The House of the Dead

nagging at me; but what did I care? I was always with Filka Morozov in those days. I never left him from morning till night. ‘Play on the guitar and dance,’ he’d say to me, ‘and I’ll lie down and fling money at you, for I’m an extremely wealthy man!’ And what wouldn’t he do! But he wouldn’t take stolen goods. ‘I’m not a thief,’ he says, ‘I’m an honest man. But let’s go and smear Akulka’s gate with pitch, for I don’t want Akulka to marry Mikita Grigoritch. I care more for that than for jelly.’ The old man had been meaning to marry Akulka to Mikita Grigoritch for some time past. Mikita, too, was an old fellow in spectacles and a widower with a business. When he heard the stories about Akulka he drew back: ‘That would be a great disgrace to me, Ankudim Trofimitch,’ says he, ‘and I don’t want to get married in my old age.’ So we smeared Akulka’s gate. And they thrashed her, thrashed her for it at home.⁠ ⁠… Marya Stepanovna cried, ‘I’ll wipe her off the face of the earth!’ ‘In ancient years,’ says the old man, ‘in the time of the worthy patriarchs, I should have chopped her to pieces at the stake, but nowadays it’s all darkness and rottenness.’ Sometimes the neighbours all along the street would hear Akulka howling⁠—they beat her from morning till night. Filka would shout for the whole marketplace to hear: ‘Akulka’s a fine wench to drink with,’ says he. ‘You walk in fine array, who’s your lover, pray! I’ve made them feel it,’ says he, ‘they won’t forget it.’

“About that time I met Akulka one day carrying the pails and I shouted at her, ‘Good morning, Akulina Kudimovna. Greetings to your grace! You walk in fine array. Where do you get it, pray? Come, who’s your lover, say!’ That was all I said. But how she did look at me. She had such big eyes and she had grown as thin as a stick. And as she looked at me her mother thought she was laughing with me and shouted from the gateway, ‘What are you gaping at, shameless hussy,’ and she gave her another beating that day. Sometimes she’d beat her for an hour together. ‘I’ll do for her,’ says she, for she is no daughter of mine now.’ ”

“Then she was a loose wench?”

“You listen, old man. While I was always drinking with Filka, my mother comes up to me one day⁠—I was lying down. ‘Why are you lying there, you rascal?’ says she. ‘You are a blackguard,’ says she. She swore at me in fact. ‘You get married,’ says she. ‘You marry Akulka. They’ll be glad to marry her now even to you, they’d give you three hundred roubles in money alone.’ ‘But she is disgraced in the eyes of all the world,’ says I. ‘You are a fool,’ says she, ‘the wedding ring covers all, it will be all the better for you if she feels her guilt all her life. And their money will set us on our feet again. I’ve talked it over with Marya Stepanovna already. She is very ready to listen.’ ‘Twenty roubles down on the table and I’ll marry her,’ says I. And would you believe it, right up to the day of the wedding I was drunk. And Filka Morozov was threatening me, too: ‘I’ll break all your ribs, Akulka’s husband,’ says he, ‘and I’ll sleep with your wife every night if I please.’ ‘You lie, you dog’s flesh,’ says I. And then he put me to shame before all the street. I ran home: ‘I won’t be married,’ says I, ‘if they don’t lay down another fifty roubles on the spot.’ ”

“But did they agree to her marrying you?”

“Me? Why not? We were respectable people. My father was only ruined at the end by a fire, till then we’d been better off than they. Ankudim says, ‘You are as poor as a rat,’ says he. ‘There’s been a lot of pitch smeared on your gate,’ I answered. ‘There’s no need for you to cry us down,’ says he. ‘You don’t know that she has disgraced herself, but there’s no stopping people’s mouths. Here’s the icon and here’s the door,’ says he. ‘You needn’t take her. Only pay back the money you’ve had.’ Then I talked it over with Filka and I sent Mitri Bikov to tell him I’d dishonour him now over all the world; and right up to the wedding, lad, I was dead drunk. I was only just sober for the wedding. When we were driven home from the wedding and sat down, Mitrofan Stepanovitch, my uncle, said, ‘Though it’s done in dishonour, it’s just as binding,’ says he, ‘the thing’s done and finished.’ Old Ankudim was drunk too and he cried, he sat there and the tears ran down his beard. And I tell you what I did, my lad: I’d put a whip in my pocket, I got it ready before the wedding. I’d made up my mind to have a bit of fun with Akulka, to teach her what it meant to get married by a dirty trick and that folks might know I wasn’t being fooled over the marriage.

“Quite right too! To make her future⁠ ⁠…”

“No, old chap, you hold your tongue. In our part of the country they take us straight after the wedding to a room apart while the others drink outside. So they left Akulka and me inside. She sits there so white, not a drop of blood in her face. She was scared, to be sure. Her hair, too, was as white as flax, her eyes were large and she was always quiet, you heard nothing of her, she was like a dumb thing in the house. A strange girl altogether. And can you believe it, brother, I got that whip ready and laid it beside me by the bed, but it turned out she had not wronged