Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 1

by Leo Tolstoy

  ‘How is that? You haven’t enough cattle, yet you sold a heifer as a calf?’ the master asked with surprise.

  ‘But what could I feed it on?’

  ‘Haven’t you enough straw to feed a cow? Others have enough.’

  ‘Others have manured land, but mine is nothing but clay. I can’t do anything with it.’

  ‘Well then dress it, so that it should not be all clay, then it will yield grain and there’ll be something to feed the cattle on.’

  ‘But I have no cattle, so how can there be any manure?’

  ‘This is a strange vicious circle,’ thought Nekhlyúdov, but could not imagine how to advise the peasant.

  ‘And then again, your honour,’ Chúris went on, ‘it is not manure that makes the corn grow, but only God. Last year I got six ricks from an unmanured plot, but from the manured land we got almost nothing. It’s only God!’ he added with a sigh. ‘And then cattle do not thrive in our yard. This is the sixth year they have died. Last year one calf died, the other I sold, as we had nothing to live on, and the year before last a fine cow perished: she was driven home from the pasture all right, then suddenly she staggered and staggered and died. Just my bad luck!’

  ‘Well friend, so that you should not say you have no cattle because you have no fodder, and no fodder because you have no cattle, here’s something to buy a cow with,’ said Nekhlyúdov, blushing as he took some crumpled paper money out of his trouser pocket and began sorting it. ‘Buy yourself a cow, and I wish you luck; and you can have fodder from the threshing ground; I’ll give orders. Mind you have a cow by next Sunday. I’ll look in.’

  Chúris stood so long smiling and shifting from foot to foot without stretching out his hand for the money, that Nekhlyúdov at last put it on the table, blushing still more.

  ‘We are greatly satisfied with your kindness,’ Chúris said with his usual rather sarcastic smile.

  His wife stood under the bunks sighing heavily, and seemed to be saying a prayer.

  The young master felt embarrassed; he hurriedly rose from his seat, went out into the passage, and called Chúris to follow. The sight of the man he was befriending was so pleasant that he did not wish to part from him at once.

  ‘I am glad to help you,’ he said, stopping by the well. ‘I can help you because I know you are not lazy. If you take pains I’ll help you, and with God’s aid you’ll get straight.’

  ‘It’s not a case of getting straight, your honour,’ said Chúris, his face suddenly assuming a serious and even stern expression as if quite dissatisfied that the master should suppose he could get straight. ‘In my father’s time I lived with my brothers and we did not know any want, but when he died and we broke up, everything went from bad to worse. It’s all from being alone!’

  ‘Why did you separate?’

  ‘All because of our wives, your honour. Your grandfather was not living then. In his time we should not have dared to, there used to be real order then. Like yourself he looked into everything, and we should not have dared to think of separating. Your grandfather did not like to let the peasants get into bad ways. But after him Andrew Ilých managed us. God forgive him! He’s left different memories behind – he was a drunken and unreliable man. We went to ask him once and again. “The women make life impossible,” we said, “allow us to separate.” Well he had us thrashed once and again, but in the end the women got their way and the families separated and lived apart. Of course everyone knows what a one-man home is! Besides there was no kind of order. Andrew Ilých ruled us as he pleased. “See that you have everything that’s needed,” – but how a peasant was to get it he didn’t ask. Then the poll-tax was increased, and more provisions were requisitioned and we had less land, and the crops began to fail. And when the time came for re-allotting the land, he took away from our manured land to add to the owner’s – the rascal – and did for us altogether. We might as well die! Your father – the kingdom of heaven be his! – was a kind master, but we rarely had sight of him; he always lived in Moscow, and of course we had to cart more produce there. Sometimes when a thaw set in and the roads were impassable and we had no fodder left we still had to cart! The master could not do without it. We dare not complain of that, but there was no order. Now that your honour lets every peasant come to you, we are a different people and the steward is a different man. At least we know now that we have a master. And it’s impossible to say how grateful the peasants are to your honour! During the time you were under guardianship we had no real master. Everybody was master – your guardian and Ilých, and his wife was mistress, and the clerk from the police-office was a master too. At that time we peasants suffered a great deal – oh God! How much sorrow!’

  Again Nekhlyúdov experienced something like shame or remorse. He raised his hat and went his way.

