Sketches from a Hunter's Album (34 page)

‘Stay a bit longer,' Akulina declared in an imploring voice.

‘What's there to wait for? I've already said goodbye to you.'

‘Stay a bit,' Akulina repeated.

Victor again lay back and started whistling. Akulina never took her eyes off him. I could tell that she was slowly working herself into a state of agitation: her lips were working and her pale cheeks were faintly crimsoning.

‘Victor Alexandrych,' she said at last in a breaking voice, ‘it's sinful of you… sinful of you, Victor Alexandrych, in God's name it is!'

‘What's sinful?' he asked, knitting his brows, and he raised himself slightly and turned his head towards her.

‘It's sinful, Victor Alexandrych. If you'd only say one kind word to me now you're leaving, just say one word to me, wretched little orphan that I am…'

‘But what should I say to you?'

‘I don't know. You should know that better than me, Victor Alexandrych. Now you're going away, and if only you'd say a word… Why should I deserve this?'

‘What a strange girl you are! What can I say?'

‘Just say one word…'

‘Well, you've certainly gone on and on about the same thing,' he said in disgruntlement and stood up.

‘Don't be angry, Victor Alexandrych,' she added quickly, hardly restraining her tears.

‘I'm not angry, it's only that you're stupid… What do you want? You know I can't marry you, don't you? Surely you know I can't? So what's it you want? What is it?' He stuck his face forward in expectation of her answer and opened wide his fingers.

‘I don't want anything… anything,' she answered, stammering and scarcely daring to stretch her trembling hands out towards him, ‘only if you'd just say one word in farewell…'

And tears streamed from her eyes.

‘Well, so there it is, you've started crying,' Victor said callously, tipping his cap forward over his eyes.

‘I don't want anything,' she went on, swallowing her tears and covering her face with both hands, ‘but what'll it be like for me in the family, what'll there be for me? And what's going to happen to me, what's going to become of me, wretch that I am! They'll give their orphan girl away to someone who doesn't love her… O poor me, poor me!'

‘Moan away, moan away!' muttered Victor under his breath, shifting from one foot to the other.

‘If only he'd say one little word, just one word… Such as, Akulina, I… I…'

Suddenly heart-rending sobs prevented her from finishing what she was saying. She flopped on her face in the grass and burst into bitter, bitter tears. Her whole body shook convulsively, the nape of her neck rising and falling. Her long-restrained grief finally poured forth in torrents. Victor stood for a moment or so above her, shrugged his shoulders, turned and walked away with big strides.

Several moments passed. She grew quiet, raised her head, jumped up, looked about her and wrung her hands; she was on the point of rushing after him, but her legs collapsed under her and she fell on her knees. I could not hold myself back and rushed towards her, but she had hardly had time to look at me before she found the strength from somewhere to raise herself with a faint cry and vanish through the trees, leaving her flowers scattered on the ground.

I stopped there a moment, picked up the bunch of cornflowers and walked out of the wood into a field. The sun was low in the pale clear sky and its rays had, as it were, lost their colour and grown cold; they did not shine so much as flow out in an even, almost watery, light. No more than half an hour remained until evening, but the sunset was only just beginning to crimson the sky. A flurrying wind raced towards me across the dry, yellow stubble; hastily spinning before it, little shrivelled leaves streamed past me across the track and along the edge of the wood; the side which faced on to the field like a wall shuddered all over and glistened with a faint sparkling, distinctly though not brightly; on the red-tinted grass, on separate blades of grass, on pieces of straw, everywhere innumerable strands of autumn cobwebs glittered and rippled. I
stopped, and a feeling of melancholy stole over me, for it seemed to me that the sombre terror associated with the approaching winter was breaking through the cheerless, though fresh, smile of nature at this time of withering. High above me, ponderously and sharply sundering the air with its wings, a vigilant raven flew by, turned its head, looked sidewards at me, took wing and disappeared beyond the wood with strident cawings; a large flock of pigeons rose smartly from a place where there had been threshing and after suddenly making a huge wheeling turn in the air settled busily on to the field – a sure sign of autumn! Someone rode by on the other side of a bare hillock, his empty cart clattering noisily…

I returned home; but the image of the poor Akulina took a long time to fade from my mind, and her cornflowers, which have long since withered, remain with me to this day…

