The witch, and other stories

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It was approaching nightfall. The sexton, Savely Gykin, was lying in his huge bed in the hut adjoining the church. He was not asleep, though it was his habit to go to sleep at the same time as the hens. His coarse red hair peeped from under one end of the greasy patchwork quilt, made up of coloured rags, while his big unwashed feet stuck out from the other. He was listening. His hut adjoined the wall that encircled the church and the solitary window in it looked out upon the open country. And out there a regular battle was going on. It was hard to say who was being wiped off the face of the earth, and for the sake of whose destruction nature was being churned up into such a ferment; but, judging from the unceasing malignant roar, someone was getting it very hot. A victorious force was in full chase over the fields, storming in the forest and on the church roof, battering spitefully with its fists upon the windows, raging and tearing, while something vanquished was howling and wailing. ... A plaintive lament sobbed at the window, on the roof, or in the stove. It sounded not like a call for help, but like a cry of misery, a consciousness that it was too late, that there was no salvation. The snow- 3 drifts were covered with a thin coating of ice; tears quivered on them and on the trees; a dark slush of mud and melting snow flowed along the roads and paths. In short, it was thawing, but through the dark night the heavens failed to see it, and flung flakes of fresh snow upon the melting earth at a terrific rate. And the wind staggered like a drunkard. It would not let the snow settle on the ground, and whirled it round in the darkness at random.

Savely listened to all this din and frowned. The fact was that he knew, or at any rate suspected, what all this racket outside the window was tending to and whose handiwork it was.

II

The Lytchkovs, father and son, caught in their meadows two cart-horses, a pony, and a broad-faced Aalhaus bull-calf, and with the help of red-headed Volodka, son of the blacksmith Rodion, drove them to the village. They called the village elder, collected witnesses, and went to look at the damage.

“ All right, let ’em! ” said Kozov, winking, “ le-et ’em ! Let them get out of it if they can, the engineers ! Do you think there is no such thing as law? All right! Send for the police inspector, draw up a statement! . . .”

“ Draw up a statement,” repeated Volodka.

“I don’t want to let this pass!” shouted the younger Lytchkov. He shouted louder and louder, and his beardless face seemed to be more and more swollen. “ They’ve set up a nice fashion ! Leave them free, and they will ruin all the meadows! You’ve no sort of right to ill-treat people! We are not serfs now! ”

“ We are not serfs now! ” repeated Volodka.

“ We got on all right without a bridge,” said the elder Lytchkov gloomily; “we did not ask for it. What do we want a bridge for? We don’t want it!”

“ Brothers, good Christians, we cannot leave it like this ! ”

“ All right, let ’em ! ” said Kozov, winking. “ Let them get out of it if they can! Landowners, indeed ! ”

They went back to the village, and as they walked the younger Lytchkov beat himself on the breast with his fist and shouted all the way, and Volodka shouted, too, repeating his words. And meanwhile quite a crowd had gathered in the village round the thoroughbred bull-calf and the horses. The bull-calf was embarrassed and looked up from under his brows, but suddenly lowered his muzzle to the ground and took to his heels, kicking up his hind legs; Kozov was frightened and waved his stick at him, and they all burst out laughing. Then they locked up the beasts and waited.

In the evening the engineer sent five roubles for the damage, and the two horses, the pony and the bull-calf, without being fed or given water, returned home, their heads hanging with a guilty air as though they were convicted criminals.

On getting the five roubles the Lytchkovs, father and son, the village elder and Volodka, punted over the river in a boat and went to a hamlet on the other side where there was a tavern, and there had a long carousal. Their singing and the shouting of the younger Lytchkov could be heard from the village. Their women were uneasy and did not sleep all night Rodion did not sleep either.

“ It’s a bad business,” he said, sighing and turning from side to side. “ The gentleman will be angry, and then there will be trouble. . . . They have insulted the gentleman. . . . Oh, they’ve insulted him. It’s a bad business. . .

It happened that the peasants, Rodion amongst them, went into their forest to divide the clearings for mowing, and as they were returning home they were met by the engineer. He was wearing a red cotton shirt and high boots; a setter dog with its long tongue hanging out, followed behind him.

“ Good-day, brothers,” he said.

The peasants stopped and took off their hats.

