The men who had gone up had the same tale to tell. Polikéy, in his shirt and trousers, was hanging from a rafter by the cord he had taken from the cradle. His cap, turned inside out, lay beside him, his coat and sheepskin were neatly folded and lay close by. His feet touched the ground, but he no longer showed signs of life. Akulína regained consciousness, and again made for the ladder, but was held back.
‘Mamma, Sëmka is dwownded!’ the lisping little girl suddenly cried from their corner. Akulína tore herself away and ran to the corner. The baby lay on his back in the trough and did not stir, and his little legs were not moving. Akulína snatched him out, but he did not breathe or move. She threw him on the bed, and with arms akimbo burst into such loud, piercing, terrible laughter that Mary, who at first laughed too, covered her ears with her hands, and ran out into the passage crying. The neighbours thronged into the corner, wailing and weeping. They carried out the little body and began rubbing it, but in vain. Akulína tossed about on the bed and laughed – laughed so that all who heard her were horror-stricken. Only now, seeing this motley crowd of men and women, old people and children, did one realize what a number of people and what sort of people lived in the serfs’ quarters. All were bustling and talking, many wept, but nobody did anything. The carpenter’s wife still found people who had not heard her tale of how her sensitive feelings were shocked by the unexpected sight, and how God had preserved her from falling down the ladder. An old man who had been a footman, with a woman’s jacket thrown over his shoulders, was telling how in the days of the old master a woman had drowned herself in the pond. The steward sent messengers to the priest and to the constable, and appointed men to keep guard. Aksyútka, the maid from ‘up there’, kept gazing with staring eyes at the opening that led to the loft, and though she could not see anything was unable to tear herself away and go back to her mistress. Agatha Mikháylovna, who had been lady’s-maid to the former proprietress, was weeping and asking for some tea to soothe her nerves. Anna the midwife was laying out the little body on the table, with her plump practised hands moistened with olive oil. Other women stood round Akulína, silently looking at her. The children, huddled together in the corner, peeped at their mother and burst into howls; and then subsiding for a moment, peeped again, and huddled still closer. Boys and men thronged round the porch, looking in at the door and the windows with frightened faces unable to see or understand anything, and asking one another what was the matter. One said the carpenter had chopped off his wife’s foot with an axe. Another said that the laundress had been brought to bed of triplets; a third that the cook’s cat had gone mad and bitten several people. But the truth gradually spread, and at last it reached the mistress; and it seems no one understood how to break it to her. That rough Egór blurted the facts straight out to her, and so upset the lady’s nerves that it was a long time before she could recover. The crowd had already begun to quiet down, the carpenter’s wife set the samovar to boil and made tea, and the outsiders, not being invited, thought it improper to stay longer. Boys had begun fighting outside the porch. Everybody now knew what had happened, and crossing themselves they began to disperse, when suddenly the cry was raised: ‘The mistress! The mistress!’ and everybody crowded and pressed together to make way for her, but at the same time everybody wanted to see what she was going to do. The lady, with pale and tear-stained face, entered the passage, crossed the threshold, and went into Akulína’s corner. Dozens of heads squeezed together and gazed in at the door. One pregnant woman was squeezed so that she gave a squeal, but took advantage of that very circumstance to secure a front place for herself. And how could one help wishing to see the lady in Akulína’s corner? For the house-serfs it was just what the coloured lights are at the end of a show. It’s sure to be great when they burn the coloured fires; and it must be an important occasion when the lady in her silks and lace enters Akulína’s corner. The lady went up and took Akulína’s hand, but Akulína snatched it away. The old house-serfs shook their heads reprovingly.
‘Akulina!’ said the lady. ‘You have your children – so take care of yourself!’
Akulína burst out laughing and got up.
‘My children are all silver, all silver! I don’t keep paper money,’ she muttered very rapidly. ‘I told Polikéy, “Take no notes,” and there now, they’ve smeared him, smeared him with tar – tar and soap, madam! Any scabbiness you may have it will get rid of at once …’ and she laughed still louder.
