Leo Tolstoy Archive
Written: 1887
Source: Original Text from Gutenberg.org
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
That whole day no one at Pokrovskoé saw Polikéï. The mistress several times after dinner made inquiries, and Aksiutka flew down to Akulína: but Akulína said that he had not come; that the merchant must have detained him, or something had happened to the horse. "Can't he have gone lame?" she suggested. "The last time Maksim was gone four and twenty hours,—walked the whole way." And Aksiutka's pendulums brought back the message to the house; and Akulína thought over all the reasons for her husband's delay, and tried hard to calm her fears, but she did not succeed. Her heart was heavy, and her preparations for the next day's festival made little progress in her hands. She tormented herself all the more because the joiner's wife was convinced that she had seen him.
"A man just like Ilyitch had driven up the proshpect, and then turned back again."
The children also waited restlessly and impatiently for their papa; but for other reasons. Aniutka and Mashka were without any sheepskin or cloak; and so they were deprived of the possibility of taking turns in going into the street, and were therefore obliged to content themselves in their single garments, and to make circuits around the house with strenuous swiftness so as to be troubled as little as possible by the inhabitants of the wing coming and going. Once Mashka tripped over the feet of the joiner's wife, who was lugging water; and though she was crying lustily* from the knock that she received on her knee, yet her hair was pulled violently, and she began to cry still more grievously. When she did not meet any one, she flew straight into the door, and mounted the stove by means of the tub.
The mistress and Akulína began to be really worried about Polikéï himself; the children, about what he wore. But Yégor Mikhailovitch, in reply to her ladyship's question, "Hasn't Polikéï come yet, and where can he be?" smiled, and said, "I cannot tell;" and it was evident that he was satisfied to have his pre-supposition confirmed. "He would have to come to dinner," he said significantly.
All that day no one at Pokrovskoé had any tidings of Polikéï: except it was noised abroad that some neighboring muzhíks had seen him without his cap, and asking every one "if they seen a letter."
Another man had seen him asleep by the side of the road, near a horse hitched into a telyéga. "I thought he was drunk," said this man, "and that the horse had not been fed or watered for a couple of days, his belly was so drawn up."
Akulína did not sleep all night, but sat up waiting for him; but not even in the night did he put in an appearance. If she had lived alone, and had a cook and second girl, she would have been still more unhappy; but as soon as the cocks began to crow for the third time, and the joiner's wife got up, Akulína was obliged to rise and betake herself to the stove. It was a holiday; so it was necessary before daylight to take out her bread, to make kvas, to bake cookies, to milk the cow, to iron the dresses and shirts, to wash the children, to bring water, and keep her neighbor from occupying the whole oven. Akulína ceased* not to keep her ears open while she was fulfilling these duties. It was already broad daylight: already the bells had begun to peal, already the children were up, and still no Polikéï. Yesterday, winter had really set in; the fields, roads, and roofs were covered with patches of snow; but to-day, as though in honor of a festival, it was clear, sunny, and cool, so that one could see and hear a long distance. But Akulína standing by the oven, and with her head thrust into the door so as to watch the baking of her cookies, did not hear Polikéï as he came in, and only by the cries of the children did she know that her husband had come. Aniutka, as the eldest, had oiled her hair and dressed herself. She had on a new calico dress, somewhat rumpled, the gift of the gracious lady, and it fitted her like the bark on a tree, and dazzled the neighbors' eyes; her hair was shiny, having been rubbed with a candle-end; her shoos were not exactly new, but were elegant.
Mashka was still in jacket and rags, so Aniutka would not let her come near to her lest she should soil her clean things. Mashka was in the yard when her father came along with a bag.
"Papa's come!" she shouted, beginning to cry, and threw herself head-first into the door past Aniutka, leaving a great smutch on her dress. Aniutka, no longer afraid of getting soiled, immediately struck Mashka. Akulína could not leave her work, and had to shout to the children, "There now, stop! I'll give you both a good thrashing!" and she glanced toward the door. Ilyitch, with his sack in his hand, came through the entry, and instantly threw himself into his corner. Akulína noticed that he was pale, and that his face had an expression as though he had been neither* weeping nor laughing: she could not understand it.
