The Steppe and Other Stories

'Serve the bitch right!' said Dyudya.

'They brought Kuzka back home. I thought it over, and decidcd to adopt him. And why not? Gaol-bird's spa^ he may be—still he's a living soul, a Christian. I felt sorry for him. I'll make him a clerk, and if I don't have children of my own I'll make him a merchant. Nowa- days I take him with me wherever I go, so he can learn something.'

All the time while Matthew Savvich was telling his story, Kuzka sat on a stone near the gate, his head cupped in his hands, and looking at the sky. In the darkness he looked like a tree-stump from a distancc.

'Go to ^d, Kuzka,' Matthcw Savvich yelled.

'Yes, it's time,' said Dyudya, getting up and yawning noisily. 'They all try to be too clever,' he added. 'They won't listen, and then they end up getting what they asked for.'

The moon was already sailing in the sky above the yard. It was moving swiftly to one side, while the clouds below it sped the other way. The clouds drifted off, but the moon was still clearly seen above the yard. Matthew Savvich turned towards the church and prayed, then wished them good night and lay do^ on the ground near the cart. Kuzka also said his prayers, then lay in the cart, covering hiisclf with his coat. To make himself comfortable, he burrowed in the hay, curling up with his elbows touching his knees. From the yard Dyudya could bc seen lighting a candle in a downstairs room, putting on his spectacles, and standing in the comcr with a book. For a long time he read, bowing before the icon.

The visitors fell asleep. Afanasyevna and Sophia went up to the cart and looked at Kuzka.

'He's asleep, poor little orphan,' the old woman said. 'He's thin and pale, nothing but skin and bones. He has no mother, and no one to feed him properly.'

'My Grishutka's two years older, I reckon,' Sophia said. 'He's no better than a slave, living in that factory without his mother. The master beats him, I'll warrant. When I looked at this little boy j ust now, I remembered Grishutka, and it made my blood tum cold.'

A minute passed in silence.

'He won't remember his mother, I reckon,' said the old woman.

'How could he?'

Huge tears flowed from Sophia's eyes.

'He's curled up like a kitten,' she said, sobbing and laughing with tender pity. 'Poor little orphan.'

Kuzka started, and opened his eyes. He saw an ugly, wrinkled, tear- stained face before him, and next to it another, an old woman's— toothless, sharp-chinned, hook-nosed. Above was the fathomless sky with its racing clouds and moon. He screamed in terror, and Sophia screamed too. Echo answered both of them, and thcir alarm Bashed through the stifling air. A neighbouring watchman started banging, and a dog barked. Matthew Savvich muttered in his sleep, and turned over.

Late at night, when Dyudya, the old woman and the watchman next door were all asleep, Sophia went out through the gate and sat on a bench. The heat was stifling, and her head ached from crying. Broad and long—with two verst-posts visible on the right, and another two on the left—the street seemcd to go on for ever. The moon had abandoned the yard to stand behind the church, and one side of the street was bathed in moonlight, while the other was black with shadows. The long shadows of poplars and starling-cotes spanned the entire street, and the church's shadow, black and menacing, lay in a broad band, clasping Dyudya's gate and half his house. There was no one about and it was quiet. From time to time faint strains of music were wafted from the end of the street—Alyoshka playing his accor- dion, no doubt.

In the shadow near the church fence someone was walking. Was it man or cow—or no more than a large bird rustling in the trees? One could not tell. Then a figure emerged from the shadows, paused, said something in a man's voice and vanished down the church lane. A little later another figure appeared about five yards from the gate. This person was moving straight to the gate from the church, and stopped still on seeing Sophia on the bench.

'Is that you, Barbara?' Sophia asked.

'What if it is?'

Barbara it was. She stood still for a minute, then came and sat on the bench.

'Where have you been ?' asked Sophia.

Barbara made no answer.

'You mind you don't get into trouble,' Sophia said. 'Playing around like this, and you only just married. Did you hear how they kicked Mashenka and whipped her with the reins? You mind that don't happen to you.'

'I don't care.'

Barbara laughed into her handkerchief.

'I've been having a bit of fun with the priest's son,' she whispered.

'You don't mean it!'

'It's God's truth.'

'That's a sin,' Sophia whispered.

'Who cares? Why bothet? Sin or no sin, I'd rather be struck by lightning than live this way. I'm young and healthy, and I have a hunchbacked husband that I can't abide—he's that pig-headed, he's wotse than that blasted Dyudya. I never had enough to eat as a gitl, and I went batefoot. To escape such misery I took the bait of Alyoshka's money, and became a slave. I was caught like a rat in a trap, and now I'd rather sleep with a viper than with that rotten Alyoshka. And your life too—it don't bear thinking of! Your Theodote threw you out of the factoty—sent you to his father's—and took up with another woman. They took your boy off you and made a slave out of him. You wotk like a horse, and never hear a kind wotd. Better pine away as an old maid all yout life, better take yout half-roubles from the priest's sons, better go begging, bettet throw yourself head first do^ a well ' 'That's a sin,' Sophia whispered again.

'Who cares ?'

Somewhere beyond the church the same three voices—the two tenors and the bass—started another sad song. Once again the words were inaudible.

'They're making quite a night of it,' Barbara laughed.

She began whispering about the fun she was having with the priest's son of a night—what he said, what his friends were like, and about how she also carried on with officials and merchants who stayed at the house. The sad song bore a whiff of freedom, and Sophia began laughing. It was all very sinful and frightening and sweet to the ear. She envied Barbara, sorry that she hadn't sinned herself when she was young and beautiful.

Midnight struck in the old church by the cemetery.

'We'd better go to bed, or else Dyudya rna y miM us,' said Sophia, getting up.

Both went quietly into the yard.

'I went away and missed the end of his story about Mashenka,' said Barbara, making her bed under the window.

'She died in gaol, he said. She'd poisoned her husband.'

Barbara lay down by Sophia and thought for a moment.

'I could kill Alyoshka,' she said. 'I'd think nothing of it.'

'You don't mean that, God help you.'

As Sophia was dropping off, Barbara huddled up to her.

'Let's do away with Dyudya and Alyoshka,' she whispered in her ear.

Sophia shuddered and said nothing, then opened her eyes and stared at the sky for a long time without winking.

'They'd find out,' she said.

'No, they wouldn't. Dyudya's an old man, he's not long for this world. And they'll say Alyoshka died of drink.'

'I'm afraid—. God would strike us dead.'

'Who cares ?'

Both lay awake, silently thinking.

'It's cold,' said Sophia, shivering all over. 'It'll soon be morning, I reckon. Are you asleep?'

'No. Don't take any notice of me, dear,' whispered Barbara. 'I'm so angry with them swine, I don't know what I'm saying. Go to sleep, it's nearly daylight. Sleep.'

Both were silent. They calmed do^ and soon fell asleep.

The old woman was the first to wake up. She woke Sophia, and they both went to the shed to milk the cows. Hunchbacked Alyoshka walked in, dead drunk, without his accordion, his chest and knees covered with dust and straw—so he must have fallen down on the way. He staggered into the shed, flopped on to a sledge without undressing, and started snoring at once. When the crosses on the church, and then the windows, were blazing in the bright flame of the rising sun, and the shadows from trees and well-sweep sp^med the dewy grass of the yard, Matthew Savvichjumped up and bestirred himself.

'Get up, Kuzka!' he shouted. 'Time to harness up! Look slippy there!'

The morning's bustle began. A young Jewish woman in a flounced bro^ dress led a horse into the yard to water it. The pulley of the well creaked piteously, the pail rattled.

Sleepy, listless, covered with dew, Kuzka sat in the cart, lazily putting on his coat, listening to water splashing out of the pail in the well, and shivering with cold.

'Give my lad a nudge, missus, so he'll go and harness up,' shouted Matthew Savvich to Sophia.

Then Dyudya yelled from a window. 'Sophia, charge that woman a copeck for watering her horse. They're always doing that, the Jewish scum.

In the street sheep were running to and fro, bleating. Women shouted at the shepherd, who played his pipe, cracked his whip, or answered them in a heavy, rough, deep voice. Three sheep ran into the yard, couldn't find the gate, butted the fence—and the noise woke Barbara, who seized her bedding in both arms and made for the house.

'You might have driven the sheep out,' the old woman shouted at her. 'You're too high and mighty, I suppose!'

'There she goes again—why should I work for such monsters?' muttered Barbara as she went indoors.

The cart was greased, the horses harnessed. Dyudya came out of the house carrying an abacus, and sat in the porch working out what to charge the visitor for his night's lodging, oats and water.

'That's a lot for oats, old man,' said Matthew Savvich.

'Then don't take them. No one's forcing you, Mister Merchant.'

Just as the travellers were going to get in the cart and leave, some- thing held them up for a moment—Kuzka had lost his cap.

'Where did you put it, you little swine?' Matthew Savvich roared angrily. 'Where is it?'

Kuzka's face was contorted with terror as he rushed this way and that near the cart. Not finding it there, he ran to the gate, then to the cowshed. The old woman and Sophia helped him look.

'I'U tear your ears off!' shouted Matthew Savvich. 'Little bleeder!'

The cap was found at the bottom of the cart. B^^g off the hay with his sleeves, Kuzka put it on and mounted the cart—nervowly, still looking terrified, as if fearing to be struck from behind. Matthew Savvich crossed himself, the lad tugged the reins. The cart moved off and rolled out of the yard.

IN EXILE

Old Simon—or 'Foxy', as he was called—and a young Tatar whose name no one knew, were sitting by a bonfire on the river bank, and the other three ferrymen were insidc the hut. Simon was an old fellow of about sixty, lean and toothless, but broad-shouldered and still husky, from the look of him. He was drunk and would have gone off to slcep long ago but for the pint bottle of vodka in his pocket—he was afraid of his hut-mates asking for a swig. The Tatar was ill and depressed. Hc wrapped his rags around him, saying how good life had been in Simbirsk Province and what a beautiful, clever wife he had left behind. He was about twenty-ftve at most. Pale, ill-looking, sad-faced, he seemed no more than a boy in the firelight.

'Now, this ain't no heaven on earth, I grant you,' said Foxy. 'There's just water, see? There's bare banks, there's clay everywhere, and that's all. It's long past Easter, but the ice is still coming do\wn river and it snowed this morning.'

'This bad, bad place,' said the Tatar, casting a fearful glance around him.

Some ten paces away the dark, cold river flowed, grumbling, lapping the rutted clay bank, sweeping swiftly on to the distant sea. Just by the bank loomed the dark hulk of the big boat which the ferry- men called their barge. Far away on the opposite bank lights snaked, now dimming, now flickering as last year's grass was burnt. Beyond the snakes was yet more blackness. Small chunks of ice rapped the barge. It was damp and cold.

The Tatar looked at the sky. There were as many stars as at home, there was the same blackness everywhere, but something was missing. The stars wcre quite different at home in Simbirsk Province, and so was the sky.

'This bad, bad place,' he repeated.

'You'll settle do^,' said Foxy with a laugh. 'You're young and stupid yet, you ain't dry behind the ears, like, and you're daft enough to think you're the unluckiest man on earth. In time, though, you'll say it's a great life, this. Takc me, for instance. We'll have clear water in a weck and we'll get the other ferry-boat started. The rest of you'll be tramping Siberia, but I'll stay here and ply from one bank to the othcr. Twenty-two years I've been at it, day and night. Thcre's pikc down in S.R.O.S.-9 the water and our local salmon, but I'm above water, praise the Lord. I don't need nothing. It's a great life, this is.'

The Tatar put some wood on the fire and lay downwn closer to the heat.

'My father sick man,' he said. 'When he die my mother and wife come here. They promise.'

'What do you need with mother and wife?' asked Foxy. 'That's all daft, mate, it's the devil befuddling you, danm his black soul. Don't you heed the bastard, don't you give in to him. Ifit's your woman he's on about, you do him downwn—you don't want her, say. If it's freedom, don't you give way—you don't want any, say. You don't need any- thing: no father, no mother, no wife, no freedom, no homestead, no nothing. You don't need a thing, blast their rotten souls!'

Foxy took a swig from his bottle.

'I ain't just another yokel, mate,' he went on. 'I ain't a bumpkin, like. I'm a verger's son, I am. When I lived in Kursk before losing my freedom I wore a frock-coat, but now I've trained myself to sleep uncovered on the ground and eat grass. Oh, it's a great life, this is. I need nothing, I fear nobody. The way I see it, I'm the richest man on earth, and the freest. When they sent me here from European Russia I dug my heels in on the first day. I don't want nothing, says I. The devil's on at me about a wife, a family, my freedom, but I don't want nothing, I tell him. I stood firm and now I'm all right, see, I ain't got no complaints. But the man that gives way to the devil and heeds him but once—he's a goner, there's no saving him. Up to his neck in the bog he'll stick and he'll never get out. And it ain't just us stupid peasants that comes a cropper, it's gentry too and educated folk.

'Fifteen years ago a certain squire was sent out here to Siberia. There was some property quarrel with his brothers back there, he forged a will or something. They did say he was a titled gentleman, like, but maybe he wasjust an official. Who cares? Well, the squire turns up here and the first thing he does, he buys a house and land in Mukhortinskoye.

'"I want to cam my living," says he, "in the sweat of my face, seeing as how I'm a gentleman no more, but an exile."

'"All right," says I, "and good luck to you. It's a good idea, that is.''

'He was young then. Very spry he was and always on the go. He did his o^ reaping, he fished and he'd ride lis horse forty mile. The trouble was, though, that from his first year he begins going over to Gyrino, to the post office. He'll stand on my ferryboat.

' "Oh, Simon," he'll sigh, "it's quite a time since they sent me money from home.''

"'You don't need money, Mr. Vasily," says I. "What good is it? You drop that old stuff, forget it. You put it from your mind as if it was all a dream, like, and start a new life."

'Don't you heed the devil, I tell him. He'll do you no good, he'll put a noose round you. Now it's money you're after, says I, but a bit later it'll be something else, see? And then something clse again. If you want to be happy, says I, then the main thing is—don't have no wants. Yes, indeed. If fate's played us a rotten trick, you and me, there's no call to beg for mercy, says I, and crawl on our bellies, we should despise it, laugh at it, or else fate will have the last laugh, and I tell him so.

'About two years later I ferry him over here, and he's rubbing his hands and laughing.

' "I'm off to Gyrino to meet my wife," says he. "She's taken pity on me and come out," he says. "She's a good woman, very kind."

'Fair panting withjoy, he was. Then, a day later, back he comes with this wife. She's a beautiful young lady with a little hat on and she has a little baby girl in her arms. And there's all sorts of baggage. My Mr. Vasily is dancing around her, he can't take his eyes offher, he can't— he fair dotes on her.

' "Yes, Simon old man, life's not so bad even in Siberia."

'All right, thinks I, but you'll have no joy of it.

'After that he was off to Gyrino every week, I reckon, to see if any money had come from home. Oh, he needed a mint of money.

' "She has sacrificed her youth and beauty for me out here in Siberia," says he. "She's sharing my wretchcd lot and so I'm bound to do what I can to please her."

'To keep his lady amused he meets up with officials and various riff-raff. But of course he has to feed that lot and give them their drink, then there has to be a piano, like, and some fluffy little dog on the sofa, rot its guts!

'It was all extravagance, in other words, sheer self-indulgence. His lady didn't stay long either. What else could you expect, what with the clay, the water, the cold, not a vegetable nor a fruit to be had, drunken boors all around, no proper manners—and her a spoilt lady from the metropolis, like? No wonder she took it bad. And, say what you like, her husband was a squire no longer, but an exile, and a bit of a come-down that made!

'Three years later, I recall, about the middle of August, there was shouting from the other side. I take the ferry over, and there's the lady all wrapped up, and with her a young gent, an official. They've come in a troika.

'I fcrry them over, they get iii their carriagc and make themsclves scarce. Gone without trace, they had. Towards morning up gallops Mr. Vasily with his carriage and pair.

' "Simon," he asks, "has my wife drivcn past with a gentlcman in spectacles?"

'"She has that," says I, "aid they've vanished into thin air."

'Off he gallops after them, and he chascs them five days and lights. Whcn I take him back to the other sidc later he flops do^ in the ferry and starts banging his head on the boards and yelling.

"'I told you so," says I with a laugh. "Life ain't so bad, evcn in Siberia," I reminds him. But he oi1y bangs his head the harder.

'Then he wanted his frecdom. His wife had made for European Russia, so he felt he must go there to sce her and gct her away from her lover. And believe me, mate, he took to galloping off to the post office or to^ authorities practically every day. He kept puning in for a pardon and applying to be sent home—he reckoned he'd spent a couple of hundred roubles on telegr^rn alone. He sold his land, he mortgaged his house to the Jews. He grew grey and bent, and yellow- complexioned, like as if he had consumption. He talks to you and all thc time he's coughing and choking, and there's tears in his eyes. Eight years he spent traipsing to and fro with his applications, but now he's bucked up again and become cheerful. He's offon a new lark now. His daughter's gro^ up, sec, and she's the very apple of his eye, like. And she ain't bad, I give her that, a pretty little thing with black eycbrows, and high-spirited with it. Every Sunday he drives her to church in Gyrino. Thcy stand on the ferry sidc by side, her laughing and him feasting his eyes on her.

"'Yes, Simon," says hc, "life ain't so bad, even in Siberia. Even in Siberia you can be happy. Sce what a fme daughter I have," says he. "You won't fmd her like within a thousand milc, I reckon."

"'Your daughter's all right," says I, and that's true enough.

'But just you wait, thinks I to myselЈ She's a young girl, she's hot- blooded, she wants a bit of fun—and what kind of lifc is there here? And then she began pining away, matc. She withcrcd and withered and wastcd right away, she fell sick and now she's bed-ridden. It's the consumption. There's your Sibcrian happiness, rot it, there's your life ain't so bad even in Siberia for you! He keeps visiting all the doctors aiid bringing thcm to his housc. When he hears of a doctor or quack within a couple of hundred mile, he'll go and see him. He's spent a fortune on doctors, but he might as well have spent it on drink if you ask me. She'll die anyway. She'll die as sure as sure can be, and then he really is done for. He'll either hang himself in his misery or he'll try to escape, and we know what that means: he'll run for it, he'll be caught, he'll be tried, he'll get hard labour and a taste of the lash.'

'Good, good,' muttered the Tatar, hugging himself in fever.

'What's good?' asked Foxy.

'Wife and daughter. Never mind prison, never mind misery—he has seen wife and daughter. You say you don't need nothing. But not need nothing is bad. His wife live with him three years, God gave him that. Nothingness is bad, but three years is good. Why you not under- stand?'

Shivering, straining as he chose the Russian words ofwhich he knew so few, stuttering, the Tatar said he hoped that God would save him from falling ill in foreign parts, from dying and being buried in the cold, rusty earth. If his wife visited him for but a single day, for a single hour, even . . . to gain such happiness he said he would accept any tortures whatever and would thank God for them. Better one day's happiness than nothing.

He spoke once more ofthe beautiful, clever wife he had left at home. Then he clutched his head in both hands, burst into tears, and began telling Simon that he was innocent and was suffering unjustly. His two brothers and his uncle had stolen a peasant's horses and had nearly beaten the old nun to death, but the community court had judged dishonestly, sentencing all three brothers to Siberia while their rich uncle stayed at home.

'You'll settle do^,' said Simon.

The Tatar was silent, staring at the fire with tears in his eyes. He looked baffled and scared as if he still couldn't see why he should be among strangers in this dark, damp place instead of in Simbirsk Province. Foxy lay down near the fire, gave a laugh and started hum- ming a song.

'How can she be happy with her father?' he said a little later. 'He loves her, she's a comfort to him—granted. But he's an ugly customer too, mate, he's strict and hard, that old man is. But strictness ain't for young girls. Cuddles, giggles, titters, scent and pomade—that's more their line. Yes, indeed.

'Oh, what a business,' sighed Simon and stood up h':'avily. 'The vodka's fmished, so it's time for bed, eh? I'm off, mate.'

164 in exile

Now alone, the Tatar put on more wood, lay down, looked at the fire and began thinking of his native village, of his wife. If only she would come out for a month, orjust for one day. Then let her go home again if she liked. Better a month, or just a day, than nothing. But supposing his wife did keep her word and come out, how would he feed her? Where would she live here?

'If there's no food, how she live ?' the Tatar asked aloud.

For plying an oar here right round the clock he was paid only ten copecks a day. Travellers did give tips, true, but the other lads shared this tea aid vodka money among themselves. They gave the Tatar nothing, they only laughed at him. Being destitute, he was also famished, frozen and frightened. Now that his whole body ached and shook he should go in the hut and sleep there, but he had nothing to put over him and it was colder in there ^^ out on the bank. Here too there was nothing to cover up with, but he could at least ^^e up the fire.

