He puffed out his cheeks and emitted a long-drawn-out sound:
“0 — 0 — hi”
At this I laughed so much that, to keep my feet, I had to hang on to the handle of the door. It flew open, and my head knocked against one of the panes of glass and broke it.
The assistant stamped his foot at me, my master hit me on the head with his heavy gold ring, and Sascha tried to pull my ears. In the evening, when we were on our way home, he said to me, sternly:
“You will lose your place for doing things like that.
I ‘d like to know where the joke comes in.”
And then he explained: “If ladies take a fancy to the assistant, it is good for trade.
A lady may not be in need of boots, but she comes in and buys what she does not want just to have a look at the assistant, who pleases her.
But you — you can’t understand!
One puts oneself out for you, and — ”
This incensed me. No one put himself out for me, and he least of all.
In the morning the cook, a sickly, disagreeable woman, used to call me before him. I had to clean the boots and brush the clothes of the master, the assistant, and Sascha, get the samovar ready, bring in wood for all the stoves, and wash up.
When I got to the shop I had to sweep the floor, dust, get the tea ready, carry goods to the customers, and go home to fetch the dinner, my duty at the door being taken in the meantime by Sascha, who, finding it lowering to his dignity, rated me.
“Lazy young wretch!
I have to do all your work for you.”
This was a wearisome, dull life for me. I was accustomed to live independently in the sandy streets of Kunavin, on the banks of the turbid Oka, in the fields or woods, from morning to night.
I was parted from grandmother and from my comrades. I had no one to speak to, and life was showing me her seamy, false side.
There were occasions on which a customer went away without making ‘ a purchase, when all three would feel themselves affronted.
The master would put his sweet smile away in his pocket as he said:
“Kashirin, put these things away.”
Then he would grumble:
“There’s a pig of a woman!
The fool found it dull sitting at home, so she must come and turn our shop upside down!
If you were my wife, I ‘d give you something!”
His wife, a dried-up woman with black eyes and a large nose, simply made a doormat of him. She used to scold him as if he were a servant.
Often, after he had shown out a frequent customer with polite bows and pleasant words, they would all begin to talk about her in a vile and shameless manner, arousing in me a desire to run into the street after her and tell her what they said.
I knew, of course, that people generally speak evil of one another behind one another’s backs, but these spoke of every one in a particularly revolting manner, as if they were in the front rank of good people and had been appointed to judge the rest of the world.
Envious of many of them, they were never known to praise any one, and knew something bad about everybody.
One day there came to the shop a young woman with bright, rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes, attired in a velvet cloak with a collar of black fur. Her face rose out of the fur like a wonderful flower.
When she had thrown the cloak off her shoulders and handed it to Sascha, she looked still more beautiful. Her fine figure was fitted tightly with a blue-gray silk robe; diamonds sparkled in her ears. She reminded me of “Vassilissa the Beautiful,” and I could have believed that she was in truth the governor’s wife.
They received her with particular respect, bending before her as if she were a bright light, and almost choking themselves in their hurry to get out polite words.
All three rushed about the shop like wild things: their reflections bobbed up and down in the glass of the cupboard.
But when she left, after having bought some expensive boots in a great hurry, the master, smacking his lips, whistled and said:
“Hussy!”
“An actress — that sums her up,” said the assistant, contemptuously.
They began to talk of the lovers of the lady and the luxury in which she lived.
After dinner the master went to sleep in the room behind the shop, and I, opening his gold watch, poured vinegar into the works.
It was a moment of supreme joy to me when he awoke and came into the shop, with his watch in his hand, muttering wildly:
“What can have happened?
My watch is all wet.
I never remember such a thing happening before. It is all wet; it will be ruined.”
In addition to the burden of my duties in the shop and the housework, I was weighed down by depression. I often thought it would be a good idea to behave so badly that I should get my dismissal.
Snow-covered people passed the door of the shop without making a sound. They looked as if on their way to somebody’s funeral. Having meant to accompany the body to the grave, they had been delayed, and, being late for the funeral procession, were hurrying to the graveside.
The horses quivered with the effort of making their way through the snow-drifts.
From the belfry of the church behind the shop the bells rang out with a melancholy sound every day. It was Lent, and every stroke of the bell fell upon my brain as if it had been a pillow, not hurting, but stupefying and deafening, me.
One day when I was in the yard unpacking a case of new goods just received, at the door of the shop, the watchman of the church, a crooked old man, as soft as if he were made of rags and as ragged as if he had been torn to pieces by dogs, approached me.
“Are you going to be kind and steal some goloshes for me?” he asked.
I was silent.
He sat down on an empty case, yawned, made the sign of the cross over his mouth, and repeated:
“Will you steal them for me?”