He had resolved to kill Malek Adel. He had thought of nothing else the whole day . . . Now he was resolved!
He went about his business, not exactly calmly, but confidently, without turning back, like a man obeying a sense of duty. It seemed to him a very simple affair: by doing away with the impostor, he would get even with “them all,” punish himself for his folly, put himself right with his real friend, and show the whole world (Chertopkhanov thought a great deal about “the whole world”) that he was not a man to be trifled with . . . But the main thing was that he would do away with himself along with the impostor, for what was there left to live for? How all this fell into place inside his head, and why it seemed to him so simple, would be difficult to explain, though not altogether impossible. Injured, lonely, without a human soul for friend, without a brass farthing, and also with his blood on fire from drink, he was in a condition bordering on madness; and there is no doubt that the most absurd actions of the insane have, in their own eyes, a special kind of logic and rightness. Anyhow Chertopkhanov was fully convinced of his own rightness; he never faltered, he was in a hurry to carry out his sentence on the guilty one, without, however, clearly explaining to himself exactly whom he meant by this term . . . The truth was that he had not thought out what it was that he intended to do. “I must get it over, I must,” he assured himself dully and grimly: “I must get it over!”
Meanwhile the innocent culprit jogged and ambled submissively behind his back . . . In Chertopkhanov’s heart, however, there was no pity.
XV
Not far from the edge of the forest to which he had led his horse, ran a small ravine, half overgrown with oak bushes. Chertopkhanov went down into it . . . Malek Adel stumbled and nearly fell on top of him.
“Do you want to crush me, curse you?” shouted Chertopkhanov—and, as if in self-defense, he snatched the pistol from his pocket. He no longer felt any bitterness, but only the special feeling of woodenness that is supposed to come over a man who is about to commit some terrible crime. His own voice frightened him—so wild was its ring under the dark canopy of the branches, in the damp, rotten-smelling fustiness of the ravine in the forest! And then, in answer to his exclamation, some great bird suddenly began flapping about on the tree-top above his head. Chertopkhanov started. It was as if he had woken up a witness to his deed—even in this dead place, where he should not have come upon a single living thing . . .
“Be off, you devil—away with you, to all the points of the compass!” he said between his teeth—and, letting go of Malek Adel’s halter, struck him a swinging blow on the shoulder with the butt of his pistol. Malek Adel immediately turned back, scrambled out of the ravine . . . and fled. The sound of his hooves soon died away. A wind had arisen, which choked and hid every sound.
In his turn Chertopkhanov slowly made his way out of the ravine, reached the edge of the forest and trudged off on the road home. He was dissatisfied with himself; the heaviness which he had felt in his head and heart spread through all his limbs; he walked on, angry, morose, discontented, hungry, as if someone had injured him, robbed him of a prize, or of bread itself . . .
His feelings were those of a suicide who has been prevented from carrying out his design.
Suddenly something touched him behind, between the shoulder blades. He looked round . . . Malek Adel was standing in the middle of the road. He had followed his master, had touched him with his muzzle . . . had reported his presence.
“Ah!” cried Chertopkhanov, “you’ve come of your own accord, to meet your death! Very well, then!”
In the twinkling of an eye he had snatched out his pistol, cocked it, put the muzzle against Malek Adel’s forehead, and fired.
The poor horse shied to one side, reared up, jumped back about ten paces and suddenly crashed heavily down, wheezed, and rolled convulsively on the ground.
Chertopkhanov stopped his ears with his hands and ran off. His knees faltered beneath him. Drunkenness, anger, grim self-confidence—all had vanished in a flash. He was left with nothing but a feeling of shame and ugliness—and the consciousness, sure beyond a doubt, that this time he had made away with himself as well.
XVI
Six weeks later, the boy Perfishka thought it his duty to stop the inspector of police as he drove past Bessonovo.
“What’s the matter?” asked the guardian of the law.
“Please, your honor, come in,” answered the boy with a low bow; “Pantelei Eremeich seems in a fair way to die; that’s what I fear.”
“What? Die?” the inspector repeated after him.