“ I have long wanted to have a talk with you, friends,” he went on. “ This is what it is. Ever since the early spring your cattle have been in my copse and garden every day. Everything is trampled down; the pigs have rooted up the meadow, are ruining everything in the kitchen garden, and all the undergrowth in the copse is destroyed. There is no getting on with your herdsmen; one asks them civilly, and they are rude. Damage is done on my estate every day and I do nothing — I don’t fine you or make a complaint; meanwhile you impounded my horses and my bull calf and exacted five roubles. Was that right? Is that neighbourly? ” he went on, and his face was so soft and persuasive, and his expression was not forbidding. “ Is that the way decent people behave? A week ago one of your people cut down two oak saplings in my copse. You have dug up the road to Eresnevo, and now I have to go two miles round. Why do you injure me at every step? What harm have 1 done you? For God’s sake, tell me ! My wife and I do our utmost to live with you in peace and harmony; we help the peasants as we can. My wife is a kind, warm-hearted woman; she never refuses you help. That is her dream — to be of use to you and your children. You reward us with evil for our good. You are unjust, my friends. Think of that. I ask you earnestly to think it over. We treat you humanely; repay us in the same coin.”

He turned and went away. The peasants stood a little longer, put on their caps and walked away. Rodion, who always understood everything that was said to him in some peculiar way of his own, heaved a sigh and said :

“We must pay. 4 Repay in coin, my friends’ ... he said.”

They walked to the village in silence. On reaching home Rodion said his prayer, took off his boots, and sat down on the bench beside his wife. Stepanida and he always sat side by side when they were at home, and always walked side by side in the street; they ate and they drank and they slept always together, and the older they grew the more they loved one another. It was hot and crowded in their hut, and there were children everywhere — on the floors, in the windows, on the stove. ... In spite of her advanced years Stepanida was still bearing children, and now, looking at the crowd of children, it was hard to distinguish which were Rodion’s and which were Volodka’s. Volodka’s wife, Lukerya, a plain young woman with prominent eyes and a nose like the beak of a bird, was kneading dough in a tub; Volodka was sitting on the stove with his legs hanging.

“ On the road near Nikita’s buckwheat . . . the engineer with his dog . . Rodion began, after a rest, scratching his ribs and his elbow. “ ‘ You must pay,’ says he ... ‘ coin,’ says he. . . . Coin or no coin, we shall have to collect ten kopecks from every hut. We’ve offended the gentleman very much. I am sorry for him. . . .”

“ We’ve lived without a bridge,” said Volodka, not looking at anyone, “ and we don’t want one.”

“What next; the bridge is a government business.”

“ We don’t want it.”

“ Your opinion is not asked. What is it to you? ”

“ ‘ Your opinion is not asked,’ ” Volodka mimicked him. “We don’t want to drive anywhere; what do we want with a bridge? If we have to, we can cross by the boat.”

Someone from the yard outside knocked at the window so violently that it seemed to shake the whole hut.

“Is Volodka at home?” he heard the voice of the younger Lytchkov. “ Volodka, come out, come along.”

Volodka jumped down off the stove and began looking for his cap.

“ Don’t go, Volodka,” said Rodion diffidently. “Don’t go with them, son. You are foolish, like a little child; they will teach you no good; don’t go!”

“ Don’t go, son,” said Stepanida, and she blinked as though about to shed tears. “ I bet they are calling you to the tavern.”

‘“To the tavern,’ ” Volodka mimicked.

“ You’ll come back drunk again, you currish Herod,” said Lukerya, looking at him angrily. “ Go along, go along, and may you burn up with vodka, you tailless Satan ! ”

“ You hold your tongue,” shouted Volodka.

“ They’ve married me to a fool, they’ve ruined me, a luckless orphan, you red-headed drunkard . . .” wailed Lukerya, wiping her face with a hand covered with dough. “ I wish I had never set eyes on you.”

Volodka gave her a blow on the ear and went off. Ill

Elena Ivanovna and her little daughter visited the village on foot. They were out for a walk. It was a Sunday, and the peasant women and girls were walking up and down the street in their brightly-coloured dresses. Rodion and Stepanida, sitting side by side at their door, bowed and smiled to Elena Ivanovna and her little daughter as to acquaintances. From the windows more than a dozen children stared at them; their faces expressed amazement and curiosity, and they could be heard whispering:

“ The Kutcherov lady has come ! The Kutcherov lady ! ”

“ Good-morning,” said Elena Ivanovna, and she stopped; she paused, and then asked: “Well, how are you getting on? ”

“ We get along all right, thank God,” answered Rodion, speaking rapidly. “ To be sure we get along.”

“The life we lead!” smiled Stepanida. “You can see our poverty yourself, dear lady! The family is fourteen souls in all, and only two bread-winners. We are supposed to be blacksmiths, but when they bring us a horse to shoe we have no coal, nothing to buy it with. We are worried to death, lady,” she went on, and laughed. “ Oh, oh, we are worried to death.”

Elena Ivanovna sat down at the entrance and, putting her arm round her little girl, pondered something, and judging from the little girl's expression, melancholy thoughts were straying through her mind, too; as she brooded she played with the sumptuous lace on the parasol she had taken out of her mother’s hands.

“ Poverty,” said Rodion, “ a great deal of anxiety — you see no end to it. Here, God sends no rain . . . our life is not easy, there is no denying it.”

“ You have a hard time in this life,” said Elena Ivanovna, “ but in the other world you will be happy.”

Rodion did not understand her, and simply coughed into his clenched hand by way of reply. Stepanida said:

“ Dear lady, the rich men will be all right in the next world, too. The rich put up candles, pay for services; the rich give to beggars, but what can the poor man do? He has no time to make the sign of the cross. He is the beggar of beggars himself; how can he think of his soul? And many sins come from poverty; from trouble we snarl at one another like dogs, we haven’t a good word to say to one another, and all sorts of things happen, dear lady — God forbid! It seems we have no luck in this world nor the next. All the luck has fallen to the rich.”

She spoke gaily; she was evidently used to talking of her hard life. And Rodion smiled, too; he was pleased that his old woman was so clever, so ready of speech.

“ It is only on the surface that the rich seem to be happy,” said Elena Ivanovna. “ Every man has his sorrow. Here my husband and I do not live poorly, we have means, but are we happy? I am young, but I have had four children; my children are always being ill. I am ill, too, and constantly being doctored.”

“ And what is your illness? ” asked Rodion.

“A woman’s complaint. I get no sleep; a continual headache gives me no peace. Here I am sitting and talking, but my head is bad, I am weak all over, and I should prefer the hardest labour to such a condition. My soul, too, is troubled; I am in continual fear for my children, my husband. Every family has its own trouble of some sort; we have ours. I am not of noble birth. My grandfather was a simple peasant, my father was a tradesman in Moscow; he was a plain, uneducated man, too, while my husband’s parents were wealthy and distinguished. They did not want him to marry me, but he disobeyed them, quarrelled with them, and they have not forgiven us to this day. That worries my husband; it troubles him and keeps him in constant agitation; he loves his mother, loves her dearly. So I am uneasy, too, my soul is in pain.”

Peasants, men and women, were by now standing round Rodion’s hut and listening. Kozov came up, too, and stood twitching his long, narrow beard. The Lytchkovs, father and son, drew near.

“ And say what you like, one cannot be happy and satisfied if one does not feel in one’s proper place.” Elena Ivanovna went on. “ Each of you has his strip of land, each of you works and knows what he is working for; my husband builds bridges — in short, everyone has his place, while I, I simply walk about. I have not my bit to work. I don’t work, and feel as though I were an outsider. I am saying all this that you may not judge from outward appearances; if a man is expensively dressed and has means it does not prove that he is satisfied with his life.”

She got up to go away and took her daughter by the hand.

