Stories (43 page)

“Why did you go and leave me, my little dove?” she wept, having buried her husband. “How am I to live without you now, wretched and unhappy as I am? Good people, have pity on me, an orphan …”

She went about in a black dress with weepers, and forever gave up wearing a hat and gloves, rarely left the house, except to go to church or visit her husband’s grave, and lived at home like a nun. And only when six months had passed did she remove the weepers and begin opening the shutters of her windows. Occasionally she was seen in the morning, going to market for provisions with her cook, but how she lived now and what went on in her house could only be guessed. Guessed, for instance, from the fact that she was seen having tea in the garden with the veterinarian, while he
read the newspaper aloud to her, or that, on meeting a lady of her acquaintance in the post office, she said:

“There’s no proper veterinarian supervision in our town, and that results in many diseases. You keep hearing of people getting sick from milk or catching infections from horses and cows. In fact, the health of domestic animals needs as much care as the health of people.”

She repeated the veterinarian’s thoughts, and was now of the same opinion as he about everything. It was clear that she could not live without an attachment even for one year, and had found her new happiness in her own wing. Another woman would have been condemned for it, but no one could think ill of Olenka, and everything was so clear in her life. She and the veterinarian told no one about the change that had occurred in their relations and tried to conceal it, but they did not succeed, because Olenka could not keep a secret. When he had guests, his colleagues from the regiment, she would start
talking about cattle plague, or pearl disease, or the town slaughterhouses, while she poured the tea or served
supper, and he would be terribly embarrassed and, when the guests left, would seize her by the arm and hiss angrily:

“I asked you not to talk about things you don’t understand! When we veterinarians are talking among ourselves, please don’t interfere. It’s tedious, finally!”

But she would look at him in amazement and alarm and ask:

“Volodechka, what then am I to talk about?”

And with tears in her eyes she would embrace him, beg him not to be angry, and they would both be happy

However, this happiness did not last long. The veterinarian left with his regiment, left forever, because
his regiment was transferred to somewhere very far away, almost to Siberia. And Olenka was left alone.

Now she was completely alone. Her father had died long ago; his armchair was lying in the attic, dusty, one leg missing. She lost weight and lost her looks, and those who met her in the street no longer looked at her as before and no longer smiled at her; obviously, the best years were already past, left behind, and now some new life was beginning, unknown, of which it was better not to think. In the evenings Olenka sat on the back porch, and could hear music playing in the Tivoli and rockets bursting, but that called up no thoughts in her. She gazed indifferently at her empty cour
tyard, thought of nothing, wanted nothing, and later, when night fell, went to sleep and dreamed of her empty courtyard. She ate and drank as if against her will.

But chiefly, which was worst of all, she no longer had any opinions. She saw the objects around her and was aware of all that went on around her, but she was unable to form an opinion about anything and did not know what to talk about. And how terrible it was to have no opinions! You see, for instance, that a bottle is standing there, or that it is raining, or that a peasant is driving a cart, but why the bottle, the rain, or the peasant are there, what sense they make, you cannot say and even for a thousand roubles you could not say anything. With Kukin and Pustovalov, and later w
ith the veterinarian, Olenka had been able to explain everything and give her opinion on anything you like, but now in her thoughts and in her heart there was the same emptiness as in her courtyard. And it felt as eerie and bitter as if she had eaten wormwood.

The town was gradually expanding on all sides; the Gypsy quarter was already called a street, and houses grew up and many lanes
appeared where the Tivoli garden and the lumberyard used to be. How quickly time flies! Olenka’s house darkened, the roof rusted, the shed slumped, and the whole courtyard was overgrown with weeds and prickly nettles. Olenka herself aged and lost her looks. In summer she sits on her porch, and as usual in he
r soul it is empty, and tedious, and smells of wormwood, and in winter she sits at the window and looks at the snow. There is a breath of spring, the ringing of the cathedral bells is borne on the wind, and suddenly a flood of memories from the past comes, her heart is sweetly wrung, and abundant tears flow from her eyes, but this lasts only a minute, and then again there is emptiness, and she does not know why she is alive. The little black cat Bryska rubs against her and purrs softly, but Olenka is not touched by the cat’s tenderness. Is that what she needs? She needs such love as would seize h
er whole being, her whole soul and mind, would give her thoughts, a direction in life, would warm her aging blood. And she shakes the black Bryska off her lap and says to her in vexation:

“Go, go … You’ve no business here!”

And so it went, day after day, year after year—and not one joy, and no opinions of any sort. Whatever the cook Mavra said was good enough.