The mistress turned away, and gave orders that the doctor’s assistant should come with mustard poultices. ‘Bring some cold water!’ she said, and began looking for it herself; but seeing the dead baby with Granny Anna the midwife beside it, the lady turned away, and everybody saw how she hid her face in her handkerchief and burst into tears; while Granny Anna (it was a pity the lady did not see it – she would have appreciated it, and it was all done for her benefit) covered the baby with a piece of linen, straightened his arms with her plump, deft hands, shook her head, pouted, drooped her eyelids, and sighed with so much feeling that everybody could see how excellent a heart she had. But the lady did not see it, she could not see anything. She burst out sobbing and went into hysterics. Holding her up under the arms they led her out into the porch and took her home. ‘That’s all there was to be seen of her!’ thought many, and again began to disperse. Akulína went on laughing and talking nonsense. She was taken into another room and bled, and plastered over with mustard poultices, and ice was put on her head. Yet she did not come to her senses, and did not weep, but laughed, and kept doing and saying such things that the kind people who were looking after her could not help laughing themselves.
XII
THE holiday was not a cheerful one at Pokróvsk. Though the day was beautiful the people did not go out to amuse themselves: no girls sang songs in the street, the factory hands who had come home from town for the day did not play on their concertinas and balaláykas and did not play with the girls. Everybody sat about in corners, and if they spoke did so as softly as if an evil one were there who could hear them. It was not quite so bad in the daytime, but when the twilight fell and the dogs began to howl, and when, to make matters worse, a wind sprang up and whistled down the chimneys, such fear seized all the people of the place that those who had tapers lit them before their icons. Anyone who happened to be alone in his corner went to ask the neighbours’ permission to stay the night with them, to be less lonely, and anyone whose business should have taken him into one of the out-houses did not go, but pitilessly left the cattle without fodder that night. And the holy water, of which everyone kept a little bottle to charm away anything evil, was all used up during the night. Many even heard something walking about with heavy steps up in the loft, and the blacksmith saw a serpent fly straight towards it. In Polikéy’s corner there was no one; the children and the mad woman had been taken elsewhere. Only the little dead body lay there, and two old women sat and watched it, while a third, a pilgrim woman, was reading the psalms, actuated by her own zeal, not for the sake of the baby but in a vague way because of the whole calamity. The mistress had willed it so. The pilgrim woman and these old women themselves heard how, as soon as they finished reading a passage of the Psalter, the rafters above would tremble and someone would groan. Then they would say, ‘Let God arise,’ and all would be quiet again. The carpenter’s wife invited a friend and, not sleeping all night, with her aid drank up all the tea she had laid in for the whole week. They, too, heard how the rafters creaked overhead, and a noise as if sacks were tumbling down. The presence of the peasant watchmen kept up the courage of the house-serfs somewhat, or they would have died of fear that night. The peasants lay on some hay in the passage, and afterwards declared that they too had heard wonderful things up in the loft, though at the time they were conversing very calmly together about the conscription, munching crusts of bread, scratching themselves, and above all so filling the passage with the peculiar odour characteristic of peasants that the carpenter’s wife, happening to pass by, spat and called them ‘peasant-brood’. However that might be, the dead man was still dangling in the loft, and it seemed as if the evil one himself had overshadowed the serfs’ quarters with his huge wings that night, showing his power and coming closer to these people than he had ever done before. So at least they all felt. I do not know if they were right; I even think they were quite mistaken. I think that if some bold fellow had taken a candle or lantern that terrible night, and crossing himself, or even without crossing himself, had gone up into the loft – slowly dispelling before him the horror of the night with the candle, lighting up the rafters, the sand, the cobweb-covered flue-pipe, and the tippets left behind by the carpenter’s wife – till he came to Polikéy, and, conquering his fears, had raised the lantern to the level of the face, he would have beheld the familiar spare figure: the feet touching the ground (the cord had stretched), the body bending lifelessly to one side, no cross visible under the open shirt, the head drooping on the breast, the good-natured face with open sightless eyes, and the meek, guilty smile, and a solemn calmness and silence over all. Really the carpenter’s wife, crouching in a corner of her bed with dishevelled hair and frightened eyes and telling how she heard the sacks falling, was far more terrible and frightful than Polikéy, though his cross was off and lay on a rafter.