1
The evening service was
being celebrated at Progonnaya Station. Before the great ikon, painted in
glaring colours on a background of gold, stood the crowd of railway servants
with their wives and children, and also of the timbermen and sawyers who worked
close to the railway line. All stood in silence, fascinated by the glare of the
lights and the howling of the snow-storm which was aimlessly disporting itself
outside, regardless of the fact that it was the Eve of the Annunciation. The
old priest from Vedenyapino conducted the service; the sacristan and Matvey
Terehov were singing.
Matvey’s face
was beaming with delight; he sang stretching out his neck as though he wanted
to soar upwards. He sang tenor and chanted the “Praises” too in a tenor voice
with honied sweetness and persuasiveness. When he sang “Archangel Voices” he
waved his arms like a conductor, and trying to second the sacristan’s hollow
bass with his tenor, achieved something extremely complex, and from his face it
could be seen that he was experiencing great pleasure.
At last the
service was over, and they all quietly dispersed, and it was dark and empty
again, and there followed that hush which is only known in stations that stand
solitary in the open country or in the forest when the wind howls and nothing
else is heard and when all the emptiness around, all the dreariness of life
slowly ebbing away is felt.
Matvey lived
not far from the station at his cousin’s tavern. But he did not want to go home.
He sat down at the refreshment bar and began talking to the waiter in a low
voice.
“We had our own
choir in the tile factory. And I must tell you that though we were only
workmen, our singing was first-rate, splendid. We were often invited to the
town, and when the Deputy Bishop, Father Ivan, took the service at Trinity
Church, the bishop’s singers sang in the right choir and we in the left. Only
they complained in the town that we kept the singing on too long: ‘the factory
choir drag it out,’ they used to say. It is true we began St. Andrey’s prayers
and the Praises between six and seven, and it was past eleven when we finished,
so that it was sometimes after midnight when we got home to the factory. It was
good,” sighed Matvey. “Very good it was, indeed, Sergey Nikanoritch! But here
in my father’s house it is anything but joyful. The nearest church is four
miles away; with my weak health I can’t get so far; there are no singers there.
And there is no peace or quiet in our family; day in day out, there is an
uproar, scolding, uncleanliness; we all eat out of one bowl like peasants; and
there are beetles in the cabbage soup. . . . God has not given me
health, else I would have gone away long ago, Sergey Nikanoritch.”
Matvey Terehov
was a middle-aged man about forty-five, but he had a look of ill-health; his
face was wrinkled and his lank, scanty beard was quite grey, and that made him
seem many years older. He spoke in a weak voice, circumspectly, and held his
chest when he coughed, while his eyes assumed the uneasy and anxious look one
sees in very apprehensive people. He never said definitely what was wrong with
him, but he was fond of describing at length how once at the factory he had
lifted a heavy box and had ruptured himself, and how this had led to “the
gripes,” and had forced him to give up his work in the tile factory and come
back to his native place; but he could not explain what he meant by “the
gripes.”
“I must own I
am not fond of my cousin,” he went on, pouring himself out some tea. “He is my
elder; it is a sin to censure him, and I fear the Lord, but I cannot bear it in
patience. He is a haughty, surly, abusive man; he is the torment of his
relations and workmen, and constantly out of humour. Last Sunday I asked him in
an amiable way, ‘Brother, let us go to Pahomovo for the Mass!’ but he said ‘I
am not going; the priest there is a gambler;’ and he would not come here today
because, he said, the priest from Vedenyapino smokes and drinks vodka. He
doesn’t like the clergy! He reads Mass himself and the Hours and the Vespers,
while his sister acts as sacristan; he says, ‘Let us pray unto the Lord’! and
she, in a thin little voice like a turkey-hen, ‘Lord, have mercy upon us! . .
.’ It’s a sin, that’s what it is. Every day I say to him, ‘Think what you are
doing, brother! Repent, brother!’ and he takes no notice.”
Sergey
Nikanoritch, the waiter, poured out five glasses of tea and carried them on a
tray to the waiting-room. He had scarcely gone in when there was a shout:
“Is that the
way to serve it, pig’s face? You don’t know how to wait!”
It was the
voice of the station-master. There was a timid mutter, then again a harsh and
angry shout:
“Get along!”
The waiter came
back greatly crestfallen.
“There was a
time when I gave satisfaction to counts and princes,” he said in a low voice;
“but now I don’t know how to serve tea. . . . He called me names
before the priest and the ladies!”
The waiter,
Sergey Nikanoritch, had once had money of his own, and had kept a buffet at a
first-class station, which was a junction, in the principal town of a province.
There he had worn a swallow-tail coat and a gold chain. But things had gone ill
with him; he had squandered all his own money over expensive fittings and
service; he had been robbed by his staff, and getting gradually into
difficulties, had moved to another station less bustling. Here his wife had
left him, taking with her all the silver, and he moved to a third station of a
still lower class, where no hot dishes were served. Then to a fourth.
Frequently changing his situation and sinking lower and lower, he had at last
come to Progonnaya, and here he used to sell nothing but tea and cheap vodka,
and for lunch hard-boiled eggs and dry sausages, which smelt of tar, and which
he himself sarcastically said were only fit for the orchestra. He was bald all
over the top of his head, and had prominent blue eyes and thick bushy whiskers,
which he often combed out, looking into the little looking-glass. Memories of
the past haunted him continually; he could never get used to sausage “only fit
for the orchestra,” to the rudeness of the station-master, and to the peasants
who used to haggle over the prices, and in his opinion it was as unseemly to
haggle over prices in a refreshment room as in a chemist’s shop. He was ashamed
of his poverty and degradation, and that shame was now the leading interest of
his life.
“Spring is late
this year,” said Matvey, listening. “It’s a good job; I don’t like spring. In
spring it is very muddy, Sergey Nikanoritch. In books they write: Spring, the
birds sing, the sun is setting, but what is there pleasant in that? A bird is a
bird, and nothing more. I am fond of good company, of listening to folks, of
talking of religion or singing something agreeable in chorus; but as for
nightingales and flowers — bless them, I say!”
He began again
about the tile factory, about the choir, but Sergey Nikanoritch could not get
over his mortification, and kept shrugging his shoulders and muttering. Matvey
said good-bye and went home.
There was no
frost, and the snow was already melting on the roofs, though it was still
falling in big flakes; they were whirling rapidly round and round in the air
and chasing one another in white clouds along the railway line. And the oak
forest on both sides of the line, in the dim light of the moon which was hidden
somewhere high up in the clouds, resounded with a prolonged sullen murmur. When
a violent storm shakes the trees, how terrible they are! Matvey walked along
the causeway beside the line, covering his face and his hands, while the wind
beat on his back. All at once a little nag, plastered all over with snow, came
into sight; a sledge scraped along the bare stones of the causeway, and a
peasant, white all over, too, with his head muffled up, cracked his whip.
Matvey looked round after him, but at once, as though it had been a vision,
there was neither sledge nor peasant to be seen, and he hastened his steps,
suddenly scared, though he did not know why.
Here was the
crossing and the dark little house where the signalman lived. The barrier was
raised, and by it perfect mountains had drifted and clouds of snow were whirling
round like witches on broomsticks. At that point the line was crossed by an old
highroad, which was still called “the track.” On the right, not far from the
crossing, by the roadside stood Terehov’s tavern, which had been a posting inn.
