“Yes, sir,” Ivan Abramych said, pensively looking out the window. “It’s never too late to marry. I myself married when I was forty-eight. People said it was late, but as it turned out it was neither late nor early, but it would have been better not to marry at all. Everybody soon gets bored with his wife, but not everybody will tell you the truth, because, you know, people are ashamed of unhappy family life and they hide it. Around his wife it’s ‘Manya this’ and ‘Manya that,’ but if he had his way, he’d stuff this Manya in a sack and drown her. With a wife it’s boredom, sheer stupidity. And with the children it’s no better, I hasten to assure you. I’ve got two of them, the scoundrels. There’s nowhere to educate them here in the steppe. I’ve got no money to send them to Novocherkassk,3 so they live here like wolf cubs. Look out or they’ll knife somebody on the high road.”
The fair-haired gentleman listened attentively, answered questions briefly and in a low voice, and was apparently a man of quiet, modest character. He said he was an attorney and was going to the village of Duyevka on business.
“Lord God, that’s six miles from me!” Zhmukhin said, sounding as if someone were arguing with him. “Sorry, but you won’t find any horses at the station. I think the best thing for you, you know, would be to come to my place now, spend the night, and in the morning go with God on my horses.”
The attorney thought it over and accepted.
When they arrived at the station, the sun already stood very low over the steppe. They were silent all the way to the farmstead: the jolting drive hindered speaking. The tarantass bounced, squeaked, and seemed to sob, as if the bouncing caused it great pain, and the attorney, who was seated very uncomfortably, looked ahead in anguish to see if the farmstead was in sight. They drove for about five miles and in the distance a low house appeared, with a yard surrounded by a dark flagstone wall; the roof of the house was green, the stucco was chipping off, and the windows were small and narrow, like squinting eyes. The farmstead stood open to the heat of the sun, and no water or trees could be seen anywhere around. The neighboring landowners and peasants called it “the Pecheneg’s Farmstead.” Many years earlier some passing surveyor, staying overnight at the farmstead, had spent the whole night talking with Ivan Abramych, ended up displeased, and in the morning, on leaving, said to him sternly: “You, my good sir, are a Pecheneg.” Hence “the Pecheneg’s Farmstead,” and the nickname became still more entrenched when Zhmukhin’s children grew up and started raiding the neighboring orchards and melon patches. Ivan Abramych himself was called “You Know,” because he habitually talked a great deal and often used the phrase “you know.”
In the yard by the shed stood Zhmukhin’s sons: one about nineteen years old, the other younger, both barefoot, without hats; and just as the tarantass drove into the yard, the younger one tossed a chicken up high; it clucked and flew, describing an arc in the air, the older one fired his gun, and the killed chicken went crashing to the ground.
“It’s my boys learning to shoot on the wing,” said Zhmukhin.
In the front hall the arrivals were met by a woman, small, thin, with a pale face, still young and pretty; from her clothes she might have been taken for a servant.
“And this, allow me to introduce her,” said Zhmukhin, “is the mother of my sons-of-a-bitch. Well, Lyubov Osipovna,” he turned to her, “get a move on, old girl, see to our guest. Serve supper! Look lively!”
The house consisted of two halves. In one was the “reception room,” and next to it old Zhmukhin’s bedroom—both stuffy, with low ceilings, and with multitudes of flies and wasps. The other was the kitchen, where the cooking and laundry were done, and workers were fed; right there, under the benches, geese and turkeys hatched their eggs, and there, too, were the beds of Lyubov Osipovna and her two sons. The furniture in the reception room was unpainted, knocked together, obviously, by a carpenter; on the walls hung rifles, hunting bags, whips, and all that old trash had rusted long ago and gone gray with dust. Not a single painting; in one corner a dark board that had once been an icon.
A young Ukrainian woman set the table and served ham, then borscht. The guest declined vodka and ate only bread and cucumbers.
“How about some ham?” Zhmukhin asked.
“No, thank you, I don’t eat it,” the guest replied. “I generally don’t eat meat.”
“Why not?”
“I’m a vegetarian. Killing animals is against my convictions.”
Zhmukhin thought for a moment and then said slowly, with a sigh:
“Yes…So…In town I also saw a man who doesn’t eat meat. There’s this belief going around now. Well, so? It’s a good thing. Can’t keep slaughtering and shooting, you know, someday you’ve got to back off and give the animals some peace. It’s a sin to kill, a sin—no disputing it. Sometimes you wound a hare, hit him in the leg, and he screams like a baby. That means it hurts!”
“Of course it hurts. Animals suffer just as people do.”
“That’s true,” Zhmukhin agreed. “I understand it all very well,” he went on, still thinking, “only, I confess, there’s one thing I can’t understand: suppose, you know, if people all stop eating meat, then what will become of domestic animals, for instance chickens and geese?”
“Chickens and geese will live freely, like the wild ones.”
“Now I see. In fact, crows and jackdaws live and get along without us. Yes…And chickens, and geese, and hares, and sheep will all live in freedom, you know, they’ll rejoice and praise God, and they won’t be afraid of us. There’ll be peace and quiet. Only, you know, there’s one thing I can’t understand,” Zhmukhin went on, glancing at the ham. “What do you do with the pigs? Where do you put them?”
“They’ll be like all the rest, that is, they’ll be free, too.”
“Yes. Right. But, excuse me, if they’re not slaughtered, they’ll multiply, you know, and then say goodbye to your meadows and vegetable gardens. If a pig is set free and not watched over, he’ll destroy everything in a single day. A pig’s a pig, and it’s not for nothing he’s called a pig…”
They finished supper. Zhmukhin got up from the table and walked around the room for a long time and kept talking, talking…He liked to talk about important and serious things and liked to think; and he wished in his old age to settle on something, to put his mind at rest, so that it would not be so frightening to die. He wished for such meekness, inner peace, self-confidence, as this guest had, who ate his fill of cucumbers and bread and thought it made him more perfect; he sits there on a chest, healthy, plump, silent, patiently bored, and in the twilight, when you look at him from the hallway, he resembles a big immoveable boulder. The man has an anchor in life—and all’s well with him.
Zhmukhin walked out through the front hall to the porch, and then could be heard sighing and saying broodingly to himself: “Yes…so.” It was already getting dark, and stars appeared here and there in the sky. Inside they had not yet brought lights. Someone came into the reception room noiselessly, like a shadow, and stopped by the door. It was Lyubov Osipovna, Zhmukhin’s wife.
“Are you from town?” she asked timidly, without looking at the guest.
“Yes, I live in town.”
“Maybe you’re in the teaching line, sir, so kindly teach us. We need to make an application.”