The female serfs' quarters were crowded with young and not-so-young girls in striped shirts, whom Pulkheria Ivanovna sometimes gave some trifles to sew or set to sorting out berries, but who mostly slept and raided the kitchen. Pulkheria Ivanovna considered it necessary to keep them in the house and stricdy supervised their morals. But, to her great astonishment, before a few months went by, one of her girls would grow much plumper at the waist, and this would seem the more astonishing since there were almost no bachelors in the place, except perhaps for the houseboy, who went around barefoot in a gray short-tailed coat and whenever he wasn't eating was sure to be asleep. Pulkheria Ivanovna usually reprimanded the guilty girl and gave strict orders that no such thing should happen again. On the windowpanes a terrible number of flies pinged, overwhelmed completely by the heavy basso of a bumblebee, occasionally accompanied by the piercing shrieks of wasps; but as soon as the candles were brought in, the whole throng would go to sleep and cover the ceiling like a black cloud.
Afanasy Ivanovich took very little care of the management, though all the same he did sometimes go out to the mowers and reapers and watched their work quite closely; the whole burden of government lay on Pulkheria Ivanovna. Pulkheria Ivanovna's management consisted in a ceaseless locking and unlocking of the storehouse, in pickling, drying, and stewing a numberless multitude of fruits and plants. Her house was the perfect likeness of a chemical laboratory. Under the apple tree a fire was forever burning, and the iron tripod was never without a cauldron or copper pot on it, for preserves, jellies, fruit pastes made with honey, sugar, and I don't remember what else. Under another tree the coachman was forever distilling vodka in a copper still, with peach leaves, bird-cherry flowers, centaury, cherry pits, and by the end of the process was quite unable to move his tongue, pouring out such nonsense that Pulkheria Ivanovna could not understand a thing and would send him to the kitchen to sleep. So much of this stuff was cooked, pickled, and dried that Pulkheria Ivanovna would finally have drowned the yard in it-because she liked to prepare things for laying away beyond what she counted on using-if a good half of it hadn't been eaten by the household serf girls, who would get into the storehouse and gorge themselves so terribly that they would spend whole days afterwards groaning and complaining about their stomachs.
As for the tillage and other aspects of management that lay outside the household, Pulkheria Ivanovna had little opportunity of entering into them. The steward, together with the village headman, stole unmercifully. They made a custom of entering their master's forests as if they were their own; they built a lot of sleds and sold them at the local fair; besides that, they sold all the big oak trees to the neighboring Cossacks to be cut down for their mills. Only once did Pulkheria Ivanovna have a wish to inspect her forests. For that purpose a droshky was harnessed with enormous leather aprons which, as soon as the coachman snapped the reins and the horses, veterans of the old militia, 5 started from their place, filled the air with strange noises, so that one could suddenly hear a flute, a tambourine, and a drum; every little nail and iron staple set up such a clangor that even out at the mills one could hear the mistress leaving her yard, though it was nearly a mile and a half away. Pulkheria Ivanovna could not fail to notice the terrible devastation in the forest and the loss of the oaks, which she knew to have been hundreds of years old when she was a child.
"Why is it, Nichipor," she said, addressing her steward, who was right there, "that with you the oaks have grown so sparse? Look out that the hair on your head doesn't grow sparse, too."
"Why sparse?" the steward replied. "They perished! Perished just like that-thunder beat them down, worms gnawed at them- they perished, ma'am, perished."
Pulkheria Ivanovna, thoroughly satisfied with that answer, went home and gave instructions to double the watch in the garden on her Spanish cherries and the big winter bergamots.
Those worthy rulers, the steward and the headman, thought it quite unnecessary to bring all the flour into the master's own barn and that half was enough; in the end, even the half that was delivered was either moldy or damp and had been rejected at the fair. But however much the steward and the headman stole, however much everyone in the household stuffed his face, from the housekeeper to the pigs, who consumed a terrible quantity of plums and apples, and often shoved the trees with their snouts to shake down a whole rain of fruit; however much the sparrows and crows pecked up; however much all the household people took as presents to their kin in other villages, even stealing old linen and yarn from the storerooms, all of which returned to the universal source, that is, the tavern; however much visitors, their phlegmatic coachmen and lackeys stole-the blessed earth produced everything in such abundance, and Afanasy Ivanovich and Pulkheria Ivanovna needed so little, that all this terrible plundering seemed to go entirely unnoticed in their management.
The two old folk, as was the ancient custom of old world landowners, liked very much to eat. As soon as day broke (they always rose early) and the doors started their discordant concert, they would be at the table having coffee. After having his coffee, Afanasy Ivanovich would go out to the front door and, shaking his handkerchief, say, "Shoo, shoo! Off the porch, geese!" In the yard he would usually run into the steward. He would enter into his usual conversation with him, ask in great detail about the work, and come out with such observations and instructions as would astonish anyone with his extraordinary knowledge of management; and a newcomer would not even dare think it possible to steal from such a keen-sighted master. But his steward was not gun-shy, he knew how to answer and, even more so, how to handle his job.
After that, Afanasy Ivanovich would go back in and, approaching Pulkheria Ivanovna, would say:
"Well, now, Pulkheria Ivanovna, isn't it time we had a little bite of something?"
"What could we have now, Afanasy Ivanovich?-unless it was shortcake with lard, or poppyseed pirozhki, 6 or maybe some pickled mushrooms?"
"Why not the mushrooms, or else the pirozhki?" Afanasy Ivanovich would reply, and a tablecloth with pirozhki and mushrooms would suddenly appear.
An hour before dinner, Afanasy Ivanovich would have another snack, drink an old-fashioned silver cup of vodka, followed by mushrooms, various dried fish, and so on. Dinner was served at twelve noon. Besides platters and sauce boats, there stood on the table a multitude of pots with sealed lids to keep some savory dishes of old-fashioned cookery from losing their flavor. At dinner the conversation was about subjects most closely related to dining.
"It seems to me," Afanasy Ivanovich would say, "that this kasha 7 is a wee bit burnt-don't you think so, Pulkheria Ivanovna?"
"No, Afanasy Ivanovich, put more butter on it, then it won't seem burnt, or else pour some mushroom sauce on it."
"Why not?" Afanasy Ivanovich would say, holding out his plate, "let's try it and see."
After dinner Afanasy Ivanovich would have a little hour of rest, after which Pulkheria Ivanovna would bring a sliced watermelon and say:
"Here, Afanasy Ivanovich, taste what a good watermelon it is."
"Never mind that it's red inside, Pulkheria Ivanovna," Afanasy Ivanovich would say, accepting a none-too-small slice, "sometimes it's no good even when it's red."
But the watermelon would immediately disappear. After that Afanasy Ivanovich would also eat a few pears and go for a walk in the garden with Pulkheria Ivanovna. On returning home, Pulkheria Ivanovna would go about her duties, and he would sit under the gallery roof facing the yard and watch the storehouse ceaselessly revealing and covering its insides, and the serf girls jostling each other, bringing heaps of all sorts of stuff in and out in wooden boxes, sieves, trays, and other containers for fruit. A little later he would send for Pulkheria Ivanovna or go to her himself and say: