The Witch, and Other Stories

At the entrance to the copse stood a milestone. Elizarov touched it; read it. Praskovya reached them out of breath. Her wrinkled and always scared-looking face was beaming with happiness; she had been at church to-day like anyone else, then she had been to the fair and there had drunk pear cider. For her this was unusual, and it even seemed to her now that she had lived for her own pleasure that day for the first time in her life. After resting they all three walked on side by side. The sun had already set, and its beams filtered through the copse, casting a light on the trunks of the trees. There was a faint sound of voices ahead. The Ukleevo girls had long before pushed on ahead but had lingered in the copse, probably gathering mushrooms.

“Hey, wenches!” cried Elizarov. “Hey, my beauties!”

There was a sound of laughter in response.

“Crutch is coming! Crutch! The old horseradish.”

And the echo laughed, too. And then the copse was left behind. The tops of the factory chimneys came into view. The cross on the belfry glittered: this was the village: “the one at which the deacon ate all the caviare at the funeral.” Now they were almost home; they only had to go down into the big ravine. Lipa and Praskovya, who had been walking barefooted, sat down on the grass to put on their boots; Elizar sat down with them. If they looked down from above Ukleevo looked beautiful and peaceful with its willow-trees, its white church, and its little river, and the only blot on the picture was the roof of the factories, painted for the sake of cheapness a gloomy ashen grey. On the slope on the further side they could see the rye – some in stacks and sheaves here and there as though strewn about by the storm, and some freshly cut lying in swathes; the oats, too, were ripe and glistened now in the sun like mother-of-pearl. It was harvest-time. To-day was a holiday, to-morrow they would harvest the rye and carry the hay, and then Sunday a holiday again; every day there were mutterings of distant thunder. It was misty and looked like rain, and, gazing now at the fields, everyone thought, God grant we get the harvest in in time; and everyone felt gay and joyful and anxious at heart.

“Mowers ask a high price nowadays,” said Praskovya. “One rouble and forty kopecks a day.”

People kept coming and coming from the fair at Kazanskoe: peasant women, factory workers in new caps, beggars, children… Here a cart would drive by stirring up the dust and behind it would run an unsold horse, and it seemed glad it had not been sold; then a cow was led along by the horns, resisting stubbornly; then a cart again, and in it drunken peasants swinging their legs. An old woman led a little boy in a big cap and big boots; the boy was tired out with the heat and the heavy boots which prevented his bending his legs at the knees, but yet blew unceasingly with all his might at a tin trumpet. They had gone down the slope and turned into the street, but the trumpet could still be heard.

“Our factory owners don’t seem quite themselves…” said Elizarov. “There’s trouble. Kostukov is angry with me. ‘Too many boards have gone on the cornices.’ ‘Too many? As many have gone on it as were needed, Vassily Danilitch; I don’t eat them with my porridge.’ ‘How can you speak to me like that?’ said he, ‘you good-for-nothing blockhead! Don’t forget yourself! It was I made you a contractor.’ ‘That’s nothing so wonderful,’ said I. ‘Even before I was a contractor I used to have tea every day.’ ‘You are a rascal…’ he said. I said nothing. ‘We are rascals in this world,’ thought I, ‘and you will be rascals in the next…’ Ha-ha-ha! The next day he was softer. ‘Don’t you bear malice against me for my words, Makaritch,’ he said. ‘If I said too much,’ says he, ‘what of it? I am a merchant of the first guild, your superior – you ought to hold your tongue.’ ‘You,’ said I, ‘are a merchant of the first guild and I am a carpenter, that’s correct. And Saint Joseph was a carpenter, too. Ours is a righteous calling and pleasing to God, and if you are pleased to be my superior you are very welcome to it, Vassily Danilitch.’ And later on, after that conversation I mean, I thought: ‘Which was the superior? A merchant of the first guild or a carpenter?’ The carpenter must be, my child!”

Crutch thought a minute and added:

“Yes, that’s how it is, child. He who works, he who is patient is the superior.”