Here there was always a light twinkling at night.
When Matvey
reached home there was a strong smell of incense in all the rooms and even in
the entry. His cousin Yakov Ivanitch was still reading the evening service. In
the prayer-room where this was going on, in the corner opposite the door, there
stood a shrine of old-fashioned ancestral ikons in gilt settings, and both
walls to right and to left were decorated with ikons of ancient and modern
fashion, in shrines and without them. On the table, which was draped to the
floor, stood an ikon of the Annunciation, and close by a cyprus-wood cross and
the censer; wax candles were burning. Beside the table was a reading desk. As
he passed by the prayer-room, Matvey stopped and glanced in at the door. Yakov
Ivanitch was reading at the desk at that moment, his sister Aglaia, a tall lean
old woman in a dark-blue dress and white kerchief, was praying with him. Yakov
Ivanitch’s daughter Dashutka, an ugly freckled girl of eighteen, was there,
too, barefoot as usual, and wearing the dress in which she had at nightfall
taken water to the cattle.
“Glory to Thee
Who hast shown us the light!” Yakov Ivanitch boomed out in a chant, bowing low.
Aglaia propped
her chin on her hand and chanted in a thin, shrill, drawling voice. And
upstairs, above the ceiling, there was the sound of vague voices which seemed
menacing or ominous of evil. No one had lived on the storey above since a fire
there a long time ago. The windows were boarded up, and empty bottles lay about
on the floor between the beams. Now the wind was banging and droning, and it
seemed as though someone were running and stumbling over the beams.
Half of the
lower storey was used as a tavern, while Terehov’s family lived in the other
half, so that when drunken visitors were noisy in the tavern every word they
said could be heard in the rooms. Matvey lived in a room next to the kitchen,
with a big stove, in which, in old days, when this had been a posting inn,
bread had been baked every day. Dashutka, who had no room of her own, lived in
the same room behind the stove. A cricket chirped there always at night and
mice ran in and out.
Matvey lighted
a candle and began reading a book which he had borrowed from the station
policeman. While he was sitting over it the service ended, and they all went to
bed. Dashutka lay down, too. She began snoring at once, but soon woke up and
said, yawning:
“You shouldn’t
burn a candle for nothing, Uncle Matvey.”
“It’s my
candle,” answered Matvey; “I bought it with my own money.”
Dashutka turned
over a little and fell asleep again. Matvey sat up a good time longer — he was
not sleepy — and when he had finished the last page he took a pencil out of a
box and wrote on the book:
“I, Matvey
Terehov, have read this book, and think it the very best of all the books I
have read, for which I express my gratitude to the non-commissioned officer of
the Police Department of Railways, Kuzma Nikolaev Zhukov, as the possessor of
this priceless book.”
He considered
it an obligation of politeness to make such inscriptions in other people’s
books.
2
On Annunciation Day, after
the mail train had been sent off, Matvey was sitting in the refreshment bar,
talking and drinking tea with lemon in it.
The waiter and
Zhukov the policeman were listening to him.
“I was, I must
tell you,” Matvey was saying, “inclined to religion from my earliest childhood.
I was only twelve years old when I used to read the epistle in church, and my
parents were greatly delighted, and every summer I used to go on a pilgrimage
with my dear mother. Sometimes other lads would be singing songs and catching
crayfish, while I would be all the time with my mother. My elders commended me,
and, indeed, I was pleased myself that I was of such good behaviour. And when
my mother sent me with her blessing to the factory, I used between working
hours to sing tenor there in our choir, and nothing gave me greater pleasure. I
needn’t say, I drank no vodka, I smoked no tobacco, and lived in chastity; but
we all know such a mode of life is displeasing to the enemy of mankind, and he,
the unclean spirit, once tried to ruin me and began to darken my mind, just as
now with my cousin. First of all, I took a vow to fast every Monday and not to
eat meat any day, and as time went on all sorts of fancies came over me. For
the first week of Lent down to Saturday the holy fathers have ordained a diet
of dry food, but it is no sin for the weak or those who work hard even to drink
tea, yet not a crumb passed into my mouth till the Sunday, and afterwards all
through Lent I did not allow myself a drop of oil, and on Wednesdays and
Fridays I did not touch a morsel at all. It was the same in the lesser fasts.
Sometimes in St. Peter’s fast our factory lads would have fish soup, while I
would sit a little apart from them and suck a dry crust. Different people have
different powers, of course, but I can say of myself I did not find fast days
hard, and, indeed, the greater the zeal the easier it seems. You are only
hungry on the first days of the fast, and then you get used to it; it goes on
getting easier, and by the end of a week you don’t mind it at all, and there is
a numb feeling in your legs as though you were not on earth, but in the clouds.
And, besides that, I laid all sorts of penances on myself; I used to get up in
the night and pray, bowing down to the ground, used to drag heavy stones from
place to place, used to go out barefoot in the snow, and I even wore chains,
too. Only, as time went on, you know, I was confessing one day to the priest
and suddenly this reflection occurred to me: why, this priest, I thought, is
married, he eats meat and smokes tobacco — how can he confess me, and what
power has he to absolve my sins if he is more sinful that I? I even scruple to
eat Lenten oil, while he eats sturgeon, I dare say. I went to another priest,
and he, as ill luck would have it, was a fat fleshy man, in a silk cassock; he
rustled like a lady, and he smelt of tobacco too. I went to fast and confess in
the monastery, and my heart was not at ease even there; I kept fancying the
monks were not living according to their rules. And after that I could not find
a service to my mind: in one place they read the service too fast, in another
they sang the wrong prayer, in a third the sacristan stammered. Sometimes, the
Lord forgive me a sinner, I would stand in church and my heart would throb with
anger. How could one pray, feeling like that? And I fancied that the people in
the church did not cross themselves properly, did not listen properly; wherever
I looked it seemed to me that they were all drunkards, that they broke the
fast, smoked, lived loose lives and played cards. I was the only one who lived
according to the commandments. The wily spirit did not slumber; it got worse as
it went on. I gave up singing in the choir and I did not go to church at all;
since my notion was that I was a righteous man and that the church did not suit
me owing to its imperfections — that is, indeed, like a fallen angel, I was
puffed up in my pride beyond all belief. After this I began attempting to make
a church for myself. I hired from a deaf woman a tiny little room, a long way
out of town near the cemetery, and made a prayer-room like my cousin’s, only I
had big church candlesticks, too, and a real censer. In this prayer-room of
mine I kept the rules of holy Mount Athos — that is, every day my matins began
at midnight without fail, and on the eve of the chief of the twelve great holy
days my midnight service lasted ten hours and sometimes even twelve. Monks are
allowed by rule to sit during the singing of the Psalter and the reading of the
Bible, but I wanted to be better than the monks, and so I used to stand all
through. I used to read and sing slowly, with tears and sighing, lifting up my
hands, and I used to go straight from prayer to work without sleeping; and, indeed,
I was always praying at my work, too. Well, it got all over the town ‘Matvey is
a saint; Matvey heals the sick and senseless.’ I never had healed anyone, of
course, but we all know wherever any heresy or false doctrine springs up
there’s no keeping the female sex away. They are just like flies on the honey.
