“Let’s do in Dyudya and Alyoshka!”
Sofya gave a start but said nothing, then opened her eyes and gazed at the sky for a long time without blinking.
“People would find out,” she said.
“No, they wouldn’t. Dyudya’s old already, it’s time he died, and they’ll say Alyoshka died of drink.”
“It’s scary … God would kill us.”
“Who cares …”
The two women lay awake and thought silently.
“It’s cold,” said Sofya, beginning to tremble all over. “Must be nearly morning … Are you asleep?”
“No … Don’t listen to me, dear heart,” Varvara whispered. “I’m bitter against the cursed lot of them, and don’t know what I’m saying myself. Sleep, dawn’s already coming … Sleep …”
They both fell silent, calmed down, and soon went to sleep.
The old woman was the first to wake up. She roused Sofya, and they went to the shed to milk the cows. Hunchbacked Alyoshka came, thoroughly drunk, without his accordion; his chest and knees were covered with dust and straw—he must have fallen down on his way. Staggering, he went to the shed and, without undressing, dropped into a sledge and at once began to snore. When the rising sun flamed brightly on the crosses of the church and then on the windows, and the shadows of the trees and the well-sweep stretched across the yard over the dewy grass, Matvei Savvich jumped up and started bustling about.
“Kuzka, get up!” he cried. “It’s time to harness the cart! Look lively!”
The morning turmoil began. A young Jewess in a brown dress with ruffles led a horse into the yard for watering. The well-sweep creaked pitifully, the bucket banged … Kuzka, sleepy, sluggish, covered with dew, sat in the cart, lazily putting on his frock coat and listening to the splashing of water from the bucket in the well, and he shuddered from the cold.
“Auntie,” Matvei Savvich shouted to Sofya, “nudge my lad, so he’ll go and harness up!”
And just then Dyudya shouted out the window:
“Sofya, take a kopeck from the Jewess for the watering! No keeping them away, mangy Yids.”
In the street sheep were running up and down, bleating; women shouted at the shepherd, and he played his pipe, cracked his whip, or answered them in a heavy, hoarse bass. Three sheep ran into the yard and, unable to find the gate, poked about at the fence. The noise awakened Varvara, she gathered up her bedding and went to the house.
“You might at least drive the sheep out!” the old woman shouted at her. “A fine lady!”
“What else! I should start working for you Herods!” Varvara growled, going into the house.
They greased the cart and harnessed the horses. Dyudya came out of the house, an abacus in his hands, sat down on the porch, and began counting up how much the traveler owed for the night, the oats, and the watering.
“You’re putting in a lot for oats, grandpa,” said Matvei Savvich.
“If it’s too much, don’t take any, merchant. Nobody’s forcing you.”
When the travelers went to get into the cart and go, they were detained for a minute by one circumstance. Kuzka’s hat had disappeared.
“Where’d you put it, little swine?” Matvei Savvich shouted angrily. “Where is it?”
Kuzka’s face twisted in terror, he rushed around the cart and, not finding it there, ran to the gate, then to the shed. The old woman and Sofya helped him to look.
“I’ll tear your ears off!” shouted Matvei Savvich. “You rascal, you!”
The hat was found at the bottom of the cart. Kuzka brushed it off with his sleeve, put it on, and timidly, still with a look of terror on his face, as if afraid of being hit from behind, climbed into the cart. Matvei Savvich crossed himself, the young fellow jerked the reins, the cart started moving and rolled out of the yard.
JUNE 1891
THE FIDGET
I
All of Olga Ivanovna’s friends and good acquaintances were at her wedding.
“Look at him: there’s something in him, isn’t there?” she said to her friends, nodding towards her husband, as if she wished to explain why she had married this simple, very ordinary and in no way remarkable man.
Her husband, Osip Stepanych Dymov, was a doctor and held the rank of titular councillor.1 He worked in two hospitals: as an intern in one, and as a prosector in the other. Every day from nine o’clock till noon he received patients and was busy with his ward, and in the afternoon he took a horse-tram to the other hospital, where he dissected dead patients. His private practice was negligible, some five hundred roubles a year. That was all. What more could be said of him? And yet Olga Ivanovna and her friends and good acquaintances were not exactly ordinary people. Each of them was remarkable for something and of some renown, already had a name and was considered a celebrity or, if not yet a celebrity, held out the brightest hopes. An actor in the theater, a big, long-recognized talent, a graceful, intelligent, and humble man and an excellent reader, who taught Olga Ivanovna recitation; an opera singer, a fat, good-natured man, who sighed as he assured Olga Ivanovna that she was ruining herself: that if she stopped being lazy and took herself in hand, she would become an excellent singer; then several artists, chief among them the genre, animal, and landscape painter Ryabovsky, a very handsome young man of about twenty-five, who was successful at exhibitions and whose last picture had sold for five hundred roubles; he corrected Olga Ivanovna’s studies and said that something might come of her; then a cellist, whose instrument wept and who confessed sincerely that, of all the women he knew, Olga Ivanovna alone was able to accompany him; then a writer, young but already known, who wrote novellas, plays, and stories. Who else? Well, there was also Vassily Vassilyich, squire, landowner, dilettante illustrator and vignette painter, who had a strong feeling for the old Russian style, heroic song and epic; he literally performed miracles on paper, porcelain, and smoked glass. Amidst this artistic, free, and fate-pampered company, delicate and modest, true, but who remembered the existence of all these doctors only when they were sick, and for whom the name Dymov sounded as nondescript as Sidorov or Tarasov—amidst this company Dymov seemed foreign, superfluous, and small, though he was a tall and broad-shouldered man. It seemed as if he were wearing someone else’s tailcoat and had a salesman’s beard. However, if he had been a writer or an artist, they would have said his little beard made him look like Émile Zola.
The actor told Olga Ivanovna that in her wedding dress, and with her flaxen hair, she very much resembled a slender cherry tree in spring, when it is covered all over with tender white blossoms.
“No, listen!” Olga Ivanovna said to him, seizing his hand. “How could this suddenly happen? Listen, listen … I must tell you that my father worked in the same hospital as Dymov. When my poor father fell ill, Dymov spent whole days and nights watching at his bedside. Such self-sacrifice! Listen, Ryabovsky … And you, writer, you listen, too, it’s very interesting. Come closer. So much self-sacrifice and genuine sympathy! I also stayed up nights, sitting by my father, and suddenly—hello! the fine fellow’s conquered! My Dymov is smitten and head over heels in love. Really, fate is sometimes so whimsical. Well, after my father’s death he called on me occasionally, or I’d meet him in the street, and one fine evening suddenly—bang!—he proposed … like a ton of snow on my head … I cried all night and fell infernally in love myself. And so, as you see, I’ve become a wife. There’s something strong, brawny, bear-like in him, isn’t there? His face is turned three-quarters to us now, and poorly lit, but when he turns this way, look at his forehead. Ryabovsky, what do you say of that forehead? Dymov, we’re talking about you!” she called out to her husband. “Come here. Give your honest hand to Ryabovsky … That’s it. Be friends.”