The Lady with the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896-1904

Peasants

I

Nikolay Chikildeyev, a waiter at the Slav Fair¹ in Moscow, was taken ill. His legs went numb and it affected his walk so much that one day he stumbled and fell down as he was carrying a tray of peas and ham along one of the passages. As a result, he had to give up his job. Any money he and his wife had managed to save went on medical expenses, so they now had nothing to live on. He got bored without a job, so he decided it was probably best to return to his native village. It’s easier being ill at home – and it’s cheaper; they don’t say ‘there’s no place like home’ for nothing.

It was late in the afternoon when he reached his village, Zhukovo. He had always remembered his old home from childhood as a cheerful, bright, cosy, comfortable place, but now, as he entered the hut, he was actually scared when he saw how dark, crowded and filthy it was in there. Olga, his wife, and his daughter, Sasha, who had travelled back with him, stared in utter bewilderment at the huge neglected stove (it took up nearly half the hut), black with soot and flies – so many flies! It was tilting to one side, the wall-beams were all askew, and the hut seemed about to collapse any minute. Instead of pictures, labels from bottles and newspaper cuttings had been pasted over the wall next to the icons. This was real poverty! All the adults were out reaping. A fair-haired, dirty-faced little girl of about eight was sitting on the stove, so bored she didn’t even look up as they came in. Down below, a white cat was rubbing itself on the fire-irons. Sasha tried to tempt it over: ‘Here Puss, here!’

‘She can’t hear you,’ the little girl said, ‘she’s deaf.’

‘How’s that?’

‘They beat her.’

From the moment they entered the hut, Nikolay and Olga could see the kind of life they led there. But they didn’t make any comment, threw their bundles onto the floor and went out into the street without a word. Their hut was third from the end and seemed the poorest and oldest. The second hut was not much better, while the last one – the village inn – had an iron roof and curtains, was unfenced and stood apart from the others. The huts formed a single row and the whole peaceful, sleepy little village, with willows, elders and ash peeping out of the yards, had a pleasant look.

Beyond the gardens, the ground sloped steeply down to the river, like a cliff, with huge boulders sticking out of the clay. Paths threaded their way down the slope between the boulders and pits dug out by the potters, and bits of brown and red clay piled up in great heaps. Down below a bright green, broad and level meadow opened out – it had already been mown and the village cattle were grazing on it. The meandering river with its magnificent leafy banks was almost a mile from the village and beyond were more broad pastures, cattle, long strings of white geese, and then a similar steep slope on its far side. At the top stood a village, a church with five ‘onion’ domes, with the manor house a little further on.

‘What a lovely spot!’ Olga said, crossing herself when she saw the church. ‘Heavens, so much open space!’

Just then the bells rang for evensong (it was Saturday evening). Two little girls, who were carrying a bucket of water down the hill, looked back at the church to listen to them.

‘It’ll be dinner time at the Slav Fair now,’ Nikolay said dreamily.

Nikolay and Olga sat on the edge of the cliff, watching the sun go down and the reflections of the gold and crimson sky in the river, in the church windows, in the air all around, which was gentle, tranquil, pure beyond description – such air you never get in Moscow.

But after the sun had set and the lowing cows and bleating sheep had gone past, the geese had flown back from the far side of the river and everything had grown quiet – that gentle light faded from the air and the shades of evening swiftly closed in.

Meanwhile the old couple – Nikolay’s parents – had returned. They were skinny, hunchbacked, toothless and the same height. Marya and Fyokla, his sisters-in-law, who worked for a landowner on the other side of the river, had returned too. Marya – the wife of his brother Kiryak – had six children, while Fyokla (married to Denis, who was away on military service) had two. When Nikolay came into the hut and saw all the family there, all those bodies large and small sprawling around on their bunks, cradles, in every corner; when he saw how ravenously the old man and the woman ate their black bread, dipping it first in water, he realized that he had made a mistake coming here, ill as he was, without any money and with his family into the bargain – a real blunder!

‘And where’s my brother Kiryak?’ he asked when they had greeted each other.

‘He’s living in the forest, working as a nightwatchman for some merchant. Not a bad sort, but he can’t half knock it back!’

‘He’s no breadwinner!’ the old woman murmured tearfully. ‘Our men are a lousy lot of drunkards, they don’t bring their money back home! Kiryak’s a drinker. And the old man knows the way to the pub as well, there’s no harm in saying it! The Blessed Virgin must have it in for us!’

They put the samovar on especially for the guests. The tea smelt of fish, the sugar was grey and had been nibbled at, and cockroaches ran all over the bread and crockery. The tea was revolting, just like the conversation, which was always about illness and how they had no money. But before they even managed to drink the first cup a loud, long drawn out, drunken cry came from outside.

‘Ma-arya!’

‘Sounds like Kiryak’s back,’ the old man said. ‘Talk of the devil.’

Everyone went quiet. And a few moments later they heard that cry again, coarse and drawling, as though it was coming from under the earth.

‘Ma-arya!’

Marya, the elder sister, turned pale and huddled closer to the stove, and it was somehow strange to see fear written all over the face of that strong, broad-shouldered woman. Suddenly her daughter – the same little girl who had been sitting over the stove looking so apathetic – sobbed out loud.

‘And what’s the matter with you, you silly cow?’ Fyokla shouted at her – she was strong and broad-shouldered as well. ‘I don’t suppose he’s going to kill you.’

Nikolay learnt from the old man that Marya didn’t live in the forest, as she was scared of Kiryak, and that whenever he was drunk he would come after her, make a great racket and always beat her mercilessly.

‘Ma-arya!’ came the cry – this time right outside the door.

‘Please, help me, for Christ’s sake, my own dear ones…’ Marya mumbled breathlessly, panting as though she had just been dropped into freezing water. ‘Please protect me…’

Every single child in the hut burst out crying, and Sasha gave them one look and followed suit. There was a drunken coughing, and a tall man with a black beard and a fur cap came into the hut. As his face was not visible in the dim lamplight, he was quite terrifying. It was Kiryak. He went over to his wife, swung his arm and hit her across the face with his fist. She was too stunned to cry out and merely sank to the ground; the blood immediately gushed from her nose.

‘Should be ashamed of yourself, bloody ashamed!’ the old man muttered as he climbed up over the stove. ‘And in front of guests. A damned disgrace!’

But the old woman sat there without saying a word, all hunched up, and seemed to be thinking; Fyokla went on rocking the cradle. Clearly pleased at the terrifying effect he had on everyone, Kiryak seized Marya’s hand, dragged her to the door and howled like a wild animal, so that he seemed even more terrifying. But then he suddenly saw the guests and stopped short in his tracks.

‘Oh, so you’ve arrived…’ he muttered, letting go of his wife. ‘My own brother, with family and all…’

He reeled from side to side as he said a prayer in front of the icon, and his drunken red eyes were wide open. Then he continued, ‘So my dear brother’s come back home with his family… from Moscow. The great capital, that is, Moscow, mother of cities… Forgive me…’

He sank down on a bench by the samovar and started drinking tea, noisily gulping from a saucer, while no one else said a word. He drank about ten cups, then slumped down on the bench and started snoring.

They prepared for bed. As Nikolay was ill, they put him over the stove with the old man. Sasha lay down on the floor, while Olga went into the barn with the other women.

‘Well, dear,’ Olga said, lying down on the straw next to Marya. ‘It’s no good crying. You’ve got to grin and bear it. The Bible says: “But whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also…”² Yes, dear!’

Then she told her about her life in Moscow, in a whispering, singsong voice, about her job as a maid in some furnished flats.

‘The houses are very big there and built of stone,’ she said. ‘There’s ever so many churches – scores and scores of them, my dear, and them that live in the houses are all gentlefolk, so handsome and respectable!’

Marya replied that she had never been further than the county town, let alone Moscow. She was illiterate, did not know any prayers – even ‘Our Father’. Both she and Fyokla, the other sister-in-law, who was sitting not very far away, listening, were extremely backward and understood nothing. Neither loved her husband. Marya was frightened of Kiryak and whenever he stayed with her she would tremble all over. And he stank so much of tobacco and vodka she nearly went out of her mind. If anyone asked Fyokla if she got bored when her husband was away, she would reply indignantly, ‘to hell with him!’ They kept talking a little longer and then fell silent…

It was cool and they could not sleep because of a cock crowing near the barn for all it was worth. When the hazy blue light of morning was already filtering through every chink in the woodwork, Fyokla quietly got up and went outside. Then they heard her running off somewhere, her bare feet thudding over the ground.

