Forty Stories (14 page)

“What’s all this talk about snappers?”

“Wha-at? Why, you asked me that yourself! I’m telling how the gentry catch fish, but the very stupidest child wouldn’t try to catch anything without a sinker. Maybe a man without a brain in his head might try to catch a fish without a sinker, but there’s no accounting for people like that!”

“According to you, the nut was unscrewed so you could use it as a sinker. Is that right?”

“Well, it couldn’t be anything else, could it? I wasn’t playing knucklebones with it, was I?”

“Instead of a nut, you could have used a bit of lead or a bullet—perhaps a nail would have served the same purpose?”

“Well, Your Honor, as for that, you don’t find lead lying about in the street, and it has to be paid for, and a nail—a nail’s no use at all. There’s nothing better than a nut.… It is heavy, and has a hole in it.…”

“The witness is determined to convince us he is out of his wits—pretends he was born yesterday or fell out of the sky! Really,
you miserable blockhead, don’t you understand what happens when you unscrew these nuts? If the linesman had not seen you at work, the train could have gone off the rails, people could have been killed, and the responsibility for killing them would have been yours!”

“Oh, God forbid, Your Honor! No! Why should I kill anybody! Do you think we are criminals or heathen, eh? Ah, good gentlemen, we thank God we have lived our lives without ever letting such an idea as killing people enter our heads! Save us and have mercy on us, Queen of Heaven! What were you saying, sir?”

“How do you suppose train wrecks happen? Doesn’t it occur to you that if a few nuts are unscrewed, you can have a train wreck?”

Denis smirked and screwed up his eyes incredulously at the magistrate.

“Why, Your Honor, we peasants have been unscrewing nuts for a good many years now, and the good Lord has protected us, and as for a train wreck and killing people, why, nothing at all.… Now, if I took up a whole rail or put a big balk of timber across the track, maybe I could smash up a train.… But just an ordinary nut, pfui!…”

“Can you get it into your head that the nut holds the rail to the tie?”

“Of course, Your Honor. We understand that. That’s why we don’t unscrew all of them. We leave some of them. We’ve got heads on our shoulders.… We know what’s what.…”

Denis yawned and made the sign of the cross over his mouth.

“Last year a train went off the rails here,” the magistrate said. “Now we know how it happened.”

“Beg pardon?”

“I said, now we know why the train went off the rails last year. It’s all clear now.”

“Good kind gentlemen, God gave you understanding, and He gives it to whom He pleases. You know about things, how it
happened, what happened, and all, but the linesman, he was a peasant, too, not a man with an education, and he took me by the collar and carted me off! He ought to know about things before dragging people off! A peasant has the brains of a peasant—that’s what they say. And write down, too, Your Honor, that he hit me twice—once in the jaw and once in the chest.”

“Listen, when they searched your place, they found another nut.… Now, where and when was that one unscrewed?”

“You mean the one they found under the little red chest?”

“I don’t know anything about where it was. I only know they found it. When did you unscrew that one?”

“I didn’t unscrew it. It was given to me by Ignashka, the son of one-eyed Semyon. I’m talking about the one under the chest. The one they found in the yard, on the sleigh—that one was unscrewed by Mitrofan and me.”

“Which Mitrofan?”

“Mitrofan Petrov. Do you mean to say you’ve never heard of him? He’s the one who makes nets in our village and sells them to the gentry. He needs a lot of nuts. Every net, I reckon, must have about ten nuts.”

“Listen. According to Article 1081 of the Penal Code, every willful act leading to the damage of a railroad and calculated to jeopardize the passage of trains, shall, if the perpetrator knows the act will cause an accident—
knows
, you understand?—and for that matter you couldn’t help knowing the consequences of unscrewing the nut—such a man is liable to exile with hard labor.…”

“Oh, well, you know best. We ignorant people, we don’t know anything.…”

“You do know! You’re lying and shamming ignorance!”

“Why should I lie? Ask in the village if you don’t believe me! Only the bleak fish can be caught without a sinker, that’s true! There’s no fish worse than a gudgeon, and even he won’t bite without a sinker.”

“You’ll be talking about snappers next,” the magistrate smiled.

“I told you, we don’t have snappers in our part of the country.… Now, if we cast our lines on the surface without a sinker, with a butterfly for bait, we might maybe catch a mullet, but it don’t happen often.”

