Some three feet long!
It looks as if we were going to live on carp the whole week."
Sometimes he was worried.
"The cucumbers failed completely this season.
There is not a good one among them—all crooked and spotty.
They're just good enough to be sent to the servants' quarters. We shall have to use last year's."
He did not approve of Arina Petrovna's management.
"Goodness, what heaps of provisions she allows to rot!
Just now she's having cured meat, pickles, fish and what not hauled to the servants' quarters.
Is that what you call good business? Is that the right way of doing things, I'd like to know.
There are lots of fresh provisions, but she will not touch them until the old rot is eaten up."
The confidence entertained by Arina Petrovna that it would be easy to induce Simple Simon to sign any paper proved wholly justified.
Not only did he not object to signing all the papers that his mother sent him, but the same evening he even boasted about it to the village clerk.
"Well, brother, to-day I have been doing nothing but signing papers.
I have renounced all my rights of inheritance. I am cleaned out.
Not a cent to my name, and none coming.
I have set the old woman at ease."
He parted with his brothers peaceably, and was in raptures over his big supply of tobacco.
Of course, he couldn't help calling Porfisha Bloodsucker and Yudushka, but the disparaging terms were drowned in a deluge of incoherent, meaningless chatter.
In taking leave the brothers became liberal and even gave him money. Porfiry Vladimirych accompanied his gift with the following speech:
"This money will be handy in case you need oil for the ikon lamp or if you want to set up a candle in the church.
That's how it is, brother.
Be good and gentle, and our dear mother will be satisfied. You will have your comforts, and all of us will be merry and happy.
Our mother is a kindly soul, you know."
"There is no denying that she is kindly," agreed Stepan Vladimirych. "Only she feeds me on rotten pickled meat."
"Whose fault is it? Who treated mother's blessing with disrespect? It is your own fault that you lost your estate.
What a nice little estate it was.
If you only knew how to behave yourself and live modestly, you would now be eating beef and veal and even ordering sauce with them.
You would have plenty of everything, potatoes, cabbage, peas. Am I not right, brother?"
Had Arina Petrovna heard this harangue, it would have made her impatient, and she would have let the orator know that it did.
But Simple Simon was fortunate that his mind could not, as it were, retain other people's words, and not a syllable of Yudushka's speech reached its destination.
So Stepan Vladimirych parted with his brothers amicably. And there was some vanity in his showing Yakov, the village clerk, two twenty-five ruble notes that had been left in his hands after the brothers had departed.
"This will last me a long time," he said. "We've got tobacco. We're well provided with tea and sugar. Nothing is missing but vodka. However, should we want vodka, we'll get vodka, too.
Nevertheless, I will restrain myself for a little while yet. I am too busy now, I have to keep an eye on the cellars.
Weaken your watch for a single instant, and everything will be pillaged.
She saw me, brother, she saw me, the hag, once, when I was gliding by along the kitchen wall.
She stood at the window looking at me and I bet she thought: 'Well, well, so that's why I miss so many cucumbers.'"
Then came October. It began to rain, the road turned black, into an impassable stream of mud.
Stepan Vladimirych could not go out because his only garments were his father's old dressing-gown and worn slippers.
He sat at his window watching the tiny, humble village drowned in mud.
There, in the gray autumn mist, men were moving about briskly, looking like black dots.
The heavy summer work was still in full swing, but now its setting was no longer the jubilant, sun-flooded hues of summer, but the endless autumn twilight.
The corn kilns emitted clouds of smoke far into the night. The melancholy clatter of the flails resounded in the air.
Thrashing was also going on in the manorial barns, and in the office they said it would hardly be possible to get through with the whole mass of grain before Shrovetide.
Everything looked gloomy and drowsy, everything spoke of oppressiveness.
The doors of the counting-house were no longer ajar, and inside the air was filled with a bluish fog rising from the wet fur cloaks.
It is difficult to say what impression this spectacle of a toilsome, rural autumn made on Stepan's mind, and whether he was at all aware of the labors going on in the incessant rain out in the boggy fields. One thing is certain, that the drab, tearful autumn sky oppressed him.
It seemed to hang close down over his head and threaten to drown him in a deluge of mud.
All he had to do was to look out through the window and watch the heavy masses of clouds.
From the dawn on they covered the heavens, hanging motionless as if spellbound. Even after several hours they were still in the same place, without the slightest apparent change in hue or outline.