For some considerable while that night I could not follow Chichkof’s story. It seemed to me as though he were constantly rambling from the point to talk of something else. Perhaps he noticed that Tchérévine paid little attention to his narrative, but I fancy that he was minded to overlook this indifference so as not to take offence.
‘… When he went out on business,’ he continued, ’everyone saluted him politely, paid him every respect-a fellow with money, that.’
‘You say he was in some trade or other.’
‘Yes; trade indeed! The trading class in my country is wretchedly poor-poverty-stricken, in fact. The women walk miles to the river to fetch water for their gardens. They wear themselves to the bone, and yet when winter comes they haven’t enough to make even cabbage soup. I tell you it’s starvation. But that fellow had a good parcel of land, which was cultivated by his three serfs. He had bee-hives, too, and sold his honey; he was also a cattle-dealer, and was a much respected man in the neighbourhood. He was aged and quite grey; his seventy years lay heavy on his old bones. When he came to market in his fox-fur pelisse everyone saluted him.
‘“Good day, Aukoudim Trophimtych!”
‘ “ Good day,” he’d return. “How are you getting along?” He never despised any man.
‘“God keep you, Aukoudim Trophimtych!”
‘“How goes business with you?”
‘“Business is as good as tallow’s white with me; and how’s yours, dad?”
‘“We’ve just got a sufficient livelihood to pay the price of sin; always sweating over our bit of land.”
‘“Lord preserve you, Aukoudim Trophimtych!”
‘He never despised any man. His advice was always worth having; every one of his words was worth a rouble. A great reader he was-quite a scholar; but he stuck to religious books. He would call his wife and say to her: “Listen, woman, mark well what I say”; then he would embark on some explanation. Marie Stépanovna was not exactly an old woman. She was his second wife, and he had married her in order to beget the children whom his first wife had failed to bear him. He had two boys who were still quite young, for the second of them was born when his father was close on sixty. His daughter, Akoulka, was eighteen years old, and she was the eldest.’
‘Your wife, eh?’
‘Wait a bit, wait a bit. Anyway Philka Marosof begins to kick up a row. Says he to Aukoudim: “Let’s split the difference. Give me back my four hundred roubles. I’m not your beast of burden; I don’t want to do any more business with you, and I don’t want to marry your Akoulka. I want to have my fling now that my parents are dead. I’ll drink my money and then join the army. In ten years I’ll come back here a field-marshal! “ Aukoudim gave him back his money-all he had of his. You see, he and Philka’s father had been business partners.
‘“You’re a lost man,” he said to Philka.
‘“Whether I’m a lost man or not, old greybeard, you’re the biggest cheat I know. You’d try to screw a fortune out of four farthings, and pick up all the dirt to do it with. Bah! Look at you, piling up here, digging deep there, the devil only knows why. I’ve got a will of my own, I tell you. All the same I won’t take your Akoulka; I’ve slept with her already.”
‘“How dare you insult a respectable father, a respectable girl! When did you sleep with her, you spawn of a sucker,
you dog, you hound, you?” cried Abkoudim, shaking with wrath. (Philka told us all this later.)
‘“I’ll not only not marry your daughter, but I’ll take good care that no one else does, not even Mikita Grigoritch, the disreputable wench. We had a fine time together, she and I, all last autumn; but I don’t want her at any price. All the money in the world wouldn’t make me take her.”
‘Then the fellow went and had high jinks for a while, and the town was unanimous in condemning him. He gathered a whole lot of other fellows round him, for he had a heap of money. He carried on like that for three months-such recklessness as you never heard of. Every penny went.
‘“I want to see the end of this money,” he said. “I’ll sell the house, everything; then I’ll enlist or go on the tramp.”
‘He was drunk from morning to night, and went about with a carriage and pair.
‘The girls liked him well, I tell you, for he played the guitar very nicely.’
‘Then it’s true that he had been intimate with this girl Akoulka?’
