Part 22

"Oh, go to the devil with your old justice!" shouted Gratschev furiously, and sprang up again. "Be just, that's easy for the well fed, d'you hear? Now, good-bye."

He went quickly from the shop and in the doorway, for some reason, took off his cap. Ilya sprang from behind the counter after him, but already Gratschev was away down the street, holding his cap in his hand, and shaking it excitedly.

"Pavel!" cried Ilya. "Stop!"

He did not stop, nor turn round once, but turned into a side street, and disappeared.

Ilya turned slowly back and felt his face burn with the words of his friend as though he had looked into a hot oven.

"How angry he was!" said Gavrik.

Ilya smiled.

"Whose throat did he want to cut?" asked the boy, and came up to the counter. He held his hands behind his back, his head thrown up, and his coarse face was red with excitement.

"His wife," said Ilya.

Gavrik was silent for a moment, then he wrinkled his forehead and said softly and thoughtfully to his master:

"There was a woman near us poisoned her husband last Christmas with arsenic, because he was always drinking."

"It does happen," said Lunev slowly, thinking of Pavel.

"But this man, will he really kill her?"

"Go away now, Gavrik."

The boy turned round and went to the door murmuring: "Marry! O Lord!"

The dusk of twilight filled the streets and lights appeared in the windows opposite.

"It's time to shut up," said Gavrik quietly.

Ilya looked at the lighted windows. Below they were decked with flowers and above with white curtains. Between the flowers, golden frames could be seen on the walls within. When the windows were opened, sounds of song and guitar and loud laughter poured into the street. There was singing and music and laughter in this house almost every evening. Lunev knew that a man, Gromov, lived there, of the district court of justice, a fat, red-cheeked man, with a big, black moustache. His wife was stout, too, fair-haired, with little friendly blue eyes; she went proudly along the street like the queen in a fairy tale, but if she was talking to any one, she smiled all the time. Gromov had an unmarried sister, a tall, brown-skinned and black-haired girl, a crowd of young officials courted her; they all assembled at Gromov's almost every evening and laughed and sang.

Gromov's cook bought thread of Ilya, complained of her employers, and said that they fed their servants badly and were always behindhand with their wages, and Lunev thought:

"There--there are people who live well."

"Really it is time to shut up," persisted Gavrik.

"Shut up then."

The boy closed the door and the shop grew dark; there was a noise as the key turned in the lock.

"Like a prison," thought Ilya.

The insulting words of his friend about his well fed condition stabbed his heart like splinters. As he sat by the samovar he thought angrily of Pavel, but did not believe he could murder Vyera.

"It was no good trying to help them, hang them; they don't know how to live, they spoil one another," he thought crossly.

Gavrik drank noisily out of his saucer and shuffled his feet under the table.

"Has he killed her or not?" he asked his master, suddenly.

Lunev looked at him moodily and said:

"Drink your tea, and go to bed."

The samovar boiled and bubbled as though it would jump off the table. From the courtyard of a neighbouring house an angry cry resounded. "Nifont! Ni--if--ont."

Suddenly a dark figure appeared at the window, and a trembling, timid voice asked:

"Does Ilya Jakovlevitch live here?"

"Yes, he does," cried Gavrik, sprang up and flew to the door of the courtyard so quickly that Ilya had no time to say anything.

"It's sure to be she," he said in a loud whisper, holding the latch of the door.

"Who?" asked Ilya, involuntarily lowering his voice.

"Why--she--he wanted to kill."

He pushed open the door and the thin small figure of a woman appeared, wearing a cotton dress and a small kerchief on her head. She supported herself by the doorpost with one hand and with the other pulled at the ends of her kerchief. She stood sideways, as though ready to go away again at once.

"Come in," said Lunev roughly; he looked at her and did not recognise her. She started at the sound of his voice, then lifted her head with a smile on the pale small face.

"Masha!" cried Ilya, and sprang up. She laughed softly, shut the door fast behind her and came towards him.

"You didn't know me--you didn't know me a bit," she said and stood in the middle of the room.

"God! Yes. I can recognise you now. But--how--you've changed!"

Ilya took her hand with exaggerated politeness, and led her to the table, bowed, looked at her face and did not know how to say in what way she had changed. She was incredibly thin and walked as though her feet gave under her.

