XX
MECHANICALLY Tikhon Ilitch threw his great-coat on over his jacket, thrust his feet into overshoes, and went out on the porch. On emerging he inhaled a deep breath of fresh air in the bluish early winter twilight, then halted once more and sat down on the bench. Yes, there was another nice family—the Grey Man, Syery, and his son! Tikhon Ilitch traversed in thought the road which Deniska had traversed in the mud, with that valise in his hand. He descried Durnovka, his manor, the ravine, the peasant cottages, the descending twilight, the light in his brother’s room, the lights among the peasant dwellings. Kuzma was probably sitting and reading. The Bride was standing in the dark, cold ante-room near the faintly-heated stove, warming her hands, her back, waiting until she should be told “Bring the supper!” and, with her dry lips, already grown old and pursed up, was thinking—of what? Perchance of Rodka? ’Twas a lie, all that about her having poisoned Rodka—a lie! But if she did poison him—
Oh, Lord God! If she did poison him, what must she be feeling? What a heavy tombstone lay upon her strange, reticent soul! And how had that come about upon which she had decided, crazed by hatred of Rodka and of his brutal beatings—possibly, also, by her outraged feelings toward him, Tikhon Ilitch, and her disgrace, and the fear that Rodka would eventually hear of that disgrace? Okh, and he had been in the habit of beating her! And Tikhon Ilitch had played a fine part, too. And God would surely punish him, too.
With his mind’s eye he cast a glance from the porch of his Durnovka manor house, at Durnovka—a rebel, also!—at the black cottages scattered over the declivity beyond the ravine, at the threshing floors and bushes in their back yards. Beyond the houses to the left, on the horizon, stood a railway watch-tower. Past it, in the twilight, a train was running, and with it ran a chain of fiery eyes. Then eyes began to shine out from the cottages. It grew darker; one began to feel more comfortable—yet a disagreeable sensation stirred every time one cast a glance at the cottages of the Bride and the Grey Man, which stood almost in the centre of Durnovka, separated only by three houses. There was no light in either of them. And it was that way nearly all winter long! The Grey Man’s small children frolicked with joy and wonder when he managed, on some lucky evening, to burn a light in the cottage.
“Yes, ’tis sinful!” said Tikhon Ilitch firmly, and rose from his seat. “Yes, ’tis wicked! I must give them at least a little help,” he said, as he wended his way towards the station.
The air was frosty, and the odour of the samovar which was wafted from the station was more fragrant than it had been on the preceding day. The lights at the gate were burning more brightly beyond the trees, which had been smartly frost-bitten and were almost bare, tinted by a little scanty foliage.
The sleighbells on the troika pealed more sonorously. A capital team of horses, those three! On the contrary, it was painful to look at the wretched nags of the peasant cabmen, their tiny vehicles mounted on half-crumbling, misshapen wheels, plastered with mud. The door to the railway station was squeaking and dully banging beyond the palisade. Making his way around it, Tikhon Ilitch ascended the lofty stone platform, on which a copper samovar of a couple of buckets’ capacity was hissing, its grating glowing red like fiery teeth; and immediately came upon the person of whom he was in search—that is, Deniska.
Deniska, his head bowed in thought, was standing on the platform and holding in his right hand a cheap grey valise, lavishly studded with tin nailheads and bound about with a rope. Deniska was wearing an under-jacket, an old and, evidently, a very heavy garment with pendant shoulders and a very low waist-line, a new peaked cap, and dilapidated boots. His figure was badly built; his legs were extremely short in comparison with his body: “I have nothing but a body,” he sometimes said of himself, with a laugh. Now, with that low waist-line and those broken boots, his legs looked shorter than ever.
“Denis?” shouted Tikhon Ilitch. “What are you doing here?”
Deniska, who was never surprised at anything, raised his dark and languid eyes with their long lashes, looked at him with a melancholy grin, and pulled the cap from his hair. His hair was mouse-coloured and immeasurably thick; his face was earthy in hue and bore the appearance of having been greased, but his eyes were handsome.
“Good Morning, Tikhon Ilitch,” he replied, in a sing-song citified tenor voice, and, as usual, rather shyly. “I’m going to—what d’ye call it?—to Tula.”
“But why, if you permit me to ask?”
“Maybe some sort of a job will turn up there.”
Tikhon Ilitch surveyed him. In his hand was the valise; from the pocket of his long-skirted waistcoat protruded sundry little books in green and red covers, twisted into a roll. The waistcoat must belong to some one else. “You’re no dandy to make an impression in Tula!”
Deniska also cast an appraising eye over himself.
