Chapter V (2)

And in the meanwhile, I already had my eye on a house on Glukhaya Ulitza.[11] Well, hearing me speak like that, the mistress didn’t even try to hold me any longer. True, when she was saying good-bye to me, she wanted me to come and live with them again, awful hard; or just to come on some holidays, or on birthdays:

[11] Blind Alley would be the nearest English equivalent. _Trans._

“You must,” she says, “always come to put things in order, to get everything ready. It’s only when you’re around,” she says, “that I feel easy. I have grown used to you, like you was one of the family.”

She saw me off with all honours,--which meant that she no longer held any grudge against me; she baked a great big white loaf, putting in a whole salt-cellar full of sugar. I thank her in all sorts of ways, but, of course, she wasn’t anything much in my life,--so I thinks one thing, and I says another. I promised her all she wanted and more, scraping and bowing low before her,--and went my ways. And at once, with the Lord’s blessing, I got busy. I bought the house I had in mind, and opened a dram shop. The trade started off awful good,--in the evening, when I’d come to counting what I’d taken in during the day, there would be thirty, or forty, or sometimes all of forty-five roubles in the till,--and so I got the idea of opening up a store as well, so as, you understand, to get them coming and going. My husband’s sister had long since married a watchman in the Red Cross; he was calling me gossip all the time, and was friendly with me,--so I went to him, got a trifling loan for all sorts of fixtures, permits, and started in doing business. And right then Vanniya had finished his apprenticeship. I took counsel with folks that knew a thing or two as to where I could place him, now.

“Why,” says they, “where else would you place him, when there’s no end of work in your own house?”

And they were right, at that. So I put Vanniya into the store, and stay in the dram shop myself. And then we were off! And, of course, I had even forgot to think of all this past nonsense,--although, to tell the honest truth, the poor cripple had just taken to his bed, at the time I was going away. Never a word out of him to anybody, but just lies down, just like he were dead, forgetting his accordeon even. Suddenly, lo, and behold ye, Polkanikha comes into my yard,--this same wet-nurse. (The little boys had nick-named her Polkanikha.[12]) She comes, and she says:

[12] Wife-of-a-regiment. _Trans._

“A certain man has told me to give you his regards; says you should come and pay him a visit, without fail.”

I went all hot and cold from vexation and shame! “What a darling, to be sure!” thinks I to myself. “What an idea he has gotten into his head! What a mate he has found for himself!” I couldn’t hold in and I says:

“I got no use for his regards; he ought to keep in mind the state he’s in, and you, you old devil, ought to be ashamed to try and be a go-between. Do you hear me, or don’t you?”

She just stopped short. She stands, all stooping, her swollen eyes glowing at me from under her brows, and just shaking her cabbage head; she’d grown daft, either from the heat or from vodka.

“Oh, you heartless creature!” says she. “He was even crying about you,” she says. “All last evening he lay with his face to the wall, and sobbing out loud.”

“Well,” says I, “am I to start weeping bucketfuls? And wasn’t he ashamed, the red-head, to be bawling before folks? Why, what a baby! Or was he weaned from the breast, or something?”

And so I put the old woman out as empty-handed as she had come, and didn’t go myself. And right soon after that he took and really did strangle himself. Right then, of course, I felt great regret because I hadn’t gone; but at that time I had other things to think about, besides him. I had one disgrace coming on top of another, right in my own house.

I had rented out two rooms in the house; one was taken by the policeman on our post,--a fine, serious-minded, respectable man, Chaikin by name; a young lady prostitute came into the other. Flaxen-fair she was, kind of young, and not at all bad to look at,--rather good-looking. She was called Phenia. Kholin the contractor used to come to see her,--he was keeping her; well, I relied on that, and let her take the room. But right here some disagreement took place between them, and so he left her. What was to be done? She had nothing to pay with, but I couldn’t chase her out,--she had run up a debt of eight roubles.

“Miss,” says I, “you must earn off anybody; I don’t keep no open house for strangers.”

“I will try,” she says.

“But then, somehow a body can’t see you trying. Instead of trying, you always stick at home evening after evening. It’s no use,” I says, “to be placing your hopes on Chaikin.”

“I will try. It makes me conscience-struck, just to hear you.”

“A-ah!” I says, “what a conscience you must have, to be sure!”

She’ll try and she’ll try,--but there was no trying of any sort, if the truth be told. She did try to get around Chaikin but he wouldn’t even as much as look at her. Then I see that she’s going after my boy. No matter when I look, he’s always hanging around her. All of a sudden, he gets a notion of getting a new jacket.

“Oh, no,” I says, “you’ll wait a while! As it is, I’m dressing you like any fine young gentleman; now it’s boots, now it’s a cap. I, now, used to deny myself everything, used to figure every copper as a gold piece, yet I’d supply you with everything.”

“I’m not a bad-looker,” says he.

“You daft loon,” says I, “what am I to do, sell the house, or something, on account of your good looks?”

I notice that my business is getting poorer. I started having shortages, losses. I’d sit down to drink my tea,--and even that had lost its taste for me. I started in to watch. I’d be sitting in the dram shop, and yet be listening all the time--I’d put my ear to the partition, without stirring, and listen. I’d hear them rumbling one day, I’d hear them rumbling the next.... I begun scolding him about it.

