Part 14

“A-a!” said Theodot, malignantly. “Why this ain’t nothin’ at all,--you just listen to what’s coming! When this same she-goat had disappeared, me and the old woman plumb lost our heads. Well, now, thinks we, it’s bye-bye; there goes our good money; she sure will make a mouthful for some wolf. But, of course, we don’t reckon at all on the fact that it would be far better if she was to go to all the devils. Soon as day came we ran for the forest; we left nary a likely place untouched, I don’t think; we beat up the entire forest to the last twig,--she wasn’t nowheres, and that’s all there was to it! Gawd knows how I grieved; however I went to ploughing,--it was just ploughing time then. I took a bit of bread with me, wrapped up in a kerchief, laying it down near the edge of the field where I was working. Now, on another mound, there was one of our village lads ploughing,--suddenly, I hear him shouting something, pointing with his hand. I look around and just gasp: there was the she-goat! She had dragged out the little bundle, seizing it in her teeth; she had shaken it loose and was standing, jerking her beard, and eating the bread.... I dropped my plough as fast as I could and went for her. I go after her, and she goes away from me. I go after her, and she goes away from me,--she’d run a little ways, and stop, and munch the bread,--a lot she cared! And such a happy and a clever carcass she was,--she watched every move I made. I had my heart set on her, I sure wanted to catch her. I just could have smashed her to bits, it seems! She gobbled down the bread and went off; she’d turn around and give me a look, shaking her tail,--well, just making fun of me!”

“No use talking,--it’s a carefree creature!” said the old man.

“That’s just what I’m saying!” exclaimed Theodot, encouraged by the sympathy. “That’s just what I’m talking about,--that she downright ruined us! There hadn’t even a week passed, when everybody had it in for me: ‘Your goat,’ says they, ‘as good as lives amongst our grain.’ She trampled down a whole eighth of an acre of my own, tearing down all the ears of oats. Then one day a thunder-storm came up; the lightning started in flashing, and the rain poured down,--I looked and I see my white she-goat sailing along with all her might straight toward our place, bleating like she was scared out of her own voice--and then she pops straight into our doorway. I started off as fast as my legs would carry me after her; I got her into a tight corner, drew a cord that I used for a belt over her horns, and began letting her have it.... The thunder rumbles, the lightning flashes, but I keep on lambasting her, I keep on lambasting her! I must have beat her for more than an hour, without lying. Then I put her up on the brewing vat, tied her up with the rope girdle ... but who knows whether the girdle was rotted, or whether it was something else,--only when we look in the morning, the goat’s gone again! Then--would you believe it?--I was so vexed, that I just burst into tears!”

IV

Theodot’s tone had become so simple, so sincere, so filled with the tones of husbandry aggrieved, that it would never have entered anybody’s head that here was a murderer, confessing his sin. Then, too, he was listened to in a spirit of simplicity. Kiriushka was lying flat on his belly, his head covered with his great coat; his feet, in big bast sandals and thickly wrapped in foot cloths, were sticking out. Ivan, with his cap shoved down over his forehead, his hands tucked into his sleeves, was lying on his side, also without moving; as for his stern and serious silence, he maintained it because he deemed it beneath his dignity to be interested in fools. He was so little concerned, whether those before him were murderers or not, that he had even called out once:

“Time to sleep! Finish that gabbing to-morrow!”

As for Pashka and the old man, both half-reclining and biting little straws, they merely shook their heads and grinned occasionally, as if to say: “Well, Theodot sure has known his fill of trouble with that she-goat!” And Theodot, evidently deeming himself already vindicated by this sympathy for his ridiculous and hard situation, lost entirely his diffidence about digressions. And the high-school boy, gritting his teeth both from the wind and from the inner cold, would at times look about him wildly: Where was he, and what queer night was this? But it was still the same simple, familiar country night, of which there had been many. The field was dark, the corn-kiln stood out in a sharp triangle against the starry sky; through the underbrush, beyond which the stars flared up and fell, a wind was blowing; its cool breath, with the pleasant scent of the chaff, reached the face and hands, rustled in the straw, and again grew still, dying away.... The hounds--white balls sunk in the straw--were fast asleep.... And all the horror lay only in that it was late, that a small cluster of silver stars had risen high in the north-east, that the dark mass of the slumbrous garden was murmuring in the distance, dully, autumn-wise; that the eyes in the faces of those conversing were sparkling in the starlight.

“Yes, little brother of mine,” Theodot was saying, laughing over his own ridiculous and sad predicament, “nobody can’t say it weren’t a misfortune! At last they tell me, now, that a _moujik_ in the Prilepakh had driven my she-goat to his place. I start out to get her back; no help for it,--such seemed to be my lot. I come to the village; there’s nobody around, wherever I look,--everybody’s out in the fields. A lad is riding off for water; I ask him,--‘Where’s Bockhov’s house?’ ‘Why,’ says he ‘right there, where the old woman in the red petticoat is sitting under a bush.’ I walk up: ‘Is this Bochkov’s place?’ The old woman waves her hand at me, pointing to a little yard in the blazing sun....”

“Must have gone daft from old age,” put in Pashka, starting to laugh so pleasantly that the student looked around at him with amazement and fear, reflecting: “Why no,--it can’t be true; he must have told lies about himself!”

“She was gone daft,” confirmed Theodot. “Just kept on waving her hand. But I had already been hearing a hog grunting in the little yard. I open the door to a sty, a corner fenced off with plaited willow, where this same pig was kept. I see a big sow pulling a woman around; the woman’s thrown her weight upon it, holding it with both hands, pouring out of a pail upon it with the other. And the sow is all black from mud, lugging the woman, dragging her along,--the woman can’t manage her nohow, and her clothes is pulled up to her belly. It was both to sin and to grin! Soon as she saw me, she pulls down her skirt,--her legs, her hands was all in manure.... ‘What d’you want?’ ‘What do I want? I’m here on business. You drove my she-goat up here; you’re keeping strayed cattle, but ain’t giving out no notice of it.’ ‘We ain’t keeping any she-goat of yours,’ says she. ‘We let her go. We drove her into the owner’s place.’ And she laughs at something. ‘So-o,’ thinks I, ‘that means I’m in hot water again: well, just you wait!’ I went out and kept on; I had just gone past the next farm, had turned up a path through some flax, when a red-haired little fellow bobs up from somewheres right in my way. ‘Did you come for the goat?’ ‘For the goat,--but why?’ Suddenly I hear a woman yelling beyond the hut: ‘Where you gone to, Kuzka, damn your eyes!’ ‘Run quick,’ I says, ‘here’s your mother comin’ with some stinging nettles.’ And there she was, right on the spot; she sees him and runs: ‘Didn’t I tell you to look after the little one? But where did you go off to, you so-and-so?’ And then she pounces on me! ‘Where you from?’ ‘And what business of yours may that be now?’ ‘Oh, no, you tell me where you’re from!’ ‘I’m the man in the moon. What are you yelling about? I’m looking for my she-goat.’ ‘Oh, so it’s you, is it, damn your eyes, that don’t give any peace to the village with your goat!’ And suddenly I see a tall _moujik_ rushing toward me from the corn kiln,--without a cap, beltless, in boots. He ran on me at full speed. ‘Your goat?’ ‘Mine....’ He unwraps himself, swings back, and lets fly one in my ear.”

“Good work!” exclaimed the old man and Pashka in the same breath; as for the school-boy, he even let out a little squeal: this, then, was the most horrible part of all! But Theodot calmly pulled out the skirt of his short coat from under him, and calmly continued:

“Oh, yes, he warmed me up so that my head just begun to hum. I grab him by his hands, and ask him, what that was for? And by now people was running up.... Right in front of everybody, I ask them to be witnesses of this here matter; again I ask what it was my goat had gone and done? It turns out that she had knocked a child off its feet, had broken its head, making it bleed; had chewn up a shirt, and had trampled some rye. Very well,--complain to the court about it; there I’ll be called to account and you won’t be let off either. ‘Now,’ says I, ‘you ain’t a-goin’ to get a durn thing off me!’ I put on my cap and went as fast as I could to the owner’s yard. I grew a trifle cheerier: the goat, thinks I, won’t get away from me now; and you can’t sue me now,--you should have waited before you started in fighting with me. I draw near and I see, on a pony with a clipped tail, a lad in a satin cap, his legs and arms bare,--a jockey, they calls it. The horse is playful, and he flicks it with a little whip. ‘How do you do, now; allow me to ask,--has your grace got my she-goat?’ ‘And who may you be?’ ‘I’m the owner of that there goat.’ ‘Well, now, my daddy ordered it to be driven in.’ Things are going along fine; I go on farther and meet a beggar, from whom I lay in some bread,--for the hounds in the owner’s yard are pretty big. I enter the yard and see a four-horse carriage standing on the gravelled drive near the house,--the horses are well-fed, spirited. There’s a flunky at the grand entrance, his beard parted in two. A grown-up young lady walks out in a hat trimmed with ribbons, her face all covered up with muslin. ‘Dasha!’ she yells to the maid in the house, ‘ask the master to come as soon as possible. He’s at the riding-ground.’ I start for the riding-ground. There I see the owner himself standing, in a uniform frock with a green collar; he wears a medal and carries his cap in his hand; his bald head simply blazes in the sun, his belly is all in creases, and he’s all red himself. And there’s a little lad perched up on the roof, his arm plunged in under the roofing, looking for something,--must be for starlings, thinks I to myself. But no,--he was taken up with sparrows. The owner looks on, yelling: ‘Catch them, catch, them, the sons of bitches!’ And the little boy catches the young sparrows, pulls them out, and knocks them against the ground. The owner catches sight of me: ‘What do you want?’ ‘Why, now,’ says I, ‘your gardener caught my she-goat at the strawberries. Allow me to take her away, so’s I may kill her.’ ‘This isn’t the first time, now,’ says he, ‘I shall fine you two roubles.’ ‘I agree with you,’ I says, ‘I’m at fault, and I admit it. What hard luck!’ I says, ‘I always have two wenches watching it; but yesterday, as though for spite,--the deuce knows whether they ate too many raw mushrooms, or what it was,--they was rolling around, spewing up; and as for my wife, she also didn’t watch out, to tell the truth,--she was lying in the barn, yelling with all her might,--her hand had all swollen up....’ A man’s got to excuse himself somehow. I tell him all about what a baneful creature my she-goat is, how I was given one in the ear for her,--he laughs and grows good-natured. ‘No matter how I chase her,’ says I, ‘I can’t catch her nohow; and I so wanted to ask your grace for a little gunpowder and to borrow a gun from the truck gardener, so’s to shoot her with it. Well, of course, he softened a lot, allowed me to take her, and I done for her on the spot.”

“You done for her?” asked the old man.

“Absolutely,” said Theodot. “‘Well, take it,’ says he, ‘only watch out, don’t mix it up with mine.’ ‘That won’t happen, nohow,’ says I, ‘I’d know her amongst a thousand.’ We went out to the fold, taking Pakhomka the shepherd along with us. I give one look,--and at once notice her behind the sheep; she was standing, looking at me sharply for some reason, eyeing me askance. Me and Pakhomka got the sheep into a corner as tight as we could, and I began to walk up to her. I make two steps,--she gives one jump over a ram! And again she stands, looking. Again I start for her.... And then, she points her head with its horns toward the ground and makes one dash for the sheep, and they all just rush away from her,--they parted like water! Then I got mad. Says I to Pakhomka: ‘You just drive her up as easy as you can, the whilst I climb up on the shed, where it’s darker, and grab her by the horns.’ And it’s awful how much manure there was in that yard, right up to the very sheds in some places. I climbed up on the shed, laid down, grabbed a beam as hard as I could, whilst Pakhomka kept on scaring her on toward me. I waited and waited, until finally she came under the very shed,--and then I made a grab for her horns! And then she starts in bleating. I even got scared! I fall off the shed; I dig my feet in, holding on to the horns, while she dashes with me all over the yard, drags me up to a pit; then she squirms out, scraping me with her horn over the beard, over the nose,--till everything turned black.... When I look up, she’s already up on the roof: she’d jumped up on the pile of manure, from the manure on to the roof, from the roof into the tall grass.... We could hear the dogs getting noisy in the yard; the other dogs picked it up, raising a racket in the village. We, of course, jumped out after her. But she’s flying along with all her might, and straight for the last hut: there was a new hut being built there; the windows was still boarded up and there was no entry yet, while there was just bare poles laid aslant for the roof. So she clambered up them up to the very ridge--a power like a whirlwind must have carried her up there! We ran up as fast as we could; as for her, she must have felt her death coming,--she was bleating for all she was worth, all scared. I picked up a hefty brick, took aim,--and caught her so neat that she just jumped up in the air, and then started with a swish down the roof! We ran up, but she was just lying there, her tongue jerking in the dust.... She’d take a breath and then rattle, take a breath and rattle again,--till the dust rose up near her nose. And her tongue was long, just like a snake.... Well, of course, after half an hour or so, she had croaked.”

