Forty Stories - Anton Chekhov [47]
“Silence!”
“All right, I’ll be silent,” Denis murmured. “But I’ll take my oath the elder lied about the assessment. There are three of us brothers—Kuzma Grigoryev, then Yegor Grigoryev, and then Denis Grigoryev …”
“You’re a nuisance,” the magistrate shouted. “Hey, Semyon! Take him away!”
“We’re three brothers,” Denis went on muttering, while two husky soldiers took hold of him and led him out of the room. “A brother doesn’t have to answer for a brother, does he? Kuzma won’t pay. So it’s up to you, Denis.… Judges, indeed! Our late master, the general, is dead, may God rest his soul, or he would have shown you what’s what.… You ought to judge sensibly, not in a cockeyed way.… Flog a man, you understand, but only when he deserves it.… Understand?…”
July 1885
A Dead Body
A CALM August night. The mist rose slowly from the fields, covering everything within view with a dull-colored winding sheet. When lit by the moon, the mist gave the impression of a quiet and limitless expanse of ocean, and at another time it resembled an immense white wall. The air was damp and chilly, and the morning still far away. There was a fire blazing a step or two beyond the pathway running along the edge of the forest. Near the small fire, under a young oak, lay a dead body covered from head to foot with a clean white linen sheet, and there was a small wooden icon lying on the dead man’s chest. Beside the dead body, almost sitting in the pathway, were “the watchers,” two peasants who were performing one of the most disagreeable and uninviting tasks ever given to peasants. One was a tall youngster with a faint mustache and thick black bushy eyebrows, wearing bast shoes and a tattered sheepskin jacket, his feet stretched out in front of him, as he sat in the damp grass. He was trying to make time go faster by getting down to work. His long neck was bent, and he wheezed loudly while he whittled a spoon from a big curved chunk of wood. The other was a small, thin pock-marked peasant with an ancient face, a scant mustache, and a little goatee beard. His hands had fallen on his knees, and he gazed listlessly and motionlessly into the flames.
The small pile of faggots that lay between them blazed up and threw a red glare on their faces. It was very quiet. The only sound came from the scraping of the knife on the wood and the crackling of the damp faggots in the flames.
“Don’t fall asleep, Syoma,” the young man said.
“Me? No, I’m not falling asleep,” stammered the man with a goatee.
“That’s good. It’s hard sitting here alone, I’d get frightened. Talk to me, Syoma.”
“I wouldn’t know …”
“Oh, you’re a strange fellow, Syomushka! Some people laugh, invent stories, and sing songs, but you—God knows what to make of you. You sit there like a scarecrow in a potato field and stare at the flames. You don’t know how to put words together.… You’re plain scared of talking. You must be getting on for fifty, but you’ve no more sense than a baby. Aren’t you sorry you are such a fool?”
“Reckon so,” said the man with a goatee gloomily.
“Well, we’re sorry too. Wouldn’t you say so? There you are, a good solid fellow, don’t drink too much, and the only trouble is that you haven’t a brain in your head. Still, if the good Lord afflicted you by making you witless, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t try to pick up some glimmerings of intelligence, is there? Make an effort, Syoma.… If someone speaks a good word and you don’t understand it, you ought to try to fathom it, get the sense of it somehow, keep on thinking and concentrating. If there’s anything you don’t understand, you should make an effort and think over exactly what it means. Do you understand me?