Muzhiks arithmetic

Ïåðåêëàä àíãë³éñüêîþ Àíäð³é ªâñà
Translated by Andrey Yevsa

“Vasil Ivanovich, do you, by any chance, have some newspaper or book?”  asked the carter Antin of the monopolist** while wrapping the money he had just received, for bringing the goods, into a handkerchief.
Vasil Ivanovich, a man of middle age, slightly red-cheeked, with a round stomach, inhaled deeply and puffed out a cloud of the tobacco smoke from a hand-rolled cigarette.
“What do you want a book for?” he asked, knitting his thin brows together.
“I would like to amuse myself a little during the holiday. I have already forgotten what it’s like to have a book in the house,” said Antin. “Probably, I do not remember the alphabet any more.”
“Is it a great difficulty for you?.. To tell the truth, reading books is a mere trifle!” said Vasil ²vanovich . “It does not beseem you at all.”
“Of course, we really need not think about books,” Antin agreed. “Sometimes at work there isn’t even time to glance up; let alone saying anything about a book!.”
After a while Antin asked again: “So, can you find something for me? I could read a bit after dinner in order not to feel so bored.”
The monopolist thought a little and said: “Maybe I can give you the Psalmbook, a more suitable book for the holiday cannot be found.”
“I have a Psalmbook of my own, Vasil Ivanovich,” said Antin “Don’t you have something, maybe, about freedom and the land?”
Vasil Ivanovich turned his screwed up eyes and bit his lip.
“I don’t have the books, you are talking about, my dear brother. Do you know where they may send you for owing such a book now?” Vasil Ivanovich glanced at Antin severely. “I advise you as a friend, Antin,: beware of such books as you would a fire. And, as you have such an itch to read, wait a minute, I will give you a book.”
Vasil Ivanovich went to the next room, opened the closet and began to dig through a stack of some papers and books. He pulled out the old Book of Problems by Yevtushevskyi from the bottom of the stack, brushed the dust off of it and gave it out to Antin.
“This is the book for you,” he said. “It is not jejune one but it is very useful! Each problem in it is like a riddle  and requires much time to solve it.”
“Thank you, Vasil Ivanovich,” said Antin. Without examining it closely he took the book under his arm and left the house.
Vasil Ivanovich stood at the door and followed him with his eyes for a long time. Being merry and glad, he started to giggle quietly and to chuckle through his sparse, small, red beard and then went into the next room to have dinner.
After his short afternoon nap, monopolist took a stick and went out for a walk. Vasil Ivanovich, leaning upon his stick, was going along the streets of the village. Groups of men and women were sitting near their huts and talking in low voices. Children were playing on the green grass, and girls were singing somewhere. Vasil Ivanovich was the only landowner in the village, and he felt himself as though he were a “king” here. Villagers kowtowed to him, and he cordially noded to them. He was so pleased to see their courtesies.
The peasant Litovka was a robust man, but here he bowed before him submissively like an oak during stormy weather.
Vasil Ivanovich guessed why Litovka bowed before him so obediently: the time to meet a bill was approaching and probably there was no money...
"It does not matter!” he thought, “We will wait. Let him pay interest in proper time."
Vasil Ivanovich went on, humming softly something spiritual to himself and looking at everything with a master’s eye to see if there was any disorder.
He scolded the children for their bad behaviour, spoke shortly with a young woman, who was coming to the well to get water.
Passing by Antin’s homestead he saw a group of peasants, sitting in the cherry orchard, speaking and laughing loudly. Antin, with a book in his hands, was in the center.
"Aha, they are reading my book!”  Vasil Ivanovich thought. “Well, let them read it."  He stopped near the cherry orchard and asked:
“Well now? How is the book? Do you like it?”
“It is not so bad, it is quite exciting,” Antin answers.
“So, read it!” said Vasil Ivanovich and cracked on.
“Quite exciting!” he chuckled, “they can prate in order to prate and they are laughing boisterously. What is so funny in it?"
He found himself tempted to listen. Having turned aside from the road he came up unnoticed and began to listen.
He heard what Àntin spelled out:
"A peasant committed himself to transport 50 kerosene lamps from the town with a proviso that for each delivered lamp he would get 5 kopecks and for each broken lamp 1 ruble and 20 kopecks would be deducted as a compensation. Three lamps had been broken during transportation. How much had the peasant earned for delivering the lamps?"
Antin finished reading the problem to the end with effort, his face was red, he lifted his eyes and examined the listeners with merry eyes.
“The question is: how much has he earned,” Antin explained laughing.
“Presumably, he has earned a lot!,” said an old bearded peasant in white trousers taking a pipe out of his mouth and burst out laughing.
“I cannot say how much he has earned but I know that if he continues to earn in such a way he will soon be without his last horse,” added  red-haired jaunty Okhrim. ”To hell with such earnings!
“Maybe it is like Zakhar’s boy who earned money in the economy,” tarted the peasant in the white trousers. After working for a week for a landowner with the threshing machine, he came home on Saturday evening. "Well, son,” his father said, “let me have your money, and I will go to the city tomorrow to buy some necessary things." His son answered him: “You may beat me, you may scold me but I have not brought you any money, not even one kopeck." His father asked: "What have you done with it, son of a bitch? Have you lost it or, maybe, it was stolen? “It would not have been such a pity for me if it had been lost or stolen. I did not have it in my hand." He explained that he had been accused when something had been broken in the winnower. The steward*** abused him, did not even give him a kopeck and ordered him to return to work off his debt a week longer. Father listened to him for some time and then said mockingly: “Always earn like this, my son, and soon you will become a landowner...”
