“Tikhon Ilitch,” said Kuzma amiably, “why do you talk nonsense? What’s the object? You must be feeling ill. You keep jumping from one thing to another; now you assert one thing, a minute later you assert something different. Are you drinking too much, perhaps?”
Tikhon Ilitch remained silent for a while. He merely waved his hand, and tears trembled in his eyes, which were riveted on the flame of the lamp.
“Are you drinking?” repeated Kuzma quietly.
“Yes, I am,” quietly replied Tikhon Ilitch. “And ’tis enough to make anyone take to drink! Has it been easy for me to acquire this golden cage, think you? Do you imagine that it has been easy for me to live like a chained hound all my life, and with my old woman into the bargain? I have never shown any pity to anyone, brother. Well, and has anyone shown the least pity on me? Do you think I don’t know how I am hated? Do you think they wouldn’t have murdered me in some fashion if those peasants had once got the breeching under their tail in proper style? If they had had luck in that revolution? Wait a bit, wait—There’ll be something doing; it’s coming! We have cut their throats!”
“And they are to be hanged—on account of a little ham?” asked Kuzma.
“Well, as for the hanging,” replied Tikhon Ilitch in agonized tones, “why, I just said the first thing that came to my tongue—”
“But they certainly will hang them!”
“Well—and that’s no affair of ours. They must answer for that to the Most High.” And, frowning, he fell into thought and closed his eyes. “Ah!” he said contritely, with a profound sigh. “Ah, my dear brother! Soon, very soon, we also must appear before His throne for judgment! I read the Trebnik35 of an evening, and I weep and I wail over that same book. I am greatly amazed; how was it possible to invent such sweet words? But here, wait a minute—”
And he rose hastily, drew from behind the mirror a thick book in ecclesiastical binding, with trembling hands donned his spectacles, and with tears in his voice began to read, hurriedly, as if he feared to be interrupted.
“ ‘I weep and I wail when I think upon death, and behold our beauty, fashioned after the image of God, lying in the tomb disfigured, dishonoured, bereft of form. …
“ ‘Of a truth, all things are vanity, and life is but a shadow and a dream. For in vain doth everyone who is born of earth disquiet himself, as saith the Scriptures: when we have acquired the world, then do we take up our abode in the grave, where kings and beggars lie down together. …’
“ ‘Kings and beggars!’ ” repeated Tikhon Ilitch with ecstatic melancholy, and shook his head. “Life is over, dear brother! I had, you understand, a dumb cook; I gave her, the stupid thing, a kerchief from foreign parts; and what does she do but take and wear it completely to rags, wrong side out! Do you understand? Out of stupidity and greed. She begrudged wearing it right side out on ordinary days—and when a feast-day came along nothing was left of it but rags. And that’s exactly the way it is with me and with my life. ’Tis truly so!”
On returning to Durnovka Kuzma was conscious of only one feeling—a certain dull agony. And all the last days of his stay at Durnovka were passed in that dull agony.
XIII
During those days snow fell, and they were only waiting for that snow at Syery’s farmstead, so that the road might be in order for the celebration of the wedding.
On the twelfth of February, towards evening, in the gloom of the cold entrance lobby, a low-toned conversation was in progress. Beside the stove stood the Bride, a yellow kerchief besprinkled with black polka-dots pulled well down on her forehead, staring at her bark-shoes. By the door stood short-legged Deniska, hatless, in a heavy undercoat, with drooping shoulders. He, too, was gazing downward, at some women’s high shoes with metal tips, which he was twisting about in his hands. The boots belonged to the Bride. Deniska had mended them, and had come to receive five kopeks for his work.
“But I haven’t got it,” the Bride was saying, “and I think Kuzma Ilitch is taking a nap. Just you wait until tomorrow.”
“I can’t possibly wait,” replied Deniska in a singsong, meditative voice, as he picked at the metal tip with his finger nail.
“Well, what are we going to do about it?”
Deniska reflected, sighed, and, shaking back his thick hair, suddenly raised his head. “Well, and what’s the good of wagging one’s tongue for nothing?” he said loudly and decisively, without glancing at the Bride, and mastering his shyness. “Has Tikhon Ilitch said anything to you?”
“Yes, he has,” replied the Bride. “He has downright bored me with his talk.”
“In that case I will come at once with my father. It won’t hurt Kuzma Ilitch to get up immediately and drink tea—”
The Bride thought it over. “That’s as you like—”
Deniska set the shoes on the windowsill and went away, without making any further mention of money. And half an hour later the knocking of bark-shoes coated with snow became audible on the porch. Deniska had returned with Syery—and Syery, for some unknown reason, was girt about the hips, over his kazak coat, with a red belt. Kuzma came out to receive them. Deniska and Syery crossed themselves for a long time toward the dark corner, then tossed back their hair and raised their faces.
“Matchmaker or not, yet a fine man!” began Syery without haste, in an unusually easy and pleasant tone. “You have an adopted daughter to marry off. I have a son who wants a wife. In
