scythe with a furious energy that might have mown a young birch copse up
by the roots, or swiftly and untiringly wielded a flail over two yards long;
while the hard oblong muscles of his shoulders rose and fell like a lever. His
perpetual silence lent a solemn dignity to his unwearying labor. He was a
splendid peasant, and, except for his affliction, any girl would have been
glad to marry him. . . . But now they had taken Gerasim to Moscow, bought
him boots, had him made a full-skirted coat for summer, a sheepskin for
winter, put into his hand a broom and a spade, and appointed him porter.
At first he intensely disliked his new mode of life. From his childhood he
had been used to field labor, to village life. Shut off by his affliction from
the society of men, he had grown up, dumb and mighty, as a tree grows on a
fruitful soil. When he was transported to the town, he could not understand
what was being done with him; he was miserable and stupefied, with the
stupefaction of some strong young bull, taken straight from the meadow,
where the rich grass stood up to his belly, taken and put in the truck of a
railway train, and there, while smoke and sparks and gusts of steam puff out
upon the sturdy beast, he is whirled onwards, whirled along with loud roar
and whistle, whither–God knows! What Gerasim had to do in his new du-
ties seemed a mere trifle to him after his hard toil as a peasant; in half an
hour all his work was done, and he would once more stand stock-still in the
middle of the courtyard, staring open-mouthed at all the passers-by, as
though trying to wrest from them the explanation of his perplexing position;
or he would suddenly go off into some corner, and flinging a long way off
the broom or, the spade, throw himself on his face on the ground, and lie for
hours together without stirring, like a caged beast. But man gets used to
anything, and Gerasim got used at last to living in town. He had little work
to do; his whole duty consisted in keeping the courtyard clean, bringing in a
barrel of water twice a day, splitting and dragging in wood for the kitchen
and the house, keeping out strangers, and watching at night. And it must be
said he did his duty zealously. In his courtyard there was never a shaving
lying about, never a speck of dust; if sometimes, in the muddy season, the
wretched nag, put under his charge for fetching water, got stuck in the road,
he would simply give it a shove with his shoulder, and set not only the cart
but the horse itself moving. If he set to chopping wood, the axe fairly rang
like glass, and chips and chunks flew in all directions. And as for strangers,
after he had one night caught two thieves and knocked their heads together–
knocked them so that there was not the slightest need to take them to the
