'All right,' said Pasha, jumping up and wiping her eyes. 'I'll give you the presents. All right. Only they aren't from Nikolay Petrovich ... I had them from other visitors. But if that's how you want it . . .'
Pasha went over to a chest ofdrawers, pulled out the top one, took out a diamond brooch, a coral necklace, several rings and a bracelet, and handed them all w the lady.
'I never had a thing from your husband, hut you take them: take them and grow rich!' Pasha continued, offendrd by the lady's threat to go down on her knees to her. 'And if you're his respcctablc, lawful wedded wife, how come you couldn't keep him? It stands to reason! I didn't seck him out, he came to me .. .'
Through her tears the lady looked the objects over and said:
'Where are the rest? . .. These won't fetch five hundred.'
In a fit of emotion Pasha furiously tossed out a gold watch, a cigarene-case and a pair of cuff-links from the drawer, threw up her hands and said:
'That's the lot ... You can search the place if you like!'
The visitor sighed, picked up the objects with trembling hands, wrapped them in a handkerchief, and without so much as a word or ..:ven a nod, left.
The door from the next room opened and Kolpakov came in. He was pale and was shaking his head nervously from side to side, as if hehad just swallowed something very bitter; tears were glistening in his eyes.
'Presents! What presents?' said Pasha, flying at him. 'When did you ever give me anything?'
'Oh what do presents maner?' Kolpakov replied and shook his head. 'My God - she cried in front of you, humiliated herself . . .'
'What presents did you ever give me, I'm asking you?' Pasha shouted.
'My God, a decent, proud, pure being l ike that was even prepared to kneel down before this . .. this whore! And I brought her to it! I let it happen !'
He seized his head in his hands and groaned:
'No, I shall never forgive myself! Never! Get away from me, you- you trash!' he shouted with loathing, backing away from Pasha and pushing her aside with trembling hands. 'She was about to go down on her knees, and to whom? To you! Oh God!'
Dressing quickly andstepping round Pasha in hisdisgust, he made his way to the door and left.
Pasha lay down and sobbed loudly. She was already beginning to regret giving away her things in the heat of the moment, and she felt hurt. She remembered how three years ago, for no rhyme or reason, a merchant had given her a beating, and sobbed even louder.
Dreams
Two village constables - one black-bearded, stocky, and with such peculiarly short legs that from behind they appear to start much lower down than everyone else's, the other long, thin and straight as a stick, with a sparse little dark-red beard - are escorting to the nearest town a tramp who will not divulge his name. The first waddles along looking from side to side, one moment chewing a straw, the next his own sleeve, slapping his thighs and humming to himself, and in general has a happy-go-lucky air; the other, despite his drawn face and narrow shoulders, looks solid, serious and sub- stantial, and in build and bearing his whole figure resembles that of an Old Believer priest or a warrior of the kind one sees on very old icons; 'for the increase of his wisdom God has extended his brow', i.e. he is going bald, and this emphasises the similarity even more. The first is called Andrey Ptakha, the second Nikandr Sapozhnikov.
The person they are escorting does not at all conform to the popular notion of a tramp. He is a puny little man, feeble and sickly-looking, with small, drab, extremely nondescript features. His eyebrows are scanty, his look mild and submissive, and his beard hardly shows through, although the tramp must be over thirty. He treads timidly, stooping and with his hands tucked into his sleeves. The collar of his threadbare little serge coat, which is not that of a peasant, is turned right up, touching his cap, so that only a red point of a nose ventures to look out on the world. He speaks in a thin, high-pitched, wheedling voice, constantly clearing his throat. It is hard, very hard, to think of him as a tramp concealing his identity. He looks more like some impoverished, down-and-out son of a priest, a clerk dismissed for drunkenness, or a merchant's son or nephew who has tried his meagre talents on the stage and is now going home to play out the last act of the parable of the prodigal son; perhaps, judging from the grim perseverance with which he is battl- ing against the impossible autumn mud, he is a fanatic - some monastic servant roaming the monasteries of Russia in stubborn search of 'a life ofpeace free from all sin', which he never finds . . .
