Ward No. 6 and Other Stories, 1892-1895

Murder

I

They were celebrating vespers at Progonnaya Station. A crowd of railwaymen, their wives and children, with some woodcutters and sawyers working nearby along the line, were standing before the great icon brightly painted on a gold background. All of them stood in silence, spellbound by the glittering light and the howling blizzard which had blown up all of a sudden, although it was the eve of Annunciation Day. The old priest from Vedenyapino was officiating and the singers were the precentor, and Matvey Terekhov.

Matvey’s face glowed with joy; and as he sang he craned his neck, as though he wanted to fly up into the sky. He sang tenor and read the canon in the same sweet, persuasive tenor voice. While they were singing ‘Song of Archangels’¹ he waved his hand like a choirmaster and produced some extremely complicated sounds in his effort to harmonize with the old lay reader’s hollow bass. One could see from his face that he was thoroughly enjoying himself. But then the service ended, the congregation quietly left, the place became dark and empty again, and that silence descended which is found only at lonely stations in the open country or in forests when nothing can be heard except the moaning of the wind; all one feels is emptiness all around and the wretchedness of life slowly slipping by.

Matvey lived near the station, at his cousin’s inn. But he did not feel like going home and sat at the counter in the refreshment room talking in a low voice. ‘We had our own choir at the tile-works. And I must say, although we were just simple workmen, we were great singers. It was marvellous. We were often invited into town and when Ivan the suffragan bishop took the service at Trinity Church the cathedral choir sang in the right-hand stalls, while we were on the left. But people in the town complained we sang too long and said that lot from the tile-works were dragging things out. They were right, St Andrew’s Vigil and the Te Deum² began before seven and didn’t finish till after ten, so very often it was gone midnight before we were back at the works.’

Matvey sighed. ‘Really marvellous it was, Sergey Nikanorych, really marvellous. But I don’t get much joy living here in the old house. The nearest church is three miles away, I can’t manage that in my state of health and there’s no choir. And you can’t get a moment’s peace with our family, just one long racket all day, with swearing, filth, everyone eating from the same bowl like peasants, and cockroaches in the soup. If God had blessed me with good health I’d have cleared off ages ago, Sergey Nikanorych.’

Matvey Terekhov was not old – about forty-five – but he had an unhealthy look. His face was covered in wrinkles and his thin, weedy beard was already completely white, which made him seem a lot older. He spoke cautiously, in a feeble voice, clasped his chest when he coughed – then he had the uneasy, worried look of a true hypochondriac. He would never say what exactly was wrong, but he loved telling a long story about straining himself lifting a heavy box once at the tile-works, giving himself a ‘rumpture’, as he put it, which forced him to leave his job there and go back home. But what a ‘rumpture’ was, he could not explain.

‘I must say, I don’t like that cousin of mine’, he continued, pouring himself some tea. ‘He’s older than me, it’s wrong to say things against him, and I’m a God-fearing man. But I just can’t stand him. He’s a proud, stern man, always swearing and tormenting the life out of his relatives and workmen, and he doesn’t go to confession. Last Sunday I asked him, all nice and friendly, “Let’s go to the service at Pakhomo, Cousin,” and he replies: “Not me, the priest there plays cards.” And he didn’t come here today either, he says the priest at Vedenyapino smokes and drinks vodka. He just hates the clergy! He says his own offices, and matins, and vespers, and his sister’s his lay reader. While he’s saying his “We beseech Thee, oh Lord”, she’s screeching away like a turkey-hen with her “Lord have mercy”. Right sinful, that’s what it is. Every day I tell him, “Come to your senses, Cousin Yakov! Repent, Cousin!”, but he just ignores me.’

Sergey Nikanorych the buffet attendant poured out five glasses of tea and carried them to the ladies’ waiting-room on a tray. A moment later they could hear someone shouting, ‘Is that the way to serve tea, you pig? You don’t know your job!’ It was the stationmaster. A timid muttering followed, then more shouting, angry and brusque: ‘Clear off!’

The buffet attendant returned looking very put out. ‘Time was when I waited on counts and princes’, he said softly, ‘but now I don’t know how to serve tea, do you see? Swearing at me in front of a priest and ladies!’

Sergey Nikanorych the buffet attendant once had money and managed the refreshment room at a main-line junction in a county town. In those days he used to wear coat and tails, and a gold watch. But then he fell on bad times, all his money wasted on fancy equipment and his staff robbing him. Gradually sinking deeper and deeper into debt, he moved to a station that was not so busy. There his wife ran off with all the silver. He moved to a third station, which was even worse – they did not serve hot meals there. Then he went to a fourth. After numerous moves, sinking lower and lower the whole time, he finally ended up at Progonnaya, where all he sold was tea and cheap vodka, and where the only food he served was hard-boiled eggs and tough sausage that smelt of tar: he himself thought it was a joke, calling it ‘bandsmen’s food’. He was completely bald on top, had bulging blue eyes and thick, fluffy whiskers which he was always combing, peering at himself in a small hand-mirror. He was perpetually tormented by memories and just could not get used to ‘bandsmen’s sausage’, to the stationmaster’s insults and the haggling peasants – in his opinion haggling was just as improper in a station refreshment room as in a chemist’s. He was ashamed of being so poverty-stricken and degraded, and this feeling of shame was his chief worry in life.

‘Spring’s late this year’, Matvey said, listening hard. ‘And it’s a good thing. I don’t like the spring, it’s very muddy, Sergey Nikano rych. In books they write about the spring, birds singing and the sun setting, but what’s so nice about it? A bird’s a bird, that’s all. I like good company, so I can hear what people have to say, I like chatting about religion or singing something nice in the choir. But I’ve no time for all them nightingales and nice little flowers!’

He went on again about the tile-works and the choir, but Sergey Nikanorych was deeply offended, would not calm down and kept shrugging his shoulders and muttering. Matvey said good night and went home.

It was not freezing – it was thawing on the roofs – yet it was snowing hard. The snow swiftly whirled through the air and white clouds chased each other along the railway track. Dimly lit by a moon that lay hidden high up in the clouds, the oak grove lining both sides of the track kept up a constant roar. How terrifying trees can be when they are shaken by a violent storm! Matvey walked along the road by the track, covering his face and hands. The wind shoved him in the back. Suddenly he caught sight of a small, wretched-looking horse, plastered with snow; a sledge scraped the bare cobbles of the road and a peasant, his muffled head as white as his horse, cracked a whip. Matvey looked round, but the sledge and peasant had already vanished as if in a dream, and he quickened his pace, suddenly feeling scared – of what, he did not know.

He reached the level crossing and the dark hut where the keeper lived. The barrier was raised and all around were massive snowdrifts and clouds of snow whirling like witches at a sabbath. The track was crossed here by an old road, once a main trunk route and still called the highway. On the right, just by the level crossing and on the road, was Terekhov’s inn, an old coaching-house. A small light always glimmered there at night.

