She thought regretfully about women of her own age (she was twenty-five) who were busy in the house, who slept soundly because they were tired, and who would wake up tomorrow in truly festive mood. Many of them were long since married and had children. Somehow she alone was obliged to bury herself in these letters like an old woman, making notes on them, penning answers and then doing nothing the entire evening, right up to midnight, except wait until she felt sleepy. All next day people would be wishing her merry Christmas and asking for favours, and the day after that there was bound to be some trouble at the works – someone would be beaten up or someone would die from vodka and she would feel somehow conscience-stricken. After the holidays Nazarych would dismiss about twenty workers for absenteeism and all twenty would huddle together bare-headed at her front door. She would feel too ashamed to go out to them and they would be driven away like dogs. And everyone she knew would talk about it behind her back and send her anonymous letters, saying that she was a millionairess, an exploiter, that she was ruining people’s lives and squeezing the last drop out of them.
Over there was a pile of letters that had been read and put to one side. They were appeals for money. The people here were hungry, drunken, burdened with large families, ill, humiliated, unrecognized. Anna Akimovna had already specified on each letter that one man was to get three roubles, another five. These letters would be taken to the office today, where the dispensation of charity – ‘feeding-time at the zoo’ as the clerks called it – would take place.
They would also distribute, in fiddling amounts, four hundred and seventy roubles – this was the interest on the capital that the late Akim Ivanych had left to the poor and needy. There would be nasty pushing and shoving. A queue, a long file of peculiar-looking people with animal-like faces, ragged, frozen stiff, hungry and already drunk, would stretch from the factory gates right down to the office. Hoarsely they would call out the name of their ‘mother’, their benefactress, Anna Akimovna and her parents. Those at the rear would jostle the ones in front, those in front would swear at them. The clerk would grow tired of the noise, swearing and general wailing, leap out of his office and cuff someone’s ear – much to everyone’s enjoyment. But her own people – workers who had been paid their wages without any holiday bonus and had already spent the lot, down to the last copeck – would be standing in the middle of the yard looking and laughing, some enviously, others sarcastically.
‘Industrialists, especially women, feel more for beggars than their own workers’, Anna Akimovna thought. ‘That’s always the case.’
Her glance fell on the wad of money. It would be nice to hand out this unnecessary filthy lucre to the workers tomorrow, but one couldn’t give them something for nothing, otherwise they would ask for more the next time. And what did those fifteen hundred roubles in fact amount to, since there were more than eighteen hundred workers at the factory, not counting wives and children? Perhaps she could pick out someone who had written a pleading letter, some miserable wretch who had long lost any hope of a better life, and give him the fifteen hundred roubles. The poor devil would be stunned by the money, as if he’d been struck by a thunderbolt, and perhaps would consider himself happy for the first time in his life. This thought appeared original, amusing and entertaining. She picked one letter at random from the pile and read it. Some clerk by the name of Chalikov, long jobless and ill, was living in Gushchin’s house. His wife was consumptive and there were five young daughters. Anna Akimovna was very familiar with that four-storey building belonging to Gushchin where Chalikov lived – and what an evil, rotten, unhealthy place it was!
‘I’ll give this Chalikov something’, she decided. ‘But I’d better take it myself rather than send it, to avoid any unnecessary dramas.’
‘Yes’, she reasoned, hiding the fifteen hundred roubles in her pocket, ‘I’ll go and have a look and perhaps fix the little girls up with something too.’
Cheered at this thought, she rang the bell and ordered the horses to be brought round.
It was after six in the evening when she got into her sledge. The windows in every factory block were brightly lit and this made the enormous yard seem very dark. Electric lamps glowed by the gates, in the remote part of the yard, near the storehouses and workers’ huts.