“The waistcoat, you mean?” he inquired modestly. “Well, when I earn some money in Tula, I’ll buy myself a hussar jacket. I did pretty well during the summer. I sold newspapers.”
Tikhon Ilitch nodded in the direction of the valise: “What’s that contraption you have there?”
Deniska lowered his eyelashes. “I bought myself a volish, sir.”
“Well, you can’t possibly go about in a hussar jacket without a valise!” said Tikhon Ilitch scoffingly. “And what’s that you’ve got in your pocket?”
“Nothing much—just a lot of small stuff.”
“Let me look at it.”
Deniska set down his valise on the platform and pulled the little books out of his pocket. Tikhon Ilitch took them and examined them attentively. There was the song-book “Marusya,” “The Woman Debauchee,” “An Innocent Young Girl in the Clutches of Violence,” “Congratulatory Verses to Parents, Teachers, and Benefactors,” “The Rôle—”
At this point Tikhon Ilitch faltered, but Deniska, who was watching closely, briskly and modestly prompted him: “The Rôle of the Proletariat in Russia.”
Tikhon Ilitch shook his head. “Here’s something new! Not a mouthful of food, but you buy yourself a valise and nasty little books. Truly,’tis not for nothing that folks call you an agitator. They say you are constantly reviling the Tsar! Look out, brother!”
“Well, ’tis not so costly as buying an estate,” replied Deniska, with a melancholy grin. “They are good little books. And I haven’t touched the Tsar. They tell lies about me as if I were dead and couldn’t defend myself. But I never had any such thing in my thoughts. Am I a lunatic?”
The door-pulley creaked, and the station watchman made his appearance—a discharged soldier, grey-haired, afflicted with a hoarse, whistling asthma—also the restaurant keeper, a fat man with puffy eyes and greasy hair.
“Step aside, Messrs. Merchants, let me get the samovar.” Deniska stepped aside and again grasped the handle of his valise.
“You stole that somewhere, I suppose?” asked Tikhon Ilitch, nodding towards the valise, and thinking of the business upon which he had come to the station.
Deniska bent his head but made no reply.
“And it’s empty, of course?”
“Yes, it’s empty.”
“Were you turned out of your place?”
“I left of my own accord.”
Tikhon Ilitch heaved a sigh. “The living image of his father!” said he. “That one was always exactly like that: Pitch him out of a place by the scruff of his neck, and he’d tell you—‘I left of my own accord.’”
“May I drop dead right before your eyes if I’m lying.”
“Well, all right, all right. Have you been at home?”
“Yes, two weeks.”
“Is your father out of work again?”
“Yes, he is out of work naow.”
“Naow!” Tikhon Ilitch mimicked him. “A wooden-headed village! And a revolutionary to boot! You’re trying to play the wolf, but your dog’s tail betrays you.”
“I rather think you come from the same litter,” Deniska said to himself, with a faint grin, keeping his head down.
“That means, the Grey Man is sitting at home smoking?”
“He’s a worthless fellow!” said Deniska with conviction.
Tikhon Ilitch rapped him on the head with his knuckles. “You might, at least, not exhibit your stupidity! Who speaks of his father like that?”
“He ought to be called an old dog, not a daddy,” replied Deniska calmly. “If he’s a father—then let him provide food. But he has fed me heartily, hasn’t he?”
But Tikhon Ilitch was not listening to him. He chose a suitable moment for beginning a business-like talk. And, paying no heed to him, he interrupted: “Well, you’ve turned out an empty-headed babbler. Has Yakoff sold the mare?”
Deniska suddenly broke out into a coarse, vociferous guffaw. But he replied in the same sing-song tenor voice as usual: “Yakoff Mikititch, you mean? What are you talking about? He’s getting richer and richer, and stingier and stingier. There was a great joke on him yesterday!”
“What about?”
“Why, there was! His colt died, and what sort of a trick did he concoct? He made use of its legs and hoofs. He hadn’t enough stakes for his wattled fence, so—he took and wove in those same legs.”
“He’s fit for a cabinet-minister, not a peasant!” said Tikhon Ilitch. “You tatterdemalions are not in the same class with him. I suppose you are travelling to Tula on a wolf’s ticket?”
“And what should I want of a ticket?” retorted Deniska. “I get into the carriage and dive straight under the seat—and may the Lord bless and protect! All I want is to get to Uzlovskaya.”
“What’s that? Uzlovskaya? Do you mean Uzslova?”
“Well, then, Uzslova; it’s the same thing. I’ll ride there, and from there on ’tis not far—I can go afoot.”
“And what were you thinking about doing with all your little books? You can’t read them under the seat.”
