“Yes, I do hammer at that idea, and I shall go on hammering at it!” Kuzma broke in hotly. “But I’ve lost my wits completely! Nowadays I don’t understand at all: whether it is an unhappy nation, or—Come now, listen to me. You know you hate that man yourself, that Deniska! You both hate each other! He never speaks of you except to call you a ‘bloodsucker who has gnawed himself into the very vitals of the people,’ and here you are calling him a bloodsucker! He is boasting insolently about the village that now he is the equal of the king!”
“Well, I know that,” Tikhon Ilitch again interrupted.
“But do you know what he is saying about the Bride?” went on Kuzma, not listening to him. “She’s handsome—she has, you know, such a white, delicate complexion—but he, the stupid animal—do you know what he is saying about her? ‘She’s all enameled, the trollop!’ And, by this time, you must understand one thing: he certainly will not live in the village. You couldn’t keep that vagabond in the country now with a lasso. What sort of a farmer and what sort of a family man do you suppose he’ll be? Yesterday, I heard, he was roaming about the village and singing in a lewd voice: ‘She’s beautiful as an angel from heaven, as sly as a damon from hell.’ ”
“I know it!” yelled Tikhon Ilitch. “He won’t live in the country—not for any consideration on earth, he won’t! Well, and devil take him! And as for his being no sort of a farmer, you and I are nice farmers ourselves, ain’t we? I remember how I was talking to you about business—in the eating-house, do you remember?—and all the while you were listening to that quail. Well, go on; what comes next?”
“What do you mean? What has the quail to do with it?” inquired Kuzma.
Tikhon Ilitch began to drum on the table with his fingers and said sternly, uttering each word with great distinctness: “Bear in mind: if you grind water, you’ll be left with just water as the result. My word is sacred to ages of ages. Once I have said I’ll do a thing—I’ll do it. I won’t set a candle before the holy picture in atonement for my sin, but I’ll do a good deed instead. Although I may give only a mite, the Lord will remember me for that mite.”
Kuzma sprang from his seat. “The Lord, the Lord!” he cried, in a falsetto tone. “What has the Lord to do with that affair of yours? What can the Lord mean to Deniska, to Akimka, to Menshoff, to Syery, to you, or to me?”
“Eh?” inquired Tikhon Ilitch severely. “What Akimka is that you’re talking about?”
“When I lay there dying,” pursued Kuzma, paying no heed to him, “did I think very much about Him? I thought just one thing: ‘I don’t know anything about Him, and I don’t know how to think’!” shouted Kuzma. “I’m an ignorant man!”
And glancing about him with roving, suffering eyes, as he buttoned and unbuttoned his coat, he strode across the room and halted directly in front of Tikhon Ilitch.
“Remember this, brother,” he said, his cheekbones reddening. “Remember this: your life and mine are finished. And no candles on earth will save us. Do you hear? We are—Durnovka folk. We’re neither candle for God nor oven-fork for the devil.” And, unable to find words in his agitation, he fell silent.
But Tikhon Ilitch had again thought of something, and suddenly assented: “Correct. ’Tis a good-for-nothing people! Just you consider—” And, animated, carried away by his new idea:
“Just you consider: they’ve been tilling the soil for a whole thousand years—what am I saying? for longer than that!—but how to till the soil properly not a soul of them understands! They don’t know how to do their one and only business! They don’t know the proper time to begin field work! Nor when to sow, nor when to reap! ‘As the people always have done, so will we always do’—that’s the whole story. Note that!” Contracting his brows, he shouted sternly, as Kuzma had recently shouted at him. “ ‘As the people always have done, so will we always do!’ Not a single peasant woman knows how to bake bread—the top crust is burned as black as the devil and falls off, and underneath that crust—there’s nothing but sour water!”
Kuzma was dumbfounded. His thoughts were reduced to a jumble. “He has lost his senses!” he said to himself, with uncomprehending eyes watching his brother, who was lighting the lamp.
But Tikhon Ilitch, giving him no time to recover himself, continued wrathfully: “The people! Lewd, lazy, liars, and so shameless that not one of them believes another! Note this,” he roared, not perceiving that the lighted wick was smoking and the soot billowing up almost to the ceiling. “ ’Tis not us they refuse to trust, but one another! And they are all like that—every one of them!” he shouted in a tearful voice, as he jammed the chimney on the lamp with a crash.
The outdoor light was beginning to filter blue through the windows. New, fresh snow was fluttering down on the pools of water and the snowdrifts. Kuzma gazed at it and held his peace. The conversation had taken such an unexpected turn that even Kuzma’s eagerness had vanished. Not knowing what to say, unable to bring himself to look at his brother’s furious eyes, he began to roll himself a cigarette.
“He has gone crazy!” he said to himself despairingly. “Well, so be it! It makes no difference! Nothing—nothing makes any difference. Enough!”
He began to smoke, and Tikhon Ilitch also began to calm down. He seated himself and, staring at the lamp, muttered softly: “You were talking about ‘Deniska.’ Have you heard what Makar Ivanovitch, that pilgrim fellow, has been up to? He
