"I didn't count, I don't know. People put in coppers and silver, but how much—I don't look."
"And do they put in paper money too?"
"The better people, gentlefolk or merchants, they put in paper money."
''Well, do you keep that in the box too?"
"No, what for? Paper's soft, it may tear ... I keep it in my bosom."
"And did you collect much paper?"
"About twenty-six rubles."
"Twenty-six rubles!" exclaimed Kuzma with a shrug of his shoulders. "At Kachabrov, ask anyone, they were building a church, and for the plans alone they paid three thousand rubles! Your money won't pay for the nails. Twenty-six rubles nowadays—why, that's chicken- feed! Nowadays you pay a ruble and a half for a pound of tea, and you can't even drink it ... And look at the tobacco I smoke. It's all right for me, because I'm a peasant, a plain fellow, but an officer or a student . •
Kuzma suddenly struck his hands together and con- tinued, smiling:
"A German from the railway was with us in the lockup, and, would you believe it? he smoked cigars ten kopecks apiece! Ah-h! Ten kopecks apiece! Why, that way, grandfather, you can burn up a hundred ru- bles a month!"
Kuzma fairly choked at this agreeable recollection, and started blinking.
"They kept you in the lockup?" asked Yefrem.
"Sure enough," Kuzma answered and glanced at the sky. "They let me out two days ago. I was there a whole month."
Evening was coming on, the sun was setting, but it was still sultry. Yefrem was dead tired and scarcely listened to Kuzma. Finally they came upon a peasant who told them that they were within less than a mile of Maloye. And now the travelers were out of the woods and had emerged into an open meadow, where an ani- mated scene opened up before them. The cart drove straight into a herd of cows, sheep, and tethered horses. Back of the pasture stretched green fields of rye and barley and a white patch of blossoming buckwheat, and farther on lay Maloye with a dark church that appeared flattened against the ground. Beyond the village loomed the forest, which now looked black.
"Here is Maloye!" said Kuzma. "The peasants are well-to-do, but they're robbers."
Yefrem took off his cap and rang the bell. Immedi- ately two peasants came walking towards him from the well which was at the entrance to the village. Then be- gan the usual queries: Where do you come from? Where are you bound for?
'Well, cousins, give the man of God a drink of wa- ter!" Kuzma started chattering, slapping now one, now the other on the shoulder. "Look lively!"
"How do we get to be cousins? How d'you make that out?"
"Haw-haw-haw! Your granny pulled my granddad by the hair, or so I'm told, because I wasn't there. That's how!"
While the cart was rolling through the village, Kuzma kept up his ceaseless chatter and rough-housed with everyone they met. He snatched one man's cap, rammed his fist into another's stomach, pulled a third by the beard. He called the women darling, dearie, mamasha, and addressed the men, according to their peculiarities, as Carrots, Tawny, Nosey, One-Eye, and the like. All this aroused lively, hearty laughter. Soon Kuzma found acquaintances. Greetings were heard: "Ah, Kuzma Rivet," "Hello, gallows bird!" "How long since you've been out of jail?"
"Hey, folks, give something to the man of God!" Kuzma cried, waving his arms. "Shake a leg! Look lively!"
He held himself with dignity and shouted as if he had taken the man of God under his wing or was his guide and mentor.
It was decided that Yefrem would spend the night at Grandmother Avdotya's, where those passing through the village usually stopped. Unhurriedly Yefrem took the horse out of the shafts and watered him at the well, where he spent half an hour talking to the peasants, then went indoors. Kuzma was waiting for him.
"Here you are!" the queer peasant rejoiced. "You're coming to the teahouse?"
"Tea would be fine," said Yefrem scratching himself, "fine, but I haven't any money, brother. Will you stand treat?"
"Me—treat? What with?"
Kuzma stood there a moment, disappointed, then sat down. Moving clumsily, sighing, and scratching himself, Yefrem placed the icon and the collection box under the holy images, undressed, took off his boots, sat about awhile, then got up and removed the box to a bench, sat down again and started eating. He chewed slowly, as a cow chews her cud, and sipped water noisily.
"The poverty!" Kuzma sighed. "Some vodka would be fine now, and tea . . ."
The evening light came feebly through the two win- dows. The village was already in deep shade, the cot- tages were somber; the church, merging into the dark- ness, seemed to grow wider and flatten itself more against the ground. A faint red gleam, apparently the reflection of the sunset, twinkled gently on the church cross. Having eaten, Yefrem sat motionless for a long time, his hands clenched on his knees, and stared at the windows. What was he thinking of? In the evening hush, when you see before you one dull window behind which the natural scene softly fades away, when the hoarse barking of strange dogs and the muffied squeak- ing of a strange accordion reaches your ear, it is diffi- cult not to think of home. He who has been a wanderer, whom necessity or Fate or whim has separated from his kin, knows how long and wearisome an evening in the country among strangers can be.
Then Yefrem stood for a long time before his icon, praying. As he finally settled himself down on the bench to sleep, he sighed deeply and observed, as though re- luctantly:
"You're a queer one • • . The Lord knows what sort you are . . ."
"What d'you mean?"
"Why, you don't look like a regular peasant • • . you clown, you wisecrack, and you've just come from the lockup."
"That don't matter! You'll even find fine gentlemen in the lockup sometimes . . . The lockup, brother, that's nothing, it don't matter, I can put in a whole year there, but if it's prison, that's bad! Tell you the truth, I've been in prison three times, and there ain't a week that I don't get a flogging at village headquarters . . . They're sore at me, damn 'em. The community's ready to deport me to Siberia. They've already passed a reso- lution."
"You're a fine one!"
"What do I care? In Siberia people live too."
"Your mother and father living?"
"Yes, they're living, they haven't croaked yet . .
"And what about honoring your father and moth- er? "
"Don't matter • . • If you ask me, they're my worst enemies. Who egged the community on against me? It's them and Uncle Stepan. Nobody else."
"Much you understand, you fool . . . The commu- nity don't need your uncle to see what sort you are. And why do the folks here call you gallows bird?"
"When I was little, our peasants nearly killed me. They hanged me by the neck on a tree, the damned brutes, but men from the next village were passing by and they saved me . . ."
"A dangerous member of society!" observed Yefrem and sighed.
Then he turned to the wall and was soon snoring.
When he woke up in the middle of the night to have a look at his horse, Kuzma was not in the house. A white cow stood at the wide-open door looking into the entry and knocking her horn against the jamb. The dogs were asleep. Somewhere in the distance, beyond the shadows a corn crake was calling in the stillness of the night, and the long-dra^-out sobbing hoot of an owl broke upon the quiet air.
And when he woke up for the second time at dawn,
Kuzma was sitting on a bench at the table, looking thoughtful. A drunken, blissful smile was frozen on his pale face. Rosy thoughts were roaming through his flattened skull and agitating him; he breathed fast, as though panting from a walk uphill.
"Ah, man of God!" he exclaimed, seeing that Yefrem was awake, and he grinned. "How would you like a white roll?"
"Where were you?" asked Yefrem.
"Hee, hee, hee!" Kuzma laughed foolishly. A dozen times he uttered this silly sound with his queer fixed grin, and then shook with convulsive laughter.