Resurrection
And all at once Nekhludoff remembered how, long ago, when he was young
and innocent, he had heard the women’s wooden bats slapping the wet
clothes above the rhythmical sound from the mill, and in the same way
the spring breeze had blown about the hair on his wet forehead and the
papers on the window-sill, which was all cut about with a knife, and
just in the same way a fly had buzzed loudly past his car.
It was not exactly that he remembered himself as a lad of 15, but he
seemed to feel himself the same as he was then, with the same freshness
and purity, and full of the same grand possibilities for the future, and
at the same time, as it happens in a dream, he knew that all this could
be no more, and he felt terribly sad. “At what time would you like
something to eat?” asked the foreman, with a smile.
“When you like; I am not hungry. I shall go for a walk through the
village.”
“Would you not like to come into the house? Everything is in order
there. Have the goodness to look in. If the outside---”
“Not now; later on. Tell me, please, have you got a woman here called
Matrona Kharina?” (This was Katusha’s aunt, the village midwife.)
“Oh, yes; in the village she keeps a secret pot-house. I know she does,
and I accuse her of it and scold her; but as to taking her up, it would
be a pity. An old woman, you know; she has grandchildren,” said the
foreman, continuing to smile in the same manner, partly wishing to
be pleasant to the master, and partly because he was convinced that
Nekhludoff understood all these matters just as well as he did himself.
“Where does she live? I shall go across and see her.”
“At the end of the village; the further side, the third from the end. To
the left there is a brick cottage, and her hut is beyond that. But I’d
better see you there,” the foreman said with a graceful smile.
“No, thanks, I shall find it; and you be so good as to call a meeting
of the peasants, and tell them that I want to speak to them about
the land,” said Nekhludoff, with the intention of coming to the same
agreement with the peasants here as he had done in Kousminski, and, if
possible, that same evening.
CHAPTER IV.
THE PEASANTS’ LOT.
When Nekhludoff came out of the gate he met the girl with the long
earrings on the well-trodden path that lay across the pasture
ground, overgrown with dock and plantain leaves. She had a long,
brightly-coloured apron on, and was quickly swinging her left arm in
front of herself as she stepped briskly with her fat, bare feet. With
her right arm she was pressing a fowl to her stomach. The fowl, with
red comb shaking, seemed perfectly calm; he only rolled up his eyes and
stretched out and drew in one black leg, clawing the girl’s apron. When
the girl came nearer to “the master,” she began moving more slowly, and
her run changed into a walk. When she came up to him she stopped, and,
after a backward jerk with her head, bowed to him; and only when he had
passed did she recommence to run homeward with the cock. As he went down
towards the well, he met an old woman, who had a coarse dirty blouse on,
carrying two pails full of water, that hung on a yoke across her bent
back. The old woman carefully put down the pails and bowed, with the
same backward jerk of her head.
After passing the well Nekhludoff entered the village. It was a bright,
hot day, and oppressive, though only ten o’clock. At intervals the sun
was hidden by the gathering clouds. An unpleasant, sharp smell of manure
filled the air in the street. It came from carts going up the hillside,
but chiefly from the disturbed manure heaps in the yards of the huts,
by the open gates of which Nekhludoff had to pass. The peasants,
barefooted, their shirts and trousers soiled with manure, turned to look
at the tall, stout gentleman with the glossy silk ribbon on his grey hat
who was walking up the village street, touching the ground every other
step with a shiny, bright-knobbed walking-stick. The peasants returning
from the fields at a trot and jotting in their empty carts, took
off their hats, and, in their surprise, followed with their eyes the
extraordinary man who was walking up their street. The women came out
of the gates or stood in the porches of their huts, pointing him out to
each other and gazing at him as he passed.
When Nekhludoff was passing the fourth gate, he was stopped by a cart
that was coming out, its wheels creaking, loaded high with manure, which
was pressed down, and was covered with a mat to sit on. A six-year-old
boy, excited by the prospect of a drive, followed the cart. A young
peasant, with shoes plaited out of bark on his feet, led the horse out
of the yard. A long-legged colt jumped out of the gate; but, seeing
Nekhludoff, pressed close to the cart, and scraping its legs against the
wheels, jumped forward, past its excited, gently-neighing mother, as she
was dragging the heavy load through the gateway. The next horse was led
out by a barefooted old man, with protruding shoulder-blades, in a dirty
shirt and striped trousers.
When the horses got out on to the hard road, strewn over with bits
of dry, grey manure, the old man returned to the gate, and bowed to
Nekhludoff.
“You are our ladies’ nephew, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am their nephew.”
“You’ve kindly come to look us up, eh?” said the garrulous old man.
“Yes, I have. Well, how are you getting on?”
“How do we get on? We get on very badly,” the old man drawled, as if it
gave him pleasure.
“Why so badly?” Nekhludoff asked, stepping inside the gate.
“What is our life but the very worst life?” said the old man, following
Nekhludoff into that part of the yard which was roofed over.
Nekhludoff stopped under the roof.
“I have got 12 of them there,” continued the old man, pointing to two
women on the remainder of the manure heap, who stood perspiring with
forks in their hands, the kerchiefs tumbling off their heads, with their
skirts tucked up, showing the calves of their dirty, bare legs. “Not a
month passes but I have to buy six poods [a pood is 36 English pounds]
of corn, and where’s the money to come from?”
“Have you not got enough corn of your own?”
“My own?” repeated the old man, with a smile of contempt; “why I have
only got land for three, and last year we had not enough to last till
Christmas.”
“What do you do then?”
“What do we do? Why, I hire out as a labourer; and then I borrowed some
money from your honour. We spent it all before Lent, and the tax is not
paid yet.”
“And how much is the tax?”
“Why, it’s 17 roubles for my household. Oh, Lord, such a life! One
hardly knows one’s self how one manages to live it.”
“May I go into your hut?” asked Nekhludoff, stepping across the yard
over the yellow-brown layers of manure that had been raked up by the
forks, and were giving off a strong smell.
“Why not? Come in,” said the old man, and stepping quickly with his
bare feet over the manure, the liquid oozing between his toes, he passed
Nekhludoff and opened the door of the hut.
The women arranged the kerchiefs on their heads and let down their
skirts, and stood looking with surprise at the clean gentleman with gold
studs to his sleeves who was entering their house. Two little girls,
with nothing on but coarse chemises, rushed out of the hut. Nekhludoff
took off his hat, and, stooping to get through the low door, entered,
through a passage into the dirty, narrow hut, that smelt of sour food,
and where much space was taken up by two weaving looms. In the hut an
old woman was standing by the stove, with the sleeves rolled up over her
thin, sinewy brown arms.
“Here is our master come to see us,” said the old man.
“I’m sure he’s very welcome,” said the old woman, kindly.
“I would like to see how you live.”
“Well, you see how we live. The hut is coming down, and might kill one
any day; but my old man he says it’s good enough, and so we live like
kings,” said the brisk old woman, nervously jerking her head. “I’m
getting the dinner; going to feed the workers.”
“And what are you going to have for dinner?”
“Our food is very good. First course, bread and kvas; [kvas is a kind of
sour, non-intoxicant beer made of rye] second course, kvas and bread,”
said the old woman, showing her teeth, which were half worn away.
“No,” seriously; “let me see what you are going to eat.”
“To eat?” said the old man, laughing. “Ours is not a very cunning meal.
You just show him, wife.”
“Want to see our peasant food? Well, you are an inquisitive gentleman,
now I come to look at you. He wants to know everything. Did I not tell
you bread and kvas and then we’ll have soup. A woman brought us some
fish, and that’s what the soup is made of, and after that, potatoes.”
“Nothing more?”
“What more do you want? We’ll also have a little milk,” said the old
woman, looking towards the door. The door stood open, and the passage
outside was full of people--boys, girls, women with babies--thronged
together to look at the strange gentleman who wanted to see the
peasants’ food. The old woman seemed to pride herself on the way she
behaved with a gentleman.
“Yes, it’s a miserable life, ours; that goes without saying, sir,” said
the old man. “What are you doing there?” he shouted to those in the
passage. “Well, good-bye,” said Nekhludoff, feeling ashamed and uneasy,
though unable to account for the feeling.
“Thank you kindly for having looked us up,” said the old man.
The people in the passage pressed closer together to let Nekhludoff
pass, and he went out and continued his way up the street.
Two barefooted boys followed him out of the passage the elder in a
shirt that had once been white, the other in a worn and faded pink one.
Nekhludoff looked back at them.
“And where are you going now?” asked the boy with the white shirt.
Nekhludoff answered: “To Matrona Kharina. Do you know her?” The boy
with the pink shirt began laughing at something; but the elder asked,
seriously:
“What Matrona is that? Is she old?”
“Yes, she is old.”
“Oh--oh,” he drawled; “that one; she’s at the other end of the village;
we’ll show you. Yes, Fedka, we’ll go with him. Shall we?”
“Yes, but the horses?”
“They’ll be all right, I dare say.”
Fedka agreed, and all three went up the street.
CHAPTER V.
MASLOVA’S AUNT.
Nekhludoff felt more at ease with the boys than with the grown-up
people, and he began talking to them as they went along. The little
one with the pink shirt stopped laughing, and spoke as sensibly and as
exactly as the elder one.
“Can you tell me who are the poorest people you have got here?” asked
Nekhludoff.
“The poorest? Michael is poor, Simon Makhroff, and Martha, she is very
poor.”
“And Anisia, she is still poorer; she’s not even got a cow. They go
begging,” said little Fedka.
“She’s not got a cow, but they are only three persons, and Martha’s
family are five,” objected the elder boy.
“But the other’s a widow,” the pink boy said, standing up for Anisia.
“You say Anisia is a widow, and Martha is no better than a widow,” said
the elder boy; “she’s also no husband.”
“And where is her husband?” Nekhludoff asked.
“Feeding vermin in prison,” said the elder boy, using this expression,
common among the peasants.
“A year ago he cut down two birch trees in the land-lord’s forest,” the
little pink boy hurried to say, “so he was locked up; now he’s sitting
the sixth month there, and the wife goes begging. There are three
children and a sick grandmother,” he went on with his detailed account.
“And where does she live?” Nekhludoff asked.
“In this very house,” answered the boy, pointing to a hut, in front
of which, on the footpath along which Nekhludoff was walking, a tiny,
flaxen-headed infant stood balancing himself with difficulty on his
rickety legs.