II. The Little Ones

And so, on that frosty, raw November morning the boy Kolya Krasotkin was sitting at home. It was Sunday, and there were no classes. But it had already struck eleven, and he absolutely had to go out “on a certain extremely important matter,” and meanwhile he had been left alone in the whole house, and decidedly as its guardian, because it so happened that all its older inhabitants, owing to a certain extraordinary and original circumstance, had gone out. In the widow Krasotkina’s house, across the entryway from the apartment she occupied herself, there was one more, the only other little apartment in the house, of two small rooms, which was let, and it was occupied by a doctor’s wife with two small children. This doctor’s wife, who was of an age with Anna Fyodorovna, was a great friend of hers, while the doctor himself had gone off about a year ago somewhere, first to Orenburg and then to Tashkent, and for half a year now there had been neither sight nor sound of him, so that if it had not been for her friendship with Mrs. Krasotkina, which somewhat softened the grief of the abandoned doctor’s wife, she would decidedly have dissolved in tears from that grief. And then, as the crowning touch to all the oppressions of fate, it had to happen that on this very night, from Saturday to Sunday, Katerina, the doctor’s wife’s only servant, suddenly and quite unexpectedly for her mistress announced to her that she intended to give birth to a baby toward morning. How it happened that nobody had noticed this beforehand was almost a miracle to everyone. The astonished doctor’s wife decided, while there was still time, to take Katerina to a certain establishment in our town, kept by a midwife and fitted out for such occasions. Since she valued this servant very highly, she carried out her plan immediately, took her there, and, what is more, stayed there with her. Then, in the morning, for some reason all the friendly sympathy and help of Mrs. Krasotkina herself was needed, since on this occasion she could ask someone for something and offer some sort of patronage. Thus both ladies were away, while Mrs. Krasotkina’s own servant, the peasant woman Agafya, had gone to the market, and so Kolya found himself for the time being the guardian and watchman of the “bubbles,” that is, the doctor’s wife’s little boy and girl, who had been left all on their own. Kolya was not afraid to guard the house; besides, Perezvon was with him, who had been ordered to lie flat on his belly in the front hall under the bench “without movements,” and who for precisely that reason, every time Kolya, pacing through the rooms, came into the front hall, would jerk his head and give two firm and ingratiating thumps of his tail on the floor; but alas, the summoning whistle did not sound. Kolya would look menacingly at the unhappy dog, and he would freeze again in obedient numbness. But if anything troubled Kolya, it was solely the “bubbles.” On the unforeseen adventure with Katerina he looked, of course, with the most profound contempt, but he was very fond of the orphaned bubbles and had already taken them some children’s book. Nastya, the elder, a girl of eight already, could read, and the younger bubble, Kostya, a boy of seven, loved very much to listen when Nastya read to him. Of course, Krasotkin could have entertained them more interestingly, that is, stood them both side by side and begun playing soldiers with them, or hide-and-seek all over the house. He had done this more than once before and did not scorn to do it, so that once even in their class it had got about that Krasotkin played horses at home with his little lodgers, prancing as the trace horse and bending his head; but Krasotkin had proudly parried this accusation, pointing out that with boys his own age, thirteen-year-olds, it would indeed be shameful to play horses “in our age,” but that he did it for the “bubbles,” because he loved them, and no one dared to ask him to account for his feelings. And for that both “bubbles” adored him. But this time he was in no mood for games. He had a very important affair of his own ahead of him, and to all appearances an almost mysterious one; meanwhile time was passing, and Agafya, with whom the children could have been left, still would not come back from the market. Several times already he had crossed the entryway, opened the door to the doctor’s wife’s, and looked anxiously over the “bubbles,” who, by his order, were sitting over their book, and every time he opened the door they smiled at him silently with all their mouths, expecting that now he would come in and do something wonderful and amusing. But Kolya was in a state of inner alarm and did not go in. At last it struck eleven, and he decided firmly and finally that if in ten minutes the “damned” Agafya did not come back, he would go out without waiting for her, having of course made the “bubbles” promise that they would not lose their nerve without him, would not get into mischief, and would not cry from fright. With these thoughts he put on his little quilted winter coat with a fur collar of some sort of sealskin, hung his satchel over his shoulder, and, in spite of his mother’s former repeated entreaties that in “such cold” he should always put on his galoshes when he went out, only looked at them with contempt as he passed through the front hall, and went out in his boots alone. Perezvon, seeing him dressed, began thumping his tail on the floor with redoubled force, twitching nervously all over, and even let out a plaintive howl, but Kolya, at the sight of such passionate impetuosity in his dog, concluded that this was harmful to discipline, and kept him under the bench for at least another minute, and only when he had already opened the door to the entryway did he suddenly whistle for him. The dog leaped up like a mad thing and rushed to bound about in front of him with rapture. Crossing the entryway, Kolya opened the door to the “bubbles.” Both were sitting at the little table as before, but they were no longer reading; they were arguing hotly about something. These little ones often argued with each other on various challenging subjects of everyday life, and Nastya, as the elder, always got the upper hand; while Kostya, if he did not agree with her, would almost always go and appeal to Kolya Krasotkin, and however he decided, so it remained, in the form of an absolute verdict for all parties. This time the “bubbles’” argument somewhat interested Krasotkin, and he stopped in the doorway to listen. The little ones saw that he was listening, and so they went on with their dispute with still greater zeal.