In a week's time the water would fall and they would launch the smaller ferry-boat. Then none of the ferrymen would be needed except Simon, and the Tatar would start tramping from village to village, begging alms and work. His wfe was only seventeen, a beautiful, spoilt, shy girl. Could she really trudge round the villages begging, with her face unveiled? No, the very thought was terrifying.

Da^ was breaking. Barge, willow-dumps in the water, ripples ... all showed clearly, and if you looked the other way there was a clay cliff with a little bro^-thatched hovel at the bottom and the village huts clinging higher up. The village cocks crowed.

Reddish clay cliff. barge, river, unkind strangers, hw1ger, cold, illness ... perhaps none of it was real. It was probably all a dream, the Tatar thought. He sensed that he was asleep aid heard himself snore. Ah, ofcourse—he was back home in Simbirsk Province, he had but to call his wife's name for her to ^^er and his mother was in the next room. But how frightening some dreams be! What are they for? The Tatar siiled and opened his eyes. What river was this? The Volga ?

It was snowing.

'Hey, let's be having you!' someone bellowed on the other side. 'Ba-a-arge!'

The Tatar came to and went to rouse his comrades so that they could cross the river. Donning their tattered sheepskins as they went, half-asleep, swearing hoarsely, hunched in the cold, the ferrymen appeared on the bank. Woken from sleep, they found the river's piercing, frozen breath repulsive and unnerving. They took thcir time about jumping into the barge. The Tatar and three other rowers seized the long, broad-bladed oars wlich seemed like crayfish claws in the dark. Simon thrust his belly against the long rudder, while shouting continued on the far side and they twice fired a revolver—thinking the ferrymen asleep, most likely, or gone to the local pub.

'All right, there's no hurry.' Foxy spoke as one convinced that there is time for everything in this world. Not that there's any point in any of it, either, he seemed to say.

Detaching itself from the shore, the heavy, clumsy barge glided be- tween willow-clumps, and only the slowly retreating wiUow showed that it was in motion at all. The ferrymen plied their oars in measured unison while Foxy laid his belly on the rudder, flitting from one side to the other and describing an arc in the air. In the darkness they seemed to be mounted on some long-pawed prehistoric beast as they floated off to that cold, dismal clime which sometimes figures in one's worst dreams.

Leaving the willow behind, they came out into open river. Those on the far shore could now hear the slap and measured plashing of oars, and shouted to them to get a move on. Ten minutes later the barge bumped heavily into a jetty.

'Will it ever, ever stop snowing?' muttered Simon, wiping snow off his face. 'Lord alone knows where it all comes from.'

On the bank a short, thin old ^^ was waiting. He wore a short fox- fur coat and a white astrakhan cap, and stood quite still some way from his horses with a grim, tense look, as if trying to recall somcthing and annoyed with his faulty memory. Simon went up to him and smiliugly doffed his cap.

'I must get to Anastasyevka quickly,' the old mansaid. 'My daughter's worse again and I'm told they have a new doctor there.'

They lugged his four-wheeler on to the barge and set off back. During the crossing the man whom Simon called Mr. Vasily stood quite still, firmly pursing his thick lips and staring at one spot. When his driver asked permission to smoke he gave no answer and seemed not to have heard. Lying belly-forward on the rudder, Simon looked at him dcrisively.

'Things ain't so bad, even in Siberia,' said he. 'It's a life of sorts.'

Foxy looked triumphant, as if he had just scored a point, and he seemed glad that things had turned out just as he had expected. The wrctchcd, hclplcss look of thc man in thc fox coat gavc him great plcasure, that was obvious.

'It's dirty travclling now, Mr. Vasily,' he said after they had har- ncsscd the horscs on thc bank. 'You should havc waited a couple of weeks for drier wcather. Or, bcttcr still, you should have stayed at home altogethcr. It's not as if therc was any point your going. As you well know, sir, pcoplc have bcen travelling day in day out for donkeys' years, but no good ever came of it, believe you me.'

Vasily tipped him silently, climbed into his carriage and drove off.

'He's off to fctch a doctor, sce?' said Simon, doublcd up with cold. 'But looking for a proper doctor round here . .. it's likc looking for a necdle in a haystack. Oh, it's a real wild-goosc chase, that is, may you rot in hcll! People are funny, Lord forgive me, sinner that I am.'

Tatar went up to Foxy and looked at him with loathing and

disgust.

'Him good, good. You bad,' he said, shivering and mixing Tatar words with his broken Russian. 'You bad. Squire him good soul, him fme man, but you wild beast, you bad. Squire alive, you dead. God made man to be alivc, to have joy and grief and sorrow, but you not want anything. So you not alive—you stone, you clay! Stonc necd nothing, you nced nothing.

'You stone. God not lovc you, God love squirc.'

Everyone laughcd. The Tatar frowned squcamishly, made an impatient gcsture, gathered his rags around him and went to thc fire. Simon and the ferrymcn trudged off to the hut.

'It's cold,' wheczed onc man, stretcling himself on thc straw laid on thc damp clay fl.oor.

'Well, it ain't warm,' another agrecd. 'Oh, it's a dog's life, this is.'

AU lay do^. The door blew opcn and snow driftcd in, but no onc fclt like getting up and closing thc door. It was cold and thcy couldn't bother.

'I feel fme,' said Simon as he fell asleep. 'It's a great lifc, this.'

'You're a real old lag, we all know that. The devils wouldn't have you in hcll, they wouldn't.'

From outside came noiscs like a hound's baying.

'What's that? Who's there?'

'The Tatar's crying.'

'Is he now? Hc's au odd one.'

'He'll settle down,' said Simon and fell straight asleep.

Soon thc others too fell aslcep and the door just stayed opcn.

ROTHSCHILD'S FIDDLE

It was a small town, more wretched than a village, and almost all the inhabitants were old folk with a depressingly low death rate. Nor were many coffms required at the hospital and gaol. In a word, business was bad. Had Jacob Ivanov been making coffins in a county to^ he would probably have o^ed a house and been called 'mister'. But in this dump he was plain Jacob, his street nickname was 'Bronze' for whatever reason, and he lived as miserably as any farm labourer in his little old one-roomed shack which housed himself, his Martha, a stove, a double bed, coffins, his work-bench and all his household goods.

Jacob made good solid coffins. For men—village and working-class folk—he made them to his o^ height, and never got them wrong because he was taller and stronger than anyone, even in the gaol, though now seventy years old. For the gentry, though, and for women he made them to measure, using an iron ruler. He was not at aU keen on orders for children's coffins, which he would knock up contempt- uously without measuring. And when paid for them he would say that he 'quite frankly set no store by such trifles'.

His fiddle brought him a small income on top ofhis trade. A Jewish band usually played at weddings in the to^, conducted by the tinker Moses Shakhkes who took more than half the proceeds. And since Jacob was a fine fiddler, especially with Russian folk tunes, Shakhkes sometimes asked him to join the band for fifty copecks a day plus tips. Straight away it made his face sweat and tum crimson, did sitting in the band. It was hot, there was a stifling smell of garlic, his f ddle squeaked. By his right ear wheezed the double-bass, by his left sobbed the flute played by a red-haired, emaciated Jew with a network of red and blue veins on his face. He was kno^ as Rothschild after the noted millionaire. Now, this bloody little Jew even contrived to play the merriest tunes in lachrymose style. For no obvious reason Jacob became more and more obsessed by hatred and contempt for Jews, and for Rothschild in particular. He started picking on him and swearing at him. Once he made to beat him, whereat Rothschild took umbrage.

'I respect your talent, otherwise I am long ago throwing you out of window,' he said with an enraged glare.

Then he burst into tears. This was why Bronze wasn't often asked

to play in the band, but only in some dire crisis, when one of the Jews was unavailable.

Jacob was always in a bad mood because of the appalling waste of money he had to endure. For instance, it was a sin to work on a Sunday or a Saint's Day, while Mondays were unlucky, so that made two himdred odd days a year when you had to sit around idle. And that was all so much money wasted. If someone in town held a wedding without music, or Shakhkes didn't ask Jacob to play, that meant stiU more losses. The police superintendent had been il for two years now. He was wasting away, and Jacob had waited impatiently for him to die, but the man had left for treatment in the county townwn, and da^ed if he didn't peg out there. Now, that was at least ten roubles downwn the drain, as his would have been an expensive coffin complete with brtocade lining. Thoughts of these losses hounded Jacob mostly at night. He would put his fiddle on the bed beside him, and when some such tomfoolery preyed on his mind he would touch the strings and the fiddle would twang in the darkncn. That made him feel better.

On the sixth of May in the previous year Manha had suddenly fallen ill. The old woman breathed heavily, drank a lot of water, was ^teady on her feet, but she would stiU do the stove herself of a morning, and even fetch the water. By evening, though, she would already be in bed. Jacob fiddled away all day. But when it was quite dark he took the book in which he listed his losses daily and began, out of sheer boredom, to add up the armual total. It came to more ^^ a thousand roubles. This so shocked him that he flung his abacus on the foor and stamped his feet. Then he picked up the abacus and clicked away again for a while, sighing deep, heartfelt sighs. His face was purple and wet with sweat. He was ^^^mg that if he had put that lost thousand in the bank he would have received at least forty roubles' interest a year. So that was forty more roubles downwn the drain. How- ever hard you tried to wriggle out of it, everything was just a dead loss in fact.

Then he suddenly heard Martha call out. jacob, I'm dying.'

He looked round at his wife. Her face was flushed in the heat, her expression was exceptionally bright and joyous. Accustomed to her pale face and timid, unhappy expression, Bronze was put out. She really did look as if she was dying, glad to be saying a permanent good-bye to hut, coffms and Jacob at long last.

Gazing at the ceiling and moving her lips, she looked happy, as ifshe could actually see her saviour Death and was whispering to him.

It was dawnwn and the first rays were seen through the window. Ashe looked at the old woman, it vaguely occurred to Jacob that for some reason he had never shownwn her any affection all his life. Never had he been kind to her, never had he thought of buying her a kerchief or bringing her sweetmeats from a wedding. All he had done was yell at her, blame her for his 'losses', threaten to punch her. True, he never had hit her. Still he had frightened her, she had always been petrified with fear. Yes, he had said she couldn't have tea because they had enough other expenses without that, so she only drank hot water. And now he knew why she looked so strangely joyous, and a chiU went through him.

^^en it was fully light he borrowed a neighbour's horse and drove Martha to hospital. There were not many patients, so he did not have long to wait. Only about three hours. To his great joy the patients were not received on this occasion by the doctor, who was il himself, but by his assistant Maxim, an old fellow said by everyone in townwn to be better than the doctor, d^nken brawler though he was.

'I humbly greet you,' said Jacob, taking his old woman into the consulting-room. 'You must excuse us troubling you with our ^^mg affairs, sir. Now, as you see, guv'nor, my old woman has faUen sick. She's my better ^^ in a manner of speaking, if you'll pardon the expression '

Frowning, stroking his side-whiskers, the white-eyebrowed auistant examined the old woman, who sat hunched on a stool, wizened, sharp-nosed, open-mouthed, her profile like a thirsty bird' s.

'H^romph. Well, yes,' the assistant slowly pronounced, and sighed. 'It's influenza, fever perhaps. There's typhus in townwn. Ah well, the old woman's lived her life, praise the Lord. How old is she?'

'Seventy come next year, guv'nor.'

'Ah well, her life's over. Time she was on her way.'

'It's true enough, what you just said, sir.' Jacob smiled out of politeness. 'And we thanks you most kindly for being so nice about it, like. But, if you'll pardon the exprewion, every insect wants to live.'

'Not half it does.' The assistant's tone suggested that it depended on him whether the old woman lived or died. 'Now then, my good man, you put a cold compress on her head and give her one of these powders twice a day. And now cheerio to you. A very bong jour.'

From his face Jacob could tell that it was all up, and that no powders would help now. Obviously Martha was going to die soon, either today or tomorrow. He gave the assistant's elbow a push and winked.

'We ought to cup her, Mr. Maxim sir,' he said in a low voice.

'Haven't the time, my good man. Take your old woman and be off with you. So long and all that.'

'Begging your kindnes, sir,' implored Jacob. 'As you know, mister, if it was her guts or her innards, like, what was sick, then it's powders and drops she should have. But this here is a chill, and the great thing with chills is to bleed 'em, sir.'

But the assistant had already called for his next patient, and a vilage woman with a little boy bad come into the consulting-room.

'Buzz off you, beat it!' The assistant frowned at Jacob. 'Don't hang around.'

'Then at least put some leeches to her. I'll be grateful to you all my life, I wil.'

The auistant lost his temper.

'Don't you bandy words widi me,' he yelled. 'D-da^ed oaf!'

Jacob lost his temper too, and ^med completely crimson. But he grabbed Martha's arm without a single word and took her out of the room. Only when they were getting into their cart did he cast a stem, mocking look at that hospital.

'They're a high and mighty lot round here,' he said. 'He'd have cupped a rich man, I'll be bound, but for a poor one he grudges even a single leech. Bastards!'

They arrived home, and Martha, after entering the house, stood for about ten minutes gripping the stove. If she was to lie downwn Jacob would talk about all the money he'd lost and blame her for lolling about and not wanting to work—or so she thought. And Jacob looked at her miserably, remembering that tomorrow was St. John's Day, and the day after that was St. Nicholas's Day, after which came Sunday and Unlucky Monday. That made four days when he couldn't work. But Martha was sure to die on one of those days, so he must make the coffin today. He took his iron ruler, went up to the old woman and measured her. Then she lay downwn and he crossed and staned on the coffin.

When the work was finished, Jacob put on his spectacles and wrote in his book.

'Martha Ivanov: to one coffin, .2 roubles 40 copecks.'

He sighed. The old woman lay there all the time silently, her eyes shut, but when it grew dark that evening she suddenly called the old man.

'Remember fifty years ago, Jacob?' She looked at him happily. 'God gave us a little fair-haired baby, remember? We were always sitting by the river, you and I, singing songs under the willow tree.' She laughed bitterly. 'The little girl died.'

Jacob cudgelled his brains, but could recall neither baby nor willow. 'You're imagining things.'

The priest came and gave the last rites, whereupon Martha mumbled something or other. By mo^rng she was gone.

Old women neighbours washed her, dressed her, laid her in her coffin. So as not to waste money on the sexton, Jacob read the lesson hi^^lf, and he got the grave for nothing because the cemetery care- taker was a crony of his. Four peasants bore the coffin to the cemetery out ofrespect, not for money. It was followed by old women, beggars and two vilage idiots while people in the street crossed the^relves piously. Jacob was delighted that it was al so right and seemly, that it didn't cost much or hurt anyone's feelings. As he said good-bye to Martha for the last time he tou^ed the coffin.

'Good workmanship, that,' he thought.

But on his way back from the cemetery he was overcome by a great sorrow. He felt vaguely unwell. His breath came hot and heavy, his legs were weak, he felt thirsty. Then various thoughts began to prey on his mind. He again remembered that never in his life had he been kind to Martha or sho^wn her affection. The fifty-two years of their life together in one hut—it seemed su^ a long, long time. But somehow he had never given her a thought in all that time, he had no more noticed her than a cat or dog. But she had made up the stove every day, hadn't she? She had cooked, baked, fetched water, cut wood, shared his bed. And when he came back from weddings she would

reverently hang his fiddle on the wall and put him to bed—all this in silence, looking scared and troubled.

Rothschild approached Jacob, s^^^g and bowing.

'I been looking for you, ^iter,' he said. 'Mister Moses sends his respects, says he vonts you at once.'

Jacob wasn't interested. He wanted to cry.

'Leave me alone.' He walked on.

'Vot are you doing?' Rothschild ran ahead, much alarmed. 'Mister Moses'll be offended. You're to come at once, said he.'

Out of breath, blinking, with all those red freckles, the Jew dis- gusted Jacob. The green frock-coat with the black patches, his whole frail, puny figure—what a loathsome sight.

'Keep out of my way, Garlick-breath,' shouted Jacob. 'You leave me alone.'

The Jew, angered, also shouted. 'You are being quiet or I am throwing you over fence.'

'Out of my fight, you!' bellowed Jacob, pouncing on him with clenched fists. 'Proper poison, them greasy bastards are.'

Scared to death, Rothschild crouched do^wn, waving his hands above his head as if warding off blows, then jumped up and scampered off as fast as he could, hopping about and flapping his arms as he ran. You could see the quaking of his long, thin back. At ^^ the street gleefully rushed after him shouting 'Dirty Yid !' Barking dogs chased him too. Someone roared with laughter and then whistled, the dogs barked louder and in closer harmony.

Then a dog must have bitten Rothschild, for a shout of pain and despair was heard.

Jacob walked on the co^rnon, then started off along the edge of the townwn without kno^mg where he was going. 'There's old Jake, there he goes,' shouted the boys. Then he came to the river. Here sand- pipers swooped and twittered, ducks quacked. The sun's heat beat downwn and the water sparkled till it hurt the eyes. Walking along the tow-path, Jacob saw a buxom, red-

'Da^ performing seal,' he thought.

Not far from the bathing hut boys were fishing for crayfish, using meat as bait. They saw ^m.

'Hey, there's old Jake,' they shouted nastily.

Then came the broad old willow tree with its huge hollow and crows' nests.

SuddenlyJacob's memory up a vivid image ofthat fair-haired baby and the willow that Martha had spoken oЈ Yes, it was the same willow—so green, so quiet, so sad.

How old it had gro^, poor thing.

He sat beneath it and began remembering. On the other bank, now a water meadow, had been a silver-birch forest, and over there on that bare hill on the horizon the dark blue bulk of an ancient pine wood. Barges had plied up and downwn the river. But now it was al flat and bare with the one little silver birch on the near side, slim and youthful as a young girl. There were only ducks and geese on the river, and it was hard to ^^ that barges had ever passed here. Even the geese seemed fewer. Jacob shut his eyes and pictured vast fliocks of white geese swooping towards each other.

How was it, he wondered, that he had never been by the river in the last forty or ftfty years of his life. Or, if he had, it had made no impre»ion on him. Why, this was a proper river, not just any old stream. You could fish it, you could sell the fish to shopkeepers, clerks and the man who kept the station bar, you could put the money in the bank. You could sail a boat from one riverside estate to another playing your fiddle, and all m^mer of folk would pay you for it. You could try starting up the barges again—better than making coffins, that was. Then you could breed geese, slaughter them and send them to Moscow in winter. 'The downwn alone would fetch ten roubles a year, I'll be bound.' But he had let al this go by, he had done nothing about it. Oh, what a waste, what a waste of money! If you put it all together —fishing, fiddling, barging, goose-slaughtering—what a lot of money you'd have made. But none of it had happened, not even in your dreams. Life had flowed past without profit, without enjoyment— gone aimlessly, leaving nothing to show for it. The future was empty. And ifyou looked back there was only all the awful waste of money that sent shivers downwn your spine. Why couldn't a man live without all that loss and waste? And why, he wondered, had they cut downwn the birch forest? Aid the pine wood? Why wasn't that common put to use? Why do people always do the wrong things? Why had Jacob spent all his life cursing, bellowing, threatening people with his fists, ill-treating his wife? And what, oh what, was the point of scaring and insulting that Jew just now? Why are people generally such a nuisance to each other? After all, it's all such a waste of money, a terrible waste it is. Without the hate and malice folks could get a lot of profit out of each other.

That evening and night he had visions of baby, willow, fish, dead geese, of Martha widi her thirsty bird's profile, and of Rothschild's wretched, pale face, while various other gargoyle-like faces advanced on him from all sides muttering about all the waste of money. He tossed and turned, he got out of bed half a dozen times to play his fiddle.

Next morning he forced himself to get up and went to the hospital. That same Maxim told him to put a cold compress on his head and gave him powders, but his look and tone made Jacob realize that it was all up and that no powders would help now. Later, on his way home, he reckoned that dcath would be pure gain to him. He wouldn't have to eat, drink, pay taxes or offend folk. And since a man lies in his grave not just one but hundreds and thousands of years, the proft would be colossal. Man's life is debit, his death credit. The argument was correct, of course, but painfuUy disagreeable too. Why are things so oddly arranged? You only live once, so why don't you get anything out of it?

He didn't mind dying, but when he got home and saw his fiddle his heart missed a beat and he felt sorry. He couldn't take his fiddle with him to the grave, so it would be orphaned and go the way of the birches and the pines. Nothing in this world has ever come to any- thing, nothing ever will. Jacob went out of the hut and sat in the door- way clasping the fiddle to his breast. Thinking of his wasted, profitless life, he started playing he knew not what, but it came out poignantly moving and tears coursed do^wn his cheeks. The harder he thought the sadder grew the fiddle's song.

The latch squeaked twice and Rothschild appeared at the garden gate. He crossed half the yard boldly, but when he saw Jacob he suddenly stopped, cringed and—through fear, no doubt—gesticulated as if trying to indicate the time with his fingers.

'Come along then,' said Jacob kindly, beckoning him. 'It's all right.'

Looking at him mistrustfully and fearfully, Ro^^Md began to approach but stopped a few feet away.

'Don't hit me, I beg you.' He squatted downwn. 'It's Mister Moses has sent me again. Never fear, says he, you go to Jacob again—tell him we can't do without him, he says. There's a vedding on Vednesday. Aye, that there is. Mister Shapovalov is marrying his daughter to a fine young man. A rich folks' vedding this, and no mistake!' The Jew screwed up one eye.

'Can't be done.' Jacob breathed heavily. 'I'm ill, son.'

He again struck up, his tears spurting on to tlie fiddle. Rothschild listened carefully, standing sideways on, arms crossed on his breast. His scared, baffled look gradually gave way to a sorrowful, suffering expression. He rolled his eyes as if in anguished delight.

'A-a-ah !' he said as the tears crawled downwn his cheeks and splashed on his green frock-coat.

After that Jacob lay downwn all day, sick at heart. When the priest heard his confession that evening and asked whether he remembered committing any particular sin he exerted his failing memory and once more recalled Martha's unhappy face and the desperate yell of the Jew bitten by a dog.

'Give my fddle to Rothschild,' he said in a voice barely audible.

'Very well,' the priest answered.

Now everyone in town wants to know where Rothschild got such a fme fiddle. Did he buy it, did he steal it? Or did someone leave it with him as a pledge? He only plays the fiddle now, having given up the flute long ago. From his bow there flow those same poignant strains which used to come from his flute. But when he tries to repeat the tune Jacob had played in his doorway the outcome is so sad and mournful that his listeners weep and he ends by rolling his eyes up with an 'A-a-ah!'

So popular is this new tune in townwn that merchants and officials are always asking Rothschild over and making him play it a dozen times.

THE STUDENT

Thb weather was fine and calm at first. Thrushes were singing, and in the near-by swamps some creature droned piteously as if blowing into an empty bottle. A woodcock flew over and a shot reverberated merrily in the spring air. But when darknes fell on the wood an unwelcome, piercing cold wind blew up from the east and eve^^Mg grew silent. Ice needles formed on the puddles and the wood seemed inhospitable, abandoned, empty. It smelt of winter.

Ivan Velikopolsky, a student at a theological college and a sexton's son, was re^^mg home along the path through the water meadow after a day's shooting. His fingers were numb, his face b^ned in the wind. This sudden onset of cold seemed to have destroyed the order and harmony of things, s^^mg dread into Nature herself and M^rng the shades of night to thicken faster fha" was needful. Eve^^^^ was so abandoned, so very gloomy, somehow. in the widows'

aUotments near the river did a light gleam. But far around, where the village stood about three miles away, everything drcrwned in the de^ evening mist. The student remembered that, when he had left the house, his mother had been sitting barefoot on the lobby floor cleaning the samovar, while his father lay coughing on the stove. There was no cooking at home because today was Good Friday, and he felt famished. Cringing in the cold, he reflected that just such a wind had blo"wn in the days of Ryurik, Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great. Their times had kno^ just such ferocious poverty and hunger. There had been the same thatched roofs with the holes in them, the same ignor^ra and misery, the same desolation on all sides, the same gloom and sense of oppression. All these horrors had been, still were, and would continue to be, and the passing of another thousand years would make things no better. He did not feel like going home.

The allotments were called widows' because they were kept by two widows, a mother and daughter. A bonfire was b^^rng briskly— crackling, lighting up the plough-land far around. Widow Vasilisa, a tall, plump old woman in a man's fur jacket, stood gazing pensively at the fire. Her short, pock-marked, stupid-looking daughter Lukerya sat on the ground washing a cooking pot and some spoons. They had just had supper, obviously. Men's voices were heard, some l^^ labourers watering their horses by the river.

'So winter's come back,' said the student, approaching the fire. 'Good evening.'

Vasilisa shuddered, but then saw who it was and smiled a welcome.

'Goodness me, I didn't recognize you,' she said. 'That means you'll be rich one day.'

They talked. Vasilisa, a woman of some experience—having been wet-nurse to gentlefolk and then a nanny—spoke delicately, always smiling a gentle, dignified smile. But her daughter Lukerya, a peasant whose husband had beaten her, only screwed up her eyes at the student, saying nothing and wearing an odd look as if she was deaf and dumb.

'On a cold night like this the Apostle Peter warmed himself by a fl.re.' The student held out his hands towa.rds the flames. 'So it must have been cold then. What a frightening night that was, Granny, what a very sorrowful, what a very long light.'

He looked at the da.rkness around and abruptly jerked his head. 'Were you in church yesterday for the Twelve Gospel Readings?'

'Yes,' Vasil.isa answered.

'At the Last Supper, you'll remember, Peter said to Jesus, "Lord, I am ready to go with Thee, both into prison, and to death.'' And the Lord said, "I say unto thee, Peter, before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice." After supper Jesus prayed in mortal agony in tlie garden, while poor Peter was weary in spirit, and enfeebled. His eyes were heavy, he couldn't fight offsleep and he slept. Then, as you have heard, Judas that night kissed Jesus and betrayed Him to the torturers. They bound Him, they took Him to the high priest, they smote Him, while Peter—worn, tormented, anguished, perturbed, you understand, not having slept properly, foreseeing some fearful hap- pening on this earth—went after them. He loved Jesus passionately, to distraction, and now, afar, he saw Him being bufeted.'

Lukerya put do^wn the spoons and stared at the student.

'They went to the high priest,' he continued. 'They put Jesus to the question, and meanwhile the workmen had kindled a fire in the midst of the hall, as it was cold, and were warming themselves. Peter stood with them near the fire—also warming himself, as I am now. A certain maid beheld him, and said, "This man was also with Jesus." In otlier words she was saying that he too should be taken for questioning. All the workmen round the fire must have looked at him suspiciously and sternly because he was confused and said, "I know him not.'' A little later someone recognized him as one of Jesus' disciples and said, "Thou also wast with him." But he denied it again. And for the third time someone addressed him. "Did I not see thee in the garden with Him this day?" He denied Him for the third time. And after that the cock straightway crowed, and Peter, looking at Jesus from afar, remembered the words which He had said to him at supper. He remembered, his eyes were opened, and he went out of the hall and shed bitter tears. The Gospel says, "And he went out, and wept bit- terly." I can imagine it was a very quiet, very dark garden and his hollow sobs could hardly be heard in the silence.'

The student sighed, plunged deep in thought. Still smiling, Vasilisa suddenly sobbed and tears, large and profuse, flowed do^ her cheeks. She shielded her face from the fire with her sleeve as if ashamed of the tears, while Lukerya, staring at the student, blushed and her expression became distressed and tense as if she was holding back a terrible pain.

The workmen returned from the river. One of them, on horseback, was already near and the light from the fire quivered on him. The studem said good lught to the widows and moved on. Agaui darkness came upon him, and his hands began to freeze. A cruel wind blew, it was real winter weather again, and it did not seem as if Easter Sunday could be only the day after tomorrow.

The student thought of Vasilisa. Her weeping meant that all that had happened to Peter on that terrible night had a particular meaning for her.

He looked back. The lonely fire quietly flickered in the darkness, no one could be seen near it. Again the student reflected that, if Vasilisa had wept and her daughter had been moved, then obviously what he had just told them about happenings nineteen centuries ago— it had a meaning for the present, for both women, and also probably for this God-forsaken village, for hinself, for all people. It had not been his gift for poignant narrative that had made the old woman weep. It was because Peter was near to her, because she was bound up heart and soul with his innermost feelings.

Joy suddenly stirred within him. He even stopped for a moment to catch his breati.

'The past', thought he, 'is linked to the present by an unbroken chain ofhappenings, each flowing from the other.'

He felt as if he had just seen both ends of that chain. When he touched one end the other vibrated.

Crossing the river by ferry, and then climbing the hill, he looked at his home village and at the narrow strip of cold crimson sunset shining in the west. And he brooded on truth and beauty—how they had guided human life there in the garden and the high priest's palace, how they had continued without a break till the present day, always as the most important element in man's life and in earthly life in general. A sensation of youth, health, strength—he was only twenty-two years old—together with an anticipation, ineffably sweet, of happiness, strange, mysterious happiness, gradually came over him. And life seemed enchanting, miraculous, imbued with exalted significance.

THF. HEAD GARDENER'S STORY

There was a flower sale at Count and Countess N's greenhouse. But there were not many buyers, just myself, my landownwning neighbour and a young timber merchant. While labourers carried our magni- ficent purchases out and packed them on carts, we sat by the green- house door discoursing of this and that. To sit in a garden on a warm April morning, to listen to the birds, and to sec the flowers sunning themselves now that they had been brought outside—how very delightful.

The stowage of the plants was handled by the head gardener Michael Karlovich—a venerable, full-faced, dean-shaven old fellow in a fur waistcoat—he had taken off his frock-coat. He said nothing all this time, but listened to our conversation in case we might say anything new. He was an intelligent, easy-going, universally respected Somehow everyone thought he was German, though he was Swedish on his father's side and Russian on his mother's. He was an Orthodox church-goer, he knew Russian, Swedish and German, he read a lot in these languages, and you could give him no greater delight than lending him a new book or talking to him about Ibsen, for instance.

He had his foibles, but innocent ones. For instance, he called himself a 'head' gardener, though there were no under-gardeners. His ex- pression was higl1y dignified and haughty. He did not permit contra- dictions, he liked to be listened to seriously and attentively.

'Now, that young spark over there—hc's a frightful rogue, I can tell you.' My neighbour pointed to a workman with a florid gipsy's face riding past on a water-cart. 'He was had up in to\wn for robbery last week and got off on grounds of insanity. Dut just look at the black- guard's face, he's as sane as can be. Russian courts are always acquitting scoundrels nowadays, explaining everything by ill health and tempor- ary insanity, but these acquittals, this blatant leniency, this aiding and abctting—it bodes no good. It demoralizes the massC"S, blunting every- one's sense of justice because they're used to seeing vice going un- punished, so that one can boldly apply to our day Shakespeare's lines. '

"For in the fatness of these pursy times

Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg." '

'True, true,' agreed the merchant. 'These acquittals have caused a boom in murder and arson. Just ask the peas::nts.'

The gardener Michael Karlovich turned to us.

'For myselfl'm always delighted with an acquittal, gentleman,' said he. 'A not guilty verdict doesn't make me fear for morality and justice. Far from it, it pleases me. Even when my conscience tells me that a jury has been wrong to acquit a criminal, even then I feel exultant. Judge for yourselves, gentlemen—ifjudges and juries believe more in man than in clues, circumstantial evidence and speeches, then is not this faith in man itself superior to all mnndane considerations? Such faith is accessible only to those few who nnderstand Christ and feel His presence.'

'A fine thought,' said I.

'But not a new one. I even remember once hearing a story on this theme long long ago, a most delightful story.' The gardener smiled. 'My old grandmother, now passed away—my father's mother, a wonderful old woman—used to teU me it. She told it in Swedish, but it doesn't sonnd as well in Russian, it's less classic.'

Stil, we asked him to tell the story undeterred by the crudeness of the Russian language. Well pleased, he slowly lit his pipe, looked angrily at the labourers, and began.

In a certain small townwn there lived an elderly, ugly bachelor called Thomson or Wilson. The name doesn't matter, it's beside the point. He practised the noble calling of doctor, was always grim and nn- sociable, spoke only when his profession required it. He never made social visits, never carried acquaintanceship beyond a silent bow, lived as humbly as any hermit. He was a scholar, in fact, and in those days scholars were unlike ordinary people. They would spend their days and nights contemplating, reading books, healing sickness, rating all else mere frivolity and being too busy to speak without need. The townwns- folk appreciated this, trying not to pester him with their visits and idle chat. They were overjoyed that God had sent them a healer at last, they were proud to have so remarkable a man living in their town.

They used to say that he 'knew everything'.

Nor was this all. We should also add his love for everyone. In the scholar's breast beat a wondrous, angelic heart. And in any case the townwnsfolk were strangers to him, they weren't his kith and kin after all, yet he loved them like his children, was ready to give his very life for them. He suffered from tuberculosis, he was always coughing, but when called to a patient he would forget his illness, not sparing him- self, and would puff his way up mountains however high. He spurned heat and cold, despised hnnger and thirst, never accepted money, and— odd, isn't it?—when one of his patients died he would follow the coffin with the relatives and weep.

He soon became so vital to the townwn that folk wondered how they had ever managed without him. Their gratitude knew no bonnds. Adults and children, the good-natured and ill-natured, the honest men and rogues—everyone, in a word—respected him, valued him. No one in the little townwn and its environs would have done him an il turn, or even thought of it. He never locked his doors and windows when leaving his quarters, being absolutely assured that no thiefwould venture to harm him. As a doctor he often had to walk highways, forests and monntains, the hannts of hungry vagabonds, but felt completely safe. One night on his way home from a patient he was waylaid in a wood by highwaymen who, when they saw who it was, respectfully doffed their hats and asked if he was hungry. When he said he was not, they gave him a warm cloak and escorted him all the way to townwn, happy that fortnne had granted tiem this chance of conveying their thanks to one so noble-spirited. Then again, if you take my drift, my grandmother used to say that even horses, cows and dogs knew him and showed how glad they were to see him.

Yet tlŭs man whose saintliness seemed a bulwark against all evil, this man whom tlie very robbers and madmen wished well—he was fonnd murdered one morning. Covered with blood, his skull smashed in, he lay in a gulley with a surprised look on his pale face. No, it was not horror but surprise which had frozen on his face when he saw his murderer before him. Now, imagine how heart-broken the townsfolk and locals were. All were in despair, not believing their eyes, wondering who could kill such a man. The court officers who conducted the investigation and examined the corpse pronounced as follows.

'Here is every evidence of murder. Since, however, no one on earth could bring himself to kill our doctor, it obviously cannot be murder and the accumulated clues must derive from pure coincidence. We must .tSsume that the doctor stumbled into the gulley in the dark and died from the fall.'

With this opinion the whole town concurred. The doctor was buried, and there was no more talk of death by violence. The very existence of someone base and foul enough to murder him seemed improbable. After all, even vileness does have its limits, doesn't it?

But then suddenly, believe it or not, chance revealed the murderer. A certain scallywag, who had often stood trial and was known for his diuolute life, was seen in an inn with a snuff-box and watch, once the doctor's, which he was using to obtain drink. When questioned he showed embarrassment and told some blatant lie. His home was searched, and in his bed were found a shirt with blood-stained sleeves and the doctor's lancet in a golden case. What more clues were needed? They put the villain in prison, and the townsfolk were perturbed while claiming it as 'most unlikely' and 'impossible'.

'Look, there may have been a mistake. Clues can be misleading, after all.'

The murderer stubbornly denied his complicity in court. Everything was against him. His guilt was as plain as that this soil is black, but the magistrates had apparently taken leave of their senses. Ten times they weighed every clue, viewing the witnesses with suspicion, blushing, drinking water.

They began trying the case early in the morning, and did not finish until evening.

The presiding magistrate addressed the murderer. 'Prisoner in the dock, the court finds you guilty of the murder of Doctor Such-and- Such and sentences you '

The chief magistrate was about to say 'to death', but dropped the paper on which the sentence had been written and wiped off cold sweat.

'No,' he shouted. 'May God punish me if this judgement is wrong, but I swear he is not guilty. That anyone would dare kill our friend the doctor I do not concede. Man cannot sink so low.'

'No indeed,' the other magistrates concurred.

'No,' echoed the crowd. 'Let him go.'

They let the murderer go scot free, and not a soul reproached the court with a miscarriage of justice. According to my grandmother God forgave all the townwnsfolk their sins because of their great faith in man. He rejoices when folk believe that man is His image and likeness, and He is grieved if men forget their human dignity and judge their fellows to be worse than dogs. Even if the acquittal should harm the townwnsfolk, yet just consider how beneficent an influence their faith in man has had on them. That faith is no dead formula, now is it? It educatcs us in noble sentiments, always prompting us to love and respcct everyonc. Everyonc—that's what's so important.

Michacl Karlovich ended. My neighbour wanted to offer some objection, but thc hcad gardener made a gesture signifying a dislike of all objections, and went over to the carts to continue supervising the loading with an expression of great dignity on his face.

PATCH

A hungry she-wolf got up to go hunting. Her three cubs were all fast asleep, huddled together in each other's warmth. She gave them a lick and went off.

It was already March—spring in fact—but at night trees cracked in the cold as though it was still December. Stick out your tongue and it felt as if it had been bitten. The wolf was in bad health and very wary—the least sound made her start. She feared that someone might hurt her cubs while she was away from home. She was scared by the scent of men and horses, by tree stumps, wood piles, and by the dark road with animal droppings on it. She seemed to sense men standing in the darkness behind the trees and dogs howling beyond the wood somewhere.

She was quite old and was losing her scent, so she sometimes took a fox's track for a dog's and even lost her way, betrayed by her scent —which had never happened when she was young. Being unweU, she had stopped hunting calves and big rams, as of old, and kept well out of the way of mares with foals, feeding only on carrion. Only very seldom did she have fresh meat-,-in spring when she met a doe hare and made off with her babies or got among the lambs in a peasant's barn.

By the post road, about three miles from her lair, was a forest lodge. This was the home of Ignat, an old watchman of about seventy who was always coughing and talking to himselЈ He usually slept at night and wandered through the forest in daytime with a shot-gun, whistling at the hares. He must have had something to do with engines once because he never came to a halt without shouting 'Brakes on!' and he would not go on without a 'Full steam ahead!' He had a big black mongrel bitch called Arapka, and when she ran too far ahead he shouted, 'Reverse!' Sometimes he sang, staggering violently, and he often fell—blown over by the wind, thought the wolf—and shouted, 'We've run off the rails!'

The wolf remembered a ram and two ewes grazing near the lodge in summer and autumn and she fancied she had heard bleating in the shed not long ago as she ran past. As she went up to the hut, she con- sidered that it was now March—the season when there must be lambs in the shed. Tortured by hunger, she thought how ravenously she would devour a lamb, and such thoughts made her teeth snap and her eyes glint in the dark like two lamps.

lgnat's hut, bam, cattle-shed and well had deep snow piled all round them. It was quiet and Arapka must be sleeping under the b^.

The wolf climbed over a snowdrift onto the shed roof and began scratching the thatch away with her paws and muzzle. The straw was rotten and crumbling, and she nearly fell through. Suddenly the smell of warm steam, dung and sheep's ^^ hit her straight in the muzzle. Feeling the cold, a lamb gently bleated do^ below. The wolfjumped through the hole and her four paws and chest hit something soft and warm. That must be the ram. Meanwhile something in the shed suddenly whined and barked and there was a lot of shrill yapping. The sheep all crashed back against the waU and the terrified wolf seized something in her teeth at random and rushed out....

She ran as fast as she could. Scenting wolf, Arapka howled furiously, frightened hens clucked inside the lodge, and Ignat wcnt out into the porch.

'FuU steam ahead!' he shouted. 'Sound the whistle!'

He whistled like an engine and then shouted several rimes. The forest echoed back all these noises.

When things had gro^ quieter the wolf calmed downwn a little. Holding the prey in her teeth and dragging it along the snow, she noticed that it was heavier and somehow harder than lambs usually are at that season. It seemed to have a different smell and there were strange noises.

The wolf stopped and laid her burden on the snow, so that she could rest and start eating—then suddenly leapt back in disgust. This was no lamb, but a puppy—black, with a big head and long legs, of some large type, with a white patch over his whole forehead like Arapka. Judging by his manners, he was an ordinary ignorant farm dog. He licked his injured back, wagged his tail, quite unimpressed, and barked at the wolЈ She growled like a dog and ran of[ He ran after her. She looked back and clicked her teeth. Hc stopped, baffled, and must have decided that she was having a game with him bccause he stretched his muzzle back towards thc lodgc and gave a joyous, ringing peal of barks as if asking his mother Arapka to come and play with him and the wolf.

It was already growing light and as the wolf madc her way home through a thick aspen copse, cach aspen-tree could be clearly seen. Woodcocks were waking already and the puppy kept putting up magnificent cock birds which were startled by its barks and careless gambols.

'Why does he run after me?' wondered the wolf, annoyed. 'He must want me to eat him.'

She and her cubs lived in a shallow lair. Three years ago a tall old pine had been torn up by the roots in a great storm, and that was how the hole had been made. Now there were dead leaves and moss at the bottom and it was strewn with bones and bullocks' honis, the cubs' playthings. The cubs were awake and all three of them, very much alike, stood in a row on the edge of the hole, wagging their tails and watching their mother come back. Seeing them, the puppy stopped some way off and stared for a while. When he noticed them staring back at him, he barked angrily at them because they were strangers.

