A Sportsman's Notebook Page 9

  We were beginning to talk about the new Marshal of Nobility of the district, when suddenly in the doorway we heard Olga’s voice: “Tea is ready.”

  We went into the drawing-room. As before, Fyodor was sitting in his corner, between the window and the door, with his legs modestly drawn in beneath him. Radilov’s mother was knitting a stocking. Through the open windows there came from the garden a breath of autumn freshness and the smell of apples. Olga was busy pouring out tea. I looked at her now with closer attention than I had at dinner. She spoke very little, as is usually the way with girls of provincial society, but at any rate I failed to detect in her any desire to say something clever, accompanied with an agonizing sense of emptiness and helplessness; with her there were no sighs, as if from an overflow of indescribable emotions, no upward rolling of the eyes, no vague and dreamy smiles. Her gaze was calm and equable, as of someone who rests after great happiness or great anxiety. Her gait and her movements were free and resolute. I took a great liking to her.

  Radilov and I got talking again. I no longer remember by what path we came to the familiar observation that so often the most insignificant things produce more of an impression on people than the most important ones.

  “Yes,” said Radilov, “I have had that experience myself. I used to be married, as you know. Not for long . . . three years; my wife died in childbirth. I thought that I would never survive her; I was terribly distressed, broken, but the tears would not come—I just went about as if I were out of my mind. She was duly dressed and laid out on the table—here in this room. The priest came, the deacons came too and began to sing and pray and to burn incense; I bowed right down to the ground, but couldn’t shed a single tear. My heart seemed to have turned to stone, my head, too; and my whole body had become a heavy weight. And so the first day went by. Will you believe me? That night I even managed to sleep. The next morning I went in to look at my wife—it was summer, and the sun shone on her from head to foot and so brightly, too. Suddenly I saw”—here Radilov gave an involuntary shudder—“what do you think? Her eyes was not properly closed, and on it a fly was walking. . . . I dropped like a sheaf of corn, and, as soon as I came to myself again, began to weep and weep—there was just no stopping me. . . .”

  Radilov paused. I looked at him, then at Olga. . . . Never shall I forget the expression on her face. The old lady put down the stocking on her knee, took a handkerchief out of her bag and furtively wiped away a tear. Fyodor suddenly got up, seized his violin, and struck up a song in a strange, hoarse voice. He probably wanted to cheer us up; but we all shuddered at his first note and Radilov begged him to be quiet.

  “Anyhow,” he continued, “what’s gone is gone; there is no going back to the past, and, in the end . . . everything is for the best in this world, as Voltaire—wasn’t it?—observed,” he added hurriedly.

  “Yes,” I rejoined, “of course. What’s more, every misfortune can be endured and there’s a way out of every bad situation.”

  “Do you think so?” said Radilov. “Who knows, perhaps you are right. I remember, I was lying in hospital in Turkey, more dead than alive, I had marsh-fever. Well, the quarters were nothing to boast about—it was wartime, of course—but, just the same, they might have been worse. And all of a sudden they bring in more patients—and the question is where to put them. The doctor rushes up and down—there’s no room. So up he comes to me and asks the dresser: ‘Is he alive?’ The dresser answers: ‘He was, this morning.’ The doctor bends down and listens: he hears my breathing. This was more than the good doctor could stand. ‘Look how stupid nature is,’ he said. ‘Look, here is a man dying, dying for certain, but he has still got a squeak in him, he’s still dragging on, he’s just taking up a place and keeping the others out.’ Well, I thought to myself, it looks bad for you, Mikhailo Mikhailich . . . But all the same, I got better and am still alive to-day, as you may have been good enough to observe. So you’re right.”

  “Whatever happened, I would have been right,” I answered. “Even if you had died, it would have got you out of the fix that you were in.”

  “Yes, to be sure,” he rejoined, thumping his hand loudly on the table. “It’s just a question of making up one’s mind. . . . What’s the point of being in a fix? What’s the good of lingering, dragging on? . . .”

  Olga got up quickly and went out into the garden.

  “Well, Fedya, give us a dance!” exclaimed Radilov.

  Fyodor jumped up, crossed the room with the special mincing step of the man who plays “giddy goat” in front of a tame bear, and began to sing: “While before our gates . . .”

