Chapter 12 "My Life - A Mainlander's Story" XII

twelve I was working in the garden or in the yard, and Moise would often stand beside me, with his hands behind his back, looking at me lazily and wantonly with his small eyes.This always pissed me off so much that I had to leave my job and walk away. We know from Stepan that this Moise is the lover of the general's wife. I noticed that when people came to her to borrow money, they always went to Moise first, and once I saw a countryman, all black, a coal miner, kneel down before him.Sometimes he whispered to others, took out the money himself, and didn't report it to his wife, so I presume that he would take out the money himself and make a private transaction when he had the opportunity.

He shot birds under the windows in our garden, took food from our cellar, and led our horses without asking first.We were angry, we no longer believed that Dubechnia belonged to us, and Masha turned pale with rage and said: "Are we going to have to spend another year and a half with these bastards?" The general's wife's son, Ivan Cheprakov, works as a conductor on our railway.This winter he became much thinner. He would get drunk after just a glass of wine, and he would feel cold when he was out of the sun.He was unhappy and ashamed of wearing the conductor's uniform, but he considered his position rewarding because he could steal the candles and sell them.My new position aroused in him a mixture of wonder, envy, and vague hopes that he would have the same opportunity.He looked at Masha with admiring eyes, and asked me what I was having for dinner, and a melancholy and sweet expression appeared on his ugly thin face, and his fingers moved, as if touching my happiness. like.

"Listen, small interest," he said fidgeting, lighting his cigarette every moment. It was always dirty where he stood because he used so many matches to smoke a cigarette. "Listen, my life is terrible now. The main thing is that every petty officer at the very least can yell at me: "You conductor!you! 'Dude, I've heard enough on the train, you know, I get it now: life is ugly!My mother ruined me!A physician on the train said to me that if parents live in dissolute lives, their children will become alcoholics or criminals.I see! " Once he staggered into the yard.His eyes were roving and his breathing was labored.He laughed and cried, and said something, as if he was talking nonsense with a high fever.Among his messy words, I can only understand these two sentences: "My mother! Where is my mother?" He cried and said these two sentences, as if a child lost his mother in the crowd like.I took him into our garden and put him in the shade, and all day and all night Marsha and I took turns by his side.He was ill, and Masha looked at his pale, wet face with disgust, and said, "Are these bastards going to live in our yard another year and a half? It's terrible! It's terrible!"

How those peasants make us sad!How often, in those early days, during the spring months, when we longed for happiness, were we disappointed!My wife is running a school.I drew up a plan for the school for sixty children.The Zemstvo agreed, but asked her to set up a school in the village of Kurilovka, which is a big village three versts from us.By the way, there used to be a school in the village of Kurilovka, where children from four villages, including ours in Dubechnya, went to school; Walking on the floor is already dangerous.At the end of March, according to Masha's wishes, she was appointed administrator of the school in the village of Kurilovka, and at the beginning of April we held three meetings and advised the peasants that their school was small and old and that a new one must be built.The Zemstvo sent to the scene, as did the superintendent of the national school, and they all gave advice to the peasants.After every meeting, the peasants always surrounded us and asked us to buy them a big barrel of white wine.Surrounded by people, we felt hot, exhausted quickly, and went home unhappy and a little embarrassed.Finally the peasants allocated a piece of land for the school and promised to bring all the building materials back from the city on their own horses.On the first Sunday after the spring crops were planted, they drove carts back from Kurilovka and Dubechnya to bring bricks and lay the foundation.

They set off at dawn, but didn't come back until dark; the peasants got drunk and said they were dead tired. As if on purpose, it has been rainy and cold all through May.The road is broken and muddy.How dreadful it is that the carts coming from the city usually drop in on our yard!And behold, a horse appeared at the gate, sprawled out, with a big belly, and put its head down before pulling the cart into the yard; Logs two arshins long, looking wet and slippery.Beside the cart was a farmer, wrapped tightly in his clothes because of the rain, with the front of his coat tucked into his belt, and walking without looking down at his feet or rounding the mud. ... Then came another wagon with thin planks, then another with logs, and a fourth... The open space in front of the main house was gradually filled with horses, logs, and planks .Peasants and peasant women with veiled heads and tucked-up skirts stared angrily at our windows, clamoring for the wife to come out, and savage oaths.Moise stood aside, and we felt he was taking pleasure in seeing us insulted.

1 7 The complete works of Chekhov's novels - 10 ① The old Russian unit of length, 1 Russian foot is equal to 0.71 meters. "We won't be shipping any more!" the farmers shouted. "We're exhausted! Let her do it herself!" Masha, pale and frightened, thought they were about to burst into the house, and sent for the half-cask of wine, after which the uproar subsided and the long logs crawled out of the yard one by one. went. I was about to go to the construction site when my wife panicked and said, "The peasants are fierce. I'm afraid they'll mess with you. No, wait a minute, I'll go with you."

We drove together to the village of Kulilovka, where the carpenters asked us to pay for the drinks.The wooden frame had been erected, and it was time to lay the foundation, but the mason had not come, so the work had to be stopped, and the carpenters complained.At last the plasterers came, but found no sand, and for some reason they forgot to use sand here.The peasants took advantage of our helpless situation to transport sand for thirty kopecks a load, when in fact it was less than a quarter of a mile from the construction site to the river.They have to transport more than 500 vehicles in total.Misunderstandings, insults, entanglements, endless quarrels, my wife was angry, and Tit Petrov, a contractor for the plasterers, an old man of seventy, took her by the arm and said: "Look! You Just look! Just bring me the sand, and I'll send you ten men at once, and the job will be done in two days. Just watch!"

The sand was brought in, but after two days, four days, a week, there was still a ditch at the place where the foundation stone was to be laid, with its mouth wide open. "It's just maddening!" my wife said excitedly. "What kind of people are these ordinary people! What kind of people!" In the midst of this confusion, the engineer Viktor Ivanitch came to us.He brought a bag with him, containing wine and cold dishes, ate for a long time, and then lay down on the terrace to sleep, snoring so loudly that the workers shook their heads and said, "It's amazing!"

Masha was not pleased that he had come, she did not trust him and at the same time asked him for advice.He had a long sleep after dinner, woke up in a bad mood, criticized our farm work, and said he regretted buying Dubechnya because it had cost him so much.Poor Masha always had a sad look on her face at such times.When she complained to him, he yawned and said that the peasant should be beaten up. He called our marriage and our life a comedy, and he called it capricious, nonsense. "Something like that has happened to her," he told me of Masha. "She left me once when she thought she could be an opera singer. I've been looking for her for two months, my dear fellow, and I've spent a thousand rubles on the telegraph."

He no longer calls me a sectarian, Mr. Painter, as he used to, nor regards my working life with approval, but just says: "You are a weirdo! You are an abnormal person! I dare not predict , but your fate will not be better!" Masha didn't sleep well at night, sitting by our bedroom window thinking.There was no more laughter at dinner, and she stopped making cute faces.I feel sad.When it rains, every raindrop hits my heart like a small bullet. I wish I could kneel in front of Masha and apologize for the weather.I also feel guilty for the peasants making trouble in the yard.I used to sit in one place for hours at a time, thinking what a wonderful person Marsha was, what a wonderful person she was.I love her passionately, and I am intoxicated by everything she says and does.She likes to sit quietly in the study, read books for a long time, and study something.She knew agricultural management only from books, and yet her knowledge astonished us. Her ideas were all applicable, and none of them was useless in agricultural management.Besides, how noble and graceful and kind she was, as only a very well-educated person can be!

To this healthy, sober minded woman, our present disordered surroundings, our petty annoyances and quarrels, were painful.I know this, so I can't sleep at night, thinking hard, tears welling up in my throat.I tossed and turned, not knowing what to do. I drove into town and bought books, newspapers, sweets, flowers for Masha.Stepan and I fished together, walking for hours in the rain and neck-deep in cold water, trying to catch a burbot to add something to our meals.I humbly begged the farmers not to make trouble, bought them drinks, bought them with money, and made various promises to them.Besides, how many stupid things have I done! At last the rain stopped and the land dried up.I got up at about four o'clock in the morning, went into the garden, saw the dewdrops shining on the flowers, the birds and insects making all kinds of noises, there was no cloud in the sky, and the garden, the meadows, and the river were so beautiful; but then I remembered Think of the peasant, think of the cart, think of the engineer!Masha and I went out into the fields in a buggy to look at the oats.She drove, and I sat behind her; her shoulders were raised slightly, and the wind played with her hair. "Keep to the right!" she yelled at the oncoming people. "You look like a driver," I said to her once. "It's possible! My grandfather, the engineer's father, was a driver. Don't you know that?" She turned to me and immediately acted out how a driver shouted and sang. "Thank goodness!" I thought to myself, listening to her voice. "Thank goodness!" But then I thought of the peasant, the cart, and the engineer. ...