Orlóff and His Wife: Tales of the Barefoot Brigade. Maksim Gorky
to him, being aware that all the secrets of the court-yard were known to Tchízhik.
"You can't do any fishing round her,"—explained Tchízhik, paying no attention to the threat.—"Maxím the painter tried it, and bang! she let fly such a slap in the face at him! I heard it myself … a healthy whack! Straight in his ugly face … just as though it had been a drum!"
Half-child, half-man, in spite of his fifteen years, lively and impressionable, he eagerly absorbed, like a sponge, the dirt of the life around him, and on his brow there was a thin wrinkle, which showed that Sénka Tchízhik was given to thinking.
… It was dark in the court-yard. Above it shone a quadrangular bit of blue sky, all glittering with stars, and surrounded by lofty roofs, so that the court seemed to be a deep pit, when one looked up out of it. In one corner of this pit sat a tiny female form, resting after her beating, and awaiting her drunken husband. …
*
The Orlóffs had been married three years. They had had a child, but after living for about a year and a half, it died; neither of them mourned it long, being consoled with the hope that they would have another. The cellar, in which they had taken up their abode, was a large, long, dark room with a vaulted ceiling. Directly at the door stood a huge Russian stove, facing the windows; between it and the wall a narrow passage led into a square space, lighted by two windows, which opened on the court-yard. The light fell through them into the cellar in slanting, turbid streaks, and the atmosphere in the room was damp, dull, dead life pulsated somewhere, tar away, up above, but only faint, ill-defined sounds of it were wafted hither, and fell, together with the dust, into the Orlóffs' hole, in a sort of formless, colorless flakes. Opposite the stove, against the wall, stood a wooden double-bed, with print curtains of a cinnamon-brown dotted with pink flowers; opposite the bed, against the other wall, was a table, on which they drank tea and dined; and between the bed and the wall, the husband and wife worked, in the two streaks of light.
Cockroaches travelled indolently over the walls, feeding on the bread-crumbs with which various little pictures from old newspapers were stuck to the plaster; melancholy flies flitted about everywhere, buzzing tiresomely, and the little pictures, which they had covered with specks, stood out like dark spots against the dirty-gray background of the walls.
The Orlóffs' day began after this fashion: at six o'clock in the morning, Matréna awoke, washed herself, and prepared the samovár, which had more than once been crippled in the heat of battle, and was covered all over with patches of lead. While the samovár was coming to a boil, she put the room in order, went to the shop,[5] then roused her husband; he rose, washed himself, and the samovár was already standing on the table, hissing and purring. They sat down to drink tea, with white bread, of which, together, they ate a pound.
[5] In Russian towns, people go or send, every morning, to the shops for bread, cream, butter.—Translator.
Grigóry worked well, and he always had work; after tea he portioned it out. He did the fine work, which required the hand of a master, his wife prepared the waxed ends, pasted in the linings, put on the outside layer on the heels, and did other trifling jobs of that sort. After tea, they discussed their dinner. In winter, when it was necessary to eat more, this was a tolerably interesting question; in summer, from economy, they heated the oven only on feast-days, and not always then, feeding themselves chiefly on a cold dish made of kvas,[6] with the addition of onions, salt-fish, sometimes of meat, boiled in the oven of someone in the court-yard. When they had finished their tea, they sat down to work: Grigóry on a small kneading-trough, covered with leather, and with a crack in the side, his wife by his side, on a low bench.
[6] A tart, non-intoxicating, liquor—thin beer—made by fermenting sour rye bread, or rye meal. Sometimes raisins, straw or watermelon juice are used to flavor it.—Translator.
At first they worked in silence—what had they to talk about? They exchanged a couple of words about their work, and maintained silence for half an hour, or more, at a stretch. The hammer tapped, the waxed-ends hissed, as they were drawn through the leather. Grigóry yawned from time to time, and invariably concluded his yawn with a prolonged roar or howl. Matréna sighed and held her peace. Sometimes Orlóff started a song. He had a sharp voice, with a metallic ring, but he knew how to sing. The words of the song were arranged in a swift, plaintive recitative, and now burst impetuously from Grigóry's breast, as though afraid to finish what they wished to say, now, all of a sudden, lengthened out into mournful sighs, or—with a wail of "ekh!"—flew in loud, melancholy strains, through the windows into the court. Matréna sang an accompaniment to her husband, with her soft contralto. The faces of both grew pensive, and sad, Grísha's dark eyes became dimmed with moisture. His wife, absorbed in the sounds, seemed to grow stupid, and sat as though half-dozing, swaying from side to side, and sometimes the song seemed to choke her, and she broke off in the middle of a note, and then went on with it, in harmony with her husband. Neither of them was conscious of the presence of the other while they were singing, and striving to pour forth in the words of others the emptiness and dulness of their gloomy life; perhaps they wished to give expression, in these words, to the half-conscious thoughts and sensations, which sprang into life in their souls.
At times Gríshka improvised:
"E-okh, thou life, … ekh, yea, thou, my thrice-accursed life. …
And thou, oh grief! Ekh, and thou, my cursed grief,
Maledictions on thee, gri-i-ief! … "
Matréna did not like these improvisations, and, on such occasions, she generally asked him:
"Why are you howling, like a dog before a corpse?"
For some reason, he instantly flew into a rage with her:
"You blunt-snouted pig! What can you understand? You marsh-spectre!"
"He howled, and howled, and now he has taken to barking. … "
"Your business is to hold your tongue! Who am I—your foreman, I'd like to know, that you meddle and read me lectures, hey? … Just so!"
Matréna, perceiving that the sinews of his neck were becoming tense, and that his eyes were blazing with wrath, held her peace, held it for a long time, demonstratively evading a reply to the questions of her husband, whose wrath died out as rapidly as it had flared up.
She turned away from his glances, which sought reconciliation with her, awaited her smiles, and was completely filled with a palpitating feeling of fear, lest he should fly into a passion with her again for this play of hers with him. But, at the same time, she was incensed at him, and was greatly pleased to observe his efforts to make peace with her—for this signified living, thinking, experiencing agitation.
They were both of them young and healthy, they loved each other, and were proud of each other. … Gríshka was so strong, ardent, handsome, and Matréna was white, plump, with a spark of fire in her gray eyes—"a buxom woman," as they called her in the court-yard. They loved each other, but their life was so tiresome, they had hardly any interests and impressions which could, occasionally, afford them the possibility of getting a rest from each other, and might have satisfied the natural demand of the human soul—to feel excitement, to think, to glow—in short, to live. For under such conditions of lack of external impressions and interests which lend a zest to life, husband and wife—even when they are persons of highly cultivated minds—are bound, inevitably, to become repulsive to each other. This law is as inevitable as it is just. If the Orlóffs had had an aim in life, even so limited an aim as the amassing of money, penny by penny, they would, undoubtedly, in that case, have got along better together.
But they had not even that.
Being constantly under each other's eye, they had grown used to each other, knew each other's every word and gesture. Day after day passed by, and