Five Great Short Stories Read online

  “Akh, batiushki!”

  She was astonished by the incessant blasphemy, and by the fact that the older men, whose time had nearly come, blasphemed worst of all. And the children and girls listened to this language, and seemed in no way uncomfortable; it was plain they were used to it, and had heard it from the cradle.

  Midnight came; the potters’ fires on both river-banks went out, but on the meadow below and in the inn the merry-making continued. The old man and Kiriak, both drunk, holding hands, and rolling against one another, came to the shed where Olga lay with Marya.

  “Leave her alone!” reasoned the old man. “Leave her. She’s not a bad sort. . . . It’s a sin. . . .”

  “Ma-arya!” roared Kiriak.

  “Stop! It’s sinful. . . . She’s not a bad sort.”

  The two men stood a moment by the shed and went away.

  “I love wild flowers . . .” sang the old man in a high, piercing tenor. “I love to pull them in the fields!”

  After this he spat, blasphemed, and went into the hut.

  CHAPTER IV

  Dreams!

  GRANDMOTHER STATIONED Sasha in the kitchen garden, and ordered her to keep off the geese. It was a hot August day. The innkeeper’s geese could get into the kitchen garden by the back way, but at present they were busy picking up oats near the inn and quietly conversing, though the old gander stood aloof, his head raised as if to make sure that grandmother was not coming with her stick. The other geese could also get into the garden; but these were feeding far across the river, and, like a big white garland, stretched across the meadow. Sasha watched a short time, and then got tired, and, seeing no geese in sight, went down to the ravine.

  There she saw Motka, Marya’s eldest daughter, standing motionless on a big stone, and looking at the church. Marya had borne thirteen children; but only six remained, all girls, and the eldest was eight years old. Bare-footed Motka, in her long shirt, stood in the sun; the sun burnt the top of her head, but she took no notice of this, and seemed turned to stone. Sasha stood beside her, and looking at the church, began—

  “God lives in the church. People burn lamps and candles, but God has red lamps, green and blue lamps, like eyes. At night God walks about the church, and with him the Holy Virgin, and holy Nicholas . . . toup, toup, toup! . . . The watchman is frightened, terribly! Yes, my heart,” she said, imitating her mother. “When the Day of Judgment comes all the churches will be carried to heaven.”

  “With the bells?” asked Motka in a bass voice, drawling every word.

  “With the bells. And on the Day of Judgment good people will go to paradise, and wicked people will burn in fire eternal and unextinguishable, my heart! To mother and Marya God will say, ‘You have offended no one, so go to the right, to paradise’; but He’ll say to Kiriak and grandmother, ‘You go to the left, into the fire!’ And people who eat meat on fast-days will go to the fire too.”

  She looked up at the sky, opened wide her eyes, and continued—

  “Look up at the sky, don’t wink . . . and you’ll see angels.”

  Motka looked at the sky, and a minute passed in silence.

  “Do you see them?” asked Sasha.

  “No,” answered Motka in her bass voice.

  “But I can. Little angels fly about the sky, with wings . . . little, little, like gnats.”

  Motka thought, looked at the ground, and asked—

  “Will grandmother burn really?”

  “She’ll burn, my heart.”

  From the stone to the bottom of the hill was a gentle, even slope covered with green grass so soft that it invited repose. Sasha lay down and slid to the bottom. Motka with a serious, severe face, puffed out her cheeks, lay down, and slid, and as she slid her shirt came up to her shoulders.

  “How funny I felt!” said Sasha in delight.

  The two children climbed to the top intending to slide down again, but at that moment they heard a familiar, squeaky voice. Terror seized them. Toothless, bony, stooping grandmother, with her short grey hair floating in the wind, armed with the long stick, drove the geese from the kitchen garden, and screamed—

  “You’ve spoiled all the cabbage, accursed; may you choke; threefold anathemas; plagues, there is no peace with you!”