One hot July day, towards evening, when the town herd was being driven down the street and the whole yard was filled with clouds of dust, someone suddenly knocked at the gate. Olenka herself went to open, looked, and was dumbstruck: outside the gate stood the veterinarian Smirnin, gray-haired now and in civilian dress. She suddenly remembered everything, could not help herself, burst into tears, and laid her head on his chest without saying a word, and was so shaken that she did not notice how they both went into the house then, how they sat down to tea.

“My little dove!” she murmured, trembling with joy. “Vladimir Platonych! Where did God bring you from?”

“I want to settle here for good,” he told her. “I’ve retired and am here to try my luck on my own, to live a sedentary life. And it’s time my son went to school. He’s a big boy. You know, I made peace with my wife.”

“Where is she?” asked Olenka.

“She’s in the hotel with my son, and I’m going around looking for lodgings.”

“Lord, dear heart, take my house! Isn’t that lodgings? Oh, Lord, I
won’t even take anything from you,” Olenka became excited and again began to cry “Live here, and I’ll be content with the wing. Lord, what joy!”

The next day the roof of the house was being painted and the walls whitewashed, and Olenka, arms akimbo, strode about the yard giving orders. The former smile lit up on her face, and she became all alive, fresh, as if she had awakened after a long sleep. The veterinarian’s wife came, a thin, plain lady with short hair and a capricious expression, and with her came Sasha, small for his years (he was going on ten), plump, with bright blue eyes and dimples on his cheeks. And as soon as the boy came into the yard, he ran after the cat, and immediately his merry, joyful laughter rang out.

“Auntie, is that your cat?” he asked Olenka. “When she has kittens, please give us one. Mama’s very afraid of mice.”

Olenka talked with him, gave him tea, and the heart in her breast suddenly warmed and was wrung sweetly, as if this boy were her own son. And when he sat in the dining room that evening repeating his lessons, she looked at him with tenderness and pity and whispered:

“My little dove, my handsome one … My little child, you came out so smart, so fair!”

“An island,” he read, “is a piece of dry land surrounded on all sides by water.”

“An island is a piece of dry land …” she repeated, and this was the first opinion she uttered with conviction after so many years of silence and emptiness in her thoughts.

And she had her own opinions now and over dinner talked with Sasha’s parents about how difficult it was for children to study in school, but that all the same classical education was better than modern, because after school all paths are open: if you wish, you can be a doctor, if you wish, an engineer.

Sasha started going to school. His mother went to Kharkov to visit her sister and did not come back; his father went somewhere every day to inspect the herds, and sometimes was away from home for three days, and it seemed to Olenka that Sasha was completely abandoned, that he was not wanted in the house, that he was starving to death; and she moved him to her wing and set him up in a little room there.

And for six months now Sasha has been living with her in the wing. Each morning Olenka goes into his room; he is fast asleep,
his hand under his cheek, breathing lightly. She is sorry to wake him up.

“Sashenka,” she says sadly, “get up, dear heart! It’s time for school.”

He gets up, dresses, says his prayers, then sits down to tea. He drinks three cups of tea and eats two big bagels and half a French roll with butter. He has not quite recovered from sleep and is therefore cross.

“You haven’t learned your fable well, Sashenka,” says Olenka, looking at him as if she were seeing him off on a long journey. “You worry me so. You must do your best, dear heart, study … Listen to your teachers.”

“Oh, leave me alone, please!” says Sasha.

Then he marches down the street to school, a little boy, but in a big visored cap, with a satchel on his back. Olenka noiselessly follows him.

“Sashenka-a!” she calls.

He turns around, and she puts a date or a caramel in his hand. When they turn down the lane where his school is, he gets embarrassed that this tall, stout woman is following after him; he turns around and says:

“Go home, auntie, I can get there myself now.”

She stops and looks after him without blinking, until he disappears through the doors of the school. Ah, how she loves him! Of all her former attachments, none was so deep, never before had her soul submitted so selflessly, so disinterestedly, and with such delight as now, when the maternal feeling burned in her more and more. For this boy who was not her own, for the dimples on his cheeks, for his visored cap, she would give her whole life, give it joyfully, with tears of tenderness. Why? Who knows why?

Having seen Sasha off to school, she slowly returns home, so content, so calm, so full of love; her face, which has grown younger in the last six months, smiles and beams; meeting her, looking at her, people feel pleasure and say to her:

“Good morning, darling Olga Semyonovna! How are you, darling?”

“School studies are getting difficult nowadays,” she says at the market. “It’s no joke, yesterday they gave the first-year students a fable to learn by heart, and a Latin translation, and a problem … It’s hard for a little boy!”

And she starts talking about teachers, lessons, textbooks—saying all the same things that Sasha says about them.

Between two and three they have dinner together, in the evening they do his homework together and weep. As she puts him to bed, she spends a long time making the cross over him and whispering a prayer. Then, going to sleep, she dreams of the far-off, m
isty future when Sasha has finished his studies, has become a doctor or an engineer, has his own big house, horses, a carriage, gets married, has children … She falls asleep and keeps thinking about the same thing, and from her closed eyes tears flow down her cheeks. And the little black cat lies beside her and purrs:

“Purr … purr … purr …”

Suddenly there is a loud knocking at the gate. Olenka wakes up, breathless with fear; her heart pounds hard. Half a minute goes by and there is more knocking.

“It’s a telegram from Kharkov,” she thinks, beginning to tremble all over. “Sasha’s mother wants him in Kharkov … Oh, Lord!”

She is in despair; her head, her feet, her arms go numb, and it seems that no one in the whole world is unhappier than she. But another minute goes by, she hears voices: it is the veterinarian coming home from the club.

“Well, thank God,” she thinks.

The weight gradually lifts from her heart, she feels light again; she lies down and thinks about Sasha, who is fast asleep in the next room and occasionally murmurs deliriously:

“I’ll sh-show you! Get out! No fighting!”

J
ANUARY
1899

T
he acting coroner and the district doctor were driving to the village of Syrnya for an autopsy On the way they were caught in a blizzard, wandered in circles for a long time, and reached the place not at noon, as they had wanted, but only towards evening, when it was already dark. They put up for the night in the zemstvo
¹
cottage. And right there in the zemstvo cottage, as it happened, also lay the corpse, the corpse of the zemstvo insurance agent Lesnitsky, who had come to Syrnya three days earlier and, having settled in the zemstvo cottage and ordered a samovar, had shot himself, quite un
expectedly for everyone; and the circumstance that he had put an end to his life somehow strangely, over the samovar, with food laid out on the table, gave many the occasion to suspect murder; an autopsy became necessary.

The doctor and the coroner stamped their feet in the front hall, shaking off the snow, and the beadle Ilya Loshadin, an old man, stood beside them holding a tin lamp and lighted the place for them. There was a strong smell of kerosene.

“Who are you?” asked the doctor.

“The biddle …” answered the beadle.

He also signed it that way at the post office: the biddle.

“And where are the witnesses?”

“Must’ve gone to have tea, Your Honor.”

To the right was the clean room, the “visiting” or master’s room, to the left the black room, with a big stove and a stove bench. The
doctor and the coroner, followed by the beadle holding the lamp above his head, went into the clean room. There on the floor, by the legs of the table, the long body lay motionless, covered with a white sheet. Besides the white sheet, a pair of new rubber galoshes was clearly visible in the weak light of the lamp, and everything there was disturbing, eerie: the dark walls, and the silence, and the galoshes, and the immobility of the dead body. On the table was a samovar, long cold, and around it were some packets, probably of food.

“To shoot oneself in a zemstvo cottage—how tactless!” said the doctor. “If you’re so eager to put a bullet in your head, shoot yourself at home, somewhere in the barn.”

Just as he was, in his hat, fur coat, and felt boots, he lowered himself onto the bench; his companion, the coroner, sat down facing him.

“These hysterical and neurasthenic types are great egoists,” the doctor went on bitterly. “When a neurasthenic sleeps in the same room with you, he rustles his newspaper; when he dines with you, he makes a scene with his wife, not embarrassed by your presence; and when he decides to shoot himself, he goes and shoots himself in some village, in a zemstvo cottage, to cause more trouble for everybody. In all circumstances of life, these gentlemen think only of themselves. Only of themselves! That’s why the old folks dislike this ‘nervous age’ of ours so much.”

“The old folks dislike all sorts of things,” said the coroner, yawning. “Go and point out to these old folk the difference between former and present-day suicides. The former so-called respectable man shot himself because he’d embezzled government funds, the present-day one because he’s sick of life, in anguish … Which is better?”

“Sick of life, in anguish, but you must agree, he might have shot himself somewhere else than in a zemstvo cottage.”

