The residents of Goryukhino have long carried on an abundant trade in bast, bast baskets, and bast shoes. It is favored by the river Sivka, which they cross in spring in dugout boats, like the ancient Scandinavians, and at other times of the year on foot, first rolling up their trousers to the knees.
The Goryukhino language is decidedly an offshoot of Slavic, but differs from it as much as Russian does. It is filled with abbreviations and contractions, some letters being quite abolished in it or replaced by others. However, a Russian can easily understand a Goryukhiner and vice versa.
The men were usually married at the age of thirteen to girls of twenty. The wives beat their husbands for the first four or five years. After that the husbands started beating their wives. In this way both sexes had their time of power, and balance was maintained.
The funeral rite took place in the following way. On the day of his death, the deceased was taken to the cemetery, so that the dead man would not uselessly take up space in the cottage. As a result it happened, to the indescribable joy of his family, that a dead man would sneeze or yawn at the very moment he was being carried out of the village in his coffin. Wives would weep over their husbands, wailing and saying: “My bright light, my brave heart! Why have you abandoned me? What will I remember you by?” With the return from the cemetery, a memorial banquet would begin in honor of the deceased, and relations and friends would be drunk for two or three days or even a whole week, depending on their zeal and their fondness for his memory. These ancient rites have survived to this day.
The Goryukhiners’ clothing consisted of a shirt worn over the trousers, which is a distinctive token of their Slavic origin. In winter they wore sheepskin coats, but more for the beauty of it than from real need, for they usually slung the coat over one shoulder and threw it off at the least effort calling for movement.
Learning, art, and poetry had been in a rather flourishing state in Goryukhino since ancient times. On top of the priests and lectors, there had always been literate men. The chronicles mention the local scribe Terenty, who lived around 1767, and who was able to write not only with his right hand but also with his left. This extraordinary man became famous in the neighborhood by composing all sorts of letters, petitions, civilian passports, and so on. Having suffered more than once for his art, for his obligingness, and for taking part in various remarkable adventures, he died in extreme old age, just as he was training himself to write with his right foot, for the writing of both of his hands had become too well known. As the reader will see below, he also plays an important role in the history of Goryukhino.
Music was always the favorite art of educated Goryukhiners: balalaikas and bagpipes, to the delight of their sensitive hearts, resound in their dwellings to this day, especially in the ancient public establishment adorned with a fir tree and the image of a double-headed eagle.10
Poetry once flourished in ancient Goryukhino. Verses by Arkhip the Bald have been preserved till now in the memory of posterity.
In delicacy they yield nothing to the eclogues of the well-known Virgil; in beauty of imagination they far exceed the idylls of Mr. Sumarokov.11 And though in dashing style they yield to the latest works of our Muses, they still equal them in whimsicality and wit.
Let us cite as an example this satirical poem:
Into the master’s yard
The headman Anton sallies,
Bearing a bunch of tallies.
The squire then inquires
Just what these sticks might be.
Ah, headman Anton, see—
You’ve robbed us all around
You’ve left us barren ground,
And the village goes without,
While your fine wife struts about.
Having thus acquainted my reader with the ethnographic and statistical situation of Goryukhino, and with the manners and customs of its inhabitants, let us now begin the narrative itself.
LEGENDARY TIMES
THE HEADMAN TRIFON
The form of government in Goryukhino has changed several times. It has been by turns under the rule of elders chosen by the community, under stewards appointed by the landowner, and finally under the direct control of the landowners themselves. The advantages and disadvantages of these different forms of government will be expanded upon in the course of my narrative.
