“Wait, wait, can’t you? I had just buried my father. My mother lived by baking gingerbread. We got our livelihood by working for Aukoudim; barely enough to eat, a precious hard life it was. We had a bit of land the other side of the woods, and grew corn there; but when my father died I went on a spree. I made my mother give me money; but I had to give her a good hiding first.”
“You were very wrong to beat her; a great sin that?”
“Sometimes I was drunk the whole blessed day. We had a house that was just tumbling to pieces with dry rot, still it was our own; we were as near famished as could be; for weeks together we had nothing but rags to chew. Mother nearly killed me with one stupid trick or another, but I didn’t care a curse. Philka Marosof and I were always together day and night. ‘Play the guitar to me,’ he’d say, ‘and I’ll lie in bed the while. I’ll throw money to you, for I’m the richest chap in the world!’ The fellow could not speak without lying. There was only one thing. He wouldn’t touch a thing if it had been stolen. ‘I’m no thief, I’m an honest man. Let’s go and daub Akoulka’s door with pitch,[5] for I won’t have her marry Mikita Grigoritch, I’ll stick to that.’
“The old man had long meant to give his daughter to this Mikita Grigoritch. He was a man well on in life, in trade too, and wore spectacles. When he heard the story of Akoulka’s bad conduct, he said to the old father, ‘That would be a terrible disgrace for me, Aukoudim Trophimtych; on the whole, I’ve made up my mind not to marry; it’s to late.’
“So we went and daubed Akoulka’s door all over with pitch. When we’d done that her folks beat her so that they nearly killed her.
“Her mother, Marie Stépanovna, cried, ‘I shall die of it,’ while the old man said, ‘If we were in the days of the patriarchs, I’d have hacked her to pieces on a block. But now everything is rottenness and corruption in this world.’ Sometimes the neighbours from one end of the street to the other heard Akoulka’s screams. She was whipped from morning to evening, and Philka would cry out in the market-place before everybody:
“Akoulka’s a jolly girl to get drunk with. I’ve given it those people between the eyes, they won’t forget me in a hurry.’
“Well, one day, I met Akoulka, she was going for water with her bucket, so I cried out to her: ‘A fine morning, pet Akoulka Koudimovna! you’re the girl who knows how to please fellows. Who’s living with you now, and where do you get your money for your finery?’ That’s just what I said to her; she opened her eyes as wide as you please. No more flesh on her than on a log of wood. She had only just given me a look, but her mother thought she was larking with me, and cried from her door-step, ‘Impudent hussy, what do you mean by talking with that fellow?’ And from that moment they began to beat her again. Sometimes they hided her for an hour together. The mother said, ‘I give her the whip because she isn’t my daughter any more.’”
“She was then as bad as they said?”