II

Olga went to church, taking Marya with her. Both of them felt cheerful as they went down the path to the meadow. Olga liked the wide-open spaces, while Marya sensed that her sister-in-law was someone near and dear to her. The sun was rising and a sleepy hawk flew low over the meadows. The river looked gloomy, with patches of mist here and there. But a strip of sunlight already stretched along the hill on the far side of the river, the church shone brightly and crows cawed furiously in the manor house garden.

‘The old man’s all right,’ Marya was telling her, ‘only Grannie’s very strict and she’s always on the warpath. Our own bread lasted until Shrovetide, then we had to go and buy some flour at the inn. That put her in a right temper, said we were eating too much.’

‘Oh, what of it, dear! You just have to grin and bear it. As it says in the Bible: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden.”’³

Olga had a measured, singsong voice and she walked like a pilgrim, quick and bustling. Every day she read out loud from the Gospels, like a priest, and there was much she did not understand. However, the sacred words moved her to tears and she pronounced ‘if whomsoever’ and ‘whither’ with a sweet sinking feeling in her heart. She believed in God, the Holy Virgin and the saints. She believed that it was wrong to harm anyone in the wide world – whether they were simple people, Germans, gipsies or Jews – and woe betide those who were cruel to animals! She believed that all this was written down in the sacred books and this was why, when she repeated words from the Bible – even words she did not understand – her face became compassionate, radiant and full of tenderness.

‘Where are you from?’ Marya asked.

‘Vladimir.⁴ But my parents took me with them to Moscow a long time ago, when I was only eight.’

They went down to the river. On the far side a woman stood at the water’s edge, undressing herself.

‘That’s our Fyokla,’ Marya said, recognizing her. ‘She’s been going across the river to the manor house to lark around with the men. She’s a real tart and you should hear her swear – something wicked!’

Fyokla, who had black eyebrows and who still had the youthfulness and strength of a young girl, leapt from the bank into the water, her hair undone, threshing the water with her legs and sending out ripples in all directions.

‘A real tart!’ Marya said again.

Over the river was a rickety wooden-plank footbridge and right below it shoals of large-headed chub swam in the pure, clear water. Dew glistened on green bushes which seemed to be looking at themselves in the river. A warm breeze was blowing and everything became so pleasant. What a beautiful morning! And how beautiful life could be in this world, were it not for all its terrible, never-ending poverty, from which there is no escape! One brief glance at the village brought yesterday’s memories vividly to life – and that enchanting happiness, which seemed to be all around, vanished in a second.

They reached the church. Marya stopped at the porch, not daring to go in, or even sit down, although the bells for evening service would not ring until after eight. So she just kept standing there.

During the reading from the Gospels, the congregation suddenly moved to one side to make way for the squire and his family. Two girls in white frocks and broad-brimmed hats and a plump, pink-faced boy in a sailor suit came down the church. Olga was very moved when she saw them and was immediately convinced that these were respectable, well-educated, fine people. But Marya gave them a suspicious, dejected look, as though they were not human beings but monsters who would trample all over her if she did not get out of the way. And whenever the priest’s deep voice thundered out, she imagined she could hear that shout again – Ma-arya! – and she trembled all over.

III

The villagers heard about the newly arrived visitors and a large crowd was already waiting in the hut after the service. Among them were the Leonychevs, the Matveichevs and the Ilichovs, who wanted news of their relatives working in Moscow. All the boys from Zhukovo who could read or write were bundled off to Moscow to be waiters or bellboys (the lads from the village on the other side of the river just became bakers). This was a longstanding practice, going back to the days of serfdom when a certain peasant from Zhukovo called Luka Ivanych (now a legend) had worked as a barman in a Moscow club and only took on people who came from his own village. Once these villagers had made good, they in turn sent for their families and fixed them up with jobs in pubs and restaurants. Ever since then, the village of Zhukovo had always been called ‘Loutville’ or ‘Lackeyville’ by the locals. Nikolay had been sent to Moscow when he was eleven and he got a job through Ivan (one of the Matveichevs), who was then working as an usher at the Hermitage Garden Theatre.⁵ Rather didactically Nikolay told the Matveichevs, ‘Ivan was very good to me, so I must pray for him night and day. It was through him I became a good man.’

Ivan’s sister, a tall old lady, said tearfully, ‘Yes, my dear friend, we don’t hear anything from him these days.’

‘Last winter he was working at Aumont’s,⁶ but they say he’s out of town now, working in some suburban pleasure gardens. He’s aged terribly. Used to take home ten roubles a day in the summer season. But business is slack everywhere now, the old boy doesn’t know what to do with himself.’

The woman looked at Nikolay’s legs (he was wearing felt boots), at his pale face and sadly said, ‘You’re no breadwinner, Nikolay. How can you be, in your state!’

They all made a fuss of Sasha. She was already ten years old, but she was short for her age, very thin and no one would have thought she was more than seven, at the very most. This fair-haired girl with her big dark eyes and a red ribbon in her hair looked rather comical among the others, with their deeply tanned skin, crudely cut hair and their long faded smocks – she resembled a small animal that had been caught in a field and brought into the hut.

‘And she knows how to read!’ Olga said boastfully as she tenderly looked at her daughter. ‘Read something, dear!’ she said, taking a Bible from one corner. ‘You read a little bit and these good Christians will listen.’

The Bible was old and heavy, bound in leather and with well-thumbed pages; it smelt as though some monks had come into the hut. Sasha raised her eyebrows and began reading in a loud, singing voice, ‘And when they were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord… appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, “Arise, and take the young child and his mother.”’⁷

‘“The young child and his mother”,’ Olga repeated and became flushed with excitement.

‘“And flee into Egypt… and be thou there until I bring thee word…”’

At the word ‘until’, Olga broke down and wept. Marya looked at her and started sobbing, and Ivan’s sister followed suit. Then the old man had a fit of coughing and fussed around trying to find a present for his little granddaughter. But he could not find anything and finally gave it up as a bad job. After the reading, the neighbours went home, deeply touched and extremely pleased with Olga and Sasha.

When there was a holiday the family would stay at home all day. The old lady, called ‘Grannie’ by her husband, daughters-in-law and grandchildren, tried to do all the work herself. She would light the stove, put the samovar on, go to milk the cows and then complain she was worked to death. She kept worrying that someone might eat a little too much or that the old man and the daughters-in-law might have no work to do. One moment she would be thinking that she could hear the innkeeper’s geese straying into her kitchen garden from around the back, and she would dash out of the hut with a long stick and stand screaming for half an hour on end by her cabbages that were as withered and stunted as herself; and then she imagined a crow was stalking her chickens and she would rush at it, swearing for all she was worth. She would rant and rave from morning to night and very often her shouting was so loud that people stopped in the street.

She did not treat the old man with much affection and called him ‘lazy devil’ or ‘damned nuisance’. He was frivolous and unreliable and wouldn’t have done any work at all (most likely he would have sat over the stove all day long, talking) if his wife hadn’t continually prodded him. He would spend hours on end telling his son stories about his enemies and complaining about the daily insults he had apparently to suffer from his neighbours. It was very boring listening to him.

‘Oh yes,’ he would say, holding his sides. ‘Yes, a week after Exaltation of the Cross,⁸ I sold some hay at thirty copecks a third of a hundredweight, just what I wanted… Yes, very good business. But one morning, as I was carting the hay, keeping to myself, not interfering with anyone… it was my rotten luck that Antip Sedelnikov, the village elder, comes out of the pub and asks: “Where you taking that lot, you devil…?” and he gives me one on the ear.’

Kiryak had a terrible hangover and he felt very ashamed in front of his brother.

‘That’s what you get from drinking vodka,’ he muttered, shaking his splitting head. ‘Oh God! My own brother and sister-in-law! Please forgive me, for Christ’s sake. I’m so ashamed!’

For the holidays they bought some herring at the inn and made soup from the heads. At midday they sat down to tea and went on drinking until the sweat poured off them. They looked puffed out with all that liquid and after the tea they started on the soup, everyone drinking from the same pot. Grannie had what was left of the herring.

That evening a potter was firing clay on the side of the cliff. In the meadows down below, girls were singing and dancing in a ring. Someone was playing an accordion. Another kiln had been lit across the river and the girls there were singing as well and their songs were soft and melodious in the distance. At the inn and round about, some peasants were making a great noise with their discordant singing and they swore so much that Olga could only shudder and exclaim, ‘Oh, good heavens!’

She was astonished that the swearing never stopped for one minute and that the old men with one foot in the grave were the ones who swore loudest and longest. But the children and the young girls were obviously used to it from the cradle and it did not worry them at all.

Now it was past midnight and the fires in the pottery kilns on both sides of the river had gone out. But the festivities continued in the meadow below and at the inn. The old man and Kiryak, both drunk, joined arms and kept bumping into each other as they went up to the barn where Olga and Marya were lying.

‘Leave her alone,’ the old man urged Kiryak. ‘Let her be. She doesn’t do any harm… it’s shameful…’

‘Ma-arya!’ Kiryak shouted.

‘Leave her alone… it’s sinful… she’s not a bad woman.’

They both paused for a moment near the barn, then they moved on.

‘I lo-ove the flowers that bloom in the fields, oh!’⁹ the old man suddenly struck up in his shrill, piercing tenor voice. ‘Oh, I do lo-ove to pick the flo-owers!’

Then he spat, swore obscenely and went into the hut.

IV

Grannie stationed Sasha near her kitchen garden and told her to watch out for stray geese. It was a hot August day. The geese could have got into the garden from round the back, but now they were busily pecking at some oats near the inn, peacefully cackling to each other. Only the gander craned his neck, as though he were looking out for the old woman with her stick. The other geese might have come up from the slope, but they stayed far beyond the other side of the river and resembled a long white garland of flowers laid out over the meadow.

Sasha stood there for a few moments, after which she felt bored. When she saw that the geese weren’t coming, off she went down the steep slope. There she spotted Motka (Marya’s eldest daughter), standing motionless on a boulder, looking at the church. Marya had borne thirteen children, but only six survived, all of them girls – not a single boy among them; and the eldest was eight. Motka stood barefooted in her long smock, in the full glare of the sun which burnt down on her head. But she did not notice it and seemed petrified. Sasha stood next to her and said as she looked at the church, ‘God lives in churches. People have icon lamps and candles, but God has little red, green and blue lamps that are just like tiny eyes. At night-time God goes walking round the church with the Holy Virgin and Saint Nikolay… tap-tap-tap. And the watchman is scared stiff!’ Then she added, mimicking her mother, ‘Now, dear, when the Day of Judgement comes, every church will be whirled off to heaven!’

‘Wha-at, with their be-ells too?’ Motka asked in a deep voice, dragging each syllable.

‘Yes, bells and all. On the Day of Judgement, all good people will go to paradise, while the wicked ones will be burnt in everlasting fire, for ever and ever. And God will tell my mother and Marya, “You never harmed anyone, so you can take the path on the right that leads to paradise.” But he’ll say to Kiryak and Grannie, “You go to the left, into the fire. And all those who ate meat during Lent must go as well.”’

She gazed up at the sky with wide-open eyes and said, ‘If you look at the sky without blinking you can see the angels.’

Motka looked upwards and neither of them said a word for a minute or so.

‘Can you see them?’ Sasha asked.

‘Can’t see nothing,’ Motka said in her deep voice.

‘Well, I can. There’s tiny angels flying through the sky, flapping their wings and going buzz-buzz like mosquitoes.’

Motka pondered for a moment as she looked down at the ground and then she asked, ‘Will Grannie burn in the fire?’

‘Yes, she will, dear.’

From the rock down to the bottom, the slope was gentle and smooth. It was covered with soft green grass which made one feel like touching it or lying on it. Sasha lay down and rolled to the bottom. Motka took a deep breath and, looking very solemn and deadly serious, she lay down too and rolled to the bottom; on the way down her smock rode up to her shoulders.

‘That was great fun,’ Sasha said rapturously.

They both went up to the top again for another roll, but just then they heard that familiar, piercing voice again. It was really terrifying! That toothless, bony, hunchbacked old woman, with her short grey hair fluttering in the wind, was driving the geese out of her kitchen garden with a long stick, shouting, ‘So you had to tread all over my cabbages, blast you! May you be damned three times and rot in hell, you buggers!’

When she saw the girls, she threw the stick down, seized a whip made of twigs, gripped Sasha’s neck with fingers as hard and dry as stale rolls, and started beating her. Sasha cried out in pain and fear, but at that moment the gander, waddling along and craning its neck, went up to the old woman and hissed at her. When it returned to the flock all the females cackled approvingly. Then the old woman started beating Motka and her smock rode up again. With loud sobs and in utter desperation, Sasha went to the hut to complain about it. She was followed by Motka, who was crying as well, but much more throatily and without bothering to wipe the tears away. Her face was so wet it seemed she had just drenched it with water.

‘Good God!’ Olga said in astonishment when they entered the hut. ‘Holy Virgin!’

Sasha was just about to tell her what had happened when Grannie started shrieking and cursing. Fyokla became furious and the hut was filled with noise. Olga was pale and looked very upset as she stroked Sasha’s head and said consolingly, ‘It’s all right, it’s nothing. It’s sinful to get angry with your grandmother. It’s all right, my child.’

Nikolay, who by this time was exhausted by the never-ending shouting, by hunger, by the fumes from the stove and the terrible stench, who hated and despised poverty, and whose wife and daughter made him feel ashamed in front of his parents, sat over the stove with his legs dangling and turned to his mother in an irritable, plaintive voice: ‘You can’t beat her, you’ve no right at all!’

‘You feeble little man, rotting away up there over the stove,’ Fyokla shouted spitefully. ‘What the hell’s brought you lot here, you parasites!’

Both Sasha and Motka and all the little girls, who had taken refuge in the corner, over the stove, behind Nikolay’s back, were terrified and listened without saying a word, their little hearts pounding away.

When someone in a family has been terribly ill for a long time, when all hope has been given up, there are horrible moments when those near and dear to him harbour a timid, secret longing, deep down inside, for him to die. Only children fear the death of a loved one and the very thought of it fills them with terror. And now the little girls held their breath and looked at Nikolay with mournful expressions on their faces, thinking that he would soon be dead. They felt like crying and telling him something tender and comforting.

He clung to Olga, as though seeking protection, and he told her softly, tremulously, ‘My dear Olga, I can’t stand it any more here. All my strength has gone. For God’s sake, for Christ’s sake, write to your sister Claudia and tell her to sell or pawn all she has. Then she can send us the money to help us get out of this place.’

He went on in a voice that was full of yearning: ‘Oh God, just one glimpse of Moscow is all I ask! If only I just could dream about my dear Moscow!’

When evening came and it was dark in the hut, they felt so depressed they could hardly speak. Angry Grannie sat dipping rye crusts in a cup and sucking them for a whole hour. After Marya had milked the cow she brought a pail of milk and put it on a bench. Then Grannie poured it into some jugs, without hurrying, and she was visibly cheered by the thought that as it was the Fast of the Assumption¹⁰ (when milk was forbidden) no one would go near it. All she did was pour the tiniest little drop into a saucer for Fyokla’s baby. As she was carrying the jugs with Marya down to the cellar, Motka suddenly started, slid down from the stove, went over to the bench where the wooden cup with the crusts was standing and splashed some milk from the saucer over them.

When Grannie came back and sat down to her crusts, Sasha and Motka sat watching her from the stove, and it gave them great pleasure to see that now she had eaten forbidden food during Lent and would surely go to hell for it. They took comfort in this thought and lay down to sleep. As Sasha dozed off she had visions of the Day of Judgement; she saw a blazing furnace, like a potter’s kiln, and an evil spirit dressed all in black, with the horns of a cow, driving Grannie into the fire with a long stick, as she had driven the geese not so long ago.

V

After ten o’clock, on the eve of the Feast of the Assumption, the young men and girls who were strolling in the meadows down below suddenly started shouting and screaming and came running back to the village. People who were sitting up on the hill, on the edge of the cliff, could not understand at first what had happened.

‘Fire! Fire!’ came the desperate cry from below. ‘We’re on fire!’

The people up above looked round and were confronted by the most terrifying, extraordinary sight: on the thatched roof of one of the huts at the end of the village a pillar of fire swirled upwards, showering sparks everywhere like a fountain. The whole roof turned into a mass of bright flames and there was a loud crackling. The moonlight was dimmed by the glare and the whole village became enveloped in a red, flickering light. Black shadows stole over the ground and there was a smell of burning. The villagers had come running up the hill, were all out of breath and could not speak for trembling; they jostled each other and kept falling down, unable to see properly in that sudden blinding light and not recognizing one another. It was terrifying, particularly with pigeons flying around in the smoke above the fire, while down at the inn (they had not heard about the fire) the singing and accordion-playing continued as if nothing had happened.

‘Uncle Semyon’s hut’s on fire!’ someone shouted in a loud, rough voice.