When Matvey arrived home the whole house, even the hall, smelled strongly of incense. Cousin Yakov Ivanych was still celebrating vespers. In the corner of the ‘chapel’ where the service was being held, facing the door, stood an icon-case filled with old-fashioned family icons, all in gilt, and both walls to right and left were covered with icons in the old and new style, some in cases, some without. On the table, draped with a cloth that touched the floor, was an icon of the Annunciation, as well as a cross made from cypress wood, and a censer. Candles were burning. Near the table stood a lectern. As he passed the chapel, Matvey stopped to look through the door. Yakov Ivanych was reading at the lectern and worshipping with him was his sister Aglaya, a tall, skinny old woman in a dark-blue dress and white kerchief. Yakov Ivanych’s daughter Dashutka was there as well – she was an ugly girl of about eighteen, covered in freckles. As usual, she was barefoot and wearing the dress in which she watered the cattle in the evenings.

‘Glory to Thee who has shown us the light!’ chanted Yakov Ivanych as he bowed low.

Aglaya propped her chin on her hand and, without hurrying, sang in a thin, shrill voice. From the room above came vague voices: they sounded sinister and seemed to be issuing threats. After the fire of long ago no one had lived on the upper storey; the windows were boarded up and empty bottles were scattered about on the floor between the wooden beams. The wind banged and howled up there and it sounded as though someone was running around and stumbling over the beams.

Half of the ground floor was taken up by the inn and the Terekhovs lived in the other, so when drunken visitors called at the inn they could hear every word from their living-room. Matvey lived next to the kitchen in a room with a large stove, where they had baked the bread every day when the coaching-inn had been there. Dashutka, without her own room, had her little space here, behind the stove. At night a cricket was always chirping and mice scurried about.

Matvey lit a candle and started reading a book he had borrowed from the railway policeman. While he sat reading, the prayers finished and everyone went to bed, Dashutka included. She immediately started snoring but soon woke up and said, yawning, ‘Uncle Matvey, you shouldn’t waste candles.’

‘It’s my own’, Matvey replied. ‘I bought it myself.’

Dashutka tossed and turned for a while, then fell asleep again. Matvey stayed up for a long time, as he did not feel sleepy, and when he had finished the last page he took a pencil from a trunk and wrote in the book: ‘I, Matvey Terekhov, have read this book and I find it the best of all those read by me, in which I hereby impress me grettitude to Kuzma Nikolayev Zhukov, senior officer of the railway police, owner of the aforesaid priceless book.’

He considered it only polite to make inscriptions in other people’s books.

II

When Annunciation Day arrived, after they had seen the mail train off, Matvey sat in the refreshment room drinking tea with lemon, and talking. The buffet attendant and Constable Zhukov were listening.

‘Let me tell you’, Matvey was saying, ‘even when I was a nipper I was all for relidgun. When I was only twelve I was already reading the Acts and the Epistles³ in church and this was a great comfort to my parents. And every summer I used to go on a pilgrimage with Mother, God rest her soul. Other boys used to sing songs or go after crayfish, but I stayed with Mother. The older folk thought well of me and I was pleased, because I was such a well-behaved boy. And after I’d gone off to the tile-works with Mother’s blessing I’d sing tenor in our choir, in my spare time, never enjoyed anything so much. Of course, I didn’t touch vodka, or smoke, and I kept myself clean. As you know, the Devil don’t like that way of life and took it into his head to ruin me and he began to cloud my mind, just as he’s doing to Cousin Yakov. The first thing I did was vow to fast on Mondays and not to eat meat on any day, and it wasn’t long before I went a bit soft in the head. The Holy Fathers say you must have cold dry food in the first week in Lent, up to the Saturday, but it’s no sin for the weak or them that toil to have a cup of tea even. Not a crumb passed my lips until the Sunday. And the whole of Lent I didn’t take a scrap of butter, and on Wednesdays and Fridays I didn’t eat anything at all. It was the same during the minor fasts. At St Peter’s Fast my mates at the works had their fish soup, but I would just suck a dry biscuit. Some folk are stronger than others, of course, but I didn’t find it too hard on fast days, and in fact the harder you try, the easier it is. You only get hungry during the first few days, but then you take it in your stride, it gets easier and easier and by the end of the week it’s not hard at all and all you have is that numb feeling in your legs, as though you were walking on clouds. And what’s more, I imposed all sorts of penances on myself – I’d get up at night and prostrate myself, drag heavy stones around and walk barefoot in the snow. And I’d wear irons.

‘But a little later, when I was at confession, the idea suddenly dawned on me: that priest’s married, he doesn’t keep the fasts and he smokes. Then why should he hear me confess, what authority did he have to pardon my sins, with him more of a sinner than me? I even kept away from vegetable oil, but he’d have his sturgeon all right, I dare say. I went to another priest, but as luck would have it I landed myself with a real fatty in a silk cassock that rustled like a lady’s dress – and he smelt of tobacco too. I went to a monastery to prepare for communion, but I was ill at ease there too, it struck me the monks didn’t keep to their rules. After that I couldn’t find any kind of church service to my liking. In one place they rushed it or sang the wrong hymns, in another the lay reader spoke through his nose. And there was once a time – God forgive me, sinner that I am – when I’d stand in the church seething with rage, and that’s no way to pray. And it seemed to me that the congregation weren’t crossing themselves properly or listening right. Whoever I looked at seemed to be a drunkard, fast-breaker, smoker, fornicator, card-sharper. Only I kept the Commandments. The Devil didn’t sleep and things got even worse. I didn’t sing in the choir any more and didn’t go to church. I didn’t think the church was good enough for a godly man like me. I was a fallen angel, swollen-headed beyond belief. Then I tried to start my own church. I rented a poky little room from a deaf woman a long way out of town, by the cemetery, and I set up a chapel – like my cousin’s, but I had proper candlesticks and a real censer. In this chapel I abided by the rules of Mount Athos,⁴ that’s to say, matins always began at midnight, and on the eve of the twelve great festivals vespers went on for ten, sometimes twelve hours even. According to their rules monks could sit while the Psalms and Parables were read, but I wanted to go one better, so I stood up the whole time. I wept and sighed as I read and sang, dragging everything out and lifting my arms up. And I went straight from prayers to work, without any sleep, and I’d still be praying while I worked.

