Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 1

by Leo Tolstoy

  Efím replied to him.

  ‘Who was that other peasant standing with you?’

  ‘Dútlov.’

  ‘Ah! and you too, Semën! Come here!’

  Having drawn near, Dútlov, by the light of a lantern the coachman was carrying, recognized Egór Mikháylovich and a short man with a cockade on his cap, dressed in a long uniform overcoat. This was the police-constable.

  ‘Here, this old man will come with us too,’ said Egór Mikháylovich on seeing him.

  The old man felt a bit uncomfortable, but there was no getting out of it.

  ‘And you, Efím – you’re a bold lad! Run up into the loft where he’s hanged himself, and set the ladder straight for his honour to mount.’

  Efím, who had declared that he would not go near the loft for anything in the world, now ran towards it, clattering with his bast shoes as if they were logs.

  The police-officer struck a light and lit a pipe. He lived about a mile and a half off, and having just been severely reprimanded for drunkenness by his superior, was in a zealous mood. Having arrived at ten o’clock at night, he wished to view the corpse at once. Egór Mikháylovich asked Dútlov how he came to be there. On the way Dútlov told the steward about the money he had found and what the lady had done, and said he was coming to ask Egór Mikháylovich’s sanction. To Dútlov’s horror the steward asked for the envelope and examined it. The police-constable even took the envelope in his hand and briefly and dryly asked the details.

  ‘Oh dear, the money is gone!’ thought Dútlov, and began justifying himself. But the police-constable handed him back the money.

  ‘What a piece of luck for the clodhopper!’ he said.

  ‘It comes handy for him,’ said Egór Mikháylovich. ‘He’s just been taking his nephew to be conscripted, and now he’ll buy him out.’

  ‘Ah!’ said the policeman, and went on in front.

  ‘Will you buy him off – Elijah, I mean?’ asked Egór Mikháylovich.

  ‘How am I to buy him off? Will there be money enough? And perhaps it’s too late …’

  ‘Well, you know best,’ said the steward, and they both followed the police-constable.

  They approached the serfs’ house, where the ill-smelling watchmen stood waiting in the passage with a lantern. Dútlov followed them. The watchmen looked guilty, perhaps because of the smell they were spreading, for they had done nothing wrong. All were silent.

  ‘Where is he?’ asked the police-constable.

  ‘Here,’ said Egór Mikháylovich in a whisper. ‘Efím,’ he added, ‘you’re a bold lad, go on in front with the lantern.’

  Efím had already put a plank straight at the top of the ladder, and seemed to have lost all fear. Taking two or three steps at a time, he clambered up with a cheerful look, only turning round to light the way for the police-constable. The constable was followed by Egór Mikháylovich. When they had disappeared above, Dútlov, with one foot on the bottom step, sighed and stopped. Two or three minutes passed. The footsteps in the loft were no longer heard; they had no doubt reached the body.

  ‘Daddy, they want you,’ Efím called down through the opening.

  Dútlov began going up. The light of the lantern showed only the upper part of the bodies of the police-constable and of Egór Mikháylovich beyond the rafters. Beyond them again someone else was standing with his back turned. It was Polikéy. Dútlov climbed over a rafter and stopped, crossing himself.

  ‘Turn him round, lads!’ said the police-constable.

  No one stirred.

  ‘Efím, you’re a bold lad,’ said Egór Mikháylovich.

  The ‘bold lad’ stepped across a rafter, turned Polikéy round, and stood beside him, looking with a most cheerful face now at Polikéy now at the constable, as a showman exhibiting an albino or Julia Pastrana8 looks now at the public and now at what he is exhibiting, ready to do anything the spectators may wish.

  ‘Turn him round again.’

  Polikéy was turned round, his arms slightly swaying and his feet dragging in the sand on the floor.

  ‘Catch hold, and take him down.’

  ‘Shall we cut the rope through, your honour?’ asked Egór Mikháylovich. ‘Hand us an axe, lads!’

  The watchmen and Dútlov had to be told twice before they set to, but the ‘bold lad’ handled Polikéy as he would have handled a sheep’s carcass. At last the rope was cut through and the body taken down and covered up. The police-constable said that the doctor would come next day, and dismissed them all.

