In the silence of the corridor boots clicked. In came Ivan Koloturov, the Chairman, in a great-coat, with a revolver in his belt–Ivan Koloturov-Kononov:–they played together as boys, then he was a sober-minded muzhik, thrifty, hard working. Silently he handed over a paper, went and stood in the middle of the room.
On the paper was typed:
“To the Estate owner, Ordinin. The Chernoretsky Poor Peasants’ Committee orders that the Soviet estate of Porechye and the limits of the district will be vacated with all speed.
Chairman Iv. Koloturov.”
“Well, then, I’ll leave this evening.”
“There won’t be any horses for you.”
“I’ll go on foot.”
“As you see fit! You can’t take anything with you!” –he turned round, stood with his back to him in thought for a minute and went away.
Just then the clock struck three quarters–the clock was the work of Kuvaldin, an eighteenth century craftsman, it used to be in the Kremlin palace in Moscow, then journeyed with the Vadkovsky princes through the Caucasus–how many times had it gone “tick-tock” to take away two centuries?–He sat by the window, looked into the thinned-out park, he sat motionless for about an hour, leaning his elbows on the marble window sill, he was thinking, reminiscing. Koloturov interrupted his reverie–he came in quietly with two lads, they walked through to the study, silently attempted to lift the desk, something cracked.
He stood up, began to hurry. He put on his broad English coat, felt hat, went out through the terrace, walked over the rustling leaves through the estate, past the stable, the distillery, descended into a gully, came up the other side, towards St. Nicholas’s, was tired and decided, that he had to walk without hurrying–to walk thirty versts, the first time he had been here on foot. How, in essence, simple everything is–he thought–and–frightening only in its simplicity!
The sun had already gone into the ground, the West burned crimson. The last crows’ wedding flew past, and the autumnal steppe silence came. Darkness approached quickly, complete, black. In the firmament the stars flared up. He was walking jauntily, evenly, along the empty steppe roads. For the first time in his life he was walking so lightly, without a thing, he didn’t know where or why. Somewhere in the distance on the sectarian farmsteads the dogs barked. Darkness and night came, autumnal, silent, in a hard frost.
Twelve versts he walked jauntily, oblivious, and then stopped for a minute–to re-tie his bootlaces–and suddenly he felt immeasurable tiredness, his legs began to ache–in one day his wandering had covered about forty versts. Ahead lay the village of Makhmitka–in his youth, as a student, he used to travel here, to see a soldier’s wife, on the sly–now he wouldn’t go to her–ever, not for anything, the slave! The village lay flattened against the earth, cluttered with huge hay ricks, it smelt of wheat and manure. Dogs met with barking, a whole pack rolled out like dark balls from the outskirts, at one’s feet.
He walked through the Mordvinian quarter and on the Russian side rapped at a window, in the first cottage, through the window a burning torch burned–smoldered. There was no immediate reply.
“Who dere?”
“Let me in, good people, for the night.”
“But who’s you?”
“A wayfarer.”
“Well, jus’ a minute.”
A muzhik came out, in pink trousers, barefoot, with a burning torch, held the light up, looked at him.
“A prince! Your Excellency! Is this what you’ve come to… …Come on in, then!”
They spread straw on the floor, a huge bundle, a cricket chirred, there was a smell of soot and manure.
“Lie down, Prince. Sleep well!”
The muzhik climbed up onto the stove, sighed, the peasant woman whispered something, the muzhik growled, then said in a loud voice:
“Prince! You sleep, but in the morning go away before daylight, so that you’re not seen. You know yourself, they’re troubled times, and you’re–a master. The masters have to be finished off.”
The cricket chirred. In the corner the piglets snorted. He lay down, without undressing, put his hat under his head, immediately caught a cockroach on his shoulder. In the remote steppe, covered with wheat, thatched, with haystacks, with cottages, eaten through by lice, bugs, fleas, itch-mites, cockroaches, sooty, stinking, where people, calves and pigs live together–lay Prince Ordinin (now already a corpse!) on the straw, tossed and turned because of the fleas and thought how now in the filthy heat, worn out–he was experiencing real happiness. A piglet approached, sniffed him and went away. Through the window looked a low, bright star–endless peace! They were singing songs in the village.
