to you!”
And now once again she thought of her pupils, of the examination, of the janitor and the school board; and when the wind blowing from the right brought her the rumbling of the departing carriage, these thoughts were mingled with others. She wanted to dream of his beautiful eyes, of love, of the happiness that would never come to her.
And if she became his wife! It was cold in the morning, there was no one to heat the stove, the janitor was away somewhere, and the school children came in as soon as it was light, making a good deal of noise, bringing in mud and snow. Everything was so bleak and uncomfortable. Her quarters consisted of one little room and a kitchen. Every day after school hours she had a headache, and after dinner a burning sensation over her heart. She had to collect money from the children for firewood and for the janitor, and this money had to be turned over to the trustee, and then she had to implore this man—this insolent, overstuffed peasant—for God’s sake to send her some of the firewood. At night she dreamed of examinations, peasants, snowdrifts. This life had aged and coarsened her, making her ugly, awkward, and gaunt, so that she looked as though lead had been poured into her veins. She was afraid of everything, and always stood up in the presence of the trustee or a member of the zemstvo council, and when she had cause to mention any of them she always referred to them deferentially, never using their names; it was always “they said this, they did that.” No one found her attractive, and life continued to be boring, with no show of affection, no friendly sharing of interests, no interesting acquaintances. In her situation, how terrible it would be if she fell in love!
“Sit tight, Vasilyevna!”
Once again there was another steep climb.
She had become a schoolteacher out of necessity, without any vocation for it. She had in fact never thought of a vocation, or of the usefulness of education: the most important part of her work, she thought, lay not in the children or in enlightening their minds, but in examinations. And when, pray, did she ever have time to think of a vocation or of the advantages of education? Schoolteachers and ill-paid doctors and their assistants, for all their arduous work, never have even the consolation of thinking they are serving the people or an idea—they are thinking about the next crust of bread, about firewood, about bad roads, about illnesses. Their lives are hard and uninteresting, and only plodding silent cart horses like Maria Vasilyevna can bear such servitude for long. Lively, sensitive, impressionable people who talk of a vocation and service to an idea soon grow weary and throw up the task.
To find the driest and shortest road Semyon sometimes struck out across a meadow or behind cottages, but the peasants would not always let him pass: if he came to priests’ land, there would be no free passage, and it was the same when he came to a plot of land which Ivan Ionov had bought from a landowner and surrounded with a ditch. In each case they had to turn back.
They reached Nizhneye Gorodishche. Near the tavern horse-carts loaded with great bottles of sulfuric acid stood about the dung-strewn earth, still covered with snow. There were a great many people in the tavern, all of them drivers, and the place smelled of vodka, tobacco, and sheepskins. The roar of conversation was sometimes interrupted by the banging of a swing door. The sound of an accordion came through the partition wall, an endless sound. Maria Vasilyevna sat down and drank her tea, while the peasants at the next table swilled down vodka and beer, perspiring freely from the tea they had already drunk and the suffocating heat of the tavern.
Voices kept shouting confusedly: “Did you hear that, Kuzma?” “What’s up, eh?” “Lord save us!” “Ivan Dementyich, I’ll get you!” “Look there, brother!”
A very small pock-marked peasant with a black beard, quite drunk, was suddenly surprised by something or other, and exploded into a torrent of foul language.
“What do you mean by all that dirty language, eh?” Semyon shouted angrily. He was sitting at the far end of the room. “Can’t you see there’s a young lady present?”
“What’s that, a young lady, eh?” someone jeered from another corner.
“What a swine!”
“I didn’t mean any harm,” the very small peasant said confusedly. “Excuse me. I lays down my money, and the young lady lays hers. Good morning, ma’am.”
“Good morning,” replied the schoolteacher.
“Very well, thank you kindly.”
Maria Vasilyevna enjoyed her tea, and soon her face was as red as the others, and once more she fell to thinking about the janitor, about firewood.…
She heard a voice from the next table: “Just look over there, brother. That’s the schoolmistress from Vyazovye. I recognize her. She’s a fine young lady.…”
“She’s all right.”
The swing door was continually banging, and people were continually coming in and going out. Maria Vasilyevna sat there absorbed in her thoughts, but the accordion on the other side of the wall kept playing and playing. Patches of sunlight which had lain on the floor when she came in moved up to the counter, then up the wall, and then vanished altogether: it meant it was now afternoon. The peasants at the next table were getting ready to go. The very small peasant went up to Maria Vasilyevna, swaying slightly. He thrust out his hand; and seeing him, all the other peasants came up to her and shook hands and went out one by one. The door banged and whined nine times.
“Vasilyevna, get ready!” Semyon called to her.
They drove away, and again the horse went at a walking pace.
“A while back they were building a school here in their Nizhneye Gorodishche,” said Semyon, turning round. “And they did something wicked.”
“What did they do?”
“The chairman put a thousand in his pocket, and the trustee put a thousand, and the teacher put five hundred.”
“You shouldn’t slander people, grandfather. The whole school only cost a thousand. It’s all nonsense what you say!”
“I wouldn’t know.… I’m only telling you what they tell me.”