“Just so, sir. First of all he’d be taking vodka every day, and now he’s gone to bed and got very, very thin. I think that now he doesn’t understand anything any more. He’s quite lost his tongue.”
The inspector got out of his cart. “Well, I suppose that at any rate you have been and fetched the priest? Has your master confessed? Has he taken communion?”
“No, sir.”
The inspector frowned. “But how is that, my friend? Is it possible—eh? Don’t you know that for this . . . there’s a heavy responsibility—eh?”
“But I asked the master the day before yesterday, and yesterday as well,” protested the intimidated boy, “wouldn’t he like me to go for a priest? ‘Silence, you fool,’ he says, ‘mind your own business.’ But to-day when I reported to him—he just looked at me and twitched his moustache.”
“Did he drink a lot of vodka?” asked the inspector.
“A terrific lot! But please, your honor, come and see him in his room.”
“Well, lead the way!” grunted the inspector and followed Perfishka.
A strange spectacle awaited him.
In the back room, which was dank and dark, on a miserable bed which was covered with a horse blanket, with a shaggy felt cloak for pillow, lay Chertopkhanov, no longer pale, but yellowish green, the color of a corpse, his eyes sunk under eyelids with a sheen on them, his nose grown sharper, but still red, above his dishevelled moustache. He lay dressed in his perpetual tunic with the cartridge-pleats round the chest and his blue Circassian trousers. The fur cap with the raspberry-colored crown covered his forehead right down to the eyebrows. In one hand Chertopkhanov held a hunting whip, in the other an embroidered red tobacco-pouch—Masha’s last present to him. On the table beside the bed stood an empty decanter; over the head of the bed, fastened to the wall with pins, hung two water-colors: one, so far as it could be made out, represented a fat man with a guitar in his hands, probably Nedopyuskin; the other depicted a galloping horseman . . . The horse was like those galloping animals which children draw on walls and fences; but its carefully shaded roan markings, and the cartridges round the horseman’s chest, the sharp points of his boots and his enormous moustache, left no room for doubt: the picture was meant to represent Pantelei Eremeich mounted on Malek Adel.
The puzzled inspector didn’t know what to do next. Deathly silence reigned in the room. He must be dead already, he thought and, raising his voice, said: “Pantelei Eremeich! I say, Pantelei Eremeich!”
Then something extraordinary happened. Chertopkhanov’s eyes slowly opened, his dim pupils moved first from right to left, then from left to right, stopped at the visitor, saw him . . . something kindled in their dim whiteness, a semblance of vision appeared in them . . . the blue lips gradually parted, and from them came a husky voice, already the voice of the grave:
“Pantelei Chertopkhanov, nobleman of ancient lineage, is dying; who can prevent him?—He owes nothing, he wants nothing . . . Leave him alone! Go!”
The hand with the whip tried to raise itself . . . in vain! The lips stuck together again, the eyes closed!—and Chertopkhanov lay as before on his hard bed, stretched out flat as a layer of bricks, the soles of his feet pressed close together.
“Let me know when he dies,” whispered the inspector to Perfishka as he left the room; “and I think you could still go for the priest. Things must be done properly, he must have the last rites.”
&nb
sp; The same day Perfishka went for the priest, and the next morning it was his duty to report to the inspector that Pantelei Eremeich had died during the night.
When they buried him, his coffin was followed by two people: the boy Perfishka and Moshel Leiba. The news of Chertopkhanov’s death had somehow or other reached the Jew—and he did not fail to pay the last tribute to his benefactor.
The Live Relic
Motherland of long-suffering—
Land of the Russian people!
F. TYUTCHEV
THE FRENCH PROVERB HAS IT THAT A DRY FISHERMAN AND A wet hunter make a sorry sight. Never having been addicted to fishing, I am no judge of a fisherman’s feelings in fine clear weather and of the extent to which, in a downpour, the satisfaction afforded him by a good catch offsets the unpleasantness of getting wet. But, for the hunter, rain is a real disaster. A disaster of this kind befell Ermolai and myself on one of our excursions after blackcock in the district of Belevo. From daybreak the rain had not stopped. We had done everything possible to escape it. We had put rubber capes practically over our heads, we had stood under trees to avoid the drops. Our waterproof capes, besides hindering us from shooting, had let the water through in the most shameless manner; and, as for the trees—true, at first there seemed to be no drops, but then the water accumulated in the leaves suddenly burst through; every branch poured down on us like a rain-pipe, a cold stream found its way under the cravat and ran down the spinal column . . . That was the last straw, as Ermolai put it. “No, Pyotr Petrovich,” he exclaimed at last, “we can’t go on like this! . . . We can’t shoot to-day. The dogs’ noses are washed-out, the guns are misfiring . . . Phew! It’s too much!”
“What shall we do?” I asked.
“I’ll tell you what. We’ll go to Alexeyevka. You may not know it—it’s a little farm, belonging to your mother; eight versts from here. We’ll spend the night there, and to-morrow . . .”
“We’ll come back here?”
“No, not here . . . I know some places beyond Alexeyevka much better than here for blackcock.”
I did not think fit to inquire of my trusty companion why he had not conducted me straight to these places, and the same day we reached my mother’s farm, the existence of which I confess I had not suspected until then. Beside the farm we found a little pavilion, very decrepit, but uninhabited and therefore clean; in it I passed a fairly peaceful night.
The next day I woke up very early. The sun had just risen; there was not a cloud in the sky; the whole scene sparkled brightly with a double brilliance: the brilliance of the early morning rays, and of the previous day’s downpour.
While my dog-cart was being harnessed, I went for a stroll in a small garden, once an orchard, now run wild, which surrounded the pavilion on all sides with its lush, scented growth. Oh, how good it was in the open air, under the clear sky, in which larks were trilling, and from which their sweet voices fell in silver beads! They had certainly carried off dewdrops on their wings, and their songs seemed drenched in dew. I took off my cap and joyously breathed in with all my lungs . . . On the slope of a shallow ravine, beside a fence, I saw a bee-garden; a narrow path led towards it, winding like a snake between unbroken walls of weed and nettle, above which towered, planted heaven knows how, the pointed stalks of dark-green hemp.
I went along the path, and came to the bee-garden. Beside it stood a little wattle shed, the place where the hives were put in winter. I looked in through the half-open door: it was dark, quite dry; there was a smell of mint and balm. In a corner there was an arrangement of trestles and on them, covered in a blanket, a sort of small figure . . . I was going away . . .
“Master, I say, master! Pyotr Petrovich!” came a voice, weak, slow and husky, like the rustling of sedge in a marsh.
I stopped.
“Pyotr Petrovich! Come closer, please!” repeated the voice. It issued from the corner where I had noticed the trestles.
I came closer—and stood stock-still from amazement. Before me lay a live human being, but what on earth . . . ?
A head completely dried up, all one color, the color of bronze, nothing more nor less than an ancient icon; a nose as thin as the blade of a knife; lips almost invisible—only the pale glimmer of teeth and eyes, and, winding out from under a handkerchief on the brow, a few thin strands of yellow hair. Beside the chin, on the fold of the blanket, slowly twisting their twig-like fingers, moved two tiny hands of the same bronze color. I looked closer: the face was far from ugly, it was beautiful even—but strange and frightening. And all the more frightening because on it, on its metallic cheeks, I could see—forcing . . . forcing its way, but unable to spread across—a smile.
“Don’t you know me, master?” whispered the voice again; it seemed an exhalation from the hardly moving lips. “But how could you know me!—I’m Lukerya . . . D’you remember, I used to lead the country dances, at your mother’s, at Spasskoye . . . d’you remember, I used to lead the singing, too?”
“Lukerya!” I exclaimed. “Is it you? Is it possible?”
“Yes, master, it is. I’m Lukerya.”
I didn’t know what to say, and gazed as if dumbfounded at that dark, motionless face, with its bright, deathlike eyes fixed upon me! Was it possible? This mummy—Lukerya, the greatest beauty of all our household—tall, plump, pink, and white—full of laughter and dancing and song! Lukerya, clever Lukerya, who was courted by all our young swains, for whom I too had sighed in secret, I—a lad of sixteen years!