It was light now and the sun was up. Snow sparkled all around and still he stood apart, barking. The mother suckled her cubs, who prodded her emaciated belly with their paws while she gnawed a white, dry horse's bone. She was frantic with hunger, the puppy had given her a headache with his barking, and she felt like pouncing on the intruder and rending him in pieces.

In the end the puppy grew tired and hoarse. Seeing that no one was afraid of him or even noticing him, he timidly approached the cubs, now squatting down, now bouncing forward. Now that it was light it was easy to see what he was like.

He had a large white forehead with a bump on it—usually the sign of an extremely stupid dog. He had tiny, dull, light blue eyes and his whole expression was idiotic. Going up to the cubs, he stretched out his broad paws, put his muzzle on them and set up a sort of champing, mumbling noise.

This made no sense to the cubs, but they wagged their tails. Then the puppy cuffed one of the cubs on its large head and the cub cuffed him back. The puppy stood sideways on, looking at the cub out of the corner ofhis eye, wagging his tail—then suddenly dashed offand circled a few times on the frozen snow. The cubs chased after him. He fell on his back, kicking up his legs and all three poW1ced, squealing with joy, and began playfully biting him, not trying to hurt. Crows perched on a tall pine looked down at this engagement in great agitation. It was all very noisy and it was all great fun. There was warm spring sunshine. Game birds flew over the fallen pine from time to time, emerald-coloured in the brilliant sunshine.

Wolves usiualy teach their cubs to hunt by giving them some of their prey to play with, and as the wolf watched her cubs chasing the puppy on the snow and wrestling with ^m, she thought that they might as well pick up a few hints.

Having played long enough, the cubs went to their lair and lay down. to sleep. The puppy howled a little because he was hungry, then he too stretched out in the sun. When they woke up they started playing again.

All day and evening the wolf could not forget the night before— the lamb bleating in the shed and the smeU of sheep's She kept snapping her teeth from hunger and went on gnawing greedily at the old bone, pretending that it was a lamb. The cubs sucked and the puppy, hungry, ran round sniffmg the snow.

'I think I'U eat him ...' decided the wolЈ

She went up to him. He gave her muzzle a lick and yapped, ^^^mg that she wanted to play. She had eaten dog in the old days, but the pup had a strong doggy smeU, and now that she was unwell she could not stand that smeU any more. It sickened her, so she went away....

Towards night it grew cold. The pup felt bored and set off home.

When the cubs were fast asleep the wolf went hunting again. As on the night before, the faintest sound startled her and she was scared of tree-st^ps, timber and dark, lonely juniper bushes which looked at a distance like men. She ran over the frozen snow, keeping off the road. Suddenly, on the road far ahead, something black moved.

She looked hard and pricked up her ears. Yes, something was moving ahead of her. She could even hear a rhythmical padding. A badger? Cautiously, scarcely breathing, keeping well to one side, she overtook the dark blob, looked back and saw what it was. It was the puppy with the white forehead making his leisurely way home to the lodge.

'I hope he won't be in my way again,' thought the wolf, ^^ing quickly ahead.

But she had almost reached the lodge already. She climbed once inorc over the snow-drift onto the shed. Yesterday's gap had been mended with straw and there were two new beams across the rooЈ The wolf began working rapidly with feet and muzzle, looking round in casc thc puppy was coming. But hardly had she scented the warm steam and reek of dung before a joyous peal of barks rang out behind her. The puppy was back. He jumped onto the roof after the wolf. then throiigh the hole. Feeling at home in the warm and recognizing his own shecp, he barked cvcn louder.

Under the barn Arapka awoke and set up a howl as she scented wolЈ There was a clucking of hens, and when Ignat appeared in the porch with his shot-gun, the terrified wolf was already far from the lodge.

'Got away!' whistled Ignat. 'Got away, eh? Full steam ahead!'

He pressed the trigger, but the gun misfired. He pressed it again. It misfired again. He pressed a third rime and a great shaft of fire flcw from the barrel, there was a deafening boom, and the hard kick of the recoil against his shoulder. He took his gun in one hand and his axe in the other and went to see what the noise was all about....

A little later he came back to the hut.

'What is it?' someone asked hoarsely—a pilgrim who was there for the night and had been woken by the noise.

'It doesn't matter . . .' answered Ignat. 'It's nothing at all. Our Patch has taken to sleeping in the warm with the sheep. But he hasn't the sense to use the door—has to try and get through the rooЈ The other night he made a hole in the roof and went larking about, the young varmint. Now he's back he's made another hole in the roof/

'Must be stupid.'

'Yes, he has a screw loose. I can't abide stupidity!' sighed Ignat, climbing onto the stove. 'WeU, mister pilgrim, it's too early to get up, so let 's sleep. FuU stean ahead....'

Next morning he caUcd Patch, puUed his ears till it hurt and then beat him with a switch.

'Use the door, can't you,' he kept saying. 'Use the door!'

THE SAVAGE

Ivan Zhmu-^rni was a retired officer of Cossacks who now lived on his farm after seeing service in the Caucasus. Once he had been a strong, hefty young man, but he was a dry old stick nowadays—with drooping shouldcrs, shaggy eyebrows and a white moustache tinged with green.

One hot summer day he was on his way back to his farm from town, where he had been to church and seen a lawyer about his wil, having had a slight stroke about a fortnight earlier. Now that he was on the traui, he was hawited by solem, melancholy thoughts. He would soon die, he thought, all is vanity and nothing on this earth lasts for ever.

At Provalye, a station on the Donets Line, a man came into his carriage and sat down opposite. He was fair-haired, middle-aged, stout, and carried a shabby brief-case. They feU into conversation.

'Aye, it's not a thing to rush into, marriage isn't,' said Zhmukhin, looking thoughtfully through the ^mdow. 'I was married when I was forty-eight and was told it was too late in life. It was neither late nor early as it turned out—I just shouldn't have married at all. A man soon gets bored with a wife, but there's them that won't let on, being ashamed to have an unhappy family life, see what I mean? They to keep quiet about it. A ^^ may be all over his wife with lots of"Mary this" and "Mary diat", when what he'd really like would be to pop Mary in a sack and drop her ii a lake. A wife 's a bore. Where 's the sense of it all? And children are no better, you take my word for it, I've two ofthc wretched things. There's no schooling for them out here in die steppe aid I can't afford to send them to school at Novocherkassk. So thcy live round here like a couple of young wolves. They'll soon be cutting people's throats on the highway, the way they're going.'

The fair-haired n^ listened attentively and rephed briefly in a low voice. He seemed a quiet, unasswning sort and described himself as a solicitor on a business trip to the village of Dyuyevka.

'Why, that's oiJy six miles from me, by heaven!' said Zhmu^^i. From the way he spoke you would have thought that someone was denying the fact. 'Now look here, you'll find no horses at the station now. Ifyou ask me, your best plan is to come straight over to my place, sec what I mcan? Stay the night, see? Then you can drive over to- morrow moriung with my horses, and jolly good luck to you.'

Thc solicitor accepted after a moment's thought.

When they reached the station the sun was low ovcr the steppe. On the way to the farm they said nothing at all, jolted beyond speech as the trap bobbed up and do-wn, squealing and apparently sobbing, as though all this bumping really hurt it. The solicitor found it a most uncomfortable ride and kept staring ahead, longing for the farm to come into sight. After about five miles there came a distant view of a low house and yard with a wall of dark stone slabs round it. The house had a green roof, peeling stucco and tiny slits of windows like screwed-up eyes. This farm stood in the fful blaze of the sun and no water or trees were to be seen anywhere near. Local squires and peasants had called it 'Savage Farm', ever since a surveyor had stayed there on his way through many years ago and spent the whole night talking to Zhmukhin.

The surveyor had not been impressed.

'Sir!' he had told Zhmukhin severely as he drove off in the morning. 'You are a savage!'

Hence the name 'Savage Farm', which caught on all the more when Zhmukhin's boys grew up and took to raiding near-by orchards and melon-plots. Zhmukhin himself was called 'See-what-1-mean ?' be- cause he talked so much and was always using that expression.

Zhmukhin's sons were standing in the yard near the bam, both barefoot and bare-headed, one about nineteen and the other a little younger. Just as the trap was corning into the yard, the younger boy threw a hen high in the air. It clucked and took wing, describing an arc. The elder fired a gun and it crashed to the ground, dead.

'That's my lads lea^mg to shoot,' said Zhmukhin.

The travellers were greeted in the hall by a thin little woman with a pale face, still young and good-looking, who might have been a servant, to judge by her clothes.

'Now, may I do the honours ?' asked Zhmukhin. 'This is the mother of my two sons of bitches.' He turned to his wife. 'Come on, Missus,' he said. 'Do get a move on, and look after your guest. Let's have supper! Look sharp, Mother!'

The house consisted of two parts. One contained the parlour with old Zhmukhin's bedroom next door—stuffy rooms with low ceilings and hordes of flies and wasps. The kitchen, where they cooked, did the laundry and fed the men, was in the other part. There were geese and hen turkeys hatching eggs under the benches. Mrs. Zhmukhin's bed was in there and so were her two sons' beds. The furniture in the parlour was Linpaintcd and hail obviou)ly bccn roughly put togcthcr by a carpenter. On thc walls hung gwlS, gamc-bags and whips, all old rubbish grey with dust, covered with the rust of ages. There were no pictures. In the comer was a dingy board that had staned life as an icon.

A young Ukr^man peasant-won^ laid the table and served ham followed by beetroot soup. The guest refused vodka and would eat only bread and cucumbers.

'Have some ham,' said Zhmukhin.

'No thank you. I never touch it,' the guest ai1Swered. 'I don't eat meat.'

'Why is that?'

'I'm a vegetarian and killing animals is against my principles.'

Zhmukhin thought for a moment.

'Aye.. •. I see what you mean ...' he brought out with a sigh. 'I met someone else in town once who didn't eat meat. It's a kind of new belief that's caught on. And why not? It's a good idea. After al, there's other ^igs in life beside slaughtering and shooting, see what I mean? It's time we took things easy and gave the beasts a bit ofpeace and quiet. It's a sinful thing, is ^^g, it stands to reason. Sometimes if you shoot a hare in the leg, it screams like a baby. So it must hurt.'

'Of course it does. Animals feel pain like we do.'

'You're quite right,' said Zhmukhin. 'I get your point,' he went on thoughtfuHy. 'But I must say, there's one thing I don't see. Suppose everyone stops eating meat? What'U happen to farm animals and things like hens and geese, see what I mean ?'

'Hens and geese will live free like wild birds.'

'Oh, I see. WeU, it's quite true crows aidjackdaws get on very well without us. •.. Aye. .. . Hens, geese, hares, sheep—diey'U al be free to enjoy themselves, see, and praise God aid not fear us. We'U al have a bit of peace and quiet. Only, you kiow, there 's one thing I don't see,' Zhmukhin went on with a glance at the ham. 'What'll become of pigs? What shall we do with them?'

'The same thing. They'll be free like othcr animals.'

'Aye, I see. But look here, ifwe don't slaughter them, they'll brced, see ? Then you can say goodbye to your pastures and kitchen-gardem. Let a pig loose, you kiow, and take your eye off" it and it'U wreck your whole place in a day. A pig's a pig. It's not called a pig for nothing, you know....'

They fnished supper. Zhmukhin got up from table and stalked up and do^ the room for a long time. He kept on and on talking.

He liked a scrioiis, earnest talk and he liked to mcditatc. And hc fclt thc need of something to hold on to in his old age, somcthing to reassure ^m so that he need not be so afraid of dying. He wanted to be gentle, relaxed and self-confident like his guest, who had just made a meal of bread and cucumbers and thought himself a better ^^ for it. He sat on a healthy and stout, saying nothing, patient in his boredom. When you looked at ^m from the hall in the dusk he seemed like a rock that could not be budged. A man's all right ifhe has something to hang on to in life.

Zhmukhin went through the hall to the porch and was heard sighing, deep in thought.

'Aye.... To be sure,' he said to

It was growing dark and a few stars had come out. Indoors no lights had yet been lit. Someone slipped quietly into the parlour and stopped by the door. It was Lyubov—Zhm^^n's wife.

'Are you from town?' she asked timidly, not looking at the visitor.

'Yes, I live in to^.'

'Maybe you're something ofa scholar, sir, and can tell us what to do. Please help us. We ought to send in an application.'

'What do you mean?' asked the guest.

'We've two sons, kind sir. They should have gone to school long ago, but no one ever comes here and there's no one to advise us. And I don't know about these things. You see, ifthey don't le^ anything, they'U be called up in the Cossacks as privates. It's not right, sir! They can't read and wriwrite. They're worse than peasants and Mr. Zhmukhin himself t^ns up his nose at them. He won't have them in the house. But it's not their fault, is it? If we could only send the younger one to school, oh it is such a shame.'

As she dragged out the words her voice quavered. How could a woman so small and young possibly have gro^-up children?

'Oh, it is such a shame!'

'You know nothing about it, Mother, and it's no business ofyours,' said Zhmukhin, appearing in the doorway. 'Stop ^moying our guest with your wild Out you go, Mother.'

Mrs. Zhmukhin went out.

'Oh, it is such a shame!' she said again in the hall in her thin little voice.

They made up a bed for the guest on a sofa in the parlour and lit a lamp in front of the icon so that he should not be in the dark. Zhmu- khin went to bed in his o^ room.

He lay and thought of his soul, of old age, of the recent stroke that had so frightened and made him so conscious of death. He was given to abstract speculation when alone in the quiet. At such he fancied himself a very deep, serious thinker whose sole concem on this earth was with things that reaUy matter. And now as he meditated he wanted to fLX on some single idea, different from all others—some- thing signiЈicant to serve ^m as a sign-post in life. He wanted to work out principles that would make his life as deep and serious as he was himselЈ It would not be a bad thing for an old man like him to give up meat and other luxuries. Sooner or later men would stop ^^bg other men and animals, it was boWld to come. He imagined it happening, pictured himself living in peace with the animal kingdom—but then suddenly thought of pigs again and that thoroughly bewildered him.

'What a business, great heavens above,' he muttered with a deep sigh, and asked, 'Are you awake?'

'Yes.'

Zhmukhin got out of bed and stood in the doorway with only his shirt on. His guest could see his stringy legs, as thin as sticks.

'Nowadays,' he began, 'we have things like the telegraph, see what I mean? And there's telephones and other miracles of one sort and an- other as you might say, but people are no better. In my day, t^ny or forty years ago, men were rough and cruel, it's said. But isn't it just the same nowadays? In my time we never stood on ceremony, it's true. I remember being stationed for four solid months in the Caucasus by a small river. We had absolutely nothing to do—I was only a sergeant at the time—and something happened then that was as good as a story book. Right on the river bank, see, just where our company was stationed, some minor chiefwas buried—we'dkilled him ourselves not long before. At night the chief's widow used to visit the grave and cry, if you see what I mean. Her moaning and groaning fair gave us the willies and we just couldn't sleep. Two nights that went on, and we were fed up with it. Why should we lose our sleep for aU reason, pardon my language? What sense does that make? So we took that widow and flogged her. She stopped conming then, you take my word.

'Oh, you get a different type nowadays of course. They don't flog people, they're more clean-living and there's a lot more studying. But human nature hasn't changed, see? Not a bit ofit.

'Take a case in point. There's a landowner roWld these parts, owns some mines, see? He has all sorts of riff-raflf working for him—men with no papers and nowhere to go. Saturday 's pay day, but he doesn't want to pay them, see? Grudges the money. So he gets hold of a foreman—another tramp, even if he does wear a hat. "Don't pay them a thing," he says. "Not one copeck. They'll beat you up," says he. "Well, let them. Just put up with it, and I'll pay you ten roubles of a Saturday."

'Well, Saturday evening rolls on and the workers duly come along, as the custom is, for their wages. "Nothing doing!" says the foreman. Well, one thing leads to another, and they start swearing and knocking him about a bit.... They punch him, they kick him—men can be like beasts, see, when they're starving. They beat him senseless and clear off. The boss tells someone to pour water over the foreman. He chucks hini his ten roubles, and he's glad to take it—in fact he'd be quite prepared to jump off a cliff for three. Aye.... On Monday along comes a new gang of workers. Why? Because they've nowhere else to go.... And on Saturdays it's the same story over again....'

The guest turned over to face the back of the sofa and muttered something.

"Take another case,' Zhmukhin went on. 'We once had anthrax here, see? Cattle were dying off like flies, believe you me. We had the vets going round and there were strict orders to bury the dead cattle deep in the earth a long way off, pour lime over them and al that—on a proper scientific basis, see what I mean? A horse of mine died of it as well. I buried it with proper precautions, poured three or four hundredweight of lime over it—and what do you think? Those young sparks, those dear lads of mine, dug up the horse at night, see, skinned it and sold the hide for three roubles, and that's a fact. So people haven't got any better. A leopard doesn't change his spots, and that's a fact. Makes you think, though, eh? What do you say?'

Through the cracks in the window-shutters on one side ofthe room lightning flashed. The air was heavy with the threat of thunder, mos- quitoes were biting, and Zhmukhin lay deep in thought in his room, sighing, groaning and ^^mg to h^Melf. 'Aye .... To be sure,' he said. And he could not sleep. Thunder growled somewhere in the far distance.

'Are you awake?'

'Yes,' answered the visitor.

Zhmukhin got up, his heels clattering tlirough the parlour and hall as he went to the kitchen for a of water.

'There's nothing worse than stupidity, see?' he said a bit later, coming back with a dipper. 'The missus kneels down and prays. She prays every night, see—bangs her head on the floor. The ^^ thing is, she wants the boys to go to school. She's afraid of them being ordinary Cossacks and getting a sabre or two laid across their backs. But schooling means money and that doesn't grow on trees. You can bang your head on the floor ril it goes right through, but if you haven't got it you haven't got it.

'The other reason she prays is that every woman thinks she's the unhappiest person in the world, see? I'm a blunt man and I'U not keep anything from you. She comes of a poor family. Her father's a priest, so she's a daughter of the cloth as you might say. I ^^roed her when she was seventeen. They let her marry me chiefly because they had nothing to eat. They were hard up and times were bad and I at least had land and a farm, see what I mean? And then I was an officer when all's said and done and she was flattered to marry me, see? She cried on our wedding day and since then she's hardly stopped the whole twenty years—oh, she's a proper cry-baby, is our Lyubov. She sits and thinks all the time. And what does she ^^^ about, I ask you? What can a woman ^^^ about? Nothing. But then women aren't really human to my way of t^^^g.'

The solicitor sat up abruptly.

'I'm sorry, it's a bit close in here,' he said. 'I must go outside.'

Still talking about women, Zhmukhin drew the bolt in the ^^ and they both went out. As it happened a fuU moon was sailing through the sky over the farm, and the house and b^ra seemed whiter by moon- light than by day. There were also bright streaks of silver moonlight, crossing the grass between black shadows. Away to the right the steppe could be seen for miles, with stars softly glowing above it. AU was mysterious and infinitely remote, as though you were looking do^ into a deep abyss. But to the left heavy, pitch-black storm-clouds were stacked on top ofone another above the steppe, their edges lit by the moon, and they looked like snow-capped moimtains, dark forests, the sea. Lightning flashed, thunder faintly rumbled, and it seemed like a battle in the mountains....

Just outside the grounds was a smaU night owl. 'To sleep! To sleep!' it cried monotonously.

'What rime is it?' asked the visitor.

'Just after one.'

'Heavens, it won't be light for ages.'

They went back to the house and lay down again. They should have slept—you usually sleep so well just before rain—but the old man was hankering after solemn, portentous ideas. Just thinking was not enough, he wanted to meditate. And he meditated that he would soon die, and ought for the good of his soul to shake off the laziness that caused day after day and year after year to be engulfed un- noticed, leaving no trace. He should plan some heroic exploit, like going on foot to some far-distant place or giving up meat like this young fellow. Once again he pictured the time when people would not kil animals any more. He saw it clearly and distinctly as if he was actually there, but his confusion suddenly ret^rced, and all was blurred.

The storm passed over, but they were caught by some outlying clouds, and rain pattered lightly on the roof. Zhmukhin got up and looked iito the parlour, groaning from sheer old age and stretching himself. His guest was stiU awake, he saw.

'We had a colonel in the Caucasus,' he said, 'a vegetarian like you, see what I mean ? Hc didn't eat meat, never went hunting and wouldn't let his men fish. I see the point of course. Every animal should be free to enjoy life. But how can you let a pig go where it likes without keeping a eye on it, that's what I don't see ... ?'