‘Wait, wait, can’t you? I had just buried my father. My mother lived by baking gingerbread. We got our livelihood by working for Aukoudim; barely enough to eat, a precious hard life it was. We had a bit of land the other side of the woods, and grew corn there; but when my father died I went on the spree. I made my mother give me money, but I had to give her a good hiding first.’
‘You were very wrong to beat her; that’s a great sin.’
‘ Sometimes I was drunk the whole blessed day. We had a house that was just tumbling to pieces with dry rot; still it was our own. We were as near famished as could be; for weeks together we had nothing but rags to chew. Mother nearly killed me with one stupid trick or another, but I didn’t care a curse. Philka Marosof and I were always together day and night. “Play the guitar to me,” he’d say, “and, I’ll lie in bed the while. I’ll throw money to you, for I’m the richest chap in the world!” The fellow could not speak without lying. There was only one thing: he wouldn’t touch a thing if it had been stolen. “I’m no thief, I’m an honest man. Let’s go and daub Akoulka’s door with pitch,1 for I won’t have her marry Mikita Grigoritch, I’ll stick to that.”
‘The old man had long meant to give his daughter to this Mikita Grigoritch. He was a man well on in life, in trade too, and wore spectacles. When he heard the story of Akoulka’s bad conduct, he said to her old father: “That would be a terrible disgrace to me, Aukoudim Trophimtych. On the whole, I’ve made up my mind not to marry-it’s too late.”
‘ So we went and daubed Akoulka’s door all over with pitch. When we’d done that her folks almost beat her to death.
‘Her mother, Marie Stépanovna, cried “I shall die of it,” while the old man said, “ If we were living in the days of the patriarchs, I’d have hacked her to pieces on a block. But now everything in this world is rottenness and corruption.” Sometimes the neighbours from one end of the street to the other heard Akoulka’s screams. She was whipped from morning to evening, and Philka would cry out in the marketplace before everybody: “Akoulka’s a jolly girl to get drunk with. I’ve given it those people between the eyes; they won’t forget me in a hurry.”
1 Daubing the door of a house where a young girl lives is done to show that she has been dishonoured.
‘Well, one day I met Akoulka. She was going for water with her bucket, so I cried out to her: “A fine morning, Akoulka Koudimovna, my pet! You’re the girl who knows how to please the chaps. Who’s living with you now, and where do you get the money for your finery?” That’s just what I said to her; she opened her eyes as wide as you please. No more flesh on her than on a log of wood. She had only just given me a look, but her mother thought she was larking with me, and cried from her doorstep: “Impudent hussy, what do you mean by talking with that fellow?” And from that moment they began to beat her again. Sometimes they thrashed her for an hour on end. Her mother said: “I give her the whip because she isn’t my daughter any more.”’
‘So she was as bad as they said?’
‘Now you just listen to my story, nunky, will you? Well, Philka and I were always drunk. One day when I was abed, mother comes and says:
‘“What d’ ye mean by lying in bed, you hound, you thief! “ She abused me for some time, and then said: “Marry Akoulka. They’ll be glad to give her to you, and they’ll give three hundred roubles with her.”
‘“But,” says I, “all the world knows that she’s a bad girl”
‘“Tush! The marriage ceremony cures all that; besides, she’ll always be in fear of her life from you, so you’ll be in clover together. Their money would make us
comfortable. I’ve spoken about the marriage already to Marie Stépanovna; we’re of one mind about it.”
‘So I say: “Let’s have twenty roubles down, and I’ll take her.”
‘Well, believe it or not, but I was drunk right up to the wedding-day. Philka Marosof was threatening me all the time.
‘“I’ll break every bone in your body. A nice fellow you are to be engaged-and to Akoulka. If I like I’ll sleep every blessed night with her when she’s your wife.”
‘“You’re a hound, and a liar,” I replied. But he insulted me so in the street, before everybody, that I ran to Aukoudim’s and said: “I won’t marry her unless I have fifty roubles down this moment.”
‘And did they really let you have her?’
