University of Virginia Library

When I lived in Kazan, I entered the service

of General Kornet's wife as doorkeeper and gardener. She was a French-woman, a general's widow, a young woman, fat and with the tiny feet of a little girl. Her eyes were amazingly beautiful, restless and always greedily alert. Before her marriage she was, I think, a huckstress or cook or, possibly, even a woman of the town. She would get drunk early in the morning and come out in the yard or garden dressed only in a chemise with an orange-colored gown over it, in Tartar slippers made of red morocco, and on her head a mane of thick hair. Her hair, carelessly done, hung about her red cheeks and shoulders. A young witch! She used to walk about the garden, humming French songs and watching me work, and every now and then she would go to the kitchen window and call: —

"Pauline, give me something."

"Something" always meant the same thing — a glass of wine with ice in it.

In the basement of her house there lived three young ladies, the princesses D. G., whose mother was dead and whose father, a commissariat General, had gone off elsewhere. General Kornet's widow took a dislike to the girls and tried to get rid of them by doing every kind of offensive thing to them. She spoke Russian badly, but swore superbly, like an expert drayman. I very much disliked her attitude towards these harmless girls — they looked so sad, frightened, and defenceless.

One afternoon, two of them were walking in the garden when suddenly the General's widow appeared, drunk as usual, and began to shout at them to drive them out of the garden. They began walking silently away, but the General's widow stood in the gateway, completely blocking it with her body like a cork, and started swearing at them and using Russian words like a regular drayman. I asked her to stop swearing and let the girls go out, but she shouted: —

"You, I know you! You get through their window at night."

I was angry, and, taking her by the shoulders, pushed her away from the gate; but she broke away and, facing me, quickly undid her dress, lifted up her chemise, and shouted:

"I'm nicer than those rats."

Then I lost my temper. I took her by the neck, turned her round, and struck her with my shovel below the back, so that she skipped out of the gate and ran across the yard, crying out three times in great surprise: "O! O! O!"

After that, I got my passport from her confidante, Pauline — also a drunken but very wily woman — took my bundle under my arm, and left the place; and the General's widow, standing at the window with a red shawl in her hand, shouted: —

"I won't call the police — it's all right — listen — come back — don't be afraid."