“ I like your place here very much,” she said, and smiled, and from that faint, diffident smile one could tell how unwell she really was, how young and how pretty; she had a pale, thinnish face with dark eyebrows and fair hair. And the little girl was just such another as her mother: thin, fair, and slender. There was a fragrance of scent about them.

u I like the river and the forest and the village,” Elena Ivanovna went on; “ I could live here all my life, and I feel as though here I should get strong and find my place. I want to help you — I want to dreadfully — to be of use, to be a real friend to you. I know your need, and what I don’t know I feel, my heart guesses. I am sick, feeble, and for me perhaps it is not possible to change my life as I would. But I have children. I will try to bring them up that they may be of use to you, may love you. I shall impress upon them continually that their life does not belong to them, but to you. Only I beg you earnestly, I beseech you, trust us, live in friendship with us. My husband is a kind, good man. Don’t worry him, don’t irritate him. He is sensitive to every trifle, and yesterday, for instance, your cattle were in our vegetable garden, and one of your people broke down the fence to the bee-hives, and such an attitude to us drives my husband to despair. I beg you,” she went on in an imploring voice, and she clasped her hands on her bosom — “I beg you to treat us as good neighbours; let us live in peace! There is a saying, you know, that even a bad peace is better than a good quarrel, and, ‘ Don’t buy property, but buy neighbours.’ I repeat my husband is a kind man and good; if all goes well we promise to do everything in our power for you; we will mend the roads, we will build a school for your children. I promise you.”

“ Of course we thank you humbly, lady,” said

Lytchkov the father, looking at the ground; “you are educated people; it is for you to know best. Only, you see, Voronov, a rich peasant at Eresnevo, promised to build a school; he, too, said, 4 I will do this for you,’ 4 I will do that for you,’ and he only put up the framework and refused to go on. And then they made the peasants put the roof on and finish it; it cost them a thousand roubles. Voronov did not care; he only stroked his beard, but the peasants felt it a bit hard.”

44 That was a crow, but now there’s a rook, too,” said Kozov, and he winked.

There was the sound of laughter.

“ We don’t want a school,” said Volodka sullenly. 44 Our children go to Petrovskoe, and they can go on going there; we don’t want it.”

Elena Ivanovna seemed suddenly intimidated; her face looked paler and thinner, she shrank into herself as though she had been touched with something coarse, and walked away without uttering another word. And she walked more and more quickly, without looking round.

44 Lady,” said Rodion, walking after her, 44 lady, wait a bit; hear what I would say to you.”

He followed her without his cap, and spoke softly as though begging.

44 Lady, wait and hear what I will say to you.”

They had walked out of the village, and Elena Ivanovna stopped beside a cart in the shade of an old mountain ash.

44 Don’t be offended, lady,” said Rodion. 44 What does it mean? Have patience. Have patience for a couple of years. You will live here, you will have patience, and it will all come round. Our folks are good and peaceable; there’s no harm in them; it’s God’s truth I’m telling you. Don’t mind Kozov and the Lytchkovs, and don’t mind Volodka. He’s a fool; he listens to the first that speaks. The others are quiet folks; they are silent. Some would be glad, you know, to say a word from the heart and to stand up for themselves, but cannot. They have a heart and a conscience, but no tongue. Don’t be offended . . . have patience. . . . What does it matter? ”

Elena Ivanovna looked at the broad, tranquil river, pondering, and tears flowed down her cheeks. And Rodion was troubled by those tears; he almost cried himself.

“ Never mind . . he muttered. u Have patience for a couple of years. You can have the school, you can have the roads, only not all at once. If you went, let us say, to sow corn on that mound you would first have to weed it out, to pick out all the stones, and then to plough, and work and work . . . and with the people, you see, it is the same . . . you must work and work until you overcome them.”

The crowd had moved away from Rodion’s hut, and was coming along the street towards the mountain ash. They began singing songs and playing the concertina, and they kept coming closer and closer. . . .

“ Mamma, let us go away from here,” said the little girl, huddling up to her mother, pale and shaking all over; “ let us go away, mamma 1 ”

“Where?”

“ To Moscow. . . . Let us go, mamma.”

The child began crying.

Rodion was utterly overcome; his face broke into profuse perspiration; he took out of his pocket a little crooked cucumber, like a half-moon, covered with crumbs of rye bread, and began thrusting it into the little girl’s hands.

“ Come, come,” he muttered, scowling severely; “ take the little cucumber, eat it up. ... You mustn’t cry. Mamma will whip you. . . . She’ll tell your father of you when you get home. Come, come. . . .”

They walked on, and he still followed behind them, wanting to say something friendly and persuasive to them. And seeing that they were both absorbed in their own thoughts and their own griefs, and not noticing him, he stopped and, shading his eyes from the sun, looked after them for a long time till they disappeared into their copse.