Three Days in the Village

"What a pity it is that so much strength is wasted uselessly!" said I. "How people like you destroy your own lives!.. Well, and what do you mean to do now?"

"I?" he said, looking intently into my face.

At first, while we talked about past events and general topics, he had answered me boldly and cheerfully; but as soon as our conversation referred to himself personally and he noticed my sympathy, he turned away, hid his eyes with his sleeve, and I noticed that the back of his head was shaking.

And how many such people there are!

They are pitiable and pathetic, and they, too, stand on the threshold beyond which a state of despair begins that makes even a kindly man ready to go all lengths.

"Stable as our civilisation may seem to us," says Henry George, "disintegrating forces are already developing within it. Not in deserts and forests, but in city slums and on the highways, the barbarians are being bred who will do for our civilisation what the Huns and Vandals did for the civilisation of former ages."

Yes! What Henry George foretold some twenty years ago, is happening now before our eyes, and in Russia most glaringly – thanks to the amazing blindness of our Government, which carefully undermines the foundations on which alone any and every social order stands or can stand.

We have the Vandals foretold by Henry George quite ready among us in Russia. And, strange as it may seem to say so, these Vandals, these doomed men, are specially dreadful here among our deeply religious population. These Vandals are specially dreadful here, because we have not the restraining principles of convention, propriety, and public opinion, that are so strongly developed among the European nations. We have either real, deep, religious feeling, or – as in Sténka Rázin and Pougatchéf – a total absence of any restraining principle: and, dreadful to say, this army of Sténkas and Pougatchéfs is growing greater and greater, thanks to the Pougatchéf-like conduct of our Government in these later days, with its horrors of police violence, insane banishments, imprisonments, exiles, fortresses, and daily executions.

Such actions release the Sténka Rázins from the last remnants of moral restraint. "If the learned gentlefolk act like that, God Himself permits us to do so," say and think they.

I often receive letters from that class of men, chiefly exiles. They know I have written something about not resisting evil by violence, and for the greater part they retort ungrammatically, though with great fervour, that what the Government and the rich are doing to the poor, can and must be answered only in one way: "Revenge, revenge, revenge!"

Yes! The blindness of our Government is amazing. It does not and will not see that all it does to disarm its enemies merely increases their number and energy. Yes! These people are terrible, terrible for the Government and for the rich, and for those who live among the rich.

But besides the feeling of terror these people inspire, there is also another feeling, much more imperative than that of fear, and one we cannot help experiencing towards those who, by a series of accidents, have fallen into this terrible condition of vagrancy. That feeling is one of shame and sympathy.

And it is not fear, so much as shame and pity, that should oblige us, who are not in that condition, to respond in one way or other to this new and terrible phenomenon in Russian life.[2 - One of the most depressing features of L. N. Tolstoy's environment is the large number of unemployed and beggars from the adjacent highway. They wait outside the house for hours every day for the coming of Leo Nikolayevich. The consciousness of his inability to render them substantial aid weighs heavily upon him, as does also the fact that, owing to insurmountable obstacles, he cannot even feed them, and allow them to sleep in the house in which he himself lives. These unfortunates surround Leo Nikolayevich at the steps, and besiege him with their importunate requests, just at the time when he seeks the fresh air and is most in need of mental rest and solitude after long-continued and strenuous mental labour. In view of this fact, the idea has occurred to some of Leo Nikolayevich's friends, of establishing in the village of Yásnaya Polyána a lodging- and eating-house for tramps, the use of which by the latter would save L. N. unnecessary trouble. The establishment of such premises – L. N. has viewed the idea very favourably – would at least afford some temporary relief to the wandering poor who are in dire need. At the same time the peasantry of Yásnaya Polyána would be relieved of the too heavy burden of supporting the passing unemployed described by Tolstoy in his article. Lastly, it would afford Tolstoy, in his declining years, considerable mental relief, which it would seem that he has more than deserved by his incessant labours on behalf of distressed mankind. Perhaps among those who read the present sketches some will be found who, prompted by the impulses animating the author, may desire to render some material help towards the practical realisation of the projected undertaking.Contributions may be sent to the following address: V. Tchertkoff, Editor of the Free Age Press, Christchurch, Hants, Eng.]

SECOND DAY

THE LIVING AND THE DYING

As I sat at my work, Ilyá Vasílyevitch entered softly and, evidently reluctant to disturb me at my work, told me that some wayfarers and a woman had been waiting a long time to see me.

"Here," I said, "please take this, and give it them."

"The woman has come about some business."

I told him to ask her to wait a while, and continued my work. By the time I came out, I had quite forgotten about her, till I saw a young peasant woman with a long, thin face, and clad very poorly and too lightly for the weather, appear from behind a corner of the house.

"What do you want? What is the matter?"

"I've come to see you, your Honour."

"Yes … what about? What is the matter?"

"To see you, your Honour."

"Well, what is it?"

"He's been taken wrongfully… I'm left with three children."

"Who's been taken, and where to?"

"My husband … sent off to Krapívny."

"Why? What for?"

"For a soldier, you know. But it's wrong – because, you see, he's the breadwinner! We can't get on without him… Be a father to us, sir!"

"But how is it? Is he the only man in the family?"

"Just so … the only man!"

"Then how is it they have taken him, if he's the only man?"

"Who can tell why they've done it?.. Here am I, left alone with the children! There's nothing for me but to die… Only I'm sorry for the children! My last hope is in your kindness, because, you see, it was not right!"

I wrote down the name of her village, and her name and surname, and told her I would see about it and let her know.

"Help me, if it's only ever so little!.. The children are hungry, and, God's my witness, I haven't so much as a crust. The baby is worst of all … there's no milk in my breasts. If only the Lord would take him!"

"Haven't you a cow?" I asked.

"A cow? Oh, no!.. Why, we're all starving!" said she, crying, and trembling all over in her tattered coat.

I let her go, and prepared for my customary walk. It turned out that the doctor, who lives with us, was going to visit a patient in the village the soldier's wife had come from, and another patient in the village where the District Police Station is situated, so I joined him, and we drove off together.

I went into the Police Station, while the doctor attended to his business in that village.

The District Elder was not in, nor the clerk, but only the clerk's assistant – a clever lad whom I knew. I asked him about the woman's husband, and why, being the only man in the family, he had been taken as a conscript.

The clerk's assistant looked up the particulars, and replied that the woman's husband was not the only man in the family: he had a brother.

"Then why did she say he was the only one?"

"She lied! They always do," replied he, with a smile.

I made some inquiries about other matters I had to attend to, and then the doctor returned from visiting his patient, and we drove towards the village in which the soldier's wife lived. But before we were out of the first village, a girl of about twelve came quickly across the road towards us.

"I suppose you're wanted?" I said to the doctor.

"No, it's your Honour I want," said the girl to me.

"What is it?"

"I've come to your Honour, as mother is dead, and we are left orphans – five of us. Help us!.. Think of our needs!"

"Where do you come from?"

The girl pointed to a brick house, not badly built.