‘Well now, people in town started saying, “Matvey’s a saint, Matvey heals the sick and insane.” Of course, I never healed anyone, but everyone knows when you have any kind of schism or heresy you just can’t keep the women away, they’re like flies round a jam-pot. Some women and old maids started calling on me, threw themselves at my feet, kissed my hand and shouted that I was a saint and so on. One of them even saw a halo round my head. It grew cramped in my chapel, so I took a larger room and it was absolute bedlam! The Devil really had his claws into me and his accursed hooves blotted the true light from my eyes. And we all seemed possessed by the Devil. I’d read, and the old girls and maids would sing. After going without food or drink for long periods, after being on their feet for twenty-four hours or more they’d suddenly get the shakes, as if they’d caught a fever. Then one would cry out, then another – it was terrifying! And I was shaking all over too, like a cat on hot bricks and I didn’t know why. There we were, all jumping about! It’s very odd, I must say, when you are jumping away and swinging your arms, and you can’t stop yourself. After this there was shouting and screaming, and we all danced and kept chasing each other till we dropped. This was how, in one of these frenzied fits, I became a fornicator.’

The policeman burst out laughing, but became serious when he saw no one else was.

‘It’s like the Molokans’,⁵ he said. ‘I’ve read they’re all that way inclined in the Caucasus.’

‘But I was not struck by lightning’, Matvey went on, crossing himself before the icon and moving his lips. ‘My mother must have prayed in heaven for me. When everyone in town thought me a saint and even fine ladies and gents started visiting me on the sly for comfort, I chanced to go and see the boss, Osip Varlamych, to ask him to forgive me, as it was Forgiveness Day.⁶ Well, he put the latch on the door and there we were, the two of us face to face. He gave me a real ticking-off. I should mention that Osip Varlamych’s got no education, but he’s no fool and everyone feared and respected him, because he led a strict and holy life and was a real hard worker. He’d been mayor and churchwarden for twenty years, I think, and he did a lot of good. He laid gravel on the New Moscow Road and had the church painted – the pillars were done up to look like malkalite.

‘So he shuts the door. “I’ve been after you for a long time, you damned so-and-so,” he says. “Think you’re a saint, do you? No, you’re no saint, but an apostate, a heretic and a scoundrel!” On and on he went, can’t say it the way he did, all smooth and clever like in books, enough to make you weep, it was. He carried on for two hours. His words struck home and my eyes were opened. I listened and listened – and I just sobbed my heart out! And he said, “Be like normal men, eat, drink, dress and pray like everyone else. Doing more than you ought is the work of the Devil. Those irons of yours are the Devil’s, your fasts are from the Devil and your chapel’s a Devil’s chapel. It’s all pride.”

‘Next day – the first Monday in Lent – God willed me to fall ill. I’d strained myself and was taken to hospital. I suffered something cruel I did, wept bitter tears and trembled. I thought I’d go straight from hospital to hell, and it nearly finished me off. About six months I lay suffering in bed and when they let me out the first thing I did was take proper communion and I became a human being again.

‘Osip Varlamych let me go home. “Now don’t forget, Matvey,” he ordered, “doing more than you should is the Devil’s work.” So now I eat and drink and pray like everyone else. If I meet an old priest who smells of tobacco or spirits I daren’t condemn him, as priests are normal human beings too. But the moment I hear some holy man’s set himself up in the town or country and doesn’t eat for weeks, keeping to his own rules, then I know for sure who’s at the bottom of it all. Well, my dear sirs, all that happened to me once. And now I’m just like Osip Varlamych, I order my cousin and his sister around, I reproach them, but mine is a voice of one crying in the wilderness.⁷ God didn’t grant me the gift.’

Matvey’s story evidently made no impression at all. Sergey Nikanorych said nothing and began clearing food from the counter, while the police constable observed how rich Matvey’s cousin Yakov Ivanych was: ‘He’s worth at least thirty thousand.’

Constable Zhukov was red-haired, full-faced (his cheeks quivered as he walked), healthy and well-fed. When his superiors weren’t around he usually sprawled in his chair, his legs crossed. He would rock to and fro as he spoke, nonchalantly whistling, with a smug, sated expression as if he had just had dinner. He had plenty of money and always spoke of it as if he were an expert on the subject. He was a commission agent and whenever people had an estate, a horse or a second-hand carriage to sell they would come to him.

‘Yes, he could be worth thirty thousand’, Sergey Nikanorych agreed. ‘Your grandpa had a large fortune’, he added, turning to Matvey. ‘Really enormous! Then everything went to your father and uncle. Your father died young and your uncle got the lot, and then Yakov Ivanych of course. While you were going round churches and monasteries with your mother and singing in the factory choir, there were some here who weren’t standing idle.’

‘Your share’s about fifteen thousand’, the policeman said, rocking in his chair. ‘The inn’s jointly owned by you, so’s the capital. Yes. If I’d been in your shoes I’d have sued them long ago. Of course, I’d have taken him to court, but while it was being sorted out I’d have got him to one side and given him a right good bash in the mug.’

Yakov Ivanych was not liked, because people with queer beliefs tend to upset others, even those who are indifferent to religion. And in any case the policeman did not like him, as he too dealt in horses and second-hand carriages.

‘You won’t sue your cousin because you’ve plenty of money of your own’, the buffet attendant told Matvey, giving him an envious look. ‘It’s all right for those what has means, but I’ll probably be stuck here in this job until I die.’

Matvey tried to assure them that he had no money at all, but Sergey Nikanorych was not listening any more. Memories of his past life, of the daily insults he had suffered, came flooding over him. His bald head sweated, he went red in the face and blinked.

‘Oh, this damned life!’ he exclaimed, deeply annoyed, and threw a piece of sausage on the floor.

III

The coaching-inn was said to have been built back in Alexander I’s reign by a widow, Avdotya Terekhov, who had settled there with her son. Travellers passing in mail coaches, especially on moonlit nights, would feel depressed and strangely uneasy at the sight of that dark yard with its lean-to shed and perpetually locked gates. It was as if the place were the haunt of sorcerers or robbers. Drivers would look back and urge on their horses every time they went past. People never liked staying overnight there, as the innkeepers were always unfriendly and charged exorbitant prices. The yard was muddy even in summer and huge fat pigs wallowed in the muck; horses – the Terekhovs were dealers – wandered around loose, often becoming restive; then they would race out of the yard and tear like mad down the road, frightening women pilgrims. In those days there was a lot of traffic. Long trains of loaded wagons would pass through and there were incidents, like the one about thirty years ago for example, when some angry wagoners had lost their tempers, started a fight and murdered a passing merchant. A crooked cross still stands about a quarter of a mile from the inn. Mail troikas with bells and landowners’ heavy dormeuses⁸ would drive by, and herds of bellowing cattle passed in clouds of dust.

