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

and he pointed to his pipe. “What is it?⁠ ⁠… Good-for-nothing rubbish! The soul’s the chief thing!” repeated he. “What you say is true,” and his face grew still kindlier and more serious.

I wished to continue the conversation, but a lump rose in my throat (I have grown very weak in the matter of tears), and I could not speak. With a joyful, tender feeling I took leave of him, swallowing my tears, and I went away.

Yes, how can one help being joyful, living amid such people? How can one help expecting from such people all that is most excellent?

From the Diary

I am again staying with my friend, Tchertkóff, in the Moscow Government, and am visiting him now for the same reason that once caused us to meet on the border of the Orlóf Government, and that brought me to the Moscow Government a year ago. The reason is that Tchertkóff is allowed to live anywhere in the whole world, except in Toúla Government. So I travel to different ends of it to see him.

Before eight o’clock I go out for my usual walk. It is a hot day. At first I go along the hard clay road, past the acacia bushes already preparing to crack their pods and shed their seeds; then past the yellowing rye-field, with its still fresh and lovely cornflowers, and come out into a black fallow field, now almost all ploughed up. To the right an old man, in rough peasant-boots, ploughs with a sohá342 and a poor, skinny horse; and I hear an angry old voice shout: “Gee-up!” and, from time to time, “Now, you devil!” and again, “Gee-up, devil!” I want to speak with him; but when I pass his furrow, he is at the other end of the field. I go on. There is another ploughman further on. This one I shall probably meet when he reaches the road. If so, I’ll speak to him, if there is a chance. And we do meet just as he reaches the road.

He ploughs with a proper plough, harnessed to a big roan horse, and is a well-built young lad, well clad, and wearing good boots; and he answers my greeting of “God aid you!” pleasantly.

The plough does not cut into the hard, beaten track that crosses the field, and he lifts it over and halts.

“You find the plough better than a sohá?”

“Why, certainly⁠ ⁠… much easier!”

“Have you had it long?”

“Not long⁠—and it nearly got stolen.⁠ ⁠…”

“But you got it back?”

“Yes! One of our own villagers had it.”

“Well, and did you have the law of him?”

“Why, naturally!”

“But why prosecute, if you got the plough back?”

“Why, you see, he’s a thief!”

“What then? The man will go to prison, and learn to steal worse!”

He looks at me seriously and attentively, evidently neither agreeing nor contradicting this, to him, new idea.

He has a fresh, healthy, intelligent face, with hair just appearing on his chin and upper lip, and with intelligent grey eyes.

He leaves the plough, evidently wishing to have a rest, and inclined for a talk. I take the plough-handles, and touch the perspiring, well-fed, full-grown mare. She presses her weight into her collar, and I take a few steps. But I do not manage the plough, the share jumps out of the furrow, and I stop the horse.

“No, you can’t do it.”

“I have only spoilt your furrow.”

“That doesn’t matter⁠—I’ll put it right!”

He backs his horse, to plough the part I have missed, but does not go on ploughing.

“It is hot in the sun.⁠ ⁠… Let’s go and sit under the bushes,” says he, pointing to a little wood just across the field.

We go into the shade of the young birches. He sits down on the ground, and I stop in front of him.

“What village are you from?”

“From Botvínino.”

“Is that far?”

“There it is, shimmering on the hill,” says he, pointing.

“Why are you ploughing so far from home?”

“This is not my land: it belongs to a peasant here. I have hired myself out to him.”

“Hired yourself out for the whole summer?”

“No⁠—to plough this ground twice, and sow it, all properly.”

“Has he much land, then?”

“Yes, he sows about fifteen bushels of seed.”

“Does he! And is that horse your own? It’s a good horse.”

“Yes, it’s not a bad mare,” he answers, with quiet pride.

The mare really is, in build, size, and condition, such as a peasant rarely possesses.

“I expect you are in service somewhere, and do carting?”

“No, I live at home. I’m my own master!”

“What, so young?”

“Yes! I was left fatherless at seven. My brother works at a Moscow factory. At first my sister helped; she also worked at a factory. But since I was fourteen I’ve had no help in all my affairs, and have worked and earned,” says he, with calm consciousness of his dignity.

“Are you married?”

“No.”

“Then, who does your housework?”

“Why, mother!”

“And you have a cow?”

“Two cows.”

“Have you, really?⁠ ⁠… And how old are you?” I ask.

“Eighteen,” he replies, with a slight smile, understanding that it interests me to see that so young a fellow has been able to manage so well. This, evidently, pleases him.

“How young you still are!” I say. “And will you have to go as a soldier?”

“Of course⁠ ⁠… be conscripted!” says he, with the calm expression with which people speak of old age, death, and in general of things it is useless to argue about, because they are unavoidable.

As always happens now when one speaks to peasants, our talk touches on the land, and, describing his life, he says he has not enough land, and that if he did not do wage-labour, sometimes with and sometimes without his horse, he would not have anything to live on. But he says this with merry, pleased and proud self-satisfaction; and again remarks that he was left alone, master of the house, when he was fourteen, and has earned everything himself.

“And do you drink vodka?”

He evidently does not like to say that he does, and still does not wish to tell