V

There was a silence. Theodot raised himself up to a sitting posture, and, bending down, spreading his hands, began slowly to unwind the cords with which his old, constantly falling foot-cloths were tied up. And a minute later the school-boy with horror and repulsion saw that which he had seen so many times before with perfect calmness: a _moujik’s_ bare foot, dead-white, enormous, flat, with a monstrously grown great toe lying crookedly on top of the others, and the thin, hairy skin, which Theodot, having unwound and dropped the foot-cloth, began to scratch hard in a delectable fury, tearing it with his nails, as strong as those of a beast. Having scratched his fill and wriggled his toes, he took the foot-cloth with both hands,--it was hardened, bent, and blackened at the heel and sole, just as though it had been rubbed with black wax,--and shook it out, spreading an unbearable stench upon the fresh breeze. “Yes, murder means nothing to him!” reflected the student, shivering. “That is the foot of a real murderer! How horribly he killed this beautiful she-goat! And the man that he killed with a whet-stone ... he must have been sharpening a scythe ... and must have struck him straight in the temple, killing him on the stop.... But Pashka! ... Pashka! ... How could he tell about it so gaily and with such enjoyment, too! ‘It came right out at his back!’”

Suddenly, without raising his head, Ivan began speaking morosely:

“Fools are beaten even at the altar. Why, Postnii, it wouldn’t be half-enough to beat you to death for this here she-goat. What did you go and kill her for? You should have sold it. What sort of a husbandman do you call yourself after that, you durn ninny, when you don’t understand that a _moujik_ can’t get along without live-stock? It should be valued. If I only had a she-goat, now....”

He didn’t finish his sentence, was silent for a while, then suddenly grinned.

“There was an affair in Stanova, now; well that really was something.... It wasn’t worse than your goat, now; a land-owner by the name of Mussin was keeping a wild bull. This bull just wouldn’t let anybody pass; he gored two young cowherds to death. They’d fasten him up with a chain, but still he’d tear loose and go off. Just the very same way, too, like your goat, he’d trample the peasants’ grain; but no one dared to chase him off: they were afraid, and would walk a mile around him. Well, of course, they sawed off his horns, gelded him.... He quieted down a bit. Only the _moujiks_ scored up everything against him. When these here riots began, here’s what they did: they caught him in the field, tied him up with ropes, threw him off his feet.... They didn’t beat him at all, but just took and stripped him to the last hair. So, all bare, he dashed into the owner’s yard,--he ran in at full speed, fell all in a heap, and died right on the spot,--losing all his blood.”

“How?” asked the school-boy; “they took his hide off? While he was alive?”

“No, while he was cooked,” mumbled Ivan. “Oh you Moscow city feller!”

Everybody started laughing; while Pashka, laughing more than all of them, quickly picked up the conversation.

“Well, there’s a lot of murderers for you! And you was saying, just like that, that we ought to be treated kindly. No brother, guess you can’t get along here without us marching soldiers! When after the Seniyaks we was stationed at Kursk, now, we was also restoring order in a certain settlement. The _moujiks_ had gotten it into their head to ruinate an owner.... And the owner, they do say, was a good sort, at that.... Well, the whole settlement went for him, and, naturally, the women tagged along. The watchmen came out to meet the villagers. The peasants went for them with stakes and scythes. The guards fired one volley, and then, of course, took to their heels: what the devil sort of strength can you expect from those dunderheads!--but one bullet did get a baby in a woman’s arms. The woman was left alive, but he, of course, didn’t even let out a squeak,--just gave one jerk with his little legs. So, good Lord!” said Pashka, tossing his head from laughter and seating himself more comfortably, “what only didn’t the _moujiks_ do! They broke everything to smash and smithereens; chased this same owner into a corner, trampling him down, while this _moujik_, the father of this here child, ran up to that very spot with this same baby; he was all gasping and crazed from grief, and he starts in to beat the owner over his head with this dead baby! Grabbed him by the little legs and starts in lambasting the owner. And then the others fall upon him, and, of course, all for one and one for all, they finished him. We were rushed up, but he was already beginning to rot when we got there.”