When they first built the railway, there had been only a halt here, simply called a passing-point. Then about ten years later the present Progonnaya Station was built. The traffic along the old post road almost vanished; now it was used only by local landowners and peasants, and in spring and autumn gangs of workmen crowded along it on foot. The coaching-inn became just an ordinary tavern. The top floor was damaged by fire, the roof went yellow with rust, the lean-to shed gradually collapsed, but enormous fat pigs – pink and revolting – still wallowed in the mud in the yard. As before, horses would sometimes tear out of the yard and race furiously down the road with tails streaming. At the inn they sold tea, hay, oats, flour, as well as vodka or beer for consumption on or off the premises. They were a little tight-lipped about the alcohol they sold, however, since they had never been licensed.

The Terekhovs had always been renowned for their piety and had even earned the nickname ‘Pillars of the Faith’. But perhaps because they lived like bears, keeping to themselves, avoiding company and thinking out things for themselves, they were prone to wild dreaming, religious wavering, and almost every generation had its own approach to religion and matters of faith.

Grandma Avdotya, who had built the coaching-inn, was an Old Believer, but her son and two grandsons (Matvey and Yakov’s fathers) worshipped at the Orthodox Church, entertained the clergy and prayed to the new icons just as reverently as to the old. In his old age her son gave up meat and took a vow of silence, considering any kind of talk at all a sin, while the grandsons were odd in not taking the Scriptures at their face value – they were always seeking some hidden meaning, maintaining that every holy word must hold some secret. Avdotya’s great-grandson Matvey had struggled against lack of faith since he was a young boy and this was very nearly his undoing. Yakov, the other great-grandson, was Orthodox, but he suddenly stopped going to church when his wife died, and worshipped at home. Aglaya followed his bad example, stayed away from church and did not let Dashutka go either. It was said that when Aglaya was a young girl she used to go to Flagellant meetings at Vedenyapino and that she was still a secret member of the sect, which was why she went around in a white kerchief.⁹

Yakov Ivanych was ten years older than Matvey. He was a handsome old man, tall, with a broad grey beard that nearly reached his waist and bushy eyebrows that lent his face a grim, even malevolent expression. He wore a long coat of good cloth, or a black sheepskin jacket, and always tried to dress neatly and decently. Even in fine weather he wore galoshes. He stayed away from church because, in his opinion, they did not observe the rites properly and because the priests drank wine at the wrong times and smoked. Every day he read and sang the service at home with Aglaya. During matins at Vedenyapino they did not read the canon, omitted vespers – even on high holidays – whereas he read through the prescribed portion at home, not hurrying or leaving out one line. In his spare time he would read aloud from the lives of the saints. And in his everyday life he stuck close to the rules. For example, if wine was permitted on a certain day during Lent ‘because of the long vigil’, he would invariably have a drink, even if he did not feel like one.

He did not read, sing or burn incense in the hope that God might shower his blessings down on him, but for form’s sake. Man cannot live without faith, and faith must be correctly expressed, from year to year and from day to day according to established formulae which laid down that man should address God each morning and evening with the exact words and thoughts appropriate to that particular day or hour. His life, and therefore his method of prayer, must be pleasing to God and so he should read and sing each day only what pleased God, that is, what was laid down by Church law. Therefore the first chapter of St John should be read only on Easter Sunday, and from Easter Sunday till Ascension Day certain hymns must not be sung. Awareness of this procedure and its importance gave Yakov Ivanych great pleasure during hours of prayer. When he was forced to depart from his routine – having to fetch goods from town or go to the bank – then his conscience tormented him and this made him feel wretched.

When Cousin Matvey unexpectedly arrived from the tile-works, making the inn his home, he started breaking the rules right from the start. He did not wish to pray with the others, had his meals and tea at the wrong times, got up late and drank milk on Wednesdays and Fridays because of his poor health. Almost every day, at prayer-time, he would go into the chapel and shout: ‘Listen to reason, Cousin! Repent, Cousin!’ This would make Yakov Ivanych see red and Aglaya lose her temper and start swearing. Or Matvey would sneak into the chapel at night and softly say: ‘Cousin, your prayer is not pleasing to the Lord, as it is said, “First be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.”¹⁰ But you’re nothing but a money-lender and a vodka trader. Repent!’

In Matvey’s words Yakov could see only the usual lame excuse made by empty, sloppy people who always talk about ‘love thy neighbour’, ‘be reconciled with thy brother’ and the rest of it just to avoid fasting, praying and reading sacred books, and who turn their noses up at profit and interest because they don’t like hard work. Indeed, it’s far easier being poor, not to save up – much easier than being rich.

For all this, he felt worried and could not worship as he used to. No sooner did he enter the chapel and open his book than he began to feel apprehensive – any moment his cousin might come in and interrupt him. And in fact Matvey would soon appear and shout in a trembling voice, ‘Come to your senses, Cousin! Repent, Cousin!’ His sister would start cursing and Yakov would lose his temper and shout, ‘Clear out of my house!’

Matvey told him, ‘This house belongs to all of us.’

Yakov would return to his reading and singing but was never able to calm himself and he would suddenly start daydreaming over his book without even noticing it. Although he thought his cousin’s words were nonsense, why had he recently taken to thinking that it was hard for the rich to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, that he had done very nicely out of that stolen horse he had bought two years ago, that a drunk had died at the inn from too much vodka, in his wife’s lifetime?…

Now he slept very badly, lightly at night and he heard Matvey, who could not sleep either, sighing as he pined for his tile-works. And as he tossed and turned Yakov recalled that stolen horse, the drunkard, what the Gospels said about camels.

He was beginning to have doubts again, it seemed. And although it was already the end of March, it snowed every day, as if on purpose; the forest roared as though it were winter and it seemed impossible that spring would ever come. This kind of weather made everyone bored, quarrelsome and hateful, and when the wind howled above the ceiling at night it seemed someone was living up there in the empty storey. And then doubts gradually flooded his mind, his head burnt and he did not want to sleep.

IV

On the morning of the Monday in Passion Week, Matvey was in his room and could hear Dashutka saying to Aglaya, ‘A few days ago Uncle Matvey was telling me I don’t need to fast.’

Matvey remembered the whole conversation he’d had with Dashutka the previous day and suddenly felt insulted.

‘That’s a sinful way to speak, girl’, he said in the moaning voice of a sick man. ‘There has to be fasting. Our Lord Himself fasted forty days. I was just trying to tell you even fasting won’t help the wicked.’

‘Just hark at him with his tile-work sermons, trying to teach us to be good’, scoffed Aglaya as she washed the floor (she normally washed the floors on weekdays and lost her temper with everyone in the process). ‘We know how they fast at the tile-works! Just ask that old uncle of yours about his little darling, how him and that filthy bitch guzzled milk in Lent. Likes preaching to others all right but forgets that slut quick enough. Ask him who he left the money with. Who?’

