War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [481]
“We’re told there’s to be order, nobody’s to leave their houses, so as not a single crumb gets taken away—and that’s that!” shouted another.
“It was your son’s turn, but no fear, you felt sorry for your chubsy,” a little old man suddenly spoke quickly, attacking Dron, “so my Vanka got his head shaved. Ah, we’ll all die!”
“Right, we’ll all die!”
“I’m no holdout on the community,” said Dron.
“So he’s no holdout, grown himself a nice paunch!…”
The two tall muzhiks were having their say. As soon as Rostov, accompanied by Ilyin, Lavrushka, and Alpatych, came up to the crowd, Karp, putting his fingers behind his belt, smiling slightly, stepped forward. Dron, on the contrary, went to the back rows, and the crowd closed in more tightly.
“Hey! Who’s your headman here?” shouted Rostov, coming up to the crowd with quick strides.
“Our headman? What do you want him for?…” asked Karp.
But before he finished speaking, his hat went flying and his head rocked sideways from a strong blow.
“Hats off, traitors!” cried the full-blooded voice of Rostov. “Where’s the headman?” he shouted furiously.
“The headman, he’s calling for the headman…You, Dron Zakharych,” obedient voices said hurriedly, and hats began coming off of heads.
“There’s no rebelling with us, we keep order,” said Karp, and several voices from the back suddenly spoke at the same time:
“It’s like the old men decided…there’s lots of you superiors…”
“Speaking out?…Rebellion!…Brigands! Traitors!” Rostov yelled senselessly, in a voice not his own, seizing Karp by the collar. “Bind him, bind him!” he shouted, though there was no one to bind him except Lavrushka and Alpatych.
Lavrushka, however, ran up to Karp and seized his arms from behind.
“Shall I call our boys from over the hill?” he shouted.
Alpatych turned to the muzhiks, calling two by name to come and bind Karp. The muzhiks obediently stepped out of the crowd and began taking off their belts.
“Where’s the headman?” cried Rostov.
Dron, with a frowning and pale face, stepped out of the crowd.
“You’re the headman? Bind him, Lavrushka!” cried Rostov, as if this order, too, could meet with no hindrance. And in fact, two more muzhiks began to bind Dron, who, as if to help them, took off his belt and handed it to them.
“And you all listen to me.” Rostov turned to the muzhiks. “March off to your homes right now, and don’t let me hear a peep from you.”
“Why, we didn’t do any harm. It was just out of stupidity. Just a lot of nonsense…I kept saying it was wrong,” voices were heard reproaching each other.
“It’s just as I told to you,” said Alpatych, entering into his rights. “It wasn’t nice, boys.”
“Our own stupidity, Yakov Alpatych,” voices responded, and the crowd immediately began to break up and scatter through the village.
The two bound muzhiks were taken to the yard of the manor house. The two drunken muzhiks followed.
“Eh, just look at you!” one of them said, addressing Karp. “As if you can talk like that with the masters! What were you thinking of?”
“A fool,” the other confirmed, “a real fool!”
Two hours later the carts stood in the yard of the Bogucharovo house. The muzhiks were animatedly carrying out the masters’ belongings and loading them on the carts, and Dron, freed at the princess’s request from the storeroom in which he had been locked, stood in the yard ordering the muzhiks about.
“Be careful how you set it down,” said one of the muzhiks, a tall man with a round, smiling face, taking a chest from a maid’s hands. “It also costs money. If you throw it down like that or put a rope on it, it’ll get scuffed. I don’t like that. Everything should be honest, by the rules. Like this, under a bast mat, and covered with some straw, there, that’s grand. Beautiful!”
“Books, look at the books,” said another muzhik, taking out Prince Andrei’s bookcases. “Don’t snag on anything! It’s a real load, boys, hefty books!”
“Yes, they wrote and didn’t dote,” said the tall, round-faced muzhik, with a meaningful wink,