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A family of noblemen

by Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov · English · Gutenberg #44237 · 630,304 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: A family of noblemen

Author: Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov

Translator: Avrahm Yarmolinsky


        
Release date: November 20, 2013 [eBook #44237]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A FAMILY OF NOBLEMEN ***
A FAMILY OF NOBLEMEN

BY

MIKHAÏL Y. SALTYKOV

(N. SHCHEDRIN)


TRANSLATED BY A. YARMOLINSKY



BONI & LIVERIGHT, INC.

NEW YORK

1917




              CONTENTS



              Book I
        THE FAMILY COUNCIL
              Book II
        AS BECOMES GOOD KINSFOLK
              Book III
        FAMILY ACCOUNTS SETTLED
              Book IV
        THE GOOD LITTLE NIECE
              Book V
        FORBIDDEN FAMILY JOYS
              Book VI
        THE DESERTED MANOR-HOUSE
              Book VII
        THE SETTLEMENT





BOOK I

THE FAMILY COUNCIL




CHAPTER I


Anton Vasilyev, the manager of a remote estate, was giving his
mistress, Arina Petrovna Golovliov, an account of his trip to Moscow.
He had gone there to collect the money due from those of her peasant
serfs who bought the right to live in the city by paying her a tax.
When he had finished with his report, she told him he might retire, but
he lingered on irresolutely, as though he had something else to say,
yet could not make up his mind to say it.

Arina Petrovna knew her servants through and through; she knew the
meaning of their slightest gestures, she could even divine their inmost
thoughts. And her steward's manner immediately aroused her disquietude.

"What else?" she asked, looking at him keenly.

"That's all," he replied evasively.

"Don't lie. There is something else. I can see it by your eyes."

Anton Vasilyev still hesitated and continued to shift from one foot to
the other.

"What is it? Tell me!" she shouted imperiously. "Out with it, out with
it! And don't wag your whole body like a dog, Telltale!"

Arina Petrovna liked to call her managers and domestics by nicknames.
She used Telltale for Anton Vasilyev, not because she had found him to
carry gossip treacherously, but simply because he had a loose tongue.

The centre of the estate that he managed was an important trading
village in which there were many taverns. He liked to take a glass
of tea in a tavern and boast of his mistress's great power. And in
the course of his boasting he would sometimes unconsciously blab out
secrets. His mistress was always with a lawsuit on her hands, so that
her trusty's garrulousness sometimes brought her sly stratagems to the
surface before they could be executed.

"Yes, I have got something else to say," Anton finally mumbled.

"What is it?" Arina Petrovna asked excitedly.

An imperious woman, with an extraordinarily lively imagination, she
instantly pictured all sorts of disagreeable opposition and antagonism,
and the thought so instantly took complete possession of her that she
turned white and jumped up from her chair.

"Stepan Vladimirych's house in Moscow has been sold," Anton said after
a pause.

"Well?"

"It's been sold."

"Why? How? Tell me."

"For debts, I suppose. Of course it can't be because of something nice."

"The police, the court, sold it, I suppose?"

"I suppose so. They say it was sold at auction for 8,000 rubles."

Arina Petrovna dropped back heavily into her armchair and gazed fixedly
at the window panes. She was so stunned by the news that she seemed
to have lost consciousness for a while. Had she heard that Stepan
Vladimirych had killed somebody, or that the Golovliov peasant serfs
had risen in revolt and refused to render the service due her on her
estates, or that serfdom had been abolished, she would not have been so
shocked. Her lips trembled, her eyes stared vacantly into the distance,
but she saw nothing. She did not even see the little girl, Duniashka,
run past the window carrying something hidden under her apron; she did
not see the child stop suddenly on beholding her mistress and wheel
round and then dart back guiltily to where she had come from. Such
suspicious conduct at any other time would have led to a thorough
investigation. Finally Arina Petrovna came to herself and managed to
bring out:

"A good joke, I must say." After which there again followed several
minutes of ominous silence.

"So the police sold the house for eight thousand?" she asked again.

"Yes, madam."

"So that's what he's done with his patrimony! Splendid! The blackguard!"

Arina Petrovna felt that the news called for a prompt decision, but
nothing occurred to her. Her thoughts ran confusedly in exactly
opposite directions. On the one hand she thought: "The police sold it.
But the police could not have sold it in a minute. An inventory must
first have been taken, then an appraisal made, and then the sale must
have been advertised. Sold for eight thousand when I myself two years
ago paid twelve thousand rubles for it, not a penny less. Had I only
known it was going to be up for sale, I could have bought it myself for
eight thousand rubles."

Her other thoughts ran: "The police sold it for eight thousand. That's
what he's done with his patrimony. To sell one's patrimony for eight
thousand rubles!"

"Who told you?" she asked, realizing finally that the house had been
sold and the chance to secure it cheaply was gone forever.

"Ivan Mikhailov, the inn-keeper."

"Why didn't he let me know in time?"

"I suppose he was afraid."

"Afraid? I'll teach him to be afraid. I'll make him come here from
Moscow, and the moment he comes I'll have him drafted into the army. He
was afraid!"

Although on the decline, serfdom still existed. Anton Vasilyev had
known his mistress to impose the most peculiar punishments, but, even
so, her present decision was so unexpected that it made him miserable.
He thought of his nickname Telltale. Ivan Mikhailov was an upright
peasant, and Anton never dreamed that misfortune would touch him.
Besides, Ivan Mikhailov was his friend and godfather. Now, all of a
sudden, he was to be made a soldier just because he, Anton Vasilyev,
the Telltale, could not hold his tongue.

"Forgive him--Ivan Mikhailov, I mean," he pleaded.

"Go away, you mollycoddler," she shouted in a voice so loud that he
lost all desire to intercede any further for his friend.




CHAPTER II


Arina Petrovna was sixty years old, still of sound health and
accustomed to have her own way in everything. Her manner was severe.
She lived alone, and managed the huge Golovliov estate all by herself,
without having to answer to any one else. She calculated closely,
almost parsimoniously, was not intimate with her neighbors, was
gracious to the local authorities, and exacted implicit obedience
from her children. They were not to do anything without first asking
themselves, "What would mamenka say about it?" She was independent,
inflexible, even stubborn, though her stubbornness was not so much
native as due chiefly to the circumstance that there was not one person
in the whole Golovliov family that could oppose her. Her husband was
a trifling creature, and drank. Arina Petrovna used to say of herself
that she was neither a widow nor a married woman. Some of the children
were in St. Petersburg, the others took after their father and were
relegated to the class of "horrid creatures," who were unfit for
household duties. In these circumstances Arina Petrovna soon began to
feel all left alone, and grew totally disaccustomed to family life,
although the word "family" was constantly on her lips, and outwardly
she seemed to be exclusively guided in all her work by the desire to
build up the family estate and keep the family affairs in order.

The head of the family, Vladimir Mikhailych Golovliov, was known from
his youth as a dissolute, quarrelsome fellow, with nothing in his
character that would be sympathetic to a serious, active woman like
Arina Petrovna. He led a lazy, good-for-nothing existence, usually
stayed locked up in his room, where he imitated the warble of the
starlings, the crowing of cocks, and the like, and composed ribald
doggerel. In bursts of confidence he would boast that he had been a
friend of the poet Barkov, intimating that the poet had blessed him
on his deathbed. Arina Petrovna disliked her husband's verses from
the very first. "Nasty stuff!" "Trash!" she called them. And since
Vladimir Mikhailych's very object in marrying had been to have someone
ever at hand to listen to his poetry, the result was that quarrels
soon began, which grew worse and worse and more frequent until they
ended with Arina Petrovna utterly indifferent and contemptuous of her
clown husband, and Vladimir Mikhailych hating his wife sincerely, with
a hatred considerably mixed with fear. The husband called the wife a
"hag" and a "devil"; the wife called the husband a "windmill" and a
"balalaika without strings."

They lived together in this way for more than forty years, and it never
occurred to either of them that there was anything unnatural in such a
life. Time did not diminish Vladimir Mikhailych's quarrelsomeness; on
the contrary, it took on a still sharper edge. Apart from the poetical
exercising in Barkov's spirit that he did, he began to drink and to
lie in wait eagerly for the servant girls in the corridors. At first
Arina Petrovna looked on this new occupation of her husband's with
repugnance. She even got wrought up over it, not so much from jealousy
as that she felt it to be an interference with her authority. After a
while, however, she shrugged her shoulders, and merely watched out that
the "dirty wenches" should not fetch brandy for their master.

From that time on, having said to herself once for all that her
husband was not a companion, she directed her efforts exclusively to
one object, the building up of the estate. And in the forty years of
her married life she actually succeeded in multiplying her property
tenfold. With astonishing patience and acumen she kept her eye on the
near and distant villages, found out in secret ways the relations that
existed between the neighboring landowners and the board of trustees,
and always appeared at the auctions like snow on the head. In this
fantastic hunt for new acquisitions Vladimir Mikhailych receded more
and more into the background, turned seedy and at last dropped out of
social life completely. He was now a decrepit old man already, keeping
his bed almost the whole time. On the rare occasions that he left his
room it was only to stick his head through the half-open door of his
wife's bedroom and shout: "Devil!" After which he would go back and
close himself up in his own room again.

Arina Petrovna was not much happier in her children. She was of a
celibate nature, so to speak, independent and self-sufficient, and her
children were nothing to her but a useless burden. The only times when
she breathed freely was when she was alone with her accounts and her
household affairs, and when no one interfered with her business talks
with her managers, stewards, housekeepers, and so on. In her eyes,
children were one of the preordained things in life that she felt she
had no right to protest against. Nevertheless they did not touch a
single chord in her inner being, which was given over wholly to the
numberless details of the household.

There were four children, one daughter and three sons. Of the oldest
son and the daughter she did not even like to speak; toward the
youngest son she was indifferent. It was only for the middle one,
Porfisha, that she cherished any feeling at all, a feeling not of love,
but of something very akin to fear.

Stepan Vladimirych, the oldest son, passed in the family by the name
of Simple Simon, or The Saucebox. He was very young when he was put
into the class of "horrid creatures," and from childhood up played the
rôle of half pariah, half clown. Unfortunately he was a bright child,
susceptible to the impressions of his environment. From his father he
inherited an irresistible inclination to play tricks, from his mother
the ability to divine the weak sides of people's natures. The first
characteristic soon made him his father's favorite, which still further
intensified his mother's dislike of him. Often when the mother was
absent on business, the father and the boy would betake themselves
into the study adorned with the portrait of Barkov, read ribald poems,
and gossip, the chief butt of their raillery being the "hag," that
is to say, Arina Petrovna. The "hag," instinctively divining their
occupation, would drive up to the front steps very quietly, then
tiptoe to the study door and listen to their fun-making. The murderous
punishment of Simple Simon followed swift and cruel. But Stiopka was
not subdued. He was impervious either to blows or to admonitions,
and in half an hour was back again at his tricks. He would cut up
Aniutka's, the servant girl's, scarf, or he would stick flies into
Vasiutka's mouth while he slept, or he would run into the kitchen and
carry off a cake (Arina Petrovna kept her children half hungry), which
he always divided with his brothers.

"You ought to be killed," his mother said. "I'll kill you, and I won't
have to answer for it either. Even God won't punish me for it."

This humiliation, constantly put upon a nature soft, yielding and
forgetful, did not remain without its effect. It did not embitter
him, nor did it make him rebellious. It made him servile, disposed to
buffoonery, with no sense of the fitness of things, and devoid of all
foresight and prudence. Such natures yield to all influences and may
become almost anything--drunkards, beggars, buffoons, even criminals.

At the age of twenty Stepan Golovliov graduated from the gymnasium
in Moscow and entered the university. But his student's life was a
bitter one. In the first place, his mother gave him just enough money
to keep him from dying of hunger. Secondly, he did not show the least
inclination to work. Instead, he developed an accursed talent, which
expressed itself chiefly in mimickry. And he suffered from a desire
for constant companionship. He hated to be alone a single instant.
So he played the light rôle of hanger-on and parasite, and thanks to
his readiness for any prank he soon became the favorite of the rich
students. However, though they received him into their society, they
looked on him, not as one of them, but as a clown; and the reputation
clung to him. Once placed on such a plane, he naturally slid down lower
and lower, and at the end of the fourth year was thoroughly confirmed
in his clownship. Nevertheless, thanks to his receptive ability and
good memory, he passed the examinations successfully and received his
bachelor's degree.

When he appeared before his mother with the diploma, she merely
shrugged her shoulders and said: "Well, that's funny." Then, after
letting him spend a month in the country, she shipped him back to St.
Petersburg with an allowance of a hundred rubles a month. Now there
began for him endless visits to various government offices. He had
neither patrons nor the determination to make his own way by hard work.
The lad's mind had lost so completely the habit of concentration that
bureaucratic tasks such as the drawing up of briefs and case abstracts
were beyond his power. After four years of struggle Stepan was forced
to admit that there was no hope of his ever rising above the rank of a
government clerk. In reply to his lamentations, Arina Petrovna wrote
him a stern letter which began with the words: "I was sure that would
happen," and wound up with a command to return at once to Moscow.
There, at the conclave of Arina Petrovna's favorite peasants, it was
decided to place Simple Simon in the Aulic Court, entrusting him to
the care of a pettifogger who from time immemorial had been the legal
adviser of the Golovliov family.

What Stepan Vladimirych did in the Aulic Court and how he behaved there
is a mystery. What is certain is that at the end of the third year he
was there no longer. Then Arina Petrovna took a heroic measure. She
"threw her son a bone," which was also supposed to fill the part of
the "parental blessing," that is to say, the patrimony. "The bone"
consisted of a house in Moscow, for which she had paid twelve thousand
rubles.

For the first time in his life Stepan Golovliov breathed freely. The
house promised to bring him an income of a thousand silver rubles, a
sum which in comparison with his former income, seemed like genuine
prosperity. He kissed his mamma's hand effusively, and promised to
justify her kindness, whereupon Arina Petrovna said: "That's better;
but mind you, you numskull, that's all you get from me!" But, alas!
so little was he used to handling money, so absurd was his estimation
of real values in life, that before long what he thought to be a
fabulous revenue proved insufficient. In five or six years he was
totally ruined, and was only too glad to enter the militia, which was
then being organized. No sooner, however, did the militia troops reach
Kharkov than peace was concluded, and Golovliov went back to Moscow,
dressed in a somewhat threadbare uniform and high boots. By this time
his house had already been sold, and the only thing he owned was a
hundred rubles. He began "speculating" with this capital, that is, he
tried his luck at cards, but in a short time he lost all he had. Then
he conceived the plan of visiting his mother's well-to-do peasants who
lived in Moscow. Some of them invited him to dinner, others, yielding
to his importunings, gave him tobacco or lent him small sums of money.
At last the hour came when he found himself before a blind wall, as
it were. He was already almost forty years old, and had to confess to
himself that his nomadic existence was too much for his strength. There
was only one thing left to him, to take the road leading to Golovliovo.

After Stepan Vladimirych, the oldest child, came Anna Vladimirovna,
about whom Arina Petrovna did not like to speak either. The truth
of the matter was, the old lady had placed definite expectations
in Annushka, but she, far from fulfilling her mother's hopes, had
perpetrated a scandal which set the whole district agog. When Annushka
left the girls' boarding-school, Arina Petrovna installed her at the
village, hoping to make of her a sort of unpaid private secretary and
bookkeeper, but instead Annushka eloped one fine night with cornet
Ulanov and married him.

"They have married like dogs, without a parent's blessing!" complained
Arina Petrovna. "Lucky, though, that he submitted to a wedding ceremony
at all. Another man would have taken advantage of her--and vanished
into thin air. A fine chance for catching a bird."

With her daughter Arina Petrovna dealt as peremptorily as she had with
her hated son. She bestowed "a bone" upon her too, in the shape of five
thousand rubles and a wretched little village of thirty souls and a
manor-house going with it, so dilapidated that the wind blew through
the gaping paneless windows and there was not one sound board in the
flooring. In two years the young couple had gone through the money, and
the cornet took himself off, deserting his wife and two twin girls,
Anninka and Lubinka. Three months later the mother died, and Arina
Petrovna, willy-nilly, had to take the little orphans into her own
house. She installed them in a side-wing and entrusted them to the care
of Palashka, old and one-eyed. "The Lord's mercy is great," remarked
Arina Petrovna. "The little orphans won't eat much of my bread, but
they'll be a solace to me in my old age. God has given me two daughters
instead of one." At the same time she wrote to her son, Porfiry
Vladimirych: "Your dear sister died as she lived, indecently, and now
her two children are hanging round my neck."

What we are going to say may seem cynical, but we feel it our duty to
state that the granting of the heritage to Stepan and Anna did not by
any means impair Arina Petrovna's financial condition. On the contrary,
in reducing the number of shareholders it contributed indirectly to the
rounding out of the family estate. For Arina Petrovna was a woman of
strict principles, and once having "thrown them a bone," she considered
her obligations toward her unloved children completely and definitely
settled. In regard to her grandchildren it never entered her mind that
in due time she would have to part with something for them. All she
cared for was to draw all the income possible from the small estate of
her deceased daughter and deposit it in the Chamber of Trustees. "There
I am," she would say, "laying by money for the orphans. For feeding and
bringing them up I take nothing from them. For the bread they eat it is
God who will pay me."

As for the younger children, Porfiry and Pavel, they served in St.
Petersburg, the former in a civil capacity, the latter in the army.
Porfiry was married; Pavel was an old bachelor.

Porfiry Vladimirych was known in the family by three nicknames,
Yudushka (diminutive of Judas), Bloodsucker, and Goody-goody Boy, which
had been invented by Simple Simon. From his early childhood Porfiry
had been oddly intent upon currying favor with his "dear mamma" and
showed a tendency to play the sycophant. He would open the door of his
mother's room softly, creep noiselessly into a corner, and sit there,
as if entranced, with his eyes fixed on his mother while she wrote
or busied herself with accounts. Even in those days Arina Petrovna
regarded her son's efforts to insinuate himself into her good graces
with vague suspicion. His stare puzzled her. She could not decide what
his eyes expressed, whether venom or filial reverence. "I cannot make
out what is in his eyes," she sometimes argued with herself. "His
glance is like a noose which he is getting ready to throw. He might
look like that handing a person poison or enticing him into a pitfall."

In this connection she often recollected highly significant details
of the time she was carrying Porfisha. An old man called Porfisha the
Saint was at that time living in the manor. He had the reputation
of a seer, and Arina Petrovna turned to him whenever she wanted to
learn something about the future. She had asked him when she would be
delivered of the child and whether it would be a boy or a girl; but the
pious old man gave no direct answer. Instead he crowed three times like
a cock and then mumbled:

"Cockerel, cockerel, sharp claw! The cock crows and threatens the
brood-hen; the brood-hen--cluck! cluck!--but it will be too late!"

That was all he said. Three days later (the seer crowed three times!)
Arina Petrovna gave birth to a son ("cockerel! cockerel!") and named
him Porfiry in honor of the old soothsayer. The first half of the
prophecy had been fulfilled; but what could be the hidden meaning of
the mysterious words, "the brood-hen--cluck! cluck!--but it will be too
late?" Arina Petrovna often pondered over it, whenever her eyes fell on
Porfisha, who sat in his nook with his enigmatic gaze fixed on her.

Meanwhile Porfisha kept on staring, quiet and meek, staring so intently
that his wide-open, motionless eyes began to swim in tears, as if
he vaguely sensed the doubts that tormented his mother's soul, and
wished to behave so as to disarm her most persistent suspicion. At the
risk of annoying his mother, he constantly hovered about her, and the
expression in his eyes seemed to say: "Look at me! I conceal nothing
from you. I am all obedience and devotion, and, mind you, I am obedient
and devoted not only from fear but also from loyalty." And although an
inner voice constantly sounded warning that the young scoundrel was
dangerous in spite of his wheedling and fawning, her heart could not
resist such unremitting devotion and her hand involuntarily felt for
the best piece in the dish to bestow upon the affectionate child. And
yet the very sight of him at times awakened a vague fear of something
puzzling and eery.

The exact opposite of Porfiry was his brother, Pavel, the most perfect
embodiment of absolute passivity. As a boy he manifested no inclination
whatever for study, or games, or playing with other boys, but liked
to keep to himself. He would get into a corner, pout, and set to work
building air castles, dreaming that he had gorged himself with oatmeal
so that his legs had become thin and he had no lessons to learn, or
else that he was Davidka, the shepherd, with a growing lump on his
forehead, just like David's, and cracked a whip and had no lessons to
learn. Arina Petrovna would gaze at him for a long time, and then her
motherly feelings would well up:

"Why do you sit there like a mouse on groats?" she would scold. "Is the
poison working in you already? Why don't you come over to your mother
and say: 'Mamenka darling, hug me?'"

Pavel would leave his place of refuge and slowly approach his mother,
as if someone were pushing him from behind. "Mamenka darling," he would
repeat in a bass voice unnatural in a child, "hug me."

"Get out of my sight, you sneak. You think if you get into your corner
I don't understand. You are mistaken, my darling. I see through and
through you. Your plans and projects are as clear as if they were
spread on the palm of my hand."

And Pavel would just as slowly retrace his steps and bury himself again
in his corner.

