly, bowing his head, as
+though ashamed of his outburst, walk along the road.
+
+"I don't see his horse," thought Kunin.
+
+Kunin did not dare to think that the priest had come on foot every
+day to see him; it was five or six miles to Sinkino, and the mud
+on the road was impassable. Further on he saw the coachman Andrey
+and the boy Paramon, jumping over the puddles and splashing Father
+Yakov with mud, run up to him for his blessing. Father Yakov took
+off his hat and slowly blessed Andrey, then blessed the boy and
+stroked his head.
+
+Kunin passed his hand over his eyes, and it seemed to him that his
+hand was moist. He walked away from the window and with dim eyes
+looked round the room in which he still seemed to hear the timid
+droning voice. He glanced at the table. Luckily, Father Yakov, in
+his haste, had forgotten to take the sermons. Kunin rushed up to
+them, tore them into pieces, and with loathing thrust them under
+the table.
+
+"And I did not know!" he moaned, sinking on to the sofa. "After
+being here over a year as member of the Rural Board, Honorary Justice
+of the Peace, member of the School Committee! Blind puppet, egregious
+idiot! I must make haste and help them, I must make haste!"
+
+He turned from side to side uneasily, pressed his temples and racked
+his brains.
+
+"On the twentieth I shall get my salary, two hundred roubles. . . .
+On some good pretext I will give him some, and some to the doctor's
+wife. . . . I will ask them to perform a special service here, and
+will get up an illness for the doctor. . . . In that way I shan't
+wound their pride. And I'll help Father Avraamy too. . . ."
+
+He reckoned his money on his fingers, and was afraid to own to
+himself that those two hundred roubles would hardly be enough for
+him to pay his steward, his servants, the peasant who brought the
+meat. . . . He could not help remembering the recent past when he
+was senselessly squandering his father's fortune, when as a puppy
+of twenty he had given expensive fans to prostitutes, had paid ten
+roubles a day to Kuzma, his cab-driver, and in his vanity had made
+presents to actresses. Oh, how useful those wasted rouble, three-rouble,
+ten-rouble notes would have been now!
+
+"Father Avraamy lives on three roubles a month!" thought Kunin.
+"For a rouble the priest's wife could get herself a chemise, and
+the doctor's wife could hire a washerwoman. But I'll help them,
+anyway! I must help them."
+
+Here Kunin suddenly recalled the private information he had sent
+to the bishop, and he writhed as from a sudden draught of cold air.
+This remembrance filled him with overwhelming shame before his inner
+self and before the unseen truth.
+
+So had begun and had ended a sincere effort to be of public service
+on the part of a well-intentioned but unreflecting and over-comfortable
+person.
+
+
+THE MURDER
+
+I
+
+The evening service was being celebrated at Progonnaya Station.
+Before the great ikon, painted in glaring colours on a background
+of gold, stood the crowd of railway servants with their wives and
+children, and also of the timbermen and sawyers who worked close
+to the railway line. All stood in silence, fascinated by the glare
+of the lights and the howling of the snow-storm which was aimlessly
+disporting itself outside, regardless of the fact that it was the
+Eve of the Annunciation. The old priest from Vedenyapino conducted
+the service; the sacristan and Matvey Terehov were singing.
+
+Matvey's face was beaming with delight; he sang stretching out his
+neck as though he wanted to soar upwards. He sang tenor and chanted
+the "Praises" too in a tenor voice with honied sweetness and
+persuasiveness. When he sang "Archangel Voices" he waved his arms
+like a conductor, and trying to second the sacristan's hollow bass
+with his tenor, achieved something extremely complex, and from his
+face it could be seen that he was experiencing great pleasure.
+
+At last the service was over, and they all quietly dispersed, and
+it was dark and empty again, and there followed that hush which is
+only known in stations that stand solitary in the open country or
+in the forest when the wind howls and nothing else is heard and
+when all the emptiness around, all the dreariness of life slowly
+ebbing away is felt.
+
+Matvey lived not far from the station at his cousin's tavern. But
+he did not want to go home. He sat down at the refreshment bar and
+began talking to the waiter in a low voice.
+
+"We had our own choir in the tile factory. And I must tell you that
+though we were only workmen, our singing was first-rate, splendid.
+We were often invited to the town, and when the Deputy Bishop,
+Father Ivan, took the service at Trinity Church, the bishop's singers
+sang in the right choir and we in the left. Only they complained
+in the town that we kept the singing on too long: 'the factory choir
+drag it out,' they used to say. It is true we began St. Andrey's
+prayers and the Praises between six and seven, and it was past
+eleven when we finished, so that it was sometimes after midnight
+when we got home to the factory. It was good," sighed Matvey. "Very
+good it was, indeed, Sergey Nikanoritch! But here in my father's
+house it is anything but joyful. The nearest church is four miles
+away; with my weak health I can't get so far; there are no singers
+there. And there is no peace or quiet in our family; day in day
+out, there is an uproar, scolding, uncleanliness; we all eat out
+of one bowl like peasants; and there are beetles in the cabbage
+soup. . . . God has not given me health, else I would have gone
+away long ago, Sergey Nikanoritch."
+
+Matvey Terehov was a middle-aged man about forty-five, but he had
+a look of ill-health; his face was wrinkled and his lank, scanty
+beard was quite grey, and that made him seem many years older. He
+spoke in a weak voice, circumspectly, and held his chest when he
+coughed, while his eyes assumed the uneasy and anxious look one
+sees in very apprehensive people. He never said definitely what was
+wrong with him, but he was fond of describing at length how once
+at the factory he had lifted a heavy box and had ruptured himself,
+and how this had led to "the gripes," and had forced him to give
+up his work in the tile factory and come back to his native place;
+but he could not explain what he meant by "the gripes."
+
+"I must own I am not fond of my cousin," he went on, pouring himself
+out some tea. "He is my elder; it is a sin to censure him, and I
+fear the Lord, but I cannot bear it in patience. He is a haughty,
+surly, abusive man; he is the torment of his relations and workmen,
+and constantly out of humour. Last Sunday I asked him in an amiable
+way, 'Brother, let us go to Pahomovo for the Mass!' but he said 'I
+am not going; the priest there is a gambler;' and he would not come
+here to-day because, he said, the priest from Vedenyapino smokes
+and drinks vodka. He doesn't like the clergy! He reads Mass himself
+and the Hours and the Vespers, while his sister acts as sacristan;
+he says, 'Let us pray unto the Lord'! and she, in a thin little
+voice like a turkey-hen, 'Lord, have mercy upon us! . . .' It's a
+sin, that's what it is. Every day I say to him, 'Think what you are
+doing, brother! Repent, brother!' and he takes no notice."
+
+Sergey Nikanoritch, the waiter, poured out five glasses of tea and
+carried them on a tray to the waiting-room. He had scarcely gone
+in when there was a shout:
+
+"Is that the way to serve it, pig's face? You don't know how to
+wait!"
+
+It was the voice of the station-master. There was a timid mutter,
+then again a harsh and angry shout:
+
+"Get along!"
+
+The waiter came back greatly crestfallen.
+
+"There was a time when I gave satisfaction to counts and princes,"
+he said in a low voice; "but now I don't know how to serve tea. . . .
+He called me names before the priest and the ladies!"
+
+The waiter, Sergey Nikanoritch, had once had money of his own, and
+had kept a buffet at a first-class station, which was a junction,
+in the principal town of a province. There he had worn a swallow-tail
+coat and a gold chain. But things had gone ill with him; he had
+squandered all his own money over expensive fittings and service;
+he had been robbed by his staff, and getting gradually into
+difficulties, had moved to another station less bustling. Here his
+wife had left him, taking with her all the silver, and he moved to
+a third station of a still lower class, where no hot dishes were
+served. Then to a fourth. Frequently changing his situation and
+sinking lower and lower, he had at last come to Progonnaya, and
+here he used to sell nothing but tea and cheap vodka, and for lunch
+hard-boiled eggs and dry sausages, which smelt of tar, and which
+he himself sarcastically said were only fit for the orchestra. He
+was bald all over the top of his head, and had prominent blue eyes
+and thick bushy whiskers, which he often combed out, looking into
+the little looking-glass. Memories of the past haunted him continually;
+he could never get used to sausage "only fit for the orchestra,"
+to the rudeness of the station-master, and to the peasants who used
+to haggle over the prices, and in his opinion it was as unseemly
+to haggle over prices in a refreshment room as in a chemist's shop.
+He was ashamed of his poverty and degradation, and that shame was
+now the leading interest of his life.
+
+"Spring is late this year," said Matvey, listening. "It's a good
+job; I don't like spring. In spring it is very muddy, Sergey
+Nikanoritch. In books they write: Spring, the birds sing, the sun
+is setting, but what is there pleasant in that? A bird is a bird,
+and nothing more. I am fond of good company, of listening to folks,
+of talking of religion or singing something agreeable in chorus;
+but as for nightingales and flowers--bless them, I say!"
+
+He began again about the tile factory, about the choir, but Sergey
+Nikanoritch could not get over his mortification, and kept shrugging
+his shoulders and muttering. Matvey said good-bye and went home.
+
+There was no frost, and the snow was already melting on the roofs,
+though it was still falling in big flakes; they were whirling rapidly
+round and round in the air and chasing one another in white clouds
+along the railway line. And the oak forest on both sides of the
+line, in the dim light of the moon which was hidden somewhere high
+up in the clouds, resounded with a prolonged sullen murmur. When a
+violent storm shakes the trees, how terrible they are! Matvey walked
+along the causeway beside the line, covering his face and his hands,
+while the wind beat on his back. All at once a little nag, plastered
+all over with snow, came into sight; a sledge scraped along the
+bare stones of the causeway, and a peasant, white all over, too,
+with his head muffled up, cracked his whip. Matvey looked round
+after him, but at once, as though it had been a vision, there was
+neither sledge nor peasant to be seen, and he hastened his steps,
+suddenly scared, though he did not know why.
+
+Here was the crossing and the dark little house where the signalman
+lived. The barrier was raised, and by it perfect mountains had
+drifted and clouds of snow were whirling round like witches on
+broomsticks. At that point the line was crossed by an old highroad,
+which was still called "the track." On the right, not far from the
+crossing, by the roadside stood Terehov's tavern, which had been a
+posting inn. Here there was always a light twinkling at night.
+
+When Matvey reached home there was a strong smell of incense in all
+the rooms and even in the entry. His cousin Yakov Ivanitch was still
+reading the evening service. In the prayer-room where this was going
+on, in the corner opposite the door, there stood a shrine of
+old-fashioned ancestral ikons in gilt settings, and both walls to
+right and to left were decorated with ikons of ancient and modern
+fashion, in shrines and without them. On the table, which was draped
+to the floor, stood an ikon of the Annunciation, and close by a
+cyprus-wood cross and the censer; wax candles were burning. Beside
+the table was a reading desk. As he passed by the prayer-room,
+Matvey stopped and glanced in at the door. Yakov Ivanitch was reading
+at the desk at that moment, his sister Aglaia, a tall lean old woman
+in a dark-blue dress and white kerchief, was praying with him. Yakov
+Ivanitch's daughter Dashutka, an ugly freckled girl of eighteen,
+was there, too, barefoot as usual, and wearing the dress in which
+she had at nightfall taken water to the cattle.
+
+"Glory to Thee Who hast shown us the light!" Yakov Ivanitch boomed
+out in a chant, bowing low.
+
+Aglaia propped her chin on her hand and chanted in a thin, shrill,
+drawling voice. And upstairs, above the ceiling, there was the sound
+of vague voices which seemed menacing or ominous of evil. No one
+had lived on the storey above since a fire there a long time ago.
+The windows were boarded up, and empty bottles lay about on the
+floor between the beams. Now the wind was banging and droning, and
+it seemed as though someone were running and stumbling over the
+beams.
+
+Half of the lower storey was used as a tavern, while Terehov's
+family lived in the other half, so that when drunken visitors were
+noisy in the tavern every word they said could be heard in the
+rooms. Matvey lived in a room next to the kitchen, with a big stove,
+in which, in old days, when this had been a posting inn, bread had
+been baked every day. Dashutka, who had no room of her own, lived
+in the same room behind the stove. A cricket chirped there always
+at night and mice ran in and out.
+
+Matvey lighted a candle and began reading a book which he had
+borrowed from the station policeman. While he was sitting over it
+the service ended, and they all went to bed. Dashutka lay down,
+too. She began snoring at once, but soon woke up and said, yawning:
+
+"You shouldn't burn a candle for nothing, Uncle Matvey."
+
+"It's my candle," answered Matvey; "I bought it with my own money."
+
+Dashutka turned over a little and fell asleep again. Matvey sat up
+a good time longer--he was not sleepy--and when he had finished
+the last page he took a pencil out of a box and wrote on the book:
+
+"I, Matvey Terehov, have read this book, and think it the very best
+of all the books I have read, for which I express my gratitude to
+the non-commissioned officer of the Police Department of Railways,
+Kuzma Nikolaev Zhukov, as the possessor of this priceless book."
+
+He considered it an obligation of politeness to make such inscriptions
+in other people's books.
+
+II
+
+On Annunciation Day, after the mail train had been sent off, Matvey
+was sitting in the refreshment bar, talking and drinking tea with
+lemon in it.
+
+The waiter and Zhukov the policeman were listening to him.
+
+"I was, I must tell you," Matvey was saying, "inclined to religion
+from my earliest childhood. I was only twelve years old when I used
+to read the epistle in church, and my parents were greatly delighted,
+and every summer I used to go on a pilgrimage with my dear mother.
+Sometimes other lads would be singing songs and catching crayfish,
+while I would be all the time with my mother. My elders commended
+me, and, indeed, I was pleased myself that I was of such good
+behaviour. And when my mother sent me with her blessing to the
+factory, I used between working hours to sing tenor there in our
+choir, and nothing gave me greater pleasure. I needn't say, I drank
+no vodka, I smoked no tobacco, and lived in chastity; but we all
+know such a mode of life is displeasing to the enemy of mankind,
+and he, the unclean spirit, once tried to ruin me and began to
+darken my mind, just as now with my cousin. First of all, I took a
+vow to fast every Monday and not to eat meat any day, and as time
+went on all sorts of fancies came over me. For the first week of
+Lent down to Saturday the holy fathers have ordained a diet of dry
+food, but it is no sin for the weak or those who work hard even to
+drink tea, yet not a crumb passed into my mouth till the Sunday,
+and afterwards all through Lent I did not allow myself a drop of
+oil, and on Wednesdays and Fridays I did not touch a morsel at all.
+It was the same in the lesser fasts. Sometimes in St. Peter's fast
+our factory lads would have fish soup, while I would sit a little
+apart from them and suck a dry crust. Different people have different
+powers, of course, but I can say of myself I did not find fast days
+hard, and, indeed, the greater the zeal the easier it seems. You
+are only hungry on the first days of the fast, and then you get
+used to it; it goes on getting easier, and by the end of a week you
+don't mind it at all, and there is a numb feeling in your legs as
+though you were not on earth, but in the clouds. And, besides that,
+I laid all sorts of penances on myself; I used to get up in the
+night and pray, bowing down to the ground, used to drag heavy stones
+from place to place, used to go out barefoot in the snow, and I
+even wore chains, too. Only, as time went on, you know, I was
+confessing one day to the priest and suddenly this reflection
+occurred to me: why, this priest, I thought, is married, he eats
+meat and smokes tobacco--how can he confess me, and what power
+has he to absolve my sins if he is more sinful that I? I even scruple
+to eat Lenten oil, while he eats sturgeon, I dare say. I went to
+another priest, and he, as ill luck would have it, was a fat fleshy
+man, in a silk cassock; he rustled like a lady, and he smelt of
+tobacco too. I went to fast and confess in the monastery, and my
+heart was not at ease even there; I kept fancying the monks were
+not living according to their rules. And after that I could not
+find a service to my mind: in one place they read the service too
+fast, in another they sang the wrong prayer, in a third the sacristan
+stammered. Sometimes, the Lord forgive me a sinner, I would stand
+in church and my heart would throb with anger. How could one pray,
+feeling like that? And I fancied that the people in the church did
+not cross themselves properly, did not listen properly; wherever I
+looked it seemed to me that they were all drunkards, that they broke
+the fast, smoked, lived loose lives and played cards. I was the
+only one who lived according to the commandments. The wily spirit
+did not slumber; it got worse as it went on. I gave up singing in
+the choir and I did not go to church at all; since my notion was
+that I was a righteous man and that the church did not suit me owing
+to its imperfections--that is, indeed, like a fallen angel, I was
+puffed up in my pride beyond all belief. After this I began attempting
+to make a church for myself. I hired from a deaf woman a tiny little
+room, a long way out of town near the cemetery, and made a prayer-room
+like my cousin's, only I had big church candlesticks, too, and a
+real censer. In this prayer-room of mine I kept the rules of holy
+Mount Athos--that is, every day my matins began at midnight without
+fail, and on the eve of the chief of the twelve great holy days my
+midnight service lasted ten hours and sometimes even twelve. Monks
+are allowed by rule to sit during the singing of the Psalter and
+the reading of the Bible, but I wanted to be better than the monks,
+and so I used to stand all through. I used to read and sing slowly,
+with tears and sighing, lifting up my hands, and I used to go
+straight from prayer to work without sleeping; and, indeed, I was
+always praying at my work, too. Well, it got all over the town
+'Matvey is a saint; Matvey heals the sick and senseless.' I never
+had healed anyone, of course, but we all know wherever any heresy
+or false doctrine springs up there's no keeping the female sex away.
+They are just like flies on the honey. Old maids and females of all
+sorts came trailing to me, bowing down to my feet, kissing my hands
+and crying out I was a saint and all the rest of it, and one even
+saw a halo round my head. It was too crowded in the prayer-room. I
+took a bigger room, and then we had a regular tower of Babel. The
+devil got hold of me completely and screened the light from my eyes
+with his unclean hoofs. We all behaved as though we were frantic.
+I read, while the old maids and other females sang, and then after
+standing on their legs for twenty-four hours or longer without
+eating or drinking, suddenly a trembling would come over them as
+though they were in a fever; after that, one would begin screaming
+and then another--it was horrible! I, too, would shiver all over
+like a Jew in a frying-pan, I don't know myself why, and our legs
+began to prance about. It's a strange thing, indeed: you don't want
+to, but you prance about and waggle your arms; and after that,
+screaming and shrieking, we all danced and ran after one another
+--ran till we dropped; and in that way, in wild frenzy, I fell
+into fornication."
+
+The policeman laughed, but, noticing that no one else was laughing,
+became serious and said:
+
+"That's Molokanism. I have heard they are all like that in the
+Caucasus."
+
+"But I was not killed by a thunderbolt," Matvey went on, crossing
+himself before the ikon and moving his lips. "My dead mother must
+have been praying for me in the other world. When everyone in the
+town looked upon me as a saint, and even the ladies and gentlemen
+of good family used to come to me in secret for consolation, I
+happened to go into our landlord, Osip Varlamitch, to ask forgiveness
+--it was the Day of Forgiveness--and he fastened the door with
+the hook, and we were left alone face to face. And he began to
+reprove me, and I must tell you Osip Varlamitch was a man of brains,
+though without education, and everyone respected and feared him,
+for he was a man of stern, God-fearing life and worked hard. He had
+been the mayor of the town, and a warden of the church for twenty
+years maybe, and had done a great deal of good; he had covered all
+the New Moscow Road with gravel, had painted the church, and had
+decorated the columns to look like malachite. Well, he fastened the
+door, and--'I have been wanting to get at you for a long time,
+you rascal, . . .' he said. 'You think you are a saint,' he said.
+'No you are not a saint, but a backslider from God, a heretic and
+an evildoer! . . .' And he went on and on. . . . I can't tell you
+how he said it, so eloquently and cleverly, as though it were all
+written down, and so touchingly. He talked for two hours. His words
+penetrated my soul; my eyes were opened. I listened, listened and
+--burst into sobs! 'Be an ordinary man,' he said, 'eat and drink,
+dress and pray like everyone else. All that is above the ordinary
+is of the devil. Your chains,' he said, 'are of the devil; your
+fasting is of the devil; your prayer-room is of the devil. It is
+all pride,' he said. Next day, on Monday in Holy Week, it pleased
+God I should fall ill. I ruptured myself and was taken to the
+hospital. I was terribly worried, and wept bitterly and trembled.
+I thought there was a straight road before me from the hospital to
+hell, and I almost died. I was in misery on a bed of sickness for
+six months, and when I was discharged the first thing I did I
+confessed, and took the sacrament in the regular way and became a
+man again. Osip Varlamitch saw me off home and exhorted me: 'Remember,
+Matvey, that anything above the ordinary is of the devil.' And now
+I eat and drink like everyone else and pray like everyone else
+. . . . If it happens now that the priest smells of tobacco or vodka I
+don't venture to blame him, because the priest, too, of course, is
+an ordinary man. But as soon as I am told that in the town or in
+the village a saint has set up who does not eat for weeks, and makes
+rules of his own, I know whose work it is. So that is how I carried
+on in the past, gentlemen. Now, like Osip Varlamitch, I am continually
+exhorting my cousins and reproaching them, but I am a voice crying
+in the wilderness. God has not vouchsafed me the gift."
+
+Matvey's story evidently made no impression whatever. Sergey
+Nikanoritch said nothing, but began clearing the refreshments off
+the counter, while the policeman began talking of how rich Matvey's
+cousin was.
+
+"He must have thirty thousand at least," he said.
+
+Zhukov the policeman, a sturdy, well-fed, red-haired man with a
+full face (his cheeks quivered when he walked), usually sat lolling
+and crossing his legs when not in the presence of his superiors.
+As he talked he swayed to and fro and whistled carelessly, while
+his face had a self-satisfied replete air, as though he had just
+had dinner. He was making money, and he always talked of it with
+the air of a connoisseur. He undertook jobs as an agent, and when
+anyone wanted to sell an estate, a horse or a carriage, they applied
+to him.
+
+"Yes, it will be thirty thousand, I dare say," Sergey Nikanoritch
+assented. "Your grandfather had an immense fortune," he said,
+addressing Matvey. "Immense it was; all left to your father and
+your uncle. Your father died as a young man and your uncle got hold
+of it all, and afterwards, of course, Yakov Ivanitch. While you
+were going pilgrimages with your mama and singing tenor in the
+factory, they didn't let the grass grow under their feet."
+
+"Fifteen thousand comes to your share," said the policeman swaying
+from side to side. "The tavern belongs to you in common, so the
+capital is in common. Yes. If I were in your place I should have
+taken it into court long ago. I would have taken it into court for
+one thing, and while the case was going on I'd have knocked his
+face to a jelly."
+
+Yakov Ivanitch was disliked because, when anyone believes differently
+from others, it upsets even people who are indifferent to religion.
+The policeman disliked him also because he, too, sold horses and
+carriages.
+
+"You don't care about going to law with your cousin because you
+have plenty of money of your own," said the waiter to Matvey, looking
+at him with envy. "It is all very well for anyone who has means,
+but here I shall die in this position, I suppose. . . ."
+
+Matvey began declaring that he hadn't any money at all, but Sergey
+Nikanoritch was not listening. Memories of the past and of the
+insults which he endured every day came showering upon him. His
+bald head began to perspire; he flushed and blinked.
+
+"A cursed life!" he said with vexation, and he banged the sausage
+on the floor.
+
+III
+
+The story ran that the tavern had been built in the time of Alexander
+I, by a widow who had settled here with her son; her name was Avdotya
+Terehov. The dark roofed-in courtyard and the gates always kept
+locked excited, especially on moonlight nights, a feeling of
+depression and unaccountable uneasiness in people who drove by with
+posting-horses, as though sorcerers or robbers were living in it;
+and the driver always looked back after he passed, and whipped up
+his horses. Travellers did not care to put up here, as the people
+of the house were always unfriendly and charged heavily. The yard
+was muddy even in summer; huge fat pigs used to lie there in the
+mud, and the horses in which the Terehovs dealt wandered about
+untethered, and often it happened that they ran out of the yard and
+dashed along the road like mad creatures, terrifying the pilgrim
+women. At that time there was a great deal of traffic on the road;
+long trains of loaded waggons trailed by, and all sorts of adventures
+happened, such as, for instance, that thirty years ago some waggoners
+got up a quarrel with a passing merchant and killed him, and a
+slanting cross is standing to this day half a mile from the tavern;
+posting-chaises with bells and the heavy _dormeuses_ of country
+gentlemen drove by; and herds of horned cattle passed bellowing and
+stirring up clouds of dust.
+
+When the railway came there was at first at this place only a
+platform, which was called simply a halt; ten years afterwards the
+present station, Progonnaya, was built. The traffic on the old
+posting-road almost ceased, and only local landowners and peasants
+drove along it now, but the working people walked there in crowds
+in spring and autumn. The posting-inn was transformed into a
+restaurant; the upper storey was destroyed by fire, the roof had
+grown yellow with rust, the roof over the yard had fallen by degrees,
+but huge fat pigs, pink and revolting, still wallowed in the mud
+in the yard. As before, the horses sometimes ran away and, lashing
+their tails dashed madly along the road. In the tavern they sold
+tea, hay oats and flour, as well as vodka and beer, to be drunk on
+the premises and also to be taken away; they sold spirituous liquors
+warily, for they had never taken out a licence.
+
+The Terehovs had always been distinguished by their piety, so much
+so that they had even been given the nickname of the "Godlies." But
+perhaps because they lived apart like bears, avoided people and
+thought out all their ideas for themselves, they were given to
+dreams and to doubts and to changes of faith and almost each
+generation had a peculiar faith of its own. The grandmother Avdotya,
+who had built the inn, was an Old Believer; her son and both her
+grandsons (the fathers of Matvey and Yakov) went to the Orthodox
+church, entertained the clergy, and worshipped before the new ikons
+as devoutly as they had done before the old. The son in old age
+refused to eat meat and imposed upon himself the rule of silence,
+considering all conversation as sin; it was the peculiarity of the
+grandsons that they interpreted the Scripture not simply, but sought
+in it a hidden meaning, declaring that every sacred word must contain
+a mystery.
+
+Avdotya's great-grandson Matvey had struggled from early childhood
+with all sorts of dreams and fancies and had been almost ruined by
+it; the other great-grandson, Yakov Ivanitch, was orthodox, but
+after his wife's death he gave up going to church and prayed at
+home. Following his example, his sister Aglaia had turned, too; she
+did not go to church herself, and did not let Dashutka go. Of Aglaia
+it was told that in her youth she used to attend the Flagellant
+meetings in Vedenyapino, and that she was still a Flagellant in
+secret, and that was why she wore a white kerchief.
+
+Yakov Ivanitch was ten years older than Matvey--he was a very
+handsome tall old man with a big grey beard almost to his waist,
+and bushy eyebrows which gave his face a stern, even ill-natured
+expression. He wore a long jerkin of good cloth or a black sheepskin
+coat, and altogether tried to be clean and neat in dress; he wore
+goloshes even in dry weather. He did not go to church, because, to
+his thinking, the services were not properly celebrated and because
+the priests drank wine at unlawful times and smoked tobacco. Every
+day he read and sang the service at home with Aglaia. At Vedenyapino
+they left out the "Praises" at early matins, and had no evening
+service even on great holidays, but he used to read through at home
+everything that was laid down for every day, without hurrying or
+leaving out a single line, and even in his spare time read aloud
+the Lives of the Saints. And in everyday life he adhered strictly
+to the rules of the church; thus, if wine were allowed on some day
+in Lent "for the sake of the vigil," then he never failed to drink
+wine, even if he were not inclined.
+
+He read, sang, burned incense and fasted, not for the sake of
+receiving blessings of some sort from God, but for the sake of good
+order. Man cannot live without religion, and religion ought to be
+expressed from year to year and from day to day in a certain order,
+so that every morning and every evening a man might turn to God
+with exactly those words and thoughts that were befitting that
+special day and hour. One must live, and, therefore, also pray as
+is pleasing to God, and so every day one must read and sing what
+is pleasing to God--that is, what is laid down in the rule of the
+church. Thus the first chapter of St. John must only be read on
+Easter Day, and "It is most meet" must not be sung from Easter to
+Ascension, and so on. The consciousness of this order and its
+importance afforded Yakov Ivanitch great gratification during his
+religious exercises. When he was forced to break this order by some
+necessity--to drive to town or to the bank, for instance his
+conscience was uneasy and he felt miserable.
+
+When his cousin Matvey had returned unexpectedly from the factory
+and settled in the tavern as though it were his home, he had from
+the very first day disturbed his settled order. He refused to pray
+with them, had meals and drank tea at wrong times, got up late,
+drank milk on Wednesdays and Fridays on the pretext of weak health;
+almost every day he went into the prayer-room while they were at
+prayers and cried: "Think what you are doing, brother! Repent,
+brother!" These words threw Yakov into a fury, while Aglaia could
+not refrain from beginning to scold; or at night Matvey would steal
+into the prayer-room and say softly: "Cousin, your prayer is not
+pleasing to God. For it is written, First be reconciled with thy
+brother and then offer thy gift. You lend money at usury, you deal
+in vodka--repent!"
+
+In Matvey's words Yakov saw nothing but the usual evasions of
+empty-headed and careless people who talk of loving your neighbour,
+of being reconciled with your brother, and so on, simply to avoid
+praying, fasting and reading holy books, and who talk contemptuously
+of profit and interest simply because they don't like working. Of
+course, to be poor, save nothing, and put by nothing was a great
+deal easier than being rich.
+
+But yet he was troubled and could not pray as before. As soon as
+he went into the prayer-room and opened the book he began to be
+afraid his cousin would come in and hinder him; and, in fact, Matvey
+did soon appear and cry in a trembling voice: "Think what you are
+doing, brother! Repent, brother!" Aglaia stormed and Yakov, too,
+flew into a passion and shouted: "Go out of my house!" while Matvey
+answered him: "The house belongs to both of us."
+
+Yakov would begin singing and reading again, but he could not regain
+his calm, and unconsciously fell to dreaming over his book. Though
+he regarded his cousin's words as nonsense, yet for some reason it
+had of late haunted his memory that it is hard for a rich man to
+enter the kingdom of heaven, that the year before last he had made
+a very good bargain over buying a stolen horse, that one day when
+his wife was alive a drunkard had died of vodka in his tavern. . . .
+
+He slept badly at nights now and woke easily, and he could hear
+that Matvey, too, was awake, and continually sighing and pining for
+his tile factory. And while Yakov turned over from one side to
+another at night he thought of the stolen horse and the drunken
+man, and what was said in the gospels about the camel.
+
+It looked as though his dreaminess were coming over him again. And
+as ill-luck would have it, although it was the end of March, every
+day it kept snowing, and the forest roared as though it were winter,
+and there was no believing that spring would ever come. The weather
+disposed one to depression, and to quarrelling and to hatred and
+in the night, when the wind droned over the ceiling, it seemed as
+though someone were living overhead in the empty storey; little by
+little the broodings settled like a burden on his mind, his head
+burned and he could not sleep.
+
+IV
+
+On the morning of the Monday before Good Friday, Matvey heard from
+his room Dashutka say to Aglaia:
+
+"Uncle Matvey said, the other day, that there is no need to fast."
+
+Matvey remembered the whole conversation he had had the evening
+before with Dashutka, and he felt hurt all at once.
+
+"Girl, don't do wrong!" he said in a moaning voice, like a sick
+man. "You can't do without fasting; our Lord Himself fasted forty
+days. I only explained that fasting does a bad man no good."
+
+"You should just listen to the factory hands; they can teach you
+goodness," Aglaia said sarcastically as she washed the floor (she
+usually washed the floors on working days and was always angry with
+everyone when she did it). "We know how they keep the fasts in the
+factory. You had better ask that uncle of yours--ask him about
+his 'Darling,' how he used to guzzle milk on fast days with her,
+the viper. He teaches others; he forgets about his viper. But ask
+him who was it he left his money with--who was it?"
+
+Matvey had carefully concealed from everyone, as though it were a
+foul sore, that during that period of his life when old women and
+unmarried girls had danced and run about with him at their prayers
+he had formed a connection with a working woman and had had a child
+by her. When he went home he had given this woman all he had saved
+at the factory, and had borrowed from his landlord for his journey,
+and now he had only a few roubles which he spent on tea and candles.
+The "Darling" had informed him later on that the child was dead,
+and asked him in a letter what she should do with the money. This
+letter was brought from the station by the labourer. Aglaia intercepted
+it and read it, and had reproached Matvey with his "Darling" every
+day since.
+
+"Just fancy, nine hundred roubles," Aglaia went on. "You gave nine
+hundred roubles to a viper, no relation, a factory jade, blast you!"
+She had flown into a passion by now and was shouting shrilly: "Can't
+you speak? I could tear you to pieces, wretched creature! Nine
+hundred roubles as though it were a farthing. You might have left
+it to Dashutka--she is a relation, not a stranger--or else have
+it sent to Byelev for Marya's poor orphans. And your viper did not
+choke, may she be thrice accursed, the she-devil! May she never
+look upon the light of day!"
+
+Yakov Ivanitch called to her: it was time to begin the "Hours." She
+washed, put on a white kerchief, and by now quiet and meek, went
+into the prayer-room to the brother she loved. When she spoke to
+Matvey or served peasants in the tavern with tea she was a gaunt,
+keen-eyed, ill-humoured old woman; in the prayer-room her face was
+serene and softened, she looked younger altogether, she curtsied
+affectedly, and even pursed up her lips.
+
+Yakov Ivanitch began reading the service softly and dolefully, as
+he always did in Lent. After he had read a little he stopped to
+listen to the stillness that reigned through the house, and then
+went on reading again, with a feeling of gratification; he folded
+his hands in supplication, rolled his eyes, shook his head, sighed.
+But all at once there was the sound of voices. The policeman and
+Sergey Nikanoritch had come to see Matvey. Yakov Ivanitch was
+embarrassed at reading aloud and singing when there were strangers
+in the house, and now, hearing voices, he began reading in a whisper
+and slowly. He could hear in the prayer-room the waiter say:
+
+"The Tatar at Shtchepovo is selling his business for fifteen hundred.
+He'll take five hundred down and an I.O.U. for the rest. And so,
+Matvey Vassilitch, be so kind as to lend me that five hundred
+roubles. I will pay you two per cent a month."
+
+"What money have I got?" cried Matvey, amazed. "I have no money!"
+
+"Two per cent a month will be a godsend to you," the policeman
+explained. "While lying by, your money is simply eaten by the moth,
+and that's all that you get from it."
+
+Afterwards the visitors went out and a silence followed. But Yakov
+Ivanitch had hardly begun reading and singing again when a voice
+was heard outside the door:
+
+"Brother, let me have a horse to drive to Vedenyapino."
+
+It was Matvey. And Yakov was troubled again. "Which can you go
+with?" he asked after a moment's thought. "The man has gone with
+the sorrel to take the pig, and I am going with the little stallion
+to Shuteykino as soon as I have finished."
+
+"Brother, why is it you can dispose of the horses and not I?" Matvey
+asked with irritation.
+
+"Because I am not taking them for pleasure, but for work."
+
+"Our property is in common, so the horses are in common, too, and
+you ought to understand that, brother."
+
+A silence followed. Yakov did not go on praying, but waited for
+Matvey to go away from the door.
+
+"Brother," said Matvey, "I am a sick man. I don't want possession
+--let them go; you have them, but give me a small share to keep
+me in my illness. Give it me and I'll go away."
+
+Yakov did not speak. He longed to be rid of Matvey, but he could
+not give him money, since all the money was in the business; besides,
+there had never been a case of the family dividing in the whole
+history of the Terehovs. Division means ruin.
+
+Yakov said nothing, but still waited for Matvey to go away, and
+kept looking at his sister, afraid that she would interfere, and
+that there would be a storm of abuse again, as there had been in
+the morning. When at last Matvey did go Yakov went on reading, but
+now he had no pleasure in it. There was a heaviness in his head and
+a darkness before his eyes from continually bowing down to the
+ground, and he was weary of the sound of his soft dejected voice.
