“A nice set of artists they have settled here!  No fear, but he would have cupped a rich man, but even a leech he grudges to the poor.  The Herods!”

When they got home and went into the hut, Marfa stood for ten minutes holding on to the stove.  It seemed to her that if she were to lie down Yakov would talk to her about his losses, and scold her for lying down and not wanting to work.  Yakov looked at her drearily and thought that to-morrow was St. John the Divine’s, and next day St. Nikolay the Wonder-worker’s, and the day after that was Sunday, and then Monday, an unlucky day.  For four days he would not be able to work, and most likely Marfa would die on one of those days; so he would have to make the coffin to-day.  He picked up his iron rule, went up to the old woman and took her measure.  Then she lay down, and he crossed himself and began making the coffin.

When the coffin was finished Bronze put on his spectacles and wrote in his book:  “Marfa Ivanov’s coffin, two roubles, forty kopecks.”

And he heaved a sigh.  The old woman lay all the time silent with her eyes closed.  But in the evening, when it got dark, she suddenly called the old man.

“Do you remember, Yakov,” she asked, looking at him joyfully.  “Do you remember fifty years ago God gave us a little baby with flaxen hair?  We used always to be sitting by the river then, singing songs . . . under the willows,” and laughing bitterly, she added:  “The baby girl died.”

Yakov racked his memory, but could not remember the baby or the willows.

“It’s your fancy,” he said.

The priest arrived; he administered the sacrament and extreme unction.  Then Marfa began muttering something unintelligible, and towards morning she died.  Old women, neighbours, washed her, dressed her, and laid her in the coffin.  To avoid paying the sacristan, Yakov read the psalms over the body himself, and they got nothing out of him for the grave, as the grave-digger was a crony of his.  Four peasants carried the coffin to the graveyard, not for money, but from respect.  The coffin was followed by old women, beggars, and a couple of crazy saints, and the people who met it crossed themselves piously. . . .  And Yakov was very much pleased that it was so creditable, so decorous, and so cheap, and no offence to anyone.  As he took his last leave of Marfa he touched the coffin and thought:  “A good piece of work!”

But as he was going back from the cemetery he was overcome by acute depression.  He didn’t feel quite well:  his breathing was laboured and feverish, his legs felt weak, and he had a craving for drink.  And thoughts of all sorts forced themselves on his mind.  He remembered again that all his life he had never felt for Marfa, had never been affectionate to her.  The fifty-two years they had lived in the same hut had dragged on a long, long time, but it had somehow happened that in all that time he had never once thought of her, had paid no attention to her, as though she had been a cat or a dog.  And yet, every day, she had lighted the stove had cooked and baked, had gone for the water, had chopped the wood, had slept with him in the same bed, and when he came home drunk from the weddings always reverently hung his fiddle on the wall and put him to bed, and all this in silence, with a timid, anxious expression.