  XV

  DÚTLOV went homeward, still moving his lips. At first he had an uncanny feeling, but it passed as he drew nearer home, and a feeling of gladness gradually penetrated his heart. In the village he heard songs and drunken voices. Dútlov never drank, and this time too he went straight home. It was late when he entered his hut. His old wife was asleep. His eldest son and grandsons were asleep on the stove, and his second son in the store-room. Elijah’s wife alone was awake, and sat on the bench bare-headed, in a dirty, working-day smock, wailing. She did not come out to meet her uncle, but only sobbed louder, lamenting her fate, when he entered. According to the old woman, she ‘lamented’ very fluently and well, taking into consideration the fact that at her age she could not have had much practice.

  The old woman rose and got supper for her husband. Dútlov turned Elijah’s wife away from the table, saying: ‘That’s enough, that’s enough!’ Aksínya went away, and lying down on a bench continued to lament. The old woman put the supper on the table and afterwards silently cleared it away again. The old man did not speak either. When he had said grace he hiccuped, washed his hands, took the counting-frame from a nail in the wall, and went into the store-room. There he and the old woman spoke in whispers for a little while, and then, after she had gone away, he began counting on the frame, making the beads click. Finally he banged the lid of the chest standing there, and clambered into the space under the floor. For a long time he went on bustling about in the room and in the space below. When he came back to the living-room it was dark in the hut. The wooden splint that served for a candle had gone out. His old woman, quiet and silent in the daytime, had rolled herself up on the sleeping-bunk and filled the hut with her snoring. Elijah’s noisy young wife was also asleep, breathing quietly. She lay on the bench dressed just as she had been, and with nothing under her head for a pillow. Dútlov began to pray, then looked at Elijah’s wife, shook his head, put out the light, hiccuped again, and climbed up on the stove, where he lay down beside his little grandson. He threw down his plaited bast shoes from the stove in the dark, and lay on his back looking up at the rafter which was hardly discernible just over his head above the stove, and listening to the sounds of the cockroaches swarming along the walls, and to the sighs, the snoring, the rubbing of one foot against another, and the noise made by the cattle outside. It was a long time before he could sleep. The moon rose. It grew lighter in the hut. He could see Aksínya in her corner and something he could not make out: was it a coat his son had forgotten, or a tub the women had put there, or a man standing there? Perhaps he was drowsing, perhaps not: anyhow he began to peer into the darkness. Evidently that evil spirit who had led Polikéy to commit his awful deed and whose presence was felt that night by all the house-serfs, had stretched out his wing and reached across the village to the house in which lay the money that he had used to ruin Polikéy. At least, Dútlov felt his presence and was ill at ease. He could neither sleep nor get up. After noticing the something he could not make out, he remembered Elijah with his arms bound, and Aksínya’s face and her eloquent lamentations; and he recalled Polikéy with his swaying hands. Suddenly it seemed to the old man that someone passed by the window. ‘Who was that? Could it be the village elder coming so early with a notice?’ thought he. ‘How did he open the door?’ thought the old man, hearing a step in the passage. ‘Had the old woman not put up the bar when she went out into the passage?’ The dog began to howl in the yard and he came stepping along the passage, so the old
man related afterwards, as though he were trying to find the door, then passed on and began groping along the wall, stumbled over a tub and made it clatter, and again began groping as if feeling for the latch. Now he had hold of the latch. A shiver ran down the old man’s body. Now he pulled the latch and entered in the shape of a man. Dútlov knew it was he. He wished to cross himself, but could not. He went up to the table which was covered with a cloth, and, pulling it off, threw it on the floor and began climbing onto the stove. The old man knew that he had taken the shape of Polikéy. He was showing his teeth and his hands were swinging about. He climbed up, fell on the old man’s chest, and began to strangle him.

  ‘The money’s mine!’ muttered Polikéy.

  ‘Let me go! I won’t do it!’ Semën tried to say, but could not.

