witnesses, the assembly fined each of them two roubles, and then they all drank up the money together.
When Masha learned of it, she would say indignantly to the doctor or my sister:
‘‘What animals! It’s awful! Awful!’’
And more than once I heard her express regret at undertaking the building of the school.
‘‘Understand,’’ the doctor persuaded her, ‘‘understand that if you build this school and generally do good, it’s not for the muzhiks but in the name of culture, in the name of the future. And the worse these muzhiks are, the more reason to build the school. Understand that!’’
In his voice, however, one could hear a lack of assurance, and it seemed to me that he and Masha both hated the muzhiks.
Masha often went to the mill and took my sister with her, and the two of them laughingly said they were going to look at Stepan, how handsome he was. Stepan, it turned out, was slow and taciturn only with men, but in the company of women behaved quite casually and talked incessantly. Once, going to the river to swim, I involuntarily overheard a conversation. Masha and Cleopatra, both in white dresses, were sitting on the bank under a willow, in a broad patch of shade, and Stepan was standing nearby, his hands behind his back, saying:
‘‘Are peasants people? They aren’t people but, excuse me, beastly folk, charlatans. What kind of life does a peasant have? Only eating, drinking, getting cheaper grub, straining his gullet witlessly in the pot-house; and no nice conversation for you, no manners, no form—just boorishness! Sits in dirt himself, and his wife sits in dirt, and his children sit in dirt, he sleeps in whatever he’s got on him, he picks potatoes from the cabbage soup straight out with his fingers, he drinks his kvass with cockroaches—might at least blow it aside!’’
‘‘But that’s poverty!’’ my sister put in.
‘‘What poverty! Want, true, but then there’s want and want, madam. If a man sits in jail or, say, is blind or crippled, that God should better spare us all, but if he’s free, can use his intelligence, has eyes and hands, has strength, has God, then what more does he need? It’s indulgence, madam, ignorance, and not poverty. If you, let’s suppose, as good masters, being educated, want to offer him charitable assistance, he’s so vile that he’ll drink up your money, or worse still, open a drinking establishment himself and use your money to rob people. Poverty, you’re pleased to say. But does the wealthy peasant live better? Excuse me, but he also lives like a pig. A boor, a loudmouth, a blockhead, wider than he is tall, a fat red mug—the scoundrel’s just begging you to haul off and whack him. This Larion from Dubechnya is also rich, but don’t worry, he strips bast in your forest no worse than a poor man; he’s foulmouthed, and his children are foulmouthed, and when he’s had a drop too much, he plunks his nose down in a puddle and sleeps. They’re all worthless, madam. Living in the village with them is like living in hell. It sticks in my craw, this village, and I thank the Lord, the Heavenly King, that I’m fed and clothed, and have served my term as a dragoon, and spent three years as elder, and am now a free Cossack: I live where I like. I have no wish to live in the village, and nobody has the right to make me. Your wife, they say. You, they say, are obliged to live in the cottage with your wife. Why is that? I’m not hired out to her.’’
‘‘Tell me, Stepan, did you marry for love?’’ asked Masha.
‘‘What kind of love do we have in the village?’’ Stepan asked and grinned. ‘‘As a matter of fact, madam, if you wish to know, I’m married for the second time. I’m not from Kurilovka myself, I’m from Zalegoshche, but I was taken to Kurilovka later as a son-in-law. Meaning my parent had no wish to divide his land among us—we’re five brothers— so I bowed out and took off, went to another village as a son-in-law. But my first wife died young.’’
‘‘What from?’’
‘‘Foolishness. Used to cry, she did, kept crying and crying for no reason, and just withered away. Kept drinking some kind of herbs to get prettier and must have damaged her insides. And my second wife, from Kurilovka—what about her? A village wench, a peasant, nothing more! When they matched me with her, I took a fancy: I thought, she’s young, fair-skinned, they live clean. Her mother was something like a flagellant21 and drank coffee, but the main thing was, they lived clean! So I married the girl, and the next day we sat down to dinner, I told my mother-in-law to give me a spoon, she gave me a spoon, and I see she wipes it with her finger. There you have it, I thought, that’s clean for you! I lived with them a year and left. Maybe I should have married a city girl,’’ he went on after a pause. ‘‘They say a wife is her husband’s helpmeet. I don’t need a helpmeet, I’m my own helpmeet, but you’d better talk to me, and not all that blah, blah, blah, but thoroughly, feelingly. Without good talk— what kind of life is it!’’
Stepan suddenly fell silent, and at once came his dull, monotonous ‘‘Oo-loo-loo-loo.’’ That meant he had seen me.
Masha often went to the mill and evidently found pleasure in conversing with Stepan; Stepan abused the muzhiks so sincerely and with such conviction—and she was attracted to him. Each time she came back from the mill, the peasant simpleton who watched over the orchard shouted at her:
‘‘Wench Palashka! Hi there, wench Palashka!’’ and barked at her like a dog: ‘‘Bow-wow!’’
And she would stop and look at him attentively, as if in that simpleton’s barking she found an answer to her thoughts, and he probably attracted her as did Stepan’s abuse. And at home some news would be waiting for her, such as, for example, that the village geese had trampled our cabbage patch, or that Larion had stolen the reins, and, shrugging her shoulders, she would say with a smile:
‘‘What do you want from these people!’’
She was indignant, she was all seething in her soul, and meanwhile I was getting used to the muzhiks and felt more drawn to them. They were mostly nervous, irritated, insulted people; they were people of suppressed imagination, ignorant, with a poor, dull outlook, with ever the same thoughts about the gray earth, gray days, black bread, people who were sly but, like birds, only hid their heads behind a tree— who didn’t know how to count. They wouldn’t go to your haymaking for twenty roubles, but they would go for a half-bucket of vodka, though for twenty roubles they could buy four buckets. In fact, there was filth, and drunkenness, and stupidity, and deceit, but with all that you could feel, nevertheless, that the muzhiks’ life was generally upheld by some strong, healthy core. However much the muzhik looks like a clumsy beast as he follows his plow, and however much he befuddles himself with vodka, still, on looking closer, you feel that there is in him something necessary and very important that is lacking, for instance, in Masha and the doctor—namely, he believes that the chief thing on earth is truth, and that his salvation and that of all people lies in truth alone, and therefore he loves justice more than anything else in the world. I would tell my wife that she saw the spots on the windowpane, but not the windowpane itself; she would say nothing in reply, or start crooning ‘‘Oo-loo-loo-loo’’ like Stepan... When this kind, intelligent woman grew pale with indignation and, in a trembling voice, talked with the doctor about drunkenness and deceit, I was puzzled and struck by her forgetfulness. How could she forget that her father, the engineer, also drank, drank a lot, and that the money that had gone to purchase Dubechnya had been acquired by a whole series of brazen, shameless deceptions? How could she forget?
XIV
AND MY SISTER also lived her own life, which she carefully concealed from me. She often whispered with
