He visited his son frequently, hired someone, petitioned someone, donated somewhere for a church banner. He offered the warden of the prison in which Anisim was kept the gift of a silver tea-glass holder with “The soul knows moderation” inscribed on the enamel and with a long teaspoon.
“There’s nobody, nobody to intervene properly for us,” said Varvara. “Oh, tush, tush … You should ask someone of the gentry to write to the head officials … At least they’d release him till the trial! Why torment the lad?”
She, too, was upset, but she grew plumper, whiter, lit the icon lamps in her room as before, and saw to it that the house was clean, and treated guests to preserves and apple comfit. The deaf son and Aksinya tended the shop. They started a new business—a brickworks in Butyokino—and Aksinya went there almost every day in the tarantass; she drove herself and on meeting acquaintances stretched her neck like a snake from the young rye and smiled naïvely and mysteriously. And Lipa played all the time with her baby, who was born to her just before Lent. He was a small baby, skinny and pitiful, and it was strange that he cried, looked about, and that he was considered a person and was even named Nikifor. He would lie in his cradle, Lipa would go to the door and say, bowing:
“How do you do, Nikifor Anisimych!”
And she would rush headlong to him and kiss him. Then she would go to the door, bow, and say again:
“How do you do, Nikifor Anisimych!”
And he would stick up his little red legs, and his crying was mixed with laughter, as with the carpenter Yelizarov.
At last the day of the trial was set. The old man left five days ahead of time. Then it was heard that peasants called as witnesses had been sent from the village; the old hired workman also received a summons, and he left.
The trial was on a Thursday. But Sunday had already passed, and the old man had still not come back, and there was no news. On Tuesday, before evening, Varvara sat by the open window listening for the old man coming. In the next room Lipa was playing with her baby. She tossed him in her arms and said in admiration:
“You’ll grow so-o-o big, so-o-o-big! You’ll be a man, we’ll do day labor together! Day labor together!”
“We-e-ell!” Varvara became offended. “What kind of day labor have you thought up, silly girl? He’ll be a merchant for us! …”
Lipa started to sing softly, but a little later forgot herself and began again:
“You’ll grow so-o-o big, so-o-o big, you’ll be a man, we’ll go to day labor together!”
“We-e-ell! You’re at it again!”
Lipa stood in the doorway with Nikifor in her arms and asked:
“Mama, why do I love him so? Why do I pity him so?” she went on in a quavering voice, and her eyes glistened with tears. “Who is he? How is he? Light as a feather, a crumb, and I love him, I love him like a real person. He can’t do anything, can’t speak, but I understand everything he wishes with his dear eyes.”
Varvara listened: there was the sound of the evening train coming into the station. Was the old man on it? She no longer heard or understood what Lipa was saying, did not notice the time going by, but only trembled all over, and that not with fear but with intense curiosity. She saw a cart filled with peasants drive past quickly, with a rumble. It was the returning witnesses coming from the station. As the cart drove past the shop, the old workman jumped off and came into the yard. One could hear him being greeted in the yard, being questioned about something …
“Loss of rights and all property,” he said loudly, “and six years’ hard labor in Siberia.”
Aksinya could be seen coming out the back door of the shop; she had just been selling kerosene and was holding a bottle in one hand and a funnel in the other, and there were silver coins in her mouth.
“And where’s papa?” she asked, lisping.
“At the station,” the workman replied. “‘When it gets darker,’ he says, ‘then I’ll come.’”
And when it became known in the yard that Anisim had been sentenced to hard labor, the cook in the kitchen began to wail as over a dead man, thinking that propriety demanded it:
“Why have you abandoned us, Anisim Grigoryich, our bright falcon …”
The dogs barked in alarm. Varvara ran to the window and in a flurry of anguish began shouting to the cook, straining her voice as much as she could:
“Eno-o-ough, Stepanida, eno-o-ough! Don’t torment us, for Christ’s sake!”
They forgot to prepare the samovar, they were no longer thinking well. Only Lipa could not understand what was the matter and went on fussing over her baby.
When the old man came home from the station, they did not ask him about anything. He greeted everyone, then walked silently through all the rooms; he ate no supper.
“There’s nobody to intercede …” Varvara began, when they were left alone. “I said to ask the gentry—you didn’t listen then … A petition might…”
“I interceded myself!” said the old man, waving his hand. “When they sentenced Anisim, I went to the gentleman who defended him. ‘Impossible to do anything now, it’s too late.’ And Anisim says so himself: it’s too late. But all the same, as I was leaving the court, I made an arrangement with a lawyer, gave him an advance … I’ll wait a week and then go back. It’s as God wills.”
The old man walked silently through all the rooms again, and when he came back to Varvara, he said:
“I must be sick. Something in my head … A fog. My thoughts are clouded.”
He shut the door so that Lipa would not hear and went on softly:
“I don’t feel right about money. Remember, Anisim brought me new roubles and half roubles before the wedding, on St. Thomas’s Sunday?5 I stashed one package away then, and the rest I mixed in with my own … When my uncle Dmitri Filatych, God rest his soul, was still alive, he used to go for goods all the time, now to Moscow, now to the Crimea. He had a wife, and that same wife, while he went for goods, as I said, used to play around with other men. There were six children. So my uncle would have a drink and start laughing: ‘I just can’t sort out which are mine and which aren’t.’ An easygoing character, that is. And so now I can’t figure out which coins are real and which are false. And it seems like they’re all false.”
“Ah, no, God help you!”
“I’m buying a ticket at the station, I hand over three roubles, and I think to myself, maybe they’re false. And it scares me. I must be sick.”
“What can I say, we all walk before God … Oh, tush, tush …” said Varvara, and she shook her head. “You ought to give it some thought, Petrovich … What if something bad happens? You’re not a young man. You’ll die, and for all I know they may wrong our grandson. Aie, they’ll do Nikifor wrong, I’m afraid they will! His father can be counted as not there, his mother’s young, foolish … You ought at least to leave that land to him, to the boy, that Butyokino, Petrovich, really! Just think!” Varvara went on persuading him. “A nice little boy, it’s a pity! Go tomorrow and draw up the paper. Why wait?”
“And here I was forgetting about my grandson …” said Tsybukin. “I must go and say hello. So you say he’s a nice boy? Well, let him grow up. God grant it!”
He opened the door and beckoned to Lipa with a bent finger. She came up to him with the baby in her arms.
“If you need anything, Lipynka, just ask,” he said. “And eat whatever you like, we won’t begrudge it, as long as you’re healthy …” He made a cross over the baby. “And take care of my grandson. The son’s gone, at least the grandson is left.”
Tears ran down his cheeks; he sobbed and turned away. A little later he went to bed and fell fast asleep, after seven sleepless nights.
VII
The old man made a short trip to town. Somebody told Aksinya that he had gone to the notary to write a will, and that he was leaving Butyokino, the same place where she baked bricks, to his grandson Nikifor. She was told of it in the morning, when the old man and Varvara were sitting under the birch tree by the porch drinking tea. She locked up the shop front and back, collected all the keys she had, and flung them down at the old man’s feet.