  Polikéy was pressing down on him with the weight of a mountain of stone. Dútlov knew that if he said a prayer he would let him go, and he knew which prayer he ought to recite, but could not utter it. His grandson sleeping beside him uttered a shrill scream and began to cry. His grandfather had pressed him against the wall. The child’s cry loosened the old man’s lips. ‘Let God arise!…’ he said. He pressed less hard. ‘And let his enemies be scattered …’ spluttered Dútlov. He got off the stove. Dútlov heard his two feet strike the floor. Dútlov went on repeating in turn all the prayers he knew. He went towards the door, passed the table, and slammed the door so that the whole hut shook. Everybody but the grandfather and grandson continued to sleep however. The grandfather, trembling all over, muttered prayers, while the grandson was crying himself to sleep and pressing close to his grandfather. All became quiet once more. The old man lay still. A cock crowed behind the wall close to Dútlov’s ear. He heard the hens stirring, and a cockerel unsuccessfully trying to crow in answer to the old cock. Something moved over the old man’s legs. It was the cat; she jumped on her soft pads from the stove to the floor, and stood mewing by the door. The old man got up and opened the window. It was dark and muddy in the street. The front of the cart was standing there close to the window. Crossing himself he went out barefoot into the yard to the horses. One could see that he had been there too. The mare, standing under the lean- to beside a tub of chaff, had got her foot into the cord of her halter and had spilt the chaff, and now, lifting her foot, turned her head and waited for her master. Her foal had tumbled over a heap of manure. The old man raised him to his feet, disentangled the mare’s foot and fed her, and went back to the hut. The old woman got up and lit the splint. ‘Wake the lads, I’m going to the town!’ And taking a wax taper from before the icon Dútlov lit it and went down with it into the opening under the floor. When he came up again lights were burning not only in his hut but in all the neighbouring houses. The young fellows were up and preparing to start. The women were coming in and out with pails of milk. Ignát was harnessing the horse to one cart and the second son was greasing the wheels of another. The young wife was no longer wailing. She had made herself neat and had bound a shawl over her head, and now sat waiting till it would be time to go to town to say good-bye to her husband.

  The old man seemed particularly stern. He did not say a word to anyone, put on his best coat, tied his belt round him, and with all Polikéy’s money in the bosom of his coat, went to Egór Mikháylovich.

  ‘Don’t dawdle,’ he called to his son, who was turning the wheels round on the raised and newly greased axle. ‘I’ll be back in a minute; see that everything is ready.’

  The steward had only just got up and was drinking tea. He himself was preparing to go to town to deliver up the recruits.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Egór Mikháylovich, I want to buy the lad off. Do be so good! You said t’other day that you knew one in the town that was willing.… Explain to me how to do it; we are ignorant people.’

  ‘Why, have you reconsidered it?’

  ‘I have, Egór Mikháylovich. I’m sorry for him. My brother’s child after all, whatever he may be. I’m sorry for him! It’s the cause of much sin, money is. Do be good enough to explain it to me!’ he said, bowing to his waist.

  Egór Mikháylovich, as was his wont on such occasions, stood for a long time thoughtfully smacking his lips. Then, having considered the matter, he wrote two notes and told him what to do in town and how to do it.

  When Dútlov got home, the young wife had already set off with Ignát. The fat roan mare stood ready harnessed at the gate. Dútlov broke a stick out of the hedge and, lapping his coat over, got into the cart and whipped up the horse. He made the mare run so fast that her fat sides quickly shrank, and Dútlov did not look at her so as not to feel sorry for her. He was tormented by the thought that he might come too late for the recruiting, that Elijah would go as a soldier and the devil’s money would be left on his hands.

  I will not describe all Dútlov’s proceedings that morning. I will only say that he was specially lucky. The man to whom Egór Mikháylovich had given him a note had a volunteer quite ready who was already twenty-three silver rubles in debt and had been passed by the recruiting-board. His master wanted four hundred silver rubles for him and a buyer in the town had for the last three weeks been offering him three hundred. Dútlov settled the matter in a couple of words. ‘Will you take three twenty-five?’ he said, holding out his hand, but with a look that showed that he was prepared to give more. The master held back his hand and went on asking four hundred. ‘You won’t take three and a quarter?’ Dútlov said, catching hold with his left hand of the man’s right and preparing to slap his own right hand down on it. ‘You won’t take it? Well, God be with you!’ he said suddenly, smacking the master’s hand with the full swing of his other hand and turning away with his whole body. ‘It seems it has to be so … take three and a half hundred! Get out the discharge and bring the fellow along. And now here are two ten-ruble notes on account. Is it enough?’

