Resurrection
“Vaska! Where’s the little scamp got to?” shouted a woman, with a dirty
grey blouse, and a frightened look, as she ran out of the house, and,
rushing forward, seized the baby before Nekhludoff came up to it, and
carried it in, just as if she were afraid that Nekhludoff would hurt her
child.
This was the woman whose husband was imprisoned for Nekhludoff’s birch
trees.
“Well, and this Matrona, is she also poor?” Nekhludoff asked, as they
came up to Matrona’s house.
“She poor? No. Why, she sells spirits,” the thin, pink little boy
answered decidedly.
When they reached the house Nekhludoff left the boys outside and went
through the passage into the hut. The hut was 14 feet long. The bed
that stood behind the big stove was not long enough for a tall person
to stretch out on. “And on this very bed,” Nekhludoff thought, “Katusha
bore her baby and lay ill afterwards.” The greater part of the hut was
taken up by a loom, on which the old woman and her eldest granddaughter
were arranging the warp when Nekhludoff came in, striking his forehead
against the low doorway. Two other grandchildren came rushing in after
Nekhludoff, and stopped, holding on to the lintels of the door.
“Whom do you want?” asked the old woman, crossly. She was in a bad
temper because she could not manage to get the warp right, and, besides,
carrying on an illicit trade in spirits, she was always afraid when any
stranger came in.
“I am--the owner of the neighbouring estates, and should like to speak
to you.”
“Dear me; why, it’s you, my honey; and I, fool, thought it was just some
passer-by. Dear me, you--it’s you, my precious,” said the old woman,
with simulated tenderness in her voice.
“I should like to speak to you alone,” said Nekhludoff, with a glance
towards the door, where the children were standing, and behind them a
woman holding a wasted, pale baby, with a sickly smile on its face, who
had a little cap made of different bits of stuff on its head.
“What are you staring at? I’ll give it you. Just hand me my crutch,” the
old woman shouted to those at the door.
“Shut the door, will you!” The children went away, and the woman closed
the door.
“And I was thinking, who’s that? And it’s ‘the master’ himself. My
jewel, my treasure. Just think,” said the old woman, “where he has
deigned to come. Sit down here, your honour,” she said, wiping the seat
with her apron. “And I was thinking what devil is it coming in, and it’s
your honour, ‘the master’ himself, the good gentleman, our benefactor.
Forgive me, old fool that I am; I’m getting blind.”
Nekhludoff sat down, and the old woman stood in front of him, leaning
her cheek on her right hand, while the left held up the sharp elbow of
her right arm.
“Dear me, you have grown old, your honour; and you used to be as fresh
as a daisy. And now! Cares also, I expect?”
“This is what I have come about: Do you remember Katusha Maslova?”
“Katerina? I should think so. Why, she is my niece. How could I help
remembering; and the tears I have shed because of her. Why, I know all
about it. Eh, sir, who has not sinned before God? who has not offended
against the Tsar? We know what youth is. You used to be drinking tea and
coffee, so the devil got hold of you. He is strong at times. What’s to
be done? Now, if you had chucked her; but no, just see how you rewarded
her, gave her a hundred roubles. And she? What has she done? Had she
but listened to me she might have lived all right. I must say the truth,
though she is my niece: that girl’s no good. What a good place I found
her! She would not submit, but abused her master. Is it for the likes
of us to scold gentlefolk? Well, she was sent away. And then at the
forester’s. She might have lived there; but no, she would not.”
“I want to know about the child. She was confined at your house, was she
not? Where’s the child?”
“As to the child, I considered that well at the time. She was so bad
I never thought she would get up again. Well, so I christened the baby
quite properly, and we sent it to the Foundlings’. Why should one let
an innocent soul languish when the mother is dying? Others do like this:
they just leave the baby, don’t feed it, and it wastes away. But, thinks
I, no; I’d rather take some trouble, and send it to the Foundlings’.
There was money enough, so I sent it off.”
“Did you not get its registration number from the Foundlings’ Hospital?”
“Yes, there was a number, but the baby died,” she said. “It died as soon
as she brought it there.”
“Who is she?”
“That same woman who used to live in Skorodno. She made a business of
it. Her name was Malania. She’s dead now. She was a wise woman. What do
you think she used to do? They’d bring her a baby, and she’d keep it and
feed it; and she’d feed it until she had enough of them to take to the
Foundlings’. When she had three or four, she’d take them all at once.
She had such a clever arrangement, a sort of big cradle--a double one
she could put them in one way or the other. It had a handle. So she’d
put four of them in, feet to feet and the heads apart, so that they
should not knock against each other. And so she took four at once. She’d
put some pap in a rag into their mouths to keep ‘em silent, the pets.”
“Well, go on.”
“Well, she took Katerina’s baby in the same way, after keeping it a
fortnight, I believe. It was in her house it began to sicken.”
“And was it a fine baby?” Nekhludoff asked.
“Such a baby, that if you wanted a finer you could not find one. Your
very image,” the old woman added, with a wink.
“Why did it sicken? Was the food bad?”
