A Sportsman's Notebook Read online

  We sat there motionless, overcome by the heat. Suddenly we heard a noise behind us in the ravine; someone was coming down to the spring. I looked round and saw a peasant of about fifty, covered in dust, wearing a shirt and plaited shoes, with a basket-work satchel and a coat slung over his shoulders. He came across to the source, drank thirstily and rose to his feet again.

  “Hey, Vlas!” exclaimed Tuman, after taking a good look at him. “Hallo, boy. Where have you come from?”

  “Hallo, Mikhailo Savelyich,” said the peasant, walking over to us. “I’ve come from miles away.”

  “Where have you been all this time?” Tuman asked him.

  “I walked to Moscow to see the master.”

  “Why?”

  “I went to ask him something.”

  “What did you want to ask him?”

  “To lower my rent, or to move me, or let me work instead of paying . . . Since my son died I can’t manage on my own any more.”

  “Your son died?”

  “Yes. He lived in Moscow,” added the peasant, after a silence; “he was a cabman; he used to pay my rent for me.”

  “But do you pay rent these days?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what did your master say?”

  “What did he say? He threw me out. He said: ‘How dare you come straight to me? That’s what the factor’s for,’ he says, ‘and you ought to report to him first . . . and where can I move you to, anyway? You pay your own arrears first,’ he says. He got very angry.”

  “So now you’ve walked all the way back again?”

  “Yes. I went to find out whether my boy hadn’t left any belongings behind, but I couldn’t make head or tail of it. I told his master that I was Philip’s father, but he says to me: ‘How should I know? Besides, your son left nothing; he still owed me money,’ he says. So I came back again.”

  The peasant told us the whole story with a grin, as if talking about someone else; but in his little shrunken eyes a tear hovered, and his lips twitched.

  “What are you doing now—going home?”

  “Where else? Of course I’m going home. I expect that by now my wife is whistling in her fist with hunger.”

  “But you could . . . well . . .” began Styopushka suddenly, then grew confused, broke off, and began fumbling in his pot.

  “Will you go to the factor?” Tuman continued, after a surprised glance at Styopushka.

  “What should I go to him for? . . . Even so, I’ve got my arrears to pay. My son was sick for about a year before he died and could not even pay his own rent . . . but it’s all the same to me: there’s nothing they can take from me. . . . No, my friend, however clever you are, you won’t catch me, I haven’t got a farthing.” The peasant burst out laughing. “However sharp he may be, that fellow Kintilyan Semyonich, all the same . . .”

  Vlas began to laugh again.

  “What? That’s bad, Vlas,” said Tuman slowly.

  “What’s bad? It’s not . . .” Vlas’s voice broke off. “What a scorching day,” he went on, wiping his face with his sleeve.

  “Who is your master?” I asked.

  “Count——, Valeryan Petrovich.”

  “The son of Pyotr Ilyich?”

  “Yes,” answered Tuman. “Pyotr Ilyich, his late Lordship, while he was still alive, gave his son the village where Vlas lives.”

  “Is he alive and well?”

  “Yes, praise be to God,” rejoined Vlas. “He’s got so red in the face, he’s all sort of mottled.”

  “That’s how it is, sir,” continued Tuman, turning to me. “If it had been near Moscow, it wouldn’t have been so bad, but he’s been settled here and has to pay rent.”

  “What are you assessed at?”

  “Ninety-five rubles,” muttered Vlas.

  “Well, you see how it is: there’s very little land, and what there is is under timber for the master.”

  “And even that has been sold, they say,” observed the peasant.

  “Well, that’s how it is . . . Styopushka, give us a worm. . . . Hey, Styopushka, have you dropped off to sleep, or what?” Styopushka started up. The peasant sat down beside us. We fell silent again. On the other bank someone started singing, but such a melancholy song . . . My poor friend Vlas grew sadder and sadder.

  Half an hour later we parted.

  The Country Doctor

  ONE AUTUMN, ON THE WAY BACK FROM AN OUTLYING PROPERTY, I caught a heavy chill. Luckily I was in the local markettown, at the inn, when the fever came on. I sent for the doctor. After half an hour he appeared, a shortish, thinnish man, with black hair. He prescribed the usual sudorific, ordered a mustard-plaster to be applied, deftly tucked my five-ruble note away up his sleeve—meanwhile coughing loudly, it is true, and averting his gaze—and was on the point of going home, when somehow or other he got talking and stayed on. I was oppressed by my fever; I foresaw a sleepless night and was glad to have the chance of a talk with the good man. We had tea served. My friend the doctor let himself go. The little fellow was no fool. He had a lively and rather amusing way of expressing himself. It’s strange how things happen in life: you live with someone for a long time, you are on the best of terms, yet you never once speak to them frankly and from the heart; with someone else, you’ve hardly even got acquainted—and there you are: as if at confession, one or other of you is blurting out all his most intimate secrets. I do not know what I did to deserve the confidence of my new friend—anyway, for no particular reason, he got going, as they say, and told me a rather remarkable story, which I will relate here for the benefit of my courteous reader. I will try to express myself in the doctor’s own words.

