A Sportsman's Notebook Read online

  And Mr. Zverkov, without finishing the sentence, turned his head away and wrapped himself up more tightly in his cloak, mastering with manly self-control the violence of his feelings.

  The reader will now probably understand why I looked so sympathetically at Arina.

  “Have you been married to the miller for long?” I asked her eventually.

  “Two years.”

  “Your master gave his permission?”

  “No, they bought my freedom.”

  “Who did?”

  “Savely Alexeich.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “My husband.” Ermolai smiled to himself. “But did the master ever speak to you about me?” added Arina after a short silence.

  I didn’t know how to answer her question. “Arina!” shouted the miller from the distance. She rose and left us.

  “What d’you think of her husband?” I asked Ermolai.

  “Nothing.”

  “Have they got any children?”

  “They had one that died.”

  “Did the miller take a fancy to her, or what? . . . Did he pay a lot for her freedom?”

  “I don’t know. She can read and write; in their business it’s . . . well . . . it’s useful. Probably he took a fancy to her.”

  “Have you known her for long?”

  “Yes, I used to go to her master’s house before. His place is not far from here.”

  “D’you know the footman Petrushka, too?”

  “Pyotr Vasilyevich? I knew him, certainly I did.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “He went for a soldier.”

  We were silent.

  “It seems she is ailing?” I asked Ermolai at last.

  “What else should she be? . . . Well, to-morrow there may be a good ‘flight.’ You could do with some sleep now.”

  Some wild duck came swishing over us and we heard them dropping down on to the river not far away. By now it was quite dark and growing cold; in the wood a nightingale chuckled loudly. We burrowed into the hay and went to sleep.

  Raspberry Water

  AT THE BEGINNING OF AUGUST THE HEAT OFTEN BECOMES UNBEARABLE. At this season, from twelve until three o’clock, even a man of the greatest decision and concentration is unable to go shooting and even the most devoted dog begins to “clean its master’s spurs,” which means following him at a walk, screwing up its eyes in pain and hanging out its tongue too far, and, in answer to the reproaches of its master, wagging its tail humbly with an embarrassed expression on its face, but making no move forward. I was out shooting on just such a day as this. For a long time I resisted the temptation to lie down in the shade, even if only for a moment; for a long time my dog searched tirelessly through the bushes, although it was clear that it expected no sensible result from its feverish activity. The stifling heat at length forced me to think of conserving our remaining strength and energy. Somehow or other I dragged myself to the stream of the Ista, with which my indulgent reader is already familiar, made my way down the steep bank, and walked over the wet yellow sand in the direction of a spring which is known in all the country round by the name of Raspberry Water. This spring bursts from a cleft in the bank which has gradually turned into a small but deep ravine, and after twenty yards the water falls with a cheerful babbling rush into the river. Oak bushes grow in all directions on the slopes of the ravine; near the source is a green patch of short velvety grass; the rays of the sun hardly ever touch its cold silver dewiness. I arrived at the spring; on the grass lay a scoop of birchwood, left there by a passing peasant for the benefit of the world at large. I drank my fill, lay down in the shade and looked around.

  Beside the creek where the spring flowed into the river, which for that reason was always a mass of tiny ripples, two old men were sitting with their backs towards me. One of them, tall and fairly thick-set, in a neat dark green coat and a quilted cap, was fishing; the other, who was small and thin and wore a fustian patched jacket and no cap, held on his knees a pot with worms in it and from time to time passed his hand over his small gray head, as if to protect it from the sun. I took a closer look at him and recognized Styopushka from Shumikhino. I ask the reader’s permission to introduce this character to him.

