see. Behind her a soldier with a gun. She wouldn’t confess. At the trial some said she poisoned her husband, and some tried to prove that the husband poisoned himself from grief. I was one of the witnesses. When they asked me, I explained it all in good conscience. ‘The sin is on her,’ I said. ‘There’s no hiding it, she didn’t love her husband, and she was temperamental…’ The trial started in the morning, and that night they reached a verdict: to send her to hard labor in Siberia for thirteen years. After the verdict, Mashenka sat in our jail for three months. I used to visit her, and brought her tea and sugar out of human kindness. But when she saw me, she’d start shaking all over, waving her arms and muttering: ‘Go away! Go away!’ And she’d press Kuzka to her as if she was afraid I’d take him. ‘This is what you’ve come to,’ I say. ‘Ah, Masha, Masha, you’re a lost soul! You didn’t listen to me when I taught you reason, so you can weep now. It’s your own fault and nobody else’s.’ I’m admonishing her, and she says: ‘Go away! Go away!’—and presses herself and Kuzka to the wall and trembles. When she was sent from here to the provincial capital, I went to see her off at the station and put a rouble into her bundle to save my soul. But she didn’t get as far as Siberia … In the provincial capital she came down with a fever and died in jail.”
“A dog’s death for a dog,” said Dyudya.
“Kuzka was brought back home … I thought a little and took him in. Why not? Though he’s a jailbird’s spawn, he’s still a living soul, a Christian … It’s a pity. I’ll make him my manager, and if I don’t have children of my own, I’ll make a merchant out of him. Now, whenever I go somewhere, I take him with me—let him get used to it.”
All the while Matvei Savvich was telling his story, Kuzka sat on a stone by the gate, his head propped in his hands, looking at the sky. From a distance, in the twilight, he looked like a little stump.
“Kuzka, go to bed!” Matvei Savvich shouted to him.
“Yes, it’s time,” said Dyudya, getting up. He yawned loudly and added: “They’ve just got to live by their own minds, not listening to anybody, and so they get what’s coming to them.”
The moon was already sailing in the sky above the yard; it raced quickly in one direction, while the clouds below it raced in the other; the clouds went on their way, but the moon could still be seen above the yard. Matvei Savvich prayed facing the church and, wishing everyone good night, lay down on the ground by the cart. Kuzka also said a prayer, lay down in the cart, and covered himself with his frock coat. To be more comfortable, he made a depression in the straw and curled up so that his elbows touched his knees. From the yard Dyudya could be seen lighting a candle in his downstairs room, putting his spectacles on, and standing in the corner with a book. He spent a long time reading and bowing.
The travelers fell asleep. Afanasyevna and Sofya went over to the cart and began looking at Kuzka.
“The little orphan’s asleep,” the old woman said. “So thin, so skinny, nothing but bones. He’s got no mother, there’s nobody to feed him properly.”
“My Grishutka must be a couple of years older,” said Sofya. “He lives at the factory, like a prisoner, without a mother. The master probably beats him. As I looked at this little lad today and remembered my Grishutka, my heart just bled.”
A minute passed in silence.
“He surely doesn’t remember his mother,” said the old woman.
“How could he!”
Big tears poured from Sofya’s eyes.
“All curled up …” she said, sobbing and laughing with tenderness and pity. “My poor orphan.”
Kuzka gave a start and opened his eyes. He saw before him an ugly, wrinkled, tear-stained face, beside it another face, an old woman’s, toothless, with a sharp chin and hooked nose, and above them the fathomless sky with racing clouds and the moon, and he cried out in terror. Sofya also cried out; an echo answered both of them, and anxiety passed through the stuffy air; the watchman rapped at the neighbor’s, a dog barked. Matvei Savvich murmured something in his sleep and rolled over on his other side.
Late in the evening, when Dyudya and the old woman and the neighbor’s watchman were already asleep, Sofya went out the gate and sat on a bench. She needed air, and her head ached from weeping. The street was wide and long; about two miles to the right, the same to the left, and no end to be seen. The moon had left the yard and stood behind the church. One side of the street was flooded with moonlight, and the other was black with shadow; the long shadows of poplars and birdhouses stretched across the whole street, and the shadow of the church, black and frightening, lay broadly, having swallowed up Dyudya’s gate and half the house. The place was deserted and quiet. From time to time, barely audible music came from the end of the street; it must have been Alyoshka playing his accordion.
Someone was walking in the shadow by the church fence, and it was impossible to make out whether it was a man, or a cow, or perhaps no one at all, but only a big bird rustling in the trees. But then a figure emerged from the shadow, stopped and said something in a man’s voice, then vanished into the lane by the church. A while later another figure appeared about five yards from the gate; it walked from the church straight towards the gate and, seeing Sofya on the bench, stopped.
“Varvara, is that you?” asked Sofya.
“And what if it is?”
It was Varvara. She stood for a moment, then came up to the bench and sat down.
“Where have you been?” asked Sofya.
Varvara did not answer.
“Watch out that you don’t come to grief, girl, with your wanderings,” said Sofya. “Did you hear how Mashenka got it with feet and reins? You may get yourself the same thing.”
“Who cares.”
Varvara laughed into her kerchief and said in a whisper:
“I’ve just been with the priest’s son.”
“You’re babbling.”
“By God.”
“It’s a sin!” Sofya whispered.
