IVAN ABRAMYCH ZHMUKHIN,1 a retired Cossack officer, who had once served in the Caucasus and now lived on his farmstead, who had once been young, healthy, strong, and was now old, dry, and bent, with shaggy eyebrows and a greenish-gray moustache, was coming back from town to his farmstead on a hot summer day. In town he went to confession and wrote a will at the notary’s (he had had a slight stroke two weeks earlier), and now, all the while he rode on the train, sad, serious thoughts about the imminence of death, about the vanity of vanities, about the transience of all earthly things never left him. At the Provalye station—there is such a station on the Donetsk line2—a fair-haired gentleman entered the car, middle-aged, plump, with a scuffed briefcase, and sat down across from him. They fell to talking.
“Yes, sir,” Ivan Abramych said, pensively looking out the window. “It’s never too late to marry. I myself married when I was forty-eight. People said it was late, but as it turned out it was neither late nor early, but it would have been better not to marry at all. Everybody soon gets bored with his wife, but not everybody will tell you the truth, because, you know, people are ashamed of unhappy family life and they hide it. Around his wife it’s ‘Manya this’ and ‘Manya that,’ but if he had his way, he’d stuff this Manya in a sack and drown her. With a wife it’s boredom, sheer stupidity. And with the children it’s no better, I hasten to assure you. I’ve got two of them, the scoundrels. There’s nowhere to educate them here in the steppe. I’ve got no money to send them to Novocherkassk,3 so they live here like wolf cubs. Look out or they’ll knife somebody on the high road.”
The fair-haired gentleman listened attentively, answered questions briefly and in a low voice, and was apparently a man of quiet, modest character. He said he was an attorney and was going to the village of Duyevka on business.
“Lord God, that’s six miles from me!” Zhmukhin said, sounding as if someone were arguing with him. “Sorry, but you won’t find any horses at the station. I think the best thing for you, you know, would be to come to my place now, spend the night, and in the morning go with God on my horses.”
The attorney thought it over and accepted.
When they arrived at the station, the sun already stood very low over the steppe. They were silent all the way to the farmstead: the jolting drive hindered speaking. The tarantass bounced, squeaked, and seemed to sob, as if the bouncing caused it great pain, and the attorney, who was seated very uncomfortably, looked ahead in anguish to see if the farmstead was in sight. They drove for about five miles and in the distance a low house appeared, with a yard surrounded by a dark flagstone wall; the roof of the house was green, the stucco was chipping off, and the windows were small and narrow, like squinting eyes. The farmstead stood open to the heat of the sun, and no water or trees could be seen anywhere around. The neighboring landowners and peasants called it “the Pecheneg’s Farmstead.” Many years earlier some passing surveyor, staying overnight at the farmstead, had spent the whole night talking with Ivan Abramych, ended up displeased, and in the morning, on leaving, said to him sternly: “You, my good sir, are a Pecheneg.” Hence “the Pecheneg’s Farmstead,” and the nickname became still more entrenched when Zhmukhin’s children grew up and started raiding the neighboring orchards and melon patches. Ivan Abramych himself was called “You Know,” because he habitually talked a great deal and often used the phrase “you know.”
In the yard by the shed stood Zhmukhin’s sons: one about nineteen years old, the other younger, both barefoot, without hats; and just as the tarantass drove into the yard, the younger one tossed a chicken up high; it clucked and flew, describing an arc in the air, the older one fired his gun, and the killed chicken went crashing to the ground.
“It’s my boys learning to shoot on the wing,” said Zhmukhin.
In the front hall the arrivals were met by a woman, small, thin, with a pale face, still young and pretty; from her clothes she might have been taken for a servant.
“And this, allow me to introduce her,” said Zhmukhin, “is the mother of my sons-of-a-bitch. Well, Lyubov Osipovna,” he turned to her, “get a move on, old girl, see to our guest. Serve supper! Look lively!”
The house consisted of two halves. In one was the “reception room,” and next to it old Zhmukhin’s bedroom—both stuffy, with low ceilings, and with multitudes of flies and wasps. The other was the kitchen, where the cooking and laundry were done, and workers were fed; right there, under the benches, geese and turkeys hatched their eggs, and there, too, were the beds of Lyubov Osipovna and her two sons. The furniture in the reception room was unpainted, knocked together, obviously, by a carpenter; on the walls hung rifles, hunting bags, whips, and all that old trash had rusted long ago and gone gray with dust. Not a single painting; in one corner a dark board that had once been an icon.
A young Ukrainian woman set the table and served ham, then borscht. The guest declined vodka and ate only bread and cucumbers.
