Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow Irina Reyfman (snow like ashes .TXT) 📖

the servants, entered my rooms. They had been allocated to me by my old master. I was not at home. I will not repeat what she said while in my rooms by way of mockery, but when I returned, I was informed that she had ordered me to be assigned a corner on the ground floor, together with unmarried domestics where my bed, the trunk with clothing and linen, were already placed. Everything else she left in my rooms, where she installed her maids.

“What took place in my soul on hearing this is easier to feel than describe, if anyone could. But in order not to detain you with perhaps excessive storytelling: my mistress, having assumed the management of the house and not finding in me a fitness for service, designated me a lackey and dressed me in livery. The slightest imagined infringement in my work incurred slaps in the face, cudgels, and cat-o’-nine-tails. O my good sir, it would be better not to have been born! How many times did I resent my deceased benefactor for giving me a sensitive soul. Would that I had grown up in ignorance, unaware that as a man I was the equal of everyone else. Long, long ago, would I have deprived myself of my hateful life, if an interdiction by the Supreme Judge of all did not stop me. I resolved myself to endure my fate patiently. And I endured not only bodily wounds but also the wounds she inflicted on my soul. But I came close to violating my pledge and taking away the lamentable remnants of my life after there occurred a new wound to my soul.

“My mistress’s nephew, a lad of eighteen years, a sergeant of the Guards, brought up in the fashion of Moscow fops, fell in love with his aunt’s chambermaid and, having prevailed because of her shrewd ardor, made her a mother. Resolute though he was in his amorous affairs, he became somewhat embarrassed by the outcome since his auntie, when she learned about this, banned her chambermaid from her presence and gently scolded her nephew. In the manner of merciful masters, she intended to punish her former favorite and to give her in marriage to a stable hand. But since they were all married, and a pregnant woman needed a husband for the honor of the house, she could find no one worse than me among all her servants. And of the ‘special favor’ my mistress informed me in the presence of her husband. I could no longer endure the abuse. ‘Inhuman woman! You have the power to torment me and to mutilate my body: you say that the laws give you this right over us. This I scarcely believe. What I do know for sure is that nobody can be forced to enter into marriage.’ These words effected beastly silence from her. Turning to her spouse then: ‘Ungrateful son of a humane father, you forget his last wishes, forget also your declaration; but do not drive to despair a nobler soul than your own, beware!’ I could say no more than that because, on my mistress’s order, I was taken to the stables and mercilessly whipped with a cat-o’-nine-tails. The next day I could hardly get out of bed because of the beating; and again I was brought before my mistress. ‘I will forgive you your impudence of yesterday,’ she said. ‘Marry my Mavrushka, she entreats you, and I, fond of her despite her transgression, want to do this for her.’ ‘Everyone heard my response yesterday,’ I told her. ‘This is the only answer. I shall only add that I will lodge a complaint against you to the authorities since you have no right to force me to do this.’ ‘Well, it is time for you to be conscripted,’ my mistress shrieked furiously…. A traveler who has lost his way in a terrible desert would feel less joy on recovering it than I had when I heard these words. ‘Conscripted,’ she repeated, and the next day this was carried out.—Foolish woman! She thought that becoming a soldier would be a punishment, as it is for peasants. For me this was joy, and as soon as they shaved my brow, I felt reborn. My strength was renewed. Reason and spirit began to work again. O! hope, sweet sensation of the unfortunate, abide with me.” A heavy tear, but not laden with grief and despair, fell from his eyes. I clasped him to my heart. New joy lit up his face. “Not everything is lost; you give strength to my soul,” he told me, “against sorrow, giving me the sense that my calamity will not be endless….”

I went across from this unfortunate man to a crowd in which I saw three men shackled with the heaviest chains. “Cause for surprise,” I said to myself looking at these captives.—“Now they are dejected, weary, timid, and not only do not they want to be soldiers, but it takes the greatest cruelty to put them in this position. But once they come to grips with performing their difficult calling, they become vigorous, enterprising and even despise their former state.” I asked the man nearby who, to judge by his clothes, looked like a government official steward: “Surely, it was out of fear for their escape that they were bound in such heavy chains?” “Your guess is correct. They belonged to a landowner who needed money for a new carriage, and to obtain it he sold them to state peasants as prospective recruits.”

I: “My friend, you are mistaken, state peasants cannot buy their own brethren.”

He: “It is not done in the form of sale. The owner of these unfortunate men, taking money by agreement, sets them free. They are presumed to be following their own wishes to register as state peasants in the district that paid the money for them, and the district, following a general arrangement, enrolls them as soldiers. They are now being transported, together with their manumission