Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 1

I

IT was autumn. Two vehicles were going along the highway at a quick trot. In the first sat two women: a lady, thin and pale, and a maidservant, plump and rosy and shining. The maid’s short dry hair escaped from under her faded bonnet and her red hand in its torn glove kept pushing it back by fits and starts; her full bosom, covered by a woollen shawl, breathed health, her quick black eyes now watched the fields as they glided past the window, now glanced timidly at her mistress, and now restlessly scanned the corners of the carriage. In front of her nose dangled her mistress’s bonnet, pinned to the luggage carrier, on her lap lay a puppy, her feet were raised on the boxes standing on the floor and just audibly tapped against them to the creaking of the coach-springs and the clatter of the window-panes.

Having folded her hands on her knees and closed her eyes, the lady swayed feebly against the pillows placed at her back, and, frowning slightly, coughed inwardly. On her head she had a white nightcap, and a blue kerchief was tied round her delicate white throat. A straight line receding under the cap parted her light brown, extremely flat, pomaded hair, and there was something dry and deathly about the whiteness of the skin of that wide parting. Her features were delicate and handsome, but her skin was flabby and rather sallow, though there was a hectic flush on her cheeks. Her lips were dry and restless, her scanty eyelashes had no curl in them, and her cloth travelling coat fell in straight folds over a sunken breast. Though her eyes were closed her face bore an expression of weariness, irritation, and habitual suffering.

A footman, leaning on the arms of his seat, was dozing on the box. The mail-coach driver, shouting lustily, urged on his four big sweating horses, occasionally turning to the other driver who called to him from the calèche behind. The broad parallel tracks of the tyres spread themselves evenly and fast on the muddy, chalky surface of the road. The sky was grey and cold and a damp mist was settling on the fields and road. It was stuffy in the coach and there was a smell of Eau-de-Cologne and dust. The invalid drew back her head and slowly opened her beautiful dark eyes, which were large and brilliant.

‘Again,’ she said, nervously pushing away with her beautiful thin hand an end of her maid’s cloak which had lightly touched her foot, and her mouth twitched painfully. Matrësha gathered up her cloak with both hands, rose on her strong legs, and seated herself farther away, while her fresh face grew scarlet. The lady, leaning with both hands on the seat, also tried to raise herself so as to sit up higher, but her strength failed her. Her mouth twisted, and her whole face became distorted by a look of impotent malevolence and irony. ‘You might at least help me! … No, don’t bother! I can do it myself, only don’t put your bags or anything behind me, for goodness’ sake! … No, better not touch me since you don’t know how to!’ The lady closed her eyes and then, again quickly raising her eyelids, glared at the maid. Matrësha, looking at her, bit her red nether lip. A deep sigh rose from the invalid’s chest and turned into a cough before it was completed. She turned away, puckered her face, and clutched her chest with both hands. When the coughing fit was over she once more closed her eyes and continued to sit motionless. The carriage and calèche entered a village. Matrësha stretched out her thick hand from under her shawl and crossed herself.

‘What is it?’ asked her mistress.

‘A post-station, madam.’

‘I am asking why you crossed yourself.’

‘There’s a church, madam.’

The invalid turned to the window and began slowly to cross herself, looking with large wide-open eyes at the big village church her carriage was passing.

The carriage and calèche both stopped at the post-station and the invalid’s husband and doctor stepped out of the calèche and went up to the coach.

‘How are you feeling?’ asked the doctor, taking her pulse.

‘Well, my dear, how are you – not tired?’ asked the husband in French. ‘Wouldn’t you like to get out?’

Matrësha, gathering up the bundles, squeezed herself into a corner so as not to interfere with their conversation.

‘Nothing much, just the same,’ replied the invalid. ‘I won’t get out.’

Her husband after standing there a while went into the station-house, and Matrësha, too, jumped out of the carriage and ran on tiptoe across the mud and in at the gate.

‘If I feel ill, it’s no reason for you not to have lunch,’ said the sick woman with a slight smile to the doctor, who was standing at her window.

‘None of them has any thought for me,’ she added to herself as soon as the doctor, having slowly walked away from her, ran quickly up the steps to the station-house. ‘They are well, so they don’t care. Oh, my God!’

