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Title: The Bishop and Other Stories

Author: Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Translator: Constance Garnett

Release date: September 9, 2004 [eBook #13419]
Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13419

Credits: Etext Produced by James Rusk

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BISHOP
AND OTHER STORIES ***

THE TALES OF CHEKHOV
Volume 7

THE BISHOP AND OTHER STORIES

By Anton Tchekhov
Translated by Constance Garnett

CONTENTS
THE BISHOP
THE LETTER
EASTER EVE
A NIGHTMARE
THE MURDER
UPROOTED
THE STEPPE

THE BISHOP
I

T
HE evening service was being celebrated on the eve of Palm Sunday
in the Old Petrovsky Convent. When they began distributing the
palm it was close upon ten o’clock, the candles were burning dimly,
the wicks wanted snuffing; it was all in a sort of mist. In the twilight of the
church the crowd seemed heaving like the sea, and to Bishop Pyotr, who
had been unwell for the last three days, it seemed that all the faces—old and
young, men’s and women’s—were alike, that everyone who came up for the
palm had the same expression in his eyes. In the mist he could not see the
doors; the crowd kept moving and looked as though there were no end to it.
The female choir was singing, a nun was reading the prayers for the day.
How stifling, how hot it was! How long the service went on! Bishop
Pyotr was tired. His breathing was laboured and rapid, his throat was
parched, his shoulders ached with weariness, his legs were trembling. And
it disturbed him unpleasantly when a religious maniac uttered occasional
shrieks in the gallery. And then all of a sudden, as though in a dream or
delirium, it seemed to the bishop as though his own mother Marya
Timofyevna, whom he had not seen for nine years, or some old woman just
like his mother, came up to him out of the crowd, and, after taking a palm
branch from him, walked away looking at him all the while good-
humouredly with a kind, joyful smile until she was lost in the crowd. And
for some reason tears flowed down his face. There was peace in his heart,
everything was well, yet he kept gazing fixedly towards the left choir,
where the prayers were being read, where in the dusk of evening you could
not recognize anyone, and—wept. Tears glistened on his face and on his
beard. Here someone close at hand was weeping, then someone else farther
away, then others and still others, and little by little the church was filled
with soft weeping. And a little later, within five minutes, the nuns’ choir
was singing; no one was weeping and everything was as before.

Soon the service was over. When the bishop got into his carriage to drive
home, the gay, melodious chime of the heavy, costly bells was filling the
whole garden in the moonlight. The white walls, the white crosses on the
tombs, the white birch-trees and black shadows, and the far-away moon in
the sky exactly over the convent, seemed now living their own life, apart
and incomprehensible, yet very near to man. It was the beginning of April,
and after the warm spring day it turned cool; there was a faint touch of
frost, and the breath of spring could be felt in the soft, chilly air. The road
from the convent to the town was sandy, the horses had to go at a walking
pace, and on both sides of the carriage in the brilliant, peaceful moonlight
there were people trudging along home from church through the sand. And
all was silent, sunk in thought; everything around seemed kindly, youthful,
akin, everything—trees and sky and even the moon, and one longed to think
that so it would be always.
At last the carriage drove into the town and rumbled along the principal
street. The shops were already shut, but at Erakin’s, the millionaire
shopkeeper’s, they were trying the new electric lights, which flickered
brightly, and a crowd of people were gathered round. Then came wide,
dark, deserted streets, one after another; then the highroad, the open
country, the fragrance of pines. And suddenly there rose up before the
bishop’s eyes a white turreted wall, and behind it a tall belfry in the full
moonlight, and beside it five shining, golden cupolas: this was the
Pankratievsky Monastery, in which Bishop Pyotr lived. And here, too, high
above the monastery, was the silent, dreamy moon. The carriage drove in at
the gate, crunching over the sand; here and there in the moonlight there
were glimpses of dark monastic figures, and there was the sound of
footsteps on the flag-stones. . . .
“You know, your holiness, your mamma arrived while you were away,”
the lay brother informed the bishop as he went into his cell.
“My mother? When did she come?”
“Before the evening service. She asked first where you were and then she
went to the convent.”
“Then it was her I saw in the church, just now! Oh, Lord!”

And the bishop laughed with joy.
“She bade me tell your holiness,” the lay brother went on, “that she
would come to-morrow. She had a little girl with her—her grandchild, I
suppose. They are staying at Ovsyannikov’s inn.”
“What time is it now?”
“A little after eleven.”
“Oh, how vexing!”
The bishop sat for a little while in the parlour, hesitating, and as it were
refusing to believe it was so late. His arms and legs were stiff, his head
ached. He was hot and uncomfortable. After resting a little he went into his
bedroom, and there, too, he sat a little, still thinking of his mother; he could
hear the lay brother going away, and Father Sisoy coughing the other side
of the wall. The monastery clock struck a quarter.
The bishop changed his clothes and began reading the prayers before
sleep. He read attentively those old, long familiar prayers, and at the same
time thought about his mother. She had nine children and about forty
grandchildren. At one time, she had lived with her husband, the deacon, in a
poor village; she had lived there a very long time from the age of seventeen
to sixty. The bishop remembered her from early childhood, almost from the
age of three, and—how he had loved her! Sweet, precious childhood,
always fondly remembered! Why did it, that long-past time that could never
return, why did it seem brighter, fuller, and more festive than it had really
been? When in his childhood or youth he had been ill, how tender and
sympathetic his mother had been! And now his prayers mingled with the
memories, which gleamed more and more brightly like a flame, and the
prayers did not hinder his thinking of his mother.
When he had finished his prayers he undressed and lay down, and at
once, as soon as it was dark, there rose before his mind his dead father, his
mother, his native village Lesopolye . . . the creak of wheels, the bleat of
sheep, the church bells on bright summer mornings, the gypsies under the
window—oh, how sweet to think of it! He remembered the priest of
Lesopolye, Father Simeon—mild, gentle, kindly; he was a lean little man,
while his son, a divinity student, was a huge fellow and talked in a roaring

bass voice. The priest’s son had flown into a rage with the cook and abused
her: “Ah, you Jehud’s ass!” and Father Simeon overhearing it, said not a
word, and was only ashamed because he could not remember where such an
ass was mentioned in the Bible. After him the priest at Lesopolye had been
Father Demyan, who used to drink heavily, and at times drank till he saw
green snakes, and was even nicknamed Demyan Snakeseer. The
schoolmaster at Lesopolye was Matvey Nikolaitch, who had been a divinity
student, a kind and intelligent man, but he, too, was a drunkard; he never
beat the schoolchildren, but for some reason he always had hanging on his
wall a bunch of birch-twigs, and below it an utterly meaningless inscription
in Latin: “Betula kinderbalsamica secuta.” He had a shaggy black dog
whom he called Syntax.
And his holiness laughed. Six miles from Lesopolye was the village
Obnino with a wonder-working ikon. In the summer they used to carry the
ikon in procession about the neighbouring villages and ring the bells the
whole day long; first in one village and then in another, and it used to seem
to the bishop then that joy was quivering in the air, and he (in those days his
name was Pavlusha) used to follow the ikon, bareheaded and barefoot, with
naïve faith, with a naïve smile, infinitely happy. In Obnino, he remembered
now, there were always a lot of people, and the priest there, Father Alexey,
to save time during mass, used to make his deaf nephew Ilarion read the
names of those for whose health or whose souls’ peace prayers were asked.
Ilarion used to read them, now and then getting a five or ten kopeck piece
for the service, and only when he was grey and bald, when life was nearly
over, he suddenly saw written on one of the pieces of paper: “What a fool
you are, Ilarion.” Up to fifteen at least Pavlusha was undeveloped and idle
at his lessons, so much so that they thought of taking him away from the
clerical school and putting him into a shop; one day, going to the post at
Obnino for letters, he had stared a long time at the post-office clerks and
asked: “Allow me to ask, how do you get your salary, every month or every
day?”
His holiness crossed himself and turned over on the other side, trying to
stop thinking and go to sleep.
“My mother has come,” he remembered and laughed.

The moon peeped in at the window, the floor was lighted up, and there
were shadows on it. A cricket was chirping. Through the wall Father Sisoy
was snoring in the next room, and his aged snore had a sound that suggested
loneliness, forlornness, even vagrancy. Sisoy had once been housekeeper to
the bishop of the diocese, and was called now “the former Father
Housekeeper”; he was seventy years old, he lived in a monastery twelve
miles from the town and stayed sometimes in the town, too. He had come to
the Pankratievsky Monastery three days before, and the bishop had kept
him that he might talk to him at his leisure about matters of business, about
the arrangements here. . . .
At half-past one they began ringing for matins. Father Sisoy could be
heard coughing, muttering something in a discontented voice, then he got
up and walked barefoot about the rooms.
“Father Sisoy,” the bishop called.
Sisoy went back to his room and a little later made his appearance in his
boots, with a candle; he had on his cassock over his underclothes and on his
head was an old faded skull-cap.
“I can’t sleep,” said the bishop, sitting up. “I must be unwell. And what it
is I don’t know. Fever!”
“You must have caught cold, your holiness. You must be rubbed with
tallow.” Sisoy stood a little and yawned. “O Lord, forgive me, a sinner.”
“They had the electric lights on at Erakin’s today,” he said; “I don’t like
it!”
Father Sisoy was old, lean, bent, always dissatisfied with something, and
his eyes were angry-looking and prominent as a crab’s.
“I don’t like it,” he said, going away. “I don’t like it. Bother it!”

II

Next day, Palm Sunday, the bishop took the service in the cathedral in the
town, then he visited the bishop of the diocese, then visited a very sick old
lady, the widow of a general, and at last drove home. Between one and two

o’clock he had welcome visitors dining with him—his mother and his niece
Katya, a child of eight years old. All dinner-time the spring sunshine was
streaming in at the windows, throwing bright light on the white tablecloth
and on Katya’s red hair. Through the double windows they could hear the
noise of the rooks and the notes of the starlings in the garden.
“It is nine years since we have met,” said the old lady. “And when I
looked at you in the monastery yesterday, good Lord! you’ve not changed a
bit, except maybe you are thinner and your beard is a little longer. Holy
Mother, Queen of Heaven! Yesterday at the evening service no one could
help crying. I, too, as I looked at you, suddenly began crying, though I
couldn’t say why. His Holy Will!”
And in spite of the affectionate tone in which she said this, he could see
she was constrained as though she were uncertain whether to address him
formally or familiarly, to laugh or not, and that she felt herself more a
deacon’s widow than his mother. And Katya gazed without blinking at her
uncle, his holiness, as though trying to discover what sort of a person he
was. Her hair sprang up from under the comb and the velvet ribbon and
stood out like a halo; she had a turned-up nose and sly eyes. The child had
broken a glass before sitting down to dinner, and now her grandmother, as
she talked, moved away from Katya first a wineglass and then a tumbler.
The bishop listened to his mother and remembered how many, many years
ago she used to take him and his brothers and sisters to relations whom she
considered rich; in those days she was taken up with the care of her
children, now with her grandchildren, and she had brought Katya. . . .
“Your sister, Varenka, has four children,” she told him; “Katya, here, is
the eldest. And your brother-in-law Father Ivan fell sick, God knows of
what, and died three days before the Assumption; and my poor Varenka is
left a beggar.”
“And how is Nikanor getting on?” the bishop asked about his eldest
brother.
“He is all right, thank God. Though he has nothing much, yet he can live.
Only there is one thing: his son, my grandson Nikolasha, did not want to go
into the Church; he has gone to the university to be a doctor. He thinks it is
better; but who knows! His Holy Will!”

“Nikolasha cuts up dead people,” said Katya, spilling water over her
knees.
“Sit still, child,” her grandmother observed calmly, and took the glass out
of her hand. “Say a prayer, and go on eating.”
“How long it is since we have seen each other!” said the bishop, and he
tenderly stroked his mother’s hand and shoulder; “and I missed you abroad,
mother, I missed you dreadfully.”
“Thank you.”
“I used to sit in the evenings at the open window, lonely and alone; often
there was music playing, and all at once I used to be overcome with
homesickness and felt as though I would give everything only to be at home
and see you.”
His mother smiled, beamed, but at once she made a grave face and said:
“Thank you.”
His mood suddenly changed. He looked at his mother and could not
understand how she had come by that respectfulness, that timid expression
of face: what was it for? And he did not recognize her. He felt sad and
vexed. And then his head ached just as it had the day before; his legs felt
fearfully tired, and the fish seemed to him stale and tasteless; he felt thirsty
all the time. . . .
After dinner two rich ladies, landowners, arrived and sat for an hour and
a half in silence with rigid countenances; the archimandrite, a silent, rather
deaf man, came to see him about business. Then they began ringing for
vespers; the sun was setting behind the wood and the day was over. When
he returned from church, he hurriedly said his prayers, got into bed, and
wrapped himself up as warm as possible.
It was disagreeable to remember the fish he had eaten at dinner. The
moonlight worried him, and then he heard talking. In an adjoining room,
probably in the parlour, Father Sisoy was talking politics:
“There’s war among the Japanese now. They are fighting. The Japanese,
my good soul, are the same as the Montenegrins; they are the same race.

They were under the Turkish yoke together.”
And then he heard the voice of Marya Timofyevna:
“So, having said our prayers and drunk tea, we went, you know, to Father
Yegor at Novokatnoye, so. . .”
And she kept on saying, “having had tea” or “having drunk tea,” and it
seemed as though the only thing she had done in her life was to drink tea.
The bishop slowly, languidly, recalled the seminary, the academy. For
three years he had been Greek teacher in the seminary: by that time he
could not read without spectacles. Then he had become a monk; he had
been made a school inspector. Then he had defended his thesis for his
degree. When he was thirty-two he had been made rector of the seminary,
and consecrated archimandrite: and then his life had been so easy, so
pleasant; it seemed so long, so long, no end was in sight. Then he had begun
to be ill, had grown very thin and almost blind, and by the advice of the
doctors had to give up everything and go abroad.
“And what then?” asked Sisoy in the next room.
“Then we drank tea . . .” answered Marya Timofyevna.
“Good gracious, you’ve got a green beard,” said Katya suddenly in
surprise, and she laughed.
The bishop remembered that the grey-headed Father Sisoy’s beard really
had a shade of green in it, and he laughed.
“God have mercy upon us, what we have to put up with with this girl!”
said Sisoy, aloud, getting angry. “Spoilt child! Sit quiet!”
The bishop remembered the perfectly new white church in which he had
conducted the services while living abroad, he remembered the sound of the
warm sea. In his flat he had five lofty light rooms; in his study he had a new
writing-table, lots of books. He had read a great deal and often written. And
he remembered how he had pined for his native land, how a blind beggar
woman had played the guitar under his window every day and sung of love,
and how, as he listened, he had always for some reason thought of the past.
But eight years had passed and he had been called back to Russia, and now

he was a suffragan bishop, and all the past had retreated far away into the
mist as though it were a dream. . . .
Father Sisoy came into the bedroom with a candle.
“I say!” he said, wondering, “are you asleep already, your holiness?”
“What is it?”
“Why, it’s still early, ten o’clock or less. I bought a candle to-day; I
wanted to rub you with tallow.”
“I am in a fever . . .” said the bishop, and he sat up. “I really ought to
have something. My head is bad. . . .”
Sisoy took off the bishop’s shirt and began rubbing his chest and back
with tallow.
“That’s the way . . . that’s the way . . .” he said. “Lord Jesus Christ . . .
that’s the way. I walked to the town to-day; I was at what’s-his-name’s—the
chief priest Sidonsky’s. . . . I had tea with him. I don’t like him. Lord Jesus
Christ. . . . That’s the way. I don’t like him.”

III

The bishop of the diocese, a very fat old man, was ill with rheumatism or
gout, and had been in bed for over a month. Bishop Pyotr went to see him
almost every day, and saw all who came to ask his help. And now that he
was unwell he was struck by the emptiness, the triviality of everything
which they asked and for which they wept; he was vexed at their ignorance,
their timidity; and all this useless, petty business oppressed him by the mass
of it, and it seemed to him that now he understood the diocesan bishop, who
had once in his young days written on “The Doctrines of the Freedom of the
Will,” and now seemed to be all lost in trivialities, to have forgotten
everything, and to have no thoughts of religion. The bishop must have lost
touch with Russian life while he was abroad; he did not find it easy; the
peasants seemed to him coarse, the women who sought his help dull and
stupid, the seminarists and their teachers uncultivated and at times savage.
And the documents coming in and going out were reckoned by tens of

thousands; and what documents they were! The higher clergy in the whole
diocese gave the priests, young and old, and even their wives and children,
marks for their behaviour—a five, a four, and sometimes even a three; and
about this he had to talk and to read and write serious reports. And there
was positively not one minute to spare; his soul was troubled all day long,
and the bishop was only at peace when he was in church.
He could not get used, either, to the awe which, through no wish of his
own, he inspired in people in spite of his quiet, modest disposition. All the
people in the province seemed to him little, scared, and guilty when he
looked at them. Everyone was timid in his presence, even the old chief
priests; everyone “flopped” at his feet, and not long previously an old lady,
a village priest’s wife who had come to consult him, was so overcome by
awe that she could not utter a single word, and went empty away. And he,
who could never in his sermons bring himself to speak ill of people, never
reproached anyone because he was so sorry for them, was moved to fury
with the people who came to consult him, lost his temper and flung their
petitions on the floor. The whole time he had been here, not one person had
spoken to him genuinely, simply, as to a human being; even his old mother
seemed now not the same! And why, he wondered, did she chatter away to
Sisoy and laugh so much; while with him, her son, she was grave and
usually silent and constrained, which did not suit her at all. The only person
who behaved freely with him and said what he meant was old Sisoy, who
had spent his whole life in the presence of bishops and had outlived eleven
of them. And so the bishop was at ease with him, although, of course, he
was a tedious and nonsensical man.
After the service on Tuesday, his holiness Pyotr was in the diocesan
bishop’s house receiving petitions there; he got excited and angry, and then
drove home. He was as unwell as before; he longed to be in bed, but he had
hardly reached home when he was informed that a young merchant called
Erakin, who subscribed liberally to charities, had come to see him about a
very important matter. The bishop had to see him. Erakin stayed about an
hour, talked very loud, almost shouted, and it was difficult to understand
what he said.
“God grant it may,” he said as he went away. “Most essential! According
to circumstances, your holiness! I trust it may!”

After him came the Mother Superior from a distant convent. And when
she had gone they began ringing for vespers. He had to go to church.
In the evening the monks sang harmoniously, with inspiration. A young
priest with a black beard conducted the service; and the bishop, hearing of
the Bridegroom who comes at midnight and of the Heavenly Mansion
adorned for the festival, felt no repentance for his sins, no tribulation, but
peace at heart and tranquillity. And he was carried back in thought to the
distant past, to his childhood and youth, when, too, they used to sing of the
Bridegroom and of the Heavenly Mansion; and now that past rose up before
him—living, fair, and joyful as in all likelihood it never had been. And
perhaps in the other world, in the life to come, we shall think of the distant
past, of our life here, with the same feeling. Who knows? The bishop was
sitting near the altar. It was dark; tears flowed down his face. He thought
that here he had attained everything a man in his position could attain; he
had faith and yet everything was not clear, something was lacking still. He
did not want to die; and he still felt that he had missed what was most
important, something of which he had dimly dreamed in the past; and he
was troubled by the same hopes for the future as he had felt in childhood, at
the academy and abroad.
“How well they sing to-day!” he thought, listening to the singing. “How
nice it is!”

IV

On Thursday he celebrated mass in the cathedral; it was the Washing of
Feet. When the service was over and the people were going home, it was
sunny, warm; the water gurgled in the gutters, and the unceasing trilling of
the larks, tender, telling of peace, rose from the fields outside the town. The
trees were already awakening and smiling a welcome, while above them the
infinite, fathomless blue sky stretched into the distance, God knows
whither.
On reaching home his holiness drank some tea, then changed his clothes,
lay down on his bed, and told the lay brother to close the shutters on the
windows. The bedroom was darkened. But what weariness, what pain in his
legs and his back, a chill heavy pain, what a noise in his ears! He had not

slept for a long time—for a very long time, as it seemed to him now, and
some trifling detail which haunted his brain as soon as his eyes were closed
prevented him from sleeping. As on the day before, sounds reached him
from the adjoining rooms through the walls, voices, the jingle of glasses
and teaspoons. . . . Marya Timofyevna was gaily telling Father Sisoy some
story with quaint turns of speech, while the latter answered in a grumpy, ill-
humoured voice: “Bother them! Not likely! What next!” And the bishop
again felt vexed and then hurt that with other people his old mother behaved
in a simple, ordinary way, while with him, her son, she was shy, spoke little,
and did not say what she meant, and even, as he fancied, had during all
those three days kept trying in his presence to find an excuse for standing
up, because she was embarrassed at sitting before him. And his father? He,
too, probably, if he had been living, would not have been able to utter a
word in the bishop’s presence. . . .
Something fell down on the floor in the adjoining room and was broken;
Katya must have dropped a cup or a saucer, for Father Sisoy suddenly spat
and said angrily:
“What a regular nuisance the child is! Lord forgive my transgressions!
One can’t provide enough for her.”
Then all was quiet, the only sounds came from outside. And when the
bishop opened his eyes he saw Katya in his room, standing motionless,
staring at him. Her red hair, as usual, stood up from under the comb like a
halo.
“Is that you, Katya?” he asked. “Who is it downstairs who keeps opening
and shutting a door?”
“I don’t hear it,” answered Katya; and she listened.
“There, someone has just passed by.”
“But that was a noise in your stomach, uncle.”
He laughed and stroked her on the head.
“So you say Cousin Nikolasha cuts up dead people?” he asked after a
pause.

“Yes, he is studying.”
“And is he kind?”
“Oh, yes, he’s kind. But he drinks vodka awfully.”
“And what was it your father died of?”
“Papa was weak and very, very thin, and all at once his throat was bad. I
was ill then, too, and brother Fedya; we all had bad throats. Papa died,
uncle, and we got well.”
Her chin began quivering, and tears gleamed in her eyes and trickled
down her cheeks.
“Your holiness,” she said in a shrill voice, by now weeping bitterly,
“uncle, mother and all of us are left very wretched. . . . Give us a little
money . . . do be kind . . . uncle darling. . . .”
He, too, was moved to tears, and for a long time was too much touched to
speak. Then he stroked her on the head, patted her on the shoulder and said:
“Very good, very good, my child. When the holy Easter comes, we will
talk it over. . . . I will help you. . . . I will help you. . . .”
His mother came in quietly, timidly, and prayed before the ikon. Noticing
that he was not sleeping, she said:
“Won’t you have a drop of soup?”
“No, thank you,” he answered, “I am not hungry.”
“You seem to be unwell, now I look at you. I should think so; you may
well be ill! The whole day on your legs, the whole day. . . . And, my
goodness, it makes one’s heart ache even to look at you! Well, Easter is not
far off; you will rest then, please God. Then we will have a talk, too, but
now I’m not going to disturb you with my chatter. Come along, Katya; let
his holiness sleep a little.”
And he remembered how once very long ago, when he was a boy, she
had spoken exactly like that, in the same jestingly respectful tone, with a
Church dignitary. . . . Only from her extraordinarily kind eyes and the timid,

anxious glance she stole at him as she went out of the room could one have
guessed that this was his mother. He shut his eyes and seemed to sleep, but
twice heard the clock strike and Father Sisoy coughing the other side of the
wall. And once more his mother came in and looked timidly at him for a
minute. Someone drove up to the steps, as he could hear, in a coach or in a
chaise. Suddenly a knock, the door slammed, the lay brother came into the
bedroom.
“Your holiness,” he called.
“Well?”
“The horses are here; it’s time for the evening service.”
“What o’clock is it?”
“A quarter past seven.”
He dressed and drove to the cathedral. During all the “Twelve Gospels”
he had to stand in the middle of the church without moving, and the first
gospel, the longest and the most beautiful, he read himself. A mood of
confidence and courage came over him. That first gospel, “Now is the Son
of Man glorified,” he knew by heart; and as he read he raised his eyes from
time to time, and saw on both sides a perfect sea of lights and heard the
splutter of candles, but, as in past years, he could not see the people, and it
seemed as though these were all the same people as had been round him in
those days, in his childhood and his youth; that they would always be the
same every year and till such time as God only knew.
His father had been a deacon, his grandfather a priest, his great-
grandfather a deacon, and his whole family, perhaps from the days when
Christianity had been accepted in Russia, had belonged to the priesthood;
and his love for the Church services, for the priesthood, for the peal of the
bells, was deep in him, ineradicable, innate. In church, particularly when he
took part in the service, he felt vigorous, of good cheer, happy. So it was
now. Only when the eighth gospel had been read, he felt that his voice had
grown weak, even his cough was inaudible. His head had begun to ache
intensely, and he was troubled by a fear that he might fall down. And his
legs were indeed quite numb, so that by degrees he ceased to feel them and

could not understand how or on what he was standing, and why he did not
fall. . . .
It was a quarter to twelve when the service was over. When he reached
home, the bishop undressed and went to bed at once without even saying
his prayers. He could not speak and felt that he could not have stood up.
When he had covered his head with the quilt he felt a sudden longing to be
abroad, an insufferable longing! He felt that he would give his life not to
see those pitiful cheap shutters, those low ceilings, not to smell that heavy
monastery smell. If only there were one person to whom he could have
talked, have opened his heart!
For a long while he heard footsteps in the next room and could not tell
whose they were. At last the door opened, and Sisoy came in with a candle
and a tea-cup in his hand.
“You are in bed already, your holiness?” he asked. “Here I have come to
rub you with spirit and vinegar. A thorough rubbing does a great deal of
good. Lord Jesus Christ! . . . That’s the way . . . that’s the way. . . . I’ve just
been in our monastery. . . . I don’t like it. I’m going away from here to-
morrow, your holiness; I don’t want to stay longer. Lord Jesus Christ. . . .
That’s the way. . . .”
Sisoy could never stay long in the same place, and he felt as though he
had been a whole year in the Pankratievsky Monastery. Above all, listening
to him it was difficult to understand where his home was, whether he cared
for anyone or anything, whether he believed in God. . . . He did not know
himself why he was a monk, and, indeed, he did not think about it, and the
time when he had become a monk had long passed out of his memory; it
seemed as though he had been born a monk.
“I’m going away to-morrow; God be with them all.”
“I should like to talk to you. . . . I can’t find the time,” said the bishop
softly with an effort. “I don’t know anything or anybody here. . . .”
“I’ll stay till Sunday if you like; so be it, but I don’t want to stay longer. I
am sick of them!”

“I ought not to be a bishop,” said the bishop softly. “I ought to have been
a village priest, a deacon . . . or simply a monk. . . . All this oppresses me . .
. oppresses me.”
“What? Lord Jesus Christ. . . . That’s the way. Come, sleep well, your
holiness! . . . What’s the good of talking? It’s no use. Good-night!”
The bishop did not sleep all night. And at eight o’clock in the morning he
began to have hemorrhage from the bowels. The lay brother was alarmed,
and ran first to the archimandrite, then for the monastery doctor, Ivan
Andreyitch, who lived in the town. The doctor, a stout old man with a long
grey beard, made a prolonged examination of the bishop, and kept shaking
his head and frowning, then said:
“Do you know, your holiness, you have got typhoid?”
After an hour or so of hemorrhage the bishop looked much thinner, paler,
and wasted; his face looked wrinkled, his eyes looked bigger, and he
seemed older, shorter, and it seemed to him that he was thinner, weaker,
more insignificant than any one, that everything that had been had retreated
far, far away and would never go on again or be repeated.
“How good,” he thought, “how good!”
His old mother came. Seeing his wrinkled face and his big eyes, she was
frightened, she fell on her knees by the bed and began kissing his face, his
shoulders, his hands. And to her, too, it seemed that he was thinner, weaker,
and more insignificant than anyone, and now she forgot that he was a
bishop, and kissed him as though he were a child very near and very dear to
her.
“Pavlusha, darling,” she said; “my own, my darling son! . . . Why are you
like this? Pavlusha, answer me!”
Katya, pale and severe, stood beside her, unable to understand what was
the matter with her uncle, why there was such a look of suffering on her
grandmother’s face, why she was saying such sad and touching things. By
now he could not utter a word, he could understand nothing, and he
imagined he was a simple ordinary man, that he was walking quickly,
cheerfully through the fields, tapping with his stick, while above him was

the open sky bathed in sunshine, and that he was free now as a bird and
could go where he liked!
“Pavlusha, my darling son, answer me,” the old woman was saying.
“What is it? My own!”
“Don’t disturb his holiness,” Sisoy said angrily, walking about the room.
“Let him sleep . . . what’s the use . . . it’s no good. . . .”
Three doctors arrived, consulted together, and went away again. The day
was long, incredibly long, then the night came on and passed slowly,
slowly, and towards morning on Saturday the lay brother went in to the old
mother who was lying on the sofa in the parlour, and asked her to go into
the bedroom: the bishop had just breathed his last.
Next day was Easter Sunday. There were forty-two churches and six
monasteries in the town; the sonorous, joyful clang of the bells hung over
the town from morning till night unceasingly, setting the spring air aquiver;
the birds were singing, the sun was shining brightly. The big market square
was noisy, swings were going, barrel organs were playing, accordions were
squeaking, drunken voices were shouting. After midday people began
driving up and down the principal street.
In short, all was merriment, everything was satisfactory, just as it had
been the year before, and as it will be in all likelihood next year.
A month later a new suffragan bishop was appointed, and no one thought
anything more of Bishop Pyotr, and afterwards he was completely
forgotten. And only the dead man’s old mother, who is living to-day with
her son-in-law the deacon in a remote little district town, when she goes out
at night to bring her cow in and meets other women at the pasture, begins
talking of her children and her grandchildren, and says that she had a son a
bishop, and this she says timidly, afraid that she may not be believed. . . .
And, indeed, there are some who do not believe her.

THE LETTER

T
he clerical superintendent of the district, his Reverence Father
Fyodor Orlov, a handsome, well-nourished man of fifty, grave and
important as he always was, with an habitual expression of dignity
that never left his face, was walking to and fro in his little drawing-room,
extremely exhausted, and thinking intensely about the same thing: “When
would his visitor go?” The thought worried him and did not leave him for a
minute. The visitor, Father Anastasy, the priest of one of the villages near
the town, had come to him three hours before on some very unpleasant and
dreary business of his own, had stayed on and on, was now sitting in the
corner at a little round table with his elbow on a thick account book, and
apparently had no thought of going, though it was getting on for nine
o’clock in the evening.
Not everyone knows when to be silent and when to go. It not infrequently
happens that even diplomatic persons of good worldly breeding fail to
observe that their presence is arousing a feeling akin to hatred in their
exhausted or busy host, and that this feeling is being concealed with an
effort and disguised with a lie. But Father Anastasy perceived it clearly, and
realized that his presence was burdensome and inappropriate, that his
Reverence, who had taken an early morning service in the night and a long
mass at midday, was exhausted and longing for repose; every minute he was
meaning to get up and go, but he did not get up, he sat on as though he were
waiting for something. He was an old man of sixty-five, prematurely aged,
with a bent and bony figure, with a sunken face and the dark skin of old
age, with red eyelids and a long narrow back like a fish’s; he was dressed in
a smart cassock of a light lilac colour, but too big for him (presented to him
by the widow of a young priest lately deceased), a full cloth coat with a
broad leather belt, and clumsy high boots the size and hue of which showed
clearly that Father Anastasy dispensed with goloshes. In spite of his
position and his venerable age, there was something pitiful, crushed and
humiliated in his lustreless red eyes, in the strands of grey hair with a shade
of green in it on the nape of his neck, and in the big shoulder-blades on his
lean back. . . . He sat without speaking or moving, and coughed with

circumspection, as though afraid that the sound of his coughing might make
his presence more noticeable.
The old man had come to see his Reverence on business. Two months
before he had been prohibited from officiating till further notice, and his
case was being inquired into. His shortcomings were numerous. He was
intemperate in his habits, fell out with the other clergy and the commune,
kept the church records and accounts carelessly —these were the formal
charges against him; but besides all that, there had been rumours for a long
time past that he celebrated unlawful marriages for money and sold
certificates of having fasted and taken the sacrament to officials and officers
who came to him from the town. These rumours were maintained the more
persistently that he was poor and had nine children to keep, who were as
incompetent and unsuccessful as himself. The sons were spoilt and
uneducated, and stayed at home doing nothing, while the daughters were
ugly and did not get married.
Not having the moral force to be open, his Reverence walked up and
down the room and said nothing or spoke in hints.
“So you are not going home to-night?” he asked, stopping near the dark
window and poking with his little finger into the cage where a canary was
asleep with its feathers puffed out.
Father Anastasy started, coughed cautiously and said rapidly:
“Home? I don’t care to, Fyodor Ilyitch. I cannot officiate, as you know,
so what am I to do there? I came away on purpose that I might not have to
look the people in the face. One is ashamed not to officiate, as you know.
Besides, I have business here, Fyodor Ilyitch. To-morrow after breaking the
fast I want to talk things over thoroughly with the Father charged with the
inquiry.”
“Ah! . . .” yawned his Reverence, “and where are you staying?”
“At Zyavkin’s.”
Father Anastasy suddenly remembered that within two hours his
Reverence had to take the Easter-night service, and he felt so ashamed of
his unwelcome burdensome presence that he made up his mind to go away

at once and let the exhausted man rest. And the old man got up to go. But
before he began saying good-bye he stood clearing his throat for a minute
and looking searchingly at his Reverence’s back, still with the same
expression of vague expectation in his whole figure; his face was working
with shame, timidity, and a pitiful forced laugh such as one sees in people
who do not respect themselves. Waving his hand as it were resolutely, he
said with a husky quavering laugh:
“Father Fyodor, do me one more kindness: bid them give me at leave-
taking . . . one little glass of vodka.”
“It’s not the time to drink vodka now,” said his Reverence sternly. “One
must have some regard for decency.”
Father Anastasy was still more overwhelmed by confusion; he laughed,
and, forgetting his resolution to go away, he dropped back on his chair. His
Reverence looked at his helpless, embarrassed face and his bent figure and
he felt sorry for the old man.
“Please God, we will have a drink to-morrow,” he said, wishing to soften
his stem refusal. “Everything is good in due season.”
His Reverence believed in people’s reforming, but now when a feeling of
pity had been kindled in him it seemed to him that this disgraced, worn-out
old man, entangled in a network of sins and weaknesses, was hopelessly
wrecked, that there was no power on earth that could straighten out his
spine, give brightness to his eyes and restrain the unpleasant timid laugh
which he laughed on purpose to smoothe over to some slight extent the
repulsive impression he made on people.
The old man seemed now to Father Fyodor not guilty and not vicious, but
humiliated, insulted, unfortunate; his Reverence thought of his wife, his
nine children, the dirty beggarly shelter at Zyavkin’s; he thought for some
reason of the people who are glad to see priests drunk and persons in
authority detected in crimes; and thought that the very best thing Father
Anastasy could do now would be to die as soon as possible and to depart
from this world for ever.
There were a sound of footsteps.

“Father Fyodor, you are not resting?” a bass voice asked from the
passage.
“No, deacon; come in.”
Orlov’s colleague, the deacon Liubimov, an elderly man with a big bald
patch on the top of his head, though his hair was still black and he was still
vigorous-looking, with thick black eyebrows like a Georgian’s, walked in.
He bowed to Father Anastasy and sat down.
“What good news have you?” asked his Reverence.
“What good news?” answered the deacon, and after a pause he went on
with a smile: “When your children are little, your trouble is small; when
your children are big, your trouble is great. Such goings on, Father Fyodor,
that I don’t know what to think of it. It’s a regular farce, that’s what it is.”
He paused again for a little, smiled still more broadly and said:
“Nikolay Matveyitch came back from Harkov to-day. He has been telling
me about my Pyotr. He has been to see him twice, he tells me.”
“What has he been telling you, then?”
“He has upset me, God bless him. He meant to please me but when I
came to think it over, it seems there is not much to be pleased at. I ought to
grieve rather than be pleased. . . ‘Your Petrushka,’ said he, ‘lives in fine
style. He is far above us now,’ said he. ‘Well thank God for that,’ said I. ‘I
dined with him,’ said he, ‘and saw his whole manner of life. He lives like a
gentleman,’ he said; ‘you couldn’t wish to live better.’ I was naturally
interested and I asked, ‘And what did you have for dinner?’ ‘First,’ he said,
‘a fish course something like fish soup, then tongue and peas,’ and then he
said, ‘roast turkey.’ ‘Turkey in Lent? that is something to please me,’ said I.
‘Turkey in Lent? Eh?’”
“Nothing marvellous in that,” said his Reverence, screwing up his eyes
ironically. And sticking both thumbs in his belt, he drew himself up and said
in the tone in which he usually delivered discourses or gave his Scripture
lessons to the pupils in the district school: “People who do not keep the
fasts are divided into two different categories: some do not keep them

through laxity, others through infidelity. Your Pyotr does not keep them
through infidelity. Yes.”
The deacon looked timidly at Father Fyodor’s stern face and said:
“There is worse to follow. . . . We talked and discussed one thing and
another, and it turned out that my infidel of a son is living with some
madame, another man’s wife. She takes the place of wife and hostess in his
flat, pours out the tea, receives visitors and all the rest of it, as though she
were his lawful wife. For over two years he has been keeping up this dance
with this viper. It’s a regular farce. They have been living together for three
years and no children.”
“I suppose they have been living in chastity!” chuckled Father Anastasy,
coughing huskily. “There are children, Father Deacon— there are, but they
don’t keep them at home! They send them to the Foundling! He-he-he! . . .”
Anastasy went on coughing till he choked.
“Don’t interfere, Father Anastasy,” said his Reverence sternly.
“Nikolay Matveyitch asked him, ‘What madame is this helping the soup
at your table?’” the deacon went on, gloomily scanning Anastasy’s bent
figure. “‘That is my wife,’ said he. ‘When was your wedding?’ Nikolay
Matveyitch asked him, and Pyotr answered, ‘We were married at Kulikov’s
restaurant.’”
His Reverence’s eyes flashed wrathfully and the colour came into his
temples. Apart from his sinfulness, Pyotr was not a person he liked. Father
Fyodor had, as they say, a grudge against him. He remembered him a boy at
school—he remembered him distinctly, because even then the boy had
seemed to him not normal. As a schoolboy, Petrushka had been ashamed to
serve at the altar, had been offended at being addressed without ceremony,
had not crossed himself on entering the room, and what was still more
noteworthy, was fond of talking a great deal and with heat—and, in Father
Fyodor’s opinion, much talking was unseemly in children and pernicious to
them; moreover Petrushka had taken up a contemptuous and critical attitude
to fishing, a pursuit to which both his Reverence and the deacon were
greatly addicted. As a student Pyotr had not gone to church at all, had slept

till midday, had looked down on people, and had been given to raising
delicate and insoluble questions with a peculiarly provoking zest.
“What would you have?” his Reverence asked, going up to the deacon
and looking at him angrily. “What would you have? This was to be
expected! I always knew and was convinced that nothing good would come
of your Pyotr! I told you so, and I tell you so now. What you have sown,
that now you must reap! Reap it!”
“But what have I sown, Father Fyodor?” the deacon asked softly, looking
up at his Reverence.
“Why, who is to blame if not you? You’re his father, he is your offspring!
You ought to have admonished him, have instilled the fear of God into him.
A child must be taught! You have brought him into the world, but you
haven’t trained him up in the right way. It’s a sin! It’s wrong! It’s a shame!”
His Reverence forgot his exhaustion, paced to and fro and went on
talking. Drops of perspiration came out on the deacon’s bald head and
forehead. He raised his eyes to his Reverence with a look of guilt, and said:
“But didn’t I train him, Father Fyodor? Lord have mercy on us, haven’t I
been a father to my children? You know yourself I spared nothing for his
good; I have prayed and done my best all my life to give him a thorough
education. He went to the high school and I got him tutors, and he took his
degree at the University. And as to my not being able to influence his mind,
Father Fyodor, why, you can judge for yourself that I am not qualified to do
so! Sometimes when he used to come here as a student, I would begin
admonishing him in my way, and he wouldn’t heed me. I’d say to him, ‘Go
to church,’ and he would answer, ‘What for?’ I would begin explaining, and
he would say, ‘Why? what for?’ Or he would slap me on the shoulder and
say, ‘Everything in this world is relative, approximate and conditional. I
don’t know anything, and you don’t know anything either, dad.’”
Father Anastasy laughed huskily, cleared his throat and waved his fingers
in the air as though preparing to say something. His Reverence glanced at
him and said sternly:
“Don’t interfere, Father Anastasy.”

The old man laughed, beamed, and evidently listened with pleasure to the
deacon as though he were glad there were other sinful persons in this world
besides himself. The deacon spoke sincerely, with an aching heart, and tears
actually came into his eyes. Father Fyodor felt sorry for him.
“You are to blame, deacon, you are to blame,” he said, but not so sternly
and heatedly as before. “If you could beget him, you ought to know how to
instruct him. You ought to have trained him in his childhood; it’s no good
trying to correct a student.”
A silence followed; the deacon clasped his hands and said with a sigh:
“But you know I shall have to answer for him!”
“To be sure you will!”
After a brief silence his Reverence yawned and sighed at the same
moment and asked:
“Who is reading the ‘Acts’?”
“Yevstrat. Yevstrat always reads them.”
The deacon got up and, looking imploringly at his Reverence, asked:
“Father Fyodor, what am I to do now?”
“Do as you please; you are his father, not I. You ought to know best.”
“I don’t know anything, Father Fyodor! Tell me what to do, for
goodness’ sake! Would you believe it, I am sick at heart! I can’t sleep now,
nor keep quiet, and the holiday will be no holiday to me. Tell me what to
do, Father Fyodor!”
“Write him a letter.”
“What am I to write to him?”
“Write that he mustn’t go on like that. Write shortly, but sternly and
circumstantially, without softening or smoothing away his guilt. It is your
parental duty; if you write, you will have done your duty and will be at
peace.”

“That’s true. But what am I to write to him, to what effect? If I write to
him, he will answer, ‘Why? what for? Why is it a sin?’”
Father Anastasy laughed hoarsely again, and brandished his fingers.
“Why? what for? why is it a sin?” he began shrilly. “I was once
confessing a gentleman, and I told him that excessive confidence in the
Divine Mercy is a sin; and he asked, ‘Why?’ I tried to answer him, but
——” Anastasy slapped himself on the forehead. “I had nothing here. He-
he-he-he! . . .”
Anastasy’s words, his hoarse jangling laugh at what was not laughable,
had an unpleasant effect on his Reverence and on the deacon. The former
was on the point of saying, “Don’t interfere” again, but he did not say it, he
only frowned.
“I can’t write to him,” sighed the deacon.
“If you can’t, who can?”
“Father Fyodor!” said the deacon, putting his head on one side and
pressing his hand to his heart. “I am an uneducated slow-witted man, while
the Lord has vouchsafed you judgment and wisdom. You know everything
and understand everything. You can master anything, while I don’t know
how to put my words together sensibly. Be generous. Instruct me how to
write the letter. Teach me what to say and how to say it. . . .”
“What is there to teach? There is nothing to teach. Sit down and write.”
“Oh, do me the favour, Father Fyodor! I beseech you! I know he will be
frightened and will attend to your letter, because, you see, you are a
cultivated man too. Do be so good! I’ll sit down, and you’ll dictate to me. It
will be a sin to write to-morrow, but now would be the very time; my mind
would be set at rest.”
His Reverence looked at the deacon’s imploring face, thought of the
disagreeable Pyotr, and consented to dictate. He made the deacon sit down
to his table and began.
“Well, write . . . ‘Christ is risen, dear son . . .’ exclamation mark.
‘Rumours have reached me, your father,’ then in parenthesis, ‘from what

source is no concern of yours . . .’ close the parenthesis. . . . Have you
written it? ‘That you are leading a life inconsistent with the laws both of
God and of man. Neither the luxurious comfort, nor the worldly splendour,
nor the culture with which you seek outwardly to disguise it, can hide your
heathen manner of life. In name you are a Christian, but in your real nature
a heathen as pitiful and wretched as all other heathens—more wretched,
indeed, seeing that those heathens who know not Christ are lost from
ignorance, while you are lost in that, possessing a treasure, you neglect it. I
will not enumerate here your vices, which you know well enough; I will say
that I see the cause of your ruin in your infidelity. You imagine yourself to
be wise, boast of your knowledge of science, but refuse to see that science
without faith, far from elevating a man, actually degrades him to the level
of a lower animal, inasmuch as. . .’” The whole letter was in this strain.
When he had finished writing it the deacon read it aloud, beamed all over
and jumped up.
“It’s a gift, it’s really a gift!” he said, clasping his hands and looking
enthusiastically at his Reverence. “To think of the Lord’s bestowing a gift
like that! Eh? Holy Mother! I do believe I couldn’t write a letter like that in
a hundred years. Lord save you!”
Father Anastasy was enthusiastic too.
“One couldn’t write like that without a gift,” he said, getting up and
wagging his fingers—“that one couldn’t! His rhetoric would trip any
philosopher and shut him up. Intellect. Brilliant intellect! If you weren’t
married, Father Fyodor, you would have been a bishop long ago, you would
really!”
Having vented his wrath in a letter, his Reverence felt relieved; his
fatigue and exhaustion came back to him. The deacon was an old friend,
and his Reverence did not hesitate to say to him:
“Well deacon, go, and God bless you. I’ll have half an hour’s nap on the
sofa; I must rest.”
The deacon went away and took Anastasy with him. As is always the
case on Easter Eve, it was dark in the street, but the whole sky was

sparkling with bright luminous stars. There was a scent of spring and
holiday in the soft still air.
“How long was he dictating?” the deacon said admiringly. “Ten minutes,
not more! It would have taken someone else a month to compose such a
letter. Eh! What a mind! Such a mind that I don’t know what to call it! It’s a
marvel! It’s really a marvel!”
“Education!” sighed Anastasy as he crossed the muddy street; holding up
his cassock to his waist. “It’s not for us to compare ourselves with him. We
come of the sacristan class, while he has had a learned education. Yes, he’s
a real man, there is no denying that.”
“And you listen how he’ll read the Gospel in Latin at mass to-day! He
knows Latin and he knows Greek. . . . Ah Petrushka, Petrushka!” the
deacon said, suddenly remembering. “Now that will make him scratch his
head! That will shut his mouth, that will bring it home to him! Now he
won’t ask ‘Why.’ It is a case of one wit to outwit another! Haha-ha!”
The deacon laughed gaily and loudly. Since the letter had been written to
Pyotr he had become serene and more cheerful. The consciousness of
having performed his duty as a father and his faith in the power of the letter
had brought back his mirthfulness and good-humour.
“Pyotr means a stone,” said he, as he went into his house. “My Pyotr is
not a stone, but a rag. A viper has fastened upon him and he pampers her,
and hasn’t the pluck to kick her out. Tfoo! To think there should be women
like that, God forgive me! Eh? Has she no shame? She has fastened upon
the lad, sticking to him, and keeps him tied to her apron strings. . . . Fie
upon her!”
“Perhaps it’s not she keeps hold of him, but he of her?”
“She is a shameless one anyway! Not that I am defending Pyotr. . . . He’ll
catch it. He’ll read the letter and scratch his head! He’ll burn with shame!”
“It’s a splendid letter, only you know I wouldn’t send it, Father Deacon.
Let him alone.”
“What?” said the deacon, disconcerted.