Old maids and females of all sorts came trailing to me, bowing down to my feet,
kissing my hands and crying out I was a saint and all the rest of it, and one
even saw a halo round my head. It was too crowded in the prayer-room. I took a
bigger room, and then we had a regular tower of Babel. The devil got hold of me
completely and screened the light from my eyes with his unclean hoofs. We all
behaved as though we were frantic. I read, while the old maids and other
females sang, and then after standing on their legs for twenty-four hours or
longer without eating or drinking, suddenly a trembling would come over them as
though they were in a fever; after that, one would begin screaming and then
another — it was horrible! I, too, would shiver all over like a Jew in a
frying-pan, I don’t know myself why, and our legs began to prance about. It’s a
strange thing, indeed: you don’t want to, but you prance about and waggle your
arms; and after that, screaming and shrieking, we all danced and ran after one
another — ran till we dropped; and in that way, in wild frenzy, I fell into
fornication.”
The policeman
laughed, but, noticing that no one else was laughing, became serious and said:
“That’s
Molokanism. I have heard they are all like that in the Caucasus.”
“But I was not
killed by a thunderbolt,” Matvey went on, crossing himself before the ikon and
moving his lips. “My dead mother must have been praying for me in the other
world. When everyone in the town looked upon me as a saint, and even the ladies
and gentlemen of good family used to come to me in secret for consolation, I
happened to go into our landlord, Osip Varlamitch, to ask forgiveness — it was
the Day of Forgiveness — and he fastened the door with the hook, and we were
left alone face to face. And he began to reprove me, and I must tell you Osip
Varlamitch was a man of brains, though without education, and everyone
respected and feared him, for he was a man of stern, God-fearing life and
worked hard. He had been the mayor of the town, and a warden of the church for
twenty years maybe, and had done a great deal of good; he had covered all the
New Moscow Road with gravel, had painted the church, and had decorated the
columns to look like malachite. Well, he fastened the door, and —‘I have been
wanting to get at you for a long time, you rascal, . . .’ he said. ‘You think
you are a saint,’ he said. ‘No you are not a saint, but a backslider from God,
a heretic and an evildoer! . . .’ And he went on and on. . . . I
can’t tell you how he said it, so eloquently and cleverly, as though it were
all written down, and so touchingly. He talked for two hours. His words
penetrated my soul; my eyes were opened. I listened, listened and — burst into
sobs! ‘Be an ordinary man,’ he said, ‘eat and drink, dress and pray like
everyone else. All that is above the ordinary is of the devil. Your chains,’ he
said, ‘are of the devil; your fasting is of the devil; your prayer-room is of
the devil. It is all pride,’ he said. Next day, on Monday in Holy Week, it
pleased God I should fall ill. I ruptured myself and was taken to the hospital.
I was terribly worried, and wept bitterly and trembled. I thought there was a
straight road before me from the hospital to hell, and I almost died. I was in
misery on a bed of sickness for six months, and when I was discharged the first
thing I did I confessed, and took the sacrament in the regular way and became a
man again. Osip Varlamitch saw me off home and exhorted me: ‘Remember, Matvey,
that anything above the ordinary is of the devil.’ And now I eat and drink like
everyone else and pray like everyone else . . . . If it happens now
that the priest smells of tobacco or vodka I don’t venture to blame him,
because the priest, too, of course, is an ordinary man. But as soon as I am
told that in the town or in the village a saint has set up who does not eat for
weeks, and makes rules of his own, I know whose work it is. So that is how I
carried on in the past, gentlemen. Now, like Osip Varlamitch, I am continually
exhorting my cousins and reproaching them, but I am a voice crying in the
wilderness. God has not vouchsafed me the gift.”
Matvey’s story
evidently made no impression whatever. Sergey Nikanoritch said nothing, but
began clearing the refreshments off the counter, while the policeman began
talking of how rich Matvey’s cousin was.
“He must have
thirty thousand at least,” he said.
Zhukov the
policeman, a sturdy, well-fed, red-haired man with a full face (his cheeks
quivered when he walked), usually sat lolling and crossing his legs when not in
the presence of his superiors. As he talked he swayed to and fro and whistled
carelessly, while his face had a self-satisfied replete air, as though he had
just had dinner. He was making money, and he always talked of it with the air
of a connoisseur. He undertook jobs as an agent, and when anyone wanted to sell
an estate, a horse or a carriage, they applied to him.
“Yes, it will
be thirty thousand, I dare say,” Sergey Nikanoritch assented. “Your grandfather
had an immense fortune,” he said, addressing Matvey. “Immense it was; all left
to your father and your uncle. Your father died as a young man and your uncle
got hold of it all, and afterwards, of course, Yakov Ivanitch. While you were
going pilgrimages with your mama and singing tenor in the factory, they didn’t
let the grass grow under their feet.”
“Fifteen
thousand comes to your share,” said the policeman swaying from side to side.
“The tavern belongs to you in common, so the capital is in common. Yes. If I
were in your place I should have taken it into court long ago. I would have
taken it into court for one thing, and while the case was going on I’d have
knocked his face to a jelly.”
Yakov Ivanitch
was disliked because, when anyone believes differently from others, it upsets
even people who are indifferent to religion. The policeman disliked him also
because he, too, sold horses and carriages.
“You don’t care
about going to law with your cousin because you have plenty of money of your
own,” said the waiter to Matvey, looking at him with envy. “It is all very well
for anyone who has means, but here I shall die in this position, I suppose . . .
.”
Matvey began
declaring that he hadn’t any money at all, but Sergey Nikanoritch was not
listening. Memories of the past and of the insults which he endured every day
came showering upon him. His bald head began to perspire; he flushed and
blinked.
“A cursed
life!” he said with vexation, and he banged the sausage on the floor.
3
The story ran that the
tavern had been built in the time of Alexander I, by a widow who had settled
here with her son; her name was Avdotya Terehov. The dark roofed-in courtyard
and the gates always kept locked excited, especially on moonlight nights, a
feeling of depression and unaccountable uneasiness in people who drove by with
posting-horses, as though sorcerers or robbers were living in it; and the
driver always looked back after he passed, and whipped up his horses.
Travellers did not care to put up here, as the people of the house were always
unfriendly and charged heavily. The yard was muddy even in summer; huge fat
pigs used to lie there in the mud, and the horses in which the Terehovs dealt
wandered about untethered, and often it happened that they ran out of the yard
and dashed along the road like mad creatures, terrifying the pilgrim women. At
that time there was a great deal of traffic on the road; long trains of loaded
waggons trailed by, and all sorts of adventures happened, such as, for
instance, that thirty years ago some waggoners got up a quarrel with a passing
merchant and killed him, and a slanting cross is standing to this day half a
mile from the tavern; posting-chaises with bells and the heavy dormeuses of country
gentlemen drove by; and herds of homed cattle passed bellowing and stirring up
clouds of dust.
When the
railway came there was at first at this place only a platform, which was called
simply a halt; ten years afterwards the present station, Progonnaya, was built.