By now the sun had set and a thick mist as white as milk was rising over the river, in the church enclosure, and in the open spaces round the factories. Now when the darkness was coming on rapidly, when lights were twinkling below, and when it seemed as though the mists were hiding a fathomless abyss, Lipa and her mother who were born in poverty and prepared to live so till the end, giving up to others everything except their frightened, gentle souls, may have fancied for a minute perhaps that in the vast, mysterious world, among the endless series of lives, they, too, counted for something, and they, too, were superior to someone; they liked sitting here at the top, they smiled happily and forgot that they must go down below again all the same.

At last they went home again. The mowers were sitting on the ground at the gates near the shop. As a rule the Ukleevo peasants did not go to Tsybukin’s to work, and they had to hire strangers, and now in the darkness it seemed as though there were men sitting there with long black beards. The shop was open, and through the doorway they could see the deaf man playing draughts with a boy. The mowers were singing softly, scarcely audibly, or loudly demanding their wages for the previous day, but they were not paid for fear they should go away before to-morrow. Old Tsybukin, with his coat off, was sitting in his waistcoat with Aksinya under the birch-tree, drinking tea; a lamp was burning on the table.

“I say, grandfather,” a mower called from outside the gates, as though taunting him, “pay us half anyway! Hey, grandfather.”

And at once there was the sound of laughter, and then again they sang hardly audibly… Crutch, too, sat down to have some tea.

“We have been at the fair, you know,” he began telling them. “We have had a walk, a very nice walk, my children, praise the Lord. But an unfortunate thing happened: Sashka the blacksmith bought some tobacco and gave the shopman half a rouble to be sure. And the half rouble was a false one” – Crutch went on, and he meant to speak in a whisper, but he spoke in a smothered husky voice which was audible to everyone. “The half-rouble turned out to be a bad one. He was asked where he got it. ‘Anisim Tsybukin gave it me,’ he said. ‘When I went to his wedding,’ he said. They called the police inspector, took the man away… Look out, Grigory Petrovitch, that nothing comes of it, no talk…”

“Gra-ndfather!” the same voice called tauntingly outside the gates. “Gra-andfather!”

A silence followed.

“Ah, little children, little children, little children…” Crutch muttered rapidly, and he got up. He was overcome with drowsiness. “Well, thank you for the tea, for the sugar, little children. It is time to sleep. I am like a bit of rotten timber nowadays, my beams are crumbling under me. Ho-ho-ho! I suppose it’s time I was dead.”

And he gave a gulp. Old Tsybukin did not finish his tea but sat on a little, pondering; and his face looked as though he were listening to the footsteps of Crutch, who was far away down the street.

“Sashka the blacksmith told a lie, I expect,” said Aksinya, guessing his thoughts.

He went into the house and came back a little later with a parcel; he opened it, and there was the gleam of roubles – perfectly new coins. He took one, tried it with his teeth, flung it on the tray; then flung down another.

“The roubles really are false…” he said, looking at Aksinya and seeming perplexed. “These are those Anisim brought, his present. Take them, daughter,” he whispered, and thrust the parcel into her hands. “Take them and throw them into the well… confound them! And mind there is no talk about it. Harm might come of it… Take away the samovar, put out the light.”

Lipa and her mother sitting in the barn saw the lights go out one after the other; only overhead in Varvara’s room there were blue and red lamps gleaming, and a feeling of peace, content, and happy ignorance seemed to float down from there. Praskovya could never get used to her daughter’s being married to a rich man, and when she came she huddled timidly in the outer room with a deprecating smile on her face, and tea and sugar were sent out to her. And Lipa, too, could not get used to it either, and after her husband had gone away she did not sleep in her bed, but lay down anywhere to sleep, in the kitchen or the barn, and every day she scrubbed the floor or washed the clothes, and felt as though she were hired by the day. And now, on coming back from the service, they drank tea in the kitchen with the cook, then they went into the barn and lay down on the ground between the sledge and the wall. It was dark here and smelt of harness. The lights went out about the house, then they could hear the deaf man shutting up the shop, the mowers settling themselves about the yard to sleep. In the distance at the Hrymin Juniors’ they were playing on the expensive concertina… Praskovya and Lipa began to go to sleep.

And when they were awakened by somebody’s steps it was bright moonlight; at the entrance of the barn stood Aksinya with her bedding in her arms.

“Maybe it’s a bit cooler here,” she said; then she came in and lay down almost in the doorway so that the moonlight fell full upon her.

