A Sportsman's Notebook Read online

  A quarter of an hour later, Fedya, carrying a lantern, escorted me to the shed. I threw myself down on the sweet-smelling hay, and my dog curled up at my feet; Fedya wished me good night, and the door squeaked and slammed to behind him. For some time I couldn’t get to sleep. A cow came up to the door and breathed loudly once or twice; my dog gave a dignified growl at her; a pig went past, grunting reflectively; somewhere nearby a horse began to munch hay and snort. . . .

  At length I dropped off to sleep.

  At dawn Fedya awoke me. I had taken a great liking to this gay, alert young fellow; he seemed to be a favorite with old Khor too, as far as I could observe. They chaffed each other in the most amiable way. The old man came out to meet me. Whether because I had spent the night under his roof, or for some other reason, at any rate Khor was much more forthcoming towards me than he had been the day before.

  “The samovar’s waiting for you,” he told me with a smile; “let’s go and have tea.”

  We sat down at table. A healthy-looking peasant woman, one of Khor’s daughters-in-law, brought a pot of milk. All his sons came in one after the other.

  “What a tall lot you’ve got!” I observed to the old man.

  “Yes,” he replied, biting off a tiny piece of sugar. “I think that neither I nor the old woman has given them anything to complain about.”

  “And do they all live with you?”

  “Yes. They all want to live here, so they do.”

  “And are they all married?”

  “That rascal there won’t marry,” he answered, pointing at Fedya, who as before was leaning in the doorway. “As for Vaska, he’s a bit young still, he has time to wait.”

  “What should I get married for?” rejoined Fedya. “I’m all right as I am. What good would a wife be to me? Someone to quarrel with, eh?”

  “Well, you . . . I know all about you! You wear silver rings . . . you like sniffing round after servant-girls! Oh, get along with you, now!” continued the old man, imitating the voice of a serving-maid. “I know all about you, with your white hands and all!”

  “But what is there that’s good about a peasant woman?”

  “The peasant woman is a worker,” observed Khor sententiously. “She is a servant to her husband.”

  “And what would I want a worker for?”

  “Because you like other people to pull your chestnuts out of the fire. Oh, I know you and your sort.”

  “Well, marry me off, if you want to. Eh? What? Why don’t you say something?”

  “Well, that’ll do, you joker. You’re disturbing the master. I’ll marry you off, don’t worry. . . . You mustn’t mind him, sir; he’s only a whipper-snapper, you see, and hasn’t had time to learn any sense.”

  Fedya shook his head. . . .

  “Is Khor in?” said a well-known voice at the door, and Kalinich came in, holding a bunch of wild strawberries which he had picked for his friend Khor. The old man welcomed him joyfully. I looked with surprise at Kalinich. I must admit, I had not expected that a peasant would be capable of such “attentions.”

