‘‘Well, now!’’
Masha was usually not glad of his coming, did not trust him, and at the same time asked for his advice; when, having slept after dinner, he woke up out of sorts and said bad things about our farming, or expressed regret that he had bought Dubechnya, which had already caused him so many losses, a look of anguish would come to poor Masha’s face; she complained to him, and he yawned and said that peasants should be whipped.
He called our marriage and our life a comedy, said it was a whim and an indulgence.
‘‘Something like this already happened with her,’’ he told me about Masha. ‘‘She once fancied herself an opera singer and left me; I searched for her for two months and spent, my gentle one, a thousand roubles on telegrams alone.’’
He no longer called me a sectarian or Mr. Housepainter, or approved of my working life as before, but said:
‘‘You’re a strange man! You’re an abnormal man! I wouldn’t venture to prophesy, but you’ll end badly, sir!’’
And Masha slept poorly at night and kept thinking about something, sitting by the window in our bedroom. There was no more laughter over dinner, no making sweet grimaces. I suffered, and when it rained, every drop of rain pierced my heart like birdshot, and I was ready to kneel before Masha and apologize for the weather. When the muzhiks made noise in the yard, I also felt myself guilty. I spent whole hours sitting in one spot, thinking only of what a wonderful, what a magnificent person Masha was. I loved her passionately and admired everything she did, everything she said. She had a penchant for quiet, studious occupations; she liked to spend a long time reading, studying something; she, who knew farming only from books, astonished us all with her knowledge, and the advice she used to give was all useful, and none of it went for naught. And with all that, so much nobility, taste, and good humor, that good humor which occurs only in exceptionally well-brought-up people!
For this woman, with her healthy, positive mind, the disorderly situation we now lived in, with its petty cares and squabbles, was tormenting; I saw it and could not sleep nights myself, my head worked, tears choked me. I thrashed about, not knowing what to do.
I galloped to town and brought Masha books, newspapers, sweets, flowers; I went fishing with Stepan and waded for hours up to my neck in cold water, under the rain, to catch a burbot in order to diversify our meals; I stooped to asking the muzhiks not to make noise, gave them vodka, bribed them, made them various promises. And did so many other foolish things!
The rain finally stopped, the earth dried. You get up early, at four o’clock—dew glistening on the flowers, birds and insects noising about, not a single cloud in the sky; the orchard, the meadow, and the river so beautiful, but then memories of the muzhiks, the carts, the engineer! Masha and I drove out to the fields in a racing droshky to look at the oats. She was the driver, I sat behind; her shoulders were raised, and the wind played with her hair.
‘‘Keep right!’’ she shouted to oncoming drivers.
‘‘You’re just like a coachman!’’ I said to her once.
‘‘Maybe so! My grandfather, the engineer’s father, was a coachman. Didn’t you know that?’’ she asked, turning to me, and at once imitated the way coachmen shout and sing.
‘‘Thank God!’’ I thought, listening to her. ‘‘Thank God!’’
And again memories of the muzhiks, the carts, the engineer...
XIII
DR. BLAGOVO CAME out on a bicycle. My sister began to visit often. Again there were conversations about physical labor, about progress, about the mysterious X that awaits mankind in the distant future. The doctor didn’t like our farming because it interfered with our arguing, and said that to plow, mow, and tend calves was unworthy of a free man, and that in time people would charge animals and machines with these crude forms of the struggle for existence, and would themselves be occupied solely with scientific studies. And my sister kept asking to be allowed to go home earlier, and if she stayed till late evening or overnight, there was no end to her worrying.
‘‘My God, what a child you still are!’’ Masha would say in reproach. ‘‘It’s even ridiculous, finally.’’
‘‘Yes, ridiculous,’’ my sister would agree, ‘‘I’m aware that it’s ridiculous; but what am I to do if I’m unable to overcome myself? It always seems to me that I act badly.’’
During the haymaking, my whole body ached from lack of habit; sitting on the terrace with everybody in the evening and talking, I would suddenly fall asleep, and they laughed loudly at me. They would wake me up and sit me at the table for supper, drowsiness would come over me, and, as in oblivion, I would see lights, faces, plates, hear voices without understanding them. And getting up early in the morning, I would at once take the scythe or go off to the construction site and work all day.
Staying home on holidays, I noticed that my wife and sister were concealing something from me and even seemed to be avoiding me. My wife was tender with me as before, but she had some thoughts of her own that she did not impart to me. There was no doubt that her irritation with the peasants was growing, life was becoming ever more difficult for her, and yet she no longer complained to me. She now talked with the doctor more willingly than with me, and I didn’t understand why that was so.
There was a custom in our province: at haymaking and harvest time, workers came in the evenings to the master’s yard to be treated to vodka, even young girls drank a glass. We did not observe it; the mowers and women stood in our yard till late in the evening, waiting for vodka, and then went away cursing. Masha frowned sternly during this time and was silent, or said irritably to the doctor in a low voice:
‘‘Savages! Pechenegs!’’18
In the country, newcomers are given an unfriendly, almost hostile welcome, as at school. We, too, were welcomed in that way. At first we were looked upon as stupid and simple people who had bought an estate only because there was nothing else to do with the money. We were laughed at. The muzhiks let their cattle graze in our woods and even in the orchard, they drove our cows and horses to their village and then came to demand money for damages. They came into our yard in whole companies and noisily complained that, while mowing, we had supposedly encroached on the border of some Bysheevka or Semyonikha that did not belong to us; and since we did not yet know the precise boundaries of our land, we took their word for it and paid the fine; later, it would turn out that we had mowed correctly. They stripped bast 19 in our woods. One Dubechnya muzhik, a kulak20 who dealt in vodka without a license, bribed our workers and, together with them, deceived us in a most treacherous way: replaced the new wheels on our carts with old ones, took our horse collars and then sold them back to us, and so on. But most offensive of all was what was happening at the Kurilovka construction site; at night the women stole planks, bricks, tiles, sheet iron; the elder searched their houses in the presence of
