Legend says that from the Sokolovaya Mountain—called the Mountain of , came Stenka Razin. It is written in books that from thence came also Emelian Pugachev.
The Sokolovaya Mountain towers high above the Volga and the plains, making a dark, precipitous descent to the pirate river below.
Across the Volga lies an ancient town. By the Glebychev Ravine, close to the old Cathedral guarded by one of Pugachev's guns, stands a with a of ochre-coloured-columns. In olden days, when it was the residence of the princely Rastorovs' balls were held there, but decay had set in during the last twenty years, and Kseniya Davydovna—the mistress—old, ill, a spinster, was drawing to the end of her days.
She died in October, 1917, and now the tumbling, house was occupied by—the heirs.
They had been over the face of Russia, had spent their lives in Petersburg, Moscow and Paris; for twenty years the house had stood vacant and . Then the Revolution came! The fury of the masses burst forth—and the remnants of the Rastorov family gathered in their old nest—to be hidden from the Revolution and famine.
Snow-storms—galloping snowy chargers—howled over the Steppe, the
Volga, and the town. Elemental, all-devastating, as in the days of
Stenka Razin—thundered the Revolution.
The rooms in the ancient mansion were damp, dark and . The old cathedral could be seen from the window, and down below lay the Volga, seven miles wide, wrapt in a dazzling sheet of snow, its steamers to their .
The family lived as a community at first, but their communism was , for each and himself in his own room, with his own pot and samovar. They lived tedious, mean, , worthless lives, existence and the Revolution; they lived apart from the that now replaced the even flow of the old regime: they were outside current events, and their thoughts for ever turned back to the past, awaiting its return.
General Kirill Lvovich awoke at seven o'clock. Everything was crowded closely together in the room, which was bedroom, drawing-room and dining-room combined. The blue dusk of morning was visible through the heavy blinds of the low window. The general put on his tasselled Bukhara dressing-gown and went outside, then returned coughing .
"Anna," he , "ask your kinsfolk which of them left the place in such a state. Don't they know we have no servants? It is your turn to set the samovar to-day. Are there no cigarette boxes?" he walked about the room, his hands behind his back, diamond rings glittering on his fingers.
"And it is your turn to go for the ," retorted Anna Andreevna.
"That will do, I know it. There are four families living in the house and they cannot themselves so as to go in turn for the rations. Give me a sheet of paper and some ink."
The general sat down at the table and wrote out a notice:
"Ladies and Gentlemen, we have no servants;
We must see to things ourselves. We can't
all like eagles, therefore,
I beg you to be more careful.
Kirill L. Lezhner."
Kirill Lvovich was not one of the heirs, it was his wife who came of the Rastorov family, and he had merely accompanied her to the ancestral mansion. Lvovich took his notice and hung it on the door. Then again he paced the floor, his jewels sparkling brilliantly.
"Why the devil do Sergius and his family occupy three rooms, and we only one?" he . "I shall leave this . They don't behave like relatives! Are there no cigarettes?"
Anna Andreevna, a quiet, weary, feeble woman, replied tonelessly: "You know there are none. But I will look for some butt-ends in a moment. Lina sometimes throws away the unused cigarette wraps."
"What they are—throwing away fag-ends and keeping servants!" her husband complained.
The dark twining corridor was strewn with rubbish, for no one had the will or wish to keep it neat. Anna Andreevna by the stove of Sergius Andreevich, Lina's husband, looking among the papers and . She peered into the stove and discovered that Leontyevna, the maid—a one-eyed Cyclop—had filled it with birch-wood, whereas it had been agreed that the rotting timber from the summer-house should be used as fuel first.
After enjoying a cigarette of his "own" tobacco, the general went out to the courtyard for firewood, returning with a bundle of sticks from the summer-house. The samovar was now ready and he sat down to his tea, drinking glass after glass, while Anna Andreevna heated her stove in the corridor.
A dim, wintry dawn was gradually breaking. The family of Sergius—the former head of a ministerial department—could be heard rousing themselves behind the wall.
"You have had sufficient albumen; take hydrates now," rose Lina's voice, calling to her children.
"Potatoes?"
"Yes."
"And fat?"
"You have had enough fat."
The general smiled , then muttered grumpily:
"That is not eating, that is scientific alimentation." He cut himself a piece of bacon, ate it with some white bread, and drank more tea with sweet root and candied melon.
Gradually the occupants of the house roused themselves and half- dressed, sleepy—carrying their towels, empty samovars, and tooth brushes—they began to pass along the corridor in front of the general's open door.
Kirill Lvovich eyed them as he sat drinking his tea and inwardly cursed them all.
The Cyclop, Leontyevna, Sergius Andreevich's servant, tramped in heavily with her man's boots from the Labour Exchange; her eye peered searchingly into Anna Andreevna's stove.
"I'll see she's not deceiving us over the firewood," she shouted aggressively: "Oh, what a store she's got!"
"But you have used the birch-wood," the general hit back from his room.
The Cyclop flew into a rage and slapped her . One of the periodic scenes ensued.
"What?" Leontyevna cried, "I am not trusted, I am being spied on!
Lina Fedorovna, I am going to complain to the Exchange."
Lina Fedorovna joined in from behind her door.
"She isn't trusted, she is being spied on," she echoed, "there must be spies in this house! And they call themselves intellectual people!"
"But you took the birch-wood!" protested Lvovich.
"And they call themselves intellectual!" screamed Lina.
The general came out into the passage and said :
"It is not for us to judge, Lina Fedorovna. We are not the heirs here. But it seems strange to me that Sergius should occupy three rooms, and Anna only one—yes, very strange indeed."
The quarrel became more violent. Satisfied, the general put on his overcoat and went out to take his place in the queue. Lina ran to her husband; he went to get an explanation of the scene, but Lvovich was not to be found, however; he with his sister, Anna Andreevna.
"This spying is impossible, it must stop," he insisted.
"But, can't you understand, it all began with searching for the butt- end of a cigarette?" Anna pleaded in deep .
Lina had gone upstairs and was telling the whole story to Ekaterina. Anna appealed to her younger brother, Constantine, a Lyceum student, but he told her he was busy, immediately sitting down at his desk to write. Soon after, however, he rose and went to Sergius.
"Busy?" he asked.
"What? Yes, I am busy."
"Have a smoke."
They began to smoke an inferior brand of tobacco known as "Kepsten."
They were silent.
"Will you have a game of chess?" Constantine asked after a while.
"Yes…But no, I think not," Sergius replied.
"Just one game?"
"Just one? Well, only one!"
They sat down and played chess. Constantine was dressed in a
Lyceum uniform; he wore rings on his fingers, like the general and
Sergius, and an antique gold chain hung round his neck.
Being in constant of requisitioners and robbers they had divided all the jewellery between them, and wore it for safety.
The brothers played one game, then a second, a fourth, a sixth— smoking and quarrelling, disagreeing over the moves and trying to re- arrange them. The general returned from the ration queue in the market and came along the passa............