The House of the Dead or Prison Life in Siberia Part 28

"'I'll break every bone in your body, a nice fellow you to be engaged, and to Akoulka; if I like I'll sleep every blessed night with her when she's your wife.'

"'You're a hound, and a liar,' that's what I said to him. But he insulted me so in the street, before everybody, that I ran to Aukoudim's and said, 'I won't marry her unless I have fifty roubles down this moment.'"

"And they really did give her to you in marriage?"

"Me? Why not, I should like to know? We were respectable people enough.

Father had been ruined by a fire a little before he died; he had been a richer man than Aukoudim Trophimtych.

"'A fellow without a shirt to his back like you ought to be only too happy to marry my daughter;' that's what old Aukoudim said.

"'Just you think of your door, and the pitch that went on it,' I said to him.

"'Stuff and nonsense,' said he, 'there's no proof whatever that the girl's gone wrong.'

"'Please yourself. There's the door, and you can go about your business; but give back the money you've had!'

"Then Philka Marosof and I settled it together to send Mitri Bykoff to Father Aukoudim to tell him that we'd insult him to his face before everybody. Well, I had my skin as full as it could hold right up to the wedding-day. I wasn't sober till I got into the church. When they took us home after church the girl's uncle, Mitrophone Stepanytch, said:

"'This isn't a nice business; but it's over and done now.'

"Old Aukoudim was sitting there crying, the tears rolled down on his gray beard. Comrade, I'll tell you what I had done: I had put a whip into my pocket before we went to church, and I'd made up my mind to have it out of her with that, so that all the world might know how I'd been swindled into the marriage, and not think me a bigger fool than I am."

"I see, and you wanted her to know what was in store for her. Ah, was----?"

"Quiet, nunky, quiet! Among our people I'll tell you how it is; directly after the marriage ceremony they take the couple to a room apart, and the others remain drinking till they return. So I'm left alone with Akoulka; she was pale, not a bit of colour on her cheeks; frightened out of her wits. She had fine hair, supple and bright as flax, and great big eyes. She scarcely ever was known to speak; you might have thought she was dumb; an odd creature, Akoulka, if ever there was one. Well, you can just imagine the scene. My whip was ready on the bed. Well, she was as pure a girl as ever was, not a word of it all was true."

"Impossible!"

"True, I swear; as good a girl as any good family might wish."

"Then, brother, why--why--why had she had to undergo all that torture?

Why had Philka Marosof slandered her so?"

"Yes, why, indeed?"

"Well, I got down from the bed, and went on my knees before her, and put my hands together as if I were praying, and just said to her, 'Little mother, pet, Akoulka Koudimovna, forgive me for having been such an idiot as to believe all that slander; forgive me. I'm a hound!'

"She was seated on the bed, and gazed at me fixedly. She put her two hands on my shoulders and began to laugh; but the tears were running all down her cheeks. She sobbed and laughed all at once.

"Then I went out and said to the people in the other room, 'Let Philka Marosof look to himself. If I come across him he won't be long for this world.'

"The old people were beside themselves with delight. Akoulka's mother was ready to throw herself at her daughter's feet, and sobbed.

"Then the old man said, 'If we had known really how it was, my dearest child, we wouldn't have given you a husband of that sort.'

"You ought to have seen how we were dressed the first Sunday after our marriage--when we left church! I'd got a long coat of fine cloth, a fur cap, with plush breeches. She had a pelisse of hareskin, quite new, and a silk kerchief on her head. One was as fine as the other. Everybody admired us. I must say I looked well, and pet Akoulka did too. One oughtn't to boast, but one oughtn't to sing small. I tell you people like us are not turned out by the dozen."

"Not a doubt about it."

"Just you listen, I tell you. The day after my marriage I ran off from my guests, drunk as I was, and went about the streets crying, 'Where's that scoundrel of a Philka Marosof? Just let him come near me, the hound, that's all!' I went all over the market-place yelling that out. I was as drunk as a man could be, and stand.

"They went after me and caught me close to Vla.s.sof's place. It took three men to get me back again to the house.

"Well, nothing else was spoken about all over the village. The girls said, when they met in the market-place, 'Well, you've heard the news--Akoulka was all right!'

"A little while after I do come across Philka Marosof, who said to me before everybody, strangers to the place, too, 'Sell your wife, and spend the money on drink. Jackka the soldier only married for that; he didn't sleep one night with his wife; but he got enough to keep his skin full for three years.'

"I answered him, 'Hound!'

"'But,' says he, 'you're an idiot! You didn't know what you were about when you married--you were drunk. How could you tell all about it?'