Years passed by, and Pavel Vladimirych gradually developed that
apathetic, unaccountably gloomy character which often goes with
absolute passivity. He was, perhaps, good, but he had done nobody any
good; he was, perhaps, not without some intelligence, but he had not
achieved anything intelligent in his life. He was hospitable, but
people did not like to avail themselves of his hospitality. He spent
money readily, but nothing good or pleasant came of his lavishness to
anybody. He never harmed anybody, but that was not considered a merit.
He was honest, but no one had ever heard it said: "How honorably Pavel
Golovliov dealt in that affair!" It must be added that sometimes, not
often, he snarled at his mother, although he feared her like poison. I
repeat, he was an ill-tempered person, but back of his moroseness was
nothing but sheer inertness.

When the brothers reached maturity, the difference in their characters
was most conspicuous in their relation to their mother. Yudushka
punctually every week sent a lengthy epistle to "mother dear," in
which he informed her in the greatest detail of all the minutiæ of his
life in St. Petersburg, and assured her of his disinterested filial
devotion in the most carefully selected terms. As for Pavel, he wrote
rarely, laconically, and sometimes even enigmatically, pulling every
word out of himself with a pair of tongs, as it were.

"My adorable friend and dear mother," is what Porfiry Vladimirych
wrote, for instance, "I have received the money from the peasant
Yerofeyev, and I send you my most heartfelt thanks for forwarding the
sum, which, according to your gracious wish, dearest mamenka, is to be
spent for my maintenance. I also kiss your hands with sincere filial
devotion. What worries and grieves me is the thought that you are
straining your precious health all too much by your ceaseless efforts
to satisfy not only our needs, but our whims as well. I don't know what
brother thinks, but I----" etc., etc.

As for Pavel, what he wrote on a similar occasion was: "Dear mother, am
in receipt of the money, and, according to my calculations, you still
owe six and a half rubles, for which I beg to be graciously forgiven."

When Arina Petrovna wrote reprimanding the children for their
extravagance--she did so rather frequently, although there was no
serious necessity for it--Porfisha invariably received her rebuke
submissively and replied: "I am well aware, my dearest friend and
mother, that you bear the heaviest burdens for the sake of us, your
unworthy children. I know that often our behavior does not justify
your motherly solicitude, and what is worse, erring humans that we
are, we often forget it, for which I apologize most devotedly and
sincerely, in the hope that in the course of time I will overcome my
weakness and be more prudent in my expenditure of the funds that you
send, my adorable friend and mother, for my maintenance and for other
purposes." Pavel would answer back: "Dearest mother, though you have
not as yet paid any of my debts, I accept most submissively the name
of spendthrift which you choose to bestow upon me, whereof I beg most
sincerely to accept my assurance."

Even the replies that the brothers made to the letter announcing the
death of their sister, Anna Vladimirovna, were quite different from
each other. Porfiry Vladimirych said: "The news of the death of my dear
sister and good playmate, Anna Vladimirovna, has filled my heart with
sorrow, a sorrow aggravated by the thought that a new cross has been
given you to bear, dearest little mother, in the shape of two little
orphans. Is it not sufficient that you, common benefactress to us all,
deny yourself everything and, without sparing your health, concentrate
all your power on the sole object of assuring the family not only
the necessaries of life but also the luxuries? Believe me, it is a
wicked thing to do, but now and then, I confess, I cannot refrain from
grumbling. As far as I can see, the only solace for you, my dearest,
in this state of affairs is to remember as often as you can all that
Christ himself had to undergo." Pavel's reply ran: "The news of my
sister, who has fallen a victim, I have received. I hope, however, that
the Most High will rest her in His celestial tent, although this is
uncertain."

Arina Petrovna reading these letters would try to guess which of the
two sons would be her destruction. At times she felt certain the
danger was coming from Porfiry Vladimirych.

"Look how he wags his tongue, a regular fiend at writing!" she would
exclaim. "Simple Simon's nickname suits to a tee--Yudushka! Not a word
of truth in all this stuff about my burdens, my cross, and the rest.
Sheer lies! Not an ounce of feeling in his heart!"

At other times Pavel Vladimirych seemed to be her real enemy.

"A fool, and yet look how deftly he tries to make love to mother on
the sly. 'Whereof I beg most sincerely to accept my assurance!' Wait a
while! I'll teach you what 'accept assurances' means! I shall deal with
you as I did with Simple Simon, and you'll find out what I mean by your
'assurances'!"

In the end a truly tragical cry would burst from her lips. "And for
whom am I hoarding all this wealth? For whom am I gathering all this? I
deny myself sleep and food--for whom?"

Such were the domestic circumstances of the Golovliovs at the time that
the bailiff, Anton Vasilyev, reported to Arina Petrovna that Simple
Simon had dissipated "the bone" flung to him, which, in view of its
loss, might now be called with especial significance the "parental
blessing."

Arina Petrovna sat in her bedroom, all her senses dazed. A vague,
unaccountable feeling stirred within her, whether pity, born suddenly
and miraculously, for her hated offspring, who, after all, was her son,
or whether merely thwarted despotism, the most expert psychologist
would have been unable to decide. Her sensations were utterly confused
and succeeded each other with bewildering swiftness. Finally, out of
the welter of her thoughts there crystallized one emotion, the fear
that "the horrid creature" would again be hanging round her neck.

"Aniutka has forced her whelps on me, and now this dunderhead is coming
here," she pondered deeply.

Long she sat silent, her eyes fixed and intent. Dinner was brought in,
but she hardly touched it; a servant came and said the master wanted
brandy. Without looking up she threw him the keys of the store-room.
After the meal she ordered the bath to be prepared for her. Then she
went into the oratory, ordered all the image lamps to be lit, and
shut herself in. These were all clear signs that the mistress was
"in a temper," and so the house turned as quiet as a churchyard. The
chambermaids walked on tiptoe; Akulina, the housekeeper, ran back and
forth like a lunatic. The preparations for preserving had been set
for after dinner; the berries had been rinsed and made ready, but the
mistress gave no orders either to go ahead or to wait. The gardener,
Matvey, came to ask whether it was time to gather the peaches, but such
was his reception in the maids' room that he fled precipitately.

Prayers and bath over, Arina Petrovna felt almost reconciled with the
world and had the bailiff summoned again.

"Now tell me, what is the numskull doing?" she asked.

"Well, Moscow is big, it would take more than a year to walk through
it."

"But he needs something to fill his stomach with, doesn't he?"

"Our peasants feed him. He eats with one, gets money for tobacco from
another."

"And who permits them to give him anything?"

"Goodness me, madam! The people don't complain. They give alms to
strangers. Should they refuse a mite to their own master's son?"

"I'll teach them to give mites! I'll have the blockhead deported to
your estate, and the community will have to maintain him at its own
expense."

"As you command, madam."

"What? What did you say?"

"As you command, my lady. If you order it, we shall feed him."

"That's better. But talk sensibly."

A pause ensued. Then the bailiff, true to his nature and his nickname,
lost patience and began to shift from one leg to another, obviously
burning with the desire to unburden his mind of something.

"He's a clever one, though," he finally blurted out. "People say he
brought back a hundred rubles from the campaign. It isn't a fortune,
but still one can live on it for a time."

"Well?"

"He thought he might improve his situation and went in for a shady
business."

"Go on, go on, and don't give me any lies."

"He went to the German Club. He thought he would find a fool to beat at
cards, but instead he happened on a cunning hawk. He tried to get away,
but was held up in the lobby. Of course, he was plucked clean."

"I suppose he was roughly handled, too."

"Of course. The next morning he came to our man, Ivan Mikhailych, and
told the tale himself. It's queer, he was in high spirits and laughed
as if they had treated him like a lord."

"Things run from him like water off a duck's back. But I won't grieve
over it, provided he does not come within sight of me."

"But I believe he will."

"Nonsense, I will not allow him to cross my threshold."

"But I'm sure he will," insisted Anton Vasilyev. "He said so in plain
words to Ivan Mikhailych. 'Enough,' he says, 'I am going back to the
old woman to eat her dry crusts.' And, madam, to speak the truth, where
can he lay his head but here? He cannot keep on forever feeding on our
men in Moscow. And besides, he needs clothing and comforts."

That was exactly the thing Arina Petrovna dreaded. It was the very
essence of the obscure thought that so deeply alarmed her. "Yes, he
will turn up," she said to herself, "he has no other place to go to,
there's no doubt of it." He would always be there, within her sight,
that accursed, hated stranger of a son. What had been the good of
throwing his portion to him? She had thought that, having received "his
due," he would drop into eternity. And there he was, rising from the
dead. He would come, make insolent demands, and hang on like a leech,
shocking everybody by his beggarly appearance. And she would have to
meet his demands, because he was a brazen-faced bully, capable of any
violence. You cannot put such a man under restraint; he is capable of
parading in tatters before strangers, of the wildest debauchery, of
running away to the neighbors and telling them the ins and outs of the
family affairs. Should she have him deported to the Suzdal Monastery,
which was said to be a place for ridding parents in distress of the
sight of their refractory children? But the Lord knows whether that
fabulous institution existed at all. People said there were such
things as houses of correction. But how could one get an overgrown dolt
into one of them?

In short, Arina Petrovna was altogether upset by the thought of how the
arrival of Simple Simon was going to disturb her peaceful existence.

"I shall billet him upon you," was her threat to the bailiff. "Feed him
at your own expense."

"Why so, madam?"

"Because you stand there croaking: 'He's sure to come,'" she mimicked.
"Get out of my sight, you raven!"

Anton Vasilyev turned to go, but Arina Petrovna stopped him:

"Wait a minute. Is it true that he is starting out for Golovliovo?"

"I'm not in the habit of telling lies, madam. He said so plainly--'I am
going back to the old woman to eat her dry crusts.'"

"He'll soon find out what kind of crusts the old woman has prepared for
him."

"But, madam, he won't live with you long."

"Why not?"

"Well, madam, he coughs very badly and keeps on clutching the left side
of his chest. He won't live long."

"That kind generally lives very long. He'll outlive us all. The
coughing doesn't hurt him. Well, we shall see about it later. Leave me
now. I have several matters to attend to."

Arina Petrovna spent the whole evening pondering over this problem.
Finally she found it best to convoke the family council for the
purpose of deciding what was to be done with Simple Simon. Such
constitutionalism was not her habit. She made up her mind to digress
from the traditions of autocracy solely for the purpose of shielding
herself from public censure, and as she did not doubt the outcome of
the conference, she sat down with a light heart to write to Porfiry and
Pavel asking them to come to Golovliovo immediately.




CHAPTER III


Meanwhile, the cause of all this mess, Simple Simon, was on his way
to Golovliovo. In Moscow he engaged a seat in one of the so-called
"diligences," in which small merchants and peasant traders used to
travel, and which are still seen in some districts. The diligence
had the city of Vladimir as its point of destination, and Stepan
was enabled to travel in it through the liberality of the aforesaid
innkeeper Ivan Mikhailych, who also paid for his master's meals on the
journey.

"Listen," said Ivan Mikhailych, with the air of an accomplice. "Do
this, get off at the station and go straight up to your mother just as
you are."

"Yes, yes, yes," answered Stepan Vladimirych approvingly. "The house is
only about fifteen versts from there. I can walk it in no time. I shall
appear before her all dirty and dusty."

"When your mother sees you in that rig, perhaps she'll take pity on
you."

"She will, she will. Mother, after all, is a kindly old woman."

Stepan Golovliov was not quite forty, but he looked like fifty. Life
had so thoroughly worn him out that there was not a vestige of his
noble origin left, not a single trace of his university education nor
of the enlightening word of science which in days bygone had been
addressed to him, too. He was tall as a Maypole, racked by hunger,
unkempt, untidy, with a sunken chest and long bony arms. His bloated
face, his dishevelled hair, streaked with grey, his loud, hoarse voice,
his bulging, bloodshot eyes were unmistakable signs of heavy drinking
and a weather-beaten life. He wore an old, threadbare uniform, with the
galloons gone--they had been sold to a smelter--and a pair of reddish
boots, patched and sadly worn. Beneath his coat, when unbuttoned,
peeped a dirty shirt, as black as if it had been smeared with soot.
With the cynicism of a militiaman, he called it "a flea nest."

His glance was stealthy and gloomy, the expression not of inner
discontent, but rather of a vague anxiety which seemed to come from
an ever-present fear of death by starvation. He talked ceaselessly
and disconnectedly, passing without transition from one subject to
another. He spoke whether Ivan Mikhailych listened or dozed off under
the soporific of his garrulousness. He was dreadfully uncomfortable,
because there were four people in the diligence and he had to sit with
his legs bent, so that at the end of three or four versts he had an
intolerable pain in his knee-joints. Nevertheless the pain did not
prevent him from talking. Clouds of dust entered through the side
windows of the vehicle, at times flooded by a flaming, scorching sheet
of sunlight. But Stepan Golovliov kept on talking.

"Yes, brother," he held forth, "I have lived hard all my life. It is
high time to rest. I shan't be eating her out of house and home, shall
I? She has enough and to spare. What d'you think, Ivan Mikhailych?"

"Oh, your mother has plenty to eat."

"Yes, but not for me, you mean to say? Yes, friend, she has heaps of
money, but not a copper for me. And to think the hag has always hated
me. Why? But now I'll sing her a different song. I've made up my mind.
I'm desperate. If she tries to drive me out, I won't go. If she doesn't
give me food, I'll take it. I've served my country, brother. Now it's
everyone's duty to help me. There's only one thing I'm afraid of, that
she won't give me tobacco."

"Yes, you'll have to say good-by to tobacco."

"Then I'll put the screw on the bailiff. The devil can well afford to
give his master a present now and then."

"Oh, yes, he may do that, but what if your mother forbids him to?"

"Well, in that case I'll be done for. Tobacco is the only luxury that
has remained of my former style. When I had money I used to smoke not
less than a quarter of a pound of Zhukov's tobacco every day."

"I guess you'll have to do without brandy, too."

"Another calamity. Brandy does me a lot of good. It breaks up my
phlegm. When we were marching to Sebastopol, we had hardly reached
Serpukhov, when each man had already been given three gallons of
brandy."

"You must have lost your senses."

"I don't remember. We marched as far as Kharkov, but I'll be hanged
if I remember anything else. The only thing I can recall is that we
passed through villages and towns and that at Tula an _otkupshchik_
made a speech. He shed tears, the scoundrel did. Yes, our holy mother
Russia drank from the cup of sorrow in those days. _Otkupshchiki,_
contractors, receivers--it's a wonder God succeeded in saving the
country from them."

"Oh, your mother came in for some of the profits. In our village hardly
half of the soldiers returned home. A recruit's receipt is now given
for each man lost in the campaign, and the government rates such a
quittance at more than four hundred rubles."

"Yes, my mater is a cunning blade. She ought to be a minister of state
instead of housekeeper at Golovliovo. Let me tell you, she has been
unjust to me and she has insulted me, but I respect her. The main thing
is, she's clever as the devil. If not for her, where would we have been
now? We would have had nothing but Golovliovo with its one hundred and
one and a half souls. Just think what an enormous pile she has made."

"Well, your brothers will certainly be rich."

"Yes. But I'll have nothing, that's just as certain. Yes, friend, I've
gone to rack and ruin. But my brothers, they'll be rich, especially the
Bloodsucker. He can ensnare a person in no time, and it won't be long
before he'll undo her, too. He'll pump the estate and the money out of
her. I have an eye for these things. But Pavel, he's a fine chap. He
will send my tobacco on the sly. You'll see if he doesn't. As soon as I
reach Golovliovo, I'll send a note off to him: 'Dear brother, it's so
and so with me. Ease my soul.' Ah, if I were rich!"

"What would you do?"

"In the first place, I'd make you roll in wealth."

"Why me? First think of yourself. I'm contented, living as I do under
your mother's rule."

"Oh, no, brother, _attendez!_ I would make you the chief marshal of all
my estates. Yes, my dear friend, you have fed and warmed a soldier,
accept my thanks. If not for your generosity, I should now be footing
it all the way to the home of my fathers. And, of course, I would free
you on the spot and open up all my treasury to you--drink, eat and be
merry. What did you think I would do?"

"You'd better stop worrying about me, sir. What else would you do if
you were rich?"

"In the second place, I'd get a mistress at once. At Kursk I went to
mass once and saw one--a queen! She was very fidgety and restless."

"But maybe she would object to becoming your mistress."

"And how about hard cash? What's the filthy lucre for? If a hundred
thousand is not enough for her, she'll take two hundred thousand. When
I have money, no expense is too great for me, if it is a question of
getting a bit of pleasure out of life. I must confess that at the time
I let her know through our corporal that I would give her three rubles.
But the wench asked five."

"That was too much for you, of course!"

"Well, I can't tell. As I said, I was in a dream the whole time.
Maybe she came to me, but I forget. Those two months of marching have
gone completely out of my mind. No such thing has happened to you, I
suppose?"

Ivan Mikhailych was silent. Stepan Vladimirych looked at him
attentively and discovered that his fellow-traveller was sound asleep.

"Umph," he said. "He has nodded off, the sleepy-head. You have grown
fat, brother, on the tea and fare of your eating-house. I can't sleep,
not a wink. A good chance for a lark."

Golovliov looked around and saw that everybody was asleep. The merchant
at his side was constantly striking his head against a cross-beam, but
kept on sleeping. His face shone as if veneered, and flies swarmed
about his mouth. A splendid idea, Stepan thought, to cram all the flies
down the merchant's throat. His hand began to move toward the merchant,
but halfway he repented and gave up the idea. "No more pranks," he
said, "enough. Sleep, friends, and rest." Meanwhile--where had he
hidden the bottle? Here, the darling! "Let me see you. Lord, save Thy
creatures," he hummed, taking out a bottle from a bag fastened to the
side of the vehicle and applying it to his mouth. "Ah, that's better.
It warms your insides, you know. Shall I have some more? Well, no. The
station is about twenty versts from here. I'll have time to get as
drunk as a lord. But shan't I have just one drop more? The deuce take
it, the vodka. The bottle simply acts like a charm. It's wicked to
drink, but how can you help it, if it is the only way of getting some
sleep? I wish the vodka, the deuce take it, would do for me quick."

He gulped down some more vodka, returned the bottle to its place, and
began to fill his pipe.

"We are all right," he said, talking to himself. "First, we had a sip,
and here we are smoking. She won't let me have any tobacco, the old
hag, sure as fate she won't, the man is right. Will she give me food?
She may send me what is left over from her meals. Well, we, too, had
money, but now we have none. Such is life. To-day you eat and drink
your fill, you enjoy yourself and smoke a pipe,


         "'And to-morrow--where art thou, man?'


Still it would not be a bad thing to have a bite now. I drink like a
fish and I hardly ever have a square meal. Doctors say drinking does
you good only when followed by a hearty meal, as the Most Reverend
Smaragd said when we passed through Oboyan. Was it Oboyan? The deuce
knows, it may have been Kromy. But that's immaterial now. The main
question is, how to get something to eat. I recollect that my man put a
sausage and three rolls into the bag. Caviar is too expensive for the
rascal. Look at the fellow--sleeps like a log and sings through his
nose. I wouldn't be surprised if he were sitting on the bag."

He rummaged about in search of the bag, but could not find it.

"Ivan Mikhailych, Ivan Mikhailych," he shouted to the sleeping
innkeeper. The man woke up and for a while could not make out where he
was and how he happened to be sitting opposite his master.

"I was just beginning to nap," he said finally.

"Sleep, friend, sleep. I only want to know where the bag with the food
is."

"Are you hungry? But you would like a drink first, I suppose."

"Right. Where is the bottle?"

Stepan Vladimirych took a drink, and then attacked the sausage, which
happened to be as salty as salt itself and as hard as stone, so that he
had to use the point of his knife to pierce it.

"Some whitefish would taste good now," he remarked.

"Excuse me, sir, I clean forgot about the whitefish. All morning I kept
saying to my wife: 'Be sure to remind me of the whitefish.' I am very
sorry."

"Oh, it doesn't matter. The sausage is good enough for me. When we
were on the campaign, we ate worse things. Father used to tell that two
Englishmen made a bet. One of them was to eat a dead cat, and he ate
it."

"You don't say!"

"He did. And he was as sick as a dog afterwards. He cured himself with
rum. He guzzled two bottles as fast as he could, and that set him right
at once. Another Englishman made a bet that he would live a whole year
on nothing but sugar."

"Did he win?"

"No. He kicked the bucket two days before the end of the year. And how
about you, why don't you take a drink?"

"I never touch it."

"So you swill nothing but tea. No good, brother. That's why your belly
has grown so big. One must be careful with tea. A cup of tea must be
followed by a glass of vodka. Tea gathers phlegm, vodka breaks it up.
Isn't that so?"

"Well, I don't know. You are learned; you know better."

"True. On the campaign we had no time to bother with tea or coffee. But
vodka--that's a holy affair. You unscrew the flask, pour the vodka into
a cup, drink, and that's all. At that time we had to march so fast that
for ten days I went without washing."

"You certainly roughed it, sir."

"Yes, marching on the highroad is not a joke. Still, on our way forward
it was not so bad. People gave us money, and there was plenty to eat
and drink. But when we marched back there was no more fêting."

Golovliov gnawed at the sausage and finally chewed up a piece.

"It is very salty, this sausage is," he said. "But I'm not squeamish.
After all, mother won't feed me on tid-bits. A plate of cabbage soup
and some gruel--that's all she'll let me have."

"God is merciful. Maybe she'll give you pie on holidays."

"No, I imagine there'll be no tea, no tobacco, no vodka. People say she
has become fond of playing fool, so she may call me in to take a hand
at the game and give me some tea. As for the rest, there is no hope."

There was a four-hour rest to feed the horses. Golovliov had finished
the bottle and was tormented by hunger. The travellers entered the inn
and settled down to a hearty meal.

Stepan Vladimirych took a stroll in the court, paid a visit to the
backyard, the stables and the dovecote, and even tried to sleep.
Finally he came to the conclusion that the best thing for him to do
was to join his fellow-travellers in the inn. There the cabbage soup
was already steaming and on a wooden tray on the sideboard lay a great
chunk of beef, which Ivan Mikhailych was just then engaged in carving.
Golovliov seated himself a little way from the table, lighted his pipe,
and sat silent for quite a while pondering over the way in which he
could allay the pangs of hunger.

"I wish you a good appetite, gentlemen," he said finally, "the soup
seems to be good and rich."

"The soup is all right," answered Ivan Mikhailych. "Why don't you order
a portion for yourself?"

"Oh, it was only a remark on my part. I'm not hungry."

"Impossible. All you've eaten is a bit of sausage, and the damned
thing only teases one's appetite. Please eat something. I'll have a
separate table laid for you. My dear woman," he turned to the hostess,
"a place for the gentleman."

The passengers silently attacked their meal and now and then exchanged
meaningful looks. Golovliov felt his fellow-travellers suspected how
matters stood, although he had played master throughout the journey,
not without some arrogance, and had addressed the faithful innkeeper as
if he had merely entrusted him with his cash. His brows knitted, and
a thick cloud of smoke escaped from his mouth. In the depths of his
heart he felt he ought to refuse, but so imperative are the dictates
of hunger that he set upon the bowl of cabbage soup like a beast of
prey and emptied it in a trice. Along with satiety came his customary
self-assurance and, as if nothing were the matter, he said, turning to
Ivan Mikhailych:

"Well, my cashier, you will pay up for me, and I am off for the hayloft
to have a talk with Mr. Khrapovitzky."

He jogged over to the hayloft, and as his stomach was full he was soon
fast asleep. He woke up at five o'clock in the morning. Noticing that
the horses stood at their empty bins rubbing their noses against the
edges, he roused the driver. "He sleeps like a top, the rascal," he
shouted. "We're in a hurry, and he's having pleasant dreams."

Soon the travellers reached the station at which the road turned
off to Golovliovo. Here at last Stepan Vladimirych lost some of his
devil-may-care attitude and became crestfallen and taciturn. Ivan
Mikhailych tried to cheer him up and insisted that he part with his
pipe.

"You'd better throw the pipe into the nettles, sir, when you come to
the manor-house," he coaxed. "You will find it later on."

Finally the horses that were to take the innkeeper to the end of his
journey were ready, and the moment of parting came.

"Good-by, brother," said Golovliov in a tremulous voice, kissing Ivan
Mikhailych. "She'll plague the life out of me."

"The Lord is merciful. Keep up a stout heart."

"She'll eat me up alive," repeated Stepan Vladimirych, with such
conviction that the innkeeper involuntarily lowered his eyes.

With these words Golovliov turned sharply along the country road,
walking in a shuffle and leaning on a gnarled stick which he had cut
off a tree.

Ivan Mikhailych followed him with his eyes for a while, and then ran
after him.

"Listen, master," he said. "When I was cleaning your uniform a few
minutes ago, I saw three rubles in your side pocket. Please don't lose
them."

Stepan Vladimirych was visibly irresolute and could not make up his
mind how to act in this contingency. Finally, he stretched out his hand
to the peasant and said, with tears in his eyes:

"I understand--to buy tobacco for the old trooper? Thanks. But she'll
eat me up alive, friend. Sure as hell."

Golovliov found the country road again and several minutes later his
grey soldier's cap showed afar off, now vanishing, now appearing above
the young wood. It was early in the day. The morning mist, touched into
gold by the first rays of the sun, hovered above the country road. The
grass glistened with the dew, and the air was redolent of fir-trees,
mushrooms, and wild berries. The road meandered across a plain swarming
with birds.

Stepan Vladimirych, however, noticed nothing of the beauty about him.
All his frivolity had suddenly gone, and he walked as if to the Last
Judgment. One thought filled his mind to the exclusion of everything
else. In three or four hours he would have reached his goal. He
recalled his life at Golovliovo, and he felt as if the doors of a damp
cellar were opening to let him in, and no sooner would he penetrate
into the gloomy interior than the doors would close behind him and
everything would be over. Memories prophetic of what awaited him at
Golovliovo surged in his mind. There had been uncle Mikhail Petrovich,
popularly known as Mishka the Squabbler, one of the "horrid" members of
the family, whom grandfather Piotr Ivanych had exiled to Golovliovo,
where he had lived in the servants' quarters and eaten out of the
same dish with Trezorka, the house dog. There had been Aunt Vera
Mikhailovna, who had lived on the estate by her brother's favor and
died of "moderate living"; for Arina Petrovna had begrudged her every
mouthful at dinner and every billet of wood for the stove in her room.
And a similar fate awaited him.

He foresaw an endless succession of joyless days losing themselves in
a grey yawning abyss, and he involuntarily shut his eyes. Henceforth
he would have to be alone with a wicked old woman, half dead in the
stagnation of despotism. She would be the death of him before long, as
sure as fate. Not a soul to speak to, not a place to visit. She would
be everywhere, scornful, despotic, deadening. The thought of that
inevitable future made his heart so heavy that he stopped under a
tree in desperation, and struck his head against it several times. His
entire life with all its farcical strutting, idleness, and buffoonery
loomed up as if flooded with sudden light. Then he started on his way
again. He felt there was nothing else left for him. The least of men
can make some effort, can earn his bread. He alone was helpless. It
was a new thought. He had been accustomed in thinking of his future to
picture various prospects, but always prospects of wealth coupled with
idleness, never prospects of work. And now the time had come when he
had to pay for the wickedness and aimlessness of his existence. It was
a bitter settlement, summed up in the terrible phrase: "She will be the
end of me."

It was about nine o'clock in the morning when the white Golovliovo
belfry showed above the forest. The traveller's face grew pale, and his
hands began to tremble. He took off his cap and crossed himself. The
parable of the prodigal son and his return occurred to him, but he at
once rejected the idea as a bit of self-delusion.

Finally, he noticed the boundary-post standing by the wayside, and
presently he was treading the Golovliovo soil, the hateful soil that
had borne him, an unloved child, that had reared him, sent him, hated,
into the wide world, and was now receiving him, the unloved one, back
into its arms again. The sun was high in the heavens and was ruthlessly
scorching the boundless fields of Golovliovo. But Stepan Vladimirych
was growing paler and shivering with ague.

At length he reached the churchyard, and here his courage failed
utterly. The manor-house looked out from behind the trees as if nothing
unpleasant had ever happened there; yet the sight of it worked on him
like the vision of a Medusa head. His paternal abode seemed to be a
tomb. "A tomb, tomb, tomb," he repeated unconsciously. He had not the
courage to go straight to the house, but first called on the priest
and sent him to break the news of his arrival and inquire whether his
mother would receive him.

The priest's wife was very sympathetic and hastened to prepare an
omelette. The village children gathered about him and stared at the
master with wondering eyes. The peasants passing by lifted their hats
in silence and looked at him curiously. One old servant ran up with
the intention of kissing the master's hand. Everyone understood that a
wastrel was before them, an unloved son who had returned to his hated
home never to leave it except for the graveyard. At the thought of it
the people were overwhelmed with a mingled feeling of pity and dread.

At last the priest returned and announced that the lady of the manor
was ready to receive Stepan Vladimirych. Ten minutes later he was
standing in her presence. Arina Petrovna met him severely and solemnly,
and measured him icily from head to foot, but allowed herself no
useless reproaches. She received him, not in the living room, but on
the porch, and ordered the young master to be taken to his father
through another entrance. The old man was dozing in his bed, under a
white coverlet, in a white nightcap, all white like a corpse. When he
felt the presence of his son he woke up and began to laugh idiotically.

"Well, friend, so now you are under the hag's paw," he cried, while his
son kissed his hand. Then he crowed like a cock, burst out laughing
again, and repeated several times: "She'll eat him up! She'll eat him
up!" The phrase found echo in Stepan's soul.

His fears were justified. He was installed in a separate room in
the wing that also housed the counting-room. He was given homespun
underwear and an old discarded dressing-gown of his father's, which he
put on immediately. The doors of the burial vault had opened, let him
in, and closed again.

There now began a long succession of dull, ugly days, which Time's
grey, yawning abyss swallowed up, one after the other. Arina Petrovna
never received him, nor was he allowed to see his father. Three days
after his arrival, his mother informed him through Finogey Ipatych, the
bailiff, that he would receive board and clothing and also a pound of
Faler's tobacco monthly. Stepan Vladimirych listened to the bailiff,
and merely remarked:

"The hag! She's found out that Zhukov's tobacco costs two rubles, while
Faler's is only one ruble ninety kopeks a pound. So she pockets ten
kopeks a month."

The symptoms of the moral sobering that had appeared during the
hours of his approaching Golovliovo on the country road, vanished.
Frivolity reasserted its rights and was followed by an acceptance of
the conditions his mother imposed upon him. The disquieting thought of
the hopeless future, which had once pierced his mind, faded gradually
away and finally was no more. The day and the evil thereof, the petty
interests of existence in all its undisguised ugliness absorbed his
entire being. What part, indeed, could his intentions and opinions play
when the course of the rest of his life in all its details was laid out
in advance in Arina Petrovna's brain?

All day long he walked to and fro in his room, pipe in mouth, humming
bits of songs, passing unaccountably from church tunes to boisterous
airs. If the village clerk happened to be in the office, he went up to
him and engaged in a conversation, of which the chief topic was Arina
Petrovna's income.

"What does she do with all her wealth?" he would exclaim wonderingly,
having reached the sum of more than eighty thousand rubles. "My
brothers' allowances are rather poor; she herself lives shabbily, and
she feeds cured meats to father. She deposits the money in the bank,
that's what she does with it."

On one occasion Finogey Ipatych came to deliver the taxes he had
gathered, and the table was littered with paper money, and Stepan's
eyes glittered.

"Ah, what a heap of money!" he exclaimed. "And it all flows right down
her throat. As for giving her son some of these nice greenbacks, no,
she wouldn't do that. She wouldn't say: 'Here, my son, you who are
visited by sorrow, here is some cash for wine and tobacco.'"

This was usually followed by endless cynical talks about how he could
win over his mother's heart.

"In Moscow," he held forth, "I used to meet a man who knew a magic
word. If his mother refused to give him money he would utter 'the
word,' and she instantly got cramps in her hands and feet, in fact all
over."

"It must have been a spell, I suppose," remarked the village clerk.

"Well, whatever it may have been, it is gospel truth that there is such
a 'word.' Another man told me this: 'Take,' he says, 'a frog, and put
it into an anthill at midnight. By morning the ants will have gnawed
it clean, so that only its skeleton will be left. Take the skeleton,
and when it is in your pocket ask anything you wish of any woman, and
she won't refuse you."

"Well, that's easy."

"The trouble is, one must first damn oneself forever. If it weren't for
that, the old hag would be cringing before me."

Hours on end were spent in such talk, but no remedy was found. The
preliminary condition was that you either had to call a curse down on
yourself, or sell your soul to the devil. There was no help. Stepan
Vladimirych had to go on living under his mother's rule, the only
relief coming in the small voluntary contributions that he raised from
the village officials in the form of tobacco, tea, and sugar. His fare
consisted mainly of what remained from his mother's table, and as Arina
Petrovna was moderate to the point of avarice, his board was meagre,
to say the least; which was all the more painful because ever since
vodka had become unattainable, his appetite had grown considerably
keener. All day long hunger gnawed at him, and his sole preoccupation
was how to fill his stomach. He awaited the hour when his mother would
retire for a rest, then sneaked into the kitchen and looked into the
servants' quarters, snatching a bit here, a bit there. Sometimes he
would sit at his open window watching for passers-by. If one of the
serfs came along, he stopped him and levied toll in the form of an egg,
a curd-cake, and the like.

At the first meeting between mother and son, Arina Petrovna briefly
explained the whole program of his life.

"Live here," she said. "Here is a shelter for you in the
counting-house. Your meals you will get from my table. In other matters
you will have to put up with things as they are. There were never any
dainties in the house, and I shan't change my ways for your sake. Your
brothers will soon arrive. Whatever they will decide about you, I shall
carry out. I shall take no sin upon my soul. Let them dispose of your
fate."

He looked forward to his brothers' arrival with impatience. Not that he
reflected on the influence their arrival might have on his existence,
as he had evidently decided that the matter was not worth his thought.
The only thing that interested him was whether Pavel would bring him
tobacco and how much.

"Maybe he'll hand me over some coin, too," he mused. "Porfishka the
Bloodsucker, he won't, but Pavel ... I'll say to him: 'Brother, give a
soldier some cash for wine.' He'll give me some. He's sure to."

He did not notice the passage of the days, nor did he feel the weight
of his absolute idleness. The only time he was lonesome was in the
evenings, because the constable left at eight, and Arina Petrovna did
not allow her son any candles, on the ground that one can walk to and
fro without light. He soon became accustomed to the dark and even began
to love it, for in the darkness his imagination had free play and
carried him far, far away from the dreary place which was his home. In
those hours only one thing disturbed him. He had a dull pain in the
chest and his heart palpitated queerly, especially when he went to bed.
Sometimes he jumped out of bed and ran about the room, clutching the
left side of his chest.

"I wish I would die," he thought at such moments. "But, no, I shan't
die. But maybe I shall."

One morning when the village clerk with an air of mystery reported that
his brothers had arrived the night before, he shuddered and grew pale.
Something childlike suddenly awoke in him. He felt like running to the
house to see how his brothers were dressed, and find out what beds had
been prepared for them, and whether they had travelling cases like one
he had seen a militia captain carrying, and hear how they would talk
to mother, and spy out what would be served at dinner. In short, a
desire once more arose in him to return to life, which so persistently
rejected him, to fall at "dear mamma's" knees, and obtain her pardon.
Then perhaps he would eat the fatted calf and be merry.

The house was still quiet, but he had already visited, the kitchen and
found out that the following courses had been ordered for dinner: soup
with fresh cabbage, also some soup left over from yesterday, cured meat
served with cutlets of chopped meat for entree, fried mutton chops and
four snipes for the roast, and raspberry pie with cream for dessert.

"Yesterday's soup, cured meat, and the chops--that, brother, is for
me," he said to the cook. "There will be no pie for me, I guess."

"For your mother to say, sir."

"Ah, friend, there was a time when I ate snipe. Yes, I did. Once I made
a bet with Lieutenant Gremykin that I would eat fifteen snipes one
after the other, and what do you think? I won the bet. After that I
couldn't look at snipe for a month."

"But you won't refuse to have some now?"

"She wouldn't let me have any. I can't see, though, what makes her
so stingy. A snipe is a free bird. You don't have to feed it or look
after it. It is self-supporting. She doesn't buy snipes any more than
she buys sheep--and yet! The hag knows snipe tastes better than mutton.
That's why she won't let me have it. She'd rather let it rot than give
it to me. What's ordered for breakfast?"

"Liver, mushrooms in sour cream, and custard."

"Why not send me a custard? Do, brother."

"Well, I'll try hard. Let me tell you, sir. When the brothers sit down
to breakfast, you send the village clerk here. He'll fetch you a couple
of custards under his coat."

Next day Stepan Vladimirych waited the entire morning for his brothers,
but they did not arrive. Finally, about eleven o'clock, the village
clerk brought the two promised custards and reported that the brothers
had just finished breakfast and were closeted with Arina Petrovna in
her bedroom.




CHAPTER IV


Arina Petrovna received her sons solemnly, weighed down by grief. Two
maids supported her under the armpits. Her grey locks streamed out from
under her cap, her head drooped, and shook from side to side, and her
limbs seemed hardly able to support her. She always liked to play the
part of a venerable, careworn mother before her children, moving with
difficulty and getting her maids to assist her. Simple Simon called
such solemn receptions high mass, herself a bishop, and the maids,
Polka and Yulka, mace-bearers. As it was late at night the interview
was almost a silent one. Without saying a word she gave her sons her
hand to kiss; kissed them in turn, and made the sign of the cross over
them; and when Porfiry Vladimirych made it clear that he would gladly
spend the rest of the night with "mother dear," she merely waved her
hand and said:

"Come now. Take a rest, you must be tired after the journey. This is
not the time for discussion. We shall talk to-morrow."

Next morning the two sons went to kiss papa's hand, but papa refused
his hand. He lay on his bed with closed eyes, and when they entered he
cried out:

"Have you come to judge the toll-gatherer? Get out, Pharisees! Get
out!"

But in spite of this reception, Porfiry Vladimirych emerged from papa's
room agitated and with tears on his eyelids, while Pavel Vladimirych,
like "the heartless dolt" that he was, merely picked his nose.

"He is very weak, mother dear, very weak!" exclaimed Porfiry
Vladimirych, throwing himself on his mother's breast.

"Is it so bad?"

"Yes, very bad. He won't live much longer."

"Oh, well, it isn't as bad as that."

"No, dear, no. And although your life has never been too joyful, yet
as I think how Fate deals you so many blows at once, upon my word, I
wonder where you get the strength to bear up under it all."

"Well, my friend, the strength comes if such is the Lord's will. You
know what it says in the Scriptures: 'Bear one another's burdens.' It
seems that our Heavenly Father has chosen me to bear the burdens of my
family."

Arina Petrovna shut her eyes, so delightful was this vision of the
family finding their tables covered for them and of her toiling for
them and bearing their burdens.

"Yes, my friend," she said after a minute's pause, "it's a hard life I
lead in my old age. I have provided for my children, and it is time for
me to rest. It's no joke--four thousand souls! At my age to take care
of such an estate, to have an eye on everybody and everything, to run
back and forth! As for all those bailiffs and managers, they look you
straight in the eye, but, believe me, they are the most faithless kind.
And you," she interrupted herself, turning to Pavel, "what are you
digging in your nose for?"

"What have I to do with it?" snarled Pavel Vladimirych, disturbed in
the very midst of his absorbing occupation.

"What do you mean? After all, he's your father. You might find a word
of pity for him."

"Well--a father! A father like any other father. He has been that way
for ten years. You always make things unpleasant for me."

"Why in the world should I, my boy? I am your mother. Here is Porfisha.
He has found words of affection and pity for me as befits a good son,
but you don't even look at your mother properly. You look at her out of
the corner of your eye, as if she were not your mother, but your foe.
Please don't bite me."

"Well, what----"

"Stop! Hold your tongue for a minute. Let your mother say a word. Do
you remember the commandment, 'Honor thy father and thy mother, and all
will be well with thee?' Am I to understand that you don't wish to be
well?"

Pavel Vladimirych kept silence and looked at his mother in perplexity.

"You see, you're silenced," went on Arina Petrovna, "you are guilty.
But I shall let you alone. For the sake of this joyful meeting we shall
dispense with this talk. God, my child, sees everything. As for me, I
see you through and through, and I always have. Children, children, you
will remember your mother when she lies in her grave. You will remember
her, but it will be too late."

"Mamma dear!" interposed Porfiry Vladimirych. "Away with such black
thoughts, away with them!"

"We must all die," said Arina Petrovna sententiously. "These are not
black, but pious thoughts. I'm growing weak, children, oh, how weak!
Debility and ailments are the only things left of my former strength.
Even the maids have noticed it, and they don't care a rap for me. If I
say one word, they have ten in reply. I have only one threat, that I
shall complain to the young masters. That works sometimes."

Tea was served and then breakfast, during which Arina Petrovna
continued her complaining and self-pitying. After breakfast she invited
her sons to her bedroom.

When the door was locked, she went straight to the business for which
she had convoked the family council.

"Simple Simon is here," she began.

"We heard about it, mamma dear," said Porfiry Vladimirych; and it was
hard to say whether it was irony or the calm complacency of a man who
has just eaten a hearty meal that sounded in his voice.

"He has come here as if that were the proper thing to do. Whatever he
may have done, he seems to think the old mother will always have bread
for him. Think of all his hatred for me, of all the trouble his tricks
and buffoonery have caused me. And what have I not done to get him a
good berth? It all ran off like water from a duck's back. At last, I
made up my mind. Goodness, if he cannot take care of himself, am I to
ruin my life on account of the big lout? I'll give him a piece of the
property, I decided. Perhaps, I thought, once an independent proprietor
he'll sober down. No sooner said than done. I myself found a house
for him and paid out twelve thousand silver rubles for it with my own
hands. And what's the upshot? After less than three years he's hanging
round my neck again. How long am I to stand such insults?"

Porfisha lifted up his eyes and shook his head sorrowfully, as if to
say, "Fine doings. Why disturb mother dear so ruthlessly? Why not
live peacefully and quietly? Then dear mamma would not be angry. Fine
doings." But Porfisha's gestures did not please Arina Petrovna, who
objected to any interruption to the course of her thoughts.

