1 That is, in 1884.
stumpy. I stopped opposite her. She looked at me and smirked, as if to say she knew what I was thinking about.
I felt I had to say something to her, and I wished to show her that I pitied her. ‘Are your parents alive?’ I asked.
She laughed hoarsely, then suddenly stopped and, raising her brows, looked at me. ‘Are your parents alive?’ I repeated.
She smirked with an expression which seemed to say: ‘You have found a queer thing to ask about!’
‘I have a mother,’ she said. ‘What is it to you?’ ‘And how old are you?’
‘Over fifteen,’ said she, promptly answering a question she was evidently accustomed to.
‘Now, get on! We shall freeze to death with you here, blast you!’ shouted the policeman, and she staggered away from the fence and swaying to and fro went down Khamovniki street to the police-station, while I turned in at the gate, entered the house, and asked if my daughters had come home. I was told that they had been to a party, had enjoyed themselves very much, had returned, and were already asleep.
Next morning I wanted to go to the police-station to learn what they had done with this unfortunate woman, and I was setting out rather early, when one of those gentry1 whose weaknesses have caused them to fall from the comfortable life to which they are accustomed and who are now up and now down again, came to see me. I had known this one three years. During that time he had several times pawned everything he had, even to the clothes he was wearing. Such a misfortune had happened to him quite recently, and now he was spending his nights in one of the night-lodgings at Rzhanov House and coming to me in the daytime. He met me as I was going out and, without listening to what I wanted to say, at once began to tell me what had happened at Rzhanov House that night. Before he had half finished the story he, an old man who had seen all phases of life, burst into sobs, began to cry, and turned to the wall. This is what he told me. All he said was perfectly true. I afterwards verified it on the spot, and learnt additional details which I will add to his story.
In that doss-lodging on the ground floor, in Number 32 where my friend slept, among various transient night-lodgers, men and women who came together for five kopeks, there lived a washerwoman of about thirty years old, a blond woman, quiet and well-conducted but sickly. The landlady of the tenement is a boatman’s mistress. In summer her lover keeps a boat, but in winter they make a living by letting bunks for the night, at three kopeks without a pillow or five kopeks with a pillow. The washerwoman had lived there for some months and was a quiet woman; but of late they had taken a dislike to her because her coughing prevented the lodgers sleeping. In particular a half-crazy old woman of eighty, who was also a permanent lodger there, took a violent dislike to the washerwoman and was always nagging at her for spoiling her sleep and for hawking all
1 This was A. P. Ivanov who for many years worked intermittently, between his fits of drinking, as a copyist for Tolstoy, as mentioned at p. 330 of Vol. II of The Life of Tolstoy in this edition.-A. M.
night like a sheep. The washerwoman kept silent; she was in debt for her lodging and felt guilty, and so she had to be quiet. She was less and less often able to go to work, her strength was failing, and so she could not pay the mistress of the room; for the last week she had not been out to work at all, and with her cough only poisoned the life of them all, especially of the old woman who also did not go out. Four days before, the mistress told her she could not remain there: she was already owing sixty kopeks1 and did not pay them, and there seemed little hope of their being paid; the bunks were all occupied, and the other lodgers complained of her coughing.
When the mistress told the washerwoman to leave unless she could pay, the old woman was delighted, and pushed her out into the yard. The washerwoman went away but returned an hour later-and the mistress had not the heart to drive her away again. And on the next and the third day the mistress did not drive her out. ‘Where shall I go to?’ said the washerwoman. But on the third day the landlady’s lover, a Moscovite and one who knew town ways and regulations, went for the police. A policeman, with a sword and a pistol on a red cord, came to the lodging, and using only polite and proper words fetched the washerwoman out into the street.
It was a clear, sunny, but frosty, March day. Water was running down the gutters, and the yard-porters were breaking up the ice on the pavements. The sledges of the cab-drivers bumped over the crusted snow and screeched as they scraped on bare stones. The washerwoman went up the sunny side of the slope, came to the church, and sat down on the sunny side of its porch. But when the sun began to sink behind the house and the puddles began again to coat with ice, she felt cold and frightened. She got up and dragged herself along… Where to?
Home, to the only home she had had latterly. Before she got there, resting on her way, it was growing dark. She came to the gates, turned in at them, slipped, uttered an exclamation, and fell.
One man passed, and then another. ‘Must be drunk.’ Yet another man passed, stumbled over the washerwoman, and said to the yard-porter: ‘Some drunken woman is lying in your gateway, I nearly broke my head tumbling over her. Get her moved away, can’t you!’
The yard-porter went to see about it… but the washerwoman was dead. That is what my friend told me. It may be thought that I am selecting the facts-my meeting with the fifteen year-old prostitute and the story of this washer-woman but do not let that be supposed; it happened just so, in one night-I do not remember the date, but in March 1884.
And then having heard my friend’s account I went to the police station, meaning to go from there to Rzhanov House to get further details about the washerwoman. The weather was fine, sunny, and in the shade between the frost-crystals the night frost had formed, running water was again visible, while in the blaze of the sun on the Khamovniki square everything was thawing and the water was running. One heard a noise from the river. The trees of the Sans-Souci gardens showed up blue across the river, the browned sparrows, unnoticed in winter, caught one’s eye by their merriment; and men too seemed to wish to be merry, but they all had too many cares. The sound of the church bells was heard, and
1 About Is. 3d.
against a background of these mingling sounds one heard that of firing in the barracks; the whistle of bullets and their smack against a target.
I came to the police station. In it were several armed men-they took me to their chief. He, too, was armed with a sword and pistol, and was busy giving directions about a ragged shivering old man who stood before him and was too feeble to answer clearly the questions put to him. When he had finished with the old man he turned to me. I asked about yesterday’s girl. At first he listened to me attentively, but then smiled at my not knowing the regulations or why they are taken to the police-station,1 and especially at my being surprised at her youth.
‘Why really, there are some twelve-year-old ones, and lots of thirteen and fourteen,’ said he cheerfully.
In reply to my question about yesterday’s girl, he explained that she had probably been sent to the Committee. (I think that was what he said.) And he replied vaguely when I asked where she had spent the night. He did not remember the particular girl I was asking about. There were so many of them every day.
At Rzhanov House, in Number 32, I found a church chanter already reading the Psalms over the deceased woman. She had been placed on what had been her bunk, and the lodgers (all quite poor people) had collected among themselves enough money to pay for the prayers, a coffin, and a shroud, and the old women had dressed her and laid her out. The church chanter was reading in the dim light, a woman in a cloak was standing with a wax taper in her hand, and another such taper was held by a man (a gentleman, I should say) who was standing in a clean overcoat with a good astrakhan collar, shining goloshes, and a starched shirt. This was her brother. They had traced and found him.
I went past the deceased woman to the mistress’s corner and asked her all about it. She was frightened at my questions; she evidently feared she might be accused