Marya was dashing around near the hut, crying and wringing her hands and her teeth chattered – even though the fire was some distance away, at the far end of the village.

Nikolay emerged in his felt boots and the children came running out in their little smocks. Some of the villagers banged on an iron plate by the police constable’s hut, filling the air with a loud clanging; this incessant, unremitting sound made your heart ache and made you go cold all over.

Old women stood holding icons.

Sheep, calves and cows were driven out into the street from the yards; trunks, sheepskins and tubs were carried outside. A black stallion, normally kept apart from the herd – it had a tendency to kick and injure the others – was set loose and galloped once or twice through the village, whinnying and stamping, and then suddenly stopped near a cart and lashed out with its hind legs.

And the bells were ringing out in the church on the other side of the river. Near the blazing hut it was hot and so light that the tiniest blade of grass was visible.

Semyon, a red-haired peasant with a large nose, wearing a waistcoat and with his cap pulled down over his ears, was sitting on one of the trunks they had managed to drag out. His wife was lying face downwards moaning in despair. An old man of about eighty, shortish, with an enormous beard – rather like a gnome – and who was obviously in some way connected with the fire (although he came from another village), was pacing up and down without any hat, carrying a white bundle. A bald patch on his head glinted in the light of the fire. Antip Sedelnikov, the village elder – a swarthy man with the black hair of a gipsy – went up to the hut with an axe and, for some obscure reason, knocked out the windows, one after the other. Then he started hacking away at the front steps.

‘Get some water, you women!’ he shouted. ‘Bring the fire-engine! And be quick about it!’

A fire-engine was hauled up by the same villagers who had just been drinking and singing at the inn. They were all dead drunk and kept stumbling and falling over; all of them had a helpless look and they had tears in their eyes.

The village elder, who was drunk as well, shouted, ‘Get some water, quick!’

The women and girls ran down to the bottom of the hill, where there was a spring, dragged up the full buckets and tubs, emptied them into the fire-engine and ran down again. Olga, Marya, Sasha and Motka all helped. The women and little boys helped to pump the water, making the hosepipe hiss, and the village elder began by directing a jet into the doorway, then through the windows, regulating the flow with his finger, which made the water hiss all the more.

‘Well done, Antip!’ the villagers said approvingly. ‘Come on now!’

Antip climbed right into the burning hall from where he shouted, ‘Keep on pouring. Try your best, you good Christians, on the occasion of such an unhappy event.’

The villagers crowded round and did nothing – they just gazed at the fire. No one had any idea what to do – no one was capable of doing anything – and close by there were stacks of wheat and hay, piles of dry brushwood, and barns. Kiryak and old Osip, his father, had joined in the crowd, and they were both drunk. The old man turned to the woman lying on the ground and said – as though trying to find some excuse for his idleness – ‘Now don’t get so worked up! The hut’s insured, so don’t worry!’

Semyon turned to one villager after the other, telling them how the fire had started.

‘It was that old man with the bundle, him what worked for General Zhukov… used to cook for him, God rest his soul. Along he comes this evening and says, “Let me stay the night, please.” Well, we had a drink or two… the old girl started messing around with the samovar to make the old man a cup of tea and she put it in the hall before the charcoal was out. The flames shot straight up out of the pipe and set the thatched roof alight, so there you are! We nearly went up as well. The old man’s cap was burnt, a terrible shame.’

Meanwhile they banged away at the iron plate for all they were worth and the bells in the church across the river kept ringing. Olga ran breathlessly up and down the slope. As she looked in horror at the red sheep, at the pink doves fluttering around in the smoke, she was lit up by the fierce glow. The loud clanging had the effect of a sharp needle piercing her heart and it seemed that the fire would never go out, that Sasha was lost… And when the ceiling in the hut collapsed with a loud crash, the thought that the whole village was bound to burn down now made her feel weak and she could not carry any more water. So she sat on the cliff, with the buckets at her side. Nearby, a little lower down, women were sitting and seemed to be wailing for the dead.

But just then some labourers and men from the manor across the river arrived in two carts, together with a fire-engine. A very young student came riding up in his unbuttoned white tunic. Axes started hacking away, a ladder was propped against the blazing framework and five men clambered up it at once, with the student leading the way. His face was red from the flames and he shouted in a hoarse, rasping voice, in such an authoritative way it seemed putting fires out was something he did every day. They tore the hut to pieces beam by beam, and they tore down the cowshed, a wattle fence and the nearest haystack.

Stern voices rang out from the crowd: ‘Don’t let them smash the place up. Stop them!’

Kiryak went off towards the hut with a determined look and as though intending stopping the newly arrived helpers from breaking the whole place up. But one of the workmen turned him round and hit him in the neck. There was laughter and the workman hit him again. Kiryak fell down and crawled back to the crowd on all fours.

Two pretty girls, wearing hats – they were probably the student’s sisters – arrived from across the river. They stood a little way off, watching the fire. The beams that had been pulled down had stopped burning, but a great deal of smoke still came from them. As he manipulated the hose, the student directed the jet at the beams, then at the peasants and then at the women fetching the water.

‘Georges!’ the girls shouted, in anxious, reproachful voices. ‘Georges!’

The fire was out now and only when they started going home did the villagers notice that it was already dawn and that everyone had that pale, slightly swarthy look which always seems to come in the early hours of the morning, when the last stars have faded from the sky. As they went their different ways, the villagers laughed and made fun of General Zhukov’s cook and his burnt hat. Already they wanted to turn the fire into a joke – and they even seemed sorry that it was all over so quickly.

‘You were a very good fireman,’ Olga told the student. ‘You should come to Moscow where we live, there’s a fire every day.’

‘You don’t say, you’re from Moscow?’ one of the young ladies asked.

‘Oh yes. My husband worked at the Slav Fair. And this is my daughter.’

She pointed to Sasha, who went cold all over and clung to her.

‘She’s from Moscow as well, miss.’

The two girls said something in French to the student and he gave Sasha a twenty-copeck piece. When old Osip saw it, there was a sudden flicker of hope on his face.

‘Thank God there wasn’t any wind, sir,’ he said, turning to the student, ‘or everything would have gone up before you could say knife.’ Then he lowered his voice and added timidly, ‘Yes, sir, and you ladies, you’re good people… it’s cold at dawn, could do with warming up… Please give me a little something for a drink…’

They gave him nothing and he sighed and slunk off home. Afterwards Olga stood at the top of the slope and watched the two carts fording the river and the two ladies and the gentleman riding across the meadow – a carriage was waiting for them on the other side.

When she went back into the hut she told her husband delightedly, ‘Such fine people! And so good-looking. Those young ladies were like little cherubs!’

‘They can damned well go to hell!’ murmured sleepy Fyokla, in a voice full of hatred.

VI

Marya was unhappy and said that she longed to die. Fyokla, on the other hand, found this kind of life to her liking – for all its poverty, filth and never-ending bad language. She ate whatever she was given, without any fuss, and slept anywhere she could and on whatever she happened to find. She would empty the slops right outside the front door, splashing them out from the steps, and she would walk barefoot through the puddles into the bargain. From the very first day she had hated Olga and Nikolay, precisely because they did not like the life there.

‘We’ll see what you get to eat here, my posh Moscow friends,’ she said viciously. ‘We’ll see!’

One morning, right at the beginning of September, the healthy, fine-looking Fyokla, her face flushed with the cold, brought two buckets of water up the hill. Marya and Olga were sitting at the table drinking tea.

‘Tea and sugar!’ Fyokla said derisively. ‘Real ladies!’ she added, putting the buckets down. ‘Is it the latest fashion, then, drinking tea every day? Careful you don’t burst with all that liquid inside you.’ She gave Olga a hateful look and went on, ‘Stuffed your fat mug all right in Moscow, didn’t you, you fat cow!’

She swung the yoke and hit Olga on the shoulders; this startled the sisters-in-law so much all they could do was clasp their hands and say, ‘Oh, God!’

Then Fyokla went down to the river to do some washing and she swore so loudly the whole way there, they could hear her back in the hut.

The day drew to a close and the long autumn evening set in. In the hut they were winding silk – everyone, that is, except Fyokla, who had gone across the river.

The silk was collected from a nearby factory and the whole family earned itself a little pocket money – twenty copecks a week.

‘We were better off as serfs,’ the old man said as he wound the silk. ‘You worked, ate, slept – everything had its proper place. You had cabbage soup and kasha¹¹ for your dinner and again for supper. You had as many cucumbers and as much cabbage as you liked and you could eat to your heart’s content, if you felt like it. And they were stricter then, everyone knew his place.’

