"If only you didn't mention the Evil One, at least!" Kleopa implored, blinking unhappily. "Keep still a while, I beg you!"
The miller soon desisted, but not because of Kleopa's request. A tiny stooped old woman, with a kindly face, wearing a queer striped jacket, that looked like the back of a bug, appeared on the dam. She carried a small bundle and leaned on a little stick.
"A good day to you, my dears!" she lisped, making a low bow to the monks. "The Lord be good to you! A good day, my little Alyosha! A good day to you, Yevsey darhng . . . ."
"Good day, Maminka," the miller mumbled, with a frown, not looking at the old woman.
"And here I've come to see you, my dear," she said, smiling and peering tenderly into the miller's face. "I haven't seen you in a long time. Why, I haven't seen you since the Feast of the Assumption. Whether it pleases you or not, receive me! I believe you have got- ten a bit thin."
The old woman seated herself beside the miller, and near this huge man her little jacket looked even more strikingly like the back of a bug.
"Yes, since the Feast of the Assumption!" she con- tinued. "I've been missing you sorely, sonny, my heart has been aching for you, but whenever I got ready to come to you, it would either start raining or I would fall
SiCk. "
"You are coming from town now?" asked the miller morosely.
"Yes, from town, straight from home—"
"With all your ailments and in your condition you
should stay home, and not traipse about visiting. What
did you come here for? Just wearing out shoe-leather!"
''I've come to have a look at you. I have two of them, sons, I mean," she said, turning to the monks, "this one and Vasily, who lives in town. Just the two of them. It's all the same to them if I am alive or dead, but they are my own, my joy. They can do without me, but without them I don't think I could live a day. Only, fathers, I'm getting old and it is hard for me now to come to him all the way from town."
A silence fell. The monks had carried the last sack to the shed and were sitting down in the cart resting. The drunken Yevsey kept crumpling the net in his hands and nodding sleepily.
"You've come at the wrong time, Maminka," said the miller. "I have to drive out to Karyazhino now."
"Do drive out. God speed you!" sighed the old woman. "Naturally, you can't drop business on my ac count. I will rest here a while and then go back. . . . Vasya and his children send you greetings, Alyosha darling. . . ."
"He still swills vodka?"
"Not so much, but he does take a drop. No use hiding the sin, he does drink. You know yourself he hasn't the money to drink a lot. Except perhaps when good people stand him a treat. It's a wretched life he leads, Alyosha! It hurts me to see it. Nothing to eat, the children in tat- ters, he ashamed to show himself in the street, what with holes in his pants and no boots. All the six of us sleep in one room. Such poverty, such bitter poverty. You can't imagine anything worse. Indeed, I've come to beg you to help us out. For the old woman's sake, Alyosha, do help Vasily. After all, he is your brother!"
The miller was silent and kept looking in the other direction.
"He is poor, but you—the Lord be praised!—you have a mill of your own, and orchards, and you trade in fish. The Lord has given you wisdom, He has raised you above all and given you bounty—and you are all alone. But Vasya has four children, and I, the accursed one, am a burden to him, and all he earns is seven rubles. How can he feed us all that way? You help us. • . ," In silence the miller carefully filled his pipe.
'Won't you help?" asked the old woman.
The miller was as silent as a clam. Receiving no an- swer, the old woman sighed, looked round at the monks and at Yevsey, then got up and said:
"Well, God bless you, don't help us—1 knew you wouldn't—l've come to you more on account of Nazar Andreich—He cried so, Alyosha darling! He kissed my hands and kept asking me to go to you and beg
M
you.
"What does he want?"
"He begs you to give him what's coming to him. He brought you his rye to be ground, he says, and you never gave him the flour."
"It isn't your business to meddle in other people's affairs, Maminka," the miller growled. "Your business is to say your prayers."
"I do pray, but it looks as though God doesn't heed my prayers. Vasily is a pauper, and as for me, I beg my bread and wear a cast-off jacket, while you are well-off, but the Lord knows what kind of a soul you have. Oh, Alyosha darling, the envious have put the evil eye on you! You've been blessed in everything. You're clever and handsome and you are a prince among merchants, but you're not human. You're unfriendly, you never smile or say a kind word, you're as pitiless as a beast. Look at your face! And what people say about you, my grief! Ask the fathers here! They lie about you, they say that you suck people's blood, that there are evil deeds upon your soul, that with your helpers you rob pass- ers-by at night and that you are a horse-thief. Your mill is like an accursed place. Boys and girls are afraid to come near it, all creatures keep clear of you. They have no other name for you but Cain and Herod—"
"You are a fool, Maminka!"
"Where your foot steps, the grass does not grow, where you breathe, not a fly buzzes. All I hear is 'Ah, if only someone did him in or if he were put away!' What does it do to a mother when she has to hear that? How does she feel? You are my own child, my flesh and blood—"
"It's time for me to go," muttered the miller, rising. "Good-by, Maminkal"
He wheeled a carriage out of the shed, led out a horse and, shoving it between the shafts as if it were a small dog, started hitching it up. The old woman hovered about him, looked into his face, and blinked tear- fully.
"Well, good-by!" she said, as her son started hur- riedly shouldering into a coat. "Stay here with God's blessing and do not forget us. Wait, I have a present for you." She mumbled, lowering her voice and untying her bundle, "Yesterday I was at the deaconess's, and they passed something round. So I put one away for you."
And the old woman held out to her son a small spice- cake.
"Leave off!" snarled the miller and pushed her hand away.
Embarrassed, the old woman dropped the cake and quietly waddled off towards the dam. It was a painful scene. Not to mention the monks, who exclaimed and held out their arms in horror, even the drunken Yevsey was petrified and stared at his master in dismay.
Whether because the miller was impressed by the re- action of the monks and his helper or because an emo- tion long dormant stirred in his breast, something like an expression of fear flashed across his face.
"Maminka!" he called.
The old woman started and looked back. The miller hurriedly plunged his hand into his pocket and drew out a large leather purse.
"There," he mumbled, pulling out of the purse a wad of paper money in which some silver coins were stuck, "take it!"
He rolled the wad in his hand, crushed it, for some reason looked at the monks, then fingered it again. The bills and the silver coins, slipping between his fingers, dropped back into the purse one after another, and only a twenty-kopeck piece remained in his hand. The miller examined it, rubbed it between his fingers and, groaning and getting purple, handed it to his mother.
1886
The Chameleon
P
OLICE INSPECTOR Ochumelov[1], wearing a new uniform and carrying a bundle in his hand, is crossing the market place. Behind him strides a red- headed policeman with a sieve that is filled to the brim with confiscated gooseberries. Silence reigns. Not a soul on the square. . . . The open doors of shops and tav- erns look out on God's world dejectedly, like hungry jaws. Not even a beggar is to be seen about them.