+When such a depression of spirit came over him at night, he put it
+down to not being able to sleep; by day it frightened him, and he
+began to feel as though devils were sitting on his head and shoulders.
+
+Finishing the service after a fashion, dissatisfied and ill-humoured,
+he set off for Shuteykino. In the previous autumn a gang of navvies
+had dug a boundary ditch near Progonnaya, and had run up a bill at
+the tavern for eighteen roubles, and now he had to find their foreman
+in Shuteykino and get the money from him. The road had been spoilt
+by the thaw and the snowstorm; it was of a dark colour and full of
+holes, and in parts it had given way altogether. The snow had sunk
+away at the sides below the road, so that he had to drive, as it
+were, upon a narrow causeway, and it was very difficult to turn off
+it when he met anything. The sky had been overcast ever since the
+morning and a damp wind was blowing. . . .
+
+A long train of sledges met him; peasant women were carting bricks.
+Yakov had to turn off the road. His horse sank into the snow up to
+its belly; the sledge lurched over to the right, and to avoid falling
+out he bent over to the left, and sat so all the time the sledges
+moved slowly by him. Through the wind he heard the creaking of the
+sledge poles and the breathing of the gaunt horses, and the women
+saying about him, "There's Godly coming," while one, gazing with
+compassion at his horse, said quickly:
+
+"It looks as though the snow will be lying till Yegory's Day! They
+are worn out with it!"
+
+Yakov sat uncomfortably huddled up, screwing up his eyes on account
+of the wind, while horses and red bricks kept passing before him.
+And perhaps because he was uncomfortable and his side ached, he
+felt all at once annoyed, and the business he was going about seemed
+to him unimportant, and he reflected that he might send the labourer
+next day to Shuteykino. Again, as in the previous sleepless night,
+he thought of the saying about the camel, and then memories of all
+sorts crept into his mind; of the peasant who had sold him the
+stolen horse, of the drunken man, of the peasant women who had
+brought their samovars to him to pawn. Of course, every merchant
+tries to get as much as he can, but Yakov felt depressed that he
+was in trade; he longed to get somewhere far away from this routine,
+and he felt dreary at the thought that he would have to read the
+evening service that day. The wind blew straight into his face and
+soughed in his collar; and it seemed as though it were whispering
+to him all these thoughts, bringing them from the broad white plain
+. . . . Looking at that plain, familiar to him from childhood, Yakov
+remembered that he had had just this same trouble and these same
+thoughts in his young days when dreams and imaginings had come upon
+him and his faith had wavered.
+
+He felt miserable at being alone in the open country; he turned
+back and drove slowly after the sledges, and the women laughed and
+said:
+
+"Godly has turned back."
+
+At home nothing had been cooked and the samovar was not heated on
+account of the fast, and this made the day seem very long. Yakov
+Ivanitch had long ago taken the horse to the stable, dispatched the
+flour to the station, and twice taken up the Psalms to read, and
+yet the evening was still far off. Aglaia has already washed all
+the floors, and, having nothing to do, was tidying up her chest,
+the lid of which was pasted over on the inside with labels off
+bottles. Matvey, hungry and melancholy, sat reading, or went up to
+the Dutch stove and slowly scrutinized the tiles which reminded him
+of the factory. Dashutka was asleep; then, waking up, she went to
+take water to the cattle. When she was getting water from the well
+the cord broke and the pail fell in. The labourer began looking for
+a boathook to get the pail out, and Dashutka, barefooted, with legs
+as red as a goose's, followed him about in the muddy snow, repeating:
+"It's too far!" She meant to say that the well was too deep for the
+hook to reach the bottom, but the labourer did not understand her,
+and evidently she bothered him, so that he suddenly turned around
+and abused her in unseemly language. Yakov Ivanitch, coming out
+that moment into the yard, heard Dashutka answer the labourer in a
+long rapid stream of choice abuse, which she could only have learned
+from drunken peasants in the tavern.
+
+"What are you saying, shameless girl!" he cried to her, and he was
+positively aghast. "What language!"
+
+And she looked at her father in perplexity, dully, not understanding
+why she should not use those words. He would have admonished her,
+but she struck him as so savage and benighted; and for the first
+time he realized that she had no religion. And all this life in the
+forest, in the snow, with drunken peasants, with coarse oaths,
+seemed to him as savage and benighted as this girl, and instead of
+giving her a lecture he only waved his hand and went back into the
+room.
+
+At that moment the policeman and Sergey Nikanoritch came in again
+to see Matvey. Yakov Ivanitch thought that these people, too, had
+no religion, and that that did not trouble them in the least; and
+human life began to seem to him as strange, senseless and unenlightened
+as a dog's. Bareheaded he walked about the yard, then he went out
+on to the road, clenching his fists. Snow was falling in big flakes
+at the time. His beard was blown about in the wind. He kept shaking
+his head, as though there were something weighing upon his head and
+shoulders, as though devils were sitting on them; and it seemed to
+him that it was not himself walking about, but some wild beast, a
+huge terrible beast, and that if he were to cry out his voice would
+be a roar that would sound all over the forest and the plain, and
+would frighten everyone. . . .
+
+V
+
+When he went back into the house the policeman was no longer there,
+but the waiter was sitting with Matvey, counting something on the
+reckoning beads. He was in the habit of coming often, almost every
+day, to the tavern; in old days he had come to see Yakov Ivanitch,
+now he came to see Matvey. He was continually reckoning on the
+beads, while his face perspired and looked strained, or he would
+ask for money or, stroking his whiskers, would describe how he had
+once been in a first-class station and used to prepare champagne-punch
+for officers, and at grand dinners served the sturgeon-soup with
+his own hands. Nothing in this world interested him but refreshment
+bars, and he could only talk about things to eat, about wines and
+the paraphernalia of the dinner-table. On one occasion, handing a
+cup of tea to a young woman who was nursing her baby and wishing
+to say something agreeable to her, he expressed himself in this
+way:
+
+"The mother's breast is the baby's refreshment bar."
+
+Reckoning with the beads in Matvey's room, he asked for money; said
+he could not go on living at Progonnaya, and several times repeated
+in a tone of voice that sounded as though he were just going to
+cry:
+
+"Where am I to go? Where am I to go now? Tell me that, please."
+
+Then Matvey went into the kitchen and began peeling some boiled
+potatoes which he had probably put away from the day before. It was
+quiet, and it seemed to Yakov Ivanitch that the waiter was gone.
+It was past the time for evening service; he called Aglaia, and,
+thinking there was no one else in the house sang out aloud without
+embarrassment. He sang and read, but was inwardly pronouncing other
+words, "Lord, forgive me! Lord, save me!" and, one after another,
+without ceasing, he made low bows to the ground as though he wanted
+to exhaust himself, and he kept shaking his head, so that Aglaia
+looked at him with wonder. He was afraid Matvey would come in, and
+was certain that he would come in, and felt an anger against him
+which he could overcome neither by prayer nor by continually bowing
+down to the ground.
+
+Matvey opened the door very softly and went into the prayer-room.
+
+"It's a sin, such a sin!" he said reproachfully, and heaved a sigh.
+"Repent! Think what you are doing, brother!"
+
+Yakov Ivanitch, clenching his fists and not looking at him for fear
+of striking him, went quickly out of the room. Feeling himself a
+huge terrible wild beast, just as he had done before on the road,
+he crossed the passage into the grey, dirty room, reeking with smoke
+and fog, in which the peasants usually drank tea, and there he spent
+a long time walking from one corner to the other, treading heavily,
+so that the crockery jingled on the shelves and the tables shook.
+It was clear to him now that he was himself dissatisfied with his
+religion, and could not pray as he used to do. He must repent, he
+must think things over, reconsider, live and pray in some other
+way. But how pray? And perhaps all this was a temptation of the
+devil, and nothing of this was necessary? . . . How was it to be?
+What was he to do? Who could guide him? What helplessness! He stopped
+and, clutching at his head, began to think, but Matvey's being near
+him prevented him from reflecting calmly. And he went rapidly into
+the room.
+
+Matvey was sitting in the kitchen before a bowl of potato, eating.
+Close by, near the stove, Aglaia and Dashutka were sitting facing
+one another, spinning yarn. Between the stove and the table at which
+Matvey was sitting was stretched an ironing-board; on it stood a
+cold iron.
+
+"Sister," Matvey asked, "let me have a little oil!"
+
+"Who eats oil on a day like this?" asked Aglaia.
+
+"I am not a monk, sister, but a layman. And in my weak health I may
+take not only oil but milk."
+
+"Yes, at the factory you may have anything."
+
+Aglaia took a bottle of Lenten oil from the shelf and banged it
+angrily down before Matvey, with a malignant smile evidently pleased
+that he was such a sinner.
+
+"But I tell you, you can't eat oil!" shouted Yakov.
+
+Aglaia and Dashutka started, but Matvey poured the oil into the
+bowl and went on eating as though he had not heard.
+
+"I tell you, you can't eat oil!" Yakov shouted still more loudly;
+he turned red all over, snatched up the bowl, lifted it higher than
+his head, and dashed it with all his force to the ground, so that
+it flew into fragments. "Don't dare to speak!" he cried in a furious
+voice, though Matvey had not said a word. "Don't dare!" he repeated,
+and struck his fist on the table.
+
+Matvey turned pale and got up.
+
+"Brother!" he said, still munching--"brother, think what you are
+about!"
+
+"Out of my house this minute!" shouted Yakov; he loathed Matvey's
+wrinkled face, and his voice, and the crumbs on his moustache, and
+the fact that he was munching. "Out, I tell you!"
+
+"Brother, calm yourself! The pride of hell has confounded you!"
+
+"Hold your tongue!" (Yakov stamped.) "Go away, you devil!"
+
+"If you care to know," Matvey went on in a loud voice, as he, too,
+began to get angry, "you are a backslider from God and a heretic.
+The accursed spirits have hidden the true light from you; your
+prayer is not acceptable to God. Repent before it is too late! The
+deathbed of the sinner is terrible! Repent, brother!"
+
+Yakov seized him by the shoulders and dragged him away from the
+table, while he turned whiter than ever, and frightened and bewildered,
+began muttering, "What is it? What's the matter?" and, struggling
+and making efforts to free himself from Yakov's hands, he accidentally
+caught hold of his shirt near the neck and tore the collar; and it
+seemed to Aglaia that he was trying to beat Yakov. She uttered a
+shriek, snatched up the bottle of Lenten oil and with all her force
+brought it down straight on the skull of the cousin she hated.
+Matvey reeled, and in one instant his face became calm and indifferent.
+Yakov, breathing heavily, excited, and feeling pleasure at the
+gurgle the bottle had made, like a living thing, when it had struck
+the head, kept him from falling and several times (he remembered
+this very distinctly) motioned Aglaia towards the iron with his
+finger; and only when the blood began trickling through his hands
+and he heard Dashutka's loud wail, and when the ironing-board fell
+with a crash, and Matvey rolled heavily on it, Yakov left off feeling
+anger and understood what had happened.
+
+"Let him rot, the factory buck!" Aglaia brought out with repulsion,
+still keeping the iron in her hand. The white bloodstained kerchief
+slipped on to her shoulders and her grey hair fell in disorder.
+"He's got what he deserved!"
+
+Everything was terrible. Dashutka sat on the floor near the stove
+with the yarn in her hands, sobbing, and continually bowing down,
+uttering at each bow a gasping sound. But nothing was so terrible
+to Yakov as the potato in the blood, on which he was afraid of
+stepping, and there was something else terrible which weighed upon
+him like a bad dream and seemed the worst danger, though he could
+not take it in for the first minute. This was the waiter, Sergey
+Nikanoritch, who was standing in the doorway with the reckoning
+beads in his hands, very pale, looking with horror at what was
+happening in the kitchen. Only when he turned and went quickly into
+the passage and from there outside, Yakov grasped who it was and
+followed him.
+
+Wiping his hands on the snow as he went, he reflected. The idea
+flashed through his mind that their labourer had gone away long
+before and had asked leave to stay the night at home in the village;
+the day before they had killed a pig, and there were huge bloodstains
+in the snow and on the sledge, and even one side of the top of the
+well was splattered with blood, so that it could not have seemed
+suspicious even if the whole of Yakov's family had been stained
+with blood. To conceal the murder would be agonizing, but for the
+policeman, who would whistle and smile ironically, to come from the
+station, for the peasants to arrive and bind Yakov's and Aglaia's
+hands, and take them solemnly to the district courthouse and from
+there to the town, while everyone on the way would point at them
+and say mirthfully, "They are taking the Godlies!"--this seemed
+to Yakov more agonizing than anything, and he longed to lengthen
+out the time somehow, so as to endure this shame not now, but later,
+in the future.
+
+"I can lend you a thousand roubles, . . ." he said, overtaking
+Sergey Nikanoritch. "If you tell anyone, it will do no good. . . .
+There's no bringing the man back, anyway;" and with difficulty
+keeping up with the waiter, who did not look round, but tried to
+walk away faster than ever, he went on: "I can give you fifteen
+hundred. . . ."
+
+He stopped because he was out of breath, while Sergey Nikanoritch
+walked on as quickly as ever, probably afraid that he would be
+killed, too. Only after passing the railway crossing and going half
+the way from the crossing to the station, he furtively looked round
+and walked more slowly. Lights, red and green, were already gleaming
+in the station and along the line; the wind had fallen, but flakes
+of snow were still coming down and the road had turned white again.
+But just at the station Sergey Nikanoritch stopped, thought a minute,
+and turned resolutely back. It was growing dark.
+
+"Oblige me with the fifteen hundred, Yakov Ivanitch," he said,
+trembling all over. "I agree."
+
+VI
+
+Yakov Ivanitch's money was in the bank of the town and was invested
+in second mortgages; he only kept a little at home, Just what was
+wanted for necessary expenses. Going into the kitchen he felt for
+the matchbox, and while the sulphur was burning with a blue light
+he had time to make out the figure of Matvey, which was still lying
+on the floor near the table, but now it was covered with a white
+sheet, and nothing could be seen but his boots. A cricket was
+chirruping. Aglaia and Dashutka were not in the room, they were
+both sitting behind the counter in the tea-room, spinning yarn in
+silence. Yakov Ivanitch crossed to his own room with a little lamp
+in his hand, and pulled from under the bed a little box in which
+he kept his money. This time there were in it four hundred and
+twenty one-rouble notes and silver to the amount of thirty-five
+roubles; the notes had an unpleasant heavy smell. Putting the money
+together in his cap, Yakov Ivanitch went out into the yard and then
+out of the gate. He walked, looking from side to side, but there
+was no sign of the waiter.
+
+"Hi!" cried Yakov.
+
+A dark figure stepped out from the barrier at the railway crossing
+and came irresolutely towards him.
+
+"Why do you keep walking about?" said Yakov with vexation, as he
+recognized the waiter. "Here you are; there is a little less than
+five hundred. . . . I've no more in the house."
+
+"Very well; . . . very grateful to you," muttered Sergey Nikanoritch,
+taking the money greedily and stuffing it into his pockets. He was
+trembling all over, and that was perceptible in spite of the darkness.
+"Don't worry yourself, Yakov Ivanitch. . . . What should I chatter
+for: I came and went away, that's all I've had to do with it. As
+the saying is, I know nothing and I can tell nothing . . ." And at
+once he added with a sigh "Cursed life!"
+
+For a minute they stood in silence, without looking at each other.
+
+"So it all came from a trifle, goodness knows how, . . ." said the
+waiter, trembling. "I was sitting counting to myself when all at
+once a noise. . . . I looked through the door, and just on account
+of Lenten oil you. . . . Where is he now?"
+
+"Lying there in the kitchen."
+
+"You ought to take him somewhere. . . . Why put it off?"
+
+Yakov accompanied him to the station without a word, then went home
+again and harnessed the horse to take Matvey to Limarovo. He had
+decided to take him to the forest of Limarovo, and to leave him
+there on the road, and then he would tell everyone that Matvey had
+gone off to Vedenyapino and had not come back, and then everyone
+would think that he had been killed by someone on the road. He knew
+there was no deceiving anyone by this, but to move, to do something,
+to be active, was not as agonizing as to sit still and wait. He
+called Dashutka, and with her carried Matvey out. Aglaia stayed
+behind to clean up the kitchen.
+
+When Yakov and Dashutka turned back they were detained at the railway
+crossing by the barrier being let down. A long goods train was
+passing, dragged by two engines, breathing heavily, and flinging
+puffs of crimson fire out of their funnels.
+
+The foremost engine uttered a piercing whistle at the crossing in
+sight of the station.
+
+"It's whistling, . . ." said Dashutka.
+
+The train had passed at last, and the signalman lifted the barrier
+without haste.
+
+"Is that you, Yakov Ivanitch? I didn't know you, so you'll be rich."
+
+And then when they had reached home they had to go to bed.
+
+Aglaia and Dashutka made themselves a bed in the tea-room and lay
+down side by side, while Yakov stretched himself on the counter.
+They neither said their prayers nor lighted the ikon lamp before
+lying down to sleep. All three lay awake till morning, but did not
+utter a single word, and it seemed to them that all night someone
+was walking about in the empty storey overhead.
+
+Two days later a police inspector and the examining magistrate came
+from the town and made a search, first in Matvey's room and then
+in the whole tavern. They questioned Yakov first of all, and he
+testified that on the Monday Matvey had gone to Vedenyapino to
+confess, and that he must have been killed by the sawyers who were
+working on the line.
+
+And when the examining magistrate had asked him how it had happened
+that Matvey was found on the road, while his cap had turned up at
+home--surely he had not gone to Vedenyapino without his cap?--
+and why they had not found a single drop of blood beside him in the
+snow on the road, though his head was smashed in and his face and
+chest were black with blood, Yakov was confused, lost his head and
+answered:
+
+"I cannot tell."
+
+And just what Yakov had so feared happened: the policeman came, the
+district police officer smoked in the prayer-room and Aglaia fell
+upon him with abuse and was rude to the police inspector; and
+afterwards when Yakov and Aglaia were led out to the yard, the
+peasants crowded at the gates and said, "They are taking the Godlies!"
+and it seemed that they were all glad.
+
+At the inquiry the policeman stated positively that Yakov and Aglaia
+had killed Matvey in order not to share with him, and that Matvey
+had money of his own, and that if it was not found at the search
+evidently Yakov and Aglaia had got hold of it. And Dashutka was
+questioned. She said that Uncle Matvey and Aunt Aglaia quarrelled
+and almost fought every day over money, and that Uncle Matvey was
+rich, so much so that he had given someone--"his Darling"--nine
+hundred roubles.
+
+Dashutka was left alone in the tavern. No one came now to drink tea
+or vodka, and she divided her time between cleaning up the rooms,
+drinking mead and eating rolls; but a few days later they questioned
+the signalman at the railway crossing, and he said that late on
+Monday evening he had seen Yakov and Dashutka driving from Limarovo.
+Dashutka, too, was arrested, taken to the town and put in prison.
+It soon became known, from what Aglaia said, that Sergey Nikanoritch
+had been present at the murder. A search was made in his room, and
+money was found in an unusual place, in his snowboots under the
+stove, and the money was all in small change, three hundred one-rouble
+notes. He swore he had made this money himself, and that he hadn't
+been in the tavern for a year, but witnesses testified that he was
+poor and had been in great want of money of late, and that he used
+to go every day to the tavern to borrow from Matvey; and the policeman
+described how on the day of the murder he had himself gone twice
+to the tavern with the waiter to help him to borrow. It was recalled
+at this juncture that on Monday evening Sergey Nikanoritch had not
+been there to meet the passenger train, but had gone off somewhere.
+And he, too, was arrested and taken to the town.
+
+The trial took place eleven months later.
+
+Yakov Ivanitch looked much older and much thinner, and spoke in a
+low voice like a sick man. He felt weak, pitiful, lower in stature
+that anyone else, and it seemed as though his soul, too, like his
+body, had grown older and wasted, from the pangs of his conscience
+and from the dreams and imaginings which never left him all the
+while he was in prison. When it came out that he did not go to
+church the president of the court asked him:
+
+"Are you a dissenter?"
+
+"I can't tell," he answered.
+
+He had no religion at all now; he knew nothing and understood
+nothing; and his old belief was hateful to him now, and seemed to
+him darkness and folly. Aglaia was not in the least subdued, and
+she still went on abusing the dead man, blaming him for all their
+misfortunes. Sergey Nikanoritch had grown a beard instead of whiskers.
+At the trial he was red and perspiring, and was evidently ashamed
+of his grey prison coat and of sitting on the same bench with humble
+peasants. He defended himself awkwardly, and, trying to prove that
+he had not been to the tavern for a whole year, got into an altercation
+with every witness, and the spectators laughed at him. Dashutka had
+grown fat in prison. At the trial she did not understand the questions
+put to her, and only said that when they killed Uncle Matvey she
+was dreadfully frightened, but afterwards she did not mind.
+
+All four were found guilty of murder with mercenary motives. Yakov
+Ivanitch was sentenced to penal servitude for twenty years; Aglaia
+for thirteen and a half; Sergey Nikanoritch to ten; Dashutka to
+six.
+
+VII
+
+Late one evening a foreign steamer stopped in the roads of Due in
+Sahalin and asked for coal. The captain was asked to wait till
+morning, but he did not want to wait over an hour, saying that if
+the weather changed for the worse in the night there would be a
+risk of his having to go off without coal. In the Gulf of Tartary
+the weather is liable to violent changes in the course of half an
+hour, and then the shores of Sahalin are dangerous. And already it
+had turned fresh, and there was a considerable sea running.
+
+A gang of convicts were sent to the mine from the Voevodsky prison,
+the grimmest and most forbidding of all the prisons in Sahalin. The
+coal had to be loaded upon barges, and then they had to be towed
+by a steam-cutter alongside the steamer which was anchored more
+than a quarter of a mile from the coast, and then the unloading and
+reloading had to begin--an exhausting task when the barge kept
+rocking against the steamer and the men could scarcely keep on their
+legs for sea-sickness. The convicts, only just roused from their
+sleep, still drowsy, went along the shore, stumbling in the darkness
+and clanking their fetters. On the left, scarcely visible, was a
+tall, steep, extremely gloomy-looking cliff, while on the right
+there was a thick impenetrable mist, in which the sea moaned with
+a prolonged monotonous sound, "Ah! . . . ah! . . . ah! . . . ah!
+. . ." And it was only when the overseer was lighting his pipe,
+casting as he did so a passing ray of light on the escort with a
+gun and on the coarse faces of two or three of the nearest convicts,
+or when he went with his lantern close to the water that the white
+crests of the foremost waves could be discerned.
+
+One of this gang was Yakov Ivanitch, nicknamed among the convicts
+the "Brush," on account of his long beard. No one had addressed him
+by his name or his father's name for a long time now; they called
+him simply Yashka.
+
+He was here in disgrace, as, three months after coming to Siberia,
+feeling an intense irresistible longing for home, he had succumbed
+to temptation and run away; he had soon been caught, had been
+sentenced to penal servitude for life and given forty lashes. Then
+he was punished by flogging twice again for losing his prison
+clothes, though on each occasion they were stolen from him. The
+longing for home had begun from the very time he had been brought
+to Odessa, and the convict train had stopped in the night at
+Progonnaya; and Yakov, pressing to the window, had tried to see his
+own home, and could see nothing in the darkness. He had no one with
+whom to talk of home. His sister Aglaia had been sent right across
+Siberia, and he did not know where she was now. Dashutka was in
+Sahalin, but she had been sent to live with some ex-convict in a
+far away settlement; there was no news of her except that once a
+settler who had come to the Voevodsky Prison told Yakov that Dashutka
+had three children. Sergey Nikanoritch was serving as a footman at
+a government official's at Due, but he could not reckon on ever
+seeing him, as he was ashamed of being acquainted with convicts of
+the peasant class.
+
+The gang reached the mine, and the men took their places on the
+quay. It was said there would not be any loading, as the weather
+kept getting worse and the steamer was meaning to set off. They
+could see three lights. One of them was moving: that was the
+steam-cutter going to the steamer, and it seemed to be coming back
+to tell them whether the work was to be done or not. Shivering with
+the autumn cold and the damp sea mist, wrapping himself in his short
+torn coat, Yakov Ivanitch looked intently without blinking in the
+direction in which lay his home. Ever since he had lived in prison
+together with men banished here from all ends of the earth--with
+Russians, Ukrainians, Tatars, Georgians, Chinese, Gypsies, Jews--
+and ever since he had listened to their talk and watched their
+sufferings, he had begun to turn again to God, and it seemed to him
+at last that he had learned the true faith for which all his family,
+from his grandmother Avdotya down, had so thirsted, which they had
+sought so long and which they had never found. He knew it all now
+and understood where God was, and how He was to be served, and the
+only thing he could not understand was why men's destinies were so
+diverse, why this simple faith which other men receive from God for
+nothing and together with their lives, had cost him such a price
+that his arms and legs trembled like a drunken man's from all the
+horrors and agonies which as far as he could see would go on without
+a break to the day of his death. He looked with strained eyes into
+the darkness, and it seemed to him that through the thousand miles
+of that mist he could see home, could see his native province, his
+district, Progonnaya, could see the darkness, the savagery, the
+heartlessness, and the dull, sullen, animal indifference of the men
+he had left there. His eyes were dimmed with tears; but still he
+gazed into the distance where the pale lights of the steamer faintly
+gleamed, and his heart ached with yearning for home, and he longed
+to live, to go back home to tell them there of his new faith and
+to save from ruin if only one man, and to live without suffering
+if only for one day.
+
+The cutter arrived, and the overseer announced in a loud voice that
+there would be no loading.
+
+"Back!" he commanded. "Steady!"
+
+They could hear the hoisting of the anchor chain on the steamer. A
+strong piercing wind was blowing by now; somewhere on the steep
+cliff overhead the trees were creaking. Most likely a storm was
+coming.
+
+
+UPROOTED
+
+_An Incident of My Travels_
+
+I WAS on my way back from evening service. The clock in the belfry
+of the Svyatogorsky Monastery pealed out its soft melodious chimes
+by way of prelude and then struck twelve. The great courtyard of
+the monastery stretched out at the foot of the Holy Mountains on
+the banks of the Donets, and, enclosed by the high hostel buildings
+as by a wall, seemed now in the night, when it was lighted up only
+by dim lanterns, lights in the windows, and the stars, a living
+hotch-potch full of movement, sound, and the most original confusion.
+From end to end, so far as the eye could see, it was all choked up
+with carts, old-fashioned coaches and chaises, vans, tilt-carts,
+about which stood crowds of horses, dark and white, and horned oxen,
+while people bustled about, and black long-skirted lay brothers
+threaded their way in and out in all directions. Shadows and streaks
+of light cast from the windows moved over the carts and the heads
+of men and horses, and in the dense twilight this all assumed the
+most monstrous capricious shapes: here the tilted shafts stretched
+upwards to the sky, here eyes of fire appeared in the face of a
+horse, there a lay brother grew a pair of black wings. . . . There
+was the noise of talk, the snorting and munching of horses, the
+creaking of carts, the whimpering of children. Fresh crowds kept
+walking in at the gate and belated carts drove up.
+
+The pines which were piled up on the overhanging mountain, one above
+another, and leaned towards the roof of the hostel, gazed into the
+courtyard as into a deep pit, and listened in wonder; in their dark
+thicket the cuckoos and nightingales never ceased calling. . . .
+Looking at the confusion, listening to the uproar, one fancied that
+in this living hotch-potch no one understood anyone, that everyone
+was looking for something and would not find it, and that this
+multitude of carts, chaises and human beings could not ever succeed
+in getting off.
+
+More than ten thousand people flocked to the Holy Mountains for the
+festivals of St. John the Divine and St. Nikolay the wonder-worker.
+Not only the hostel buildings, but even the bakehouse, the tailoring
+room, the carpenter's shop, the carriage house, were filled to
+overflowing. . . . Those who had arrived towards night clustered
+like flies in autumn, by the walls, round the wells in the yard,
+or in the narrow passages of the hostel, waiting to be shown a
+resting-place for the night. The lay brothers, young and old, were
+in an incessant movement, with no rest or hope of being relieved.
+By day or late at night they produced the same impression of men
+hastening somewhere and agitated by something, yet, in spite of
+their extreme exhaustion, their faces remained full of courage and
+kindly welcome, their voices friendly, their movements rapid. . . .
+For everyone who came they had to find a place to sleep, and to
+provide food and drink; to those who were deaf, slow to understand,
+or profuse in questions, they had to give long and wearisome
+explanations, to tell them why there were no empty rooms, at what
+o'clock the service was to be where holy bread was sold, and so on.
+They had to run, to carry, to talk incessantly, but more than that,
+they had to be polite, too, to be tactful, to try to arrange that
+the Greeks from Mariupol, accustomed to live more comfortably than
+the Little Russians, should be put with other Greeks, that some
+shopkeeper from Bahmut or Lisitchansk, dressed like a lady, should
+not be offended by being put with peasants. There were continual
+cries of: "Father, kindly give us some kvass! Kindly give us some
+hay!" or "Father, may I drink water after confession?" And the lay
+brother would have to give out kvass or hay or to answer: "Address
+yourself to the priest, my good woman, we have not the authority
+to give permission." Another question would follow, "Where is the
+priest then?" and the lay brother would have to explain where was
+the priest's cell. With all this bustling activity, he yet had to
+make time to go to service in the church, to serve in the part
+devoted to the gentry, and to give full answers to the mass of
+necessary and unnecessary questions which pilgrims of the educated
+class are fond of showering about them. Watching them during the
+course of twenty-four hours, I found it hard to imagine when these
+black moving figures sat down and when they slept.
+
+When, coming back from the evening service, I went to the hostel
+in which a place had been assigned me, the monk in charge of the
+sleeping quarters was standing in the doorway, and beside him, on
+the steps, was a group of several men and women dressed like
+townsfolk.
+
+"Sir," said the monk, stopping me, "will you be so good as to allow
+this young man to pass the night in your room? If you would do us
+the favour! There are so many people and no place left--it is
+really dreadful!"
+
+And he indicated a short figure in a light overcoat and a straw
+hat. I consented, and my chance companion followed me. Unlocking
+the little padlock on my door, I was always, whether I wanted to
+or not, obliged to look at the picture that hung on the doorpost
+on a level with my face. This picture with the title, "A Meditation
+on Death," depicted a monk on his knees, gazing at a coffin and at
+a skeleton laying in it. Behind the man's back stood another skeleton,
+somewhat more solid and carrying a scythe.
+
+"There are no bones like that," said my companion, pointing to the
+place in the skeleton where there ought to have been a pelvis.
+"Speaking generally, you know, the spiritual fare provided for the
+people is not of the first quality," he added, and heaved through
+his nose a long and very melancholy sigh, meant to show me that I
+had to do with a man who really knew something about spiritual fare.
+
+While I was looking for the matches to light a candle he sighed
+once more and said:
+
+"When I was in Harkov I went several times to the anatomy theatre
+and saw the bones there; I have even been in the mortuary. Am I not
+in your way?"
+
+My room was small and poky, with neither table nor chairs in it,
+but quite filled up with a chest of drawers by the window, the stove
+and two little wooden sofas which stood against the walls, facing
+one another, leaving a narrow space to walk between them. Thin
+rusty-looking little mattresses lay on the little sofas, as well
+as my belongings. There were two sofas, so this room was evidently
+intended for two, and I pointed out the fact to my companion.
+
+"They will soon be ringing for mass, though," he said, "and I shan't
+have to be in your way very long."
+
+Still under the impression that he was in my way and feeling awkward,
+he moved with a guilty step to his little sofa, sighed guiltily and
+sat down. When the tallow candle with its dim, dilatory flame had
+left off flickering and burned up sufficiently to make us both
+visible, I could make out what he was like. He was a young man of
+two-and-twenty, with a round and pleasing face, dark childlike eyes,
+dressed like a townsman in grey cheap clothes, and as one could
+judge from his complexion and narrow shoulders, not used to manual
+labour. He was of a very indefinite type; one could take him neither
+for a student nor for a man in trade, still less for a workman. But
+looking at his attractive face and childlike friendly eyes, I was
+unwilling to believe he was one of those vagabond impostors with
+whom every conventual establishment where they give food and lodging
+is flooded, and who give themselves out as divinity students,
+expelled for standing up for justice, or for church singers who
+have lost their voice. . . . There was something characteristic,
+typical, very familiar in his face, but what exactly, I could not
+remember nor make out.
+
+For a long time he sat silent, pondering. Probably because I had
+not shown appreciation of his remarks about bones and the mortuary,
+he thought that I was ill-humoured and displeased at his presence.
+Pulling a sausage out of his pocket, he turned it about before his
+eyes and said irresolutely:
+
+"Excuse my troubling you, . . . have you a knife?"
+
+I gave him a knife.
+
+"The sausage is disgusting," he said, frowning and cutting himself
+off a little bit. "In the shop here they sell you rubbish and fleece
+you horribly. . . . I would offer you a piece, but you would scarcely
+care to consume it. Will you have some?"
+
+In his language, too, there was something typical that had a very
+great deal in common with what was characteristic in his face, but
+what it was exactly I still could not decide. To inspire confidence
+and to show that I was not ill-humoured, I took some of the proffered
+sausage. It certainly was horrible; one needed the teeth of a good
+house-dog to deal with it. As we worked our jaws we got into
+conversation; we began complaining to each other of the lengthiness
+of the service.
+
+"The rule here approaches that of Mount Athos," I said; "but at
+Athos the night services last ten hours, and on great feast-days
+--fourteen! You should go there for prayers!"
+
+"Yes," answered my companion, and he wagged his head, "I have been
+here for three weeks. And you know, every day services, every day
+services. On ordinary days at midnight they ring for matins, at
+five o'clock for early mass, at nine o'clock for late mass. Sleep
+is utterly out of the question. In the daytime there are hymns of
+praise, special prayers, vespers. . . . And when I was preparing
+for the sacrament I was simply dropping from exhaustion." He sighed
+and went on: "And it's awkward not to go to church. . . . The monks
+give one a room, feed one, and, you know, one is ashamed not to go.
+One wouldn't mind standing it for a day or two, perhaps, but three
+weeks is too much--much too much! Are you here for long?"
+
+"I am going to-morrow evening."
+
+"But I am staying another fortnight."
+
+"But I thought it was not the rule to stay for so long here?" I
+said.
+
+"Yes, that's true: if anyone stays too long, sponging on the monks,
+he is asked to go. Judge for yourself, if the proletariat were
+allowed to stay on here as long as they liked there would never be
+a room vacant, and they would eat up the whole monastery. That's
+true. But the monks make an exception for me, and I hope they won't
+turn me out for some time. You know I am a convert."
+
+"You mean?"
+
+"I am a Jew baptized. . . . Only lately I have embraced orthodoxy."
+
+Now I understood what I had before been utterly unable to understand
+from his face: his thick lips, and his way of twitching up the right
+corner of his mouth and his right eyebrow, when he was talking, and
+that peculiar oily brilliance of his eyes which is only found in
+Jews. I understood, too, his phraseology. . . . From further
+conversation I learned that his name was Alexandr Ivanitch, and had
+in the past been Isaac, that he was a native of the Mogilev province,
+and that he had come to the Holy Mountains from Novotcherkassk,
+where he had adopted the orthodox faith.
+
+Having finished his sausage, Alexandr Ivanitch got up, and, raising
+his right eyebrow, said his prayer before the ikon. The eyebrow
+remained up when he sat down again on the little sofa and began
+giving me a brief account of his long biography.
+
+"From early childhood I cherished a love for learning," he began
+in a tone which suggested he was not speaking of himself, but of
+some great man of the past. "My parents were poor Hebrews; they
+exist by buying and selling in a small way; they live like beggars,
+you know, in filth. In fact, all the people there are poor and
+superstitious; they don't like education, because education, very
+naturally, turns a man away from religion. . . . They are fearful
+fanatics. . . . Nothing would induce my parents to let me be educated,
+and they wanted me to take to trade, too, and to know nothing but
+the Talmud. . . . But you will agree, it is not everyone who can
+spend his whole life struggling for a crust of bread, wallowing in
+filth, and mumbling the Talmud. At times officers and country
+gentlemen would put up at papa's inn, and they used to talk a great
+deal of things which in those days I had never dreamed of; and, of
+course, it was alluring and moved me to envy. I used to cry and
+entreat them to send me to school, but they taught me to read Hebrew
+and nothing more. Once I found a Russian newspaper, and took it
+home with me to make a kite of it. I was beaten for it, though I
+couldn't read Russian. Of course, fanaticism is inevitable, for
+every people instinctively strives to preserve its nationality, but
+I did not know that then and was very indignant. . . ."
+
+Having made such an intellectual observation, Isaac, as he had been,
+raised his right eyebrow higher than ever in his satisfaction and
+looked at me, as it were, sideways, like a cock at a grain of corn,
+with an air as though he would say: "Now at last you see for certain
+that I am an intellectual man, don't you?" After saying something
+more about fanaticism and his irresistible yearning for enlightenment,
+he went on:
+
+"What could I do? I ran away to Smolensk. And there I had a cousin
+who relined saucepans and made tins. Of course, I was glad to work
+under him, as I had nothing to live upon; I was barefoot and in
+rags. . . . I thought I could work by day and study at night and
+on Saturdays. And so I did, but the police found out I had no
+passport and sent me back by stages to my father. . . ."
+
+Alexandr Ivanitch shrugged one shoulder and sighed.
+
+"What was one to do?" he went on, and the more vividly the past
+rose up before his mind, the more marked his Jewish accent became.
+"My parents punished me and handed me over to my grandfather, a
+fanatical old Jew, to be reformed. But I went off at night to Shklov.
+And when my uncle tried to catch me in Shklov, I went off to Mogilev;
+there I stayed two days and then I went off to Starodub with a
+comrade."
+
+Later on he mentioned in his story Gonel, Kiev, Byelaya, Tserkov,
+Uman, Balt, Bendery and at last reached Odessa.
+
+"In Odessa I wandered about for a whole week, out of work and hungry,
+till I was taken in by some Jews who went about the town buying
+second-hand clothes. I knew how to read and write by then, and had
+done arithmetic up to fractions, and I wanted to go to study
+somewhere, but I had not the means. What was I to do? For six months
+I went about Odessa buying old clothes, but the Jews paid me no
+wages, the rascals. I resented it and left them. Then I went by
+steamer to Perekop."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Oh, nothing. A Greek promised me a job there. In short, till I was
+sixteen I wandered about like that with no definite work and no
+roots till I got to Poltava. There a student, a Jew, found out that
+I wanted to study, and gave me a letter to the Harkov students. Of
+course, I went to Harkov. The students consulted together and began
+to prepare me for the technical school. And, you know, I must say
+the students that I met there were such that I shall never forget
+them to the day of my death. To say nothing of their giving me food
+and lodging, they set me on the right path, they made me think,
+showed me the object of life. Among them were intellectual remarkable
+people who by now are celebrated. For instance, you have heard of
+Grumaher, haven't you?"
+
+"No, I haven't."
+
+"You haven't! He wrote very clever articles in the _Harkov Gazette_,
+and was preparing to be a professor. Well, I read a great deal and
+attended the student's societies, where you hear nothing that is
+commonplace. I was working up for six months, but as one has to
+have been through the whole high-school course of mathematics to
+enter the technical school, Grumaher advised me to try for the
+veterinary institute, where they admit high-school boys from the
+sixth form. Of course, I began working for it. I did not want to
+be a veterinary surgeon but they told me that after finishing the
+course at the veterinary institute I should be admitted to the
+faculty of medicine without examination. I learnt all Kuehner; I
+could read Cornelius Nepos, _a livre ouvert_; and in Greek I read
+through almost all Curtius. But, you know, one thing and another,
+. . . the students leaving and the uncertainty of my position, and
+then I heard that my mamma had come and was looking for me all over
+Harkov. Then I went away. What was I to do? But luckily I learned
+that there was a school of mines here on the Donets line. Why should
+I not enter that? You know the school of mines qualifies one as a
+mining foreman--a splendid berth. I know of mines where the foremen
+get a salary of fifteen hundred a year. Capital. . . . I entered
+it. . . ."
+
+With an expression of reverent awe on his face Alexandr Ivanitch
+enumerated some two dozen abstruse sciences in which instruction
+was given at the school of mines; he described the school itself,
+the construction of the shafts, and the condition of the miners. . . .
+Then he told me a terrible story which sounded like an invention,
+though I could not help believing it, for his tone in telling it
+was too genuine and the expression of horror on his Semitic face
+was too evidently sincere.
+
+"While I was doing the practical work, I had such an accident one
+day!" he said, raising both eyebrows. "I was at a mine here in the
+Donets district. You have seen, I dare say, how people are let down
+into the mine. You remember when they start the horse and set the
+gates moving one bucket on the pulley goes down into the mine, while
+the other comes up; when the first begins to come up, then the
+second goes down--exactly like a well with two pails. Well, one
+day I got into the bucket, began going down, and can you fancy, all
+at once I heard, Trrr! The chain had broken and I flew to the devil
+together with the bucket and the broken bit of chain. . . . I fell
+from a height of twenty feet, flat on my chest and stomach, while
+the bucket, being heavier, reached the bottom before me, and I hit
+this shoulder here against its edge. I lay, you know, stunned. I
+thought I was killed, and all at once I saw a fresh calamity: the
+other bucket, which was going up, having lost the counter-balancing
+weight, was coming down with a crash straight upon me. . . . What
+was I to do? Seeing the position, I squeezed closer to the wall,
+crouching and waiting for the bucket to come full crush next minute
+on my head. I thought of papa and mamma and Mogilev and Grumaher.
+. . . I prayed. . . . But happily . . . it frightens me even to
+think of it. . . ."
+
+Alexandr Ivanitch gave a constrained smile and rubbed his forehead
+with his hand.
+
+"But happily it fell beside me and only caught this side a little.
+. . . It tore off coat, shirt and skin, you know, from this side.
+. . . The force of it was terrific. I was unconscious after it.
+They got me out and sent me to the hospital. I was there four months,
+and the doctors there said I should go into consumption. I always
+have a cough now and a pain in my chest. And my psychic condition
+is terrible. . . . When I am alone in a room I feel overcome with
+terror. Of course, with my health in that state, to be a mining
+foreman is out of the question. I had to give up the school of
+mines. . . ."
+
+"And what are you doing now?" I asked.
+
+"I have passed my examination as a village schoolmaster. Now I
+belong to the orthodox church, and I have a right to be a teacher.
+In Novotcherkassk, where I was baptized, they took a great interest
+in me and promised me a place in a church parish school. I am going
+there in a fortnight, and shall ask again."
+
+Alexandr Ivanitch took off his overcoat and remained in a shirt
+with an embroidered Russian collar and a worsted belt.
+
+"It is time for bed," he said, folding his overcoat for a pillow,
+and yawning. "Till lately, you know, I had no knowledge of God at
+all. I was an atheist. When I was lying in the hospital I thought
+of religion, and began reflecting on that subject. In my opinion,
+there is only one religion possible for a thinking man, and that
+is the Christian religion. If you don't believe in Christ, then
+there is nothing else to believe in, . . . is there? Judaism has
+outlived its day, and is preserved only owing to the peculiarities
+of the Jewish race. When civilization reaches the Jews there will
+not be a trace of Judaism left. All young Jews are atheists now,
+observe. The New Testament is the natural continuation of the Old,
+isn't it?"
+
+I began trying to find out the reasons which had led him to take
+so grave and bold a step as the change of religion, but he kept
+repeating the same, "The New Testament is the natural continuation
+of the Old"--a formula obviously not his own, but acquired--
+which did not explain the question in the least. In spite of my
+efforts and artifices, the reasons remained obscure. If one could
+believe that he had embraced Orthodoxy from conviction, as he said
+he had done, what was the nature and foundation of this conviction
+it was impossible to grasp from his words. It was equally impossible
+to assume that he had changed his religion from interested motives:
+his cheap shabby clothes, his going on living at the expense of the
+convent, and the uncertainty of his future, did not look like
+interested motives. There was nothing for it but to accept the idea
+that my companion had been impelled to change his religion by the
+same restless spirit which had flung him like a chip of wood from
+town to town, and which he, using the generally accepted formula,
+called the craving for enlightenment.
+
+Before going to bed I went into the corridor to get a drink of
+water. When I came back my companion was standing in the middle of
+the room, and he looked at me with a scared expression. His face
+looked a greyish white, and there were drops of perspiration on his
+forehead.
+
+"My nerves are in an awful state," he muttered with a sickly smile,"
+awful! It's acute psychological disturbance. But that's of no
+consequence."
+
+And he began reasoning again that the New Testament was a natural
+continuation of the Old, that Judaism has outlived its day. . . .
+Picking out his phrases, he seemed to be trying to put together the
+forces of his conviction and to smother with them the uneasiness
+of his soul, and to prove to himself that in giving up the religion
+of his fathers he had done nothing dreadful or peculiar, but had
+acted as a thinking man free from prejudice, and that therefore he
+could boldly remain in a room all alone with his conscience. He was
+trying to convince himself, and with his eyes besought my assistance.
+
+Meanwhile a big clumsy wick had burned up on our tallow candle. It
+was by now getting light. At the gloomy little window, which was
+turning blue, we could distinctly see both banks of the Donets River
+and the oak copse beyond the river. It was time to sleep.
+
+"It will be very interesting here to-morrow," said my companion
+when I put out the candle and went to bed. "After early mass, the
+procession will go in boats from the Monastery to the Hermitage."
+
+Raising his right eyebrow and putting his head on one side, he
+prayed before the ikons, and, without undressing, lay down on his
+little sofa.
+
+"Yes," he said, turning over on the other side.
+
+"Why yes?" I asked.
+
+"When I accepted orthodoxy in Novotcherkassk my mother was looking
+for me in Rostov. She felt that I meant to change my religion," he
+sighed, and went on: "It is six years since I was there in the
+province of Mogilev. My sister must be married by now."
+
+After a short silence, seeing that I was still awake, he began
+talking quietly of how they soon, thank God, would give him a job,
+and that at last he would have a home of his own, a settled position,
+his daily bread secure. . . . And I was thinking that this man would
+never have a home of his own, nor a settled position, nor his daily
+bread secure. He dreamed aloud of a village school as of the Promised
+Land; like the majority of people, he had a prejudice against a
+wandering life, and regarded it as something exceptional, abnormal
+and accidental, like an illness, and was looking for salvation in
+ordinary workaday life. The tone of his voice betrayed that he was
+conscious of his abnormal position and regretted it. He seemed as
+it were apologizing and justifying himself.
+
+Not more than a yard from me lay a homeless wanderer; in the rooms
+of the hostels and by the carts in the courtyard among the pilgrims
+some hundreds of such homeless wanderers were waiting for the
+morning, and further away, if one could picture to oneself the whole
+of Russia, a vast multitude of such uprooted creatures was pacing
+at that moment along highroads and side-tracks, seeking something
+better, or were waiting for the dawn, asleep in wayside inns and
+little taverns, or on the grass under the open sky. . . . As I fell
+asleep I imagined how amazed and perhaps even overjoyed all these
+people would have been if reasoning and words could be found to
+prove to them that their life was as little in need of justification
+as any other. In my sleep I heard a bell ring outside as plaintively
+as though shedding bitter tears, and the lay brother calling out
+several times:
+
+"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon us! Come to mass!"
+
+When I woke up my companion was not in the room. It was sunny and
+there was a murmur of the crowds through the window. Going out, I
+learned that mass was over and that the procession had set off for
+the Hermitage some time before. The people were wandering in crowds
+upon the river bank and, feeling at liberty, did not know what to
+do with themselves: they could not eat or drink, as the late mass
+was not yet over at the Hermitage; the Monastery shops where pilgrims
+are so fond of crowding and asking prices were still shut. In spite
+of their exhaustion, many of them from sheer boredom were trudging
+to the Hermitage. The path from the Monastery to the Hermitage,
+towards which I directed my steps, twined like a snake along the
+high steep bank, going up and down and threading in and out among
+the oaks and pines. Below, the Donets gleamed, reflecting the sun;
+above, the rugged chalk cliff stood up white with bright green on
+the top from the young foliage of oaks and pines, which, hanging
+one above another, managed somehow to grow on the vertical cliff
+without falling. The pilgrims trailed along the path in single file,
+one behind another. The majority of them were Little Russians from
+the neighbouring districts, but there were many from a distance,
+too, who had come on foot from the provinces of Kursk and Orel; in
+the long string of varied colours there were Greek settlers, too,
+from Mariupol, strongly built, sedate and friendly people, utterly
+unlike their weakly and degenerate compatriots who fill our southern
+seaside towns. There were men from the Donets, too, with red stripes
+on their breeches, and emigrants from the Tavritchesky province.
+There were a good many pilgrims of a nondescript class, like my
+Alexandr Ivanitch; what sort of people they were and where they
+came from it was impossible to tell from their faces, from their
+clothes, or from their speech. The path ended at the little
+landing-stage, from which a narrow road went to the left to the
+Hermitage, cutting its way through the mountain. At the landing-stage
+stood two heavy big boats of a forbidding aspect, like the New
+Zealand pirogues which one may see in the works of Jules Verne. One
+boat with rugs on the seats was destined for the clergy and the
+singers, the other without rugs for the public. When the procession
+was returning I found myself among the elect who had succeeded in
+squeezing themselves into the second. There were so many of the
+elect that the boat scarcely moved, and one had to stand all the
+way without stirring and to be careful that one's hat was not
+crushed. The route was lovely. Both banks--one high, steep and
+white, with overhanging pines and oaks, with the crowds hurrying
+back along the path, and the other shelving, with green meadows and
+an oak copse bathed in sunshine--looked as happy and rapturous
+as though the May morning owed its charm only to them. The reflection
+of the sun in the rapidly flowing Donets quivered and raced away
+in all directions, and its long rays played on the chasubles, on
+the banners and on the drops splashed up by the oars. The singing
+of the Easter hymns, the ringing of the bells, the splash of the
+oars in the water, the calls of the birds, all mingled in the air
+into something tender and harmonious. The boat with the priests and
+the banners led the way; at its helm the black figure of a lay
+brother stood motionless as a statue.
+
+When the procession was getting near the Monastery, I noticed
+Alexandr Ivanitch among the elect. He was standing in front of them
+all, and, his mouth wide open with pleasure and his right eyebrow
+cocked up, was gazing at the procession. His face was beaming;
+probably at such moments, when there were so many people round him
+and it was so bright, he was satisfied with himself, his new religion,
+and his conscience.
+
+When a little later we were sitting in our room, drinking tea, he
+still beamed with satisfaction; his face showed that he was satisfied
+both with the tea and with me, that he fully appreciated my being
+an intellectual, but that he would know how to play his part with
+credit if any intellectual topic turned up. . . .
+
+"Tell me, what psychology ought I to read?" he began an intellectual
+conversation, wrinkling up his nose.
+
+"Why, what do you want it for?"
+
+"One cannot be a teacher without a knowledge of psychology. Before
+teaching a boy I ought to understand his soul."
+
+I told him that psychology alone would not be enough to make one
+understand a boy's soul, and moreover psychology for a teacher who
+had not yet mastered the technical methods of instruction in reading,
+writing, and arithmetic would be a luxury as superfluous as the
+higher mathematics. He readily agreed with me, and began describing
+how hard and responsible was the task of a teacher, how hard it was
+to eradicate in the boy the habitual tendency to evil and superstition,
+to make him think honestly and independently, to instil into him
+true religion, the ideas of personal dignity, of freedom, and so
+on. In answer to this I said something to him. He agreed again. He
+agreed very readily, in fact. Obviously his brain had not a very
+firm grasp of all these "intellectual subjects."
+
+Up to the time of my departure we strolled together about the
+Monastery, whiling away the long hot day. He never left my side a
+minute; whether he had taken a fancy to me or was afraid of solitude,
+God only knows! I remember we sat together under a clump of yellow
+acacia in one of the little gardens that are scattered on the
+mountain side.
+
+"I am leaving here in a fortnight," he said; "it is high time."
+
+"Are you going on foot?"
+
+"From here to Slavyansk I shall walk, then by railway to Nikitovka;
+from Nikitovka the Donets line branches off, and along that branch
+line I shall walk as far as Hatsepetovka, and there a railway guard,
+I know, will help me on my way."
+
+I thought of the bare, deserted steppe between Nikitovka and
+Hatsepetovka, and pictured to myself Alexandr Ivanitch striding
+along it, with his doubts, his homesickness, and his fear of solitude
+. . . . He read boredom in my face, and sighed.
+
+"And my sister must be married by now," he said, thinking aloud,
+and at once, to shake off melancholy thoughts, pointed to the top
+of the rock and said:
+
+"From that mountain one can see Izyum."
+
+As we were walking up the mountain he had a little misfortune. I
+suppose he stumbled, for he slit his cotton trousers and tore the
+sole of his shoe.
+
+"Tss!" he said, frowning as he took off a shoe and exposed a bare
+foot without a stocking. "How unpleasant! . . . That's a complication,
+you know, which . . . Yes!"
+
+Turning the shoe over and over before his eyes, as though unable
+to believe that the sole was ruined for ever, he spent a long time
+frowning, sighing, and clicking with his tongue.
+
+I had in my trunk a pair of boots, old but fashionable, with pointed
+toes and laces. I had brought them with me in case of need, and
+only wore them in wet weather. When we got back to our room I made
+up a phrase as diplomatic as I could and offered him these boots.
+He accepted them and said with dignity:
+
+"I should thank you, but I know that you consider thanks a convention."
+
+He was pleased as a child with the pointed toes and the laces, and
+even changed his plans.
+
+"Now I shall go to Novotcherkassk in a week, and not in a fortnight,"
+he said, thinking aloud. "In shoes like these I shall not be ashamed
+to show myself to my godfather. I was not going away from here just
+because I hadn't any decent clothes. . . ."
+
+When the coachman was carrying out my trunk, a lay brother with a
+good ironical face came in to sweep out the room. Alexandr Ivanitch
+seemed flustered and embarrassed and asked him timidly:
+
+"Am I to stay here or go somewhere else?"
+
+He could not make up his mind to occupy a whole room to himself,
+and evidently by now was feeling ashamed of living at the expense
+of the Monastery. He was very reluctant to part from me; to put off
+being lonely as long as possible, he asked leave to see me on my
+way.
+
+The road from the Monastery, which had been excavated at the cost
+of no little labour in the chalk mountain, moved upwards, going
+almost like a spiral round the mountain, over roots and under sullen
+overhanging pines. . . .
+
+The Donets was the first to vanish from our sight, after it the
+Monastery yard with its thousands of people, and then the green
+roofs. . . . Since I was mounting upwards everything seemed vanishing
+into a pit. The cross on the church, burnished by the rays of the
+setting sun, gleamed brightly in the abyss and vanished. Nothing
+was left but the oaks, the pines, and the white road. But then our
+carriage came out on a level country, and that was all left below
+and behind us. Alexandr Ivanitch jumped out and, smiling mournfully,
+glanced at me for the last time with his childish eyes, and vanished
+from me for ever. . . .
+
+The impressions of the Holy Mountains had already become memories,
+and I saw something new: the level plain, the whitish-brown distance,
+the way side copse, and beyond it a windmill which stood with out
+moving, and seemed bored at not being allowed to wave its sails
+because it was a holiday.
+
+
+THE STEPPE
+
+_The Story of a Journey_
+
+I
+
+EARLY one morning in July a shabby covered chaise, one of those
+antediluvian chaises without springs in which no one travels in
+Russia nowadays, except merchant's clerks, dealers and the less
+well-to-do among priests, drove out of N., the principal town of
+the province of Z., and rumbled noisily along the posting-track.
+It rattled and creaked at every movement; the pail, hanging on
+behind, chimed in gruffly, and from these sounds alone and from the
+wretched rags of leather hanging loose about its peeling body one
+could judge of its decrepit age and readiness to drop to pieces.
+
+Two of the inhabitants of N. were sitting in the chaise; they were
+a merchant of N. called Ivan Ivanitch Kuzmitchov, a man with a
+shaven face wearing glasses and a straw hat, more like a government
+clerk than a merchant, and Father Christopher Sireysky, the priest
+of the Church of St. Nikolay at N., a little old man with long hair,
+in a grey canvas cassock, a wide-brimmed top-hat and a coloured
+embroidered girdle. The former was absorbed in thought, and kept
+tossing his head to shake off drowsiness; in his countenance an
+habitual business-like reserve was struggling with the genial
+expression of a man who has just said good-bye to his relatives and
+has had a good drink at parting. The latter gazed with moist eyes
+wonderingly at God's world, and his smile was so broad that it
+seemed to embrace even the brim of his hat; his face was red and
+looked frozen. Both of them, Father Christopher as well as Kuzmitchov,
+were going to sell wool. At parting with their families they had
+just eaten heartily of pastry puffs and cream, and although it was
+so early in the morning had had a glass or two. . . . Both were in
+the best of humours.
+
+Apart from the two persons described above and the coachman Deniska,
+who lashed the pair of frisky bay horses, there was another figure
+in the chaise--a boy of nine with a sunburnt face, wet with tears.
+This was Yegorushka, Kuzmitchov's nephew. With the sanction of his
+uncle and the blessing of Father Christopher, he was now on his way
+to go to school. His mother, Olga Ivanovna, the widow of a collegiate
+secretary, and Kuzmitchov's sister, who was fond of educated people
+and refined society, had entreated her brother to take Yegorushka
+with him when he went to sell wool and to put him to school; and
+now the boy was sitting on the box beside the coachman Deniska,
+holding on to his elbow to keep from falling off, and dancing up
+and down like a kettle on the hob, with no notion where he was going
+or what he was going for. The rapid motion through the air blew out
+his red shirt like a balloon on his back and made his new hat with
+a peacock's feather in it, like a coachman's, keep slipping on to
+the back of his head. He felt himself an intensely unfortunate
+person, and had an inclination to cry.
+
+When the chaise drove past the prison, Yegorushka glanced at the
+sentinels pacing slowly by the high white walls, at the little
+barred windows, at the cross shining on the roof, and remembered
+how the week before, on the day of the Holy Mother of Kazan, he had
+been with his mother to the prison church for the Dedication Feast,
+and how before that, at Easter, he had gone to the prison with
+Deniska and Ludmila the cook, and had taken the prisoners Easter
+bread, eggs, cakes and roast beef. The prisoners had thanked them
+and made the sign of the cross, and one of them had given Yegorushka
+a pewter buckle of his own making.
+
+The boy gazed at the familiar places, while the hateful chaise flew
+by and left them all behind. After the prison he caught glimpses
+of black grimy foundries, followed by the snug green cemetery
+surrounded by a wall of cobblestones; white crosses and tombstones,
+nestling among green cherry-trees and looking in the distance like
+patches of white, peeped out gaily from behind the wall. Yegorushka
+remembered that when the cherries were in blossom those white patches
+melted with the flowers into a sea of white; and that when the
+cherries were ripe the white tombstones and crosses were dotted
+with splashes of red like bloodstains. Under the cherry trees in
+the cemetery Yegorushka's father and granny, Zinaida Danilovna, lay
+sleeping day and night. When Granny had died she had been put in a
+long narrow coffin and two pennies had been put upon her eyes, which
+would not keep shut. Up to the time of her death she had been brisk,
+and used to bring soft rolls covered with poppy seeds from the
+market. Now she did nothing but sleep and sleep. . . .
+
+Beyond the cemetery came the smoking brickyards. From under the
+long roofs of reeds that looked as though pressed flat to the ground,
+a thick black smoke rose in great clouds and floated lazily upwards.
+The sky was murky above the brickyards and the cemetery, and great
+shadows from the clouds of smoke crept over the fields and across
+the roads. Men and horses covered with red dust were moving about
+in the smoke near the roofs.
+
+The town ended with the brickyards and the open country began.
+Yegorushka looked at the town for the last time, pressed his face
+against Deniska's elbow, and wept bitterly.
+
+"Come, not done howling yet, cry-baby!" cried Kuzmitchov. "You are
+blubbering again, little milksop! If you don't want to go, stay
+behind; no one is taking you by force!
+
+"Never mind, never mind, Yegor boy, never mind," Father Christopher
+muttered rapidly--"never mind, my boy. . . . Call upon God. . . .
+You are not going for your harm, but for your good. Learning is
+light, as the saying is, and ignorance is darkness. . . . That is
+so, truly."
+
+"Do you want to go back?" asked Kuzmitchov.
+
+"Yes, . . . yes, . . ." answered Yegorushka, sobbing.
+
+"Well, you'd better go back then. Anyway, you are going for nothing;
+it's a day's journey for a spoonful of porridge."
+
+"Never mind, never mind, my boy," Father Christopher went on. "Call
+upon God. . . . Lomonosov set off with the fishermen in the same
+way, and he became a man famous all over Europe. Learning in
+conjunction with faith brings forth fruit pleasing to God. What are
+the words of the prayer? For the glory of our Maker, for the comfort
+of our parents, for the benefit of our Church and our country. . . .
+Yes, indeed!"
+
+"The benefit is not the same in all cases," said Kuzmitchov, lighting
+a cheap cigar; "some will study twenty years and get no sense from
+it."
+
+"That does happen."
+
+"Learning is a benefit to some, but others only muddle their brains.
+My sister is a woman who does not understand; she is set upon
+refinement, and wants to turn Yegorka into a learned man, and she
+does not understand that with my business I could settle Yegorka
+happily for the rest of his life. I tell you this, that if everyone
+were to go in for being learned and refined there would be no one
+to sow the corn and do the trading; they would all die of hunger."
+
+"And if all go in for trading and sowing corn there will be no one
+to acquire learning."
+
+And considering that each of them had said something weighty and
+convincing, Kuzmitchov and Father Christopher both looked serious
+and cleared their throats simultaneously.
+
+Deniska, who had been listening to their conversation without
+understanding a word of it, shook his head and, rising in his seat,
+lashed at both the bays. A silence followed.
+
+Meanwhile a wide boundless plain encircled by a chain of low hills
+lay stretched before the travellers' eyes. Huddling together and
+peeping out from behind one another, these hills melted together
+into rising ground, which stretched right to the very horizon and
+disappeared into the lilac distance; one drives on and on and cannot
+discern where it begins or where it ends. . . . The sun had already
+peeped out from beyond the town behind them, and quietly, without
+fuss, set to its accustomed task. At first in the distance before
+them a broad, bright, yellow streak of light crept over the ground
+where the earth met the sky, near the little barrows and the
+windmills, which in the distance looked like tiny men waving their
+arms. A minute later a similar streak gleamed a little nearer, crept
+to the right and embraced the hills. Something warm touched
+Yegorushka's spine; the streak of light, stealing up from behind,
+darted between the chaise and the horses, moved to meet the other
+streak, and soon the whole wide steppe flung off the twilight of
+early morning, and was smiling and sparkling with dew.
+
+The cut rye, the coarse steppe grass, the milkwort, the wild hemp,
+all withered from the sultry heat, turned brown and half dead, now
+washed by the dew and caressed by the sun, revived, to fade again.
+Arctic petrels flew across the road with joyful cries; marmots
+called to one another in the grass. Somewhere, far away to the left,
+lapwings uttered their plaintive notes. A covey of partridges,
+scared by the chaise, fluttered up and with their soft "trrrr!"
+flew off to the hills. In the grass crickets, locusts and grasshoppers
+kept up their churring, monotonous music.
+
+But a little time passed, the dew evaporated, the air grew stagnant,
+and the disillusioned steppe began to wear its jaded July aspect.
+The grass drooped, everything living was hushed. The sun-baked
+hills, brownish-green and lilac in the distance, with their quiet
+shadowy tones, the plain with the misty distance and, arched above
+them, the sky, which seems terribly deep and transparent in the
+steppes, where there are no woods or high hills, seemed now endless,
+petrified with dreariness. . . .
+
+How stifling and oppressive it was! The chaise raced along, while
+Yegorushka saw always the same--the sky, the plain, the low hills
+. . . . The music in the grass was hushed, the petrels had flown away,
+the partridges were out of sight, rooks hovered idly over the
+withered grass; they were all alike and made the steppe even more
+monotonous.
+
+A hawk flew just above the ground, with an even sweep of its wings,
+suddenly halted in the air as though pondering on the dreariness
+of life, then fluttered its wings and flew like an arrow over the
+steppe, and there was no telling why it flew off and what it wanted.
+In the distance a windmill waved its sails. . . .
+
+Now and then a glimpse of a white potsherd or a heap of stones broke
+the monotony; a grey stone stood out for an instant or a parched
+willow with a blue crow on its top branch; a marmot would run across
+the road and--again there flitted before the eyes only the high
+grass, the low hills, the rooks. . . .
+
+But at last, thank God, a waggon loaded with sheaves came to meet
+them; a peasant wench was lying on the very top. Sleepy, exhausted
+by the heat, she lifted her head and looked at the travellers.
+Deniska gaped, looking at her; the horses stretched out their noses
+towards the sheaves; the chaise, squeaking, kissed the waggon, and
+the pointed ears passed over Father Christopher's hat like a brush.
+
+"You are driving over folks, fatty!" cried Deniska. "What a swollen
+lump of a face, as though a bumble-bee had stung it!"
+
+The girl smiled drowsily, and moving her lips lay down again; then
+a solitary poplar came into sight on the low hill. Someone had
+planted it, and God only knows why it was there. It was hard to
+tear the eyes away from its graceful figure and green drapery. Was
+that lovely creature happy? Sultry heat in summer, in winter frost
+and snowstorms, terrible nights in autumn when nothing is to be
+seen but darkness and nothing is to be heard but the senseless angry
+howling wind, and, worst of all, alone, alone for the whole of life
+. . . . Beyond the poplar stretches of wheat extended like a bright
+yellow carpet from the road to the top of the hills. On the hills
+the corn was already cut and laid up in sheaves, while at the bottom
+they were still cutting. . . . Six mowers were standing in a row
+swinging their scythes, and the scythes gleamed gaily and uttered
+in unison together "Vzhee, vzhee!" From the movements of the peasant
+women binding the sheaves, from the faces of the mowers, from the
+glitter of the scythes, it could be seen that the sultry heat was
+baking and stifling. A black dog with its tongue hanging out ran
+from the mowers to meet the chaise, probably with the intention of
+barking, but stopped halfway and stared indifferently at Deniska,
+who shook his whip at him; it was too hot to bark! One peasant woman
+got up and, putting both hands to her aching back, followed
+Yegorushka's red shirt with her eyes. Whether it was that the colour
+pleased her or that he reminded her of her children, she stood a
+long time motionless staring after him.
+
+But now the wheat, too, had flashed by; again the parched plain,
+the sunburnt hills, the sultry sky stretched before them; again a
+hawk hovered over the earth. In the distance, as before, a windmill
+whirled its sails, and still it looked like a little man waving his
+arms. It was wearisome to watch, and it seemed as though one would
+never reach it, as though it were running away from the chaise.
+
+Father Christopher and Kuzmitchov were silent. Deniska lashed the
+horses and kept shouting to them, while Yegorushka had left off
+crying, and gazed about him listlessly. The heat and the tedium of
+the steppes overpowered him. He felt as though he had been travelling
+and jolting up and down for a very long time, that the sun had been
+baking his back a long time. Before they had gone eight miles he
+began to feel "It must be time to rest." The geniality gradually
+faded out of his uncle's face and nothing else was left but the air
+of business reserve; and to a gaunt shaven face, especially when
+it is adorned with spectacles and the nose and temples are covered
+with dust, this reserve gives a relentless, inquisitorial appearance.
+Father Christopher never left off gazing with wonder at God's world,
+and smiling. Without speaking, he brooded over something pleasant
+and nice, and a kindly, genial smile remained imprinted on his face.
+It seemed as though some nice and pleasant thought were imprinted
+on his brain by the heat.
+
+"Well, Deniska, shall we overtake the waggons to-day?" asked
+Kuzmitchov.
+
+Deniska looked at the sky, rose in his seat, lashed at his horses
+and then answered:
+
+"By nightfall, please God, we shall overtake them."
+
+There was a sound of dogs barking. Half a dozen steppe sheep-dogs,
+suddenly leaping out as though from ambush, with ferocious howling
+barks, flew to meet the chaise. All of them, extraordinarily furious,
+surrounded the chaise, with their shaggy spider-like muzzles and
+their eyes red with anger, and jostling against one another in their
+anger, raised a hoarse howl. They were filled with passionate hatred
+of the horses, of the chaise, and of the human beings, and seemed
+ready to tear them into pieces. Deniska, who was fond of teasing
+and beating, was delighted at the chance of it, and with a malignant
+expression bent over and lashed at the sheep-dogs with his whip.
+The brutes growled more than ever, the horses flew on; and Yegorushka,
+who had difficulty in keeping his seat on the box, realized, looking
+at the dogs' eyes and teeth, that if he fell down they would instantly
+tear him to bits; but he felt no fear and looked at them as malignantly
+as Deniska, and regretted that he had no whip in his hand.
+
+The chaise came upon a flock of sheep.
+
+"Stop!" cried Kuzmitchov. "Pull up! Woa!"
+
+Deniska threw his whole body backwards and pulled up the horses.
+
+"Come here!" Kuzmitchov shouted to the shepherd. "Call off the dogs,
+curse them!"
+
+The old shepherd, tattered and barefoot, wearing a fur cap, with a
+dirty sack round his loins and a long crook in his hand--a regular
+figure from the Old Testament--called off the dogs, and taking
+off his cap, went up to the chaise. Another similar Old Testament
+figure was standing motionless at the other end of the flock, staring
+without interest at the travellers.
+
+"Whose sheep are these?" asked Kuzmitchov.
+
+"Varlamov's," the old man answered in a loud voice.
+
+"Varlamov's," repeated the shepherd standing at the other end of
+the flock.
+
+"Did Varlamov come this way yesterday or not?"
+
+"He did not; his clerk came. . . ."
+
+"Drive on!"
+
+The chaise rolled on and the shepherds, with their angry dogs, were
+left behind. Yegorushka gazed listlessly at the lilac distance in
+front, and it began to seem as though the windmill, waving its
+sails, were getting nearer. It became bigger and bigger, grew quite
+large, and now he could distinguish clearly its two sails. One sail
+was old and patched, the other had only lately been made of new
+wood and glistened in the sun. The chaise drove straight on, while
+the windmill, for some reason, began retreating to the left. They
+drove on and on, and the windmill kept moving away to the left, and
+still did not disappear.
+
+"A fine windmill Boltva has put up for his son," observed Deniska.
+
+"And how is it we don't see his farm?"
+
+"It is that way, beyond the creek."
+
+Boltva's farm, too, soon came into sight, but yet the windmill did
+not retreat, did not drop behind; it still watched Yegorushka with
+its shining sail and waved. What a sorcerer!
+
+II
+
+Towards midday the chaise turned off the road to the right; it went
+on a little way at walking pace and then stopped. Yegorushka heard
+a soft, very caressing gurgle, and felt a different air breathe on
+his face with a cool velvety touch. Through a little pipe of hemlock
+stuck there by some unknown benefactor, water was running in a thin
+trickle from a low hill, put together by nature of huge monstrous
+stones. It fell to the ground, and limpid, sparkling gaily in the
+sun, and softly murmuring as though fancying itself a great tempestuous
+torrent, flowed swiftly away to the left. Not far from its source
+the little stream spread itself out into a pool; the burning sunbeams
+and the parched soil greedily drank it up and sucked away its
+strength; but a little further on it must have mingled with another
+rivulet, for a hundred paces away thick reeds showed green and
+luxuriant along its course, and three snipe flew up from them with
+a loud cry as the chaise drove by.
+
+The travellers got out to rest by the stream and feed the horses.