‘Well, Edward Ivánovich?’ said the husband, rubbing his hands as he met the doctor with a merry smile. ‘I have ordered the lunch-basket to be brought in. What do you think about it?’

‘A capital idea,’ replied the doctor.

‘Well, how is she?’ asked the husband with a sigh, lowering his voice and lifting his eyebrows.

‘As I told you: it is impossible for her to reach Italy – God grant that she gets even as far as Moscow, especially in this weather.’

‘But what are we to do? Oh, my God, my God!’ and the husband hid his eyes with his hand. ‘Bring it here!’ he said to the man who had brought in the lunch-basket.

‘She ought to have stayed at home,’ said the doctor, shrugging his shoulders.

‘But what could I do?’ rejoined the husband. ‘You know I used every possible means to get her to stay. I spoke of the expense, of our children whom we had to leave behind, and of my business affairs, but she would not listen to anything. She is making plans for life abroad as if she were in good health. To tell her of her condition would be to kill her.’

‘But she is killed already – you must know that, Vasíli Dmítrich. A person can’t live without lungs, and new lungs won’t grow. It is sad and hard, but what is to be done? My business and yours is to see that her end is made as peaceful as possible. It’s a priest who is needed for that.’

‘Oh, my God! Think of my condition, having to remind her about her will. Come what may I can’t tell her that, you know how good she is …’

‘Still, try to persuade her to wait till the roads are fit for sledging,’ said the doctor, shaking his head significantly, ‘or something bad may happen on the journey.’

‘Aksyúsha, hello Aksyúsha!’ yelled the station-master’s daughter, throwing her jacket over her head and stamping her feet on the muddy back porch. ‘Come and let’s have a look at the Shírkin lady: they say she is being taken abroad for a chest trouble, and I’ve never seen what consumptive people look like!’

She jumped onto the threshold, and seizing one another by the hand the two girls ran out of the gate. Checking their pace, they passed by the coach and looked in at the open window. The invalid turned her head towards them but, noticing their curiosity, frowned and turned away.

‘De-arie me!’ said the station-master’s daughter, quickly turning her head away. ‘What a wonderful beauty she must have been, and see what she’s like now! It’s dreadful. Did you see, did you, Aksyúsha?’

‘Yes, how thin!’ Aksyúsha agreed. ‘Let’s go and look again, as if we were going to the well. See, she has turned away, and I hadn’t seen her yet. What a pity, Másha!’

‘Yes, and what mud!’ said Másha, and they both ran through the gate.

‘Evidently I look frightful,’ thought the invalid. ‘If only I could get abroad quicker, quicker. I should soon recover there.’

‘Well, my dear, how are you?’ said her husband, approaching her and still chewing.

‘Always the same question,’ thought the invalid, ‘and he himself is eating.’

‘So-so,’ she murmured through her closed teeth.

‘You know, my dear, I’m afraid you’ll get worse travelling in this weather, and Edward Ivánovich says so too. Don’t you think we’d better turn back?’

She remained angrily silent.

‘The weather will perhaps improve and the roads be fit for sledging; you will get better meanwhile, and we will all go together.’

‘Excuse me. If I had not listened to you for so long, I should now at least have reached Berlin, and have been quite well.’

‘What could be done, my angel? You know it was impossible. But now if you stayed another month you would get nicely better, I should have finished my business, and we could take the children with us.’

‘The children are well, but I am not.’

‘But do understand, my dear, that if in this weather you should get worse on the road.… At least you would be at home.’

‘What of being at home?… To die at home?’ answered the invalid, flaring up. But the word ‘die’ evidently frightened her, and she looked imploringly and questioningly at her husband. He hung his head and was silent. The invalid’s mouth suddenly widened like a child’s, and tears rolled down her cheeks. Her husband hid his face in his handkerchief and stepped silently away from the carriage.

‘No, I will go on,’ said the invalid, and lifting her eyes to the sky she folded her hands and began whispering incoherent words: ‘Oh, my God, what is it for?’ she said, and her tears flowed faster. She prayed long and fervently, but her chest ached and felt as tight as before; the sky, the fields, and the road were just as grey and gloomy, and the autumnal mist fell, neither thickening nor lifting, and settled on the muddy road, the roofs, the carriage, and the sheepskin coats of the drivers, who talking in their strong merry voices were greasing the wheels and harnessing the horses.