Matvey took pains to hide the fact, as though it were a festering sore, that when he’d been frisking about and making merry with those old women and young girls at prayer meetings he had had an affair with a woman from the town, who bore him a child. Before he went home he gave her everything he had saved up at the tile-works and borrowed the money for his fare from the boss. And now he had only a few roubles for tea and candles. Later on his ‘darling’ informed him that the baby had died, and wrote to ask what she should do with the money. The workman brought the letter from the station but Aglaya intercepted it and read it, and every day after that kept reproaching Matvey about his ‘darling’.

‘Mere chicken-feed, only nine hundred roubles!’ Aglaya continued. ‘Gave nine hundred to a stranger, that bitch, that factory tart! Damn you!’ She flew off the handle and shrieked, ‘Nothing to say for yourself then? I could tear you to pieces, you spineless wretch! Nine hundred roubles, like chicken-feed! You should have left it to Dashutka, she’s your own flesh and blood. Or sent it to the poor orphans’ home in Belyov. Why couldn’t she choke, that cow of yours, blast her! Bloody bitch, damn her eyes! May she rot in hell!’

Yakov Ivanych called her, as it was time to begin lauds. She washed, put on a white kerchief and now went quietly and meekly to her beloved brother in the chapel. When she spoke to Matvey or served tea to peasants at the inn she was a skinny, sharp-eyed old hag, but in chapel she looked pure and radiant. Making elaborate curtsies, coyly pursing her lips even, she looked so much younger.

As always during Lent, Yakov Ivanych began to read the offices in a soft, mournful voice. After a little while he stopped to savour the calm that reigned over the whole house. Then he started reading again, deriving great pleasure from it. He clasped his hands as if to pray, turned his eyes up, shook his head and sighed.

Suddenly he heard some voices. Sergey Nikanorych and the policeman had come to visit Matvey. Yakov Ivanych felt awkward reading out loud and singing with strangers in the house and now the sound of voices made him read slowly, in a whisper. In the chapel they could hear what the buffet attendant was saying:

‘The Tartar at Shchepovo is selling his business for fifteen hundred. He’ll accept five hundred now and we can draw up a bill of exchange for the rest. So please, Matvey Vasilich, help me out and lend me the five hundred. I’ll pay you two per cent a month interest.’

Matvey was staggered and said, ‘But what money? What money have I got?’

‘Two per cent a month would be a godsend for you’, the policeman explained. ‘But if the money’s left lying around here, it’ll only be food for moths and that’ll do you no good at all.’

The visitors left and silence fell. But Yakov had hardly returned to his reading and singing than a voice came through the door: ‘Cousin, give me a horse, I want to go to Vedenyapino.’

It was Matvey. Yakov felt uneasy again. ‘But which one?’ he asked after a moment’s thought. ‘The workman’s taking the bay to cart a pig and I’m off to Shuteykino on the stallion as soon as I’m finished here.’

‘My dear cousin, why are you allowed to do what you want with the horses while I’m not?’ Matvey asked angrily.

‘Because I’m not going on a joyride, they’re needed for a job.’

‘The property belongs to all of us, that means horses as well. You must understand that, Cousin.’

Silence fell. Yakov did not go back to his devotions, but waited for Matvey to go away from the door.

‘Cousin’, Matvey said, ‘I’m a sick man, I don’t want any part of the estate. You can keep it, I don’t care, but just let me have enough to live on seeing as I’m so poorly. Give it to me and I’ll go away.’

Yakov did not reply. He dearly wanted to be rid of Matvey, but he could not let him have any money, since it was all tied up in the business. Among the whole Terekhov clan there had never been a single case of cousins sharing – that meant going broke.

Yakov still said nothing, waiting for Matvey to leave and he kept looking at his sister, frightened she might interfere and start another quarrel like they’d had that morning. When Matvey had gone at last he went back to his reading, but he took no enjoyment in it. His head was heavy from all those prostrations, his eyes were dim and he found the sound of his own soft, mournful voice most monotonous. When he was depressed like this at night he ascribed it to lack of sleep, but during the day it scared him and he began to think devils were sitting on his head and shoulders.

After he somehow finished reading the offices he left for Shuteykino, feeling disgruntled and irritable. In the autumn, navvies had dug a boundary ditch near Progonnaya and run up a bill for eighteen roubles at the inn: now he had to catch their foreman in Shuteykino and get his money. The thaw and snowstorms had ruined the road. It was dark, full of potholes and already breaking up in places. The snow was lying lower than the road level, along the verges, so that it was like driving along a narrow embankment. Giving way to oncoming traffic was quite a job. The sky had been overcast since morning and a moist wind was blowing…

A long train of sledges was coming towards him – some women were carting bricks – so Yakov had to turn off the road. His horse sank up to its belly in the snow, his one-man sledge tilted to the right. He bent over to the left to stop himself falling off and sat that way while the sledges slowly moved past. Through the wind he could hear the sledges creaking, the skinny horses panting, and the women saying: ‘There goes His Grace.’ One of them looked pityingly at his horse and said quickly, ‘Looks like the snow’ll last until St George’s Day. We’re fair worn out!’

Yakov sat uncomfortably hunched, screwing up his eyes in the wind as horses and red bricks went by. Perhaps it was because he felt cramped and had a pain in his side that he suddenly began to feel annoyed; the purpose of his journey struck him as unimportant and he concluded that he could send his man to Shuteykino tomorrow. Once again, as on the last sleepless night, he recalled the words about the camel and then all sorts of memories came to mind – the peasant who sold him the stolen horse, the drunkard, the women who pawned their samovars with him. Of course, every trader was out for all he could get, but he was tired of it and wanted to go as far away as he could from that mode of life. The thought that he would have to read vespers that evening depressed him. The wind that lashed him right in the face and rustled in his collar seemed to be whispering all these thoughts to him, carrying them from the wide white fields… As he looked at these fields he had known from childhood, Yakov remembered having had just the same feelings of apprehension, just the same worries as a young man, when he was assailed by serious doubts and his faith began to waver.

It was frightening being all alone in the open fields and he turned back and slowly followed the sledge train. The women laughed and said, ‘His Grace’s turned back.’

As it was Lent, no cooking was done at home and they did not use the samovar, which made the day seem very long. Yakov Ivanych had long ago stabled the horse and sent flour to the station. Once or twice he had started reading the Psalms, but it was a long time till evening. Aglaya had already washed down the floors and for something to do was tidying her trunk. The inside of its lid had bottle labels stuck all over it. Hungry and depressed, Matvey sat reading or went over to the tiled stove, where he stood a long time inspecting the tiles, which made him think of the works. Dashutka slept, but soon woke up again and went off to water the cattle. As she was drawing water from the well, the rope broke and the bucket fell into the water. The workman hunted around for a hook to haul it out with, and Dashutka followed him over the muddy snow, her bare feet as red as a goose’s. She kept repeating, ‘It’s dippy there!’ – she wanted to say the water in the well was too deep for the hook, but the man did not understand. Evidently she had got on his nerves, as he suddenly turned round and swore at her. Yakov happened to come out into the yard just then and heard Dashutka quickly reply with a stream of choice obscenities she could only have picked up from drunken peasants at the inn. He shouted at her and even became quite frightened: ‘What’s that, you shameless bitch? What kind of language is that?’

