He became conscious of an agreeable burning sensation inside, and eagerly sipped the boiling tea from his saucer, sucking at a lump of sugar which he held in his teeth. He felt better, so far as his body was concerned. But his soul went on living its own life, which was both gloomy and melancholy. Thoughts followed thoughts, but there was no sense in them. As he sipped his tea, he cast an abstracted and suspicious glance sidelong at the partition-wall, at the man in the yellow kaftan, at the photographs in the shell-work frames, and even at the priest in his watered-silk cassock. “Lerigion means nothing to us pigs!” he said to himself; and, as though by way of justifying himself to some one, he added roughly: “Just you try living in the village, and drinking sparkling kvas, like us!”
As he gazed askance at the priest he felt that everything was dubious; even his habitual reverence for that priest seemed doubtful, not founded on reason. When one really came to think about it....
But at this point he made haste to transfer his glance to the Moscow Kremlin. “Shame on me!” he muttered. “I’ve never been in Moscow since I was born!” No, he had not. And why? His pigs wouldn’t let him! Now it was his petty trading which hindered, now the posting-station, then the pot-house, then Durnovka. And now he could not get away because of the stallion and the boar-pigs. But why speak of Moscow? For the last ten years he had been intending, without success, to get as far as the little birch grove that lay the other side of the highway. He had kept on hoping that somehow or other he would manage to tear himself free for an evening, carry a rug and samovar with him, sit on the grass in the cool air, in the greenery—and he simply had not been able to get away. The days flowed past like water between the fingers, and before one had time to gather one’s wits together, one’s fiftieth year had knocked at the door, and that meant the end of everything, and it didn’t seem so very long ago that one was running about without any breeches, did it? Just as if it had been yesterday!
XVII
THE faces gazed out in complete immobility from their shell-work frames. Here was a scene which had never taken place and could not take place: In the field, amid the thick-growing rye, lay two persons—Tikhon Ilitch himself and a young merchant named Rostovtzeff, holding in their hands glasses exactly half filled with dark beer. What a close friendship had sprung up between Rostovtzeff and Tikhon Ilitch! How well he remembered that grey day in Carnival Week when the picture was taken! But in what year had that happened? What had become of Rostovtzeff? Perhaps he had died in Voronezh—and now no one knew for a certainty whether he were still alive in this world or not. And yonder stood three petty burghers, drawn up in military style and perfectly wooden, with their hair parted in the middle and very smooth, dressed in embroidered Russian shirts opening at the side and long coats, with their boots well polished—Butchneff, Vystavkin, and Bogomoloff. Vystavkin, the one in the middle, was holding in front of his breast the bread and salt of hospitality on a wooden platter, covered with a towel embroidered with cocks, while Butchneff and Bogomoloff each held a holy picture. They had been photographed on a dusty, windy day, when the grain-elevator had been blessed—when the Bishop and the Governor had come for the ceremony, when Tikhon Ilitch had felt so proud that he had been one of the crowd appointed to greet the officials. But what had his memory retained about that day? Merely this—that they had waited beside the elevator for five hours, on the new brown rails of the track, that the white dust had been blown in clouds by the wind, that the railway carriages and the trees were all covered with dust, that the Governor, a long, lean man, exactly like a corpse in white trousers with gold stripes, a uniform embroidered in gold, and a three-cornered hat, walked towards the deputation in a remarkably deliberate manner—that it was very alarming when he began to speak as he accepted the bread and salt, that every one had been surprised at the thinness and whiteness of his hands, and the skin on them, as delicate and gleaming as the hide stripped from a snake, the brilliant, polished gold rings and rings with gems on his dry, slender fingers with their long transparent nails. Now that Governor was no longer among the living, and Vystavkin was dead, also. And in another five or ten years people would be saying, in speaking of Tikhon Ilitch, too: “The late Tikhon Ilitch.”
The room had grown warmer and more cosy, now that the stove had got to going well; the little mirror had cleared off; but nothing was to be seen through the windows, which were white with a dull steam, indicating that the weather had grown colder outside. The insistent grunting of the hungry pigs made itself more and more audible. And suddenly the grunt was transmuted into a mighty unanimous roar: obviously the pigs had heard the voices of the cook and Oska, who were lugging to them the heavy tub with their mess. And, without finishing his reflections on death, Tikhon Ilitch flung his cigarette into the slop-basin, drew on his overcoat, and hurried out to the barn. With long strides, sinking deep in the sloppy manure, he opened the door of the sty with his own hands, and for a long time kept his greedy, melancholy eyes riveted on the pigs, which hurled themselves on the trough into which the steaming mess had been poured.
The thought of death had been interrupted by another: “the late,” as applied to himself, was all right, but possibly this particular dead man might serve as an example. Who had he been? An orphan, a beggar, who had often had no bread to eat for a couple of days at a stretch. But now? “Your biography ought to be written,” Kuzma had said one day, in jest. But there was no occasion for jesting, if you please. He must have had a noddle on his shoulders, if the wretched little urchin who barely knew how to read had turned out not Tishka, but Tikhon Ilitch: that was what it meant.
But all of a sudden the cook, who had also been staring intently at the pigs as they jostled one another and got their forefeet into the trough, hiccoughed and remarked: “Okh, O Lord! I only hope some calamity won’t happen to us today! Last night I had a dream—I thought cattle were being driven into our farmyard: sheep, cows, all sorts of pigs were being driven to us. And they were all black, every last one of them was black!”
And once more his heart sank within him. Yes, there were those cattle! The cattle alone were enough to drive a man to hang himself. Not three hours had elapsed—and again you had to seize your keys, again drag fodder for the whole farmyard. In the common stall were three milch cows; in special stalls were the red calf and the bull Bismarck: now they must be supplied with hay. The horse and sheep got bran for their dinner, but the stallion—the devil himself couldn’t tell what that beast wanted! He was completely spoiled. He thrust his muzzle against the grated top of his door, sniffed at something, and made grimaces: he curled back his upper lip, bared his rose-coloured gums and white teeth, distorted his nostrils. And Tikhon Ilitch, in a rage which surprised even himself, suddenly yelled at him: “You spoiled pet, curse you, may the lightning strike you!”
Again he had got his feet wet; he had a chill; it began to sleet—and again he had recourse to the mountain-ash-berry brandy. He ate some potatoes with sunflower-seed oil, and salted cucumbers, sour cabbage soup with mushrooms added to it, and wheat groats. His face got red, his head grew heavy.