Never mind—we'll be reaping together soon.
Come on, then, dear relatives."
Matryona put her strong, loving arm round Semyon's waist and led him to the cart, in which were embroidered cushions laid on a homespun rug.
Seating him, she took her place beside him, stretching her feet, in the new, town-made boots, in front of her.
Alexei, fixing the breech-band, said gaily:
"A soldier from a cavalry troop train got left behind in February.
I filled him with samogon two whole days.
Then I gave him five hundred rubles in Kerensky notes, and look what a horse I got!"
He clapped the sturdy chestnut gelding on the rump.
Then, jumping on to the driver's seat, he settled his sheepskin cap firmly on his head, and gave a tug at the reins.
They drove over a field path through the faintly sprouting fields, over which a lark was singing thrillingly in the sunlight, its wings quivering.
A smile crept over Semyon's unshaven pallid face. Matryona, pressing him closer to her, questioned him with her eyes, and he answered:
"You people are doing yourself proud, aren't you?"
Semyon enjoyed going into the spacious, newly whitewashed house.
There were green shutters on the small windows, and a new, shingled porch, and on passing through the familiar low door, Semyon was struck by the coziness and prosperity of it all—the warm whitewashed stove, the sturdy table with the embroidered cloth, the uncountrified pots and pans on the shelf, some nickelled, some chinaware, Matryona's bedroom with the iron bedstead and the lace quilt, the mattress topped by a pile of fluffed-out pillows, and, to the right, Alexei's room (formerly the room of their late father), with the bridle and saddle, shining new harness, a sword, a rifle, and framed photographs on the walls. And in all three rooms, the lovingly placed flowers in pots, the aspidistra and the cactus....
He had been away from home for eighteen months, and now there were aspidistras, and a bed fit for a princess, and Matryona in a town-made coat!
"You live like the gentry," he said, sitting down on a bench and unwinding his scarf with an effort.
Matryona put away her fine coat in the chest, tied on an apron, turned the tablecloth on to its other side, and rapidly laid the table.
She shoved the great oven prongs into the stove, and, bowing beneath the weight, her arms, bare to the elbow, suffused with colour, drew out the iron pot of borshch.
There were already lard, smoked goose, and dried fish on the table.
Matryona turned her gleaming eyes towards Alexei, he winked, and she brought in an earthenware jug full of samogon.
Then the brothers drew up to the table. Alexei handed the first glass to his brother.
Matryona bowed low.
And when Semyon drank the burning raw spirits, which almost took his breath away, they both—Alexei and Matryona—wiped their eyes.
This meant they really were glad Semyon was alive and sitting at the table with them.
"We don't live like princes, brother," said Alexei when they had finished their borshch. "But we're comfortable."
Matryona cleared away the used plates and sat close to her husband.
"Remember the field near the copse, on the prince's estate?" continued Alexei. "The land with the rich soil?
I made a great to-do in the village, stood the peasants six pails of samogon and they allotted the land to me.
Now Matryona and I have ploughed it.
And we got a fairly good crop from the strip along the riverbank last summer.
All these things—bed, mirror, coffeepots, spoons and forks, and the rest of the odds and ends—we got all of them this winter.
Matryona's a rare housewife.
She never misses a market day.
I still stick to the old ways, and sell for money. But she doesn't! She'll slaughter a sow, or kill a couple of hens in a jiffy, and on to the cart with them, with a sack of flour, and some potatoes, and off she goes to town.... And she doesn't go to the market place, but straight to the houses of the former gentry, her eyes rolling:
'For the bedstead,' she tells them, 'two poods of flour and six pounds of lard.... And for the bedspread a sack of potatoes....' You'd die of laughing to see us coming home from the market—proper gypsies—our cart loaded up with a lot of trash."
Matryona, pressing her husband's hand, said:
"Remember my cousin Avdotya?
She's a year older than me—we want her to marry Alexei."
Alexei laughed, fumbling in his pocket.
"The wenches have settled it without me. But you know, brother, I'm tired of widowhood.
Drinking and whoring, and then the filth seems to stick to you...."
He drew out a pouch and a charred pipe, with copper trinkets hanging from it, and began filling it with home-grown tobacco, and puffing smoke all over the hut.
Semyon's head was going round from the talk and the samogon.
He sat in his place, listening and marvelling.
Towards dusk Matryona took him to the bathhouse, soaped him well, enveloped him in clouds of steam, whipped him all over with a bundle of twigs, wrapped him in a sheepskin coat, and once again they all sat down to table, and had supper, finishing up the earthenware jug to the last drop.
Still weak, Semyon went to bed with his wife, and slept with her warm arm round his neck.
And when he opened his eyes the next morning the hut was neat and warm.
Matryona, the whites of her eyes, and her teeth gleaming in a smile, was kneading dough.
Alexei would soon be back from the fields for his breakfast.