By now the travellers have been going a long time, but still they cannot get off the small patch ofearth on which they are walking. In front of them stretches thirty feet of mud-hound, brownish-black road, behmd them as much ag.iin, and beyond, vvherever you look, is an impenctrable wall of white mist. They waik and walk, but the earth is still the same, the wall gets no closer, and the patch remains a patch. A jagged white piece of cobblestone, a gully, or a sheaf of hay someone has dropped, appearsfor a moment, a dingy puddle gleams briefly, then all of a sudden a shadow of uncertain outline looms ahead unexpectedly; the closer to it they get, the smaller and darker it becomes; closer still, and the travellers make out a leaning post with the number of versts half erascd, or a pathetic little birch tree, drenched and bare like a wayside beggar. The birch tree whispers something with its remaining yellow leaves, one leaf breaks off, and floats lethargically to the earth . . . Then there is nothing but mist again, mud, and the brown grass along the edges of the road. On the grass hang bleary, cheerless tears. These are not the tears of quiet joy that the earth weeps as it welcomes and bids farewell to the summer sun, and which it gives the quails, the corncrakes and the slender, long-billed curlew to drink at dawn! The travellers' feet drag in the heavy, clinging mud. Evcry step is hard work.
Andrey Ptakha is somewhat agitated. He keeps eyeing the tramp and striving to understand how a living, sober human being can fail to remember his own name.
'But you're a Russian Orthodox, aren't you?' he asks.
'I am,' the tramp answers mildly.
'Hm! . . . So you were christened then?'
'Of course - I'm not a Turk, am I? I go to church, I fast for the sacrament, I only eat what's proper in Lent, I observe all the practicu- lars of religion . . .'
'Well then, what's your name?'
'Call me what you will, lad.'
Ptakha shrugs his shoulders and in utter bewilderment slaps his thighs. The other constable, though, Nikandr Sapozhnikov, main- tains a lofty silence. He is not as naive as Ptakha and evidently has a very good idea of the kind of reasons that might induce a normal Orthodox person to conceal his name from people. His face is manifestly cold and severe. He walks apart, does not deign to chat idly with his fellows, and seems to be trying to demonstrate his gravity and wisdom to all and sundry, even the mist.
'God knows what to make of you!' Ptakha continues to press. 'You're neither peasant nor gent, but a sort of in-between . .. The other day, I was washing some sieves in the pond when I caught this creepy-crawly thing -so long, the size of your finger, with gills and a tail. First I thought it was a fish, then I looked at it and - blow me if it didn't have little paws! It weren't a fish, it weren't a viper, damned if I know what it was . . . And you're just the same . .. What's your official status?'
'I'm a peasant, I'm ofpeasant stock,' sighs the tramp. 'My mamma was a house serf. I don't much look like a peasant, I know, because that was how fate treated me, kind sir. My mamma was a nursemaid to the gentry and had every comfort and I'm, well, her flesh and blood, and I lived with her in the big house. She pampered me and spoilt me and set her heart on lifting me out ofthe lower orders and making a gentleman of me. I slept in a bed, every day I ate a proper dinner, and I wore trousers and half-boots like any little lord. What- ever my mamma had to eat, I had the same; ifthey gave her cloth for a dress, she'd make clothes for me out of it . .. Oh, we lived well! The sweets and gingerbreads I scoffed in the days of my childhood - if you sold them now, they'd buy you a decent horse. My mamma taught me to read and write, she made me fear God from an early age, and she trained me so well that now I can't bring myself to use any ungenteel, peasant word. I don't drink vodka, either, lad, and I dress neat, and know how to behave properly in good society. If she is still alive, then God give her health, and if she's died, then grant rest unto her soul, O Lord, in thy kingdom where all the righteous do find rest!'