Fifty-Two Stories

The engineer apparently became irritable, petty, and now saw every trifle as a theft or an encroachment. The gates were locked even during the day, and at night two watchmen walked in the garden, rapping on boards;² no one from Obruchanovo was hired to do day labor any more. As if on purpose, someone (one of the peasants or a tramp—no one knew) took the new wheels off the cart and replaced them with old ones; then, a little later, two bridles and a pair of pincers were taken, and murmuring even began in the village. They said a search should be carried out at the Lychkovs’ and Volodka’s, after which the pincers and the bridles were found by the fence in the engineer’s garden: someone had put them there.

Once a crowd of them came out of the woods and again met the engineer on the road. He stopped and, without greeting them, looking angrily first at one, then at another, began:

“I’ve asked that the mushrooms not be picked in my park and around the premises, that they be left for my wife and children, but your girls come at dawn, and then there’s not a single mushroom left. Asking you or not asking—it’s all the same. Requests, kindness, persuasion, I see, are all useless.”

He fixed his indignant eyes on Rodion and went on:

“My wife and I treated you as human beings, as equals, and you? Eh, what’s there to talk about! It will end, most likely, with us looking down on you. There’s nothing else left!”

And making an effort to restrain his wrath, so as not to say something unnecessary, he turned and went on his way.

On coming home, Rodion said a prayer, took off his boots, and sat down on the bench beside his wife.

“Yes…,” he began, after resting. “We were going along just now and met Mister Kucherov…Yes…He’s seen the village girls at daybreak…He says, ‘Why don’t they bring mushrooms,’ he says…‘to my wife and children?’ And then he looks at me and says: ‘My wife and I,’ he says, ‘are going to look after you.’ I wanted to bow down at his feet, but I turned shy…God grant him good health…Lord, send them…”

Stepanida crossed herself and sighed.

“They’re kind masters, sort of simple…,” Rodion went on. “ ‘We’ll look after you…’ he promised in front of everybody. In our old age and…it would be nice…I’d pray to God for them eternally…Queen of Heaven, send them…”

The Elevation, on the fourteenth of September, was the church feast.³ The Lychkovs, father and son, crossed the river in the morning, and came back drunk at lunchtime; they went around the village for a long time, now singing, now abusing each other in foul language; then they got into a fight and went to the estate to complain. First Lychkov the father came into the yard with a long aspen stick in his hand; he stopped hesitantly and took off his hat. Just then the engineer and his family were sitting on the terrace having tea.

“What do you want?” the engineer shouted.

“Your Honor, sir…,” Lychkov began and burst into tears. “Show me divine mercy, intercede…My son won’t let me live…He’s ruined me, he beats me…Your Honor…”

Lychkov the son also came in, hatless, also with a stick. He stopped and fixed his drunken, mindless gaze on the terrace.

“It’s not my business to sort it out,” said the engineer. “Go to the local court or the police.”

“I’ve been everywhere…I’ve petitioned…,” said Lychkov the father, and he started sobbing. “Where can I go now? So it means he can kill me now? It means he can do anything? And me his father? His father?”

He raised his stick and hit his son on the head; the son raised his and hit the old man right on his bald spot, so that the stick even bounced off. Lychkov the father did not even sway and again hit his son, again on the head. They stood like that and kept hitting each other on the head, and it looked not like a fight, but like some sort of game. And outside the gate peasant men and women crowded and silently looked into the yard, and their faces were all serious. They had come with wishes for the feast day, but, seeing the Lychkovs, they felt ashamed and did not enter the yard.

The next morning Elena Ivanovna left for Moscow with the children. And the rumor spread that the engineer was selling his dacha…

V

The bridge had long been a familiar sight, and it was already hard to imagine the river in that place without it. The heaps of debris left from the construction had long been overgrown with grass, the vagabonds were forgotten, and instead of the song “Dubinushka,” the sound of a passing train was heard almost every hour.

The New Dacha was sold long ago; it now belongs to some official, who comes here from town on holidays with his family, has tea on the terrace, and then goes back to town. He has a cockade on his visored cap, he talks and coughs like a very important official, though in rank he is a mere collegiate secretary,⁴ and when the peasants bow to him, he does not respond.

In Obruchanovo everyone has aged; Kozov has already died, Rodion has even more children in his cottage, Volodka has grown a long red beard. Life is as poor as before.