Fifty-Two Stories

“I like the river, and the forest, and the village…,” Elena Ivanovna went on. “I could live here all my life, and it seems to me that here I would recover my health and find my place. I want, I passionately want to help you, to be useful, to be close to you. I know how needy you are, and what I don’t know, I feel, I guess with my heart. I’m sick, weak, and for me it’s probably already impossible to change my life as I’d like to. But I have children, I’ll try to raise them so that they’re accustomed to you and love you. I’ll constantly instill in them that their lives belong not to them, but to you. Only I ask you earnestly, I beg you, trust us, be friends with us. My husband is a kind, good man. Don’t upset him, don’t vex him. He’s sensitive about every little thing, and yesterday, for instance, your herd got into our vegetable garden, and one of you broke the wattle fence at our apiary, and this attitude drives my husband to despair. I beg you,” she went on in a pleading voice, clasping her hands on her breast, “I beg you, treat us as good neighbors, let us live in peace! They say a bad peace is better than a good quarrel, and ‘Don’t buy a house, buy a neighbor.’ I repeat, my husband is a kind man, a good man; if all goes well, I promise you, we’ll do everything in our power; we’ll repair the roads, we’ll build a school for your children. I promise you.”

“We humbly thank you, for sure, lady,” said Lychkov the father, looking at the ground. “You’re educated, you know better. Only you see, in Eresnevo a rich peasant, Ravenov, promised to build a school, he also said ‘I’ll do this, I’ll do that,’ and only put up the frame and quit, and then the peasants were forced to roof it and finish it—a thousand roubles went on it. It was nothing to Ravenov, he just stroked his beard, but it was kind of hurtful for the peasants.”

“That was the raven, and now the rook’s come flying,” Kozov said and winked.

Laughter was heard.

“We don’t need a school,” Volodka said sullenly. “Our children go to Petrovskoe, and let them. We have no wish.”

Elena Ivanovna somehow suddenly became timid. She grew pale, pinched, cringed all over, as if she had been touched by something coarse, and walked off without saying another word. And she walked more and more quickly, without looking back.

“Lady!” Rodion called out, walking after her. “Lady, wait, I’ve got something to tell you.”

He followed right behind her, without his hat, and spoke softly, as if begging for alms.

“Lady! Wait, I’ve got something to tell you.”

They left the village, and Elena Ivanovna stopped in the shade of an old rowan tree, near somebody’s cart.

“Don’t be offended, lady,” said Rodion. “It’s nothing! Just be patient. Be patient for a couple of years. You’ll live here, you’ll be patient, and it’ll all come round. Our folk are good, peaceable…decent enough folk, I’m telling you as God is my witness. Don’t look at Kozov and the Lychkovs, or my Volodka, he’s a little fool: he listens to whoever speaks first. The rest are peaceable folk, they keep mum…Some would be glad to say a word in all conscience, to stand up for you, I mean, but they can’t. There’s soul, there’s conscience, but they’ve got no tongue. Don’t be offended…be patient…It’s nothing!”

Elena Ivanovna looked at the wide, calm river, thinking about something, and tears flowed down her cheeks. And Rodion was confused by these tears; he all but wept himself.

“Never mind…,” he murmured. “Be patient for a couple of little years. The school can be done, and the roads can be done, only not right away…Say, for example, you want to sow wheat on that hillock: so first root it up, dig out all the stones, then plow it, go on and on…And so, with our folk, I mean…it’s the same, go on and on, and you’ll manage.”

The crowd separated from Rodion’s cottage and came down the street in the direction of the rowan tree. They struck up a song, a concertina played. And they drew nearer and nearer…

“Mama, let’s go away from here,” said the girl, pale, pressing herself to her mother and trembling all over. “Let’s go away, Mama!”

“Where?”

“To Moscow…Let’s go away, Mama!”

The girl wept. Rodion became totally confused, his face all covered with sweat. He took a cucumber from his pocket, small, bent like a moon sickle, stuck all over with breadcrumbs, and started shoving it into the girl’s hands.

“Now, now…,” he murmured, frowning sternly. “Take the cucumber, eat it…It’s no good crying, Mama will beat you…at home she’ll complain to your father…Now, now…”

They went on, and he kept following behind them, wishing to tell them something gentle and persuasive. But, seeing that they were both taken up with their own thoughts and their own grief and did not notice him, he stopped and, shielding his eyes from the sun, looked after them for a long time, until they disappeared into their woods.

IV