“Why. . . . Don’t send it, deacon! What’s the sense of it? Suppose you
send it; he reads it, and . . . and what then? You’ll only upset him. Forgive
him. Let him alone!”
The deacon looked in surprise at Anastasy’s dark face, at his unbuttoned
cassock, which looked in the dusk like wings, and shrugged his shoulders.
“How can I forgive him like that?” he asked. “Why I shall have to answer
for him to God!”
“Even so, forgive him all the same. Really! And God will forgive you for
your kindness to him.”
“But he is my son, isn’t he? Ought I not to teach him?”
“Teach him? Of course—why not? You can teach him, but why call him a
heathen? It will hurt his feelings, you know, deacon. . . .”
The deacon was a widower, and lived in a little house with three
windows. His elder sister, an old maid, looked after his house for him,
though she had three years before lost the use of her legs and was confined
to her bed; he was afraid of her, obeyed her, and did nothing without her
advice. Father Anastasy went in with him. Seeing his table already laid with
Easter cakes and red eggs, he began weeping for some reason, probably
thinking of his own home, and to turn these tears into a jest, he at once
laughed huskily.
“Yes, we shall soon be breaking the fast,” he said. “Yes . . . it wouldn’t
come amiss, deacon, to have a little glass now. Can we? I’ll drink it so that
the old lady does not hear,” he whispered, glancing sideways towards the
door.
Without a word the deacon moved a decanter and wineglass towards him.
He unfolded the letter and began reading it aloud. And now the letter
pleased him just as much as when his Reverence had dictated it to him. He
beamed with pleasure and wagged his head, as though he had been tasting
something very sweet.
“A-ah, what a letter!” he said. “Petrushka has never dreamt of such a
letter. It’s just what he wants, something to throw him into a fever. . .”

“Do you know, deacon, don’t send it!” said Anastasy, pouring himself out
a second glass of vodka as though unconsciously. “Forgive him, let him
alone! I am telling you . . . what I really think. If his own father can’t
forgive him, who will forgive him? And so he’ll live without forgiveness.
Think, deacon: there will be plenty to chastise him without you, but you
should look out for some who will show mercy to your son! I’ll . . . I’ll . . .
have just one more. The last, old man. . . . Just sit down and write straight
off to him, ‘I forgive you Pyotr!’ He will under-sta-and! He will fe-el it! I
understand it from myself, you see old man . . . deacon, I mean. When I
lived like other people, I hadn’t much to trouble about, but now since I lost
the image and semblance, there is only one thing I care about, that good
people should forgive me. And remember, too, it’s not the righteous but
sinners we must forgive. Why should you forgive your old woman if she is
not sinful? No, you must forgive a man when he is a sad sight to look at . . .
yes!”
Anastasy leaned his head on his fist and sank into thought.
“It’s a terrible thing, deacon,” he sighed, evidently struggling with the
desire to take another glass—“a terrible thing! In sin my mother bore me, in
sin I have lived, in sin I shall die. . . . God forgive me, a sinner! I have gone
astray, deacon! There is no salvation for me! And it’s not as though I had
gone astray in my life, but in old age—at death’s door . . . I . . .”
The old man, with a hopeless gesture, drank off another glass, then got up
and moved to another seat. The deacon, still keeping the letter in his hand,
was walking up and down the room. He was thinking of his son.
Displeasure, distress and anxiety no longer troubled him; all that had gone
into the letter. Now he was simply picturing Pyotr; he imagined his face, he
thought of the past years when his son used to come to stay with him for the
holidays. His thoughts were only of what was good, warm, touching, of
which one might think for a whole lifetime without wearying. Longing for
his son, he read the letter through once more and looked questioningly at
Anastasy.
“Don’t send it,” said the latter, with a wave of his hand.
“No, I must send it anyway; I must . . . bring him to his senses a little, all
the same. It’s just as well. . . .”

The deacon took an envelope from the table, but before putting the letter
into it he sat down to the table, smiled and added on his own account at the
bottom of the letter:
“They have sent us a new inspector. He’s much friskier than the old one.
He’s a great one for dancing and talking, and there’s nothing he can’t do, so
that all the Govorovsky girls are crazy over him. Our military chief,
Kostyrev, will soon get the sack too, they say. High time he did!” And very
well pleased, without the faintest idea that with this postscript he had
completely spoiled the stern letter, the deacon addressed the envelope and
laid it in the most conspicuous place on the table.

EASTER EVE

I
was standing on the bank of the River Goltva, waiting for the ferry-boat
from the other side. At ordinary times the Goltva is a humble stream of
moderate size, silent and pensive, gently glimmering from behind thick
reeds; but now a regular lake lay stretched out before me. The waters of
spring, running riot, had overflowed both banks and flooded both sides of
the river for a long distance, submerging vegetable gardens, hayfields and
marshes, so that it was no unusual thing to meet poplars and bushes sticking
out above the surface of the water and looking in the darkness like grim
solitary crags.
The weather seemed to me magnificent. It was dark, yet I could see the
trees, the water and the people. . . . The world was lighted by the stars,
which were scattered thickly all over the sky. I don’t remember ever seeing
so many stars. Literally one could not have put a finger in between them.
There were some as big as a goose’s egg, others tiny as hempseed. . . . They
had come out for the festival procession, every one of them, little and big,
washed, renewed and joyful, and everyone of them was softly twinkling its
beams. The sky was reflected in the water; the stars were bathing in its dark
depths and trembling with the quivering eddies. The air was warm and still.
. . . Here and there, far away on the further bank in the impenetrable
darkness, several bright red lights were gleaming. . . .
A couple of paces from me I saw the dark silhouette of a peasant in a
high hat, with a thick knotted stick in his hand.
“How long the ferry-boat is in coming!” I said.
“It is time it was here,” the silhouette answered.
“You are waiting for the ferry-boat, too?”
“No I am not,” yawned the peasant—“I am waiting for the illumination. I
should have gone, but to tell you the truth, I haven’t the five kopecks for the
ferry.”

“I’ll give you the five kopecks.”
“No; I humbly thank you. . . . With that five kopecks put up a candle for
me over there in the monastery. . . . That will be more interesting, and I will
stand here. What can it mean, no ferry-boat, as though it had sunk in the
water!”
The peasant went up to the water’s edge, took the rope in his hands, and
shouted; “Ieronim! Ieron—im!”
As though in answer to his shout, the slow peal of a great bell floated
across from the further bank. The note was deep and low, as from the
thickest string of a double bass; it seemed as though the darkness itself had
hoarsely uttered it. At once there was the sound of a cannon shot. It rolled
away in the darkness and ended somewhere in the far distance behind me.
The peasant took off his hat and crossed himself.
‘“Christ is risen,” he said.
Before the vibrations of the first peal of the bell had time to die away in
the air a second sounded, after it at once a third, and the darkness was filled
with an unbroken quivering clamour. Near the red lights fresh lights
flashed, and all began moving together and twinkling restlessly.
“Ieron—im!” we heard a hollow prolonged shout.
“They are shouting from the other bank,” said the peasant, “so there is no
ferry there either. Our Ieronim has gone to sleep.”
The lights and the velvety chimes of the bell drew one towards them. . . .
I was already beginning to lose patience and grow anxious, but behold at
last, staring into the dark distance, I saw the outline of something very
much like a gibbet. It was the long-expected ferry. It moved towards us with
such deliberation that if it had not been that its lines grew gradually more
definite, one might have supposed that it was standing still or moving to the
other bank.
“Make haste! Ieronim!” shouted my peasant. “The gentleman’s tired of
waiting!”

The ferry crawled to the bank, gave a lurch and stopped with a creak. A
tall man in a monk’s cassock and a conical cap stood on it, holding the rope.
“Why have you been so long?” I asked jumping upon the ferry.
“Forgive me, for Christ’s sake,” Ieronim answered gently. “Is there no
one else?”
“No one. . . .”
Ieronim took hold of the rope in both hands, bent himself to the figure of
a mark of interrogation, and gasped. The ferry-boat creaked and gave a
lurch. The outline of the peasant in the high hat began slowly retreating
from me—so the ferry was moving off. Ieronim soon drew himself up and
began working with one hand only. We were silent, gazing towards the bank
to which we were floating. There the illumination for which the peasant was
waiting had begun. At the water’s edge barrels of tar were flaring like huge
camp fires. Their reflections, crimson as the rising moon, crept to meet us in
long broad streaks. The burning barrels lighted up their own smoke and the
long shadows of men flitting about the fire; but further to one side and
behind them from where the velvety chime floated there was still the same
unbroken black gloom. All at once, cleaving the darkness, a rocket
zigzagged in a golden ribbon up the sky; it described an arc and, as though
broken to pieces against the sky, was scattered crackling into sparks. There
was a roar from the bank like a far-away hurrah.
“How beautiful!” I said.
“Beautiful beyond words!” sighed Ieronim. “Such a night, sir! Another
time one would pay no attention to the fireworks, but to-day one rejoices in
every vanity. Where do you come from?”
I told him where I came from.
“To be sure . . . a joyful day to-day. . . .” Ieronim went on in a weak
sighing tenor like the voice of a convalescent. “The sky is rejoicing and the
earth and what is under the earth. All the creatures are keeping holiday.
Only tell me kind sir, why, even in the time of great rejoicing, a man cannot
forget his sorrows?”

I fancied that this unexpected question was to draw me into one of those
endless religious conversations which bored and idle monks are so fond of.
I was not disposed to talk much, and so I only asked:
“What sorrows have you, father?”
“As a rule only the same as all men, kind sir, but to-day a special sorrow
has happened in the monastery: at mass, during the reading of the Bible, the
monk and deacon Nikolay died.”
“Well, it’s God’s will!” I said, falling into the monastic tone. “We must
all die. To my mind, you ought to rejoice indeed. . . . They say if anyone
dies at Easter he goes straight to the kingdom of heaven.”
“That’s true.”
We sank into silence. The figure of the peasant in the high hat melted into
the lines of the bank. The tar barrels were flaring up more and more.
“The Holy Scripture points clearly to the vanity of sorrow and so does
reflection,” said Ieronim, breaking the silence, “but why does the heart
grieve and refuse to listen to reason? Why does one want to weep bitterly?”
Ieronim shrugged his shoulders, turned to me and said quickly:
“If I died, or anyone else, it would not be worth notice perhaps; but, you
see, Nikolay is dead! No one else but Nikolay! Indeed, it’s hard to believe
that he is no more! I stand here on my ferry-boat and every minute I keep
fancying that he will lift up his voice from the bank. He always used to
come to the bank and call to me that I might not be afraid on the ferry. He
used to get up from his bed at night on purpose for that. He was a kind soul.
My God! how kindly and gracious! Many a mother is not so good to her
child as Nikolay was to me! Lord, save his soul!”
Ieronim took hold of the rope, but turned to me again at once.
“And such a lofty intelligence, your honour,” he said in a vibrating voice.
“Such a sweet and harmonious tongue! Just as they will sing immediately at
early matins: ‘Oh lovely! oh sweet is Thy Voice!’ Besides all other human
qualities, he had, too, an extraordinary gift!”

“What gift?” I asked.
The monk scrutinized me, and as though he had convinced himself that
he could trust me with a secret, he laughed good-humouredly.
“He had a gift for writing hymns of praise,” he said. “It was a marvel, sir;
you couldn’t call it anything else! You would be amazed if I tell you about
it. Our Father Archimandrite comes from Moscow, the Father Sub-Prior
studied at the Kazan academy, we have wise monks and elders, but, would
you believe it, no one could write them; while Nikolay, a simple monk, a
deacon, had not studied anywhere, and had not even any outer appearance
of it, but he wrote them! A marvel! A real marvel!” Ieronim clasped his
hands and, completely forgetting the rope, went on eagerly:
“The Father Sub-Prior has great difficulty in composing sermons; when
he wrote the history of the monastery he worried all the brotherhood and
drove a dozen times to town, while Nikolay wrote canticles! Hymns of
praise! That’s a very different thing from a sermon or a history!”
“Is it difficult to write them?” I asked.
“There’s great difficulty!” Ieronim wagged his head. “You can do nothing
by wisdom and holiness if God has not given you the gift. The monks who
don’t understand argue that you only need to know the life of the saint for
whom you are writing the hymn, and to make it harmonize with the other
hymns of praise. But that’s a mistake, sir. Of course, anyone who writes
canticles must know the life of the saint to perfection, to the least trivial
detail. To be sure, one must make them harmonize with the other canticles
and know where to begin and what to write about. To give you an instance,
the first response begins everywhere with ‘the chosen’ or ‘the elect.’ . . .
The first line must always begin with the ‘angel.’ In the canticle of praise to
Jesus the Most Sweet, if you are interested in the subject, it begins like this:
‘Of angels Creator and Lord of all powers!’ In the canticle to the Holy
Mother of God: ‘Of angels the foremost sent down from on high,’ to
Nikolay, the Wonder-worker— ‘An angel in semblance, though in
substance a man,’ and so on. Everywhere you begin with the angel. Of
course, it would be impossible without making them harmonize, but the
lives of the saints and conformity with the others is not what matters; what
matters is the beauty and sweetness of it. Everything must be harmonious,

brief and complete. There must be in every line softness, graciousness and
tenderness; not one word should be harsh or rough or unsuitable. It must be
written so that the worshipper may rejoice at heart and weep, while his
mind is stirred and he is thrown into a tremor. In the canticle to the Holy
Mother are the words: ‘Rejoice, O Thou too high for human thought to
reach! Rejoice, O Thou too deep for angels’ eyes to fathom!’ In another
place in the same canticle: ‘Rejoice, O tree that bearest the fair fruit of light
that is the food of the faithful! Rejoice, O tree of gracious spreading shade,
under which there is shelter for multitudes!’”
Ieronim hid his face in his hands, as though frightened at something or
overcome with shame, and shook his head.
“Tree that bearest the fair fruit of light . . . tree of gracious spreading
shade. . . .” he muttered. “To think that a man should find words like those!
Such a power is a gift from God! For brevity he packs many thoughts into
one phrase, and how smooth and complete it all is! ‘Light-radiating torch to
all that be . . .’ comes in the canticle to Jesus the Most Sweet. ‘Light-
radiating!’ There is no such word in conversation or in books, but you see
he invented it, he found it in his mind! Apart from the smoothness and
grandeur of language, sir, every line must be beautified in every way, there
must be flowers and lightning and wind and sun and all the objects of the
visible world. And every exclamation ought to be put so as to be smooth
and easy for the ear. ‘Rejoice, thou flower of heavenly growth!’ comes in
the hymn to Nikolay the Wonder-worker. It’s not simply ‘heavenly flower,’
but ‘flower of heavenly growth.’ It’s smoother so and sweet to the ear. That
was just as Nikolay wrote it! Exactly like that! I can’t tell you how he used
to write!”
“Well, in that case it is a pity he is dead,” I said; “but let us get on, father,
or we shall be late.”
Ieronim started and ran to the rope; they were beginning to peal all the
bells. Probably the procession was already going on near the monastery, for
all the dark space behind the tar barrels was now dotted with moving lights.
“Did Nikolay print his hymns?” I asked Ieronim.

“How could he print them?” he sighed. “And indeed, it would be strange
to print them. What would be the object? No one in the monastery takes any
interest in them. They don’t like them. They knew Nikolay wrote them, but
they let it pass unnoticed. No one esteems new writings nowadays, sir!”
“Were they prejudiced against him?”
“Yes, indeed. If Nikolay had been an elder perhaps the brethren would
have been interested, but he wasn’t forty, you know. There were some who
laughed and even thought his writing a sin.”
“What did he write them for?”
“Chiefly for his own comfort. Of all the brotherhood, I was the only one
who read his hymns. I used to go to him in secret, that no one else might
know of it, and he was glad that I took an interest in them. He would
embrace me, stroke my head, speak to me in caressing words as to a little
child. He would shut his cell, make me sit down beside him, and begin to
read. . . .”
Ieronim left the rope and came up to me.
“We were dear friends in a way,” he whispered, looking at me with
shining eyes. “Where he went I would go. If I were not there he would miss
me. And he cared more for me than for anyone, and all because I used to
weep over his hymns. It makes me sad to remember. Now I feel just like an
orphan or a widow. You know, in our monastery they are all good people,
kind and pious, but . . . there is no one with softness and refinement, they
are just like peasants. They all speak loudly, and tramp heavily when they
walk; they are noisy, they clear their throats, but Nikolay always talked
softly, caressingly, and if he noticed that anyone was asleep or praying he
would slip by like a fly or a gnat. His face was tender, compassionate. . . .”
Ieronim heaved a deep sigh and took hold of the rope again. We were by
now approaching the bank. We floated straight out of the darkness and
stillness of the river into an enchanted realm, full of stifling smoke,
crackling lights and uproar. By now one could distinctly see people moving
near the tar barrels. The flickering of the lights gave a strange, almost
fantastic, expression to their figures and red faces. From time to time one

caught among the heads and faces a glimpse of a horse’s head motionless as
though cast in copper.
“They’ll begin singing the Easter hymn directly, . . .” said Ieronim, “and
Nikolay is gone; there is no one to appreciate it. . . . There was nothing
written dearer to him than that hymn. He used to take in every word! You’ll
be there, sir, so notice what is sung; it takes your breath away!”
“Won’t you be in church, then?”
“I can’t; . . . I have to work the ferry. . . .”
“But won’t they relieve you?”
“I don’t know. . . . I ought to have been relieved at eight; but, as you see,
they don’t come! . . . And I must own I should have liked to be in the
church. . . .”
“Are you a monk?”
“Yes . . . that is, I am a lay-brother.”
The ferry ran into the bank and stopped. I thrust a five-kopeck piece into
Ieronim’s hand for taking me across and jumped on land. Immediately a
cart with a boy and a sleeping woman in it drove creaking onto the ferry.
Ieronim, with a faint glow from the lights on his figure, pressed on the rope,
bent down to it, and started the ferry back. . . .
I took a few steps through mud, but a little farther walked on a soft
freshly trodden path. This path led to the dark monastery gates, that looked
like a cavern through a cloud of smoke, through a disorderly crowd of
people, unharnessed horses, carts and chaises. All this crowd was rattling,
snorting, laughing, and the crimson light and wavering shadows from the
smoke flickered over it all . . . . A perfect chaos! And in this hubbub the
people yet found room to load a little cannon and to sell cakes. There was
no less commotion on the other side of the wall in the monastery precincts,
but there was more regard for decorum and order. Here there was a smell of
juniper and incense. They talked loudly, but there was no sound of laughter
or snorting. Near the tombstones and crosses people pressed close to one
another with Easter cakes and bundles in their arms. Apparently many had

come from a long distance for their cakes to be blessed and now were
exhausted. Young lay brothers, making a metallic sound with their boots,
ran busily along the iron slabs that paved the way from the monastery gates
to the church door. They were busy and shouting on the belfry, too.
“What a restless night!” I thought. “How nice!”
One was tempted to see the same unrest and sleeplessness in all nature,
from the night darkness to the iron slabs, the crosses on the tombs and the
trees under which the people were moving to and fro. But nowhere was the
excitement and restlessness so marked as in the church. An unceasing
struggle was going on in the entrance between the inflowing stream and the
outflowing stream. Some were going in, others going out and soon coming
back again to stand still for a little and begin moving again. People were
scurrying from place to place, lounging about as though they were looking
for something. The stream flowed from the entrance all round the church,
disturbing even the front rows, where persons of weight and dignity were
standing. There could be no thought of concentrated prayer. There were no
prayers at all, but a sort of continuous, childishly irresponsible joy, seeking
a pretext to break out and vent itself in some movement, even in senseless
jostling and shoving.
The same unaccustomed movement is striking in the Easter service itself.
The altar gates are flung wide open, thick clouds of incense float in the air
near the candelabra; wherever one looks there are lights, the gleam and
splutter of candles. . . . There is no reading; restless and lighthearted singing
goes on to the end without ceasing. After each hymn the clergy change their
vestments and come out to burn the incense, which is repeated every ten
minutes.
I had no sooner taken a place, when a wave rushed from in front and
forced me back. A tall thick-set deacon walked before me with a long red
candle; the grey-headed archimandrite in his golden mitre hurried after him
with the censer. When they had vanished from sight the crowd squeezed me
back to my former position. But ten minutes had not passed before a new
wave burst on me, and again the deacon appeared. This time he was
followed by the Father Sub-Prior, the man who, as Ieronim had told me,
was writing the history of the monastery.

As I mingled with the crowd and caught the infection of the universal
joyful excitement, I felt unbearably sore on Ieronim’s account. Why did
they not send someone to relieve him? Why could not someone of less
feeling and less susceptibility go on the ferry? ‘Lift up thine eyes, O Sion,
and look around,’ they sang in the choir, ‘for thy children have come to thee
as to a beacon of divine light from north and south, and from east and from
the sea. . . .’
I looked at the faces; they all had a lively expression of triumph, but not
one was listening to what was being sung and taking it in, and not one was
‘holding his breath.’ Why was not Ieronim released? I could fancy Ieronim
standing meekly somewhere by the wall, bending forward and hungrily
drinking in the beauty of the holy phrase. All this that glided by the ears of
the people standing by me he would have eagerly drunk in with his
delicately sensitive soul, and would have been spell-bound to ecstasy, to
holding his breath, and there would not have been a man happier than he in
all the church. Now he was plying to and fro over the dark river and
grieving for his dead friend and brother.
The wave surged back. A stout smiling monk, playing with his rosary and
looking round behind him, squeezed sideways by me, making way for a
lady in a hat and velvet cloak. A monastery servant hurried after the lady,
holding a chair over our heads.
I came out of the church. I wanted to have a look at the dead Nikolay, the
unknown canticle writer. I walked about the monastery wall, where there
was a row of cells, peeped into several windows, and, seeing nothing, came
back again. I do not regret now that I did not see Nikolay; God knows,
perhaps if I had seen him I should have lost the picture my imagination
paints for me now. I imagine the lovable poetical figure solitary and not
understood, who went out at nights to call to Ieronim over the water, and
filled his hymns with flowers, stars and sunbeams, as a pale timid man with
soft mild melancholy features. His eyes must have shone, not only with
intelligence, but with kindly tenderness and that hardly restrained childlike
enthusiasm which I could hear in Ieronim’s voice when he quoted to me
passages from the hymns.

When we came out of church after mass it was no longer night. The
morning was beginning. The stars had gone out and the sky was a morose
greyish blue. The iron slabs, the tombstones and the buds on the trees were
covered with dew There was a sharp freshness in the air. Outside the
precincts I did not find the same animated scene as I had beheld in the
night. Horses and men looked exhausted, drowsy, scarcely moved, while
nothing was left of the tar barrels but heaps of black ash. When anyone is
exhausted and sleepy he fancies that nature, too, is in the same condition. It
seemed to me that the trees and the young grass were asleep. It seemed as
though even the bells were not pealing so loudly and gaily as at night. The
restlessness was over, and of the excitement nothing was left but a pleasant
weariness, a longing for sleep and warmth.
Now I could see both banks of the river; a faint mist hovered over it in
shifting masses. There was a harsh cold breath from the water. When I
jumped on to the ferry, a chaise and some two dozen men and women were
standing on it already. The rope, wet and as I fancied drowsy, stretched far
away across the broad river and in places disappeared in the white mist.
“Christ is risen! Is there no one else?” asked a soft voice.
I recognized the voice of Ieronim. There was no darkness now to hinder
me from seeing the monk. He was a tall narrow-shouldered man of five-
and-thirty, with large rounded features, with half-closed listless-looking
eyes and an unkempt wedge-shaped beard. He had an extraordinarily sad
and exhausted look.
“They have not relieved you yet?” I asked in surprise.
“Me?” he answered, turning to me his chilled and dewy face with a
smile. “There is no one to take my place now till morning. They’ll all be
going to the Father Archimandrite’s to break the fast directly.”
With the help of a little peasant in a hat of reddish fur that looked like the
little wooden tubs in which honey is sold, he threw his weight on the rope;
they gasped simultaneously, and the ferry started.
We floated across, disturbing on the way the lazily rising mist. Everyone
was silent. Ieronim worked mechanically with one hand. He slowly passed
his mild lustreless eyes over us; then his glance rested on the rosy face of a

young merchant’s wife with black eyebrows, who was standing on the ferry
beside me silently shrinking from the mist that wrapped her about. He did
not take his eyes off her face all the way.
There was little that was masculine in that prolonged gaze. It seemed to
me that Ieronim was looking in the woman’s face for the soft and tender
features of his dead friend.

A NIGHTMARE

K
unin, a young man of thirty, who was a permanent member of the
Rural Board, on returning from Petersburg to his district, Borisovo,
immediately sent a mounted messenger to Sinkino, for the priest
there, Father Yakov Smirnov.
Five hours later Father Yakov appeared.
“Very glad to make your acquaintance,” said Kunin, meeting him in the
entry. “I’ve been living and serving here for a year; it seems as though we
ought to have been acquainted before. You are very welcome! But . . . how
young you are!” Kunin added in surprise. “What is your age?”
“Twenty-eight, . . .” said Father Yakov, faintly pressing Kunin’s
outstretched hand, and for some reason turning crimson.
Kunin led his visitor into his study and began looking at him more
attentively.
“What an uncouth womanish face!” he thought.
There certainly was a good deal that was womanish in Father Yakov’s
face: the turned-up nose, the bright red cheeks, and the large grey-blue eyes
with scanty, scarcely perceptible eyebrows. His long reddish hair, smooth
and dry, hung down in straight tails on to his shoulders. The hair on his
upper lip was only just beginning to form into a real masculine moustache,
while his little beard belonged to that class of good-for-nothing beards
which among divinity students are for some reason called “ticklers.” It was
scanty and extremely transparent; it could not have been stroked or combed,
it could only have been pinched. . . . All these scanty decorations were put
on unevenly in tufts, as though Father Yakov, thinking to dress up as a priest
and beginning to gum on the beard, had been interrupted halfway through.
He had on a cassock, the colour of weak coffee with chicory in it, with big
patches on both elbows.

“A queer type,” thought Kunin, looking at his muddy skirts. “Comes to
the house for the first time and can’t dress decently.
“Sit down, Father,” he began more carelessly than cordially, as he moved
an easy-chair to the table. “Sit down, I beg you.”
Father Yakov coughed into his fist, sank awkwardly on to the edge of the
chair, and laid his open hands on his knees. With his short figure, his narrow
chest, his red and perspiring face, he made from the first moment a most
unpleasant impression on Kunin. The latter could never have imagined that
there were such undignified and pitiful-looking priests in Russia; and in
Father Yakov’s attitude, in the way he held his hands on his knees and sat
on the very edge of his chair, he saw a lack of dignity and even a shade of
servility.
“I have invited you on business, Father. . . .” Kunin began, sinking back
in his low chair. “It has fallen to my lot to perform the agreeable duty of
helping you in one of your useful undertakings. . . . On coming back from
Petersburg, I found on my table a letter from the Marshal of Nobility. Yegor
Dmitrevitch suggests that I should take under my supervision the church
parish school which is being opened in Sinkino. I shall be very glad to,
Father, with all my heart. . . . More than that, I accept the proposition with
enthusiasm.”
Kunin got up and walked about the study.
“Of course, both Yegor Dmitrevitch and probably you, too, are aware that
I have not great funds at my disposal. My estate is mortgaged, and I live
exclusively on my salary as the permanent member. So that you cannot
reckon on very much assistance, but I will do all that is in my power. . . .
And when are you thinking of opening the school Father?”
“When we have the money, . . .” answered Father Yakov.
“You have some funds at your disposal already?”
“Scarcely any. . . . The peasants settled at their meeting that they would
pay, every man of them, thirty kopecks a year; but that’s only a promise,
you know! And for the first beginning we should need at least two hundred
roubles. . . .”

“M’yes. . . . Unhappily, I have not that sum now,” said Kunin with a sigh.
“I spent all I had on my tour and got into debt, too. Let us try and think of
some plan together.”
Kunin began planning aloud. He explained his views and watched Father
Yakov’s face, seeking signs of agreement or approval in it. But the face was
apathetic and immobile, and expressed nothing but constrained shyness and
uneasiness. Looking at it, one might have supposed that Kunin was talking
of matters so abstruse that Father Yakov did not understand and only
listened from good manners, and was at the same time afraid of being
detected in his failure to understand.
“The fellow is not one of the brightest, that’s evident . . .” thought Kunin.
“He’s rather shy and much too stupid.”
Father Yakov revived somewhat and even smiled only when the footman
came into the study bringing in two glasses of tea on a tray and a cake-
basket full of biscuits. He took his glass and began drinking at once.
“Shouldn’t we write at once to the bishop?” Kunin went on, meditating
aloud. “To be precise, you know, it is not we, not the Zemstvo, but the
higher ecclesiastical authorities, who have raised the question of the church
parish schools. They ought really to apportion the funds. I remember I read
that a sum of money had been set aside for the purpose. Do you know
nothing about it?”
Father Yakov was so absorbed in drinking tea that he did not answer this
question at once. He lifted his grey-blue eyes to Kunin, thought a moment,
and as though recalling his question, he shook his head in the negative. An
expression of pleasure and of the most ordinary prosaic appetite overspread
his face from ear to ear. He drank and smacked his lips over every gulp.
When he had drunk it to the very last drop, he put his glass on the table,
then took his glass back again, looked at the bottom of it, then put it back
again. The expression of pleasure faded from his face. . . . Then Kunin saw
his visitor take a biscuit from the cake-basket, nibble a little bit off it, then
turn it over in his hand and hurriedly stick it in his pocket.
“Well, that’s not at all clerical!” thought Kunin, shrugging his shoulders
contemptuously. “What is it, priestly greed or childishness?”

After giving his visitor another glass of tea and seeing him to the entry,
Kunin lay down on the sofa and abandoned himself to the unpleasant
feeling induced in him by the visit of Father Yakov.
“What a strange wild creature!” he thought. “Dirty, untidy, coarse, stupid,
and probably he drinks. . . . My God, and that’s a priest, a spiritual father!
That’s a teacher of the people! I can fancy the irony there must be in the
deacon’s face when before every mass he booms out: ‘Thy blessing,
Reverend Father!’ A fine reverend Father! A reverend Father without a grain
of dignity or breeding, hiding biscuits in his pocket like a schoolboy. . . .
Fie! Good Lord, where were the bishop’s eyes when he ordained a man like
that? What can he think of the people if he gives them a teacher like that?
One wants people here who . . .”
And Kunin thought what Russian priests ought to be like.
“If I were a priest, for instance. . . . An educated priest fond of his work
might do a great deal. . . . I should have had the school opened long ago.
And the sermons? If the priest is sincere and is inspired by love for his
work, what wonderful rousing sermons he might give!”
Kunin shut his eyes and began mentally composing a sermon. A little
later he sat down to the table and rapidly began writing.
“I’ll give it to that red-haired fellow, let him read it in church, . . .” he
thought.
The following Sunday Kunin drove over to Sinkino in the morning to
settle the question of the school, and while he was there to make
acquaintance with the church of which he was a parishioner. In spite of the
awful state of the roads, it was a glorious morning. The sun was shining
brightly and cleaving with its rays the layers of white snow still lingering
here and there. The snow as it took leave of the earth glittered with such
diamonds that it hurt the eyes to look, while the young winter corn was
hastily thrusting up its green beside it. The rooks floated with dignity over
the fields. A rook would fly, drop to earth, and give several hops before
standing firmly on its feet. . . .
The wooden church up to which Kunin drove was old and grey; the
columns of the porch had once been painted white, but the colour had now

completely peeled off, and they looked like two ungainly shafts. The ikon
over the door looked like a dark smudged blur. But its poverty touched and
softened Kunin. Modestly dropping his eyes, he went into the church and
stood by the door. The service had only just begun. An old sacristan, bent
into a bow, was reading the “Hours” in a hollow indistinct tenor. Father
Yakov, who conducted the service without a deacon, was walking about the
church, burning incense. Had it not been for the softened mood in which
Kunin found himself on entering the poverty-stricken church, he certainly
would have smiled at the sight of Father Yakov. The short priest was
wearing a crumpled and extremely long robe of some shabby yellow
material; the hem of the robe trailed on the ground.
The church was not full. Looking at the parishioners, Kunin was struck at
the first glance by one strange circumstance: he saw nothing but old people
and children. . . . Where were the men of working age? Where was the
youth and manhood? But after he had stood there a little and looked more
attentively at the aged-looking faces, Kunin saw that he had mistaken
young people for old. He did not, however, attach any significance to this
little optical illusion.
The church was as cold and grey inside as outside. There was not one
spot on the ikons nor on the dark brown walls which was not begrimed and
defaced by time. There were many windows, but the general effect of
colour was grey, and so it was twilight in the church.
“Anyone pure in soul can pray here very well,” thought Kunin. “Just as
in St. Peter’s in Rome one is impressed by grandeur, here one is touched by
the lowliness and simplicity.”
But his devout mood vanished like smoke as soon as Father Yakov went
up to the altar and began mass. Being still young and having come straight
from the seminary bench to the priesthood, Father Yakov had not yet
formed a set manner of celebrating the service. As he read he seemed to be
vacillating between a high tenor and a thin bass; he bowed clumsily, walked
quickly, and opened and shut the gates abruptly. . . . The old sacristan,
evidently deaf and ailing, did not hear the prayers very distinctly, and this
very often led to slight misunderstandings. Before Father Yakov had time to
finish what he had to say, the sacristan began chanting his response, or else

long after Father Yakov had finished the old man would be straining his
ears, listening in the direction of the altar and saying nothing till his skirt
was pulled. The old man had a sickly hollow voice and an asthmatic
quavering lisp. . . . The complete lack of dignity and decorum was
emphasized by a very small boy who seconded the sacristan and whose
head was hardly visible over the railing of the choir. The boy sang in a shrill
falsetto and seemed to be trying to avoid singing in tune. Kunin stayed a
little while, listened and went out for a smoke. He was disappointed, and
looked at the grey church almost with dislike.
“They complain of the decline of religious feeling among the people . . .”
he sighed. “I should rather think so! They’d better foist a few more priests
like this one on them!”
Kunin went back into the church three times, and each time he felt a great
temptation to get out into the open air again. Waiting till the end of the
mass, he went to Father Yakov’s. The priest’s house did not differ outwardly
from the peasants’ huts, but the thatch lay more smoothly on the roof and
there were little white curtains in the windows. Father Yakov led Kunin into
a light little room with a clay floor and walls covered with cheap paper; in
spite of some painful efforts towards luxury in the way of photographs in
frames and a clock with a pair of scissors hanging on the weight the
furnishing of the room impressed him by its scantiness. Looking at the
furniture, one might have supposed that Father Yakov had gone from house
to house and collected it in bits; in one place they had given him a round
three-legged table, in another a stool, in a third a chair with a back bent
violently backwards; in a fourth a chair with an upright back, but the seat
smashed in; while in a fifth they had been liberal and given him a
semblance of a sofa with a flat back and a lattice-work seat. This semblance
had been painted dark red and smelt strongly of paint. Kunin meant at first
to sit down on one of the chairs, but on second thoughts he sat down on the
stool.
“This is the first time you have been to our church?” asked Father Yakov,
hanging his hat on a huge misshapen nail.
“Yes it is. I tell you what, Father, before we begin on business, will you
give me some tea? My soul is parched.”

Father Yakov blinked, gasped, and went behind the partition wall. There
was a sound of whispering.
“With his wife, I suppose,” thought Kunin; “it would be interesting to see
what the red-headed fellow’s wife is like.”
A little later Father Yakov came back, red and perspiring and with an
effort to smile, sat down on the edge of the sofa.
“They will heat the samovar directly,” he said, without looking at his
visitor.
“My goodness, they have not heated the samovar yet!” Kunin thought
with horror. “A nice time we shall have to wait.”
“I have brought you,” he said, “the rough draft of the letter I have written
to the bishop. I’ll read it after tea; perhaps you may find something to add. .
. .”
“Very well.”
A silence followed. Father Yakov threw furtive glances at the partition
wall, smoothed his hair, and blew his nose.
“It’s wonderful weather, . . .” he said.
“Yes. I read an interesting thing yesterday. . . . the Volsky Zemstvo have
decided to give their schools to the clergy, that’s typical.”
Kunin got up, and pacing up and down the clay floor, began to give
expression to his reflections.
“That would be all right,” he said, “if only the clergy were equal to their
high calling and recognized their tasks. I am so unfortunate as to know
priests whose standard of culture and whose moral qualities make them
hardly fit to be army secretaries, much less priests. You will agree that a bad
teacher does far less harm than a bad priest.”
Kunin glanced at Father Yakov; he was sitting bent up, thinking intently
about something and apparently not listening to his visitor.

“Yasha, come here!” a woman’s voice called from behind the partition.
Father Yakov started and went out. Again a whispering began.
Kunin felt a pang of longing for tea.
“No; it’s no use my waiting for tea here,” he thought, looking at his
watch. “Besides I fancy I am not altogether a welcome visitor. My host has
not deigned to say one word to me; he simply sits and blinks.”
Kunin took up his hat, waited for Father Yakov to return, and said good-
bye to him.
“I have simply wasted the morning,” he thought wrathfully on the way
home. “The blockhead! The dummy! He cares no more about the school
than I about last year’s snow. . . . No, I shall never get anything done with
him! We are bound to fail! If the Marshal knew what the priest here was
like, he wouldn’t be in such a hurry to talk about a school. We ought first to
try and get a decent priest, and then think about the school.”
By now Kunin almost hated Father Yakov. The man, his pitiful, grotesque
figure in the long crumpled robe, his womanish face, his manner of
officiating, his way of life and his formal restrained respectfulness,
wounded the tiny relic of religious feeling which was stored away in a
warm corner of Kunin’s heart together with his nurse’s other fairy tales. The
coldness and lack of attention with which Father Yakov had met Kunin’s
warm and sincere interest in what was the priest’s own work was hard for
the former’s vanity to endure. . . .
On the evening of the same day Kunin spent a long time walking about
his rooms and thinking. Then he sat down to the table resolutely and wrote
a letter to the bishop. After asking for money and a blessing for the school,
he set forth genuinely, like a son, his opinion of the priest at Sinkino.
“He is young,” he wrote, “insufficiently educated, leads, I fancy, an
intemperate life, and altogether fails to satisfy the ideals which the Russian
people have in the course of centuries formed of what a pastor should be.”
After writing this letter Kunin heaved a deep sigh, and went to bed with
the consciousness that he had done a good deed.

On Monday morning, while he was still in bed, he was informed that
Father Yakov had arrived. He did not want to get up, and instructed the
servant to say he was not at home. On Tuesday he went away to a sitting of
the Board, and when he returned on Saturday he was told by the servants
that Father Yakov had called every day in his absence.
“He liked my biscuits, it seems,” he thought.
Towards evening on Sunday Father Yakov arrived. This time not only his
skirts, but even his hat, was bespattered with mud. Just as on his first visit,
he was hot and perspiring, and sat down on the edge of his chair as he had
done then. Kunin determined not to talk about the school—not to cast
pearls.
“I have brought you a list of books for the school, Pavel Mihailovitch, . .
.” Father Yakov began.
“Thank you.”
But everything showed that Father Yakov had come for something else
besides the list. Has whole figure was expressive of extreme
embarrassment, and at the same time there was a look of determination
upon his face, as on the face of a man suddenly inspired by an idea. He
struggled to say something important, absolutely necessary, and strove to
overcome his timidity.
“Why is he dumb?” Kunin thought wrathfully. “He’s settled himself
comfortably! I haven’t time to be bothered with him.”
To smoothe over the awkwardness of his silence and to conceal the
struggle going on within him, the priest began to smile constrainedly, and
this slow smile, wrung out on his red perspiring face, and out of keeping
with the fixed look in his grey-blue eyes, made Kunin turn away. He felt
moved to repulsion.
“Excuse me, Father, I have to go out,” he said.
Father Yakov started like a man asleep who has been struck a blow, and,
still smiling, began in his confusion wrapping round him the skirts of his

cassock. In spite of his repulsion for the man, Kunin felt suddenly sorry for
him, and he wanted to soften his cruelty.
“Please come another time, Father,” he said, “and before we part I want
to ask you a favour. I was somehow inspired to write two sermons the other
day. . . . I will give them to you to look at. If they are suitable, use them.”
“Very good,” said Father Yakov, laying his open hand on Kunin’s
sermons which were lying on the table. “I will take them.”
After standing a little, hesitating and still wrapping his cassock round
him, he suddenly gave up the effort to smile and lifted his head resolutely.
“Pavel Mihailovitch,” he said, evidently trying to speak loudly and
distinctly.
“What can I do for you?”
“I have heard that you . . . er . . . have dismissed your secretary, and . . .
and are looking for a new one. . . .”
“Yes, I am. . . . Why, have you someone to recommend?”
“I. . . er . . . you see . . . I . . . Could you not give the post to me?”
“Why, are you giving up the Church?” said Kunin in amazement.
“No, no,” Father Yakov brought out quickly, for some reason turning pale
and trembling all over. “God forbid! If you feel doubtful, then never mind,
never mind. You see, I could do the work between whiles, . . so as to
increase my income. . . . Never mind, don’t disturb yourself!”
“H’m! . . . your income. . . . But you know, I only pay my secretary
twenty roubles a month.”
“Good heavens! I would take ten,” whispered Father Yakov, looking
about him. “Ten would be enough! You . . . you are astonished, and
everyone is astonished. The greedy priest, the grasping priest, what does he
do with his money? I feel myself I am greedy, . . . and I blame myself, I
condemn myself. . . . I am ashamed to look people in the face. . . . I tell you

on my conscience, Pavel Mihailovitch. . . . I call the God of truth to witness.
. . .”
Father Yakov took breath and went on:
“On the way here I prepared a regular confession to make you, but . . .
I’ve forgotten it all; I cannot find a word now. I get a hundred and fifty
roubles a year from my parish, and everyone wonders what I do with the
money. . . . But I’ll explain it all truly. . . . I pay forty roubles a year to the
clerical school for my brother Pyotr. He has everything found there, except
that I have to provide pens and paper.”
“Oh, I believe you; I believe you! But what’s the object of all this?” said
Kunin, with a wave of the hand, feeling terribly oppressed by this outburst
of confidence on the part of his visitor, and not knowing how to get away
from the tearful gleam in his eyes.
“Then I have not yet paid up all that I owe to the consistory for my place
here. They charged me two hundred roubles for the living, and I was to pay
ten roubles a month. . . . You can judge what is left! And, besides, I must
allow Father Avraamy at least three roubles a month.”
“What Father Avraamy?”
“Father Avraamy who was priest at Sinkino before I came. He was
deprived of the living on account of . . . his failing, but you know, he is still
living at Sinkino! He has nowhere to go. There is no one to keep him.
Though he is old, he must have a corner, and food and clothing—I can’t let
him go begging on the roads in his position! It would be on my conscience
if anything happened! It would be my fault! He is. . . in debt all round; but,
you see, I am to blame for not paying for him.”
Father Yakov started up from his seat and, looking frantically at the floor,
strode up and down the room.
“My God, my God!” he muttered, raising his hands and dropping them
again. “Lord, save us and have mercy upon us! Why did you take such a
calling on yourself if you have so little faith and no strength? There is no
end to my despair! Save me, Queen of Heaven!”

