Resurrection - Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (interesting novels in english .TXT) 📗

who stood

perspiring with forks in their hands, the kerchiefs tumbling off

their heads, with their skirts tucked up, showing the calves of

their dirty, bare legs. “Not a month passes but I have to buy six

poods [a pood is 36 English pounds] of corn, and where’s the money to

come from?”

 

“Have you not got enough corn of your own?”

 

“My own?” repeated the old man, with a smile of contempt; “why I

have only got land for three, and last year we had not enough to

last till Christmas.”

 

“What do you do then?”

 

“What do we do? Why, I hire out as a labourer; and then I

borrowed some money from your honour. We spent it all before

Lent, and the tax is not paid yet.”

 

“And how much is the tax?”

 

“Why, it’s 17 roubles for my household. Oh, Lord, such a life!

One hardly knows one’s self how one manages to live it.”

 

“May I go into your hut?” asked Nekhludoff, stepping across the

yard over the yellow-brown layers of manure that had been raked

up by the forks, and were giving off a strong smell.

 

“Why not? Come in,” said the old man, and stepping quickly with

his bare feet over the manure, the liquid oozing between his

toes, he passed Nekhludoff and opened the door of the hut.

 

The women arranged the kerchiefs on their heads and let down

their skirts, and stood looking with surprise at the clean

gentleman with gold studs to his sleeves who was entering their

house. Two little girls, with nothing on but coarse chemises,

rushed out of the hut. Nekhludoff took off his hat, and, stooping

to get through the low door, entered, through a passage into the

dirty, narrow hut, that smelt of sour food, and where much space

was taken up by two weaving looms. In the but an old woman was

standing by the stove, with the sleeves rolled up over her thin,

sinewy brown arms.

 

“Here is our master come to see us,” said the old man.

 

“I’m sure he’s very welcome,” said the old woman, kindly.

 

“I would like to see how you live.”

 

“Well, you see how we live. The hut is coming down, and might

kill one any day; but my old man he says it’s good enough, and so

we live like kings,” said the brisk old woman, nervously jerking

her head. “I’m getting the dinner; going to feed the workers.”

 

“And what are you going to have for dinner?”

 

“Our food is very good. First course, bread and kvas; [kvas is a

kind of sour, non-intoxicant beer made of rye] second course,

kvas and bread,” said the old woman, showing her teeth, which

were half worn away.

 

“No,” seriously; “let me see what you are going to eat.”

 

“To eat?” said the old man, laughing. “Ours is not a very cunning

meal. You just show him, wife.”

 

“Want to see our peasant food? Well, you are an inquisitive

gentleman, now I come to look at you. He wants to know

everything. Did I not tell you bread and kvas and then we’ll have

soup. A woman brought us some fish, and that’s what the soup is

made of, and after that, potatoes.”

 

“Nothing more?”

 

“What more do you want? We’ll also have a little milk,” said the

old woman, looking towards the door. The door stood open, and the

passage outside was full of people—boys, girls, women with

babies—thronged together to look at the strange gentleman who

wanted to see the peasants’ food. The old woman seemed to pride

herself on the way she behaved with a gentleman.

 

“Yes, it’s a miserable life, ours; that goes without saying,

sir,” said the old man. “What are you doing there?” he shouted to

those in the passage. “Well, goodbye,” said Nekhludoff, feeling

ashamed and uneasy, though unable to account for the feeling.

 

“Thank you kindly for having looked us up,” said the old man.

 

The people in the passage pressed closer together to let

Nekhludoff pass, and he went out and continued his way up the

street.

 

Two barefooted boys followed him out of the passage the elder in

a shirt that had once been white, the other in a worn and faded

pink one. Nekhludoff looked back at them.

 

“And where are you going now?” asked the boy with the white

shirt. Nekhludoff answered: “To Matrona Kharina. Do you know

her?” The boy with the pink shirt began laughing at something;

but the elder asked, seriously:

 

“What Matrona is that? Is she old?”

 

“Yes, she is old.”

 

“Oh—oh,” he drawled; “that one; she’s at the other end of the

village; we’ll show you. Yes, Fedka, we’ll go with him. Shall

we?”

 

“Yes, but the horses?”

 

“They’ll be all right, I dare say.”

 

Fedka agreed, and all three went up the street.

 

CHAPTER V.

 

MASLOVA’S AUNT.

 

Nekhludoff felt more at case with the boys than with the grown-up

people, and he began talking to them as they went along. The

little one with the pink shirt stopped laughing, and spoke as

sensibly and as exactly as the elder one.

 

“Can you tell me who are the poorest people you have got here?”

asked Nekhludoff.

 

“The poorest? Michael is poor, Simon Makhroff, and Martha, she is

very poor.”

 

“And Anisia, she is still poorer; she’s not even got a cow. They

go begging,” said little Fedka.

 

“She’s not got a cow, but they are only three persons, and

Martha’s family are five,” objected the elder boy.

 

“But the other’s a widow,” the pink boy said, standing up for

Anisia.

