Short Stories by Chekhov
town they usually drove to our horror, into our yard! A horse would
appear in the gate, straddling its fore legs, with its big belly
heaving; before it came into the yard it would strain and heave and
after it would come a ten-yard beam in a four-wheeled wagon, wet and
slimy; alongside it, wrapped up to keep the rain out, never looking
where he was going and splashing through the puddles, a peasant would
walk with the skirt of his coat tucked up in his belt. Another cart
would appear with planks; then a third with a beam; then a fourth ...
and the yard in front of the house would gradually be blocked up with
horses, beams, planks. Peasants, men and women with their heads wrapped
up and their skirts tucked up, would stare morosely at our windows, kick
up a row and insist on the lady of the house coming out to them; and
they would curse and swear. And in a corner Moissey would stand, and it
seemed to us that he delighted in our discomfiture.
"We won't cart any more!" the peasants shouted. "We are tired to death!
Let her go and cart it herself!"
Pale and scared, thinking they would any minute break into the house,
Masha would send them money for a pail of vodka; after which the noise
would die down and the long beams would go jolting out of the yard.
When I went to look at the building my wife would get agitated and say:
"The peasants are furious. They might do something to you. No. Wait.
I'll go with you."
We used to drive over to Kurilovka together and then the carpenters
would ask for tips. The framework was ready for the foundations to be
laid, but the masons never came and when at last the masons did come it
was apparent that there was no sand; somehow it had been forgotten that
sand was wanted. Taking advantage of our helplessness, the peasants
asked thirty copecks a load, although it was less than a quarter of a
mile from the building to the river where the sand was to be fetched,
and more than five hundred loads were needed. There were endless
misunderstandings, wrangles, and continual begging. My wife was
indignant and the building contractor, Petrov, an old man of seventy,
took her by the hand and said:
"You look here! Look here! Just get me sand and I'll find ten men and
have the work done in two days. Look here!"
Sand was brought, but two, four days, a week passed and still there
yawned a ditch where the foundations were to be.
"I shall go mad," cried my wife furiously. "What wretches they are! What
wretches!"
During these disturbances Victor Ivanich used to come and see us. He
used to bring hampers of wine and dainties, and eat for a long time, and
then go to sleep on the terrace and snore so that the labourers shook
their heads and said:
"He's all right!"
Masha took no pleasure in his visits. She did not believe in him, and
yet she used to ask his advice; when, after a sound sleep after dinner,
he got up out of humour, and spoke disparagingly of our domestic
arrangements, and said he was sorry he had ever bought Dubechnia which
had cost him so much, and poor Masha looked miserably anxious and
complained to him, he would yawn and say the peasants ought to be
flogged.
He called our marriage and the life we were living a comedy, and used to
say it was a caprice, a whimsy.
"She did the same sort of thing once before," he told me. "She fancied
herself as an opera singer, and ran away from me. It took me two months
to find her, and my dear fellow, I wasted a thousand roubles on
telegrams alone."
He had dropped calling me a sectarian or the House-painter; and no
longer approved of my life as a working man, but he used to say:
"You are a queer fish! An abnormality. I don't venture to prophesy, but
you will end badly!"
Masha slept poorly at nights and would sit by the window of our bedroom
thinking. She no longer laughed and made faces at supper. I suffered,
and when it rained, every drop cut into my heart like a bullet, and I
could have gone on my knees to Masha and apologised for the weather.
When the peasants made a row in the yard, I felt that it was my fault. I
would sit for hours in one place, thinking only how splendid and how
wonderful Masha was. I loved her passionately, and I was enraptured by
everything she did and said. Her taste was for quiet indoor occupation;
she loved to read for hours and to study; she who knew about farm-work
only from books, surprised us all by her knowledge and the advice she
gave was always useful, and when applied was never in vain. And in
addition she had the fineness, the taste, and the good sense, the very
sound sense which only very well-bred people possess!
To such a woman, with her healthy, orderly mind, the chaotic environment
with its petty cares and dirty tittle-tattle, in which we lived, was
very painful. I could see that, and I, too, could not sleep at night. My
brain whirled and I could hardly choke back my tears. I tossed about,
not knowing what to do.
I used to rush to town and bring Masha books, newspapers, sweets,
flowers, and I used to go fishing with Stiepan, dragging for hours,
neck-deep in cold water, in the rain, to catch an eel by way of varying
our fare. I used humbly to ask the peasants not to shout, and I gave
them vodka, bribed them, promised them anything they asked. And what a
lot of other foolish things I did!
At last the rain stopped. The earth dried up. I used to get up in the
morning and go into the garden--dew shining on the flowers, birds and
insects shrilling, not a cloud in the sky, and the garden, the meadow,
the river were so beautiful, perfect but for the memory of the peasants
and the carts and the engineer. Masha and I used to drive out in a car
to see how the oats were coming on. She drove and I sat behind; her
shoulders were always a little hunched, and the wind would play with her
hair.