“Calm yourself, Father,” said Kunin.
“I am worn out with hunger, Pavel Mihailovitch,” Father Yakov went on.
“Generously forgive me, but I am at the end of my strength . . . . I know if I
were to beg and to bow down, everyone would help, but . . . I cannot! I am
ashamed. How can I beg of the peasants? You are on the Board here, so you
know. . . . How can one beg of a beggar? And to beg of richer people, of
landowners, I cannot! I have pride! I am ashamed!”
Father Yakov waved his hand, and nervously scratched his head with
both hands.
“I am ashamed! My God, I am ashamed! I am proud and can’t bear
people to see my poverty! When you visited me, Pavel Mihailovitch, I had
no tea in the house! There wasn’t a pinch of it, and you know it was pride
prevented me from telling you! I am ashamed of my clothes, of these
patches here. . . . I am ashamed of my vestments, of being hungry. . . . And
is it seemly for a priest to be proud?”
Father Yakov stood still in the middle of the study, and, as though he did
not notice Kunin’s presence, began reasoning with himself.
“Well, supposing I endure hunger and disgrace—but, my God, I have a
wife! I took her from a good home! She is not used to hard work; she is
soft; she is used to tea and white bread and sheets on her bed. . . . At home
she used to play the piano. . . . She is young, not twenty yet. . . . She would
like, to be sure, to be smart, to have fun, go out to see people. . . . And she is
worse off with me than any cook; she is ashamed to show herself in the
street. My God, my God! Her only treat is when I bring an apple or some
biscuit from a visit. . . .”
Father Yakov scratched his head again with both hands.
“And it makes us feel not love but pity for each other. . . . I cannot look at
her without compassion! And the things that happen in this life, O Lord!
Such things that people would not believe them if they saw them in the
newspaper. . . . And when will there be an end to it all!”
“Hush, Father!” Kunin almost shouted, frightened at his tone. “Why take
such a gloomy view of life?”

“Generously forgive me, Pavel Mihailovitch . . .” muttered Father Yakov
as though he were drunk, “Forgive me, all this . . . doesn’t matter, and don’t
take any notice of it. . . . Only I do blame myself, and always shall blame
myself . . . always.”
Father Yakov looked about him and began whispering:
“One morning early I was going from Sinkino to Lutchkovo; I saw a
woman standing on the river bank, doing something. . . . I went up close
and could not believe my eyes. . . . It was horrible! The wife of the doctor,
Ivan Sergeitch, was sitting there washing her linen. . . . A doctor’s wife,
brought up at a select boarding-school! She had got up you see, early and
gone half a mile from the village that people should not see her. . . . She
couldn’t get over her pride! When she saw that I was near her and noticed
her poverty, she turned red all over. . . . I was flustered—I was frightened,
and ran up to help her, but she hid her linen from me; she was afraid I
should see her ragged chemises. . . .”
“All this is positively incredible,” said Kunin, sitting down and looking
almost with horror at Father Yakov’s pale face.
“Incredible it is! It’s a thing that has never been! Pavel Mihailovitch, that
a doctor’s wife should be rinsing the linen in the river! Such a thing does
not happen in any country! As her pastor and spiritual father, I ought not to
allow it, but what can I do? What? Why, I am always trying to get treated
by her husband for nothing myself! It is true that, as you say, it is all
incredible! One can hardly believe one’s eyes. During Mass, you know,
when I look out from the altar and see my congregation, Avraamy starving,
and my wife, and think of the doctor’s wife—how blue her hands were from
the cold water—would you believe it, I forget myself and stand senseless
like a fool, until the sacristan calls to me. . . . It’s awful!”
Father Yakov began walking about again.
“Lord Jesus!” he said, waving his hands, “holy Saints! I can’t officiate
properly. . . . Here you talk to me about the school, and I sit like a dummy
and don’t understand a word, and think of nothing but food. . . . Even before
the altar. . . . But . . . what am I doing?” Father Yakov pulled himself up

suddenly. “You want to go out. Forgive me, I meant nothing. . . . Excuse . .
.”
Kunin shook hands with Father Yakov without speaking, saw him into
the hall, and going back into his study, stood at the window. He saw Father
Yakov go out of the house, pull his wide-brimmed rusty-looking hat over
his eyes, and slowly, bowing his head, as though ashamed of his outburst,
walk along the road.
“I don’t see his horse,” thought Kunin.
Kunin did not dare to think that the priest had come on foot every day to
see him; it was five or six miles to Sinkino, and the mud on the road was
impassable. Further on he saw the coachman Andrey and the boy Paramon,
jumping over the puddles and splashing Father Yakov with mud, run up to
him for his blessing. Father Yakov took off his hat and slowly blessed
Andrey, then blessed the boy and stroked his head.
Kunin passed his hand over his eyes, and it seemed to him that his hand
was moist. He walked away from the window and with dim eyes looked
round the room in which he still seemed to hear the timid droning voice. He
glanced at the table. Luckily, Father Yakov, in his haste, had forgotten to
take the sermons. Kunin rushed up to them, tore them into pieces, and with
loathing thrust them under the table.
“And I did not know!” he moaned, sinking on to the sofa. “After being
here over a year as member of the Rural Board, Honorary Justice of the
Peace, member of the School Committee! Blind puppet, egregious idiot! I
must make haste and help them, I must make haste!”
He turned from side to side uneasily, pressed his temples and racked his
brains.
“On the twentieth I shall get my salary, two hundred roubles. . . . On
some good pretext I will give him some, and some to the doctor’s wife. . . .
I will ask them to perform a special service here, and will get up an illness
for the doctor. . . . In that way I shan’t wound their pride. And I’ll help
Father Avraamy too. . . .”

He reckoned his money on his fingers, and was afraid to own to himself
that those two hundred roubles would hardly be enough for him to pay his
steward, his servants, the peasant who brought the meat. . . . He could not
help remembering the recent past when he was senselessly squandering his
father’s fortune, when as a puppy of twenty he had given expensive fans to
prostitutes, had paid ten roubles a day to Kuzma, his cab-driver, and in his
vanity had made presents to actresses. Oh, how useful those wasted rouble,
three-rouble, ten-rouble notes would have been now!
“Father Avraamy lives on three roubles a month!” thought Kunin. “For a
rouble the priest’s wife could get herself a chemise, and the doctor’s wife
could hire a washerwoman. But I’ll help them, anyway! I must help them.”
Here Kunin suddenly recalled the private information he had sent to the
bishop, and he writhed as from a sudden draught of cold air. This
remembrance filled him with overwhelming shame before his inner self and
before the unseen truth.
So had begun and had ended a sincere effort to be of public service on
the part of a well-intentioned but unreflecting and over-comfortable person.

THE MURDER
I

T
he evening service was being celebrated at Progonnaya Station.
Before the great ikon, painted in glaring colours on a background of
gold, stood the crowd of railway servants with their wives and
children, and also of the timbermen and sawyers who worked close to the
railway line. All stood in silence, fascinated by the glare of the lights and
the howling of the snow-storm which was aimlessly disporting itself
outside, regardless of the fact that it was the Eve of the Annunciation. The
old priest from Vedenyapino conducted the service; the sacristan and
Matvey Terehov were singing.
Matvey’s face was beaming with delight; he sang stretching out his neck
as though he wanted to soar upwards. He sang tenor and chanted the
“Praises” too in a tenor voice with honied sweetness and persuasiveness.
When he sang “Archangel Voices” he waved his arms like a conductor, and
trying to second the sacristan’s hollow bass with his tenor, achieved
something extremely complex, and from his face it could be seen that he
was experiencing great pleasure.
At last the service was over, and they all quietly dispersed, and it was
dark and empty again, and there followed that hush which is only known in
stations that stand solitary in the open country or in the forest when the
wind howls and nothing else is heard and when all the emptiness around, all
the dreariness of life slowly ebbing away is felt.
Matvey lived not far from the station at his cousin’s tavern. But he did
not want to go home. He sat down at the refreshment bar and began talking
to the waiter in a low voice.
“We had our own choir in the tile factory. And I must tell you that though
we were only workmen, our singing was first-rate, splendid. We were often
invited to the town, and when the Deputy Bishop, Father Ivan, took the
service at Trinity Church, the bishop’s singers sang in the right choir and we

in the left. Only they complained in the town that we kept the singing on
too long: ‘the factory choir drag it out,’ they used to say. It is true we began
St. Andrey’s prayers and the Praises between six and seven, and it was past
eleven when we finished, so that it was sometimes after midnight when we
got home to the factory. It was good,” sighed Matvey. “Very good it was,
indeed, Sergey Nikanoritch! But here in my father’s house it is anything but
joyful. The nearest church is four miles away; with my weak health I can’t
get so far; there are no singers there. And there is no peace or quiet in our
family; day in day out, there is an uproar, scolding, uncleanliness; we all eat
out of one bowl like peasants; and there are beetles in the cabbage soup. . . .
God has not given me health, else I would have gone away long ago, Sergey
Nikanoritch.”
Matvey Terehov was a middle-aged man about forty-five, but he had a
look of ill-health; his face was wrinkled and his lank, scanty beard was
quite grey, and that made him seem many years older. He spoke in a weak
voice, circumspectly, and held his chest when he coughed, while his eyes
assumed the uneasy and anxious look one sees in very apprehensive people.
He never said definitely what was wrong with him, but he was fond of
describing at length how once at the factory he had lifted a heavy box and
had ruptured himself, and how this had led to “the gripes,” and had forced
him to give up his work in the tile factory and come back to his native
place; but he could not explain what he meant by “the gripes.”
“I must own I am not fond of my cousin,” he went on, pouring himself
out some tea. “He is my elder; it is a sin to censure him, and I fear the Lord,
but I cannot bear it in patience. He is a haughty, surly, abusive man; he is
the torment of his relations and workmen, and constantly out of humour.
Last Sunday I asked him in an amiable way, ‘Brother, let us go to
Pahomovo for the Mass!’ but he said ‘I am not going; the priest there is a
gambler;’ and he would not come here to-day because, he said, the priest
from Vedenyapino smokes and drinks vodka. He doesn’t like the clergy! He
reads Mass himself and the Hours and the Vespers, while his sister acts as
sacristan; he says, ‘Let us pray unto the Lord’! and she, in a thin little voice
like a turkey-hen, ‘Lord, have mercy upon us! . . .’ It’s a sin, that’s what it
is. Every day I say to him, ‘Think what you are doing, brother! Repent,
brother!’ and he takes no notice.”

Sergey Nikanoritch, the waiter, poured out five glasses of tea and carried
them on a tray to the waiting-room. He had scarcely gone in when there was
a shout:
“Is that the way to serve it, pig’s face? You don’t know how to wait!”
It was the voice of the station-master. There was a timid mutter, then
again a harsh and angry shout:
“Get along!”
The waiter came back greatly crestfallen.
“There was a time when I gave satisfaction to counts and princes,” he
said in a low voice; “but now I don’t know how to serve tea. . . . He called
me names before the priest and the ladies!”
The waiter, Sergey Nikanoritch, had once had money of his own, and had
kept a buffet at a first-class station, which was a junction, in the principal
town of a province. There he had worn a swallow-tail coat and a gold chain.
But things had gone ill with him; he had squandered all his own money
over expensive fittings and service; he had been robbed by his staff, and
getting gradually into difficulties, had moved to another station less
bustling. Here his wife had left him, taking with her all the silver, and he
moved to a third station of a still lower class, where no hot dishes were
served. Then to a fourth. Frequently changing his situation and sinking
lower and lower, he had at last come to Progonnaya, and here he used to sell
nothing but tea and cheap vodka, and for lunch hard-boiled eggs and dry
sausages, which smelt of tar, and which he himself sarcastically said were
only fit for the orchestra. He was bald all over the top of his head, and had
prominent blue eyes and thick bushy whiskers, which he often combed out,
looking into the little looking-glass. Memories of the past haunted him
continually; he could never get used to sausage “only fit for the orchestra,”
to the rudeness of the station-master, and to the peasants who used to haggle
over the prices, and in his opinion it was as unseemly to haggle over prices
in a refreshment room as in a chemist’s shop. He was ashamed of his
poverty and degradation, and that shame was now the leading interest of his
life.

“Spring is late this year,” said Matvey, listening. “It’s a good job; I don’t
like spring. In spring it is very muddy, Sergey Nikanoritch. In books they
write: Spring, the birds sing, the sun is setting, but what is there pleasant in
that? A bird is a bird, and nothing more. I am fond of good company, of
listening to folks, of talking of religion or singing something agreeable in
chorus; but as for nightingales and flowers—bless them, I say!”
He began again about the tile factory, about the choir, but Sergey
Nikanoritch could not get over his mortification, and kept shrugging his
shoulders and muttering. Matvey said good-bye and went home.
There was no frost, and the snow was already melting on the roofs,
though it was still falling in big flakes; they were whirling rapidly round
and round in the air and chasing one another in white clouds along the
railway line. And the oak forest on both sides of the line, in the dim light of
the moon which was hidden somewhere high up in the clouds, resounded
with a prolonged sullen murmur. When a violent storm shakes the trees,
how terrible they are! Matvey walked along the causeway beside the line,
covering his face and his hands, while the wind beat on his back. All at once
a little nag, plastered all over with snow, came into sight; a sledge scraped
along the bare stones of the causeway, and a peasant, white all over, too,
with his head muffled up, cracked his whip. Matvey looked round after him,
but at once, as though it had been a vision, there was neither sledge nor
peasant to be seen, and he hastened his steps, suddenly scared, though he
did not know why.
Here was the crossing and the dark little house where the signalman
lived. The barrier was raised, and by it perfect mountains had drifted and
clouds of snow were whirling round like witches on broomsticks. At that
point the line was crossed by an old highroad, which was still called “the
track.” On the right, not far from the crossing, by the roadside stood
Terehov’s tavern, which had been a posting inn. Here there was always a
light twinkling at night.
When Matvey reached home there was a strong smell of incense in all the
rooms and even in the entry. His cousin Yakov Ivanitch was still reading the
evening service. In the prayer-room where this was going on, in the corner
opposite the door, there stood a shrine of old-fashioned ancestral ikons in

gilt settings, and both walls to right and to left were decorated with ikons of
ancient and modern fashion, in shrines and without them. On the table,
which was draped to the floor, stood an ikon of the Annunciation, and close
by a cyprus-wood cross and the censer; wax candles were burning. Beside
the table was a reading desk. As he passed by the prayer-room, Matvey
stopped and glanced in at the door. Yakov Ivanitch was reading at the desk
at that moment, his sister Aglaia, a tall lean old woman in a dark-blue dress
and white kerchief, was praying with him. Yakov Ivanitch’s daughter
Dashutka, an ugly freckled girl of eighteen, was there, too, barefoot as
usual, and wearing the dress in which she had at nightfall taken water to the
cattle.
“Glory to Thee Who hast shown us the light!” Yakov Ivanitch boomed
out in a chant, bowing low.
Aglaia propped her chin on her hand and chanted in a thin, shrill,
drawling voice. And upstairs, above the ceiling, there was the sound of
vague voices which seemed menacing or ominous of evil. No one had lived
on the storey above since a fire there a long time ago. The windows were
boarded up, and empty bottles lay about on the floor between the beams.
Now the wind was banging and droning, and it seemed as though someone
were running and stumbling over the beams.
Half of the lower storey was used as a tavern, while Terehov’s family
lived in the other half, so that when drunken visitors were noisy in the
tavern every word they said could be heard in the rooms. Matvey lived in a
room next to the kitchen, with a big stove, in which, in old days, when this
had been a posting inn, bread had been baked every day. Dashutka, who had
no room of her own, lived in the same room behind the stove. A cricket
chirped there always at night and mice ran in and out.
Matvey lighted a candle and began reading a book which he had
borrowed from the station policeman. While he was sitting over it the
service ended, and they all went to bed. Dashutka lay down, too. She began
snoring at once, but soon woke up and said, yawning:
“You shouldn’t burn a candle for nothing, Uncle Matvey.”
“It’s my candle,” answered Matvey; “I bought it with my own money.”

Dashutka turned over a little and fell asleep again. Matvey sat up a good
time longer—he was not sleepy—and when he had finished the last page he
took a pencil out of a box and wrote on the book:
“I, Matvey Terehov, have read this book, and think it the very best of all
the books I have read, for which I express my gratitude to the non-
commissioned officer of the Police Department of Railways, Kuzma
Nikolaev Zhukov, as the possessor of this priceless book.”
He considered it an obligation of politeness to make such inscriptions in
other people’s books.

II

On Annunciation Day, after the mail train had been sent off, Matvey was
sitting in the refreshment bar, talking and drinking tea with lemon in it.
The waiter and Zhukov the policeman were listening to him.
“I was, I must tell you,” Matvey was saying, “inclined to religion from
my earliest childhood. I was only twelve years old when I used to read the
epistle in church, and my parents were greatly delighted, and every summer
I used to go on a pilgrimage with my dear mother. Sometimes other lads
would be singing songs and catching crayfish, while I would be all the time
with my mother. My elders commended me, and, indeed, I was pleased
myself that I was of such good behaviour. And when my mother sent me
with her blessing to the factory, I used between working hours to sing tenor
there in our choir, and nothing gave me greater pleasure. I needn’t say, I
drank no vodka, I smoked no tobacco, and lived in chastity; but we all
know such a mode of life is displeasing to the enemy of mankind, and he,
the unclean spirit, once tried to ruin me and began to darken my mind, just
as now with my cousin. First of all, I took a vow to fast every Monday and
not to eat meat any day, and as time went on all sorts of fancies came over
me. For the first week of Lent down to Saturday the holy fathers have
ordained a diet of dry food, but it is no sin for the weak or those who work
hard even to drink tea, yet not a crumb passed into my mouth till the
Sunday, and afterwards all through Lent I did not allow myself a drop of
oil, and on Wednesdays and Fridays I did not touch a morsel at all. It was

the same in the lesser fasts. Sometimes in St. Peter’s fast our factory lads
would have fish soup, while I would sit a little apart from them and suck a
dry crust. Different people have different powers, of course, but I can say of
myself I did not find fast days hard, and, indeed, the greater the zeal the
easier it seems. You are only hungry on the first days of the fast, and then
you get used to it; it goes on getting easier, and by the end of a week you
don’t mind it at all, and there is a numb feeling in your legs as though you
were not on earth, but in the clouds. And, besides that, I laid all sorts of
penances on myself; I used to get up in the night and pray, bowing down to
the ground, used to drag heavy stones from place to place, used to go out
barefoot in the snow, and I even wore chains, too. Only, as time went on,
you know, I was confessing one day to the priest and suddenly this
reflection occurred to me: why, this priest, I thought, is married, he eats
meat and smokes tobacco—how can he confess me, and what power has he
to absolve my sins if he is more sinful that I? I even scruple to eat Lenten
oil, while he eats sturgeon, I dare say. I went to another priest, and he, as ill
luck would have it, was a fat fleshy man, in a silk cassock; he rustled like a
lady, and he smelt of tobacco too. I went to fast and confess in the
monastery, and my heart was not at ease even there; I kept fancying the
monks were not living according to their rules. And after that I could not
find a service to my mind: in one place they read the service too fast, in
another they sang the wrong prayer, in a third the sacristan stammered.
Sometimes, the Lord forgive me a sinner, I would stand in church and my
heart would throb with anger. How could one pray, feeling like that? And I
fancied that the people in the church did not cross themselves properly, did
not listen properly; wherever I looked it seemed to me that they were all
drunkards, that they broke the fast, smoked, lived loose lives and played
cards. I was the only one who lived according to the commandments. The
wily spirit did not slumber; it got worse as it went on. I gave up singing in
the choir and I did not go to church at all; since my notion was that I was a
righteous man and that the church did not suit me owing to its imperfections
—that is, indeed, like a fallen angel, I was puffed up in my pride beyond all
belief. After this I began attempting to make a church for myself. I hired
from a deaf woman a tiny little room, a long way out of town near the
cemetery, and made a prayer-room like my cousin’s, only I had big church
candlesticks, too, and a real censer. In this prayer-room of mine I kept the
rules of holy Mount Athos—that is, every day my matins began at midnight

without fail, and on the eve of the chief of the twelve great holy days my
midnight service lasted ten hours and sometimes even twelve. Monks are
allowed by rule to sit during the singing of the Psalter and the reading of the
Bible, but I wanted to be better than the monks, and so I used to stand all
through. I used to read and sing slowly, with tears and sighing, lifting up my
hands, and I used to go straight from prayer to work without sleeping; and,
indeed, I was always praying at my work, too. Well, it got all over the town
‘Matvey is a saint; Matvey heals the sick and senseless.’ I never had healed
anyone, of course, but we all know wherever any heresy or false doctrine
springs up there’s no keeping the female sex away. They are just like flies
on the honey. Old maids and females of all sorts came trailing to me,
bowing down to my feet, kissing my hands and crying out I was a saint and
all the rest of it, and one even saw a halo round my head. It was too
crowded in the prayer-room. I took a bigger room, and then we had a
regular tower of Babel. The devil got hold of me completely and screened
the light from my eyes with his unclean hoofs. We all behaved as though we
were frantic. I read, while the old maids and other females sang, and then
after standing on their legs for twenty-four hours or longer without eating or
drinking, suddenly a trembling would come over them as though they were
in a fever; after that, one would begin screaming and then another—it was
horrible! I, too, would shiver all over like a Jew in a frying-pan, I don’t
know myself why, and our legs began to prance about. It’s a strange thing,
indeed: you don’t want to, but you prance about and waggle your arms; and
after that, screaming and shrieking, we all danced and ran after one another
—ran till we dropped; and in that way, in wild frenzy, I fell into
fornication.”
The policeman laughed, but, noticing that no one else was laughing,
became serious and said:
“That’s Molokanism. I have heard they are all like that in the Caucasus.”
“But I was not killed by a thunderbolt,” Matvey went on, crossing
himself before the ikon and moving his lips. “My dead mother must have
been praying for me in the other world. When everyone in the town looked
upon me as a saint, and even the ladies and gentlemen of good family used
to come to me in secret for consolation, I happened to go into our landlord,
Osip Varlamitch, to ask forgiveness —it was the Day of Forgiveness—and

he fastened the door with the hook, and we were left alone face to face. And
he began to reprove me, and I must tell you Osip Varlamitch was a man of
brains, though without education, and everyone respected and feared him,
for he was a man of stern, God-fearing life and worked hard. He had been
the mayor of the town, and a warden of the church for twenty years maybe,
and had done a great deal of good; he had covered all the New Moscow
Road with gravel, had painted the church, and had decorated the columns to
look like malachite. Well, he fastened the door, and—‘I have been wanting
to get at you for a long time, you rascal, . . .’ he said. ‘You think you are a
saint,’ he said. ‘No you are not a saint, but a backslider from God, a heretic
and an evildoer! . . .’ And he went on and on. . . . I can’t tell you how he
said it, so eloquently and cleverly, as though it were all written down, and
so touchingly. He talked for two hours. His words penetrated my soul; my
eyes were opened. I listened, listened and —burst into sobs! ‘Be an
ordinary man,’ he said, ‘eat and drink, dress and pray like everyone else. All
that is above the ordinary is of the devil. Your chains,’ he said, ‘are of the
devil; your fasting is of the devil; your prayer-room is of the devil. It is all
pride,’ he said. Next day, on Monday in Holy Week, it pleased God I should
fall ill. I ruptured myself and was taken to the hospital. I was terribly
worried, and wept bitterly and trembled. I thought there was a straight road
before me from the hospital to hell, and I almost died. I was in misery on a
bed of sickness for six months, and when I was discharged the first thing I
did I confessed, and took the sacrament in the regular way and became a
man again. Osip Varlamitch saw me off home and exhorted me:
‘Remember, Matvey, that anything above the ordinary is of the devil.’ And
now I eat and drink like everyone else and pray like everyone else . . . . If it
happens now that the priest smells of tobacco or vodka I don’t venture to
blame him, because the priest, too, of course, is an ordinary man. But as
soon as I am told that in the town or in the village a saint has set up who
does not eat for weeks, and makes rules of his own, I know whose work it
is. So that is how I carried on in the past, gentlemen. Now, like Osip
Varlamitch, I am continually exhorting my cousins and reproaching them,
but I am a voice crying in the wilderness. God has not vouchsafed me the
gift.”
Matvey’s story evidently made no impression whatever. Sergey
Nikanoritch said nothing, but began clearing the refreshments off the

counter, while the policeman began talking of how rich Matvey’s cousin
was.
“He must have thirty thousand at least,” he said.
Zhukov the policeman, a sturdy, well-fed, red-haired man with a full face
(his cheeks quivered when he walked), usually sat lolling and crossing his
legs when not in the presence of his superiors. As he talked he swayed to
and fro and whistled carelessly, while his face had a self-satisfied replete
air, as though he had just had dinner. He was making money, and he always
talked of it with the air of a connoisseur. He undertook jobs as an agent, and
when anyone wanted to sell an estate, a horse or a carriage, they applied to
him.
“Yes, it will be thirty thousand, I dare say,” Sergey Nikanoritch assented.
“Your grandfather had an immense fortune,” he said, addressing Matvey.
“Immense it was; all left to your father and your uncle. Your father died as a
young man and your uncle got hold of it all, and afterwards, of course,
Yakov Ivanitch. While you were going pilgrimages with your mama and
singing tenor in the factory, they didn’t let the grass grow under their feet.”
“Fifteen thousand comes to your share,” said the policeman swaying
from side to side. “The tavern belongs to you in common, so the capital is
in common. Yes. If I were in your place I should have taken it into court
long ago. I would have taken it into court for one thing, and while the case
was going on I’d have knocked his face to a jelly.”
Yakov Ivanitch was disliked because, when anyone believes differently
from others, it upsets even people who are indifferent to religion. The
policeman disliked him also because he, too, sold horses and carriages.
“You don’t care about going to law with your cousin because you have
plenty of money of your own,” said the waiter to Matvey, looking at him
with envy. “It is all very well for anyone who has means, but here I shall die
in this position, I suppose. . . .”
Matvey began declaring that he hadn’t any money at all, but Sergey
Nikanoritch was not listening. Memories of the past and of the insults
which he endured every day came showering upon him. His bald head
began to perspire; he flushed and blinked.

“A cursed life!” he said with vexation, and he banged the sausage on the
floor.

III

The story ran that the tavern had been built in the time of Alexander I, by
a widow who had settled here with her son; her name was Avdotya Terehov.
The dark roofed-in courtyard and the gates always kept locked excited,
especially on moonlight nights, a feeling of depression and unaccountable
uneasiness in people who drove by with posting-horses, as though sorcerers
or robbers were living in it; and the driver always looked back after he
passed, and whipped up his horses. Travellers did not care to put up here, as
the people of the house were always unfriendly and charged heavily. The
yard was muddy even in summer; huge fat pigs used to lie there in the mud,
and the horses in which the Terehovs dealt wandered about untethered, and
often it happened that they ran out of the yard and dashed along the road
like mad creatures, terrifying the pilgrim women. At that time there was a
great deal of traffic on the road; long trains of loaded waggons trailed by,
and all sorts of adventures happened, such as, for instance, that thirty years
ago some waggoners got up a quarrel with a passing merchant and killed
him, and a slanting cross is standing to this day half a mile from the tavern;
posting-chaises with bells and the heavy dormeuses of country gentlemen
drove by; and herds of horned cattle passed bellowing and stirring up
clouds of dust.
When the railway came there was at first at this place only a platform,
which was called simply a halt; ten years afterwards the present station,
Progonnaya, was built. The traffic on the old posting-road almost ceased,
and only local landowners and peasants drove along it now, but the working
people walked there in crowds in spring and autumn. The posting-inn was
transformed into a restaurant; the upper storey was destroyed by fire, the
roof had grown yellow with rust, the roof over the yard had fallen by
degrees, but huge fat pigs, pink and revolting, still wallowed in the mud in
the yard. As before, the horses sometimes ran away and, lashing their tails
dashed madly along the road. In the tavern they sold tea, hay oats and flour,
as well as vodka and beer, to be drunk on the premises and also to be taken

away; they sold spirituous liquors warily, for they had never taken out a
licence.
The Terehovs had always been distinguished by their piety, so much so
that they had even been given the nickname of the “Godlies.” But perhaps
because they lived apart like bears, avoided people and thought out all their
ideas for themselves, they were given to dreams and to doubts and to
changes of faith and almost each generation had a peculiar faith of its own.
The grandmother Avdotya, who had built the inn, was an Old Believer; her
son and both her grandsons (the fathers of Matvey and Yakov) went to the
Orthodox church, entertained the clergy, and worshipped before the new
ikons as devoutly as they had done before the old. The son in old age
refused to eat meat and imposed upon himself the rule of silence,
considering all conversation as sin; it was the peculiarity of the grandsons
that they interpreted the Scripture not simply, but sought in it a hidden
meaning, declaring that every sacred word must contain a mystery.
Avdotya’s great-grandson Matvey had struggled from early childhood
with all sorts of dreams and fancies and had been almost ruined by it; the
other great-grandson, Yakov Ivanitch, was orthodox, but after his wife’s
death he gave up going to church and prayed at home. Following his
example, his sister Aglaia had turned, too; she did not go to church herself,
and did not let Dashutka go. Of Aglaia it was told that in her youth she used
to attend the Flagellant meetings in Vedenyapino, and that she was still a
Flagellant in secret, and that was why she wore a white kerchief.
Yakov Ivanitch was ten years older than Matvey—he was a very
handsome tall old man with a big grey beard almost to his waist, and bushy
eyebrows which gave his face a stern, even ill-natured expression. He wore
a long jerkin of good cloth or a black sheepskin coat, and altogether tried to
be clean and neat in dress; he wore goloshes even in dry weather. He did
not go to church, because, to his thinking, the services were not properly
celebrated and because the priests drank wine at unlawful times and smoked
tobacco. Every day he read and sang the service at home with Aglaia. At
Vedenyapino they left out the “Praises” at early matins, and had no evening
service even on great holidays, but he used to read through at home
everything that was laid down for every day, without hurrying or leaving
out a single line, and even in his spare time read aloud the Lives of the

Saints. And in everyday life he adhered strictly to the rules of the church;
thus, if wine were allowed on some day in Lent “for the sake of the vigil,”
then he never failed to drink wine, even if he were not inclined.
He read, sang, burned incense and fasted, not for the sake of receiving
blessings of some sort from God, but for the sake of good order. Man
cannot live without religion, and religion ought to be expressed from year to
year and from day to day in a certain order, so that every morning and every
evening a man might turn to God with exactly those words and thoughts
that were befitting that special day and hour. One must live, and, therefore,
also pray as is pleasing to God, and so every day one must read and sing
what is pleasing to God—that is, what is laid down in the rule of the church.
Thus the first chapter of St. John must only be read on Easter Day, and “It is
most meet” must not be sung from Easter to Ascension, and so on. The
consciousness of this order and its importance afforded Yakov Ivanitch
great gratification during his religious exercises. When he was forced to
break this order by some necessity—to drive to town or to the bank, for
instance his conscience was uneasy and he felt miserable.
When his cousin Matvey had returned unexpectedly from the factory and
settled in the tavern as though it were his home, he had from the very first
day disturbed his settled order. He refused to pray with them, had meals and
drank tea at wrong times, got up late, drank milk on Wednesdays and
Fridays on the pretext of weak health; almost every day he went into the
prayer-room while they were at prayers and cried: “Think what you are
doing, brother! Repent, brother!” These words threw Yakov into a fury,
while Aglaia could not refrain from beginning to scold; or at night Matvey
would steal into the prayer-room and say softly: “Cousin, your prayer is not
pleasing to God. For it is written, First be reconciled with thy brother and
then offer thy gift. You lend money at usury, you deal in vodka—repent!”
In Matvey’s words Yakov saw nothing but the usual evasions of empty-
headed and careless people who talk of loving your neighbour, of being
reconciled with your brother, and so on, simply to avoid praying, fasting
and reading holy books, and who talk contemptuously of profit and interest
simply because they don’t like working. Of course, to be poor, save
nothing, and put by nothing was a great deal easier than being rich.

But yet he was troubled and could not pray as before. As soon as he went
into the prayer-room and opened the book he began to be afraid his cousin
would come in and hinder him; and, in fact, Matvey did soon appear and
cry in a trembling voice: “Think what you are doing, brother! Repent,
brother!” Aglaia stormed and Yakov, too, flew into a passion and shouted:
“Go out of my house!” while Matvey answered him: “The house belongs to
both of us.”
Yakov would begin singing and reading again, but he could not regain his
calm, and unconsciously fell to dreaming over his book. Though he
regarded his cousin’s words as nonsense, yet for some reason it had of late
haunted his memory that it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of
heaven, that the year before last he had made a very good bargain over
buying a stolen horse, that one day when his wife was alive a drunkard had
died of vodka in his tavern. . . .
He slept badly at nights now and woke easily, and he could hear that
Matvey, too, was awake, and continually sighing and pining for his tile
factory. And while Yakov turned over from one side to another at night he
thought of the stolen horse and the drunken man, and what was said in the
gospels about the camel.
It looked as though his dreaminess were coming over him again. And as
ill-luck would have it, although it was the end of March, every day it kept
snowing, and the forest roared as though it were winter, and there was no
believing that spring would ever come. The weather disposed one to
depression, and to quarrelling and to hatred and in the night, when the wind
droned over the ceiling, it seemed as though someone were living overhead
in the empty storey; little by little the broodings settled like a burden on his
mind, his head burned and he could not sleep.

IV

On the morning of the Monday before Good Friday, Matvey heard from
his room Dashutka say to Aglaia:
“Uncle Matvey said, the other day, that there is no need to fast.”

Matvey remembered the whole conversation he had had the evening
before with Dashutka, and he felt hurt all at once.
“Girl, don’t do wrong!” he said in a moaning voice, like a sick man. “You
can’t do without fasting; our Lord Himself fasted forty days. I only
explained that fasting does a bad man no good.”
“You should just listen to the factory hands; they can teach you
goodness,” Aglaia said sarcastically as she washed the floor (she usually
washed the floors on working days and was always angry with everyone
when she did it). “We know how they keep the fasts in the factory. You had
better ask that uncle of yours—ask him about his ‘Darling,’ how he used to
guzzle milk on fast days with her, the viper. He teaches others; he forgets
about his viper. But ask him who was it he left his money with—who was
it?”
Matvey had carefully concealed from everyone, as though it were a foul
sore, that during that period of his life when old women and unmarried girls
had danced and run about with him at their prayers he had formed a
connection with a working woman and had had a child by her. When he
went home he had given this woman all he had saved at the factory, and had
borrowed from his landlord for his journey, and now he had only a few
roubles which he spent on tea and candles. The “Darling” had informed him
later on that the child was dead, and asked him in a letter what she should
do with the money. This letter was brought from the station by the labourer.
Aglaia intercepted it and read it, and had reproached Matvey with his
“Darling” every day since.
“Just fancy, nine hundred roubles,” Aglaia went on. “You gave nine
hundred roubles to a viper, no relation, a factory jade, blast you!” She had
flown into a passion by now and was shouting shrilly: “Can’t you speak? I
could tear you to pieces, wretched creature! Nine hundred roubles as though
it were a farthing. You might have left it to Dashutka—she is a relation, not
a stranger—or else have it sent to Byelev for Marya’s poor orphans. And
your viper did not choke, may she be thrice accursed, the she-devil! May
she never look upon the light of day!”
Yakov Ivanitch called to her: it was time to begin the “Hours.” She
washed, put on a white kerchief, and by now quiet and meek, went into the

prayer-room to the brother she loved. When she spoke to Matvey or served
peasants in the tavern with tea she was a gaunt, keen-eyed, ill-humoured old
woman; in the prayer-room her face was serene and softened, she looked
younger altogether, she curtsied affectedly, and even pursed up her lips.
Yakov Ivanitch began reading the service softly and dolefully, as he
always did in Lent. After he had read a little he stopped to listen to the
stillness that reigned through the house, and then went on reading again,
with a feeling of gratification; he folded his hands in supplication, rolled his
eyes, shook his head, sighed. But all at once there was the sound of voices.
The policeman and Sergey Nikanoritch had come to see Matvey. Yakov
Ivanitch was embarrassed at reading aloud and singing when there were
strangers in the house, and now, hearing voices, he began reading in a
whisper and slowly. He could hear in the prayer-room the waiter say:
“The Tatar at Shtchepovo is selling his business for fifteen hundred. He’ll
take five hundred down and an I.O.U. for the rest. And so, Matvey
Vassilitch, be so kind as to lend me that five hundred roubles. I will pay you
two per cent a month.”
“What money have I got?” cried Matvey, amazed. “I have no money!”
“Two per cent a month will be a godsend to you,” the policeman
explained. “While lying by, your money is simply eaten by the moth, and
that’s all that you get from it.”
Afterwards the visitors went out and a silence followed. But Yakov
Ivanitch had hardly begun reading and singing again when a voice was
heard outside the door:
“Brother, let me have a horse to drive to Vedenyapino.”
It was Matvey. And Yakov was troubled again. “Which can you go
with?” he asked after a moment’s thought. “The man has gone with the
sorrel to take the pig, and I am going with the little stallion to Shuteykino as
soon as I have finished.”
“Brother, why is it you can dispose of the horses and not I?” Matvey
asked with irritation.

“Because I am not taking them for pleasure, but for work.”
“Our property is in common, so the horses are in common, too, and you
ought to understand that, brother.”
A silence followed. Yakov did not go on praying, but waited for Matvey
to go away from the door.
“Brother,” said Matvey, “I am a sick man. I don’t want possession —let
them go; you have them, but give me a small share to keep me in my
illness. Give it me and I’ll go away.”
Yakov did not speak. He longed to be rid of Matvey, but he could not
give him money, since all the money was in the business; besides, there had
never been a case of the family dividing in the whole history of the
Terehovs. Division means ruin.
Yakov said nothing, but still waited for Matvey to go away, and kept
looking at his sister, afraid that she would interfere, and that there would be
a storm of abuse again, as there had been in the morning. When at last
Matvey did go Yakov went on reading, but now he had no pleasure in it.
There was a heaviness in his head and a darkness before his eyes from
continually bowing down to the ground, and he was weary of the sound of
his soft dejected voice. When such a depression of spirit came over him at
night, he put it down to not being able to sleep; by day it frightened him,
and he began to feel as though devils were sitting on his head and
shoulders.
Finishing the service after a fashion, dissatisfied and ill-humoured, he set
off for Shuteykino. In the previous autumn a gang of navvies had dug a
boundary ditch near Progonnaya, and had run up a bill at the tavern for
eighteen roubles, and now he had to find their foreman in Shuteykino and
get the money from him. The road had been spoilt by the thaw and the
snowstorm; it was of a dark colour and full of holes, and in parts it had
given way altogether. The snow had sunk away at the sides below the road,
so that he had to drive, as it were, upon a narrow causeway, and it was very
difficult to turn off it when he met anything. The sky had been overcast ever
since the morning and a damp wind was blowing. . . .

A long train of sledges met him; peasant women were carting bricks.
Yakov had to turn off the road. His horse sank into the snow up to its belly;
the sledge lurched over to the right, and to avoid falling out he bent over to
the left, and sat so all the time the sledges moved slowly by him. Through
the wind he heard the creaking of the sledge poles and the breathing of the
gaunt horses, and the women saying about him, “There’s Godly coming,”
while one, gazing with compassion at his horse, said quickly:
“It looks as though the snow will be lying till Yegory’s Day! They are
worn out with it!”
Yakov sat uncomfortably huddled up, screwing up his eyes on account of
the wind, while horses and red bricks kept passing before him. And perhaps
because he was uncomfortable and his side ached, he felt all at once
annoyed, and the business he was going about seemed to him unimportant,
and he reflected that he might send the labourer next day to Shuteykino.
Again, as in the previous sleepless night, he thought of the saying about the
camel, and then memories of all sorts crept into his mind; of the peasant
who had sold him the stolen horse, of the drunken man, of the peasant
women who had brought their samovars to him to pawn. Of course, every
merchant tries to get as much as he can, but Yakov felt depressed that he
was in trade; he longed to get somewhere far away from this routine, and he
felt dreary at the thought that he would have to read the evening service that
day. The wind blew straight into his face and soughed in his collar; and it
seemed as though it were whispering to him all these thoughts, bringing
them from the broad white plain . . . . Looking at that plain, familiar to him
from childhood, Yakov remembered that he had had just this same trouble
and these same thoughts in his young days when dreams and imaginings
had come upon him and his faith had wavered.
He felt miserable at being alone in the open country; he turned back and
drove slowly after the sledges, and the women laughed and said:
“Godly has turned back.”
At home nothing had been cooked and the samovar was not heated on
account of the fast, and this made the day seem very long. Yakov Ivanitch
had long ago taken the horse to the stable, dispatched the flour to the
station, and twice taken up the Psalms to read, and yet the evening was still

far off. Aglaia has already washed all the floors, and, having nothing to do,
was tidying up her chest, the lid of which was pasted over on the inside
with labels off bottles. Matvey, hungry and melancholy, sat reading, or went
up to the Dutch stove and slowly scrutinized the tiles which reminded him
of the factory. Dashutka was asleep; then, waking up, she went to take
water to the cattle. When she was getting water from the well the cord
broke and the pail fell in. The labourer began looking for a boathook to get
the pail out, and Dashutka, barefooted, with legs as red as a goose’s,
followed him about in the muddy snow, repeating: “It’s too far!” She meant
to say that the well was too deep for the hook to reach the bottom, but the
labourer did not understand her, and evidently she bothered him, so that he
suddenly turned around and abused her in unseemly language. Yakov
Ivanitch, coming out that moment into the yard, heard Dashutka answer the
labourer in a long rapid stream of choice abuse, which she could only have
learned from drunken peasants in the tavern.
“What are you saying, shameless girl!” he cried to her, and he was
positively aghast. “What language!”
And she looked at her father in perplexity, dully, not understanding why
she should not use those words. He would have admonished her, but she
struck him as so savage and benighted; and for the first time he realized that
she had no religion. And all this life in the forest, in the snow, with drunken
peasants, with coarse oaths, seemed to him as savage and benighted as this
girl, and instead of giving her a lecture he only waved his hand and went
back into the room.
At that moment the policeman and Sergey Nikanoritch came in again to
see Matvey. Yakov Ivanitch thought that these people, too, had no religion,
and that that did not trouble them in the least; and human life began to seem
to him as strange, senseless and unenlightened as a dog’s. Bareheaded he
walked about the yard, then he went out on to the road, clenching his fists.
Snow was falling in big flakes at the time. His beard was blown about in the
wind. He kept shaking his head, as though there were something weighing
upon his head and shoulders, as though devils were sitting on them; and it
seemed to him that it was not himself walking about, but some wild beast, a
huge terrible beast, and that if he were to cry out his voice would be a roar

that would sound all over the forest and the plain, and would frighten
everyone. . . .

V

When he went back into the house the policeman was no longer there,
but the waiter was sitting with Matvey, counting something on the
reckoning beads. He was in the habit of coming often, almost every day, to
the tavern; in old days he had come to see Yakov Ivanitch, now he came to
see Matvey. He was continually reckoning on the beads, while his face
perspired and looked strained, or he would ask for money or, stroking his
whiskers, would describe how he had once been in a first-class station and
used to prepare champagne-punch for officers, and at grand dinners served
the sturgeon-soup with his own hands. Nothing in this world interested him
but refreshment bars, and he could only talk about things to eat, about wines
and the paraphernalia of the dinner-table. On one occasion, handing a cup
of tea to a young woman who was nursing her baby and wishing to say
something agreeable to her, he expressed himself in this way:
“The mother’s breast is the baby’s refreshment bar.”
Reckoning with the beads in Matvey’s room, he asked for money; said he
could not go on living at Progonnaya, and several times repeated in a tone
of voice that sounded as though he were just going to cry:
“Where am I to go? Where am I to go now? Tell me that, please.”
Then Matvey went into the kitchen and began peeling some boiled
potatoes which he had probably put away from the day before. It was quiet,
and it seemed to Yakov Ivanitch that the waiter was gone. It was past the
time for evening service; he called Aglaia, and, thinking there was no one
else in the house sang out aloud without embarrassment. He sang and read,
but was inwardly pronouncing other words, “Lord, forgive me! Lord, save
me!” and, one after another, without ceasing, he made low bows to the
ground as though he wanted to exhaust himself, and he kept shaking his
head, so that Aglaia looked at him with wonder. He was afraid Matvey
would come in, and was certain that he would come in, and felt an anger

against him which he could overcome neither by prayer nor by continually
bowing down to the ground.
Matvey opened the door very softly and went into the prayer-room.
“It’s a sin, such a sin!” he said reproachfully, and heaved a sigh. “Repent!
Think what you are doing, brother!”
Yakov Ivanitch, clenching his fists and not looking at him for fear of
striking him, went quickly out of the room. Feeling himself a huge terrible
wild beast, just as he had done before on the road, he crossed the passage
into the grey, dirty room, reeking with smoke and fog, in which the peasants
usually drank tea, and there he spent a long time walking from one corner to
the other, treading heavily, so that the crockery jingled on the shelves and
the tables shook. It was clear to him now that he was himself dissatisfied
with his religion, and could not pray as he used to do. He must repent, he
must think things over, reconsider, live and pray in some other way. But
how pray? And perhaps all this was a temptation of the devil, and nothing
of this was necessary? . . . How was it to be? What was he to do? Who
could guide him? What helplessness! He stopped and, clutching at his head,
began to think, but Matvey’s being near him prevented him from reflecting
calmly. And he went rapidly into the room.
Matvey was sitting in the kitchen before a bowl of potato, eating. Close
by, near the stove, Aglaia and Dashutka were sitting facing one another,
spinning yarn. Between the stove and the table at which Matvey was sitting
was stretched an ironing-board; on it stood a cold iron.
“Sister,” Matvey asked, “let me have a little oil!”
“Who eats oil on a day like this?” asked Aglaia.
“I am not a monk, sister, but a layman. And in my weak health I may take
not only oil but milk.”
“Yes, at the factory you may have anything.”
Aglaia took a bottle of Lenten oil from the shelf and banged it angrily
down before Matvey, with a malignant smile evidently pleased that he was
such a sinner.

