Fifty-Two Stories

The coachman only glanced at him with scorn and did not say a word. And later, while the fire was heating up in the smithy, the coachman stood talking and smoking cigarettes. The peasants learned many details from him: his masters were rich; earlier, before her marriage, the mistress, Elena Ivanovna, had lived in Moscow as a poor governess; she was kind, compassionate, and liked to help the poor. On the new estate, he went on telling them, there will be no plowing, no sowing, they will live only for their own pleasure, only so as to breathe the clean air. When he finished and led the horses back, he was followed by a crowd of boys, dogs barked, and Kozov, following them with his eyes, winked mockingly.

“So-o-ome landowners!” he said. “They build a house, buy horses, but they’ve probably got nothing to eat. So-o-ome landowners!”

Kozov began somehow at once to hate the new estate, and the white horses, and the well-fed, handsome coachman. He himself was a single man, a widower; his life was boring (he was prevented from working by some illness which he called now a hoornia, now worms); he received money for subsistence from his son, who worked in a pastry shop in Kharkov, and from early morning till evening he wandered idly along the riverbank or around the village, and if he saw, for instance, a peasant carrying a log or fishing, he would say: “That log’s deadwood, rotten,” or “Fish don’t bite in such weather.” During a dry spell, he would say there would be no rain before the frost, and when it rained, he would say now everything in the fields was going to rot and perish. And all the while he kept winking, as if he knew something.

On the estate in the evenings they burned Bengal lights and set off fireworks, and a boat with red lamps went sailing past Obruchanovo. One morning the engineer’s wife, Elena Ivanovna, came to the village with her little daughter in a carriage with yellow wheels, drawn by a pair of dark bay ponies; both mother and daughter were wearing straw hats with broad brims bent down to their ears.

This was just the time of the dung carting, and the blacksmith Rodion, a tall, gaunt old man, hatless, barefoot, with a fork on his shoulder, stood by his filthy, ugly cart, looking at the ponies in bewilderment, and his face showed clearly that he had never seen such small horses before.

“It’s Kucherov’s woman!” people whispered all around. “Look, it’s Kucherov’s woman!”

Elena Ivanovna kept glancing at the cottages as if she were choosing, then stopped the horses by the poorest cottage, where there were so many children’s heads in the windows—blond, dark, red. Stepanida, Rodion’s wife, a stout old woman, ran out of the cottage, the kerchief slipped from her gray head, she looked at the carriage against the sun, and her face smiled and winced as if she were blind.

“This is for your children,” Elena Ivanovna said and handed her three roubles.

Stepanida suddenly burst into tears and bowed to the ground. Rodion also dropped down, displaying his broad, tanned bald spot and almost snagging his wife’s side with his fork. Elena Ivanovna became embarrassed and drove away.

II

The Lychkovs, father and son, caught two workhorses, one pony, and a broad-muzzled Aalhaus bull calf on their meadow, and together with red-headed Volodka, the son of the blacksmith Rodion, led them to the village. They called the headman, took witnesses, and went to look at the damage.

“All right, let ’em!” said Kozov, winking. “Go o-o-on! Let ’em squirm a bit now, these engineers! They think there’s no justice? All right! Send for the police, draw up a report!…”

“Draw up a report!” Volodka repeated.

“I don’t want to leave it like this!” Lychkov the son was shouting, shouting louder and louder, and that seemed to make his beardless face swell even more. “It’s some new fashion! If you let them, they’ll trample down all the meadows! They’ve got no full right to bully people! There are no serfs now!”

“There are no serfs now!” Volodka repeated.

“We lived without a bridge,” Lychkov the father said sullenly, “we didn’t ask for it, what do we need a bridge for? We don’t want it!”

“Brothers, good Orthodox people! We can’t leave it like this!”

“All right, go o-o-on!” Kozov winked. “Let ’em squirm a bit now! So-o-ome landowners!”

They headed back to the village, and all the while they walked, Lychkov the son beat himself on the chest with his fist and shouted, and Volodka also shouted, repeating his words. And in the village, meanwhile, a whole crowd had gathered around the thoroughbred bull calf and the horses. The bull calf was embarrassed and looked from under his brow, but suddenly he lowered his muzzle to the ground and ran, kicking up his hind legs. Kozov got frightened and waved his stick at him, and they all burst out laughing. Then they locked up the beasts and began to wait.