An old workman who was passing by the porch shook his head and grunted:
“Yes, Grigory Petrovich, what daughters-in-law God sent you!” he said. “Not women, but pure treasures!”
V
On July 8, a Friday, Yelizarov, nicknamed Crutch, and Lipa were coming back from the village of Kazanskoe, where they had gone on a pilgrimage, the occasion being the feast of the church there— the Kazan Mother of God.4 Far behind them walked Lipa’s mother Praskovya, who could never keep up, because she was ill and short of breath. It was getting towards evening.
“A-a-ah! …” Crutch was surprised as he listened to Lipa. “A-ah! … We-e-ll?”
“I’m a great lover of preserves, Ilya Makarych,” said Lipa. “I sit myself down in a little corner and drink tea with preserves. Or I drink together with Varvara Nikolaevna, and she tells me some touching story. They’ve got lots of preserves—four jars. ‘Eat, Lipa,’ they say, ‘don’t have any second thoughts.’”
“A-a-ah! … Four jars!”
“It’s a rich man’s life. Tea with white bread, and as much beef as you like. A rich man’s life, only it’s scary there, Ilya Makarych. It’s so scary!”
“What are you scared of, little one?” asked Crutch, and he turned around to see how far Praskovya was lagging behind.
“First, right after the wedding, I was afraid of Anisim Grigoryich. He was all right, he never hurt me, only as soon as he comes near me I get chills all over, in every little bone. I didn’t sleep a single night, I kept shivering and praying to God. And now I’m afraid of Aksinya, Ilya Makarych. She’s all right, she just smiles, only sometimes she looks out the window, and her eyes are so angry and they burn green, like with a sheep in the barn. The Khrymin Juniors keep egging her on: ‘Your old man has a lot in Butyokino,’ they say, ‘about a hundred acres, and there’s sand and water there,’ they say, ‘so you build yourself a brickworks, Aksiusha, and we’ll go shares with you.’ Bricks now cost twenty roubles a thousand. It’s a going trade. So yesterday at dinner Aksinya says to the old man, ‘I want to build a brickworks in Butyokino, to be a merchant in my own right.’ She says it and smiles. But Grigory Petrovich goes dark in the face; obviously he doesn’t like it. ‘As long as I’m alive,’ he says, ‘we can’t do things separately, it must be all together.’ And she flashed her eyes at him, ground her teeth … They served pancakes—she didn’t eat!”
“A-a-ah! …” Crutch was astonished. “She didn’t eat!”
“And tell me, please, when does she sleep?” Lipa went on. “She sleeps a wee half hour, then pops up, walks around, walks around all the time, checking whether the peasants are setting fire to something or stealing … It’s scary with her, Ilya Makarych! And the Khrymin Juniors didn’t even go to bed after the wedding, they went to court in town, and people say it’s all because of Aksinya. Two of the brothers promised to build her the brickworks, but the third took it wrong, and the factory has stood still for a month, and my uncle Prokhor is out of work and goes from door to door begging for a crust. ‘Uncle,’ I say to him, ‘don’t shame yourself, go and do plowing meanwhile, or cut lumber!’ ‘I’ve lost the feel for peasant work, Lipynka,’ he says, ‘I can’t do anything …’”
They stopped near a grove of young aspens to rest and wait for Praskovya. Yelizarov had been a contractor for a long time, yet he did not keep a horse, but went about the whole district on foot, with nothing but a little sack in which he kept bread and onion, and he took long strides, swinging his arms. It was hard to keep up with him.
At the entrance to the grove stood a boundary post. Yelizarov touched it to see if it was sturdy. Praskovya came up, out of breath. Her wrinkled, perpetually frightened face was radiant with happiness: she had been in church today, like other people, then had gone to the fair, and there she had drunk pear kvass! That rarely happened to her, and it even seemed to her now that she had lived for her own pleasure for the first time in her life. After resting, all three went on together. The sun was setting, and its rays penetrated the grove, shone on the tree trunks. Loud voices rang out ahead. The Ukleyevo girls had gone ahead long ago, but had tarried there in the grove, probably picking mushrooms.
“Hey, gi-i-irls!” shouted Yelizarov. “Hey, you beauties!”
He was answered with laughter.
“Crutch is coming! Crutch! The old coot!”
And the echo laughed, too. Now the grove was behind them. They could already see the tops of the factory smokestacks; the cross on the belfry flashed: this was the village, “the one where the verger ate all the caviar at the funeral.” They were almost home; they only had to go down into the big ravine. Lipa and Praskovya, who went barefoot, sat down on the grass to put their shoes on; the contractor sat down with them. Looked at from above, Ukleyevo, with its pussywillows, white church, and river, seemed beautiful, peaceful, an impression only spoiled by the factory roofs, painted a gloomy, savage color for the sake of economy. On the opposite slope one could see rye—stacked up, or in sheaves here and there, as if scattered by a storm, or in just-cut rows; the oats, too, were ripe and gleamed in the sun now, like mother-of-pearl. It was harvest time. Today was a feast day, tomorrow, a Saturday, they had to gather the rye and get the hay in, then Sunday was a feast day again; every day distant thunder rumbled; the weather was sultry, it felt like rain, and, looking at the fields now, each one hoped that God would grant them to finish the harvest in time, and was merry, and joyful, and uneasy at heart.
“Mowers cost a lot these days,” said Praskovya. “A rouble forty a day!”
And people kept on coming from the fair in Kazanskoe; peasant women, factory workers in new visored caps, beggars, children … A cart drove past, raising dust, with an unsold horse running behind it, looking as if it were glad it had not been sold; then a resisting cow was led past by the horns, then came another cart carrying drunken peasants, their legs dangling down. An old woman led a boy in a big hat and big boots; the boy was exhausted from the heat and the heavy boots, which did not let him bend his knees, but even so he kept blowing with all his might on a toy trumpet; they had already gone down and turned off on a side street, and the trumpet could still be heard.
“And our factory-owners are a bit out of sorts …” said Yelizarov. “It’s bad! Kostiukov got angry with me. He said, ‘Too much lumber went into the cornices.’ Too much? ‘As much as was needed, Vassily Danilych,’ I say, ‘that’s how much went into them. I don’t eat it with my kasha, your lumber.’ ‘How can you speak to me like that?’ he says. ‘A blockhead, that’s what you are! Don’t forget yourself! It was I,’ he shouts, ‘who made you a contractor!’ ‘Some feat,’ I say. ‘Before I was a contractor,’ I say, ‘I still drank tea every day’ ‘You’re all crooks,’ he says … I kept quiet. We’re crooks in this world, I thought, and you’ll be crooks in the next. Ho, ho, ho! The next day he softened. ‘Don’t be angry with me for my words, Makarych,’ he said. ‘If I said something unnecessary, still there’s the fact that I’m a merchant of the first guild, superior to you—you ought to keep quiet.’ ‘You’re a merchant of the first guild,’ I say, ‘and I’m a carpenter, that’s correct. And Saint Joseph,’ I say, ‘was also a carpenter. Our business is righteous, pleasing to God, and if,’ I say, ‘you want to be superior, go ahead, Vassily Danilych.’ And later—that is, after the conversation—I thought: but who’s the superior one? A merchant of the first guild or a carpenter? Turns out it’s the carpenter, little ones!”
Crutch thought briefly and added: