‘Whose serf were you before?’
‘Sergey Sergeich Pekhterev’s. We were his by inheritance. An’ he didn’t own us long, just six years. It was for him I were coachman, though not in the town – he had others for town – only in the country.’
‘Were you always a coachman?’
‘Not always I weren’t! I became a coachman under Sergey Ser-geich, but before that I were a cook, but not a cook in town, just a cook here in the country.’
‘Who were you a cook for?’
‘A previous gentleman, Afanasy Nefedych, Sergey Sergeich’s uncle. He bought Lgov, Afanasy Nefedych did, while Sergey Sergeich inherited his estate.’
‘Who did he buy it from?’
‘From Tatyana Vasilyevna.’
‘Which Tatyana Vasilyevna?’
‘The one who died last year near Bolkhov – that’s to say, near Karachev – the spinster, the one who never got married. You perhaps know her? We passed to her from her father, from Vasily Semyonych. She owned us a long, long time – ‘bout twenty years or so.’
‘So you were a cook for her, were you?’
‘At first I were just that, a cook, but then I became a cofficial.’
‘A what?’
‘A cofficial.’
‘What sort of a job is that?’
‘I don’t really know, sir. Standing by the sideboard and being called Anton, not Kuzma. That’s what our ladyship ordered.’
‘Is your real name Kuzma?’
‘Kuzma.’
‘And you were a cofficial all the time?’
‘No, not all the time. I was also an akhtor.’
‘Really?’
‘Sure I were. An akhtor in a keatre. Our ladyship had a keatre.’
‘What parts did you play?’
‘Pardon?’
‘What did you do in the theatre?’
‘You don’t know what we did, eh? They’d take me and dress me up and I’d walk on dressed-up, or stand, or sit, as was needed. They’d say, You say this, and I’d say it. Once I were a blind man. They put a pea under each eyelid… That’s what we did.’
‘And then what?’
‘Then I became a cook again.’
‘Why did they demote you to cook?’
‘’Cos my brother ran away.’
‘I see. But what were you under your first lady’s father?’
‘I had various employments. First I were a pageboy, then an outrider, then a gardener, then a huntsman.’
‘A huntsman? So you rode to hounds?’
‘I rode to hounds, but I got hurt. I fell with the horse and the horse got hurt. The old master, he were real strict with us. He ordered me flogged and sent off to Moscow, to be apprentice to a shoemaker.’
‘To be an apprentice? You weren’t a boy when you were made a huntsman, were you?’
‘No, I were twenty years old or so.’
‘What sort of an apprentice would you be if you were twenty?’
‘That didn’t matter, it’s what had to happen if the master ordered. Luckily, he died soon afterwards and I were sent back to the country.’
‘When did you learn to be a cook?’
Old Knot raised his thin and yellowish face and grinned.
‘Do you have to learn that? It’s women’s work, cooking!’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘you’ve seen some sights in your time, Kuzma! What do you do now as a fisherman if there are no fish?’
‘I don’t complain, sir. An’ I thank God I were made a fisherman. There’s another old man like me, Andrey Pupyr, her ladyship ordered him to work in the dipping-room in the paper factory. It’s a sin, she said, for him to eat bread for nothing… But Pupyr’d hoped to gain her favour. He had a relative of his working as a clerk in her office. He promised to put in a good word for him with her ladyship, remind her, you know. Well, he reminded her right enough! Pupyr, you know, had bowed down to that relative’s feet right before my very eyes…’
‘Have you got a family? Were you married?’
‘No, sir, I wasn’t. The late Tatyana Vasilyevna – God rest her soul! – she wouldn’t allow anyone to marry. Heaven preserve us! She’d say: “I live like a spinster, don’t I, so what’s the fuss? What more do they want?” ‘
‘How do you make a living now? Do you get any pay?’
‘Pay, sir! No!… Food is provided – so, glory be to God, I’m greatly content. May God grant our ladyship long life!’
Yermolay returned.
‘The boat’s put right,’ he pronounced severely. ‘You go off and get your pole, you!’
Old Knot ran off for his pole. Throughout my conversation with the poor old man the hunter Vladimir had been giving him glances and grinning disdainfully.
‘A stupid fellow, sir,’ he said when the other had gone, ‘a completely uneducated fellow, sir, just a peasant, sir, nothing else. You can’t call him a household servant, sir… and such a boaster… How could he be thought of as an actor, judge for yourself! You bothered with him for nothing, talking to him as you did, sir!’
Within a quarter of an hour we were already sitting in Old Knot’s punt. (We left the dogs in a peasant hut in the care of the coachman Yehudi.) It wasn’t very comfortable for us, but hunters are never very choosy. At the blunt rear end stood Old Knot and ‘punted’ with his pole. Vladimir and I sat on the centre cross-seat and Yermolay perched himself up front, in the bow. Despite the oakum, water soon appeared round our feet. Luckily the weather was calm and the pond water literally seemed to have gone to sleep.
We traversed the water fairly slowly. The old man had difficulty in pulling his long pole out of the sticky mud because it had become twined about with the green threads of underwater grasses and the solid round pads of the marsh lilies also hindered our boat’s progress. Eventually we reached the clumps of reeds and the fun started. The ducks rose noisily, literally ‘exploding’ from the pond in fright at our sudden appearance in their domain and gunfire resounded in unison after them and it was a delight to see how the stumpy birds somersaulted in the air and splashed down heavily in the water. We didn’t of course retrieve all the shot duck. Some of the slightly injured ones dived, some of the dead ones fell in such thick ‘mayer’ that even the lynx-eyed Yermolay couldn’t spot them, but nevertheless by dinnertime our boat had become filled to the brim with our bag.
Vladimir, to Yermolay’s great satisfaction, was by no means an expert shot and after each failure showed his surprise, inspected his gun, blew through it, expressed puzzlement and finally gave us his reasons for missing his target. Yermolay as usual shot victoriously and I, as usual, rather poorly. Old Knot studied us with the eyes of someone who’d been all his life in someone or other’s service and from time to time cried out: ‘There’s one, there’s a duck!’ and all the while scratched his back not with his hands but with movements of his shoulders. The weather remained perfect. White round clouds hung high and calm above us, clearly reflected in the water. The reeds murmured softly all about us and in places the pond water glittered in the sunlight like steel. We were on the point of returning to the village when suddenly something rather unpleasant occurred.
We’d been aware for some time that water had slowly been seeping into the punt. Vladimir had been given the task of bailing it out with a ladle pinched for the purpose by my prudent hunter from a dozy old woman. Everything was all right so long as Vladimir remembered what he had to do. But towards the end of our hunt, as if in farewell, the ducks started to rise in such flocks that we scarcely had time to reload our guns. In the heat of firing we didn’t pay any attention to the state of our punt, when suddenly, as a result of a strong movement from Yermolay, who had stretched out full-length along the gunwale in order to reach a shot bird, our ancient craft leaned to one side, keeled over and solemnly sank to the bottom, luckily in a shallow place. We cried out but it was already too late. In a moment we were standing up to our necks in water surrounded by the floating bodies of dead ducks. Now I can’t help recalling withou
t laughing the pale and frightened faces of my comrades (very likely my own face wasn’t all that healthily pink at the time), but I must confess that at that moment it didn’t occur to me to laugh at all. Each of us held our guns above our heads and Old Knot, no doubt through his habit of always copying his masters, also held his pole up. The first to break the silence was Yermolay.
‘Phew, tipped right up!’ he complained, spitting in the water. ‘What an occasion! And it’s all down to you, you old devil!’ he added heatedly, turning to Old Knot. ‘What sort of a boat is it you’ve got?’
‘Sorry,’ muttered the old man.
‘Yes, and a lot of good you are,’ my hunter went on, turning his head in the direction of Vladimir. ‘Where were you looking? Why weren’t you bailing? Oh, you, you, you…’
But Vladimir was in no mood to respond because he was shaking like a leaf, his teeth chattered without meeting and he was smiling completely senselessly. God knows what had happened to his eloquence and sense of elegant propriety and personal dignity!
The damned punt swayed about feebly under our feet. The instant after our shipwreck the water had seemed extremely cold, but we soon got used to it. When the first fright was over, I looked around and saw that ten or so paces from us were reeds and beyond, above their tips, could be seen the bank. ‘Not good!’ I thought.
