Korney Vasiliev

I

Korney Vasiliev was fifty-four years old when he last came to the village. In his thick curly hair there was not yet a single gray strand, and only in his black beard near the cheekbones was gray beginning to show. His face was smooth and ruddy, his neck thick and strong, and his whole powerful body had grown fat from the well-fed city life.

Twenty years before, he had completed his military service and returned with money. At first he opened a shop, then left the shop and began trading in cattle. He would travel to Cherkassy for “goods” (cattle) and drive them to Moscow.

In the village of Gai, in his stone house with an iron roof, lived his old mother, his wife with two children (a girl and a boy), also an orphaned nephew, a mute fifteen-year-old lad, and a hired worker. Korney had been married twice. His first wife was a weak, sickly woman who died without children, and as an older widower he married a second time—a healthy, beautiful girl, the daughter of a poor widow from a neighboring village. The children were from the second wife.

Korney had sold his last “goods” in Moscow so profitably that he had accumulated nearly three thousand rubles. Having learned from a fellow countryman that not far from his village a grove was being sold advantageously by a ruined landowner, he decided to try his hand at the timber business as well. He knew this trade and before his military service had worked as an assistant steward for a merchant in a grove.

At the railway station where one turned off for Gai, Korney met a fellow villager, one-eyed Kuzma from Gai. Kuzma drove from Gai to meet every train with his pair of poor, shaggy little horses, looking for passengers. Kuzma was poor and therefore disliked all the rich, especially the rich man Korney, whom he called “Kornyushka.”

Korney, in his short sheepskin coat and long fur coat, with a small trunk in his hand, came out onto the station porch and, thrusting out his belly, stopped, puffing and looking around. It was morning. The weather was calm and overcast, with a light frost.

“So you didn’t find any passengers, Uncle Kuzma?” he said. “Will you take me, then?”

“Well, give me a ruble. I’ll take you.”

“Come now, seventy kopecks is enough.”

“You’ve grown yourself a belly, and now you want to squeeze thirty kopecks from a poor man.”

“All right then, let’s go,” said Korney. And having placed his trunk and bundle in the small sleigh, he seated himself broadly in the back.

Kuzma remained on the driver’s seat.

“All right. Get going.”

They drove out of the ruts by the station onto the smooth road.

“Well, how is it in your place—not ours, but yours in the village?” asked Korney.

“Not much good.”

“Why so? Is my old mother alive?”

“Your old mother’s alive. Was in church the other day. Your old mother’s alive. And your young mistress is alive too. What could happen to her? She’s taken on a new worker.”

And Kuzma laughed somehow strangely, or so it seemed to Korney.

“What worker? And what about Pyotr?”

“Pyotr got sick. She hired Evstigney Bely from Kamenka,” said Kuzma, “from her own village, that is.”

“Is that so?” said Korney.

Even when Korney was courting Marfa, the village women had gossiped something about Evstigney.

“So that’s how it is, Korney Vasilich,” said Kuzma. “Women have taken too much liberty nowadays.”

“What can you say!” Korney remarked. “And your gray mare has gotten old,” he added, wanting to end the conversation.

“I’m not young myself. Like master, like horse,” Kuzma replied to Korney’s words, flicking the shaggy, crooked-legged gelding.

Halfway there was an inn. Korney told him to stop and went inside. Kuzma pulled the horse up to an empty trough and adjusted the harness, not looking at Korney and waiting for him to call him in.

“Come in, Uncle Kuzma,” said Korney, coming out onto the porch, “have a glass.”

“Well, why not,” answered Kuzma, pretending he was in no hurry.

Korney ordered a bottle of vodka and poured Kuzma a glass. Kuzma, who had not eaten since morning, immediately became drunk. And as soon as he was drunk, he began whispering, leaning toward Korney, telling him what people were saying in the village. And they were saying that Marfa, his wife, had taken her former lover as a worker and was living with him.

“It’s nothing to me. I feel sorry for you,” said the drunken Kuzma. “Only it’s not right, people are laughing. Obviously she’s not afraid of sin. But just you wait, I say. Give it time, he’ll come himself. So that’s how it is, brother, Korney Vasilich.”

Korney listened in silence to what Kuzma said, and his thick eyebrows sank lower and lower over his shining, coal-black eyes.

