Part 27 (1/2)

CHAPTER IV.

THE HUSBAND OF AKOULKA

It was late at night, about eleven o'clock. I had been sleeping some time and woke up with a start. The wan and weak light of the distant lamp barely lit the room. Nearly everybody was fast asleep, even Oustiantsef; in the quiet of the night I heard his difficult breathing, and the rattlings in his throat with every respiration. In the ante-chamber sounded the heavy and distant footsteps of the patrol as the men came up. The b.u.t.t of a gun struck the floor with its low and heavy sound.

The door of the room was opened, and the corporal counted the sick, stepping softly about the place. After a minute or so he closed the door again, leaving a fresh sentinel there; the patrol went off, silence reigned again. It was only then that I observed two prisoners, not far from me, who were not sleeping, and who seemed to be holding a muttered conversation. Sometimes, in fact, it would happen that a couple of sick people, whose beds adjoined and who had not exchanged a word for weeks, would all of a sudden break out into conversation with one another, in the middle of the night, and one of them would tell the other his history.

Probably they had been speaking for some considerable time. I did not hear the beginning of it, and could not at first seize upon their words, but little by little I got familiar with the muttered sounds, and understood all that was going on. I had not the least desire for sleep on me, so what could I do but listen.

One of them was telling his story with some warmth, half-lying on his bed, with his head lifted and stretched towards his companion. He was plainly excited to no little degree; the necessity of speech was on him.

The man listening was sitting up on his pallet, with a gloomy and indifferent air, his legs stretched out flat on the mattress, and now and again murmured some words in reply, more out of politeness than interest, and kept stuffing his nose with snuff from a horn box. This was the soldier Techerevin, one of the company of discipline; a morose, cold-reasoning pedant, an idiot full of _amour propre_; while the narrator was Chichkof, about thirty years old; this was a civilian convict, whom up to that time I had not at all observed; and during the whole time I was at the prison I never could get up the smallest interest in him, for he was a conceited, heady fellow.

Sometimes he would hold his tongue for weeks together, and look sulky and brutal enough for anything; then all of a sudden he would strike into anything that was going on, behave insufferably, go into a white heat about nothing at all, and tell you long stories with nothing in them whatever about one barrack or another, blowing abuse on all the world, and acting like a man beside himself. Then some one would give him a hiding, and he would have another fit of silence. He was a mean and cowardly fellow, and the object of general contempt. His stature was low, he had little flesh on him, he had wandering eyes, though they sometimes got mixed and seemed filled with a stupid sort of thinking.

When he told you anything he worked himself into a fever, gesticulated wildly, suddenly broke off and went to another subject, lost himself in fresh details, and at last forgot altogether what he was talking about.

He often got into squabbles, this Chichkof, and when he poured insult on his adversary, he spoke with a sentimental whine and was affected nearly to tears. He was not a bad hand at playing the _balalaika_, and had a weakness for it; on fete days he would show you his dancing powers when others set him at it, and he danced by no means badly. You could easily enough make him do what you wanted ... not that he was of a complying turn, but he liked to please and to get intimate with fellows.

For some considerable time I couldn't understand the story Chichkoff was telling; that night I mean. It seemed to me as though he were constantly rambling from the point to talk of something else. Perhaps he had observed that Tcherevine was paying little attention to the narrative, but I fancy that he was minded to overlook this indifference, so as not to take offence.

”When he went out on business,” he continued, ”every one saluted him politely, paid him every respect ... a fellow with money that.”

”You say that he was in some trade or other.”

”Yes; trade indeed! The trading cla.s.s in my country is wretchedly ill-off; just poverty-stricken. The women go to the river and fetch water from ever such a distance to water their gardens. They wear themselves to the very bone, and, for all that, when winter comes, they haven't got enough to make a mere cabbage soup. I tell you it's starvation. But that fellow had a good lump of land, which his labourers cultivated; he had three. Then he had hives, and sold his honey; he was a cattle-dealer too; a much respected man in our parts. He was very old and quite gray, his seventy years lay heavy on his old bones. When he came to the market-place with his fox-skin pelisse, everybody saluted him.

”'Good-day, daddy Aukoudim Trophimtych!'

”'Good-day,' he'd return.

”'How are you getting along;' he never looked down on any one.

”'G.o.d keep you, Aukoudim Trophimtych!'

”'How goes business with you?'

”'Business is as good as tallow's white with me; and how's yours, daddy?'

”'We've just got enough of a livelihood to pay the price of sin; always sweating over our bit of land.'

”'Lord preserve you, Aukoudim Trophimtych!'

”He never looked down on anybody. All his advice was always worth having; every one of his words was worth a rouble. A great reader he was, quite a man of learning; but he stuck to religious books. He would call his old wife and say to her, 'Listen, woman, take well in what I say;' then he would explain things. His old Marie Stepanovna was not exactly an old woman, if you please; it was his second wife; he had married her to have children, his first wife had not brought him any. He had two boys still quite young, for the second of them was born when his father was close on sixty; Akoulka, his daughter, was eighteen years old, she was the eldest.”

”Your wife? Isn't it so?”

”Wait a bit, wait. Then Philka Marosof begins to kick up a row. Says he to Aukoudim: 'Let's split the difference. Give me back my four hundred roubles. I'm not your beast of burden; I don't want to do any more business with you, and I don't want to marry your Akoulka. I want to have my fling now that my parents are dead. I'll liquor away my money, then I'll engage myself, 'list for a soldier; and in ten years I'll come back here a field-marshal!' Aukoudim gave him back his money--all he had of his. You see he and Philka's father had both put in money and done business together.

”'You're a lost man,' that's what he said to Philka.