‘Why did you separate?’
‘All because of our wives, your honour. Your grandfather was not living then. In his time we should not have dared to, there used to be real order then. Like yourself he looked into everything, and we should not have dared to think of separating. Your grandfather did not like to let the peasants get into bad ways. But after him Andrew Ilých managed us. God forgive him! He’s left different memories behind – he was a drunken and unreliable man. We went to ask him once and again. “The women make life impossible,” we said, “allow us to separate.” Well he had us thrashed once and again, but in the end the women got their way and the families separated and lived apart. Of course everyone knows what a one-man home is! Besides there was no kind of order. Andrew Ilých ruled us as he pleased. “See that you have everything that’s needed,” – but how a peasant was to get it he didn’t ask. Then the poll-tax was increased, and more provisions were requisitioned and we had less land, and the crops began to fail. And when the time came for re-allotting the land, he took away from our manured land to add to the owner’s – the rascal – and did for us altogether. We might as well die! Your father – the kingdom of heaven be his! – was a kind master, but we rarely had sight of him; he always lived in Moscow, and of course we had to cart more produce there. Sometimes when a thaw set in and the roads were impassable and we had no fodder left we still had to cart! The master could not do without it. We dare not complain of that, but there was no order. Now that your honour lets every peasant come to you, we are a different people and the steward is a different man. At least we know now that we have a master. And it’s impossible to say how grateful the peasants are to your honour! During the time you were under guardianship we had no real master. Everybody was master – your guardian and Ilých, and his wife was mistress, and the clerk from the police-office was a master too. At that time we peasants suffered a great deal – oh God! How much sorrow!’
Again Nekhlyúdov experienced something like shame or remorse. He raised his hat and went his way.
Chapter VI
‘EPIFÁN WISEMAN wishes to sell a horse,’ Nekhlyúdov read in his note-book, and he crossed the street to Epifán’s home.
This hut was carefully thatched with straw from the threshing-floor of the estate, and was built of light grey aspen timber – also from the master’s forest. It had two red painted shutters to each window, a little roofed porch, and board railings with fancy patterns cut in them. The passage and unheated portion of the house were also sound; but the general look of well-being and sufficiency was rather marred by a shed with an unfinished wattle wall and unthatched roof adjoining the gateway. Just as Nekhlyúdov reached the porch from one side, two women came up from the other carrying between them a full tub slung from a pole. One was Epifán Wiseman’s wife, the other his mother. The former was a sturdy red-cheeked woman with a very fully developed bosom and broad fleshy cheeks. She wore a clean smock with embroidered sleeves and collar, an apron with similar embroidery, a new linen skirt, shoes, glass beads and a smart square head-dress embroidered with red cotton and spangles.
The end of the pole did not sway but lay firmly on her broad solid shoulder. The easy effort noticeable in her red face, in the curve of her back, and the measured movement of her arms and legs, indicated excellent health and extraordinary masculine strength.
Epifán’s mother who carried the other end of the pole was, on the contrary, one of those elderly women who seem to have reached the utmost limit of age and decrepitude possible to a living person. Her bony figure, clad in a dirty torn smock and discoloured skirt, was so bent that the pole rested rather on her back than on her shoulder. Her hands were of a dark red-brown colour, with crooked fingers which seemed unable to unbend and with which she seemed to clutch the pole for support. Her drooping head, wrapped in some clout, bore the unsightly evidence of want and great age. From under her low forehead, furrowed in all directions by deep wrinkles, her two red, lashless eyes looked dimly on the ground. One yellow tooth protruded from under her sunken upper lip and, constantly moving, touched at times her pointed chin. The folds on the lower part of her face and throat were like bags that swung with every movement. She breathed heavily and hoarsely, but her bare deformed feet, though they dragged along the ground with effort, moved evenly one after the other.
Chapter VII
HAVING almost collided with the master, the young woman looked abashed, briskly set down the tub, bowed, glanced at him with sparkling eyes from under her brow, and clattering with her shoes ran up the steps, trying to hide a slight smile with the embroidered sleeve of her smock.
‘You go and take the yoke back to Aunt Nastásya, mother,’ she said to the old woman, pausing at the door.
The modest young man looked attentively but sternly at the rosy-faced woman, frowned, and turned to the old one, who having disengaged the yoke from the tub with her rough hands and lifted it onto her shoulders, was submissively directing her steps towards the neighbouring hut.
‘Is your son at home?’ the master asked.
The old woman, bending still lower, bowed and was about to speak, but lifting her hand to her mouth began coughing so that Nekhlyúdov did not wait, but went into the hut.
Epifán, who was sitting on the bench in the best corner, rushed to the oven when he saw his master, as if trying to hide from him, hurriedly shoved something onto the bunk, and with mouth and eyes twitching, pressed himself against the wall as if to make way for the master.
Epifán was a man of about thirty; slender, well set, with brown hair and a young pointed beard, he would have been rather good-looking had it not been for the evasive little brown eyes that looked unpleasantly from under his puckered brows, and for the absence of two front teeth, which at once caught the eye as his lips were short and constantly moving. He had on a holiday shirt with bright red gussets, striped cotton trousers, and heavy boots with wrinkled legs. The interior of his hut was not so crowded and gloomy as Chúris’s, though it was also stuffy, smelt of smoke and sheepskin coats, and was littered in the same untidy way with peasant garments and implements. Two things struck one as strange: a small dented samovar which stood on a shelf, and the portrait of an archimandrite with a red nose and six fingers, that hung near the icon with its brass facings, in a black frame with the remnant of a dirty piece of glass. Nekhlyúdov looked with dissatisfaction at the samovar, the archimandrite’s portrait, and the bunk where the end of a brass-mounted pipe protruded from under some rags, and addressed the peasant.
‘Good morning, Epifán,’ he said, looking into his eyes.
Epifán bowed and muttered, ‘Hope you’re well, y’r Ex’cency,’ pronouncing the last word with peculiar tenderness while his eyes ran rapidly over his master’s whole figure, the hut, the floor, and the ceiling, not resting on anything. Then he hurriedly went to the bunk and pulled down from it a coat which he began putting on.
‘Why are you doing that?’ said Nekhlyúdov, sitting down on the bench and trying to look at Epifán as sternly as possible.
‘What else could I do, y’r Ex’cency? I think we know our place.…’
‘I have come to ask what you need to sell a horse for, and how many horses you have, and which horse you want to sell,’ said Nekhlyúdov drily, evidently repeating questions he had prepared.
‘We are very pleased that y’r Ex’cency deigns to come to peasants like us,’ replied Epifán with a rapid glance at the archimandrite’s portrait, at the oven, at Nekhlyúdov’s boots, and at everything except his master’s face. ‘We always pray God for y’r Ex’cency.…’