Only one lamp was alight, smoking and glowing dimly. Whenever anyone stood in front of it, a large shadow fell across the window and one could see the bright moonlight. Old Osip took his time as he told them all what life was like before the serfs were emancipated;¹² how, in those very same places where life was so dull and wretched now, they used to ride out with wolfhounds, borzois and skilled hunters.¹³ There would be plenty of vodka for the peasants during the battue. He told how whole cartloads of game were taken to Moscow for the young gentlemen, how badly behaved peasants were flogged or sent away to estates in Tver,¹⁴ while the good ones were rewarded. Grannie had stories to tell as well. She remembered simply everything. She told of her mistress, whose husband was a drunkard and a rake and whose daughters all made absolutely disastrous marriages; one married a drunkard, another a small tradesman in the town, while the third eloped (with the help of Grannie, who was a girl herself at the time). In no time at all they all died of broken hearts (like their mother) and Grannie burst into tears when she recalled it all.

Suddenly there was a knock at the door and everyone trembled.

‘Uncle Osip, put me up for tonight, please!’

In came General Zhukov’s cook – a bald, little old man, the same cook whose hat had been burnt. He sat down, listened to the conversation and soon joined in, reminiscing and telling stories about the old days. Nikolay sat listening with his legs dangling from the stove and all he wanted to know was what kind of food they used to eat in the days of serfdom. They discussed various kinds of rissoles, cutlets, soups and sauces. The cook, who had a good memory as well, mentioned dishes that were not made any more. For example, there was some dish made from bulls’ eyes called morning awakening.

‘Did they make cutlets à la maréchale then?’ Nikolay asked.

‘No.’

Nikolay shook his head disdainfully and said, ‘Oh, you miserable apology for a cook!’

The little girls who were sitting or lying on the stove looked down without blinking. There seemed to be so many of them, they were like cherubs in the clouds. They liked the stories, sighed, shuddered and turned pale with delight or fear. Breathlessly they listened to Grannie’s stories, which were the most interesting, and they were too frightened to move a muscle. All of them lay down to sleep without saying a word. The old people, excited and disturbed by the stories, thought about the beauty of youth, now that it was past: no matter what it had really been like, they could only remember it as bright, joyful and moving. And now they thought of the terrible chill of death – and for them death was not far away. Better not to think about it! The lamp went out. The darkness, the two windows sharply outlined in the moonlight, the silence and the creaking cradle somehow reminded them that their lives were finished, nothing could bring them back. Sometimes one becomes drowsy and dozes off, and suddenly someone touches you on the shoulder, breathes on your cheek and you can sleep no longer, your whole body goes numb, and you can think of nothing but death. You turn over and death is forgotten; but then the same old depressing, tedious thoughts keep wandering around your head – thoughts of poverty, cattle fodder, about the higher price of flour and a little later you remember once again that your life has gone, that you can never relive it.

‘Oh God!’ sighed the cook.

Someone was tapping ever so gently on the window – that must be Fyokla. Olga stood up, yawning and whispering a prayer as she opened the door and then drew the bolt back in the hall. But no one came in and there was just a breath of chill air from the street and the sudden bright light of the moon. Through the open door she could see the quiet, deserted street and the moon itself sailing across the heavens.

Olga called out, ‘Who is it?’

‘It’s me,’ came the answer, ‘it’s me.’

Fyokla was standing near the door, pressing close to the wall, and she was stark naked. She was trembling with the cold and her teeth chattered. In the bright moonlight she looked very pale, beautiful and strange. The shadow and the brilliant light playing over her skin struck Olga particularly vividly and those dark eyebrows and firm young breasts were very sharply outlined.

‘It was them beasts on the other side of the river, they stripped me naked and sent me away like this…’ she muttered. ‘I’ve come all the way home without nothing on… stark naked… Give me some clothes.’

‘Come into the hut!’ Olga said softly and she too started shivering.

‘I don’t want the old people to see me!’

But in actual fact Grannie had already become alarmed and was grumbling away, while the old man asked, ‘Who’s there?’

Olga fetched her own smock and skirt and dressed Fyokla in them. Then they both tiptoed into the hut, trying not to bang the doors.

‘Is that you, my beauty?’ Grannie growled angrily when she realized who it was. ‘You little nightbird, want a nice flogging, do you?’

‘It’s all right, it’s all right, dear,’ Olga whispered as she wrapped Fyokla up.

Everything became quiet again. They always slept badly in the hut, every one of them would be kept awake by obsessive, nagging thoughts – the old man by his backache, Grannie by her worrying and evil mind, Marya by her fear and the children by itching and hunger.

And now their sleep was as disturbed as ever and they kept tossing and turning, and saying wild things; time after time they got up for a drink of water.

Suddenly Fyokla started bawling in her loud, coarse voice, but immediately tried to pull herself together and broke into an intermittent sobbing which gradually became fainter and fainter until it died away completely. Now and again the church on the other side of the river could be heard striking the hour, but in the most peculiar way: first it struck five and then three.

‘Oh, my God!’ sighed the cook.

It was hard to tell, just by looking at the windows, whether the moon was still shining or if dawn had already come. Marya got up and went outside. They could hear her milking the cow in the yard and telling it, ‘Ooh, keep still!’ Grannie went out as well. Although it was still dark in the hut, by now every object was visible.

Nikolay, who had not slept the whole night, climbed down from the stove. He took his tailcoat out of a green trunk, put it on, smoothed the sleeves as he went over to the window, held the tails for a moment and smiled. Then he carefully took it off, put it back in the trunk and lay down again.

Marya returned and started lighting the stove. Quite clearly she was not really awake yet and she was still coming to as she moved around. Most probably she had had a dream or suddenly remembered the stories of the evening before, since she said, ‘No, freedom¹⁵ is best,’ as she sensuously stretched herself in front of the stove.

VII

The ‘gentleman’ arrived – this was how the local police inspector was called in the village. Everyone knew a week beforehand exactly when and why he was coming. In Zhukovo there were only forty households, but they were so much in arrears with their taxes and rates that over two thousand roubles were overdue.

The inspector stopped at the inn. There he ‘imbibed’ two glasses of tea and then set off on foot for the village elder’s hut, where a crowd of defaulters was waiting for him. Antip Sedelnikov, the village elder, despite his lack of years (he had only just turned thirty) was a very strict man and always sided with the authorities, although he was poor himself and was always behind with his payments. Being the village elder obviously amused him and he enjoyed the feeling of power and the only way he knew to exercise this was by enforcing strict discipline. At village meetings everyone was scared of him and did what he said. If he came across a drunk in the street or near the inn he would swoop down on him, tie his arms behind his back and put him in the village lock-up. Once he had even put Grannie there for swearing when she was deputizing for Osip at a meeting and he kept her locked up for twenty-four hours. Although he had never lived in a town or read any books, somehow he had managed to accumulate a store of various clever-sounding words and he loved using them in conversation, which made him respected, if not always understood.

When Osip entered the elder’s hut with his rent book, the inspector – a lean old man with long grey whiskers, in a grey double-breasted jacket – was sitting at a table in the corner near the stove, writing something down. The hut was clean and all the walls were gay and colourful with pictures cut out of magazines. In the most conspicuous place, near the icons, hung a portrait of Battenberg,¹⁶ once Prince of Bulgaria. Antip Sedelnikov stood by the table with his arms crossed.

‘This one ’ere owes a hundred and nineteen roubles, your honour,’ he said when it was Osip’s turn. ‘’E paid a rouble before Easter, but not one copeck since.’

The inspector looked up at Osip and asked, ‘How come, my dear friend?’

‘Don’t be too hard on me, your honour,’ Osip said, getting very worked up, ‘just please let me explain, sir. Last summer the squire from Lyutoretsk says to me, “Sell me your hay, Osip, sell it to me…” Why not? I had about a ton and a half of it, what the women mowed in the meadows… well, we agreed the price… It was all very nice and proper.’

He complained about the elder and kept turning towards the other peasants as though summoning them as witnesses. His face became red and sweaty and his eyes sharp and evil-looking.

‘I don’t see why you’re telling me all this,’ the inspector said. ‘I’m asking you why you’re so behind with your rates. It’s you I’m asking. None of you pays up, so do you think I’m going to be responsible!’

‘But I just can’t!’

‘These words have no consequences, your honour,’ the elder said. ‘In actual fact those Chikildeyevs belong to the impecunious class. But if it please your honour to ask the others, the whole reason for it is vodka. And they’re real troublemakers. They’ve no comprehension.’

The inspector jotted something down and told Osip in a calm, even voice, as though asking for some water, ‘Clear off!’

Shortly afterwards he drove away and he was coughing as he climbed into his carriage. From the way he stretched his long, thin back one could tell that Osip, the elder and the arrears at Zhukovo were no more than dim memories, and that he was now thinking about something that concerned him alone. Even before he was half a mile away, Antip Sedelnikov was carrying the samovar out of the Chikildeyevs’ hut, pursued by Grannie, who was shrieking for all she was worth, ‘I won’t let you have it, I won’t, blast you!’

Antip strode along quickly, while Grannie puffed and panted after him, nearly falling over and looking quite ferocious with her hunched back. Her shawl had slipped down over her shoulders and her grey hair, tinged with green, streamed in the wind. Suddenly she stopped and began beating her breast like a real rebel and shouted in an even louder singsong voice, just as though she were sobbing, ‘Good Christians, you who believe in God! Heavens, we’ve been trampled on! Dear ones, we’ve been persecuted. Oh, please help us!’

‘Come on, Grannie,’ the elder said sternly, ‘time you got some sense into that head of yours!’

Life became completely and utterly depressing without a samovar in the Chikildeyevs’ hut. There was something humiliating, degrading in this deprivation, as though the hut itself were in disgrace. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the elder had only taken the table, all the benches and pots instead – then the place wouldn’t have looked so bare as it did now. Grannie yelled, Marya wept and the little girls looked at her and wept too. The old man felt guilty and sat in one corner, his head downcast and not saying a word. Nikolay did not say a word either: Grannie was very fond of him and felt sorry for him, but now all compassion was forgotten as she suddenly attacked him with a stream of reproaches and insults, shaking her fists right under his nose. He was to blame for everything, she screamed. And in actual fact, why had he sent them so little, when in his letters he had boasted that he was earning fifty roubles a month at the Slav Fair? And why did he have to come with his family? How would they pay for the funeral if he died here… ? Nikolay, Olga and Sasha made a pathetic sight.

The old man wheezed, picked his cap up and went off to see the elder. Already it was getting dark. Antip Sedelnikov was soldering something near the stove, puffing his cheeks out. The air was heavy with fumes. His skinny, unwashed children – they were no better than the Chikildeyev children – were playing noisily on the floor, while his ugly, freckled, pot-bellied wife was winding silk. It was a wretched, miserable family – with the exception of Antip, who was handsome and dashing. Five samovars stood in a row on a bench. The old man offered a prayer to Battenberg and said, ‘Antip, have pity on us, give us the samovar back, for Christ’s sake!’

‘Bring me three roubles – then you can have it back.’

‘I haven’t got them!’

Antip puffed his cheeks out, the fire hummed and hissed and its light gleamed on the samovars. The old man rumpled his cap, pondered for a moment and said, ‘Give it back!’

The dark-faced elder looked jet-black, just like a sorcerer. He turned to Osip and said in a rapid, stern voice, ‘It all depends on the magistrate. At the administrative meeting on the 26th inst. you can announce your grounds for dissatisfaction, orally or in writing.’

Osip did not understand one word of this, but he seemed satisfied and went home.

About ten days later the inspector turned up again, stayed for an hour and then left. About this time the weather was windy and cold. The river had frozen over long ago, but there still hadn’t been any snow and everyone was miserable, as the roads were impassable. On one holiday, just before evening, some neighbours dropped in at Osip’s for a chat. The conversation took place in the dark – it was considered sinful to work, so the fire had not been lit. There was a little news – most of it unpleasant: some hens had been confiscated from two or three households that were in arrears and taken to the council offices where they died, since no one bothered to feed them. Sheep were confiscated as well – they were taken away with their legs tied up and dumped into a different cart at every village; one died. And now they were trying to decide who was to blame.

‘The local council, who else?’ Osip said.

‘Yes, of course, it’s the council.’

The council was blamed for everything – tax arrears, victimization, harassment, crop failures, although not one of them had any idea what the function of the council was. And all this went back to the times when rich peasants who owned factories, shops and inns had served as councillors, became dissatisfied, and cursed the council when they were back in their factories and inns. They discussed the fact that God hadn’t sent them any snow: firewood had to be moved, but it was impossible to drive or walk because of all the bumps in the road. Fifteen or twenty years ago – or even earlier – the local gossip in Zhukovo was much more interesting. In those times every old man looked as though he was hiding some secret, knew something, and was waiting for something. They discussed deeds with golden seals, allotments and partition of land, hidden treasure and they were always hinting at something or other. But now the people of Zhukovo had no secrets at all: their entire lives were like an open book, which anyone could read and all they could talk about was poverty, cattle feed, lack of snow…

They fell silent for a while: then they remembered the hens and the sheep and tried to decide whose fault it was.

‘The council’s!’ Osip exclaimed gloomily. ‘Who else’s!’

VIII

The parish church was about four miles away, at Kosogorovo, and the people only went there when they really had to – for christenings, weddings or funerals. For ordinary prayers they went to the church across the river. On saints’ days (when the weather was fine) the young girls put on their Sunday best and crowded along to Mass, making a very cheerful picture as they walked across the meadows in their yellow and green dresses. But when the weather was bad everyone stayed at home. Pre-Communion services were held in the parish church. The priest fined anyone who had not prepared for Communion during Lent fifteen copecks as he went round the huts at Easter with his cross.

The old man didn’t believe in God, for the simple reason that he rarely gave him a moment’s thought. He admitted the existence of the supernatural, but thought that it could only affect women. Whenever anyone discussed religion or the supernatural with him, or questioned him, he would reluctantly reply as he scratched himself, ‘Who the hell knows!’

The old woman believed in God, but only in some vague way. Everything in her mind had become mixed up and no sooner did she start meditating on sin, death and salvation, than poverty and everyday worries took charge and immediately she forgot what she had originally been thinking about. She could not remember her prayers and it was usually in the evenings, before she went to bed, that she stood in front of the icons and whispered, ‘to the Virgin of Kazan, to the Virgin of Smolensk, to the Virgin of the Three Arms…’

Marya and Fyokla would cross themselves and prepare to take the sacrament once a year, but they had no idea what it meant. They hadn’t taught their children to pray, had told them nothing about God and never taught them moral principles: all they did was tell them not to eat forbidden food during fast days. In the other families it was almost the same story: hardly anyone believed in God or understood anything about religion. All the same, they loved the Bible dearly, with deep reverence; but they had no books, nor was there anyone to read or explain anything to them. They respected Olga for occasionally reading to them from the Gospels, and spoke to her and Sasha very politely.

Olga often went to festivals and services in the neighbouring villages and the county town, where there were two monasteries and twenty-seven churches. Since she was rather scatterbrained, she tended to forget all about her family when she went on these pilgrimages. Only on the journey home did she suddenly realize, to her great delight, that she had a husband and daughter, and then she would smile radiantly and say, ‘God’s been good to me!’

Everything that happened in the village disgusted and tormented her. On Elijah’s Day¹⁷ they drank, on the Feast of the Assumption they drank, on the day of the Exaltation of the Cross they drank. The Feast of the Intercession was a parish holiday in Zhukovo, and the men celebrated it by going on a three-day binge. They drank their way through fifty roubles of communal funds and on top of this they had a whip-round from all the farms for some vodka. On the first day of the Feast, the Chikildeyevs slaughtered a sheep and ate it for breakfast, lunch and dinner, consuming vast quantities, and then the children got up during the night for another bite. During the entire three days Kiryak was terribly drunk – he drank everything away, even his cap and boots, and he gave Marya such a thrashing that they had to douse her with cold water. Afterwards everyone felt ashamed and sick.

However, even in Zhukovo or ‘Lackeyville’, a truly religious ceremony was once celebrated. This was in August, when the icon of the Life-giving Virgin was carried round the whole district, from one village to another. The day on which the villagers at Zhukovo expected it was calm and overcast. Right from the morning the girls, in their Sunday best, had left their homes to welcome the icon and towards evening it was carried in procession into the village with the church choir singing and the bells in the church across the river ringing out loud. A vast crowd of villagers and visitors filled the street; there was noise, dust and a terrible crush… The old man, Grannie and Kiryak all held their hands out to the icon, looked at it hungrily and cried out tearfully, ‘Our Protector, holy Mother!’

It was as though everyone suddenly realized that there wasn’t just a void between heaven and earth, that the rich and the strong had not grabbed everything yet, that there was still someone to protect them from slavery, crushing, unbearable poverty – and that infernal vodka.