 

“You say Anisia is a widow, and Martha is no better than a

widow,” said the elder boy; “she’s also no husband.”

 

“And where is her husband?” Nekhludoff asked.

 

“Feeding vermin in prison,” said the elder boy, using this

expression, common among the peasants.

 

“A year ago he cut down two birch trees in the landlord’s

forest,” the little pink boy hurried to say, “so he was locked

up; now he’s sitting the sixth month there, and the wife goes

begging. There are three children and a sick grandmother,” he

went on with his detailed account.

 

“And where does she live?” Nekhludoff asked.

 

“In this very house,” answered the boy, pointing to a hut, in

front of which, on the footpath along which Nekhludoff was

walking, a tiny, flaxen-headed infant stood balancing himself

with difficulty on his rickety legs.

 

“Vaska! Where’s the little scamp got to?” shouted a woman, with a

dirty grey blouse, and a frightened look, as she ran out of the

house, and, rushing forward, seized the baby before Nekhludoff

came up to it, and carried it in, just as if she were afraid that

Nekhludoff would hurt her child.

 

This was the woman whose husband was imprisoned for Nekhludoff’s

birch trees.

 

“Well, and this Matrona, is she also poor?” Nekhludoff asked, as

they came up to Matrona’s house.

 

“She poor? No. Why, she sells spirits,” the thin, pink little boy

answered decidedly.

 

When they reached the house Nekhludoff left the boys outside and

went through the passage into the hut. The hut was 14 feet long.

The bed that stood behind the big stove was not long enough for a

tall person to stretch out on. “And on this very bed,” Nekhludoff

thought, “Katusha bore her baby and lay ill afterwards.” The

greater part of the hut was taken up by a loom, on which the old

woman and her eldest granddaughter were arranging the warp when

Nekhludoff came in, striking his forehead against the low

doorway. Two other grandchildren came rushing in after

Nekhludoff, and stopped, holding on to the lintels of the door.

 

“Whom do you want?” asked the old woman, crossly. She was in a

bad temper because she could not manage to get the warp right,

and, besides, carrying on an illicit trade in spirits, she was

always afraid when any stranger came in.

 

“I am—the owner of the neighbouring estates, and should like to

speak to you.”

 

“Dear me; why, it’s you, my honey; and I, fool, thought it was

just some passer-by. Dear me, you—it’s you, my precious,” said

the old woman, with simulated tenderness in her voice.

 

“I should like to speak to you alone,” said Nekhludoff, with a

glance towards the door, where the children were standing, and

behind them a woman holding a wasted, pale baby, with a sickly

smile on its face, who had a little cap made of different bits of

stuff on its head.

 

“What are you staring at? I’ll give it you. Just hand me my

crutch,” the old woman shouted to those at the door.

 

“Shut the door, will you!” The children went away, and the woman

closed the door.

 

“And I was thinking, who’s that? And it’s ‘the master’ himself.

My jewel, my treasure. Just think,” said the old woman, “where he

has deigned to come. Sit down here, your honour,” she said,

wiping the seat with her apron. “And I was thinking what devil is

it coming in, and it’s your honour, ‘the master’ himself, the

good gentleman, our benefactor. Forgive me, old fool that I am;

I’m getting blind.”

 

Nekhludoff sat down, and the old woman stood in front of him,

leaning her cheek on her right hand, while the left held up the

sharp elbow of her right arm.

 

“Dear me, you have grown old, your honour; and you used to be as

fresh as a daisy. And now! Cares also, I expect?”

 

“This is what I have come about: Do you remember Katusha

Maslova?”

 

“Katerina? I should think so. Why, she is my niece. How could I

help remembering; and the tears I have shed because of her. Why,

I know all about it. Eh, sir, who has not sinned before God? who

has not offended against the Tsar? We know what youth is. You

used to be drinking tea and coffee, so the devil got hold of you.

He is strong at times. What’s to be done? Now, if you had chucked

her; but no, just see how you rewarded her, gave her a hundred

roubles. And she? What has she done? Had she but listened to me

she might have lived all right. I must say the truth, though she

is my niece: that girl’s no good. What a good place I found her!

She would not submit, but abused her master. Is it for the likes

of us to scold gentlefolk? Well, she was sent away. And then at

the forester’s. She might have lived there; but no, she would

not.”

 

“I want to know about the child. She was confined at your house,

was she not? Where’s the child?”

 

“As to the child, I considered that well at the time. She was so

bad I never thought she would get up again. Well, so I christened

the baby quite properly, and we sent it to the Foundlings’. Why

should one let an innocent soul languish when the mother is

dying? Others do like this: they just leave the baby, don’t feed

it, and it wastes away. But, thinks I, no; I’d rather take some

trouble, and send it to the Foundlings’. There was money enough,

so I sent it off.”

 

“Did you not get its registration number from the Foundlings’

Hospital?”

 

“Yes, there was a number, but the baby died,” she said. “It died

as soon as she brought it there.”

 

“Who is she?”

 

“That same woman who used to live in Skorodno. She made a

business