The founding of Goryukhino and its initial population are shrouded in the darkness of the unknown. Obscure legends tell us that Goryukhino was once a rich and extensive village, that its inhabitants were all well-to-do, that its quitrent was collected once a year and sent to no one knew whom on several carts. In that time everything was bought cheaply and sold dearly. Stewards did not exist, the headmen offended nobody, the inhabitants worked little and lived in clover, and the shepherds tended the flocks in boots. We should not be seduced by this charming picture. The notion of a golden age is inherent in all people and proves only that they are never pleased with the present and, experience giving them little hope for the future, adorn the irretrievable past with all the flowers of their imagination. Here is what is certain:
The village of Goryukhino from olden times has belonged to the illustrious Belkin family. But my ancestors, owners of many other country seats, gave no attention to this remote land. Goryukhino paid small tribute and was ruled by elders elected by the people of the veche, or community assembly.
But with the passage of time the Belkins’ ancestral holdings were broken up and went into decline. The impoverished grandchildren of a rich grandfather could not get out of their habit of luxury and demanded the former full income from an estate that by then had diminished tenfold. Threatening orders followed one after another. The headmen read them to the veche; the elder oratorized, the peasants became agitated, and the masters, instead of a double quitrent, received cunning excuses and humble complaints written on greasy paper and sealed with a copper coin.
A dark cloud hung over Goryukhino, but nobody even thought about it. In the last year of the rule of Trifon, the last headman elected by the people, on the very day of the church feast, when all the folk noisily surrounded the pleasure establishment (pot-house, in simple parlance) or wandered through the streets embracing each other and loudly singing the songs of Arkhip the Bald, a bast-covered britzka drove into the village, hitched to a pair of barely alive nags; on the box sat a ragged Jew, while a head in a visored cap stuck itself out of the britzka and seemed to gaze curiously at the merrymaking folk. The residents met the vehicle with laughter and crude mockery. (NB. “Rolling the hems of their clothes into tubes, the madmen jeered at the Jewish driver and exclaimed mockingly: ‘Jew, Jew, eat the sow’s ear!…’ ” Chronicle of the Goryukhino Sexton.) But how amazed they were when the britzka stopped in the middle of the village and the new arrival, leaping out of it, in an imperious voice summoned the headman Trifon. This dignitary was in the pleasure establishment, from which two elders respectfully led him under the arms. The stranger, giving him a terrible look, handed him a letter and ordered him to read it immediately. The Goryukhino headmen had the habit of never reading anything themselves. The headman was illiterate. They sent for the village clerk Avdei. He was found not far away, sleeping under a fence in a lane, and was brought to the stranger. But, once brought, either from sudden fright, or from rueful premonition, he seemed to find the clearly written characters of the letter blurred, and he was unable to make them out. The stranger, with terrible oaths, sent the headman Trifon and the clerk Avdei to bed, postponed the reading of the letter until the next day, and went to the office cottage, where the Jew carried his small trunk after him.
The Goryukhiners gazed upon this extraordinary incident in mute amazement, but the britzka, the Jew, and the stranger were soon forgotten. The day ended noisily and merrily, and Goryukhino fell asleep, not foreseeing what awaited it.
With the morning sunrise the residents were awakened by a knocking on the windows and a call to a community assembly. The citizens appeared one after another in the courtyard of the
office cottage, which served as a meeting place. Their eyes were bleary and red, their faces swollen; yawning and scratching themselves, they looked at the man in the visored cap and old blue kaftan, standing solemnly on the porch of the office cottage, and tried to recall his features, which they had seen sometime or other. The headman Trifon and the clerk Avdei stood hatless beside him with a look of servility and profound sadness.
“Everybody here?” asked the stranger.
“Is everybody here?” repeated the headman.
“Yes, everybody,” replied the citizens.
Then the headman announced that a decree had been received from the master, and he ordered the clerk to read it for all the assembly to hear. Avdei stepped forward and read aloud the following. (NB. “This ill-omened decree I copied from the headman Trifon’s, who kept it in a coffer together with other mementos of his rule over Goryukhino.” I myself could not find this curious letter.)
Trifon Ivanov!