  She saw the two girls, threw down her stick, took up a bundle of brushwood, and seizing Sasha’s shoulders with fingers dry and hard as tree-forks, began to beat her. Sasha cried from pain and terror; and at that moment a gander, swinging from foot to foot and stretching out its neck, came up and hissed at the old woman; and when he returned to the geese, all welcomed him approvingly: go-go-go! Thereafter grandmother seized and whipped Motka, and again Motka’s shirt went over her shoulders. Trembling with terror, crying loudly, Sasha went back to the hut to complain, and after her went Motka, also crying in her bass voice. Her tears were unwiped away, and her face was wet as if she had been in the river.

  “Lord in heaven!” cried Olga as they entered the hut. “Mother of God, what’s this?”

  Sasha began her story, and at that moment, screaming and swearing, in came grandmother. Fekla lost her temper, and the whole hut was given over to noise.

  “Never mind, never mind!” consoled Olga, pale and unnerved, stroking Sasha’s head. “She’s your grandmother; you’ve no right to be angry. Never mind, child!”

  Nikolai, already tortured by the constant shouting, hunger, smell, and smoke, hating and despising poverty, and ashamed of his parents before his wife and child, swung his legs over the stove and said to his mother with an irritable whine—

  “You mustn’t touch her! You have no right whatever to beat her!”

  “Nu, you’ll choke there on the stove, corpse!” cried Fekla angrily. “The devil sent you to us, parasite!”

  And Sasha and Motka, and all the little girls, hid on the stove behind Nikolai’s back, and the throbbing of their little hearts was almost heard. In every family with an invalid, long sick and hopeless, there are moments when all, timidly, secretly, at the bottom of their hearts, wish for his death; alone, children always dread the death of any one kin to them, and feel terror at the thought. And now the little girls, with bated breath and mournful faces, looked at Nikolai, and thinking that he would soon die, wanted to cry and say something kindly and compassionate.

  Nikolai pressed close to Olga, as if seeking a defender, and said in a soft, trembling voice—

  “Olga, my dear, I can stand this no longer. It is beyond my strength. For the love of God, for the love of Christ in heaven, write to your sister, Claudia Abramovna; let her sell or pledge everything, and send us the money to get out of this. O Lord,” he cried, with longing, “to look at Moscow again, even with one eye! Even to see it in dreams!”

  When evening came and the hut grew dark, all felt such tedium that it was hard to speak. Angry grandmother soaked rye crusts in a bowl, and took an hour to eat them. Marya milked the cow, carried in the milk-pail, and set it down on a bench; and grandmother slowly poured the milk into jugs, pleased at the thought that now at Assumption fast no one would drink milk, and that it would remain whole. But she poured a little, very little, into a saucer for Fekla’s youngest. When she and Marya carried the milk to the cellar Motka suddenly started up, climbed down from the stove, and going to the bench poured the saucer of milk into the wooden bowl of crusts.

  Grandmother, back in the hut, sat down again to the crusts, and Sasha and Motka, perched on the stove, looked at her, and saw with joy that she was drinking milk during fast time, and therefore would go to hell. Consoled by this, they lay down to sleep; and Sasha, going off to sleep, imagined the terrible chastisement: a big stove, like the potter’s, and a black unclean spirit horned like a cow drove grandmother into the stove with a long stick, as she herself had lately driven the geese.

  CHAPTER V

  Fire!

  ON THE NIGHT of Assumption, at eleven o’clock, the young men and girls playing below in the meadow suddenly cried and shrieked and ran back towards the village. T
he boys and girls who sat above, on the brink of the ravine, at first could not understand the cause of their cries.

  “Fire! Fire!” came from beneath in a despairing scream. “The hut’s on fire!”

  The boys and girls on the ravine turned their heads and saw a picture terrible and rare. Over one of the farthest thatched huts rose a fathom-high pillar of fire which curled and scattered fountain-wise on all sides showers of bright sparks. And immediately afterwards the whole roof caught fire, and the crackling of burning beams was heard by all.

  The moonlight faded, and soon the whole village was bathed in a red, trembling glare; black shadows moved across the ground, and there was a smell of burning. The merry-makers from below, all panting, speechless, shuddering, jostled one another and fell; dazzled by the bright light, they saw nothing, and could not even tell who was who. The sight was terrible; and most terrible of all was that in the smoke above the conflagration fluttered doves, and that the men in the inn, knowing nothing of the fire, continued to sing and play the concertina as if nothing had happened.

