All this was so new and strange to him that at first it quite frightened Alyosha. He felt it was preventing him from carrying out his duties as he used to do. But all the same he felt glad, and when he looked at his trousers which Ustinya had darned, he shook his head and smiled. Often when he was working or as he walked along, he would think of Ustinya and say ‘Oh yes, Ustinya!’ Ustinya helped him where she could, and he helped her. She told him all about her past life, how she had lost her parents, how her aunt took her in, then sent her to the town, how the merchant’s son had tried to talk her into doing something stupid, and how she had put him in his place. She loved talking, and he loved listening to her. He had heard that in towns it often happened that peasant workmen ended up marrying cooks. And on one occasion she asked him whether his family would soon be marrying him off. He said he didn’t know, and that he wasn’t keen to take a country girl for a wife.
‘Well then, who have you got your eye set on?’ she said.
‘Ah, I’d like to marry you, of course. Would you be willing to marry me?’
‘Just look at him, he may be only Alyosha the Pot, just a pot, but see how he’s contrived to speak out and say what he wanted,’ she said, giving him a whack on the back with the towel she was holding. ‘And why shouldn’t I marry you indeed?’
At Shrovetide the old man came to town to collect his money. The merchant’s wife had heard how Alexei had hit on the idea that he was going to marry Ustinya, and she did not like it. ‘She’ll go and get pregnant, and what use will she be with a child?’ she said to her husband.
The master paid over the money to Alexei’s father.
‘Well then, and how is the boy behaving himself?’ asked the peasant. ‘I told you he was a meek one.’
‘Meek or not meek, he’s thought up a thoroughly stupid scheme. He’s got it into his head that he’s going to marry the cook. But I’m not going to start employing married people. That sort of thing doesn’t suit us.’
‘He’s a fool, nothing but a fool. Look what he’s thought up here,’ said the father. ‘You wouldn’t credit it. I’ll tell him straight out he’s got to give up this notion.’
Going into the kitchen, the father sat down at the table to wait for his son. Alyosha was out running errands, and he was panting when he came in.
‘I thought you were a sensible lad. But now what’s this you’ve gone and thought up?’ said the father.
‘I haven’t thought up anything.’
‘What do you mean, you haven’t thought up anything? You’ve decided you want to get married. I’ll marry you off when the time’s right, and I’ll marry you off to the right person, and not to some town slut.’
The father went on talking for some time. Alyosha stood there and sighed. When his father had finished talking, Alyosha smiled.
‘So I’m to give the whole thing up.’
‘That’s right.’
When his father had gone and he was left alone with Ustinya, he said to her (she had been listening behind the door while the father was talking to his son):
‘Our plan wasn’t right, it didn’t work out. Did you hear him? He got real angry; he won’t allow it.’
She said nothing, but burst into tears and buried her face in her apron.
Alyosha made a clicking noise with his tongue.
‘It’s no use going against it. It’s clear we must just give the whole thing up.’
That evening, when the merchant’s wife ordered him to close the shutters, she said to him:
‘Well then, did you listen to your father, and have you given up your silly notions?’
‘Stands to reason I’ve given them up,’ replied Alyosha; and he laughed, then immediately burst into tears.
*
From that time on Alyosha said nothing more to Ustinya about marriage, and he went on living as he had before.
One day in Lent the steward sent him to clear the snow off the roof. He had climbed up on to the roof, and had got it clear and was just starting to pull away the frozen snow from the gutters, when his feet slipped, and he fell off the roof, holding the shovel. Unfortunately he landed not on the snow, but on the iron-covered entrance gate of the yard. Ustinya came running up, as did the master’s daughter.
‘Are you hurt, Alyosha?’
‘I reckon you could say that again. But not to worry.’
He tried to stand up, but could not, and he began to smile. They carried him into the yardman’s lodge. The doctor’s assistant arrived. He examined Alyosha and asked him where it hurt.
‘It hurts all over, but it’s not too bad. But the master’s going to be upset. And they ought to send word to my old man.’
Alyosha lay in bed for two days and nights, and on the third day they sent for the priest.
‘And what if you should be going to die?’ asked Ustinya.
‘What if I am? We don’t go on living for ever, do we? You’ve got to go sometime,’ said Alyosha quickly, in his usual tone of voice. ‘Thank you, Ustinya, for having pity on me. But it was really better that they didn’t let me get married, it wouldn’t have been any good. And now we’re on friendly terms, you and me.’
He accompanied the priest’s prayers only with his hands and in his heart. But in his heart was the knowledge that life here on earth is good if you do what you are told and don’t offend people, and there too it will be good.
He did not say very much. He just asked for something to drink, and as he drank it he looked as if he was surprised at something.
He looked surprised, stretched himself out, and died.
WHAT FOR? A story from the time of the Polish insurrections
I
IN the spring of 1830 Pan Jaczewski, who was living on his ancestral estate of Rozanka, received a visit from his late friend’s only son, the young Josif Migurski. Jaczewski was an old man of sixty-five with a wide forehead, broad shoulders and a broad chest and long white whiskers on his brickred face, and he was a patriot from the time of the Second Partition of Poland. As a young man he had served alongside Migurski the elder under the banner of Kosciuszko and he detested with all the strength of his patriotic soul the ‘whore of the Apocalypse’, as he called her, the Empress Catherine II, and her loathsome, traitorous lover Poniatowski, and he likewise believed in the restoration of the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania,1 just as he believed at night that the sun would rise again by the next morning. In 1812 he had commanded a regiment in the army of Napoleon, whom he worshipped. Napoleon’s downfall grieved him but he did not abandon the hope of a restoration of the Polish kingdom, were it only a mutilated one. The opening of the Sejm2 in Warsaw by Alexander I revived his hopes, but the Holy Alliance and the triumph of the general reaction across the whole of Europe, and the petty tyranny of the Grand Duke Constantine put off indefinitely any realization of his cherished longings … After 1825 Jaczewski made his home in the country, spending his time without interruption at Rozanka and occupying himself with farming, hunting, and the reading of newspapers and letters, by which means he continued ardently to follow political events in his homeland. He had taken as his second wife a beautiful but impoverished woman from the szlachta,3 and the marriage was not a happy one. He neither loved nor respected this second wife of his: he felt her to be an encumbrance and treated her harshly and rudely, as if her were punishing her for his own mistake in remarrying. He had no children by his second wife. From the first marriage there were two daughters: the elder, Wanda, a stately beauty who was aware of the value of her attractions and was bored by country life; and the younger, Albina, her father’s darling, a lively, bony little girl with curly blonde hair and, like her father, large widely-spaced sparkling blue eyes.