The Village

joined engaged themselves to get in a large crop at eighty kopeks a pood,33 but behold, the crop turned out twice as heavy as had been calculated. They winnowed it, and Syery was hired to run the machine. He drove some of the grain out through the waste-spout and bought it. And he grew rich: that same autumn he built a brick cottage. But his calculations had been faulty: it turned out that the cottage must be heated. And where was the money to come from? that was the question. Why, there was not even enough to provide food. So it became necessary to burn the top of the cottage; and there it stood, roofless, for a year, and turned completely black. And the chimney went for the price of a horse-collar. There were no horses as yet, it is true; but, naturally, one must begin to fit oneself out some time or other. And Syery let his arms fall by his side in despair: he decided to sell the cottage, to build a cheaper one of beaten clay. His argument ran as follows: There must be in the cottage⁠—well, at the very least, ten thousand bricks; he could sell them for five or even six rubles a thousand; the sum-total, of course, would be about one hundred and fifty rubles. But it turned out that there were only three thousand five hundred bricks, and he was forced to accept two rubles and a half for each girder, instead of five rubles. And for a long time a bare mound of rubbish occupied the site of the splendid cottage, solidifying under the rain: there was no money available for clearing it away, and one’s hands simply refused to undertake the task. Yakoff harangued on the subject: “Matters ought, for example, to have been more cheaply managed from the start.” “But, devil take it,” Syery said to himself, “a cheap thing doesn’t last long, does it?” And, much troubled in mind, he proceeded to look up a new cottage⁠—and spent a whole year in bargaining for precisely those which were beyond his means. He had reconciled himself to his present domicile merely in the firm expectation of a future cottage which should be strong, spacious, and warm.

“I simply don’t intend to live on here!” he snapped one day.

Yakoff stared at him attentively and shook his cap. “Exactly so. That means you are expecting your ships to come in?”

“They’ll come, all right,” replied Syery mysteriously.

“Oi, drop your nonsense,” said Yakoff. “Get yourself a place somewhere⁠—anywhere you can⁠—and keep your teeth, for example, in their proper place.”

But the thought of a fine farmstead, good order, some suitable, real work, poisoned Syery’s entire life. He got bored when working in a place.

“Evidently, working at home isn’t as sweet as honey, either,” said his neighbours.

“Never you mind, it might be honey-sweet if the house were managed sensibly!”

“Just so. And will you take a place by the month, or until the working season?”

“I’ll get one, never fear. Oversight is needed at home, isn’t it?”

“But all you do is to sit in the house and smoke your pipe.”

“What am I to do, then? can’t I even smoke?”

And Syery, suddenly becoming animated, jerked the cold pipe out of his mouth and began his favourite story: how, while still a bachelor, he had lived two full years honestly and nobly at the house of a priest near Eletz. “Yes, and if I were to go there this minute, they would fairly tear me to pieces with joy!” he exclaimed. “I need say only one word: ‘I’ve come, papa, to work for you⁠—will you take me or not?’ ‘But why do you ask that, light of my life? Don’t I know you? Yes, good Lord, live here with us forever and ever, if you will’!”

“Well, and you might go there, for example⁠—”

“I might go there! Look at them⁠—all those brats in the corner! We know all about that; ’tis another man’s grief, I’ll not meddle. But a man is being wasted here, in vain.”

V

Syery was being wasted, in vain, this year also. He had sat at home all winter long, with careworn countenance, without light, cold and hungry. During the Great Fast (Lent), he had managed somehow or other to get a place with Rusanoff, near Tula: no one in his own neighbourhood would any longer give him a place. But before the month was out, Rusanoff’s establishment had become more repulsive to him than a bitter radish.

“Oi, young fellow!” the manager once remarked to him. “I can see right through you: you are picking a quarrel so that you can take to your heels. Here, you dog, here’s your money in advance, and now be off with you into the bushes!”

“Perhaps some sort of vagabond might take himself off, but not me,” retorted Syery sharply.

But the manager did not understand the hint. And it became necessary to adopt more decisive means. One day Syery was set to hauling in some husks for the cattle. He went to the threshing-floor and began to load a cart with straw. The manager came along:

“Didn’t I tell you, in good plain Russian, to load up with husks?”

“ ’Tis not the right time to load them,” replied Syery firmly.

“Why not?”

“Sensible farmers give husks for dinner, not at night.”

“And how do you come to be a teacher?”

“I don’t like to starve the cattle. That’s all there is to my being a teacher.”

“But you are hauling straw.”

“One must know the proper time for everything.”

“Stop loading this very minute.”

Syery turned pale. “No, I won’t stop my work. I can’t stop my work.”

“Hand me over that fork, you dog, and get out, lest worse happen.”

“I’m no dog, but a baptized Christian man. When I’ve driven in this load, I’ll get out. And I’ll go for good.”

“Well, brother, that’s not likely! You’ll go away, and pretty soon you’ll be back again⁠—and get locked up in the county jail.”

Syery leaped from the cart and