Fifty-Two Stories

IN THE CART

THEY DROVE OUT OF TOWN at half past eight in the morning.

The road was dry, the wonderful April sun was very warm, but there was still snow in the ditches and the woods. The fierce, dark, long winter was still so near, spring had come suddenly, but for Marya Vassilyevna, who was now sitting in the wagon, there was nothing new or interesting either in the warmth or in the languid, transparent woods, thawed by the breath of spring, or in the black flocks flying in the field over huge puddles that resembled lakes, or in that sky, wondrous, bottomless, into which it seemed you could go so joyfully. It was already thirteen years that she had been working as a teacher, and there was no counting how many times in all those years she had ridden to town for her salary; and whether it was spring, as now, or a rainy autumn evening, or winter—for her it was all the same, and she always invariably wanted one thing: to get there quickly.

It felt to her as if she had been living in those parts for a long, long time, a hundred years, and it seemed to her that she knew every stone, every tree on the way from town to her school. Here was her past, her present, and she was unable to imagine any other future apart from the school, the road to town and back, and again the school, and again the road…

She had already lost the habit of recalling how things had been in the past, before she became a teacher—and had forgotten almost all of it. Once upon a time she had a father and a mother; they lived in a big apartment in Moscow, near the Red Gate, but of all that time there remained in her memory something vague and elusive, like a dream. Her father died when she was ten years old, her mother died soon after…There was an officer brother, with whom she exchanged letters at first, but then her brother stopped answering her letters, he lost the habit. Of former things there remained only a photograph of her mother, but it had faded from the dampness of her room at the schoolhouse, and now nothing could be seen but hair and eyebrows.

When they had gone some two miles, old Semyon, who drove the horse, turned around and said:

“They arrested an official in town. Packed him off. Rumor has it that he and some Germans killed the mayor Alexeev in Moscow.”

“Who told you that?”

“They read it in a newspaper in Ivan Ionov’s tavern.”

And again they fell silent for a long time. Marya Vassilyevna was thinking about her school, about how there would soon be an examination and she would present four boys and one girl. And just as she was thinking about the examination, the landowner Khanov overtook her in a coach and four, the same man who had conducted examinations at her school the previous year. Drawing even with her, he recognized her and bowed.

“Greetings!” he said. “Might you be going home?”

This Khanov, a man of about forty, with a worn face and listless expression, was already beginning to age noticeably, but was still handsome and pleasing to women. He lived alone on his big estate, did not work anywhere, and it was said of him that at home he did nothing, but only paced up and down whistling, or played chess with his old valet. It was also said that he drank a lot. In fact, at the last year’s examination, even the papers he brought with him smelled of scent and drink. He was wearing all new clothes then, and Marya Vassilyevna liked him very much, and, sitting beside him, she felt quite embarrassed. She was used to having examiners who were cold, sober-minded, but this one did not remember a single prayer, did not know what questions to ask, was polite and tactful, and gave only the highest marks.

“I’m on my way to see Bakvist,” he went on, addressing Marya Vassilyevna, “but they say he’s not home.”

From the highway they turned off onto a dirt road: Khanov went ahead, Semyon followed him. The team of four drove along the road, slowly, straining to pull the heavy coach through the mud. Semyon, avoiding the road, maneuvered now over a hummock, now across a meadow, often jumping off the cart and helping the horse. Marya Vassilyevna kept thinking about school, about whether the math problem at the examination would be difficult or simple. She was also upset with the zemstvo office,¹ where she had not found anyone yesterday. What disorder! It was already two years that she had been asking them to fire the caretaker, who did nothing, was rude to her, and beat the pupils, but no one listened to her. The chairman was hard to catch in his office, and if you did, he said with tears in his eyes that he had no time; the inspector visited the school once in three years and had no idea what he was doing, because he had formerly worked in an excise office and got the job of inspector through connections; the school board met very rarely and no one ever knew where it would meet; the custodian was a barely literate peasant, the owner of a tannery, unintelligent, rude, and great friends with the caretaker—so God only knew who she could turn to with complaints or for information…

“He really is handsome,” she thought, glancing at Khanov.

But the road was getting worse and worse…They rode into the forest. Here there was no way to turn off. The ruts were deep, and water flowed and gurgled in them. And prickly branches kept hitting her in the face.

“Some road, eh?” Khanov asked and laughed.

The teacher looked at him and could not understand: Why does this odd fellow live here? What good can his money, his imposing appearance, his refined politeness do him in this backwoods, with its mud and boredom? He gets no advantages from life, and, just like Semyon, drives slowly over the execrable road, and suffers the same inconveniences. Why live here, if it’s possible to live in Petersburg or abroad? And it would seem worth his while, rich man as he is, to make a good road out of this bad one, so as not to suffer and not to see the despair written on the faces of his coachman and Semyon; but he just laughs, and it seems to make no difference to him, and he needs no better life. He’s kind, gentle, naïve, he doesn’t understand this coarse life, he doesn’t know it, just as he didn’t know the prayers at the examination. He only donates globes to the school, and sincerely considers himself a useful person and a prominent activist in the people’s education. And who here needs his globes!