II

THE carriage was ready but the driver still loitered. He had gone into the drivers’ room at the station. It was hot, stuffy, and dark there, with an oppressive smell of baking bread, cabbage, sheepskin garments, and humanity. Several drivers were sitting in the room, and a cook was busy at the oven, on the top of which lay a sick man wrapped in sheepskins.

‘Uncle Theodore! I say, Uncle Theodore!’ said the young driver, entering the room in his sheepskin coat with a whip stuck in his belt, and addressing the sick man.

‘What do you want Theodore for, lazybones?’ asked one of the drivers. ‘There’s your carriage waiting for you.’

‘I want to ask for his boots; mine are quite worn out,’ answered the young fellow, tossing back his hair and straightening the mittens tucked in his belt. ‘Is he asleep? I say, Uncle Theodore!’ he repeated, walking over to the oven.

‘What is it?’ answered a weak voice, and a lean face with a red beard looked down from the oven, while a broad, emaciated, pale, and hairy hand pulled up the coat over the dirty shirt covering his angular shoulder.

‘Give me a drink, lad.… What is it you want?’

The lad handed him up a dipper with water.

‘Well, you see, Theodore,’ he said, stepping from foot to foot, ‘I expect you don’t need your new boots now; won’t you let me have them? I don’t suppose you’ll go about any more.’

The sick man, lowering his weary head to the shiny dipper and immersing his sparse drooping moustache in the turbid water, drank feebly but eagerly. His matted beard was dirty, and his sunken clouded eyes had difficulty in looking up at the lad’s face. Having finished drinking he tried to lift his hand to wipe his wet lips, but he could not do so, and rubbed them on the sleeve of his coat instead. Silently, and breathing heavily through his nose, he looked straight into the lad’s eyes, collecting his strength.

‘But perhaps you have promised them to someone else?’ asked the lad. ‘If so, it’s all right. The worst of it is, it’s wet outside and I have to go about my work, so I said to myself: “Suppose I ask Theodore for his boots; I expect he doesn’t need them.” If you need them yourself—just say so.’

Something began to rumble and gurgle in the sick man’s chest; he doubled up and began to choke with an abortive cough in his throat.

‘Need them indeed!’ the cook snapped out unexpectedly so as to be heard by the whole room. ‘He hasn’t come down from the oven for more than a month! Hear how he’s choking – it makes me ache inside just to hear him. What does he want with boots? They won’t bury him in new boots. And it was time long ago – God forgive me the sin! See how he chokes. He ought to be taken into the other room or somewhere. They say there are hospitals in the town. Is it right that he should take up the whole corner? – there’s no more to be said. I’ve no room at all, and yet they expect cleanliness!’

‘Hullo, Sergéy! Come along and take your place, the gentlefolk are waiting!’ shouted the drivers’ overseer, looking in at the door.

Sergéy was about to go without waiting for a reply, but the sick man, while coughing, let him understand by a look that he wanted to give him an answer.

‘Take my boots, Sergéy,’ he said when he had mastered the cough and rested a moment. ‘But listen.… Buy a stone for me when I die,’ he added hoarsely.

‘Thank you, uncle. Then I’ll take them, and I’ll buy a stone for sure.’

‘There, lads, you heard that?’ the sick man managed to utter, and then bent double again and began to choke.

‘All right, we heard,’ said one of the drivers. ‘Go and take your seat, Sergéy, there’s the overseer running back. The Shírkin lady is ill, you know.’

Sergéy quickly pulled off his unduly big, dilapidated boots and threw them under a bench. Uncle Theodore’s new boots just fitted him, and having put them on he went to the carriage with his eyes fixed on his feet.

‘What fine boots! Let me grease them,’ said a driver, who held some axle-grease in his hand, as Sergéy climbed onto the box and gathered up the reins. ‘Did he give them to you for nothing?’

