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Ebook has 2042 lines and 80163 words, and 41 pages

Orl?ff and His Wife Konov?loff The Khan and His Son The Exorcism Men with Pasts The Insolent Man V?renka ?lesoff Comrades

Date of first publication.

ORL?FF AND HIS WIFE

Almost every Saturday, just before the All-Night Vigil Service, from two windows in the cellar of merchant Pet?nnikoff's old and filthy house, opening on the narrow court-yard encumbered with various utensils, and built up with wooden servants'-quarters ricketty with age, broke forth the vehement shrieks of a woman:

The evening service, composed of Vespers and Matins, which is used on Saturdays, and on the Eves of most other Feast-days. Sunday begins with sunset on Saturday, in the Holy Catholic Orthodox Church of the East, and the appointed evening service is obligatory before the Liturgy can be celebrated on Sunday morning.--Translator.

"Stop! Stop, you drunken devil!" the woman cried in a low contralto voice.

"Let go!" replied a man's tenor voice.

"I won't, I won't. I'll give it to you, you monster!"

"You li-ie! You will let me go!"

"You may kill me--but I won't!"

"You? You li-ie, you heretic!"

"Heavens! He has murdered me ... he-eavens!"

"Will you let go?!"

"Beat away, you wild beast, beat me to death!"

"You can wait.... I won't do it all at once!"

At the first words of this dialogue, S?nka Tch?zhik, the apprentice of house-painter Sutchk?ff, who ground paint whole days together in one of the small sheds in the court-yard, flew headlong thence, his little eyes, black as those of a mouse, sparkling, yelling at the top of his voice:

"Shoemaker Orl?ff and his wife are fighting! My eye! what a lively time they're having!"

Tch?zhik, who was passionately fond of all possible sorts of events, rushed to the windows of the Orl?ffs' lodgings, flung himself on the ground on his stomach, and hanging down his shaggy, saucy head, with its bold, thin face streaked with ochre and reddish-brown paint, he gazed down with eager eyes into the dark, damp hole, which reeked of mould, shoemakers' wax and musty leather. There, at the bottom of it, two figures were jerking about in a fury, screaming hoarsely, groaning and cursing.

"You'll kill me...." warned the woman, with a sigh.

"N-ne-ever m-mind!"--her husband soothed her confidently, and with concentrated venom.

Dull, heavy blows on some soft object resounded, sighs, piercing screams, the strained groaning of a man who is moving about a heavy weight.

"Oh my! I-is-n't he just giving it to her with the last!" said Tch?zhik with a lisp, illustrating the course of events in the cellar, while the audience which had gathered around him--tailors, messenger of the courts Levtch?nko, Kislyak?ff the accordeon-player, and others who were fond of gratuitous entertainments--kept asking S?nka, pulling, in their impatience, at his legs and little breeches all impregnated with greasy paints:

"Well? What's going on now? What's he doing to her?"

"He's sitting astride of her, and banging her snout against the floor," reported S?nka, curling up voluptuously with the impressions which he was experiencing.

The spectators bent over also, to the Orl?ffs' windows, being seized with a burning desire to see all the details of the fight for themselves; and although they had long known the ways which Gr?sha Orl?ff employed in his war with his wife, still they expressed surprise:

Gr?sha and Gr?shka are the diminutives of Grig?ry.--Translator.

"Akh, the devil! Has he smashed her up?"

"Her nose is all bloody ... and he keeps on banking her!" reported S?nka, choking with delight.

"Akh, Lord my God!" cried the women.--"Akh, the tormenting-monster!"

The men judged more objectively.

"Without fail, he'll beat her to death!" said they. And the accordeon-player announced in the tone of a seer:

"Remember my words--he'll disembowel her with a knife! One of these days he'll get tired of cutting up in this fashion, and he'll put an end to the music at one blow!"

"He's done!" reported S?nka, springing up from the ground, and bounding away like a ball from the windows, to one side, to a nook where he took up another post of observation, being aware that Gr?sha Orl?ff would immediately emerge into the court-yard.

The spectators rapidly dispersed, as they did not care to fall under the eye of the savage shoemaker; now that the battle was over, he had lost all interest in their eyes, and he was decidedly dangerous, to boot.

And generally, there was not a living soul in the courtyard except S?nka, when Orl?ff made his appearance from his cellar. Breathing heavily, in a torn shirt, with his hair rumpled all over his head, with scratches on his perspiring and excited face, he scrutinized the court-yard with a sidelong glance, with eyes suffused with blood, and clasping his hands behind his back, he walked slowly to an old carrier's sledge, which lay with runners upward, against the wall of the wood-shed. Sometimes he whistled valiantly as he did so, and stared about in all directions exactly as though he had the intention of challenging the entire population of the Pet?nnikoff house to a fight. Then he seated himself on the runners of the sledge, wiped the blood and sweat from his face with his shirt-sleeve, and fell into a fatigued attitude, gazing dully at the wall of the house, which was dirty with peeling stucco and decorated with motley-hued stripes of paint,--as Sutchk?f's painters, on their return from work, had a habit of cleaning their brushes against that part of the wall.