She gave her father a stupid, puzzled look, not understanding why such words were forbidden. He wanted to give her a good telling-off, but she seemed so barbarous, so ignorant. For the very first time since she had been with him he realized that she believed in nothing. His whole way of life – the forests, snow, drunken peasants, swearing – struck him as just as wild and barbarous as the girl, so instead of telling her off he merely waved his arm and went back to his room.

Just then the policeman and Sergey Nikanorych came back to see Matvey again. Yakov Ivanych recalled that these people had no faith either – this didn’t worry them in the least and his life seemed strange, mad and hopeless, a real dog’s life in fact. He paced up and down the yard bareheaded, then he went out into the road and walked up and down with fists clenched (at that moment the snow began to fall in large flakes) and his beard streamed in the wind. He kept shaking his head, as something seemed to be weighing down on his head and shoulders – it was just as though devils were sitting on them. It was not he who was wandering about, so he thought, but some huge and terrifying wild beast, and it seemed he only had to shout for his voice to roar through the fields and woods, terrifying everyone…

V

When he returned to the house, the policeman had gone and the buffet attendant was sitting in Matvey’s room working with his abacus. Earlier he had been in the habit of calling at the inn almost every day. Then he would go and see Yakov Ivanych, but now it was Matvey. He was always busy with his abacus, and then his face would be tense and sweaty; or he would ask for money, or stroke his whiskers and tell how he had once made punch for some officers at a main-line station and had personally served the sturgeon soup at regimental dinners. His sole interest in life was catering, his sole topic of conversation food, cutlery and wines. Once, wanting to say something pleasant, he had told a young mother feeding her baby, ‘A mother’s breast is milk-bar for baby!’

As he worked away at the abacus in Matvey’s room he asked for money, saying he could not live at Progonnaya any more and as if about to burst into tears he asked, ‘Oh, where can I go now? Please tell me where I can go?’

Then Matvey came into the kitchen and started peeling some boiled potatoes he had probably put by the day before. It was quiet and Yakov Ivanych thought that the buffet attendant had gone. It was high time for vespers. He called Aglaya and, thinking no one was at home, began singing in a loud, uninhibited voice. He sang and read, but in his mind he recited something quite different, ‘Lord forgive me! Lord save me!’

And without stopping he performed a series of low bows, as though he wanted to tire himself out, shaking his head the whole time so that Aglaya looked at him in astonishment. He was scared Matvey might come in – he was convinced he would and neither his prayers nor his many prostrations were enough to suppress his feeling of anger towards him.

Matvey opened the door extremely quietly and entered the chapel. ‘What a sin, what a sin!’ he sighed reproachfully. ‘Repent! Come to your senses, Cousin!’

Yakov dashed out of the chapel, fists clenched, without looking at him, in case he was tempted to hit him. He felt he was a huge terrible beast again – the same feeling he’d had a little while before on the road – and he crossed the hall into the grey, dirty part of the inn, thick with haze and smoke, where peasants usually drank their tea. For some time he paced up and down, treading so heavily that the china on the shelves rattled and the tables shook. Now he realized quite clearly that he was no longer satisfied with the way he believed and he could no longer carry on praying as before. He must repent, come to his senses, see reason, live and worship somehow differently. But how was he to worship? Perhaps all this was only the Devil trying to confuse him and he really needed to do none of these things?… What would happen? What should he do? Who could teach him? How helpless he felt! He stopped, clutched his head and started to think, but could not take stock of everything in peace, since Matvey was so near. And he quickly returned to the living-quarters.

Matvey was sitting in the kitchen eating from a bowl of potatoes which he had in front of him. Aglaya and Dashutka were sitting in the kitchen too, by the stove, facing each other and winding yarn. An ironing-board had been set up between the stove and the table where Matvey was sitting; on it was a cold flat-iron.

‘Cousin Aglaya’, asked Matvey, ‘give me some oil, please!’

‘But no one has oil in Lent!’ Aglaya said.

‘I’m not a monk, Cousin Aglaya, I’m an ordinary man. Being so poorly I’m even allowed milk, let alone oil.’

‘You factory lot think you can do just what you like!’

Aglaya reached for a bottle of vegetable oil from the shelf and banged it angrily in front of Matvey with a spiteful grin, obviously delighted to see he was such a sinner.

‘I’m telling you, you’re not allowed any oil!’ Yakov shouted.

Aglaya and Dashutka shuddered, but Matvey poured some oil into his bowl and went on eating as though he had not heard.

‘I’m telling you that you mustn’t have oil!’ Yakov shouted even louder. He went red, suddenly seized the bowl, held it above his head and dashed it on the floor as hard as he could; the pieces went flying.

‘Don’t you dare say anything!’ he shouted furiously, although Matvey did not say one word. ‘Don’t you dare!’ he repeated and thumped his fist on the table.

Matvey went pale and got up. ‘Cousin!’ he said, still chewing. ‘Come to your senses, Cousin!’

‘Get out of my house this minute!’ Yakov shouted. Matvey’s wrinkled face, his voice, the crumbs in his moustache revolted him. ‘I’m telling you to get out!’

‘Cousin, calm down! Your pride is the Devil’s work!’

‘Shut up!’ Yakov said, stamping his feet. ‘Clear off, you devil!’

‘If you really want to know’, Matvey kept on shouting, beginning to lose his temper now, ‘you’re an apostate and heretic. Accursed demons have blotted out the true light from your eyes, your prayers don’t satisfy God. Repent, before it’s too late! A sinner’s death is terrible! Repent, Cousin!’

Yakov grabbed him by the shoulders and dragged him away from the table. Matvey turned even paler. Terrified out of his wits he muttered, ‘What’s all this? What’s going on?’

As he struggled and fought to free himself from Yakov’s grip, Matvey accidentally caught hold of his shirt near the neck and tore the collar. But Aglaya thought he wanted to hit Yakov, screamed, seized the bottle of oil and brought it down with all her strength on the crown of this hateful cousin’s head. Matvey staggered and in an instant his face became calm, indifferent. Yakov breathed heavily. He was very excited and took great pleasure in hearing the bottle grunt like a living thing as it made contact with Matvey’s head. He held him up and several times (this he remembered very clearly later) directed Aglaya’s attention to the iron. Only when the blood was streaming through his hands, when he heard Dashutka’s loud sobbing, when the ironing-board had crashed to the ground with Matvey slumped over it did his anger subside and he realized what had happened.