  That day I went shooting four hours later than usual, and I spent the next three days at Khor’s. I was absorbed by my new acquaintances. I can’t say how I deserved their confidence, but they talked to me without constraint. I enjoyed listening to them and observing them. The two friends were not in the least similar. Khor was a positive, practical fellow, an administrator, a rationalist. Kalinich, on the other hand, belonged to the category of idealists, romantics, enthusiasts and dreamers. Khor understood reality, that is to say, he knew how to get on in the world, how to put money aside, and keep on good terms with the master and the other powers that be; Kalinich went about in plaited shoes and lived from hand to mouth. Khor was the father of a large, submissive and united family; Kalinich had once had a wife, of whom he had been afraid, but never any children. Khor saw right through Mr. Polutykin; Kalinich, on the other hand, idolized him. Khor loved Kalinich and gave him his protection; Kalinich loved and revered Khor. Khor spoke little, chuckled, and thought things out for himself; Kalinich expressed himself with warmth, although he was not one of your nightingales of eloquence, like some smart fellows of the artisan class. . . . But Kalinich was endowed with advantages which even Khor allowed him; for instance, he knew spells to cure fear, frenzy or bleeding; he could drive out worms; his bees did well, he had the right touch with them. Khor asked him, in my presence, to lead a newly-bought horse into the stable, for luck, and Kalinich carried out the request of the old sceptic with conscientious gravity. Kalinich was nearer to nature; Khor, to people, to human society. Kalinich did not like arguing and believed everything blindly; Khor had risen far enough to take an ironic view of life. He had seen a lot, he knew a lot, he taught me a lot, too. For example, from his stories I learned that every summer, just before mowing time, there appears in the country villages a small cart of unusual aspect. In the cart there sits a man in a frock-coat with scythes to sell. In cash he charges one ruble twenty-five copecks; in notes, a ruble and a half; on credit, four rubles. It goes without saying that all peasants buy from him on credit. Two or three weeks later he appears again and demands payment. The peasant has just cut his oats, and therefore has money to pay with; he goes with the merchant to the pot-house and there settles his account. Certain landowners had the idea of buying scythes themselves for cash and issuing them to their peasants on credit for the same price; but the peasants showed themselves dissatisfied and even depressed: they were deprived of the pleasure of tapping on the scythe, listening to it, turning it in their hands and asking the crafty vendor twenty times or so: “Well, lad, the scythe is not as good as all that, eh?” The same tricks take place when it comes to the buying of sickles, the only difference being that then the women intervene and sometimes bring the vendor himself to a point where he is obliged to hit them—for their own good. But for the women the most painful occasions of all are these. Purveyors of material to the paper mills entrust the purchasing of rags to agents of a special type, who are known in some districts as “eagles.” An “eagle” receives from a merchant two hundred rubles or so in notes and goes in search of his prey. But, in contrast to the noble bird after which he is named, he does not practice an open courageous method of attack: on the contrary, the “eagle” resorts to cunning and deception. He halts his cart somewhere in the bushes outside the village, and makes his way on foot by back-ways and back-doors, like a casual passerby or a common tramp. The women instinctively divine his approach and creep out to meet him. A business deal is hurriedly completed. For a few copper farthings the woman gives the “eagle” not only all her unneeded rags, but often her husband’s shirt too and her own petticoat. Recently the women have found it advantageous to steal from themselves and to dispose of their hemp in this way, which all brings more and better business to the “eagles.” Meanwhile, however, the peasants in their turn have become wise to what goes on, and at the least suspicion, or a single distant rumor, of the appearance of an “eagle,” they take swift and drastic recourse to measures of precaution and correction. And indeed they have good grounds for offense. Selling hemp is their business, and sell it they do—not in town, for they would have to go all the way there, but to visiting hucksters, who, having no weights, reckon one pound at forty handfuls—but you know what a handful can be, and what a palm a Russian has, especially when he gives his mind to it!

  As an inexperienced man who had not lived much in the country, I listened to a good many stories such as this. But Khor didn’t spend all the time telling stories, often it was his turn to question me. He discovered that I had lived abroad and this fired his curiosity. . . . Kalinich kept up with him; but he was more interested in descriptions of nature and mountains, waterfalls, unusual buildings and big cities; Khor was preoccupied by questions of administration and government. He examined everything in its right order: “Is it the same way there as it is with us, or otherwise? . . . Tell us, sir, how is it?” “Oh, Lord God Almighty!” Kalinich would
exclaim as I went on; Khor remained silent, drew his shaggy brows together, and only occasionally remarked: “This wouldn’t do here, but that is good—it’s how it ought to be.” I cannot tell you all the questions he asked, and there is no reason why I should; but from our talks I carried away a conviction which will probably surprise my readers, the conviction that Peter the Great was an essentially Russian character, and never more Russian than in his reforms. The Russian is so confident in his strength and steadfastness that he does not mind undergoing change; he cares little about his past, he looks boldly into the future. He likes what is good, he will gladly take what is reasonable, but where it comes from is all the same to him. His sound common sense enjoys a laugh at rigid minds of the German type; but the Germans, in Khor’s words, are an interesting lot, and he was quite ready to learn a lesson from them. Thanks to his unusual situation, to his condition of virtual independence, Khor was able to speak to me of many things on which nothing would have extracted a word from another, not even, as peasants say, if you ground him with a grindstone.