+Kuzmitchov, Father Christopher and Yegorushka sat down on a mat in
+the narrow strip of shade cast by the chaise and the unharnessed
+horses. The nice pleasant thought that the heat had imprinted in
+Father Christopher's brain craved expression after he had had a
+drink of water and eaten a hard-boiled egg. He bent a friendly look
+upon Yegorushka, munched, and began:
+
+"I studied too, my boy; from the earliest age God instilled into
+me good sense and understanding, so that while I was just such a
+lad as you I was beyond others, a comfort to my parents and preceptors
+by my good sense. Before I was fifteen I could speak and make verses
+in Latin, just as in Russian. I was the crosier-bearer to his
+Holiness Bishop Christopher. After mass one day, as I remember it
+was the patron saint's day of His Majesty Tsar Alexandr Pavlovitch
+of blessed memory, he unrobed at the altar, looked kindly at me and
+asked, 'Puer bone, quam appelaris?' And I answered, 'Christopherus
+sum;' and he said, 'Ergo connominati sumus'--that is, that we
+were namesakes. . . Then he asked in Latin, 'Whose son are you?'
+To which I answered, also in Latin, that I was the son of deacon
+Sireysky of the village of Lebedinskoe. Seeing my readiness and the
+clearness of my answers, his Holiness blessed me and said, 'Write
+to your father that I will not forget him, and that I will keep you
+in view.' The holy priests and fathers who were standing round the
+altar, hearing our discussion in Latin, were not a little surprised,
+and everyone expressed his pleasure in praise of me. Before I had
+moustaches, my boy, I could read Latin, Greek, and French; I knew
+philosophy, mathematics, secular history, and all the sciences. The
+Lord gave me a marvellous memory. Sometimes, if I read a thing once
+or twice, I knew it by heart. My preceptors and patrons were amazed,
+and so they expected I should make a learned man, a luminary of the
+Church. I did think of going to Kiev to continue my studies, but
+my parents did not approve. 'You'll be studying all your life,'
+said my father; 'when shall we see you finished?' Hearing such
+words, I gave up study and took a post. . . . Of course, I did not
+become a learned man, but then I did not disobey my parents; I was
+a comfort to them in their old age and gave them a creditable
+funeral. Obedience is more than fasting and prayer.
+
+"I suppose you have forgotten all your learning?" observed Kuzmitchov.
+
+"I should think so! Thank God, I have reached my eightieth year!
+Something of philosophy and rhetoric I do remember, but languages
+and mathematics I have quite forgotten."
+
+Father Christopher screwed up his eyes, thought a minute and said
+in an undertone:
+
+"What is a substance? A creature is a self-existing object, not
+requiring anything else for its completion."
+
+He shook his head and laughed with feeling.
+
+"Spiritual nourishment!" he said. "Of a truth matter nourishes the
+flesh and spiritual nourishment the soul!"
+
+"Learning is all very well," sighed Kuzmitchov, "but if we don't
+overtake Varlamov, learning won't do much for us."
+
+"A man isn't a needle--we shall find him. He must be going his
+rounds in these parts."
+
+Among the sedge were flying the three snipe they had seen before,
+and in their plaintive cries there was a note of alarm and vexation
+at having been driven away from the stream. The horses were steadily
+munching and snorting. Deniska walked about by them and, trying to
+appear indifferent to the cucumbers, pies, and eggs that the gentry
+were eating, he concentrated himself on the gadflies and horseflies
+that were fastening upon the horses' backs and bellies; he squashed
+his victims apathetically, emitting a peculiar, fiendishly triumphant,
+guttural sound, and when he missed them cleared his throat with an
+air of vexation and looked after every lucky one that escaped death.
+
+"Deniska, where are you? Come and eat," said Kuzmitchov, heaving a
+deep sigh, a sign that he had had enough.
+
+Deniska diffidently approached the mat and picked out five thick
+and yellow cucumbers (he did not venture to take the smaller and
+fresher ones), took two hard-boiled eggs that looked dark and were
+cracked, then irresolutely, as though afraid he might get a blow
+on his outstretched hand, touched a pie with his finger.
+
+"Take them, take them," Kuzmitchov urged him on.
+
+Deniska took the pies resolutely, and, moving some distance away,
+sat down on the grass with his back to the chaise. At once there
+was such a sound of loud munching that even the horses turned round
+to look suspiciously at Deniska.
+
+After his meal Kuzmitchov took a sack containing something out of
+the chaise and said to Yegorushka:
+
+"I am going to sleep, and you mind that no one takes the sack from
+under my head."
+
+Father Christopher took off his cassock, his girdle, and his full
+coat, and Yegorushka, looking at him, was dumb with astonishment.
+He had never imagined that priests wore trousers, and Father
+Christopher had on real canvas trousers thrust into high boots, and
+a short striped jacket. Looking at him, Yegorushka thought that in
+this costume, so unsuitable to his dignified position, he looked
+with his long hair and beard very much like Robinson Crusoe. After
+taking off their outer garments Kuzmitchov and Father Christopher
+lay down in the shade under the chaise, facing one another, and
+closed their eyes. Deniska, who had finished munching, stretched
+himself out on his back and also closed his eyes.
+
+"You look out that no one takes away the horses!" he said to
+Yegorushka, and at once fell asleep.
+
+Stillness reigned. There was no sound except the munching and
+snorting of the horses and the snoring of the sleepers; somewhere
+far away a lapwing wailed, and from time to time there sounded the
+shrill cries of the three snipe who had flown up to see whether
+their uninvited visitors had gone away; the rivulet babbled, lisping
+softly, but all these sounds did not break the stillness, did not
+stir the stagnation, but, on the contrary, lulled all nature to
+slumber.
+
+Yegorushka, gasping with the heat, which was particularly oppressive
+after a meal, ran to the sedge and from there surveyed the country.
+He saw exactly the same as he had in the morning: the plain, the
+low hills, the sky, the lilac distance; only the hills stood nearer;
+and he could not see the windmill, which had been left far behind.
+From behind the rocky hill from which the stream flowed rose another,
+smoother and broader; a little hamlet of five or six homesteads
+clung to it. No people, no trees, no shade were to be seen about
+the huts; it looked as though the hamlet had expired in the burning
+air and was dried up. To while away the time Yegorushka caught a
+grasshopper in the grass, held it in his closed hand to his ear,
+and spent a long time listening to the creature playing on its
+instrument. When he was weary of its music he ran after a flock of
+yellow butterflies who were flying towards the sedge on the
+watercourse, and found himself again beside the chaise, without
+noticing how he came there. His uncle and Father Christopher were
+sound asleep; their sleep would be sure to last two or three hours
+till the horses had rested. . . . How was he to get through that
+long time, and where was he to get away from the heat? A hard
+problem. . . . Mechanically Yegorushka put his lips to the trickle
+that ran from the waterpipe; there was a chilliness in his mouth
+and there was the smell of hemlock. He drank at first eagerly, then
+went on with effort till the sharp cold had run from his mouth all
+over his body and the water was spilt on his shirt. Then he went
+up to the chaise and began looking at the sleeping figures. His
+uncle's face wore, as before, an expression of business-like reserve.
+Fanatically devoted to his work, Kuzmitchov always, even in his
+sleep and at church when they were singing, "Like the cherubim,"
+thought about his business and could never forget it for a moment;
+and now he was probably dreaming about bales of wool, waggons,
+prices, Varlamov. . . . Father Christopher, now, a soft, frivolous
+and absurd person, had never all his life been conscious of anything
+which could, like a boa-constrictor, coil about his soul and hold
+it tight. In all the numerous enterprises he had undertaken in his
+day what attracted him was not so much the business itself, but the
+bustle and the contact with other people involved in every undertaking.
+Thus, in the present expedition, he was not so much interested in
+wool, in Varlamov, and in prices, as in the long journey, the
+conversations on the way, the sleeping under a chaise, and the meals
+at odd times. . . . And now, judging from his face, he must have
+been dreaming of Bishop Christopher, of the Latin discussion, of
+his wife, of puffs and cream and all sorts of things that Kuzmitchov
+could not possibly dream of.
+
+While Yegorushka was watching their sleeping faces he suddenly heard
+a soft singing; somewhere at a distance a woman was singing, and
+it was difficult to tell where and in what direction. The song was
+subdued, dreary and melancholy, like a dirge, and hardly audible,
+and seemed to come first from the right, then from the left, then
+from above, and then from underground, as though an unseen spirit
+were hovering over the steppe and singing. Yegorushka looked about
+him, and could not make out where the strange song came from. Then
+as he listened he began to fancy that the grass was singing; in its
+song, withered and half-dead, it was without words, but plaintively
+and passionately, urging that it was not to blame, that the sun was
+burning it for no fault of its own; it urged that it ardently longed
+to live, that it was young and might have been beautiful but for
+the heat and the drought; it was guiltless, but yet it prayed
+forgiveness and protested that it was in anguish, sad and sorry for
+itself. . . .
+
+Yegorushka listened for a little, and it began to seem as though
+this dreary, mournful song made the air hotter, more suffocating
+and more stagnant. . . . To drown the singing he ran to the sedge,
+humming to himself and trying to make a noise with his feet. From
+there he looked about in all directions and found out who was
+singing. Near the furthest hut in the hamlet stood a peasant woman
+in a short petticoat, with long thin legs like a heron. She was
+sowing something. A white dust floated languidly from her sieve
+down the hillock. Now it was evident that she was singing. A couple
+of yards from her a little bare-headed boy in nothing but a smock
+was standing motionless. As though fascinated by the song, he stood
+stock-still, staring away into the distance, probably at Yegorushka's
+crimson shirt.
+
+The song ceased. Yegorushka sauntered back to the chaise, and to
+while away the time went again to the trickle of water.
+
+And again there was the sound of the dreary song. It was the same
+long-legged peasant woman in the hamlet over the hill. Yegorushka's
+boredom came back again. He left the pipe and looked upwards. What
+he saw was so unexpected that he was a little frightened. Just above
+his head on one of the big clumsy stones stood a chubby little boy,
+wearing nothing but a shirt, with a prominent stomach and thin legs,
+the same boy who had been standing before by the peasant woman. He
+was gazing with open mouth and unblinking eyes at Yegorushka's
+crimson shirt and at the chaise, with a look of blank astonishment
+and even fear, as though he saw before him creatures of another
+world. The red colour of the shirt charmed and allured him. But the
+chaise and the men sleeping under it excited his curiosity; perhaps
+he had not noticed how the agreeable red colour and curiosity had
+attracted him down from the hamlet, and now probably he was surprised
+at his own boldness. For a long while Yegorushka stared at him, and
+he at Yegorushka. Both were silent and conscious of some awkwardness.
+After a long silence Yegorushka asked:
+
+"What's your name?"
+
+The stranger's cheeks puffed out more than ever; he pressed his
+back against the rock, opened his eyes wide, moved his lips, and
+answered in a husky bass: "Tit!"
+
+The boys said not another word to each other; after a brief silence,
+still keeping his eyes fixed on Yegorushka, the mysterious Tit
+kicked up one leg, felt with his heel for a niche and clambered up
+the rock; from that point he ascended to the next rock, staggering
+backwards and looking intently at Yegorushka, as though afraid he
+might hit him from behind, and so made his way upwards till he
+disappeared altogether behind the crest of the hill.
+
+After watching him out of sight, Yegorushka put his arms round his
+knees and leaned his head on them. . . . The burning sun scorched
+the back of his head, his neck, and his spine. The melancholy song
+died away, then floated again on the stagnant stifling air. The
+rivulet gurgled monotonously, the horses munched, and time dragged
+on endlessly, as though it, too, were stagnant and had come to a
+standstill. It seemed as though a hundred years had passed since
+the morning. Could it be that God's world, the chaise and the horses
+would come to a standstill in that air, and, like the hills, turn
+to stone and remain for ever in one spot? Yegorushka raised his
+head, and with smarting eyes looked before him; the lilac distance,
+which till then had been motionless, began heaving, and with the
+sky floated away into the distance. . . . It drew after it the brown
+grass, the sedge, and with extraordinary swiftness Yegorushka floated
+after the flying distance. Some force noiselessly drew him onwards,
+and the heat and the wearisome song flew after in pursuit. Yegorushka
+bent his head and shut his eyes. . . .
+
+Deniska was the first to wake up. Something must have bitten him,
+for he jumped up, quickly scratched his shoulder and said:
+
+"Plague take you, cursed idolater!"
+
+Then he went to the brook, had a drink and slowly washed. His
+splashing and puffing roused Yegorushka from his lethargy. The boy
+looked at his wet face with drops of water and big freckles which
+made it look like marble, and asked:
+
+"Shall we soon be going?"
+
+Deniska looked at the height of the sun and answered:
+
+"I expect so."
+
+He dried himself with the tail of his shirt and, making a very
+serious face, hopped on one leg.
+
+"I say, which of us will get to the sedge first?" he said.
+
+Yegorushka was exhausted by the heat and drowsiness, but he raced
+off after him all the same. Deniska was in his twentieth year, was
+a coachman and going to be married, but he had not left off being
+a boy. He was very fond of flying kites, chasing pigeons, playing
+knuckle-bones, running races, and always took part in children's
+games and disputes. No sooner had his master turned his back or
+gone to sleep than Deniska would begin doing something such as
+hopping on one leg or throwing stones. It was hard for any grown-up
+person, seeing the genuine enthusiasm with which he frolicked about
+in the society of children, to resist saying, "What a baby!" Children,
+on the other hand, saw nothing strange in the invasion of their
+domain by the big coachman. "Let him play," they thought, "as long
+as he doesn't fight!" In the same way little dogs see nothing strange
+in it when a simple-hearted big dog joins their company uninvited
+and begins playing with them.
+
+Deniska outstripped Yegorushka, and was evidently very much pleased
+at having done so. He winked at him, and to show that he could hop
+on one leg any distance, suggested to Yegorushka that he should hop
+with him along the road and from there, without resting, back to
+the chaise. Yegorushka declined this suggestion, for he was very
+much out of breath and exhausted.
+
+All at once Deniska looked very grave, as he did not look even when
+Kuzmitchov gave him a scolding or threatened him with a stick;
+listening intently, he dropped quietly on one knee and an expression
+of sternness and alarm came into his face, such as one sees in
+people who hear heretical talk. He fixed his eyes on one spot,
+raised his hand curved into a hollow, and suddenly fell on his
+stomach on the ground and slapped the hollow of his hand down upon
+the grass.
+
+"Caught!" he wheezed triumphantly, and, getting up, lifted a big
+grasshopper to Yegorushka's eyes.
+
+The two boys stroked the grasshopper's broad green back with their
+fingers and touched his antenna, supposing that this would please
+the creature. Then Deniska caught a fat fly that had been sucking
+blood and offered it to the grasshopper. The latter moved his huge
+jaws, that were like the visor of a helmet, with the utmost unconcern,
+as though he had been long acquainted with Deniska, and bit off the
+fly's stomach. They let him go. With a flash of the pink lining of
+his wings, he flew down into the grass and at once began his churring
+notes again. They let the fly go, too. It preened its wings, and
+without its stomach flew off to the horses.
+
+A loud sigh was heard from under the chaise. It was Kuzmitchov
+waking up. He quickly raised his head, looked uneasily into the
+distance, and from that look, which passed by Yegorushka and Deniska
+without sympathy or interest, it could be seen that his thought on
+awaking was of the wool and of Varlamov.
+
+"Father Christopher, get up; it is time to start," he said anxiously.
+"Wake up; we've slept too long as it is! Deniska, put the horses
+in."
+
+Father Christopher woke up with the same smile with which he had
+fallen asleep; his face looked creased and wrinkled from sleep, and
+seemed only half the size. After washing and dressing, he proceeded
+without haste to take out of his pocket a little greasy psalter;
+and standing with his face towards the east, began in a whisper
+repeating the psalms of the day and crossing himself.
+
+"Father Christopher," said Kuzmitchov reproachfully, "it's time to
+start; the horses are ready, and here are you, . . . upon my word."
+
+"In a minute, in a minute," muttered Father Christopher. "I must
+read the psalms. . . . I haven't read them to-day."
+
+"The psalms can wait."
+
+"Ivan Ivanitch, that is my rule every day. . . . I can't . . ."
+
+"God will overlook it."
+
+For a full quarter of an hour Father Christopher stood facing the
+east and moving his lips, while Kuzmitchov looked at him almost
+with hatred and impatiently shrugged his shoulders. He was particularly
+irritated when, after every "Hallelujah," Father Christopher drew
+a long breath, rapidly crossed himself and repeated three times,
+intentionally raising his voice so that the others might cross
+themselves, "Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah! Glory be to Thee,
+O Lord!" At last he smiled, looked upwards at the sky, and, putting
+the psalter in his pocket, said:
+
+"Finis!"
+
+A minute later the chaise had started on the road. As though it
+were going backwards and not forwards, the travellers saw the same
+scene as they had before midday.
+
+The low hills were still plunged in the lilac distance, and no end
+could be seen to them. There were glimpses of high grass and heaps
+of stones; strips of stubble land passed by them and still the same
+rooks, the same hawk, moving its wings with slow dignity, moved
+over the steppe. The air was more sultry than ever; from the sultry
+heat and the stillness submissive nature was spellbound into silence
+. . . . No wind, no fresh cheering sound, no cloud.
+
+But at last, when the sun was beginning to sink into the west, the
+steppe, the hills and the air could bear the oppression no longer,
+and, driven out of all patience, exhausted, tried to fling off the
+yoke. A fleecy ashen-grey cloud unexpectedly appeared behind the
+hills. It exchanged glances with the steppe, as though to say, "Here
+I am," and frowned. Suddenly something burst in the stagnant air;
+there was a violent squall of wind which whirled round and round,
+roaring and whistling over the steppe. At once a murmur rose from
+the grass and last year's dry herbage, the dust curled in spiral
+eddies over the road, raced over the steppe, and carrying with it
+straws, dragon flies and feathers, rose up in a whirling black
+column towards the sky and darkened the sun. Prickly uprooted plants
+ran stumbling and leaping in all directions over the steppe, and
+one of them got caught in the whirlwind, turned round and round
+like a bird, flew towards the sky, and turning into a little black
+speck, vanished from sight. After it flew another, and then a third,
+and Yegorushka saw two of them meet in the blue height and clutch
+at one another as though they were wrestling.
+
+A bustard flew up by the very road. Fluttering his wings and his
+tail, he looked, bathed in the sunshine, like an angler's glittering
+tin fish or a waterfly flashing so swiftly over the water that its
+wings cannot be told from its antenna, which seem to be growing
+before, behind and on all sides. . . . Quivering in the air like
+an insect with a shimmer of bright colours, the bustard flew high
+up in a straight line, then, probably frightened by a cloud of dust,
+swerved to one side, and for a long time the gleam of his wings
+could be seen. . . .
+
+Then a corncrake flew up from the grass, alarmed by the hurricane
+and not knowing what was the matter. It flew with the wind and not
+against it, like all the other birds, so that all its feathers were
+ruffled up and it was puffed out to the size of a hen and looked
+very angry and impressive. Only the rooks who had grown old on the
+steppe and were accustomed to its vagaries hovered calmly over the
+grass, or taking no notice of anything, went on unconcernedly pecking
+with their stout beaks at the hard earth.
+
+There was a dull roll of thunder beyond the hills; there came a
+whiff of fresh air. Deniska gave a cheerful whistle and lashed his
+horses. Father Christopher and Kuzmitchov held their hats and looked
+intently towards the hills. . . . How pleasant a shower of rain
+would have been!
+
+One effort, one struggle more, and it seemed the steppe would have
+got the upper hand. But the unseen oppressive force gradually riveted
+its fetters on the wind and the air, laid the dust, and the stillness
+came back again as though nothing had happened, the cloud hid, the
+sun-baked hills frowned submissively, the air grew calm, and only
+somewhere the troubled lapwings wailed and lamented their destiny. . . .
+
+Soon after that the evening came on.
+
+III
+
+In the dusk of evening a big house of one storey, with a rusty iron
+roof and with dark windows, came into sight. This house was called
+a posting-inn, though it had nothing like a stableyard, and it stood
+in the middle of the steppe, with no kind of enclosure round it. A
+little to one side of it a wretched little cherry orchard shut in
+by a hurdle fence made a dark patch, and under the windows stood
+sleepy sunflowers drooping their heavy heads. From the orchard came
+the clatter of a little toy windmill, set there to frighten away
+hares by the rattle. Nothing more could be seen near the house, and
+nothing could be heard but the steppe. The chaise had scarcely
+stopped at the porch with an awning over it, when from the house
+there came the sound of cheerful voices, one a man's, another a
+woman's; there was the creak of a swing-door, and in a flash a tall
+gaunt figure, swinging its arms and fluttering its coat, was standing
+by the chaise. This was the innkeeper, Moisey Moisevitch, a man no
+longer young, with a very pale face and a handsome beard as black
+as charcoal. He was wearing a threadbare black coat, which hung
+flapping on his narrow shoulders as though on a hatstand, and
+fluttered its skirts like wings every time Moisey Moisevitch flung
+up his hands in delight or horror. Besides his coat the innkeeper
+was wearing full white trousers, not stuck into his boots, and a
+velvet waistcoat with brown flowers on it that looked like gigantic
+bugs.
+
+Moisey Moisevitch was at first dumb with excess of feeling on
+recognizing the travellers, then he clasped his hands and uttered
+a moan. His coat swung its skirts, his back bent into a bow, and
+his pale face twisted into a smile that suggested that to see the
+chaise was not merely a pleasure to him, but actually a joy so sweet
+as to be painful.
+
+"Oh dear! oh dear!" he began in a thin sing-song voice, breathless,
+fussing about and preventing the travellers from getting out of the
+chaise by his antics. "What a happy day for me! Oh, what am I to
+do now? Ivan Ivanitch! Father Christopher! What a pretty little
+gentleman sitting on the box, God strike me dead! Oh, my goodness!
+why am I standing here instead of asking the visitors indoors?
+Please walk in, I humbly beg you. . . . You are kindly welcome!
+Give me all your things. . . . Oh, my goodness me!"
+
+Moisey Moisevitch, who was rummaging in the chaise and assisting
+the travellers to alight, suddenly turned back and shouted in a
+voice as frantic and choking as though he were drowning and calling
+for help:
+
+"Solomon! Solomon!"
+
+"Solomon! Solomon!" a woman's voice repeated indoors.
+
+The swing-door creaked, and in the doorway appeared a rather short
+young Jew with a big beak-like nose, with a bald patch surrounded
+by rough red curly hair; he was dressed in a short and very shabby
+reefer jacket, with rounded lappets and short sleeves, and in short
+serge trousers, so that he looked skimpy and short-tailed like an
+unfledged bird. This was Solomon, the brother of Moisey Moisevitch.
+He went up to the chaise, smiling rather queerly, and did not speak
+or greet the travellers.
+
+"Ivan Ivanitch and Father Christopher have come," said Moisey
+Moisevitch in a tone as though he were afraid his brother would not
+believe him. "Dear, dear! What a surprise! Such honoured guests to
+have come us so suddenly! Come, take their things, Solomon. Walk
+in, honoured guests."
+
+A little later Kuzmitchov, Father Christopher, and Yegorushka were
+sitting in a big gloomy empty room at an old oak table. The table
+was almost in solitude, for, except a wide sofa covered with torn
+American leather and three chairs, there was no other furniture in
+the room. And, indeed, not everybody would have given the chairs
+that name. They were a pitiful semblance of furniture, covered with
+American leather that had seen its best days, and with backs bent
+backwards at an unnaturally acute angle, so that they looked like
+children's sledges. It was hard to imagine what had been the unknown
+carpenter's object in bending the chairbacks so mercilessly, and
+one was tempted to imagine that it was not the carpenter's fault,
+but that some athletic visitor had bent the chairs like this as a
+feat, then had tried to bend them back again and had made them
+worse. The room looked gloomy, the walls were grey, the ceilings
+and the cornices were grimy; on the floor were chinks and yawning
+holes that were hard to account for (one might have fancied they
+were made by the heel of the same athlete), and it seemed as though
+the room would still have been dark if a dozen lamps had hung in
+it. There was nothing approaching an ornament on the walls or the
+windows. On one wall, however, there hung a list of regulations of
+some sort under a two-headed eagle in a grey wooden frame, and on
+another wall in the same sort of frame an engraving with the
+inscription, "The Indifference of Man." What it was to which men
+were indifferent it was impossible to make out, as the engraving
+was very dingy with age and was extensively flyblown. There was a
+smell of something decayed and sour in the room.
+
+As he led the visitors into the room, Moisey Moisevitch went on
+wriggling, gesticulating, shrugging and uttering joyful exclamations;
+he considered these antics necessary in order to seem polite and
+agreeable.
+
+"When did our waggons go by?" Kuzmitchov asked.
+
+"One party went by early this morning, and the other, Ivan Ivanitch,
+put up here for dinner and went on towards evening."
+
+"Ah! . . . Has Varlamov been by or not?"
+
+"No, Ivan Ivanitch. His clerk, Grigory Yegoritch, went by yesterday
+morning and said that he had to be to-day at the Molokans' farm."
+
+"Good! so we will go after the waggons directly and then on to the
+Molokans'."
+
+"Mercy on us, Ivan Ivanitch!" Moisey Moisevitch cried in horror,
+flinging up his hands. "Where are you going for the night? You will
+have a nice little supper and stay the night, and to-morrow morning,
+please God, you can go on and overtake anyone you like."
+
+"There is no time for that. . . . Excuse me, Moisey Moisevitch,
+another time; but now I must make haste. We'll stay a quarter of
+an hour and then go on; we can stay the night at the Molokans'."
+
+"A quarter of an hour!" squealed Moisey Moisevitch. "Have you no
+fear of God, Ivan Ivanitch? You will compel me to hide your caps
+and lock the door! You must have a cup of tea and a snack of
+something, anyway."
+
+"We have no time for tea," said Kuzmitchov.
+
+Moisey Moisevitch bent his head on one side, crooked his knees, and
+put his open hands before him as though warding off a blow, while
+with a smile of agonized sweetness he began imploring:
+
+"Ivan Ivanitch! Father Christopher! Do be so good as to take a cup
+of tea with me. Surely I am not such a bad man that you can't even
+drink tea in my house? Ivan Ivanitch!"
+
+"Well, we may just as well have a cup of tea," said Father Christopher,
+with a sympathetic smile; "that won't keep us long."
+
+"Very well," Kuzmitchov assented.
+
+Moisey Moisevitch, in a fluster uttered an exclamation of joy, and
+shrugging as though he had just stepped out of cold weather into
+warm, ran to the door and cried in the same frantic voice in which
+he had called Solomon:
+
+"Rosa! Rosa! Bring the samovar!"
+
+A minute later the door opened, and Solomon came into the room
+carrying a large tray in his hands. Setting the tray on the table,
+he looked away sarcastically with the same queer smile as before.
+Now, by the light of the lamp, it was possible to see his smile
+distinctly; it was very complex, and expressed a variety of emotions,
+but the predominant element in it was undisguised contempt. He
+seemed to be thinking of something ludicrous and silly, to be feeling
+contempt and dislike, to be pleased at something and waiting for
+the favourable moment to turn something into ridicule and to burst
+into laughter. His long nose, his thick lips, and his sly prominent
+eyes seemed tense with the desire to laugh. Looking at his face,
+Kuzmitchov smiled ironically and asked:
+
+"Solomon, why did you not come to our fair at N. this summer, and
+act some Jewish scenes?"
+
+Two years before, as Yegorushka remembered very well, at one of the
+booths at the fair at N., Solomon had performed some scenes of
+Jewish life, and his acting had been a great success. The allusion
+to this made no impression whatever upon Solomon. Making no answer,
+he went out and returned a little later with the samovar.
+
+When he had done what he had to do at the table he moved a little
+aside, and, folding his arms over his chest and thrusting out one
+leg, fixed his sarcastic eyes on Father Christopher. There was
+something defiant, haughty, and contemptuous in his attitude, and
+at the same time it was comic and pitiful in the extreme, because
+the more impressive his attitude the more vividly it showed up his
+short trousers, his bobtail coat, his caricature of a nose, and his
+bird-like plucked-looking little figure.
+
+Moisey Moisevitch brought a footstool from the other room and sat
+down a little way from the table.
+
+"I wish you a good appetite! Tea and sugar!" he began, trying to
+entertain his visitors. "I hope you will enjoy it. Such rare guests,
+such rare ones; it is years since I last saw Father Christopher.
+And will no one tell me who is this nice little gentleman?" he
+asked, looking tenderly at Yegorushka.
+
+"He is the son of my sister, Olga Ivanovna," answered Kuzmitchov.
+
+"And where is he going?"
+
+"To school. We are taking him to a high school."
+
+In his politeness, Moisey Moisevitch put on a look of wonder and
+wagged his head expressively.
+
+"Ah, that is a fine thing," he said, shaking his finger at the
+samovar. "That's a fine thing. You will come back from the high
+school such a gentleman that we shall all take off our hats to you.
+You will be wealthy and wise and so grand that your mamma will be
+delighted. Oh, that's a fine thing!"
+
+He paused a little, stroked his knees, and began again in a jocose
+and deferential tone.
+
+"You must excuse me, Father Christopher, but I am thinking of writing
+to the bishop to tell him you are robbing the merchants of their
+living. I shall take a sheet of stamped paper and write that I
+suppose Father Christopher is short of pence, as he has taken up
+with trade and begun selling wool."
+
+"H'm, yes . . . it's a queer notion in my old age," said Father
+Christopher, and he laughed. "I have turned from priest to merchant,
+brother. I ought to be at home now saying my prayers, instead of
+galloping about the country like a Pharaoh in his chariot. . . .
+Vanity!"
+
+"But it will mean a lot of pence!"
+
+"Oh, I dare say! More kicks than halfpence, and serve me right. The
+wool's not mine, but my son-in-law Mikhail's!"
+
+"Why doesn't he go himself?"
+
+"Why, because . . . His mother's milk is scarcely dry upon his lips.
+He can buy wool all right, but when it comes to selling, he has no
+sense; he is young yet. He has wasted all his money; he wanted to
+grow rich and cut a dash, but he tried here and there, and no one
+would give him his price. And so the lad went on like that for a
+year, and then he came to me and said, 'Daddy, you sell the wool
+for me; be kind and do it! I am no good at the business!' And that
+is true enough. As soon as there is anything wrong then it's 'Daddy,'
+but till then they could get on without their dad. When he was
+buying he did not consult me, but now when he is in difficulties
+it's Daddy's turn. And what does his dad know about it? If it were
+not for Ivan Ivanitch, his dad could do nothing. I have a lot of
+worry with them."
+
+"Yes; one has a lot of worry with one's children, I can tell you
+that," sighed Moisey Moisevitch. "I have six of my own. One needs
+schooling, another needs doctoring, and a third needs nursing, and
+when they grow up they are more trouble still. It is not only
+nowadays, it was the same in Holy Scripture. When Jacob had little
+children he wept, and when they grew up he wept still more bitterly."
+
+"H'm, yes . . ." Father Christopher assented pensively, looking at
+his glass. "I have no cause myself to rail against the Lord. I have
+lived to the end of my days as any man might be thankful to live.
+. . . I have married my daughters to good men, my sons I have set
+up in life, and now I am free; I have done my work and can go where
+I like. I live in peace with my wife. I eat and drink and sleep and
+rejoice in my grandchildren, and say my prayers and want nothing
+more. I live on the fat of the land, and don't need to curry favour
+with anyone. I have never had any trouble from childhood, and now
+suppose the Tsar were to ask me, 'What do you need? What would you
+like?' why, I don't need anything. I have everything I want and
+everything to be thankful for. In the whole town there is no happier
+man than I am. My only trouble is I have so many sins, but there
+--only God is without sin. That's right, isn't it?"
+
+"No doubt it is."
+
+"I have no teeth, of course; my poor old back aches; there is one
+thing and another, . . . asthma and that sort of thing. . . . I
+ache. . . . The flesh is weak, but then think of my age! I am in
+the eighties! One can't go on for ever; one mustn't outstay one's
+welcome."
+
+Father Christopher suddenly thought of something, spluttered into
+his glass and choked with laughter. Moisey Moisevitch laughed, too,
+from politeness, and he, too, cleared his throat.
+
+"So funny!" said Father Christopher, and he waved his hand. "My
+eldest son Gavrila came to pay me a visit. He is in the medical
+line, and is a district doctor in the province of Tchernigov. . . .
+'Very well . . .' I said to him, 'here I have asthma and one thing
+and another. . . . You are a doctor; cure your father!' He undressed
+me on the spot, tapped me, listened, and all sorts of tricks, . . .
+kneaded my stomach, and then he said, 'Dad, you ought to be treated
+with compressed air.'" Father Christopher laughed convulsively,
+till the tears came into his eyes, and got up.
+
+"And I said to him, 'God bless your compressed air!'" he brought
+out through his laughter, waving both hands. "God bless your
+compressed air!"
+
+Moisey Moisevitch got up, too, and with his hands on his stomach,
+went off into shrill laughter like the yap of a lap-dog.
+
+"God bless the compressed air!" repeated Father Christopher, laughing.
+
+Moisey Moisevitch laughed two notes higher and so violently that
+he could hardly stand on his feet.
+
+"Oh dear!" he moaned through his laughter. "Let me get my breath
+. . . . You'll be the death of me."
+
+He laughed and talked, though at the same time he was casting
+timorous and suspicious looks at Solomon. The latter was standing
+in the same attitude and still smiling. To judge from his eyes and
+his smile, his contempt and hatred were genuine, but that was so
+out of keeping with his plucked-looking figure that it seemed to
+Yegorushka as though he were putting on his defiant attitude and
+biting sarcastic smile to play the fool for the entertainment of
+their honoured guests.
+
+After drinking six glasses of tea in silence, Kuzmitchov cleared a
+space before him on the table, took his bag, the one which he kept
+under his head when he slept under the chaise, untied the string
+and shook it. Rolls of paper notes were scattered out of the bag
+on the table.
+
+"While we have the time, Father Christopher, let us reckon up,"
+said Kuzmitchov.
+
+Moisey Moisevitch was embarrassed at the sight of the money. He got
+up, and, as a man of delicate feeling unwilling to pry into other
+people's secrets, he went out of the room on tiptoe, swaying his
+arms. Solomon remained where he was.
+
+"How many are there in the rolls of roubles?" Father Christopher
+began.
+
+"The rouble notes are done up in fifties, . . . the three-rouble
+notes in nineties, the twenty-five and hundred roubles in thousands.
+You count out seven thousand eight hundred for Varlamov, and I will
+count out for Gusevitch. And mind you don't make a mistake. . ."
+
+Yegorushka had never in his life seen so much money as was lying
+on the table before him. There must have been a great deal of money,
+for the roll of seven thousand eight hundred, which Father Christopher
+put aside for Varlamov, seemed very small compared with the whole
+heap. At any other time such a mass of money would have impressed
+Yegorushka, and would have moved him to reflect how many cracknels,
+buns and poppy-cakes could be bought for that money. Now he looked
+at it listlessly, only conscious of the disgusting smell of kerosene
+and rotten apples that came from the heap of notes. He was exhausted
+by the jolting ride in the chaise, tired out and sleepy. His head
+was heavy, his eyes would hardly keep open and his thoughts were
+tangled like threads. If it had been possible he would have been
+relieved to lay his head on the table, so as not to see the lamp
+and the fingers moving over the heaps of notes, and to have let his
+tired sleepy thoughts go still more at random. When he tried to
+keep awake, the light of the lamp, the cups and the fingers grew
+double, the samovar heaved and the smell of rotten apples seemed
+even more acrid and disgusting.
+
+"Ah, money, money!" sighed Father Christopher, smiling. "You bring
+trouble! Now I expect my Mihailo is asleep and dreaming that I am
+going to bring him a heap of money like this."
