The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories | Page 8

the
kitchen into a little room where all the walls were hung with petticoats
and dresses, where there was a smell of cornflowers and fennel, and a
bedstead with a perfect mountain of pillows, standing in the corner by
the stove; this must have been the old mother's room. From there he
passed into another little room, and here he saw Lyubka. She was lying
on a chest, covered with a gay-coloured patchwork cotton quilt,
pretending to be asleep. A little ikon-lamp was burning in the corner
above the pillow.
"Where is my horse?" Yergunov asked.

Lyubka did not stir.
"Where is my horse, I am asking you?" Yergunov repeated still more
sternly, and he tore the quilt off her. "I am asking you, she-devil!" he
shouted.
She jumped up on her knees, and with one hand holding her shift and
with the other trying to clutch the quilt, huddled against the wall . . . .
She looked at Yergunov with repulsion and terror in her eyes, and, like
a wild beast in a trap, kept cunning watch on his faintest movement.
"Tell me where my horse is, or I'll knock the life out of you," shouted
Yergunov.
"Get away, dirty brute!" she said in a hoarse voice.
Yergunov seized her by the shift near the neck and tore it. And then he
could not restrain himself, and with all his might embraced the girl. But
hissing with fury, she slipped out of his arms, and freeing one hand--the
other was tangled in the torn shift--hit him a blow with her fist on the
skull.
His head was dizzy with the pain, there was a ringing and rattling in his
ears, he staggered back, and at that moment received another blow--this
time on the temple. Reeling and clutching at the doorposts, that he
might not fall, he made his way to the room where his things were, and
lay down on the bench; then after lying for a little time, took the
matchbox out of his pocket and began lighting match after match for no
object: he lit it, blew it out, and threw it under the table, and went on
till all the matches were gone.
Meanwhile the air began to turn blue outside, the cocks began to crow,
but his head still ached, and there was an uproar in his ears as though
he were sitting under a railway bridge and hearing the trains passing
over his head. He got, somehow, into his coat and cap; the saddle and
the bundle of his purchases he could not find, his knapsack was empty:
it was not for nothing that someone had scurried out of the room when
he came in from the yard.
He took a poker from the kitchen to keep off the dogs, and went out
into the yard, leaving the door open. The snow-storm had subsided and
it was calm outside. . . . When he went out at the gate, the white plain
looked dead, and there was not a single bird in the morning sky. On
both sides of the road and in the distance there were bluish patches of
young copse.

Yergunov began thinking how he would be greeted at the hospital and
what the doctor would say to him; it was absolutely necessary to think
of that, and to prepare beforehand to answer questions he would be
asked, but this thought grew blurred and slipped away. He walked
along thinking of nothing but Lyubka, of the peasants with whom he
had passed the night; he remembered how, after Lyubka struck him the
second time, she had bent down to the floor for the quilt, and how her
loose hair had fallen on the floor. His mind was in a maze, and he
wondered why there were in the world doctors, hospital assistants,
merchants, clerks, and peasants instead of simple free men? There are,
to be sure, free birds, free beasts, a free Merik, and they are not afraid
of anyone, and don't need anyone! And whose idea was it, who had
decreed that one must get up in the morning, dine at midday, go to bed
in the evening; that a doctor takes precedence of a hospital assistant;
that one must live in rooms and love only one's wife? And why not the
contrary--dine at night and sleep in the day? Ah, to jump on a horse
without enquiring whose it is, to ride races with the wind like a devil,
over fields and forests and ravines, to make love to girls, to mock at
everyone . . . .
Yergunov thrust the poker into the snow, pressed his forehead to the
cold white trunk of a birch-tree, and sank into thought; and his grey,
monotonous life, his wages, his subordinate position, the