The guest sat up, his pale, haggard face showing annoyance and fatigue. He was obviously suffering, and only his natural good m^rners prevented ^m from putting his annoyance into words.

'It's getting light,' he said mildly. 'Would you please let me have a horse now?'

'But why? Wait til it stops raining.'

'No, really, please,' begged the guest fearfully. 'I must go right now.'

He started quickly dressing.

By the time they brought the horse the sun was rising. It had just stopped raining, clouds raced past, there were more and more blue patches in the sky and down in the puddles the first rays of sunlight ^mdly glinted.

The solicitor took his brief-case and went through the hall to get ui the trap, while Mrs. Zhmukhin, tearful and pale—paler, seemingly, than the day before—gave him a careful, unb^^^g stare, looking as innocent as a little girl. Her dejected face showed how she envied his freedom—what joy it would be for her if she could escape from the place! And she obviously wanted to speak to him and must want his advice about the boys. She was so pathetic. Shc wasn't a wife, she wasn't the mistress of the house or even a servant, she was more of a dependant—an unwanted poor relation, a nobody.

Her husband made a great fuss ofseeing his guest off, ^^mg non- stop and constantly darting ahead of ^m, while she huddled, timid and apologetic, against a waU, waiting her chance to speak.

'Do come again.' clie old man kept saying. 'You're always welcome, see what I mean?'

The guest got quickly into the trap, clearly relieved, but looking scared as if he feared some last-minute hitch, but ilie trap lurched and squealed as on the day before and a pail tied to the back-board banged furiously.

The solicitor looked back at Zhmukhin wiili an odd expression. It scemed as if he, like ilie surveyor before him, felt ilie urge to call Zhmukhin a savage or some such name, but being too kind he held himself back and said nothing. However, in the gateway he could suddenly stand it no longer and raised h.imself slightly.

'You're a bore!' he yelled angrily.

He vanished through the gate.

Zhmukhin's sons were standing near the bam. The elder had a gun and the younger held a grey cockerel with a beautiful bright comb. The younger threw ilie cockerel up as hard as he could and die bird flew higher than ilie house and ^roed over in die air like a pigeon. The elder boy fi.red and the cockerel fell like a stone.

Greatly put out, baffled by his guest's odd, unexpected outcry, the old man slowly made his way indoors. He sat at a table, reflecting for a while on current intellectual trends, universal immorality, the telegraph, the telephone and the bicyclc—what use was all iliat stuff? He gradually calmed down, had a lcisurely breakfast, drank five glasses of tea and went to bed.

IN THE CART

They left town at half-past eight in the morning.

The road had dried out and there was a glorious, hot April sun, but snow stil lay in the ditches and among the trees. The long, dark, foul ^mter had only just ended and here, suddenly, was spring. It was so warm. The sleepy trees with their bare boughs basked in the breath of springtime and black flocks of birds flew over open country where vast pools lay like lakes. What joy, you felt, to disappear into the un- fathomable depths of that marvellous sky! But to Marya as she sat in the cart these things had nothing fresh or exciting to off^r. For thirteen years she had been a schoolmistress, and during those years she had gone into to-wn for her salary time without number. It might be spring, as now. It might be a rainy autunm evening or winter. What difference did it make? Al she ever wanted was to get it over with.

She seemed to have lived in these parts for so long—a hundred years or more—and felt as ifshe knew every stone and tree on the way from townwn to her school. Her whole life, past and present, was bound up with the place, and what did the future hold? The school, the road to townwn, the school, the road to town again, and that was al....

By now she had given up t^^^g of her life before she was a teacher and had forgotten about most of it. Once she had had a father and mother who lived in a big flat near the Red Gates in Moscow, but that period had only left a vague, blurred, dreamlike memory. Her father had died when she was ten, her mother soon after.

There was a brother, an army officer, and they had corresponded for a ^rne, but then her brother lost the habit of answering. Al she had left from those days was a snapshot of her mother and that had faded, as the schoolhouse was so damp—all you could see of Mother now was hair and eyebrows.

After a mile or two her driver, old Simon, turned round.

'They've nm in some official in townwn,' he said. 'Sent him away, they have. They say he helped some Germans in Moscow to kil Mayor Alekseyev.'

'Who told you?'

'Someone read it out from the newspaper at Ivan Ionov's in.'

Another long silence followed. Marya thought of her school and of the forthcoming examinations, for which she was entering four boys and one girl. She was just ^^^mg about these exa^mations when Squire Khanov passed her in his carriage and four—the Khanov who had examined at her school last year. He recognized her as he drew level and bowed.

'Good morning,' he said. 'On your way home?'

This Khanov, a man of about forty, with a wom face and a bored look, had begun to show his age, but was stiU handsome and attractive to women. He lived alone on his large estate. He had no job and it was said that he did nothing at home but stride about whistling or play chess with an old manservant. He also drank a lot, it was said. And true enough, even the papers that he had brought to last year's examinations had smelt of scent and spirits. He had been wearing new clothes and Marya had thought very attractive and felt rather shy sitting beside ^m. She was used to caUous, businesslike exa^mers, but this one had forgotten all his prayers and did not know what questions to ask. He was most polite and tactful and everyone got full marks.

'Well, I'm going to see Bakvist,' he went on, addressing Marya. 'But I'm told he may be away.'

They turned off the highway into a country lane, Khanov leading and Simon bringing up the rear. The four horses plodded down the lane, straining to haul the heavy carriage out of the mud, while Simon zig-zagged and made detours up hiU and down dale, often jumping off to help the horse.

Marya thought of the school and wondered how ^fficult the examination questions would be. She was annoyed with the rural council because she had not found anyone in the office the day before. What inefficiency! She had been on to them for the last two years to sack her caretaker, who was rude and idle and beat the children. But no one would listen. It was hard to catch the council chairman in his office, and even if you succeeded he only told you with tears in his eyes that he had not a moment to spare. The inspector visited the school only once in three years and was right out of his depth—he had been an excise officer before that and was only made inspector because he had friends in the right places. The education committee met very seldom, and then you could never find out where. The school manager was a peasant who could hardly write his name, and owned a —a

dull, uncouth fellow and a crony of the caretaker. So where on earth could you complaui ? Or find anything out. . . ?

'He really is a good-looking man,' she thought, with a glance at Khanov.

The track went from bad to worse.

They entered woods where no more detours were possible. There were deep ruts with swishing, gurgling water and prickly branches that lashed you in the facc.

'CaU this a road!' Khanov said with a laugh.

The schoolmistress stared at ^m.

Why was he fool enough to live round here? That's what she couldn't see. What use were his money, good looks and sophistication to in this dismal, filthy dump? He got nothing out of life! He was slowly jogging along the same ghastly track as Simon here and putting up with just the same discomforts. Why live here when you could live in St. Petersburg or abroad? He was rich, and it might have been thought worth his while to improve this foul track and spare himself aU the bother, and that look of despair on his coachman's face and Simon's. But he only laughed. He obviously didn't care—wasn't interested in any better life. He was kind, gentle, innocent. He didn't understand this rough life. He knew no more about it than he had about his prayers at the examinations. All he ever gave the school was terrestrial globes, yet he genuinely thought that ^^ made him a useful citizen and a leading light in popular education. A lot of use his globes were here !

'Hold tight, miss,' said Simon.

The cart gave a great lurch and nearly overturned. Something heavy crashed onto Marya's feet—her bundles of shopping. Then came a steep climb on clay with water rushing and roaring do^ winding ruts as ifit had gnawed into the track. What a place to drive through! The horses snorted. Khanov got do^ from his carriage and walked by the side of the track in his long overcoat. He was hot.

'CaU this a road!' he said with another laugh. 'At this rate we'll soon have no carriage left.'

'Well, why go out in such weather?' asked Simon sternly. 'Stay at home, can't you?'

'Home 's a bore, old fellow. I hate being cooped up there.'

He looked fit and keen enough beside old Simon, but there was a hint of something in the way he walked which showed that he was reaUy a feeble, poisoned creature well on the road to nM. And from the forest, sure enough, came a sudden whiff of spirits. Marya was horrified. She was sorry for the man, and could see no good reason why he should be so hopeless. It struck her that if she was his wife or sister she would very likely give her whole life to saving him.

'His wife?' 1-lc livcd alonc on his largc cstatc, thc way things ha\1 workcd out, whilc shc also livcil alonc—in her godforsaken villagc. llut could they bc friends and cijitals? The vcry idea—impossible, absurd! Such is life, that's what it comes down to. People's relationships have grown so complex, they make so little sense. They are too frightful to comcmplate—too depressing altogether.

'Why, oh why,' she thought, 'does God give these wcak, unhappy, useless people such good looks, delightful matmers and beautiful, melancholy eyes? Why are they so charming?'

'This is where we turn right,' said Khanov, gening back in his carriage. 'Goodbye and good luck.'

Once more she thought of pupils, of thc examinations, the caretaker and the education committee. Then she heard the departing carriage rumbling somewhere on her right, its noise borne on the wind—and these thoughts fused with others. She wanted to dream of beautiful eyes, love and happiness that was not to be....

To be a wife? It was cold in the mornings with the caretaker out and no one to light the stoves. Thc children began arriving at crack of dawn, bringing in snow and mud and making a noise. It was all so hideously uncomfortable. She had only a bed-sining-room in which she also did her cooking. She had headaches every day after school and after diimer she always had heartburn. She had to collect money from the children for ftrewood and for the caretaker and hand it to the manager—then practically go down on her kiees to that smug, insolem lout before he let her have the wood. Examinations, peasants, snowdrifts—they filled her dreams at night. The life had aged and coarsencd her—made her ugly, awkward, clumsy, as if her veins were fi.lled with lead. She was so scared of things. If the school manager or a local councillor came in, she would rise to her feet and did not dare sit down. And she called them 'sir'. No one found her attractive and life rolled wretchedly on without affection, sympathy or interesting friends. For her to fall in love, placed as she was, would be a disaster.

'Hold tight, miss!'

Another steep rise.. ..

She had become a teacher because she was hard up, not because she had any vocation for it. She never thought ofeducation as a calling, or as something of value. She always felt that examinations were the main thing in her job, not pupils or education, and anyway, what time had she to thiik of her calling or of the value of education? Teachers, badly paid doctors and their assistants do a tough enough job, yet arc so worricd about where their next meal is coming from— or about fuel, bad roads and illness—that they even miss the satisfaction of thinking that they are serving an ideal or working for the people. It is a hard, dull life and no one puts up with it for long except silent drudges like Marya. Vivacious, highly strung, sensitive souls may talk of their vocation and service to ideals, but they soon enough wilt and throw in their hand.

Simon tried to pick the driest and shortest route through fields or back yards, but at one place the vilagers would not let ^m pass, another place was priest's land and no thoroughfare, while somewhere else again Ivan Ionov had bought a plot from the squire and dug a ditch round it. They kept tu^Mg back.

They came to Lower Gorodishche. Near the in, in a place where the snow was spread with dung, stood carts loaded with oil of vitriol in carboys. The in was full of people, al waggoners, and smelt of vodka, tobacco and sheepskins. People were talking at the top of their voices and the door, which had a weight-and-puUey to keep it shut, kept slam^mg. In the off-licence next door there was an accor- dion playing, and it never let up for a second. Marya sat do^ and drank tea, while peasants at the next table—half stewed already, what with the tea they had had and the stuffy ale-house atmosphere—were s-^^mg vodka and beer.

Discordant voices rang out. 'Hey, Kuzma!' 'Eh?' 'Lord, save us!' 'That I can, Ivan, my boy!' 'Watch it, mate!'

A short, pock-marked peasant with a little black beard, who had been ^^^ for a long time, suddenly showed surprise at something and swore vilely.

Simon was sitting at the far end of the room. 'Hey, you! What do you mean by swearing!' he shouted angrily. 'Can't you see the young lady?'

'Young lady, eh ?' sneered someone in the otlier corner.

'Clumsy swine!'

'Sorry, I didn't mean no harm ...' said the little peasant sheepishly. 'I ^^ ^mding my o^ business, just as the young lady was minding hers.... Good morning to you, miss.'

'Good morning,' answered the teacher.

'And unco^rnonly obliged to you I am.'

Enjoying her tea, Marya went red in the face like the peasants while she brooded yet again on the firewood and the caretaker. ...

'Just a moment, mate,' came a voice from the next table. 'It's her that tcachcs at Vyazovyc ... we know her—and a nicc yoiing ladv she is too.'

'Oh, yes, she's not bad at all.'

The door kcpt banging as people came and went. Marya sat, still thinking the same old thoughts, while the accordion next door went on and on and on. On the floor had been patches ofsunlight. They had movcd to the counter, crawled up the wall and disappearcd altogether. So it must be past noon. The men at the next table made ready to go. Swaying slightly, the little peasant went up and shook hands with Marya. The others took their cue from him and also shook hands and then went out one after another. Nine times the door squeaked and slammed.

'Get ready, miss!' shouted Simon.

They drove off, but could still only move at walking pace.

'They built a school not long back here in Lower Gorodishche,' said Simon, turning round. 'What a swindle!'

'Why, what happened?'

'They say the chairman of the council pocketed a thousand, the manager another thousand, and the teacher got fi.ve hundred.'

'But the whole school only cost a thousand. You shouldn't tell such tales, old fellow. You're talking rubbish.'

'I wouldn't know.... I only got it from the others.'

But Simon clearly didn't believe the teacher. The peasants never did trust her, they always thought that she was paid too much—a cool twenty-one roubles a month where five would have done—and they thought that she hung on to most of what she collected from the children for fi.rewood and the caretaker. The manager thought like the peasants. He himself made a bit on the firewood and was also paid by the peasants for managing the school, ofwhich the authorities knew nothing.

The forest ended, thank God, and now it was all level going to Vyazovye. They wcre ncarly there—just the river to cross and the railway line—and that would be it.

'Hey! Where are you off to?' Marya asked Simon. 'Why didn't you go to the right across the bridge?'

'Eh? We can get across here. It ain't vcry deep.'

'Mind we don't drown the horse then.'

'Eh?'

'Look—there's Khanov crossing the bridge,' said Marya, spotting a carriagc and foiir far to the right. 'It is him, isn't it?'

'That it is. Bakvist must have been out. Pig-headcd fool, Lord help us, going all that way when this be two"mile ncarer.'

Thcy drove down to the river. In summer it was a shalow brook, easily forded, and by August it had usually dried up, but now the spring floods had made it a cold, muddy torrent about forty feet across. On the bank, right up to the water's edge, were fresh wheel tracks, so someone must have crossed here.

'Come on!' shouted Simon, angry and worried, tugging hard at the reins and flapping his elbows like wings. 'Gee up!'

The horse waded in up to its beUy and stopped, but then plunged on again, stra^mg every sinew, and Marya felt a cold shock on her feet.

She stood up. 'Come on,' she shouted. 'Gee up!'

They came out on the other bank.

'Gawd help us, what with one thing and another,' muttered Simon, putting the harness to rights. 'A proper botheration—'tis all the council's doing... .'

Marya's galoshes and boots were full of water, the bottom of her dress and coat and one sleeve were sopping wet—and worst of al, her sugar and flour were soaked. She could only throw up her hands in horror.

'Oh, Simon ...' she said. 'Simon, how could you ... ?'

The barrier was down at the level-crossing and an express was ready to leave the station. Marya stood by the crossing and waited for it to pass, trembling with cold in every limb. Vyazovye was in view—the school with its green roof and the church, its crosses ablaze in the evening sun. The station windows blazed too and the smoke from the engine was pink.

Everything seemed to be shivering with cold.

The train came past, its win^mdows ablaze like the church crosses—it hurt to look at them. On the small platform at the end of a first-class carriage stood a woman and Marya glanced at her. It was her mother! What a fantastic likeness! Her mother had the same glorious hair, exactly the same forehead and set of the head. Vividly, with striking clarity, for the first time in thirteen years, she pictured her mother and father, her brother, their Moscow flat, the fish-tank and goldfish—all down to the last detail. Suddenly she heard a piano playing, heard her father's voice and felt as she had felt then—young, pretty, well- dressed in a warm, light room, with her family round her. In a sudden surge ofjoy and happiness she clasped her head rapturously in her hands.

'Mother,' she cricd tcnderly, appcaluigly.

For some rcason shc burst into tears, at which momcnt Khanov drovc up with his coach and four. Seeing him, she imagined such happiness as has never been on earth. Shc smiled and nodded to him as to her friend and equal, fccling that the sky, the trees and al the windows wcrc aglow with her triumphant happiness. No, her fathcr and mother had not died, she had ncver been a schoolmistress. It had aU becn a strange dream, a long nightmarc, and now she had wokcn

^uP--..

'Get in, miss.'

Suddenly it aU vanished. The barrier slowly rose. Shivering, numb with cold, Marya got into the cart. The coach and four crossed the line, foUowed by Simon. The crossing-keeper raised his cap.

'Well, here we are. Vyazovye.'

NEW VILLA

I

A huge bridge was wider construction two miles from Obruchanovo village. From the village, which stood high on a steep bank, the trellised skeleton could be seen: a picturesque—indeed, a fantastic— sight in misty weather and on quiet winter days, when the thin iron struts and all the surrounding scaffolding were frost-covered. Engineer Kucherov, who was building the bridge—a stout, broad-shouldered, bearded man with a crumpled soft cap—sometimes drove through the village in a fast droshky or carriage. Sometimes the navvies employed on the bridge carne along on their days off—begged for money, jeered at the local women, occasionally absconded with something. That was exceptional, though. Usually the days passed as quietly and rnievent- fully as if no construction was in progress at all. Only in the evenings, when bonfires blazed near the bridge, was the navvies' singing borne faintly on the breeze. In daytime there was an occasional sad, metallic clanking.

Mrs. Kucherov, the engineer's wife, chanced to come over on a visit. Much taken with the river banks and the gorgeous view of the green valley with its hamlets, churches and cattle, she asked her husband to buy a small plot of land and build a villa. He did. They bought fifty acres, and on the high bank, in a meadow where once the village cows had strayed, they put up a handsome two-storey house with terrace, balconies, tower . .. and a spire which flew a flag on Swidays. After building it in about three months they planted large trees through the winter. Then, when spring carne with all the fresh greenery, the new garden already had its paths. A gardener and his two white-aproned auistants dug near the house, a fountain played and a globe made of looking-glass gleamed so fiercely that it hurt the eyes. The estate already had its name: New Villa.

One fine warm morning at the end ofMay two horses were brought to Obruchanovo for shoeing by the local blacksmith, Rodion Petrov. They carne from New Villa, they were snow-white, graceful, well-fed, and they bore a striking resemblance to each other. 'Like swans, they are,' said Rodion, awe-struck. His wife Stepanida, his children, his grand-children . .. all came out s.s.o.s.-ii

ofdoors toscc, and a crowd gradu.illy collected. The Lychkovs, father and son—both naturally beardless, both puffy-faced and hatlcu—came along. So did Kozov: a tall, scraggy old boy with a long, narrow beard, carrying a walking-stick. Hc kept winking sly winks and smiling sardonic, knowing smiles.

'They're white, but they'rc no good,' said he. 'Put mine on oats, and they'd bc just as sleek. I'd make 'em plough—whip 'em too.'

The coachman just gave him a look ofscorn and said nothing. Then, as die smithy furnace was heated up, the coachman talked and smoked cigarettes. The villagers learnt many details. His ^^ter and mistreu were rich. Before her marriage the mistress, Helen Kucherov, had been a poor governess in Moscow. She was kind, she was soft-hearted, she liked helping the poor. There was to be no ploughing or sowing on the new estatc, said he. They were just going to enjoy themselves— breathing fresh air, that was their sole aim in life.

When he had finished and started leading thc horses back home, a crowd ofurchins followed him. Dogs barked. Kozov watched him go, winking sarcastically.

'Think they o^ everything!' he jeered. 'They build a house, they keep horses—but they're the lowest ofthe low, believe you me. Think they're the lords of creation, do they?'

Kozov had somehow conccived an immediate loathing for thc new estate, for thosc white horses, for that sleek, handsome coachman. He was a lonely man, was Kozov, a widower. He led a dull life—couldn't work because of some illness: 'me rheumatics' he would call it, or 'the worms'. The money for his keep camc from a son who worked at a Kharkov confectioner's. He would stroll idly along the river bank or village from da^ to dusk. If he saw someone carting a log, say —or fishing—he would tell him that his wood was 'dry, rotten stuff', or that he would 'never catch anything on a day like this'. During droughts he would say that therc would be no rain before the frosts came, and when it did rain he would say that the crops would all rot, they were all ruined. And he would wink knowingly the while.