+
+"Your Mihailo Timofevitch is a man who doesn't understand business,"
+said Kuzmitchov in an undertone; "he undertakes what isn't his work,
+but you understand and can judge. You had better hand over your
+wool to me, as I have said already, and I would give you half a
+rouble above my own price--yes, I would, simply out of regard for
+you. . . ."
+
+"No, Ivan Ivanitch." Father Christopher sighed. "I thank you for
+your kindness. . . . Of course, if it were for me to decide, I
+shouldn't think twice about it; but as it is, the wool is not mine,
+as you know. . . ."
+
+Moisey Moisevitch came in on tiptoe. Trying from delicacy not to
+look at the heaps of money, he stole up to Yegorushka and pulled
+at his shirt from behind.
+
+"Come along, little gentleman," he said in an undertone, "come and
+see the little bear I can show you! Such a queer, cross little bear.
+Oo-oo!"
+
+The sleepy boy got up and listlessly dragged himself after Moisey
+Moisevitch to see the bear. He went into a little room, where,
+before he saw anything, he felt he could not breathe from the smell
+of something sour and decaying, which was much stronger here than
+in the big room and probably spread from this room all over the
+house. One part of the room was occupied by a big bed, covered with
+a greasy quilt and another by a chest of drawers and heaps of rags
+of all kinds from a woman's stiff petticoat to children's little
+breeches and braces. A tallow candle stood on the chest of drawers.
+
+Instead of the promised bear, Yegorushka saw a big fat Jewess with
+her hair hanging loose, in a red flannel skirt with black sprigs
+on it; she turned with difficulty in the narrow space between the
+bed and the chest of drawers and uttered drawn-out moaning as though
+she had toothache. On seeing Yegorushka, she made a doleful,
+woe-begone face, heaved a long drawn-out sigh, and before he had
+time to look round, put to his lips a slice of bread smeared with
+honey.
+
+"Eat it, dearie, eat it!" she said. "You are here without your
+mamma, and no one to look after you. Eat it up."
+
+Yegorushka did eat it, though after the goodies and poppy-cakes he
+had every day at home, he did not think very much of the honey,
+which was mixed with wax and bees' wings. He ate while Moisey
+Moisevitch and the Jewess looked at him and sighed.
+
+"Where are you going, dearie?" asked the Jewess.
+
+"To school," answered Yegorushka.
+
+"And how many brothers and sisters have you got?"
+
+"I am the only one; there are no others."
+
+"O-oh!" sighed the Jewess, and turned her eyes upward. "Poor mamma,
+poor mamma! How she will weep and miss you! We are going to send
+our Nahum to school in a year. O-oh!"
+
+"Ah, Nahum, Nahum!" sighed Moisey Moisevitch, and the skin of his
+pale face twitched nervously. "And he is so delicate."
+
+The greasy quilt quivered, and from beneath it appeared a child's
+curly head on a very thin neck; two black eyes gleamed and stared
+with curiosity at Yegorushka. Still sighing, Moisey Moisevitch and
+the Jewess went to the chest of drawers and began talking in Yiddish.
+Moisey Moisevitch spoke in a low bass undertone, and altogether his
+talk in Yiddish was like a continual "ghaal-ghaal-ghaal-ghaal, . . ."
+while his wife answered him in a shrill voice like a turkeycock's,
+and the whole effect of her talk was something like "Too-too-too-too!"
+While they were consulting, another little curly head on a thin
+neck peeped out of the greasy quilt, then a third, then a fourth.
+. . . If Yegorushka had had a fertile imagination he might have
+imagined that the hundred-headed hydra was hiding under the quilt.
+
+"Ghaal-ghaal-ghaal-ghaal!" said Moisey Moisevitch.
+
+"Too-too-too-too!" answered the Jewess.
+
+The consultation ended in the Jewess's diving with a deep sigh into
+the chest of drawers, and, unwrapping some sort of green rag there,
+she took out a big rye cake made in the shape of a heart.
+
+"Take it, dearie," she said, giving Yegorushka the cake; "you have
+no mamma now--no one to give you nice things."
+
+Yegorushka stuck the cake in his pocket and staggered to the door,
+as he could not go on breathing the foul, sour air in which the
+innkeeper and his wife lived. Going back to the big room, he settled
+himself more comfortably on the sofa and gave up trying to check
+his straying thoughts.
+
+As soon as Kuzmitchov had finished counting out the notes he put
+them back into the bag. He did not treat them very respectfully and
+stuffed them into the dirty sack without ceremony, as indifferently
+as though they had not been money but waste paper.
+
+Father Christopher was talking to Solomon.
+
+"Well, Solomon the Wise!" he said, yawning and making the sign of
+the cross over his mouth. "How is business?"
+
+"What sort of business are you talking about?" asked Solomon, and
+he looked as fiendish, as though it were a hint of some crime on
+his part.
+
+"Oh, things in general. What are you doing?"
+
+"What am I doing?" Solomon repeated, and he shrugged his shoulders.
+"The same as everyone else. . . . You see, I am a menial, I am my
+brother's servant; my brother's the servant of the visitors; the
+visitors are Varlamov's servants; and if I had ten millions, Varlamov
+would be my servant."
+
+"Why would he be your servant?"
+
+"Why, because there isn't a gentleman or millionaire who isn't ready
+to lick the hand of a scabby Jew for the sake of making a kopeck.
+Now, I am a scabby Jew and a beggar. Everybody looks at me as though
+I were a dog, but if I had money Varlamov would play the fool before
+me just as Moisey does before you."
+
+Father Christopher and Kuzmitchov looked at each other. Neither of
+them understood Solomon. Kuzmitchov looked at him sternly and dryly,
+and asked:
+
+"How can you compare yourself with Varlamov, you blockhead?"
+
+"I am not such a fool as to put myself on a level with Varlamov,"
+answered Solomon, looking sarcastically at the speaker. "Though
+Varlamov is a Russian, he is at heart a scabby Jew; money and gain
+are all he lives for, but I threw my money in the stove! I don't
+want money, or land, or sheep, and there is no need for people to
+be afraid of me and to take off their hats when I pass. So I am
+wiser than your Varlamov and more like a man!"
+
+A little later Yegorushka, half asleep, heard Solomon in a hoarse
+hollow voice choked with hatred, in hurried stuttering phrases,
+talking about the Jews. At first he talked correctly in Russian,
+then he fell into the tone of a Jewish recitation, and began speaking
+as he had done at the fair with an exaggerated Jewish accent.
+
+"Stop! . . ." Father Christopher said to him. "If you don't like
+your religion you had better change it, but to laugh at it is a
+sin; it is only the lowest of the low who will make fun of his
+religion."
+
+"You don't understand," Solomon cut him short rudely. "I am talking
+of one thing and you are talking of something else. . . ."
+
+"One can see you are a foolish fellow," sighed Father Christopher.
+"I admonish you to the best of my ability, and you are angry. I
+speak to you like an old man quietly, and you answer like a turkeycock:
+'Bla---bla---bla!' You really are a queer fellow. . . ."
+
+Moisey Moisevitch came in. He looked anxiously at Solomon and at
+his visitors, and again the skin on his face quivered nervously.
+Yegorushka shook his head and looked about him; he caught a passing
+glimpse of Solomon's face at the very moment when it was turned
+three-quarters towards him and when the shadow of his long nose
+divided his left cheek in half; the contemptuous smile mingled with
+that shadow; the gleaming sarcastic eyes, the haughty expression,
+and the whole plucked-looking little figure, dancing and doubling
+itself before Yegorushka's eyes, made him now not like a buffoon,
+but like something one sometimes dreams of, like an evil spirit.
+
+"What a ferocious fellow you've got here, Moisey Moisevitch! God
+bless him!" said Father Christopher with a smile. "You ought to
+find him a place or a wife or something. . . . There's no knowing
+what to make of him. . . ."
+
+Kuzmitchov frowned angrily. Moisey Moisevitch looked uneasily and
+inquiringly at his brother and the visitors again.
+
+"Solomon, go away!" he said shortly. "Go away!" and he added something
+in Yiddish. Solomon gave an abrupt laugh and went out.
+
+"What was it?" Moisey Moisevitch asked Father Christopher anxiously.
+
+"He forgets himself," answered Kuzmitchov. "He's rude and thinks
+too much of himself."
+
+"I knew it!" Moisey Moisevitch cried in horror, clasping his hands.
+"Oh dear, oh dear!" he muttered in a low voice. "Be so kind as to
+excuse it, and don't be angry. He is such a queer fellow, such a
+queer fellow! Oh dear, oh dear! He is my own brother, but I have
+never had anything but trouble from him. You know he's. . ."
+
+Moisey Moisevitch crooked his finger by his forehead and went on:
+
+"He is not in his right mind; . . . he's hopeless. And I don't know
+what I am to do with him! He cares for nobody, he respects nobody,
+and is afraid of nobody. . . . You know he laughs at everybody, he
+says silly things, speaks familiarly to anyone. You wouldn't believe
+it, Varlamov came here one day and Solomon said such things to him
+that he gave us both a taste of his whip. . . . But why whip me?
+Was it my fault? God has robbed him of his wits, so it is God's
+will, and how am I to blame?"
+
+Ten minutes passed and Moisey Moisevitch was still muttering in an
+undertone and sighing:
+
+"He does not sleep at night, and is always thinking and thinking
+and thinking, and what he is thinking about God only knows. If you
+go to him at night he is angry and laughs. He doesn't like me either
+. . . . And there is nothing he wants! When our father died he left
+us each six thousand roubles. I bought myself an inn, married, and
+now I have children; and he burnt all his money in the stove. Such
+a pity, such a pity! Why burn it? If he didn't want it he could
+give it to me, but why burn it?"
+
+Suddenly the swing-door creaked and the floor shook under footsteps.
+Yegorushka felt a draught of cold air, and it seemed to him as
+though some big black bird had passed by him and had fluttered its
+wings close in his face. He opened his eyes. . . . His uncle was
+standing by the sofa with his sack in his hands ready for departure;
+Father Christopher, holding his broad-brimmed top-hat, was bowing
+to someone and smiling--not his usual soft kindly smile, but a
+respectful forced smile which did not suit his face at all--while
+Moisey Moisevitch looked as though his body had been broken into
+three parts, and he were balancing and doing his utmost not to drop
+to pieces. Only Solomon stood in the corner with his arms folded,
+as though nothing had happened, and smiled contemptuously as before.
+
+"Your Excellency must excuse us for not being tidy," moaned Moisey
+Moisevitch with the agonizingly sweet smile, taking no more notice
+of Kuzmitchov or Father Christopher, but swaying his whole person
+so as to avoid dropping to pieces. "We are plain folks, your
+Excellency."
+
+Yegorushka rubbed his eyes. In the middle of the room there really
+was standing an Excellency, in the form of a young plump and very
+beautiful woman in a black dress and a straw hat. Before Yegorushka
+had time to examine her features the image of the solitary graceful
+poplar he had seen that day on the hill for some reason came into
+his mind.
+
+"Has Varlamov been here to-day?" a woman's voice inquired.
+
+"No, your Excellency," said Moisey Moisevitch.
+
+"If you see him to-morrow, ask him to come and see me for a minute."
+
+All at once, quite unexpectedly, Yegorushka saw half an inch from
+his eyes velvety black eyebrows, big brown eyes, delicate feminine
+cheeks with dimples, from which smiles seemed radiating all over
+the face like sunbeams. There was a glorious scent.
+
+"What a pretty boy!" said the lady. "Whose boy is it? Kazimir
+Mihalovitch, look what a charming fellow! Good heavens, he is
+asleep!"
+
+And the lady kissed Yegorushka warmly on both cheeks, and he smiled
+and, thinking he was asleep, shut his eyes. The swing-door squeaked,
+and there was the sound of hurried footsteps, coming in and going
+out.
+
+"Yegorushka, Yegorushka!" he heard two bass voices whisper. "Get
+up; it is time to start."
+
+Somebody, it seemed to be Deniska, set him on his feet and led him
+by the arm. On the way he half-opened his eyes and once more saw
+the beautiful lady in the black dress who had kissed him. She was
+standing in the middle of the room and watched him go out, smiling
+at him and nodding her head in a friendly way. As he got near the
+door he saw a handsome, stoutly built, dark man in a bowler hat and
+in leather gaiters. This must have been the lady's escort.
+
+"Woa!" he heard from the yard.
+
+At the front door Yegorushka saw a splendid new carriage and a pair
+of black horses. On the box sat a groom in livery, with a long whip
+in his hands. No one but Solomon came to see the travellers off.
+His face was tense with a desire to laugh; he looked as though he
+were waiting impatiently for the visitors to be gone, so that he
+might laugh at them without restraint.
+
+"The Countess Dranitsky," whispered Father Christopher, clambering
+into the chaise.
+
+"Yes, Countess Dranitsky," repeated Kuzmitchov, also in a whisper.
+
+The impression made by the arrival of the countess was probably
+very great, for even Deniska spoke in a whisper, and only ventured
+to lash his bays and shout when the chaise had driven a quarter of
+a mile away and nothing could be seen of the inn but a dim light.
+
+IV
+
+Who was this elusive, mysterious Varlamov of whom people talked so
+much, whom Solomon despised, and whom even the beautiful countess
+needed? Sitting on the box beside Deniska, Yegorushka, half asleep,
+thought about this person. He had never seen him. But he had often
+heard of him and pictured him in his imagination. He knew that
+Varlamov possessed several tens of thousands of acres of land, about
+a hundred thousand sheep, and a great deal of money. Of his manner
+of life and occupation Yegorushka knew nothing, except that he was
+always "going his rounds in these parts," and he was always being
+looked for.
+
+At home Yegorushka had heard a great deal of the Countess Dranitsky,
+too. She, too, had some tens of thousands of acres, a great many
+sheep, a stud farm and a great deal of money, but she did not "go
+rounds," but lived at home in a splendid house and grounds, about
+which Ivan Ivanitch, who had been more than once at the countess's
+on business, and other acquaintances told many marvellous tales;
+thus, for instance, they said that in the countess's drawing-room,
+where the portraits of all the kings of Poland hung on the walls,
+there was a big table-clock in the form of a rock, on the rock a
+gold horse with diamond eyes, rearing, and on the horse the figure
+of a rider also of gold, who brandished his sword to right and to
+left whenever the clock struck. They said, too, that twice a year
+the countess used to give a ball, to which the gentry and officials
+of the whole province were invited, and to which even Varlamov used
+to come; all the visitors drank tea from silver samovars, ate all
+sorts of extraordinary things (they had strawberries and raspberries,
+for instance, in winter at Christmas), and danced to a band which
+played day and night. . . .
+
+"And how beautiful she is," thought Yegorushka, remembering her
+face and smile.
+
+Kuzmitchov, too, was probably thinking about the countess. For when
+the chaise had driven a mile and a half he said:
+
+"But doesn't that Kazimir Mihalovitch plunder her right and left!
+The year before last when, do you remember, I bought some wool from
+her, he made over three thousand from my purchase alone."
+
+"That is just what you would expect from a Pole," said Father
+Christopher.
+
+"And little does it trouble her. Young and foolish, as they say,
+her head is full of nonsense."
+
+Yegorushka, for some reason, longed to think of nothing but Varlamov
+and the countess, particularly the latter. His drowsy brain utterly
+refused ordinary thoughts, was in a cloud and retained only fantastic
+fairy-tale images, which have the advantage of springing into the
+brain of themselves without any effort on the part of the thinker,
+and completely vanishing of themselves at a mere shake of the head;
+and, indeed, nothing that was around him disposed to ordinary
+thoughts. On the right there were the dark hills which seemed to
+be screening something unseen and terrible; on the left the whole
+sky about the horizon was covered with a crimson glow, and it was
+hard to tell whether there was a fire somewhere, or whether it was
+the moon about to rise. As by day the distance could be seen, but
+its tender lilac tint had gone, quenched by the evening darkness,
+in which the whole steppe was hidden like Moisey Moisevitch's
+children under the quilt.
+
+Corncrakes and quails do not call in the July nights, the nightingale
+does not sing in the woodland marsh, and there is no scent of
+flowers, but still the steppe is lovely and full of life. As soon
+as the sun goes down and the darkness enfolds the earth, the day's
+weariness is forgotten, everything is forgiven, and the steppe
+breathes a light sigh from its broad bosom. As though because the
+grass cannot see in the dark that it has grown old, a gay youthful
+twitter rises up from it, such as is not heard by day; chirruping,
+twittering, whistling, scratching, the basses, tenors and sopranos
+of the steppe all mingle in an incessant, monotonous roar of sound
+in which it is sweet to brood on memories and sorrows. The monotonous
+twitter soothes to sleep like a lullaby; you drive and feel you are
+falling asleep, but suddenly there comes the abrupt agitated cry
+of a wakeful bird, or a vague sound like a voice crying out in
+wonder "A-ah, a-ah!" and slumber closes one's eyelids again. Or you
+drive by a little creek where there are bushes and hear the bird,
+called by the steppe dwellers "the sleeper," call "Asleep, asleep,
+asleep!" while another laughs or breaks into trills of hysterical
+weeping--that is the owl. For whom do they call and who hears
+them on that plain, God only knows, but there is deep sadness and
+lamentation in their cry. . . . There is a scent of hay and dry
+grass and belated flowers, but the scent is heavy, sweetly mawkish
+and soft.
+
+Everything can be seen through the mist, but it is hard to make out
+the colours and the outlines of objects. Everything looks different
+from what it is. You drive on and suddenly see standing before you
+right in the roadway a dark figure like a monk; it stands motionless,
+waiting, holding something in its hands. . . . Can it be a robber?
+The figure comes closer, grows bigger; now it is on a level with
+the chaise, and you see it is not a man, but a solitary bush or a
+great stone. Such motionless expectant figures stand on the low
+hills, hide behind the old barrows, peep out from the high grass,
+and they all look like human beings and arouse suspicion.
+
+And when the moon rises the night becomes pale and dim. The mist
+seems to have passed away. The air is transparent, fresh and warm;
+one can see well in all directions and even distinguish the separate
+stalks of grass by the wayside. Stones and bits of pots can be seen
+at a long distance. The suspicious figures like monks look blacker
+against the light background of the night, and seem more sinister.
+More and more often in the midst of the monotonous chirruping there
+comes the sound of the "A-ah, a-ah!" of astonishment troubling the
+motionless air, and the cry of a sleepless or delirious bird. Broad
+shadows move across the plain like clouds across the sky, and in
+the inconceivable distance, if you look long and intently at it,
+misty monstrous shapes rise up and huddle one against another. . . .
+It is rather uncanny. One glances at the pale green, star-spangled
+sky on which there is no cloudlet, no spot, and understands why the
+warm air is motionless, why nature is on her guard, afraid to stir:
+she is afraid and reluctant to lose one instant of life. Of the
+unfathomable depth and infinity of the sky one can only form a
+conception at sea and on the steppe by night when the moon is
+shining. It is terribly lonely and caressing; it looks down languid
+and alluring, and its caressing sweetness makes one giddy.
+
+You drive on for one hour, for a second. . . . You meet upon the
+way a silent old barrow or a stone figure put up God knows when and
+by whom; a nightbird floats noiselessly over the earth, and little
+by little those legends of the steppes, the tales of men you have
+met, the stories of some old nurse from the steppe, and all the
+things you have managed to see and treasure in your soul, come back
+to your mind. And then in the churring of insects, in the sinister
+figures, in the ancient barrows, in the blue sky, in the moonlight,
+in the flight of the nightbird, in everything you see and hear,
+triumphant beauty, youth, the fulness of power, and the passionate
+thirst for life begin to be apparent; the soul responds to the call
+of her lovely austere fatherland, and longs to fly over the steppes
+with the nightbird. And in the triumph of beauty, in the exuberance
+of happiness you are conscious of yearning and grief, as though the
+steppe knew she was solitary, knew that her wealth and her inspiration
+were wasted for the world, not glorified in song, not wanted by
+anyone; and through the joyful clamour one hears her mournful,
+hopeless call for singers, singers!
+
+"Woa! Good-evening, Panteley! Is everything all right?"
+
+"First-rate, Ivan Ivanitch!
+
+"Haven't you seen Varlamov, lads?"
+
+"No, we haven't."
+
+Yegorushka woke up and opened his eyes. The chaise had stopped. On
+the right the train of waggons stretched for a long way ahead on
+the road, and men were moving to and fro near them. All the waggons
+being loaded up with great bales of wool looked very high and fat,
+while the horses looked short-legged and little.
+
+"Well, then, we shall go on to the Molokans'!" Kuzmitchov said
+aloud. "The Jew told us that Varlamov was putting up for the night
+at the Molokans'. So good-bye, lads! Good luck to you!"
+
+"Good-bye, Ivan Ivanitch," several voices replied.
+
+"I say, lads," Kuzmitchov cried briskly, "you take my little lad
+along with you! Why should he go jolting off with us for nothing?
+You put him on the bales, Panteley, and let him come on slowly, and
+we shall overtake you. Get down, Yegor! Go on; it's all right. . . ."
+
+Yegorushka got down from the box-seat. Several hands caught him,
+lifted him high into the air, and he found himself on something
+big, soft, and rather wet with dew. It seemed to him now as though
+the sky were quite close and the earth far away.
+
+"Hey, take his little coat!" Deniska shouted from somewhere far
+below.
+
+His coat and bundle flung up from far below fell close to Yegorushka.
+Anxious not to think of anything, he quickly put his bundle under
+his head and covered himself with his coat, and stretching his legs
+out and shrinking a little from the dew, he laughed with content.
+
+"Sleep, sleep, sleep, . . ." he thought.
+
+"Don't be unkind to him, you devils!" he heard Deniska's voice
+below.
+
+"Good-bye, lads; good luck to you," shouted Kuzmitchov. "I rely
+upon you!"
+
+"Don't you be uneasy, Ivan Ivanitch!"
+
+Deniska shouted to the horses, the chaise creaked and started, not
+along the road, but somewhere off to the side. For two minutes there
+was silence, as though the waggons were asleep and there was no
+sound except the clanking of the pails tied on at the back of the
+chaise as it slowly died away in the distance. Then someone at the
+head of the waggons shouted:
+
+"Kiruha! Sta-art!"
+
+The foremost of the waggons creaked, then the second, then the
+third. . . . Yegorushka felt the waggon he was on sway and creak
+also. The waggons were moving. Yegorushka took a tighter hold of
+the cord with which the bales were tied on, laughed again with
+content, shifted the cake in his pocket, and fell asleep just as
+he did in his bed at home. . . .
+
+When he woke up the sun had risen, it was screened by an ancient
+barrow, and, trying to shed its light upon the earth, it scattered
+its beams in all directions and flooded the horizon with gold. It
+seemed to Yegorushka that it was not in its proper place, as the
+day before it had risen behind his back, and now it was much more
+to his left. . . . And the whole landscape was different. There
+were no hills now, but on all sides, wherever one looked, there
+stretched the brown cheerless plain; here and there upon it small
+barrows rose up and rooks flew as they had done the day before. The
+belfries and huts of some village showed white in the distance
+ahead; as it was Sunday the Little Russians were at home baking and
+cooking--that could be seen by the smoke which rose from every
+chimney and hung, a dark blue transparent veil, over the village.
+In between the huts and beyond the church there were blue glimpses
+of a river, and beyond the river a misty distance. But nothing was
+so different from yesterday as the road. Something extraordinarily
+broad, spread out and titanic, stretched over the steppe by way of
+a road. It was a grey streak well trodden down and covered with
+dust, like all roads. Its width puzzled Yegorushka and brought
+thoughts of fairy tales to his mind. Who travelled along that road?
+Who needed so much space? It was strange and unintelligible. It
+might have been supposed that giants with immense strides, such as
+Ilya Muromets and Solovy the Brigand, were still surviving in Russia,
+and that their gigantic steeds were still alive. Yegorushka, looking
+at the road, imagined some half a dozen high chariots racing along
+side by side, like some he used to see in pictures in his Scripture
+history; these chariots were each drawn by six wild furious horses,
+and their great wheels raised a cloud of dust to the sky, while the
+horses were driven by men such as one may see in one's dreams or
+in imagination brooding over fairy tales. And if those figures had
+existed, how perfectly in keeping with the steppe and the road they
+would have been!
+
+Telegraph-poles with two wires on them stretched along the right
+side of the road to its furthermost limit. Growing smaller and
+smaller they disappeared near the village behind the huts and green
+trees, and then again came into sight in the lilac distance in the
+form of very small thin sticks that looked like pencils stuck into
+the ground. Hawks, falcons, and crows sat on the wires and looked
+indifferently at the moving waggons.
+
+Yegorushka was lying in the last of the waggons, and so could see
+the whole string. There were about twenty waggons, and there was a
+driver to every three waggons. By the last waggon, the one in which
+Yegorushka was, there walked an old man with a grey beard, as short
+and lean as Father Christopher, but with a sunburnt, stern and
+brooding face. It is very possible that the old man was not stern
+and not brooding, but his red eyelids and his sharp long nose gave
+his face a stern frigid expression such as is common with people
+in the habit of continually thinking of serious things in solitude.
+Like Father Christopher he was wearing a wide-brimmed top-hat, not
+like a gentleman's, but made of brown felt, and in shape more like
+a cone with the top cut off than a real top-hat. Probably from a
+habit acquired in cold winters, when he must more than once have
+been nearly frozen as he trudged beside the waggons, he kept slapping
+his thighs and stamping with his feet as he walked. Noticing that
+Yegorushka was awake, he looked at him and said, shrugging his
+shoulders as though from the cold:
+
+"Ah, you are awake, youngster! So you are the son of Ivan Ivanitch?"
+
+"No; his nephew. . . ."
+
+"Nephew of Ivan Ivanitch? Here I have taken off my boots and am
+hopping along barefoot. My feet are bad; they are swollen, and it's
+easier without my boots . . . easier, youngster . . . without boots,
+I mean. . . . So you are his nephew? He is a good man; no harm in
+him. . . . God give him health. . . . No harm in him . . . I mean
+Ivan Ivanitch. . . . He has gone to the Molokans'. . . . O Lord,
+have mercy upon us!"
+
+The old man talked, too, as though it were very cold, pausing and
+not opening his mouth properly; and he mispronounced the labial
+consonants, stuttering over them as though his lips were frozen.
+As he talked to Yegorushka he did not once smile, and he seemed
+stern.
+
+Two waggons ahead of them there walked a man wearing a long
+reddish-brown coat, a cap and high boots with sagging bootlegs and
+carrying a whip in his hand. This was not an old man, only about
+forty. When he looked round Yegorushka saw a long red face with a
+scanty goat-beard and a spongy looking swelling under his right
+eye. Apart from this very ugly swelling, there was another peculiar
+thing about him which caught the eye at once: in his left hand he
+carried a whip, while he waved the right as though he were conducting
+an unseen choir; from time to time he put the whip under his arm,
+and then he conducted with both hands and hummed something to
+himself.
+
+The next driver was a long rectilinear figure with extremely sloping
+shoulders and a back as flat as a board. He held himself as stiffly
+erect as though he were marching or had swallowed a yard measure.
+His hands did not swing as he walked, but hung down as if they were
+straight sticks, and he strode along in a wooden way, after the
+manner of toy soldiers, almost without bending his knees, and trying
+to take as long steps as possible. While the old man or the owner
+of the spongy swelling were taking two steps he succeeded in taking
+only one, and so it seemed as though he were walking more slowly
+than any of them, and would drop behind. His face was tied up in a
+rag, and on his head something stuck up that looked like a monk's
+peaked cap; he was dressed in a short Little Russian coat, with
+full dark blue trousers and bark shoes.
+
+Yegorushka did not even distinguish those that were farther on. He
+lay on his stomach, picked a little hole in the bale, and, having
+nothing better to do, began twisting the wool into a thread. The
+old man trudging along below him turned out not to be so stern as
+one might have supposed from his face. Having begun a conversation,
+he did not let it drop.
+
+"Where are you going?" he asked, stamping with his feet.
+
+"To school," answered Yegorushka.
+
+"To school? Aha! . . . Well, may the Queen of Heaven help you. Yes.
+One brain is good, but two are better. To one man God gives one
+brain, to another two brains, and to another three. . . . To another
+three, that is true. . . . One brain you are born with, one you get
+from learning, and a third with a good life. So you see, my lad,
+it is a good thing if a man has three brains. Living is easier for
+him, and, what's more, dying is, too. Dying is, too. . . . And we
+shall all die for sure."
+
+The old man scratched his forehead, glanced upwards at Yegorushka
+with his red eyes, and went on:
+
+"Maxim Nikolaitch, the gentleman from Slavyanoserbsk, brought a
+little lad to school, too, last year. I don't know how he is getting
+on there in studying the sciences, but he was a nice good little
+lad. . . . God give them help, they are nice gentlemen. Yes, he,
+too, brought his boy to school. . . . In Slavyanoserbsk there is
+no establishment, I suppose, for study. No. . . . But it is a nice
+town. . . . There's an ordinary school for simple folks, but for
+the higher studies there is nothing. No, that's true. What's your
+name? . . ."
+
+"Yegorushka."
+
+"Yegory, then. . . . The holy martyr Yegory, the Bearer of Victory,
+whose day is the twenty-third of April. And my christian name is
+Panteley, . . . Panteley Zaharov Holodov. . . . We are Holodovs
+. . . . I am a native of--maybe you've heard of it--Tim in the
+province of Kursk. My brothers are artisans and work at trades in
+the town, but I am a peasant. . . . I have remained a peasant. Seven
+years ago I went there--home, I mean. I went to the village and
+to the town. . . . To Tim, I mean. Then, thank God, they were all
+alive and well; . . . but now I don't know. . . . Maybe some of
+them are dead. . . . And it's time they did die, for some of them
+are older than I am. Death is all right; it is good so long, of
+course, as one does not die without repentance. There is no worse
+evil than an impenitent death; an impenitent death is a joy to the
+devil. And if you want to die penitent, so that you may not be
+forbidden to enter the mansions of the Lord, pray to the holy martyr
+Varvara. She is the intercessor. She is, that's the truth. . . .
+For God has given her such a place in the heavens that everyone has
+the right to pray to her for penitence."
+
+Panteley went on muttering, and apparently did not trouble whether
+Yegorushka heard him or not. He talked listlessly, mumbling to
+himself, without raising or dropping his voice, but succeeded in
+telling him a great deal in a short time. All he said was made up
+of fragments that had very little connection with one another, and
+quite uninteresting for Yegorushka. Possibly he talked only in order
+to reckon over his thoughts aloud after the night spent in silence,
+in order to see if they were all there. After talking of repentance,
+he spoke about a certain Maxim Nikolaitch from Slavyanoserbsk.
+
+"Yes, he took his little lad; . . . he took him, that's true . . ."
+
+One of the waggoners walking in front darted from his place, ran
+to one side and began lashing on the ground with his whip. He was
+a stalwart, broad-shouldered man of thirty, with curly flaxen hair
+and a look of great health and vigour. Judging from the movements
+of his shoulders and the whip, and the eagerness expressed in his
+attitude, he was beating something alive. Another waggoner, a short
+stubby little man with a bushy black beard, wearing a waistcoat and
+a shirt outside his trousers, ran up to him. The latter broke into
+a deep guffaw of laughter and coughing and said: "I say, lads, Dymov
+has killed a snake!"
+
+There are people whose intelligence can be gauged at once by their
+voice and laughter. The man with the black beard belonged to that
+class of fortunate individuals; impenetrable stupidity could be
+felt in his voice and laugh. The flaxen-headed Dymov had finished,
+and lifting from the ground with his whip something like a cord,
+flung it with a laugh into the cart.
+
+"That's not a viper; it's a grass snake!" shouted someone.
+
+The man with the wooden gait and the bandage round his face strode
+up quickly to the dead snake, glanced at it and flung up his
+stick-like arms.
+
+"You jail-bird!" he cried in a hollow wailing voice. "What have you
+killed a grass snake for? What had he done to you, you damned brute?
+Look, he has killed a grass snake; how would you like to be treated
+so?"
+
+"Grass snakes ought not to be killed, that's true," Panteley muttered
+placidly, "they ought not. . . They are not vipers; though it looks
+like a snake, it is a gentle, innocent creature. . . . It's friendly
+to man, the grass snake is."
+
+Dymov and the man with the black beard were probably ashamed, for
+they laughed loudly, and not answering, slouched lazily back to
+their waggons. When the hindmost waggon was level with the spot
+where the dead snake lay, the man with his face tied up standing
+over it turned to Panteley and asked in a tearful voice:
+
+"Grandfather, what did he want to kill the grass snake for?"
+
+His eyes, as Yegorushka saw now, were small and dingy looking; his
+face was grey, sickly and looked somehow dingy too while his chin
+was red and seemed very much swollen.
+
+"Grandfather, what did he kill it for?" he repeated, striding along
+beside Panteley.
+
+"A stupid fellow. His hands itch to kill, and that is why he does
+it," answered the old man; "but he oughtn't to kill a grass snake,
+that's true. . . . Dymov is a ruffian, we all know, he kills
+everything he comes across, and Kiruha did not interfere. He ought
+to have taken its part, but instead of that, he goes off into
+'Ha-ha-ha!' and 'Ho-ho-ho!' . . . But don't be angry, Vassya. . . .
+Why be angry? They've killed it--well, never mind them. Dymov
+is a ruffian and Kiruha acted from foolishness--never mind. . . .
+They are foolish people without understanding--but there, don't
+mind them. Emelyan here never touches what he shouldn't; he never
+does; . . . that is true, . . . because he is a man of education,
+while they are stupid. . . . Emelyan, he doesn't touch things."
+
+The waggoner in the reddish-brown coat and the spongy swelling on
+his face, who was conducting an unseen choir, stopped. Hearing his
+name, and waiting till Panteley and Vassya came up to him, he walked
+beside them.
+
+"What are you talking about?" he asked in a husky muffled voice.
+
+"Why, Vassya here is angry," said Panteley. "So I have been saying
+things to him to stop his being angry. . . . Oh, how my swollen
+feet hurt! Oh, oh! They are more inflamed than ever for Sunday,
+God's holy day!"
+
+"It's from walking," observed Vassya.
+
+"No, lad, no. It's not from walking. When I walk it seems easier;
+when I lie down and get warm, . . . it's deadly. Walking is easier
+for me."
+
+Emelyan, in his reddish-brown coat, walked between Panteley and
+Vassya and waved his arms, as though they were going to sing. After
+waving them a little while he dropped them, and croaked out hopelessly:
+
+"I have no voice. It's a real misfortune. All last night and this
+morning I have been haunted by the trio 'Lord, have Mercy' that we
+sang at the wedding at Marionovsky's. It's in my head and in my
+throat. It seems as though I could sing it, but I can't; I have no
+voice."
+
+He paused for a minute, thinking, then went on:
+
+"For fifteen years I was in the choir. In all the Lugansky works
+there was, maybe, no one with a voice like mine. But, confound it,
+I bathed two years ago in the Donets, and I can't get a single note
+true ever since. I took cold in my throat. And without a voice I
+am like a workman without hands."
+
+"That's true," Panteley agreed.
+
+"I think of myself as a ruined man and nothing more."
+
+At that moment Vassya chanced to catch sight of Yegorushka. His
+eyes grew moist and smaller than ever.
+
+"There's a little gentleman driving with us," and he covered his
+nose with his sleeve as though he were bashful. "What a grand driver!
+Stay with us and you shall drive the waggons and sell wool."
+
+The incongruity of one person being at once a little gentleman and
+a waggon driver seemed to strike him as very queer and funny, for
+he burst into a loud guffaw, and went on enlarging upon the idea.
+Emelyan glanced upwards at Yegorushka, too, but coldly and cursorily.
+He was absorbed in his own thoughts, and had it not been for Vassya,
+would not have noticed Yegorushka's presence. Before five minutes
+had passed he was waving his arms again, then describing to his
+companions the beauties of the wedding anthem, "Lord, have Mercy,"
+which he had remembered in the night. He put the whip under his arm
+and waved both hands.
+
+A mile from the village the waggons stopped by a well with a crane.
+Letting his pail down into the well, black-bearded Kiruha lay on
+his stomach on the framework and thrust his shaggy head, his
+shoulders, and part of his chest into the black hole, so that
+Yegorushka could see nothing but his short legs, which scarcely
+touched the ground. Seeing the reflection of his head far down at
+the bottom of the well, he was delighted and went off into his deep
+bass stupid laugh, and the echo from the well answered him. When
+he got up his neck and face were as red as beetroot. The first to
+run up and drink was Dymov. He drank laughing, often turning from
+the pail to tell Kiruha something funny, then he turned round, and
+uttered aloud, to be heard all over the steppe, five very bad words.
+Yegorushka did not understand the meaning of such words, but he
+knew very well they were bad words. He knew the repulsion his friends
+and relations silently felt for such words. He himself, without
+knowing why, shared that feeling and was accustomed to think that
+only drunk and disorderly people enjoy the privilege of uttering
+such words aloud. He remembered the murder of the grass snake,
+listened to Dymov's laughter, and felt something like hatred for
+the man. And as ill-luck would have it, Dymov at that moment caught
+sight of Yegorushka, who had climbed down from the waggon and gone
+up to the well. He laughed aloud and shouted:
+
+"I say, lads, the old man has been brought to bed of a boy in the
+night!"
+
+Kiruha laughed his bass laugh till he coughed. Someone else laughed
+too, while Yegorushka crimsoned and made up his mind finally that
+Dymov was a very wicked man.
+
+With his curly flaxen head, with his shirt opened on his chest and
+no hat on, Dymov looked handsome and exceptionally strong; in every
+movement he made one could see the reckless dare-devil and athlete,
+knowing his value. He shrugged his shoulders, put his arms akimbo,
+talked and laughed louder than any of the rest, and looked as though
+he were going to lift up something very heavy with one hand and
+astonish the whole world by doing so. His mischievous mocking eyes
+glided over the road, the waggons, and the sky without resting on
+anything, and seemed looking for someone to kill, just as a pastime,
+and something to laugh at. Evidently he was afraid of no one, would
+stick at nothing, and most likely was not in the least interested
+in Yegorushka's opinion of him. . . . Yegorushka meanwhile hated
+his flaxen head, his clear face, and his strength with his whole
+heart, listened with fear and loathing to his laughter, and kept
+thinking what word of abuse he could pay him out with.
+
+Panteley, too, went up to the pail. He took out of his pocket a
+little green glass of an ikon lamp, wiped it with a rag, filled it
+from the pail and drank from it, then filled it again, wrapped the
+little glass in the rag, and then put it back into his pocket.
+
+"Grandfather, why do you drink out of a lamp?" Yegorushka asked
+him, surprised.
+
+"One man drinks out of a pail and another out of a lamp," the old
+man answered evasively. "Every man to his own taste. . . . You drink
+out of the pail--well, drink, and may it do you good. . . ."
+
+"You darling, you beauty!" Vassya said suddenly, in a caressing,
+plaintive voice. "You darling!"
+
+His eyes were fixed on the distance; they were moist and smiling,
+and his face wore the same expression as when he had looked at
+Yegorushka.
+
+"Who is it you are talking to?" asked Kiruha.
+
+"A darling fox, . . . lying on her back, playing like a dog."
+
+Everyone began staring into the distance, looking for the fox, but
+no one could see it, only Vassya with his grey muddy-looking eyes,
+and he was enchanted by it. His sight was extraordinarily keen, as
+Yegorushka learnt afterwards. He was so long-sighted that the brown
+steppe was for him always full of life and interest. He had only
+to look into the distance to see a fox, a hare, a bustard, or some
+other animal keeping at a distance from men. There was nothing
+strange in seeing a hare running away or a flying bustard--everyone
+crossing the steppes could see them; but it was not vouchsafed to
+everyone to see wild animals in their own haunts when they were not
+running nor hiding, nor looking about them in alarm. Yet Vassya saw
+foxes playing, hares washing themselves with their paws, bustards
+preening their wings and hammering out their hollow nests. Thanks
+to this keenness of sight, Vassya had, besides the world seen by
+everyone, another world of his own, accessible to no one else, and
+probably a very beautiful one, for when he saw something and was
+in raptures over it it was impossible not to envy him.
+
+When the waggons set off again, the church bells were ringing for
+service.
+
+V
+
+The train of waggons drew up on the bank of a river on one side of
+a village. The sun was blazing, as it had been the day before; the
+air was stagnant and depressing. There were a few willows on the
+bank, but the shade from them did not fall on the earth, but on the
+water, where it was wasted; even in the shade under the waggon it
+was stifling and wearisome. The water, blue from the reflection of
+the sky in it, was alluring.
+
+Styopka, a waggoner whom Yegorushka noticed now for the first time,
+a Little Russian lad of eighteen, in a long shirt without a belt,
+and full trousers that flapped like flags as he walked, undressed
+quickly, ran along the steep bank and plunged into the water. He
+dived three times, then swam on his back and shut his eyes in his
+delight. His face was smiling and wrinkled up as though he were
+being tickled, hurt and amused.
+
+On a hot day when there is nowhere to escape from the sultry,
+stifling heat, the splash of water and the loud breathing of a man
+bathing sounds like good music to the ear. Dymov and Kiruha, looking
+at Styopka, undressed quickly and one after the other, laughing
+loudly in eager anticipation of their enjoyment, dropped into the
+water, and the quiet, modest little river resounded with snorting
+and splashing and shouting. Kiruha coughed, laughed and shouted as
+though they were trying to drown him, while Dymov chased him and
+tried to catch him by the leg.
+
+"Ha-ha-ha!" he shouted. "Catch him! Hold him!"
+
+Kiruha laughed and enjoyed himself, but his expression was the same
+as it had been on dry land, stupid, with a look of astonishment on
+it as though someone had, unnoticed, stolen up behind him and hit
+him on the head with the butt-end of an axe. Yegorushka undressed,
+too, but did not let himself down by the bank, but took a run and
+a flying leap from the height of about ten feet. Describing an arc
+in the air, he fell into the water, sank deep, but did not reach
+the bottom; some force, cold and pleasant to the touch, seemed to
+hold him up and bring him back to the surface. He popped out and,
+snorting and blowing bubbles, opened his eyes; but the sun was
+reflected in the water quite close to his face. At first blinding
+spots of light, then rainbow colours and dark patches, flitted
+before his eyes. He made haste to dive again, opened his eyes in
+the water and saw something cloudy-green like a sky on a moonlight
+night. Again the same force would not let him touch the bottom and
+stay in the coolness, but lifted him to the surface. He popped out
+and heaved a sigh so deep that he had a feeling of space and
+freshness, not only in his chest, but in his stomach. Then, to get
+from the water everything he possibly could get, he allowed himself
+every luxury; he lay on his back and basked, splashed, frolicked,
+swam on his face, on his side, on his back and standing up--just
+as he pleased till he was exhausted. The other bank was thickly
+overgrown with reeds; it was golden in the sun, and the flowers of
+the reeds hung drooping to the water in lovely tassels. In one place
+the reeds were shaking and nodding, with their flowers rustling--
+Styopka and Kiruha were hunting crayfish.
+
+"A crayfish, look, lads! A crayfish!" Kiruha cried triumphantly and
+actually showed a crayfish.
+
+Yegorushka swam up to the reeds, dived, and began fumbling among
+their roots. Burrowing in the slimy, liquid mud, he felt something
+sharp and unpleasant--perhaps it really was a crayfish. But at
+that minute someone seized him by the leg and pulled him to the
+surface. Spluttering and coughing, Yegorushka opened his eyes and
+saw before him the wet grinning face of the dare-devil Dymov. The
+impudent fellow was breathing hard, and from a look in his eyes he
+seemed inclined for further mischief. He held Yegorushka tight by
+the leg, and was lifting his hand to take hold of his neck. But
+Yegorushka tore himself away with repulsion and terror, as though
+disgusted at being touched and afraid that the bully would drown
+him, and said:
+
+"Fool! I'll punch you in the face."
+
+Feeling that this was not sufficient to express his hatred, he
+thought a minute and added:
+
+"You blackguard! You son of a bitch!"
+
+But Dymov, as though nothing were the matter, took no further notice
+of Yegorushka, but swam off to Kiruha, shouting:
+
+"Ha-ha-ha! Let us catch fish! Mates, let us catch fish."
+
+"To be sure," Kiruha agreed; "there must be a lot of fish here."
+
+"Styopka, run to the village and ask the peasants for a net!
+
+"They won't give it to me."
+
+"They will, you ask them. Tell them that they should give it to us
+for Christ's sake, because we are just the same as pilgrims."
+
+"That's true."
+
+Styopka clambered out of the water, dressed quickly, and without a
+cap on he ran, his full trousers flapping, to the village. The water
+lost all its charm for Yegorushka after his encounter with Dymov.
+He got out and began dressing. Panteley and Vassya were sitting on
+the steep bank, with their legs hanging down, looking at the bathers.
+Emelyan was standing naked, up to his knees in the water, holding
+on to the grass with one hand to prevent himself from falling while
+the other stroked his body. With his bony shoulder-blades, with the
+swelling under his eye, bending down and evidently afraid of the
+water, he made a ludicrous figure. His face was grave and severe.
+He looked angrily at the water, as though he were just going to
+upbraid it for having given him cold in the Donets and robbed him
+of his voice.
+
+"And why don't you bathe?" Yegorushka asked Vassya.
+
+"Oh, I don't care for it, . . ." answered Vassya.
+
+"How is it your chin is swollen?"
+
+"It's bad. . . . I used to work at the match factory, little sir.
+. . . The doctor used to say that it would make my jaw rot. The air
+is not healthy there. There were three chaps beside me who had their
+jaws swollen, and with one of them it rotted away altogether."
+
+Styopka soon came back with the net. Dymov and Kiruha were already
+turning blue and getting hoarse by being so long in the water, but
+they set about fishing eagerly. First they went to a deep place
+beside the reeds; there Dymov was up to his neck, while the water
+went over squat Kiruha's head. The latter spluttered and blew
+bubbles, while Dymov stumbling on the prickly roots, fell over and
+got caught in the net; both flopped about in the water, and made a
+noise, and nothing but mischief came of their fishing.
+
+"It's deep," croaked Kiruha. "You won't catch anything."
+
+"Don't tug, you devil!" shouted Dymov trying to put the net in the
+proper position. "Hold it up."
+
+"You won't catch anything here," Panteley shouted from the bank.
+"You are only frightening the fish, you stupids! Go more to the
+left! It's shallower there!"
+
+Once a big fish gleamed above the net; they all drew a breath, and
+Dymov struck the place where it had vanished with his fist, and his
+face expressed vexation.
+
+"Ugh!" cried Panteley, and he stamped his foot. "You've let the
+perch slip! It's gone!"
+
+Moving more to the left, Dymov and Kiruha picked out a shallower
+place, and then fishing began in earnest. They had wandered off
+some hundred paces from the waggons; they could be seen silently
+trying to go as deep as they could and as near the reeds, moving
+their legs a little at a time, drawing out the nets, beating the
+water with their fists to drive them towards the nets. From the
+reeds they got to the further bank; they drew the net out, then,
+with a disappointed air, lifting their knees high as they walked,
+went back into the reeds. They were talking about something, but
+what it was no one could hear. The sun was scorching their backs,
+the flies were stinging them, and their bodies had turned from
+purple to crimson. Styopka was walking after them with a pail in
+his hands; he had tucked his shirt right up under his armpits, and
+was holding it up by the hem with his teeth. After every successful
+catch he lifted up some fish, and letting it shine in the sun,
+shouted:
+
+"Look at this perch! We've five like that!"
+
+Every time Dymov, Kiruha and Styopka pulled out the net they could
+be seen fumbling about in the mud in it, putting some things into
+the pail and throwing other things away; sometimes they passed
+something that was in the net from hand to hand, examined it
+inquisitively, then threw that, too, away.
+
+"What is it?" they shouted to them from the bank.
+
+Styopka made some answer, but it was hard to make out his words.
+Then he climbed out of the water and, holding the pail in both
+hands, forgetting to let his shirt drop, ran to the waggons.
+
+"It's full!" he shouted, breathing hard. "Give us another!"
+
+Yegorushka looked into the pail: it was full. A young pike poked
+its ugly nose out of the water, and there were swarms of crayfish
+and little fish round about it. Yegorushka put his hand down to the
+bottom and stirred up the water; the pike vanished under the crayfish
+and a perch and a tench swam to the surface instead of it. Vassya,
+too, looked into the pail. His eyes grew moist and his face looked
+as caressing as before when he saw the fox. He took something out
+of the pail, put it to his mouth and began chewing it.
+
+"Mates," said Styopka in amazement, "Vassya is eating a live gudgeon!
+Phoo!"
+
+"It's not a gudgeon, but a minnow," Vassya answered calmly, still
+munching.
+
+He took a fish's tail out of his mouth, looked at it caressingly,
+and put it back again. While he was chewing and crunching with his
+teeth it seemed to Yegorushka that he saw before him something not
+human. Vassya's swollen chin, his lustreless eyes, his extraordinary
+sharp sight, the fish's tail in his mouth, and the caressing
+friendliness with which he crunched the gudgeon made him like an
+animal.
+
+Yegorushka felt dreary beside him. And the fishing was over, too.
+He walked about beside the waggons, thought a little, and, feeling
+bored, strolled off to the village.
+
+Not long afterwards he was standing in the church, and with his
+forehead leaning on somebody's back, listened to the singing of the
+choir. The service was drawing to a close. Yegorushka did not
+understand church singing and did not care for it. He listened a
+little, yawned, and began looking at the backs and heads before
+him. In one head, red and wet from his recent bathe, he recognized
+Emelyan. The back of his head had been cropped in a straight line
+higher than is usual; the hair in front had been cut unbecomingly
+high, and Emelyan's ears stood out like two dock leaves, and seemed
+to feel themselves out of place. Looking at the back of his head
+and his ears, Yegorushka, for some reason, thought that Emelyan was
+probably very unhappy. He remembered the way he conducted with his
+hands, his husky voice, his timid air when he was bathing, and felt
+intense pity for him. He longed to say something friendly to him.
+
+"I am here, too," he said, putting out his hand.
+
+People who sing tenor or bass in the choir, especially those who
+have at any time in their lives conducted, are accustomed to look
+with a stern and unfriendly air at boys. They do not give up this
+habit, even when they leave off being in a choir. Turning to
+Yegorushka, Emelyan looked at him from under his brows and said:
+
+"Don't play in church!"
+
+Then Yegorushka moved forwards nearer to the ikon-stand. Here he
+saw interesting people. On the right side, in front of everyone, a
+lady and a gentleman were standing on a carpet. There were chairs
+behind them. The gentleman was wearing newly ironed shantung trousers;
+he stood as motionless as a soldier saluting, and held high his
+bluish shaven chin. There was a very great air of dignity in his
+stand-up collar, in his blue chin, in his small bald patch and his
+cane. His neck was so strained from excess of dignity, and his chin
+was drawn up so tensely, that it looked as though his head were
+ready to fly off and soar upwards any minute. The lady, who was
+stout and elderly and wore a white silk shawl, held her head on one
+side and looked as though she had done someone a favour, and wanted
+to say: "Oh, don't trouble yourself to thank me; I don't like it
+. . . ." A thick wall of Little Russian heads stood all round the
+carpet.
+
+Yegorushka went up to the ikon-stand and began kissing the local
+ikons. Before each image he slowly bowed down to the ground, without
+getting up, looked round at the congregation, then got up and kissed
+the ikon. The contact of his forehead with the cold floor afforded
+him great satisfaction. When the beadle came from the altar with a
+pair of long snuffers to put out the candles, Yegorushka jumped up
+quickly from the floor and ran up to him.
+
+"Have they given out the holy bread?" he asked.
+
+"There is none; there is none," the beadle muttered gruffly. "It
+is no use your. . ."
+
+The service was over; Yegorushka walked out of the church in a
+leisurely way, and began strolling about the market-place. He had
+seen a good many villages, market-places, and peasants in his time,
+and everything that met his eyes was entirely without interest for
+him. At a loss for something to do, he went into a shop over the
+door of which hung a wide strip of red cotton. The shop consisted
+of two roomy, badly lighted parts; in one half they sold drapery
+and groceries, in the other there were tubs of tar, and there were
+horse-collars hanging from the ceiling; from both came the savoury
+smell of leather and tar. The floor of the shop had been watered;
+the man who watered it must have been a very whimsical and original
+person, for it was sprinkled in patterns and mysterious symbols.
+The shopkeeper, an overfed-looking man with a broad face and round
+beard, apparently a Great Russian, was standing, leaning his person
+over the counter. He was nibbling a piece of sugar as he drank his
+tea, and heaved a deep sigh at every sip. His face expressed complete
+indifference, but each sigh seemed to be saying:
+
+"Just wait a minute; I will give it you."
+
+"Give me a farthing's worth of sunflower seeds," Yegorushka said,
+addressing him.
+
+The shopkeeper raised his eyebrows, came out from behind the counter,
+and poured a farthing's worth of sunflower seeds into Yegorushka's
+pocket, using an empty pomatum pot as a measure. Yegorushka did not
+want to go away. He spent a long time in examining the box of cakes,
+thought a little and asked, pointing to some little cakes covered
+with the mildew of age:
+
+"How much are these cakes?"
+
+"Two for a farthing."
+
+Yegorushka took out of his pocket the cake given him the day before
+by the Jewess, and asked him:
+
+"And how much do you charge for cakes like this?"
+
+The shopman took the cake in his hands, looked at it from all sides,
+and raised one eyebrow.
+
+"Like that?" he asked.
+
+Then he raised the other eyebrow, thought a minute, and answered:
+
+"Two for three farthings. . . ."
+
+A silence followed.
+
+"Whose boy are you?" the shopman asked, pouring himself out some
+tea from a red copper teapot.
+
+"The nephew of Ivan Ivanitch."
+
+"There are all sorts of Ivan Ivanitchs," the shopkeeper sighed. He
+looked over Yegorushka's head towards the door, paused a minute and
+asked:
+
+"Would you like some tea?"
+
+"Please. . . ." Yegorushka assented not very readily, though he
+felt an intense longing for his usual morning tea.
+
+The shopkeeper poured him out a glass and gave him with it a bit
+of sugar that looked as though it had been nibbled. Yegorushka sat
+down on the folding chair and began drinking it. He wanted to ask
+the price of a pound of sugar almonds, and had just broached the
+subject when a customer walked in, and the shopkeeper, leaving his
+glass of tea, attended to his business. He led the customer into
+the other half, where there was a smell of tar, and was there a
+long time discussing something with him. The customer, a man
+apparently very obstinate and pig-headed, was continually shaking
+his head to signify his disapproval, and retreating towards the
+door. The shopkeeper tried to persuade him of something and began
+pouring some oats into a big sack for him.
+
+"Do you call those oats?" the customer said gloomily. "Those are
+not oats, but chaff. It's a mockery to give that to the hens; enough
+to make the hens laugh. . . . No, I will go to Bondarenko."
+
+When Yegorushka went back to the river a small camp fire was smoking
+on the bank. The waggoners were cooking their dinner. Styopka was
+standing in the smoke, stirring the cauldron with a big notched
+spoon. A little on one side Kiruha and Vassya, with eyes reddened
+from the smoke, were sitting cleaning the fish. Before them lay the
+net covered with slime and water weeds, and on it lay gleaming fish
+and crawling crayfish.
+
+Emelyan, who had not long been back from the church, was sitting
+beside Panteley, waving his arm and humming just audibly in a husky
+voice: "To Thee we sing. . . ." Dymov was moving about by the horses.
+
+When they had finished cleaning them, Kiruha and Vassya put the
+fish and the living crayfish together in the pail, rinsed them, and
+from the pail poured them all into the boiling water.
+
+"Shall I put in some fat?" asked Styopka, skimming off the froth.
+
+"No need. The fish will make its own gravy," answered Kiruha.
+
+Before taking the cauldron off the fire Styopka scattered into the
+water three big handfuls of millet and a spoonful of salt; finally
+he tried it, smacked his lips, licked the spoon, and gave a
+self-satisfied grunt, which meant that the grain was done.
+
+All except Panteley sat down near the cauldron and set to work with
+their spoons.
+
+"You there! Give the little lad a spoon!" Panteley observed sternly.
+"I dare say he is hungry too!"
+
+"Ours is peasant fare," sighed Kiruha.
+
+"Peasant fare is welcome, too, when one is hungry."
+
+They gave Yegorushka a spoon. He began eating, not sitting, but
+standing close to the cauldron and looking down into it as in a
+hole. The grain smelt of fish and fish-scales were mixed up with
+the millet. The crayfish could not be hooked out with a spoon, and
+the men simply picked them out of the cauldron with their hands;
+Vassya did so particularly freely, and wetted his sleeves as well
+as his hands in the mess. But yet the stew seemed to Yegorushka
+very nice, and reminded him of the crayfish soup which his mother
+used to make at home on fast-days. Panteley was sitting apart
+munching bread.
+
+"Grandfather, why aren't you eating?" Emelyan asked him.
+
+"I don't eat crayfish. . . . Nasty things," the old man said, and
+turned away with disgust.
+
+While they were eating they all talked. From this conversation
+Yegorushka gathered that all his new acquaintances, in spite of the
+differences of their ages and their characters, had one point in
+common which made them all alike: they were all people with a
+splendid past and a very poor present. Of their past they all--
+every one of them--spoke with enthusiasm; their attitude to the
+present was almost one of contempt. The Russian loves recalling
+life, but he does not love living. Yegorushka did not yet know that,
+and before the stew had been all eaten he firmly believed that the
+men sitting round the cauldron were the injured victims of fate.
+Panteley told them that in the past, before there were railways,
+he used to go with trains of waggons to Moscow and to Nizhni, and
+used to earn so much that he did not know what to do with his money;
+and what merchants there used to be in those days! what fish! how
+cheap everything was! Now the roads were shorter, the merchants
+were stingier, the peasants were poorer, the bread was dearer,
+everything had shrunk and was on a smaller scale. Emelyan told them
+that in old days he had been in the choir in the Lugansky works,
+and that he had a remarkable voice and read music splendidly, while
+now he had become a peasant and lived on the charity of his brother,
+who sent him out with his horses and took half his earnings. Vassya
+had once worked in a match factory; Kiruha had been a coachman in
+a good family, and had been reckoned the smartest driver of a
+three-in-hand in the whole district. Dymov, the son of a well-to-do
+peasant, lived at ease, enjoyed himself and had known no trouble
+till he was twenty, when his stern harsh father, anxious to train
+him to work, and afraid he would be spoiled at home, had sent him
+to a carrier's to work as a hired labourer. Styopka was the only
+one who said nothing, but from his beardless face it was evident
+that his life had been a much better one in the past.
+
+Thinking of his father, Dymov frowned and left off eating. Sullenly
+from under his brows he looked round at his companions and his eye
+rested upon Yegorushka.
+
+"You heathen, take off your cap," he said rudely. "You can't eat
+with your cap on, and you a gentleman too!"
+
+Yegorushka took off his hat and did not say a word, but the stew
+lost all savour for him, and he did not hear Panteley and Vassya
+intervening on his behalf. A feeling of anger with the insulting
+fellow was rankling oppressively in his breast, and he made up his
+mind that he would do him some injury, whatever it cost him.
+
+After dinner everyone sauntered to the waggons and lay down in the
+shade.
+
+"Are we going to start soon, grandfather?" Yegorushka asked Panteley.
+
+"In God's good time we shall set off. There's no starting yet; it
+is too hot. . . . O Lord, Thy will be done. Holy Mother. . . Lie
+down, little lad."
+
+Soon there was a sound of snoring from under the waggons. Yegorushka
+meant to go back to the village, but on consideration, yawned and
+lay down by the old man.
+
+VI
+
+The waggons remained by the river the whole day, and set off again
+when the sun was setting.
+
+Yegorushka was lying on the bales again; the waggon creaked softly
+and swayed from side to side. Panteley walked below, stamping his
+feet, slapping himself on his thighs and muttering. The air was
+full of the churring music of the steppes, as it had been the day
+before.
+
+Yegorushka lay on his back, and, putting his hands under his head,
+gazed upwards at the sky. He watched the glow of sunset kindle,
+then fade away; guardian angels covering the horizon with their
+gold wings disposed themselves to slumber. The day had passed
+peacefully; the quiet peaceful night had come, and they could stay
+tranquilly at home in heaven. . . . Yegorushka saw the sky by degrees
+grow dark and the mist fall over the earth--saw the stars light
+up, one after the other. . . .
+
+When you gaze a long while fixedly at the deep sky thoughts and
+feelings for some reason merge in a sense of loneliness. One begins
+to feel hopelessly solitary, and everything one used to look upon
+as near and akin becomes infinitely remote and valueless; the stars
+that have looked down from the sky thousands of years already, the
+mists and the incomprehensible sky itself, indifferent to the brief
+life of man, oppress the soul with their silence when one is left
+face to face with them and tries to grasp their significance. One
+is reminded of the solitude awaiting each one of us in the grave,
+and the reality of life seems awful . . . full of despair. . . .
+
+Yegorushka thought of his grandmother, who was sleeping now under
+the cherry-trees in the cemetery. He remembered how she lay in her
+coffin with pennies on her eyes, how afterwards she was shut in and
+let down into the grave; he even recalled the hollow sound of the
+clods of earth on the coffin lid. . . . He pictured his granny in
+the dark and narrow coffin, helpless and deserted by everyone. His
+imagination pictured his granny suddenly awakening, not understanding
+where she was, knocking upon the lid and calling for help, and in
+the end swooning with horror and dying again. He imagined his mother
+dead, Father Christopher, Countess Dranitsky, Solomon. But however
+much he tried to imagine himself in the dark tomb, far from home,
+outcast, helpless and dead, he could not succeed; for himself
+personally he could not admit the possibility of death, and felt
+that he would never die. . . .
+
+Panteley, for whom death could not be far away, walked below and
+went on reckoning up his thoughts.
+
+"All right. . . . Nice gentlefolk, . . ." he muttered. "Took his
+little lad to school--but how he is doing now I haven't heard say
+--in Slavyanoserbsk. I say there is no establishment for teaching
+them to be very clever. . . . No, that's true--a nice little lad,
+no harm in him. . . . He'll grow up and be a help to his father
+. . . . You, Yegory, are little now, but you'll grow big and will
+keep your father and mother. . . . So it is ordained of God, 'Honour
+your father and your mother.' . . . I had children myself, but they
+were burnt. . . . My wife was burnt and my children, . . . that's
+true. . . . The hut caught fire on the night of Epiphany. . . . I
+was not at home, I was driving in Oryol. In Oryol. . . . Marya
+dashed out into the street, but remembering that the children were
+asleep in the hut, ran back and was burnt with her children. . . .
+Next day they found nothing but bones."
+
+About midnight Yegorushka and the waggoners were again sitting round
+a small camp fire. While the dry twigs and stems were burning up,
+Kiruha and Vassya went off somewhere to get water from a creek;
+they vanished into the darkness, but could be heard all the time
+talking and clinking their pails; so the creek was not far away.
+The light from the fire lay a great flickering patch on the earth;
+though the moon was bright, yet everything seemed impenetrably black
+beyond that red patch. The light was in the waggoners' eyes, and
+they saw only part of the great road; almost unseen in the darkness
+the waggons with the bales and the horses looked like a mountain
+of undefined shape. Twenty paces from the camp fire at the edge of
+the road stood a wooden cross that had fallen aslant. Before the
+camp fire had been lighted, when he could still see things at a
+distance, Yegorushka had noticed that there was a similar old
+slanting cross on the other side of the great road.
+
+Coming back with the water, Kiruha and Vassya filled the cauldron
+and fixed it over the fire. Styopka, with the notched spoon in his
+hand, took his place in the smoke by the cauldron, gazing dreamily
+into the water for the scum to rise. Panteley and Emelyan were
+sitting side by side in silence, brooding over something. Dymov was
+lying on his stomach, with his head propped on his fists, looking
+into the fire. . . . Styopka's shadow was dancing over him, so that
+his handsome face was at one minute covered with darkness, at the
+next lighted up. . . . Kiruha and Vassya were wandering about at a
+little distance gathering dry grass and bark for the fire. Yegorushka,
+with his hands in his pockets, was standing by Panteley, watching
+how the fire devoured the grass.
+
+All were resting, musing on something, and they glanced cursorily
+at the cross over which patches of red light were dancing. There
+is something melancholy, pensive, and extremely poetical about a
+solitary tomb; one feels its silence, and the silence gives one the
+sense of the presence of the soul of the unknown man who lies under
+the cross. Is that soul at peace on the steppe? Does it grieve in
+the moonlight? Near the tomb the steppe seems melancholy, dreary
+and mournful; the grass seems more sorrowful, and one fancies the
+grasshoppers chirrup less freely, and there is no passer-by who
+would not remember that lonely soul and keep looking back at the
+tomb, till it was left far behind and hidden in the mists. . . .
+
+"Grandfather, what is that cross for?" asked Yegorushka.
+
+Panteley looked at the cross and then at Dymov and asked:
+
+"Nikola, isn't this the place where the mowers killed the merchants?"
+
+Dymov not very readily raised himself on his elbow, looked at the
+road and said:
+
+"Yes, it is. . . ."
+
+A silence followed. Kiruha broke up some dry stalks, crushed them
+up together and thrust them under the cauldron. The fire flared up
+brightly; Styopka was enveloped in black smoke, and the shadow cast
+by the cross danced along the road in the dusk beside the waggons.
+
+"Yes, they were killed," Dymov said reluctantly. "Two merchants,
+father and son, were travelling, selling holy images. They put up
+in the inn not far from here that is now kept by Ignat Fomin. The
+old man had a drop too much, and began boasting that he had a lot
+of money with him. We all know merchants are a boastful set, God
+preserve us. . . . They can't resist showing off before the likes
+of us. And at the time some mowers were staying the night at the
+inn. So they overheard what the merchants said and took note of
+it."
+
+"O Lord! . . . Holy Mother!" sighed Panteley.
+
+"Next day, as soon as it was light," Dymov went on, "the merchants
+were preparing to set off and the mowers tried to join them. 'Let
+us go together, your worships. It will be more cheerful and there
+will be less danger, for this is an out-of-the-way place. . . .'
+The merchants had to travel at a walking pace to avoid breaking the
+images, and that just suited the mowers. . . ."
+
+Dymov rose into a kneeling position and stretched.
+
+"Yes," he went on, yawning. "Everything went all right till they
+reached this spot, and then the mowers let fly at them with their
+scythes. The son, he was a fine young fellow, snatched the scythe
+from one of them, and he used it, too. . . . Well, of course, they
+got the best of it because there were eight of them. They hacked
+at the merchants so that there was not a sound place left on their
+bodies; when they had finished they dragged both of them off the
+road, the father to one side and the son to the other. Opposite
+that cross there is another cross on this side. . . . Whether it
+is still standing, I don't know. . . . I can't see from here. . . ."
+
+"It is," said Kiruha.
+
+"They say they did not find much money afterwards."
+
+"No," Panteley confirmed; "they only found a hundred roubles."
+
+"And three of them died afterwards, for the merchant had cut them
+badly with the scythe, too. They died from loss of blood. One had
+his hand cut off, so that they say he ran three miles without his
+hand, and they found him on a mound close to Kurikovo. He was
+squatting on his heels, with his head on his knees, as though he
+were lost in thought, but when they looked at him there was no life
+in him and he was dead. . . ."
+
+"They found him by the track of blood," said Panteley.
+
+Everyone looked at the cross, and again there was a hush. From
+somewhere, most likely from the creek, floated the mournful cry of
+the bird: "Sleep! sleep! sleep!"
+
+"There are a great many wicked people in the world," said Emelyan.
+
+"A great many," assented Panteley, and he moved up closer to the
+fire as though he were frightened. "A great many," he went on in a
+low voice. "I've seen lots and lots of them. . . . Wicked people!
+. . . I have seen a great many holy and just, too. . . . Queen of
+Heaven, save us and have mercy on us. I remember once thirty years
+ago, or maybe more, I was driving a merchant from Morshansk. The
+merchant was a jolly handsome fellow, with money, too . . . the
+merchant was . . . a nice man, no harm in him. . . . So we put up
+for the night at an inn. And in Russia the inns are not what they
+are in these parts. There the yards are roofed in and look like the
+ground floor, or let us say like barns in good farms. Only a barn
+would be a bit higher. So we put up there and were all right. My
+merchant was in a room, while I was with the horses, and everything
+was as it should be. So, lads, I said my prayers before going to
+sleep and began walking about the yard. And it was a dark night, I
+couldn't see anything; it was no good trying. So I walked about a
+bit up to the waggons, or nearly, when I saw a light gleaming. What
+could it mean? I thought the people of the inn had gone to bed long
+ago, and besides the merchant and me there were no other guests in
+the inn. . . . Where could the light have come from? I felt suspicious.
+. . . I went closer . . . towards the light. . . . The Lord have
+mercy upon me! and save me, Queen of Heaven! I looked and there was
+a little window with a grating, . . . close to the ground, in the
+house. . . I lay down on the ground and looked in; as soon as I
+looked in a cold chill ran all down me. . . ."
+
+Kiruha, trying not to make a noise, thrust a handful of twigs into
+the fire. After waiting for it to leave off crackling and hissing,
+the old man went on:
+
+"I looked in and there was a big cellar, black and dark. . . . There
+was a lighted lantern on a tub. In the middle of the cellar were
+about a dozen men in red shirts with their sleeves turned up,
+sharpening long knives. . . . Ugh! So we had fallen into a nest of
+robbers. . . . What's to be done? I ran to the merchant, waked him
+up quietly, and said: 'Don't be frightened, merchant,' said I, 'but
+we are in a bad way. We have fallen into a nest of robbers,' I said.
+He turned pale and asked: 'What are we to do now, Panteley? I have
+a lot of money that belongs to orphans. As for my life,' he said,
+'that's in God's hands. I am not afraid to die, but it's dreadful
+to lose the orphans' money,' said he. . . . What were we to do? The
+gates were locked; there was no getting out. If there had been a
+fence one could have climbed over it, but with the yard shut up!
+. . . 'Come, don't be frightened, merchant,' said I; 'but pray to
+God. Maybe the Lord will not let the orphans suffer. Stay still.'
+said I, 'and make no sign, and meanwhile, maybe, I shall think of
+something. . . .' Right! . . . I prayed to God and the Lord put the
+thought into my mind. . . . I clambered up on my chaise and softly,
+. . . softly so that no one should hear, began pulling out the straw
+in the thatch, made a hole and crept out, crept out. . . . Then I
+jumped off the roof and ran along the road as fast as I could. I
+ran and ran till I was nearly dead. . . . I ran maybe four miles
+without taking breath, if not more. Thank God I saw a village. I
+ran up to a hut and began tapping at a window. 'Good Christian
+people,' I said, and told them all about it, 'do not let a Christian
+soul perish. . . .' I waked them all up. . . . The peasants gathered
+together and went with me, . . one with a cord, one with an oakstick,
+others with pitchforks. . . . We broke in the gates of the inn-yard
+and went straight to the cellar. . . . And the robbers had just
+finished sharpening their knives and were going to kill the merchant.
+The peasants took them, every one of them, bound them and carried
+them to the police. The merchant gave them three hundred roubles
+in his joy, and gave me five gold pieces and put my name down. They
+said that they found human bones in the cellar afterwards, heaps
+and heaps of them. . . . Bones! . . . So they robbed people and
+then buried them, so that there should be no traces. . . . Well,
+afterwards they were punished at Morshansk."
+
+Panteley had finished his story, and he looked round at his listeners.
+They were gazing at him in silence. The water was boiling by now
+and Styopka was skimming off the froth.
+
+"Is the fat ready?" Kiruha asked him in a whisper.
+
+"Wait a little. . . . Directly."
+
+Styopka, his eyes fixed on Panteley as though he were afraid that
+the latter might begin some story before he was back, ran to the
+waggons; soon he came back with a little wooden bowl and began
+pounding some lard in it.
+
+"I went another journey with a merchant, too, . . ." Panteley went
+on again, speaking as before in a low voice and with fixed unblinking
+eyes. "His name, as I remember now, was Pyotr Grigoritch. He was a
+nice man, . . . the merchant was. We stopped in the same way at an
+inn. . . . He indoors and me with the horses. . . . The people of
+the house, the innkeeper and his wife, seemed friendly good sort
+of people; the labourers, too, seemed all right; but yet, lads, I
+couldn't sleep. I had a queer feeling in my heart, . . . a queer
+feeling, that was just it. The gates were open and there were plenty
+of people about, and yet I felt afraid and not myself. Everyone had
+been asleep long ago. It was the middle of the night; it would soon
+be time to get up, and I was lying alone in my chaise and could not
+close my eyes, as though I were some owl. And then, lads, I heard
+this sound, 'Toop! toop! toop!' Someone was creeping up to the
+chaise. I poke my head out, and there was a peasant woman in nothing
+but her shift and with her feet bare. . . . 'What do you want, good
+woman?' I asked. And she was all of a tremble; her face was
+terror-stricken. . . 'Get up, good man,' said she; 'the people are
+plotting evil. . . . They mean to kill your merchant. With my own
+ears I heard the master whispering with his wife. . . .' So it was
+not for nothing, the foreboding of my heart! 'And who are you?' I
+asked. 'I am their cook,' she said. . . . Right! . . . So I got out
+of the chaise and went to the merchant. I waked him up and said:
+'Things aren't quite right, Pyotr Grigoritch. . . . Make haste and
+rouse yourself from sleep, your worship, and dress now while there
+is still time,' I said; 'and to save our skins, let us get away
+from trouble.' He had no sooner begun dressing when the door opened
+and, mercy on us! I saw, Holy Mother! the innkeeper and his wife
+come into the room with three labourers. . . . So they had persuaded
+the labourers to join them. 'The merchant has a lot of money, and
+we'll go shares,' they told them. Every one of the five had a long
+knife in their hand each a knife. The innkeeper locked the door and
+said: 'Say your prayers, travellers, . . . and if you begin screaming,'
+they said, 'we won't let you say your prayers before you die. . . .'
+As though we could scream! I had such a lump in my throat I could
+not cry out. . . . The merchant wept and said: 'Good Christian
+people! you have resolved to kill me because my money tempts you.
+Well, so be it; I shall not be the first nor shall I be the last.
+Many of us merchants have been murdered at inns. But why, good
+Christian brothers,' says he, 'murder my driver? Why should he have
+to suffer for my money?' And he said that so pitifully! And the
+innkeeper answered him: 'If we leave him alive,' said he, 'he will
+be the first to bear witness against us. One may just as well kill
+two as one. You can but answer once for seven misdeeds. . . Say
+your prayers, that's all you can do, and it is no good talking!'
+The merchant and I knelt down side by side and wept and said our
+prayers. He thought of his children. I was young in those days; I
+wanted to live. . . . We looked at the images and prayed, and so
+pitifully that it brings a tear even now. . . . And the innkeeper's
+wife looks at us and says: 'Good people,' said she, 'don't bear a
+grudge against us in the other world and pray to God for our
+punishment, for it is want that drives us to it.' We prayed and
+wept and prayed and wept, and God heard us. He had pity on us, I
+suppose. . . . At the very minute when the innkeeper had taken the
+merchant by the beard to rip open his throat with his knife suddenly
+someone seemed to tap at the window from the yard! We all started,
+and the innkeeper's hands dropped. . . . Someone was tapping at the
+window and shouting: 'Pyotr Grigoritch,' he shouted, 'are you here?
+Get ready and let's go!' The people saw that someone had come for
+the merchant; they were terrified and took to their heels. . . .
+And we made haste into the yard, harnessed the horses, and were out
+of sight in a minute. . ."
+
+"Who was it knocked at the window?" asked Dymov.
+
+"At the window? It must have been a holy saint or angel, for there
+was no one else. . . . When we drove out of the yard there wasn't
+a soul in the street. . . . It was the Lord's doing."
+
+Panteley told other stories, and in all of them "long knives" figured
+and all alike sounded made up. Had he heard these stories from
+someone else, or had he made them up himself in the remote past,
+and afterwards, as his memory grew weaker, mixed up his experiences
+with his imaginations and become unable to distinguish one from the
+other? Anything is possible, but it is strange that on this occasion
+and for the rest of the journey, whenever he happened to tell a
+story, he gave unmistakable preference to fiction, and never told
+of what he really had experienced. At the time Yegorushka took it
+all for the genuine thing, and believed every word; later on it
+seemed to him strange that a man who in his day had travelled all
+over Russia and seen and known so much, whose wife and children had
+been burnt to death, so failed to appreciate the wealth of his life
+that whenever he was sitting by the camp fire he was either silent
+or talked of what had never been.
+
+Over their porridge they were all silent, thinking of what they had
+just heard. Life is terrible and marvellous, and so, however terrible
+a story you tell in Russia, however you embroider it with nests of
+robbers, long knives and such marvels, it always finds an echo of
+reality in the soul of the listener, and only a man who has been a
+good deal affected by education looks askance distrustfully, and
+even he will be silent. The cross by the roadside, the dark bales
+of wool, the wide expanse of the plain, and the lot of the men
+gathered together by the camp fire--all this was of itself so
+marvellous and terrible that the fantastic colours of legend and
+fairy-tale were pale and blended with life.
+
+All the others ate out of the cauldron, but Panteley sat apart and
+ate his porridge out of a wooden bowl. His spoon was not like those
+the others had, but was made of cypress wood, with a little cross
+on it. Yegorushka, looking at him, thought of the little ikon glass
+and asked Styopka softly:
+
+"Why does Grandfather sit apart?"
+
+"He is an Old Believer," Styopka and Vassya answered in a whisper.
+And as they said it they looked as though they were speaking of
+some secret vice or weakness.
+
+All sat silent, thinking. After the terrible stories there was no
+inclination to speak of ordinary things. All at once in the midst
+of the silence Vassya drew himself up and, fixing his lustreless
+eyes on one point, pricked up his ears.
+
+"What is it?" Dymov asked him.
+
+"Someone is coming," answered Vassya.
+
+"Where do you see him?"
+
+"Yo-on-der! There's something white. . ."
+
+There was nothing to be seen but darkness in the direction in which
+Vassya was looking; everyone listened, but they could hear no sound
+of steps.
+
+"Is he coming by the highroad?" asked Dymov.
+
+"No, over the open country. . . . He is coming this way."
+
+A minute passed in silence.
+
+"And maybe it's the merchant who was buried here walking over the
+steppe," said Dymov.
+
+All looked askance at the cross, exchanged glances and suddenly
+broke into a laugh. They felt ashamed of their terror.
+
+"Why should he walk?" asked Panteley. "It's only those walk at night
+whom the earth will not take to herself. And the merchants were all
+right. . . . The merchants have received the crown of martyrs."
+
+But all at once they heard the sound of steps; someone was coming
+in haste.
+
+"He's carrying something," said Vassya.
+
+They could hear the grass rustling and the dry twigs crackling under
+the feet of the approaching wayfarer. But from the glare of the
+camp fire nothing could be seen. At last the steps sounded close
+by, and someone coughed. The flickering light seemed to part; a
+veil dropped from the waggoners' eyes, and they saw a man facing
+them.
+
+Whether it was due to the flickering light or because everyone
+wanted to make out the man's face first of all, it happened, strangely
+enough, that at the first glance at him they all saw, first of all,
+not his face nor his clothes, but his smile. It was an extraordinarily
+good-natured, broad, soft smile, like that of a baby on waking, one
+of those infectious smiles to which it is difficult not to respond
+by smiling too. The stranger, when they did get a good look at him,
+turned out to be a man of thirty, ugly and in no way remarkable.
+He was a tall Little Russian, with a long nose, long arms and long
+legs; everything about him seemed long except his neck, which was
+so short that it made him seem stooping. He was wearing a clean
+white shirt with an embroidered collar, white trousers, and new
+high boots, and in comparison with the waggoners he looked quite a
+dandy. In his arms he was carrying something big, white, and at the
+first glance strange-looking, and the stock of a gun also peeped
+out from behind his shoulder.
+
+Coming from the darkness into the circle of light, he stopped short
+as though petrified, and for half a minute looked at the waggoners
+as though he would have said: "Just look what a smile I have!"
+
+Then he took a step towards the fire, smiled still more radiantly
+and said:
+
+"Bread and salt, friends!"
+
+"You are very welcome!" Panteley answered for them all.
+
+The stranger put down by the fire what he was carrying in his arms
+--it was a dead bustard--and greeted them once more.
+
+They all went up to the bustard and began examining it.
+
+"A fine big bird; what did you kill it with?" asked Dymov.
+
+"Grape-shot. You can't get him with small shot, he won't let you
+get near enough. Buy it, friends! I will let you have it for twenty
+kopecks."
+
+"What use would it be to us? It's good roast, but I bet it would
+be tough boiled; you could not get your teeth into it. . . ."
+
+"Oh, what a pity! I would take it to the gentry at the farm; they
+would give me half a rouble for it. But it's a long way to go--
+twelve miles!"
+
+The stranger sat down, took off his gun and laid it beside him.
+
+He seemed sleepy and languid; he sat smiling, and, screwing up his
+eyes at the firelight, apparently thinking of something very
+agreeable. They gave him a spoon; he began eating.
+
+"Who are you?" Dymov asked him.
+
+The stranger did not hear the question; he made no answer, and did
+not even glance at Dymov. Most likely this smiling man did not taste
+the flavour of the porridge either, for he seemed to eat it
+mechanically, lifting the spoon to his lips sometimes very full and
+sometimes quite empty. He was not drunk, but he seemed to have
+something nonsensical in his head.
+
+"I ask you who you are?" repeated Dymov.
+
+"I?" said the unknown, starting. "Konstantin Zvonik from Rovno.
+It's three miles from here."
+
+And anxious to show straight off that he was not quite an ordinary
+peasant, but something better, Konstantin hastened to add:
+
+"We keep bees and fatten pigs."
+
+"Do you live with your father or in a house of your own?"
+
+"No; now I am living in a house of my own. I have parted. This
+month, just after St. Peter's Day, I got married. I am a married
+man now! . . . It's eighteen days since the wedding."
+
+"That's a good thing," said Panteley. "Marriage is a good thing
+. . . . God's blessing is on it."
+
+"His young wife sits at home while he rambles about the steppe,"
+laughed Kiruha. "Queer chap!"
+
+As though he had been pinched on the tenderest spot, Konstantin
+started, laughed and flushed crimson.
+
+"But, Lord, she is not at home!" he said quickly, taking the spoon
+out of his mouth and looking round at everyone with an expression
+of delight and wonder. "She is not; she has gone to her mother's
+for three days! Yes, indeed, she has gone away, and I feel as though
+I were not married. . . ."
+
+Konstantin waved his hand and turned his head; he wanted to go on
+thinking, but the joy which beamed in his face prevented him. As
+though he were not comfortable, he changed his attitude, laughed,
+and again waved his hand. He was ashamed to share his happy thoughts
+with strangers, but at the same time he had an irresistible longing
+to communicate his joy.
+
+"She has gone to Demidovo to see her mother," he said, blushing and
+moving his gun. "She'll be back to-morrow. . . . She said she would
+be back to dinner."
+
+"And do you miss her?" said Dymov.
+
+"Oh, Lord, yes; I should think so. We have only been married such
+a little while, and she has gone away. . . . Eh! Oh, but she is a
+tricky one, God strike me dead! She is such a fine, splendid girl,
+such a one for laughing and singing, full of life and fire! When
+she is there your brain is in a whirl, and now she is away I wander
+about the steppe like a fool, as though I had lost something. I
+have been walking since dinner."
+
+Konstantin rubbed his eyes, looked at the fire and laughed.
+
+"You love her, then, . . ." said Panteley.
+
+"She is so fine and splendid," Konstantin repeated, not hearing
+him; "such a housewife, clever and sensible. You wouldn't find
+another like her among simple folk in the whole province. She has
+gone away. . . . But she is missing me, I kno-ow! I know the little
+magpie. She said she would be back to-morrow by dinner-time. . . .
+And just think how queer!" Konstantin almost shouted, speaking a
+note higher and shifting his position. "Now she loves me and is sad
+without me, and yet she would not marry me."
+
+"But eat," said Kiruha.
+
+"She would not marry me," Konstantin went on, not heeding him. "I
+have been struggling with her for three years! I saw her at the
+Kalatchik fair; I fell madly in love with her, was ready to hang
+myself. . . . I live at Rovno, she at Demidovo, more than twenty
+miles apart, and there was nothing I could do. I sent match-makers
+to her, and all she said was: 'I won't!' Ah, the magpie! I sent her
+one thing and another, earrings and cakes, and twenty pounds of
+honey--but still she said: 'I won't!' And there it was. If you
+come to think of it, I was not a match for her! She was young and
+lovely, full of fire, while I am old: I shall soon be thirty, and
+a regular beauty, too; a fine beard like a goat's, a clear complexion
+all covered with pimples--how could I be compared with her! The
+only thing to be said is that we are well off, but then the Vahramenkys
+are well off, too. They've six oxen, and they keep a couple of
+labourers. I was in love, friends, as though I were plague-stricken.
+I couldn't sleep or eat; my brain was full of thoughts, and in such
+a maze, Lord preserve us! I longed to see her, and she was in
+Demidovo. What do you think? God be my witness, I am not lying,
+three times a week I walked over there on foot just to have a look
+at her. I gave up my work! I was so frantic that I even wanted to
+get taken on as a labourer in Demidovo, so as to be near her. I was
+in misery! My mother called in a witch a dozen times; my father
+tried thrashing me. For three years I was in this torment, and then
+I made up my mind. 'Damn my soul!' I said. 'I will go to the town
+and be a cabman. . . . It seems it is fated not to be.' At Easter
+I went to Demidovo to have a last look at her. . . ."
+
+Konstantin threw back his head and went off into a mirthful tinkling
+laugh, as though he had just taken someone in very cleverly.
+
+"I saw her by the river with the lads," he went on. "I was overcome
+with anger. . . . I called her aside and maybe for a full hour I
+said all manner of things to her. She fell in love with me! For
+three years she did not like me! she fell in love with me for what
+I said to her. . . ."
+
+"What did you say to her?" asked Dymov.
+
+"What did I say? I don't remember. . . How could one remember? My
+words flowed at the time like water from a tap, without stopping
+to take breath. Ta-ta-ta! And now I can't utter a word. . . . Well,
+so she married me. . . . She's gone now to her mother's, the magpie,
+and while she is away here I wander over the steppe. I can't stay
+at home. It's more than I can do!"
+
+Konstantin awkwardly released his feet, on which he was sitting,
+stretched himself on the earth, and propped his head in his fists,
+then got up and sat down again. Everyone by now thoroughly understood
+that he was in love and happy, poignantly happy; his smile, his
+eyes, and every movement, expressed fervent happiness. He could not
+find a place for himself, and did not know what attitude to take
+to keep himself from being overwhelmed by the multitude of his
+delightful thoughts. Having poured out his soul before these
+strangers, he settled down quietly at last, and, looking at the
+fire, sank into thought.
+
+At the sight of this happy man everyone felt depressed and longed
+to be happy, too. Everyone was dreamy. Dymov got up, walked about
+softly by the fire, and from his walk, from the movement of his
+shoulder-blades, it could be seen that he was weighed down by
+depression and yearning. He stood still for a moment, looked at
+Konstantin and sat down.
+
+The camp fire had died down by now; there was no flicker, and the
+patch of red had grown small and dim. . . . And as the fire went
+out the moonlight grew clearer and clearer. Now they could see the
+full width of the road, the bales of wool, the shafts of the waggons,
+the munching horses; on the further side of the road there was the
+dim outline of the second cross. . . .
+
+Dymov leaned his cheek on his hand and softly hummed some plaintive
+song. Konstantin smiled drowsily and chimed in with a thin voice.
+They sang for half a minute, then sank into silence. Emelyan started,
+jerked his elbows and wriggled his fingers.
+
+"Lads," he said in an imploring voice, "let's sing something sacred!"
+Tears came into his eyes. "Lads," he repeated, pressing his hands
+on his heart, "let's sing something sacred!"
+
+"I don't know anything," said Konstantin.
+
+Everyone refused, then Emelyan sang alone. He waved both arms,
+nodded his head, opened his mouth, but nothing came from his throat
+but a discordant gasp. He sang with his arms, with his head, with
+his eyes, even with the swelling on his face; he sang passionately
+with anguish, and the more he strained his chest to extract at least
+one note from it, the more discordant were his gasps.
+
+Yegorushka, like the rest, was overcome with depression. He went
+to his waggon, clambered up on the bales and lay down. He looked
+at the sky, and thought of happy Konstantin and his wife. Why did
+people get married? What were women in the world for? Yegorushka
+put the vague questions to himself, and thought that a man would
+certainly be happy if he had an affectionate, merry and beautiful
+woman continually living at his side. For some reason he remembered
+the Countess Dranitsky, and thought it would probably be very
+pleasant to live with a woman like that; he would perhaps have
+married her with pleasure if that idea had not been so shameful.
+He recalled her eyebrows, the pupils of her eyes, her carriage, the
+clock with the horseman. . . . The soft warm night moved softly
+down upon him and whispered something in his ear, and it seemed to
+him that it was that lovely woman bending over him, looking at him
+with a smile and meaning to kiss him. . . .
+
+Nothing was left of the fire but two little red eyes, which kept
+on growing smaller and smaller. Konstantin and the waggoners were
+sitting by it, dark motionless figures, and it seemed as though
+there were many more of them than before. The twin crosses were
+equally visible, and far, far away, somewhere by the highroad there
+gleamed a red light--other people cooking their porridge, most
+likely.
+
+"Our Mother Russia is the he-ad of all the world!" Kiruha sang out
+suddenly in a harsh voice, choked and subsided. The steppe echo
+caught up his voice, carried it on, and it seemed as though stupidity
+itself were rolling on heavy wheels over the steppe.
+
+"It's time to go," said Panteley. "Get up, lads."
+
+While they were putting the horses in, Konstantin walked by the
+waggons and talked rapturously of his wife.
+
+"Good-bye, mates!" he cried when the waggons started. "Thank you
+for your hospitality. I shall go on again towards that light. It's
+more than I can stand."
+
+And he quickly vanished in the mist, and for a long time they could
+hear him striding in the direction of the light to tell those other
+strangers of his happiness.
+
+When Yegorushka woke up next day it was early morning; the sun had
+not yet risen. The waggons were at a standstill. A man in a white
+cap and a suit of cheap grey material, mounted on a little Cossack
+stallion, was talking to Dymov and Kiruha beside the foremost waggon.
+A mile and a half ahead there were long low white barns and little
+houses with tiled roofs; there were neither yards nor trees to be
+seen beside the little houses.
+
+"What village is that, Grandfather?" asked Yegorushka.
+
+"That's the Armenian Settlement, youngster," answered Panteley.
+"The Armenians live there. They are a good sort of people, . . .
+the Arnienians are."
+
+The man in grey had finished talking to Dymov and Kiruha; he pulled
+up his little stallion and looked across towards the settlement.
+
+"What a business, only think!" sighed Panteley, looking towards the
+settlement, too, and shuddering at the morning freshness. "He has
+sent a man to the settlement for some papers, and he doesn't come
+. . . . He should have sent Styopka."
+
+"Who is that, Grandfather?" asked Yegorushka.
+
+"Varlamov."
+
+My goodness! Yegorushka jumped up quickly, getting upon his knees,
+and looked at the white cap. It was hard to recognize the mysterious
+elusive Varlamov, who was sought by everyone, who was always "on
+his rounds," and who had far more money than Countess Dranitsky,
+in the short, grey little man in big boots, who was sitting on an
+ugly little nag and talking to peasants at an hour when all decent
+people were asleep.
+
+"He is all right, a good man," said Panteley, looking towards the
+settlement. "God give him health--a splendid gentleman, Semyon
+Alexandritch. . . . It's people like that the earth rests upon.
+That's true. . . . The cocks are not crowing yet, and he is already
+up and about. . . . Another man would be asleep, or gallivanting
+with visitors at home, but he is on the steppe all day, . . . on
+his rounds. . . . He does not let things slip. . . . No-o! He's a
+fine fellow. . ."
+
+Varlamov was talking about something, while he kept his eyes fixed.
+The little stallion shifted from one leg to another impatiently.
+
+"Semyon Alexandritch!" cried Panteley, taking off his hat. "Allow
+us to send Styopka! Emelyan, call out that Styopka should be sent."
+
+But now at last a man on horseback could be seen coming from the
+settlement. Bending very much to one side and brandishing his whip
+above his head like a gallant young Caucasian, and wanting to
+astonish everyone by his horsemanship, he flew towards the waggons
+with the swiftness of a bird.
+
+"That must be one of his circuit men," said Panteley. "He must have
+a hundred such horsemen or maybe more."
+
+Reaching the first waggon, he pulled up his horse, and taking off
+his hat, handed Varlamov a little book. Varlamov took several papers
+out of the book, read them and cried:
+
+"And where is Ivantchuk's letter?"
+
+The horseman took the book back, looked at the papers and shrugged
+his shoulders. He began saying something, probably justifying himself
+and asking to be allowed to ride back to the settlement again. The
+little stallion suddenly stirred as though Varlamov had grown
+heavier. Varlamov stirred too.
+
+"Go along!" he cried angrily, and he waved his whip at the man.
+
+Then he turned his horse round and, looking through the papers in
+the book, moved at a walking pace alongside the waggons. When he
+reached the hindmost, Yegorushka strained his eyes to get a better
+look at him. Varlamov was an elderly man. His face, a simple Russian
+sunburnt face with a small grey beard, was red, wet with dew and
+covered with little blue veins; it had the same expression of
+businesslike coldness as Ivan Ivanitch's face, the same look of
+fanatical zeal for business. But yet what a difference could be
+felt between him and Kuzmitchov! Uncle Ivan Ivanitch always had on
+his face, together with his business-like reserve, a look of anxiety
+and apprehension that he would not find Varlamov, that he would be
+late, that he would miss a good price; nothing of that sort, so
+characteristic of small and dependent persons, could be seen in the
+face or figure of Varlamov. This man made the price himself, was
+not looking for anyone, and did not depend on anyone; however
+ordinary his exterior, yet in everything, even in the manner of
+holding his whip, there was a sense of power and habitual authority
+over the steppe.
+
+As he rode by Yegorushka he did not glance at him. Only the little
+stallion deigned to notice Yegorushka; he looked at him with his
+large foolish eyes, and even he showed no interest. Panteley bowed
+to Varlamov; the latter noticed it, and without taking his eyes off
+the sheets of paper, said lisping:
+
+"How are you, old man?"
+
+Varlamov's conversation with the horseman and the way he had
+brandished his whip had evidently made an overwhelming impression
+on the whole party. Everyone looked grave. The man on horseback,
+cast down at the anger of the great man, remained stationary, with
+his hat off, and the rein loose by the foremost waggon; he was
+silent, and seemed unable to grasp that the day had begun so badly
+for him.
+
+"He is a harsh old man, . ." muttered Panteley. "It's a pity he is
+so harsh! But he is all right, a good man. . . . He doesn't abuse
+men for nothing. . . . It's no matter. . . ."
+
+After examining the papers, Varlamov thrust the book into his pocket;
+the little stallion, as though he knew what was in his mind, without
+waiting for orders, started and dashed along the highroad.
+
+VII
+
+On the following night the waggoners had halted and were cooking
+their porridge. On this occasion there was a sense of overwhelming
+oppression over everyone. It was sultry; they all drank a great
+deal, but could not quench their thirst. The moon was intensely
+crimson and sullen, as though it were sick. The stars, too, were
+sullen, the mist was thicker, the distance more clouded. Nature
+seemed as though languid and weighed down by some foreboding.
+
+There was not the same liveliness and talk round the camp fire as
+there had been the day before. All were dreary and spoke listlessly
+and without interest. Panteley did nothing but sigh and complain
+of his feet, and continually alluded to impenitent deathbeds.
+
+Dymov was lying on his stomach, chewing a straw in silence; there
+was an expression of disgust on his face as though the straw smelt
+unpleasant, a spiteful and exhausted look. . . . Vassya complained
+that his jaw ached, and prophesied bad weather; Emelyan was not
+waving his arms, but sitting still and looking gloomily at the fire.
+Yegorushka, too, was weary. This slow travelling exhausted him, and
+the sultriness of the day had given him a headache.
+
+While they were cooking the porridge, Dymov, to relieve his boredom,
+began quarrelling with his companions.
+
+"Here he lolls, the lumpy face, and is the first to put his spoon
+in," he said, looking spitefully at Emelyan. "Greedy! always contrives
+to sit next the cauldron. He's been a church-singer, so he thinks
+he is a gentleman! There are a lot of singers like you begging along
+the highroad!"
+
+"What are you pestering me for?" asked Emelyan, looking at him
+angrily.
+
+"To teach you not to be the first to dip into the cauldron. Don't
+think too much of yourself!"
+
+"You are a fool, and that is all about it!" wheezed out Emelyan.
+
+Knowing by experience how such conversations usually ended, Panteley
+and Vassya intervened and tried to persuade Dymov not to quarrel
+about nothing.
+
+"A church-singer!" The bully would not desist, but laughed
+contemptuously. "Anyone can sing like that--sit in the church
+porch and sing 'Give me alms, for Christ's sake!' Ugh! you are a
+nice fellow!"
+
+Emelyan did not speak. His silence had an irritating effect on
+Dymov. He looked with still greater hatred at the ex-singer and
+said:
+
+"I don't care to have anything to do with you, or I would show you
+what to think of yourself."
+
+"But why are you pushing me, you Mazeppa?" Emelyan cried, flaring
+up. "Am I interfering with you?"
+
+"What did you call me?" asked Dymov, drawing himself up, and his
+eyes were suffused with blood. "Eh! I am a Mazeppa? Yes? Take that,
+then; go and look for it."
+
+Dymov snatched the spoon out of Emelyan's hand and flung it far
+away. Kiruha, Vassya, and Styopka ran to look for it, while Emelyan
+fixed an imploring and questioning look on Panteley. His face
+suddenly became small and wrinkled; it began twitching, and the
+ex-singer began to cry like a child.
+
+Yegorushka, who had long hated Dymov, felt as though the air all
+at once were unbearably stifling, as though the fire were scorching
+his face; he longed to run quickly to the waggons in the darkness,
+but the bully's angry bored eyes drew the boy to him. With a
+passionate desire to say something extremely offensive, he took a
+step towards Dymov and brought out, gasping for breath:
+
+"You are the worst of the lot; I can't bear you!"
+
+After this he ought to have run to the waggons, but he could not
+stir from the spot and went on:
+
+"In the next world you will burn in hell! I'll complain to Ivan
+Ivanitch. Don't you dare insult Emelyan!"
+
+"Say this too, please," laughed Dyrnov: "'every little sucking-pig
+wants to lay down the law.' Shall I pull your ear?"
+
+Yegorushka felt that he could not breathe; and something which had
+never happened to him before--he suddenly began shaking all over,
+stamping his feet and crying shrilly:
+
+"Beat him, beat him!"
+
+Tears gushed from his eyes; he felt ashamed, and ran staggering
+back to the waggon. The effect produced by his outburst he did not
+see. Lying on the bales and twitching his arms and legs, he whispered:
+
+"Mother, mother!"
+
+And these men and the shadows round the camp fire, and the dark
+bales and the far-away lightning, which was flashing every minute
+in the distance--all struck him now as terrible and unfriendly.
+He was overcome with terror and asked himself in despair why and
+how he had come into this unknown land in the company of terrible
+peasants? Where was his uncle now, where was Father Christopher,
+where was Deniska? Why were they so long in coming? Hadn't they
+forgotten him? At the thought that he was forgotten and cast out
+to the mercy of fate, he felt such a cold chill of dread that he
+had several times an impulse to jump off the bales of wool, and run
+back full speed along the road; but the thought of the huge dark
+crosses, which would certainly meet him on the way, and the lightning
+flashing in the distance, stopped him. . . . And only when he
+whispered, "Mother, mother!" he felt as it were a little better.
+
+The waggoners must have been full of dread, too. After Yegorushka
+had run away from the camp fire they sat at first for a long time
+in silence, then they began speaking in hollow undertones about
+something, saying that it was coming and that they must make haste
+and get away from it. . . . They quickly finished supper, put out
+the fire and began harnessing the horses in silence. From their
+fluster and the broken phrases they uttered it was apparent they
+foresaw some trouble. Before they set off on their way, Dymov went
+up to Panteley and asked softly:
+
+"What's his name?"
+
+"Yegory," answered Panteley.
+
+Dymov put one foot on the wheel, caught hold of the cord which was
+tied round the bales and pulled himself up. Yegorushka saw his face
+and curly head. The face was pale and looked grave and exhausted,
+but there was no expression of spite in it.
+
+"Yera!" he said softly, "here, hit me!"
+
+Yegorushka looked at him in surprise. At that instant there was a
+flash of lightning.
+
+"It's all right, hit me," repeated Dymov. And without waiting for
+Yegorushka to hit him or to speak to him, he jumped down and said:
+"How dreary I am!"
+
+Then, swaying from one leg to the other and moving his shoulder-blades,
+he sauntered lazily alongside the string of waggons and repeated
+in a voice half weeping, half angry:
+
+"How dreary I am! O Lord! Don't you take offence, Emelyan," he said
+as he passed Emelyan. "Ours is a wretched cruel life!"
+
+There was a flash of lightning on the right, and, like a reflection
+in the looking-glass, at once a second flash in the distance.
+
+"Yegory, take this," cried Panteley, throwing up something big and
+dark.
+
+"What is it?" asked Yegorushka.
+
+"A mat. There will be rain, so cover yourself up."
+
+Yegorushka sat up and looked about him. The distance had grown
+perceptibly blacker, and now oftener than every minute winked with
+a pale light. The blackness was being bent towards the right as
+though by its own weight.
+
+"Will there be a storm, Grandfather?" asked Yegorushka.
+
+"Ah, my poor feet, how they ache!" Panteley said in a high-pitched
+voice, stamping his feet and not hearing the boy.
+
+On the left someone seemed to strike a match in the sky; a pale
+phosphorescent streak gleamed and went out. There was a sound as
+though someone very far away were walking over an iron roof, probably
+barefoot, for the iron gave a hollow rumble.
+
+"It's set in!" cried Kiruha.
+
+Between the distance and the horizon on the right there was a flash
+of lightning so vivid that it lighted up part of the steppe and the
+spot where the clear sky met the blackness. A terrible cloud was
+swooping down, without haste, a compact mass; big black shreds hung
+from its edge; similar shreds pressing one upon another were piling
+up on the right and left horizon. The tattered, ragged look of the
+storm-cloud gave it a drunken disorderly air. There was a distinct,
+not smothered, growl of thunder. Yegorushka crossed himself and
+began quickly putting on his great-coat.
+
+"I am dreary!" Dymov's shout floated from the foremost waggon, and
+it could be told from his voice that he was beginning to be
+ill-humoured again. "I am so dreary!"
+
+All at once there was a squall of wind, so violent that it almost
+snatched away Yegorushka's bundle and mat; the mat fluttered in all
+directions and flapped on the bale and on Yegorushka's face. The
+wind dashed whistling over the steppe, whirled round in disorder
+and raised such an uproar from the grass that neither the thunder
+nor the creaking of the wheels could be heard; it blew from the
+black storm-cloud, carrying with it clouds of dust and the scent
+of rain and wet earth. The moonlight grew mistier, as it were
+dirtier; the stars were even more overcast; and clouds of dust could
+be seen hurrying along the edge of the road, followed by their
+shadows. By now, most likely, the whirlwind eddying round and lifting
+from the earth dust, dry grass and feathers, was mounting to the
+very sky; uprooted plants must have been flying by that very black
+storm-cloud, and how frightened they must have been! But through
+the dust that clogged the eyes nothing could be seen but the flash
+of lightning.
+
+Yegorushka, thinking it would pour with rain in a minute, knelt up
+and covered himself with the mat.
+
+"Panteley-ey!" someone shouted in the front. "A. . . a. . . va!"
+
+"I can't!" Panteley answered in a loud high voice. "A . . . a
+. . . va! Arya . . . a!"
+
+There was an angry clap of thunder, which rolled across the sky
+from right to left, then back again, and died away near the foremost
+waggon.
+
+"Holy, holy, holy, Lord of Sabaoth," whispered Yegorushka, crossing
+himself. "Fill heaven and earth with Thy glory."
+
+The blackness in the sky yawned wide and breathed white fire. At
+once there was another clap of thunder. It had scarcely ceased when
+there was a flash of lightning so broad that Yegorushka suddenly
+saw through a slit in the mat the whole highroad to the very horizon,
+all the waggoners and even Kiruha's waistcoat. The black shreds had
+by now moved upwards from the left, and one of them, a coarse,
+clumsy monster like a claw with fingers, stretched to the moon.
+Yegorushka made up his mind to shut his eyes tight, to pay no
+attention to it, and to wait till it was all over.
+
+The rain was for some reason long in coming. Yegorushka peeped out
+from the mat in the hope that perhaps the storm-cloud was passing
+over. It was fearfully dark. Yegorushka could see neither Panteley,
+nor the bale of wool, nor himself; he looked sideways towards the
+place where the moon had lately been, but there was the same black
+darkness there as over the waggons. And in the darkness the flashes
+of lightning seemed more violent and blinding, so that they hurt
+his eyes.
+
+"Panteley!" called Yegorushka.
+
+No answer followed. But now a gust of wind for the last time flung
+up the mat and hurried away. A quiet regular sound was heard. A big
+cold drop fell on Yegorushka's knee, another trickled over his hand.
+He noticed that his knees were not covered, and tried to rearrange
+the mat, but at that moment something began pattering on the road,
+then on the shafts and the bales. It was the rain. As though they
+understood one another, the rain and the mat began prattling of
+something rapidly, gaily and most annoyingly like two magpies.
+
+Yegorushka knelt up or rather squatted on his boots. While the rain
+was pattering on the mat, he leaned forward to screen his knees,
+which were suddenly wet. He succeeded in covering his knees, but
+in less than a minute was aware of a penetrating, unpleasant dampness
+behind on his back and the calves of his legs. He returned to his
+former position, exposing his knees to the rain, and wondered what
+to do to rearrange the mat which he could not see in the darkness.
+But his arms were already wet, the water was trickling up his sleeves
+and down his collar, and his shoulder-blades felt chilly. And he
+made up his mind to do nothing but sit motionless and wait till it
+was all over.
+
+"Holy, holy, holy!" he whispered.
+
+Suddenly, exactly over his head, the sky cracked with a fearful
+deafening din; he huddled up and held his breath, waiting for the
+fragments to fall upon his head and back. He inadvertently opened
+his eyes and saw a blinding intense light flare out and flash five
+times on his fingers, his wet sleeves, and on the trickles of water
+running from the mat upon the bales and down to the ground. There
+was a fresh peal of thunder as violent and awful; the sky was not
+growling and rumbling now, but uttering short crashing sounds like
+the crackling of dry wood.
+
+"Trrah! tah! tah! tah!" the thunder rang out distinctly, rolled
+over the sky, seemed to stumble, and somewhere by the foremost
+waggons or far behind to fall with an abrupt angry "Trrra!"
+
+The flashes of lightning had at first been only terrible, but with
+such thunder they seemed sinister and menacing. Their magic light
+pierced through closed eyelids and sent a chill all over the body.
+What could he do not to see them? Yegorushka made up his mind to
+turn over on his face. Cautiously, as though afraid of being watched,
+he got on all fours, and his hands slipping on the wet bale, he
+turned back again.
+
+"Trrah! tah! tah!" floated over his head, rolled under the waggons
+and exploded "Kraa!"