“Well, are you going to treat me some more?” he only said when the bottle was empty. “If not, then let’s go.”

He paid the innkeeper and went out into the street.

He arrived home at dusk. The first person to meet him was that same Evstigney Bely whom he had not been able to stop thinking about the whole way. Korney greeted him. Seeing Evstigney’s thin, pale face as he hurried about, Korney only shook his head in puzzlement. “That old dog lied,” he thought about Kuzma’s words. “But who knows. I’ll find out.”

Kuzma stood by the horse, winking with his one eye at Evstigney.

“So you’re living with us?” asked Korney.

“Well, a man has to work somewhere,” answered Evstigney.

“Is the parlor heated?”

“Of course. Matvevna’s in there,” answered Evstigney.

Korney climbed the porch steps. Marfa, hearing the voices, came out into the entryway and, seeing her husband, flushed and greeted him hurriedly and with particular affection.

“Mother and I had already given up waiting,” she said and followed Korney into the parlor.

“Well, how are you living without me?”

“Same as always,” she said and, picking up her two-year-old daughter, who was tugging at her skirt and asking for milk, walked with big, determined steps into the entryway.

Korney’s mother, with the same black eyes as Korney, came into the parlor, dragging her feet with difficulty in their felt boots.

“Thank you for coming to visit,” she said, her head shaking.

Korney told his mother what business had brought him, and remembering Kuzma, went to take him the money. As soon as he opened the door to the entryway, he saw right before him, by the door to the yard, Marfa and Evstigney. They were standing close to each other, and she was saying something. Seeing Korney, Evstigney slipped out into the yard, and Marfa went to the samovar, adjusting the pipe that was humming over it.

Korney walked silently past her bent back and, taking the bundle, called Kuzma in for tea in the main room. Before tea Korney distributed the Moscow gifts to the household: a woolen shawl for his mother, a picture book for Fedka, a waistcoat for the mute nephew, and calico for a dress for his wife.

Over tea Korney sat scowling and silent. Only occasionally did he smile reluctantly, watching the mute, who amused everyone with his joy. He could not stop admiring the waistcoat. He folded and unfolded it, put it on, and kissed his own hand while looking at Korney and smiling.

After tea and supper Korney immediately went to the parlor, where he slept with Marfa and their little daughter. Marfa stayed in the main room to clear away the dishes. Korney sat alone at the table, leaning on his hand and waiting. His anger at his wife was churning more and more within him. He took the abacus down from the wall, pulled out his notebook from his pocket, and to distract his thoughts began to calculate. He counted, glancing at the door and listening to the voices in the main room.

Several times he heard the door to the room open and someone go out into the entryway, but it was never her. Finally he heard her footsteps, the door jerked, came unstuck, and she, rosy-cheeked and beautiful in her red kerchief, came in with the girl in her arms.

“You must be tired from the journey,” she said, smiling as if not noticing his gloomy look.

Korney glanced at her and began counting again, though there was nothing left to count.

“It’s getting late,” she said and, setting down the girl, went behind the partition.

He heard her making the bed and putting the daughter to sleep.

“People are laughing,” he remembered Kuzma’s words. “Just you wait…” he thought, barely able to breathe, and with a slow movement he stood up, put the pencil stub in his vest pocket, hung the abacus on the nail, took off his jacket, and approached the door of the partition. She was standing with her face to the icons, praying. He stopped, waiting. She crossed herself for a long time, bowed, and whispered prayers. It seemed to him that she had long since said all the prayers and was deliberately repeating them several times. But then she made a prostration to the ground, straightened up, whispered some prayerful words to herself, and turned to face him.

“Agashka’s already asleep,” she said, pointing to the girl, and smiling, sat down on the creaking bed.

“How long has Evstigney been here?” said Korney, entering through the doorway.

With a calm movement she tossed one thick braid over her shoulder onto her chest and began rapidly unbraiding it with nimble fingers. She looked directly at him, and her eyes were laughing.

“Evstigney? Who knows, two or three weeks.”

“Are you living with him?” said Korney.

She let go of the braid but immediately caught her stiff, thick hair again and began braiding.

“What won’t people make up. Living with Evstigney?” she said, pronouncing “Evstigney” with particular resonance. “The things they invent! Who told you that?”

“Tell me: is it true or not?” said Korney and clenched into fists his powerful hands thrust into his pockets.