"Where have you come from? Are you tired? Ah--you--how you look!"--he murmured, settled her carefully in a chair and looked steadily at her.

"See how he treats me," she said, and looked at Ilya with a smile. His heart contracted painfully. Now that the lamplight fell on her, he saw her face plainly. She leant back in the chair, with her thin hands in her lap, bent her head sideways, and her flat chest heaved in shallow rapid breathing. She looked as though made of skin and bone; through the cotton stuff of her dress showed the bony shoulders, elbows and knees, and her face was terrible in its thinness. Over the temples, and the cheek-bones and chin, the bluish skin was tight drawn, the mouth was half open, the thin lips did not cover the teeth, and the expression of pain and fear stared from the long narrow face. The eyes looked dull and dead.

"Have you been ill?" asked Ilya.

"N--no," she answered slowly. "I'm quite well--he has made me like this."

"Your husband?"

"Yes--my husband."

Her slow, drawling speech came like groans, the uncovered teeth gave her a fish-like, dead look--it seemed as though the dead might smile as she smiled now and then.

Gavrik stood beside her and looked at her with lips compressed and fear in his eyes.

"Go to bed!" said Lunev to him.

The lad went into the shop, moved about a little there--then his head appeared again in the doorway. Masha sat motionless, only her eyes moved and wandered from one thing to another. Lunev poured her out some tea, looked at her, but asked her no questions.

"Ye--es--he torments me so," she said. Her lips trembled and her eyes closed for a moment; when she opened them again two big, heavy tears rolled down from under the lashes.

"Don't cry," said Ilya, turning away.

"Drink your tea--and tell me all about it--then it will be easier."

"I'm afraid--he'll come," she said, and shook her head.

"We'll turn him out."

"He's strong," Masha warned him.

"Have you run away?"

"Yes--it's the fourth time--when I can't bear it any more, I run away--before I meant to drown myself--but he caught me--and beat me and hurt me so." Her eyes grew unnaturally big from the fear her memories roused, and her lower jaw trembled. She hung her head and said in a whisper:

"He always hurts my feet."

"Ah," cried Ilya. "What's the matter with you? Haven't you a tongue? Tell the police--say--he tortures me! He can be punished for that; put in prison."

"But--he's one of the judges," said Masha, hopelessly.

"Ehrenov?--a judge? What do you mean?"

"I know. A little while ago, he was on the bench for two weeks--judging. He came back angry and hungry. He pinched my breast with the tongs and twisted it and turned it like a rag--look!"

She unbuttoned her dress with trembling fingers and showed the small withered breast, all covered with dark patches, as though it had been gnawed.

"Don't!" said Ilya gloomily. It made him sick to see the tortured, lacerated body--he could not believe that it was Masha, the friend of his childhood, once so gay, who sat before him. She bared her shoulder and said in a toneless voice:

"See how my shoulder is knocked about! Everything he can, all my body is pinched and hair torn out."

"But why?"

"He's a beast. He says, 'You don't love me,' and he pinches me."

"Perhaps--before he married you, there was some one else?"

"How could there be? I saw only you and Jakov--no one ever touched me. Yes, and now I hate all that. It hurts me. I hate it. I'm always sick."

"Don't--don't--Masha," said Ilya gently. She was silent, sat once more as though turned to stone, her breast still bare. Ilya looked from behind the samovar again at her thin bruised body and said: "Do up your dress!"

"I don't mind you," she answered mechanically, and began to button her blouse with shaking fingers. All was still. Then the sound of loud sobbing came from the shop. Ilya got up and went to the door and closed it, saying crossly:

"Be quiet--Gavrushka--go to sleep!"

"Is that the boy?" asked Masha.

"Yes."

"Crying?"

"Yes."

"Is he frightened?"

"No. I think--he's sorry."

"For what?"

"For you."

"Ah--the boy!" said Masha, indifferently; but her lifeless face did not move. Then she began to drink her tea, but her hands shook so that the saucer rattled against her teeth. Ilya looked on and wondered--was he sorry for Masha--or not? But his heart was heavy, and he thought of her husband with hatred.

"What will you do?" he asked after a long pause.

"I don't know," she answered with a sigh. "What can I do? I'll rest--till they catch me again."

"You ought to complain to the police," said Lunev, firmly. "Why should he torment you? Who has any right to torment any one like that?"

"He did the same to his first wife," said Masha. "He tied her to the bed by her hair--and pinched her--just the same--and once I was asleep and suddenly I felt a pain and woke and screamed--he'd burnt me with a lighted match."

Lunev sprang up and said fiercely and loudly that the very next morning she should go to the police and show her bruises and demand to have her husband condemned. She listened to him, shifting unceasingly to and fro, looked at him in terror, and said:

"Don't shout--don't shout, please! They'll hear you."

His words only distressed her. He soon perceived this little girl, once so cheerful and gay, had been beaten and crushed till all human spirit was tortured out of her.

"Very well," he said, and sat down again. "I'll see to it. I'll find a way. You'll stay here, Mashutka--d'you hear?"

"Yes. I hear," she answered softly, and looked round the room.

"You can have my bed, and I'll go into the shop--but to-morrow."

"I'll lie down at once, I think. I'm tired." He folded back the coverlet from the bed. She fell on it and tried to cover herself with the bedclothes, but could not manage it, and said with a dull smile:

"How silly I am. I might be drunk."

Ilya drew the coverlet over her, arranged the pillows, and was going away, when she said anxiously:

"Don't go. Stay a little. I'm so frightened alone--there's something haunts me." He sat down by the bed, looked once at her pale face, framed in its curls, and turned away. All at once he was full of shame that she should lie there, hardly alive. He remembered Jakov's entreaties, and Matiza's account of Masha's life, and he hung his head.

"And his father beats Jasha, they say. Matiza says, 'What a life!'" she said.

"Such fathers," said Lunev between his teeth, interrupting her soft, lifeless speech. "Such fathers--ought to go to penal servitude--your father and Petrusha Filimonov."

"No, my father is weak--he isn't wicked."

"If you can't look after your children you've no business to have any."

From the house opposite came the music of two voices singing together, and the words of the song drifted through the open window into Ilya's room. A strong, deep bass sang fiercely:

"My heart is disenchanted."

"There. I shall go to sleep," murmured Masha. "How nice it is--so peaceful--and the singing--they sing well."

"Oh, yes--they sing,", said Lunev smiling, grimly. "Though the skin is torn off one, the others can shout."

"It will not trust again," sang the tenor voice, the clear, round tones ringing through the quiet night lightly and freely up into the sky. Lunev got up and shut the window crossly; the song was unendurable, it tormented him. The noise of the window-frame made Masha start. She opened her eyes, raised her head in terror and asked: "Who's there?"

"I. I was shutting the window."

"For Heaven's sake--are you going?"

"No, no--don't be afraid."

She turned on her pillow and went to sleep again. Ilya's least movement, or the noise of footsteps in the street, disturbed her. She opened her eyes at once and cried in her sleep.

"Coming--oh--I'm coming."

Or she stretched out her hand to Ilya and asked: "Is that a knock at the door?" While he tried to sit still, and looked out of the window which he had opened again, Ilya pondered how he could help Masha, and determined grimly not to let her go till the matter was in the hands of the police.

"I must work it through Kirik."

"Please, please--go on!" through the windows came the sound of lively appeals and applause from Gromov's house. Masha groaned in her sleep, but the music began again.

"A pair of bay horses, and early away."

Lunev shook his head despairingly. The singing and outcry and laughter disturbed him. He propped his elbows on the window-ledge and stared at the lighted windows opposite, with wrath and fierce resentment, and thought how good it would be to cross the street and hurl a paving stone through into the room; or to have a gun and send a charge of shot among these cheerful people. The shot would come whizzing in--he imagined the terrified bleeding faces, the confusion and outcry, and smiled with an evil joy in his heart. But the words of the song crept involuntarily into his ears, he repeated them to himself, and suddenly grasped with amazement, that these happy people were singing of the burial of a mistress. This surprised him; he began to listen more attentively and thought:

"Why do they sing that? What sort of pleasure can there be in such a song? See, what a thing to think of--the fools! A funeral--such a funeral! And here--ten steps away lies a living, suffering human being."

"Bravo! Bravo!" came from over the street.

Lunev smiled, looked first at Masha, and then at the street; it seemed to him ridiculous that men should find amusement in singing of the burial of a light-o'-love.