“But I tell you, you can’t eat oil!” shouted Yakov.
Aglaia and Dashutka started, but Matvey poured the oil into the bowl and
went on eating as though he had not heard.
“I tell you, you can’t eat oil!” Yakov shouted still more loudly; he turned
red all over, snatched up the bowl, lifted it higher than his head, and dashed
it with all his force to the ground, so that it flew into fragments. “Don’t dare
to speak!” he cried in a furious voice, though Matvey had not said a word.
“Don’t dare!” he repeated, and struck his fist on the table.
Matvey turned pale and got up.
“Brother!” he said, still munching—“brother, think what you are about!”
“Out of my house this minute!” shouted Yakov; he loathed Matvey’s
wrinkled face, and his voice, and the crumbs on his moustache, and the fact
that he was munching. “Out, I tell you!”
“Brother, calm yourself! The pride of hell has confounded you!”
“Hold your tongue!” (Yakov stamped.) “Go away, you devil!”
“If you care to know,” Matvey went on in a loud voice, as he, too, began
to get angry, “you are a backslider from God and a heretic. The accursed
spirits have hidden the true light from you; your prayer is not acceptable to
God. Repent before it is too late! The deathbed of the sinner is terrible!
Repent, brother!”
Yakov seized him by the shoulders and dragged him away from the table,
while he turned whiter than ever, and frightened and bewildered, began
muttering, “What is it? What’s the matter?” and, struggling and making
efforts to free himself from Yakov’s hands, he accidentally caught hold of
his shirt near the neck and tore the collar; and it seemed to Aglaia that he
was trying to beat Yakov. She uttered a shriek, snatched up the bottle of
Lenten oil and with all her force brought it down straight on the skull of the
cousin she hated. Matvey reeled, and in one instant his face became calm
and indifferent. Yakov, breathing heavily, excited, and feeling pleasure at
the gurgle the bottle had made, like a living thing, when it had struck the
head, kept him from falling and several times (he remembered this very

distinctly) motioned Aglaia towards the iron with his finger; and only when
the blood began trickling through his hands and he heard Dashutka’s loud
wail, and when the ironing-board fell with a crash, and Matvey rolled
heavily on it, Yakov left off feeling anger and understood what had
happened.
“Let him rot, the factory buck!” Aglaia brought out with repulsion, still
keeping the iron in her hand. The white bloodstained kerchief slipped on to
her shoulders and her grey hair fell in disorder. “He’s got what he
deserved!”
Everything was terrible. Dashutka sat on the floor near the stove with the
yarn in her hands, sobbing, and continually bowing down, uttering at each
bow a gasping sound. But nothing was so terrible to Yakov as the potato in
the blood, on which he was afraid of stepping, and there was something else
terrible which weighed upon him like a bad dream and seemed the worst
danger, though he could not take it in for the first minute. This was the
waiter, Sergey Nikanoritch, who was standing in the doorway with the
reckoning beads in his hands, very pale, looking with horror at what was
happening in the kitchen. Only when he turned and went quickly into the
passage and from there outside, Yakov grasped who it was and followed
him.
Wiping his hands on the snow as he went, he reflected. The idea flashed
through his mind that their labourer had gone away long before and had
asked leave to stay the night at home in the village; the day before they had
killed a pig, and there were huge bloodstains in the snow and on the sledge,
and even one side of the top of the well was splattered with blood, so that it
could not have seemed suspicious even if the whole of Yakov’s family had
been stained with blood. To conceal the murder would be agonizing, but for
the policeman, who would whistle and smile ironically, to come from the
station, for the peasants to arrive and bind Yakov’s and Aglaia’s hands, and
take them solemnly to the district courthouse and from there to the town,
while everyone on the way would point at them and say mirthfully, “They
are taking the Godlies!”—this seemed to Yakov more agonizing than
anything, and he longed to lengthen out the time somehow, so as to endure
this shame not now, but later, in the future.

“I can lend you a thousand roubles, . . .” he said, overtaking Sergey
Nikanoritch. “If you tell anyone, it will do no good. . . . There’s no bringing
the man back, anyway;” and with difficulty keeping up with the waiter, who
did not look round, but tried to walk away faster than ever, he went on: “I
can give you fifteen hundred. . . .”
He stopped because he was out of breath, while Sergey Nikanoritch
walked on as quickly as ever, probably afraid that he would be killed, too.
Only after passing the railway crossing and going half the way from the
crossing to the station, he furtively looked round and walked more slowly.
Lights, red and green, were already gleaming in the station and along the
line; the wind had fallen, but flakes of snow were still coming down and the
road had turned white again. But just at the station Sergey Nikanoritch
stopped, thought a minute, and turned resolutely back. It was growing dark.
“Oblige me with the fifteen hundred, Yakov Ivanitch,” he said, trembling
all over. “I agree.”

VI

Yakov Ivanitch’s money was in the bank of the town and was invested in
second mortgages; he only kept a little at home, Just what was wanted for
necessary expenses. Going into the kitchen he felt for the matchbox, and
while the sulphur was burning with a blue light he had time to make out the
figure of Matvey, which was still lying on the floor near the table, but now
it was covered with a white sheet, and nothing could be seen but his boots.
A cricket was chirruping. Aglaia and Dashutka were not in the room, they
were both sitting behind the counter in the tea-room, spinning yarn in
silence. Yakov Ivanitch crossed to his own room with a little lamp in his
hand, and pulled from under the bed a little box in which he kept his money.
This time there were in it four hundred and twenty one-rouble notes and
silver to the amount of thirty-five roubles; the notes had an unpleasant
heavy smell. Putting the money together in his cap, Yakov Ivanitch went out
into the yard and then out of the gate. He walked, looking from side to side,
but there was no sign of the waiter.
“Hi!” cried Yakov.

A dark figure stepped out from the barrier at the railway crossing and
came irresolutely towards him.
“Why do you keep walking about?” said Yakov with vexation, as he
recognized the waiter. “Here you are; there is a little less than five hundred.
. . . I’ve no more in the house.”
“Very well; . . . very grateful to you,” muttered Sergey Nikanoritch,
taking the money greedily and stuffing it into his pockets. He was trembling
all over, and that was perceptible in spite of the darkness. “Don’t worry
yourself, Yakov Ivanitch. . . . What should I chatter for: I came and went
away, that’s all I’ve had to do with it. As the saying is, I know nothing and I
can tell nothing . . .” And at once he added with a sigh “Cursed life!”
For a minute they stood in silence, without looking at each other.
“So it all came from a trifle, goodness knows how, . . .” said the waiter,
trembling. “I was sitting counting to myself when all at once a noise. . . . I
looked through the door, and just on account of Lenten oil you. . . . Where
is he now?”
“Lying there in the kitchen.”
“You ought to take him somewhere. . . . Why put it off?”
Yakov accompanied him to the station without a word, then went home
again and harnessed the horse to take Matvey to Limarovo. He had decided
to take him to the forest of Limarovo, and to leave him there on the road,
and then he would tell everyone that Matvey had gone off to Vedenyapino
and had not come back, and then everyone would think that he had been
killed by someone on the road. He knew there was no deceiving anyone by
this, but to move, to do something, to be active, was not as agonizing as to
sit still and wait. He called Dashutka, and with her carried Matvey out.
Aglaia stayed behind to clean up the kitchen.
When Yakov and Dashutka turned back they were detained at the railway
crossing by the barrier being let down. A long goods train was passing,
dragged by two engines, breathing heavily, and flinging puffs of crimson
fire out of their funnels.

The foremost engine uttered a piercing whistle at the crossing in sight of
the station.
“It’s whistling, . . .” said Dashutka.
The train had passed at last, and the signalman lifted the barrier without
haste.
“Is that you, Yakov Ivanitch? I didn’t know you, so you’ll be rich.”
And then when they had reached home they had to go to bed.
Aglaia and Dashutka made themselves a bed in the tea-room and lay
down side by side, while Yakov stretched himself on the counter. They
neither said their prayers nor lighted the ikon lamp before lying down to
sleep. All three lay awake till morning, but did not utter a single word, and
it seemed to them that all night someone was walking about in the empty
storey overhead.
Two days later a police inspector and the examining magistrate came
from the town and made a search, first in Matvey’s room and then in the
whole tavern. They questioned Yakov first of all, and he testified that on the
Monday Matvey had gone to Vedenyapino to confess, and that he must have
been killed by the sawyers who were working on the line.
And when the examining magistrate had asked him how it had happened
that Matvey was found on the road, while his cap had turned up at home—
surely he had not gone to Vedenyapino without his cap?— and why they
had not found a single drop of blood beside him in the snow on the road,
though his head was smashed in and his face and chest were black with
blood, Yakov was confused, lost his head and answered:
“I cannot tell.”
And just what Yakov had so feared happened: the policeman came, the
district police officer smoked in the prayer-room and Aglaia fell upon him
with abuse and was rude to the police inspector; and afterwards when
Yakov and Aglaia were led out to the yard, the peasants crowded at the
gates and said, “They are taking the Godlies!” and it seemed that they were
all glad.

At the inquiry the policeman stated positively that Yakov and Aglaia had
killed Matvey in order not to share with him, and that Matvey had money of
his own, and that if it was not found at the search evidently Yakov and
Aglaia had got hold of it. And Dashutka was questioned. She said that
Uncle Matvey and Aunt Aglaia quarrelled and almost fought every day over
money, and that Uncle Matvey was rich, so much so that he had given
someone—“his Darling”—nine hundred roubles.
Dashutka was left alone in the tavern. No one came now to drink tea or
vodka, and she divided her time between cleaning up the rooms, drinking
mead and eating rolls; but a few days later they questioned the signalman at
the railway crossing, and he said that late on Monday evening he had seen
Yakov and Dashutka driving from Limarovo. Dashutka, too, was arrested,
taken to the town and put in prison. It soon became known, from what
Aglaia said, that Sergey Nikanoritch had been present at the murder. A
search was made in his room, and money was found in an unusual place, in
his snowboots under the stove, and the money was all in small change, three
hundred one-rouble notes. He swore he had made this money himself, and
that he hadn’t been in the tavern for a year, but witnesses testified that he
was poor and had been in great want of money of late, and that he used to
go every day to the tavern to borrow from Matvey; and the policeman
described how on the day of the murder he had himself gone twice to the
tavern with the waiter to help him to borrow. It was recalled at this juncture
that on Monday evening Sergey Nikanoritch had not been there to meet the
passenger train, but had gone off somewhere. And he, too, was arrested and
taken to the town.
The trial took place eleven months later.
Yakov Ivanitch looked much older and much thinner, and spoke in a low
voice like a sick man. He felt weak, pitiful, lower in stature that anyone
else, and it seemed as though his soul, too, like his body, had grown older
and wasted, from the pangs of his conscience and from the dreams and
imaginings which never left him all the while he was in prison. When it
came out that he did not go to church the president of the court asked him:
“Are you a dissenter?”
“I can’t tell,” he answered.

He had no religion at all now; he knew nothing and understood nothing;
and his old belief was hateful to him now, and seemed to him darkness and
folly. Aglaia was not in the least subdued, and she still went on abusing the
dead man, blaming him for all their misfortunes. Sergey Nikanoritch had
grown a beard instead of whiskers. At the trial he was red and perspiring,
and was evidently ashamed of his grey prison coat and of sitting on the
same bench with humble peasants. He defended himself awkwardly, and,
trying to prove that he had not been to the tavern for a whole year, got into
an altercation with every witness, and the spectators laughed at him.
Dashutka had grown fat in prison. At the trial she did not understand the
questions put to her, and only said that when they killed Uncle Matvey she
was dreadfully frightened, but afterwards she did not mind.
All four were found guilty of murder with mercenary motives. Yakov
Ivanitch was sentenced to penal servitude for twenty years; Aglaia for
thirteen and a half; Sergey Nikanoritch to ten; Dashutka to six.

VII

Late one evening a foreign steamer stopped in the roads of Dué in
Sahalin and asked for coal. The captain was asked to wait till morning, but
he did not want to wait over an hour, saying that if the weather changed for
the worse in the night there would be a risk of his having to go off without
coal. In the Gulf of Tartary the weather is liable to violent changes in the
course of half an hour, and then the shores of Sahalin are dangerous. And
already it had turned fresh, and there was a considerable sea running.
A gang of convicts were sent to the mine from the Voevodsky prison, the
grimmest and most forbidding of all the prisons in Sahalin. The coal had to
be loaded upon barges, and then they had to be towed by a steam-cutter
alongside the steamer which was anchored more than a quarter of a mile
from the coast, and then the unloading and reloading had to begin—an
exhausting task when the barge kept rocking against the steamer and the
men could scarcely keep on their legs for sea-sickness. The convicts, only
just roused from their sleep, still drowsy, went along the shore, stumbling in
the darkness and clanking their fetters. On the left, scarcely visible, was a
tall, steep, extremely gloomy-looking cliff, while on the right there was a
thick impenetrable mist, in which the sea moaned with a prolonged

monotonous sound, “Ah! . . . ah! . . . ah! . . . ah! . . .” And it was only when
the overseer was lighting his pipe, casting as he did so a passing ray of light
on the escort with a gun and on the coarse faces of two or three of the
nearest convicts, or when he went with his lantern close to the water that the
white crests of the foremost waves could be discerned.
One of this gang was Yakov Ivanitch, nicknamed among the convicts the
“Brush,” on account of his long beard. No one had addressed him by his
name or his father’s name for a long time now; they called him simply
Yashka.
He was here in disgrace, as, three months after coming to Siberia, feeling
an intense irresistible longing for home, he had succumbed to temptation
and run away; he had soon been caught, had been sentenced to penal
servitude for life and given forty lashes. Then he was punished by flogging
twice again for losing his prison clothes, though on each occasion they were
stolen from him. The longing for home had begun from the very time he
had been brought to Odessa, and the convict train had stopped in the night
at Progonnaya; and Yakov, pressing to the window, had tried to see his own
home, and could see nothing in the darkness. He had no one with whom to
talk of home. His sister Aglaia had been sent right across Siberia, and he did
not know where she was now. Dashutka was in Sahalin, but she had been
sent to live with some ex-convict in a far away settlement; there was no
news of her except that once a settler who had come to the Voevodsky
Prison told Yakov that Dashutka had three children. Sergey Nikanoritch was
serving as a footman at a government official’s at Dué, but he could not
reckon on ever seeing him, as he was ashamed of being acquainted with
convicts of the peasant class.
The gang reached the mine, and the men took their places on the quay. It
was said there would not be any loading, as the weather kept getting worse
and the steamer was meaning to set off. They could see three lights. One of
them was moving: that was the steam-cutter going to the steamer, and it
seemed to be coming back to tell them whether the work was to be done or
not. Shivering with the autumn cold and the damp sea mist, wrapping
himself in his short torn coat, Yakov Ivanitch looked intently without
blinking in the direction in which lay his home. Ever since he had lived in
prison together with men banished here from all ends of the earth—with

Russians, Ukrainians, Tatars, Georgians, Chinese, Gypsies, Jews— and ever
since he had listened to their talk and watched their sufferings, he had
begun to turn again to God, and it seemed to him at last that he had learned
the true faith for which all his family, from his grandmother Avdotya down,
had so thirsted, which they had sought so long and which they had never
found. He knew it all now and understood where God was, and how He was
to be served, and the only thing he could not understand was why men’s
destinies were so diverse, why this simple faith which other men receive
from God for nothing and together with their lives, had cost him such a
price that his arms and legs trembled like a drunken man’s from all the
horrors and agonies which as far as he could see would go on without a
break to the day of his death. He looked with strained eyes into the
darkness, and it seemed to him that through the thousand miles of that mist
he could see home, could see his native province, his district, Progonnaya,
could see the darkness, the savagery, the heartlessness, and the dull, sullen,
animal indifference of the men he had left there. His eyes were dimmed
with tears; but still he gazed into the distance where the pale lights of the
steamer faintly gleamed, and his heart ached with yearning for home, and
he longed to live, to go back home to tell them there of his new faith and to
save from ruin if only one man, and to live without suffering if only for one
day.
The cutter arrived, and the overseer announced in a loud voice that there
would be no loading.
“Back!” he commanded. “Steady!”
They could hear the hoisting of the anchor chain on the steamer. A strong
piercing wind was blowing by now; somewhere on the steep cliff overhead
the trees were creaking. Most likely a storm was coming.

UPROOTED
An Incident of My Travels

I
WAS on my way back from evening service. The clock in the belfry of
the Svyatogorsky Monastery pealed out its soft melodious chimes by
way of prelude and then struck twelve. The great courtyard of the
monastery stretched out at the foot of the Holy Mountains on the banks of
the Donets, and, enclosed by the high hostel buildings as by a wall, seemed
now in the night, when it was lighted up only by dim lanterns, lights in the
windows, and the stars, a living hotch-potch full of movement, sound, and
the most original confusion. From end to end, so far as the eye could see, it
was all choked up with carts, old-fashioned coaches and chaises, vans, tilt-
carts, about which stood crowds of horses, dark and white, and horned
oxen, while people bustled about, and black long-skirted lay brothers
threaded their way in and out in all directions. Shadows and streaks of light
cast from the windows moved over the carts and the heads of men and
horses, and in the dense twilight this all assumed the most monstrous
capricious shapes: here the tilted shafts stretched upwards to the sky, here
eyes of fire appeared in the face of a horse, there a lay brother grew a pair
of black wings. . . . There was the noise of talk, the snorting and munching
of horses, the creaking of carts, the whimpering of children. Fresh crowds
kept walking in at the gate and belated carts drove up.
The pines which were piled up on the overhanging mountain, one above
another, and leaned towards the roof of the hostel, gazed into the courtyard
as into a deep pit, and listened in wonder; in their dark thicket the cuckoos
and nightingales never ceased calling. . . . Looking at the confusion,
listening to the uproar, one fancied that in this living hotch-potch no one
understood anyone, that everyone was looking for something and would not
find it, and that this multitude of carts, chaises and human beings could not
ever succeed in getting off.
More than ten thousand people flocked to the Holy Mountains for the
festivals of St. John the Divine and St. Nikolay the wonder-worker. Not

only the hostel buildings, but even the bakehouse, the tailoring room, the
carpenter’s shop, the carriage house, were filled to overflowing. . . . Those
who had arrived towards night clustered like flies in autumn, by the walls,
round the wells in the yard, or in the narrow passages of the hostel, waiting
to be shown a resting-place for the night. The lay brothers, young and old,
were in an incessant movement, with no rest or hope of being relieved. By
day or late at night they produced the same impression of men hastening
somewhere and agitated by something, yet, in spite of their extreme
exhaustion, their faces remained full of courage and kindly welcome, their
voices friendly, their movements rapid. . . . For everyone who came they
had to find a place to sleep, and to provide food and drink; to those who
were deaf, slow to understand, or profuse in questions, they had to give
long and wearisome explanations, to tell them why there were no empty
rooms, at what o’clock the service was to be where holy bread was sold,
and so on. They had to run, to carry, to talk incessantly, but more than that,
they had to be polite, too, to be tactful, to try to arrange that the Greeks
from Mariupol, accustomed to live more comfortably than the Little
Russians, should be put with other Greeks, that some shopkeeper from
Bahmut or Lisitchansk, dressed like a lady, should not be offended by being
put with peasants. There were continual cries of: “Father, kindly give us
some kvass! Kindly give us some hay!” or “Father, may I drink water after
confession?” And the lay brother would have to give out kvass or hay or to
answer: “Address yourself to the priest, my good woman, we have not the
authority to give permission.” Another question would follow, “Where is
the priest then?” and the lay brother would have to explain where was the
priest’s cell. With all this bustling activity, he yet had to make time to go to
service in the church, to serve in the part devoted to the gentry, and to give
full answers to the mass of necessary and unnecessary questions which
pilgrims of the educated class are fond of showering about them. Watching
them during the course of twenty-four hours, I found it hard to imagine
when these black moving figures sat down and when they slept.
When, coming back from the evening service, I went to the hostel in
which a place had been assigned me, the monk in charge of the sleeping
quarters was standing in the doorway, and beside him, on the steps, was a
group of several men and women dressed like townsfolk.

“Sir,” said the monk, stopping me, “will you be so good as to allow this
young man to pass the night in your room? If you would do us the favour!
There are so many people and no place left—it is really dreadful!”
And he indicated a short figure in a light overcoat and a straw hat. I
consented, and my chance companion followed me. Unlocking the little
padlock on my door, I was always, whether I wanted to or not, obliged to
look at the picture that hung on the doorpost on a level with my face. This
picture with the title, “A Meditation on Death,” depicted a monk on his
knees, gazing at a coffin and at a skeleton laying in it. Behind the man’s
back stood another skeleton, somewhat more solid and carrying a scythe.
“There are no bones like that,” said my companion, pointing to the place
in the skeleton where there ought to have been a pelvis. “Speaking
generally, you know, the spiritual fare provided for the people is not of the
first quality,” he added, and heaved through his nose a long and very
melancholy sigh, meant to show me that I had to do with a man who really
knew something about spiritual fare.
While I was looking for the matches to light a candle he sighed once
more and said:
“When I was in Harkov I went several times to the anatomy theatre and
saw the bones there; I have even been in the mortuary. Am I not in your
way?”
My room was small and poky, with neither table nor chairs in it, but quite
filled up with a chest of drawers by the window, the stove and two little
wooden sofas which stood against the walls, facing one another, leaving a
narrow space to walk between them. Thin rusty-looking little mattresses lay
on the little sofas, as well as my belongings. There were two sofas, so this
room was evidently intended for two, and I pointed out the fact to my
companion.
“They will soon be ringing for mass, though,” he said, “and I shan’t have
to be in your way very long.”
Still under the impression that he was in my way and feeling awkward,
he moved with a guilty step to his little sofa, sighed guiltily and sat down.
When the tallow candle with its dim, dilatory flame had left off flickering

and burned up sufficiently to make us both visible, I could make out what
he was like. He was a young man of two-and-twenty, with a round and
pleasing face, dark childlike eyes, dressed like a townsman in grey cheap
clothes, and as one could judge from his complexion and narrow shoulders,
not used to manual labour. He was of a very indefinite type; one could take
him neither for a student nor for a man in trade, still less for a workman.
But looking at his attractive face and childlike friendly eyes, I was
unwilling to believe he was one of those vagabond impostors with whom
every conventual establishment where they give food and lodging is
flooded, and who give themselves out as divinity students, expelled for
standing up for justice, or for church singers who have lost their voice. . . .
There was something characteristic, typical, very familiar in his face, but
what exactly, I could not remember nor make out.
For a long time he sat silent, pondering. Probably because I had not
shown appreciation of his remarks about bones and the mortuary, he
thought that I was ill-humoured and displeased at his presence. Pulling a
sausage out of his pocket, he turned it about before his eyes and said
irresolutely:
“Excuse my troubling you, . . . have you a knife?”
I gave him a knife.
“The sausage is disgusting,” he said, frowning and cutting himself off a
little bit. “In the shop here they sell you rubbish and fleece you horribly. . . .
I would offer you a piece, but you would scarcely care to consume it. Will
you have some?”
In his language, too, there was something typical that had a very great
deal in common with what was characteristic in his face, but what it was
exactly I still could not decide. To inspire confidence and to show that I was
not ill-humoured, I took some of the proffered sausage. It certainly was
horrible; one needed the teeth of a good house-dog to deal with it. As we
worked our jaws we got into conversation; we began complaining to each
other of the lengthiness of the service.
“The rule here approaches that of Mount Athos,” I said; “but at Athos the
night services last ten hours, and on great feast-days —fourteen! You should

go there for prayers!”
“Yes,” answered my companion, and he wagged his head, “I have been
here for three weeks. And you know, every day services, every day services.
On ordinary days at midnight they ring for matins, at five o’clock for early
mass, at nine o’clock for late mass. Sleep is utterly out of the question. In
the daytime there are hymns of praise, special prayers, vespers. . . . And
when I was preparing for the sacrament I was simply dropping from
exhaustion.” He sighed and went on: “And it’s awkward not to go to
church. . . . The monks give one a room, feed one, and, you know, one is
ashamed not to go. One wouldn’t mind standing it for a day or two,
perhaps, but three weeks is too much—much too much! Are you here for
long?”
“I am going to-morrow evening.”
“But I am staying another fortnight.”
“But I thought it was not the rule to stay for so long here?” I said.
“Yes, that’s true: if anyone stays too long, sponging on the monks, he is
asked to go. Judge for yourself, if the proletariat were allowed to stay on
here as long as they liked there would never be a room vacant, and they
would eat up the whole monastery. That’s true. But the monks make an
exception for me, and I hope they won’t turn me out for some time. You
know I am a convert.”
“You mean?”
“I am a Jew baptized. . . . Only lately I have embraced orthodoxy.”
Now I understood what I had before been utterly unable to understand
from his face: his thick lips, and his way of twitching up the right corner of
his mouth and his right eyebrow, when he was talking, and that peculiar oily
brilliance of his eyes which is only found in Jews. I understood, too, his
phraseology. . . . From further conversation I learned that his name was
Alexandr Ivanitch, and had in the past been Isaac, that he was a native of
the Mogilev province, and that he had come to the Holy Mountains from
Novotcherkassk, where he had adopted the orthodox faith.

Having finished his sausage, Alexandr Ivanitch got up, and, raising his
right eyebrow, said his prayer before the ikon. The eyebrow remained up
when he sat down again on the little sofa and began giving me a brief
account of his long biography.
“From early childhood I cherished a love for learning,” he began in a
tone which suggested he was not speaking of himself, but of some great
man of the past. “My parents were poor Hebrews; they exist by buying and
selling in a small way; they live like beggars, you know, in filth. In fact, all
the people there are poor and superstitious; they don’t like education,
because education, very naturally, turns a man away from religion. . . . They
are fearful fanatics. . . . Nothing would induce my parents to let me be
educated, and they wanted me to take to trade, too, and to know nothing but
the Talmud. . . . But you will agree, it is not everyone who can spend his
whole life struggling for a crust of bread, wallowing in filth, and mumbling
the Talmud. At times officers and country gentlemen would put up at papa’s
inn, and they used to talk a great deal of things which in those days I had
never dreamed of; and, of course, it was alluring and moved me to envy. I
used to cry and entreat them to send me to school, but they taught me to
read Hebrew and nothing more. Once I found a Russian newspaper, and
took it home with me to make a kite of it. I was beaten for it, though I
couldn’t read Russian. Of course, fanaticism is inevitable, for every people
instinctively strives to preserve its nationality, but I did not know that then
and was very indignant. . . .”
Having made such an intellectual observation, Isaac, as he had been,
raised his right eyebrow higher than ever in his satisfaction and looked at
me, as it were, sideways, like a cock at a grain of corn, with an air as though
he would say: “Now at last you see for certain that I am an intellectual man,
don’t you?” After saying something more about fanaticism and his
irresistible yearning for enlightenment, he went on:
“What could I do? I ran away to Smolensk. And there I had a cousin who
relined saucepans and made tins. Of course, I was glad to work under him,
as I had nothing to live upon; I was barefoot and in rags. . . . I thought I
could work by day and study at night and on Saturdays. And so I did, but
the police found out I had no passport and sent me back by stages to my
father. . . .”

Alexandr Ivanitch shrugged one shoulder and sighed.
“What was one to do?” he went on, and the more vividly the past rose up
before his mind, the more marked his Jewish accent became. “My parents
punished me and handed me over to my grandfather, a fanatical old Jew, to
be reformed. But I went off at night to Shklov. And when my uncle tried to
catch me in Shklov, I went off to Mogilev; there I stayed two days and then
I went off to Starodub with a comrade.”
Later on he mentioned in his story Gonel, Kiev, Byelaya, Tserkov, Uman,
Balt, Bendery and at last reached Odessa.
“In Odessa I wandered about for a whole week, out of work and hungry,
till I was taken in by some Jews who went about the town buying second-
hand clothes. I knew how to read and write by then, and had done
arithmetic up to fractions, and I wanted to go to study somewhere, but I had
not the means. What was I to do? For six months I went about Odessa
buying old clothes, but the Jews paid me no wages, the rascals. I resented it
and left them. Then I went by steamer to Perekop.”
“What for?”
“Oh, nothing. A Greek promised me a job there. In short, till I was
sixteen I wandered about like that with no definite work and no roots till I
got to Poltava. There a student, a Jew, found out that I wanted to study, and
gave me a letter to the Harkov students. Of course, I went to Harkov. The
students consulted together and began to prepare me for the technical
school. And, you know, I must say the students that I met there were such
that I shall never forget them to the day of my death. To say nothing of their
giving me food and lodging, they set me on the right path, they made me
think, showed me the object of life. Among them were intellectual
remarkable people who by now are celebrated. For instance, you have heard
of Grumaher, haven’t you?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“You haven’t! He wrote very clever articles in the Harkov Gazette, and
was preparing to be a professor. Well, I read a great deal and attended the
student’s societies, where you hear nothing that is commonplace. I was
working up for six months, but as one has to have been through the whole

high-school course of mathematics to enter the technical school, Grumaher
advised me to try for the veterinary institute, where they admit high-school
boys from the sixth form. Of course, I began working for it. I did not want
to be a veterinary surgeon but they told me that after finishing the course at
the veterinary institute I should be admitted to the faculty of medicine
without examination. I learnt all Kühner; I could read Cornelius Nepos, à
livre ouvert; and in Greek I read through almost all Curtius. But, you know,
one thing and another, . . . the students leaving and the uncertainty of my
position, and then I heard that my mamma had come and was looking for
me all over Harkov. Then I went away. What was I to do? But luckily I
learned that there was a school of mines here on the Donets line. Why
should I not enter that? You know the school of mines qualifies one as a
mining foreman—a splendid berth. I know of mines where the foremen get
a salary of fifteen hundred a year. Capital. . . . I entered it. . . .”
With an expression of reverent awe on his face Alexandr Ivanitch
enumerated some two dozen abstruse sciences in which instruction was
given at the school of mines; he described the school itself, the construction
of the shafts, and the condition of the miners. . . . Then he told me a terrible
story which sounded like an invention, though I could not help believing it,
for his tone in telling it was too genuine and the expression of horror on his
Semitic face was too evidently sincere.
“While I was doing the practical work, I had such an accident one day!”
he said, raising both eyebrows. “I was at a mine here in the Donets district.
You have seen, I dare say, how people are let down into the mine. You
remember when they start the horse and set the gates moving one bucket on
the pulley goes down into the mine, while the other comes up; when the
first begins to come up, then the second goes down—exactly like a well
with two pails. Well, one day I got into the bucket, began going down, and
can you fancy, all at once I heard, Trrr! The chain had broken and I flew to
the devil together with the bucket and the broken bit of chain. . . . I fell from
a height of twenty feet, flat on my chest and stomach, while the bucket,
being heavier, reached the bottom before me, and I hit this shoulder here
against its edge. I lay, you know, stunned. I thought I was killed, and all at
once I saw a fresh calamity: the other bucket, which was going up, having
lost the counter-balancing weight, was coming down with a crash straight
upon me. . . . What was I to do? Seeing the position, I squeezed closer to the

wall, crouching and waiting for the bucket to come full crush next minute
on my head. I thought of papa and mamma and Mogilev and Grumaher. . . .
I prayed. . . . But happily . . . it frightens me even to think of it. . . .”
Alexandr Ivanitch gave a constrained smile and rubbed his forehead with
his hand.
“But happily it fell beside me and only caught this side a little. . . . It tore
off coat, shirt and skin, you know, from this side. . . . The force of it was
terrific. I was unconscious after it. They got me out and sent me to the
hospital. I was there four months, and the doctors there said I should go into
consumption. I always have a cough now and a pain in my chest. And my
psychic condition is terrible. . . . When I am alone in a room I feel
overcome with terror. Of course, with my health in that state, to be a mining
foreman is out of the question. I had to give up the school of mines. . . .”
“And what are you doing now?” I asked.
“I have passed my examination as a village schoolmaster. Now I belong
to the orthodox church, and I have a right to be a teacher. In
Novotcherkassk, where I was baptized, they took a great interest in me and
promised me a place in a church parish school. I am going there in a
fortnight, and shall ask again.”
Alexandr Ivanitch took off his overcoat and remained in a shirt with an
embroidered Russian collar and a worsted belt.
“It is time for bed,” he said, folding his overcoat for a pillow, and
yawning. “Till lately, you know, I had no knowledge of God at all. I was an
atheist. When I was lying in the hospital I thought of religion, and began
reflecting on that subject. In my opinion, there is only one religion possible
for a thinking man, and that is the Christian religion. If you don’t believe in
Christ, then there is nothing else to believe in, . . . is there? Judaism has
outlived its day, and is preserved only owing to the peculiarities of the
Jewish race. When civilization reaches the Jews there will not be a trace of
Judaism left. All young Jews are atheists now, observe. The New Testament
is the natural continuation of the Old, isn’t it?”
I began trying to find out the reasons which had led him to take so grave
and bold a step as the change of religion, but he kept repeating the same,

“The New Testament is the natural continuation of the Old”—a formula
obviously not his own, but acquired— which did not explain the question in
the least. In spite of my efforts and artifices, the reasons remained obscure.
If one could believe that he had embraced Orthodoxy from conviction, as he
said he had done, what was the nature and foundation of this conviction it
was impossible to grasp from his words. It was equally impossible to
assume that he had changed his religion from interested motives: his cheap
shabby clothes, his going on living at the expense of the convent, and the
uncertainty of his future, did not look like interested motives. There was
nothing for it but to accept the idea that my companion had been impelled
to change his religion by the same restless spirit which had flung him like a
chip of wood from town to town, and which he, using the generally
accepted formula, called the craving for enlightenment.
Before going to bed I went into the corridor to get a drink of water. When
I came back my companion was standing in the middle of the room, and he
looked at me with a scared expression. His face looked a greyish white, and
there were drops of perspiration on his forehead.
“My nerves are in an awful state,” he muttered with a sickly smile,”
awful! It’s acute psychological disturbance. But that’s of no consequence.”
And he began reasoning again that the New Testament was a natural
continuation of the Old, that Judaism has outlived its day. . . . Picking out
his phrases, he seemed to be trying to put together the forces of his
conviction and to smother with them the uneasiness of his soul, and to
prove to himself that in giving up the religion of his fathers he had done
nothing dreadful or peculiar, but had acted as a thinking man free from
prejudice, and that therefore he could boldly remain in a room all alone
with his conscience. He was trying to convince himself, and with his eyes
besought my assistance.
Meanwhile a big clumsy wick had burned up on our tallow candle. It was
by now getting light. At the gloomy little window, which was turning blue,
we could distinctly see both banks of the Donets River and the oak copse
beyond the river. It was time to sleep.
“It will be very interesting here to-morrow,” said my companion when I
put out the candle and went to bed. “After early mass, the procession will

go in boats from the Monastery to the Hermitage.”
Raising his right eyebrow and putting his head on one side, he prayed
before the ikons, and, without undressing, lay down on his little sofa.
“Yes,” he said, turning over on the other side.
“Why yes?” I asked.
“When I accepted orthodoxy in Novotcherkassk my mother was looking
for me in Rostov. She felt that I meant to change my religion,” he sighed,
and went on: “It is six years since I was there in the province of Mogilev.
My sister must be married by now.”
After a short silence, seeing that I was still awake, he began talking
quietly of how they soon, thank God, would give him a job, and that at last
he would have a home of his own, a settled position, his daily bread secure.
. . . And I was thinking that this man would never have a home of his own,
nor a settled position, nor his daily bread secure. He dreamed aloud of a
village school as of the Promised Land; like the majority of people, he had a
prejudice against a wandering life, and regarded it as something
exceptional, abnormal and accidental, like an illness, and was looking for
salvation in ordinary workaday life. The tone of his voice betrayed that he
was conscious of his abnormal position and regretted it. He seemed as it
were apologizing and justifying himself.
Not more than a yard from me lay a homeless wanderer; in the rooms of
the hostels and by the carts in the courtyard among the pilgrims some
hundreds of such homeless wanderers were waiting for the morning, and
further away, if one could picture to oneself the whole of Russia, a vast
multitude of such uprooted creatures was pacing at that moment along
highroads and side-tracks, seeking something better, or were waiting for the
dawn, asleep in wayside inns and little taverns, or on the grass under the
open sky. . . . As I fell asleep I imagined how amazed and perhaps even
overjoyed all these people would have been if reasoning and words could
be found to prove to them that their life was as little in need of justification
as any other. In my sleep I heard a bell ring outside as plaintively as though
shedding bitter tears, and the lay brother calling out several times:
“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon us! Come to mass!”

When I woke up my companion was not in the room. It was sunny and
there was a murmur of the crowds through the window. Going out, I learned
that mass was over and that the procession had set off for the Hermitage
some time before. The people were wandering in crowds upon the river
bank and, feeling at liberty, did not know what to do with themselves: they
could not eat or drink, as the late mass was not yet over at the Hermitage;
the Monastery shops where pilgrims are so fond of crowding and asking
prices were still shut. In spite of their exhaustion, many of them from sheer
boredom were trudging to the Hermitage. The path from the Monastery to
the Hermitage, towards which I directed my steps, twined like a snake
along the high steep bank, going up and down and threading in and out
among the oaks and pines. Below, the Donets gleamed, reflecting the sun;
above, the rugged chalk cliff stood up white with bright green on the top
from the young foliage of oaks and pines, which, hanging one above
another, managed somehow to grow on the vertical cliff without falling.
The pilgrims trailed along the path in single file, one behind another. The
majority of them were Little Russians from the neighbouring districts, but
there were many from a distance, too, who had come on foot from the
provinces of Kursk and Orel; in the long string of varied colours there were
Greek settlers, too, from Mariupol, strongly built, sedate and friendly
people, utterly unlike their weakly and degenerate compatriots who fill our
southern seaside towns. There were men from the Donets, too, with red
stripes on their breeches, and emigrants from the Tavritchesky province.
There were a good many pilgrims of a nondescript class, like my Alexandr
Ivanitch; what sort of people they were and where they came from it was
impossible to tell from their faces, from their clothes, or from their speech.
The path ended at the little landing-stage, from which a narrow road went to
the left to the Hermitage, cutting its way through the mountain. At the
landing-stage stood two heavy big boats of a forbidding aspect, like the
New Zealand pirogues which one may see in the works of Jules Verne. One
boat with rugs on the seats was destined for the clergy and the singers, the
other without rugs for the public. When the procession was returning I
found myself among the elect who had succeeded in squeezing themselves
into the second. There were so many of the elect that the boat scarcely
moved, and one had to stand all the way without stirring and to be careful
that one’s hat was not crushed. The route was lovely. Both banks—one
high, steep and white, with overhanging pines and oaks, with the crowds

hurrying back along the path, and the other shelving, with green meadows
and an oak copse bathed in sunshine—looked as happy and rapturous as
though the May morning owed its charm only to them. The reflection of the
sun in the rapidly flowing Donets quivered and raced away in all directions,
and its long rays played on the chasubles, on the banners and on the drops
splashed up by the oars. The singing of the Easter hymns, the ringing of the
bells, the splash of the oars in the water, the calls of the birds, all mingled in
the air into something tender and harmonious. The boat with the priests and
the banners led the way; at its helm the black figure of a lay brother stood
motionless as a statue.
When the procession was getting near the Monastery, I noticed Alexandr
Ivanitch among the elect. He was standing in front of them all, and, his
mouth wide open with pleasure and his right eyebrow cocked up, was
gazing at the procession. His face was beaming; probably at such moments,
when there were so many people round him and it was so bright, he was
satisfied with himself, his new religion, and his conscience.
When a little later we were sitting in our room, drinking tea, he still
beamed with satisfaction; his face showed that he was satisfied both with
the tea and with me, that he fully appreciated my being an intellectual, but
that he would know how to play his part with credit if any intellectual topic
turned up. . . .
“Tell me, what psychology ought I to read?” he began an intellectual
conversation, wrinkling up his nose.
“Why, what do you want it for?”
“One cannot be a teacher without a knowledge of psychology. Before
teaching a boy I ought to understand his soul.”
I told him that psychology alone would not be enough to make one
understand a boy’s soul, and moreover psychology for a teacher who had
not yet mastered the technical methods of instruction in reading, writing,
and arithmetic would be a luxury as superfluous as the higher mathematics.
He readily agreed with me, and began describing how hard and responsible
was the task of a teacher, how hard it was to eradicate in the boy the
habitual tendency to evil and superstition, to make him think honestly and

independently, to instil into him true religion, the ideas of personal dignity,
of freedom, and so on. In answer to this I said something to him. He agreed
again. He agreed very readily, in fact. Obviously his brain had not a very
firm grasp of all these “intellectual subjects.”
Up to the time of my departure we strolled together about the Monastery,
whiling away the long hot day. He never left my side a minute; whether he
had taken a fancy to me or was afraid of solitude, God only knows! I
remember we sat together under a clump of yellow acacia in one of the little
gardens that are scattered on the mountain side.
“I am leaving here in a fortnight,” he said; “it is high time.”
“Are you going on foot?”
“From here to Slavyansk I shall walk, then by railway to Nikitovka; from
Nikitovka the Donets line branches off, and along that branch line I shall
walk as far as Hatsepetovka, and there a railway guard, I know, will help
me on my way.”
I thought of the bare, deserted steppe between Nikitovka and
Hatsepetovka, and pictured to myself Alexandr Ivanitch striding along it,
with his doubts, his homesickness, and his fear of solitude . . . . He read
boredom in my face, and sighed.
“And my sister must be married by now,” he said, thinking aloud, and at
once, to shake off melancholy thoughts, pointed to the top of the rock and
said:
“From that mountain one can see Izyum.”
As we were walking up the mountain he had a little misfortune. I suppose
he stumbled, for he slit his cotton trousers and tore the sole of his shoe.
“Tss!” he said, frowning as he took off a shoe and exposed a bare foot
without a stocking. “How unpleasant! . . . That’s a complication, you know,
which . . . Yes!”
Turning the shoe over and over before his eyes, as though unable to
believe that the sole was ruined for ever, he spent a long time frowning,
sighing, and clicking with his tongue.

I had in my trunk a pair of boots, old but fashionable, with pointed toes
and laces. I had brought them with me in case of need, and only wore them
in wet weather. When we got back to our room I made up a phrase as
diplomatic as I could and offered him these boots. He accepted them and
said with dignity:
“I should thank you, but I know that you consider thanks a convention.”
He was pleased as a child with the pointed toes and the laces, and even
changed his plans.
“Now I shall go to Novotcherkassk in a week, and not in a fortnight,” he
said, thinking aloud. “In shoes like these I shall not be ashamed to show
myself to my godfather. I was not going away from here just because I
hadn’t any decent clothes. . . .”
When the coachman was carrying out my trunk, a lay brother with a good
ironical face came in to sweep out the room. Alexandr Ivanitch seemed
flustered and embarrassed and asked him timidly:
“Am I to stay here or go somewhere else?”
He could not make up his mind to occupy a whole room to himself, and
evidently by now was feeling ashamed of living at the expense of the
Monastery. He was very reluctant to part from me; to put off being lonely as
long as possible, he asked leave to see me on my way.
The road from the Monastery, which had been excavated at the cost of no
little labour in the chalk mountain, moved upwards, going almost like a
spiral round the mountain, over roots and under sullen overhanging pines. .
..
The Donets was the first to vanish from our sight, after it the Monastery
yard with its thousands of people, and then the green roofs. . . . Since I was
mounting upwards everything seemed vanishing into a pit. The cross on the
church, burnished by the rays of the setting sun, gleamed brightly in the
abyss and vanished. Nothing was left but the oaks, the pines, and the white
road. But then our carriage came out on a level country, and that was all left
below and behind us. Alexandr Ivanitch jumped out and, smiling

mournfully, glanced at me for the last time with his childish eyes, and
vanished from me for ever. . . .
The impressions of the Holy Mountains had already become memories,
and I saw something new: the level plain, the whitish-brown distance, the
way side copse, and beyond it a windmill which stood with out moving, and
seemed bored at not being allowed to wave its sails because it was a
holiday.

