“Eighty-four roubles a year.”
“You probably make a little something on the side, don’t you?”
“What little something? Gentlemen rarely give tips nowadays. Gentlemen are strict these days, they keep getting offended. You bring him a paper—he gets offended. You take your hat off before him—he gets offended. ‘You came in by the wrong entrance,’ he says, ‘you’re a drunkard,’ he says, ‘you stink of onions, you’re a blockhead, a son of a bitch.’ Some are kind, of course, but you can’t expect anything from them, they just make fun of you with all sorts of nicknames. Mr. Altukhin, for instance. He’s kind and sober, and sensible enough, but when he sees me he shouts, and doesn’t know what himself. He’s given me this nickname. Hey, he says, you …”
The beadle mumbled some word, but so softly that it was impossible to make it out.
“How’s that?” asked Lyzhin. “Repeat it.”
“Administration!” the beadle repeated loudly. “He’s been calling me that for a long time, some six years. Greetings, administration! But let him, I don’t mind, God bless him. Some lady may happen to send me out a glass of vodka and a piece of pie, so then I drink to her health. It’s mostly peasants that tip me; peasants have heart, they’re more god-fearing; they give me bread, or cabbage soup, or sometimes even a drink. The elders treat me to tea in the tavern. Right now the witnesses have gone for tea. ‘Loshadin,’ they said, ‘you stay here and watch for us,’ and they gave me a kopeck each. They’re scared because they’re not used to it. And yesterday they gave me fifteen kopecks and treated me to a little glass.”
“And you’re not afraid?”
“I am, sir, but it’s part of the work—the job, there’s no getting away from it. In the summer I was taking a prisoner to town, and he starts hitting me—whack! whack! whack! All fields and forest around—nowhere to run to. It’s the same here. I remember Mr. Lesnitsky when he was just so high, and I knew his father and mother. I’m from the village of Nedoshchotovo, and the Lesnitsky family is no more than half a mile from us, maybe less, we have a common boundary. And old Mr. Lesnitsky had a maiden sister, a god-fearing and merciful lady. Remember, O Lord, the soul of your servant Yulia, of eternal memory. She never got married, and before she died, she divided up all her property; she left two hundred and fifty acres to the monastery and five hundred to us, the peasant community of the village of Nedoshchotovo, for the memory of her soul. But her brother, the squire, hid the paper, burned it in the stove, they say, and took all the land for himself. Meaning he hoped to profit from it, but—no, hold on, brother, you can’t live by injustice in the world. The squire didn’t go to confession for some twenty years after that, he kept away from church, meaning he died without confession, just popped. He was fat as could be. Just popped open. After that the young squire—Seryozha, that is—had it all taken from him for debts, all there was. Well, he didn’t get far in his studies, couldn’t do anything, so his uncle, the chairman of the zemstvo council, thought, ‘Why don’t I take Seryozha to work for me as an agent, he can insure people, it’s not complicated.’ But the young squire was a proud man, he would have liked a broader life, fancier, with more freedom, he resented having to drive around the area in a little cart and talk to peasants; he always went about looking at the ground, looking and saying nothing; you’d shout, ‘Sergei Sergeich!’ right by his ear, and he’d turn and say, ‘Eh?’ and look at the ground again. And now, see, he’s laid hands on himself. It makes no sense, Your Honor, it’s not right. Merciful God, you can’t tell what’s happening in the world. Say your father was rich and you’re poor—that’s too bad, of course, but you have to get used to it. I, too, had a good life, Your Honor, I had two horses, three cows, some twenty head of sheep, but the time came when I was left with nothing but a little bag, and it’s not mine at that, it comes with the job, and now, in our Nedoshchotovo, my house is the worst of all, truth to tell. Four lackeys had Moky, now Moky’s a lackey. Four workers had Burkin, now Burkin’s a worker.”
“What made you so poor?” asked the coroner.
“My sons are hard drinkers. They drink so hard, so hard, I can’t tell you, you wouldn’t believe me.”
Lyzhin listened and thought that while he, Lyzhin, would sooner or later go back to Moscow, this old man would stay here forever and keep on walking and walking; and how many of these old men he would meet in his life, tattered, disheveled, “worthless,” in whose hearts a fifteen-kopeck piece, a glass of vodka, and the profound belief that you cannot live by injustice in this world were somehow welded fast together. Then he became bored with listening and ordered some hay brought for his bed. There was an iron bed with a pillow and blanket in the visitors’ side, and it could have been brought over, but the deceased had been lying next to it for almost three days (had, perhaps, sat on it before he died), and now it would be unpleasant to sleep on it …
“It’s only seven-thirty,” thought Lyzhin, glancing at his watch. “How terrible!”
He did not want to sleep, but having nothing to do and needing to pass the time somehow, he lay down and covered himself with a plaid. Loshadin, as he cleared the dishes away, came in and out several times, smacking his lips and sighing, kept shuffling about by the table, finally took his lamp and left; and, looking at his long gray hair and bent body from behind, Lyzhin thought: “Just like a sorcerer in the opera.”
It grew dark. There must have been a moon behind the clouds, because the windows and the snow on the window frames were clearly visible.
“Hoo-o-o!” sang the blizzard. “Hoo-o-o!”
“Oh, Lo-o-ord!” a woman howled in the loft, or so it seemed. “Oh, my Lo-o-ord!”
“Bang!” Something hit the wall outside. “Crash!”
The coroner listened: there was no woman, it was the wind howling. He was chilly and covered himself with his coat as well, on top of the plaid. While he was making himself warm, he thought of how all this—the blizzard, and the cottage, and the old man, and the dead body lying in the next room—how all this was far from the life he wanted for himself, and how foreign it all was to him, how petty and uninteresting. If this man had killed himself in Moscow or somewhere near Moscow, and he were conducting the investigation there, it would be interesting, important, and perhaps even frightening to sleep next to the corpse; but here, a thousand miles from Moscow, all this seemed to appear in a different light, all this was not life, not people, but something that existed only “on formality,” as Loshadin had said, all this would leave not the slightest trace in his memory and would be forgotten as soon as he, Lyzhin, left Syrnya. The motherland, the true Russia, was Moscow, Petersburg, and this was a province, a colony; when you dream of playing a role, of being popular, of being, for instance, an investigator in cases of special importance or a prosecutor for the district court, of being a social lion, you inevitably think of Moscow. To live means to live in Moscow, whereas here you wanted nothing, easily became reconciled with your inconspicuous role, and hoped for only one thing from life—to leave, to leave soon. And Lyzhin mentally raced about the Moscow streets, entered familiar houses, saw his family, his friends, and his heart was wrung sweetly at the thought that he was now twenty-six years old, and if he escaped from here and got to Moscow in five or ten years, even then it would not be too late and there would still be a whole life ahead of him. And as he fell into oblivion, when his thoughts were already becoming confused, he imagined the long corridors of the Moscow court, himself giving a speech, his sisters, an orchestra which for some reason kept howling:
“Hoo-o-o! Hoo-o-o!”
