Five Great Short Stories

CHAPTER IV Dreams!

GRANDMOTHER STATIONED Sasha in the kitchen garden, and ordered her to keep off the geese. It was a hot August day. The innkeeper’s geese could get into the kitchen garden by the back way, but at present they were busy picking up oats near the inn and quietly conversing, though the old gander stood aloof, his head raised as if to make sure that grandmother was not coming with her stick. The other geese could also get into the garden; but these were feeding far across the river, and, like a big white garland, stretched across the meadow. Sasha watched a short time, and then got tired, and, seeing no geese in sight, went down to the ravine.

There she saw Motka, Marya’s eldest daughter, standing motionless on a big stone, and looking at the church. Marya had borne thirteen children; but only six remained, all girls, and the eldest was eight years old. Bare-footed Motka, in her long shirt, stood in the sun; the sun burnt the top of her head, but she took no notice of this, and seemed turned to stone. Sasha stood beside her, and looking at the church, began—

“God lives in the church. People burn lamps and candles, but God has red lamps, green and blue lamps, like eyes. At night God walks about the church, and with him the Holy Virgin, and holy Nicholas . . . toup, toup, toup! . . . The watchman is frightened, terribly! Yes, my heart,” she said, imitating her mother. “When the Day of Judgment comes all the churches will be carried to heaven.”

“With the bells?” asked Motka in a bass voice, drawling every word.

“With the bells. And on the Day of Judgment good people will go to paradise, and wicked people will burn in fire eternal and unextinguishable, my heart! To mother and Marya God will say, ‘You have offended no one, so go to the right, to paradise’; but He’ll say to Kiriak and grandmother, ‘You go to the left, into the fire!’ And people who eat meat on fast-days will go to the fire too.”

She looked up at the sky, opened wide her eyes, and continued—

“Look up at the sky, don’t wink . . . and you’ll see angels.”

Motka looked at the sky, and a minute passed in silence.

“Do you see them?” asked Sasha.

“No,” answered Motka in her bass voice.

“But I can. Little angels fly about the sky, with wings . . . little, little, like gnats.”

Motka thought, looked at the ground, and asked—

“Will grandmother burn really?”

“She’ll burn, my heart.”

From the stone to the bottom of the hill was a gentle, even slope covered with green grass so soft that it invited repose. Sasha lay down and slid to the bottom. Motka with a serious, severe face, puffed out her cheeks, lay down, and slid, and as she slid her shirt came up to her shoulders.

“How funny I felt!” said Sasha in delight.

The two children climbed to the top intending to slide down again, but at that moment they heard a familiar, squeaky voice. Terror seized them. Toothless, bony, stooping grandmother, with her short grey hair floating in the wind, armed with the long stick, drove the geese from the kitchen garden, and screamed—

“You’ve spoiled all the cabbage, accursed; may you choke; threefold anathemas; plagues, there is no peace with you!”

She saw the two girls, threw down her stick, took up a bundle of brushwood, and seizing Sasha’s shoulders with fingers dry and hard as tree-forks, began to beat her. Sasha cried from pain and terror; and at that moment a gander, swinging from foot to foot and stretching out its neck, came up and hissed at the old woman; and when he returned to the geese, all welcomed him approvingly: go-go-go! Thereafter grandmother seized and whipped Motka, and again Motka’s shirt went over her shoulders. Trembling with terror, crying loudly, Sasha went back to the hut to complain, and after her went Motka, also crying in her bass voice. Her tears were unwiped away, and her face was wet as if she had been in the river.

“Lord in heaven!” cried Olga as they entered the hut. “Mother of God, what’s this?”

Sasha began her story, and at that moment, screaming and swearing, in came grandmother. Fekla lost her temper, and the whole hut was given over to noise.

“Never mind, never mind!” consoled Olga, pale and unnerved, stroking Sasha’s head. “She’s your grandmother; you’ve no right to be angry. Never mind, child!”

Nikolai, already tortured by the constant shouting, hunger, smell, and smoke, hating and despising poverty, and ashamed of his parents before his wife and child, swung his legs over the stove and said to his mother with an irritable whine—

“You mustn’t touch her! You have no right whatever to beat her!”

“Nu, you’ll choke there on the stove, corpse!” cried Fekla angrily. “The devil sent you to us, parasite!”

And Sasha and Motka, and all the little girls, hid on the stove behind Nikolai’s back, and the throbbing of their little hearts was almost heard. In every family with an invalid, long sick and hopeless, there are moments when all, timidly, secretly, at the bottom of their hearts, wish for his death; alone, children always dread the death of any one kin to them, and feel terror at the thought. And now the little girls, with bated breath and mournful faces, looked at Nikolai, and thinking that he would soon die, wanted to cry and say something kindly and compassionate.

Nikolai pressed close to Olga, as if seeking a defender, and said in a soft, trembling voice—

“Olga, my dear, I can stand this no longer. It is beyond my strength. For the love of God, for the love of Christ in heaven, write to your sister, Claudia Abramovna; let her sell or pledge everything, and send us the money to get out of this. O Lord,” he cried, with longing, “to look at Moscow again, even with one eye! Even to see it in dreams!”

When evening came and the hut grew dark, all felt such tedium that it was hard to speak. Angry grandmother soaked rye crusts in a bowl, and took an hour to eat them. Marya milked the cow, carried in the milk-pail, and set it down on a bench; and grandmother slowly poured the milk into jugs, pleased at the thought that now at Assumption fast no one would drink milk, and that it would remain whole. But she poured a little, very little, into a saucer for Fekla’s youngest. When she and Marya carried the milk to the cellar Motka suddenly started up, climbed down from the stove, and going to the bench poured the saucer of milk into the wooden bowl of crusts.

Grandmother, back in the hut, sat down again to the crusts, and Sasha and Motka, perched on the stove, looked at her, and saw with joy that she was drinking milk during fast time, and therefore would go to hell. Consoled by this, they lay down to sleep; and Sasha, going off to sleep, imagined the terrible chastisement: a big stove, like the potter’s, and a black unclean spirit horned like a cow drove grandmother into the stove with a long stick, as she herself had lately driven the geese.