  From the porch we heard the sound of a racing drozhky, and in a few moments there came into the room a tall, burly, broad-shouldered old man. This was Ovsyanikov the freeholder . . . But Ovsyanikov is such a remarkable and original character, that with the reader’s permission we will describe him in the next story. For the moment I will only add, on my own account, that on the next day Ermolai and I went out shooting at daybreak, that after shooting we returned home; that a week later I again called at Radilov’s, but found neither him nor Olga at home, and that two weeks later still I learned that he had suddenly vanished, left his mother and gone off with his sister-in-law. This incident caused much excitement and discussion throughout the province, and it was only then that I finally understood Olga’s expression while Radilov was telling us his story. At that moment her face was not just alive with sympathy: it was on fire with jealousy.

  Before leaving the country, I visited Radilov’s old mother. I found her in the drawing-room; she was playing a game of “idiots” with Fyodor Mikheich.

  “Have you heard from your son?” I asked her eventually.

  The old lady burst into tears. I asked her no more questions about Radilov.

  Ovsyanikov the Freeholder

  PICTURE TO YOURSELF, DEAR READER, A TALL, STOUT MAN OF about seventy, with a face rather reminiscent of Krylov’s,* clear intelligent eyes beneath overhanging brows, a dignified bearing, a measured speech, and a deliberate gait: there you have Ovsyanikov. He wore a capacious long-sleeved blue coat, buttoned right up, a lilac-colored silk handkerchief round his neck, and brilliantly polished boots with tassels, and in general had something of the look of a well-to-do merchant. His hands were well-shaped, soft and white: often, in the course of conversation, he would play with the buttons of his coat. With his dignity and immobility, his intelligence and indolence, with his straight-forwardness and his obstinacy, Ovsyanikov reminded me of the Russian boyars of the period of Peter the Great. The traditional Russian attire would have suited him well. He was one of the last survivors from the good old days.

  All his neighbors had an extraordinary respect for him and considered his acquaintance an honor. His fellow-freeholders practically said their prayers to him, started fingering their hats as soon as they caught sight of him in the distance, and regarded him as their pride. Generally speaking it is difficult to distinguish the Russian freeholder from the peasant. His standard of farming is hardly higher than the peasant’s, his calves never budge from the buckwheat field, his horses have little life in them, their harness is made of string. Although he was not known as a man of means, Ovsyanikov was an exception to the general rule. He lived alone with his wife in a neat and cozy little house, he kept a few servants, he dressed them in the Russian manner and referred to them as “hands.” It was in fact they who ploughed his land. He never pretended to be a nobleman, never posed as a landowner, never, as they say, “forgot himself,” never sat down unless invited to do so, and when a new guest arrived would never fail to rise from his place, but with such dignity, such majestic grace that the guest involuntarily bowed to him all the lower for it. Ovsyanikov kept up the old-fashioned ways, not from superstition (for he was a reasonably open-minded man), but from habit. For example, he disliked carriages with springs, because he found them unrestful, and he travelled either in a racing drozhky or in a neat little cart with a leather cushion. He drove his good b
ay trotting-horse himself. (He kept only bay horses.) His coachman, a red-cheeked peasant lad, with hair cropped round a basin, in a plush overcoat and a low hat and with a strap round his waist, sat respectfully at his side. Ovsyanikov always slept after dinner, went to the bath-house on Saturdays, read nothing but religious works (for which he would solemnly fix a pair of round silver spectacles on his nose), rose and retired early. He wore no beard, however, and his hair was cut in the German manner. He gave his guests a joyful welcome, but never made them a deep bow, never fussed over them, never pressed preserves or pickles on them. “Wife!” he would say slowly, not rising from his place, but slightly turning his head in her direction: “Bring the gentlemen something tasty.” He considered it a sin to sell corn, since it was the gift of God, and in the year ’40, at the time of the great famine and the terrible rise in prices, he distributed all his store to the landowners and peasants of the district; in the following year they gratefully repaid him their debt in kind.

  Ovsyanikov’s neighbors often appealed to him with requests to decide their disputes and make peace between them, and almost always took his advice and bowed to his decision. Thanks to him, many neighbors finally reached agreement on the boundaries of their land. But after two or three encounters with female landowners, he announced his decision never to mediate between disputants of the opposite sex. He could not stand the flurries, the restless bustle, the old-wives’ chatter, the fuss.

