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

an interesting spectacle. I stopped, conscious of having acted ill, and I turned to go home.

And to think that these things are at the present moment being done to tens of thousands of men all over Russia, and have been done, and will long continue to be done, to the meek, wise, and saintly Russian people, who are so cruelly and treacherously deceived!

Traveller and Peasant The interior of a peasant hut. An old Traveller is sitting on a bench, reading a book. A Peasant, the master of the hut, just home from his work, sits down to supper and asks the Traveller to share it. The Traveller declines. The Peasant eats, and when he has finished, rises, says grace, and sits down beside the old man. Peasant What brings you?⁠ ⁠… Traveller Taking off his spectacles and putting down his book. There is no train till tomorrow. The station is crowded, so I asked your missis to let me stay the night with you, and she allowed it. Peasant That’s all right, you can stay. Traveller Thank you!⁠ ⁠… Well, and how are you living nowadays? Peasant Living? What’s our life like?⁠ ⁠… As bad as can be! Traveller How’s that? Peasant Why, because we’ve nothing to live on! Our life is so hard that if we wanted a worse one, we couldn’t get it.⁠ ⁠… You see, there are nine of us in family; all want to eat, and I have only got in four bushels of corn. Try and live on that! Whether one likes it or not, one has to go and work for wages⁠ ⁠… and when you look for a job, wages are down!⁠ ⁠… The rich do what they like with us. The people increase, but the land doesn’t, and taxes keep piling up! There’s rent, and the district tax, and the land tax, and the tax for bridges, and insurance, and police, and for the corn store⁠ ⁠… too many to count! And there are the priests and the landlords.⁠ ⁠… They all ride on our backs, except those who are too lazy! Traveller I thought the peasants were doing well nowadays. Peasant So well, that we go hungry for days at a time! Traveller The reason I thought so, was that they have taken to squandering so much money. Peasant Squandering what money? How strange you talk!⁠ ⁠… Here are people starving to death, and you talk of squandering money! Traveller But how is it? The papers say that 700 million roubles (and a million is a thousand thousands)⁠—700 million were spent by the peasants on vodka last year. Peasant Are we the only ones that drink? Just look at the priests.⁠ ⁠… Don’t they swill first-rate? And the gentlefolk aren’t behindhand! Traveller Still, that’s only a small part. The greater part stills falls to the peasants. Peasant What of that? Are we not to drink at all? Traveller No; what I mean is that if 700 millions were squandered on vodka in one year it shows that life can’t be so very hard.⁠ ⁠… 700 millions! It’s no joke⁠ ⁠… one can hardly imagine it! Peasant But how can one do without it? We didn’t start the custom, and it’s not for us to stop it.⁠ ⁠… There are the Church feasts, and weddings, and memorial feasts, and bargains to be wetted with a drink.⁠ ⁠… Whether one likes it or not, one can’t get on without it. It’s the custom! Traveller But there are people who never drink, and yet they manage to live! After all, there’s not much good in it. Peasant No good at all! Only evil! Traveller Then one ought not to drink. Peasant Well, anyhow, drink or no drink, we’ve nothing to live on! We’ve not enough land. If we had land we could at least live⁠ ⁠… but there’s none to be had. Traveller No land to be had? Why, isn’t there plenty of land? Wherever one looks, one sees land! Peasant There’s land, right enough, but it’s not ours. Your elbow’s not far from your mouth, but just you try to bite it! Traveller Not yours! Whose is it, then? Peasant Whose?⁠ ⁠… Whose, indeed! There’s that fat-bellied devil over there⁠ ⁠… he’s seized 5000 acres. He has no family, but he’s never satisfied, while we’ve had to give up keeping fowls⁠—there’s nowhere for them to run about! It’s nearly time for us to stop keeping cattle, too⁠ ⁠… we’ve no fodder for them; and if a calf, or maybe a horse, happens to stray into his field, we have to pay fines and give him our last farthing. Traveller What does he want all that land for? Peasant What does he want the land for? Why, of course, he sows and reaps and sells, and puts the money in the bank. Traveller How can he plough a stretch like that, and get his harvest in? Peasant You talk as if you were a child!⁠ ⁠… What’s he got money for, if not to hire labourers?⁠ ⁠… It’s they that do the ploughing and reaping. Traveller These labourers are some of you peasants, I expect? Peasant Some are from these parts, and some from elsewhere. Traveller Anyway, they are peasants? Peasant Of course they are!⁠ ⁠… the same as ourselves. Who but a peasant ever works? Of course they are peasants. Traveller And if the peasants did not go and work for him⁠ ⁠… ? Peasant Go or stay, he wouldn’t let us have it. If the land were to lie idle, he’d not part with it! Like the dog in the manger, that doesn’t eat the hay himself and won’t let others eat it! Traveller But how can he keep his land? I suppose it stretches over some three or four miles? How can he watch it all? Peasant How queer you talk! He himself lies on his back, and fattens his paunch; but he keeps watchmen! Traveller And those watchmen, I dare say, are also peasants? Peasant What else could they be? Of course they are! Traveller So that the peasants work the rich man’s land for him, and guard it for him from themselves? Peasant But how can one help it? Traveller Simply by not going to work for him, and not being his