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

“But could not one be sent from a two-man family?⁠ ⁠… Egór Miháylovitch, this is an affront!” he said. Then, after a pause, he went on, almost with tears:

“It seems that my brother died a soldier, and now they are taking my boy! How have I deserved such a blow?” and he was ready to fall on his knees.

“Well, well, go away!” said Egór Miháylovitch. “Nothing can be done. It’s the law. Keep an eye on Elijah: you’ll have to answer for him!”

Doútlof went home, thoughtfully tapping the ruts with his stick as he walked.

Early next morning a big-boned bay gelding⁠—for some reason called Drum⁠—harnessed to a small cart (the steward himself used to drive in that cart), stood at the porch of the serfs’ quarters. Annie, Polikéy’s eldest daughter, barefooted in spite of the falling sleet and the cold wind, and evidently frightened, stood holding the reins at arm’s length, and with her other hand held a faded, yellowy-green jacket that was thrown over her head. This jacket served the family as blanket, cloak, hood, carpet, overcoat for Polikéy, and many other things besides. Polikéy’s cubicle was all in a bustle. The dim light of a rainy morning was just peeping in at the window, which was broken here and there, and mended with paper. Akoulína went away from her cooking by the oven, and left her children⁠—the youngest of whom were still in bed⁠—shivering because the jacket that served them as a blanket had been taken away and only replaced by the shawl off their mother’s head.

Akoulína was busy getting her husband ready for his journey. His shirt was clean, but his boots, which were gaping open, gave her much trouble. She had taken off her thick worsted stockings (her only pair) and given them to her husband, and had managed to cut out a pair of soles from a saddlecloth (that had been carelessly left about in the stable and brought home by Polikéy two days before) in such a way that they should stop the holes in his boots and keep his feet dry.

Polikéy sat, feet and all on the bed, untwisting his girdle so that it should not look like a dirty rope. The lisping, cross little girl, wrapped in the sheepskin (which though it covered her head was trailing round her feet) had been despatched to ask Nikíta to lend them a cap. The bustle was increased by the other serfs, who came to ask Polikéy to get different things for them in town. One wanted needles; another, tea; a third, some tobacco; and another, some oil to burn before his icon. The joiner’s wife⁠—who to conciliate Polikéy had already had time to boil her samovar, and bring him a mug full of liquid which she called tea⁠—wanted some sugar.

Though Nikíta refused to lend a cap, and they had to mend their own⁠—i.e., to push in the bits of wadding that hung out of the rents and to sew them up with the surgical needle; though at first the boots with the saddlecloth soles would not go onto his feet; though Annie, chilled through, nearly let Drum get away, and Mary, in the long sheepskin, had to take her place, and then Mary had to take off the sheepskin, and Akoulína had to hold the horse herself⁠—it all ended by Polikéy successfully getting all the warm family garments onto himself, leaving only the jacket and a pair of slippers behind. When ready, he got into the little cart. He wrapped the sheepskin coat round him, shook up the bag of hay at the bottom of the cart, again wrapped himself round, took the reins, wrapped the coat still closer round him in the way that very respectable men do, and started.

His little boy Mike, running out into the porch, begged to have a ride; the lisping Mary also begged that she might “have a lide,” and was “not cold even without the theepthkin;” so Polikéy stopped Drum and smiled his weak smile, while Akoulína put the children into the cart and, bending towards him, asked him in a whisper to remember his oath, and not to drink on the way.

Polikéy took the children through the village as far as the smithy, put them down, wrapped himself up and put his cap straight again, and drove off at a slow, sedate trot, his cheeks shaking at every jolt and his feet knocking against the sides of the cart. Mary and Mike, with their bare feet, rushed down the slippery hill to the house at such a rate, and yelling so, that a stray dog from the village looked up at them and scurried home with its tail between its legs, which made Polikéy’s heirs yell ten times louder.

It was abominable weather: the wind was cutting, and something between rain and snow, and now and then fine hail, beat on Polikéy’s face and on his bare hands which held the reins⁠—and over which he kept drawing the sleeves of his coat⁠—and on the leather of the horse-collar, and on the old head of Drum, who set back his ears and half closed his eyes.

Then suddenly the rain stopped, and it brightened up for a moment. The bluish snow-clouds stood out clear, and the sun seemed to come out, but uncertainly and cheerlessly, like Polikéy’s own smile. Nevertheless, Polikéy was deep in pleasant thoughts. He whom they threatened to exile and enlist, whom only those who were too lazy did not scold and beat, who was always shoved into the worst places, he was now driving to fetch a sum of money, and a large sum, and his mistress trusted him, and he was driving in the steward’s cart behind Drum⁠—with whom the lady herself had driven out⁠—just as if he were some innkeeper, with leather collar-strap and reins instead of ropes. And Polikéy settled himself straighter, pushed in the bits of wadding hanging out of his