Orl?ff was about thirty years of age. His bronzed, nervous face, with delicate features, was adorned with a small, dark mustache, which sharply shaded his full, red lips. His eyebrows almost met above his large, cartilaginous nose; from beneath them gazed black eyes which always blazed uneasily. His curly hair, tangled in front, fell behind over a sinewy, light-brown neck. Of medium stature, and somewhat round-shouldered from his work, muscular and ardent, he sat for a long time on the sledge, in a sort of benumbed condition, and surveyed the paint-bedaubed wall, breathing deeply with his healthy, swarthy breast.

The sun had already set, but it was stifling in the courtyard; it smelled of oil-paints, tar, sour cabbage, and something rotten. From all the windows in both stories of the house which opened on the court-yard, poured songs and scolding; from time to time someone's intoxicated countenance inspected Orl?ff for a minute, being thrust forth from behind a window-jamb and withdrawn with a laugh.

The painters made their appearance from their work; as they passed Orl?ff they cast furtive glances at him, exchanging winks among themselves, and filling the courtyard with the lively dialect of Kostrom?, they made ready to go out, some to the bath, some to the pot-house. From above, from the second story, tailors crept out into the court--a half-clad, consumptive and bow-legged lot of men--and began to make fun of the Kostrom? painters for their mode of speech, which rattled about like peas. The whole court was filled with noise, with daring, lively laughter, with jests.... Orl?ff sat in his corner and maintained silence, not even casting a glance at anyone. No one approached him, and no one could make up his mind to ridicule him, for everyone knew that now he was--a raging wild beast.

He sat there, the prey to a dull and heavy wrath, which oppressed his breast, made breathing difficult, and his nostrils quivered rapaciously from time to time while his lips curled in a snarl, laying bare two rows of large, strong, yellow teeth. Within him something dark and formless was springing up, red, turbid spots swam before his eyes, grief and a thirst for v?dka sucked at his entrails. He knew that he would feel better when he had had a drink, but it was still daylight, and it mortified him to go to the dram-shop in such a tattered and disreputable condition through the street where everybody knew him, Grig?ry Orl?ff.

He knew his own value, and did not wish to go out as a general laughing-stock, but neither could he go home to wash and dress himself. There, on the floor, lay his wife whom he had unmercifully beaten, and now she was repulsive to him in every way.

She was groaning there, and he felt that she was a martyr, and that she was right, so far as he was concerned--he knew that. He knew, also, that she was really in the right, and he was to blame, but this still further augmented his hatred toward her, because, along with this consciousness a dark, evil feeling was seething in his soul, and it was more powerful than the consciousness. Everything within him was heavy and confused, and, without any exertion of his will, he gave himself over to the weight of his inward sensations, unable to disentangle them, and knowing that nothing but half a bottle of v?dka would afford him relief.

Now Kislyak?ff the accordeon-player comes along. He is clad in a sleeveless cotton-velvet jacket, over a red silk shirt, with voluminous trousers tucked into dandified boots. Under his arm is his accordeon in a green bag, the ends of his small black mustache are twisted into arrows, his cap is set dashingly on one side, and his whole countenance is beaming with audacity and jollity. Orl?ff loves him for his audacity, for his playing, and for his merry character, and envies him his easy, care-free life.

"Congratulations, Gr?sha, on your vi-ic-to-ory, And on your well-scra-a-atched cheek!"

See footnote, p. 5.

Orl?ff did not fly into a rage with him for this joke, although he had already heard it fifty times, and besides, the accordeon-player did not say it out of malice, but simply because he was fond of joking.

"What now, brother! Had another Plevna?"--asked Kislyak?ff, halting for a minute in front of the shoemaker.

"Ekh, Gr?sha, you're a ripe melon! You ought to go where the road for all of us lies.... You and I might have a bite together....'

"I'm coming soon...." said Orl?ff, without raising his head.

"I'll wait and suffer for you...."

And before long, Orl?ff went off after him.

Then, from the cellar emerged a small, plump woman, clinging to the wall as she went. Her head wad closely enveloped in a kerchief, and from the aperture over the face, only one eye, and a bit of the cheek and forehead peeped out. She walked, staggering, across the court, and seated herself on the same spot where her husband had been sitting not long before. Her appearance surprised no one--they had got used to it, and everybody knew that there she would sit until Gr?sha, intoxicated and in a repentant mood, should make his appearance from the dram-shop. She came out into the court, because it was suffocating in the cellar, and for the purpose of leading drunken Gr?sha down the stairs. The staircase was half-decayed, and steep; Gr?sha had tumbled down it one day, and had sprained his wrist, so that he had not worked for a fortnight, and, during that time, they had pawned nearly all their chattels to feed themselves.

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