The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories

Alyosha the Pot

ALYOSHA WAS the younger brother. He was nicknamed “the Pot” because his mother sent him to the deacon’s wife with a pot of milk, and he tripped and broke the pot. His mother gave him a beating, and the children began to tease him with “the Pot.” Alyosha the Pot—so he got his nickname.

Alyosha was a skinny, lop-eared lad (his ears stuck out like wings), and his nose was big. The children teased him: “Alyosha has a nose like a hound on a hill.” There was a school in the village, but reading and writing did not come easy to Alyosha, nor did he have time to study. His older brother lived at a merchant’s in town, and from childhood Alyosha began to help his father. When he was six, he already went with his older sister to watch the sheep and a cow on the village green, and when he grew up a little, he began to watch the horses during the day and at night pasture. By the age of twelve he was already plowing and carting. He was not strong, but he had a knack for things. He was always cheerful. The boys laughed at him; he said nothing or else laughed. If his father scolded him, he said nothing and listened. And as soon as the scolding was over, he smiled and set about whatever work was before him.

Alyosha was nineteen when his brother was taken as a soldier. And his father sent Alyosha to the merchant’s to replace his brother as a yard porter. Alyosha was given his brother’s old boots, his father’s hat and jerkin, and taken to town. Alyosha could not have been more glad of his clothes, but the merchant was left displeased with Alyosha’s appearance.

“I thought you’d put a real man in Semyon’s place,” the merchant said, looking Alyosha over. “But you’ve brought me a milksop. What’s he good for?”

“He can do everything—hitch up, and drive anywhere, and work like a fury. He only looks wispy. In fact, he’s tough.”

“Well, we’ll see about that.”

“And, above all, he’s uncomplaining. Greedy for work.”

“Well, what can I do with you? Let him stay.”

And Alyosha started living at the merchant’s.

The merchant’s family was not large: his wife, his old mother, the older married son, of simple education, who was in business with his father, and another son, a studious one, who had finished high school and gone to university, but had been expelled and lived at home, and also a daughter, a schoolgirl.

At first they did not like Alyosha—he was much too peasantlike, and poorly dressed, and had no manners, addressing everyone informally—but they soon got used to him. He served them better than his brother. He was indeed uncomplaining, was sent to do all kinds of things, and did them all eagerly and quickly, going without pause from one thing to another. And, as at home, so at the merchant’s, all the work was heaped on Alyosha. The more he did, the more work they heaped on him. The master’s wife, and the master’s mother, and the master’s daughter, and the master’s son, and the clerk, and the cook all sent him now here, now there, making him do now this, now that. All one heard was “Off you run, brother,” or “Alyosha, take care of this.” “What’s the matter, Alyosha, did you forget or something?” “Look out you don’t forget, Alyosha.” And Alyosha ran, took care, looked out, and did not forget, and had time for it all, and smiled through it all.

He soon wore out his brother’s boots, and the master gave him a good scolding for going around with torn boots and bare toes, and had new boots bought for him at the market. The boots were new, and Alyosha was glad of them, but his feet were still the old ones, and by evening they ached from running around, and he was angry with them. Alyosha was afraid that his father, when he came to take the money for him, might be upset that the merchant had deducted the cost of the boots from his pay.

In winter Alyosha got up before dawn, split wood, then swept the yard, fed the cow, the horse, and watered them. Then he stoked the stove, cleaned the master’s boots and clothes, prepared samovars, cleaned them, then either the clerk called him to take out the wares or the cook ordered him to knead dough or scrub pots. Then they sent him to town now with a message, now for the master’s daughter at school, now for lamp oil for the old woman. “Where’d you disappear to, curse you,” now one, now another said to him. “Why should you go—Alyosha’ll run over. Alyosha! Hey, Alyosha!” And off Alyosha ran.

He ate breakfast on the move, and he rarely managed to eat dinner with the rest of them. The cook scolded him for not coming with the rest, but took pity on him all the same and left him some hot food for dinner and supper. There was especially much work before and during holidays. And Alyosha was especially glad of the holidays, because on holidays they gave him tips—small ones, but they added up to some sixty kopecks, and after all it was his own money. He could spend it as he liked. As for his pay, he never set eyes on it. His father came, took it from the merchant, and only reprimanded Alyosha for having worn out his boots so quickly.

When he had saved up two roubles of this “tip” money, he bought, on the cook’s advice, a red knitted jacket, and when he put it on, he could not keep his lips shut from satisfaction.

Alyosha spoke little, and when he did, it was always abruptly and briefly. And when he was told to do or was asked whether he could do this or that, he always said without the slightest hesitation, “It can all be done,” and at once rushed to do it and did it.

He did not know any prayers. What his mother had taught him, he had forgotten; but he still prayed in the morning and in the evening—prayed with his hands, crossing himself.