She did not sleep, but breathed heavily, tossing from side to side with the heat, throwing off almost all the bedclothes. And in the magic moonlight what a beautiful, what a proud animal she was! A little time passed, and then steps were heard again: the old father, white all over, appeared in the doorway.

“Aksinya,” he called, “are you here?”

“Well?” she responded angrily.

“I told you just now to throw the money into the well, have you done so?”

“What next, throwing property into the water! I gave them to the mowers…”

“Oh my God!” cried the old man, dumbfounded and alarmed. “Oh my God! you wicked woman…”

He flung up his hands and went out, and he kept saying something as he went away. And a little later Aksinya sat up and sighed heavily with annoyance, then got up and, gathering up her bedclothes in her arms, went out.

“Why did you marry me into this family, mother?” said Lipa.

“One has to be married, daughter. It was not us who ordained it.”

And a feeling of inconsolable woe was ready to take possession of them. But it seemed to them that someone was looking down from the height of the heavens, out of the blue from where the stars were seeing everything that was going on in Ukleevo, watching over them. And however great was wickedness, still the night was calm and beautiful, and still in God’s world there is and will be truth and justice as calm and beautiful, and everything on earth is only waiting to be made one with truth and justice, even as the moonlight is blended with the night.

And both, huddling close to one another, fell asleep comforted.

VI

News had come long before that Anisim had been put in prison for coining and passing bad money. Months passed, more than half a year passed, the long winter was over, spring had begun, and everyone in the house and the village had grown used to the fact that Anisim was in prison. And when anyone passed by the house or the shop at night he would remember that Anisim was in prison; and when they rang at the churchyard for some reason, that, too, reminded them that he was in prison awaiting trial.

It seemed as though a shadow had fallen upon the house. The house looked darker, the roof was rustier, the heavy, iron-bound door into the shop, which was painted green, was covered with cracks, or, as the deaf man expressed it, “blisters”; and old Tsybukin seemed to have grown dingy, too. He had given up cutting his hair and beard, and looked shaggy. He no longer sprang jauntily into his chaise, nor shouted to beggars: “God will provide!” His strength was on the wane, and that was evident in everything. People were less afraid of him now, and the police officer drew up a formal charge against him in the shop though he received his regular bribe as before; and three times the old man was called up to the town to be tried for illicit dealing in spirits, and the case was continually adjourned owing to the non-appearance of witnesses, and old Tsybukin was worn out with worry.

He often went to see his son, hired somebody, handed in a petition to somebody else, presented a holy banner to some church. He presented the governor of the prison in which Anisim was confined with a silver glass stand with a long spoon and the inscription: “The soul knows its right measure.”

“There is no one to look after things for us,” said Varvara. “Tut, tut… You ought to ask someone of the gentlefolks, they would write to the head officials… At least they might let him out on bail! Why wear the poor fellow out?”

She, too, was grieved, but had grown stouter and whiter; she lighted the lamps before the ikons as before, and saw that everything in the house was clean, and regaled the guests with jam and apple cheese. The deaf man and Aksinya looked after the shop. A new project was in progress – a brickyard in Butyokino – and Aksinya went there almost every day in the chaise. She drove herself, and when she met acquaintances she stretched out her neck like a snake out of the young rye, and smiled naively and enigmatically. Lipa spent her time playing with the baby which had been born to her before Lent. It was a tiny, thin, pitiful little baby, and it was strange that it should cry and gaze about and be considered a human being, and even be called Nikifor. He lay in his swinging cradle, and Lipa would walk away towards the door and say, bowing to him:

“Good-day, Nikifor Anisimitch!”

And she would rush at him and kiss him. Then she would walk away to the door, bow again, and say:

‘Good-day, Nikifor Anisimitch!

And he kicked up his little red legs, and his crying was mixed with laughter like the carpenter Elizarov’s.

At last the day of the trial was fixed. Tsybukin went away five days before. Then they heard that the peasants called as witnesses had been fetched; their old workman who had received a notice to appear went too.

The trial was on a Thursday. But Sunday had passed, and Tsybukin was still not back, and there was no news. Towards the evening on Tuesday Varvara was sitting at the open window, listening for her husband to come. In the next room Lipa was playing with her baby. She was tossing him up in her arms and saying enthusiastically:

“You will grow up ever so big, ever so big. You will be a peasant, we shall go out to work together! We shall go out to work together!”