The traffic on the old posting-road almost ceased, and only local landowners
and peasants drove along it now, but the working people walked there in crowds
in spring and autumn. The posting-inn was transformed into a restaurant; the
upper storey was destroyed by fire, the roof had grown yellow with rust, the
roof over the yard had fallen by degrees, but huge fat pigs, pink and
revolting, still wallowed in the mud in the yard. As before, the horses
sometimes ran away and, lashing their tails dashed madly along the road. In the
tavern they sold tea, hay oats and flour, as well as vodka and beer, to be
drunk on the premises and also to be taken away; they sold spirituous liquors
warily, for they had never taken out a licence.
The Terehovs
had always been distinguished by their piety, so much so that they had even
been given the nickname of the “Godlies.” But perhaps because they lived apart
like bears, avoided people and thought out all their ideas for themselves, they
were given to dreams and to doubts and to changes of faith and almost each
generation had a peculiar faith of its own. The grandmother Avdotya, who had
built the inn, was an Old Believer; her son and both her grandsons (the fathers
of Matvey and Yakov) went to the Orthodox church, entertained the clergy, and
worshipped before the new ikons as devoutly as they had done before the old.
The son in old age refused to eat meat and imposed upon himself the rule of
silence, considering all conversation as sin; it was the peculiarity of the
grandsons that they interpreted the Scripture not simply, but sought in it a
hidden meaning, declaring that every sacred word must contain a mystery.
Avdotya’s
great-grandson Matvey had struggled from early childhood with all sorts of
dreams and fancies and had been almost ruined by it; the other great-grandson,
Yakov Ivanitch, was orthodox, but after his wife’s death he gave up going to
church and prayed at home. Following his example, his sister Aglaia had turned,
too; she did not go to church herself, and did not let Dashutka go. Of Aglaia
it was told that in her youth she used to attend the Flagellant meetings in
Vedenyapino, and that she was still a Flagellant in secret, and that was why
she wore a white kerchief.
Yakov Ivanitch
was ten years older than Matvey — he was a very handsome tall old man with a
big grey beard almost to his waist, and bushy eyebrows which gave his face a
stern, even ill-natured expression. He wore a long jerkin of good cloth or a
black sheepskin coat, and altogether tried to be clean and neat in dress; he
wore goloshes even in dry weather. He did not go to church, because, to his
thinking, the services were not properly celebrated and because the priests
drank wine at unlawful times and smoked tobacco. Every day he read and sang the
service at home with Aglaia. At Vedenyapino they left out the “Praises” at
early matins, and had no evening service even on great holidays, but he used to
read through at home everything that was laid down for every day, without
hurrying or leaving out a single line, and even in his spare time read aloud
the Lives of the Saints. And in everyday life he adhered strictly to the rules
of the church; thus, if wine were allowed on some day in Lent “for the sake of
the vigil,” then he never failed to drink wine, even if he were not inclined.
He read, sang,
burned incense and fasted, not for the sake of receiving blessings of some sort
from God, but for the sake of good order. Man cannot live without religion, and
religion ought to be expressed from year to year and from day to day in a
certain order, so that every morning and every evening a man might turn to God
with exactly those words and thoughts that were befitting that special day and
hour. One must live, and, therefore, also pray as is pleasing to God, and so
every day one must read and sing what is pleasing to God — that is, what is
laid down in the rule of the church. Thus the first chapter of St. John must
only be read on Easter Day, and “It is most meet” must not be sung from Easter
to Ascension, and so on. The consciousness of this order and its importance
afforded Yakov Ivanitch great gratification during his religious exercises.
When he was forced to break this order by some necessity — to drive to town or
to the bank, for instance his conscience was uneasy and he fit miserable.
When his cousin
Matvey had returned unexpectedly from the factory and settled in the tavern as
though it were his home, he had from the very first day disturbed his settled
order. He refused to pray with them, had meals and drank tea at wrong times,
got up late, drank milk on Wednesdays and Fridays on the pretext of weak health;
almost every day he went into the prayer-room while they were at prayers and
cried: “Think what you are doing, brother! Repent, brother!” These words threw
Yakov into a fury, while Aglaia could not refrain from beginning to scold; or
at night Matvey would steal into the prayer-room and say softly: “Cousin, your
prayer is not pleasing to God. For it is written, First be reconciled with thy
brother and then offer thy gift. You lend money at usury, you deal in vodka —
repent!”
In Matvey’s
words Yakov saw nothing but the usual evasions of empty-headed and careless
people who talk of loving your neighbour, of being reconciled with your
brother, and so on, simply to avoid praying, fasting and reading holy books,
and who talk contemptuously of profit and interest simply because they don’t
like working. Of course, to be poor, save nothing, and put by nothing was a
great deal easier than being rich.
But yet he was
troubled and could not pray as before. As soon as he went into the prayer-room
and opened the book he began to be afraid his cousin would come in and hinder
him; and, in fact, Matvey did soon appear and cry in a trembling voice: “Think
what you are doing, brother! Repent, brother!” Aglaia stormed and Yakov, too,
flew into a passion and shouted: “Go out of my house!” while Matvey answered
him: “The house belongs to both of us.”
Yakov would
begin singing and reading again, but he could not regain his calm, and
unconsciously fell to dreaming over his book. Though he regarded his cousin’s
words as nonsense, yet for some reason it had of late haunted his memory that
it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, that the year before
last he had made a very good bargain over buying a stolen horse, that one day
when his wife was alive a drunkard had died of vodka in his tavern
. . . .
He slept badly
at nights now and woke easily, and he could hear that Matvey, too, was awake,
and continually sighing and pining for his tile factory. And while Yakov turned
over from one side to another at night he thought of the stolen horse and the
drunken man, and what was said in the gospels about the camel.
It looked as
though his dreaminess were coming over him again. And as ill-luck would have
it, although it was the end of March, every day it kept snowing, and the forest
roared as though it were winter, and there was no believing that spring would
ever come. The weather disposed one to depression, and to quarrelling and to
hatred and in the night, when the wind droned over the ceiling, it seemed as
though someone were living overhead in the empty storey; little by little the
broodings settled like a burden on his mind, his head burned and he could not
sleep.
4
On the morning of the
Monday before Good Friday, Matvey heard from his room Dashutka say to Aglaia:
“Uncle Matvey
said, the other day, that there is no need to fast.”
Matvey
remembered the whole conversation he had had the evening before with Dashutka,
and he felt hurt all at once.
“Girl, don’t do
wrong!” he said in a moaning voice, like a sick man. “You can’t do without
fasting; our Lord Himself fasted forty days. I only explained that fasting does
a bad man no good.”
“You should
just listen to the factory hands; they can teach you goodness,” Aglaia said
sarcastically as she washed the floor (she usually washed the floors on working
days and was always angry with everyone when she did it). “We know how they
keep the fasts in the factory. You had better ask that uncle of yours — ask him
about his ‘Darling,’ how he used to guzzle milk on fast days with her, the
viper. He teaches others; he forgets about his viper. But ask him who was it he
left his money with — who was it?”