"Wait a minute," she said, "don't shake your head. Listen first. Think
of my feelings when I learned that he had thrown away his parental
blessing like a gnawed bone into a cesspool. Think how he outraged me,
me, who for years refused myself sleep and food. He has done to his
patrimony what one would do to a bauble bought at a fair."

"Oh, mother dear, what a shame, what a shame!" began Porfiry
Vladimirych, but Arina Petrovna stopped him again.

"Wait a minute. Let me have your opinion when I order you to. If at
least the scoundrel had come to me in time and said: 'I am guilty,
dear mamma, I couldn't restrain myself,' I might have bought the house
back for a song. The unworthy son did not know how to make use of the
property. Perhaps the worthier children would. The house easily brought
in fifteen per cent. income yearly. Maybe I would have thrown him out
another thousand rubles in his distress. But instead, he disposed of
the property without so much as saying a word to me. With my own hands,
I paid out twelve thousand rubles for the house, and it was sold at
auction for eight thousand rubles!"

"The main thing, dear mamma, is that he has dealt so basely with the
parental blessing," Porfiry interjected hastily, as if afraid of being
stopped again.

"Yes, that's so, too. My money does not come lightly. I have earned it
with the sweat of my brow. When I married your father, all he owned
was the estate of Golovliovo with one hundred and one souls, and a few
more souls scattered in distant estates, a hundred and fifty in all.
As for me, I had nothing at all. Now look what an estate I have built
up on that foundation. There are four thousand souls, not a single one
less. I can't take them into the grave with me. Do you think it was an
easy task to scrape four thousand souls together? No, dear child, not
easy, far from easy. I spent many a sleepless night trying to work out
a good business scheme, so that no one should smell it out and stand in
my way. And what have I not endured in my business travels? I have had
plenty of hard road and bad weather and slippery ice. It is only lately
that I allow myself the luxury of a coach. In former times I rode in a
plain two-horse peasant's cart with a cover put on extra for me. It was
in nothing but a cart that I used to go to Moscow. And the filth and
stench I had to put up with in the Moscow inns! I begrudged myself the
dime for the cabby, and I walked all the way from Rogozhskaya Street
to Solyanka. The house-porter would say to me wonderingly: "Mistress,
they say you are young and well-to-do, why do you work so hard?" But I
was silent and patient. At first all I had at my disposal were thirty
thousand rubles in bank notes. I sold your father's remote estates with
their one hundred souls, and with what I realized from the sale I set
out to buy a property with a thousand souls. I had a mass said at the
Iverska Church and went to Solyanka to try my luck. What do you think
happened? The Holy Virgin must have seen my bitter tears. She helped
me buy the estate. It was like a miracle. The instant I bid thirty
thousand rubles the auction came to an end. There had been a lot of
noise and excitement, but then the people stopped bidding, and it was
as quiet as could be. The auctioneer got up and congratulated me. I was
dumfounded. Ivan Nikolaich, the lawyer, came over to me and said: 'Let
me congratulate you, madam, on your purchase.' But I stood there stiff
as a post. How great is God's mercy! Think of it, if in my confusion
someone had called out just for spite, 'I bid thirty-five thousand,' I
should certainly have offered every bit of forty thousand. And where
would I have gotten the money from?"

Many a time before had Arina Petrovna regaled her children with the
epical beginnings of her career of acquisition. It had never lost
the charm of novelty for them. Porfiry Vladimirych listened smiling,
sighing, turning up his eye-balls, lowering them, to the tune of the
rapid changes through which the tale passed. As for Pavel Vladimirych,
he sat with wide-open eyes, like a child, listening to a familiar, yet
ever-fascinating fairy tale.

"Do you think your mother built up her fortune without trouble?" went
on Arina Petrovna. "It takes trouble even to make a pimple on your
nose. After the first purchase I was laid up with fever for six weeks.
So judge for yourselves how it must make my heart ache to see my
hard-earned money, money I went through torments to get, you may say,
thrown out into the gutter for no earthly reason."

There was a minute's pause. Porfiry Vladimirych was ready to rend his
garments, but refrained, fearing there would be no one in the village
to mend them. Pavel Vladimirych, as soon as the fairy tale was over,
fell back into his wonted apathy, and his face resumed its customary
dull expression.

"That is why I asked you to come here," began Arina Petrovna anew. "Now
judge us, me and the villain. Whatever you decide will be done. If you
condemn him, he will be guilty. If you condemn me, I shall be guilty.
Only I shall not allow the rascal to get the better of me," she added,
quite unexpectedly.

Porfiry Vladimirych felt his turn had come, and he prepared to hold
forth, but approached the subject in a roundabout way.

"If you will permit me, dearest mother, to express my opinion," he
said, "here it is in two words: children must obey their parents,
blindly do their bidding, cherish them in their old age. That's all!
What are children, dear mother? Children are loving creatures who owe
their parents everything, from their persons to the last rag they
possess. Therefore, parents may judge children, while children may
never judge parents. Children are in duty bound to respect, not to
judge. You say: 'Judge us.' That is magnanimous of you, dear mother,
_mag_nificent! But how can we think about it without fear, we whom from
the first day of our birth you have been clothing with kindness from
head to foot? Say what you may, it would not be judgment but blasphemy.
It would be such blasphemy, such blasphemy----"

"Stop, wait a minute. If you say you cannot sit in judgment on me,
acquit me and condemn _him,_" Arina Petrovna interrupted. She was
listening and trying to search his meaning, but could not make out what
new plot was back of the Bloodsucker's mind.

"No, mother dear, even that I cannot do, or rather I don't dare to. I
have no right to. I can neither acquit nor condemn. I simply cannot
judge. You are the mother; you alone know how to deal with us children.
You have the right to reward us if we deserve it, and chastise us if we
are guilty. Our duty is not to criticise, but to obey. And if at the
moment of parental wrath you exceed the measure of justice, even then
we dare not grumble, for the ways of Providence are hidden from us. Who
knows, perhaps it was necessary. Our brother Stepan has acted basely,
unspeakably, but you alone can determine the degree of punishment he
deserves."

"Then you refuse to help me? You would have me get out of this affair
as best I can?"

"Oh, dearest, dearest, how you misunderstood me! Goodness, goodness! I
said, that however you might be pleased to dispose of brother Stepan's
fate, so shall it be, and you--what horrible thoughts you ascribe to
me."

"All right. And you?" she turned to Pavel Vladimirych.

"Do you want my opinion? But what's my opinion to you?" said he, as if
only half-awake. However, he braced himself unexpectedly and went on:
"Of course, he's guilty. Have him torn to pieces--ground to dust in a
mortar--it's settled in advance. What am I in this?"

Having mumbled these incoherent words, he stopped and stared at his
mother, his mouth wide open, as if not trusting his own ears.

"Well, my dear, I shall speak to you later," Arina Petrovna cut him off
coldly. "I see that you are anxious to tread in Stiopka's tracks. Take
care, my child. You will repent, but it will be too late."

"Why, what's the matter? I'm not saying anything. I say, just as you
please. What is there disrespectful in that?" said Pavel Vladimirych,
faintly.

"I'll talk with you later on, my boy, later on. You think because you
are an army officer, you can run wild. You are greatly mistaken. Then
neither of you wants to sit in judgment?"

"I, dearest mother----"

"What am I in this?" said Pavel Vladimirych. "I don't care. Have him
torn to pieces."

"Hold your tongue, for Christ's sake, you wicked man!" Arina Petrovna
felt she was fully entitled to call her son "scoundrel," but refrained
in deference to the joyous meeting. "Well, if you refuse to judge him I
shall. Here is my verdict. I shall try to treat him kindly once more. I
shall hand over to him the little Vologda village, have a cottage built
there, and let him live there and be fed by the peasants."

Although Porfiry Vladimirych had refused to sit in judgment on his
brother, his mother's generosity was so amazing that he felt he simply
had to point out the dangerous consequences of her project.

"Dearest mamma," he exclaimed, "you are more than magnanimous. You are
confronted by a deed--well, the vilest, meanest deed--and then you
forget and pardon. _Mag_nificent! But forgive me, I am afraid for you,
dearest. Think what you will of me, but if I were you, I wouldn't do
it."

"Why not?"

"I don't know. Perhaps I lack your magnanimity, that motherly feeling
of yours. But one thought comes back to me all the while--what if
brother Stepan does the same with his second legacy as he did with his
first?"

Arina Petrovna had already thought of that, yet in the back of her mind
was another consideration.

"The Vologda estate is father's property, it belongs to the patrimony,"
she said through her teeth. "Sooner or later a portion of the patrimony
will have to be doled out to him."

"I understand that very well, mother dear."

"Then you also understand that on giving him the Vologda village we can
make him sign a document to the effect that he has received his full
share and that he renounces all further inheritance claims."

"I understand that too, dearest mother. Your excessive kindness caused
you to commit a grave mistake. At the time you bought him the house you
ought to have made him give you such a document then."

"Yes, that was a blunder."

"At that time, in his joy, he would have signed any document. But you,
dearest, in the kindness of your heart--goodness, what a mistake! What
a mistake!"

"Don't talk of it any more. Why didn't you speak up before it was too
late? Now you are ready to blame everything on your mother, but when it
comes to business, you are not there. However, it isn't the document
I have in mind. I can make him sign it even now. Papa, I suppose,
isn't going to die at once. Until his death the blockhead must live on
something. In case he refuses to sign, we can chase him out and bid him
wait for papa's death. No, what I want to know is, do you dislike my
idea of giving him the Vologda estate?"

"He will squander away the village, darling, as he did the house."

"If he does, let him blame himself."

"He'll come back to you, again, to no one else."

"Oh, no, I won't stand for it. I won't let him come near my threshold.
There won't be a drink of water for him in my house. And people won't
condemn me for it, nor will God punish me. To squander away first a
house, then an estate! Am I his slave? Is he the only one I have to
provide for? Have I not other children?"

"Still, it is to you that he will come. Isn't he brazen-faced enough to
do that, darling mamma?"

"I tell you, I won't let him come near my threshold. Why do you sit
there croaking, 'he'll come, he'll come?' I won't let him in."

Arina Petrovna grew silent and fixed her gaze on the window. She
herself vaguely realized that the Vologda estate would only temporarily
free her from "the horrid creature," that in the end he would dispose
of it, too, and would return to her again, and that as a mother she
could not refuse him a corner in her house. But the thought that the
odious fellow would always be with her, that even though locked up in
the counting-house he would be preying on her imagination like a spook,
was so appalling that she shuddered involuntarily.

"Not for the world!" she exclaimed, striking the table with her fist
and leaping to her feet.

Meanwhile, Porfiry Vladimirych kept on staring at "mother dear" and
shaking his head rhythmically in token of condolence.

"I see you are angry, dearest mamma," he said at last in a tone so
sugared that he seemed to be getting ready to tickle Arina Petrovna.

"What would you have me do? Dance a jig?"

"Excuse me, darling, but what do the Scriptures say about patience?
'In patience,' it says, 'possess ye your souls,' 'In patience'--that's
the word. Do you think God does not see? He sees everything, mother
dear. We perhaps don't suspect anything, we sit here proposing this and
planning that, while He may already have disposed. Oh, dearest mamma,
how unjust you are to me."

But Arina Petrovna was fully aware that the Bloodsucker was throwing a
snare, and she flew into a rage.

"Are you making sport of me?" she shouted. "I am discussing business,
and he's trying to hoax me. Don't pull the wool over my eyes. Speak
plainly. Do you want him to remain at Golovliovo, hanging around his
mother's neck?"

"Just so, dearest mother, if you please. Let him be where he is and
make him sign a paper about the heritage."

"So, so. I knew that was what you would advise. All right. God alone
knows how it will pain me always to be having that creature around.
However, it seems nobody will take pity on me. When I was young I bore
my cross. Shall I refuse it in my old age? But there is still another
point. While papa and I are alive, _he'll_ live at Golovliovo, and we
won't let him starve. But how about afterwards?"

"Dearest mother! Darling! Why such melancholy thoughts?" cried the
Bloodsucker.

"Melancholy or not, still one has to provide ahead. We aren't babies.
When we die, what will become of him?"

"Dearest mother! Can't you count on us, your children? Have we not been
properly brought up by you?"

Porfiry Vladimirych flashed on her one of those puzzling glances which
had always made her uneasy, and went on:

"The poor man, dear mamma, I shall help with greater joy than the rich.
The rich man, Christ be with him, the rich man has enough of his own.
But the poor man--you know what Christ said of the poor."

Porfiry Vladimirych got up and kissed his mother's hand.

"Dearest mamma, allow me to present my brother with two pounds of
tobacco," he said entreatingly.

Arina Petrovna did not answer. She looked at him and reflected: "Is he
really such a Bloodsucker that he would turn his own brother out on the
streets?"

"Well, do as you please. Let him live at Golovliovo," she said finally,
turning to Porfiry. "You have trapped me. You started with 'just
as you please, dearest mamma,' and finished by dancing me on your
wire. But let me tell you this, I hate him and he has disgraced and
pestered me all his life, he has even dishonored my motherly blessing.
Nevertheless, if you turn him out into the streets or make a beggar of
him, you shall not have my blessing. No, no, no. Now you two go to him.
The idiot is wearing out his silly eyes looking for you."

The sons left. Arina Petrovna rose and watched them stride over the
front yard to the counting-house without exchanging a word. Porfiry was
constantly taking off his cap and crossing himself, now at the sight
of the church, which shimmered afar off, now before the chapel, now
before the wooden post to which a charity box was attached. As for
Pavel, he seemed unable to take his eyes off his boot tips shining in
the sunlight.

"For whom have I been accumulating riches? Refused myself sleep and
food--for whom?" she cried bitterly.




CHAPTER V


The brothers departed, and the manor-house of Golovliovo was deserted.
With renewed energy, Arina Petrovna took up her work again. The
clatter of the knives in the kitchen ceased, but activities in office,
storehouses, cellars, were redoubled. Summer, the great provider,
was nearly over; preserving, canning, pickling, storing were in full
swing. Winter provisions flowed in from all quarters, dried mushrooms,
berries, eggs, vegetables. This requisition in kind imposed upon the
peasant women came in wagons from all the various family estates.
Everything was measured and added to the stores of former years. Not in
vain had the lady of Golovliovo had a long row of cellars, storehouses
and granaries built. They were full to the brim. Quite a good deal of
damaged material was along with the rest and smelt foully. At the end
of summer the stuff was all sorted and what was suspicious was sent to
the servants' quarters.

"The pickles are still in good condition, only the skin is coming off
in some places, and they smell a little. Well, let the servants enjoy a
dainty bit," Arina Petrovna would say, pointing out the barrels to be
put aside.

Stepan Vladimirych adapted himself admirably to his new condition. At
times he felt a strong craving to get drunk as a piper. He had money
for the purpose, as we shall see later. But he restrained himself
stoically, as if considering that the time had not yet arrived. He
was always busy now, for he took a lively part in the provisioning,
rejoicing in its successes and regretting its failures in a wholly
disinterested manner. In a sort of ecstasy, hatless, clad in his
dressing-gown, he scurried from the office to the cellars, hiding from
his mother behind trees and various small buildings that crowded the
court-yard. Arina Petrovna noticed him in this garb many times, and
felt an itching in her motherly heart to give Simple Simon a severe
scolding, but on second thought she left him alone in his escapades.
In the cellars Stepan Vladimirych with feverish impatience watched how
the carts were unloaded, how jars, barrels and tubs were brought in
from the estate, and everything was assorted and finally sent off into
the yawning abyss of cellars and storehouses. He felt satisfied in most
instances.

"To-day two wagons of mushrooms came from Dubrovino. Ripping fine
mushrooms, brother," he informed the village clerk rapturously. "And we
were afraid we should have to get along without mushrooms this winter.
Bravo, Dubrovino fellow, much obliged! Fine fellows they are! They have
helped us out!"

On another occasion, he said:

"To-day mother gave an order to catch some carps in the pond. You ought
to see them! Some three feet long! It looks as if we were going to live
on carp the whole week."

Sometimes he was worried.

"The cucumbers failed completely this season. There is not a good one
among them--all crooked and spotty. They're just good enough to be
sent to the servants' quarters. We shall have to use last year's."

He did not approve of Arina Petrovna's management. "Goodness, what
heaps of provisions she allows to rot! Just now she's having cured
meat, pickles, fish and what not hauled to the servants' quarters.
Is that what you call good business? Is that the right way of doing
things, I'd like to know. There are lots of fresh provisions, but she
will not touch them until the old rot is eaten up."

The confidence entertained by Arina Petrovna that it would be easy to
induce Simple Simon to sign any paper proved wholly justified. Not only
did he not object to signing all the papers that his mother sent him,
but the same evening he even boasted about it to the village clerk.

"Well, brother, to-day I have been doing nothing but signing papers. I
have renounced all my rights of inheritance. I am cleaned out. Not a
cent to my name, and none coming. I have set the old woman at ease."

He parted with his brothers peaceably, and was in raptures over his
big supply of tobacco. Of course, he couldn't help calling Porfisha
Bloodsucker and Yudushka, but the disparaging terms were drowned in a
deluge of incoherent, meaningless chatter.

In taking leave the brothers became liberal and even gave him money.
Porfiry Vladimirych accompanied his gift with the following speech:

"This money will be handy in case you need oil for the ikon lamp or if
you want to set up a candle in the church. That's how it is, brother.
Be good and gentle, and our dear mother will be satisfied. You will
have your comforts, and all of us will be merry and happy. Our mother
is a kindly soul, you know."

"There is no denying that she is kindly," agreed Stepan Vladimirych.
"Only she feeds me on rotten pickled meat."

"Whose fault is it? Who treated mother's blessing with disrespect? It
is your own fault that you lost your estate. What a nice little estate
it was. If you only knew how to behave yourself and live modestly, you
would now be eating beef and veal and even ordering sauce with them.
You would have plenty of everything, potatoes, cabbage, peas. Am I not
right, brother?"

Had Arina Petrovna heard this harangue, it would have made her
impatient, and she would have let the orator know that it did. But
Simple Simon was fortunate that his mind could not, as it were, retain
other people's words, and not a syllable of Yudushka's speech reached
its destination.

So Stepan Vladimirych parted with his brothers amicably. And there was
some vanity in his showing Yakov, the village clerk, two twenty-five
ruble notes that had been left in his hands after the brothers had
departed.

"This will last me a long time," he said. "We've got tobacco. We're
well provided with tea and sugar. Nothing is missing but vodka.
However, should we want vodka, we'll get vodka, too. Nevertheless, I
will restrain myself for a little while yet. I am too busy now, I have
to keep an eye on the cellars. Weaken your watch for a single instant,
and everything will be pillaged. _She_ saw me, brother, she saw me, the
hag, once, when I was gliding by along the kitchen wall. She stood at
the window looking at me and I bet she thought: 'Well, well, so that's
why I miss so many cucumbers.'"

Then came October. It began to rain, the road turned black, into
an impassable stream of mud. Stepan Vladimirych could not go out
because his only garments were his father's old dressing-gown and
worn slippers. He sat at his window watching the tiny, humble village
drowned in mud. There, in the gray autumn mist, men were moving about
briskly, looking like black dots.

The heavy summer work was still in full swing, but now its setting was
no longer the jubilant, sun-flooded hues of summer, but the endless
autumn twilight. The corn kilns emitted clouds of smoke far into the
night. The melancholy clatter of the flails resounded in the air.
Thrashing was also going on in the manorial barns, and in the office
they said it would hardly be possible to get through with the whole
mass of grain before Shrovetide. Everything looked gloomy and drowsy,
everything spoke of oppressiveness. The doors of the counting-house
were no longer ajar, and inside the air was filled with a bluish fog
rising from the wet fur cloaks.

It is difficult to say what impression this spectacle of a toilsome,
rural autumn made on Stepan's mind, and whether he was at all aware of
the labors going on in the incessant rain out in the boggy fields. One
thing is certain, that the drab, tearful autumn sky oppressed him. It
seemed to hang close down over his head and threaten to drown him in a
deluge of mud. All he had to do was to look out through the window and
watch the heavy masses of clouds. From the dawn on they covered the
heavens, hanging motionless as if spellbound. Even after several hours
they were still in the same place, without the slightest apparent
change in hue or outline. In the morning, one cloud, heavy and black,
had a ragged shape resembling a priest in a cassock with outstretched
arms. It was clearly outlined on the pallid background of the upper
clouds, and at noon it still had the identically same form. The right
hand, it is true, had become shorter, and the left was stretched out in
an ugly fashion and was sending down such a flood of rain that against
the dark background of the sky there formed a streak still darker,
almost black. Another huge shaggy lump of a cloud a little farther up
hung over the village, threatening to smother it, you would think.
Hours later it was still hanging in the same place, the same shaggy
monster with outstretched paws, as though ready to pounce upon the
earth. Clouds, clouds, nothing but clouds! Around five o'clock a change
took place, darkness gradually enveloped heaven and earth, and soon
the clouds disappeared completely, vanishing beneath a black shroud.
They were the first to go, next followed the forest and the village,
then the church, the chapel, the hamlet, the orchard, and finally the
manor-house, several yards away.