On the estate Bengal lights and rockets were set off in the evenings, and a boat with red lamps would sail past Obruchanovo. One moning the engincer's wife, Helen Kucherov, brought hcr little daughter to thc village in a yellow-wheeled trap drawn by a pair of dark bay ponics. Mother and daughter both wore broad-brimmed straw hats turned do^ over dieir ears.

This happcned at mucking-ont timc, and Blacksmith Rodion—a tal, scraggy, bare-headed, barefoot old man with a pitchfork over his shoulder—stood near his nasty, dirty cart, staring flabbergasted at those ponies. He had never seen such small horscs in his life ... that was written on his face.

'Look at 'er in the trap!' the whisper was heard on all sides. 'It's that there Kucherov woman.'

Scanning the huts quizzically, Helen Kucherov halted her horses near the poorest of all, where there were masses of children's heads—fair, dark, red—in the windows. Out ofthe hut ran Rodion's wife, Stepan- ida, a stout old girl, her kerchief slipping off her grey hair. She peered at the trap against the sun, smiling and fro^rong like a blind person.

'This is for your children, my good woman,' said Helen Kucherov. And gave her three roubles.

Suddenly bursting into tears, Stepanida bowed to the ground, while Rodion too flopped down, showing his broad, bro^ pate and almost catcling his wife in the side with his pitchfork. Helen Kucherov felt awkward and went home.

II

The Lychkovs, father and son, caught two cart-horses straying in their meadow, together with one pony and a broad-muzzled Aalhaus bull-calf. These they drove off to the village, helped by 'Ginger' Volodka—Blacksrnith Rodion's son. They called the village elder, they collected witnesses, they went to assess the damage.

'Very well, let 'em try it on!' Kozov winked. 'Just let 'em try, that's all. Let's see them engineers wriggle out of this! Think themselves above the law, do they? Very well, we'll send for the sergeant, make out a charge.'

'Make out a charge,' echoed Volodka.

'I ain't a-going to overlook it,' shouted the younger Lychkov. His voice sounded louder and louder, seeming to make lis beardless face bulge increasuigly. 'A fine to-do, this is! Ruin all the pasture, they will, if we let 'em! They ain't got no right to harm the common man. We ain't living in the dark ages.'

'No, that we ain't,' echoed Volodka.

'We've got on without a bridge so far,' said Lychkov Senior gloomily. 'We never asked for one, we don't need one and we won't 'ave one!'

'They ain't getting away with this, mates!'

'Just let 'em try it on!' winked Kozov. 'Let 'em squirm! Who do they diink they are?'

They turned back towards the village, and as they went Lychkov Junior pounded his chest with his fist, shouting, while Volodka also shouted, echoing his words. Meanwhile, in the village, a crowd had formed round the pedigree bull-calf and horses. The calf glowered in embarrassment, but suddenly dropped his head to the ground and ran, kicking up his back legs. Taking fright, Kozov swung lis stick and everyone laughed. Then they locked the animals up and waited.

That eveiing the engineer sent five roubles in compensation, where- upon both horses, pony and bull-calf returned home: unfed, unwatered, hanging their heads in guilt as if on their way to execution.

Having received the five roubles, the Lychkovs Senior and Junior, the village elder and Volodka crossed the river by boat, set off for Kryakovo village on the other side, where there was a pub, and spent a long time whooping it up. Their singing and young Lychkov's shouting were heard. Back at the village the women couldn't sleep all night for worrying. Nor could Rodion.

'A bad business,' he sighed, tossing from side to side. 'He'll have the law on 'em, will Squire, if he be vexed. They done him wrong, oh, that they have. A bad business.'

One day the men, Rodion included, went into their wood to decide who should reap what plot of land. On their way home they met the engineer. He wore a red calico shirt and high boots, he was followed by a setter with its long tongue stuck out.

'Good day, my lads,' said he.

The peasants stopped, doffed their caps.

'I've been wanting to talk to you for some time, lads,' he went on. 'The thing is, your cattle have been in my garden and woods every day since early spring. It's all been trampled up. Your pigs have dug up the meadow, they're ruining the vegetable plot, and I've lost all the saplings in my wood. I can't get on with your shepherds, they bite your head offifyou ask them anything. You trespau on my land every day, but I do nothing, I don't get you fined, I don't complain. Now you've taken my horses and bull—and my five roubles.

'Is it fair, is it ncighbourly?' he went on, his voice soft and pleading, his glance anything but stem. 'Is this how decent men behave? One of you cut do^ two young oaks in my wood a week ago. You've dug up the Yeresnevo road, and now I h.nve to go two miles out of my way. Why are you always injuring me? What harm have I done you?

For God's sake tell me. My wife and I have tried our level best to live in peace and harmony with you—we help the village as much as we can. My wife is a kind, warm-hearted woman, she doesn't refuse to help—she longs to be useful to you and your children. But you repay good with evil. You are unfair, my friends. Now, you just think it over, I beg you—think it over. We're treating you decently, so why can't you pay us hack in the same coin?'

He turned and walked off. The peasants stood a little longer, put their hats on, and left. Rodion—who misinterpreted everything, always putting his o-wn twist on things—gave a sigh.

'We'll have to pay, says he. Pay in coin, mates.'

They walked to the village in silence. At home Rodion said his prayers, took his boots off, and sat on the bench beside his wife. Stepanida and he always did sit side by side at home, and they always walked downwn the street side by side. They always ate, drank and slept together, and the more they aged the more they loved each other. It was hot and crowded in their hut, and there were children everywhere: on floor, window-ledges and stove.

Stepanida was still having babies despite her advanced years, and it was hard to tell which, in that huddle of children, were Rodion's and which Volodka's. Volodka's wife Lukerya—an ill-favoured young woman with bulging eyes and a beaky nose—was mixing dough in a tub. Her husband sat on the stove, feet dangling.

'On the road near Nikita's buckwheat, er ... the engineer and his dog,' began Rodion after resting and scratching his sides and elbows. 'We must pay, says he. In coin, he says. I dunno about no coins, but ten copecks a hut—that we should collect. We're treating Squire right badly, we are. 'Tis a shame '

'We've done without a bridge so far,' said Volodka, looking at no one. 'We don't want no bridge.'

'Oh, get away with you! 'Tis a government bridge.'

'We don't want none of it.'

'Who asked you? What's it got to do with you?'

' "Who asked you?" ' mimicked Volodka. 'We have nowhere to go, so what do we want with a bridge? We can cross by boat if we want.'

Someone outside banged the window so loudly that the whole hut seemed to shake.

'Volodka in?' said the voice ofLychkovJunior. 'Come out, Volodka. On our way!'

Volodka jumped down from the stove, looked for his cap.

'Don't go, Volodka,' Rodion said nervously. 'Don't go with them, son. You're such a silly boy, you're a proper baby, and they won't teach you no good. Don't go.'

'Don't go, son,' begged Stepanida, blinking on the brink of tears. 'They want to take you to the pub, I'll be bound.'

' "To the pub",' Volodka mimicked.

'You'll come back drunk again, you filthy hell-hound.' Lukerya gave him an angry look. 'You go! And may the vodka rot your guts, you blasted tailless wonder!'

'You hold your tongue!' Volodka shouted.

'I'm married to a half-wit, my life's been ruined—oh, I'm so alone and unhappy! You ginger-haired sot!' lamented Lukerya, wiping her face with a dough-<:overed hand. 'I wish I'd never set eyes on you.'

Volodka hit her on the ear and left.

III

Helen Kucherov and her little daughter went for a stroll and arrived in the village on foot. It happened to be a Sunday, and the women and girls were out and about in their bright dresses. Sitting side by side on their porch, Rodion and Stepanida gave Helen and her little girl a friendly bow and smile, while over a dozen children watched them from the windows, their faces expressing bafflement and curiosity. Whispering was heard.

'It's that there Kucherov woman.'

'Good morning,' said Helen and stopped.

'Well, how are you?' she asked after a pause.

'Can't complain, praise be,' answered Rodion rapidly. 'We manage, that's true enough.'

'Oh, it's no end ofa life, lady, ours is,' Stcpanida laughed. 'You can sec how poor we arc, love. We've fourteen in the family, and only two at work. It ain't much ofa trade, a smith's ain't. People bring their horses for shoeing, but there's no coal—we can't afford it. It's a terrible life, lady,' she went on with a laugh. ''Tis a proper botheration!'

Helen sat on the porch and put her arms broodily rowid her little girl. The child too looked as if she was subject to gloomy musings, and pensively played with the smart lace parasol which she had taken from her mother.

'We're so poor,' said Rodion. 'We have lots of trouble and no end

of work. And now God won't send us rain. It's a rotten life, that's plain enough.'

'You suffer in this life,' said Helen. 'But you'll be happy in the next.'

Not understanding, Rodion only coughed into his fist.

'The rich are well off, lady,' said Stepanida. 'Even in the next world they are, love. Your rich man pays for his church candles, he has his special services held. And he gives to the poor, does the rich man. But your peasant hasn't time to make the sign of the cross over his fore- head, even. He's poor as a church mouse—so how can he save his soul? It makes for a mort of sinning, does poverty. Oh, it's a dog's life, ours —sheer howling misery, I call it! We've a good word for no one, missus. And the goings-on round here, love—well, all I say is, God 'elp us! There's no happiness for us in this world or the next. The rich have took it all.'

She spoke good-humouredly, obviously long accustomed to retailing her miseries. Rodion smiled too. He liked feeling that his old woman was so clever, that she had the gift of the gab.

'The rich aren't really so well off, appearances are deceptive,' said Helen. 'Everyone has some trouble or other. Now, we—my husband and 1—don't live poorly, we do have means. But are we happy? I'm still young, but I have four children already. They're always ill. I'm ill too—I'm always seeing the doctor.'

'What's the matter with you then?' Rodion asked.

'It's a woman's complaint. I can't sleep, I'm plagued by headaches. Here I sit talking to you, but my head feels rotten, my body's weak all over, and I'd rather do the hardest labour dian be in such a state. I'm worried too. You fear for your children and your husband all the time. Every family has some trouble or other, and we have ours. I'm not really a lady. My grandfather was an ordinary peasant, and my father a Moscow tradesman—so he was lower class too. But my husband has rich, well-connected parents. They didn't want him to marry me, but he disobeyed them, quarrelled with them. And they still haven't forgiven us. This bothers my husband—upsets him, makes him edgy all the time. He loves his mother, loves her very much. So I'm upset too, my feelings are hurt.'

Near Rodion's hut men and women now stood around listening. Up came Kozov. He halted, shook his long narrow beard. Up came the Lychkovs, father and son.

'And another thing—you can't be happy and contented if you feel out of place,' went on Helen. 'Each of you has his plot of land—you all work, and you do know what you're working for. My husband builds bridges. Everyone has his own job, in other words. But I just drift, I have no bit ofland, I don't work, I feel out ofit. I'm telling you all this so you shan't judge from appearances. If a person has expensive clothes, and is well off, it doesn't follow that he's contented with his lot.'

She got up to go away, taking her daughter's hand.

'I do like being with you here,' she smiled: a feeble, timid smile which showed how unwell she really was-—and how young and pretty. She had .1 pale, thin face, dark brows and fair hair. The little girl was just likc her mother: thin, fair-haired, slender. They smelt of scent.

'I like the river, the woods, the village,' Helen went on. 'I could spend all my life here. I feel as ifl could get well here, and find a place in life. I want, I do so much want, to help you: to be useful and close to you. I know how poor you are, and what I don't know I can feel and sense by instinct. I'm ill and weak myself-perhaps it's too late for me, now, to change my life as I should like. Dut I do have children, and I shall try to educate them to know you and like you. I shall always impress on them that their lives belong lo you, not to themselves. But I beg most earnestly, I implore you—do trust us, do live in friendship with us. My husband is a good, kind nun. Don't upset and irritate him. He's so sensitive to every trifle. Take yesterday—your c.ittle got into our vegetable garden, and one of you broke the fence by our bee- hives. It's your attitude to us ... it drives my husband frantic.

'I beg you,' she pleaded, croaing her hands on her breast, 'do please be good neighbours, do let us live in peace. A bad truce is better than a good war, they say, and it's always neighbours you buy rather than a house. My husband is, I repe.it, a good, kind man. If all goes well we'll do our utmost, I promise you: we'll mend roads, we'll build a school for your children. You have my promise.'

'We thanks you kindly, lady—stands to reason,' said Lychkov Senior, looking at the ground. 'You're educated, like, and you know what's best. It's just that a rich villager—name of "Raven" Voronov— once said he'd build a school in Yeresnevo, like. He too kept saying he'd give this and he'd give that. But all he did was put up the frame- work and walk out. Them peasants had to build the roof and finish it off—a thousand roubles, it cost 'em. Raven didn't care, just stroked his beard—but it was kind of hard on the lads.'

'That was Mastcr Raven's doing,' winked Kozov. 'Now it's Mrs. Rook's turn!'

Laughter was heard.

'We don't need no school,' said Volodka gloomily. 'Our kids go to Petrovskoye. Let 'em! We don't want one.'

Hden suddenly felt nervous. She blenched, her face looked pinched, she flinched as at the touch of something coarse, and she went off without another word. She walked faster and faster without looking round.

'Lady,' called Rodion, going after her. 'Wait a moment, missus, I want to talk to you.'

He followed her, hatless. 'I've something to say, missus,' he told her quietly, as if begging for alms.

They left the vilage, and Helen stopped in the shadow of an old mountain-ash near somebody's cart.

'Don't you take offence, rniuus,' said Rodion. 'Don't you take no notice. Just have patience, put up with things for a couple of years. Stay on here and put up with it, it'll be all right. We're decent, quiet folk. The peasants are all right, I'll take my oath. Never mind Kozov and the Lychkovs, never mind my Volo^u—that boy's an idiot, listens to the first that speaks. The rest are peaceable, quiet folk. One or two of them wouldn't mind putting in a good word and standing up for you, like, but they ^'t. They have fedings and consciences, but they ain't got no tongues. Don't you take offence, youjust put up with it. What docs it ^tter?'

Helen looked pensively at the broad, calm river, tears streaming do^ her cheeks. Embarrassed by her weeping, Rodion almost wept himsdЈ

'Don't you take no notice,' he muttered. 'Put up with it for a couple of years. We can have the school and the roads—but not just yet. Suppose you wanted to sow crops on this hillock, say. You'd first have to grub up the roots and pick out all the stones. Then you'd plough it—for ever a-coming and a-going you'd be. Folk are the same, like, there's a lot of coming and going before you get things to rights.'

A crowd detached itself from Rodion's hut, and moved off up the road towards the mountain-ash. They began singing, an accordion struck up. They kept coming nearer and nearer.

'Do let's leave here, Mother,' said the little girl—pale, huddling up to her mother and trembling all over. 'Let's go away!'

'Where to?'

'Moscow. Let's go away, Mother.'

Thc child burst into tears. Rodion, his facc swcating profusely, was utterly taken aback. Hc removcd a cucumbcr from his pocket—a little, twistcd, crcscent-shaped cucumber covercd with rye crumbs—and thrust it into the girl's hands.

'Therc therc,' hc muttcred, frowiing sternly. 'Take thc cucumber and cat it, dear. Don't cry, now, or Mummy will smack you—she'll tell your fathcr of you. There, therc.'

They walked off. He followed, wanting to say somcthing kind and persuasivc. Then, sccing that both wcre too engrossed in their thoughts and grief to noticc him, hc stoppcd. Shielding his eyes from the sun, he watchcd them for a while until thcy vanished into their wood.

IV

The enginecr had cvidently grown irritable and niggling, now seeing in every triflc some act of robbery or other outrage. He kept his gates bolted cven in daytime, and at night two watchmen patrolled his garden beating boards. He hired no more labour from Obruchanovo. And then, as ill luck would have it, someone—peasant or navvy, no one knew which—took the new wheels off his cart and replaced thcm with old ones. A littlc later two bridles and a pair of tongs were taken, and murmurs were heard cven in the village. The Lychkovs' place and Volodka's ought to be searched, it was said. Dut then both tongs and bridlcs turned up under the engineer's garden hedge, where someone had thro^ them.

Going from the wood one day, a crowd of peasants met the engineer on the road again. He stopped without saying good day.

'I have asked you not to pick mushrooms in my park and near my place, but to leave them for my wife and children,' said he, looking angrily from one to thc other. 'Dut your girls come bcforc dawn, and we're lcft without any. Whatever we ask or don't ask, it makes no difference. Pleading, kindness, persuasion . . . they'rc all usclcss, I see.'

He fixed his indignant gaze on Rodion.

'My wifc and I have trcated you as human beings, as equals,' he wcnt on. 'Dut what about you? Oh—what's the usc of calking? We shall cnd up looking down on you, vcry likely—what else can we do?'

Making an effort to keep his temper, in case he said too much, he turned on his heel and marched off.

Rodion went home, prayed, took his boots off, sat on his bench beside his wife.

'Aye,' said he when he was rested. 'We're walking along just now, and there's Squire Kucherov coming our way. Aye! He saw them girls at dawnwn. Why, says he, don't they pick some mushrooms for my wife and children? Then he looks at me. "Me and the wife, we're a-going to look a/ter you," says he. I want to fall downwn at his feet, but I don't make so bold. God save him, Lord bless him '

Stepanida croued herselfand sighed.

'Squire and his lady are so nice and kind, like,' Rodion went on. ' "We shall look after you"—he promises me that before them all. In our old age, er—. Not a bad thing, either—. I'd always remember them in my prayers. Holy Mother, bless him '

The Fourteenth of September—the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross—was the local church festival. After going over the river in the mo^rng, Lychkov Senior and Lychkov Junior came back towards afternoon They lurched about the village for a while, singing

and swapping obscenities, they had a fight, and they went up to the manor to complain. First Lychkov Senior entered the grounds carrying a long aspen stick. He halted indecisively, doffed his cap.

'What do you want?' shouted the engineer, who happened to be having tea on the terrace with his family.

'Begging your pardon, Squire,' began Lychkov, bursting into tears. 'Have mercy on me, sir—don't let me downwn. My son'll be the death of me. Ruined me, he has. He's always picking on me, sir '

In came Lychkov Junior, hatless, also carrying a stick. He paused, he fixed a drunken, mindless stare on the terrace.

'It's not my job to deal with you,' said the engineer. 'Go and see the police, go to the magistrate.'

'I've been everywhere, I've made me applications,' said Lychkov Senior, sobbing. 'Where can I t^n now? He can murder me now, I suppose. Do anything he likes, can he? And to his father? His father?'

He raised his stick and hit his son on the head. Then Junior raised his stick and struck the old man straight on his bald pate so hard that the stick actually rebounded. Without so much as a wince, Lychkov pere again hit Junior, again on the head. They just stood there clouting each other on the head—it looked more like some game than a fight. Massing beyond the gates, village men and women stared silently into the yard, all looking very serious. They had come to offer their holiday greetings, but when they saw the Lychkovs they were too ashamed to go in.

Next mo^rng Helen left for Moscow with her children, and rumour had it that the engineer had put his house up for sale.

v

The bridge has long been a familiar sight—it is hard, now, to imagine this bit of river without its bridge. The heaps of building rubble have long been covered with grau, the navvies are a thing of the past, and instead of their shanties the noise of a passing train is heard almost hourly.

New Villa was sold long ago. It belongs, now, to a civil servant who brings his family over on his days off, has tea on his terrace and drives back to townwn. He wears a cockade on his cap, he talks and coughs like a bureaucrat of consequence, whereas in fact he's very much of a junior. When the villagers bow to him he makes no reply.

Everyone in Obruchanovo has aged. Kozov has died, Rodion has even more children in his hut, Volodka has grownwn a long ginger beard. They are just as poor as ever.

Early one spring the Obruchanovites are sav.ing wood near the station. See them going home after work: walking slowly, in single file. The wide saws sway on their shoulders, reflecting sunlight. Nightingales sing in the bushes on the river's bank, larks trill in the sky. At New Villa all is quiet, not a soul is to be seen—nothing but golden pigeons ... golden because they are flying in the siunshine high above the house. Everyone—Rodion, both Lychkovs, Volodka— remembers white horses, little ponies, fireworks, lamp-lit boat. They remember the engineer's wife, so handsome and elegant, coming to tie viUage, speaking to them so kindly. Yet none ofit might ever have happened, it is all like a dream or legend.

They trudge along wearily, pensively.

We're decent, quiet, reasoruble, god-fearing folk in the village, they reflect. Helen Kucherov had been a quiet, kind, gentle person t^^ you couldn't help liking her, poor thing. So why had they been on such bad terms, why had they parted as enemies? What was this mist which veiled everything ofreal importance, while disclosing only such trifles as trespau, bridles, tongs? Such nonsense it all seems when you remember it now! How is it that they can get on with the new ownwner when they were on such bad terms with the engineer?