“Maybe he had earned as much with the winnower as the peasant with lamps,” added the old man.
Everybody began to laugh.
“A lamp is a fragile thing,” somebody said, “if the cart rumbles it will make the glass splinter. And he even dared to go in such bad weather!”
“You would dare if there is not a piece of bread in the house…”
“Having discussed the matter of the lamps in detail, the people fell silent and Antin went on reading.
“Now I see!” Vasil Ivanovich thought and began to listen more attentively.
“The landlord had 857 dessiatines**** of land in one piece, the second piece was 130 dessiatines larger than the first one and the third was 150 dessiatines larger than the second one. How many dessiatines of land had the landlord in total?”
Antin finished reading the problem and began to explain it in his own way:
“One piece was 857 dessiatines, the second was 130 dessiatines larger, and the  third was even larger! The question is,” Antin  screwed up one eye and raised up a finger, ”how many dessiatines of land had the landlord in total?”
“Perhaps, it is more than our whole community has,” one of the peasants said smiling, “if we even have one such piece it would be enough for us and for our children.”
“They were such pieces!”  said Okhrim and gave a wink, “it is not what you or I have: Having such pieces it is possible to keep a house. But, give him one uprug***** into one hand, a half-uprug into the other, and nothing into the third and let him keep his house! You will carry the lamps willy-nilly!”
“And it would be good to know what piece would be for each one of us if all that land was divided between the members of our community,” a sullen peasant said.
“Vasil Ivanovich could not endure it any longer. He came from the fence to the people and began to reproach them:
“Why are you prattling? That book was  absolutely not written for that; it was written to learn arithmetic, and you are doing God knows what. If you read it like this, it’s better not to read it at all.”
“We, Vasil Ivanovich, read it in order to kill the time, so as not to be bored to death.”
“Since you are bored, would it not be better to count and to find the solution to each problem?” Vasil Ivanovich admonished, “That is the purpose of this book.”
The nearest men to Vasil Ivanovich pretended that they were listening to him attentively but behind them Okhrim winked at his neighbours and said in a low voice:
“It turns out that arithmetic is like this: the harvest is brought from the field to the landlord and the muzhik has no land so he has to count what the total area of the landlord’s land is!
Some of them tittered trying not to burst out laughing loudly.
Vasil Ivanovich heard their laughing and said: “You see, you are laughing but you do not know even why. I am sure that not one of you can figure the problem.“
“We can hardly do it!” said the nearest. “We are half-educated people or even quite illiterate: we can hardly count such an amount!”
And Îkhrim again said to his neighbours:
“It is like this: how much land do you have, Mikita, two uprugs? I have approximately that much. Here we met each other and decided: since we have no land of our own let us count the landlord’s land. You will say: he has so much land. I will say: that is not correct, he has this much. You will then say: you are lying. I will say: no, it is you, who is lying. Then you grasp my hair and you give me a box on the ear and arithmetic is going on! Here Hrygoryi comes and asks: why are these men fighting, maybe for the inheritance?”
Everybody burst out laughing, not restraining themselves any longer. Vasil Ivanovich became angry.
“You are talking nonsense, and it is quite ill-timed. I tell you,” he tried to explain, “that what was written in the Book of Problems one needed only to calculate.”
“That is exactly what we are saying,” Okhrim interrupted him. “If you have nothing to calculate at home let…”
“Pah!”, Vasil Ivanovich spat angrily. “Give me the book!” he shouted at Antin  and snatched it out of his hands almost by force .
“Do you have to read books? You have to twist oxes’ tails! That is your book!”  Vasil Ivanovich turned his back upon the group and went away..
Everybody began to laugh.
“You know, Vasil Ivanovich,” shouted Okhrim to the monopolist, “if we have to divide your 90 dessiatines, maybe we would divide them in accordance with our, muzhiks, arithmetic.”
“Probably, we should divide it correctly,” the sad man added.
Vasil  Ivanovich stopped abruptly as if somebody had pulled on his coattails, looked at them and wanted to say something. Then he spat and quickly went to his monopoly.
“Oh, he turned his nose aside. He, evidently, does not like the muzhiks’ arithmetic too much!” somebody said laughing.
“From where has the devil brought him?” others asked. As soon as two or three men come together he, willy-nilly, is brought there by the devil too! He did not give us the possibility to read to our hearts content. It is a very great pity: the book was enjoyable!”
 
*muzhik: (historical) a Russian peasant, esp. under the tsars. 
**monopolist, here:  a person who has a monopoly to sell made by state alcohol in his own shop (monopoly).
 
***steward, here: a person whose responsibility it is to take care of the grain  threshing process.

****dessiatine: a Russian unit of area equal to approximately 2.7 acres or 10 800 square metres.

***** uprug: a unit of area equal to 1/8 or 1/4 dessiatine.
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