“Well, what are you laughing about, you fool!” the school-boy wanted to cry out, suddenly feeling a ferocious hatred for Pashka’s laughter, for Pashka’s voice. But here Kiriushka suddenly stirred, and, raising his head, said with childish naïveness:

“But that which took place when Kochergin the land-owner was bein’ wrecked,--_that_ was something awful! I was then living with him as one of his shepherds.... So all their mirrors was thrown into the pond.... Afterwards, people from the village would come over for a swim, and would always be pulling them out of the slime.... You’d dive, stand up,--and then your foot would just slide over a mirror.... And this, now ... how do you call it ... fortopianner was dragged into the rye.... We used to come ...” Kiriushka raised himself up, and, laughing, leant back on his elbows; “we would come and there it would be standing.... You’d take a club, and start banging upon it,--upon its keys, that is.... From one end to the other.... Why, it would play better nor any accordeon!”

Everybody laughed once more. Theodot had adjusted his foot-gear, had again criss-crossed his foot-cloths accurately with the cords, and, having set himself to rights, had resumed his former position. And, having waited for a moment of silence, he began to finish his story in measured tones:

“Yes, he gave me one on the ear, and yet put in a suit as well.... For all these, now, losses and damages, for the forage, that is. He was called Andrei Bogdanov,--Andrei Ivannov Bogdanov. A tall _moujik_, he was,--red-faced, thin, always evil-tempered, always drunk. Well, now, so he started a suit. It was he that had warmed my ear, and he it was that was suing me to boot. Here the busiest time of the year came along, with nary a breathing space; but I’ve got to be hiking off fifteen miles away.... I guess that’s just what the Lord must have punished him for....”

As he gazed at the straw, stifling his cough and wiping his flat lips with the palm of his hand, Theodot’s speech was becoming more and more sombre, more and more expressive. Having said “The Lord must have punished him,” he was silent for a while, and then went on:

“The suit, of course, came to nothing. A peace was patched up between us. We was both at fault, that is. But only he wasn’t content with that. He made up with me, but right after he walked away, drank till he was blind-drunk, started threatening to kill me. He yells before everybody: ‘Wait,’ says he, ‘wait, I ain’t drunk yet, now; but when I’ve drunk enough I’ll settle your hash.’ I wanted to get away from the mixup,--it made me feel sick in the stomach.... Then he took to coming to our village: he’d come under my windows, drunk as drunk could be, and would start in to curse me out, saying things about my mother. And I have a grown-up daughter....”

“That weren’t right,” sympathetically grunted out the old man, and yawned.

“Oh, it was a grand story!” said Theodot. “Well, now, so he comes on an evening before the Kiriki. I hear him making a hubbub in the street. I got up, without saying a word, went out into the yard, sat down on a harrow, and started sharpening a scythe. But I was taken with such a rage that I saw red before my eyes. Then I hear him walking up to the hut, raising a rumpus. Must be wanting to break the panes, thinks I to myself. But no; he just made a lot of noise and was already going somewhere else. That would have been the end of it perhaps,--if only Ollka, my daughter, hadn’t jumped out ... And then she starts in yelling, with a voice not her own: ‘Help, father, Andrushka is beating me!’ I dashed out with the scythe whet-stone in my hand,--and, all in a passion, hit him once right over his head! He just hit the ground. Folks ran up, started dousing him with water ... but he lies there, and by now he’s only hiccoughing.... Maybe something might have been done then.... Like putting a cold pack on him, or something like that.... He ought to have been carried off to a hospital as fast as possible, and a tenner should have been handed to the doctor.... But where was a tenner to be gotten? Well, so he hiccoughed and he hiccoughed, and he passed away toward night. He threshed about and threshed about; then turned over on his back, stretched himself out, and there he was, all ready. And the folks were standing around, looking, all silent. And the lights was already lit by that time.”