"Well, Ilyitch," she asked, not leaving the oven, "what luck?"
Ilyitch muttered something which she did not hear.
"How?" she screamed, "have you been to our lady's?"
Ilyitch sat down on the bed, looked wildly around, and smiled his guilty and deeply unhappy smile. For a long time he said nothing.
"Well, Ilyitch? why so long?" rang Akulína's voice.
"I, Akulína,—I gave the money to our lady; how thankful she was!" said he suddenly, and looked around even more restlessly than ever, still smiling. Two objects especially attracted his restless, feverishly-staring eyes,—the rope fastened to the cradle, and the baby. He went to the cradle, and with his slender fingers began rapidly to untie a knot in the rope. Then his eyes rested on the babe; but here Akulína, with the cookies on a platter, came into the corner. Ilyitch quickly hid the rope in his bosom, and sat down on the bed.
"What's the matter, Ilyitch? you don't seem like yourself," said Akulna.
"I haven't had any sleep," was his reply.
Suddenly something flashed by the window; and in an instant Aksiutka, the maid from the upper house, darted into the room.
"The gracious lady[16] commands Polikéï Ilyitch to come to her this minute," said she. "Avdót'ya Mikolávna commands you to come this minute,—this minute."
*
Polikéï gazed at Akulína, at the maid-servant.
"Right away! what more is wanted?" he asked so simply that Akulína's apprehensions were quieted: maybe he is going to be rewarded. "Say I will come right away."
He got up and went out. Akulína took a trough, placed it on the bench, poured in water from the buckets which stood by the door, filled it up with boiling water from the kettle, began to roll up her sleeves, and try the temperature of the water.
"Come, Mashka, I want to wash you."
The cross sibilating little girl began to cry.
"Come, you scabby wench! I want to put you on a clean shirt. Now, make up faces, will you? Come, I've got to wash your sister yet."
Polikéï meantime was going, not in the direction taken by the maid from the house, but exactly opposite. In the entry next the wall was a straight staircase leading to the loft. When Polikéï reached the entry he looked around, and, seeing no one, he bent down, and almost running climbed up this stairs quickly and with agility.
"What in the world does it mean that Polikéï doesn't come?" asked the lady impatiently, turning to Duniasha, who was combing her hair. "Where is Polikéï? Why doesn't he come?"
Aksiutka again flew down to the servants' wing, and again flew into the entry, and summoned Ilyitch to the mistress. "But he went long ago," said Akulína, who, having washed Mashka, was at this time in the act of putting her contumacious little boy in the trough, and silently, in spite of his cries, was washing his red head. The boy screamed, wrinkled up his face, and tried to clutch something with his helpless hands. Akulína with one big hand supported his* weak, soft little back, all dimples, and soaped it.
"See if he isn't asleep somewhere," she said, glancing around nervously.
The joiner's wife at this time with her hair unkempt, with her bosom open, and holding up her dress, was climbing up to the loft to get her clothes which were drying there. Suddenly a cry of horror was heard from the loft, and the joiner's wife, like one crazy, with wide-open eyes, came down on her hands and feet backwards, quicker than a cat, and fled from the stairs.
"Ilyitch," she cried.
Akulína dropped the child which she was holding.
"He has hung himself!" roared the joiner's wife.
Akulína—not noticing that the child, like a ball, rolled over and over on his face, and, kicking his little legs, fell head first into the water—ran to the entry.
"From the beam—he is hanging," repeated the joiner's wife, but stopped when she saw Akulína.
Akulína flew to the stairs, and before any one could prevent her climbed up, and with a terrible cry fell back like a dead body on the steps; and she would have killed herself if the people, coming from all parts, had not been in time to seize her.