“Such a dire thing,” the beadle began to say, “a dire thing—sheer punishment. Folks are very upset, Your Honor, it’s the third night they haven’t slept. The kids are crying. The cows need milking, but the women won’t go to the barn, they’re afraid … lest the master appear to them in the dark. Sure, they’re foolish women, but even some of the men are afraid. Once night comes, they won’t go past the cottage singly, but always in a bunch. And the witnesses, too …”

Dr. Starchenko, a middle-aged man with a dark beard and spectacles, and the coroner Lyzhin, blond, still young, who had finished his studies only two years before and looked more like a student than an official, sat silently, pondering. They were vexed at being late. They now had to wait till morning, stay there overnight, though it was not yet six, and they were faced with a long evening, then the long, dark night, boredom, uncomfortable beds, cockroaches, the morning cold; and, listening to the blizzard howling in the chimney and in the loft, they both thought how all this was un
like the life they would have wished for themselves and had once dreamed of, and how far they both were from their peers, who were now walking the well-lit city streets, heedless of the bad weather, or were about to go to the theater, or were sitting in their studies over a book. Oh, how dearly they would have paid now just to stroll down Nevsky Prospect, or Petrovka Street in Moscow, to hear some decent singing, to sit for an hour or two in a restaurant…

“Hoo-o-o!” sang the blizzard in the loft, and something outside slammed spitefully, probably the signboard on the zemstvo cottage. “Hoo-o-o!”

“Do as you like, but I have no wish to stay here,” Starchenko said, getting up. “It’s not six yet, too early for bed, I’ll go somewhere. Von Taunitz lives nearby, only a couple of miles from Syrnya. I’ll go to his place and spend the evening. Beadle, go and tell the coachman not to unharness. What about you?” he asked Lyzhin.

“I don’t know. I’ll go to bed, most likely.”

The doctor wrapped his coat around him and went out. One could hear him talking to the coachman and the little bells jingling on the chilled horses. He drove off.

“It’s not right for you to spend the night here, sir,” said the beadle. “Go to the other side. It’s not clean there, but for one night it won’t matter. I’ll fetch a samovar from the peasants and get it going, and after that I’ll pile up some hay for you, and you can sleep, Your Honor, with God’s help.”

A short time later the coroner was sitting in the black side, at a table, drinking tea, while the beadle Loshadin stood by the door and talked. He was an old man, over sixty, not tall, very thin, bent over, white-haired, a naïve smile on his face, his eyes tearful, his lips constantly smacking as if he were sucking candy. He wore a short coat and felt boots, and never let the stick out of his hands. The
coroner’s youth evidently aroused pity in him, and that may have been why he addressed him familiarly

“The headman, Fyodor Makarych, told me to report to him as soon as the police officer or coroner came,” he said. “So, in that case, I’ll have to go now … It’s three miles to town, there’s a blizzard, a terrible lot of snow has piled up, I may not make it before midnight. Listen to that howling.”

“I don’t need the headman,” said Lyzhin. “There’s nothing for him to do here.”

He gave the old man a curious glance and asked:

“Tell me, grandpa, how many years have you been going around as a beadle?”

“How many? Thirty years now. I started about five years after the freeing,
²
so you can count it up. Since then I’ve gone around every day. People have holidays, and I go around. It’s Easter,
the bells are ringing, Christ is risen, and I’m there with my bag. To the treasury, to the post office, to the police chief’s house, to a zemstvo member, to the tax inspector, to the council, to the gentry, to the peasants, to all Orthodox Christians. I carry packages, summonses, writs, letters, various forms, reports, and nowadays, my good sir, Your Honor, they’ve started having these forms for putting down numbers—yellow, white, red—and every landowner, or priest, or rich peasant has to report without fail some ten times a year on how much he sowed and reaped, how many bushels or sacks of rye, how
much oats and hay, and what the weather was like, and what kinds of bugs there were. They can write whatever they want, of course, it’s just a formality, but I have to go and hand out the papers, and then go again and collect them. There’s no point, for instance, in gutting this gentleman here, you know yourself it’s useless, you’re just getting your hands dirty, but you took the trouble and came, Your Honor, because it’s a formality; there’s no help for it. For thirty years I’ve been going around on formalities. In summer it’s all right, warm, dry, but in winter or autumn it’s no good. I’
ve drowned, frozen—everything’s happened. And bad people took my bag from me in the woods, and beat me up, and I was put on trial …”

“For what?”

“Swindling.”

“What kind of swindling?”