‘What can we do?’ I asked Yermolay.
‘Well, let’s take a look, since we can’t spend the night here,’ he answered. ‘Here, you, take hold of my gun,’ he said to Vladimir.
Vladimir obeyed without a word.
‘I’m going to look for a fording place,’ continued Yermolay in the sure conviction that every stretch of pond water must have a fording place, seized hold of Old Knot’s pole and set off in the direction of the bank, carefully feeling his way along the bottom.
‘Do you know how to swim?’ I asked him.
‘No, I don’t,’ his voice resounded beyond the reeds.
‘Well, he’s bound to drown,’ was the indifferent comment from Old Knot, who, as earlier, had been frightened not by the danger so much as by our anger and now, completely calm, merely emitted the occasional long breath and gave the impression of feeling no need to change his position.
‘And he’ll perish quite uselessly, sir,’ Vladimir added piteously.
Yermolay didn’t return for more than an hour. That hour seemed to us an eternity. To start with we exchanged shouts with him very eagerly, but later he began to answer our shouts more rarely and finally he ceased altogether. In the village the bells were tolling for the evening service. We didn’t talk among ourselves and even tried to avoid each other’s eyes. The ducks flew over our heads; some would be about to alight near us but would then suddenly rise up, as they say, ‘in formation’ and fly off with much quacking. We started to grow stiff. Old Knot started blinking his eyes as if he was preparing to go to sleep.
At last, to our indescribable joy, Yermolay returned.
‘Well, what did you find?’
‘I was on the bank and found a fording place… Let’s go.’
We’d have liked to set off at once, but he first of all extracted some string from his pocket underwater and tied up all the shot duck by their feet, seized both ends of the string between his teeth and went ahead of us, Vladimir behind him and I behind Vladimir. Old Knot brought up the rear. It was about two hundred paces to the bank and Yermolay made his way boldly and without stopping (he’d noted the route that well), only occasionally shouting out: ‘To the left! There’s a hole on the right!’ or: ‘To the right! You’ll get stuck on the left…’ Sometimes the water rose to our necks and once or twice poor Old Knot, being smaller than us, started swallowing water and letting out bubbles. ‘Hey, hey, hey!’ Yermolay shouted at him threateningly and Old Knot would scramble along, jumping, his legs dangling and somehow managing to reach a shallower place, but even in extreme difficulty he never took hold of the edge of my coat. Finally worn out, filthy and wet through, we reached the bank.
A couple of hours later we were all seated, as dry as was possible, in a large hay barn and awaiting our supper. The coachman Yehudi, a man of extraordinarily slow movements, sluggish, deliberate and dopey, stood by the doors and zealously plied Old Knot with snuff. (I have noticed that coachmen in Russia are quick to make friends.) Old Knot gave frenzied sniffs, almost to the point of making himself ill. He spat and coughed and evidently enjoyed himself enormously. Vladimir looked languid, leaned his head to one side and said little. Yermolay cleaned our guns. The dogs wagged their tails at an exaggerated rate in anticipation of their oatmeal, while the horses stamped their hooves and neighed under the awning. The sun set slowly. Its last rays ran across the land in broad crimson lines. Little golden clouds spread out upon the sky in ever smaller shapes as if in a burst, splattered wave… The village resounded with a sound of singing.