  Once, somehow or other, his house caught fire, and one of his hands rushed up to him at full speed, crying, “Fire, fire!” “Well, what are you shouting about?” said Ovsyanikov calmly. “Give me my hat and stick . . .” He was fond of training horses himself. Once a fiery steed bolted with him downhill into a ravine. “Well, that will do, that will do, young colt—or you’ll kill yourself,” Ovsyanikov said to him good-naturedly and, a moment later, he was flying into the ravine, complete with his racing drozhky, the boy who sat behind him, the horse and all. Luckily there were piles of sand lying at the bottom of the ravine. No one was hurt, only the horse put its leg out. “Well, you see,” continued Ovsyanikov in a calm voice as he got up from the ground, “I told you so.”

  He had found a wife after his own heart. Tatyana Ilyinichna Ovsyanikova was a tall, dignified, silent woman, with a brown silk handkerchief permanently tied over her head. She had a chilling presence, although no one had ever accused her of severity. On the contrary, many beggars called her “mother” and “kind soul.” Her regular features, her big dark eyes, her fine lips, still testified to a once famous beauty. Ovsyanikov had no children.

  As the reader already knows, I made his acquaintance at Radilov’s, and two days later I went to call on him. I found him at home. He was sitting in a large leather armchair, reading The Lives of the Saints. A gray cat was purring on his shoulder. He received me in his usual manner, warmly and with dignity. We fell into conversation.

  “Tell me, Luka Petrovich,” I said in the course of our talk, “things were better, weren’t they, in the old days, in your time?”

  “Some things were certainly better, I should say,” rejoined Ovsyanikov. “We had a quieter life; things were easier, certainly . . . but all the same, it is better now; and for your children it will be better still, please God.”

  “And I was so expecting you to sing me the praises of the good old days.”

  “No, I have no special reason for praising the good old days. Now take yourself, for example. You’re a landowner to-day, as your late grandfather was, but you’ve nothing like the same power, and you’re not the same sort of man, either. Even to-day there are other gentlemen who make life difficult for our sort; but evidently that can’t be avoided. First you grind the corn and then you get flour. No, I shall never again see the sort of things that I saw when I was young.”

  “But what, for example?”

  “Well, take your grandfather’s case again. A hard man he was. Did much harm to fellows like us! You may know—of course you will, as it is your own land—the wedge-shaped piece of ground between Chepligin and Malinin? . . . You’ve got it under oats at the moment . . . Well, it’s ours—the whole piece, as it stands, is ours. Your grandfather took it away from us; he rode out, pointed with his hand, and said: ‘My property,’ and his property it became. My late father (Heaven rest his soul!) was a just man, and a hot-tempered one too; he wouldn’t take it lying down—indeed who is keen on losing his property?—and he made a petition to the court. He did so by himself, as the others wouldn’t support him—they were frightened. So they told your grandfather: ‘Pyotr Ovsyanikov is putting in a complaint against you, sir, on the grounds that you have taken away his land.’ . . . Your grandfather at once sent his huntsman Bausch to our home with a whole troop of fellows. . . . And they took my father and carried him off to your estate. I was a little boy then, I ran after him barefoot. What next? They brought him to your home and flogged him right under the windows. And your grandfather stands on the balcony and looks on; and your grandmother sits in the window and looks, too. My father cries out: ‘Marya Vasilyevna, gracious lady, save me—you at least should have pity on me.’ But all she does, d’you see, is sit up straight and look on. Well, they made my father promise to give up his claim to the land, and then made him say thank you for having been left off with his life. So the land stayed with you. Go and ask your peasants what the land is called. It’s called ‘cudgel field,’ because it was taken away with the cudgel. That’s the sort of reason why we simple folk don’t miss the old ways too badly.”

  I didn’t know how to answer Ovsyanikov and I didn’t dare look him in the face.