“And what business is that of yours?” he says. “Maybe I want to marry her.”

“So that’s how,--it’s none of your own mother’s business! I see your intention long since,” I says, “only this is never going to be in this eternity.”

“She’s mad in love with me; you can’t understand her; she is tender and shy.”

“A fine love you can expect,” I says, “from a deboshed slut like that! She’s making fun of you, you fool,” I says. “She’s got the bad disease,” I says, “all her legs is covered with sores.”

He seemed turned to stone for a while; his eyes was all puckered up, like he was looking at the bridge of his nose, and he kept silent. “Well,” thinks I, “glory be to the Lord, I got him in the right spot.” But still, I was frightened to death: it was plain to be seen, you understand, that the poor fellow had fallen hard. “So that means,” thinks I, “that I must finish her off as fast as I can.” I take counsel with my gossip, and with Chaikin. “Tell me, now, what am I to do with them?” “Why,” they say, “catch them on the spot, of course, and throw them out,--and there’s the long and the short of it.” And here is what they thought up. I made believe I was going out calling. I went away, walked for some time through the streets, and about six o’clock,--when Chaikin was relieved, that is,--I set out for home, soft and easy. I run up and push the door,--just as I thought, it was locked. I knock,--no answer. And Chaikin was already standing around the corner. Then I started knocking on the windows, until the panes jarred. Suddenly the latch clicks,--and Vanniya comes out. He’s as white as chalk. I hit him on the shoulder with all my might,--and go straight into the room. And there it was just like a feast had been laid out,--empty beer bottles; weak table wine; sardines; a large herring, all cleaned, as rosy as amber,--everything from the store. Phenka was sitting on a chair, with a blue ribbon in her braid. Soon as she saw me, she jumped up, staring at me with all her eyes; she was all white, and her very lips had turned blue from fear,--she thought I’d go for her, to beat her. But I just says, natural-like,--although I could scarcely breath; I was throwing my shawl open, and then muffling myself up again, by turns:

“What have you got here?” I says; “is it a bethrothal, or something? Or is it somebody’s birthday? Well, why don’t you welcome a body, why don’t you treat me to something?”

They don’t say a word.

“Well,” I says, “why don’t you say something? Why don’t you speak, little son? Is that the kind of a host you are, my pet? So that’s where my hard-earned money flies away, I see!”

He even got his dander up:

“I am of full age myself!”

“So-o,” I says, “and what about me? That means that I’m to rent a hutch or something from your grace and this here little bitch? To get out of my own house? Is that it, eh, so I’ve warmed a viper in my bosom, have I?”

And then he starts yelling at me!

“You have no right to insult her! You have been young yourself at one time,--you ought to understand what love is!”

And Chaikin, the minute he heard that uproar, was right there: he jumped in without a word, grabbed Vannka by the shoulders, and straight into a lumber room with him, under lock and key. (An awful strong man, he was,--like a bandit or something!) He turns the key on him, and says to Phenka:

“You are listed as a miss, but I can make a wolf out of you!”

(Meaning he’d make a note on her passport that would make her hounded like a wolf.)

“Do you want me to do that,” he says, “or don’t you? Vacate this room for us this very day, so’s there won’t be even a whiff of you left!”

She went into tears. But I added something on top of that.

“Let her first get the money what’s coming to me!” I says. “Or else I won’t even let her take away the least little lousy trunk of hers. Let her get my money ready, or I’ll let the whole town know about her!”

Well, so we packed her off that same evening. When I was chasing her out, she took on something awful. She cried and she couldn’t catch her breath for sobbing; she even tore her hair. Of course, her fix wasn’t any too sweet. Where was she to go? All her goods, all her booty, was her own person. But never the less she went off. Vanniya, too, quieted down for a while. He was let out from under lock and key in the morning,--and never a peep out of him; he was very much scared, and you could see by his face that he was conscience-stricken. He settled down to work. And so I even rejoiced and was set at rest,--but not for long. Again there were leaks from the till; and this here street-walker started sending a boy into the shop, and my son, now, would supply her with all sorts of delicacies! Now he’d give her all the sugar she wanted, now tea, now tobacco.... Or a handkerchief, or soap, again and again,--whatever came to his hand.... How was a body to watch him all the time? And then he started in to drink, harder and harder. At last he neglected the store entirely: he didn’t even live at home, come to think of it,--he’d just come in and eat, and then he’d be off again without as much as a by-your-leave. Every day he’d go off to see her; he’d put a bottle under his coat, and away with him; and this same vodka, now, was already dear then. I run around like a chicken without its head,--from the dram-shop to the store, from the store to the dram-shop; and by that time I was afraid to tell him as much as a word,--he had become a downright tramp! He always was a good-looker,--he took after me entirely; his face was very fair and soft,--just like a young lady, he was; he had clear, intelligent eyes; was well-built, broad-shouldered, with chestnut curly hair.... But now his mug was all bloated; his hair got shaggy and came down over his collar; his eyes got bleary, and he got all tattered and had begun to stoop. He always kept silent now, looking at the bridge of his nose all the time,--in deep thought, like.