THE STEPPE
The Story of a Journey

I

E
ARLY one morning in July a shabby covered chaise, one of those
antediluvian chaises without springs in which no one travels in
Russia nowadays, except merchant’s clerks, dealers and the less
well-to-do among priests, drove out of N., the principal town of the
province of Z., and rumbled noisily along the posting-track. It rattled and
creaked at every movement; the pail, hanging on behind, chimed in gruffly,
and from these sounds alone and from the wretched rags of leather hanging
loose about its peeling body one could judge of its decrepit age and
readiness to drop to pieces.
Two of the inhabitants of N. were sitting in the chaise; they were a
merchant of N. called Ivan Ivanitch Kuzmitchov, a man with a shaven face
wearing glasses and a straw hat, more like a government clerk than a
merchant, and Father Christopher Sireysky, the priest of the Church of St.
Nikolay at N., a little old man with long hair, in a grey canvas cassock, a
wide-brimmed top-hat and a coloured embroidered girdle. The former was
absorbed in thought, and kept tossing his head to shake off drowsiness; in
his countenance an habitual business-like reserve was struggling with the
genial expression of a man who has just said good-bye to his relatives and
has had a good drink at parting. The latter gazed with moist eyes
wonderingly at God’s world, and his smile was so broad that it seemed to
embrace even the brim of his hat; his face was red and looked frozen. Both
of them, Father Christopher as well as Kuzmitchov, were going to sell wool.
At parting with their families they had just eaten heartily of pastry puffs and
cream, and although it was so early in the morning had had a glass or two. .
. . Both were in the best of humours.
Apart from the two persons described above and the coachman Deniska,
who lashed the pair of frisky bay horses, there was another figure in the

chaise—a boy of nine with a sunburnt face, wet with tears. This was
Yegorushka, Kuzmitchov’s nephew. With the sanction of his uncle and the
blessing of Father Christopher, he was now on his way to go to school. His
mother, Olga Ivanovna, the widow of a collegiate secretary, and
Kuzmitchov’s sister, who was fond of educated people and refined society,
had entreated her brother to take Yegorushka with him when he went to sell
wool and to put him to school; and now the boy was sitting on the box
beside the coachman Deniska, holding on to his elbow to keep from falling
off, and dancing up and down like a kettle on the hob, with no notion where
he was going or what he was going for. The rapid motion through the air
blew out his red shirt like a balloon on his back and made his new hat with
a peacock’s feather in it, like a coachman’s, keep slipping on to the back of
his head. He felt himself an intensely unfortunate person, and had an
inclination to cry.
When the chaise drove past the prison, Yegorushka glanced at the
sentinels pacing slowly by the high white walls, at the little barred
windows, at the cross shining on the roof, and remembered how the week
before, on the day of the Holy Mother of Kazan, he had been with his
mother to the prison church for the Dedication Feast, and how before that,
at Easter, he had gone to the prison with Deniska and Ludmila the cook, and
had taken the prisoners Easter bread, eggs, cakes and roast beef. The
prisoners had thanked them and made the sign of the cross, and one of them
had given Yegorushka a pewter buckle of his own making.
The boy gazed at the familiar places, while the hateful chaise flew by and
left them all behind. After the prison he caught glimpses of black grimy
foundries, followed by the snug green cemetery surrounded by a wall of
cobblestones; white crosses and tombstones, nestling among green cherry-
trees and looking in the distance like patches of white, peeped out gaily
from behind the wall. Yegorushka remembered that when the cherries were
in blossom those white patches melted with the flowers into a sea of white;
and that when the cherries were ripe the white tombstones and crosses were
dotted with splashes of red like bloodstains. Under the cherry trees in the
cemetery Yegorushka’s father and granny, Zinaida Danilovna, lay sleeping
day and night. When Granny had died she had been put in a long narrow
coffin and two pennies had been put upon her eyes, which would not keep
shut. Up to the time of her death she had been brisk, and used to bring soft

rolls covered with poppy seeds from the market. Now she did nothing but
sleep and sleep. . . .
Beyond the cemetery came the smoking brickyards. From under the long
roofs of reeds that looked as though pressed flat to the ground, a thick black
smoke rose in great clouds and floated lazily upwards. The sky was murky
above the brickyards and the cemetery, and great shadows from the clouds
of smoke crept over the fields and across the roads. Men and horses covered
with red dust were moving about in the smoke near the roofs.
The town ended with the brickyards and the open country began.
Yegorushka looked at the town for the last time, pressed his face against
Deniska’s elbow, and wept bitterly.
“Come, not done howling yet, cry-baby!” cried Kuzmitchov. “You are
blubbering again, little milksop! If you don’t want to go, stay behind; no
one is taking you by force!
“Never mind, never mind, Yegor boy, never mind,” Father Christopher
muttered rapidly—“never mind, my boy. . . . Call upon God. . . . You are
not going for your harm, but for your good. Learning is light, as the saying
is, and ignorance is darkness. . . . That is so, truly.”
“Do you want to go back?” asked Kuzmitchov.
“Yes, . . . yes, . . .” answered Yegorushka, sobbing.
“Well, you’d better go back then. Anyway, you are going for nothing; it’s
a day’s journey for a spoonful of porridge.”
“Never mind, never mind, my boy,” Father Christopher went on. “Call
upon God. . . . Lomonosov set off with the fishermen in the same way, and
he became a man famous all over Europe. Learning in conjunction with
faith brings forth fruit pleasing to God. What are the words of the prayer?
For the glory of our Maker, for the comfort of our parents, for the benefit of
our Church and our country. . . . Yes, indeed!”
“The benefit is not the same in all cases,” said Kuzmitchov, lighting a
cheap cigar; “some will study twenty years and get no sense from it.”
“That does happen.”

“Learning is a benefit to some, but others only muddle their brains. My
sister is a woman who does not understand; she is set upon refinement, and
wants to turn Yegorka into a learned man, and she does not understand that
with my business I could settle Yegorka happily for the rest of his life. I tell
you this, that if everyone were to go in for being learned and refined there
would be no one to sow the corn and do the trading; they would all die of
hunger.”
“And if all go in for trading and sowing corn there will be no one to
acquire learning.”
And considering that each of them had said something weighty and
convincing, Kuzmitchov and Father Christopher both looked serious and
cleared their throats simultaneously.
Deniska, who had been listening to their conversation without
understanding a word of it, shook his head and, rising in his seat, lashed at
both the bays. A silence followed.
Meanwhile a wide boundless plain encircled by a chain of low hills lay
stretched before the travellers’ eyes. Huddling together and peeping out
from behind one another, these hills melted together into rising ground,
which stretched right to the very horizon and disappeared into the lilac
distance; one drives on and on and cannot discern where it begins or where
it ends. . . . The sun had already peeped out from beyond the town behind
them, and quietly, without fuss, set to its accustomed task. At first in the
distance before them a broad, bright, yellow streak of light crept over the
ground where the earth met the sky, near the little barrows and the
windmills, which in the distance looked like tiny men waving their arms. A
minute later a similar streak gleamed a little nearer, crept to the right and
embraced the hills. Something warm touched Yegorushka’s spine; the streak
of light, stealing up from behind, darted between the chaise and the horses,
moved to meet the other streak, and soon the whole wide steppe flung off
the twilight of early morning, and was smiling and sparkling with dew.
The cut rye, the coarse steppe grass, the milkwort, the wild hemp, all
withered from the sultry heat, turned brown and half dead, now washed by
the dew and caressed by the sun, revived, to fade again. Arctic petrels flew
across the road with joyful cries; marmots called to one another in the grass.

Somewhere, far away to the left, lapwings uttered their plaintive notes. A
covey of partridges, scared by the chaise, fluttered up and with their soft
“trrrr!” flew off to the hills. In the grass crickets, locusts and grasshoppers
kept up their churring, monotonous music.
But a little time passed, the dew evaporated, the air grew stagnant, and
the disillusioned steppe began to wear its jaded July aspect. The grass
drooped, everything living was hushed. The sun-baked hills, brownish-
green and lilac in the distance, with their quiet shadowy tones, the plain
with the misty distance and, arched above them, the sky, which seems
terribly deep and transparent in the steppes, where there are no woods or
high hills, seemed now endless, petrified with dreariness. . . .
How stifling and oppressive it was! The chaise raced along, while
Yegorushka saw always the same—the sky, the plain, the low hills . . . . The
music in the grass was hushed, the petrels had flown away, the partridges
were out of sight, rooks hovered idly over the withered grass; they were all
alike and made the steppe even more monotonous.
A hawk flew just above the ground, with an even sweep of its wings,
suddenly halted in the air as though pondering on the dreariness of life, then
fluttered its wings and flew like an arrow over the steppe, and there was no
telling why it flew off and what it wanted. In the distance a windmill waved
its sails. . . .
Now and then a glimpse of a white potsherd or a heap of stones broke the
monotony; a grey stone stood out for an instant or a parched willow with a
blue crow on its top branch; a marmot would run across the road and—
again there flitted before the eyes only the high grass, the low hills, the
rooks. . . .
But at last, thank God, a waggon loaded with sheaves came to meet them;
a peasant wench was lying on the very top. Sleepy, exhausted by the heat,
she lifted her head and looked at the travellers. Deniska gaped, looking at
her; the horses stretched out their noses towards the sheaves; the chaise,
squeaking, kissed the waggon, and the pointed ears passed over Father
Christopher’s hat like a brush.

“You are driving over folks, fatty!” cried Deniska. “What a swollen lump
of a face, as though a bumble-bee had stung it!”
The girl smiled drowsily, and moving her lips lay down again; then a
solitary poplar came into sight on the low hill. Someone had planted it, and
God only knows why it was there. It was hard to tear the eyes away from its
graceful figure and green drapery. Was that lovely creature happy? Sultry
heat in summer, in winter frost and snowstorms, terrible nights in autumn
when nothing is to be seen but darkness and nothing is to be heard but the
senseless angry howling wind, and, worst of all, alone, alone for the whole
of life . . . . Beyond the poplar stretches of wheat extended like a bright
yellow carpet from the road to the top of the hills. On the hills the corn was
already cut and laid up in sheaves, while at the bottom they were still
cutting. . . . Six mowers were standing in a row swinging their scythes, and
the scythes gleamed gaily and uttered in unison together “Vzhee, vzhee!”
From the movements of the peasant women binding the sheaves, from the
faces of the mowers, from the glitter of the scythes, it could be seen that the
sultry heat was baking and stifling. A black dog with its tongue hanging out
ran from the mowers to meet the chaise, probably with the intention of
barking, but stopped halfway and stared indifferently at Deniska, who
shook his whip at him; it was too hot to bark! One peasant woman got up
and, putting both hands to her aching back, followed Yegorushka’s red shirt
with her eyes. Whether it was that the colour pleased her or that he
reminded her of her children, she stood a long time motionless staring after
him.
But now the wheat, too, had flashed by; again the parched plain, the
sunburnt hills, the sultry sky stretched before them; again a hawk hovered
over the earth. In the distance, as before, a windmill whirled its sails, and
still it looked like a little man waving his arms. It was wearisome to watch,
and it seemed as though one would never reach it, as though it were running
away from the chaise.
Father Christopher and Kuzmitchov were silent. Deniska lashed the
horses and kept shouting to them, while Yegorushka had left off crying, and
gazed about him listlessly. The heat and the tedium of the steppes
overpowered him. He felt as though he had been travelling and jolting up
and down for a very long time, that the sun had been baking his back a long

time. Before they had gone eight miles he began to feel “It must be time to
rest.” The geniality gradually faded out of his uncle’s face and nothing else
was left but the air of business reserve; and to a gaunt shaven face,
especially when it is adorned with spectacles and the nose and temples are
covered with dust, this reserve gives a relentless, inquisitorial appearance.
Father Christopher never left off gazing with wonder at God’s world, and
smiling. Without speaking, he brooded over something pleasant and nice,
and a kindly, genial smile remained imprinted on his face. It seemed as
though some nice and pleasant thought were imprinted on his brain by the
heat.
“Well, Deniska, shall we overtake the waggons to-day?” asked
Kuzmitchov.
Deniska looked at the sky, rose in his seat, lashed at his horses and then
answered:
“By nightfall, please God, we shall overtake them.”
There was a sound of dogs barking. Half a dozen steppe sheep-dogs,
suddenly leaping out as though from ambush, with ferocious howling barks,
flew to meet the chaise. All of them, extraordinarily furious, surrounded the
chaise, with their shaggy spider-like muzzles and their eyes red with anger,
and jostling against one another in their anger, raised a hoarse howl. They
were filled with passionate hatred of the horses, of the chaise, and of the
human beings, and seemed ready to tear them into pieces. Deniska, who
was fond of teasing and beating, was delighted at the chance of it, and with
a malignant expression bent over and lashed at the sheep-dogs with his
whip. The brutes growled more than ever, the horses flew on; and
Yegorushka, who had difficulty in keeping his seat on the box, realized,
looking at the dogs’ eyes and teeth, that if he fell down they would instantly
tear him to bits; but he felt no fear and looked at them as malignantly as
Deniska, and regretted that he had no whip in his hand.
The chaise came upon a flock of sheep.
“Stop!” cried Kuzmitchov. “Pull up! Woa!”
Deniska threw his whole body backwards and pulled up the horses.

“Come here!” Kuzmitchov shouted to the shepherd. “Call off the dogs,
curse them!”
The old shepherd, tattered and barefoot, wearing a fur cap, with a dirty
sack round his loins and a long crook in his hand—a regular figure from the
Old Testament—called off the dogs, and taking off his cap, went up to the
chaise. Another similar Old Testament figure was standing motionless at the
other end of the flock, staring without interest at the travellers.
“Whose sheep are these?” asked Kuzmitchov.
“Varlamov’s,” the old man answered in a loud voice.
“Varlamov’s,” repeated the shepherd standing at the other end of the
flock.
“Did Varlamov come this way yesterday or not?”
“He did not; his clerk came. . . .”
“Drive on!”
The chaise rolled on and the shepherds, with their angry dogs, were left
behind. Yegorushka gazed listlessly at the lilac distance in front, and it
began to seem as though the windmill, waving its sails, were getting nearer.
It became bigger and bigger, grew quite large, and now he could distinguish
clearly its two sails. One sail was old and patched, the other had only lately
been made of new wood and glistened in the sun. The chaise drove straight
on, while the windmill, for some reason, began retreating to the left. They
drove on and on, and the windmill kept moving away to the left, and still
did not disappear.
“A fine windmill Boltva has put up for his son,” observed Deniska.
“And how is it we don’t see his farm?”
“It is that way, beyond the creek.”
Boltva’s farm, too, soon came into sight, but yet the windmill did not
retreat, did not drop behind; it still watched Yegorushka with its shining sail
and waved. What a sorcerer!

II

Towards midday the chaise turned off the road to the right; it went on a
little way at walking pace and then stopped. Yegorushka heard a soft, very
caressing gurgle, and felt a different air breathe on his face with a cool
velvety touch. Through a little pipe of hemlock stuck there by some
unknown benefactor, water was running in a thin trickle from a low hill, put
together by nature of huge monstrous stones. It fell to the ground, and
limpid, sparkling gaily in the sun, and softly murmuring as though fancying
itself a great tempestuous torrent, flowed swiftly away to the left. Not far
from its source the little stream spread itself out into a pool; the burning
sunbeams and the parched soil greedily drank it up and sucked away its
strength; but a little further on it must have mingled with another rivulet, for
a hundred paces away thick reeds showed green and luxuriant along its
course, and three snipe flew up from them with a loud cry as the chaise
drove by.
The travellers got out to rest by the stream and feed the horses.
Kuzmitchov, Father Christopher and Yegorushka sat down on a mat in the
narrow strip of shade cast by the chaise and the unharnessed horses. The
nice pleasant thought that the heat had imprinted in Father Christopher’s
brain craved expression after he had had a drink of water and eaten a hard-
boiled egg. He bent a friendly look upon Yegorushka, munched, and began:
“I studied too, my boy; from the earliest age God instilled into me good
sense and understanding, so that while I was just such a lad as you I was
beyond others, a comfort to my parents and preceptors by my good sense.
Before I was fifteen I could speak and make verses in Latin, just as in
Russian. I was the crosier-bearer to his Holiness Bishop Christopher. After
mass one day, as I remember it was the patron saint’s day of His Majesty
Tsar Alexandr Pavlovitch of blessed memory, he unrobed at the altar,
looked kindly at me and asked, ‘Puer bone, quam appelaris?’ And I
answered, ‘Christopherus sum;’ and he said, ‘Ergo connominati sumus’—
that is, that we were namesakes. . . Then he asked in Latin, ‘Whose son are
you?’ To which I answered, also in Latin, that I was the son of deacon
Sireysky of the village of Lebedinskoe. Seeing my readiness and the
clearness of my answers, his Holiness blessed me and said, ‘Write to your
father that I will not forget him, and that I will keep you in view.’ The holy

priests and fathers who were standing round the altar, hearing our
discussion in Latin, were not a little surprised, and everyone expressed his
pleasure in praise of me. Before I had moustaches, my boy, I could read
Latin, Greek, and French; I knew philosophy, mathematics, secular history,
and all the sciences. The Lord gave me a marvellous memory. Sometimes,
if I read a thing once or twice, I knew it by heart. My preceptors and
patrons were amazed, and so they expected I should make a learned man, a
luminary of the Church. I did think of going to Kiev to continue my studies,
but my parents did not approve. ‘You’ll be studying all your life,’ said my
father; ‘when shall we see you finished?’ Hearing such words, I gave up
study and took a post. . . . Of course, I did not become a learned man, but
then I did not disobey my parents; I was a comfort to them in their old age
and gave them a creditable funeral. Obedience is more than fasting and
prayer.
“I suppose you have forgotten all your learning?” observed Kuzmitchov.
“I should think so! Thank God, I have reached my eightieth year!
Something of philosophy and rhetoric I do remember, but languages and
mathematics I have quite forgotten.”
Father Christopher screwed up his eyes, thought a minute and said in an
undertone:
“What is a substance? A creature is a self-existing object, not requiring
anything else for its completion.”
He shook his head and laughed with feeling.
“Spiritual nourishment!” he said. “Of a truth matter nourishes the flesh
and spiritual nourishment the soul!”
“Learning is all very well,” sighed Kuzmitchov, “but if we don’t overtake
Varlamov, learning won’t do much for us.”
“A man isn’t a needle—we shall find him. He must be going his rounds
in these parts.”
Among the sedge were flying the three snipe they had seen before, and in
their plaintive cries there was a note of alarm and vexation at having been

driven away from the stream. The horses were steadily munching and
snorting. Deniska walked about by them and, trying to appear indifferent to
the cucumbers, pies, and eggs that the gentry were eating, he concentrated
himself on the gadflies and horseflies that were fastening upon the horses’
backs and bellies; he squashed his victims apathetically, emitting a peculiar,
fiendishly triumphant, guttural sound, and when he missed them cleared his
throat with an air of vexation and looked after every lucky one that escaped
death.
“Deniska, where are you? Come and eat,” said Kuzmitchov, heaving a
deep sigh, a sign that he had had enough.
Deniska diffidently approached the mat and picked out five thick and
yellow cucumbers (he did not venture to take the smaller and fresher ones),
took two hard-boiled eggs that looked dark and were cracked, then
irresolutely, as though afraid he might get a blow on his outstretched hand,
touched a pie with his finger.
“Take them, take them,” Kuzmitchov urged him on.
Deniska took the pies resolutely, and, moving some distance away, sat
down on the grass with his back to the chaise. At once there was such a
sound of loud munching that even the horses turned round to look
suspiciously at Deniska.
After his meal Kuzmitchov took a sack containing something out of the
chaise and said to Yegorushka:
“I am going to sleep, and you mind that no one takes the sack from under
my head.”
Father Christopher took off his cassock, his girdle, and his full coat, and
Yegorushka, looking at him, was dumb with astonishment. He had never
imagined that priests wore trousers, and Father Christopher had on real
canvas trousers thrust into high boots, and a short striped jacket. Looking at
him, Yegorushka thought that in this costume, so unsuitable to his dignified
position, he looked with his long hair and beard very much like Robinson
Crusoe. After taking off their outer garments Kuzmitchov and Father
Christopher lay down in the shade under the chaise, facing one another, and

closed their eyes. Deniska, who had finished munching, stretched himself
out on his back and also closed his eyes.
“You look out that no one takes away the horses!” he said to Yegorushka,
and at once fell asleep.
Stillness reigned. There was no sound except the munching and snorting
of the horses and the snoring of the sleepers; somewhere far away a lapwing
wailed, and from time to time there sounded the shrill cries of the three
snipe who had flown up to see whether their uninvited visitors had gone
away; the rivulet babbled, lisping softly, but all these sounds did not break
the stillness, did not stir the stagnation, but, on the contrary, lulled all nature
to slumber.
Yegorushka, gasping with the heat, which was particularly oppressive
after a meal, ran to the sedge and from there surveyed the country. He saw
exactly the same as he had in the morning: the plain, the low hills, the sky,
the lilac distance; only the hills stood nearer; and he could not see the
windmill, which had been left far behind. From behind the rocky hill from
which the stream flowed rose another, smoother and broader; a little hamlet
of five or six homesteads clung to it. No people, no trees, no shade were to
be seen about the huts; it looked as though the hamlet had expired in the
burning air and was dried up. To while away the time Yegorushka caught a
grasshopper in the grass, held it in his closed hand to his ear, and spent a
long time listening to the creature playing on its instrument. When he was
weary of its music he ran after a flock of yellow butterflies who were flying
towards the sedge on the watercourse, and found himself again beside the
chaise, without noticing how he came there. His uncle and Father
Christopher were sound asleep; their sleep would be sure to last two or
three hours till the horses had rested. . . . How was he to get through that
long time, and where was he to get away from the heat? A hard problem. . .
. Mechanically Yegorushka put his lips to the trickle that ran from the
waterpipe; there was a chilliness in his mouth and there was the smell of
hemlock. He drank at first eagerly, then went on with effort till the sharp
cold had run from his mouth all over his body and the water was spilt on his
shirt. Then he went up to the chaise and began looking at the sleeping
figures. His uncle’s face wore, as before, an expression of business-like
reserve. Fanatically devoted to his work, Kuzmitchov always, even in his

sleep and at church when they were singing, “Like the cherubim,” thought
about his business and could never forget it for a moment; and now he was
probably dreaming about bales of wool, waggons, prices, Varlamov. . . .
Father Christopher, now, a soft, frivolous and absurd person, had never all
his life been conscious of anything which could, like a boa-constrictor, coil
about his soul and hold it tight. In all the numerous enterprises he had
undertaken in his day what attracted him was not so much the business
itself, but the bustle and the contact with other people involved in every
undertaking. Thus, in the present expedition, he was not so much interested
in wool, in Varlamov, and in prices, as in the long journey, the
conversations on the way, the sleeping under a chaise, and the meals at odd
times. . . . And now, judging from his face, he must have been dreaming of
Bishop Christopher, of the Latin discussion, of his wife, of puffs and cream
and all sorts of things that Kuzmitchov could not possibly dream of.
While Yegorushka was watching their sleeping faces he suddenly heard a
soft singing; somewhere at a distance a woman was singing, and it was
difficult to tell where and in what direction. The song was subdued, dreary
and melancholy, like a dirge, and hardly audible, and seemed to come first
from the right, then from the left, then from above, and then from
underground, as though an unseen spirit were hovering over the steppe and
singing. Yegorushka looked about him, and could not make out where the
strange song came from. Then as he listened he began to fancy that the
grass was singing; in its song, withered and half-dead, it was without words,
but plaintively and passionately, urging that it was not to blame, that the sun
was burning it for no fault of its own; it urged that it ardently longed to live,
that it was young and might have been beautiful but for the heat and the
drought; it was guiltless, but yet it prayed forgiveness and protested that it
was in anguish, sad and sorry for itself. . . .
Yegorushka listened for a little, and it began to seem as though this
dreary, mournful song made the air hotter, more suffocating and more
stagnant. . . . To drown the singing he ran to the sedge, humming to himself
and trying to make a noise with his feet. From there he looked about in all
directions and found out who was singing. Near the furthest hut in the
hamlet stood a peasant woman in a short petticoat, with long thin legs like a
heron. She was sowing something. A white dust floated languidly from her
sieve down the hillock. Now it was evident that she was singing. A couple

of yards from her a little bare-headed boy in nothing but a smock was
standing motionless. As though fascinated by the song, he stood stock-still,
staring away into the distance, probably at Yegorushka’s crimson shirt.
The song ceased. Yegorushka sauntered back to the chaise, and to while
away the time went again to the trickle of water.
And again there was the sound of the dreary song. It was the same long-
legged peasant woman in the hamlet over the hill. Yegorushka’s boredom
came back again. He left the pipe and looked upwards. What he saw was so
unexpected that he was a little frightened. Just above his head on one of the
big clumsy stones stood a chubby little boy, wearing nothing but a shirt,
with a prominent stomach and thin legs, the same boy who had been
standing before by the peasant woman. He was gazing with open mouth and
unblinking eyes at Yegorushka’s crimson shirt and at the chaise, with a look
of blank astonishment and even fear, as though he saw before him creatures
of another world. The red colour of the shirt charmed and allured him. But
the chaise and the men sleeping under it excited his curiosity; perhaps he
had not noticed how the agreeable red colour and curiosity had attracted
him down from the hamlet, and now probably he was surprised at his own
boldness. For a long while Yegorushka stared at him, and he at Yegorushka.
Both were silent and conscious of some awkwardness. After a long silence
Yegorushka asked:
“What’s your name?”
The stranger’s cheeks puffed out more than ever; he pressed his back
against the rock, opened his eyes wide, moved his lips, and answered in a
husky bass: “Tit!”
The boys said not another word to each other; after a brief silence, still
keeping his eyes fixed on Yegorushka, the mysterious Tit kicked up one leg,
felt with his heel for a niche and clambered up the rock; from that point he
ascended to the next rock, staggering backwards and looking intently at
Yegorushka, as though afraid he might hit him from behind, and so made
his way upwards till he disappeared altogether behind the crest of the hill.
After watching him out of sight, Yegorushka put his arms round his knees
and leaned his head on them. . . . The burning sun scorched the back of his

head, his neck, and his spine. The melancholy song died away, then floated
again on the stagnant stifling air. The rivulet gurgled monotonously, the
horses munched, and time dragged on endlessly, as though it, too, were
stagnant and had come to a standstill. It seemed as though a hundred years
had passed since the morning. Could it be that God’s world, the chaise and
the horses would come to a standstill in that air, and, like the hills, turn to
stone and remain for ever in one spot? Yegorushka raised his head, and with
smarting eyes looked before him; the lilac distance, which till then had been
motionless, began heaving, and with the sky floated away into the distance.
. . . It drew after it the brown grass, the sedge, and with extraordinary
swiftness Yegorushka floated after the flying distance. Some force
noiselessly drew him onwards, and the heat and the wearisome song flew
after in pursuit. Yegorushka bent his head and shut his eyes. . . .
Deniska was the first to wake up. Something must have bitten him, for he
jumped up, quickly scratched his shoulder and said:
“Plague take you, cursed idolater!”
Then he went to the brook, had a drink and slowly washed. His splashing
and puffing roused Yegorushka from his lethargy. The boy looked at his wet
face with drops of water and big freckles which made it look like marble,
and asked:
“Shall we soon be going?”
Deniska looked at the height of the sun and answered:
“I expect so.”
He dried himself with the tail of his shirt and, making a very serious face,
hopped on one leg.
“I say, which of us will get to the sedge first?” he said.
Yegorushka was exhausted by the heat and drowsiness, but he raced off
after him all the same. Deniska was in his twentieth year, was a coachman
and going to be married, but he had not left off being a boy. He was very
fond of flying kites, chasing pigeons, playing knuckle-bones, running races,
and always took part in children’s games and disputes. No sooner had his

master turned his back or gone to sleep than Deniska would begin doing
something such as hopping on one leg or throwing stones. It was hard for
any grown-up person, seeing the genuine enthusiasm with which he
frolicked about in the society of children, to resist saying, “What a baby!”
Children, on the other hand, saw nothing strange in the invasion of their
domain by the big coachman. “Let him play,” they thought, “as long as he
doesn’t fight!” In the same way little dogs see nothing strange in it when a
simple-hearted big dog joins their company uninvited and begins playing
with them.
Deniska outstripped Yegorushka, and was evidently very much pleased at
having done so. He winked at him, and to show that he could hop on one
leg any distance, suggested to Yegorushka that he should hop with him
along the road and from there, without resting, back to the chaise.
Yegorushka declined this suggestion, for he was very much out of breath
and exhausted.
All at once Deniska looked very grave, as he did not look even when
Kuzmitchov gave him a scolding or threatened him with a stick; listening
intently, he dropped quietly on one knee and an expression of sternness and
alarm came into his face, such as one sees in people who hear heretical talk.
He fixed his eyes on one spot, raised his hand curved into a hollow, and
suddenly fell on his stomach on the ground and slapped the hollow of his
hand down upon the grass.
“Caught!” he wheezed triumphantly, and, getting up, lifted a big
grasshopper to Yegorushka’s eyes.
The two boys stroked the grasshopper’s broad green back with their
fingers and touched his antenna, supposing that this would please the
creature. Then Deniska caught a fat fly that had been sucking blood and
offered it to the grasshopper. The latter moved his huge jaws, that were like
the visor of a helmet, with the utmost unconcern, as though he had been
long acquainted with Deniska, and bit off the fly’s stomach. They let him
go. With a flash of the pink lining of his wings, he flew down into the grass
and at once began his churring notes again. They let the fly go, too. It
preened its wings, and without its stomach flew off to the horses.

A loud sigh was heard from under the chaise. It was Kuzmitchov waking
up. He quickly raised his head, looked uneasily into the distance, and from
that look, which passed by Yegorushka and Deniska without sympathy or
interest, it could be seen that his thought on awaking was of the wool and of
Varlamov.
“Father Christopher, get up; it is time to start,” he said anxiously. “Wake
up; we’ve slept too long as it is! Deniska, put the horses in.”
Father Christopher woke up with the same smile with which he had
fallen asleep; his face looked creased and wrinkled from sleep, and seemed
only half the size. After washing and dressing, he proceeded without haste
to take out of his pocket a little greasy psalter; and standing with his face
towards the east, began in a whisper repeating the psalms of the day and
crossing himself.
“Father Christopher,” said Kuzmitchov reproachfully, “it’s time to start;
the horses are ready, and here are you, . . . upon my word.”
“In a minute, in a minute,” muttered Father Christopher. “I must read the
psalms. . . . I haven’t read them to-day.”
“The psalms can wait.”
“Ivan Ivanitch, that is my rule every day. . . . I can’t . . .”
“God will overlook it.”
For a full quarter of an hour Father Christopher stood facing the east and
moving his lips, while Kuzmitchov looked at him almost with hatred and
impatiently shrugged his shoulders. He was particularly irritated when, after
every “Hallelujah,” Father Christopher drew a long breath, rapidly crossed
himself and repeated three times, intentionally raising his voice so that the
others might cross themselves, “Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah! Glory be
to Thee, O Lord!” At last he smiled, looked upwards at the sky, and, putting
the psalter in his pocket, said:
“Finis!”
A minute later the chaise had started on the road. As though it were going
backwards and not forwards, the travellers saw the same scene as they had

before midday.
The low hills were still plunged in the lilac distance, and no end could be
seen to them. There were glimpses of high grass and heaps of stones; strips
of stubble land passed by them and still the same rooks, the same hawk,
moving its wings with slow dignity, moved over the steppe. The air was
more sultry than ever; from the sultry heat and the stillness submissive
nature was spellbound into silence . . . . No wind, no fresh cheering sound,
no cloud.
But at last, when the sun was beginning to sink into the west, the steppe,
the hills and the air could bear the oppression no longer, and, driven out of
all patience, exhausted, tried to fling off the yoke. A fleecy ashen-grey
cloud unexpectedly appeared behind the hills. It exchanged glances with the
steppe, as though to say, “Here I am,” and frowned. Suddenly something
burst in the stagnant air; there was a violent squall of wind which whirled
round and round, roaring and whistling over the steppe. At once a murmur
rose from the grass and last year’s dry herbage, the dust curled in spiral
eddies over the road, raced over the steppe, and carrying with it straws,
dragon flies and feathers, rose up in a whirling black column towards the
sky and darkened the sun. Prickly uprooted plants ran stumbling and
leaping in all directions over the steppe, and one of them got caught in the
whirlwind, turned round and round like a bird, flew towards the sky, and
turning into a little black speck, vanished from sight. After it flew another,
and then a third, and Yegorushka saw two of them meet in the blue height
and clutch at one another as though they were wrestling.
A bustard flew up by the very road. Fluttering his wings and his tail, he
looked, bathed in the sunshine, like an angler’s glittering tin fish or a
waterfly flashing so swiftly over the water that its wings cannot be told
from its antenna, which seem to be growing before, behind and on all sides.
. . . Quivering in the air like an insect with a shimmer of bright colours, the
bustard flew high up in a straight line, then, probably frightened by a cloud
of dust, swerved to one side, and for a long time the gleam of his wings
could be seen. . . .
Then a corncrake flew up from the grass, alarmed by the hurricane and
not knowing what was the matter. It flew with the wind and not against it,

like all the other birds, so that all its feathers were ruffled up and it was
puffed out to the size of a hen and looked very angry and impressive. Only
the rooks who had grown old on the steppe and were accustomed to its
vagaries hovered calmly over the grass, or taking no notice of anything,
went on unconcernedly pecking with their stout beaks at the hard earth.
There was a dull roll of thunder beyond the hills; there came a whiff of
fresh air. Deniska gave a cheerful whistle and lashed his horses. Father
Christopher and Kuzmitchov held their hats and looked intently towards the
hills. . . . How pleasant a shower of rain would have been!
One effort, one struggle more, and it seemed the steppe would have got
the upper hand. But the unseen oppressive force gradually riveted its fetters
on the wind and the air, laid the dust, and the stillness came back again as
though nothing had happened, the cloud hid, the sun-baked hills frowned
submissively, the air grew calm, and only somewhere the troubled lapwings
wailed and lamented their destiny. . . .
Soon after that the evening came on.

III

In the dusk of evening a big house of one storey, with a rusty iron roof
and with dark windows, came into sight. This house was called a posting-
inn, though it had nothing like a stableyard, and it stood in the middle of the
steppe, with no kind of enclosure round it. A little to one side of it a
wretched little cherry orchard shut in by a hurdle fence made a dark patch,
and under the windows stood sleepy sunflowers drooping their heavy heads.
From the orchard came the clatter of a little toy windmill, set there to
frighten away hares by the rattle. Nothing more could be seen near the
house, and nothing could be heard but the steppe. The chaise had scarcely
stopped at the porch with an awning over it, when from the house there
came the sound of cheerful voices, one a man’s, another a woman’s; there
was the creak of a swing-door, and in a flash a tall gaunt figure, swinging its
arms and fluttering its coat, was standing by the chaise. This was the
innkeeper, Moisey Moisevitch, a man no longer young, with a very pale
face and a handsome beard as black as charcoal. He was wearing a
threadbare black coat, which hung flapping on his narrow shoulders as

though on a hatstand, and fluttered its skirts like wings every time Moisey
Moisevitch flung up his hands in delight or horror. Besides his coat the
innkeeper was wearing full white trousers, not stuck into his boots, and a
velvet waistcoat with brown flowers on it that looked like gigantic bugs.
Moisey Moisevitch was at first dumb with excess of feeling on
recognizing the travellers, then he clasped his hands and uttered a moan.
His coat swung its skirts, his back bent into a bow, and his pale face twisted
into a smile that suggested that to see the chaise was not merely a pleasure
to him, but actually a joy so sweet as to be painful.
“Oh dear! oh dear!” he began in a thin sing-song voice, breathless,
fussing about and preventing the travellers from getting out of the chaise by
his antics. “What a happy day for me! Oh, what am I to do now? Ivan
Ivanitch! Father Christopher! What a pretty little gentleman sitting on the
box, God strike me dead! Oh, my goodness! why am I standing here instead
of asking the visitors indoors? Please walk in, I humbly beg you. . . . You
are kindly welcome! Give me all your things. . . . Oh, my goodness me!”
Moisey Moisevitch, who was rummaging in the chaise and assisting the
travellers to alight, suddenly turned back and shouted in a voice as frantic
and choking as though he were drowning and calling for help:
“Solomon! Solomon!”
“Solomon! Solomon!” a woman’s voice repeated indoors.
The swing-door creaked, and in the doorway appeared a rather short
young Jew with a big beak-like nose, with a bald patch surrounded by
rough red curly hair; he was dressed in a short and very shabby reefer
jacket, with rounded lappets and short sleeves, and in short serge trousers,
so that he looked skimpy and short-tailed like an unfledged bird. This was
Solomon, the brother of Moisey Moisevitch. He went up to the chaise,
smiling rather queerly, and did not speak or greet the travellers.
“Ivan Ivanitch and Father Christopher have come,” said Moisey
Moisevitch in a tone as though he were afraid his brother would not believe
him. “Dear, dear! What a surprise! Such honoured guests to have come us
so suddenly! Come, take their things, Solomon. Walk in, honoured guests.”

A little later Kuzmitchov, Father Christopher, and Yegorushka were
sitting in a big gloomy empty room at an old oak table. The table was
almost in solitude, for, except a wide sofa covered with torn American
leather and three chairs, there was no other furniture in the room. And,
indeed, not everybody would have given the chairs that name. They were a
pitiful semblance of furniture, covered with American leather that had seen
its best days, and with backs bent backwards at an unnaturally acute angle,
so that they looked like children’s sledges. It was hard to imagine what had
been the unknown carpenter’s object in bending the chairbacks so
mercilessly, and one was tempted to imagine that it was not the carpenter’s
fault, but that some athletic visitor had bent the chairs like this as a feat,
then had tried to bend them back again and had made them worse. The
room looked gloomy, the walls were grey, the ceilings and the cornices
were grimy; on the floor were chinks and yawning holes that were hard to
account for (one might have fancied they were made by the heel of the
same athlete), and it seemed as though the room would still have been dark
if a dozen lamps had hung in it. There was nothing approaching an
ornament on the walls or the windows. On one wall, however, there hung a
list of regulations of some sort under a two-headed eagle in a grey wooden
frame, and on another wall in the same sort of frame an engraving with the
inscription, “The Indifference of Man.” What it was to which men were
indifferent it was impossible to make out, as the engraving was very dingy
with age and was extensively flyblown. There was a smell of something
decayed and sour in the room.
As he led the visitors into the room, Moisey Moisevitch went on
wriggling, gesticulating, shrugging and uttering joyful exclamations; he
considered these antics necessary in order to seem polite and agreeable.
“When did our waggons go by?” Kuzmitchov asked.
“One party went by early this morning, and the other, Ivan Ivanitch, put
up here for dinner and went on towards evening.”
“Ah! . . . Has Varlamov been by or not?”
“No, Ivan Ivanitch. His clerk, Grigory Yegoritch, went by yesterday
morning and said that he had to be to-day at the Molokans’ farm.”

“Good! so we will go after the waggons directly and then on to the
Molokans’.”
“Mercy on us, Ivan Ivanitch!” Moisey Moisevitch cried in horror,
flinging up his hands. “Where are you going for the night? You will have a
nice little supper and stay the night, and to-morrow morning, please God,
you can go on and overtake anyone you like.”
“There is no time for that. . . . Excuse me, Moisey Moisevitch, another
time; but now I must make haste. We’ll stay a quarter of an hour and then
go on; we can stay the night at the Molokans’.”
“A quarter of an hour!” squealed Moisey Moisevitch. “Have you no fear
of God, Ivan Ivanitch? You will compel me to hide your caps and lock the
door! You must have a cup of tea and a snack of something, anyway.”
“We have no time for tea,” said Kuzmitchov.
Moisey Moisevitch bent his head on one side, crooked his knees, and put
his open hands before him as though warding off a blow, while with a smile
of agonized sweetness he began imploring:
“Ivan Ivanitch! Father Christopher! Do be so good as to take a cup of tea
with me. Surely I am not such a bad man that you can’t even drink tea in
my house? Ivan Ivanitch!”
“Well, we may just as well have a cup of tea,” said Father Christopher,
with a sympathetic smile; “that won’t keep us long.”
“Very well,” Kuzmitchov assented.
Moisey Moisevitch, in a fluster uttered an exclamation of joy, and
shrugging as though he had just stepped out of cold weather into warm, ran
to the door and cried in the same frantic voice in which he had called
Solomon:
“Rosa! Rosa! Bring the samovar!”
A minute later the door opened, and Solomon came into the room
carrying a large tray in his hands. Setting the tray on the table, he looked
away sarcastically with the same queer smile as before. Now, by the light of

the lamp, it was possible to see his smile distinctly; it was very complex,
and expressed a variety of emotions, but the predominant element in it was
undisguised contempt. He seemed to be thinking of something ludicrous
and silly, to be feeling contempt and dislike, to be pleased at something and
waiting for the favourable moment to turn something into ridicule and to
burst into laughter. His long nose, his thick lips, and his sly prominent eyes
seemed tense with the desire to laugh. Looking at his face, Kuzmitchov
smiled ironically and asked:
“Solomon, why did you not come to our fair at N. this summer, and act
some Jewish scenes?”
Two years before, as Yegorushka remembered very well, at one of the
booths at the fair at N., Solomon had performed some scenes of Jewish life,
and his acting had been a great success. The allusion to this made no
impression whatever upon Solomon. Making no answer, he went out and
returned a little later with the samovar.
When he had done what he had to do at the table he moved a little aside,
and, folding his arms over his chest and thrusting out one leg, fixed his
sarcastic eyes on Father Christopher. There was something defiant, haughty,
and contemptuous in his attitude, and at the same time it was comic and
pitiful in the extreme, because the more impressive his attitude the more
vividly it showed up his short trousers, his bobtail coat, his caricature of a
nose, and his bird-like plucked-looking little figure.
Moisey Moisevitch brought a footstool from the other room and sat down
a little way from the table.
“I wish you a good appetite! Tea and sugar!” he began, trying to entertain
his visitors. “I hope you will enjoy it. Such rare guests, such rare ones; it is
years since I last saw Father Christopher. And will no one tell me who is
this nice little gentleman?” he asked, looking tenderly at Yegorushka.
“He is the son of my sister, Olga Ivanovna,” answered Kuzmitchov.
“And where is he going?”
“To school. We are taking him to a high school.”

In his politeness, Moisey Moisevitch put on a look of wonder and
wagged his head expressively.
“Ah, that is a fine thing,” he said, shaking his finger at the samovar.
“That’s a fine thing. You will come back from the high school such a
gentleman that we shall all take off our hats to you. You will be wealthy and
wise and so grand that your mamma will be delighted. Oh, that’s a fine
thing!”
He paused a little, stroked his knees, and began again in a jocose and
deferential tone.
“You must excuse me, Father Christopher, but I am thinking of writing to
the bishop to tell him you are robbing the merchants of their living. I shall
take a sheet of stamped paper and write that I suppose Father Christopher is
short of pence, as he has taken up with trade and begun selling wool.”
“H’m, yes . . . it’s a queer notion in my old age,” said Father Christopher,
and he laughed. “I have turned from priest to merchant, brother. I ought to
be at home now saying my prayers, instead of galloping about the country
like a Pharaoh in his chariot. . . . Vanity!”
“But it will mean a lot of pence!”
“Oh, I dare say! More kicks than halfpence, and serve me right. The
wool’s not mine, but my son-in-law Mikhail’s!”
“Why doesn’t he go himself?”
“Why, because . . . His mother’s milk is scarcely dry upon his lips. He
can buy wool all right, but when it comes to selling, he has no sense; he is
young yet. He has wasted all his money; he wanted to grow rich and cut a
dash, but he tried here and there, and no one would give him his price. And
so the lad went on like that for a year, and then he came to me and said,
‘Daddy, you sell the wool for me; be kind and do it! I am no good at the
business!’ And that is true enough. As soon as there is anything wrong then
it’s ‘Daddy,’ but till then they could get on without their dad. When he was
buying he did not consult me, but now when he is in difficulties it’s
Daddy’s turn. And what does his dad know about it? If it were not for Ivan
Ivanitch, his dad could do nothing. I have a lot of worry with them.”

“Yes; one has a lot of worry with one’s children, I can tell you that,”
sighed Moisey Moisevitch. “I have six of my own. One needs schooling,
another needs doctoring, and a third needs nursing, and when they grow up
they are more trouble still. It is not only nowadays, it was the same in Holy
Scripture. When Jacob had little children he wept, and when they grew up
he wept still more bitterly.”
“H’m, yes . . .” Father Christopher assented pensively, looking at his
glass. “I have no cause myself to rail against the Lord. I have lived to the
end of my days as any man might be thankful to live. . . . I have married my
daughters to good men, my sons I have set up in life, and now I am free; I
have done my work and can go where I like. I live in peace with my wife. I
eat and drink and sleep and rejoice in my grandchildren, and say my prayers
and want nothing more. I live on the fat of the land, and don’t need to curry
favour with anyone. I have never had any trouble from childhood, and now
suppose the Tsar were to ask me, ‘What do you need? What would you
like?’ why, I don’t need anything. I have everything I want and everything
to be thankful for. In the whole town there is no happier man than I am. My
only trouble is I have so many sins, but there —only God is without sin.
That’s right, isn’t it?”
“No doubt it is.”
“I have no teeth, of course; my poor old back aches; there is one thing
and another, . . . asthma and that sort of thing. . . . I ache. . . . The flesh is
weak, but then think of my age! I am in the eighties! One can’t go on for
ever; one mustn’t outstay one’s welcome.”
Father Christopher suddenly thought of something, spluttered into his
glass and choked with laughter. Moisey Moisevitch laughed, too, from
politeness, and he, too, cleared his throat.
“So funny!” said Father Christopher, and he waved his hand. “My eldest
son Gavrila came to pay me a visit. He is in the medical line, and is a
district doctor in the province of Tchernigov. . . . ‘Very well . . .’ I said to
him, ‘here I have asthma and one thing and another. . . . You are a doctor;
cure your father!’ He undressed me on the spot, tapped me, listened, and all
sorts of tricks, . . . kneaded my stomach, and then he said, ‘Dad, you ought

to be treated with compressed air.’” Father Christopher laughed
convulsively, till the tears came into his eyes, and got up.
“And I said to him, ‘God bless your compressed air!’” he brought out
through his laughter, waving both hands. “God bless your compressed air!”
Moisey Moisevitch got up, too, and with his hands on his stomach, went
off into shrill laughter like the yap of a lap-dog.
“God bless the compressed air!” repeated Father Christopher, laughing.
Moisey Moisevitch laughed two notes higher and so violently that he
could hardly stand on his feet.
“Oh dear!” he moaned through his laughter. “Let me get my breath . . . .
You’ll be the death of me.”
He laughed and talked, though at the same time he was casting timorous
and suspicious looks at Solomon. The latter was standing in the same
attitude and still smiling. To judge from his eyes and his smile, his contempt
and hatred were genuine, but that was so out of keeping with his plucked-
looking figure that it seemed to Yegorushka as though he were putting on
his defiant attitude and biting sarcastic smile to play the fool for the
entertainment of their honoured guests.
After drinking six glasses of tea in silence, Kuzmitchov cleared a space
before him on the table, took his bag, the one which he kept under his head
when he slept under the chaise, untied the string and shook it. Rolls of
paper notes were scattered out of the bag on the table.
“While we have the time, Father Christopher, let us reckon up,” said
Kuzmitchov.
Moisey Moisevitch was embarrassed at the sight of the money. He got
up, and, as a man of delicate feeling unwilling to pry into other people’s
secrets, he went out of the room on tiptoe, swaying his arms. Solomon
remained where he was.
“How many are there in the rolls of roubles?” Father Christopher began.