Knowing no answer to these questions, they remain silent. Only Volodka mutters something. 'What's that?' asks Rodion.

'We've managed without a bridge,' says Volodka gloomily. 'We never asked for no bridge and we don't need none.'

No one answers. They trudge on silently, heads bowed.

ON OFFICIAL BUSINESS

An acting coroner and a country doctor were on their way to hold an inquest in the village of Symya when they were overtaken by a snowstorm. For a while they went round in circles, and instead of tu^^g up (as intended) at noon they did not arrive until evening, when it was dark. They were to stay the night in a hut, the rural district council 'offices'. Now, it chanced that these same 'offices' housed the corpse: that of the council's ins^^ce representative Lesnitsky, who had reached Syrnya three days earlier, settled do^ in the hut, ordered a samovar and shot himself much to everyone's surprise. The strange ^^mer of his end—over that ^movar, after he had spread his food out on the table—had given rise to widespread suspicions of murder. An inquest there must be.

Doctor and coroner shook the snow off in the passage, stamping their feet, while the elderly village constable, Eli Loshadin, stood near them holding a light: a tin lamp. There was a stink ofparaffin.

'Who are you, my man?' asked the doctor.

'Conshtible,' a^^ered the constable. That was how he signed his name in the post-office: conshtible.

'And where are the witneses?'

'Gone for their tea, sir, I reckon.'

On the right was the parlour, or 'reception'—for persons of genteel rank—and on the left was the room for the vulgar, with its big stove and its shelf for sleeping on. Doctor and coroner, followed by the constable with the lamp above his head, went into 'reception'. Here, on the floor close to the table legs, a long, white-shrouded body lay stock still. Besides that white covering the dim lamp-light clearly showed some new rubber galoshes. It was all very eerie and nasty: the dark walls, the silence, those galoshes, the stillness ofthe corpse. On the table was the samovar, long cold, and around it were certain packets— the food, pres^ably.

'Shooting himself on council property—very tactless, that,' said the doctor. 'If he wanted to put a bullet through his brains he might have done it at home in some shed or other.'

Just as he was—in fur cap, fur coat, felt boots—he lowered himself on to the bench. His companion the coroner sat opposite.

'They're so selfish, these hysterical neurotics,' the doctor went on sadly. 'When a neurotic sleeps in the same room as you, he'll rustle a newspaper. When you dine together he'll start a row with his wifc without minding you. And when he fancies shooting himself he does it like this: in a village, on official premises, just to crcate as much trouble as possible. No matter where they are they think only of Number One, these birds do—oh, they're a selfish lot. That's why old folk so dislike what they call this "nervous" age.'

'Old folk dislike so many things,' yawned the coroner. 'Why don't you tell the older generation about the difference between suicides as they used to be and as they are today? In thc old days your gentleman, s^^lled, would shoot himself because he'd embczzled public money, but your present-day suicide does it because he's fed up with life and depreaed. Which is better?'

'The fed-up-and-depressed brigade. Still, he didn't have to shoot himself on council property, now, did he?'

'Oh it's real vexing—more than flesh and blood can stand,' said the constable. 'The peasants are very upset, sir, they haven't slept these three nights. Their kids are crying. Their cows need milking, but the women are scared to go to the shed—afraid they'll see the gent's ghost in the dark. They'rc just silly women, I know, but there's some of the men scared too. They won't pass this hut on their own of an evening, they all troop by in a bunch. Them witnesses are the same.'

Middle-aged, dark-bearded, bespectacled Dr. Starchenko and Coroner Lyzhin—fair-haired, quite young, having taken his degree only two years previously and looking more like a student than an official—sat deep in silent thought. They were annoyed at arriving late. Now they had to wait till morning and spend the night here, but it wasn't even six o'clock yet, and they were faced with a long evening followed by a long, dark night, boredom, uncomfortable sleeping arrangements, cockroaches and the cold of early morning. Harking to the blizzard howling in chimney and loft, both thought how far this was from the life wlich they would have chosen, and of which they had once dreamed. How little they resembled their contemporaries who were now strolling do-wn brightly-lit townwn streets not noticing the bad weather, who were getting ready for the theatre or sicting over books in their studies. What they would have given, now, just to stroll along the Nevsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg or downwn Moscow's Petrovka Street, to listen to decent singing, to spend an hour or so in a restaurant!

The blizzard whined and droned in the loft, there was a furious slamming outside: the office signboard, no doubt.

'I don't know about you, but I don't want to spend the night here. Starchenko stood up. 'It's not ax yet, it's too early for bed, so I'm off. There's a von Taunitz lives near by, only a couple of miles from I'll drive over for the evening. Constable, go and tell our driver not to take the horses out.

'Now, what about you?' he asked Lyzhin.

'I don't know. I'll go to sleep, I suppose.'

The doctor wrapped his fur coat round him and went out. He was heard talking to the driver. Sleigh-bellsjingled on cold horses. He drove off.

'It ain't right for you to sleep here, ^iter,' said the constable. 'You go in the other room. It ain't clean, but thatwon't ^tter for one night. I'll just get a samovar from the caretaker and put it on. Then I'll nuke a pile of this here hay for you, sir, and you have a nice sleep.'

A little later the coroner was sitting in the other room dri^mg tea while Constable Loshadin stood by the door talking. He was an old man: t^ned sixty, short, very ^rn, hunched, pale, with a naive smile and watery eyes. And he was for ever smacking his lips as if sucking sweets. He wore a short sheepskin coat and felt boots, he always held a stick. He was evidently touched by the coroner's youth, which must be why he spoke to him in this familiar way.

'Old Theodore, the gaffer on the parish council ... he told me to report when the police inspector or the coroner arived,' he said. 'Oh well, I suppose I must be on my way. It's nearly three miles to hU place, there's a blizzard and there's drifts. Proper awful it is—1 won't get there before midnight, belike. Hark at that howling!'

'I don't need your gaffer,' said Lyzhin. 'There's nothing for him to do here.'

He looked at the old man inquisitively. 'I , old fellow, how long have you been constable round here?'

'How long? Why, thirty year, it must be. Five years after the serfs were freed I started the job, so you can reckon it yourselЈ Since then I've been at it every day. Ochers have their holidays, but I never have no day off. It may be Easter over there, with church bells ringing and Christ getting Himself resurrected, but I'm doing me rounds with me little bag. I go to the accounts department, the post-office, the police inspector's place. I visit the magistrate, the tax man, the to-wn hall, the ladies and gentlemen, the peasants and all other god-fearing Russian folks. I carry parcels, notices, tax papers, letters, all sorts of forms, registers. These days, my dear good sir, there's all these form things— red, white, yellow—what you write fi.gures on. Every squire, parson and rich villager must write down a dozen times a year what he's so-wn and reaped, how many bushels or hundredweight of rye he has, how much oats and hay—and also about the weather, different insects and that. They put do^ what they please, of course—it's only a form— but it's me as has to go round handing out them bits of paper and then go round again collecting them. Now, take this dead gentleman here. There ain't no call to cut his guts out—there's no point, as you know yourself, it's only dirtying your hands for nothing. But you've been put to this trouble—you've come out here—because of them forms, sir. It can't be helped. Thirty year I've been traipsing round with forms. Summer's all right, it's warm and dry—but in winter or autu^ it's a nuisance. I've kno^ times when I near dro^ed and froze, there's nothing as hasn't happened to me. There was that time when some villains stole me bag in a wood and beat me up. And I've been had up in court '

'What ever for?'

'Fraud.'

'What do you mean, fraud?'

'Well, what happened is, our clerk—Khrisanf Grigoryev—sells a contractor some boards as weren't his ... cheats him, like. I'm there when it's going on, and they send me out to the pub for some vodka. Well, the clerk doesn't cut me in—never even offers me a gla^—but seeing as I'm poor and don't look reliable, seeing I'm kind of no good, like, they takes us both to court. He goes to prison, but I'm let off on all counts, thank God. They read out one of them bits of paper at the trial, and they're all wearing uniform—in court, that is. Now, you take it from me, sir, my kind of work ... for someone as ain't used to it, it's hell on earth, God help me, but it ain't nothing to the likes of us. It's when you're not doing your rounds that your feet ache! And it's worse for us indoors. Back at the parish offices it's make up the clerk's stove, fetch the clerk's water, clean the clerk's boots.'

'What wages do you get?' Lyzhin asked.

'Eighty-four rouble a year.'

'But you must make a bit on the side, surely?'

'Bit on the side? No fear! Gentlefolk don't tip much these days. They're hard-hearted nowadays, arc gentlefolk—proper touchy they are. Bring 'em a form and they take it amiss. Doff your hat to 'em, and they take that amiss. "You didn't use the proper entrance," thcy say. "You're a dr^^ard," they say. "You stink ofonion, you oaf, you son of a bitch." There's some kind ones ofcourse, but what good are they? They only laugh at you, call you names. Take that Mr. Altukhin, now. He's kind and he looks sober, like, he has his hcad screwed on. But when he sees you he starts shouting things he don't even understand himself. He gives me a nickname, er '

The constable pronounced a word, but so quietly that it made no sense.

'What?' asked Lyzhin. 'Say it again.'

'Mr. Administrator,' the constable repeated aloud. 'He's been calling me that for a long time, about six years. "Hallo there, Mr. Administrator.'' But it's al right, I don't mind—let 'im! And a lady will sometimes send you out a glau of vodka and a bit of pie—so you drink her health, like. The peasants give most. He's more warm- hearted, your peasant is, he fears God. He'll give you a bit of bread, a sup of cabbage stew, or a glass ofsomething. Or the gaffers give you tea in the pub. Like now, say—them wimesses have gone for their tea. "You stay and keep watch, Loshadin," they tell me. And they give me a copeck each. They're scared beca^ they ain't used to these things. And yesterday they gave me fifteen copecks and a glass of tea.'

'And you—aren't you afraid?'

'I am that, mister, but it's all part of the job, ain't it? That's service life for you. Last year I was taking a prisoner to to^, when he suddenly starts beating me up—he doesn't half lam into me! There's open country and forests all around, no refuge anywhere. Now, take this business here. I remember Mr. Lesnitsky when he was only so high, I knew his father and his mum. I come from Nedoshchotovo village, and they—the Lesnitsky family—live half a mile away ... less, in fact, their land joins ours. Now, old Mr. Lesnitsky had an unmarried sister, a god-fearing, kind-hearted soul—Lord, remember Thy servant Julia, may her name live for ever! She never married, and when she was dying she split her property, leaving the monastery two hundred and fifty acres, and giving us—Nedoshchotovo village— five hundred to remember her by. But they do say as how the old squire her brother hid that paper—burnt it in his stove, he did, and took all the land himself. He's doing himself a good ^m, thinks he. But that ain't so, mate. You can't live by injustice, brother, not on this earth you can't. And the old squire didn't go to confession for twenty year, he turned against the church, like, and he died unrepentant. Burst himself hc did—he wasn't half fat. Right along his wholc lcngth he burst. Then they take cverything away from the young mastcr here— name ofSeryozha—to pay them debts. They take thc lot. Wcll, sceing he hasn't much book-learning—or sensc, either—his uncle, who's Council Chairman, thinks he'll take him on as insurance man. "Let Seryozha try it," says he. "It's easy enough, is the insurance." But the young master's proud, he is. He wants something with a bit more scope too, a bit more stylish, a bit morc free and easy. Traipsing round the county in some broken-down cart talking to peasants ... it's rather a come-down. When he's on his rounds hc always has his eyes fixed on the ground. He don't say nothing. "Mr. Scryozha !" you can shout right into his ear, and he'll just look round with an "Eh?" And he'll C.x his eycs on thc ground again. And now he's done himself in, see? It's awkward, sir—it ain't right. The things that happen ... you can't make head nor tail of them, God help us. Say your father was rich, but you're poor—well, it's real hard on you, true enough, but you must put up with it. I once lived well myself, sir, I've kept my two horses, my three cows, my twenty head ofsheep. But a time camc when I was left with only me little bag—even that wasn't mine but the government's. And now I've got what you might call the rottenest house in our village. Fell off me perch, I did—came down with a bump: it was king of the castle one day and dirty rascal the next!'

'What m:ide you so poor?' the coroner asked.

'My sons don't half knock back the vodka. The amount they shift . . . ifl told you, you'd never believe it.'

Lyzhin realized as he listened that he himself would bc b:ick in Moscow sooner or later, whereas this old boy would be stuck here doing his rounds for ever. How many more of them would he meet in life ... these bedraggled, unkempt, 'no good' old men in whose consciousness the concept of thc fifteen-copeck picce was somehow indissolubly fused with that of their glass of tea and a profound faith that honesty is the only possible policy in life? Then he grew tired of listening and told the old man to bring hay for his bedding. Though there was an iron bedstead, with pillow and blankct, in 'reception', and though it could havc been brought in, the corpse—the man who had perhaps sat on that bed before he died—had lain alongside for nearly three days. To sleep in it now would be wipleasant.

'Only half-past seven, how awful!' thought Lyzhin, looking at his watch.'

He was not sleepy, but having nothing clse to do he lay down and pulled a rug over himself—just to pass the time. Loshadin cleared away the tea things, popping in and out several times, smacking his lips, sighing, fidgeting near thc table. He took his lamp and went out in the end. Looking at that long grey hair and bent body from behind, Lyzhin thought that the old man was just like a wizard in an opera.

It was dark. There must have been a moon bclind the clouds because the windows and the snow on their frames could be so clearly seen. The blizzard howled and howled.

'Oh lord, lord, lord—' moaned a woman in the loft. Or so it seemed.

Then something struck the outside wall with a great thudding crash.

The coroner pricked up his ears. That was no woman but the howling wind. Feeling chilly, he put his fur coat over the rug, reflecting as he warmed up on all this stuff: blizzard, hut, old man;-corpse next door. What a far cry, all this, from the life of his dreams—how alien, how petty, how dull! If the man had killed himself in Moscow or those parts, if the coroner had had to hold that inquest, how interesting and important it would all have been. He irnght even have been scared to sleep in thc next room to a corpse. Here, though, more than six hundred miles from Moscow, all these things appeared in different guise. This wasn't life, these weren't people—they were just 'things on forms' (as Loshadin would put it). None of this would leave the faintest trace in the memory, it would be forgotten as soon as Lyzhin left Syrnya. His country—real Russia—was Moscow and St. Peters- burg. This place was just a provincial outpost. When you dream of making a stir, becoming popular—being an ace investigator, say, prosecuting at the assizes, making a splash socially—you're bound to think of Moscow. Moscow ... that's where the action is! Whereas hete you want nothing, you easily come to terms with your own insignificance, and you expect only one thing oflife:just let it hurry up and go away. Borne in imagination along Moscow streets, Lyzhin called at friends' houses, met relatives and colleagues. His heart leapt for joy to think that he was only twenty-six—and if he escaped from here and reached Moscow in fi.ve or ten years it still wouldn't be too late, thcre would still be a whole life ahead of him. Sinking into unconsciousness, his thoughts now more and more confused, he imagined the long corridors of the Moscow court-house, himselfgiving a speech, his sisters, and an orchcstra which was droning away for some reason.

And again he heard the same howling, again the same thudding crashes.

Then he suddenly remembered talking to a cashier once at the council offices, when a certain thin, pale, dark-eyed, black-haired individual had approached the counter. He had that unpleasant look about the eyes which you see in people who have slept too long after lunch—it spoilt his subtle, intelligent profile. He wore jack-boots which didn't suit him: they looked too rough. The cashier had introduced him as 'our insurance man'.

So that was who Lesnitsky had been—the very same, Lyzhin now reckoned. He remembered Lesnitsky's quiet voice, pictured his walk . . . and seemed to hear someone walking near him now: someone who walked just like Lesnitsky.

Suddenly he panicked, his head went cold.

'Who's there?' he asked in alarm.

'The conshtible.'

'What do you want?'

'It's just a question, sir. You saidjust now you didn't need the gaffer here, but I'm afraid he might get vexed, like. He told me to fetch him, so hadn't I better?'

'Oh, bother you,' said Lyzhin, testily, covering himself up again. 'I'm fed up with you.'

'He might get vexed, like. I'll be on my way, sir, and you make yourself at home here.'

Loshadin left. There was coughing and murmuring in the passage— the wime»es must be back.

'We'll let those poor fellows off early tomorrow,' thought the coroner. 'We'll start the inquest at daybreak.'

Then, just as he was losing consciousness, more footsteps—not timid, these, but swift and noisy—were heard. A door slammed, there were voices, a match was struck.

'Asleep, eh?' rapped Dr. Starchenko crossly, lighting match after match. He was completely covered with snow and brought a chill air in with him. 'Asleep, eh? Get up, we're going to von Taunitz's, he's sent his own horses for you. Come on, you'll at least get your supper and a decent sleep. I've come for you myself, you see. The horses are splendid, and we'll make it in twenty minutes.'

'What time is it?'

'A quarter past ten.'

Sleepy and disgruntled, Lyzhin donned boots, coat, cap and hood, and went out with the doctor. Though the cold was not intense, a piercing gale blew, driving clouds of snow downwn the road before it— seenungly in panic-stricken rout. There were already deep snowdrifts by fences and doorways. Doctor and coroner got into the sledge, and a white driver bent over them to button up the cover. They were boch hot.

'We're off!'

Off they drove through the village. The coroner idly watched che trace-horse's legs working, and thought of Pushkin's 'He clove the snow in powdered furrows'. There were lights in all the huts, as on the eve of a major festival: the villagers were too scared of the corpse to go to bed. Bored, no doubt, by his wait outside the hut—brooding, too, on the dead body—their driver preserved a sullen silence.

'When Taunitz's people realized you were staying overnight in that hut,' said Scarchenko, 'they all went on ac me for not bringing you along.'

On a bend at che end of the village the driver suddenly yelled at the top of his voice chat someone should 'get out of che way!' They glimpsed a figure knee-deep in snow: someone who had stepped off the road and was watching the sledge with its three horses. The coroner saw a crook, a beard, a slung satchel. It was Loshadin, ic struck him, a Loshadin who was actually smiling! Ic was just a glimpse and then he vanished.

The road first skirted a wood, then ran downwn a broad forest ride. They glimpsed old pines, young birches and call, gnarled young oaks standing alone in clearings where timber had recentlv been felled, but soon the air was aU a-blur with snow flurries. The driver claimed to see trees, but the coroner saw oidy the trace-horse. The wind blew against their backs.

Suddenly the horses halted.

'What is it this time?' asked Starchenko crossly.

The driver silently climbed off his box and ran round the sledge, digging in his heels. He described ever wider circles further and further from the sledge, and seemed to be dancing. At last he came back and tumed right.

'Missed the road, did you, my man?' asked Starchenko.

'We're all right '

Here was some village without a single light. Then came more woods, more fields, they lost the road again, che driver climbed off the box and danced again. The sledge careered down a dark avenue, flying rapidly on while the heated trace-horse kicked into the front of the bodywork. Here the trees gave a hollow roar. It was terrifying, pitch black—as if they were hurtling into an abyss. Then, suddenly, the bright light ofa drive and windows struck their eyes, a welcoming bark rang out, there were voices.

They lwd arrived.

As they took off their coats and boots in the hall, someone was playing the waltz 'Un petit verre de Cliquot' on a piano upstairs, and the stamp of children's feet was heard. Warm air suddenly breathed on the travellers the scent of rooms in an old manor where life is always so snug, clean and comfortablc, never mind the weather out- side.

'Capital, capital!' said von Taunitz, a fat man with side-whiskers and an unbelievably broad neck, as he shook the coroner's hand. 'Now do come in—delighted to meet you. After all, we're colleagues in a way, you and I. I was deputy prosecutor once, but not for long—only two years. I carne here to run this place, and I've grownwn old here. I'm an old fogy, in fact.

'Do come in,' he went on, obviously trying not to speak too loud, and took the guests upstairs. 'I have no wife. She died, but here are my daughters. May I introduce you?'

He turned round. 'Tell Ignaitius to bring the sledge round for eight o'clock tomorrow,' he shouted downstairs in a voice ofthunder.

His four daughters were in the drawing-room: pretty young girls, all in grey dresses, all with the same hair style. There was an attractive young cousin too, with her children. Having met them already, Starchenko at once asked them to sing something, and two of the young ladies assured him at length that they couldn't sing and had no music. Then the cousin sat down at the piano and they rendered a quavering duet from The Queen of Spades. 'Un petit verre de Cliquot' was played again, while the children skipped and beat time with their feet. Starchenko pranced a bit too, and everyone laughed.

