we known this, we wouldn’t have found a husband like this for you, our beloved daughter.”
When we went to church the first Sunday, I in my astrakhan cap, coat of fine cloth and velveteen breeches, and she in her new hareskin coat with a silk kerchief on her head, we looked a well-matched pair: didn’t we walk along! People were admiring us. I needn’t speak for myself, and though I can’t praise Akulina up above the rest, I can’t say she was worse: and she’d have held her own with any dozen.”
“That’s all right, then.”
“Come, listen. The day after the wedding, though I was drunk, I got away from my visitors and I escaped and ran away. ‘Bring me that wretch Filka Morozov,’ says I, ‘bring him here, the scoundrel!’ I shouted all over the market. Well, I was drunk too; I was beyond the Vlasov’s when they caught me, and three men brought me home by force. And the talk was all over the town. The wenches in the market-place were talking to each other: ‘Girls, darlings, have you heard? Akulka is proved innocent.’”
“Not long after, Filka says to me before folks, Sell your wife and you can drink. Yashka the soldier got married just for that, says he. ‘He didn’t sleep with his wife, but he was drunk for three years.’ I said to him, ‘You are a scoundrel.’ ‘And you,’ says he, ‘a fool. Why, you weren’t sober when you were married,’ says he, ‘how could you tell about it when you were drunk?’ I came home and shouted, ‘You married me when I was drunk,’ said I. My mother began scolding me, ‘Your ears are stopped with gold, mother. Give me Akulka.’ Well, I began beating her. I beat her, my lad, beat her for two hours, till I couldn’t stand up. She didn’t get up from her bed for three weeks.”
“To be sure,” observed Tcherevin phlegmatically, “if you don’t beat them, they’ll . . . But did you catch her with a lover?”
“Catch her? No, I didn’t,” Shishkov observed, after a pause, and; as it were, with an effort. “But I felt awfully insulted. People teased me so and Filka led the way. ‘You’ve a wife for show,’ says he, ‘for folks to look at.’ Filka invited us with others, and this was the greeting he gave me: ‘His wife is a tender-hearted soul,’ says he, honourable and polite, who knows how to behave, nice in every way—that’s what he thinks now. But you’ve forgotten, lad, how you smeared her gate with pitch