“Stop talking nonsense. Shall I take off your boots?”

“I’m asking you,” he repeated.

“As if he were such a treasure. That I’d fall for Evstigney,” she said. “And who told you such lies?”

“What were you talking to him about in the entryway?”

“What was I talking about? I was saying that we need to put a hoop on the barrel. And why are you badgering me?”

“I’m telling you: speak the truth. I’ll kill you, you filthy bitch.”

He grabbed her by the braid.

She yanked her braid from his hand; her face contorted with pain.

“The only thing you’re good for is fighting. What good have I seen from you? Living like this, I don’t know what a woman might do.”

“What might she do?” he said, advancing on her.

“Why did you tear out half my hair? Look at it coming out in clumps. Why are you badgering me? It’s the truth that…”

She did not finish. He grabbed her by the arm, pulled her off the bed, and began beating her on the head, the sides, the chest. The more he beat her, the more his rage flared. She screamed, defended herself, tried to get away, but he would not let her. The girl woke up and threw herself at her mother.

“Mama!” she wailed.

Korney seized the girl by the arm, tore her away from her mother, and threw her into the corner like a kitten. The girl shrieked, and for several seconds she could not be heard.

“Murderer! You’ve killed the child!” screamed Marfa and tried to rise toward her daughter.

But he grabbed her again and hit her in the chest so hard that she fell on her back and also stopped screaming. Only the girl screamed desperately, without catching her breath.

The old mother, without her kerchief, with disheveled gray hair and shaking head, came staggering into the room and, without looking at Korney or Marfa, went to her granddaughter, who was pouring out desperate tears, and picked her up.

Korney stood breathing heavily and looking around as if just woken from sleep, not understanding where he was or who was there with him.

Marfa raised her head and, groaning, wiped her bloodied face with her shirt.

“You hateful villain!” she said. “Yes, I am living with Evstigney and have been. Here, kill me to death. And Agashka isn’t your daughter; I had her with him,” she said quickly and covered her face with her elbow, expecting a blow.

But Korney seemed not to understand anything and only breathed heavily and looked around.

“Look what you’ve done to the girl: you’ve broken her arm,” said the old woman, showing him the twisted, hanging little arm of the girl who continued to wail without stopping.

Korney turned and silently went out into the entryway and onto the porch.

Outside it was just as frosty and overcast. Snowflakes of frost fell on his burning cheeks and forehead. He sat down on the steps and ate snow by the handful, gathering it from the railings. From behind the doors he could hear Marfa groaning and the girl crying pitifully; then the door to the entryway opened, and he heard his mother carry the girl out of the parlor and cross through the entryway to the main room. He got up and went into the parlor.

The lamp, turned down low, was burning dimly on the table. From behind the partition came Marfa’s groans, which intensified as soon as he entered. He silently got dressed, took out the suitcase from under the bench, packed his things in it, and tied it with a rope.

“Why did you kill me? Why? What did I do to you?” Marfa began speaking in a pitiful voice. Korney, without answering, lifted the suitcase and carried it to the door. “Convict! Murderer! Just you wait. Is there no court for the likes of you?” she said in a completely different, malicious voice.

Korney, without answering, kicked the door open and slammed it so hard that the walls shook.

Going into the main room, Korney woke the mute and told him to harness the horse. The mute, not fully awake, looked questioningly at his uncle and scratched his head with both hands. Finally understanding what was wanted of him, he jumped up, put on felt boots and a torn sheepskin coat, took a lantern, and went out to the yard.

It was already quite light when Korney drove out through the gate with the mute in the small sleigh and headed back along the same road by which he had come the evening before with Kuzma.

He arrived at the station five minutes before the train departed. The mute saw him buy a ticket, pick up his suitcase, get into the carriage with a nod of his head, and watched the carriage roll out of sight.

Marfa, besides the bruises on her face, had two broken ribs and a wound on her head. But the strong, healthy young woman recovered in six months, so that no trace of the beatings remained. The girl, however, remained partially crippled for life. Two bones in her arm had been broken, and the arm remained crooked.

As for Korney, from the time he left, no one knew anything about him. They did not know whether he was alive or dead.

---

II

Seventeen years passed. It was late autumn. The sun traveled low, and by four in the afternoon it was already getting dark. The Andreyevka herd was returning to the village. The shepherd, having finished his term, had left before the fast began, and the cattle were driven by women and children taking turns.