“Don’t you bother me now,” he’d say, “I’m liable to do something that will lead to prison.”

And when he’d get tipsy, he’d start slobbering, laughing over nothing at all; he’d be playing _Time Fled Beyond Recall_ on his accordeon, and his eyes would fill with tears. Well, I see my affairs are in a bad way,--time for me to get married, soon as I can. And right then they was trying to make a match betwixt me and a certain widower,--he had a store, too, and lived in a suburb. An elderly man, he was, but in good standing, with means. Just the very thing, you understand, that I was striving for. I find out as quickly as I can from trustworthy folks all about his life, down to the last stitch; I see there’s nothing out of the way whatsoever. I got to decide about getting up an acquaintance as quick as possible,--the match-maker had only shown us to each other in church before that; I got to bring it about, you understand, so’s we can visit each other,--sort of make an inspection, as it were. He comes to me first, and gives his credentials: “Lagutin, Nikolai Ivannich,--store-keeper.” “Very pleased to meet you,” I says. I see he’s altogether a fine man,--not any too tall, of course, and all gray; but so agreeable, quiet, neat, diplomatic,--you could see he was a thrifty sort; he had never run up a copper of debt to anybody in all his life, he says. Then me and the match-maker went to see him, like it was on business. We get there. I see he’s got a wine-cellar,--Rhine wines, mostly; and a store stocked with everything that goes with wines: cured lard, now, and ham, and sardines, and herrings. The house wasn’t large, but neat as a pin. There was flowers and little curtains on the windows, the floor was swept clean,--even though he were a bachelor. In the yard everything was in order, too. There was three cows and two horses. One was a three-year-old brood-mare,--he’d been offered five hundred for it already, he said, but he’d turned the offer down. Well, I just went into raptures watching that horse,--that’s how handsome it was! But he only smiles quiet-like, walks with little steps before us, crackling his fingers, and telling us everything, like he was reading off some price-list: here’s this and this, and there’s that and that.... So, thinks I, it’s no use trying to be too smart here; the business ought to be brought to an end quick....

Of course, it’s only now that I’m telling all these things so briefly; but only my poor head knows what feelings I went through at that time! I couldn’t feel my legs under me for joy,--I’d gotten what I was after, you see, I had found the party I was looking for! But I kept silent, I was afraid and shivering all over,--supposing all my hopes was to be dashed down? And that’s almost what did happen; all my trouble almost went for nothing,--and I can’t tell calmly the reason why, even now;--it was on account of this here poor cripple, and on account of my darling little son! We was managing this business so quietly, so genteel, that we thought never a soul would know. But no, I hear that the entire suburb already knows about my intentions and Nikolai Ivannich’s; the rumour, of course, reached the Samokhvalovs as well,--never fear, it was nobody else but Polkanikha that whispered it to them. And he, the poor cripple, now, took and hung himself, like I’m telling you! “There now, you,--I threatened and you didn’t believe me, so now, I’ll do it just to spite you!” He hammered a nail into the wall above his head, fixed a cord from a sugar-loaf to it, drew it around his throat, and crawled off the bed. It wasn’t no great trick; didn’t take much brains! One day at twilight I was standing in the store, putting some things to rights,--when suddenly some one thunders again and again against a shutter in the house. My heart just went down into my shoes. I jump out on the threshold,--it’s Polkanikha.

“What do you want?”

“Nicanor Matveich has passed away!”

She barked it out, turned on her heel, and went for home. But I, in the first excitement, didn’t take anything into account,--it was just like I had been scalded with steam from fright.... I threw a shawl over my shoulders, and started after her. She runs, with her skirt caught up in front, stumbling, stooping,--and I keep on running too.... It was just a disgrace before the whole town! I run, and can’t understand a thing. I had only one thought,--I’m ruined forever! Just think of what he’d gone and done,--may God not bear it against him! Just think what little conscience some people have! I run up to the house,--and there are as many people there as at a fire. The front entrance is ajar; whoever wants to pushes his way in,--everybody is curious, naturally. In my lightheadedness I tried to get in there too. But, glory be, something seemed to hit me over the head; I came to my senses and backed out. Maybe that was what saved me,--else I would have known what crow tastes like. If any one,--why, even this Polkanikha, say,--had remembered me!... “Here, now, your honour, is the one we think is to blame, who is the reason of it all; just you question her,”--and all would have been over with me. Try and wriggle out of it then. A person may not have a blessed thing to do with it, but they grab you and put you away.... It wouldn’t be the first time a thing like that has happened.

