The Cooks Wedding and Other Stories | Page 4

Through the door in the next room
the master and the apprentice Afanasy are snoring. . . . The cradle
creaks plaintively, Varka murmurs--and it all blends into that soothing
music of the night to which it is so sweet to listen, when one is lying in
bed. Now that music is merely irritating and oppressive, because it
goads her to sleep, and she must not sleep; if Varka--God
forbid!--should fall asleep, her master and mistress would beat her.
The lamp flickers. The patch of green and the shadows are set in
motion, forcing themselves on Varka's fixed, half-open eyes, and in her
half slumbering brain are fashioned into misty visions. She sees dark
clouds chasing one another over the sky, and screaming like the baby.
But then the wind blows, the clouds are gone, and Varka sees a broad
high road covered with liquid mud; along the high road stretch files of
wagons, while people with wallets on their backs are trudging along
and shadows flit backwards and forwards; on both sides she can see
forests through the cold harsh mist. All at once the people with their
wallets and their shadows fall on the ground in the liquid mud. "What is
that for?" Varka asks. "To sleep, to sleep!" they answer her. And they

fall sound asleep, and sleep sweetly, while crows and magpies sit on
the telegraph wires, scream like the baby, and try to wake them.
"Hush-a-bye, my baby wee, and I will sing a song to thee," murmurs
Varka, and now she sees herself in a dark stuffy hut.
Her dead father, Yefim Stepanov, is tossing from side to side on the
floor. She does not see him, but she hears him moaning and rolling on
the floor from pain. "His guts have burst," as he says; the pain is so
violent that he cannot utter a single word, and can only draw in his
breath and clack his teeth like the rattling of a drum:
"Boo--boo--boo--boo. . . ."
Her mother, Pelageya, has run to the master's house to say that Yefim is
dying. She has been gone a long time, and ought to be back. Varka lies
awake on the stove, and hears her father's "boo--boo--boo." And then
she hears someone has driven up to the hut. It is a young doctor from
the town, who has been sent from the big house where he is staying on
a visit. The doctor comes into the hut; he cannot be seen in the darkness,
but he can be heard coughing and rattling the door.
"Light a candle," he says.
"Boo--boo--boo," answers Yefim.
Pelageya rushes to the stove and begins looking for the broken pot with
the matches. A minute passes in silence. The doctor, feeling in his
pocket, lights a match.
"In a minute, sir, in a minute," says Pelageya. She rushes out of the hut,
and soon afterwards comes back with a bit of candle.
Yefim's cheeks are rosy and his eyes are shining, and there is a peculiar
keenness in his glance, as though he were seeing right through the hut
and the doctor.
"Come, what is it? What are you thinking about?" says the doctor,
bending down to him. "Aha! have you had this long?"
"What? Dying, your honour, my hour has come. . . . I am not to stay
among the living."
"Don't talk nonsense! We will cure you!"
"That's as you please, your honour, we humbly thank you, only we
understand. . . . Since death has come, there it is."
The doctor spends a quarter of an hour over Yefim, then he gets up and
says:
"I can do nothing. You must go into the hospital, there they will operate

on you. Go at once . . . You must go! It's rather late, they will all be
asleep in the hospital, but that doesn't matter, I will give you a note. Do
you hear?"
"Kind sir, but what can he go in?" says Pelageya. "We have no horse."
"Never mind. I'll ask your master, he'll let you have a horse."
The doctor goes away, the candle goes out, and again there is the sound
of "boo--boo--boo." Half an hour later someone drives up to the hut. A
cart has been sent to take Yefim to the hospital. He gets ready and
goes. . . .
But now it is a clear bright morning. Pelageya is not at home; she has
gone to the hospital to find what is being done to Yefim. Somewhere
there is a baby crying, and Varka hears someone singing with her own
voice:
"Hush-a-bye, my baby wee, I will sing a song to thee."
Pelageya comes back; she crosses herself and whispers:
"They put him to rights in the night, but towards morning he