The bearer of this letter, my agent * * *, is going to my native village Goryukhino in order to take upon himself the administration of same. Immediately upon his arrival, gather the muzhiks and announce to them my will; to wit: The orders of my agent * * * are to be obeyed by them, the muzhiks, as my own. All that he demands of them is to be fulfilled unquestioningly; in the contrary case he, * * *, is to treat them with all possible severity. I am forced into this by their shameless disobedience and your knavish connivance, Trifon Ivanov.
(Signed) N. N.
Then, legs spread like the letter X and hands on his hips like a Φ, * * * delivered the following brief and expressive speech:
“Watch out you don’t get too smart on me; I know you’re spoilt folk, but don’t worry, I’ll knock the foolishness out of your heads quicker than yesterday’s drunkenness.”
There was no drunkenness left in anyone’s head. As if thunderstruck, the Goryukhiners hung their heads and in terror dispersed to their homes.
THE RULE OF THE STEWARD * * *
* * * took the reins of government and set about implementing his political system. It merits special examination.
Its main foundation was the following axiom: The richer the muzhik, the more spoiled he is; the poorer, the more humble. Consequently, * * * strove for humility on the estate as the main peasant virtue. He demanded a list of the peasants, and divided them into rich and poor. (1) The arrears were distributed among the well-to-do muzhiks and exacted from them with all possible strictness. (2) The slackers and holiday revelers were immediately put to the plow, and if, by his reckoning, their work proved insufficient, he sent them to other peasants as hired hands, for which they paid him a voluntary contribution, while those sent into bondage had the full right to buy themselves out by paying a double quitrent on top of the arrears. Any community obligations fell to the well-to-do muzhiks. Recruitment was a triumph for the mercenary-minded ruler; one by one the rich muzhiks all bought themselves out, so that the lot finally fell upon the scoundrels or the ruined.* Community assemblies were abolished. He collected quitrent in small installments all year round. On top of that, he took up unexpected collections. The muzhiks, it seems, did not even pay that much more than in former times, but they simply could not earn or save enough money. In three years Goryukhino was totally destitute.
Goryukhino became cheerless, the marketplace was empty, the songs of Arkhip the Bald fell silent. Young children went begging. Half the muzhiks were in the fields, the other half served as hired hands; and the day of the church feast became, in the chronicler’s expression, not a day of joy and exultation, but an anniversary of grief and sorrowful remembrance.
* * *
* “The accursed steward put Anton Timofeev in irons, but old Timofei bought his son out for one hundred roubles; the steward shackled Petrushka Eremeev, and his father bought him out for sixty-eight roubles, and the accursed one wanted to chain up Lyokha Tarasov, but the man fled to the forest, and the steward was greatly distressed and waxed verbally violent, and it was the drunkard Vanka who was taken to town and sent off as a recruit.” (From a report by the Goryukhino muzhiks.)
Roslavlev
Reading Roslavlev,1 I was amazed to see that its plot is based on a real event that I know all too well. I was once a friend of the unfortunate woman Mr. Zagoskin chose as the heroine of his story. He has turned public attention anew to the forgotten event, awakened feelings of indignation lulled to sleep by time, and disturbed the peace of the grave. I will defend the shade—and let the reader forgive the weakness of my pen out of respect for the promptings of my heart. I must needs speak a good deal about myself, because my fate was long bound up with the lot of my poor friend.
My coming out was in the winter of 1811. I will not describe my first impressions. It can easily be imagined what the feelings of a sixteen-year-old girl must be in exchanging upstairs rooms and teachers for continuous balls. I gave myself to the whirl of merriment with all the liveliness of my years and as yet without reflection…A pity: those times were worth observing.
Among the girls who came out together with me, Princess * * * distinguished herself (Mr. Zagoskin has called her Polina; I shall let her keep that name). We quickly became friends, and this was the occasion.
My brother, a lad of twenty-two, belonged to the ranks of the dandies back then; he had been assigned to the Foreign Office and lived in Moscow, dancing and leading a wild life. He fell in love with Polina and entreated me to bring our families closer together. My brother was the idol of our whole family, and with me he did as he liked.
