Interrupted Stories

Stepan Stepanovich pestered the neighbor to sell him Akulka. The neighbor played hard to get, then agreed on the condition that Stolygin also buy her father and mother. “I am a Christian,” he said, “and I do not want to separate what God has joined.” Stepan Stepanovich agreed to everything and paid him three thousand rubles; at the prices of that time, one could have bought five Akulkas and as many Dunyashkas with their fathers and mothers for such a sum.

The rural Brunhilda understood, precisely from the sum paid for her, the breadth of her power and in six months brought her master into complete submissiveness. The influence of the cook faded, the power of the elder weakened. Akulina Andreyevna’s father was made the butler, her mother the housekeeper, and she did not show them any favoritism either, but kept them in fear and obedience. And all this was not enough for her; she wanted to be openly and clearly the mistress, and she began to harbor dynastic interests. And in about two years, Stepan Stepanovich set off in the four-horse carriage

of his late parent to the church and got married to Akulina Andreyevna. Their marriage, unlike Lev Stepanovich’s marriage, did not remain barren. In the entrance hall of the manor house, when the newlyweds returned, first her parents came up to kiss the hand and congratulate the new mistress, and then the wet nurse in a gold-embroidered cap brought out a ten-month-old son. Their marriage had been blessed in advance. This suckling infant was Mikhaylo Stepanovich, whom Efimka used to carry on a sled, while he prodded him with a small whip.

After the wedding, the master became a ghost. Akulina Andreyevna took the reins of government with a strong hand. With deep political tact, she took every measure to consolidate her absolute power, but as always happens, having taken every measure, she still overlooked one of the possible causes of a coup, and that is where everything fell apart. Little acquainted with medical science, she not only did not limit, but actively encouraged Stepan Stepanovich’s passion for liqueurs and sweet vodkas; she did not know that the human body only counteracts alcohol to a certain degree. About seven years after the wedding, the blue-faced Stepan Stepanovich, swollen from dropsy and half-mute from paralysis, gave his soul to God, around the same time that Lev Stepanovich was finishing his house on the Yauza river.