I gave him my silver rouble, the cross, and the earring, and he wrote out the release, put the court seal on it, and said:
“I should have added something for the seal, like I do with everybody, but I pity your poverty and don’t want papers of my making to be imperfect. Off you go,” he says, “and if anybody else needs it, send him to me.”
“Well,” I think, “a fine benefactor he is: takes the cross from my neck and then pities me.” I didn’t send anybody to him, I only went begging in Christ’s name without even a penny in my pocket.
I came to that town and stood in the marketplace so as to get myself hired. There were very few people up for hire—three men in all—and all of them must have been the same as me, half vagrants, and many people came running to hire us, and they all latched onto us and pulled us this way and that. One gentleman, a great huge one, bigger than I am, fell on me, pushed everybody away, seized me by both arms, and dragged me off with him: he led me along, making his way through the others with his fists and cursing most foully, and there were tears in his eyes. He brought me to his little house, hastily slapped together from who knows what, and asked me:
“Tell me the truth: are you a runaway?”
“I am,” I say.
“A thief,” he says, “or a murderer, or just a vagrant?”
I answer:
“Why do you ask me that?”
“The better to know what kind of work you’re good for.”
I told him all about why I ran away, and he suddenly threw himself into kissing me and said:
“Just the one I need, just the one I need! If you felt sorry for your pigeons,” he says, “surely you’ll be able to nurse my baby: I’m hiring you as a nanny.”
I was horrified.
“How do you mean,” I say, “as a nanny? I’m not at all suited to that situation.”
“No, that’s trifles,” he says, “trifles: I see you can be a nanny; otherwise I’m in a bad way, because my wife, out of boredom, ran off with a remount officer and left me a baby daughter at the breast, and I’ve got no time and no way to feed her, so you’ll nurse her, and I’ll pay you a salary of two roubles a month.”
“For pity’s sake,” I reply, “it’s not a matter of two roubles, but how am I to manage that kind of work?”
“Trifles,” he says. “Aren’t you a Russian? Russians can manage anything.”
“Well, all right, so I’m a Russian, but I’m also a man, and what’s needed for nursing a baby at the breast, I’m not endowed with.”
“But,” he says, “to help you in that regard, I’m going to buy a goat from a Jew: you’ll milk her and nurse my daughter with the milk.”
I thought it over and said:
“Of course, why not nurse a baby with a goat,” I say, “only it seems to me you’d be better off having a woman do this work.”
“No, kindly don’t talk to me about women,” he replies. “All the scandals here are caused by women, and there’s nowhere to get them, and if you don’t agree to nurse my baby, I’ll call the Cossacks at once and order you bound and taken to the police, and you’ll be sent back under convoy. Choose now what’s better for you: to crush stones again on the count’s garden path or nurse my baby?”
I thought: no, I won’t go back, and agreed to stay on as a nanny. That same day we bought a white goat with a kid from a Jew. The kid I slaughtered, and my master and I ate it with noodles, and I milked the goat and started giving her milk to the baby. The baby was little, and so wretched, so pathetic: she whined all the time. My master, her father, was a Pole, an official, and the rogue never stayed home, but ran around to his comrades to play cards, and I stayed alone with this charge of mine, this little girl, and I began to be terribly attached to her, because it was unbearably boring for me, and having nothing to do, I busied myself with her. I’d put her in the tub and give her a good washing, and if she had a rash somewhere, I’d sprinkle it with flour; or I’d brush her hair, or rock her on my knees, or, if it got very boring at home, I’d put her on my bosom and go to the estuary to do laundry—and the goat, too, got used to us and would come walking behind us. So I lived until the next summer, and my baby grew and began to stand on her feet, but I noticed that she was bowlegged. I pointed it out to the master, but he wasn’t much concerned and only said:
“What’s that got to do with me? Go and show her to the doctor: let him look her over.”
I took her, and the doctor says:
“It’s the English disease, she must sit in the sand.”
I began doing that. I chose a little spot on the bank of the estuary where there’s sand, and whenever the day was nice and warm, I took the goat and the girl and went there with them. I’d rake up the warm sand with my hands and cover the girl with it up to the waist and give her some sticks and pebbles to play with, and our goat walks around us, grazing on the grass, and I sit and sit, my arms around my knees, and get drowsy, and fall asleep.
The three of us spent whole days that way, and for me it was the best thing against boredom, because, I repeat again, the boredom was terrible, and that spring especially, when I started burying the girl in the sand and sleeping over the estuary, all sorts of confused dreams came to me. I’d fall asleep, and the estuary is murmuring, and with the warm wind from the steppe fanning me, it’s as if some kind of sorcery flows over me, and I’m beset by terrible fantasies. I see a wide steppe, horses, and somebody seems to be calling me, luring me somewhere. I even hear my name shouted: “Ivan! Ivan! Come, brother Ivan!” I rouse myself, give a shake, and spit: “Pah, hell’s too good for you, what are you calling me for?” I look around: dreariness. The goat has wandered far off, grazing in the grass, and the baby sits covered with sand, and nothing more … Ohh, how boring! The emptiness, the sun, the estuary, and again I fall asleep, and this current of wafting wind gets into my soul and shouts: “Ivan, let’s go, brother Ivan!” I even curse and say: “Show yourself, deuce take you, who are you to call me like that?” And once I got bitterly angry and was sitting half asleep, looking across the estuary, and a light cloud rose up from there and came floating straight at me. I thought: “Whoa! Not this way, my good one, you’ll get me all wet!” Then suddenly I see: it’s that monk with the womanish face standing over me, the one I killed with my whip long ago when I was a postillion. I say: “Whoa there! Away with you!” And he chimes out so tenderly: “Let’s go, Ivan, let’s go, brother! You still have much to endure, but then you’ll attain.” I cursed him in my sleep and said: “As if I had anywhere to go with you or anything to attain.” And suddenly he turned back into a cloud and through himself showed me I don’t know what: the steppe, some wild people, Saracens, like in the tales of Eruslan and Prince Bova,20 in big, shaggy hats and with bows and arrows, on terrifying wild horses. And along with seeing that, I heard hooting, and neighing, and wild laughter, and then suddenly a whirlwind … a cloud of sand rose up, and there is nothing, only a thin bell softly ringing somewhere, and a great white monastery all bathed in the scarlet dawn appears on a height, and winged angels with golden lances are walking on its walls, all surrounded by the sea, and whenever an angel strikes his shield with his lance, the sea around the monastery heaves and splashes, and from the deep terrible voices cry: “Holy!”
“Well,” I think, “it’s this monkhood getting at me again!” and from vexation I wake up and am astonished to see that someone of the gentlest appearance is kneeling in the sand over my little mistress and pouring out floods of tears.
I watched this for a long time, because I kept thinking it was my vision going on, but then I saw that it didn’t vanish, and I got up and went closer: I see the lady has dug my little girl out of the sand, and has picked her up in her arms, and is kissing her and weeping.