“Shut up!”

Then there was silence, while Denis shifted from one foot to the other, stared at the table covered with a green cloth, and violently blinked his eyes. He was like someone gazing, not at the green cloth, but at the sun. The magistrate was writing rapidly.

“May I be getting along now?” Denis asked a moment later.

“No, you’ll be kept in custody and sent to prison.”

Denis stopped blinking. Raising his thick eyebrows, he looked inquiringly in the direction of the magistrate.

“What do you mean, prison? Your Honor, I haven’t the time for prison! I’ve got to go to the fair—there’s Yegor, who owes me three rubles for the lard he …”

“Keep your mouth shut, and don’t disturb me!”

“Prison, eh? Now, listen. If I’d done anything wrong, then I’d go … but there’s neither rhyme nor reason in sending me … What for should I go to prison? I haven’t stolen anything so far as I know. I haven’t been fighting.… If there’s any question in your mind about the arrears, well, Your Honor, you shouldn’t believe the village elder.… Ask the permanent member of the board.… The elder, he hasn’t been baptized.…”

“Silence!”

“All right, I’ll be silent,” Denis murmured. “But I’ll take my oath the elder lied about the assessment. There are three of us brothers—Kuzma Grigoryev, then Yegor Grigoryev, and then Denis Grigoryev …”

“You’re a nuisance,” the magistrate shouted. “Hey, Semyon! Take him away!”

“We’re three brothers,” Denis went on muttering, while two husky soldiers took hold of him and led him out of the room. “A
brother doesn’t have to answer for a brother, does he? Kuzma won’t pay. So it’s up to you, Denis.… Judges, indeed! Our late master, the general, is dead, may God rest his soul, or he would have shown you what’s what.… You ought to judge sensibly, not in a cockeyed way.… Flog a man, you understand, but only when he deserves it.… Understand?…”

July 1885

A CALM August night. The mist rose slowly from the fields, covering everything within view with a dull-colored winding sheet. When lit by the moon, the mist gave the impression of a quiet and limitless expanse of ocean, and at another time it resembled an immense white wall. The air was damp and chilly, and the morning still far away. There was a fire blazing a step or two beyond the pathway running along the edge of the forest. Near the small fire, under a young oak, lay a dead body covered from head to foot with a clean white linen sheet, and there was a small wooden icon lying on the dead man’s chest. Beside the dead body, almost sitting in the pathway, were “the watchers,” two peasants who were performing one of the most disagreeable and uninviting tasks ever given to peasants. One was a tall youngster with a faint mustache and thick black bushy eyebrows, wearing bast shoes and a tattered sheepskin jacket, his feet stretched out in front of him, as he sat in the damp grass. He was trying to make time go faster by getting down to work. His long neck was bent, and he wheezed loudly while he whittled a spoon from a big curved chunk of wood. The other was a small, thin pock-marked peasant with an ancient face, a scant mustache, and a little goatee beard. His hands had fallen on his knees, and he gazed listlessly and motionlessly into the flames.

The small pile of faggots that lay between them blazed up and threw a red glare on their faces. It was very quiet. The
only sound came from the scraping of the knife on the wood and the crackling of the damp faggots in the flames.

“Don’t fall asleep, Syoma,” the young man said.

“Me? No, I’m not falling asleep,” stammered the man with a goatee.

“That’s good. It’s hard sitting here alone, I’d get frightened. Talk to me, Syoma.”

“I wouldn’t know …”

“Oh, you’re a strange fellow, Syomushka! Some people laugh, invent stories, and sing songs, but you—God knows what to make of you. You sit there like a scarecrow in a potato field and stare at the flames. You don’t know how to put words together.… You’re plain scared of talking. You must be getting on for fifty, but you’ve no more sense than a baby. Aren’t you sorry you are such a fool?”

“Reckon so,” said the man with a goatee gloomily.

“Well, we’re sorry too. Wouldn’t you say so? There you are, a good solid fellow, don’t drink too much, and the only trouble is that you haven’t a brain in your head. Still, if the good Lord afflicted you by making you witless, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t try to pick up some glimmerings of intelligence, is there? Make an effort, Syoma.… If someone speaks a good word and you don’t understand it, you ought to try to fathom it, get the sense of it somehow, keep on thinking and concentrating. If there’s anything you don’t understand, you should make an effort and think over exactly what it means. Do you understand me? Just make an effort! If you don’t get some sense into your head, you’ll die an idiot, you’ll be the least important man in the world.”