  A few versts away from my estate lies the big village of Shumikhino, which has a stone church raised in honor of Saints Cosmas and Damian. Opposite this church there used to stand a fine big manor house, surrounded by various dependencies, outbuildings, workshops, stables, coach-houses, bath-houses and temporary kitchens, guest-wings, agents’ houses, conservatories, swings for the servants’ amusement, and other more or less useful constructions. In this mansion lived a rich landowner’s family and everything went swimmingly—when suddenly one fine morning the whole pleasant seat was burnt down to the ground. The owners flitted to another nest and the property fell into neglect. The great expanse of waste ground became a kitchen garden, cluttered up here and there with piles of bricks, which were all that remained of the old foundations. From the surviving timbers a hut had been hastily knocked together, roofed over with planks which had been bought ten years earlier for the construction of a pavilion in the Gothic manner, and in it were settled the gardener Mitrofan with his wife Axinya and their seven children. Mitrofan had instructions to provide his master’s table—one hundred and fifty versts away—with vegetables and garden produce; Axinya was entrusted with the care of the Tyrolean cow which had been bought in Moscow for a large sum, but had unfortunately lacked all capacity for reproduction and had therefore since the time of its purchase given no milk; she was also entrusted with the tufted smoke-colored drake, the only bird of “feudal” status; the children were too small to have any special duties assigned to them, which did not prevent them from growing as lazy as could be.

  On two occasions I had spent the night in the gardener’s hut; whenever I passed by I would collect cucumbers which, God knows why, impressed you even in summer by their size, their unpleasant watery taste, and their thick yellow skin. It was here that I saw Styopushka for the first time. Apart from Mitrofan and his family and Gerasim the deaf old sacristan, who lived on charity in a little cabin belonging to a one-eyed soldier’s wife, there was not a single serving-man left in Shumikhino, for Styopushka, with whom I propose to make the reader acquainted, could be regarded neither in general as a man, nor in particular as a servant.

  There is no man who does not have some sort of status in society, some sort of human ties; there is no servant who does not receive either his wages or at least some so-called equivalent in kind; whereas Styopushka certainly had no means of subsistence, was related to nobody, and nobody knew how he existed. He didn’t even have a past; no one spoke about him; when the census was taken they hardly bothered to count him. There were dark rumors abroad that he had once been employed somewhere as a valet; but who he was, where he came from, whose son he was, how he came to be one of the serfs of Shumikhino, in what manner he acquired the fustian coat which he had worn from time immemorial, where and on what he lived—no one had the slightest idea and, to tell the truth, no one cared either. Even grandfather Trofimich, who knew the family tree of all the Shumikhino retainers as far back as the fourth generation, even he had been known to mention only once that, as he remembered, Styopushka had been related to a Turkish woman whom the late master, Brigadier-General Alexei Romanich, had been pleased to bring back in the baggage-train after one of his campaigns. Even on feast days, days of universal treating and regaling with bread and salt, with buckwheat pies and green spirits, in the old Russian manner—even on these days Styopushka never appeared when the tables and barrels were set out, never made his bow, never came to kiss his master’s hand, never drank a glass in one draught under the master’s eye and to the master’s health, a glass which had been filled by the greasy hand of the factor; at best, some good-natured soul might run into the poor fellow and give him a half-eaten pie-crust. On Easter Sunday he got the three traditional kisses, but he never turned up his greasy sleeve
, never pulled out from his back pocket a red-painted egg, never brought it, panting and blinking, to the master’s children or to the lady herself. In summer he lived in a shed behind the chicken-house and in winter in the porch of the bath-house; if the frost was heavy he spent the night in the hay-loft. People were used to seeing him; sometimes they went so far as to give him a friendly kick, but no one ever fell into conversation with him; indeed he seemed never to have opened his mouth from birth. After the great fire this outcast creature took shelter with or, as the Orel people say, “leant against,” the gardener Mitrofan. The gardener left him alone, never offered him a roof, but never drove him out either. And Styopushka in fact did not live at the gardener’s; he wandered about the garden and made it his home. His walk and his movements were noiseless: he sneezed and coughed into his hand as if afraid to break the silence; he was for ever hurrying silently about like an ant; and the object of the whole thing was food, just food. And indeed, had he not busied himself from morning to night with matters of subsistence, my friend Styopushka would have died of hunger. It is a sorry fate not to know in the morning how you are going to fill your belly before the day is done. Sometimes Styopushka sits under a fence and gnaws a radish, or sucks a carrot, or scatters round him the shreds of a dirty cabbage stalk; sometimes he groans under the weight of a pail of water which he is carrying away; sometimes he gets a small fire going under a pot, into which he throws black morsels which he brings out from under his coat; sometimes in his little den he can be heard knocking with a piece of wood, driving in a nail, putting up a shelf on which to keep his bread. He does it all in silence, as though peeping round the corner; one look from you and he has vanished. Then suddenly he disappears for a couple of days; it goes without saying that no one notices his absence. Next time you look, he is back again, and somewhere near the fence he has furtively built a fire out of odd splinters. He has a small face, little yellow eyes, hair down to his eyebrows, a sharp nose, enormous transparent ears like a bat’s, and what appears to be two weeks’ growth of beard, never more nor less. This was Styopushka as I met him on the bank of the Ista sitting beside another old man.

