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

part, having been brought⁠—to the lowest depths of poverty and despair; but we are protected, as well as fed and supported, by that same basic strength of the Russian nation⁠—the peasantry.

Yes! Were it not that there is among Russia’s vast peasant population a deep religious consciousness of the brotherhood of all men, not only would these homeless people, having reached the last stages of despair, have long since destroyed the houses of the rich, in spite of any police force (there are and must be so few of them in country districts), but they would even have killed all who stood in their way. So that we ought not to be horrified or surprised when we hear or read of people being robbed, or killed that they may be robbed, but we should understand and remember that if such things happen as seldom as they do, we owe this to the unselfish help rendered by the peasants to this unfortunate tramping population.

Every day from ten to fifteen people come to our house to beg. Some among them are regular beggars, who for some reason have chosen that means of livelihood, and having clothed and shod themselves as best they might, and having made sacks to hold what they collect, have started out to tramp the country. Among them some are blind, and some have lost a leg or an arm; and sometimes, though rarely, there are women and children among them. But these are only a small part. The majority of the beggars that come now are passersby, without a beggar’s sack, mostly young, and not crippled. They are all in a most pitiable state, barefoot, half-naked, emaciated, and shivering with cold. You ask them, “Where are you going?” The answer is always the same: “To look for work”; or, “Have been looking for work, but found none, and am making my way home. There’s no work; they are shutting down everywhere.” Many of these people are returning from exile.

A few days ago I was barely awake when our servant, Ilyá Vasílyevitch, told me:

“There are five tramps waiting near the porch.”

“Take some money there is on the table, and give it them,” said I.

Ilyá Vasílyevitch took it, and, as is the custom, gave each of them five kopecks.338 About an hour passed. I went out into the porch. A dreadfully tattered little man with a sickly face, swollen eyelids, restless eyes, and boots all falling to pieces, began bowing, and held out a certificate to me.

“Have you received something?”

“Your Excellency, what am I to do with five kopecks?⁠ ⁠… Your Excellency, put yourself in my place! Please, your Excellency, look⁠ ⁠… please see!” and he shows me his clothing. “Where am I to go to, your Excellency?” (it is “Excellency” after every word, though his face expresses hatred). “What am I to do? Where am I to go?”

I tell him that I give to all alike. He continues to entreat, and demands that I should read his certificate. I refuse. He kneels down. I ask him to leave me.

“Very well! That means, it seems, that I must put an end to myself! That’s all that’s left me to do.⁠ ⁠… Give me something, if only a trifle!”

I give him twenty kopecks, and he goes away, evidently angry.

There are a great many such peculiarly insistent beggars, who feel they have a right to demand their share from the rich. They are literate for the most part, and some of them are even well-read persons on whom the Revolution has had an effect. These men, unlike the ordinary, old-fashioned beggars, look on the rich, not as on people who wish to save their souls by distributing alms, but as on highwaymen and robbers who suck the blood of the working classes. It often happens that a beggar of this sort does no work himself and carefully avoids work, and yet considers himself, in the name of the workers, not merely justified, but bound, to hate the robbers of the people⁠—that is to say, the rich⁠—and to hate them from the depths of his heart; and if, instead of demanding from them, he begs, that is only a pretence.

There are a great number of these men, many of them drunkards, of whom one feels inclined to say, “It’s their own fault”; but there are also a great many tramps of quite a different type: meek, humble, and very pathetic, and it is terrible to think of their position.

Here is a tall, good-looking man, with nothing on over his short, tattered jacket. His boots are bad and trodden down. He has a good, intelligent face. He takes off his cap and begs in the ordinary way. I give him something, and he thanks me. I ask him where he comes from and where he is going to.

“From Petersburg, home to our village in Toúla Government.”

I ask him, “Why on foot?”

“It’s a long story,” he answers, shrugging his shoulders.

I ask him to tell it me. He relates it with evident truthfulness.

“I had a good place in an office in Petersburg, and received thirty roubles339 a month. Lived very comfortably. I have read your books War and Peace and Anna Karénina,” says he, again smiling a particularly pleasant smile. “Then my folks at home got the idea of migrating to Siberia, to the Province of Tomsk.” They wrote to him asking whether he would agree to sell his share of land in the old place. He agreed. His people left, but the land allotted them in Siberia turned out worthless. They spent all they had, and came back. Being now landless, they are living in hired lodgings in their former village, and work for wages. It happened, just at the same time, that he lost his place in Petersburg. It was not his doing. The firm he was with became bankrupt, and dismissed its employees. “And just then, to tell the truth, I came across a seamstress.” He smiled again. “She