‘Our Protector, holy Mother!’ Marya sobbed. ‘Holy Mother!’

But the service was over now, the icon was taken away and everything returned to normal. Once again those coarse drunken voices could be heard in the pub.

Only the rich peasants feared death, and the richer they became, the less they believed in God and salvation – if they happened to donate candles or celebrate Mass, it was only for fear of their departure from this world – and just to be on the safe side. The peasants who weren’t so well off had no fear of death.

Grannie and the old man had been told to their faces that their lives were over, that it was time they were gone, and they did not care. They had no qualms in telling Fyokla, right in front of Nikolay, that when he died her husband Denis would be discharged from the army and sent home. Far from having any fear of death, Marya was only sorry that it was such a long time coming, and she was glad when any of her children died.

Death held no terrors for them, but they had an excessive fear of all kinds of illness. It only needed some trifle – a stomach upset or a slight chill – for the old woman to lie over the stove, wrap herself up and groan out loud, without stopping, ‘I’m dy-ing!’ Then the old man would dash off to fetch the priest and Grannie would receive the last sacrament and extreme unction. Colds, worms and tumours that began in the stomach and worked their way up to the heart were everyday topics. They were more afraid of catching cold than anything else, so that even in summer they wrapped themselves in thick clothes and stood by the stove warming themselves. Grannie loved medical treatment and frequently went to the hospital, telling them there that she was fifty-eight, and not seventy: she reasoned if the doctor knew her real age he would refuse to have her as a patient and would tell her it was time she died, rather than have hospital treatment. She usually left early in the morning for the hospital, taking two of the little girls with her, and she would return in the evening, cross and hungry, with drops for herself and ointment for the little girls. Once she took Nikolay with her; he took the drops for about two weeks afterwards and said they made him feel better.

Grannie knew all the doctors, nurses and quacks for twenty miles around and she did not like any of them. During the Feast of the Intercession, when the parish priest went round the huts with his cross, the lay reader told her about an old man living near the town prison, who had once been a medical orderly in the army and who knew some very good cures. He advised her to go and consult him, which Grannie did. When the first snows came she drove off to town and brought a little old man back with her: he was a bearded, Jewish convert to Christianity who wore a long coat and whose face was completely covered with blue veins. Just at that time some jobbing tradesmen happened to be working in the hut – an old tailor with terrifying spectacles was cutting a waistcoat from some old rags and two young men were making felt boots from wool. Kiryak, who had been given the sack for drinking and lived at home now, was sitting next to the tailor mending a horse collar. It was cramped, stuffy and evil-smelling in the hut. The convert examined Nikolay and said that he should be bled, without fail.

He applied the cupping glasses, while the old tailor, Kiryak and the little girls stood watching – they imagined that they could actually see the illness being drawn out of Nikolay. And Nikolay also watched the cup attached to his chest slowly filling with dark blood and he smiled with pleasure at the thought that something was really coming out.

‘That’s fine,’ the tailor said. ‘Let’s hope it does the trick, with God’s help.’

The convert applied twelve cups, then another twelve, drank some tea and left. Nikolay started shivering. His face took on a pinched look, like a clenched fist, as the women put it; his fingers turned blue. He wrapped himself tightly in a blanket and a sheepskin, but he only felt colder. By the time evening came he was very low. He asked to be laid on the floor and told the tailor to stop smoking. Then he fell silent under his sheepskin and passed away towards morning.

IX

What a long harsh winter it was!

By Christmas their own grain had run out, so they had to buy flour. Kiryak, who was living at home now, made a dreadful racket in the evening, terrifying everyone, and in the mornings he was tormented by self-disgust and hangovers; he made a pathetic sight. Day and night a hungry cow filled the barn with its lowing, and this broke Grannie and Marya’s hearts. And, as though on purpose, the frosts never relented in their severity and snowdrifts piled up high. The winter dragged on: a real blizzard raged at Annunciation and snow fell at Easter.

However, winter finally drew to an end. At the beginning of April it was warm during the day and frosty at night – and still winter hadn’t surrendered. But one warm day did come along at last and it gained the upper hand. The streams flowed once more and the birds began to sing again. The entire meadow and the bushes near the river were submerged by the spring floods and between Zhukovo and the far side there was just one vast sheet of water with flocks of wild duck flying here and there. Every evening the fiery spring sunset and rich luxuriant clouds made an extraordinary, novel, incredible sight – such clouds and colours that you would hardly think possible seeing them later in a painting.

Cranes flashed past overhead calling plaintively, as though inviting someone to fly along with them. Olga stayed for a long while at the edge of the cliff watching the flood waters, the sun, the bright church which seemed to have taken on a new life, and tears poured down her face; a passionate longing to go somewhere far, far away, as far as the eyes could see, even to the very ends of the earth, made her gasp for breath. But they had already decided to send her back to Moscow as a chambermaid and Kiryak was going with her to work as a hall porter or at some job or other. Oh, if only they could go soon!

When everything had dried out and it was warm, they prepared for the journey. Olga and Sasha left at dawn, with rucksacks on their backs, and both of them wore bast shoes. Marya came out of the hut to see them off. Kiryak wasn’t well and had to stay on in the hut for another week. Olga gazed at the church for the last time and thought about her husband. She did not cry, but her face broke out in wrinkles and became ugly, like an old woman’s. During that winter she had grown thin, lost her good looks and gone a little grey. Already that pleasant appearance and agreeable smile had been replaced by a sad, submissive expression that betrayed the sorrow she had suffered and there was something blank and lifeless in her, as though she were deaf. She was sorry to leave the village and the people there. She remembered them carrying Nikolay’s body and asking for prayers to be said at each hut, and how everyone wept and felt for her in her sorrow. During the summer and winter months there were hours and days when these people appeared to live worse than cattle, and life with them was really terrible. They were coarse, dishonest, filthy, drunk, always quarrelling and arguing amongst themselves, with no respect for one another and living in mutual fear and suspicion. Who maintains the pubs and makes the peasants drunk? The peasant. Who embezzles the village, school and parish funds and spends it all on drink? The peasant. Who robs his neighbour, sets fire to his house and perjures himself in court for a bottle of vodka? Who is the first to revile the peasant at district council and similar meetings? The peasant. Yes, it was terrible living with these people; nevertheless, they were still human beings, suffering and weeping like other people and there was nothing in their lives which did not provide some excuse: killing work which made bodies ache all over at night, harsh winters, poor harvests, overcrowding, without any help and nowhere to find it. The richer and stronger cannot help, since they themselves are coarse, dishonest and drunk, using the same foul language. The most insignificant little clerk or official treats peasants like tramps, even talking down to elders and churchwardens, as though this is their right. And after all, could one expect help or a good example from the mercenary, greedy, dissolute, lazy people who come to the village now and then just to insult, fleece and intimidate the peasants? Olga recalled how pathetic and downtrodden the old people had looked when Kiryak was taken away for a flogging that winter… and now she felt sorry for all these people and kept glancing back at the huts as she walked away.

Marya went with them for about two miles and then she made her farewell, prostrating herself and wailing out loud, ‘Oh, I’m all alone again, a poor miserable wretch…’

For a long time she kept wailing, and for a long time afterwards Olga and Sasha could see her still kneeling there, bowing as though someone were next to her and clutching her head, while the rooks circled above.

The sun was high now and it was warm. Zhukovo lay far behind. It was very pleasant walking on a day like this. Olga and Sasha soon forgot both the village and Marya. They were in a gay mood and everything around was a source of interest. Perhaps it was an old burial mound, or a row of telegraph poles trailing away heaven knows where and disappearing over the horizon, with their wires humming mysteriously. Or they would catch a glimpse of a distant farmhouse, deep in foliage, with the smell of dampness and hemp wafting towards them and it seemed that happy people must live there. Or they would see a horse’s skeleton lying solitary and bleached in a field. Larks poured their song out untiringly, quails called to each other and the corncrake’s cry was just as though someone was tugging at an old iron latch.

By noon Olga and Sasha reached a large village. In its broad street they met that little old man who had been General Zhukov’s cook. He was feeling the heat and his sweaty red skull glinted in the sun. Olga and the cook did not recognize one another at first, but then they both turned round at once, realized who the other was and went their respective ways without a word. Olga stopped by the open windows of a hut which seemed newer and richer than the others, bowed and said in a loud, shrill singsong voice, ‘You good Christians, give us charity, for the sake of Christ, so that your kindness will bring the kingdom of heaven and lasting peace to your parents…’

‘Good Christians,’ Sasha chanted, ‘give us charity for Christ’s sake, so that your kindness, the kingdom of heaven…’

[The following two chapters have been taken from incomplete MSS fragments that have survived in draft form; see also note on pp. 332–3.]

