Stories

The clergy were there, the factory managers and their wives, merchants and tavernkeepers from other villages. The local headman and the local clerk, who had been serving together for fourteen years and in all that time had never signed a single paper nor allowed a single person to leave their office without having cheated and insulted him, were now sitting side by side, both fat, well fed, and it seemed they were so saturated with falsehood that even the skin of their faces was of some special fraudulent sort. The clerk’s wife, an emaciated, cross-eyed woman, had brought all her children with her, and, like a bird of prey, cast sidelong glances at the plates, snatched everything she could lay her hands on, and hid it in her own and her children’s pockets.

Lipa sat petrified, with the same look that she had in church. Since making her acquaintance, Anisim had not said a single word to her, so that he did not know to that day what her voice was like; and now, sitting beside her, he still kept silent and drank English bitters, but when he got drunk he began to speak, addressing her aunt, who was sitting opposite him:

“I have a friend whose last name is Samorodov. He’s a special man. A personally honorable citizen and a capable speaker. But I can see through him, auntie, and he feels it. Allow me, auntie, to drink with you to Samorodov’s health!”

Varvara, tired and confused, walked around the table offering things to the guests, and was clearly pleased that there was so much food and all of it so high-class—now no one could find fault with them. The sun set and the dinner went on; they no longer knew what they were eating, what they were drinking, it was impossible to hear anything that was said, and only from time to time, when the music died down, could some peasant woman in the yard be heard shouting:

“You’ve sucked enough of our blood, you Herods, a plague upon you!”

In the evening there was dancing to the music. The Khrymin Juniors came with their wine, and one of them, during the quadrille, held a bottle in each hand and a glass in his mouth, and that made everyone laugh. In the middle of the quadrille, someone would start a squatting dance; the green Aksinya only flitted about, and a breeze blew from her train. Someone stepped on her flounce, and Crutch shouted:

“Hey, the plinth got torn off below! Little ones!”

Aksinya had gray, naive eyes that seldom blinked, and a naive smile constantly played over her face. And there was something snakelike in those unblinking eyes, and in that small head on its long neck, and in her shapely build; green with a yellow front, smiling, she gazed the way a viper in springtime, stretched out and head up, gazes from the young rye at someone going past. The Khrymins behaved freely with her, and it was quite obvious that she had a long-standing intimacy with the older one. And her deaf husband, who understood nothing, did not look at her; he sat with his legs crossed eating nuts, and cracked them so loudly that it was as if he were firing a pistol.

But now old man Tsybukin himself stepped out to the middle and waved his handkerchief, giving a sign that he, too, wanted to dance a Russian dance, and a hum of approval ran through the whole house and the crowd in the courtyard:

“Himself stepped out! Himself!”

Varvara danced, while the old man just waved the handkerchief and shifted from one heel to the other, but those who were hanging over each other there in the yard, peeking through the windows, were delighted and for a moment forgave him everything—his wealth and his offenses.

“Good boy, Grigory Petrovich!” came from the crowd. “Keep it up! So you can still go to it! Ha, ha!”

It all ended late, past one o’clock in the morning. Anisim went around unsteadily to all the singers and musicians and gave each of them a new half rouble. And the old man, not swaying but somehow favoring one foot, saw the guests off and told each of them:

“The wedding cost two thousand.”

As people were leaving, somebody exchanged the Shikalovo tavernkeeper’s good vest for an old one, and Anisim suddenly flared up and started shouting:

“Stop! I’ll find him at once! I know who stole it! Stop!”

He ran outside, chasing after someone; they caught him, took him under the arms, brought him home, shoved him, drunk, flushed with anger, wet, into the room where the aunt was already undressing Lipa, and locked the door.

IV

Five days passed. Anisim got ready to leave and went upstairs to say good-bye to Varvara. She had all the icon lamps burning, there was a smell of incense, and she herself was sitting by the window knitting a red woolen stocking.

“You didn’t spend long with us,” she said. “Boring, was it? Oh, tush, tush … We have a good life, there’s plenty of everything, and your wedding was celebrated properly, the right way. The old man says two thousand went into it. In short, we live like merchants, only it’s boring here. We do people much wrong. My heart aches, my friend—oh, God, how we wrong them! We trade a horse, or buy something, or hire a workman—there’s cheating in all of it. Cheating and cheating. The vegetable oil in the shop is bitter, rancid, the people’s tar is better. Tell me, for pity’s sake, isn’t it impossible to sell good oil?”

“Each to his own place, mother.”

“But don’t we all have to die? Ah, no, really, you should talk with your father! …”

“Why don’t you talk with him yourself.”

“Well, well! I tell him what I think, and he says the same as you, word for word: each to his own place. In the other world they’re not going to sort out who had which place. God’s judgment is righteous.”

“Of course, nobody’s going to sort it out,” Anisim said and sighed. “And anyhow God doesn’t exist, mother. What’s there to sort out!”

Varvara looked at him with astonishment and laughed and clasped her hands. Because she was so sincerely astonished at his words and looked at him as if he were a freak, he became embarrassed.

“Or maybe God does exist, only there’s no faith,” he said. “As I was being married, I felt out of sorts. Like when you take an egg from under a hen and there’s a chick peeping in it, so my conscience suddenly peeped in me, and all the while I was being married, I kept thinking: God exists! But as soon as I stepped out of the church—there was nothing. And how should I know if God exists or not? We weren’t taught that when we were little, but here’s a baby still at his mother’s breast, and he’s taught just one thing: each to his own place. Papa doesn’t believe in God either. You told me that time that the Guntorevs had their sheep stolen … I found out: it was a Shikalovo peasant