The Man Who Was Afraid | Page 7

like dumb-bells."
"You know what I'm talking about, you fool."
"Can one become pregnant from such blows?"
"It's not on account of the blows that you don't bear any children; it's
because you eat too much. You fill your stomach with all sorts of
food--and there's no room for the child to engender."

"As if I didn't bear you any children?"
"Those were girls," said Ignat, reproachfully. "I want a son! Do you
understand? A son, an heir! To whom shall I give my capital after my
death? Who shall pray for my sins? Shall I give it to a cloister? I have
given them enough! Or shall I leave it to you? What a fine pilgrim you
are! Even in church you think only of fish pies. If I die, you'll marry
again, and my money will be turned over to some fool. Do you think
this is what I am working for?"
And he was seized with sardonic anguish, for he felt that his life was
aimless if he should have no son to follow him.
During the nine years of their married life his wife had borne him four
daughters, all of whom had passed away. While Ignat had awaited their
birth tremblingly, he mourned their death but little--at any rate they
were unnecessary to him. He began to beat his wife during the second
year of their married life; at first he did it while being intoxicated and
without animosity, but just according to the proverb: "Love your wife
like your soul and shake her like a pear-tree;" but after each
confinement, deceived in his expectation, his hatred for his wife grew
stronger, and he began to beat her with pleasure, in revenge for not
bearing him a son.
Once while on business in the province of Samarsk, he received a
telegram from relatives at home, informing him of his wife's death. He
made the sign of the cross, thought awhile and wrote to his friend
Mayakin:
"Bury her in my absence; look after my property."
Then he went to the church to serve the mass for the dead, and, having
prayed for the repose of the late Aquilina's soul, he began to think that
it was necessary for him to marry as soon as possible.
He was then forty-three years old, tall, broad-shouldered, with a heavy
bass voice, like an arch-deacon; his large eyes looked bold and wise
from under his dark eyebrows; in his sunburnt face, overgrown with a

thick, black beard, and in all his mighty figure there was much truly
Russian, crude and healthy beauty; in his easy motions as well as in his
slow, proud walk, a consciousness of power was evident--a firm
confidence in himself. He was liked by women and did not avoid them.
Ere six months had passed after the death of his wife, he courted the
daughter of an Ural Cossack. The father of the bride, notwithstanding
that Ignat was known even in Ural as a "pranky" man, gave him his
daughter in marriage, and toward autumn Ignat Gordyeeff came home
with a young Cossack-wife. Her name was Natalya. Tall, well-built,
with large blue eyes and with a long chestnut braid, she was a worthy
match for the handsome Ignat. He was happy and proud of his wife and
loved her with the passionate love of a healthy man, but he soon began
to contemplate her thoughtfully, with a vigilant eye.
Seldom did a smile cross the oval, demure face of his wife--she was
always thinking of something foreign to life, and in her calm blue eyes
something dark and misanthropic was flashing at times. Whenever she
was free from household duties she seated herself in the most spacious
room by the window, and sat there silently for two or three hours. Her
face was turned toward the street, but the look of her eyes was so
indifferent to everything that lived and moved there beyond the
window, and at the same time it was so fixedly deep, as though she
were looking into her very soul. And her walk, too, was queer. Natalya
moved about the spacious room slowly and carefully, as if something
invisible restrained the freedom of her movements. Their house was
filled with heavy and coarsely boastful luxury; everything there was
resplendent, screaming of the proprietor's wealth, but the Cossack-wife
walked past the costly furniture and the silverware in a shy and
somewhat frightened manner, as though fearing lest they might seize
and choke her. Evidently, the noisy life of the big commercial town did
not interest this silent woman, and whenever she went out driving with
her husband, her eyes were fixed on the back of the driver. When her
husband took her visiting she went and behaved there just as queerly as
at