Then the children said good night and went to bed. The coroner laughed, danced a quadrille, flirted, and wondered ifhe was dreaiing. The peasants' quarters in the council hut, the hay pile in the corner, the rustle of cockroaches, the revoltingly mean appointments, the witnesses' voices, the wind, the snowstorm, the danger oflosing one's way—then, suddenly, these superb, brightly-lit roois, piano-playing, lovely girls, curly-haired children and gay, happy laughter! The transformation seemed magical. And for it to be accomplished within a couple ofmiles or so, a single hour . . . that seemed incredible. Dismal thoughts marred his enjoyment. This wasn't life around him, he mused, it was only scraps of life—mere fragments. You could draw no conclusions, things were all so arbitrary. He even felt sorry for these girls who lived, who would end their lives, out here in this provincial dump, far from the sort of cultured setting where nothing is arbitrary, where evcrything makes sense and conforms with its ov.n laws—and where, for instance, every suicide is intelligible, where one can explain why it happened, and what part it plays in the general scheme ofthings. Ifhe couldn't make sense ofthe life around him in this backwater, ifhe couldn't even see it—then there couldn't be any life round here, he supposed.

Conversation at supper turned to Lesnitsky.

'He left a wife and child,' said Starchenko. 'Thcseneuroticsandother mentalJy unstable persons ... I wouldn't let them marry, I'd deny them the right and opportunity to reproduce their kind. It's a crime to bring mentally disturbed children into the world.'

'Poor young fellow,' von Taunitz sighed quietly, shaking his head. 'What brooding, what agony one must suffer before fmally venturing to take one's life—a young life. It can happen in any family, such a disaster. It's terrible, it's hard to endure, it's unbearable '

The girls all listened silently, with grave faces, looking at their father. Lyzhin felt that he was expected to comment too, but all he could think ofwas that, yes, suicides were an 'undesirable phenomenon'.

He slept in a warm room on a soft bed with a quilt above him and a finely woven fresh sheet beneath, but somehow failed to appreciate these amenities—perhaps because the doctor and von Taunitz kept up a long conversation next door while the storm was making just as big a racket above the ceiJing and in the stove as it had back in the hut. It was that same old droning, piteous whine.

Taunitz's wife had died two years before. He still hadn't resigned himself to the fact, and kept mentioning her no matter what he was talking about. There was nothing of the lawyer about him any longer.

'Could I ever be reduced to such a state?' wondered Lyzhin as he fell asleep, hearing the other's subdued and bereaved-sowiding voice through the wall.

The coroner slept badly. He was hot and uncoi^ortable. In his sleep he seemed not to be in Taunitz's house, or in a soft clean bed—but still back in the hut on the hay, listening to the wimesscs' muffied voices. He felt as if Lesnitsky was near: about fifteen paces away. In his dreams he once more remembered the msurance man—black- haired, pale, in dusty boots—approaching the cashier's counter. ('This is our insurance man.') Then he imagined Lesnitsky and Constable Loshadin walking side by side through the snow-fields, supporting each other. The blizzard whirled above them, the wind blew at their backs, while they went on their way quietly singing that they were 'marching along, marching along'.

The old man looked like an operatic wizard, and both were singing as though on stage.

'We're marching, marching along. You're warm, you have light and comfort, but we are marching into the freezing cold and blizzard through the deep snow. We know no peace, no joy. We bear all the burdens of this life, our own and yours.

'We are marching, marching along,' they droned.

Lyzhin woke and sat up in bed. What a confused, evil dream! Why had he dreamt of the insiirance man and the constable together? What noisense! But while Lyzhin's heart throbbed, while he sat up in bed clutching his head in his hands, it occurred to him that the insurance man and the constable really did have something in common. Had they not indeed been marching along through life side by side, clinging to each other? There was some link—invisible, but significant and essential—between the two, between them and Taunitz, even . .. between all men. Nothing in this life, even in the remotest backwater, is arbitrary, everything is imbued by a single common idea, everything has but one spirit, one purpose. Thinking and reasoning are not enough to furnish insights into these things. Very likely one also needs the gift of penetrating life's essence—a gift which has obviously not been granted to everyone. The miserable, broken-down, suicidal 'neurotic' {the doctor's word for him), the old peasant who had spent every day of his life wandering from one person to another ... only to someone who also finds his own existence arbitrary are these arbitrary fragments of life. To him who sees and understands his own life as part of the common whole these things are all part of a single miraculous and rational organism. Thus did Lyzhin brood, such was his own long-

He lay down, began dozing off Then, suddenly, they were walking along together again.

'We're marching, marching along,' they sang. 'We take upon ourselves all the hardest and bitterest clements in life. We leave you the easy, enjoyable things, and so you can sit at your supper table coldly and sensibly discussing why we suffer and perish, why we are less healthy and happy than you.'

The burden of their song had occurred to him before, but as an idea somehow masked by other ideas. It had flickered timidly like a distant light in foggy weather. This suicide, this village tragedy ... they lay heavy on his conscience, he felt. To resign oneself to the fact that these people, so submissive to their fate, have taken on the burden of everything most grim and black in life . . . how horrible! To resign oneself to that while yet desiring a bright, lively life for oneself amid happy, contented people, and while yea^^g constantly for such a life ... this was to desire yet more suicides among those crushed by toils and tribulations, among the weak and the outcast: among those very people who may be the subject of the occasional annoyed or sardonic mention over the supper-table . .. yet without anyone ever going to their help.

Once again he heard their 'marching, marching along', and he felt as if someone was banging his temples with a hammer.

Next morning he woke early with a headache, roused by a noise.

'You can't leave now,' von Taimitz was shouting at the doctor in the next room. 'Just look out of doors! Don't argue, you ask the driver—he won't take you in this weather for a million roubles.'

'But it is only two miles, isn't it?' the doctor pleaded.

'I don't care if it's two hundred yards. What can't be done can't be done. The monient you're through those gates all hell will break loose, you'll be off that road inside a minute. Say what you like, but nothing would induce me to let you go.'

'It'll quieten do^ by evening, I reckon,' said the peasant who was tending the stove.

The doctor next door was talking about Russia's rugged climate influencing her national character, about the long winters impeding freedom of movement and thus retarding the people's intellectual growth. Meanwhile Lyzhin listened with vexation to these disquisitions, gazing through the windows at the snowdrifts against the fence, at the white dust filling all visible space, at the trees bending desperately to right and left. He listened to the howling and banging.

'Well, what moral can we draw?' he wondered gloomily. 'That this is a blizzard, that's all.'

They lunched at noon, then wandered aimlessly about the house and went to the windows.

'Lesnitsky lies there,' thought Lyzhin, looking at the snow flurries whirling furiously above the drifts. 'There he lies, while the witnesses wait.'

They talked about the weather, saying that a snowstorm usually lasts forty-eight hours, rarely longer. They dined at six, then played cards, sang, danced and finally had supper. The day was over, they went to bed.

The storm droppedjust before dawn. When they got up and looked out of the windows, bare willows with their feebly drooping branches stood completely still. It was overcast and quiet, as ifnature was now ashamed ofher orgy, of her mad nights, of giving vent to her passions. Harnessed in tandem, the horses had been waiting at the front door since five o'clock that morning. When it was fully daylight, doctor and coroner put on their coats and boots, said good-bye to their host, and went out.

By the porch, near the driver, stood the familiar figure of the 'conshtible'. Hatless, with his old leather bag across his shoulder, Eli Loshadin was covered with snow. His face was red and wet with sweat.

A footman—he had come out to help the guests into the sledge and wrap up their feet—looked at the old man sternly. 'Why are you hang- ing around, you old devil? Clear out!'

'The village people are upset, sir,' said Loshadin, smiling innocently all over his face—and obviously glad to see, at last, those whom he had so long awaited. 'Very restive, them peasants are, and the kids are crying. They thought you'd gone back to town, sir. Have pity on them, good, kind sirs '

Doctor and coroner said nothing, got in the sledge and drove to Symya.

AT CHRISTMAS

I

'Tell me what to write,' said Yegor as he dipped lispen in the ink.

Not for four years had Vasilisa seen her daughter. The daughter, Yefimya, had gone to St. Petersburg with her husband after their wedding, and she had written home twice. Dut not a word had been heard of her after that, she might have vanished into thin air. Milking the cow at dawn, making up the stove, dreaning at night, the old woman had only one thing on her lind: how was Yefimya getting on, was she alive? Vasilisa ought to send a letter, but her old man couldn't write—and there was no one else to ask.

Well, when Christmas came round Vasilisa could bear it no longer, and went to sec Yegor at the inn. This Yegor was the landlady's brother who had been hanging round that pub doing nothing ever since he had come home from the army. He was said to turn out a good letter if he was properly paid. Vasilisa first had a word with the pub cook, and then with the landlady, and fmally with Yegor hinuelf. A fifieen-copeck fee was agreed.

And now, in the pub kitchen on Boxing Day, Yegor sat at the table holding a pen. Vasilisa stood before him brooding. She had a care- worn, grief-stricken air. Her old husband, Peter—very thin, tall, brown-pated—had come in with her and stood staring straight before him like a blind man. On the stove a pan of pork was frying. It hissed, it spurted, it even seemed to be saying 'flue', 'flu', 'flew' or some such word. The room was hot and stuffy.

'What shall I write?' Yegor repeated.

'Nonc of that, now!' said Vasilisa with an angry and suspicious look. 'Don't you rush me. You ain't doing us no favour. You're being paid, ain't you? So you write "to our dear son-in-law Andrew and our only beloved daughter YeC.mya our love, a low bow and our parental blessing which shall abide for ever aud ever.'"

'O.K. Carry ou shooting!'

'We also wish you a Happy Christmas. We are alive and well, and we wish the same to you from Our Lord, er, and Heavenly King.'

Vasilisa pondered, exchanged glances with the old man.

'We wish the same to you from Our Lord, er, and Heavenly King,' she repeated—and burst into tears.

That was all she could say. And yet, when she had lain awake at night thinking, a dozen letters hadn't seemed enough to say it all. Since the daughter and her husband had left, a great deal of water had flowed under the bridge, and the old people had lived a life of utter loneliness, sighing deeply ofa night as ifthcy had buried their daughter. So many things had happened in the village since then, what with all the weddings and funerals. How long the winters had seemed, how long the nights !

'It's hot in here,' said Yegor, unbuttoning his waistcoat. 'About seventy degrees, I reckon.

'All right then—what else?' he asked.

The old people said nothing.

'What's your son-in-law's job?' asked Yegor.

'He was a soldier, sir, as you know,' answered the old man in a frail voice. 'He left the service same time as you. He was a soldier, but now he works in St. Petersburg, like—in the hydropathetics. There's a doctor cures the sick with the waters, and he's a doorman at that doctor's institution.'

'It's all written here,' said the old woman, taking a letter out of her kerchief. 'This came from Yefimya, God knows when. Perhaps they ain't alive no more.'

Yegor reflected and wrote rapidly.

'At the present j uncture,' he wrote, 'seeing as how destinny has been determined in the Soldiering Feild we advises you to look in the Regulations of Disciplinnary Penalties and the Criminal Law of the War Department and you will see in them said Laws the civilization of the Higher Ranks of the War Deppartment.'

After writing this, he read it out aloud while Vasilisa was thinking that he ought to write how miserable they had been last year, when their grain hadn't even lasted till Christmas and they'd had to sell the cow. She ought to ask for money, she ought to writc that the old man was often poorly—and was bound, soon, to be called to his Maker.

But how could she put it in words? What did you say first and what next?

'Pay attenshon,' Yegor went on writing. 'In Volume Five of Milit- tary Regulations. Soldier is a genneral Term as is well your

most important Genneral and the least importtant Private is both called Soldiers.'

The old man moved his lips.

'It would be nice to see our grandchildren,' he said softly.

'What grandchildren?' the old woman asked, looking at him ^^rily. 'Perhaps there ain't none.'

'Ain't none? But perhaps there is. Who can tell?'

'By which you can judge,' Yegor hurried on, 'which enemy is Foreign and which Internnal the most important Inte^^l Enemy is Bacchus.'

The pen squeaked, making flourishes like fish-hooks on the paper. Yegor was in a hurry and read out each line several times. He sat on a stool, legs sprawling under the table: a smug, hulking, fat-faced, red- necked creature. He was the very soul of vulgarity—of vulgarity brash, overbearing, exultant, and proud of having been born and bred in a pub. That this indeed was vulgarity Vasilisa fully realized, though she could not put it into words, but only looked at Yegor angrily and suspiciously. His voice, his meaningleu words, the heat, the stuffmess ... they made her head ache and muddled her thoughts, so she said nothing, thought nothing, and only waited for that pen to stop squeaking. But the old man was looking at Yegor with absolute faith. He trusted them both: his old woman who had brought him here, and Yegor. And when he had mentioned the 'hydropathetics' institution just now, his faith—alike in that institution and in the curative power of'the waters'—had been written all over his face.

Yegor finished, stood up and read out the whole letter from the beginning. Not understanding, the old man nodded trustingly.

'Pretty good, a smooth job,' said he. 'God bles you. Pretty good.'

They put three five-copeck pieces on the table left the pub. The old man stared straight before him as if he was blind, absolute faith written on his face, but as they came out of the pub Vasilisa swung her fist at the dog.

'Ugly brute!' she said angrily.

The old woman got no sleep that night for wor^mg. At da^ she rose, said her prayers and set off for the station to post the letter—a distance of between eight and nine miles.

II

Dr. B. O. Moselweiser's Hydro was open on New Year's Day, as on any orJinary day, die only difference being that Andrew the doornun wore a uniform with new galloons. His boots had an extra special shine and he wished everyone who carne in a Happy New Year.

It was morning. Andrew stood by the door reading a newspaper. At exactly ten o'clock in carne a general whom he knew^^ne of the regulars—followed by the postman.

'Happy New Year, sir,' said Andrew, helping the general off with his cloak.

'Thank you, my good feUow. Same to you.'

On his way upstairs the general nodded towards a door and asked a question which he asked every day, always forgetting the answer.

'What goes on in there?'

'Massage room, sir!'

When the general's steps had died away, Andrew examined the postal delivery and found one letter addressed to himself He opened it, read several lines. Glancing at the newspaper, he sauntered to his room which was down here on the ground floor at the end of the pa^age. His wife Yefimya sat on the bed feeding a baby. Another child, the eldest, stood near her with his curly head on her lap while a third slept on the bed.

Entering his room. Andrew gave his wife the letter.

'This must be from the village.'

Then he went out, not taking his eyes off the newspaper, and paused in the corridor near his door. He could hear Yefimya read out the fi.rst lines in a quavering voice. After reading them she couldnt carry on— those few lines were quite enough for her, she was bathed in tears. Hugging and kissing her eldest child, she began to speak—crying or laughing, it was hard to say which.

'This is from Granny and Grandpa,' she said. 'From the village. May the Holy Mother and the Blessed Saints be with them. They have snow drifts right up to the roofs now, and the trees are white as white. The children are sliding on their tiny toboggans. And there's dear old bald Grandpa on the stove. And there's a little yellow dog. My lovely darlings.'

As he listened, Andrew remembered that his wife had given him letters three or four times, asking him to post them to the village, but some important business had always prevented him. He had not posted those letters, and they had been left lying around somewhere.

'There's little hares running about them fields,' Yeftmya chanted, bathed in tears and kissing her boy. 'Grandpa is quiet and gentle, and Granny is also kind and loving. In the village they live a godly life and fear the Lord. There's a little church, with such nice peasants singing in the choir. Holy Mother, our protector, take us away from this place!'

Andrew came back to his room for a smoke before anyone else arrived, and Yefimya suddenly stopped talking, quietened do^ and wiped her eyes. Only her lips quivered. She was so afraid of him, oh dear she was! His footsteps, his glance . .. they nude her tremble with fright. She dared not iitter a word in lis presence.

No sooner had Andrew lit a cigarette than there was a ring from upstairs. He put out his cigarette, adopted an expreuion of great solemity, and ran to his front door.

The general was descending from aloft, pink and fresh from his bath.

'What goes on in there?' he asked, pointing at a door.

Andrew drew limself up to attention, and announced in a loud voice that it was the 'Charcot showers, sir!'

FRAGMENT

K.ozerogov, a senior civil servant, retired, bought a small estate and settled down on it. Here, in partial emulation of Cincinnatus but also of Professor Kaygorodov, he worked in the sweat of his brow and noted down his observations of nature. After his death these notes were inherited by his housekeeper Martha, as also were his other effects. As everyone knows, that respectable old woman pulled down the manor farm and built an excellent inn, licensed for spirits, on the site. There was a special saloon bar for travelling landowners and officials, and the deceased owner's diary was kept on a table in this bar for convenience, should customers perchance require paper. One sheet of these notes has come into my possession. It evidently refers to the very beginning of the deceased's agricultural activities and it contains the following entries.

3 March. Spring. The birds have begun to fly back. Yesterday I saw some sparrows. Greetings, feathered children of the south! In your sweet twittering I seem to hear the words: 'Wishing you every h.ippiness, sir.'

14 March. Today I asked Martha why a cock crows so often. 'Because it has a throat,' she told me. I have a throat too, I told her, but I don't crow. Nature holds so many mysteries. When working in St. Peters- burg, I fiequently ate turkey, but yesterday was the first time I ever saw a live turkey. Most remarkable bird.

22 March. The local police officer called. We had a long conversation about virtue: I seated, he standing. 'Would you like to have your youth restored, sir?' he asked, among other things. 'No, I wouldn't,' I answered, 'because if I was young again I shouldn't hold my present high rank.' He agreed and went away visibly moved.

April. I personally dug two beds in my kitchen garden and sowed buckwheat in them. I didn't say a word about it as I wanted to surprise Martha, to whom I owe so many happy moments of my life. Yesterday at tea she complained bitterly of her build, claiiing that increasing corpulence now prevented her going through the larder door.

'On the contrary, dearest,' I noted in reply, 'the fullness of your figure serves to adorn you and only disposes me more favourably towards you.'

She blushed, and I stood up and embraced her with both arms, for one arm alone wouldn't go round her.

jS May. An old fcllow saw inc nc.nr the women's bathing place and asked what I was doing there. Tin making sure no young men loiter and hang around,' I answered.

'Let's make sure of it together.' With these words the old man sat down by my side and we started to talk about virtue.

THE STORY OF A COMMERCIAL VENTURE

AndrewSiderov inherited four thousand roubles from his mother and decided to open a bookshop with the money. Such a shop was greatly needed, for the townwn was stagnatingin ignorance and prejudice. Old men did nothing but visit the public baths, civil servants played their cards and knocked back their vodka, ladies gossiped, young people lacked ideals, unmarried girls thought about getting married and ate porridge all day long, husbands beat their wives, pigs wandered the streets.

'Ideas, and then more ideas!' thought Siderov. 'That's what we need.'

Having rented premises for his shop he went to Moscow and brought back numerous authors, old and new, and plenty of textbooks, and arranged all these wares on shelves.

In the first three weeks he had no customers at all. Siderov sat behind the counter, read his Mikhaylovsky and tried to think high-minded thoughts. Whenever he suddenly felt like buying some bream and gruel, say, he would immediately fi.nd himself thinking how very cheap such thoughts were.

Every day a frozen wench, in kerchief and leather galoshes on bare feet, nuhed headlong into his shop and asked for two copecks' worth of vinegar.

'You have come to the wrong address, madam,' Siderov would answer scornfully.

Whenever a friend visited him he adopted a portentous, enigmatic expression, took downwn Volume Three of Pisarev from the remotest shelf, blew off the dust and spoke, his expression hinting that he had a few other items in the shop, but was afraid to show them.

'Yes, old man. That's quite something, I assure you, er .... Yes, er .... At this point, old man, in a word, I must say, er, you understand, er, you'll be really shaken ifyou read this, indeed you will.'

'You mind you don't get into trouble, old boy.'

Three weeks later the first customer arrived. This was a fat, white- haired individual with side-whiskers, wearing a peaked cap with a red band and looking like a country squire. He demanded Part Two of Our Native Word and asked for slate pencils.

'I don't keep them.'

'Well, you should. It's a pity you don't. One doesn't want to go to market for a little thing like that.'

242 the story of a commercial venture

'Now, I really should keep slate pencils,' thought Siderov after his customer liad left. 'One shouldn't specialize too narrowly here in the provinces, one should sell anything cmmected with education: any- thing which fosters it in some way or other.'

He wrote to Moscow and within a month his window display included pens, pcncils, fountain-pens, exercise-books, slates and other school requisites. Boys and girls took to dropping in occasionally, and there was even a day when he made one rouble forty copecks. Once the girl in leather galoshes hurtled in. He had already opened his mouth to tell her scornfully that she had come to the wrong addres*. but

'Give me one copeck's worth of paper and a seven-copeck stamp!' she shouted.

Thereafter Siderov started keeping postage and revenue scamps, and also forms for promissory notes. About eight months after the opening of the shop a lady came in to buy pens and asked if he kept school- children's satchels.