“Never, never will I believe,” Nastya was prattling hotly, “that midwives find little babies in the kitchen garden, between the cabbage beds. It’s winter now, and there aren’t any beds, and the midwife couldn’t have brought Katerina a little daughter.”

“Whew!” Kolya whistled to himself.

“Or else it’s like this: they bring them from somewhere, but only to those who get married.”

Kostya looked at Nastya intently, listening profoundly and thinking it over.

“Nastya, what a fool you are,” he pronounced at last, firmly and without getting heated. “How can Katerina have a baby when she isn’t married?”

Nastya got terribly heated.

“You don’t understand anything,” she cut him off irritably. “Maybe she had a husband, only he’s in prison, so she went and had a baby.”

“But has she really got a husband in prison?” the matter-of-fact Kostya inquired gravely.

“Or else it’s this,” Nastya interrupted impetuously, completely abandoning and forgetting her first hypothesis, “she hasn’t got a husband, you’re right about that, but she wants to get married, so she started thinking about how she’d get married, and she kept thinking and thinking, and thought until there it was, she had not a husband but a baby.”

“Well, maybe so,” agreed Kostya, completely defeated, “but you didn’t say that before, so how was I supposed to know?”

“Well, little ones,” Kolya pronounced, stepping into the room, “you are dangerous folk, I see!”

“Is Perezvon with you?” Kostya grinned, and began snapping his fingers and calling Perezvon.

“Bubbles, I am in difficulty,” Krasotkin began gravely, “and you must help me; Agafya has certainly broken her leg, since she still hasn’t turned up, that’s signed and sealed, and I absolutely have to go out. Will you let me go or not?”

The children looked at each other anxiously; their grinning faces began to express uneasiness. They did not yet fully understand, however, what was wanted of them.

“You won’t get into mischief without me? You won’t clamber up onto the cupboard and break your legs? You won’t cry from fright alone?”

A terrible woe appeared on the children’s faces.

“And in return I could show you a certain little thing, a little brass cannon that you can fire with real gunpowder.”

The little ones’ faces instantly brightened.

“Show us the little cannon,” said Kostya, all beaming.

Krasotkin put his hand into his satchel and, taking out a small bronze cannon, set it on the table.

“Show you, is it! Look, it’s on little wheels,” he rolled the toy along the table, “and you can fire it. Load it with shot and fire.”

“And will it kill?”

“It’ll kill everybody, you only have to aim it,” and Krasotkin explained where to put the powder, where to roll in the pellet of shot, pointed out the little hole that served as the touchhole, and told them that there was a recoil. The children listened with terrible curiosity. What struck their imagination most of all was that there was a recoil.

