“He has married a townswoman. His wife is not fit for our work. He is a lopped-off branch and thinks only of keeping himself. To be sure it’s a pity, but it can’t be helped!”
While we were talking, the lads came out into the street, and the lamentations, shrieks, laughter, and adjurations recommenced. After standing about for some five minutes, the procession moved on with songs and accordion accompaniment. One could not help marvelling at the energy and spirit of the player, as he beat time accurately, stamped his foot, stopped short, and then after a pause again took up the melody most merrily, exactly on the right beat, while he gazed around with his kind, hazel eyes. Evidently he had a real and great talent for music.
I looked at him, and (so at least it seemed to me) he felt abashed when he met my eyes, and with a twitch of his brows he turned away, and again burst out with even more spirit than before. When we reached the fifth and last of the cottages, the lads entered, and I followed them. All five of them were made to sit round a table covered with a cloth, on which were bread and vodka. The host, the man I had been talking to, who was now to take leave of his married son, poured out the vodka and handed it round. The lads hardly drank at all (at most a quarter of a glass) or even handed it back after just raising it to their lips. The hostess cut some bread, and served slices round to eat with the vodka.
While I was looking at the lads, a woman, dressed in clothes that seemed to me strange and incongruous, got down from the top of the oven, close to where I sat. She wore a light green dress (silk, I think) with fashionable trimmings, and high-heeled boots. Her fair hair was arranged in quite the modern style, like a large round cap, and she wore big, ring-shaped, gold earrings. Her face was neither sad nor cheerful, but looked as if she were offended.
After getting down, she went out into the passage, clattering with the heels of her new boots and paying no heed to the lads. All about this woman—her clothing, the offended expression of her face, and above all her earrings—was so foreign to the surroundings that I could not understand how she had come to be on the top of Vasíly Oréhof’s oven. I asked a woman sitting near me who she was.
“Vasíly’s daughter-in-law; she has been a housemaid,” was the answer.
The host began offering vodka a third time, but the lads refused, rose, said grace, thanked the hosts, and went out.
In the street, the lamentations recommenced at once. The first to raise her voice was a very old woman with a bent back. She lamented in such a peculiarly piteous voice, and wailed so, that the women kept soothing the sobbing, staggering old creature, and supported her by her elbows.
“Who is she?” I inquired.
“Why, it’s his granny; Vasíly’s mother, that is.”
The old woman burst into hysterical laughter and fell into the arms of the women who supported her, and just then the procession started again, and again the accordion and the merry voices struck up their tune. At the end of the village the procession was overtaken by the carts which were to carry the conscripts to the District Office. The weeping and wailing stopped. The accordion-player, getting more and more elated, bending his head to one side and resting on one foot, turned out the toes of the other and stamped with it, while his fingers produced brilliant fioritures, and exactly at the right instant the bold, high, merry tones of his song, and the second of Vasíly’s son, again chimed in. Old and young, and especially the children who surrounded the crowd, and I with them, fixed their eyes admiringly on the singer.
“He is clever, the rascal!” said one of the peasants.
“ ‘Sorrow weeps, and sorrow sings!’ ” replied another.
At that moment one of the young fellows whom we were seeing off—the tall one—came up with long, energetic strides, and stooped to speak to the one who played the accordion.
“What a fine fellow,” I thought; “they will put him in the Guards.” I did not know who he was or what house he belonged to.
“Whose son is that one? That gallant fellow?” I asked a little old man, pointing to the fine lad.
The old man raised his cap and bowed to me, but did not hear my question.
“What did you say?” asked he.
I had not recognised him, but as soon as he spoke I knew him at once. He is a hardworking, good peasant who, as often happens, seems specially marked out for misfortune: first, two horses were stolen from him, then his house burnt down, and then his wife died. I had not seen Prokófey for a long time, and remembered him as a bright red-haired man of medium height; whereas he was now not red, but quite grey-haired, and small.
“Ah, Prokófey, it’s you!” I said. “I was asking whose son that fine fellow is—that one who has just spoken to Alexander?”
“That one?” Prokófey replied, pointing with a motion of his head to the tall lad. He shook his head and mumbled something I did not understand.
“I’m asking whose son the lad is?” I repeated, and turned to look at Prokófey.
His face was puckered, and his jaw trembled.
“He’s mine!” he muttered, and, turning away and hiding his face in his hand, began to whimper like a child.
And only then, after the two words, “He’s mine!” spoken by Prokófey, did I realise, not only in my mind but in my whole being, the horror of what was taking place before my eyes that memorable misty morning. All the disjointed, incomprehensible, strange things I had seen suddenly acquired a simple, clear, and terrible significance. I became painfully ashamed of having looked on as at