  And Dútlov unfastened his girdle and got out the money.

  The man, though he did not withdraw his hand, yet did not seem quite to agree and, not accepting the deposit money, went on stipulating that Dútlov should wet the bargain and stand treat to the volunteer.

  ‘Don’t commit a sin,’ Dútlov kept repeating as he held out the money. ‘We shall all have to die some day,’ he went on, in such a mild, persuasive and assured tone that the master said:

  ‘So be it, then!’ and again clapped Dútlov’s hand and began praying for God’s blessing. ‘God grant you luck,’ he said.

  They woke the volunteer, who was still sleeping after yesterday’s carouse, examined him for some reason, and went with him to the offices of the Administration. The recruit was merry. He demanded rum as a refresher, for which Dútlov gave him some money, and only when they came into the vestibule of the recruiting-board did his courage fail him. For a long time they stood in the entrance-hall, the old master in his full blue cloak and the recruit in a short sheepskin, his eyebrows raised and his eyes staring. For a long time they whispered, tried to get somewhere, looked for somebody, and for some reason took off their caps and bowed to every copying-clerk they met, and meditatively listened to the decision which a scribe whom the master knew brought out to them. All hope of getting the business done that day began to vanish, and the recruit was growing more cheerful and unconstrained again, when Dútlov saw Egór Mikháylovich, seized on him at once, and began to beg and bow to him. Egór Mikháylovich helped him so efficiently that by about three o’clock the recruit, to his great dissatisfaction and surprise, was taken into the hall and placed for examination, and amid general merriment (in which for some reason everybody joined, from the watchmen to the President), he was undressed, dressed again, shaved, and led out at the door; and five minutes later Dútlov counted out the money, received the discharge and, having taken leave of the volunteer and his master, went to the lodging-house where the Pokróvsk recruits were staying. Elijah and his young wife were sitting in a corner of the kitchen, and as soon as the old man came in they stopped talking and looked at him with a
resigned expression, but not with goodwill. As was his wont the old man said a prayer, and he then unfastened his belt, got out a paper, and called into the room his eldest son Ignát and Elijah’s mother, who were in the yard.

  ‘Don’t sin, Elijah,’ he said, coming up to his nephew. ‘Last night you said a word to me.… Don’t I pity you? I remember how my brother left you to me. If it had been in my power would I have let you go? God has sent me luck, and I am not grudging it you. Here it is, the paper’; and he put the discharge on the table and carefully smoothed it out with his stiff, unbending fingers.

  All the Pokróvsk peasants, the inn-keeper’s men, and even some outsiders, came in from the yard. All guessed what was happening, but no one interrupted the old man’s solemn discourse.

  ‘Here it is, the paper! Four hundred silver rubles I’ve given for it. Don’t reproach your uncle.’

  Elijah rose, but remained silent not knowing what to say. His lips quivered with emotion. His old mother came up and would have thrown herself sobbing on his neck; but the old man motioned her away slowly and authoritatively and continued speaking.

  ‘You said a word to me yesterday,’ the old man again repeated. ‘You stabbed me to the heart with that word as with a knife! Your dying father left you to me and you have been as my own son to me, and if I have wronged you in any way, well, we all live in sin! Is it not so, good Christian folk?’ he said, turning to the peasants who stood round. ‘Here is your own mother and your young wife, and here is the discharge for you. I don’t regret the money, but forgive me for Christ’s sake!’

  And, turning up the skirts of his coat, he deliberately sank to his knees and bowed down to the ground before Elijah and his wife. The young people tried in vain to restrain him, but not till his forehead had touched the floor did he get up. Then, after giving his skirts a shake, he sat down on a bench. Elijah’s mother and wife howled with joy, and words of approval were heard among the crowd. ‘That is just, that’s the godly way,’ said one. ‘What’s money? You can’t buy a fellow for money,’ said another. ‘What happiness!’ said a third; ‘no two ways about it, he’s a just man!’ Only the peasants who were to go as recruits said nothing, and went quietly out into the yard.