Chapter 10

Just then the head of a peasant woman carrying linen on a yoke flashed by the window, and a minute later Davydka's mother entered the hut. She was a tall woman of about fifty years, and was well preserved and active. Her pockmarked and wrinkled face was not handsome, but her straight, firm nose, her compressed thin lips, and her keen gray eyes expressed intelligence and energy. The angularity of her shoulders, the flatness of her bosom, the bony state of her hands, and the well- developed muscles on her black bare feet witnessed to the fact that she had long ceased to be a woman, and was only a laborer.

She entered boldly into the room, closed the door, pulled down her skirt, and angrily looked at her son. Nekhlyudov wanted to tell her something, but she turned away from him, and began to make the signs of the cross before a black wooden image that peered out from behind the loom. Having finished her devotion, she straightened out her dirty checkered kerchief in which her head was wrapped, and made a low obeisance before the master.

" A pleasant Lord's Day to your Grace," she said. " May God preserve you, our father — ! "

When Davydka saw his mother he evidently became embarrassed, bent his back a little, and lowered his neck even more.

" Thank you, Arina," answered Nekhlyudov. " I have just been speaking with your son about your farm."

Anna, or, as the peasants had called her when she was still a maiden, Arishka-Burlak,^ supported her chin with the fist of her right hand, which, in its turn, was resting on the palm of her left hand ; and, without hearing what the master had still to say, began to speak in such a penetrating and loud voice that the whole hut was filled with sound, and in the street it might have appeared that several women were speaking at the same time.

" What use, father, is there of speaking to him ? He can't even speak like a man. There he stands, block- head," she continued, contemptuously pointing with her head to Davydka's wretched, massive figure. " My farm, your Grace ? We are mendicants ; there are no people in your whole village more wretched : we have neither of our own, nor anything for the manorial dues — a shame ! He has brought us to all this. I bore him, raised, and fed him, and with anticipation waited for him to grow up. Here he is: the grain is bursting, but there is no more work in him than in this rotten log. All he knows how to do is to lie on the oven, or to stand and scratch his stupid head," she said, mocking him. " If you, father, could threaten him somehow ! I beg you : punish him for the Lord's sake ; send him to the army, and make an end of it. I have lost my patience with him, I tell you."

"How is it you are not ashamed, Davydka, to bring your mother to such a state ? " said Nekhlyudov, reproachfully turning to the peasant.

Davydka did not budge.

" It would be different if he were a sickly man," Arina continued, with the same vivacity and gestures, " but you look at him, he is fatter than a mill pig. He is a good- looking chap, fit enough to work ! But no, he lies like a lubber all day on the oven. My eyes get tired looking when he undertakes to do something ; when he rises, or moves, or anything," she said, drawling her words and awkwardly turning her angular shoulders from side to side. " Now, for example, to-day the old man has gone for brushwood into the forest, and he has told him to dig holes ; but no, not he, he has not had the spade in his hands — " She grew silent for a moment. "He has undone me, abandoned woman ! " she suddenly whined, waving her hands, and walking up to her son with a threatening gesture. " Your smooth, good-for-nothing snout, the Lord forgive me ! "

She turned away contemptuously and in despair from him, spit out, and again turned to the master, continuing to wave her hands, with the same animation and with tears in her eyes :

" I am all alone, benefactor. My old man is sick and old, and there is little good in him, and I am all sole alone. It is enough to make a stone burst. It would be easier if I just could die ; that would be the end. He has worn me out, that rascal ! Our father ! I have no more strength ! My daughter-in-law died from work, and I shall, too."

1 Biu'lak is a laborer towing boats up the Volga.