“The clerk Khrisanf Grigoryev sold somebody else’s lumber to a
contractor—cheated him, that is. I was there when the deal was made, they sent me to the tavern for vodka; well, the clerk didn’t share with me, didn’t even offer me a glass, but since, poor as I am, I was seen as an unreliable, worthless man, we both went to trial; he was put in jail, but I, thank God, was justified in all my rights. They read some paper in court. And they were all in uniforms. There in the court. I’ll tell you what, Your Honor, for a man who’s not used to it, this work is a sheer disaster—G
od forbid—but for me it’s all right. My legs even hurt when I don’t walk. And it’s worse for me to stay home. In the office in my village it’s nothing but light the clerk’s fire, fetch the clerk’s water, polish the clerk’s boots.”

“And how much are you paid?” asked Lyzhin.

“Eighty-four roubles a year.”

“You probably make a little something on the side, don’t you?”

“What little something? Gentlemen rarely give tips nowadays. Gentlemen are strict these days, they keep getting offended. You bring him a paper—he gets offended. You take your hat off before him—he gets offended. ‘You came in by the wrong entrance,’ he says, ‘you’re a drunkard,’ he says, ‘you stink of onions, you’re a blockhead, a son of a bitch.’ Some are kind, of course, but you can’t expect anything from them, they just make fun of you with all sorts of nicknames. Mr. Altukhin, for instance. He’s kind and sober, and sensible enough, but when he sees me he shouts, and doesn’t k
now what himself. He’s given me this nickname. Hey, he says, you …”

The beadle mumbled some word, but so softly that it was impossible to make it out.

“How’s that?” asked Lyzhin. “Repeat it.”

“Administration!” the beadle repeated loudly. “He’s been calling me that for a long time, some six years. Greetings, administration! But let him, I don’t mind, God bless him. Some lady may happen to send me out a glass of vodka and a piece of pie, so then I drink to her health. It’s mostly peasants that tip me; peasants have heart, they’re more god-fearing; they give me bread, or cabbage soup, or sometimes even a drink. The elders treat me to tea in the tavern. Right now the witnesses have gone for tea. ‘Loshadin,’ they said, ‘you stay here and watch for us,’ and they gave me a kopeck
each. They’re scared because they’re not used to it. And yesterday they gave me fifteen kopecks and treated me to a little glass.”

“And you’re not afraid?”

“I am, sir, but it’s part of the work—the job, there’s no getting
away from it. In the summer I was taking a prisoner to town, and he starts hitting me—whack! whack! whack! All fields and forest around—nowhere to run to. It’s the same here. I remember Mr. Lesnitsky when he was just so high, and I knew his father and mother. I’m from the village of Nedoshchotovo, and the Lesnitsky family is no more than half a mile from us, maybe less, we have a common boundary. And old Mr. Lesnitsky had a maiden sister, a god-fearing and merciful lady. Remember, O Lord, the soul of your servant Yuli
a, of eternal memory. She never got married, and before she died, she divided up all her property; she left two hundred and fifty acres to the monastery and five hundred to us, the peasant community of the village of Nedoshchotovo, for the memory of her soul. But her brother, the squire, hid the paper, burned it in the stove, they say, and took all the land for himself. Meaning he hoped to profit from it, but—no, hold on, brother, you can’t live by injustice in the world. The squire didn’t go to confession for some twenty years after that, he kept away from church, meaning he died without confession, just
popped. He was fat as could be. Just popped open. After that the young squire—Seryozha, that is—had it all taken from him for debts, all there was. Well, he didn’t get far in his studies, couldn’t do anything, so his uncle, the chairman of the zemstvo council, thought, ‘Why don’t I take Seryozha to work for me as an agent, he can insure people, it’s not complicated.’ But the young squire was a proud man, he would have liked a broader life, fancier, with more freedom, he resented having to drive around the area in a little cart and talk to peasants; he always went about looking at the ground, l
ooking and saying nothing; you’d shout, ‘Sergei Sergeich!’ right by his ear, and he’d turn and say, ‘Eh?’ and look at the ground again. And now, see, he’s laid hands on himself. It makes no sense, Your Honor, it’s not right. Merciful
God, you can’t tell what’s happening in the world. Say your father was rich and you’re poor—that’s too bad, of course, but you have to get used to it. I, too, had a good life, Your Honor, I had two horses, three cows, some twenty head of sheep, but the time came when I was left with nothing but a little bag, and it’s not mine at that, it comes with the job, and now, in our Nedoshchotovo, my house is the worst of all, truth to tell. Four lackeys had Moky, now Moky’s a lackey. Four workers had Burkin, now Burkin’s a worker.”