The herd had just come off the oat stubble onto the muddy main road, black with earth churned by split-hoofed tracks and rutted by wheels, and with unceasing lowing and bleating was making its way toward the village. Along the road ahead of the herd walked a tall old man in a patched zipun darkened by rain, a large cap, with a leather bag on his stooped back and a curly gray beard and curly gray hair; only his thick eyebrows were black. He walked, heavily moving his feet in wet, worn-out coarse Ukrainian boots through the mud, and with every other step steadying himself evenly with an oak staff. When the herd caught up with him, he stopped, leaning on his staff.

A young woman driving the herd, her head covered with a piece of burlap, her skirt tucked up, wearing men’s boots, ran quickly now to one side of the road, now to the other, driving the straggling sheep and pigs. Coming alongside the old man, she stopped and looked him over.

“Good day, Grandpa,” she said in a clear, tender, young voice.

“Good day, dear,” the old man said.

“What, are you looking for a place to spend the night?”

“I suppose so. I’m worn out,” the old man said hoarsely.

“Don’t go to the village elder, Grandpa,” the young woman said kindly. “Come straight to us, the third house from the edge. My mother-in-law lets pilgrims stay without being sent there.”

“The third house. That would be Zinoveyev’s?” said the old man, somehow meaningfully moving his black eyebrows.

“You know it?”

“I’ve been here before.”

“Fedyushka, why are you dawdling, the lame one’s fallen way behind,” the young woman shouted, pointing to a three-legged sheep hobbling behind the herd, and waving her switch with her right hand and somehow strangely grabbing the burlap on her head from below with her crooked left hand, she ran back after the straggling lame wet black sheep.

The old man was Korney. And the young woman was that same Agashka whose arm he had broken seventeen years before. She had been married off to Andreyevka, to a wealthy family, about four versts from Gai.

---

III

Korney Vasiliev had gone from being a strong, rich, proud man to what he was now: an old beggar who had nothing but worn-out clothes on his body, a soldier’s identity paper, and two shirts in his bag. This whole change had happened so gradually that he could not have said when it began and when it was complete. One thing he knew, one thing he was firmly convinced of: that the cause of his misfortune was his villainous wife. It was strange and painful for him to remember what he had been before. And when he remembered it, he remembered with hatred the one he considered the cause of all the bad things he had experienced in these seventeen years.

That night when he had beaten his wife, he had gone to the landowner where the grove was for sale. He could not buy the grove. It had already been sold, and he returned to Moscow and began drinking there. He had drunk before, but now he drank without stopping for two weeks, and when he came to his senses, he went south for cattle. The purchase was unsuccessful, and he suffered a loss. He went a second time. The second purchase also failed. And within a year his three thousand had shrunk to twenty-five rubles, and he had to hire himself out to work for others. He had drunk before, but now he began drinking more and more often.

At first he spent a year as a steward for a cattle dealer, but on the road he went on a binge, and the dealer dismissed him. Then through acquaintances he found a position selling wine, but he did not last long there either. He got tangled up in his accounts, and they let him go. To go home was shameful, and he felt rage. “They’ll get along without me. Maybe the boy isn’t even mine,” he thought.

Everything kept getting worse and worse. He could not live without wine. He began hiring himself out not as a steward but as a cattle driver, and then even for that position no one would take him.

The worse things got for him, the more he blamed her and the more his rage against her grew.

The last time Korney was hired as a cattle driver was by an unfamiliar dealer. The cattle got sick. Korney was not at fault, but the dealer got angry and dismissed both the steward and him. There was nowhere to hire on, and Korney decided to go wandering. He made himself good boots and a bag, got tea, sugar, and eight rubles in money, and set off for Kiev. He did not like Kiev, and he went to the Caucasus, to New Athos. Before reaching New Athos, he was struck by fever. He suddenly grew weak. He had one ruble seventy kopecks left, he knew no one, and he decided to go home to his son. “Maybe she’s dead by now, my villainess,” he thought. “And if she’s alive, then at least before death I’ll tell her everything; let her know, the wretch, what she’s done to me,” he thought, and set off for home.