Anna Akimovna disliked and feared those dark, gloomy blocks, storehouses and workers’ huts. Since her father died she had only once visited the main block. Those high ceilings with iron girders, dozens of huge, rapidly turning wheels, drive-belts and levers, the piercing hiss, the screech of steel, clattering trolleys, the harsh breath of steam; faces that were pale, crimson, or black with coal dust, shirts wet with sweat; the glitter of steel, copper and fire; the smell of coal and oil; the wind that was scorching and cold in turn – all this made the place seem like hell to her. She thought that the wheels, levers and hot, hissing cylinders were trying to break loose from their couplings and destroy people, while anxious-looking men ran around without hearing each other, fussing with the machinery in an attempt to bring its terrible movements to a halt. They showed Anna Akimovna some object which they respectfully explained. She remembered a piece of white-hot iron being drawn out of the furnace in the forge shop; how an old man with a strap round his head and another – younger, in a dark-blue blouse with a chain on his chest, angry-faced and probably a foreman – struck a piece of iron with hammers, making golden sparks fly in all directions; and how, a little later, they had rolled an enormous piece of sheet iron in front of her with a sound like thunder. The old man stood to attention and smiled, while the younger one wiped his wet face on his sleeve and explained something to her. And she could still remember a one-eyed old man in another section scattering filings as he sawed the piece of iron, and a red-haired workman in dark glasses and with holes in his shirt working away at the lathe making something from a piece of steel. The lathe roared and screeched and whistled, and all this noise made Anna feel sick and as if something were boring into her ears. She looked and listened without understanding, smiled graciously and felt ashamed. To earn one’s living and receive thousands of roubles from a business one didn’t understand and which one couldn’t bring oneself to like – how strange this was!
Not once had she visited the workers’ blocks, where there was said to be damp, bed-bugs, debauchery, lawlessness. Amazingly, thousands were spent every year on their upkeep, but if the anonymous letters were to be believed, the workers’ lot deteriorated with every year that passed.
‘Things were better organized when Father was alive’, Anna Akimovna thought as she drove out of the yard, ‘because he was a factory worker himself and he knew what had to be done. But I know nothing and only do stupid things.’
Again she felt bored and no longer pleased at having made the journey. The thought of that lucky man, suddenly to be showered with fifteen hundred roubles like manna from heaven, did not seem original or amusing any more. Going to see this Chalikov while a million-rouble business at home gradually declined and fell apart, while the workers lived worse than convicts in their blocks – that was a stupid act and it meant she was trying to cheat her conscience. Workers from the neighbouring cotton and paper mills were crowding along the high road and across the nearby fields on their way to the lights in town. Laughter and cheerful conversation rang out in the frosty air. As she looked at the women and young ones, Anna Akimovna suddenly yearned for simplicity, roughness, overcrowding. She vividly pictured those far-off times when she was a little girl called Annie, sharing her mother’s blanket, while their lodger – a laundress – worked away in the next room. From the adjoining flats she could hear laughter, swearing, children crying, an accordion, the buzzing of lathes and sewing-machines which penetrated the thin walls, while Akim Ivanych, her father and jack-of-all-trades, did some soldering at the stove or drew plans, or worked with his plane oblivious of the cramped conditions and the noise. And now she had a strong urge to wash and iron, to run back and forwards to shop and pub as she had done every day when
she lived with her mother. Rather be a worker than a factory owner! Her large house with its chandeliers and paintings, her footman Misha with his coat and tails, and small, velvety moustache, the grand Barbara, the toadying Agafya, the young people of both sexes who came almost every day to beg for money and with whom she always felt somewhat guilty, those civil servants, doctors, ladies dispensing charity on her behalf, flattering her and at the same time despising her humble origin – how boring and alien all this was!