“Hold tight, Vassilyevna!” said Semyon.

The cart tilted sharply and nearly overturned; something heavy landed on Marya Vassilyevna’s feet—it was her purchases. They climbed steeply uphill, on clay; there noisy streams flowed through meandering ditches, the water seemed to gnaw away at the road—how could you even drive there! The horses snorted. Khanov got out of the carriage and walked along the edge of the road in his long coat. He felt hot.

“Some road, eh?” he said again and laughed. “Bad enough to break the carriage.”

“Who told you to drive in such weather!” Semyon said sternly. “Better to stay home.”

“Home is boring, grandpa. I don’t like staying home.”

Next to old Semyon he looked trim, vigorous, but in his gait there was something barely noticeable that betrayed him as being already poisoned, weak, close to ruin. And it was as if the forest suddenly smelled of drink. Marya Vassilyevna became frightened and felt sorry for this man, who was perishing no one knew why, and it occurred to her that if she were his wife or sister, she might give her whole life to save him from ruin. To be a wife? Life was so arranged that he lived alone in a big manor house, she lived alone in a remote village, but for some reason even the notion that he and she could be close and equal seemed impossible, absurd. In fact, all of life was so arranged, and human relations had become complicated to such an incomprehensible degree, that once you thought about it, you felt eerie and your heart sank.

“And it’s incomprehensible,” she thought, “why God gives this beauty, this affability, these sad, sweet eyes to weak, unhappy, useless people, and why they’re so attractive.”

“We turn right here,” Khanov said, getting into his carriage. “Goodbye! All the best!”

And again she began to think about her pupils, about the examination, the caretaker, the school board; and when the wind from the right brought the sound of the carriage driving away, these thoughts mixed with the others. She wanted to think about beautiful eyes, about love, about the happiness that was never to be…

To be a wife? In the morning it is cold, there is no one to light the stove, the caretaker has gone off somewhere; the pupils come at the crack of dawn, bring in snow and mud, make noise; everything is so uncomfortable, uninviting. Her apartment is one room, plus a little kitchen. Every day after classes she has a headache, and after dinner she has heartburn. She has to collect money from the pupils for firewood, for the caretaker, and give it to the custodian, and then beg that well-fed, insolent peasant for God’s sake to send the firewood. And at night she dreams about examinations, peasants, snowdrifts. And she has grown old and coarse from such a life, become unattractive, angular, awkward, as if she were filled with lead; and she is afraid of everything; and she stands up and does not dare to sit down in the presence of a member of the board or the custodian; and when she speaks about any of them, it is in deferential terms. And no one likes her, and her life goes by dully, with no gentleness, no friendly concern, no interesting acquaintances. In her situation, how terrible it would be if she fell in love!

“Hold tight, Vassilyevna!”

Again they climbed steeply uphill…

She had become a teacher out of necessity, without any sense of vocation; and she never thought about the vocation, about the usefulness of education, and it always seemed to her that the main thing in what she was doing was not the pupils and not the education, but the examinations. And when was she to think about the vocation, about the usefulness of education? Teachers, poor doctors, medical aides, with their enormous workload, do not even have the comfort of thinking they are serving an idea, or the people, because their heads are always crammed with thoughts about a crust of bread, firewood, bad roads, illnesses. It is a hard, uninteresting life, and only silent dray horses like this Marya Vassilyevna could bear it for long; the lively, high-strung, impressionable ones, who talked about their vocation, about serving an idea, soon became tired and dropped out.

Semyon kept choosing the drier and shorter way to go, across meadows, over back roads; but here the peasants would not let them pass, there it was a priest’s land and couldn’t be crossed, elsewhere Ivan Ionov had bought a plot from his master and surrounded it with a ditch. They kept having to turn back.

They arrived at Nizhny Gorodishche. Carts stood by a tavern, where the lingering snow was covered with dung: they carried big glass jugs full of oil of vitriol. There were many men in the tavern, all coachmen, and there was a smell of vodka, tobacco, and sheepskin. There was loud talk, the slamming of the door on its pulley. In a shop on the other side of the wall, someone was playing a concertina without stopping for a moment. Marya Vassilyevna sat and drank tea, but the peasants at the next table, steamed up by tea and the stifling tavern air, were drinking vodka and beer.

“Listen here, Kuzma!” disorderly voices rang out. “Never mind! God bless! I could do it for you, Ivan Dementyich! Watch it, lad!”

A short peasant with a black beard, pockmarked, long since drunk, suddenly got surprised at something and poured out some foul abuse.

“Why do you go badmouthing! You!” Semyon, who was sitting to one side, responded angrily. “Look, there’s a young lady here!”

“A young lady…,” someone said mockingly in another corner.

“A swiny crow!”

“Never mind us…” The little peasant became embarrassed. “Beg your pardon. We’re spending our money, the young lady’s spending hers…Hello there!”

“Hello,” replied the schoolteacher.

“And our heartfelt thanks!”

