Sketches From a Hunter's Album

  ‘But if you were to tell the truth, old fellow, you’d want to be where you were born, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘For sure I’d like to take a look at it. Still, it doesn’t matter where I am. I’m not a family man, not tied to anywhere. And what would I be doing sittin’ at home a lot? It’s when I’m off on my way, off on my travels,’ he began saying in a louder voice, ‘that everything’s surely easier. Then the sweet sunlight shines on you, and you’re clearer to God, and you sing in better tune. Then you look-see what herbs is growing there, and you take note of ’em. and collect the ones you want. Maybe there’s water runnin’ there, water from a spring, so you have a drink of it and take note of that as well. The birds of the air’ll be singing… And then on t’other side of Kursk there’ll be the steppes, O such steppelands, there’s a wonder for you, a real joy to mankind they are, such wide expanses, a sign of God’s bounty. And they go on and on, people do say, right to the warm seas where Gamayun2 lives, the bird of the sweet voice, to the place where no leaves fall from the trees in winter, nor in the autumn neither, and golden apples do grow on silver branches and each man lives in contentment and justice with another… That’s where I’d like to be going… Though I’ve been about a bit in my time! I’ve been in Romyon and in Sinbirsk, that fine city, and in Moscow herself, dressed in her golden crowns. And to Oka, river of mother’s milk, I’ve been, and to Tsna, fair as a dove, and to our mother, the Volga, and many’s the people I’ve seen, good Chrestians all, and many’s the honest towns I’ve been in… But I’d still like to be going to that place… and that’s it… and soon-like… And it’s not only I, sinner that I am, but many other Chrestians that go walking and wandering through the wide world with nothin’ but bast on their feet and seekin’ for the truth… Sure they are!… But as for what’s at home, eh? There’s no justice in the way men live – that’s what…’

  Kasyan uttered these last words with great speed and almost inaudibly: afterwards he said something else, which I was unable even to hear, and his face took on such a strange expression that I was spontaneously reminded of the title ‘holy man’ which Yerofey had given him. He stared down at the ground, gave a phlegmy cough and appeared to collect his senses.

  ‘O the sweet sun!’ he uttered almost under his breath. ‘O such a blessing, Good Lord! O such warmth here in the forest!’

  He shrugged his shoulders, fell silent, glanced round distractedly and started singing in a quiet voice. I could not catch all the words of his protracted little song, but I heard the following words:

  But Kasyan’s what they call me,

  And by nickname I’m the Flea…

  ‘Ha!’ I thought, ‘he’s making it up…’

  Suddenly he shuddered and stopped his singing, gazing intently into the forest thicket. I turned and saw a little peasant girl of about eight years of age, dressed in a little blue coat, with a chequered handkerchief tied over her head and a small wattle basket on her bare, sunburnt arm. She had obviously not expected to come across us here at all; she had stumbled on us, as they say, and now stood stock-still on a shady patch of grass in a green thicket of nut trees, glancing fearfully at me out of her jet-black eyes. I had scarcely had time to notice her when she at once plunged out of sight behind a tree.

  ‘Annushka! Annushka! Come here, don’t be frightened,’ the old man called to her in a gentle voice.

  ‘I’m frightened,’ a thin little voice answered.

  ‘Don’t be frightened, don’t be frightened, come to me.’

  Annushka silently left her hiding-place, quietly made her way round – her child’s feet scarcely made any noise in the thick grass – and emerged from the thicket beside the old man. She was not a girl of about eight years of age, as it had seemed to me at first judging by her lack of inches, but of thirteen or fourteen. Her whole body was small and thin, but very well-made and supple, and her beautiful little face was strikingly similar to Kasyan’s, although Kasyan was no beauty. The same sharp features, the same unusual look, which was both cunning and trustful, meditative and penetrating, and exactly the same gestures… Kasyan took her in at a glance as she stood sideways to him.

  ‘You’ve been out picking mushrooms, have you?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she answered with a shy smile.

  ‘Did you find many?’

  ‘Yes.’ (She directed a quick glance at him and again smiled.)

  ‘Are there any white ones?’

  ‘There are white ones as well.’

  ‘Come on, show them…’ (She lowered the basket from her arm and partly raised the broad dock leaf with which the mushrooms were covered.) ‘Ah!’ said Kasyan, bending over the basket, ‘they’re real beauties! That’s really something, Annushka!’

  ‘Is she your daughter, Kasyan?’ I asked. (Annushka’s face crimsoned faintly.)

  ‘No, she’s just a relative,’ Kasyan said with pretended indifference. ‘Well, Annushka, you be off,’ he added at once, ‘and God be with you! Watch where you go…’

  ‘But why should she go on foot?’ I interrupted. ‘We could take her home in the cart.’

  Annushka blushed red as a poppy, seized hold of the basket by its string handle and glanced at the old man in alarm.

  ‘No, she’ll walk home,’ he objected in the same indifferent tone of voice. ‘Why shouldn’t she? She’ll get home all right… Off with you now!’

  Annushka walked off briskly into the forest. Kasyan followed her with his eyes, then looked down at the ground and grinned to himself. In this protracted grin, in the few words which he had spoken to Annushka and in the sound of his voice as he was talking to her there had been ineffable, passionate love and tenderness. He again glanced in the direction that she had gone, again smiled and, wiping his face, gave several nods of the head.

  ‘Why did you send her away so soon?’ I asked him. ‘I would have bought some mushrooms from her…’

  ‘You can buy them there at home whenever you like, it’s no matter,’ he answered, addressing me with the formal ‘You’ for the first time.

  ‘She’s very pretty, that girl of yours.’

  ‘No… how so?… she’s just as they come,’ he answered with apparent unwillingness, and from that very moment dropped back into his former taciturnity.

  Seeing that all my efforts to make him start talking again were fruitless, I set off for the clearings. The heat had meanwhile dissipated a little; but my bad luck or, as they say in our parts, my ‘nothing doing’ continued the same and I returned to the village with no more than a single landrail and a new axle. As we were driving up to the yard, Kasyan suddenly turned to me.

  ‘Master, sir,’ he began, ‘sure I’m the one you should blame, sure it was I who drove all the game away from you.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘It’s just something I know. There’s that dog of yours, a good dog and trained to hunt, but he couldn’t do anything. When you think of it, people are people, aren’t they? Then there’s this animal here, but what’ve they been able to make out of him?’

  It would have been useless for me to start persuading Kasyan that it was impossible to ‘cast a spell’ over game and therefore I did not answer him. At that moment we turned in through the gates of the yard.

  Annushka was not in the hut; she had already arrived and left behind her basket of mushrooms.

  Yerofey fixed the new axle, having first subjected it to a severe and biased evaluation; and an hour later I drove away, leaving Kasyan a little money, which at first he did not wish to accept but which later, having thought about it and having held it in the palm of his hand, he placed inside the front of his shirt. During this whole hour he hardly uttered a single word; as previously, he stood leaning against the gates, made no response to my driver’s reproachful remarks and was extremely cold to me in saying goodbye.

  As soon as I had returned I had noticed that my Yerofey was once again sunk in gloom. And in fact he had found nothing edible in the village and the water for the horses had been of
poor quality. So we drove out. With a dissatisfaction that expressed itself even in the nape of his neck, he sat on the box and dearly longed to strike up a conversation with me, but in anticipation of my initial question he limited himself to faint grumblings under his breath and edifying, occasionally caustic, speeches directed at the horses.

  ‘A village!’ he muttered. ‘Call it a village! I asked for some kvas and they didn’t even have any kvas… Good God! And as for water, it was simply muck!’ (He spat loudly.) ‘No cucumbers, no kvas, not a bloody thing. As for you,’ he added thunderously, turning to the right-hand horse, ‘I know you, you dissemblin’ female, you! You’re a right one for pretendin’, you are…’ (And he struck her with the whip.) ‘That horse has gone dead cunnin’, she has, and before it was a nice, easy creature… Gee-up there, look-see about it.’

  ‘Tell me, please, Yerofey,’ I began, ‘what sort of a person is that Kasyan?’

  Yerofey did not reply immediately: in general he was thoughtful and slow in his ways, but I could guess at once that my question had cheered and calmed him.

  ‘The Flea, you mean?’ he said eventually, jerking at the reins. ‘A strange and wonderful man he is, truly a holy man, and you’d not find another one like him all that quick. He’s, so to speak, as like as like our grey horse there: he’s got out of hand just the same… that’s to say, he’s got out of the way of workin’. Well, of course, he’s no worker. Just keeps himself going, but still… For sure he’s always been like that. To start with he used to be a carrier along with his uncles: there were three of ’em.; but after a time, well, you know, he got bored and gave it up. Started living at home, he did, but couldn’t feel settled – he’s restless as a flea. Thanks be to God, it happened he had a kind master who didn’t force him to work. So from that time on he’s been wanderin’ here, there and everywhere, like a roaming sheep. And God knows, he’s remarkable enough, with his being silent as a tree-stump one moment and then talking away all of a sudden the next – and as for what he says, God alone knows what that is. Maybe you think it’s his manner? It’s not his manner, because he’s too ungainly. But he sings well – a bit pompous-like, but not too bad really.’

  ‘Is it true he has the power of healing?’

  ‘A power of healing! What would he be doing with that? Just ordinary he is. But he did cure me of scrofula… A lot of good it does him! He’s just as stupid as they come, he is,’ he added, after a pause.

  ‘Have you known him long?’

  ‘Long enough. We were neighbours of his in Sychovka, on the Beautiful Lands.’

  ‘And that girl we came across in the wood – Annushka – is she a blood relation of his?’

  Yerofey glanced at me over his shoulder and bared his teeth in a wide grin.

  ‘Huh… Yes, they’re relations. She’s an orphan, got no mother and nobody knows who her mother was. But it’s likely she’s related to him: she’s the spittin’ image of him… And she lives with him. A smart girl, she is, no denying that; and a good girl, and the old man, he dotes on her: she’s a good girl. And likely he’ll – you may not believe it – but likely he’ll take it into his head to teach his Annushka readin’ and writin’. You never know, it’s just the sort of thing he’d start: he’s as extrardin’ry as that, changeable-like he is, even untellable… Hey, hey, hey!’ My driver suddenly interrupted himself and, bringing the horses to a stop, leaned over the side and started sniffing. ‘Isn’t there a smell of burning? There is an’ all! These new axles’ll be the end of me. It seemed I’d put enough grease on. I’ll have to get some water. There’s a little pond over there.’

  And Yerofey got down slowly from the box, untied a bucket, walked to the pond and, when he returned, listened with considerable pleasure to the way the axle-hole hissed as it was suddenly doused with water. About six times in the course of seven or so miles he had to douse the overheated axle, and evening had long since fallen by the time we returned home.

