‘You’re right – that they will!’
‘That’s it! Every year they get shallower and shallower, there’s no longer those nice deep pools there used to be, me friend. See those bushes over there?’ asked the old man, pointing to one side. ‘Behind them there’s an old river-bed – “the backwater” it’s called. In my father’s day that’s where the Peschanka flowed, but now look where the devil’s taken it! It keeps changing course and you see, it’ll keep changing course till it dries up altogether. Other side of Kurgasov there used to be marshes and ponds, but where are they now? And what became of all them little streams? In this very wood there used to be a stream with so much water in it the peasants only had to dip their creels in to catch pike, and wild duck used to winter there. But even at spring flood there’s no decent water in it now. Yes, me friend, things are bad everywhere you look. Everywhere!’
There was silence. Lost in thought, Meliton stared before him. He wanted to think of a single part of nature as yet untouched by the all-embracing ruin. Bright patches of light glided over the mist and the slanting sheets of rain as if over frosted glass, only to vanish immediately – the rising sun was trying to break through the clouds and glimpse the earth.
‘Yes – and the forests too,’ Meliton muttered.
‘And the forests too,’ repeated the shepherd. ‘They’re being cut down, they catch fire or dry up and there’s no new growth. What does grow is felled right away. One day it comes up and the next it’s chopped down and so it goes on till there’s nothing left. Ever since we got our freedom,2 me friend, I’ve been minding the village herd and before that I was one of squire’s shepherds too – grazed this very spot – and I can’t remember one summer’s day when I wasn’t here. And all the time I keep watching God’s works. I’ve been able to keep a close watch on things in me lifetime and as I sees it now all kinds of plants are dying out, whether it’s rye, vegetables, flowers – everything’s heading one way…’
‘But people are better now,’ observed the bailiff.
‘How are they better?’
‘They’re cleverer.’
‘Cleverer they may be, my lad, but what good is that? What use is being clever to those that’s on the brink of ruin? You don’t need any brains to perish! What use is brains to a huntsman if there’s no game about? As I reckon, God’s given folk brains, but he’s taken their strength away. Folk have become feeble, mighty feeble. Take me, for example. I know I’m not worth a brass farthing, I’m the lowliest peasant in the whole village, but I still have me strength, lad. As you can see, I’m in me sixties, but I still mind the herd, come rain or shine. And at night I keep watch over the horses for a couple of copecks and I don’t fall asleep or suffer from the cold. My son’s cleverer than me, but just put him in my place and next day he’ll be asking for a rise or he’ll be off to the doctor’s. Oh yes! I don’t need nothing but bread – “give us our daily bread” as it is written. And me father ate nothing but bread – and me grandpa, too. But these days your peasant wants his tea and vodka and fancy white rolls. He needs to sleep from dusk to dawn, keeps going to the doctor’s – pampers himself silly, he does. And why? Because he’s grown feeble, he’s got no backbone. He’d rather not sleep, but his eyes start to close – and there’s nothing he can do about it.’
‘That’s true,’ agreed Meliton. ‘These days peasants are a useless bunch.’
‘There’s no escaping the fact, we get worse every year. Just consider the gentry, they’re even feebler than the peasants now. These days gents might think they know everything, but they know things they don’t need to know – and where’s the sense in that? Fair breaks your heart to look at them… all skinny and weedy, like some Magyar or Frenchie. No class, no dignity – they’re only gents by name. The poor devils’ve got no place in society, no work to do and you can never make out what they really want. Either they sit with their rod catching fish or they lie belly up reading a book. Or they’re knocking around with the peasants and telling them all sorts of things. And there’s those what’s hungry and get jobs as clerks. And so they fritter their time away and it never enters their heads to try and get down to some real work. Time was when half the gentry were generals, but nowadays they’re sheer trash!’
‘They’re very much poorer now,’ said Meliton.
‘They’re poorer because God’s taken their strength away. You can’t go against God.’