“The rouble notes are done up in fifties, . . . the three-rouble notes in
nineties, the twenty-five and hundred roubles in thousands. You count out
seven thousand eight hundred for Varlamov, and I will count out for
Gusevitch. And mind you don’t make a mistake. . .”
Yegorushka had never in his life seen so much money as was lying on the
table before him. There must have been a great deal of money, for the roll
of seven thousand eight hundred, which Father Christopher put aside for
Varlamov, seemed very small compared with the whole heap. At any other
time such a mass of money would have impressed Yegorushka, and would
have moved him to reflect how many cracknels, buns and poppy-cakes
could be bought for that money. Now he looked at it listlessly, only
conscious of the disgusting smell of kerosene and rotten apples that came
from the heap of notes. He was exhausted by the jolting ride in the chaise,
tired out and sleepy. His head was heavy, his eyes would hardly keep open
and his thoughts were tangled like threads. If it had been possible he would
have been relieved to lay his head on the table, so as not to see the lamp and
the fingers moving over the heaps of notes, and to have let his tired sleepy
thoughts go still more at random. When he tried to keep awake, the light of
the lamp, the cups and the fingers grew double, the samovar heaved and the
smell of rotten apples seemed even more acrid and disgusting.
“Ah, money, money!” sighed Father Christopher, smiling. “You bring
trouble! Now I expect my Mihailo is asleep and dreaming that I am going to
bring him a heap of money like this.”
“Your Mihailo Timofevitch is a man who doesn’t understand business,”
said Kuzmitchov in an undertone; “he undertakes what isn’t his work, but
you understand and can judge. You had better hand over your wool to me,
as I have said already, and I would give you half a rouble above my own
price—yes, I would, simply out of regard for you. . . .”
“No, Ivan Ivanitch.” Father Christopher sighed. “I thank you for your
kindness. . . . Of course, if it were for me to decide, I shouldn’t think twice
about it; but as it is, the wool is not mine, as you know. . . .”
Moisey Moisevitch came in on tiptoe. Trying from delicacy not to look at
the heaps of money, he stole up to Yegorushka and pulled at his shirt from
behind.

“Come along, little gentleman,” he said in an undertone, “come and see
the little bear I can show you! Such a queer, cross little bear. Oo-oo!”
The sleepy boy got up and listlessly dragged himself after Moisey
Moisevitch to see the bear. He went into a little room, where, before he saw
anything, he felt he could not breathe from the smell of something sour and
decaying, which was much stronger here than in the big room and probably
spread from this room all over the house. One part of the room was
occupied by a big bed, covered with a greasy quilt and another by a chest of
drawers and heaps of rags of all kinds from a woman’s stiff petticoat to
children’s little breeches and braces. A tallow candle stood on the chest of
drawers.
Instead of the promised bear, Yegorushka saw a big fat Jewess with her
hair hanging loose, in a red flannel skirt with black sprigs on it; she turned
with difficulty in the narrow space between the bed and the chest of drawers
and uttered drawn-out moaning as though she had toothache. On seeing
Yegorushka, she made a doleful, woe-begone face, heaved a long drawn-out
sigh, and before he had time to look round, put to his lips a slice of bread
smeared with honey.
“Eat it, dearie, eat it!” she said. “You are here without your mamma, and
no one to look after you. Eat it up.”
Yegorushka did eat it, though after the goodies and poppy-cakes he had
every day at home, he did not think very much of the honey, which was
mixed with wax and bees’ wings. He ate while Moisey Moisevitch and the
Jewess looked at him and sighed.
“Where are you going, dearie?” asked the Jewess.
“To school,” answered Yegorushka.
“And how many brothers and sisters have you got?”
“I am the only one; there are no others.”
“O-oh!” sighed the Jewess, and turned her eyes upward. “Poor mamma,
poor mamma! How she will weep and miss you! We are going to send our
Nahum to school in a year. O-oh!”

“Ah, Nahum, Nahum!” sighed Moisey Moisevitch, and the skin of his
pale face twitched nervously. “And he is so delicate.”
The greasy quilt quivered, and from beneath it appeared a child’s curly
head on a very thin neck; two black eyes gleamed and stared with curiosity
at Yegorushka. Still sighing, Moisey Moisevitch and the Jewess went to the
chest of drawers and began talking in Yiddish. Moisey Moisevitch spoke in
a low bass undertone, and altogether his talk in Yiddish was like a continual
“ghaal-ghaal-ghaal-ghaal, . . .” while his wife answered him in a shrill voice
like a turkeycock’s, and the whole effect of her talk was something like
“Too-too-too-too!” While they were consulting, another little curly head on
a thin neck peeped out of the greasy quilt, then a third, then a fourth. . . . If
Yegorushka had had a fertile imagination he might have imagined that the
hundred-headed hydra was hiding under the quilt.
“Ghaal-ghaal-ghaal-ghaal!” said Moisey Moisevitch.
“Too-too-too-too!” answered the Jewess.
The consultation ended in the Jewess’s diving with a deep sigh into the
chest of drawers, and, unwrapping some sort of green rag there, she took
out a big rye cake made in the shape of a heart.
“Take it, dearie,” she said, giving Yegorushka the cake; “you have no
mamma now—no one to give you nice things.”
Yegorushka stuck the cake in his pocket and staggered to the door, as he
could not go on breathing the foul, sour air in which the innkeeper and his
wife lived. Going back to the big room, he settled himself more
comfortably on the sofa and gave up trying to check his straying thoughts.
As soon as Kuzmitchov had finished counting out the notes he put them
back into the bag. He did not treat them very respectfully and stuffed them
into the dirty sack without ceremony, as indifferently as though they had not
been money but waste paper.
Father Christopher was talking to Solomon.
“Well, Solomon the Wise!” he said, yawning and making the sign of the
cross over his mouth. “How is business?”

“What sort of business are you talking about?” asked Solomon, and he
looked as fiendish, as though it were a hint of some crime on his part.
“Oh, things in general. What are you doing?”
“What am I doing?” Solomon repeated, and he shrugged his shoulders.
“The same as everyone else. . . . You see, I am a menial, I am my brother’s
servant; my brother’s the servant of the visitors; the visitors are Varlamov’s
servants; and if I had ten millions, Varlamov would be my servant.”
“Why would he be your servant?”
“Why, because there isn’t a gentleman or millionaire who isn’t ready to
lick the hand of a scabby Jew for the sake of making a kopeck. Now, I am a
scabby Jew and a beggar. Everybody looks at me as though I were a dog,
but if I had money Varlamov would play the fool before me just as Moisey
does before you.”
Father Christopher and Kuzmitchov looked at each other. Neither of them
understood Solomon. Kuzmitchov looked at him sternly and dryly, and
asked:
“How can you compare yourself with Varlamov, you blockhead?”
“I am not such a fool as to put myself on a level with Varlamov,”
answered Solomon, looking sarcastically at the speaker. “Though Varlamov
is a Russian, he is at heart a scabby Jew; money and gain are all he lives for,
but I threw my money in the stove! I don’t want money, or land, or sheep,
and there is no need for people to be afraid of me and to take off their hats
when I pass. So I am wiser than your Varlamov and more like a man!”
A little later Yegorushka, half asleep, heard Solomon in a hoarse hollow
voice choked with hatred, in hurried stuttering phrases, talking about the
Jews. At first he talked correctly in Russian, then he fell into the tone of a
Jewish recitation, and began speaking as he had done at the fair with an
exaggerated Jewish accent.
“Stop! . . .” Father Christopher said to him. “If you don’t like your
religion you had better change it, but to laugh at it is a sin; it is only the
lowest of the low who will make fun of his religion.”

“You don’t understand,” Solomon cut him short rudely. “I am talking of
one thing and you are talking of something else. . . .”
“One can see you are a foolish fellow,” sighed Father Christopher. “I
admonish you to the best of my ability, and you are angry. I speak to you
like an old man quietly, and you answer like a turkeycock: ‘Bla—-bla—-
bla!’ You really are a queer fellow. . . .”
Moisey Moisevitch came in. He looked anxiously at Solomon and at his
visitors, and again the skin on his face quivered nervously. Yegorushka
shook his head and looked about him; he caught a passing glimpse of
Solomon’s face at the very moment when it was turned three-quarters
towards him and when the shadow of his long nose divided his left cheek in
half; the contemptuous smile mingled with that shadow; the gleaming
sarcastic eyes, the haughty expression, and the whole plucked-looking little
figure, dancing and doubling itself before Yegorushka’s eyes, made him
now not like a buffoon, but like something one sometimes dreams of, like
an evil spirit.
“What a ferocious fellow you’ve got here, Moisey Moisevitch! God bless
him!” said Father Christopher with a smile. “You ought to find him a place
or a wife or something. . . . There’s no knowing what to make of him. . . .”
Kuzmitchov frowned angrily. Moisey Moisevitch looked uneasily and
inquiringly at his brother and the visitors again.
“Solomon, go away!” he said shortly. “Go away!” and he added
something in Yiddish. Solomon gave an abrupt laugh and went out.
“What was it?” Moisey Moisevitch asked Father Christopher anxiously.
“He forgets himself,” answered Kuzmitchov. “He’s rude and thinks too
much of himself.”
“I knew it!” Moisey Moisevitch cried in horror, clasping his hands. “Oh
dear, oh dear!” he muttered in a low voice. “Be so kind as to excuse it, and
don’t be angry. He is such a queer fellow, such a queer fellow! Oh dear, oh
dear! He is my own brother, but I have never had anything but trouble from
him. You know he’s. . .”

Moisey Moisevitch crooked his finger by his forehead and went on:
“He is not in his right mind; . . . he’s hopeless. And I don’t know what I
am to do with him! He cares for nobody, he respects nobody, and is afraid
of nobody. . . . You know he laughs at everybody, he says silly things,
speaks familiarly to anyone. You wouldn’t believe it, Varlamov came here
one day and Solomon said such things to him that he gave us both a taste of
his whip. . . . But why whip me? Was it my fault? God has robbed him of
his wits, so it is God’s will, and how am I to blame?”
Ten minutes passed and Moisey Moisevitch was still muttering in an
undertone and sighing:
“He does not sleep at night, and is always thinking and thinking and
thinking, and what he is thinking about God only knows. If you go to him at
night he is angry and laughs. He doesn’t like me either . . . . And there is
nothing he wants! When our father died he left us each six thousand
roubles. I bought myself an inn, married, and now I have children; and he
burnt all his money in the stove. Such a pity, such a pity! Why burn it? If he
didn’t want it he could give it to me, but why burn it?”
Suddenly the swing-door creaked and the floor shook under footsteps.
Yegorushka felt a draught of cold air, and it seemed to him as though some
big black bird had passed by him and had fluttered its wings close in his
face. He opened his eyes. . . . His uncle was standing by the sofa with his
sack in his hands ready for departure; Father Christopher, holding his
broad-brimmed top-hat, was bowing to someone and smiling—not his usual
soft kindly smile, but a respectful forced smile which did not suit his face at
all—while Moisey Moisevitch looked as though his body had been broken
into three parts, and he were balancing and doing his utmost not to drop to
pieces. Only Solomon stood in the corner with his arms folded, as though
nothing had happened, and smiled contemptuously as before.
“Your Excellency must excuse us for not being tidy,” moaned Moisey
Moisevitch with the agonizingly sweet smile, taking no more notice of
Kuzmitchov or Father Christopher, but swaying his whole person so as to
avoid dropping to pieces. “We are plain folks, your Excellency.”

Yegorushka rubbed his eyes. In the middle of the room there really was
standing an Excellency, in the form of a young plump and very beautiful
woman in a black dress and a straw hat. Before Yegorushka had time to
examine her features the image of the solitary graceful poplar he had seen
that day on the hill for some reason came into his mind.
“Has Varlamov been here to-day?” a woman’s voice inquired.
“No, your Excellency,” said Moisey Moisevitch.
“If you see him to-morrow, ask him to come and see me for a minute.”
All at once, quite unexpectedly, Yegorushka saw half an inch from his
eyes velvety black eyebrows, big brown eyes, delicate feminine cheeks with
dimples, from which smiles seemed radiating all over the face like
sunbeams. There was a glorious scent.
“What a pretty boy!” said the lady. “Whose boy is it? Kazimir
Mihalovitch, look what a charming fellow! Good heavens, he is asleep!”
And the lady kissed Yegorushka warmly on both cheeks, and he smiled
and, thinking he was asleep, shut his eyes. The swing-door squeaked, and
there was the sound of hurried footsteps, coming in and going out.
“Yegorushka, Yegorushka!” he heard two bass voices whisper. “Get up; it
is time to start.”
Somebody, it seemed to be Deniska, set him on his feet and led him by
the arm. On the way he half-opened his eyes and once more saw the
beautiful lady in the black dress who had kissed him. She was standing in
the middle of the room and watched him go out, smiling at him and nodding
her head in a friendly way. As he got near the door he saw a handsome,
stoutly built, dark man in a bowler hat and in leather gaiters. This must have
been the lady’s escort.
“Woa!” he heard from the yard.
At the front door Yegorushka saw a splendid new carriage and a pair of
black horses. On the box sat a groom in livery, with a long whip in his
hands. No one but Solomon came to see the travellers off. His face was
tense with a desire to laugh; he looked as though he were waiting

impatiently for the visitors to be gone, so that he might laugh at them
without restraint.
“The Countess Dranitsky,” whispered Father Christopher, clambering
into the chaise.
“Yes, Countess Dranitsky,” repeated Kuzmitchov, also in a whisper.
The impression made by the arrival of the countess was probably very
great, for even Deniska spoke in a whisper, and only ventured to lash his
bays and shout when the chaise had driven a quarter of a mile away and
nothing could be seen of the inn but a dim light.

IV

Who was this elusive, mysterious Varlamov of whom people talked so
much, whom Solomon despised, and whom even the beautiful countess
needed? Sitting on the box beside Deniska, Yegorushka, half asleep,
thought about this person. He had never seen him. But he had often heard of
him and pictured him in his imagination. He knew that Varlamov possessed
several tens of thousands of acres of land, about a hundred thousand sheep,
and a great deal of money. Of his manner of life and occupation Yegorushka
knew nothing, except that he was always “going his rounds in these parts,”
and he was always being looked for.
At home Yegorushka had heard a great deal of the Countess Dranitsky,
too. She, too, had some tens of thousands of acres, a great many sheep, a
stud farm and a great deal of money, but she did not “go rounds,” but lived
at home in a splendid house and grounds, about which Ivan Ivanitch, who
had been more than once at the countess’s on business, and other
acquaintances told many marvellous tales; thus, for instance, they said that
in the countess’s drawing-room, where the portraits of all the kings of
Poland hung on the walls, there was a big table-clock in the form of a rock,
on the rock a gold horse with diamond eyes, rearing, and on the horse the
figure of a rider also of gold, who brandished his sword to right and to left
whenever the clock struck. They said, too, that twice a year the countess
used to give a ball, to which the gentry and officials of the whole province
were invited, and to which even Varlamov used to come; all the visitors

drank tea from silver samovars, ate all sorts of extraordinary things (they
had strawberries and raspberries, for instance, in winter at Christmas), and
danced to a band which played day and night. . . .
“And how beautiful she is,” thought Yegorushka, remembering her face
and smile.
Kuzmitchov, too, was probably thinking about the countess. For when the
chaise had driven a mile and a half he said:
“But doesn’t that Kazimir Mihalovitch plunder her right and left! The
year before last when, do you remember, I bought some wool from her, he
made over three thousand from my purchase alone.”
“That is just what you would expect from a Pole,” said Father
Christopher.
“And little does it trouble her. Young and foolish, as they say, her head is
full of nonsense.”
Yegorushka, for some reason, longed to think of nothing but Varlamov
and the countess, particularly the latter. His drowsy brain utterly refused
ordinary thoughts, was in a cloud and retained only fantastic fairy-tale
images, which have the advantage of springing into the brain of themselves
without any effort on the part of the thinker, and completely vanishing of
themselves at a mere shake of the head; and, indeed, nothing that was
around him disposed to ordinary thoughts. On the right there were the dark
hills which seemed to be screening something unseen and terrible; on the
left the whole sky about the horizon was covered with a crimson glow, and
it was hard to tell whether there was a fire somewhere, or whether it was the
moon about to rise. As by day the distance could be seen, but its tender lilac
tint had gone, quenched by the evening darkness, in which the whole steppe
was hidden like Moisey Moisevitch’s children under the quilt.
Corncrakes and quails do not call in the July nights, the nightingale does
not sing in the woodland marsh, and there is no scent of flowers, but still
the steppe is lovely and full of life. As soon as the sun goes down and the
darkness enfolds the earth, the day’s weariness is forgotten, everything is
forgiven, and the steppe breathes a light sigh from its broad bosom. As
though because the grass cannot see in the dark that it has grown old, a gay

youthful twitter rises up from it, such as is not heard by day; chirruping,
twittering, whistling, scratching, the basses, tenors and sopranos of the
steppe all mingle in an incessant, monotonous roar of sound in which it is
sweet to brood on memories and sorrows. The monotonous twitter soothes
to sleep like a lullaby; you drive and feel you are falling asleep, but
suddenly there comes the abrupt agitated cry of a wakeful bird, or a vague
sound like a voice crying out in wonder “A-ah, a-ah!” and slumber closes
one’s eyelids again. Or you drive by a little creek where there are bushes
and hear the bird, called by the steppe dwellers “the sleeper,” call “Asleep,
asleep, asleep!” while another laughs or breaks into trills of hysterical
weeping—that is the owl. For whom do they call and who hears them on
that plain, God only knows, but there is deep sadness and lamentation in
their cry. . . . There is a scent of hay and dry grass and belated flowers, but
the scent is heavy, sweetly mawkish and soft.
Everything can be seen through the mist, but it is hard to make out the
colours and the outlines of objects. Everything looks different from what it
is. You drive on and suddenly see standing before you right in the roadway
a dark figure like a monk; it stands motionless, waiting, holding something
in its hands. . . . Can it be a robber? The figure comes closer, grows bigger;
now it is on a level with the chaise, and you see it is not a man, but a
solitary bush or a great stone. Such motionless expectant figures stand on
the low hills, hide behind the old barrows, peep out from the high grass, and
they all look like human beings and arouse suspicion.
And when the moon rises the night becomes pale and dim. The mist
seems to have passed away. The air is transparent, fresh and warm; one can
see well in all directions and even distinguish the separate stalks of grass by
the wayside. Stones and bits of pots can be seen at a long distance. The
suspicious figures like monks look blacker against the light background of
the night, and seem more sinister. More and more often in the midst of the
monotonous chirruping there comes the sound of the “A-ah, a-ah!” of
astonishment troubling the motionless air, and the cry of a sleepless or
delirious bird. Broad shadows move across the plain like clouds across the
sky, and in the inconceivable distance, if you look long and intently at it,
misty monstrous shapes rise up and huddle one against another. . . . It is
rather uncanny. One glances at the pale green, star-spangled sky on which
there is no cloudlet, no spot, and understands why the warm air is

motionless, why nature is on her guard, afraid to stir: she is afraid and
reluctant to lose one instant of life. Of the unfathomable depth and infinity
of the sky one can only form a conception at sea and on the steppe by night
when the moon is shining. It is terribly lonely and caressing; it looks down
languid and alluring, and its caressing sweetness makes one giddy.
You drive on for one hour, for a second. . . . You meet upon the way a
silent old barrow or a stone figure put up God knows when and by whom; a
nightbird floats noiselessly over the earth, and little by little those legends
of the steppes, the tales of men you have met, the stories of some old nurse
from the steppe, and all the things you have managed to see and treasure in
your soul, come back to your mind. And then in the churring of insects, in
the sinister figures, in the ancient barrows, in the blue sky, in the moonlight,
in the flight of the nightbird, in everything you see and hear, triumphant
beauty, youth, the fulness of power, and the passionate thirst for life begin
to be apparent; the soul responds to the call of her lovely austere fatherland,
and longs to fly over the steppes with the nightbird. And in the triumph of
beauty, in the exuberance of happiness you are conscious of yearning and
grief, as though the steppe knew she was solitary, knew that her wealth and
her inspiration were wasted for the world, not glorified in song, not wanted
by anyone; and through the joyful clamour one hears her mournful,
hopeless call for singers, singers!
“Woa! Good-evening, Panteley! Is everything all right?”
“First-rate, Ivan Ivanitch!
“Haven’t you seen Varlamov, lads?”
“No, we haven’t.”
Yegorushka woke up and opened his eyes. The chaise had stopped. On
the right the train of waggons stretched for a long way ahead on the road,
and men were moving to and fro near them. All the waggons being loaded
up with great bales of wool looked very high and fat, while the horses
looked short-legged and little.
“Well, then, we shall go on to the Molokans’!” Kuzmitchov said aloud.
“The Jew told us that Varlamov was putting up for the night at the
Molokans’. So good-bye, lads! Good luck to you!”

“Good-bye, Ivan Ivanitch,” several voices replied.
“I say, lads,” Kuzmitchov cried briskly, “you take my little lad along with
you! Why should he go jolting off with us for nothing? You put him on the
bales, Panteley, and let him come on slowly, and we shall overtake you. Get
down, Yegor! Go on; it’s all right. . . .”
Yegorushka got down from the box-seat. Several hands caught him, lifted
him high into the air, and he found himself on something big, soft, and
rather wet with dew. It seemed to him now as though the sky were quite
close and the earth far away.
“Hey, take his little coat!” Deniska shouted from somewhere far below.
His coat and bundle flung up from far below fell close to Yegorushka.
Anxious not to think of anything, he quickly put his bundle under his head
and covered himself with his coat, and stretching his legs out and shrinking
a little from the dew, he laughed with content.
“Sleep, sleep, sleep, . . .” he thought.
“Don’t be unkind to him, you devils!” he heard Deniska’s voice below.
“Good-bye, lads; good luck to you,” shouted Kuzmitchov. “I rely upon
you!”
“Don’t you be uneasy, Ivan Ivanitch!”
Deniska shouted to the horses, the chaise creaked and started, not along
the road, but somewhere off to the side. For two minutes there was silence,
as though the waggons were asleep and there was no sound except the
clanking of the pails tied on at the back of the chaise as it slowly died away
in the distance. Then someone at the head of the waggons shouted:
“Kiruha! Sta-art!”
The foremost of the waggons creaked, then the second, then the third. . . .
Yegorushka felt the waggon he was on sway and creak also. The waggons
were moving. Yegorushka took a tighter hold of the cord with which the
bales were tied on, laughed again with content, shifted the cake in his
pocket, and fell asleep just as he did in his bed at home. . . .

When he woke up the sun had risen, it was screened by an ancient
barrow, and, trying to shed its light upon the earth, it scattered its beams in
all directions and flooded the horizon with gold. It seemed to Yegorushka
that it was not in its proper place, as the day before it had risen behind his
back, and now it was much more to his left. . . . And the whole landscape
was different. There were no hills now, but on all sides, wherever one
looked, there stretched the brown cheerless plain; here and there upon it
small barrows rose up and rooks flew as they had done the day before. The
belfries and huts of some village showed white in the distance ahead; as it
was Sunday the Little Russians were at home baking and cooking—that
could be seen by the smoke which rose from every chimney and hung, a
dark blue transparent veil, over the village. In between the huts and beyond
the church there were blue glimpses of a river, and beyond the river a misty
distance. But nothing was so different from yesterday as the road.
Something extraordinarily broad, spread out and titanic, stretched over the
steppe by way of a road. It was a grey streak well trodden down and
covered with dust, like all roads. Its width puzzled Yegorushka and brought
thoughts of fairy tales to his mind. Who travelled along that road? Who
needed so much space? It was strange and unintelligible. It might have been
supposed that giants with immense strides, such as Ilya Muromets and
Solovy the Brigand, were still surviving in Russia, and that their gigantic
steeds were still alive. Yegorushka, looking at the road, imagined some half
a dozen high chariots racing along side by side, like some he used to see in
pictures in his Scripture history; these chariots were each drawn by six wild
furious horses, and their great wheels raised a cloud of dust to the sky,
while the horses were driven by men such as one may see in one’s dreams
or in imagination brooding over fairy tales. And if those figures had existed,
how perfectly in keeping with the steppe and the road they would have
been!
Telegraph-poles with two wires on them stretched along the right side of
the road to its furthermost limit. Growing smaller and smaller they
disappeared near the village behind the huts and green trees, and then again
came into sight in the lilac distance in the form of very small thin sticks that
looked like pencils stuck into the ground. Hawks, falcons, and crows sat on
the wires and looked indifferently at the moving waggons.

Yegorushka was lying in the last of the waggons, and so could see the
whole string. There were about twenty waggons, and there was a driver to
every three waggons. By the last waggon, the one in which Yegorushka
was, there walked an old man with a grey beard, as short and lean as Father
Christopher, but with a sunburnt, stern and brooding face. It is very possible
that the old man was not stern and not brooding, but his red eyelids and his
sharp long nose gave his face a stern frigid expression such as is common
with people in the habit of continually thinking of serious things in solitude.
Like Father Christopher he was wearing a wide-brimmed top-hat, not like a
gentleman’s, but made of brown felt, and in shape more like a cone with the
top cut off than a real top-hat. Probably from a habit acquired in cold
winters, when he must more than once have been nearly frozen as he
trudged beside the waggons, he kept slapping his thighs and stamping with
his feet as he walked. Noticing that Yegorushka was awake, he looked at
him and said, shrugging his shoulders as though from the cold:
“Ah, you are awake, youngster! So you are the son of Ivan Ivanitch?”
“No; his nephew. . . .”
“Nephew of Ivan Ivanitch? Here I have taken off my boots and am
hopping along barefoot. My feet are bad; they are swollen, and it’s easier
without my boots . . . easier, youngster . . . without boots, I mean. . . . So
you are his nephew? He is a good man; no harm in him. . . . God give him
health. . . . No harm in him . . . I mean Ivan Ivanitch. . . . He has gone to the
Molokans’. . . . O Lord, have mercy upon us!”
The old man talked, too, as though it were very cold, pausing and not
opening his mouth properly; and he mispronounced the labial consonants,
stuttering over them as though his lips were frozen. As he talked to
Yegorushka he did not once smile, and he seemed stern.
Two waggons ahead of them there walked a man wearing a long reddish-
brown coat, a cap and high boots with sagging bootlegs and carrying a whip
in his hand. This was not an old man, only about forty. When he looked
round Yegorushka saw a long red face with a scanty goat-beard and a
spongy looking swelling under his right eye. Apart from this very ugly
swelling, there was another peculiar thing about him which caught the eye
at once: in his left hand he carried a whip, while he waved the right as

though he were conducting an unseen choir; from time to time he put the
whip under his arm, and then he conducted with both hands and hummed
something to himself.
The next driver was a long rectilinear figure with extremely sloping
shoulders and a back as flat as a board. He held himself as stiffly erect as
though he were marching or had swallowed a yard measure. His hands did
not swing as he walked, but hung down as if they were straight sticks, and
he strode along in a wooden way, after the manner of toy soldiers, almost
without bending his knees, and trying to take as long steps as possible.
While the old man or the owner of the spongy swelling were taking two
steps he succeeded in taking only one, and so it seemed as though he were
walking more slowly than any of them, and would drop behind. His face
was tied up in a rag, and on his head something stuck up that looked like a
monk’s peaked cap; he was dressed in a short Little Russian coat, with full
dark blue trousers and bark shoes.
Yegorushka did not even distinguish those that were farther on. He lay on
his stomach, picked a little hole in the bale, and, having nothing better to
do, began twisting the wool into a thread. The old man trudging along
below him turned out not to be so stern as one might have supposed from
his face. Having begun a conversation, he did not let it drop.
“Where are you going?” he asked, stamping with his feet.
“To school,” answered Yegorushka.
“To school? Aha! . . . Well, may the Queen of Heaven help you. Yes. One
brain is good, but two are better. To one man God gives one brain, to
another two brains, and to another three. . . . To another three, that is true. . .
. One brain you are born with, one you get from learning, and a third with a
good life. So you see, my lad, it is a good thing if a man has three brains.
Living is easier for him, and, what’s more, dying is, too. Dying is, too. . . .
And we shall all die for sure.”
The old man scratched his forehead, glanced upwards at Yegorushka with
his red eyes, and went on:
“Maxim Nikolaitch, the gentleman from Slavyanoserbsk, brought a little
lad to school, too, last year. I don’t know how he is getting on there in

studying the sciences, but he was a nice good little lad. . . . God give them
help, they are nice gentlemen. Yes, he, too, brought his boy to school. . . . In
Slavyanoserbsk there is no establishment, I suppose, for study. No. . . . But
it is a nice town. . . . There’s an ordinary school for simple folks, but for the
higher studies there is nothing. No, that’s true. What’s your name? . . .”
“Yegorushka.”
“Yegory, then. . . . The holy martyr Yegory, the Bearer of Victory, whose
day is the twenty-third of April. And my christian name is Panteley, . . .
Panteley Zaharov Holodov. . . . We are Holodovs . . . . I am a native of—
maybe you’ve heard of it—Tim in the province of Kursk. My brothers are
artisans and work at trades in the town, but I am a peasant. . . . I have
remained a peasant. Seven years ago I went there—home, I mean. I went to
the village and to the town. . . . To Tim, I mean. Then, thank God, they were
all alive and well; . . . but now I don’t know. . . . Maybe some of them are
dead. . . . And it’s time they did die, for some of them are older than I am.
Death is all right; it is good so long, of course, as one does not die without
repentance. There is no worse evil than an impenitent death; an impenitent
death is a joy to the devil. And if you want to die penitent, so that you may
not be forbidden to enter the mansions of the Lord, pray to the holy martyr
Varvara. She is the intercessor. She is, that’s the truth. . . . For God has
given her such a place in the heavens that everyone has the right to pray to
her for penitence.”
Panteley went on muttering, and apparently did not trouble whether
Yegorushka heard him or not. He talked listlessly, mumbling to himself,
without raising or dropping his voice, but succeeded in telling him a great
deal in a short time. All he said was made up of fragments that had very
little connection with one another, and quite uninteresting for Yegorushka.
Possibly he talked only in order to reckon over his thoughts aloud after the
night spent in silence, in order to see if they were all there. After talking of
repentance, he spoke about a certain Maxim Nikolaitch from
Slavyanoserbsk.
“Yes, he took his little lad; . . . he took him, that’s true . . .”
One of the waggoners walking in front darted from his place, ran to one
side and began lashing on the ground with his whip. He was a stalwart,

broad-shouldered man of thirty, with curly flaxen hair and a look of great
health and vigour. Judging from the movements of his shoulders and the
whip, and the eagerness expressed in his attitude, he was beating something
alive. Another waggoner, a short stubby little man with a bushy black beard,
wearing a waistcoat and a shirt outside his trousers, ran up to him. The latter
broke into a deep guffaw of laughter and coughing and said: “I say, lads,
Dymov has killed a snake!”
There are people whose intelligence can be gauged at once by their voice
and laughter. The man with the black beard belonged to that class of
fortunate individuals; impenetrable stupidity could be felt in his voice and
laugh. The flaxen-headed Dymov had finished, and lifting from the ground
with his whip something like a cord, flung it with a laugh into the cart.
“That’s not a viper; it’s a grass snake!” shouted someone.
The man with the wooden gait and the bandage round his face strode up
quickly to the dead snake, glanced at it and flung up his stick-like arms.
“You jail-bird!” he cried in a hollow wailing voice. “What have you
killed a grass snake for? What had he done to you, you damned brute?
Look, he has killed a grass snake; how would you like to be treated so?”
“Grass snakes ought not to be killed, that’s true,” Panteley muttered
placidly, “they ought not. . . They are not vipers; though it looks like a
snake, it is a gentle, innocent creature. . . . It’s friendly to man, the grass
snake is.”
Dymov and the man with the black beard were probably ashamed, for
they laughed loudly, and not answering, slouched lazily back to their
waggons. When the hindmost waggon was level with the spot where the
dead snake lay, the man with his face tied up standing over it turned to
Panteley and asked in a tearful voice:
“Grandfather, what did he want to kill the grass snake for?”
His eyes, as Yegorushka saw now, were small and dingy looking; his face
was grey, sickly and looked somehow dingy too while his chin was red and
seemed very much swollen.

“Grandfather, what did he kill it for?” he repeated, striding along beside
Panteley.
“A stupid fellow. His hands itch to kill, and that is why he does it,”
answered the old man; “but he oughtn’t to kill a grass snake, that’s true. . . .
Dymov is a ruffian, we all know, he kills everything he comes across, and
Kiruha did not interfere. He ought to have taken its part, but instead of that,
he goes off into ‘Ha-ha-ha!’ and ‘Ho-ho-ho!’ . . . But don’t be angry,
Vassya. . . . Why be angry? They’ve killed it—well, never mind them.
Dymov is a ruffian and Kiruha acted from foolishness—never mind. . . .
They are foolish people without understanding—but there, don’t mind
them. Emelyan here never touches what he shouldn’t; he never does; . . .
that is true, . . . because he is a man of education, while they are stupid. . . .
Emelyan, he doesn’t touch things.”
The waggoner in the reddish-brown coat and the spongy swelling on his
face, who was conducting an unseen choir, stopped. Hearing his name, and
waiting till Panteley and Vassya came up to him, he walked beside them.
“What are you talking about?” he asked in a husky muffled voice.
“Why, Vassya here is angry,” said Panteley. “So I have been saying things
to him to stop his being angry. . . . Oh, how my swollen feet hurt! Oh, oh!
They are more inflamed than ever for Sunday, God’s holy day!”
“It’s from walking,” observed Vassya.
“No, lad, no. It’s not from walking. When I walk it seems easier; when I
lie down and get warm, . . . it’s deadly. Walking is easier for me.”
Emelyan, in his reddish-brown coat, walked between Panteley and
Vassya and waved his arms, as though they were going to sing. After
waving them a little while he dropped them, and croaked out hopelessly:
“I have no voice. It’s a real misfortune. All last night and this morning I
have been haunted by the trio ‘Lord, have Mercy’ that we sang at the
wedding at Marionovsky’s. It’s in my head and in my throat. It seems as
though I could sing it, but I can’t; I have no voice.”
He paused for a minute, thinking, then went on:

“For fifteen years I was in the choir. In all the Lugansky works there was,
maybe, no one with a voice like mine. But, confound it, I bathed two years
ago in the Donets, and I can’t get a single note true ever since. I took cold in
my throat. And without a voice I am like a workman without hands.”
“That’s true,” Panteley agreed.
“I think of myself as a ruined man and nothing more.”
At that moment Vassya chanced to catch sight of Yegorushka. His eyes
grew moist and smaller than ever.
“There’s a little gentleman driving with us,” and he covered his nose with
his sleeve as though he were bashful. “What a grand driver! Stay with us
and you shall drive the waggons and sell wool.”
The incongruity of one person being at once a little gentleman and a
waggon driver seemed to strike him as very queer and funny, for he burst
into a loud guffaw, and went on enlarging upon the idea. Emelyan glanced
upwards at Yegorushka, too, but coldly and cursorily. He was absorbed in
his own thoughts, and had it not been for Vassya, would not have noticed
Yegorushka’s presence. Before five minutes had passed he was waving his
arms again, then describing to his companions the beauties of the wedding
anthem, “Lord, have Mercy,” which he had remembered in the night. He put
the whip under his arm and waved both hands.
A mile from the village the waggons stopped by a well with a crane.
Letting his pail down into the well, black-bearded Kiruha lay on his
stomach on the framework and thrust his shaggy head, his shoulders, and
part of his chest into the black hole, so that Yegorushka could see nothing
but his short legs, which scarcely touched the ground. Seeing the reflection
of his head far down at the bottom of the well, he was delighted and went
off into his deep bass stupid laugh, and the echo from the well answered
him. When he got up his neck and face were as red as beetroot. The first to
run up and drink was Dymov. He drank laughing, often turning from the
pail to tell Kiruha something funny, then he turned round, and uttered aloud,
to be heard all over the steppe, five very bad words. Yegorushka did not
understand the meaning of such words, but he knew very well they were
bad words. He knew the repulsion his friends and relations silently felt for

such words. He himself, without knowing why, shared that feeling and was
accustomed to think that only drunk and disorderly people enjoy the
privilege of uttering such words aloud. He remembered the murder of the
grass snake, listened to Dymov’s laughter, and felt something like hatred for
the man. And as ill-luck would have it, Dymov at that moment caught sight
of Yegorushka, who had climbed down from the waggon and gone up to the
well. He laughed aloud and shouted:
“I say, lads, the old man has been brought to bed of a boy in the night!”
Kiruha laughed his bass laugh till he coughed. Someone else laughed too,
while Yegorushka crimsoned and made up his mind finally that Dymov was
a very wicked man.
With his curly flaxen head, with his shirt opened on his chest and no hat
on, Dymov looked handsome and exceptionally strong; in every movement
he made one could see the reckless dare-devil and athlete, knowing his
value. He shrugged his shoulders, put his arms akimbo, talked and laughed
louder than any of the rest, and looked as though he were going to lift up
something very heavy with one hand and astonish the whole world by doing
so. His mischievous mocking eyes glided over the road, the waggons, and
the sky without resting on anything, and seemed looking for someone to
kill, just as a pastime, and something to laugh at. Evidently he was afraid of
no one, would stick at nothing, and most likely was not in the least
interested in Yegorushka’s opinion of him. . . . Yegorushka meanwhile hated
his flaxen head, his clear face, and his strength with his whole heart,
listened with fear and loathing to his laughter, and kept thinking what word
of abuse he could pay him out with.
Panteley, too, went up to the pail. He took out of his pocket a little green
glass of an ikon lamp, wiped it with a rag, filled it from the pail and drank
from it, then filled it again, wrapped the little glass in the rag, and then put
it back into his pocket.
“Grandfather, why do you drink out of a lamp?” Yegorushka asked him,
surprised.
“One man drinks out of a pail and another out of a lamp,” the old man
answered evasively. “Every man to his own taste. . . . You drink out of the

pail—well, drink, and may it do you good. . . .”
“You darling, you beauty!” Vassya said suddenly, in a caressing, plaintive
voice. “You darling!”
His eyes were fixed on the distance; they were moist and smiling, and his
face wore the same expression as when he had looked at Yegorushka.
“Who is it you are talking to?” asked Kiruha.
“A darling fox, . . . lying on her back, playing like a dog.”
Everyone began staring into the distance, looking for the fox, but no one
could see it, only Vassya with his grey muddy-looking eyes, and he was
enchanted by it. His sight was extraordinarily keen, as Yegorushka learnt
afterwards. He was so long-sighted that the brown steppe was for him
always full of life and interest. He had only to look into the distance to see a
fox, a hare, a bustard, or some other animal keeping at a distance from men.
There was nothing strange in seeing a hare running away or a flying bustard
—everyone crossing the steppes could see them; but it was not vouchsafed
to everyone to see wild animals in their own haunts when they were not
running nor hiding, nor looking about them in alarm. Yet Vassya saw foxes
playing, hares washing themselves with their paws, bustards preening their
wings and hammering out their hollow nests. Thanks to this keenness of
sight, Vassya had, besides the world seen by everyone, another world of his
own, accessible to no one else, and probably a very beautiful one, for when
he saw something and was in raptures over it it was impossible not to envy
him.
When the waggons set off again, the church bells were ringing for
service.

V

The train of waggons drew up on the bank of a river on one side of a
village. The sun was blazing, as it had been the day before; the air was
stagnant and depressing. There were a few willows on the bank, but the
shade from them did not fall on the earth, but on the water, where it was

wasted; even in the shade under the waggon it was stifling and wearisome.
The water, blue from the reflection of the sky in it, was alluring.
Styopka, a waggoner whom Yegorushka noticed now for the first time, a
Little Russian lad of eighteen, in a long shirt without a belt, and full
trousers that flapped like flags as he walked, undressed quickly, ran along
the steep bank and plunged into the water. He dived three times, then swam
on his back and shut his eyes in his delight. His face was smiling and
wrinkled up as though he were being tickled, hurt and amused.
On a hot day when there is nowhere to escape from the sultry, stifling
heat, the splash of water and the loud breathing of a man bathing sounds
like good music to the ear. Dymov and Kiruha, looking at Styopka,
undressed quickly and one after the other, laughing loudly in eager
anticipation of their enjoyment, dropped into the water, and the quiet,
modest little river resounded with snorting and splashing and shouting.
Kiruha coughed, laughed and shouted as though they were trying to drown
him, while Dymov chased him and tried to catch him by the leg.
“Ha-ha-ha!” he shouted. “Catch him! Hold him!”
Kiruha laughed and enjoyed himself, but his expression was the same as
it had been on dry land, stupid, with a look of astonishment on it as though
someone had, unnoticed, stolen up behind him and hit him on the head with
the butt-end of an axe. Yegorushka undressed, too, but did not let himself
down by the bank, but took a run and a flying leap from the height of about
ten feet. Describing an arc in the air, he fell into the water, sank deep, but
did not reach the bottom; some force, cold and pleasant to the touch,
seemed to hold him up and bring him back to the surface. He popped out
and, snorting and blowing bubbles, opened his eyes; but the sun was
reflected in the water quite close to his face. At first blinding spots of light,
then rainbow colours and dark patches, flitted before his eyes. He made
haste to dive again, opened his eyes in the water and saw something cloudy-
green like a sky on a moonlight night. Again the same force would not let
him touch the bottom and stay in the coolness, but lifted him to the surface.
He popped out and heaved a sigh so deep that he had a feeling of space and
freshness, not only in his chest, but in his stomach. Then, to get from the
water everything he possibly could get, he allowed himself every luxury; he

lay on his back and basked, splashed, frolicked, swam on his face, on his
side, on his back and standing up—just as he pleased till he was exhausted.
The other bank was thickly overgrown with reeds; it was golden in the sun,
and the flowers of the reeds hung drooping to the water in lovely tassels. In
one place the reeds were shaking and nodding, with their flowers rustling—
Styopka and Kiruha were hunting crayfish.
“A crayfish, look, lads! A crayfish!” Kiruha cried triumphantly and
actually showed a crayfish.
Yegorushka swam up to the reeds, dived, and began fumbling among
their roots. Burrowing in the slimy, liquid mud, he felt something sharp and
unpleasant—perhaps it really was a crayfish. But at that minute someone
seized him by the leg and pulled him to the surface. Spluttering and
coughing, Yegorushka opened his eyes and saw before him the wet grinning
face of the dare-devil Dymov. The impudent fellow was breathing hard, and
from a look in his eyes he seemed inclined for further mischief. He held
Yegorushka tight by the leg, and was lifting his hand to take hold of his
neck. But Yegorushka tore himself away with repulsion and terror, as
though disgusted at being touched and afraid that the bully would drown
him, and said:
“Fool! I’ll punch you in the face.”
Feeling that this was not sufficient to express his hatred, he thought a
minute and added:
“You blackguard! You son of a bitch!”
But Dymov, as though nothing were the matter, took no further notice of
Yegorushka, but swam off to Kiruha, shouting:
“Ha-ha-ha! Let us catch fish! Mates, let us catch fish.”
“To be sure,” Kiruha agreed; “there must be a lot of fish here.”
“Styopka, run to the village and ask the peasants for a net!
“They won’t give it to me.”

“They will, you ask them. Tell them that they should give it to us for
Christ’s sake, because we are just the same as pilgrims.”
“That’s true.”
Styopka clambered out of the water, dressed quickly, and without a cap
on he ran, his full trousers flapping, to the village. The water lost all its
charm for Yegorushka after his encounter with Dymov. He got out and
began dressing. Panteley and Vassya were sitting on the steep bank, with
their legs hanging down, looking at the bathers. Emelyan was standing
naked, up to his knees in the water, holding on to the grass with one hand to
prevent himself from falling while the other stroked his body. With his bony
shoulder-blades, with the swelling under his eye, bending down and
evidently afraid of the water, he made a ludicrous figure. His face was grave
and severe. He looked angrily at the water, as though he were just going to
upbraid it for having given him cold in the Donets and robbed him of his
voice.
“And why don’t you bathe?” Yegorushka asked Vassya.
“Oh, I don’t care for it, . . .” answered Vassya.
“How is it your chin is swollen?”
“It’s bad. . . . I used to work at the match factory, little sir. . . . The doctor
used to say that it would make my jaw rot. The air is not healthy there.
There were three chaps beside me who had their jaws swollen, and with one
of them it rotted away altogether.”
Styopka soon came back with the net. Dymov and Kiruha were already
turning blue and getting hoarse by being so long in the water, but they set
about fishing eagerly. First they went to a deep place beside the reeds; there
Dymov was up to his neck, while the water went over squat Kiruha’s head.
The latter spluttered and blew bubbles, while Dymov stumbling on the
prickly roots, fell over and got caught in the net; both flopped about in the
water, and made a noise, and nothing but mischief came of their fishing.
“It’s deep,” croaked Kiruha. “You won’t catch anything.”