Parting with my host, I began to wander about the rooms. Almost all the guests were complete strangers to me; about twenty of them were already seated at the card tables. Among those playing preference were two military men with distinguished, if slightly down-at-heel,
faces, and a few civilian gentlemen wearing high, tight collars and the kind of pendant, dyed whiskers affected only by resolute but well-disposed people (these well-disposed people were engaged in importantly sorting their cards and casting sideward glances at newcomers without moving their heads); also five or six district officials with round tummies, puffy, sticky little hands and modestly immobile little feet (these gentlemen spoke in soft voices, regaled everyone with timid smiles, held their cards close to their shirt-fronts and, when playing trumps, did not thump them down on the table but, on the contrary, let them drop with a floating motion on the green cloth and, as they gathered in their winnings, produced a slight, but very decorous and polite creaking sound). Other members of the nobility were sitting on divans or clustered in groups about the doorways and windows; a no longer young, though outwardly effeminate, landowner was standing in one corner, trembling and blushing and agitatedly twisting the watch signet on his stomach, though no one was paying any attention to him; other gentlemen, adorned in round frock-coats and chequered trousers of Moscow workmanship tailored by the foreigner, Fiers Klyukhin, master of his guild in perpetuity, were engaged in unusually free and lively discussion, liberally turning the fat, bare napes of their necks in one direction or another; a young man of about twenty, blond and myopic, dressed from head to foot in black, was visibly embarrassed, but continued to smile venomously.

I was, however, beginning to grow a little bored when suddenly I was joined by a certain Voinitsyn, a young man who had failed to complete his education and was now living in Alexander Mikhailych's house in the capacity of… it would be difficult to say precisely in what capacity. He was an excellent shot and adept at training dogs. I had known him earlier in Moscow. He belonged to the run of young men who used to ‘play dumb as a post' at every examination – that is to say, who never uttered a word in answer to the professor's questions. These gentlemen were also known, in stylish parlance, as ‘sideburn-ites'.
¹
(These matters relate to the distant past, as you can readily appreciate.) It would be arranged as follows: they would call upon Voinitsyn, for instance. Voinitsyn, who until that moment had been sitting straight and motionless on his bench, perspiring hotly from head to toe and slowly, though fatuously,
rolling his eyes around – he would rise, hastily button up his uniform right to the top and saunter crabwise to the examiners' table.

‘Be good enough to take a ticket,' a professor would say affably.

Voinitsyn would stretch out a hand and agitatedly finger the little pile of tickets.

‘You don't have to choose one, if you don't mind,' would remark the querulous voice of some tetchy old man, a professor from another faculty, who had conceived a sudden dislike for the unfortunate ‘sideburn-ite'. Voinitsyn would submit to his fate, take a ticket, show its number and walk to the window to sit down while a previous examinee answered a question. At the window Voinitsyn would not take his eyes off the ticket, save perhaps once again to roll his eyes slowly around, and would remain stock-still in every limb. Eventually, however, the previous examinee would be finished. He would be told: ‘Good, you may go,' or even ‘Good, sir, very good, sir,' depending upon his abilities. Then they would call upon Voinitsyn. Voinitsyn would rise and approach the table with a firm step.

‘Read out the question,' they would tell him.

Holding it in both hands, Voinitsyn would raise the ticket to the tip of his nose, read out the question slowly and slowly lower his arms.

‘Well, sir, be so good as to answer,' the first professor would say casually, resting back in his chair and crossing his hands on his chest.

A silence deep as the grave would fall upon the proceedings.

‘What's wrong with you?'

Voinitsyn would be silent. The old man from another faculty would begin to grow annoyed.

‘Come on, say something, man!'

This Voinitsyn of mine would remain silent, as if he had given up the ghost. The shaven nape of his neck would jut out still and sharp before the curious gaze of his comrades. The old man's eyes were ready to jump out of his head: he had finally begun to loathe Voinitsyn.

‘Isn't it rather strange, after all,' another examiner would remark, ‘that you should stand there dumb as a post? So you don't know the answer, is that it? If that's so, say so.'

‘Permit me to take another ticket,' the unfortunate chap would mumble. The professors exchanged looks.

‘Very well, then,' says the chief examiner with a wave of his hand.

Voinitsyn again takes a ticket, again goes to the window, again returns to the table and again is as silent as a corpse. The old fellow from another faculty is just about to eat him alive. Finally they send him packing and award him a zero mark. By now you would think he'd at least make tracks. Not at all! He returns to his place and adopts the same motionless pose until the conclusion of the examination, when he leaves, exclaiming: ‘What a sweat that was! What a business!' And all day he strolls around Moscow, occasionally clutching his head and bitterly cursing his wretched fate. Never once, of course, does he so much as glance at a book, and the next day the same thing happens all over again.

It was this Voinitsyn who took his place next to me. We talked together about our Moscow days, about our hunting experiences.

‘If you wish,' he suddenly whispered to me, ‘I'll introduce you to our leading local wit?'

‘Do me that honour.'

Voinitsyn led me up to a man of small stature, with a tall tuft of hair on the top of his head and whiskers, dressed in a brown frock-coat and a colourful necktie. His embittered, lively features conveyed a real air of wit and vindictiveness. A sour, fugitive smile endlessly contorted his lips; his small, dark, puckered eyes looked boldly out from beneath uneven eyelashes. Standing beside him was a landowner, broad of beam, soft, sugary – a real Lord Honeybun – and one-eyed. His laughter always anticipated the little man's witticisms and he was literally melting with pleasure. Voinitsyn introduced me to the local wit, one Pyotr Petrovich Lupikhin by name. We made our introductions and exchanged the initial words of greeting.

‘And now allow me to introduce you to my best friend,' said Lupikhin suddenly in a sharp tone of voice, seizing the sugary landowner by the arm. ‘Now don't you be retiring, Kirila Selifanych,' he added, ‘they won't bite you. Here, my dear sirs,' he continued, while the embarrassed Kirila Selifanych gave such awkward bows that it seemed his stomach was about to collapse, ‘here, sir, I recommend to you a most excellent member of the gentry. He enjoyed splendid health until he was fifty years of age, and then he suddenly took it into his head to cure his eyesight, as a result of which he lost the use of one eye. Since then he's been dispensing
cures to his peasants with the same degree of success… And they, it goes without saying, have shown a similar devotion…'

‘What a fellow,' Kirila Selifanych muttered and burst into laughter.

‘Do complete what you were saying, my friend, do go on,' Lupikhin inserted. ‘After all, they could well elect you to the judges' bench, and they will elect you, you'll see. Well, suppose, of course, that the court assessors do all the thinking for you, there'd still be a need in any event to express somebody else's ideas, let's say. What if the Governor should unexpectedly drop by and ask: “What's the judge stammering for?” Well, suppose they say it's an attack of paralysis, then he'll say: “Bleed him, then, bleed him!” And that in your position, you'll agree, wouldn't be right and proper.'

The sugary landowner went off into a drum-roll of laughter.

‘Look at him laughing,' Lupikhin continued, gazing wickedly at the quivering stomach of Kirila Selifanych. ‘And why shouldn't he laugh?' he added, turning to me. ‘He's well fed, healthy, childless, his peasants aren't mortgaged – after all, he's curing them – and his wife's a bit dotty.' (Kirila Selifanych turned slightly to one side, feigning not to catch this, and continued to roar with laughter.) ‘I can laugh just the same, and my wife's run off with a land surveyor.' (He showed his teeth in a grin.) ‘Perhaps you didn't know that? Yessir! She just upped and ran off and left me a letter which read: “Dear Pyotr Petrovich, forgive me, carried away by passion. I'm going off with the friend of my heart…” And the land surveyor only captured her heart by not cutting his nails and wearing his pants skin-tight. You're surprised? “Such a frank fellow,” you'll say… And, my God! we men of the steppes know how to open up the womb of truth. However, let's go to one side. There's no need for us to go on standing next to a future judge…'

He took me by the arm and we went to the window.

‘I pass here for a wit,' he said to me in the course of conversation, ‘but you mustn't believe that. I'm simply an embittered man and I speak my mind out loud. That's why I'm so unrestrained. And why should I stand on ceremony, in fact? I don't give a damn for any opinions and I'm not out for anything for myself. I have a wicked tongue – so what of it? A man with a wicked tongue at least doesn't need to have a mind. But how refreshing it is, you wouldn't believe
it… Well, take a look, for example, at our host! Now I ask you, why on earth is he scurrying about like that, all the time glancing at the clock, smiling, perspiring, making himself look important and leaving us to die of hunger? A high-ranking dignitary's not so unusual a sight, after all! There he is, there he is, again running – he's even started hobbling about, look at him!'