She came to the level crossing and barrier. Houses alternated with vegetable gardens. Here at last was the broad street where Gushchin’s celebrated house stood. The normally quiet street was very busy, as it was Christmas Eve. A great deal of noise came from the pubs and bars. If some stranger to the district, someone from the middle of the town, had driven down the street, then he would have seen only filthy, drunken, foul-mouthed people. But Anna Akimovna, who had lived in the district from childhood, imagined she could see her late father, then her mother, then her uncle in the crowd. Her father had been a gentle, vague soul, something of a dreamer, carefree and light-headed. He had no liking for money, position or power. He often used to say that working men had no time to think of holidays or going to church. But for his wife, he might never have observed the fasts and would have eaten meat during Lent. In contrast, her Uncle Ivan Ivanych had been a man of steel. In everything that was connected with religion, politics or morals he had been strict and unbending, and made sure that not only he himself practised what he preached, but the servants and his acquaintances too. Heaven help anyone coming into his room without making the sign of the cross. He kept the luxurious apartment where Anna Akimovna now lived under lock and key, opening it only on special holidays, for important guests, while he himself lived in that poky little icon-filled room which was his office. He believed in the Old Creed,1 always entertaining bishops and priests who believed as he did, although he had been christened and married and had buried his wife according to the rites of the Orthodox Church. He did not like his brother Akim – his sole heir – for his frivolous attitude, calling it simple-minded and stupid, and for his indifference to religion. He had treated him badly, just like a workman, paying him sixteen roubles a month. Akim would speak to his brother most respectfully, and at Shrovetide went with his whole family to prostrate himself before him. But three years before he died Ivan relented, forgave him and told him to engage a governess for Anna.
The gates to Gushchin’s house were dark, deep, and had a terrible stench about them. Men could be heard coughing near the walls. Leaving her sledge in the street, Anna Akimovna entered the yard, where she asked the way to flat No. 46, where Chalikov the clerk lived. She was directed to the last door on the right, on the second floor. In the yard, and near the last door, even on the staircase, there was the same terrible smell as at the gates. In her childhood, when her father was a simple workman, Anna Akimovna had lived in similar houses. Then, when her circumstances changed, she often visited them as a charity worker. The filthy narrow stone staircase with a landing on each floor, the greasy lamp in the stair-well, the stench, the slop-basins, pots, rags outside doors on the landings – all this she was long familiar with. One door was open and she could see Jewish tailors, wearing caps, sitting on top of tables and sewing. She met people on the stairs, but she did not think for one moment that they could do her any harm. She feared workmen and peasants, whether drunk or sober, as little as she did her own cultivated friends.
Flat No. 46 had no hall and opened straight into the kitchen. Factory workers’ and craftsmen’s flats usually smell of varnish, tar, leather or smoke, depending on the occupant’s trade. But flats belonging to impoverished gentlefolk and clerks can be recognized by their dank, rather acrid smell. Hardly had Anna Akimovna crossed the threshold than she was enveloped in this revolting stench. A man in a frock-coat was sitting at a table in one corner, his back to the door – most probably Chalikov himself. With him were five little girls. The eldest, broad-faced and thin, with a comb in her hair, looked about fifteen, while the youngest was a plump little girl with hair like a hedgehog and not more than three. All six were eating. Near the stove, with an oven-fork in her hands, stood a small, very thin, sallow-faced woman in a skirt and white blouse. She was pregnant.
‘I didn’t expect such disobedience from you, Liza’, the man said reproachfully. ‘It’s a disgrace! Would you like Daddy to give you a good hiding? Yes?’
When she saw a strange lady on the threshold, the thin woman shuddered and put down her oven-fork.
‘Vasily Nikitich!’ she called out in a hollow voice, after a moment’s hesitation – as though she could not believe her eyes.
The man looked round and jumped up. He was a bony, narrow-shouldered person with sunken temples and a flat chest. His eyes were small, deep-set, with dark rings round them; his nose was long, bird-like and slightly twisted to the right; his mouth was wide and his forked beard and clean-shaven upper lip made him look more like a footman than a clerk.
‘Does Mr Chalikov live here?’ Anna Akimovna asked.
‘That’s right, lady’, Chalikov replied gruffly, but then he recognized Anna Akimovna and cried out ‘Miss Glagolev! Anna Akimovna!’, and suddenly he gasped for breath and threw his arms up as if scared out of his wits. ‘Our saviour!’
Groaning and mumbling like a paralytic as he ran over to her (there was cabbage on his beard and he smelt of vodka), he laid his forehead on her muff and seemed to lose consciousness.