“Don’t tug, you devil!” shouted Dymov trying to put the net in the proper
position. “Hold it up.”
“You won’t catch anything here,” Panteley shouted from the bank. “You
are only frightening the fish, you stupids! Go more to the left! It’s shallower
there!”
Once a big fish gleamed above the net; they all drew a breath, and
Dymov struck the place where it had vanished with his fist, and his face
expressed vexation.
“Ugh!” cried Panteley, and he stamped his foot. “You’ve let the perch
slip! It’s gone!”
Moving more to the left, Dymov and Kiruha picked out a shallower
place, and then fishing began in earnest. They had wandered off some
hundred paces from the waggons; they could be seen silently trying to go as
deep as they could and as near the reeds, moving their legs a little at a time,
drawing out the nets, beating the water with their fists to drive them
towards the nets. From the reeds they got to the further bank; they drew the
net out, then, with a disappointed air, lifting their knees high as they
walked, went back into the reeds. They were talking about something, but
what it was no one could hear. The sun was scorching their backs, the flies
were stinging them, and their bodies had turned from purple to crimson.
Styopka was walking after them with a pail in his hands; he had tucked his
shirt right up under his armpits, and was holding it up by the hem with his
teeth. After every successful catch he lifted up some fish, and letting it shine
in the sun, shouted:
“Look at this perch! We’ve five like that!”
Every time Dymov, Kiruha and Styopka pulled out the net they could be
seen fumbling about in the mud in it, putting some things into the pail and
throwing other things away; sometimes they passed something that was in
the net from hand to hand, examined it inquisitively, then threw that, too,
away.
“What is it?” they shouted to them from the bank.

Styopka made some answer, but it was hard to make out his words. Then
he climbed out of the water and, holding the pail in both hands, forgetting to
let his shirt drop, ran to the waggons.
“It’s full!” he shouted, breathing hard. “Give us another!”
Yegorushka looked into the pail: it was full. A young pike poked its ugly
nose out of the water, and there were swarms of crayfish and little fish
round about it. Yegorushka put his hand down to the bottom and stirred up
the water; the pike vanished under the crayfish and a perch and a tench
swam to the surface instead of it. Vassya, too, looked into the pail. His eyes
grew moist and his face looked as caressing as before when he saw the fox.
He took something out of the pail, put it to his mouth and began chewing it.
“Mates,” said Styopka in amazement, “Vassya is eating a live gudgeon!
Phoo!”
“It’s not a gudgeon, but a minnow,” Vassya answered calmly, still
munching.
He took a fish’s tail out of his mouth, looked at it caressingly, and put it
back again. While he was chewing and crunching with his teeth it seemed to
Yegorushka that he saw before him something not human. Vassya’s swollen
chin, his lustreless eyes, his extraordinary sharp sight, the fish’s tail in his
mouth, and the caressing friendliness with which he crunched the gudgeon
made him like an animal.
Yegorushka felt dreary beside him. And the fishing was over, too. He
walked about beside the waggons, thought a little, and, feeling bored,
strolled off to the village.
Not long afterwards he was standing in the church, and with his forehead
leaning on somebody’s back, listened to the singing of the choir. The
service was drawing to a close. Yegorushka did not understand church
singing and did not care for it. He listened a little, yawned, and began
looking at the backs and heads before him. In one head, red and wet from
his recent bathe, he recognized Emelyan. The back of his head had been
cropped in a straight line higher than is usual; the hair in front had been cut
unbecomingly high, and Emelyan’s ears stood out like two dock leaves, and
seemed to feel themselves out of place. Looking at the back of his head and

his ears, Yegorushka, for some reason, thought that Emelyan was probably
very unhappy. He remembered the way he conducted with his hands, his
husky voice, his timid air when he was bathing, and felt intense pity for
him. He longed to say something friendly to him.
“I am here, too,” he said, putting out his hand.
People who sing tenor or bass in the choir, especially those who have at
any time in their lives conducted, are accustomed to look with a stern and
unfriendly air at boys. They do not give up this habit, even when they leave
off being in a choir. Turning to Yegorushka, Emelyan looked at him from
under his brows and said:
“Don’t play in church!”
Then Yegorushka moved forwards nearer to the ikon-stand. Here he saw
interesting people. On the right side, in front of everyone, a lady and a
gentleman were standing on a carpet. There were chairs behind them. The
gentleman was wearing newly ironed shantung trousers; he stood as
motionless as a soldier saluting, and held high his bluish shaven chin. There
was a very great air of dignity in his stand-up collar, in his blue chin, in his
small bald patch and his cane. His neck was so strained from excess of
dignity, and his chin was drawn up so tensely, that it looked as though his
head were ready to fly off and soar upwards any minute. The lady, who was
stout and elderly and wore a white silk shawl, held her head on one side and
looked as though she had done someone a favour, and wanted to say: “Oh,
don’t trouble yourself to thank me; I don’t like it . . . .” A thick wall of Little
Russian heads stood all round the carpet.
Yegorushka went up to the ikon-stand and began kissing the local ikons.
Before each image he slowly bowed down to the ground, without getting
up, looked round at the congregation, then got up and kissed the ikon. The
contact of his forehead with the cold floor afforded him great satisfaction.
When the beadle came from the altar with a pair of long snuffers to put out
the candles, Yegorushka jumped up quickly from the floor and ran up to
him.
“Have they given out the holy bread?” he asked.

“There is none; there is none,” the beadle muttered gruffly. “It is no use
your. . .”
The service was over; Yegorushka walked out of the church in a leisurely
way, and began strolling about the market-place. He had seen a good many
villages, market-places, and peasants in his time, and everything that met
his eyes was entirely without interest for him. At a loss for something to do,
he went into a shop over the door of which hung a wide strip of red cotton.
The shop consisted of two roomy, badly lighted parts; in one half they sold
drapery and groceries, in the other there were tubs of tar, and there were
horse-collars hanging from the ceiling; from both came the savoury smell of
leather and tar. The floor of the shop had been watered; the man who
watered it must have been a very whimsical and original person, for it was
sprinkled in patterns and mysterious symbols. The shopkeeper, an overfed-
looking man with a broad face and round beard, apparently a Great Russian,
was standing, leaning his person over the counter. He was nibbling a piece
of sugar as he drank his tea, and heaved a deep sigh at every sip. His face
expressed complete indifference, but each sigh seemed to be saying:
“Just wait a minute; I will give it you.”
“Give me a farthing’s worth of sunflower seeds,” Yegorushka said,
addressing him.
The shopkeeper raised his eyebrows, came out from behind the counter,
and poured a farthing’s worth of sunflower seeds into Yegorushka’s pocket,
using an empty pomatum pot as a measure. Yegorushka did not want to go
away. He spent a long time in examining the box of cakes, thought a little
and asked, pointing to some little cakes covered with the mildew of age:
“How much are these cakes?”
“Two for a farthing.”
Yegorushka took out of his pocket the cake given him the day before by
the Jewess, and asked him:
“And how much do you charge for cakes like this?”

The shopman took the cake in his hands, looked at it from all sides, and
raised one eyebrow.
“Like that?” he asked.
Then he raised the other eyebrow, thought a minute, and answered:
“Two for three farthings. . . .”
A silence followed.
“Whose boy are you?” the shopman asked, pouring himself out some tea
from a red copper teapot.
“The nephew of Ivan Ivanitch.”
“There are all sorts of Ivan Ivanitchs,” the shopkeeper sighed. He looked
over Yegorushka’s head towards the door, paused a minute and asked:
“Would you like some tea?”
“Please. . . .” Yegorushka assented not very readily, though he felt an
intense longing for his usual morning tea.
The shopkeeper poured him out a glass and gave him with it a bit of
sugar that looked as though it had been nibbled. Yegorushka sat down on
the folding chair and began drinking it. He wanted to ask the price of a
pound of sugar almonds, and had just broached the subject when a customer
walked in, and the shopkeeper, leaving his glass of tea, attended to his
business. He led the customer into the other half, where there was a smell of
tar, and was there a long time discussing something with him. The
customer, a man apparently very obstinate and pig-headed, was continually
shaking his head to signify his disapproval, and retreating towards the door.
The shopkeeper tried to persuade him of something and began pouring
some oats into a big sack for him.
“Do you call those oats?” the customer said gloomily. “Those are not
oats, but chaff. It’s a mockery to give that to the hens; enough to make the
hens laugh. . . . No, I will go to Bondarenko.”

When Yegorushka went back to the river a small camp fire was smoking
on the bank. The waggoners were cooking their dinner. Styopka was
standing in the smoke, stirring the cauldron with a big notched spoon. A
little on one side Kiruha and Vassya, with eyes reddened from the smoke,
were sitting cleaning the fish. Before them lay the net covered with slime
and water weeds, and on it lay gleaming fish and crawling crayfish.
Emelyan, who had not long been back from the church, was sitting
beside Panteley, waving his arm and humming just audibly in a husky
voice: “To Thee we sing. . . .” Dymov was moving about by the horses.
When they had finished cleaning them, Kiruha and Vassya put the fish
and the living crayfish together in the pail, rinsed them, and from the pail
poured them all into the boiling water.
“Shall I put in some fat?” asked Styopka, skimming off the froth.
“No need. The fish will make its own gravy,” answered Kiruha.
Before taking the cauldron off the fire Styopka scattered into the water
three big handfuls of millet and a spoonful of salt; finally he tried it,
smacked his lips, licked the spoon, and gave a self-satisfied grunt, which
meant that the grain was done.
All except Panteley sat down near the cauldron and set to work with their
spoons.
“You there! Give the little lad a spoon!” Panteley observed sternly. “I
dare say he is hungry too!”
“Ours is peasant fare,” sighed Kiruha.
“Peasant fare is welcome, too, when one is hungry.”
They gave Yegorushka a spoon. He began eating, not sitting, but standing
close to the cauldron and looking down into it as in a hole. The grain smelt
of fish and fish-scales were mixed up with the millet. The crayfish could not
be hooked out with a spoon, and the men simply picked them out of the
cauldron with their hands; Vassya did so particularly freely, and wetted his
sleeves as well as his hands in the mess. But yet the stew seemed to
Yegorushka very nice, and reminded him of the crayfish soup which his

mother used to make at home on fast-days. Panteley was sitting apart
munching bread.
“Grandfather, why aren’t you eating?” Emelyan asked him.
“I don’t eat crayfish. . . . Nasty things,” the old man said, and turned
away with disgust.
While they were eating they all talked. From this conversation
Yegorushka gathered that all his new acquaintances, in spite of the
differences of their ages and their characters, had one point in common
which made them all alike: they were all people with a splendid past and a
very poor present. Of their past they all— every one of them—spoke with
enthusiasm; their attitude to the present was almost one of contempt. The
Russian loves recalling life, but he does not love living. Yegorushka did not
yet know that, and before the stew had been all eaten he firmly believed that
the men sitting round the cauldron were the injured victims of fate. Panteley
told them that in the past, before there were railways, he used to go with
trains of waggons to Moscow and to Nizhni, and used to earn so much that
he did not know what to do with his money; and what merchants there used
to be in those days! what fish! how cheap everything was! Now the roads
were shorter, the merchants were stingier, the peasants were poorer, the
bread was dearer, everything had shrunk and was on a smaller scale.
Emelyan told them that in old days he had been in the choir in the Lugansky
works, and that he had a remarkable voice and read music splendidly, while
now he had become a peasant and lived on the charity of his brother, who
sent him out with his horses and took half his earnings. Vassya had once
worked in a match factory; Kiruha had been a coachman in a good family,
and had been reckoned the smartest driver of a three-in-hand in the whole
district. Dymov, the son of a well-to-do peasant, lived at ease, enjoyed
himself and had known no trouble till he was twenty, when his stern harsh
father, anxious to train him to work, and afraid he would be spoiled at
home, had sent him to a carrier’s to work as a hired labourer. Styopka was
the only one who said nothing, but from his beardless face it was evident
that his life had been a much better one in the past.
Thinking of his father, Dymov frowned and left off eating. Sullenly from
under his brows he looked round at his companions and his eye rested upon

Yegorushka.
“You heathen, take off your cap,” he said rudely. “You can’t eat with your
cap on, and you a gentleman too!”
Yegorushka took off his hat and did not say a word, but the stew lost all
savour for him, and he did not hear Panteley and Vassya intervening on his
behalf. A feeling of anger with the insulting fellow was rankling
oppressively in his breast, and he made up his mind that he would do him
some injury, whatever it cost him.
After dinner everyone sauntered to the waggons and lay down in the
shade.
“Are we going to start soon, grandfather?” Yegorushka asked Panteley.
“In God’s good time we shall set off. There’s no starting yet; it is too hot.
. . . O Lord, Thy will be done. Holy Mother. . . Lie down, little lad.”
Soon there was a sound of snoring from under the waggons. Yegorushka
meant to go back to the village, but on consideration, yawned and lay down
by the old man.

VI

The waggons remained by the river the whole day, and set off again when
the sun was setting.
Yegorushka was lying on the bales again; the waggon creaked softly and
swayed from side to side. Panteley walked below, stamping his feet,
slapping himself on his thighs and muttering. The air was full of the
churring music of the steppes, as it had been the day before.
Yegorushka lay on his back, and, putting his hands under his head, gazed
upwards at the sky. He watched the glow of sunset kindle, then fade away;
guardian angels covering the horizon with their gold wings disposed
themselves to slumber. The day had passed peacefully; the quiet peaceful
night had come, and they could stay tranquilly at home in heaven. . . .
Yegorushka saw the sky by degrees grow dark and the mist fall over the
earth—saw the stars light up, one after the other. . . .

When you gaze a long while fixedly at the deep sky thoughts and feelings
for some reason merge in a sense of loneliness. One begins to feel
hopelessly solitary, and everything one used to look upon as near and akin
becomes infinitely remote and valueless; the stars that have looked down
from the sky thousands of years already, the mists and the incomprehensible
sky itself, indifferent to the brief life of man, oppress the soul with their
silence when one is left face to face with them and tries to grasp their
significance. One is reminded of the solitude awaiting each one of us in the
grave, and the reality of life seems awful . . . full of despair. . . .
Yegorushka thought of his grandmother, who was sleeping now under the
cherry-trees in the cemetery. He remembered how she lay in her coffin with
pennies on her eyes, how afterwards she was shut in and let down into the
grave; he even recalled the hollow sound of the clods of earth on the coffin
lid. . . . He pictured his granny in the dark and narrow coffin, helpless and
deserted by everyone. His imagination pictured his granny suddenly
awakening, not understanding where she was, knocking upon the lid and
calling for help, and in the end swooning with horror and dying again. He
imagined his mother dead, Father Christopher, Countess Dranitsky,
Solomon. But however much he tried to imagine himself in the dark tomb,
far from home, outcast, helpless and dead, he could not succeed; for himself
personally he could not admit the possibility of death, and felt that he would
never die. . . .
Panteley, for whom death could not be far away, walked below and went
on reckoning up his thoughts.
“All right. . . . Nice gentlefolk, . . .” he muttered. “Took his little lad to
school—but how he is doing now I haven’t heard say —in Slavyanoserbsk.
I say there is no establishment for teaching them to be very clever. . . . No,
that’s true—a nice little lad, no harm in him. . . . He’ll grow up and be a
help to his father . . . . You, Yegory, are little now, but you’ll grow big and
will keep your father and mother. . . . So it is ordained of God, ‘Honour
your father and your mother.’ . . . I had children myself, but they were
burnt. . . . My wife was burnt and my children, . . . that’s true. . . . The hut
caught fire on the night of Epiphany. . . . I was not at home, I was driving in
Oryol. In Oryol. . . . Marya dashed out into the street, but remembering that

the children were asleep in the hut, ran back and was burnt with her
children. . . . Next day they found nothing but bones.”
About midnight Yegorushka and the waggoners were again sitting round
a small camp fire. While the dry twigs and stems were burning up, Kiruha
and Vassya went off somewhere to get water from a creek; they vanished
into the darkness, but could be heard all the time talking and clinking their
pails; so the creek was not far away. The light from the fire lay a great
flickering patch on the earth; though the moon was bright, yet everything
seemed impenetrably black beyond that red patch. The light was in the
waggoners’ eyes, and they saw only part of the great road; almost unseen in
the darkness the waggons with the bales and the horses looked like a
mountain of undefined shape. Twenty paces from the camp fire at the edge
of the road stood a wooden cross that had fallen aslant. Before the camp fire
had been lighted, when he could still see things at a distance, Yegorushka
had noticed that there was a similar old slanting cross on the other side of
the great road.
Coming back with the water, Kiruha and Vassya filled the cauldron and
fixed it over the fire. Styopka, with the notched spoon in his hand, took his
place in the smoke by the cauldron, gazing dreamily into the water for the
scum to rise. Panteley and Emelyan were sitting side by side in silence,
brooding over something. Dymov was lying on his stomach, with his head
propped on his fists, looking into the fire. . . . Styopka’s shadow was
dancing over him, so that his handsome face was at one minute covered
with darkness, at the next lighted up. . . . Kiruha and Vassya were
wandering about at a little distance gathering dry grass and bark for the fire.
Yegorushka, with his hands in his pockets, was standing by Panteley,
watching how the fire devoured the grass.
All were resting, musing on something, and they glanced cursorily at the
cross over which patches of red light were dancing. There is something
melancholy, pensive, and extremely poetical about a solitary tomb; one
feels its silence, and the silence gives one the sense of the presence of the
soul of the unknown man who lies under the cross. Is that soul at peace on
the steppe? Does it grieve in the moonlight? Near the tomb the steppe
seems melancholy, dreary and mournful; the grass seems more sorrowful,
and one fancies the grasshoppers chirrup less freely, and there is no passer-

by who would not remember that lonely soul and keep looking back at the
tomb, till it was left far behind and hidden in the mists. . . .
“Grandfather, what is that cross for?” asked Yegorushka.
Panteley looked at the cross and then at Dymov and asked:
“Nikola, isn’t this the place where the mowers killed the merchants?”
Dymov not very readily raised himself on his elbow, looked at the road
and said:
“Yes, it is. . . .”
A silence followed. Kiruha broke up some dry stalks, crushed them up
together and thrust them under the cauldron. The fire flared up brightly;
Styopka was enveloped in black smoke, and the shadow cast by the cross
danced along the road in the dusk beside the waggons.
“Yes, they were killed,” Dymov said reluctantly. “Two merchants, father
and son, were travelling, selling holy images. They put up in the inn not far
from here that is now kept by Ignat Fomin. The old man had a drop too
much, and began boasting that he had a lot of money with him. We all know
merchants are a boastful set, God preserve us. . . . They can’t resist showing
off before the likes of us. And at the time some mowers were staying the
night at the inn. So they overheard what the merchants said and took note of
it.”
“O Lord! . . . Holy Mother!” sighed Panteley.
“Next day, as soon as it was light,” Dymov went on, “the merchants were
preparing to set off and the mowers tried to join them. ‘Let us go together,
your worships. It will be more cheerful and there will be less danger, for
this is an out-of-the-way place. . . .’ The merchants had to travel at a
walking pace to avoid breaking the images, and that just suited the mowers.
. . .”
Dymov rose into a kneeling position and stretched.
“Yes,” he went on, yawning. “Everything went all right till they reached
this spot, and then the mowers let fly at them with their scythes. The son, he

was a fine young fellow, snatched the scythe from one of them, and he used
it, too. . . . Well, of course, they got the best of it because there were eight of
them. They hacked at the merchants so that there was not a sound place left
on their bodies; when they had finished they dragged both of them off the
road, the father to one side and the son to the other. Opposite that cross
there is another cross on this side. . . . Whether it is still standing, I don’t
know. . . . I can’t see from here. . . .”
“It is,” said Kiruha.
“They say they did not find much money afterwards.”
“No,” Panteley confirmed; “they only found a hundred roubles.”
“And three of them died afterwards, for the merchant had cut them badly
with the scythe, too. They died from loss of blood. One had his hand cut
off, so that they say he ran three miles without his hand, and they found him
on a mound close to Kurikovo. He was squatting on his heels, with his head
on his knees, as though he were lost in thought, but when they looked at
him there was no life in him and he was dead. . . .”
“They found him by the track of blood,” said Panteley.
Everyone looked at the cross, and again there was a hush. From
somewhere, most likely from the creek, floated the mournful cry of the
bird: “Sleep! sleep! sleep!”
“There are a great many wicked people in the world,” said Emelyan.
“A great many,” assented Panteley, and he moved up closer to the fire as
though he were frightened. “A great many,” he went on in a low voice.
“I’ve seen lots and lots of them. . . . Wicked people! . . . I have seen a great
many holy and just, too. . . . Queen of Heaven, save us and have mercy on
us. I remember once thirty years ago, or maybe more, I was driving a
merchant from Morshansk. The merchant was a jolly handsome fellow, with
money, too . . . the merchant was . . . a nice man, no harm in him. . . . So we
put up for the night at an inn. And in Russia the inns are not what they are
in these parts. There the yards are roofed in and look like the ground floor,
or let us say like barns in good farms. Only a barn would be a bit higher. So
we put up there and were all right. My merchant was in a room, while I was

with the horses, and everything was as it should be. So, lads, I said my
prayers before going to sleep and began walking about the yard. And it was
a dark night, I couldn’t see anything; it was no good trying. So I walked
about a bit up to the waggons, or nearly, when I saw a light gleaming. What
could it mean? I thought the people of the inn had gone to bed long ago, and
besides the merchant and me there were no other guests in the inn. . . .
Where could the light have come from? I felt suspicious. . . . I went closer .
. . towards the light. . . . The Lord have mercy upon me! and save me,
Queen of Heaven! I looked and there was a little window with a grating, . . .
close to the ground, in the house. . . I lay down on the ground and looked in;
as soon as I looked in a cold chill ran all down me. . . .”
Kiruha, trying not to make a noise, thrust a handful of twigs into the fire.
After waiting for it to leave off crackling and hissing, the old man went on:
“I looked in and there was a big cellar, black and dark. . . . There was a
lighted lantern on a tub. In the middle of the cellar were about a dozen men
in red shirts with their sleeves turned up, sharpening long knives. . . . Ugh!
So we had fallen into a nest of robbers. . . . What’s to be done? I ran to the
merchant, waked him up quietly, and said: ‘Don’t be frightened, merchant,’
said I, ‘but we are in a bad way. We have fallen into a nest of robbers,’ I
said. He turned pale and asked: ‘What are we to do now, Panteley? I have a
lot of money that belongs to orphans. As for my life,’ he said, ‘that’s in
God’s hands. I am not afraid to die, but it’s dreadful to lose the orphans’
money,’ said he. . . . What were we to do? The gates were locked; there was
no getting out. If there had been a fence one could have climbed over it, but
with the yard shut up! . . . ‘Come, don’t be frightened, merchant,’ said I;
‘but pray to God. Maybe the Lord will not let the orphans suffer. Stay still.’
said I, ‘and make no sign, and meanwhile, maybe, I shall think of
something. . . .’ Right! . . . I prayed to God and the Lord put the thought into
my mind. . . . I clambered up on my chaise and softly, . . . softly so that no
one should hear, began pulling out the straw in the thatch, made a hole and
crept out, crept out. . . . Then I jumped off the roof and ran along the road as
fast as I could. I ran and ran till I was nearly dead. . . . I ran maybe four
miles without taking breath, if not more. Thank God I saw a village. I ran
up to a hut and began tapping at a window. ‘Good Christian people,’ I said,
and told them all about it, ‘do not let a Christian soul perish. . . .’ I waked
them all up. . . . The peasants gathered together and went with me, . . one

with a cord, one with an oakstick, others with pitchforks. . . . We broke in
the gates of the inn-yard and went straight to the cellar. . . . And the robbers
had just finished sharpening their knives and were going to kill the
merchant. The peasants took them, every one of them, bound them and
carried them to the police. The merchant gave them three hundred roubles
in his joy, and gave me five gold pieces and put my name down. They said
that they found human bones in the cellar afterwards, heaps and heaps of
them. . . . Bones! . . . So they robbed people and then buried them, so that
there should be no traces. . . . Well, afterwards they were punished at
Morshansk.”
Panteley had finished his story, and he looked round at his listeners. They
were gazing at him in silence. The water was boiling by now and Styopka
was skimming off the froth.
“Is the fat ready?” Kiruha asked him in a whisper.
“Wait a little. . . . Directly.”
Styopka, his eyes fixed on Panteley as though he were afraid that the
latter might begin some story before he was back, ran to the waggons; soon
he came back with a little wooden bowl and began pounding some lard in it.
“I went another journey with a merchant, too, . . .” Panteley went on
again, speaking as before in a low voice and with fixed unblinking eyes.
“His name, as I remember now, was Pyotr Grigoritch. He was a nice man, .
. . the merchant was. We stopped in the same way at an inn. . . . He indoors
and me with the horses. . . . The people of the house, the innkeeper and his
wife, seemed friendly good sort of people; the labourers, too, seemed all
right; but yet, lads, I couldn’t sleep. I had a queer feeling in my heart, . . . a
queer feeling, that was just it. The gates were open and there were plenty of
people about, and yet I felt afraid and not myself. Everyone had been asleep
long ago. It was the middle of the night; it would soon be time to get up,
and I was lying alone in my chaise and could not close my eyes, as though I
were some owl. And then, lads, I heard this sound, ‘Toop! toop! toop!’
Someone was creeping up to the chaise. I poke my head out, and there was
a peasant woman in nothing but her shift and with her feet bare. . . . ‘What
do you want, good woman?’ I asked. And she was all of a tremble; her face
was terror-stricken. . . ‘Get up, good man,’ said she; ‘the people are plotting

evil. . . . They mean to kill your merchant. With my own ears I heard the
master whispering with his wife. . . .’ So it was not for nothing, the
foreboding of my heart! ‘And who are you?’ I asked. ‘I am their cook,’ she
said. . . . Right! . . . So I got out of the chaise and went to the merchant. I
waked him up and said: ‘Things aren’t quite right, Pyotr Grigoritch. . . .
Make haste and rouse yourself from sleep, your worship, and dress now
while there is still time,’ I said; ‘and to save our skins, let us get away from
trouble.’ He had no sooner begun dressing when the door opened and,
mercy on us! I saw, Holy Mother! the innkeeper and his wife come into the
room with three labourers. . . . So they had persuaded the labourers to join
them. ‘The merchant has a lot of money, and we’ll go shares,’ they told
them. Every one of the five had a long knife in their hand each a knife. The
innkeeper locked the door and said: ‘Say your prayers, travellers, . . . and if
you begin screaming,’ they said, ‘we won’t let you say your prayers before
you die. . . .’ As though we could scream! I had such a lump in my throat I
could not cry out. . . . The merchant wept and said: ‘Good Christian people!
you have resolved to kill me because my money tempts you. Well, so be it; I
shall not be the first nor shall I be the last. Many of us merchants have been
murdered at inns. But why, good Christian brothers,’ says he, ‘murder my
driver? Why should he have to suffer for my money?’ And he said that so
pitifully! And the innkeeper answered him: ‘If we leave him alive,’ said he,
‘he will be the first to bear witness against us. One may just as well kill two
as one. You can but answer once for seven misdeeds. . . Say your prayers,
that’s all you can do, and it is no good talking!’ The merchant and I knelt
down side by side and wept and said our prayers. He thought of his
children. I was young in those days; I wanted to live. . . . We looked at the
images and prayed, and so pitifully that it brings a tear even now. . . . And
the innkeeper’s wife looks at us and says: ‘Good people,’ said she, ‘don’t
bear a grudge against us in the other world and pray to God for our
punishment, for it is want that drives us to it.’ We prayed and wept and
prayed and wept, and God heard us. He had pity on us, I suppose. . . . At the
very minute when the innkeeper had taken the merchant by the beard to rip
open his throat with his knife suddenly someone seemed to tap at the
window from the yard! We all started, and the innkeeper’s hands dropped. .
. . Someone was tapping at the window and shouting: ‘Pyotr Grigoritch,’ he
shouted, ‘are you here? Get ready and let’s go!’ The people saw that
someone had come for the merchant; they were terrified and took to their

heels. . . . And we made haste into the yard, harnessed the horses, and were
out of sight in a minute. . .”
“Who was it knocked at the window?” asked Dymov.
“At the window? It must have been a holy saint or angel, for there was no
one else. . . . When we drove out of the yard there wasn’t a soul in the
street. . . . It was the Lord’s doing.”
Panteley told other stories, and in all of them “long knives” figured and
all alike sounded made up. Had he heard these stories from someone else,
or had he made them up himself in the remote past, and afterwards, as his
memory grew weaker, mixed up his experiences with his imaginations and
become unable to distinguish one from the other? Anything is possible, but
it is strange that on this occasion and for the rest of the journey, whenever
he happened to tell a story, he gave unmistakable preference to fiction, and
never told of what he really had experienced. At the time Yegorushka took it
all for the genuine thing, and believed every word; later on it seemed to him
strange that a man who in his day had travelled all over Russia and seen and
known so much, whose wife and children had been burnt to death, so failed
to appreciate the wealth of his life that whenever he was sitting by the camp
fire he was either silent or talked of what had never been.
Over their porridge they were all silent, thinking of what they had just
heard. Life is terrible and marvellous, and so, however terrible a story you
tell in Russia, however you embroider it with nests of robbers, long knives
and such marvels, it always finds an echo of reality in the soul of the
listener, and only a man who has been a good deal affected by education
looks askance distrustfully, and even he will be silent. The cross by the
roadside, the dark bales of wool, the wide expanse of the plain, and the lot
of the men gathered together by the camp fire—all this was of itself so
marvellous and terrible that the fantastic colours of legend and fairy-tale
were pale and blended with life.
All the others ate out of the cauldron, but Panteley sat apart and ate his
porridge out of a wooden bowl. His spoon was not like those the others had,
but was made of cypress wood, with a little cross on it. Yegorushka, looking
at him, thought of the little ikon glass and asked Styopka softly:

“Why does Grandfather sit apart?”
“He is an Old Believer,” Styopka and Vassya answered in a whisper. And
as they said it they looked as though they were speaking of some secret vice
or weakness.
All sat silent, thinking. After the terrible stories there was no inclination
to speak of ordinary things. All at once in the midst of the silence Vassya
drew himself up and, fixing his lustreless eyes on one point, pricked up his
ears.
“What is it?” Dymov asked him.
“Someone is coming,” answered Vassya.
“Where do you see him?”
“Yo-on-der! There’s something white. . .”
There was nothing to be seen but darkness in the direction in which
Vassya was looking; everyone listened, but they could hear no sound of
steps.
“Is he coming by the highroad?” asked Dymov.
“No, over the open country. . . . He is coming this way.”
A minute passed in silence.
“And maybe it’s the merchant who was buried here walking over the
steppe,” said Dymov.
All looked askance at the cross, exchanged glances and suddenly broke
into a laugh. They felt ashamed of their terror.
“Why should he walk?” asked Panteley. “It’s only those walk at night
whom the earth will not take to herself. And the merchants were all right. . .
. The merchants have received the crown of martyrs.”
But all at once they heard the sound of steps; someone was coming in
haste.

“He’s carrying something,” said Vassya.
They could hear the grass rustling and the dry twigs crackling under the
feet of the approaching wayfarer. But from the glare of the camp fire
nothing could be seen. At last the steps sounded close by, and someone
coughed. The flickering light seemed to part; a veil dropped from the
waggoners’ eyes, and they saw a man facing them.
Whether it was due to the flickering light or because everyone wanted to
make out the man’s face first of all, it happened, strangely enough, that at
the first glance at him they all saw, first of all, not his face nor his clothes,
but his smile. It was an extraordinarily good-natured, broad, soft smile, like
that of a baby on waking, one of those infectious smiles to which it is
difficult not to respond by smiling too. The stranger, when they did get a
good look at him, turned out to be a man of thirty, ugly and in no way
remarkable. He was a tall Little Russian, with a long nose, long arms and
long legs; everything about him seemed long except his neck, which was so
short that it made him seem stooping. He was wearing a clean white shirt
with an embroidered collar, white trousers, and new high boots, and in
comparison with the waggoners he looked quite a dandy. In his arms he was
carrying something big, white, and at the first glance strange-looking, and
the stock of a gun also peeped out from behind his shoulder.
Coming from the darkness into the circle of light, he stopped short as
though petrified, and for half a minute looked at the waggoners as though
he would have said: “Just look what a smile I have!”
Then he took a step towards the fire, smiled still more radiantly and said:
“Bread and salt, friends!”
“You are very welcome!” Panteley answered for them all.
The stranger put down by the fire what he was carrying in his arms —it
was a dead bustard—and greeted them once more.
They all went up to the bustard and began examining it.
“A fine big bird; what did you kill it with?” asked Dymov.

“Grape-shot. You can’t get him with small shot, he won’t let you get near
enough. Buy it, friends! I will let you have it for twenty kopecks.”
“What use would it be to us? It’s good roast, but I bet it would be tough
boiled; you could not get your teeth into it. . . .”
“Oh, what a pity! I would take it to the gentry at the farm; they would
give me half a rouble for it. But it’s a long way to go— twelve miles!”
The stranger sat down, took off his gun and laid it beside him.
He seemed sleepy and languid; he sat smiling, and, screwing up his eyes
at the firelight, apparently thinking of something very agreeable. They gave
him a spoon; he began eating.
“Who are you?” Dymov asked him.
The stranger did not hear the question; he made no answer, and did not
even glance at Dymov. Most likely this smiling man did not taste the
flavour of the porridge either, for he seemed to eat it mechanically, lifting
the spoon to his lips sometimes very full and sometimes quite empty. He
was not drunk, but he seemed to have something nonsensical in his head.
“I ask you who you are?” repeated Dymov.
“I?” said the unknown, starting. “Konstantin Zvonik from Rovno. It’s
three miles from here.”
And anxious to show straight off that he was not quite an ordinary
peasant, but something better, Konstantin hastened to add:
“We keep bees and fatten pigs.”
“Do you live with your father or in a house of your own?”
“No; now I am living in a house of my own. I have parted. This month,
just after St. Peter’s Day, I got married. I am a married man now! . . . It’s
eighteen days since the wedding.”
“That’s a good thing,” said Panteley. “Marriage is a good thing . . . .
God’s blessing is on it.”

“His young wife sits at home while he rambles about the steppe,”
laughed Kiruha. “Queer chap!”
As though he had been pinched on the tenderest spot, Konstantin started,
laughed and flushed crimson.
“But, Lord, she is not at home!” he said quickly, taking the spoon out of
his mouth and looking round at everyone with an expression of delight and
wonder. “She is not; she has gone to her mother’s for three days! Yes,
indeed, she has gone away, and I feel as though I were not married. . . .”
Konstantin waved his hand and turned his head; he wanted to go on
thinking, but the joy which beamed in his face prevented him. As though he
were not comfortable, he changed his attitude, laughed, and again waved
his hand. He was ashamed to share his happy thoughts with strangers, but at
the same time he had an irresistible longing to communicate his joy.
“She has gone to Demidovo to see her mother,” he said, blushing and
moving his gun. “She’ll be back to-morrow. . . . She said she would be back
to dinner.”
“And do you miss her?” said Dymov.
“Oh, Lord, yes; I should think so. We have only been married such a little
while, and she has gone away. . . . Eh! Oh, but she is a tricky one, God
strike me dead! She is such a fine, splendid girl, such a one for laughing and
singing, full of life and fire! When she is there your brain is in a whirl, and
now she is away I wander about the steppe like a fool, as though I had lost
something. I have been walking since dinner.”
Konstantin rubbed his eyes, looked at the fire and laughed.
“You love her, then, . . .” said Panteley.
“She is so fine and splendid,” Konstantin repeated, not hearing him;
“such a housewife, clever and sensible. You wouldn’t find another like her
among simple folk in the whole province. She has gone away. . . . But she is
missing me, I kno-ow! I know the little magpie. She said she would be back
to-morrow by dinner-time. . . . And just think how queer!” Konstantin

almost shouted, speaking a note higher and shifting his position. “Now she
loves me and is sad without me, and yet she would not marry me.”
“But eat,” said Kiruha.
“She would not marry me,” Konstantin went on, not heeding him. “I have
been struggling with her for three years! I saw her at the Kalatchik fair; I
fell madly in love with her, was ready to hang myself. . . . I live at Rovno,
she at Demidovo, more than twenty miles apart, and there was nothing I
could do. I sent match-makers to her, and all she said was: ‘I won’t!’ Ah, the
magpie! I sent her one thing and another, earrings and cakes, and twenty
pounds of honey—but still she said: ‘I won’t!’ And there it was. If you
come to think of it, I was not a match for her! She was young and lovely,
full of fire, while I am old: I shall soon be thirty, and a regular beauty, too; a
fine beard like a goat’s, a clear complexion all covered with pimples—how
could I be compared with her! The only thing to be said is that we are well
off, but then the Vahramenkys are well off, too. They’ve six oxen, and they
keep a couple of labourers. I was in love, friends, as though I were plague-
stricken. I couldn’t sleep or eat; my brain was full of thoughts, and in such a
maze, Lord preserve us! I longed to see her, and she was in Demidovo.
What do you think? God be my witness, I am not lying, three times a week
I walked over there on foot just to have a look at her. I gave up my work! I
was so frantic that I even wanted to get taken on as a labourer in Demidovo,
so as to be near her. I was in misery! My mother called in a witch a dozen
times; my father tried thrashing me. For three years I was in this torment,
and then I made up my mind. ‘Damn my soul!’ I said. ‘I will go to the town
and be a cabman. . . . It seems it is fated not to be.’ At Easter I went to
Demidovo to have a last look at her. . . .”
Konstantin threw back his head and went off into a mirthful tinkling
laugh, as though he had just taken someone in very cleverly.
“I saw her by the river with the lads,” he went on. “I was overcome with
anger. . . . I called her aside and maybe for a full hour I said all manner of
things to her. She fell in love with me! For three years she did not like me!
she fell in love with me for what I said to her. . . .”
“What did you say to her?” asked Dymov.

“What did I say? I don’t remember. . . How could one remember? My
words flowed at the time like water from a tap, without stopping to take
breath. Ta-ta-ta! And now I can’t utter a word. . . . Well, so she married me.
. . . She’s gone now to her mother’s, the magpie, and while she is away here
I wander over the steppe. I can’t stay at home. It’s more than I can do!”
Konstantin awkwardly released his feet, on which he was sitting,
stretched himself on the earth, and propped his head in his fists, then got up
and sat down again. Everyone by now thoroughly understood that he was in
love and happy, poignantly happy; his smile, his eyes, and every movement,
expressed fervent happiness. He could not find a place for himself, and did
not know what attitude to take to keep himself from being overwhelmed by
the multitude of his delightful thoughts. Having poured out his soul before
these strangers, he settled down quietly at last, and, looking at the fire, sank
into thought.
At the sight of this happy man everyone felt depressed and longed to be
happy, too. Everyone was dreamy. Dymov got up, walked about softly by
the fire, and from his walk, from the movement of his shoulder-blades, it
could be seen that he was weighed down by depression and yearning. He
stood still for a moment, looked at Konstantin and sat down.
The camp fire had died down by now; there was no flicker, and the patch
of red had grown small and dim. . . . And as the fire went out the moonlight
grew clearer and clearer. Now they could see the full width of the road, the
bales of wool, the shafts of the waggons, the munching horses; on the
further side of the road there was the dim outline of the second cross. . . .
Dymov leaned his cheek on his hand and softly hummed some plaintive
song. Konstantin smiled drowsily and chimed in with a thin voice. They
sang for half a minute, then sank into silence. Emelyan started, jerked his
elbows and wriggled his fingers.
“Lads,” he said in an imploring voice, “let’s sing something sacred!”
Tears came into his eyes. “Lads,” he repeated, pressing his hands on his
heart, “let’s sing something sacred!”
“I don’t know anything,” said Konstantin.

Everyone refused, then Emelyan sang alone. He waved both arms,
nodded his head, opened his mouth, but nothing came from his throat but a
discordant gasp. He sang with his arms, with his head, with his eyes, even
with the swelling on his face; he sang passionately with anguish, and the
more he strained his chest to extract at least one note from it, the more
discordant were his gasps.
Yegorushka, like the rest, was overcome with depression. He went to his
waggon, clambered up on the bales and lay down. He looked at the sky, and
thought of happy Konstantin and his wife. Why did people get married?
What were women in the world for? Yegorushka put the vague questions to
himself, and thought that a man would certainly be happy if he had an
affectionate, merry and beautiful woman continually living at his side. For
some reason he remembered the Countess Dranitsky, and thought it would
probably be very pleasant to live with a woman like that; he would perhaps
have married her with pleasure if that idea had not been so shameful. He
recalled her eyebrows, the pupils of her eyes, her carriage, the clock with
the horseman. . . . The soft warm night moved softly down upon him and
whispered something in his ear, and it seemed to him that it was that lovely
woman bending over him, looking at him with a smile and meaning to kiss
him. . . .
Nothing was left of the fire but two little red eyes, which kept on growing
smaller and smaller. Konstantin and the waggoners were sitting by it, dark
motionless figures, and it seemed as though there were many more of them
than before. The twin crosses were equally visible, and far, far away,
somewhere by the highroad there gleamed a red light—other people
cooking their porridge, most likely.
“Our Mother Russia is the he-ad of all the world!” Kiruha sang out
suddenly in a harsh voice, choked and subsided. The steppe echo caught up
his voice, carried it on, and it seemed as though stupidity itself were rolling
on heavy wheels over the steppe.
“It’s time to go,” said Panteley. “Get up, lads.”
While they were putting the horses in, Konstantin walked by the
waggons and talked rapturously of his wife.

“Good-bye, mates!” he cried when the waggons started. “Thank you for
your hospitality. I shall go on again towards that light. It’s more than I can
stand.”
And he quickly vanished in the mist, and for a long time they could hear
him striding in the direction of the light to tell those other strangers of his
happiness.
When Yegorushka woke up next day it was early morning; the sun had
not yet risen. The waggons were at a standstill. A man in a white cap and a
suit of cheap grey material, mounted on a little Cossack stallion, was
talking to Dymov and Kiruha beside the foremost waggon. A mile and a
half ahead there were long low white barns and little houses with tiled
roofs; there were neither yards nor trees to be seen beside the little houses.
“What village is that, Grandfather?” asked Yegorushka.
“That’s the Armenian Settlement, youngster,” answered Panteley. “The
Armenians live there. They are a good sort of people, . . . the Arnienians
are.”
The man in grey had finished talking to Dymov and Kiruha; he pulled up
his little stallion and looked across towards the settlement.
“What a business, only think!” sighed Panteley, looking towards the
settlement, too, and shuddering at the morning freshness. “He has sent a
man to the settlement for some papers, and he doesn’t come . . . . He should
have sent Styopka.”
“Who is that, Grandfather?” asked Yegorushka.
“Varlamov.”
My goodness! Yegorushka jumped up quickly, getting upon his knees,
and looked at the white cap. It was hard to recognize the mysterious elusive
Varlamov, who was sought by everyone, who was always “on his rounds,”
and who had far more money than Countess Dranitsky, in the short, grey
little man in big boots, who was sitting on an ugly little nag and talking to
peasants at an hour when all decent people were asleep.

“He is all right, a good man,” said Panteley, looking towards the
settlement. “God give him health—a splendid gentleman, Semyon
Alexandritch. . . . It’s people like that the earth rests upon. That’s true. . . .
The cocks are not crowing yet, and he is already up and about. . . . Another
man would be asleep, or gallivanting with visitors at home, but he is on the
steppe all day, . . . on his rounds. . . . He does not let things slip. . . . No-o!
He’s a fine fellow. . .”
Varlamov was talking about something, while he kept his eyes fixed. The
little stallion shifted from one leg to another impatiently.
“Semyon Alexandritch!” cried Panteley, taking off his hat. “Allow us to
send Styopka! Emelyan, call out that Styopka should be sent.”
But now at last a man on horseback could be seen coming from the
settlement. Bending very much to one side and brandishing his whip above
his head like a gallant young Caucasian, and wanting to astonish everyone
by his horsemanship, he flew towards the waggons with the swiftness of a
bird.
“That must be one of his circuit men,” said Panteley. “He must have a
hundred such horsemen or maybe more.”
Reaching the first waggon, he pulled up his horse, and taking off his hat,
handed Varlamov a little book. Varlamov took several papers out of the
book, read them and cried:

“And where is Ivantchuk’s letter?”
The horseman took the book back, looked at the papers and shrugged his
shoulders. He began saying something, probably justifying himself and
asking to be allowed to ride back to the settlement again. The little stallion
suddenly stirred as though Varlamov had grown heavier. Varlamov stirred
too.
“Go along!” he cried angrily, and he waved his whip at the man.
Then he turned his horse round and, looking through the papers in the
book, moved at a walking pace alongside the waggons. When he reached
the hindmost, Yegorushka strained his eyes to get a better look at him.
Varlamov was an elderly man. His face, a simple Russian sunburnt face
with a small grey beard, was red, wet with dew and covered with little blue
veins; it had the same expression of businesslike coldness as Ivan Ivanitch’s
face, the same look of fanatical zeal for business. But yet what a difference
could be felt between him and Kuzmitchov! Uncle Ivan Ivanitch always had
on his face, together with his business-like reserve, a look of anxiety and
apprehension that he would not find Varlamov, that he would be late, that he
would miss a good price; nothing of that sort, so characteristic of small and
dependent persons, could be seen in the face or figure of Varlamov. This
man made the price himself, was not looking for anyone, and did not
depend on anyone; however ordinary his exterior, yet in everything, even in
the manner of holding his whip, there was a sense of power and habitual
authority over the steppe.
As he rode by Yegorushka he did not glance at him. Only the little
stallion deigned to notice Yegorushka; he looked at him with his large
foolish eyes, and even he showed no interest. Panteley bowed to Varlamov;
the latter noticed it, and without taking his eyes off the sheets of paper, said
lisping:
“How are you, old man?”
Varlamov’s conversation with the horseman and the way he had
brandished his whip had evidently made an overwhelming impression on
the whole party. Everyone looked grave. The man on horseback, cast down
at the anger of the great man, remained stationary, with his hat off, and the

rein loose by the foremost waggon; he was silent, and seemed unable to
grasp that the day had begun so badly for him.
“He is a harsh old man, . .” muttered Panteley. “It’s a pity he is so harsh!
But he is all right, a good man. . . . He doesn’t abuse men for nothing. . . .
It’s no matter. . . .”
After examining the papers, Varlamov thrust the book into his pocket; the
little stallion, as though he knew what was in his mind, without waiting for
orders, started and dashed along the highroad.