“How about some ham?” Zhmukhin asked.
“No, thank you, I don’t eat it,” the guest replied. “I generally don’t eat meat.”
“Why not?”
“I’m a vegetarian. Killing animals is against my convictions.”
Zhmukhin thought for a moment and then said slowly, with a sigh:
“Yes…So…In town I also saw a man who doesn’t eat meat. There’s this belief going around now. Well, so? It’s a good thing. Can’t keep slaughtering and shooting, you know, someday you’ve got to back off and give the animals some peace. It’s a sin to kill, a sin—no disputing it. Sometimes you wound a hare, hit him in the leg, and he screams like a baby. That means it hurts!”
“Of course it hurts. Animals suffer just as people do.”
“That’s true,” Zhmukhin agreed. “I understand it all very well,” he went on, still thinking, “only, I confess, there’s one thing I can’t understand: suppose, you know, if people all stop eating meat, then what will become of domestic animals, for instance chickens and geese?”
“Chickens and geese will live freely, like the wild ones.”
“Now I see. In fact, crows and jackdaws live and get along without us. Yes…And chickens, and geese, and hares, and sheep will all live in freedom, you know, they’ll rejoice and praise God, and they won’t be afraid of us. There’ll be peace and quiet. Only, you know, there’s one thing I can’t understand,” Zhmukhin went on, glancing at the ham. “What do you do with the pigs? Where do you put them?”
“They’ll be like all the rest, that is, they’ll be free, too.”
“Yes. Right. But, excuse me, if they’re not slaughtered, they’ll multiply, you know, and then say goodbye to your meadows and vegetable gardens. If a pig is set free and not watched over, he’ll destroy everything in a single day. A pig’s a pig, and it’s not for nothing he’s called a pig…”
They finished supper. Zhmukhin got up from the table and walked around the room for a long time and kept talking, talking…He liked to talk about important and serious things and liked to think; and he wished in his old age to settle on something, to put his mind at rest, so that it would not be so frightening to die. He wished for such meekness, inner peace, self-confidence, as this guest had, who ate his fill of cucumbers and bread and thought it made him more perfect; he sits there on a chest, healthy, plump, silent, patiently bored, and in the twilight, when you look at him from the hallway, he resembles a big immoveable boulder. The man has an anchor in life—and all’s well with him.
Zhmukhin walked out through the front hall to the porch, and then could be heard sighing and saying broodingly to himself: “Yes…so.” It was already getting dark, and stars appeared here and there in the sky. Inside they had not yet brought lights. Someone came into the reception room noiselessly, like a shadow, and stopped by the door. It was Lyubov Osipovna, Zhmukhin’s wife.
“Are you from town?” she asked timidly, without looking at the guest.
“Yes, I live in town.”
“Maybe you’re in the teaching line, sir, so kindly teach us. We need to make an application.”
“Where?” asked the guest.
“We have two sons, good sir, and we should have sent them to study long ago, but nobody visits us and there’s no one to advise us. And I don’t know anything myself. Because if they don’t study, they’ll be taken into the army as simple Cossacks. It’s not good, sir! They’re illiterate, worse than peasants, and Ivan Abramych himself scorns them and won’t allow them in his room. But is it their fault? At least the younger one could be sent to study, really, or it’s such a pity!” she said, drawing out the words, and her voice quivered; and it seemed incredible that such a small and young woman already had grown-up children. “Ah, such a pity!”
“You don’t understand anything, Mother, and it’s none of your business,” Zhmukhin said, appearing in the doorway. “Don’t pester the guest with your wild talk. Go away, Mother!”
Lyubov Osipovna left and in the front hall repeated in a high voice:
“Ah, such a pity!”
They made a bed for the guest on the sofa in the reception room and lit an icon lamp so that he would not be in the dark. Zhmukhin lay down in his bedroom. And, lying there, he thought about his soul, about old age, about the recent stroke, which had frightened him so much and had vividly reminded him of death. He liked to philosophize, left by himself, in silence, and then it seemed to him that he was a very serious, profound man, and in this world he was concerned only with important questions. And now he kept thinking, and he wished to settle on some one thought, unlike the others, a significant one, that would be a guidance in life, and he wished to think up some rules for himself, so as to make his life as serious and profound as he himself was. For instance, it would be good if an old man like him could give up meat and various excesses entirely. The time when people stop killing animals and each other would come sooner or later, it could not be otherwise, and he imagined that time to himself, and clearly pictured himself living in peace with all animals, and suddenly he again remembered about the pigs, and everything became confused in his head.
“Lord have mercy, what a puzzle!” he muttered, sighing heavily. “Are you asleep?” he asked.