Meliton stared fixedly at one point again. After a pause for thought he sighed the way steady, sober-minded people sigh and shook his head.
‘And what’s the reason for all this?’ he said. ‘It’s because we sin so much, we’ve forgotten God and so the time is near when everything will come to an end. Honestly, you can’t expect the world to last for ever. It mustn’t outstay its welcome!’
The shepherd sighed and as if wishing to end that painful conversation he walked away from the birch and started counting the cattle in silence.
‘Hey-hey-hey!’ he shouted, ‘where d’ye think you’re all going, damn you! The devil himself’s driven them into the firs! Halloo-loo-loo!’
He glared angrily and went over to the bushes to round up the herd. Meliton rose and strolled quietly along the edge of the wood. He gazed at the ground beneath his feet and thought: he was still trying to remember at least one thing as yet untouched by death. Again, bright patches crept over the slanting belts of rain; they leapt into the tree tops and faded away in the wet foliage. Lady found a hedgehog under a bush and tried to attract her master’s attention by howling and barking.
‘You had an eclipse,3 didn’t you?’ the shepherd cried out from behind the bushes.
‘Yes, we did!’ replied Meliton.
‘I thought so. Everywhere folk are going on about it. It means, me friend, that there’s disorder in heaven too. It didn’t happen for nothing… Hey-hey-hey!’
After driving his herd out of the wood the shepherd leant against a birch, glanced at the sky and idly drew his pipe from his smock. As before he played mechanically, producing no more than five or six notes. The sounds that flew forth were hesitant, disjointed, wild and tuneless, as if he were holding the pipes for the very first time. But to Meliton, who was contemplating the world’s impending ruin, there was something deeply mournful and heart-rending in his playing, something that he would have preferred not to hear. The highest, shrillest notes which trembled and broke off abruptly seemed to be weeping inconsolably, as though the pipe was sick and frightened, while the lowest notes somehow evoked the mist, the dejected trees and the grey skies. Such music harmonized with the weather, the old man and what he had been saying.
Meliton felt an urge to complain. He went up to the old man, looked at his sad, mocking face and muttered, ‘And life’s got worse, old man. It’s more than flesh and blood can stand, what with bad harvests, poverty, cattle plagues the whole time, illness. We’re racked by poverty, we are.’
The bailiff’s podgy face turned crimson and took on a doleful, womanish expression. He twiddled his fingers as if looking for words to convey his vague feelings.
‘I’ve eight children,’ he continued, ‘and a wife… my mother is still alive and all they pay me is ten roubles a month without lodging. The poverty’s turned my wife into a real bitch and I’m on the bottle. In actual fact, I’m a sober-minded, steady sort of chap, I’ve had some education. I’d like to be sitting peacefully at home but all day long I keep wandering around with my gun, just like a dog, because I can’t stand it there. I hate my own home!’
Aware that his tongue was muttering the complete opposite of what he intended the bailiff waved his arm and continued bitterly, ‘If the world’s doomed to perish, the sooner the better! No point in dragging things out and letting people suffer for nothing!’
The old shepherd took the pipe from his lips, screwed up one eye and peered down the small mouthpiece. His face was sad and covered with large, tear-like splashes. He smiled and said, ‘It’s a pity, my friend. God, a real pity! The earth, fores
ts, sky, animals – all these have been fashioned and fitted for some purpose, there’s a reason behind everything. But it’ll all come to nothing. It’s folk I feel most sorry for.’
Suddenly a heavy squall rustled through the wood as it approached the edge. Meliton looked towards where the noise was coming from and buttoned his coat right up.
‘I must get back to the village,’ he said. ‘Goodbye, old friend… what’s your name?’
‘Poor Luke.’
‘Well, goodbye Luke. It’s been nice talking to you. Lady, ici!’