Suddenly a long-drawn-out moaning sound was heard from the direction of the forest. There was the sound of something being torn from the top of a tree, slithering down and rustling among the leaves, and falling to the ground, followed by a dull echo. The young man shuddered and looked searchingly at his companion.

“It’s only an owl running after little birds,” Syoma said gloomily.

“I’d have thought it was time for the birds to be flying to warm countries now.”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“And the dawns are getting cold now—there’s a chill in the air. Birds, too—cranes, for example—they feel the cold, they’re delicate things. When it’s cold like this, they die. Me, I’m not a crane, but I’m frozen. Put some more wood on!”

Syoma rose and vanished in the dark undergrowth. While he was wandering through the undergrowth, snapping off dry twigs, his companion shielded his eyes with his hands, shivering at every sound. Syoma brought back an armful of wood and threw it on the fire. Little tongues of flame licked the black twigs uncertainly, and then suddenly, as though at a word of command, the flames leapt up and enveloped their faces in a deep purple glow; and the pathway, and the white linen sheet which showed the dead man’s hands and feet in relief, and the icon, all these shone with the same deep purple glow. The watchers remained silent. The young man bent his neck still lower and went back to work more nervously than ever. Meanwhile the old man with the goatee sat motionless, never taking his eyes from the fire.

“Oh, ye that love not Zion shall be ashamed in the face of the Lord!”—the silence of the night was suddenly broken by a high falsetto voice, and soft footsteps.

Into the purple firelight there emerged the dark figure of a man wearing a broad-brimmed hat and the short cassock of a monk, carrying a birch-bark sack on his shoulders.

“Thy will be done, O Lord! O Holy Mother!” he sang in a voice grown hoarse. “I saw the fire in the depths of night, and my soul leapt for joy! At first, I told myself they were keeping watch over horses, and then I told myself, it cannot be so, for there are no horses. Then, said I, they were thieves waiting to pounce upon some rich Lazarus, and then it crossed my mind
they were gypsies preparing to sacrifice victims to their idols. My soul again leapt for joy! I said to myself: Go then, Theodosy, thou servant of God, receive a martyr’s crown! So I flew to the fire on the gentle wings of a moth. Now I stand before you, and examine your physiognomies, and judge your souls, and I conclude you are neither thieves nor heathens! Peace be upon you!”

“Good evening to you.”

“Dear brethren in God, pray tell me where I can find Makukhinsky’s brickyard?”

“It’s not far. Straight down the road, and after a mile and a half you’ll come to Ananova, which is our village. Turn right at the village, Father, follow the riverbank, and keep on going till you reach the brickyard. It’s two miles from Ananova.”

“God give you health!… Tell me, why are you sitting here?”

“We are keeping watch. Look over there—there’s a dead body.”

“Eh, what’s that? A dead body! Holy Mother!”

When the stranger saw the white sheet and the icon, he shivered so violently that his legs involuntarily made little hopping motions. This unexpected sight produced an overwhelming effect. He shrank within himself and was rooted to the spot, his eyes glazed, his mouth wide open. For three minutes he remained completely silent, as though he could not believe his eyes, and then he muttered: “O Lord, O Holy Mother! I was wandering abroad and giving offense to none, and now am I consigned to punishment.…”

“What are you?” the young man asked. “Are you a member of the clergy?”

“No, no … I wander from one monastery to another. Do you know by chance Mikhail Polikarpich? He runs the brickyard, and I’m his nephew.… Thy will be done, O Lord!… What are you doing here?”

“We are the watchers. They told us to watch him.”

“Yes, yes,” muttered the man in the cassock, running his hands over his eyes. “Tell me—the dead man—where did he come from?”

“He was passing by.”

“Well, such is life! So it is, dear brethren, and now I must go on my way. I’m all confused. I tell you, I’m more frightened of the dead than of anything else. And it comes to me that when he was living, no one paid any attention to him, and now that he is dead and delivered over to corruption, we tremble before him as though he were a great conqueror or a high official of the Church.… Such is life!… Tell me, was he murdered?”