I fancy the daughters were ashamed of their eccentric old parents.
A month later and Malania Pavlovna too passed away. From the very day of Alexey Sergeitch's death she had hardly risen from her bed, and had not put on her usual attire; but they buried her in the blue jacket, and with Orlov's medallion on her shoulder, only without the diamonds. Those her daughters divided, on the pretext that the diamonds should be used in the setting of some holy pictures; in reality, they used them to adorn their own persons.
And so I can see my old friends as though they were alive and before my eyes, and pleasant is the memory I preserve of them. And yet on my very last visit to them (I was a student by then) an incident occurred which jarred upon the impression of patriarchal harmony always produced in me by the Teliegin household.
Among the house-serfs there was one Ivan, called 'Suhys' Ivan,' a coachman or coach-boy, as they called him on account of his small size, in spite of his being no longer young. He was a tiny little man, brisk, snub-nosed, curly-headed, with an everlastingly smiling, childish face, and little eyes, like a mouse's. He was a great joker, a most comic fellow; he was great at all sorts of tricks—he used to fly kites, let off fireworks and rockets, to play all sorts of games, gallop standing up on the horse's back, fly higher than all the rest in the swing, and could even make Chinese shadows. No one could amuse children better; and he would gladly spend the whole day looking after them. When he started laughing, the whole house would seem to liven up; they would answer him—one would say one thing, one another, but he always made them all merry…. And even if they abused him, they could not but laugh. Ivan danced marvellously, especially the so-called 'fish dance.' When the chorus struck up a dance tune, the fellow would come into the middle of the ring, and then there would begin such a turning and skipping and stamping, and then he would fall flat on the ground, and imitate the movement of a fish brought out of the water on to dry land; such turning and wriggling, the heels positively clapped up to the head; and then he would get up and shriek—the earth seemed simply quivering under him. At times Alexey Sergeitch, who was, as I have said already, exceedingly fond of watching dancing, could not resist shouting, 'Little Vania, here! coach-boy! Dance us the fish, smartly now'; and a minute later he would whisper enthusiastically: 'Ah, what a fellow it is!'
Well, on my last visit, this Ivan Suhih came into my room, and, without saying a word, fell on his knees. 'Ivan, what's the matter?' 'Save me, sir.' 'Why, what is it?' And thereupon Ivan told me his trouble.
He was exchanged, twenty years ago, by 'the Suhy family for a serf of the Teliegins';—simply exchanged without any kind of formality or written deed: the man given in exchange for him had died, but the Suhys had forgotten about Ivan, and he had stayed on in Alexey Sergeitch's house as his own serf; only his nickname had served to recall his origin. But now his former masters were dead; the estate had passed into other hands; and the new owner, who was reported to be a cruel and oppressive man, having learned that one of his serfs was detained without cause or reason at Alexey Sergeitch's, began to demand him back; in case of refusal he threatened legal proceedings, and the threat was not an empty one, as he was himself of the rank of privy councillor, and had great weight in the province. Ivan had rushed in terror to Alexey Sergeitch. The old man was sorry for his dancer, and he offered the privy councillor to buy Ivan for a considerable sum. But the privy councillor would not hear of it; he was a Little Russian, and obstinate as the devil. The poor fellow would have to be given up. 'I have spent my life here, and I'm at home here; I have served here, here I have eaten my bread, and here I want to die,' Ivan said to me—and there was no smile on his face now; on the contrary, it looked turned to stone…. 'And now I am to go to this wretch…. Am I a dog to be flung from one kennel to another with a noose round my neck? … to be told: "There, get along with you!" Save me, master; beg your uncle, remember how I always amused you…. Or else there'll be harm come of it; it won't end without sin.'
'What sort of sin, Ivan?'
'I shall kill that gentleman. I shall simply go and say to him, "Master, let me go back; or else, mind, be careful of yourself…. I shall kill you."'
