I had a lot of work to do. I fulfilled all the duties of a housemaid, washed the kitchen over on Wednesday, cleaning the samovar and all the copper vessels, and on Saturday cleaned the floor of the rest of the house and both staircases.
I had to chop and bring in the wood for the stoves, wash up, prepare vegetables for cooking, and go marketing with the mis — tress, carrying her basket of purchases after her, be — sides running errands to the shops and to the chemist.
My real mistress, grandmother’s sister, a noisy, indomitable, implacably fierce old woman, rose early at six o’clock, and after washing herself in a hurry, knelt before the icon with only her chemise on, and complained long to God about her life, her children, and her daughter-in-law.
“Lord,” she would exclaim, with tears in her voice, pressing her two first fingers and her thumbs against her forehead —
“Lord, I ask nothing, I want nothing; only give me rest and peace, Lord, by Thy power!”
Her sobs used to wake me up, and, half asleep, I used to peep from under the blanket, and listen with terror to her passionate prayers.
The autumn morning looked dimly in at the kitchen window through panes washed by the rain. On the floor in the cold twilight her gray figure swayed from side to side; she waved her arms alarmingly. Her thin, light hair fell from her small head upon her neck and shoulders from under the swathing handkerchief, which kept slipping off. She would replace it angrily with her left hand, muttering
“Oh, bother you!”
Striking her forehead with force, beating her breast and her shoulders, she would wail:
“And my daughter-in-law — punish her, O Lord, on my account! Make her pay for all that she has made me suffer!
And open the eyes of my son — open his eyes and Victor’s!
Lord, help Victor; be merciful to him!”
Victorushka also slept in the kitchen, and, hearing the groans of his mother, would cry in a sleepy voice:
“Mamasha, you are running down the young wife again.
It is really dreadful.”
“All right; go to sleep,” the old woman would whisper guiltily.
She would be silent for a minute perhaps, and then she would begin to murmur vindictively, “May their bones be broken, and may there be no shelter for them on earth. Lord!”
Even grandfather had never prayed so terribly.
When she had said her prayers she used to wake me up.
“Wake up! You will never get on if you do not get up early.
Get the samovar ready! Bring the wood in! Didn’t you get the sticks ready overnight?’
I tried to be quick in order to escape hearing the frothy whisper of the old woman, but it was impossible to please her. She went about the kitchen like a winter snow-storm, hissing:
“Not so much noise, you little devil!
Wake Victorushka up, and I will give you something!
Now run along to the shop!”
On weekdays I used to buy two pounds of wheaten bread and two copecks’ worth of rolls for the young mistress.
When I brought it in, the women would look at it suspiciously, and, weighing it in the palms of their hands, would ask:
“Wasn’t there a make-weight?
No?
Open your mouth!” And then they would cry triumphantly: “He has gobbled up the make-weight; here are the crumbs in his teeth! You see, Vassia?”
I worked willingly enough. It pleased me to abolish dirt from the house, to wash the floors, to clean the copper vessels, the warm-holes, and the door-handles. More than once I heard the women remark about me in their peaceful moments:
“He is zealous.”
“And clean.”
“Only he is very impudent.”
“Well, Mother, who has educated him?’
They both tried to educate me to respect them, but I regarded them as half witted. I did not like them; I would not obey them, and I used to answer them back.
The young mistress must have noticed what a bad effect their speeches had upon me, for she said with increasing frequency:
“You ought to remember from what a poor family you have been taken.
I gave your mother a silk cloak trimmed with jet.”
One day I said to her:
“Do you want me to skin myself to pay for the cloak?”
“Good gracious!” she cried in a tone of alarm, “this boy is capable of setting fire to the place!”
I was extremely surprised. Why did she say that?
They both complained to the master about me on this occasion, and he said to me sternly:
“Now, my boy, you had better look out.”
But one day he said coolly to his wife and his mother:
“You are a nice pair!
You ride the boy as if he were a gelding! Any other boy would have run away long ago if you had not worked him to death first.”
This made the women so angry that they wept, and his wife stamped her foot, crying:
“How can you speak like that before him, you long-haired fool?