“No.”
Zhmukhin got out of bed and stood in the doorway in nothing but his nightshirt, showing the guest his legs, sinewy and dry as sticks.
“Nowadays, you know,” he began, “all sorts of telegraphs, telephones, and various wonders, in a word, have come along, but people haven’t gotten better. They say that in our time, some thirty or forty years ago, people were coarse, cruel; but isn’t it the same now? Actually, in my time we lived without ceremony. I remember, in the Caucasus, when we spent a whole four months by the same little river with nothing to do—I was still a sergeant then—a story happened, something like a novel. Right on the bank of that little river, you know, where our squadron was stationed, they buried a little prince we had killed earlier. And by night, you know, the widowed princess came to his grave and wept. She howled and howled, moaned and moaned, and annoyed us so much that we couldn’t sleep at all. We didn’t sleep one night, we didn’t sleep another night; well, enough of that! And, reasoning from common sense, in fact one shouldn’t lose sleep on account of the devil knows what, forgive the expression. We took that princess, gave her a whipping—and she stopped coming. There you have it. Now, of course, people are no longer of that category, and nobody gets whipped, and they live cleaner, and there’s more learning, but, you know, the soul’s still the same, there’s no change. So, kindly see, we’ve got a landowner living here. He owns mines, you know. He’s got people working for him who have nowhere to go: all sorts of vagrants, without passports.4 On Saturdays he was supposed to pay his workers, but he didn’t want to pay them, you know, he was sorry for the money. So he found this clerk, also a bum, though he went around in a hat. ‘Pay them nothing,’ he said, ‘not a kopeck. They’ll beat you, but let them beat you,’ he said, ‘bear with it, and I’ll pay you ten roubles for it every Saturday.’ So on Saturday evening the workers, in good order, as usual, come for their pay; the clerk tells them, ‘No money.’ Well, one thing leads to another, they start a fight, a brawl…They beat him, beat him and kick him—you know, the folk are brutal from hunger—they beat him unconscious, and then go their ways. The owner has the clerk doused with water, then shoves ten roubles at him, which he gladly takes, because in fact he’d do anything, even put his head in a noose, for three roubles, let alone ten. Yes…And on Monday a new party of workers comes; they come, no way out of it…On Saturday, the same story all over again…”
The guest turned on his other side, facing the back of the sofa, and murmured something.
“And here’s another example,” Zhmukhin went on. “Once there was anthrax here, you know; cattle dropping like flies, let me tell you, and veterinarians came here, and there were strict orders to bury the dead animals further, deeper in the ground, and to pour lime on them, you know, on a scientific basis. A horse dropped dead on me, too. I buried it with all the precautions and poured three hundred pounds of lime on it. And what do you think? My fine fellows, you know, these dear sons of mine, dug up the horse at night, skinned it, and sold the skin for three roubles. There you have it. Meaning people haven’t gotten better, and meaning once a wolf, always a wolf. There you have it. There’s something to think about! Eh? How does that strike you?”
In the windows on one side, through the chinks in the shutters, lightning flashed. It was stifling before the storm, mosquitoes were biting, and Zhmukhin, lying in his room and reflecting, groaned, moaned, and said to himself: “Yes…so”—and it was impossible to fall asleep. Thunder rumbled somewhere very far away.
“Are you asleep?”
“No,” the guest replied.
Zhmukhin got up and walked, stomping his heels, through the reception room and the front hall to the kitchen, to have a drink of water.
“The worst thing in the world, you know, is stupidity,” he said a little later, returning with a dipper. “My Lyubov Osipovna kneels and prays to God. She prays every night, you know, and bows to the ground, first of all, that the children be sent to study. She’s afraid they’ll go into the army as simple Cossacks and be whacked across the back with swords. But it takes money for them to study, and where to get it? She can beat her head on the floor, but if there isn’t any, there just isn’t. Second, she prays because, you know, every woman thinks there’s nobody in the world unhappier than she is. I’m a plainspoken man and have no wish to conceal anything from you. She comes from a poor family, a priest’s daughter, the bell-ringing class, so to speak. I married her when she was seventeen, and they gave her to me more on account of having nothing to eat, want, dire poverty, and after all, as you see, I have some land, a farm, well, anyhow, I’m an officer after all; it was flattering for her to marry me, you know. On the first day of our marriage she wept, and after that for all of twenty years she’s been weeping—there was always a tear in her eye. And she goes on sitting and thinking, thinking. And what’s she thinking about, you may ask? What can a woman think about? Nothing. I confess, I don’t consider women human beings.”
The attorney got up abruptly and sat on the bed.