‘Why, are you envious?’ Sergéy replied, rising and wrapping the skirts of his coat under his legs. ‘Off with you! Gee up, my beauties!’ he shouted to the horses, nourishing the whip, and the carriage and calèche with their occupants, portmanteaux, and trunks rolled rapidly along the wet road and disappeared in the grey autumnal mist.

The sick driver was left on the top of the oven in the stuffy room and, unable to relieve himself by coughing, turned with an effort onto his other side and became silent.

Till late in the evening people came in and out of the room and dined there. The sick man made no sound. When night came, the cook climbed up onto the oven and stretched over his legs to get down her sheepskin coat.

‘Don’t be cross with me, Nastásya,’ said the sick man. ‘I shall soon leave your corner empty.’

‘All right, all right, never mind,’ muttered Nastásya. ‘But what is it that hurts you? Tell me, uncle.’

‘My whole inside has wasted away. God knows what it is!’

‘I suppose your throat hurts when you cough?’

‘Everything hurts. My death has come – that’s how it is. Oh, oh, oh!’ moaned the sick man.

‘Cover up your feet like this,’ said Nastásya, drawing his coat over him as she climbed down from the oven.

A night-light burnt dimly in the room. Nastásya and some ten drivers slept on the floor or on the benches, loudly snoring. The sick man groaned feebly, coughed, and turned about on the oven. Towards morning he grew quite quiet.

‘I had a queer dream last night,’ said Nastásya next morning, stretching herself in the dim light. ‘I dreamt that Uncle Theodore got down from the oven and went out to chop wood. “Come, Nastásya,” he says, “I’ll help you!” and I say, “How can you chop wood now?”, but he just seizes the axe and begins chopping quickly, quickly, so that the chips fly all about. “Why,” I say, “haven’t you been ill?” “No,” he says, “I am well,” and he swings the axe so that I was quite frightened. I gave a cry and woke up. I wonder whether he is dead! Uncle Theodore! I say, Uncle Theodore!’

Theodore did not answer.

‘True enough he may have died. I’ll go and see,’ said one of the drivers, waking up.

The lean hand covered with reddish hair that hung down from the oven was pale and cold.

‘I’ll go and tell the station-master,’ said the driver. ‘I think he is dead.’

Theodore had no relatives: he was from some distant place. They buried him next day in the new cemetery beyond the wood, and Nastásya went on for days telling everybody of her dream, and of having been the first to discover that Uncle Theodore was dead.

III

SPRING had come. Rivulets of water hurried down the wet streets of the city, gurgling between lumps of frozen manure; the colours of the people’s clothes as they moved along the streets looked vivid and their voices sounded shrill. Behind the garden-fences the buds on the trees were swelling and their branches were just audibly swaying in the fresh breeze. Everywhere transparent drops were forming and falling.… The sparrows chirped, and fluttered awkwardly with their little wings. On the sunny side of the street, on the fences, houses, and trees, everything was in motion and sparkling. There was joy and youth everywhere in the sky, on the earth, and in the hearts of men.

In one of the chief streets fresh straw had been strewn on the road before a large, important house, where the invalid who had been in a hurry to go abroad lay dying.

At the closed door of her room stood the invalid’s husband and an elderly woman. On the sofa a priest sat with bowed head, holding something wrapped in his stole. In a corner of the room the sick woman’s old mother lay on an invalid chair weeping bitterly: beside her stood one maidservant holding a clean handkerchief, waiting for her to ask for it; while another was rubbing her temples with something and blowing under the old lady’s cap onto her grey head.

‘Well, may Christ aid you, dear friend,’ the husband said to the elderly woman who stood near him at the door. ‘She has such confidence in you and you know so well how to talk to her, so persuade her as well as you can, my dear – go to her.’ He was about to open the door, but her cousin stopped him, pressing her handkerchief several times to her eyes and giving her head a shake.

‘Well, I don’t think I look as if I had been crying now,’ said she and, opening the door herself, went in.

The husband was in great agitation and seemed quite distracted. He walked towards the old woman, but while still several steps from her turned back, walked about the room, and went up to the priest. The priest looked at him, raised his eyebrows to heaven, and sighed: his thick, greyish beard also rose as he sighed and then came down again.

‘My God, my God!’ said the husband.

‘What is to be done?’ said the priest with a sigh, and again his eyebrows and beard rose and fell.

