“Now tell the master why you’ve come here!” Savka went on, still holding Agafya by the waist. “Go on, tell him, you husband’s wife! Ho-ho…What do you say, good old Agasha, shall we have another nip of vodka?”
I got up and, making my way between the beds, walked along the garden. The dark beds looked like big, flattened graves. They gave off a smell of tilled soil and the delicate dampness of the plants that were beginning to be covered with dew…To the left the little red light still shone. It blinked affably and seemed to smile. I heard happy laughter. It was Agafya laughing.
“And the train?” I remembered. “The train came long ago.”
Having waited a little, I went back to the hutch. Savka was sitting motionless, Turkish fashion, and quietly, barely audibly, murmuring some song that consisted only of one-syllable words, something like “Phoo-you, to-you…me and you…” Agafya, drunk on the vodka, Savka’s scornful caress, and the stifling night, lay beside him on the ground and pressed her face hard against his knee. She was so far gone in her feeling that she did not notice my coming.
“Agasha, you know the train came long ago!” I said.
“It’s time, it’s time.” Savka picked up my thought, shaking his head. “What are you doing lying around here? You’re shameless!”
Agafya roused herself, glanced at me, and pressed her head to his knee again.
“It’s long been time!” I said.
Agafya stirred and got to one knee…She was suffering…For half a minute her whole figure, as far as I could make it out in the dark, expressed struggle and hesitation. There was a moment when, as if coming to her senses, she raised herself so as to get to her feet, but then some invincible and implacable force pushed her whole body, and she pressed herself to Savka again.
“Ah, forget him!” she said with wild, deep-throated laughter, and in that laughter you could hear reckless resolution, powerlessness, pain.
I slowly trudged off to the grove and from there went down to the river, where our fishing rods were standing. The river was asleep. Some soft, fluffy flower on a tall stem tenderly touched my cheek, like a child who wants to let you know he is not asleep. Having nothing to do, I felt for one line and pulled it. It responded limply and hung down—nothing had been caught…I could not see the other bank and the village. A little light glimmered in one cottage, but soon went out. I felt around on the bank, found a depression I had already noticed during the day, and sat down in it as in an armchair. I sat for a long time…I saw how the stars began to fade and lose their brightness, how a slight breath of coolness passed over the earth, touching the leaves of the awakening willows…
“A-ga-fya!…” Someone’s muffled voice reached me from the village. “Agafya!”
It was the returned and alarmed husband, looking for his wife in the village. And in the kitchen gardens I heard unrestrained laughter: the wife had forgotten herself, was drunk, and with the happiness of a few hours was trying to offset the suffering that awaited her the next day.
I fell asleep.
When I woke up, Savka was sitting beside me, lightly shaking me by the shoulder. The river, the grove, both banks, green and washed, the village, and the field—all was flooded with bright morning light. The rays of the just-risen sun struck my back through the thin trunks of the trees.
“So that’s how you fish?” Savka smiled. “Well, up you get!”
I stood up, stretched sweetly, and my awakened chest eagerly began to drink in the moist, fragrant air.
“Agasha left?” I asked.
“There she is,” Savka pointed in the direction of the ford.
I looked and saw Agafya. Tucking up her skirts, disheveled, her kerchief askew on her head, she was crossing the river. Her legs could barely move…
“The cat knows she ate the canary!” Savka muttered, narrowing his eyes at her. “There she goes, tail between her legs…These women are mischievous as cats, and cowardly as hares…The foolish woman, she should have gone when she was told! Now she’s going to get it, and me, too, at the local precinct…another flogging on account of a woman…”
Agafya stepped onto the bank and went off across the field to the village. At first she walked rather boldly, but then agitation and fear claimed their own: she turned in fright, stopped, and caught her breath.
“See, it’s scary!” Savka smiled sadly, looking at the bright green stripe Agafya left on the dewy grass. “She doesn’t want to go! The husband’s been standing there waiting for a whole hour…Did you see him?”
Savka said these last words with a smile, but they chilled my heart. In the village, by the last cottage, on the road, Yakov stood and stared fixedly at his returning wife. He did not stir and was still as a post. What was he thinking as he looked at her? What words had he prepared for their meeting? Agafya stood for a time, looked back once, as if expecting help from us, and went on. I had never yet seen anyone walk like that, either drunk or sober. It was as if Agafya writhed under her husband’s gaze. She walked in zigzags, then stamped in place, her knees bending and her arms spreading, then backed up a little. Having gone some hundred steps forward, she looked back again and sat down.
“You should at least hide behind a bush,” I said to Savka. “What if the husband sees you…”
“He knows who Agasha’s coming from anyway…It’s not for cabbage that women go to the kitchen gardens at night—everybody knows that.”
I looked at Savka’s face. It was pale and wincing from squeamish pity, as with people when they see an animal tortured.
“The cat laughs, the mouse weeps…,” he sighed.
Agafya suddenly jumped to her feet, shook her head, and, stepping boldly, went to meet her husband. She had evidently gathered her forces and made up her mind.
1886
SPRING
THE SNOW HAS NOT YET LEFT THE GROUND, but spring is already calling on the soul. If you have ever convalesced from a grave illness, you know the blissful state when you swoon from vague presentiments and smile without any reason. Evidently that is the state nature is experiencing now. The ground is cold, mud mixed with snow sloshes under your feet, but everything around is so cheerful, affectionate, friendly! The air is so clear and transparent that it seems if you climbed up on a dovecot or a belfry you could see the whole universe from end to end. The sun shines brightly, and its rays, playing and smiling, bathe in the puddles along with the sparrows. The river swells and darkens; it is already awake, and will start roaring any day now. The trees are bare, but already living, breathing.
In that season it feels good to drive dirty water along the gutters with a broom or a shovel, to send toy boats down the streams, or crack the stubborn ice with your heels. It also feels good to drive pigeons high up into the heavens, or to climb trees and tie birdhouses in them. Yes, everything feels good in that happy time of year, especially if you’re young, love nature, and if you’re not capricious, hysterical, and your job does not oblige you to sit between four walls from morning till evening. It’s not good if you’re sick, if you’re pining away in an office, if you keep company with the muses.
Yes, in spring one should not keep company with the muses.
Just look how good, how nice ordinary people feel. Here’s the gardener Pantelei Petrovich, bright and early, sporting a broad-brimmed straw hat, and quite unable to part with the little stub of a cigar he picked up this morning on the path; look at him standing, arms akimbo, outside the kitchen window, telling the cook about the boots he bought the day before. His whole long and narrow figure, for which the servants call him “scrimpy,” expresses self-satisfaction and dignity. He looks upon nature with the awareness of his superiority over it, and there is in his gaze something proprietary, peremptory, and even supercilious, as if, sitting in his greenhouse or pottering in the garden, he has learned about the vegetable kingdom something that no one else knows.