For a long time I could not grasp what he was talking about. I fancy, too, that at first he was constantly straying away from his subject into other things. He noticed perhaps that Tcherevin took scarcely any interest in his story, but he seemed anxious to convince himself that his listener was all attention, and perhaps it would have hurt him very much if he had been convinced of the contrary.
“… He would go out into the market,” he went on. “Everyone would bow to him. They felt he was a rich man; that’s the only word for it.”
“He had some trade, you say?”
“Yes, he had. They were poor folks there, regular beggars. The women used to carry water from the river ever so far up the steep bank to water their vegetables; they wore themselves out and did not get cabbage enough for soup in the autumn. It was poverty. Well, he rented a big piece of land, kept three labourers to work it; besides he had his own beehives and sold honey, and cattle too in our parts, you know; he was highly respected. He was pretty old, seventy if he was a day, his old bones were heavy, his hair was grey, he was a great big fellow. He would go into the marketplace in a fox-skin coat and all did him honour. They felt what he was, you see! ‘Good morning, Ankudim Trofimitch, sir.’ ‘Good day to you,’ he’d say. He wasn’t too proud to speak to anyone, you know. ‘Long life to you, Ankudim Trofimitch!’ ‘And how’s your luck?’ he’d ask. ‘Our luck’s as right as soot is white; how are you doing, sir?’ ‘I am doing as well as my sins will let me, I am jogging along.’ ‘Good health to you, Ankudim Trofimitch!’ He wasn’t too proud for anyone, but if he spoke, every word he said was worth a rouble. He was a Bible reader, an educated man, always reading something religious. He’d set his old woman before him: ‘Now wife, listen and mark!’ and he’d begin expounding to her. And the old woman was not so very old, she was his second wife, he married her for the sake of children, you know, he had none from the first. But by the second, Marya Stepanovna, he had two sons not grown up. He was sixty when the youngest, Vasya, was born and his daughter, Akulka, the eldest of the lot, was eighteen.”
“Was that your wife?”
“Wait a bit. First there was the upset with Filka Morozov. ‘You give me my share,’ says Filka to Ankudim, ‘give me my four hundred roubles—am I your servant? I won’t be in business with you and I don’t want your Akulka. I am going to have my fling. Now my father and mother are dead, so I shall drink up my money and then hire myself out, that is, go for a soldier, and in ten years I’ll come back here as a field-marshal.’ Ankudim gave him the money and settled up with him for good—for his father and the old man had set up business together. ‘You are a lost man,’ says he. ‘Whether I am a lost man or not, you, grey beard, you’d teach one to sup milk with an awl. You’d save off every penny, you’d rake over rubbish to make porridge. I’d like to spit on it all. Save every pin and the devil you win. I’ve a will of my own,’ says he. ‘And I am not taking your Akulka, anyway. I’ve slept with her as it is,’ says he. ‘What!’ says Ankudim, ‘do you dare shame the honest daughter of an honest father? When have you slept with her, you adder’s fat? You pike’s blood!’ And he was all of a tremble, so Filka told me.
“ ‘I’ll take good care,’ says he, ‘that your Akulka won’t get any husband now, let alone me; no one will have her, even Mikita Grigoritch won’t take her, for now she is disgraced. I’ve been carrying on with her ever since autumn. I wouldn’t consent for a hundred crabs now. You can try giving me a hundred crabs, I won’t consent. …’
“And didn’t he run a fine rig among us, the lad! He kept the country in an uproar and the town was ringing with his noise. He got together a crew of companions, heaps of money; he was carousing for three months, he spent everything. ‘When I’ve got through all the money,’ he used to say, ‘I’ll sell the house, sell everything, and then I’ll either sell myself for a soldier or go on the tramp.’ He’d be drunk from morning till night, he drove about with bells and a pair of horses. And the way the wenches ran after him was tremendous. He used to play the torban finely.”
“Then he’d been carrying on with Akulka before?”
“Stop, wait a bit. I’d buried my father just then too, and my mother used to make cakes, she worked for Ankudim, and that was how we lived. We had a hard time of it. We used to rent a bit of ground beyond the wood and we sowed it with corn, but we lost everything after father died, for I went on the spree too, my lad. I used to get money out of my mother by beating her.”
“That’s not the right thing, to beat your mother. It’s a great sin.”
“I used to be drunk from morning till night, my lad. Our house was all right, though it was tumbledown, it was our own, but it was empty as a drum. We used to sit hungry, we had hardly a morsel from one week’s end to another. My mother used to keep on