Matvey had
carefully concealed from everyone, as though it were a foul sore, that during
that period of his life when old women and unmarried girls had danced and run
about with him at their prayers he had formed a connection with a working woman
and had had a child by her. When he went home he had given this woman all he
had saved at the factory, and had borrowed from his landlord for his journey,
and now he had only a few roubles which he spent on tea and candles. The
“Darling” had informed him later on that the child was dead, and asked him in a
letter what she should do with the money. This letter was brought from the
station by the labourer. Aglaia intercepted it and read it, and had reproached
Matvey with his “Darling” every day since.
“Just fancy,
nine hundred roubles,” Aglaia went on. “You gave nine hundred roubles to a
viper, no relation, a factory jade, blast you!” She had flown into a passion by
now and was shouting shrilly: “Can’t you speak? I could tear you to pieces,
wretched creature! Nine hundred roubles as though it were a farthing You might
have left it to Dashutka — she is a relation, not a stranger — or else have it
sent to Byelev for Marya’s poor orphans. And your viper did not choke, may she
be thrice accursed, the she-devil! May she never look upon the light of day!”
Yakov Ivanitch
called to her: it was time to begin the “Hours.” She washed, put on a white
kerchief, and by now quiet and meek, went into the prayer-room to the brother
she loved. When she spoke to Matvey or served peasants in the tavern with tea
she was a gaunt, keen-eyed, ill-humoured old woman; in the prayer-room her face
was serene and softened, she looked younger altogether, she curtsied
affectedly, and even pursed up her lips.
Yakov Ivanitch
began reading the service softly and dolefully, as he always did in Lent. After
he had read a little he stopped to listen to the stillness that reigned through
the house, and then went on reading again, with a feeling of gratification; he
folded his hands in supplication, rolled his eyes, shook his head, sighed. But
all at once there was the sound of voices. The policeman and Sergey Nikanoritch
had come to see Matvey. Yakov Ivanitch was embarrassed at reading aloud and
singing when there were strangers in the house, and now, hearing voices, he
began reading in a whisper and slowly. He could hear in the prayer-room the
waiter say:
“The Tatar at
Shtchepovo is selling his business for fifteen hundred. He’ll take five hundred
down and an I.O.U. for the rest. And so, Matvey Vassilitch, be so kind as to
lend me that five hundred roubles. I will pay you two per cent a month.”
“What money
have I got?” cried Matvey, amazed. “I have no money!”
“Two per cent a
month will be a godsend to you,” the policeman explained. “While lying by, your
money is simply eaten by the moth, and that’s all that you get from it.”
Afterwards the
visitors went out and a silence followed. But Yakov Ivanitch had hardly begun
reading and singing again when a voice was heard outside the door:
“Brother, let
me have a horse to drive to Vedenyapino.”
It was Matvey.
And Yakov was troubled again. “Which can you go with?” he asked after a
moment’s thought. “The man has gone with the sorrel to take the pig, and I am
going with the little stallion to Shuteykino as soon as I have finished.”
“Brother, why
is it you can dispose of the horses and not I?” Matvey asked with irritation.
“Because I am
not taking them for pleasure, but for work.”
“Our property
is in common, so the horses are in common, too, and you ought to understand
that, brother.”
A silence
followed. Yakov did not go on praying, but waited for Matvey to go away from
the door.
“Brother,” said
Matvey, “I am a sick man. I don’t want possession — let them go; you have them,
but give me a small share to keep me in my illness. Give it me and I’ll go
away.”
Yakov did not
speak. He longed to be rid of Matvey, but he could not give him money, since
all the money was in the business; besides, there had never been a case of the
family dividing in the whole history of the Terehovs. Division means ruin.
Yakov said
nothing, but still waited for Matvey to go away, and kept looking at his sister,
afraid that she would interfere, and that there would be a storm of abuse
again, as there had been in the morning. When at last Matvey did go Yakov went
on reading, but now he had no pleasure in it. There was a heaviness in his head
and a darkness before his eyes from continually bowing down to the ground, and
he was weary of the sound of his soft dejected voice. When such a depression of
spirit came over him at night, he put it down to not being able to sleep; by
day it frightened him, and he began to feel as though devils were sitting on
his head and shoulders.
Finishing the
service after a fashion, dissatisfied and ill-humoured, he set off for
Shuteykino. In the previous autumn a gang of navvies had dug a boundary ditch
near Progonnaya, and had run up a bill at the tavern for eighteen roubles, and
now he had to find their foreman in Shuteykino and get the money from him. The
road had been spoilt by the thaw and the snowstorm; it was of a dark colour and
full of holes, and in parts it had given way altogether. The snow had sunk away
at the sides below the road, so that he had to drive, as it were, upon a narrow
causeway, and it was very difficult to turn off it when he met anything. The
sky had been overcast ever since the morning and a damp wind was blowing
. . . .
A long train of
sledges met him; peasant women were carting bricks. Yakov had to turn off the
road. His horse sank into the snow up to its belly; the sledge lurched over to
the right, and to avoid falling out he bent over to the left, and sat so all
the time the sledges moved slowly by him. Through the wind he heard the
creaking of the sledge poles and the breathing of the gaunt horses, and the
women saying about him, “There’s Godly coming,” while one, gazing with
compassion at his horse, said quickly:
“It looks as
though the snow will be lying till Yegory’s Day! They are worn out with it!”
Yakov sat
uncomfortably huddled up, screwing up his eyes on account of the wind, while
horses and red bricks kept passing before him. And perhaps because he was
uncomfortable and his side ached, he felt all at once annoyed, and the business
he was going about seemed to him unimportant, and he reflected that he might
send the labourer next day to Shuteykino. Again, as in the previous sleepless
night, he thought of the saying about the camel, and then memories of all sorts
crept into his mind; of the peasant who had sold him the stolen horse, of the
drunken man, of the peasant women who had brought their samovars to him to
pawn. Of course, every merchant tries to get as much as he can, but Yakov felt
depressed that he was in trade; he longed to get somewhere far away from this
routine, and he felt dreary at the thought that he would have to read the
evening service that day. The wind blew straight into his face and soughed in
his collar; and it seemed as though it were whispering to him all these
thoughts, bringing them from the broad white plain . . . . Looking at
that plain, familiar to him from childhood, Yakov remembered that he had had
just this same trouble and these same thoughts in his young days when dreams
and imaginings had come upon him and his faith had wavered.
He felt
miserable at being alone in the open country; he turned back and drove slowly
after the sledges, and the women laughed and said:
“Godly has
turned back.”
At home nothing
had been cooked and the samovar was not heated on account of the fast, and this
made the day seem very long. Yakov Ivanitch had long ago taken the horse to the
stable, dispatched the flour to the station, and twice taken up the Psalms to
read, and yet the evening was still far off. Aglaia has already washed all the
floors, and, having nothing to do, was tidying up her chest, the lid of which
was pasted over on the inside with labels off bottles. Matvey, hungry and
melancholy, sat reading, or went up to the Dutch stove and slowly scrutinized
the tiles which reminded him of the factory. Dashutka was asleep; then, waking
up, she went to take water to the cattle. When she was getting water from the
well the cord broke and the pail fell in. The labourer began looking for a
boathook to get the pail out, and Dashutka, barefooted, with legs as red as a
goose’s, followed him about in the muddy snow, repeating: “It’s too far!” She
meant to say that the well was too deep for the hook to reach the bottom, but
the labourer did not understand her, and evidently she bothered him, so that he
suddenly turned around and abused her in unseemly language. Yakov Ivanitch,
coming out that moment into the yard, heard Dashutka answer the labourer in a
long rapid stream of choice abuse, which she could only have learned from
drunken peasants in the tavern.