The fever shook him every other day. He grew weaker and weaker, so that he could not walk more than ten or fifteen versts a day. Two hundred versts from home, all his money ran out, and he went on in Christ’s name and spent the nights wherever the village elder assigned him.

“Rejoice at what you’ve brought me to!” he thought about his wife, and out of old habit his old, weak hands clenched into fists. But there was no one to beat, and there was no longer any strength in his fists.

For two weeks he walked those two hundred versts, and completely sick and weak he reached the place four versts from home where he met, without recognizing her and without being recognized, that same Agashka who was considered but was not his daughter, and whose arm he had broken.

---

IV

He did as Agafya had told him. Reaching the Zinoveyev yard, he asked for a place to spend the night. They let him in.

Entering the house, as he always did, he crossed himself toward the icons and greeted the hosts.

“You’re frozen, Grandpa! Come, come up on the stove,” said the wrinkled, cheerful little old hostess, who was cleaning up around the table.

Agafya’s husband, a young-looking peasant, sat on the bench by the table, trimming a lamp.

“You’re soaked through, Grandpa!” he said. “But what can you do? Dry yourself!”

Korney undressed, took off his boots, hung his foot-cloths opposite the stove, and climbed up on the stove.

Agafya came into the house with a jug. She had already managed to drive the herd home and tend to the livestock.

“Didn’t an old pilgrim come by?” she asked. “I told him to come to us.”

“He’s here,” said the master, pointing to the stove, where Korney sat rubbing his hairy, bony legs.

The hosts called Korney down for tea. He climbed down and sat on the edge of the bench. They gave him a cup and a lump of sugar.

The conversation was about the weather and the harvesting. They could not get the grain in. The landowners had sprouting stacks in the fields. They would just begin carting, and it would rain again. The peasants had brought theirs in. But the gentry’s was just rotting away. And the mice in the sheaves—terrible.

Korney told them that along the road he had seen a whole field full of stacks. The young woman poured him a fifth cup of weak, faintly yellow tea and handed it to him.

“Go ahead. Drink, Grandpa, to your health,” she said when he refused.

“Why is your arm not right?” he asked her, carefully taking the full cup from her and moving his eyebrows.

“It was broken when I was little,” said the talkative mother-in-law. “Her father wanted to kill our Agasha.”

“Why was that?” asked Korney. And, looking at the young woman’s face, he suddenly remembered Evstigney Bely with his blue eyes, and the hand holding the cup trembled so much that he spilled half the tea before he brought it to the table.

“There was such a man in Gai, her father, Korney Vasiliev they called him. He was a rich man. He got angry at his wife. Beat her and crippled this one.”

Korney was silent, glancing from under his ceaselessly moving black eyebrows now at the master, now at Agasha.

“What for?” he asked, biting off a piece of sugar.

“Who knows? They’ll say anything about our kind, and you have to answer for it,” the old woman said. “Something happened between them over a hired worker. The worker was a good young fellow from our village. He died in their house.”

“Died?” Korney repeated and coughed.

“Died long ago… We got our daughter-in-law from their house. They lived well. Were first in the village. While the master was alive.”

“And what about him?” asked Korney.

“He must have died too. Disappeared that time. Must be fifteen years now.”

“More than that, my mother told me, she’d just stopped nursing me.”

“Why don’t you hold it against him for breaking your arm…” Korney began and suddenly started sobbing.

“Why would I—he wasn’t a stranger, he was my father. Here, have some more to warm you up. Shall I pour you more?”

Korney did not answer and went on sobbing and crying.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, just so. God save you.”

And Korney, with trembling hands, grasped the post and the sleeping shelf and climbed onto the stove with his big thin legs.

“Well, would you look at that!” said the old woman to her son, nodding toward the old man.

---

V

The next day Korney got up before everyone else. He climbed down from the stove, stretched out his dried foot-cloths, with difficulty pulled on his stiffened boots, and put on his bag.

“Grandpa, won’t you have breakfast?” said the old woman.

“God save you. I’ll go.”

“Then take at least some of yesterday’s flatcakes. I’ll put them in your bag.”

Korney thanked her and said goodbye.

“Come again on your way back, if we’re still alive…”

Outside there was a heavy autumn fog that covered everything. But Korney knew the road well; he knew every slope and rise, every bush, all the willows along the road, and the forests to the right and left, though in seventeen years some had been cut down and old ones had become young, while others had grown from young to old.