“Eh, what food? Only just a pretence of food. Naturally, when it’s not
one’s own child. Only enough to get it there alive. She said she
just managed to get it to Moscow, and there it died. She brought a
certificate--all in order. She was such a wise woman.”
That was all Nekhludoff could find out concerning his child.
CHAPTER VI.
REFLECTIONS OF A LANDLORD.
Again striking his head against both doors, Nekhludoff went out into the
street, where the pink and the white boys were waiting for him. A few
newcomers were standing with them. Among the women, of whom several
had babies in their arms, was the thin woman with the baby who had the
patchwork cap on its head. She held lightly in her arms the bloodless
infant, who kept strangely smiling all over its wizened little face, and
continually moving its crooked thumbs.
Nekhludoff knew the smile to be one of suffering. He asked who the woman
was.
“It is that very Anisia I told you about,” said the elder boy.
Nekhludoff turned to Anisia.
“How do you live?” he asked. “By what means do you gain your
livelihood?”
“How do I live? I go begging,” said Anisia, and began to cry.
Nekhludoff took out his pocket-book, and gave the woman a 10-rouble
note. He had not had time to take two steps before another woman with
a baby caught him up, then an old woman, then another young one. All of
them spoke of their poverty, and asked for help. Nekhludoff gave them
the 60 roubles--all in small notes--which he had with him, and, terribly
sad at heart, turned home, i.e., to the foreman’s house.
The foreman met Nekhludoff with a smile, and informed him that the
peasants would come to the meeting in the evening. Nekhludoff thanked
him, and went straight into the garden to stroll along the paths strewn
over with the petals of apple-blossom and overgrown with weeds, and to
think over all he had seen.
At first all was quiet, but soon Nekhludoff heard from behind the
foreman’s house two angry women’s voices interrupting each other, and
now and then the voice of the ever-smiling foreman. Nekhludoff listened.
“My strength’s at an end. What are you about, dragging the very cross
[those baptized in the Russo-Greek Church always wear a cross round
their necks] off my neck,” said an angry woman’s voice.
“But she only got in for a moment,” said another voice. “Give it her
back, I tell you. Why do you torment the beast, and the children, too,
who want their milk?”
“Pay, then, or work it off,” said the foreman’s voice.
Nekhludoff left the garden and entered the porch, near which stood two
dishevelled women--one of them pregnant and evidently near her time.
On one of the steps of the porch, with his hands in the pockets of his
holland coat, stood the foreman. When they saw the master, the women
were silent, and began arranging the kerchiefs on their heads, and the
foreman took his hands out of his pockets and began to smile.
This is what had happened. From the foreman’s words, it seemed that the
peasants were in the habit of letting their calves and even their cows
into the meadow belonging to the estate. Two cows belonging to the
families of these two women were found in the meadow, and driven into
the yard. The foreman demanded from the women 30 copecks for each cow
or two days’ work. The women, however, maintained that the cows had got
into the meadow of their own accord; that they had no money, and asked
that the cows, which had stood in the blazing sun since morning without
food, piteously lowing, should be returned to them, even if it had to be
on the understanding that the price should be worked off later on.
“How often have I not begged of you,” said the smiling foreman, looking
back at Nekhludoff as if calling upon him to be a witness, “if you drive
your cattle home at noon, that you should have an eye on them?”
“I only ran to my little one for a bit, and they got away.”
“Don’t run away when you have undertaken to watch the cows.”
“And who’s to feed the little one? You’d not give him the breast, I
suppose?” said the other woman. “Now, if they had really damaged the
meadow, one would not take it so much to heart; but they only strayed in
a moment.”
“All the meadows are damaged,” the foreman said, turning to Nekhludoff.
“If I exact no penalty there will be no hay.”
“There, now, don’t go sinning like that; my cows have never been caught
there before,” shouted the pregnant woman.
“Now that one has been caught, pay up or work it off.”
“All right, I’ll work it off; only let me have the cow now, don’t
torture her with hunger,” she cried, angrily. “As it is, I have no rest
day or night. Mother-in-law is ill, husband taken to drink; I’m all
alone to do all the work, and my strength’s at an end. I wish you’d
choke, you and your working it off.”
Nekhludoff asked the foreman to let the women take the cows, and went
back into the garden to go on thinking out his problem, but there was
nothing more to think about.
Everything seemed so clear to him now that he could not stop wondering
how it was that everybody did not see it, and that he himself had for
such a long while not seen what was so clearly evident. The people were
dying out, and had got used to the dying-out process, and had formed
habits of life adapted to this process: there was the great mortality
among the children, the over-working of the women, the under-feeding,
especially of the aged. And so gradually had the people come to this
condition that they did not realise the full horrors of it, and did
not complain. Therefore, we consider their condition natural and as it
should be. Now it seemed as clear as daylight that the chief cause of
the people’s great want was one that they themselves knew and always
pointed out, i.e., that the land which alone could feed them had been
taken from them by the landlords.
And how evident it was that the children and the aged died because they
had no milk, and they had no milk because there was no pasture land, and
no land to grow corn or make hay on. It was quite evident that all the
misery of the people or, at least by far the greater part of it, was
caused by the fact that the land which should feed them was not in their