How he fell asleep–he didn’t notice. At dawn the peasant woman woke him up, lead him out the back. The dawn was blue, cold, a light gray frost lay on the grass. He set off quickly, waving his walking stick, with his coat collar turned up. The sky was surprisingly deep and blue, at the “Mar loop-station,” together with the suitcases and bags of flour the prince squeezed into the heated freight car, and there, huddled to the wall, coated with white flour–set off…
Second extract.
Ivan Koloturov, the chairman, worked himself to the bone, always got up before dawn and worked, he dug, harrowed, hammered, planed, repaired–worked with his own hands, huge, unbending, rough. Having got up in the morning, he stuffed himself with potatoes and bread and went from the cottage to do something with wood, stone, iron, the earth, the cattle. He was hard-working, honest, thrifty. Still in 1905 (he was riding from the station and he gave a lift to a man in a tradesman’s short coat) he was told that before God all are equal, that the land–was theirs, the muzhiks’, that the landowners had stolen the land, that the time would come when it would be necessary to get down to business. Ivan Koloturov understood badly what it would be necessary to do, but when the Revolution came, it thundered into the steppe–he got up first, to act. He felt remorse. He wanted to do everything honorably, he knew how to work only with his hands–to dig, plough, repair. He was elected to the district committee–he was used to getting up before dawn and immediately setting to work–now before ten he did not have to do anything, at ten he went to the committee, where with the greatest difficulty he signed papers–but this was not action: papers were sent to him and from him without his will, he did not understand them, he only signed. He wanted to act. In spring he went home to plough. In autumn he was elected chairman of the Poor Peasants’ Committee, he settled on the Prince’s estate, put on his brother’s army greatcoat, belted on a revolver.
In the evening he would go home, a peasant woman would meet him sullenly, cooking pork, waving her elbows. The children were sitting on the stove, the burning torch smoked.
“You won’t want to be eating with us after your nobleman’s grub! You’ve turned into a nobleman!”
He remained silent. He was sitting on the window sill, under the ikons, like a guest.
“Look, who are you getting mixed up with? Only enemies have gathered. Only parted enemies.”
“Quiet, fool. You don’t understand, and be quiet!”
“You’re ashamed of me, hiding from me!”
“Let’s go and live together!”
“I won’t go!”
“Fool.”
“You’s already learned to bitch. Eat your pork. Or have you forgotten how to eat the noblemen’s pork?”
True, he’d already eaten his fill, and she had guessed–of pork. He began snorting.
“She’s a fool!”
He came to have a word about the housekeeping, to have a chat. He went away with nothing. The peasant woman had touched on a tender spot–all respectable muzhiks began to shun him, only those who had nothing to lose assembled on the committee. He passed through the village, the park, there was a light in the stable yard, he dropped in to have a look–boys had gathered there and were playing cards, they were smoking–he stood–said sullenly:
“You shouldn’t be doing that, lads. You’ll set fire to the pl
ace!”
“So what, then! What a protector of other people’s property you are!”
“It’s not other people’s, but ours!”
He turned round, went away. They shouted after him:
“Uncle Ivan! Have you got the key to the wine cellar?! There are spirits in there, they say! If you won’t give it–we’ll break in!”
In the house it was dark, silent, the Prince still lived in the drawing room. The large rooms were unfamiliar, frightening. He went into the office (the former dining room), lit a lamp. He was concerned all the time with cleanliness–on the floor lay lumps of mud from boots: he just couldn’t understand–why don’t the masters’ boots leave traces behind them? –He knelt down and gathered the mud off the floor, threw it out of the window, fetched a brush and swept. There was nothing to do. He went into the kitchen, lay on a bench without undressing, couldn’t get to sleep for a long time.
In the morning he woke up when everyone was still sleeping, walked about the estate. In the stable yard the boys were still playing–
“Why aren’t you asleep?”