And Lupikhin gave a screeching laugh.

‘One thing wrong is that there are no ladies,' he continued with a deep sigh. ‘It's a stag occasion – otherwise it would've been useful for the likes of us. Take a look, take a look,' he exclaimed suddenly. ‘Prince Kozelsky's coming – there he is, that tall man with a beard and yellow gloves. You can tell at once that he's been abroad… And he makes a habit of arriving so late. That man alone, I tell you, is as stupid as a couple of merchant's horses, but you just take the trouble to notice how condescendingly he addresses the likes of us, how magnanimously he permits himself to smile at the pleasantries of our famished mothers and daughters! Sometimes he even tries to be witty on his own account, although he doesn't live here permanently; and the kind of witty remarks he makes! Just like trying to saw at a tow-rope with a blunt knife! He can't stand the sight of me… I'll go and pay my respects to him.'

And Lupikhin ran off in the prince's direction.

‘And here comes my private enemy,' he announced, suddenly turning back to me. ‘See that stout man with the tanned face and bristles on his head – there, the one who's grasping his hat in his hand and stealing along by the wall, glancing all around him like a veritable wolf? For 400 roubles I sold him a horse that was worth a thousand, and this lowly creature now has every right to despise me; and yet he is so devoid of the capacity for understanding, especially in the morning, before he's taken his tea, or immediately after dinner, that if you say “How d'you do?” to him he'll answer: “How what, sir?” And here comes a general,' Lupikhin went on, ‘a civilservice general in retirement, a general who's lost all his money. He has a daughter of sugar-beet refinement and a factory of scrofula – I'm sorry, I didn't get that right… Anyhow, you understand what I mean. Ah! and here's an architect just dropped by! A German, replete with whiskers and no idea of his business – wonders'll never cease! But as a matter of fact there's no need for him to know his
business: all he has to do is take bribes and put up more columns, more pillars, that is, for the pillars of our aristocracy!'

Lupikhin again gave vent to laughter. But suddenly an anxious excitement spread through the entire house. The dignitary had arrived. Our host literally plunged into the entrance hall. Several devoted members of his staff and some eager guests rushed after him. The noisy conversation changed into soft, pleasant talk, similar to the springtime humming of bees in their native hives. Only the indefatigably waspish Lupikhin and the superb drone Kozelsky did not lower their voices… And finally came the queen herself – the dignitary entered. Hearts were wafted to meet him, sitting torsos were raised a trifle; even the landowner who had bought the horse cheaply from Lupikhin, even he thrust his chin into his chest. The dignitary maintained his dignity with the utmost aplomb: nodding his head back as though bowing, he spoke a few appreciative words, each of which began with the letter ‘a' uttered protractedly through the nose, and with a disapproval amounting to ravening hunger he glanced at Prince Kozelsky's beard and offered the index finger of his left hand to the penniless civil-service general with the factory and daughter. After a few minutes, in the course of which the dignitary succeeded in remarking twice how glad he was that he had not arrived late for the dinner, the entire company proceeded into the dining-room, the bigwigs leading the way.

It is hardly necessary to tell the reader how the dignitary was given the seat of honour between the civil-service general and the provincial marshal of nobility, a man of unrestrained and dignified expression entirely in keeping with his starched shirt-front, infinitely broad waistcoat and round snuff-box full of French tobacco; how our host fussed, dashed about, busied himself importantly, urged his guests to partake of what was offered, smiled in passing at the dignitary's back and, standing in one corner like a schoolboy, hastily spooned down a plate of soup or had a bite of beef; how the butler brought in a fish more than three feet long with a floral bouquet in its mouth; how the servants, all liveried and severe of face, morosely approached each member of the gentry either with Malaga or dry madeira and how almost all these gentlemen, especially the elderly, drank glass after glass as though submitting unwillingly to a sense of duty; how finally bottles of champagne began to pop and toasts
began to be made: the reader is, no doubt, only too familiar with such matters. But particularly noteworthy, it seemed to me, was an anecdote told by the dignitary himself amid a universally joyous hush.