Short Fiction, Leo Tolstoy [general ebook reader .txt] 📗

knows, means the proprietor’s house, even if it is situated lower down.) Aksyúta⁠—that was the girl’s name⁠—always flew like a bullet, and did it without bending her arms, which, keeping time with the speed of her flight, swung like pendulums, not by her sides, but in front of her. Her cheeks were always redder than her pink dress, and her tongue moved as rapidly as her legs. She flew into the room, and for some reason catching hold of the stove, began to sway to and fro; then, as if reluctant on any account to bring out more than two or three words at a time, she all of a sudden breathlessly addressed Akoulína as follows:

“The mistress⁠ ⁠… has given orders⁠ ⁠… that Polikoúshka should come this minute⁠ ⁠… orders to come up.⁠ ⁠…”

She stopped, breathing heavily.

“Egór Miháylovitch has been with the mistress⁠ ⁠… they talked about rickruits⁠ ⁠… they mentioned Polikoúshka⁠ ⁠… Avdótya Nikoláyevna⁠ ⁠… has ordered you to come this minute⁠ ⁠… Avdótya Nikoláyevna has ordered⁠ ⁠…” again a sigh, “to come this minute.⁠ ⁠…”

For half a minute Aksyúta looked round at Polikéy and at Akoulína and the children⁠—who had put out their heads from under their bedclothes⁠—picked up a nutshell that lay on the stove, and threw it at little Annie. Then she repeated:

“To come this minute!⁠ ⁠…” and rushed out of the room like a whirlwind, the pendulums swinging as usual at right angles to the line of her flight.

Akoulína again rose, and got her husband’s boots⁠—abominable soldier’s boots, with holes in them⁠—and got down his coat and passed it to him without speaking.

“Won’t you change your shirt, Polikéy?”

“No,” he answered.

Akoulína never once looked at his face while he put on his boots and coat, and she did well not to look. Polikéy’s face was pale, his nether jaw trembled, and in his eyes there was that tearful, submissive and deeply mournful look one only sees in the eyes of kindly, weak, and guilty people.

He combed his hair, and was going out; but his wife stopped him, hid the string of his shirt that hung down from under his coat, and put his cap on for him.

“What’s that, Polikoúshka? Has the mistress sent for you?” came the voice of the carpenter’s wife from behind the partition.

Only that morning the carpenter’s wife had had high words with Akoulína about her pot of potash207 that Polikéy’s children had upset, and at first she was pleased to hear Polikéy being summoned to the mistress: most likely for no good. She was a cute, diplomatic lady, with a biting tongue. Nobody knew better than she how to pay anyone out with a word: so she imagined.

“I expect you’ll be sent to town to do the shopping,” she continued. “I suppose a safe person must be chosen to do that job, so you’ll be sent! Please buy a quarter of a pound of tea for me there, Polikéy.”

Akoulína forced back her tears, and an angry expression distorted her lips. She felt as if she could have clutched “that vixen the joiner’s wife, by her mangy hair.” But when she looked at her children, and thought that they would be left fatherless and she herself a soldier’s wife and as good as widowed, she forgot the sharp-tongued joiner’s wife, hid her face in her hands, sat down on the bed, and let her head sink in the pillows.

“Mammy, you cluth me!” lisped her little girl, pulling the cloak with which she was covered from under her mother’s elbow.

“If you’d only die, all of you! I’ve brought you into the world for nothing but sorrow!” exclaimed Akoulína, and sobbed aloud, to the joy of the joiner’s wife, who had not yet forgotten the potash.

IV

Half an hour passed. The baby began to cry. Akoulína rose and gave it the breast. Weeping no longer, but resting her thin, though still handsome, face on her hand, and fixing her eyes on the last flickerings of the candle, she sat thinking why she had married, wondering why so many soldiers were needed, and also how she could pay out the joiner’s wife.

She heard her husband’s footsteps; and, wiping her tears, got up to let him pass. Polikéy entered like a conqueror, threw his cap on the bed, puffed, and unfastened his belt.

“Well, what did she want?”

“H’m! Of course! Polikoúshka is the least among men⁠ ⁠… but when there’s business to be done, who’s wanted? Why, Polikoúshka.⁠ ⁠…”

“What business?”

Polikéy did not hasten to reply. He lit his pipe and spat.

“To go and get money from a tradesman.”

“To fetch money?” Akoulína asked.

Polikéy chuckled and wagged his head.

“Ah! Ain’t she clever at words?⁠ ⁠… ‘You have been regarded,’ she says, ‘as an untrustworthy man; but I trust you more than another’ ” (Polikéy spoke in a loud voice that the neighbours might hear). “ ‘You promised me you’d reform; here,’ she says, ‘is the first proof that I believe you. Go,’ she says, ‘to the customer, fetch the money he owes, and bring it back to me.’ And I say: ‘We all are your serfs, ma’am,’ I say, ‘and I must serve you as we serve the Lord; therefore I feel myself that I can do anything for Your Honour, and cannot refuse any kind of job; whatever you order I will fulfil, because I am your slave.’ ” (He again smiled that peculiar weak, kindly, guilty smile.) “ ‘Well, then,’ she says, ‘you will do it faithfully?⁠ ⁠… You understand,’ she says, ‘that your fate depends on it?’⁠—‘How could I help understanding that I can do something? If they have told tales about me⁠—well, anyone can tell tales about anybody⁠ ⁠… but I never in any way, I believe, have even had a thought against Your Honour⁠ ⁠…’ In a word, I buttered her up till my lady was quite softened.⁠ ⁠… ‘I shall think highly of you,’ she says.” (He kept silent a minute, then the smile again appeared on his face.) “I know very well how to talk to the likes of them! Formerly, when I used to pay for the right to