“For goodness’ sake, Lukerya,” I said at last, “what’s happened to you?”
“Oh, I’ve had terrible trouble! But you mustn’t be put off, master, you mustn’t look down on me for my bad luck—sit down over there on the cask—nearer, or you won’t be able to hear me . . . you see what a fine voice I’ve got! . . . Well, I am glad to see you! How did you come to turn up at Alexeyevka like this?”
Lukerya spoke very quietly and faintly, but without faltering.
“Ermolai, the hunter, brought me here. But tell me . . .”
“Tell you about my trouble?—Very well, master. It happened some time ago now, six or seven years back. I had just been betrothed to Vasily Polyakov—d’you remember him, a fine-looking chap, with curly hair—he was serving as butler at your mother’s? You had left the country by then and gone to Moscow to study. Vasily and I loved each other very much; he was never out of my thoughts. It was in the spring. Well, one night . . . It was not long before dawn . . . and I couldn’t sleep: a nightingale in the garden was singing so wonderfully sweet! . . . I couldn’t stay still, I got up and went out to the porch to listen to him. He went flowing, flowing on . . . and suddenly it seemed to me that someone with Vasily’s voice was calling me, quietly-like: ‘Lusha!’ I looked round, half-asleep, you know—slipped, fell right off the floor of the porch, and went flying down, thump, on the ground! And it didn’t seem as though I’d hurt myself badly, because I got up at once and went back to my room. Only it felt as if inside me—in my belly—something had torn . . . Let me get my breath . . . just a minute, master.”
Lukerya paused and I looked at her in bewilderment. What bewildered me particularly was that she told her story almost gaily, without groans or sighs, never complaining or asking for sympathy.
“From then on,” continued Lukerya, “I started fading and withering away; a blackness came over me, it got hard for me to walk, and then—I couldn’t even use my legs; neither stand nor sit: I’d just lie the whole time. And I didn’t want to eat or drink; I got thinner and thinner. From the kindness of her heart your mother showed me to the doctors and sent me to hospital. But I got no relief from it. Not a single doctor could even say what my illness was. They did everything they could think of to me: they burned my back with red-hot iron, they sat me down in broken ice—all no good. At length I grew all stiff, like a board . . . So the mistress decided that there was nothing more to be done to cure me, and as it isn’t possible to keep a cripple in the manor house . . . well, they sent me over h
ere—because here I have relations. And here I live, as you see.”
Lukerya paused again and again, made an effort to smile.
“But it’s a terrible plight to be in!” I exclaimed . . . and, not knowing what to add, I asked: “And what about Vasily Polyakov?”
It was a very stupid question.
Lukerya turned her eyes away.
“What about Polyakov? He moped and moped, and married someone else—a girl from Glinnoye. D’you know Glinnoye? Not far from us. Her name was Agrafena. He loved me very much . . . but he was young, you see . . . there was no reason why he should stay a bachelor. And what sort of a sweetheart could I be to him now? He found himself a good wife . . . they’ve got children. He lives on a neighboring estate, in the agent’s office; your mother let him go with a passport, and, praise be to God, he’s very happy.”
“And so you just lie and lie?” I asked again.
“Yes, master, I have lain like this for more than six years. In summer I lie here in this wattle hut, but when it gets cold they’ll move me inside the bath-house. And there I lie.”
“But who looks after you? Who keeps an eye on you?”
“Oh, there are good folk here, too. They don’t leave me to myself. And I don’t take much looking after. As for food, I don’t eat anything, and as for water—here it is in the mug: there’s a supply of clear spring water always standing there. I can reach the mug myself: one of my hands still works. There’s a girl here, an orphan; now and again she looks in on me, bless her. She was here just now . . . didn’t you meet her? Pretty, she is, and fair-skinned. She brings me flowers; I’m very fond of them, of flowers. There are no garden flowers here . . . there were, but they’ve died out. But wild flowers are good, too, they smell even better than garden ones. Take the lily of the valley . . . What could be sweeter?”
“Aren’t you bored, aren’t you restless, my poor Lukerya?”
A Sportsman's Notebook Page 40