‘Let him die, that factory ram!’ Aglaya said with loathing, still holding on to the iron. Her white, blood-spattered kerchief had slipped down to her shoulders and her grey hair fell loose. ‘Serves him right!’

It was a terrible sight. Dashutka was sitting on the floor by the stove with yarn in her hands, sobbing and prostrating herself, making a kind of munching sound each time she bowed. But nothing terrified Yakov so much as the bloodstained boiled potatoes, and he was afraid of treading on them. And there was something even more terrifying, which oppressed him like a dreadful nightmare and which seemed to pose the greatest threat and did not register at first. Sergey Nikanorych the buffet attendant was standing in the doorway holding his abacus. He was very pale and looked in horror at the scene in the kitchen. Only after he had turned, dashed through the hall and then outside did Yakov realize who it was, and he went after him.

He pondered everything as he walked along, rubbing snow on his hands. The thought flashed through his mind that the workman had asked if he could spend the night at home and had long since left for his village. The day before they had killed a pig and large patches of blood lay on the snow and the sledge. Even one side of the well-head was spattered with blood. Consequently, even if all Yakov’s family were up to their eyes in blood, no one would have suspected a thing. The thought of concealing the murder was torment enough, but the idea of a policeman turning up whistling and sneering from the station, that peasants would come and bind Yakov and Aglaya’s hands tightly together and haul them off triumphantly to the largest village in the district, then to the town – this was the most agonizing thing of all. Everyone would point at them on the way and scoff: ‘Their Graces’ve been nabbed!’

Yakov wanted to put off the evil day somehow so that he could suffer the disgrace some time later, not now.

‘I can lend you a thousand roubles…’ he said, catching up with Sergey Nikanorych. ‘Won’t do any good telling anyone, no good at all… We can’t bring him back from the dead anyway.’

He could hardly keep up with the buffet attendant, who never looked round and was quickening his pace.

‘I could lend you fifteen hundred’, he added.

He stopped for breath, but Sergey Nikanorych kept going at the same pace, possibly scared he might be next. Only when he had passed the level crossing and was half way along the road to the station did he take a brief look back and slow down. Red and green lamps were already shining at the station and along the line; the wind had slackened, but it was still snowing hard and the road had turned white again. Then, almost at the station, Sergey Nikanorych stopped, thought for a moment, and then determinedly retraced his steps. It was growing dark.

‘I’ll take the whole fifteen hundred then, Yakov Ivanych’, he said softly, trembling all over. ‘Yes, I’ll take ’em!’

VI

Yakov Ivanych’s money was held at the town bank or lent out on mortgage. He kept a little petty cash in the house for immediate business expenses. He went into the kitchen and groped around for the tin of matches, and from the blue, sulphurous flame was able to take a close look at Matvey, still lying in the same place by the table, but draped in a white sheet now, so that only his boots showed. A cricket was chirping. Aglaya and Dashutka weren’t in any of the living-rooms, but sat behind the counter in the tea-room silently winding yarn. Yakov Ivanych went to his room with a lamp and pulled out the small chest in which he kept the petty cash from under the bed. There happened to be four hundred and twenty roubles in small notes and thirty-five in silver. The notes had an unpleasant, oppressive smell. Stuffing the money into his cap he went into the yard and out through the gate. He looked to each side as he went, but there was no sign of the buffet attendant.

‘Hullo!’ Yakov shouted.

Right by the level crossing a dark figure detached itself from the swing barrier and approached him hesitantly. Yakov recognized the buffet attendant.

‘Why can’t you stay put?’ he asked irritably. ‘Here you are, just short of five hundred… there’s no more in the house.’

‘Fine… much obliged’, Sergey Nikanorych muttered as he greedily snatched the money and stuffed it in his pockets. Even though it was dark he was clearly shaking all over.

‘But don’t worry yourself, Yakov Ivanych… Why should I let on? All I did was come here and then go away. As they say, hear no evil…’ Then he sighed and added, ‘It’s a lousy, rotten life!’

They stood in silence for a moment, without looking at each other.

‘All for nothing, God knows how…’ the buffet attendant said trembling. ‘There I was doing me adding when suddenly I hear a noise… I look through the door and see you all having a row over some oil… Where is he now?’

‘Lying in the kitchen.’

‘You should ditch the body somewhere… Don’t hang about!’

Without saying a word Yakov went with him as far as the station, then went back home and harnessed the horse to take Matvey to Limarovo – he had decided to take him to the forest there and leave him on the road. Afterwards he would tell everyone that Matvey had gone off to Vedenyapino and had not returned. They would all think he had been murdered by some people on the way. He knew that no one would be fooled by that story, but he felt that being on the move, doing things and keeping himself busy was less of an ordeal than just sitting around waiting. He called Dashutka and the two of them took Matvey away, while Aglaya stayed behind to clean up the kitchen.

When Yakov and Dashutka were on the way back they had to stop at the level crossing, as the barrier was down. A long goods train passed through, drawn by two panting engines which threw sheaves of crimson fire from their funnels. The engine in front gave a piercing whistle at the crossing when it was in view of the station.

‘What a noise, goes right through you…’ Dashutka said.

The train at last passed through and the keeper slowly raised the barrier. ‘Is that you, Yakov Ivanych?’ he asked. ‘They say it’s lucky not recognizing someone.’

When they were back in the house they had to get some sleep. Aglaya and Dashutka made up a bed on the tea-room floor and lay side by side, while Yakov settled down on the counter. They did not pray before going to sleep, nor did they light the icon-lamps. All three of them lay awake till morning, but they did not say one word and all night long felt someone was moving around in the empty storey above.

Two days later the district police officer and an examining magistrate came from town, searched Matvey’s room and then the whole place. Yakov was questioned first and he testified that Matvey had left that Monday evening for Vedenyapino to prepare for communion in the church there, so he must have been murdered on the way by some sawyers working along the track. But when the magistrate asked why it was that Matvey had been found on the road, while his cap turned up at home – would he really have gone to Vedenyapino without it? – and why hadn’t they found a single drop of blood near him in the snow on the road considering his head was smashed in and his face and chest were black with blood, Yakov became confused, lost his head and replied, ‘Don’t know sir.’

Yakov’s worst fears were realized: the railway policeman arrived, a local constable smoked in the chapel, and Aglaya attacked him with a torrent of abuse and was rude to the inspector. And later, when Yakov and Aglaya were being taken away, peasants thronged the gate and called out, ‘They’ve nabbed His Grace!’ Everyone seemed glad.

The railway policeman said outright, under cross-examination, that Yakov and Aglaya had murdered Matvey to avoid having to share the property with him and if none of it had turned up when they were searching the place, then obviously Yakov and Aglaya had used it. Dashutka was questioned as well. She said Uncle Matvey quarrelled with Aunt Aglaya every day, that they almost came to blows over the money. Uncle must have been rich, she said, to have given a ‘lady friend’ a present of nine hundred roubles.