‘Your hand, your divine hand!’ he gasped. ‘It’s a dream, a beautiful dream! Children, wake me up!’
He turned towards the table and waved his fists.
‘Providence has heard our prayers!’ he sobbed. ‘Our rescuer, our angel has come! We’re saved! Children, on your knees! On your knees!’
For some reason Mrs Chalikov and the girls – with the exception of the youngest – began hurriedly clearing the table.
‘You wrote that your wife was very ill’, Anna Akimovna said, and she felt ashamed and annoyed. ‘I won’t give him that fifteen hundred’, she thought.
‘That’s her, that’s my wife!’ Chalikov said in a shrill, woman’s voice, and he seemed about to burst into tears. ‘There she is, the poor woman, with one foot in the grave! But we’re not complaining, ma’am. Death is better than a life like that. Die, you miserable woman!’
‘Why is he putting on such an act?’ Anna Akimovna wondered indignantly. ‘I can see right away that he’s used to dealing with rich people.’
‘Please talk to me properly, I don’t like play-acting’, she said.
‘Yes, ma’am. Five orphans round their mother’s coffin, with the funeral candles burning! You call that play-acting! Oh, God!’ Chalikov said bitterly and turned away.
‘Shut up!’ his wife whispered, tugging him by the sleeve. ‘It’s a terrible mess here, ma’am’, she said to Anna Akimovna. ‘Please forgive us. Please understand… it’s a family matter. It’s so overcrowded, but we mean no offence.’
‘I won’t give them the fifteen hundred’, Anna Akimovna thought again.
To make a quick escape from these people and that acrid smell, she took out her purse and decided to leave them twenty-five roubles – and no more. But suddenly she felt ashamed of having travelled so far and having troubled these people for nothing.
‘If you’d like to give me some paper and ink I’ll write straight away to a doctor, a very good friend of mine, and tell him to call’, she said, blushing. ‘He’s a very good doctor. And I’ll leave you some money for medicine.’
Mrs Chalikov hurriedly began wiping the table down.
‘It’s filthy in here! What are you doing?’ Chalikov hissed, giving her a vicious look. ‘Take her to the lodger’s room. Please, ma’am, go into the lodger’s room, if you don’t mind’, he said, turning to Anna Akimovna. ‘It’s clean there.’
‘Osip Ilich says no one’s to go into his room!’ one of the little girls said sternly.
But Anna Akimovna
had already been led out of the kitchen, through a narrow, intercommunicating room, between two beds. From the position of these beds she could tell that two people slept lengthways on one of them and three crossways on the other. The next room, where the lodger lived, really was clean. There was a tidy bed with a red woollen cover, a pillow in a white case, even a special little holder for a watch. There was a table covered with a linen cloth, and on this stood a milky-white ink-pot, pens, paper, framed photographs – all neatly arranged. And there was another table, which was black, with watchmaker’s instruments and dismantled watches neatly laid out on it. On the walls hung little hammers, pincers, gimlets, chisels, pliers and so on. And there were three wall clocks, all ticking away. One of them was quite huge, with the kind of fat pendulum weights you see in taverns.
As she started on the letter, Anna Akimovna saw a portrait of her father, and one of herself, on the table in front of her, which surprised her.
‘Who lives here?’ she asked.
‘The lodger, ma’am. Pimenov works at your factory.’
‘Really? I thought a watchmaker must be living here.’
‘He repairs watches privately, in his spare time. It’s his hobby, ma’am.’
After a brief silence, during which only the ticking of the clocks and the scraping of pen on paper could be heard, Chalikov sighed and said in a disgruntled, sarcastic voice, ‘There’s no getting away from it, you can’t make much money from being a gentleman or office clerk. You can wear decorations on your chest, you can have a title, but you’ll still starve. If you ask me, if some ordinary man from the lower classes helps the poor, he’s much more of a gentleman than some Chalikov who’s bogged down in poverty and vice.’
Ward No. 6 and Other Stories Page 23