He clung to Olga, as though seeking protection, and he told her softly, tremulously, ‘My dear Olga, I can’t stand it any more here. All my strength has gone. For God’s sake, for Christ’s sake, write to your sister Claudia and tell her to sell or pawn all she has. Then she can send us the money to help us get out of this place.’
He went on in a voice that was full of yearning: ‘Oh God, just one glimpse of Moscow is all I ask! If only I just could dream about my dear Moscow!’
When evening came and it was dark in the hut, they felt so depressed they could hardly speak. Angry Grannie sat dipping rye crusts in a cup and sucking them for a whole hour. After Marya had milked the cow she brought a pail of milk and put it on a bench. Then Grannie poured it into some jugs, without hurrying, and she was visibly cheered by the thought that as it was the Fast of the Assumption10 (when milk was forbidden) no one would go near it. All she did was pour the tiniest little drop into a saucer for Fyokla’s baby. As she was carrying the jugs with Marya down to the cellar, Motka suddenly started, slid down from the stove, went over to the bench where the wooden cup with the crusts was standing and splashed some milk from the saucer over them.
When Grannie came back and sat down to her crusts, Sasha and Motka sat watching her from the stove, and it gave them great pleasure to see that now she had eaten forbidden food during Lent and would surely go to hell for it. They took comfort in this thought and lay down to sleep. As Sasha dozed off she had visions of the Day of Judgement; she saw a blazing furnace, like a potter’s kiln, and an evil spirit dressed all in black, with the horns of a cow, driving Grannie into the fire with a long stick, as she had driven the geese not so long ago.
V
After ten o’clock, on the eve of the Feast of the Assumption, the young men and girls who were strolling in the meadows down below suddenly started shouting and screaming and came running back to the village. People who were sitting up on the hill, on the edge of the cliff, could not understand at first what had happened.
‘Fire! Fire!’ came the desperate cry from below. ‘We’re on fire!’
The people up above looked round and were confronted by the most terrifying, extraordinary sight: on the thatched roof of one of the huts at the end of the village a pillar of fire swirled upwards, showering sparks everywhere like a fountain. The whole roof turned into a mass of bright flames and there was a loud crackling. The moonlight was dimmed by the glare and the whole village became enveloped in a red, flickering light. Black shadows stole over the ground and there was a smell of burning. The villagers had come running up the hill, were all out of breath and could not speak for trembling; they jostled each other and kept falling down, unable to see properly in that sudden blinding light and not recognizing one another. It was terrifying, particularly with pigeons flying around in the smoke above the fire, while down at the inn (they had not heard about the fire) the singing and accordion-playing continued as if nothing had happened.
‘Uncle Semyon’s hut’s on fire!’ someone shouted in a loud, rough voice.
Marya was dashing around near the hut, crying and wringing her hands and her teeth chattered – even though the fire was some distance away, at the far end of the village.
Nikolay emerged in his felt boots and the children came running out in their little smocks. Some of the villagers banged on an iron plate by the police constable’s hut, filling the air with a loud clanging; this incessant, unremitting sound made your heart ache and made you go cold all over.
Old women stood holding icons.
Sheep, calves and cows were driven out into the street from the yards; trunks, sheepskins and tubs were carried outside. A black stallion, normally kept apart from the herd – it had a tendency to kick and injure the others – was set loose and galloped once or twice through the village, whinnying and stamping, and then suddenly stopped near a cart and lashed out with its hind legs.
And the bells were ringing out in the church on the other side of the river. Near the blazing hut it was hot and so light that the tiniest blade of grass was visible.
Semyon, a red-haired peasant with a large nose, wearing a waistcoat and with his cap pulled down over his ears, was sitting on one of the trunks they had managed to drag out. His wife was lying face downwards moaning in despair. An old man of about eighty, shortish, with an enormous beard – rather like a gnome – and who was obviously in some way connected with the fire (although he came from another village), was pacing up and down without any hat, carrying a white bundle. A bald patch on his head glinted in the light of the fire. Antip Sedelnikov, the village elder – a swarthy man with the black hair of a gipsy – went up to the hut with an axe and, for some obscure reason, knocked out the windows, one after the other. Then he started hacking away at the front steps.
‘Get some water, you women!’ he shouted. ‘Bring the fire-engine! And be quick about it!’
A fire-engine was hauled up by the same villagers who had just been drinking and singing at the inn. They were all dead drunk and kept stumbling and falling over; all of them had a helpless look and they had tears in their eyes.
The village elder, who was drunk as well, shouted, ‘Get some water, quick!’
The women and girls ran down to the bottom of the hill, where there was a spring, dragged up the full buckets and tubs, emptied them into the fire-engine and ran down again. Olga, Marya, Sasha and Motka all helped. The women and little boys helped to pump the water, making the hosepipe hiss, and the village elder began by directing a jet into the doorway, then through the windows, regulating the flow with his finger, which made the water hiss all the more.