The village of Gai was the same as ever, only new houses had been built on the edge, houses that had not been there before. And wooden houses had become brick. His stone house was the same, only aged. The roof had not been painted for a long time, and bricks had been knocked out at the corner, and the porch had become crooked.

Just as he approached his former house, a mare with a colt, an old dun gelding, and a three-year-old came out through the creaky gate. The old dun was the very image of the mare that Korney had brought from the fair the year before he left.

“That must be the one that was in her belly then. Same drooping hindquarters and same broad chest and shaggy legs,” he thought.

A black-eyed little boy in new bast shoes was driving the horses to water. “Must be a grandson, Fedka’s son, that’s why he’s black-eyed,” thought Korney.

The boy looked at the unfamiliar old man and ran after the frisky colt in the mud. A dog was running after the boy, just as black as the old Volchok.

“Could it be Volchok?” he thought. And he remembered that he would be twenty years old.

He approached the porch and with difficulty climbed the same steps on which he had once sat, swallowing snow from the railings, and opened the door to the entryway.

“Why are you coming in without asking?” a woman’s voice called from the house. He recognized her voice. And there she was herself—a dry, sinewy, wrinkled old woman peering out of the doorway. Korney had expected that young beautiful Marfa who had wronged him. He hated her and wanted to reproach her, and suddenly instead of her there was some old woman before him. “If you want alms, ask at the window,” she said in a piercing, creaky voice.

“I’m not asking for alms,” said Korney.

“Then what do you want? What else?”

She suddenly stopped. And he could see by her face that she recognized him.

“Lots of you tramps around. Go on, go on. God be with you.”

Korney leaned his back against the wall and, propping himself on his staff, looked intently at her and felt with surprise that he no longer had in his soul that malice toward her that he had carried in himself for so many years, but some tender weakness suddenly overcame him.

“Marfa! We’re going to die.”

“Go on, go on, God be with you,” she said quickly and angrily.

“Is that all you have to say?”

“I have nothing to say,” she said. “Go on, God be with you. Go on, go on. Lots of you devils, freeloaders, wandering about.”

She quickly turned, went back into the house, and slammed the door.

“Why scold him,” came a man’s voice, and through the door came a darkish peasant with an axe in his belt, the same as Korney had been forty years ago, only smaller and thinner, but with the same black shining eyes.

This was that same Fedka to whom he had given a picture book seventeen years ago. It was he who had reproached his mother for not taking pity on the beggar. Along with him came the mute nephew, also with an axe in his belt. Now he was a grown man with a sparse little beard, a wrinkled, sinewy man with a long neck and a determined, attentively penetrating gaze. Both men had just had breakfast and were going to the forest.

“Just a moment, Grandpa,” said Fedor and pointed to the old man for the mute, then to the parlor, and made a motion as if cutting bread.

Fedor went out into the street, and the mute went back into the house. Korney still stood with his head bowed, leaning against the wall and propping himself on his staff. He felt great weakness and could barely hold back his sobs. The mute came out of the house with a large, fragrant slice of fresh black bread and, crossing himself, gave it to Korney. When Korney, accepting the bread, also crossed himself, the mute turned to the door to the house, passed both hands over his face, and began making as if to spit. He was expressing his disapproval of his aunt. Suddenly he froze and, his mouth agape, stared at Korney as if recognizing him. Korney could no longer hold back his tears and, wiping his eyes, nose, and gray beard with the skirt of his coat, turned away from the mute and went out onto the porch. He felt some special, tender, rapturous feeling of humility, of abasement before people, before her, before his son, before all people, and this feeling both joyfully and painfully tore at his soul.

Marfa looked out the window and breathed calmly only when she saw the old man disappear around the corner of the house.

When Marfa was sure the old man had gone, she sat down at the loom and began to weave. She struck the batten about ten times, but her hands would not work; she stopped and began thinking and remembering how she had just seen Korney—she knew it was him—the same one who had beaten her nearly to death and had loved her before, and she was frightened at what she had just done. It was not the right thing to do. But how should she have treated him? After all, he had not said he was Korney or that he had come home.

And she picked up the shuttle again and continued weaving until evening.

---

VI

Korney barely made it to Andreyevka by evening and again asked to spend the night at the Zinoveyevs’. They took him in.