Well, soon as they buried him, my heart eased up a little. I’m getting ready for the wedding, hurrying to wind up my business, to sell what I could without loss,--when again there’s grief and woe. I was knocked off my feet as it was, what with one worry and another, and was all roasted from the heat,--the heat that year was simply unbearable, with dust, with a hot wind, especially in our neighbourhood, in Glukhaya Ulitza, standing half way up on a hill,--when suddenly there was another bit of news: Nikolai Ivannich had taken offense. He sends over this same match-maker, now, that had brought us together,--a terrible slut, she was, and kept both her eyes peeled; never fear, it was she herself that put him, Nikolai Ivannich, up to it. Nikolai Ivannich lets me know through her as how he’s putting off the wedding until the first of September,--he’s got a lot of affairs to attend to, now,--and lets me know about my son, about Vanniya: to figure out what was best to be done with him; that he was to be placed anywhere at all,--“Because, now,” he says, “I won’t take him into my house, for no amount. Even though he be your own son,” he says, “he’s bound to clear ruin us, and he’ll be upsetting me.” (And really, just think of his position! Since he’s never known any turmoil, had never raised any rows, of course he was afraid of any excitement: whenever he’d get excited, everything in his head would get muddled,--he wouldn’t be able to say a word.) “Let her get rid of him,” he says. And where was I to place him, how was I to get rid of him? The young fellow had gotten out of hand entirely; with strangers he’d break his neck altogether. But there was no way of getting away from his riddance. As it was, I was all through with him ever since he’d come to know Phenka: she had just bewitched him, the bitch! He’d sleep all day and drink all night,--turning night into day.... I couldn’t even begin to tell the trouble I went through with him that summer! He got me so that I began to melt away like a candle; I couldn’t hold a spoon, my hands shook so. Soon as it got dark I’d sit down on the bench before the house and wait until he’d come in off the street,--I was afeared the boys in the city might do him up....

Well, having gotten such a decision from Nikolai Ivannich, I call my son to me: “So and so, my little son,” I says, “I’ve borne with you long enough, but you’ve turned out a weakling and have gone astray; you have disgraced me all over this neighbourhood. You’ve got used to having everything soft and nice, now, until at last you’ve become a tramp, a drunkard. You haven’t got a gift like I have,--no matter how many times I fell, I always got up again; but you can’t save up anything for yourself. Here am I,--I’ve come to be respected, and I own real estate, and I drink and eat no worse nor other folk; I don’t deny my heart nothing,--and all along of being governed by common sense, always and above all things. But you, I see, want to stay a flutter-fly, like you’d always been. It’s time you was getting off my neck....”

He sits there and never a word out of him,--just picks the oilcloth on the table. I had just called him out to dinner, for he’d been sleeping all along, and his mug was all puffed up.

“Well, why don’t you say something?” I asks. “Don’t you be tearing that oilcloth,--get one of your own first; just you answer me.”

Again he don’t say a word; he bends his head and his lips quiver.

“You’re going to marry?” he says.

“Well,” I says, “it ain’t known yet whether I am or whether I ain’t; but, if I do marry, it will be a decent man, that ain’t a-going to let you into his house. I ain’t your Phenka, brother; I ain’t no street-walker or something.”

When all on a sudden he jumps up from his place and gets all in a passion:

“Why,” he says, “you ain’t worth one of her fingernails!”

How was that? Good, eh? He jumped up, yelling till it didn’t sound like his own voice, slammed the door like thunder,--and off with him. But I, even though I was no great hand at crying, just went off into tears. I cry one day, I cry another,--I had only to think of the words he could find the heart to say to me, and off I’d go. I cry, but I keep one thing in mind,--I would never forgive him such an insult till the end of time, and I would drive him off entirely.... But all this time he don’t come home. I hear he’s carrying on a feast at her house, dancing and prancing, drinking through the money he had stolen, and threatening me: “Never mind,” he says, “I’ll settle her; I’ll lay in wait till she’ll be going somewhere in the evening; and I’ll kill her with a stone.” He sends to the store to buy things,--to make fun of me, of course; now for ginger cookies, now for herrings. I just quiver all over from vexation, but I hold myself in and give what’s wanted. One day I’m sitting in the store, when suddenly he comes in himself, drunk as a lord. He brings in some herrings,--a little wench had bought four of them that morning for his money, of course,--and slap with them down on the counter!

“How dare you,” he yells, “send such abominable stuff to your customers? They smell; they’re only fit for dogs to eat!”

He’s yelling, with his nostrils all puffed out,--looking for an excuse.

“Don’t you be raising no rumpus here,” I says, “and don’t be yelling; I don’t make the herrings myself, but buy them by the barrel. If you don’t like them, don’t guzzle them,--here’s your money back.”

“But what if I had ate them and died?”

“Again,” I says, “you’re swine, and ain’t got no call to be yelling at me,--who are you to be giving me orders? Guess you ain’t such a much. You ought to speak decent-like, and not be crowding in with a row into somebody else’s establishment.”

But all on a sudden he grabbed hold of a steelyard off a bin and sort of hisses out:

“I’ll swat you over the head,” he says, “so’s you’ll stretch right out!”

And then he ran out of the shop with all his might. But I, the way I had sat down on the floor, that’s the way I stayed,--I just couldn’t get up....

Then, I hear that they done for him,--the Lord had punished him on account of his mother! He was barely alive when they brought him in a cab,--unconscious drunk, his head bobbing, his hair caked with blood and covered with dust; his boots and watch had been stolen, his new jacket was all in tatters,--there wasn’t as much as a square inch of whole cloth left anywhere.... I figured and I figured,--take him in I did, and I even paid the cabby; but that very same day I sends my compliments to Nikolai Ivannich, and say that he be told for sure that he shouldn’t be worried any more over anything; that I had decided about my son, now,--I would drive him out without any pity right off when he would wake up. He also sends back his compliments and bids them say: “Very wisely and well done, accept my thanks and sympathy ...” and two weeks later he set the date for the wedding. Yes....