‘Well done, Antip!’ the villagers said approvingly. ‘Come on now!’
Antip climbed right into the burning hall from where he shouted, ‘Keep on pouring. Try your best, you good Christians, on the occasion of such an unhappy event.’
The villagers crowded round and did nothing – they just gazed at the fire. No one had any idea what to do – no one was capable of doing anything – and close by there were stacks of wheat and hay, piles of dry brushwood, and barns. Kiryak and old Osip, his father, had joined in the crowd, and they were both drunk. The old man turned to the woman lying on the ground and said – as though trying to find some excuse for his idleness – ‘Now don’t get so worked up! The hut’s insured, so don’t worry!’
Semyon turned to one villager after the other, telling them how the fire had started.
‘It was that old man with the bundle, him what worked for General Zhukov… used to cook for him, God rest his soul. Along he comes this evening and says, “Let me stay the night, please.” Well, we had a drink or two… the old girl started messing around with the samovar to make the old man a cup of tea and she put it in the hall before the charcoal was out. The flames shot straight up out of the pipe and set the thatched roof alight, so there you are! We nearly went up as well. The old man’s cap was burnt, a terrible shame.’
Meanwhile they banged away at the iron plate for all they were worth and the bells in the church across the river kept ringing. Olga ran breathlessly up and down the slope. As she looked in horror at the red sheep, at the pink doves fluttering around in the smoke, she was lit up by the fierce glow. The loud clanging had the effect of a sharp needle piercing her heart and it seemed that the fire would never go out, that Sasha was lost… And when the ceiling in the hut collapsed with a loud crash, the thought that the whole village was bound to burn down now made her feel weak and she could not carry any more water. So she sat on the cliff, with the buckets at her side. Nearby, a little lower down, women were sitting and seemed to be wailing for the dead.
But just then some labourers and men from the manor across the river arrived in two carts, together with a fire-engine. A very young student came riding up in his unbuttoned white tunic. Axes started hacking away, a ladder was propped against the blazing framework and five men clambered up it at once, with the student leading the way. His face was red from the flames and he shouted in a hoarse,
rasping voice, in such an authoritative way it seemed putting fires out was something he did every day. They tore the hut to pieces beam by beam, and they tore down the cowshed, a wattle fence and the nearest haystack.
Stern voices rang out from the crowd: ‘Don’t let them smash the place up. Stop them!’
Kiryak went off towards the hut with a determined look and as though intending stopping the newly arrived helpers from breaking the whole place up. But one of the workmen turned him round and hit him in the neck. There was laughter and the workman hit him again. Kiryak fell down and crawled back to the crowd on all fours.
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 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 Moscow?’ 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 clung to her.
‘She’s from Moscow as well, miss.’
The two girls said something in French to the student and he gave Sasha a twenty-copeck 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 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.
VI
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 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 all they could do was clasp their hands and say, ‘Oh, God!’
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 copecks 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 kasha11 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;12 how, in those very same places where life was so dull and wretched now, they used to ride out with wolfhounds, borzois and skilled hunters.13 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 peasants were flogged or sent away to estates in Tver,14 while the good ones were rewarded. Grannie had stories to tell as well. She remembered simply everything. She told of her mistress, whose husband was a drunkard and a rake and whose daughters all 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 discussed 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 morning awakening.
‘Did they make cutlets à la maréchale then?’ Nikolay asked.
‘No.’
Nikolay shook his head disdainfully and said, ‘Oh, you miserable 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 relive it.
‘Oh God!’ sighed the cook.
Someone was tapping ever so gently on the window – that must be Fyokla. Olga stood up, yawning and whispering a prayer as she opened the door and then drew the bolt back in the hall. But no one came in and there was just a breath of chill air from the street and the sudden bright light of the moon. Through the open door she could see the quiet, deserted street and the moon itself sailing across the heavens.
Olga called out, ‘Who is it?’
‘It’s me,’ came the answer, ‘it’s me.’
Fyokla was standing near the door, pressing close to the wall, and she was stark naked. She was trembling with the cold and her teeth chattered. In the bright moonlight she looked very pale, beautiful and strange. The shadow and the brilliant light playing over her skin struck Olga particularly vividly and those dark eyebrows and firm young breasts were very sharply outlined.
‘It was them beasts on the other side of the river, they stripped me naked and sent me away like this…’ she muttered. ‘I’ve come all the way home without nothing on… stark naked… Give me some clothes.’
‘Come into the hut!’ Olga said softly and she too started shivering.
‘I don’t want the old people to see me!’
But in actual fact Grannie had already become alarmed and was grumbling away, while the old man asked, ‘Who’s there?’
Olga fetched her own smock and skirt and dressed Fyokla in them. Then they both tiptoed into the hut, trying not to bang the doors.