Forty Stories

It was quite clear that Semyon did not believe the schoolmistress. The peasants, too, did not believe her. They always thought her salary was too large, twenty-one rubles a month-five rubles, in their estimation, would have been sufficient—and they thought she kept the greater part of the money she received for firewood and for the janitor. The trustee thought like the rest, though he made a profit out of the firewood and received a salary from the peasants for acting as trustee, and all this in secret without the knowledge of the authorities.

But now, thank God, they had left the forest behind them, and it was level ground all the way to Vyazovye. They had only a little further to go—a river to cross, then a railroad track, and then they would be in Vyazovye.

“Where are you going now?” Maria Vasilyevna asked Semyon. “Why don’t you take the road to the right across the bridge?”

“What’s wrong with this road? The water’s not very deep.”

“Be careful you don’t drown the horse!”

“What’s that?”

“Why, there’s Khanov driving over the bridge,” Maria Vasilyevna said, seeing the carriage and four horses far to the right. “It is him, isn’t it?”

“It’s him for sure. Reckon he didn’t find Bakvist at home after all. God in heaven, he’s a fool to drive all that way, when it’s all of two miles nearer this way.”

They came to the river. In summer the river was only a shallow stream which you could walk across easily. Usually in August it was dried up, but now, after the spring floods, it had grown to be a torrent of swift, cold, muddy water fifty feet wide. There were fresh wheel tracks visible on the bank up to the water’s edge: evidently carts had been going over.

“Giddap!” Semyon shouted angrily and anxiously, tugging violently at the reins and flapping his arms like a pair of wings. “Giddap!”

The horse waded into the water up to his belly, stopped, and then plunged on again, straining to the utmost, and Maria Vasilyevna felt the shock of cold water lapping her feet.

“Get up!” she shouted, rising to her feet. “Get up!”

They came to the opposite bank.

“What a business, eh? Good Lord!” muttered Semyon, setting the harness straight. “Those zemstvo people plague the devil out of us!”

Her shoes and galoshes were full of water; the hem of her skirt and her coat and one sleeve were drenched and dripping. The bags of sugar and flour she had bought were soaked, and this was harder to bear than all the rest. In her despair Maria Vasilyevna only clasped her hands together and murmured: “Oh, Semyon, Semyon, how could you … really?”

The barrier was down at the railroad crossing: an express train was leaving the station. Maria Vasilyevna stood at the crossing waiting for the train to pass, her whole body trembling with cold. From where they were, they could see Vyazovye, the green roof over the school and the church with the blazing crosses reflecting the rays of the setting sun; and the station windows were also ablaze, and rose-colored smoke came from the engine.… And it seemed to her that everything in the world was shivering with cold.

At last the train appeared, the windows aflame like the crosses on the church: it made her eyes ache to look at them. Maria Vasilyevna caught a quick glimpse of a lady standing on the platform of a first-class carriage. It was her mother! There was an extraordinary resemblance. The same glorious hair, the same forehead, the same inclination of the head. With amazing clarity, for the first time in thirty years, there came to her vivid images of her mother, her father, her brother, their apartment in Moscow, the aquarium with the little fishes, everything to the smallest detail. There came to her the sound of someone playing on the grand piano, and the voice of her father, and she saw herself young and pretty and well dressed in a warm and brilliantly lit room, with her whole family around her. A great joy and happiness welled up in her heart, and she pressed her hands to her temples in rapture, crying softly and imploringly: “Mother!”

And she began to cry, for no reason. At that moment Khanov drove up with his four-in-hand, and seeing him, she imagined such happiness as had never been, and she smiled and nodded to him as though they possessed equal stations in life and were intimate with one another, and it seemed to her that the whole sky, the trees, and all the windows were glowing with her happiness and her triumph. No! Her father and mother had never died, and she herself had never been a schoolteacher: there had been a long, strange, tortured dream, but now she was wide awake.

“Vasilyevna, get up in the cart!”

Suddenly it all vanished. The barrier slowly rose. Trembling, numb with cold, Maria Vasilyevna took her place in the cart. The carriage with the four horses crossed the railroad track, and Semyon followed it. The guard at the crossing lifted his cap.

“Here is Vyazovye! We have arrived!”

1897

On Love

AT breakfast the next day they served very tasty pirozhki, crayfish, and mutton cutlets, and while we were eating, Nicanor the cook came in to ask what the guests would like for dinner. He was a man of middle height with a puffy face and small eyes, and though clean-shaven he somehow looked as though his mustache had been plucked rather than shaved.

Alyokhin told us that the beautiful Pelageya was in love with Nicanor. As he was a drunkard with a violent temper, she did not want him for a husband, but was prepared to live with him. He was a very devout man, and his religious convictions did not permit him to live in this way, and so he insisted upon marriage and refused any other solution, and when he was drunk he used to curse her and even beat her. Sometimes she would hide upstairs and fall into fits of weeping, and on such occasions Alyokhin and the servants remained in the house to defend her if it should become necessary.

They started talking about love.

“How love is born,” Alyokhin was saying, “why Pelageya has not fallen in love with someone closer to her both inwardly and outwardly, why she fell in love with ‘Dog-face’ Nicanor—for we all call him ‘Dog-face’—and to what