‘And her mother is here!’ said the husband almost in despair. ‘She won’t be able to bear it. You see, loving her as she does … I don’t know! If you would only try to comfort her, Father, and persuade her to go away.’

The priest got up and went to the old woman.

‘It is true, no one can appreciate a mother’s heart,’ he said – ‘but God is merciful.’

The old woman’s face suddenly twitched all over, and she began to hiccup hysterically.

‘God is merciful,’ the priest continued when she grew a little calmer. ‘Let me tell you of a patient in my parish who was much worse than Mary Dmítrievna, and a simple tradesman cured her in a short time with various herbs. That tradesman is even now in Moscow. I told Vasíli Dmítrich – we might try him.… It would at any rate comfort the invalid. To God all is possible.’

‘No, she will not live,’ said the old woman. ‘God is taking her instead of me,’ and the hysterical hiccuping grew so violent that she fainted.

The sick woman’s husband hid his face in his hands and ran out of the room.

In the passage the first person he met was his six-year-old son, who was running full speed after his younger sister.

‘Won’t you order the children to be taken to their mamma?’ asked the nurse.

‘No, she doesn’t want to see them – it would upset her.’

The boy stopped a moment, looked intently into his father’s face, then gave a kick and ran on, shouting merrily.

‘She pretends to be the black horse, Papa!’ he shouted, pointing to his sister.

Meanwhile in the other room the cousin sat down beside the invalid, and tried by skilful conversation to prepare her for the thought of death. The doctor was mixing a draught at another window.

The patient, in a white dressing-gown, sat up in bed supported all round by pillows, and looked at her cousin in silence.

‘Ah, my dear friend,’ she said, unexpectedly interrupting her, ‘don’t prepare me! Don’t treat me like a child. I am a Christian. I know it all. I know I have not long to live, and know that if my husband had listened to me sooner I should now have been in Italy and perhaps – no, certainly – should have been well. Everybody told him so. But what is to be done? Evidently this is God’s wish. We have all sinned heavily. I know that, but I trust in God’s mercy everybody will be forgiven, probably all will be forgiven. I try to understand myself. I have many sins to answer for, dear friend, but then how much I have had to suffer! I try to bear my sufferings patiently …’

‘Then shall I call the priest, my dear? You will feel still more comfortable after receiving Communion,’ said her cousin.

The sick woman bent her head in assent.

‘God forgive me, sinner that I am!’ she whispered.

The cousin went out and signalled with her eyes to the priest.

‘She is an angel!’ she said to the husband, with tears in her eyes. The husband burst into tears; the priest went into the next room; the invalid’s mother was still unconscious, and all was silent there. Five minutes later he came out again, and after taking off his stole, straightened out his hair.

‘Thank God she is calmer now,’ she said, ‘and wishes to see you.’

The cousin and the husband went into the sick-room. The invalid was silently weeping, gazing at an icon.

‘I congratulate you, my dear,’¹ said her husband.

‘Thank you! How well I feel now, what inexpressible sweetness I feel!’ said the sick woman, and a soft smile played on her thin lips. ‘How merciful God is! Is He not? Merciful and all powerful!’ and again she looked at the icon with eager entreaty and her eyes full of tears.

Then suddenly, as if she remembered something, she beckoned to her husband to come closer.

‘You never want to do what I ask …’ she said in a feeble and dissatisfied voice.

The husband, craning his neck, listened to her humbly.

‘What is it, my dear?’

‘How many times have I not said that these doctors don’t know anything; there are simple women who can heal, and who do cure. The priest told me … there is also a tradesman … Send!’

‘For whom, my dear?’

‘O God, you don’t want to understand anything!’ … And the sick woman’s face puckered and she closed her eyes.

The doctor came up and took her hand. Her pulse was beating more and more feebly. He glanced at the husband. The invalid noticed that gesture and looked round in affright. The cousin turned away and began to cry.

‘Don’t cry, don’t torture yourself and me,’ said the patient. ‘Don’t take from me the last of my tranquillity.’

‘You are an angel,’ said the cousin, kissing her hand.

‘No, kiss me here! Only dead people are kissed on the hand. My God, my God!’