"Vassily--Vassilitch," murmured Masha. "I won't. O God!"

She threw herself about in bed as if she were burning, threw the coverlet on the floor, stretched her arms out, and stared in front of her. Her mouth was half open, she rattled in her throat. Lunev bent quickly over her, he was afraid she was dying. Then, relieved by hearing her breathe, he covered her up again, crawled back to the window, leaned his face against the bars and looked over at Gromov's house. There they were still singing, now one voice, now two, now several in chorus. Music was followed by laughter. Past the windows flitted ladies dressed in white or pink or blue. He listened to the music and marvelled how these men could sing long-drawn, melancholy songs of the Volga and of funerals and of desert lands, and laugh at the end of every song as though it were all nothing, as if they had sung of indifferent things. Is it possible that they find sorrow amusing? But every time that Masha attracted his attention, he looked at her stupidly and wondered what was to become of her. Suppose Tatiana came in and saw her--what was he to do with Masha? He felt as though caught in a mist; his heart was weighed down with the songs and Masha's groans, and his own heavy, disconnected thoughts. When he felt sleepy he crawled from under the window-ledge, lay down on the floor by the bed and put his overcoat under his head. He dreamed that Masha was dead and lying on the ground in a big shed, and round about were standing ladies, dressed in white and pink and blue, and singing songs over her; and when they sang mournful songs they all laughed, and when the songs were cheerful they wept bitterly, and nodded their heads sadly and wiped away their tears with white pocket-handkerchiefs. In the shed it was dark and damp, and in the corner stood Savel the smith, hammering at an iron railing and striking noisy blows on the red-hot bars. On the roof of the shed someone went round about and cried, "Ilya. Il--ya."

But he lay in the shed, bound somehow fast, he could hardly turn, he could not speak.

XXII.

"Ilya, get up please."

He opened his eyes and recognised Pavel Gratschev. Pavel was sitting on a chair, kicking Ilya's legs gently. The bright sunlight streamed into the room and shone on the samovar boiling on the table; Lunev blinked, dazzled.

"Listen, Ilya."

Pavel's voice was hoarse, as though after heavy drinking, his face was yellow, his hair disordered. Lunev looked at him, then sprung up from the floor and cried half aloud:

"What?"

"She's caught," said Pavel, and shook his head.

"What? Where is she?" asked Ilya, bending over him and catching him by the shoulder. Gratschev swayed and said miserably:

"They've put her in prison, yesterday morning, they say; they brought her to the prison."

"What for?" asked Ilya in a loud whisper. Masha waked up, shuddered at the sight of Pavel, and stared at him terrified. From the door into the shop Gavrik looked in, his lips compressed in disapproval.

"They say she's stolen six hundred roubles from a merchant, a pocket book, bills, and so on."

Ilya laid a hand on his friend's shoulder, and then moved silently away.

"When they searched they found the money at her house," said Gratschev, in a dull way. "The police inspector, she struck him in the face."

"Oh, of course," said Ilya with a harsh laugh. "If you've got to go to prison, why not go in style!"

When Masha understood that all this did not concern her she smiled and said softly: "If they'd take me to prison."

Pavel looked at her, then at Ilya.

"Don't you know her?" asked Ilya. "Masha, Perfishka's daughter, you remember."

"Oh, yes," said Pavel slowly and indifferently, and turned away, although Masha, who had recognised him, greeted him with a smile.

"Ilya," said Gratschev gloomily. "If she's done that for me? She spoke of it."

"Oh, I don't know for whom, for you or for herself, it's all the same! Her song is finished."

Lunev could not collect his thoughts. Weary for want of sleep, unwashed, and dishevelled, he sat down at Masha's feet, and looked first at her, then at Pavel, and felt overwhelmed.

"I knew," he said slowly, "the whole business could come to no good end."

"She wouldn't listen to me," said Pavel, in a lifeless tone.

"That's it, of course!" cried Lunev ironically. "That's the whole trouble, that she wouldn't listen to you! What could you say to her?"

"I loved her."

"What's the good of your love? in the devil's name! What can you get with that? Apart from anything else you never got her enough to eat by your work."

"That's true," said Pavel, sighing. Lunev was irritated, he felt that all these lives, Pavel's, Masha's, stirred him to wrath, excited him, and not knowing where to direct his feelings, he vented them on his friend.