If a siskin or a chaffinch could have spoken, and had begun declaring that it would peck another bird to death, it would not have reduced me to greater amazement than did Ivan at that moment. What! Suhys' Vania, that dancing, jesting, comic fellow, the favourite playfellow of children, and a child himself, that kindest-hearted of creatures, a murderer! What ridiculous nonsense! Not for an instant did I believe him; what astonished me to such a degree was that he was capable of saying such a thing. Anyway I appealed to Alexey Sergeitch. I did not repeat what Ivan had said to me, but began asking him whether something couldn't be done. 'My young sir,' the old man answered, 'I should be only too happy—but what's to be done? I offered this Little Russian an immense compensation—I offered him three hundred roubles, 'pon my honour, I tell you! but he—there's no moving him! what's one to do? The transaction was not legal, it was done on trust, in the old-fashioned way … and now see what mischief's come of it! This Little Russian fellow, you see, will take Ivan by force, do what we will: his arm is powerful, the governor eats cabbage-soup at his table; he'll be sending along soldiers. And I'm afraid of those soldiers! In old days, to be sure, I would have stood up for Ivan, come what might; but now, look at me, what a feeble creature I have grown! How can I make a fight for it?' It was true; on my last visit I found Alexey Sergeitch greatly aged; even the centres of his eyes had that milky colour that babies' eyes have, and his lips wore not his old conscious smile, but that unnatural, mawkish, unconscious grin, which never, even in sleep, leaves the faces of very decrepit old people.
I told Ivan of Alexey Sergeitch's decision. He stood still, was silent for a little, shook his head. 'Well,' said he at last, 'what is to be there's no escaping. Only my mind's made up. There's nothing left, then, but to play the fool to the end. Something for drink, please!' I gave him something; he drank himself drunk, and that day danced the 'fish dance' so that the serf-girls and peasant-women positively shrieked with delight—he surpassed himself in his antics so wonderfully.
Next day I went home, and three months later, in Petersburg, I heard that Ivan had kept his word. He had been sent to his new master; his master had called him into his room, and explained to him that he would be made coachman, that a team of three ponies would be put in his charge, and that he would be severely dealt with if he did not look after them well, and were not punctual in discharging his duties generally. 'I'm not fond of joking.' Ivan heard the master out, first bowed down to his feet, and then announced it was as his honour pleased, but he could not be his servant.
'Let me off for a yearly quit-money, your honour,' said he, 'or send me for a soldier; or else there'll be mischief come of it!'
The master flew into a rage. 'Ah, what a fellow you are! How dare you speak to me like that? In the first place, I'm to be called your excellency, and not your honour; and, secondly, you're beyond the age, and not of a size to be sent for a soldier; and, lastly, what mischief do you threaten me with? Do you mean to set the house on fire, eh?'
'No, your excellency, not the house on fire.'
'Murder me, then, eh?'
Ivan was silent. 'I'm not your servant,' he said at last.
'Oh well, I'll show you,' roared the master, 'whether you 're my servant or not.' And he had Ivan cruelly punished, but yet had the three ponies put into his charge, and made him coachman in the stables.
Ivan apparently submitted; he began driving about as coachman. As he drove well, he soon gained favour with the master, especially as Ivan was very quiet and steady in his behaviour, and the ponies improved so much in his hands; he turned them out as sound and sleek as cucumbers—it was quite a sight to see. The master took to driving out with him oftener than with the other coachmen. Sometimes he would ask him, 'I say, Ivan, do you remember how badly we got on when we met? You've got over all that nonsense, eh?' But Ivan never ma
de any response to such remarks. So one day the master was driving with Ivan to the town in his three-horse sledge with bells and a highback covered with carpet. The horses began to walk up the hill, and Ivan got off the box-seat and went behind the back of the sledge as though he had dropped something. It was a sharp frost; the master sat wrapped up, with a beaver cap pulled down on to his ears. Then Ivan took an axe from under his skirt, came up to the master from behind, knocked off his cap, and saying, 'I warned you, Piotr Petrovitch—you've yourself to blame now!' he struck off his head at one blow. Then he stopped the ponies, put the cap on his dead master, and, getting on the box-seat again, drove him to the town, straight to the courts of justice.
