The soldier blinked and considered the matter. “The sheep without a name might be a ram,” he said at last, at his leisure. “But I will ask you something also. Is Adam a name, or is it not?”
“It is.”
“Very well. And about how many people, for example, have died since then?”
“I don’t know,” said Kuzma. “Why do you inquire?”
“Simply because that’s one of the things we never were born to understand. Now, take any busybody you like. Do you indulge in revolt? Do it, my dear man: perhaps you will become a fit-marshal! Only, at best, that they may stretch you out without your breeches for a flogging. Are you a peasant? Till the soil. Are you a cooper? In that case, equally, attend to your business. I, for example, am a soldier and a veterinary. Not long ago I was passing through the Fair, and what should I see but a horse with the glanders? I went at once to the policeman: ‘Thus and so,’ says I, ‘Your High Wellborn.’ ‘But can you kill that horse with a feather?’ ‘With the greatest pleasure!’ ”
“With what sort of a feather?” inquired Kuzma.
“Why, a goose feather. I took it, sharpened it, jabbed it into his spinal cord, blew a little—into the feather, I mean—and the thing was done. ’Tis a simple matter, to all appearance, but just try to do it!” And the soldier winked craftily and tapped his brow with his finger: “Understanding is needed here.”
Kuzma shrugged his shoulders and made no reply. And as he passed Odnodvorka’s cottage he found out from her boy Senka what the soldier’s name was. It turned out to be Parmen.
“And what’s your task for tomorrow?” added Kuzma, gazing with curiosity at Senka’s fiery red mop of hair, his lively green eyes, his pockmarked face, his rickety little body, and his hands and feet all cracked with mud and chaps.
“The tasks are verses,” said Senka, grasping his uplifted foot in his right hand and hopping up and down on one spot.
“What sort of tasks?”
“Counting the geese. A flock of geese has flown past—”
“Ah, I know,” said Kuzma. “And what else?”
“Also mice—”
“They are to be counted too?”
“Yes. Six mice were walking along carrying six copper coins,” mumbled Senka rapidly, casting a sidelong glance at Kuzma’s silver watch chain. “One mouse, which was bigger, carried two coins. How many does that make in all—?”
“Splendid. And what are the verses?”
Senka released his foot.
“The verses are ‘Who is he?’ ”
“Have you learned them?”
“Yes, I have.”
“Well, then, say them.”
And Senka muttered still more rapidly about a horseman who was riding above the Neva through the forests, where there were only—
“ ‘Firs, pine-trees, and green moss. …’ ”
“Grey,” said Kuzma, “not green.”
“Well, then, grey,” assented Senka.
“And who was that horseman?”
Senka considered the matter. “Why, a sorcerer,” said he.
“Exactly. Now, tell your mother that she ought to cut your hair, on your temples at least. ’Tis all the worse for you as it is, when the teacher pulls it.”
“Then he’ll find my ears,” said Senka unconcernedly, again grasping his foot, and off he hopped on the pasture common.
III
The promontory and Durnovka lived in a state of perpetual enmity and mutual disdain, as adjoining villages always do. The promontory dwellers regarded the Durnovka folk in the light of bandits and beggars, while the Durnovka people returned the compliment precisely and in full measure. Durnovka was “gentry property,” while on the promontory dwelt “boors,” one-farm petty owners—more properly speaking, the remains of the one-farm people who had emigrated to the Tomsk Government. Odnodvorka was the only person who was not included in this enmity, these quarrels. Small, thin, dependable, she was lively, even-tempered, and agreeable in intercourse; and she was observant. She knew every family on the promontory and in Durnovka as well as if it were her own; she was the first to inform the manor-house of every smallest happening in the life of the village. And everyone was also thoroughly well acquainted with her life.
She never concealed anything from anybody; she talked calmly and simply about her husband and Durnovo and stated that she had become a procuress when he went away. “What could I do?” she said, with a faint sigh. “I was dreadfully poor; I had not enough bread even after the new harvest. My good husband loved me, to speak the plain truth, but one has to submit, you know. The master gave three whole carloads of rye for me. ‘What can I do?’ I said to my husband. ’Twas plain, I must go, he said. He went for the rye, dragged home measure after measure, and his tears drip-dripped, drip-dripped all the while.”
And, after a moment’s thought, she added:
“Well, and later on, when the master went away, and my husband went to Rostoff, I began to bring people together, as chance occurred. You’re immoral dogs, the Lord forgive you!”
By day she toiled, never pausing for a moment; by night she mended, sewed, stole snow-screens from the railway. Once late at night, when Kuzma was driving to Tikhon Ilitch, he ascended a hillock and halted paralyzed with fright: across the ploughed land, half deluged in darkness, on a faintly smouldering strip of the sunset, something black, huge, sprang up and bore down smoothly on Kuzma.
“Who’s that?” he shouted feebly, tugging at his reins.
“Oi!” feebly and in affright shouted that which had so swiftly and smoothly sprung up against the sky; and it disappeared with a crash.
Kuzma recovered himself—and instantly recognized, in the darkness, Odnodvorka. She had been running toward him on her light, unshod feet, all bent together with the weight of two screens a fathom long—the sort that are set up, in winter, along the railway line, to protect it from snowdrifts. And, having rearranged herself, she whispered, with a quiet laugh:
“You frightened me to death. When one runs off somewhere of a night, one is all a-tremble, but what can one do? The whole village
