Read The village. [Translation from the original Russian text by Isabel Hapgood] for Free Online Page A

comfort at all, to speak the plain truth! Young folks are no comfort nowadays!"
    Yakoff, like many peasants, was extremely nervous,
    1 Sharpers who pretend to be the poverty-stricken descendants of the Tatar Princes who ruled Kazan before it was conquered, during the rein of Ivan the Terrible.— trans.

    THE VILLAGE
    especially if his family or his affairs were in question. He was remarkably secretive, but on such occasions nervousness overpowered him, although only his disconnected, trembling speech betrayed the fact. So, in order to complete his disquiet, Tikhon Hitch inquired sympathetically: "So he isn't a comfort? Tell me, pray, is it all because of the woman?"
    Yakoff, looking about him, scratched his breast with his finger-nails. "Yes, because of the woman, his wife, his father may go break his back with work."
    "Is she jealous?"
    "Yes, she is. People set me down as the lover of my daughter-in-law."
    -"H'm!" ejaculated Tikhon Hitch sympathetically, although he knew full well that there is never smoke without fire.
    But Yakoff's eyes were already wandering: "She complained to her husband; how she complained! And, just think, she wanted to poison me. Sometimes, for example, a fellow catches cold and smokes a bit to relieve his chest. Well, she noticed that—and stuck a cigarette under my pillow. If I hadn't happened to see it—I'd have been done for!"
    "What sort of a cigarette?"
    "She had pounded up the bones of dead men, and stuffed it with that in place of tobacco."
    "That boy of yours is a fool! He ought to teach her a lesson, in Russian style—the damned hussy!"
    "What are you thinking of! He climbed on my breast, so to speak. And he wriggled like a serpent.

    THE VILLAGE
    I grabbed him by the head, but his head was shaved! I grabbed hold of his stomach. I hated to tear his shirt!"
    Tikhon Hitch shook his head, remained silent for a minute, and at last reached a decision: "Well, and how are things going with you over there? Are you still expecting the rebellion?"
    But thereupon Yakoff's secrecy was restored instantaneously. He grinned and waved his hand. "Well!" he muttered volubly. "What would we do with a rebellion? Our folks are peaceable. Yes, a peaceable lot." And he tightened the reins, as though his horse were restive and would not stand.
    "Then why did you have a village assembly last Sunday?" Tikhon Hitch maliciously and abruptly interjected.
    "A village assembly, did you say? The plague only knows! They started an awful row, so to speak."
    "I know what the row was about! I know!"
    "Well, what of it? I'm not making a secret of it. They gabbled, so to speak, said orders had been issued —orders had been issued—that no one was to work any more at the former price."
    It was extremely mortifying to reflect that, because of wretched little Durnovka, affairs were escaping from his grasp. And there were only thirty homesteads altogether in that same Durnovka. And it was situated in a devil of a ravine: a broad gorge, with peasant cottages on one side, and on the other the tiny manor. And that manor exchanged glances with the cottages

    THE VILLAGE
    and from day to day expected some "order." Ekh, he'd like to apply a few kazaks with their whips to the situation!
    IX
    BUT the "order" came, at last. One Sunday a rumour began to circulate in Durnovka that the village assembly had worked out a plan for an attack upon the manor. With maliciously merry eyes, a feeling of unusual strength and daring, and a readiness to "break the horns of the devil himself," Tikhon Hitch shouted orders to have the colt harnessed to the runabout, and within ten minutes he was driving him at high speed along the highway to Durnovka. The sun was setting, after a rainy day, in greyish-red clouds; the boles of the trees in the birch-grove were crimson; the country dirt-road, which stood out as a line of blackish-purple mud amid the fresh greenery, afforded heavy going. Rose-hued foam dripped from the haunches of the colt and from the