'That's our Fyokla,' Marya said, recognizing her. 'She's been going across the river to the manor-house to lark around with the men. She's a real tart and you should hear her swear - something wicked!' 51
Fyokla, who had black eyebrows and who still had the youthfulness and strength of a young girl, leapt from the bank into the water, her hair undone, threshing the water with her legs and sending out ripples in all directions.
'A real tart!' Marya said again.
Over the river was a rickety wooden plank footbridge and right below it shoals of large-headed chub swam in the pure, clear water. Dew glistened on green bushes which seemed to be looking at themselves in the river. A warm breeze was blowing and everything became so pleasant. What a beautiful morning! And how beautiful life could be in this world, were it not for all its terrible, never-ending poverty, from which there is no escape! One brief glance at the village brought yesterday's memories vividly to life - and that enchanting happiness, which seemed to be all around, vanished in a second.
They reached the church. Marya stopped at the porch, not daring to go in, or even sit down, although the bells for evening service would not ring until after eight. So she just kept standing there.
During the reading from the Gospels, the congregation suddenly moved to one side to make way for the squire and his family. Two girls in white frocks and broad-brimmed hats and a plump, pink-faced boy in a sailor suit came down the church. Olga was very moved when she saw them and was immediatelv convinced that these were respectable, well- educated, fine people. But Marya gave them a suspicious, dejected look, as though they were not human beings but 52 monsters who would trample all over her if she did not get
out of the way. And whenever the priest's deep voice thun- dered out, she imagined she could hear that shout again - Ma-arya! - and she trembled all over.
3
The villagers heard about the newly arrived visitors and a large crowd was already waiting in the hut after the service. Among them were the Leonychevs, the Matveichevs and the Ilichovs, who wanted news of their relatives working in Moscow. All the boys from Zhukovo who could read or write were bundled off to Moscow to be waiters or bellboys (the lads from the village on the other side of the river just became bakers). This was a long-standing practice, going back to the days of serfdom when a certain peasant from Zhukovo called Luka (now a legend) had worked as a barman in a Moscow club and only took on people who came from his own village. Once these villagers had made good, they in turn sent for their families and fixed them up with jobs in pubs and restaurants. Ever since then, the village of Zhukovo had always been called 'Loutville' or 'Lackeyville' by the locals. Nikolay had been sent to Moscow when he was eleven and he got a job through Ivan (one of the Matveichevs), who was then working as an usher at the 'Hermitage' Gardens. Rather didactically Nikolay told the Matveichevs, 'Ivan was very good to me, so I must pray for him night and day. It was through him I became a good man.'
Ivan's sister, a tall old lady, said tearfully, 'Yes, my dear friend, we don't hear anything from them these days.' 53
'Last winter he was working at Aumont's,[2] but they say he's out of town now, working in some suburban pleasure gardens. He's aged terribly. Used to take home ten roubles a day in the summer season. But business is slack everywhere now, the old boy doesn't know what to do with himself.'
The woman looked at Nikolay's legs (he was wearing felt boots), at his pale face and sadly said, 'You're no breadwinner, Nikolay. How can you be, in your state!'
They all made a fuss of Sasha. She was already ten years old, but she was short for her age, very thin and no one would have thought she was more than seven, at the very most. This fair-haired girl with her big dark eyes and a red ribbon in her hair looked rather comical among the others, with their deeply tanned skin, crudely cut hair and their long faded smocks - she resembled a smali animal that had been caught in a field and brought into the hut.
'And she knows how to read!' Olga said boastfully as she tenderly looked at her daughter. 'Read something, dear!' she said, taking a Bible from one corner. 'You read a little bit and these good Christians will listen.'
54
The Bible was old and heavy, bound in leather and with well-thumbed pages; it smelled as though some monks had come into the hut. Sasha raised her eyebrows and began reading in a loud, singing voice, 'And when they were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord . . . appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, "Arise, and take the young child and his mother."'
'"The young child and his mother",' Olga repeated and became fl.ushed with excitement.
'"And flee into Egypt . . . and be thou there until I bring thee word ..."'
At the word 'until', Olga broke down and wept. Marya looked at her and started sobbing, and Ivan's sister followed suit. Then the old man had a fit of coughing and fussed around trying to find a present for his little granddaughter. But he could not find anything and finally gave it up as a bad job. After the reading, the neighbours went home, deeply touched and extremely pleased with Olga and Sasha.
When there was a holiday the family would stay at home all day. The old lady, called 'Grannie' by her husband, daughters-in-law and grandchildren, tried to do all the work herself. She would light the stove, put the samovar on, go to milk the cows and then complain she was worked to death. She kept worrying that someone might eat a little too much or that the old man and the daughters-in-law might have no work to do. One moment she would be thinking that she could hear the innkeeper's geese straying into her kitchen garden from around the back, and she would dash out of the hut with a long stick and stand screaming for half an hour on end by her cabbages that were as withered and stunted as herself; and then she imagined a crow was stalking her chickens and she would rush at it, swearing for all she was worth. She would rant and rave from morning to night and very often her shouting was so loud that people stoppcd in the street.
She did not treat the old man with much affection and 55
called him 'lazy devil' or 'damned nuisance'. He was frivolous and unreliable and wouldn't have done any work at all (most likely he would have sat over the stove all day long, talking) if his wife hadn't continually prodded him. He would spend hours on end telling his son stories about his enemies and complaining about the daily insults he had apparently to suffer from his neighbours. It was very boring listening to him.
'Oh yes,' he would say, holding his sides. 'Yes, a week after Exaltation of the Cross, I sold some hay at thirty kopeks a third of a hundredweight, just what I wanted .. . Yes, very good business. But one morning, as I was carting the hay, keeping to myself, not interfering with anyone . . . it was my rotten luck that Antip Sedelnikov, the village elder, comes out of the pub and asks: "Where you taking that lot, you devil . . .?" and he gives me one on the ear.'
Kiryak had a terrible hangover and he felt very shamed in front of his brother.
'That's what you get from drinking vodka,' he muttered, shaking his splitting head. 'Oh God! My own brother and sister-in-law! Please forgive me, for Christ's sake. I'm so ashamed!'
For the holiday.s they bought some herring at the inn and made soup from the heads. At midday they sat down to tea and went on drinking until the sweat poured off them. They looked puffed out with all that liquid and after the tea they started on the soup, everyone drinking from the same pot. Grannie had what was left of the herring.
56 That evening a potter was firing clay on the side of the
cliff. In the meadows down below, girls were singing and dancing in a ring. Someone was playing an accordion. Another kiln had been lit across the river and the girls there were singing as well and their songs were soft and melodious in the distance. At the inn and round about, some peasants were making a great noise with their discordant singing and they swore so much that Olga could only shudder and exclaim, 'Oh, good heavens!'