“Come, come,” said Varvara, offended. “Go out to work, what an idea, you silly girl! He will be a merchant…!”

Lipa sang softly, but a minute later she forgot and again:

“You will grow ever so big, ever so big. You will be a peasant, we’ll go out to work together.”

“There she is at it again!”

Lipa, with Nikifor in her arms, stood still in the doorway and asked:

“Why do I love him so much, mamma? Why do I feel so sorry for him?” she went on in a quivering voice, and her eyes glistened with tears. “Who is he? What is he like? As light as a little feather, as a little crumb, but I love him; I love him like a real person. Here he can do nothing, he can’t talk, and yet I know what he wants with his little eyes.”

Varvara was listening; the sound of the evening train coming in to the station reached her. Had her husband come? She did not hear and she did not heed what Lipa was saying, she had no idea how the time passed, but only trembled all over – not from dread, but intense curiosity. She saw a cart full of peasants roll quickly by with a rattle. It was the witnesses coming back from the station. When the cart passed the shop the old workman jumped out and walked into the yard. She could hear him being greeted in the yard and being asked some questions…

“Deprivation of rights and all his property,” he said loudly, “and six years’ penal servitude in Siberia.”

She could see Aksinya come out of the shop by the back way; she had just been selling kerosene, and in one hand held a bottle and in the other a can, and in her mouth she had some silver coins.

“Where is father?” she asked, lisping.

“At the station,” answered the labourer. “‘When it gets a little darker,’ he said, ‘then I shall come.’”

And when it became known all through the household that Anisim was sentenced to penal servitude, the cook in the kitchen suddenly broke into a wail as though at a funeral, imagining that this was demanded by the proprieties:

“There is no one to care for us now you have gone, Anisim Grigoritch, our bright falcon…”

The dogs began barking in alarm. Varvara ran to the window, and rushing about in distress, shouted to the cook with all her might, straining her voice:

“Sto-op, Stepanida, sto-op! Don’t harrow us, for Christ’s sake!”

They forgot to set the samovar, they could think of nothing. Only Lipa could not make out what it was all about and went on playing with her baby.

When the old father arrived from the station they asked him no questions. He greeted them and walked through all the rooms in silence; he had no supper.

“There was no one to see about things…” Varvara began when they were alone. “I said you should have asked some of the gentry, you would not heed me at the time… A petition would…”

“I saw to things,” said her husband with a wave of his hand. “When Anisim was condemned I went to the gentleman who was defending him. ‘It’s no use now,’ he said, ‘it’s too late’; and Anisim said the same; it’s too late. But all the same as I came out of the court I made an agreement with a lawyer, I paid him something in advance. I’ll wait a week and then I will go again. It is as God wills.”

Again the old man walked through all the rooms, and when he went back to Varvara he said:

“I must be ill. My head’s in a sort of… fog. My thoughts are in a maze.”

He closed the door that Lipa might not hear, and went on softly:

“I am unhappy about my money. Do you remember on Low Sunday before his wedding Anisim’s bringing me some new roubles and half-roubles? One parcel I put away at the time, but the others I mixed with my own money. When my uncle Dmitri Filatitch – the kingdom of heaven be his – was alive, he used constantly to go journeys to Moscow and to the Crimea to buy goods. He had a wife, and this same wife, when he was away buying goods, used to take up with other men. She had half a dozen children. And when uncle was in his cups he would laugh and say: ‘I never can make out,’ he used to say, ‘which are my children and which are other people’s.’ An easy-going disposition, to be sure; and so I now can’t distinguish which are genuine roubles and which are false ones. And it seems to me that they are all false.”

“Nonsense, God bless you.”

“I take a ticket at the station, I give the man three roubles, and I keep fancying they are false. And I am frightened. I must be ill.”

“There’s no denying it, we are all in God’s hands… Oh dear, dear…” said Varvara, and she shook her head. “You ought to think about this, Grigory Petrovitch: you never know, anything may happen, you are not a young man. See they don’t wrong your grandchild when you are dead and gone. Oy, I am afraid they will be unfair to Nikifor! He has as good as no father, his mother’s young and foolish… you ought to secure something for him, poor little boy, at least the land, Butyokino, Grigory Petrovitch, really! Think it over!” Varvara went on persuading him. “The pretty boy, one is sorry for him! You go to-morrow and make out a deed; why put it off?”

