BORIS
PILNYAK
broad felt hat, his sheepskin bumfreezer and
his
leggings.
He
was going to see the carpenter and the carter, obtain ropes and
I
matting and make all the necessary arrangements for the packing
of the purchases and their transport to the wharf for dispatch to
Moscow. The old man knew his business and on leaving he said:
"We should give the job to the down-and-outs in the brick·
works: they're as honest as the day is long, crackpots though they
may be. But we can't. Their revolutionary-in-chief, brother Ivan,
would never hear of them doing a job for the counter-revolution,
he-he-he! ..."
The Bezdetov brothers settled down to rest in the sitting
room and night was settling on the earth. Throughout the eve·
ning people came and knocked furtively on Maria Klimovna's
window. Katerina would go out to see them and, fawning like
beggars, the people would say: "Your visitors buy all kinds of
antiques, don't they?" and they offered old ruble and kopeck
coins, broken lamps, ancient samovars, books and candlesticks.
These people, who were poverty-stricken in all respects, knew
nothing of antiques. Katerina did not allow them to come into
the house with their brass candlesticks and proposed that they
leave their stuff until the morning when the visitors, having
rested, would look at it.
At .about eight o'clock Katerina asked her mother's permis–
sion to go out for the evening-first to choir practice and then
to visit a friend. She put on her best clothes and left the house.
Half an hour later Pavel Feodorovich and his brother Stepan fol–
lowed her out into the rain. Katerina was waiting for them on
the other side of the bridge. Stepan Feodorovich took Katerina's
arm, and they walked in the pitch dark along a path which ran
by the side of a ravine to the outskirts of the town, where Yakov
Karpovich's old sisters Kapitolina and Rimma had their house.
Katerina and the Bezdetovs crept into the yard like thieves and,
like thieves, slipped through the garden. In the depths of the
garden
stood
a solitary bathhouse.
Katerina knocked and the door was ha,lf opened. A light