  He certainly knew where he stood. As I conversed with Khor, I heard for the first time the shrewd simple speech of the Russian peasant. He was a man of fairly wide knowledge, by his own standards, but he could not read; Kalinich, however, could. “Reading and writing come easy to this lazy rogue,” observed Khor; “it’s like his bees, which never die from the day they are hatched.” “Haven’t you had your children taught to read and write?” Khor was silent for a moment. “Fedya knows how to.” “And the others?” “The others don’t.” “How is that?” The old fellow would not answer and changed the subject. In fact, for all his shrewdness, even he was not without prejudices and preconceived ideas. Women, for instance, he despised from the bottom of his heart, and in moments of hilarity he enjoyed making fun of them. His wife, who was old and shrewish, spent the whole day above the stove, grumbling and scolding incessantly; her sons paid no attention to her, but she kept her daughters-in-law in the fear of God. With reason does the mother-in-law sing in the Russian folk-song:

  You’re a fine one, my son, in your family life,

  If you’ve never a touch of the stick for your wife.

  Once it occurred to me to take the part of the daughters-in-law, and I tried to enlist the sympathy of Khor; but he calmly rejoined: “Why should you worry your head with such . . . trash? Let ’em squabble among themselves; putting them apart only makes it worse, it’s just not worth dirtying your hands.”

  Sometimes the old shrew climbed down from the stove, called the dog in out of the passage, saying: “Here, doggie, here!” then beat it over its thin back with a poker; or else she would stand in the porch and “yap,” as Khor expressed it, at everyone who went by. Nevertheless she stood in awe of her husband and at a word from him would retire to her perch above the stove.

  But it was especially entertaining to hear the dispute that arose between Kalinich and Khor when Mr. Polutykin’s name came up.

  “I won’t have you touch him, Khor,” said Kalinich.

  “But why doesn’t he have some boots made for you?” rejoined Khor.

  “Pooh, boots! . . . What should I want boots for? I’m a peasant. . . .”

  “And so am I, but look . . .” As he spoke Khor lifted his foot and showed Kalinich a boot which looked as if it had been carved out of mammoth-skin.

  “Oh—as if you were the same as the rest of us,” answered Kalinich.

  “Well, he might give you money for your bast shoes: look, you go out with him when he goes shooting; one day, one pair of shoes.”

  “He gives me money to buy them.”

  “Yes, last year he was so kind as to give you ten copecks.”

  Kalinich turned away indignantly, and Khor burst out laughing until his little eyes completely disappeared.

  Kalinich had quite a pleasant voice and accompanied himself on the balalaika. Khor would listen and listen, then suddenly put his head on one side and join in in a plaintive voice. He was particularly fond of the song, “Oh, my fate, my fate.” Fedya never missed the opportunity for a joke against his father: “What makes you so sorry for yourself?” But Khor propped his chin on his hand, shut his eyes and went on complaining about his fate. . . . With all this, there could be no one more active at other moments than Khor. He was eternally busy about something or other—mending the cart, fixing the fence, looking over the harness. He was no great stickler for cleanliness, however, and once answered an observation of mine by saying that “a hut ought to smell lived-in.”

  “But,” I rejoined, “look how clean Kalinich keeps his bee-garden.”

  “The bees wouldn’t live if he didn’t, sir,” he said with a sigh.

  Another time he asked me: “Have you got an estate of your own?”

  “Yes.”

  “Far from here?”

  “A hundred versts.”

  “And do you live there, sir?”

  “I do.”

  “But I expect you spend most of the time shooting?”

  “I suppose I do.”

  “And quite right, too, sir; shoot blackcock to your heart’s content, and change your agent every so often.”

  On the evening of the fourth day Mr. Polutykin sent to fetch me. I was sorry to leave the old man. Kalinich and I took our places in the cart. “Well, good-bye, Khor, look after yourself,” I said. “Good-bye, Fedya.”

  “Good-bye, sir, don’t forget us.” We drove off. The sunset was just beginning to blaze. “It’s going to be a glorious day to-morrow,” I remarked, looking at the clear sky. “No, there is rain coming,” Kalinich rejoined. “You see how restless those ducks are, and the grass smells too strong, too.”

  We drove into the brushwood. Kalinich began to sing under his breath as he bumped up and down on the driver’s seat, and stared and stared into the sunset . . .

  The following day I left Mr. Polutykin’s hospitable roof.

  Ermolai and the Miller’s Wife

  IN THE EVENING THE HUNTER ERMOLAI AND I WENT OUT FOR the “flight.” . . . But perhaps there are some of my readers who do not know what I mean by this. So listen, gentlemen.

