'That's enough!' says the magistrate and turns to examining the witnesses.
Sergeant Prishibeyev pushes his glasses onto his forehead and stares in amazement at theJ.P. - who is evidently not on his side. His eyes gleam and start out of his head, and his nose turns bright red. He looks from the J.P. to the witnesses and simply cannot understand why the magistrate should be so het up and why from every corner of the courtroom comes a mixture of angry murmurs and suppressed laughter. The sentence is equally incomprehensible to him: one month in custody !
'For what?!' he asks, throwing up his arms in disbelief. 'By what law?'
And he realises that the world is a changed place, a place imposs- ible to live in. Dark, gloomy thoughts possess him. But when he comes out of the courtroom he sees some peasants huddled together talking about something and by force of a habit which he can no longer control, he squares his shoulders and bawls in a hoarse, irate voice:
'You lot — break it up! Move along! Diss-perse!'
The Misfortune
Grigory Petrov, a turner with the reputation of being the best crafts- man and the most useless peasant in the whole of Galchino district, is taking his old woman to the zemstvo hospital. He has nearly thirty vcrsts to cover and the road is so atrocious that even the government mail would be unable to get through, let alone a layabout like Grigory the turner. A biting cold wind buffets straight into him. Wherever he looks, great clouds of snowflakes are whirling round in the air, so that it's difficult to make out whether thesnow is coming down from the sky or up off the earth. Forest, fields and telegraph- poles are all indistinguishable through the thick fog of snow, and whenever a particularly strong gust of wind swoops down on Grig- ory even the yoke above the shafts disappears from sight. The decrepit, feeble little nag can barely drag herself along. All her energy has been used in picking her hooves up out of the deep snow and jerkingher head forward. Theturneris in a hurry. He keeps fidgeting about on his seat and every so often lashes at the horse's back with his whip.
'Don't you cry, Matryona .. .' he mumbles. 'Just have a bit of patience. We'll get you to the hospital, God willing, and in a trice you'll - it'll be all right ... Old Pavel Ivanych'll give you some of them drops, or have you bled, or maybe his worship'll decide to rub you down with some of that spirit stuff . .. that'll draw it out ofyour side for you. Pavel Ivanych'll do his best . . . Of course, he'll holler and stamp his feet, but he'll do his best all right . . . He's a fine gent, real obliging, may the Lord preserve him . .. As soon as we get there, he'll come rushing out of his 'partments and raise hell at me, he will. "What's the meaning ofthis? Whatdo you think you're up to?" he'll shout at me. "Why didn't you come at the right time? Do you take me for a dog or something, making me run round after you blighters all day? Why didn't you come this morning? Clear out! Get out of my sight. Comeback tomorrow!" But I shall sayto him: "Pavel Ivanych! Mr Doctor, sir! Your honour!" Get up there, blast you! Hup!'
The turner lashes the horse's back and without looking at theold woman continues to mumble into his beard:
' "Your honour! I swear, as God's my witness . .. here's the cross on it, I set out at first light I did. How could I get here before, if the Lord . . . the holy mother uf God . . . was wroth and sent down this blizzard ? You can sec yourself what it's like . . . Finer horses 'n this wouldn't get through and you can see for yourself, mine's not a horse, it's a bleeding disgrace!" Then Pavel lvanych'II frown and holler "I know you lot! You'vealways got an answer! Especially you, Grishka! I worked you out long ago! I bet you called in at half-a- dozen pubs on the way!" So I says: "Your honour! What do you take me for, a villain and a heathen or something? Do you think I'd go off round the pubs, with my old girl here giving up her ghost to God, wnh her dying? For mercy's sake, sir! May they rot, the pubs, the lot of 'em!" Then Pavel lvanych'll tell them to carry you into the hospital. And I'll go down at his feet . . . "Pavel lvanych!" I'll say. "Your honour! We're everlasting grateful to you! Forgive us fools and sinners, don't be hard on us, us peasants! I know we deserve to be thrown out on our necks, but you're so kind, you're going to all this trouble and gening your feet wet in the snow!" Then Pavel lvanych'll look at me so as you'd think he was going to clout me, and he'll say: "Instead of bashing your head up and down at my feet, you'd do better to stop swilling vodka like a bloody fool, and have a bit of feeling for your old woman. You deserve a thrashing!"-"Yes, a good thrashing, Pavel lvanych, God help me, a thrashing's what I need! But why shouldn't we bow down low to you, if you're all such benefactors and fathers to us? Your honour, sir! Mark my words -I swear before God now -you can spit in both eyes i fl tell a lie: as soon as my Matryona here, you know - recovers, finds her feet again, I'll make anything for your worship that you care to ask me for! A cigarette-case if you want, from real Karelian birch . . . or croquet balls . . . or I can turn you skinles just like those foreign ones . .. I'll make anything you want! J won't take a kopeck offyou! In Moscow they'd rook you fourroubles for a cigarene-case like that, but I won't take a kopeck." Then the doctor'll laugh and say: "All right, all right ... I believe you! It's a pity you're such a drunkard, that's all ..." I know how to handle the gents, Matryona me old mate. There isn't a gent I can't get round. Just so long as the Lord keeps me on this road all right. Cor, what a blizzard! My eyes are full of it.'
And the turner rambles endlessly on. Chattering away mechani- cally like this at least helps smother the heavy feeling he has inside him. There are many words on the tip of his tongue, but even more thoughts and questions milling in his head. Misfortune has caught the turner unawares, when he was least expecting it, and now he simply cannot come to, pull himself together, work out what has happened. Till now he had lived an unclouded, unruffled existence, in a state of drunken semi-consciousness, knowing neither grief nor joy, and now he suddenly feels this terrible ache. Without warning, the carefree layabout and drunk has found himself in the position of a man with a task to do, a worried man, a man in a hurry and even battling with the elements.
The turner recalls that the misfonune began the previous evening. When he came home yesterday evening, dead drunk as usual, and by long-established tradition staned swearing and throwing his fists about, the old woman looked at her ruffian in a way she had never looked at him before. Usually the look in her aged eyes was tor- memed, meek, like that of a dog that is underfed and often beaten, but now she stared at him sternly and unwaveringly, as saims on icons do, or people dying. Those strange, ill-boding eyes were the stan of the misfortune. Stunned, the turner begged his neighbour's horse from him and now was taking the old woman w the hospital, in the hope that Pavel lvanych would use his powders and ointments to give her back her old look.
'And if, er . . .' he mumbles, 'if Pavel lvanych asks you, Matryona, if I beat you, you say "Never, sir!" Nor I shan't, any more. Here's the cross on it. And I didn't ever beat you for spite, did I?I just beat you, like. I feel sorry for you, I do. Another man might not feel much, but here am I taking you to hospital . . . doing my best for you. Ah, this snow, this snow! Thy will be done, Lord, only grant we stay on the road,that's all ... Your side hun, does it? Matryona, why won't you say anything? Does your side hurt, I say?'
He finds it odd that the snow does not melt on the old woman's face, odd that her face seems to have stretched out unusually long, to have taken on a greyish-white, dirty waxen colour, and come over serious and forbidding.
'Ha, you're a fool, Matryona!' mutters the turner. 'I'm saying all this on my soul, before God, and you just ... Well, you're a fool, that's what! I've a mind not to take you t Pavel lvanych after all!'