Two pretty girls, wearing hats - they were probably the student's sisters - arrived from across the river. They stood a little way off, watching the fire. The beams that had been pulled down had stopped burning, but a great deal of smoke still came from them. As he manipulated the hose, the student directed the jet at the beams, then at the peasants and then at the women fetching the water.
'Georges!' the girls shouted, in anxious, reproachful voices. 'Georges!'
The fire was out now and only when they started going home did the villagers notice that it was already dawn and that everyone had that pale, slightly swarthy look which 67
always seems to come in the early hours of the morning, when the last stars have faded from the sky. As they went their different ways, the villagers laughed and made fun of General Zhukov's cook and his burnt hat. Already they wanted to turn the fire into a joke - and they even seemed sorry that it was all over so quickly.
'You were a very good fireman,' Olga told the student. 'You should come to Moscow where we live, there's a fire every day.'
'You don't say, you're from MoscomT one of the young ladies asked.
'Oh yes. My husband worked at the Slav Fair. And this is my daughter.'
She pointed to Sasha, who went cold all over and clungtoher.
'She's from Moscow as well, Miss.'
The two girls said something in French to the student and he gave Sasha a twenty-kopek piece. When old Osip saw it, there was a sudden flicker of hope on his face.
'Thank God there wasn't any wind, sir,' he said, turning to the student, 'or everything would have gone up before you could say knife.' Then he lowered his voice and added timidly, 'Yes, sir, and you ladies, you're good people . .. it's cold at dawn, could do with warming up ... Please give me a little something for a drink . . .'
They gave him nothing and he sighed and slunk off home. Afterwards Olga stood at the top of the slope and watched the two carts fording the river and the two ladies and the gentleman riding across the meadow - a carriage was waiting 68 for them on the other side.
When she went back into the hut she told her husband delightedly, 'Such fine people! And so good-looking. Those young ladies were like little cherubs!'
'They can damned well go to hell!' murmured sleepy Fyokla, in a voice full of hatred.
6
Marya was unhappy and said that she longed to die. Fyokla, on the other hand, found this kind of life to her liking - for all its poverty, filth and never-ending bad language. She ate whatever she was given, without any fuss, and slept anywhere she could and on whatever she happened to find. She would empty the slops right outside the front door, splashing them out from the steps, and she would walk barefoot through the puddles into the bargain. From the very first day she had hated Olga and Nikolay, precisely because they did not like the life there.
'We'll see what you get to eat here, my posh Moscow friends,' she said viciously. 'We'll see!'
One morning, right at the beginning of September, the healthy, fine-looking Fyokla, her face flushed with the cold, brought two buckets of water up the hill. Marya and Olga were sitting at the table drinking tea.
'Tea and sugar!' Fyokla said derisively. 'Real ladies!' she added, putting the buckets down. 'Is it the latest fashion, then, drinking tea every day.? Careful you don't burst with all that liquid inside you.' She gave Olga a hateful look and went 69
on, 'Stuffed your fat mug all right in Moscow, didn't you, you fat cow!'
She swung the yoke and hit Olga on the shoulders; this startled the sisters-in-law so much that all they could do was clasp their hands and say, 'Oh, good heavens!'
Then Fyokla went down to the river to do some washing and she swore so loudly the whole way there, they could hear her back in the hut.
The day drew to a close and the long autumn evening set in. In the hut they were winding silk - everyone, that is, except Fyokla, who had gone across the river.
The silk was collected from a nearby factory and the whole family earned itself a little pocket money - twenty kopeks a week.
'We were better off as serfs,' the old man said as he wound the silk. 'You worked, ate, slept - everything had its proper place. You had cabbage soup and kasha for your dinner and again for supper. You had as many cucumbers and as much cabbage as you liked and you could eat to your heart's content, if you felt like it. And they were stricter then, everyone knew his place.'
Only one lamp was alight, smoking and glowing dimly. Whenever anyone stood in front of it, a large shadow fell across the window and one could see the bright moonlight. Old Osip took his time as he told them all what life was like before the serfs were emancipated;* how, in those very same places where life was so dull and wretched now, they used to
70 • The serfs were officially emancipated in 1861.
ride out with wolfhounds, borzois and skilled hunters. There would be plenty of vodka for the peasants during the battue. He told how whole cartloads of game were taken to Moscow for the young gentlemen, how badly behaved ^^&nts were flogged or sent away to estates in Tver, while the good ones were rewarded. Grannie had stories to teU as weU. She remembered amply everything. She told of her mistre&, whose husband was a drunkard and a rake and whose daughters aU made absolutely disastrous marriages; one married a drunkard, another a small tradesman in the town, while the third eloped (with the help of Grannie, who was a girl herself at the time). In no time at all they all died of broken hearts (like their mother) and Grannie burst into tears when she recalled it all.
Suddenly there was a knock at the door and everyone trembled.
'Uncle Osip, put me up for tonight, please!'
In came General Zhukov's cook - a bald, little old man, the same cook whose hat had been burnt. He sat down, listened to the conversation and soon joined in, reminiscing and telling stories about the old days. Nikolay sat listening with his legs dangling from the stove and all he wanted to know was what kind of food they used to eat in the days of serfdom. They discu^ed various kinds of rissoles, cutlets, soups and sauces. The cook, who had a good memory as well, mentioned dishes that were not made any more. For example, there was some dish made from bulls' eyes called mormng awakening.
'Did they make cutlets d la marechale then?' Nikolay asked.
'No.' 71
Nikolay shook his head disdainfully and said, 'Oh, you little apology for a cook!'
The little girls who were sitting or lying on the stove looked down without blinking. There seemed to be so many of them, they were like cherubs in the clouds. They liked the stories, sighed, shuddered and turned pale with delight or fear. Breathlessly they listened to Grannie's stories, which were the most interesting, and they were too frightened to move a muscle. All of them lay down to sleep without saying a word. The old people, excited and disturbed by the stories, thought about the beauty of youth, now that it was past: no matter what it had really been like, they could only remember it as bright, joyful and moving. And now they thought of the terrible chill of death - and for them death was not far away. Better not to think about it! The lamp went out. The darkness, the two windows sharply outlined in the moonlight, the silence and the creaking cradle somehow reminded them that their lives were finished, nothing could bring them back. Sometimes one becomes drowsy and dozes off, and suddenly someone touches you on the shoulder, breathes on your cheek and you can sleep no longer, your whole body goes numb, and you can think of nothing but death. You turn over and death is forgotten; but then the same old depressing, tedious thoughts keep wandering around your head - thoughts of poverty, cattle fodder, about the higher price of flour and a little later you remember once again that your life has gone, that you can never re-live it.