Well, that’s enough; that’s where my story ends. Guess there’s nothing more, to tell about. I’ve gotten along so well with my husband all my days, that it’s just like a rarity nowadays. As I’m saying, what I went through whilst I was struggling to get into this heaven can’t be told in words! But, truth to tell, the Lord hath rewarded me,--it is now the twenty-first year that I’m living with my little old man, fenced about as with a stone wall, and I know for sure that he wouldn’t let nothing or nobody hurt me; it’s only to look at him that he’s so quiet! But, of course, no matter how I try, the heart _will_ start yearning once in a while! Especially before Easter, in Lent, for some reason or other. I think I could die now,--it’s fine, peaceful; they’ll be after reading litanies in all the churches.... True, I’ve had enough of toiling and moiling in my time,--oh, but Nastasiya Semenovna was the persistent one! Ought I, with my mind, to be sitting on the outskirts of a town? My husband calls me Skobele,[13] as it is.... Again, once in a while I get to longing for Vanniya. Never a bit of news about him in twenty years. Maybe he’s died long since, but I don’t know about it. I even felt sorry for him that time they brought him in. We dragged him in, and got him up into bed,--he slept like he was dead the livelong day. I’d climb up, and listen to his breathing,--to see if he was alive, now.... And in the room there was a sour stench of some sort; he’s lying in bed, all tattered, chewed-up, snoring and gagging.... It was a shame and a pity to look at him, and yet it was my own flesh and blood! I’d look and I’d look, and I’d listen,--and then walk out. And what an anguish seized hold on me! I forced myself to sup, cleared away the table, put out the light.... Can’t sleep, and that’s all there is to it,--I just lie there and shiver.... And it was one moonlit night. Then I hear he’s waked up. He’s coughing all the time, all the time going out into the yard, banging the door.

[13] A great Russian general and a universal military genius and strategist. _Trans._

“What you walking about for?” I ask.

“My stomach aches,” he says.

I can hear by his voice that he’s upset and grieving.

“Drink some of that mugwort and vodka that you’ll find in a bottle standing in the image shrine.”

I lay a little longer,--I may have dozed off a little,--when I felt through my slumber, that some one is stealing up over the flooring. I jumped up,--it was he.

“Mother, dear,” he says, “don’t be afraid of me, for the love of Christ!”

And then he went off into a flood of tears! He sat down on the bed, catching my hands, kissing them, raining tears on them,--and just unable to catch his breath,--that’s how he was crying and sobbing. I couldn’t bear it--and went off on my own! It was a pity, of course, but there was no help for it,--all my future lot turned upon him. But then, I saw he understood all this very well himself.

“I can forgive you,” I says, “but you see yourself, now, that there’s nothing to be done about it. So you just go away as far as possible, so’s I shouldn’t even hear about you!”

“Mother, dear,” he says, “why have you ruined me, just like you ruined that poor cripple Nicanor Matveich?”

Well, I see the man ain’t in his right senses yet, so I didn’t even start to argue with him. He cried and he cried, then he got up and went away. And in the morning, I look into the room where he’d slept, but he was already gone for a long while. That meant he had gone as early as possible for shame,--and then he just disappeared, like a stone in the water. There was a rumour, now, that he had lived for a while in a monastery at Zadorsk; that he had then travelled to Tsaritsin,--and there, never fear, he must have broken his neck.... But what’s the use of talking about it--it only troubles the heart! No matter how much you cook water, it will still be water....

But as to what he’d said about Nicanor Matveich,--why, I think it’s even silly. It wasn’t like I had been greedy after a great sum, or had pulled it out of his pocket. He knew his unfortunate condition himself, and was often taken with spells of sadness. He used to say to me at times:

“Nastiya, fate has made me a cripple, and my nature is an insane one: either I’m gay somehow, like just before some misfortune,--or else I have such a melancholy spell, especially in summer, during the heat, with all this dust, that I could just lay hands on myself! I’ll die; they’ll bury me in the Chernoslobodskaya cemetery,--and this dust will swirl for all eternity on to my grave, from beyond the enclosing wall!”

“But, now, Nicanor Matveich, why take on so about that? We don’t feel such things when we’re dead.”

“Why,” he says, “what of it that we won’t feel them,--the trouble is that one thinks about them while one is still alive....”

And, to tell the truth, it was awful wearisome in the house, in the Samokhvalovs’, when everybody would fall asleep after dinner, and the wind would be swirling this dust along! And he had laid hands on himself just at the time of the greatest heat, at the dullest time. Our whole town, to tell the truth, is wearisome. I was in Tula the other day, now,--why, you can’t even compare them!

_1911._

“I SAY NOTHING”

When he had been a young man, everybody used to call Alexander Romanov Shasha; at that time he was living in the settlement of Limovo, in an iron-roofed house that stood facing the common, and his beatings were administered to him by his father, Roman.