"So off I went to the house, and cried out to them 'You married me when I was drunk.'

"Akoulka's mother tried to fasten herself on me; but I cried, 'Mother, you don't know about anything but money. You bring me Akoulka!'

"And didn't I beat her! I tell you I beat her for two hours running, till I rolled on the floor myself with fatigue. She couldn't leave her bed for three weeks."

"It's a dead sure thing," said Tcherevine phlegmatically; "if you don't beat them they---- Did you find her with her lover?"

"No; to tell the truth, I never actually caught her," said Chichkoff after a pause, speaking with effort; "but I was hurt, a good deal hurt, for every one made fun of me. The cause of it all was Philka. 'Your wife is just made for everybody to look at,' said he.

"One day he invited us to see him, and then he went at it. 'Do just look what a good little wife he has! Isn't she tender, fine, nicely brought up, affectionate, full of kindness for all the world? I say, my lad, have you forgotten how we daubed their door with pitch?' I was full at that moment, drunk as may be; then he seized me by the hair and had me down upon the ground before I knew where I was. 'Come along--dance; aren't you Akoulka's husband? I'll hold your hair for you, and you shall dance; it will be good fun.' 'Dog!' said I to him. 'I'll bring some jolly fellows to your house,' said he, 'and I'll whip your Akoulka before your very eyes just as long as I please.' Would you believe it?

For a whole month I daren't go out of the house, I was so afraid he'd come to us and drag my wife through the dirt. And how I did beat her for it!"

"What was the use of beating her? You can tie a woman's hands, but not her tongue. You oughtn't to give them a hiding too often. Beat 'em a bit, then scold 'em well, then fondle 'em; that's what a woman is made for."

Chichkoff remained quite silent for a few moments.

"I was very much hurt," he went on; "I began it again just as before. I beat her from morning till night for nothing; because she didn't get up from her seat the way I liked; because she didn't walk to suit me. When I wasn't hiding her, time hung heavy on my hands. Sometimes she sat by the window crying silently--it hurt my feelings sometimes to see her cry, but I beat her all the same. Sometimes her mother abused me for it: 'You're a scoundrel, a gallows-bird!' 'Don't say a word or I'll kill you; you made me marry her when I was drunk, you swindled me.' Old Aukoudim wanted at first to have his finger in the pie. Said he to me one day: 'Look here, you're not such a tremendous fellow that one can't put you down;' but he didn't get far on that track. Marie Stepanovna had become as sweet as milk. One day she came to me crying her eyes out and said: 'My heart is almost broken, Ivan Semionytch; what I'm going to ask of you is a little thing for you, but it is a good deal to me; let her go, let her leave you, daddy Ivan.' Then she throws herself at my feet.

'Do give up being so angry! Wicked people slander her; you know quite well she was good when you married her.' Then she threw herself at my feet again and cried. But I was as hard as nails. 'I won't hear a word you have to say; what I choose to do, I do, to you or anybody, for I'm crazed with it all. As to Philka Marosof, he's my best and dearest friend.'"

"You'd begun to play your pranks together again, you and he?"

"No, by Jove! He was out of the way by this time; he was killing himself with drink, nothing less. He had spent all he had on drink, and had 'listed for a soldier, as subst.i.tute for a citizen body in the town. In our parts, when a lad makes up his mind to be subst.i.tute for another, he is master of that house and everybody there till he's called to the ranks. He gets the sum agreed on the day he goes off, but up to then he lives in the house of the man who buys him, sometimes six whole months, and there isn't a horror in the whole world those fellows are not guilty of. It's enough to make folks take the holy images out of the house.

From the moment he consents to be subst.i.tute for the son of the family then he considers himself their patron and benefactor, and makes them dance as he pipes, or else he goes off the bargain.

"So Philka Marosof played the very mischief at the home of this townsman. He slept with the daughter, pulled the master of the house by the beard after dinner, did anything that came into his head. They had to heat the bath for him every day, and, what's more, give him brandy fumes with the steam of the bath: and he would have the women lead him by the arms to the bath room.[6]

"When he came back to the man's house after a revel elsewhere, he would stop right in the middle of the road and cry out:

"'I won't go in by the door; pull down the fence!'

"And they actually _had_ to pull down the fence, though there was the door right at it to let him in. That all came to an end though, the day they took him to the regiment. That day he was sobered sufficiently. The crowd gathered all through the street.

"'They're taking off Philka Marosof!'

"He made a salute on all sides, right and left. Just at that moment Akoulka was returning from the kitchen-garden. Directly Philka saw her he cried out to her: