ave been an
expensive coffin to make, lined with brocade. The thought of his
losses haunted Yakov, especially at night; he laid his fiddle on
the bed beside him, and when all sorts of nonsensical ideas came
into his mind he touched a string; the fiddle gave out a sound in
the darkness, and he felt better.

On the sixth of May of the previous year Marfa had suddenly been
taken ill. The old woman's breathing was laboured, she drank a great
deal of water, and she staggered as she walked, yet she lighted the
stove in the morning and even went herself to get water. Towards
evening she lay down. Yakov played his fiddle all day; when it was
quite dark he took the book in which he used every day to put down
his losses, and, feeling dull, he began adding up the total for the
year. It came to more than a thousand roubles. This so agitated him
that he flung the reckoning beads down, and trampled them under his
feet. Then he picked up the reckoning beads, and again spent a long
time clicking with them and heaving deep, strained sighs. His face
was crimson and wet with perspiration. He thought that if he had
put that lost thousand roubles in the bank, the interest for a year
would have been at least forty roubles, so that forty roubles was
a loss too. In fact, wherever one turned there were losses and
nothing else.

"Yakov!" Marfa called unexpectedly. "I am dying."

He looked round at his wife. Her face was rosy with fever, unusually
bright and joyful-looking. Bronze, accustomed to seeing her face
always pale, timid, and unhappy-looking, was bewildered. It looked
as if she really were dying and were glad that she was going away
for ever from that hut, from the coffins, and from Yakov. . . . And
she gazed at the ceiling and moved her lips, and her expression was
one of happiness, as though she saw death as her deliverer and were
whispering with him.

It was daybreak; from the windows one could see the flush of dawn.
Looking at the old woman, Yakov for some reason reflected that he
had not once in his life been affectionate to her, had had no feeling
for her, had never once thought to buy her a kerchief, or to bring
her home some dainty from a wedding, but had done nothing but shout
at her, scold her for his losses, shake his fists at her; it is
true he had never actually beaten her, but he had frightened her,
and at such times she had always been numb with terror. Why, he had
forbidden her to drink tea because they spent too mu