It has already become quite dark in the room, and there is no light.
So what can one do but pace up and down? A morbid languor seizes
Stepan's brain; his entire body, despite its idleness, is filled
with an incomprehensible, indescribable feeling of fatigue. Just one
thought moves in him and sucks at him--the grave, the grave, the
grave! Those black dots which have recently been moving busily on the
dark background of the boggy soil and near the village barns are not
oppressed by that thought. They will not perish under the burden of
despondency and weariness. If they do not challenge the sky directly,
at least they struggle, build, make enclosures, repair their houses.
Stepan did not question whether all this bustle was worth the while,
but he was aware that even the nameless dots were incomparably superior
to him, that he couldn't even struggle, that he had nothing to build,
nothing to repair.

He spent the evenings in the counting-house, because Arina Petrovna
refused to supply him with candles. Several times, through the
bailiff, he asked for boots and a fur coat, and was invariably told
that boots were not kept in store for him, but that he would be given
a pair of felt shoes as soon as the cold spells arrived. Evidently,
Arina Petrovna intended to fulfill her program literally, that was,
to sustain her son in such a manner as barely to keep him from
starvation. At first he abused his mother, but then behaved as though
he had forgotten all about her. Even the light of the candles in the
counting-room annoyed him, and he began to lock himself in his room
and remain all alone in the darkness. There was just a single refuge
left, one that he still dreaded but that attracted him irresistibly,
to get drunk and forget deeply, irrevocably, to plunge into the sea
of oblivion and never emerge again. Everything drove him to it, the
debauchery of the past, the enforced idleness of the present, his
ailing body with the torturing cough, the unbearable asthma, and the
constantly increasing pains in his heart. At last the hour came.

"You must fetch me a bottle of vodka for to-night," he said once to the
village clerk in a voice boding little good.

That one bottle of vodka was followed by a long succession of other
bottles. After that he got drunk every night. At nine o'clock, when
the light in the counting-house had been put out and the servants had
retired to their quarters, he placed a bottle of vodka and a slice of
rye bread thickly strewn over with salt on the table. He did not attack
the liquor at once, but approached it stealthily as it were. Everybody
on the place was fast asleep. The mice scudded behind the wall paper
and the clock in the counting-house ticked ominously. Stepan threw off
his dressing-gown, and began to stride back and forth in the overheated
room, with nothing but a shirt on his back. At times he stopped, went
over to the table, searched for the bottle in the darkness, then
resumed his restless pacing. The first tumblers he emptied in a sort of
passion, voluptuously swallowing down the burning liquid. But little by
little his heart began to beat faster, the blood mounted to his head,
and he mumbled incoherently. His feeble imagination tried to create
images, his blunted memory attempted to pierce the mists of the past.
But the images were broken and meaningless, and the past remained dim
and formless. There was no recollection, either bitter or sweet, as
though an impervious wall separated the past from the present.

He was completely filled by the present, which seemed like a prison
cell, in which he would be locked up for eternity without consciousness
of time or space. His mind took in nothing but the room, the stove,
the three windows in the front wall, the squeaking wooden bed with its
mattress worn thin, and the table with the bottle.

As the contents of the bottle decreased and his head grew hotter and
hotter, even this boresome sense of the present gradually faded. His
mumblings, to which at first there had been a bit of form, now lost
all meaning. His pupils dilated in the attempt to pierce the engulfing
darkness. Finally, the darkness itself vanished and its place was taken
by a phosphorescent sheen.

It was an endless void, with not a color or a sound, but radiant with
sinister splendor. The void followed him in his wanderings, trod on
his heels at every step. There were no walls, no windows, nothing
but this endless vacant splendor. Dread fell on him, coupled with an
irresistible impulse to annihilate even the void. A few more efforts,
and his goal was reached. His stumbling legs carried a benumbed body,
his chest gave forth not a murmur but an inarticulate cry, his very
existence seemingly ceased. A strange stupor took possession of him, in
which conscious life had no part, which plumbed the depths of a life
independent of and beyond the boundaries of normal existence. Groans
burst from his chest without in the least disturbing his sleep. His
organic disease continued its destructive work, without apparently
causing him any physical pain.

He rose early in the morning, filled with agonizing longing, disgust
and hatred. It was an inarticulate hatred, without either cause
or definite object. His bloodshot eyes rolled restlessly, his
limbs trembled, his heart worked with sickening irregularity, now
stopping altogether, now hammering with such violence that his hand
involuntarily clutched at his breast. Not a thought, not a desire!
Objects of immediate perception filled his mind so completely that it
was closed to other impressions.

He filled his pipe and lighted it. It dropped from his nerveless
fingers. His tongue mumbled something, but seemingly by force of habit
only. He sat in silence and stared at one point. He felt an intense
craving to raise the temperature of his body so that he would feel
the presence of life for at least a short while. But he had no way of
getting vodka in the daytime. He had to wait for night to attain those
blissful moments when the ground vanished from under his feet and the
four odious prison walls were replaced by a shoreless, shining void.

Arina Petrovna had not the slightest idea of how Simple Simon spent his
time. The casual glimmer of feeling which had appeared for a moment
during the conversation with the Bloodsucker vanished so precipitately
that she was unconscious of its ever having appeared. It was not a
premeditated course of action on her part, but sheer oblivion. She
completely forgot that in the counting-house, in close proximity to
her, there lived a human being bound to her by ties of blood, who
perhaps was pining away in the yearning for life. Once having cut out
a certain channel in life and filling it almost mechanically with
the same things, she thought others ought to do likewise, it never
occurring to her that the very character of the things life holds vary
among people according to a multitude of circumstances in different
combinations, and that these things may be dear to some, herself among
these some, while they are an abomination and a tyranny to others.

Therefore when the bailiff repeatedly reported that "something was the
matter" with Stepan Vladimirych, the words slipped by her ears, leaving
no impression on her mind. Indeed, she scarcely ever even replied, and
when she did, then only with the stereotyped reply:

"Oh, well, he'll be all right. I bet he'll outlive you and me. Nothing
is the matter with the shambling colt. Coughing, you say! Well, some
people cough thirty years on end and they don't feel it."

Nevertheless, one morning when they came and told her that Stepan
Vladimirych had disappeared during the night, she was aroused.
Immediately she sent out all the available men in search of him, and
herself started an investigation beginning with the room in which
Stepan had lived. The first thing that struck her was a bottle standing
on the table, with a bit of vodka in it.

"What's this?" she asked, pretending not to understand.

"Why, I guess--the young master indulged," stammered the bailiff.

"Who supplied----?" she began, flaring up. But she restrained herself,
and continued her investigation, hiding her rage.

The room was so filthy that even she, who did not know and did not
recognize any demands of comfort, began to feel awkward. The ceiling
was smutty, the wall paper in many places was hanging in tatters, the
window-sills were black with a thick layer of tobacco ashes, pillows
were lying about on the floor beslimed with viscous mud, on the bed lay
a crumpled sheet, gray with accumulated dirt. In one window the winter
frame had been taken, or, rather, torn out, and the window itself was
left half open. Apparently it was through this opening that Simple
Simon had disappeared. Arina Petrovna instinctively looked out on the
road and became more frightened. It was already the first of November,
but the autumn that year had lasted long, and the cold spells had not
yet arrived. Both the road and the field were one black sea of mud. How
had he got away? Where had he gone to? Here it occurred to her that he
had nothing on but a dressing-gown and a slipper. The other slipper had
been found under the window. And the night before it had been pouring
ceaselessly.

"It's a long, long time since I've been here," she said, inhaling
instead of air a foul mixture of vodka, tobacco and sheepskin
evaporations.

All day long, while the servants were searching the forest, she stood
at the window staring dully out upon the naked fields unrolled before
her eyes. So much ado on account of Simple Simon! It seemed like a
preposterous dream. She had _said_ he ought to have been shipped off to
the Vologda village. "No," that cursed Yudushka had wheedled, "leave
him here, dearest mother, at Golovliovo." Now handle him, if you
please, Yudushka.

"I wish he had lived there, out of my sight, as he pleased--Christ
be with him!" Arina Petrovna mused. "But I did my part. If he wasted
one good thing, well, I would throw him another. If he'd have wasted
the other, too, well, what could I do then? Even God can't fill a
bottomless belly. Everything would have been peaceful and quiet here.
But now--who knows what he has been up to? Go, look in the forest and
whistle for him. It would be good if he were brought home alive, but
with drunken eyes one is liable to run into a noose--take a rope, tie
it to a branch, put it round his neck, and no more Stiopka. His mother
denied herself sleep and food, and he has invented a new style--hanging
himself. There would be some excuse for him if he had had it hard
here. But goodness, what did he have to do but walk about in his
room all day and eat and drink? Another son would not have known how
to thank his mother enough. And how does this precious son repay his
mother? Goes and hangs himself. The idea!"

Arina Petrovna's surmises about Simple Simon's violent death were not
justified. Toward evening he was brought back in a peasant wagon, still
alive. He was in a semi-conscious state, all bruised and cut, his face
blue and swollen. He had been found at the Dubrovino estate, twenty
miles away.

The returned fugitive slept straight through the next twenty-four
hours. When he awoke, he stumbled to his feet and began to pace up and
down the room as was his habit, but he did not touch the pipe and made
no reply to the questions he was asked. Arina Petrovna's heart softened
so that on the spur of the moment she all but had him transferred
to the manor-house. Then she quieted down, and left him in the
counting-house, but gave orders for the room to be scoured and tidied
up, the bed linen changed, curtains hung, and so on.

The following evening, when told that Stepan Vladimirych was awake, she
had him brought to the house for tea and found it possible, in talking
to him, to inject kindliness into her voice.

"Why did you go away from your mother?" she began. "Do you know you
caused her great anxiety? It's good the news did not reach papa. It
would have been a terrible shock to the poor sick man."

But Stepan seemed altogether indifferent to his mother's kindly words.
He kept staring at the candle with his glassy eyes, as if watching the
snuff forming on the wick.

"My, my, aren't you a foolish boy?" continued Arina Petrovna, growing
kinder and kinder. "Just think what rumors will be spread about your
mother because of you. There are enough people who envy her. What will
they not say about her? They will say she did not give you food or
clothes. My, my, what a foolish boy you are!"

There was the same silence and the same motionless staring glance.

"Was your stay at mother's so bad? Thank God, you don't go hungry or
naked. What else do you want? If you are lonesome, don't fret. This
is nothing but a village, my boy. We have no entertainments or halls,
we sit in our nooks and we hardly know how to while away the time. I,
myself, would be glad to dance now and then or sing a song, but you
look out upon the road and you lose the desire to go even to church in
such weather."

Arina Petrovna paused, hoping that Simple Simon would give utterance to
at least some sounds, but he was as dumb as a stone. She was beginning
to work up a temper, but restrained herself.

"And if you were discontented with anything, if perhaps you lacked
food or linen, could you not explain it frankly to your mother? Could
you not say, 'Mamma, darling, won't you have some liver or curd-cakes
prepared for me?' Do you think your mother would have refused you? Or
if you wanted a drop of vodka, goodness, I wouldn't have begrudged you
a glass or two. To think of it, you were not ashamed to beg from a
serf, while it was difficult for you to say a word to your own mother."

But her flattering words were of no avail. Simple Simon remained
impervious to either emotion (Arina Petrovna had hoped he would kiss
her hand) or repentance. In fact, he seemed to have heard nothing.

From that time on he never spoke a single word. All day long he
walked up and down his room, his brows knit and his lips moving,
apparently never growing tired. At times he halted as if wishing to
say something, but he could not find the words. He had not lost the
capacity for thinking, but impressions left so slight a trace on his
brain that he could not hold them for any appreciable length of time.
Consequently his failure to find the necessary words did not even make
him impatient. Arina Petrovna, for her part, thought he would surely
set the house on fire.

"He does not say a word all day long," she repeated. "Still he must be
thinking of something, the blockhead! I am sure he'll set the house on
fire one of these days."

But the blockhead did not think of anything at all. He was deeply
immersed in absolute darkness, in which there was no room either for
reality or the illusory world of imagination. His brain did work, but
in a void, disconnected from either the past, the present, or the
future. It was as though he was completely wrapt up in a black cloud
and all he did was to scan it, to watch its imaginary fluctuations,
and, at times, to make a feeble attempt at resisting its sinister sway.
The whole physical and spiritual world dwindled down to that enigmatic
cloud.

In December of the same year, Porfiry Vladimirych received the
following letter from his mother:

"Yesterday morning God visited us with a new ordeal. My son and your
brother, Stepan, breathed his last. The very evening before he had been
quite well and even took his supper, but in the morning he was found
dead in bed. Such is the brevity of this earthly life! And what is most
grievous to a mother's heart is that he left this world of vanity for
the realm of the unknown without the last communion.

"May this be a warning to us all. He who sets at naught the ties of
kinship must always await such an end. Failures in this life, untimely
death, and everlasting torments in the life to come, all these evils
spring from the one source. For, however learned and exalted we may
be, if we do not honor our parents, our learning and eminence will
be turned into nothingness. Such are the precepts which every one
inhabiting this world must commit to his mind. Besides, slaves should
revere their masters.

"Notwithstanding this, all honors were duly given to him who had
departed into life eternal, as becomes my son. The pall was ordered
from Moscow, and the burial ceremonies were solemnly presided over by
the Father archimandrite. And according to the Christian custom, I am
having memorial services performed daily. I mourn the loss of my son,
but I do not complain, nor do I advise you, my children, to do so. For
who knows? We may be mourning and complaining here while his soul may
be rejoicing in Heaven."




BOOK II

AS BECOMES GOOD KINSFOLK




CHAPTER I


A hot midday in July; the Dubrovino manor-house all deserted. Workers
and idlers alike resting in the shade. Under the canopy of a huge
willow-tree in the front yard the dogs, too, were lying stretched out,
and you could hear the sound of their jaws when they drowsily snapped
at the flies. Even the trees drooped motionless, as if exhausted. All
the windows in the manor-house and the servants' quarters were flung
wide open. The heat seemed to surge in sweltering waves and the soil
covered with short, singed grass was ablaze. The atmosphere was a
blinding haze touched into gold, so that one could scarcely distinguish
things in the distance. The manor-house, once painted gray and now
faded into white, the small flower garden in front of the house, the
birch grove, separated from the farm by the road, the pond, the village
and the corn field, which touched the outskirts of the village, all
were immersed in the dazzling torrent. The fragrance of blossoming
linden trees mingled with the noxious emanations of the cattle shed.
There was not a breath of air, not a sound. Only from the kitchen
there came the grating of knives being sharpened, which foretold the
inevitable hash and beef cutlets for dinner.

Inside the house reigned noiseless confusion. An old lady and two young
girls were sitting in the dining room, forgetful of their crocheting,
which lay on the table. They were waiting with intense anxiety. In
the maids' room two women were busied preparing mustard plasters
and poultices, and the rhythmic tinkling of the spoons pierced the
silence like the chirping of a cricket. Barefooted girls were stealing
silently along the corridor, scurrying back and forth from the entresol
to the maids' room. At times a voice was heard from upstairs: "What
about the mustard plasters? Are you asleep there?" And a girl would
dash out of the maids' room. At last heavy footsteps sounded on the
staircase, and the regimental surgeon entered the dining room, a tall,
broad-shouldered man, with firm, ruddy cheeks, the picture of health.
His voice was sonorous, his gait steady, his eyes clear, gay and
frank, his lips full and fresh. In spite of his fifty years he was a
thoroughly fast liver and expected to see many years pass before he
would give up drinking and carousing. He wore a showy summer suit, and
his spotless piqué coat was trimmed with white buttons bearing arms. On
entering he made a clicking sound with his lips and tongue.

"Girls!" he shouted merrily, standing on the threshold. "Bring us some
vodka and something to eat."

"Well, doctor, how is he?" the old lady asked, her voice full of
anxiety.

"The Lord's mercy is infinite, Arina Petrovna," answered the physician.

"What do you mean? Then he----"

"Just so. He will last another two or three days, and then--good-bye!"
The doctor made an expressive gesture with his hand and hummed: "Head
over heels, head over heels he will fall."

"How's that? Doctors treated him--and now all of a sudden----"

"What doctors?"

"The _zemstvo_ doctor and one from the town used to come here."

"Fine doctors! If they'd given him a good bleeding, they'd have saved
him."

"So nothing at all can be done?"

"Well, I said, 'The Lord's mercy is great,' and I can add nothing to
that."

"But perhaps it will work?"

"What will work?"

"I mean--the mustard plasters."

"Perhaps."

A woman in a black dress and black shawl brought in a tray holding a
decanter of vodka, a dish of sausages and a dish of caviar. The doctor
helped himself to the vodka, held the glass to the light and smacked
his tongue.

"Your health, mother," he said to the old lady, and gulped the liquid.

"Drink in good health, my dear sir."

"This is the cause of Pavel Vladimirych dying in the prime of his life,
this vodka," said the doctor, grimacing comfortably and spearing a
piece of sausage with his fork.

"Yes, it's the ruin of many a man."

"That's because not everyone can stand it. But I can, and I shall have
another glass. Your health, madam."

"Drink, drink. Nothing can happen to you."

"Nothing. My lungs and kidneys and liver and spleen are in excellent
condition. By the way," he turned to the woman in black who stood at
the door, listening to the conversation, "What will you have for dinner
to-day?"

"Hash and beef cutlets and chicken for roast," she answered, smiling
somewhat sourly.

"Have you any smoked fish?"

"We have, sir. We have white sturgeon and stellated sturgeon, plenty of
it."

"Then have a cold soup with sturgeon for our dinner, and pick out a fat
bit of sturgeon, you hear me? What is your name? Ulita?"

"Yes, sir, people call me Ulita."

"Well, then, hurry up, friend Ulita, hurry up."

Ulita left the room, and for a while oppressive silence reigned.
Then Arina Petrovna rose from her seat and made sure Ulita was not
eavesdropping.

"Andrey Osipych, have you spoken to him yet about the orphans?" she
asked the doctor.

"Yes, I did."

"Well?"

"There was no change. 'When I get well' he kept on saying, 'I will make
my will and write the notes.'"

Silence, heavier than before, filled the room. The girls took the
crocheting from the table, and their trembling hands worked one row
after the other. Arina Petrovna heaved a deep sigh of dejection. The
doctor paced up and down the room and whistled, "Head over heels, head
over heels."

"But did you try to drive the matter home to him, doctor?"

"Well, I said to him: 'You'll be a scoundrel if you don't make a
definite provision for the orphans.' Could I make it clearer? Yes,
mother, you certainly slipped up. If you had called me in a month ago,
I would have given him a good bleeding and I would have seen to it that
he made his will. But now everything will go to Yudushka, the lawful
heir. It certainly will."

"Oh, grandmother, what will become of us?" said the older of the two
girls, plaintively and almost in tears. "What is uncle doing to us?"

The girls were Anninka and Lubinka, the daughters of Anna Vladimirovna
Ulanova, to whom Arina Petrovna had once "thrown a bone."

"I don't know, dear, I don't know. I don't even know what will become
of me. Today I am here, and tomorrow God knows where I'll be. Maybe
I'll have to sleep in a shed or at a peasant's."

"Goodness, isn't uncle silly!" exclaimed the younger girl.

"I wish, young lady, you would keep your mouth shut," remarked the
doctor. Turning to Arina Petrovna, he suggested, "Why not try to talk
to him yourself, mother?"

"No, no. There's no use my talking to him. He doesn't even want to see
me. The other day I stuck my nose into his room, and he snarled, 'Have
you come to see me off to the other world?'"

"I think Ulita is back of it all. She incites him against you."

"She surely does, nobody but she. And then she reports everything to
Porfiry the Bloodsucker. People say he keeps a pair of horses harnessed
all day waiting for the beginning of the agony. And just imagine, the
other day Ulita went so far as to take an inventory of the furniture,
wardrobe, and dishes, so that nothing should be lost, as she said. We
are the thieves, just imagine it."

"Why don't you treat her more severely? Head over heels, you know, head
over heels."

But fate decreed that the doctor should not develop his thought. A
girl, all out of breath, dashed into the room and exclaimed in a fright:

"The master! The master wants the doctor."




CHAPTER II


Not more than ten years had passed since the death of Simple Simon,
but the condition of the various members of the Golovliov family had
so completely changed that not a trace remained of those artificial
ties which had given the family the air of an impregnable stronghold.
This stronghold, erected by the tireless hands of Arina Petrovna, had
crumbled away, but so imperceptibly that she herself was ignorant of
how it had happened, was even involved in the destruction, the leading
spirit in which, of course, had been Porfiry the Bloodsucker.

From an irresponsible, hot-tempered ruler over the Golovliovo estate,
Arina Petrovna had descended into a mere hanger-on in the home of
her younger son, a useless hanger-on, with no voice in the household
management. Her head was bowed, her back bent, the fire in her eyes had
died out, her gait was languid, the vivacity of her movements was gone.
She had taken to knitting to occupy her idleness, but her mind was
always wandering somewhere away from her needles, and the knitting was
a failure. She would knit for a few moments, then her hands would drop
of themselves, her head would fall on the back of her chair, and she
would begin to go over bygones in her mind, until she got drowsy and
dropped off into a senile slumber. Or else she would get up and begin
to pace the rooms, always searching for something; always looking into
corners, like a good housewife hunting for her keys, which she usually
carries about with her and has now misplaced somehow.

The first blow to her authority was not so much the abolition of
serfdom as the preparations preceding it. At first, there were simply
rumors, then came the meetings of landowners and addresses, next
followed provincial committees, and revising commissions. All these
things exhausted and confused her. Arina Petrovna's imagination,
active enough without additional stimuli, conceived numerous absurd
situations. "How am I going to call Agashka?" she'd think. "Perhaps
I'll have to tack a 'Miss' before her name." Or she would see herself
walking about in the empty rooms while the servants were taking it
easy in their quarters and were gorging themselves with all kinds of
food; and when they got tired of gorging she saw them throwing the
remnants under the table. Then she would find herself surprising Yulka
and Feshka in the cellar, devouring everything in sight, like beasts,
and she would itch to reprimand them, but would have to check herself
with the thought, "How dare one say anything to them, now that they are
free? Why one can't even appeal to the court against them!"

However insignificant such trifles may be, a whole fantastic world is
built up of them, which holds you tight and completely paralyzes your
activity. Arina Petrovna somehow suddenly let the reins of government
slip out of her grasp, and for a space of two years did nothing from
morning until night except complain.

"One or the other," she was fond of saying, "gains all or loses all.
But these meetings and addresses and commissions, they're nothing but
trouble."

At that time, just when the committees were in full swing, Vladimir
Mikhailych died. On his deathbed he repudiated Barkov and his
teachings, and died appeased and reconciled to the world. His last
words were:

"I thank my God that He did not suffer me to come into His presence on
an equal footing with the serfs."

These words made a deep impression on his wife's receptive soul, so
that both his death and her fantastic notions about the future laid a
coloring of gloom and despair on the atmosphere of the house. It seemed
as if both the old manor and its inhabitants were getting ready for
death.

From a few complaints that found their way into the letters of Arina
Petrovna, Porfiry Vladimirych's amazingly keen perceptions sensed the
confusion that possessed her mind. Not that Arina Petrovna actually
sermonized and moralized in her letters, but above all, she trusted
in God's help, "which in these faithless times does not abandon even
slaves, far less those who because of their means were the surest prop
and ornament of the church." Yudushka instinctively understood that if
mother dear began to put her hope in God, then there was some flaw in
the fabric of her existence. And he took advantage of the flaw with his
peculiar, subtle skill.

Almost at the very end of the preliminaries to the emancipation, he
visited Golovliovo quite unexpectedly and found Arina Petrovna sunk
into despondency, almost to a point of prostration.

"Well, what news? What do they say in St. Petersburg?" was her first
question, after mutual greetings had been exchanged.

Porfiry cast down his eyes and sat speechless.

"No, you must consider my circumstances," continued Arina Petrovna,
gathering from her son's silence that good news was not to be expected.
"Right now in the maids' room I have about thirty of these creatures.
What shall I do with them? If they remain in my care, what am I going
to feed them on? At present I have a little cabbage, a little potatoes,
some bread, enough of everything; and we manage somehow to make both
ends meet. If the potatoes give out, I order cabbage to be cooked; if
there is no cabbage, cucumbers have to do. But now, if I have to run to
market for everything and pay for everything, and buy and serve, how am
I ever to provide for such a crowd?"

Porfiry gazed into the eyes of his "mother dear" and smiled bitterly as
a sign of sympathy.

"And then, if the government is going to turn them loose, give them
absolute leeway--well, then, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know
what it will come to."

Porfiry smiled as if there were something very funny in "what it was
coming to."

"Don't you laugh. It is a serious matter, so serious that if only the
Lord grants them a little more reason, only then--Here's my case, for
instance. I am by no means an old rag, am I? I must have my bread and
butter, too, mustn't I? How am I to go about getting it? Think of the
bringing-up we received. The only thing we know is how to dance and
sing and receive guests. Then how am I going to get along without those
wretches, I'd like to know. I can't serve meals or cook. I can't do a
thing."

"God is merciful, mother dear."

"He used to be, but not now. When we were good, the Almighty was
merciful to us; when we became wicked, well, we mustn't complain. I'm
beginning to think that the best thing for me is to throw everything to
the dogs. Really, I'll build myself a little hut right next to father's
grave, and that's where I'll spend the rest of my days."

Porfiry Vladimirych pricked up his ears. His mouth began to water.

"And who will manage the estates?" he questioned, carefully throwing
his bait, as it were.

"Why, you boys will have to manage them yourselves. Thank God, I have
provided plenty. I ought not carry the whole burden alone."

Arina Petrovna suddenly stopped and raised her head. Her eyes fell
on Yudushka's simpering, drivelling, oily face, all suffused with a
carnivorous inner glow.

"You seem to be getting ready to bury me," remarked Arina Petrovna
drily. "Isn't it a bit too early, darling? Look out, don't make a
mistake."

Thus the matter ended in nothing definite. But there are discussions
which, once begun, never really come to an end. A few hours later Arina
Petrovna renewed the conversation.

"I'll leave for the Trinity Monastery," she dreamed aloud. "I'll divide
up the estate, buy a little cottage on the grounds and settle there."

But Porfiry Vladimirych, taught by past experience, remained silent
this time.

"Last year, while your deceased father was still alive," continued
Arina Petrovna, "I was sitting alone in my bedroom and suddenly I
thought I heard someone whispering in my ear: 'Go to the Trinity
Monastery. Go to the Trinity.' Three times, mind you. I turned
about--there was nobody in the room. Well, then, I thought that must
have been a sign for me. 'Well,' I said, 'if God is pleased with my
faith, I am ready.' No sooner had I said that than suddenly the room
was filled with such a wonderful fragrance. Of course I immediately
ordered my things packed and by evening I was on my way."

Tears rose in Arina Petrovna's eyes. Yudushka took advantage of this to
kiss his mother's hand, and even made free to put his arm around her
waist.

"Now you are a good girl," he said. "Ah, how good it is, darling, when
one lives in peace with God. You come to God with a prayer, and the
Lord meets you with help. That's how it is, mother dear."

"Wait a minute, I haven't finished. Next day, in the evening I arrived
at the monastery and went straight to the saint's chapel. Evening
service was being held, the choir was singing, candles were burning,
fragrance was wafted from the censers. I simply did not know where I
was--on earth or in Heaven. I went from the service to Father Yon,
and I said to him: 'Well, your Reverence, it was mighty good today at
church.' 'No wonder, madam,' he said, 'Father Avvakum had a vision
today at the evening service. He had just raised his arms to begin
praying when he beheld a light in the cupola and a dove looking down at
him.' Well, from that time, I came to the conclusion, sooner or later
my last days will be spent at Trinity Monastery."

"And who will take care of us? Who will have your children's welfare at
heart? Ah, mamma, mamma!"

"Well, you're not babies any longer, and you'll be able to look after
yourselves. As for me, I'll go to the monastery with Annushka's orphans
and live under the saint's wing. Perhaps the desire will awaken in
one of the girls to serve God. Well, then, the convent is right at
hand. I'll buy myself a little house, plant a little garden, potatoes,
cabbage--there'll be enough of everything for me."

Such idle talk continued for several days, Arina Petrovna making the
boldest plans, withdrawing them and remaking them, and then finally
carrying the matter so far that she could not withdraw again. Within
half a year after Yudushka's visit this was the situation: Arina
Petrovna not at the monastery, nor in a little house built near her
husband's grave. Instead of that she had divided the estate, leaving
only the capital for herself. Porfiry Vladimirych received the better
part and Pavel Vladimirych the worse part.




CHAPTER III


Arina Petrovna remained at Golovliovo. This gave rise, of course, to
a domestic comedy. Yudushka shed tears and succeeded in inducing his
mother dear to manage his household without accountability to him, to
receive the income and to use it at her discretion. "And, dearest,
whatever portion of the income you give me," he added, "I shall be
satisfied with it." Pavel, on the other hand, thanked his mother coldly
("as if he wanted to bite me," were her words), immediately retired
from service ("just so, without his mother's blessing, like a madman,
he escaped to freedom") and settled down at Dubrovino.

From that time on, Arina Petrovna's judgment became somewhat dimmed.
The image of Porfishka the Bloodsucker, whom she had once sized up so
shrewdly, now went, as it were, behind a fog. She seemed no longer to
understand anything except that, despite the division of the estate and
the emancipation of the peasants, she still lived at Golovliovo and
still owed no account to anyone. Here, at her side, lived another son,
but what a difference! While Porfisha had entrusted both himself and
his household into his mother's care, Pavel not only never consulted
her about anything, but even spoke to her through his teeth.

And as her mind became more clouded, her heart warmed more to her
gentle son. Porfiry Vladimirych asked nothing of her. She herself
anticipated his desires. Little by little she became dissatisfied with
the shape of the Golovliovo property. At such and such a place, a
stranger's land jutted into it--it would be well to buy up that piece
of land. In such and such a place it would be fine to have a separate
farm, but there was too little meadow. And here, right next to it,
was a meadow for sale, ah, a fine bit of meadow. Arina Petrovna's
enthusiasm was that of a mother and a woman of affairs who wants her
affectionate son to view her capabilities in all their glory. But
Porfiry Vladimirych withdrew into his shell, impervious to all her
suggestions. In vain did Arina Petrovna tempt him with bargains. To all
her propositions for acquiring a piece of woodland or meadowland, he
invariably answered: "Dear mother, I am perfectly satisfied with what
you granted me in your kindness."

These answers only spurred Arina Petrovna on. Carried away by her
household zeal, and also by indignation against the "scoundrel
Pavlusha," who lived beside her but refused to have anything to do
with her, Arina Petrovna lost sight of her actual relationship to the
estate. Her former fever for acquiring possessed her with renewed
strength, though now it was no longer aggrandizement for her own sake
but for the sake of her beloved son. The Golovliovo estate grew,
rounded out, and flourished.

And at the very moment when Arina Petrovna's capital had dwindled
to a point at which it was almost impossible for her to live on the
interest, Yudushka sent her a most respectful letter along with an
enormous package of blank forms, which were to guide her in the future
in the making out of the annual balance sheet. Beside the principal
items of the household expenses were listed raspberries, gooseberries,
mushrooms, etc. There was a special account for every item, on the
following plan:


Number of raspberry bushes, year 18--, - - - - - - - - pounds
"      "  bushes planted this year - - - - - - - - - -  "
Quantity of berries picked - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  "
   Out of this total you, mother dear, used for
     yourself - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - "
Preserves used, or to be used, in the household of
   His Excellency Porfiry Vladimirych Golovliov - - - - "
Given to boy in reward for good behavior - - - - - - -  "
Sold to the common people for a tidbit - - - - - - - -  "
Decayed because of absence of buyers and for
other reasons - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - "
------
  NOTE.--In case the crop in the year in which the account is
taken is less than that of the previous year, the reasons therefor,
like drought, rain, hail, and so forth, should be indicated.


Arina Petrovna fairly groaned. First of all, she was shocked at
Yudushka's avarice. She had never heard of berries forming an item in
the account of an estate, and he seemed to emphasize that item most.
Secondly, she fully realized that the blanks were a constitution
limiting her power hitherto autocratic.

After a long controversial correspondence between them, Arina Petrovna,
humiliated and indignant, moved to Dubrovino, and Porfiry Vladimirych
subsequently retired from office and settled at Golovliovo.

From that time on the old woman spent many wretched days in enforced
idleness. Pavel Vladimirych was particularly offensive in his treatment
of his mother. He received her in what he thought was quite a decent
manner, that is, he promised to provide food and drink for both her
and his orphan nieces, on two conditions, however, first, they were
not to enter the entresol which he occupied; secondly, they were not
to interfere in the management of the household. The second condition
was particularly galling to Arina Petrovna. The management of the house
was in the hands of the housekeeper Ulita, a viperous woman who had
been found in secret communication with Yudushka and Kirushka, the late
master's butler, a man who knew nothing about farming and whom Pavel
Vladimirych almost feared. Both of them stole relentlessly. How often
did Arina Petrovna's heart ache when she saw the house being ransacked;
how she did long to warn her son and open his eyes to the theft of
tea, sugar, butter! Loads of things were wasted, and Ulita, not in the
least shamed by the presence of the old mistress, repeatedly hid whole
handfuls of sugar in her pocket right before her eyes. Arina Petrovna
saw it all, but was forced to remain a silent witness to the plunder.
No sooner would she open her mouth to make some remark, than Pavel
Vladimirych would instantly check her, saying:

"Mother, there should be only one person to manage a house. I'm not
alone in that opinion, everybody says so. I know my orders are foolish.
Never mind, let them be foolish. Your orders are wise. Let them be
wise. Wise you are, very wise, still Yudushka left you without house or
home, to shift for yourself."

The last straw was the awful discovery that Pavel Vladimirych drank.
The craving had come from the loneliness of life in the country and had
crept upon him stealthily, until finally it possessed him completely,
and he was a doomed man. When his mother first came to live in the
house, he seemed to have some scruples about drinking. He would come
down from the entresol and talk to his mother quite often. She noticed
that his speech was strangely incoherent but for a long time attributed
it to his stupidity. She did not enjoy his visits. The chats with him
oppressed her extremely. In fact he always seemed to be grumbling
foolishly. Either there had been a drought for many weeks, or an
overwhelming downpour of rain, or tree beetles had overrun the garden
and ruined the trees, or moles had made their appearance and dug up
the whole field. All this afforded an endless source for grumbling. He
would come down from the entresol, seat himself opposite his mother and
begin:

"There are clouds all around. Is Golovliovo far from here? The
Bloodsucker had a shower yesterday and we don't get a single drop. The
clouds wander about, all around here. If there were only a drop of rain
for us!"

Or else he would say:

"Have you ever seen such a flood? The rye has just begun to flower and
it comes pouring down. Half of the hay is rotten already, and the rain
still spouts and spurts. Is Golovliovo far from here? The Bloodsucker
has long since gathered in his crops, and here we're stuck. We'll have
to feed our cattle on rotten hay this winter."

Arina Petrovna listened in silence to his stupid complaints, but at
times her patience gave way and she said:

"Well, keep on sitting there with your arms folded."

Instantly Pavel Vladimirych would flare up.

"What would you advise me to do? Transfer the rain to Golovliovo?"

"I'm not talking about the rain, but in general."

"No 'in general,' please. Why don't you tell me straight out what you
think I should do? Shall I change the climate? There's Golovliovo. When
Golovliovo needs rain, it rains. When Golovliovo doesn't need rain,
then it doesn't rain. And everything grows there, while here, the very
opposite. Well, we'll see what you'll have to say when there isn't
anything to eat."

"Then such will be the Lord's will."

"All right, then such will be the Lord's will. But you say 'in general'
as if that were an explanation."

Sometimes Pavel even found his property a burden.

"Why in the world did I get the Dubrovino estate?" he would complain.
"What good is it?"

"What's the matter with Dubrovino? The soil is good, there's plenty of
everything. What's got into your head of a sudden?"

"This, that nowadays there's no use having any estate. Money, that's
the thing. You take your money, put it in your pocket and off you go.
But real estate----"

"What sort of an age have we come to when there's no use owning real
estate?"

"Yes, this is a peculiar age. You don't read the newspapers, but I do.
Nowadays the lawyers are everywhere--you can imagine the rest. If a
lawyer finds out that you have real estate, then he begins to circle
around you."

"Well, how is he going to get at you when you have the proper deeds to
the property?"

"Deeds or no deeds, they'll get you. Porfiry the Bloodsucker may hire a
lawyer and serve me with summons after summons."

"What are you talking about! We're not living in a lawless country."

"That's just why they serve summonses on you. If the country were
lawless, they would take it away without a summons. There's my friend
Gorlopiatov, for instance. His uncle died and he, fool that he was,
up and accepted the inheritance. The inheritance proved worthless,
but the debts figured up to the thousands, the bills of exchange were
all false. Now they've been suing him for three years on end. First,
they took his uncle's estate. Then they even sold his own property at
auction. That's what real estate is."

"Can there possibly be a law like that?"

"If there were no such law, they couldn't have sold it. There's a law
for everything. A man without a conscience finds a law to back him in
everything. But there are no laws for a man with a conscience. Try and
look for them in the books."

Arina Petrovna always let Pavel have his way in these controversies.
Many a time she could hardly refrain from shouting, "Out of my sight,
you scoundrel." But she would think it over and keep silent. Sometimes
she would only murmur to herself:

"Goodness, whom do these monsters take after? One is a bloodsucker, the
other is a lunatic. What did I hoard and save for? For what did I deny
myself sleep and food? For whom did I do all that?"

The more completely drink took possession of Pavel Vladimirych, the
more fantastic and annoying his conversations became. Finally Arina
Petrovna noticed there was something wrong. A whole flask of vodka
would be put away in the dining-room cupboard in the morning, and by
dinner time there wouldn't be a drop left. Or she would be sitting in
the parlor and would hear a mysterious creaking in the dining-room
near the cupboard. She would call out, "Who's there?" and would hear
footsteps quickly but carefully withdrawing toward the entresol.

"Goodness, can it be that he drinks?" she once asked Ulita.

"I shouldn't deny it," answered the latter, with a vicious grin.

When Pavel Vladimirych saw that his mother had discovered the truth, he
lost all restraint. One morning Arina Petrovna found the cupboard had
disappeared from the dining-room, and when she asked where it had gone
to, Ulita told her she had been ordered to carry it to the entresol,
because it would be more comfortable for the master to drink there.

In the entresol, the decanters of vodka followed one after the other
with amazing rapidity. Shut up alone by himself, Pavel Vladimirych
began to hate human society. He created a peculiar fantastic reality
for himself, spinning out a long-winded nonsensical romance, in
which the main heroes were himself and the Bloodsucker. He was not
fully conscious of how, deeply rooted his hatred for Porfiry was.
It gnawed at his bones and entrails every minute of his life. The
loathed image of his brother stood lifelike before his eyes, and
Yudushka's lachrymose, hypocritical twaddle rang in his ears. In his
talk there lurked a cold, almost abstract hatred of every living thing
that did not conform to the traditional code laid down by hypocrisy.
Pavel Vladimirych drank and recalled memories, all the insults and
humiliations he had had to suffer because of Yudushka's claims to
supremacy in the house; the division of the estate in particular; how
he had calculated every kopek and compared every scrap of land. Oh,
how he detested him! Entire dramas were enacted in his imagination,
heated by alcohol. In these dramas he avenged every offense that he had
sustained, and not Yudushka but he himself was always the aggressor. He
saw himself the winner of two hundred thousand, and informed Yudushka
of his good luck in a long scene, making his brother's face writhe with
envy. At other times he imagined his grandfather had died and left a
million to him, while nothing at all to Porfiry. He also discovered a
means of becoming invisible and when unseen he played wicked tricks on
Porfiry to make him groan in agony. His genius for inventing tricks
was inexhaustible, and for a long time his idiotic laughter would ring
through the entresol, much to the delight of Ulita, who would hurry to
inform Porfiry Vladimirych of his brother's doings.

He detested Yudushka and at the same time had a superstitious fear of
him. He imagined his eyes discharged a venom of magic effect, that
his voice crept, snake-like, into the soul and paralyzed the will. He
absolutely refused to meet him, and when the Bloodsucker occasionally
visited Dubrovino to kiss the hand of his mother dear, Pavel
Vladimirych would lock himself into the entresol and remain imprisoned
there until he left.

So the days passed until Pavel Vladimirych found himself face to face
with a deadly malady.




CHAPTER IV


The doctor stayed at the house overnight merely for the sake of form,
and departed for the city early the next day. On taking leave he said
frankly that the patient had no more than two days to live, and it
was already too late to talk about any "arrangements" since Pavel
Vladimirych could not even sign his name properly.

"He'll sign the document wrong and then you will have a lawsuit on your
hands," he added. "Of course, Yudushka respects his mother very highly,
but, at that, he'll commence proceedings to prove fraud, and should
'mother dear' be sent to distant regions, the only thing he'll do is to
have a mass said for the welfare of the travellers."

All morning Arina Petrovna walked about as if in a dream. She tried to
say her prayers. Perhaps God would suggest something, but prayers would
not enter her head. Even her tongue refused to obey. There was utter
confusion in her mind. Fragments of prayers mingled with incoherent
thoughts and vague impressions.

Finally she sat down and sobbed. The tears flowed from her dull eyes
over her aged shrivelled cheeks, lingered in the hollows of her
wrinkles, and dribbled down on the greasy collar of her old calico
waist. Her tears spoke of bitterness, despair, and feeble, but stubborn
resistance. Her age, her senile ailments, and the hopelessness of
the situation, all seemed to point to death as the only way out. At
the same time memories of the past intervened, memories of a life of
power, prosperity and unrestrained freedom, and these reminiscences
plunged their sting into her soul, dragging her down to earth. "To
die!" passed through her mind, but the thought was instantly supplanted
by a dogged desire to live. She recalled neither Yudushka nor her dying
son. It was as if both had ceased to exist for her. She thought of no
one, was indignant at no one, accused no one, even forgot whether she
had any capital or no and whether it was sufficient to provide for her
old age. A deadly anguish seized her entire being. Her tears had come
from a deep source. Drop by drop they had been accumulating since the
moment when she left Golovliovo and settled at Dubrovino. She was quite
prepared for everything that awaited her. She had expected and foreseen
everything, but somehow it had never come to her with such vividness
that her fears would be realized. And now this very end had arrived,
an end full of anguish and hopeless lonesomeness. All her life long
she had been busy building up, she had worn herself to the bone for
something, and now she felt as if she had wasted her life on a phantom.
All her life the word "family" had never left her lips. In the name
of "family" she had punished some and rewarded others. In the name of
"family" she had subjected herself to privations, torments, she had
crippled her whole life; and suddenly she discovered that "family" was
exactly what she did not have.

"Good Lord! Can it possibly be the same everywhere?" was the thought
that kept revolving in her mind.

She sat with her head resting on her hand and her face soaked with
tears turned to the rising sun, as if to bid it, "Look!" She neither
groaned nor cursed. She simply sobbed as if choked by her tears. At the
same time the thought seared her soul, "There is no one! No one! No
one!"

But now her eyes were drained of tears. She washed her face and
wandered without purpose into the dining-room. Here she was assailed by
the girls with new complaints which seemed at this time particularly
importunate.

"What is going to come of it, grandma? Is it possible that we shall be
left just so, without anything?" grumbled Anninka.

"How silly uncle is," Lubinka chimed in.

About midday, Arina Petrovna decided to go to her dying son. Stepping
softly she climbed the stairs and groped in the dark till she found the
door leading into the rooms. The entresol was buried in deepest gloom.
The windows were darkened by green shades, through which the light
could scarcely filter. A sickening mixture of odors pervaded the room,
which had not been ventilated for a long while. There was the smell of
berries, plaster, oil from the image-lamp, and those peculiar odors
which bespeak the presence of sickness and death. There were only two
rooms. In the first one sat Ulita, cleaning berries. The flies swarmed
about the heap of gooseberries and impudently attacked her nose and
lips, and she would keep driving them off in exasperation. Through the
half-closed door of the adjoining room came the sound of incessant
coughing which every now and then ended in painful expectoration. Arina
Petrovna stopped in an uncertain pose, searching the gloom and waiting
for the course of action that Ulita would take in view of her arrival.
But Ulita never moved an eyelash, entirely confident that every attempt
to influence the sick man would be fruitless. Her lips merely twitched
in resentment, and Arina Petrovna heard the word "hag" pronounced under
her breath.

"You had better go down, my dear," said Arina Petrovna, turning to
Ulita.

"Where did you get that idea from?" snapped the latter.

"I have to talk to Pavel Vladimirych. Go down."

"Excuse me, madam, how can I leave the master? What if something should
happen? There's no one to serve him and attend to him."

"What's the matter?" a hollow voice called from the bedroom.

"Order Ulita to go downstairs, my friend. I have matters to talk over
with you."

This time Arina Petrovna pressed her point so persistently that she was
victorious. She crossed herself and entered the room. The patient's
bed stood near the inner wall far from the window. He lay on his back,
covered with a white blanket, smoking a cigarette, though almost half
unconscious. Notwithstanding the smoke, the flies pestered him with
peculiar persistence, so that he had continually to pass his hand over
his face. His arms were so weak, so bare of muscle, that they showed
the bones, of almost equal thickness from wrist to shoulder, in clear
outline. His head nestled despondently in the pillow. His whole body
and face burned in a dry fever. His large round eyes were sunken and
gazed aimlessly about, as if looking for something. The lines of his
nose had grown longer and sharper. His mouth was half open. He had
stopped coughing, but he breathed with such difficulty that it seemed
as if all his vital energy were concentrated in his chest.

"Well, how do you feel to-day?" asked Arina Petrovna, sinking into the
armchair at his feet.

"So--so--to-morrow--that is, to-day--when was the doctor here?"

"He was here to-day."

"Well, then, to-morrow----"

The patient fumbled as if struggling to recall a word.

"You'll be able to get up?" prompted Arina Petrovna. "God grant it, my
friend, God grant it."

They both remained silent for a moment. Arina Petrovna found it very
difficult to open a conversation when she was face to face with Pavel
Vladimirych.

"Yudushka--is he alive?" finally asked the sick man himself.

"Nothing is the matter with him. He lives and prospers."

"I bet he is thinking, 'Now brother Pavel is going to die--and with
God's help the estate will come to me.'"

"We'll all die, some day--and after every one of us, the estates will
go to the lawful heirs."

"Only not to the Bloodsucker! I'll throw it to the dogs, but he shan't
have it."

The situation was turning out excellently. Pavel Vladimirych himself
was leading the conversation. Arina Petrovna did not fail to take
advantage of the opportunity.

"You ought to consider that, my friend," she said, as if by the way,
not looking at her son and examining the color of her hands as if they
were the main object of her interest.

"What do you mean by 'that'?"

"Well, I mean, if you don't wish that the estate should go to your
brother."

The patient was silent. Only his eyes widened unnaturally and his face
flushed more and more.

"And also, my friend, you ought to take into consideration the fact
that you have orphaned nieces--and what sort of capital have they? Then
there is your mother," continued Arina Petrovna.

"You've managed to give everything away to Yudushka!"

"Whatever may have happened, I know that I myself am to blame. But it
wasn't such a crime after all. I thought 'he is my son.' At any rate,
it isn't kind of you to remember that against your mother."

Silence followed.

"Well, why don't you say something?"

"And how soon do you expect to bury me?"

"Oh, don't talk like that. All Christians----Everybody doesn't die
right away, still in general----"

"There you go--'in general!' Always your 'in general!' You think I
don't see."

"See what, my boy?"

"I see you take me for a fool. Well, if I am a fool, let me remain a
fool. Why do you come to a fool? Don't come, don't worry about me."

"I'm not worrying. But in general there is a term set to everybody's
life."

"Then wait for my term."

Arina Petrovna lowered her head and meditated. She saw clearly that her
case was almost a failure, but she was so tortured that nothing could
convince her of the fruitlessness of further attempts to influence her
son.

"I don't know why you hate me," she declared finally.

"Not at all--on the contrary I--not at all. In fact I--why, the
idea--you brought us all up--so impartially."

He spoke in jerks and gasps. A broken yet triumphant laugh made its way
into his voice. His eyes sparkled. His shoulders and legs quivered.

"Perhaps I have really sinned against you, then for Christ's sake
forgive me."

Arina Petrovna rose and bowed till her hand touched the floor. Pavel
Vladimirych shut his eyes without replying.

"Suppose we let the question of the estate alone. You couldn't make
any arrangement in your present condition. Porfiry is the lawful heir.
Well, let the real estate go to him. But what about your personal
property and capital?" Arina Petrovna ventured to state her point
directly.

Pavel Vladimirych shuddered, but remained silent. It is very possible
that at the word "capital" he gave no thought whatsoever to his
mother's insinuations, but simply mused: "September is here already. I
have to collect the interest."

"If you think I desire your death, you're very much mistaken, my
child. If you would only live I should not need to complain in my old
age. What have I to grumble about? I have food and shelter here, and
should I want a little additional pleasure, I can get it. I merely
wish to call your attention to the fact that there is a custom among
Christians, according to which, in expectation of the life to come,
we----"

Arina Petrovna paused, searching for a suitable word.

"We provide for the future of those related to us," she concluded,
looking out of the window.

Pavel Vladimirych lay motionless, coughing softly. He did not betray
by a single movement whether or not he was listening. Apparently his
mother was boring him.

"The capital may go from hand to hand during life," said Arina
Petrovna, as though passing a trivial remark and resuming the
inspection of her hands.

The patient shuddered slightly, but Arina Petrovna did not notice it
and continued:

"The law, my friend, expressly permits the free transfer of capital.
Money is something one acquires. Yesterday you had it. To-day it is
gone. And nobody can call you to account for it. You can give it to
whomever you choose."

Pavel Vladimirych suddenly laughed viciously.

"You probably remember the story about Polochkin," he hissed. "He gave
his capital to his wife 'from hand to hand' and she ran off with her
lover."

"You may rest assured, my child, I have no lover."

"Then you'll run off without a lover--with the money."

"How well you understand my motives!"

"I don't understand you at all. You gave me the reputation of a fool.
Well, I _am_ a fool. Let me be a fool. What wonderful tricks they have
invented--to pass my money from hand to hand! And where do I come in? I
suppose you'll order me to go to a monastery for my salvation, and from
there watch how you manage my money?"

He shot these words out in a volley, in a voice full of hatred and
indignation. Then he broke down completely and burst into a fit of
coughing that lasted a full quarter of an hour. It was amazing to see
how much strength that wretched human skeleton contained. Finally he
caught his breath and closed his eyes.

Arina Petrovna looked about in bewilderment. Until that moment she
could not believe it, somehow, but now she was fully convinced that
every attempt to persuade the dying man would only serve to hasten the
day of Yudushka's triumph. Yudushka kept dancing before her eyes. She
saw him walking behind the hearse, giving his brother the last Judas
kiss and squeezing out two foul tears. Then she had a picture of the
coffin being lowered into the grave and Yudushka exclaiming, "Farewell,
brother!" his lips twitching and his eyes rolling upward. She heard
his attempt to add a note of grief to his voice, and afterwards say,
turning to Ulita: "The kutya,[A] the kutya, don't forget to take the
kutya into the house. And be sure to put on a clean table cloth. We
must honor brother's memory in the house, too." Next she saw him
presiding over the funeral feast, chatting incessantly with the
reverend father about the virtues of the deceased. She heard him say,
"Ah, brother, brother, you didn't wish to live with us," as he rose
from the table, stretching out his hand, palm upward, to receive the
father's blessing. And lastly she saw Yudushka walking about the house
with the air of a master, taking the inventory of all the effects and
in doubtful cases casting suspicious glances at mother.

All these inevitable scenes of the future floated before Arina
Petrovna's mental vision. In her ears rang Yudushka's shrill, unctuous
voice as he said: "Do you remember, mother dear, the little golden
shirt studs that brother had? They were so pretty. He used to wear them
on holidays. I simply can't imagine where those studs could have gone
to."

[Footnote A: A gruel made of rice or wheat or barley, boiled with
raisins and mead. It is eaten after the mass for the dead and, in the
South, on Christmas Eve.--_Translator's Note._]




CHAPTER V


No sooner did Arina Petrovna come downstairs, than a carriage drawn by
a team of four horses made its appearance on a hill near the church.
In it, in the place of honor, was seated Porfiry Golovliov, who had
removed his hat and was crossing himself at the sight of the church.
Opposite him sat his two sons, Petenka and Volodenka. The very blood
froze in Arina Petrovna's veins as the thought flashed through her
mind, "Speak of the devil and he's sure to appear." The girls also
lost courage, and timidly clung closer to their grandmother. The house
hitherto peaceful was suddenly filled with alarm. Doors banged, people
ran about crying, "The master is coming, the master is coming!" and
all the occupants of the house rushed out on the porch. Some made the
sign of the cross, some stood in silent expectation, all apparently
conscious of the fact that the existing order in Dubrovino had been
only temporary, and that now the real management was to begin with
a real master at the head. Under the former master some of the old,
deserving serfs had enjoyed the privilege of a monthly allowance of
provisions. Many of them fed their cattle on the master's hay, had
kitchen gardens of their own, and altogether lived "freely." Everyone,
of course, was now vitally interested to know whether the new master
would permit the old order of things, or whether he would introduce a
new one, similar to that which prevailed at Golovliovo.

Yudushka drove up to the house. From the reception accorded to him he
concluded that affairs at Dubrovino were fast coming to a head. Without
a sign of haste, he descended from the carriage, waved his hand to the
servants who rushed forward to kiss it, then put his palms together,
and began to climb the steps slowly, whispering a prayer. His face
expressed a feeling of mingled grief, firmness, and resignation. As a
man he grieved; as a Christian he did not dare to complain. He prayed
to God to cure his brother, but above all he put his trust in the Lord
and bowed before His will. His sons walked side by side behind him,
Volodenka mimicking his father, clasping his hands, rolling his eyes
heavenward and mumbling his lips. Petenka revelled in his brother's
performance. Behind them, in silent procession, followed the servants.

Yudushka kissed dear mother's hand, then her lips, then her hand again
and put his arm about her waist and said, shaking his head sadly:

"And you keep on worrying. That's bad, mother dear, very bad. Instead
of that you should ask yourself: 'And what is God going to say to
this?' He will say: 'Here have I in my infinite wisdom arranged
everything for the best, and she grumbles.' Ah, mother dear, mother
dear."

Then he kissed both of his nieces, and with the same charming
familiarity in his voice, said:

"And you, too, romps, you are crying your eyes out. I won't permit it.
I command you immediately to smile. And that shall be the end of it."

And he stamped his foot at them in jesting anger.

"Just look at me," he continued. "As a brother I am torn with grief.
More than once I have shed tears. I am sorry for brother, sorry as can
be. I weep. Then I bethink myself: 'And what is God for? Is it possible
that God knows less than we what ought to be?' This thought inspires
me with courage. That is how you all should act, you, mother dear, and
you, little nieces, and--" he turned to the servants--"you all."

"Look at me, how well I bear up."

And in the same charming manner he proceeded to impersonate a man who
bears up. He straightened his body, put one foot forward, expanded his
chest, and threw back his head. The audience smiled sourly.

This performance over, Yudushka passed into the drawing-room and kissed
his mother's hand again.

"Well, so that's how things are, mother dear," he said, seating himself
on the couch. "So brother Pavel, too."

"Yes, Pavel, too," softly answered Arina Petrovna.

"Yes, yes--a little too early. Although I play the brave, in my soul
I, too, suffer and grieve for my poor brother. He hated me--hated me
bitterly. Maybe that is why God is punishing him."

"You might forget about it at such a moment. You must set old grudges
aside."

"I have forgotten it all long ago. I only mentioned it in passing.
My brother disliked me, for what reason, I know not. I tried one way
and another, directly and indirectly. I called him 'dear' and 'kind
brother,' but he drew back and that was the end of it."

"I asked you please not to bring all that up. The man is lying at the
point of death."

"Yes, mother dear, death is a great mystery. 'For ye know neither
the day nor the hour.' That's the kind of mystery it is. There he
was making plans, thinking he was exalted so high, so high as to be
beyond mortal reach. But in one instant with one blow God undid all his
dreams. Perhaps he would be glad now to cover up his sins. But they are
already recorded in the Book of Life. And whatever is written in that
book, mother dear, won't be scraped off in a hurry."

"But does not the Lord accept the sinner's repentance?"

"That's just what I wish for him from the bottom of my heart. I
know he hated me, still I wish him forgiveness. I wish the best for
everybody--for those that hate me, those that insult me--everybody. He
was unfair to me and now God sends him an ailment--not I, but God. Does
he suffer much, mother dear?"

"Well, not very much. The doctor was here and even gave us hopes." So
lied Arina Petrovna.

"What splendid news! Don't you worry, dear mother, he'll pull through
yet. Here we are eating our hearts away and grumbling at the Creator,
and perhaps he is sitting quietly on his bed thanking the Lord for his
recovery."

The idea delighted Yudushka so immensely that he even giggled softly to
himself.

"Do you know, mother dear, that I have come to stay here a while?" he
went on, for all the world as if he were giving his mother a pleasant
surprise. "It's among good kinsmen, you know. In case something
happens--you understand, as a brother--I may console, advise, make
arrangements. You will permit me, will you not?"

"What sort of permissions can I give when I am here myself only as
a--guest?"

"Well, then, dearest, since this is Friday, just order them, if you
please, to prepare a fish meal for me. Some salt-fish, mushrooms, a
little cabbage--you know, I don't need much. And in the meantime, as a
relative, I shall drag myself up to the entresol. Perhaps I shall still
be in time to do some good, if not to his body, at least to his soul.
In his position, it seems to me, the soul is of much more consequence.
We can patch up the body, mother dear, with potions and poultices, but
the soul needs a more potent remedy."

Arina Petrovna made no objection. The thought of the inevitability
of the "end" had taken such complete hold of her, that she observed
everything and listened to everything about her dazedly. She saw
Yudushka rise from the sofa, stoop and shuffle his feet. He liked to
appear invalided at times. He had an idea it added to his dignity. She
knew the unexpected appearance of the Bloodsucker in the entresol would
greatly excite the patient, might even hasten his end. But after the
day of agitation, she was so exhausted that she felt as if in a dream.

Meanwhile Pavel Vladimirych was in an indescribable state of
excitement. Though quite alone, he was aware of an unusual stir in
the house. Every bang of a door, every hurried footstep in the hall
awakened a mysterious alarm. For a while he called with all his
might; but, soon convinced his shouts were useless, he gathered all
his strength, sat up in bed, and listened. The sound of running feet
and loud voices stopped and was followed by a dead silence. Something
unknown and fearful surrounded him. Only a few, miserly rays of light
sifted through the lowered shades and the dim light of the lamp burning
before the ikon in the corner made the dusk filling the room seem all
the darker and gloomier. Pavel fixed his gaze upon that mysterious
corner as if for the first time he found something surprising in
it. The ikon, in a gilt framework on which the rays from the lamp
fell perpendicularly, stood out of the gloom with a sort of striking
brightness, like something alive. A circle of light wavered upon the
ceiling, flaring up or dying down in proportion to the strength or
weakness of the lamplight. Strange shadows filled the room, and the
dressing-gown hanging on the wall was alive with vacillating stripes of
light and shadow. Pavel Vladimirych watched and watched, and he felt
as if right there in that corner everything were suddenly beginning
to move. Solitude, helplessness, dead silence--and shadows, a host of
shadows. The shadows seemed to be coming, coming, coming. Gripped by
an indescribable terror, he gazed into the mysterious corner, eyes and
mouth agape, uttering no cries, but simply groaning--groaning in a
stifled voice, in jerks, like the barking of a dog. He heard neither
the creak of the stairs nor the careful shuffling steps in the adjacent
room. Suddenly, beside his bed, there loomed up the detestable figure
of Yudushka, as if from that gloom which had just mysteriously hovered
before his eyes, and as if there were more, more of shadows, shadows
without end--coming, coming----

"What? Where did you come from? Who let you in?" he cried
instinctively, dropping back on his pillow helplessly. Yudushka
stood at the bedside, scrutinizing the sick man and shaking his head
sorrowfully.

"Does it hurt?" he asked, putting all the oiliness of which he was
capable into his voice.

Pavel Vladimirych was silent, but stared at him stupidly, as if making
every effort to understand him.

Meanwhile Yudushka approached the ikon, fell to his knees, bowed three
times to the ground, arose and appeared again at the bedside.

"Well, brother, get up. May God send you grace," he said, sitting down
in an armchair, in a voice so jovial that he actually appeared to be
carrying "grace" about with him in his pocket.

At last Pavel Vladimirych realized that this was no shadow but the
Bloodsucker in flesh. He seemed to coil up of a sudden as if in a
cramp. Yudushka's eyes were bright with affection, but the invalid very
distinctly saw the "noose" lurking in those eyes ready any instant to
dart out and tighten round his neck.

"Ah, brother, brother, you've become no better than an old woman,"
Yudushka continued jocosely. "Come, brace up! Get up and run a little
race. Come on, come on, give mother the joy of seeing what a strong
fellow you are. Come on now! Up with you!"

"Get out of here, Bloodsucker!" the invalid cried in desperation.

"Ah, brother, brother! I come to you in kindness and sympathy, and
you ... what do you say in return? Oh, what a sin! And how could your
tongue say such a thing to your own brother! It's a shame, darling,
it's a shame! Wait a minute, let me arrange the pillow for you."

Yudushka got up and poked his finger into the pillow.

"Like this," he continued. "That's fine now. Lie quietly, now. You
won't need to touch it till tomorrow."

"You get out!"

"My, how cranky your illness has made you! Why, you have even become
stubborn, really. You keep chasing me, 'Get out, get out!' But how can
I go? Here, for instance, you feel thirsty and I hand you some water.
Or I see the ikon is out of order, and I set it to rights, or pour in
some oil. You just lie where you are and I'll be sitting nearby, real
quietly. So we won't even see how time flies."

"Get out, you Bloodsucker!"

"Look here, you are insulting me, but I am going to pray to the Lord
for you. I know it isn't you, it's your illness talking. You see,
brother, I am used to forgiving. I forgive everybody. Today, for
instance, as I was coming here I met a peasant, and he said something
about me. Well, the Lord be with him. He defiled his own tongue. And I,
why I not only was not angry at him, I even made the sign of the cross
over him, I did truly."

"You robbed him, didn't you?"

"Who, I? Why, no, my friend, I don't rob people; highwaymen rob, but
I--I act in accordance with the law. I caught his horse grazing in my
meadows--well, let him go to the justice of the peace. If the justice
says it's right to let your cattle graze on other people's fields,
well, then I'll give him his horse back, but if the justice says it
isn't right, I am sorry. The peasant will have to pay a fine. I act
according to the law, my friend, according to the law."

"You Judas the traitor, you left mother a pauper."

"I repeat, you may be angry, if you please, but you are wrong. If I
were not a Christian, I would even have cause to be angry at you for
what you've just said."

"Yes, you did, you did make mother a pauper."

"Now, do be quiet, please. Here, I am going to pray for you. Maybe that
will calm you down."

Though Yudushka had restrained himself successfully throughout the
conversation, the dying man's curses affected him deeply. His lips
curled queerly and turned pale. However, hypocrisy was so ingrained
in his nature that once the comedy was begun, he could not leave it
unfinished. So he knelt before the ikon and for fully fifteen minutes
murmured prayers, his hands uplifted. Thereupon he returned to the
dying man's bed with countenance calm and serene.

