Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 2

‘Yes, that’s what it says,’ she replied, and she read him the Sermon on the Mount from the Gospels. The tailor fell to thinking. And when he had been paid off and he had returned home he still kept thinking about what he had seen in Mariya Semyonovna’s house, and about what she had said to him and read to him.

XVII

Pyotr Nikolayevich Sventitsky’s attitude towards the common people had changed completely, and so had their attitude towards him. Before a year was out they had felled twenty-seven of his oak trees and burned down the barn and the threshing-floor, which were not insured. Pyotr Nikolayevich decided that it was impossible to go on living among these people.

About this time the Livyentsov family were seeking a steward to look after their estates, and the marshal of the nobility had recommended Pyotr Nikolayevich as being the best farmer in the district. The Livyentsov estates although enormous in size were not yielding any profit, and the peasants were helping themselves to everything they could. Pyotr Nikolayevich undertook to set everything to rights, and after letting his own estate to a tenant he set off with his wife to go and live on the Livyentsovs’ land in the far-off Volga province.

Pyotr Nikolayevich had always been a lover of law and order, and now he was more unwilling than ever to tolerate these wild, uncivilized peasants who were illegally taking possession of property which did not belong to them. He was glad to have this chance to teach them a lesson and he set about his task with severity. One peasant he had imprisoned for the theft of forest timber, another he flogged with his own hand for not giving way to him on the road and failing to take off his hat. Concerning the meadows, about which there was a dispute, since the peasants regarded them as theirs, Pyotr Nikolayevich announced that if anyone let their cattle on to them, then he would have the animals impounded.

Spring came, and the peasants, as they had done in previous years, let their livestock out on to the manorial meadows. Pyotr Nikolayevich called all his farm-hands together and gave the order to drive the cattle and sheep into the manor farmyard. The muzhiks were out ploughing, so the farmhands, despite the women’s shrieks of protest, were able to drive the animals in. On getting back from their work the muzhiks gathered together and came across to the manor farmyard to demand that their livestock should be given back to them. Pyotr Nikolayevich came out to meet them carrying a rifle across his shoulders (he had just returned from making his tour of inspection on horseback) and informed them that he would only return their livestock to them on payment of a fine of fifty copecks per horned beast and ten copecks per sheep. The muzhiks began shouting that the meadows were theirs anyway, and had belonged to their fathers and their grandfathers before them, and that he had no right to go seizing other people’s stock.

‘Give us our cattle back, or it’ll be the worse for you,’ said one old man, going up to Pyotr Nikolayevich.

‘It’ll be the worse for me, will it?’ cried Pyotr Nikolayevich, his face all pale, advancing on the old man.

‘Give them back if you don’t want to get hurt. Parasite.’

‘What?’ shouted Pyotr Nikolayevich, and he struck the old man in the face.

‘You won’t dare fight us. Come on lads, take the cattle by force.’

The crowd surged forward. Pyotr Nikolayevich made as if to get out of the way, but they did not let him. He tried to force his way through. His rifle went off by accident, killing one of the peasants. A general riot broke out. Pyotr Nikolayevich was crushed to death. And five minutes later his mutilated body was dragged away and thrown into a ravine.

The murderers were brought before a military tribunal, and two of them were sentenced to death by hanging.

XVIII

In the village where the tailor came from five wealthy peasants had leased from the landowner for eleven hundred roubles a hundred and five desyatins of rich arable land as black as tar and distributed it among the other muzhiks in parcels costing eighteen or fifteen roubles each. None of the allotments of land went for under twelve roubles. So that they made themselves a good profit. The muzhiks who had leased the land each took five desyatins, and this land cost them nothing at all. One of these five muzhiks died, and the others invited the crippled tailor to come in with them as a partner.

When the tenants began to divide up the land, the tailor did not join in drinking vodka with them, and when the discussion turned to the question of who should get how much land, the tailor said that they should allocate it equally, and without taking money they didn’t need from the tenants, but only what they could afford.

‘What do you mean?’

‘If we don’t do it like this, we are not acting like Christians. The other way may be all right for the masters, but we are Christian people. We should do things God’s way. That’s the law of Christ.’