“What, Grandpa, didn’t you go on?”

“Didn’t go. I’m too weak. I’ll go back, I suppose. Will you let me stay the night?”

“You won’t wear out the bed. Come in and dry off.”

All night Korney was shaken by fever. Toward morning he lost consciousness, and when he woke, the family had all gone off to their work, and only Agafya was left in the house.

He lay on the sleeping shelf, on the dry coat that the old woman had spread for him. Agafya was taking bread out of the oven.

“Dear,” he called to her in a weak voice, “come here.”

“Just a moment, Grandpa,” she answered, lifting out the loaves. “Do you want something to drink? Some kvass?”

He did not answer.

Having taken out the last loaf, she came to him with a dipper of kvass. He did not turn toward her and did not drink, but as he lay with his face up, he began speaking without turning.

“Gasha,” he said in a quiet voice, “my time has come. I want to die. So forgive me, for Christ’s sake.”

“God will forgive. Why, you’ve done me no harm…”

He was silent.

“And here’s something else: go, dear, to your mother, tell her… that a pilgrim, tell her… the pilgrim from yesterday, tell her…”

He began to sob.

“Were you at our folks’ place?”

“I was. Tell her, the pilgrim from yesterday… the pilgrim, tell her…” again he stopped, overcome by sobs, and finally, gathering his strength, finished: “came to say goodbye to her,” he said and began searching near his chest.

“I’ll tell him, Grandpa, I’ll tell him. What are you looking for?” said Agafya.

The old man, without answering, his face contorted with effort, pulled a paper from inside his shirt with his thin, hairy hand and gave it to her.

“And give this to whoever asks. It’s my soldier’s paper. Thank God, all my sins are resolved,” and his face composed itself into a solemn expression. His eyebrows rose, his eyes fixed on the ceiling, and he grew still.

“A candle,” he said without moving his lips.

Agafya understood. She got a burned-down wax candle from by the icons, lit it, and gave it to him. He held it with his thumb.

Agafya went away to put his papers in a chest, and when she came back to him, the candle was falling from his hand, his fixed eyes no longer saw, and his chest no longer breathed. Agafya crossed herself, blew out the candle, got out a clean towel, and covered his face.

All that night Marfa could not sleep and kept thinking about Korney. In the morning she put on her zipun, covered herself with a kerchief, and went to find out where yesterday’s old man was. Very soon she learned that the old man was in Andreyevka. Marfa took a stick from the fence and set off for Andreyevka. The farther she went, the more frightened she became.

“We’ll say goodbye, take him home, resolve the sin. Let him at least die at home with his son,” she thought.

When Marfa began to approach her daughter’s yard, she saw a large crowd by the house. Some stood in the entryway, others under the windows. Everyone already knew that that same famous rich man Korney Vasiliev, who had been renowned throughout the district twenty years before, had died a poor pilgrim in his daughter’s house. The house too was full of people. Women were whispering, sighing, and moaning.

When Marfa entered the house and the crowd parted to let her through, she saw under the icons the washed, dressed body covered with a cloth, over which the literate Filip Kononych, imitating the chanters, was reading in a singsong the Slavonic words of the Psalter.

It was no longer possible to forgive or to ask forgiveness. And from Korney’s stern, beautiful old face it was impossible to tell whether he forgave or was still angry.

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Translator’s Notes:

• This is an original story by Tolstoy, written specifically for The Circle of Reading in 1905.
• The story illustrates several of Tolstoy’s key moral themes: the destructive power of anger and jealousy, the corrosive effect of harbored resentment over time, and the possibility of spiritual transformation even at the end of life.
• The mute nephew (немой) is a powerful literary device—he communicates through gesture and expression, and his moral clarity (disapproving of Marfa’s coldness to the beggar, seemingly recognizing Korney at the end) provides wordless moral commentary.
• The ending is deeply ambiguous—Korney achieves a kind of peace and reconciliation with Agafya (the daughter he injured), but the final reconciliation with Marfa remains incomplete. She arrives too late, and his expression in death reveals nothing.
• The name “Gai” (Гаи) means “groves” in Russian, providing ironic resonance with Korney’s failed timber business.
• “Christ’s name” (Khristovym imenem)—going “in Christ’s name” means begging as a religious pilgrim, a common practice in Russian Orthodox culture.