“Then you are a queer sort of cook.”
The little girls sat and lay on the stove, and looked down with widely opened eyes; there seemed to be no end to them—like cherubs in the sky. The stories delighted them; they sighed, shuddered, and turned pale sometimes from rapture, sometimes from fear; and, breathless, afraid to move, they listened to the stories of their grandmother, which were the most interesting of all.
They went to bed in silence; and the old men, agitated by their stories, thought how glorious was youth, which—however meagre it might be—left behind it only joyful, living, touching recollections; and how terribly cold was this death, which was now so near. Better not think of it! The lamp went out. And the darkness, the two windows, bright with moonshine, the silence, the cradle’s creak somehow reminded them that life was now past, and that it would never return. They slumbered, lost consciousness; then suddenly some one jostled their shoulders, or breathed into their cheeks—and there was no real sleep; through their heads crept thoughts of death; they turned round and forgot about death; but their heads were full of old, mean, tedious thoughts, thoughts of need, of forage, of the rise in the price of flour; and again they remembered that life had now passed by, and that it would never return.
“O Lord!” sighed the cook.
Some one tapped cautiously at the window. That must be Fekla. Olga rose, yawned, muttered a prayer, opened the inner door, then drew the bolt in the hall. But no one entered. A draught blew and the moon shone brightly. Through the open door, Olga saw the quiet and deserted street, and the moon itself, swimming high in the sky.
“Who’s there?” she cried.
“I!” came a voice. “It’s I.”
Near the door, pressing close to the wall, stood Fekla, naked as she was born. She shuddered from the cold, her teeth chattered; and in the bright moonlight she was pale, pretty, and strange. The patches of shade and the moonlight on her skin stood out sharply; and plainest of all stood out her dark eyebrows and her young, firm breast.
“Some impudent fellows across the river undressed me and sent me off in this way—as my mother bore me! Bring me something to put on.”
“Go into the hut yourself!” whispered Olga, with a shudder.
“The old ones will see me.”
And as a fact grandmother got restless, and growled; and the old man asked, “Who is there?” Olga brought out her shirt and petticoat and dressed Fekla; and the two women softly, and doing their best to close the doors without notice, went into the hut.
“So that’s you, devil?” came an angry growl from grandmother, who guessed it was Fekla. “May you be . . . night walker . . . there’s no peace with you!”
“Don’t mind, don’t mind,” whispered Olga, wrapping Fekla up. “Don’t mind, my heart!”
Again silence. The whole family always slept badly; each was troubled by something aggressive and insistent; the old man by a pain in the back; grandmother by worry and ill-temper; Marya by fright; the children by itching and hunger. And to-night the sleep of all was troubled; they rolled from side to side, wandered, and rose constantly to drink.
Fekla suddenly cried out in a loud, rough voice; but soon mastered herself, and merely sobbed quietly until at last she ceased. Now and then from beyond the river were heard the church chimes; but the clock struck strangely; and at first beat struck five, and later three.
“O Lord!” sighed the cook.
From the light in the windows it was hard to judge whether the moon still shone or whether dawn had come. Marya rose and went out; and she was heard milking the cows and shouting “Stand!” Grandmother also went out. It was still dark in the hut, but everything could be seen.
Nikolai, who had spent a sleepless night, climbed down from the stove. He took from a green box his evening dresscoat, put it on, and going over to the window, smoothed the sleeves and the folds, and smiled. Then he took off the coat, returned it to the box, and lay down.
Marya returned, and began to light the stove. Apparently she was not yet quite awake. Probably she still dreamed of something, or recalled the stories of last night, for she stretched herself lazily before the stove and said—
“No, we’re better in freedom.”
CHAPTER VII Who Else?
IN THE VILLAGE arrived “the gentleman,” as the peasants called the superintendent of police. Every one knew a week ahead the day and cause of his arrival. For though Zhukovo had only forty houses, it owed in arrears to the Imperial Treasury and the Zemstvo13 more than two thousand roubles.
The superintendent stopped at the inn, drank two glasses of tea, and then walked to the starosta’s hut, where already waited a crowd of peasants in arrears. The starosta, Antip Siedelnikoff, despite his youth—he was little over thirty—was a stern man who always took the side of the authorities, although he himself was poor and paid his taxes irregularly. It was clear to all that he was flattered by his position and revelled in the sense of power, which he had no other way of displaying save by sternness. The mir14 feared and listened to him; when in the street or at the inn he met a drunken man he would seize him, tie his hands behind his back, and put him in the village gaol; once, indeed, he even imprisoned grandmother for several days, because, appearing at the mir instead of her husband, she used abusive language. The starosta had never lived in town and read no books; but he had a copious collection of learned words and used them so liberally that people respected him, even when they did not understand.
When Osip with his tax book entered the starosta’s hut, the superintendent, a thin, old, grey-whiskered man in a grey coat, sat at a table in the near corner and made notes in a book. The hut was clean, the walls were decorated with pictures from magazines, and in a prominent place near the ikon hung a portrait of Alexander of Battenberg, ex-Prince of Bulgaria. At the table, with crossed arms, stood Antip Siedelnikoff.
“This man, your honour, owes 119 roubles,” he said when it came to Osip’s turn. “Before Holy Week, he paid a rouble, since then, nothing.”
The superintendent turned his eyes on Osip, and asked—
“What’s the reason of that, brother?”
“Your honour, be merciful to me . . .” began Osip in agitation. “Let me explain . . . this summer . . . Squire Liutoretzky . . . ‘Osip,’ he says, ‘sell me your hay. . . . Sell it,’ he says. . . . I had a hundred poods for sale, which the women mowed. . . . Well, we bargained. . . . All went well, without friction. . . .”
He complained of the starosta, and now and again turned to the muzhiks as if asking for support; his flushed face sweated, and his eyes turned bright and vicious.
“I don’t understand why you tell me all that,” said the superintendent. “I ask you . . . it’s you I ask, why you don’t pay your arrears? None of you pay, and I am held responsible.”
“I’m not able to.”
“These expressions are without consequence, your honour,” said the starosta magniloquently. “In reality, the Tchikildeyeffs belong to the impoverished class, but be so good as to ask the others what is the reason. Vodka and impudence . . . without any comprehension.”
The superintendent made a note, and said to Osip in a quiet, even voice, as if he were asking for water—
“Begone!”
Soon afterwards he drove away; and as he sat in his cheap tarantass15 and coughed, it was plain, even from the appearance of his long, thin back, that he had forgotten Osip, and the starosta, and the arrears of Zhukovo, and was thinking of his own domestic affairs. He had hardly covered a verst before Antip Siedelnikoff was carrying off the Tchikildeyeff samovar; and after him ran grandmother, and whined like a dog.