“Here,” the driver replied, pointing to the little village, and with those words we drove into it. By the gate I saw an old cast-iron cannon; the streets were narrow and crooked, the cottages low and mostly thatch-roofed. I ordered the driver to go to the commandant’s, and a moment later the kibitka drew up in front of a little wooden house, built on a rise near a church, also wooden.
No one came out to meet me. I went into the front hall and opened the door to the anteroom. An old veteran was sitting on a table, sewing a blue patch on the elbow of a green uniform. I told him to announce me.
“Go on in, my dear man,” the veteran replied. “Our people are at home.”
I entered a clean little room, decorated in the old-fashioned way. In one corner stood a china cupboard; on the wall hung an officer’s diploma under glass and in a frame; around it were proudly displayed some woodblock prints depicting the taking of Küstrin and Ochakov,12 as well as the choosing of a bride and the burial of a cat. By the window sat an old woman in a quilted vest and with a kerchief on her head. She was unwinding yarn, which a one-eyed old man in an officer’s uniform was holding on his outstretched arms.
“What can I do for you, my dear man?” she asked, going on with her work.
I replied that I had come to serve and was reporting for duty to the captain, addressing these last words to the one-eyed old man, whom I took for the commandant; but the lady of the house interrupted my prepared speech.
“Ivan Kuzmich is not at home,” she said. “He’s gone to visit Father Gerasim. But it makes no difference, my dear, I am his missis. Come right in. Sit down, dear.”
She called the serving girl and told her to summon the sergeant. The old man kept glancing at me curiously with his solitary eye.
“Dare I ask,” he said, “in what regiment you were pleased to serve?”
I satisfied his curiosity.
“And dare I ask,” he continued, “why you were pleased to transfer from the guards to the garrison?”
I replied that such was the will of my superiors.
“I suspect it was for behavior unbecoming to a guards officer,” the indefatigable questioner continued.
“Enough nonsense,” the captain’s wife said to him. “You can see the young man’s tired from the journey; he can’t be bothered with you…Hold your arms straight…And you, my dear,” she continued, turning to me, “don’t grieve that they’ve bundled you off to our backwater. You’re not the first, and you’re not the last. Habit and love go hand in glove. Shvabrin, Alexei Ivanych, was transferred to us nearly five years ago for killing a man. God knows what devil got into him. You see, he went outside town with a certain lieutenant, and they took swords, and then up and started poking them at each other; and Alexei Ivanych stabbed the lieutenant to death, and that in front of two witnesses! What can you do? The devil knows no master.”
Just then the sergeant came in, a strapping young Cossack.
“Maximych!” the captain’s wife said to him. “Find quarters for the good officer—of the cleaner sort.”
“Yes, ma’am, Vasilisa Egorovna,” replied the sergeant. “Why not put his honor up with Ivan Polezhaev?”
“No good, Maximych,” said the captain’s wife. “It’s crowded at Polezhaev’s; besides, he’s a friend and mindful that we’re his superiors. Take the good officer…What’s your name, my dear? Pyotr Andreich?…Take Pyotr Andreich to Semyon Kuzov’s. The rascal let his horse get into my kitchen garden. Well, so, Maximych, is everything all right?”
“Yes, thank God, everything’s quiet,” replied the Cossack, “only Corporal Prokhorov had a fight in the bathhouse with Ustinya Negulina over a basin of hot water.”
“Ivan Ignatyich!” the captain’s wife said to the one-eyed old man. “Sort it out between Prokhorov and Ustinya, who’s right and who’s wrong. And punish both of them. Well, Maximych, off you go, and God be with you. Pyotr Andreich, Maximych will take you to your quarters.”
I bowed and left. The sergeant brought me to the cottage, which stood on a high riverbank at the very edge of the fortress. One half of the cottage was occupied by Semyon Kuzov’s family, the other was allotted to me. It consisted of one rather tidy room divided in two by a partition. Savelyich started putting things in order; I started looking out the narrow window. Before me stretched the dismal steppe. To one side stood several huts; several chickens were wandering in the street. An old woman, standing on the porch with a tub, was calling her pigs, who answered with friendly grunts. And such was the place where I was condemned to spend my youth! Anguish came over me; I left the window and went to bed without supper, despite the admonitions of Savelyich, who kept repeating in distress: “God Almighty! He doesn’t want to eat anything! What will the mistress say if the little one’s taken ill?”
The next morning, just as I was beginning to dress, the door opened and a young officer came in, a short man with a swarthy and singularly unattractive, but extremely animated, face.
