Matryona dropped on to a bench, squeezing her hands between her knees.
"They're flogging Vaska Dementyev," said Alexei quietly. "They came for him and took him to the prince's house."
"That'll be the third," whispered Matryona.
They listened in silence.
A shriek hung in the air over the night-bound village, striking the same note of horror and despair.
Semyon rose abruptly, tugging at his trouserbelt with an abrupt movement, and went into his brother's room.
Matryona, equally silent, rushed after him.
He had taken the rifle down from the wall.
Matryona put her arms round his neck, hung on him, throwing back her head and setting her white teeth, and there she froze.
Semyon tried to push her away, but could not.
The rifle fell on the earthen floor.
Semyon threw himself on the bed, burying his head in a pillow.
Matryona sat down beside him, stroking his rough locks with rapid movements.
Not trusting to the strength of the guards and the Gaidamaks, as the new hetman troops were called, Grigori Karlovich, the bailiff, asked for a garrison to be sent to Vladimirskoye.
The Germans were always ready to help in such cases, and two platoons with machine guns entered Vladimirskoye.
The soldiers were billeted in the village.
People said it was Grigori Karlovich who named the homesteads to be used.
However that may have been, every peasant who had participated in the previous year's looting of the prince's mansion, and every nonparty member of the former Volost Executive Committee (ten of the younger ones had left the village before the appearance in it of the Germans) was made to quarter and support a soldier and a horse.
And so a gallant German soldier, in field equipment, rifle on shoulder and helmet on head, knocked at the gate of the Krasilnikov home.
Uttering incomprehensible words, he showed Alexei his order, and clapped him on the shoulder:
"Gut, Freund...."
He was assigned Alexei's room, after the harness and arms had been removed.
He settled down at once, spreading a good blanket on the bed, hanging a photograph of Wilhelm on the wall, and ordering the floor to be swept clean.
While Matryona was sweeping he collected his dirty linen and asked for it to be washed.
"Schmutzig—pfui!" he said. "Bitte waschen."
Then, well pleased, he threw himself down on the bed in his boots, and lit a cigar.
The soldier was a fat man with a sleek upturned moustache.
His clothes were of good quality and comfortable.
And he was as greedy as a hog.
He devoured everything Matryona brought to him. Best of all he liked the salt bacon.
Matryona could hardly bear to feed a German on her bacon, but Alexei said:
"Never mind that! Let him guzzle and sleep, so long as he doesn't go poking his nose into things."
In his leisure time the soldier hummed military marches, or wrote home on picture postcards of Kiev.
He behaved quite decently, but tramped about in his boots as if the place belonged to him.
The Krasilnikovs lived as if there were a corpse in the house. They sat down to meals and rose from table in silence, and Alexei was always glum, wrinkles had appeared on his forehead.
Matryona went about with a drawn face, sighing and furtively wiping away tears with her apron.
She was in continual terror that Semyon would lose control of himself in an outburst of rage.
But Semyon had fallen silent these days, and seemed to have retreated within himself.
Every day now the house of the Volost Administration and the gates of farmsteads were freshly plastered with the hetman's orders for the return of livestock and lands to the owners, for requisitions and seizures, and the compulsory sale of bread, notices of ruthless penalties for attempts to organize riots, aid to Communists, and so on....
The peasants read the notices and held their tongues.
Then ominous rumours began to be spread that in some village purchasers with an escort of German cavalry had even taken away unmilled grain, paying for it with un-Russian paper money which even the women would not take, that in another village they had driven away half of the livestock, and in yet another had not left behind them enough food to keep a sparrow alive.
The peasants began gathering in small groups at night in secret places, exchanging rumours and grunting.
What was to be done?
Was there no way out?
The force which had descended upon them was so overpowering that there seemed nothing for it but surrender without a murmur.
Semyon began attending these gatherings in backyards, on the bank of a stream, beneath a willow.
He would sit on the ground, his coat thrown over his shoulders, smoking and listening.
He sometimes longed to leap to his feet, throw off his coat, square his shoulders, and cry out:
"Comrades!"
But what would be the good? They'd only be frightened, and run away with their trousers flapping.