  “Uncle Semion is burning!” cried a loud, hoarse voice.

  Marya with chattering teeth wandered about her hut weeping and wringing her hands, although the fire was far away at the other end of the village; Nikolai came out in his felt boots and after him the children in their shirts. At the village policeman’s hut they beat the alarm. Bem, bem, bem! echoed through the air; and this tireless, repeated sound made the heart sink and the listeners turn cold. The old women stood about with images. From the yards were driven sheep, calves, and cows; and the villagers carried into the street their boxes, sheepskins, and pails. A black stallion, kept apart from the herd because he kicked and injured the horses, found himself in freedom, and neighing loudly, he tore up and down the village, and at last stopped beside a cart and kicked it violently.

  In the church beyond the river the fire-alarm was rung.

  It was hot all around the burning hut, and in the bright glare even the blades of grass were visible. On a box which the peasants had managed to save sat Semion, a big-nosed, red-headed muzhik, in short coat, with a forage-cap pressed down to his ears; his wife lay on her face on the earth and groaned. A little, big-bearded, capless, gnome-like stranger of eighty, evidently partial to fires, wandered around, carrying a white bundle; his bald head reflected the glare. The starosta,10 Antip Siedelnikoff, swarthy and black-haired as a gipsy, went up to the hut with his axe, and for no apparent reason beat in all the windows and began to hack at the steps.

  “Women, water!” he roared. “Bring the engine! Look sharp!”

  The peasants, fresh from merry-making in the inn, dragged up the fire-engine. All were drunk; they staggered and fell; their expressions were helpless, and tears stood in their eyes.

  “Bring water, girls!” cried the starosta, also drunk. “Lcok sharp!”

  The young women and girls ran down the slope to the well, returned with pails and pitchers of water, and, having emptied them into the engine, ran back for more. Olga, and Marya, and Sasha, and Motka, all helped. The water was pumped up by women and small boys; the hose-nozzle hissed; and the starosta, aiming it now at the door, now at the windows, held his finger on the stream of water, so that it hissed still more fiercely.

  “Good man, Antip!” came approving cries. “Keep it up!”

  And Antip went into the hall and cried thence—

  “Bring more water! Do your best, Orthodox men and women, on this unfortunate occasion!”

  The muzhiks stood in a crowd with idle hands and gaped at the fire. No one knew what to start on, not one was capable of help; although around were stacks of grain, hay, outhouses, and heaps of dry brushwood. Kiriak and his father Osip, both tipsy, stood in the crowd. As if to excuse his idleness, the old man turned to the woman who lay on the ground and said—

  “Don’t worry yourself, gossip! The hut’s insured—it’s all the same to you!”

  And Semion, addressing each muzhik in turn, explained how the hut caught fire.

  “That old man there with the bundle is General Zhukoff’s servant. . . . He was with our general, heaven kingdom to him! as cook. He comes up to us in the evening and begins, ‘Let me sleep here tonight.’ . . . We had a drink each, of course. . . . The woman prepared the samovar to get the old man tea, when in an unlucky moment she put it in the hall; and the fire from the chimney, of course, went up to the roof, the straw and all! We were nearly burnt ourselves. And the old man lost his cap; it’s a pity.”

  The fire-alarm boomed without cease; and the bells of the church across the river rang again and again. Olga, panting, bathed in the glare, looked with terror at the red sheep and the red pigeons flying about in the smoke; and it seemed to her that the boom of the fire-alarm pierced into her soul, that the fire would last for ever, and that Sasha was lost. . . . And when the roof crashed in she grew so weak with fear lest the whole village burn that she could no longer carry water; and she sat on the brink of the ravine with her pail beside her; beside her sat other women, and spoke as if they were speaking of a corpse.

  At last from the manor-house came two cartloads of factors and workmen. They brought with them a fire-engine. A very youthful student in white, unbuttoned tunic rode into the village on horseback. Axes crashed, a ladder was placed against the burning log-walls; and up it promptly climbed five men led by the student, who was very red, and shouted sharply and hoarsely, and in a tone which implied that he was well accustomed to extinguishing fires. They took the hut to pieces, beam by beam; and dragged apart stall, the wattle fence, and the nearest hayrick.