“We’ve already slept it off!”
He woke the cattle girls. The cowman Semyon went outside, stood, combed his hair, swore hard, displeased that he’d been wakened, said:
“Mind your own damn business! I know when to wake up!”
The dawn was blue, clear frosty. A light appeared in the drawing room; he saw the prince go out across the terrace, go away into the steppe.
At ten he sat down in the office, busied himself with utterly torturing work–and utterly useless, in his opinion–he was compiling an inventory of all the wheat and rye possessed by each muzhik–senseless because he knew by heart how much of what each muzhik had, as everyone in the village knew, torturing because it was necessary to write a great deal. They called from town on the telephone, ordered him to evict the Prince. For a whole hour he was typing the order to the Prince.
In the evening the Prince went away. They began to haul, to shift the things, they ripped the veneer off the writing table. They wanted to move the clock into the office, but someone noticed that it only had one hand–nobody knew that the old Kuvaldin clock was only meant to have one hand, showing every five minutes, surely because in the old days they didn’t begrudge the minutes–someone noticed that the clock lifted out of a box, and Ivan Koloturov ordered:
“Take the clock out of the case! Tell the carpenter to attach shelves. It’ll make a cupboard for the office… And your feet, don’t stamp your feet.”
In the evening a peasant woman came. In the village there was an event: a girl was raped–nobody knows who by–whether it was their own people or whether it was the Moscow people who had come for flour. The peasant woman came down on the committee members. The peasant woman stood under the windows and cursed at the top of her voice–Ivan Koloturov chased her away, gave her one on the ear. The peasant woman left with a yelp.
It was already completely dark, in the house silence had frozen hard, outside the cattle girls were bawling songs. He went through to the study, sat a while on the settee, tested its quality and softness, came across a forgotten electric lamp, played a little with it, lit up the walls and caught sight of a watch on the floor in the drawing room, thought for a moment–where was he to put it?–he carried it away and threw it down the toilet. At the other end of the house, in a gang, the boys had burst in, someone began banging on the piano, Ivan Koloturov felt like chasing them away so that they wouldn’t make a mess–he didn’t dare. Suddenly he began to feel very sorry for himself and the peasant woman, and he wanted to go home, to the stove.
They rang the gong for supper. Surreptitiously he made his way to the spirits store, poured out a mug, drank it, managed to lock the cellar, but did not go to the house, collapsed in the park, lay for a long time, trying to get up, wanted to tell all about something and explain, but fell asleep. The night was coming black, hard, autumnal–it was coming over the empty fields, cold and dead.
And the landowners’ Porechye, the Porechye of the anarchists, the Porechye of Ivan Koloturov–perished because Porechye was dead. Because the first, the second and the third (surely Ivan Koloturov had rights?!–he did, of course, for all this–is his)–and the first, the second and the third–did not have the very first: the will to act, create, for a creation always destroys.
And–
THIRD PART OF THE TRIPTYCH, the darkest
A cold dusk shrouds the earth–that autumnal dusk when the sky is snowy and wintry and the clouds are bound to disintegrate into snow towards dawn. The earth is silent and black. Steppe. Black earth. The further the steppe, the higher the ricks, the lower the cottages, the rarer the settlements. Out of the steppe–over the plundered desert–out of the black chink between the sky and steppe–blows a winter wind. In the steppe there is the barely audible swishing of the sward after the mowing of the grass, the rye and the wheat. Soon a glassy moon rises. If the storm clouds trail after, there will be snow, and not hoar frost. –Grain.
