Orlóff and His Wife: Tales of the Barefoot Brigade. Maksim Gorky

ORLÓFF AND HIS WIFE

      Almost every Saturday, just before the All-Night Vigil Service,[1] from two windows in the cellar of merchant Petúnnikoff's old and filthy house, opening on the narrow court-yard encumbered with various utensils, and built up with wooden servants'-quarters ricketty with age, broke forth the vehement shrieks of a woman:

[1] The evening service, composed of Vespers and Matins, which is used on Saturdays, and on the Eves of most other Feast-days. Sunday begins with sunset on Saturday, in the Holy Catholic Orthodox Church of the East, and the appointed evening service is obligatory before the Liturgy can be celebrated on Sunday morning.—Translator.

      "Stop! Stop, you drunken devil!" the woman cried in a low contralto voice.

      "Let go!" replied a man's tenor voice.

      "I won't, I won't. I'll give it to you, you monster!"

      "You li-ie! You will let me go!"

      "You may kill me—but I won't!"

      "You? You li-ie, you heretic!"

      "Heavens! He has murdered me … he-eavens!"

      "Will you let go?!"

      "Beat away, you wild beast, beat me to death!"

      "You can wait. … I won't do it all at once!"

      At the first words of this dialogue, Sénka Tchízhik, the apprentice of house-painter Sutchkóff, who ground paint whole days together in one of the small sheds in the court-yard, flew headlong thence, his little eyes, black as those of a mouse, sparkling, yelling at the top of his voice:

      "Shoemaker Orlóff and his wife are fighting! My eye! what a lively time they're having!"

      Tchízhik, who was passionately fond of all possible sorts of events, rushed to the windows of the Orlóffs' lodgings, flung himself on the ground on his stomach, and hanging down his shaggy, saucy head, with its bold, thin face streaked with ochre and reddish-brown paint, he gazed down with eager eyes into the dark, damp hole, which reeked of mould, shoemakers' wax and musty leather. There, at the bottom of it, two figures were jerking about in a fury, screaming hoarsely, groaning and cursing.

      "You'll kill me. … " warned the woman, with a sigh.

      "N-ne-ever m-mind!"—her husband soothed her confidently, and with concentrated venom.

      Dull, heavy blows on some soft object resounded, sighs, piercing screams, the strained groaning of a man who is moving about a heavy weight.

      "Oh my! I-is-n't he just giving it to her with the last!" said Tchízhik with a lisp, illustrating the course of events in the cellar, while the audience which had gathered around him—tailors, messenger of the courts Levtchénko, Kislyakóff the accordeon-player, and others who were fond of gratuitous entertainments—kept asking Sénka, pulling, in their impatience, at his legs and little breeches all impregnated with greasy paints:

      "Well? What's going on now? What's he doing to her?"

      "He's sitting astride of her, and banging her snout against the floor," reported Sénka, curling up voluptuously with the impressions which he was experiencing.

The spectators bent over also, to the Orlóffs' windows, being seized with a burning desire to see all the details of the fight for themselves; and although they had long known the ways which Grísha[2] Orlóff employed in his war with his wife, still they expressed surprise:

[2] Grísha and Gríshka are the diminutives of Grigóry.—Translator.

      "Akh, the devil! Has he smashed her up?"

      "Her nose is all bloody … and he keeps on banking her!" reported Sénka, choking with delight.

      "Akh, Lord my God!" cried the women.—"Akh, the tormenting-monster!"

      The men judged more objectively.

      "Without fail, he'll beat her to death!" said they.

      And the accordeon-player announced in the tone of a seer:

      "Remember my words—he'll disembowel her with a knife! One of these days he'll get tired of cutting up in this fashion, and he'll put an end to the music at one blow!"

      "He's done!" reported Sénka, springing up from the ground, and bounding away like a ball from the windows, to one side, to a nook where he took up another post of observation, being aware that Grísha Orlóff would immediately emerge into the court-yard.

      The spectators rapidly dispersed, as they did not care to fall under the eye of the savage shoemaker; now that the battle was over, he had lost all interest in their eyes, and he was decidedly dangerous, to boot.

      And generally, there was not a living soul in the courtyard except Sénka, when Orlóff made his appearance from his cellar. Breathing heavily, in a torn shirt, with his hair rumpled all over his head, with scratches on his perspiring and excited face, he scrutinized the court-yard with a sidelong glance, with eyes suffused with blood, and clasping his hands behind his back, he walked slowly to an old carrier's sledge, which lay with runners upward, against the wall of the wood-shed. Sometimes he whistled valiantly as he did so, and stared about in all directions exactly as though he had the intention of challenging the entire population of the Petúnnikoff house to a fight. Then he seated himself on the runners of the sledge, wiped the blood and sweat from his face with his shirt-sleeve, and fell into a fatigued attitude, gazing dully at the wall of the house, which was dirty with peeling stucco and decorated with motley-hued stripes of paint—as Sutchkóf's