“What are you
saying, shameless girl!” he cried to her, and he was positively aghast. “What
language!”
And she looked
at her father in perplexity, dully, not understanding why she should not use
those words. He would have admonished her, but she struck him as so savage and
benighted; and for the first time he realized that she had no religion. And all
this life in the forest, in the snow, with drunken peasants, with coarse oaths,
seemed to him as savage and benighted as this girl, and instead of giving her a
lecture he only waved his hand and went back into the room.
At that moment
the policeman and Sergey Nikanoritch came in again to see Matvey. Yakov Ivanitch
thought that these people, too, had no religion, and that that did not trouble
them in the least; and human life began to seem to him as strange, senseless
and unenlightened as a dog’s. Bareheaded he walked about the yard, then he went
out on to the road, clenching his fists. Snow was falling in big flakes at the
time. His beard was blown about in the wind. He kept shaking his head, as
though there were something weighing upon his head and shoulders, as though
devils were sitting on them; and it seemed to him that it was not himself
walking about, but some wild beast, a huge terrible beast, and that if he were
to cry out his voice would be a roar that would sound all over the forest and
the plain, and would frighten everyone . . . .
5
When he went back into the
house the policeman was no longer there, but the waiter was sitting with
Matvey, counting something on the reckoning beads. He was in the habit of
coming often, almost every day, to the tavern; in old days he had come to see
Yakov Ivanitch, now he came to see Matvey. He was continually reckoning on the
beads, while his face perspired and looked strained, or he would ask for money
or, stroking his whiskers, would describe how he had once been in a first-class
station and used to prepare champagne-punch for officers, and at grand dinners
served the sturgeon-soup with his own hands. Nothing in this world interested
him but refreshment bars, and he could only talk about things to eat, about
wines and the paraphernalia of the dinner-table. On one occasion, handing a cup
of tea to a young woman who was nursing her baby and wishing to say something
agreeable to her, he expressed himself in this way:
“The mother’s
breast is the baby’s refreshment bar.”
Reckoning with
the beads in Matvey’s room, he asked for money; said he could not go on living
at Progonnaya, and several times repeated in a tone of voice that sounded as
though he were just going to cry:
“Where am I to
go? Where am I to go now? Tell me that, please.”
Then Matvey
went into the kitchen and began peeling some boiled potatoes which he had
probably put away from the day before. It was quiet, and it seemed to Yakov
Ivanitch that the waiter was gone. It was past the time for evening service; he
called Aglaia, and, thinking there was no one else in the house sang out aloud
without embarrassment. He sang and read, but was inwardly pronouncing other
words, “Lord, forgive me! Lord, save me!” and, one after another, without
ceasing, he made low bows to the ground as though he wanted to exhaust himself,
and he kept shaking his head, so that Aglaia looked at him with wonder. He was
afraid Matvey would come in, and was certain that he would come in, and felt an
anger against him which he could overcome neither by prayer nor by continually
bowing down to the ground.
Matvey opened
the door very softly and went into the prayer-room.
“It’s a sin,
such a sin!” he said reproachfully, and heaved a sigh. “Repent! Think what you
are doing, brother!”
Yakov Ivanitch,
clenching his fists and not looking at him for fear of striking him, went
quickly out of the room. Feeling himself a huge terrible wild beast, just as he
had done before on the road, he crossed the passage into the grey, dirty room,
reeking with smoke and fog, in which the peasants usually drank tea, and there
he spent a long time walking from one corner to the other, treading heavily, so
that the crockery jingled on the shelves and the tables shook. It was clear to
him now that he was himself dissatisfied with his religion, ant could not pray
as he used to do. He must repent, he must think things over, reconsider, live
and pray in some other way. But how pray? And perhaps all this was a temptation
of the devil, and nothing of this was necessary? . . . How was it to
be? What was he to do? Who could guide him? What helplessness! He stopped and,
clutching at his head, began to think, but Matvey’s being near him prevented
him from reflecting calmly. And he went rapidly into the room.
Matvey was sitting
in the kitchen before a bowl of potato, eating. Close by, near the stove,
Aglaia and Dashutka were sitting facing one another, spinning yarn. Between the
stove and the table at which Matvey was sitting was stretched an ironing-board;
on it stood a cold iron.
“Sister,”
Matvey asked, “let me have a little oil!”
“Who eats oil
on a day like this?” asked Aglaia.
“I am not a
monk, sister, but a layman. And in my weak health I may take not only oil but
milk.”
“Yes, at the
factory you may have anything.”
Aglaia took a
bottle of Lenten oil from the shelf and banged it angrily down before Matvey,
with a malignant smile evidently pleased that he was such a sinner.
“But I tell
you, you can’t eat oil!” shouted Yakov.
Aglaia and
Dashutka started, but Matvey poured the oil into the bowl and went on eating as
though he had not heard.
“I tell you,
you can’t eat oil!” Yakov shouted still more loudly; he turned red all over,
snatched up the bowl, lifted it higher that his head, and dashed it with all
his force to the ground, so that it flew into fragments. “Don’t dare to speak!”
he cried in a furious voice, though Matvey had not said a word. “Don’t dare!”
he repeated, and struck his fist on the table.
Matvey turned
pale and got up.
“Brother!” he
said, still munching —“brother, think what you are about!”
“Out of my
house this minute!” shouted Yakov; he loathed Matvey’s wrinkled face, and his
voice, and the crumbs on his moustache, and the fact that he was munching.
“Out, I tell you!”
“Brother, calm
yourself! The pride of hell has confounded you!”
“Hold your
tongue!” (Yakov stamped.) “Go away, you devil!”
“If you care to
know,” Matvey went on in a loud voice, as he, too, began to get angry, “you are
a backslider from God and a heretic. The accursed spirits have hidden the true
light from you; your prayer is not acceptable to God. Repent before it is too
late! The deathbed of the sinner is terrible! Repent, brother!”
Yakov seized
him by the shoulders and dragged him away from the table, while he turned
whiter than ever, and frightened and bewildered, began muttering, “What is it?
What’s the matter?” and, struggling and making efforts to free himself from
Yakov’s hands, he accidentally caught hold of his shirt near the neck and tore
the collar; and it seemed to Aglaia that he was trying to beat Yakov. She
uttered a shriek, snatched up the bottle of Lenten oil and with all her force
brought it down straight on the skull of the cousin she hated. Matvey reeled,
and in one instant his face became calm and indifferent. Yakov, breathing
heavily, excited, and feeling pleasure at the gurgle the bottle had made, like
a living thing, when it had struck the head, kept him from falling and several
times (he remembered this very distinctly) motioned Aglaia towards the iron
with his finger; and only when the blood began trickling through his hands and
he heard Dashutka’s loud wail, and when the ironing-board fell with a crash,
and Matvey rolled heavily on it, Yakov left off feeling anger and understood
what had happened.
“Let him rot,
the factory buck!” Aglaia brought out with repulsion, still keeping the iron in
her hand. The white bloodstained kerchief slipped on to her shoulders and her
grey hair fell in disorder. “He’s got what he deserved!”