VII

On the following night the waggoners had halted and were cooking their
porridge. On this occasion there was a sense of overwhelming oppression
over everyone. It was sultry; they all drank a great deal, but could not
quench their thirst. The moon was intensely crimson and sullen, as though it
were sick. The stars, too, were sullen, the mist was thicker, the distance
more clouded. Nature seemed as though languid and weighed down by
some foreboding.
There was not the same liveliness and talk round the camp fire as there
had been the day before. All were dreary and spoke listlessly and without
interest. Panteley did nothing but sigh and complain of his feet, and
continually alluded to impenitent deathbeds.
Dymov was lying on his stomach, chewing a straw in silence; there was
an expression of disgust on his face as though the straw smelt unpleasant, a
spiteful and exhausted look. . . . Vassya complained that his jaw ached, and
prophesied bad weather; Emelyan was not waving his arms, but sitting still
and looking gloomily at the fire. Yegorushka, too, was weary. This slow
travelling exhausted him, and the sultriness of the day had given him a
headache.
While they were cooking the porridge, Dymov, to relieve his boredom,
began quarrelling with his companions.
“Here he lolls, the lumpy face, and is the first to put his spoon in,” he
said, looking spitefully at Emelyan. “Greedy! always contrives to sit next

the cauldron. He’s been a church-singer, so he thinks he is a gentleman!
There are a lot of singers like you begging along the highroad!”
“What are you pestering me for?” asked Emelyan, looking at him angrily.
“To teach you not to be the first to dip into the cauldron. Don’t think too
much of yourself!”
“You are a fool, and that is all about it!” wheezed out Emelyan.
Knowing by experience how such conversations usually ended, Panteley
and Vassya intervened and tried to persuade Dymov not to quarrel about
nothing.
“A church-singer!” The bully would not desist, but laughed
contemptuously. “Anyone can sing like that—sit in the church porch and
sing ‘Give me alms, for Christ’s sake!’ Ugh! you are a nice fellow!”
Emelyan did not speak. His silence had an irritating effect on Dymov. He
looked with still greater hatred at the ex-singer and said:
“I don’t care to have anything to do with you, or I would show you what
to think of yourself.”
“But why are you pushing me, you Mazeppa?” Emelyan cried, flaring up.
“Am I interfering with you?”
“What did you call me?” asked Dymov, drawing himself up, and his eyes
were suffused with blood. “Eh! I am a Mazeppa? Yes? Take that, then; go
and look for it.”
Dymov snatched the spoon out of Emelyan’s hand and flung it far away.
Kiruha, Vassya, and Styopka ran to look for it, while Emelyan fixed an
imploring and questioning look on Panteley. His face suddenly became
small and wrinkled; it began twitching, and the ex-singer began to cry like a
child.
Yegorushka, who had long hated Dymov, felt as though the air all at once
were unbearably stifling, as though the fire were scorching his face; he
longed to run quickly to the waggons in the darkness, but the bully’s angry
bored eyes drew the boy to him. With a passionate desire to say something

extremely offensive, he took a step towards Dymov and brought out,
gasping for breath:
“You are the worst of the lot; I can’t bear you!”
After this he ought to have run to the waggons, but he could not stir from
the spot and went on:
“In the next world you will burn in hell! I’ll complain to Ivan Ivanitch.
Don’t you dare insult Emelyan!”
“Say this too, please,” laughed Dyrnov: “‘every little sucking-pig wants
to lay down the law.’ Shall I pull your ear?”
Yegorushka felt that he could not breathe; and something which had
never happened to him before—he suddenly began shaking all over,
stamping his feet and crying shrilly:
“Beat him, beat him!”
Tears gushed from his eyes; he felt ashamed, and ran staggering back to
the waggon. The effect produced by his outburst he did not see. Lying on
the bales and twitching his arms and legs, he whispered:
“Mother, mother!”
And these men and the shadows round the camp fire, and the dark bales
and the far-away lightning, which was flashing every minute in the distance
—all struck him now as terrible and unfriendly. He was overcome with
terror and asked himself in despair why and how he had come into this
unknown land in the company of terrible peasants? Where was his uncle
now, where was Father Christopher, where was Deniska? Why were they so
long in coming? Hadn’t they forgotten him? At the thought that he was
forgotten and cast out to the mercy of fate, he felt such a cold chill of dread
that he had several times an impulse to jump off the bales of wool, and run
back full speed along the road; but the thought of the huge dark crosses,
which would certainly meet him on the way, and the lightning flashing in
the distance, stopped him. . . . And only when he whispered, “Mother,
mother!” he felt as it were a little better.

The waggoners must have been full of dread, too. After Yegorushka had
run away from the camp fire they sat at first for a long time in silence, then
they began speaking in hollow undertones about something, saying that it
was coming and that they must make haste and get away from it. . . . They
quickly finished supper, put out the fire and began harnessing the horses in
silence. From their fluster and the broken phrases they uttered it was
apparent they foresaw some trouble. Before they set off on their way,
Dymov went up to Panteley and asked softly:
“What’s his name?”
“Yegory,” answered Panteley.
Dymov put one foot on the wheel, caught hold of the cord which was tied
round the bales and pulled himself up. Yegorushka saw his face and curly
head. The face was pale and looked grave and exhausted, but there was no
expression of spite in it.
“Yera!” he said softly, “here, hit me!”
Yegorushka looked at him in surprise. At that instant there was a flash of
lightning.
“It’s all right, hit me,” repeated Dymov. And without waiting for
Yegorushka to hit him or to speak to him, he jumped down and said: “How
dreary I am!”
Then, swaying from one leg to the other and moving his shoulder-blades,
he sauntered lazily alongside the string of waggons and repeated in a voice
half weeping, half angry:
“How dreary I am! O Lord! Don’t you take offence, Emelyan,” he said as
he passed Emelyan. “Ours is a wretched cruel life!”
There was a flash of lightning on the right, and, like a reflection in the
looking-glass, at once a second flash in the distance.
“Yegory, take this,” cried Panteley, throwing up something big and dark.
“What is it?” asked Yegorushka.

“A mat. There will be rain, so cover yourself up.”
Yegorushka sat up and looked about him. The distance had grown
perceptibly blacker, and now oftener than every minute winked with a pale
light. The blackness was being bent towards the right as though by its own
weight.
“Will there be a storm, Grandfather?” asked Yegorushka.
“Ah, my poor feet, how they ache!” Panteley said in a high-pitched
voice, stamping his feet and not hearing the boy.
On the left someone seemed to strike a match in the sky; a pale
phosphorescent streak gleamed and went out. There was a sound as though
someone very far away were walking over an iron roof, probably barefoot,
for the iron gave a hollow rumble.
“It’s set in!” cried Kiruha.
Between the distance and the horizon on the right there was a flash of
lightning so vivid that it lighted up part of the steppe and the spot where the
clear sky met the blackness. A terrible cloud was swooping down, without
haste, a compact mass; big black shreds hung from its edge; similar shreds
pressing one upon another were piling up on the right and left horizon. The
tattered, ragged look of the storm-cloud gave it a drunken disorderly air.
There was a distinct, not smothered, growl of thunder. Yegorushka crossed
himself and began quickly putting on his great-coat.
“I am dreary!” Dymov’s shout floated from the foremost waggon, and it
could be told from his voice that he was beginning to be ill-humoured
again. “I am so dreary!”
All at once there was a squall of wind, so violent that it almost snatched
away Yegorushka’s bundle and mat; the mat fluttered in all directions and
flapped on the bale and on Yegorushka’s face. The wind dashed whistling
over the steppe, whirled round in disorder and raised such an uproar from
the grass that neither the thunder nor the creaking of the wheels could be
heard; it blew from the black storm-cloud, carrying with it clouds of dust
and the scent of rain and wet earth. The moonlight grew mistier, as it were
dirtier; the stars were even more overcast; and clouds of dust could be seen

hurrying along the edge of the road, followed by their shadows. By now,
most likely, the whirlwind eddying round and lifting from the earth dust,
dry grass and feathers, was mounting to the very sky; uprooted plants must
have been flying by that very black storm-cloud, and how frightened they
must have been! But through the dust that clogged the eyes nothing could
be seen but the flash of lightning.
Yegorushka, thinking it would pour with rain in a minute, knelt up and
covered himself with the mat.
“Panteley-ey!” someone shouted in the front. “A. . . a. . . va!”
“I can’t!” Panteley answered in a loud high voice. “A . . . a . . . va! Arya .
. . a!”
There was an angry clap of thunder, which rolled across the sky from
right to left, then back again, and died away near the foremost waggon.
“Holy, holy, holy, Lord of Sabaoth,” whispered Yegorushka, crossing
himself. “Fill heaven and earth with Thy glory.”
The blackness in the sky yawned wide and breathed white fire. At once
there was another clap of thunder. It had scarcely ceased when there was a
flash of lightning so broad that Yegorushka suddenly saw through a slit in
the mat the whole highroad to the very horizon, all the waggoners and even
Kiruha’s waistcoat. The black shreds had by now moved upwards from the
left, and one of them, a coarse, clumsy monster like a claw with fingers,
stretched to the moon. Yegorushka made up his mind to shut his eyes tight,
to pay no attention to it, and to wait till it was all over.
The rain was for some reason long in coming. Yegorushka peeped out
from the mat in the hope that perhaps the storm-cloud was passing over. It
was fearfully dark. Yegorushka could see neither Panteley, nor the bale of
wool, nor himself; he looked sideways towards the place where the moon
had lately been, but there was the same black darkness there as over the
waggons. And in the darkness the flashes of lightning seemed more violent
and blinding, so that they hurt his eyes.
“Panteley!” called Yegorushka.

No answer followed. But now a gust of wind for the last time flung up
the mat and hurried away. A quiet regular sound was heard. A big cold drop
fell on Yegorushka’s knee, another trickled over his hand. He noticed that
his knees were not covered, and tried to rearrange the mat, but at that
moment something began pattering on the road, then on the shafts and the
bales. It was the rain. As though they understood one another, the rain and
the mat began prattling of something rapidly, gaily and most annoyingly
like two magpies.
Yegorushka knelt up or rather squatted on his boots. While the rain was
pattering on the mat, he leaned forward to screen his knees, which were
suddenly wet. He succeeded in covering his knees, but in less than a minute
was aware of a penetrating, unpleasant dampness behind on his back and
the calves of his legs. He returned to his former position, exposing his knees
to the rain, and wondered what to do to rearrange the mat which he could
not see in the darkness. But his arms were already wet, the water was
trickling up his sleeves and down his collar, and his shoulder-blades felt
chilly. And he made up his mind to do nothing but sit motionless and wait
till it was all over.
“Holy, holy, holy!” he whispered.
Suddenly, exactly over his head, the sky cracked with a fearful deafening
din; he huddled up and held his breath, waiting for the fragments to fall
upon his head and back. He inadvertently opened his eyes and saw a
blinding intense light flare out and flash five times on his fingers, his wet
sleeves, and on the trickles of water running from the mat upon the bales
and down to the ground. There was a fresh peal of thunder as violent and
awful; the sky was not growling and rumbling now, but uttering short
crashing sounds like the crackling of dry wood.
“Trrah! tah! tah! tah!” the thunder rang out distinctly, rolled over the sky,
seemed to stumble, and somewhere by the foremost waggons or far behind
to fall with an abrupt angry “Trrra!”
The flashes of lightning had at first been only terrible, but with such
thunder they seemed sinister and menacing. Their magic light pierced
through closed eyelids and sent a chill all over the body. What could he do
not to see them? Yegorushka made up his mind to turn over on his face.

Cautiously, as though afraid of being watched, he got on all fours, and his
hands slipping on the wet bale, he turned back again.
“Trrah! tah! tah!” floated over his head, rolled under the waggons and
exploded “Kraa!”
Again he inadvertently opened his eyes and saw a new danger: three
huge giants with long pikes were following the waggon! A flash of
lightning gleamed on the points of their pikes and lighted up their figures
very distinctly. They were men of huge proportions, with covered faces,
bowed heads, and heavy footsteps. They seemed gloomy and dispirited and
lost in thought. Perhaps they were not following the waggons with any
harmful intent, and yet there was something awful in their proximity.
Yegorushka turned quickly forward, and trembling all over cried:
“Panteley! Grandfather!”
“Trrah! tah! tah!” the sky answered him.
He opened his eyes to see if the waggoners were there. There were
flashes of lightning in two places, which lighted up the road to the far
distance, the whole string of waggons and all the waggoners. Streams of
water were flowing along the road and bubbles were dancing. Panteley was
walking beside the waggon; his tall hat and his shoulder were covered with
a small mat; his figure expressed neither terror nor uneasiness, as though he
were deafened by the thunder and blinded by the lightning.
“Grandfather, the giants!” Yegorushka shouted to him in tears.
But the old man did not hear. Further away walked Emelyan. He was
covered from head to foot with a big mat and was triangular in shape.
Vassya, without anything over him, was walking with the same wooden step
as usual, lifting his feet high and not bending his knees. In the flash of
lightning it seemed as though the waggons were not moving and the men
were motionless, that Vassya’s lifted foot was rigid in the same position. . . .
Yegorushka called the old man once more. Getting no answer, he sat
motionless, and no longer waited for it all to end. He was convinced that the
thunder would kill him in another minute, that he would accidentally open
his eyes and see the terrible giants, and he left off crossing himself, calling

the old man and thinking of his mother, and was simply numb with cold and
the conviction that the storm would never end.
But at last there was the sound of voices.
“Yegory, are you asleep?” Panteley cried below. “Get down! Is he deaf,
the silly little thing? . . .”
“Something like a storm!” said an unfamiliar bass voice, and the stranger
cleared his throat as though he had just tossed off a good glass of vodka.
Yegorushka opened his eyes. Close to the waggon stood Panteley,
Emelyan, looking like a triangle, and the giants. The latter were by now
much shorter, and when Yegorushka looked more closely at them they
turned out to be ordinary peasants, carrying on their shoulders not pikes but
pitchforks. In the space between Panteley and the triangular figure, gleamed
the window of a low-pitched hut. So the waggons were halting in the
village. Yegorushka flung off the mat, took his bundle and made haste to get
off the waggon. Now when close to him there were people talking and a
lighted window he no longer felt afraid, though the thunder was crashing as
before and the whole sky was streaked with lightning.
“It was a good storm, all right, . . .” Panteley was muttering. “Thank God,
. . . my feet are a little softened by the rain. It was all right. . . . Have you
got down, Yegory? Well, go into the hut; it is all right. . . .”
“Holy, holy, holy!” wheezed Emelyan, “it must have struck something . .
. . Are you of these parts?” he asked the giants.
“No, from Glinovo. We belong to Glinovo. We are working at the
Platers’.”
“Threshing?”
“All sorts. Just now we are getting in the wheat. The lightning, the
lightning! It is long since we have had such a storm. . . .”
Yegorushka went into the hut. He was met by a lean hunchbacked old
woman with a sharp chin. She stood holding a tallow candle in her hands,
screwing up her eyes and heaving prolonged sighs.

“What a storm God has sent us!” she said. “And our lads are out for the
night on the steppe; they’ll have a bad time, poor dears! Take off your
things, little sir, take off your things.”
Shivering with cold and shrugging squeamishly, Yegorushka pulled off
his drenched overcoat, then stretched out his arms and straddled his legs,
and stood a long time without moving. The slightest movement caused an
unpleasant sensation of cold and wetness. His sleeves and the back of his
shirt were sopped, his trousers stuck to his legs, his head was dripping.
“What’s the use of standing there, with your legs apart, little lad?” said
the old woman. “Come, sit down.”
Holding his legs wide apart, Yegorushka went up to the table and sat
down on a bench near somebody’s head. The head moved, puffed a stream
of air through its nose, made a chewing sound and subsided. A mound
covered with a sheepskin stretched from the head along the bench; it was a
peasant woman asleep.
The old woman went out sighing, and came back with a big water melon
and a little sweet melon.
“Have something to eat, my dear! I have nothing else to offer you, . . .”
she said, yawning. She rummaged in the table and took out a long sharp
knife, very much like the one with which the brigands killed the merchants
in the inn. “Have some, my dear!”
Yegorushka, shivering as though he were in a fever, ate a slice of sweet
melon with black bread and then a slice of water melon, and that made him
feel colder still.
“Our lads are out on the steppe for the night, . . .” sighed the old woman
while he was eating. “The terror of the Lord! I’d light the candle under the
ikon, but I don’t know where Stepanida has put it. Have some more, little
sir, have some more. . . .”
The old woman gave a yawn and, putting her right hand behind her,
scratched her left shoulder.

“It must be two o’clock now,” she said; “it will soon be time to get up.
Our lads are out on the steppe for the night; they are all wet through for
sure. . . .”
“Granny,” said Yegorushka. “I am sleepy.”
“Lie down, my dear, lie down,” the old woman sighed, yawning. “Lord
Jesus Christ! I was asleep, when I heard a noise as though someone were
knocking. I woke up and looked, and it was the storm God had sent us. . . .
I’d have lighted the candle, but I couldn’t find it.”
Talking to herself, she pulled some rags, probably her own bed, off the
bench, took two sheepskins off a nail by the stove, and began laying them
out for a bed for Yegorushka. “The storm doesn’t grow less,” she muttered.
“If only nothing’s struck in an unlucky hour. Our lads are out on the steppe
for the night. Lie down and sleep, my dear. . . . Christ be with you, my
child. . . . I won’t take away the melon; maybe you’ll have a bit when you
get up.”
The sighs and yawns of the old woman, the even breathing of the
sleeping woman, the half-darkness of the hut, and the sound of the rain
outside, made one sleepy. Yegorushka was shy of undressing before the old
woman. He only took off his boots, lay down and covered himself with the
sheepskin.
“Is the little lad lying down?” he heard Panteley whisper a little later.
“Yes,” answered the old woman in a whisper. “The terror of the Lord! It
thunders and thunders, and there is no end to it.”
“It will soon be over,” wheezed Panteley, sitting down; “it’s getting
quieter. . . . The lads have gone into the huts, and two have stayed with the
horses. The lads have. . . . They can’t; . . . the horses would be taken away. .
. . I’ll sit here a bit and then go and take my turn. . . . We can’t leave them;
they would be taken. . . .”
Panteley and the old woman sat side by side at Yegorushka’s feet, talking
in hissing whispers and interspersing their speech with sighs and yawns.
And Yegorushka could not get warm. The warm heavy sheepskin lay on
him, but he was trembling all over; his arms and legs were twitching, and

his whole inside was shivering. . . . He undressed under the sheepskin, but
that was no good. His shivering grew more and more acute.
Panteley went out to take his turn with the horses, and afterwards came
back again, and still Yegorushka was shivering all over and could not get to
sleep. Something weighed upon his head and chest and oppressed him, and
he did not know what it was, whether it was the old people whispering, or
the heavy smell of the sheepskin. The melon he had eaten had left an
unpleasant metallic taste in his mouth. Moreover he was being bitten by
fleas.
“Grandfather, I am cold,” he said, and did not know his own voice.
“Go to sleep, my child, go to sleep,” sighed the old woman.
Tit came up to the bedside on his thin little legs and waved his arms, then
grew up to the ceiling and turned into a windmill. . . . Father Christopher,
not as he was in the chaise, but in his full vestments with the sprinkler in his
hand, walked round the mill, sprinkling it with holy water, and it left off
waving. Yegorushka, knowing this was delirium, opened his eyes.
“Grandfather,” he called, “give me some water.”
No one answered. Yegorushka felt it insufferably stifling and
uncomfortable lying down. He got up, dressed, and went out of the hut.
Morning was beginning. The sky was overcast, but it was no longer raining.
Shivering and wrapping himself in his wet overcoat, Yegorushka walked
about the muddy yard and listened to the silence; he caught sight of a little
shed with a half-open door made of reeds. He looked into this shed, went
into it, and sat down in a dark corner on a heap of dry dung.
There was a tangle of thoughts in his heavy head; his mouth was dry and
unpleasant from the metallic taste. He looked at his hat, straightened the
peacock’s feather on it, and thought how he had gone with his mother to
buy the hat. He put his hand into his pocket and took out a lump of
brownish sticky paste. How had that paste come into his pocket? He
thought a minute, smelt it; it smelt of honey. Aha! it was the Jewish cake!
How sopped it was, poor thing!

Yegorushka examined his coat. It was a little grey overcoat with big bone
buttons, cut in the shape of a frock-coat. At home, being a new and
expensive article, it had not been hung in the hall, but with his mother’s
dresses in her bedroom; he was only allowed to wear it on holidays.
Looking at it, Yegorushka felt sorry for it. He thought that he and the great-
coat were both abandoned to the mercy of destiny; he thought that he would
never get back home, and began sobbing so violently that he almost fell off
the heap of dung.
A big white dog with woolly tufts like curl-papers about its face, sopping
from the rain, came into the shed and stared with curiosity at Yegorushka. It
seemed to be hesitating whether to bark or not. Deciding that there was no
need to bark, it went cautiously up to Yegorushka, ate the sticky plaster and
went out again.
“There are Varlamov’s men!” someone shouted in the street.
After having his cry out, Yegorushka went out of the shed and, walking
round a big puddle, made his way towards the street. The waggons were
standing exactly opposite the gateway. The drenched waggoners, with their
muddy feet, were sauntering beside them or sitting on the shafts, as listless
and drowsy as flies in autumn. Yegorushka looked at them and thought:
“How dreary and comfortless to be a peasant!” He went up to Panteley and
sat down beside him on the shaft.
“Grandfather, I’m cold,” he said, shivering and thrusting his hands up his
sleeves.
“Never mind, we shall soon be there,” yawned Panteley. “Never mind,
you will get warm.”
It must have been early when the waggons set off, for it was not hot.
Yegorushka lay on the bales of wool and shivered with cold, though the sun
soon came out and dried his clothes, the bales, and the earth. As soon as he
closed his eyes he saw Tit and the windmill again. Feeling a sickness and
heaviness all over, he did his utmost to drive away these images, but as
soon as they vanished the dare-devil Dymov, with red eyes and lifted fists,
rushed at Yegorushka with a roar, or there was the sound of his complaint:
“I am so dreary!” Varlamov rode by on his little Cossack stallion; happy

Konstantin passed, with a smile and the bustard in his arms. And how
tedious these people were, how sickening and unbearable!
Once—it was towards evening—he raised his head to ask for water. The
waggons were standing on a big bridge across a broad river. There was
black smoke below over the river, and through it could be seen a steamer
with a barge in tow. Ahead of them, beyond the river, was a huge mountain
dotted with houses and churches; at the foot of the mountain an engine was
being shunted along beside some goods trucks.
Yegorushka had never before seen steamers, nor engines, nor broad
rivers. Glancing at them now, he was not alarmed or surprised; there was
not even a look of anything like curiosity in his face. He merely felt sick,
and made haste to turn over to the edge of the bale. He was sick. Panteley,
seeing this, cleared his throat and shook his head.
“Our little lad’s taken ill,” he said. “He must have got a chill to the
stomach. The little lad must. . . away from home; it’s a bad lookout!”

VIII

The waggons stopped at a big inn for merchants, not far from the quay.
As Yegorushka climbed down from the waggon he heard a very familiar
voice. Someone was helping him to get down, and saying:
“We arrived yesterday evening. . . . We have been expecting you all day.
We meant to overtake you yesterday, but it was out of our way; we came by
the other road. I say, how you have crumpled your coat! You’ll catch it from
your uncle!”
Yegorushka looked into the speaker’s mottled face and remembered that
this was Deniska.
“Your uncle and Father Christopher are in the inn now, drinking tea;
come along!”
And he led Yegorushka to a big two-storied building, dark and gloomy
like the almshouse at N. After going across the entry, up a dark staircase
and through a narrow corridor, Yegorushka and Deniska reached a little

room in which Ivan Ivanitch and Father Christopher were sitting at the tea-
table. Seeing the boy, both the old men showed surprise and pleasure.
“Aha! Yegor Ni-ko-la-aitch!” chanted Father Christopher. “Mr.
Lomonosov!”
“Ah, our gentleman that is to be,” said Kuzmitchov, “pleased to see you!”
Yegorushka took off his great-coat, kissed his uncle’s hand and Father
Christopher’s, and sat down to the table.
“Well, how did you like the journey, puer bone?” Father Christopher
pelted him with questions as he poured him out some tea, with his radiant
smile. “Sick of it, I’ve no doubt? God save us all from having to travel by
waggon or with oxen. You go on and on, God forgive us; you look ahead
and the steppe is always lying stretched out the same as it was—you can’t
see the end of it! It’s not travelling but regular torture. Why don’t you drink
your tea? Drink it up; and in your absence, while you have been trailing
along with the waggons, we have settled all our business capitally. Thank
God we have sold our wool to Tcherepahin, and no one could wish to have
done better. . . . We have made a good bargain.”
At the first sight of his own people Yegorushka felt an overwhelming
desire to complain. He did not listen to Father Christopher, but thought how
to begin and what exactly to complain of. But Father Christopher’s voice,
which seemed to him harsh and unpleasant, prevented him from
concentrating his attention and confused his thoughts. He had not sat at the
table five minutes before he got up, went to the sofa and lay down.
“Well, well,” said Father Christopher in surprise. “What about your tea?”
Still thinking what to complain of, Yegorushka leaned his head against
the wall and broke into sobs.
“Well, well!” repeated Father Christopher, getting up and going to the
sofa. “Yegory, what is the matter with you? Why are you crying?”
“I’m . . . I’m ill,” Yegorushka brought out.
“Ill?” said Father Christopher in amazement. “That’s not the right thing,
my boy. . . . One mustn’t be ill on a journey. Aie, aie, what are you thinking

about, boy . . . eh?”
He put his hand to Yegorushka’s head, touched his cheek and said:
“Yes, your head’s feverish. . . . You must have caught cold or else have
eaten something. . . . Pray to God.”
“Should we give him quinine? . . .” said Ivan Ivanitch, troubled.
“No; he ought to have something hot. . . . Yegory, have a little drop of
soup? Eh?”
“I . . . don’t want any,” said Yegorushka.
“Are you feeling chilly?”
“I was chilly before, but now . . . now I am hot. And I ache all over. . . .”
Ivan Ivanitch went up to the sofa, touched Yegorushka on the head,
cleared his throat with a perplexed air, and went back to the table.
“I tell you what, you undress and go to bed,” said Father Christopher.
“What you want is sleep now.”
He helped Yegorushka to undress, gave him a pillow and covered him
with a quilt, and over that Ivan Ivanitch’s great-coat. Then he walked away
on tiptoe and sat down to the table. Yegorushka shut his eyes, and at once it
seemed to him that he was not in the hotel room, but on the highroad beside
the camp fire. Emelyan waved his hands, and Dymov with red eyes lay on
his stomach and looked mockingly at Yegorushka.
“Beat him, beat him!” shouted Yegorushka.
“He is delirious,” said Father Christopher in an undertone.
“It’s a nuisance!” sighed Ivan Ivanitch.
“He must be rubbed with oil and vinegar. Please God, he will be better
to-morrow.”
To be rid of bad dreams, Yegorushka opened his eyes and began looking
towards the fire. Father Christopher and Ivan Ivanitch had now finished

their tea and were talking in a whisper. The first was smiling with delight,
and evidently could not forget that he had made a good bargain over his
wool; what delighted him was not so much the actual profit he had made as
the thought that on getting home he would gather round him his big family,
wink slyly and go off into a chuckle; at first he would deceive them all, and
say that he had sold the wool at a price below its value, then he would give
his son-in-law, Mihail, a fat pocket-book and say: “Well, take it! that’s the
way to do business!” Kuzmitchov did not seem pleased; his face expressed,
as before, a business-like reserve and anxiety.
“If I could have known that Tcherepahin would give such a price,” he
said in a low voice, “I wouldn’t have sold Makarov those five tons at home.
It is vexatious! But who could have told that the price had gone up here?”
A man in a white shirt cleared away the samovar and lighted the little
lamp before the ikon in the corner. Father Christopher whispered something
in his ear; the man looked, made a serious face like a conspirator, as though
to say, “I understand,” went out, and returned a little while afterwards and
put something under the sofa. Ivan Ivanitch made himself a bed on the
floor, yawned several times, said his prayers lazily, and lay down.
“I think of going to the cathedral to-morrow,” said Father Christopher. “I
know the sacristan there. I ought to go and see the bishop after mass, but
they say he is ill.”
He yawned and put out the lamp. Now there was no light in the room but
the little lamp before the ikon.
“They say he can’t receive visitors,” Father Christopher went on,
undressing. “So I shall go away without seeing him.”
He took off his full coat, and Yegorushka saw Robinson Crusoe reappear.
Robinson stirred something in a saucer, went up to Yegorushka and
whispered:
“Lomonosov, are you asleep? Sit up; I’m going to rub you with oil and
vinegar. It’s a good thing, only you must say a prayer.”
Yegorushka roused himself quickly and sat up. Father Christopher pulled
down the boy’s shirt, and shrinking and breathing jerkily, as though he were

being tickled himself, began rubbing Yegorushka’s chest.
“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” he whispered,
“lie with your back upwards—that’s it. . . . You’ll be all right to-morrow,
but don’t do it again. . . . You are as hot as fire. I suppose you were on the
road in the storm.”
“Yes.”
“You might well fall ill! In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Ghost, . . . you might well fall ill!”
After rubbing Yegorushka, Father Christopher put on his shirt again,
covered him, made the sign of the cross over him, and walked away. Then
Yegorushka saw him saying his prayers. Probably the old man knew a great
many prayers by heart, for he stood a long time before the ikon murmuring.
After saying his prayers he made the sign of the cross over the window, the
door, Yegorushka, and Ivan Ivanitch, lay down on the little sofa without a
pillow, and covered himself with his full coat. A clock in the corridor struck
ten. Yegorushka thought how long a time it would be before morning;
feeling miserable, he pressed his forehead against the back of the sofa and
left off trying to get rid of the oppressive misty dreams. But morning came
much sooner than he expected.
It seemed to him that he had not been lying long with his head pressed to
the back of the sofa, but when he opened his eyes slanting rays of sunlight
were already shining on the floor through the two windows of the little
hotel room. Father Christopher and Ivan Ivanitch were not in the room. The
room had been tidied; it was bright, snug, and smelt of Father Christopher,
who always smelt of cypress and dried cornflowers (at home he used to
make the holy-water sprinklers and decorations for the ikonstands out of
cornflowers, and so he was saturated with the smell of them). Yegorushka
looked at the pillow, at the slanting sunbeams, at his boots, which had been
cleaned and were standing side by side near the sofa, and laughed. It
seemed strange to him that he was not on the bales of wool, that everything
was dry around him, and that there was no thunder and lightning on the
ceiling.

He jumped off the sofa and began dressing. He felt splendid; nothing was
left of his yesterday’s illness but a slight weakness in his legs and neck. So
the vinegar and oil had done good. He remembered the steamer, the railway
engine, and the broad river, which he had dimly seen the day before, and
now he made haste to dress, to run to the quay and have a look at them.
When he had washed and was putting on his red shirt, the latch of the door
clicked, and Father Christopher appeared in the doorway, wearing his top-
hat and a brown silk cassock over his canvas coat and carrying his staff in
his hand. Smiling and radiant (old men are always radiant when they come
back from church), he put a roll of holy bread and a parcel of some sort on
the table, prayed before the ikon, and said:
“God has sent us blessings—well, how are you?”
“Quite well now,” answered Yegorushka, kissing his hand.
“Thank God. . . . I have come from mass. I’ve been to see a sacristan I
know. He invited me to breakfast with him, but I didn’t go. I don’t like
visiting people too early, God bless them!”
He took off his cassock, stroked himself on the chest, and without haste
undid the parcel. Yegorushka saw a little tin of caviare, a piece of dry
sturgeon, and a French loaf.
“See; I passed a fish-shop and brought this,” said Father Christopher.
“There is no need to indulge in luxuries on an ordinary weekday; but I
thought, I’ve an invalid at home, so it is excusable. And the caviare is good,
real sturgeon. . . .”
The man in the white shirt brought in the samovar and a tray with tea-
things.
“Eat some,” said Father Christopher, spreading the caviare on a slice of
bread and handing it to Yegorushka. “Eat now and enjoy yourself, but the
time will soon come for you to be studying. Mind you study with attention
and application, so that good may come of it. What you have to learn by
heart, learn by heart, but when you have to tell the inner sense in your own
words, without regard to the outer form, then say it in your own words. And
try to master all subjects. One man knows mathematics excellently, but has
never heard of Pyotr Mogila; another knows about Pyotr Mogila, but cannot

explain about the moon. But you study so as to understand everything.
Study Latin, French, German, . . . geography, of course, history, theology,
philosophy, mathematics, . . . and when you have mastered everything, not
with haste but with prayer and with zeal, then go into the service. When you
know everything it will be easy for you in any line of life. . . . You study
and strive for the divine blessing, and God will show you what to be.
Whether a doctor, a judge or an engineer. . . .”
Father Christopher spread a little caviare on a piece of bread, put it in his
mouth and said:
“The Apostle Paul says: ‘Do not apply yourself to strange and diverse
studies.’ Of course, if it is black magic, unlawful arts, or calling up spirits
from the other world, like Saul, or studying subjects that can be of no use to
yourself or others, better not learn them. You must undertake only what God
has blessed. Take example . . . the Holy Apostles spoke in all languages, so
you study languages. Basil the Great studied mathematics and philosophy—
so you study them; St. Nestor wrote history—so you study and write
history. Take example from the saints.”
Father Christopher sipped the tea from his saucer, wiped his moustaches,
and shook his head.
“Good!” he said. “I was educated in the old-fashioned way; I have
forgotten a great deal by now, but still I live differently from other people.
Indeed, there is no comparison. For instance, in company at a dinner, or at
an assembly, one says something in Latin, or makes some allusion from
history or philosophy, and it pleases people, and it pleases me myself. . . .
Or when the circuit court comes and one has to take the oath, all the other
priests are shy, but I am quite at home with the judges, the prosecutors, and
the lawyers. I talk intellectually, drink a cup of tea with them, laugh, ask
them what I don’t know, . . . and they like it. So that’s how it is, my boy.
Learning is light and ignorance is darkness. Study! It’s hard, of course;
nowadays study is expensive. . . . Your mother is a widow; she lives on her
pension, but there, of course . . .”
Father Christopher glanced apprehensively towards the door, and went on
in a whisper:

“Ivan Ivanitch will assist. He won’t desert you. He has no children of his
own, and he will help you. Don’t be uneasy.”
He looked grave, and whispered still more softly:
“Only mind, Yegory, don’t forget your mother and Ivan Ivanitch, God
preserve you from it. The commandment bids you honour your mother, and
Ivan Ivanitch is your benefactor and takes the place of a father to you. If
you become learned, God forbid you should be impatient and scornful with
people because they are not so clever as you, then woe, woe to you!”
Father Christopher raised his hand and repeated in a thin voice:
“Woe to you! Woe to you!”
Father Christopher’s tongue was loosened, and he was, as they say,
warming to his subject; he would not have finished till dinnertime but the
door opened and Ivan Ivanitch walked in. He said good-morning hurriedly,
sat down to the table, and began rapidly swallowing his tea.
“Well, I have settled all our business,” he said. “We might have gone
home to-day, but we have still to think about Yegor. We must arrange for
him. My sister told me that Nastasya Petrovna, a friend of hers, lives
somewhere here, so perhaps she will take him in as a boarder.”
He rummaged in his pocket-book, found a crumpled note and read:
“‘Little Lower Street: Nastasya Petrovna Toskunov, living in a house of
her own.’ We must go at once and try to find her. It’s a nuisance!”
Soon after breakfast Ivan Ivanitch and Yegorushka left the inn.
“It’s a nuisance,” muttered his uncle. “You are sticking to me like a burr.
You and your mother want education and gentlemanly breeding and I have
nothing but worry with you both. . . .”
When they crossed the yard, the waggons and the drivers were not there.
They had all gone off to the quay early in the morning. In a far-off dark
corner of the yard stood the chaise.
“Good-bye, chaise!” thought Yegorushka.

At first they had to go a long way uphill by a broad street, then they had
to cross a big marketplace; here Ivan Ivanitch asked a policeman for Little
Lower Street.
“I say,” said the policeman, with a grin, “it’s a long way off, out that way
towards the town grazing ground.”
They met several cabs but Ivan Ivanitch only permitted himself such a
weakness as taking a cab in exceptional cases and on great holidays.
Yegorushka and he walked for a long while through paved streets, then
along streets where there were only wooden planks at the sides and no
pavements, and in the end got to streets where there were neither planks nor
pavements. When their legs and their tongues had brought them to Little
Lower Street they were both red in the face, and taking off their hats, wiped
away the perspiration.
“Tell me, please,” said Ivan Ivanitch, addressing an old man sitting on a
little bench by a gate, “where is Nastasya Petrovna Toskunov’s house?”
“There is no one called Toskunov here,” said the old man, after
pondering a moment. “Perhaps it’s Timoshenko you want.”
“No, Toskunov. . . .”
“Excuse me, there’s no one called Toskunov. . . .”
Ivan Ivanitch shrugged his shoulders and trudged on farther.
“You needn’t look,” the old man called after them. “I tell you there isn’t,
and there isn’t.”
“Listen, auntie,” said Ivan Ivanitch, addressing an old woman who was
sitting at a corner with a tray of pears and sunflower seeds, “where is
Nastasya Petrovna Toskunov’s house?”
The old woman looked at him with surprise and laughed.
“Why, Nastasya Petrovna live in her own house now!” she cried. “Lord!
it is eight years since she married her daughter and gave up the house to her
son-in-law! It’s her son-in-law lives there now.”

And her eyes expressed: “How is it you didn’t know a simple thing like
that, you fools?”
“And where does she live now?” Ivan Ivanitch asked.
“Oh, Lord!” cried the old woman, flinging up her hands in surprise. “She
moved ever so long ago! It’s eight years since she gave up her house to her
son-in-law! Upon my word!”
She probably expected Ivan Ivanitch to be surprised, too, and to exclaim:
“You don’t say so,” but Ivan Ivanitch asked very calmly:
“Where does she live now?”
The old woman tucked up her sleeves and, stretching out her bare arm to
point, shouted in a shrill piercing voice:
“Go straight on, straight on, straight on. You will pass a little red house,
then you will see a little alley on your left. Turn down that little alley, and it
will be the third gate on the right. . . .”
Ivan Ivanitch and Yegorushka reached the little red house, turned to the
left down the little alley, and made for the third gate on the right. On both
sides of this very old grey gate there was a grey fence with big gaps in it.
The first part of the fence was tilting forwards and threatened to fall, while
on the left of the gate it sloped backwards towards the yard. The gate itself
stood upright and seemed to be still undecided which would suit it best —to
fall forwards or backwards. Ivan Ivanitch opened the little gate at the side,
and he and Yegorushka saw a big yard overgrown with weeds and burdocks.
A hundred paces from the gate stood a little house with a red roof and green
shutters. A stout woman with her sleeves tucked up and her apron held out
was standing in the middle of the yard, scattering something on the ground
and shouting in a voice as shrill as that of the woman selling fruit:
“Chick! . . . Chick! . . . Chick!”
Behind her sat a red dog with pointed ears. Seeing the strangers, he ran to
the little gate and broke into a tenor bark (all red dogs have a tenor bark).
“Whom do you want?” asked the woman, putting up her hand to shade
her eyes from the sun.

“Good-morning!” Ivan Ivanitch shouted, too, waving off the red dog with
his stick. “Tell me, please, does Nastasya Petrovna Toskunov live here?”
“Yes! But what do you want with her?”
“Perhaps you are Nastasya Petrovna?”
“Well, yes, I am!”
“Very pleased to see you. . . . You see, your old friend Olga Ivanovna
Knyasev sends her love to you. This is her little son. And I, perhaps you
remember, am her brother Ivan Ivanitch. . . . You are one of us from N. . . .
You were born among us and married there. . . .”
A silence followed. The stout woman stared blankly at Ivan Ivanitch, as
though not believing or not understanding him, then she flushed all over,
and flung up her hands; the oats were scattered out of her apron and tears
spurted from her eyes.
“Olga Ivanovna!” she screamed, breathless with excitement. “My own
darling! Ah, holy saints, why am I standing here like a fool? My pretty little
angel. . . .”
She embraced Yegorushka, wetted his face with her tears, and broke
down completely.
“Heavens!” she said, wringing her hands, “Olga’s little boy! How
delightful! He is his mother all over! The image of his mother! But why are
you standing in the yard? Come indoors.”
Crying, gasping for breath and talking as she went, she hurried towards
the house. Her visitors trudged after her.
“The room has not been done yet,” she said, ushering the visitors into a
stuffy little drawing-room adorned with many ikons and pots of flowers.
“Oh, Mother of God! Vassilisa, go and open the shutters anyway! My little
angel! My little beauty! I did not know that Olitchka had a boy like that!”
When she had calmed down and got over her first surprise Ivan Ivanitch
asked to speak to her alone. Yegorushka went into another room; there was
a sewing-machine; in the window was a cage with a starling in it, and there

were as many ikons and flowers as in the drawing-room. Near the machine
stood a little girl with a sunburnt face and chubby cheeks like Tit’s, and a
clean cotton dress. She stared at Yegorushka without blinking, and
apparently felt very awkward. Yegorushka looked at her and after a pause
asked:
“What’s your name?”
The little girl moved her lips, looked as if she were going to cry, and
answered softly:
“Atka. . . .”
This meant Katka.
“He will live with you,” Ivan Ivanitch was whispering in the drawing-
room, “if you will be so kind, and we will pay ten roubles a month for his
keep. He is not a spoilt boy; he is quiet. . . .”
“I really don’t know what to say, Ivan Ivanitch!” Nastasya Petrovna
sighed tearfully. “Ten roubles a month is very good, but it is a dreadful
thing to take another person’s child! He may fall ill or something. . . .”
When Yegorushka was summoned back to the drawing-room Ivan
Ivanitch was standing with his hat in his hands, saying good-bye.
“Well, let him stay with you now, then,” he said. “Good-bye! You stay,
Yegor!” he said, addressing his nephew. “Don’t be troublesome; mind you
obey Nastasya Petrovna. . . . Good-bye; I am coming again to-morrow.”
And he went away. Nastasya once more embraced Yegorushka, called
him a little angel, and with a tear-stained face began preparing for dinner.
Three minutes later Yegorushka was sitting beside her, answering her
endless questions and eating hot savoury cabbage soup.
In the evening he sat again at the same table and, resting his head on his
hand, listened to Nastasya Petrovna. Alternately laughing and crying, she
talked of his mother’s young days, her own marriage, her children. . . . A
cricket chirruped in the stove, and there was a faint humming from the
burner of the lamp. Nastasya Petrovna talked in a low voice, and was
continually dropping her thimble in her excitement; and Katka her

granddaughter, crawled under the table after it and each time sat a long
while under the table, probably examining Yegorushka’s feet; and
Yegorushka listened, half dozing and looking at the old woman’s face, her
wart with hairs on it, and the stains of tears, and he felt sad, very sad. He
was put to sleep on a chest and told that if he were hungry in the night he
must go out into the little passage and take some chicken, put there under a
plate in the window.
Next morning Ivan Ivanitch and Father Christopher came to say good-
bye. Nastasya Petrovna was delighted to see them, and was about to set the
samovar; but Ivan Ivanitch, who was in a great hurry, waved his hands and
said:
“We have no time for tea! We are just setting off.”
Before parting they all sat down and were silent for a minute. Nastasya
Petrovna heaved a deep sigh and looked towards the ikon with tear-stained
eyes.
“Well,” began Ivan Ivanitch, getting up, “so you will stay. . . .”
All at once the look of business-like reserve vanished from his face; he
flushed a little and said with a mournful smile:
“Mind you work hard. . . . Don’t forget your mother, and obey Nastasya
Petrovna. . . . If you are diligent at school, Yegor, I’ll stand by you.”
He took his purse out of his pocket, turned his back to Yegorushka,
fumbled for a long time among the smaller coins, and, finding a ten-kopeck
piece, gave it to Yegorushka.
Father Christopher, without haste, blessed Yegorushka.
“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. . . . Study,” he
said. “Work hard, my lad. If I die, remember me in your prayers. Here is a
ten-kopeck piece from me, too. . . .”
Yegorushka kissed his hand, and shed tears; something whispered in his
heart that he would never see the old man again.

“I have applied at the high school already,” said Ivan Ivanitch in a voice
as though there were a corpse in the room. “You will take him for the
entrance examination on the seventh of August. . . . Well, good-bye; God
bless you, good-bye, Yegor!”
“You might at least have had a cup of tea,” wailed Nastasya Petrovna.
Through the tears that filled his eyes Yegorushka could not see his uncle
and Father Christopher go out. He rushed to the window, but they were not
in the yard, and the red dog, who had just been barking, was running back
from the gate with the air of having done his duty. When Yegorushka ran
out of the gate Ivan Ivanitch and Father Christopher, the former waving his
stick with the crook, the latter his staff, were just turning the corner.
Yegorushka felt that with these people all that he had known till then had
vanished from him for ever. He sank helplessly on to the little bench, and
with bitter tears greeted the new unknown life that was beginning for him
now. . . .
What would that life be like?

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