"You know, brother, I have come to talk serious matters over with you,"
he said, seating himself in the armchair. "Here you are insulting
me, but I am thinking of your soul. Tell me, please, when did you
communicate last?"

"Oh, Lord! What is all this? Take him away! Ulita, Agasha! Anybody
here?" moaned Pavel.

"Now, now, darling, do be quiet. I know you don't like to talk about
it. Yes, brother, you always were a bad Christian and you are still.
But it wouldn't be bad, really it wouldn't, to give some thought to
your soul. We've got to be careful with our souls, my friend, oh, how
careful! Do you know what the Church prescribes? It says, 'Ye shall
offer prayers and thanks.' And again, 'The end of a Christian's earthly
life is painless, honorable and peaceable.' That's what it is, my
friend. You really ought to send for the priest and sincerely, with
penitence. All right, I won't, I won't. But really you'd better."

Pavel Vladimirych lay livid and nearly suffocated. If he could have,
he would have dashed his head to pieces.

"And how about the estate? Have you already made arrangements?"
continued Yudushka. "Yours is a fine little estate, a very fine one.
The soil is even better than at Golovliovo. And you have money, too, I
suppose. Of course, I don't know anything about your affairs. I only
know that you received a lump sum on freeing your serfs, but exactly
how much, I never cared to know. To-day, for instance, as I was coming
here, I said to myself, 'I suppose brother Pavel has money.' 'But
then,' I thought, 'if he has capital, he must have decided already how
to dispose of it.'"

The patient turned away and sighed heavily.

"You have not made any disposition? Well, so much the better, my
friend. It's even more just, according to the law. It won't be
inherited by strangers, but by your own kind. Take me, for example, I
am old, with one foot in the grave, but still I think, 'Why should I
make disposition of my property if the law will do it all for me, after
I am dead?' And it's really the right way, my friend. There will be no
quarrels, no envy, no lawsuits. It's the law."

That was unbearable. Pavel Vladimirych felt as if he were lying in a
coffin, fettered, in lethargy, unable to move a limb, and forced to
hear the Bloodsucker revile his dead body.

"Get out--for Christ's sake, get out!" he finally implored his torturer.

"All right, you just be quiet, I'll go. I know you don't like me. It's
a shame, my friend, a real shame, to dislike your own brother. You see,
I do love you. And I've always been telling my children, 'Though Pavel
Vladimirych has sinned against me, yet I love him.' So you did not
make any disposition? Well, that's fine, my friend. Sometimes, though,
one's money is stolen while one is yet alive, especially when one is
without relatives, all alone. But I'll take care of it. Eh? What? Am I
annoying you? Well, well, let it be as you wish. I'll go. Let me offer
up a prayer."

He rose, placed his palms together, and whispered a prayer hurriedly.

"Good-by, friend, don't worry. Take a good rest, and perhaps with God's
help you will get better. I will talk the matter over with mother dear.
Maybe we'll think something up. I have ordered a fish meal for myself,
some salt-fish, some mushrooms and cabbage. So you'll pardon me. What?
Am I annoying you again? Ah, brother dear! Well, well, I'm going. Above
all, don't be alarmed, don't be excited, sleep well and take a good
rest," he said, and finally made his departure.

"Bloodsucker!" The word came after him in such a piercing shriek that
even he felt as if he had been branded with a hot iron.




CHAPTER VI


While Porfiry Vladimirych was holding forth in the entresol,
grandmother Arina Petrovna had gathered the young folks around her
downstairs, and was talking to them, not without the hope of getting
something out of them.

"Well, how are you?" she asked, turned to her eldest grandson, Petenka.

"I'm pretty well, granny. Next month I'll graduate as an officer."

"Really? How many years have you been promising that? Are the
examinations so hard? Or what?"

"At the last examination, granny, he failed in his catechism. The
priest asked him, 'What is God?' and he answered, 'God is Spirit--is
Spirit--and Holy Spirit.'"

"Oh, you poor thing! How is that? Look at those little orphans. I'm
sure even they know that."

"Why, certainly. God is invisible Spirit." Anninka hurried to show off
her knowledge.

"Whom none ever beheld," Lubinka put in.

"Omniscient, most Gracious, Omnipotent, Omnipresent," Anninka continued.

"Whither can I go from Thy spirit and whither can I flee from Thy face?
Should I rise to Heaven, there wouldst Thou be, should I descend to
Hell, there wouldst Thou be."

"I wish you would have answered like that. You would have epaulets by
this time. And how about you, Volodya, what are you going to do?"

Volodya flushed and remained silent.

"Apparently, you go no further than your brother with his 'Spirit--Holy
Spirit,' Ah, children, children! You seem to be so bright and yet
somehow you can't master your studies at all. I might understand if you
had a father who spoiled you. Tell me, how does he treat you now?"

"Still the same old way, granny."

"Does he beat you? Didn't I hear he stopped thrashing you?"

"A little bit, but--the worst is, he pesters us to death."

"I must say, I don't understand. How can a father pester his children?"

"He does though, grandma, awfully. We can't go out without permission,
we can't take a thing. It couldn't be worse."

"Well, then, ask permission. Your tongue wouldn't fall out in the
effort, I imagine."

"Impossible. You just begin to talk to him, then he doesn't let go of
you. 'Don't hurry and wait a while. Gently, gently, take it easy.'
Really, granny, his talk is too tiresome for words."

"Granny, he listens to us on the sly behind our doors. Just the other
day Piotr caught him in the act."

"Oh, you rogues! Well, what did he say?"

"Nothing. I said to him, 'It won't do, daddy, for you to eavesdrop at
our doors. Some day you may get your nose squashed. And all he said
was, 'Well, well, it's nothing, it's nothing. I, my child, am like a
thief in the night, as it says in the Bible.'"

"The other day, granny, he picked up an apple in the orchard, and put
it away in a cupboard. I ate it up. So he hunted and hunted for it, and
cross-examined everybody."

"What do you mean? Has he become a miser?"

"No, he's not exactly stingy, but--how shall I put it? He is just
swamped head over heels in little things. He hides slips of paper, and
he hunts for wind-fallen fruit."

"Every morning he says mass in his study, and later he gives each of us
a little piece of holy wafer, stale as stale can be."

"But once we played a trick on him. We discovered where he keeps the
wafers, made a cut in the bottom of them, took out the pulp, and stuck
butter in."

"Well, I must say you are regular cut-throats."

"My, just imagine his surprise, next day. Wafers with butter!"

"I suppose you got it good and hard afterwards."

"No, not a bit. But he kept spitting all day and muttering to himself,
'The rascals!' Of course we made believe he didn't mean us."

"Let me tell you, granny, he is afraid of you."

"Of me! I'm not a scarecrow to frighten him."

"I'm sure he's scared of you. He thinks you'll put a curse on him. He's
desperately afraid of curses."

Arina Petrovna became lost in thought. At first the idea passed through
her mind: "What if I really should put a curse on him--just take and
curse him?" But the thought was instantly replaced by a more pressing
question, "What is Yudushka doing now? What tricks is he playing
upstairs? He must be up to one of his usual tricks." Finally a happy
idea struck her.

"Volodya," she said, "you, dear heart, are light on your feet. Why
shouldn't you go softly and listen to what's going on up there?"

"Gladly, granny."

Volodya tiptoed toward the doors and disappeared through them.

"What made you come over to us to-day?" Arina Petrovna continued with
her questioning.

"We meant to come a long time ago, grandma, but today Ulita sent a
messenger to say the doctor had been here and uncle was going to die,
if not to-day, then surely to-morrow."

"Tell me, is there any talk among you about the heritage?"

"We keep talking about it the whole day, granny. Papa tells us how
it used to be before grandpa's time. He even remembers Goriushkino,
granny. 'See now,' he says, 'if Auntie Varvara Mikhailovna had no
children, then Goriushkino would be ours. And God knows,' he says, 'who
the children's father is. But let us not judge others. We see a mote in
the eye of our neighbor, but fail to notice a beam in our own. That's
how the world goes, brother.'"

"Nonsense, nonsense. Auntie was married, was she not? Even if there had
been anything before that, the marriage made it all straight."

"That's true, grandma, and each time we go past Goriushkino, he brings
up the same old tale: 'Grandma Natalya Vladimirovna,' he says, 'brought
Goriushkino as a dowry. By all rights it should have stayed in the
family. But your deceased grandfather gave it to sister as a dot. And
what wonderful watermelons,' he says, 'used to grow at Goriushkino!
Twenty pounds each. That's the kind of watermelons that grew there!'"

"Twenty pounds, bosh! I never heard of such melons. Well, and what are
his intentions about Dubrovino?"

"In the same line, granny. Watermelons and muskmelons and other
trifles. But of late he has constantly been asking us, 'What do you
think, children, has uncle Pavel much money?' He has had it all figured
out for a long time, grandma: the amount of redemption loan, and when
the property was mortgaged, and how much debt is paid off. We even saw
the paper on which he made the calculations; and guess what, granny, we
stole it. We nearly drove him crazy with that slip of paper. He'd put
it in a drawer, and we'd match the key and stick it into a holy wafer.
Once he went to take a bath, when lo and behold! he saw the paper lying
on the bath shelf."

"You've a gay life up there."

Volodenka returned and became the center of general attention.

"I couldn't hear a thing," he announced in a whisper, "the only thing I
heard was father mouthing words like 'painless, untarnished, peaceful,'
and uncle shouting, 'Get out of here, you Bloodsucker!'"

"Didn't you hear anything about the will?"

"I think there was something said about it, but I couldn't make it out.
Father shut the door entirely too tight, granny. Only a buzzing came
through. And then suddenly uncle yelled, 'Get--get out!' Well then I
took to my heels and here I am."

"If only the orphans were given----" anxiously thought Arina Petrovna.

"If father gets his hands on it, granny, he'll not give a thing to
anyone," Petenka assured her. "And I have a feeling he's even going to
deprive us of the inheritance."

"Still, he can't take it to the grave with him, can he?"

"No, but he'll think up some scheme. It wasn't for nothing that he had
a talk with the priest not long ago. 'How does the idea of building
a tower of Babel strike you, Father?' he asked. 'Would one need much
money?'"

"Well, he just said that perhaps out of curiosity."

"No, granny, he has some plan in mind. If it isn't for a tower of
Babel, he'll donate the money to the St. Athos monastery; but he'll
make sure we don't get any."

"Will father get a big estate when uncle dies?" asked Volodya,
curiously.

"Well, God alone knows which of them will die first."

"Father is sure he'll outlive uncle. The other day, just as soon as
we reached the boundary of the Dubrovino estate, he took off his cap,
crossed himself, and said, 'Thank God we'll be riding again on our own
land!"'

"He's made arrangements for everything already, granny. He noticed the
woods. 'There,' he says, 'if there were a good landlord, that would be
a ripping fine forest.' Then he looked at the meadows. 'What a meadow!
Just look! Look at all those hay stacks!'"

"Yes, indeed, both the woods and the meadows, everything will be yours,
my darlings," sighed Arina Petrovna. "Goodness! Wasn't that a squeak on
the stairs?"

"Hush, granny, hush! That's he--'like a thief in the night,' listening
behind the doors."

There was a silence, but it proved to be a false alarm. Arina Petrovna
sighed and muttered to herself, "Ah, children, children!"

The boys stared at the orphans, fairly swallowing them with their gaze,
while the little orphans sat in silent envy.

"Did you see Mademoiselle Lotar, cousin?" Petenka started a
conversation.

Anninka and Lubinka exchanged glances as if they had been asked a
question in history or geography.

"In _Fair Helen_ she plays the part of Helen on the stage."

"Oh, yes--Helen--Paris--'Beautiful and young; he set the hearts of the
goddesses aflame--' I know, I know it," cried Lubinka joyfully.

"Exactly. And how she sings 'Cas-ca-ader, ca-as-cader.' It's great."

"The doctor who was just here keeps humming '_Head over heels._'"

"That is Lyadova's song. Wasn't she splendid, cousin? When she died,
nearly two thousand persons followed the hearse. People thought there
would be a revolution."

"Is it about theatres you're chattering?" broke in Arina Petrovna.
"Well, their destiny lies far from theatres, my boys. It leads rather
to the convent."

"Granny, you've set your mind on burying us in a convent," complained
Anninka.

"Come, cousin, let's go to St. Petersburg instead of to a convent.
We'll show you everything to be seen there."

"Their minds should not be occupied with thoughts of pleasure, but
rather with thoughts of God," continued Arina Petrovna sententiously.

"We will teach you everything under the sun. In St. Petersburg there
are lots of girls like you. They walk about swinging their skirts."

"Stop bothering them, for Christ's sake, you teachers," Arina Petrovna
interjected. "Nice things you can teach them."

"I'm going to take them to Khotkov, after Uncle Pavel's death, and
we'll settle down comfortably there."

"So you're still at your blabbing," a voice at the door suddenly broke
in.

Engrossed in conversation nobody had heard Yudushka steal up "like a
thief in the night." He was all in tears, his head was bowed, his face
pale, his hands crossed on his breast, his lips mumbling in prayer.
For a few moments his eyes sought the ikons, then found them and for a
brief while he prayed.

"He's very ill. Ah, how ill he is!" he finally exclaimed, embracing his
mother dear.

"Is he?"

"Very, very ill, dear heart. And do you recollect what a strong fellow
he was?"

"Well, he was never exactly strong. I can't remember that, somehow."

"Ah no, mother dear, don't say that. He was, always. I remember
perfectly when he left the cadets corps how well shaped he was, broad
shouldered, glowing with health. Yes, yes, mother dear, that's how
it is. We're all in God's hands. To-day we're strong, in the best of
health, we want to enjoy life to have a good meal, and tomorrow....

He shrugged his shoulders and assumed deep emotion.

"Did he say anything at least?"

"Very little, dearest. The only thing he said was, 'Good-by, brother.'
And yet, mother dear, he can feel. He feels that he is in a bad way."

"Well, no wonder he feels he is in a bad way when he can hardly catch
his breath."

"No, mother dear, that's not what I mean. I have in mind the inner
vision which is given to the righteous and which allows them to foresee
their death."

"Yes, yes! Didn't he say anything about his will?"

"No, mother. He wanted to say something about it, but I stopped him.
'No,' I said, 'don't talk about that! Whatever you leave me, brother,
out of the kindness of your heart, I shall be satisfied. And even if
you leave me nothing, I'll have mass said for you at my own expense.'
And yet, mother dear, how he wants to live! How he longs for life!"

"Of course, who doesn't want to live?"

"No, mother. Take myself, for example. If it pleased the Lord God to
call me to Himself, I'm ready on the spot."

"All well and good if you go to Heaven, but what if Satan gets you
between his fangs?"

In this vein the talk continued till supper, during supper, and
after supper. Arina Petrovna was very restless. While Yudushka was
expatiating on various subjects, the thought entered her mind at
shorter and shorter intervals, "What if I should really curse him?" But
Yudushka had not the slightest suspicion of the storm raging in his
mother's heart. He had an air of serenity, and continued slowly and
gently to torture his "mother dear" with his endless twaddle.

"I'll curse him! I'll curse him! Curse him!" Arina Petrovna repeated
inwardly, with greater and greater determination.




CHAPTER VII


An odor of incense pervaded the rooms, the sing-song of funeral chants
was heard in the house, the doors were thrown open, those wishing to
pay their last respects to the deceased came and went. While Pavel
Vladimirych lived, nobody had paid any attention to him; at his death
everybody mourned. People recalled that he "had never hurt a single
person," that "he had never uttered a cross word to anyone," nor
thrown anyone a look of ill-will--all qualities that had appeared
purely negative, but now assumed a positive character. Many seemed
to repent that at times they had taken advantage of the dead man's
simplicity--but after all, who knew that the simple soul was destined
to so speedy an end? One peasant brought Yudushka three silver rubles
and said: "Here's a little debt I owe Pavel Vladimirych. No writing
passed between us. Here, take it."

Yudushka took the money, praised the peasant, and said he would donate
the three silver rubles for oil to burn forever before an ikon in the
church.

"You, my dear friend, will see the flame, and everybody will see it,
and the soul of my deceased brother will rejoice. Maybe he will obtain
something for you in Heaven. You won't be expecting anything--and
suddenly the Lord will send you luck."

Very probably the high estimate of the deceased's virtues was largely
based on a comparison between him and his brother. People did not like
Yudushka. Not that they couldn't get the better of him, but that he
was entirely too much of a nuisance with his scrape-penny ways. Very
few could bring themselves to lease land from him. They were afraid of
his passion for litigation. He dragged any number of people to court,
wasted their time, and won nothing, because his pettifogging habits
were so well known in the district that almost without listening to the
case the courts dismissed his claims.

Since meanness, or, to be more exact, a kind of moral hardness,
especially when under the mask of hypocrisy, always inspires a sort of
superstitious fear, Yudushka's neighbors bowed waist low as they passed
by the Bloodsucker, standing all in black beside the coffin with palms
crossed and eyes raised upward.

As long as the deceased lay in the house, the family walked about on
tip-toe, stole glances into the dining-room, where the coffin stood
on the table, wagged their heads, and talked in whispers. Yudushka
pretended to be overcome by the disaster, and shuffled painfully along
the corridor, paid a visit to the "dear deceased," affected deep
emotional stress, arranged the pall on the coffin, and whispered to the
commissioner of police, who was taking the inventory and affixing the
seal. Petenka and Volodenka busied themselves about the coffin, placing
and lighting the candles, handing over the censer, and so forth.
Anninka and Lubinka cried and through their tears helped the chanters
sing the mass for the dead in thin little voices. The woman servants,
dressed in black calico, wiped their noses red from weeping on their
aprons.

Immediately after the death of Pavel Vladimirych, Arina Petrovna
went up to her room and locked herself in. She was not disposed
to weep, for she realized that she had to decide upon a course of
action immediately. To remain at Dubrovino was out of the question.
Consequently, she had only one choice, to go to Pogorelka, the orphans'
estate, the "bone" that she had once thrown to her disrespectful
daughter, Anna Vladimirovna. Arriving at this decision, she felt
relieved, as though Yudushka had suddenly and forever lost all power
over her. Calmly she counted her five per cent. Government bonds. They
totalled fifteen thousand rubles of her own, and as much belonging
to the orphans, which she had saved up for them. And she went on
composedly to calculate how much money she would have to spend to put
the Pogorelka manor-house in order. Then she immediately sent for the
bailiff of Pogorelka, gave the necessary orders about hiring carpenters
and sending a horse and cart to Dubrovino for her and the orphans'
belongings, ordered the coach to be made ready (the coach was her own,
and she had evidence that it was her very own), and began to pack.
She felt neither hatred nor goodwill toward Yudushka. It suddenly
became disgusting to her to have any dealings with him. She even ate
unwillingly and little, because from that day she had to eat not
Pavel's but Yudushka's food. Several times Porfiry Vladimirych peeped
into her room to have a chat with his "mother dear." He understood the
meaning of her packing clearly, but pretended to notice nothing. Arina
Petrovna refused to see him.

"Go, my friend, go," she said. "I have no time."

In three days, Arina Petrovna had everything in readiness for
departure. They heard mass, performed the funeral service, and buried
Pavel Vladimirych. At the funeral everything happened just as Arina
Petrovna had imagined on the morning when Yudushka came to Dubrovino.
In the very way she had foreseen Yudushka cried out, "Farewell,
brother!" when they lowered the coffin into the grave, and turned to
Ulita and said hastily: "Don't forget--don't forget to take the kutya,
and put it in the dining-room on a clean table cloth. We will honor
brother's memory in the house, too."

Three churchmen, the Father Provost and a deacon, were invited to the
dinner served, as is the custom, immediately on the return from the
funeral ceremony. A special table was laid in the entrance hall for
the sextons. Arina Petrovna and the orphans entered clad in travelling
clothes, but Yudushka pretended even then not to understand. He went
over to the table, requested the Father Provost to bless the food and
drink, poured a glassful of vodka for himself and the churchmen, put
on an air of deep emotion and said, "Everlasting memory to the late
deceased! Ah, brother, brother, you have forsaken us! Who of us more
than you was fit to live a happy life? How sad, brother, how sad!"

Then he crossed himself, and emptied the glass. He crossed himself
again and swallowed a piece of caviar, crossed himself again and took a
taste of dried sturgeon.

"Eat, Father," he urged the Provost. "All this is my late brother's
stock. How the deceased loved good fare! Not only that he ate well
himself, but he even liked treating others better. Ah, brother,
brother, you have forsaken us! How wrong it was of you, brother, how
very wrong!"

He was so carried away by his incessant chatter that he even forgot
about his dear mother. But suddenly she came to his mind as he scooped
up a spoonful of mushrooms and was about to send it down his mouth.

"Mother, dearest, darling!" he exclaimed. "I, the fool, am here,
gorging myself. What a sin! Mother dear, help yourself. Some mushrooms.
These are Dubrovino mushrooms. The famous ones."

But Arina Petrovna did not stir. She only shook her head in silence.
She seemed listening to something with intense curiosity, a new light
seemed to fill her eyes, as if the comedy to which she had long since
become accustomed and in which she had always taken active part,
suddenly presented itself to her in a changed light.

The dinner commenced with a brief, pathetic discussion. Yudushka
insisted that Arina Petrovna should take the hostess's place at the
head of the table. Arina Petrovna refused.

"No, you are the host here, so sit where you please

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