War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [472]
It was this Dron whom Alpatych, having come from the devastated Bald Hills, summoned to him on the day of the prince’s funeral and ordered to prepare twelve horses for the princess’s carriages and eighteen carts for a train that was to be made up at Bogucharovo. Though the peasants there were on quitrent, the fulfillment of this order could not present any difficulties, in Alpatych’s opinion, because there were two hundred and thirty households at Bogucharovo, and the peasants were well-to-do. But the headman Dron, having heard the order, silently lowered his eyes. Alpatych named for him some muzhiks whom he knew and from whom he ordered the carts to be taken.
Dron replied that those muzhiks had their horses hired out. Alpatych named some other muzhiks, and they, too, had no horses, according to Dron; some were pulling government carts, others were too weak, still others had dropped dead from lack of fodder. In Dron’s opinion, it was impossible to collect any horses, not only for the carting, but even for the carriages.
Alpatych looked at Dron attentively and frowned. Just as Dron was an exemplary headman and muzhik, so it was not for nothing that Alpatych had managed the prince’s estates for twenty years and was an exemplary steward. He was capable in the highest degree of understanding intuitively the needs and instincts of the people he was dealing with, and that was why he was an excellent steward. Having glanced at Dron, he understood at once that Dron’s replies were not the expression of Dron’s thoughts, but the expression of that general mood of the Bogucharovo community in which the headman was already caught up. But along with that he knew that Dron, grown rich and therefore hated by the community, was bound to waver between the two camps—the masters and the peasants. He noticed this wavering in his eyes, and therefore Alpatych frowned and moved closer to Dron.
“Listen, Dronushka!” he said. “No empty talk with me. His Excellency Prince Andrei Nikolaich himself has ordered me to have all these people sent away and not left to the enemy, and there’s a tsar’s order for it. And whoever stays is a traitor to the tsar. Do you hear?”
“I hear,” Dron replied without raising his eyes.
Alpatych was not satisfied with this response.
“Eh, Dron, it’ll go badly for you!” Alpatych said, shaking his head.
“The power’s yours!” Dron said ruefully.
“Drop it, Dron!” said Alpatych, taking his hand from behind his lapel and pointing with a solemn gesture at the floor under Dron’s feet. “I not only see through you, I see through everything seven feet under you,” he said, staring at the floor under Dron’s feet.
Dron became troubled, glanced fleetingly at Alpatych, and again lowered his eyes.
“Drop this nonsense and tell the people to get ready to leave home for Moscow and to prepare carts tomorrow morning for the princess’s baggage, and don’t go to any meeting. Do you hear?”
Dron suddenly fell at his feet.
“Yakov Alpatych, release me! Take the keys from me, release me, for Christ’s sake!”
“Drop it!” Alpatych said sternly. “I see through seven feet under you,” he repeated, knowing that his skill in beekeeping, his knowledge of when to sow oats, and the fact that for twenty years he had been able to please the old prince had long since earned him the reputation of a sorcerer, and that the ability to see seven feet under a man was ascribed to sorcerers.
Dron stood up and was about to say something, but Alpatych interrupted him.
“What’s this you’ve got into your heads? Eh?…What are you thinking? Eh?”
“What can I do with the people?” said Dron. “They’re all riled up. I did tell them…”
“So you told them,” said Alpatych. “Drinking?” he asked curtly.
“All riled up, Yakov Alpatych: brought a second barrel.”
“Listen, then. I’ll go for the police chief, and you tell that to the people, and that they should drop all this and furnish the carts.”
“Yes, sir,” replied Dron.
Yakov Alpatych did not insist further. He had been managing peasants for a long time and knew that the main means of getting people to obey consisted in not showing