“I’d forgotten about my grandson,” said Tsybukin. “I must go and have a look at him. So you say the boy is all right? Well, let him grow up, please God.”

He opened the door and, crooking his finger, beckoned to Lipa. She went up to him with the baby in her arms.

“If there is anything you want, Lipinka, you ask for it,” he said. “And eat anything you like, we don’t grudge it, so long as it does you good…” He made the sign of the cross over the baby. “And take care of my grandchild. My son is gone, but my grandson is left.”

Tears rolled down his cheeks; he gave a sob and went away. Soon afterwards he went to bed and slept soundly after seven sleepless nights.

VII

Old Tsybukin went to the town for a short time. Someone told Aksinya that he had gone to the notary to make his will and that he was leaving Butyokino, the very place where she had set up a brickyard, to Nikifor, his grandson. She was informed of this in the morning when old Tsybukin and Varvara were sitting near the steps under the birch-tree, drinking their tea. She closed the shop in the front and at the back, gathered together all the keys she had, and flung them at her father-in-law’s feet.

“I am not going on working for you,” she began in a loud voice, and suddenly broke into sobs. “It seems I am not your daughter-in-law, but a servant! Everybody’s jeering and saying, ‘See what a servant the Tsybukins have got hold of!’ I did not come to you for wages! I am not a beggar, I am not a slave, I have a father and mother.”

She did not wipe away her tears, she fixed upon her father-in-law eyes full of tears, vindictive, squinting with wrath; her face and neck were red and tense, and she was shouting at the top of her voice.

“I don’t mean to go on being a slave!” she went on. “I am worn out. When it is work, when it is sitting in the shop day in and day out, scurrying out at night for vodka – then it is my share, but when it is giving away the land then it is for that convict’s wife and her imp. She is mistress here, and I am her servant. Give her everything, the convict’s wife, and may it choke her! I am going home! Find yourselves some other fool, you damned Herods!”

Tsybukin had never in his life scolded or punished his children, and had never dreamed that one of his family could speak to him rudely or behave disrespectfully; and now he was very much frightened; he ran into the house and there hid behind the cupboard. And Varvara was so much flustered that she could not get up from her seat, and only waved her hands before her as though she were warding off a bee.

“Oh, Holy Saints! what’s the meaning of it?” she muttered in horror. “What is she shouting? Oh, dear, dear!.. People will hear! Hush. Oh, hush!”

“He has given Butyokino to the convict’s wife,” Aksinya went on bawling. “Give her everything now, I don’t want anything from you! Let me alone! You are all a gang of thieves here! I have seen my fill of it, I have had enough! You have robbed folks coming in and going out; you have robbed old and young alike, you brigands! And who has been selling vodka without a licence? And false money? You’ve filled boxes full of false coins, and now I am no more use!”

A crowd had by now collected at the open gate and was staring into the yard.

“Let the people look,” bawled Aksinya. “I will shame you all! You shall burn with shame! You shall grovel at my feet. Hey! Stepan,” she called to the deaf man, “let us go home this minute! Let us go to my father and mother; I don’t want to live with convicts. Get ready!”

Clothes were hanging on lines stretched across the yard; she snatched off her petticoats and blouses still wet and flung them into the deaf man’s arms. Then in her fury she dashed about the yard by the linen, tore down all of it, and what was not hers she threw on the ground and trampled upon.

“Holy Saints, take her away,” moaned Varvara. “What a woman! Give her Butyokino! Give it her, for the Lord’s sake!

“Well! Wha-at a woman!” people were saying at the gate. “She’s a wo-oman! She’s going it – something like!”

Aksinya ran into the kitchen where washing was going on. Lipa was washing alone, the cook had gone to the river to rinse the clothes. Steam was rising from the trough and from the caldron on the side of the stove, and the kitchen was thick and stifling from the steam. On the floor was a heap of unwashed clothes, and Nikifor, kicking up his little red legs, had been put down on a bench near them, so that if he fell he should not hurt himself. Just as Aksinya went in Lipa took the former’s chemise out of the heap and put it in the trough, and was just stretching out her hand to a big ladle of boiling water which was standing on the table.