Roman deemed himself the first man in all that district,--he used to shove his hand out to all the gentry and the squires whenever he would meet them. He had a store in the settlement, and a mill beyond it; but the way he got richer and richer was by buying up groves from the land-owners and then cutting them down. Makar, his own brother, had nothing to eat; all in tatters, he might be hobbling over the common, and, doffing his hat meekly, would say: “Greetings, brother.” But Roman, well-fed, looking like a deacon, would answer him from his stoop: “Don’t you brother me, you dolt. You’ve made your bow, so just keep on going on your way.” What, then, must have been the feelings of the sole heir of such a man? He used to stroll through the village in a cap that had come from the city; in a sleeveless overcoat of the finest broadcloth, in boots with patent-leather tops. He was all the time cracking polly-seeds, and playing polkas on an expensive accordeon. Whenever he met any wenches or young lads,--all his relatives, all consanguine, everyone of them,--he would be followed by that sort of gaze from which celebrities feel a chill run down their back. But he would meet such a gaze with a surly--even a ferocious--one; all his youth seemed to have passed in a preparation for that rôle in which he attained such perfection later on.

Roman, at the height of his prosperity, began to decline in strength, and to get muddled in his affairs. Grizzled, bearded, pot-bellied, clad in a sleeveless overcoat of casinette that resembled an under-cassock, it was only when he was in his cups that he plucked up heart; but when sober he was always despondent and deliberately churlish. He still retained his glory and his might. Out on the common, near the church, right opposite his windows, he had built a school; he was trustee over it, and could at any instant he liked make the teacher grovel at his feet. He was still able to give goods on credit to the land-owners; to give bribes to the police inspector, without the least necessity; he could still regale one with smoked sprats, with a pickled lobster in a rusty can, with sherry and with wine from Tsimliyan, which is something like champagne,--and, even as he entertained, he would yell, if his guest were of the humbler sort: “Drink, you blockhead!” But it surely was high time to supplant him. But who could do it? That was just it,--there was no supplanting him. Shasha was withdrawing more and more into his rôle of a man upon whom had been inflicted an insult which could be wiped out only by blood, and his relations with Roman resolved themselves merely into Roman’s dragging him around by his “temples.” Shasha, to use Roman’s words, could make an angel lose his patience,--it was impossible not to be dragging him around. And drag him around Roman did. But the more he dragged him, the more unbearable did Shasha become.

Who but he should have taken pride in the house, the might, the ways of his father? His father would yell at him, in the presence of guests: “Go on, now, be a trifle more free and easy, you dolt!” But then, that was the way of those whom his father imitated, the way of the merchants; and was it not a matter for the highest pride to feel one’s self a merchant’s son? At times his father would even boast about him, self-complacently saying to the guest: “Wait, I’ll show youse my son!”--and would shout all over the house: “Shash, c’mon over here,--Mikolai Mikhalich wants to have a look at ye!” But, oh, the way Shasha would enter the room where his father and the guest were sitting! He would enter with his face crimsoning, glowering from underneath his beetling and knit eye-brows, holding his arms stiffly akimbo, like a pretzel, and stepping still more stiffly, toeing in, and as elegantly as if he, were dancing the fifth figure of the quadrille,--and, having made a scraping bow to the guest, he would instantly rush backward to the window, toward the lintel of the door; blowing out his nostrils, he would tear his hang-nails with his teeth, and, in the expectation of an affront from the visitor, answered all questions with the most ludicrous brevity and abruptness.... How, then, could one refrain from beating him? The guest would depart; Roman, having seen him off, would walk up to Shasha without a word, and, swinging back his arm, would grab Shasha fast by his hair. Without a word, Shasha would extricate his head out of his father’s fingers, and, having run out into the anteroom, would smite his bosom with his fist:

“All r-r-right, father! I say nothing! I always say nothing!” he would hiss ominously.

“Why, she-animal that you are!” Roman would bawl at him. “Why, it’s for this same silence and hoiti-toitiness that I’m a-beating you of! So, then, you’re striving for the beating yourself? Why? Wherefore?”

“My ashes when I’m laid in my grave shall know it all!” Shasha would answer ferociously and enigmatically.