Everything was
terrible. Dashutka sat on the floor near the stove with the yarn in her hands,
sobbing, and continually bowing down, uttering at each bow a gasping sound. But
nothing was so terrible to Yakov as the potato in the blood, on which he was
afraid of stepping, and there was something else terrible which weighed upon
him like a bad dream and seemed the worst danger, though he could not take it
in for the first minute. This was the waiter, Sergey Nikanoritch, who was
standing in the doorway with the reckoning beads in his hands, very pale,
looking with horror at what was happening in the kitchen. Only when he turned
and went quickly into the passage and from there outside, Yakov grasped who it
was and followed him.
Wiping his
hands on the snow as he went, he reflected. The idea flashed through his mind
that their labourer had gone away long before and had asked leave to stay the
night at home in the village; the day before they had killed a pig, and there
were huge bloodstains in the snow and on the sledge, and even one side of the
top of the well was splattered with blood, so that it could not have seemed
suspicious even if the whole of Yakov’s family had been stained with blood. To
conceal the murder would be agonizing, but for the policeman, who would whistle
and smile ironically, to come from the station, for the peasants to arrive and
bind Yakov’s and Aglaia’s hands, and take them solemnly to the district
courthouse and from there to the town, while everyone on the way would point at
them and say mirthfully, “They are taking the Godlies!”— this seemed to Yakov
more agonizing than anything, and he longed to lengthen out the time somehow,
so as to endure this shame not now, but later, in the future.
“I can lend you
a thousand roubles, . . .” he said, overtaking Sergey Nikanoritch. “If you tell
anyone, it will do no good. . . . There’s no bringing the man back,
anyway;” and with difficulty keeping up with the waiter, who did not look
round, but tried to walk away faster than ever, he went on: “I can give you
fifteen hundred . . . .”
He stopped
because he was out of breath, while Sergey Nikanoritch walked on as quickly as
ever, probably afraid that he would be killed, too. Only after passing the
railway crossing and going half the way from the crossing to the station, he
furtively looked round and walked more slowly. Lights, red and green, were
already gleaming in the station and along the line; the wind had fallen, but
flakes of snow were still coming down and the road had turned white again. But
just at the station Sergey Nikanoritch stopped, thought a minute, and turned
resolutely back. It was growing dark.
“Oblige me with
the fifteen hundred, Yakov Ivanitch,” he said, trembling all over. “I agree.”
6
Yakov Ivanitch’s money was
in the bank of the town and was invested in second mortgages; he only kept a
little at home, Just what was wanted for necessary expenses. Going into the
kitchen he felt for the matchbox, and while the sulphur was burning with a blue
light he had time to make out the figure of Matvey, which was still lying on
the floor near the table, but now it was covered with a white sheet, and
nothing could be seen but his boots. A cricket was chirruping. Aglaia and
Dashutka were not in the room, they were both sitting behind the counter in the
tea-room, spinning yarn in silence. Yakov Ivanitch crossed to his own room with
a little lamp in his hand, and pulled from under the bed a little box in which
he kept his money. This time there were in it four hundred and twenty
one-rouble notes and silver to the amount of thirty-five roubles; the notes had
an unpleasant heavy smell. Putting the money together in his cap, Yakov
Ivanitch went out into the yard and then out of the gate. He walked, looking from
side to side, but there was no sign of the waiter.
“Hi!” cried
Yakov.
A dark figure
stepped out from the barrier at the railway crossing and came irresolutely
towards him.
“Why do you
keep walking about?” said Yakov with vexation, as he recognized the waiter.
“Here you are; there is a little less than five hundred. . . . I’ve
no more in the house.”
“Very well;
. . . very grateful to you,” muttered Sergey Nikanoritch, taking the
money greedily and stuffing it into his pockets. He was trembling all over, and
that was perceptible in spite of the darkness. “Don’t worry yourself, Yakov
Ivanitch. . . . What should I chatter for: I came and went away,
that’s all I’ve had to do with it. As the saying is, I know nothing and I can
tell nothing . . .” And at once he added with a sigh “Cursed life!”
For a minute
they stood in silence, without looking at each other.
“So it all came
from a trifle, goodness knows how, . . .” said the waiter, trembling. “I was
sitting counting to myself when all at once a noise. . . . I looked
through the door, and just on account of Lenten oil you. . . . Where
is he now?”
“Lying there in
the kitchen.”
“You ought to
take him somewhere. . . . Why put it off?”
Yakov
accompanied him to the station without a word, then went home again and harnessed
the horse to take Matvey to Limarovo. He had decided to take him to the forest
of Limarovo, and to leave him there on the road, and then he would tell
everyone that Matvey had gone off to Vedenyapino and had not come back, and
then everyone would think that he had been killed by someone on the road. He
knew there was no deceiving anyone by this, but to move, to do something, to be
active, was not as agonizing as to sit still and wait. He called Dashutka, and
with her carried Matvey out. Aglaia stayed behind to clean up the kitchen.
When Yakov and
Dashutka turned back they were detained at the railway crossing by the barrier
being let down. A long goods train was passing, dragged by two engines,
breathing heavily, and flinging puffs of crimson fire out of their funnels.
The foremost
engine uttered a piercing whistle at the crossing in sight of the station.
“It’s
whistling, . . .” said Dashutka.
The train had
passed at last, and the signalman lifted the barrier without haste.
“Is that you,
Yakov Ivanitch? I didn’t know you, so you’ll be rich.”
And then when
they had reached home they had to go to bed.
Aglaia and
Dashutka made themselves a bed in the tea-room and lay down side by side, while
Yakov stretched himself on the counter. They neither said their prayers nor
lighted the ikon lamp before lying down to sleep. All three lay awake till
morning, but did not utter a single word, and it seemed to them that all night
someone was walking about in the empty storey overhead.
Two days later
a police inspector and the examining magistrate came from the town and made a
search, first in Matvey’s room and then in the whole tavern. They questioned
Yakov first of all, and he testified that on the Monday Matvey had gone to
Vedenyapino to confess, and that he must have been killed by the sawyers who
were working on the line.
And when the
examining magistrate had asked him how it had happened that Matvey was found on
the road, while his cap had turned up at home — surely he had not gone to
Vedenyapino without his cap? — and why they had not found a single drop of
blood beside him in the snow on the road, though his head was smashed in and
his face and chest were black with blood, Yakov was confused, lost his head and
answered:
“I cannot
tell.”
And just what
Yakov had so feared happened: the policeman came, the district police officer
smoked in the prayer-room and Aglaia fell upon him with abuse and was rude to
the police inspector; and afterwards when Yakov and Aglaia were led out to the
yard, the peasants crowded at the gates and said, “They are taking the
Godlies!” and it seemed that they were all glad.
At the inquiry
the policeman stated positively that Yakov and Aglaia had killed Matvey in
order not to share with him, and that Matvey had money of his own, and that if
it was not found at the search evidently Yakov and Aglaia had got hold of it.
And Dashutka was questioned. She said that Uncle Matvey and Aunt Aglaia
quarrelled and almost fought every day over money, and that Uncle Matvey was
rich, so much so that he had given someone —“his Darling”— nine hundred
roubles.