That same evening the patient was a corpse, and the body lay in a coffin in the music-room of the large house. A deacon sat alone in that big room reading the psalms of David through his nose in a monotonous voice. A bright light from the wax candles in their tall silver candlesticks fell on the pale brow of the dead woman, on her heavy wax-like hands, on the stiff folds of the pall which brought out in awesome relief the knees and the toes. The deacon without understanding the words read on monotonously, and in the quiet room the words sounded strangely and died away. Now and then from a distant room came the sounds of children’s voices and the patter of their feet.

‘Thou hidest thy face, they are troubled,’ said the psalter. ‘Thou takest away their breath, they die and return to their dust. Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created: and thou renewest the face of the earth. The glory of the Lord shall endure for ever.’

The dead woman’s face looked stern and majestic. Neither in the clear cold brow nor in the firmly closed lips was there any movement. She seemed all attention. But had she even now understood those solemn words?

IV

A MONTH later a stone chapel was being erected over the grave of the deceased woman. Over the driver’s tomb there was still no stone, and only the light green grass sprouted on the mound which served as the only token of the past existence of a man.

‘It will be a sin, Sergéy,’ said the cook at the station-house one day, ‘if you don’t buy a stone for Theodore. You kept saying “It’s winter, it’s winter!” but why don’t you keep your word now? You know I witnessed it. He has already come back once to ask you to do it; if you don’t buy him one, he’ll come again and choke you.’

‘But why? I’m not backing out of it,’ replied Sergéy. ‘I’ll buy a stone as I said I would, and give a ruble and a half for it. I haven’t forgotten it, but it has to be fetched. When I happen to be in town I’ll buy one.’

‘You might at least put up a cross – you ought to – else it’s really wrong,’ interposed an old driver. ‘You know you are wearing his boots.’

‘Where can I get a cross? I can’t cut one out of a log.’

‘What do you mean, can’t cut one out of a log? You take an axe and go into the forest early, and you can cut one there. Cut down a young ash or something like that, and you can make a cross of it … you may have to treat the forester to vodka; but one can’t afford to treat him for every trifle. There now, I broke my splinter-bar and went and cut a new one, and nobody said a word.’

Early in the morning, as soon as it was daybreak, Sergéy took an axe and went into the wood.

A cold white cover of dew, which was still falling untouched by the sun, lay on everything. The east was imperceptibly growing brighter, reflecting its pale light on the vault of heaven still veiled by a covering of clouds. Not a blade of grass below, nor a leaf on the topmost branches of the trees, stirred. Only occasionally a sound of wings amid the brushwood, or a rustling on the ground, broke the silence of the forest. Suddenly a strange sound, foreign to Nature, resounded and died away at the outskirts of the forest. Again the sound was heard, and was rhythmically repeated at the foot of the trunk of one of the motionless trees. A tree-top began to tremble in an unwonted manner, its juicy leaves whispered something, and the robin who had been sitting in one of its branches fluttered twice from place to place with a whistle, and jerking its tail sat down on another tree.

The axe at the bottom gave off a more and more muffled sound, sappy white chips were scattered on the dewy grass and a slight creaking was heard above the sound of the blows. The tree, shuddering in its whole body, bent down and quickly rose again, vibrating with fear on its roots. For an instant all was still, but the tree bent again, a crashing sound came from its trunk, and with its branches breaking and its boughs hanging down it fell with its crown on the damp earth.

The sounds of the axe and of the footsteps were silenced. The robin whistled and flitted higher. A twig which it brushed with its wings shook a little and then with all its foliage grew still like the rest. The trees flaunted the beauty of their motionless branches still more joyously in the newly cleared space.

The first sunbeams, piercing the translucent cloud, shone out and spread over earth and sky. The mist began to quiver like waves in the hollows, the dew sparkled and played on the verdure, the transparent cloudlets grew whiter, and hurriedly dispersed over the deepening azure vault of the sky. The birds stirred in the thicket and, as though bewildered, twittered joyfully about something; the sappy leaves whispered gladly and peacefully on the tree-tops, and the branches of those that were living began to rustle slowly and majestically over the dead and prostrate tree.

¹ It was customary in Russia to congratulate people who had received Communion.