  I went up to them, exchanged greetings and sat down beside them. In Styopushka’s companion I recognized another acquaintance: this was a liberated serf of Count Pyotr Ilyich——, by name Mikhailo Savelyev, commonly known as Tuman.* He lived in Bolkhovo, with the consumptive innkeeper with whom I had fairly often stayed. Young officials or other idle travellers passing along the main road to Orel—(merchants, sunk deep inside their striped quilts, never spare the time to look)—can still to this day observe not far from the large village of Troitskoye a huge two-storied wooden house, completely derelict, with its roof fallen in and windows boarded up, thrusting right out on to the roadside. At midday, in clear sunny weather, it is impossible to imagine a sorrier spectacle than this ruin. It was once the home of Count Pyotr Ilyich, a rich magnate of the old days who was famous for his hospitality. The time had been when all the province assembled in his house, danced and made merry in famous style, to the deafening strains of a home-taught orchestra, to the crackling of fireworks and of Roman candles; and, probably, more than one old lady, driving past the now deserted halls of the Boyar, heaves a sigh and recalls times gone by and the days of her youth. For long years the Count continued to give banquets and to walk about with a welcoming smile among the throng of obsequious guests. But, alas, his fortune was not enough to outlast his lifetime. Ruined beyond repair, he went place-hunting in St. Petersburg and died in an hotel bedroom before he knew the result of his quest. Tuman had been his butler and received his freedom while the Count was still alive. He was a man of about seventy, with an agreeable, regular face. He wore an almost constant smile, the sort of smile that is now seen only on the faces of survivors from the days of Catherine the Great; a smile that is both benign and stately; when he spoke, his lips parted and came together again slowly, his eyes narrowed amiably and the words came out with a slightly nasal tone. His manner of blowing his nose or taking snuff was equally unhurried, as of a man engrossed in serious business.

  “Well, Mikhailo Savelyich,” I began; “what luck with the fish?”

  “Look at my basket, sir, if you will. I’ve caught two perch, and five roach. . . . Show them, Styopushka.”

  Styopushka held the basket out to me.

  “How are you, Styopushka?” I asked him.

  “Oh . . . oh . . . oh . . . all right, sir, not so bad,” answered Styopushka, stammering as though he was rolling weights on his tongue.

  “Is Mitrofan well?”

  “Well, sir . . . why, yes.”

  The poor fellow turned away.

  “They’re not taking,” said Tuman. “It’s much too hot; the fish are all tucked away under the bushes, fast asleep . . . Put a new worm on, Styopushka.” Styopushka took out a worm, laid it on the palm of his hand, tapped it once or twice, put it on the hook, spat on it and handed it to Tuman. “Thank you, Styopushka . . . but you, sir,” he continued, addressing himself to me, “you have been shooting?”

  “As you see.”

  “Quite so . . . And is that dog that you have with you from England—or from Fourland?” The old man enjoyed showing off when he had the chance, as if to say, “We too have lived in the great world!”

  “I don’t know what breed he is, but he’s a good dog.”

  “Quite so . . . and do you hunt with hounds too?”

  “Yes, I have two packs.”

