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

For several minutes no explanation could be arrived at amidst the general tumult. A crowd of people had collected, everyone was shouting and talking, children and old women were crying. Akoulína lay unconscious.

At last the men⁠—the joiner and the steward⁠—who had run to the place, went up the ladder, and the joiner’s wife began telling for the twentieth time how she, “nothing doubting, went to fetch a dress, and just looked⁠—this wise⁠—and see⁠ ⁠… a man⁠ ⁠… and I look, and a cap is lying inside-out, close by. I look⁠ ⁠… the legs are swinging.⁠ ⁠… I went cold all over! Is it pleasant?⁠ ⁠… To think of a man hanging himself, and that I should be the one to see him!⁠ ⁠… How I came clattering down I myself don’t remember⁠ ⁠… it’s a miracle how God saved me! Really, the Lord has had mercy on me!⁠ ⁠… Is it a trifle?⁠ ⁠… such steepness and from such a height.⁠ ⁠… Why, I might have been killed!”

The men who had gone up had the same tale to tell. Polikéy, in his shirt and trousers, was hanging from a rafter by the rope which he had unfastened from the cradle. His cap, turned inside out, lay beside him, his coat and sheepskin were neatly folded, and lay close by. His feet touched the ground, but he no longer showed signs of life.

Akoulína regained consciousness, and again rushed to the ladder, but was held back.

“Mamma, Syómka’s tsoking!” the lisping little girl suddenly cried from their cubicle. Akoulína tore herself away, and ran to her room. The baby did not stir, and his little legs were not moving. Akoulína snatched him out, but he did not breathe or move. She threw him down on the bed, and, with arms akimbo, burst into such loud, ringing, terrible laughter that Mary, who at first had started laughing herself, covered her ears with her hands, and ran out into the passage crying. The crowd thronged into the cubicle, wailing and weeping. They carried out the little body and began rubbing it, but in vain. Akoulína tossed about on the bed, and laughed⁠—laughed so that all who heard her were frightened. Only now, seeing this motley crowd of men and women, old people and children, did one fully realize what a number, and what sort, of people lived in the serfs’ quarters. Everybody fussed and spoke; many wept, but nobody did anything. The joiner’s wife still found people who had not heard her tale about the way her tender feelings were shocked by the unexpected sight, and how God had saved her from falling down the ladder. An old man who had been a footman, with a woman’s jacket thrown over his shoulders, was relating how in the days of the old proprietor a woman drowned herself in the pond. The steward sent messengers to the priest and to the policeman, and appointed men to keep guard. Aksyúta, the maid from “up there,” kept gazing with staring eyes at the opening that led to the garret, and though she could not see anything, was unable to tear herself away and go back to her mistress. Agatha Miháylovna, who had been lady’s-maid to the former proprietress, was weeping and asking for some tea to soothe her nerves. Anna, the midwife, was laying out the little body on the table, with her practised, plump, oily hands. Other women stood in front of Akoulína, silently looking at her. The children, huddled together in a corner, kept glancing at their mother and bursting into howls; and then, growing silent for a moment, glanced again, and huddled still closer. Boys and men thronged round the porch, looking in at the door and the windows with frightened faces; and, unable to see or understand anything, asking one another what it was all about. One said the joiner had chopped off his wife’s foot with an axe. Another said that the laundress had borne triplets; a third, that the cook’s cat had gone mad and bitten the people. But the truth gradually spread, and at last it reached the proprietress. And apparently no one understood how to prepare her! That rough Egór blurted the facts straight out to her, and so upset the lady’s nerves that it was a long time before she could recover.

The crowd had already begun to quiet down; the joiner’s wife set the samovar to boil and made tea; and the outsiders⁠—not being invited⁠—thought it impolite to stay any longer. The boys began fighting outside the porch. Everybody now knew what had happened; and, crossing themselves, they began dispersing, when suddenly a cry was raised:

“The mistress! The mistress!”

And everybody crowded and pressed together to make way for her; but at the same time everybody wanted to see what she would do. The lady, pale and with tear-stained face, entered the passage, crossed the threshold, and went into Akoulína’s cubicle. A dozen heads close together gazed in at the door. One pregnant woman was pushed so that she gave a squeak, but made use of that very circumstance to appropriate to herself a front place.

And how could one help wishing to see the lady in Akoulína’s cubicle? It was just like the coloured lights at the end of a performance. It must be an important occasion, since they burnt the coloured fires; and so it must be an important occasion when the lady in her silk and lace entered Akoulína’s cubicle.

The lady came up and took Akoulína’s hand, but Akoulína snatched it away. The old domestic serfs shook their heads reprovingly.

“Akoulína!” said the lady. “You have your children⁠—have pity on yourself!”

Akoulína burst out laughing and got up.

“My children are all silver, all silver! I don’t keep any paper money,” she muttered very quickly. “I told Polikéy, ‘Take no notes,’ and there, now, they’ve buttered him, buttered him up with tar⁠—tar and soap, madam! Whatever rash you may have, it will pass at once⁠ ⁠…” and she laughed still louder.

The mistress turned round, and gave orders that the doctor’s