'Here's the Suhinsky general for you, dead; I have killed him. As I told him, so I did to him. Put me in fetters.'
They took Ivan, tried him, sentenced him to the knout, and then to hard labour. The light-hearted, bird-like dancer was sent to the mines, and there passed out of sight for ever….
Yes; one can but repeat, in another sense, Alexey Sergeitch's words:
'They were good old times … but enough of them!'
1881.
THE BRIGADIER
I
Reader, do you know those little homesteads of country gentlefolks, which were plentiful in our Great Russian Oukraïne twenty-five or thirty years ago? Now one rarely comes across them, and in another ten years the last of them will, I suppose, have disappeared for ever. The running pond overgrown with reeds and rushes, the favourite haunt of fussy ducks, among whom one may now and then come across a wary 'teal'; beyond the pond a garden with avenues of lime-trees, the chief beauty and glory of our black-earth plains, with smothered rows of 'Spanish' strawberries, with dense thickets of gooseberries, currants, and raspberries, in the midst of which, in the languid hour of the stagnant noonday heat, one would be sure to catch glimpses of a serf-girl's striped kerchief, and to hear the shrill ring of her voice. Close by would be a summer-house standing on four legs, a conservatory, a neglected kitchen garden, with flocks of sparrows hung on stakes, and a cat curled up on the tumble-down well; a little further, leafy apple-trees in the high grass, which is green below and grey above, straggling cherry-trees, pear-trees, on which there is never any fruit; then flower-beds, poppies, peonies, pansies, milkwort, 'maids in green,' bushes of Tartar honeysuckle, wild jasmine, lilac and acacia, with the continual hum of bees and wasps among their thick, fragrant, sticky branches. At last comes the manor-house, a one-storied building on a brick foundation, with greenish window-panes in narrow frames, a sloping, once painted roof, a little balcony from which the vases of the balustrade are always jutting out, a crooked gable, and a husky old dog in the recess under the steps at the door. Behind the house a wide yard with nettles, wormwood, and burdocks in the corners, outbuildings with doors that stick, doves and rooks on the thatched roofs, a little storehouse with a rusty weathercock, two or three birch-trees with rooks' nests in their bare top branches, and beyond—the road with cushions of soft dust in the ruts and a field and the long hurdles of the hemp patches, and the grey little huts of the village, and the cackle of geese in the far-away rich meadows…. Is all this familiar to you, reader? In the house itself everything is a little awry, a little rickety—but no matter. It stands firm and keeps warm; the stoves are like elephants, the furniture is of all sorts, home-made. Little paths of white footmarks run from the doors over the painted floors. In the hall siskins and larks in tiny cages; in the corner of the dining-room an immense English clock in the form of a tower, with the inscription, 'Strike—silent'; in the drawing-room portraits of the family, painted in oils, with an expression of ill-tempered alarm on the brick-coloured faces, and sometimes too an old warped picture of flowers and fruit or a mythological subject. Everywhere there is the smell of kvas, of apples, of linseed-oil and of leather. Flies buzz and hum about the ceiling and the windows. A daring cockroach suddenly shows his countenance from behind the looking-glass frame…. No matter, one can live here—and live very well too.
II
Just such a homestead it was my lot to visit thirty years ago … it was in days long past, as you perceive. The little estate in which this house stood belonged to a friend of mine at the university; it had only recently come to him on the death of a bachelor cousin, and he was not living in it himself…. But at no great distance from it there were wide tracts of steppe bog, in which at the time of summer migration, when they are on the wing, there are great numbers of snipe; my friend and I, both enthusiastic sportsmen, agreed therefore to go on St. Peter's day, he from Moscow, I from my own village, to his little house. My friend lingered in Moscow, and was two days late; I did not care to start shooting without him. I was received by an old servant, Narkiz Semyonov, who had had notice of my coming. This old servant was not in the least like 'Savelitch' or 'Caleb'; my friend used to call him in joke 'Marquis.' There was something of conceit, even of affectation, about him; he looked down on us young men with a certain dignity, but cherished no particularly respectful sentiments for other landowners either; of his old master he spoke slightingly, while his own class he simply scorned for their ignorance. He could read and write, expressed himself correctly and with judgment, and did not drink. He seldom went to church, and so was looked upon as a dissenter. In appearance he was thin and tall, had a long and good-looking face, a sharp nose, and overhanging eyebrows, which he was continually either knitting or lifting; he wore a neat, roomy coat, and boots to his knees with heart-shaped scallops at the tops.