BEZHIN LEA
IT was a beautiful July day, one of those days which occur only when the weather has been unchanged for a long time. From early morning the sky is clear and the sunrise does not so much flare up like a fire as spread like a mild pinkness. The sun – not fiery, not molten, as it is during a period of torrid drought, not murkily crimson as it is before a storm, but bright and invitingly radiant – peacefully drifts up beneath a long, thin cloud, sends fresh gleams through it and is immersed in its lilac haze. The delicate upper edge of the long line of cloud erupts in snakey glints of light: their gleam resembles the gleam of beaten silver. But then again the playful rays break out – and as if taking wing the mighty sun rises gaily and magnificently. About midday a mass of high round clouds appear, golden-grey, with soft white edges. They move hardly at all, like islands cast down on the infinite expanses of a flooding river which flows round them in deeply pellucid streams of level blue; away towards the horizon they cluster together and merge so that there is no blue sky to be seen between them; but they have themselves become as azure-coloured as the sky and are pervaded through and through with light and warmth. The light, pale-lilac colour of the heavens remains the same throughout the day and in all parts of the sky; there is no darkening anywhere, no thickening as for a storm, though here and there pale-blue columns may stretch downwards, bringing a hardly noticeable sprinkling of rain. Towards evening these clouds disappear. The last of them, darkling and vague as smoke, lie down in rosy mistiness before the sinking sun. At the point where the sun has set just as calmly as it rose into the sky, a crimson glow lingers for a short time over the darkened earth, and, softly winking, the evening star burns upon the glow like a carefully carried candle. On such days all the colours are softened; they are bright without being gaudy; everything bears the mark of some poignant timidity. On such days the heat is sometimes very strong and occasionally even ‘simmers’ along the slopes of the fields. But the wind drives away and disperses the accumulated heat, and whirling dust storms – a sure sign of settled weather – travel in tall white columns along roads through the ploughland. The dry pure air is scented with wormwood, harvested rye and buckwheat. Even an hour before nightfall you can feel no dampness. It is just such weather that the farmer wants for harvesting his grain.
It was on precisely such a day that I once went out grouse-shooting in Chernsk county in the province of Tula. I found, and bagged, a fair number of birds. My full game-pouch cut mercilessly at my shoulder. But I did not finally decide to make my way home until the evening glow had already died away and chill shadows began to thicken and proliferate in air that was still bright, though no longer illumined by the rays of the sunset. With brisk steps I crossed a long ‘plaza’ of bushy undergrowth, clambered up a hillock and, instead of the expected familiar moor with a little oak wood to the right of it and a low-walled white church in the distance, I saw completely different places which were unknown to me. At my feet there stretched a narrow valley; directly ahead of me rose, like a steep wall, a dense aspen wood. I stopped in bewilderment and looked around. ‘Ah-ha!’ I thought. ‘I’m certainly not where I sho
uld be: I’ve swerved too much to the right’ – and, surprised at my mistake, I quickly descended from the hillock. I was at once surrounded by an unpleasant, motionless damp, just as if I had entered a cellar. The tall, thick grass on the floor of the valley was all wet and shone white like a smooth tablecloth; it felt clammy and horrible to walk through. As quickly as possible I scrambled across to the other side and, keeping to the left, made my way along beside the aspen wood. Bats already flitted above its sleeping treetops, mysteriously circling and quivering against the dull paleness of the sky; a young hawk, out late, flew by high up, taking a direct, keen course in hurrying back to its nest. ‘Now then, as soon as I reach that corner,’ I said to myself, ‘that’s where the road’ll be so what I’ve done is to make a detour of about three-quarters of a mile!’
I made my way finally to the corner of the wood, but there was no road there, only some low, unkempt bushes spread out widely in front of me and beyond them, in the far distance, an expanse of deserted field. Again I stopped. ‘What’s all this about? Where am I?’ I tried to recall where I had been during the day. ‘Ah, these must be the Parakhin bushes!’ I exclaimed eventually. ‘That’s it! And that must be the Sindeyev wood… How on earth did I get as far as this? It’s very odd! Now I must go to the right again.’
I turned to the right, through the bushes. Meanwhile, night was approaching and rose around me like a thunder cloud; it was as if, in company with the evening mists, darkness rose on every side and even poured down from the sky. I discovered a rough, overgrown track and followed it, carefully peering ahead of me. Everything quickly grew silent and dark; only quail gave occasional cries. A small night bird, which hurried low and soundlessly along on its soft wings, almost collided with me and plunged off in terror. I emerged from the bushes and wandered along the boundary of a field. It was only with difficulty that I could make out distant objects. All around me the field glimmered faintly; beyond it, coming closer each moment, the sullen murk loomed in huge clouds. My footsteps sounded muffled in the thickening air. The sky which had earlier grown pale once again began to shine blue, but it was the blue of the night. Tiny stars began to flicker and shimmer.