Dashutka was left on her own at the inn. No one came for tea or vodka and she would either tidy up or drink mead and eat buns. But a few days later the level crossing keeper was questioned and he testified that he had seen Yakov and Dashutka driving back late on Monday evening from Limarovo. Dashutka was arrested as well, taken to town and put in prison. It soon transpired, from what Aglaya said, that Sergey Nikanorych had been there at the time of the murder. They searched his room and found the money in a strange place – a felt boot under the stove, all in small change. There was three hundred in one-rouble notes alone. He swore he had earned it from the business and that he hadn’t been to the inn for over a year; but witnesses testified that he was poor and that recently he had been particularly short of cash. They said he had been coming to the inn every day to borrow from Matvey. The railway policeman told how, on the day of the murder, he himself had gone twice to the inn with the buffet attendant to help him raise a loan. Incidentally, people remembered that on the Monday evening Sergey Nikanorych had not been there to meet the combined goods and passenger train, but had wandered off somewhere. So he was arrested too and sent to town.

The trial took place eleven months later. Yakov Ivanych had aged terribly, grown thinner and spoke in the subdued voice of a sick man. He felt weak and pathetic and that he was shorter than anyone else, and pangs of conscience and religious doubts that constantly preyed on him in prison too seemed to have aged and emaciated his spirit as much as his body. When his absence from church was brought up the judge asked, ‘Are you a dissenter?’; to which he replied, ‘Don’t know, sir.’

By now his faith had completely deserted him. He knew nothing, understood nothing and his former religion repelled him and struck him as irrational and barbarous. Aglaya was still on the warpath and still swore at poor departed Matvey, blaming him for all her misfortunes. Instead of whiskers, Sergey Nikanorych grew a beard now. In the courtroom he sweated and blushed and was plainly ashamed of his grey prison coat and of having to sit in the dock with common peasants. Clumsily, he tried to defend himself, and in his efforts to prove that he had not visited the inn for a whole year, argued with all the witnesses, which made him a general laughing-stock. Dashutka had put on weight while she was in prison. She did not understand any of the questions she was asked in court and only managed to reply that while Uncle Matvey was being killed she had been scared stiff, but that she had felt all right afterwards.

All four were found guilty of murder for gain. Yakov Ivanych was sentenced to twenty years’ hard labour, Aglaya to thirteen, Sergey Nikanorych to ten and Dashutka to six.

VII

Late one evening a foreign steamer anchored in the Dué Roads¹¹ and asked for coal. The captain was requested to wait until morning, but he wasn’t disposed to wait one hour even, and said that should the weather break during the night he risked having to leave without any coal at all. In the Tartary Straits the weather can deteriorate very sharply – in a matter of half an hour – and then the Sakhalin coast becomes extremely dangerous. The wind was freshening already and quite a swell was running.

A convict gang was ordered out to the coalpits from the Voyevoda prison¹² – the gloomiest and most forbidding prison on the island. The convicts were to load coal onto barges which a steam launch would tow to the steamer anchored about half a mile out. There they would have to transfer the load (backbreaking work), with the launch smashing against the ship and the men hardly able to stand for seasickness. Turned out of bed only a short time before, the convicts went along the shore half asleep, stumbling in the dark and clanking their chains. To the left they could barely make out a high, incredibly gloomy cliff, while to the right was pitch-black, unrelieved darkness and the long, drawn-out, monotonous groaning of the sea. Only when a warder lit his pipe, casting a brief light on a guard with a rifle and two or three rough-looking convicts standing nearby, or when he went close to the water with his lantern, could the white crests of the nearest waves be seen.

In this party was Yakov Ivanych, who had been nicknamed ‘Old Shaggy’ on account of his long beard. No one ever called him by his name and patronymic now, he was simply plain Yakov. Now his stock stood very low, for three months after reaching the penal settlement he had become terribly, unbearably homesick, yielded to temptation and ran away. But he was soon caught, given a life sentence and forty lashes. Subsequently he was flogged twice more for losing prison clothing, although in both cases the clothing had been stolen from him. He had begun to feel homesick the moment he was on the way to Odessa. The convict train had stopped during the night at Progonnaya and Yakov had pressed against the window, trying to make out the old place, but it was too dark to see anything.

There was no one he could talk to about home. His sister Aglaya had been sent to a prison on the other side of Siberia and he did not know where she was now. Dashutka was on Sakhalin but had been given to some ex-convict, to live with him in some remote settlement. There was no news of her at all; but once a settler who came to the Voyevoda prison told Yakov that Dashutka had three children. Sergey Nikanorych was not far away, working in some official’s house in Dué, but one could not be sure of meeting him, since he was too stuck-up to associate with rank-and-file convicts.

The gang reached the pithead and the convicts took their positions on the quayside. The news went round that the weather was getting too bad for loading and the steamer appeared to be about to weigh anchor.

Three lights were visible. One was moving – this was the steam launch that had gone out to the ship and which was apparently returning now to report if there would be any work or not. Shivering from the autumn cold and the damp sea air, and wrapped tight in his short, torn sheepskin coat, Yakov Ivanych stared unblinking in the direction of his native land. Ever since his life had begun in prison with others who had been brought there – Russians, Ukrainians, Tatars, Georgians, Chinese, Finns, gypsies and Jews – ever since he had listened to what they had to say and seen them suffer, he had once again begun to pray to God. He felt that at last he had discovered the true faith that his entire family had thirsted for from the time of Grandma Avdotya, had sought for so long without ever finding it. Now he knew all this and he understood where God was and how he could serve Him. But one thing he did not understand – why one man’s destiny should differ so much from another’s. Why had that simple faith, God’s gift to other men, cost him so dear? What was the reason for all those horrible sufferings which made his arms and legs twitch like a drunkard’s and which would clearly give him no respite until his dying day? He peered hard into the gloom and thought he could make out, over thousands of miles of pitch darkness, his homeland, his native province, his district, Progonnaya; he thought he could see the ignorance, savagery, heartlessness, the blind, harsh, bestial indifference of those he had left behind. His eyes were blurred with tears, but still he peered into the distance where the steamer’s pale lights faintly glimmered. And his heart ached with longing for his native land, and he felt an urge to live, to go back home and tell them all about his new-found faith. If only he could save just one man from ruin – and be free of suffering for just one day!

The launch arrived and the warder announced in a loud voice that the job was off. ‘Back!’ he ordered. ‘Stand to attention!’

He could hear the anchor chain being stowed on board the ship. A strong biting wind was blowing now and somewhere, high up on the steep cliffs, the trees were creaking. Most probably a storm was getting up.