  “You don’t happen to know,” he began, in a voice that had grown suddenly faint and trembling (such is the effect of unadulterated “birch” snuff), “you don’t happen to know our local judge, Pavel Lukich Mylov? You don’t? . . . Well, it doesn’t matter.” He cleared his throat and wiped his eyes. “Anyway, this is the story. Let me see, now—to be exact, it was in Lent, at the time of the thaw. I was sitting at the judge’s, playing Preference. Our judge is a capital fellow and a great hand at Preference. Suddenly”—this was a word that the doctor often used—“a message comes that someone is asking for me. I say, ‘What does he want?’ ‘He’s brought a note’—doubtless from a patient. ‘Give me the note,’ I say. Yes: it’s from a patient. . . . Well, all right—you know, it’s our daily bread. . . . The note is from a landowner’s widow; she says: ‘My daughter is dying, for God’s sake come, I’ve sent horses to fetch you.’ Well, that’s all right . . . but the lady lives twenty versts from town, and night’s upon us, and the roads are in such a state, my word! and the lady herself is not so well off as she was; two silver rubles is the most you can expect, and even that is doubtful. Perhaps all that I shall get out of it will be a piece of linen and a little flour. . . . However, duty first, you know: someone’s dying. At once I pass my hand to Councillor Kalliopin and return home. I see a small cart standing outside my porch; real peasant’s horses—enormous pot bellies, and woolly hair as thick as felt; and a coachman sitting bareheaded, as a sign of respect. Well, my friend, I think, it’s plain that your masters don’t eat off gold plate. . . . You, sir, may well smile, but I tell you: we are poor men in our profession and we have to notice all these things. . . . If the coachman sits up like a prince and doesn’t take off his cap, if he sniggers at you in his beard and toys with his whip—you can rely on a couple of five-ruble notes. But this turn-out here is a very different pair of shoes. Well, I think, it can’t be helped: duty first. I grab the essential medicines, and off I go. Believe me, it was all we could do to get there. The road was hellish: streams, snow, mud, ravines, then, suddenly, a burst dam. Chaos! At last I’m there. A little house with a thatched roof. The windows are lit up: they must be waiting for me. A dignified little old lady in a cap comes to meet me. ‘Save her,’ she says, ‘she is dying.’ I say: ‘Pray calm yourself. . . . Where is the patient?’ ‘Here, please come this way.’ I see
a small, clean room, an oil-lamp in the corner, on the bed a girl of about twenty, unconscious, heat fairly blazing from her, breathing heavily: a high fever. There are two other girls there, too, her sisters—badly scared, and in tears. ‘Yesterday,’ they say, ‘she was perfectly well and had a good appetite; this morning she complained of a headache, then suddenly in the evening she became like this.’ I repeat again, ‘Pray calm yourselves’—it’s part of the doctor’s job, you know—and I set to work. I bleed her, I order mustard-plasters, I prescribe a mixture. Meanwhile I look at her. I look and look; my goodness, never have I see such a face before . . . an absolute beauty! I feel so sorry for the girl, it fairly tears me to pieces. Such lovely features, such eyes. . . . At last, thank God, she gets more comfortable; she begins to sweat, partly recovers consciousness; looks around, smiles, passes her hand over her face . . . The sisters bend over her and ask: ‘What’s the matter?’ ‘Nothing,’ she says, and turns her head away. . . . I look—she’s dropped off to sleep. ‘Well,’ I say, ‘now we must leave the patient in peace.’ We all tiptoe out; only the maid stays behind in case of emergencies. In the sitting-room the samovar’s on the table and a bottle of rum beside it: in our job we can’t get along without it. They gave me tea; they asked me to stay the night. I accepted: where else could I go at that hour! The old lady keeps up a steady groaning. ‘What’s the matter?’ I ask. ‘She’ll live; calm yourself and go to bed: it’s two o’clock.’ ‘You’ll have me woken up if anything happens?’ ‘Of course I will.’ The old lady retired and the girls went to their room; a bed was put up for me in the drawing-room. I lay down—but couldn’t get to sleep, strangely enough. You’d have thought that I’d worried my head enough already. I couldn’t get my patient out of my head. Finally I could stand it no longer and all of a sudden I got up; I thought I’d just go and see how she was. Her bedroom adjoined the drawing-room. Well, I got up, and quietly opened the door, and my heart was fairly beating away. I saw the maid asleep, with her mouth open, snoring away like an animal, and the patient lying with her face towards me, her arms moving restlessly, poor girl! I went up to her . . . and suddenly she opened her eyes and stared at me. ‘Who are you?’ I felt awkward. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ I said; ‘I am the doctor; I’ve come to see how you feel.’ ‘You’re the doctor?’ ‘Yes, I am . . . your mother sent for me from town; we’ve bled you, and now, please, you must rest, and in two days, with God’s help, we shall have you up and about.’ ‘Oh, yes, yes, doctor, don’t let me die . . . please, please.’ ‘Good Heavens, whatever next!’ But, I thought to myself, the fever is on her again; I felt her pulse: yes, I was right. She looked at me—and suddenly she took me by the hand. ‘I’ll tell you why I don’t want to die, I’ll tell you . . . now that we’re alone: only not a word, please . . . listen . . .’ I bent over her; her lips moved right against my ear, her hair touched my cheek—I admit, my head went round in circles—and she began to whisper. . . . I didn’t understand a word. . . . Oh, of course, she must be delirious. She whispered and whispered, but so quickly, as if in a foreign language, and when she had done she shuddered, dropped her head on the pillow and raised a finger at me. ‘Listen, doctor, not a word.’ . . . Somehow or other I calmed her, gave her a drink, woke the maid and went out.”