Having become close with Polina to please him, I soon found myself sincerely attached to her. There was much that was strange in her and still more that was attractive. I did not yet understand her, but I already loved her. Imperceptibly I began to look with her eyes and to think with her thoughts.
Polina’s father was a worthy man, i.e., he drove a tandem and wore a key and a star, though he was simple and flighty. Her mother, on the other hand, was a staid woman and distinguished by her gravity and common sense.
Polina appeared everywhere; she was surrounded by admirers; they paid court to her—but she was bored, and boredom gave her an air of pride and coldness. That went extraordinarily well with her Grecian face and dark eyebrows. I exulted when my satirical observations brought a smile to that regular and bored face.
Polina read an extraordinary amount, and without any discrimination. She had the key to her father’s library. The library consisted for the most part of works by eighteenth-century writers. She knew French literature from Montesquieu to the novels of Crébillon. Rousseau she knew by heart. There was not a single Russian book in the library, except for the works of Sumarokov, which Polina never opened.2 She told me that it was hard for her to decipher Russian type, and she probably never read anything in Russian, not even the little verses offered her by Moscow poetasters.
Here I shall allow myself a small digression. It is thirty years now, praise God, since they began reproaching poor us for not reading in Russian and for (supposedly) being unable to express ourselves in our native language. (NB. The author of Yuri Miloslavsky wrongly repeats these banal accusations. We have all read him, and it seems he owes to one of us the translation of his novel into French.) The thing is that we would even be glad to read in Russian; but it seems our literature is no older than Lomonosov3 and is still extremely limited. Of course, it does present us with several excellent poets, but it is impossible to demand of all readers an exceptional interest in poetry. In prose we have only Karamzin’s History;4 the first two or three novels appeared two or three years ago, while in France, England, and Germany books, one more remarkable than the other, follow one after the other. We do not even see translations; and if we do, then, say what you like, I still prefer the originals. Our journals are of interest only to our literati. We are forced to draw everything, news and ideas, from foreign books; thus we also think in foreign languages (all those, at least, who do think and who follow the thoughts of the human race). Our most
famous literati have admitted it to me. The eternal complaints of our writers about the neglect to which we relegate Russian books are like the complaints of Russian tradeswomen, who are indignant that we buy our hats at Sichler’s and are not content with the products of Kostroma milliners. I return back to my subject.
Memories of high society life are usually weak and insignificant even in historic epochs. However, one traveler’s appearance in Moscow left a deep impression on me. That traveler was Mme de Staël.5 She came in the summer, when most of Moscow’s inhabitants had left for the country. Russian hospitality began to bustle; they went out of their way to entertain the famous foreigner. Naturally, they gave dinners for her. Gentlemen and ladies gathered to gawk at her and were for the most part displeased. They saw in her a fat fifty-year-old woman, whose dress did not suit her age. They did not like her tone, her talk seemed too long, and her sleeves too short. Polina’s father, who had known Mme de Staël back in Paris, gave a dinner for her, to which he invited all our Moscow wits. There I saw the author of Corinne. She sat in the place of honor, her elbows leaning on the table, her beautiful fingers rolling and unrolling a little paper tube. She seemed out of sorts, began to speak several times, but could not go on. Our wits ate and drank their fill and seemed much more pleased with the prince’s fish soup than with Mme de Staël’s conversation. The ladies kept aloof. The ones and the others only rarely broke the silence, convinced of the insignificance of their thoughts and intimidated in the presence of the European celebrity. All through dinner Polina sat as if on pins and needles. The guests’ attention was divided between the sturgeon and Mme de Staël. They expected a bon mot from her any moment; finally a double entendre escaped her, even quite a bold one. Everyone picked it up, laughed loudly, a murmur of astonishment arose; the prince was beside himself with joy. I glanced at Polina. Her face was ablaze, and tears showed in her eyes. The guests got up from the table completely reconciled with Mme de Staël: she had made a pun, and they galloped off to spread it all over the city.
Novels, Tales, Journeys Page 15