Dashutka was
left alone in the tavern. No one came now to drink tea or vodka, and she
divided her time between cleaning up the rooms, drinking mead and eating rolls;
but a few days later they questioned the signalman at the railway crossing, and
he said that late on Monday evening he had seen Yakov and Dashutka driving from
Limarovo. Dashutka, too, was arrested, taken to the town and put in prison. It
soon became known, from what Aglaia said, that Sergey Nikanoritch had been
present at the murder. A search was made in his room, and money was found in an
unusual place, in his snowboots under the stove, and the money was all in small
change, three hundred one-rouble notes. He swore he had made this money
himself, and that he hadn’t been in the tavern for a year, but witnesses
testified that he was poor and had been in great want of money of late, and
that he used to go every day to the tavern to borrow from Matvey; and the
policeman described how on the day of the murder he had himself gone twice to
the tavern with the waiter to help him to borrow. It was recalled at this
juncture that on Monday evening Sergey Nikanoritch had not been there to meet
the passenger train, but had gone off somewhere. And he, too, was arrested and
taken to the town.
The trial took
place eleven months later.
Yakov Ivanitch
looked much older and much thinner, and spoke in a low voice like a sick man.
He felt weak, pitiful, lower in stature that anyone else, and it seemed as
though his soul, too, like his body, had grown older and wasted, from the pangs
of his conscience and from the dreams and imaginings which never left him all
the while he was in prison. When it came out that he did not go to church the
president of the court asked him:
“Are you a
dissenter?”
“I can’t tell,”
he answered.
He had no
religion at all now; he knew nothing and understood nothing; and his old belief
was hateful to him now, and seemed to him darkness and folly. Aglaia was not in
the least subdued, and she still went on abusing the dead man, blaming him for
all their misfortunes. Sergey Nikanoritch had grown a beard instead of
whiskers. At the trial he was red and perspiring, and was evidently ashamed of
his grey prison coat and of sitting on the same bench with humble peasants. He
defended himself awkwardly, and, trying to prove that he had not been to the
tavern for a whole year, got into an altercation with every witness, and the
spectators laughed at him. Dashutka had grown fat in prison. At the trial she
did not understand the questions put to her, and only said that when they
killed Uncle Matvey she was dreadfully frightened, but afterwards she did not
mind.
All four were
found guilty of murder with mercenary motives. Yakov Ivanitch was sentenced to
penal servitude for twenty years; Aglaia for thirteen and a half; Sergey
Nikanoritch to ten; Dashutka to six.
7
Late one evening a foreign
steamer stopped in the roads of Dué in Sahalin and asked for coal. The captain
was asked to wait till morning, but he did not want to wait over an hour,
saying that if the weather changed for the worse in the night there would be a
risk of his having to go off without coal. In the Gulf of Tartary the weather
is liable to violent changes in the course of half an hour, and then the shores
of Sahalin are dangerous. And already it had turned fresh, and there was a considerable
sea running.
A gang of
convicts were sent to the mine from the Voevodsky prison, the grimmest and most
forbidding of all the prisons in Sahalin. The coal had to be loaded upon
barges, and then they had to be towed by a steam-cutter alongside the steamer
which was anchored more than a quarter of a mile from the coast, and then the
unloading and reloading had to begin — an exhausting task when the barge kept
rocking against the steamer and the men could scarcely keep on their legs for
sea-sickness. The convicts, only just roused from their sleep, still drowsy,
went along the shore, stumbling in the darkness and clanking their fetters. On
the left, scarcely visible, was a tall, steep, extremely gloomy-looking cliff,
while on the right there was a thick impenetrable mist, in which the sea moaned
with a prolonged monotonous sound, “Ah! . . . ah! . . . ah!
. . . ah! . . .” And it was only when the overseer was lighting his
pipe, casting as he did so a passing ray of light on the escort with a gun and
on the coarse faces of two or three of the nearest convicts, or when he went
with his lantern close to the water that the white crests of the foremost waves
could be discerned.
One of this
gang was Yakov Ivanitch, nicknamed among the convicts the “Brush,” on account
of his long beard. No one had addressed him by his name or his father’s name
for a long time now; they called him simply Yashka.
He was here in
disgrace, as, three months after coming to Siberia, feeling an intense
irresistible longing for home, he had succumbed to temptation and run away; he
had soon been caught, had been sentenced to penal servitude for life and given
forty lashes. Then he was punished by flogging twice again for losing his
prison clothes, though on each occasion they were stolen from him. The longing
for home had begun from the very time he had been brought to Odessa, and the
convict train had stopped in the night at Progonnaya; and Yakov, pressing to
the window, had tried to see his own home, and could see nothing in the darkness.
He had no one with whom to talk of home. His sister Aglaia had been sent right
across Siberia, and he did not know where she was now. Dashutka was in Sahalin,
but she had been sent to live with some exconvict in a far away settlement;
there was no news of her except that once a settler who had come to the
Voevodsky Prison told Yakov that Dashutka had three children. Sergey
Nikanoritch was serving as a footman at a government official’s at Dué, but he
could not reckon on ever seeing him, as he was ashamed of being acquainted with
convicts of the peasant class.
The gang
reached the mine, and the men took their places on the quay. It was said there
would not be any loading, as the weather kept getting worse and the steamer was
meaning to set off. They could see three lights. One of them was moving: that
was the steam-cutter going to the steamer, and it seemed to be coming back to
tell them whether the work was to be done or not. Shivering with the autumn
cold and the damp sea mist, wrapping himself in his short torn coat, Yakov
Ivanitch looked intently without blinking in the direction in which lay his
home. Ever since he had lived in prison together with men banished here from
all ends of the earth — with Russians, Ukrainians, Tatars, Georgians, Chinese,
Gypsies, Jews — and ever since he had listened to their talk and watched their
sufferings, he had begun to turn again to God, and it seemed to him at last
that he had learned the true faith for which all his family, from his
grandmother Avdotya down, had so thirsted, which they had sought so long and
which they had never found. He knew it all now and understood where God was,
and how He was to be served, and the only thing he could not understand was why
men’s destinies were so diverse, why this simple faith which other men receive
from God for nothing and together with their lives, had cost him such a price
that his arms and legs trembled like a drunken man’s from all the horrors and
agonies which as far as he could see would go on without a break to the day of
his death. He looked with strained eyes into the darkness, and it seemed to him
that through the thousand miles of that mist he could see home, could see his
native province, his district, Progonnaya, could see the darkness, the
savagery, the heartlessness, and the dull, sullen, animal indifference of the
men he had left there. His eyes were dimmed with tears; but still he gazed into
the distance where the pale lights of the steamer faintly gleamed, and his
heart ached with yearning for home, and he longed to live, to go back home to
tell them there of his new faith and to save from ruin if only one man, and to
live without suffering if only for one day.
The cutter
arrived, and the overseer announced in a loud voice that there would be no
loading.
“Back!” he commanded.
“Steady!”
They could hear
the hoisting of the anchor chain on the steamer. A strong piercing wind was
blowing by now; somewhere on the steep cliff overhead the trees were creaking. Most likely a storm was coming.
1895.
No comments:
Post a Comment