One could have wagered his head that he must have been in an excellent state of feelings. Had he not been born with a golden spoon in his mouth? He would order new boots two or three times in a year; he never ran short of money or of polly-seeds; he would promenade the main street with the teacher, and he played on the harmonica better and more spiritedly than everybody else; the wenches used to sing their “heart-breaking” songs without taking their languishing eyes off him. While in the fall, in the winter, he would pay court at evening parties to the coquettish daughters of the priest, to the daughters of the police inspector, dancing with them to the sounds of a talking machine; he was usher at weddings, donning a frock-coat, starched shirt, and new, tight shoes. But then, even his courting was somehow caustic, offhand. But what’s the use! Even when all by himself, looking in the mirror as he whipped up his browny fleece with a metallic comb, he would squint at himself like some monster. His nose was squashed, his voice hoarse, his appearance that of a convict,--the _moujiks_ used to call him a hangman.... No great honour, that, you would think. But no,--he took a delight even in that. “The low-down devil!” the _moujiks_ would say. “Nothing ever pleases him; everything ain’t his way, everything ain’t right!” And he, with all his might, tried to justify these by-names. “Who? Is it Shasha you mean by low-down?” Roman would ask with indignation. “Why, you can pave a pavement with blocks the likes of him! He’s a fool, a play-actor, a born loafer,--and that’s all there is to it! What’s he putting on airs for? What the devil is he after?” But Shasha just looked on with a venomous smile, and never let a word out. “Well, now, just take a look at him,--do!” Roman was saying. “Just look what he’s trying to make out of himself!” But Shasha only knit his eye-brows, making them turn up higher and higher; more and more rapidly did he bite his nails, and by now was convinced even himself that something dreadful was coming to a head within him. “Oh, father!” he would say, as though unable to hold out. “Oh, but I would like to tell you a certain thing!” Roman, despondent, with sagging pouches under his eyes, would smile like a martyr: “Well, what sort of a thing is it? Eh? Well, now, say it?” “Who, me?” Shasha would ask, throwing a glance at him from underneath his eyebrows. “Yes, you!” “My ashes when I’m laid in my grave shall know it all!” “But what is it that they’ll know? Are you drunk, you good-for-nought?” “Drunk!” Shasha would answer. “Drunk? I say nothing. I al-ways say nothing!” And, almost weeping, Roman would again advance upon him, like a bear; would again catch him by the head, and, bending it down, would drag him by the hair in an excruciating transport.

From his twentieth year to his twenty-fifth, Shasha was almost never beaten,--unless it were sort of casually, of course. But he made up for this with something else. He sought other occasions for self-torture,--and of occasions there were as many as he wanted.

He married--and it was a splendid match--the daughter of the manager of a great estate which belonged to a nobleman; his bride was a laughing, freckled girl, rather pretty. His marriage was celebrated magnificently. The owners of the estate resided abroad; therefore Shasha was able to go to the wedding ceremony in their carriage, and the priest, out of respect to this carriage, felicitated him upon his lawful marriage with especial eloquence and servility, although it did seem to Shasha that he was being made fun of. The wedding feast, too, was held in the owners’ house. Wine flowed like a river. Roman, amid the general clamour of delight, started in to dance, shaking the parquetry, the mirrors and the chandeliers. The owners’ flunky gave an excellent imitation of a railroad train: he began with a rumbling whistle through his fingers, then started in beating out, with his feet, the slow and heavy clatter of a train constantly increasing its momentum, and wound up with a riotous gallop. The sexton, having imbibed too much cognac at the feast, died on his way home. The deacon, having fallen down in his own yard into some half-liquid manure, was almost trampled to death by his sheep. The nastiest of autumn dawns, pallidly blue, looked in through the fog into the smoke-filled seigniorial halls,--but the lights were still burning there; the talking machine, now grown hoarse, was still gurgling out now the _Lezguinka_, now _The Lancers_; the ushers, all moist from the heat and their exertions, were still yelling as they supervised the dances; while the eyes of the young ladies grew glazed from fatigue, and the soles of their white slippers flew off as they danced.... But Shasha did not spare even his own high celebration; having convinced himself that he was infernally jealous of his young wife and a certain rather young land-owner, he, feigning intoxication, suddenly stepped upon the long train of her dress during a waltz, and tore it off with a ripping sound. And after that he made a rush for a knife, trying to cut his own throat, and, upon being disarmed, he sobbed wildly, tearing off his starched collar and his white tie, calling upon the memory of his departed mother.... As for his behaviour after the wedding,--Shasha did everything that lay in his power to wreck his own domestic well-being, and to hasten the ruin of Roman.

Having attained the zenith, Roman was inevitably bound, as is always the case in Russia, to start rolling downward again, toward his former lowly lair. Soon after the wedding it turned out that he was entirely entangled, head and foot, in the toils of debt. He became awesome. His grizzled beard turned white. His face came to resemble a dirty-gray, milked-out udder. His eyes died out. His belly, grown flabby, hung down. But Shasha rejoiced malignantly: “I told you so! I told you so!”--and was finishing him off; he rioted, kicked up rows, demanded a winding up of Roman’s affairs. And Roman, turning green from wrath, would rise up against him like a bear, thirsting to maim him,--but he no longer could; he no longer could! Crushed down by the thought of approaching disgrace, of approaching poverty, he took to drinking harder and harder. Having lost all shame, he got his mistress (a cook and a soldier’s wife), into his own house. Shasha, not being contented with his wife, lived with her too, just to spite him. As for his wife, he used to exhaust her with his jealousy and his scares; he used to stay away from the house and to send _moujiks_ with notes to her, upon which notes would be written: “Forgive me in death; I send my blessings to the children,”--and below there would be drawn a grave with a cross. His wife was for a long while deluged with tears. And then she got together with the teacher, and now gave Shasha every reason to be saying “All r-r-right! Only my ashes when I’m laid in my grave will know it all!” The upshot of it all was, that Roman was laid low by a stroke of paralysis; that only the wind-mill beyond the settlement was left out of all his wealth; that Shasha’s wife, taking the children with her, fled to her father, who had gone to the city of Skopin. The while Shasha, drinking deep of the delicious draught of his misfortunes, treating everything and everybody with merciless criticism and opprobrium, was absenting himself in the village, drinking every bit as hard as his father, she pulled up stakes and disappeared.

Roman left the settlement for his mill beggared and barely alive. Beggared and widowed, gnashing his teeth with rage, Shasha followed him out of the village. What with toiling and moiling, even the mill would not have been a bad thing to live by. But how was Shasha to be bothered with it! How could you expect him to have the strength of getting up on his feet after the awful finishing stroke fate had dealt him! Even formerly he,--not understood, not appreciated, condemned to live in the midst of enemies and ill-wishers,--had had but one recourse left him: to say nothing, and again to say nothing, and to say nothing without end. And now? Why, he could have piled up thousands from this mill alone; there would have been no getting into it for the carts full of grain surrounding it,--if he only had two or three hundred to get him a new shaft and new mill-stones.... Yes, but where was a body to get that money? It’s only into the hands of fools that good luck plays; but you take an able, sensible man, and Fate will twist him into a ram’s horn. Well, let it,--let it! “I say nothing,” Shasha would say, malignantly rejoicing; “I al-ways say nothing!”

The broken trough,[14] familiar to him and appropriate to his former status of a _moujik_, again appeared before Roman in place of palatial chambers. Nor did the rub lie at all in the fact that, instead of smoked sprats and Tsimliyan wine, a big slice of black bread and a wooden vessel of water turned up on his table,--he would have eaten such food with his former relish; the rub was in the torments of his pride,--the most cruel of all human torments. In a big hut, leaning all to one side, with an earthen floor and with holes in its corners, atop the bare oven,--there did Roman sleep now. In the morning he would crawl out beyond the threshold, with a tall staff in his hands. With pig-weeds and high rank grass was the outside of the hut overgrown; stinging nettles choked up the huge shell of the wide-open wind-mill. All this stood out on the bare ridge of the plains, nigh the highway. And Roman would go out to the edge of the road, and would place his trembling, cold paws upon his staff. He was without a hat; the wind tangled up his gray, shaggy locks, his gray beard,--the beard of a _moujik_ Job. He was bare-footed, in short drawers of striped ticking, in a long blouse filthy from cinders and the rubbish of the oven. His legs were black and thin, his torso huge and emaciated. Those whom he had regaled and lectured at one time now rode past him. And Roman--it was not for nothing that Shasha had sprung from his loins--even rejoiced that folks saw him in poverty, in disgrace, and he bowed to the ground before them. And of evenings he would stand in the dark hut before a little painted board hung up in a corner, and with heavy sighs bowed before it still lower then he did before men, saying his prayers now in a whisper, now loudly--warmly and grievously thanking God for all that He had visited upon him, a miserable, stricken old man.... Shasha, now, enjoyed his humiliation in a gayer fashion, in low-down inns, in low-down pot-houses, drinking away the last scanty remnants of their former prosperity, and paying for his long tongue by being beaten....

[14] The reference here is to a famous folk-tale,--best known in Pushkin’s version, _The Little Gold Fish_. A fisherman, having caught a little gold fish, is promised the fulfillment of all his wishes for its release. All his demands, instigated by his wife, are granted, beginning with a substitution of a new trough for a broken one, and up to the attainment of rank and wealth; but finally the wife insists upon the fulfillment of a wish so insolent that, upon his return from interviewing his benefactress, the fisherman finds his wife sitting at the same old broken trough, before his former humble hut. _Trans._

Then, from his twenty-fifth year on, his beatings became regular, administered to him upon a previously designated day; and no longer was he beaten the way his father used to beat him; he was beaten with heels now, until he would lose consciousness.

The soldier’s wife remained faithful to the house of Roman. She also moved to the mill. And when Roman died--oh, how proud (with a malignantly joyous pride) Shasha was over this calamity,--she passed into Shasha’s hands openly. But in the meanwhile her lawful husband had come home from service. She was as needful to him as snow in the summertime; but never the less he held it to be his most sacred duty and his inalienable right to avenge his sullied honour. And he ingeniously timed this revenge with the day of the folk-festival at Limovo.

Every year, on the fifteenth of July, on a great holiday popularly called the Kiriki, a fair is held in Limovo. Rain pours down in chill torrents; one is reminded of the summer only by the rooks in the fields, by the height and the density of the grains and the grasses, and also by the sky-larks, that sing above them in the rain and are blown aslant by the wind. But on the common at Limovo a little nomadic city of tents is already springing up. The traders from the city have arrived,--and it is an unaccustomed, strange sight to see in the settlement these city people, in their long-skirted coats. In building upon the common, and making it congested, they have changed the simple village picture with their thronging, their big, strong carts laden with goods; together with these goods they have brought the atmosphere of an Asiatic bazaar; their samovars smoke, and their braziers emit the fumes of frying mutton.... On the fifteenth, since the early morn, they are already standing behind their counters; while the _moujiks_ with their women-folk and little ones keep on streaming in, flocking from all directions toward the village; they have dammed up the common so that there isn’t room for a pin to fall. And above all this swarming, babel, hubbub, and creak of carts, booms the festal pealing of bells, summoning to mass.