"Keep to the right!" she shouted to the passers-by.
"You are like a coachman!" I once said to her.
"Perhaps. My grandfather, my father's father, was a coachman. Didn't you
know?" she asked, turning round, and immediately she began to mimic the
way the coachmen shout and sing.
"Thank God!" I thought, as I listened to her. "Thank God!"
And again I remember the peasants, the carts, the engineer....
XIII
Doctor Blagovo came over on a bicycle. My sister began to come often.
Once more we talked of manual labour and progress, and the mysterious
Cross awaiting humanity in the remote future. The doctor did not like
our life, because it interfered with our discussions and he said it was
unworthy of a free man to plough, and reap, and breed cattle, and that
in time all such elementary forms of the struggle for existence would be
left to animals and machines, while men would devote themselves
exclusively to scientific investigation. And my sister always asked me
to let her go home earlier, and if she stayed late, or for the night,
she was greatly distressed.
"Good gracious, what a baby you are," Masha used to say reproachfully.
"It is quite ridiculous."
"Yes, it is absurd," my sister would agree. "I admit it is absurd, but
what can I do if I have not the power to control myself. It always seems
to me that I am doing wrong."
During the haymaking my body, not being used to it, ached all over;
sitting on the terrace in the evening, I would suddenly fall asleep and
they would all laugh at me. They would wake me up and make me sit down
to supper. I would be overcome with drowsiness and in a stupor saw
lights, faces, plates, and heard voices without understanding what they
were saying. And I used to get up early in the morning and take my
scythe, or go to the school and work there all day.
When I was at home on holidays I noticed that my wife and sister were
hiding something from me and even seemed to be avoiding me. My wife was
tender with me as always, but she had some new thought of her own which
she did not communicate to me. Certainly her exasperation with the
peasants had increased and life was growing harder and harder for her,
but she no longer complained to me. She talked more readily to the
doctor than to me, and I could not understand why.
It was the custom in our province for the labourers to come to the farm
in the evenings to be treated to vodka, even the girls having a glass.
We did not keep the custom; the haymakers and the women used to come
into the yard and stay until late in the evening, waiting for vodka, and
then they went away cursing. And then Masha used to frown and relapse
into silence or whisper irritably to the doctor:
"Savages! Barbarians!"
Newcomers to the villages were received ungraciously, almost with
hostility; like new arrivals at a school. At first we were looked upon
as foolish, soft-headed people who had bought the estate because we did
not know what to do with our money. We were laughed at. The peasants
grazed their cattle in our pasture and even in our garden, drove our
cows and horses into the village and then came and asked for
compensation. The whole village used to come into our yard and declare
loudly that in mowing we had cut the border of common land which did not
belong to us; and as we did not know our boundaries exactly we used to
take their word for it and pay a fine. But afterward it appeared that we
had been in the right. They used to bark the young lime-trees in our
woods. A Dubechnia peasant, a money-lender, who sold vodka without a
licence, bribed our labourers to help him cheat us in the most
treacherous way; he substituted old wheels for the new on our wagons,
stole our ploughing yokes and sold them back to us, and so on. But worst
of all was the building at Kurilovka. There the women at night stole
planks, bricks, tiles, iron; the bailiff and his assistants made a
search; the women were each fined two roubles by the village council,
and then the whole lot of them got drunk on the money.
When Masha found out, she would say to the doctor and my sister:
"What beasts! It is horrible! Horrible!"
And more than once I heard her say she was sorry she had decided to
build the school.
"You must understand," the doctor tried to point out, "that if you build
a school or undertake any good work, it is not for the peasants, but for
the sake of culture and the future. The worse the peasants are the more
reason there is for building a school. Do understand!"
There was a loss of confidence in his voice, and it seemed to me that he
hated the peasants as much as Masha.
Masha used often to go to the mill with my sister and they would say
jokingly that they were going to have a look at Stiepan because he was
so handsome. Stiepan it appeared was reserved and silent only with men,
and in the company of women was free and talkative. Once when I went
down to the river to bathe I involuntarily overheard a conversation.
Masha and Cleopatra, both in white, were sitting on the bank under the
broad shade of a willow and Stiepan was standing near with his hands
behind his back, saying:
"But are peasants human beings? Not they; they are, excuse me, brutes,
beasts, and thieves. What does a peasant's life consist of? Eating and
drinking, crying for cheaper food, bawling in taverns, without decent
conversation, or behaviour or manners. Just an ignorant beast! He lives
in filth, his wife and children live in filth; he sleeps in his clothes;
takes the potatoes out of the soup with his fingers, drinks down a black
beetle with his kvass--because he won't trouble to fish it out!"
"It is because of their poverty!" protested my sister.
"What poverty? Of course there is want, but there are different kinds of
necessity. If a man is in prison, or is blind, say, or has lost his
legs, then he is in a bad way and God help him; but if he is at liberty
and in command of his senses, if he has eyes and hands and strength,