“And do you have gunpowder?” Nastya inquired.

“I do.”

“Show us the gunpowder too,” she drawled with a pleading smile.

Krasotkin climbed into his satchel again and took out of it a small vial, in which some real gunpowder had indeed been poured, and in a twist of paper there turned out to be a few grains of shot. He even uncorked the vial and poured a little powder out on his palm.

“There, only there mustn’t be any fire around, or else it’ll just blow up and kill us all,” Krasotkin warned for effect.

The children examined the powder with reverent fear, which heightened their delight still more. But Kostya liked the shot better.

“And shot doesn’t burn?” he inquired.

“Shot doesn’t burn.”

“Give me a little shot,” he said in a pleading little voice.

“I’ll give you a little shot, here, take it, only don’t show it to your mama until I come back, or else she’ll think it’s gunpowder and simply die of fright, and give you a whipping.”

“Mama never whips us with a birch rod,” Nastya remarked at once.

“I know, I only said it for the elegance of my style. And never deceive your mama, but this time—until I come back. And so, bubbles, may I go or not? You won’t cry from fright without me?”

“We’ll cr-y-y,” Kostya drawled, already preparing to cry.

“We will, we’ll certainly cry!” Nastya chimed in too, in a frightened patter.

“Oh, children, children, how dangerous are your years. There’s nothing to be done, my fledglings, I’ll have to sit here with you for I don’t know how long. And the time, the time, oof!”

“Then tell Perezvon to play dead,” Kostya asked.

“Well, there’s nothing to be done, we’ll have to resort to Perezvon too. Ici (here), Perezvon!” And Kolya began commanding the dog, and the dog performed everything it knew. It was a shaggy dog, about the size of an ordinary mongrel, with a coat of some sort of grayish lilac. Its right eye was blind, and its left ear for some reason had a slit in it. It squealed and jumped, sat up and begged, walked on its hind legs, threw itself on its back with all four paws in the air and lay motionless as if dead. During this last trick the door opened, and Agafya, Mrs. Krasotkina’s fat servant, a pockmarked peasant woman of about forty, appeared on the threshold, back from the market with a bag of groceries in her hand. She stopped and, holding the bag dangling in her left hand, began watching the dog. Kolya, however much he had been waiting for Agafya, did not interrupt the performance, and, having kept Perezvon dead for the fixed time, at last whistled to him: the dog leaped up and began jumping for joy at having done its duty.

“Look at that dog!” Agafya said edifyingly. “And you, female sex, why are you late?” Krasotkin asked menacingly.

“Female sex, is it, you little pimple!”

“Pimple?”

“A pimple, that’s what. What’s it to you that I’m late; if I’m late, it means that’s how it had to be,” Agafya muttered, starting to bustle about the stove, but in a voice not at all displeased or angry; on the contrary, very pleased, as if glad of the chance to trade jibes with the merry young master.

“Listen, frivolous old woman,” Krasotkin began, getting up from the sofa, “can you swear to me by everything that is holy in this world, and by something else besides, that you will watch over the bubbles tirelessly in my absence? I am going out.”

“And why should I swear to you?” Agafya laughed. “I’ll look after them anyway.”

“No, nothing short of swearing by the eternal salvation of your soul. Otherwise I won’t go.”

“Then don’t. What’s it to me; it’s freezing out, stay at home.”

“Bubbles,” Kolya turned to the little ones, “this woman will stay with you until I come back or until your mama comes, because she ought to have been back long ago too. Besides, she will give you some lunch. Will you give them something, Agafya?”

“That’s possible.”

“Goodbye, fledglings, I go with a quiet heart. And you, granny,” he said in an undertone and gravely as he passed Agafya, “I hope you won’t tell them your usual womanish nonsense about Katerina; you’ll spare their tender age. Ici, Perezvon!”

“Oh, go to God with you,” Agafya snapped, angry now. “Ridiculous! You’re the one who wants a whipping for such words, that’s what.”