X

Olga’s sister, Klavdiya Abramovna, lived in a narrow side-street near Patriarch’s Ponds,¹⁸ in a wooden, two-storey house. On the ground floor was a laundry and the entire upper floor was rented by an elderly spinster, a quiet and unassuming gentlewoman, who lived off the income from rooms she in turn rented out. When you went into the dark hall you would find two doors, one on the right, one on the left. One of them opened into the tiny room where Klavdiya Abramovna lived with Sasha; the other room was rented by a typesetter. Then there was a sitting-room, with couch, armchairs, a lamp with shade, pictures on the walls – all thoroughly proper, except that a smell of linen and steam came from the laundry and all day long one could hear singing from down below. The sitting-room, from which there was access to three flats, was used by all the tenants. In one of these flats lived the landlady, in another the old footman Ivan Makarych Matveyevich, a native of Zhukovo, who had found Nikolay a job. A large barn lock was suspended by rings on his white, well-thumbed door. Behind the third door lived a young, skinny, eagle-eyed, thick-lipped woman with three children who were constantly crying. On church holidays a monastery priest visited her; all day she normally went around in only a skirt, uncombed and unwashed, but when she was expecting her priest she would put on a nice silk dress and curl her hair.

In Klavdiya Abramovna’s little place there wasn’t room to swing a cat, as they say. There were a bed, chest of drawers, a chair – and nothing else – but still it was cramped. However, the room was kept neat and tidy, and Klavdiya Abramovna called it her ‘boudoir’. She was extremely pleased with her surroundings, particularly with the objects on her chest of drawers: mirror, powder, scent bottles, lipstick, tiny boxes, ceruse and every single luxury that she considered an essential accessory of her profession and on which she spent almost everything she earned. And there were also framed photographs in which she appeared in various poses. There was one of herself with her postman husband, with whom she lived just one year before leaving him, since she felt no vocation for family life. She was photographed, like most women of her sort, with a fringe curled like a lamb’s forelock, in military uniform with drawn sabre, and as a page astride a chair, which made her thighs, sheathed in woollen tights, lie flat over the chair like two fat boiled sausages. And there were male portraits – these she called her visitors and she couldn’t name all of them. Here our friend Kiryak made an appearance: he was photographed full height, in a black suit he had borrowed for the occasion.

Klavdiya Abramovna had been in the habit of going to masked balls and to Filippov’s¹⁹ and she spent entire evenings on Tversky Boulevard.²⁰ As the years passed she gradually became a stay-at-home and now that she was forty-two she very rarely had visitors – there were just a few friends from earlier days who visited her for old time’s sake. They, alas, had aged too and visits became increasingly rare, because every year their number dwindled. The only new visitor was a very young man without a moustache. He would enter the hall quietly, sullenly – like a conspirator – with the collar of his school coat turned up, endeavouring to avoid being seen from the sitting-room. Later, when he left, he would place a rouble on the chest of drawers.

For days on end Klavdiya Abramovna would stay at home doing nothing. But in good weather she would sometimes stroll down the Little Bronny²¹ and Tversky, her head proudly held high, feeling that she was a solid and imposing lady. Only when she looked in at the chemist’s to ask in a whisper if they had any ointment for wrinkles or red hands did she show any sign of shame. In the evenings she would sit in her little room with the lamp unlit, waiting for someone to come. And between ten and eleven o’clock – this happened rarely, only once or twice a week – you could hear someone quietly going up or down stairs, rustling at the door as he looked for the bell. The door would open, a muttering would be heard and a stout, old, ugly and usually bald visitor would gingerly enter the hall and Klavdiya Abramovna would hurriedly take him to her room. She adored good visitors. For her there was no nobler or worthier being. To receive a good visitor, to treat him tactfully, to respect and please him, was a spiritual necessity, a duty, her happiness and pride. She was incapable of refusing a visitor or failing to make him welcome, even when fasting in preparation for Communion.

When she was back from the country Olga lodged Sasha with her for the time being, her mother supposing that while the girl was little she would not understand if she happened to see something bad. But now Sasha was thirteen and the time had really come to find alternative accommodation for her; but she and her aunt had grown attached to each other and now it was hard to separate them. In any event, there was nowhere to take Sasha to, since Olga herself was sheltering in the corridor of an establishment with furnished rooms, where she slept on some chairs. Sasha would spend the day with her mother, or out in the street, or downstairs in the laundry: she spent the nights on her aunt’s floor, between the bed and chest of drawers, and if a visitor came she would go and sleep in the entrance hall.

In the evenings she loved going to Ivan Makarych’s place of work and watching the dancing from the kitchen. There was always music and it was cheerful and noisy, with a tasty smell of food around the cook and washers-up. Grandpa Ivan Makarych would give her tea or ice-cream and pass her assorted titbits that he brought back into the kitchen on plates and dishes. One evening in late autumn, after returning from Ivan Makarych, she brought a little parcel containing a chicken leg, a piece of sturgeon and a slice of cake. Auntie was already in bed.

‘Auntie dear,’ Sasha said sadly. ‘I’ve brought you something to eat.’

They lit the lamp. Sitting up in bed, Klavdiya Abramovna started eating. Sasha looked at her curlers, which made her look dreadful, at her withered, aged shoulders. She looked long and sadly, as if she were seeing a sick woman; suddenly tears flowed down her cheeks.

‘Auntie dear,’ she said in a trembling voice. ‘Auntie dear, this morning the laundry girls were saying that when you’re old you’ll end up begging in the streets and that you’ll die in hospital. It’s not true, Auntie, it’s not true,’ Sasha continued, sobbing now. ‘I won’t leave you, I’ll feed you, I won’t let you go into hospital.’

Klavdiya Abramovna’s chin quivered and tears shone in her eyes. But she immediately took hold of herself and with a stern look she told Sasha: ‘You shouldn’t listen to laundry girls!’

XI

In the ‘Lisbon’ furnished rooms the tenants were gradually quietening down. There was the smell of burning from extinguished lamps and the lanky attendant was already stretched out on some chairs in the corridor. Olga took off her white ribboned cap and her apron, covered her head with a kerchief and went off to see Sasha and Klavdiya Abramovna at Patriarch’s Ponds. Every day from morning to late evening she was busy working at the ‘Lisbon’ rooms and was rarely able to visit her family – and then only at night. Her work took up all her time, leaving her without a single free minute, so that since her return from the country she had not once gone to church.

She hurried to show Sasha the letter she had received from Marya in the village. In it there were only greetings – and complaints of poverty, of grief, and that the old folk were still alive and getting fed without doing any work. But for some reason these crooked lines, where every letter resembled a cripple, held a special, hidden charm and besides those greetings and complaints she also read of the warm clear days in the country now, of quiet fragrant evenings when you could hear the church clock striking the hour on the other side of the river. She could visualize the village cemetery where her husband lay. The green graves breathed peace and one envied the dead – such space, such open expanses! And the strange thing was, when they had lived in the country she had dearly wished to go to Moscow, but now it was the opposite and she longed for the country.

Olga woke Sasha. Alarmed and afraid that the whispers and light might disturb someone, she read her the letter twice. Then they both went down the dark, evil-smelling stairs and left the house. Through the wide open windows they could see the laundry girls ironing. Two girls were standing outside the gates, smoking. Olga and Sasha hurried down the street, discussing what a good idea it would be to save up two roubles and send them to the village: one for Marya and one to pay for memorial prayers over Nikolay’s grave.

‘Oh, I’ve had to put up with so much lately!’ Olga was saying, clasping her hands. ‘We’d only just started dinner, my sweet, when all of a sudden in comes Kiryak, like a bolt from the blue, drunk as a lord! “Give me some money, Olga!” he says. And he shouts and stamps his feet. “Give me some – now!” But where was I to get money from? I don’t get any wages, I just live on what nice gents give me – that’s all my wealth! But he wouldn’t listen: “Give me some!” The tenants look out of their rooms, the boss comes – it was real punishment – and the shame of it! I begged thirty copecks from the students and gave them to him. He left… All day long I’ve been walking around whispering: “Soften his heart, O Lord.” That’s what I’ve been whispering.’

It was quiet in the streets. Now and then a night cab drove past, and somewhere far off, most probably in the pleasure gardens, the band was still playing and you could hear the vague crackle of fireworks.