vigorous young neck, the lazy and careless gait, and her eyes were full of melancholy and tender affection.… Her eyes ran over the tall, lean figure of her husband, and caressed and fondled him. As though he felt the force of her gaze, he stopped and looked back.… He did not speak, but from his face and the thrust of his shoulders Pelageya knew he wanted to say something to her. She went up to him timidly, gazing at him imploringly.
“Take it,” he said, and he turned away.
He gave her a crumpled-up ruble note, and walked on quickly.
“Good-by, Yegor Vlassich,” she said, mechanically taking the ruble.
He went down the long road, which was as straight as a taut strap. She stood there pale and motionless as a statue, following closely each one of his footsteps. Soon the red color of his shirt melted into the dark color of his trousers, and she could no longer follow his footsteps, and the dog became indistinguishable from his boots. At last she could see only his cap, and suddenly Yegor turned sharply to the right into a clearing, and the cap vanished in the green depths.
“Good-by, Yegor Vlassich,” whispered Pelageya, and she stood on tiptoe, hoping to see the white cap.
T
THE tiny and extraordinarily skinny peasant, wearing patched drawers and a shirt of striped linen, stood facing the investigating magistrate. His hairy face was pitted with smallpox, and his eyes, scarcely visible under thick overhanging brows, conveyed an expression of sullen resentment. He wore his hair in a tangled unkempt thatch which somehow emphasized his sullen spiderlike character. He was barefoot.
“Denis Grigoryev!” the magistrate began. “Step closer, and answer my questions. On the morning of July 7 the linesman Ivan Semyonov Akinfov, while performing the duty of examining the tracks, found you in proximity to the one-hundred-and-forty-first mile post unscrewing one of the nuts from the bolt securing the rail to the tie. The nut is here. He thereupon arrested you with the nut in your possession. Do you testify to the truth of this statement?”
“Wha-at?”
“Did all this happen as stated by Akinfov?”
“Sure—yes, it did.”
“Excellent. Now why were you unscrewing the nut?”
“Wha-at?”
“Stop saying what’ and answer the question! Why were you unscrewing the nut?”
“I wouldn’t have unscrewed it, would I, if I hadn’t wanted it?” Denis said hoarsely, squinting up at the ceiling.
“What on earth was the good of the nut to you?”
“The nut, eh? Well, we make sinkers out of ’em.”
“Who is ‘we’?”
“We—the people in the village. The peasants of Klimovo.…”
“Listen, fellow. Don’t play the fool with me. Learn to talk sense. Don’t tell me any lies about sinkers!”
“Me, tell lies? All my life I haven’t told any lies, and now …” Denis muttered, his eyes blinking. “Your Honor, I ask you, what can you do without sinkers? Now, if you put live worms on the hook, how do you think it touches bottom without a sinker? So I’m lying, am I?” he smirked. “Then what is the good of live bait floating on the surface? The perch and pike and eelpout always go along the bottom, while if the bait floats on the surface there’s only the snapper will bite, and that doesn’t happen often.… And there are no snappers in our part of the country.… Our fish like a lot of space.…”
“What’s all this talk about snappers?”
“Wha-at? Why, you asked me that yourself! I’m telling how the gentry catch fish, but the very stupidest child wouldn’t try to catch anything without a sinker. Maybe a man without a brain in his head might try to catch a fish without a sinker, but there’s no accounting for people like that!”
“According to you, the nut was unscrewed so you could use it as a sinker. Is that right?”
“Well, it couldn’t be anything else, could it? I wasn’t playing knucklebones with it, was I?”
“Instead of a nut, you could have used a bit of lead or a bullet—perhaps a nail would have served the same purpose?”
“Well, Your Honor, as for that, you don’t find lead lying about in the street, and it has to be paid for, and a nail—a nail’s no use at all. There’s nothing better than a nut.… It is heavy, and has a hole in it.…”
“The witness is determined to convince us he is out of his wits—pretends he was born yesterday or fell out of the sky! Really, you miserable blockhead, don’t you understand what happens when you unscrew these nuts? If the linesman had not seen you at work, the train could have gone off the rails, people could have been killed, and the responsibility for killing them would have been yours!”
“Oh, God forbid, Your Honor! No! Why should I kill anybody! Do you think we are criminals or heathen, eh? Ah, good gentlemen, we thank God we have lived our lives without ever letting such an idea as killing people enter our heads! Save us and have mercy on us, Queen of Heaven! What were you saying, sir?”
“How do you suppose train wrecks happen? Doesn’t it occur to you that if a few nuts are unscrewed, you can have a train wreck?”
Denis smirked and screwed up his eyes incredulously at the magistrate.
“Why, Your Honor, we peasants have been unscrewing nuts for a good many years now, and the good Lord has protected us, and as for a train wreck and killing people, why, nothing at all.… Now, if I took up a whole rail or put a