  Chapter VI

  ‘EPIFÁN WISEMAN wishes to sell a horse,’ Nekhlyúdov read in his note-book, and he crossed the street to Epifán’s home.

  This hut was carefully thatched with straw from the threshing-floor of the estate, and was built of light grey aspen timber – also from the master’s forest. It had two red painted shutters to each window, a little roofed porch, and board railings with fancy patterns cut in them. The passage and unheated portion of the house were also sound; but the general look of well-being and sufficiency was rather marred by a shed with an unfinished wattle wall and unthatched roof adjoining the gateway. Just as Nekhlyúdov reached the porch from one side, two women came up from the other carrying between them a full tub slung from a pole. One was Epifán Wiseman’s wife, the other his mother. The former was a sturdy red-cheeked woman with a very fully developed bosom and broad fleshy cheeks. She wore a clean smock with embroidered sleeves and collar, an apron with similar embroidery, a new linen skirt, shoes, glass beads and a smart square head-dress embroidered with red cotton and spangles.

  The end of the pole did not sway but lay firmly on her broad solid shoulder. The easy effort noticeable in her red face, in the curve of her back, and the measured movement of her arms and legs, indicated excellent health and extraordinary masculine strength.

  Epifán’s mother who carried the other end of the pole was, on the contrary, one of those elderly women who seem to have reached the utmost limit of age and decrepitude possible to a living person. Her bony figure, clad in a dirty torn smock and discoloured skirt, was so bent that the pole rested rather on her back than on her shoulder. Her hands were of a dark red-brown colour, with crooked fingers which seemed unable to unbend and with which she seemed to clutch the pole for support. Her drooping head, wrapped in some clout, bore the unsightly evidence of want and great age. From under her low forehead, furrowed in all directions by deep wrinkles, her two red, lashless eyes looked dimly on the ground. One yellow tooth protruded from under her sunken upper lip and, constantly moving, touched at times her pointed chin. The folds on the lower part of her face and throat were like bags that swung with every movement. She breathed heavily and hoarsely, but her bare deformed feet, though they dragged along the ground with effort, moved evenly one after the other.

  Chapter VII

  HAVING almost collided with the master, the young woman looked abashed, briskly set down the tub, bowed, glanced at him with sparkling eyes from under her brow, and clattering with her shoes ran up the steps, trying to hide a slight smile with the embroidered sleeve of her smock.

  ‘You go and take the yoke back to Aunt Nastásya, mother,’ she said to the old woman, pausing at the door.

  The modest young man looked attentively but sternly at the rosy-faced woman, frowned, and turned to the old one, who having disengaged the yoke from the tub with her rough hands and lifted it onto her shoulders, was submissively directing her steps towards the neighbouring hut.

  ‘Is your son at home?’ the master asked.

  The old woman, bending still lower, bowed and was about to speak, but lifting her hand to her mouth began coughing so that Nekhlyúdov did not wait, but went into the hut.

 
Epifán, who was sitting on the bench in the best corner, rushed to the oven when he saw his master, as if trying to hide from him, hurriedly shoved something onto the bunk, and with mouth and eyes twitching, pressed himself against the wall as if to make way for the master.

  Epifán was a man of about thirty; slender, well set, with brown hair and a young pointed beard, he would have been rather good-looking had it not been for the evasive little brown eyes that looked unpleasantly from under his puckered brows, and for the absence of two front teeth, which at once caught the eye as his lips were short and constantly moving. He had on a holiday shirt with bright red gussets, striped cotton trousers, and heavy boots with wrinkled legs. The interior of his hut was not so crowded and gloomy as Chúris’s, though it was also stuffy, smelt of smoke and sheepskin coats, and was littered in the same untidy way with peasant garments and implements. Two things struck one as strange: a small dented samovar which stood on a shelf, and the portrait of an archimandrite with a red nose and six fingers, that hung near the icon with its brass facings, in a black frame with the remnant of a dirty piece of glass. Nekhlyúdov looked with dissatisfaction at the samovar, the archimandrite’s portrait, and the bunk where the end of a brass-mounted pipe protruded from under some rags, and addressed the peasant.

  ‘Good morning, Epifán,’ he said, looking into his eyes.

  Epifán bowed and muttered, ‘Hope you’re well, y’r Ex’cency,’ pronouncing the last word with peculiar tenderness while his eyes ran rapidly over his master’s whole figure, the hut, the floor, and the ceiling, not resting on anything. Then he hurriedly went to the bunk and pulled down from it a coat which he began putting on.

  ‘Why are you doing that?’ said Nekhlyúdov, sitting down on the bench and trying to look at Epifán as sternly as possible.

  ‘What else could I do, y’r Ex’cency? I think we know our place.…’

  ‘I have come to ask what you need to sell a horse for, and how many horses you have, and which horse you want to sell,’ said Nekhlyúdov drily, evidently repeating questions he had prepared.

  ‘We are very pleased that y’r Ex’cency deigns to come to peasants like us,’ replied Epifán with a rapid glance at the archimandrite’s portrait, at the oven, at Nekhlyúdov’s boots, and at everything except his master’s face. ‘We always pray God for y’r Ex’cency.…’

  ‘Why must you sell a horse?’ Nekhlyúdov repeated, raising his voice and clearing his throat.

  Epifán sighed, shook back his hair, his glance again roving over the whole hut, and noticing a cat that lay quietly purring on the bench, shouted to it, ‘Sss, get away, beast!’ and hurriedly turned to the master.

  ‘It’s a horse, y’r Ex’cency, that’s no good.… If it were a good beast I wouldn’t sell it, y’r Ex’cency.’

  ‘And how many horses have you?’

  ‘Three horses, y’r Ex’cency.’

  ‘And no foals?’

  ‘Why certainly, y’r Ex’cency, I have a foal too.’

  Chapter VIII

  ‘COME, let me see your horses. Are they in the yard?’

  ‘Exactly so, y’r Ex’cency. I have done as I was ordered, y’r Ex’cency. As if we could disobey y’r Ex’cency! Jacob Alpátych told me not to let the horses out into the field. “The prince will look at them,” he said, so we did not let them out. We dare not disobey y’r Ex’cency.’

  As Nekhlyúdov was passing out of the hut, Epifán snatched his pipe from the bunk and shoved it behind the oven; his lips continued to move restlessly even when the master was not looking at him.

  A lean little grey mare was rummaging among some rotten straw under the penthouse, and a two-months-old long-legged foal of some nondescript colour, with bluish legs and muzzle, kept close to her thin tail which was full of burrs. In the middle of the yard, with its eyes shut and pensively hanging its head, stood a thick-bellied sorrel gelding – by his appearance a good peasant horse.

  ‘Are these all the horses you have?’

  ‘No, sir, y’r Ex’cency, there’s also the mare and the foal,’ Epifán said, pointing to the horses which his master could not have helped seeing.

  ‘I see. And which of them do you want to sell?’

  ‘Why, this one, y’r Ex’cency,’ replied Epifán, shaking the skirt of his coat towards the drowsy gelding and continually blinking and twitching his lips. The gelding opened its eyes and lazily turned its tail to him.

  ‘He doesn’t look old and is a sturdy horse,’ said Nekhlyúdov. ‘Just catch him, and let me see his teeth. I can tell if he is old.’

  ‘It’s impossible for one person to catch him, Ex’cency. The beast is not worth a penny and has a temper – he bites and kicks, Ex’cency,’ replied Epifán, smiling gaily and letting his eyes rove in all directions.

  ‘What nonsense! Catch him, I tell you.’

  Epifán smiled for a long time, shuffling from foot to foot, and only when Nekhlyúdov cried angrily: ‘Well, what are you about?’ did he rush under the penthouse, bring out a halter, and begin running after the horse, frightening it and following it.

  The young master was evidently weary of seeing this, and perhaps wished to show his skill.

  ‘Let me have the halter!’ he said.

  ‘I beg your pardon, how can y’r Ex’cency? Please don’t.…’

  But Nekhlyúdov went up to the horse’s head and suddenly seized it by the ears with such force that the gelding, which was after all a very quiet peasant horse, swayed and snorted, trying to get away. When Nekhlyúdov noticed that it was quite unnecessary to use such force, and looked at Epifán who continued to smile, the idea – most humiliating to one of his age – occurred to him that Epifán was making fun of him and regarded him as a child. He flushed, let go of the horse’s ears, and without making use of the halter opened its mouth and examined its teeth: the eye-teeth were sound and the double teeth full – which the young master knew the meaning of. Of course the horse was a young one.