III
On the day of my arrival, Narkiz, having given me lunch and cleared the table, stood in the doorway, looked intently at me, and with some play of the eyebrows observed:
'What are you going to do now, sir?'
'Well, really, I don't know. If Nikolai Petrovitch had kept his word and come, we should have gone shooting together.'
'So you really expected, sir, that he would come at the time he promised?'
'Of course I did.'
'H'm.' Narkiz looked at me again and shook his head as it were with commiseration. 'If you 'd care to amuse yourself with reading,' he continued: 'there are some books left of my old master's; I'll get them you, if you like; only you won't read them, I expect.'
'Why?'
'They're books of no value; not written for the gentlemen of these days.'
'Have you read them?'
'If I hadn't read them, I wouldn't have spoken about them. A dream-book, for instance … that's not much of a book, is it? There are others too, of course … only you won't read them either.'
'Why?'
'They are religious books.'
I was silent for a space…. Narkiz was silent too.
'What vexes me most,' I began, 'is staying in the house in such weather.'
'Take a walk in the garden; or go into the copse. We've a copse here beyond the threshing-floor. Are you fond of fishing?'
'Are there fish here?'
'Yes, in the pond. Loaches, sand-eels, and perches are caught there. Now, to be sure, the best time is over; July's here. But anyway, you might try…. Shall I get the tackle ready?'
'Yes, do please.'
'I'll send a boy with you … to put on the worms. Or maybe I 'd better come myself?' Narkiz obviously doubted whether I knew how to set about things properly by myself.
'Come, please, come along.'
Narkiz, without a word, grinned from ear to ear, then suddenly knitted his brows … and went out of the room.
IV
Half an hour later we set off to catch fish. Narkiz had put on an extraordinary sort of cap with ears, and was more dignified than ever. He walked in front with a steady, even step; two rods swayed regularly up and down on his shoulders; a bare-legged boy followed him carrying a can and a pot of worms.
'Here, near the dike, there's a seat, put up on the floating platform on purpose,' Narkiz was beginning to explain to me, but he glanced ahead, and suddenly exclaimed: 'Aha! but our poor folk are here already … they keep
it up, it seems.'
I craned my head to look from behind him, and saw on the floating platform, on the very seat of which he had been speaking, two persons sitting with their backs to us; they were placidly fishing.
'Who are they?' I asked.
'Neighbours,' Narkiz responded, with displeasure. 'They've nothing to eat at home, and so here they come to us.'
'Are they allowed to?'
'The old master allowed them…. Nikolai Petrovitch maybe won't give them permission…. The long one is a superannuated deacon—quite a silly creature; and as for the other, that's a little stouter—he's a brigadier.'
'A brigadier?' I repeated, wondering. This 'brigadier's' attire was almost worse than the deacon's.
'I assure you he's a brigadier. And he did have a fine property once. But now he has only a corner given him out of charity, and he lives … on what God sends him. But, by the way, what are we to do? They've taken the best place…. We shall have to disturb our precious visitors.'
'No, Narkiz, please don't disturb them. We'll sit here a little aside; they won't interfere with us. I should like to make acquaintance with the brigadier.'
'As you like. Only, as far as acquaintance goes … you needn't expect much satisfaction from it, sir; he's grown very weak in his head, and in conversation he's silly as a little child. As well he may be; he's past his eightieth year.'
'What's his name?'
'Vassily Fomitch. Guskov's his surname.'
'And the deacon?'
'The deacon? … his nickname's Cucumber. Every one about here calls him so; but what his real name is—God knows! A foolish creature! A regular ne'er-do-well.'
A Desperate Character and Other Stories Page 15