Marya Vassilyevna was enjoying her tea, and was becoming as red as the peasants herself, and again she thought about the firewood, the caretaker…

“Hold on, lad!” reached her from the next table. “She’s the teacher from Vyazovye…we know her! A nice young lady.”

“A decent one!”

The door on the pulley kept slamming, people came in, others went out. Marya Vassilyevna sat and went on thinking about the same things, and the concertina behind the wall went on playing and playing. There were patches of sunlight on the floor, then they moved to the counter, to the wall, and disappeared completely; that meant the sun had gone past noon. The peasants at the next table were preparing to leave. The little peasant, staggering slightly, went up to Marya Vassilyevna and gave her his hand; looking at him, the others all gave her their hands as they left and went out one after the other, and the door on the pulley squealed and slammed nine times.

“Vassilyevna, get ready!” called Semyon.

They set off. And again slowly all the time.

“A while ago they were building a school here, in their Nizhny Gorodishche,” said Semyon, turning around. “There was no end of wrongdoing!”

“How so?”

“Seems the chairman put a thousand in his pocket, and the custodian another thousand, and the teacher five hundred.”

“The whole school costs a thousand. It’s not nice to slander people, grandpa. It’s all nonsense.”

“I don’t know…I say what folk say.”

But it was clear that Semyon did not believe the teacher. The peasants did not believe her; they had always thought that she received too big a salary—twenty-one roubles a month (five would have been enough)—and that, of the money she collected from the pupils for firewood and the caretaker, she kept the greater part for herself. The custodian thought the same as all the peasants, and he himself made something from the firewood and also got a salary from the peasants for his duties, in secret from the authorities.

The forest ended, thank God, and now there would be level fields all the way to Vyazovye. And there was already not far to go: cross the river, then the railroad tracks, and there was Vyazovye.

“Where are you going?” Marya Vassilyevna asked Semyon. “Take the road to the right over the bridge.”

“Wha? We’ll cross over this way. It ain’t all that deep.”

“See you don’t drown the horse on us.”

“Wha?”

“There’s Khanov crossing the bridge,” Marya Vassilyevna said, seeing a coach and four to the right. “That’s him, isn’t it?”

“Y-yes. Must not have found Bakvist. What a dumbbell, Lord help him, going that way, and why, this way’s a good two miles shorter.”

They drove to the river. In summer it was a shallow little stream that could easily be forded and by August had usually dried up, but now, after the spring floods, it was a river some forty feet wide, swift, muddy, cold; on the bank and right down to the water, fresh tracks could be seen—meaning someone had crossed there.

“Giddap!” Semyon shouted angrily and anxiously, snapping hard on the reins and raising his elbows like a bird its wings. “Giddap!”

The horse went into the water up to its belly and stopped, but went on again at once, straining its forces, and Marya Vassilyevna felt a sharp cold on her legs.

“Giddap!” she also shouted, standing up. “Giddap!”

They drove out onto the bank.

“And what is it, this thing, Lord,” Semyon muttered, adjusting the harness. “Sheer punishment, this zemstvo…”

Her galoshes and shoes were full of water, the hem of her dress and coat, and one sleeve as well, were wet and dripping; the sugar and flour turned out to be damp—that was the most annoying thing of all, and in her despair Marya Vassilyevna only clasped her hands and said:

“Oh, Semyon, Semyon!…You’re really something!…”

The barrier at the railway crossing was lowered: an express train was coming from the station. Marya Vassilyevna stood at the crossing waiting for it to pass and trembling all over from the cold. Vyazovye could already be seen—the school with its green roof and the church with its crosses ablaze, reflecting the evening sun; and the windows of the station were also ablaze, and the locomotive gave off pinkish smoke…And it seemed to her that everything was trembling from the cold.

Here it is—the train; its windows, shot with bright light like the crosses on the church, were painful to look at. On the rear platform of one of the first-class carriages a lady was standing, and Marya Vassilyevna caught a passing glimpse of her: Mother! What a resemblance! Her mother had the same fluffy hair, exactly the same forehead and tilt of the head. And for the first time in those thirteen years she pictured to herself, vividly, with striking clarity, her mother, father, brother, the apartment in Moscow, the aquarium with its fish, and all to the last detail; she suddenly heard the piano playing, her father’s voice, she felt herself as she was then, young, beautiful, dressed up, in a bright, warm room, amidst her family; a feeling of joy and happiness suddenly came over her; in ecstasy she pressed her palms to her temples and called out tenderly, imploringly:

“Mama!”

And she began to weep, not knowing why. Just then Khanov drove up in his coach and four, and, seeing him, she imagined such happiness as had never been, and she smiled and nodded to him as an equal and intimate, and it seemed to her that the sky, and all the windows, and the trees shone with her happiness, her triumph. Yes, her father and mother had never died, she had never been a teacher, it had all been a long, strange, oppressive dream, and now she was awake.

“Vassilyevna, get in!”

And suddenly it all vanished. The barrier was slowly rising. Marya Vassilyevna, trembling, freezing cold, got into the cart. The coach and four crossed the rails, Semyon followed them. The watchman at the crossing took off his hat.

“And here’s Vyazovye. We’ve arrived.”

1897