And it is not an easy life for those who are students, you see. There was that daughter of the Bakhilovs. She studied and studied, and even became a teacher herself. Once you become a teacher, you know, you are settled for life.”
“Of course, if they marry, they can do without education; that is, if they have something else to recom — mend them.”
“A woman’s wit lies not in her head.”
It was strange and embarrassing to hear them speak about themselves with such lack of reticence.
I knew how sailors, soldiers, and tillers of the soil spoke about women. I heard men always boasting among themselves of their skill in deceiving women, of cunning in their relations with them. I felt that their attitude toward “females” was hostile, but generally there was a ring of something in these boastings which led me to suppose that these stories were merely brag, inventions, and not the truth.
The washerwomen did not tell one another about their love adventures, but in whatever they said about men I detected an undercurrent of derision, of malice, and I thought it might be true that woman was strength.
“Even when they don’t go about among their fellows and make friends, they come to women, every one of them!” said Natalia one day, and an old woman cried to her in a rheumy voice:
“And to whom else should they go?
Even from God monks and hermits come to us.”
These conversations amid the weeping splash of the water, the slapping of wet clothes on the ground, or against the dirty chinks, which not even the snow could hide with its clean cover — these shameless, malicious conversations about secret things, about that from which all races and peoples have sprung, roused in me a timid disgust, forced my thoughts and feelings to fix themselves on “the romances” which surrounded and irritated me. For me the understanding of the “romances” was closely intertwined with representations of obscure, immoral stories.
However, whether I was with the washerwomen, or in the kitchen with the orderlies or in cellars where lived the field laborers, I found it much more interesting than to be at home, where the stilted conversa — tions were always on the same lines, where the same things happened over and over again, arousing nothing but a feeling of constraint and embittered bore — dom.
My employers dwelt within the magic circle of food, illness, sleep, and the anxieties attendant on preparing for eating and sleeping. They spoke of sin and of death, of which they were much afraid. They rubbed against one another as grains of corn are rubbed against the grindstone, which they expect every moment to crush them.
In my free time I used to go into the shed to chop wood, desiring to be alone. But that rarely happened. The orderlies used to come and talk about the news of the yard.
Ermokhin and Sidorov came more often than the others.
The former was a long, bow-backed Kalougan, with thick, strong veins all over him, a small head, and dull eyes.
He was lazy and irritatingly stupid; he moved slowly and clumsily, and when he saw a woman he blinked and bent forward, just as if he were going to throw himself at her feet.
All the yard was amazed by his swift conquest of the cooks and the maids, and envied him. They were all afraid of his bear-like strength.
Sidorov, a lean, bony native of Tula, was always sad, spoke softly, and loved to gaze into dark corners. He would relate some incident in a low voice, or sit in silence, looking into the darkest corner.
“What are you looking at?”
“I thought I saw a mouse running about.
I love mice; they run to and fro so quietly.”
I used to write letters home for these orderlies — love-letters. I liked this, but it was pleasanter to write letters for Sidorov than for any of the others. Every Saturday regularly he sent a letter to his sister at Tula.
He invited me into his kitchen, sat down beside me at the table, and, rubbing his close-cropped hair hard, whispered in my ear:
“Well, go on.
Begin it as it ought to be begun. ‘My dearest sister, may you be in good health for many years’ — you know how it ought to go.
And now write, ‘I received the ruble; only you need not have sent it. But I thank you.
I want for nothing; we live well here.’ As a matter of fact, we do not live at all well, but like dogs; but there is no need to write that. Write that we live well.
She is little, only fourteen years old. Why should she know?
Now write by yourself, as you have been taught.”
He pressed upon me from the left side, breathing into my ear hotly and odorously, and whispered perseveringly:
“Write ‘if any one speaks tenderly to you, you are not to believe him. He wants to deceive you, and ruin you.’ ”
His face was flushed by his effort to keep back a cough. Tears stood in his eyes. He leaned on the table and pushed against me.
“You are hindering me!”
“It is all right; go on I
‘Above all, never believe gentlemen. They will lead a girl wrong the first time they see her.
They know exactly what to say.
And if you have saved any money, give it to the priest to keep for you, if he is a good man.
But the best thing, is to bury it in the ground, and remember the spot.’ ”
It was miserable work trying to listen to this whisper, which was drowned by the squeaking of the tin ventilator in the fortochka, I looked at the blackened front of the stove, at the china cupboard covered with flies. The kitchen was certainly very dirty, overrun with bugs, redolent with an acrid smell of burnt fat, kerosene, and smoke.
On the stove, among the sticks of wood, cockroaches crawled in and out. A sense of melancholy stole over my heart. I could have cried with pity for the soldier and his sister.
Was it possible, was it right that people should live like this?
I wrote something, no longer listening to Sidorov’s whisper. I wrote of the misery and repulsiveness of life, and he said to me, sighing:
“You have written a lot; thank you.
Now she will know what she has to be afraid of.”
“There is nothing for her to be afraid of,” I said angrily, although I was afraid of many things myself.
The soldier laughed, and cleared his throat.
“What an oddity you are!
How is there nothing to be afraid of?
What about gentlemen, and God?
Isn’t that something?”