“Listen here, Kuzma!” disorderly voices rang out. “Never mind! God bless! I could do it for you, Ivan Dementyich! Watch it, lad!”
A short peasant with a black beard, pockmarked, long since drunk, suddenly got surprised at something and poured out some foul abuse.
“Why do you go badmouthing! You!” Semyon, who was sitting to one side, responded angrily. “Look, there’s a young lady here!”
“A young lady…,” someone said mockingly in another corner.
“A swiny crow!”
“Never mind us…” The little peasant became embarrassed. “Beg your pardon. We’re spending our money, the young lady’s spending hers…Hello there!”
“Hello,” replied the schoolteacher.
“And our heartfelt thanks!”
Marya Vassilyevna was enjoying her tea, and was becoming as red as the peasants herself, and again she thought about the firewood, the caretaker…
“Hold on, lad!” reached her from the next table. “She’s the teacher from Vyazovye…we know her! A nice young lady.”
“A decent one!”
The door on the pulley kept slamming, people came in, others went out. Marya Vassilyevna sat and went on thinking about the same things, and the concertina behind the wall went on playing and playing. There were patches of sunlight on the floor, then they moved to the counter, to the wall, and disappeared completely; that meant the sun had gone past noon. The peasants at the next table were preparing to leave. The little peasant, staggering slightly, went up to Marya Vassilyevna and gave her his hand; looking at him, the others all gave her their hands as they left and went out one after the other, and the door on the pulley squealed and slammed nine times.
“Vassilyevna, get ready!” called Semyon.
They set off. And again slowly all the time.
“A while ago they were building a school here, in their Nizhny Gorodishche,” said Semyon, turning around. “There was no end of wrongdoing!”
“How so?”
“Seems the chairman put a thousand in his pocket, and the custodian another thousand, and the teacher five hundred.”
“The whole school costs a thousand. It’s not nice to slander people, grandpa. It’s all nonsense.”
“I don’t know…I say what folk say.”
But it was clear that Semyon did not believe the teacher. The peasants did not believe her; they had always thought that she received too big a salary—twenty-one roubles a month (five would have been enough)—and that, of the money she collected from the pupils for firewood and the caretaker, she kept the greater part for herself. The custodian thought the same as all the peasants, and he himself made something from the firewood and also got a salary from the peasants for his duties, in secret from the authorities.
The forest ended, thank God, and now there would be level fields all the way to Vyazovye. And there was already not far to go: cross the river, then the railroad tracks, and there was Vyazovye.
“Where are you going?” Marya Vassilyevna asked Semyon. “Take the road to the right over the bridge.”
“Wha? We’ll cross over this way. It ain’t all that deep.”
“See you don’t drown the horse on us.”
“Wha?”
“There’s Khanov crossing the bridge,” Marya Vassilyevna said, seeing a coach and four to the right. “That’s him, isn’t it?”
“Y-yes. Must not have found Bakvist. What a dumbbell, Lord help him, going that way, and why, this way’s a good two miles shorter.”
They drove to the river. In summer it was a shallow little stream that could easily be forded and by August had usually dried up, but now, after the spring floods, it was a river some forty feet wide, swift, muddy, cold; on the bank and right down to the water, fresh tracks could be seen—meaning someone had crossed there.
“Giddap!” Semyon shouted angrily and anxiously, snapping hard on the reins and raising his elbows like a bird its wings. “Giddap!”
The horse went into the water up to its belly and stopped, but went on again at once, straining its forces, and Marya Vassilyevna felt a sharp cold on her legs.
“Giddap!” she also shouted, standing up. “Giddap!”
They drove out onto the bank.
“And what is it, this thing, Lord,” Semyon muttered, adjusting the harness. “Sheer punishment, this zemstvo…”
Her galoshes and shoes were full of water, the hem of her dress and coat, and one sleeve as well, were wet and dripping; the sugar and flour turned out to be damp—that was the most annoying thing of all, and in her despair Marya Vassilyevna only clasped her hands and said:
“Oh, Semyon, Semyon!…You’re really something!…”
The barrier at the railway crossing was lowered: an express train was coming from the station. Marya Vassilyevna stood at the crossing waiting for it to pass and trembling all over from the cold. Vyazovye could already be seen—the school with its green roof and the church with its crosses ablaze, reflecting the evening sun; and the windows of the station were also ablaze, and the locomotive gave off pinkish smoke…And it seemed to her that everything was trembling from the cold.
Here it is—the train; its windows, shot with bright light like the crosses on the church, were painful to look at. On the rear platform of one of the first-class carriages a lady was standing, and Marya Vassilyevna caught a passing glimpse of her: Mother! What a resemblance! Her mother had the same fluffy hair, exactly the same forehead and tilt of the head. And for the first time in those thirteen years she pictured to herself, vividly, with striking clarity, her mother, father, brother, the apartment in Moscow, the aquarium with its fish, and all to the last detail; she suddenly heard the piano playing, her father’s voice, she felt herself as she was then, young, beautiful, dressed up, in a bright, warm room, amidst her family; a feeling of joy and happiness suddenly came over her; in ecstasy she pressed her palms to her temples and called out tenderly, imploringly:
“Mama!”
And she began to weep, not knowing why. Just then Khanov drove up in his coach and four, and, seeing him, she imagined such happiness as had never been, and she smiled and nodded to him as an equal and intimate, and it seemed to her that the sky, and all the windows, and the trees shone with her happiness, her triumph. Yes, her father and mother had never died, she had never been a teacher, it had all been a long, strange, oppressive dream, and now she was awake.
“Vassilyevna, get in!”
And suddenly it all vanished. The barrier was slowly rising. Marya Vassilyevna, trembling, freezing cold, got into the cart. The coach and four crossed the rails, Semyon followed them. The watchman at the crossing took off his hat.
“And here’s Vyazovye. We’ve arrived.”
1897
ABOUT LOVE1
FOR LUNCH THE NEXT DAY we were served very tasty little patties, crayfish, and lamb cutlets; and while we were eating, the cook Nikanor came upstairs to ask what the guests would like for dinner. He was a man of medium height, with a puffy face and small eyes, clean-shaven, and it seemed that his moustache was not shaved, but plucked.
Alekhin told us that the beautiful Pelageya was in love with this cook. Since he was a drunkard and had a violent temper, she did not want to marry him, but agreed to live just so. He was very pious, and his religious convictions did not allow him to live just so; he demanded that she marry him, and would not have it otherwise, and he yelled at her when he was drunk and even beat her. When he was drunk, she hid upstairs and wept, and then Alekhin and the servants did not leave the house, so as to defend her if need be.
The talk turned to love.
“How love is born,” said Alekhin, “why Pelageya did not fall in love with someone else, who suited her better in her inner and outer qualities, but fell in love precisely with Nikanor, this ugly mug—here everybody calls him ‘ugly mug’—insofar as questions of personal happiness are important in love—all this is unknown and can be interpreted any way you like. Up to now only one unquestionable truth has been uttered about love, that ‘this is a great mystery,’2 and all the rest that has been written and said about love is not an answer, but a posing of questions that still remain unanswered. An explanation that seems suited to one case is not suited to a dozen others, and the best thing, in my opinion, is to explain each case separately, without trying to generalize. We ought, as doctors say, to individualize each separate case.”