So Alyosha lived for a year and a half, and then, in the second half of the second year, the most extraordinary event of his life happened to him. This event consisted in his learning, to his own amazement, that besides the relations between people that come from their need of each other, there are also quite special relations: not that a person needs to have his boots polished, or a purchase delivered, or a horse harnessed, but that a person just needs another person for no reason, so as to do something for him, to be nice to him, and that he, Alyosha, was that very person. He learned it through the cook, Ustinya. Ustyusha was an orphan, young, as hardworking as Alyosha. She began to pity Alyosha, and Alyosha felt for the first time that another person needed him, not his work, but him himself. When his mother pitied him, he did not notice it, it seemed to him that it had to be so, that it was as if he were pitying himself. But here he suddenly saw that Ustinya, a perfect stranger, pitied him, left him a pot of kasha with butter, and watched him while he ate, her head propped on her hand with her sleeve rolled up. And he glanced at her, and she laughed, and he laughed.

This was so new and strange that Alyosha was frightened at first. He sensed that it would hinder him from working as he used to work. But even so he was glad, and when he looked at his trousers, mended by Ustinya, he shook his head and smiled. Often while working or going somewhere, he would remember Ustinya and say: “Ah, that Ustinya!” Ustinya helped him where she could, and he helped her. She told him her life, how she became an orphan, how she was taken by her aunt, how they sent her to town, how the merchant’s son tried to talk her into some foolishness, and how she brought him up short. She liked to talk, and he found it pleasant to listen to her. He heard that it often happens in towns: some muzhik workman marries the cook. And once she asked him if he would soon be married off. He said he did not know and had no wish to marry in his village.

“Why, have you got your eye on somebody?” she asked.

“I’d take you. Would you accept?”

“See, the pot, the pot, but what a catchy way he says it,” she said, slapping him in the back with a towel. “And why shouldn’t I?”

At Shrovetide the old man came to town for the money. The merchant’s wife had found out that Alexei was of a mind to marry Ustinya, and she did not like it. “She’ll get pregnant, and what good will she be with a baby?” She told her husband.

The merchant gave Alexei’s father the money.

“So, then, is my boy doing all right?” asked the muzhik. “Like I said—he’s uncomplaining.”

“Uncomplaining he is, but he’s got his mind on some foolishness. He’s thinking about marrying the cook. And I won’t keep a married couple. It doesn’t suit us.”

“A fool, a fool, but he’s got his notions,” said the father. “But never you mind. I’ll order him to drop it.”

Going to the kitchen, the father sat down at the table to wait for his son. Alyosha was running errands and came back out of breath.

“I thought you were sensible. But what’s this you’ve taken into your head?” said the father.

“Nothing, really.”

“How, nothing? You’re meaning to get married. I’ll marry you off when the time comes, and marry you as you ought, not to some town slut.”

The father spoke a lot. Alyosha stood and sighed. When the father finished, Alyosha smiled.

“Well, it can be given up.”

“That’s the way.”

When his father left and he remained alone with Ustinya, he said to her (she had been standing behind the door and listening while the father and son talked):

“Our plan’s no good, it won’t work. Did you hear? He’s angry, he forbids it.”

She wept silently into her apron.

Alyosha clucked his tongue.

“How can I disobey him? Seems we’ll have to drop it.”

In the evening, when the merchant’s wife called him to close the blinds, she said to him:

“So you’ve obeyed your father, you’ve dropped this foolishness of yours?”

“Seems I have,” said Alyosha, and he laughed and all at once wept.

FROM THEN ON Alyosha and Ustinya said no more about marriage and lived as before.

During Lent the clerk sent him to clear the snow off the roof. He climbed up on the roof, cleared it all off, started chipping away the snow that was frozen to the gutters, his feet slipped, and he fell with his shovel. The trouble was that he fell not on the snow but on the iron roof of the porch. Ustinya ran to him and so did the merchant’s daughter.

“Are you hurt, Alyosha?”

“I guess so. Never mind.”

He wanted to stand up but could not and began to smile. They carried him to the yard porter’s room. A doctor’s aide came. He examined him and asked where it hurt.

“It hurts everywhere, but never mind. Only the master will be cross. We must send word to my father.”

Alyosha lay there for two days; on the third they sent for a priest.

“So, what, you mean you’re going to die?” asked Ustinya.

“And why not? Can we just keep on living? Someday it’s got to be,” Alyosha said, quickly, as always. “Thank you, Ustyusha, for pitying me. You see, it’s better that they told us not to get married, otherwise it would have come to nothing. Now it’s all for the best.”

He prayed with the priest only with his hands and heart. And in his heart was this: that, as it is good here, provided you obey and do not hurt anyone, so it will be good there.

He spoke little. Only asked to drink and kept being surprised at something.

He got surprised at something, stretched out, and died.

1905