Deniska thought that over. “Right you are!” said he. “Well, I won’t stay under the bench all the time. I’ll creep into the toilet—I can read there until daylight.”
Tikhon Ilitch frowned. “Well, see here now,” he began. “See here: ’tis time for you to stop that sort of talk. You’re not a small boy, you fool. Trot back as fast as you can to Durnovka. ’Tis time to buckle down to business. Why, as you are, it makes one sick at the stomach just to look at you. My courtyard-councillors there live better than you do. I’ll help you—that’s got to be done—at the start. Well, I’ll help you to get some simple merchandise and implements. Then you’ll be able to feed yourself and give a little to your father.”
“What’s he driving at with all this?” Deniska said to himself.
But Tikhon Ilitch had come to a decision, and wound up: “Yes, and ’tis time you married.”
“So—oo, that’s it!” said Deniska to himself, and began in a leisurely way to roll himself a cigarette.
“Very good,” he responded, with a barely perceptible trace of sadness, and without raising his eyelashes. “I’ll not resist. I might marry. ’Tis worse to go with the public women.”
“Well, and that’s precisely the point,” put in Tikhon Ilitch, perturbed. “Only, brother, bear in mind that you must make a sensible marriage. ’Tis a good thing to have money on which to rear your children.”
Deniska burst out laughing.
“What are you guffawing about?”
“Why, what you say, of course! Rear! As though they were chickens or pigs.”
“They require food, just as much as chickens and pigs do.”
“And whom shall I marry?” inquired Deniska, with a melancholy smile.
“Whom? Why, any one you like.”
“You mean the Bride?”
Tikhon Ilitch flushed deeply. “Fool! What’s wrong with the Bride? She’s a peaceable, hard-working woman—”
Deniska remained silent, and picked with his finger-nail at one of the tin nailheads on the valise. Then he pretended to be stupid. “There’s a lot of them—of young women,” he drawled. “I don’t know which one you’re jabbering about. Do you happen to mean the one with whom you lived?”
But Tikhon Ilitch had already recovered his composure. “Whether I have lived with her or not is none of your business, you pig,” he retorted, and that so swiftly and peremptorily that Deniska submissively muttered:
“Well, ’tis all the same to me. I only said—’Twas a chance remark—slipped off my tongue.”
“Well, then, mind what you’re about, and don’t indulge in idle chatter. I’ll make decent people of you. Do you understand? I’ll give you a dowry. Understand that?”
Deniska reflected. “I think I’ll go to Tula—” he began.
“The cock has found a pearl! A priceless idea! What are you going to do in Tula?”
“We’re too starved at home.”
Tikhon Ilitch unfastened his coat, thrust his hand into the pocket of his sleeveless under-kaftan—he had almost made up his mind to give Deniska a twenty-kopek coin. But he came to his senses—’twas stupid to squander his money, and, what was more, that dolt would become conceited, would say he had been bribed. So he pretended to be hunting for something. “Ah, I’ve forgotten my cigarettes! Come, give me some tobacco.”
Deniska gave him his tobacco-pouch. The lantern over the station entrance had already been lighted, and by its dim light Tikhon Ilitch read aloud the inscription embroidered in coarse white thread on the bag: “To whoam I luv I giv I luv hartilie I giv a poch foureaver.” “That’s clever!” he said, when he had finished reading.
Deniska modestly cast down his eyes.
“So you have a lady-love already?”
“There’s a lot of them, the hussies, roaming about!” replied Deniska, quite unembarrassed. “But as for marrying—I don’t refuse. I’ll be back by the Meat-days, and then, Lord bless our marriage!”
From behind the palisade thundered a peasant cart, spattered all over with mud. It rolled up to the platform with a peasant perched on the side-rail and the deacon, Govoroff, from Ulianovka, seated on the straw inside. “Has it gone?” shouted the deacon in agitated tones, thrusting out of the straw one foot in a new overshoe. Every individual hair of his frowsy, reddish-sandy beard curled turbulently; his cap had retreated to the nape of his neck: his face was fiery-red from the wind and his excitement.
“The train, you mean?” inquired Tikhon Ilitch. “No, sir, it hasn’t even arrived yet. Good morning, Father Deacon.”
“Aha! Well then, thank God!” said the deacon joyfully and hastily; but nevertheless he leaped from the cart and rushed headlong to the door.
Tikhon Ilitch shook his head. “Oh, that long-maned fellow came at the wrong time! Nothing will come of my affair!”[11] But as he grasped the handle of the door he said, firmly and confidently: “Well, so be it. It’s settled for the meat-season.”