+
+Again he inadvertently opened his eyes and saw a new danger: three
+huge giants with long pikes were following the waggon! A flash of
+lightning gleamed on the points of their pikes and lighted up their
+figures very distinctly. They were men of huge proportions, with
+covered faces, bowed heads, and heavy footsteps. They seemed gloomy
+and dispirited and lost in thought. Perhaps they were not following
+the waggons with any harmful intent, and yet there was something
+awful in their proximity.
+
+Yegorushka turned quickly forward, and trembling all over cried:
+"Panteley! Grandfather!"
+
+"Trrah! tah! tah!" the sky answered him.
+
+He opened his eyes to see if the waggoners were there. There were
+flashes of lightning in two places, which lighted up the road to
+the far distance, the whole string of waggons and all the waggoners.
+Streams of water were flowing along the road and bubbles were
+dancing. Panteley was walking beside the waggon; his tall hat and
+his shoulder were covered with a small mat; his figure expressed
+neither terror nor uneasiness, as though he were deafened by the
+thunder and blinded by the lightning.
+
+"Grandfather, the giants!" Yegorushka shouted to him in tears.
+
+But the old man did not hear. Further away walked Emelyan. He was
+covered from head to foot with a big mat and was triangular in
+shape. Vassya, without anything over him, was walking with the same
+wooden step as usual, lifting his feet high and not bending his
+knees. In the flash of lightning it seemed as though the waggons
+were not moving and the men were motionless, that Vassya's lifted
+foot was rigid in the same position. . . .
+
+Yegorushka called the old man once more. Getting no answer, he sat
+motionless, and no longer waited for it all to end. He was convinced
+that the thunder would kill him in another minute, that he would
+accidentally open his eyes and see the terrible giants, and he left
+off crossing himself, calling the old man and thinking of his mother,
+and was simply numb with cold and the conviction that the storm
+would never end.
+
+But at last there was the sound of voices.
+
+"Yegory, are you asleep?" Panteley cried below. "Get down! Is he
+deaf, the silly little thing? . . ."
+
+"Something like a storm!" said an unfamiliar bass voice, and the
+stranger cleared his throat as though he had just tossed off a good
+glass of vodka.
+
+Yegorushka opened his eyes. Close to the waggon stood Panteley,
+Emelyan, looking like a triangle, and the giants. The latter were
+by now much shorter, and when Yegorushka looked more closely at
+them they turned out to be ordinary peasants, carrying on their
+shoulders not pikes but pitchforks. In the space between Panteley
+and the triangular figure, gleamed the window of a low-pitched hut.
+So the waggons were halting in the village. Yegorushka flung off
+the mat, took his bundle and made haste to get off the waggon. Now
+when close to him there were people talking and a lighted window
+he no longer felt afraid, though the thunder was crashing as before
+and the whole sky was streaked with lightning.
+
+"It was a good storm, all right, . . ." Panteley was muttering.
+"Thank God, . . . my feet are a little softened by the rain. It was
+all right. . . . Have you got down, Yegory? Well, go into the hut;
+it is all right. . . ."
+
+"Holy, holy, holy!" wheezed Emelyan, "it must have struck something
+. . . . Are you of these parts?" he asked the giants.
+
+"No, from Glinovo. We belong to Glinovo. We are working at the
+Platers'."
+
+"Threshing?"
+
+"All sorts. Just now we are getting in the wheat. The lightning,
+the lightning! It is long since we have had such a storm. . . ."
+
+Yegorushka went into the hut. He was met by a lean hunchbacked old
+woman with a sharp chin. She stood holding a tallow candle in her
+hands, screwing up her eyes and heaving prolonged sighs.
+
+"What a storm God has sent us!" she said. "And our lads are out for
+the night on the steppe; they'll have a bad time, poor dears! Take
+off your things, little sir, take off your things."
+
+Shivering with cold and shrugging squeamishly, Yegorushka pulled
+off his drenched overcoat, then stretched out his arms and straddled
+his legs, and stood a long time without moving. The slightest
+movement caused an unpleasant sensation of cold and wetness. His
+sleeves and the back of his shirt were sopped, his trousers stuck
+to his legs, his head was dripping.
+
+"What's the use of standing there, with your legs apart, little
+lad?" said the old woman. "Come, sit down."
+
+Holding his legs wide apart, Yegorushka went up to the table and
+sat down on a bench near somebody's head. The head moved, puffed a
+stream of air through its nose, made a chewing sound and subsided.
+A mound covered with a sheepskin stretched from the head along the
+bench; it was a peasant woman asleep.
+
+The old woman went out sighing, and came back with a big water melon
+and a little sweet melon.
+
+"Have something to eat, my dear! I have nothing else to offer you,
+. . ." she said, yawning. She rummaged in the table and took out a
+long sharp knife, very much like the one with which the brigands
+killed the merchants in the inn. "Have some, my dear!"
+
+Yegorushka, shivering as though he were in a fever, ate a slice of
+sweet melon with black bread and then a slice of water melon, and
+that made him feel colder still.
+
+"Our lads are out on the steppe for the night, . . ." sighed the
+old woman while he was eating. "The terror of the Lord! I'd light
+the candle under the ikon, but I don't know where Stepanida has put
+it. Have some more, little sir, have some more. . . ."
+
+The old woman gave a yawn and, putting her right hand behind her,
+scratched her left shoulder.
+
+"It must be two o'clock now," she said; "it will soon be time to
+get up. Our lads are out on the steppe for the night; they are all
+wet through for sure. . . ."
+
+"Granny," said Yegorushka. "I am sleepy."
+
+"Lie down, my dear, lie down," the old woman sighed, yawning. "Lord
+Jesus Christ! I was asleep, when I heard a noise as though someone
+were knocking. I woke up and looked, and it was the storm God had
+sent us. . . . I'd have lighted the candle, but I couldn't find
+it."
+
+Talking to herself, she pulled some rags, probably her own bed, off
+the bench, took two sheepskins off a nail by the stove, and began
+laying them out for a bed for Yegorushka. "The storm doesn't grow
+less," she muttered. "If only nothing's struck in an unlucky hour.
+Our lads are out on the steppe for the night. Lie down and sleep,
+my dear. . . . Christ be with you, my child. . . . I won't take
+away the melon; maybe you'll have a bit when you get up."
+
+The sighs and yawns of the old woman, the even breathing of the
+sleeping woman, the half-darkness of the hut, and the sound of the
+rain outside, made one sleepy. Yegorushka was shy of undressing
+before the old woman. He only took off his boots, lay down and
+covered himself with the sheepskin.
+
+"Is the little lad lying down?" he heard Panteley whisper a little
+later.
+
+"Yes," answered the old woman in a whisper. "The terror of the Lord!
+It thunders and thunders, and there is no end to it."
+
+"It will soon be over," wheezed Panteley, sitting down; "it's getting
+quieter. . . . The lads have gone into the huts, and two have stayed
+with the horses. The lads have. . . . They can't; . . . the horses
+would be taken away. . . . I'll sit here a bit and then go and take
+my turn. . . . We can't leave them; they would be taken. . . ."
+
+Panteley and the old woman sat side by side at Yegorushka's feet,
+talking in hissing whispers and interspersing their speech with
+sighs and yawns. And Yegorushka could not get warm. The warm heavy
+sheepskin lay on him, but he was trembling all over; his arms and
+legs were twitching, and his whole inside was shivering. . . . He
+undressed under the sheepskin, but that was no good. His shivering
+grew more and more acute.
+
+Panteley went out to take his turn with the horses, and afterwards
+came back again, and still Yegorushka was shivering all over and
+could not get to sleep. Something weighed upon his head and chest
+and oppressed him, and he did not know what it was, whether it was
+the old people whispering, or the heavy smell of the sheepskin. The
+melon he had eaten had left an unpleasant metallic taste in his
+mouth. Moreover he was being bitten by fleas.
+
+"Grandfather, I am cold," he said, and did not know his own voice.
+
+"Go to sleep, my child, go to sleep," sighed the old woman.
+
+Tit came up to the bedside on his thin little legs and waved his
+arms, then grew up to the ceiling and turned into a windmill. . . .
+Father Christopher, not as he was in the chaise, but in his full
+vestments with the sprinkler in his hand, walked round the mill,
+sprinkling it with holy water, and it left off waving. Yegorushka,
+knowing this was delirium, opened his eyes.
+
+"Grandfather," he called, "give me some water."
+
+No one answered. Yegorushka felt it insufferably stifling and
+uncomfortable lying down. He got up, dressed, and went out of the
+hut. Morning was beginning. The sky was overcast, but it was no
+longer raining. Shivering and wrapping himself in his wet overcoat,
+Yegorushka walked about the muddy yard and listened to the silence;
+he caught sight of a little shed with a half-open door made of
+reeds. He looked into this shed, went into it, and sat down in a
+dark corner on a heap of dry dung.
+
+There was a tangle of thoughts in his heavy head; his mouth was dry
+and unpleasant from the metallic taste. He looked at his hat,
+straightened the peacock's feather on it, and thought how he had
+gone with his mother to buy the hat. He put his hand into his pocket
+and took out a lump of brownish sticky paste. How had that paste
+come into his pocket? He thought a minute, smelt it; it smelt of
+honey. Aha! it was the Jewish cake! How sopped it was, poor thing!
+
+Yegorushka examined his coat. It was a little grey overcoat with
+big bone buttons, cut in the shape of a frock-coat. At home, being
+a new and expensive article, it had not been hung in the hall, but
+with his mother's dresses in her bedroom; he was only allowed to
+wear it on holidays. Looking at it, Yegorushka felt sorry for it.
+He thought that he and the great-coat were both abandoned to the
+mercy of destiny; he thought that he would never get back home, and
+began sobbing so violently that he almost fell off the heap of dung.
+
+A big white dog with woolly tufts like curl-papers about its face,
+sopping from the rain, came into the shed and stared with curiosity
+at Yegorushka. It seemed to be hesitating whether to bark or not.
+Deciding that there was no need to bark, it went cautiously up to
+Yegorushka, ate the sticky plaster and went out again.
+
+"There are Varlamov's men!" someone shouted in the street.
+
+After having his cry out, Yegorushka went out of the shed and,
+walking round a big puddle, made his way towards the street. The
+waggons were standing exactly opposite the gateway. The drenched
+waggoners, with their muddy feet, were sauntering beside them or
+sitting on the shafts, as listless and drowsy as flies in autumn.
+Yegorushka looked at them and thought: "How dreary and comfortless
+to be a peasant!" He went up to Panteley and sat down beside him
+on the shaft.
+
+"Grandfather, I'm cold," he said, shivering and thrusting his hands
+up his sleeves.
+
+"Never mind, we shall soon be there," yawned Panteley. "Never mind,
+you will get warm."
+
+It must have been early when the waggons set off, for it was not
+hot. Yegorushka lay on the bales of wool and shivered with cold,
+though the sun soon came out and dried his clothes, the bales, and
+the earth. As soon as he closed his eyes he saw Tit and the windmill
+again. Feeling a sickness and heaviness all over, he did his utmost
+to drive away these images, but as soon as they vanished the
+dare-devil Dymov, with red eyes and lifted fists, rushed at Yegorushka
+with a roar, or there was the sound of his complaint: "I am so
+dreary!" Varlamov rode by on his little Cossack stallion; happy
+Konstantin passed, with a smile and the bustard in his arms. And
+how tedious these people were, how sickening and unbearable!
+
+Once--it was towards evening--he raised his head to ask for
+water. The waggons were standing on a big bridge across a broad
+river. There was black smoke below over the river, and through it
+could be seen a steamer with a barge in tow. Ahead of them, beyond
+the river, was a huge mountain dotted with houses and churches; at
+the foot of the mountain an engine was being shunted along beside
+some goods trucks.
+
+Yegorushka had never before seen steamers, nor engines, nor broad
+rivers. Glancing at them now, he was not alarmed or surprised; there
+was not even a look of anything like curiosity in his face. He
+merely felt sick, and made haste to turn over to the edge of the
+bale. He was sick. Panteley, seeing this, cleared his throat and
+shook his head.
+
+"Our little lad's taken ill," he said. "He must have got a chill
+to the stomach. The little lad must. . . away from home; it's a bad
+lookout!"
+
+VIII
+
+The waggons stopped at a big inn for merchants, not far from the
+quay. As Yegorushka climbed down from the waggon he heard a very
+familiar voice. Someone was helping him to get down, and saying:
+
+"We arrived yesterday evening. . . . We have been expecting you all
+day. We meant to overtake you yesterday, but it was out of our way;
+we came by the other road. I say, how you have crumpled your coat!
+You'll catch it from your uncle!"
+
+Yegorushka looked into the speaker's mottled face and remembered
+that this was Deniska.
+
+"Your uncle and Father Christopher are in the inn now, drinking
+tea; come along!"
+
+And he led Yegorushka to a big two-storied building, dark and gloomy
+like the almshouse at N. After going across the entry, up a dark
+staircase and through a narrow corridor, Yegorushka and Deniska
+reached a little room in which Ivan Ivanitch and Father Christopher
+were sitting at the tea-table. Seeing the boy, both the old men
+showed surprise and pleasure.
+
+"Aha! Yegor Ni-ko-la-aitch!" chanted Father Christopher. "Mr.
+Lomonosov!"
+
+"Ah, our gentleman that is to be," said Kuzmitchov, "pleased to see
+you!"
+
+Yegorushka took off his great-coat, kissed his uncle's hand and
+Father Christopher's, and sat down to the table.
+
+"Well, how did you like the journey, puer bone?" Father Christopher
+pelted him with questions as he poured him out some tea, with his
+radiant smile. "Sick of it, I've no doubt? God save us all from
+having to travel by waggon or with oxen. You go on and on, God
+forgive us; you look ahead and the steppe is always lying stretched
+out the same as it was--you can't see the end of it! It's not
+travelling but regular torture. Why don't you drink your tea? Drink
+it up; and in your absence, while you have been trailing along with
+the waggons, we have settled all our business capitally. Thank God
+we have sold our wool to Tcherepahin, and no one could wish to have
+done better. . . . We have made a good bargain."
+
+At the first sight of his own people Yegorushka felt an overwhelming
+desire to complain. He did not listen to Father Christopher, but
+thought how to begin and what exactly to complain of. But Father
+Christopher's voice, which seemed to him harsh and unpleasant,
+prevented him from concentrating his attention and confused his
+thoughts. He had not sat at the table five minutes before he got
+up, went to the sofa and lay down.
+
+"Well, well," said Father Christopher in surprise. "What about your
+tea?"
+
+Still thinking what to complain of, Yegorushka leaned his head
+against the wall and broke into sobs.
+
+"Well, well!" repeated Father Christopher, getting up and going to
+the sofa. "Yegory, what is the matter with you? Why are you crying?"
+
+"I'm . . . I'm ill," Yegorushka brought out.
+
+"Ill?" said Father Christopher in amazement. "That's not the right
+thing, my boy. . . . One mustn't be ill on a journey. Aie, aie,
+what are you thinking about, boy . . . eh?"
+
+He put his hand to Yegorushka's head, touched his cheek and said:
+
+"Yes, your head's feverish. . . . You must have caught cold or else
+have eaten something. . . . Pray to God."
+
+"Should we give him quinine? . . ." said Ivan Ivanitch, troubled.
+
+"No; he ought to have something hot. . . . Yegory, have a little
+drop of soup? Eh?"
+
+"I . . . don't want any," said Yegorushka.
+
+"Are you feeling chilly?"
+
+"I was chilly before, but now . . . now I am hot. And I ache all
+over. . . ."
+
+Ivan Ivanitch went up to the sofa, touched Yegorushka on the head,
+cleared his throat with a perplexed air, and went back to the table.
+
+"I tell you what, you undress and go to bed," said Father Christopher.
+"What you want is sleep now."
+
+He helped Yegorushka to undress, gave him a pillow and covered him
+with a quilt, and over that Ivan Ivanitch's great-coat. Then he
+walked away on tiptoe and sat down to the table. Yegorushka shut
+his eyes, and at once it seemed to him that he was not in the hotel
+room, but on the highroad beside the camp fire. Emelyan waved his
+hands, and Dymov with red eyes lay on his stomach and looked mockingly
+at Yegorushka.
+
+"Beat him, beat him!" shouted Yegorushka.
+
+"He is delirious," said Father Christopher in an undertone.
+
+"It's a nuisance!" sighed Ivan Ivanitch.
+
+"He must be rubbed with oil and vinegar. Please God, he will be
+better to-morrow."
+
+To be rid of bad dreams, Yegorushka opened his eyes and began looking
+towards the fire. Father Christopher and Ivan Ivanitch had now
+finished their tea and were talking in a whisper. The first was
+smiling with delight, and evidently could not forget that he had
+made a good bargain over his wool; what delighted him was not so
+much the actual profit he had made as the thought that on getting
+home he would gather round him his big family, wink slyly and go
+off into a chuckle; at first he would deceive them all, and say
+that he had sold the wool at a price below its value, then he would
+give his son-in-law, Mihail, a fat pocket-book and say: "Well, take
+it! that's the way to do business!" Kuzmitchov did not seem pleased;
+his face expressed, as before, a business-like reserve and anxiety.
+
+"If I could have known that Tcherepahin would give such a price,"
+he said in a low voice, "I wouldn't have sold Makarov those five
+tons at home. It is vexatious! But who could have told that the
+price had gone up here?"
+
+A man in a white shirt cleared away the samovar and lighted the
+little lamp before the ikon in the corner. Father Christopher
+whispered something in his ear; the man looked, made a serious face
+like a conspirator, as though to say, "I understand," went out, and
+returned a little while afterwards and put something under the sofa.
+Ivan Ivanitch made himself a bed on the floor, yawned several times,
+said his prayers lazily, and lay down.
+
+"I think of going to the cathedral to-morrow," said Father Christopher.
+"I know the sacristan there. I ought to go and see the bishop after
+mass, but they say he is ill."
+
+He yawned and put out the lamp. Now there was no light in the room
+but the little lamp before the ikon.
+
+"They say he can't receive visitors," Father Christopher went on,
+undressing. "So I shall go away without seeing him."
+
+He took off his full coat, and Yegorushka saw Robinson Crusoe
+reappear. Robinson stirred something in a saucer, went up to
+Yegorushka and whispered:
+
+"Lomonosov, are you asleep? Sit up; I'm going to rub you with oil
+and vinegar. It's a good thing, only you must say a prayer."
+
+Yegorushka roused himself quickly and sat up. Father Christopher
+pulled down the boy's shirt, and shrinking and breathing jerkily,
+as though he were being tickled himself, began rubbing Yegorushka's
+chest.
+
+"In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost," he
+whispered, "lie with your back upwards--that's it. . . . You'll
+be all right to-morrow, but don't do it again. . . . You are as hot
+as fire. I suppose you were on the road in the storm."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You might well fall ill! In the name of the Father, the Son, and
+the Holy Ghost, . . . you might well fall ill!"
+
+After rubbing Yegorushka, Father Christopher put on his shirt again,
+covered him, made the sign of the cross over him, and walked away.
+Then Yegorushka saw him saying his prayers. Probably the old man
+knew a great many prayers by heart, for he stood a long time before
+the ikon murmuring. After saying his prayers he made the sign of
+the cross over the window, the door, Yegorushka, and Ivan Ivanitch,
+lay down on the little sofa without a pillow, and covered himself
+with his full coat. A clock in the corridor struck ten. Yegorushka
+thought how long a time it would be before morning; feeling miserable,
+he pressed his forehead against the back of the sofa and left off
+trying to get rid of the oppressive misty dreams. But morning came
+much sooner than he expected.
+
+It seemed to him that he had not been lying long with his head
+pressed to the back of the sofa, but when he opened his eyes slanting
+rays of sunlight were already shining on the floor through the two
+windows of the little hotel room. Father Christopher and Ivan
+Ivanitch were not in the room. The room had been tidied; it was
+bright, snug, and smelt of Father Christopher, who always smelt of
+cypress and dried cornflowers (at home he used to make the holy-water
+sprinklers and decorations for the ikonstands out of cornflowers,
+and so he was saturated with the smell of them). Yegorushka looked
+at the pillow, at the slanting sunbeams, at his boots, which had
+been cleaned and were standing side by side near the sofa, and
+laughed. It seemed strange to him that he was not on the bales of
+wool, that everything was dry around him, and that there was no
+thunder and lightning on the ceiling.
+
+He jumped off the sofa and began dressing. He felt splendid; nothing
+was left of his yesterday's illness but a slight weakness in his
+legs and neck. So the vinegar and oil had done good. He remembered
+the steamer, the railway engine, and the broad river, which he had
+dimly seen the day before, and now he made haste to dress, to run
+to the quay and have a look at them. When he had washed and was
+putting on his red shirt, the latch of the door clicked, and Father
+Christopher appeared in the doorway, wearing his top-hat and a brown
+silk cassock over his canvas coat and carrying his staff in his
+hand. Smiling and radiant (old men are always radiant when they
+come back from church), he put a roll of holy bread and a parcel
+of some sort on the table, prayed before the ikon, and said:
+
+"God has sent us blessings--well, how are you?"
+
+"Quite well now," answered Yegorushka, kissing his hand.
+
+"Thank God. . . . I have come from mass. I've been to see a sacristan
+I know. He invited me to breakfast with him, but I didn't go. I
+don't like visiting people too early, God bless them!"
+
+He took off his cassock, stroked himself on the chest, and without
+haste undid the parcel. Yegorushka saw a little tin of caviare, a
+piece of dry sturgeon, and a French loaf.
+
+"See; I passed a fish-shop and brought this," said Father Christopher.
+"There is no need to indulge in luxuries on an ordinary weekday;
+but I thought, I've an invalid at home, so it is excusable. And the
+caviare is good, real sturgeon. . . ."
+
+The man in the white shirt brought in the samovar and a tray with
+tea-things.
+
+"Eat some," said Father Christopher, spreading the caviare on a
+slice of bread and handing it to Yegorushka. "Eat now and enjoy
+yourself, but the time will soon come for you to be studying. Mind
+you study with attention and application, so that good may come of
+it. What you have to learn by heart, learn by heart, but when you
+have to tell the inner sense in your own words, without regard to
+the outer form, then say it in your own words. And try to master
+all subjects. One man knows mathematics excellently, but has never
+heard of Pyotr Mogila; another knows about Pyotr Mogila, but cannot
+explain about the moon. But you study so as to understand everything.
+Study Latin, French, German, . . . geography, of course, history,
+theology, philosophy, mathematics, . . . and when you have mastered
+everything, not with haste but with prayer and with zeal, then go
+into the service. When you know everything it will be easy for you
+in any line of life. . . . You study and strive for the divine
+blessing, and God will show you what to be. Whether a doctor, a
+judge or an engineer. . . ."
+
+Father Christopher spread a little caviare on a piece of bread, put
+it in his mouth and said:
+
+"The Apostle Paul says: 'Do not apply yourself to strange and diverse
+studies.' Of course, if it is black magic, unlawful arts, or calling
+up spirits from the other world, like Saul, or studying subjects
+that can be of no use to yourself or others, better not learn them.
+You must undertake only what God has blessed. Take example . . .
+the Holy Apostles spoke in all languages, so you study languages.
+Basil the Great studied mathematics and philosophy--so you study
+them; St. Nestor wrote history--so you study and write history.
+Take example from the saints."
+
+Father Christopher sipped the tea from his saucer, wiped his
+moustaches, and shook his head.
+
+"Good!" he said. "I was educated in the old-fashioned way; I have
+forgotten a great deal by now, but still I live differently from
+other people. Indeed, there is no comparison. For instance, in
+company at a dinner, or at an assembly, one says something in Latin,
+or makes some allusion from history or philosophy, and it pleases
+people, and it pleases me myself. . . . Or when the circuit court
+comes and one has to take the oath, all the other priests are shy,
+but I am quite at home with the judges, the prosecutors, and the
+lawyers. I talk intellectually, drink a cup of tea with them, laugh,
+ask them what I don't know, . . . and they like it. So that's how
+it is, my boy. Learning is light and ignorance is darkness. Study!
+It's hard, of course; nowadays study is expensive. . . . Your mother
+is a widow; she lives on her pension, but there, of course . . ."
+
+Father Christopher glanced apprehensively towards the door, and
+went on in a whisper:
+
+"Ivan Ivanitch will assist. He won't desert you. He has no children
+of his own, and he will help you. Don't be uneasy."
+
+He looked grave, and whispered still more softly:
+
+"Only mind, Yegory, don't forget your mother and Ivan Ivanitch, God
+preserve you from it. The commandment bids you honour your mother,
+and Ivan Ivanitch is your benefactor and takes the place of a father
+to you. If you become learned, God forbid you should be impatient
+and scornful with people because they are not so clever as you,
+then woe, woe to you!"
+
+Father Christopher raised his hand and repeated in a thin voice:
+
+"Woe to you! Woe to you!"
+
+Father Christopher's tongue was loosened, and he was, as they say,
+warming to his subject; he would not have finished till dinnertime
+but the door opened and Ivan Ivanitch walked in. He said good-morning
+hurriedly, sat down to the table, and began rapidly swallowing his
+tea.
+
+"Well, I have settled all our business," he said. "We might have
+gone home to-day, but we have still to think about Yegor. We must
+arrange for him. My sister told me that Nastasya Petrovna, a friend
+of hers, lives somewhere here, so perhaps she will take him in as
+a boarder."
+
+He rummaged in his pocket-book, found a crumpled note and read:
+
+"'Little Lower Street: Nastasya Petrovna Toskunov, living in a
+house of her own.' We must go at once and try to find her. It's a
+nuisance!"
+
+Soon after breakfast Ivan Ivanitch and Yegorushka left the inn.
+
+"It's a nuisance," muttered his uncle. "You are sticking to me like
+a burr. You and your mother want education and gentlemanly breeding
+and I have nothing but worry with you both. . . ."
+
+When they crossed the yard, the waggons and the drivers were not
+there. They had all gone off to the quay early in the morning. In
+a far-off dark corner of the yard stood the chaise.
+
+"Good-bye, chaise!" thought Yegorushka.
+
+At first they had to go a long way uphill by a broad street, then
+they had to cross a big marketplace; here Ivan Ivanitch asked a
+policeman for Little Lower Street.
+
+"I say," said the policeman, with a grin, "it's a long way off, out
+that way towards the town grazing ground."
+
+They met several cabs but Ivan Ivanitch only permitted himself such
+a weakness as taking a cab in exceptional cases and on great holidays.
+Yegorushka and he walked for a long while through paved streets,
+then along streets where there were only wooden planks at the sides
+and no pavements, and in the end got to streets where there were
+neither planks nor pavements. When their legs and their tongues had
+brought them to Little Lower Street they were both red in the face,
+and taking off their hats, wiped away the perspiration.
+
+"Tell me, please," said Ivan Ivanitch, addressing an old man sitting
+on a little bench by a gate, "where is Nastasya Petrovna Toskunov's
+house?"
+
+"There is no one called Toskunov here," said the old man, after
+pondering a moment. "Perhaps it's Timoshenko you want."
+
+"No, Toskunov. . . ."
+
+"Excuse me, there's no one called Toskunov. . . ."
+
+Ivan Ivanitch shrugged his shoulders and trudged on farther.
+
+"You needn't look," the old man called after them. "I tell you there
+isn't, and there isn't."
+
+"Listen, auntie," said Ivan Ivanitch, addressing an old woman who
+was sitting at a corner with a tray of pears and sunflower seeds,
+"where is Nastasya Petrovna Toskunov's house?"
+
+The old woman looked at him with surprise and laughed.
+
+"Why, Nastasya Petrovna live in her own house now!" she cried.
+"Lord! it is eight years since she married her daughter and gave
+up the house to her son-in-law! It's her son-in-law lives there
+now."
+
+And her eyes expressed: "How is it you didn't know a simple thing
+like that, you fools?"
+
+"And where does she live now?" Ivan Ivanitch asked.
+
+"Oh, Lord!" cried the old woman, flinging up her hands in surprise.
+"She moved ever so long ago! It's eight years since she gave up her
+house to her son-in-law! Upon my word!"
+
+She probably expected Ivan Ivanitch to be surprised, too, and to
+exclaim: "You don't say so," but Ivan Ivanitch asked very calmly:
+
+"Where does she live now?"
+
+The old woman tucked up her sleeves and, stretching out her bare
+arm to point, shouted in a shrill piercing voice:
+
+"Go straight on, straight on, straight on. You will pass a little
+red house, then you will see a little alley on your left. Turn down
+that little alley, and it will be the third gate on the right. . . ."
+
+Ivan Ivanitch and Yegorushka reached the little red house, turned
+to the left down the little alley, and made for the third gate on
+the right. On both sides of this very old grey gate there was a
+grey fence with big gaps in it. The first part of the fence was
+tilting forwards and threatened to fall, while on the left of the
+gate it sloped backwards towards the yard. The gate itself stood
+upright and seemed to be still undecided which would suit it best
+--to fall forwards or backwards. Ivan Ivanitch opened the little
+gate at the side, and he and Yegorushka saw a big yard overgrown
+with weeds and burdocks. A hundred paces from the gate stood a
+little house with a red roof and green shutters. A stout woman with
+her sleeves tucked up and her apron held out was standing in the
+middle of the yard, scattering something on the ground and shouting
+in a voice as shrill as that of the woman selling fruit:
+
+"Chick! . . . Chick! . . . Chick!"
+
+Behind her sat a red dog with pointed ears. Seeing the strangers,
+he ran to the little gate and broke into a tenor bark (all red dogs
+have a tenor bark).
+
+"Whom do you want?" asked the woman, putting up her hand to shade
+her eyes from the sun.
+
+"Good-morning!" Ivan Ivanitch shouted, too, waving off the red dog
+with his stick. "Tell me, please, does Nastasya Petrovna Toskunov
+live here?"
+
+"Yes! But what do you want with her?"
+
+"Perhaps you are Nastasya Petrovna?"
+
+"Well, yes, I am!"
+
+"Very pleased to see you. . . . You see, your old friend Olga
+Ivanovna Knyasev sends her love to you. This is her little son. And
+I, perhaps you remember, am her brother Ivan Ivanitch. . . . You
+are one of us from N. . . . You were born among us and married
+there. . . ."
+
+A silence followed. The stout woman stared blankly at Ivan Ivanitch,
+as though not believing or not understanding him, then she flushed
+all over, and flung up her hands; the oats were scattered out of
+her apron and tears spurted from her eyes.
+
+"Olga Ivanovna!" she screamed, breathless with excitement. "My own
+darling! Ah, holy saints, why am I standing here like a fool? My
+pretty little angel. . . ."
+
+She embraced Yegorushka, wetted his face with her tears, and broke
+down completely.
+
+"Heavens!" she said, wringing her hands, "Olga's little boy! How
+delightful! He is his mother all over! The image of his mother! But
+why are you standing in the yard? Come indoors."
+
+Crying, gasping for breath and talking as she went, she hurried
+towards the house. Her visitors trudged after her.
+
+"The room has not been done yet," she said, ushering the visitors
+into a stuffy little drawing-room adorned with many ikons and pots
+of flowers. "Oh, Mother of God! Vassilisa, go and open the shutters
+anyway! My little angel! My little beauty! I did not know that
+Olitchka had a boy like that!"
+
+When she had calmed down and got over her first surprise Ivan
+Ivanitch asked to speak to her alone. Yegorushka went into another
+room; there was a sewing-machine; in the window was a cage with a
+starling in it, and there were as many ikons and flowers as in the
+drawing-room. Near the machine stood a little girl with a sunburnt
+face and chubby cheeks like Tit's, and a clean cotton dress. She
+stared at Yegorushka without blinking, and apparently felt very
+awkward. Yegorushka looked at her and after a pause asked:
+
+"What's your name?"
+
+The little girl moved her lips, looked as if she were going to cry,
+and answered softly:
+
+"Atka. . . ."
+
+This meant Katka.
+
+"He will live with you," Ivan Ivanitch was whispering in the
+drawing-room, "if you will be so kind, and we will pay ten roubles
+a month for his keep. He is not a spoilt boy; he is quiet. . . ."
+
+"I really don't know what to say, Ivan Ivanitch!" Nastasya Petrovna
+sighed tearfully. "Ten roubles a month is very good, but it is a
+dreadful thing to take another person's child! He may fall ill or
+something. . . ."
+
+When Yegorushka was summoned back to the drawing-room Ivan Ivanitch
+was standing with his hat in his hands, saying good-bye.
+
+"Well, let him stay with you now, then," he said. "Good-bye! You
+stay, Yegor!" he said, addressing his nephew. "Don't be troublesome;
+mind you obey Nastasya Petrovna. . . . Good-bye; I am coming again
+to-morrow."
+
+And he went away. Nastasya once more embraced Yegorushka, called
+him a little angel, and with a tear-stained face began preparing
+for dinner. Three minutes later Yegorushka was sitting beside her,
+answering her endless questions and eating hot savoury cabbage soup.
+
+In the evening he sat again at the same table and, resting his head
+on his hand, listened to Nastasya Petrovna. Alternately laughing
+and crying, she talked of his mother's young days, her own marriage,
+her children. . . . A cricket chirruped in the stove, and there was
+a faint humming from the burner of the lamp. Nastasya Petrovna
+talked in a low voice, and was continually dropping her thimble in
+her excitement; and Katka her granddaughter, crawled under the table
+after it and each time sat a long while under the table, probably
+examining Yegorushka's feet; and Yegorushka listened, half dozing
+and looking at the old woman's face, her wart with hairs on it, and
+the stains of tears, and he felt sad, very sad. He was put to sleep
+on a chest and told that if he were hungry in the night he must go
+out into the little passage and take some chicken, put there under
+a plate in the window.
+
+Next morning Ivan Ivanitch and Father Christopher came to say
+good-bye. Nastasya Petrovna was delighted to see them, and was about
+to set the samovar; but Ivan Ivanitch, who was in a great hurry,
+waved his hands and said:
+
+"We have no time for tea! We are just setting off."
+
+Before parting they all sat down and were silent for a minute.
+Nastasya Petrovna heaved a deep sigh and looked towards the ikon
+with tear-stained eyes.
+
+"Well," began Ivan Ivanitch, getting up, "so you will stay. . . ."
+
+All at once the look of business-like reserve vanished from his
+face; he flushed a little and said with a mournful smile:
+
+"Mind you work hard. . . . Don't forget your mother, and obey
+Nastasya Petrovna. . . . If you are diligent at school, Yegor, I'll
+stand by you."
+
+He took his purse out of his pocket, turned his back to Yegorushka,
+fumbled for a long time among the smaller coins, and, finding a
+ten-kopeck piece, gave it to Yegorushka.
+
+Father Christopher, without haste, blessed Yegorushka.
+
+"In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. . . .
+Study," he said. "Work hard, my lad. If I die, remember me in your
+prayers. Here is a ten-kopeck piece from me, too. . . ."
+
+Yegorushka kissed his hand, and shed tears; something whispered in
+his heart that he would never see the old man again.
+
+"I have applied at the high school already," said Ivan Ivanitch in
+a voice as though there were a corpse in the room. "You will take
+him for the entrance examination on the seventh of August. . . .
+Well, good-bye; God bless you, good-bye, Yegor!"
+
+"You might at least have had a cup of tea," wailed Nastasya Petrovna.
+
+Through the tears that filled his eyes Yegorushka could not see his
+uncle and Father Christopher go out. He rushed to the window, but
+they were not in the yard, and the red dog, who had just been
+barking, was running back from the gate with the air of having done
+his duty. When Yegorushka ran out of the gate Ivan Ivanitch and
+Father Christopher, the former waving his stick with the crook, the
+latter his staff, were just turning the corner. Yegorushka felt
+that with these people all that he had known till then had vanished
+from him for ever. He sank helplessly on to the little bench, and
+with bitter tears greeted the new unknown life that was beginning
+for him now. . . .
+
+What would that life be like?
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Bishop and Other Stories, by Anton Chekhov
+
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