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Updated: May 17, 2025
It was hot and crowded in their hut, and there were children everywhere on the floors, in the windows, on the stove.... In spite of her advanced years Stepanida was still bearing children, and now, looking at the crowd of children, it was hard to distinguish which were Rodion's and which were Volodka's.
Rodion and Stepanida, sitting side by side at their door, bowed and smiled to Elena Ivanovna and her little daughter as to acquaintances. From the windows more than a dozen children stared at them; their faces expressed amazement and curiosity, and they could be heard whispering: "The Kutcherov lady has come! The Kutcherov lady!"
"Our lads are out on the steppe for the night, . . ." sighed the old woman while he was eating. "The terror of the Lord! I'd light the candle under the ikon, but I don't know where Stepanida has put it. Have some more, little sir, have some more. . . ." The old woman gave a yawn and, putting her right hand behind her, scratched her left shoulder.
Volodka jumped down off the stove and began looking for his cap. "Don't go, Volodka," said Rodion diffidently. "Don't go with them, son. You are foolish, like a little child; they will teach you no good; don't go!" "Don't go, son," said Stepanida, and she blinked as though about to shed tears. "I bet they are calling you to the tavern." "'To the tavern," Volodka mimicked.
His wife Stepanida, his children and grandchildren came out into the street to look at them. By degrees a crowd collected. The Lytchkovs, father and son, both men with swollen faces and entirely beardless, came up bareheaded.
Stepanida, Rodion's wife, a stout woman, came running out of the hut; her kerchief slipped off her grey head; she looked at the carriage facing the sun, and her face smiled and wrinkled up as though she were blind. "This is for your children," said Elena Ivanovna, and she gave her three roubles. Stepanida suddenly burst into tears and bowed down to the ground.
"Good-morning," said Elena Ivanovna, and she stopped; she paused, and then asked: "Well, how are you getting on?" "We get along all right, thank God," answered Rodion, speaking rapidly. "To be sure we get along." "The life we lead!" smiled Stepanida. "You can see our poverty yourself, dear lady! The family is fourteen souls in all, and only two bread-winners.
“Only the other day Stepanida Ilyinishna—she’s a rich merchant’s wife—said to me, ‘You go, Prohorovna, and put your son’s name down for prayer in the church, and pray for the peace of his soul as though he were dead. His soul will be troubled,’ she said, ‘and he will write you a letter.’ And Stepanida Ilyinishna told me it was a certain thing which had been many times tried.
Stepanida and he always sat side by side when they were at home, and always walked side by side in the street; they ate and they drank and they slept always together, and the older they grew the more they loved one another.
Sasha, looking worried and excited, kept running by me with a thimble, a skein of wool or some other boring object. "Wait, wait, I shan't be a minute," she would say when I raised imploring eyes to her. "Only fancy that wretch Stepanida has spoilt the bodice of the barège dress!"
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