They prepared for bed. As Nikolay was ill, they put him over the stove with the old man. Sasha lay down on the floor, while Olga went into the barn with the other women.
‘Well, dear,’ Olga said, lying down on the straw next to Marya. ‘It’s no good crying. You’ve got to grin and bear it. The Bible says: “But whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also…”2 Yes, dear!’
Then she told her about her life in Moscow, in a whispering, singsong voice, about her job as a maid in some furnished flats.
‘The houses are very big there and built of stone,’ she said. ‘There’s ever so many churches – scores and scores of them, my dear, and them that live in the houses are all gentlefolk, so handsome and respectable!’
Marya replied that she had never been further than the county town, let alone Moscow. She was illiterate, did not know any prayers – even ‘Our Father’. Both she and Fyokla, the other sister-in-law, who was sitting not very far away, listening, were extremely backward and understood nothing. Neither loved her husband. Marya was frightened of Kiryak and whenever he stayed with her she would tremble all over. And he stank so much of tobacco and vodka she nearly went out of her mind. If anyone asked Fyokla if she got bored when her husband was away, she would reply indignantly, ‘to hell with him!’ They kept talking a little longer and then fell silent…
It was cool and they could not sleep because of a cock crowing near the barn for all it was worth. When the hazy blue light of morning was already filtering through every chink in the woodwork, Fyokla quietly got up and went outside. Then they heard her running off somewhere, her bare feet thudding over the ground.
II
Olga went to church, taking Marya with her. Both of them felt cheerful as they went down the path to the meadow. Olga liked the wide-open spaces, while Marya sensed that her sister-in-law was someone near and dear to her. The sun was rising and a sleepy hawk flew low over the meadows. The river looked gloomy, with patches of mist here and there. But a strip of sunlight already stretched along the hill on the far side of the river, the church shone brightly and crows cawed furiously in the manor house garden.
‘The old man’s all right,’ Marya was telling her, ‘only Grannie’s very strict and she’s always on the warpath. Our own bread lasted until Shrovetide, then we had to go and buy some flour at the inn. That put her in a right temper, said we were eating too much.’
‘Oh, what of it, dear! You just have to grin and bear it. As it says in the Bible: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden.”’3
Olga had a measured, singsong voice and she walked like a pilgrim, quick and bustling. Every day she read out loud from the Gospels, like a priest, and there was much she did not understand. However, the sacred words moved her to tears and she pronounced ‘if whomsoever’ and ‘whither’ with a sweet sinking feeling in her heart. She believed in God, the Holy Virgin and the saints. She believed that it was wrong to harm anyone in the wide world – whether they were simple people, Germans, gipsies or Jews – and woe betide those who were cruel to animals! She believed that all this was written down in the sacred books and this was why, when she repeated words from the Bible – even words she did not understand – her face became compassionate, radiant and full of tenderness.
‘Where are you from?’ Marya asked.
‘Vladimir.4 But my parents took me with them to Moscow a long time ago, when I was only eight.’
They went down to the river. On the far side a woman stood at the water’s edge, undressing herself.
‘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!’
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 immediately 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 monsters who would trample all over her if she did not get out of the way. And whenever the priest’s deep voice thundered out, she imagined she could hear that shout again – Ma-arya! – and she trembled all over.
III
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 longstanding practice, going back to the days of serfdom when a certain peasant from Zhukovo called Luka Ivanych (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 Garden Theatre.5 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 him these days.’
‘Last winter he was working at Aumont’s,6 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 small 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.’
The Bible was old and heavy, bound in leather and with well-thumbed pages; it smelt 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… ap
peareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, “Arise, and take the young child and his mother.”’7
‘“The young child and his mother”,’ Olga repeated and became flushed 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 stopped in the street.
She did not treat the old man with much affection and 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,8 I sold some hay at thirty copecks 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 ashamed 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 holidays 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.
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!’
She was astonished that the swearing never stopped for one minute and that the old men with one foot in the grave were the ones who swore loudest and longest. But the children and the young girls were obviously used to it from the cradle and it did not worry them at all.
Now it was past midnight and the fires in the pottery kilns on both sides of the river had gone out. But the festivities continued in the meadow below and at the inn. The old man and Kiryak, both drunk, joined arms and kept bumping into each other as they went up to the barn where Olga and Marya were lying.
‘Leave her alone,’ the old man urged Kiryak. ‘Let her be. She doesn’t do any harm… it’s shameful…’
‘Ma-arya!’ Kiryak shouted.
‘Leave her alone… it’s sinful… she’s not a bad woman.’
They both paused for a moment near the barn, then they moved on.
‘I lo-ove the flowers that bloom in the fields, oh!’9 the old man suddenly struck up in his shrill, piercing tenor voice. ‘Oh, I do lo-ove to pick the flo-owers!’
Then he spat, swore obscenely and went into the hut.
IV
Grannie stationed Sasha near her kitchen garden and told her to watch out for stray geese. It was a hot August day. The geese could have got into the garden from round the back, but now they were busily pecking at some oats near the inn, peacefully cackling to each other. Only the gander craned his neck, as though he were looking out for the old woman with her stick. The other geese might have come up from the slope, but they stayed far beyond the other side of the river and resembled a long white garland of flowers laid out over the meadow.
Sasha stood there for a few moments, after which she felt bored. When she saw that the geese weren’t coming, off she went down the steep slope. There she spotted Motka (Marya’s eldest daughter), standing motionless on a boulder, looking at the church. Marya had borne thirteen children, but only six survived, all of them girls – not a single boy among them; and the eldest was eight. Motka stood barefooted in her long smock, in the full glare of the sun which burnt down on her head. But she did not notice it and seemed petrified. Sasha stood next to her and said as she looked at the church, ‘God lives in churches. People have icon lamps and candles, but God has little red, green and blue lamps that are just like tiny eyes. At night-time God goes walking round the church with the Holy Virgin and Saint Nikolay… tap-tap-tap. And the watchman is scared stiff!’ Then she added, mimicking her mother, ‘Now, dear, when the Day of Judgement comes, every church will be whirled off to heaven!’
‘Wha-at, with their be-ells too?’ Motka asked in a deep voice, dragging each syllable.
‘Yes, bells and all. On the Day of Judgement, all good people will go to paradise, while the wicked ones will be burnt in everlasting fire, for ever and ever. And God will tell my mother and Marya, “You never harmed anyone, so you can take the path on the right that leads to paradise.” But he’ll say to Kiryak and Grannie, “You go to the left, into the fire. And all those who ate meat during Lent must go as well.”’
She gazed up at the sky with wide-open eyes and said, ‘If you look at the sky without blinking you can see the angels.’
Motka looked upwards and neither of them said a word for a minute or so.
‘Can you see them?’ Sasha asked.
‘Can’t see nothing,’ Motka said in her deep voice.
‘Well, I can. There’s tiny angels flying through the sky, flapping their wings and going buzz-buzz like mosquitoes.’
Motka pondered for a moment as she looked down at the ground and then she asked, ‘Will Grannie burn in the fire?’
‘Yes, she will, dear.’
From the rock down to the bottom, the slope was gentle and smooth. It was covered with soft green grass which made one feel like touching it or lying on it. Sasha lay down and rolled to the bottom. Motka took a deep breath and, looking very solemn and deadly serious, she lay down too and rolled to the bottom; on the way down her smock rode up to her shoulders.
‘That was great fun,’ Sasha said rapturously.
They both went up to the top again for another roll, but just then they heard that familiar, piercing voice again. It was really terrifying! That toothless, bony, hunchbacked old woman, with her short grey hair fluttering in the wind, was driving the geese out of her kitchen garden with a long stick, shouting, ‘So you had to tread all over my cabbages, blast you! May you be damned three times and rot in hell, you buggers!’
When she saw the girls, she threw the stick down, seized a whip made of twigs, gri
pped Sasha’s neck with fingers as hard and dry as stale rolls, and started beating her. Sasha cried out in pain and fear, but at that moment the gander, waddling along and craning its neck, went up to the old woman and hissed at her. When it returned to the flock all the females cackled approvingly. Then the old woman started beating Motka and her smock rode up again. With loud sobs and in utter desperation, Sasha went to the hut to complain about it. She was followed by Motka, who was crying as well, but much more throatily and without bothering to wipe the tears away. Her face was so wet it seemed she had just drenched it with water.
‘Good God!’ Olga said in astonishment when they entered the hut. ‘Holy Virgin!’
Sasha was just about to tell her what had happened when Grannie started shrieking and cursing. Fyokla became furious and the hut was filled with noise. Olga was pale and looked very upset as she stroked Sasha’s head and said consolingly, ‘It’s all right, it’s nothing. It’s sinful to get angry with your grandmother. It’s all right, my child.’
Nikolay, who by this time was exhausted by the never-ending shouting, by hunger, by the fumes from the stove and the terrible stench, who hated and despised poverty, and whose wife and daughter made him feel ashamed in front of his parents, sat over the stove with his legs dangling and turned to his mother in an irritable, plaintive voice: ‘You can’t beat her, you’ve no right at all!’
‘You feeble little man, rotting away up there over the stove,’ Fyokla shouted spitefully. ‘What the hell’s brought you lot here, you parasites!’
Both Sasha and Motka and all the little girls, who had taken refuge in the corner, over the stove, behind Nikolay’s back, were terrified and listened without saying a word, their little hearts pounding away.
When someone in a family has been terribly ill for a long time, when all hope has been given up, there are horrible moments when those near and dear to him harbour a timid, secret longing, deep down inside, for him to die. Only children fear the death of a loved one and the very thought of it fills them with terror. And now the little girls held their breath and looked at Nikolay with mournful expressions on their faces, thinking that he would soon be dead. They felt like crying and telling him something tender and comforting.