  Meanwhile Epifán had gone to the penthouse, and noticing that a harrow was not lying in its place, moved it and stood it up against the wattle wall.

  ‘Come here!’ cried Nekhlyúdov with an expression of childish annoyance on his face and a voice almost tearful with vexation and anger. ‘Now, is this horse old?’

  ‘Please, y’r Ex’cency, very old. It must be twenty.… Some horses …’

  ‘Silence! You’re a liar and a good-for-nothing! A decent peasant does not lie – he has no need to!’ said Nekhlyúdov, choking with angry tears. He stopped, in order not to disgrace himself by bursting into tears before the peasant. Epifán too was silent, and looking as if he would begin to cry at any moment, sniffed and slightly jerked his head.

  ‘Tell me, what will you plough with if you sell this horse?’ Nekhlyúdov went on when he had calmed down sufficiently to speak in his ordinary tone. ‘You are being sent to do work on foot so as to let your horses be in better condition for the ploughing, and you want to sell your last one? And above all, why do you tell lies?’

  As soon as his master grew calm Epifán quieted down too. He stood straight, still twitching his lips and his eyes roaming from one object to another.

  ‘We’ll come out to work for y’r Ex’cy no worse than the others.’

  ‘But what will you plough with?’

  ‘Don’t trouble about that, we’ll get y’r Ex’cency’s work done!’ said Epifán, shooing at the horse and driving it away. ‘If I didn’t need the money would I sell him?’

  ‘What do you need the money for?’

  ‘We have no flour left, y’r Ex’cency, and I must pay my debts to other peasants, y’r Ex’cency.’

  ‘No flour? How is it that others with families still have flour, while you without a family have none? What have you done with it?’

  ‘Eaten it up, y’r Ex’cency, and now there’s none left at all. I’ll buy a horse before the autumn, y’r Ex’cency.’

  ‘Don’t dare to think of selling the horse!’

  ‘But if I do
n’t sell it, y’r Ex’cency, what kind of a life will ours be, when we’ve no flour and daren’t sell anything …’ replied Epifán turning aside, twitching his lips, and suddenly casting an insolent look at his master’s face – ‘it means we’re to starve!’

  ‘Mind, my man!’ Nekhlyúdov shouted, pale with anger and experiencing a feeling of personal animosity towards the peasant. ‘I won’t keep such peasants as you. It will go ill with you.’

  ‘That’s as you wish, if I’ve not satisfied y’r Ex’cency,’ replied Epifán, closing his eyes with an expression of feigned humility, ‘but it seems that no fault has been noticed in me. Of course if y’r Ex’cency doesn’t like me, it’s all in your power: but I don’t know what I am to be punished for.’

  ‘For this: that your sheds are not thatched, your wattle walls are broken, your manure is not ploughed in, and you sit at home smoking a pipe and not working; and because you don’t give your mother, who turned the whole farm over to you, a bit of bread, but let your wife beat her so that she has to come to me with complaints.’

  ‘Oh no, y’r Ex’cency, I don’t even know what a pipe is!’ replied Epifán in confusion, apparently hurt most of all by being accused of smoking a pipe. ‘It is possible to say anything about a man …’

  ‘There you are, lying again! I saw it myself.’

  ‘How should I dare to lie to y’r Ex’cency?’

  Nekhlyúdov bit his lip silently and began pacing up and down the yard. Epifán stood in one spot and without lifting his eyes watched his master’s feet.

  ‘Listen, Epifán!’ said Nekhlyúdov suddenly in a voice of childlike gentleness, stopping in front of the peasant and trying to conceal his excitement. ‘You can’t live like that – you will ruin your life. Bethink yourself. If you want to be a good peasant change your way of life, give up your bad habits, stop lying, don’t get drunk, and respect your mother. You see I know all about you. Attend to your allotment, don’t steal from the Crown forest, and stop going to the tavern. What good is all that? – just think. If you need anything come to me and ask straight out for what you want, and tell me why you want it. Don’t lie, but tell the whole truth, and then I shan’t refuse anything I can do for you.’