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

assistant should come with mustard poultices. “Bring some cold water,” she said, and began looking for water herself; but, seeing the dead baby, with Anna the midwife beside it, the lady turned away, and everybody saw how she hid her face in her handkerchief and began to cry; while Anna (it was a pity the lady could not see her⁠—she would have appreciated it, and it was all done for her sake) covered the baby with a piece of linen cloth, put his arms right with her plump, deft hands, shook her head, pouted, drooped her eyelids, and sighed with so much feeling that everybody could see how excellent a heart she had. But the lady did not see it; she could not see anything. She burst out sobbing, and went into hysterics.

Holding her up under the arms, they led her out into the passage and took her home. “That’s all the good she’s done!” thought many, and again began to disperse.

Akoulína went on laughing and talking nonsense. She was taken into another room and bled, and plastered over with mustard poultices, and ice was put on her head; but she did not come to her senses, and did not cry, but laughed, and kept doing and saying such things that the kind people who attended on her could not help laughing too.

XII

The holiday was not a merry one at Pokróvsk. Though the day was beautiful, the people did not go out to amuse themselves, no girls sang in the street, the factory hands who had come home from town for the day did not play on their concertinas and balalaikas, and had no games with the girls. Everybody sat about in corners, and if they spoke, did so in a low voice, as if something evil were there and could hear them.

It was not quite so bad in the daytime, but when the twilight fell and the dogs began to howl, and when, to make matters worse, a wind arose and whistled down the chimneys, such fear seized all the inhabitants of the place that those who had tapers lit them in front of their icons. He who happened to be alone in his cubicle went to ask the neighbours’ permission to stay the night with them, to be less lonely; and he whose business should have taken him into one of the outhouses did not go, but pitilessly left the cattle without fodder that night. And the holy water, of which everyone kept some in a little bottle to charm away anything evil, was all used up during the evening.

That night many even heard something walking about with heavy steps up in the garret, and the blacksmith saw a dragon fly straight towards it. The children and the madwoman had been removed from Polikéy’s cubicle. Only the little dead body lay there, and two old women sat and watched, while a third, a pilgrim, was reading psalms, actuated by her own zeal, not for the sake of the baby, but in a vague way because of all the misfortunes that had happened. The mistress had willed it so.

The pilgrim and the other two women themselves heard how, as soon as they finished reading a portion of the Psalter, the rafters above would tremble, and somebody would move. Then they would read, “May God arise,” and all would be quiet again.

The joiner’s wife invited a friend; and, not sleeping all night, with her aid drank up all the tea she had procured for the whole week. They, too, heard how the beams cracked above, and something like sacks tumbled down. The presence of the peasant watchmen kept up the courage of the domestic serfs somewhat, or the latter would have died of fear that night. The peasants lay on some hay in the passage, and afterwards declared that they also had heard wonderful things up in the garret, though at the time they were conversing very peacefully among themselves about the recruiting, chewing crusts of bread, scratching themselves, and so filling the passage with the peculiar smell characteristic of peasants that the joiner’s wife, happening to pass by, spat and called them “peasant-brood.”

However that might have been, the suicide was still dangling in the garret, and it was as if that night the evil spirit himself had overshadowed the serfs’ quarters with his huge wing, showing his power, and coming closer to these people than he had ever done before. At any rate, they all felt so. I do not know if they were right, and I even think they were quite mistaken. I think that if some bold fellow had taken a candle or a lantern that terrible evening, and, crossing himself, or even not crossing himself, had gone up to the garret⁠—slowly dispelling with the light of the candle the horror of the night before him, lighting up the rafters, the cobweb-covered chimney, the tippets left behind by the joiner’s wife⁠—till he came to Polikéy, and if, conquering his fears, he had raised the lantern to the level of the head, he would have beheld the familiar, spare figure: the feet standing on the ground (the rope had stretched), the body leaning lifelessly to one side, no cross visible under the open shirt, the head drooping on the breast; the kind face, with open, sightless eyes and the meek, guilty smile; and a severe calmness and silence over all. Really, the joiner’s wife, crouching in a corner of her bed with dishevelled hair and frightened eyes, and telling how she heard sacks falling, is far more terrible and frightful than Polikéy, though his cross is off and lies on a rafter.

“Up there”⁠—i.e., in the house of the proprietress⁠—reigned the same horror as in the serfs’ quarters. Her bedroom smelt of eau de cologne and medicine. Dounyásha was melting yellow wax and making an ointment. What the ointment was for I don’t know; but it was always made when the lady was ill.