"Every one wants to be decent and happy, you too, but you say to her, I love you, therefore live with me, and suffer want; do you think that's the way to take it?"

"How should I then?" asked Pavel gently.

The question calmed Ilya a little, involuntarily he fell to thinking of it. "It would be easier for me to kill her with my own hands," said Pavel.

Gavrik looked in. "Ilya Jakovlevitch! shall I open the shop!"

"Oh, go to the devil!" shouted Lunev in anger. "Don't worry me with the shop."

"Am I in the way," asked Pavel.

He sat in the chair leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, and looked at the floor. A vein, full of blood, swelled on his temple.

"You," cried Lunev, and looked at him. "You don't disturb me, nor Masha; it's a very different thing! I've told you before, that there's something gets in the way of us all, you and me, and Masha. It's our folly or something. I don't know what; but it's not possible to live like human beings!"

Lunev looked round his little room at Masha sitting on the bed, motionless with downcast expression, into the shop where Gavrik was having his tea, into the street, through the railed-in window, and continued with despair in his soul, excitedly, angrily, and hoarsely:

"It's impossible to live. It's cramped and stupid, and absurd; you find a quiet corner, and there's no peace there! Everything is impure, heavy, painful; you can't understand; everything goes wrong, you hear people singing and you think you're happy. But it hurts you to hear their songs if your soul's in pain."

"What are you talking of?" asked Pavel, without looking at him.

"Of every one," cried Lunev. "I feel now that nothing's any use, damn it! I don't understand, perhaps, well then I don't! But I do understand what I want. I want to live like a man, cleanly, and honourably, and happily! I don't want to see trouble and horrors and sin, and all sorts of beastliness. I don't want it! But----"

He stopped and grew pale.

"Well?" said Pavel.

"No, that's not it. I only meant----" began Lunev, and his voice dropped.

"You always speak of yourself," observed Pavel.

"And whom do you speak of? Of her? But who is it she troubles, me or you? Every man cares for his own wounds, and groans with his own voice. I don't speak of myself only, I speak of every one, for every one troubles me."

"I'll go," said Gratschev, and got up heavily.

"Ah," cried Ilya. "Don't be hurt, try to understand. I'm hurt too, and sufferers should understand one another, then it will be clear who it is who torments us."

"Brother, it's as though you hit me on the head with a stone. I don't understand. I'm sorry for Vyera--there, I am, really. What can I do? I don't know."

"You can't do anything," said Ilya firmly. "I tell you she's done for! They'll condemn her, she's caught in the act."

Gratschev sat down again.

"But if I declare she did it for me?"

"Are you a prince? Say it, and they'll put you in prison too. Anyhow, we must pull things together. You had better have a wash, and you, too, Masha. We're going into the shop, but you get up and tidy yourself, have some tea, make yourself at home."

Masha shuddered, raised her head from the pillow and asked:

"What, am I to go home?"

"No. You're home is where, at any rate, you're not tortured. Come Pasha!"

When they were in the shop, Pavel asked gloomily:

"Why is she here? She's like a corpse."

Lunev told him briefly how matters stood. To his astonishment, Gratschev seemed cheered.

"My word, the old devil!" he said, and smiled.

Ilya stood by him, looking round his shop, and said:

"Theft and lying, and robbery, and drunkenness--all kinds of filth and disorder--that is life. You don't want it, but it's all the same, you go down the same stream as the rest and the same water soaks you; live as you have to! You can't get out of it anyhow. Run away to the forest? or a monastery? You told me a little while ago that I should find no peace here."

He indicated the shop with a sweeping gesture, nodded and smiled unpleasantly. "Right, there is no peace. What's the good to me to stand on one spot and do business? Plenty of worry, but no freedom. I can't go out. Before, I went where I liked, in the streets, if I found a nice comfortable place I sat down and enjoyed myself, but now here I squat, day in day out, and that's all."

"See, you might have taken Vyera as an assistant," said Pavel.

Ilya looked at him, but said nothing.

"Come in," cried Masha.

At tea, hardly a word was spoken.

The sun shone on the street, the bare feet of the children shuffled along the pavement, the hawkers of vegetables went by the window.

"Fresh leeks, onions!" a woman cried.

"Fresh cucumbers!"