Resurrection Leo Tolstoy (ebook reader for pc .txt) 📖

you are an inquisitive gentleman, now I come to look at you. He wants to know everything. Did I not tell you bread and kvass and then we’ll have soup. A woman brought us some fish, and that’s what the soup is made of, and after that, potatoes.”

“Nothing more?”

“What more do you want? We’ll also have a little milk,” said the old woman, looking towards the door. The door stood open, and the passage outside was full of people⁠—boys, girls, women with babies⁠—thronged together to look at the strange gentleman who wanted to see the peasants’ food. The old woman seemed to pride herself on the way she behaved with a gentleman.

“Yes, it’s a miserable life, ours; that goes without saying, sir,” said the old man. “What are you doing there?” he shouted to those in the passage. “Well, goodbye,” said Nekhlúdoff, feeling ashamed and uneasy, though unable to account for the feeling.

“Thank you kindly for having looked us up,” said the old man.

The people in the passage pressed closer together to let Nekhlúdoff pass, and he went out and continued his way up the street.

Two barefooted boys followed him out of the passage the elder in a shirt that had once been white, the other in a worn and faded pink one. Nekhlúdoff looked back at them.

“And where are you going now?” asked the boy with the white shirt. Nekhlúdoff answered: “To Matróna Khárina. Do you know her?” The boy with the pink shirt began laughing at something; but the elder asked, seriously:

“What Matróna is that? Is she old?”

“Yes, she is old.”

“Oh⁠—oh,” he drawled; “that one; she’s at the other end of the village; we’ll show you. Yes, Fédka, we’ll go with him. Shall we?”

“Yes, but the horses?”

“They’ll be all right, I dare say.”

Fédka agreed, and all three went up the street.

V

Nekhlúdoff felt more at ease with the boys than with the grown-up people, and he began talking to them as they went along. The little one with the pink shirt stopped laughing, and spoke as sensibly and as exactly as the elder one.

“Can you tell me who are the poorest people you have got here?” asked Nekhlúdoff.

“The poorest? Michael is poor, Simon Makároff, and Martha, she is very poor.”

“And Anísia, she is still poorer; she’s not even got a cow. They go begging,” said little Fédka.

“She’s not got a cow, but they are only three persons, and Martha’s family are five,” objected the elder boy.

“But the other’s a widow,” the pink boy said, standing up for Anísia.

“You say Anísia is a widow, and Martha is no better than a widow,” said the elder boy; “she’s also no husband.”

“And where is her husband?” Nekhlúdoff asked.

“Feeding vermin in prison,” said the elder boy, using this expression, common among the peasants.

“A year ago he cut down two birch trees in the landlord’s forest,” the little pink boy hurried to say, “so he was locked up; now he’s sitting the sixth month there, and the wife goes begging. There are three children and a sick grandmother,” he went on with his detailed account.

“And where does she live?” Nekhlúdoff asked.

“In this very house,” answered the boy, pointing to a hut, in front of which, on the footpath along which Nekhlúdoff was walking, a tiny, flaxen-headed infant stood balancing himself with difficulty on his rickety legs.

“Váska! Where’s the little scamp got to?” shouted a woman, with a dirty grey blouse, and a frightened look, as she ran out of the house, and, rushing forward, seized the baby before Nekhlúdoff came up to it, and carried it in, just as if she were afraid that Nekhlúdoff would hurt her child.

This was the woman whose husband was imprisoned for Nekhlúdoff’s birch trees.

“Well, and this Matróna, is she also poor?” Nekhlúdoff asked, as they came up to Matróna’s house.

“She poor? No. Why, she sells spirits,” the thin, pink little boy answered decidedly.

When they reached the house Nekhlúdoff left the boys outside and went through the passage into the hut. The hut was fourteen feet long. The bed that stood behind the big stove was not long enough for a tall person to stretch out on. “And on this very bed,” Nekhlúdoff thought, “Katúsha bore her baby and lay ill afterwards.” The greater part of the hut was taken up by a loom, on which the old woman and her eldest granddaughter were arranging the warp when Nekhlúdoff came in, striking his forehead against the low doorway. Two other grandchildren came rushing in after Nekhlúdoff, and stopped, holding on to the lintels of the door.

“Whom do you want?” asked the old woman, crossly. She was in a bad temper because she could not manage to get the warp right, and, besides, carrying on an illicit trade in spirits, she was always afraid when any stranger came in.

“I am⁠—the owner of the neighbouring estates, and should like to speak to you.”

“Dear me; why, it’s you, my honey; and I, fool, thought it was just some passerby. Dear me, you⁠—it’s you, my precious,” said the old woman, with simulated tenderness in her voice.

“I should like to speak to you alone,” said Nekhlúdoff, with a glance towards the door, where the children were standing, and behind them a woman holding a wasted, pale baby, with a sickly smile on its face, who had a little cap made of different bits of stuff on its head.

“What are you staring at? I’ll give it you. Just hand me my crutch,” the old woman shouted to those at the door.

“Shut the door, will you!” The children went away, and the woman closed the door.

“And I was thinking, who’s that? And it’s ‘the master’ himself. My jewel, my treasure. Just think,” said the old woman, “where he has deigned to come. Sit down here, your honour,” she said, wiping the seat with her apron. “And I was thinking what devil is it coming in, and it’s your honour, ‘the master’ himself, the good gentleman, our benefactor. Forgive me, old fool that