The oxen stand for a long time by the crossing. The oxen’s necks are bowed, the oxen stand humbly, humbly they look into the steppe, steppe inhabitants. A train crawls past, further off. There is no church in the settlement, a miserable mosque towers up. Steppe. The train crawls along slowly–the brown freight car, cluttered with people, as these people are with lice. The train is silent: people hanging on the roofs, on the footboards, on the buffers. And at the little station “Mar loop-station,” where trains never stop and they don’t even change the points, the train buzzes with human buzzing: from roof to roof to the engine the people are crying out something frightening, about something, in this cold dusk. And “mack” stops the train. A young man on duty wearing a cap with a red hatband–out of boredom–meets the train on the platform. The people head from the train to the puddles for water. The train buzzes like a beehive, buzzes, moves off, squeaking, like a large coach, and on the sleepers remains a peasant woman with eyes frenzied in pain. A peasant woman is running after the train and frenziedly shouting:
“Mitya, dar-ling! Feed my kids!”
Then, waving her bundle, a peasant woman runs somewhere beyond the sleepers, howling and yelping like a dog. Ahead is the empty steppe distance–the peasant woman turns and runs to the station, to the man on duty, who’s still standing on the platform out of boredom and in boredom. The peasant woman looks at the man on duty worryingly, her lips shaking, and her eyes filled with pain.
“What’s up with you?” says the man on duty.
The peasant woman remains silent, shouts out in a fit and, screaming, again runs away somewhere to the side, shaking her bundle. The guard, an old Tartar, says gloomily:
“The woman’s about to go into labor. The woman’s having a child. –Hey, woman!–come ‘ere!… A Russian peasant woman is like a cat,” –and the old man leads the peasant woman to the station cottage, into his own small room, where on a bunk a rotten hay mattress and sheepskin coat were thrown down. The peasant woman, exactly like a cat, throws herself onto a plank bed and whispers maliciously:
“Go away, loudmouth–go away! Call a woman…”
But there is no woman on the station.
The man on duty walks along the platform from end to end, looks into the dark steppe and thinks maliciously:–Asia!
The steppe is empty and silent. In the sky moves the glassy small moon. The wind swishes stale and cold. The man on duty wanders along the platform, then goes to the office. Behind the wall a woman is groaning. The duty man rings to the neighboring station and speaks the way all Russian duty men speak:
“Akhmytovaaa! No. 58 is on its way. Is one comm-ming this way?”
But none was coming. The duty man sits on a hard government issue settee, flicks through “The Awakening,” flicked through a thousand times, and lies down so as not to sit. –The old man brings in a lamp. –The duty man is sleeping sweetly.
After his shift the duty man goes home to the village. “Mar loop-station,” at which
trains never stop and they don’t even change the points, immediately vanishes in the darkness. Around there is emptiness and steppe. The duty man goes past the burial mound: a steppe burial mound towers death-like and silently–who, when, what nomads piled it up here, and what does it contain?–the withered feather-grass swishes by the burial mound. The black earth in the lanes has been trampled flat, like asphalt, and it squelches underfoot.
The village is silent, only the dogs bark. The duty man crosses the Tatar district, descends into the ravine, where the Mordva settled, climbs up the hillside. In her cottage the soldier’s wife puts the kasha onto the table, pork dripping, the milk. The duty man eats quickly, changes into more elegant clothes and goes to visit the school mistress.
At the school mistress’s the duty man puts into its holder one burning torch after another, and says in a melancholy way:
“Asia. Not a country, but Asia. The Tatars, Mordva. Poverty. Not a country, but Asia.”
And the duty man thinks about his own poverty.
The school mistress stands by the stove, muffling herself up in a downy shawl, already looking her age. Then the school mistress heats the samovar and makes the rye coffee…
Late at night the duty man goes to bed in his cottage, beside the soldier’s wife. The bed creaks, a guitar twangs. The cricket chirrs, in the corner behind the little stove a piglet snorts. The soldier’s wife clears the table, goes outside. Behind the slender clayey wall she can be heard defecating and chasing away a dog which had hurried to eat up her excretia. The duty man listens and thinks about unusual things: about wealth, beautiful, elegant women, about fashionable dress, about wines, gaiety, luxury, which will come to him… The soldier’s wife prays for a long time, whispers her prayers. The light is dimming, and the soldier’s wife in bare feet over the earth floor, scratching herself, goes to the duty man’s bed.
The Naked Year Page 14