“Sorry, I feel somehow stifled,” he said. “I’ll step outside.”
Zhmukhin, still talking about women, unbolted the door in the front hall, and they both went out. Just then a full moon was floating in the sky over the yard, and in the moonlight the yard and the sheds looked whiter than during the day; and on the grass between the black shadows stretched bright strips of light, also white. To the right the steppe is visible far away, with stars quietly shining over it—and it is all mysterious, infinitely far away, as if you are looking into a deep abyss; and to the left over the steppe heavy thunderclouds are piled on each other, black as soot; their edges are lit by the moon, and it looks as if there are mountains there with white snow on their peaks, dark forests, the sea; lightning flashes, thunder rumbles softly, and it looks as if there is a battle going on in the mountains…
Just by the farmstead a small night owl cries monotonously: “Sleep! Sleep!”
“What time is it now?” the guest asked.
“A little past one.”
“Dawn is still a long way off!”
They went back to the house and lay down again. It was time to sleep, and one usually sleeps so well before rain, but the old man wanted to have important, serious thoughts; he wanted not simply to think, but to reflect. And he reflected that it would be good, seeing the imminence of death, for the sake of his soul, to put an end to the idleness that so imperceptibly swallows day after day, year after year, without leaving a trace; to think up some great deed for himself, for instance, to go somewhere on foot far, far away, to give up meat, like this young man. And again he pictured to himself a time when people would not kill animals, pictured it clearly, distinctly, as if he were living in that time; but suddenly everything became confused in his head again and it all became unclear.
The thunderstorm passed by, but the edge of the cloud caught them, rain fell and pattered softly on the roof. Zhmukhin got up and, stretching and groaning from old age, looked into the reception room. Noticing that the guest was not asleep, he said:
“One of our colonels in the Caucasus, you know, was also a vegetarian. He didn’t eat meat, never went hunting, didn’t allow his men to fish. Of course, I understand. Every animal should live in freedom and enjoy life; only I don’t understand how a pig can go wherever it likes, untended…”
The guest got up and sat on the bed. His pale, crumpled face expressed vexation and fatigue; he was obviously exhausted, and only his meekness and inner delicacy kept him from voicing his vexation.
“Dawn already,” he said meekly. “Please order them to give me a horse.”
“What for? Wait a bit, the rain will pass.”
“No, I beg you,” the guest said pleadingly, in fright. “I need it right now.”
And he hastily began to dress.
When the horse was brought, the sun was already rising. The rain stopped, the clouds raced quickly, there were more and more blue spaces in the sky. In the puddles below, the first rays gleamed timidly. The attorney passed through the front hall with his briefcase to get into the tarantass, and at that moment Zhmukhin’s wife, pale, and seeming paler than the day before, tearful, looked at him attentively, without blinking, with a naïve expression, like a little girl’s. It was obvious from her sorrowful face that she envied his freedom—ah, how delighted she would be to leave here herself!—and that she needed to say something to him, probably to ask for advice about the children. And how pitiful she was! Not a wife, not the mistress of the household, not even a servant, but rather a sponger, a poor relation needed by no one, a nonentity…Her husband, bustling about, never stopped talking and kept running ahead, seeing the guest off, and she pressed up against the wall fearfully and guiltily and kept waiting for the right moment to speak.
“You’re welcome to come again!” the old man kept saying all the time. “Whatever we have is yours for the asking, you know.”
The guest hurriedly got into the tarantass, evidently with great pleasure and as if fearful that he might be detained at any moment. As on the previous day, the tarantass bounced, squeaked, the bucket tied behind rattled furiously. The attorney glanced back at Zhmukhin with a peculiar expression; it looked as if he, like the surveyor once, would have liked to call him a Pecheneg, or something similar, but his meekness won out, he restrained himself and said nothing. But in the gateway, he suddenly could not help himself, rose up, and shouted loudly and angrily:
“I’m sick of you!”
And disappeared through the gate.
By the shed stood Zhmukhin’s sons: the older one was holding a rifle, in the younger one’s hands was a gray rooster with a beautiful bright comb. The younger one threw the rooster into the air with all his might; the rooster flew up higher than the house and turned over in the air like a pigeon; the older one fired, and the rooster dropped like a stone.
The old man, embarrassed, not knowing how to explain this strange, unexpected outcry of his guest, unhurriedly went into the house. And, sitting there at the table, he reflected for a long time on the present-day turn of mind, on universal immorality, on the telegraph, the telephone, bicycles, and on how it was all not needed, and he gradually calmed down, then unhurriedly had a bite to eat, drank five glasses of tea, and lay down to sleep.
1897