  “Don’t let them break it!” came angry voices from the crowd. “Don’t let them!”

  Kiriak with a resolute face went into the hut as if to prevent the new-comers breaking, but one of the workmen turned him back with a blow on the neck. Kiriak tumbled, and on all fours crept back to the crowd.

  From across the river came two pretty girls in hats; the student’s sisters, no doubt. They stood some way off and watched the conflagration. The scattered logs no longer burned, but smoked fiercely; and the student, handling the hose, sent the water sometimes on the logs, sometimes into the crowd, sometimes at the women who were carrying pails.

  “George!” cried the frightened girls reproachfully. “George!”

  The fire ended. Before the crowd dispersed the dawn had begun; and all faces were pale and a little dark—or so it always seems in early morning when the last stars fade away. As they went to their homes the muzhiks laughed and joked at the expense of General Zhukoff’s cook and his burnt cap: they reenacted the fire as a joke, and, it seemed, were sorry it had come so quickly to an end.

  “You put out the fire beautifully, sir,” said Olga to the student. “Quite in the Moscow way; there we have fires every day.”

  “Are you really from Moscow?” asked one of the girls.

  “Yes. My husband served in the Slaviansky Bazaar. And this is my little girl.” She pointed to Sasha, who pressed close to her from the cold. “Also from Moscow, miss.”

  The girls spoke to the student in French, and handed Sasha a twenty-kopeck piece. When old Osip saw this his face grew bright with hope.

  “Thank God, your honour, there was no wind,” he said, turning to the student. “We’d have been all burnt up in an hour. Your honour, good gentleman,” he added shamefacedly. “It’s a cold morning; we want warming badly . . . a half a bottle from your kindness . . .”

  Osip’s hint proved vain; and, grunting, he staggered home. Olga stood at the end of the village and watched as the two carts forded the stream, and the pretty girls walked through the meadow towards the carriage waiting on the other side. She turned to the hut in ecstasies—

  “And such nice people! So good-looking. The young ladies, just like little cherubs!”

  “May they burst asunder!” growled sleepy Fekla angrily.

  CHAPTER VI

  The Hut

  MARYA WAS UNHAPPY, and said that she wanted to die. But life as sh
e found it was quite to Fekla’s taste: she liked the poverty, and the dirt, and the never-ceasing bad language. She ate what she was given without picking and choosing, and could sleep comfortably anywhere; she emptied the slops in front of the steps: threw them, in fact, from the threshold, though in her own naked feet she had to walk through the puddle. And from the first day she hated Olga and Nikolai for no reason save that they loathed this life.

  “We’ll see what you’re going to eat here, my nobles from Moscow!” she said maliciously. “We’ll see!”

  Once on an early September morning, Fekla, rosy from the cold, healthy, and good-looking, carried up the hill two pails of water; when she entered the hut Marya and Olga sat at the table and drank tea.

  “Tea . . . and sugar!” began Fekla ironically. “Fine ladies you are!” she added, setting down the pails. “A nice fashion you’ve got of drinking tea everyday! See that you don’t swell up with tea!” she continued, looking with hatred at Olga. “You got a thick snout already in Moscow, fatbeef!”

  She swung round the yoke and struck Olga on the shoulder. The two women clapped their hands and exclaimed—

  “Akh, batiushki!”

  After which Fekla returned to the river to wash clothes, and all the time cursed so loudly that she was heard in the hut.

  The day passed, and behind it came the long autumn evening. All sat winding silk, except Fekla, who went down to the river. The silk was given out by a neighbouring factory; and at this work the whole family earned not more than twenty kopecks a week.

  “We were better off as serfs,” said the old man, winding away busily. “In those days you’d work, and eat, and sleep . . . each in its turn. For dinner you’d have schtchi11 and porridge, and for supper again schtchi and porridge. Gherkins and cabbage as much as you liked; and you’d eat freely, as much as you liked. And there was more order. Each man knew his place.”