‘Me? Why not, indeed? We were quite respectable people. Father was ruined by a fire shortly before he died; he’s been a richer man than Aukoudim Trophimtych.’
‘“A fellow like you, without a shirt to his back, ought to be only too happy to marry my daughter,” retorted Aukoudim.
‘“Just remember your door and its coat of pitch,” I answered back.
‘“ Stuff and nonsense,” said he. “There’s no proof whatever that the girl’s done wrong.”
‘“Please yourself. There’s the door, and you can go about your business; but give back the money you’ve had!”
‘Then Philka Marosof and I agreed to send Mitri Bykoff to old Aukoudim to tell him that we’d insult him to his face in front of everyone. Well, as I say, I was full of drink right up to the wedding-day; I wasn’t sober till I got into church. As they were escorting us home from church the girl’s uncle, Mitrophone Stépanytch, said:
‘“This isn’t a nice business, but it’s over and done with now.”
‘Old Aukoudim was sitting there crying, the tears rolling down his grey beard. Comrade, shall I tell you what I’d done? I’d put a whip in my pocket before we went to church, and I ‘d made up my mind to have it out of her with that, so that all the world might know how I ‘d been swindled into the marriage, and not think me a bigger fool than I am.’
‘I see, and you wanted her to know what was in store for her. Er, was?’
‘Quiet, nunky, quiet! I’ll tell you how it is with us. Directly after the marriage ceremony they take the couple to a room apart, and the others remain drinking till they return. So I ‘m left alone with Akoulka. She was pale, not a bit of colour on her cheeks; frightened out of her wits. She had fine hair, supple and bright as flax, and great big eyes. She was scarcely ever heard to speak; ycu might have thought she was dumb; an odd creature, Akoulka, if ever there was one. Well, you can just imagine the scene. My whip was ready on the bed. Well, she was as pure a girl as ever was; not a word of it was true.’
‘Impossible!’
‘True, I swear; as honest a girl as any good family could wish for.’
‘Then, brother, why-why-why had she had to undergo all that torture? Why had Philka Marosof slandered her so?’
‘Yes, why, indeed? Well, I got down from the bed, and went on my knees before her, and put my hands together as if I were praying, and just said to her: “Little mother, my pet, Akoulka Koudimovna, forgive me for having been such an idiot as to believe all that slander; forgive me. I’m a hound!”
‘She was seated on the bed, and gazed at me fixedly. Putting both her hands on my shoulders, she began to laugh, but the tears were running down her cheeks. She cried and laughed together.
‘Then I went out and said to the people in the other room: “Let Philka look to himself: if I come across him he won’t be long for this world.”
‘The old people were beside themselves with delight. Akoulka’s mother was ready to throw herself at her daughter’s feet, and sobbed.
‘Then the old man said: “If we had known the truth, my dearest child, we wouldn’t have given you a husband of that sort.”
‘You ought to have seen how we were dressed the first Sunday after our marriage-when we left church! I’d got a long coat of fine cloth, a fur cap, and plush breeches. She wore a pelisse of hareskin, quite new, and a silk kerchief on her head. One was as fine as the other. Everybody admired us. I must say I looked well, and little Akoulka did too. One oughtn’t to boast, but one mustn’t sing small. I tell you, people like us are not turned out by the dozen.’
‘I don’t doubt it.’
‘Just you listen, now. The day after the wedding I left my guests, drunk as I was, and ran about the streets crying: “Where’s that scoundrel Philka Marosof? Just let him come near me, the hound, that’s all!” I went all through the market-place yelling like that. I was only just able to stand.
‘They came after me and caught me close to Vlassof’s place. It took three men to get me back to the house.
‘Well, the whole thing was the talk of the village. The girls said, when they met in the market-place: “Well, you’ve heard the news-Akoulka was all right!”
‘Not long afterwards I ran across Philka Marosof, who said to me before everybody, strangers included: “Sell your wife, and spend the money on drink. Jackka the soldier only married for that; he didn’t sleep one night with his wife, but he got enough drink to keep his skin full for three years.”
‘I answered: “You hound!”
‘“But,” says he, “you’re an idiot! You didn’t know what you were doing when you married-you were drunk. How could you know anything about it?”
‘So off I went to the house, and shouted at them: “You married me when I was drunk.”
‘Akoulka’s mother tried to fasten herself on me, but I cried: “Mother, you know nothing about anything except money. You bring me Akoulka!”
‘And didn’t I beat her! I tell you, I beat her for two hours running, till I dropped on the floor with fatigue. She couldn’t leave her bed for three weeks.’
‘It’s a dead sure thing,’ said Tchérévine phlegmatically,
‘if you don’t beat them they Did you find her with her lover?’
‘No. To tell the truth, I never actually caught her,’ said Chichkoff after a pause, speaking with an effort; ‘but I was hurt, a good deal hurt, because everyone made fun of me. The cause of it all was Philka. “Your wife’s just made to be looked at,” said he.
‘One day he invited us round to his place and started in: “Do just look what a good little wife he has! Isn’t she tender, isn’t she fine, nicely brought up, affectionate, and full of kindness for all the world? I say, my lad, have you forgotten how we daubed their door with pitch?” At the moment I was hopelessly drunk; he seized me by the hair and had me on the floor before I knew where I was. “ Come along-dance. Aren’t you Akoulka’s husband? I’ll hold your hair for you, and you shall dance. It’ll be good fun.”
“Dog! ‘ I said. “ I’ll bring some jolly fellows to your house,” he went on, “and I’ll whip your Akoulka before your very eyes just as long as I please.” Would you believe it? For a whole month I daren’t go out of the house, I was so afraid he’d come and drag my wife through the dirt. And how I beat her for it!’
‘What was the use of beating her? You can tie a woman’s hands, but not her tongue. You oughtn’t to thrash them too often. Beat ’em a bit, then scold ’em well, then fondle ‘em; that’s what a woman’s made for.’
Chichkoff remained quite silent for a few moments.
‘I was very much hurt,’ he continued. ‘I began it again just as before-beating her from morning till night for nothing; because she didn’t get up from her seat the way I liked; because she didn’t walk to suit me. When I wasn’t hiding her time hung heavy on my hands. Sometimes she sat by the window crying silently-it hurt my feelings sometimes to see her cry, but I beat her all die same. Sometimes her mother abused me for it: “You’re a scoundrel, a gallows-bird!”
“Don’t say a word or I’ll kill you. You made me marry her when I was drunk; you swindled me.” Old Aukoudim wanted at first to have his finger in the pie. Said he to me one day: “Look here, you’re not such a tremendous fellow that o
ne can’t put you down”; but he didn’t get far on that track. Marie Stépanovna had become as sweet as milk. One day she came to me, crying her eyes out, and said: “My heart is almost broken, Ivan Semionytch. What I’m going to ask of you is only a little thing for you, but it means a good deal to me. Let her go, let her leave you, Ivan.” Then she threw herself at my feet. “Do give up being so angry! Wicked people slander her. You know quite well she was good when you married her.” Once again she knelt before me and cried. But I was as hard as nails. “ I won’t hear a word you have to say. What I choose to do, I do, to you or anybody, for I’m crazed with it all. As for Philka Marosof, he’s my best and dearest friend.”’
‘You’d begun to play your pranks together again, had you?’
‘No, by Jove! He was out of the way by this time; he was killing himself with drink, nothing less. He’d spent all he had on drink, and had joined the army as substitute for another citizen. In my part of the world, when a lad makes up his mind to enlist as substitute for another, he is master of the latter’s house and everybody in it until he’s called to the colours. He receives an agreed sum on the day he leaves, but until then he lives in the house of the man who pays him, sometimes for six whole months, and there isn’t a horror in the whole world those fellows are not guilty of. It’s enough to make folks remove the ikons from the house. From the moment he consents to be substitute for a son of the family he considers himself their patron and benefactor, and makes them dance as he pipes, otherwise he calls off the bargain.
Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky Page 161