The Village quotes

The Gipsy had lured his lord-and-master’s mistress away from him. Durnovo gave orders that The Gipsy should be taken out into the fields and placed on a hillock. Then he himself went out there with a pack of hounds and shouted “Tallyho! Go for him!”

The Gipsy, who was sitting there in a state of stupor, started to run. But there is no use in running away from wolfhounds.

The grandfather of the Krasoffs, for some reason or other, was given a letter of enfranchisement. He went off with his family to the town—and soon distinguished himself by becoming a famous thief.

I shall bring you back. But I shall be just. I’m a Russian man, brother.” When in an evil mood, he would say curtly, with eyes blazing: “Pigs! There is not a juster man in the world than I am!”

“Pigs, all right⁠—but that’s not me,” the peasant would think, averting his eyes from that gaze.

And he would mumble submissively: “Oh, Lord, don’t we know it?” “Yes, you know it, but you have forgotten. I don’t want your property gratis, but bear this in mind: I won’t give you a scrap of what’s mine! There’s that brother of mine:

He frightened the horse, and Tikhon Ilitch gritted his teeth with rage; the rascal ought to be degraded to the ranks of the workingmen! The midday sun scorched; a hot breeze was blowing; the cloudless sky became slate-coloured.

And, as he meditated upon the brevity and senselessness of life, Tikhon Ilitch turned away with ever-increasing irritation from the dust which whirled along the road

, and with ever-increasing anxiety cast sidelong glances at the spindling, prematurely drying stalks of the grain.

This did not, however, interfere in the slightest degree with his business, and, according to his own account, it did not interfere with his health.

“Vodka polishes the blood,”

he was wont to remark; and, truth to tell, to all appearances he became more robust than ever. Not infrequently now he called his life that of a galley-slave—the hangman’s noose—a gilded cage.

Now here are you, I see, priding yourself on being a Russian, while I, brother, okh! am very far from being a Slavophil! It’s not proper to jabber much, but one thing I will say: for God’s sake, don’t brag of being a Russian!

We’re an uncivilized people and an extremely unreliable one⁠—neither candle for God nor oven-fork for the devil.

But we will discuss this as time goes on.”

“But with us, Kuzma Ilitch,” he said when Kuzma had finished and, removing his eyeglasses, dropped his eyes, “but with us there is only one song.” And he twisted his lips unpleasantly and bitterly:

“The only song we know is: ‘What’s the price of pig’s bristles?’ ”

And

Tikhon Ilitch’s hands shook all day long as that mumbling answer recurred to his mind. Everybody, everybody, thought she had poisoned him!

Fortunately, the secret remained a secret. The Sacrament was administered to Rodka before he died.

“Even monks take this.” “But perhaps I oughtn’t,” he said aloud. However, he lacked firmness. Through his mind, against his will, flashed the old saw:

“Drink and you’ll die, and don’t drink and you’ll die just the same.”

So he poured out a glassful and tossed it off, poured out another and gulped that down, also. And, munching at a thick cracknel, he sat down at the table.

… had kept on hoping that somehow or other he would manage to tear himself free for an evening, carry a rug and samovar with him, sit on the grass in the cool air, in the greenery—and he simply had not been able to get away.

The days flowed past like water between the fingers, and before one had time to gather one’s wits together, one’s fiftieth year had knocked at the door, and that meant the end of everything, and it didn’t seem so very long ago that one was running about without any breeches, did it?

Just as if it had been yesterday!

Makarka surveyed the blind man, who was standing erect, firmly planted with brows elevated, and asked him: “Man of God, what ought we to do, think you? Strangle him or shoot him?”

“Shooting’s surer,” replied the blind man gravely. “At any rate, that’s the most direct road.”

Not even children would have saved him. And he would not have known the children, and the children would have found him as much of a stranger as he had been to all those, alive or dead, who had been nearly connected with him.

There were as many people on the earth as there are stars in the sky; but life is short, people come into being, grow up, and die so rapidly, are so slightly acquainted with one another, and so quickly forget all that has happened to them, that it is enough to drive a man crazy if he once sets about considering the matter attentively!

Only quite recently he had said to himself: “My life ought to be written up. …” But what was there to write about? Nothing. Nothing at all, or nothing of any consequence. Why, he himself could recall scarcely anything of that life.

Almost all his life long Kuzma had dreamed of writing, of obtaining an education.

Verses did not count. He had dallied with verses as a mere child. He longed to narrate how he had come to naught;

Kuzma fervently set forth his remarks and thoughts on the brink of death, his grief over his iniquitous life, “so prematurely cut short.” But the bazaar mercilessly threw cold water on it.

“Well, you are a queer one, Lord forgive us!” it pronounced, merrily and insolently, through Tikhon’s mouth.

“ ‘Prematurely’! That potbellied devil ought to have been done for long before! Well, and how did you know what he was thinking about? They cut his throat, didn’t they?”

And Kuzma’s entire youth was spent in just such affairs! He thought and professed one thing—and said and did something entirely different. Aspiring to write and reckoning up the sum-total of his life, Kuzma shook his head mournfully:

“A genuine Russian trait, sir! The sowing was half peas, half thistles.”

It seemed as if he had been merry in his youth, kind, tender, quick to understand, eager to learn. But was it really so? He was not Tikhon, of course.

“Well, and isn’t Sukhonosy the populace? isn’t it Russia?

All Russia is nothing but a village: get that firmly fixed in your noddle!

Look about you: is this a town, in your opinion? The flocks jam the streets every evening—they kick up such a dust that you can’t see your next-door neighbour. But you call it a ‘town’!

he suffered like a puppy in a bed of straw when he took up a pen. And Balashkin’s deathbed prophecy brought him to his senses; ’twas not for him to write stories! So the first thought which flashed through his mind was, to write

“The Sum-Total,” a stern, harsh epitaph on himself and⁠—on Russia.

At one cottage—it had a broken window and a wheel on the rotten roof—a long-legged, ailing peasant sat on a bench.

People look handsomer in their coffins than he looked in life.

He resembled the poet Nekrasoff. Over his shoulders, above a long and soiled shirt of hemp crash, was thrown an old short sheepskin coat; his stick-like legs stood in felt boots;

His boots were huge, his body lean and somehow wooden. His eyes, beneath large, sleepy lids, were like those of a hawk, with a golden ring around the iris.

When he lowered his lids he was a lisping idiot; when he raised them one felt a certain fear of him.

“Do you live in the garden?” asked Kuzma.

“But where would we get the potatoes? You can’t buy any from a peasant, any more than from the devil, brother!

You couldn’t wheedle even snow out of a peasant in the middle of winter.

”

But, according to his own statement, he had devilish bad luck. Nothing worth while ever came his way. Well, and he didn’t care about playing jackstraws—taking chances. Everyone was on the watch to condemn a man, of course.

“ ’Tis well known that the tongue can break bones, though it has none itself,”

Syery was wont to remark. “Do you first place the job in my hand, and then you can jabber.”

But Syery calmly and practically shouted after him: “

A drunkard will come to his senses, brother, but a fool never will.

”

Thanks to lack of cleanliness and the cold, he had grown extremely thin and grey since the autumn. His hands had grown thinner, and the skin on them had become more delicate, shiny, and covered with certain tiny purplish spots.

“The old grey horse has gone down a steep hill,” he said to himself.

It was a grey morning. Beneath the crusted grey snow the village also had become quite grey in hue by St. Philip’s Day. The frozen household linen hung like grey boards from the rafters under the roofs of the sheds.

Ivanushka slowly shook his head.

“I can’t raise it now, brother. It drags earthward.”

And with a dim smile he made an effort to lift his dreadful face, all overgrown with hair, and his tiny screwed-up eyes.

“As you like,” she said, her voice trembling. “ ’Tis your affair. Break it off—God help you—”

Kuzma opened his eyes very wide and shouted: “Stop! have you lost your senses? Do you think I wish you ill?”

The Bride turned round and halted. “And isn’t it wishing me ill?” she said hotly and roughly, her cheeks flushing and her eyes blazing. “What is to become of me, according to your idea?

“Remember this, brother,” he said, his cheekbones reddening. “Remember this: your life and mine are finished. And no candles on earth will save us. Do you hear? We are—Durnovka folk.

We’re neither candle for God nor oven-fork for the devil.

” And, unable to find words in his agitation, he fell silent.

“ ‘Kings and beggars!’ ” repeated Tikhon Ilitch with ecstatic melancholy, and shook his head. “

Life is over, dear brother!

I had, you understand, a dumb cook; I gave her, the stupid thing, a kerchief from foreign parts; and what does she do but take and wear it completely to rags, wrong side out! Do you understand? Out of stupidity and greed.

“Okh!” said Kuzma. “How you have tortured me! ‘Disgraced’! ‘we’ve spent it’—

Are you cheaper than the pig?

”

“

Whether I’m cheaper or not, what is done is done⁠—the dead are not brought back from the cemetery,

” firmly and simply replied the Bride; and, sighing, she folded the warm, freshly-ironed curtain neatly. “Will you have your dinner immediately?” Her face was calm.