  The doctor took another violent pinch of snuff and sat stock-still for a moment.

  “Anyhow,” he continued, “next day, contrary to my expectations, the patient was no better. I thought and thought and suddenly decided to stay on, although I had other patients waiting for me. . . . You know, one shouldn’t neglect them: it’s bad for one’s practice. But, in the first place, the girl was really desperately ill; and secondly, to tell the truth, I felt myself strongly attracted to her. Besides, I liked the whole family. Although they were very hard up, they were extraordinarily cultivated people. . . . The father had been a scholar, a writer; he died a poor man, of course, but he’d managed to give his children an excellent education; he left them a lot of books, too. Whether it was because I put my whole heart into looking after the patient, or whether there were other reasons, anyway, I’d go so far as to say that they came to love me in that house like one of the family. . . . Meanwhile the thaw got worse and worse: communications were completely broken, I could hardly even get medicines sent out from town. . . . The girl got no better . . . day after day, day after day . . . but then . . . well . . .” The doctor paused. “The truth is that I don’t know how to explain to you . . .” He took another pinch of snuff, sneezed, and swallowed a gulp of tea. . . . “I’ll tell you straight out, my patient . . . how shall I put it? . . . fell in love with me, I suppose . . . or rather, she wasn’t exactly in love . . . but anyway . . . it’s certainly . . .” The doctor looked down and blushed.

  “No,” he continued with some animation, “‘Love’ is the wrong word. One must see oneself at one’s own worth, after all. She was a cultivated, intelligent, well-read girl, and I, well, I’d even forgotten my Latin, more or less completely. My figure, too”—and the doctor looked at himself with a smile—“is nothing to boast about, I think. But God didn’t make me a fool either: I don’t call white black; I’ve got a mind that works at times. For instance, I understood very well that what Alexandra Andreyevna—that was her name—felt towards me was not love, but affection, so to speak, regard, or what not. Although she herself probably misread her feelings towards me, her condition was such, as you can imagine . . . Anyhow,” added the doctor, who had uttered all these disjointed statements without drawing breath, and with obvious embarrassment, “I think I’ve let my tongue run away with me . . . and the result is that you won’t understand what happened . . . so I’ll tell you the story in its proper order.”

  He finished his glass of tea and resumed in a calmer voice.

  “This is how it was. My patient continued to get worse and worse. You, my good sir, are not a doctor; you have no idea of what goes on inside a doctor’s head, especially in his early days, when it dawns on him that a patient’s illness is defeating him. All his self-assurance vanishes into thin air. I can’t tell you how scared he gets. It seems to him that he’s forgotten everything he ever knew, that his patient has no confidence in him, that other people are beginning to notice that he’s out of his depth, and don’t want to describe the patient’s symptoms, that they are looking at him strangely, and whispering . . . oh, it’s terrible! He feels there must be some way of treating the case if only it could be found. Perhaps this is it? He tries—no, wrong after all. He leaves no time for the treatment to take its proper effect. . . . He snatches first at one method, then at another. He takes up his book of prescriptions . . . here it is, he thinks, this is it! To be quite honest, sometimes he opens the book at random: this, he thinks, must be the hand of fate. . . . Meanwhile there is someone dying; someone whom another doctor would have saved. I must have another opinion, you think; I won’t take the whole responsibility myself. But what a fool you look on such occasions! Well, as time goes on, you get used to it, you say to yourself: never mind. The patient has died—it’s not your fault; you only followed the rules. But what disturbs you still more is this: when other people have blind confidence in yourself, and all the time you know that you’re helpless. It was exactly such confidence that all Alexandra Andreyevna’s family felt towards me: they no longer even thought of her as in danger. And I, on my side, was assuring them that there was nothing to worry about, but really my heart was in my boots. To make things even worse, the thaw became so bad that the coachman spent whole days fetching medicines. Meanwhile I never left the patient’s room; I simply couldn’t tear myself away. I told her all sorts of funny stories; I played cards with her; I spent the nights at her bedside. The old lady would thank me with tears in her eyes; but I thought to myself: I don’t deserve your gratitude. I confess to you frankly—there is no reason why I should conceal it now—I was in love with my patient. And Alexandra Andreyevna grew fonder and fonder of me: she would allow no one into her room except me. We would get talking; she wou
ld ask me where I studied, what sort of life I led, and about my parents and my friends. And I felt that we shouldn’t be talking, but to stop her, stop her really firmly, was more than I could do. I would bury my head in my hands: what are you doing, scoundrel? . . . And then she would take my hand and hold it, look at me for a long, long time, turn away, sigh and say: ‘How good you are!’ Her hands were so feverish, her eyes so big and languid. ‘Yes,’ she would say. ‘You’re a good, kind man. You’re not like our neighbours . . . you’re quite, quite different. . . . To think that I never knew you until now!’ ‘Alexandra Andreyevna, calm yourself,’ I’d say. ‘Believe me, I appreciate it; I don’t know what I’ve done to . . . only calm yourself, for Heaven’s sake, calm yourself . . . everything will be all right; you’ll get quite well again.’ By the way, I must tell you,” added the doctor, leaning forward and lifting his eyebrows, “they had little to do with their neighbors, because the smaller people weren’t up to them, and they were too proud to get to know the richer ones. I tell you, it was an extraordinarily cultivated family; so that, for me, it was quite flattering. Alexandra would only take her medicine from my hands . . . the poor girl would lift herself up, with my help, swallow the medicine and gaze at me . . . and my heart would fairly turn over. But all the time she was getting worse and worse: she will die, I thought, she will surely die. Believe me or not, I would gladly have lain in the coffin instead of her; but there were her mother and sisters watching me, looking into my eyes, and I could feel their confidence on the wane. ‘Well, how is she?’ ‘Nothing to worry about, nothing at all’—but what did I mean, ‘nothing at all’? My head was in a daze. There I was, one night, alone, as usual, sitting at the bedside. The maid was sitting in the room too, snoring for all she was worth . . . well, one couldn’t find fault with the poor girl, she too was quite exhausted. Alexandra had been feeling very bad the whole evening; the fever gave her no rest. Right up to midnight she had been tossing away; at last she seemed to fall asleep; at any rate she stopped moving and lay still. The oil-lamp was burning in the corner in front of the icon. I sat there, my head dropped forward, you know, and I too dozed off. Suddenly it was as if someone had given me a push in the ribs; I looked round . . . God Almighty! Alexandra was staring at me wide-eyed . . . her lips parted, her cheeks aflame. ‘What is it?’ ‘Doctor, am I going to die?’ ‘For Heaven’s sake!’ ‘No, please, doctor, please, don’t tell me that I’m going to live . . . don’t tell me that . . . if only you knew . . . listen, for God’s sake don’t try to hide my condition from me.’ I noticed how quickly she was breathing. ‘If I can know for sure that I am going to die . . . then I can tell you everything I have to say.’ ‘Alexandra Andreyevna, for mercy’s sake!’ ‘Listen, I haven’t slept a wink, I’ve been looking and looking at you . . . for God’s sake . . . I trust you, you’re kind, you’re honest, I implore you by everything that’s holy on earth—tell me the truth! If only you knew how much it matters to me. . . . Doctor, tell me, for God’s sake, am I in danger?’ ‘What can I tell you, Alexandra Andreyevna?’ ‘For God’s sake, I beseech you to tell me.’ ‘Alexandra Andreyevna, I can’t hide the truth from you—you are in danger, but God is merciful . . .’ ‘I’m going to die, I’m going to die . . .’ And it was as if she was overjoyed at the thought, her face lit up so; I was fairly terrified. ‘Never fear, never fear, death has no terror for me.’ All of a sudden she raised herself on one elbow. ‘Now . . . well, now I can tell you that I’m grateful to you from all my heart; that you’re good and kind; that I love you.’ . . . I looked at her like a man possessed; I can tell you, I had quite a creepy feeling. . . . ‘Listen to me. I love you.’ ‘Alexandra Andreyevna, what have I done to deserve this?’ ‘No, no, you don’t understand me, my dear one . . .’ And suddenly she reached out, took my head in her hands and kissed me. Believe me or not, it was all I could do not to cry out loud. . . . I fell on my knees and hid my head in the pillow. She said nothing; her fingers trembled on my hair; I could hear her crying. I began to comfort her, to assure her. . . . I really don’t know what I said to her. ‘You’ll wake the maid . . . believe me when I say . . . how grateful I am . . . and calm yourself.’ ‘Don’t . . . don’t,’ she kept repeating. ‘Never mind any of them, let them wake, let them come—it doesn’t signify: I’m dying anyway. . . . Why are you so shy and timid? Lift your head . . . Or can it be that you don’t love me, that I was mistaken? . . . If that is so, please forgive me.’ ‘What are you saying? . . . I love you, Alexandra Andreyevna.’ She gazed at me, straight in the eyes, and opened her arms. ‘Then, put your arms around me.’ . . . I tell you honestly: I don’t understand how I got through that night without going out of my mind. I knew that my patient was killing herself; I saw that she was half delirious; I also understood that if she had not believed herself on the point of death, she would never have given me a thought; but, say what you like, there must be something appalling about dying at twenty-five without ever having loved; that was the thought that tormented her, that was why, in despair, she seized on me. Now do you see it all? She still held me tightly in her arms. ‘Have pity on me, Alexandra Andreyevna, have pity on us both,’ I said. ‘Why?’ she answered, ‘what is there to pity? Don’t you understand that I’ve got to die?’ She kept on repeating this phrase. ‘If I knew that I was going to live and turn into a well-brought-up young lady again, I should be ashamed, yes, ashamed . . . but, as it is? . . .’ ‘And who told you that you were going to die?’ ‘Oh, no, enough of that, you can’t deceive me, you don’t know how to lie, just look at yourself.’ ‘You will live, Alexandra Andreyevna; I will cure you; we will ask your mother for her blessing . . . nothing will part us; we shall be happy.’ ‘No, no, I have your word that I must die . . . you promised me . . . you told me I must . . .’ It was a bitter moment for me, bitter for many reasons. You know, sometimes small things can happen: they amount to nothing, but they hurt all the same. It occurred to her to ask me my name, my Christian name, I mean. Of course it would be my ill-luck to be called Trifon.* Yes, sir; Trifon, Trifon Ivanich. In the house, all the family called me doctor. Well, there was nothing for it, so I answered: ‘Trifon.’ She screwed her eyes up, shook her head and whispered something in French—oh, it was something unflattering, and she laughed unkindly, too. Well, like this, I spent almost the whole night with her. At dawn I went out, like one possessed; it was midday when I returned to her room, after taking tea. God Almighty! You couldn’t recognize her: I’ve seen prettier sights laid out in the coffin. Upon my word, I don’t know to this day, I simply don’t know how I stood the ordeal. For three days and three nights my patient’s life still flickered on . . . and what nights they were! What things she told me! . . . On the last night of the three—just fancy—I was sitting beside her, praying now for one thing only: O, God, take her quickly, and take me as well . . . when suddenly the old lady, her mother, burst into the room. . . . I had already told her the day before that there was little hope, that things were bad, and that it would be as well to send for the priest. As soon as she saw her mother, the sick girl said: ‘I’m glad that you’ve come . . . look at us, we love each other, we are pledged to each other.’ ‘What’s she saying, doctor, what’s she saying?’ I went pale as death. ‘She’s delirious,’ I said, ‘it’s the fever.’ But then, from Alexandra: ‘Enough of that, just now you spoke to me quite differently and accepted my ring. . . . Why pretend? My mother is kind, she will forgive, she will understand, but I am dying—why should I lie? Give me your hand.’ I jumped up and ran from the room. Of course, the old lady guessed the whole story.