  BAILIFF

  TEN miles or so from my estate there lives a certain acquaintance of mine, a young landowner and retired guards officer, Arkady Pavlych Penochkin. His lands are rich in game, his house designed by a French architect, his servants dressed in the English fashion, he provides excellent dinners and extends a cordial welcome to his guests; yet it is only with reluctance that one visits him. He is a man of intelligence and substance, educated according to the best standards, has done his service in a guards regiment and gone the rounds of high society, and now looks after his estate with much success. To use his own words, Arkady Pavlych is stern but just, busies himself with the welfare of his menials and metes out punishments always for their own good. ‘One must treat them like children,’ he says on such occasions. ‘It’s due to ignorance, mon cher; il faut prendre cela en considération.’ He himself, when there is occasion for so-called unfortunate strictness, avoids sharp and abrupt gestures and prefers not to raise his voice, but rather sticks his hand out directly in front of him saying quietly: ‘Surely I asked you, my dear chap,’ or ‘What’s the matter with you, my friend? Pull yourself together’ – all the while slightly gritting his teeth and giving his mouth a slight twist. He is not tall, dapper in build, not at all bad-looking and he keeps his hands and nails admirably groomed; his rosy lips and cheeks exude good health. He has a resonant and carefree laugh and a jovial way of screwing up his bright hazel eyes. He dresses excellently and with taste; he orders French books, pictures and newspapers, but he is no book-worm: he hardly managed to finish The Wandering Jew.1He is an expert card-player. Generally speaking, Arkady Pavlych is considered to be one of the most cultured members of the gentry and the most sought-after prospective husband in our province; women are quite out of their minds about him and are particularly fulsome in their praise of his manners. He is amazingly good at conducting himself properly, is as cautious as a cat and has never for the life of him let himself be touched by a breath of scandal, although he occasionally permits the world to know what sort of man he is by taking a delight in teasing some shy wretch and snapping his head off. He stoutly avoids bad company for fear of compromising himself; though at a time of celebration he is fond of proclaiming himself a devotee of Epicurus, despite his generally poor opinion of philosophy which he calls the misty nourishment of German intellects or sometimes, quite simply, a lot of nonsense. He is also fond of music; while playing cards he sings through his teeth, but he does it with feeling; he knows part of Lucia2 and Les Somnambules,3 though he pitches his voice too high. During the winter he goes to St Petersburg. He keeps his house in exceptionally good order; even his coachmen have succumbed to his influence and not only give daily washings to the horse-collars and their own peasant coats, but also wash their own faces. Arkady Pavlych’s house-serfs, it’s true, have a habit of looking at you from under their brows – but then in Russia, it’s no easy matter to tell a gloomy face from a sleepy one. Arkady Pavlych speaks in a soft and pleasant voice, lending his speech due measure and deriving enjoyment, as it were, from permitting each word to pass through his splendid, perfumed whiskers; he also makes use of many French turns of phrase, such as ‘Mais c’est impayable!’ ‘Mais comment donc!’ and so on. Regardless of this, I at least visit him with the utmost reluctance, and if it had not been for the grouse and the partridges I would long ago no doubt have put an end to our acquaintanceship. A strange kind of unease seizes hold of you in his house; even the comforts of it evoke no pleasure, and each evening, when the frizzle-haired lackey appears before you in his sky-blue livery with its crested buttons and proceeds deferentially to pull off your boots, you feel that if only in place of his lean and hungry figure there were suddenly presented to you the strikingly wide cheekbones and impossibly blunt nose of a strapping lad just brought in from the plough by the master of the house, who had already succeeded in bursting through the seams of his newly loaned nankeen tunic in a dozen places – you would be indescribably pleased and would willingly submit to the danger of losing, along with your boot, the whole of your l
eg right up to the thigh…

  Notwithstanding my dislike of Arkady Pavlych, I once had to spend a night at his house. Early the next morning I ordered my carriage to be harnessed, but he was unwilling to let me go without offering me an English breakfast and led me into his study. Tea was served together with cutlets, soft-boiled eggs, butter, honey, cheese and so on. Two menservants in peerless white gloves swiftly and silently anticipated our least wish. We were seated on a Persian divan. Arkady Pavlych was arrayed in wide silken trousers, a black velvet jacket, a fine fez with a blue tassel and yellow Chinese slippers without heels. He sipped his tea, laughed, studied his fingernails, smoked, stuffed cushions on either side of him and generally accounted himself to be in the best of moods. Having breakfasted substantially and with evident pleasure, Arkady Pavlych poured himself a glass of red wine, raised it to his lips and suddenly frowned.

  ‘Why has the wine not been warmed?’ he inquired of one of the menservants in a fairly sharp voice.

  The man was confused, stood rooted to the spot and turned pale.

  ‘Well, I am asking you, my dear chap,’ Arkady Pavlych continued quietly, without taking his eyes off him.

  The wretched man fidgeted, twisted his napkin and did not utter a word. Arkady Pavlych bent his head forward and meditated upon him from beneath his brows.

  ‘Pardon, mon cher,’ he said with a pleasant smile, giving me a friendly pat on the knee, and once again directed a stare at his manservant. ‘Well, you may leave,’ he added after a short silence, raised his brows and rang the bell.

  There appeared a fat, dark-featured, black-haired man with a low forehead and eyes completely buried in his face.