When he had taken leave of the shepherd, Meliton trudged along the edge of the wood and then down to a meadow which gradually turned into a marsh. Water squelched underfoot and the reddish heads of sedge (its stems were still green and lush) bowed towards the earth as if afraid of being trampled. Beyond the marsh, on the banks of the Peschanka, about which the old shepherd had just been talking, stood willows, and beyond them, showing blue in the mist, could be seen the squire’s threshing-barn. One sensed the proximity of that bleak time which nothing can avert, when the fields darken, when the earth grows muddy and cold, when the weeping willow seems sadder than ever and tears trickle down her trunk, when the cranes alone are able to flee universal disaster. And even they, as if afraid of offending despondent nature by voicing their joy, fill the skies with their mournful, plaintive song.
Meliton wandered towards the river and heard the sounds of the pipe gradually dying away behind him. He still felt the urge to complain. Sadly he looked on both sides and he felt unbearably sorry for the sky, the earth, the sun, the moon, the woods, his Lady; and when the pipe’s highest note suddenly shrilled and hung in the air, trembling like the voice of someone weeping, he felt extraordinarily bitter and resentful at the disorder that was apparent in nature.
The top note quivered, broke off – and the panpipes were silent.
The Kiss
On 20 May, at eight o’clock in the evening, all six batteries of a reserve artillery brigade, on their way back to headquarters, stopped for the night at the village of Mestechki. At the height of all the confusion – some officers were busy with the guns, while others had assembled in the main square by the churchyard fence to receive their billetings – someone in civilian dress rode up from behind the church on a strange horse: it was small and dun-coloured with a fine neck and short tail, and seemed to move sideways instead of straight ahead, making small dancing movements with its legs as if they were being whipped. When the rider came up to the officers he doffed his hat and said, ‘Our squire, His Excellency, Lieutenant-General von Rabbeck, invites you for tea and would like you to come now…’
The horse performed a bow and a little dance, and retreated with the same sideways motion. The rider raised his hat again and quickly disappeared behind the church on his peculiar horse.
‘To hell with it!’ some of the officers grumbled as they rode off to their quarters. ‘We want to sleep and up pops this von Rabbeck with his tea! We know what that means all right!’
Every officer in the six batteries vividly remembered the previous year when they were on manoeuvres with officers from a Cossack regiment and had received a similar invitation from a landowning count, who was a retired officer. This hospitable and genial count had plied them with food and drink, would not hear of them returning to their billets and made them stay the night. That was all very well, of course, and they could not have hoped for better. But the trouble was that this retired officer was overjoyed beyond measure at having young men as his guests and he regaled them with stories from his glorious past until dawn, led them on a tour of the house, showed them his valuable paintings, old engravings and rare guns, and read out signed letters from eminent personages; and all this time the tired and weary officers listened, looked, pined for bed, and continuously yawned in their sleeves. When their host finally let them go, it was too late for bed.
Now, was this von Rabbeck one of the same breed? Whether he was or not, there was nothing they could do about it. The officers put clean uniforms on, smartened themselves up and went off en masse to look for the squire’s house. On the square by the church they were told that they could either take the lower path leading down to the river behind the church, and then go along the bank to the garden, or they could ride direct from the church along the higher road which would bring them to the count’s barns about a quarter of a mile from the village. The officers decided on the higher route.
‘Who is this von Rabbeck?’ they argued as they rode along. ‘Is he the one who commanded a cavalry division at Plevna?’1
‘No, that wasn’t von Rabbeck, just Rabbe, and without the “von”.’
‘It’s marvellous weather, anyway!’
The road divided when they reached the first barn: one fork led straight on and disappeared in the darkness of the evening, while the other turned towards the squire’s house on the right. The officers took the right fork and began to lower their voices… Stone barns with red tiled roofs stood on both sides of the road and they had the heavy, forbidding look of some provincial barracks. Ahead of them were the lighted windows of the manor-house.
‘That’s a good sign, gentlemen!’ one of the officers said. ‘Our setter’s going on in front. That means he scents game!’
Lieutenant Lobytko, a tall, strongly built officer, who was riding ahead of the others, who had no moustache (although he was over twenty-five there wasn’t a trace of hair on his face), and who was renowned in the brigade for his keen senses and ability to sniff a woman out from miles away, turned round and said, ‘Yes, there must be women here, my instinct tells me.’
The officers were met at the front door by von Rabbeck himself – a fine-looking man of about sixty, wearing civilian clothes. He said how very pleased and happy he was to see the officers as he shook hands, but begged them most sincerely, in the name of God, to excuse him for not inviting them to stay the night, as two sisters with their children, his brothers and some neighbours had turned up, and he didn’t have one spare room.
The general shook everyone’s hand, apologized and smiled, but they could tell from his face that he wasn’t nearly as pleased to have guests as last year’s count and he had only asked them as it was the done thing. And, as they climbed the softly carpeted stairs and listened, the officers sensed that they had been invited only because it would have caused embarrassment if they had not been invited. At the sight of footmen dashing around lighting the lamps in the hall and upstairs, they felt they had introduced a note of uneasiness and anxiety into the house. And how could any host be pleased at having nineteen strange officers descend on a house where two sisters, children, brothers and neighbours had already arrived, most probably to celebrate some family anniversary. They were met in the ballroom upstairs by a tall, stately old lady with black eyebrows and a long face – the living image of Empress Eugénie. She gave them a majestic, welcoming smile and said how glad and happy she was to have them as guests and apologized for the fact that she and her husband weren’t able to invite the officers to stay overnight on this occasion. Her beautiful, majestic smile, which momentarily disappeared every time she turned away from her guests, revealed that in her day she had seen many officers, that she had no time for them now, and that she had invited them and was apologizing only because her upbringing and social position demanded it.
The officers entered the large dining-room where about ten gentlemen and ladies, old and young, were sitting along one side of the table having tea. Behind their chairs, enveloped in a thin haze of cigar smoke, was a group of men with a rather lean, young, red-whiskered man in the middle, rolling his ‘r’s as he spoke out loud in English. Behind them, through a door, was a bright room with light blue furniture.
‘Gentlemen, there’s so many of you, it’s impossible to introduce everyone!’ the general was saying in a loud voice, trying to sound cheerful. ‘So don’t stand on ceremony, introduce yourselves!’
Some officers wore very serious, even solemn expressions; others f
orced a smile, and all of them felt awkward as they bowed rather indifferently and sat down to tea.
Staff-Captain Ryabovich, a short, stooping officer, with spectacles and lynx-like side whiskers, was more embarrassed than anyone else. While his fellow-officers were trying to look serious or force a smile, his face, lynx-like whiskers and spectacles seemed to be saying, ‘I’m the shyest, most modest and most insignificant officer in the whole brigade!’ When he first entered the dining-room and sat down to tea, he found it impossible to concentrate on any one face or object. All those faces, dresses, cut-glass decanters, steaming glasses, moulded cornices, merged into one composite sensation, making Ryabovich feel ill at ease, and he longed to bury his head somewhere. Like a lecturer at his first appearance in public, he could see everything in front of him well enough, but at the same time he could make little sense of it (physicians call this condition, when someone sees without understanding, ‘psychic blindness’). But after a little while Ryabovich began to feel more at home, recovered his normal vision and began to take stock of his surroundings. Since he was a timid and unsociable person, he was struck above all by what he himself had never possessed – the extraordinary boldness of these unfamiliar people. Von Rabbeck, two elderly ladies, a young girl in a lilac dress, and the young man with red whiskers – Rabbeck’s youngest son – had sat themselves very cunningly among the officers, as though it had all been rehearsed. Straight away they had launched into a heated argument, which the guests could not help joining. The girl in lilac very excitedly insisted that the artillery had a much easier time than either the cavalry or the infantry, while Rabbeck and the elderly ladies argued the contrary. A rapid conversational crossfire ensued. Ryabovich glanced at the lilac girl who was arguing so passionately about something that was so foreign to her, so utterly boring, and he could see artificial smiles flickering over her face.
The Steppe and Other Stories, 1887-91 Page 16