  Tuman smiled and shook his head. “That’s just how it is. One gentleman is dead keen on hounds and another would not take them as a gift. That’s how it is, to my simple way of thinking. A gentleman ought to keep hounds more for the sake of appearances than for anything else, if you take my meaning. And everything ought to be in its proper style: horses in style, whippers-in in style, and everything else too. His late Lordship—may God rest his soul!—was not a born huntsman, it is true, but he kept his hounds, and hunted them about twice a year. The huntsmen would muster in the courtyard, in their red coats trimmed with braid, blowing their horns; out comes his Lordship, his horse is led up; his Lordship mounts, and the head huntsman puts his feet into the stirrups, takes the cap off his head and hands the reins in his cap to his Lordship. His Lordship gives his whip a good crack, the huntsmen cry ‘halloo,’ and off they go. A groom rides behind his Lordship, leads his master’s two favorite dogs on a silken lead, and keeps a sharp eye on them, too, you may be sure. . . . And there he sits, this groom-fellow, way, way up on a Cossack saddle. A red-cheeked fellow with great big rolling eyes. . . . Well, of course, there were guests there, too, for the occasion. And great fun it was, and everything as it should be. . . . Oh, he’s got away, the Chinaman!” he added suddenly, giving his rod a twitch.

  “They say the Count had quite a time of it in his day?” I asked.

  The old man spat on the worm and made a cast.

  “He certainly lived like a lord. I dare say that all the leading people from Petersburg came out to see him. There they all were in their blue ribbons, sitting at table feasting. And he was certainly a master-hand at entertaining, too. He used to call me: ‘Tuman,’ he says, ‘I need live sterlets for to-morrow; order them to be sent, do you hear?’ ‘Very good, your Lordship.’ Embroidered coats, wigs, canes, perfumes, Lady-Cologne of the finest quality, snuff-boxes, great big pictures like this—everything ordered straight from Paris. He would give a banquet and, Lord God Almighty! the fireworks, the drives there would be! They would even shoot off cannons. The musicians alone were forty strong. There was a German conductor, but he got too big for his boots; he wanted to eat at the master’s table; so his Lordship sent him packing: ‘Even without him,’ he says, ‘my musicians understand their business.’ Of course, the master’s word was law. They would start dancing—and dance until sunrise; they’d mostly dance the acossaise-matrador . . . Eh . . . eh . . . our friend is hooked!” The old man drew a small perch out of the water. “Here you are, Styopushka. The master was
everything a master should be,” continued the old fellow, making another cast. “And he had a good heart too. He might beat you—but before you could look round he would have forgotten all about it. There was one thing, though: he kept may-tresses. Oh, those may-tresses, merciful God! It was they who ruined him. For choice, strange to say, he liked a common sort of girl. You would have thought that they would have had all they wanted—but no, they must have everything that’s most expensive in the whole of Europe! Of course you can say, why shouldn’t the master live as he wants to—it’s his own business . . . but he shouldn’t have gone and ruined himself. There was one of them in particular, by name, Akulina; she is dead now—may she rest in peace! She was a simple sort of girl, daughter of the village policeman at Sitovo, but what a shrew! She used to smack his Lordship in the face. She had him properly bewitched. She had my nephew’s head shaven because he had spilled chocolate on her new dress, and he wasn’t the only one either. But they were good old days, all the same!” added the old man, with a deep sigh; then he looked down and said no more.

  “You had a strict master, I see,” I began, after a few moments of silence.

  “That was the fashion then, sir,” rejoined the old man, shaking his head.

  “Things are different now,” I observed, looking at him keenly. He gave me a sidelong glance.

  “No doubt things are better now,” he muttered, and cast his line far out into the stream.

  We were sitting in the shade; but even there the heat was stifling; the heavy sultry air was without a breath; your burning face longed for a breeze, but no breeze came. The sun was fairly beating down from the sombre blue sky; right in front of us on the opposite bank was the yellow blaze of an oatfield, broken here and there by patches of wormwood, and not a single ear was stirring. A little farther downstream a peasant’s horse was standing up to its knees in the water, lazily swishing a wet tail; now and then, beneath an overhanging bush, a big fish came to the surface, let off a stream of bubbles and quietly sank again to the bottom, leaving a faint ripple behind. Grasshoppers chirruped in the rust-colored grass; quails called with a reluctant note; hawks floated smoothly above the fields and often stopped dead, with wings working at full speed and tails fanned out.