  A quarter of an hour before sunset, in spring, you go into a wood, with a gun, but without a dog. You choose a place somewhere near the skirts of the wood; you have a look round; you inspect the cap; you make a sign to your companion. A quarter of an hour passes. The sun has set, but it is still light in the forest; the air is clear and translucent; the birds are chattering away; the young grass glows with a cheerful emerald brilliance. . . . You wait. Inside the forest it gradually grows dark; the scarlet light of sunset slowly slips along the roots and trunks of the trees, rises higher and higher, passes from the lower branches, still almost bare, to the motionless, sleeping tree-tops. . . . Now even the tree-tops have faded out; the ruddy sky turns to blue. The smell of the forest grows stronger; there is a faint breath of warm dampness; a breeze comes fluttering in to die away beside you. The birds go off to sleep—not all together, but according to their kinds: first the chaffinches fall silent, then, after a few moments, the robins, after them the yellow-hammers. In the forest it grows darker and darker. The trees merge into great masses that loom up ever more blackly; in the blue sky the first small stars make a timid appearance. The birds are all asleep. Only the redstarts and the small woodpeckers still give an occasional sleepy whistle. . . . Soon even they are silent. Once more there rings out above you the clear voice of the chiff-chaff; somewhere an oriole utters its mournful cry, the nightingale chuckles for the first time. Your heart grows tired of waiting, and suddenly—but only sportsmen will understand me—suddenly in the deep stillness there comes a special kind of whirr and swish, you hear the measured stroke of swift wings—and the woodcock, with his long beak drooping gracefully down, comes swimming out from a dark birch tree to meet your fire.

  This is what is meant by “waiting for the flight.”

  So Ermolai and I set out for the “flight”; but forgive me, gentlemen: I ought first to hav
e presented Ermolai to you.

  Imagine a man of about forty-five, tall, thin, with a long sharp nose, a narrow forehead, small gray eyes, tousled hair and a wide mocking mouth. A man who went about winter and summer in a short yellowish nankeen coat of German cut, but with a belt round the waist; who wore baggy blue trousers and a round lambskin cap which had been given to him, as a joke, by a ruined landowner. From the belt hung two bags, one in front, artfully twisted into two halves—for powder and for shot; the other behind—for game; as for wads, Ermolai used to produce them from the apparently inexhaustible resources of his cap. From the money which he received in return for game he could easily have bought himself a bandolier and a game-bag; but such an idea had never even occurred to him, and he continued to load his gun as before, exciting the astonishment of all beholders by the deftness with which he avoided the danger of spilling or mixing his shot and powder. He had a single-barrelled flint-lock gun, with an ugly kick to it, so that his right cheek was permanently swollen out of all proportion to his left. How Ermolai hit the mark with this gun, even the cleverest could not guess—but he did.

  He had a pointer called Valetka, a creature of surprises. Ermolai never fed him. “Why should I?” he argued. “A dog’s a clever beast and ought to be able to find its own food.” And he was right; although Valetka impressed even the most casual passer-by with his extraordinary leanness, he lived—and a long life into the bargain; in spite of his miserable condition, he never ran away or showed the slightest wish to desert his master. Only once, in his youth, he absented himself for two days, under the influence of love; but this was a madness which quickly left him. Valetka’s most remarkable quality was his imperturbable indifference to everything in the world. . . . If I had not been talking about a dog, I would have used the word “disenchantment.” His habit was to sit with his short tail tucked under him, frowning, shivering from time to time and never smiling. (It is well known that dogs can smile, and smile very sweetly too.) He had an extremely unprepossessing appearance, and no idle man-servant would ever miss a chance of a spiteful joke about it; but Valetka put up with all these jokes, and a few blows too, with surprising sangfroid. He gave special entertainment to cooks, who immediately dropped what they were doing to rush headlong after him with shouts and curses as soon as, with a weakness not characteristic of dogs alone, he showed his hungry mug through the half-open door of a temptingly warm and succulent-smelling kitchen. In the chase his great qualities were his tirelessness and his very fine nose; but if a wounded hare happened to come his way, then he would eat it up with gusto, to the last bone, in some cool and shady spot underneath a green bush, at a respectful distance from Ermolai, who would be cursing him in all known and unknown dialects.