  “Then we had another neighbor on our hands about that time—Komov, Stefan Niktopolionich. He fairly drove my father to death—first in one way, then in another. He was a drunken fellow and liked entertaining others, but when after a drop or two he would come out in French with ‘say bon’ and lick his lips—it was more even than a saint could bear. He’d send out and summon all his neighbors. He’d have a troika standing ready and if you didn’t come at once he’d pay you a surprise visit himself. . . . What a strange fellow he was! When he was sober he didn’t tell lies but, as soon as he’d had a drink, he’d begin to tell you that he had three houses on the Fontanka in Petersburg: one, red, with one chimney; another, yellow, with two chimneys; the third, blue, with no chimneys; and three sons (and he never so much as married): one in the infantry, one in the cavalry, and the third all on his own . . . And he’d say that he had a son living in each house, and that the eldest entertained admirals, the second entertained generals, and the youngest entertained Englishmen only! Then up he’d get and say: ‘To the health of my eldest son, he’s the best son of the lot!’ and he’d begin to cry. And woe betide anyone who wouldn’t drink with him. ‘I’ll shoot you!’ he’d say, ‘and I won’t let them bury you either!’ Then he’d jump up and shout: ‘Dance, good people, dance for your own entertainment and my consolation!’ Well, you’d have to dance, even if it killed you, you’d have to dance. He gave his serf girls terrible trouble. They had to be singing choruses all the livelong night and the one who raised her voice the highest would get a prize. But if they started to get tired he would put his head in his hands and feel sorry for himself: ‘Oh, fatherless orphan that I am! They’re dropping me, like the poor little thing that I am!’ The grooms would at once put fresh heart into the girls. He took a liking to my father, and there was nothing to be done about it . . . he nearly drove him to his grave, and would have done so quite, but luckily he died first himself. He fell down from a dovecote when he was drunk. That’s the sort of nice neighbors we used to have.”

  “How the times have changed,” I observed.

  “Yes, yes,” agreed Ovsyanikov. “But, there’s the other side, too. In the olden days the nobility lived on a grander scale. Not to mention the real magnates; I saw plenty of them in Moscow. I’ve heard that now they’ve died out, even there.”

  “You have been in Moscow?”

  “Yes, long, long
ago. I’m now seventy-two, and I went to Moscow when I was fifteen.”

  Ovsyanikov sighed.

  “Whom did you see there?”

  “I saw any number of great magnates—everybody did; they lived openly, in a blaze of glory and admiration. But there was not one of them to touch Count Alexei Grigoryevich Orlov-Chesmensky. I often saw Alexei Grigoryevich; my uncle served as his steward. The Count lived by the Kaluga Gates, on the Shabolovka. There was a real magnate for you! Such presence, such graciousness of manner, not to be imagined or described. His size alone was something extraordinary, and his strength, his expression! Until you knew him, you would be too shy and frightened to enter his house; but once you went in, he would warm you like the sun and all your spirits would rise. He was accessible to everyone, and very open-minded. At the races he drove himself and was ready to take on anybody. And he would never overtake them at once, he’d never hurt their feelings or pull them up short, but he’d just pass them at the very end; and so nice about it, too—he’d console his opponent and praise his horse. He kept tumbler-pigeons of the very best breed. Sometimes he’d go out into the courtyard, sit down in an armchair and order the pigeons to be let out; and all around, on the roof, would be men standing with guns to keep the hawks off. At the Count’s feet they’d put a big silver bowl full of water; he’d look into the water, too, to see the pigeons play in it. The poor and needy lived by hundreds on his charity . . . and what fortunes he gave away! When he was angry, it was like a thunderclap. It was terrifying—but nothing really to cry about; you’d look again—and already he’d be smiling. He would give a feast—and make all Moscow drunk . . . And what a brain he had! Look how he beat the Turk. He liked wrestling, too; they brought him champions from Tula, from Kharkov, from Tambov, from all over the place: the ones he threw he’d reward; but if any one threw him, he’d load him with presents and kiss him on the mouth. . . . While I was in Moscow, he gave a party the like of which had never been seen in Russia. He invited to his house all the sportsmen in the whole country, and fixed a day three months ahead. So they all assembled, they brought with them their dogs and huntsmen—why, it was an army, a whole army, that arrived! First of all they feasted in proper style, then they went out to the gates. The people came swarming together! . . . And what d’you think happened? . . . Your grandfather’s dog came in first of the lot.”